KAROLIN WOLTER BY AMY TROOST

We love supporting new talent. Every issue, we try to feature a few commissioned works from some of our favorite artists. We give them free rein of a full-spread; the only limitations are the generous dimensions of the page. For our Fall 2014 issue, photographer Kava Gorna sent over a vivid series of stark nudes and lush landscapes.

We love supporting new talent. Every issue, we try to feature a few commissioned works from some of our favorite artists. We give them free rein of a full-spread; the only limitations are the generous dimensions of the page. For our Fall 2014 issue, New York-based photographer Anthony Cotsifas captured a still life of shivs confiscated from prisoners, curated by Michael Reynolds.

The up-and-coming Brooklyn band Bad Girlfriend performed at the inaugural Last Supper in July, held at Dan Martensen and Clare Richardson’s barn in upstate New York, with food by Alejandro Alcocer.

Downtown New York garage surf rock band Bad Girlfriend isn’t shy about their ragtag, fly-by-night origins. “We booked a show even before we really had a band,” grins the all-girl group’s strawberry-locked guitarist, Christian Owens. “And once we found [our drummer] Lyla [Vander], we named the band after someone’s bad girlfriend.” The bad girlfriend in question was “a great lady,” insists fellow singer and guitarist Brianna Lance: “Smart and funny—just not the best girlfriend.” The only other ‘Bad Girlfriend’ in the city—a cover band made up of “kind of middle-aged ladies”—was “run out of town!” teases Owens. “They were kind of talking to us and everything, then they just got scared and changed their name,” completes Lance.

Marc by Marc Jacobs’ new designers Luella Bartley and Katie Hillier take it to the streets in their first collection with a revolutionary new look.

There’s a reason that a tiny volcanic island at the edge of the Arctic Circle has produced some mesmerizingly original minds, whether in music (Björk, Sigur Rós), art (Steinunn Thórarinsdóttir), or even food (Siggi’s Skyr). Cloaked in darkness and frigidity for half the year, it’s as if creativity shields Icelanders from their harsh but beautiful home.

Launched in Reykjavík in 2011, the dark, minimalist, leather-heavy womenswear of Kalda represents a bit of a departure from typical Icelandic lines. No patterned woolen sweaters here, just simplicity and a few well-placed details. “I’ve always been attracted to opposites in life,” explains designer Katrin Alda about her process. A black lambskin motorcycle jacket from Spring 2014 sold out almost immediately.

“I believe in a dialogue between past and present,” explains Carmen March, the creative director of Pedro del Hierro. “It gives an intellectual tension to the collections that feels, somehow, timeless.”

This exchange is evident in the collections helmed by March ever since she joined the Cortefiel Group in 2012, marking a new era for the popular Spanish label.

The gnarled and pocked contours of an unearthed animal bone, carefully catalogued shards of attic pottery, the viscosity of a new batch of bone-china slip or heated wax: these are the things that make the artist Melissa Gamwell’s heart beat a little faster. Gamwell uses a sophisticated technical process involving bone china, phosphate dyes, water, and semiprecious metals to create sculptural objects that seductively straddle the line between the fine and applied arts. The result is beautifully disconcerting: fine china and flatware firmly reimagined through the chaotic logic of the natural world.

Le Corbusier swore by the golden ratio. Much like venerated early mathematicians Euclid and Fibonacci, the Swiss architect and urban planner was confident that by recreating this geometric relationship—shortened to the decimal 1.61—the most gratifying, harmonious proportions could be arrived at. This clarity of vision, this dogged certainty that disciplined thinking is key to effective design, is one shared by New York label 1.61.