Last weekend, a pack of New York’s artists, fashion editors, designers, and style personalities packed their bags and jetted off to Istanbul for the International Arts & Culture Festival. That’s not a short hike — farther than travelling to Paris or London for those cities’ respective fashion weeks. Yet, when they arrived in the ancient city thousands of miles away, the guests were expected to attend a party at the Boom Boom Room, that sky-high hot spot atop the Standard Hotel that usually resides in their native city’s Meatpacking District.
It wasn’t the real thing, but it was mighty close. The Standard creative team had opened a pop-up version of the party space, complete with a reproduction of the original’s soaring circular bar. And they constructed it — in just six days — within the Esma Sultana mansion, a palace overlooking the Bosporus strait and, beyond the water, Asia.
Instead of finding a local spot that would sate the needs of this very specific set, perhaps it’s better to plant a version of what’s already worked before — a pop-up club, bar, or boutique, open for just one week. It’s just the latest example of what’s become a de rigueur element of every elite cultural happening in a far-flung locale, something present at every stop on the fashionista’s global pilgrimage.
A few weeks ago, party boy Andre Saraiva let the Cannes Film Festival have a taste of his world-conquering Le Baron empire, setting up shop in a defunct Croisette nightclub called Jimmy’z. This is business as usual for Saraiva, whose entire mission seems predicated upon the spread of the Le Baron brand. In addition to the Paris flagship, he’s got brick-and-mortar outposts in New York, London, and Tokyo. With these pop-ups, pretty people the world over know that where they go, Le Baron goes.
Not a day’s yachting distance from Cannes, the little town of Saint-Tropez attracts the same type of patron as the film festival’s more posh bashes. But what to during the day, when you’re not sunning? Well, you can go shopping. Realizing this opportunity, Karl Lagerfeld opened a Chanel pop-up at 25 rue François Sibilli, in 2010.
Miami might have its fair share of bars and clubs, but when Art Basel Miami Beach comes along and half of New York’s art industry decamps for the sunshine state, the nightlife has to come with them. Saraiva is there with his Le Baron crew (until he fries the soundboard, that is), but the more intriguing addition to the scene came in 2009, when the guys behind the burlesque club the Box brought their special Lower East Side version of naughty entertainment to Club Nikki. We’ve sampled the wares at their Chrystie Street location, and according to Urban Daddy, things at the pop-up weren’t too much different. “Expect gender-bending aerialists swinging from the rafters, avant-garde vocalists and an act so anatomically innovative we’re not even sure we can tell you its name (or if it’s legal).”
That same year, the guys behind art collective OHWOW decided to base a pop-up on a place just a few blocks away from the Box: the legendary art punk bar Max Fish. Usually located on Ludlow Street, Max Fish has always catered to artists — based on the walls, you’d think they had a paintings-for-tabs deal, like a Cedar Tavern for the age of Dash Snow. So it made sense for a Max Fish pop-up to appear at Art Basel Miami Beach.
There are countless others, and with Art Basel coming up in Switzerland later this month, expect to see more. And why not? To remake one of your hometown’s cherished places in a foreign locale is a creative project, one in line with the cultural happenings where these pop-ups appear. But the best example of a pop-up may be a shop that never actually opens. That would be the Prada boutique in Marfa, Texas, installed by the artists Elmgreen and Dragset in 2005. It’s a fully stocked store off a tiny road in the middle of the desert that just sits there, serving no one. And unlike another bar or store in the luxury mecca that is New York, Saint-Tropez, or Miami, it might be distinctly useful — there isn’t a real Prada boutique in the entire state of Texas.