Steven Alan Is Back!

With a new store in Chelsea.

In September, subscribers to Steven Alan's newsletter received a surprise announcement in their inbox: After a five-year hiatus, the designer and store owner beloved for his casual-cool clothes and curation of small brands is back. 

"I feel re-energized," he said with a grin when I visited his new 500-square-foot space on West 20th Street in Chelsea. Located adjact to a lumber yard and nestled in between some of the city’s most prominent galleries, the store is something of a do-over for Steven (we go by first names in this newsletter), who is now 58.

Steven Alan in front of his new storefront at 511 W. 20th Street.

In 1994, he opened a store of a similar size on Wooster Street in SoHo. There, he sold vintage jewelry (his family is in the jewelry business), Casio watches imported from Japan, and later, a curation of small New York and LA-based brands that together became a uniform for the downtown hipster—names like Daryl K, Built by Wendy, and Milk Fed by Sofia Coppola.

Inside Steven Alan’s narrow new space.

Eventually, Steven started designing clothes himself, working with local factories to produce pants, shirts, blazers, etc., under his own name. He focused on fabric, fit, and design details he couldn’t find elsewhere. "It didn't make any sense to me that you couldn't put a cell phone on the inside of a woman's blazer,” he offers as an example. (I still have one of his blazers and wear it all the time.)

Growing up in Tribeca, the Steven Alan Annex on Franklin Street was one of the first stores I ever really went to as a young shopper. The selection was a significant step up from Urban Outfitters, but still within pretty please, mom range. It was where I learned about brands like Common Projects and Acne and where I began to aspire towards a more adult sense of style.

At the time, I attended a private school with a dress code, and Steven Alan’s machine-washable, purposefully rumpled button-down shirts were a flex among my guy friends who—I can’t believe I’m putting this in writing—were referred to as the “downtown kids” or “DTK” for short. Styles like the “reverse seam” offered a more relaxed, less preppy look than the Ralph Lauren shirts and Lacoste polos preferred by the “UES kids” or “Upper East Side kids.” In a 2005 NYMag article about the reverse seam titled “The Shirt That Ate Manhattan,” writer Amy Larocca describes them as being “unstudied, yet a perfect fit.” They were decidedly not European.

The Steven Alan Single Needle Shirt modeled by Steven’s son, Max.

In some ways, this moment feels like it did twenty years ago, not just because of the alleged return of the hipster and “indie sleaze” but also because New York is, once again, in desperate need of small, multi-brand stores. "People want real experiences,” says Steven. “They want to go to someone who has a voice—who's curating [a selection] and can explain to you why they like it—and discover things that they didn't necessarily know about." On the day I visited, he showed me ceramic water cups he discovered while dining out with his 10-year-old son in Williamsburg, Birkenstock-like shoes he found upstate, and nail clippers he brought back from a trip to Japan.

At the moment, he’s keeping the offering tight, stocking menswear, plus jewelry (his dad, Jerry Grant, is still designing at 84) and home goods like candles. After taking on an investor around 2014, the brand grew too quickly, going from eight stores to 23 in just two years. By 2019, all its U.S. locations had closed. "I found that I wasn't really enjoying what I was doing because I wasn't designing, curating, and collaborating as much," says Steven. Instead, he was constantly traveling around and talking to brokers. "When I thought about opening a store again, the first thing that came to my mind was: I want to be in the store."

An antique jewelry case in the store.

Thankfully, Steven kept his branded wooden hangers in his garage. "I was like, ‘One day!’” he says with a laugh. “One day, I'm going to need these..." He designed the new space, which used to be a coffee shop, with the help of his oldest son, Max, who is currently studying architecture at NYU, and who also models for the site. “He told me his friends are into the brand,” says Steven with a shrug. “The next generation who didn’t know about it before.”

Despite living in Ditmas, Steven is in the Chelsea store “almost all the time,” he says. “Not only do I feel very rooted in the store, but other things also come from it," he explains. He’ll chat with people, see what they’re wearing, and discover new things himself. “It's already happened here in a week.”

So far, the reaction has been overwhelmingly positive. “Fifty percent of people who come in are like, What do you mean you don't have women's? ” he says. So, don’t worry, he’s going to start doing some women’s again, too. "I underestimated how many people would be interested."