Posts Tagged ‘Andrea Linett’

Our lady of the Lower East Side

My longtime friend (and sometime co-conspirator) Andrea Linett is an ideal shopping companion. She has endless stamina, is famously amusing, and has a great eye not only for what’s worth buying, but—perhaps more importantly—what’s worth leaving behind. We don’t get to see each other nearly as often as back when we were running a magazine together, but we still talk and text all the time. And have shopping excursions when we can,  occasionally running into former co-workers, who always look mildly shocked to see we’re still at it. On Sunday, Andrea and I made a date to visit Gargyle, a boutique way deep down on the Lower East Side that I’d never visited—and that shockingly, given that this is so much her turf that some neighborhood shopkeepers once nicknamed her The Mayor of Ludlow Street, neither had Andrea.

Gargyle is is a wee little store, but it is packed with wonder: flowy Mes Demoiselles dresses; sexy lace blouses from Lover that I would totally wear even though I am not a sexy lace blouse person;  their own rather beautiful line of bags; and more. I wasn’t sure how Andrea would feel about these snake print embossed leather platforms, but she thought they were as awesome as I did, so of course I not only bought them but wore them out of the store.  I am about a million per cent sure that at least one of you is going to insist they are awful and the very soul of clunk, but I am here to tell you that when you put them on, they are magic.

I do love a leopard print, but rarely on a bag: as with shoes, it almost invariably ends up looking cheap. This Wood Wood tote is a glorious exception, thanks to the excellent washed-out grey and black print.

Right down the street from Gargyle is Project No. 8, a spare, clean design store that displays its wares pristinely and thoughtfully, giving the art gallery treatment to, well, the same stuff that pretty much all of these places carry. Waxed canvas totes? Check. Artisanal soap from Brooklyn? Check. Hand-tooled wallets? Check. Apartamento magazine?  Present and accounted for.

Of course I am generalizing horribly. There’s plenty of beautiful stuff at Project No. 8, and it’s all quite carefully chosen, and this crystal bee tumbler is maybe one of the best things ever.

Then we moved along to Maryam Nassir Zadeh, a store I absolutely love even though I have never bought a thing there. The clothes are all expensive and esoteric, with shapes that are frequently complicated and far easier to pull off the closer you are to six feet tall.

For instance, I would not attempt this, but it is a wonder to behold.

My favorite thing at Maryam Nassir Zadeh are the shoes. I can’t even bear to look at these Robert Clergerie platforms.

And check out the heel on these gold Rochas slingbacks!

The girl we all wanna be

It’s funny that my pal Andrea Linett’s funny, clever fashion memoir is called I Want to be Her, since I’ve never had another friend whose sense of style has been more envied, coveted, or closely studied than hers.  She just knows how to throw things together, as some people do. And I would never try to pull off that very specifically Andrea-branded slickified rock chick/French fashion editor/hippie chick look of hers even for a moment. It is always best, in matters such as this, to simply look and learn.

This is pretty much the message of I Want to be Her, which tells the story of the many and varied women who shaped and influenced Andrea’s sense of style. The range is impressive and unpredictable. We’ve got:

Francine, the beautiful French babysitter Andrea found quite bohemian, even though she was not yet certain what bohemian meant.

Lisa Bonet as Denise Huxtable. And also as Lisa Bonet.

Mandy, A girl Andrea met at college who had a huge Vuitton Speedy bag and wore grey sweatpants so perfect that Andrea suspected they’d been professionally altered.

And the mysterious stranger, spied briefly on the street in Easthampton, who was dressed quite simply,  but had two tattoos of green snakes, one on either side of her face right next to her ear.  ”Was this woman a former Marrakesh hippie? Did she used to hang out with Jim Morrison? Was she covering up face-lift scars?” Andrea wrote. “Although I am confident that I will never in a million years want tattoos on my face, there was something about her individuality that inspired me.”

While  it was of course fun to see so many people who were part of both of our lives—from our time at Sassy, where we met in the late 80s, to the years we spent together at Lucky—that wasn’t my favorite part of the book. What I appreciated most, aside from the fact that it’s probably the most unpretentious fashion memoir ever written, is its value as a piece of pop cultural history. Anyone who came of age in the late 70s and early 80s—or whose universes were in any way altered by The Brooke Book, Fiorucci, Bow Wow Wow, Sun-In or Leif Garret —will be utterly charmed.