The Second Coming of Khaki


By ERIC WILSON
Published: August 20, 2008

ON Monday afternoon, as the ballyhooed new designs of Gap’s fall collection by Patrick Robinson began appearing at its store on Fifth Avenue and 54th Street, a line of customers stretched well around the corner — at Abercrombie & Fitch, that is, two blocks away.

Fashion magazines have heralded the recent arrival of Mr. Robinson at Gap in reverential tones (he is actually called a “megabrand messiah” in the September issue of Elle), and the windows announce in big block letters that a “New Shape” is in store. But there has not yet been a seismic return of shoppers to a retail chain that stopped being cool around the time Abercrombie opened its doors with a reinvented brand.

In that regard, his career has had similarities with that of Mr. Ford, who left Gucci in a creative dispute several years ago. But at Gap, Mr. Robinson said, he is comfortable working within a large corporate environment. That said, he has continued to assert the need for creative control: last week the company dismissed its European design staff, adding the duties for creating lines for international markets to Mr. Robinson’s purview. The move raised eyebrows among those who have wondered whether ego had caused his problems at Perry Ellis and Paco Rabanne. But Mr. Robinson said that the hoopla had not made any difference to the success of his collections.

Gary Muto, the president of Gap’s adult and body divisions, said Mr. Robinson’s arrival at the company had revitalized its design staff, describing the difference as “night and day.” Part of the reason is that the designs are selling, he said, citing a deep V-neck shirt and pull-on skirt introduced this summer as an illustration of how classic clothes could be fashionably updated.

“Where we’re going to win is with those items that are truly versatile, that a person can dress up or dress down and still be able to express their own personal style,” he said.

Mr. Robinson has demonstrated that he is a versatile designer, and one who has learned when to let the product speak louder than the personality.

“Speaking honestly, when I was younger, I really wanted the fame thing,” he said. “It was part of the game of being a fashion designer. But that doesn’t turn me on anymore. What turns me on — my soul — is making cool clothes and being part of a company where I can actually see the difference I’m making. I’m not just spinning my wheels and getting the clothes into five stores in America.”

One thing that stands out about Mr. Robinson’s collection for Gap is how similar it looks to his work for Perry Ellis, with loose popover plaid dresses, sleeveless wool jackets and cropped cargo pants in mushroomy grays, layered up with artsy knits — clothes that fashion editors had clamored about back then but customers never had a chance to buy. Now anyone can at Gap, even those who have never heard of Mr. Robinson.

“It’s definitely a major improvement,” said Rie Cochran, a 21-year-old secretary from Marshall, Mich., as she left the Fifth Avenue store. “It’s chic, but still subdued.”

Nevertheless, she walked out empty-handed.

Inside the Gap store, a few dozen customers were trying on $58 waffle-knit cardigans and blazers made of fleece. But for a better picture, one could stand outside on the street corner for 15 minutes and count shopping bags: 6 from Gap, 27 from Abercrombie on Monday; 8 from Gap, 38 from Abercrombie on Tuesday.

Reinventing Gap, the nation’s largest specialty apparel chain, has been fashion’s equivalent of Merlin’s stone for much of the last decade, as sales and profits have dipped, along with its image among young consumers. Mr. Robinson, 41, is the third designer to attempt to pull the sword since Gap began to publicly acknowledge its creative personnel in 2003, and the most closely watched because of his popularity with industry insiders and his finesse with casual American sportswear. His fall designs have generated promising reviews, but also concern about whether a single designer — one with a mixed track record — can revive a brand with 1,155 stores in the United States in the midst of an economic crisis.

On the one hand, the company has continued to report weak sales, including an 11 percent drop last month in stores open at least a year, and on Tuesday, Brand Keys, a research consultancy, announced that Gap ranked last in customer loyalty. On the other, some retail analysts long critical of Gap’s merchandising efforts and management choices have joined the chorus that is singing Mr. Robinson’s praises.

“I just about died when I went in the store,” said Jennifer Black, the president of Jennifer Black & Associates, a research company focused on the apparel industry. “I don’t know how traffic’s been, but from an aesthetic perspective, I think it looks great. For me to be taken aback is kind of a big thing.”

