Alex Vinash has felt drawn to Columbus since his first visit in 2017, and five years later, the designer has opened a boutique in the city.
Located at 249 S. Third St., Alex Vinash NY is a collection of clothes for men and women that are designed and hand-picked by Vinash. The boutique sells additional items such as candles, travel books, glassware and home decor. The first Alex Vinash NY opened in Long Island, New York, in 2018.
“The brand is more like vacation. It’s like you come here and you feel like you’re on a resort,” he said.
Alex Vinash NY is one of seven new boutiques on South Third Street that make up Common Thread, a destination shopping experience featuring local and national brands. The program launched October 2022 and is a partnership between the Columbus Downtown Development Corporation and the Columbus Fashion Council.
Originally from Buenos Aires, Argentina, Vinash, a national champion in ice-skating, moved to Europe at the age of 19 to perform in shows. He started designing dance and ice-skating costumes while traveling around the continent.
“I have performance in many countries in the world, so I always understood movement and fabrics and combinations and colors,” he said.
Vinash opened a studio in Barcelona, Spain, in 2012. A feature in an edition of Vanity Fair in 2014 brought a lot of attention to Vinash and he started to design more clothes outside of performance wear.
“I was thinking, ‘If I can do this, I can do a piece of clothing, this is very similar to what I was doing,’” he said. “So I start to just redesign that and focus less on the bodysuits and more actually on the clothes.”
Vinash has since appeared in over fifty fashion magazines and has designed clothes for a number of celebrities, including Billy Porter, Paris Hilton, Kate Walsh and Dascha Polanco, according to Vinash’s website.
Vinash first traveled to New York in 2014 for Fashion Week. He opened a studio in the city in 2015 and then his first boutique three years later at 300 Main St., Greenport, New York.
Vinash was the headline designer for both the 2017 and 2021 Columbus Fashion Week Finale Runway Shows. He said he felt a lot of energy from the people he met when he first visited and he thought the city was amazing. He started to travel to Columbus once a year just to visit.
In addition to clothes, Vinash works with interior design as well and has styled various restaurants, bars and hotels. Vinash said he designs his own wallpaper and makes some custom furniture.
Vinash releases new items every two weeks. He said a key component in the design process is to examine the people in whatever environment he is in. Some of Vinash’s clothes are sold online and can be found in both stores, but not all of them.
“It’s a different client,” he said. “I like to spend time in the city because you can study how they work, how they go out, how they dress when they go out. I like to observe how they actually move during the day, and then I can approach the items that I’m going to have in the store.”
Alex Vinash NY is located at 249 S. Third St. and is open Tuesday through Saturday from 12 – 8 p.m. More information about the brand and designer can be found at alexvinash.com.
Learn more about Common Thread at downtowncolumbus.com/commonthread.
All photos by Ashley Kimmel unless otherwise noted