The Shophound

SCENTS IN SPACE: ODIN Creates A Pop-Up Environment For Its Fragrances

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We weren't quite sure what to expect when we were invited down to Odin New York, one of our favorite stores in the East Village (or anywhere, really), to preview a special pop-up store for Odin's Fragrance and Home Fragrance lines in the concept shop next to the mini-chain's original East 11th Street store. After all, don't they sell those things at Odin all the time anyway?

When The Shophound got down there yesterday evening, we immediately understood the point of the whole venture as we encountered a striking environment inside the tiny retail space. Working with the Odin team, the innovative design firm, Snarkitecture created a deceptively expansive installation using plaster casts of the brand's fragrance bottles precisely positioned and suspended to form a pristine and unexpectedly serene setting for the product lines (pictured above). We also got a chance to finally meet Eddy Chai, one of Odin's co-founders, and discovered that their fragrance partner is a former co-worker of ours from way back when The Shophound was just a fledgling sales associate.

The installation opens to the public today, May 1st, and will remain for six weeks. The first 50 customers who make a purchase from the award winning fragrance collection during the first week of the concept shop with receive a plaster cast bottle as an artifact from the shop (which also happens to make an excellent if quirky paperweight). The next week, customers will have to settle for an Odin New York x Snarkitecture tote bag decorated with a rendering of the installation.

Odin New York Fragrance x Snarkitecture Pop-Up 330 East 11th Street Between First & Second Avenues, East Village

EMPLOYEE OF THE MONTH: Flora Shepelsky Is The Wig Queen Of The Upper East Side

There's no "Critical Shopper" column this week in the Thursday Styles, so The Shophound went hunting for one of our other favorite shopping related columns, and found a new installment of New York Magazine's "Ask A Shop Clerk" feature. Now monthly instead of weekly, the column, which should really be called "Ask A Shop Owner" these days, is currently featuring Ms. Flora Shepelskly of Design by Flora (at right). While it sounds like it could be a store for anything, this is actually a wig store, and by that we do not mean some tacky, stack-'em-high-sell-'em-cheap outfit like you might find on 14th Street. No, Ms. Shepelsky appears to be a deluxe, high end perruquière whose wares range from $1,850 to $10,000. She carries 500 wigs in her shop with another 1,200 in her New Jersey showroom and another 1,200 in the basement. With nearly 3,000 wigs to choose from, what's the most popular color? Russet red? Honey blonde? Nope. Mousy brown, Who knew?

New York asked her about changing attitudes toward wig wearing, and she had this observation to share

NYMag: Why is fake hair still taboo?
Flora: Years of bad wigs have given it a bad rap. It’s sad that fake teeth and fake boobs are okay, but if a woman puts on fake hair, she feels ashamed. My mission is to show people that a hairpiece is nothing to be embarrassed about.

Time was when a stylish wig-wearing woman would rather die than admit she had to wear fake hair, but now, in the era of Wendy Williams, Sherri Shepherd and, hell, the enduring RuPaul, we seem to have entered a new age of Wig Pride in which, for some women, the question isn't whether or not your hair is fake, but how good of a fake is it?

There's at least one thing The Shophound and Flora Shepelsky agree on with no reservations. Toupeés are always bad. She will happily outfit a cross-dresser (as she refers to the transgendered, or any other gentlemen who choose to dress like ladies), but has no time for men who want to hide their natural hair loss. "My husband is balding, and I make him shave his head," she says. As she should.

Ask a Shop Clerk: Flora Shepelsky (NYMag)
Design by Flora 243 East 78th Street between Second & Third Avenues, Upper East Side

NEW IN STORE: MUJI Skincare Hits The U.S.

 

Generally, Fashion Week is all about any number of publicity minded entities fighting for attention, so there is something refreshing about the fact that, this week, Japanese retail chain MUJI has quietly launched its skincare line in all four of its U.S. stores which just happen to be in New York City (as well as in the online store).

 

The well-priced line which includes an organic collection of lotions, moisturizers and toners as well as one for sensitive skin is thoughtfully packaged in both regular and travel sizes, typifyng the chain's philosophy of useful and practical design.