The clothes are indeed compelling. The trench coat and shirtdress styles and the muted colors — a variety of grays, browns and purple plaid — are at once basic and fashionable, a duality that could be either girly and pretty or androgynous in an Oliver Twist goes to a Nirvana concert sort of way. But will customers, especially those who look to Gap for jeans and T-shirts, get it?

In an interview in the Gap showroom in Chelsea last week, Mr. Robinson said he could best describe his vision for Gap as one of “optimism,” keying into an emotion conveyed by the company’s past advertising campaigns that spotlighted bright colors and made wearing khaki seem like a swingy choice. Having grown up in California, he recalled shopping at Gap stores and thinking how cool the white gallerylike spaces were. While he wanted to recapture that feeling, he said, the styles, fits and colors — even the weight of the T-shirt fabrics — all had to be changed.

“We can’t go back and put women in big old heavy sweatshirts,” he said. “That was Gap in the ’80s.”

Throughout his career, Mr. Robinson has demonstrated a single-mindedness about image control, including his own. In 2005, when he was hired at Paco Rabanne, the French fashion house, he compared his intended makeover of that fading collection to Tom Ford’s transformation of Gucci, a remark that proved foolhardy when the line was closed after three seasons.

He had previously worked for Giorgio Armani in Milan and Anne Klein in New York and briefly made sportswear collections under his own label in the ’90s. But his greatest critical success — and public folly — occurred in 2003, when he was hired to remake a lower-priced women’s sportswear collection for Perry Ellis. His vintage-inspired designs were so well received by the press that Mr. Robinson lobbied the label’s owners to reposition it from middle-market department stores to upscale retailers like Barneys New York. He was rebuffed in a dispute that spilled out into the press and most of the line was never sold.

On the strength of that collection, Mr. Robinson was nominated for a Council of Fashion Designers of America award. But at the awards, the designer, who is married to Virginia Smith, Vogue’s accessories director, was seated with Anna Wintour, a perceived slight to Perry Ellis executives, who had bought a large table of their own.

Mr. Robinson resigned the next season. In retrospect, he said, the conflict “was never a personal thing.”

“We just totally disagreed on the vision of the brand,” he said, “and they owned the thing, so they won.”

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FALL FASHION Tiptoeing Into the Stores


By CATHY HORYN
Published: August 20, 2008

SINCE the shows for next spring’s clothes start in two weeks, the window for surveying the new fall fashion seems to be closing before it has fully opened. A lot of the best pieces, the runway stuff, still haven’t arrived in stores. Not everyone follows fashion so carefully as to notice what has arrived at Barneys, or in Bryant Park. (Is it runway season? Isn’t it always?) But before these columns are suddenly filled with rompers and bathing suits, let’s see what looks right for fall.

A practical elegance ran through last year’s polished clothes. This season, things are more romantic, thanks to moody prints, dramatic blouses and antique effects, but there is a sting — namely, the economy. Lots of people can’t afford, and can’t accept, paying $3,000 to $4,000 for an outfit, which is entirely possible in Designerland. You can rationalize blowing your rent on Gucci’s $1,900 swinging fringed boots — by telling yourself you’ll spend only $89 for Zara’s copy of Gucci’s mini peasant dress. But you would know immediately that your cheap-jack Doctor Zhivago outfit wasn’t working, and then what?

The best style is almost always a result of an unexpected combination of good and less costly things, of masculine and feminine elements, with a sharp eye toward what’s in fashion. Bear in mind that proportions are generally longer this season: hemlines flutter around the knee; pants are full (with classic pegged variations, like those Stefano Pilati showed for Saint Laurent); jackets have extended shoulders or an extravagant collar; blouses all seem to have a stock tie or an old-fashioned effect, like Proenza Schouler’s draped charmeuse versions (about $850). And a cropped fur or shearling vest can be a good investment, as a finish to prints and long layers.

