New York Fashion Week

Fashion Week is here.  No harm in some creative advertising to the hoards of hungry fashionistas.  

I took a lot of math, but...

... never have I seen such an equation!  It was great fun to watch these two guys (right arm of the other painter - resting or bored, presumably - is at lower left) hand-painting this billboard, slowly and in real time, over a parking lot at the corner of Crosby and Broome in Soho.

It's not so common to see billboard painters these days, especially in a get-up like that one - suspenders and hat!  

And it's not just an ad using the idea of a complex mathematical equation, as I thought when I watched it being written up there.  It's in fact an actual formula with a "solution."  See this link for a better look at the problem, the solutions to the various component parts and the overall solution itself.  Very clever.  I love the idea of using math and historical events like that to scratch the brain. 

Another "Ah, New York!" moment.

Hats of Spring

It's a season of hats in New York City, this and every spring in the last few years (since the street fedora became trendy with the hipster set), but this spring, I notice it more for some reason.  Perhaps it's because I've got the camera out and am snapping all the hats I see.

The small fedoras have the most urban appearance to me, but the larger brim hats do a better job at sun protection...and they're just so much more varied, colorful, individual and clearly seasonal.

I have two favorite milliners (love that word, just brings you right back to "Hello, Dolly," "My Fair Lady," Ascot and the Kentucky Derby, doesn't it?).  Luckily, New York has a few very good shops.  The best have the hat designers on premises,  happy and proud to fit the customer with just the right design in just the right size.  I love the tiny boutiques of Lisa Shaub and Barbara Feinman.  Both shops are downtown (Nolita and the East Village, respectively) and both are owned and run by their amazing designers, who have helped me select mes chapeaux for every season.  As a matter of fact, when I was in Barbara Feinman earlier this spring, two tall blonds had just purchased about half the store for the Kentucky Derby; it was such fun watching them try on all those huge hats I'd love to buy but would think I'd never have any possible reason to wear.  But I do love hat shopping, maybe even more than hat wearing (they always seem to look so much better on everyone else)!

MUJI

Packing light when traveling is always a gamble, hard enough to do under the best of circumstances.  But when the weather turns against the Paris méteo forecast you were diligently checking every day for a week before your flight, there you are, with a well-edited suitcase full of color-coordinated mix and match clothes that now are either too warm, too light, or too wet from the rain to wear.  What to do?

This happened to me a year ago in Paris during a stretch of unseasonably hot and sunny May weather.  No big sacrifice, to be sure, except that all I'd packed were sweaters, long-sleeve t-shirts, black pants and jeans, expecting the more typical cool and damp Paris spring.  It was over 80 degrees, no AC (as we well know), bright sunshine and time to do something about it!  Shopping is also no sacrifice of my time in Paris but I have enough summer t-shirts at home and didn't feel like spending a fortune.  It wasn't even les soldes!

That's when I walked past MUJI on Rue St-Sulpice and saw great basic color (gray, white, black) tank tops and spaghetti strap tees in the window.  I'd never been in there, though I've since discovered MUJI in New York City.  There are a few locations - in the New York Times Building near Port Authority, in Soho on Broadway and in Chelsea.  I love this store!  It's like not much else - clothes are just a part of it, for both men and women.  Paper things, pens (which I always love to shop for), notebooks, containers, kitchen, bath and organizing items, with a priority in style, minimalism and no-brand labeling.  Originally a Japanese, but now global, store, it's a cool place to browse even if you leave with nothing.  But the clothes I've purchased there are great quality for reasonable price.  The tees come in 3-packs, as do undies, if you run out of those and hate to wash on vacation.  All the clothes seem highly packable and great for travel, in that they tend to be in muted or basic colors, very wearable, layerable, washable, natural fibers and casual.  The notebooks and pens are a fun and useful purchase for travel, and many other items there, like bags and puzzles, make great gifts to bring home or to your out-of-town host. 

The predictability of unpredictable weather when traveling now has a fairly inexpensive solution (at least in Paris, New York and loads of other cities around the world). 

Caffeinated Weekends - Ground Support

I really need to remember this place, for it's a breath of fresh air in the middle of the bustling, sometimes overwhelming, hyped-up shopping and gallery hopping experience that defines Soho on West Broadway.  Ground Support, 399 West Broadway near Spring (no website), in fact, is located in a former art gallery.  By downtown New York espresso bar standards, it's huge and airy, with a skylight that permits the bright sun (when lucky enough to have such a day) to spotlight one of the customer tables.  It definitely seems to be a neighborhood "regulars" kind of place, both for breakfast and lunchtime noshing and/or caffeine fixes.

There's a long zinc bar for sit-downs, and four large wooden picnic tables, accommodating a number of computer workers during the times I was there.  Ground Support serves Ceci Cela croissants as well as interesting muffins from somewhere else I can't remember the name of.  I tried a whole wheat cherry pineapple muffin, which was incredibly filling but seemed virtuous.   And their coffees are Intelligentsia.  

Sandwiches were being made nonstop by two people behind the zinc bar.  Veg sandwich was heavy on cauliflower, not what I expected in a veggie sandwich but, with feta cheese and an interesting aioli among other things, made for a crunchy change of pace.  Everything was super fresh, and they have a variety of clever sandwiches and salad.  Cookies, too, of course. 

Bref, it's roomy, very relaxing, a good place for a light meal as well as your caffeine, and the baristas are patient and enthusiastic (when I couldn't make up my mind, I was encouraged to try the muffin for something different). Plus, there are outside benches for optimal only-in-Soho people and dog watching (or are the dogs watching the Soho people?). 

Lost in translation?

Seen yesterday in the store windows of French Connection on West Broadway in Soho:

"DO YOU STEP WITH PURPOSE INTO PROBLEM?"

"You are unsolvable mysterie, puzzle unworkable cryptic galaxie?"

"You are woman?"

"You make every thud sound like musique?"

What?  Seriously?  If this is English, I'm feeling much better about French!