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.

Watch connoisseurs on this side of the pond have big reason to celebrate: Patek Philippe has just opened its first full-service retail salon in the U.S., located on the mezzanine floor of the Tiffany & Co. flagship on New York's Fifth Avenue. The space marks the pinnacle of a partnership that began in 1851, when the companies' founders struck a deal—by way of a gentleman's verbal agreement and a handshake—for Philippe to manufacture timepieces for Tiffany & Co.

To commemorate the opening, an exhibit of Philippe's horological evolution is currently on display, through April 26, on Tiffany's fifth floor. After that, it heads to the Beverly Wilshire Hotel in Beverly Hills (May 16-18). Exhibition highlights include a silver and rose gold pocket watch that was gifted to Pope Leo XIII in 1888 to celebrate his ten-year pontificate (the timepiece is engraved with his likeness), and a wristwatch, circa 1945, made for King Farouk I of Egypt. While those items aren't for sale, many others are, such as the Star Caliber 2000, a pocket watch that, with six patents, twenty-one complications and more than 1,100 individual parts, is said to be one of Patek Philippe's most complicated timepieces ever. Its price? The exact figure has yet to be determined, but a company exec says it will be in the $3 million-ballpark.

Patek Philippe's Star Caliber 2000, King Farouk I of Egypt watch, and Pope Leo XIII pocket watch

On our recent flight to the BaselWorld watch fair in Switzerland, we were marveling over the concept of slow living and how someone could ever achieve such a lifestyle in the fast pace of New York. Later, while frantically negotiating our nearly impossible schedule (sixty-three appointments in three-and-a-half days), our answer came in the form of, ironically, a watch. The nifty conversation piece is Jaquet Droz's limited-edition Grande Heure 24 timepiece (only eighty-eight were produced), but we prefer to call it the "ish" watch. Forget minute accuracy. Instead, it suggests a vague estimation of time between the hours of the day, i.e. 2:30-ish or 5-ish. We quickly took the watch's witty design to heart, arriving at our next appointment around 3-ish.

While cruising the floor at the recent SIHH watch show in Geneva, we came across a novelty timepiece perfect for the fashion lover on the go: Girard-Perregaux's ww.tc 24 Hour Shopping watch. The steel and diamond beauty ($22,750) tells the time in twenty-four different time zones, nine of which are named for famous luxury shopping districts around the world—Faubourg St. Honore, Dubai, Rodeo Drive and Bond Street, for example. What better way for jet-setters to schedule their next international shopping spree?

For its first-ever use of semi-precious stones, Lalique has selected a posse of slithering creatures to play messenger. Its new "Serpent" pendant range for fall, a sub-group within its vast China Mood collection of gorge crystal bric-a-brac, was unveiled at the house's Madison Avenue flagship on Wednesday. Featuring a wide array of rocks (amber, onyx, quartz and carnelian, to name a few), the necklaces are chunky and drape-y - just the thing to toss over a few layers of cozy knits. But supplies won't last; in a nod to Asian numerology, only 188 pieces were created.

Vintage fabrics galore, a grand pair of old brownstone doors flanked by pressed-tin mirrors

"Apparently, we're in desperate need of a flea market." So said one Fort Greene denizen as he pushed his way through the mobs of hipsters at the neighborhood's latest hot spot: the front lot of Bishop Loughlin Memorial High School. Indeed, the grand opening of Brooklyn Flea was the place to be on Sunday, despite the un-spring-like chilly temps and blustery winds. Curated by the real estate Web site, Brownstoner.com, the merch was a far cry from the cassette tapes and cheap sunglasses that infiltrate many a flea market. (Even the food was curated: Belgian waffles, mini quiches, couscous.) While the requisite reworked vintage T-shirts and onesies were aplenty, there were also some terrific curios to be had, ranging from retro textiles to an old oak door salvaged from a brownstone. While I really wanted to walk away with a gorgeous pair of lacquered wood and black glass night tables, circa 1955 ($1,600), or a Halston tie-dye-esque gown from the Seventies ($350), I instead settled for a very on-trend pleated blouse (sans label) with a rhinestone-dotted neckline, $15; a couple of pretty vintage books (Conrad Richter's The Trees, $8, and Philip Truex's The City Gardener, $15); a leather clutch with a metal "M" monogram, $20, and a kitschy plastic spoon holder in the shape of a peacock, $5. Watch your back, Clignancourt.

