Just a few days after Opening Ceremony's trademark and intellectual property was acquired by the Farfetch-owned platform New Guards Group, it's been announced that all of the brand's stores will close this year. Carol Lim and Humberto Leon, co-founders of Opening Ceremony, said that they are 'stepping back from multi-brand retail' and will focus on 'growing the Opening Ceremony collection and brand.'
At the moment, the brand's eponymous in-house line only makes up less than 25% of overall revenue for the company, so Lim and Leon will be looking to expand this considerably with the help of New Guards Group. The OC site will be moving to Farfetch, while there will be a showroom in Paris and production will move to Milan. While it's good news for die-hard Opening Ceremony fans that it's not shuttering completely, it's a sad day for the fashion landscape.
When OC launched back in 2002, it revitalised and innovated the entire fashion industry, developing a brand model that may now be standard practice, but was once a brave new idea. Lim and Leon opened it with their savings and a small business loan, creating a much-coveted brand and a platform for emerging designers who, at the time, included the likes of Alexander Wang and Proenza Schouler. Now, OC stocks brands from Acne to Jacquemus, and has enjoyed success with exclusive collaborations, a concept many brands have appropriated for their own business models.
The closure certainly seems like another nail in the coffin for fashion retail, which is increasingly moving away from the traditional bricks-and-mortar structure. Opening Ceremony's stores may only be in the US, but it's reflective of what's happening on our UK high streets and within the fashion industry more generally. As Lim and Leon said, 'As children of immigrants who grew up in the suburbs, looking through magazines to learn about what was happening in fashion and culture, we feel incredibly lucky to have been able to even start this company.'
It's a very valid worry that people won't have access to such opportunities now. We can only hope that worry doesn't become a reality.