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"  Imagine, if you can, a time before Havaianas. When the only women flip-flopping around America in the brightly colored, almost-indestructible rubber shoes got them from Brazil. Or try to remember when Topshop was nothing but a pair of words that rhymed. Both of these brands are mass-market ubiquities now, but not so long ago, few people had heard of them in the United States. And those who had\u2014whether they realized it or not\u2014were probably introduced to them because of a store on Howard Street in New York City called Opening Ceremony.  Humberto Leon and Carol Lim started Opening Ceremony in 2002 after they went on a vacation together in Asia. &amp;quot;We were in Hong Kong shopping like crazy people,&amp;quot; says Leon, 35. &amp;quot;We were like, `Shopping is so fun! Why are we not this excited in New York?&amp;#039;\u2009&amp;quot; Leon was working as the director of visual merchandising at Burberry, Lim as a merchandise planner for Bally. &amp;quot;We thought, It&amp;#039;s because we have no preconceived notions of the brands: We&amp;#039;re not thinking, That&amp;#039;s not cool, or This is lame, or This isn&amp;#039;t for people like us. We like anything that feels good and looks good and is fun.&amp;quot; It occurred to the pair of best friends, who&amp;#039;d met as students at the University of California\u2013Berkeley in the mid-&amp;#039;90s, that they should bring this spirit of adventure and discovery to a store of their own. Opening Ceremony has the funky, overflowing aesthetic of a vintage shop, albeit with a cart of beautifully displayed Comme des Gar\u00E7ons leather goods toward the back of the main room, and upstairs, little heaps of many-thousand-dollar ragged Rodarte sweaters. But luxury fashion is only part of the formula. There are racks upon racks of garments from young and foreign designers, such as Macedonia&amp;#039;s Risto Bimbiloski and Japan&amp;#039;s Tsumori Chisato. There is the reasonably priced and extremely popular house line, which Leon designs with his team and a rotating group of guest collaborators\u2014style luminaries such as Chlo\u00EB Sevigny and Robert Clergerie. There are books of Ryan McGinley&amp;#039;s photographs and a T-shirt \u00ADprinted to look like it&amp;#039;s covered in pearls (created for Opening Ceremony by the artist Terence Koh). And then there are wacky things that don&amp;#039;t seem like they have anything to do with high fashion or art, like baskets of bright Solmate socks. &amp;quot;They believe that the same person who is buying a $1,500 dress will also buy a $50 \u00ADT-shirt and a $3 bumper sticker, even if that person never shopped like that before. They have made it possible to get it all in one place,&amp;quot; says Alexander Wang, who has been selling his work through Opening Cer\u00ADe\u00ADmony since the very beginning of his career, in spring 2007. &amp;quot;OC has changed the way stores are now buying and doing business all over the world. They created an environment based on customer and experience rather than the traditional route, by price point.&amp;quot; After the pair&amp;#039;s fateful vacation, &amp;quot;we came up with what we thought was the silliest, most stupid idea,&amp;quot; Leon says. &amp;quot;We&amp;#039;re going to bring all these brands that we just found in Hong Kong and open up a store with them, and we have all these friends in New York who are designers. We&amp;#039;re going to do a competition and find out who&amp;#039;s better.&amp;quot; This battle of nations, a small-scale fashion Olym\u00ADpics, inspired the name for their store\u2014along with Leon and Lim&amp;#039;s desire to come up with something mock-proof. &amp;quot;We wanted two words because it&amp;#039;s kind of hard to talk shit about two words,&amp;quot; Leon says. &amp;quot;Opening Ceremony is so pretty! It&amp;#039;s such a pretty name and a ceremony is so beautiful. How could you ever say, `Ugh, you&amp;#039;re going to Opening \u00ADCeremony?&amp;#039;\u2009&amp;quot; An opening ceremony also implies an inauguration, and that is precisely what Leon and Lim have offered a slew of now-established designers and brands since they opened eight years ago in Manhattan. (They have since expanded their business to include stores in Los Angeles and Tokyo.)Opening Ceremony was not only the first retailer to offer Havaianas outside their native Brazil and Topshop beyond the UK, it was also among the first to introduce such home\u00ADgrown talents as Proenza Schouler and Rodarte\u2014designers who were obscure when Leon and Lim first started working with them but are major presences in fashion today. Leon and Lim are on a kind of Warhol\u00ADian mission to make art out of commerce. They see themselves as &amp;quot;curators&amp;quot; and their stores and events as opportunities to do something exhilarating and creative. And they are about as indifferent to wealth as a pair of proprietors could plausibly be. &amp;quot;They&amp;#039;re not just thinking about retail; it becomes a relationship where they think, How can we foster what a designer does best?