As the World Turned: Soap Opera Prop Shop Opens in Amenia
Gilded tin candle sconces, $35 - $75
For seventeen years, Dennis Donegan shopped on behalf of the glamorous residents of Oakdale, Illinois, a cadre of fictional characters whose shenanigans have been enthralling daytime t.v. audiences for the 54 years As the World Turns has been on CBS. On September 17, that World stops in its axis, after the last episode airs, victim, as are all daytime soaps, of cable t.v.‘s myriad options and viewers’ changing tastes.
When the cancellation of the show was announced early last winter, Donegan and others in the cast and crew were given the opportunity to buy the props that for decades had been persuading viewers that Tom and Margo, the Snyders, Lucinda, and assorted friends, enemies and neighbors were enviably rich and stylish.
Now Donegan and his wife Martha have opened a shop, Donegan’s Done Ag’ins in Amenia, where they are selling the props from As the World Turns. “In the early years, they bought lots of antiques, good lamps, a practice I was able to continue to a degree, so at the final prop sale, I acquired plenty of quality stuff,” says Dennis. “But as the audience shrank, so did our budgets. Still, we had to keep up appearances. So I got good at spotting inexpensive items that, with a little work maybe, could pass for expensive.”
Dennis Donegan’s eye is so good and his choices have been so unfailingly persuasive that he has been nominated eleven times and won five Daytime Emmy Awards for Set Decoration. Though the taste level at his store is consistently high, all levels of quality are represented in the merchandise. The Donegans make no attempt to palm off cheap reproductions and Pier 1 imports as the real thing. In fact, they delight in playing a version of “Where’s Waldo?” with visitors. “See if you can pick out the item that came from Home Depot,” Martha, a graphic designer who worked in fashion in New York, challenges a visitor. This reporter, ostensibly someone with a measure of expertise in these matters, was genuinely stymied. Even after Martha revealed the identity of the item, it was still impossible, even upon close inspection, to accept its humble origin.
Before joining the show, Dennis Donegan, who has a degree in interior design from LSU, studied decorative painting at the fabled Isabel O’Neil Studio in Manhattan, then taught there for many years. While there, he began freelancing for As The World Turns, filling in for one of the set decorator’s occasionally, and eventually they offered him a job. His training in trompe l’oeil is why it’s impossible to spot the Home Depot item; as needed, Donegan messes around with the pieces he buys until they look suitably aged and of high quality. This is a practice he intends to continue at the shop, where the back room will serve as his atelier.
Presently, the front of the shop is charmingly crammed to the rafters with a mere fraction of the props Donegan acquired at the sale. His stash will roll out in waves, as the stock from the previous wave gets snapped up, which it is bound to do quickly, as the prices on all the items are beyond fair. Meanwhile, Donegan will continue to shop for his store as he has for the past seventeen years with those stylish residents of Oakdale, Illinois and CBS’s tight budget in mind. He claims that it disciplines his choices to buy for “real” people and “real” rooms. Even though, of course, everybody (sort of) understands that they were just actors mouthing lines and meeting marks on a sound stage. “A set might play for many years, then get scrapped,” says Donegan. “Later we’d reuse the props somewhere else, but, inevitably, some viewer would write in to ask, ‘Why is Tom and Margo’s quilt in one of the Snyder’s guests rooms?’ ”
Donegan’s Done Ag’ins
3324 Route 343
Amenia, NY
845.789.1331
Thursday - Saturday & Monday 10 a.m. - 5 p.m.
Or by appointment
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Posted by Marilyn Bethany on 09/02/10 at 01:31 AM • Permalink
A Fashion Pop-Up Shop at FACE Stockholm in Hudson
Petria May, a former New York City lawyer who now lives in Great Barrington, has a somewhat incompatible passion for country living and chic city clothing. For the past seven years, she has reconciled these divergent interests in a series of high-end vintage clothing stores, beginning with a shop on Route 44 in Norfolk, CT, and then a boutique by Rubi’s cafe in Great Barrington, which she closed last spring. Now, she is reconciling her return to part-time lawyering with a new pop-up shop at FACE Stockholm, the makeup boutique, on Warren Street in Hudson.
