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