Downtown Comes to Harlem

New York Times

Thursday Styles

Downtown Comes to Harlem


John Lei for The New York Times
N, a clothing boutique near Seventh Avenue north of Central Park.



By RUTH LA FERLA
Published: June 22, 2006

TALKING up N, his new fashion emporium in Harlem, Larry Ortiz posed a question: "If we had to put Harlem in a bottle, what would the scent be?" He then answered with no prompting. "It would obviously be a little retro, a little 1930's." An infusion, in short, evocative of Harlem's glory years, an era of artistic ferment that spawned Cab Calloway, Dorothy Dandridge and Nat King Cole, fused with a modern street-inflected sensibility.

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Hiroko Masuike for The New York Times
So Hunter owns the Denim Library,
which has an extensive stock of detailed jeans.



Hiroko Masuike for The New York Times
Clothing boutiques like B. Oyama have
found a home near Seventh Avenue
north of Central Park.


Hiroko Masuike for The New York Times
Montgomery Harris moved her clothing
boutique, Montgomery, to Seventh
Avenue from SoHo.

For Mr. Ortiz, one of N's three partners, capturing the essence of the neighborhood is not just rhetoric. To succeed as a merchant, he maintained, he will need to distill Harlem, not just in a fragrance but in all of the upscale fashions, home accessories and cosmetic lines sold at his gracious two-level store in a town house on 116th Street between Seventh and Lenox Avenues.

His objective in showcasing brands like Nicole Miller, Hugo Boss, Marimekko and Jonathan Adler to the increasingly affluent enclave north of Central Park is partly to cater to a fashionably hip local population that has until now traveled downtown in search of popular fashion labels. He is also the latest in a growing number of retailers to invoke Harlem's multilayered heritage to put their wares on the fashion map.

"One of the things that is compelling to us is the idea of branding Harlem," Mr. Ortiz said. It is an idea he hopes to render concrete by offering a mix of local labels and African-American designers like Byron Lars and Tracy Reese with more established, upscale brands. "It's very important to push a lot of black designers who wouldn't get the same attention elsewhere," he said.

"This store is not about hip-hop," he added emphatically.

At 4,000 square feet, N, which opened in April in Mount Morris Park, is the largest upscale retailer to descend on the area. Like N, other newcomers are pointedly distancing themselves from the brash hip-hop aesthetic and offering fashion that deliberately summons Harlem's fabled past, along with current fashion trends being interpreted by downtown outposts like Scoop, Intermix and Big Drop and also by a clutch of stylish men's stores.

As well they might. They have arrived in a rapidly gentrifying neighborhood. Mount Morris Park, a 16-block area from 118th Street to 124th Street between Fifth and Seventh Avenues, has the highest concentration of Harlem households with incomes exceeding $100,000, said Nikoa Evans, a partner in the store and a former vice president for finance for the Upper Manhattan Empowerment Zone, a federal economic development initiative. Affluent residents pay about $750,000 for a one-bedroom condominium and $2 million for the traditional brownstones that are in high demand.

But Mount Morris Park, and much of Harlem, remains a relative bargain for boutique owners, who pay rents varying from $75 a square foot to as much as $150 on 125th Street, compared with $700 on prime blocks along Madison Avenue.

Flaunting an aura of exclusivity, the new shops offer a high-style — and pricey — alternative to the wares on 125th Street. That crowded, populist thoroughfare is now home to, among others, a MAC cosmetics store; Atmos, a Japanese-owned store specializing in hard-to-find sneakers, with a flagship in the Harajuku district of Tokyo; Old Navy and H & M.

"Harlem is so much more than just 125th Street," said Faith Hope Consolo, the chairwoman of the retail leasing and sales division at Prudential Douglas Elliman. "There is so much retail potential there," said Ms. Consolo, who is scouting sites for several clients. "The challenge is to choose the right location."

Springing up along and just off Seventh and Lenox Avenues, from about 114th Street to 135th Street, are stores like Pieces of Harlem, on West 135th Street, a boutique that sells denim skirts and jackets with Victorian-inspired ruffles and pearl buttons designed by the owners, Latisha and Colin Daring. It also carries draped jersey dresses ($354) by Rachel Roy, who is married to the rap entrepreneur Damon Dash, and ribbon-trimmed T-shirts ($185) by Gwen Stefani.
Montgomery, on Seventh Avenue, sells handbags, T-shirts and lingerie emblazoned with the image of Jolinda, a head-wrapped rag doll that recalls the Southern roots of its designer, Montgomery Harris, who moved her store from SoHo to Harlem about three years ago. Ms. Harris is also known for her whimsically hand-embroidered, one-of-a-kind skirts and dresses, many in a vintage mood ($400 to $500).

