Critical Shopper: Starter Chic for the Would-Be’s — Critical Shopper

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Enlarge This Image Kirsten Luce for The New York Times

Enlarge This Image Kirsten Luce for The New York Times

Enlarge This Image Kirsten Luce for The New York Times

Enlarge This Image Kirsten Luce for The New York Times

At first, they came with ambition and self-regard. They were praying for an angle. They were dreaming of a life where being on the make finally adds up to something. They didn’t know it, but they were dreaming of Surface to Air.

Surface to Air, clothing label, creators of ads and music videos, gang of flâneurs made good, has just opened a SoHo store to follow the one in Paris, and it’s stocked with the upscale, exquisitely designed versions of pieces that any ol’ vagabond would carry to the city in his duffel. It’s a way to look refined without sacrificing the dirtbag spirit, starter chic for men who, if they play their cards right, will never have to get around to the fancier version, even though they’ll be able to afford it.

Take the beat-up black leather jacket. Twenty bucks will get you one in any thrift store between the coasts; wear it to a fancy party and seem charming, dangerous, someone to know. When you’re ready to host the fancy party, though, there will be S2A’s outrageous black bomber, festooned with withered pockets ($1,155). On me, it looked like one of those space-saver bags sucked of all its air: a wrinkled, scratchy, perfect fit. I didn’t buy it, but knowing it exists lets me put my Halloween plans to go as Olivier Zahm into motion.

Surface to Air does leather beautifully. It’s also the medium of the store’s featured collaboration: a pair of black motorcycle jackets with splashes of fire-truck red, made in concert with the moody rapper Kid Cudi, a sort of dirtbag arriviste champion. (Better is the beige-and-red combo, worn by Kid Cudi himself on the cover of an in-store broadsheet, but it’s a one of one, sadly.) He even acts on HBO’s “How to Make It in America,” a whole series dedicated to dirtbags going legit.

The aspiring designers on that show can barely dye a T-shirt, but it’s a line like Surface to Air they’re aiming for. They’d renounce stubble for good to come up with a jacket as stunning as the navy S2A parka with corduroy accents ($600), and they’re several years of social climbing away from understanding a coat like the burgundy one here, with a flipped-up short gray collar ($625), the sort that I used to see at Portobello Market and on the backs of the lesser gentry at Oxford in the late ’90s.

Those slummers probably would have loved the tan shearling, too ($1,375). That jacket is worth touching, as are many of the clothes: Fabric is king here, including on one of my favorite pieces, a revision of the traditional army sweater with satiny patches cloaking the shoulders, done in a tight-knit navy wool, with suede at the shoulders, as if preparing for a terribly leisurely war. The collar was tall, and split at the front to soften its restraint; the yellow and white oxford I was wearing poked out under it, puckering the front flap, giving off a futurist formal vibe.

I bought it, naturally. It would go great with the purple pants with a slight waxed effect, or the twill-like grayish blue denim that suggests the long-awaited union of German miserabilism and the American Southwest.

The shirts were slightly more classic, most with a monogrammed S2A at the lower left, an affectation almost earned, especially on the sharp blue one with a prim tartan stripe running down the placket ($173).

As with much of the line, this was cut slim, though sizing was inconsistent, and plenty weren’t in stock, despite the store being open only a week. A couple of indulgent salespeople were diligent, though, bringing several pieces I asked to see, and as many that I didn’t, to the smartly arranged dressing rooms in the back, with illustrations by Charlotte Delarue on the walls, same as on the store’s bags and some of its T-shirts.

Which is to say: aesthetics matter, sometimes, more than function, as in the featherweight navy boot with a thick white sole ($445) — handsome but not built for a real fight — or the barely there stretchy T-shirts in heather blue and salmon ($115).

About half of the store is given over to clothes for women, which are less regimented than those for men: some red palazzo denim, a distressed black leather romper, a stern-looking patent leather clutch, and button-cute double monk-strap shoes, worn, seemingly, by all of the store’s sales staff.

These are for the women — assistant merchandisers, junior gallerists, assistants to Graydon Carter — who date those dirtbags. They clean up the would-be’s and help make them into someone worth climbing with. They have aspirations, too.

Surface to Air

27 Mercer Street, (212) 256-0340;surfacetoair.com.

ELECT FEW For the one out of every 100 young men of artistic intent and questionable seriousness who comes to New York and succeeds, but still wants to look as if he just showed up in town, Surface to Air has his uniform: sharp, pricey versions of the clothes he arrived in.

PICK CAREFULLY There is ample space here, and ample staff, but not always ample clothes. Still, there are oodles of blacks and grays and navys to choose from.

SAFE CHOICE S2A is known for its men’s wear, but its more surprising choices come in its items for women, perhaps an acknowledgment of the limits of risk-taking, even in the aspiring creative class.

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