To get to the Vacant boutique at the Marshall Field’s mothership this month, you can take the main elevator straight to the ninth floor. Or, if you get directions from some crackhead, like I did, you can wend your way through the forest of expensive furniture on the eighth floor, find the special escalator that goes up one more level, then cut through the rug department, so desolate the employees lie down on the merchandise.
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Information about Miller is scarce, but it’s obvious he’s very protective of his concept. He keeps a “bandwagon” log on his Web site, www.govacant.com, where he calls out alleged copycats. Paper isn’t on the list (yet) but Levi’s, Comme des Garcons, and Song Airlines are.
In theory bringing rare, interesting products to towns with little or no access to such goods is a noble act of humanitarianism, though Paris and Tokyo hardly need the help. And I’m all for exclusivity when it comes to fashion–but in my book that involves humans who make a decent living handcrafting works of art that are rare by necessity, because there are only so many hours in the day. A lot of the stuff Miller was peddling came from corporations like Nike and Puma, which limit editions purely by choice. Most of the $90 screen-printed T-shirts, from Mad Anthony, Futura Laboratories, and the like, had tags that said they were manufactured in third world countries.
