Aimé Leon Dore's NYC Flagship Is Clubhouse Culture
If you liked its London store, you'll love Aimé Leon Dore's refurbished New York flagship. Finally reopening after several months of construction, ALD's home on Mulberry Street is finally back in business.
Aimé Leon Dore's Mulberry Street store is partially responsible for the revival of New York's downtown streetwear scene, having played a not-insignificant role in shifting the greater cultural taste away from Supreme logomania and towards a quasi-sophisticated style of post-skate menswear.
Thus, it's fitting that its store would epitomize that same façade with a literal façade of wood grain and easy to digest art.
Though Aimé Leon Dore's new-old store isn't much larger than its cramped predecessor, it amps up the sense of intimacy. The result is a sort of old-school clubhouse akin to the social clubs of the mid-20th century, progenitor to today's man caves.
WASP sociologist E. Digby Baltzell described how "The circulation of elites in America and the assimilation of new men of power and influence into the upper class" came to be through "urban clubdom," as men of means gathered in smoky, moodily-lit rooms to discus topics ranging from the events of the day to plans for world domination (slight hyperbole).
The Aimé Leon Dore store on 224 Mulberry St. is certainly nowhere as exclusive as those highbrow gathering places but it does ape the aesthetic with its fancy midcentury modern furnishings and art books aplenty, thus giving the ALD collection the desired veneer of urbanity.
Aimé Leon Dore has been tremendously busy as of late, having just debuted its latest Porsche team-up alongside collaborative New Balance 550 and 1906 sneakers all while rolling out its expansive Spring/Summer 2023 collection.
Don't expect ALD to slow down as the months tick by, but you could justifiably posit that the reopening of its original New York flagship is where all of its recent achievements hit their pinnacle. It's all coming home.
