Sept/Oct

I TA LO Z U C C H E L L I F R A N C I S C O C O S TA

ISSUE 102 SEPTEMBER / OCTOBER 2013

HOW CALVIN KLEIN IS MADE

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M E L L L OU N GE | d e s ig n je h s + laub

e s t. 1 9 6 1

NO. 102

CONTENTS departments 22 24 26 40 43 46 48 52 55 58

Masthead Editor’s Letter Contributors Travel Hotel Bar Restaurant Transport On Time Art

60 62 64 66 70 168

Auction Books Material Survey Endorsement Object

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fashion Photos: Pete Deevakul Styling: Justin Min

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ideas in design Paul Cocksedge discusses making light into a tactile object. A new book celebrates Formica’s centennial.

Crate & Barrel enlists Paola Navone to help revamp the brand. Working with Maserati, the U.K.-based audio giant Bowers & Wilkins adapts the carmaker’s materials for a speaker system.

146 gallery Two curators explore interior design and impermanence with a lively showcase in a soon-to-be-developed Berlin building.

Curators: Gisbert Poeppler and Erik Hofstetter Photos: Wolfgang Stahr and Ole Akhøj

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product Photos: Pete Deevakul Styling: Justin Min

159 culture club A photo portfolio capturing the fashion, art, and design cognoscenti at recent openings, events, and discussions hosted by Surface and other cultural organizations.

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Presenting the black-tie-optional tuxedo sofa.

The Goodland Collection by Milo Baughman.

THE BEST IN MODERN DESIGN W W W.DWR.COM | 1.800.944.2233 | DWR STUDIOS Shown: Goodland Sofa, Milo Baughman Drum Tables, Serge Mouille Lamps, Nelson Star Clock, Broken Stripe Rug. For the trade: dwr.com/trade | Call to request our free catalog. | Download our iPad app. |

Š 2013 Design Within Reach, Inc.

NO. 102

CONTENTS 106

how it’s made Master artisans and innovators reveal the secrets behind their creative methods.

132 nakashima woodworkers furniture

108 calvin klein collection

136 nike tech fleece

118

illesteva lou reed sunglasses

140 fendi fur

122 galerie bsl exhibition

cover: Italo Zucchelli and Francisco Costa of Calvin Klein at Industria Superstudio in New York. photographer: Grant Cornett hair and makeup: Claudia at Workgroup

128 alessi la stanza dello scirocco collection

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www.poliformusa.com

MADE IN ITALY

to find your nearest showroom call 1-888-poliform/ info@poliformusa.com/ www.poliformusa.com “design now� quick ship program available New York, Miami, Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington DC, Tucson, Phoenix, Salt Lake City, Puerto Rico, Denver, Dallas, Austin, Houston, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle, Portland, Philadelphia, Des Moines, St Louis, Oklahoma City, Naples, Reno, Boston, Atlanta, Cincinnati, Sun Valley, Mexico City, Santo Domingo, Panama, Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, Calgary.

MASTHEAD

S U R FAC E chief executive officer Marc Lotenberg marc@surfacemag.com Twitter: @marclotenberg Instagram: @marclotenberg

executive editor Spencer Bailey sbailey@surfacemag.com Twitter: @spencer_bailey Instagram: @spencercbailey

publisher Keren Eldad keldad@surfacemag.com Instagram: @goldinkee

creative direction NoĂŤ & Associates info@noeassociates.com

associate publisher Melanie Brown mbrown@surfacemag.com interiors manager Adriana Gelves agelves@surfacemag.com Instagram: @adrigel advertising manager Justin Hyde jhyde@surfacemag.com Twitter: @thejustinhyde Instagram: @justjayman controller Nathalie Lascase accounting@surfacemag.com operations manager Taryn Watzman tw@surfacemag.com Instagram: @angstyblonde executive assistant Ondrea Venezia ovenezia@surfacemag.com Instagram: @ondreavenezia account managers Jim Horan jim@accessmediala.com Ken Stubblefield ken@focusmm.net

associate art director Jada Vogt jvogt@surfacemag.com Instagram: @jadavogt managing editor Jeremy Lehrer Twitter: @unifyingtheory senior editor Dave Kim Twitter: @therestherub Instagram: @therestherub fashion editor Justin Min jmin@surfacemag.com Instagram: @justinmin10 editorial assistant Allie Weiss aweiss@surfacemag.com Twitter: @allie_weiss Instagram: @allie_weiss digital imaging Traian Stanescu contributing editors Jeff Carvalho, Marina Cashdan, Julia Cooke, Benjamin Clymer, Natasha Edwards, Steve Kroeter, Bettina Korek, Seamus Mullen, Nonie Niesewand, Stephen J. Pulvirent, Ben Pundole, Tomas Delos Reyes, Jonathan Schultz, Ian Volner contributing photographers Robert G. Bartholot, Grant Cornett, Wendelien Daan, Henrique Gendre, Roland Halbe, Dean Kaufman, Mark Mahaney, Ogata, David Schulze, Yoshiaki Sekine interns Nicole Derienzo, Hicham Faraj, Maggie Geary, Jillian Richardson, Renae Rodriguez

chairman Eric Crown eric@surfacemag.com surface is published ten times annually by surface media llc. to subscribe, visit us online at: surfacemag.com/subscriptions or contact: 212-229-1500 subscriptions@surfacemag.com Surface Magazine 110 East 25th Street Fourth Floor New York, New York 10010 One-Year Print and iPad Subscription: $60 Single Copies (within the U.S.): $15 u.s. advertising and editorial office: advertising@surfacemag.com editorial@surfacemag.com find us online at: surfacemag.com twitter.com/surfacemag facebook.com/surfacemag surfacemag.tumblr.com instagram.com/surfacemag pinterest.com/surfacemag explore our international editions at: surface-china.cn surfaceasiamag.com contact us for licensing fees. all rights reserved. reproduction in whole or part without written permission is strictly prohibited. printed in the usa. please recycle.

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Bold knows art doesn’t need to be hung on a wall.

No Artist Editions™ Kallos glass basin is the same. Kohler designers collaborate to bring their unique vision to life, in your bathroom. kohler.com ®

© 2013 Kohler Co.

Editor’s Letter

BY SPENCER BAILEY

In Francisco Costa’s ninth-floor office, a white fluorescent light glows from the wall. A neon sign reads, from top to bottom: Collaboration, Innovation, Fearlessness. After talking with Costa (page 110), women’s creative director of Calvin Klein Collection and one of this issue’s two cover subjects, I realized the mantra isn’t just for show; Costa lives and breathes it. Calvin men’s creative director Italo Zucchelli—the other cover subject, who I interview on page 114—has a similarly ambitious, open-minded approach. Though Zucchelli’s sixth-floor office doesn’t feature any maxims, his team’s creative consciousness is represented in part by the art books that surround them: Titles featuring work

by Robert Mapplethorpe, Julius Shulman, and Le Corbusier were among the hundreds I saw on tables and shelves there.

Collaboration, innovation, fearlessness. These qualities define so much of the world Surface covers. In fact, they could be used individually or collectively to describe any story in the magazine.

Take eyewear brand Illesteva, which this September is releasing a line of shades designed in collaboration with rock star Lou Reed (page 118). Or consider Nike. This year, the innovative brand’s socklike, practically waste-free Flyknit shoe, which Costa raves about in these pages, has evolved into the Free Flyknit (pictured), with a new upper that cushions stress areas on the top of the foot.

Nike also just released the Tech Fleece collection (page 136) that invigorates the aesthetic of fleece by adding neoprene to the mix.

At Surface, we too believe in Costa’s creed. In this issue, you’ll notice six new columns—or innovations: Bar (page 46), Restaurant (page 48), On Time (page 55), Auction (page 60), Endorsement (page 70), and Object (page 168). Along with these additions, we’ve brought on a cast of influential contributing editors—or collaborators: watch aficionados Benjamin Clymer and Stephen J. Pulvirent of the website Hodinkee, trendsetter Jeff Carvalho of the style websites Selectism and Highsnobiety, Steve Kroeter of the website Designers & Books, chef and restaurateur Seamus Mullen, and mixologist Tomas Delos Reyes.

As for fearlessness, well, that’s the nature of magazine making— or any creative endeavor. Costa, in our conversation, put it best: “The spirit of fearlessness should override everything.”

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Contributors

BENJAMIN CLYMER AND STEPHEN J. PULVIRENT Benjamin Clymer and Stephen J. Pulvirent are the editors of the wristwatch website Hodinkee. The new Surface contributing editors head up the section On Time (page 55), which covers the world of watches. In this issue, Pulvirent, who is Hodinkee’s associate editor, and Clymer, the site’s founder and executive editor, write about the past, present, and future of high-end Japanese watchmaking, with a special focus on Grand Seiko—which Clymer calls “one of the unsung heroes in haute horlogerie.” Clymer is the youngest jury member of the Grand Prix d’Horlogerie de Genève—“the Oscars of watchmaking,” as he puts it.

JUSTIN MIN Before joining Surface, fashion editor Justin Min worked at BlackBook magazine and as menswear editor at Niche Media. In his new role, Min plans to “relay fashion back to the Surface reader with a perspective on design,” he says. For this issue, he selected the looks for the Product and Fashion sections (pages 36 and 72, respectively). He also helped style Calvin Klein creative directors Francisco Costa and Italo Zucchelli for the cover. “I think my most memorable contribution to the issue was rolling Francisco Costa’s sleeves,” Min says.

“He loved my technique!”

TOMAS DELOS REYES New Surface contributing editor Tomas Delos Reyes dreamed up a cocktail recipe inspired

by Berlin’s Bar Saint Jean for the inaugural Bar column (page 46). “Crafting something tangible like a drink that’s inspired by an [intangible] experience is a big part of my passion to create,” Reyes says. To come up with the recipe, he imagined what “a cocktail should taste like while sitting in the space.” Reyes, a Brooklyn transplant who grew up in San Francisco, is a partner at Jeepney, a Filipino gastropub in New York’s East Village. He also DJs at MoMA openings, shoots video art, and is currently working on a web series about cooking and mixology.

AARON HEWITT Portland-based photographer Aaron Hewitt has shot for clients including Adidas, Coca-Cola, and Microsoft, and is currently working on a multicity project for the NFL. He took the portrait of British-born Nike designer Lee Holman for the “How It’s Made” package (page 136). Of the shoot, Hewitt says, “Lee was in a great mood, still on a high from Andy Murray winning Wimbledon—the first Brit to do so in a long time. From the very first frame, he was open to ideas and focused on what I was trying to do. I can imagine that people really like working with him.” After his NFL project, Hewitt will head to Montana—“my favorite place in the world,” he says—to unwind with his wife and daughter.

GUIDO GAZZILLI Photographer Guido Gazzilli went behind the scenes of the Fendi fur atelier in Rome for the “How It’s Made” package (page 140). “I was very impressed by the long [fur-making] process, the dexterity of the artisans, and careful study behind every single coat,” he says.

Gazzilli has presented his photographs at a number of festivals around the world, including Kaunas Photo in Lithuania, the Lumix Festival for Young Photojournalism in Germany, and the New York Photo Festival. He often photographs Europe’s independent music scene, as well as other subjects relating to cultural and social issues.

SEAMUS MULLEN New York chef, restaurateur, and Surface contributing editor Seamus Mullen runs the eatery Tertulia in Manhattan’s West Village. He is currently developing a tapas and wine bar in the city’s Gotham West Market, which is scheduled to open this fall. For Surface’s debut Restaurant column (page 48), he created a recipe inspired by Christopher’s in London.

“For me, creating restaurants is just as much about creating a visual, sensory experience as it is about creating delicious food,” Mullen says. “I love how this column brings these two disciplines together.” He adds, “It was a lot of fun to come up with a dish that was purely based on creative inspiration, and not have to think about things like food cost.”

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¬

CATHERINE

´

NOE DUCHAUFOUR-LAWRANCE BERNH ARDTDESIGN.COM

Ideas in Design

IDEAS IN DESIGN

Pinho, and the studio manager, Sybil Caines, run the office. Then there’s my room. Its contents constantly change. At the moment, there’s a huge wall of old hi-fi speakers, once buried in a dump, which I’ll bring back to life via my portable Vamp Bluetooth speaker during the London Design Festival this September. All around me are experiments.

You chose “Capture” as the title for your show at Friedman Benda. Why?

I wanted to see if I could make light become a material in a physical sense.

Light is intangible, so I “capture” it and try to package it. Light doesn’t really belong to anyone. It has no borders; it escapes and changes energy. The feeling it gives is a beautiful thing. Two big pieces in the show explore the physicality of light. The first one, “Capture,” is a hand-spun aluminum dome that holds warm white light in a glowing sphere hovering overhead. The other, “White Light,” is a room within the gallery. It’s all white except for a mosaic of light, in many colors, covering the ceiling. It slowly dims and fades into a pure white light that replicates sunlight indoors. The third big piece is a cantilevered table, “Poise.” It weighs half a ton, but it began with a piece of paper. I love the shape that paper makes when set on its side, kind of curling over, with a flap at the end. To replicate that weightless fold for a table, I took a thick piece of metal and rolled it to the point where it became unstable. Usually, when I embark on a piece, I start with the idea that it won’t work. Then I persist.

It’s been more than four years from your initial concept to now. What took so long?

Getting exactly the right kind of white light from the sun at midday. The LEDs I use can give very flat and cold light, like mobile-phone screens.

Why Friedman Benda?

I didn’t rush into the art world. When I met Marc Benda—one of the founders of the gallery, along with Barry Friedman—I knew he was the guy I wanted to work with. No compromises. If he likes the idea, he’ll follow it.

Does this show signal a change in your career from designer to artist?

They’re different disciplines, but similar processes. Sometimes they blur. I think an artist is much closer to—and a bit more honest toward— creativity. Painting is about that person’s individual take on the process. Designers do chairs, lamps, tables, things that other people use.

Ultimately design is always about people. Lots of artists consider design, though—take Yves Klein and Méret Oppenheim. And designers often move into performance art or conceptual art—look at [the lighting designer] Ingo Maurer, whom I know and admire.

What are your goals for the show?

Paul Cocksedge

This London-based designer unveils “Capture,” his first-ever solo exhibit, at New York’s Friedman Benda gallery.

INTERVIEW BY NONIE NIESEWAND

Tell me about your studio.

It’s in Hackney, East London, not far from where I grew up, in Haringey. It’s a strange area, with beauty alongside poverty and a burgeoning art scene, all set in an industrial situation. The studio was a cabinetmakers’ workshop.

We moved here in 2004. Today there are at most 10 people working in it. I’ve kept the division of the spaces, with the workshop, the office, and my room. In the workshop, we manufacture on site and fulfill shop orders, make models, and do lots of research and development. Some projects are developed off site in a foundry or glass studio. Surrounded by computers and lots of storage to archive projects, my business partner, Joana

Weightlessness is very important to me. This nothingness, this void of pure light, is deceptive. The ceiling in “White Light” must weigh about three quarters of a ton. It was a challenge to make it appear to effortlessly hover overhead. It’s intangible, the opposite of overdoing things. Color in my work has a purpose, but it’s not a decorative pattern. It’s all about the precision that goes with understanding the science of pure white light.

How important is it for you to keep up with technological advances?

A lot of new design is pure technology just for the sake of it. Ideas, thinking, reasoning—this is what lies behind good design. Often, styling outperforms technology. Pieces that rely entirely upon technology can become a bit passé. You have to have a bit of romance, a narrative. Otherwise, in three or four years, chances are that time has dated the work.

What’s your creative process?

I think there is a lot of security in having a process. I’m aware, however, of the need to generate ideas. Technicalities must not spoil original thinking.

There’s a danger in knowing too much. I try to remain open, to see how a project evolves and inspires me. Most of all, I enjoy a blank piece of paper.

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PHOTO: PAUL PLEWS.

STUDIO VISIT

zucchettidesign.it

design Matteo Thun e Antonio Rodriguez. / AD: ps+a / PH: Max Zambelli

IDEAS IN DESIGN

BOOK

Formica Forever

“A portable exhibition” is how Pentagram’s Abbott Miller describes the book he designed that commemorates the 100th anniversary of Formica. With more than 400 archival images, Formica Forever (Metropolis Books) tells the story of the now-ubiquitous laminate.

Developed in 1913 as a substitute “for mica,” it was first employed in the manufacture of electrical insulation. As the understanding of Formica’s capabilities expanded beyond utility and new applications brought pattern, texture, and color “to the table,” as Miller puts it, the

material began to be used for interiors and consumer products. Essays

by Phil Patton, Alexandra Lange, and Peter York address, respectively, the history of the company, the adoption of the laminate by modern architects and designers, and how Formica encouraged the postwar ideal of an easy-upkeep world. Patton notes that Formica’s focus on design “is what separated it from its commodity rivals.” Not surprisingly, the architects and designers associated with the material make up a who’s-who list: Donald Deskey, Charles and Ray Eames, Frank Gehry, and Zaha Hadid, to name a few. —Steve Kroeter, editor-in-chief of the website Designers & Books

RETAIL

Paola Navone’s Crate & Barrel Collection PHOTO: FORMICA FOREVER, COURTESY DISTRIBUTED ART PUBLISHERS.

