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A blog dedicated to the interesting, scandalous, useful and cutting edge in the world of men’s style, fashion and grooming.
Cate the Great: Cate Blanchett is too normal to make for a good profile…but she makes a great Cleopatra. [Vanity Fair]
Tick Tock: Gawker’s list of the five types of New Year’s Eve party does not include the drug-fueled bacchanal we were hoping for. [Gawker]
It’s Getting Hot in Here: ACL gets a visit from the ghost of schvitzes past. [A Continuous Lean]
Your Name In Lights: New York’s eleven favorite billboards, featuring no less than two enormous instances of Eva Mendes. [Racked]
Indomitable: These Dom Perignon ads make us forgive Karl Lagerfeld for basically everything. [NotCot]
The Blueprint: Jay-Z’s hotelier ambitions are quashed by the economic downturn. We’re hoping this means the next album gets a Robert Rubin diss track. [Luxist]
Type Slowly: Is the fashion industry moving in slower cycles? Maybe it’s just the klonopin. [PSFK]
Out in the Streets: Counting down the 21 best-looking people in New York. [Racked]
Street art has been one of New York’s highlights since the old Keith Haring days, but we haven’t been as good keeping up with the Paris scene. But these days, there’s always someone keeping an eye on things.
The fine folks at Wooster Collective just put us onto a colorful new tagger called FKDL who’s been leaving his mark everywhere from Turing to Queens. He mostly deals with silhouettes over neon-colored backgrounds, with a little bit of newsprint collage for texture and a lot of attention to the human figure…which we’ve always been a fan of.
Here’s hoping he doesn’t start his own a t-shirt shop for a while.
For the past 70 years, one of the crown jewels of Rockefeller Plaza has been the Rainbow Room, a dance hall and society space on the 65th floor of the GE Building, but 2009 is giving it its first black eye. As of next Monday, the in-house restaurant is shutting down, citing hard times.
The bar and revolving dance floor will keep going, but it’s a reminder that Manhattan’s art deco past is not immune to modern troubles. The Rainbow Room is a relic of a time when wealth was confined to families not corporations, but it has to play by the same rules as everybody else. The restaurant was owned by the Cipriani family, who have troubles of their own, but the credit crunch couldn’t have helped. It’s a reminder of how tenuous the upper crust is lately.
We’ve been following New York’s Assembly since it opened this past April, and they’ve turned into the city’s best mix of vintage rarities and well-chosen designer gear. But we didn’t expect them to turn into designers.
Greg Armas is the man behind the store, and, more recently, the man behind a small, limited-edition line of car coats, blazers and slacks. The line looks fantastic—exactly what we’d expect from a man with an appreciation for antique corkscrew—but the precedent is even better.
Granted, most boutique owners probably don’t have the knack for design that Armas does…but it would be interesting to see them try. And as long as they keep things limited edition, we doubt there’ll be too much harm done. We might even get a few new labels out of it.
Men.Style’s Material Interest alerted us to WWD’s latest poll ranking cities on menswear spending and the results are a little staggering. Perennially hip, Austin comes in first, closely followed by the loose thread that is Las Vegas. Southern California takes up the next three spots, while the New York area barely makes the list.
Best of all is Salt Lake City in the #7 spot, confirming our long-held theory about Mormon style. Sadly, neither of the Portlands made the cut.
Online boutiques are a good idea, but the Black Buoy is the first time we’ve seen three labels with small stocks join together in a single site. It’s a good idea; no one of them would have been able to hold our interest for very long, but together they make up quite a store. Plus, we managed to find this charcoal button-down, from the small Max & Suzanne, and stitched together right here in New York.
The Choosy Beggar turned us onto the site, and has a code that should get you 15% off.
Mining subcultures is a tricky business, and nobody knows it better than Converse. They were already known as a hipster brand…and a whimsical web video full of Williamsburg landmarks probably isn’t helping anything.
The street artist known as Poster Boy has been cutting up subway ads for over a year now, growing from a neighborhood curiosity to a citywide phenomenon. And naturally, when the Museum of Modern Art took over a station in downtown Brooklyn with posters of some of their finer pieces, he had his work cut out for him.
Of course, he had the ad exec behind the MoMA campaign along for the ride, so it’s hardly an anti-establishment move, but this time around it may be more about art than politics. After all, he can’t stay an outsider forever, and these reworkings are the best case for mainstream recognition he could have arranged.
