The holiday window reveals at Bergdorf Goodman and Barneys (below the jump) in New York City.
Adding an extra layer to the smellscape
Egner’s personal favorite haunted scent experience was another bait-and-switch scene: as visitors approached a dimly lit table, they could smell roast turkey, mashed potatoes, and stuffing, and see dishes piled high with food—which turned out, on closer inspection, to be cured hog guts and other viscera. “I’m sure that we ruined somebody’s Thanksgiving that year,” Egner told me gleefully.
The Soap Factory does make visitors sign a waiver before they enter the Haunted Basement. “It’s intense,” Egner said, adding that, most years, one or two patrons vomit during their visit (requiring a sanitary cleanup and adding an extra layer to the smellscape).
— Lillian Egner talks to the New Yorker about the use of smell in The Soap Factory's annual Haunted Basement in New York City. Read more at The Smell of Death.
Dover Street Market ~ shopping for perfume in New York City
If you’ve ever caught yourself saying or thinking that New York’s department stores have become too big, too bland, too same-old-same-old, then you need to schedule a visit to Dover Street Market as soon as possible. The original Dover Street Market opened in London (on Mayfair’s Dover Street) in 2004 and was followed by locations in Tokyo and Beijing. The Manhattan store opened in December 2013, stirring much discussion among architecture and design fans as well as fashion obsessives.
Rei Kawakubo, the designer behind Comme des Garçons and the founder and creative director of the entire Dover Street Market enterprise, is quoted as saying, “I want to create a kind of market where various creators from various fields gather together and encounter each other in an ongoing atmosphere of beautiful chaos.” The phrase “beautiful chaos” is perfect…
New Frederic Malle boutique in New York City
Niche brand Frédéric Malle has opened a second boutique in New York City (see our shopping report on the existing Malle store here). The new store, at 94 Greenwich Avenue in the West Village, is the first of a projected series of boutiques designed to “showcase the work of top architects in the same way he showcases perfumers”…
Twisted Lily ~ shopping for perfume in New York
Twisted Lily is a sunny little boutique located on the ever-growing Atlantic Avenue shopping strip of Brooklyn’s Boerum Hill neighborhood. It opened last autumn, as a new project from the owners of online perfume retailer Parfum1. If you’re picturing a warehouse stocked with discounted mass-market scents, however, you’ll be surprised by Twisted Lily: its clean white interior is stocked exclusively with niche fragrance lines. A few big names like Serge Lutens and L’Artisan Parfumeur serve as anchors to a wide, thoughtful selection of smaller, independent lines that are difficult to find anywhere else in New York, like Imaginary Authors and Slumberhouse.
The fragrances are displayed in neat groupings along counters…