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This piece previously appeared in the New York Times in 2010.

A NUMBER of art galleries in New York closed their doors after the economy tanked. These tended to be scrappy, up-and-coming enterprises surviving with little more than a rented white box and a discerning eye. They established reputations by sifting through packs of nameless young artists and — with a little spit shine, P.R. and insider collusion — gave them a booster shot of recognition, lifting them from total obscurity to a low rung of somewhere.

Client lists tended to be top-heavy with youngish Wall Street sharks, inspired by filthy new wealth to build collections with work by relatively undiscovered artists considered to have favorable odds as investments.

And then all the pretty money went away. The art market, like other markets, becomes conservative when the chips are down — and hoards blue chips. Collectors went fetal and regressed to their love of oil paintings. The more vulnerable, high-risk galleries died, and the avant-garde, broke again, slumped back to Bushwick.

I had never been to Début, having been unaware of its low-key presence on Mulberry Street for the last two years, but the concept behind the store is not unlike that of the endangered art galleries. Lisa Weiss, Début’s owner, explicitly devotes herself to introducing high-quality, innovative designs by new designers with strong aesthetics and original visions.

The interior is, somewhat literally, a gallery; the white walls are sectioned into discrete areas, all featuring the goods of different designers you’ve never heard of, displayed on racks protruding from the walls next to gallery-type labels traditionally posted next to art installations. Example: “Julian J. Smith” the first white card reads in a bold font. At the bottom, “Inspired by a ratcheted-up sense of futurism.”

And there, hanging next to the card, a handful of very structured, technically virtuosic space-age minidresses with excellent geometric and sometimes plastic-coated details in multiple fabrics, direct from a ratcheted-up future where linoleum comes in Navajo rug prints.

A center display featured the work of the Swedish designer Fannie Schiavoni, who makes exciting accessories out of chain mail, like a rather perplexing exoskeletal brassiere ($413) and a series of chain necklaces that connect two Road Warrior-cum-Xena Warrior Princess armored epaulets to the shoulders: layered metal scales like shingled aluminum guitar picks ($545) — ideal for the socialite with a Zweihänder broadsword in her Birkin bag.

Another display, by the Sang A label, introduced a wild new world of sea leathers. I was fascinated by a matte-black doctor-bowling-bag hybrid. I was told by the friendly young saleswoman that it was made of sea snake, which has a soft, rubbery Braille texture, like a newborn basketball ($1,595). A clutch from the same designer was made of perch (of all things!) tanned red and gold, with scales about the size of a large human tooth. The fish, I reasoned, must have been a monster: one doesn’t usually think of them as having pelts.

Apropos of unusual skins, a small row of experimental-looking, mismatched furs on the back wall by Quentin Veron, were made of combinations like “Fin Raccoon with Goat Gilet” ($2,160) and resembled wholly new creatures: skunk-borzoi hybrids. Persian heffalump.

I was impressed with a batch of dresses by the British-born, Moscow-based fashion designer Clare Lopeman: very body-conscious, Barbie nude-tone sheaths in a light jersey, printed with amazingly intricate, geometric designs inspired by the diagrams in a Soviet-era dressmaking book, which purported to reverse-engineer French couture for the crafty Communist homemaker.

I became instantly obsessed with Elisa Palomino, a former designer for Galliano, among other houses. The gallery placard next to her signature items informs the Shopper that her line was “inspired by roaring ’20s Japanese illustrator Kasho Takahata.” Inspired by, perhaps, but Ms. Palomino is much too musical to stick to standards. The original places she goes from this departure point are To Die: stunningly feminine, wise exaggerations of flapper lines. A long, weightless floral dress in transparent, tiered chiffon; cherry blossoms unexpectedly printed on the peachy nylon of an hourglass-shaped down vest; a thick ivory knit sweater with pompoms on the shoulders, teardrop sleeves; and a kind of sea-anemone-turned-harlequin collar made of a wreath of distressed silk strips the width of grass blades.

To. Die.

And this is why small art galleries, and stores like Début, are necessary. Merchandise from the usual designer suspects may be comforting, but it mostly stops being excruciatingly personal. You rarely find something that speaks to your pleasure centers so purely and directly, it knocks you sideways.

I INSTANTLY went mad, in a very personal way, for a small jewelry collection by Valérie MacCarthy (who, I later discovered via the Internet, is a gorgeous, flamboyant Paris-based opera singer). These creations hit me right in the bull’s-eye of a secret, fetishy lust I have never told anyone about: a weird thing I have for vintage wooden speedboats. But Mme. MacCarthy seems to have pulled her Salt of the Earth collection straight from the catalog of my unspoken desires. The pieces are exquisitely carved wood, with little floating silver Art Deco railings redolent of chrome boat trim. I slipped on a ring ($390) and moaned involuntarily — a little curve of perfectly smooth, cool wood, so delicious to the fingers as to make one reinvestigate, in one’s mind, the relevance of “tactile” art.

And to think it could happen on Mulberry Street.

Without innovation, museums become mausoleums. To find hope in a marketplace, one must first have enough faith in the future to support newness — and resist the temptation to go back to the graveyard, dig up and worship the bones of inspirations long deceased.

I’ll buy one of those rings someday, when the economy rebounds. Logistics, after all, follow desire. To desire is to have a purpose, to walk toward a destination worth being excited about. Great new art is prophetic. It can sometimes be so ahead of its time that its presence, in a room, seems to be looking back over its shoulder at us from the brightness of its own future, and blowing us an affectionate little spark.

LE WHO? A whole lot of designers you’ve never heard of, but you’ll be glad Lisa Weiss discovered them. Début hips you to tomorrow’s fashion geniuses before they are haute ... and overpriced.

LE ZOO The furs may be unusual, and the clothes intergalactic, but the staff is laid-back, low key, entirely human and just as bemused by most of the merch as you are.

LE SHOCK OF THE NEW: How on earth was that made? How does that thing even exist? I don’t know, but chances are, you definitely need one in your closet.

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Theme Song: Jack Black

Artwork: “Hanuman,” oil on canvas, Cintra Wilson 2023

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