The Shophound

ALEXANDRA JACOBS GOES SHOPPING: East Side Wonderland Edition

This week's Thursday Styles brings Critical Shopper Alexandra Jacobs to the new East Side boutique FIVESTORY where, to her credit, she waited until the paint had dried to make an assessment. Her visit finds her in a sharp-eyed mood, though she does not avoid making a reference to the current Costume Institute exhibition “Schiaparelli and Prada: Impossible Conversations”. That's last week's news.

Back in the boutique, she engages a Tanzanian-born sales associate named Simba who fills her dressing room with all manner of stuff from around the store.
We hope she bought something for Simba's sake.
We are guessing she didn't.

No less interesting than the clothes from unheard-of designer are the snippets of conversation overheard throughout the store. Jacobs plants the seeds of a modern day "The Women", if only Meg Ryan & Co. hadn't totally ruined that concept a few years ago. Overall, she seems to find the store as engaging as it is designed to be,

To browse at Fivestory is to plunge Alice in Wonderland-like into a strange, refreshing mirror world of unfamiliar fashion. Not Altuzarra, but Aquazzura. Not Dolce & Gabbana, but Chianti and Parker.

And bringing it back to museums, "...if Barneys is the Met of this shopping district," she writes, "consider Fivestory more of a Frick Collection."

Critical Shopper: Fivestory: A Boudoir With Stories to Tell By Alexandra Jacobs (NYTimes)
FIVESTORY 18 East 69th Street between Fifth & Madison Avenues, Upper East Side

THE SHOPHOUND ON THE ROAD: L.A. Shopping: Venice Edition featuring Guild, Bazar, Bountiful & Alternative

Last week The Shophound was M.I.A. from New York as we switched coasts for a week in sunn Los Angeles. While we were on vacation, we naturally spent a bit of time checking out L.A.'s retail scene because, well, what would a vacation be without some shopping?

For anyone used to New York's highly concentrated shopping neighborhoods, the thing that is different about L.A. stores is the same as what is different about the city itself. They sprawl, and unlike in our urban metropolis, where a prominent store might anchor a colony of 20 or 30 shopping establishments densely clustered together, in L.A, iconic retailers can sit alone, monolithically with only a parking lot in front and two or three related shops nearby. Everybody drives, and everything is its own destination.

That is not to say that there aren't a few areas with a well developed sidewalk culture. Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills is the obvious example, but The Shophound limited our attention there to a quick drive through, since all we found was versions of the same designer boutiques we have on Madison and Fifth Avenues. Another area where we found a more dense shopping strip was Venice's ABBOT-KINNEY Boulevard. It has developed a lot since we last visited about two and a half years ago, and felt a little bit like Bleecker Street did about 10 years ago. Does that mean that the bigger chains will start moving in soon? Zoning might have something to say about it, and L.A.'s more abundant real estate keeps rents in most areas from skyrocketing and strangling pioneering, independent stores as severely they can in New York. All the same, Jack Spade has moved in already, and, of course, there's a Steven Alan, but most stores feel home grown, like GUILD (1335 ½ Abbot Kinney at right), which holds up the high fashion end of the neighborhood. The unassuming shop offers an international mix of labels for men and women from Belgium, France, Japan and beyond as well as hometown favorites like Rick Owens all blended to create the kind of luxe casual looks that L.A. can call its own. When we stopped in, we discovered two generations of a family shopping away enthusiastically —and spending freely. Guild is not cheap, but it is where Angelenos will buy harder to find labels like Nicolas Andrea Taralis, Haider Ackerman and Miharayasuhiro alongside stalwarts like Ann Demuelemeester.

A few steps away, we found BAZAR (1108 Abbot Kinney at left), a store that typifies the way L.A. seems almost more obsessed with vintage than New York. Here you will vintage furniture, denim, accessories, boots and whatever other curiosities catch the store's owner's 1930's inspired eye. For those who like their clothes a little bit fresher, the store also carries a selection of vintage reproduction apparel from the local brand Mister Freedom that New Yorkers might recognize from seeing it in J.Crew's curated men's stores.