When Marta Calle became president of Crate & Barrel last year—only the second person in that role during the company’s 50-year history— she planned to make big changes at the chain. Once the exemplar of modern design for many Americans, Crate more recently had been lacking in luster. No longer. This September, Calle is bringing design clout to the 92-store brand by launching a 140-piece collection by Paola Navone, the versatile Italian designer whose unwavering commitment to handicrafts is evident in her work with companies like Armani Casa, Cappellini, and Molteni. The Crate & Barrel collaboration, the first of three planned collections, focuses on casual entertaining and encompasses many categories: dinnerware, glassware, flatware, table linens, lighting, rugs, dining tables, and chairs. “It’s everything you’d need for a dinner with a friend,” Navone says. The designer used colors that mirror the Mediterranean—bright blue, aqua, and a crisp white with an occasional vibrant red accent, as well as touches of black and gray. Exaggerated shapes, graphic patterns, and bold textures bring exuberance to the work. While there are three separate groups within the collection—Como, Riviera, and Mallorca—all mingle happily, linked by Navone’s confident vision. “Today, you have to produce different objects and shapes that can live together,” she says. —Arlene Hirst

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p. Paola Navone - ph. Andrea Ferrari

EMOTIONS SHOULDN’T BE DESCRIBED, THEY SHOULD BE EXPERIENCED.

| Sofa Stoccolma

IDEAS IN DESIGN

SELECT

805 Maserati Edition Speaker

The movement of air is an essential consideration in the engineering of both automobiles and loudspeakers, a connection not lost on Danny Haikin, brand director for British speaker manufacturer Bowers & Wilkins. That commonality may help explain B&W’s ongoing partnership with Maserati. Three years ago, B&W first joined forces with the Italian automaker on the 15-speaker audio system for the Maserati Quattroporte. Now the company is bringing its collaboration into the home with a special-edition loudspeaker, the 805 Maserati Edition, and later this year, corresponding headphones. “We spent a lot of time looking at Maserati’s extensive personalization options, both current and historical, as well as considering how to honor the trident [Maserati’s logo] in a really nice way,” Haikin says of the speaker. To that end, Haikin and his team applied Maserati interior traits to the speaker’s sleek, curved cabinet. One such touch is paneling from Italian veneer company Alpi that’s meant to evoke the same bird’s-eye maple offered by the carmaker. Another is black leather from Poltrona Frau on the top and front baffle surfaces. (Maserati has used Poltrona Frau as a leather supplier for more than a decade.) The result: an attractive fusion of auto and audio. “Ultimately, both brands are engineering-driven,” Haikin says, “but they wrap their engineering in beautiful, aerodynamic exteriors.” —Jeff Carvalho, partner of the websites Selectism and Highsnobiety

EXHIBIT

Nowadays, even those too young to recognize names like Tom Dixon and Philippe Starck know that design encompasses many disparate disciplines. This is resoundingly evident in the show “Bangles to Benches: Contemporary Jewelry and Design,” which opens Oct. 8 at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta (through June 8, 2014). “We want people to realize that design is a vast field that works on many levels,” says Sarah Schleuning, curator of decorative arts and design at the High. “It’s about the material, process, and intent. Whether you’re interested in architecture or a great necklace, they’re both exploring the same idea.” The show tackles this theme by presenting several examples from each designer: The romanticism patent in Joris Laarman’s Art Nouveau–inspired creditcard brooch is also referenced in the curlicues of his Ivy wall fixture.

The whimsy of Marcel Wanders’s gold-plated clown-nose necklace (pictured) reappears in his Crochet chair, which transforms the comforting familiarity of a grandma’s doilies into an ethereal and modern piece of furniture. Culled largely from the High’s extensive permanent collection, the exhibit includes works by Ron Arad, Fernando and Humberto Campana, and Marc Newson, among others. —Carren Jao

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PHOTO: HIGH MUSEUM, WOUTER VANDENBRINK.

“Bangles to Benches” at the High Museum of Art

STRI KING Geometry put at the service of surprise, disguise and fantasy. This is Dazzle, an artistic exercise by Lladró Atelier inspired by avantgarde camouflage techniques.

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IDEAS IN DESIGN

TECH

Filip Locator and Phone

Four years ago, Sten Kirkbak’s 3-year-old son, Filip, went missing at an Oslo shopping mall for 30 minutes. The incident inspired him to develop technology that would combine a cell phone, clock, and geolocator all in the guise of a brightly colored, kid-friendly wristwatch. To realize his idea, Kirkbak brought the project to Norwegian design duo Anderssen & Voll, who sought to find a delicate balance between form and function. Says Torbjørn Anderssen: “The technology we needed didn’t exist when we started. We needed to find a form that would communicate the function of the product. The biggest challenge was packing all this technology down into something that would actually fit a child’s wrist.” The tech component—a combination of GPS, celltower technology, and Wi-Fi—was developed by a team of engineers in North Carolina who created three of the world’s smallest antennas to fit the device. “It’s been inspiring to see that our design thinking is a resource to the engineering team on subjects of complex technicality, since we usually do more low-tech designs,” Anderssen says. “The easiest way to think outside the box is sometimes not knowing what the box looks like or where it is.” —Ava Burke

LIMITED EDITION

Copper Mirror Series

PHOTO: COPPER MIRROR SERIES, COURTESY GALLERY LIBBY SELLERS.

For designers Amy Hunting and Oscar Narud, roots reign supreme. The two share a studio in East London as well as a common background: Born and raised in Norway, both have lived in England for several years (he for 13, she for five), and their work puts their Scandinavian heritage on prominent display. The latest example: the duo’s Copper Mirror series of highly polished metal disks supported by slender steel rods atop blocky stone bases, on display at London’s Gallery Libby Sellers from Sept. 5 through Oct. 5. “The initial idea was really to meditate on northern [European] materials and see them in their rawest state,” Hunting says. Swiveling in semicircular metal frames, the mirrors rotate like globes of the old schoolroom variety, and not surprisingly, the designers have compared the series to a solar system. Their prime cue, however, remains their homeland. Says Narud: “All the materials have quite strong connections to Norway.” Copper, in particular, evokes the Nordic country, having been a major national export as far back as the 1700s. In actuality, though, all the materials were sourced locally in the U.K. “Everything is made quite close to us,” Hunting says, adding that the pieces are “kind of mixed-Scandinavian.” Not unlike their creators. —Ian Volner

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18-21 September 2013 | Earls Court London Register FREE at www.100percentdesign.co.uk

A Media 10 event

PRODUCT

IRON MAIDENS Metallic accents and masculine shapes lend women’s footwear a subdued kick this fall.

PHOTOS BY PETE DEEVAKUL STYLING BY JUSTIN MIN

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PRODUCT

Shoe with metal buckle detail, Michael Kors.

Opposite: Suede ankle boot with leather cap toe, Chanel.

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PRODUCT

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PRODUCT

Metallic leather pump with cut-out detail, Jil Sander.

Opposite: Metallic leather lace-up, Loeffler Randall.

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Southern Exposure

TRAVEL

Stephan Weishaupt imports bold, beautiful furniture from Brazil to Canada.

BY SPENCER BAILEY PHOTOS BY EVAN DION For Stephan Weishaupt, president and co- thing [as the furniture industry], but it’s defifounder of the Toronto-based furniture nitely something I was able to later implement.”

The timing for launching Avenue Road was brand Avenue Road, storytelling matters as much as aesthetic appeal. Every furniture ideal. Throughout the mid- to late aughts, the piece, he believes, must have a point of view, Toronto area grew rapidly—seeing a 9.2 pera sense of narrative, a seductive plotline. “I cent population increase between 2006 and get excited to show pieces not just because 2011, according to census data. With that, inthey’re beautiful,” he says, “but also because ternational money and influence came flowing in, and the once nascent, almost nonexistent they have a story behind them.”

From Sept. 26 to March 29, 2014, design community there flourished. “When Weishaupt’s storytelling savvy will take the I moved here, there wasn’t much of a design form of an exhibition, “4U from Brazil,” at scene. There were only a handful of stores,” the brand’s flagship showroom in Toronto’s Weishaupt says. “Our current customers used Leslieville district. The follow-up to a show to shop outside of Toronto. They would go to on Brazilian design he presented five years New York, to Paris, to Milan and buy things. I ago, “4U” will display roughly 30 pieces by think we all sort of evolved together.”

As Toronto continues to grow, so does the four designers. On view will be re-editions of work by the late architect Oscar Niemeyer, brand. Avenue Road opened a 5,000-squareplus new and old work by designers Paulo foot showroom in New York last year, and Werneck, Carlos Motta, and Jorge Zalszupin. Weishaupt plans to introduce showrooms in The pieces, some of which will be sold in a Miami and western Canada in the year ahead. limited run only, were manufactured in Brazil Now, by bringing Brazilian design to Canada, for Avenue Road at factories Weishaupt has he’s extending the brand’s—and Toronto’s— global outreach. “People love the fact that it’s been working with for several years.

Weishaupt’s fascination with Brazilian different and it’s not something that you typidesign began about seven years ago, when cally see up here,” he says of Brazilian design, he first traveled there for what he calls “a adding, “You have to stimulate your audience discovery trip.” What he found—a vibrant, a bit to get the conversation going. You need colorful culture full of bold and sensuous to emotionally stir it up sometimes. Brazilian forms—hooked him. “I discovered its archi- stuff—the color, the philosophy, and the heavy tectural landscape, Niemeyer, and the whole volumes—is something that not everybody rehistory,” he says. “There’s a lot more design sponds to. I want to open up their eyes.”

Toronto has a long way to go to reach down there than one would think. And I saw great manufacturing—the qualities were the status of New York, Paris, or Milan in incredible.” He now travels to Brazil a few terms of influence, but it is quickly becoming one of the world’s top design destinatimes a year, both for business and pleasure.

Weishaupt grew up in Munich, Germany, tions. Frank Gehry, who grew up in the city, and lived in the country until 10 years ago, completed the new Art Gallery of Ontario when the automotive company he worked for in 2008—his first project in Canada—and sent him to Toronto to help grow its business just announced a trio of skyscrapers there, in Canada. The experience prepared him well set for completion in 2023; the city is also for launching Avenue Road a few years later. home to new game-changing buildings by “The automotive business is very design-driv- Daniel Libeskind, MAD Architects, and Alen,” he says. “Technology is one side of it, but sop Architects. “In Canada, there are only design is a major component. And I worked in three or four big cities and the rest is just marketing, so I learned a lot about how to tell a woods,” Weishaupt says. “I would definitestory and position the brand. It’s not the same ly say Toronto is the design capital.”

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TRAVEL

STEPHAN WEISHAUPT’S INSIDER’S GUIDE TO TORONTO

01 The Italian eatery Terroni was founded in 1992 and now has three Toronto outposts, plus two more in L.A. This past summer, the owner, Cosimo Mammoliti, opened the café Il Forno del Sud (pictured) next to Terroni’s original location in the city’s Queen West neighborhood. Weishaupt enjoys Terroni’s oyster mushrooms, pasta, and paninis, but he’s especially impressed by the restaurant’s branding. “Everything from the menu cards to the in-house magazine is really well done,” he says. 716 Queen Street West; 416-5040320; terroni.com

02 Weishaupt’s friend Troy Seidman runs the midcentury-design gallery Caviar 20. “He has a great eye, great sensibility,” Weishaupt says of Seidman, who has previously worked at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Montreal and Sotheby’s. “His work is very different from what I do, because he’s in collectibles. His gallery is something you would see in a place like New York, and yet he brought it here.” Sold pieces have included a 2005 Gaetano Pesce vase and a Lucite sculpture by Dorothy Thorpe. 416-704-1720; caviar20.com

01

03 Canada’s design museum, Design Exchange, is located in the former Toronto Stock Exchange building which is situated at the base of a Mies van der Rohe high-rise addition. Weishaupt, who is on the museum’s board, admits the 1930s Art Deco space “may not be the most suitable for a museum, but it’s certainly interesting.” On view through Sept. 15 is a retrospective of work by the French shoe designer Christian Louboutin.

234 Bay Street; 416-363-6121; dx.org

04 Weishaupt describes the Four Seasons Toronto, designed by local powerhouse firm Yabu Pushelberg— which has also done pieces for Avenue Road—as “definitely one of the top hotels to go to.” He adds, “The design reflects the brand values of Four Seasons very well. It’s not avant garde, and I don’t think it’s overly contemporary. There’s a richness to it.” 60 Yorkville Avenue; 416-964-0411; fourseasons.com/toronto 02

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04

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HOTEL

Stay to Play

A lively beach motel brings collaborative energy and eclectic art to New York’s Rockaway Beach.

In this column, we ask Ben Pundole, founder of the website A Hotel Life, to pick a new hotel that offers the best of hospitality design today.

BY ALLIE WEISS “A one-day holiday.” The slogan of the once-beloved Playland Amusement Park in the Rockaways, New York, resonated with the founders of the new Playland Motel.

“My friends and I became a bit disillusioned with Montauk and the Hamptons becoming very scene-y,” says Robin Scott, a cofounder of the motel, which now occupies a 100-year-old building across the street from where the park stood until 1985. “The proximity of the Rockaways to New York City—you can get out here in a 45-minute

PHOTO: CARI VUONG.

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drive—was really important to us.”

Once an area of abandoned buildings and a sketchy beachfront, the Rockaways have bounded back in recent years as a younger crowd has embraced the area as a weekend destination. Local draws include the five boroughs’ only surfing beach, a beloved group of boardwalk food vendors, and easy transport to the area: Options include a weekend ferry, the subway, and the Rockabus, a chartered bus, complete with DJ soundtracks, that leaves from the city’s Williamsburg and Lower East Side neighborhoods.

The Playland team envisioned a no-frills beach motel made up of recycled materials and bright colors—an inviting destination for an impromptu voyage out of the city.

But a few months after buying the building, which previously housed two popular restaurants, Hurricane Sandy rolled in. “We had five feet of water in it—it took a good beating,” Scott says. “But we feel that restoring an old favorite of the neighborhood has been a good way for the community to see that things can bounce back as good as, if not better than, they were before.” > A room designed by Robbie & Apples with a canvas teepee as its centerpiece.

HOTEL

Rooms The idea of community shapes Playland’s design, which was the collaborative effort of a number of New York creatives. Scott, along with co-founder Jamie Wiseman, partnered with Diego Galarza and Eduardo Suarez of Brooklyn restaurants El Almacen and Rosarito’s Fish Shack, and commissioned 12 artists and designers, including Simon Spurr, Fede Saenz, and Design Department, to each design one of the rooms. (Full disclosure: Surface contributing editor Ben Pundole designed a room with artist Jessica Baker.)

The rooms form an eclectic mix, and feature everything from forest-print curtains to a red ceiling with paint dripping down the wall. The only creative restraint, according to menswear designer Simon Spurr: an $800 budget. A room by Robbie & Apples showcases a large bamboo and canvas teepee made by the startup Wave-Wam that’s splattered with bright blue paint on the inside. “We wanted to keep the teepee and the room simple and minimal, resembling the unassuming outside of Playland. But then you walk in and discover the inside of the teepee, and the madness inside the motel,” says designer Robbie Owens-Russo.

Contrasting color schemes show up again in Spurr’s room, a two-tone minimalist space that pits stark white against bonsai green—a design Spurr says reflects the juxtaposition between the city and the beach. Like the reclaimed Virginia barnwood that makes

up the motel’s facade, reused and recycled materials are a significant feature of many rooms. Saenz, one of the motel’s creative directors, built his room around found objects such as wooden organ pipes salvaged from a church and leftover cuts from a woodshop.

Saenz is also responsible for the bursts of hot pink that run through the hotel. (The same pink is used in the Playland logo and the venue’s plastic drinking cups.)

Restaurant and Backyard Furnished with tables from an old diner in Pennsylvania, lighting from a former allgirls school in upstate New York, and wood flooring from a Lutheran church in Brooklyn, the Playland Diner serves a menu of locally sourced fare. Out back, Playland Pizza shells out slices from its brick oven. Plastic chairs, umbrellas, and Ping-Pong tables create a relaxed hangout environment. In the reception area, a boutique sells Playland’s custom fashion brand, Weeeah, a mix of beach-appropriate sunglasses, T-shirts, and Hawaiian shirts designed by a group of eight artists, five of whom also did rooms.

The Playland, says Scott, is meant to evoke 1950s motels, which had a “futuristic idealism” about them. When the Playland amusement park was in full swing in that era, it had an energetic spirit that Scott and Wiseman sought to capture. “We wanted to do a departure from a lot of the beach brands that we feel have gone stale,” Scott says. “We wanted something dynamic.”

BEN PUNDOLE’S TAKE ON THE PLAYLAND:

PHOTO: CARI VUONG.

“Playland is not for the faint of heart. It’s created by the young and the restless for the young and reckless. The music’s loud—and exceptionally good—due to programming by sound director Liv Spencer. The drinks flow fast and fruity. Playland’s 12 guest rooms are all shapes and sizes, and they’re designed by a roster of talented artists and designers, from local Rockaways painter Pat Conlon, to menswear designer Simon Spurr, to blogger and designer Athena Calderone. (Oh, and look out for room No. 9, called “If My Yacht Dreams Collided With a Wes Anderson Movie,” by yours truly.) You can get to Playland on the A train. It runs late, which means you can, too.”

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HOTEL

PHOTOS: CHEYENNE BOSCO.

(THIS PAGE, TOP TO BOTTOM) Plastic lounge chairs and Ping-Pong tables in the backyard create a casual hangout space. The Playland Diner, which features furnishings salvaged from sites around New York state.

(OPPOSITE) A room designed by the motel’s creative director, Fede Saenz.

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BAR

Cocktail by Tomas Delos Reyes INSPIRED BY BAR SAINT JEAN

There’s a dominant masculinity about this space that I imagine will make it attractive to a woman’s eye, given the lighting scheme, the organic texture of the bar, and how it’s designed to really showcase the bartender. This cocktail takes the sensibility of a female artist and wraps it in an air of masculinity.

