CREATURES OF COMFORT / CLOTHING FIT FOR WOMAN OR BEAST

When a cardigan isn't.

(This piece previously appeared in the New York Times in October 2010. )

AS part of a recent arts festival, a little bicycle no taller than my knee has been chain-locked to a park gate near my house for the last week. An uncredited artist has crocheted over every contour — pedals, wheels, frame, handlebars — encasing the tiny bike entirely in a custom-potholder shroud of mismatched acrylic yarns.

I’ve watched various children try to play with it, then give up when they realize that the toy isn’t fun. It employs all the shiny semiotic cues that lure kids in, but ultimately it’s a red herring: overdressed in its self-absorbed, art-world persona, the bike is too wrapped up in itself for normal engagement.

Creatures of Comfort’s much anticipated new SoHo outpost, an offshoot of its popular Los Angeles store, is wide open and spacious. High ceilings, naked wood and an acoustic folk-rock soundtrack give an aggressively relaxed, weekend vibe to a collection of very serious casualwear by a bevy of fashion luminaries: Martin Margiela, Rick Owens, Maria Cornejo.

The Creatures of Comfort signature line is fairly straightforward and practical; it seems to be going for a kind of oversize, Amish chicka-wah-wah: big unisex linen henley shirts ($135), tank dresses so tall and wide I actually asked one of the stress-free staff members if they were intended for men. “Ha hah, no-o-o,” she said cheerfully, pulling a giant T-shirt back onto her shoulder, proving that there is potential sex appeal in Dad’s wardrobe after all (as long as he’s not wearing it).

I first became perplexed while looking at a thickly knit mauve cardigan.

I supposed it offered a quaint and 1940s-anachronistic ideal of Lost Purity — a good, plain, homemade sweater with decent values and defiant Luddite contrarianism — the kind of cardigan that hand-embroiders its own pillowcases and hangs them to dry with unhinged wooden clothespins.

This pinkish sweater wasn’t seeking to flatter. In fact, it was unsexy almost to the point of hostility ... but it was also $552. When something looks so utilitarian but costs so much, there are bound to be issues once the tags come off. Can you really pack that sweater and wear it upstate in your survivalist victory garden to fondle soiled turnips and tear feathers out of the chicken you once ironically named Tina Turner?

By the time I got to the offerings by the Belgian designer Christian Wijnants, I was totally at sea. On the rack: a batch of blazingly warm, painted-desert colors in regal fabrics: burnt sienna, sunrise peach, sandstone orange — and all the pieces were hu-u-u-uge.

Not N.B.A. huge — like, Mothra huge.

An ocher velvet toga seemed to be formalwear for an inflatable Macy’s parade version of Barney Rubble ($785). A jumbo bathrobe sweater ($775) had enough volume to house a sumo wrestler and the back end of a pantomime horse. (I dubbed the collection Gargantua and Pantaloons, because, like Rabelais, I respected it but couldn’t get into it.)

This clothing didn’t seem to want to be clothing anymore. It refused to conform to clothing stereotypes. The meanings of garments were seriously destabilized.

In search of answers, I looked up that women’s lib slogan, “A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle,” and found that it was originally an anonymous graffito, under which someone else penned the lesser-known male comeback: “Yes, but who needs a stationary haddock?”

Is a sweater without a human size like a fish without a bicycle? The mind unspools.

Were these clothes a theoretical antithesis of clothing? Were they attacking my sartorial prejudices and forcing me to problematize human body measurements in order to see them as a form of subtle yet all-pervasive oppression?

Then I had the Aha! moment: I realized that the selections at Creatures of Comfort weren’t designed for me ... but for creatures.

Suddenly, more bewildering items, like the $665 Margiela jacket I thought looked like something Yukon fur mongers might have done to a Camaro seat cover, began to make sense.

I stopped identifying the sweaters according to culturally hegemonic stereotypes and began to see them for the infinitude of things they had the potential to become: radiator cozies, octo-snoods, Prius merkin-shrugs.

Emboldened, I headed to the bright dressing room with a pair of unisex motocross sweatpants ($325). Alas, these, too, were post-human. Usually with an XS, the thing that won’t fit into the garment isn’t my size 7.5 foot, but this loungewear basic wasn’t there to gratify my imperial expectations, having been made for tapering limbs like tentacles, or pogo-hooks.

I finally saw the light, surrendered to a power greater than logic and bought a pair of gray suede Robert Clergerie platform wallabies (price redacted). There are apparently more Franken-wedgies in heaven and on earth than were previously dreamed of in my philosophy, but they understood me.

After a few days, the local children completely gave up on the crocheted bicycle. It sits alone and ignored, looking a little tragic. It didn’t take long for kids to see through its pretentious art-sweater, and judge it to be a stationary haddock.

But I go bounding into the night in my brave new shoes as a wholly comfortable creature, one of stupefying height, ridiculous dimensions and monstrous extravagance. Grrrrr.

Creatures of Comfort

205 Mulberry Street (between Spring and Kenmare Streets); (212) 925-1005.

SNEECHES OF SNEEVEPORT What the Wild Things Wear to hang out in Truro can be found in this eclectic gallery of ultra-hep unisex designs by labels like Acne, United Bamboo and Rachel Comey. A careful footwear selection features faves like LD Tuttle and Repetto.

FEATURES OF FRUMPORT The whole place, including the staff, has a kind of been-there-done-that, post-ambitious bonelessness — more luxurious relaxation than most people are capable of, but nice to aspire to.

BEWITCHES OF BEASTWICK Compelling accessories are on hand just in case you’re in danger of looking too casual. Ninh’s Quarry geometric stone-steel necklaces are “around $280.” Add a cool MM6 amber plexiglass safety belt ($220), and let the wild rumpus start!

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Theme song: Jack Black

Artwork: “Annie and Friend,” oil on linen, Cintra Wilson 2020