The Shophound

Departures: Happy Trails To Howdy Do

This past weekend saw the passing of anther iconic East Village store. Howdy Do was a compact corner of East 7^th Street, but its roots ran back to the freewheeling pre-gentrified days of the early '90s when the neighborhood was more drag bar than coffee bar. The brainchild of Michael Torres and Ryan Lance and their love of pop culture in its myriad forms, Howdy Do became a cherished headquarters for the media effluvia and gaudy baubles known as kitsch. The duo built their reputations as connoisseurs of collectibles at the forefront of what would become a national obsession, offering forgotten treasures like Blythe dolls, vintage books and accessories and all manner of promotional tie in products from long forgotten movies and TV shows. Looking for an original Cher doll? Here was your first stop.
After an all too familiar story of dodgy landlords and staggering rent hikes, Torres and Lance weighed their options and decided the time was right to take a break from retail life.
"We had other opportunities in the neighborhood to move the store," Torres told us last Saturday as the last of Howdy Do's goods and fixtures were being sold, and the shop was being dismantled. "We felt like this was a good time to regroup and return in a new way." The team promises to bring Howdy Do back in a new form, perhaps as a showroom catering more to stylists, designers and special customers or as whatever happens to feels right for the times.
The pair are sanguine about the inevitability of change, recalling how neighborhood regulars were rattled when they first opened in place of the popular Egg Store. "People would line up for fresh eggs every Tuesday, but we didn't push them out," they told us. In fact, the pair acquired the lease from another store whose plans fell through before it opened. Howdy Do thrived until the popularity of eBay, the changing neighborhood, and of course, the economy slowed business.
Lance and Torres will use the break to work on long postponed projects like a photo book chronicling their experiences as their nightlife alter egos Brandy Wine and Brenda A. Go-Go, regulars at the Marc Jacobs show and glamorous events all over town. Then there are the hours and hours of their hilarious, beloved and frequently tawdry Public Access television show On Patrol that chronicled a particularly vibrant moment in New York's club and fashion culture and is waiting to be repackaged for new eyes.
While Lance and Torres are full of plans for the future, nobody is quite sure what will take the newly vacant space. For East 7^th Street, however, the loss will be another symbol of an especially vivid time in the East Village's bohemian heritage.
Brandy Wine and Brenda A. Go-Go Are On Patrol (Official Site)

Renovations & Upgrades: Kiehl's Gets An East Village Upgrade

Back in the '90s, when it was still a family owned cult cosmetics brand, Kiehl's was famous for its no -nonsense packaging, late deliveries, scarcity of product and its main East Village headquarters at 13^th Street and Third Avenue dating from the mid 19^th century, where customers were encouraged to take an abundance of free samples to try at home before making any purchases.
Since the Morse family sold the company to L'Oreal in 2000, deliveries have improved, distribution has broadened, and there are now 33 freestanding stores, but the Third Avenue home is still a destination for the faithful, and now it has been given a facelift as well as exclusive products that will sold nowhere else.
“This store is our Graceland — the ultimate Kiehl’s store,” Kiehl’s president Chris Salgardo tells WWD, “We wanted people to leave here with special merchandise and a feeling that they’d been on a journey with us.”
New additions include a "gifting bar" elaborately carved with a subtly stylized skull pattern, which customizes gifts with special packaging and wrappings. Popular products are also available with exclusive packaging designed by an eclectic group celebrities including Erykah Badu and Adrian Grenier. There's logo gear as well for the faithful making pilgrimages for far and wide including a $90 bathrobe found only at the store. If this all sounds a little too slick for the hometown favorite, be comforted that teaching skeleton remains on display.
Kiehl’s Spiffs Up Flagship (WWD)

Cintra Wilson Goes Shopping:I'll Try Anything Edition

Today's Critical Shopper, Cintra Wilson gets extra points for going waaay off the beaten path in Today's Thursday Styles. Today's featured boutique is Enchantments, the East Village destination for magicks of all sorts (well, not all sorts. The store pointedly eschews those of the Black variety).
La Cintra's claws remain conspicuously retracted this week, and instead she mostly recounts stories of ordinary shoppers whose lives have been altered with a little help from a potion or two. Apparently, when times get tough, people will turn to all kinds avenues that would remain otherwise unexplored.

Another friend of ours, an actress in her 50s, bought a candle “dressed” to assuage her anxiety about a big acting gig, which she landed. (She soon became the muse of a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, earned several film roles and was finally able to quit her day job. Coincidence?)

