Fashion, entertainment, fame, generation and discovery have converged in The Seaport District and will soon begin to mingle.
Howard Hughes Corporation and Live Rocket said the New York-based content and commerce company signed an area licensing agreement in the Seaport district in anticipation of the launch of the Live Rocket New York Television Network.
An area of 18,000 square feet at 26 Fulton Street will begin as an incubator and catalyst for creativity in the community, occupying a component of the area and evolving in 2021 in an expanded long-term retail studio, described as a cross between Andy Warhol Factory, Fiorucci and QVC.
“We’ll have podcasts. One of the systems we’ll launch in the first quarter is called “Blast Off”. They will be other people with smart products, who will audition to host,” Said Mark Bozek, founder and CEO of Live Rocket, in an exclusive interview.
If that sounds familiar, it’s because Bozek is a former home telesales executive who worked at QVC with Barry Diller. As CEO of HSN, he acquired Joy Mangano, founder of Miracle Mop. Bradley Cooper’s character in David O’Russell’s 2015 film Joy about Mangano founded in Bozek.
The president of Howard Hughes’ three-state region in New York, Saul Scherl, said Live Rocket would register for “revolutionary Seaport tenants such as ESPN’s live broadcast studios, Nike Design Studio, iPic Theatres and chefs Jean-Georges Vongerichten, David Chang, Andrew Carmellini and Helene.” Henderson. »
Located along the cobblestones of history, the Seaport community of Lower Manhattan, where Fulton Street meets the East River, is framed through perspectives of the Brooklyn Bridge, the Statue of Liberty and the city skyline.
Early in his career, Bozek worked as a manufacturer on Fox Style News, where he produced a three-minute report on street photographer Bill Cunningham of the New York Times, broadcast in 1994.
Soon after, Cunningham learned that he had decided to win an award from the Council of Fashion Designers of America. He called Bozek and asked him to film the mandatory video for the award ceremony.
Bozek arrived at Cunningham’s narrow studio, hoping that the interview would last 10 minutes, given the photographer’s reservation, to his surprise, the photographer spoke frankly for hours.
It wasn’t until Cunningham’s death in 2016 that Bozek reviewed the tape of the interview. Based on this long interview, Bozek wrote and directed the documentary The Times of Bill Cunningham, which cuts off the chatter and background noise of the fashion industry, allowing the photographer’s own voice to penetrate the film.
Cunningham is the connective fabric of Live Rocket’s in The Seaport District.
“I stopped running on TV buying groceries four years ago to make this movie, and it was this movie that featured Live Rocket,” Bozek said. “The amount of six degrees of separation and despair, since I walked into my basement and discovered this movieArray.. Since the first interview, ironies have abounded in all of this.
When asked if he knew he had caught gold on the tape, Bozek replied, “I never knew I knew, because Bill in discovery.
This sense of discovery is what Bozek hopes to create in Seaport, first with the incubator and finally with the largest retail studio.
In an example of Six Degrees, Edwin Schlossberg, ESI Design’s spouse, designed 26 Fulton, a project suitable for Caroline Kennedy’s husband, whose expired mother, Jackie, one of Cunningham’s favorite muses. She even asked her to dye a red Balenciaga dress in black that she wanted to wear at President John F. Kennedy’s funeral.
Released friday, BillCunninghamStreet.com features The Times of Bill Cunningham, which can be downloaded through apps, and an online shop for T-shirts, handbags and a cheerful mask with the poster art of Cunningham’s film in the most sensitive of its blue signature. Bike. The collections, treated as drops, are grouped by theme, like the blue jacket, and on the street.
BillCunninghamStreet.com offers a wide variety of images to the site. Bozek received the rights to the 3 million images, documents and recordings in Cunningham’s archives, and digitized about 25,000 images, eventually employing about 500 iconic and unpublished images of the film.
“We’re going to create a store-based network, so part of the network, or programming, will be continuously sold in other unique tactics in the Live Rocket studio,” Bozek said, adding, “We’ll get our profits from the products we sell. The other part will be logo content similar to the fashion, advertising and pop culture that will be supported by advertisers. It is presented in a much more exclusive way than television purchases are known and will attract more and thriving customers.”
Imagine the glamorous ghosts of Jackie Kennedy, Babe Paley and Barbara Streis and an inspiring product for Live Rocket New York.
Aside from Sarah Jessica Parker, who narrates the documentary and is a well-documented fashion girl, Cunningham had little use for Hollywood stars. “I’m strictly interested in how women dress in their own lives,” he says in the film. “Elizabeth Taylor once came [to Chez Ninon, the luxury boutique where Cunningham used to work] and they didn’t know what to do with it.”
Bozek said the fact that The Times of Bill Cunningham exists is a testament to the close-knit members of Cunningham’s fashion tribe, who bring a torch for the photographer and whose fashion pastime is proudly based on minimalist black sleeves. “Two really excellent advisers are Bethann Hardison, whom I’ve known since the days of Willi Smith, and Susan Rockefeller, [the environmentalist, entrepreneur and filmmaker] who was married to David Rockefeller Jr.,” Bozek said.
The South Street seaport, as it used to be known, suffered on September 11, 2001 and the coup d’éted of SuperStorm Sandy in 2012, but recovered. The COVID-19 pandemic was another challenge, with victims such as 10 Corso Como, a branch of the prominent Milanese specialty store, which closed its doors permanently.
Howard Hughes, who took control of Seaport in 2010 through a long-term land lease with the city, stated the complexity of Seaport’s ambitious project, when the developer told analysts in October, “There is still a deadline to unlock value and we intend to continue executing this strategy until 2020 and 2021.”
Significantly, Howard Hughes has accepted a percentage of sales rather than a more classic form of rental. Retailers whose monetary effects have been decimated by the pandemic have been eager to move on to the percentage model, but homeowners have been reluctant.
“If we do this correctly, then the mutual benefit to Live Rocket and Howard Hughes will be that our global broadcast and Live Rocket TV Network will market the Seaport District in an unprecedented way,” she said.
I have been a journalist for 30 years, as editor-in-chief of W magazine, and for 17 years, as editor-in-chief at WWD. I write about
I have been a journalist for 30 years, as editor-in-chief of W magazine, and for 17 years, covering real estate and retailers as editor-in-chief at WWD. I write about luxury boutiques, independent stores, branches, mass chains and local virtual brands, and the strength that redefines the way we shop: Amazon. I announced the news and interviewed the CEOs of the major stores and REIT, and looked below the surface to notice and analyze the complexities of achieving business in the COVID-19 era. After months of quarantine, consumer purchasing behavior has changed; have been more dependent on Amazon than ever. Retailers will want to leverage the creativity of their organizations to survive, while addressing key issues such as sustainability, diversity, and inclusion.