Sometimes the line between kitsch and vintage in L.A. can get very blurry as we found when we entered under the Hardware Store sign to find ourselves in BOUNTIFUL (1335 Abbot Kinney at right), which is either a wonderland or the result of one highly discerning hoarder. With its counters piled literally to the ceiling with vintage style cake stands most prominently among the other glass and ceramic table and kitchenware, it seems more more like an installation than a workable retail environment, and the prices suggest that some items may not have as much charm when taken home and separated from their fanciful environment. Still, it's a sight to be seen, especially if you like cake stands.

Finally, for a look at the kind of store that would be nearly impossible to replicate in New York, there's the beach bungalow that houses the ALTERNATIVE Flagship Store (1337 Abbot Kinney above top and at left). Inside are the kind of weathered jerseys and knits that make up a huge part of L.A.'s fashion industry, but with sections open to the street, and it's particular architectural setting, it would be a challenge to squeeze the ambiance into a shoebox sized space on, say Bleecker Street.

JON CARAMANICA GOES SHOPPING: French Convenience Edition

Today's Thursday Styles features Critical Shopper Jon Caramanica's visit to New York's latest French import, Maison Kitsuné in the NoMad Hotel on the edge of what he charitably calls "the Perfume District" (or what we like to call the Cheap Wig, Perfume and Sunglasses District). Our shopper is unexpectedly enchanted by the brand's refined, super slim versions of classic men's clothes, and sees it as the follow up to that other French favorite A.P.C., which has been sullied by having the nerve to expand its retail network and wholesale its products to other stores to meet demand (Kitsuné is also sold at Barneys and online through Mr. Porter as well as in other boutiques in New York).

In the end, he has given into more than just the allure of the clothes,

Taken all together, this adds up to a uniform. And the Kitsuné concept of uniformity encompasses more than the body. More than a clothing company, it’s a full-service lifestyle-improvement enterprise: clothes for the body, music for the ears (the “Kitsuné America” compilation was just released), maybe someday low-key inspirational speeches for the mind, accompanied by cheek kisses and some grimy hair gel.

Sounds like a cult. Tread lightly.

Critical Shopper: Invisibility, All in Good Taste By Jon Caramanica (NYTimes)
Maison Kitsuné 1170 Broadway at 28th Street, Madison Square-ish

THE SHOPHOUND ON THE ROAD: Can L.A.'s Fred Segal Be Replicated In New York ...Or Anywhere Else?

How convenient that just as The Shophound arrived in sunny Los Angeles, WWD announced that Fred Segal, the quintessential California retailer, had sold the rights to its name, intellectual property and brand extensions to New York based company called Sandow Media. The new steward of the brand promised new product lines, a revamped web presence (much needed) and an international expansion program including new stores in New York, Miami, Las Vegas and the shopping capitals of Europe and Asia.

More Fred Segal could only be a good thing, right? Over the past month we have asked many of the industry professional we cross paths with which stores we should be seeking out on our trip to L.A., and among the many they recommended, every one said, "You're going to Fred Segal, right?".

Hey, give us some credit. We have always held the store in high regard since our first visit in the late 1990s, but we have to admit that we were really only familiar with the West Hollywood branch that is mostly taken over by Ron Herman's renowned boutique. For anyone not familiar with the way Fred Segal's business concept works, it is not the kind of luxury boutique we are used to with a leading merchant and singular point of view, but rather an amalgam of separate departments each run independently by what WWD calls "employee-owners" that range from couture to cafes to beauty boutiques to home furnishings and a yoga studio all under the same roof with many incorporating the Fred Segal name into their stores. There is Fred Segal Trend, Fred Segal Man, Fred Segal Finery, The Parliament at Fred Segal and so on and so forth, each a separate business with what appears to be an unwritten rule that no vendor will be repeated from one department to the next in the same location. Ron Herman is the rare exception who has other locations outside of the Fred Segal umbrella. Most of the operators seem happy to trade on their landlord/partner's name and benefit from its legendary draw.

