Green Aisle Grocery Opens Today
We’ve been remiss in mentioning that PW food critic Adam Erace and his brother have spent the last few months prepping for the opening of their new store, Green Aisle Grocery (1618 East Passyunk Ave.). We know you love supporting local businesses way more than biggie corporations, so we’ve got the deets.
The shop opens today at 12:30, so get thee to Passyunk Ave. to peep their extensive selection of locally produced treats.
The Erace boys have been leaking details about the shop’s products on Twitter—hummus from Zahav, barbecue sauce from Pub & Kitchen, Antoine Amrani chocolates and (our personal fave) popcorn from boardwalk icon Johnson’s—as well as linking some sweet shots of Green Aisle’s interior, which we took the liberty of borrowing to give all y’all a peek. (Thanks, Adam!)
Also: Swag alert! The first 50 customers who drop $20 at Green Aisle get these lovely, durable totes, which were designed by local (m)ad men (and women) at Red Tettemer.
Regular hours will be noon-8p.m. Monday through Friday, 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Saturday and noon to 5 p.m. on Sundays.
Gaultier trunk show today
I mention the Gaultier trunk show at Joan Shepp today not because I think anyone who is willing and able to afford Gaultier isn’t aware of it, but mostly because I want to say that for Halloween, I myself recreated a Gaultier outfit:
Half off Very Bad Horse
So I’d like to say: thanks, SEPTA and TWA 234, for working your stuff out! I am free to move about the city once more. And speaking of giving thanks…
Maison du Very Bad Horse sells fancy handmade jeans by Philly native Kim Montenegro, and they’re generally very out of my price range. But at half off, they drop into the “maybe?” category, so I thought I’d let people know about it.
Iggy Pop owns ten pairs… I mean, honestly, that’s enough advertisement for me. I especially like the Willowbys, with the red buttons:
I’d probably wear them with a shirt, though.
Maison du Very Bad Horse: Piazza at Schmidt’s, 1050 N Hancock St.
Zahra Saeed
Gah, I love this White Lotus dress by Zahra Saeed. I guess I usually don’t take most stores directly on Rittenhouse Sqaure seriously, because they always seem like places to outfit a child, Pomeranian or overpriced condo of privilege, and I have none of the above. When I’m (window) shopping, I generally don’t venture past the Barnes and Noble on Walnut Street.
But I’ve been missing out, apparently. Philadelphia Magazine did a story on the Moorestown designer’s second collection, and I was super impressed.
The Pakistan-born Moorestown resident (whose personal history includes an arranged marriage, a divorce, and moving her way up the corporate ladder at a South Jersey mortgage bank while raising two daughters; she self-financed her fashion business) is constantly inspired by the fabrics she finds around the world. And with the wholesale success of her eponymous lines throughout Europe and the Middle East, she sees quite a bit of it.
While I generally appreciate color and pattern more, and there are quite a few pieces in the collection that use those fabrics from around the world extremely well, what I especially like here is what this woman can do with plain ol’ white:
And what’s more, she has a way of keeping balance when employing interesting silhouettes and structural bits so that the wearer looks like she’s wearing something neat that you haven’t seen before, but doesn’t look like she got lost on her way to the Met Costume Ball (OK, the one on the right’s a little bit Swan Lake costumey, but I still like it).
I’m not gonna lie, though: her website doesn’t work very well (at least, not on my computer), and if you click “home” you’ll get blasted with unwelcome music. Whatever. Just wander past the Barnes and Noble next time, and check out all this gorgeous stuff from a for-real local designer.
Zahra Saeed, 1905 Walnut St.
Broad and Market
Have I mentioned how pleased I am that Maggie, of the street-style photography blog Broad and Market, came back from Japan and started shooting Philly again? The blog has been back and regularly updating from Philly for a couple months now, but every time I try to post on it I remember that there’s some event that night I need to mention or some or Chase Utley hits another home run and I forget… but now!
What I especially like about Broad and Market is… well, you know how there was that funny flowchart about How to Get Shot by the Sartorialist over at Refinery 29:
The Sartorialist, while it certainly is great and what street-snapshot fashion blogs everywhere aspire to be, kind of has a type. I was briefly considering starting to do something similar as an occasional feature for this blog, with the brainstormed title being “OMG, your outfit is amazing!” Not “something I would wear”or “something that looks like it came out of Vogue,” although those wouldn’t hurt, but more like “not something I see every day, and you clearly made an effort to make it that way,” although that title is a little long.
That’s the reason I like Broad and Market so much: I ended up scrapping the idea for a great many reasons, but I feel like Maggie does almost exactly what I would have done. Because while the photo I started the post off with would probably ring the Sartorialist’s bell, there’s also this guy:
And this lady:
And of course this lady, too:
Which: not something I’d wear, nor something that would be in Vogue. But it’s definitely not something you see every day, either.
Say what you want, but there is so much amazing layering and pattern/color play going on here – plus dreads, eyebrows, and the custom baseball cap. If you click either image, you can see the extra huge version for all the little details. For real, who picks out a fitted pastel-quilt pattern hoodie and rocks it like that? This is real good.
Exactly!
J.Karma and Career Wardrobe
Reasonably-good-cause alert!
From J.Karma Boutique, at 62 N 3rd St. in Old City, there’s a donation drive for Career Wardrobe with an added bonus:
November 2nd starts a MONTH long accessory drive for work appropriate shoes and handbags which will be donated to The Career Wardrobe, a non-profit organization which provides free work appropriate clothing and workshops designed to educate and inspire women returning to the workforce.