Selling and buying clothes professionally evolved from necessity. “I used to sell a lot of my personal clothes to consignment shops in New York City,” she says. “I would become easily bored with my clothes. When I opened my first store, I sold a lot of my own things.” A devotee of Belgian designers like Ann Demeulemeester and Dries Van Noten, she is drawn to “architectural and experimental clothing,” and she likes nothing more than putting together old pieces in new ways. “What makes me different than other vintage shops is my personal styling advice,” she says. Petria plans to be on the floor at FACE Stockholm every Saturday, helping women (men’s wear may come later) combine, say, a 1970s Bill Blass black-and-white tweed maxi skirt ($200) with a vintage Diane Von Furstenberg black-and-white wrap blouse ($58)—a look that she does not consider retro but fashion forward. “My approach to vintage is always with an eye to tomorrow,” she says. “I see vintage as my way of putting my finger on what’s coming next.” Does she consider what she sells investment dressing? “I think you can! It’s not fast fashion—and I love fast fashion—but I sell pieces people will keep in their closets for a long time.”
FACE Stockholm co-owner Martina Arfwidson (left with Petria), whose mother started the makeup company in Sweden more than 25 years ago, is thrilled that Petria will lure new customers into her airy corner store. “I’ve been a customer of Petria’s for a very long time,” says Martina, who just happens to be wearing a vintage Mila Schön sleveless trench dress that she bought a couple of years ago from Petria. “I think she will bring a new energy to the retail environment. We don’t have a display window here, but at my stores in Rhinebeck and SoHo we always add an artistic element. Petria’s clothes will bring a playful, colorful element into the store. The only problem is that I like what she has so much I may be her best customer.”
Are there really many women in the Rural Intelligence region who care about fashion? “More than you would think!” says Petria. “Though a lot of my clients are from the city and buy the clothes to take back to the city.” But Petria doesn’t wait to go back to Manhattan to dress up. Whether she’s attending a store opening in Millerton or a concert in Pittsfield, she is dressed uniquely and imaginatively. “Clothes are an easily accessible way to express my creativity,” she says. “It’s a way for me to send ideas out into the world.”
Petria Boutique at FACE Stockholm
401 Warren Street, Hudson; 518 822 9474
Thursday - Monday 11 a.m. - 6 p.m.
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Posted by Dan Shaw on 09/01/10 at 02:02 PM • Permalink
Rural Outfitters: Peter Becks Village Store Opens in Salisbury
Store owners Becky Belcher & Peter Feen on a bench made out of old skis
With three boarding schools—Salisbury, Indian Mountain and Hotchkiss—Salisbury, CT, is arguably the preppiest town in our region, but until this week there was no place for prep students or their parents (or grandparents) to buy the high quality sporty clothing and gear that’s essential to the preppy lifestyle. Now Becky Belcher (Taft ‘97) and Peter Feem (Gunnery ‘99) have opened Peter Becks Village Store on Main Street, which carries a wide range of casual apparel, footwear and paraphernelia for country life including hiking boots and outerwear by Patagonia. “There was a void in the market,” says Belcher, who grew up in Salisbury and shopped for athletic equipment at the Village Store that occupied this same location for many years and closed in 2005. “I’ve come full circle. Annette West, who is our store manager, was my tennis coach growing up. She used to string tennis racquets for the Village Store and she will be doing so here, too.”
Although it carries snazzy polo shirts by Collared Greens, belts and ties by Vineyard Vines and tennis togs by Wilson, Peter Becks is not for preppies only. It plans to cater to the thousands of Appalachian Trail hikers who pass through Salisbury every year, picking up care packages at the post office across the street and carbo-loading on sandwiches from LaBonne’s Market and cookies from Sweet William’s Bakery. “We have tick guard, sleeping bag pads, camping utensils and tents stakes,” says Feen. “This is a place where you can buy a can of tennis balls, shoe laces, Smartwool socks. We’ll be getting tents and sleeping bags soon. We don’t want to be perceived as a shop for weekenders though we expect they will enjoy shopping here. We’ll adjust the merchandise as we find out what people want.” Adds Belcher: “We have things that women need, too, like yoga pants and running bras.”
