200-Year-Old Waterford Crystal Debuts New Look, NYC Pop-up Store

Waterford, a 200-year-old crystal brand, wants to update its image with a new creative campaign and is opening its first standalone retail store in the United States to show it off.

The campaign follows the appointment of Creative Director Alice Bastin, a veteran of luxury fashion houses Chloé and Celine, as well as designer label Alexander McQueen, according to a Friday (Oct. 7) news release.

“Clarity and quality are both at the crux of Waterford’s historic success, so those were natural concepts to influence this campaign,” Bastin said in the release. “That meant introducing the same authenticity and a palpable sense of quality to the overall aesthetic and messaging in the execution of these images.”

The idea is to combine the company’s roots in Ireland with “modern-day relevance,” through the campaign’s “stark black and white photography,” by Irish photographer Seán McGirr, the release stated.

These images will be showcased in Waterford’s pop-up store in New York’s SoHo neighborhood, opening this month as the company tries to widen its customer base, according to the release.

PYMNTS noted last month that luxury brands such as Waterford are seeing visits that matched or exceeded pre-pandemic levels and opening new stores.

Read more: Luxury Retail Follows Money and Shoppers to the ’Burbs

But while some of these stores were in places like Manhattan or Los Angeles, many retailers have begun to court consumers in other, less-populated parts of the country.

Meanwhile, PYMNTS research has found that high-earning consumers who can afford to buy from luxury brands are resting a bit easier after feeling the pinch of inflation.

The latest installment of the PYMNTS/Lending Club collaboration “New Reality Check: The Paycheck-to-Paycheck Report: The Inflation Edition,” found: “The share of consumers earning more than $200,000 who lived paycheck to paycheck dropped slightly from 30% in July 2022 to 28% in August.”

And consumers who earned between $150,000 and $200,000 saw a slight decrease to 47% in August from 48% in July.

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