Minimalist clothing designer Jil Sander’s +J collection for Uniqlo debuted this morning and the line stretched down Broadway from Spring to Prince Street, and stayed that way, with people waiting as much as an hour and a half to get first dibs.

“I obviously can’t afford the real stuff,” said one customer, Stephanie Judge—who added she was at Uniqlo doing “research” for work but refused to explain what that meant. She had waited in line for an hour and 40 minutes. “Wait, wait, no, I’m with her!” Ms. Judge shouted, indicating a companion, as a security guard tried to block her entrance.

Ms. Sander’s collection, which includes both men’s and women’s clothing, dragged people away from other daily responsibilities.

“I actually have a class at 12:30,” Marcus Oda, a first year law student at N.Y.U., said. “So I’m getting a little nervous.”

People were let in ten at a time, and could only buy five items because of limited supplies.

“It’s exciting. I feel like these are collector’s pieces,” Fawnia Chang, a fashion blogger, said. She admitted to being more of a Uniqlo fan, but still she showed her support for Ms. Sander, buying a long gray winter coat, a cardigan and skinny jeans after waiting for an hour and a half. “Don’t tell my husband,” she whispered.

Ms. Sander’s ready-to-wear clothing usually sells for several thousand dollars per piece. The +J line ranges from $19.50 for shirts to $149.50 for outerwear. Get shoppin'!

Catherine Zeta-Jones buys duplicates of all her clothes and stocks them at her various homes throughout the world so that they all have identical wardrobes. [Vogue UK]

Critics find Indian Vogue offensive because of its spread of real people living in impoverished areas, photographed with accessories like a $100 Fendi bib and $200 Burberry umbrella. [NY Times]  

Halston may replace designer Marco Zanini with a whole design team rather than an individual designer. [WWD] 

Jil Sander has been sold to Onward Holdings Co. Ltd., a Tokyo-based apparel group, for $244.1 million. [WWD]

Photographer Patrick Demarchelier said he'd like to photograph Michelle Obama. [Vogue UK]

Overheated social events find me clawing at my extremities under the table like a deranged smack addict. I find it’s much better for all concerned if I stay at home and refrain from frightening people.

Fortunately for itchy me, there is some really diverting TV unspooling at the moment. Kath and Kim, the big Aussie hit, is back on the Sundance Channel. A recent episode saw the mother (Kath) and daughter (Kim) team donning fancy hats and heading off to the races, where they get so drunk they end up disgracing themselves in the hospitality marquee—Kath coughs up an hors d’oeuvre on Rachel Griffith—and vomiting in the Porta-Potties. Kath tops things off by getting a chunk of regurgitated carrot stuck in her fascinator (alluring eye-veil). What a couple of fun-loving crazy Sheilas! (Down under, all females are referred to as Sheilas.)

Despite TV’s fascination with high fashion, there would appear to be a giant disconnect re the overall message. The big news from Europe—those skinny Sheilas are mincing up and down the Parisian catwalks as I write—is that Belgian enigma Raf Simons has taken over the helm at the house of Jil Sander. Gushing reviews of his fall 2006 collection optimistically herald the arrival of a new and intellectual sexuality to fashion. This message contrasts sharply with what is currently happening in TV land, where, thankfully, people continue to get tartier and sluttier and ever more whorish. The new series of Footballers’ Wives on BBC America is impossibly steamy and sleazier than ever. The characters, all of whom have dewy moist skin (thanks to the dismal damp climate of my homeland), are bursting out of sarongs and tights skirts—and that’s just the men. The first episode was replete with bare bums, boobs and, yes, strap-ons. Highly recommended.

The biggest portion of my TV-watching time is currently accorded to more wholesome fare: I’m talking American Idol. My husband and I, along with anyone with half a brain, are rooting wildly for one-namer Mandisa.

Yes, Paris Bennett is as cute as a button and her voice is perfection, but Ms. Mandisa has something petite Paris doesn’t have: Mandisa is larger than life. The lady has heft. Mandisa is a big, bad mama-jama.

