The Shophound

JON CARAMANICA GOES SHOPPING: Circle Of Friends Edition

Critical Shopper Jon Caramanica seems to have gotten all emotional after his visit to SoHo's eclectic boutique/gallery/coffee bar/general hangout American Two-Shot. In this week's Thursday Styles, he begins by declaring the city to be made up not of neighborhoods or demographic segments, but of groups of friends whose interactions shape its history. So clearly he's in kind of a different mood this week.

It is the unique, relaxed ambiance of American Two-Shot that has put him in this frame of mind. The store is apparently less a business endeavor, than a depository for a the results of friends' hobbies. There is repurposed vintage wear (using vintage in the loosest way that really just means "used"), and whimsical, handmade items that sound like they may not seem as witty and clever once removed from the confines of the store.

To shop the store properly, you have to treat it more like a clubhouse, with layers you can’t see at first glance. That’s because, as much as this is a retail environment, it’s the expression of the will of a group of intimates, who speak one another’s language, and for which immersion is required.

We actually started wondering how this place would ever survive in a bustling retail hub like SoHo with its aggressively priced rents. It sounds more like something you might find on a side street in a Brooklyn neighborhood transitioning from blight to hipster, and then he lets on that the women's offerings include actual fashion collections from young designers like Porter Grey and Timo Weiland. So it's a real store after all, but one that may make you want to chuck it all to make hand-screened t-shirts and run a two-seat coffee bar.

Critical Shopper: Gaining Entry to That Stomping Ground By Jon Caramanica (NYTimes)
American Two-Shot 135 Grand Street at Crosby Street, SoHo

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

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

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

JON CARAMANICA GOES SHOPPING: Brooklyn Dream Edition

This week's Thursday Styles readers will find a Critical Shopper column that is based in part on a fantasy. In an extended opening section, shopper John Caramanica expounds on the idyllic life he imagines among the quiet, serene side streets of Greenpoint, Brooklyn which he calls "the Via Condotti of fourth-wave Brooklyn redistricting". His dream home is so placid and, more importantly, imaginary, that we can't help thinking it must be right around the corner from The Shophound's football-field-sized Tribeca loft —geographic specifics being essentially irrelevant when we are talking about living in fantasyland.

Here, everything is still, on streets populated by people who mostly seem to stay in their homes. This spit of town is so isolated that it bears little relation to the aggro-hip clusters in next-door Williamsburg, to say nothing of the melting-pot bustle just a block away, on Manhattan Avenue, which practically constitutes a different borough.

Anyway, his dream has inspired him to showcase not one but three stores from the neighborhood's Franklin Street corridor, Alter, Raised By Wolves and Kill Devil Hill. Each is little independent gem of eclecticism, some even selling goods made right in the neighborhood. They are untouched by the corrupting masses of nearby Williamsburg or, god forbid, Manhattan.
Until now.
Yes, now that they have been featured in the New York Times, these stores are no longer anyone's best kept secrets, and before you know it, the charms of Greenpoint will probably be high-rised and yuppied away.

Oh well. We hear that the South Bronx is still relatively untouched. Go colonize, brave young hipsters.

Critical Shopper: Basic to Eccentric and Eye-Opening By Jon Caramanica (NYTimes)
Alter 109 Franklin Street, Raised by Wolves 174 Franklin Street, Kill Devil Hill 170 Franklin Street, all in Greenpoint, Brooklyn

ALEXANDRA JACOBS GOES SHOPING:

In this week's Thursday Styles, Alexandra Jacobs returns to the Critical Shopper post to give her take on Fifth Avenue's brand new Zara flagship. Curiously, she mostly ignores the store's surprisingly rich interior design and focuses on the Spanish-based fast fashion chain's head-spinning knockoff skills. To her, the store is full of the ghosts of other designers' collections as she and a "statuesque blond shopping companion" traipse through the place playing trend detective.

...red pump with tailfin à la Prada, yup; Pierre Hardyesque contrast clutch, sure; Navajo print in sequins on a miniskirt, mm-hmm.

And yet, despite the store's being a cornucopia of Spring trends, Jacobs finds fault with nearly everything she tries, with either fit or fabric falling short. When she finally finds something she likes, it's the lengthy checkout line that stymies an actual purchase. It seems that there's no winning for Jacobs at Zara. Is it really that the store is dissatisfying, or, like most people who have steeped themselves in fashion, has Jacobs just become immune to the charms of the knockoff in favor of the precious"real thing"?

In fairness to Jacobs' critical cred, we would kind of like to see what the other half of the Critical team, Jon Caramanica, would make of the store's expansive men's floor upstairs. It's designed with effect of a sleek designer megastore in mind as opposed to H&M's trend-happy cacophony a block or so downtown (it has the same gray marble slab floor as Barneys' new women's main floor -make of that what you will), the men's floor seemed less hectic to us and yet remarkably skillful at interpreting current trends without going overboard. Perhaps it's time for both shoppers to team up when they review a store for both men and women so we can get the full picture?

Critical Shopper: Where Have I Seen You Before? By Alexandra Jacobs (NYTimes)
Zara 666 Fifth Avenue at 52nd Street, Midtown

JON CARAMANICA GOES SHOPPING: Almost Ready For Prime Time Edition

In this week's Thursday Styles, Critical Shopper Jon Caramanica checks out the newly relocated Rothmans which has moved itself to a more spacious location just a few steps up Park Avenue South. The goal of the relocation was not only to escape the store's cluttery longtime home, but also to broaden the retailer's scope by showcasing more sportswear and an upgraded fashion image. Our shopper seems to think that Rothmans's has only partly succeeded.