The Shophound is starting to think of Muji as an old fashioned variety store filled with modest but frequently perfect items, often coming to the rescue when we are exhausted looking for the perfect thing from desk items to storage and shelves. It is always worth a browse in one of their shops if you haven't been in there in a while, even if it's just to pick up a few of their great pens and notepads.

Muji Skincare (Muji.us)

HOLIDAY SHOPPING: A Gold Star For SPACE NK ★

As the Holiday season winds down, we all have a few people we still need to pick up gifts for, and sometimes that means setting aside some time to shop around looking for inspiration. A couple of days ago, while gift hunting on Columbus Avenue on a busy weekend afternoon, The Shophound wandered into SPACE.NK.apothecary thinking, "Lets give this one a shot," and boy did they ever deliver.

It may not surprise you that, as a non-lady, The Shophound is not extraordinarily well-versed in the beauty products that keep so many women happily obsessed. We were certainly familiar with Space.NK, having posted about it several times and occasionally been asked to cover the U.K.-based retailer's openings and events. We knew enough about the place to expect special items and brands that won't be found at every Sephora, but as with many beauty and cosmetics stores, we were walking in there essentially clueless. That didn't remotely matter to the razor sharp sales associate who did everything short of take us by the hand to find just the right gifts we needed at the price we were hoping to pay all beautifully wrapped in less than 20 minutes. What a refreshing change from the all too common experience of arriving at the register holding an item or two and being faced with the usual question, "Did anyone help you with this?", which, if you need to ask it, almost always guarantees a response in the negative. By contrast, earlier in the day we visited the similarly themed Bluemercury on upper Broadway with the same goal in mind, and left the store without so much as a second glance from the staff.

Our only disappointment with Space.NK was that the best service The Shophound has received since we don't know when was in a store that at best we will probably only shop in every now and then at most. It almost makes us sorry we don't wear makeup, but perhaps we can make up for it by sending them some of our readers who do. It's been a while since we have left a store with such satisfaction at having paid full retail, so we can happily add Space.NK to the list of store we wholeheartedly recommend.

★ SPACE.NK.apothecary 217 Columbus Avenue between 69th and 70th Streets, Upper West Side
also in SoHo, the Upper East Side and in both Manhattan Bloomingdale's locations

SCENT SPECIALISTS: Jo Malone Fêtes A New Bleecker Street Branch

Though it has been quietly welcoming customers for a few weeks, Jo Malone officially toasted its latest boutique last night with a party hosted by Marcus Wainwright and David Neville of the neighboring Rag & Bone boutiques and glamorous couple Lucy Sykes and Euan Rellie. Most recently a modest bakery, the jewel box of a shop on the corner of Bleecker and Christopher Streets is now filled with merchandise of a more fragrant sort. Decked out in the brand's signature cream and black color scheme it offers the London-based label's complete line of non-gender specific scents meant to be worn alone or mixed together to create a personally calibrated, multilayered olfactory experience.

The shop joins the Jo Malone boutiques on Madison Avenue and in Grand Central Terminal as the brand's third freestanding Manhattan boutique, and re-establishes a downtown beachhead for the brand after its original Flatiron Building boutique was shuttered a couple of years ago. It also joins sister brand M.A.C as well as Nars and a recently refurbished Diptyque on Bleecker Street for a bigger beauty and fragrance presence on the small but coveted retail stretch.

As guests shipped Champagne and nibbled on tiny canapés suited to the fashion flock, they were invited, in lieu of gift bags, to choose their own product from the store's entire inventory to be wrapped in a personally decorated box. Needless to say, someone is getting a perfume present from The Shophound in a couple of weeks, which we wouldn't normally announce in a blog post, but the SEC has gotten all prickly about such things these days.

