A California-based clothing brand known for sustainability has planted its first Alabama flag at The Summit in Birmingham, bringing with it a 1,430-square-foot store built around digital dressing rooms, touchscreens and QR codes instead of racks you have to dig through yourself. Reformation’s new boutique sits on the mall’s upper level, tucked between Free People and Madewell.
According to bizjournals.com, the store runs on Reformation’s Retail X platform, a system that lets shoppers browse the brand’s online inventory and build digital dressing rooms right on the sales floor while trying on pieces. The idea, per the retailer’s own framing, is to replicate the ease of online shopping inside a physical space — customers work with a store associate, and only one of each item sits out on the floor, with touchscreens and QR codes doing the rest of the heavy lifting. As AL.com reports, Reformation offers limited-edition collections alongside jeans, sweaters, dresses, shoes and accessories, and the company now operates stores in 25 states.
The dressing rooms themselves include touchscreens that let customers request a different size or style without hunting down an employee or leaving the room. It’s the same setup Reformation rolled out earlier this year at its first Raleigh store at North Hills, where, as newsobserver.com reported, shoppers could build a dressing room digitally using touchscreens and QR codes throughout that store. That North Carolina location — Reformation’s second in the state after a Charlotte SouthPark store that opened in 2025 — stocked dresses, separates, denim, outerwear, shoes and bags.
Sustainability Built Into the Fixtures
The Birmingham store leans into Reformation’s sustainability branding in its physical design, not just its tech. The space features green building infrastructure meant to minimize waste, water and energy use, along with vintage furnishings, Forest Stewardship Council-certified wood hangers and reusable deadstock totes. The newsobserver.com report on the Raleigh opening described a nearly identical setup, noting that vintage furnishings and FSC-certified wooden hangers were used throughout that store as well…