On a quiet stretch of Park Slope's Fifth Avenue, designer Christine Alcalay 's atelier sits inviting, intimate and unmistakably Brooklyn. Racks of blouses, jackets and vintage-buttoned trousers line the space - proof of what locals already know: the woman behind the clothes runs her business the way she designs, slowly, deliberately and with a soulfulness that can't be mass-produced. But Alcalay's story begins long before her name appeared on a storefront.