A few weeks ago, “Going Out of Business” signs were plastered in the windows of M&J Trimming. Then an ominous red banner went up on its website declaring that it was no longer taking online orders. It’s an abrupt and quiet end for the Garment District store, which opened in 1936 and has, in the decades, since become a New York institution, especially for the fashion industry — its client list includes Kate Spade, Ralph Lauren, Calvin Klein, and Vera Wang. If you were a stylist or worked in fashion magazines during their print heyday, M&J was a regular pitstop for the requisite on-set frippery needed for a photo shoot. But beyond the fashion world, it was also a haven for amateurs and artists and actors and teens, for whom the crammed aisles promised transformation by ribbon, lace, and button. As Lady Gaga said in the intro of her music video for “Marry the Night”:
You may say “I lost everything”
But I still had my Bedazzler
And I had a lot of patches
Shiny ones from M&J Trimming
So I wreaked havoc on some old denim
And I did what any girl would do
I did it all over again
M&J will soon join the list of iconic shuttered stores, including Pearl Paint, Village Cigars, Barneys, Kim’s Video, and J&R Music World, to name just a few. Its closing is another indication of fashion manufacturing’s prolonged exit from New York City, something that, says fashion historian Jessica Glasscock, started back in the 1980s, when rents for local factories tripled, and then accelerated with the offshore production of nearly everything that went into a garment. “The professionals who relied on M&J Trimming are still there, but their numbers have been dwindling,” she said. It didn’t help that the de Blasio administration relocated some of them to Sunset Park and the Brooklyn Navy Yard.
Still, there have been some recent reversals of fortune — this year, East Village sewing shop Gizmo closed its First Avenue location after rent increases but found a new space further east in the Village, and my pal Janet, a former fashion editor, reminded me that Tinsel Trading, the Manhattan trimmings store (a onetime favorite of Martha Stewart), had reopened in Berkeley, California, priced out of New York after 84 years in business. We can only hope! We didn’t get any answers to our queries on future plans from M&J’s owners, but we did hear from New Yorkers who were devotees.
Photo: M&J Trimmings
Author, fashion commentator, and former creative director of Barneys New York
“When I needed zhuzh for Barney’s windows, I headed to M&J. I hate to think of how many miles of ball fringe we consumed back in the day. Ostrich-feather wigs for the mannequins? Plug in the glue gun and call M&J!”
Fashion designer
“Fiorucci and M&J Trimming are my two favorite New York stores. But M&J was the most important to me because the stuff they had was so essential for my designs. They just carried everything imaginable, and I could always find what I needed there. So many of my clothes, especially when I was doing Paraphernalia, started with my buttons and my trims and my fringe. I used to get a woven jacquard ribbon from them, one and a quarter inches wide with a great green background and beautiful embroidery of a green frog, a red mushroom with white dots, and a little yellow ducky. That jacquard was a trim I used a lot of, especially in the ’60s and ’70s when I was doing this artsy-crafty stuff. One of my main pieces from the ’60s was a tiny little miniskirt with a four-inch-wide rayon fringe that really shakes in Day-Glo chartreuse, pink, green, and white across the top. They weren’t just trims for me; they became major parts of my garments! I don’t know anyone that didn’t use M&J. And for a while, for me, the store was a daily pop-in. Is M&J having a funeral? Because I’ll go!”
Contributing fashion editor at Vogue
“I’m an enthusiastic, but not very skilled, home sewer, and I’m also a collector of antique toys and dolls. During the pandemic, I must have been cleaning up, which is very unusual, and somehow a little ribbon on a 1920s flapper doll fell off her head, and I must have somehow swept it up. I was quite devastated, plus everything was closed. So then as soon as the stores reopened, I slipped on my mask and I went up to M&J and I found this little vintage-looking ribbon and a tiny rosette. Everyone was laughing at me because that was literally the first thing I did when the stores reopened.
I was just up there a couple weeks ago because some color ran on a very embroidered piece and I needed rosettes to cover it. I’m a big rosette buyer, I guess. I also bought lots of little patches there over the years. I’m kind of a funny dresser, and so I’ll have something trimmed in antique lace, and then the antique lace will get a hole in it. Now, a normal person would throw the thing out, but me, I just go to M&J and get a beautiful thing to cover the hole. For me, the fact that you can get any kind of ribbon, any button, any patch, I just don’t know what we’re going to do. Honestly, the only other place I know to get this stuff in person is in France.”
Set designer whose clients include Vogue, the New York Times, and the Metropolitan Museum’s Costume Institute
“We saw the Japanese trimming store Mokuba, where you needed an appointment to get in, close down. It was always so expensive, so arch, so snooty, but the stuff was beautiful. After the never-satisfying visits there (you always felt there was so much they were not even showing you), you would go cleanse your palate at M&J, where anything went! Sequins, two-foot-long fringes in 20 colors, Swarovski-a-go-go, polyester-satin four-inch Day-Glo next to fine French silk … it will be missed. But we cannot just bemoan another loss; it’s time to go support East Coast Trimming, which inherited Mokuba’s stock and is truly amazing!”
Actress and television producer
“I have a very long relationship with M&J Trimming. It’s the only trimming store I’ve ever gone to in my whole life, and I’m religiously devoted. They had the best grosgrain for the best price, and I knew all of the people that work there by name, and I love them.