1 1 ½ 1 1

½ounce Bacardi Superior rum ounce Aperol ounce lemon juice teaspoon superfine sugar spray of Laphroaig

Combine first four ingredients into a shaker. Add ice and shake hard.

Spray cocktail glass with Laphroaig, then strain ingredients into the glass.

Slice a lemon peel. Squeeze it over the top and drop in.

Tomas Delos Reyes is a mixologist and partner of the gastropub Jeepney in New York’s East Village.

Repurposed materials and subtle colors make this tiny Berlin bar a comfortable wintertime watering hole.

When French native Johann Courgibet first envisioned Bar Saint Jean, which opened earlier this year in the heart of Berlin’s Mitte district, he wanted to bring a touch of Parisian after-hours cocktail culture to Germany.

The entrepreneur commissioned 32-year-old architect Thilo Reich to create the intimate space. Though he was constrained by a tight budget, Reich sought to build something timeless. “That’s why I worked a lot with natural, real materials,” he says. The centerpiece of the bar is a counter made of stacked wooden ship planks, which, before being stripped of tar, were used as a fence on a farm in France; the artistic assemblage lends the space a feeling of rustic charm.

Reich worked with a palette of muted grays, greens, and browns to define the conspiratorial air of the bar, while a rusted-metal side table — made with pieces found during early-morning searches through scrap heaps around the city — complements the owner’s red beard and hair. “Courgibet has a very strong charisma and appearance, and the

bar is meant to be something that really suits him,” Reich says. A twisted metal ladder, also found in a scrap heap, is lit from below and hovers on the wall behind Courgibet as he tends the bar.

Other elements in the cozy, cocoonlike room are steel lights by La Lampe Gras, steel-and-wood bar stools by Atelier Haussmann, and anthracite oak flooring. For Reich, the space helps make the social dreariness of Berlin during the winter months more bearable. “The activity of a whole city can fall asleep immediately, and I think that’s a pity,” says Reich, but Bar Saint Jean “is the perfect hibernation.”

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PHOTO: DRINK, LESLEY UNRUH.

In the Raw

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Second Act

RESTAURANT

An established restaurant in the heart of London’s Theaterland presents a glitzy revamp.

BY ALLIE WEISS Architecture firm De Matos Ryan’s update of the London restaurant Christopher’s has given the theater-district eatery, which first opened in 1991, a new guise. The firm’s design uses elements of theatrical staging to transport diners to a captivating world separate from the everyday. “We’re not trying to reflect reality, but rather create a more imaginative or glamorous one,” Jose De Matos, one of the firm’s two partners, says of the space. That design sensibility begins in the foyer, which features a gilded rotunda set on pilasters—part of the original 1860s building that the firm restored. A grand staircase connects the restaurant’s three floors.

Next to the ground-floor entrance is the Martini Bar, which the firm fitted with a large, geometrically cut mirror and warm lighting by Delightfull. “The barmen are very much the performers in the bar,” De Matos says. “They’ve been given this very incredible stage, which is reminiscent of a cut crystal tumbler or decanter where the drink is contained within.” A long onyx table en-

courages mingling, while a velvet-ceilinged lower space with leather banquettes suits private conversation. A string of hanging tubular lights animates the space.

Upstairs in the dining area, gilded modern paneling brings the glimmer from the downstairs bar into the room. Golden velvet upholstery on custom-designed furnishings is set against gray walls—part of Christopher’s recurring palette—and windows with views of the Waterloo Bridge offer another spectacle. “The views are quite unusual for London,” De Matos says. “You could almost, with certain glances, imagine that you’re in New York.” In the basement, a private clubroom features a brass-clad bar and red velvet curtains. The entire space, in De Matos’s eyes, is meant to provide an escape from mundane concerns. “Even though we’re in an age of economic turmoil, there’s still a lot of optimism and enthusiasm in London,” he says. “Every so often you need to be able to go and indulge yourself.” >

The main dining room on the second floor of Christopher’s.

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Dish by Seamus Mullen INSPIRED BY CHRISTOPHER’S

Much as the design of the space is tonal grays with lavish, golden upholstery complemented by fleeting moments of color, this salad is layered in white and off-white colors and textures. It features vegetables, both cooked and raw, and the overtly decadent caviar of yesteryear is replaced with the approachable— and still exquisite—trout roe of today.

Serves Four

1 4 ½ 1 1

½1

2

1 ½ 1 2 1 1 1 2

head cauliflower, cut into 1-inch floret pieces tablespoons unsalted butter teaspoon freshly ground coriander seed small celeriac, peeled, trimmed, and set aside in a bowl with lemon water bunch white asparagus, trimmed, peeled, and cut into 2-inch batons medium-sized artichokes, peeled, trimmed, and set aside in a bowl with celeriac handful of frisée cup Arbequina olive oil tablespoons Champagne vinegar clove garlic, finely grated teaspoon honey teaspoon Dijon mustard tablespoons trout roe kosher salt fresh cracked pepper zest and juice of two lemons small handful of basil leaves, lightly torn

Working with a mandoline or sharp knife, slice half of the cauliflower florets into paper-thin slices. Set aside in a large mixing bowl. Using a vegetable peeler, slice the celeriac as thinly as possible. Combine with the cauliflower. In a large sauté pan, heat butter over medium-high heat for about 4 minutes or until it begins to foam and turn brownish, giving off a nutty aroma. Add unsliced cauliflower florets to the pan and cook until golden in color, about 3 to 5 minutes.

Remove to a plate lined with a paper towel and season with kosher salt, fresh pepper, and ground coriander. Add a quick run of a lemon across the zester.

Set aside to cool. Wipe out the sauté pan with a paper towel and add olive oil, then return to the stove and reduce burner to medium-low. With the mandoline, slice one of the artichokes as thinly as possible, then toss with a squeeze of fresh lemon juice and combine with celeriac and raw cauliflower. Cut the remaining artichoke into small pieces and combine with the white asparagus batons in the olive oil, gently cooking them until both are tender, about 6 minutes on low heat. Remove the artichokes and asparagus from heat and allow them to cool in the oil. Once cooled, remove from the oil (reserving the cooking oil) and add to the bowl with the cauliflower-celeriac mixture. In a mixing bowl, whisk together vinegar, honey, grated garlic, and Dijon mustard. Slowly drizzle in the reserved cooking oil from the artichokes, whisking as you drizzle it in.

Add the caramelized cauliflower florets and leaves of frisee to the large mixing bowl; season with salt, pepper, and the juice and zest of two lemons. Carefully blend together. Using a rubber spatula, gently fold in the vinaigrette until fully incorporated. Finish with a sprinkling of trout roe and fresh basil.

Seamus Mullen is the chef and owner of the restaurant Tertulia in New York’s West Village.

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PHOTO: LESLEY UNRUH.

RESTAURANT

TRANSPORT

Adrian van Hooydonk shakes up BMW design with the purely electric i3.

Generation i

BY JONATHAN SCHULTZ

Of all the impenetrable jargon employed by “This gave us a very large opening.” Indeed, car designers, “monovolume” is mercifully with double doors swung wide, the i3’s cabin simple. Whereas the common three-box appears more spacious than any other comdesign is patterned on a preschooler’s no- pact hatchback.

BMW i is envisioned as a sub-brand, with tion of a car—short boxes on the ends, tall box in the middle—monovolumes are one- a design vocabulary of its own. Van Hooybox designs, the kind evidenced by the new donk notes with some pride that BMW’s traBMW i3, in which a single smooth arc can ditional kidney grille is among the few allube traced from the front bumper over the sions to the mother ship. But he chafes at the idea that the i3—and the i8 sports car comroof to the back.

However uncomplicated they are in prin- ing next year—subscribe to some codified ciple, monovolumes are fiendishly tricky to idea of “eco” or “green” automotive design.

“I don’t think there is a common notion of build well, owing to the variable loads and pressures that must be distributed across what a ‘green’ car should look like,” he says. the car’s body. BMW, though, had a few aces “I think that field is wide open.”

Unlike other BMW production cars beup its sleeve for the i3, the brand’s first massmarket electric vehicle. For one, Adrian fore it, the i3 reflects a materials-led apvan Hooydonk, the company’s 49-year-old proach to design. Apart from the structural Dutch design chief, who has eased BMW use of carbon fiber, the i3’s seat covers inback into the business of making handsome tegrate post-consumer plastic, and the incars, following a decade of bulbous shapes strument panel is made from a rigid material derived from the kenaf plant. Though favored by his predecessor, Chris Bangle.

“We are at the beginning of what we sharp lines typically aren’t one of BMW’s feel is a new kind of mobility,” van Hooy- cues, van Hooydonk says the i3’s thermodonk says. “And for that, we needed a new plastic body panels afforded his team an uncommonly malleable surface to achieve kind of car.”

The i3 is built around a skeleton made the sharp crease running at door-handle from carbon fiber–reinforced plastic, or level along the car’s flanks.

Regardless of body color, the hood will alCFRP, which possesses all the tensile strength of high-grade steel but weighs ways be painted a black, shiny lacquer, “like roughly half as much. The i3 costs $41,350, a modern cell phone,” van Hooydonk says. a remarkable feat, since other cars featuring In the vein of the traditional floating white this architecture cost upward of $200,000. roof on a Mini Cooper, this element may The material allowed van Hooydonk and his become a hallmark of the i brand. But van Hooydonk is in no mood to talk “heritage” team some rare luxuries.

“The CFRP meant we could do away or “classic” just yet.

“We wanted to communicate that this car with the B-pillar,” he says, referencing the structural column traditionally found be- was modern,” he says. “The design should tween the front- and rear-passenger doors. indicate that the future starts now.”

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ON TIME

Eastern Promise

Beyond Seiko’s mass-market appeal lies a line of timepieces that could give Swiss watchmakers pause.

In this column, Benjamin Clymer, founder and executive editor of the website Hodinkee, and Stephen J. Pulvirent, associate editor of Hodinkee, unveil the intricacies and trends of the world of fine watchmaking.

BY STEPHEN J. PULVIRENT Not all great watches are Swiss, and not all great watch collectors are European. Some of the most astute watch buyers in the world seldom see the hills and valleys surrounding Geneva, Lausanne, and Zurich—the centurieslong homes of high-end watchmaking. The Japanese are deeply dedicated to fine watches and often launch collecting trends years before they hit Europe or the U.S.—and no watch is more lauded in Japan than the Grand Seiko.

The name “Seiko” is mostly associated with the accessibly priced, utilitarian quartz watches available at department-store counters across America. But those mass-produced timekeepers and the handcrafted Grand Seiko line have little in common. The latter embodies a level of craft reserved for custom, meticulously built watches.

The limited-edition Grand Seiko 44GS Historical Collection in stainless steel.

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Seiko timepieces were launched 100 years ago, but it wasn’t until 1960 that the Grand Seiko was released. While the earliest Grand Seiko models are coveted by collectors, it’s the 1967 piece known as reference 44GS that’s widely considered the archetype for the precise line we know today. “Grand Seiko design expresses all that is Japanese,” says Yosh Kawada, president of Seiko Corporation of America. “It is understated and sophisticated, while its quality is immediately evident.”

The 44GS was originally conceived by a young employee of the company who felt that Seiko needed to create its own language of luxury watchmaking, rather than focusing only on technical achievements. The model features a faceted case, not quite round and not quite tonneau shaped; each facet on the integrated lugs reflects light differently and gives the case visual depth. Inside the case, crisp dials and hands with razor-sharp edges constitute a look that’s rigorously precise but not austere.

The 44GS is so important to the brand that earlier this year, in honor of Seiko’s centenary, the company announced a limitededition tribute to this benchmark of Japanese watchmaking. While many marks are releasing vintage-inspired watches in larger sizes and with modern updates, Grand Seiko decided to remain as true to the iconic watch as possible.

The case is still the same restrained 37.9 millimeters in diameter, the caseback features the Grand Seiko seal instead of a sapphire window typically found on modern watches, and the

ON TIME

movement is a manually wound Grand Seiko caliber 9S64. Worldwide, only 700 iterations will be made in stainless steel, and an additional 70 will be available in yellow, rose, and white gold. The series releases in September.

There’s more to Grand Seiko than the 44GS, though. Throughout the ’60s and ’70s, Grand Seiko was constantly innovating with new movement concepts. Examples include the 1968 61GS, which introduced Hi-Beat—a movement with a balance that vibrates 10 times per second, improving the watch’s accuracy over time—and the 1970 56GS, which houses a 4.5-millimeter-thin automatic movement.

Throughout these developments, however, the watchmaker has had a singular goal for the GS. “Grand Seiko has strived to be the very best of Seiko by adhering to a set of simple principles: Be more accurate, more durable, more legible, and easier to wear than any other watch in the world,” Kawada says.

Grand Seiko has always held its movements to extremely high standards. The first of its line was marked “chronometer” right on the dial, indicating the precision of its timekeeping mechanism. Later, in 1998, Grand Seiko developed a movement-certification process more stringent than the Official Swiss Chronometer Testing Institute’s verification; the latter is required for a Swiss watch to bear the label “chronometer.” Meeting the Grand Seiko standard requires 17 days of testing on each movement to ensure it varies by no more than -3/+5 seconds per day, while the Swiss institute’s allows up to -4/+6 second variations.

Seiko also does additional tests to assess how the movement performs at human body temperatures and in positions that watches are typically left in when wearers take them off.

This rigorous testing is done to prevent the scenario in which a watch is highly accurate in a laboratory yet wildly variant on the wrist.

To push accuracy beyond what a traditional mechanical watch can achieve, Seiko developed an entirely new movement system called Spring Drive, which first appeared in a Grand Seiko in 2004. The most fundamental components of a mechanical watch are a spring-barrel power source and a mechanical escapement with a hairspring, balance wheel, and levers.

Spring Drive retains the mechanical power

element while using a quartz-based regulator, placing accuracy and longevity as the two top priorities. It has even better accuracy than a quartz movement—+/-15 seconds per month—and doesn’t need a battery. In 2010, a Spring Drive chronograph won the Grand Prix d’Horlogerie de Genève award for best sports watch—the first time the prestigious award didn’t go to a European watchmaker.

These developments were once confined to a Japanese market, but three years ago Seiko made the watch available in the U.S. Collectors caught on quickly. Says Kawada: “For 50 years, Grand Seiko has stood for the same simple yet exacting ideals. And so it will be for the next 50 years and beyond.” To watch lovers, that just means more of Grand Seiko — not only in Japan, but all over the world.

BENJAMIN CLYMER ON THE ART OF FINE JAPANESE WATCHMAKING:

& Söhne watches in the world has been assembled.

I knew all of this as I went into Seiko’s Micro Artist Studio in Shiojiri, where the absolute finest of the megamanufacturer’s watches are designed, assembled, and finished. What I saw there, however, changed my perspective on not only Japanese watchmaking and collecting, but on haute horlogerie in general. Inside this tiny studio tucked under a stairwell, I got to personally experience Seiko’s Credor Spring Drive Minute Repeater— the very first minute repeater to come out of Japan (the mechanism sounds a pattern of chimes to indicate the time and was originally created so wearers could know what time it was in the dark). As soon as I saw the $400,000 timepiece, I knew it was something special.

The level of finishing was on par with the absolute finest of Switzerland. And the sound? It still rings in my ear and

“The Japanese mind is a collector’s mind,” the famed designer Hiroshi Fujiwara once told me in his Roppongi Hills home. It was our first meeting, and he had already left me duly awestruck after showing me an assortment of incredibly rare vintage Rolex Cosmographs and complicated double-signed Patek Philippes. Fujiwara’s personal collection is exemplary of Japanese watch buyers’ tastes. Japan is where many revered brands first gain notoriety; it’s where the prodigious Swiss watchmaker F.P. Journe chose to open his first boutique in 2003, where a significant percentage of Philippe Dufour’s legendary Simplicity line was sold, and where the largest collection of A. Lange

Grand Seiko Mechanical Hi-Beat 36,000 (left) and the limited-edition Grand Seiko 44GS Historical Collection in stainless steel.

is, to me, the repeater by which all others are measured.

The gongs of this 42.8-millimeter rose-gold watch are handmade by Munemichi Myochin, a 52nd-generation (yes, 52nd!) craftsman specializing in soft iron that was first and most famously used in samurai armor and now wind chimes. This razor-thin metal generates a sound that is light, crisp, and elegant, in stark contrast to the heavy, rich chimes of traditional Swiss minute repeaters. This regionally produced metal, along with the innovative Spring Drive architecture and the finest Swiss-style finishing, has helped put Seiko atop the horological arena when it comes to the most complicated of high-end mechanisms. If the Credor Minute Repeater is any indication of what we can expect in coming years, we’re about to enter a whole new era of Japanese horlogerie.

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ON TIME

The self-winding Tudor Heritage Black Bay reference 79220R, which features a unidirectional rotatable bezel and domed sapphire crystal.

were used by the French and U.S. navies— while others, like the Advisor and Heritage Chrono, are updates of classic Tudor models.

Looking to its archive hasn’t kept Tudor from pushing things forward. The Pelagos diver, for example, combines the classic Tudor “snowflake” hands with a brushed titanium case and matte black ceramic bezel, and finishes off with an innovative titanium bracelet clasp that expands and contracts to compensate for changes in wrist diameter when diving. The Tudor returns stateside with responsive clasp is one of those details that solves a common problem so elegantly that hardy, stylish dive watches it’s surprising it hasn’t existed for decades. that colorfully update the Tudor isn’t afraid to add some color to its watches, either. Red, blue, and orange all brand’s history. feature prominently, and touches like handwoven fabric straps, as well as leather straps and metal bracelets, add a bit of extra charm.

