By Going Way Beyond Clothes, Komune Lives up to Its Name (EXCLUSIVE)
Even among the mix of quirky fashion boutiques, vintage shops, and independent retailers in New York's Lower East Side one store on Orchard Street stands apart. Its brutalist-meets-mystical exterior immediately catches the eye, concrete lines softened by an aura of mystery. Peering through the glass, you don’t just see racks of garments but sculptures (a dragon stretching across the ceiling), strange objects, and clothes woven seamlessly into this curated chaos.
The space is called Komune, and while this wasn’t my first visit, it still felt new. Each time, the store has offered something fresh to discover: fresh installations, unexpected pop-ups, films projected across the walls, even a lecture from a guest speaker (Professor.E, most recently).
Komune isn’t just a retailer. It’s an evolving experiment where emerging designers from New York to Asia merge into disparate worlds under one roof.
To learn about how it all began, I sat down with Brandon Fogarty, one of Komune’s co-founders, to grasp the vision behind the space on the occasion of Komune's second group show, a gathering of emerging international designers that coincided with New York Fashion Week while gently pushing back on a still-exclusionary industry.
What’s your role at Komune?
Brandon Fogarty: I’m one of the co-founders. There are four of us, but I usually say five because that’s the real core team. My email says Creative Director, but honestly, in a small company you do whatever’s needed to keep things moving. I had to let go of this idea of “what I thought my role should be” and accept that keeping us alive is the work.
How does being based in New York shape what you do as a store and concept?
That’s interesting, because I don’t think we could do this anywhere but New York. I wouldn’t say New York shapes us — I feel like we fit into New York. We’re kind of just doing our own thing in this little shop on this little street.
Maybe the way New York does shape us is through the people we’ve been able to meet. Like, Gloria from Gsongim, Benjamin Greco, Elliot Tiemann — who’s one of our newest designers, I’m literally wearing his pants right now, they’re sick — those connections only happened here. If I’d stayed in Boston, I never would’ve crossed paths with them. LES and Brooklyn are full of amazing designers.
So maybe New York doesn’t shape Komune directly, but it shapes me. Living here has definitely made me tougher. I can put up with a lot more bullshit now than I could before moving here. And in that way, yeah, New York is shaping Komune through shaping me.
That toughness, paired with a willingness to experiment, feels embedded in the store itself — a space that thrives on risk and reinvention.
Can you share a bit about how Komune came to be?
Quick history: Martin and I went to high school together. Senior year we started a clothing brand — not much design, just cut-and-sew tees, but we did a little symposium at our school with basically zero budget. It was super experiential, a whole space people could walk into. That was the seed.
We went off to college, split up, then during COVID started calling each other again and wanted to do something together. That’s where the idea for Komune came — bringing our favorite online designers into one physical space.
Martin’s partner, Leah, joined as the business backbone. She kept track of all our weekly notes and finally was like, “Guys, you talk about the same stuff every week and never actually do it.” She pushed us to put things into motion. So it was the three of us at first.
Right before our first pop-up, we met Cassie Mao — she joined and now runs our website and is our women’s buyer. And then before opening the store, I got a cold email from Alex Tao. We hopped on a call, I loved him immediately, and he became part of the core team. It’s a team of five twenty-somethings, each wearing multiple hats, proving that resourcefulness is just as important as vision.
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