Though they are virgin retailers, Belcher knows the challenges faced by independent clothing stores, because she worked as a sales rep for Vineyard Vines for six years. “I also handled the custom lines for prep schools so I understand that market, too,” she explains. She knew that there was not a store for 20 miles that sold the brands she wanted to sell—including Ray Ban, Marmot, Patagonia, Bill’s Khakis—so she was sure that manufacturers would be happy to supply her shop. “We really don’t have any local competition,” she says. While Saperstein’s in Millerton already caters to the Carhartt crowd, Peter Becks is going one-step upscale with items such as $80 Mountain Khakis from Jackson Hole, Wyoming and well-cut Ibex merino wool sportswear from Woodstock, Vermont.
The couple have designed their store to be a hangout with a welcoming seating area in front of an electric fireplace flanked by bookshelves stocked with guidebooks. To make sure they got the look right, they sought advice from designer Matthew Patrick Smyth who has gotten rave reivews for his makeover of the White Hart Inn up the street. They installed a TV over the fireplace so when people come in and give talks about travel or sports they can show films, too. The store’s logo includes a ski jumper because Peter Becks expects to capitalize on the hubub surrounding the annual Salisbury Ski Jumps as well as the Junior Olympic Trials which will be coming to town for the first time next winter. “The Salisbury Winter Sports Association has given us old skis that we’ve hung vertically on the walls to divide areas of merchandise,” says Feen. “We also re-used two signs from the old Village Store.”
Though Salisbury has an independent grocery store, pharmacy, bank, post office and several shops, it is a relatively sleepy village, and the couple hope Peter Becks will help enliven it. “It’s such a great town untouched by chain stores and chain restaurants, but it’s in need of some new energy,” says Belcher. “It’s a very outdoorsy town and we are filling a void. People enjoy shopping locally, and we want to make shopping locally as fun as possible.”
Peter Becks Village Store
19 Main Street, Salisbury, CT; 860.596.4217
Wednesday - Monday 9 a.m. - 7 p.m.
Closed Tuesdays
Grand Opening Celebration August 28 10 a.m. - 5 p.m, with free hamburgers and hot dogs
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Posted by Dan Shaw on 08/18/10 at 08:55 PM • Permalink
Charley’s Fund Opens A Boutique in Stockbridge
Everywhere you go in the Berkshires you see women wearing chunky charm bracelets with smiley face discs. “The ‘Believe” bracelet in sterling silver is our best-selling item,” says Tracy Seckler, the Egremont mom who runs Charley’s Fund, a Berkshire-based not-for-profit foundation devoted to raising funds to develop treatments for Duchenne muscular dystrophy, the fatal pediatric disease her nine-year-old son, Charley, is fighting. For the past couple of years, Seckler has been raising money by selling merchandise such as tank tops and hoodies online and at special events. “We have a great online business but we really wanted to reach more people, which is why we decided to open a store. We really wanted more people to hear our story.”
Seckler decided to open in Stocbridge because her friend Ali Aronoff, who owns Peace, Love & Chocolate in the Stockbridge Mews, had been successfully selling a small assortment of Charley’s Fund items for the past 18 months. “When the space next to Ali’s became available, I realized we could move our office there and have a shop in the front,” says Seckler, who had a soft opening in July, and is having a grand opening on Thursday, August, 12, from 5 - 7 p.m. (Altough the store has posted opening hours of 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. seven days a week through leaf season, you should be understanding if the store is not open because, as Seckler expains, “we’re staffed entirely by volunteers.”) Seckler learned right away that tourists like Berkshires memenots, so she is stamping or embroidering “Homegrown in the Berkshires” on items made or designed here. She’s been selling a lot of $45 picnic blankets that have a water-resistant back and a super soft top. “It’s the most useful thing on earth!” she says. “It’s perfect for Tanglewood or the beach. I keep one in my car at all times.” She’s also got umbrellas, sparkly evening bags, and lime green lunch boxes, which have all been designed by Studio Two of Lenox. “And if you come to the grand opening, you get to meet Charley and get a free Charley’s Fund temporary tattoo.”
Charley’s Fund Store at The Mews
36 Main Street, Stockbridgel 413.298.4300
Daily 10 a.m. - 6 p.m.
Grand Opening: August 12, 5 - 7 p.m.
