Fashion boutiques coming to McLean’s Chesterbrook Shopping Center

A pair of clothing stores and a custom frames shop are coming to Chesterbrook Shopping Center (6224 Old Dominion Drive).

Sassanova, Apricot Lane and Framebridge are all slated to open in McLean later this year or in early 2025, helping fill out a tenant roster that has turned over substantially since property manager Federal Realty took ownership of the site in 2021.

Apricot Lane, a women’s fashion boutique, started as a retail gift shop in Vacaville, California, in 1991 before opening its first boutique in 2007. The business has now expanded to more than 130 existing and planned locations across the U.S., including one in Ashburn.

The McLean shop will be Apricot Lane’s first in Fairfax County. The 1,987-square-foot store is expected to open by the end of 2024 in a portion of the former RiteAid space next to Sorn Thai, a restaurant also on track to open late this year.

Coming in the first quarter of 2025 will be Sassanova, another women’s fashion brand that got started as a shoe shop in 2003. With four boutiques in Maryland, the company will expand to Virginia for the first time with its 2,262-square-foot space adjacent to Apricot Lane at Chesterbrook.

The store will offer a “collection of contemporary apparel, shoes, & accessories from elevated fashion brands,” according to a press release. Sassanova also has a menswear concept called Nova Man, but that can only be found at one location at the moment — at Green Spring Station in Brooklandville, Maryland.

Framebridge is also anticipated to open in the first quarter of 2025. The 694-square-foot store will be nested in between the clothing store J. McLaughlin and the deli Call Your Mother, which moved into a brick-and-mortar storefront in July.

Offering custom framing for photos, art and “anything with depth,” Framebridge launched in 2014 as an online startup. Founder and CEO Susan Tynan introduced a physical store on 14th Street in D.C. in 2019 after customers began stopping by the company’s Georgetown headquarters, according to Washingtonian.

Framebridge now has 28 stores, including ones in Merrifield’s Mosaic District, Clarendon and Old Town Alexandria. In addition to McLean, more locations are planned for Georgetown, Charlotte in North Carolina, Wellesley, Massachusetts, and Nashville, Tennessee.

After acquiring Chesterbrook, which was built in 1967, Federal Realty initiated a “remerchandising” plan and embarked on an $8.5 million renovation that started construction in mid-2022.

Now expected to finish in early 2025, the project includes “architectural enhancements, refreshed storefronts, upgraded landscaping with indigenous plants, decorative lighting, widened sidewalks and outdoor amenity spaces” with art, the property owner said in its press release.

The Safeway-anchored shopping center still has some vacant spaces, including a nearly 5,000-square-foot space at the end of its main strip.

Hat tip to Mike Whatley