Meruert Tolegen Opens First Boutique in SoHo New York

NEW YORK — Meruert Tolegen opened the doors to her first boutique Tuesday, welcoming guests into the full expression of her world with a location that includes not only a retail space but also her atelier.

“We actually were just looking for an office space,” she said. Her first store is something she had thinking on but it needed to be a space that “made sense,” Tolegen said.

She has a lot of momentum this year as a finalist of the CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund and a semifinalist of the LVMH Prize, leading to her need to expand her studio. When she found the SoHo space at 39 Wooster Street, complete with a full basement suitable for an atelier and a street-level storefront above, she knew it was an opportunity she couldn’t pass up.

Designed entirely in-house by Tolegen and her team, the flagship is about 1,500 square feet.

“There’s a moodiness to it, there’s this antiquity to it,” Tolegen said of the space she has created, which has custom-built architectural elements conceived from the team’s own illustrations: hand-drawn wood moldings, arches, walls and ornamental detailing. But she said the space’s natural elements with wood and iron pieces are not linked to any specific era in time. Rather, it is “a little bit of industrialism mixed together with some antiquity. I think it’s also very close to what SoHo is or used to be,” she explained, adding, “I wanted to create something that has an Old World feel.”

The result is a handcrafted, intimate environment that reflects the tactile sensibility of the brand. “I think something that I’ve struggled with Instagram or just overall showing the brand is clothing is one thing, but there’s also a world behind the clothing, and showing that without the physicality of it on just an image or a runway show isn’t enough sometimes. And I feel like this kind of gives people a physical glimpse into something they can touch and immerse themselves in.”

The space unfolds across three distinct rooms: The Library, at the front, acts as a sculptural gallery of mannequins, garments, and rotating artistic installations — currently sculptural dirt mounds — forming an ever-shifting visual index of the brand’s language. From there, the space opens into The Hall, the central room where the full seasonal collection is presented. At the back, behind velvet drapery, lies The Salon, an intimate enclave set to debut as a private club-like speakeasy with programming spanning sound, receptions, and cultural gatherings.

“I want to do readings and events in the space, hosting different artists and even doing collaborations with different brands,” she said, sharing that a collaboration with Batsheva is in the works for 2026. “I would like to have activations and do things to bring the public in because it’s a destination,” she said.

While this is her first store, she had a pop-up space last year in New York City that she said was a success but had no real identity attached to it. “This is really built out.  We created a world here,” she said of her SoHo flagship.

Part of that world gives customers a chance to meet the creator, as she and her team are just below working in the atelier. “We have this bell that rings downstairs anytime somebody walks in. So we’re patterning or we’re working on something and then we hear this bell and everybody runs upstairs. So we get customer interaction.”

Tolegen has shown in Paris and New York and has steadily gained traction with her unique point of view with Victorian-inspired details — panniers, lace — and  a touch of the macabre. Her collections, primarily for women but with a recent addition of menswear,  are sophisticated, otherworldly and intellectual.

Born in Kazakhstan, she immigrated to the U.S. at an early age and is self-taught, a creative process she has learned through trial and error. “I remember looking at garments that I’ve purchased over time before starting fashion and just kind of examining them and seeing how they’re made inside,” she said of her early days of design.  

“The way I see it is I just kind of make whatever I feel like. We just start sketching. But there’s still a continuity and pieces kind of go off of each other and evolve.”

Since launching in 2020 she has taken on a few wholesale accounts with Nordstrom and Maxfield in the U.S. and a few smaller shops globally, but her focus remains growing her direct-to-consumer business.

“I’ve always approached it with intention to scale,” she said.  “Everything that we have we can recreate in factories,” she said, with some pieces only meant for runway to help expand her worldview through editorial coverage.  

“I think right now the wholesale market is really fragile and everybody is struggling. Just taking things into your own hands is probably the smartest way to go right now,” she said.