{"id":68831,"date":"2025-12-12T15:20:12","date_gmt":"2025-12-12T15:20:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/68831\/"},"modified":"2025-12-12T15:20:12","modified_gmt":"2025-12-12T15:20:12","slug":"how-christine-alcalay-built-brooklyns-most-community-driven-fashion-house-brooklyn-paper","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/68831\/","title":{"rendered":"How Christine Alcalay built Brooklyn\u2019s most community-driven fashion house \u2022 Brooklyn Paper"},"content":{"rendered":"

On a quiet stretch of Park Slope\u2019s<\/a> Fifth Avenue, designer Christine Alcalay<\/a>\u2018s atelier sits inviting, intimate and unmistakably Brooklyn. Racks of blouses, jackets and vintage-buttoned trousers line the space \u2014 proof of what locals already know: the woman behind the clothes runs her business the way she designs, slowly, deliberately and with a soulfulness that can\u2019t be mass-produced.<\/p>\n

But Alcalay\u2019s story begins long before her name appeared on a storefront.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

\u201cMy story goes way back,\u201d Alcalay told Brooklyn Paper. \u201cIt goes back to when I first came to the country with my mom as a Vietnamese immigrant.\u201d Her mother, unsure how to navigate a new city and language, took a job in a Queens garment factory. Child care was not an option.<\/p>\n

\"ChristineAlcalay grew up in the Garment District with her mother, something that led her to a career in fashion.Photo by Colleen Dodge<\/p>\n

\u201cI actually started in Queens sweatshops because my mom couldn\u2019t afford childcare, so I would just go to the factory with her every single day.\u201d<\/p>\n

Those long hours spent watching her mother sew, mend, cut and hustle were formative \u2014 and often mischievous.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cShe would give me a jacket or something to cut off, and I\u2019d snip holes and cut the sleeves off,\u201d Alcalay laughed.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

But the joy of making things lived alongside the realities of struggle. For years, Alcalay resisted following her mother into the fashion industry.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cI was actually very anti going into fashion for a long time \u2019cause I had like watched her kind of struggle for so long, and the amount of like hours that she would just pour into what she was doing,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\"Christine\u201cI feel like it picked me\u201d: Alcalay told Brooklyn Paper about her career.Photo by Colleen Dodge<\/p>\n

Eventually, she said, the choice stopped feeling like a choice at all.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn a way, I felt like it picked me. I wanted to take what she started with \u2014 learning the craft of it \u2014 into a completely different level.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

By 13, she\u2019d decided to attend the High School of Fashion Industries in Chelsea. Then came Parsons School of Design, Parsons Paris and a series of internships and textile jobs that made her, as she put it, \u201calready like a veteran in the industry\u201d by the time she graduated.<\/p>\n

Retail came next \u2014 because Alcalay loved selling as much as she loved sewing. A job at a made-to-measure boutique on Madison Avenue opened her eyes to fashion\u2019s intimate, detail-driven side. She eventually opened her first shop, KIWI<\/a>, on a quiet Park Slope side street with a fellow employee and future business partner.<\/p>\n

That was 23 years ago.\n<\/p>\n

Building a Brooklyn fashion ecosystem<\/p>\n

When Alcalay first moved to Brooklyn from Inwood, Park Slope was unfamiliar terrain. She said it took her and her husband a \u201creally long time\u201d to get to know the neighborhood. They spent many nights painting walls, installing carpets and racks \u2014 even sleeping in the store with their dog.<\/p>\n

But the welcome was not immediate.\u00a0
\n\"ChristineAlcalay said before opening any shop, she wanted to familiarize herself with the neighborhood to fully understand the consumer base.Photo by Tiff Pemperton\n<\/p>\n

\u201cI remember opening up, and someone from the neighborhood walked up to the store and said to me, \u2018Well, good luck because this neighborhood doesn\u2019t like to spend money.\u2019 And it really burst my bubble,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

