Every year, Esquire builds a temporary bachelor pad to host events and showcase products from advertisers, and this year, Hearst's men's publication is using the pop-up platform to flaunt its own line of wares—an assortment of home furnishings and accessories known as the Esquire Home Collection. (Esquire still plans to host its experiential living space later this year.) Inside the Fifth Avenue flagship store of Nat Sherman, a key advertiser, the promotional vehicle is designed to complement the tobacco emporium's social-club-like setting, with items like a green tartan-patterned ottoman and trunk-style side tables incorporated into the lounge areas of the 8,000-square-foot venue.
As with the other pop-ups, Esquire is using its temporary home inside Nat Sherman to host an array of events—gatherings of readers, partners, and executives that started with an opening party on February 16 and will end with the launch of the magazine's semiannual fashion periodical, the spring 2011 Esquire Big Black Book, on April 8.
The eight-week effort, dubbed Esquire Home at Nat Sherman, is a subtle one, with minimal signage and promotional material. The intention is to create a dapper, denlike environment with furniture the publication's readers can sit on and play with, rather than a branded gallery of showpieces. And as smoking is permitted inside the store's lower-level club, the scene looks more like a set from Mad Men than a furniture showroom.
Appropriately, the items in Esquire's collection, designed by the Halo Group and sold at ABC Carpet & Home, are named for classic drinks. For instance, the "Rob Roy" is a vintage-inspired trunk that serves as a cabinet, a clubby leather armchair is called the "Whiskey Collins," and an ottoman upholstered in charcoal wool fabric is referred to as the "Boilermaker."
