The spirit of the whole quandary is somehow ultra-American as well.

Andrew: Right, people can take it for what it is, but there is something exciting about the re-interpretation or new angle for helping a customer to rediscover something. And to add to that, when you go this crazy about details in garments, let’s get honest—there has to be some level of compulsion. So in Japan, there had to have been that love first in order to have other customers value that story behind it for the brands to survive and give us a chance to bring their work here.

Is there a way to categorize the typical Self Edge customer?

Andrew: No, and I love that! We have customers from 16-80. You’ve got 16 year-old kids in high school who are looking for their first real pair of jeans. Maybe it’s a young kid looking for his first wardrobe staple. Next, you have the college student with no money but enough for one pair to last the year. Next, you have the young professional who finally has disposable income to build a wardrobe. Then, you have the married guy, who comes in with his wife and tries them on for her. This goes all the way to the 80-year old who says, “Yes! Finally clothes that are built the way they used to be when I was a kid.” It’s not about style to this customer. It’s more about rediscovering something very dear to him or her.

You are in a very fashionable and influential city in one of its most influential neighborhoods, so you have the cache to comment on this: have you seen a shift away from over-adornment to more simplified looks? Is this look going to more of a mass audience and away from the niche market?

Andrew: Oh sure. We get big box buyers in here all the time looking at what we stock. You can tell the way that they look at the stitching, and that’s ok to us. We knew we were ahead of the curve, we know what’s up when people look at J.Crew and say, “look what they’re bringing to the market!” A lot of what we have in here is fashionable now. People may be in that recession-mode where they are shying away from flashiness, and others coin terms like “durable goods” and “dry goods” – we just know that once this moment has passed in fashion, we will still be here. These brands will keep doing what they do. We’re not too concerned with the trends.

So maybe you give them something they can stick with regardless of the trends?

Andrew: Yes, we try to give them something special about these brands’ philosophies and give them a taste of that obsessiveness. You give them a peek at something foreign, like what a documentary would do for a person. It gives that customer a look at a different way of doing something.