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Posted by Dan Shaw on 08/11/10 at 11:02 AM • Permalink
Panning for Gold at the New York Designer Fabric Outlet
Shopping for home furnishings fabrics is no picnic for non-professional decorators. Visualizing which fabric will look and perform best in a given situation is difficult and confusing work. Which is why, most days at the New York Designer Fabric Outlet in Valatie (Columbia County), New York, the place is as quiet as a library. Annette McConnell mans the outlet by herself, patiently serving shoppers seeking deep discounts on the kind of fabrics that sell to decorators and interior designers at the to-the-trade-only showrooms in the likes of the D & D Building in New York. Annette patiently snips swatches, steering customers through the thousands of choices toward what she and they think/hope they (might) want. Then she helps each customer figure out how many yards the project will require. It all takes great concentration, hence the almost studious atmosphere.
Until John Knott (above left) shows up. Owner of both the outlet and, more important from his perspective, Quadrille, the New York showroom whose cast-offs fill the outlet’s shelves, Knott knows each of these fabrics as if it were an old friend whose life story he cannot wait to share. Holding up a yard or so of lampas-weave green silk, Knott says, “It sold for $240 a yard wholesale ten years ago. We sell it here for $50. This is all that’s left. We shipped most of it to Melville Doty. Remember him? He was Billy Baldwin’s assistant way back when. He’s about 90 now. Three or four years ago, he was doing the Government House in Nassau—you know, that’s the one that had been done up in the 40s for the Dutchess of Windsor. They were on a tight budget, so Annette sent him samples, and he ordered all of the fabrics from here.”
Knott holds another fabric, a yellow cotton damask, aloft, and says, “This was custom-made for Laura Bush’s private sitting room off the master bedroom in the White House.” In Knott’s chatter, D.C.‘s best addresses come up a lot. “Isn’t this the one they used in Sasha’s bedroom?,” he asks his friend John Fondas, holding up a peppy orange-and-white chevron print by Alan Campbell. “What about this?,” a regular customer asks of a cream-ground chintz with a print of brown stars that she’d bought 20 yards of @$10 per on an earlier visit. “Mark Hampton used it at Blair House,” says Knott. Adds Fondas, “It also covers every inch of Lily Safra’s New York dressing room.”
Even for those who don’t give a fig about their provenance, the fabrics from the New York Designer Fabric Outlet are fun—who doesn’t love owning things of the first quality that have been picked up for a song? This is why antiques dealers throughout the region buy bits and pieces here to upholster chair seats and the like. It is also why a lot of interior designers from New York City, such as Fondas (he and Annette rummaging at left), who routinely buy from Quadrille and similar showrooms for their clients, make the pilgrimage to Valatie to shop for themselves and their friends. Knott bought Quadrille thirty years ago and has been growing it ever since. He has an uncanny knack for buying declasse fabric companies that he anticipates will have a fashion comeback. As its name suggests, China Seas specializes in batiks and clean bright cottons wovens that were all the rage several decades back. Now, as Knott had predicted, they are chic once again. Another brand, Alan Campbell, whose former hay day had been the 1960s and 70s, is, according to Knott, prominently featured in this months’s House Beautiful.
China Seas plaid at the outlet (left) and in Hudson at Arenskjold Antiques on modern chairs.
Annette is entirely without guile or pretense; she treats every customer as if he or she were Billie Baldwin incarnate. Knott, on the other hand, likes to think that his fabrics are being used well by people who understand what an amazing bargain they are. One such knowledgeable customer once pointed to a pale gold spolanato weave that usually sells wholesale for $350 a yard and exclaimed, “We just saw that in the Palais Royale in Paris! What’s it doing in Valatia?!” Answer: Waiting for the right customer, perhaps a modernist with the vision to recognize a smashing throw-pillow fabric, to snap it up for $35 a yard.
New York Designer Fabric Outlet
3143 Route 9 (north of the Hannaford traffic circle)
Valatie; 518.758.1555
Daily 9 a.m. - 5 p.m.; closed Tuesdays
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Posted by Marilyn Bethany on 07/31/10 at 05:51 PM • Permalink
Wing & Clover: An Artist’s Palette
By Kathryn Matthews
Perhaps, it’s the name “Wing & Clover” that catches your eye as you stroll down East Market Street in Rhinebeck. Or, the chalkboard, stationed outside the storefront, listing “Weekly Workshops” that piques your interest. Or, maybe you’ve just wandered in by accident.
