A Treasury Of… Minneapolis Fashion and Interior Design Blog

Saturday morning we wandered through Brooklyn and into a new shop called Goose Barnacle where I shuffled through thirty or so assorted packs of Afro-jelly bracelets to select the perfect color combination.

At the Barney’s Co-op we met up with Yuko whose lovely New York life I’ve followed on the internet and Twitter for years. She suggested we walk to an old Pharmacy turned Soda Fountain which sounded super to me.

I tried to select something that wouldn’t ruin my upcoming stop at the Shake Shack, so I went for the Red Velvet Twinkie Sundae. While we snacked Yuko told us about the dream-like shopping in Japan, and we recounted our survival story of being stranded in Paris last Spring at the hands of the Icelandic volcano.

We stopped into a few more hipster-worthy stores on our way back to the subway. Yuko mentioned she doesn’t actually venture into Brooklyn that often because she has a hard enough time stopping herself from buying clothes and shoes and important stuff like that all throughout Manhattan. That’s pretty much half the reason to know and love her!

Another New York blogger, Kwannam, told me about the Cured Olive Shortbread Cookies at a coffee shop called Abraco, so later in the day I tracked one down and adored its offbeat amazing-ness. I think I’ll try and bake some at home myself, sometime sorta soon.

Our final day in New York began at Barney’s where I’d wanted to see their R&Y Augousti accessories since I’m never fast enough to add any of them to my cart when they show up on Gilt. I’ve totally got a thing for shagreen, and after leaving the shop without anything, we trekked all the way back later in the day and bagged one of the boxes above!

I’m always way early for everything, so while wasting time until our lunch reservation we walked past the Apple Store to witness firsthand the fan memorials to the life and work of Steve Jobs. I actually got pretty choked up seeing all the people weeping and hugging and laying down their tributes to the man who changed the world. It’s been such an exciting and impacting decade or so; I guess my almost-tears were a silent little “thank you”.

Needing a AAA battery for the plane ride home, we then darted into a Duane Reader drugstore, where I added a bag of Utz Potato Chips to my souvenir stash. Cuz you don’t see Utz in Minneapolis very often, and Don Draper did do their creative, after all.

The day’s main event was a grand tour of Bergdorf Goodman’s, the retail kingdom where the turban-crowned Kelly Wearstler is now reigning queen.

Having just added clothing and accessories to her brazen line of brassy home goods, our tour climaxed with a two-and-a-half course lunch in the Wearstler-designed BG restaurant.

The best thing about a vacation to a big city is you can curate it with only the topmost shops, and the snappiest snacks, and the most atmospheric eateries, making it as if, for those four or five days, you live in a time and place where everything is beautiful.

Cause that’s the kind of time and place in which we should all be living.

The second batch of Santa’s bounty.

1. Wasp Queen Honey Flavored Syrup (in the sweetest jar ever).

2. Quirky-Colored Prize Ribbons.

3. Imported Indian Bowl & Spice Spoon.

4. Yesterday’s Candy (edible today).

5. Little Bottles of Liquid Luxury.

6. Military Grade Notebooks.

7. Sweet Potato Chocolate Bar (I’m enthralled yet half-afraid!)

8. Letterman Jacket Patch (to attach to almost anything except, probably, a jacket).

I’m saving my favorite present for last. (Be sure and check back!)

Although I flirt with and photograph Byredo bottles of fragrance, I tend to end up with whatever scent COMME des GARCONS spritzes into the ether.

The essence of the line’s newest, WONDERWOOD, is richly wooded and thickly forested – yet fine and fancy; too luscious for luggy ol’ lumberjacks. It’s the smell of black-tie in a birch grove, of tuxedos in tree houses. And although I’m not afraid of an offbeat, edgy scent WONDERWOOD’s calmer and quieter than CdG’s Man 2 or Hinoki fragrances which I also favor.

For a limited time you can indulge in any of COMME des GARCONS’ scents at 25 percent off at BeautyHabit.com with a semi-secret coupon code. The code is applicable to any of BeautyHabit’s myriad of brands including Treasury favorites Valobra soaps and shaving cremes and Couto Portuguese toothpaste.

Click below to learn the not-so-secret code, and pinky promise me you won’t make fun of me for knowing it.

Promise!

(more…)

Playfully, I often turn the selection of a new scent into an ultimate death match-type competition. I’ll order a batch of sample fragrances from Luckyscent, then spray two different scents on me per day – the winner then going head to head with a new contender the next day until only one champion cologne remains.

