Where Madelynn Ringo leads, shoppers follow. Over the past few years, the intrepid designer has worked with brands like Bala, Glossier and Our Place (all of which started out as e-commerce operations) to envision their first physical locations. Her firm’s latest project is bound to become another viral shopping destination, but it also represents a step in a new direction — after years of introducing internet-first brands to the IRL world, Ringo is now ready to help more established players make their own mark in the new retail landscape. In this case, she teamed up with Steve Madden — a shoe and fashion industry stalwart that is no stranger to bricks and mortar.

“It’s an exciting milestone for me, because often I’ve been working with brands that haven’t done retail before,” Ringo says. “Whereas in this case, Steve Madden has been doing retail for ages. They know their merchandising and they know their customer.”

Nevertheless, the brand was eager to leverage Ringo’s expertise to transform its NYC flagship from a simple shoe store into something more. The footwear company has called its 186-square-metre Times Square storefront home since 2017 — and while it kept renewing its lease, it had never done a full-scale buildout to really make the space its own. The idea that Ringo came up with was to approach the shop as an “urban clubhouse.” Inspired in part by the brand’s NYC origins and in part by a semi-secret back-of-store lounge area that Steve Madden had included in an earlier location, Ringo’s concept is twofold. On the one hand, she wanted to cultivate a stronger sense of intimacy and community, creating a welcome contrast to the surrounding neighbourhood’s visual overload. But the environment that she designed still has its own sense of buzzy spectacle, too. “This is a space where Steve Madden host a lot of their shoe shows, so it’s truly a destination,” she says.

Her first move was to devise a clear spatial strategy. The previous layout was wide-open, and Ringo worked to divide the area into zones that make navigation easier — boots are in one corner, while dress shoes are in another — while also promoting a stronger sense of discovery along the way. A colonnade that runs through the centre of the store now frames key moments like the checkout counter, as well as display tables highlighting new collections. “We treated that big architecture almost like an urban scale intervention, blasting through the space as a way to direct people,” explains Ringo. “We were very much sculpting the space.”

Speaking of sculptural elements, geometric seating and shelving embrace soft curves in some areas, but skew rigid and blocky in others. This speaks to another core mission of the project: balancing masculine and feminine sensibilities. Often, the two intersect — as is the case in display tables that join together rounded aluminum drums and marble plinths. As Ringo explains, these displays were directly driven by Steve Madden’s product expertise. “We had very technical conversations about their merchandising requirements — the categories, the quantities, and how often things get switched out,” she says. “The perimeter niches are sized to fit certain collections, and then dispersed throughout the floor are these destination display moments that highlight hero products and create storytelling moments.”

Colour plays a similarly important role in evolving Steve Madden’s identity — and in turn, helping the store connect with a new customer base. “They wanted to use experiential retail to attract a shopper who is really trend-setting,” says Ringo. “We wanted to have a youthful feeling to the store while still allowing it to look sophisticated,” she notes. In turn, she settled on a mix of hues that feels as envelope-pushing as it does elegant, pairing buttery yellow with soft mauve and baby blue with bright chartreuse. It was important that there be enough contrast between these tones to create visual interest — without overpowering the shoes themselves. Not knowing what colours future shoes might be, Ringo tested a wide range of product against “so, so many swatches” — especially when it came time to pick the colour for the main shelving niches. “The blue we ultimately selected really makes the merchandise pop in a nice way — it became almost like a natural for the project,” she says.

It was similarly important that these colours complement the space’s exuberant material palette, which represents another careful balancing act. High-gloss finishes mingle with dark marble and brushed aluminum, while warm white oak clads the colonnade that ties the entire space together. Meanwhile, tiled portions of the floor end in raw, unfinished edges — a way to reflect the messiness of always-under-construction city life.

Shoes and handbags often provide the perfect finishing touch to an outfit. Sometimes that means contrasting other elements of an ensemble, and other times that means matching them. In that same spirit, Steve Madden’s Times Square flagship is filled with dramatic accents that serve as interesting visual exclamation points. The Gen Z–friendly design may mark the start of a new chapter for the brand (and Ringo Studio is already at work on a follow-up design for the retailer’s location in New Jersey’s American Dream mall), but it also harkens back to what the footwear company has always done best: sparking style inspiration and encouraging shoppers to get creative with their accessories.