The new Marimekko shop at Crate and Barrel

Last Friday afternoon, I tested out my new camera inside the colorful new Marimekko shop-in-shop at Crate and Barrel's Madison Avenue store. The 60-year-old Finnish design house announced its retail collaboration with Crate and Barrel almost exactly one year ago.

The launch officially kicked off last fall and continued this spring with the opening of four shop-in-shop locations - in Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and this one in New York.

The interior entrance to the Marimekko shop (that little splash of color in the background).

Marimekko's previously announced company-owned flagship will open on Fifth Avenue at the beginning of October. Another two Marimekko shops are scheduled to open in Crate and Barrel stores: one in Boston this September and the other in the Miami area in October. After these openings, Crate and Barrel will house a total of seven Marimekko shops. Marimekko also opened its own U.S. online store in July.
 
The relationship between Crate and Barrel and Marimekko spans more than four decades. It began in the early sixties when Crate and Barrel Co-Founders Gordon and Carole Segal discovered Marimekko at a store in Denmark.

The goal of the Segals' newly-formed home furnishings business was to offer well-designed, useful, quality products at a value to their American customers - they found Marimekko to be an ideal fit. In 1967, Crate and Barrel presented the first Marimekko fabric collections, followed by a clothing line several years later.

Here are more than a few photos of the Marimekko shop in Crate and Barrel (at 650 Madison Avenue).

Actually, this montage (above) does a better job of demonstrating the symbiotic relationship that makes this such an "ideal fit" -- the photos on the left are from Crate and Barrel's very neutral upstairs showroom, and the photos on the right are from the Marimekko shop on the first floor

 

 

The Marimekko shop at Crate and Barrel features textiles, accessories, bed and bath, tabletop, bags and a few items of apparel.

 

 

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 Rasymatto Teal, designed by Maija Louekarl in 2009 (above). Rasymatto ("rag rug") -- "...appearing as a disciplined linear pattern from afar, free form yet concisely connected dots are revealed upon closer examination, creating an abstract reference to a rag rug."

 

 

 

 Crate and Barrel has the exclusive rights to retail Marimekko interior decor products in the U.S. and Canada.