During a 17-year absence from the U.S. market, Not only do Tudor watches offer a great value Swiss brand Tudor has introduced a number of proposition, they’re also just plain fun to wear. extremely popular watches that Americans have And for Americans, the timepieces are now had to either buy overseas or lust after from easier to get. —S.P. afar. But this September the brand is returning to the country in a big way, with a portfolio that includes some of the most distinctive dive watches and chronographs on the market.

Tudor has created a niche for itself in the watch world by offering a range of technically innovative, robust, and stylish products within the $2,500 to $5,000 price bracket. Some models, like the Heritage Black Bay, draw abstractly on Tudor’s old Submariner dive watches—which

Coming (Back) to America

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Helter Shelter

ART

Tuning out the noise of the art world, artist Matthew Day Jackson streamlines the gallery experience.

BY MARINA CASHDAN PORTRAIT BY MARK MAHANEY After Sept. 8, if you tap on the steel door of 259 Banker Street in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, you might be greeted by the artist Matthew Day Jackson with a tray of cookies, a cool drink, and an invitation into the one-room gallery space, appropriately named Bunker 259. The location wasn’t designed as a bunker, but given that it’s a windowless irregular rectangle, it was named for one. “But not by me,” says Jackson, 39. Mario Diacono, an artist who is a friend of Jackson’s, thought of the moniker when Jackson and his wife said they wanted to create a more intimate, salonlike gallery.

Inside the space, you’ll find a single artwork and an accompanying text to study.

“This was inspired by some projects that I was part of with Mario in Boston, where he would show one piece of art and write about it,” Jackson says. “We asked Mario to do the same thing here—to create a space where you can just look at one thing. The thing is that we have infinite bandwidth [to focus], and here visitors will be able sit down and

listen, maybe even for hours.” It may be the gallery antidote to today’s TED-watching, bite-size-everything Internet culture.

“Bunker” is a familiar term for the California-born, Washington-raised Jackson, who has constructed actual modern-day fallout shelters that are now in private collections, like his 2010 work “Second Home,” owned by the French couple Steven and Chiara Rosenblum. “What I do as an artist is essentially like creating a bunker—creating an immersive [environment] in which to experience a work,” he says.

September is an eventful month for the artist. In addition to his Brooklyn space, he’s opening a solo show on Sept. 6 at Hauser & Wirth’s colossal gallery in Manhattan's Chelsea neighborhood, which will feature paintings, sculpture, and an automobileturned-installation.

Over the past decade, Jackson has been renowned for his range of mixed-media works that explore notions of life and death, science, space, and boundaries—often in-

corporating parts from planes, cars, and even his own anatomy. With the launch of his own art space—and soon, a production company—he’s pushing into all realms of the arts, including design. “A lot of my ambition in terms of where I’d like the work to go is in furniture design,” he says. Based on his table and chairs at Hauser & Wirth’s booth at Frieze New York last May—the chairs made from B-29 aircraft seats and tabletop replicating the landscape of lunar landings—it’s hard not to be intrigued by what the next chapter of Jackson’s career will bring.

Artist Matthew Day Jackson in his Brooklyn studio holding “Trophy,” a replica of a human head he created for his upcoming show at Hauser & Wirth in New York’s Chelsea neighborhood.

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AUCTION

Making an Entrance

In 1949, the French government commissioned the multidisciplinary architect Jean Prouvé to design colonial housing in the Congo. But the houses, referred to as Les Maisons Tropicales, weren’t particularly comfortable in the steamy African climate. “Nobody wanted to live in them; they were actually very hot,” says Alexander Heminway, the New York design director of Phillips auction house. “And they didn’t suit the tastes of French bureaucrats.”

Prouvé designed the prefabricated houses to include half a dozen sets of porthole-clad doors, which would have served as both functional entrances and aesthetic adornments; the design was replicated in the decorative wall paneling to be placed along the structures’ exteriors. As it happens, some of the doors never left Prouvé’s workshop in Nancy, France—ultimately, only three houses were shipped to Africa. “In essence, these are dead stock,” Heminway says. In June, one set of the doors sold at Phillips for $149,000. The sale showed that Prouvé remains a big draw. Phillips sold one of the designer’s dining tables for nearly $300,000 in April, and Christie’s auctioned a full Maison Tropicale home to hotelier André

Balazs for just shy of $5 million in 2008—the highest Prouvé sale ever. “With the doors, you’re owning a bit of Prouvé architecture without the commitment of owning a house,” Heminway says.

The two-inch-thick, painted steel doors, previously owned by a U.S. corporate collection that acquired them in 1991, were sold to an anonymous buyer. Though they’re intended to be functional, Heminway notes that the prior owner displayed them as sculpture. “We are hoping the buyer will use them as doors,” he says. “Because of the sharp color—there’s a bright green on the reverse side and blue glass—you could get away with hanging them on the wall. But I think it’s kind of pretentious to divorce them from their utility.”

A set of never-used doors designed by Jean Prouvé for houses in Africa show a strong sale at Phillips.

BY ALLIE WEISS

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PHOTOS:TOM HAYES.

Books Dixonary (Violette) highlights the resourceful and often deeply personal creative process of British industrial designer Tom Dixon. Images of seemingly random objects and places are presented opposite short narratives.

Readers can lift these story pages to reveal the designs that the items or scenes inspired.

Some revelations are startling: Who would’ve thought, for instance, that his celebrated Jack light was prompted by a traffic bollard?

While the typical architecture monograph consists of project descriptions and idealized images produced or commissioned by a firm, this debut compendium from Rotterdambased MVRDV (Nai010) relies almost entirely on the impressions of users and outside observers. World-renowned projects like the Expo 2000 Netherlands Pavilion and the VPRO office park are examined through various public perspectives.

Landscapes—lush, austere, or aflame— abound in Ametsuchi (Aperture), the latest book from Japanese photographer Rinko Kawauchi. The controlled-burn farming technique known as yakihata features prominently on its pages, and Kawauchi brings a ghostly, paintlike aura to blazing fields in southern Japan. Also fascinating are the pages themselves, bound in a variation of traditional Japanese bookbinding.

In 1977, the German architect Oswald Mathias Ungers released a manifesto titled The City in the City—Berlin: The Green Archipelago with a set of proposals for transforming Berlin into urban islands. The pamphlet, now republished by Lars Müller, was penned by Ungers and a number of his students, among them a 32-year-old Rem Koolhaas, who argued that urban population shrinkage called for a “weeding out” of substandard areas.

There are people who find the destruction of books, even in the name of art and design, to be sacrilegious, but this survey may convert some naysayers. Art Made From Books (Chronicle) brings together the work of more than 25 artists who’ve put everyone from Thackeray to Derrida under their knives, brushes, sewing needles, and a variety of other tools. Included are Su Blackwell’s intricate landscape dioramas and Jeremy May’s jewelry.

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Material In this column, we ask Material Connexion vice president Andrew Dent, Ph.D., to select one innovation set to influence what designers will be using tomorrow.

BY CAROLYN STANLEY PHOTO BY TOM HAYES

3-D printing has come a long way since its inception in the 1980s, rapidly gaining a foothold in manufacturing and garnering attention as an open-source platform for tech-minded DIY enthusiasts. Until recently, however, most domestic printers were limited to producing models from thermoplastics. With CC Products’ Laywoo-D3 material, a surprising new ingredient has been added to the mix: wood. The brainchild of Kai Parthy, a Cologne, Germany–based product developer—“My friends say ‘inventor,’” he says—the filament is the first wood-based composite that can be used in fused deposition modeling (a category of additive manufacturing).

A blend of 40 percent recycled wood and binding polymers, Laywoo-D3 is available in diameters of 1.75 and 3 millimeters and can be

used to create objects that reproduce the look, feel, and even the smell of natural wood. To make something with the material, the fibrous coil is fed into a printer and then deposited in successive layers corresponding to a computer rendering, with each layer fusing to the one below it. Perhaps the composite’s most distinctive feature is how it reacts to variations in printing temperature (between 347°F and 482°F). Lower temperatures result in a lighter color similar to pine, while warmer ones generate a darker shade. This property can even be manipulated to produce a natural-looking tree-ring effect.

After printing, objects have a texture similar to roughened medium-density fiberboard, but they can be sanded, treated, or painted, depending on the desired finish.

While Laywoo-D3’s visual effect is striking, Parthy’s original intent wasn’t to replicate the look of wood. As an inventor with an eclectic background—he’s spent time as a shoemaker, a technician in a music club, and a tow-truck driver—he was drawn to 3-D printing. “I needed cheaper prototypes,” he says, “but to use rapid prototyping services was too expensive, and of course I wanted to make it myself.” In his garage, he began experimenting and creating his own

materials to suit his needs. “I realized that with today’s materials like ABS”—acrylonitrile butadiene styrene, a type of thermoplastic commonly used in 3-D printing—“I couldn’t print objects bigger than 5 to 10 centimeters. Bigger objects would warp.”

Initially using kitchen appliances such as a blender, oven, and waffle iron, Parthy tried out different components to add to the polymer in search of materials that would perform better.

He tested chalk, glass beads, and titanium dioxide before landing on Laywoo-D3’s key ingredient. “I came across wood fibers that gave me fine and interesting results,” he says. The material’s resistance to warping makes it ideal for a variety of projects: model planes, jewelry, and decorative items such as boxes, vases, and figurines.

However, despite the positive response to his innovation, he’s quick to defend the natural material it simulates. “You can print out your prototypes, make your concept-studies visible with Laywoo-D3,” he says, “but real wood is more interesting to work with.”

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Musical Chairs

Each of these new seats and sofas sings its own song, sometimes with bravado, other times with subtlety.

BY JAMES CHAD HANNA

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Designed by Antonio Citterio, Maxalto’s Fulgens chair for B&B Italia combines lowslung sturdiness with the fluid lines of highconcept design. Made from shellacked wood and upholstered in either fabric or leather, it pays homage to classic Thonet pieces.

Pennsylvania-based brand Emeco teamed up with German designer Konstantin Grcic to produce this streamlined seat for the Parrish Art Museum. The aluminum-frame chair is available with a polypropylene, wood, fabric, or leather seat.

The high-backed P22 armchair, designed by Patrick Norguet for Cassina, takes classical traditions into consideration (think Bergère) and deftly integrates a stylish aluminum base and iron frame. It comes in five combinations of leather and fabrics.

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The plush Catherine chair, conceived by Noé Duchaufour-Lawrance for Bernhardt Design, comes in 15 shades of maple (as well as two paint colors) and an array of fabrics and finishes. The chair’s deep, scooped-out shape is in the vein of the European club chair.

Set on legs finished in spessart oak, the polyester-padded body of Poliform’s Mad chair—covered in fabric or leather—was designed by Marcel Wanders with the idea of minimizing boundaries. The result rides the line between balance and asymmetry.

In designer Patricia Urquiola’s latest iteration of Kartell’s Comback chair—her first came out in 2011—she settled on an integration of wood and plastic. The chair is available in six colors and four styles, including swivel, stationary, and rocking.

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Sancal’s Sumo sofa and armchair have a low center of gravity—like the Japanese wrestlers from whom they take their name.

Designed by Clara del Portillo and Alex Selma of Yonoh, the base echoes the wooden clogs worn by sumos outside of the ring.

Moroso’s Massas modular seating system, designed by Patricia Urquiola, contains 13 pieces, including this chair, and is available in a kaleidoscope of colors. The real star is the stitching, with raised seams creating distinctive forms on an otherwise smooth surface.

The Camber sofa, designed by Jeffrey Bernett and Nicholas Dodziuk for Design Within Reach, is handbuilt in California.

Measuring almost 8 feet long, it’s available in onyx powder-coated steel or stainless steel legs, and fabric or leather upholstery.

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Herman Miller’s Wireframe sofa comes from designers Sam Hecht and Kim Colin. Crafted to be as strong as it is light, the piece’s frame is made from steel wire that holds the cushions in place, making moving and cleaning it a cinch.

A Moooi Works design by Bart Schilder, the Bart sofa is part of a collection that also includes daybeds, armchairs, and canapés.

The sofa is a strikingly simple piece—especially considering it was inspired by the rounded lines typical of 18th-century rococo.

The Torii chair, designed by Noé DuchaufourLawrance for Ligne Roset, is a playful piece of furniture that mingles Eastern and Western design sensibilities. It features a beech frame with a foam body that’s available in more than a hundred colors.

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A Maker’s Mark

ENDORSEMENT

In this column, Surface editors put our stamp of approval on a game changer who’s influencing how we think about design.

Kulapat Yantrasast, co-founder of the L.A.based architecture firm Why How (formerly Why Architecture), wants to bring a heightened understanding of materials to the field.

The effort is evident in the firm’s inventive, lyrical work: At the Grand Rapids Art Museum, designed to be as green as possible, Yantrasast chose to use cast-in-place concrete, since its components could all be sourced locally. That decision shaped the functional structural elements—soaring planes of concrete and glass— that provide a stunning framework for both art and the public spaces surrounding the museum.

“In the kind of architecture we do, the making of the building is really part of the concept,” Yantrasast says.

This fall, Yantrasast is bringing this perspective of materiality to a show he and his team curated for the New York design gallery R 20th Century. The exhibition, titled “What’s the Matter?,” runs from Sept. 17 to Nov. 1 and showcases the four elemental materials of wood, stone, glass, and metal, and the four primary methods used to craft them: cutting, bending, blowing, and pouring. The pieces in the show are drawn mostly from R 20th’s collection; by juxtaposing an archival piece from the collection with a modern one, the show reveals an evolution of techniques.

In an exploration of how designers evoke human forms, a bonelike column made in 1966

by Wendell Castle, crafted from stack-laminated wood, is paired with a muscularly legged stool skinned with hexagonal brass plating, designed by the Haas Brothers in 2012. The possibilities of translucence and texture are considered

in Thaddeus Wolfe’s Assemblage pendant, a quartzlike opaline with jagged surface planes, exhibited alongside a mirror by Ettore Sottsass for Poltronova; the latter piece’s frame, made from a glossy plastic that sparkles, suggests wavy blond hair.

Yantrasast intends for the show to explore “the process of how materials are transformed into something else.” To that end, the “open kitchen”—where diners can see chefs preparing meals from initial ingredients—is a favored metaphor for the architect, who believes it represents the way hidden processes of production are revealed. “Everyone is very curious about what’s going into their food, everyone wants to talk about how to cook the food,” he says. “The cooking-show chef has become such a successful occupation because people love looking at those things. I would like design and architecture to have that relationship with people—that it’s not just about the finished product.”

For the exhibition, the gallery space will have three different areas. In the first section, unfinished materials such as wood and metal will be on display—the design equivalent of the starting ingredients. A second section features the design pieces selected by Why How, set against a chalkboard wall detailed with diagrams, descriptions, and videos that reveal why the objects were selected and how they were made.

In a separate area, fabricators will be working on Why How’s own contribution to the show: three limited-edition pieces that the firm designed to explore the exhibition’s themes.

Each piece relates to a particular Why How architectural project. “We used the concept of the building and tried to see how that concept worked as an object,” Yantrasast says. A stoollamp hybrid, made from three glass squares that appear to levitate, references the Speed

Art Museum in Louisville, Kentucky, a project scheduled for completion in 2016. Why How’s design for Pomona College’s studio-arts building, to be completed next year, features a roof with a gentle contour that Yantrasast describes as “almost like a mountain or folded leaf”; the corresponding metal pillow, hammered from brass, features similarly soft curves rendered in an unyielding surface.

“What’s the Matter?” came to fruition during an informal conversation with R 20th co-founder Evan Snyderman, who suggested in passing that Why How oversee the gallery’s annual show organized by a guest curator. The idea intrigued Yantrasast, and in April, the architect and his team began research with R 20th, paging through inventories, making multiple trips to the gallery and its warehouses, and talking with artists about their working processes.

Yantrasast sought to exhibit some of the lesserknown work in the gallery’s collection.

Throughout the process of selecting the pieces, Yantrasast discovered the subtleties of the artists’ work. For him, contemporary designers such as the Haas Brothers and David Wiseman have a “handmade primitive aspect” to their designs.

In meeting Wendell Castle, Yantrasast developed an appreciation for how the artisan worked with different materials over time, segueing from solid wood to laminated wood and then to plastic. While the projects fit into an integrated aesthetic, the solid wood objects could be made only at relatively small sizes; the other materials enabled him to explore increasingly complex methods of production. “That’s the kind of revelation that I like to witness,” Yantrasast says. “Because in our own work, I want to be intelligent about how I use material, but at the same time, I want inspiration to come from it.”

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ENDORSEMENT

The architect Kulapat Yantrasast remixes a contemporary design collection, revealing the process of making.

BY JEREMY LEHRER PORTRAIT BY MARK MAHANEY

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Kulapat Yantrasast at the gallery R 20th Century with a coffee table (2002) from the Celia series, by Humberto & Fernando Campana; Argolas sculptures (2011) in pequi wood, by Hugo Franca; ceramic planter (circa 1950),

by Rex Goode; Lattice vase (2012) in bronze, by David Wiseman.

ORDER

With subtle colors and magnificent materials, this season’s womenswear and menswear effortlessly evoke authority.

OF

COMMAND

GRAY

MATTERS

PHOTOGRAPHS BY PETE DEEVAKUL STYLING BY JUSTIN MIN

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Wool top, Jil Sander. Studded calfskin clutch, Valentino.

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Skirt, Prada.

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Fur-trimmed jacket, Prada. Herringbone gloves with chain detail, Chanel.

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Draped asymmetrical dress, Christian Dior.

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Draped asymmetrical dress, Christian Dior.

