Now Open: Rogan Braves the Bowery

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This is shaping up to be a very busy day for designer Rogan Gregory: this afternoon, without too much ado, his Rogan boutique at 330 Bowery and Bond opened for business and tonight he's being feted at Barneys for the launch of his Target collection (rolling out at the high-end department store tomorrow). A select few were invited to the store's pre-opening bash last night, and the doors swung wide this afternoon; a Racked correspondent dropped in to suss out the scene, and to take some photos of the very dark interior (galleried above). The thorough report:

I stopped by the new Rogan store today, which the nice salesguy said had been open just about two hours. He'd mentioned an opening party the night before, and the space still seemed to be recovering from it (there was a big black trashbag sort of shoved in the back and only about half of the merchandise had price tags attached). It was really dark (read: all black interior) despite the big windows which gave the merchandise a sort of heavenly/spotlighty glow.

It was a little smaller than I expected: about three breezy racks each for men and women, separated pretty loosely in a progression of t-shirts to sweaters/sweatshirts to dresses/jackets with some trousers sort of interspersed. The middle had a black counter with things like a solitary tie or a bag on it: again, way, way more shiny black surface than merchandise (which is to say not a ton of that either: the space is pretty small overall). There's a slightly surprising loft/lookout area that blends in against the back wall and overlooks the floor; up there was a DJ (playing some Radiohead, natch) and what looked like a salesperson figuring out labels or price tags or something. Most of the clothes were of the cream-gray-black variety; t-shirts didn't have prices on them yet, but things like a sturdy ladies' smoking jacket or billowy structured ivory dress run in the $590-$690 range. Not a lot of action inside the store; besides the salesguys milling around, there were maybe two or three men of the tall/handsome/slightly euro/dress-in-Rogan type. Once word spreads and/or people start decoding the way-subtle signage, I suspect traffic will pick up.

· RackedWire: Rogan Readies on Bowery, Aloha Rag Celebrates [Racked]
· Storecasting: Rogan on Bowery Looking Creepy [Racked]
· BREAKING: Rogan Bowery-Bound [Racked]