To be sure, there are some wonderful standout looks that make you wish your family held the patent to the lug nut. While pawing through the racks of new clothes at Bergdorf Goodman, I spotted Thakoon’s all-over sequined dress in a murky rose-pink pattern, the hem and cap sleeves edged with printed chiffon ($4,900). Another great look for the individually minded shopper, at Linda Dresner, was Stephan Janson’s deep-green tweed skirt with a matching popover top, its three-quarter sleeves fluffed with gray-green marabou feathers ($3,110). You could definitely slay the fashion sisters with that outfit, as different as it is chic, especially with a pair of Christian Louboutin stiletto pumps (O.K., another thousand bucks).

But while lots of women are pretty certain that Balenciaga’s molded wool dresses are the acme of fashion, they halt before the price ($3,475). I was happy to discover a slightly more realistic alternative — and one that doesn’t show up in virtually every magazine editorial. Balenciaga has a creamy white sleeveless blouse in a stiff wool crepe that is banded in black at the waist and finished with a modest bow ($1,345). With a slim black skirt, it would convey the same minimalist look.

Fashion snobs have an exquisite understanding of store deliveries. Most of the stuff hanging in stores since mid-August is from preseason designer collections, or from moderate-priced labels like Vince and Nanette Lepore. Over the next few weeks, they’ll be spruced up with runway pieces. A few designers, like Marc Jacobs, who makes most of his clothes in New York, delivered very early. At Barneys, I saw a terrific wool pencil skirt by Mr. Jacobs with an elastic grosgrain waist — just pull it on! Considering the name and the quality of the fit, it seemed a good buy at $495.

While in the store, I went in search of trousers. Mr. Jacobs’s slouchy version in black velveteen ($1,100) sums up the season’s look, but I found other styles, too, like Alexander Wang’s paper-bagged trousers in dark gray wool ($495) and a pair of muddy glen-plaid pegged trousers by Piazza Sempione ($695), a label many women like for its consistent fit. Lanvin also had a sharp-looking pair of pegged tweed trousers, but at $1,250, you have to start rationalizing.

It’s curious the things you see when you’re looking for contemporary fashion as well as good value. After my attention at Bloomingdale’s was drawn to a well-made knitted coat in cream wool with a rolled collar by Nanette Lepore ($650) and a cute navy wool-jersey dress by James Perse ($240), I saw across the floor a sleeveless blouse in papery taffeta with a spill of rock-star ruffles down the front. Made by Vince ($165), it was a dead ringer for a L’Wren Scott blouse.

For the most part, though, cheap blouses look just that. Nearly every store has some version of the stock-tied, lantern-sleeved or Victorian frilled blouse, but I hate to think how all that drippy polyester crepe will look on sale racks next season. This is one item where it’s worth trading up, especially since a blouse with a great pair of trousers or a slinky gold sequined skirt, like Proenza Schouler’s ($850), can make such a statement. The creamy silk crepe blouses shown by Mr. Jacobs and Oscar de la Renta, with a slightly asymmetrical tie, look best. There are more affordable variations by Doo.Ri, Thakoon and Sari Gueron, from $495 to $695.

Although the swirling prints of Dries Van Noten hold a certain artsy charm, the Russian-inspired paisleys and foulards that Frida Giannini did for Gucci have more kick, it seems to me. Six months after looking at that collection, at the modern proportions, the black tights and high fringed boots, the mix of prints with tough fur or leather jackets, it still has energy and muscle. Unfortunately, shoppers will have to be content with looking at the Zara knockoffs. In the Gucci flagship on Fifth Avenue, I looked with apathy at the preseason merchandise begging at the rails. Take me, take me. Fat chance. I knew about the good stuff.

It was a similar story at Yves Saint Laurent — a collection that led in every trend — and at the new Jil Sander shop in SoHo. The runway pieces hadn’t arrived.

“Come back in September,” a Saint Laurent salesman almost sang.

But ...

“They’re samples,” a saleswoman at Jil Sander said, referring to a display of gorgeous tweed dresses.