Over the weekend, we made it a point to finally take a look at the original Santa Monica Fred Segal complex on two corners of Broadway and 5th Street. We were expecting something similar to the Melrose Avenue store that we were familiar with, but instead found a deceptively sprawling complex not unlike the city of Los Angeles itself with one shop/neighborhood leading into another with a similar but slightly different character and each presenting a carefully curated mix of familiar and independent brands formulated to make a its own fashion statement. It is also marked by excellent sales staffs. When one skilled associated expressed interest in the Burkman Brothers shirt we were wearing, he smoothly led us over to another made by a Japanese brand we had never seen before that he thought we would appreciate, and had we been in a free-spending mood, we would have instantly snapped it up and asked him to show us everything else he thought we might like. He had a laid-back, but sharply observant style of selling that fits Southern California well and offers a welcome contrast to the kind of over-eager, in-your-face attention we find all too often even in some of New York's more rarefied stores.

ALEXANDRA JACOBS GOES SHOPPING: Designer Renewal Edition

This week's Thursday Styles features a visit to the newly rejuvenated Salvatore Ferragamo* flagship boutique on Fifth Avenue by Critical Shopper Alexandra Jacobs. The longstanding boutique has just emerged from a timely renovation, and jacobs spends a good deal of column inches recounting the oft-told story of Ferragamo's many innovations (wedges, platforms, engineered stilettos, etc.), celebrity clientele (Marilyn Monroe, Audrey Hepburn, Eva Braun?) and the brand's eventual descent, after its namesake's 1960 death, from fashion leader to comfortable, family owned middle of the road luxury cash cow where grandma got her shoes (Ferragamo is literally where The Shophound's grandma got her shoes).

But then, in the past year, new design leadership has vaulted Ferragamo back into the editorial spotlight, and so a refresh of its main retail showcase was in order. Our shopper finds herself in a store that is also part brand museum, but it is in the dressing room where she discovers that part of the brand's resurgence may be due to combining improved styling with the more forgiving fit of a collection that, in the past, has been aimed at a more conservative customer.

“Small is the only one we have,” he said of the pants, sounding genuinely sorrowful.
That was O.K., as Ferragamo’s clothes are cut with generosity, sometimes even outright forgiveness. Navy sailor slacks had fake buttons on the front, ties up the back and the kind of side slit and roomy seat one might see at Ann Taylor.

It's a strategy some designers might take note of to keep their clothes off the clearance racks.

Critical Shopper: A Transporting Trill of ‘Amore’ By Alexandra Jacobs (NYTimes)
Salvatore Ferragamo 655 Fifth Avenue at 52nd Street, Midtown

*Full Disclosure: The Shophound once spent a couple of years happily working on one of Salvatore Ferragamo's selling floors.

COMING SOON: Bleecker Street Getting Maison Martin Margiela's Diffusion Boutique MM➅

There aren't too many spaces left on Bleecker Street for new entrants these days, but the departure of the long running gallery, A Clean Well Lighted Place, makes room for Maison Martin Margiela to move in with a boutique devoted to the brand's MM➅ collection. Fashion journalist Jim Shi's TwitPic above has (along with anyone walking down Bleecker Street) tipped off the magical interwebs that the store will be opening "soon", with an official date sure to follow. With the main Margiela boutique not far away on Greenwich Street it makes sense that the brand would choose Bleecker as it is shifting from a designer enclave into a street for various diffusion and contemporary brands like Ralph Lauren's Rugby and RRL labels, Burberry Brit and, of course, Marc by Marc Jacobs. It also signals an effort from the characteristically cryptic house of Margiela that plans may be underfoot for a more aggressive rollout of stores devoted to the brand's less expensive divisions, but a look at the company website will remind anyone that things at Margiela are never as simple as they might seem.

@jimshi809 (Twitter)
Maison Martin Margiela's MM6 Line Is Coming to Bleecker Street (RACKED)

DIFFUSION DEBUT: Helmut Lang Launches A Second Collection Next Month

There's original cutting edge Helmut Lang, the current, contemporary department Helmut Lang version 2.0, and starting in May, there will be HELMUT by Helmut Lang (pictured above). That popular yet redundant labeling format can only mean one thing, and that is a new secondary collection from the Link Theory owned label. The Cut has a slideshow of some key pieces to be included in the label's inaugural collection, and it looks like the label's most popular items and signature looks will be repurposed as classic basics. That's not Helmut Lang classics so much as Michael and Nicole Colovos for Helmut Lang classics which means lots of lightweight, draped jersey with uneven hems rather than shocking pink laser cut latex sheaths. (Sorry, the name Helmut Lang still makes The Shophound think of all those razor sharp tailored suits, sleek camel coats and unexpected clashing materials from the late 1990s. Flowy draped jersey was not on the menu then.)

