07.27.20
EDITORS’ LIST
Jill and Monica share their July picks, including checkerboard rugs, hand-painted carpenter’s pants, ombré spray bottles, a late French landscape painter (above), and the best in-store soundtrack we’ve ever heard.
Jill’s List
 |
 |
 |
| 1.HARUOMI HOSONO’S WATERING A FLOWER Muji recently filed for Chapter 11 for its American operations, meaning it will shutter its U.S. stores and focus on online sales. It’s a shame for many reasons, and I’ve coincidentally been thinking a lot about the Japanese retailer after falling into a rabbit hole that led me to Haruomi Hosono’s 1984 instrumental Watering a Flower, originally created as in-store background music for Muji’s retail outposts in Japan. If only American retailers were this cool. Listen to the whole cassette on YouTube via this link. |
2. CHERRY KIM’S CHAIR PANTS I don’t know much about New York–based designer and stylist Cherry Kim, but her hand-painted pants are my new obsession. Typically adorning plain white carpenter’s pants, Kim paints vintage bottles, foods, or lamps, but it’s the chair pair that interest me the most, considering the extreme specificity of the chairs. The pants depict classic vintage chairs by the likes of Arne Jacobsen and Verner Panton, but click through and you’ll see renderings of Fogia’s Bollo chair (a personal fave) as well as the Ekstrem chair in lime green (click here). |
3. DANESSA MYRICKS MAKEUP PALETTES Something happened to me in lockdown, and I — generally an already color-friendly person — suddenly needed everything to be the most insane rainbow version of itself. I’ve accumulated a new wardrobe of underwear in outrageously bright hues, a pair of hot-pink satin mules, and I’m seriously considering pulling the trigger on this neon waterproof palette by makeup artist Danessa Myricks. Is it just me? |
 |
 |
 |
| 4. ANDRÉE AND MICHEL HIRLET I fell in love with the ceramics of Andrée and Michal Hirlet —which often depict puzzles and/or faces — on the Instagram of the New York gallery Dobrinka Salzman, knowing nothing about the French artists. This article in T Magazine, which introduces the two as a couple who have lived and worked together for more than 50 years and shows them in cozy sweaters, seals the deal. |
5. NAP DRESS BACKLASH Life is quite serious right now, so I’ve been happily spectating the summer’s most irrelevant non-scandals. Take the recent nap dress backlash: a “nap dress” is a frilly white frock that one lounges around the house in, and it could not be more tone deaf to a time when many people are sitting around the house due to *no job* or are forced out of their homes by the essential nature of their work. Simultaneous New Yorker and Elle analyses of the trend — and a perfect clapback on The Cut entitled “My Nap Dress is a Big Ol’ T-Shirt” — have made this an excellent design-adjacent story to become invested in. |
6. ROGER MÜHL The late French-German artist’s paintings, depicting the landscape in the south of France, were a new find for me but they also feel strangely current right now, like some kind of cross between David Hockney and Guy Yanai. |
Monica’s List
 |
 |
 |
| 1. CHECKERED RUGS ON ETSY Ever since we published this story about the checkerboard trend, I’ve had major Baader-Meinhof syndrome, suddenly seeing it everywhere, even in places where it must have been long before our current obsession. Like in the Moroccan rug category on Etsy, where I stumbled onto a cache of checkered rugs that are relatively affordable — just search “Moroccan checker rug” or “Moroccan checkerboard rug.” The ones that alternate checkers with stripes are especially great. |
2. STOREFRONT TV In 2014, the New York museum Storefront for Art and Architecture launched an online TV channel for “experimental programming about the built environment” that it commissions from artists and architects. If you’re tired of filling your COVID nights with dumb reality shows, give season 3 of the program a shot — it features short videos on the theme of “maintenance” by the likes of Sumayya Vally and Yolande Daniels. |
3. OMBRE SPRAY BOTTLES I was searching for stock spray bottles for a friend’s brand when I found these ombré ones, which are meant for folks who make DIY cleaning sprays with essential oils. I’d been intrigued by the idea of making my own cleaners ever since I saw Sophie Lou Jacobsen’s glass bottle set for Furnishing Utopia back in 2018; hers (still) aren’t for sale, so now I’m thinking these might be the thing that finally motivates me (and possibly some of you?) to give it a shot. Note that they come in three different color combos, too. |
 |
 |
 |
| 4. @SIDEWALKFACE As silly as it is, an Instagram account called Sidewalkface has been uplifting my spirits since lockdown began and my screen time quadrupled. The guy who runs it just makes weird makeshift faces on the sidewalk and on plants, and some of them are cute, and it’s a real relief when all you’re seeing all day is shitty news. Plus, he apparently has a new friend called @things_that_should_not_sing, which is so bizarre I won’t spoil it, just click. |
5. MAGGIE BOYD CERAMICS This month a friend sent me to the Instagram account of Maggie Boyd, who makes Matisse-meets-feminist-meets-neoclassical ceramics. Her newest work, pictured above, is especially wonderful. Though don’t you wish there was some magic wand you could wave that would enable all of the incredible ceramicists you follow to keep their online shops stocked with work? They all seem to be sold out, all the time. It ain’t easy being a small business, folks. |
6. GLUSTIN MIRROR CABINET I recently went down an internet wormhole trying to learn more about the Paris store and design studio Glustin, having first found these cabinets made from a patchwork of colored mirrors on 1stdibs. Can’t say I figured much out, seeing as the cabinets are listed as 1970s but I’m suspecting that, as this listing for the sideboard above seems to imply, the cabinet is from the 70s and the mirrors are a new addition? Anyway, all their mirrored pieces are pretty rad. Here are a couple more. |
