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When Alex Eagleton, 28, started lining up labels for his new shop, And Then Some, he didn’t have to look far. Friend and fellow artist Anthony Lister volunteered to print T-shirts and skateboards, while Eagleton’s wife Maya Ravi offered cast-crystal necklaces from her jewelry line Tooth of a Lion. And then there was the impetus for the boutique all along: his clothing line, thesamenicepeople.
Eagleton—who put in a year working on Wall Street—started his menswear collection two years ago with a strong vision. “I wanted to make what I wanted, out of the fabric that I wanted, and as much or little as I wanted,” he says. He’s succeeded by reinterpreting basics in luxe materials and producing limited runs of up to 30 per style. In addition to his slim-cut lambskin-and-wool varsity jackets and lush cotton-knit hoodies, he stocks wildly printed streetwear by London-dwelling Swede Karolina Kling and hugely oversized tops by Finn Daniel Palillo.
More impresario than shopkeeper, the Fort Greene inhabitant has wrangled an amorphous crew of artists, musicians and now designers under the banner of thesamenicepeople. The artists collective functions as both promoter—organizing shows at Williamsburg’s 3rd Ward—and curator, gathering works for that neighborhood’s Insest Gallery, a sidewalk display case and site of occasional parties. All that was missing was a brick-and-mortar venue for turning those creative whims into something with a price tag.
He’s found that in a pocket-size shop in Boerum Hill off Atlantic Avenue, which doubles as a clubhouse for his eclectic crew. Inside you’ll find a listening station stocked with tracks by unsigned bands like Brooklyn teens Neon Coyote and Eagleton’s own group Romanoff, plus zany one-off designs such as Lister’s skateboards and creepy crochet animals from surrealist painter Kirsten Deirup. There’s a smidge of room left for hanging out, too. “Most stores have the boyfriend chair, we have a girlfriend couch,” says Eagleton’s pal Sean Sullivan, who moonlights as the designer of FRIENDS, a collection of board shorts that come with a vinyl 7" LP.
One more hyphenate Eagleton has added to his name is “perfumer.” He’s designed a fragrance, Spanish Fly, with the help of Brooklyn-based perfumers D.S. & Durga (a musician and an architect by day). “I wanted it to smell like your drunk grandfather,” Eagleton says. The trio nailed it with wafts of tobacco, booze and musk. It’s sexy, if unsettling—just a whiff of what’s to come.
103 Bond St, Brooklyn (718-387-1613)