In fact, it turns out that Helmut Lang 2.0 seems to have been far more profitable than the original press darling, High Fashion version. When Link Theory relaunched the line without its namesake, it stayed fairly low-key until the brand was rebuilt as contemporary label, and then a few seasons ago, it re-joined the Fashion Week runway race. Now that a secondary collection is on the way, one wonders if the Colovoses (Colovi?) may push the main collection back up towards the pricier designer category. Time will tell. In the meantime, HELMUT will debut in the brand's own stores next month, and then, presumably, in department stores everywhere shortly afterward.

First Looks: Helmut Lang’s New Diffusion Line By Charlotte Cowles (NYMag)

FRENCH IMPORTS: Maison Kitsuné Makes Its American Debut

The Shophound wandered into the higly anticipated new Maison Kitsuné store at the NoMad hotel yesterday only to be told that though the doors were open, the store was not. However the staff kindly invited us to have a look around anyway. They didn't go all lout and invite us to the opening party at LeBaron, but, you know, we take what we can get. Anyway, we can report that though modest in size, the boutique adds a certain flair to what continues to be one of the most strangely eclectic shopping neighborhood in the city.

For those unfailiar with the 10-year-old Kitsuné brand, it is both an apparel company that makes classic, even preppy styles filtered through a refined French sensibility and also a music label. The music side of the business is out of the spotlight in the new store which uses the elegant 1,200 square foot space to showcase the pricey but beautifully made men's and women's apparel collections along with exclusive shoes and accessories made for the store by labels like Want les Essentials de la Vie and  Pierre Hardy. We did not see the special edition J.M. Weston loafers that are reportedly being offered exclusively by the store, but we did glimpse a charming pair of multi-colored handsewn moccasins made for the brand by Maine shoemaker Quoddy.

The new store features a crisp and tidy restoration of the corner store at Broadway and 28th Street with a spanking new parquet floor and glowing globe shaped fixtures. It makes a nice companion a couple of blocks away for Opening Ceremony (which sells Kitsuné in its other locations), though the neighborhood still makes for an odd fit for the refined little shop. Only steps away are still an abundance of cheap wig and janky accessory dealers, and for all the hip folks who work in the nearby Flatiron district or in the home furnishings showrooms over on Fifth, there are just as many street vendors milling about because this is still the neighborhood where they buy their cheap sidewalk sunglasses and dodgy perfumes. We can't tell if the the NoMad and the Ace Hotels and their complementing boutiques will be able to completely remake this odd stretch between Greeley Square and the Flatiron Building into the next Meatpacking District, or even if that would be a good thing, but for now, it is probably the only part of town where you can get a $1,499 Liberty-print silk dress and a cheap bargain wig with some designer impostor perfume on exactly the same block. That must count as a unique shopping experience.

Maison Kitsuné in the NoMad Hotel 1170 Broadway at 28th Street, Midtown

ALEXANDRA JACOBS GOES SHOPPING: Retro Redux Edition

This week's Critical Shopper, Alexandra Jacobs returns to the Thursday Styles by taking on the new Haute Hippie boutique in NoLita. Something about Haute Hippie has always bugged The Shophound, but it's not the actual clothes. Maybe it's the literal name of the label, which doesn't leave room for much surprise. Still, "hippie" is a look that seems to have no expiration date now that we have hit the age of incessant decade surfing in fashion. We're not entirely sure that Jacobs totally gets that the rich hippie concept has been around since long before Tom Ford's YSL peasant blouse of 2011. It pretty much goes back to the days of the original Hippies (see Giorgio di Saint'Angelo, Thea Porter, Zandra Rhodes etc.), an early example of designers lifting inspiration from the streets. After a brief, obligatory ode to rich hippie #1, Talitha Getty, whose sordid days in Morocco have been ghoulishly over-romanticized by too many designers, we get to the store itself. Jacobs seems mildly charmed but not necessarily bowled over by what her cheerful salesperson suggests,

Becca from Boston kindly entrusted me with a floaty delicate taupe tunic top that she said had been hand-beaded in India ($795). It was gorgeous, even though the idea could be approximated for a fraction of the price at Do Kham, the veteran Tibetan emporium down the street, which I fear will eventually suffer a hostile takeover from a gluten-free cupcake shop.

