Mood Fabrics of Project Runway fame opens its first Chicago showroom on State Street in the Loop

Mood Fabrics, the New York fabric store that became a household name through the TV show Project Runway, held the grand opening of its first Chicago location on September 10, 2026 at 109 S. State St. in the Loop. The 2,000-square-foot showroom had a soft opening in August and shares its block with the Palmer House hotel, a few doors south of Monroe Street.

The Loop store is the first Midwest location for https://windycitymagazine.com/business/mood-fabrics/ and the second built on what the company calls its showroom model, after one that opened at Ponce City Market in Atlanta in April 2026. The company had announced the Chicago plan in July, telling the Sun-Times and NBC Chicago it expected a mid-August soft opening and a September grand opening, and it hit both dates. The basics, from Mood’s own Chicago page and from coverage in Block Club Chicago, are these.

• The showroom is at 109 South State Street, Chicago, IL 60603, and the phone number is (872) 282-2300.
• Hours are 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. seven days a week, with no closed day.
• The store stocks samples of more than 8,000 fabrics, trims and buttons and hundreds of notions, according to Mood’s site.
• Fabric yardage is ordered online from the sample and either shipped home or held for free in-store pickup; notions and accessories can be bought on the spot.

How the showroom model works

There are no bolts to dig through. Every fabric on the wall is a swatch with a QR code attached. Customers drape it, stretch it, hold it up against a trim, then scan the code to order the yardage from Mood’s website, with shipping that typically takes three to seven business days or pickup at the store, Block Club reported. Zippers, thread, needles, pattern paper and other sewing supplies are sold in-store the ordinary way.

Elana Cohen, Mood’s director of retail operations and experience, told the Sun-Times in July that the format is a response to how people shop now. She said a 15,000-square-foot warehouse can be overwhelming, that lugging fabric home is inconvenient for bigger projects, and that buying fabric online is hard because you cannot feel or drape the material or judge the color accurately. The showroom is meant to fix the second problem without the first.

The showroom has a central design table that students, costume shops and hobbyists can use as a shared workspace, per Block Club. Mood says the space is set up as a community design hub with events, workshops and demonstrations.

Classes and events

The programming is part of the pitch. Block Club listed the first round of sessions the store announced for September, and Mood’s Chicago page points to an events calendar for reservations.

• Free open sewing sessions run from 5 to 7 p.m. every Thursday, where people can bring their own machine or use one in the store.
• A four-hour beginner garment-making class was scheduled for 10 a.m. on Sunday, September 13.
• A workshop on working with beaded fabrics was priced at $7.18 for 6 p.m. on Wednesday, September 16.
• Meetups and textile and product workshops are planned on a rolling basis, ranging from beginner to advanced.

The Atlanta showroom runs a similar calendar, with paid sessions such as an introduction to patternmaking for $5.45 and business-of-fashion workshops for $10, according to the Sun-Times. Mood has said Chicago will follow the same template.

Why State Street

Cohen said Mood picked its showroom sites with nearby colleges in mind. The Loop store is a few blocks from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Columbia College Chicago, both of which have fashion design programs, and Mood has said it hopes to collaborate with both, per the Sun-Times and Block Club. The company has also said it wanted to reach markets left short of fabric retail after the Joann chain closed all of its stores in 2025.

The store’s own history is part of the draw. Jack and Janet Sauma opened the first Mood Designer Fabrics in New York’s Garment District in 1991, and the business passed to sons Philip and Eric. Since 2004, contestants on Project Runway have shopped there on camera, and host Tim Gunn’s sign-off, “Thank you, Mood,” turned the store into a brand. Mood now has full stores in New York, Los Angeles, Miami and Houston and showrooms in Atlanta and Chicago, according to Mood’s site.

Getting there

The block is one of the easiest in the city to reach without a car, and parking is the usual Loop story.

• The Monroe Red Line station is at the corner of State and Monroe, steps from the door, and the Monroe Blue Line station is two blocks west on Dearborn.
• The Adams/Wabash and Washington/Wabash stations on the Loop L are a block east.
• Street parking on State Street is not available; the nearest garages are the public garages on Wabash and Adams and the Millennium Park garages east of Michigan Avenue.
• Metra riders can walk from Millennium Station on Michigan Avenue in about five minutes.

One number is worth flagging for anyone comparing coverage. Block Club and the July announcement both put the sample count above 10,000; Mood’s own Chicago page says more than 8,000 fabrics, trims and buttons. The store’s page is the more current figure. The showroom is inside the Loop, between Monroe and Adams on the west side of State Street.

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