Bond Street Series: Daryl K
If you want a pair of pants that make your ass look amazing and shop girls who become your friends after one visit in the store, then you want Daryl K. Dublin-born Daryl Kerrigan has a cult following dating back to the 90s, when she was sky-rocketed to icon status by Kim Gordon of Sonic Youth. Her 90s minimalist style fuses elegance and sex to create the ultra-feminine dream. One of the wonderful girls who works at the store, Leah, gushed over Daryl’s genius.
“There are designers who can make cool clothes, and then there are designers who understand the body. There are no random cuts or seams. Every stitch you see on Daryl’s clothes has purpose,” she told me. It’s true. There are people who can sketch a picture of a hot dress, but in reality that hot dress will only look hot on certain body types. I have never found a pair of harem pants that looked good on me until I tried on a pair from Daryl K. They caused some sort of optical illusion where I look longer and leaner. Among other things, I tried on a hot pink silk t-shirt dress with a zipper down the front. It was so amazing that I had to come back a few days later to buy it.
Daryl opened Daryl K in 1997 on 21 Bond Street-William Wegman’s former studio. The room in the back is Daryl’s studio, and the actual store functions as a showroom as well. The store is quite beautiful. It is simple and raw, creating an ideal space to show off the pieces. The wooden floors are unfinished and covered in red paint splatters, there is an exposed heater and a wooden chair with a hanging sheepskin.
As with OAK, Daryl K is the kind of place you should visit even if you don’t need to buy anything. I spent an hour talking to Leah about her own mark on the musicartfashion world. Leah Hennessey started photography projects with her friend Max Lakner for no purpose other than to exercise their creativity. Their website, babymanque.com, has picked up quite the buzz, including the interest of Paper Magazine. Paper’s November 2009 issue features their badass, gothic sex world of whimsy. If you overfed the cerebrum of a ghost with LSD and glitter, you might come close to babymanque. Here is Leah before changing into her work clothes.
Stay naked and find a gypsy mermaid to befriend at Daryl K.
