The Q&A is a tried and true, though sometimes tired, tool for communicating. The interview site Varsity Bookmarking updates it brilliantly, allowing interview subjects only a link to respond to its interview questions. There are only five entries thus far—most recently an interview with the great book cover designer Peter Mendelsund of Jacket Mechanical, but we live in hope that Varsity will step up the posting schedule soon.
Bookmark it at VarsityBookmarking.com
The Pender Coat is a great example of how Carhartt Work in Progress takes the legendary workwear company in a fresh, new direction. A 100% nylon diamond quilted jacket, the Pender Coat features a waxy water repellent shell along with a double-way zip closure. Whether under a coat or on its own, the jacket (available in black, navy, orange, and camo) will add a nice bit of texture to a fall wardrobe.
Visit Carhartt WIP where the Pender Coat is priced at $163.
The uncanny aesthetic of Alex Roulette's paintings is likely caused by his source material: extensive photographs and found images of an area filtered through distorted and subjective memory. His oil paintings have subtle fantasy elements that could just as easily go unexplained (see the blue smoke cloud), while his choices in posture and perspective feel photorealistic.
Alex Roulette lives and works in New York City.
These five-panel corduroy camp caps from Battenwear are a good option with fall quickly approaching. Adjustable and made with a supple foam visor, the short-brimmed cap is designed to fold into itself when not in use. The caps are made in NYC and come in your choice of four different colorways.
Visit the Woodlands where the Battenwear Camp Caps are priced at $64.
1946 was a good time to take the subway in New York City. You could buy a printed horoscope from a vending machine right on the platform, and if you posed just right in front of a sleeping guy at 81st Street, Stanley Kubrick might take your photo. Kubrick's series, originally commissioned by LOOK Magazine with the very un-Kubrickian title, "Life and Love on the New York City Subway," is available in full from the Museum of the City of New York. [MCNY via Gothamist]
During his coursework for a masters degree in architecture, Hank Butitta was frustrated that his ideas never made it past the rendering phase. To satisfy his impulse to work with his hands and actually see a project through to construction, he started designing a cabin for a rural plot of land his grandfather owned. When a pesky building code and a too small budget made that project unfeasible, Butitta realized that a similar structure built inside of a bus would be exempt from the local law and cost much less.
A few months later, when it came time to start his final thesis project, Butitta pulled the bus idea from the back burner and purchased a decommissioned school bus for $3,000. Over the course of the semester he designed and fabricated an interior that could sleep a handful of passengers, and planned a 5,000 mile road trip to test the design. That road trip, which started in Minneapolis, is in progress right now, with the bus somewhere in the Pacific Northwest.
Check out the travel log, and see a few photos of the restoration below.
After an enlightening conversation with Karim Rashid about sneaker history, technology, and design trends, and inspired by his work for the Out of the Box: The Rise of Sneaker Culture exhibit at the Bata Shoe Museum in Toronto, we were interested to find out what the heavyweight designer would put on his own list of favorite sneakers. Rashid named many of his own designs. And as the five selections below suggest, his focus on technology and digital culture rarely wavers.
Rashid tells us why he love each shoe in the captions below.
Fessura Mirror
"The beauty of the Fessura shoes was the tops can be changed and come off the molded, soft, flexible bottom. The bottom can be worn separately for going in water, etc. I designed 40 different tops to interchange with the bottom molds."
Fessura Hi-Fi
"I love these updated Chelsea boots and the minimal design with bright accents of color. High tops were always my fave."
Kromo for Sully Wong
"I always loved the simplicity of desert boots. I realized that there were none on the market made from leather that were interesting. So I made a minimal version, with very soft special printed leather patterns of my belief in the new global ornamentation I call digipop, and made them super comfortable and highly crafted."
Melissa Dynamik
"These shoes were co-injection molded. It is a robotically made running shoe that you can wear in the pool, the shower, anywhere."
Pro Keds Royal Skyhawk
"I found these on eBay, my favorite store on the globe. You can find a lot of amazing design objects online! I’ve even purchased and sold a vintage Avanti car and a house on eBay."
The La Sardina 35mm camera from Lomography borrows its name, and thin rectangular body, from the familiar sardine can. Although the body remains the same, the company usually keeps about 24 different varieties of the camera in stock, with a remarkably active rotation of new designs. Yesterday, Lomography announced a 25th version of the camera dubbed the "Wally Watcher," which features classic illustrations from the Where's Waldo books. If the "Wally Watcher" name throws North American readers for a loop, Where's Wally is the original English title of the series.
The Wally Watcher is available now for $79.
We’ll be keeping an eye on this new site from designer and developer Matt Johnston. He has started a project exploring the aspects of watch design with a smart and simple website he’s calling Wrist. Taking a page from Windows of New York, Johnston's goal is to illustrate and animate one watch every other week, all the while playing with typography, color, and animation.
Already on the site are watches from Timex and From Us With Love, but we can think of dozens of different watches that we’d like to see Johnston mock up. Side note: The animation didn't work on our Safari browser, but did work on Chrome.
Visit Wrist to get your bi-weekly dose of beautifully animated watches.
Save for the assassination scene, the creepy subtext of the "Meals Interrupted" photo series is that something unknown but presumably terrible happened to the diners mid-meal. The series is a collaboration between photographer Davide Luciano and food stylist Claudia Ficca, who has likely never used a swarm of bees or a charred lobster in her previous work. The pair, who also happen to be husband and wife, shot the photos in each of their hometowns, New York and Montreal.
See more work from Luciano and Ficca.