&amp;quot; says Laura Mulleavy, the codesigner, with her sister, Kate, of Rodarte. &amp;quot;People look to them to see what&amp;#039;s creative, what&amp;#039;s influential, because everything they invest in has value. They have an amazing eye for what should be valuable in the marketplace. That willingness to do things in a different way is what gives them power.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Part of what we&amp;#039;re good at is launching things,&amp;quot; says Lim, 35, one morning over dim sum in Arcadia, California, not far from where both she and Leon grew up. &amp;quot;We feel it&amp;#039;s really great to introduce and then move on,&amp;quot; Leon says. His mother, Wendy, and three members of the Opening Ceremony staff from New York\u2014who were staying at Lim&amp;#039;s parents&amp;#039; house while in town for an event at the L.A. store\u2014passed dumplings and noodles and soup around the table. (Both Leon and Lim are very close to their families. When they opened their first store, Wendy knit all the sweaters sold there; an accomplished Chinese cook, she still prepares food for many of their events in L.A. Lim&amp;#039;s father, Ted, who was in real estate before he retired, advises them on their store locations.)  When Topshop decided to open an enormous flagship in New York City, Opening Ceremony knew their work with the brand was done. &amp;quot;At that time a lot of people had embraced Topshop,&amp;quot; says Lim, who is wearing a Vlas Bloome plain brown sweater, a ruched navy headband, and no makeup. In contrast to her sober outfit, her nails are hot pink with purple leopard spots on them, except for one pinky, which is done up as a slice of watermelon. &amp;quot;They were going to come and open a huge collection, and we said, `That&amp;#039;s great. But it&amp;#039;s not novelty anymore.&amp;#039;\u2009&amp;quot; What it would have been was a substantial payday for Lim and Leon. But that does not seem to be their primary motivation. &amp;quot;We&amp;#039;re not into selling out,&amp;quot; Leon says\u2014which is a pretty funny thing to come out of the mouth of a retailer. &amp;quot;I could&amp;#039;ve stayed in investment banking if that&amp;#039;s what I wanted,&amp;quot; says Lim, referring to her first career. &amp;quot;I would&amp;#039;ve hated myself. Whereas here, you want to get up, you want to go to that meeting, you want to be inspired, you want to meet new people, and that&amp;#039;s kind of why it works for us.&amp;quot; Their staff\u2014young, creative people, many of whom are aspiring designers and artists\u2014are their control group. &amp;quot;They need to be so excited about an idea that their heads are blown off. That way we know,&amp;quot; says Leon, eating a forkful of noodles. The biggest concern, in almost every situation, seems to be whether a project has the potential to be really fun. In 2009, when their friend Spike Jonze directed Where the Wild Things Are, based on Maurice Sendak&amp;#039;s children&amp;#039;s classic, he asked if Opening Ceremony would collaborate on some kind of tie-in merchandise. They didn&amp;#039;t want to make T-shirts. Instead, Leon did an entire line of faux-fur Wild Things coats and vests inspired by the beasts&amp;#039; fur. Every piece was based on one of the beasts\u2014&amp;quot;luxurious-\u00ADlooking fur coats that were done so well, they looked like something that could&amp;#039;ve been on Carine Roitfeld\u2014for $350 to $400,&amp;quot; Leon says. There was even a one-piece adult-size white suit with pointy ears and a tail, based on little Max&amp;#039;s costume. When Leon showed the director his samples, &amp;quot;Spike said, `Okay, but is anyone going to buy any of these things?&amp;#039; I said, `You know what? Maybe, maybe not. But let&amp;#039;s just go with it.&amp;#039;\u2009&amp;quot; The Max suit sold out within the first hour. Leon and Lim know their customers are coming to them for inspiration as much as they are coming to buy clothes. The Opening Ceremony accessories shop in L.A. is occupied by several life-size fiberglass farm animals that have glass display cases for stomachs. The adjacent 10,000-square-foot (and completely self-funded) main store is housed in Charlie Chaplin&amp;#039;s former West Hollywood dance studio and opened in 2007; it doesn&amp;#039;t look that big from the outside, but once you&amp;#039;ve entered, it&amp;#039;s labyrinthine\u2014room tucked behind room, each with its own unique reality. &amp;quot;The challenge was, how do we make it feel like L.A.?