Everything's Coming Up Gowanus

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Also working in Gowanus: the designers of Vena Cava. "On a recent bright, bitter cold December morning, Lisa Mayock—one half, with Sophie Buhai, of the team behind Vena Cava—is showing off the pair's design studio...It's precisely the sort of airy, elegant space that you might find on Walker Street in TriBeCa, where Proenza Schouler's Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez work, or in west Chelsea, where Phi is based. But Mayock and Buhai are in Brooklyn. Working in a former cannery. Next to the Gowanus Canal, to be exact. A glamorous fashion industry hub or heir apparent to the Garment District it is not. And yet this South Brooklyn neighborhood, a sprawling grid of industrial warehouses and factories incongruously situated between the million-dollar brownstones of Park Slope and Carroll Gardens, with the 20-foot-deep Gowanus Canal ribboning through it, is emerging as an artists'—and artisans'—haven in a borough where rent by the square foot continues to skyrocket." [WWD, subscription req]