What is it about large black ladies that makes them so compelling? Why do we, straight and gay alike, derive such good vibrations from their big cuddly selves? Here’s my theory: We love big black chicks because they are genuinely comfortable with their girth. Their heapin’ helpin’s of joyous self-acceptance are universally attractive. All that jolly self-esteem is positively contagious. It’s the opposite of the depressing I’m-never-thin-enough wretched self-hatred that emanates from Hollywood white ladies.

I hatched this theory a number of years ago when, filing a report for this very newspaper, I interviewed Lane Bryant shoppers in Harlem. These gorgeous gals were bursting with pride out of their size-26 halter-tops. I watched them as they strutted off down 125th Street, spreading joy and good vibrations in their lovely wakes.

While American Idol is sizzling, there are, on the reality-TV front, few innovations this season. The formats, with their bitchy judgments and eliminations, have become cliché. The exception would be Style Me with Rachel Hunter. Though typical in much of its structure, this show breaks one very fundamental principle: The grand prize is an un-prize. It is, in fact, a total, horrifying dud. As a result, we audience members, instead of rooting for the best person to win, find ourselves wishing the putrid winnings on the worst person.

Just how wanky is said grand prize? Are you ready? BRACE YOURSELVES! Here goes: The winner of this show gets the privilege of becoming Rachel Hunter’s personal stylist!!! Can you stand it? Yes, there’s a $10,000 check as well, but, personally speaking, I would rather scrub out Porta-Potties at the racetrack than spend the rest of my days hauling Ms. Hunter’s gowns back and forth to the dry cleaner. No offense, Rach.

Let’s talk about the lady in question: It may well be that the Kiwi former model and former Mrs. Rod Stewart is a wonderful, fun-loving Sheila in real life, but you’d never know it from watching her low-key (no-key?) performance on Style Me. She comes across as being a humorless, schoolmarmy sort of Sheila. No chunks of vomit in her fascinator. To become her personal stylist would be to enter into a cruel mistress/handmaiden relationship—I’m thinking Jean Genet here—where every day would end in ripped stockings and mascara tears. It’s no wonder that when Maîtresse Hunter says, “You don’t measure up!”—the show’s version of “You’re fired!”—tears of relief come streaming out of the lucky loser’s eyeballs.

The thought that one of these poor suckers is going to enter Rachel’s closet and remain there for the rest of eternity, deeming it a bonanza prize, gives the show an air of overwhelming sadness. Compared to America’s Next Top Model, Style Me views like an episode of Bleak House.

Re ANTM, the next spellbinding series starts March 8. Don’t expect to see yours truly upbraiding any of the young hopefuls. Tyra Banks appears to have lost my phone number.

Scratch. Scratch. Scratch.

The old chestnut about what book you'd want on a desert island is outmoded now, what with most desert islands dedicated to reality programming. However, if you were to find yourself stranded in a motel room without cable, you could do a lot worse than Schott's Original Miscellany . A best-seller in Britain, this slender collection of random information is surprisingly entertaining, frequently useful and occasionally thought-provoking. As the compiler himself observes, "It is, perhaps, possible to live one's life without Schott's Original Miscellany , but it seems a curious and brave thing to attempt."

That's a slight overstatement, given the generous amount of standard-issue trivia here. If you want the names of Santa's reindeer, Snow White's dwarves, the Bond girls, the labors of Hercules or the seven wonders of the ancient world, then Mr. Schott's your man. He also includes those tired old collective nouns, most of which-a "murder" of crows, an "exaltation" of larks-we've seen before. (I'm not sure that all of them are even right; a "bench" doesn't refer just to bishops, as Mr. Schott implies, but to many elected officials.)

Still, the good, original stuff vastly outweighs the so-so. For me, the appeal of Mr. Schott's book lies in the practical information that I didn't know I needed but am delighted to have. For example, in a lifetime of buying lingerie, I've never understood how the ladies with the tape measure arrive at a bra size. It's complicated, and it's here. And Mr. Schott's explication of the intensely cryptic international laundry symbols is, all by itself, worth the price of the book: I can now understand my garment tags and operate my Braun iron without fear.

