NY TIMES – CRITICAL SHOPPER

 12-24-2009WWD – Retailers Look to Holiday’s Second Season
 10-23-2009ETC – Boulevard Magazine 10-09
 10-16-2009WWD – Americana Manhasset Gets Involved
 09/18/2008VERSACE AT HIRSHLEIFER’S
 09/18/2008WWD – VERSACE FETES HIRSHLEIFER’S IN-STORE SHOP
 04/18/2008CLICK-AND-MORTAR: MALL HITS WEB
 01/30/2008WWD – INDUSTRY UPBEAT ON HALSTON PLAN
 10/08/2007HIRSHLEIFER’S PREPS NEW SHOE STORE
 12/22/2006HEARTS, HARLEYS AND BETTY
 11/15/2006GILLES MENDEL
 03/20/2006NY TIMES – OH, IT’S LUXURIOUS AT THE TOP
 01/09/2006HIRSHLEIFER’S – STYLE LEADER
 12/07/2005NY TIMES – I’ll Take Manhasset
 09/27/2005WWD – HIGH FASHION FORMULA
 09/08/2005NY TIMES – CRITICAL SHOPPER
 11/08/2004OPULENT OUTPOSTS – CHANEL BOUTIQUE AT HIRSHLEIFER’S
 10/27/2004WWD – RANKING THE INDEPENDENTS
 02-21-2009IF EVENINGWEAR IS YOUR QUESTION…
 12-20-2008CHANEL HAS EXPANDED
 VERSACE OPENS AT HIRSHLEIFER’S

ALTHOUGH I have lived in New York for almost two decades, I had not until recently visited the Miracle Mile in Manhasset, N.Y., a stretch of stores along Northern Boulevard anchored by the Americana Manhasset mall. Everything I knew about the Mile was limited to information gleaned from the 1980 Billy Joel song ”It’s Still Rock and Roll to Me.” It was presumably a thoroughfare on which a person might cruise after equipping one’s car with whitewall tires.

The Mile, of course, is the retail epicenter of suburban Long Island, a place where ladies from the five towns cluster on weekday afternoons and over salad greens at the Americana’s Cipollini Trattoria gossip about what they are going to wear for the high holidays. The centerpiece of the Americana is Hirshleifer’s, a regionally legendary store that is made up of high-end boutiques like Chanel, J. Mendel, Valentino and Dolce & Gabbana.

I own three pieces of Dolce & Gabbana clothing. The first is a long black velvet jacket printed with lilies, purchased at a sample sale several years ago for $85. The second is a vivid green satin evening dress from Woodbury Common, and the third is the jacket portion of a black suit my husband bought me for Christmas last year.

I used to own a fourth item: the pants that went with the suit, but in a mystery tantalizing enough to serve as a plot for an episode of ”Cold Case Files,” they were abducted from my closet.

I relished the chance to return to Dolce & Gabbana and see if there were pieces entrancing enough for me to lust after until they might turn up at a sample sale or the husband could be persuaded to drink enough hot buttered rums to forget he had ever bought me a suit there in the first place. Rather than visit the flagship store on Madison Avenue, I chose the Manhasset location because I was curious: does the expensive and often seriously seductive Dolce & Gabbana play outside 10021?

It does, and here’s why. Dolce & Gabbana sends looks down the runways every season that are either saint or sinner, Madonna (as in aesthetic-religious iconography) or Madonna (as in the singer, circa the pre-Madge days). On Madison Avenue you’ll get a lot of sinner and a bit of saint. In Manhasset you’ll get about the same amount of both, with a dash of virgin prom queen thrown in for good measure.

In a touching nod to the domestic nature of the suburbs, the Manhasset store stocks men’s clothes at the front and women’s at the back. That would never work on Madison Avenue, where men don’t often accompany women shopping, if the women are even married.

But Manhasset is a more domestic kind of place: I saw three middle-aged couples strolling the shops arm in arm on a weekday afternoon. It is so much less emasculating for a man to walk into a store in which the men’s clothes are prominently displayed at the front than for him to be led by the nose straight through the front doors to the women’s merchandise. At least in Manhasset he can pretend to look at the leather bomber jackets while his female companion heads for the goods.

Although Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana announced late last year that they had broken up as a couple, this is their 20th year designing clothing together. Among other sources, they have drawn inspiration from the grandmothers of southern Italy, from the angular suits once worn by the Mafia and from their Roman Catholicism. (Both describe themselves as credenti, or believing Catholics.)

This collection, like previous ones, mixes pieces that evoke sex and bondage with those that are pillbox-hat prim. A black corset dress with a satin front panel and lace bust and sides is $775. A white shift dress in wool is $1,150. A demure matching coat, with fur collar, is $2,995. A body-hugging floor-length gown in black stretch satin is $2,400.

Chiffon panels tease out from inside the folds of a wool skirt, but the matching cashmere sweater with pearl buttons assures its propriety. Doris Day could have worn the yellow chiffon cocktail dress with a rhinestone belt and silk rose at the waist. If she had the $5,950.

Most entrancing was a white and gold cocktail dress with rhinestone details and a matching knee-length jacket. It somehow made even me look like Jackie Onassis. At $4,700 it was a bargain, assured the sales clerk, who looked eerily like the escaped suburban housewife played by Rosanna Arquette in the 1985 movie ”Desperately Seeking Susan.” After all, she reasoned, I was getting two pieces.

Perhaps because Mr. Dolce and Mr. Gabbana tend to stroke their accessories broadly with the letters D and G in rhinestones, Rosanna Arquette brought me a slim anonymous-looking purse in gold (”Jimmy Choo” etched in tiny letters on the zipper pull) and a pair of gold sandals. (Hirshleifer’s also has a Choo boutique.)

I paused. Swooned. Perspective time. The top fifth of earners in Manhattan now make 52 times what the lowest fifth make: $365,826 compared with $7,047. Or for every dollar made by wealthy households, poor households make about 2 cents. So if rich New Yorkers are paying $4,700 for a dress and jacket, the poorest would need divine intervention to help pay for the same bargain.

Here I was on the Miracle Mile, and although I hadn’t heard Billy Joel’s ode to it in years, I could still remember the lyrics as if I had belted it out while driving my parents’ station wagon yesterday:
”Don’t you know about the new fashion honey? All you need are looks and a whole lotta money.”

Dolce & Gabbana
At Hirshleifer’s at the Americana Manhasset Mall, 2060 Northern Boulevard, Manhasset, N.Y.; (516)627-7742

ATMOSPHERE — A highly refrigerated black and white gallery.
SERVICE — Beyond the call of duty. A saleswoman cheerfully offered me a banana from her purse when I told her I was feeling hypoglycemic.
KEY LOOKS — All-saint or all-sinner.
PRICES — Expensive.

Photos: SUBURBAN RETREAT — The Dolce & Gabbana boutique, at the Americana Manhasset mall, brings a taste of Madison Avenue to the Long Island suburbs. (Photographs by Pascal Perich for The New York Times)