shabby for a brand that is a relative newcomer compared to other French luxury brands, such as Yves Saint Laurent (64 years old) or Balenciaga (106 years old).   The brand was founded by Charaf Tajer, a Paris-born fashion designer of Moroccan descent, and launched in 2018.  Shortly after launching onto the market, Casablanca quickly started garnering attention for its modern reimagining of the timeless apres-sport aesthetic. The brand applies Neapolitan-esque tailoring techniques to tennis-inspired statement pieces, creating a fusion between a more traditional luxury style and leisurewear attire – a highly appealing combination for today’s high-spending shopper who prefers more casual silhouettes.  By 2022, Casablanca accrued over 320 wholesale partnership accounts worldwide, accounting for 80 per cent of the brand’s total sales.  In 2023, Casablanca further cemented its path to becoming the next big French heritage brand with the appointment of retail veteran Frederick Lukoff as its CEO. Before joining the team, Lukoff had been at the helm of Scotch & Soda as its CEO and had previously spent a decade as president and CEO of Stella McCartney and had also worked in senior roles at French luxury houses Lanvin, Paco Rabanne and Courrèges. With Lukoff’s diverse experience leading both legacy and nouveau luxury brands, Lukoff and Tajer’s insights into the design interests of today’s one per cent shopper make Casablanca’s goal of becoming the next major French legacy brand seem less far-fetched.  Opening up Casablanca’s first US store Charaf Tajer, the brand’s founder and creative director, remarked that the new Beverly Hills location pays homage to his love for the city of Los Angeles.  The Parisian-born designer recalled that in his younger days, he would go to visit Los Angeles and be creatively inspired by the city of angels. From the city’s skateboarding culture to its cinema and Chicano culture, Tajer explained that he was fascinated by the “living paradox” that Los Angeles represented. “This utopia of America offset by its grittiness, the fast-paced business and the celebrity. This has many messages, but this raw mix of industry and subculture creates a unique harmony that makes the city. It’s the same philosophy we explore at Casablanca. We love juxtapositions that create something new; that’s our design ethos.”  Much like Casablanca’s first store in Paris, which features a “deconstructed” tennis court made from marble, velvet and high-gloss lacquered wood that connects the ground and first-floor spaces as its centerpiece, the Los Angeles store also showcases the brand’s larger-than-life approach to design. The new flagship occupies a former bank, an early-20th-century building whose soaring, 10-metre-high ceilings, grand arches, and classical motifs provided a grand canvas for Casablanca’s luxe aesthetic. Tajer and brand art director Steve Grimes chanced upon the space more than two years ago, collaborating to transform the historic building into a living reflection of Casablanca’s ethos, preserving its monumental Greek-inspired architecture while reinterpreting it through a contemporary lens. Inside the store lies a bespoke sound system by Void Acoustics, which pays homage to music’s central role in Casablanca’s brand identity. Meanwhile, elements like a grand, sculpted foot pay homage to the brand’s focus on movement and sport.  A striking red wall, a mix of curated antique furnishings and modern fabrications, such as a clean, brushed-metal showcase, highlights the brand’s signature design language. Altogether, the space strikes a balance between openness and more intimate areas, catering to clientele seeking a quietly opulent experience. “Each store we open is about creating something timeless yet modern, with its own personality, but in our Casablanca design language and our handwriting. LA is a home for Casablanca: it’s a place where our community can enjoy the world. We wanted a place where DJs can come play and people can hang out and talk about art and design,” said Tajer.  Casablanca is taking over the fashion industry, one store at a time The opening of the Beverly Hills store is just one step in Casablanca’s carefully curated strategy to create a long-lasting legacy fashion house.  Steve Grimes, Casablanca’s brand art director, stated, “It’s such a huge milestone for the brand to be represented in Beverly Hills, and for me, the opportunity of a retail space offers more than just commerce: it’s also a physical manifestation of the brand, for people to come and experience the colour, the sound, the energy, the 360 degree representation.” In addition to opening its own flagship stores, Casablancas has opened shop-in-shops at Harvey Nichols and Selfridges in London, Bloomingdale’s in Dubai, and KaDeWe in Berlin, with further shop-in-shop openings planned for the future.  While the brand shows no signs of slowing down in its native European market or in some of its other international territories, Casablanca doesn’t have a guaranteed shot of success with its new flagship just yet.  The American retail market is not for the faint of heart. For Casbalanca’s Beverly Hills store, as well as any other stores to be opened later in the US market, to succeed, the brand must be ready to roll up its sleeves and put in the hard work to win over this hard-to-please shopper group. Further reading: Monday Swimwear opens Beverly Hills flagship