When Benoit Jamin and Isabelle Puech (above right) decided to upgrade their New York retail digs, they didn't comb the island, weighing the relative hipness factors of different neighborhoods. They just packed up their little Nolita Jamin Puech shop and moved around the corner to a new outpost on Prince Street that's triple the size. "We pulled this together in 20 days," says Puech, gesturing at the 1,400-square-foot space. "It's now the biggest of our eight stores, and we can show everything here. We couldn't do that before." Not that the shop is filled floor to ceiling with the culty, super-embellished handbags. In fact, the outsize furnishings play a starring role. Puech and Jamin went to great lengths to gussy up the place, making many trips to Paris's Marché Paul Bert in search of festive decorations. They also enlisted the help of interior designers Michel Perraches and Eric Miele to source industrial antique furniture and other beyond-the-fringe objets, including a waist-high stack of early 20th century leather gymnasium mats, WWII airport lamps used to land war planes and 19th century Venetian chairs accented with gold and silver leaf. Sourced in Europe and shipped Stateside, it's all for sale. So what happens if the store is stripped bare of its covetable décor? "We'll just rush back to the flea market as fast as we can," says Puech.
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