COLLABORATION ANTICIPATION:

H&M's Lanvin Leak

DISCOUNT DISCOVERY:

Marshall's Stocks Up In Chelsea

CINTRA WILSON GOES SHOPPING:

Misplaced Military Edition

Z-CRITIC-A-popup The blog coverage of Brooklyn's brand new Barneys Co-op has been so breathless that one would think the store had been imported from Paris instead of a just few miles across the East River. It is with impressive speed that Critical Shopper Cintra Wilson weighs in with her take in this week's Thursday Styles, and refreshingly, she quickly dispenses with the significance (or lack thereof) of Barneys' acknowledgement of Brooklyn's status as an upscale shopping destination.

No, Wilson is more interested in what she finds inside the new store, specifically the way military gear has become nearly fetishized by so many of the designers carried there.

Something was rubbing me the wrong way, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. Then I put my finger on a prewadded NSF shirt, a garment affecting all the “realness” of a Vietnam veteran camouflage jacket, replete with a living-under-a-freeway patina ($195).

And one after another, she ticks off the surplus-inspired looks but goes much deeper than simply pointing out the irony of expensive clothes patterned after cheap, durable ones. That would be to easy and obvious. What piques her the disconnect between the pervasive military chic and the fact that our country continues to fight a prolonged war.

Yeah, she went there. And what's more, she managed to focus her judgement not at the war or the government, but at the customers who blithely snap up pricey camouflage print leggings without a moment's thought for the people who sport the very same pattern on their clothes not by fashionable choice but by occupational requirement.

...I am not sure it counts as sociopolitical consciousness to pay too much for workless work shirts (for all the ditches we won’t be digging) or warless war shirts, for all the fights we keep forgetting are still happening over there. Can luxury combat fatigues really camouflage the fact that the falcon cannot hear the falconer? What rough boot slouches toward $2,000, waiting to be born?

At least you many think twice before you take home those designer combat boots.

Critical Shopper: Where the Well-Heeled Dress Down By Cintra Wilson
Barneys Co-op 194 Atlantic Avenue at Court Street, Brooklyn

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