BIRD/ WHEN YOUR CLOTHES HAVE A BACKSTORY
A New York Times article from Feb. 25, 2009
I’VE always admired the astringent fashion rules of my childhood friend, Lord Relentless Ha. Discriminating San Francisco hoodlums favored a certain heavy twill, bomber-cut “Derby” jacket. Mr. Ha thought that the crisp industrial angles of a new Derby jacket were gauche, so before presenting one as a gift, he put it through a rigorous set of tortures, which, I believe, began with dragging it behind his mufflerless (“loud ’n’ proud”) late-model Cadillac. “Then I marinated it in the bathtub in beer and cigarette butts,” he said. “Then I tied it up in rope and let the ocean chew on it for a while.” A proper Derby, Mr. Ha maintained, required a certain history of abuse.
“Ocean chewed,” is the couplet that sprang from the back to the front of my mind when trying to describe the look and feel of Bird’s new location in Williamsburg. Opening the door from the unbeautiful street, one is practically knocked backward by a refreshing gust of cedar, an aggressively relaxing surplus of softly lighted space, and mellow acoustic indie rock. It is like being suddenly hit in the neck with a Klonopin dart and transported to Wellfleet.
On the very first racks, both male and female, the store’s ID establishes itself. I characterize the Bird person as a Bennington graduate whose quiet weekends upstate have evolved into a full-time escape from Manhattan for the explicit purpose of writing divorce poetry. It’s a thoughtful, slouchy, post-Cedar Tavern, Disillusioned Preppy Unisex look, still accustomed to intense, status-minded fashion scrutiny, but overcoated by a spalike, de-stressed and soul-seeky note I’ll call Reprioritized Values or The Benefits of Acupuncture.
The colors are muted and nostalgic; diaper-soft cotton button-down shirts by Steven Alan ($170) are wrinkled and sun-bleached, as if wadded straight from grandma’s clothesline. Cross-dressing is heartily encouraged: women may buy the men’s French sailor shirts; men may take a liking to the skinny feminine neckties. Tiny gold earrings by Giles & Brother, shaped like handlebar mustaches, may be worn at any bar in Provincetown.
The jeans, like the Current/Elliott Boyfriend style favored by starlets caught Starbucking in daylight ($210), have been expertly ravaged to appear as if they have endured many train-hoppings and boating accidents but are now safe at the family vacation home, tanned and comfy, reading Doris Lessing and responsibly refusing their third glass of wine.
At the back of the store there are more formal versions of resort wear for the eternally tranquilized: forgiving dinner-party muumuus by Thakoon and Tsumori Chisato; Martin Margiela’s late-afternoon muumuu ($275), and a daring, intergalactic muumuu by Risto Bimbiloski ($750) covered with a repeating photo-pattern of what I believe was the Orion Nebula perfect for that lost weekend with Sir Richard Branson, especially if you never wanted him to see your body and/or you were trying to escape from his vessel and required camouflage.
Since I am struggling to embrace the subtle allure of drapey, loose-fitting things, I tried two items by Maria Cornejo: an elastic-waist silk jumpsuit in that beguiling brown-purple-gray color I call “burnt prune” ($755) and a pair of black capri jodhpurs in a swishy viscose-acetate blend ($530).
I must bestow a particular honor on Bird’s owner, Jennifer Mankins (below): She holds the title for my all-time favorite dressing room. The rooms are perfect replicas of saunas, with everything but dry heat. Another olfactory blast of cedar aromatherapizes the mind, with the bonus addition of generous mirrors; enough bars to really hang your clothes on; good, soft light; and a nice bench an excellent place to take off all your clothes.
I had no idea what to expect from the silk jumpsuit silk pants attached to a blousy kimono top but it was quite smart; very Yoko, circa 1979. To wear it really well, I thought, you would need to be a sexually liberated woman with lots of hair and strappy gold platforms, sashaying around the infinity-pool party with large wooden jewelry, terrorizing your husband’s business associates by being obviously naked underneath. I personally found it far too comfortable to be evening wear, but it would really be spot-on for the 18th wife of Bob Evans.
I loved the jodhpurs, but Bird didn’t have my size. I predict that despite a trend overdose, we haven’t seen the last of the neo-jodhpur variations; they seem to be quietly prevailing as a real look, as if to say, “Relax, dear, we are not the Gaucho.”
