Lady White Co Doubles Its Silverlake Store With Modernist-Inspired Refresh

Lady White Co has doubled the footprint of its first store, LW-C1, in Los Angeles' Silverlake neighbourhood, marking its tenth anniversary with a redesign that borrows directly from Eileen Gray, Pierre Chareau, Juliaan Lampens and Charlotte Perriand.

The Los Angeles-based label, founded in 2015 by Phil and Sarah Proyce, built its reputation on a single premise: perfecting the white T-shirt. A decade on, it produces a library of jersey and sportswear basics, each made in family-owned factories within a ten-mile radius of its East Los Angeles design headquarters. The brand calls this an "uncommon approach to familiar classics".

The anniversary prompted a full refresh of the store at 2431 Hyperion Avenue. Space was one driver. Detail was the other.

"We needed more space," Phillip Proyce and co-owner Taylor Caruso, who has worked with the brand since its beginnings, told Wallpaper*. "But mainly we felt like the level of detail that we put into our clothes was not being mirrored in our old store build-out. We wanted space for customers to take in the clothes at a slower, more thoughtful pace – a little breathing room."

Who designed the new LW-C1?

The brand drafted interior design studio WOE (Width Over Ears), also Los Angeles-based, to conceive the new space. The expansion doubles the store's original footprint – "but it was tiny to begin with – so nothing too massive", say Proyce and Caruso, who took over the entirety of a building that previously housed both their storefront and offices.

WOE founders Nicole Choy and Justin Coates had wanted to work with Lady White Co for some time, having been fans of the clothing, and connected with Proyce and Caruso over shared influences. "[We are both] enthusiasts of esoteric fabrics, modernist architecture, and art and fashion photography," Choy and Coates said.

What are the modernist references?

The renovation draws on four modernist figures in particular. "The building was not architecturally specific in any stylistic sense, but given the brand's ethos, some early influences included the very personal, yet enduring expressions of Eileen Gray's E-1027, and Pierre Chareau's Maison de Verre," Choy and Coates said. "Further on, we were looking at the work of Juliaan Lampens, and in particular, the plywood 'closets' that he would build into his otherwise continuous concrete structures."

The result is utilitarian. Studded rubber flooring and aluminium accordion doors – "commonly used in institutional settings" – sit alongside storage and displays in painted, rather than natural, wood, "as a nod to a less precious, more utilitarian sensibility".

"The design is meant to complement the qualities of the brand: subtle but sharp, distinct but familiar, utilitarian but beautiful," the pair added.

Why did the brand stay in Silverlake?

Proyce and Caruso describe an "odd love for municipal looking spaces" that initially contradicts WOE's own aesthetic. "That juxtaposition is why we chose them," they said. "We didn't want someone to regurgitate our look and vice versa. It is not easy to make something look 'real' these days, but WOE achieves that. They have an identity."

"The clothes we make always felt simple and pragmatic," they continued. "When trying to harmonise an environment with our clothing, we kept ending up at municipal-looking buildings – waiting rooms, educational facilities, things with very little ornamentation. We found beauty in that normality, and that thought stuck with the brand for the last 10 years."

The building itself, which Choy and Coates call "nondescript... a 1950s relic blending seamlessly into the iconic Silverlake throughway that is Hyperion Avenue", previously served as the storefront in its garage form. The first iteration of the store opened in the building's former garage.

"Silverlake has always been an anchor for midcentury architecture," say Proyce and Caruso of the decision to stay rather than relocate. "Within a couple blocks there are several great works by Neutra, Schindler, and others. All that great architecture is the foundation for further creativity in and around the neighbourhood."

A second store, LW-C2, opened in Los Angeles' Arts District in 2021. The refreshed LW-C1 flagship now positions the brand's original address as the clearest built expression of its decade-old design ethos.