A year or so since open­ing on Bleecker, FSC, they of “Made Lo­cal. Buy Lo­cal”, have made a tem­po­rary move a stone’s throw from their prior ad­dress.


While the build­ing that houses the orig­i­nal shop un­der­goes some very nec­es­sary struc­tural up­grades, I paid FSC a visit at their new ad­dress both while it was very much un­der con­struc­tion and af­ter, prod­uct in place, Black Keys play­ing on the Hi-Fi and the whole place smelling won­der­fully of Feu de Bois. Be­low, a look at the space un­der­go­ing its trans­for­ma­tion from derelict store front to a lit­tle some­thing FSC refers to as “Mad Men meets The Odd Cou­ple.”












Com­pleted in a mat­ter of weeks and on a de­lib­er­ately scant bud­get, FSC’s new out­post on Bleecker is a tem­po­rary one. With that in mind, I asked Taavo about the de­sign and build as­pects of the pro­ject and the in­her­ent chal­lenges in pick­ing up and mov­ing shop. From con­cept to com­ple­tion, the idea was to em­brace the very idea of tem­po­rari­ness it­self. Faux fin­ished as far as the eye can see, FSC’s new digs rep­re­sents a sharp de­par­ture with a wry wink. A touch du­bi­ous af­ter my first visit, upon re­turn­ing, I was taken back by just how slickly and com­pletely but not self-se­ri­ously the shop came to­gether. There’s a sense of hu­mor to it(see FSC Cal­en­der and look­book GIFs for fur­ther ev­i­dence) that per­haps comes from a re­ac­tion to the pre­sent state of men’s Amer­i­cana re­tail.

As Taavo says, “The un­der­ly­ing con­cept is an au­then­tic fake. In­stead of fak­ing a “real” Amer­i­can shop with the trap­pings of tai­lor­ing and prod­ucts from over­seas wrapped in old glory, we wanted to be au­then­tic in what we are do­ing. We ac­tu­ally are an au­then­tic Amer­i­can made brand, and this is our au­then­tic tem­po­rary shop.
So, With that in mind, the new place is de­signed as a a real, fake set thats move­able in a snap. All the walls and floor floor are 1/8 Luan. It all stacks 4×8 and can be set up back at the old shop when it’s time to move.
The sec­ond idea was to have fun with and play with the ma­te­ri­al­ity of the walls, floor, ceil­ing, ob­jects. In­stead of pay­ing a ton for real and rare old wood and an­tiques, we faked it. All the sur­faces are fois boised or “wood grained”. Check out cab­i­net, mir­rors, suit cab­i­nets, even the AC duct got the fake wood treat­ment.
We also wanted to see if we could make some­thing tem­po­rary and cheap (we spent un­der 1000 bucks on the shell) look classy and fancy. How far could our scrappy ten gal­lons of paint and some shitty Luan ply­wood take us?
On that same is­sue, we have been priced out of the “cool” in­dus­trial an­tiques mar­ket by every­one else with deeper pock­ets. So we thought, let’s buy cheap, un­cool, crappy newish copies of an­tiques. Stuff no one else wants.”
The new shop, though a work still in progress, is chock-a-block with FSC’s full range of FW11 of­fer­ings. Har­ris Tweed sports coats, boiled wool chore coats, the FSC shacket and my per­sonal win­ter go-to, the in­domitable Isle of Man waxed parka. An im­pos­si­bly hand­some ser­vice boot by Viberg ex­clu­sively for FSC. Their clas­sic and cov­etable suit­ing(a tai­lor, as al­ways, deftly plies his trade at the rear of the store). Hand-made leather ring belts from long-time com­pa­triot ML Brown. Cuff-links by the tal­ented Ms. Kate Jones of Ursa Ma­jor. Ma­chin­ist BD’s. Win­ches­ter trousers in F/W weight fab­rics. Ties im­ported from Brook­lyn. Etc.
FSC just may have just raised the bar by de­cid­ing to say “f*ck it” and low­er­ing it. Get over there and take in the grandeur.
Free­mans Sport­ing Club
343 Bleecker st.
(b/w Christo­pher & W. 10th.)
West Vil­lage, NYC
(212)255-5509