On the first warm spring day all the young men of SoHo appeared at Dean & DeLuca’s café on Prince Street in generic white T-shirts. A couple of years ago, the T-shirts were black and they were worn with an air of swaggering angst. Now the preferred look is one of squeaky-clean early adolescence. The gallery assistants and artists just out of art school are all impersonating the smooth-cheeked kid next door. With their hair cut to show their ears, these guys look freshly hatched. They cultivate a bit of nerdish gawkiness. This is the new, passive, do-with-me-what-you-will sexiness.

SoHo on a weekday morning is pretty good theater; it’s a spontaneous fashion tableau. Only when everybody has finished their cappuccinos does the work of the day begin: turning fashion statements into marketable art. In SoHo, where street style becomes gallery style as fast as you can say “Artforum,” the boys...

 

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