Loris Diran Boutique in NYC’s Bowery

New York designer Loris Diran can literally “size someone up.” He can look at most men and women and tell both their clothing sizes and tastes. “You’ve got to understand what a woman wants,” explains Diran, whose boutique at 3 East 1^st Street in New York features both his women’s and men’s lines. It’s situated just off Bowery, nearby The Bowery Hotel, Whole Foods, the now-closed punk palace CBGB, the New Museum of Contemporary Art, and trendy restaurants and shops.
Diran assumes numerous roles there: designer, manager, merchandiser, salesperson and also stock person and occasional janitor. The floor-to-ceiling window-front shop is small, but spacious, and well lit, but not glaring. Garments are merchandised on racks along the back and two side walls, with select pieces displayed on dress forms.

Current color stories include neutrals and brights: khakis, blacks, and navies spiked with yellow, red and white. Diran said he likes to do the unexpected. For example, for men he pairs a black-and-white vertical thin-striped button-front, French cuffed shirt with a black-and-white diagonal thick-striped silk tie, under a camel, slim-cut blazer with white binding.

For women he offers a mix of sheers, knits and summer-weight woolens fashioned into garments with unique and sometimes unexpected details. He adds a Valentino-inspired peplum and zipper front closure to a three-quarter length sleeve, fitted waist, suit jacket in black-and-white nubby wool, with matching above-knee straight skirt.

Diran’s best selling dress is a sleeveless, fitted sheath with wide pin-tucks at both the front and back of its scoop neck, made up in navy lightweight wool jersey (my personal favorite). Diran designs what trend watcher David Wolfe of The Doneger Group refers to as real clothes for real people; the kind of clothes women can wear well.

Diran said he designs clothes that are “elegant with an edge.” His womenswear is simple, yet structured with details such as rouching at side seams, sheer layers or zipper closures. His menswear is cut leaner in the “shrunken suit” style now made popular by the TV series, “Mad Men.” But Diran reminds me he was designing menswear like this before that show started.

Diran worked at design houses Versace, Chanel and Claude Montana before launching his own label in 2003 with a women’s line of knitwear. He opened his Bowery boutique, his first-ever New York store, in February 2009 in the midst of the global economic crisis. In hindsight, Diran said recently, he may be better known if he had located on Madison Avenue. Diran’s Web site tells more about his background. You can also find videos of his fashion shows on YouTube, and you can watch for Diran and his designs in upcoming episodes of Bravo reality show “The Real Housewives of New York City,” Season 3.

I like Diran’s clothes because they look good on both slim and curvaceous, and tall and short women. He merchandises sizes 8, 10 and 12 on his boutique salesfloor, as opposed to only putting out the 0s and 2s and keeping the larger sizes in the back. Businesswomen Lydia Kallipoliti and Susan Brown are fans of Diran, as is Modacycle photographer Sandy Ramirez, who sometimes shoots photos for models’ portfolios, outfitting the women in Diran’s designs.

“The aesthetic of the design is ‘New York meets Europe,’ because I’m New York meets Europe,” Diran, who is of French-Armenian descent, told a couple who stopped in his boutique March 20. After talking with them about his clothing lines, fashion, the Bowery neighborhood and various other topics, Diran gave the couple his business card and invited them to come back.

“One of my favorite things of being in the store is meeting the clients,” he told me later as he closed up shop, straightening garments, putting things in place, getting ready to do it again the next day.”