Just like its affiliate J. Crew, Madewell specializes half in sturdy quality clothing and half in flimsy, pseudo designer caliber crap for quasi-designer prices of $20 to $300 dollars. A benefit of this store is that it carries Alexa Chung's line, as well as jackets and other items from rare and preppy vendors such as New Haven. The store also often features limited edition lines from other boutiques. Right now, for example, they have some technicolor skinny jeans in from Blank NYC. Finally, unlike most other stores, the in-store availability is actually better than what can be found on madewell.com, which behooves the shopper to hoof it to the nearest branch.
The smallness of the store and its corner location on the Soho border makes it easily navigable on one hand but a packed clusterfuck on the other. When the store is full of oblivious shoppers, the place is wildly understaffed despite the valiant efforts of individual salespeople to answer questions, locate styles, get sizes, manage dressing rooms, and constantly fix their nice presentations, which become trampled by the spacey and generally stupid clientele. A genteel and stern guard is permanently stationed by the door, presumably to staunch the flow of shoplifters who are emboldened and even enticed by the general disorder within.
When the store is quiet, the staff are either inattentive as they catch up on inventory duties or yak amongst themselves. Or, the entire shift of a total of three workers might swoop down upon you to suggest jewelry options you never needed or find a size that they don't even carry. It's hard to find a size when all the jeans in the store are 34"L. I might have short ass legs, but is it too much to ask to have 32s in stock, especially when the jeans fit so perfectly otherwise that I was ready to shell out $98.50 to replace my cheaper, holey pair from the Topshop next door?!
There's always something on sale here, which exposes rhe store's ridiculously fast turnover. If it's not on sale, wait a minute. Seriously.
The compact environment helps prevent a complete meltdown at the options. So far, I've succeeded in scoring an unassuming 3-season khaki jacket with a zip-off hood from one of the aforementioned prep providers as well as two cotton plaid "boyfriend shirts," that were on sale over the holidays. By "on sale," of course, I mean that each shirt was about $49, marked down from its normal price, which was a fashionable $75 or $79). I've gotten kind of tired of the shirts, but they're of good quality and have interesting cuts (the lighter weight one has a nice long tail in the back, which I rather enjoy as a layering option in the winter). So, I guess I could say that they've just become stock pieces in my closet, for what that's worth.
There are lots of distractions as well, like a baby blue mohair Alexa sweater that would have made me break out into a rash, a knit dress that would have stretched and pilled after three wears, shoes that would have drawn blood on their maiden voyage, and jewelry that would have lost their sheen immediately upon my exit from the store.
That said, in the land of Madewell, it's all about finding what you want at the lowest price possible and then getting the hell out. If you linger, you might find yourself in the preposterous position that I did a couple months ago, when one of the salesgirls took an armload of my finds, and then completely disappeared. A lot of stuff in the pile had been the last item left of a certain style, size, and color, so I was beyond disappointed and then stone pissed when I had to wait for about three coworkers of this horrible person to make phone calls and walkie talkie transmissions and a bunch of apologetic overtures amounting to absolutely nothing. This is when I learned to hold on to my crap as I progress through the store, as inconvenient as that might be.
When in doubt, it's a good idea to put your stuff on hold for the rest of the day, because a little extra time proves to be a good litmus test as to what is really worth purchasing from the store. Don't bother squirreling it away somewhere because there's a huge line to talk with the next available representative, because miraculously, someone will get back to restocking it ASAP.
Oh, and say hello and goodbye to the poor sap at the door - he stands there every goddamn day watching all of us stomp back and forth in our own bullshit world. It would probably make his day just to be acknowledged of his existence. read more
