Sex or Shopping?

It’s a no-brainer, guys.

By Carol Tisch

I’m confused. The lines between sex therapy and retail therapy are beginning to blur. I’ve heard about Hollywood actors checking themselves into treatment centers for sex addiction—Michael Douglas appears to be the most notorious repeat offender. But what prompted Unilever to poll 1000 women on whether they prefer clothes to sex?

Check it out: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070206/od_nm/life_clothes_dc. The results are staggering. Women are willing to abstain from sex for a month, 15 months, even three years—for clothes? Extrapolate this information and you can draw only one logical conclusion. Michael Douglas doesn’t shop enough. He needs new clothes. Sexy European clothes that are so hot he’ll forget about sex. The kind of clothes the men of Sarasota can finally get at Beau Monde (1529 State Street, 941-953-5111) and Stitch Boutique. (1636 Main Street, 941-366-7268).

These new shops have just what the haberdasher (um, therapist) ordered —no preppy looks here. The problem is the clothes make guys look hot; it’s a vicious cycle. But this is a shopping blog, so we won’t go there.

Suffice it to say the therapists we prescribe are Renee Wilson at BeauMonde, (I interviewed her in my “Shopping” column for the February issue of SARASOTA Magazine), and Vinny Sizemore of the even newer Stitch Boutique. Wilson outfits men from head to toe, with classy Ted Baker shoes and Ben Sherman shirts, even the newest Jack Spade sunglasses, socks and travel bags.

Ben Sherman shirts favored by rock stars and musicians across the globe are available at BeauMonde

Wilson leans to a mod British cut so slim one might question its appeal to any but Sarasota’s youngest and fittest specimens. “It’s a tailored lifestyle that isn’t defined by age—we carry sizes from small to double XL,” she says

Sizemore, a fashion pro who spent the last nine years at Saks Fifth Avenue (both in Sarasota and New York City) also goes for European cut shirts—his coveted exclusive brand is Bogosse. This celebrity-endorsed Miami based-shirt company is the brainchild of two Haitian brothers, Patrick and Fabrice Tardieu. Before they started Bogosse, Patrick was a soccer player for the Fort Lauderdale strikers; Fabrice worked for a European fashion house.

Shirts from the latest Bogosse runway show are at Stitch Boutique

But Sizemore is calling in markers from the contacts he made in New York, including a friend from Saks whose new venture is a shirt brand called Niformis. “We’ll be carrying these shirts exclusively in Sarasota beginning in August,” Sizemore reports. Fashion critics are raving about both lines, which are called hybrids between couture and ready to wear.

“It’s all part of a move toward tailored clothing mixed in a casual way,” says Vinny, who is most comfortable mixing his Euro-style shirts with blazers. Sizemore is determined to offer the newest and most unique brands for men and women, ones that aren’t anywhere else in town.

In the Unilever survey, 70 percent said they believe in love at first sight of the perfect clothing article, and 54 percent said they felt equally confident about their ability to find the right man. In Sarasota, you can be 100 percent sure it will be love at first sight at these hip new stores.

Posted: 2/14/2007 9:36:27 AM | 0 comments

Retail Therapy

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