Nom De Guerre article in today's NY Times

[triniboy27]

I've cut and pasted below...enjoy.

Grown-Up Boys' Wear for Bar or Barricades

By PENELOPE GREEN

FOR a revolutionary, a nom de guerre is both an image maker and a practical tool. He or she can employ one to burnish or fashion an image, adding mystery to the mundane - as Patty Hearst did when she was reborn as Tania - while neatly covering his or her tracks.

The owners of a men's store called Nom de Guerre, which is set like a bunker or an after-hours club in concrete chambers underneath the sidewalk at Broadway and Bleecker Street, are clearly enamored of revolutionaries and their advertising techniques.

Here is a store without a storefront. Heck, it doesn't even have a sign, though if you're looking down at just the right spot, you might see the words "Nom de Guerre" stenciled on the sidewalk in a swirly Gothic, old-style surfer typeface. To reach it, you walk gingerly down an iron staircase that ends in a wide and dimly lighted concrete hall, empty except for the gigantic black Nom de Guerre stencil on one wall; a row of red utility lights beckons from a smaller hall just beyond. There's a copy shop to your left and an unmarked door to your right. Follow the guy gliding in on the skateboard, as I did early one weekday afternoon.

It's a bit grim to be sure, but the young men working here are affable and kindly despite the greenish light and dour themes. In the spring, images of men in ski masks glowered from bright-pink T-shirts on a wall. On another wall rows of revolutionary tracts were laid out like jewelry, with titles that included "10 Days That Shook Iraq," "I Ask That One Piece of Your Heart Be Zapatista" and "500 Years of Indigenous Revolutions."

This month the tracts have been replaced by bios of 80's bands like the Cure and the Clash and the Smiths, as well as old music videos of Depeche Mode and Spandau Ballet.

Tyler Thompson, a soft-spoken salesman wearing a black knit cap with a slogan that read "Easy Money," unlocked a glass case so that I could try on a black sweatshirt lined in black rabbit fur. Its silk-lined sleeves were printed with dollar signs. Instead of drawstrings, gold-plated chains dangled, tipped with tiny daggers. It was $1,600, a limited-edition garment made one sweatshirt at a time by a hairstylist named Joey Curls. The store has sold just one. On my back it looked as comic as you would imagine.

"They're shooting a music video down the street if you'd like to wear it out," Mr. Thompson said helpfully. Now the case is filled with a collection of old Ray-Bans - Wayfarers, Drifters - but you can ask for the bunny fur, and they'll order one for you.

There are essentially four things for sale at Nom de Guerre: T-shirts, sweatshirts, blue jeans and sneakers. A boy's uniform. But what sort of boy? T-shirts made by Rogan, $60, are laundered into a suedelike nap, their slogans ("Keep New York City," "You Won't Belize Your Eyes") faded just to the brink of erasure. You want to nuzzle them, smell the Tide.

Paper-thin Rogan flip-flops nearby are even more archly casual, almost disposable, in a black-on-brown print over hemp soles, $110. Military jackets in navy and white pinstripes or a tigery black-and-gray camouflage pattern, carrying Nom de Guerre's own label, are $325. Lavender gingham button-down shirts, also by Nom de Guerre, classic and fitted, are $210 and $195.

Sneakers are the other story at Nom de Guerre. For some young men, maybe the only story. Limited edition and vintage sneakers are presented in a curatorial manner in a vaultlike cement room deeper within, along with more T-shirts in flat files and a trance-tribal soundtrack. The vintage sneakers live in a glass vitrine, single pairs on consignment, like a pair of sleek white hightops in men's size 12, with orange tongues and touches of a silvery reflective material for $1,000. (Called Maharishi Terminators, they are among 48 pairs made by Nike in 2004, Mr. Thompson said.)

Such artful casualness, my friend Dan mused, seems geared to a man inten