Ryckman – Little England—2/18/05 – 1

Rock star parents squeal over black onesies emblazoned with “For those about to nap, we salute you” and booties featuring the Union Jack. Traditional mothers coo over pink tees that say “My Mummy Is A Yummy Mummy,” but relent when fathers vie for shirts with the slogans “Lock Up Your Daughters” and “I Don’t Do Greens.” Adults and children alike can wear shirts that say “Shmoozer” or “Mensch,” while fashionistas buy into word play with best-sellers “You had me at Shalom” and “Nobody puts Bubbeleh in the corner.”

Showroom 64, home to this unlikely combination of British and Yiddish, is the latest shop to hit “Little England,” as Greenwich Avenue and surrounding West Village streets have been dubbed since both British expatriates and Anglophiles moved in. Co-owner Holly Greenwald, 32, who is both British and Jewish, moved to Manhattan from England ten years ago and worked at distinguished investment bank Goldman Sachs before opening the Manhattan branch of Showroom 64, the high-profile London-based children’s clothing business founded by her sister Emma Norden in 2001. She joins fellow British institutions such as the exclusive Soho House, Alexander McQueen, Lulu Guinness, and Stella McCartney boutiques, and Tea & Sympathy, the tearoom at the heart of New York’s English and Anglophile community.

While Showroom 64’s offbeat inventory is up-to-the-minute, Greenwald’s old-fashioned service model is consistent with other Brits on the block, many of whom have come to America to capitalize on the country they left behind. The English come to New York for a piece of the American dream, seeking a more commercial, less classicist society. Crossing the Atlantic allows them to preserve cherished elements of their own culture and to earn a good living doing it. And while the Brits flock to New York to make money, New Yorkers spend their hard-earned cash pretending they live in an atavistic, leisurely Europe.

“We provide real old English service that Americans seem to love,” said Greenwald, who knows exactly how to trade on the cache associated with exclusive European goods. When a 20-something single American male walks in looking confused, Greenwald snaps up her pen and paper to jot the name, age, and sex of each child he’s shopping for. She asks about each child’s personality, then recommends appropriate items from her collection. “Is this too edgy? Perhaps her mother would prefer something safer,” she says, and leads him to a t-shirt with the letters “HRH” – i.e., “Her Royal Highness.” Showroom 64 wraps each purchase, regardless of price, in a signature platinum gift box with lavender ribbon.

“American people have been so much more receptive and supportive because it’s a culture built on entrepreneurialism,” said Greenwald, who despite being seven months pregnant continues to wear four-inch Manolo Blahniks. This sentiment is echoed by Nicky Perry, the reigning queen of downtown’s British colony who found retail space for Greenwald next door to Tea & Sympathy, Perry’s tearoom since 1990, Carry On Tea & Sympathy, her English specialty food store, and A Salt and Battery, her fish and chips restaurant. “Americans are not jealous. They’re entrepreneurial,” said Perry. “Americans are very into success and they’re very supportive if you have a good idea. They really rally around you.”

Perry admits that her shop is more traditionally British than one might find in England these days, where tearooms have been traded for Starbucks. Tea & Sympathy remains faithful to British traditions, serving treacle pudding and loose tea in teapots and baking china blackbirds into homemade pies according to the English nursery rhyme. The 24-seat tearoom is an anachronism for wistful Brits in New York and an antiquated, idealized notion of British culture for Americans hungry for old-world charm.

Amy Stoller, a dialect coach and loyal Tea& Sympathy regular who identifies herself as a “lifelong raging, incurable Anglophile,” shares with Perry a love of the British television show East Enders and appreciates the sense of community she’s found at the tearoom. “Because it’s such a small restaurant, it’s easy to talk to your neighbor. You can have all sorts of interesting conversations or you can just sit there and read,” she said. Alexandra Lynch, a long-term customer who cruises downtown in her Jaguar from the Upper East Side for Yorkshire Gold Tea, called Tea & Sympathy “very charming and quaint” and said of Perry’s staff, “I love the way people really pay attention. They’re very warm.”

Both Perry and Greenwald have cozy relationships with their staffs and with the surrounding community. Despite her Union Jack sweatshirt and thick accent, Perry claims to be “much more American than English” in her boldness, her lack of formality, and her amiability. “America has drawn it out of me, given me confidence,” said Perry. Once when a long-term, wealthy customer was rude to one of her employees, Perry snatched away the phone and told the woman she would never again sell to her. “It’s not about the money!” Perry huffed. “I just cannot bear disrespect.” Greenwald in turn offers a glass of wine to valued customers and insists that she will not make any of her salespeople do anything she wouldn’t do herself. Both Perry and Greenwald donate money and goods to surrounding schools and neighborhood associations, which Perry calls “puttin’ it back.” In both cases, small business success is due in part to a big stake in what some might call an outmoded value system.

Peter Myers, owner of British grocery store Myers of Keswick on Hudson St., knows the old world better than either Perry or Greenwald and has been trading on its principles and on his countrymen’s longing for the past two decades. “We get the works in here, from pop stars to paupers, from bankers to buffoons,” he said craftily, sharing late afternoon tea and shortbread biscuits with this reporter. He too delivers the same personalized service, regardless of a patron’s status.

