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A Fashion-Retail Dream Team Opens a New Concept Store in Atlanta

By , Curbed and New York Magazine’s design editor  who covers the city’s most spectacular interiors.

In 2007, Sid and Ann Mashburn pooled their collective fashion-retail and editorial-savvy resources to open Sid Mashburn, their menswear flagship, in the Westside Provisions District of Atlanta. (Sid is an alum of Ralph Lauren, Lands’ End, and J.Crew, among others, and Ann was a former editor at Vogue and Glamour magazines.) Located in a great industrial building built around a courtyard near the railroad tracks, the space used to be a meatpacking and storage plant. Ann Mashburn opened her women’s store right next door in 2012, and the pair now have shops in Dallas, Houston, and Washington, D.C., plus a men’s shop in Los Angeles.

And back in Atlanta, they have just opened Mashburn, a new concept space next door to Ann’s store that offers home accessories, records, room fragrances, baby clothes (with their new label Kid Mashburn), and a lot more. I spied a set of what I thought were Astier de Villatte plates only to discover they were melamine. Genius! The secret to their success is that everything feels hand-picked and personal, a testament to their curatorial eye. The minute you enter any one of their stores, it’s a distinctly different shopping experience, one that has me coming back for more every time I visit Atlanta, which I did last month for my second mentorship at the Savannah College of Art and Design campus. And as my stay converged with the opening of the store, I thought it was a great opportunity to have SCAD students participate in creating a story with me for “Design Hunting.” So I conferred with my friend professor Michael James O’Brien, and he asked some of his photography students to document the space. “Design Hunting” is proud to feature three of professor O’Brien’s photography majors in the B.F.A. program in Atlanta: Megan Benitez, Conrad Maxwell-Girod, and Jenny Watts.

The Mashburns collaborated with in-house architect Peter Samuelson to renovate the façade to match the exterior of Ann Mashburn next door. “We took this space as soon as it came up,” Ann said. “It was such a great opportunity.” The team then added the steel canopy to the front. Photo: Megan Benitez
The interior underwent a complete 180-degree design transformation. The former retail space had a black painted ceiling and taupe walls with hardly any natural light. The team added two skylights and a floor of face-nailed white-oak planks, then painted the walls, ceiling, and existing structure a fresh coat of white. Then they lined up the entrance axis to lead your eye to the courtyard beyond. Photo: Megan Benitez
From the women’s store you can go right on through here to enter the men’s store, which can also be accessed from the street. Photo: Megan Benitez
Sid Mashburn’s men’s shop has on-site tailoring with a vibe that is decidedly clubby, as you can see here with those great vintage Barcelona pieces and other assorted furnishings that invite conversation and hanging out. Photo: Megan Benitez
The new concept store has a coffee bar topped with Carrara marble and barely visible Lucite stools. Photo: Jenny Watts
You can enjoy King State and Methodical Coffee, many varieties of loose tea, and yummy pastries from H+F Bread Co. Photo: Jenny Watts
Underneath a table next to the Kid Mashburn line, I noticed baskets of toys, which were immediately put to use by each and every child who entered the store with their parents. Photo: Conrad Maxwell-Girod
The merchandise never overwhelms. Here, in the women’s store, everything is presented within venues that allow perusing in peace. The modern clean sweep of retail space in all Mashburn shops includes comfy home furnishings throughout. Photo: Conrad Maxwell-Girod
The thoughtful display in the men’s shop includes a selection of pieces that could all be worn together; this is curation at work. Photo: Conrad Maxwell-Girod
There’s a table piled with books for sale in the new concept store. “I mean, we’ve always had books and candles in the other stores,” Ann says. “I love having books in the stores because I think that is such a personal thing to share. It’s a way of saying ‘I like this book, and I think you might too.’ It tells something about you, and that seems kind of old-fashioned to me. I love that.” Photo: Conrad Maxwell-Girod

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A Fashion-Retail Dream Team’s New Concept Store in Atlanta