Find the Docs of Your Dreams: Dr. Martens SoHo Opens

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• Lots of florals—love them all
• LOVE
• Horsehair!
• The girly, flowery display
• The manly display
• The mod display
• YES
• Velvet!
• Docs does Clarks
• Serious boots—in lavendar
• Yes!
• The dots are flocked!
• Oh hey Raf Simons collab but right now and much cheaper
• Formulated to be pre-broken in looking
• All of them
• The lame ones—available but definitely not showcased

Last night's party marked the official launch and grand opening for Dr. Martens new shop on Spring Street, which has been open since October 25. We were there. And after experiencing it for ourselves—over champagne and the best soft pretzel we've ever had—we can safely say: There aren't too many shoe stores in SoHo. Not when one of them is devoted solely to Docs.

You have to see the variety of shoe options to believe them. Never again will we be shackled to the five or six colorways available in various St. Mark's Place boutiques or those crazy, practically-nameless shoe emporiums dotting Broadway from Chinatown to the Empire State. Seriously, choose between animal prints in horsehair, perforated neon leather, mottled leather in Easter colors, pebbled leather, olive or slate or navy canvas, black or burgundy velvet, maybe ten different florals ranging from embossed cabbage roses on off-red to sweet, photo-screened micro-Liberties on cornflower blue. From there: Piping or not? How do you feel about variously contrasting soles? Flocked polka dots? Metallics?

Just, wow. All that doesn't even account for the different styles—oxford verses boot, various heights of boot, buckles or lace-ups or a combination thereof. There's a brogue, there's a variation on a desert boot, there's a mod wingtip, for women there are spectators and wedges and booties?it's a boot wonderland. And they're unisex! All sizes for all people (barring the obvious of course, like wedges—but not the florals!)

And, for those of you who haven't already come back into the Dr. Martens fray and bought or browsed in the past couple of years—they are all the exact same price as they were when we were in high school. They start around $110; the most expensive pair we spotted was under $160. You could conceivably buy two to three a season—it's absolutely mind-blowing.

We seriously wanted roughly 25 pairs.

Oh, right, sorry: Exposed brick; warm Edison-bulb lighting; suspended shelving; cozy leather furniture; archival photos documenting the history of the hipster via the history of Dr. Martens. The SoHo shop is the British brand's third in the country (after Portland, where the brand has its U.S. headquarters, and San Francisco). Those other two? They've both opened within the past year as well.

So, yeah—long live Dr. Martens SoHo.
· Soho Slips On Some Doc Martens for Fall [Racked NY]
· Just What Soho Needs: Three New Shoe Stores [Racked NY]
· Storecasting: Doc Martens [Racked NY]