In “The Recognitions,” the famously undercelebrated doorstop by William Gaddis, the virtuosity of a painter who makes counterfeit “undiscovered” paintings by Flemish masters is the vehicle through which Gaddis questions the genuineness of other forms of art, life and religion.
Much of the clothing at Bird appears to be recovering from its too-adventurous lives. To live vicariously through the scars on one’s casual wear is an interesting kind of psychic trompe l’oeil, suggesting that one has been more kinetically active than one really has. It seems a bit perversely bourgeois to demand a patina of robust character from our clothes in an economy in which garments bearing the marks of age are not an elective style choice for so many. But if your leisure is too demanding to damage your play clothes through the rigors of actual motion, Bird poses an interesting conundrum.
It is possible to look at these pretrashed jeans as more than just a look that sedentary poseurs borrow to mimic outdoorsy virility. They may be viewed as a declaration of taste, to wit: “I may not have had to fight feral, screwdriver-wielding 9-year-olds in the Outback, but I am wise enough to appreciate the pants of those who have.”
As the ghost of Gaddis argues, there is such a thing as a counterfeit so well done that it can be, in its way, more authentic than the “real thing.” When Lord Ha gives you a jacket, its wear and tear has been earned, however artificially. To legitimize the fictional distress of designer jeans is to step through the dressing room looking glass and leave one’s brain behind ... but destruction, too, is a creative act, is it not?
BIRD
203 Grand Street (near Driggs Avenue), Williamsburg, Brooklyn; (718) 388-1655.
RHODE ISLAND WHITE This Bird comes with all the dressing necessary for your permanent retreat from urban society. Like Walden, Bird is unrealistic, maybe, but Utopian fer sher. Beach croquet, anyone?
BUSHTIT Extra soft, prebattered, unisex safari and beachfront casuals ought to excite both downtown and uptown girls, Chelsea boys and Republicans alike.
YELLOW-RUMPED WARBLER If its post-prep look is largely undersexed, you can still picture Jennifer Lopez wearing its Yigal Azrouël muumuu to the right scandal.
A New York Times article from Feb. 25, 2009
I’VE always admired the astringent fashion rules of my childhood friend, Lord Relentless Ha. Discriminating San Francisco hoodlums favored a certain heavy twill, bomber-cut “Derby” jacket. Mr. Ha thought that the crisp industrial angles of a new Derby jacket were gauche, so before presenting one as a gift, he put it through a rigorous set of tortures, which, I believe, began with dragging it behind his mufflerless (“loud ’n’ proud”) late-model Cadillac. “Then I marinated it in the bathtub in beer and cigarette butts,” he said. “Then I tied it up in rope and let the ocean chew on it for a while.” A proper Derby, Mr. Ha maintained, required a certain history of abuse.
“Ocean chewed,” is the couplet that sprang from the back to the front of my mind when trying to describe the look and feel of Bird’s new location in Williamsburg. Opening the door from the unbeautiful street, one is practically knocked backward by a refreshing gust of cedar, an aggressively relaxing surplus of softly lighted space, and mellow acoustic indie rock. It is like being suddenly hit in the neck with a Klonopin dart and transported to Wellfleet.
On the very first racks, both male and female, the store’s ID establishes itself. I characterize the Bird person as a Bennington graduate whose quiet weekends upstate have evolved into a full-time escape from Manhattan for the explicit purpose of writing divorce poetry. It’s a thoughtful, slouchy, post-Cedar Tavern, Disillusioned Preppy Unisex look, still accustomed to intense, status-minded fashion scrutiny, but overcoated by a spalike, de-stressed and soul-seeky note I’ll call Reprioritized Values or The Benefits of Acupuncture.
The colors are muted and nostalgic; diaper-soft cotton button-down shirts by Steven Alan ($170) are wrinkled and sun-bleached, as if wadded straight from grandma’s clothesline. Cross-dressing is heartily encouraged: women may buy the men’s French sailor shirts; men may take a liking to the skinny feminine neckties. Tiny gold earrings by Giles & Brother, shaped like handlebar mustaches, may be worn at any bar in Provincetown.
The jeans, like the Current/Elliott Boyfriend style favored by starlets caught Starbucking in daylight ($210), have been expertly ravaged to appear as if they have endured many train-hoppings and boating accidents but are now safe at the family vacation home, tanned and comfy, reading Doris Lessing and responsibly refusing their third glass of wine.