From November 2nd thru November 30th, J. Karma will be accepting much needed donations to benefit this important cause. During this time, please stop by and donate your gently used work appropriate shoes and handbags – we will also be accepting scarves & jewelry.
In exchange for your generous donations, J.Karma will offer a coupon for $10 off your next purchase of $50 or more OR $20 off your next purchase of $100 or more.
Arright, so $10 off $50 and $20 off $100 are kind of sneaky not-real-coupons, like those standardized Banana Republic/Gap/Express/whichever-mall-store sales in which you always run around trying to find something that’s exactly $5 to go with that $45 skirt and end up buying more than you would have (or maybe that’s just me), but!
The Career Wardrobe is a legit good cause, and I don’t think it’s going too far out there in feminist-land to say that it takes far more effort and money for a woman to outfit herself for most living-wage jobs than it does for her male counterpart, and that on top of that, women tend to be judged more than men on how they dress at work. Like, say you only have two or three work-type outfits and one pair of shoes: way less likely to be noticed if you’re a guy.
So even if you’re not in the market for a new pair of shoes, you might consider the Career Wardrobe when you clean out your closet for the season.
But if you’re looking to take advantage of what they’re offering, here’s some things we like at J.Karma at the moment, in addition to the Melie Bianco bag at the top of the post:
Short and tall boots by Jeffrey Campbell.
Bubble ring by Marlyn Schiff.
…more boots by Jeffrey Campbell. What can we say, we like boots.
The boob bail-out program
I’ve expressed my love for Coeur before, but I thought this sale idea was pretty cute. And I’m seriously in need of a new bra.
Coeur: 132 S 17th St.
Previously: How I learned to stop worrying and love the boob
Jay McCarroll’s Germania @ Spool
Designer and South Philly resident Jay McCarroll, who (as I’m sure he’s sick of hearing) you may remember from season one of Project Runway (in which he turned down the first-place prize of $100,000 because of a creepy clause that entitled the Weinstein company to a 10% interest in all his future ventures, forever), has been teaching at alma mater Philadelphia University and producing some pretty adorable retro-ish fabric prints.
Spool has his latest line of fabrics, Germania (if you look closely, a lot of the prints involve fuzzy little spherical monsters with two fangs and one googley eye, which I love), and they’re using them in their Stitch Party this Friday from 5-7. FYI.
Spool: 1912 South St., open 11-6 Wed-Sun
P.S.: I have nothing interesting to report about jury duty, they let me out before lunch. I didn’t even get disqualified, they just didn’t need anybody in my 50-person group. Here’s one thing: you can buy ramen bowls, oatmeal, chicken noodle soup and Chef Boyardee Beefaroni at the jury-duty vending machine. The woman in charge of my group was very nice. That is all.
girl.bike.dog.
I was wandering around the weird triangle area around Grace Tavern this weekend, trying to recall where the hell I had parked my car the night the Phillies beat the Dodgers, when I wandered into the storefront of girl. bike. dog., at 23rd and Bainbridge.
The titular dog. His name is Vince.
The store sells a mix of store-made bike stuff and dog stuff, and, looking at the website, offers dog-walking services, which I didn’t notice when I was there. It opened the storefront this June.
The beer cozies, which come in standard and 40 sizes, can strap onto your bag or your bike so’s you don’t have to ditch your drink just because you’re ditching a party.
I asked whether the lack of traditional foot traffic at 23rd and Bainbridge was a problem (because seriously, the streets can get a little deserted down there during the day). The answer was that the foot traffic wasn’t as thick as on Walnut, but that the people who DID walk by tended to be on their way to the dog park at 25th and Spruce, and thus more likely to be interested in some of the dog accessories like the collars above.
They have a selection of messenger bags in the store (the one on the above left was made of a fallen billboard), and they also do custom stuff (below).
Top tube protectors:
They’ve got a blog, too, and when I looked it up, I was somewhat startled to find several pictures of my little sister’s boyfriend at the Wild Wild West race, 2008, and shooting a rifle in the woods with the store’s owner? Hee hee. Hi, Eric, you just turn up everywhere I look!
King of Jeans
Photo by flickr user stellaoella
King of Jeans, according to whoever Philebrity’s unsourced “rumor mill” is, may be closing. Sad face.
If you’re not familiar, King of Jeans is an clothing store down in the Passyunk East neighborhood that always seems a little surprised to notice that the block is now full of people in tight pants; it’s notable for having one of the most bizarre, Patrick Nagel-ass sign I’ve seen outside a West Philly salon. It is also the namesake of Philly band Pissed Jeans’ album “King of Jeans.”
There is a quote from a 2008 South Philly Review story on a new boutique on Passyunk East that would suggest the store is suffering in the economy:
Issac, a manager at King of Jeans at 1843 Passyunk Ave., who did not want to give his last name, said staying open is a great idea in theory, but in his experience, it just doesn’t work.
“I tried later hours and it hadn’t really been working,” he said. ‘We’re in a recession where people have a limited amount of funds. I wish them luck because anything that works will benefit all of us. It’s better to have a store than an empty store. Maybe they could start a trend.”
We called King of Jeans for comment but it rang twenty times at noon on a Wednesday and we gave up. Not a good sign?