New York Fashion Week kicked off on Thursday, and with it, Instagram opportunities galore descended on the city. These photo-friendly moments don’t only come during the shows, but in pop-up experiences! The Saks IT List Townhouse is one of these experiences.
The Saks IT List Townhouse takes a storied brownstone and transforms the rooms into the living embodiment of fall’s hottest trends, as dictated by Saks’s annual IT List: Silver, Wild Wild West, Suit Yourself, Mad for Plaid, Statement Outerwear and Animal Instincts.
Each room is designed to be an Instagram-ready playground. The “Mad for Plaid” room contains a ball pit and a light-up ping pong table. The walls and furniture of the “Animal Instincts” room are covered floor-to-ceiling in leopard print—and there’s another ball pit in that room, too. The floor of the “Statement Outwear” room is dusted with faux snow.
The objective of the pop-up is to bring Saks Fifth Avenue’s “It List” franchise to life. The IT List comes out twice a year, and lays out that season’s “curated set of trends and key items that customers need,” Emily Essner, senior vice president, marketing and digital for Saks, said. It felt like a natural fit for a more immersive experience, and that’s where the idea for the townhouse was born.
The name “townhouse” is literal: The space is housed in a Greenwich Village townhouse, less than a block off of Washington Square Park. According to Essner, the team felt the location was a more “intimate” take on the pop-up experience, rather than housing it in a warehouse or event space.
She said: “A townhouse would be a really different environment, a little bit more lived in and a bit more personal.”
And of course, included in each room are shoppable products that visitors can purchase right then and there. “It makes the experience a lot more fulfilling,” Essner said. “You’re going to go there and experience the trends, but then you actually get to buy them.”