Earlier this year, when City Council voted to demolish the shopping centre at South Street Seaport, they announced that current tenants would be allowed to stay until the (northern) summer’s end. But many anchor stores chose to move out earlier — and two designers from Brooklyn were determined to take advantage of the abandoned store space.
Demolition on the shopping centre is scheduled to start any day now, and most of the original stores are emptied out — including the Victoria’s Secret. But where you and I might see a dismal metaphor for the perennial churn of capitalism, designer Payton Cosell Turner saw an opportunity. Turner is the founder of Flat Vernacular, a small wallpaper company that’s boomed thanks to the patronage of clients like Lena Dunham.
Turner and her partner Brian Kaspr normally work from their Brooklyn studio, hand-drawing quirky designs like a glow-in-the-dark pattern and a “toile” that features broken down cars. But on Memorial Day, the duo opened up a temporary Manhattan shop inside the hollowed out shell of the South Street Seaport. According to Gothamist, it was the shopping centre’s developer — Howard Hughes Corporation — that allowed the duo to use the space for free (they only had to pay for insurance).
Because Flat Vernacular only sells wallpaper (“Paint is boring, pattern is best!”), the interior of the three-month pop-up shop still looks fairly similar to its previous incarnation as a lingerie purveyor. The details that remain — from once-pink carpets to mirror details — serve to heighten the contrast between the store’s former and current tenants. Since opening in May, the space has served as a showroom and a temporary studio, where Kaspr and Turner work and sell new products ranging from hand-lettered wallets to one-off wallpaper designs.
We’ve seen Gothamist.
Pictures: Nick Stango