Jennifer Mankins and the Brooklyn Aesthetic

“It’s glamour but it’s less perfect and polished than what you might find in Manhattan,” said Mary Alice Stephenson, a stylist and fashion commentator who has lived in Brooklyn for some 20 years, describing one of the most identifiable styles that has developed among the brownstone bourgeoisie there.

“It’s gold lamé, but it’s cut into a classic shirtdress,” she added by example. “You’re still wearing gold lamé while you’re taking your kid around on his scooter, but you can roll up the sleeves and the hem isn’t too short. It’s not precious. She really nailed that.”

The “she” Ms. Stephenson was referring to is Jennifer Mankins, 36, the owner of Bird, a mini-chain of boutiques that has over the past five years or so set a kind of gold lamé standard for local dressing: a style oasis in the land of organic kale chips, strollers and bicycle helmets.

In the past few years, Ms. Mankins has distinguished herself from her Manhattan counterparts by stocking approachable pieces from independent designers like Isabel Marant, Rag & Bone and Rachel Comey. Ms. Comey credited Ms. Mankins, now a close friend, with her own recent retail surge.

“I’ve gotten stores in Denver and London because they know I sell to Bird,” Ms. Comey said. “Jen has a ton of energy. Because she’s always active, she keeps things interesting.”

Ms. Mankins was indeed bustling with energy on a brisk November afternoon during a visit to her South Williamsburg flagship (she also has stores in Cobble Hill and Park Slope), which was designed by Ole Sondreson and also houses the company’s corporate office. Barefaced, with sunlight reflecting off the lenses of her hot pink-framed eyeglasses, she could have passed for an art student at Brown University, her alma mater. A very well-dressed art student.

She was wearing a printed brown smock dress by Ms. Comey, whose brand she said is a best-seller at Bird; an Acne silk cargo shirt in a clashing light olive pattern; and a large necklace by Melissa Joy Manning, a Berkeley, Calif., jewelry designer whose line she carries. It was decorated with petrified wood and a “quartz-y stone,” she said.

“I love oversize things and Japanese style and muumuus,” Ms. Mankins said with a chuckle. “One of my friends was like, ‘Thank God you’re already married, Jennifer’ ” (to Niklas Arnegren, whom she met at Brown and who is now the director of cultural affairs and public programs at the consulate general of Sweden).

Referential rather than racy, this style of dress is in keeping with Ms. Mankins’s theory that the current Brooklyn aesthetic, if it exists, has a certain intellectualism to it.

“If people are going to define ‘sexy’ it’s going to be in a way that’s a little more subversive,” she said. “It’s about being interesting as opposed to being really sexy, with the really high heels and really tight dresses.”

Indeed, only two styles in the store’s shoe collection had a truly high heel.

“I have a lot of moms who are customers, with kids — there’s a lot of running around,” Ms. Mankins said.

Ms. Mankins was perhaps an unlikely candidate to become the queen of Brooklyn retail. She grew up the youngest of four girls in Texarkana (named for Texas, Arkansas and Louisiana) in the northeast corner of Texas.

“It’s very small-town U.S.A.,” she said.

She spent much of her time outdoors on her family’s 10-acre property.

“Piney and very green,” she said. “My mom wasn’t particularly into fashion and neither were my sisters. It wasn’t really a focal point.”

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Fire Damages Church of St. Luke and St. Matthew in Brooklyn

Flames and heavy smoke erupted around 4 a.m. at the Church of St. Luke and St. Matthew, which is nestled between brownstones on Clinton Avenue in Clinton Hill.

The Rev. Christopher Ballard, the church’s curate, said the flames had caused “significant damage,” burning the wooden doors of two entrances and charring the foyer. The sanctuary, he said, remained largely unscathed. No one was injured.

Though the police said the cause remained under investigation, Father Ballard said the fire had been fueled by a pair of gasoline containers donated to Occupy Sandy volunteers, who had used the church as a staging area for hurricane relief efforts. The gasoline was intended to be used in a generator for a Christmas party in the Rockaways on Sunday night. Father Ballard said the containers had been put outside when the church was cleared of most donated materials to make way for Christmas services.

“Somebody decided to take those canisters, dump them on the doors of the church and set the gas on fire,” he said. “We don’t know why someone would do this, what darkness is in someone’s heart.”

Father Ballard noted that the church had been rebuilt after a devastating fire in 1914. Councilwoman Letitia James, who represents the area, expressed outrage at what she called a hateful arson. “We will find the sick individual who committed this crime,” she said, standing outside the church.

More than 100 firefighters battled the two-alarm blaze early Sunday.

By the afternoon, a dozen volunteers, some wearing yellow Occupy Sandy patches, stood outside a taped-off area around the church as fire marshals and detectives from the police arson and explosion squad surveyed the damage for clues to the fire’s origin.    

The possibility of water damage on top of the fire provided a bitter irony for relief workers. Kelly Guenther, the site coordinator for Occupy Sandy there, said some of the teams who were cleaning up homes flooded by Hurricane Sandy would turn their attention to the church.

“At least we’re really, really good at it,” she said, adding that it was the second time the church had had water damage since relief work began in November. Last month, the boiler room flooded after a pipe burst.

Three volunteers were sleeping on the second floor when the fire broke out. They were there as a security precaution after a spate of thefts that included donated materials and Father Ballard’s bicycle, Ms. Guenther said.

At Brown Memorial Baptist Church nearby on Washington Avenue, roughly 50 members of the fire-affected congregation found refuge on Sunday in a soaring room, rimmed with festive lights.

“We were literally without an inn, and you took us in,” Howard Blunt, a member of St. Luke and St. Matthew, told the Baptist congregation. “And so for us, this Sunday, this is Bethlehem.”

On Sunday evening, Father Ballard said that St. Luke and St. Matthew would reopen for Christmas services, beginning Monday night.

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