NEW YORK — The lives and times of Yves Saint Laurent, Claire McCardell, Rem Koolhaas and others who shaped the world of design are on display at the renovated Strand bookstore.
Calvin Klein, Christo and his wife, Jeanne-Claude, were among the first to flip through the discounted fashion, art, design, photography and architecture books that now occupy 2,500 square feet — one-quarter — of the second floor. The famed 76-year-old store at Broadway and 12th Street in Manhattan is all that remains of “Book Row,” 48 used bookstores that once stretched along Fourth Avenue from Union Square to Astor Place.
Fred Bass, whose father, Benjamin, founded The Strand and at one point slept there in the business’ leaner days, said much of the current stock was picked up in 2001, when the company bought 250,000 fashion and design books from Hacker Art Books Inc. store. Buying books from walk-in customers, private estates and other resources has helped push the inventory beyond 500,000.
“For the last 30 years, fashion has always been a bestseller,” Fred Bass said. “There were piles of books, but you couldn’t see the shelves….It was so crowded, it wasn’t comfortable for people.”
The second floor stands out like a Lamborghini on a used car lot in comparison with the other floors. There are easy-to-maneuver aisles, well-marked signs and plenty of lights, as well as public rest rooms, a $140,000 glass elevator, tidy displays and planned coffee bar.
Applying her makeup for a photo shoot in the middle of the sales floor Monday, Bass’ stylish blonde daughter and co-owner, Nancy Bass, laughed. “You know, we’re not fancy people,” she said. Despite their bare-bones approach to books, the father-daughter team aim to have a store that is “worth going out of the way for.”
“Our customers are supersophisticated and really art hungry,” she said. “We like our customers. They all have good taste.”
Karl Lagerfeld, John Galliano, Anna Sui, Paloma Picasso, Paul Jenkins, Veruschka, Dale Chihully and Naomi Campbell have been spotted eying the stacks of books. Andy Warhol and Diana Vreeland also were said to be fans. Abbie Hoffman also frequented The Strand and inscribed a few books for the elder Bass, including one that read, “Steal this book especially at The Strand Book Store.”
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Providing libraries for tastemakers such as Steven Spielberg and Alexandra von Furstenberg, as well as Paula Zahn’s home and Ralph Lauren’s stores, is another way The Strand sets itself apart. While shooting a film last year, Ashley Judd couldn’t stand the idea of living in a house for six or eight weeks without books, so she lined up The Strand.
The store also has taken to using its third floor, where rare books such as a $125,000 Shakespeare and a $10,000 first edition of “Gone With the Wind” are kept. Paul Krugman, Walter Isaacson, Simon Winchester, Maurice Sendak and Art Spiegelman are some of the authors who have been toasted there. Despite the literary fixings, the elder Bass said, “We’re really booksellers.”
So much so that the “18 Miles of Books” — a statistic that George Will initially helped calculate in the Seventies and is now imprinted on the side of the building, no longer does the store justice. “Probably, if we measured it out, it would be in the 20s,” Fred Bass said.
As for what his father would make of the inventory, Bass said, “He’d flip. He was worse than I am about buying books. We have one floor filled with boxes. It’s kind of silly from an economic point of view, but at least I know I have stock. It will take me a few years to unpack them and get them out.”
— R.F.;