How The Other Half Gives Into The Shallow Vanity Of Extreme Wealth*

You should have just flown to Thailand and gotten a couple of suits made there; not only would it have been cheaper but you also could have enjoyed the company of, you know, some actual prostitutes:

The butler did it. Or — wait — maybe it was the maid. Or maybe, just maybe, it was the scowling doormen who looked me up and down disapprovingly and made me feel like Oprah trying to shop at Hermès.

Either way, my first visit to the new Tom Ford flagship last week — I had attended a party there a few days earlier — was a confounding affair.

In the 1990s, Mr. Ford’s brand of martini-drenched, pheromone-charged glamour resuscitated the once clinically dead house of Gucci. He left in 2004, after a well-documented rupture with the conglomerate that owns Gucci, and has curiously chosen to re-enter the fashion arena with an upscale men’s wear collection. Mr. Ford has spoken at length about wanting to redefine luxury, from suits to nuts, for today’s peacocks who want a more sumptuous environment than that offered by the old school tailors on Savile Row. If my walk-in is any indication, Mr. Ford has confused exclusionary with exclusive.

Once I had cleared passport control, the experience was no less forbidding. The off-the-rack suits (starting around $3,000), Shogun-looking dressing gowns ($3,900) and formal attire (from $3,200) in the loungelike room to the left were enclosed in museumworthy glass cabinets that screamed, “Don’t touch!” Not a problem when it came to a beaver top hat (price on request) that would make any man look like a Central Park coachman, but if I am going to pay $5,690 for a dinner jacket, I want to try it on and have someone fawn over me while I do so.

. . .

Unimpressed by the selection of mostly cashmere-silk-blend sweaters and overpriced shoes ($1,390 for a pair of Chelsea boots; add another zero for crocodile), I decided to venture upstairs, where a lot of the most interesting accessories — limited-edition sunglasses and slick tie bars — had been on display at the party.

“Sir, this area is for appointments only,” said the security guard at the base of the stairs. I told him that I wanted to arrange a time for a fitting; he told me he did not know to whom to direct me. When I suggested he try the store manager, he replied, “Let me see if he has the time for you.”

You have to laugh. An unintentionally hilarious parody of a pretentious Madison Avenue boutique, the store reeks of arriviste Anglophilic posturing dressed up as aristocratic gentlemanly refinement. For all the preopening ballyhoo about the it’s-all-about-you customization and details like buttons on trouser cuffs so that your butler can brush away the remains of the day — at last! — the reality is more akin to a luxury store in a second-tier market during the mid-’90s.

When I heard that Mr. Ford had appointed an in-store maid, I assumed that it was a marketing ploy and that a modelesque stunner would walk around in high heels and a feather duster, playfully spanking the hedge-fund guys who were prepared to drop a pretty penny on, say, silk pajamas ($1,900, monogram not included). Not to my taste, by any means, but it would have been a cheeky gesture in keeping with the winking sexual provocation for which he was known at Gucci.

The last thing I expected was a display of help-as-spectacle that reminded me of the Brazilian haute department store Daslu, which employs hundreds of maids for the benefit of traveling robber-baron princesses. The security guards and curtained windows brought to mind the closed-door policy of Bijan in the ’80s, a shop that is now confined to the annals of retail history.

Then again, it could have simply been an off day:

My visit the following day was markedly different. The service offered me, especially by the store manager, Edward Carbonell, who possesses a charming bedside manner and the best skin in high-end men’s retail, was exemplary. It was Champagne and smiles all around, but then the entire staff appeared to know I was a Times reporter since I had made the appointment in my name.

*It’s kind of pathetic that a Thursday Style article can do more to stimulate discussion about the rich paying their fair share of taxes than the Times’ op-ed page is able to do.

