While there remain plenty of papered over and boarded up shop windows from the depths of the pandemic slowdown, the draw of Capitol Hill’s younger and increasingly wealthy demographics and its proximity to the city’s downtown core continues to be strong enough to attract new ventures and nationwide brands.

On E Pine, a pandemic-emptied retail spot has reopened on the E Pine block of the massive Excelsior Apartments development where “American classic” fashion purveyor Buck Mason is now resident:

Buck Mason’s first Seattle location, the store is located in the Capitol Hill neighborhood, and stocks the brand’s full collection of timeless men’s essentials, including their million-selling Los Angeles-made t-shirts, hard wearing leather jackets, and Japanese denim jeans.

“We couldn’t ask for a better location for our first Seattle store than Capitol Hill. Our goal with every store is to become a real part of the neighborhood where we’re located,” the company’s co-founder Erik Allen Ford said in the LA-based company’s announcement of the new opening. “You’ve got your local coffee place, local pizza place, and we want to be the local t-shirt place. The Capitol Hill community has been so warm and inviting — it’s already starting to feel like home.”

The eight-year-old company began life as an ecommerce venture packaging sets of jeans and shirts from other designers and manufacturers but has transitioned into showcasing its own lines and creations.

It was boosted along the way by the likes of Tom Brady and GQ and buzz about its old school, no gimmicks approach to advertising and marketing, and has grown its brand online and with 14 brick and mortar locations with a focus on men’s fashion and “old school manufacturing techniques and modern technology to create wardrobe essentials that make it easy to be the best-dressed guy in the room.”

Two more new stores — one in Boston, the other, Nashville — are coming in addition to the Capitol Hill location.

The new E Pine store will include a new direction for the company — a women’s collection “just as high quality and thoughtfully designed as our men’s, but with a decidedly feminine fit and feel.” It’s a big shift for a company named for a fictional character of masculinity intended to honor the founders’ fathers — and sound “manly.”

Like the recently opened Pike/Pine Glossier, Buck and Mason stores as much about showcasing the brands as they are sales.

“Buck Mason Seattle is a great chance for our online customers to see our products in person, new customers to discover our brand, and for our skilled and friendly staff of stylists to share a little California cool with the Emerald City,” Ford says in the press release.

The new shop replaces home decor retailer Stock and Pantry which closed due to the COVID-19 crisis last year and was a rare Seattle-based retail venture in the huge Excelsior development that has focused on larger tenants for its commercial spaces stringing the block once home to the Bauhaus coffee shop, Le Frock, Edie’s, Scout Apparel, Vutique, Wall of Sound and Spine and Crown Books.

Buck Mason Seattle is located at 313 E Pine. You can learn more at buckmason.com.

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