Judging books by their covers

Brookyn Flea
Bishop Loughlin Memorial High School
Lafayette Ave. between Clermont and Vanderbilt Ave.
Fort Greene, Brooklyn, NY

C100

On Tuesday evening, a very strange thing happened at a New York fashion party: the stiletto-shod ladies in attendance were far outnumbered by dressed-down, regular-looking—some might even say swarthy—dudes. The occasion for this industry anomaly? Sunglass company Oakley's unveiling of its limited-edition, super-retro Frogskin glasses, which feature art by a handful of graffiti scribblers and graphic designers.  Mingling among the testosterone-heavy crowd at the Nicholas Robinson Gallery in Chelsea was number-monikered artist C100, who previously collaborated with Prada on a line of graffiti-print tee-shirts and whose glasses were wrapped in a print of an animated character. Another partygoer was Andrew Petterson, an automotive painter whose fifty different one-of-a-kind pairs of glasses, which will be sold in individual black wooden cases, were inspired by the pinstripes on vintage racing cars. While many of the guests opted to stick close to the display cases, where the various sunglasses—a few with bold hues splashed along the frames, others bedecked with looping, scrawled patterns—hung from invisible string, some ventured into the gallery's basement to test out the make-your-own-graffiti-tee machine. "I started tagging when I was fifteen," said C100. "Sunglasses are just another surface for us to do our thing."

It seems Camila Alves, Matthew McConaughey's soon-to-be baby mama, has been up to a bit more than kitting-out the nursery. The Brazilian model has teamed with her mother on a line of handcrafted leather bags that are roomy enough to accommodate a laptop and other globetrotting miscellany without veering into schleppy territory. Named MUXO ("goddess of the water in an African legend," according to the mymuxo.com Web site), priced from $650 to $1450 and slated for Kitson, the styles are themed around Alves's various haunts. But the one common denominator among the LAX, the Malibu, the SoHo and the Little West 12th? Lots of groovy, free-spirited fringe.

After collaborating with Marc Jacobs for the past four years on his runway jewelry and hats, not to mention his home collection, accessories designer Clare Corrigan is taking things into her own hands. Her new lineup of modern jewels—named Nusch, after Picasso muse Nusch Eluard—features rings, bracelets, necklaces and earrings made of gold vermeil and pearls. It's now sold at Colette in Paris, and will make its way to Karry O, also in the City of Light, in Febuary.

The 88-foot-tall spruce currently holding court at Rockefeller Center has some stiff competition in London. Conjured by British designers Zowie Broach and Brian Kirkby of Boudicca, an evergreen at the Victoria & Albert Museum is tricked-out with a custom soundtrack by composer Daniel Pemberton and its own "damp forest smell" by perfumer Geza Schoen. But it's the piece de resistance up top that has people talking: a 24-inch fiberglass and papier mache mannequin, dressed in a lace-covered corset with delicate roses running across her shoulder and feather wings sprouting from her back. But Miss V&A's no prim and proper holiday angel; for all that sweet detailing, she has exposed steel alloy pins for arms and molded, fingered hands. Why? The figurine was partly inspired by Broach and Kirkby's interests in robots and the slightly creepy mechanical dancing doll in Fellini's Seventies flick Casanova. The other main inspiration was Hans Christian Andersen's tale of "The Little Match Girl." The storybook heroine "strikes her match to see her dreams," says Broach. "She sees them, then dies and is taken to heaven. There's a dark beauty that's very natural to Boudicca language." Also noteworthy: the figure's coiffure, designed by Paris' Laurent Philippon of Bumble & bumble. "She looks a bit like Elizabeth's Cate Blanchett," says Broach, "with a kind of glorious Thirties wave mixed in."