&amp;quot; Lim says. &amp;quot;We wanted separate little areas,&amp;quot; like the multitudinous neighborhoods of the city itself. And, because getting anywhere in Los Angeles requires driving and very likely traffic, &amp;quot;this spot is a destination,&amp;quot; Lim says. &amp;quot;We want you to come and spend a long time.&amp;quot; The dressing rooms are housed in a small log cabin on the second floor. A two-story papier-m\u00E2ch\u00E9 Doc Martens boot hangs in the stairwell. One room is a tidy book shop for D.A.P. art tomes. The \u00FCber-sharp prepster label Band of Outsiders is displayed in a room covered floor to ceiling in Legos\u2014sweaters neatly stacked on Lego shelves; the back wall adorned with dozens of little Lego men; the ceiling speckled with a constellation of Lego stars. For all of their edgy cool, Leon and Lim say that humble, cheesy suburban mall culture is what formed their sensibility. &amp;quot;It really made us realize how we could tweak this retail business,&amp;quot; Leon says. &amp;quot;I grew up here surrounded by mall merchandise, and I loved it. So we&amp;#039;re always trying to figure out, how do you make that suburban kid \u00ADreally freak out?&amp;quot; It might sound a bit airy, all this talk of fun and &amp;quot;going with it,&amp;quot; but in an environment in which traditional retail is imploding and department stores are desperate to think of new ways to sell fashion and luxury goods to customers worried about falling stocks and uncertain futures\u2014innovative, counterintuitive approaches may be exactly what works. While many fashion businesses are contracting, Opening Ceremony has been following its own idiosyncratic growth pattern.  In February, they introduced a new boutique inside Manhattan&amp;#039;s Ace Hotel\u2014Opening Ceremony&amp;#039;s answer to the tourist gift shop. It carries hot pink and orange rolling suitcases, thanks to a special collaboration with luggage manufacturer Tumi, travel-size cosmetics from Kiehl&amp;#039;s, color-block toothbrushes, Haribo gummi bears to chew on the airplane ride home, and every magazine from McSweeney&amp;#039;s to Architectural Digest. &amp;quot;The best version of everything you need for a trip,&amp;quot; Leon says, with satisfaction. He loves the idea of reinterpreting retail clich\u00E9s, whether it&amp;#039;s promotional merchandise for a movie or a mini mall, which is what Leon says they were riffing on when they created their L.A. store. &amp;quot;I look at retail in the broadest sense,&amp;quot; he says. &amp;quot;You&amp;#039;re probably going to think I&amp;#039;m crazy, but I would love to do a supermarket.&amp;quot; Just because Leon and Lim aren&amp;#039;t predominantly motivated by money doesn&amp;#039;t mean they aren&amp;#039;t exceptionally ambitious. They are both first-generation Americans and they share an extremely strong work ethic. Leon started working for the Gap when he was 14 years old; by the time he graduated from Berkeley with a double major in art practice and American studies, he had become the Gap&amp;#039;s visual director for the entire East Bay. &amp;quot;I worked full-time through all of college,&amp;quot; he says. &amp;quot;I needed the money. I didn&amp;#039;t have the luxury of just being a college student, but I didn&amp;#039;t mind it, because I was doing something I really liked.&amp;quot; As busy as he was with work and school, Leon remembers always being the instigator, the adventurer in his friendship with Lim, who majored in economics. &amp;quot;Our dynamic started with Carol studying for midterms and me wanting to go out and rage in the city,&amp;quot; Leon says. &amp;quot;I was like, `Come out in your pajamas! Let&amp;#039;s have fun, and we&amp;#039;ll come back and study at two in the morning!&amp;#039;\u2009&amp;quot; That symbiosis of Lim&amp;#039;s practicality and Leon&amp;#039;s ingenuity is still in play at Opening Ceremony. &amp;quot;I kind of say, `Here&amp;#039;s the limits of what we can do right now,&amp;#039;\u2009&amp;quot; says Lim, who was responsible for budget allocation at Bally in her last job. &amp;quot;Humberto&amp;#039;s a master at saying, `If you give me x, I&amp;#039;m going to create z.&amp;#039; And that&amp;#039;s the way we work. We&amp;#039;ve always been the checks and balances to each other.&amp;quot; Lim has a similarly practical and nurturing role in her relationships with many of the designers Opening Ceremony represents. &amp;quot;We appreciate the artists,&amp;quot; Lim says. &amp;quot;With traditional retailers, they&amp;#039;re like, `Nope, that&amp;#039;s not for us,&amp;#039; and they walk away. We&amp;#039;re, `Okay, we love the person who&amp;#039;s behind this; we see their vision.