New York - August 13, 2003

Miss Match

Soojin Lee's Matching Outfits

Your lipstick and your handbag. Your jeans and the tablecloth. Your toenails and your dog’s claws.

Coordinated fashion is so hopelessly … premeditated. Too proper grandma, too wannabe uptown socialite. Too friggin’ complicated. (Like you have the time.)

But sometimes the urge to be pulled together calls. Blame it on one too many mornings of “I guess the shirt on the floor works with the skirt draped over the lamp shade.” (May we remind you that that’s also a fire hazard?) When the mood hits, head to Esujin for a decidedly downtown take on the well-kempt look.

Designer Soojin Lee trained with Ralph and Donna, and it shows in the carefully thought-out colors, cuts, fabrics and designs. You don’t have to pair a gold-embossed cotton halter with the wrap skirt in the same fabric, or a topstitched black skirt with the matching reverse-colored ivory tank … But why not?

Can it be? Clothes that you and Mom agree on.

Esujin, 4 Prince Street, between Bowery and Elizabeth Street (212-219-3368).