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