I know about M&J because of my mother. Growing up, we wore hair ribbons in our hair every single day. And at a very young age, I was taught to iron them myself in the morning before school. My mother didn’t think of yarn ribbons as hair ribbons: We wore grosgrain for school and satin for special occasions. We literally had a bureau devoted to hair ribbons in our house that was organized by color, texture, and material. When we moved to New York, my mom was walking with my baby sister in her stroller in 1978, and after going to Lord & Taylor for school clothes she came upon M&J. And that’s where we’ve directed all of our business since. I order ribbons every year from M&J, and I do the front of my house in garlands and tie ribbons around our stoop and staircase. I had a shoe business, and grosgrain was the back of the shoe — and it was in large part because of M&J and my feelings about my mother.
The loss of M&J is huge, and the news has traveled through New York like some sort of natural disaster. The amount of people texting me to tell me that it was closing was shocking, but it also really touched me that so many others were touched by the loss, too. It speaks to larger issues of these specialty businesses closing, businesses that have been really important to New York and important to the fashion world and important to the district. New York was special because we had industries here that were unique to our city, that we could support, and that made our streets look different than other cities with their big-box stores. Now we’ve become more of that, and New York has lost its color. To see shop after shop close is devastating, but it’s not just the memories and the sentiment; it’s also the people that work there who were extremely good at their jobs and knew a huge amount about fabric and the way things fold and lay and drape. The more people have migrated online to shop, the more we’ve lost this dynamic of waiting for stuff to come in instead of buying it immediately. I would literally be calling Carlos at M&J and asking if the two-and-three-eighths-inch-wide purple grosgrain had come in yet from Switzerland. I loved the relationship. These kinds of losses are real because it’s not just the purchase, it’s the experience of the purchase that’s gone.”
Stylist and co-star of forthcoming Amazon show Wear Whatever the F You Want
“M&J was our go-to in the ’90s. You were not a fashion assistant by any stretch if you didn’t know M&J. It always seemed to be the place for an immediate fashion need. I can’t tell you how many photo shoots I did with Joe McKenna where I was there. We were always running to M&J in case we wanted to change buttons when I styled with Rebecca Taylor and Vivienne Tam. When I worked at Vogue, I was like a size 14 or 16, and nothing fit me. And I would go get buttons or trim or something like butterfly sequin patches, something to make my clothes look cool so that I felt more a part of the industry. I don’t think that would be an issue now in the same way, but in 1991, it certainly was. There’s just so much history behind M&J, and there are so many incredible ideas that came from that place. It was such a source of inspiration. I think it really speaks to a day of the fashion industry gone by, as everything now is becoming more online. But where are we going to immediately get a feather? A ribbon? A button?”
Hair stylist for the fashion and advertising industry; founder of Salon, a hair studio and community center in Brooklyn.
“I grew up with a family of seamstresses who were convinced every article of clothing could use an added ribbon, lace, or beads, which made M&J Trimming and the Garment District a home away from home. I’ve been going there to make hair accessories for myself and for photo shoots for the last 16 years! My last purchase was ribbons for last year’s Salon holiday party. One of my librarians had never been before, and she immediately fell in love with it as well. It felt like sharing a New York institution with a new generation.”
Stylist, designer, and creative director
“I have so many fond memories at M&J. I could always count on finishing and elevating my designs with their trims. It’s a creative playground! I remember taking my daughter there for play dates. I would let her pick out patches, buttons, and fringe to remix and custom design her clothes. It was the perfect place to expand your creativity. They will be missed.”
Floral designer whose clients include Ulla Johnson, Bvlgari, and Jason Wu
“M&J was my introduction to vintage trimmings … they opened a window to silk cords and the like that perhaps would have been better left closed. Now my trimmings cabinet is a bulging mass of treasures awaiting their moment. I will miss M&J terribly.”
Fashion designer
“M&J was so iconic. I bought trims there in the very beginning, when I was a company of one, and I remember always getting in trouble for grabbing buttons without asking for help. We made a T-shirt with a horse head printed on it, and the horse’s mane was made of real ribbons that I got at M&J. They were these gorgeous, watercolor-y, almost tie-dye print. I was just obsessed with them.”
Fashion designer
“As a lifelong New Yorker, I have memories of visiting M&J since childhood (after visiting Tender Buttons — RIP). I used to get velvet ribbon and clip random earrings onto it to make choker necklaces. It was the first place I went for ric-rac trim when I started my brand. It was simply the place, and I’m so sad it won’t be there, like so many other New York institutions that are slipping away.”
Stylist and author of the 5 Things You Should Buy Substack
“I like to think this was before the huge bow craze, but I was set on wearing a black grosgrain bow in my hair for my wedding in 2017 and I got the ribbons at M&J. I think I spent $150 buying every width of black and ivory ribbon in grosgrain and satin. I ended up wearing the one-and-a-half-inch width, I believe. I had the girl who did my hair put it in a low pony and tie the bow. She was like, ‘That’s it? That’s all you want?’ I think it was the easiest job of her life.”
Painter, designer, and creative director of Happy Menocal Studio
“I loved their great deadstock sales, the towers of grosgrain (you had to shell out for the 100 percent cotton kind with the toothier edge), and the always-helpful staff (Angel and Frankie were my guys). We package all of our custom work in an orgy of tissue and ribbon, and it felt thrilling to watch them measure out your requested yardage — I imagine a similar feeling for people who love going to the butcher or a fish market. I also loved watching the FIT kids sorting out their elastic and zippers.”
Source link
