Atelier Jolie is a silly place on paper. When Angelina Jolie first got the lease on Basquiat’s old studio on Great Jones, she introduced the venture as “a place to have fun. To create your own designs with freedom. To discover yourself.” Which, sure. All these months later, what’s happening inside seems to be part store, part café, and part adult-arts-and-crafts workshop, as though a traditional atelier and a WeWork had a baby. If you want to upcycle or futz with your clothing, you can do so there with all the equipment they have on hand for a flat fee. (Indeed, as I walked in, one person came in behind me with a pair of beat-up sneakers. “I’m hoping to paint these for a while,” he said, heading down to the basement.) If you want to buy something from Jolie’s collaboration with the brand Chloé for an easy $4,000, you can do that, too. If you want to work on your laptop out of the back café, a well-lit little space full of actual books and sketch pads and a working piano, well, there’s room for that as well. After the kind security guard immediately ushered me past the clothing section (my budget wearing me, I guess), I ordered a cortado ($6) and sat and read for a bit. Customers wandered in and out muttering in French. On the wall sat a handful of kids’ drawings, charming and sloppy and colorful. The store was strangely unpretentious, quiet, and welcoming. |