NOTE: This post was scheduled for the weekend which seemed sort of like like bad timing. The opening of this collection is scheduled for today, but I have no idea if that will take place, given the events of this last Friday in Paris.
Sarah Andelman, the founder and creative director of the Parisian boutique Colette, has been a been visiting the Catskills, where she and her family have a house for the past decade in upstate New York. She spends holidays and summers in the area and was married in Woodstock in 2011. She recently told The New York Times from her house…
“I think I feel a little guilty spending so much time upstate.”
This month, Colette will feature a collection of goods, art, music and literature produced in that area from the Hudson Valley to the Pennsylvania border. A t-shirt from Phoenicia’s Graham & Co. hotel trumpets the areas battle-cry: CATSKILLS VS. HAMPTONS. After discovering the wealth of locally made products — from jewelry to candles to granola — over the years,
“it made sense for me to bring all of it to Paris, where the Catskills are really unknown.”
Andelman’s decision to highlight the Catskills is a testament to the growing DIY folks in the last decade. My friend Michael Mundy and his wife Nhi left the city after their apartment was flooded during Hurricane Sandy and they launched a small gazette, DV8, this past summer out of Jeffersonville, the next town over from me. It offers up portraits and interviews with everyone from farmers and beekeepers to familiar fashion names like Daryl Kerrigan…
“The kind of people who move up here are really practical. They can be rough around the edges, like pioneers. I felt like these people have stories that need to be told.”
I recently told my own story in their current issue, The Locals. I’m upstate in that house right now and have been thinking of Paris for the last three days. I feel a connection and I’m happy DV8 and upstate New York will be debuting in The Catskills collection today, Nov. 16, at Colette, 213 Rue Saint Honoré, Paris.
We ARE with you, Paris.
(via NY Times)