Full-Court Presse

As editors-turned-retail consultants- turned-boutique owners, Renee R. Klein and Zoe Schaeffer have seen the fashion business from just about every imaginable perspective. And they’re intent on using that 360-degree point of view to fill what they see as major voids in the shopping experience. They’re doing it twofold; the first step, their own store. March marked the one-year anniversary of the launch of their boutique, Presse, which the bicoastal business partners—Klein is based in New York, Schaeffer in Los Angeles—opened on L.A.’s La Brea Avenue as an alternative to the city’s glut of fast-fashion, trickle-down trend marts and luxury fashion giants. “Things were sort of coming back to the boutique business,” says Klein. “And for sure L.A. felt like it needed a really sophisticated, luxury boutique,” adds Schaeffer. Indeed, Presse’s retro-glam space, appointed à la a movie star’s Art Deco–y dressing chamber, is a world away from the kitschy flash of Robertson Boulevard’s main shopping drag. And the tightly edited stock—the latest styles by Rodarte, Proenza Schouler, Nina Ricci and Yigal Azrouël line the boldly papered walls—has lured L.A.’s most fashiony types.

Presse boutique.

Now, just a little more than a year later, the duo are ready for part two of their master plan: They’re busy setting up a shop of a different sort, with a larger audience in mind. “We knew we wanted to have a store which would basically serve as our visual representation,” says Schaeffer. “But the plan was really to always reach beyond one market and into the e-commerce world.” After months researching the latest in online retailing, presseboutique.com was scheduled to go live in late March. At a time when sites like Net-a-Porter are successfully making shopping anywhere a virtual reality, rolling out an online store to accompany the brick-and-mortar hardly seems like something to fuss over. But the fact that such prestigious and established stores as Jeffrey, Linda Dresner and Ikram haven’t gone there yet puts Presse improbably ahead of the curve. That’s all the more surprising when one considers, as Klein points out, that while the current retail economy is shaky, e-commerce has experienced major growth. So why not just entirely forgo the store in favor of online?

“Psychologically, it’s nice knowing that there is a real person in a real store,” says Klein. “There will always be people who want the tactile experiences—seeing and touching and feeling. But in terms of the majority of shoppers out there, online is their access,” continues Schaeffer. “Especially the fashion-forward women in the middle of the country. When we get credits in magazines, I have women calling me from Omaha asking for the same cardigan as the women calling from Park Avenue.”