Another new store is Denim Library, on Seventh Avenue, a repository for premium jeans like People's Liberation, Citizens for Humanity and Ciano Farmer, all of which are displayed folded with rear pockets on view in a series of library shelves, and sell for $130 to $750. Hats by Bunn, on Seventh Avenue, sells waxed-straw chapeaus and flat-top felt hats by Bunn, the Trinidad-born milliner.

Bernard Oyama, the owner of B. Oyama, an elegant old-world style haberdashery on Seventh Avenue, sells his own designs of suits, shirts and neckwear, which are displayed amid a collection of black-and-white photographs of dapper greats like Miles Davis and Duke Ellington, each a reminder that the Harlem of the 30's through the 60's was a thriving style capital.

"The idea was to bring back the sense of quality to Harlem," said Mr. Oyama, a native of Gabon who studied fashion design in Paris. His store draws locals and, he said, even greater numbers of clients from the Bronx, Brooklyn and New Jersey, who drop in from time to time to be fitted for custom-tailored suits ($800 to $2,200), and to pick up bow ties, cravats and kaleidoscopically colorful gingham and paisley pocket squares.

Not every store is so rarefied. Harlemade, which has been at 116th Street for six years, is stocked with books and photographs offering glimpses of the historic area and its architecture. It also sells handbags, dolls and an assortment of T-shirts bearing Harlem logos.
"I was the first to brand Harlem," insisted Murphy Heyliger, an owner. "Since then I've seen other companies realize you can get cool by putting your neighborhood on a shirt."

Mr. Heyliger is typical of the merchants catering to both residents and visitors drawn to a Harlem that is increasingly perceived as romantic and vibrant enough to draw several thousand tourists on weekends, many of whom place boutique-hopping high on an itinerary that might also include dining at Emperor's Roe or Settepani, and touring the Studio Museum, which exhibits the work of contemporary African-American artists.

Despite those attractions, some skeptical local merchants and residents wonder if importing fancy wares to Harlem is not premature. The new boutiques are interspersed with bodegas, hairdressers and discount stores, and not all of the retail landscape looks promising. Stores like N "may be too early," said Minya Quirk, the owner of Brand Pimps, a fashion consulting company, and a Harlem resident.

Ms. Quirk also frets that the goods may not be relevant to a local population. "Harlem residents have a deeply ingrained sense of personal style," she said. "They know what they want, and I think a lot of retailers might underestimate that."

Not Mr. Ortiz, who argues that his inventory was conceived expressly to appeal to style-driven locals. N offers fashion at prices that vary from $165 for a cotton shirt with grosgrain detailing to $1,000 for a leather coat. Sizes range from 0 to 16.

"We have a market here that has certain needs when it comes to sizing," he said. "We're offering larger sizes mixed in with smaller ones in a very unapologetic way. And we're always making sure we'll accommodate a variety of body types."

The fashions are often more boldly patterned than those at shops in other neighborhoods. "They reflect the way our uptown customers would like to wear clothes, and an understanding that this market is more heavily into color," Mr. Ortiz said.
Harlem shoppers also are serious fragrance consumers, which is evident from the proliferation of shops displaying ever-widening selections of designer scents. That infatuation attracted Laurice Rahmé, the entrepreneur behind Bond No. 9, with scents named after New York neighborhoods. Ms. Rahmé, who was prescient in branding the area with New Haarlem, a scent introduced in 2004, plans to open a store in Harlem this year. Her flagship is on Bond Street in Lower Manhattan. "But what happened to retailing and tourism downtown is going to happen uptown," she predicted.

Bud Konheim, the chief executive of Nicole Miller, a line with hothouse colors and animated prints that are popular at N, is confident that a presence in the neighborhood is healthy for the bottom line. The collection at N is expected to generate $300,000 to $500,000 in its first year, he said.

"Harlem is an undiscovered secret for now, but that won't last," Mr. Konheim went on. "Things are moving too fast."