alice roi

Front Row
No Hiding From Alice Roi

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By ERIC WILSON
Published: May 3, 2007

LIKE her brash, unflirtatious designs for urban tomboys, Alice Roi is not coy. Asked what she, a designer with authentic indie stature, intended by blanketing SoHo this week with her name on posters and her little smock dresses in two stores, she came right to the point. She wanted to see whether or not people would actually buy her clothes.
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Lars Klove for The New York Times

FAST FASHION An Alice Roi smock dress, part of her new collection for Uniqlo.

Ms. Roi is one of eight guest designers selling a capsule collection at the Uniqlo flagship on lower Broadway this spring, and her $49.50 paper-bag shorts and $69.50 smock dresses caused the usual fast-fashion frenzy when they went on sale Friday morning. Ms. Roi was there, too.

For three days beginning today, she also plans to sell her signature spring runway designs, with dresses that start at $300, at a “pop up” shop nearby at 76 Greene Street, a space normally used for sample sales. Ms. Roi said she figured that with the added exposure from the Uniqlo collection, it was a good moment to test the retail waters herself.

“I thought it would be a good idea to get my feet wet first and not fully commit to a store,” she said.

Still, her name was pervasive on the streets. Racked.com, a shopping blog, described the dual approach, including the Alice Roi posters around the neighborhood, as “the Roi-ification of SoHo.” An exaggeration, considering Ms. Roi has been in business since 2000 and is not as powerful a presence as all that. But she has developed a fan base among women who favor an alternative view of pretty other than satin ruffles and tweed bouclé jackets and are willing to seek her out.

“It’s great to have the whole brand represented, rather than a rack of clothes that’s next to another rack of someone else’s clothes,” Ms. Roi said.

To give a better sense of what she has in mind for a permanent store someday, she transformed the pop-up space into what she described as a “sculptural cleaned-up theme park” by installing whitewashed roller coaster tracks along the floor, kites on the ceiling and fun-house changing rooms that give the illusion of being as transparent as her intentions. Ms. Roi said voyeurs will be able to make out only general shapes behind a curtain.




hahaha i like the phrase urban tomboy. Dress masculine and cute yeah yeah