Thurs. 06/10/2010 - Shop

I never knew the 10th and 11th streets (mostly between Broadway and 5th Avenue) were once places for antiques. I heard the business went down quite a bit here and many stores closed, but there were quite a lot of stores remaining from teeny tiny jewelry store, to high end sleek ones, to mega size wholesalers.

{Bijan Royal}

First of all, I never saw that many of chandeliers in one place in my life. The amount of pieces Bijan (very nice grandpa owner) carried there was beyond imagination. Bijan has been doing business in the current building since 1971 (so the store is older than me) and he used to fill the whole 5 floors with antiques. Today I looked around 3 floors, so I can only imagine how this place used to be. Plus, he also has a 10,000sq. warehouse in Long Island City. Bijan is actually a wholesaler selling only to decorators, traders, dealers and collectors. But he was very nice to me and showed me around the store and even gave me the whole sale prices + extra good delivery fee! If you get lucky here, you can find a more than 100 years antique chair with better prices than at Wisteria.com. Since I had budget, he showed me many pieces with very good prices. And I was totally glad that I didn't order one yet...(I was about to do it!) It's just that I had too many choices and couldn't pick one. I also told him I was going back to Korea, and he could arrange international shipment as well, which he's been doing so long. I hold one chair and will go back there on Tuesday when he comes back from Florida. I can't wait to see more there...I was a little too excited today, I couldn't really looked at things closely.

{Eskandar}

Eskandar is women's wear designer from London. But the store also carries vintage furnitures and homewares. The clothing was not so much of my style, but I really liked its home collections. I specially liked vintage French linen bed sheets with scalloped edges, French striped bath towels with tassels, and vintage French striped linen napkins like the one at Pastis. Lines are always pricey, but they last forever, and they get softer by washing, so it's worth of investment. It's hard to get French linen pieces in Korea, so I may want to bring some...

{Bernd Goeckler Antiques}

This place carries pieces from 1920 to current, and many of them were from 20s to 50s with distinctive styles of those eras. They are also by famous designer or design houses, so the prices are super high even with 20% discount. What's very nice of this place was, they were very friendly (or do I really look like a person who's gonna buy these?) and if I tell them what I am interested, they give me the photographs with designer, descriptions and price on it. So, I picked two pieces just for fun, and got two photographs and a nice calendar!

{Jordi Anold}

Jordi Anold used to sell her line under the name of MINT, but she recently renamed her brand as by her name. Her dresses are always cute...I really like all the dresses here. And the line is so well edited, so there is not a single piece that was unnecessary. All made with food fabrics and pattern so, they looked great on person.