New York’s Still Here Is Heading West

Still Here is heading west. Today, Downtown New York’s favorite denim brand will expand beyond the city for the first time with a Los Angeles opening on Melrose, one month after opening its fourth New York store.

When husband and wife duo Sonia and Maurice Mosseri founded the brand in 2018, they had no plans of going all-in on physical retail. But their 2022 Nolita store proved to be the blueprint, and in 2026, Still Here is jumping from three to five units in total. The offering will remain consistent, including denim mainstays such as the fan-favorite Cool Jean with the drawstring toggle, celeb-loved waistband-free Sport Jean, and the classic Everyday Jean.

The brand’s retail playbook formed early on. In 2019, the duo took its first 200 pairs of jeans to Barneys, where they sold out in a week and a half. Then, Barneys went bankrupt, and other retailers weren’t accepting new orders following the onset of the pandemic. So the pair set up a ShopMy account, and sold the jeans online. But return rates were high, which the founders put down to the fact that their jeans are 100% cotton, giving them a different fit than the more popular stretch jeans that were holding up the market. The obvious solution, they decided, was a retail store. Coming out of Covid, the price on the brand’s 340-square-foot Elizabeth Street space was low, leading them to sign the lease in spring 2022.

Still Here’s first store on Nolita’s Elizabeth Street.

Return rates tanked. “We were like, ‘Whoa, these sales are sticky,’” Sonia recalls. From there, Still Here built a cult following of Downtown New Yorkers. “If you have a cool brand and a great product in Downtown Manhattan with a small little shop, immediately people flock to it, because it’s ‘if you know, you know’. Word of mouth was the main driver there,” Maurice says.

When the brand’s second store opportunity came up on Madison Avenue at the end of 2023, the founders were torn: the space was great, but the Still Here girl was downtown. While deliberating at Eli Zabar’s E.A.T, they saw a young woman step out of a cab carrying a Still Here tote. They signed the lease, and a Williamsburg space followed in 2025. Now, 80% of Still Here’s revenue is direct-to-consumer (DTC), an almost even split between retail (45%) and e-commerce (55%), while the remaining 20% is wholesale across 200-plus boutique and specialty stores in the US and beyond.

Still Here’s eight-figure revenue business is now growing fast, up tenfold over the past three years, during which revenues have more than doubled year-on-year, according to the brand, which is profitable and remains self-funded. This year, DTC orders are up over 90%, online orders are up 136%, while in-store sales are up 92%. So the question now stands: where does Still Here go from here?

The West Village was a no-brainer for Still Here’s next store, the founders say. “It’s one of our highest zip codes in Manhattan in terms of sales,” Sonia explains. “The West Village girl wants us there, and there’s a lot of magic happening in the West Village right now. It’s such a hot market.”

Still Here joins a string of recent West Village openings, including Australian-born Posse and LA-based Frankies Bikinis. It’s the right moment, the founders believe, like Madison Avenue was in 2023, when brands including Khaite, Kallmeyer and Toteme swiftly followed uptown. “The community in Madison Avenue doesn’t really leave, their whole world is up there. We feel similarly to the West Village, where it really feels like its own little pocket in the city,” says Sonia. Four times the size of the mini Nolita store, the West Village space will serve as Still Here’s new downtown hub.

Inside Still Here’s Madison Avenue store.

Los Angeles marks more of a jump, as the founders’ first time exiting NYC. “It’s really exciting because we’re making a hop west in New York and then we’re making a larger hop west in LA,” Sonia says. Even more than New York, which Still Here now has well-covered, LA has pockets. A year ago, the duo spent time in the city to identify where they should open. “We went to Abbot Kinney, Melrose, Rodeo Drive, Brentwood, Malibu, and we sat and watched,” Sonia says. Like New York before it, Still Here’s neighbors — and neighbors-to-be — were a deciding factor. The real estate agent told them that Danielle Guizio, Sporty & Rich and Aimé Leon Dore had all signed leases. “We were like, ‘OK, I think this is our pocket’,” Sonia recalls.

LA is the brand’s second-best zip code by state, and in 2025, it was number one for online sales. But the founders still aren’t expecting to do the same sales numbers as a New York store. And that’s the idea, Sonia says. “There’s nothing like New York retail. We know that. But an LA store opens different kinds of doors for us. So many celebrities, stylists, network people — I think that it’s more of an accelerator for the brand in that world, rather than [solely] financial.” Already, the brand is a go-to for New Yorkers like Zoe Kravitz and Jennifer Lawrence, but there’s ample room for growth in the celebrity style world.

Jumping into Hollywood doesn’t mean Still Here will stray from its pared-back product ethos. Eighty-five percent of Still Here’s product mix is denim, and 80% of denim sales are from core styles as opposed to seasonal, more trendy pieces. “It’s not trend chasing or newness or whatever. It’s just everyday sales,” Maurice says.

The pair are staunch on the concept of “everyday dressing”, pieces that can be styled with the jeans: tees, jumpers, jackets. The idea is to give context, Sonia says. But they don’t want to overcomplicate. With the brand’s standard spring/summer, fall/winter model, there was no newness in store for four months at a time — which meant lost sales. The Madison Avenue customer was coming in three weeks after purchasing and asking for new stock, Maurice says.

But the founders don’t want to pump out more products for the sake of it, so instead of introducing more seasonal styles, they’re changing their product cadence, moving from two drops per year (spring/summer, fall/winter) to four (spring, summer, fall, winter). The founders are confident that having new products in store more frequently, with each new collection, will satisfy customers’ desire for fresh products.

This desire for simplification is reflected across the business: Still Here has never done a collaboration. It doesn’t go on sale (the brand has only ever hosted one sample sale), so don’t expect any Black Friday discounts. Instead, seasonal styles are produced in limited quantities, and once they’re done, they’re done; rarely will they restock. “I hope to be able to maintain this when we have four seasons,” Maurice says.

The founders are getting used to this new way of thinking. “You have to put on a different hat, from pushing the rock up the hill and now, in a way, chasing it down,” Maurice says. “But I think where we’re at now is putting on a different hat to scale, and there’s a lot of excitement around that.”

Maurice is optimistic that seeing Still Here decamp to LA will drive momentum for the brand’s next chapter. “We know it can be successful in New York already. Seeing that come to life in other markets is going to be something that energizes us into testing new avenues and states,” he says. “We see a lot of traction from other major cities across the US. Some of them are mainstays, some of them are seasonal.”

That said, there’s no set plan for where and when the founders will go next. “When we find something we like and something that excites us, we move very quickly,” Maurice says. “We like connecting with the retail space,” Sonia agrees. “That’s going to really lead which market we open in, when.”

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