At the end of last week, we published our list of the 25 best clothing stores in New York. Scroll through it and tell me what we nailed and what we left out.
Working on this list was personal. My first several jobs in New York were in retail. I toiled at J. Crew’s flagship in the Flatiron district folding gingham shirt after gingham shirt, and in the windowless basement of Club Monaco’s SoHo shop selling chinos to junior associates.
My longest stint was at Epaulet, a modern men’s haberdashery that at the time had two tidy locations, one on the Lower East Side and the other in south Brooklyn. I spent a couple of years there selling calf-tight dress pants and double monks to the sort of persnickety men who read forums about clothing in their off time. (It was, let’s say, a very specific time in men’s fashion.)
I loved that job. Yes, it paid my rent. But treading the sales floor, I received an education on how people shop: through practicality, joy, indulgence and, occasionally, fear.
I watched shoppers sweat over buying pants in a size 33 or size 34 as if they were Magellan weighing what course to take to circumnavigate the globe. I will never forget the guy who refused to unbutton the dress shirts — or use a fitting room, for that matter — and stood there on a busy Saturday tugging blue shirts over his bare torso as if any extra second spent shopping was a second wasted. I remember the man from overseas who saved up, for months, if not years, for a single pair of Horween leather boots. And I remember, too, how I felt, funneling portions of my paychecks back to my employer so I, too, could buy my own blazers and dress shirts.
Working at Epaulet corrupted me for good. Watching shoppers leave happy with their optimal pair of trousers in hand made me want that feeling, too.
I’ve spent my adult life chasing such highs. I still believe — foolishly, both psychologically and financially — that the next pair of shoes, the next black suit, the next zippered neck sweater will heal me for good. When I visit a new city, I think of visiting stores as a cultural experience on a par with going to museums or to a play. I am thankful that my wife sees shopping the same way. We’ll see how our son tolerates it when he’s older.
Much the way I imagine that a chef can never look at dinner the same way after working in a restaurant kitchen, I never enter a store without unconsciously ticking through a set of criteria. Does the ambience rouse me to shop with abandon (something Epaulet’s metal racks never quite achieved)? Are the salespeople chummy but not grating? Is the assortment unlike anything I’ve seen before?
It was these questions, and many more, that my colleagues and I considered when working on this list of New York stores. These are stores many of us have shopped at for years. You could say we’ve been working on this list for years without even realizing it.
Epaulet’s stores are gone. So is that Club Monaco I worked at and an innumerable number of other stores. New York’s retail scene is ever in flux. This list will help you navigate it, ideally to that sweater that will better your life.
