The Design Crack Guide to Synthetic Fabrics
Alright. I’ve fallen for it. The Swiss Army brand has moved into shoes and I’m in. The shoes, lead by Established Brands, have been expertly produced with the expected simplicity, ease of use, and signature red color that is important to give it that Swiss Army feel. I grew up owning a Swiss Army knife, [...]
Doc System Furniture a Genius Idea for Small Spaces
This has to be one of the most useful pieces of furniture I’ve seen in a long while. It’s called the Doc System, and it folds from a sofa into a bunk bed. I’m, of course, being heavily biased because of the recent arrival of my first child. Here’s the deal, my wife and I [...]
What Would a Chandelier Look Like if Were Overtaken by Spiders?
Marcel Wanders, uber designer of the past five years, has created this recent addition to the stable of fantastic, high-concept lights for Flos. The concept is to take an old school chandelier and treat it as it were in a haunted house with some overzealous spiders which had made the most lethal web imaginable. The [...]
Stool Wraps by Arik Levy: An idea for the space challenged magazine readers
Arik Levy has created a design that takes recycling to new levels while also creating an opportunity for those magazine hoarders out there to remain fashionably clutter free and still keep their magazines. We all know these people. Usually they are older single people who have saved every magazine for the past forty years because [...]
The Flatpack Rug by Big-Game: Functional Furniture for the Transient Fashionista
Flatpack is a tufted wool rug by Big-Game, a Swiss and Belgian design house. The rug concept was born from the idea of taking a simple cardboard box and flattening it out so that each tab of the box spreads to make a rug. I like this simply because it exploit an already interesting form [...]
Bell & Ross Watches’ Subtle Boxiness Wows
This past weekend, The New York Times had an advertising supplemental that was a slick magazine devoted to the watch, a dying breed of product design. Probably my favorite of the watches was the Bell & Ross BR01-97. It is, quite frankly, one of the ugliest watches I have ever seen, but there is no [...]
Burberry offers an extremely exciting fall winter 07/08 collection
I’ve increasingly been looking at fashion lately, and call me conservative: I love the Burberry collection for this upcoming season. Burberry, as you may know, was a brand that only catered to preppy Hampton sows for years and years. It ranked up there with Ralph Lauren in yawn factor. Today, Burberry has reinvented itself by [...]
Just How Sexy Can a Lamp Be? The Moschino Dress Lamp Answers
Moschino, that clever Italian fashion house, is always jabbing a stick in the eye of what fashion should be. They are a creative lot that does not like to be tied down by any sense of tradition. One of their recent forays is in the realm of lighting design. They have taken a number of [...]
Nazi Couture: Raf Simons Autumn/Winter Collection 2007-2008
I live in San Francisco where a multitude of strange subcultures coexist. However one that has never taken a foothold which I think would give the city a new dimension is what I will refer to as Nazi Couture. In one sense, I imagine Nazi Couture as a group of self absorbed young males who [...]
Fall / Winter 2007 Collection by Mina Perhonen
Mina Perhonen is a Finnish Designer working in Japan. Her work is characterized by empire dresses with flowing waists, huge, bold buttons, neutrals mixed with a few earthy cool colors, and softness. I’ve chosen to show a picture of the softest of the soft pieces. It’s sort of a hoodie mixed with a cardigan made [...]
Chord Light by Form Us With Love
Form Us With Love, an exciting Swedish based design group, has come up with the cutest floor lamp. It reminds me of a Bugs Bunny cartoon I saw years ago where Bugs was supposed to be somewhere in an exotic Casbah, and to disguise himself he became one of those snake charmers who sit with [...]
Electro Luminescent Vases by Voon Wong and Benson Saw
How bad ass are these items? Okay, it’s maybe a bit hard to tell what these are at first glance, so I’ll add a bit of description: These are vases where the designers have woven an electro luminescent (EL) wire around a ceramic vessel. EL wire is a low light emitting wire used in the [...]
Boom Bag by GRO Design
Boom Bag is a prototype by Gro Design that combines two great accessories into an awesome final concept. It’s one part purse and one part portable iPod stereo. This is one of those, “Why didn’t I think of that?!…Hey, pass me that bong, dude” moments in product design. If you look at most portable iPod [...]
Hotdoll by Clement Eloy
Clement Eloy is a French product designer with an idea to help out dogs when they get the urge. Mr. Eloy has produced a number of provocative product designs in the past couple years, but this one is the most visceral. The Hotdoll. There’s not much to say about the concept that isn’t already obvious. [...]
Jackets by Moncler
I think that I had originally meant to write about this jacket about six months ago. I saw it in a magazine, so I just bookmarked it to follow up later. OK, now that it’s Spring, I’ve decided to do some spring cleaning and clear the boards of all these posts that I’ve started. This [...]
Smittens by Wendy Feller
I’ve been combing through the latest ID Magazine and I’ve found a number of pieces that were extremely compelling. One of my favorites is Smittens by Wendy Feller. They couldn’t be more aptly named. These are mittens for couples who are smitten (sorry for the obvious observation). This seems like such unique novelty design at [...]