No matter. This tranquil, white space, which triples as a workshop studio, gallery and retail store, immediately engages your imagination. The minimalist, light-filled interior features a curated selection of work by local artists and artisans. And a well-edited collection of art and crafts-themed books, supplies and gifts line the shelves. Workshops run the creative DIY gamut, from oil painting and knitting, to bookmaking and Photoshop. Taught by local Hudson Valley artists,
most classes are one-day, limited to 10-12 people, and last two or three hours.
“We’re committed to the process of being creative” says owner Marla Walker (below left, with employees Alex Batkin and Yvette Rogers), who opened Wing & Clover last December.
The seed for this kind of storefront was planted in 2007 when Walker, her husband, Brian Walker, an architect, and their two young sons moved from Brooklyn to Barrytown. Away from the City, she said, “I gained not just greater physical space, but also more psychological freedom, allowing me to think and to reflect.”
This opportunity for reflection sparked Walker’s desire to be creative—and to try new things. One of her recent creative endeavors was teaching herself how to quilt.
“I figured that there might be other people like me, who want to expand their creative horizons,” she said. At the same time, she was meeting many talented, creative people in the area.
The impetus for opening the store—and its guiding tenet—is that an “examined life” —one that taps into your creative potential—is an enriched life.
Its unusual name, referring to both tool (wing) and raw material (clover) that bees need to make honey, is Walker’s metaphor for the creative process. In this case, the store supplies the books, materials and classes that help create your “honey”.
For Walker, the store has been a way to connect people who are eager to learn, with a community of local artists and artisans, who are happy to teach. She has also just begun using the workshop studio to showcase the work of the instructors. Eventually, what students make will also be displayed. “It’s a great way to discover a local artist—including yourself!” she said.
The overarching theme at Wing & Clover is documentation—and the many forms of storytelling. One of the most consistently popular workshops is papercutting, taught by Jenny Lee Fowler, a traditional silhouette artist, specializing in custom profile portraits. Her work, which currently appears on the cover of Neiman Marcus’ Fall 2010 catalog, is also on display at the shop. Classes on fiction-writing, pattern-making and block printing also tend to fill up quickly.
Much of what Walker sells complement the workshops being offered. Over time, she intends to create whole sections in the store devoted to fabric, textiles, quilting, photography and film-making, as well as art supplies for painting or collage classes.
Walker is used to thinking out-of-the-box. While getting her Masters in Education at Harvard, she specialized in media and technology. Inspired by her graduate work—helping inner city, pre-teen girls make documentary videos about their lives—Walker founded a “Monday for Girls” after-school program that encouraged girls’ use of technology at The Computer Museum.
From Boston, she headed to New York, where she worked as a producer at Children’s Television Workshop, then at Noggin.
Her foray into retail was another—albeit accidental—creative outlet for Walker. In 1999, she and a friend opened “Bird”, a clothing store in Park Slope, after searching their neighborhood in vain for stores that sold cheap, stylish clothes. Filling an obvious retail void, Bird was instant hit. (The duo sold the business to its current owner in 2004.)
But with Wing & Clover, Walker wants to go beyond just a commercial retail experience: “I want to inspire others to participate in the creative process because, whatever the medium, we all have stories to tell.”
Wing & Clover
22 East Market Street
Rhinebeck; 845.876.1035
Summer Hours: Monday-Saturday 11am-6pm; Sunday 11am-4pm
Kathryn Matthews, Rural Intelligence’s Dutchess County correspondent, is a lifestyles writer based in Red Hook and New York City who frequently writes about travel, health, food and leisure for the New York Times, Town & Country and O Magazine.
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Posted by Marilyn Bethany on 07/27/10 at 11:00 AM • Permalink
The Berkshires’ First Lady of Fashion: Mikki Brown
If you see a woman wearing a dress this summer that is so exceptionally pretty, quirky or arresting that you have to stop and ask her, “Where’d you get that?” the answer will more than likely be “The Browns.” Located on Water Street in Williamstown, which is the heart of the Williams College campus, The Browns offers a dog-whistle fashion sensibility filtered for the new ruralists: clothes and accessories that are right for everything from openings at Jacob’s Pillow and The Clark to a wedding in a meadow or an outdoor concert in the courtyard of MASS MoCA. 