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Dress, Calvin Klein Collection.

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SPIRIT

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Jacket, Emporio Armani.

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Sweater and jacket, Emporio Armani.

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Parka with fur panel, Marni.

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Lamb leather dress, Jil Sander.

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Coat, Calvin Klein Collection.

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Chrome finish coat, Alexander Wang.

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Down-filled puffer with leather shell, Louis Vuitton.

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Satin jacket with leather sleeves, Diesel Black Gold.

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Patent leather trench, Dior Homme.

Photo assistant: Trey Badami.

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H O W

Calvin Klein Collection.

Illesteva. Galerie BSL. Alessi. Nakashima Woodworkers. Nike. Fendi.

Master artisans and innovators reveal the secrets behind their creative methods.

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HOW IT’S MADE

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HOW IT’S MADE

Calvin Klein Collection Creative directors Francisco Costa and Italo Zucchelli were given the daunting task of taking the reins at Calvin Klein 10 years ago.

They didn’t blink—and the brand continues to flourish, both creatively and financially. They tell us how.

INTERVIEWS BY SPENCER BAILEY PORTRAITS BY GRANT CORNETT

In late 2002, when Calvin Klein sold the company that bears his name to Phillips-Van Heusen (PVH), he cleaned up nicely—financially, at least: $400 million in cash, roughly $30 million in PVH stock, plus other financial incentives.

PVH, meanwhile, had to figure out how to lead the brand into a prosperous future. Within the world of high fashion, everyone wondered: Could Calvin Klein the brand exist without Calvin Klein the man?

Now, 10 years since taking over as Calvin Klein Collection’s women’s and men’s creative directors, respectively, the Brazilian-born Francisco Costa and Italian-born Italo Zucchelli are proving that the

stalwart American brand is as strong as it ever was. And the company is still growing: In the first quarter of this year, Calvin reported a revenue increase of $638 million ($361 million of which was due to the acquisition of apparel corporation Warnaco in February), up from $262 million in the year prior.

The collections by Costa, 49, and Zucchelli, 48, have maintained the pared-down simplicity, youthful attitude, and sensuality Klein made famous, while showcasing each designer’s distinctive sense of style.

Costa, who won CFDA Designer of the Year awards in 2006 and 2008 and worked at Oscar de la Renta and Gucci before Calvin, creates practical

yet fantastical womenswear that combines streamlined structures with architecturally inspired seaming. Zucchelli, who won a CFDA Designer of the Year award in 2009 and was at Jil Sander before Calvin, constructs functional pieces with sleek lines and a comfortable fit, usually with a geometric bent. Both designers put materials front and center, making innovative, often unfamiliar fabrics the focus. Surface spoke with Costa and Zucchelli in a VIP dressing room at the company’s headquarters in Midtown Manhattan about their success in pushing one of the world’s most recognized fashion houses forward.

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HOW IT’S MADE

Francisco Costa

Run me through your creative process when making a collection.

I’m not a minimalist. I’m much more of a reductionist. My process is really about elimination. It’s about chopping and polishing. If you come to the studio at the beginning of a collection, there’s so much inspiration, from every corner. At first, it’s so all over the place, but as we go on, everything becomes calmer and calmer. The essence of the first idea is what prevails. We go through a major trip. It’s exciting for me, for the designers, for the patternmakers. I really believe in collaboration among people. Everybody’s a part of it.

How did you design the fall/winter 2013 collection?

(PREVIOUS SPREAD) Francisco Costa (left) and Italo Zucchelli.

I was into plaids. I was in a very graphic, linear mood. We made some interesting mixes of fabrics. That was the beginning of it: textiles. I developed this particular drop-needle weave; to do it, you take the looms and isolate some needles, and then you create a sort of punched-open hole in the fabric.

And for the colors, I used all these military mélanges and celadon greens and forest greens.

Sometimes, mills have yarns that are “stock grown” for many, many years, and those are amazing. Usually weaves and yarns are the starting point. Then you go on trying to find something that makes sense.

The second part of the process was

identifying this woman, this character. I had seen this one clip on YouTube of this amazing movie, Ivan’s Childhood, by Andrei Tarkovsky. It was just so inspiring, and it made sense with everything I was already working on. The colors, they feel slightly aged, all the military blues, the greens, black. One scene in the movie shows this girl, and she’s so powerful in it. It’s this completely psychological love affair, and it takes place in this amazing white-birch forest. She’s with a gentleman, who’s obviously a soldier, and she’s in this very tailored military coat. And she’s totally in control of the situation. The collection became that essence: the woman who wears a coat, the coat becoming the iconic piece, the idea of protection. And she was super sexy. She was sensuous in it. We developed the collection based upon that powerful, strong character. In fact, we did broader shoulders just to emphasize them, to convey the strength of a woman in power.

Do you often respond to cultural references when you work?

Oh my God, yes. It’s happened so many times.

And it’s happening right now, actually. I had to take this trip to Brazil, and I went to São Paulo. I never knew São Paulo, really. I grew up in Minas Gerais, I went to Rio, and then I came to the U.S. São Paulo was somehow a different world for me. It still is. But I was so excited about what’s happening there. I went to this area where all these graphic artists have taken ownership of their neighborhood.

It’s basically four streets that are completely graffitied. The houses, they have murals everywhere. It’s like a fantasyland. I think it’s become a kind of showcase. Seeing that was very energizing.

I find that today there’s a spirit of the early ’80s. It’s exciting to think of that: Basquiat, the whole time when things were just a little more free. I think it has somehow come back again.

It’s still out there somewhere. There’s almost a political statement behind the art. I follow the artist JR on Instagram, and I saw his work back in Brazil—it’s amazing, the freedom of it.

As a fashion designer, do other types of design inform your work?

Very much so. Especially architecture—and art in general. Architecture came into my work even before I knew it inspired me, because I grew up in an environment in which it was very prominent. My parents had this manufacturing business, and that’s where I used to hang out after school. With scissors and paper, I’d be pasting and cutting all day. I built little houses. I think architecture is so representative of one’s life and ability to roam. > (THIS PAGE, LEFT TO RIGHT) F/W 2013 vinyl-bonded wool twill trench, wool-cashmere V-neck vest, feltpleated wool skirt, and vinyl welt boot.

F/W 2013 wool felt back bandeau, calf clutch, wool military roller belt, and patent leather welt pump.

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You’ve previously mentioned your interest in Oscar Niemeyer. What is it about his architecture that you admire?

I identify with him because his work is very sensuous. It’s totally feminine. It’s all curvilinear, which I’m so not. Curves are not my forte. But his architecture is like women. There was a sense of ease to what he did; there was a spaciousness and a sensuality. A lot of great Brazilian furniture—which has now become popular—was informed by him.

Your Brazilian background seems a good fit for what you bring to Calvin.

Yes. I come from a very small town in the mountains. Super simple, super quiet. Nobody dressed in colors because it was already so baroque, because it was already so lush, because it was already so sunny.

How exactly does your past translate to your fashion sensibility?

To some extent, there’s a level of organicness in what I do. I love natural fibers. I love greens, I love grays. I also reflect on some sort of peacefulness, the surroundings in which I grew up—especially the mountains, the air.

The thing about Calvin is really the environment. The images he created with his work were always so peaceful: the beach, the pebbles. It all goes back to nature. And space.

I think there was the luxury of a lot of space where I grew up. Time and space become very important to how we design and how we feel and how we present the collection.

It’s interesting that you bring up time. This fall marks your 10th anniversary at Calvin.

Looking back, what does this milestone mean to you?

How about looking forward? For me, it’s business as usual. I feel like there’s so much more to do. If you look at Calvin’s evolution as a brand, it didn’t really become the Calvin that we know until 15 to 20 years into his career. So much could still happen. I feel very excited about the future. To me, it just means that we have to work hard to be a part of the next 10 years.

How have your designs evolved over the past decade?

I’ve been able to go in so many directions and explore. With great respect for the brand, I went on exploratory trips many times. I’ve always felt very free to do that, and I think it has helped me align with the brand. I probably wouldn’t have survived if I had gone back and dipped into the archives. I felt very free—and I still feel very free—to explore. I think that creates great energy and excitement for everybody in the company.

A lot has changed since you started.

When Calvin hired me, it was a full studio.

And then the company got sold. It was a big surprise to everyone. I hadn’t hired anybody.

It was Calvin’s studio, in a sense. Everybody felt like they had to leave; nobody believed in what was going on. I stayed. I was already the design director, and I just thought, We have to keep going! I had no doubts. There wasn’t a moment of hesitation. It was just about the work. A lot of people left, and I hired a very talented young man who used to work at the stores as a salesperson. He sent me his résumé, I looked at it, and we started a team. It was very unorthodox. I had no idea. I’m not a manager.

I’m a designer, for God’s sake! I had to figure out how to go about it, how to navigate a corporation. I still have zero idea how to go about it—and I think that’s a good thing.

Where did you get this sense of fearlessness?

Fearlessness? That’s one of my favorite words!

I don’t know where I got it. If you want something, you go about doing it. I think you have to have a lot of morals and respect and realize your boundaries, but I think the spirit of fearlessness should override everything. I’m very much about action. And I make many mistakes. I go on making mistakes all the time.

Fashion has become an increasingly global, technologically advanced industry. How are you responding as a designer?

I read an article recently about 3-D printing in fashion. They’re saying this could really happen. I remember there was an amazing exhibit at MoMA five years ago [“Design and the Elastic Mind”] that was all about technology now. It was the first time I had encountered 3-D printing. They had a printer there creating a chair. Now, the fact that this is coming to fashion means a lot. It means no waste at all. It means great design. It means you’re not producing more than you actually need to. I find it fantastic. In the grand scheme of things, something like this is going to take over, though I don’t know in what form. You see it with Nike and the way they’re building shoes now. The Flyknit shoe has no waste to it.

The technology is just amazing. I don’t think we know a third of what’s going to come up in the next five years.

What can we still learn from fashion’s traditional methods?

I like the texture of things. I love how things are textural, how yarns are spun. There’s something about touching and seeing it—and even seeing the process. I was terrified when we stopped doing screen prints. I was really upset because I didn’t want to part with the idea that the print is now a digital print.

Everybody was doing digital prints, and I felt that the human value wasn’t there anymore.

But of course it’s still there; it’s just there in a completely different way. It’s just getting accustomed to different values. And that’s

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why I’m not just into environment, but also the way people think. We shouldn’t disregard humanity for technology.

Material sits at this intersection of fashion and technology. What major changes are you seeing in materials?

I think fashion will only change if something major happens. For instance, the ’60s was a very positive time in fashion. There was this idea of utopia, this great society. It was like we’d all one day be traveling like The Jetsons. It was excitement, it was kitsch, it was somehow minimal. Today, while we’re going into crazy development in polyesters, I’m also looking into recycled fibers. I’m looking into nylon and viscose. And I’m paying great attention to the handweaver who’s stuck in the middle of Tuscany somewhere.

A couple of years ago, we based a collection on the work of the California artist Ferne Jacobs. She’s really cool, in her 70s now. She started manufacturing with all these great techniques of basketry used by Native American tribes. She built these gigantic sculptures, and she created these crazy baskets. They really explode. Anyway, I went everywhere to try to create those forms. I wanted clothes to feel like that, to just put them on and that’s that. I wanted them to be woven. I also had to consider washing, which is just as important as the weaving itself. But the concept was to generate something that was just tubular to put on.

minimalism, I think today there’s something else happening. I truly believe if you’re going to pay certain prices, if you’re going to walk into a collection’s store, you have to come up with something that makes you go, “Wow, this is an object!” I really like to think of the excitement of design. I like to create a staple that one can look at and appreciate. I find it very sexy to think that somebody could wear just one coat forever. I also like the idea of the clothes being worn and taking shape. To me, that’s the most exciting thing. That’s why sometimes my coats, they have a little weight to them, because I feel they will blend and become the body.

Who is today’s Calvin Klein woman, and is she any different from 10 years ago?

I don’t think she’s different. Very excitingly, I think her character has broadened and opened up. In our advertisements over the last 10 years, we have used Zoe Saldana. We have used Christy Turlington, who’s now in amazing underwear, looking like she always has, the incredible woman she is. Because the company is so global, I think it’s our responsibility to convey our vision to all types of women.

We’ve become much broader. At one point, you only thought of Gwyneth Paltrow when you thought of Calvin. Today, it’s Gwyneth, but there are also so many other aspects.

Do you have any tried-and-true mantras you live by?

I’ll never forget what Calvin once said to me: “There’s no right thing or wrong thing. There’s only a right time and a wrong time.” That’s I live in the now. I try not to live too much in very freeing. I had never heard that before. I the future. The future is really now. You do the take that very seriously. Time is everything. I best you can to create some sort of interesting also have a saying with three words I go by. piece and relate to the time you’re in now.

It’s on the wall in my office. “Fearlessness” is one of them. “Collaboration” is another. The You don’t seem to ignore the past, though. third is “innovation.” It’s very comprehensible, You’ve somehow maintained the strong and it simplifies things. I always think it: innovision that Calvin established, mixing sexu- vation, collaboration, fearlessness. With these words, we’re all on the same path. ality with these streamlined forms.

What’s your day-to-day mindset?

When you think of sexuality, you think of the body. It’s how people interact. That mystery, that underlying sense of getting to know the mystery—I think that’s amazing. It has to do with getting to know the body. The forms need to be really flattering and just easy so that you can actually let the body speak. I think there’s a language that Calvin created like nobody else: the language of lifestyle. The lines are very simple because of that. There’s something quite austere about much of Calvin’s work, too. The clothes were rather, at times, Calvinist. But through his advertisements he made all of that really light and really sexy. He found the perfect balance.

Where does your vision differ the most from Calvin’s?

I don’t know if it differs from his vision. I just think I express it in a more contemporary way. While there’s a time and a thought about

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(THIS PAGE) F/W 2013 leather-lace bustier belted dress and calf hair welt pump. (OPPOSITE, TOP TO BOTTOM) F/W 2013 anthracite open-weave alpaca hinge-pocket coat, nappa V-neck, anthracite open-weave wool felt pencil skirt, velvet shearling scarf, leather and gold military roller belt, and nappa biker boot. F/W 2013 wool hinge-pocket jacket, nappa V-neck shirt, nappa pleated panel skirt, leather and gold military roller belt, and nappa welt boot.

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Italo Zucchelli

(THIS PAGE, TOP TO BOTTOM) F/W 2013 wool flannel herringbone jacket, cashmere crewneck sweater, cashmere short-sleeve crewneck T-shirt, wool flannel herringbone slim pant, and macro-mesh oxford shoes.

F/W 2013 wool herringbone hiddenplacket overcoat, quilted wool long vest, cashmere-silk crewneck sweater, cotton short-level crewneck T-shirt, wool flannel slim pant, and mesh oxford shoes. (OPPOSITE) F/W 2013 thermoembossed nylon overcoat, wool plissé herringbone crewneck sweater, bonded wool slim pant, and multitexture low tops.

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How did you put together the fall/winter 2013 collection?

I usually start with a trip after the shows. For this collection, I went to Tokyo. It’s one of my favorite cities for research. Sometimes I go to Tokyo; other times, L.A., Berlin, or London.

Usually, I collect stuff like books and vintage objects. That’s how it starts, and then we come back to the office and start looking at everything. We get a model, we put things on the model, and we start formulating concepts. We ask, “What’s the concept of the collection?” I come up with a color story, and then we start designing the first pieces. This process starts really, really early. For next fall, I’m starting now. It allows me to have luxury. I have two, three fittings during the seasons—meaning that I can see things multiple times until they’re almost perfect. Usually when I do the first fitting, I do different things and decide which direction to go. It’s a work in progress from that moment on. After the first fitting, we do a fabric selection. Then it’s two more fittings and making changes. Then—to say it simply—it’s the fashion show.

What did you find in Tokyo?

It’s always inspiring just to be on the streets.

There’s an aesthetic in Japan that’s very different from the Western aesthetic. The ways in which the Japanese look at and experience things are so different. These trips really enrich me. I want to see what the kids in Tokyo or Paris or London or L.A. do—or want to wear.

I think it’s important for a creative person, for a designer, to be in touch with these things firsthand, not just because somebody brought it to you or told you. That’s really not the same.

How do you make your design choices? Is it visceral?

Yeah, it’s a little bit of intuition, a little bit of a gut feeling. A little bit of wanting to do something different and new. Sometimes I put more work on the fabric technology; sometimes I put more work in shapes. Sometimes it’s more in color. This is also a house that’s based on minimalism. It’s a love-hate word, minimalism, and so sometimes I think if you make a strong statement in shape, you have to be more restrained with color. It’s not a rule. I try to balance these elements the best I can. You don’t want to have an overload of new shapes, new fabrics, new everything. Otherwise it gets too crazy. You need to balance all the ingredients in an interesting way.

The spring/summer 2014 collection you recently showed in Milan is very blue.

Yes, it’s very blue! The theme was a celebration of summer, and what’s the color of summer?

Blue. It’s also a very Calvin Klein color. That’s what we decided at the beginning of the process: We should do a collection that’s going to be blue. We kept it, it went through, and we arrived at that.

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So where did you travel that inspired blue?

L.A., a very sunny city with blue skies. After the show in January, it’s cold. It’s good to go somewhere warm, especially for the spring collection.

When you’re not traveling, what’s your average day like?

It depends on what part of the process I’m working on. There’s always fitting, or working with fabrics, or casting—a very important part of my process. The house has a strong legacy in advertising and in models. Especially in menswear, the casting that you use for the shows is very important. Everybody says it’s more difficult casting for men than for women, so I pre-cast a lot. I have a casting agent who works with me, and she casts all year round.

