At Last

I love a good tailor, but for many a month, I was without one.  It was a trying time, I was wandering, lost, through a sea of mediocre dry cleaner alternations.

But finally, once my black coat's lining had become truly shredded (and I totally mortified myself by handing it inside out to the coat check woman at a beautiful gala dinner at the University Club a few weeks back), I decided the time had come to rectify the situation.

I was looking for a small proprietor, preferably foreign (I'm sorry, I know this is obnoxious, with vague tones of racism, but in my experience American tailors just aren't that great), who charged reasonable prices (and obviously, did good work).  After a bit of research on Yelp, I settled on Ardian's Tailor.  He is Albanian and has no employees other than himself.  Perfect.

After wandering around aimlessly on the southeast corner of Eighth Avenue and Horatio Street for a good ten minutes searching for 5 Horatio Street, a kindly doorman directed me to the northwest corner and told me to look for the barber shop, then head around the corner.  Oh, joy!  Not only was it a one man (foreign) shop, but it was also hard to find!  I could hardly contain my excitement.  I had a good feeling about this guy.

I rounded the corner and found a door marked "Ardian's".  But the gate was closed.  Boo.  I called, he said he was closed but would open the store for me, and to come in through the barber shop.  Loving this guy even more.

Now I know that people throw around the term "hole in a wall" a bit loosely, but this place literally is a hole in a wall.  It is possibly the tiniest store I've ever seen.  And clothes cover virtually every surface.  Sort of like a bratty teenager's bedroom. 

Anyway, I came, coat (and a cool but ill fitting dress I had picked up at the Yigal Azrouel sample sale a couple of weeks before) in hand.  He took my coat, and directed me to put on the dress.  After a minute or two of pinning, I handed the dress over to him, said a little prayer, and left him to work some magic.

Things got busy, the holidays happened, I didn't get back to pick my clothes up until Saturday.  But the minute I walked in, he knew exactly who I was and what I had come to pick up.  He handed me my totally relined coat (loving not getting my arm stuck in the lining anymore) and asked if I wanted to try on the dress.  I did, and the fit was great.  Maybe one little wrinkle in the back that could be fixed, but was certainly something I could live with.

But Ardian took one look, zeroed in on exactly the wrinkle I had been mulling over, pinned it, and told me to come back on Monday to pick it up.  I am looking forward to picking up the most perfect dress ever.

And the best part?  The relined coat cost $65 (the cheapest I found anywhere else was $80, and the prices at the higher end went up to $120) and the dress alterations cost $35 (and I should add that the alterations were pretty extensive).

So the moral of the story?  I have found my tailor, and I'm sticking with him.

The Death of a Tailor

I was hoping to end my week of my favorite services in New York with a recommendation for a tailor, as I've come to believe that tailoring your clothes is crucial to making them look their best.  I think this view was inspired by something Michael Kors said on Project Runway about great fit?

Anyway, after hearing Michael Kors' bit of wisdom, I emailed a Saville Row tailor who had a blog and asked for recommendation for a professional in New York.  He wrote back telling me that Sal, who had a shop on 61st and Lex, would take care of me.  And boy did he.  Actually, a guy named Danny who worked in the shop did, but he was just wonderful.  I took virtually every pair of pants there (with the exception of those from an especially good Yigal Azrouel sample sale, which fit me absolutely perfectly with no alterations), and every fitted skirt.  You see, my waist to hip ratio is smaller than average (translation:  my butt is big) so I almost always need to have the waist taken in on new butt-covering items. 

I also took in what was a fairly average looking suit that I'd picked up on clearance at Loehman's and he completely reworked it.  He nipped the waist in on the jacket, shortened the sleeves, the skirt, reset the sleeves...god knows what else.  Now it fits me perfectly, the way a much higher end suit would.  All I know is that the whole thing only cost me $100 and now I have random receptionists complimenting me on the suit totally unprompted.

Then one day last year, after having not been in for some time, I brought the shop a few pieces that I had had made for me in Hong Kong that I was unhappy with.  Where was Danny?  I have no idea, but he had been replaced by some twenty year old kid wearing True Religion jeans a little too low on his waist.  I was wary initially.  I like my tailors old and wearing slacks, not ill-fitting expensive jeans.   

Now, the Hong Kong clothes really were terrible, so perhaps it is unfair of me to get annoyed that the guy couldn't get them to look good.  But, I think that when I take a pair of pants in to get fixed I should be able to sit down in them once they've been altered.  I wore them to work one day without testing them out in a seated position, and let me tell you, I was SORRY.  Picture it, an entire day of me attempting to sit in a chair without bending at the waist in an effort to preserve the integrity of some very sensitive areas.  Not fun.