The store's suit selection remains extensive, if not particularly adventurous, but Caramanica feels that the store lacks expertise in its more contemporary sportswear selections. He is only marginally impressed by a new, exclusive line from Duckie Brown, and the other brands seem poorly curated, including a disappointing appearance by dodgy off-price store mainstay, Bugatchi Uomo.

Here, though, it was represented by several shirts, many in clashing agglomerations of vertical stripes ($145) that recalled the outfits I would see, during my time in late-’90s London, on City bankers out for a certainly loutish and potentially violent night of pints and crisps. (Or, once the contrasting inner cuff revealed itself, it evoked the five-alarm shirts worn by Cameron on “Modern Family.”)

Apparently, a taste intervention is needed at the new Rothmans if it wants to follow in the footsteps of Barneys, that other humble downtown suit-seller that transformed itself into a paragon of fashion. This place sounds like it has a long way to go, but Our shopper manages to find a pair of Ted Baker pants to keep his visit from being a total loss. Hey, if you write about them, are they a tax deduction?

Critical Shopper: Seeking an Elixir of Youth By Jon Caramanica (NYTimes)
Rothmans 222 Park Avenue South at 18th Street

JON CARAMANICA GOES SHOPPING: Luxe No-Brainer edition

John Caramanica makes his way to the men's floors of the newly renovated Giorgio Armani boutique on Madison Avenue as this week's Critical Shopper in the Thursday Styles. Like many fashion-minded folk, he is accustomed to overlooking Armani's deeply codified signature look in favor of younger, more dynamic designers, calling the designer the "rich man's Gap" for men of means who want to look impressive but don't want or care to think too much about clothes. He describes them as "dashing, svelte playboys and toady, lumpy industry captains". Take that, Giorgio Armani, New York Times Advertiser.

Our shopper tours through the shop, noting the intentionally limited color range —describing a vast tie selection as going "from gray to still gray to more gray to light pink to light green to light yellow" (We can picture them in our mind without ever having to set foot into the store.)— but eventually appreciating the designer's subtle design tricks and innovative materials.  Still, nothing seems to fully please, and it's probably just as well. It turns out that Giorgio Armani knows his customers' tastes so well after 30 or so years that if you don't like it, you're probably not supposed to.

Critical Shopper: Ageless, Like Armani By Jon Caramanica (NYTimes)
Giorgio Armani 760 Madison Avenue at 65th Street, Upper East Side

ALEXANDRA JACOBS GOES SHOPPING: Rejected Retro Edition

Critical Shopper Alexandra Jacobs' pen is a little bit sharper than we usually expect in Today's Thursday Styles as she visits Madison Avenue's Milly boutique. Most pointedly, she questions the terminology for the popular brand's "Contemporary" market category,

The curious thing about these lines is how resolutely uncontemporary they are, constantly recycling visions of femininity that include ruffles, polka dots and lashings of hot pink.

Jacobs is not to be charmed by designer Michelle Smith's popular, ladylike line, unable to find anything in the store to cause any excitement or desire.

...I plowed through a pile of clothing that included an A-line boldly printed cobalt dress that would’ve been appropriate on a Braniff stewardess ($395) and a tie-neck sweater whose generous contours reminded me that Milly is, in the end, a bit mall-y.

Well, nobody want to be mistaken for a stewardess —not even flight attendants. In the end, she has praise for the fact that much of Milly's production is done in the U.S. and also for the pretty shopping bags, but the label's overly nostalgic look clearly leaves her cold and looking for something truly modern to wear.

Critical Shopper: Nonstop Flights of Fancy at Milly By Alexandra Jacobs
Milly 900 Madison Avenue at 73rd Street, Upper East Side

ERIC WILSON GOES SHOPPING: Underappreciated In Milan Edition

There's no Critical Shopper today in the Thursday Styles, but instead, the Times has sent Eric Wilson to moonlight as the "Global Shopper" while he covers the Fall 2012 collections in Milan. He finds himself at Excelsior, an ambitious, new multi-brand store in Milan that seems to have rubbed Italian traditionalists the wrong way.

It's not surprising that a flashy $40 million 40,000 square foot store would cause a stir in any city, but while New Yorkers, for example would typically be waiting for a new retail extravaganza with bated breath, the Milanese, even cab drivers, apparently don't take too kindly to such ostentation.

“We don’t need it,” the driver said. In fact, he sounded a little offended that a store like Excelsior, with its facade of flashy video displays and nightclub lighting, exists in a city where shopping is supposed to be sacrosanct.

No fun.
As Wilson lists the labels carried in the store, we wonder if the abundance of American-based sportswear labels may be part of the local resistance. Helmut Lang, Theory, Rag & Bone, Alice & Olivia, Gryphon, Altuzarra, Wrangler, Levi’s, Lee, RRL Ralph Lauren and Proenza Schouler are all mentioned as being featured prominently. Maybe its a local pride thing.

The most exciting feature, to us, sounds to be the extensive food department, but if the Milanese aren't able to appreciate Excelsior, the by all means pack the place up and sent it over here. New Yorkers would be all over that place.

Global Shopper: Fiddling With a Milanese Recipe By Eric Wilson (NYTimes)
Excelsior Milano Galleria del Corso, 4, Milan, Italy