Myers attributes the neighborhood’s onslaught of all things English with his “charm, good looks, and personality,” but when pressed will acknowledge that perhaps Brits and Anglophiles long for the tastes of home. Myers cures homesickness with Scotch eggs, Cumberland sausage and shepherd’s pie and, like Perry, carries traditional English products that are now hard to find even in the U.K., such as camp coffee, a coffee essence that requires mixing with water, and TCP liquid, a disinfectant. He laments the phasing out of tearooms and other English traditions in his homeland. “Some people would call it progress. I wouldn’t,” said Myers, his lips pursed and turned down. Yet in the U.S., his business has improved every year, regardless of recessions and difficulties importing goods since Sept. 11, 2001.

“The trend now seems to be turning back to more localized products, to small, independent producers and suppliers. A store like this works in New York, but not elsewhere,” said Myers. However, it’s the inverse across the pond, where the U.S.’s “otherness” continues to hold some allure. “If I were an American, I would be in England opening a hamburger restaurant,” said Perry.


EXTRAS:

The American response to Showroom 64 has been overwhelming and New York’s hippest parents have become instant fans. Julianne Moore was seen climbing over boxes and sifting through merchandise the day the store opened and gift basket requests for Liv Tyler are some of the first orders Greenwald processed. Rapper 50 Cent, the Beckhams, and Oasis’ Gallagher brothers have raided the London store, while stylists for Jude Law, Gwenyth Paltrow, Stephanie Seymour, and Rod Stewart purchase from New York. Greenwald has beaten her overhead and inventory costs nearly every day she’s been in business, almost unheard-of in retail.

Despite the celebrity appeal, foot traffic on this busy neighborhood block has been her greatest ally. Most customers ogle her wares through the window before coming inside. She is regularly visited by neighborhood residents who simply want to welcome her and wish her good luck, though having lived on Horatio St. Greenwald is no stranger to the area.

Perry opened Tea & Sympathy in 1990 and has since expanded her business to include two fish and chips restaurants called A Salt and Battery. She now employs more than 40 British expatriates at her various locations. While rival English food purveyor Myers of Keswick has been in the neighborhood for 20 years, the true British invasion began with Tea & Sympathy.

Perry has been followed to the neighborhood by Perry and Greenwald agree that many Brits. “America is where you come to make or break,” said Perry, who with her compatriots has capitalized on the homeland they left behind.

Similarly, Greenwald sees her business as the anti-conglomerate, a place where superstars and plebes alike will receive personalized service and posh gift boxes, regardless of the amount of money they spend. Some patrons spend $15 on a t-shirt, while others drop ten

times that without a second thought.

“Every pub serves Budweiser!”

95 percent are British who come for a taste of home from as far away as New Hampshire, 5 percent are Americans who have been on holiday to England and liked a certain food item

Myers said his business has improved every year – Attributes the British invasion of the last ten years with his “charm, good looks and personality.” Pastis – Keith McNally

Says Brits come in because they’re nostalgic for the tastes of home – like Perry, features such items as Scotch eggs, Cumberland sausage, and shepherd’s pie and also carries items that are vestiges from his youth, but are now hard to find in England – camp coffee and TCP liquid, a disinfectant. Sells teapots, but echoes Perry in saying that “most people don’t sell proper tea anymore. It’s all bags, so teapots don’t sell.”

“In North Yorkshire, there are two or three traditional English tea shops called ‘Betty’s.’

America is the entrepreneurial land of opportunity – any money that’s here is, relatively speaking, new money – versus the United Kingdom, which is an inherently classicist society, with its remnants of aristocracy – titled, but no money left – British and other Europeans can move here and trade on American’s perceived notions of their culture. – old-fashioned personalized service – boutiques over conglomerates, allure of specialized European goods not found elsewhere in America

Like Vegas?

TEA & SYMPATHY NOTES:

“He thinks we do, but we don’t,” Nicky Perry said about whether her business competes with Myers of Keswick, a specialty English grocery shop a few blocks away.

Nicky Perry: BUSINESS MODEL – WHAT IS UNIQUE? SERVICE LEVELS? SEND OF COMMUNITY?

T&S MYSTIQUE:

“Nicky is a great character. She loves the business and cares about the community,” said Dewi Williams, a former head of publicity at the British consulate who now works for Perry, showing thank you notes from various neighborhood organizations to which Perry has donated. Perry calls this “puttin’ it back.”

But Perry attributes her loyal following to humor – she and her staff are cracking jokes all day long

Clientele is 80 percent American and 20 percent British during the week, but the percentage of British increases to 40 percent on the weekends – “The Brits come for their hangovers and they’ll travel here on weekends when they feel homesick,” Perry said of her customers who live in other neighborhoods, even the outer boroughs.

Perry: “This is where you come to make or break and now young people can’t afford to live here. This is going to become a middle-aged city and when that happens, we’re finished.”

MYERS OF KESWICK NOTES

“Since 9/11, you’d think I’d suddenly begun importing thermo-nuclear missiles” – delay in getting goods from England

“eventually there won’t be any poor people in Manhattan”

I plan to focus on Holly Greenwald and the recent success of Showroom 64, but also to place the business’ success in the context of this subset of expatriates and Anglophiles who help each other navigate Gotham.

TEA & SYMPATHY,.—serves rhubarb crumble and treacle pudding – Greenwald identifies Tea & Sympathy’s charm to Anglophiles, but also to the British because it is a vestige, a memory of past days, as Londoners no longer take time out for afternoon tea, either. “This is more British than you’ll even find in London anymore,” Greenwald said.

Malt balls, …three 20-something men presiding over the shop on a Thursday evening…awaiting their fourth compatriot, whom they describe alternately as “slovenly,” “pungent,” and “wrapped in boiled cheese.”