Pitchfork   Festivals: Chicago | Paris
Photo: Ryan Plett

It was a mob of manicured beards, Fair Isle sweaters, and leather boots at the recent Pop Up Flea V at NYC’s ROOT (Drive-in) in Chelsea. Hosted by A Continuous Lean’s Michael Williams and Randy Goldberg of Urban Daddy, the 3-day menswear event was the mecca for urban dudes who embrace a decidedly rustic wardrobe. Has the heritage trend given guys the liberty to upgrade their look in a down-to-earth way? We’ll let you decide. So, go ahead and pitch a tent. Here are a few highlights:

  1. Man of the World: The fancy lifestyle mag’s booth sported a shiny black MG, fixies, and smaller goods like axes by Best Made Co. and Walnut Studios’ Leather Bicycle Can Cages, perfect for your PBR.

  2. Gerber: No, not baby food… knives. A shit ton of knives displayed beneath a tent adorned by a huge boar head. And other potentially lethal goodies like hatchets. Winner: most creative booth.

  3. Ursa Major: Sustainable skincare products made from natural ingredients that smell fantastic. Products like “Stellar Shave Cream” and “Fortifying Face Balm” kind of smell like... well, the woods. Not sweaty lumberjack woods, more rugged outdoorsman woods.

  4. Billykirk: The leatherwork designs of brothers Chris and Kirk Bray is handcrafted by a group of Amish leather workers in Pennsylvania. Impeccably made satchels, belts, and more. Also? They’ve collaborated with J.Crew so you know their work is perfect. Because J.Crew just seems…perfect.
     
  5. Levi’s Vintage Clothing: I know, it feels all branding voodoo with the addition of “Vintage Clothing”, but Levi’s pulled off some serious bad-ass magic with a large gallery exhibit of self-taught Brooklyn photographer Danny Lyon’s “The Bikeriders” featuring hand-painted leather moto jackets, books, pics, and archives. Photojournalism at its best. It was brilliant.
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The xx and Grizzly Bear toured the U.S. and Canada together and Manchester's Dr. Me designed a very handsome poster available only at the shows. Some superfans couldn't make the gigs, however, and petitioned for their own posters. So the designer has wisely made the posters available to the rest of us.

Stalk desktop speakers are actually designed to stand next to a crowded desk, rather than take up valuable desktop real estate. The two models (taller or shorter) are built with colored steel legs and a 3D-printed dome, both meant to be chosen by the owner to personalize the set. The designer, New Zealand-based Ella Bates-Hermans, developed the cone patterns by experimenting with 3D printing textures, and drew inspiration for the speaker's form by studying the shape of speaker drivers. [via NOTCOT]

Check out the Stalk speakers on Behance.







At one point in time, we took them for granted. Payphones were a must—if you were running late, lost, or traveling and needed to make reservations—or perhaps didn't have a home phone. The eventual affordability and popularity of mobile phones wiped them out, destroying the market for their use and making payphones, it seems, not worth the time or money to maintain. Some still exist, sometimes in the oddest of places, and we're sure that some of us still need them in a pinch. By now, their increasing rarity makes them ripe as a photographic subject. #payphoneography is a bit like a chronicle of the last days of a connected, cheap public communication network—with the occassional shot of an exotic callbox from a far-flung locale. Particularly sad, we think, are the "carcasses" of ripped-out phones.

As part of an exhibit at this year's Design/Miami Basel fair celebrating Swiss design and promoting tourism, seven designers were given discarded gondolas from the Verbier resort in the Swiss Alps and told to use the materials to create new work. Some kept the basic form of the gondolas and created rocking benches and tables, while others deconstructed the cars entirely, creating new installations that only vaguely suggested the shape of the classic gondola. The seven designs will be shown during a brief tour of Switzerland, and auctioned by Christie's to raise funds for the Make-a-Wish foundation. [via Yatzer / photos © Annik Wetter]