It’s an Olympic event
COS, H&M’s upscale sister brand, brings its artistic, elegant fashion to a storied building in downtown L.A.
Swedish retailer H&M Group’s more upscale, minimalist brand COS (originally an abbreviation for Collection of Style) tends to f ly under the sartorial radar despite having 215 stores worldwide, including a store in Beverly Hills as well as ones at the Beverly Center in Los Angeles and at South Coast Plaza in Costa Mesa.
This year the 10-year-old Londonbased brand continued to expand its foothold in Southern California. COS quietly opened its fourth L.A. area boutique (and 14th U.S. location) in the historic Olympic Theatre building at 313 W. 8th St. in downtown Los Angeles in late August.
The store opening, part of a retail revival in downtown, follows COS’ successful shop-in-shop in November 2015 in the now-defunct concept store Austere on South Hill Street.
The building, in which COS has its 5,511-square-foot store, dates to 1927 when it was Bard’s 8th Street Theatre. In 1932 the theater was renamed the Olympic Theatre to commemorate the Summer Olympic Games in L.A. that year.
COS had the notable Olympic sign and building facade restored, a nod to the brand’s commitment to architecture and design. That design-inspired focus can be found in COS’ fashion collections along with reasonable prices, which max out around $450 for, say, a cashmere-blend coat.
COS doesn’t generally publicize the Hollywood stars who wear its men’s and women’s pieces. So it might be a surprise to learn that celebrity stylist Jeanne Yang has dressed Tom Holland, Kumail Nanjiani and Alexander Skarsgard in COS’ clean-lined styles.
“I have always been a fan of casual-cocktail or work-to-weekend clothing — separates that can straddle the line for many different occasions,” Yang said. “COS has been a great go-to place for me to find the right pieces that are hip and always hit the right note.”
Karla Welch, another Hollywood stylist, is a fan of the brand. She has worked COS into the wardrobes of model-entrepreneur Karlie Kloss and actresses America Ferrera, Kathryn Hahn and Lisa Kudrow.
“I just love the modern yet unique quality of the clothes,” Welch said. “It feels sort of Japanese but not completely identifiable.”
In collaboration with British magazine the Gentlewoman, the new downtown L.A. store offers free maps of 15 L.A.-area architectural landmarks.
“We offer a timeless aesthetic that lasts beyond the moment,” COS creative director Karin Gustafsson said by phone from London. “Everything we create should have that feeling of quality, of something you’d like to keep for a long time . ... We are very much about reinventing the classics, giving them new proportions.”
For fall, for example, COS’ design team reworked the crease, a classic element on a tailored pant, and put it into a new context by using it on a skirt or dress.
“We looked at industrial colors, a lot of grays in concrete and metal,” Gustafsson said. “One of the inspirations was [San Francisco-born,] New York-based artist Tauba Auerbach’s canvas fold paintings. We’ve explored a way of folding fabric, creating soft looks to balance the tailoring and contrast masculine with feminine.”
On Oct. 20 COS will introduce the 11-piece women’s capsule line, Creating With Shapes ($99-$390), at its downtown store and online.
The collection, which features an intricate draping and pleating technique with no darts or seams, was developed with Usha Doshi, a longtime COS design partner and former teacher at London’s Royal College of Art.