Yahoo Lifestyle RH Expands With Three New California Locations and Launches First Waterworks Showroom
MILAN — RH has expanded its roster of experiential locations where customers can peruse collections, plan the look of their new home, dine, savor a glass of Champagne, view art and even catch up on some reading. The luxury American lifestyle brand said Monday that it has opened two new California galleries: RH Newport Beach, The Gallery at Fashion Island and RH Montecito, The Gallery at The Old Firehouse. It also opened its first stand-alone RH Interior Design practice in Palm Desert.
The RH Newport Beach location, which spans 97,000 square feet of interior and exterior space, is the company’s largest gallery to date.
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In addition to housing its RH Interiors, Modern, Baby & Child, Teen and Outdoor collections, the property is home to the brand’s first, 3,000-square-foot Waterworks bath and kitchen showroom. RH bought the Waterworks luxury bath and kitchen business in 2016.
“RH Newport Beach is one of our most dramatic, immersive and brand-defining physical locations to date,” said RH chairman and chief executive officer Gary Friedman. “The gallery reflects our quest to continue revolutionizing physical retailing, blurring the lines between residential and retail, indoors and outdoors, home and hospitality, and we are proud to introduce this inspiring destination in the Southern California markets.”
With the aim of creating convivial, cultural locations, RH Newport Beach is emblematic of the brand’s potential to create immersive experiences around its core business. RH Newport also hosts a one-of-a-kind dining experience, the RH Ocean Grill, the brand’s first restaurant in Southern California. Set within a year-round skylit garden with views of the California coastline, the 270-seat, indoor-outdoor rooftop restaurant specializes in seafood and caviar as well as classics. Spanning four floors, the store encompasses garden courtyards with 16-foot water walls, terraces and some 3,000 square feet dedicated to Waterworks, 8,500 square feet dedicated to its interior design atelier and wine bars.
RH Montecito, The Gallery at The Old Firehouse
The Newport Beach location is the latest in the string of RH stores opening in California. Last week the brand unveiled RH Montecito, The Gallery at The Old Firehouse, which feted its opening with guests including Gwyneth Paltrow, beauty veteran Victoria Jackson and designer Charlotte Ronson.
The Montecito location is situated in a historic building built in 1931, designed by award-winning architect Alexander Bertrand Harmer and that served as the regional firehouse for over half a century. The new gallery features the RH Firehouse Grill, an indoor-outdoor Courtyard Restaurant with fireplaces and fountains, a Wine & Barista Bar, plus an Interior Design Atelier and artistic installations incorporating RH Collections.
RH Interior Design Palm Desert
The third location is the RH Interior Design Palm Desert, the brand’s first stand-alone destination for RH Interior Design, which it said is one of the largest residential design firms in the world.
Situated in the El Paseo shopping district in greater Palm Springs, RH Interior Design Palm Desert has numerous projects worldwide, from San Francisco to Shanghai, Miami to Milan, Los Angeles to London, Pittsburgh to Paris, Toronto to Tokyo and Denver to Dubai.
“Representing the first phase of the brand’s broader vision to create a comprehensive design ecosystem in the region, future plans include the 2025 opening of a Design Gallery featuring artistic lifestyle installations of RH Collections by internationally acclaimed designers, followed by the development of a hospitality concept and an expansive outdoor oasis,” RH said in a statement, adding that the Palm Desert location will offer bespoke design services for the first time in a physical space, allowing customers to “experience whole-home transformations from concept to completion.”
RH Interior Design Palm Desert is also home to the first North American RH Architecture & Design Library, where customers can find books on contemporary architecture, interior design and landscape architecture. At the core of the library is the first modern-language edition of De Architectura Libri Dece (“The Ten Books on Architecture”), printed in Italy in 1521. Authored by Roman master architect Vitruvius during the first century B.C., the treatise, which is a study of balance, symmetry and proportion, has served as a pillar of the RH Design ethos and is also said to have inspired Leonardo da Vinci’s drawing of the “Vitruvian Man” 1,500 years later. The first RH Architecture & Design Library opened at the brand’s Gallery in Aynho Park, England, location and also contains rare books from architects such as Andrea Palladio, Vincenzo Scamozzi and Leon Battista Alberti.
The Waterworks Showroom houses an assortment of bath and kitchen fittings, fixtures and surfaces. It features a rotunda illuminated by an Audubon chandelier, which hangs 30 feet above a bespoke solid Botticino marble tub.
New Openings in 2025 and Beyond
During the third-quarter conference call, Friedman said the firm’s next galleries will open in Montreal; Manhasset, N.Y; Detroit; Oklahoma City; Los Gatos, Calif., and Aspen. Additionally, RH Paris and RH London will open in 2025, with RH Milan opening in 2026. “We anticipate an inflection of our business in Europe as we begin to open in the important brand-building markets of Paris and London in 2025 and Milan in 2026,” he said. Sydney is also slated to open in 2026, the company said.
RH Paris, he said, will come to fruition as a six-floor store connected by an ornate scissor stair and a central glass elevator, with a rooftop Champagne and caviar bar with views of the Eiffel Tower and a menu featuring Petrossian caviars.
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