Let’s hope the entire fall season is not a figment of my imagination

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The Feminine Side of Goth


By CINTRA WILSON
Published: August 12, 2008

“SO, I was at Les Deux Cafés in Los Angeles a few years ago,” enthused Nancy, who wears Rick Owens as often as possible, and was telling me why. “I was sitting by the door in a halter top, shivering a little. And this drop-dead fabulous older woman comes in: tiny-skinny, smoking; wild, black witchy-woman hair; wearing this very clingy Morticia-Addams-meets-Ginger-Rogers look, with her skirt dragging on the floor. Gobs of big wonderful rings. She looks at me and asks in her French accent, ‘Are you cold?’ And she rips this absolutely incredible leather jacket off her body and throws it around my shoulders.”

“Then she sashays away, looks at me over her shoulder, wags her finger and says, ‘Don’t forget, on your way out!’ ”

“Did she instantly become your role model for life?”

“Completely. So, she turns out to be Michele Lamy, the owner of Les Deux. Everything she’s wearing is Rick Owens, because he’s her lover. She’s his muse. She’s significantly older, but he fell madly in love with her when he was a crazy twentysomething bisexual. I never wanted to take that jacket off!”

Rick Owens’s star began its vertical ascent as soon as Los Angeles stores began carrying his designs: drape-y, rough-looking creations in gorgeous materials, wrought into a style he has dubbed “glunge” (grunge plus glamour), which tends to give the wearer an appearance of emerging from the lips of a huge, slightly tattered flower.

His new boutique — big, white and stark — is, like a lot of Owens creations, still unfinished around the edges. But this blind spot has been turned into an advantage. If Mr. Owens were an architect, he would make beautiful ruins.

When I arrived at the shop, Nancy, in the spirit of Madame Lamy, was already swaddled in a long, lean sable coat, moaning with pleasure.

“How much is it?” she asked Antino Angel Crowley, one of Mr. Owens’s willowy, tattooed, beautiful employees. “It’s an apartment, right?”


“Basically,” Mr. Crowley replied. “It’s $65,000. Which isn’t bad, if you think about it.”

I tried it, and agreed: not bad. Actually, it was a poem.

“You wouldn’t need an apartment,” I said, half-joking. “This coat is like youth and sex and butter all at the same time. You could sleep on the sidewalk and you would never feel a lack. You wouldn’t even need love.” This coat might have humanized Leona Helmsley.

In 2003, Mr. Owens became the designer for Revillon, a label that has been wrapping women in fur since 1723. Later I read an Owens quotation encapsulating his approach to Revillon:

“It’s about an elegance being tinged with a bit of the barbaric, the sloppiness of something dragging and the luxury of not caring. At Revillon, I felt it wasn’t about displaying one’s wealth, but rather giving the woman a selfish pleasure. It is about using sable as the lining under a very humble jacket, the luxury is all hers.”

A mink cave-girl stole ($22,344) and a sheared mink coat with amorously wrapping tentacles ($43,610) echoed this sentiment.

RICK OWENS designs are decidedly kinetic; the pieces are made to elongate lines of movement in three dimensions, whereas most clothing is spatially flat — conscious mainly in front and back, and best when standing still. The store employees, hanging around in these slouchy, body-conscious shapes, resemble a modern-dance company.

I tried on a smoky brown, flared coat with a cowl neck and wobbling zipper that Bea Arthur might wear in “The Matrix IV” ($4,214). It inspired fooling around in the mirror; the perfect swing-weight of the coat added an ideal billowing slo-mo effect to my bullet-dodging Keanu back bend.

Nancy tried a pair of bias-cut trousers ($995) — very sexy and sharp for something as comfy as lounge wear. The hemless hem was dragging around the unswept stone floor collecting dust, to the admiration of the staff boys, who approved of this Kate Hepburn-in-a-vacant-lot-like spectacle.

I tried a pleated Art Deco Egyptian goddess-skort. It took three tries to get both legs through the proper holes in the light-free dressing room, but once on, it was very tempting to refuse to take it off until the price ($1,136) came down.

Mr. Owens’s aesthetic sometimes requires more hippy élan than one might be capable of.

William Streng, another tattooed sales-beauty in unlaced combat boots, pulled the mohair sleeves of a $568 V-neck sweater down over my fingers.

“But I can’t see my watch!” I complained.

“Who cares?” he shrugged. “Time stops.”

He had a point.

