The Robust Preciousness of Labour and Wait

Not long ago, I went to the Manhattan outpost of the Dover Street Market, situated on a quiet stretch of lower Lexington Avenue. The store is an unexpected oasis of high style, where seven floors of Comme des Garçons and Thom Browne keep company with an ever-shifting selection of avant-garde up-and-comers. It all takes place within the gutted shell of a bank, a detail you may make as little or as much of as you like. On the ground floor, you can have cakes and tea, or soft-scrambled eggs, or an array of Bonnard-hued salads, in Rose Bakery, a chic international mini-chain with shops in Paris and London as well as the various Dover Street Market locations around the world. (The bakery’s proprietor, Rose Carrarini, is the sister-in-law of the Japanese fashion designer Rei Kawakubo, who founded Comme des Garçons and co-founded Dover Street Market.) The dining area of the chilly industrial room is warmed up by some colorful yarn-bombing on the support columns, and the lunch had all the sophisticated wholesomeness one expects of casual New British cooking. But my real goal was a small display of goods just beyond the bakery’s counter, the first American location of the British retail brand Labour and Wait. I deliberately suspended the pleasure of my visit, fingering my wallet.