There are people in this world whose sense of style amply covers up the fact that they don’t have much else going on, and there are those whose apparel is just an outward expression of everything that they’ve got happening.
East Village artist/entrepreneur Delphine Le Goff happily falls into the latter category — whether she’s behind the counter at her shop 3rd and B’zaar, creating and assembling windows for Love Shack Fancy, or selling her art in an open air market, you can count on her to look fabulous.
A former actress, Le Goff left France 20 years to come to our metropolis.
“I wanted to get the f–k out of Paris!” she demurely explains. “It was too small for me.”
Back home, “school was just something annoying to deal with” and attending the renowned theatre school Cours Florent pointed her in the direction of an acting career. “I made a few films,” she recounts, but she left that path behind when she hit the city.
“Being French in New York was an advantage,” she recalls, but her grasp of English was not quite up to speed. After gigs as a sales associate at Issey Miyake and La Perla, she found herself as an assistant shop trimmer at Bloomingdale’s.
“The most exhausting part of my job was trying to figure out what people were telling me — I didn’t understand 75% of what they said,” she recalls.
Over the years, she’s worked on windows and decor (while greatly improving her language skills) for Macy’s, Urban Outfitters, Saks Fifth Avenue, Anthropologie and now at Bergdorf Goodman, where she also sells her original artwork on the Home Floor.
“I started making art during the lockdown,” Le Goff says. “I couldn’t work and I started making drawings of my apartment and putting them up on social media. They were s#!t — like a child’s — but people liked them, and I started having people send me pictures of their apartments and I made drawings from them.”
This is year is the second that she has produced a calendar from her work; it’s available at the shop as well as the “Vintage French Promotional Keychain Necklace” that she makes by hand from original keychains and charms that she finds on her trips back home.
In addition to her art, Le Goff frequently spends quality time manning the sales counter at 3rd and B’Zaar, the clothing and art boutique that sells vintage apparel and new, original clothing as well as art and a mixed bag of other things from a variety of vendors.
Started by Le Goff and Maegan Hayward (who was the originator of the idea), along with some other friends who have since dropped out, the shop has stuck around long after its initial pop-up origin. Asked to sum up the aesthetic of the marketplace, Le Goff replies, “I want to say that we are the next Patricia Field.”
Le Goff, who is somewhat stubborn about a lot of things, wants us to know that she does not own a computer and has no desire for one (she does have an iPad) and “still writes with a pen.” In fact, she may be the only one we know who still send postcards when she is away doing shop decor for clients in Dallas and Atlanta.
Firmly ensconced in her East Village studio — a colorful riot of art, kitsch, surreal objects and books — she is the kind of East Village denizen that makes the neighborhood fun.
“I thought that I’d only be here for a few years,” she admits. “But I’m not going anywhere.”
Nevertheless, you can find Le Goff’s work online at her Instagram account, @displaybydelphine, and at @3rdandbzaar.
