nytimes.com
26.09.2024 / 09:29
A Hudson Valley Spot That Channels Japanese Listening Bars
As a fashion industry veteran, the men’s wear designer Jesse Rowe has been to countless stores. The one he can’t stop thinking about is Marcello, a hidden shop in Fukuoka, Japan. “You walk into a nondescript building, go up a couple of flights of stairs to the rooftop, walk along a stone path, then go down a fire escape to this completely transporting clothing shop,” says Rowe. The designer has brought that spirit of discovery to Zebra Room, a boutique in Germantown, N.Y., that’s equal parts coffee shop, cabinet of curiosities and listening lounge. Housed in a converted barn, Zebra Room devotes most of its square footage to a collection of midcentury Scandinavian furniture that Rowe’s brother imports from Copenhagen (highlights include an Inca chair by Arne Norell). There are also secondhand clothes and goods, from vintage marinière shirts to handmade leather dog collars. A coffee bar (which serves everything from Mexican café de olla to cold brew tonics topped with yuzu) is set up in a cube leftover from an exhibition held by the shop’s next-door neighbors Alexander Gray Associates. Rowe and his wife, the interior designer Loren Daye, clad the plaster installation with hemlock wood to keep with the natural feel of the space, which also has a 1970s cast-iron stove and retains the barn’s bluestone dirt floors. The cube houses Rowe’s record collection and sound system, which the designer has modeled after those in Japan’s kissa cafes. He alternates between vinyl and streaming, but the shop’s soundtrack is always played through a restored vintage SunValley/Dynaco tube amplifier and Klipsch LaScala speakers; similar tube amps, turntables and speakers are also for sale. “I want it to feel like someone’s living room — you might have to yell over the music,” says Rowe.