• Barneys Co-Op

  660 Madison Avenue, at 60th Street, 212-826-8900; 236 West 18th Street, 212-716-8816

  Her With a new denim designer hitting the market weekly (like James Denim Preferred, pictured), shopping for jeans has become impossibly daunting. Unless you enlist the help of Erlens, the denim doctor on the eighth floor of the Madison Avenue Barneys. One good look at your butt, a few questions, and Erlens is ready to deliver his prescription. The unbelievably comprehensive selection assembled by Barneys’ crack buying staff helps, too.
  
  His For men interested in exploring the world beyond Levi’s or the Gap, Barneys Chelsea Co-op offers the best selection of Rogans, paper denim & cloth, and Seven for All Mankind in the city, along with an expert staff capable of convincing you that a little Lycra can go a long way. (They do, in the interest of keeping options open, carry Levi’s, too . . .)

From the 2004 Best of New York issue of New York Magazine