Even handier, Schott's provides European/U.S. conversion tables for shoe and dress sizes, a list I've just photocopied for my next Barneys sortie. Now I won't need to ask an arch salesperson to reveal whether a size six is a European 34 or 36-a question that evidently exposes me as someone with no business in the Jil Sander boutique, anyway. A little farther afield, if you, like me, have always wondered idly how Indian women keep their saris up, Mr. Schott provides simple line drawings-à la The Joy of Sex -illustrating how to wrap six yards of silk.

Practicality aside, the best tidbits in Schott's produce unexpected little epiphanies. The juiciest of these nuggets are historical-tiny, carefully selected footnotes that animate the past (and lead me to suspect that Mr. Schott has a degree from a good university). For instance, the leaders of the French Revolution ditched the Gregorian calendar and invented a system of 12 30-day months with names based on seasonal weather-fog, wind and heat. They eliminated weeks in favor of 10-day groupings called décades and made the five or six leftover days into holidays dedicated to such concepts as reason, virtue and revolution. The sheer hell-bent iconoclasm of it reminds you how well-behaved our own founders were.

Across the Channel, during the reign of George I, demonstrators had one hour to disperse after an official read them the newly passed Riot Act, which commanded "all persons … peaceably to depart to their habitations." It all seems so much more civilized than fire hoses, until you get to Mr. Schott's observation that anyone who didn't move along woke up with his head on a pike.

Other entries are somehow reassuring, revealing order in a world that seems more chaotic every day. I was glad to know, for instance, that there are precise guidelines for describing newly discovered terrain on the moon and planets. The names of scholars, artists and scientists go to large lunar craters; dunes on Venus get names of desert goddesses; features of Titan, a satellite of Saturn, receive names of "displaced ancient cultures." Meteorologists are equally systematic in their classification of tornadoes based on wind speed. An F4 (207 to 260 m.p.h.) is "Devastating," an F5 (261 to 318 m.p.h.) is "Incredible," and an F6 (greater than 319 m.p.h.) is left nameless, with the hopeful annotation "Theoretical; not expected on Earth."

But more intriguing than any mere fact in Schott's is the philosophical question raised by its popularity. In A.D. 2003, when anyone with a high-speed Internet connection can get the basics of any subject within 10 seconds, does the world need collections like this? From an informational standpoint, probably not. As an experiment, I Googled a few of Schott's entries and was instantly drowning in expertise. "Collective nouns" produced five Web sites devoted to the subject, including one in which you can coin collective nouns of your own. "French Revolutionary Calendar" brought me the particulars in Mr. Schott's book, plus thumbnail pictures of the multi-ethnic Mariannes-those women who embody La France. "Sari-wrapping" led me to diagrams much more detailed than Schott's , and a curry recipe besides.

So if information isn't the selling point of Schott's Original Miscellany , what is? Aesthetics comes into it a little bit: The volume is beautifully designed (by Mr. Schott himself), feels great in the hand and comes with one of those attached satin ribbons that serve as page markers. (Note to Mr. Schott for his next miscellany: Do those things have a special name?) But the real pleasure of the book lies in the process by which you come across the information. You don't seek, you stumble. The difference between this handsome volume and an Internet search is the difference between listening to a CD you've burned yourself and happening onto a really great radio station, or the difference between giving a party and going to one. Ben Schott has done all the work, and given it to us as a gift.

JoAnn Gutin is a science writer and editor in New York City.

"It's the granite," explained the waiter as he set down a plate of chocolate cake between her and her companion. "Granite walls on both sides you see, so cell phones don't work."

Some restaurateurs will go to any lengths to stop the use of cell phones in their dining room.

Nicole's is in the basement of the 20,000-square-foot store opened by the British designer who formerly worked for French Connection. In the premises that formerly housed the Copacabana nightclub, it was designed by architect Michael Gabellini (who also did the Giorgio Armani and Jil Sander stores and the Guggenheim extension). You enter through glass doors over a glass-edged wooden bridge and look down through a high atrium to the dining room below. You can look across and see clothes hanging on rails on the other side; black, gray and brown enlivened here and there by a splash of lime green or orange. The restaurant is at the foot of a wooden staircase.

