Miami Vice Ventilator Pop-up Store

by Ami Kealoha

Done up in a breezy spring colorway, Reebok's Miami Vice Ventilator is a fitting prequel to the warmer months. Timed to run in tandem with New York's fashion week, 150 pairs have been shipped from Japan to New York for an exclusive pre-release of the limited edition sherbert-colored sneaker. (The above photo is a Cool Hunting exclusive.) It will be available for one week only, from 6 February through 12 February, at a temporary shop in Soho (by pop-up experts Vacant), along with four other versions of the reissued Ventilator and Shin Tanaka's paper versions. A runway show on 8 February in the space will launch another limited edition, a mid-calf shoe by clothing designer Rolland Berry that wearers can customize with an included needle and thread.

Miami Vice Ventilator Pop-up store
102 Wooster
Soho, New York
map

Also on Cool Hunting: ShinTanaka's Paper Air Force 1's @ Vacant Chicago

Gravis Black Box Collection

by Ami Kealoha

Nearly every company at the Action Sports Retailer show (ASR) seemed to be hooking-up some sort of collaboration — from DVS shoes photo-printed insoles and packaging to Retail Mafia-designed Boost Mobile phones sold in briefcases with accessories. Among the many ventures, the Gravis' Black Box Collection stood out for aesthetics, durability, and usefulness.

Black Box is Gravis’ limited collection of shoes, bags and accessories available only through premium retailers and boutiques. Each season they work with top musicians, artists, or designers from around the world to create a line of unique and yet ultimately highly-functional products. For the fall/winter 2006 Black Box Collection, Gravis teamed up with top DJs A-Trak, Kid Millionaire, and T.Raumschmiere to create an impressive line of DJ bags with coordinating shoes and accessories.

The Musical Underground

by SummerSeventySix

Harry Beck's iconic map of the London Underground is one of the most recognisable examples of design to come out of the U.K., but that hasn't stopped people from messing about with it to great success. Not least artist Simon Patterson in his 1992 work Great Bear, which swapped the station names with those of famous people.

Now, The Guardian's Dorian Lynskey has distilled his idea down to only include musicians and bands, with each tube line representing a musical genre. So, Prince is at the point where the pop, rock and funk lines cross-over, while DJ Shadow occupies the intersection of hip-hop, soul and avant-garde. Radiohead are, quite rightly, at the end of a rock line full of legendary, influential names.

It's not perfect by any means, but it's clever enough that I can't stop looking at it.

You can read the story behind the re-worked map at The Guardian, downlaod a pdf file and buy a poster at the London Transport Museum shop for £8.

Contributed by SummerSeventySix

Welcome Squid Overlords

by Wendy Dembo

Take me to your leader.

Monday night I heard the most esteemed and funny neurologist Oliver Sacks speak at Columbia (he is a super naturalist: into ferns, squids, cuttlefish and stereopsis). It was a fascinating lecture, but his Welcome Squid Overlords shirt transfixed me. It was so strange, I had to find its meaning. Was it from an episode of Star Wars that I had missed? I need to sport one at all times.

With a little help from the internet, I found Mike Monteiro, the Creative Director of Mule Design and the creator of the overlord shirt. He is just trying to make squids a little more user-friendly.

He said that he and his son Henry were watching a Discovery Channel program about what animals might look like in the future and it theorized that cephalopods are best poised to be the next dominant species on the planet. Wow! Move over Cockroaches! Then he read that the squid biomass had surpassed the human biomass on Earth. That means that there are more squids than people. We have to make them feel comfortable. The only way to do that is to stop eating calamari and by wearing “Welcome Squid Overlords” clothing.

Get it for $20 from Mule Design.

Ursula 1000: Here Comes Tomorrow

by Mike Reger

"Savoir Faire is everywhere!" Ever since I first met this very unassuming maestro back in 1999 at DC's infamous Eighteenth Street Lounge, I've always been impressed with the high contrast between Alex Gimeno's mild-mannered in person demeanor and his jet set persona "Ursula 1000," a name that is defined by swift navigation of stylistic currents, savvy sense of humor (in song titles, art work and especially sample sources), and of course consistently seductive musical output. This guy needs no hype machine, he's just on point.

