NEW YORK — Christine Lee brings a refined eye and sense of humor to Esthete, a 1,700-square-foot store here in the Meatpacking District that opened last month.
Lee, the store’s creative director, developed and executed the concept. Samuel Ben-Avraham, founder of Atrium, an East Village retailer known for its high-decibal sound system and selection of hard-to-find jeans, is Lee’s financial partner.
By also serving as the women’s buyer for Atrium, Lee scours showrooms for hip-hop- and rock-inspired clothes with an edge. Esthete, on the other hand, gives her the opportunity to play in a more elegant arena, and has an international roster of designers. They include Thomas Wylde, 3.1 Phillip Lim, VPL by Victoria Bartlett, Gardem, Anne-Valerie Hash and Gary Graham. The store, at 416 West 14th Street, is projected to do $1.5 million in sales in its first year, Lee said.
“The product has to be special and stand out,” she said. “Nothing can be widely distributed. And, of course, it has to be beautiful.”
Graham, a local designer, makes garment-dyed pieces such as vintage-inspired washed silk dresses and washed linen jackets. The Wylde collection, designed by Paula Thomas, is gaining a following, especially among celebrities such as Lindsay Lohan and Alicia Keys. The neo-Gothic line features skulls printed on silk blouses and leather. Her new pattern was taken from blood cells seen under magnification. “[Paula] may do her next presentation here with coffins,” Lee said. “She’s a little dark.”
Lee, herself, leans more toward sunny. The Vancouver native cut her fashion teeth at Holt Renfrew and designed a collection that was sold at Barneys New York. She’s attracted to Belgian designers and collections that combine lots of different fabrics. For example, Hidy Ng, a Hong Kong designer, creates multilayered pieces finished with sequins and lace. Lee also likes unexpected juxtapositions such as Nigel Preston’s long leather jacket with a removable bustle. In the basics department, there are cotton and cashmere tops by Kristensen du Nord of Amsterdam.
Prices range from $200 for leggings to $2,500 for a leather coat.
For fall, Lee will add collections by Hedi Slimane protege Nicolas Andreas Taralis — “the woman’s answer to Dior Homme” — as well as Haider Ackermann, Atsuro Tayama and Tim Van Steenbergen, who is “very Vivienne Westwood, but with a soft edge, like Vivienne Westwood’s Aunt Millie,” Lee said.
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She also has some vintage pieces, such as a $900 mink stole, one of several dozen items from Lee’s own collection.
In addition to reconstructed black jackets, there are lace bras from the 1900s, which Lee said can be worn as layering pieces.
The store design incorporates authentic materials, with exposed-brick walls and wooden ceiling girders. The space had been an art gallery, which looked like a minimalist white box. Lee wanted to warm up the environment, so she added green to the poured concrete floor and had an artist paint the walls to appear aged.
Antiques are put to decorative and functional use. An architect’s table became the cash wrap, a large credenza holds yarn, printers blocks with Russian words are used to display shoes and jewelry is shown under bell jars. Original baker’s racks hold men’s T-shirts and Con Edison wood panels that held fire extinguishers serve as picture frames and are lighted from within. In the dressing room area, an old gym bench covered with leather provides seating. Customers try clothes on in one of two changing rooms made from the facade of a Twenties building whose windows were replaced with mirrors.
Lee is waiting for a finishing touch: a taxidermy peacock. “Maybe I’ll attach it to a wire so it can fly across the room,” she said.