From the entrance, I could see into what looked like a lab, but is actually a gleaming kitchen bustling with cooks in pristine whites. It is placed inside a brightly lit glass tube that overlooks the entire dining room. Down a few steps on the right is a wide bar about 30 feet long, lit underneath so that it glows like iridescent marble. People were perched on barstools having drinks and snacks from the afternoon bar menu.

The dining room, with its high ceiling and wood floors, is spacious and minimal, with banquettes down one plain white wall. Pale blue lighting reflected on our faces from below and made one of my friends, whose hair has turned a premature white, look as though he'd had a blue rinse. The effect is disconcerting. (Who would ever want to look at themselves in this light?) Even the candles at night cast a blue glow, placed as they are in little glass holders filled with blue liquid. The banquettes are rather uncomfortable, catching your back in just the wrong place, and the sound bounces up from the floors, making the room quite noisy. But these caveats aside, the space is sleek and impressive–and a far, far cry from the way dining rooms in clothing shops used to be.

The old department store restaurants were the province of women in from the suburbs for the sales, dressed in Peck & Peck suits, who dined on shrimp and pineapple platters washed down with watery coffee served in thick cups. But either the stores have closed or their restaurants have been done over, their chicken salads replaced by grilled fish, foccaccia and risotto.

Ms. Farhi has a highly successful restaurant in her London boutique, and she brought in her head chef Annie Wayte to oversee the new place with Anna Kovel–a protégée of Alice Waters' at Chez Panisse in Berkeley–as chef. The menu is simple but eclectic, and the kitchen makes lavish use of produce from local producers and farmer's markets. It is terrific food, starting with the excellent selection of breads: olive bread, country loaf, challah and foccaccia served with a wonderful green, fruity olive oil that is brought to the table when you sit down.

The salads are particularly imaginative and original (and, needless to say, made with the freshest ingredients). Shards of crisp fried prosciutto come with baby leeks and watercress tossed in a sharp mustard dressing. It's a delicious combination. So is the mizuna salad, spiky pale-green leaves under a perfectly ripened slice of goat cheese with warm toasted almonds and haricots verts. Marinated wild mushrooms are thinly sliced and mixed with frisée and baby greens, sprinkled with shaved Parmesan. The herb-cured wild salmon is as good as I've had anywhere, matched with pickled cucumber, sliced Rose Finn Apple potatoes and onion, flavored with mint. Instead of a shrimp and pineapple platter, there is lump crabmeat seasoned with herbs (including lots of dill), piled into a crab shell. It comes with a lemony fresh mayonnaise, marinated zucchini and green beans, and a crunchy flatbread. When I was there for lunch one afternoon, just about everyone seemed to be eating it.

Risotto of the day, made on this occasion with tomato, was a disappointment. The rice was properly cooked but bland and in need of seasoning. But not so the riff on English fish and chips that the kitchen turns out: chunks of snowy, deep-fried monkfish with fries the size of the columns in a child's building blocks.

The hanger steak was nicely charred and rare, matched with a creamy potato artichoke gratin, and the grilled veal chop was juicy, with pronounced flavor, served with chanterelles and potato gratin. The roasted duck breast is one of the kitchen's most inspired dishes: surrounded by a ring of spicy red mustard leaves with roasted onions, figs and bacon, the whole thing brought together with a rich balsamic vinegar sauce.

Desserts were not conceived with the idea of fitting into a size six, or even a size eight. A plate of poached Seckel pears stuffed with mascarpone and biscotti was described, appropriately, by the person who was eating it one evening as "one of the best desserts I ever had in my life." The caramelized plums in a flaky crust with almond ice cream were also great. Crema Catalana is a smooth, fennel-flavored custard you can't stop eating, served with delicate hazelnut cookies. The chocolate cake is dark, rich and fluffy. It would be the star dish on some restaurant's menus, but here it seems almost ordinary compared with the other desserts (it comes with a fine-tasting brittle, too).

Ms. Farhi says she likes casual, easy clothes. But even so, it's probably better to eat here after you've worked up an appetite browsing through the bulky sweaters and leather tank tops in the store, rather than before. And a glass or two of wine (from the expensive list) might lead to blurry impulse purchases on the way out. A lime-green leather tank top! What was I thinking?

