Frank + Oak arrived in DC in November, bringing moderately priced menswear in easy-going styles to The Shay development in Shaw. But soon the brand won’t just be a go-to for men’s printed popovers and suit jackets: in the fall, Frank + Oak plans to launch a line of womenswear.
They’re not the first to start with menswear before branching into women—companies like Rag & Bone and Paul Stuart have successfully done so—and it seems to be a sensible business choice for expanding their target demographic.
“The goal is to build connections with communities of independent, passionate, and creative women by providing considered style and a memorable shopping experience,” says Frank + Oak’s CEO and creative director Ethan Song. “Frank + Oak is looking at a certain lifestyle and trying to figure out how to create functional products for these women.“
The “functional products” they plan to market include t-shirts, blouses, skirts, dresses, pants, sweaters, accessories, and outerwear, most of which will fall in the $50 to $165 range. To start, personal shopping services will not be available for women, though Frank + Oak is considering adding it down the line. The women’s line will also not be available in-store right off the bat; rather, it will be sold online via the Frank + Oak website. But though the women’s line won’t be in the same full force as their menswear right from the start, Song says that selling womenswear has been a goal for a while.
“[Frank + Oak] realized that they already had a number of female customers that were shopping with them before and so they wanted to offer them products; it was never a question of ‘if,’ but more a question of ‘when,’ and that time has finally come,” he says.
Caroline Cunningham joined Washingtonian in 2014 after moving to the DC area from Cincinnati, where she interned and freelanced for Cincinnati Magazine and worked in content marketing. She currently resides in College Park.
