NEW YORK — The sign outside the café said it all. Handmade, with hand-painting on a piece of swinging wood, it was a vaguely 1940s scene of tiny figures against a green wide-open landscape. Above their heads, in loose script, were the words "Lovely Day." So blissed out was I by a bright clear spring afternoon in Lower Manhattan, it took a moment to register that "lovely day" was actually the name of the café.
New York is on a high. The dust and debris of 9/11 have finally been cleared and the champagne is flowing like water. Shop windows are bursting with bright pinks, yellows and lavender like spring bouquets popping up out of the concrete. Beautiful girls bopping their heads to their mini iPods have multiple bracelets of shopping bags on each arm. And you can't get a table at hot new restaurants such as Jean-Georges Vongerichten's Spice Market to save your life. All of which make it the perfect place to spot spring's top trends.
Emblematic of the current absence of gravity is this season's uniform: a strapless top with a smocked bodice like a little girl's dress. Worn everywhere with big seventies sunglasses and capris or a tight-fitting pair of cult-label jeans, the frighteningly jejeune top began to look almost chic. Until, that is, I spied one hapless fashion victim — a salesgirl in the top du jour in a NoLita boutique. Half-hidden behind a mirrored sales counter that came precisely to chest level, she looked as naked as Venus when you walked in the store.
Speaking of cupcakes, it seems that New Yorkers suddenly can't get enough sweets — so long as they are "gourmet." Krispy Kreme might be singing the blues and cursing the late Dr. Atkins, but Vosges, the haute treat boutique, can hardly keep up with the glamazon models pouring in on rollerblades for more designer chocolate. And late-night clubbers find the icing at Magnolia Bakery so addictive that they line up in the wee hours for cupcakes fresh out of the oven.
I observed this phenomenon firsthand at a fashion party held by Swarovski in an old YMCA gymnasium, where the design team from hip furniture store Apartment was brought in to reconceive the space, and French designer Yves Béhar was commissioned to create a 40-foot crystal chandelier. Chatting over cocktails, the hipster crowd licked icing off each other's fingers from the night's retro-chic hors d'oeuvre: frilly iced cupcakes.
Now a rose tattoo, I will admit, is nothing new. It's as classically Popeye as "Mom" on a pierced heart. But the new trend in body art is a botanical tattoo as delicate and precise as a leaf in an Audubon drawing. The warmer temperatures revealed arms with curling ferns, and ankles ringed in clover. Even the concrete was not immune: a graffiti artist is planting child-like chalk daisies — his or her signature logo — everywhere in Manhattan.
On the subject of logos, the newest form of identification appears to be the self-branded pattern. Time was, a store or label became so well-loved that people clamoured for blouses and sheets in a motif made from its initials. Now, the logo motif starts the business. In March, Fifth Avenue socialite Tory Burch, hitherto unknown as a fashion designer, opened her own eponymous boutique. Its enormous lacquered orange front doors alone are a nod to Hermès, or Gucci, but almost every inch of the stuff inside is printed with a pattern made from Ts that looks suspiciously like my mother's Halston sheets circa 1972. Same story at this week's furniture fair, where a small shop called Homer introduced their new wallcovering and scented candles, all emblazoned with a tiny "H" pattern.
Indeed, nostalgia itself has taken on a new twist. It's still all about vintage, in fashion and décor, but the newest take is to mix the vintage pieces with vintage-inspired new designs. The result is that you cannot be sure whether you are looking at something that's really old, or just seems to be.
At tiny Lyell, owner/designer Emma Fletcher has hung her own pieces (forties-looking chiffons printed with tulips and crepe dresses with cutouts of leaping stags) on the same rack as 60-year-old dresses. The rack itself hangs off a wall freshly papered in original 1940s wallpaper she bought on-line.
It's the same scene at Legacy on Thompson Street, where sixties Lanvin duds rub shoulders with the store's own deconstructed Depression looks. It can be almost disconcerting to discover, in retro hot spots such as Schiller's Liquor Bar, Pastis or Café Lebowitz, that the vintage feeling isn't authentic, but has been carefully created through such a mix.
New Yorkers in search of authenticity, however, need only go so far as the nearest corner, where they will no doubt find yet another Tibetan importer. Do Kham, in particular, is crowded with Upper East Side yoginis and Swedish tourists stocking up on breezy caftans, relaxation CDs and the earrings of the moment: a pair of golden hoops dangling with a multitude of coloured hanging beads.
A reflection of this airy, hippie look can also be found in the latest lighting (light fixtures themselves being the hot interior accessory). Originally designed by Verner Panton in 1964, the Fun lamp is a series of chrome hoops hung with mother of pearl discs like a groovy wind chime or chandelier earring. Newly released by Verpan, the lamp is showing up everywhere cool, from the newest boutique hotel lobbies to a N.Y. interior by decorator DD Allen in this month's Elle Décor.
In short, spring's mood can be summed up by young British designer Eva Menz, who showed her own witty and environmentally friendly take on the Fun lamp made from clear scraps of used Evian bottles at the furniture fair. Her collection was named Life is Beautiful. This spring, in New York, it most certainly is.
