SEX AND THE CITY WARDROBE STYLIST PATRICIA FIELD OPENS A NEW MANHATTAN RETAIL STORE

If you’re familiar with Ms. Field’s fashion sense you will know that this shop is a must stop for fashion inspiration. You can pick up a relic to copy or a frivolous feathered frock to contemplate. Field’s original boutique was on Eighth Street, then West Broadway and is now debuting at 302 Bowery - between Bleecker and Houston Street.

The store is chock filled with graffiti art by East Harlem artist James de la Vega, leopard-print upholstery and pop-culture detritus. “There are no doors in the dressing area, but that's part and parcel of the Field philosophy, in which the act of shopping ought to resemble a pajama party — after which someone else will clean up.” At the end of the month, Ms. Field's fashion sensibility can be seen in the movie "The Devil Wears Prada.”

If your fashion taste buds are at a low ebb, get a boost from this funky retail space.

The New York Times article about Field’s new store is below:

CRITICAL SHOPPER
Patricia Field Gives New Meaning to the Changing Room
By ALEX KUCZYNSKI

It’s 1992, and I am in a theater watching the new movie everyone is talking about. The protagonist falls in love with a woman who has rather broad shoulders and an athletic build. I, a competitive swimmer, keep hissing loudly to my friends: "Finally! A movie that highlights the beautiful, muscular form of the female body! It's about time!" I see the broadly built female character as a symbol of vindication. Women can be tall and strong and still be attractive. But of course.

I eat my Raisinets in triumphant handfuls until we get to the end of the movie, "The Crying Game," and see that the woman with the shoulders is actually a man in drag. A couple of weeks ago I replicated the utter humiliation of that scene, on a consumer level, in the new Patricia Field store. Downstairs, past the footlong rhinestone-studded cigarette holders, I saw a pair of sky-high stiletto-heel boots in a fetching black and white graphic canvas. "Cool," I announced to the sales clerk standing nearby, who nodded, then cast a polite sideways glance in my direction. Turning the boots over, I saw that the sole read "Size N/A."

Not applicable? The taste of chocolate-covered raisins rose in my mouth as the terrible truth dawned: the boots were gunboats, far too big for most women without a pituitary problem, so big that mere numeric size was not even a relevant concept. I had simply wandered into the drag-queen shoe section of the store.

The worst part: the sales clerk had been polite to me.

I should have expected nothing less. This was Patricia Field, downtown purveyor of cross-gendered chic. In the 80's and 90's, Ms. Field was the doyenne of drag, her boutique on Eighth Street the destination for anyone who was truly serious about neon wigs, heavy-duty fishnet tights and booty boosters, the padded panties that add a womanly curve to otherwise unendowed buttocks.

Later her store moved to West Broadway, and her résumé was burnished by a lengthy run as the stylist for "Sex and the City," during which time she attempted to convince an entire generation of women in their 30's and 40's that it was O.K. to wear tube tops, newsboy caps and Capri pants to the office. At the end of the month, Ms. Field's hand can be seen in "The Devil Wears Prada," for which she dressed Anne Hathaway in Dolce & Gabbana and Chanel, and a white-blond Meryl Streep in, natch, Prada. (Earlier this week, Amazon introduced an online boutique where you can buy a distressed-leather studded La Rue handbag Ms. Field designed for Ms. Hathaway's character, for $79.95. )

The new store on the Bowery occupies an anonymous-looking spot on a stretch of bars, construction sites and restaurant-equipment suppliers. The boutique, in fact, sits beneath a façade that reads "Pat's Restaurant Equip. Sales Repairs & Parts. Se Habla Español." In lighter lettering it reads "Patricia Field," and only the girls wearing curlicues of metallic green eye shadow and smoking cigarettes out front give away the shop's true identity. (Upon closer inspection, it was not entirely clear they were girls, nor that they could habla Español.)

Inside, the place is a riot of graffiti art by the East Harlem artist James de la Vega, leopard-print upholstery and pop-culture detritus. The tall wooden screens that separate the dressing rooms at the back are artifacts from the set of "Sex and the City." There are no doors in the dressing area, but that's part and parcel of the Field philosophy, in which the act of shopping ought to resemble a pajama party — after which someone else will clean up.

"Girls, I mean boys, aren't allowed back there anyway," the very helpful clerk told me. A sign reading "Venus," which was reclaimed from a porn theater in Times Square, indicates the lingerie area. Downstairs in the salon area, a hairdresser braided long blond strands into a client's buzz cut, as portraits of Jacqueline Onassis and Marilyn Monroe looked on, next to shelves stacked inexplicably high with Hello Kitty merchandise. (I personally prefer the Goodbye Kitty merchandise, not on sale here, which has a slightly darker bent.)

WHILE Ms. Field has dressed movie stars in high fashion, no designer clothes are in evidence here. Prices are relatively low, and the merchandise is fanciful, continually stretching the borders of good, bad and so-bad-it's-good taste. A chic Upper East Side woman going for a Babe Paley look — or, for that matter, a downtown drag queen going for a Babe Paley look — could find something here, like a pale gray silk-chiffon embroidered poncho ($152) and a Kenneth Jay Lane enamel giraffe bracelet ($78). And the nightclub habitué or hotel heiress would find herself perfectly at home with the studded metallic-pink leather wallet by Ash & Diamonds ($218) and the silk dress patterned with anchors and fastened around the neck with gold rope ($238). For the home there are Dirty Linens — sheet sets printed with a toile de Jouy pattern of naked men or women — and a white ceramic table vase that appears to be made of three handguns, pointed end up, so flowers poke from their joined snouts ($62).

This is an object of such cultural dissonance that it's difficult to pin down its meaning. Are the flowers inserted into the gun barrels to evoke a Vietnam-era message of protest and peace? On the other hand, the vase looks as if it were assembled from white ceramic Glocks, the hardware favored, at least in the public imagination, by rap stars and criminals.

Does it celebrate crime? Or turn what appears to be criminal into a cartoon of domesticity? Is it a symbol of dynamic male power neutered and rendered powerless by the classically feminine act of floral arrangement? Impossible to tell. Mixing the message — mingling male and female, high and low, art and not art — is the kind of thing Patricia Field does best.

PATRICIA FIELD

302 Bowery (between Bleecker and Houston Streets); (212) 966-4066
ATMOSPHERE Disco fun house.
SERVICE Good.
KEY LOOKS Drag queen visits the Hamptons; debutante slumming it; Johnny Rotten meets Truman Capote. Hair extensions encouraged.
PRICES Sequined beret, $18; Sarah zebra-print silk top, $280; Patricia Field for Pro Keds metallic, snakeskin-embossed high-tops, $86.