God forbid! This city is lousy with cupcakes.

Critical Shopper: Well-Tended Flower Children By Alexandra Jacobs (NYTimes)
Haute Hippie 9 Prince Street between Elizabeth Street & The Bowery, NoLita

TOO MUCH TOO SOON?: Is The Meatpacking District's Growth Undermining Its Prestige?

It's been about 10 years since the Meatpacking District fully shifted from, well, actual meat packing along with a few adventurous nightspots to a major designer shopping destination. While fearless restaurants like the much loved Florent, and bars and clubs like Hell, the Lure and Jackie 60 gave the neighborhood a cool and even racy cachet, the retail invasion inaugurated by luxury players Jeffrey, Stella McCartney and Alexander McQueen eventually swept those pioneering businesses away, along with Western Beef and the butchers.

Next came the renovated High Line park, a couple of glitzy, modern attention-getting hotels, and louder, more mainstream bars and restaurants with "disco brunches" which are setting the stage for a third phase of development that threatens to wipe away the high end designers in favor of more mainstream national brands and chains accustomed to paying higher rents.

Cachet and prestige are fragile things, and just as quickly as the westernmost stretch of 14th Street became an elite shopping area, it may soon become a more populist one. Stella McCartney is already out in favor of SoHo, perhaps thinking that if she is going to be in a busy tourist area, she should take maximum advantage of potential traffic. Alexander McQueen's store is reportedly weighing its options as its lease comes up for renewal. Balenciaga and Yves Saint Laurent wound up choosing SoHo as well when it came time to place upcoming Downtown boutiques.

Lucrative for its landlords, but less interesting for customers, the new development is vexing for the area's residents, many of whom feel that the small neighborhood has hit the limit for traffic and activity. WWD is reporting that the arrival of the Whitney Museum in 2015 is also pushing up rents in the neighborhood. New York designers and longtime Meatpacking boutique Rubin & Chapelle has just closed its 14th street shop and will reopen shortly in SoHo. Meanwhile, it seems that high end designers are being replaced not by others like them, but less expensive contemporary brands like Alice & Olivia, which is taking over McCartney's store and moving its showroom upstairs as well. While on Madison Avenue, such brands mix easily with more rarefied designers, downtown, it looks like they are pushing them away, Diane von Furstenberg's more gently priced contemporary brand with its prominent corner boutique and headquarters seems to be setting the pace for the neighborhood the way Jeffrey did 10 years ago.

Jeffrey, now owned mostly by Nordstrom, looks like he is staying put, but his new neighbors seem not as likely to attract the sort of folks who are willing to invest in his stratospherically priced goods. UGG is coming soon. Sephora is already there, and what is expected to take root in the area sounds like more stores which are already well represented throughout the city, making the neighborhood a still charming, but no longer an especially unique destination. While this might be great for Scoop, Vince, Intermix, Levi's and all those premium denim shops, it might not be so favorable for the more luxurious Krizia (pictured above), Ports 1961 and Moschino, each a single flagship for its brand in New York and relatively recent arrivals to the neighborhood who may have hoped for things to move in a more pure luxury direction.

The other factor is the possible expansion of the Chelsea Market, the food and office complex which was a major factor in the neighborhood's earlier transformation. Crain's tells us that Owner Jamestown Property wants to keep the momentum going with a 330,000 square foot addition atop the building which would include yet another hotel. Community groups are not happy even though they love the building's food market which features a series of independent culinary businesses (as well as the controversial addition of Anthropologie in a prominent space).

How much is too much is an endless debate that takes place all over the city. Do you miss shopping at Bodum and Stella McCartney on the same block as Western Beef, or are you happier that there's yet another Sephora downtown?

The Meatpacking District's Changing Face by David Moin (WWD)
Chelsea Market tops itself by Theresa Agovino (Crain's)