Real Fashion, Fake Flowers, & Catastrophic Pizza
Autumn in Manhattan gets me every time. Maybe it’s the golden leaves in Central Park and rows of pumpkins at every corner shop, or the knitted sweater coats and clusters of school kids with shiny new backpacks. Earlier this week, my fiancé and I traveled there so that he could accept a medical marketing award and I could begin the fascinating anthropological experiment known as wedding dress shopping.
In the Garment District, where sewing machines never sleep, my mother and I visited the studio of charismatic designer Gilles Montezin. He creates wedding gowns and ready-to-wear pieces with stunningly unique drapes and pleats. Surrounded by pattern cuts and spools of satin, we learned about the intricate and tedious art of fabric manipulation. It’s probably good that I didn’t know Gilles constructed textilian masterpieces for Madonna and Sarah Jessica Parker. Even though Sex and the City is resoundingly not my thing, SJP is the Mary Magdalene of the sacred couture universe, and I bought a dress at Old Navy today for $2.99. In the nearby Flower District we weaved through oceans of bulbs, blossoms, and branches, but the most impressive blooms weren’t living at all. PANY Silk Flowers carries hundreds of silk flower varieties from Thailand, and they’re the realest looking fake flowers you’ll ever find.
Later on, we walked by Ralph Lauren’s new store at 72nd and Madison. It’s an incredulously posh mansion of a retail experience that opens tomorrow and took several years to build. The decadently macabre windows are filled with black chandeliers, dangling chairs, and pouty mannequins. A man of the people Ralphie is not, but it’s always fun oogling his unattainable dioramas. A few blocks away, we feasted on a seasonal pistachio and avocado dish at the hopelessly cozy Italian eatery otherwise known as Il Riccio. And down in Greenwich Village we stopped by John’s Pizzeria, because no trip to The City is complete without one of their half cheese, half garlic meatball pies. It’s the Best Pizza In The World, so not indulging in it would be a travesty of unparalleled proportions. Only in New York, baby.