We have a big meeting in which we see guys the casting agent found, usually from all over America. Typically they’ve never modeled before. I keep it to 10 exclusive guys in shows.

This allows me to do something fresh. For the last show, all the guys were blond.

Seems like the models are hard to find.

They are. But that’s why I’m actually pushing with the casting agent a lot to go to unusual places to look for guys. I’m looking for guys in northern Europe, where guys sometimes look more American than Americans, believe it or not. I like that American look, but it’s not easy. It’s a peculiar casting.

What was your ambition for the fall/winter 2013 collection?

I always like reconciling opposites. In this case, it was to take the sportswear world and the formal world and meld them into a third entity.

That’s why I called this collection “formal sportswear,” because there were elements of the formal wardrobe. Herringbone and houndstooth were expressed in a different way, for example. There was quilting, and within the shape of herringbone or houndstooth, there was a neoprene material. I wanted to merge worlds because this, I think, is the way we live. We are not living in a super-formal world anymore. The modern world is a world in which we all move in different situations. I have a fascination with athleticism throughout my collections. It’s a sort of trademark that I’ve built. But I also elevate that language onto a fashion-show level.

Much of your work seems to be about having fun and not taking yourself too seriously.

Yeah, it’s very important. For the client and for the press, it’s important to have fun. It’s not that everyone has to jiggle, but a fashion show should be something that makes you feel good. One of the best compliments that people gave me after this last show was that when all these prints came out, they felt a

sense of serenity. It made them leave the space with a smile on their face. I was happy to hear that because I think fashion is supposed to be fun, to a certain extent. It shouldn’t be too serious or heavy. I mean, I take it seriously. I love my job, I think I’m very blessed, and I treat it as a business. But you have to have that element of fun.

What major differences do you see between Calvin’s vision and yours?

The core vision of Calvin Klein is timeless, sophisticated, minimal, and clean. I’ve continued elements that he established long ago, like the idea of athleticism. For me, the first-ever image that I saw of the brand was the photograph that Bruce Weber took in ’83 of the guy in underwear. It still informs me about what that man is. I still keep these elements in my mind. But I also add extreme color, like I did with the fluorescent colors in my new collection. I play with new materials, too, different kinds of shapes. I’m adding to the vocabulary, but always keeping it in sync with what it used to be. Calvin Klein, for me, is very graphic. For the graphic T-shirts I did in the last show, I used language in a way that’s more appropriate for today. As a creative director, I think it’s my job—it’s the job of all creative directors—to bring the brand that I design to a new audience. Today’s audience is roughly 30 years old.

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What about menswear has changed?

When I started at Calvin, it was the beginning of the spread of the Internet. That was a major shift. Since then, it’s been escalating. We now live in a device. You can see a fashion show in its entirety online, five minutes after it’s over.

Everybody’s also taking care of themselves these days. They go to the gym a lot. There are a thousand reasons why men want to have more fun with their clothes, to feel good, to look good. The quality, it’s very different than 10 years ago, 20 years ago.

I would say if I had to pinpoint one way in which things are different, it’s that men are more aware of what’s around them. There are so many tools to make you aware of what you can buy, where you can find it, or what it is.

Fashion has become more widespread. In the ’90s, it was a more specific world. Now celebrities are designing fashion. It’s more complicated. There’s too much stuff around, but at least everybody is more aware of fashion.

Has the collection evolved over the last 10 years to address these changes? Where do you see it going?

There was a specific moment—I don’t remember the year. It was my seventh show. At that moment, I felt, “Okay, this is the way that I’m going to go.” I felt it very clearly. From then on, I was going to explore new technologies.

That was the beginning of a new trajectory.

It was like there was a “before that” and an “after that.” In the show, there was a swimsuit I did. Everybody called the piece “leggings,” but it was a swimsuit. It got a lot of stir in the room. It was quite dramatic. I wasn’t trying to be noticed. It was just the direction I was taking the collection: new materials, new technologies. Now I’m in a phase where I balance that kind of innovation with pure luxury. I’m adding other layers, like graphics or different shapes. It’s an ongoing evolution.

Materiality is very central to your work.

How do you pick your materials?

Anything can inspire me. This girl I work with in Milan, I give her anything—images, a record cover—and we have a fantastic time sourcing whatever it is. It’s still very high-end.

The craftsmanship, quality, and innovation in Italy are amazing. She goes to the mills that we work with—almost all of them are Italian— and she starts a process that sometimes is easier, sometimes very complicated, depending on what I give her. Sometimes what we attempt doesn’t work, sometimes it’s amazing, but that’s what makes the job so exciting.

Right now we’re starting to work on fall/ winter 2014. The fabric selection is a process.

It lasts for a couple of weeks. We go back to it, even when it’s finished. The process to make the fabrics a reality sometimes lasts months.

That’s where the discipline kicks in. I like to be able to start in advance because it allows me the time to develop these things. It’s not instantaneous.

Where did you learn your organizational skills and discipline?

Probably a little bit is innate, and a little bit comes from working in the U.S., especially at Calvin Klein—a company that’s based in New York but has its collections produced in Europe. Before Calvin, I worked at Jil Sander, a German company. That was also part of how I learned discipline.

I have two different aspects to me. One is the crazy, creative part ; the other is that I’m very rational. I’m a Gemini. I like to put it all in astrological terms, even though I’m not obsessed with astrology. These are the two faces of me. One does this job; the other does that job. I think these parts work well together.

I don’t have to be only one thing. I can be both.

It allows me to experiment, but not rush.

What’s been your most difficult challenge at Calvin, and how did you respond to it?

I remember once we did a collection and we used this material that’s not even a fabric. It’s more like a foil. We sourced it here in America, and it’s not supposed to be used for clothes.

It’s a material that keeps you warm. It’s very light, and it’s always silver or gold. Anyway, I wanted to make clothes out of it, and we did. It took forever to make the clothes. I wanted the material in color, but it only came in silver. We had to develop a process to dye it, which was very difficult. Then, to make the clothes, we had to bond it. It was tough, but the show looked great. Through it, I learned a valuable lesson: It’s good to do things that look new on a runway, but they need to translate in the world. Of all my collections, that was the only one that was quite difficult to produce. I think it’s mandatory that collections translate into a real product. This is also part of the legacy of Calvin Klein as a company.

Much of what you do seems to be about perseverance. How do you do it?

I’ve been meditating for almost 25 years.

Maybe that’s helped. It goes back to discipline.

But it’s important to make the audience—be it press or buyers or even whoever can buy the clothes—understand that that’s what Calvin Klein is about: perseverance. In a world like today, where there is a lot of fashion, they need to understand that this is what we’re about.

You’re from Italy and currently work for an American brand. How has America influenced you?

New York is a very peculiar America. New York is, well, New York. I love being in this country. I actually have an American passport.

I’m an American citizen. I voted for the first time last election. I love this country, and I love this city. It’s my ideal city. I like the mentality in this country that if you have a talent you can make it grow and become something.

It’s very different from Italian culture. Here, when you say something, you mean it, and

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you don’t have to repeat it a thousand times. I like the fact that people are very empowered to be exactly who they are. They tend to work hard for themselves and create their dream.

It’s that idea of perseverance.

Yeah, and I relate to that. I think there’s a truth to the American dream. If you have a dream and if you work hard to achieve it, you can. I’m not saying that this idea doesn’t exist anywhere else. But in this country, it’s very ingrained in the fabric and consciousness of the people.

That’s true. Just think about Calvin Klein growing up in the Bronx in the ’40s and ’50s. He later built an empire.

Yes! Absolutely. There are thousands of examples. Calvin Klein, Michael Jackson, Oprah.

When I heard Oprah’s story, I was amazed by what she went through and what she became.

In this country, you really feel that anything is possible.

Do you think the American dream is integral to the Calvin Klein brand?

Even when I wasn’t working here, I saw it as an ideal American house. I would see all these healthy-looking people—the athletic element, the nice bodies, the cleanness. It’s American without being preppy, which is perfect for me.

I don’t relate to that preppiness so much. It’s not really my taste. Calvin Klein managed to create a very American look with simplicity, and even with the simplicity of it, the casualness of it, the sportiness, it’s still high-end and sophisticated. Calvin Klein is the quintessential American: a white T-shirt with a blazer.

Who is the Calvin Klein man today?

A modern man who travels and works hard, who wants to have a little fun, who wants to feel really good and confident in what he’s wearing. When he buys something, it needs to make him happy. He wants to have a little fun. He’s masculine, with character.

Is he any different from the Calvin guy of 10 years ago?

He’s an evolution of that man. What I’m doing now is catering to a younger audience—to an audience that’s more spoiled, in a way. Today’s audience knows they have a lot of choice.

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(THIS PAGE) F/W 2013 wool herringbone-houndstooth panel jacket, wool houndstooth slim shirt, bonded wool multipocket pant, and macro-mesh oxford shoes. (OPPOSITE, TOP TO BOTTOM) F/W 2013 wool herringbonehoundstooth panel overcoat, wool herringbone-houndstooth panel pea coat, cotton basketweave slim shirt, bonded wool slim pant, and black mesh oxford shoes. F/W 2013 double-faced wool basketweave-twill overcoat, double-faced wool basketweave-twill jacket, wool herringbone slim shirt, bonded wool slim pant, and mesh oxford shoes.

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Illesteva Lou Reed Sunglasses

After decades of sporting shades on the stage, a music legend finally produces his own line.

BY JULIA COOKE PORTRAITS BY GRANT CORNETT

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Lou Reed is the most iconic sunglasses wearer ever—at least according to Daniel Silberman, the founder of eyewear brand Illesteva.

Pop-culture history backs up Silberman’s sweeping statement. During his time as frontman for The Velvet Underground, Reed often wore sunglasses on stage because, as he once famously put it, he “couldn’t stand the sight of the audience.” Photos of the band from 1966, with Reed in his mother’s cataract sunglasses, have set present-day online fan forums atwitter with discussions of where to buy the wraparound shades.

This is why, Silberman says, Reed was a “dream collaborator.” The product of Illesteva and Reed’s joint efforts, called Lou Reed for Illesteva, launches on the market this fall. The 10 sunglasses, the debut line of what will be an ongoing partnership, include aviator and square acetate styles with a range of lenses, from blue mirrored to flat light gray. The frames, with a Lou Reed signature in the top right corner of the lens, mix classic shapes with the fashion-forward detailing for which the brand is known.

Before joining forces with Illesteva, Reed, it turns out, had been searching for years for the right company to work with. Reed and Silberman initially met through the musician’s manager, who is a friend of Silberman’s.

“I was very impressed by the modern style of Daniel’s work,” says Reed, who had wideranging creative input on the line. “I have many ideas. For example, glasses for photographers, electronically magnified glasses for those with particularly poor eyesight, and even a line of sunglasses for dogs.” Reed was adamant about the quality of the glasses, and Silberman notes that he was particularly focused on developing new ventures for the collaboration.

“He’s been really involved, as far as what lenses to use, what material, how they should fit,” Silberman says, adding that their most important shared value is that “you have to feel good when you wear them.”

Silberman and partner Justin Salguero founded Illesteva in 2009 with that principle in mind. Other key tenets of Illesteva’s mission, Silberman says, are top quality and a good price point. To that end, the company works with a small factory of artisans in Italy that has been owned by the same family for 50 years. After meeting the company’s representatives at a trade show, Silberman visited the manufacturing facility near Verona. He liked the handmade quality of the glasses, he says, as well as the people themselves. “Once you work with them, you’re like part of the family,” he says. “It’s a really good experience.

We eat together, we go to see production, we eat again. I love visiting.”

The manufacturing of each pair is a rather intricate process. The acetate frames of the horn glasses, for example, after being cut from sheets, are hand-formed into the frames and then filled in with UV 400 lenses. Due to variations in the acetate, no two pairs look alike.

It’s this sort of specificity and quality that Silberman says allows him to bring Illesteva glasses to a broad range of customers.

“These are sunglasses that everyone can wear, from a 19-year-old girl who goes to Parsons to someone who’s been listening to Lou’s music for 50 years,” he says. “It’s like Lou’s music—there’s not a specific audience.

At any given concert of his, there are 19-yearold girls and 75-year-olds.”

(ABOVE) Illesteva co-founder Daniel Silberman in matte black Waverly sunglasses designed in partnership with Lou Reed. (OPPOSITE) Lou Reed wearing clear Waverly sunglasses (and vampire teeth).

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(TOP TO BOTTOM) Gold Aviator with blue gradient lenses and matte black Waverly.

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(TOP TO BOTTOM) Tortoise Waverly and clear Waverly with pink mirrored lenses.

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Galerie BSL Exhibition PHOTOS BY FRANCK JUERY

When Béatrice Saint-Laurent, the owner of Galerie BSL in Paris, approached four artists about doing a group exhibition that would debut at Design Miami/Basel in June, she was not focused on capturing the cutting-edge or the never-been-done. “I [wanted] to confront these contemporary artists with timeless materials,” Saint-Laurent says.

“And I was intrigued to see how they could combine them in new designs.” Her brief called on the artists to create exclusive designs for the gallery using wood, hard stone, and copper alloys brass and

bronze—materials that “symbolize the world of decorative arts,” she says. The signature style of each of the four artists—Spanish-born designer Nacho Carbonell, British designer Faye Toogood, Israeli designer Ayala Serfaty, and French jewelry artist Taher Chemirik—is evident in the resulting pieces. (Only Serfaty used different materials, though Saint-Laurent says her work fits the prompt as “a metaphorical interpretation of stone.”) In September, the works will appear together at Galerie BSL in a special exhibition open through Nov. 22.

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Time is a Treasure Clocks

BY NACHO CARBONELL

Béatrice gave me a little book about animals. In the book, the pages were cut so that you could create your own creature using a combination of three different animals. I like to use this “animalist” approach. That’s how the Time is a Treasure clocks came to be.

Stone was my starting point. Béatrice gave a stone to me, and I kept thinking about it, but I had no idea what to do with it. We looked into the history of the stone—it had a hole, so I asked why it had been cut before. We were told that a big clockmaking brand used the inside of these stones to create clocks. What we got were the leftovers. I really believed in the spirit of the material, so I thought that the leftovers of the stone were meant to be a clock.

I was working with the idea of time. I had this concept already in mind about how we interpret time and how we look at time. The idea is that, apart from having all the external clocks in our houses, we have a ticking clock within all of us.

I wanted to represent this idea by creating some creatures you could really look inside of and see their “time life.”

The brief was to use a goldish metal, but I’m not really into that look. I decided to put it on the inside, so if you really wanted to see the

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most precious part, you have to look in. I don’t like when the gold part is covering the outside— it’s a little pretentious.

The clocks are made out of bronze. We used a wax method to make the bronze casting. You make a shape in wax and make a mold in plaster around it, melt the wax, and then you pour bronze in the hollow mold you have left. We shaped the whole animal into wax, and then made the mold out of it. The shapes are too big to be cast in one whole piece. Later, we assembled the pieces by welding them. The bottom part of the creature is a separate part; you can open and close it to reach the clock and feed it.

Once they come out of the mold, the pieces are really rough. We need to sand all the insides that are going to become the goldish part with some specific tools so that they have no texture.

It’s a slow, painful process. It’s so difficult to work within such a tiny space. First, we grind it all. Then, when it’s ground, we sand it. Then we’re able to polish all the insides and assemble the piece with the bottom part. We also sand the stone. Finally, we assemble it with the bronze using special glue for natural stone so it looks like one piece.

The end process is to give the bronze a patina.

You take a torch, you put some acid on the bronze, you use some fire, you put more acid on it, and you repeat the process until you get the color that you’re looking for. When you’re painting a canvas, it can be very quick to get the right colors and the right feeling that you want, or it can take very long to get the color you’re looking for. I’m not a patina expert, but I did this myself, so it took me a while to find the right color combination.

As for the clock itself, we found one that was suitable for our purpose, but we needed to deal with a clockmaker to customize parts so we could adapt them for the pieces. You need to wind the clock—it doesn’t work with a battery—so the clockmaker needed to extend the keys in some of them. They needed to be in the front for some or in the back for others.

The clocks are very sensitive, so the last step is to assemble the clock. Once you do that, you have to handle the piece very carefully.

Once the shapes were cast, we worked on these three pieces with 10 people for over a month. It was intense. —As told to Allie Weiss

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Caged Elements Collection

BY FAYE TOOGOOD

Initially, Béatrice came to us and said she wanted to put on a show based on three materials: wood, stone, and brass. I realized I couldn’t make the pieces from brass because it’s too soft; I had to make them from steel, to give them strength, and then dip them into brass.

I’m not an artist in the sense that I make everything myself, in-house. I work with industrial manufacturers and craftsmen who currently work in the U.K. I’m really interested in that—whether it’s someone who makes motorbikes, someone who makes Lucite, or someone who carves beetle sculptures out of stone. I’m interested in all of the craftsmanship that is available locally. For these pieces, there were many different craftsmen involved.

There was a welder, a plater, a woodworker, a stonemason who dealt with the Hopton Old White stone, and then the marble was done in Italy. When I can, I try to use British craftsmen.

There were many components in each piece.

Just the procedure of getting this industrial security mesh to look jewellike took quite a lot of effort and energy. I always hope that my pieces look effortless. But the labor, technique, and logistical side of things are actually very complicated.

The Element table is something that I reconfigure in various materials. For instance, I did a version in solid resin before. I like to take the same geometry and the same configurations and rematerialize those to make them feel quite different. All my pieces start with clean, geometric shapes. They’re like building blocks.

