Women-Owned Design Brands to Support This Women’s Month + Beyond
03.03.22 | By Alexa Morales
Michele Varian’s light fixtures are the perfect blend of traditional and modern aesthetics. Featuring luxurious brass, marble, copper, and steel materials, the NYC brand’s range of contemporary table lamps are rife with playful, unexpected touches that make a decorative statement in any room in the house.
6sqft - The 30+ best neighborhood shops in NYC for finding the perfect gift
posted on Fri, December 10, 2021, by MICHELLE COHEN
When NYC design-world treasure Michele Varian moved her shop from Soho to a mint-hued storefront on Atlantic Avenue in Boerum Hill, the move made sense: The neighborhood, which is something of a design destination, welcomed her with open arms. Expect to find a perfectly curated trove of unforgettable housewares, ceramics, furniture, and jewelry. (Get a peek inside Michele’s Soho loft here).
There are practically endless opportunities for holiday shopping in New York City. But if you’re looking to do some good with your dollar this season, consider skipping the big-box stores for some local home goods stores in NYC instead. Not only is it a way to help the local economy in general, it can also contribute to the recovery of small businesses and their owners who have endured a challenging couple of years.
“There’s been a significant migration from SoHo to Brooklyn. A lot of creative professionals now live in Brooklyn and that is really my customer base,” said Michele Varian of the shop at 400 Atlantic Avenue that bears her name. Her store sells pillows, lighting, baskets, wallpaper, furniture, tableware, jewelry, art, ceramics and gifts. “I design and manufacture a lot of the lighting, the pillows, wallpaper and some furniture.” Lighting is created downstairs in the shop, which employs a full-time fabricator for the lighting and a seamstress for the pillows.
“I really do believe successful retail is the kind of retail that’s integrated into people’s lifestyles,” Varian said. “We are part of the residential community which is totally how it used to be in SoHo. I live in SoHo. It’s become tourist-driven. We have been robbed of our streets during the day, but it’s a beautiful neighborhood when it’s not overrun with people.”
Varian moved her store from SoHo right before the pandemic, in January 2020. “I can not overstate how important that was. I had the shop in SoHo for 20 years. It was as though my landlord was my boss. I am paying 30 percent of what I was paying in SoHo. If I was still in SoHo I would be out of business.”
Asked what she thinks makes Atlantic Avenue distinctive, Varian said, “The historic storefronts are very striking but within those storefronts you’ve got the owners on site,” bringing their personal taste and preferences to the merchandising and decor. “It’s a more traditional retail experience that hearkens back to olden days,” said Varian. “You see people you know. You have conversations and relationships with the store staff. There are like-minded people and so many of my customers and many of the people on Atlantic Avenue are looking for things they can’t find somewhere else. It’s a discerning clientele craving things they haven’t seen online.”
