Home Memphis
05.04.17

Studio Visit

The Glass-Walled LA Loft of New Fashion Brand Everybody is Anything But Basic

As former creative leads at American Apparel, it’s no surprise that Iris Alonzo and Carolina Crespo have an idiosyncratic sense of what counts as basic. After all, these are the women who visually defined a generation by re-proportioning denim and T-shirts into high-waisted mom jeans and plunging V-necks. In leggings as pants and a rainbow array of unitards — and in a now-notorious series of advertisements — was the sense that wearing a uniform could be outré, as well as an embrace of ease that paved the way for the subsequent movements of athleisure and normcore. The duo's new line follows suit: EVERYBODY, a collection of unisex, seasonless basics ranging from a white cotton flightsuit to a perfect garment-dyed denim work coat. We recently visited them in their studio.
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09.17.16

Saturday Selects

Week of September 12, 2016

A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week: Moroccan-inspired rugs by way of Paris, a conceptual one-day gallery-cum-exhibition and an octogenarian design couple finally making it onto our collective radar.
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Kathryn Bentley's midcentury Los Angeles home
03.25.16

Interiors

Kathryn Bentley’s LA Home is a Beautiful Showcase for Talented Designers and Friends

When we think about our dream home, here are some of the things we think about: bountiful sunlight and lots of green plants; layered, colorful Moroccan rugs and deep, caramel-colored leather sofas; and tons and tons of intimately personal art, objects, and furniture made by designers we know and love. (And, let's not forget, our well-documented penchant for a great yellow and blue combo.) So imagine our surprise and delight when a sneak peek for this weekend's T Magazine hit the internet and we came face to face with all of those things packed into one beautiful, mid-century Los Angeles home — owned, no less, by jewelry designer and shop owner Kathryn Bentley of Dream Collective, a woman whose style we've admired for years.
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03.05.16

Saturday Selects

Week of February 29, 2016

A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week: A David Hockney library, a Gio Ponti flatware collection, a bracelet inspired by Mario Botta, and a brand new collection by two of the founding members of Memphis.
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09.15.15

Eye Candy

Peter Judson’s April Showers

If illustration doesn't work out for Peter Judson, perhaps he might consider interior design as an alternate career? In the story we published on the London designer today, he revealed that for every day in April of this year, he imagined and drew a different shower stall, complete with tile schemes, hinges, Bacterio-style laminates, and geometric faucets.
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03.31.15

Eye Candy

Acme Releases Deadstock Memphis Objects

It was only a week and a half ago that we reported on a cache of original, made-in-the-80s Memphis jewelry designs that the brand ACME has spent the past few months pulling from its archives and posting for sale on its Legacy website (where it appears that even more designs, particularly those by Peter Shire, have since been added). But we had to come in for round two today when we found out that, just this morning, Acme unleashed the motherlode: actual objects, long unavailable and highly rarefied, by the likes of Ettore Sottsass, Andrea Branzi, and Aldo Rossi. Many of them are original prototypes, some of them are one-of-a-kind, and none of them were ever put into mass production. We've posted a selection of the offerings after the jump, along with the bits of history provided by ACME — get them before the collectors do!
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03.18.15

Sighted

Acme Legacy’s Archival Memphis Jewelry

After our recent post on jewelry created by famous '80s-era Memphis-group architects, readers came to us asking where they could find the pieces (good luck), while even copies of the out-of-print book we pulled the images from immediately became exponentially harder to procure (for under $350, at least). And so despite the excitement the post generated, it was destined to remain a mere digital artifact for most. That's why we were so happy to discover, shortly thereafter, Acme's Legacy collection, through which the 30-year-old accessories brand — which these days focuses on designer pens — has been quietly pulling Memphis jewelry pieces out of its archives and making them available for sale at shockingly reasonable price points. From 1985 to 1992, Acme founders Adrian Olabuenaga and Leslie Bailey produced more than 100 different earrings, brooches, and necklaces by design titans like Ettore Sottsass, Joanna Grawunder, Alessandro Mendini, and George Sowden, a big chunk of which are now up for grabs on its Legacy page. We asked Olabuenaga a few questions about the history and future of the project.
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03.01.15

Saturday Selects

Week of February 23, 2015

A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week: long-awaited collections from two of our favorite designers, a new exhibition and book from the doyenne of Memphis, and a serious contender for the best watering can we've ever seen.
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02.18.15

From the Library Of

Esprit’s Brand Books

There are some books that are quoted, referenced, or photographed so often in our line of work that they begin to feel like touchstones for design-world enthusiasts all over the world. The Nathalie du Pasquier–illustrated Leonard Koren bible Arranging Things: A Rhetoric of Object Placement is of those such books; the late-'90s graphic-design manifesto Tibor Kalman: Perverse Optimist is another. But recently, another book has begun popping up no matter where we look. Esprit: The Comprehensive Design Principle — a huge, softcover paean to every design aspect of the beloved 1980s fashion brand — was published in 1989 by its founder Douglas Tompkins, but has experienced a resurgence of late in these '80s nostalgia–tinged, Memphis revival–happy times.
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12.06.14

Saturday Selects

Week of December 1, 2014

A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week: A full report on our travels in Miami and Finland is coming next week, but until then we have acid-trip lenticulars, '80s-era armchairs, and the most G-rated fun you can have in 52 pages.
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11.10.14

Sighted

#Nannyart by Brandon E. Cannon

"In Panama, the term "Nanny" is thrown around a lot because everyone has one. To have someone who comes to your home or apartment once or twice a week, some are even live-in, is more than common in Panama. There's even an extra bedroom and bathroom in every home and apartment for live-in nannies. Over time while painting at my studio I began to take notice of some of the cleaning supplies my "nanny," Lucre, was using on a day-to-day basis. The colors, patterns, and textures of the supplies began to catch my eye and greatly intrigued me. With the sudden idea of buying art supplies not at the art store but in the cleaning aisles of grocery stores or mini-marts #NannyArt began to take form."
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