Mr. Streng was wearing a sheer rayon tank top ($245), frayed into hanging clots at the hem. I’ve always thought it sound to buy good clothes and wear them until they rot. With Rick Owens, this is especially true, because entropy is built in as a plus factor: the tatters look better with age. Like a security blanket, the holes are proof of enduring love.

The mystique of Michele Lamy, a chanteuse with two gold front teeth, is evident all over, but especially in a shelf full of little vicious-looking rat monsters made from sable scraps.

“Those are stash bags,” Nancy whispered.

“How much?” Mr. Crowley asked Mr. Streng.

“They are five, I think.”

“Hundred?”

“Thousand.”

Formidable.

THERE is something both exhilarating and exhausting about super-hipness — its demands can inspire both admiration and a slightly desolate feeling. Hanging out on certain couches can seem as arduous as a camping trip.

The Owens-Lamy Paris home, the former headquarters of the French Socialist Party, was described by Paper magazine as “gargantuan” and “bunker-like.”

But the clothes, for all their Gothic fury, are deliriously feminine.

Mr. Owens has said he is inspired by Lou Reed’s music. This makes sense: crudely simple melodies sung in an unpretty voice, but suspended in the excruciating tension of an almost unbearably delicate softness and sensitivity.

This mood can create anxiety, like sitting under a lead-glass chandelier that would crash down if not for the brilliant efforts of a single heroic spider. But unsettling settings also inspire relaxed inhibitions, creating the possibility for sudden intimacies to occur between strangers.

Are you cold? Here!

The sable, mes amis, is on the inside.

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Summering in the City? Give the Plaza a Whirl


By DAN LEVIN
Published: August 8, 2008

FOR those fortunate New Yorkers who use the word summer as a verb, weeknights in the city during this humid season can be woefully lacking in socially aspirational activities.

What luck then that the recently renovated Plaza Hotel’s gilded new lounge, the Rose Club, opened in July, just in time to offer them a fresh urban haven where they can unwind for an evening — until they flee to the South Fork on Fridays.

As a first-time visitor ascends the marble staircase from the Plaza’s Fifth Avenue lobby, it can take a few moments to adjust to the faint lighting that bathes the crowd in a uniform pink glow.

Perched on an antique chair in a corner, Hilary Downing, 21, was relishing a glass of pinot grigio. “I like that I can sit here and not get kicked out for bottle service,” she said. Still, she wondered if the scene clashed with the lavish décor. “Everyone here is a hipster with long hair and a fedora, and all the girls have perms,” she said. “But I love the wood.”

At the top of the mahogany staircase by the bar, a silver-haired man gyrated to Depeche Mode as waiters carrying cocktails swerved to avoid him.

Karin Agstam, an actress from Sweden, was grooving, too. “I love the Plaza,” she said. “You can dance if you want to, and they’re much more careful at the door.”

For many Rose Bar patrons, the Plaza Hotel address is not only brag-worthy, but convenient. “All our friends live above 57th street, so it’s a great spot for a nightcap,” said Arthur Zeckendorf, 21, a college student and son of the luxury property developer of the same name. Does he normally drink on school nights? “We heard some kid was having a birthday party,” he said.

His friend Jared Baumeister, 26, was celebrating more-scholarly pursuits. “I’m supposed to be studying for the bar exam,” he said. “I blew it off the last six weeks, but everyone says you have to get serious after July 4th.” It was advice he had taken seriously. “I hadn’t had a drink in five days,” he said, beer in hand.

Around 2:30 a.m., they were ready to go. “Your car’s here,” Mr. Baumeister said to Mr. Zeckendorf as they stepped out of the hotel.

“I don’t drive,” Mr. Zeckendorf replied.

Mr. Baumeister laughed. “No dude, your chauffeur,” he said, and off they headed toward Fifth Avenue.

The Rose Club At the Plaza

Fifth Avenue at Central Park South, (212) 546-5311

GETTING IN Reservations only after 10 p.m. (and you’d better know superpromoter Danny A., who compiles the list).

DRESS CODE Pinstripes and plaid for men; cocktail dresses and animal prints for women.

