22/11/2013

Amsterdam

Amsterdam creates addiction. But not in the way that the ten thousand youngsters, who every year visit the capital of the Netherlands, understand it. Its clean street markets, the graceful houses that overlook the canals and the endless comings and goings of old ladies and businessmen on their bikes clash with the libertine air of some of its neighborhoods and with the sense of perdition that in general is associated with the city. This creates a powerful contrast that floors tourists and that, sometimes, is not totally grasped during the first visit to the city. The desire of better understanding this cohabitation of lights and shadows generates again and again the craving of coming back here for discovering new marvelous features.


At night, when the city lights reflect on the water, Amsterdam becomes a fairy city. Then, when the lights of the 50 days long light festival are added, the city offers a sublime show. It was organized for the first time in 2012, and also this year (from December 6 until January 19), the light festival will transform Amsterdam into a sparkle of optical effects, that has been able to enchant residents and tourists, and that make the city become an illuminated jewel during the darkest month of the year. It has been organized in the respect of energetic sustainability and with the help of young talents: high tech art installations, that respect the environment and that have been created by international artists, who in this way can exhibit their own creations in the stunning showcase that is Amsterdam.

The best way to enjoy this show is on a boat, so that it is possible to admire the art installations while navigating the Amstel, while admiring some of the historical monuments of the city, such as the Werthein Park or the Nemo and Stopera Science Center. This is for sure the best trip to do in the city.



Antonio Leggieri – Image courtesy of Janus Van den Eijnden and Janet Echelman 
21/11/2013

Guest interview n°51: Guido Biondi

President’s is one of the most innovative contemporary Italian brands. In an era of fast culture and even faster fashion, its creative director Guido Biondi has decided to take things slow. Made of essential, but meticulously designed pieces, each President’s collection is an ode to quality Italian manufacture, timeless elegance and bold style. We have sat together with Guido for a pleasant chat, discussing President’s past, present and future.

Could you explain the concept that guides President’s collections? Do you have a ‘recipe’ to follow when you create each collection?
If we were to sum up the silent guidelines we follow for each President’s collection we should say that the inspiration comes mainly from items of the past. What could be understood as timeless pieces is brought together and translated in a unique collection, contaminated by various cultures and styles with a strong contemporary twist. President’s style is raw, authentic and elegant, while it also pays an ode to the supremely Italian sartorial tradition fused together with continuous research of quality fabrics.

Do you feel the weight of Italian fashion heritage? How do you feel President’s fits in this heritage?
President’s brand was first registered in 1957 by my grandfather, but it was never used until three years ago. I have decided to add the “Crafted in Tuscany” phrase to the brand’s name in order to make people understand my passion and dedication to Italian textile tradition, as well as the country’s crafts in general. The reference to tradition and heritage is one of the fundamental qualities of President’s collections, and we continually seek to develop new collaborations with artisans and local manufacturers.

You stress the importance of quality materials. Could you tell us something about the materials you use, how and where are they produced, how and why you choose them for your collections?
When we source new materials, I am always interested in knowing where does the raw material come from. Whether it is cotton, linen or wool, I always try to find out how the yarn is produced, if the farms or plantations are sustainable and top-notch quality. This is the reason why we choose to produce all of our collections in Italy, mainly in Tuscany.

The summer and autumn collections seem very different yet somewhat similar at the same time, where did the inspiration come from for both of them?
The summer and winter collections are brought together by core values of the brand: offering a unique, exceptional product in a contemporary interpretation of classic menswear pieces. The winter collection draws inspiration from the military world, interpreted in a neat, sartorial key. The summer collection, on the other hand, plays with 60s Puerto Rican Americans’ style, interpreted in a lighter tone.

What kind of man do you envision would wear your collections? Do you think that contemporary clients value and know how to recognize the quality manufacture in an era of fast production and consumption of low-cost brands?
A President’s man is a globe-trotter, with a variety of interests from art and culture, to underground movements. He loves and appreciates beauty and quality craftsmanship and chooses our clothes because he knows they will last for a lifetime. I think that our ideal clients understand and appreciate the quality manufacture and precious detailing of our clothes. You cannot notice the handmade quality of our products, especially in a world made of low-cost fashion.

How would you like to see the brand develop in the future?
In the future, I hope to be able to develop products that are even more smart, neat and well-finished. In particular, my biggest aspiration is to open a series of President’s boutiques, developed with a new concept, offering a unique shell for our products. Hopefully the future will bring new challenges and exciting new projects.

Rujana Rebernjak 
20/11/2013

Through the Lens of Brian W. Ferry









Brian W. Ferry 
20/11/2013

The Multi Brand Store – From Merchants To Makers

Concept stores are nothing new. Ever since the 90’s, we’ve been able to shop limited capsule collections while sipping on a wide array of bottled waters. 10 Corso Como and Colette need no further introductions. These boutiques were founded by influential individuals. However, in the recent years, a slight evolution has been discernible. The smallest brands have gone from merchants to makers.

