Coop + Spree: Upgrade Your Office Style, Bring Your Mom

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Plenty of boutiques peddle work-to-drinks looks—some more successfully than others. ("Just throw a blazer over it!" doesn't always work when "It" is a bandage dress.) But Elizabeth Street newcomer Coop + Spree's owner Brooke Richman really lived that corporate life. The recent Columbia Business School grad logged time at Citigroup before switching gears and working as a buyer for Helmut Lang and Theory, where she noticed something interesting about her peers' shopping patterns.

"She's a professional woman and she has to dress well for work, but after work she's going out," Brooke told us of the Coop + Spree customer. "But what I discovered at Theory is that girl's mom is a huge untapped market. There, a mom would come in wanting to buy her daughter a dress or sweater and then ultimately find a trench for herself."

The owner and her mom have already picked up matching leather-sleeved Helmut Lang blazers from Coop + Spree's racks, but the store's stock goes way beyond pieces from Brooke's former employers. Shoppers will also find mother-daughter-friendly styles like silk Equipment blouses, patterned 10 Crosby Derek Lam trousers, structured Freedom of Animals bags, and lip-emblazoned American Retro sweatshirts (perfect for edging up a pencil skirt).

And, if the family bonding gets to be too much, there's a lounge area in the back, with smartphone chargers, a photo booth, and unlimited quantities of beer, wine, and candy.
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