SIGNATURE DRINK Park Side Smash (Hennessy VS Cognac, lemon wedges, organic mint leaves; $23).

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They’ll Take Manhattan, in Cash


By ALEX WILLIAMS
Published: August 3, 2008
NEGIN FARSAD, a filmmaker and comedian who lives in the East Village, recalled a time not long ago when European friends would visit New York to see her, and not, she said, to use her apartment as a “temporary locker for their shopping bags.”

Ms. Farsad, 32, recently escorted two friends from London on the inevitable Europeans-clean-out-the-Apple-store shopping excursion, where they bought a MacBook Pro for nearly $3,000, plus hundreds of dollars worth of extra memory (why not?), and continued on a spree that included East Village boutiques and Bloomingdale’s downtown. During the evenings, the couple — both of whom work in television production back home — dined at downtown restaurants and partied at a chic bars, without concern as to cost.

“I remember the next morning, my friend looked in her wallet and said, ‘Oh, apparently I spent $165 buying three rounds of shots for everybody,’ ” Ms. Farsad recalled.

“Back home they’re just run-of-the-mill cubicle people,” Ms. Farsad added, “but here, they’re like three parts Kimora Simmons and two parts Oasis, circa 1995.”

This summer, New York is awash with visitors from abroad, who are expected to top last summer’s record number, tourism officials say. Thanks in part to home currencies that are holding strong against the dollar, even middle-class vacationers from Hamburg, Yokohama or Perth can afford to scoop up New York style — the clothes, the hot restaurants, the nightclubs — at bargain prices.

But for New Yorkers trapped on the other side of the currency imbalance, it’s easy to feel ambivalent about the invasion. An infusion of foreign money is welcome in a city faced with a wobbly economy and a possible budget gap in the billions. But even some locals who consider themselves cosmopolitan and internationalist confess to feeling envy, not to mention territorialism, in watching a outsiders treat their city like a Wal-Mart of hip.

Their party is raging just as the hangover has started to set in for Americans. Frictions do arise — especially in a summer of looming recession, where many locals do not feel rich enough or secure enough to travel abroad themselves. (And let’s not even get into their weeks of summer vacation).

“It’s Psych 101 — jealousy,” said Randi Ungar, 30, an online advertising sales manager who lives on the Upper West Side. “I’m jealous that I can’t go to Italy and buy 12 Prada bags, but they can come here and buy 18 of them.”

Steven Schoenfeld, a 45-year-old investment manager who lives near Lincoln Center, said that he welcomes the influx of visitors, in theory, as a boost to the local economy, but “sometimes you feel like it’s going to become a situation where they stop and take picture: ‘Look at that endangered species — a native New Yorker, with a briefcase, going to work.’ ”

Polly Blitzer, a former magazine beauty editor who now runs a beauty Web site, said she believes that a turf war is going on this summer between free-spending Europeans and locals over the chic bistros, spas, boutiques and department stores that she, a native New Yorker, used to consider her playground.

She said the point was driven home to her on a recent trip to Bergdorf Goodman to help her fiancé select a pair of shoes to go with his tuxedo for their wedding.

Wearing the sort of outfit that usually acts as a siren for department store salespeople — a Tory Burch shift dress and Jimmy Choo slingback heels — she instead found herself waiting behind a European couple in sneakers and bike shorts who “had made such massive purchases that we couldn’t get anyone to give us the time of day for our size 11 ½ Ferragamo party slippers,” recalled Ms. Blitzer, 32.

The Europeans, she said, “brought over bags and bags of shoes” while the salesman wrapped their orders and chatted them up about restaurants and travel. “I didn’t want to do the ahem-I’m-sitting-here thing, but we had to sit there for 5 or 10 minutes while these big spenders small-talked.”

She was always used to first-class service, she said, adding, “But now, there’s an ultra-first.”

Manhattanites without Bergdorf budgets often find themselves working overtime — figuratively and literally — to keep up with their visiting friends from Europe or Asia.

Jessica S. Le, an executive assistant at an investment banking firm who lives on the Lower East Side, said she recently started moonlighting as a dog-walker, in part to earn extra income she needs to see friends from abroad, who are dining at WD-50 or Suba, or drinking at Thor.

