rabbit hole 06: Opening Ceremony
the missed connection I most regret
The deep dive is now the rabbit hole, with the encouragement of some enthusiastic readers after I posed this question on Notes the other day. The deep dive started as a simple exploration of a brand—an overview of its history, some fun or overlooked facts, and a selection of secondhand pieces—but this latest one is a bit more layered, and the timing of a new name felt appropriate.
In addition to … ahem… diving deep into the world of a designer, a collection, or even a single garment, the rabbit hole will intertwine my own memories and experiences of that brand with how it fits into the larger narratives of fashion and culture.
On a trip to Los Angeles at the end of 2023, dissatisfied with the contents of my suitcase, I borrowed my friend Anna’s satin bomber jacket for an evening. I became convinced that a bomber jacket was the one item that would finally bring my wardrobe together. I started my eBay search on the plane ride home, eventually uncovering a trove of colorful silk bomber jackets from Opening Ceremony—all reversible, emblazoned on both sides with cheeky graphics. I chose a red one with a bird of paradise and the coordinates of the Los Angeles location embroidered on the back (now featured in many an outfit post)! That was the first Opening Ceremony item I bought—a good fifteen years after I’d first stepped foot in the store.
Opening Ceremony was started by two friends, Carol Lim and Humberto Leon, who met at UC Berkeley in the 1990s. After moving to New York post-graduation and working separately in the fashion industry for several years, they traveled to Hong Kong together and came up with the concept for a store upon their return. Each year, they’d travel to a new country, bringing back local garments and designers and featuring them alongside up and coming US labels. Hence the name, ‘Opening Ceremony,’ a nod to the Olympics event—the celebration of unity that brings countries together from around the world. In 2002, the brand opened its first store in Chinatown.
“A lot of times, we did use it as this positive motive to really reclaim the narrative and create change. We talk a lot about growing up and feeling the need to assimilate, but as we grew up, and as we started to really kind of form which we were, we felt this particular need to be anti-assimilation. Our culture and our background are what make us American; we don’t need to fit into this American stereotype, but by expressing our own identities, that’s what we contribute to America.”
-Humberto Leon, in an interview with the Represent Asian Project
Opening Ceremony was a rare bastion of cultural and racial diversity in the often stifling homogeneity of the New York fashion scene in the early 2000s. (In terms of size diversity, however, Opening Ceremony doesn’t seem to have been as inclusive—it’s difficult to find vintage Opening Ceremony in sizes bigger than a large. Many of the brands they carried—and elevated by exposing them to a wider audience—also do not make sizes larger than an XL.1)
In early March 2020, not even two months after its acquisition by the streetwear conglomerate New Guards Group, Opening Ceremony’s New York flagship store went out with a whimper—an eerie, cusp-of-covid premonition of the retail apocalypse that would soon follow. Though I’d shared a home city with Opening Ceremony for over a decade by that point, I can probably count on one hand (I definitely don’t need my toes, in any case) the number of times I’d actually visited the store. I was too intimidated!
This was before shopping online was mainstream—if you owned something from Opening Ceremony, chances were you’d bought it at the store. But everyone there seemed far too cool, and the prices were steep for a college student getting by on bookselling and babysitting. I have vivid memories of the few times I did go in—feeling each garment as I made my way down a rack, picking up a clunky shoe with PVC straps, turning down a salesgirl’s offer to grab it from the back in my size. I couldn’t buy anything, so what was the point? I had American Apparel (and even that was a stretch financially, but they gave out free copies of Vice magazine), I had the Salvation Army on Bedford Ave and North 7th, the other Salvation Army on Quincy Street—that was all I thought I needed.
While Opening Ceremony carried multiple emerging and indie designers, the heart of the brand was in its eponymous in-house label. Opening Ceremony was the precursor to so many smaller fashion labels of today—I see its spirit in the humor and ingenuity of Fashion Brand Company, the quirky femininity of Lisa Says Gah, the downtown insouciance of Sandy Liang, the subversiveness of Demna Gvasalia’s Vetements. The Opening Ceremony velour tracksuits bridged the gap between early 2000s Juicy Couture and the prevalence of Supreme and other streetwear brands today.
“We were oddly creating this kind of drop culture or exclusive product without even knowing it. At the time, we wanted to make things no one else could get.”
- Humberto Leon, in an interview with the Represent Asian Project
Opening Ceremony was also the master of collaborations before everyone and their mother (Pringles x Crocs, anyone?) was doing it. In 2004, they partnered with Nike on a collection, and countless collaborations followed—all across the spectrum, from mass market to cult favorite, luxury to heritage brands (a sampling: Chloe Sevigny, Pendleton, Spike Jonze, Levi’s, Maison Margiela, Adidas, Yoko Ono, Minnetonka, Esprit, Columbia, and Dickies.)
Not all of Opening Ceremony’s collaborations were purely clothing capsules. Their seasonal shows became hot-ticket events, often subverting (or entirely ignoring) the usual self-seriousness of the runway. In 2016, this looked like a talent show/pageant hosted by Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein that ended with a plea to vote in the upcoming election; In 2017, they teamed up with a choreographer from the New York City Ballet to showcase their new collection with a ‘protest ballet’ performance.
As of right now, Opening Ceremony (the brand) still exists…. sort of? After its acquisition in January of 2020, New Guards Group closed the retail outposts to focus on growing the Opening Ceremony in-house label. Lim and Leon stayed creatively involved for a couple years, as far as I can tell, but Opening Ceremony isn’t even in Leon’s Instagram bio now. Openingceremony.com leads to an error page—“This site can’t be reached”—and the @openingceremony Instagram account hasn’t posted since May 2023. You can still find Opening Ceremony brand new on Farfetch (also owned by New Guards Group), SSENSE, and even a small selection in person at Asphalt NYC, a streetwear store with retail outposts in the outer boroughs of the city. But for a brand whose energy was predicated so much on both its physical presence and the spirits and whims of its founders, this iteration feels like a mere shell of its former self.
