Custom Menswear Retailer Proper Cloth to Open at The Herald in DC

Menswear retailer Proper Cloth inked a 10-year lease at The Herald in Downtown Washington, D.C., for its first showroom outside New York. 

The clothier, which makes made-to-measure menswear, will open a 4,585-square-foot studio on the ground floor of the former Washington-Herald Times building at 1307 New York Avenue, filling the only retail space in the repositioned office building owned by Marx Realty.

Proper Cloth, founded in 2008, has two New York showrooms in SoHo and Midtown. The D.C. location will be its first outpost in a new market. 

Ken Patton and Tucker Farman of JLL represented the tenant, while Avison Young’s William Stern, Eli Barnes and Lauryn Harris represented the landlord. Asking rents at the building range from $67 to $90 per square foot.

After acquiring the 114,000-square-foot building in 2020, Marx Realty redeveloped the historic property, which once held the newspaper’s printing presses, into modern offices. 

It nabbed its first tenant in 2021, with an 8,000-square-foot lease from government affairs firm CGCN Group, followed by leases from financial services firm FS Vector, the Society of Industrial and Office Realtors, PR firm Locust Street Group, and, most recently, furniture manufacturer OFS, which signed a 7,114-square-foot lease for a showroom and office in October.

Chava Gourarie can be reached at cgourarie@commercialobserver.com.