Louis Terline at Oak
Oak, the big white box on Williamsburg’s North 8th St. is not an exclusive club, insists Louis Terline. The 3-year-old clothing store, which stocks everything from 3.1 phillip lim to Cheap Monday to the sculpturally elaborate New York label Harmon, is simply a place he and partner Jeff Madalena put things they like. It’s an open admissions society for those with “fashionable dreams,” he says. “Come on in, and if you like it’s yours.”
When I come into your store, I’m often drawn first to the menswear. That could just be my aesthetic, but is that intentional on your part? Is Oak a menswear store?
We do 50/50 men’s and women’s. But the Williamsburg look is based on not worrying about things like that. And we’ve noticed since the beginning that our men’s rack has attracted lots of women, and to be honest, we have a lot of men who buy off the women’s rack.
What is the Williamsburg look?
There’s nothing specific as to any details, I guess. You could say, oh, skinny jeans, but it’s really more of an attitude. It’s nonchalance. It’s the mix and match. It’s effortless. It’s high and low. Those are all buzzwords that everyone is using, I guess, but Williamsburg really is about the $400 jeans and the $10 top. The neighborhood really perfected that look, and it’s what we devised the store around.
We tried to sell suits and it didn’t really go, because nobody here has a need for it. These are all creative people. If they don’t work from home, they work in some loft office. They’re not really corporate. That’s why they spend that money on jeans. That’s their uniform. That’s their work clothes.
What were you doing before opening Oak?
My degree is actually in art direction. Jeff and I have know each other for six or seven years now. He was designing. I was styling. We started working on a line together. We found a small storefront and started selling other people’s goods, and that took off.
Did you have a customer in mind when you opened?
We’ve been in Williamsburg for ten years. Those are our friends. Those are our people, the people who sort of started up this neighborhood. We were trying to really give voice to the way we felt men and women were dressing. Then it became an international movement and still is. You go to Paris and everyone talks about Williamsburg.
How has style in the neighborhood changed in that decade?
The Williamsburg look has always been design driven, but it’s slowly getting more and more sophisticated. We started out selling vintage. That’s we we wore, that’s what our friends wore, but as we grew up as a community we all got a bit more money, and our tastes got a bit more sophisticated.
What are you buying for next season?
It’s really about exaggerated proportions in contrast with each other.
Things are going to get tighter or looser, and you’ll have the conflict between the two. Tight dresses with giant oversize coats. High waists and crop tops.
You also have your own in-house line. What were you trying to create that you couldn’t find elsewhere?
The line is actually the opposite of things we weren’t finding. It’s things we were finding. We wanted to cover the basics in the store so we could free up money to support designers who were innovating with new ideas. We’ve always been really interested in New York talent and make an effort to support it as much as possible.
We’ve talked a lot about Williamsburg, but you also have a store in Park Slope. How are the two stores different?
The neighborhoods started out similar and have taken their own trajectories. Brooklyn is a city; every neighborhood shouldn’t be the same. Park slope is a little more conservative. It’s families and more young professionals. The classic clothing we do well with over there.
How would you characterize Williamsburg outside of fashion?
You can’t talk about Williamsburg without fashion. Williamsburg is fashion incarnate right now. Everything, down to what grocery store you shop at, is fashion oriented, but fashion in it’s largest sense. It’s about new ideas. It’s about design. It’s about finding quality.
You’re from Queens, right? I feel like it’s almost rare to find people in this neighborhood who are from New York.
I always say I know more people not from New York than from New York.
How does that inform what you do at Oak?
I am 100 percent informed by the New York aesthetic, and how New York always retains its grit. And I mean, it’s a cliché, but New York really is the city that never sleeps. It’s the only city I’ve ever been to that’s full on 24 hours. Like us. Our clothes can go for days.
