In January, the luxury fragrance brand Editions de Parfums Frederic Malle closed its North American flagship store on Manhattan’s Madison Avenue. Just six months later, the brand’s new flagship store is up and running. On Friday, Frederic Malle opened the new store to the public, located 14 blocks north of the original.
“Having this brick-and-mortar footprint is so critical — especially for a brand like Frederick Malle that is so focused on the art and craftsmanship of perfumery at the same time as true olfactive innovation,” said Salvatore Zullo, gm of Editions de Parfum Frederic Malle.
Editions de Parfum Frederic Malle was founded by Frederic Malle in 2000 and acquired by The Estée Lauder Companies in 2015. The new 550-square-foot store sits on the ground floor of the luxury residential Bellemont building and was designed entirely in-house by ELC’s creative teams. Zullo said the brand has high hopes for the new space, which is drenched in Frederic Malle’s signature red and includes “scenting chambers,” or glass cylinder displays that allow customers to smell various perfumes, which are also found at other Frederic Malle stores, including its Greenwich Village location.
“The ambition is to make this store the No. 1 global flagship for the brand,” he said. “We’re doing events and experiences that really will help to establish that this is the No. 1 global flagship location and introduce this brand to a new customer, as well as engage our existing customers to come uptown.”
The fast-tracked construction and opening is a part of The Estée Lauder Companies’ “Beauty Reimagined” strategic framework. ELC CEO Stéphane de La Faverie unveiled the new strategy to recoup declining sales in February, when the company also announced a 6% drop in net sales for the second quarter of fiscal year 2025. At the conglomerate’s most recent quarterly earnings call in May for Q3 2025, the company reported a 10% decline in net sales. Fragrance sales saw the smallest decline of all categories, with a 1% drop in net sales.
“Among Stéphane de La Faverie’s bold visions as part of Beauty Reimagined are speed to market and innovation,” said Zullo. “We’re really challenging ourselves to think bolder, think differently and think faster.”
Zullo said the store plays the into brand’s larger strategy to foster engagement with its core consumer base through experiential eventing and to deepen consumers’ knowledge of the brand’s core products. The new store gives prime shelf space to both longstanding launches like Portrait of a Lady, which was created by master perfumer Dominique Ropion and is celebrating its 15th anniversary in 2025, and newcomers like the brand’s 2024 collaboration with Acne Studios, created by perfumer Suzy Le Helley.
Though just a dozen blocks away from the previous location, the new location puts Frederic Malle within a stone’s throw of some of New York’s major cultural institutions like the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Guggenheim.
“The brand has had so much incredible momentum over the last year. We really wanted to move it to a neighborhood that allowed us to tap into a consumer and an area that resonated with where the brand started, which is sort of the crux of design, art, culture and fashion,” said Zullo. “This is a 550-square-foot store just a block from the Met, the Guggenheim. The Frick has just reopened. So, it puts the store and the brand in New York City in the context of where our consumer is shopping.”
The new neighborhood is home to other fragrance stores, as well. Fellow ELC brand Le Labo, growing New York brand D.S.& Durga and Argentine luxury house Fueguia 1833 all have a footprint in the neighborhood. The Madison Avenue Business Improvement District announced the opening of 20 new stores along the shopping corridor in 2025, including many luxury fashion and beauty outposts.
Malle was an early pioneer in niche fragrance when he launched his namesake line in 2000. His brand is still one of the few to print the name of each perfumer on the bottle. Malle, who stepped away from the brand in 2024, has called himself a “publisher” of perfumes.
Though brick-and-mortar retail is key to the Frederic Malle world, Zullo said the brand has also caught on with the online fragrance community, which has helped niche brands become more mainstream in recent years. According to the brand, Frederic Malle has seen a 478% year-over-year increase in organic mentions on TikTok. The hope is some of the users generating those mentions may pay a visit to the new store.
“The total ecosystem of beauty is important. The customers are shopping omni,” said Zullo. “The customer is still coming into the store to have the experience, to understand the brand. Though they may be purchasing online, they still need to have that touch point and that connection to the store.”