When Mikki Brown and her husband, Tom, opened their loft-like shop five years ago, they were refugees from suburban Fairfield County, CT, who’d decided to take a sabbatical from their fashion careers and try living at their weekend house in Hancock, MA. Tom had worked at Mitchell’s in Westport, where hedge-fund guys bought their four-figure suits, and Mikki had a resume that included big jobs at Saks Fifth Avenue, Bergdorf Goodman, Issey Miyake and Capezio. They discovered that as much as they loved the simplicity of rural life they were starved for style. They decided to see if they could create a boutique that would synthesize their past and present lives. “My goal was to have unusual things that you could not find in department stores or specialty shops,” says the effervescent Mikki. “Of course, I had no idea what people here actually wore.”
Mikki decided she would stock The Browns with clothes for women (and men) like herself who think that apparel can be art and who are willing to invest in quality clothes with style that supersedes fashion trends (and has very little to do with designer labels.) “That is my biggest challenge,” she explains. “It’s amazing how much people want to buy clothes with labels they recognize from magazines.” Although she carries some clothes by Max Mara, Martin Margiela’s MM6 line, and Jean-Charles de Castelbajac, most of the labels on the rack are obscure such as Nuno from Japan and SkifO from St. Louis. “My average dress costs about $265, and most of my T-shirts are $50 - $80,” she says. “Sometimes, we carry luxury items like a $3,500 Max Mara winter coat, but I know my customers well and who might actually buy that coat.”
The Browns is not about what’s in fashion this season. “My goal is to help people find their personal style and mix pieces from many collections,” says Mikki, who dresses that way herself. On a recent weekday, she was wearing an exuberant and youthful outfit: a hand painted silk Heyne Bogut jumper (“made in Philadelphia!”) over layered T-shirts by Beautiful People and Martin Margiela, with French ballet flats by Pataugas and a chunky vintage necklace. “I don’t think age is a factor if you love clothes,” she says.
While some college students shop at The Browns, it is more typically their parents who are the store’s customers. Mikki and Tom tried to sell cutting-edge men’s clothing but the market was too small, so they stick to more traditional lines for guys such as Bill’s Khakis (“made in America!”), French Connection T-shirts, and custom-made Jack Victor suits (“they’re made in Canada, cost about $850 which is ridiculously low for a custom fit, and you get it in four weeks.”) Their customers are a mix of summer tourists, actors from Williamstown Theatre Festival, and year-round regulars from three states. “We have loyal clients from Dorset and Bennington, Vermont, and from Albany and Saratoga, New York, and from Sheffield and Great Barrington, Massachusetts,” she says.
The store even has fans from New York City such as Leslie Milton, the director of major gifts for the Tenement Museum on the Lower East Side, who has a weekend house in Stockbridge. “I walked into the Browns about two weeks after they opened and from the minute I met Mikki, I knew I could trust her to dress me,” says Milton. “It’s a rare day that I’m not wearing at least one item of clothing from the store, and it’s a very frequent occurrence that one hundred percent of my outfit, including bag and shoes, was hand-picked for me by Mikki. She has the most incredible sense of what will look good on you and she is never wrong. And if all that weren’t enough, everyone who knows her will tell you that she is the most positive, generous, beautiful woman they know. I just adore her.”
The Browns
16 Water Street, Williamstown, MA; 413.458.1618
Summer Hours:
Monday - Saturday 10 a.m.- 6 p.m.
Sunday 12 - 5 p.m.
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Posted by Dan Shaw on 06/23/10 at 10:23 AM • Permalink
Hudson’s White Rice Expands to Great Barrington
Was the opening in mid-May of a Great Barrington branch of White Rice—the six-year-old Hudson shop selling apparel and antiques from Bali—part of a “crossover” trend as described by the astute social observer and blogger Sam Pratt? He draws a comparison between White Rice and other locally-owned “chains” like Hammertown Barn (Great Barrington, Pine Plains, Rhinebeck) and Baba Louie’s (Great Barrington, Hudson and soon Pittsfield.) With its deep blue walls, boho vibe, and eclectic merchandise, White Rice feels like its karma was to be in Great Barrington.
