Carhartt Work in Progress has landed in Williamsburg.
The trendy streetwear-inspired collection from classic workwear brand Carhartt has opened its largest North American store in the Brooklyn neighborhood.
The 4,000-square-foot space at 132 Bedford Avenue features men’s and women’s merchandise from the spring collection along with two exclusive pieces — a graphic T-shirt and a sweatshirt bearing a print of its Boogeyman motif — specific to Brooklyn.
“We’ve been on the search for a larger space in New York for a while,” said Steve Wolski, general manager of North America for the Basel, Switzerland-based company. Carhartt Work in Progress has a store on Lafayette Street in Manhattan that has expanded three times and now measures 1,800 square feet.
Carhartt Work in Progress
Courtesy of Carhartt Work In Progress
“We make a lot of stuff,” Wolski said. “And we are limited in SoHo based on Manhattan sizes, so we were hoping for space to showcase the breadth of the collection. We’ve been patient.”
Opening in the borough was a natural for the company, he added. “Brooklyn has one of our largest customer bases and Williamsburg has a lot of foot traffic, which is big for us.”
The centerpiece of the Brooklyn store, which was designed by the Milan-based architecture studio of Andrea Caputo and Salomée Faeh, is a 14-foot metal Boogeyman in burnished iron, Wolski said it has been tricked out as a fully functional speaker system.
“It’s a graphic reference from our catalogue in the early ‘90s intended to show the mix of the iconic Carhartt workwear and the Work in Progress line in Europe,” he said. “We’ve adapted it into different forms over the last 32 years.”
In addition to the Boogeyman, the store features a racking system that wraps around the entire space, wooden display tables and a hammered wood bar.
Carhartt Work in Progress
Courtesy of Carhartt Work In Progress
Wolski said he expects bestsellers to be the brand’s workwear-inspired pieces, notably its Detroit chore coat in a 13-ounce duck canvas offered in updated fits and washes; its Active jacket in canvas with a hood, and its loose-fit five-pocket jeans, overalls, vest and single- or double-knee carpenter pants.
“Canvas and denim have been the drivers of our business,” he said. Men’s continues to represent the bulk of the business, but women’s is growing, he said.
Wolski said that despite the global turmoil that has impacted many businesses worldwide, Carhartt Work in Progress continues to perform well. “We’re on an upward trajectory. The world is unpredictable, but all is positive here.”
In addition to the two New York City stores, the company operates a unit in Los Angeles and just opened a store in Toronto.
Carhartt Work in Progress
Courtesy of Carhartt Work In Progress
Wolski said eventually the plan is to open more stores in North America. Carhartt Work in Progress operates more than 100 units globally.
“We see other markets we can service, but there’s nothing imminent,” he said. The Carhartt Co. was founded by Hamilton Carhartt in Detroit in 1889 as a workwear brand and it is still owned and operated by his descendants. In 1989, Swiss national Edwin Faeh started importing the workwear to Europe. He holds the global license for the line.
Faeh created Carhartt WIP in 1994, offering trendy alternatives inspired by the utilitarian core collection. Over the years the company has collaborated with everyone from Nike and Junya Watanabe to Sacai.
