The Art of Where.
Where in New York City fashion and lifestyle brands should be, whether they are local or opening their first US store.
Stores, offices, showrooms, condos and buildings. Leasing and buying.
We help fashion and lifestyle brands lease and buy the spaces they work from in New York City: storefronts and flagships, offices and showrooms, studios and schools.
One of our specialties is helping international brands enter the US market, among them Paloma Wool, Granado, Arlettie, VEJA, Margiela and Dries Van Noten. They know their brand. What they don’t know yet is how a New York landlord reads a tenant with no US sales, what a lease here commits them to, and which block is right for them. We guide them from the first search to opening day, and stay on for the stores that follow.
We work just as closely with businesses already here. We found John Hardy its new SoHo store, opened stores for Altuzarra and 7th Avenue Sofa, and found Reade Street Prep a new 10,000 SF home in Tribeca. We’ve leased a SoHo photography studio for Nuovo Studios and space for the paper conservators at Novak Studios, and we advise the artist Robert Longo on where to work.
Many clients first come to us for our reach in SoHo. Their search rarely stops there. We work in every major retail destination in New York City: SoHo and Nolita, Tribeca, the Meatpacking District and West Village, Midtown, Madison Avenue and the Upper East Side, and Brooklyn. We also represent established brands nationally: Dries Van Noten’s first North American store was in Los Angeles.
Profile
David Baker has spent 25 years in New York City real estate, bringing a lawyer’s training and a trader’s instincts to each deal. He reads every lease as closely as the corner, and can walk a client who has never signed a US lease through it line by line. Experience on the trading desk at Santander taught him how markets move and how to negotiate hard for the best result. His clients are fashion and lifestyle brands, and he works wherever they belong: throughout Manhattan, in Brooklyn and, when their plans call for it, in other US cities. He speaks Portuguese, Spanish and French.
Career highlights include work with brands from Dries Van Noten and Maison Margiela to A.P.C., Sandro & Maje and Nespresso, whose US and Canadian expansion he ran for nine years. He sold the historic West Village building that became The Twenty Two, a private club, and has helped brands buy their own headquarters, including Caudalie and Red Circle, the US company behind Diesel and Staff International.
Since 2022 David has been Executive Managing Director at Sinvin, where his team works daily with the principals and brokers of one of New York’s most respected boutique firms.
Selected Deals
Paloma Wool. 425 Broome Street, SoHo. 4,600 SF flagship.
A Barcelona brand with no US sales history. We ran three pop-ups in the space first, used the numbers to win a permanent lease, and set the rent slightly under asking plus a share of sales above an agreed level. Read the story →
Dries Van Noten. 451 North La Cienega Boulevard, Los Angeles. 8,500 SF.
The former Opening Ceremony compound: two buildings, two landlords, negotiated as LA shut down. Lease signed June 2020, store open October 2020. Read the story →
Granado. Prince Street, Nolita, and 611 Madison Avenue.
A Brazilian beauty brand we first met in 2014. When they were ready in 2024 they opened two stores at once: 550 SF on Prince with nearly 20 feet of frontage, and 611 Madison Avenue. Read the story →
Opening in New York?
Tell us the brand, the size you need and your timing. David will call you back.
