City Desk: On the Avenue - Brief Article

National Review, March 25, 2002 by Richard Brookhiser

On Madison Avenue there is a store called Worldly Things. That name shall be the text for this day, and Madison Avenue the setting.

There was a time, not long ago, when Fifth Avenue in Midtown was New York's mart and display case for high-quality things of this world. That stretch of Fifth Avenue is still impressive, with wide and noble sidewalks, St. Patrick's Cathedral and Rockefeller Center, the Tiffany diamond and the University Club. But there has recently been an unmistakable invasion of cheesiness. Stores for teenagers, franchise outlets for sport and entertainment products, the monstrous snowflake that hangs over 57th Street at Christmastime -- it all has a whiff of the mall, or Los Angeles. The concentrated high-end shopping experience, without distractions, is now north and east, on Madison Avenue.

The Upper East Side, through which Madison Avenue passes, is the last nest in New York of prosperous WASPs and those who aspire to be like them, and toward the upper end of the Madison Avenue shopping district stands an homage to WASPs and their things, the Ralph Lauren store. Like all but the best tributes, it has the excess of passion. Lauren took a 19th-century limestone mansion in the style of the French Renaissance, frosted with battlements and doodads, and furnished it with absurdly detailed props: editions of Dickens, bowler hats on pegs, saddles, paintings of fox hunts. It is a stage set for shopping. No club was ever so clubby, no country house so horsey. Real clubs and country houses have patches of shabbiness -- the shiny sofa cushion, the lamp with a frayed cord, the ugly dust catcher that some member donated or that Grandmother bought. But at Ralph Lauren's store love demands perfection. His affection for his dream world recalls Simon Rosedale, the bustling nouveau riche in Edith Wharton's House of Mirth, whose appreciation Lily Bart repels early in the book. But one of Wharton's points, as her mirthless book progresses, is that all the actual WASPs let Lily down or stab her in the back; only Rosedale remains true after his fashion to the bitter end. When Ralph Lauren goes, will WASPs have any fans left?

Ralph Lauren is the Russell Kirk of high fashion; above and below him on Madison Avenue are the modernists, the Japanese and the Italians. Issey Miyake has a store in the high 70s displaying his contraptions: feathery boas, dresses like accordion bellows made of crepe paper, the same dresses put through a shredder. Everything is cut for tiny tiny Japanese bodies, though some items would seem not to fit even them, as clothing floats away from human beings. Thousands of years from now the computer programs we will have become may display, at their portals, blouses or trousers out of nostalgia for their hominid past. The Japanese will get there first.

To the south are the Italians -- Etro, Prada, Krizia. Giorgio Armani is suffering from Guggenheim shock. The spiral museum recently held a show of his clothes, which seems to have gone to his head. So has his sexuality. He once designed for slightly hip businessmen; now too many of his selections look as if they were designed for dimwitted 18-year-olds. The polymorphous perversity of the late Gianni Versace, by contrast, never interfered with his design sense. He found his notes, flash and classicism, and stayed with them. If he courted vulgarity, so did the Caesars. His murder in South Beach by an aging homosexual party boy brought the closure of melodrama to his life, but his line marches exuberantly on.

What else does the avenue have, and not have, that helps maintain its character? The only real blemish is the Whitney Museum: The pianist Dick Wellstood helpfully suggested that it be torn down and replaced by brownstones. The sidewalks are narrow, but the buildings are relatively short, so everything is well proportioned. There are very few restaurants, and they are expensive or grim; this is appropriate, for the sense of Madison Avenue is sight, not taste. There are boutiques, art galleries, and a little store with big diamonds. There is a good book store, Madison Avenue Bookshop; another good one, Books & Company, lost its lease and is much mourned, though it was biased toward academic subjects. There you found the correspondence of Leo Strauss and Carl Schmitt, but they seemed out of place. What would Socrates and Himmler do on Madison Avenue?

What does an ordinary American do there? A place like Madison Avenue rests uneasily in this country, for though our history has been a two-century-long boom interrupted by temporary contractions, our wealth pulls against older mindsets. The stern Puritan and the plain Quaker came here to found the new Jerusalem, not to shop. Classical republicanism was equally suspicious of luxury. At the Constitutional Convention George Mason argued that the federal government should have the power to pass sumptuary laws, to ward off decadence. Finally, there is the agrarian tradition, most nobly represented by the Virginia gentleman. President Jefferson received visitors to his White House in slippers and dirty corduroy breeches. The only man in Washington who was plainer was his cousin and enemy, Chief Justice John Marshall. One reason the two men hated each other so, besides ideology, was that they were competing in the simplicity Olympics.