Just Browsing: Violet Grey Brings California Cool to the Upper East Side

Vogue

4 days ago

With so much fashion existing online, there's something refreshing about trying pieces on in-store after eyeing them first on a little screen. Enter Just Browsing: We're taking you into the fitting room as we preview the newest collections from some of our favorite high-street brands and contemporary labels. We'll get into fabric and quality, fit and feel, and so much more as we make our way through the shop floor. Happy scrolling (and strolling)!
'New York is Violet Grey's boyfriend,' founder Cassandra Grey tells me over email. Melrose Place may have been the first outpost of her beauty retailer, but her dalliance with Manhattan is just as long-standing to Grey as Los Angeles is.
It was New York where she dreamt up the business plan for Violet Grey. 'I was inspired by Zitomer, Barneys, Bergdorf, Central Park, Saturday Night Live, Bobby Short, the Barbizon Hotel, the beauty closets at Vogue and Allure, and of course, Net-a-Porter,' she lists. 'The Carlyle, where I lived with my late husband, holds a special place in our story. It was in the Gallery Bar that I first pitched beauty brands, investors, potential team members, and Vogue's beauty editor with nothing more than a stapled mood board, a dream, and the kind of ear-to-ear smile that only comes with naivety.'
A little over a year ago, a dream location just off the corner of 78th St. and Madison, askance from The Carylye's outdoor café, presented itself. 'It felt so perfectly on-brand, it was almost too good to be true,' she says. 'We knew we had to have it—a place for our community to call home.' Grey and investor Sherif Guirgis found the space before they bought back the company from Farfetch in 2024. 'At the time, we weren't in a financial position to sign a lease, and we nearly lost it,' she says. 'But where there's a will, there's always a way.'
The location opens into a garden entrance, that per Grey, is a quiet nod to the alleyway approach of Melrose Place. Bill Sofield, who designed the LA store, played a pivotal role in this one, too; the pair drew upon 'the Dorothy Draper-inspired Deco iconography of the Carlyle with the signature Hollywood Regency of John Elgin Woolf that defined Melrose Place' for something that Grey hopes feels like an extension of that legacy. Complete with a Paul Poiret sofa plucked from Sofield's warehouse, the complete works of Colette from one of the oldest bookstores in Paris, and a collection of polaroids from old cover shoots and Hollywood parties, the space transports you to a glamorous vintage home, without getting lost in time.