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In the spring, when a struggling J.Crew closed the Liquor Store, its quietly iconic downtown men’s shop, a generation of shoppers mourned. These were guys—and I count myself among them—who were weaned on its slim suiting, prescient interest in collaborations, and general permissiveness toward male shopping. To a certain kind of guy, the one who now rattles off names like Dries and Raf at the bar, the Liquor Store was a gateway drug. Its closure was a loss.
The designer Todd Snyder mourned, too, but only for the briefest moment. He had work to do. “As soon as I saw everybody writing about the Liquor Store[‘s closure,] I had to have it,” he explained on a recent afternoon. “I didn’t think they would ever move out. So when I heard they moved out, I had to jump on the opportunity.” This was less an act of canny scavenging than a kind of homecoming. Snyder, after all, used to be an executive at J.Crew, and was in fact the driving force behind the shop in the first place. Who better to take over the lease?
“I had gotten a text from a friend,” he explained. We were chatting a day before the store’s opening-night festivities, the store half-stocked, a buzz of movement and last-minute construction, a hand-letterer etching Snyder’s name into the window. “They sent me the photo of, like, [the sign reading] ‘Store Closing.’ And I literally called that second, and I talked to the owner. I knew her from when we originally opened, ten or eleven years ago.” He met her at home in Westchester for breakfast, sketched out his idea for a reinvigorated shop, and promised he’d be a worthy steward. A few weeks later, he learned that he’d edged out a few competitors—a coffee shop, a bar—for the space. And then he got to work.
“That was my goal,” he explained. “I want to do this, but how do I make this different?” Step one was beefing up the lighting; step two was coating just about every available surface in a slick, shiny, high-gloss military green. “It really helps elevate it,” he said, though in typical Snyder fashion, it won’t be so elevated as to alienate the slightly anxious shopper his business caters to. “It’s going to be hard for someone coming in who hasn’t been here in a while to be, like, Oh, what’s changed? You’ll just have that feeling of, Oh, wow, this is nice.” And it is: reclaimed French oak floors, shoppable furniture and fixtures from First Dibs, a whole-wall installation of Aesop products all contribute to the J.Crew-gro s-up vibe Snyder has perfected.
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