There's Shopping, then There's Shopping

Behind every good store, there’s an artful shopper. Most home furnishings stores in our region, for example, select their stock from the furniture market at High Point, NC and from the vendors at various trade shows at the Javits Center in New York. In other words, the same stuff is available to everyone; the art is in the selection process. The better retailers, of course, develop exclusive resources with crafts people and antiques pickers, but, for convenience sake, these tend to be fairly local.

At Foley & Cox HOME, a store that opened just this week on Warren Street, they do things differently. Foley-Cox is a highly regarded New York-based interior-design team. But before forming a design partnership, Mary Foley and Michael Cox graduated from the Ralph Lauren School of Shopping and Set Design, where they finished at the top of the class. Ever since he began creating his Home Collection in the early ‘80s, Ralph Lauren has fielded a team of world-class scavengers whose job is to circle the globe with more-or-less open budgets, buying stuff the way you and I would wheel a cart around a supermarket. Consequently, anyone who travels and enjoys shopping has had the following experience: You’re in a shop in an remote region of an obscure country. Maybe you arrived by camel. Through a translator, the owner, shaking his head with regret, tells you, it’s too bad you didn’t get here last week. Someone from Ralph Lauren was in and bought all his best things. (Why does Ralph Lauren need so much stuff? Inspiration.) So when Mary Foley says, “The store gives us the opportunity to take advantage of all the wonderful craftspeople, artisans and resources we have discovered around the world, and share them with a wider public,” she’s not kidding.