Designers looking for a leg up and a home on the Upper East Side have a new place to turn: Code.
The 10,000-square-foot hybrid store, showroom, café and event space for designers at 800 Fifth Avenue — a port in the storm of New York’s fashion scene — is the brainchild of Moshe Lax, who was nudged into his new fashionable life by his wife, Shaindy, Hillary Beckman and Ivanka Trump.
When Shaindy found that it was no easy feat to break into department stores with her detailed fashions for kids, Lax turned to Beckman, a friend with a long list of fashion industry contacts, including childhood pal Tracy Margolies, sister-in-law and filmmaker Fabiola Beracasa Beckman and Bergdorf Goodman executive Elizabeth von der Goltz.
“I told him that the stars have to align, and even then, you may be a blip on the radar and never gain traction,” Beckman said.
Lax and Beckman concluded that the fashion industry is fragmented, struggling to stay one step ahead of consumers’ shifting tastes and still reconciling e-commerce with brick-and-mortar.
“There’s a hole in the market,” Beckman said. “There’s nowhere a new designer can go to get all the eyes, especially those of editors and heads of fashion departments.”
Lax
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