They not only sell their own products and those of others, they own the whole store. Say hi to the multi brand store. It has become a given platform for young talents to showcase their ideas. Carol Lim and Humberto Leon are partially responsible for this development. In 2002, they founded Opening Ceremony. It started in New York and eleven years later, they’ve spread worldwide. Today, they additionally run their own TV channel and an annual magazine. And of course, their own line of clothing. The idea has spread further up the Northern hemisphere as well. The same year as Opening Ceremony, danish Wood Wood opened up its business. Except for their own pieces and collaborations, they also offer selected items from Carven and scents from Comme des Garçons.


In August, Cheap Monday-founder, Örjan Andersson launched his latest project Från Ö Till A (From Ö to A). Located by the Skanstulls bridge in Stockholm, it features local designers such as Cornelia Webb, altewai.saome and the founders own collection Örjan Andersson. It’s actually an ingenious marketing ploy for peddling one’s goods. Carefully choosing other brands for a store will translate the in-house designer’s own aesthetics. The customers compare and juxtapose the external labels to Anderssons’. The near future will most probably see a multitude of these new conceptual stores flourishing. The most interesting part of this will be to see whether they’ll balance emerging talents with already established ones. Instead of clinging to the conventional luxury segment, this is a golden opportunity to promote a new generation of craftswo/men.


Petter Köhler 
19/11/2013

Monthly reads: Nomadic Furniture

History has taught us that the most radical thoughts and gestures are rarely met with approval when they emerge. It is time that gives them value and common appreciation. It should come as no surprise then, that when Victor Papanek first wrote “there are professions more harmful than industrial design, but only a few of them” in the introduction of his book Design for the real world, his ideas were not welcomed. He was, in fact, forced to resign from the Industrial Designers Society of America and his work was met with scepticism, if not publicly ridiculed. And yet, 15 years after he passed away, Victor Papanek is now celebrated as one of the most innovative, disruptive and radical design thinkers of all times, while his most celebrated books, Design for the Real World and Nomadic Furniture, still offer inspiration and thoughtful insight on design practice.

Nomadic Furniture was written together with James Henessey and first published in 1973. In the first edition the authors state “No book like this has ever been put together before”, apologizing, thus, for all that is missing. They also quote Gerturde Stein, quoting Picasso saying “when you make a thing, a thing that is new, it is so complicated making it that it is bound to be ugly. But those that make it after you, they don’t have to worry about making it. And they can make it pretty and so everybody can like it when the others make it after you…”, but we can now state that neither these two apologies seem necessary.



Nomadic Furniture appears as a simple book, containing a series of do-it-yourself designs for furniture which “folds, stacks, inflates or knocks down or else is disposable while being ecologically responsible”. It is structured in sections, each of which presents a series of solutions for different necessities: seating, eating and working, storage, sleeping, light, babies and children, together with two special sections on human measurements and hints for working. It is as simple as it is challenging when it teaches us the right proportions of a dining table, while also handing precious advice on how to reduce our possessions without cutting down anything we might actually need. It also gives us hints on how to make our own bean bag, while teaching us how to taste freedom. In fact, it is as much a practical design guidebook as it is a manifesto for a new way of life.


Rujana Rebernjak  
18/11/2013

Style Suggestions: Winter Accessories

Stay warm this season with our choice of winter accessories. Forget your boring black knits and opt for vibrant colours and rich textures.

Gap Gloves, Acne scarf, Pieces Egir ear muffs, Jcrew socks, Tak.Ori, Fresh lip balm, Vintage Chanel

Styling by Vanessa Cocchiaro 

18/11/2013

Haim Steinbach | The Window

The National Gallery of Denmark has just inaugurated The Window, a solo show dedicated to the international acclaimed artist Haim Steinbach (b. 1944, Rehovot, Israel, american citizen since 1962), well-known for his interest in creating new systems through the use of ordinary objects. Leading figure of an art developed during the ‘70s, based on pre-existing material, the artist selects both desirable items and everyday life things, getting them from different fields. Shelves, walls, display cases hosts linear installations made of plastic toys, knick-knacks, wood ledges, panels, steel pipes etc. characterized by methodical and almost obsessive sequences; a personal and unique order that Steinbach investigates to give objects other ways of existing, or other meanings related to their own intrinsic factors combined with diverse frames of references. As he says: “I am taking real objects out of our world — I don’t make them, I don’t have someone to fabricate them, I don’t put a little signature on them, I don’t paint them, I don’t place them upside down and I don’t lick these objects. They’re just objects — you can lift them off the shelf, throw them on the floor, re-arrange them, or even put other objects on the shelf.”


