Grown-Up Boys' Wear for Bar or Barricades

Nom de Guerre, an outfitter of unregimented men at Broadway and Bleecker Street, is underground and proud of it. (John Lei for The New York Times)

By PENELOPE GREEN

FOR a revolutionary, a nom de guerre is both an image maker and a practical tool. He or she can employ one to burnish or fashion an image, adding mystery to the mundane - as Patty Hearst did when she was reborn as Tania - while neatly covering his or her tracks.

The owners of a men's store called Nom de Guerre, which is set like a bunker or an after-hours club in concrete chambers underneath the sidewalk at Broadway and Bleecker Street, are clearly enamored of revolutionaries and their advertising techniques.

Here is a store without a storefront. Heck, it doesn't even have a sign, though if you're looking down at just the right spot, you might see the words "Nom de Guerre" stenciled on the sidewalk in a swirly Gothic, old-style surfer typeface. To reach it, you walk gingerly down an iron staircase that ends in a wide and dimly lighted concrete hall, empty except for the gigantic black Nom de Guerre stencil on one wall; a row of red utility lights beckons from a smaller hall just beyond. There's a copy shop to your left and an unmarked door to your right. Follow the guy gliding in on the skateboard, as I did early one weekday afternoon.

It's a bit grim to be sure, but the young men working here are affable and kindly despite the greenish light and dour themes. In the spring, images of men in ski masks glowered from bright-pink T-shirts on a wall. On another wall rows of revolutionary tracts were laid out like jewelry, with titles that included "10 Days That Shook Iraq," "I Ask That One Piece of Your Heart Be Zapatista" and "500 Years of Indigenous Revolutions."

This month the tracts have been replaced by bios of 80's bands like the Cure and the Clash and the Smiths, as well as old music videos of Depeche Mode and Spandau Ballet.

Tyler Thompson, a soft-spoken salesman wearing a black knit cap with a slogan that read "Easy Money," unlocked a glass case so that I could try on a black sweatshirt lined in black rabbit fur. Its silk-lined sleeves were printed with dollar signs. Instead of drawstrings, gold-plated chains dangled, tipped with tiny daggers. It was $1,600, a limited-edition garment made one sweatshirt at a time by a hairstylist named Joey Curls. The store has sold just one. On my back it looked as comic as you would imagine.

"They're shooting a music video down the street if you'd like to wear it out," Mr. Thompson said helpfully. Now the case is filled with a collection of old Ray-Bans - Wayfarers, Drifters - but you can ask for the bunny fur, and they'll order one for you.

There are essentially four things for sale at Nom de Guerre: T-shirts, sweatshirts, blue jeans and sneakers. A boy's uniform. But what sort of boy? T-shirts made by Rogan, $60, are laundered into a suedelike nap, their slogans ("Keep New York City," "You Won't Belize Your Eyes") faded just to the brink of erasure. You want to nuzzle them, smell the Tide.

Paper-thin Rogan flip-flops nearby are even more archly casual, almost disposable, in a black-on-brown print over hemp soles, $110. Military jackets in navy and white pinstripes or a tigery black-and-gray camouflage pattern, carrying Nom de Guerre's own label, are $325. Lavender gingham button-down shirts, also by Nom de Guerre, classic and fitted, are $210 and $195.

Sneakers are the other story at Nom de Guerre. For some young men, maybe the only story. Limited edition and vintage sneakers are presented in a curatorial manner in a vaultlike cement room deeper within, along with more T-shirts in flat files and a trance-tribal soundtrack. The vintage sneakers live in a glass vitrine, single pairs on consignment, like a pair of sleek white hightops in men's size 12, with orange tongues and touches of a silvery reflective material for $1,000. (Called Maharishi Terminators, they are among 48 pairs made by Nike in 2004, Mr. Thompson said.)

Such artful casualness, my friend Dan mused, seems geared to a man intent on modeling himself after a Brad Pitt type who has been styled for a visit to Starbucks. "You know, the hair is wet and tousled, so he can be 'caught' by the paparazzi," Dan said. "Or maybe it's what you wear in the front row of a Lakers game."

Dan called these items "dog whistle" fashion, quoting from the late Geraldine Stutz, who in the 60's and 70's presided over the famous first-floor bazaar at Henri Bendel, where young designers were featured in an assemblage of chic pitched so high only a few discerning women could hear it.

DESPITE that bunny-fur sweatshirt, what's being sold here isn't flash. Instead, Nom de Guerre, which has been open for a year and a half, is offering indie fashion and springs from a tradition of the single vision, owner-in-the-store shops you used to find on Ludlow Street in the early 90's, then in NoLIta and finally in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Its parent is the three-year-old Isa, a clublike store in Williamsburg invented by Isa Saalabi and Holly Harnsongkram. Isa is now famous among young artists, musicians and fashion connoisseurs for its terse selection and its events. A book party for the graffiti artist Neck Face last winter, for example, drew hundreds of people.

Nom de Guerre's owners, Mr. Saalabi; Ms. Harnsongkram; Wil Whitney, a former manager at Stüssy; and Devon Ojas, a graffiti artist, prefer to describe themselves as a collective. "We like to have things that we feel are important culturally and socially," Ms. Harnsongkram said. "Not totally heavy but a little bit of thought there."

I asked Ms. Harnsongkram how you make a business at subway level with no billboard. (In my three visits a small but steady stream of customers arrived at the store.)

"We've always operated by word of mouth," she said. "It fits with the ideas we have. And we always carry something special to make sure it's worth the trip."

There is something pleasantly subversive about a store that is literally underground, just below the scads of shoppers logjammed at the Crate & Barrel corner at Broadway and Houston Street, funneling toward the dada shopping theater at the Prada store two blocks south. It's not too heavy, but there's a little bit of thought there.

Nom de Guerre
640 Broadway at Bleecker Street, Manhattan; directly underneath the Swatch store; use the copy shop sign as a navigational aid; (212) 253-289.

ATMOSPHERE A little menacing, like the former after-hours club Sound Factory, or perhaps a concrete bunker.

CLIENTELE Readers of Paper magazine, Vogue editors, skater boys and sneaker freaks.

SERVICE Gentle, kindly and knowledgeable.

NOTEWORTHY ITEMS A pair of 1994 Nike Air Max 2's, size 10½, white with royal-blue accents and a slice of suede around the heel that looks like faux cement, $350; gold and metallic turquoise leather basketball shoes by Y-3, the snazzy Adidas brand designed by Yohji Yamamoto, $325; and red or black plaid Jack Purcell's, the old-fashioned cloth sneakers that your grandfather (and Jack Purcell) used to wear, $50.