Londoners hopping the proverbial pond in search of bargains will find a little something familiar if they’re strolling through downtown Manhattan this winter. Karen Millen, the upscale British women’s clothing line, has put down roots in SoHo — opening a flagship store on Prince Street as part of its three-year plan to expand its stateside presence.

The boutique — its soft opening was last month though its official launch is not until March — is situated in the 2,500-square-foot space that was formerly occupied by the Mimi Fertz Gallery, which, longtime SoHo residents and visitors will recall, had an enormous multi-breasted fertility goddess sculpture guarding the entrance. These days, plain old two-breasted folk welcome shoppers to the site.

Karen Millen releases two collections a year, each comprising daytime, work, occasion, and weekend wear. Highlights of the fall/winter 2007-2008 collection include moleskin swing coats, patent leather biker jackets, checked wool belted trenches, and heavy, satin knee-length numbers — in pouffy, ruffled styles — that give a tasteful nod to the 1980s prom dresses that shoppers may have donned years ago. At the store, coats and jackets retail $600–$700; dresses for $400–$500, and jeans and casual tops for about $130.

“Our best-selling items at the moment include dresses, accessories, coats, and occasion wear,” the company’s international director, Sanjay Sharma, said. “We have been delighted by the first few weeks of trade from the SoHo Store.”

The boutique, which was designed by the London-based architectural firm Brinkworth Design, is located in a landmark building and maintains an old SoHo feel, thanks to its tin ceilings, cast iron columns, exposed brick, and wood floors. The far right wall, however, revisits that prom aesthetic — thanks to floor-to-ceiling, disco-like slatted mirrors that reflect light in every direction.

Karen Millen’s SoHo flagship is the brand’s first store in New York City, though the label has eight other American stores, including those in Los Angeles, Boston, Atlanta, Dallas, San Francisco, and McLean, Va.; until recently, two Short Hills, N.J., stores had been the label’s only presence in the New York metropolitan area.

“We have been researching the New York City market for the last two years,” Mr. Sharma said. “We concluded that Karen Millen should look for suitable showcase sites both uptown and downtown. We felt that SoHo was an excellent established downtown market for international bridge and luxury retailers.”

Mr. Sharma noted that Karen Millen is currently pursuing other possible store locations in New York; and Women’s Wear Daily reported recently that the company would roll out as an additional 75 freestanding stores in America as well as a stateside concept store in the next three years.

The Karen Millen line, which caters to women ages 18 to 40, was founded by Ms. Millen and her now-ex husband Kevin Stanford in 1981, with an initial investment of just 100 British pounds. Ms. Millen was only 19 at the time, and made most of the clothing herself by hand; her makeshift headquarters was her parents’ living room. Ms. Millen and Mr. Stanford opened their first storefront in Kent three years later, and quickly gained acclaim for its tailored apparel, generally offered at the lower end of the designer price scale; her designs have been seen on the likes of Naomi Campbell and Victoria Beckham.

Today, there are more than 100 Karen Millen shops in more than a dozen countries.

In 2004, the company and a chain it owned, Whistles, were bought by the Icelandic retail group Mosaic Fashions LTD for 120 million British pounds, though Ms. Millen retains a stake in the company.

More recently, the brand has been in the news for filing suit against an Irish supermarket and retail chain, Dunnes — after tops that looked nearly identical to Karen Millen’s hit the racks at low-cost stores in 2006. The Karen Millen company argued that the copies were not coincidental, and that they were an infringement of a 2001 European regulation on unregistered community designs, which states that a design cannot legally be copied if it is clearly an original, non-generic garment that makes a unique “overall impression” on “an informed” customer. Last month, a court ruled in Karen Millen’s favor.

Whether or not the line will make a unique “overall impression” in its new SoHo locale is yet to be seen. Although Mr. Sharma said that sales are exceeding their expectations, a sampling of customers on a recent Saturday, when asked, said that the steep, off-season, pre-opening sales were luring in customers more than the brand name. During that same weekend, a crowd of several dozen people gathered in front of the Karen Millen flagship to look at the 3-inch-high plastic figurine that some local artists had set up in the middle of the sidewalk right outside the store. The tiny man stood atop a piece of paper that read: “Our politicians don’t look out for the little guy.”

Passersby — some of whom were exiting the store — kept inadvertently stepping on the “little guy,” each time eliciting a roar from the crowd. When the artists were asked if they’d ever heard of a store called “Karen Millen,” in unison, they shook their heads.

Then someone pointed out that it was the name of the store in front of which they’d been setting up shop for days. “Oh!” one of the artists yelled. “Snap!”

(Karen Millen, 114 Prince St. at Greene Street, 212-334-8492)