FROM BESPOKE OXFORDS TO SKIS MADE FOR DOWNHILL DOMINANCE, BOROUGHMADE OR FEATURED ITEMS READY TO MAKE SOMEONE’S DECEMBER

BY MATT SCANLON, JESSICA JONES GORMAN, ERIK SCHONING, AND CHRISTINE SIRACUSA

RS1E REFERENCE SERIES HEADPHONE
GRADO LABS
This family company started in 1953 on a quiet stretch of Sunset Park’s 7th Avenue. Founded by Joseph Grado and emphasizing painstaking hand assembly, it produced turntable cartridges that became world famous for dynamic range, airiness, and subtlety. The company survived the 1980s and ’90s vinyl nadir by making headphones of similarly remarkable quality, starting with the open air design Signature Series that Joseph’s son, John, helped develop, one that broke new ground in terms of bass response, harmonic accuracy, and pitch control. The brand is still in the cartridge game, too happily riding a seemingly ever increasing new century hunger for the LP.

Featuring handcrafted mahogany earpieces made through an extended curing process, the RS1e uses newly developed 50mm dynamic transducers and an eight conductor cable design, all in an open air configuration. Weighing 9 ounces, they are a perfect example of Grado’s lovely retro styling. $695 718.556.6450, gradolabs.com

ABYSS MINI SOFA
NAULA WORKSHOP
Angel Naula, owner of and chief designer for this furniture company in Bushwick, inherited his place in a long line of Ecuadorian furniture makers, learning at his father’s side in childhood years. An invitation from his uncle prompted a move to New York, and he landed in Brooklyn. For his manufactory and showroom, clientele was built slowly Naula’s custom furniture sales relying mainly on word of mouth recommendations. Gradually he began creating his own designs and showing at high end exhibits like the Architectural Digest Home Show and International Contemporary Furniture Fair.

Every piece is built in the workshop, under close supervision by Naula himself at all stages of completion, ensuring that it will “be functional, and work with the client’s lifestyle and needs,” as he explains. To us, one of the company’s grandest statements is this 91 inch long Abyss Sofa (28 inches deep and 29 inches high), with remarkable asymmetrical contours. Reminiscent of a casual mid century lounge, but built for a sizeable nook (there’s a 126 inch long model available, too), its upholstered surface sports deep tufting. The Abyss’s distinctive legs are in brushed stain steel. Allow six to eight weeks for custom build. Call for pricing.
349 Suydam Street, 3rd and 4th Floor (appointment only), 212.470.6796, naulaworkshop.com

CUBIST SHEER PANT WITH CUBIST LUCID BLOUSE
FENOEL
Crown Heights based designer, Felisha Noel, got the shock of her professional life last December. While she was at dinner with friends, she found out that she’d been tagged in a short video of Beyoncé serenading husband, Jay Z, at his 49th birthday party Queen Bey wearing a patterned off the shoulder piece from Noel’s 2017 line. It was a massive boost for the 32 year old and her brand, Fe Noel. This past summer, the company found Beyoncé synergy again when Bloomingdale’s launched a Fe Noel collection, “Style Kingdom,” inspired by the remake of The Lion King (the singer voice acted in the film). Noel has also designed for other massive names, including Jordin Sparks, Gabrielle Union, and Michelle Obama. 866.342.4665, fenoel.com

HUBLOT SILICONE MP 05
WILLIAM BARTHMAN
Its story beginning in 1884 on the corner of Lower Manhattan’s Broadway and Maiden Lane, this luxury jewelry retailer has been decorating the hands, wrists, napes, and ears of prominent businesspeople, celebrities, and socialites for 135 years. It has a recently built out location on Broad Street (adjacent, suitably enough, to the New York Stock Exchange), as well as a 5,000 square foot retail space on Kings Highway in Brooklyn.

One of the retailer’s most extraordinary pieces is the special edition Hublot MP 05 LaFerrari, conceived by the Swiss maker in collaboration with Ferrari designer, Flavio Manzoni. The most complicated watch Hublot has ever made (no fewer than 637 components), its movement seems to be floating in the 53.5 gram case. Seconds are displayed in a transparent cylinder fixed on the suspended tourbillon cage; on the right of the mainspring barrels are hours and minutes, while on the left is a power reserve indicator. Call for pricing. 20 Broad Street, Manhattan, 212.732.0890 1118 Kings Highway, 718.375.1818, williambarthman.com