Jo Malone 330 Bleecker Street at Christopher Street, West Village

 

LAUNCH PAD: Lacoste Kicks Off Its New Fragrance With A Multi-Media Extravaganza

First of all, we have to say that The Shophound does not often find ourselves at fragrance launches. When we were invited to the unveiling of Lacoste's "La Machine L.12.12" we weren't quite sure what it was for, but the idea of a cocktail party at Grand Central Station's Vanderbilt Hall closed off during the height of Rush Hour (and in yesterday's case, a particularly grueling one that included annoying U.N traffic plus a subway snarling water main break) seemed intriguing. It felt delightfully decadent to sip wine and scarf and endless flow of hors d'ouevres while everyone in the rest of the station was scurrying to their trains, or trying to peer into the roped off section wondering what the heck was going on? Lacoste did an impressive job transforming the cavernous space into a swanky lounge replete with video screens which informed us that we were at a fragrance launch for the brand's new trio of men's fragrances, Eau de Lacoste L.12.12, named for the style number of the famous crocodile festooned tennis shirt. La Machine turned out to be (as out press package explained):

a groundbreaking interactive visual installation which aims to show the transformation of the polo shirt (the inspiration for the collection) to a fragrance in both a mechanical way (you can watch as a real polo short is magically transformed into a bottle of Eau de Lacoste L.12.12) and visually using special user-generated videos

Wow that's a lot of alchemy for one perfume to bear. We're not quite sure how to describe the giant installation, but we can report that it does not literally make perfume out of shirts, or an other garments. We can also report that fragrance launches are pretty damn extravagant. Just before the momentous presentation, we noticed young people intermingling through the crowd dressed in jeans and Lacoste shirts in white, green and blue (the three colors of the fragrances). It turns out that the were a dance team there to do a celebratory routine to the classic Hip-Hop track "The Message" by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five. The president of Lacoste's fragrance division made a speech in his charming French accent which, among other things, indicated that we call the installation "L.douze.douze". Then the dancers came on again, this time with Grandmaster Flash himself and about two or three of the Furious Five who performed "The Message" live and in person (at left). We closed our eyes and pretended that it was 1982 which suddenly made it much more thrilling. At which point we couldn't help feling bemused that the seminal rap song was being performed behind what was possibly the whitest group of Hip-Hop dancers ever at a party for French fragrances. Then, more randomness as actor Max Minghella, best known for playing Divya Narendra, the non-Winklevoss plaintiff in "The Social Network", was brought out to personally unveil "La Machine". It ia a huge, swooping structure placed on the other side of Vanderbilt hall with lights and moving parts and a social networking component that we don't totally get, but then, we are old enough to remember when "The Message" was an outrageously edgy new song, and Hip-Hop was this newfangled kind of music that we started hearing people perform and dance to on "Soul Train".

At the very least, we were dazzled by the resoures devoted to fragrance launches, and we left with a generous package of products including a full, 100 ml bottle of the white Eau de Lacoste L.12.12 Eau de Toilette and two smaller 30 ml bottles of the blue and green variations.

La Machine L.12.12 will be exhibited in Grand Central Terminal' Vanderbilt Hall (at the 42nd Street entrance) through September 27^th. If you stop by, let us know what you think.

JON CARAMANICA GOES SHOPPING: Olfactory Overload Edition

We learned all sorts of things from this week's Critical Shopper in the Thursday Styles. Some were interesting, some were disturbing. This week's shopper, Jon Caramanica braved the SoHo fragrance boutique MiN New York. Valentine's Day is just around the corner, after all.

We learned that Caramanica is a former Drakkar Noir abuser (considering that any use of Drakkar Noir at all qualifies as abuse in our humble estimation). We also learn that there are no good names left for fragrances, and so perfumers are left with numbers and random phrases to identify their scents, like "Love, Don't Be Shy" or "Liaisons Dangereuses, Typical Me".

