No cell phones or photographs, conversation at the lowest level so as not to disturb the neighbors at the table.
The Shaker ethic
dominates at Commerce Inn, the new restaurant created on Commerce Street, the most enchanting corner of Greenwich Village, by Florentine Rita Sodi with partner Jody Williams.
Freshly whitewashed dining room, simple furniture in homage to the monastic ethic of the religious group that rejected any ornament in the name of values such as simplicity, usefulness and honesty.
Even the menu, in a change of course from the Eurocentric style of the couple's other places such as Via Carota and I Sodi, is inspired by "simple things" as in the hymn "Simple Gifts" that Aaron Copland arranged for the ballet "Appalachian Springs ".
But it is not only in the world of food that
the Shakers are trending in New York
.
Uptown, at the Metropolitan Museum, the American Wing room that reconstructs a bedroom and prayer room in Mount Lebanon, New York, was used by Chloe Zhao and Frances McDormand, the 2021 Oscar winners of "Nomadland", to pay homage, with the Shakers and their ideals of community, pacifism, sacrifice and gender equality, to the stylist Claire McCardell, a pioneer of sportswear in the 1930s, whose creations reflected a style that was the polar opposite of the ornaments of contemporary French couture.
McCardell, one of the stars of the Costume Institute's "In America" exhibition inaugurated in early May, created a "monastic" dress: a sack cut on the bias, pleated from neck to hem.
The Shakers, who have always rebelled against any kind of authority, come from afar: they are members of a branch of
Puritan Calvinism of the Quakers born in the early eighteenth century in France
and transmigrated to England where he was led by a prophetess, Mother Ann Lee, who he was considered an "incarnation of Christ in women's clothing".
The Shaker faith included outward manifestations including
ecstatic tremors
, hence the nickname "Agitators".
They arrived in the US at the end of the eighteenth century
, again persecuted, and settled in
New England
.
Only two Shakers remain in America today, Brother Arnold Hadd and Sister June Carpenter to perpetuate the ethics of the congregation, both in Maine, and both surprised by the fascination exercised by the religious group especially in New York.
But the trend is irresistible
, as the New York Times also points out.
Like the owners of Commerce Inn and Zhao al Met, others in the world of fashion and design have recently been struck by the Shaker ethos, whose furniture in the name of solidity and essential lines, has been sought after by interior designers for years.
Among the stylists, Emily Adams Bode Aujla of the men's line
Bode
is inspired by the Shakers in the
reuse of unused materials
as well as the Shakers who reused the fabric of clothes used to make dolls or brushes for the house.
The Shaker spirit is therefore no longer a niche.
Tory Burch
's Spring 2021 collection
, inspired by the group's maxim "beauty is based on utility," was unveiled at Hancock Shaker Village, a former community-turned museum in Pittsfield, Massachusetts.