What followed proved that neighbor wrong. Brooklyn showed up \u2014 slowly, but loyally.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cWeek by week, year by year, our community really started to support us.\u201d
\n\"ChristineKIWI expanded to Fig, which led to her namesake shop, Christine Alcalay.Photo by Colleen Dodge\n<\/p>\n

KIWI eventually expanded, then expanded again. Fig<\/a>, a menswear shop, opened next door. In 2022, Alcalay debuted her namesake boutique, Christine Alcalay, on Fifth Avenue. She said it \u201ctook me 20 years to get to this space, where everything we have in the shop is things that I\u2019ve designed with just a few supporting brands.\u201d<\/p>\n

Through recessions, COVID-19 and constant change, one thing remained: \u201cOur community always shows up, even when it\u2019s hard.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

A designer devoted to the Garment District<\/p>\n

Alcalay produces nearly all her collection in the Garment District \u2014 by choice, not convenience.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cI grew up in sweatshops around NYC, and the way I do things is slow and steady,\u201d she said.
\n\"ChristineAlcalay prides herself in local production, with pieces made in the Garment District.Photo by Colleen Dodge\n<\/p>\n

Mass production, overseas minimums and fast-fashion timelines don\u2019t match her ethos. \u201cYou can\u2019t make that in bulk; you can only make it one by one.\u201d<\/p>\n

Both factories she uses are women-owned. One is run by a woman who worked alongside Alcalay\u2019s mother decades ago. They essentially built their businesses in parallel, she said.\n<\/p>\n

Local production also means immediacy.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

\u201cI can run up and speak to the makers,\u201d she said. \u201cI can immediately say, \u2018I\u2019d like you to take it in exactly one quarter of an inch. You can\u2019t do that overseas.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"ChristineChristine Alcalay employs women-owned makers, and even uses a factory created by a woman that used to work with her mother.Photo by Colleen Dodge<\/p>\n

The result, she said, is craftsmanship revealed not through flash but through fit \u2014 the lining, the stretch, the feel.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you look at a jacket from a distance, you may not see it immediately, but you will feel it if you put it on.\u201d\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

Supporting the Garment District, she said, feels like honoring her own history.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

\u201cIf it were ever to not exist anymore, I\u2019m not really sure I would want to continue because I wouldn\u2019t be able to do it the way I do it now.\u201d\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

Growing slowly, by design<\/p>\n

Three years into running her namesake space, Alcalay is thinking about the future with the same patience that has guided everything else.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf I were to grow, I think it would grow very similarly to everything else. I\u2019m definitely a slow burn.\u201d\u00a0
\n\"ChristineAlcalay described herself as a \u201cslow burn,\u201d not wanting to rush into any new opportunities.Photo by Tiff Pemperton\n<\/p>\n

Her next step? Another brick-and-mortar, somewhere with the same \u201csmall village mindset\u201d as Park Slope.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Christine Alcalay brand is already there, so I\u2019d love to continue this model in other neighborhoods.\u201d\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

But growth, she said, will always come second to intention.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cI really love how small we do things and what a huge impact we have by doing it that way,\u201d she said.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

Christine Alcalay<\/a> is located at 316 Fifth Ave., between second and third streets, in Park Slope. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On a quiet stretch of Park Slope\u2019s Fifth Avenue, designer Christine Alcalay\u2018s atelier sits inviting, intimate and unmistakably…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":68832,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[35637,98,35638,100,99,35639,35640,35641,9,24,35642,63,35643,26369,35644,13615,28764],"class_list":["post-68831","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-brooklyn","tag-boutique-retail","tag-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn-fashion","tag-brooklyn-headlines","tag-brooklyn-news","tag-christine-alcalay","tag-fashion-entrepreneurship","tag-local-designers","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-garment-district","tag-nyc","tag-nyc-makers","tag-park-slope-shopping","tag-slow-fashion","tag-sustainable-fashion","tag-women-owned-businesses"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68831","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68831"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68831\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/68832"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68831"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68831"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68831"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}