I’m not interested in creating new, futuristic silhouettes. This time, we used English walnut and Hopton Old White stone, and then we used a green Verde Alpi marble from Italy. All of these materials lie within the brass mesh.

Each of the three pieces of geometry is slotted into the mesh construction.

The lamp is an elongated version of the table lamp I did in my first collection. The chair is the first time that we’ve done that shape. For me, it’s reminiscent of those high-backed chairs from the English Arts and Crafts movement.

But then, with the curve, it has some references to Art Deco. I think that with simple geometry it feels like you’ve seen the shape before, but you haven’t seen it in that configuration.

I really love the English high-backed chairs and the wing-backed chairs and the Rennie Mackintosh chairs from the early parts of last century. I wanted to create my own thronelike version. I like that you can see through the security mesh—it’s not a closed, opaque protection, but you’re still protected inside this cage nevertheless.

I wanted the whole collection to be about slotting the shapes together. The process began with deciding on the materials. I wanted to use brass. But we quickly realized—considering the height of the back of the chair and the height of the lamp—that the structure had to be steel, so we then had the challenge of plating the brass. I’ve never used plating on any of the furniture that I’ve done—I try to avoid it and use natural processes. The dipping was a real challenge—we eventually found a place that had dipping tanks as big as we needed. (They

had done [large-scale] dips for the London Olympics.) I wanted the back of the chair as high as it could possibly go. The height was determined by the size of the dipping tank.

The next challenge was finding a woodworker who was capable of working with English walnut, because English walnut is a wood with a lot of grain and a lot of movement within it. And the box for the lamp had to be laminated. We had to find woodworkers who were prepared to take that on and could help me saw pieces of English walnut at that size.

The Hopton White is a stone I haven’t used before. I try to use British stones whenever possible. We chose a stonemason I had previously worked with. I think the key thing about all these elements being made by different craftsmen is that they all had to fit perfectly inside the cage. There was constant back and forth with the craftsmen and the manufacturers to make sure that we were making things perfectly, down to the millimeter—which when you’re using natural materials is pretty much impossible. You’re also working with craftsmen that have basic machinery, not factorylevel machinery. It looks really simple to create, but the precision is what was so difficult about this collection and what was painstaking for the whole process. It took seven or eight months to complete the three pieces.

The other thing about the security mesh: You have to find someone who’s prepared to roll the mesh to create the back of the chair.

Then you have to find someone who can make a frame for the mesh. The way they do that is bend a steel rod and weld it at every point.

You have to make a weld spot on the rod so you’re creating a frame around the whole of the mesh sheet. That’s a really meticulous process because every sheet of mesh that you buy is slightly different. Nothing ever quite matches up. The welders, by the time they finish something like the Element table, are pretty much fed up. It takes days to weld it all together.

The metalwork has to be cut, rolled, and then welded onto a steel rod. And then that goes off to be plated, and then, finally, given a clear matte lacquer finish. After that, the wood, the stone, and the marble all need to be put together. The moment at the end when all the pieces are slotted together—that was our relief.

When we finished, it was about a week before we had to go to Basel. —As told to A.W.

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Faye Toogood’s Caged Elements floor lamp at Galerie BSL.

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Seejo So II Sofa

BY AYA L A SERFAT Y

I started out with felt when I was a student in 1985 and went to a Joseph Beuys exhibition at the Anthony d’Offay Gallery in London.

The installation was made entirely of felt, with a piano in the middle, and it resonated with me. Since then, I’ve done quite a bit of work with the material. Recently, I took a course and discovered a way to make it. Now I produce it myself.

I was trained as a painter. For me, the value of felt—historically, culturally, and artistically— means that I can treat it like a painting or a sculpture. I make the textile in the colors and shapes I want. In the case of the Seejo sofa, I was inspired by white marble. I wanted to do something in relation to amazing sculpture, like Michelangelo’s David. David is one of my favorites. I was trying to think about the sculpture in terms of textile, in a soft way. When you look at David, it looks like it’s breathing, like it’s completely alive.

I think that upholstered furniture is ultimately about the position of the body. The Seejo sofa actually has two different postures: the left side is not the same as the right. There’s more depth on one side and less on the other— the angle of the body changes. That was my

starting point. First, I sculpted the polyurethane foam over a metal structure. After that, I had the form of the sofa. Next I figured out the shape of the garment so that it would totally cover it.

When I shape the textile, I don’t cut a piece of fabric—I make the entire cover in one piece.

I find out what the form is, and then I make a three-dimensional mold for the fill. I stitch it, I do all the sides, and when I’m finished, it’s exactly the shape and size of the sofa. There’s no fitting. I take layers of wool, silk, and other fibers, and I lay them according to a plan. From that I can get what I want in terms of color and thickness and texture. Sometimes, the fibers are dark, so I dye them with natural dyes. I make the colors I need. I mix silk with wool in different percentages. It all looks like hair.

When you make the fibers wet, you rub and press them until they become felt. After that, it’s really easy to attach. The shape of the felt is three-dimensional to match the shape of the sofa. I attach it with one stitch, and that’s it. At the end, I put the legs on. —As told to A.W. Ayala Serfaty’s Seejo So II sofa (left) and Soma lamp at Galerie BSL.

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Naïve Cabinet

BY TA HER CHE MI RI K

After my Rough Sea screen, Bride chandelier, and Pathway tables presented at Design Miami last year, I decided to develop a new type of furniture with Galerie BSL. From the beginning, I imagined a pair of cabinets. The Naïve cabinet (pictured) embodies spring. She’s light and golden yet simple in her dress of flowers.

She offers her curves to the Fiancé cabinet, who is angular, structured, and anchored on his feet.

The Fiancé is more masculine, but his attire shows a fantastic and imaginative side that resembles a Tim Burton character.

In my jewelry, I use fine stones, gold, and silver, but also wood, coral, and hard stones.

I like to mix materials in my furniture as well, in particular materials that defy time and are in line with the tradition of the decorative arts—brass, wood, and hard stone. Galerie BSL’s theme was focused on wood, hard stone, copper, and its alloys brass and bronze. I used materials that naturally belong to my own creative universe.

The Naïve is made of brass flowers and mahogany from Africa. The piece was handmade in my workshop in Paris, and most of the materials are of French origin. I made each cabinet in three months with my two assistants.

Six tubular pillars hold together the brass structure of the Naïve, which is welded in silver to

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the circular base. The Fiancé’s structure is a brass grid through which one can barely see .

The Naïve, on the other hand, opens herself up to the eyes of the admirer. She wears a guipure costume that has a constellation of flowers. Each flower is handmade and unique—I sculpted them one by one. The brass flowers have four different sizes, and each flower has five petals.

The production process of the Naïve’s brass “costume” began with the creation of each droplike brass petal, made from two brass plates sculpted using a pewter mold. I welded two half-drops together in order to make a complete petal. In a few select flowers, only one side is rounded so that the flower has a flat back. Some of the flowers have a polished, mirrorlike effect obtained from galvanization.

Others were brushed and others distressed with a hammer. Some were given a pink or blue effect using fire. Once all of the flowers were finished, I joined them by hand with silver to make a costume of metal and mahogany.

As a final step, I decided to add mirror petals to the work to make it even more lyrical. These mirror petals are cut and attached with glue on the inside of some brass flowers.

The reflection of the flower petals in the beveled mirrored-glass shelves gives the feminine

Naïve its springlike dress. The shelves of the Fiancé alternate mirror and glass, creating a different reflection game.

To me, every creation is a one-of-a-kind rendezvous. The contrasts of the polished, satiny, and brushed parts make the work more interesting. The Naïve and the Fiancé are the first cabinets I’ve ever made, and I feel they’re both in perfect harmony. The Fiancé is a knight in a parade outfit, strict in his structure yet lyrical in his decoration of flowers and stones. When opened, his fragile side is revealed—flanks of wood with brass screws show the sewn wounds and traces of combat, like the holes in his brass armor. Just like Narcissus, the Naïve admires her inner self through mirrors. Beyond the similar materials and the flower elements, the main tie between them is the wheat stalks— the symbol of fertility—which the Naïve wears on her hip and the Fiancé as his belt. —As told to A.W.

Taher Chemirik’s Naïve cabinet at Galerie BSL.

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Alessi La Stanza dello Scirocco Collection

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Rings and bracelets are the latest in the evolution of designer Mario Trimarchi’s whimsical tabletop line.

BY ALLIE WEISS PORTRAIT BY HELENIO BARBETTA

PHOTOS: HELENIO BARBETTA.

(THIS PAGE, TOP TO BOTTOM) Lasercut into their desired shapes, Alessi’s Fiato sul collo necklaces are ready to be shaped. A necklace is shaped in a mold.

(OPPOSITE) Designer Mario Trimarchi in front of one of his sketches.

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When architect and designer Mario Trimarchi many things to do that they do not have any started designing for fabled Italian kitchenware free time—they are running 24 hours a day,” brand Alessi in 2008, he was inspired not by Trimarchi says. “This necklace is an homage the bowls, kettles, and dishware the company to these women who do generally too many is known for, but rather the shadows these things. They need to have a moment in which objects leave behind. “If you put a light on they are able to stop the time.” the table, the pieces seem very close together The necklace, called Fiato sul collo, transbecause of their large shadows,” Trimarchi says lates to “breathing down your neck.” The of his ongoing La Stanza dello Scirocco collec- fluttered look of each of Trimarchi’s asymtion for Alessi. “You can’t put a bottle of water metrical pieces for Alessi was inspired by the very close to them. They want a big territory harsh Scirocco wind of Italy—a defining feaaround them—they have a sort of soul.” ture of Trimarchi’s early life in Sicily. “As soon With shadows in mind, Trimarchi created as you’re awake, you look outside the window pieces in various configurations, including a and see the wind,” he says. “The rhythm of the basket, a fruit holder, a candleholder, a cen- day revolves around wind, which is nasty and terpiece, an orange bowl, an orchid vase, and dusty because it comes from the desert. You a tray. Each object resembles a set of cards in really can’t survive it.” disarray. Linked steel rectangles and the empty To escape the gusts, the children would spaces between them create the illusion that have to stay inside for several days. “The only the pieces are suspended in air. This sense of thing to do was to play cards,” Trimarchi says. motion and surprise inspired Trimarchi to “When you build up a castle with playing cards, make jewelry pieces—or, as he puts it, “orna- after a while something might happen—you ments”—that add an extra dimension to the touch the table or a door opens, and everybody in the way that the bowls and candlehold- thing could be destroyed. In the same way, ers expand the table. “The idea is that these even though we program and plan everything objects have their own life; we’re not the owner in our lives, something might happen that we of them,” Trimarchi says. “The object builds can’t forecast. Our life plan is blown away like its own territory in the house or on our body.” a castle of cards.”

Trimarchi first designed a necklace and To represent this sense of instability, earrings in 2011, and this fall Alessi is releas- Trimarchi knew he had to work on the line by ing a bracelet and ring. When he started on hand. “We tried not to design by computer,” the jewelry line, he envisioned the necklace he says. “I started to cut small pieces of paper as a way for its wearer to escape the concrete and glue them together. Ultimately, I made routine of day-to-day life. “Women have so more than 100 different small models. When

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I went to Mr. [Alberto] Alessi, I put more than then polished and placed between molds that 50 models on his table. He has a giant table, and shape them. A worker does the final shaping by hand to ensure the pieces can sit properly I covered the surface of it.”

After Alessi and Trimarchi agreed on the on a neck or wrist, and the process comes to an models and colors (Trimarchi convinced the end when the pieces have been polished again, brand to stick to only three neutrals—steel, also by hand, using brushes and abrasive paste black, and white), production began at the to achieve Alessi’s signature mirrored shine.

Alessi headquarters in Crusinallo, Italy. The To Trimarchi, the evolution of the line sigprocess to make each piece is “very easy,” nals shifting preferences in the design market. according to Trimarchi. A laser machine “These lines had immediate, very big worldcuts sheets of stainless steel into the line’s wide success, which I didn’t anticipate in the abstract checkered patterns. The pieces are beginning,” he says. “I thought it was a very

niche product, but people accepted it very easily. It’s become a part of the new normality.” The collection’s success goes to show that good design applies to vastly different contexts, whether on the dining table or around the wrist.

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PHOTO: HELENIO BARBETTA.

(THIS PAGE) Final shaping of the necklaces is done by hand. (OPPOSITE, CLOCKWISE FROM TOP) The finished product on a bust model. A set of tabletop pieces, Trimarchi’s first designs for the collection. A bracelet and ring, the most recent additions to the line.

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PHOTOS: COURTESY ALESSI.

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The daughter of 20thcentury furniture designer George Nakashima preserves her father’s principles in a modern world.

BY JANELLE ZARA

(THIS PAGE) Nakashima Woodworkers Reflection bench. (OPPOSITE) Sunset Base dining table.

A meditative calm has always filled the Nakashima Woodworkers property in rural New Hope, Pennsylvania, a quality cultivated by its founder, celebrated midcentury designer George Nakashima. The spiritual experiences that Nakashima had in his 30s deeply influenced his approach to carpentry: While working for four years under the architect Antonin Raymond in Tokyo, he learned the concepts of wabi-sabi, the embrace of nature and imperfection. In India, while overseeing the construction of the nation’s first poured-concrete building, Nakashima spent two years living in the Sri Aurobindo ashram and took the name Sundarananda, “one who delights in beauty.”

His reverence for nature, combined with his master’s in architecture from MIT in 1931, resulted in a design aesthetic based largely on modernist geometries but also the raw forms of a tree. Rather than hiding the cracks in the discarded lumber he used to make some of his furniture, he opted to decorate them with butterfly-shaped structural supports; he also

chose to keep the gnarled surfaces underneath tree bark intact rather than sanding them down.

The New Hope campus has the feel of a sanctuary where the guru’s legacy is preserved— and reinterpreted. Twenty-three years after Nakashima’s death, his daughter Mira, 72, is now at the helm of Nakashima Woodworkers, continuing the venerated, spiritual traditions that her father brought to wooden furniture making after opening the studio in 1946. Her father’s lifelong apprentice, Mira was the ideal choice to carry out his legacy: A childhood photograph shows her by his side in the studio, sitting on top of his work table, mechanical drill in hand.

In Philadelphia, 40 minutes south of New Hope, midcentury furniture dealer Robert Aibel’s Moderne Gallery has been collecting and selling George Nakashima works since 1985. A close friend of Mira’s, Aibel doesn’t represent her officially, but the gallery has hosted all the exhibitions of her studio’s work since 1998. Moderne’s “Nakashima

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PHOTO: CHRISTIAN GIANNELLI.

Nakashima Furniture

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Woodworkers: An Evolving Legacy,” on view from Sept. 20 through Nov. 2, features more than 25 original pieces that show the connection between Nakashima’s past and present, displaying works based on the elder’s archival drawings alongside designs by his daughter, developed in collaboration with a new generation of woodworkers. “It’s really fun because you don’t have a client to answer to,” Nakashima says of showing at Moderne. “You sort of do what you want in the space.”

While gnarled free edges and butterfly joints recur throughout the Moderne show, several pieces defy expectations by eschewing textbook Nakashima features. One example is the Chigaidana shelving unit, based on a late-’50s drawing by Nakashima that Mira found in the now-defunct manufacturer WiddicombMueller’s archives and produced for this occasion. The freestanding riff on Japanese asymmetrical wall shelving is composed entirely of right angles, far better suited for

PHOTO: CHRISTIAN GIANNELLI.

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mass production. Several designs are credited to Mira and her assistant, Miriam Carpenter, contrasting George’s unyielding adherence to his own vision. “He was much more of a dictator than I am,” Mira says. “The reason he went into the furniture business is that he wanted to control the process from beginning to end.”

Following a concept proposal by Carpenter, the drolly titled Carpenter coffee table reflects her and Mira’s mutual interest in music; its proportions are based on those produced by a harmonograph, a mechanical apparatus that draws geometric shapes in response to the vibrations of musical notes. (When Carpenter joined Mira in the studio six years ago, they discovered that they both enjoyed listening to Bach while working.) Viewers may recognize Mira’s Reflection coffee table from the Wharton Esherick Studio’s 2012 “Poplar Culture” exhibition in Malvern, Pennsylvania, a piece Mira fashioned from the poplar tree that had grown and died outside the midcentury

woodworker’s studio.

Gerald Everett, a lifelong New Hope resident, came to the Nakashima studio at age 16.

After 43 years as a Nakashima woodworker (the first 15 of which he spent cutting the grass every Saturday), he is now the studio’s foreman and longest serving carpenter. Following the Nakashima philosophy, his process begins with the wood itself. George Nakashima is no longer on hand to supervise the cutting of the log— as he had insisted during his life—but he left behind a considerable inventory; the estate’s lumber shed is a mammoth 2,650-square-foot library of vertically cut slabs of various woods, half of which were cut during Nakashima’s lifetime. Having by now learned the lumber cataloguing system by heart, Everett navigates the extensive stacks and chooses three to five pieces that Mira then considers for a project.

His first criterion is to select for appropriate size and thickness. Aesthetics follow: Burls are ideal for tables because of their swirling

(THIS PAGE, TOP TO BOTTOM) Drop Leaf dining table. A detail of the Drop Leaf dining table’s joinery.

(OPPOSITE) The Special Base end table, with a signature Nakashima butterfly joint.

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PHOTOS: CHRISTIAN GIANELLI.

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PHOTO: ADAM MARELLI.

surface patterns; walnut’s strength makes it an all-purpose wood. Ultimately, the final decision depends on the needs of the client, who will more often than not request the raw hallmarks that arose from George’s humble beginnings working with discarded wood. “If they like the look of butterflies,” Everett says, referring to Nakashima’s trademark joints, “we have plenty of woods with cracks in them.”