So, how the object is displayed takes on a fundamental role in the artist’s poetic, who prefers heterogeneous combinations connected to social and anthropological aspects, always influenced by emotional parts. Steinbach makes use of minimal art’s strategies where differences and repetitions, along with logical sequences, are highlighted in their aesthetic and structural value. For this exhibition, set up in the x-rummet, the danish museum’s experimental space for contemporary art, the artist gathers artworks from the SMK’s collections, such as a Degas’ dancer or a Matisse’s Interior with Violin, together with common goods, treating all of them as cultural artifacts connected through an unconventional visual and philosophical concept. Changing the common criteria, usually used by museums and art institutions, Steinbach introduces a radical re-think of set-ups, that goes beyond the chronological and thematic boundaries to advance a more spontaneous, but refined approach. The Window will run until 23rd February, 2014.



Monica Lombardi – Pictures courtesy of Jakob Fibiger Andreasen from the SMK press office, pictures © Anders Sune Berg. 
15/11/2013

Hello my name is Paul

Would you believe us if we told you that the very first Paul Smith’s shop was 3 squared metres? Recognized as one of the most successful UK designers, he built a career step-by-step, mostly thanks to both his unique fashion taste and the intuitive approach to the retailer role.

Until March 9th 2014, the Design Museum of London will celebrate his work-life with a special exhibition that aims to be a proper journey inside his original mind. Hello my name is Paul will feature a recreation of the first shop in Byard Lane, Nottingham, alongside a digital room displaying moving images, as well as Smith’s personal office, full of inspirational books, souvenirs from all his travels, bikes, and many other objects.


The show has been curated by Donna Loveday, who said she would like it to become more and more popular since: “He’s constantly doing something new and I think that’s why people are still so interested in him”, a valid reason to go and see the exhibit even for the ones who already know Mr. Smith. The creative path will also showcase some film clips and audio regarding special collaborations and fashion shows, together with the best behind-the-scene moments. A special space to the different and architectural shop structures has been given, too.


Francesca Crippa 
14/11/2013

Design Stores by Famous Designers

When online shopping has been taking the lion’s share of the markets, offline stores have started to change their concepts from the mere commercial destinations. Contemporary flagship stores do not only embody astonishing interiors as a proof of concept, neither they limit to provide an experience to the most demanding fashion victims. Instead, they have become the tangible horizon of our imaginary escapes, a parallel word that goes beyond products, and invests our eagerness in terms of extravagance, extraordinary, thrill. Designers do not miss the chance to give their contribution: one more time, they work as storytellers, providing a narrative plot that is capable to brand a space through inedited architectural solutions.


Peter Marino, the most revered among retail designers, has been working with the great majority of world renown luxury brands. As his most acclaimed project probably remains the “Louis Vuitton Maison” on London’s Bond Street (which is still the largest brand shop in town), a jubilation of golden chainmail and metal scaffoldings wrapping the entire surface of the walls. However, his latest, Chanel’s Avenue Montaigne, is not inferior to his most well-known precedent, combining a linear layout with astonishing, hyperbolic details – like Coco’s oversized pearls hung from the ceiling, or golden tweed wall coverings.

Most often, designers do not limit their collaborations to the world of luxury corporations. Jaime Hayon is a paradigmatic example of a more transversal, eclectic attitude. His versatility, in fact, allows him to respond to the need of exclusivity of niche luxury brands such as Octium Jewellery, while providing informal solutions for footwear giants such as Camper. Usually, the brands going for this strategy do not maintain an exclusivity policy with the designers they choose to work with: getting back to Camper, the Spanish company has demonstrated a special intuition to select the coolest designers around. Nendo, for example, was given carte blanche to redesign Camper’s New York store. While maintaining the white and grey palette, he succeed to give to a modular repetition a witty, yet decorative, effect.

Does great retail design remain a prerogative of luxury brands? Yes in most cases, even with a few notable exceptions confirming the rule. H&M’s flagship store in Barcelona is one of them: designed by Javier Mariscal in 2008, it combines a conscious architectural intervention – an hyper modern, essential steel structure inside the huge XIX century stairwell – with a cheerful, Spanish spirit. More recently, Normal Studio’s work for H&M Home‘s London store proves that also a DIY approach can contaminate the most established corporations retail rules.

Giulia Zappa 
13/11/2013

Style Suggestions: Late Autumn

We have reached that period of the year when we’re bothered by all the extra pieces of clothing we have to put on, in the same time as we’re enjoying that the layers and layers of clothes let us play with our styling creativity. Even though we can feel winter approaching, we are still revelling in the autumn collections: rich colours, heavy accessories and layers playing with light versus hefty fabrics.

All clothes from Roy Roger’s A/W 13-14 – sevenbell.com

Styling by Vanessa Cocchiaro 

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