The Shophound

Dearly Departed:Has Lucien Pellat-Finet Vacated?

Last weekend, as we took a break from holiday shopping to ogle the latest shoes at Leffot, we noticed that its longstanding neighbor across the street, Lucien Pellat-Finet was looking suspiciously papered over and empty of its sumptuous cashmere sweaters.
We wouldn't be surprised that the market for $3,000 cashmere sweaters with witty intarsia patterns might be a little bit light lately, even though we know that M. Pellat-Finet makes the most perfectly cut cashmere sweaters we have encountered (and we have encountered a lot). Unfortunately, even his solid colored sweaters retail for just under a grand these days. Perhaps the humor of his cannabis leaf emblem has worn off.
Someone tell us this is a temporary situation, or perhaps he's just moving to a higher profile location (though the corner of Christopher & Gay Streets seems to be working out quite well for the folks at Leffot and their equally expensive shoes). The boutique is still listed on the designer's website, but behind that paper in the windows, there ain't nothing but floor and walls.

Rogues Gallery/John Bartlett Collaboration Is A Hit As The Designer Bounces Back

You never know what's going to sell out first.
Since we missed John Bartlett's launch party last week for his collaboration with Rogues Gallery, we stopped by his boutique yesterday to check it out just in time to catch John selling the next-to-last union suit from the collection to a customer who was so pleased that he wore it right out of the store (under his clothes, of course).
Don't worry, there are still plenty of great t-shirts and accessories from the line left at the shop, including the "log carrier" that raised a few eyebrows and turns out to make a particularly luxurious zippered leather tote for those with less need for firewood. John told us that the collection has been such a success that he's planning to increase its frequency from a seasonal project to a new group appearing every couple of months.
Always up for a friendly chat, the designer put a good spin on the ending of his Claiborne men's collection, calling it a great learning experience. He admitted that even before he was involved, the line's prospects were dampened by a nervous, contracting retail market and ongoing friction between Liz Claiborne Inc. and retailers like Macy's whose support was crucial to success. There are still lots of great, extremely well priced items from the fall Claiborne line mixed in with his main collection at Bartlett's West Village boutique where he has had a busy season and can still be regularly found personally helping weekend customers. We have to say that having the designer himself choose one of his signature cable-knit scarves to match our outfit was a rare treat that you definitely won't find anywhere else.
Rogues Gallery for John Bartlett 143 Seventh Avenue South at Charles Street, West Village
Previously:
Collaboration Du Jour: John Bartlett Rebounds With Rogues Gallery: A First Look

Collaboration Du Jour: John Bartlett Rebounds With Rogues Gallery: A First Look

After the unfortunate repositioning of Liz Claiborne's labels, John Bartlett has wasted no time in finding new projects. The latest is a collaboration with Rogues Gallery's Alex Carleton for a collection that will be sold exclusively at Bartlett's West Village boutique starting this December.
For starters, the collection, to be called Rogues Gallery/John Bartlett, will include the sweet handcrafted leather gym bag pictured above, as well as Carleton's signature t-shirts in exclusive patterns (see Rooster & Berlin below), pique polo shirts and a black over-dyed union suit for frosty Winter nights. The extensive accessory collection will include, aside from the aforementioned bag (an excellent stocking stuffer for, perhaps, The Shophound), a leather log carrier, and bankers’ envelopes made from leather, silk screened canvas and vintage, recycled wools.
Carleton, who is also developing the L.L.Bean's Signature premium collection, has a New England vintage aesthetic that seems to be blending nicely with Bartlett's current rugged classic mode, so if we're lucky, this team-up could be an ongoing program. Thanks to John for these preview images. We're looking forward to seeing more soon.
 

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Cintra Wilson Goes Shopping: The Punk Luxe Edition

This week's edition of the Times' somewhat embattled Critical Shopper column sends Cintra Wilson to Tom Binns' West Village boutique, which features the jewelry designer's peculiar mix of posh and punk brought to you, if her report is typical, by what may possibly be the world's worst sales staff.
La Cintra is in a more thoughtful mood this week, and has some interesting observations about the effects of fashion's relentless recycling of past styles:

A subtle cultural revisionism gets enacted by look-makers every time they dust off an era and trot it back out into ready-to-wear. They resurrect the shapes of a decade, but leave out all the guts, glory and street cred.
...leaving all the latex, profanity and gender-bending out of the ’80s is the equivalent of plucking only the flowers from the ’60s (daisies and bell-bottoms) and turning off the power by airbrushing out Vietnam. The cultural context that built the mood of the style gets glossed in translation.

Of course, this would applies to Tom Binns in the sense that his (and pretty much everyone else's) "punk" aesthetic has been diluted enough for Michelle Obama to regularly wear his earrings, but it turns out that Binns makes up for this by hiring a stunningly, almost comically disaffected sales force.