A year and a few months has passed since this traumatic incident, so I think I'm ready to give the kid another try.  I suspect he may be related to the owner, so maybe he's been schooled a bit by now.  I'm taking my horrible Hong Kong clothes back, and actually a coat of mine needs re-lining as well.  I will report back on the results.

In the meantime, I will give you what I consider to be a good service recommendation, so as to fulfill my one-a-day-for-this-week commitment.  Sorry gentlemen, this one doesn't apply to you.

After years of wandering, I have finally settled on an eyebrow place that I'm happy with.  For some reason, perhaps because I have a tiny bald spot on my right eyebrow, eyebrow groomers can never get my arches even.  My left one is always higher than the right.  But then I read in some magazine for aestheticians that this is a common mistake, so maybe my bald spot is not to blame.  

Anyway, I had found a woman at Shobha who didn't seem to fall into this trap, so I was going there for a while, and then bizarrely, out of nowhere she started doing it, and I had uneven eyebrows again.  Dismayed, I (skeptically) gave Marissa's recommendation of the Anastasia Brow Studio in the Times Square Sephora a try.  This was hard for me.  I hate Times Square, and frankly am not the biggest Sephora fan either.

But...success!  It's sort of weird that they use a variety of stencils provided by Anastasia herself, literally laying it on your face and waxing anything that lies outside of the shape, but the outcome is consistently great.  I love that they leave my brows thick, I'm very into that Sophia Loren look with the strong, dark brows.  

Speaking of which, how funny is this picture of Sophia Loren and Jayne Mansfield?  

Sophia's like, Mio Dio, you have got to be kidding me with these ridiculous American breasts.  And Jayne's like, No!  I'm actually not!  Aren't they humongous!  Sophia:  They will be down at your knees in twenty years.  Jayne:  Who cares!  Won't be an issue!  Would you like to see my nipples?  Either way, you will before the night's over!   

At $32 I'm not sure Anastasia qualifies completely as "good service for good value", I mean it only takes like seven minutes...$4.57 a minutes seems a little steep.  But the service is very good, and they're not completely taking the piss like these places that charge $50, even $100 for the same service.  So if you can brave Times Square, give it a try.  If you can't, head over to the location on Fifth Avenue and 48th Street. 

Toes, Fingers Knees and Toes

There's an odd phenomenon that seems to have presented itself among Manhattan women:  absolute finger and toenail obsession.  Weekly manicures and biweekly pedicures are seen by many as a necessity, sort of a periodic dose of mood enhancers I guess.  Actually, looking at how gorgeous these varnishes are (the nail photos are from nail obsessed Blogdorf Goodman, and by the way, the perfume she mentions today is AMAZING, I especially love the Rose Noir), I understand the mood-lifting effect they have on some people.   

I am not judging the nail obsession, I mean anyone who goes to the Union Square Greenmarket on a tri-weekly basis shouldn't be talking...my obsessions just tend more towards food than fingertips.  Which if you've ever seen my nails, is very clear.  They generally can be described no way other than "raggedy". 

However, every couple of months I get in the mood for a little pick me up, and head over to Eve Salon for some nail therapy.  

I've always had great experiences at Eve.  The pedicures are particularly good, I feel like my toes look sort of like very beautiful pieces of candy when all is said and done.  And the manicures last me at least four days (my usual is about a day and a half, so Eve is well above average).  At $13 and $26 for a manicure and pedicure, respectively, it's slightly more than the rock bottom place that's probably around the corner from your apartment, but I'd call that still in the realm of cheap.  Plus I think the quality is better...never an inadvertent cuticle cut, no stray polish and the lotion smells good. 

Also, I LOVE that they don't use those whirlpool baths that most corner nail places insist on.  Barbara Walters did some expose on those things a few years back and it turns out that something like 85% of those baths have filters that have never been cleaned, which means you can get some horrible fungal infection that may never go away (the pictures of the beauty victims' legs were not pretty), so I've been a bit (probably unnecessarily) freaked out about them ever since.

  

The service is, of course, no match for The Best Pedicurist of All Time 

that Vivian's 

family

employs down in Santo Domingo, but then no one in New York, not even the ones that charge panic inducing prices, can match this woman.  So to my mind, in New York, Eve is the next best option.  And, if you're short on time, the waxing services are quite good as well.  It serves as my back-up waxing place if for some reason I can't get in to see Lana and I've got a hair removal emergency.  

For the longest time, Eve was at 400 Bleecker, just across the street from Magnolia Bakery and the queueing customers that love it.  It was a tiny shop, the size of a shoebox really, but it was comfortable and well appointed in the manner a very practical, thrifty but stylish woman might decorate her apartment.  However, after more than twenty years at this location (which by the way boggles my mind...the changes they must have seen in that neighborhood over the years!), they are vacating to make room for a Kate Spade store, and will be relocating to 55 West 8th Street, just off of Sixth Avenue.

