IF Soho

IF Soho was founded in 1979 in New York by Marlene Marino as one of the original American avant-garde designer boutiques on Grand Street in Manhattan's SoHo district, pioneering the multi-brand European-Japanese designer fashion retail model that subsequently became the global template for cities from Tokyo to Paris to Hong Kong. The IF Soho premise—that New York customers wanted access to the avant-garde Japanese and Belgian designer fashion that the rest of American retail wasn't carrying—proved out commercially and established IF Soho as one of the defining American avant-garde designer destinations across the post-1980 era. The IF Soho vocabulary settled around the avant-garde Japanese and Belgian designer pipeline: Yohji Yamamoto, Comme des Garçons (including Junya Watanabe MAN and Tao Kurihara), Maison Margiela (during the Margiela-helmed era), Ann Demeulemeester, Dries Van Noten, plus the broader Antwerp Six and the post-Antwerp Belgian designer pipeline. The store's curatorial buying team made early bets on avant-garde labels that subsequently became global luxury anchors, with IF Soho's Maison Margiela and Comme des Garçons buying predating the broader American market's adoption of these brands by years. IF Soho operates from its original Grand Street flagship in Manhattan, with the building's modest exterior contrasting with the deep curatorial inventory inside. The store's customer base—heavily skewed toward New York art-and-design industry adjacent professionals, fashion editors, and the broader American avant-garde fashion collector community—treats IF Soho as the editorial reference point for Japanese-and-Belgian designer fashion in the United States. For New York customers building an avant-garde designer wardrobe through the post-1990 era, IF Soho has been one of the defining boutique retail destinations alongside Barneys (in its peak era), Bird (Brooklyn), and the broader American avant-garde designer retail network.