I’d learned that with Byredo, if you sign up on their website, they’ll actually send you three scent samples in the mail free of charge. After flirting with their Fantastic Man and Bal d’Afrique fragrances last summer, the new pepper + leather based Baudelaire sounded worth a trysty test-spritz, and since they were out of one of the other scent samples I’d requested, Byredo kindly threw in a few extra vials for me.

Ladies and gentlemen, the competition begins now!

Annoying 90º plus temperatures hit Minneapolis by May this year, and there’s still a whole lot of summer yet to come. Surviving such sudden scorching all last week was made considerably easier and more exotically atmospheric by my new bar of Coco-nutty Skin Trip soap from Colorado based Mountain Ocean.

Hard and heavy and scented like a well-bronzed beach bum, the sudsy bricks are online at Hickorees.

Incense is for hemped up hippy-dips and candles can get a little soccer mom-ish. The “hot” new way to play with fragranced fire is with Armenia Papers.

Florentine pharmacist Santa Maria Novella offers an abundance of dramatic costume-drama-like cosmetics and tonics, and their frankincense and myrrh-scented Armenia Papers singe away the stagnant staleness of our modern days with a cinematic sense of ceremony.

Sized like a stick of gum, each scented stick is to be folded back and forth like an accordion, set on its side, and set aflame, to fill your room and your soul, once again, with a sense of romance and of warmth.

Question – do I write too constantly about cologne?

To be fair, I wear it every day and I do feel it helps transport me to other places and times. Sometimes I don’t even have to spray it on, I can just glance at the bottle on my bathroom shelf and pretend I’m someone richer, slicker, or grittier.

In the shadows of an image on All Plaidout I came across a bottle of Nostalgia by Santa Maria Novella. I’ve been wearing the house’s Colona Russa (Russian Cologne) the past few summers since something in its mix literally chills and tickles my skin with every spritz. It’s like running through a shivery sprinkler before having to get dressed on hot humid mornings.

Nostalgia sounds like the ideal, atypical scent to sport in the cooler months when Colona Russa proves icily abusive to wear.

“Nostalgia is the scent of a vintage racing car. It brings to mind the small of benzene, tires and leather for a truly unique and individual eau de cologne,” the LAFCONY website states.

Something that tough and turbine sounds perfect come fall.

Jake Davis just asked his readers for some of their favorite scents, in his mission to find himself a new cologne. This reminded me of an entry I’ve been meaning to post in the Treasury at some point – so I might as well set that point for right about now.

The gift shop of my hotel during a trip to New York 3 years ago offered Comme Des Garcons’s 2 cologne. It smelled golden and bold and tickled my nose. I made it mine.

The 2 cologne proves I like my scents on the coy or quirky side, so I was intrigued last fall by Monocle Magazine’s launch of their Hinoki scent collaboration with Comme Des Garcons. I felt CDG’s scents and I were a perfect, plucky match, but wasn’t sure Hinoki should definitely be my second CDG scent. Especially considering I’d never sampled it.

Luckily for me I somehow came upon Luckyscent.com where you are able to order most of their hundreds and hundreds of scents in two or three dollar trial size vials! I ordered six vials of different Comme Des Garcons fragrances and then turned my mission into a March Madness-like battle. Every morning, on each arm I’d dab a different scent, and then scribble down simple notes for each scent a half an hour later.

“Reminds me of Christmas” or “Smells like pickle juice” for instance.

Each day’s fragrance winner went head to head with the next day’s winner until, alas, the Monocle Hinoki entrant proved to be the ultimate winner, after all.

So if you’re interested in sampling scents slowly over time  in order to identify the right one for you (versus making split-second decisions in a mobbed mall), or if you’re stuck in a state void of Barneys and Bergdorfs, then Luckyscent is a sensational resource.

For the record/for Jake, here’s my eau de cologne arsenal of late:

• Tiffany for Men (elegant, sparkly, like cloves or Brandy)
• The first women’s Prada parfum (I’m man enough. Like honey on a hot August day.)
• Comme Des Garcon, 2  (flinty, fiery – drunken and unabashed)
• Santa Maria Novella, Colonia Russa (icy metallic, it tingles the skin in summer)
• Banana Republic, Black Walnut (hushed, harmless, handsome)
• Monocle x CDG, Hinoki (like a spicy dusty cedar chest caught on fire)