Nicole's

* *

10 East 60th Street

223-2288

Dress: Preferably Nicole Farhi

Noise level: Quite loud

Wine list: Very expensive

Credit cards: All major

Price range: Main courses lunch and dinner $20 to $32

Brunch: Sunday (coming soon)

Lunch: Monday to Saturday noon to 3 P.M., tea 3 P.M. to 5:30 P.M.

Dinner: Monday to Saturday 6 P.M. to 10 P.M.

* Good

* * Very Good

* * * Excellent

* * * * Outstanding

No Star: Poor

Mr. Gabellini, 40, was honored for a design that will reintegrate a large piazza located on a landfill in the Adige River in Verona, Italy, into the fabric of the city. Mr. Gabellini persuaded the city to open the river's floodgates, which were closed in 1881. The water will run through channels along the perimeter walls of a two-level underground parking structure; the channels will be lit from above with natural light through pinhole-size openings. The project, which will be completed in 2001, will hopefully turn the piazza on top of the parking garage into an open marketplace and site for future events relating to the annual Verona Music Festival.

Mr. Gabellini is a 1980 graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design. Before founding Gabellini Associates in 1991, he worked for Kohn Pederson Fox Associates in New York. For the past two years, he has designed the Hugo Boss Awards exhibition at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and several art installations for the Council of Fashion Designers of America. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife, Nancy Spector, a curator at the Guggenheim. Noted for his use of cool, simple materials and luminous lighting, Gabellini Associates' first commission was for the Jil Sander flagship store on Avenue Montaigne in Paris. Earlier this year, Mr. Gabellini received an American Institute of Architects award for the design of the Jil Sander showroom in Hamburg and the Ultimo boutique in San Francisco.

"Michael's strategy is both elegant and beautiful," said Raul Barreneche, a senior editor at Architecture . "But to make the transition into larger-scale architecture and urban design puts him in another league altogether. I think it is a difficult transition to go from a showroom to an urban plaza."

The P/A award, originated in 1954 by the now defunct Progressive Architecture magazine, is one of the rites of passages in the making of architectural stars: Philip Johnson, Peter Eisenman, Frank Gehry, Michael Graves, Rem Koolhaas and I.M. Pei have been recipients in the past. This year's other winner were Office dA of Boston, Wendell Burnette Architects of Phoenix, Vincent James Associates of Minneapolis and Willis, Bricker & Cannady, Architects of Houston.

From his office on lower Broadway, Mr. Gabellini said that he is not going to abandon working on boutiques and galleries now that he has been recognized for a design that is more ambitious.

"We will continue with our retail and gallery work, which we have a history with," said Mr. Gabellini. "As retail gave us design entree, we hope this will give us entree into architecture and urban design work."

Cooper's Second Space

Paula Cooper opened the first art gallery in SoHo in 1968. She left SoHo in 1996 for Chelsea, and hired Richard Gluckman to design a lofty barnlike space at 534 West 21st Street that has become a magnet for scores of other galleries. Although she once represented a number of artists, many of them, like Elizabeth Murray, Donald Judd and Jennifer Bartlett, have gone on to other galleries, while leaving her with 30 years' worth of art inventory. Now, in a space that used to be just a well-kept secret between her and some of her clients, she has opened a second gallery, across the street at 521 West 21st Street. In four weeks, the second gallery has become a main stop in Chelsea.

Open only on Saturdays, the second Paula Cooper Gallery operates more like a museum. Where the main gallery has rotating exhibitions that change completely every five weeks, the new space will have a permanent exhibition with artworks moved and rotated on a regular basis. "I want to make people slow down and look at things," said Ms. Cooper, 61, a slow-speaking, measured person herself who likes to stand in front of artworks in silent reverie. "I remember one time I had a group show in the summer. I would occasionally change one piece. There was an artist who came in quite frequently. I moved a Jackie Winsor from one side of the gallery to another part of the gallery and he came back and said, 'Oh, is that a new piece?' So even someone who is used to looking and sensitive can miss something. It is very interesting to pay attention to different things. One thing will make you see other things."

