Calvin Klein's white label has become so popular that the line is heading out on its own into five retail stores in the United States.The stores will have a stark design that will mimic the luxury minimalism we have seen from the line recently. The first five stores will be in shopping malls: The Beverly Center in Los Angeles; Cherry Creek in Denver; The Mall At Partridge Creek in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan; Natick Collection in Natick, Massachusetts; and Lenox Square in Atlanta and will open in November 2007. Each concept store will average approximately 10,000 square feet and will bring together merchandise from the categories available today under the Calvin Klein white label line of men's and women's better apparel. If the stores are a success there could be as many as 100 stores eventually.

As an article in WWD reports, opening signature stores is a growing trend among luxury fashion brands which one used to sell their wares primarily in department stores. This gets me thinking about the shopping experience as a whole. Let's say you are looking for a purse. Now if you were in search of a type of purse, say a brown leather satchel for example, then the department store is the obvious choice. But it seems that many people find themselves attracted by the aesthetic of a certain brand and therefore wind up wanting to know what that brand has new. This type of brand identity has led to the rise of not just the signature stores but also the store within a store designer-branded boutiques that many of the larger department stores have adopted.