Archives for category: fashion

How To Italy

November 14, 2009 //

The new dual brand Moroso-Flos showroom looks so inviting you’d think you were sitting in a loft off Via Tortona rather than an ex-office building in London’s Clerkenwell. Which is, of course, the whole rather ambitious point, with the two Italian super brands setting up house together to sell not only furniture and lighting but the very culture of Made in Italy itself.

In a similar move, Moroso teamed up with Diesel and Foscarini in Milan for this years’s design week but I prefer the more grown up union with Flos. And so it seems might Patrizia Moroso, with plans afoot for more shared flagships (most likely starting with Beijing or Shanghai) in 2010.

via AT Casa

Tags design culture, Flos, Italy, London, Made in Italy, Moroso, shared flagship

Categories design, design stories, fashion, furniture, interior design, Italy, lighting, travel

Destination Stockholm

November 7, 2009 //

Swedish by geography, the Story Hotel shares the freestyle, ‘very hip friend’s apartment’ spirit finding form more and more in the interiors of self-styled hotels everywhere. Especially nice the public spaces – the white attic and the matt black dining room are examples – that take on the same unfinished, impromptu, domestic feel as the guest rooms. The whole place having the mood of a private club, but one that welcomes its new members with open arms.

via AT Casa

Tags bohemian chic, domestic hotel, private club, Stockholm, Story Hotel, vintage

Categories colour, decoration, design stories, fashion, interior design, lighting, vintage

Love Hotel

September 10, 2009 //

Design terroir for travellers: The new Michelberger in Berlin and the Ace Hotel in New york might be pitching to the same young-minded, fiscally-aware demographic, but there’d be no mistaking which city you’re in when you wake up in the morning.

Tags Berlin, design terroir, domestic hotel, home hotel, New York

Categories design stories, fashion, interior design, travel

Bare Essentials

September 6, 2009 //

The Japanese master minimalism all over again with the reopening of the Pleats Please Issey Miyake store in Aoyama. Light, surface, space as art, as just about only the Japanese can.

Tags Issey Miyake, Japanese minimalism, light, Minimalist fashion, Pleats Please, white

Categories fashion, interior design, lighting, materials, new technology

Seeing Red, Paris

July 16, 2009 //

In tune with the global zeitgeist perhaps, French designers Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec walk the red line between seduction and austerity in their design for the new Camper store (opposite Centre Pompidou) in Paris.

Tags austerity chic, Bouroullec, Camper, French design, Paris retail, red, shopfront Paris, texture

Categories colour, fashion, interior design, materials

One Love

July 1, 2009 //

This window display by artist Arnold Goron for French clothing label Isabel Marant is a sublime example of how one brilliant, elegant, well crafted concept can win.

Tags Arnold Goran, ceramic art, fashion retail, Isabel Marant, Paris, Porcelain Bird, visual merchandising

Categories art, design, fashion

Cloud Street

May 31, 2009 //

Kvadrat’s new Copenhagen showroom has to be the ideal place to show their easy-to-love-but-a-little harder-to-know-what-to-do-with textile tile concept Clouds, designed by Erwan and Ronan Bouroullec. But while the French duo were responsible for the interior design of the space, including the most of the furniture the project is far from a covert exercise in self-promotion for brand Bouroullec. For the Copenhagen flagship store the designers have adopted a very context-sensitive approach, using a classic Scandinavian palette for all the built elements and even referencing the company’s new port side address in the hip gallery precinct of Frihavnen in the design of the open plan meeting zone.

via designboom

Tags Bouroullec, Clouds, Copenhagen, Danish design, french interior design, Kvadrat, textile showroom

Categories design, fashion, interior design, planning

Beautiful on the inside

March 22, 2009 //

If charity retail and the pinnacle of Paris chic sound like unlikely bedfellows think again. Merci, the newly opened exquisitely styled ‘mixed bag’ boutique by the founders of children’s couture brand Bonpoint, is what can happen (in the French capital at least) when cashed up creatives and their A-list clique of design stars and intellectuals, develop a social conscience. And the results are stunning.

Already being talked about as a new direction in retailing (for luxury brands especially), the really intoxicating thing about Merci is how its creators have so cleverly and elegantly reinvented the often awkward idea of the charity store, turning it into what Trendwatching might call the most desirable ‘status story’ in town. Simply by insisting on the best. For everyone.

Tags Bonpoint, brand, charity store, design, loft, Merci, Paris, vintage

Categories art, children, colour, craft, decoration, design, design stories, fashion, food, furniture, interior design, lighting, products, vintage

Bags of potential

March 16, 2009 //

Goldsmith turned industrial designer turned jewellery designer again, Saskia Diez is chaneling the zeitgeist in spades with her sensational new range of low key, classically styled travellers. Papier bags are hand crafted from Tyvek (a super tough synthetic paper by Dupont) making them lightweight, water resistant, recyclable and tear proof. The goldsmith’s touch isn’t missing though with the bags labelled in sterling silver. And I love the way Diez insists on presenting the bags in both their pristine ‘unused’ and rather more lived-in ‘used’ forms. Either way they look great.

And there’s not long to wait. The Munich-based designer is launching the Papier range through her online shop and selected stores in April 2009.

Tags innovative materials, Munich, recyclable design, Saskia Diez, synthetic paper, travel bags, Tyvek

Categories craft, design, design stories, fashion, products, travel

Luxury redefined

February 24, 2009 //

I stumbled upon this apt and eloquent reminder of why the old luxury just doesn’t cut it anymore…

The post reproduced below was written by James Pearson. Entitled The New Luxury, it comes from the website of Acholi Beads, a ‘Socially Proactive Business’, based in Uganda, that sells handmade jewellery crafted from beads of recycled paper.

The New Luxury is our society’s response to consumerism’s inability to add meaning to our lives, while recognizing its power to improve livelihoods.

The New Luxury is smarter than advertising. It doesn’t seek its values in airbrushed images or phrases engineered to be memes. The New Luxury abides in story. It basks in the soft fabric of lives woven together by intention and fate.

The New Luxury transcends the sterile front of retail shelves. It peers into the true history of products, joining hands with the many people behind the supply chain, on the far side of the world, who brought the products into existence.

The New Luxury doesn’t rely on the weight of a price tag, but knows the glory of connection to stories larger than any dollar figure, more important than any bragging rights.

The New Luxury acknowledges that value cannot be bought, but that we can buy based on values. It asserts that meaning is broader than a slogan, more attractive than a photo, and deeper than any pockets. It assures us that beauty created in a studio pales when compared to the faintest reflection of real love. And The New Luxury insists that we will not be blinded by advertisements or manipulated by marketing; we are too smart and passionate to allow our dollars to be tempted away by false promises of happiness.

The New Luxury chooses joy, truth, hope, and love.

Tags Acholi Beads, craft, handmade, recycled, Socially Proactive Business, the new luxury, Uganda

Categories colour, craft, design stories, fashion, products, travel