There's a bit of a gap between when their old lease on Bleecker expired and when their new space (which apparently is going to be beautiful, looks to be much more spacious than their old digs) will be ready, so for the time being the salon is operating out of their sister salon in Soho, Haven, which is sort of the luxury version of Eve (prices are a bit higher, although still very reasonable, and you get fancy tea and nice pillows to lounge against during a pedicure).  But supposedly the move is imminent, so go pay them a visit in their new home.

Smooth As A Baby...

Gentlemen, I feel that I ought to warn you that I am about to discuss my favorite waxing joint.  And this is not back waxing I'm talking about here, I'm more focused on areas south of the equator.  Although if you are into the whole-body waxing Chelsea boy thing this is probably your place.  It's pretty decent although I was freaked out by my waxer's arm cellulite and her overzealous use of the baby powder the one time I went there.  But let's just say they are familiar with men's special hair removal issues.  Anyway, now I'm getting into the lady waxing part so avert your eyes if you wish.

I hate shaving.  It takes forever, doesn't last and really, stubble belongs on a man's face, not on a woman's legs.  Plus this whole $25 replacement razor blade phenomenon is just getting offensive.  At this point in my life, I don't even own a razor.  

I wax EVERYTHING.  Which, given that I live in New York, could easily get very expensive.  In fact, the venerable J Sisters would charge me $195 for everything that I get done.  Now, I love Brazil and the Brazilians just as much as the next guy (actually, possibly more...I was so depressed to leave the last time I was down there), but I do not feel the need to spend $2,400 a year to be waxed by them.

Thankfully, Brazilians are not the only game in town.  The Russians give them a run for their money at Dyanna, a small, bare bones salon down on East 21st Street.  Now this place is not in a fancy townhouse, nor is the location particularly glamorous, but it's clean, the women know what they're doing, I'm always out of there in under thirty minutes, and they charge about 25% of what higher end salons do.  I will say though, that I've never gotten my eyebrows done here, so I can't vouch for that particular service.  

If you go, you must, must, must request Lana, who I have been going to for the past five years (and let me tell you, I'm not the most loyal person when it comes to beauty services, so this really does speak well of her skill, professionalism and compassion...all qualities necessary in a good aesthetician I think).  She never misses a spot, she is just one of the sweetest women alive, and she somehow fills the time effortlessly with random conversation that I genuinely enjoy listening to.  It's not often that one looks forward to a waxing, but at this point I feel like I'm going to see an old friend when I make an appointment with her.  When I was living in Philadelphia I even made the trek up to New York rather than finding a waxer down there, as I knew it would be virtually impossible to find someone that I liked as much as Lana.

Dyanna's clientele is somewhat varied.  You've got quite a few high maintenance jappy twenty-somethings (it's not all that far from Murray Hill after all), tall willowy blonds and moms who bring their twelve and thirteen year old daughters in for their first wax as some sort of bonding experience.  By the way, I'm a little uncomfortable with this last one.  I think early adolescence is traumatic enough without having to get largely naked in front of a stranger and get your hair ripped out of your sensitive young skin.  But, as Lana says, they are probably very hairy girls, which I guess is traumatic in its own way.  

Anyway, go on Sundays around noon if you're looking for a more relaxing experience.  There's never anyone there at that time.  But, if you prefer weekdays, they're open until 8:00 and Lana's there everyday but Friday and Saturday.        

Big (Green) Apple

I have a distinct memory growing up of my mom coming home from the dry cleaners with my hunter green wool toggle coat one day, and insisting that it could not be brought into the house.  She took the dry cleaner's plastic off and hung the coat on the porch for SEVERAL DAYS to give the toxins a chance to escape.  At the time, I thought she was ridiculous.  Although why I didn't see an issue with the fact that I even owned the coat in the first place given that temperatures in the Bay Area rarely drop below fifty-five degrees I'm not sure.  I guess even then I wanted to move to the east coast and was practicing my outfits or something.

Anyway, now I find that I seem to have inherited her neurosis.  If I can avoid dry cleaning at all, even by hand washing, I do.  I have always made a conscious choice not to live in a building with a dry cleaner (apparently your chance of getting cancer and neurological diseases if you live above a dry cleaner is like ten times normal or something horrifying like that), and for the longest time I was scouring New York to find an ecologically friendly dry cleaner.  Well, finally, after an afternoon cream tea at Tea & Sympathy, I stumbled across one.

