When Thakoon Panichgul launched his HommeGirls zine in the spring of 2019 he told Vogue, “there’s a lot of loudness [in fashion], and what I want to get back to is instinct. The way to do that is to stay grounded to what I feel excited by.” In the six years since, HommeGirls has become much more than a zine. Clothes, which Panichgul originally conceived as merch and sold DTC, came in the fall of 2019, and there’s been a string of collabs with brands including Kith, Vans, and Nike. In early 2023, Panichgul and co. landed Kylie Jenner, playing against type, for their Volume 9 cover.
As HommeGirls has grown so has its influence, but staying grounded is still the name of the game as Panichgul opens the first-ever HommeGirls storefront on Walker Street in Chinatown, a couple of blocks from its office on Broadway. Designed by Rafael de Cárdenas, Ltd, the tiny 250-square-foot space has exactly one clothing rack—in the form of a dry cleaner garment conveyor (yes, it’s operational)—and a single valet stand from Italy. The only decor is floor-to-ceiling mirrors, which produce a mesmerizing infinity effect, polished marble tiles nodding to the clothes’ Made in Italy bona fides, and a magazine display. The current issue—you can’t call it a zine, after all, with ads from Prada, Chanel, Hermès, and more—boasts seven different print covers, Blackpink’s Jennie, Shygirl, and Natasha Lyonne among them.
“I don’t want it to just be a retail store open all the time,” says Panichgul of the new space. “It’s more of an outpost, an IRL expression for HommeGirls and what we stand for. There’s a lot of galleries already in this neighborhood, and I’m thinking in that mindset as well.”
HommeGirls, as its name implies, was conceived as a platform for women who wear men’s clothes. In fact, the clothes are fitted on men first when they’re designed. “I could wear all of it,” Panichgul says, gesturing to the dry cleaner rack. There are cotton boxers and khakis with cotton boxer waistbands peeking out, trenches, suits, crisp poplin shirts, and logo ties. Like the new shop, the clothes are both raw and refined. Many of HommeGirls’ shirts are hacked off at the midriff, but the classic trench has a deep red twill lining and the satin lapels of the tuxedo jacket are traced with delicate pickstitching.
Women have been borrowing men’s tailoring as far back as Dietrich and Garbo and beyond. It’s a timeless look, but it’s also particularly of this moment. Both the New York Times and the Financial Times have published how-to’s for women tempted to try out men’s neckties in the last couple of months, inspired perhaps by the spring 2025 shows of Saint Laurent, Ralph Lauren, and Emporio Armani. HommeGirls has been cropping its button-down shirts since Panichgul collaborated with Kith (three years before Miu Miu did it, by the way), but he shrugs off the suggestion that HommeGirls has helped shape the current girls-in-guys’ tailoring trend. “The young kids—they don’t see the difference between men’s and women’s clothes. They shop for clothes,” plain and simple, he says.
Panichgul made his New York Fashion Week debut 20 years ago last September. Back then he was a Harper’s Bazaar fashion editor-turned-fledgling designer with a taste for dressy separates. Peers who emerged in the same mid-2000s period have quietly dropped off the New York calendar—or out of fashion entirely. Panichgul chalks up his longevity in the industry to the diversity of his early experiences. He was trained in production, he spent five years in magazine editorial, and he earned a business degree from Boston University—all in addition to designing his eponymous label for over a decade.
“You kind of have to be open-minded, to test the system a little bit,” he says. “I came up under one tradition, which was runway shows, Vogue, and Barneys, and once you had those set, then everything else fell into place. That was my generation, and then that got flipped over and turned on its head. And so you have to assess, to look at the chaos and find opportunities in that.” This particular opportunity is located at 112 Walker Street, and it opens next Thursday, April 24 at 11 am.