Sounds good to us. where do we sign up?
Critical Shopper | Enchantments: Secrets Only Your Witch Would Know
Enchantments 424 East Ninth Street between First Avenue and Avenue A, East Village

Clearance Alert:Den Converts To An Odin Outlet...Get It While It Lasts

Pop-up specialist Den has made itself useful while it waits for its next occupant by clearing out excess stock from sibling stores Odin and Pas de Deux.
Those of you who are familiar with Den know that it's a pretty tiny space, so it gets crowded when even four or five people enter, but once inside, the place is busting with goods from Odin's usual roster of designers which includes labels like Rag & Bone, Tim Hamilton and Robert Geller. Like all clearance sales, it's hit or miss depending on your size, but prices generally looked to run about 75% off or more which is a good deal by anybody's standards. That means a Cheap Monday coat was a whopping $20 over the weekend, and premium denim from Rag & Bone and Kicking Mule Workshop was down to $49 from their usual $200+ levels. We also saw Y-3 sneakers and lots of Spring/Summer goods that were so cheap it would be worth buying early for next year or maybe your sunny Winter vacation. Since Pas De Deux only just opened, there is mostly menswear here, but there are a few women's items kicking around, and some tiny men's sizes left that might be more suitable for women anyway (like a big stack of Cheap Monday Jeans, for example).
We have no end date for this sale, but we know they have to get the space ready for its next pop-up, Richard Chai (who just happens to be Odin co-owner Eddy Chai's brother).
Den hosts Odin's Clearance Sale 333 East 11^th Street between 1^st & 2^nd Avenues, East Village

East Village Empire Building:Odin Expands Once MoreWith Pas De Deux For Ladies

There are two ways to expand your store when the space next door becomes available.
One (the conventional method) is to simply knock down the walls and make the place bigger. The other, which is the method the folks behind Odin on East 11th Street, Eddy Chai and Paul Birardi, have chosen, is to open another store with different but related focus.
Last year we were treated to the opening of Den, which rotates a single label every couple of  months, showcasing new brands and favorites from Odin's vendor list, and now, on the other side of the father ship, Pas De Deux, a women's counterpart, has made its début, ready to take on the powerful troika of Scoop, Intermix & Big Drop, and making a mini-retail empire in the East Village.
Long and narrow, like its progenitor, The new store has its own distinct, retro-plush décor with chandeliers and soft draperies that feel more uptown that East Village. While it carries many of the same labels as Odin, it has bolstered its assortment with lines like Clu and Loeffler Randall that, so far, are just for ladies. The genteel ambiance is a welcome contrast to the hectic, "white box with packed racks" environments of its aforementioned competition.
The staff (of three on a quiet Monday afternoon) is genial and friendly, and though the store is as tiny as its siblings, they make it warm and inviting. We are already willing to predict that, like Odin, Pas De Deux is only an appetizer for a much larger satellite in a higher profile location in short order.
Pas De Deux 328 East 11th Street, East Village

Mike Albo Goes Shopping:Lighten Up Edition

In today's Thursday Styles, Mike Albo takes the Critical Shopper reins and visits Rogan's gloomy new East Village boutique. It's a fairly straightforward evaluation, and without his characteristic personal disclosures and vexations over prices, Mike gets to the root of the matter pretty quickly.

Obviously his sober vision strikes a chord: the clothes here are well-conceived, wearable and reflect our contemporary anomie, but they also make you wish the person wearing them would just stop being so intense about everything, throw up his hands and say, “Oh, what do I know, I am such a total dipstick!”

Mike has managed to put his finger on exactly what has begun to rub us the wrong way about Rogan, and that is that somewhere along the way (like when he opened this store) he seemed to cross the line dividing intriguing and pretentious. Lighten up Rogan. Sometimes people just want to buy clothes.
Oh, there's also the 70% off sale he mentions, which makes everything OK!
Critical Shopper - Rogan: Misery Loves Flattery by Mike Albo (NYTimes)
Rogan 330 Bowery, East Village

Expansion Alert:Odin Begets Pas de DeuxFor Ladies This August

Our friends over at The Cut broke some welcome news late yesterday. The tireless pair behind Odin and its revolving stock sibling, Den, are expanding once again. Eddy Chai and Paul Birardi will open Pas de Deux, a counterpart for the ladies, next month along the same East 11th Street row as its siblings.
Pas de Deux promises as fanciful and feminine an ambiance Odin's is refined and masculine. The roster of labels sounds like a woman's mirror to her next-door neighbor's mix of updated classics and accessible avant-garde brands including Shipley & Halmos and Alexander Wang among other emerging designers. Ordinarily, the news of a ladies' boutique coming from the men from menswear-land might give The Shophound pause, but Chai and Birardi have demonstrated flawless merchandising instincts thus far. By this Fall, we predict that their little pocket of the East Village will become a new shopping epicenter.
Odin Duo Opening Women’s Store in August (The Cut)