Owners Rudy Huston (right) and Mary Vaughn Williams started their wholesale clothing company two decades ago after falling in love with Bali and its batik prints and wood furniture. For many years, they lived in New York City and shortly after 9/11 they decided they wanted to live a rural life. “But I wanted a little bit of the city in the country which is why we moved to Hudson,” says Huston. “We could open a shop and live upstairs and be with our children all the time.” Although many of their regular customers in Hudson come from Connecticut and Massachusetts, they felt that they weren’t really tapping into the Berkshire/Litchfield market. “There are people who see Great Barrington and Hudson as very connected and others who seem them as very different worlds. Some people are intimidated by the grit of Hudson.”
Huston sees synergy between the two towns, and he notes that one of the first customers at the new shop was a woman who lives in Hawthorne Valley which is right in between the two stores. White Rice carries the kind of flowy, fun and feminine accessories and clothes that don’t cost a fortune—a cotton dress for $60, a rayon dress for $68, a sweater for $74—so customers keep coming back to buy more. Huston isn’t saying whether he’s thinking about a third store yet, but he’s very pleased with how number 2 has turned out. “I’m a ‘chain store’ now,” he says happily.
White Rice
Main Street, Great Barrington; 413. 644.9200
Sunday - Thursday 11 a.m. - 5 p.m.
Friday 11 a.m. - 7 p.m.
Saturday 10 a.m. - 7 p.m.
531 Warren Street, Hudson; 518.697.3500
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Posted by Dan Shaw on 06/03/10 at 06:19 AM • Permalink
dbO Home’s Pop-up Shop Opens in Great Barrington
Since giving up her high-powered marketing job at Elektra Records in New York City in 2006, Dana Brandwein (left with her husband, Daniel Oates) has been making pottery in her barn in Sharon, CT. Her porcelain and stoneware is found on the tables at the highly regarded restaurant Blue Hill at Stone Barns and the Harney Tea Salon in Millerton. In the past four years, she has sold her hand glazed one-of-a-kind hand-thrown, hand-built or hand-caste bowls, plates, platters and vases to some of the best home furnishings stores in the country, including ABC Carpet & Home in Manhattan and Urban Mercantile in San Francisco. You could find a few of her pieces locally at Privet House in Warren and Liliandloo in Hudson; but until last week when she opened a pop-up shop at Germain in Great Barrington you could not see the entire collection anywhere.
“I loved Germain the minute I read about it last fall in Rural Intelligence,” says Brandwein, who has the sweet-and-smart aura of a one-time hippie-chick, rock-‘n’-roll executive “I thought, I could not only live in this store. I could sell my pottery in this store, too.” This spring, after Julia Baier moved out of her part of Germain and before a new tenant was ready to move in, Germain owner Elena Letteron offered Brandwein the opportunity to have her own shop-within-a-shop through June 6. “It’s the perfect place and opportunity for me.”
Her boutique is a chance for shoppers to discover locally made tableware that has a rustic elegance such as platters that look like burled wood or white birch bark. One of Brandwein’s signatures is pressing leaves, twigs or honeycomb (from Meili Farm near her studio) into the clay to create a pattern or decoration. “It makes each piece one of a kind,” she explains. Though the pieces, especially the porcelain, feel very delicate, Brandwein says they are tough enough to be used every day. “You don’t need to have a full set of anything. It mixes very well with pieces from Ikea.”
It also looks good on the stunning $6,000 Live Edge English elm table with triple bent legs that was made by her husband, Daniel Oates, a sculptor and former puppet maker. “I use elm that has been felled responsibly,” he says. “A lot of it gets cut down because of Dutch elm disease.” Besides collaborating with Oates on a group of lamps, Brandwein is expanding beyond ceramics. She recently took a trip to Peru where she was introduced to artisans who work in fair-trade workshops and make textiles and pillows out of super-soft alpaca and cotton. Brandwein loves her new career where she’s star of the show. She says she got out of the music business just in the nick of time. “I don’t understand why people want to buy music on their phones!” she says, laughing. “I wouldn’t fit in anymore.” But she certainly fits in beautifully at Germain.
dbO Home Pop Up Store at Germain
Through June 6
635 Main Street, Great Barrington; 413.644.8688
Friday & Saturday 11 a.m. - 5 p.m.; Sunday noon. - 4 p.m.
