Coco de Mer's new store, on Elizabeth Street.

The first clue that Coco de Mer is not your mother’s sex shop is the way that Justine Roddick pronounces the word “debauchery.” Swaddled in her jammy British accent, the word sounds comforting and good-humored, as if debauching oneself was no different than a long lunch at a particularly cozy wine bar, or a pleasurable afternoon of antique shopping.

And that’s pretty much the vibe that Justine and her little sister, Samantha, have established at the chain of erotic emporia they’ve opened in London, Los Angeles, and, as of last week, Elizabeth Street in Manhattan’s NoLiTa district. While the typical purveyor of sex paraphernalia tends to employ garish lighting, bad heavy metal soundtracks and sales associates who just love the vibrator that comes with a carburetor and a kickstand, Coco de Mer cultivates a warmer, less intimidating approach for a more discerning clientele. According to Sam, who opened the siblings’ first boutique in London’s Covent Garden eight years ago, “It’s a bit of a mission” for the Roddick sisters to express “sexuality with class, intelligence, humor, irreverence and depth.”

To those ends, the siblings stock their shops and Web site—Sam runs Covent Garden and another London location, Brompton Cross; Justine is based at the Coco de Mer on Melrose in Los Angeles--with artisanal products manufactured in small batches, and, wherever possible using ethical and eco-conscious methods—a little trick they learned from their mother, Dame Anita Roddick, founder of The Body Shop beauty products company. (“She focused on the outside of the body. We deal with the inside,” Justine says of their mother.) Mixed in with the Stella McCartney lingerie and bondage wear by Paul Seville are one-of-a-kind vintage and antique erotica. And in February, the Elizabeth Street store plans to institute a late-night delivery service for customers who are in need of Coco de Mer products but are temporarily, well, indisposed. The store will also unveil a back-room salon where a highly skilled collection of “sexperts” will begin teaching classes, for men and women, on the worldly arts of sexually pleasing their partners. Shortly before throwing open their doors, the Roddick sisters gave me a tour of their New York shop—which Cleaving author Julie Powell might like to know—is located aptly next to a butcher’s shop.

Frank DiGiacomo: So, show me around.

Justine Roddick: We’ve got lots of vintage bits. We just found these old Popeye porn comics. Who knew he and Olive Oyl were so filthy?

So, Popeye’s arms weren’t the only things that got big when he ate his spinach. What decade are those from?

Justine: The girl that we got this from—her dad was in the Navy, and she thought it was published in the 50s. We try really hard to put some humor into the world of sex and sexuality.

Does that help put your customers at ease?

Justine: Yes. We’re trying to put some class and elegance into debauchery. We want people—no matter what their sexual orientation or the stage of their sexual discovery—to feel comfortable. If you’re comfortable then you can look around and see a spanking paddle and go, ‘Ooooh, I didn’t think of that. But now that seems like a good idea.’

Especially since I’m told that you sell ethical and eco-erotica.

Justine: Right. Obviously we came from the pedigree of ‘Don’t even think about doing business unless you’re going to be responsible about it.’ So, pretty much everything on this table is fair trade. These are all made in the fair-trade community. The tassels on those pasties and the silk blindfolds are all embroidered by a project in India. These feather ticklers are made in Bali of reclaimed wood and cock feathers. Spanking paddles are made from fair-trade sustainable wood. We are trying to move as much in the fair-trade direction as we can. But we don’t do a lot of mass production. We have so many one-off designers that have these little cottage industries. Like the guy who does a lot of leather stuff for us, Ilya Flee, he’s a saddle maker. And these leather pieces are by a designer named Paul Seville. He makes Alexander McQueen and Vivienne Westwood’s leatherwork. I gave this to my accountant yesterday because I was late with my taxes.

A ruler that says “Teach Me A Lesson.” I presume that’s for spanking as well.

Justine: Yes, although he was not amused by it—at all. This is great. Paul Seville makes these leather-handled whips as well. They’re made with human hair. This one, the redheaded one, is the most popular color that we sell, and it’s really hard to get the red hair.

I think I read somewhere that the redheads on this earth are dwindling and will eventually disappear entirely. You know, that’s beautiful enough to put on your mantle as a conversation piece.

*Justine:*Really, and would anybody know? Let me go behind this case. There’s a smorgasbord of pleasure in here. These are great toys, I’m telling you. They’re fantastic. All these glass dildos, they’re all hand blown—for want of a better word—by a glass artist who shows his pieces in the Smithsonian. But he won’t let us use his name because his collectors are people who wouldn’t appreciate it. The jade is great. There are a lot of historical stories behind jade. Jade was first used for sex toys, and I think it means something like ‘stone of the loins’ in Spanish.

Perhaps this is too forward a question to ask…

Justine: In this shop?

Do you and your employees test all of these toys?

Justine: Most of them. They have to be because you simply cannot sell a sex toy with any confidence unless you’ve tried it. And so we work really hard. Needless to say we don’t have very high staff turnover, but all our girls, when they start, are given a glass toy because people don’t believe how great it is until they’ve used it. The same thing with the vibrators: we give each of them a vibrator so they can actually speak to it. And then we’ve got the pearls.

Samantha Roddick: Pearls are thought of as the crystallized tears of Aphrodite. And I always think there’s nothing better than having crystallized tears around a cock.

Justine: Or out the bottom!

Sam: Aphrodite crying out of you!

Justine: What are you going to do when you go back and listen to this?

I won’t have any trouble getting a story out of this, that’s for sure. Now, those pieces of jewelry—I can’t figure out how they’d be used in the bedroom.