The wooden slabs with the roughest outlines, prized for the tops of tables and the backs of benches because of their quintessential Nakashima look, come from the root area and require painstaking attention: “You have to get the bark out relatively cleanly without damaging the wood underneath,” Everett says. After carefully scraping away the edges, a process that sometimes takes days, the woodworker will polish the perimeter with a plastic brush attached to a hand drill, then fill holes in the surface with epoxy colored to match the wood.

From there, spindles are inserted and glued, and then junior woodworkers give it a final sanding. After an inspection, the piece goes to the finishing department.

The meticulousness and diligence with which the carpenters hew, carve, sand, and cut reflect the rigid discipline George Nakashima continually instilled in his workers. “George was always skeptical of people who went to design school because they came with preconceived ideas as to what was good and what wasn’t,” says Mira’s husband, Jon Yarnall, who walked onto the Nakashima property looking for a job in 1974 and has stayed since. “He

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often liked to start with someone who didn’t have any experience and train them himself.”

To build the trust and stamina he believed were necessary for the job, George assigned newcomers repetitive, humbling chores: pulling the weeds, raking the gravel, and mowing the lawn. His methods were deeply rooted in the Mingei tradition of Japanese folk art, which emphasizes the anonymity of craftsmen while acknowledging the subtle variations that occur between identical items that are made by hand.

In order to discern which applicants are suited for the studio, Mira continues to employ his strategy. “We’ve been careful to hire people with the right spirit,” she says. “We do each piece on an individual basis, so there is a variety of sameness in our work. You have to have a certain quietness of mind to deal with that.”

While preparing for the show at Moderne affords Mira and her woodworkers an unusual amount of freedom, it introduces many of the same obstacles, particularly those that arise when realizing a design for the first time; without George Nakashima’s preternatural knowledge of woodworking, drawings rarely translate into finished pieces on the first try.

The guiding principle of Mira’s design process, however, has always been the preservation of her father’s aesthetic, a mission more complicated than the inlaying of a few butterfly joints. “There is a whole series of subtle details about the narrowing of the legs, the way he cut the tops, the canted angles,” Aibel says. “The number of decisions figure into the hundreds.”

In the past, Mira based her process on the

choices she instinctively believed her father would have made. She continues to examine a question her woodworkers and patrons have posed since she assumed control of the studio: “How far do you push those boundaries before it’s not Nakashima anymore?”

From the musical adaptations of her father’s drawings to her newfound collaborative ethos, the Moderne exhibition, while offering valuable insights into the elder Nakashima’s creative vision, is unquestionably Mira’s. As the show’s “Evolving Legacy” title makes clear, the Nakashima aesthetic is more than just a dutiful preservation of free edges: “It’s moving in a new direction,” Aibel says. “That’s what’s exciting about this. It’s an evolving legacy, not an endpoint or a finished line.”

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Nike Tech Fleece

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With neoprene technology, a Nike designer breathes new life into the aesthetic of a staid fashion staple: fleece.

BY SPENCER BAILEY PORTRAIT BY AARON HEWITT

(THIS PAGE) Detail of a men’s Nike Tech Fleece Hoody. (OPPOSITE) Nike vice president of apparel design Lee Holman.

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One cold winter’s day at Oregon’s Cannon sport,” says the British-born Holman, who has Beach about a year and a half ago, Nike vice worked at Nike for three years and previously president of apparel design Lee Holman looked held design roles at Burberry, Abercrombie & on as surfers got out of the frigid water in thin Fitch, Levi Strauss & Co., and Paul Smith. (He neoprene wetsuits. Nothing was unusual about graduated with a master’s in fashion design the scene. At the time, though, Holman’s mind from Central Saint Martin’s in London in was focused on how to reinvigorate fleece—tra- 2000.) “It’s about simplicity and a cleaner ditionally a cheap, loose-fitting, widely avail- aesthetic.” able fabric—for the Beaverton, Oregon–based For the initial step in developing the line, brand. “I was like, ‘Ugh, fleece — how do we Holman worked with a team of Nike fabric innovate that?’” he says. The surfers’ suits pro- technicians to select yarns, experimenting with vided inspiration: This, he thought, was how to different weights until they found those that create a fashionable new take on the soft fabric. created the most natural, ergonomic forms “I went back to the design team and fabric on the body. “We cut fabric and draped it on team and asked, ‘How do we incorporate mannequins and bodies to see how it would neoprene technology into a fleece aesthetic?’’ perform,” he says. “We designed into differHolman says. “It was the idea of taking two ent silhouettes. It was a very hands-on, very different fabrics and bonding them together. three-dimensional process.”

When you put two fabrics together in one, it This approach led to further streamlinbecomes a natural insulator. You have this ing and the introduction of fuss-free trims. trapped air that heats up your body. I wanted Holman designed sleeves to ease mobility, to add thermal regulation into fleece.” pared down silhouettes, reduced topstitching The designers of the sculptural, silhouetted and seaming, and added accents. Instead of jackets and pants of Nike’s Tech Fleece collec- ribbed cuffs, Holman implemented black elastion, which hit stores in late August, inserted tic microbinding, and in lieu of bonded zippers, neoprene foam between two layers of cotton he went with highly flexible plastic Vislon zips, jersey to create a three-layer fabric that’s tightly which don’t crunch when the wearer bends fitted to the body. Functionally, it’s not all that down. different from a wetsuit, and in form, it’s pracHolman’s next step—a Nike strongpoint tically high fashion. “We wanted to tailor the —was to figure out how to commercialize the line around the notion of a modern-looking range. His main solution came in the form of

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the sweatsuit. “It’s very traditional,” he says of the sweatsuit concept, “but with our new technology and structure, it just feels fresh again. When you think about Europe, the U.S., or Asia, people love that sweatsuit aesthetic, whether you’re training in it or going out on the street.”

Also essential to Holman was the Nike archive. Instead of creating completely new pieces, he rethought seven of the company’s staples: for men, the Crew, Hoody, Track

Jacket, and Windrunner; for women, the Cape, Funnel Neck Hoody, and Windrunner. “We really wanted to go back to our icons, but give a modern look to them,” he says.

In designing the Track Jacket and Hoody, for example, Holman used a seam-bound, rather than stitched, kangaroo pocket that allows for cleaner profiles and extra storage; the left chest on each also has a zip pocket for media players.

For the Cape, he dropped the back hem to create an exaggerated effect characteristic of a

luxury label’s. In the end, each piece was pared down to its purest, most functional form. “It’s okay to innovate, but if you don’t have style and attractiveness, it’s a losing battle,” Holman says. “You have to have balance.”

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(THIS PAGE) Men’s Crew. (OPPOSITE, LEFT TO RIGHT) Women’s Funnel Neck Hoody. Detail of men’s Crew.

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Fendi Fur

In Fendi’s fur atelier, a team of highly trained craftspeople brings Karl Lagerfeld’s visions for coats and bags to life.

BY JILLIAN RICHARDSON PHOTOS BY GUIDO GAZZILLI

“Fur is part of our DNA,” says Silvia Venturini Fendi, creative director of accessories and menswear at Fendi. “The craftsmanship is passed on from generation to generation.”

The house has been working with fur since its founding in 1925 and is currently one of just a handful of fashion brands with an in-house fur atelier. A Fendi fur coat begins with an original sketch from Karl Lagerfeld, who designs the brand’s womenswear and fur lines. The sketch is then translated into a pattern at the atelier, based in the brand’s Rome headquarters. A team of no fewer than seven artisans — all of whom have trained for more than 10 years — works to produce a single coat.

Those specializing in the selection and pairing of fur wet and stretch the pelts they’ve chosen to fit the pattern, while another group, trained in the gheronatura craft, expertly slices the pelts into thin V-shaped strips. Others trained in the intarsio technique then fit and sew the pieces together in a puzzlelike pattern.

When Lagerfeld came to the brand in 1965, he envisioned fur coats that moved seamlessly with the body rather than hanging heavily on the frame. “When it moves, the Fendi fur becomes very sensual, like a light garment,” Fendi says. “It’s closer to the symbol of women nowadays.” Deeply ingrained in the history of the brand, fur has been applied to almost all of the accessories in Fendi’s fall/winter 2013 line, including the Selleria bag, which has brightly colored fur accents — the first time the material has appeared on the product. For Fendi, the options are endless. Even the fashion house’s sunglasses have been decorated in fur. “When speaking about Fendi furs,” she says, “tradition always meets innovation.”

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(THIS SPREAD, CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT) Sketches by Karl Lagerfeld for a fur coat. A paper pattern with pelt-cutting guidelines. Lagerfeld’s sketches on top of the finished piece.

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(THIS SPREAD, CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT) A fur coat turned inside out to highlight the intarsio technique used to make it. The outside of the piece.

A finished coat on top of its pattern.

A striped mink jacket shown with its fur tablet study. Felt strips are sewn together to create the tablet study.

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HOW IT’S MADE

(TOP TO BOTTOM) Fur tablet studies for various designs hang on the walls of the atelier. After wetting the pelts, a specialist stretches and dries them to form the desired shapes.

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HOW IT’S MADE

(CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT) V-shaped strips are cut from the pelt using the gheronatura technique. A detail of the intarsio technique for a jacket turned inside out. The completed silver fox fur bomber with banded mink trim.

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CULTURE Two curators explore interior design and impermanence with a lively showcase in a soon-to-be-developed Berlin building. & A photo portfolio of recent events in the Surface universe, including a performance

by Jay Z at New York’s Pace Gallery.

CLUB

Gisbert Poeppler on co-curating the show “Between Time” in a historic Berlin building located at Wallstrasse 85 (through Sept. 22): I’ve been observing this building for about 18 years. It has a long history. I live in the area, and I’ve always wanted to know: Who owns it? What’s going to happen to it? It’s very strange because it’s in the middle of Berlin, but not many people know of it. Since the wall came down, the building hasn’t been restored. Now the owner is about to develop it. Before it changes, I had the idea to do an interior-design showroom in this fantastic space.

The owner gave us the space for six weeks. I showed him the concept, and he said, “Go for it.” From there, I went to Milan. There’s this company there called Dedar that does fabrics, and they gave us a huge amount of fabric. We made big curtains with them, and the upholstery is mostly from them. I also met the people from the furniture company Azucena.

I told both companies, “It will not be a Dedar showroom. It will not be an Azucena showroom. It will show what you can do with interiors.” Interiors are not such a big subject yet in Germany. In New York, it’s normal to have interior designers. In France and London, too.

But in Germany, it’s more like, “Oh, my wife does it.” So we’re developing what you can do with interiors here.

We have the vintage pieces, the Azucena furniture, and antique Chinese Art Deco rugs. It’s a whole mixture from different periods. It’s not about showing one company; it’s more about putting things together into a whole.

The colors we chose for the Azucena sofas correspond with the Dedar fabrics and the space’s walls.

That’s mainly our work: Usually we work in existing spaces; we don’t build new spaces. It’s this whole “inbetween” idea, because the building is in between time.

The show’s up for only six weeks; you will never see it this way again. The owner is looking for someone to buy it.

Ideally, it will be an art collector who has a lot of money to show his art to the public. But perhaps someone else will buy it, and then you won’t be able to enter the space.

We also chose pieces by Morten Espersen. His sculptures are a nice contrast to the furniture because they’re all about surfaces. He does these fantastic surfaces with textures that very much correspond to the space. He also does these very strict forms, but lately he’s done free forms. You can see how he completely changed his process. Up until three or four years ago, it was purer Danish design. Now it’s a completely different era in his work. We wanted to show both eras.

I work a lot with colors, so on the one hand, the show seems to be a bit eclectic, but at the same time, what I want to achieve is that as you enter the room you immediately feel comfortable. I want to make people aware of the fact that interior design doesn’t have to be minimalist all the time. It doesn’t have to be gray and beige, gray and beige. I really want to show what is possible when you combine things. These Chinese Art Deco rugs and ’70s furniture are from completely different times—they have completely different languages—but they fit together perfectly. —As told to Spencer Bailey

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PHOTOS: INTERIORS, WOLFGANG STAHR. ARTWORK, OLE AKHOJ.

Curated by Gisbert Poeppler and Erik Hofstetter

Gallery

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Chinese Art Deco rug. Writing table, Gisbert Poeppler. Armchair, Vico Magistretti.

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“Horror Vacui – Noir désir” (2012), Morten Espersen.

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Restored vintage club chair with velvet upholstery from Lelievre and cording by Dedar. Paparazzo lamp, Erik Hofstetter.

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“Vacui #1577” (2011), Morten Espersen.

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Chinese Art Deco rug. Lido lounge chair, Caccia Dominioni for Azucena. Restored vintage club chairs. Sculpture, Shipper Geissler.

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“Horror Vacui #1664 – Disclaimed Reflection” (2013), Morten Espersen.

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Chinese Art Deco rug. Diesis chaise lounges, Antonio Citterio for B&B Italia.

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“Horror Vacui #1665 – Sedated Hermit” (2013), Morten Espersen.

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GALLERY

Restored vintage club chair. Paparazzo lamp, Erik Hofstetter. Luis chair, Caccia Dominioni for Azucena.

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18–22/09/2013

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Culture Club

Opening of Fendi’s new Paris flagship and Karl Lagerfeld’s “The Glory of Water” exhibit On July 3, Fendi held a two-part event in Paris that kicked off with a cocktail party to toast the opening of the brand’s new flagship on Avenue Montaigne.

Following that, shuttle buses took guests to a custombuilt space along the Seine to celebrate “The Glory of

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Water,” an exhibition of Karl Lagerfeld’s photographs.

Lagerfeld (above), Silvia Venturini Fendi and her daughter Delfina Delettrez, and Vogue creative director Grace Coddington were among the attendees. (Photo: Courtesy of Fendi)

CULTURE CLUB

Surface Design Dialogues No. 2 at Neuehouse At Surface’s second installment of Design Dialogues on July 31, in a talk moderated by executive editor Spencer Bailey, hotelier Ian Schrager—the magazine’s July/ August issue cover subject—discussed the difference between New York and London hospitality with Glenn Pushelberg and George Yabu of interior-design firm

Yabu Pushelberg. (Schrager collaborated with Yabu Pushelberg on the London Edition hotel, which opens in September.) Afterward, guests mingled and sipped summery concoctions from Corzo Tequila at the Manhattan workspace collective Neuehouse, Surface’s new headquarters. Bentley Motors provided transportation for several VIPs. (Photo: Benjamin Rosser)

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CULTURE CLUB

Summer opening at the Studio Museum To celebrate its summer exhibitions, including a show by artist Robert Pruitt, the Studio Museum in Harlem held a party on July 17. Guests included pop musician Solange, artist Derrick Adams, and Queens Museum director Tom Finkelpearl. (Photo: Scott Rudd)

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“Picasso Baby” at the Pace Gallery For six hours on July 10, Jay Z took over New York’s Pace Gallery to perform his recent single “Picasso Baby” for an audience of art-world insiders, including artist Marina Abramovic and J.Crew’s Jenna Lyons. Footage from the marathon performance was used for the song’s music video. (Photo: Joe Schildhorn /BFAnyc.com)

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Hosted By reception at the Sculpture Center On July 18, the Sculpture Center in Long Island City held an after-hours reception for “Better Homes,” an exhibition on domestic interiors. Among those in attendance were Grey Area creative director Kyle DeWoody, curator Tim Goossens, and gallerist Paul Judelson. (Photo: Leandro Justen/BFAnyc.com)

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CULTURE CLUB

Young Members Party at the Met For the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s annual party celebrating members under the age of 35, artist Curtis Kulig (above, next to model Camilla Deterre) designed light installations adorning the Great Hall. (Photo: Billy Farrell/BFAnyc.com)

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Lancôme Show by Alber Elbaz at the Trianon To celebrate the launch of a cosmetics line with Lanvin creative director Alber Elbaz (above, with former French Vogue editor Carine Roitfeld), Lancôme held a soiree at the Trianon theater in Paris. Guests included fashion designer Giambattista Valli and model Daria Werbowy.

(Photo: Stéphane Feugère for Lancôme)

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CULTURE CLUB

Art Crush at the Aspen Art Museum Aspen Art Museum’s annual three-day gala concluded on Aug. 2 with a live auction of 87 lots (including Ellsworth Kelly’s “Easter Lily”). Above, curator Dan Cameron, gallerist Stephan Stoyanov, philanthropist Toby Lewis, Madison Square Art curator Adam Glick, and MOCA Cleveland curator David Norr. (Photo: Billy Farrell/BFAnyc.com)

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OBJECT

High Flyer

Bentley’s new Flying Spur, crafted in Crewe, England, and available in the U.S. in September, photographed

by David Black outside the gallery Regen Projects on Santa Monica Boulevard in Los Angeles.

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FLYING SPUR BY THE NUMBERS: Hours it takes to build the car Employees who work on the Bentley production line 24 Standard options for interior leather color 120 Standard options for exterior paint color 12 Hours it takes to complete the mirror-finishing process in the Bentley paint shop 35 Hours it takes to complete the interior elements 3 Hours it takes one specialist to make the steering wheel, including 30 minutes of cross-stitching by hand 25 Hours it takes to contrast-stitch the cabin 16 Wood veneer options 167 Employees who work in the wood shop 17 Wood-finishing processes 4 Years it takes for workers to master every one of the finishing processes 15 Leather hides in every car 5,103 Stitches in the winged B that adorns the Bentley headrest

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PLOUM Sofa by Ronan & Erwan Bouroullec 800-BY-ROSET ligne-roset-usa.com

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