Ms. Cooper told The Observer that she originally rented the second gallery–the former Paolo Baldacci Gallery–as a storage space for her extensive inventory. "Everything looked so beautiful here I just couldn't bring myself to use it as open storage. We originally envisioned it as a very private space where we could bring collectors. Then word got out and so many people wanted to come that we decided to open it to the public." Ms. Cooper still stores art at Crozier Fine Arts Storage, right down the street from her galleries.

For the present, Ms. Cooper has taken the main room of the new gallery, which has a pair of vaulted skylights, and installed six pieces by a couple of her favorite artists: a black bronze minimalist wall sculpture by Ellsworth Kelly titled Diagonal Curve XVII , a five-unit untitled stainless steel Donald Judd floor piece, a Carl Andre floor sculpture titled Tin Ribbon , an untitled Donald Judd copper and red Plexiglas wall sculpture, a 1962 Pop Art painting of a smoking cigarette with a Plexiglas box protruding from the front by James Rosenquist called Space That Won't Fall , and a 1997 untitled Rudolf Stingel painting made out of pink styrofoam. She said that each work represents a distinct artistic philosophy.

"It's kind of a joke," she said. "A gallery shouldn't be a museum, but what I intended to do was install works so you could see them individually and there is a dialogue. So your mind can take on a lot of things.… Rudi [Stingel] using styrofoam, which is such a light material compared to the Judd, Andre and Kelly. It is interesting because it gets you thinking."

Ms. Cooper does not use wall labels to distinguish between the artworks that are on view, which also includes a room of mixed media works on paper by Yayoi Kusama, a room of recent Sol LeWitt gouaches and a tiny room with a Jackie Winsor wire box sculpture and a wall sculpture. Although there is a checklist, it helps if you have Ms. Cooper as a guide. She said that she finds it "distracting" to have to see labels on the walls next to the art.

What does all this have to do with selling art? "Nothing," said Ms. Cooper with a laugh. "Once in a while, something happens," said the dealer who originated the SoHo soft sell, a style involving a large number of silent pauses. "Ninety percent of the people who come in are art lovers, not collectors," said Ms. Cooper, who is married to Jack Macrae, an editor at Henry Holt & Company and publisher of Duchamp: A Biography , by Calvin Tomkins. Ms. Cooper and Mr. Macrae live in a town house a block away from the gallery.

"It is really a neighborhood here–young people, old people–and it is a very community-minded area. They are really attractive and they get together and have meetings. I mean, SoHo became a middle-class ghetto after a while."

On Aug. 2 (his 37th birthday), Mr. Kalinsky, a former shoe buyer for Barneys, will open Jeffrey New York, a 12,000-square-foot former warehouse on the corner of 10th Avenue packed with expensive garments, reminiscent–in inventory, at least–of his former employer. Gucci, Helmut Lang, Ann Demeulemeester, Costume National, Dries Van Noten, Jil Sander, John Bartlett, Lucien Pellat-Finet and Marni, among others, will decorate his racks. Stuart Weitzman, Robert Clergerie, Dolce & Gabbana and Prada will line his centerpiece shoe display.

What Jeffrey lacks in name recognition and square-footage compared to Barneys (and everyone is comparing his store to Barneys), Mr. Kalinsky intends to make up for in pampering and Southern charm. The son and grandson of retailers and owner of three successful Atlanta stores–Bob Ellis, Jeffrey and Jil Sander (he owns her franchise)–will offer up his Manolo Blahniks with a healthy dose of hospitality, which may prove to be a welcome antidote to Madison Avenue, where the salespeople are almost always too hip to help. If you have ever been to one of Jeffrey Kalinsky's stores, you have probably met him, and chances are he remembers your shoe size.

Bag designer Judith Leiber calls Mr. Kalinsky her "terrific shoe man." And when wedding-cake designer Sylvia Weinstock, who has been shopping with Mr. Kalinsky for 10 years, heard he was coming to New York, she called him to say, "I can't wait! I have my charge card ready!"

