Reformation quietly turned Tuesday into a big day for Chicago retail, cutting the ribbon on two new stores and bringing its sustainable, tech-forward shopping experience to Fulton Market and Lake View. The expansion extends the brand’s footprint beyond its Streeterville shop and offers another sign that national retailers are steadily refilling city storefronts. Inside, shoppers will find Reformation’s usual mix of everyday basics and event-ready dresses aimed squarely at Gen Z and millennial customers.
Where the stores landed
The new arrivals are planted in two busy corridors: one in Fulton Market and another on Southport Avenue in Lake View, taking over a former Allbirds and the old Dr. Martens space, according to the Chicago Sun-Times. The company had already staked out the area with a Streeterville storefront that opened in 2019 and a suburban Oak Brook location that followed in 2022, the Sun-Times notes. Both Fulton Market and Southport have been magnets for new retail licenses in recent years, making them logical landing spots for the brand.
What shoppers will find inside
Both Chicago locations run on Reformation’s Retail X format, where just one of each style sits on the sales floor while touchscreens and QR codes let shoppers send sizes and colors directly to fitting rooms, a layout described by Time Out. The stores also plug into the company’s RefRecycling take-back program, which offers store credit when customers return old pieces. Retail analysts say the Retail X setup effectively turns each storefront into a compact distribution hub that leans on in-store staff to turn digital browsing into actual purchases, according to reporting in Vogue Business.
Why it matters for Chicago retail
Reformation’s latest moves come as city data shows the Near North Side, Near West Side, and Lake View among the community areas logging some of the highest counts of new business licenses, the Chicago Sun-Times reports. The company itself has grown into a sizable player, now operating dozens of locations, with 58 stores in the United States and 10 more internationally. It also leans hard on its sustainability story, noting that its products have been described as climate neutral since 2015 and that it earned official Climate Neutral Certification in 2021, according to a news release cited by the Sun-Times. Those credentials, paired with the RefRecycling program, are central to how Reformation pitches itself while it keeps adding brick-and-mortar spots.
What to expect next
Inside the new Chicago shops, prices run from everyday tanks to silk dresses, landing in the roughly $38 to $398 range, and the company lists standard in-store hours in its opening announcements, Time Out says. Local watchers note that openings like Reformation’s are steadily reshaping stretches from Fulton Market to Southport, where national brands keep sliding in next to independent boutiques, a broader retail trend that Axios has been tracking across recent Chicago openings.
