Aēsop NoMad, designed by the New York studio MV-LLC, recasts the 19th-century building at Broadway as a study in continuity—where a layered past quietly informs a present defined by restraint and precision.
The address once sheltered horses for the Coleman House hotel, then leather goods and wholesale clothing. Each incarnation left a trace, and in MV-LLC’s hands, those traces are not erased but reframed. The familiar awning that once stretched across the façade reappears inside as a series of louvered shelves in waterproof canvas, their warm orange tone lending the steel structure a tactile softness.
The architects allowed the building’s bones—cast-iron columns, original ceiling joints—to remain visible, a reminder that refinement need not overwrite history. Even the polished-steel Fragrance Library, gleaming at the store’s center, feels less like an insertion than a quiet punctuation mark in the building’s ongoing story.
As with the brand’s formulations—plant-based, cruelty-free, and grounded in ritual—the architecture asks for attention without clamoring for it. The result is a space that holds the past lightly while offering something distinctly of this moment: a place where commerce and memory are not at odds, but in conversation.
