Vibe Rater: Hermes, 15 Broad Street

The full flowering of the financial district’s success since Sept. 11, 2001, can be smelt within the Broad Street Hermès store, which had its first full day Friday.

To be amongst its $1,250 t-shirts, $520 belts, $5,750 leather jackets and $810 handbags is to feel the full braggadocio of capitalism in Manhattan—Power! Money! Stephen Schwarzman!—and it felt pretty good, though a bit disquieting. After all, the prices!

The store unfolds behind glass doors, and greets you with racks of excruciatingly bright ties (Is this a seasonal thing, the lavender and the yellow and the pink? Let’s hope so.), and then zings you around a softly lit layout of Hermès product, from clothes to horse saddles to perfume.

Across the pedestrian mall from the Stock Exchange and roughly two blocks from U.S. Treasury founder Alexander Hamilton’s grave, this Hermès couldn’t have opened five—maybe even two—years ago. Now, it already, from Day One, feels like it’s been there forever.