Two key pieces were bouquets of mismatched vintage rhinestone brooches welded into armored neck plates, like the collars worn by Katharine Hepburn’s Eleanor of Aquitaine.
“May I try that on?” I asked the manager, who became visibly uncomfortable.
“Is it not for sale?” I asked.
“Well ... it’s technically sort of for sale,” she stammered. “It’s ... potentially for sale. It’s up for debate as to whether it’s for sale or not.”
O.K.?
“Here’s the thing: It’s, like, $30,000, so if you feel comfortable with that responsibility, that’s fine.”

For all of you who are tired of aggressive hard-sell salespeople, here is the store for you.
Critical Shopper | Tom Binns: Where the Bad ’80s Has a Niche By Cintra Wilson (NYTimes)
Tom Binns 41 Perry Street at West Fourth Street, West Village

Mike Albo Goes Shopping: At The Center Of The Trend Edition

This week, Critical Shopper Mike Albo wastes no time in getting himself to Odin's brand new branch in the West Village for the Thursday Styles. From his report we can basically deduce that this new Odin is much like the other two: slightly cramped, but full of appealing stuff.
By running the leading men's boutique in the city, at the moment, and one of the country's most influential stores, the folks at Odin bear some responsibility for the trends that are currently cresting in the world of men's fashion, and in his way, Mike crystallizes exactly what they are:

Steeped as we are in decades of postmodern self-referential artifice, we don’t just want to look like backwoodsmen; we want to look like actors from the 1950s playing backwoodsmen of the 1890s, but in a totally fresh, laid-back 2009 kind of way.

It's all rugged authenticity these days for a guy out shopping, and in some quarters, that leaves you a choice of looking like a lumberjack or a longshoreman. While Odin does a very good job of keeping things fresh, flaws in the formula are starting to appear.

A Richard Chai short-sleeve striped T-shirt, for $95, felt soft and had interesting vertical seams, but if I see one more hipster horizontal-stripe shirt, I will scream.

So will we.
Critical Shopper | Odin: Neighborhood Preservation By Mike Albo (NYTimes)
Odin 750 Greenwich Street at West 11th Street, West Village

A Mini-Chain Is Born: Odin Opens Store #3

It was still under construction when we walked by last week, but WWD is reporting that Odin's third location at Greenwich and West 11^th Streets in the West Village is now open for business, officially creating a mini-chain. The antiques-filled interior should feel familiar to regular customers of the trailblazing contemporary men's boutique's other locations. “Every neighborhood has a different need, and the customers here want the basic essentials: toothpaste, socks, cotton T-shirts, things you can’t find all that easily in the West Village,” Co-owner Eddy Chai tells WWD. Don't go looking for this to be Odin's version of the Gap. This branch of store will carry its stalwart labels like Engineered Garments, Woolrich, Our Legacy and 3.1 Phillip Lim. 'Basic' is, after all, a relative term.
Holiday will bring the début of a new sportswear line produced by the retailer in collaboration with the folks at Duckie Brown, whose shoe line for Florsheim is sold there (and practically everywhere else in Manhattan as far as we can tell).
Odin Opens in West Village (WWD)
Odin New York (Official Site)

Fashion's NIght Out: Forget The Sales, It's Drinks For Everybody!

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Fashion's Night Out is over and we are pooped. POOPED!
If the goal of the event was to get people into stores, then in Manhattan, at least, it succeeded wildly. Every shopping area we hit was busy, and some were downright teeming with people.
We started the evening after three runway shows and three presentations, so really, we would just as soon have stayed home, but that would have been shirking our duty, and if the designers are putting in extra effort, so should we.
We began at Saks, whose main floor was packed with surprisingly dressed-up customers. The entire store felt like it was a busy Saturday in high season, with particularly concentrated crowds on the sumptuously renovated, designer laden third floor. We made our way to 7 to meet our friend DJ Aaron Elvis who was spinning for Marc by Marc Jacobs with a martini and margarita bar in tow, and the drinking was in full swing.  As we were next off to SoHo, our friends from Marc urged us stop by their Mercer Street shop where we found the designer himself in his signature kilt with more cocktails and snacks. Between Marc, Vera Wang, Costume National and Marni, that particular block was a raging party scene.
Onward to Greene Street, where we had Champagne with our friends from PHI and met Creative Director Andreas Melbostad along with star of the runways Suvi Koponen, who is lovely and tall, especially in her PHI boots. We would have happily to spend the rest of the evening there, but there was more to see. SoHo in general was buzzing, and some stores like Intermix were forced to impose velvet ropes on the sidewalk like nightclubs (which kind of defeats the purpose of the event, does it not?)
A Bathing Ape had a line wrapped around the corner of Spring Street, but that happens there every other day. The new Original Penguin store celebrated its grand opening with live models in the window, and Opening Ceremony was a madhouse. Throngs waited on the sidewalk to get in, but even if you weren't ready to face that, there were vendors on the street like Band of Outsiders' Tie Truck, selling specially priced neckwear just for the evening. Perhaps no store was better suited to the evening that Jil Sander across the street, whose first level is basically empty display space, making an easy transition to stylish downtown bar. After a quick tour through Anna Sui's elaborate Target Pop-Up on Crosby Street where models played various "Gossip Girl" characters and we were on to the final phase of our evening.
The last leg of our tour took us up to the West Village, where we meant to stop in at John Bartlett, but as his tiny store was quite full, and our feet were starting to give out, we headed up Bleecker Street where Ralph Lauren's string of shops had people flocking and Marc by Marc Jacobs was offering customers their photographs taken with models.
Finally, Raindrops began to fall as the Meatpacking District loomed. Adam by Adam Lippes had a lounge-y vibe and giant searchlights rotating at the front door. Theory's huge flagship was packing them in and taking orders for young designer accessory lines, and Jeffrey had a crush at the door that was surely brought on by rumors of Hugh Jackman. Did we stick around? No. Could we have gotten if we had? Probably not, but our feet were thanking us for turning homeward as we passed the door lines at Stella McCartney and Alexander McQueen at 10 PM.
Did the event translate into sales? We don't exactly know yet, but what we do know is that retailers and designers have learned that they now need to do more than just hang up the clothes and open their doors to get customers back shopping again, and open bars don't hurt.