Green Apple Cleaners uses CO2 technology to clean clothes.  As far as I can tell, they use liquid CO2 (sort of like club soda I guess?) and pass it through your clothes at a high pressure.  I have no idea how it works, but let me tell you, it does.  They're gentle on my clothes, no buttons are discolored in the process, and my whites actually come out looking, well, white (I took in a fairly heavily stained white blazer a few months ago and I was practically blinded by it's whiteness when I picked it up...a far cry from the faintly yellow cast that seems to be the result at most dry cleaners).  Apparently Consumer Reports shares my enthusiasm.  In a 2003 study, the publication voted CO2 as the best overall cleaning method out there.  Funnily enough, perc, the standard, extremely toxic, dry cleaning method, came out close to the bottom of the list.

The prices are a bit higher than at a standard cheapo dry cleaner, but they're certainly fair.  Maybe like a dollar more than my guy down the street would charge.  And they are WAY more reasonable than the high end places like Meurice and Madame Paulette's. (I had a particularly traumatic experience years ago with one of these establishments, I won't say which, when they charged me $75 to clean three pairs of pants).  Besides, I'd prefer to spend the extra dollar than to end up with a giant tumor someday.  

Here's the CEO, David Kistner, who started the business because he didn't want his kids exposed to toxic chemicals:

One of Green Apples environmentally friendly pick-up and delivery vehicles:

Green Apple currently has two other locations in addition to the one in the West Village--one on the Upper East Side and one one the Upper West Side.  But fear not if these are not convenient options for you.  Sign up here for pick up and delivery.  They'll get you started with a kit that includes reuseable garment bags (no more drowning in endless sheets of plastic), spot stickers, a hanger recycling bin and a garment checklist and you'll be all set to be clean and green!

My Blue Suede Shoes

I love heels, and occasionally I can find a pair that is glamorous, shapely, high AND freakishly comfortable.  When this state of nirvana is achieved, I hold on for dear life.  

I wear said shoes constantly on the mean streets of Manhattan (at least, they are mean to shoes, not so much to people anymore), and thus the beloved shoes take quite a beating.  Nicks on the heel from inadvertently stepping in subway grates, scuffed toes, soiled leather...the indignities my poor clodhoppers endure are endless.  Therefore, I feel an obligation to provide them with excellent care. 

This is where Top Service, a shoe repair shop at 845 Seventh Avenue (between 54th and 55th Streets) comes in.  This phenomenal shop provides meticulous repairs for all types of shoes, and I am always pleasantly surprised by the modest amount they charge.  In fact, I'm fairly sure that I have never paid more than $12 for any one service, and I have brought some seriously beat down shoes in for repair.

They will go to impressive lengths to get your shoes looking like new.  I've had the entire skin on a pair of heels replaced ($8!), I've had leather restored, even boots altered.  However, I think the most impressive feat of theirs that I've ever witnessed was when the manager called Prada to get the actual satin used in a particular pump so that they could use it to recover the mangled heel of the shoe in question (this was clearly for another client, not me.  The only pair of Prada shoes I own are a very utilitarian black leather that I picked up on deep discount at an end of season sale at Saks).  

Top Service routinely makes it onto plenty of "Best of New York" lists, and apparently is the go to place for the Manolo Blahnik people.  I pretty regularly run into young women who seem to work as assistants for editors at fashion magazines, either picking up bags and bags of shoes for shoots, or just a few pairs for their high maintenance bosses, so I'm clearly not alone in my love and appreciation for this place.

To my mind, Top Service lives up to its name.  The place respects the customer, the product and the relationship between the two.  The guys are nice, the service is fast, and the prices are always reasonable.  Definitely a business worthy of everyone's support.

At Your Service

At heart I share the attitude of my grandparents when it comes to consumption patterns.  I feel comfortable spending a fair amount of money on certain things (in my case shoes, coats, kitchenware, in their case American-made cars, furniture and appliances) but in exchange for the higher price, I expect them to last forever.  Nothing irritates me more than buying something that I think (or have been led to believe) is of high quality and then having it fall apart two months later.  Come to think of it, this attitude extends to restaurants as well.  Few things in the world make me more angry than a mediocre restaurant masquerading as a good one, and getting charged as if my meal had been delicious, when in fact I could easily have made something better at home on a hot plate.  But as usual, I digress.

Like my grandparents (and actually, come to think of it, my parents also), I will repair something I love until it is well past the point of resurrection.  My grandparents kept their 1978 Oldsmobile Custom Cruiser running long enough, and well enough, that both my sister and I could drive it through high school (the government eventually paid my parents $500 to get it off the road), my parents are the only people I know who still repair their giant pink vacuum cleaner, and I have been propping up a pair of perfect black pumps since about 2002.

As a result, over the years I have sought out and discovered great service providers in New York, both to repair things I refuse to let die, and places like salons that I just think do a good job at a fair price.  I'm dedicating this week to these rare establishments, and will write about one place per day.  I generally try to keep things fairly gender neutral on this site, but things may get a bit feminine this week what with my waxing recommendations and the like, so I ask for the gentlemen readers' indulgence, just this once.