Lost Boys

In Georgetown, mere blocks from bourgeois M Street teeming with tourists, an unexpected coup in Capitol menswear occurred. Lost Boys, a men’s-only style studio, enabled the boardroom-badass dichotomy of the Washingtonian man to coexist.

Open since 2008, the cutting-edge establishment has earned a 2012 MR Magazine Uptown/Downtown Honoree award and countless features in publications such as the Washington Post, DC Magazine, and the Washingtonian.

â€œI never wanted a store, to be honest with you, said Kelly Muccio, owner and lead stylist of Lost Boys.

A native to the area, she worked in New York and LA for the likes of Tommy Hilfiger and Victorinox before returning to DC more than four years ago. Her guy friends began referring to her for style advice. She was eager to oblige, until demand grew.

All of a sudden I was like, I need something to pull from. Shit! Well I’m going to have to stack my decks. I guess I’ve gotta open a fucking store. Okay! She laughs. Excuse my language, but I lived in New York for five years.

We forgive you. Let’s get real here, Kelly Muccio is a bombshell. Beyond the blonde’s striking good-looks, she also has an exuberant, explosive personality and spontaneous nature. It’s easy to see why male customers love her. But what’s even clearer is why they love Lost Boys: it’s the epitome of effortlessly cool.

My mission was to create a space where guys could come and let their guards down, and really have an open experience with what their style is, and maybe what their style could be. Muccio said.

On the first floor, a single industrial rack lines the right wall, showcasing a curated selection of looks. You’ll find suiting, shirts, outerwear, denim, ties, some basics, and a new collection every week (prices range from $80 tees to $2,000+ suits). A rotating roster of designers includes Band of Outsiders, Theory, John Varvatos, Rogan, and more.

While it may seem minimal, the selection is meticulously chosen and is often exclusive. In August, Band of Outsider tailored suiting hit DC for the first time, available only at Lost Boys. The studio carries The White Briefs, a Swedish brand sold in only ten stores throughout the US. It makes the best in underthings, featuring 100% organic pima cotton tees and briefs cleanly (ahem) packaged in a cubed box.

Muccio keeps a close relationship with the designers she carries and was on the phone with Stefan Miljanic of Gilded Age earlier, gathering the precise details of the process used on the modern yet rugged pair of grey selvedge jeans the store just got in. The f-me jeans, as her team have deemed them, are lined up under a flat-screen TV playing Casino Royale.

I feel like [James Bond is] such a gentleman, yet he’s a 007 killer and he’s a ladies man, Muccio said. But it’s not how he is, it’s how he approaches everything. And that’s what we try to do here.

Lost Boys selection for fall is piece-driven, zeroing in on those special items that can be worn with anything, like a sleek, slate grey leather jacket or a Theory sport coat picture above ($535).

Saying Lost Boys hosts events would be a disservice to the epic remember when..? nights Muccio puts on. No trunk shows or cocktails and cupcakes. We’re talking about a fashion versus foodie throwdown with the designers of Shipley & Halmos and Rouge 24â€™s R.J. Cooper, and a night dedicated to the lost art of the pre-game with straight-razor shaves and cocktails with Tryst’s bartender, to name a few.

With our events here, I want to add to that fantasy of elegance and quoi and know-how that I personally find attractive, she said.

Muccio mentions a possible collaboration with the designer Rogan Gregory, who also happens to weld modern Eames chairs and designed some of the furniture in Lost Boys.

How sick would that be to go to an event with a guy with a blowtorch being like, ˜This is how you fucking make furniture™? Pretty sick.

Everything in the store emulates this raw masculinity and gentlemanliness — from the plush leather chairs to the classic Sinatra soundtrack to the Suede & Smoke aroma (courtesy of the man-approved Delirium candles).

And just like a true man of mystery, the studio has a secret: The Black Room.

In the beginning, so many clients were requesting one-on-one appointments that the store ended up being closed more than open. So when the second level became available, Muccio jumped at the opportunity to create a fantasy playground for styling exclusive clients.

If I personally, as an artist and a creator, have a space to dedicate to this, what would my fantasy be of upstairs? Muccio asked herself. And so the esoteric second floor of Lost Boys was born.

The Black Room was engineered by Muccio and modeled after a black box theater — an empty space where anything could happen.

There are three, huge, metal, gritty as… mmmph…

No word exists for the cabinets she’s describing. It’s simply that raw grit only a noise can express.

Three head-to-toe looks literally and dramatically swing open on these huge doors, Muccio said.

It’s here that she makes magic happen. On top of pulling items from downstairs, she uses industry contacts to bring in pieces right off the runway.

I’m buying what I see in each of my clients. So I feel like my journey with each client is exactly that… a journey, Muccio said. It’s like, where am I going to take them next?

Muccio and her staff have dressed Cabinet members, foreign diplomats, and White House Correspondence dinner attendees as well as those guys looking to develop everyday, standout style. But it goes beyond dropping names or big money.

To be honest, Lost Boys is more than a store or even a style studio, like I like to call it, or a work space for guys, Muccio said. It’s a world. And to me, it’s my job to not only help a man claim his identity through clothing, but help him claim his identity through his interests, through what he’s learning. Muccio explains, ¨A guy who can walk into the room, and you have no idea when he leaves what he was wearing, but you remember the essence of that guy… that’s when a man is pulling together all those details. That’s the one who everyone is having a cocktail, and all of a sudden takes a moment , and doesn’t even realize that they’ve stopped conversation.