& Son occupies a corner slice of New York City's SoHo district that's so neighborhood-y it barely feels like SoHo. It's an architectural liminal space framed by a couple different neighborhoods but belonging to none of them, a transitory zone between Film Forum, Carbone, McNally Jackson, and pickleball courts.
Appropriately, & Son is itself a sort of retail crossroads between the great designers of tomorrow and the good taste of right damn now.
Put in plain talk: & Son stocks one of strongest, sharpest selections of young designers in the entire city.
& Son's clarity of taste belies its young age. The six-ish-months-old menswear retailer is a scaled-up realization of the humbler concept store that founder Ben Stricof initially opened in his native New Jersey only four years ago.
The digs may be new (and darn beautiful) but the mission remains the same.
& Son is dedicated to "supporting independent and emerging designers whose work skews funky, original & somewhat experimental," says Stricof. It's also a veritable hangout spot and Smashing Pumpkins may or may not be playing on the speakers as you read this.
Spurred to get into retail by his mother, whose own boutique inspired his store's name ("& Son" — geddit?), Stricof kept the atmosphere familial. To whit, his goal was to make & Son "feel like the living room of that artsy uncle with good taste."
& Son's soft-focus lighting and somehow softer couches (which are for sale!) are as inviting as, well, soft lighting and soft couches. Other furnishings, mostly handmade by local craftspeople, reiterate the shop's unspoken ethos: community comes first. We're all in this together.
And by "this," I mean good clothes. We're all into good clothes together.
Stricof "swan-dove full-send into the deep end of independent menswear brands that have little to no representation in NYC" to build & Son's rich assortment of clothes, accessories, home goods, and doodads. Yes, even the doodads.
"The common thread is that each of these brands bring a unique perspective to their craft, work in small batches, and feel both conversational and personal."
In other words, seeing (and touching and wearing) is believing. & Son is sort of like a menswear Ripley's in that way, except this ain't no tourist trap.
You will almost certainly not know most of the brands sold at & Son because that's the point. The household names are being sold on the other side of SoHo; come to & Son for stuff made with love. Possibly with blood, sweat, and/or tears, too. But mostly love.
But you will want to know them.
These are some of the best and brightest creatives from across the globe, some of whom are still only just making their way and some of whom never previously worked with a retailer. Some produce limited editions exclusively for & Son — not because they choose to make one-offs but because that's the entirety of what they're capable of producing.
Reading & Son's list of designers is thrilling in the same way that reading the menu at a reservations-only restaurant is thrilling: it all looks so good, how could ya possibly know where to start?
Chef's choice includes British eco-designer Xenia Telunts, footwear genius Samuel Falzone, IYKYK menswear savant Carter Young, the post-streetwear of Rice Nine Ten, the genderfluid handcraft of Silphium, plaster-craft prodigy Refomed, and actually that's enough words because, seriously, nothing compares to reality.
You can (and should) skim & Son's web store to glimpse it all from afar but even then, you still must cop a feel to catch my drift. And once you do, you'll be a believer. Every brand at & Son is your new favorite brand — you just don't know it yet.
Upstairs, the clothes — separated solely by the regions their makers call home — are accompanied by tasteful art tomes, knowingly kitschy kitchenware, and ceramics made by artists who live but a short drive away.
Downstairs, a rotating collection of vintage apparel handpicked by respected secondhand clothiers and Stricof himself.
Because & Son is for the kinda person who craves thoughtful stuffthe kinda person who turns garments inside-out to savor the seams, the kinda person who loves clothes (not fashion), the Ben Stricof kinda person.
Because, he says, & Son "is everything I ever wanted in a retail experience."
Same here.
