The MAN New York trade show emerged recently as the American counterpart to a Parisian menswear expo first held in January of 2012. Over three seasons, MAN has defined itself by presenting a group of brands that favor responsible manufacturing and build quality rather than wholesale quantity. For many brands showing, MAN marks their first major introduction to the American market. Earlier this month, we stopped in to inspect the goings-on and came away impressed.

La Paz was an early standout at this month's MAN New York. Owner André Bastos Teixeira explained the Portuguese brand is based in the northern city of Porto, "near the industry," but does its manufacturing all over the country: with hat makers in the mountains and shirt-making fishermen in Nazaré. The only products they don't make in Portugal are the knit sweaters they outsource to the powerful Scottish knitwear machine. The La Paz line is cleanly designed and loosely based around a "seafaring" life near the water.

Tender is a brand run out of owner William Kroll's living room in London. In addition to staffing the company's warehouse (which he says is literally a series of boxes), he also leads the design and manufacture of each product. The takeaway from Tender's booth was that Kroll is a materials man. All the metal for his line, for things like buttons and buckles, is made from solid brass by vintage wax casting. Even the glasses he sells are actually made from cotton acetate instead of plastic or cellulose.

One of his headline items had to be the "hands on" watch. Tender uses reclaimed Swiss movements with a special 45 degree rotated face to recreate vintage driving watches. The idea was that with the tilted face, you never had to take your hands off the wheel.

New York's painfully cold and windy weather during MAN was a stroke of luck for the Netherlands knitwear brand Howlin', which is actually a side-label of the older family-owned knitwear brand Morrison. The two brothers of the family started Howlin' in 2009 to try out some youthful new designs. Howlin' showed an impressive line including hats, sweaters, and socks, with designs ranging from intricate multi-colored patterns to simple solids. Like La Paz, they also source their knits from Scotland. By the way, Howlin' is Scottish slang for smelly, but that didn't seem to stop the attendees from taking a long glance at the warm knits when contemplating braving the elements outside. 

Oak Street Bootmakers' line of leather footwear is designed in a Chicago workshop, made from American leather by Horween, and manufactured in Maine or New York. The brand's designs echo classic American styles. It seems that Oak Street's mission isn't to reinvent the wheel of boot design, but to improve build quality. Prices fall in the $300–$450 range, but with an estimated 15-year lifespan, their shoes should be a worthy investment.

There's a spot in Brooklyn where cyclists can make pitstops for some quick repairs and a can of beer or two. With a bar in the front, the bike shop will send you on your way tuned-up and relaxed, though hopefully not off your game.

A new laundromat in Ghent, Belgium just took this idea of social multitasking a step further. Wasbar Ghent puts two time-consuming, regular, and often solitary tasks, doing laundry and getting a haircut, in the context of a bright cafe. Put simply, the goal is for patrons to actually enjoy their time doing errands.

Design studio Pinkeye had the huge and very busy student population of Ghent in mind. In addition to laundry machines and a unisex hair salon, the location has a full-service bar, Wi-Fi, and a generous number of tables to allow customers to get the basics done in the midst of mingling.

Not keen on folding your underwear in a busy cafe? Not to worry, there are private folding rooms to keep everyone comfortable.

Airstream has been bringing the dream of going mobile to life for over 80 years. The distinctive aluminum trailer was futuristic when it was first released, and today represents a potent combination of nostalgia, adventure, and even modernist minimalism. The company recently announced its newest model, the Airstream International Sterling, designed by Christopher C. Deam, is being produced. Its slogan is minimalist design—maximum functionality, and that sounds like music to our ears. Airstreams are handcrafted individually, and the new Sterling has yet to hit the streets, but Airstream has wisely teased us with some concept photos from the 2012 prototype, featuring textiles from Chicago's Unison in a very contemporary interior.

What's particularly interesting about this collaboration is that it's been over a decade in the making. After creating a few custom prototype Airstreams for other clients, Deam (who happens to be married to Lara Hedberg Deam, the founder of Dwell) began consulting with Airstream and suggested a new interior look. Airstream was interested, but wasn't planning on changing its one-at-a-time, handbuilt production methods. Finally, a Deam Airstream is coming to market. The timing might be good. It feels as if the market may just be ready for an Airstream with a truly modern interior.

Video / Deam talks about his first redesign of an Airstream trailer in 2002.

Slit-scan photography is a technique with its own fans and adherents—it was famously used to make the Enterprise-D stretch as it engaged warp drive. Slit-scan images can be beautiful, chaotic, or strangely abstract like seeing the warped results of a glitch in time. Making slitscans from web videos can be somewhat laborious. Sha Hwang's new Slitscanner bookmarklet makes slit-scan creation available to even the most idle of us would-be contemporary artists. It's pretty basic, only works with HTML5 modes of Vimeo and YouTube, and you'll need to take a screenshot to save your piece, but it does have a variable speed option and you can start over whenever you'd like. We've already made some slit-scan images from the new video "Full of Fire" by The Knife. Not awful, but we're sure we can do better.

Drag slitscanner to your bookmarks to get in on the action.

A treasure trove of slit-scan work at Flong.com

Nab Slit-Scan Movie Maker to make your own slit-scan videos, like this one.

The time to learn how to tie a bow tie is not 45 minutes before your best friend's wedding. Trust us, you won't come up looking like 007 on his way to play baccarat without some practice. With spring wedding season quickly approaching, it might be time to bone up on bow tying. And believe us, it's not easy to find a video online that's not totally confusing. Thankfully, The Hill-Side, which also happens to sell fantastic bow ties, has created a video for those of us that want a sharp-looking collar on those days to remember. And the video doesn't end with you scratching your head like you just got taken in a shell game. So study up—and work on that toast—everyone at the reception will be glad you did. 

