Something Special...

Kate Spade Restroom - One of the Best


Showplace Antique Center @ 40 W 25th Street. Website Here































Last Summer I was visiting Jack Spade and before leaving stopped by the powder room. I've visited a number of New York's fashion elite restrooms. I think they tell a lot about the designer and the brand and you'll be able to see them all just as soon as I secure my book deal, "Fashion Takes A Dump." A sumptuous coffee table book filled with full color photographs of fashion's places to ponder. He may be Tom Ford but he has to pee just like any other man... he may pee sitting down but you get my point.

I'm heading east on 25th Street and am stopped in my tracks by a window display of enamel double links. Thinking it one store -- it turns to a gallery of stores. Over 200 on four floors packed to the gunwales with some of the most bizarre, interesting, cool, kitschy stuff you're likely to find... in one place.

There's a website so no excuses about living in Naperville and having to shop at the Woodfield Mall. You're gonna have to forgo a 70% discount as well but you know all this discount stuff is bullshit anyway. Americans would buy horseshit if it were discounted enough. Which is mostly what's in the malls of this country.

Some ideas for ladies today and I'll follow with guy stuff tomorrow Monday. Be warned. This is shopping that takes some thought but it's connecting with someone special through something special. You'll know it when you see it.

Steve McQueen's Porsche

UK Classic Cars Magazine - 1993

The guy who insured pig farms came up with the idea over lunch. Get a syndicate together and buy Steve McQueen's Porsche 911. The marketing guy, who dreamed up porn movie plots, was in for $10,000. His best, a bizarre "I Dream of Jeannie" plot device where Major Nelson's penis size increased with each Jeannie "blink" while being boinked.

The pig farm guy was in for $20,000. He wasn't married, came from money and was boinking the agency owner's secretary. A courageous and ultimately foolish decision. I was married, poor and boinking no one so $10,000 to me was a stretch but not impossible since bonus time was fast approaching.

But January turned into February and rumors of the big day spread across the 20th floor of the Hancock like wild fire on the Serengeti. B-Day finally came in April -- Never under estimate the power of keeping people economically off balance. Account executives sneaked calculators into bathrooms where they would attempt to make sense of numbers in symbolic privacy.

Vice presidents closed office doors and, whether in defeat or celebration, called wives. Celebrants somehow managed to find each other after 5:01 PM and proceeded to drink, smoke cigars, fall off bar stools and show each other their bonus checks.

By midnight, the celebrants stumbled into homes where wives called them beer smelling ashtrays. The tirades cut short only by showing a crumpled piece of paper that turned into a new kitchen, car, bathroom or house. It did not turn into a 69 Porsche. I never did like Steve McQueen.

Extinct Etamine Etymolgy

The Holy Grail

Etamine pullover


Etamine in yellow, white, blue, pink and melon


Etamine defined


I was talking to Tom Davis (MTM Shirts) at Brooks Brothers last week. We covered a lot of ground but everything stopped when he brought up etamine. An ultra light voile-like fabric used by Brooks Brothers for shirting years ago. I did some digging around and didn't find much. I'm still digging.

A weekend wander through textile and fashion books reveal the letter 'E' has the fewest entries and etamine ain't one of 'em. The internet will tell you it's a light porous cotton in an open mesh, susceptible to snagging, with a slight gloss finish. Dig a little deeper into the etymology and, by 1936, etamine is pretty much extinct.

Hardly a surprise Brooks Brothers catalogs from the late '70s and early '80s show the shirt Tom remembered. Short sleeve pullover in basic blue, yellow and white with pink and melon added in 1981. Great colors, popular pullover style and a fabric that appears to breathe better than linen. Cheaper too according to a web site that sells etamine for three bucks a meter (beware minimum order).

Who knows if etamine today is the same as it was in 1981? That's a question not a statement. If you know, please let me know, since the hunt is on. Summers don't look like they're gonna get any cooler.