Contributed Illustration
For the second Black Friday in a row, a new store is scheduled to open at the corner of York and Broadway — this time reviving a piece of New Haven history.
The Gant clothing company plans to open a “Campus Store” there in time for the holiday shopping season. It’s reviving a retail name that New Haven lost some two decades ago: the Gant clothing company that began here (first in Fair Haven, then on Long Wharf in what’s now the New Haven Register building on Sargent Drive), then fled in the late ‘70s on its way to being bought out by a Swiss company.
The illustration above is what the company said the York-Broadway corner will look like when the new store opens.
Gant replaces Kerin, a vegan clothing outlet that opened last Black Friday. The store, which sold animal-free products like Moo Shoes, never caught on, and closed recently.
You can still see pictures of the old New Haven Gant factory — at the Gant store on Fifth Avenue in New York City. The New Haven store will feature vintage ads of Gant produces sold here in the old days, Gant USA CEO Ari Hoffman said in an interview Tuesday.
And the store will revive a clothing line that Gant once produced in conjunction with the now-defunct Yale Coop (now Barnes and Nobles’ Yale Bookstore). It will bear the Yale Coop label.
“It’s kind of nostalgic, coming home,” Hoffman said. “Some people may say, ‘Paris, Milan, Italy.’ We say, ‘New Haven.’”
Gant has over 500 stores worldwide.