Retailers are less giddy. In fact, Barneys is said to be ticked off. Jason Weisenfeld, vice president of public relations, tried to take the high road. "We are thrilled for Jeffrey as we are for all Barneys alumni that go on and excel in the world of retail," he said. "In Jeffrey's case, we are particularly flattered because he has always been very vocal about the enormous amount he learned during his tenure at Barneys."

Like how to sign a label like Gucci, which doesn't even sell at Barneys? "The area he is going into is extremely exciting," said Barbara Sforza, president of Zama Sport USA, importer and distributor of Gucci's women's clothing. "He has impeccable taste. It will be great for New York to have another small multivendor store. I am sure tons of people will be shopping there." Until Jeffrey, Gucci was available in New York only at Saks Fifth Avenue and the Gucci boutique on Fifth Avenue.

Laura Stephen, director of wholesale sales at Helmut Lang, also decided to sell to Mr. Kalinsky. "It is exciting and experimental and risk taking," she said of the store. Helmut Lang is sold at Barneys, Saks and at his own boutique on Greene Street. "He has excellent standards and excellent taste. It is very much not what is happening on Madison and Fifth and even in SoHo."

As it turns out, Jeffrey New York will be headed by a troika of Barneys graduates. On March 25, Mr. Kalinsky hired David Rubenstein, a former buyer of designer and evening collections at Barneys, as vice president of men's and women's wear. Mr. Kalinsky and Mr. Rubenstein, who has also been vice president of sales and merchandising at Isaac Mizrahi and then at Tse Cashmere, already collaborate on a casual men's and women's clothing line called Kalinsky Rubenstein, which is sold at Barneys and at Linda Dresner on Park Avenue. (Probably not for long.)

"He is entering a league of competition that is quite high," said Ellen Carey, former public relations director at Barneys until the late 80's, who was brought on as fashion director and vice president of Jeffrey New York, also on March 25. "The friends that he had previously might not be his friends now. Nobody is going to be happy to have a new retailer enter into this arena.… We're all sharing the same customers."

Lugging a cavernous Hermès bag across the slick cobblestones, Mr. Kalinsky approached his new space, the first floor of 449 West 14th Street, which used to be occupied by Moishe's Moving and Storage. "I mean, can't you see it?" he said, waving a buttery-leather-clad arm at the six-story limestone building. "It's a store! It's already a store! It looks like an old main-floor department store and it's going to be this raw."

Had it been a weekday, one of Mr. Kalinsky's friends might have asked him to pipe down. Upstairs from Mr. Kalinsky are the offices of designer John Bartlett, fashion event planners Milk Studios, Guccione Media ( Gear magazine) and fashion publicist KCD. Within a few blocks are restaurants like Markt, Petite Abeille, Le Gans, Macau and, soon, a Balthazar outpost. The Chelsea Market between 15th and 16th streets on Ninth Avenue houses wholesale and retail stores like Amy's Bread and Hale and Hearty Soup. Dozens of galleries have slowly migrated from SoHo to the far West 20's. Shortly thereafter, Comme des Garçons forged a path for fashion retailers, opening a store at 520 West 22nd Street between 10th and 11th avenues. Barnesandnoble.com sits across the street from the Chelsea Markets in the old Post Office building. Jeffrey will be the first multivendor retail store.

"It's the last frontier of New York," said Caroline P. Banker, senior vice president of New Spectrum Realty, who found Mr. Kalinsky his space. Since then, she has steered Portico into a former Williams-Sonoma outlet store on 10th Avenue between 23rd and 24th streets. "All of the buildings are going to be converted. The restaurants are always the first ones in. I keep getting calls about it. Every developer is trying to get in."

Mr. Kalinsky poked around the empty, windowless space, which has 18-foot ceilings supported by a couple dozen giant, square pillars. The original marble tile floor is scuffed. Along one wall are ancient elevators with mahogany cars, remnants from the days when the building was the Nabisco headquarters. They don't work but Mr. Kalinsky may fix them. "We are keeping everything architecturally we can from the building," he said. Even the loading bays. People can watch the new stock arrive while they shop.