Today In Relocation:Chocolate Bar Heads East

After losing its original West Village space to the usual rent-related drama, Chocolate Bar has migrated East, and today marks its Grand Opening on East 7th Street.
Along with its usual arrays of sweets and drinks, artisanal egg creams have been added to the options offered at the new location.
If chocolate alone isn't enough to lure you in, the fine folks at Chocolate Bar are offering a Meet the Neighbors Special to celebrate the opening of its new home, which includes 1/2 price drip coffee and espresso for the first month and a complimentary stencil bar with every iced or hot liquid chocolate purchase (while supplies last).
Chocolate Bar 127 East 7th Street between 1st Avenue & Avenue A

It's Rogan Day

Sometimes we have to wonder how it is that Rogan Gregory won the big CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund prize for emerging designers? After all, if he has the wherewithal to orchestrate the opening of his second Manhattan boutique and a special preview at Barney's Co-op of his Target collaboration all on the same weekend, how could be possibly need cash prizes and mentoring? He seems to have things well in hand.
Much has been made lately of the cooperation between Barneys and Target for this preview, but it's notreally that surprising, and nobody seems to remember that last year, a similar event took place at Opening Ceremony for the Proenza Schouler/Target collection. Barneys is a natural choice because they have been Rogan's biggest supporter since his label started. Today, Co-op customers were not remotely dismayed by the $15 to $45 price tags on the capsule collection. The dreary weather may have kept it from being a stand in line and wait for insanity event like the Kate Moss/Topshop launch, and the Co-op was busy but not chaotic this morning at 10:45 AM, with shoppers loading their arms despite a three-item limit (which may or may not have been enforced). It appeared that customers were also receiving special Barneys/Target canvas totes with their purchases. Considering that the line will be available at Target stores all over America in a few days, it would have been silly to find a feeding frenzy at Barneys. As for the collection, the less expensive fabrics adapted well to Rogan's stripped down aesthetic, and look well constructed for the lower prices. Barneys Co-op customers will totally get it, but we wonder if it might be too subtle or minimal for the real Target crowd?
After Barneys, we shot dowtown to the new Rogan boutique that opened yeterday at the Bowery and Bond Street. By now, with the Bowery's gentrification in full swing, complaining about  it is utterly beside the point. In typically stealthy mode, Rogan has done his best to obscure his shop from the street, using the subtlest of signage. He has replaced the 'r's in the 'Bouwerie Lane Theatre' sign that remains on the building with his own blocky stencil script, making the store, like his Tribeca shop, pretty easy to miss. The interior is painted totally black with dramatic spotlighting which makes the store look closed from outside. Once inside, the theatrical lighting is striking, particularly on a gloomy day, but often makes it hard to examine the goods with spotlights glaring in your face at odd angles and much of the store in dark shadow. In the back, there is an elevated loft, which when we visited, held three employees who seemed to be folding things in utter darkness, which just seemed creepy.
As for the goods, Rogan has expanded beyond his signature denim, into more refined dresses, blouses with more tailored jackets and trousers for men in addition to printed tee shirts and jeans, all still in a minimal black, white and gray palette.
The store has an alluring, mysterious atmosphere, but if you're looking to do serious shopping, bring a flashlight.
Rogan for Target Go International at Barneys Co-op Madison Avenue only through May 11
Rogan Bowery, 330 Bowery at Bond Street, East Village

Den's Latest Pop-Up: Robert Geller

A few weeks ago, Den, the East Village's continuing pop-up store debuted it's latest temporary tenant: New York's Robert Geller.
Despite the tiny space available, the folks at Den constructed a skeletal house inside the store to show off the German-born designer's second menswear collection under his own name.
Fan's of the defunct label Cloak will recognize some of the subtle finishing and details that Geller brought to that collection as an assistant before he struck out on his own. This time, the military and nautical inspired looks are more relaxed and casual.
As with a previous tenant, Tim Hamilton, Den has found itself filled with appealing, interesting but expensive clothes. It's worth noting that the latest wave of New York's men's designers are as interested in jeans and casualwear as they are in suits (at which Geller excels). Unfortunately, this has given rise to the unfortunate phenomenon known as the $300 cotton hoodie sweatshirt.
Geller is only one of many who have given their own costly spin to what was once lowly gymnasium-wear, which only leads us to wonder, "How much do we have to pay to look like a schlump?"
Next up at Den is footwear maker, Common Projects, known for their luxurious, minimalist, and yes, expensive, sneakers.
Robert Geller at Den, 330 East 11th Street, East Village