MILAN — After selling a majority stake to consumer investment giant L Catterton and presenting its fall 2023 collection during Paris Fashion Week, A.P.C. is capping off a busy month by officially planting a flag in Italy. The contemporary fashion label has opened its first store in Milan’s arty Brera district, which will likely be celebrated with a cocktail event on March 30.

“Italy has all the time been in our development plan however it was mostly an issue of timing. Our recent growth on the Italian market has been a robust sign that it was now the time to open,” told WWD Jean Touitou, who founded the brand in 1987.

Touitou noted that the country counts “many hyper-qualitative specialty stores,” and “distributing the brand in wholesale has been very profitable for us over the past years, because of our local partner Giacomo Piazza (247 showroom). Having said that, we feel we were missing a dedicated space to specific A.P.C. values. The shop is clearly a robust lever to attain this strategic objective.”

Asked in regards to the location chosen, Touitou said Brera has “the cool vibes that we will have in Paris once we are in Le Marais.”

To further enhance the familiar vibe, the corporate partnered with longtime collaborator and design studio Laurent Deroo Architecte for the inside project.

“Laurent Deroo has designed A.P.C. stores over the past 20 years so there isn’t really an issue [of] ‘what partner’ [to select] with regards to architecture but more ‘which project,’ since Laurent all the time adapt his design to the local context,” Touitou said.

For this unit, the studio was inspired by the Arte Povera movement and Italian modernist artist and furniture designer Enzo Mari, to develop functional and sober interiors, nodding to A.P.C. own collections carried at the shop, encompassing women’s, men’s, denim and accessories lines. As hinted by the shop facade and the triangular window detail standing out on the picket door, graphic and angular wood displays dominate the space and contrast with ice gray partitions.

Whether the Milan store marks the primary of a series in Italy is to-be-determined, since Touitou said “the roll out plan remains to be under discussion.”

“The A.P.C. retail network remains to be very small in comparison with our competitors, so we’ve room to expand either in countries where we have already got stores or in recent countries: the plan is clearly to open but we don’t need to rush,” added the founder.

The brand has greater than 70 company-owned stores across Europe, the U.S., Australia, South Korea, Japan and Hong Kong.

“The general distribution strategy stays unchanged: we would like to maintain our geographical balance (Asia, Europe, the U.S.) along with our channel balance (retail, wholesale, digital),” said Touitou, adding that “’continuity’ must be the primary word to characterize this strategy,” so no revolution is to be expected.

Ditto for the product: as reported earlier this month, while talking to journalists after the show in Paris, Touitou said “nothing goes to vary” after the L Catterton investment, and he’ll proceed to go the creative side.

There, he also said he felt a weight had been lifted off of his shoulders after a tricky business spell in the course of the pandemic, and that he was not the correct person to steer the business to the following level, though the time was right for it to grow.

Talking to WWD following the sale news, L Catterton Europe partner Eduardo Velasco said that A.P.C. has revenue of greater than 100 million euros and he believes it’s poised for growth as much as 500 million euros.

L Catterton is backed by luxury conglomerate LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton and has invested heavily in fashion brands, including Birkenstock, Etro, Ganni and John Hardy, in recent times.