The plan is to have shoes down the center of the store and ready-to-wear and accessories surrounding them. Men's and women's clothing will be hung side by side. "Wouldn't you rather shop with your boyfriend than without him?" Or wear his clothes. Or even have him wear yours. "You have to say, Why not? I wear a lot of Jil. I have been known to be in the Brooks Brothers women's department for too long." He likes their narrow-legged pants. "On me, it looked like high fashion, not $60 pants."

The store will be full of sights and sounds. "We will have all different kinds of dressing rooms. You know the pink room and the Blue Room at the White House? Each one will be different. Some will have CD players, some will have TV's, some will have both. It is going to be fun."

Mr. Kalinsky doesn't only want to sell to young, scrawny fashion addicts. He will also go after the fashion unspeakable: large sizes. "I am going to sell–I hope–to 80-year-olds. I want all size 14's in clothes. But I have to start slow and see if they will come. Shoes will come from the airport to the store in sizes 4 to 12, quad A's to B's."

He has already committed to 6,000 more square feet in January and has his eye on the second and the third floors, where Saks Fifth Avenue, among others, now have space. On his mind: cosmetics, a restaurant, furniture and maybe even a private Jeffrey New York label.

"I want people wheeling their racks into the store for me to look at their stuff. If they will come to me and show it to me, I'll look at it."

"People think I had the idea to open down here because Barneys doesn't exist down here anymore. That wasn't it at all," said Mr. Kalinsky. "I was originally shopping the city looking for the possibility of a Jil Sander flagship. When I started to hear about the rents, I thought, 'Wow! If she doesn't want to do that, I want to do it.'"

Then, Mr. Kalinsky had to put New York out of his mind; he was supposed to be marrying his boyfriend of eight years last Oct. 24. "In a synagogue with a rabbi. My mother walking me down the aisle in a dress designed for her by Michael Kors, his mother in a Guy Laroche dress. Three hundred friends and family for a beautiful seated dinner dance at the Four Seasons in Atlanta afterwards."

But then his plans changed. "Two weeks before the wedding, he slept with his new 28-year-old boyfriend."

With rents in the $20-a-square-foot range on West 14th Street, he decided to go to New York after all. He signed a lease, booked a suite at the St. Regis and started looking for an apartment in the West Village. "I always wanted this and now there is absolutely nothing–no reason not to."

Walking around the store, he said, "I love the whole synergy of the meat market and the sex clubs at night. What people call seedy and what I call seedy are two different things."

But Susan Rolontz, executive vice president of the Tobé Report , a retail publication, thinks he might be jumping off the deep end. "I think he's taking on a big risk," she said. "He is so far over! Maybe it is chic, but it is not the easiest area to get to.… I would offer a car service or a van service down to there from someplace. Lunch, free delivery service, lots of amenities, that all has to be part of the package.… Downtown Barneys offered free parking."

Mr. Kalinsky protested. "What a better place to shop than on the [Hudson] river? It is so open, it is not congested. SoHo is so claustrophobic." The sound of the West Side Highway filled the air.

"I think New Yorkers will go anyplace where they can get something wonderful with a great deal of service," said Ms. Weinstock. "This is going to be Southern service, Southern gentility with a sophisticated taste at an affordable pocket. Anybody who walks through that door will be treated like a princess."

Mr. Kalinsky hopes she's right–and she may be. "He is not a bank. He is the merchant," conceded Ms. Rolontz. "Personalized service and a personality was what it used to be about. We have lost a lot of those stores like Martha and Bonwit Teller. Even Bendel when they were on 57th used to do it."

Although Mr. Kalinsky still has much to accomplish between now and Aug. 2–like knocking down walls, adding windows and stocking the store–he is already planning his Aug. 1 store-opening party. "If I had to sell from picnic tables, whatever. I can put down some carpet today and have rolling racks and sell clothes."

He wants to throw a fund-raiser for breast cancer and AIDS research and charge $1,000 a person. He put in a call to Harper's Bazaar editor Liz Tilberis. And Sylvia Weinstock is "fixing him up" with party planner Colin Cowie.

Five months a "divorcé," Mr. Kalinsky was intrigued, then disappointed.

"Well, he has a boyfriend," Mr. Kalinsky sighed, "but he is a great party planner and is in New York and is somebody I should know."