A tiny, 80-year-old shop that sells print magazines is totally in fashion.
Casa Magazines in the West Village just collaborated with Madewell for Fashion Week, offering denim jackets embroidered with its logo and filling its windows with a special Madewell denim zine.
It’s just the latest trending moment for Casa. While print magazines and the shops that sell them have been shuttering and dying in recent years, it’s thriving. Sales are strong; its Instagram account has nearly 50,000 followers, including a number of influential New Yorkers; celebs such as Julianne Moore and Sarah Jessica Parker are regulars; and buzzy brands are eager to collaborate.
“I don’t know about other shops, but no matter what — bad weather or corona — we never had a problem here,” manager Syed Khalid “Ali” Wasim told The Post. “The neighborhood is just right — everybody here is a writer or director or actor and more interested in magazines, more old school. They love the print still.”
The Madewell jacket sold out in less than a day, and it’s not the shop’s first fashionable foray. It collaborated with Vans on limited edition Casa-branded sneakers in 2021 and was the site of Valentino’s book launch in 2020. Wasim was once even a model for True Religion. A painting of Casa was even framed in Carrie Bradshaw’s closet in the “Sex and the City” reboot, “And Just Like That.”
Wasim, who has worked at Casa for 24 years, said they’re always fielding requests from people looking to team up.
“Designers and brands will just reach out on social media to collaborate,” said the 54-year-old Pakistan native who lives in Bayside. He launched the Instagram account in 2017, with help from a neighborhood friend. On it, he and owner Mohammed Ahmed pose like influencers with the latest covers.
It’s been “very helpful” for business, Wasim said of the account.
The shop’s origins are murky, but Ahmed bought it in 1994. Since taking over, he and Wasim have completely remodeled the shelving on the walls to make room to display 3,000 unique titles.
“Say in the article that since [I] got here, the space is much more organized,” Wasim joked.
These days, the roughly 400-square-foot space stocks hundreds of titles, many of them from foreign countries. Some of its rarer offerings — such as “Gap Press” and “Yummy” — can go for upwards of $300 a copy.
International issues of Vogue — especially British, French and Italian iterations — tend to be the top sellers. But, Wasim’s personal favorite is National Geographic.
“If I go to NYU, I’m going to become a photographer,” the father-of-three joked.
In addition to attracting brands, the shop’s social media presence account has helped make it a destination for tourists across the globe.
Bridget from Antwerp, Belgium, found Casa on Instagram and knew it was a must-see on her recent three-day trip to the city.
“It was just so cute. It felt very New York,” she told The Post.
But most of Wasim’s customers are locals, and he speaks fondly of longtime ties to some of them.
“[Julianne Moore] knew my kids since they were in Pampers. And I knew her kids since they were in Pampers,” he said. “We have customers from 6 to 93 years-old. They all love magazines, they walk into the shop, and they breathe the scent of freshly printed paper, and they just enjoy the place.”
Luis Lopez, who drives the M12 bus route for the MTA, uses the shop for short breaks, and has been a fan for a decade.
“I come in and hang out with Ali and read the paper real quick,” Lopez told The Post. “We became basically like family.”
Wasim can’t imagine working anywhere else.
“Really, this is my dream,” he said. “I always saw in my dream that I worked in a magazine place. A messy, crowded place that was hard to work in — and my dream came true.”