"HOW TO TIE A BOW TIE" by The Hill-Side from The Hill-Side on Vimeo.

During our stay in the land of sunshine, beaches, and too much traffic, we began to feel the same, and found a quartet of stellar boutiques to consummate the affair. Here are four L.A. boutiques we don't mind hitting when we're burning air miles.

1. Clare Vivier
3339 Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90026
This sunny Parisian-inspired shop in Silver Lake is all about handmade accessories: brilliantly colored top handle totes, minimally-designed iPad cases, and foldover striped clutches line the shelves—and p.s. everything can be monogrammed. CV is also the only shop in L.A. that sells fancy Chateau Marmont candles, aside from the upscale hotel itself, so make a note of it.

2. DNA Clothing
Venice, 411 Rose Avenue, Venice, CA 90291
Hollywood location, 8000 Sunset Blvd. Los Angeles, CA 90046
Quirky, boho-hippie Venice is at the tipping point of yuppie these days. Nonetheless, the casual beach/surfer vibe rules here. For the last two decades, DNA Clothing has been the go-to shop where locals stock up on beach essentials like printed ponchos, T-shirts, hoodies, and sunnies. On trend and on the cheap.

3. Dream Collective
1404 Michetorena, Los Angeles, CA 90026
Another gem in Silver Lake is Dream Collective, a boutique recently opened by local jewelry maker Kathryn Bentley. Stained glass windows set the stage for Bentley’s intricate, affordable costume jewelry collection. Other local artists sell wares like tote bags, art, and footwear at the shop, too. But we went for the jewels: a slender brass and enamel cuff in a multi-colored chevron print looks simple, but really pops against a plain white tee. And the turquoise-hued, oversized triangle ring in brass? We’re suckers for a chic statement ring.

4. Left Bank

2479 Fletcher Drive, Los Angeles, CA 90039
This quaint little thrift store/art gallery is located in the up-and-coming neighborhood of Atwater Village. Jacqueline Goodman, who runs the shop with her mom and sister, stocks the French-inspired boutique with a curated collection of apparel and footwear (both new and vintage), as well as housewares and accessories—some locally made, others imported from France. It’s a bit like raiding a tiny flea market or your cool aunt’s closets—trinkets and treasures are everywhere.

Chances are if you've seen an aerial photograph of a terrifyingly large oil field, or a machine near that oil field that looks capable of moving a building, Edward Burtynsky took the photo. Burtynsky has been shooting human-altered landscapes for decades and, after years of photographing oil fields around the world, he recently shifted his focus to the industry of water.

His "Water" collection focuses on two regions: the recovery effort in the Gulf of Mexico immediately following the 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill, and the crawling webs of water ways used for dryland farming in Monegros County in Northeast Spain. 

A 2008 collection of Burtynsky's photos titled "Oil" is currently on view at the Canadian Museum of Science in Ottawa through September 2013. The exhibit also has an accompanying app.

In addition to his photography, he also founded the Toronto Image Works photo lab.

The Vårdapoteket chain of pharmacies are found in about 24 different hospitals throughout Sweden. In an effort to make their locations feel less cold and clinical than the hospitals that house them, Vårdapoteket enlisted the help of the Stockholm Design Lab to create a warm new identity for all their locations.

The result is a colorful theme with a bright diagram of the human body's internal organs at the center of the design.

The branding is tailor-made to a very specific, and potentially sensitive, setting. The imagery and color palette are positive, but not obnoxiously joyful, and the medical-diagram-meets-illustration aesthetic functions at various scales; it looks great at eight inches on printed literature and at eight feet on the pharmacies' walls.

Breezing through the blog of one of our favorite Cal-centric design firms, Commune, we stumbled upon a photo set from Senegal's capital, Dakar. Expecting wind-battered and white-washed remnants of Colonialism, perhaps? Hardly. In Dakar and its environs, modernist architecture plays off the exuberant temperment of familiar African textiles. The color palette and bold, freestyle geometry that have endeard Kubas and Kentes to the post-Domino design zeitgeist emerge unexpectedly in Technicolor concrete casts and jilted architraves. The influence of everyone from Frank Lloyd Wright to Buckminster Fuller is evidenced in designs that are irreverent and utilitatian, adulterated by disregard, yet still beautiful.

We’d like to thank fashion designer Jonathan Simkhai for his carefree, beachy Spring 2013 collection—just the cure for our January SADS as we trudge through NYC’s evil season of frigid temps and gray skies. While his eponymous line launched just two years ago, the 27-year-old NYC-based designer has already been labeled a rising star and was recently accepted to the CFDA’s Fashion Incubator program.

Simkhai’s collection is 70% surfer girl/30% urban sophisticate—perfect for sunny Golden State weather, or the gritty Lower East Sider with a sunny disposition. Drawing on the Dogtown days of Venice Beach in the '70s, Simkhai created a line of fresh urban sportswear essentials in shades of sherbet pastels and cool neutrals.

Ultra laid-back pieces include classic boardshorts in sun-faded florals; palm leaf-printed frocks in lavender or mint; sky blue/pale peach ombré short-shorts; crisp button-up blouses; and slim trackpants in deep sea blue. A darker leather shift dress and soft-shouldered trench anchor the collection so it’s not too flip-flop casual. Scoop up looks from the line at Barney’s in the coming weeks. Until then, we’ll have to crank the thermostat to 80, slather on some Hawaiian Tropic, sip coconut water, and use our imaginations.