MANNY’S MILLINERY IS BIG NEWS FOR NEW YORK TIMES RETAIL REPORTER

Manny’s Millinery got top billing in the New York Times, and that’s good news for this one-of-a-kind old world hat retailer and manufacturer.

We recently spoke with Manny’s Millinery owner Howard Reinlieb (before this story broke) and he expressed frustration with the current state of retail business (can we blame it on oil?). Many of the small retailers on his block in midtown Manhattan (West 38th Street) have gone out of business and times they were a changing around town. But with this twist of editorial fate, we are hoping that Manny’s receives the push it needs to keep on trucking with the best of them.

In case you missed the article, that ran last week, we are printing it in its entirety. My hope is that you all have a chance to experience this positive media exposure - it’s good for hat business and good for retail business.

A search for top-notch millinery led to a store on 38th Street in Manhattan.

May 7, 2006
THE THRIFTY MILLIONAIRE

Mad About the Perfect Hat for Summer
By TRACIE ROZHON

SIMPLICITY can be hard to find.

If you're looking for a summer hat — the perfect summer hat, in fact — you can go to various discount chains and find oceans of flimsy straw in pastel colors, covered with twigs and roses and other objects.

But if you want one hat to wear to weddings and funerals, to summer lawn parties and to elegant luncheons in elegant restaurants, you may think that the only place to find one is a top-notch millinery boutique or one of the best department stores. You may expect to pay at least $200.

You wouldn't necessarily think of seeking your chapeau at 26 West 38th Street in Manhattan, only a few blocks from the hubbub of Times Square.

Yet that is where I found the perfect hat — for a price far less than I would have paid on Madison Avenue.

Manny's has been on the same block of 38th Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues, since 1948. The present owner is Howard Reinlieb, whose father, Manny, was a supplier to the industry when the area was full of hat manufacturers and the city was full of hat shops.

For years, Manny's has largely been a wholesaler of hat bodies — shapeless felt crowns and straw tape — to shops all over the country. Nevertheless, it usually offered finished hats for sale at the rear of the shop, a secret source of lovely felt go-to-meeting hats in superb moss greens and velvety burgundies. Manny's would also let you thumb through well-worn catalogs of varying hat styles, and let you choose your own style and color.

It still allows customers to order their own hats, which it makes right there on West 38th Street — in the basement, Mr. Reinlieb said. But this year, Manny's has opened a shop next door to its old one — a space that until recently was leased to a bridal shop.

In the window were some of the nicest straw hats I've seen anywhere: hats made of Milan straw — named for the city that made that kind of narrow straw popular — with an old-fashioned shape, accented only by a simple grosgrain ribbon, in either mocha or black. (Manny's will let you choose another color of ribbon from its stock — or you can bring in your own — for no extra charge.)

The hats cost $89.99, only $10 more than new stiffened gauze hats — black with huge hot coral gauze bows — were selling for at T. J. Maxx in Manhattan last week. Still, a Manny's hat is expensive enough not to be an impulse purchase, something to be tossed away after a few wearings. I bought the one with the navy ribbon.

On Monday afternoon, with the hat still in its flimsy black bag — Manny's also sells beautiful black-and-white striped hatboxes for $12, but I was in too much of a hurry to buy one — I took it over to Robert Burke, who until recently was the fashion director at Bergdorf Goodman. That is where I once paid $450 for a brown velvet hat by Patricia Underwood.

I didn't tell him where I had bought the hat. I just put it down in front of him as he sat at the head of his mahogany conference table and asked him what he thought of it. Mr. Burke, who now runs his own fashion consulting business on Madison Avenue, said he liked the hat. (I was relieved.)

"It's nice quality, and it's nicely finished," he said, turning it over to look at the way the navy blue ribbon was sewn around the edge of the brim. "It would set well with any well-made hat found in a high-end department store. It would certainly fit well into Saks or Bergdorf's. I could see some women wearing hats like this to the Central Park Conservancy luncheon."

But it was only $89, I now told him.

He shrugged.

"So much of the product in these stores is influenced by marketing, and the brand posturing of a label," he replied, after looking at it again, even more carefully now that he knew its cost. "This hat might be sold as a private-label brand, with the store's label sewn into it, for $300 or so."

The Manny's hat has a label that reads Merit. If it said, say, Bergdorf's, would it really be worth so much more?

"There's a consumer who's not going to 38th Street and dig around down there," Mr. Burke said. "And don't underestimate the ability of a merchant to edit and choose. It's no different than going down to Strand Books and picking through all those thousands of old books and finding a treasure for far less than you'd pay in a rare-book shop uptown. There's a lot of people who would rather shop in the mellow, furniture-polish-smelling atmosphere of the rare-book shop."

But a lot of people do find their way here — both retail and wholesale customers. Last week, a friendly young man was picking up a big box full of brightly colored straw hats for his aunt's boutique in the Bronx, on Gun Hill Road.

Several years ago, I saw an obviously chic woman at Manny's and overheard her chatting with the clerk about her own shop.

I asked for the woman's card and, sometime later, visited her shop. That had been Tracey Tooker — a milliner who now sells hats in Southampton and Palm Beach — just browsing on West 38th Street.