Boutique Expansion: Odin Takes A Crosstown Trip

Call it the Little East Village Boutique that could.
Odin, the 5-year-old East 11^th Street men's shop that has helped launch and showcase designers like Robert Geller, Tim Hamilton and Engineered Garments to name just a few, will be adding another location, its third, as just one of its upcoming projects. Owners Eddy Chai and Paul Birardi will be taking over the Oliver Spencer Boutique on Greenwich Street in the West Village. Spencer will be moving East to take over the space occupied by Den, Odin's revolving concept space next door, while the Den concept will be absorbed into the Odin flagship on Lafayette Street in SoHo.
If that little game of musical stores isn't enough, Chai and Birardi are working with Duckie Brown designers Daniel Silver and Steven Cox to create a contemporary priced classic collection called Edward which, naturally, will launch exclusively in Odin's stores.
Having thoroughly covered the territory below 14^th Street, could Odin's next stop be uptown?
Odin Owners Continue to Expand Their Reach (WWD)

Mike Albo Goes Shopping: Second Date Edition

In today's Thursday styles, Critical Shopper Mike Albo revisits one of his favorite themes, his romantic life, as he stops by John Bartlett's West Village boutique.
Moving on from bitter breakups of the past, Mike is now in dating mode, though we are not quite sure that we would have set up Mike, who has been known to occasionally moonlight as a glitter clad performance artist, with a John Bartlett wardrobe. Bartlett, of whom regular readers know we are a fan, has certainly had his own avant-garde moments over the years, but lately has been working in a more tailored mode. Mike is, not surprisingly, initially put off by all the classicism, but ultimately finds his own inner regular guy, though not without a bit of drama:

[The clothes] made me look presentable. Suddenly I felt as if I were on “What Not to Wear,” and Clinton and Stacy were going to hop out from behind mirrors and say how much they loved this look on me. Then they would say something totally caring, sweet and self-helpish, like “Be the person you want to date, Mike!” And then I would cry and walk out and all my friends would be there clapping. This didn’t happen. The salesman was very busy taking inventory or something. And no one else was in the store. But I am fine!

And, on an crucial note, Mike discovers that while the store is not screamingly, flamboyantly, rainbow flag wavingly gay, the presence of a Tom of Finland anthology, skimpy swimwear and some camouflage make it just gay enough for comfort.
Otherwise, that date could end up really badly.
Critical Shopper | John Bartlett: No Skinny ‘This’ or ‘That’ Here by Mike Albo (NYTimes)
John Bartlett 143 Seventh Avenue South at Charles Street, West Village

Today In Relocations: Untitled Displaced

Designer boutique Untitled managed to survive the wave of store closures that swept through 8^th Street a couple of years ago, but now, we see that the two level shop is leaving its longtime home, in the wake of the expected deeply discounted Moving Sale.
We don't mind saying that 8^th Street hasn't been the same since Patricia Field decamped to the Bowery a few years ago, but Untitled was, at least for a while, one of the few remaining upscale holdouts on the shopping strip.
Has the economy finally taken its toll on Untitled, or has the 25-year old boutique simply seen better days? Once a reliable source for innovative designers like Vivienne Westwood, Jean Paul Gaultier, Helmut Lang and Moschino, the store recently shifted its focus to "premium" denim, and started filling its windows with True Religion and, yes, the dreaded Ed Hardy.
So far, we have no word on a new location, but perhaps a change of scenery is what Untitled needs to regain its cachet.