Speaking of neckwear, the New York Garment District stalwarts at Mountain & Sackett are knocking their stock down 50%, which should be a good enough reason to spend a few minutes perusing their wares.
Our favorite is this herringbone cashmere version…even if it won’t do you much good at a clambake.
When it comes to store openings, John Varvatos has basically never let us down. So now that his SoHo outpost has emerged from renovation, we figured we’d take a look. The result is a new emphasis on tailoring space, along with the same vintage rock stills and leather boots we all know and love.
The buttoned dress shirt is such a staple that it’s easy to overlook. That is, until an enterprising designer reminds you that it’s not all easy-irons fronts and spread collars.
Our friends at UrbanDaddy just turned us on to Lee Harkness Shirt Co., a New York shirtier (and American List candidate) with a few changes in mind. The label brings together designers Oliver Harkness (a famed vintage dealer) and Jussara Lee (a upscale woman’s designer) to create a middle ground somewhere between bespoke and vintage. The result is a line full of well-shaped club collars, tuxedo-esque pullover shirts, and shackets (high fashion for “shirt/jacket”) that give Freeman’s a run for their money, all available in sizes and made-to-measure.
The exodus of Earnest Sewn’s braintrust continues…
Our friends at UrbanDaddy just let us know about a new coffee shop/general store called The Smile and masterminded by Carlos Quirarte, one of the brains behind Earnest Sewn’s rugged store design. His new project looks intriguing—especially the Ronnybrook Ice Cream—but we can’t help but notice how all of ES’s bright minds are jumping ship lately. It’s enough to make a denim man nervous.
At least we have our straight-legs to remember them by.
Our friends at UrbanDaddy just tipped us off to the latest J. Crew store opening in New York. It’s a lot like their Tribeca outpost, the Liquor Store, but they’ve got a few new tricks up their sleeve too.
For one, they’ve tempted Richard Haines, one of our favorite sketch-bloggers, to make an appearance at the store from noon to 2pm and 4pm to 6pm this Tuesday and Saturday. He’ll be making and handing out original sketches of whoever happens by, on whatever paper’s handy.
It’s not a bad idea: A good artist can be more trustworthy than a mirror if you’re trying to figure out whether that blazer’s a good fit.
New York’s Oak is taking a shot at recession-friendliness with their new mini-web store A.Ok.
Of course, there’s already an ongoing 60% markdown on a few items, but this particular corner of their online store is dedicated to finds under $100. For now, the men’s pickings are limited to t-shirts, slippers, sunglasses (like the quay shields pictured above) and the occasional duffel bag, but we hear there’s more in the pipeline, and if the women’s items are any indication, they should be worth the wait.
Mickey Rourke has been stuck in sartorial purgatory for longer than we care to remember…but he still manages to surprise us from time to time.
Guest of a Guest managed to catch up with our favorite middleweight at a Merkato 55 brunch bash where they got this strangely compelling snap. We’re not sure if it’s Mickey pulling the old rose routine, the young woman’s palpably nervous expression or the deft combination of an argyle sweater and peak lapels, but for some reason we can’t look away.
The appeal of army boots is as much functional as sartorial, so the usual ad tricks—people wearing them, for instance—don’t work quite as well. Luckily, you can always get creative…
These spots for the French Legion-approved Palladium Boots line explore New York’s abandoned spaces, some of which are pretty fantastic and all of which require some pretty rugged footwear. The campaign comes with a documentary on a few of the more interesting spots, and it’ll presumably tell you how to find them in the bargain. And if the style seems familiar, there’s a reason: the whole thing was cooked up by Virtue, the advertising wing of Vice Magazine. No wonder Brooklyn’s so well-represented…
via BehanceIn honor of the definitive end of beach season, here’s a peek at Jones Beach during the deepest stretch of the off-season, courtesy of Lee Balzano. If you were waiting to get your duffle coat out of storage, now might be a good time.
An advance warning: This past June’s Pop-Up Flea is getting ready for a repeat performance from ACL’s Michael Williams and our very own Randy Goldberg. We’ll pass along more info on who will be peddling their wares soon, but expect some new names and fun offerings. In the meantime, we’d save the date. And, of course, prep yourself.