*Justine:*This is all really great jewelry that has an erotic function. Betony Vernon, the designer, claims this one is her piece de resistance. It’s a petting ring that’s actually really comfortable to wear. But you can use it for—she describes it as being the state of ‘Om.’ [According to the website, this “petting ring” is “a double ring that holds the index finger and thumb in the chi mudra position; the gesture used in meditation for a one-pointed mind and for a perfect hand job as well.”] They actually make this in a men’s size as well.

Sam: It’s the notion that you’re wearing something quite explicit, but it’s hidden by its beauty in a way.

*Justine:*See the butterfly necklace that I’m wearing? It has shooting penises in it, and a little vagina in the middle. I wear it to the P.T.A. all the time in L.A. They’re like, ‘Love your necklace.’

American culture has gone through such a conservative period. Do you feel that’s about to change?

Justine: In L.A., the only thing I’ve carried that people got a bit iffy about was The X-Rated Bible. The people that come into the shop, I think, are really happy because people are so sick of being told that they shouldn’t feel good.

They feel repressed.

Justine: Absolutely. There’s no dialogue about pleasure. There’s no dialogue about sensuality. There’s no dialogue about consent. All of the good and important things about sex and sexuality are not discussed. So, when people walk in the doors, they’re like, ‘Ahhh, this feels good.’ Which is exactly what they should be feeling.

What’s the price range of the items in your shop?

Justine: From three dollars, all the way up to—

Sam: Seventeen grand for piece of art that we’re not showing yet. We sell quite a lot of art pieces. I just went to the most bizarre auction I’ve ever been to in Paris and bought a lot of erotic antiques from one of my favorite collections.

Justine: You got some spectacular pieces.

Sam: My favorite is this incredible 17th Century geisha’s ball. Literally it’s made out of ivory and it’s got spikes on it. Like, what are those weapons of old—

A mace? â¿¿

Sam: Yeah, but the spikes retract, so it’s like a sea anemone. It’s a pleasure ball that geishas used to wear, and when you see it, you realize that, from a historical point of view, sex and innovation have been around forever. And really, the only time that it’s been badly executed is this era. The artistry is gone, and what’s ironic is, it was the wealthy that originally bought into it. Perversions didn’t exist within the working class. Sex was thought of as very simplistic and prolific. Perversion was only attributed to the upper class. And they say now that the only progression that’s taken place within sexuality is not that we are more liberated today, but that, actually, perversions have seeped down into the working class. From a social perspective, I think that is quite interesting.

When did you two put your heads together and say, we want to open a shop devoted to sex and pleasure?

Justine: Sam came up with it. This is her baby. I was living in America, and she was like, ‘Come on, we’ve got so many customers over there. Can you please?’ But from the minute I’ve opened the doors, I’ve had to train myself to be aware of —cultural differences.

Sam: You’ve had to train yourself to not say ‘snog.’

Justine: Or ‘fanny.’ When I’m talking about my fanny, I’m referring to my vagina. Here, someone is talking about her ass.

Sam: I got my whole sexual education from the West coast of America. America has the best sexperts in the world, from my perspective, other than in Arab countries.

Arab countries, seriously?

Sam: I am telling you, there is a sexual confidence that Arab women have which is a western taboo. I have a lot of Arab women customers who are very comfortable and very directed about their sexuality. And one of the reasons they are is, it’s their ticket to freedom. They don’t have the same financial power. They don’t have the same political power. But if they are very well versed in the bedroom, they are controlling absolutely everything. And I think that is very, very interesting because it’s not done in terms of transaction. It’s really done in terms of true pleasure. In transactional sex, there’s this insincerity to it, there’s an underlying unhappiness. But these women are very comfortable with their bodies.

Justine: Especially in London. So many Arabic women come into London for the summers, and, you know, underneath their burkas it’s full-on filth and naughtiness.

I had no idea.

Sam: We didn’t either until we opened up the shop. (Laughs.)

I understand that you will have sexperts holding classes here at the New York shop beginning in February.â¿¿

Justine: We’ve got three booked for February already. We have the best sexperts. Literally, they are the best of the best, and they teach at our stores in L.A., London and here. In L.A., I laugh all the time because I can sell out a blowjob class every day of the week. I kid you not. What is it about the ladies of L.A.? They love to get on their knees there. We just did an ‘Eat A Peach’ class, which is how to pleasure a woman, and we did get ten men. We got the women in the blowjob class to sign them up.

These are the dressing rooms?

*Justine:*Yes. For all the good religious folk, we have a confessional. You would be in here looking through this opening in the wall. Your partner would be in here trying on lingerie. Or perhaps it would be the other way around. We have plenty of men who love to wear lingerie. And this here, this is a touch screen. The object of this is it will take a photograph of you if you approve and post it on our website. I have had so many shitty pictures taken of me today.

Sam: You should go on our Web site and see what our customers put up on the ‘private poses’ section.

Justine: I interviewed this girl in L.A. to become a member of the staff. And I’m looking at her, thinking, ‘God she looks really familiar.’ And I can’t figure out why. And then a couple days later, I’m going through the private poses, and she had been in Sam’s store in London with her boyfriend. She was giving him a blowjob. Hysterical.

Well, we’ve talked about quite a lot. Is there anything else you’d like to mention?

Sam: The butcher! I love the butcher next door. Can I just show you what my next window campaign is? [She pulls out a poster-sized photo of a hot dog slathered in condiments.] We’re going to print this up big, with the saying: “Get your hot sausage next door and your sauce in here. Or is it, ‘Get your filet next door and your rump in here’?

Justine: Get your bump in here and your grind next door. The poor bugger has no idea.