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Posted by Dan Shaw on 05/17/10 at 08:05 PM • Permalink
High End On-Line, the Brave New World of Luxury Retailing
“A couple of years ago, big-time luxury retailing changed drastically. The stores became impossible for a small vendor like me to deal with,” says Kerry MacBride (left), a Hudson-based jewelry designer whose creations had done well for years at such lofty outlets as Berdorf Goodman, Saks Fifth Avenue, and Neiman Marcus. “They would demand that I agree to take back anything that hadn’t sold by the end of a season, as if my stuff were on consignment. Even if a customer came back two years later, to take advantage of the retailer’s ‘generous’ return policy, they’d send the piece back to me and demand that I return what they’d paid me.”
MacBride dates this alarming sea-change to 2008, when “Saks marked down everything by 80% at Thanksgiving,” a move that sent shock waves throughout the high-end retail industry. Retailers’ responded by making draconion demands on their vendors—and the stores’ taste suddenly got very safe. “One buyer told me, ‘Our customers don’t want things they have never seen before; they want what their friends have.’” In other words, unless a jewelry designer were a David Yurman, whose chunky cable-inspired baubles are a symbol of tribal affiliation for well-to-do woman nationwide, forget it.
Today, battered but unbroken by the collapse of a (perhaps antiquated) business model that had once sustained him, MacBride has positioned himself to take advantage of another that is just emerging—luxury shopping on-line. “Word on the street is that the Hudson antiques dealers who are doing best are those who have a big internet presence,” he says. For his part, MacBride has created a user-friendly website that offers his creations directly to the consumer, at much-reduced prices. “The message sent by Saks was not lost on consumers,” he contends. “It made everyone reassess what things cost. Now I can offer jewelry at a much better price. A necklace that would have sold for $1000 in a store? If I sell it for $500 over the internet, my profit margin is unchanged.”
MacBride makes jewelry that is highly refined, yet manages to retain a handmade quality. The faint lines in a leaf, for example, may appear to be the leaf’s veins, but they are actually MacBride’s fingerprints, impressions left in the soft wax from which he fashions his prototypes. This is a surprising level of nuance for a $400, 22-karat gold-over-bronze collar (above) or for a pair of gold and mother-of-pearl earrings that cost less than $50. His heavy silver and braided leather bracelets for men (which some woman also enjoy wearing), lack no finesse for all their muscularity, and sell on-line for $125 - $700, exactly half of what they once fetched in stores.
Surviving one major change has opened MacBride to the possibility of others. A jeweler since his days as an art student in Michigan, he recently became interested in designing objects on a larger scale. “In New York, I lived and worked in a 700 square foot loft,” he says. “When I moved to a house in Hudson, I needed more furniture. I was looking for lamps and wondered, if I were designing lamps, how would I want them to look?” Inspired by the bases for Brancusi’s sculptures, by Frank Lloyd Wright’s geometic motifs and those of Charles Rennie MacIntosh, MacBride could envision what his ideal lamp would look like. Only problem: he had no idea how to translate that vision into a lamp, until he recalled something he’d done in art school. He filled a half-gallon milk carton with wet plaster of paris, let it dry, then tore off the carton. and began to sculpt. “I didn’t know how else to do this,” he says. “I spent three months carving blocks of plaster.” He then sent those models to an artisan in Mexico who replicates them in matte travertine, low-luster black onyx, and matte white quartz, “so they don’t look too new and shiny.” The lamps are available in Hudson and in New York through Foley-Cox or via MacBride’s website.
“The lamps are completely timeless; they could have been done this week or in the 30s or 40s,” he says. Other tastemakers seem to agree. “My very first sale through Foley & Cox in New York was to the President of Diane von Furstenburg.” Photographs of silver bracelet and lamp by Michael Fredericks.
Kerry MacBride.com
Foley & Cox Home
317 Warren Street
Hudson; 518.828.3210
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Posted by Marilyn Bethany on 04/20/10 at 05:48 PM • Permalink
