Archives for category: products

Democratic Design to go

April 24, 2009 //

I love British firm SCP’s take on the democratic design push (led by Ikea in their first outing at Milan design week) being felt everywhere in 2009. The SCP Boxed Collection will launch in Milan this week. Guest designers were all briefed to create accessibly priced products, small enough to be carried home under the customer’s arm. Konstantin Grcic’s height-adjustable Tom Tom and Tam Tam tables, the cute as a button Ulrik, a timber stool in two halves by Alex Hellum, and Sum wall storge by Peter Marigold are my instant favourites, with Sum being perhaps the most democratic piece in the range. Three per pack, the shelves are infinitely modular making it the sort of furniture you can buy and grow at your own pace.

Tags British design, democratic design, flat pack, Milan design week 2009, SCP

Categories design, furniture, interior design, Italy, products

Tati goes to the Fair

April 19, 2009 //

The smart and sophisticated Tati lamp by Ferruccio Laviani debuts at Il Salone del Mobile, Milano in a few days. The big event starts on April 22 and, as the previews stream through the inbox, this lamp with its air of a classic in the making continues to stand out. At its best in white or black, the look and feel of the lamp changes according to the selected diffuser. Kartell will launch Tati alongside two other (very different!) lamps by Laviani among others as part of the Kartell Marathon Fuorisalone at their flagship store in via Turati.

Tags acrylic, Ferruccio Laviani, Fuorisalone, Kartell, lamp, Milan design week

Categories design, lighting, materials, products

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

Utility Rules

March 19, 2009 //

The theme of the Tom Dixon roadshow for Milan design week is, very sensibly, ‘Utility’. A quality captured utterly in the heavy duty, no nonsense aesthetic of the London-based designer’s collection 2009/2010, now previewing online ahead of I Saloni in April.

I’m an always more ardent fan of Tom Dixon’s work since seeing his Zona Tortona Superstudio Piu’ show first hand in Milan last year. Dixon does the very English cool, clever, gorgeous, practical thing better than anyone and the design world’s growing appetite for a new refined frugality should play right into this Brit’s very talented hands.

Tags British design, heavy duty, Milan design week 09, Superstudio Piu', Tom Dixon

Categories design, furniture, lighting, products

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

Silver Linings over London

March 1, 2009 //

I am liking what Italian designer Rodolfo Dordoni has say about the impact of the global economic downturn on design. In a chat with Wallpaper on the occasion of the opening last month of the new Minotti flagship store in London (Dordoni is creative director), the Milanese architect was upbeat, – and apparently in no mood to mince words either – insisting the financial crunch can only have a positive impact.

“We have gone too far towards show and a type of vulgarity”, he says. “People have been too weak and spoiled and failed to develop their own style, and instead everything and everyone looks the same”. Dordoni is now looking forward to a move towards something more ‘discreet’ and ‘sobre’. ”A change in priorities should result in something less exhibitionist, more sane and tasteful’, he says.

And with all eyes starting to focus on what should be a more streamlined Milan design week in April, it’ll be interesting to see how many of Dordoni’s look-a-likes decide to stay home.

Tags classic modern, contemporary furniture, design stories, global financial crisis, London, Milan, Minotti, Rodolfo Dordoni, showroom

Categories design, design stories, furniture, interior design, Italy, products

The soul of discretion

February 27, 2009 //

Young French company ENO (“Edition Nouveaux Objets”) sees itself as a type of design matchmaker, bringing together talented designers and smart manufacturers to produce new objects for ordinary living. Taking their cue from Japanese design culture, the end game for ENO is beautiful, useful and discreet objects that do what they say they do, simply. End of.

Tags Arik Levy, ENO, everyday luxury, French design, product design, Spazio Rossana Orlandi, useful and beautiful

Categories design, design stories, products

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

Classic curves

January 5, 2009 //

Seeing Artemide’s Logico range turn up in the New York ‘Brown stone’ of Egyptian-born artist Ghada Amer was an instant reminder to me about the transformative power of context over design. I’ve been eyeing these lights with intent for a while now and yet, hovering above the dark wood and oriental textile inside a gritty Harlem facade, they still took me a little by surprise. For as good as they look in the showroom or online, in a real life context, where someone had actually sat down and selected them from presumably a stack of other options, the fittings seemed somehow more beautiful. More elegant and versatile really, softer. And, oddly, much more memorable.

Tags Artemide, Ghada Amer, glass, modern lighting, New York brownstone, period building

Categories art, decoration, interior design, lighting, products

Lamp life

December 21, 2008 //

Reissues of the design classics from the last half century or so are thicker on the ground than usual at the moment, with manufacturers apparently only too happy to indulge the popular taste for all things vintage. A safe bet in uncertain economic times? Maybe. But hey, anything that gives oxygen to the notion that design can, and should, get better with age is surely nothing to complain about.

Two of my personal fancies are lights: 1. the ingenious Cobra lamp by Elio Martinelli – a mere 300 have been re-issued by Martinelli Luce this year in celebration of its fortieth year. And 2. the 70′s pendant Cynthia by Mario Marenco for Artemide. As Italian daily Corriere della Sera notes, a lamp capable of recreating the atmosphere of its times.

Tags 1968, cobra, icon, lamp, limited edition, Martinelli luce, vintage design

Categories design, Italy, lighting, products, vintage