We learned that when you try to describe a fragrance in print, it almost always sounds like something mysteriously disgusting —pepper, yuzu, mulled cider, musk?. Apparently, our shopper is drawn to fragrances that smell like food, which sounds challenging. We can't really tell if the nice folks at MiN will helpfully guide you through their forest of scents or simply assault you with so many different smells that you'll buy something just to give your nose a rest. We have to admit that The Shophound is highly sensitive to perfumes. In fact most of them give us a headache, so a fantastic fragrance store translates to us as a ticket to nausea. We would have to commend Mr. Caramanica for his bravery in taking on a scent store at all. In fairness, he admits to breaking cover and getting the royal press treatment, but we can hardly blame him. We naturally assumed that the review was timed to coincide with Valentine's Day shopping, however it looks like our shopper was mainly investigating new scents for himself, something we wouldn't dream of attempting without an expert guide.

Critical Shopper: A Place of Mystery and Elixirs  By Jon Caramanica (NYTimes)
MiN New York 117 Crosby Street between Prince & Houston Streets, SoHo

BEAUTY NEWS: Estée Lauder Broadens Its Scope With Joan Smalls

For years, an Estée Lauder contract was one of the modeling industry's biggest prizes, given to a single model who would typically represent all the company's by herself. In the past decade, however, the brand has multiplied the roster, and announced this week that Puerto Rican born Joan Smalls (pictured left in an official image) will join the brands lineup. This is significant not only because the Lauder contract remains a plum achievement and Smalls is a beauty whose career ignited in 2010, but also because the company has been without a model of color since Liya Kebede's contract expired a few years ago.

Smalls, as well as newcomers to the brand Liu Wen from China and Constance Jablonski from France, joins longtime spokesmodels Carolyn Murphy, Elizabeth Hurley and main face Hilary Rhoda at Lauder. Her addition finally allows the team of models to represent a fuller spectrum of beauty than it ever has —something that the company, which has grown to be an enormous force in the beauty business, has been slow to do in its flagship brand.

Well, better late than never.

Estée Lauder Signs Joan Smalls (WWD)

BEAUTY BOUTIQUE: NARS Set To Bow On Bleecker This Spring

Proving that no space on Bleecker Street stays empty for long, makeup artist François Nars is announcing that the first flagship boutique for his hugely successful NARS cosmetics brand will open for Spring 2011 at 413 Bleecker Street, the former home of Leo Design.

At the very least, it trumps expectations, slightly. We would have put money on the space going to yet another clothing boutique. Though there are fragrance shops nearby from Bond No. 9 and Dyptique, aside from Fresh, there is much less in the way of cosmetics on the still coveted stretch, so the shop will round out the selection in its own way. Nars fans should getting excited for that, and also because the shop promises exclusive merchandise to be found only at the boutique. We have no further details, but the folks at Nars promise more information to come, so stay tuned.

(Shophound Inbox)
Previously:
Upcoming Relocations: Leo Design Gets Booted Off Bleecker

WINDOW TEASE: Lush Serves Up Bosoms

Click the image for larger boobs in a new window

Considering the uproar that American Apparel's risqué advertising used to cause, we are kind of surprised that we haven't heard any complaints about the windows we saw recently at Lush, the natural cosmetics chain that has sprung up all around the city over the past few years. They've got that AA girl-against-white-seamless-with-a bright-strobe look, and there's a pointed emphasis on the models' barely covered bosoms to promote the brand's Lovely Jubblies breast cream. So how, when American Apparel's scantily clad strumpets have raised community hackles on so many occasions, does Lush able to get away with its topless sextet with nary a whimper that we have heard about?

Is it the humorous yet juvenile reference to jugs, headlights, hooters and watermelons that excuses the image? Even the token male (or very hairy flatchested female) holds up a pair of door knockers. (Get it? Knockers!) Maybe it's just the wholesome context of personal care and maintenance instead of AA's louche "hey look at my ass" aesthetic that makes the imagery seem so innocent. Perhaps we are unbothered because we don't know of a pervy, slightly unhinged CEO behind the scenes shooting the ads at Lush.

Mind you, it takes a lot more than some barely covered breasts to offend The Shophound, but we discovered this window display smack in the middle of the stroller clogged, family friendly Upper West Side where would have thought it might raise an eyebrow or two. If this all means we now live in an enlightened, prude-free society, then we are all for that, but we think Lush is just flying under the radar here.

Lush (Official Site)