Gorgonzola As The New Government Cheese

Imagine that:

After nearly two years in Harlem, gourmet market Citarella became a bit more community-friendly last week by finally accepting EBT cards — what used to be known as food stamps. Though its five sibling stores still hold true to cash or credit only, the underpopulated 125th Street branch is making changes to accommodate the vastness of the neighborhood (and the fact that it’s located across from the General Grant Houses). “If people walk in and can’t afford it, they walk out,” says manager Charles Schillaci. “What good is that for us or for them? Our prices are comparable to those of other stores in the area.” The store sells both Gorgonzola tortellini and Goya black beans.

The Shrinking Upper Middle Class Of New York City

How unlikely is it that you’ll ever be able to afford real estate in Manhattan? Basically impossible:

Pity upper-middle-class Manhattanites. The average sales price of apartments here has spiked so extremely — tripling in the last decade to a record $1,295,445, according to a recent Prudential Douglas Elliman report — that only the most excessively well-heeled can become local owners.

Dottie Herman is the president and C.E.O. of that massive Elliman brokerage, yet her betrothed niece can’t find a Manhattan apartment. “Her fiancé said to me, ‘Gee, I don’t think it’s fair: We’re both professionals, we both went to college, and we’re not going to be able to find something in Long Island,'” Ms. Herman said, “‘and we’re not going to be able to find something in the city.'”

. . .

It’s uncouth to fret over rich people who can’t afford to buy a leafy Manhattan pad when there are over 30,000 New Yorkers living in shelters, and when the top-10th earners have the highest share of national income since pre-Depression America.

And yet: Back in 1997, when the average annual wage here was about $59,200, the median co-op cost a wonderfully appropriate $196,000. According to the state Department of Labor, that wage stat only rose to $84,200 in 2005, when the median co-op cost $635,000.

Last year, that median price blossomed by another $40,000.

. . .

According to Ms. Herman, $150,000 per year is enough income to become an island homeowner. “It’s not going to be on Central Park South, but I’m sure you can find something in Murray Hill. You can find things — a one-bedroom, 700, 800 square feet.”

Indeed, Upper West Side mortgage-broker Susan Gersh calculated that $130,000 is about the minimum income for a $600,000 apartment buyer with a 30-year mortgage — and 20 percent readily available up front for the down payment.

Therefore, a prospective Manhattan homeowner not only needs to be among the top 10 percent of Americans in income, but also must have gobs of saved money, too.

“If you have about $250 to $300 [thousand] in the bank, and you’re buying something that costs $600,000, you’re just there if you’re making a buck-fifty,” said associate Elliman broker Matt Gulker.

Pied-a-terrible.

Sure, You Could Say That You’d Like To See The Whole Market Come Crashing And Burning Down To The Ground But That Wouldn’t Be Prudential (Douglas Elliman) Of You

When you put it this way, would an unmitigated real estate collapse really be so bad? I’m not kidding:

In the past decade, the price of the average Manhattan apartment has surged by nearly $1 million, a threefold increase to $1.3 million, a new report says.

The report, an analysis of Manhattan apartment sales by Miller Samuel, an appraisal company, and Prudential Douglas Elliman, a real estate firm, illustrates the seemingly endless increase in housing prices over the past 10 years, especially between 2000 and 2005. Despite the financial slowdown after the terror attacks of September 11, 2001, and a national cooling of the housing market, Manhattan has attained levels that may have been considered unfathomable 10 years ago.

“Three-hundred dollars a foot 10 years ago was the number — that was the Manhattan number,” an author of the report, Jonathan Miller, said. In 2006, the average price per square foot of a condo or a co-op was $1,031 — the first time the price had reached that high, and a 214% increase over 1997.

Both the average and median sales prices have increased by more than 200%, with the average Manhattan apartment selling for $1.3 million last year, compared with $431,000 10 years ago.

We’re Still Waiting For An SJP Apology

Very Big of him:

At the opening-night party for Talk Radio, [Sex and the City star Chris Noth] lamented, “What makes me really sick is how New York now looks like a bad imitation of Sex and the City. Meatpacking is a good example of just how fucked up it is. You can’t have a city that’s interesting where the only people living in it are rich. When I came here as a kid, as a young adult, you could get lost — many different worlds collided. You cannot say that today.”