The first few days in New York were surprisingly and pleasantly warm....around 19* C, which meant muchos costume changing throughout the day. On Monday Morning, Marc took me around to the Meatpacking district where we absorbed the sleek commercial designs and "stumbled'' across a few neat stores like DVF and AmQ...I die. Being in the space of the final products with McQueen at the head of design was breathtaking...I had no qualms taking my time to analyse the detail and technical work into each garment. McQueen's concept of design and the pursuit of flattering and embracing women at large extended into the concept store, whose floor staff were friendly and the clothes were presented in a warm, inviting environment. They were even playing a bit of old Black Betty instore, ha.
We wandered back through to Chelsea Markets, and into a milk bar which was terrible, but the general observation of places like Chelsea Market is similar to the kind of grocery shopping experience equivilant to James St Markets...there is a niche appreciation of organics, and fresh, wholesome food that people don't mind paying the extra couple of dollars to ensure quality eating. At home, we love local grocery store Wholefoods, who are like the Woolworthes of James St...sah gewd.
Mark had gone to Uniqlo that morning, so we met up for lunch at Columbus Circle (a shopping mall near Times Square) where there was an exhibition of Salvador Dali sculptures and sketches. I personally adore Dali's work, so the exhibition was really exciting for me. And some of the sculptures were inspired by Dali's famous (and my favourite) paintings about the essence of time. Afterwards we wandered up through to Central Park and spent some quality time absorbing the early afternoon sunset and park activity. The sun sets beautifully over the park at around 3pm, and throughout the whole park, buskers and performers every few hundred metres are really entertaining. My favourites were a string quartet + guitar, who did covers of Radiohead in this gypsyish sort of genre; as well as a man who blew insanely big bubbles; and also this crazy lady who was doing interpretive dance to her ipod on rollerblades while chasing her dog. Off her rocker.
Marc wanted to reach the Jacqui Onassis Resovoir, which we did, and then he went home to sleep while Mark and I went to Strand Bookstore at Union Square. I picked up a few fashion theory books I'd been anticipating for years, and bought Marc an excellent book on the history of Saville Row which he really enjoyed. The shop is so cheap and glorious! I reccomend it to anyone who is after any time of niche book genre,,,as per example, the fashion section extended across 3 large shelves as well as several long tables with books ranging from $10 in perfect-condition-second-hand, to about $120 for a recently released or distinguishable book.
It is funny how you get to the point of sleepiness, that even if you are dead tired, you manage to walk into a store and be instantly replenished. This was the case after Strand bookstore...at about 9.30pm, while hailing a cab home with Mark, a shoe store caught my eye. 2 pairs later, we came home and crashed.
My honest cure for jetlag is retail therapy.
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