THE HERBAL CHAI COLLECTION
BELLOCQ TEA ATELIER
This gorgeous little place in Greenpoint has, for ten years now, been on a mission to, as principals Heidi Johannsen Stewart, Scott Stewart, and Michael Shannon, explain, “source and blend the finest teas and botanicals into a devoted and articulate history of tea connoisseurship.” Teas are sold exclusively whole leaf, and organic varieties and herbal blends can also be assembled by hand. Most recently, Bellocq’s crew has developed a collection of candles fragrance inspired by the company’s offerings. Leaves are sourced “from the finest estates in China, Japan, India, Nepal, Taiwan, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, and Malawi, and are exclusively full leaf, almost entirely organic, and sourced from high elevation gardens.”
After a yearlong pop up in London, Bellocq returned to New York, operates out of Brooklyn, and this gift set is a terrific crash course in the wonder and care its three partners wield when compiling aromas and sensations. A rooibos tea based chai, Hindu Holiday is creamy and soothing, with flavors of cardamom and cinnamon and a gorgeous aroma touched by rose petals. The turmeric rich Canyon Chai, meanwhile, with its additional notes of ginger, fennel, black pepper, and clove, is winter afternoon perfection. Packaged in signature yellow or French blue handcrafted traveler caddies with a white grosgrain ribbon. $79 104 West Street, 800.495.5416, bellocqtea.com

VÖLKL SKI WOMEN’S FLAIR 76
PANDA SPORT
When Robert Ottofaro first opened a Bay Ridge based shop that specialized in ski and snow wear and gear, “people thought I was crazy,” he said. “But the popularity of winter sports has simply soared. Instead of traveling from a big city to go and rent ski equipment in these resort towns, New Yorkers had a shop of their own right here. It’s a service that was sorely needed, we found.”

Over more than 20 years, Panda Sport has expanded to address a broad range of winter sporting goods, from snowboards to skis, bindings to backpacks, and fourteen years ago broadened lines yet again when it opened a golf specialty store on the same site.

Founded in 1923 and based in Straubing, Germany, Völkl Ski was famed for decades for innovative ski, binding, and outerwear design before expanding to include snowboard and tennis gear. Its Flair 76 is an easy handling yet nimble ride (thanks in part to partial sidewall construction), geared for already decent skiers looking to improve. Secure edge grip and Völkl’s VMotion Marker binding system combine for the perfect amount of power transmission. $599 9213 5th Avenue, 718.238.4919, pandasportdirect.com

SALT GLOW BODY TREATMENT
D’MAI URBAN SPA
Raised in the West Village, Daniella Stromberg opened this Park Slope spa in 2004 converting a long shuttered fish market into 3,000 square feet of calming, minimalist, earth tone oasis. D’mai treatments run the gamut, from luxury aromatherapy and CBD massages to facial skin care treatments, from LED light therapy to nail care and waxing. Cis gender, transitioning, and transit clients, the owner reports, are especially welcome.

Salt has been used as a component of beauty treatments and massages for millennia, and not simply because it feels wonderful. A number of salt types have been proven to reduce inflammation as well as exfoliate (thus encouraging new skin cell growth) and unclog pores of dirt and bacteria. This treatment’s salts have the additional benefit of being enhanced with essential oils, which is calming generally and a terrific skin soother. 45 minutes, $125 157 Fifth Avenue, 718.398.2100, dmaiurbanspa.com

VARESE OXFORDS
BETITO SHOES
Christian Dior famously said that, “You can never take too much care over the choice of your shoes.” The hitch is that the product of that care is too often a stratospheric price tag that might have guys returning to their Kung Fu slippers to the diminishment of many a relationship
On a quiet stretch of Midwood, a remarkable solution to that dilemma is afoot. In a small shop and showroom, Levy Betito and his crew designs 133 variations of men’s loafers, sneakers, monk straps, and lace up shoes. Just a few of its painstaking processes are sourcing leather from France and Italy, crafting outsoles with sprockets on their outside, and applying both a reinforcement in rubber and a thin layer of silicone for water resistance. Prices range from $129 for sneakers to $279 for ankle height boots.

The Varese, in hand finished calfskin leather and featuring a leather lining, medallion cap toe, and leather sole, is an extraordinary bargain and a thrillingly practical way of buying local. $200 1478 Coney Island Avenue, 718.676.2022, betitoshoes.com

10 YEAR BOURBON WHISKEY
WIDOW JANE DISTILLERY
Its maker building façade at 218 Conover Street is classic Red Hook: steel frame windows and doors, plenty of red brick, with the street out front paved in cobblestones. Yet one step inside and this space reveals itself to be anything but traditional cavernous square footage home to not one but three businesses: Botanica bar, Widow Jane Distillery, and Cacao Prieto, the last a purveyor and maker of beans tobar single origin chocolate. This fascinating confluence draws all sorts, from locals to ferry riders from Manhattan to cruise ship passengers on afternoon shore leave.

In an increasingly competitive spirits market, both in the city and further flung, Widow Jane has been making a mark, thanks in part to heirloom distillations like this 10 Year Bourbon Whiskey “assembled using the richest and rarest straight bourbons and only made in five barrel batches, using non chill filtered and proofed with our own mineral water,” as a mission statement reads. Unique in intensity and complexity, it won double gold at the San Francisco World Spirits Competition. Smooth and creamy, with a wonderfully long and gently sweet finish. $70 218 Conover Street, 718.407.4927, widowjane.com