At the back of the store there are more formal versions of resort wear for the eternally tranquilized: forgiving dinner-party muumuus by Thakoon and Tsumori Chisato; Martin Margiela’s late-afternoon muumuu ($275), and a daring, intergalactic muumuu by Risto Bimbiloski ($750) covered with a repeating photo-pattern of what I believe was the Orion Nebula perfect for that lost weekend with Sir Richard Branson, especially if you never wanted him to see your body and/or you were trying to escape from his vessel and required camouflage.
Since I am struggling to embrace the subtle allure of drapey, loose-fitting things, I tried two items by Maria Cornejo: an elastic-waist silk jumpsuit in that beguiling brown-purple-gray color I call “burnt prune” ($755) and a pair of black capri jodhpurs in a swishy viscose-acetate blend ($530).
I must bestow a particular honor on Bird’s owner, Jennifer Mankins (below): She holds the title for my all-time favorite dressing room. The rooms are perfect replicas of saunas, with everything but dry heat. Another olfactory blast of cedar aromatherapizes the mind, with the bonus addition of generous mirrors; enough bars to really hang your clothes on; good, soft light; and a nice bench an excellent place to take off all your clothes.
I had no idea what to expect from the silk jumpsuit silk pants attached to a blousy kimono top but it was quite smart; very Yoko, circa 1979. To wear it really well, I thought, you would need to be a sexually liberated woman with lots of hair and strappy gold platforms, sashaying around the infinity-pool party with large wooden jewelry, terrorizing your husband’s business associates by being obviously naked underneath. I personally found it far too comfortable to be evening wear, but it would really be spot-on for the 18th wife of Bob Evans.
I loved the jodhpurs, but Bird didn’t have my size. I predict that despite a trend overdose, we haven’t seen the last of the neo-jodhpur variations; they seem to be quietly prevailing as a real look, as if to say, “Relax, dear, we are not the Gaucho.”
In “The Recognitions,” the famously undercelebrated doorstop by William Gaddis, the virtuosity of a painter who makes counterfeit “undiscovered” paintings by Flemish masters is the vehicle through which Gaddis questions the genuineness of other forms of art, life and religion.
Much of the clothing at Bird appears to be recovering from its too-adventurous lives. To live vicariously through the scars on one’s casual wear is an interesting kind of psychic trompe l’oeil, suggesting that one has been more kinetically active than one really has. It seems a bit perversely bourgeois to demand a patina of robust character from our clothes in an economy in which garments bearing the marks of age are not an elective style choice for so many. But if your leisure is too demanding to damage your play clothes through the rigors of actual motion, Bird poses an interesting conundrum.
It is possible to look at these pretrashed jeans as more than just a look that sedentary poseurs borrow to mimic outdoorsy virility. They may be viewed as a declaration of taste, to wit: “I may not have had to fight feral, screwdriver-wielding 9-year-olds in the Outback, but I am wise enough to appreciate the pants of those who have.”
As the ghost of Gaddis argues, there is such a thing as a counterfeit so well done that it can be, in its way, more authentic than the “real thing.” When Lord Ha gives you a jacket, its wear and tear has been earned, however artificially. To legitimize the fictional distress of designer jeans is to step through the dressing room looking glass and leave one’s brain behind ... but destruction, too, is a creative act, is it not?
BIRD
203 Grand Street (near Driggs Avenue), Williamsburg, Brooklyn; (718) 388-1655.
RHODE ISLAND WHITE This Bird comes with all the dressing necessary for your permanent retreat from urban society. Like Walden, Bird is unrealistic, maybe, but Utopian fer sher. Beach croquet, anyone?
BUSHTIT Extra soft, prebattered, unisex safari and beachfront casuals ought to excite both downtown and uptown girls, Chelsea boys and Republicans alike.
YELLOW-RUMPED WARBLER If its post-prep look is largely undersexed, you can still picture Jennifer Lopez wearing its Yigal Azrouël muumuu to the right scandal.
CINTRAW@GMAIL.COM
Artwork: “Dan and Maybelline,” oil on canvas by Cintra Wilson, 2020
2nd Gaddis reference today after years of radio silence
Way ahead of it's time, this piece is extremely relevant with the likes of Unsound Rags and others charging for clothing worn by actual workers to sell at a high price to people that do not actually labor.