Looking For A Bespoke Suit in Palm Springs? At Paul Marlow You Have Come To The Right Place

Just when you think you’ve heard every life-after-Covid story, you hear yet one more—and this one has a very happy outcome. Paul Marlow, formerly of the design collective Loden Dager, a witty and clever menswear label known for riffing on classic Americana as much as it did achingly hip contemporary New York, is now opening a store in Palm Springs to showcase his decade and counting bespoke tailoring business. Though store seems a little prosaic.

At the risk of sounding pretentious (me, I mean, not Marlow) experiential space is better. As well as his impeccable made to measure suiting, and his NYC-manufactured off the rack shirting, and the sweaters knitted in Scotland, there is vintage furniture, new textiles, Voutsa wallpaper, tabletop, candles, fragrance and last but by no means least a revolving roster of art shows, all presented in a vast industrial building sandwiched between two interior design studios. What Marlow has created is an environment that’s as cool as the summer midday Palm Springs sun is hot; that is, extremely.

Marlow wants this space to feel curated but not to leave you feeling overstimulated; less, to his thinking, is more. Photo: Courtesy of Paul Marlow

“It really feels like a great materialization of my life in an external format, what with the art, the interiors, the textiles, and the custom clothing,” Marlow says. “After Loden Dager closed, I turned to doing bespoke, to make a fresh start. And then I started doing ready to wear again during Covid when nobody wanted to come in and get measured. That’s when I picked up on the idea of opening a store. My friends have had their store on this strip for 20 years and they’re downsizing, so they rented me one of their spaces—so it comes with a great community, a great family of people.”

The idea of a store wasn’t exactly untested for him, though. Marlow still has his tailoring atelier in the former Loden Dager design studio on West 29th Street in New York, where people can drop by and hang out as much as they can be fitted for something to wear. In fact, with its industrial NYC workspace vibe personalized by Marlow’s extensive art and book collections, as well as his elegantly lived-in vintage furniture, his Manhattan space was a kind of aesthetic forerunner for what he has done in Palm Springs.

Paul Marlow in his Palm Springs store.

Photo: Courtesy of Paul Marlow

This tale of two cities is professional but also personal. Marlow ended up in Palm Springs because he and his partner, the theater director Joe Mantello, had gotten a place there, retreating to it during the pandemic; they liked the life, they liked the community, and they liked, says Marlow “that it’s one of the few places left in America where you don’t get frowned on for being gay.” With Mantello wanting to spend more time there, Marlow started making plans for his Palm Springs store. Except, he says, laughing, “Joe doesn’t want to go back to New York unless he’s working on a project, and now he has like five plays in the pipeline, so he’ll be in New York a lot. And now that I have the store I will mostly be here.”

Marlow is certainly going to be kept busy. There is, he says, a ready market for what he is doing. “There’s this built-in clientele of an educated design customer who is looking for something special to wear,” he says. “The population here has been growing ever since Covid. It’s not like we will have people coming in who are looking for a Palm Springs t-shirt.” Though truth be told, a tee like that might look pretty great under one of his classic but never stuffy jackets.

If his post fashion label life has taught him anything, he says, it’s that working with his clients (who now number well into the hundreds) it’s that design is, “a continual collaboration. It has actually changed the way I designed and the way I approach things,” he says. “I used to be designing a collection with one body type in mind; now I’m fitting one garment on one body at a time. And so I’ve learned so much more about tailoring and how to fit and accommodate people’s desires while making them look good and feel good. And if you don’t feel good in something, you shouldn’t wear it. It makes me so happy to see people’s posture changes when they put something on that I’ve made.”

Immersing himself in a different life experience from New York, and to be in a world of the outdoors and mid-century/modernist design has, he says, imbued his clothing, “with a cleaner, simpler take on things; the less embellishment, the longer things last. I don’t follow trends. I’m really keeping it very less is more.” The backdrop for all of this is no less considered. “I really like the juxtaposition of a gritty down and dirty workspace,” Marlow says, “but with these moments of perfection and allowing for the imperfections to also be perfect.”

The fitting room, with vintage kilim rugs, and art by British painter Lucien Rees Roberts. Photo: Courtesy of Paul Marlow

Accompanying the clothing is plywood furniture of his own design, which he is looking to sell at some point, as well as vintage pieces: a 1940s French coffee table; Michel Boyer stools; a Studio Italia lamp, and, an original Eames Bikini chair. “Things will,” he says, “be cycling through. And Joe has an amazing eye; he has been grabbing stuff for me.” Adding to the feel of the space is the art. The first showing will be of British artist Lucien Rees Roberts (“He hasn’t had a show in ten years”), with shows coming up from John Ceglic and Gus Van Sant. (He and Marlow are friends and they play that most Palm Springs of sports together—golf).

Yet the intention of all this is the same: to create a world that’s considered and thoughtful but also casual and easy. It’s most definitely not about the hard sell. “I’m really taking my time,” Marlow says. “And there’s not a ton of product in the store right now, but that’s intentional. I don’t want to rush things. Too much can be too distracting.”

PAUL MARLOW, 68929 Perez Road, Cathedral City, Palm Springs, CA 92234. Open Thu-Sun 12pm-4pm and by appointment