“We were excited to have exclusive products without people feeling excluded from the experience. It was really about creating a community and a safe space that anyone could enjoy. We always say that you don’t have to buy anything, there is never any pressure. I love it the most when people come up and tell me that they tried on a bunch of clothes they could not afford while in college, and eventually, they became customers. We always tried to have things in the store that ranged in pricing, and we wanted to ensure everyone felt welcome.”
-Carol Lim, in an interview with the Represent Asian Project
Opening Ceremony’s timeline traces a similar arc to that of NYC Craiglist missed connections. Missed connections first appeared on Craigslist as its own section in 2000, and seemed to reach its golden age mid- to late Obama administration. It still technically exists today, but without any of the cultural ubiquity it once enjoyed, having long since been overshadowed in convenience and relevance by dating apps and social media. My roommates and I used to read missed connections religiously, usually in the evening, sitting on the floor, gathered around someone’s laptop. There was even a dress—someday I’ll write about this—that we called the ‘missed connections dress,’ because no matter who wore it, like clockwork there’d be a missed connection posted within the day. I imagine that stepping into Opening Ceremony in the pre-online shopping era was akin to logging onto Craigslist missed connections at that time—a hub of possibility and discovery.
Is there any store in New York that might be able to continue Opening Ceremony’s brick and mortar legacy? Dover Street Market is a contender, but it’s more expensive, less emergent, no rough edges. Cafe Forgot feels like a step in the right direction, though it’s not quite the vibrant cultural powerhouse that Opening Ceremony was. Willy Chavarria’s eponymous label seems to embody a similar ethos and essence, but it lacks a permanent physical space for community to gather. The Opening Ceremony flagship in its prime was truly something special.2 Though I kept myself at arm’s length, those who were in its orbit speak so fondly of what it meant to them:
“The internet and social media has made middlemen retailers like Opening Ceremony irrelevant as a marketplace. But 'discovery' platforms — influencers and Instagrammers — don’t exactly foster newness. Clicking 'like' on one photo of a lime-green turtleneck leads me to become inundated with photos of other electric-hued tops. That is not discovery. That’s the fashion equivalent of being fed last week’s leftovers when you asked for something new. […] It takes a lot more effort to end up somewhere strange and unfamiliar. When Opening Ceremony was in its heyday, it was as simple as walking through its doors.”
- Connie Wang writing for Refinery29
It kills me that I wasn’t a part of any of it. It was an exclusion entirely of my own making, my own missed connection, the imaginary bouncer of my self-consciousness refusing to pull aside the velvet rope. I still wouldn’t have been able to buy anything (save for maybe a tote bag) but that would have been okay! There was no purchase requirement for entry. The Opening Ceremony flagship was a part of New York City history that I had full access to while it wasn’t history, it was just the present—and I didn’t think I was cool enough to belong. If I’d been a little more brave and actually spent some time there, I might have found community, kinship, at the very least inspiration. I like to think the Opening Ceremony universe would have been big enough to let me in.
Here are some treasures from Opening Ceremony’s label, if you, like me, want to hold a piece of something special in your hot little hands.
Here’s how I would style some of those Opening Ceremony items:
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Sources used:
https://hypebeast.com/2020/1/best-opening-ceremony-collaborations-store-closing-kaws-vans
https://www.vox.com/a/craigslist-missed-connections/i-analyzed-10-000-craigslist-missed-connections-here-s-what-i-learned
https://www.billboard.com/music/music-news/opening-ceremony-fashion-show-fred-armisen-carrie-brownstein-7503697/
https://www.wallpaper.com/fashion/opening-ceremony-and-justin-peck-stage-protest-inspired-ballet
https://representasianproject.com/features/in-conversation-with-carol-lim-and-humberto-leon/
https://www.papermag.com/opening-ceremony-stores-closing-rip#rebelltitem9
https://www.gq.com/story/dig-the-new-levis-x-opening-ceremony
https://www.allure.com/story/opening-ceremony-protest-ballet-in-celebration-of-immigrants
https://wwd.com/fashion-news/fashion-features/opening-ceremony-new-york-city-ballet-10770139/
https://www.allure.com/story/opening-ceremony-protest-ballet-in-celebration-of-immigrants
https://www.thecut.com/2020/03/opening-ceremony-history.html
https://www.refinery29.com/en-gb/2020/01/9214758/opening-ceremony-store-closing
https://www.thecut.com/2016/09/opening-ceremony-celebrated-its-esprit-collaboration.html
https://wwd.com/fashion-news/fashion-features/new-york-shopping-young-designers-cafe-forgot-boutique-1203459573/
Opening Ceremony was among the first stores to sell Eckhaus Latta, Rodarte, Proenza Schouler, and Wales Bonner, among others. Eckhaus Latta goes up to a size 12, Rodarte to a size 16 or XXL, Proenza Schouler to a size 12, and Wales Bonner to an IT 46 (generally equivalent to a US size 10).
No, but really, you should read (in full) this interview with the founders that
of Shop Rat did in 2020.
I rented an orange opening ceremony dress to wear to a wedding circa 2011 and i felt SO SPECIAL 🥰 thanks for this trip down memory lane!
So relatable, I was totally intimidated and felt not cool enough for that store