Published: December 14, 2010

LIKE any Frenchman worth his fleur de sel, the new Pierre Hardy boutique immediately poses challenging questions.

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Kirsten Luce for The New York Times

Like, where is it?

Monsieur Hardy, an intriguing artist on several fronts, came to shoes after scholarly forays into fashion illustration, dance and scenography. In the store literature, he proclaims that he eschews nostalgia and history, preferring to find inspirations for his futuristic footwear through design and conceptual art.

In an architectural sense, the shop is so understated as to be virtually invisible: a wall of dark topaz glass is inset several feet from the sidewalk, with no identifying markings. This is the kind of cold, tinted slickness generally preferred by military contractors around Arlington, Va. At first glance, the shop might be the front office for an international weaponry brokerage, an illegal plastic surgery cult or perhaps an entertainment law office-slash-sex dungeon. The (presumed intentional) effect is to cause the shopper to question her own validity. Should she potentially corrupt the space inhabited by these rarefied shoes by insinuating herself into it, or should she should let all her credit cards slide from her fingers into the middle of West Fourth Street, lie down on them and succumb to a coma of existential ambivalence?

M. Hardy's aesthetics of disinvitation are reaffirmed by the fact that there does not appear to be an actual door. Getting inside requires more than galvanizing a certainty of one's metaphysical being; the determined shopper is forced to hurl her full body weight across panels of amber glass until a secret hinge eventually yields, allowing her to stumble inside, stripped of pride and balance. It is a somewhat Masonic experience; you realize that there were no witnesses to your fall from grace because everyone who works there seems to be somewhere in the back, and it's really dark in there (and therefore grace arguably never hath left you).

The floors are black leather strips cut and arranged to resemble wood planks; the benches are black powder-coated industrial I-beams. Gray shoebox-size cubes appear to have crystallized like raw lithium formations in corners of the space. This is where constellations of M. Hardy's signature items are displayed: unisex suede desert boots ($490) and high-top sneakers with Velcro ankle straps, in kicky flavors like heathery flannel, charcoal patent leather, gold lamé ($520).

The staff, once inspired to participate, is particularly lovely and laid-back in that casually hospitable, elegant French way -- no fussiness or pretense, and a rather effortless way of dealing with customers.

At one point, I heard thumping and fluttering and looked toward the street, thinking that perhaps a rash of adolescent doves had performed a group suicide against the window. But no. An incognito Andy Samberg and a comely model-slash-actress seemed to be leaving mime handprints all over the glass, apparently having the same problem I had with the Zen koan of the doorless door. We watched in silence until they passed the initiation and lurched inside.