Jack's Mixed Bag

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Shopping depends on wish fulfillment, cultural theorists have suggested, luring consumers with the promise of unattainable worlds or lifestyles—or, in a more optimistic spin on that theory, providing a space for a transaction that enables shoppers to tacitly acknowledge what they "lack." If the Ralph Lauren world offers vague aspirations of grandeur, the Jack Spade world suggests that "real" grandeur is not so bland. Your new friend, the fictive Jack, is a rambling, shambling character who comes from old money and keeps a tidy home but can't quite let go of his threadbare rug, favorite sofa, and boyhood hobbies. Asked how Jack Spade would be attired, Andy Spade responds, "Like Woody Allen," or in an outfit you might put on a Ben Katchor character: "good-quality tweeds, crappy Rockports, a little hat. Not Peter Beard." It's a world where shabby is chic and $500 gets you a duffel bag that subtly signifies your membership in an exclusive club.

The recent renovation is an exercise in the kind of undesign that Restaurant Florent (see “Restaurant Florent,” April 2006) achieved a few blocks north two decades ago: Sclaroff increased the amount of sales space by 200 square feet, updated the air-conditioning, built fixtures, and improved the lighting with the help of Johnson Schwinghammer, a consultancy better known for illuminating the MoMA Design Store, the W Hotel, and Bloomberg's New York headquarters. But the aim was to make it appear that nothing had changed, as if time had stood still. "It's got a library feel, but also a clubhouse or office," Sclaroff says. "You wouldn't want it to look too retaily, but there are functional things like lighting that were improved in the renovation."

The guiding principles for stocking the store and furnishing the walls are studiously ad hoc. An assortment of taxidermy includes a moose and a laughing (or snarling?) fox. The addition of selected paintings and sculptures from Kate and Andy's personal collection sounds like an impressive idea, but while many of the artists' names are familiar, the work is not: there is only half of a John Baldessari diptych and a rather shabby sculpture of toy guns forming a kind of funeral pyre, by Chris Burden, the shock artist famous for hijacking a TV show and taking a bullet in the arm in the 1970s. Andy calls the collection "unimportant art." He describes the curatorial strategy as "taking all the things I like and putting them in one store. I sometimes call it a ‘hobbydashery' because it's a mix of hobby stores I love and things I grew up with as a kid, and then things I discovered after moving to New York."

Shopping has been cast as a poor form of self-expression; selling at this level, however, becomes an art form. Andy admits that to turn Jack Spade into a chain and roll it out would "ruin" it. Although there is talk of opening stores in Tokyo and London, he is more interested in a side project to build the brand through what he calls "commercial readymades"—finding an existing retail establishment that fits the profile and then paying the owner a fee to put a Jack Spade sign outside for a month. This was tried out on a barbershop in Little Italy named Sal's, and Andy hopes to find a topless club and a restaurant that hasn't changed in years to carry a Jack Spade sign. "There's a certain aesthetic that Jack is trying to achieve," he says, "and it's a bad one."

In the art world, of course, unrealized but well-publicized plans can be as valuable as those that see the light of day. Commercial readymades need only happen once to provide the required documentation. In Jack Spade, Andy has turned branding and advertising into a high-concept game. He has executive-produced short films, is at work on the TV series Jack Spade Presents, and his advertising campaigns are more like performance art: in June 2000 a hundred Jack Spade billfolds were dropped on the streets of New York, each filled with some dollars, a few items to characterize a fictional owner, and an "If found, please call" note.