After 2 highly successful albums, numerous remixes, singles and two incredibly funky DJ mix CDs, I was beginning to think there was no where else for his "now" sound to turn away from its retro-exotica leanings. Suddenly Alex flips the nitro-switch on his sonic time-machine to introduce Here Comes Tomorrow, his most sophisticated and ambitious album to date.

It's a wild ride from his cheeky signature ethno-fusion breakbeat style (Kaboom, Got Cha and Mirkin The Mystic) to glam rock (Hello! Let's Go To A Disco) to electric boogie to dubby ska (Two Tone Rocka) to cinema-scopic spaghetti western epic—as if done by 1980's art-school rockers (think Talking Heads or Echo and The Bunnymen) on the title track at the end, with plenty of surprise in between.

Although it's not officially released until April 4, 2006 on ESL Music I'm certain you will be hearing cuts from this album everywhere long before then. The title track is already in rotation on KCRW in LA and other radio stations worldwide. Keep an eye on ESL Music and Ursula 1000 for more info.

This Week at Refinery29

by Ami Kealoha

The highlights this week at Refinery29 include the Australian a completely new look, inspired by childhood fantasies and 50's style hardware stores. And finally, Refinery sits down with British shoe designer Nicholas Kirkwood to discuss his creative process when designing a collection and his architectural inspirations. Priding himself on his well-crafted and well-constructed stilletos, Kirkwood guides us from his initial sketches straight through to the Italian factory where each pair of pumps is handmade.

This Week in Needled

by Ami Kealoha

It was a star-studded week at Needled beginning with the fabulous Margaret Cho and her equally fabulous Ed Hardy tattoo. Marisa spoke with Margaret about her motivation for the tattoo and the response is personal and provacative. The next day, Marisa runs into the World's Most Tattooed Person, Lucky Diamond Rich, on the streets of London, and he offers his thoughts on what it's like to change your skin from white to black with tattoos. One of Lucky's mentors is sideshow great, Captain Don Leslie, who put out a little known record of tunes he wrote about old school tattoo lore. For more body art nostalgia, Needled looks at the photographs of the recently deceased Albert Morse, a man who published one of the first photography books on tattoo art in the US. Also in fine art, is an exhibit of tattoo-inspired art work by 40 artists, most tattooists, at the Beverly Arts Center in Chicago. The week ends with a must-see for interior design fans, the Yakuza table, and for law buffs, a review of the recent federal case that upholds a ban on police officers displaying their spider web tattoos.

This Week in Tropolism

by Ami Kealoha

We started with another Shiny-Gold building, Then two artist-itect posts A progress update on the High Line And ended with some wicked Fashion-tecture.Stay tuned next Friday for a Special Announcement!

Lumisty

by Jacob Resneck

Borrowed a stapler? Typing a personal email? Filing your nails from inside your office? Of course, you don't want gawkers watching your every move. As office space becomes tighter, we're crammed in closer quarters without an ounce of privacy. But Lumisty gives us some respite from the panopticon gaze of our fellow workers.

The folks at Glass Film Enterprises have developed a glass pane that is only completely transparent when the viewer looks at it head-on. As people walk past the glass, they see a fogged, blurred opaque surface. As they approach a 90-degree angle, the glass becomes much more transparent. The effect is such that only people standing head-on to the glass can see through it. Sure, they can gawk, but not without giving themselves away. The passing wayfaring officeworkers can't get more than a glimpse of what you're doing inside behind the Lumisty pane.

It's hard to explain the full effect, so check out the website which does a decent job of giving a visual demonstration.

Applications are varied: conference rooms, banks, hotels, anywhere where a degree of privacy is warranted.

by Jacob Resneck