Juicy Couture to open new stores after switching owners

Juicy Couture, the California retailer famous for popularizing rhinestone-decorated tracksuits, is opening new concept stores next year.

The Los Angeles company changed hands last year after Authentic Brands Group bought it for $195 million from Fifth & Pacific Cos., now known as Kate Spade & Co. Existing Juicy stores are in the process of closing as they are “no longer representative of the ... brand today,” Authentic Brands said in a statement.

Beginning next year, Authentic Brands will open new stores befitting the brand’s new emphasis in locations such as Los Angeles and New York, Authentic said.

Juicy also plans to open another 127 locations and shop-in-shops outside the U.S. in the next five years, focusing on major cities in areas like the Middle East, Asia and Europe, the company said.

The new stores’ layout will mimic a department store’s with sections showing merchandise by category, according to Women’s Wear Daily.

The new stores may help the brand regain its appeal with the moneyed and aspirational shoppers it once attracted. The clothier’s signature tracksuits -- stamped with the word “juicy” in rhinestones -- were once ubiquitous in the celebrity world and among the fashion-conscious during the early 2000s.

But since then its fortunes have slipped. Posh department stores like Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman Marcus have stopped carrying the label. Last year discount retailer Kohl’s inked a deal to sell Juicy Couture-branded clothing beginning this fall, a move that some observers said signaled the end of the label’s luxury connotations.

Cofounders Gela Nash-Taylor and Pamela Skaist-Levy have started a new label in Los Angeles called Pam & Gela.

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