Like dozens of others who have left their calling card at this vintage menswear shop on the corner of Greenwich and Watts Streets, the "Duke of Uke" placed his in the registry along with a written request. The Duke, it seems, was in need of a vintage white or ivory linen suit, a tweed jacket as well, and naturally, any "ukulele paraphernalia" that shop owner Jae Jarrell could get her hands on.

		The ukulele player's size may not have been on the suit rack at the time of his visit, but Jarrell is on the look out- just as she is keeping her eyes peeled for a vintage doorman's spring-loaded umbrella with a wooden handle, and a brown Borsalino fedora, size seven and five-eighths with a two-and-quarter- inch brim. Jarrell is owner of Jae Jarrell Vintage at 466 Greenwich St., one of the few places in the city where a man can outfit himself from head to toe (or pork pie hat to pointy shoes) in vintage style. "I'm not in the game of the 'comeback' or 'the trend,'" she said. "When it comes to being 'in,' this is not the place to provide that."
What she provides instead is menswear she considers timeless. Skinny ties from the 1950s hang on a rack, well away from their uncool cousins, the bow ties. Just as the fedoras, sorted by the size of their brims ("wide," "stingy," and "ultra-stingy"), seem to keep their distance from the derbies and the top hats-which come in the standard or collapsible variety. "For the opera," she explains. "Even if he never wears it, a gentlemen sees to it that he has it." Jarrell, a former fashion and textile designer, set up shop in Tribeca in 2001. Her clientele includes costume designers and actors in search of a prop, but most are simply guys who believe that a man should wear a hat, stroll with a walking stick or perhaps carry a pipe in the pocket of his waistcoat. "It's not about fashion for me," said one mustachioed young man from the Lower East Side who would not give his name. "It's about anti-fashion." He walked into the shop with a friend on a recent afternoon wearing blue jeans, sneakers and punk rock pins on the lapels of his paint-splattered sport coat. Perched atop his head of shoulder-length blond hair was a black fedora which looked a size too small. "It was my grandfather's," he said. Jarrell showed him something in a larger size, a "stingy-brim" fedora with a brush feather in the band. "Do you have anything with a wider brim?" he asked. "Oh, wait," he said, trying on a top hat. "Awesome!" "Um, too much," said his companion. He settled on a wide-brimmed, black fedora that Jarrell said she could steam and custom fit for him by the next day. "There really isn't a stereotypical customer," Jarrell said later. "But they all talk about their grandfathers." And most of them gravitate to the hat rack. "Even the ones without a lot of spunk will try one on," she said. "It's like putting on a mask." Jarrell, 69, said her love of vintage men's clothing lies in their fine fabrics and sharp tailoring. Her husband, artist Wadsworth Jarrell, shares her appreciation. "He wears a hat every day," she said. Wadsworth Jarrell's paintings and sketches of jazz musicians are for sale in the shop and work nicely in a place dizzy with the sounds of Miles Davis, Ray Charles and Charlie Parker. Jarrell first began selling menswear in outdoor markets in 1997. When she opened her shop she expanded her collection to include art-deco furniture pieces that she considers "suitable" for a gentleman. "Good wood, strong lines and no frills," she said. She finds the clothes and furniture at estate sales or through dealers and friends, though few items make it through the door and straight to the rack. The furniture is refinished in the basement, the hats steamed and blocked in a back room, the suits sent out for dry cleaning and, if needed, repairs. "I don't carry anything I don't respect," she said, thumbing the silk liner of a bowler hat. "This place is about being a gent."