SURELY YOUR MOM DESERVES CASHMERE
And what better place to get her a wildly expensive, oversize cashmere scarf – a scarf so large you could sleep in it . . . a scarf so soft you could make love to it . . . a scarf so fashionable you (or in this case, your mom) could walk down the runway – than at Charles’s new shop, which opened yesterday, at 30 Gansevoort Street in New York?
Notes for the uninitiated:
1. Charles designed ANNE KLEIN before going out on his own this year. His line is at SAKS nationwide, but some items – like the cashmere scarf and his kick-ass boots – are exclusive to his shop, at least for now, along with furniture he’s designed, 2,000-year-old clay vases he brought back from Korea (which may or may not be 2,000 years old), and more.
2. The shop is open from noon to seven, and at the moment you will have to duck to avoid the construction crews still finishing the façade. We hope to have figured out the cash register by the time you arrive.
3. This stuff is very expensive (hey – so is the rent), but we are talking about your mother. Do you think you were an easy child to bear? To raise? If you could spend two months’ salary on an engagement ring for your wife (I have a better idea, by the way), surely you can spend one week’s salary on your mom. Seriously. It’s a family values thing.
4. The shop is called CHARLES NOLAN (that being his name), and Gansevoort Street is in lower Manhattan’s trendy meatpacking district, where if you come early enough you will see cattle being herded up from the subway to the abattoir, or if you come later you will get a really great burger at Florent. One block south of 13th Street, at the corner of Hudson, which would be Ninth Avenue if it had a number.
5. Coming from Europe to take advantage of the weak dollar? Stay across the street at the four-star Gansevoort Hotel, with its hypo-allergenic duvets. (Prices for the Duplex Penthouse start at $5,000 a night.) I, of course, would offer $120 a night, this being New York – $79 anywhere else – and leave it up to priceline.com what four-star hotel I stayed in. But that’s me.
6. Readers of ultra-longstanding and photographic memory may recall that I have written of a man who bought (himself!) a $1,200 scarf. So in the scheme of things, you’re getting off easy. And . . . it’s . . . your . . .mom.
Tomorrow: Sell Apple, Eat a Strawberry