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Girl Power
Amid the luxury retail haven that Manhattan's SoHo district has become lies a tiny store packed with accessories with attitude.
Girlprops.com, located steps from the Louis Vuitton store and around the corner from Polo Ralph Lauren's pricy shop on Prince Street, is literally overflowing with baubles of all shades and stripes. And polkadots. And glitter.
Camouflage belts, purple wigs and bright red heart rings commingle with rhinestone earrings and leather spiked bracelets. While the small store is located below street level, bold black and white zebra stripes painted across the front wall make girlprops.com difficult to miss.
"I like to refer to the store as Claire's on acid," said owner Cora Hysinger, referring to the behemoth accessories chain found in malls across the country.
Hysinger, a lively woman with pink hair who at one point designed her own apparel line, opened her first store in a different location on Prince Street in 1979. At that time, it carried a mix of merchandise including furniture and home accessories.
She launched girlprops.com in its current incarnation about three years ago and recently opened two more girlprops.com stores in downtown Manhattan. The company does sell on the Internet, though its core business comes from brick-and-mortar stores, not from its Web site, which launched in April 2000. (Nevertheless, Hysinger hung onto the girlprops.com name for the brick-and-mortars, as her landlord objected to her first choice: So What.)
She does most of the buying herself and makes a point of staying away from traditional channels in the accessories industry. She doesn't go to showrooms during market week, and she rarely attends trade shows.
"I only buy what I like," said Hysinger, who, due to space concerns in the overflowing store, granted WWD an interview from her car, which is also painted in zebra stripes and is usually parked in front of the shop. "I consider myself a stylist, and I have an acute radar."
She also listens carefully to the desires of...