Young and Smart : Funkeesentials Mixes Hip Hop and Europe at Third Street

Whatever you do, don’t call Funkeesentials, uh, funky.

“To a lot of people that term is distasteful,” says Pauline Takahashi, who along with Sally Sowter, owns the offbeat Third Street boutique.

“ Funky brings to mind a cartoonish quality that, unfortunately, stores like ours get labeled,” says Sowter as she leans over a cutting table in the shop’s back room, where the pair cuts patterns for their own merchandise.

“It’s more of a hip-hop, urban, Euro-street look,” says Takahashi. Read: oversized denim shorts, hooded jackets, Lycra halter tops, faux leather corsets and hot pants, casual sun dresses and classic baseball caps.

Plastic love beads and striped curtains hang from doorways. Cream-colored walls painted with yellow and baby blue swirls complete the picture. A locked security gate protects the store from would-be robbers while keeping the riffraff out. Intimidating is an apt description.

Takahashi and Sowter, former hairdressers-turned-retailers, consistently break the traditional rules of retailing. Neither are overtly friendly and both would prefer to let equally unapproachable employees wait on customers.

“We make a lot of our own clothes because we wanted to be free of companies that try to dictate trends,” says Sowter. “We can usually get something new out within a month,” adds Takahashi.

Although the shop carries such hot American streetwear labels as Fresh Jive, Island Trading, New Consciousness and Junkyard Angel as well as English brands like Sue Rowe, So Such Soul and Pam Hogg, Funkeesentials is still the most requested brand.

More than 200 customers fill the tiny boutique every day, dropping anywhere from $20 on a T-shirt to $200 on several complete outfits.

“We carry a lot of that oversized streetwear but it’s very commercial now,” says Takahashi.

“So we’re going back to classic 1960s shapes . . . not mod but very slim trousers that the Italians wore in the late ‘50s, early ‘60s.”

“Our customers want something young and fun,” says Takahashi.

“But not stupid,” says Sowter.

The duo’s designs, she says, are often inspired by “groovy movies or musical styles of the last 50 years.”

Nevertheless, there are no Bee Gees bell-bottoms, Chubby Checker platforms or Elvis Presley hip-huggers in sight.