L'ARCOBALENO

In selecting architect David Adjaye for their first retail space, Proenza Schouler’s Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez were attempting to chisel their own progressive framework into Manhattan’s stiff Upper East Side. The outpost, they say, was meant to be “the antithesis of a slick, high-gloss Madison Avenue store,” and Adjaye, whose rise to fame is rooted firmly in the dissolution of cultural boundaries, was seen as the ideal mediator.

The turnover at 57 Walker Street is heavy this autumn, with five different designer-architect collaborations taking their turn in the small Chinatown storefront that is the site of this year’s BOFFO Building Fashion series with barely more than a week each to set up. But despite appearances to the contrary—the taped floor, the exposed ceiling, the scaffolding, the dust—the Patrik Ervell pop-up shop is indeed open and ready for business.

Precision as a theme was apparent at this year’s International Contemporary Furniture Fair, most notably in the Chassis Chair by Stefan Diez for Wilkhahn, a beautifully innovative tour de force of design and engineering—metal formed like a German luxury car, construction as tight and precise as a made-to-measure suit. Similar crisp lines and construction define the W101, an LED lamp made of formed biodegradable paper and designed by Claesson Koivisto Rune in collaboration with lighting manufacturer Wästberg and forestry group Södra. Paper sheets are sandwiched and interleaved with electronics before being molded into the elegant and simple form.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about The Doors’ Jim Morrison and the artist Stewart Home, and lo and behold, up pops a new exhibition by the gentleman who could have been their love child (should two men be allowed to reproduce). Rick Owens made his name in the late ‘90s as a fashion designer […]