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Mood U Fashion School

Opening Hours
Today: 9am–7pm
Fri:
9am–7pm
Sat:
10am–5pm
Sun:
Closed
Mon:
9am–7pm
Tues:
9am–7pm
Wed:
9am–7pm
Location
225 West 37th Street, 3rd Floor
Mood U 1 Art Schools Schools Garment District Hudson Yards

In 2014, Mood Fabrics launched an innovative new side to its company, Mood U. Located on the second floor, a space that used to house furniture from Mood Home is now filled with seventy sewing machines, set up in neat rows. This is where classes are taught for beginners up through advanced students. When I visited, it was the first day of an open sewing lab that was slated to happen every Thursday. I met with Benjamin Mach, the director of Mood U, who was also a contestant on "Project Runway" (the fashion reality show uses Mood's materials for most of its on-screen challenges). Ben, who has been running classes at Mood U since early 2015, told me that the open labs began because students had started asking instructors for tips on personal projects after class. In response, a time was created when members of the school could come in with whatever they were working on and receive advice and assistance. Ben admitted that he will always be excited to see what comes out of the open labs. He already witnessed one unique project – a woman trying to teach herself how to make baby booties.

Ben, who had only been the director of the school for two weeks when I visited, confessed that though he has had to jump in head first (“literally – I’ve jumped in the deep end”), he was looking forward to “putting his spin on things.” He shared a bit more about the origins of the school: The Los Angeles location of Mood began running classes in 2013 with immediate success. This continued and enhanced when the school opened in New York. There are a wide range of workshops focusing on different items, techniques, and materials. Some past classes that Ben mentioned included instruction in leather-working, a How-To in making clutch bags, and beginner sewing courses.

As to who takes the classes, Ben says it can be a wide range of people. He informed me that though there are those who are looking at going to fashion school, many of the students have no intension of getting into the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) or Parson’s School of Design, and that they are simply hobbyists. Quite a few are the kind of people who once dabbled in sewing, often in their childhood, and now want to see if they can get into it again. While I was chatting with Ben, a man who had taken his course came up to him to thank him for the instruction. He complimented him on how thorough he was, and yet how easy to follow. “Thank you for speaking plain English,” he said.

Ben is not the only "Project Runway" alum to spend time at Mood U. There are guest appearances every week. While I was there, Sean Kelly, the winner from a recent "Project Runway" season, was there to help out. It was great to see Ben and Sean joke around together – as Ben put it, “You have to keep things fun when you do things like this.” He explained that members of the corporate fashion world often come by to take a break from the high-stress professional world and experience the calm, creative atmosphere of Mood U. The school has the same effect on Ben, even though he works there. He told me that no matter how physically drained he feels at the end of a day of teaching, “I head off into my evening recharged and happy.”

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Mood U 1 Art Schools Schools Garment District Hudson Yards
Mood U 2 Art Schools Schools Garment District Hudson Yards
Mood U 3 Art Schools Schools Garment District Hudson Yards

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The location was renamed in 2023 as The Flatiron Room Murray Hill. This feature was first published in September 2017. Fine & Rare, shorthand for “fine food and rare spirits” is the latest creation of Tommy Tardie, restaurateur and owner of the Flatiron Room on West 26th Street. In contrast to the more common restaurant theme of the 1920s and 30s, which Tommy considers to have “played out, ” Fine & Rare aims to be an aristocratic parlor straight out of the 1950s, modeled after classic Manhattan hideaways such as The Explorers Club. “The challenge was getting it to look like the Flatiron Room - old world, almost like we discovered it, ” Tommy told the Manhattan Sideways team. The space has had other lives as a Japanese restaurant and a photocopy center - Tommy said that when he first saw the space, it was raw, with concrete floors that had holes them and wires hanging from the ceiling. In 2016, it became a little slice of vintage Manhattan, complete with a repurposed teller booth from Grand Central Station serving as the hosts’ stand. The wallpaper is finely textured with glass and sand, and the stainless steel ceilings are reclaimed parts from a former distillery. Descending into the restaurant, we walked on 125-year-old floorboards from Connecticut that have the names of the restaurant’s investors carved into it. Two of these investors are Tommy’s young sons, River and Sawyer, who each made a $1 investment in the establishment in order to garner a place on the floor. Hanging above the booths are pieces of taxidermy that Tommy believes “bring in some more old world charm. ”The room is large, but because the tables are isolated from one another, each setting is intimate and unique. “Wherever you are in the restaurant, you feel like you’re in your own area. ” Each side of the dining room features a fireplace: one has hand carved marble from Italy, and the other is repurposed from the door of a country schoolhouse. The jazz stage provides a theatrical ambience to the space without overpowering it. “We want the performance to enhance, but not be, the experience. There’s always a show going on even if nothing is onstage. ” The walls are decked out with the restaurant’s inventory of over 1000 bottles, which Tommy noted are, “part of the architecture. ” Some sit atop high shelves and can only be reached by ladders, which members of the staff will climb throughout the night. Others sit in the caged bottle keep, with personalized labels that can be bought. “New York is all about showmanship - people love to put their name on something. ” The back elevated room holds up to thirty-five people and is used for tastings and private events. It has a few hidden elements of its own, including a chandelier and leather and steel door from a masonic hall. While speaking with Tommy, the Manhattan Sideways team sampled a few of the restaurant's scrumptious items, including the burrata served with arugula and an assortment of fruits, the short rib burger, the seafood Cobb salad, and the Greek grain bowl with quinoa, mint, and beet humus. While the Flatrion Room focuses largely on whiskey, Fine & Rare features cocktails with tequila, rum, and brandy. This does not mean that they do not still have some amazing whiskey options, such as the breathtaking smoked Old Fashioned that was presented to us to photograph and then sip. Tommy began his professional career as a creative director in advertising on Madison Avenue, but realized after a dozen years that he was craving something more exciting. “The higher I got on the corporate ladder, the less creative it got. It lost that cool factor. ” He resolved to go the route of the entrepreneur, initially with a few clubs, and later with the Flatiron Room and eventually Fine & Rare in 2017. “With this one, I decided to make the demographic and design a place I’d like to go, as opposed to previous projects that centered on reaching a specific consumer base. " Tommy also remarked on how Fine & Rare is the result of the trial and error from past ventures: “This is as if I got to do it again and I could do it better. I think entrepreneurs are genetically coded to forget how difficult it can be starting out, but a new project is fun. It makes your heart pump and your adrenaline go. ”