&amp;#039;\u2009&amp;quot; Over time, they help young designers cultivate their work into a sustainable business\u2014which, in turn, fuels Opening Ceremony over the long term. &amp;quot;From the beginning, they have known exactly how to edit a designer&amp;#039;s collection so there&amp;#039;s an equal balance of what is commercially viable and pieces that truly represent the brand,&amp;quot; says Alexander Wang. What&amp;#039;s surprising is how well this for\u00ADmula works with both emerging designers and established old brands that need dusting off. Opening Ceremony has collaborated with classic but\u2014until recently\u2014faded brands such as Red Wing, Woolrich, Keds, Bass, and Pendleton to surprising effect: A memorable partnership with Timberland yielded neon orange lace boots. &amp;quot;We de\u00ADcided early on we were going to focus on American heritage brands,&amp;quot; Leon says. &amp;quot;It was time for us as Americans to hold on to this and use this, to say, `You know what? This product is meaningful to us.&amp;#039;\u2009&amp;quot; The people at Pendleton, an Oregon company that has been making flannel shirts and wool blankets that interpret Native American designs since 1909, were not immediately clear on why a hip Manhattan retailer was pursuing them. &amp;quot;Their main line was sold at hunting stores, outdoor shops, things that weren&amp;#039;t necessarily our demographic,&amp;quot; Lim says. &amp;quot;We told them, `We&amp;#039;re going to carry your line in our store; we&amp;#039;re going to tell the story as to why it&amp;#039;s here. And in the next two years, I guarantee you, you&amp;#039;re going to have boutiques; you&amp;#039;re going to have high-level specialty stores coming to buy this.&amp;#039;\u2009&amp;quot; Which is exactly what has happened. Leon and Lim are allergic to the word trend. But, Leon admits, &amp;quot;American heritage brands are a really big focus right now: Retailers across the board, high and low, are embracing them, and I think that we&amp;#039;re a part of that. We&amp;#039;ve always said it&amp;#039;s about the bigger picture. It&amp;#039;s about really affecting retail on a global level.&amp;quot; Though Opening Ceremony is in only three cities at the moment, &amp;quot;we think that retail&amp;#039;s at a great point right now, where it&amp;#039;s malleable, where it can be reconfigured. I think retail as a whole can be shifted,&amp;quot; he says. On a sunny spring Saturday, Leon and Lim are throwing a barbecue in the parking lot next to their store in West Hollywood to celebrate their collaboration with various artists on a line of &amp;quot;air dancers&amp;quot;: enormous, inflatable creatures that adorn many of L.A.&amp;#039;s car dealerships and parking lots, swaying in the sky to attract potential customers driving by. Wendy Leon grills carne asada for a long line of hipsters\u2014a guy wearing a leather motorcycle jacket with a pair of khaki Bermuda shorts, a pair of girls who look very much like Asian Olsen twins. Opening Ceremony staffers are deejaying, and Mischa Barton is wearing a balloon twisted into a crown on top of her head. Spike Jonze stands in front of the air dancers he dreamed up for the occasion, a towering trio of blown-up fabric figures: a tall fellow with orange wings and a blond Mohawk in the middle, flanked by a green creature to the left and a pink one to the right, both undulating in the air, seemingly competing to get the middle man&amp;#039;s attention. &amp;quot;Humberto and I both like air dancers, and we discovered that one night in Japan,&amp;quot; says Jonze, who is wearing white corduroys and holding a white balloon sword. &amp;quot;The next morning, Humberto had looked up, like, eight air dancer websites.&amp;quot; Chlo\u00EB Sevigny, who couldn&amp;#039;t make it to the barbecue that day but is a regular presence at Opening Ceremony&amp;#039;s parties and stores, opted to work with Leon and Lim on her collection of streetwear rather than collaborate with any of the other dozens of retail outlets or designers who would doubtless have been thrilled to partner with her\u2014because, she says, &amp;quot;Humberto&amp;#039;s so re\u00ADsourceful. Any fantasy I have, he just makes it come true. This season, we collaborated with Nana for shoes, we did Fogal tights&amp;quot; in wild, busy patterns that make for riotous outfits if they&amp;#039;re worn with Sevigny&amp;#039;s floaty silk print dresses for Opening Ceremony in leopard spots and florals. &amp;quot;I love people who can make things happen.&amp;quot; "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.elle.com/fashion/a11356/the-success-of-opening-ceremony-470082/?click=main_sr>