First Look
In early November, Amazon-backed smart-glasses company North will open a store, with frames that use “retinal-projection technology” to call you an Uber and give you directions (178 Court St., Cobble Hill).
1. Demo: An appointment-only lounge area with overhead skylights, where customers can try on the glasses and learn about their functionality from team members.
2. Sizing booths: Four 3-D scanners get the customer’s precise measurements so the company’s factory can make the glasses to size.
3. Fitting: Two licensed opticians will be on hand to do final adjustments to glasses once they’ve come back from the factory; staff can help connect the glasses with your phone and sync them with your Amazon and Uber accounts.
4. Glasses: Shelves display North’s frames ($999), which are controlled by a Bluetooth-connected ring and come in round and rectangular styles.
2x2: Color-blocked Aprons
It’s hunker-down-and-bake season.
Cheaper
Half: Sugy Sena apron, $19 at shopcoucou.com.
Full: Color Block Linen apron, $58 at foldsantabarbara.com.
Pricier
Half: Color Block half-apron, $150 at virginiasin.com.
Full: Geo Work apron, $75 at tilitnyc.com.
Ask a Shop Clerk
Designer Prabal Gurung has opened his first-ever store, with Met Gala gowns and embroidered T-shirts (367 Bleecker St.).
Why Bleecker?
When I moved here, Bleecker Street was so relevant. Then it shut down. I hated seeing the sad, empty storefronts. It is never going to be Madison Avenue and never should be — every shop should be unique. Our window has a light installation that mimics the sunrise in Nepal, where I am from. Inside, there are many new things: our pearl-embroidered puffers ($3,595); our menswear pieces, like a blue patterned shorts-and-shirt set ($1,520). People from the neighborhood seem to like it. They keep walking in with suggestions. One woman thought perhaps we should have more casual sweaters.
IRL
Kathryn Duryea has set up her e-commerce tableware brand Year & Day (91 Crosby St.).
“We’ve created alcoves for each of our palettes: Midnight (black), Daybreak (pink), Fog (gray), and Moon (white). We’re also going to have a table with settings that combine the colors, like a Fog bowl ($44 for four) with a Moon platter ($50). That’s what Eva Chen has, by the way. Mandy Moore has all Daybreak.”
Three in One
On November 15, Gucci will open the Gucci Wooster Bookstore, a shop dedicated to art and contemporary photography (375 W. Broadway).
Watch
A curated film-screening program next door featuring short films and film series highlighting the cultural significance of Soho in the 1970s and ’80s, including Jody Saslow’s Crosby Street.
Read
A 2,000-book selection curated by Dashwood Books founder David Strettell, including Robert Cumming’s The Difficulties of Nonsense ($65) plus titles by “friends of the house” like Ryan McGinley.
Gather
Book signings, like a reading with Florence Welch, plus panels with film directors like Amos Poe and Sara Driver.
Top Five
Artist-favorite sculptural-furniture design studio Green River Project has opened its debut brick-and-mortar shop (204 E. 7th St.). Co-founder Aaron Aujla talks his favorite bamboo-and-textile screens and pine-board club chairs.
“We call this the One Pine-Board chair (price upon request) because it’s made from a single 12-foot pine board cut up into different lengths.”
“This ashtray ($225) is sliced from the connective, membranous part of a bamboo stalk, then painted white. It’s shaped like a sweet little cup.”
“This stool ($500), which is made of African mahogany and red velvet, was initially designed for a dinner party at the furniture dealer Michael Bargo’s gallery.”
“We created this bamboo screen ($1,500) in collaboration with the clothing studio Bode. The panels are made of embroidered antique textiles from India.”
“My partner’s brother is an airline mechanic and sources old plane parts for us, which we make sconces ($1,750) out of. This one uses the tip of a wing.”
*This article appears in the October 29, 2018, issue of New York Magazine. Subscribe Now!