These friends from Europe and Asia “come over and play in New York like it’s Candyland,” she said in an e-mail message.

Yes, she is jealous of friends like the one from London, who arrives with empty suitcases, ready to buy her fall wardrobe. But, she added, she tries to keep it in perspective. Last year, she went to Vietnam and enjoyed evenings of fine dining for 10 people at less than $20 a person, where, she said, “I felt like I was in my own Candyland.”

The number of international travelers who will visit New York in June, July and August is expected to rise by about 118,000 from 3.12 million last summer (that number itself was a record —and an estimated 20-percent jump from 2006), according to forecasts by NYC & Company, the city’s tourism and marketing bureau.

Meanwhile, the euro has hovered near record highs against the dollar all summer; it is up 22 percent in the last two years, and since 2001, has nearly doubled against the dollar. Over the last five years, the yen is up nearly 12 percent against the dollar, the British pound 23 percent, the Swiss franc nearly 31 percent, the Danish krone 42 percent, the Australian dollar nearly 45 percent.

Feeling flush, foreign visitors are noticeably more lavish in their spending habits, said some New York merchants and restaurateurs.

Richard Thomas, the marketing director of Marquee, the Chelsea nightclub, said he has seen a surge of European clients this summer, and even visitors who appear to be of humbler origins than the usual Gucci-clad jet-setters are now “willing to play in the arena of bottle service,” he said, referring to the practice where drinks are purchased only a bottle at a time, for hundreds of dollars or more.

These are “people with more modest incomes, who wouldn’t just walk up and say, ‘Hey, let me get a table’ if they’re back home in London, where it’s too expensive to go to Boujis,” Mr. Thomas said, referring to a popular club in that city’s Kensington district. “But in New York, they can get away with it.”

EYTAN SUGARMAN, who is an owner, along with his partners, Trace Ayala and Justin Timberlake, of the restaurant Southern Hospitality on the Upper East Side, said it is not unusual this summer to see foreign tourists order a few different entrees apiece, just to taste, and not finish any of them.

City officials and business owners welcome such extravagance. Many have hailed New York’s wave of tourists as a major factor keeping the city economy afloat during a troubled economic period.

At EOS New York, a boutique watch and accessories store in the West Village, the customer base is now about 70 percent international tourist, said the company’s owner, Mukul Lalchandani. “Needless to say, with the bad economy, we could use that extra boost of traffic,” he said.

At Buddakan, the hangar-like pan-Asian restaurant in the meatpacking district, foreign traffic has increased by 20 to 30 percent in the last four months, said the owner, Stephen Starr.

“It’s a wonderful thing that in a tough climate economically, you sort of have this insurance policy of foreign money,” Mr. Starr said. “And to be honest with you, it’s great to be in a restaurant and to hear so many different languages. It adds to the theater of the experience.”

NYC & Company calculated that spending by international tourists rose 20 percent in the first quarter of this year. While that agency does not finish compiling statistics for tourist spending during the summer months until the end of the year, such trends usually hold strong through the warmer months, said Tiffany Townsend, an agency spokeswoman.

Earlier this decade, it was Americans snapping up bargains on the Champs-Élysées.

Marie Monte, 23, a law student from Paris who was vacationing in New York last week, said she felt sorry for today’s currency-challenged Americans. “But I remember,” she said, “it was not a very long time ago, it was much more difficult, when the money here was very strong. If you wanted to go to New York on holiday, you didn’t know what you would be able to do there.” While some New Yorkers may wrestle with envy, others admit that the trend has its side benefits, too.

Sarah Geary, a British-born marketing director for Mulberry, the English fashion company, often finds herself working pro bono for her British friends as tour guide, personal shopper and cartographer (she draws them a map of insider New York cool, starting at Barneys, meandering through the meatpacking district for stops at stores like Scoop and Jeffrey, then ending downtown for dinner at places like Freemans or Socialista).

In return, the visitors are unusually willing to pick up the check at the end of the day. “They will literally say, ‘Come meet me for dinner — and bring some friends!’ ” Ms. Geary said.

“That,” she said, “is something British people never do.”

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