Catpod Tee

by Ami Kealoha

Collectively, Team CH is more of a dog person, but we do love a three-legged feline on a t-shirt—especially when profits support pooches fighting cancer. Designed by L.A.-based artist Amanda Viselli, the cat-in-a-hat graphic tee helps Sonia Zjawinski's ongoing effort (dubbed I Heart Tripods) inspired by her own dog Lulu's battle with bone cancer. Printed on a heather blue Alternative Apparel crew neck, the tee is $30 from Tripod Charity Gear.

Also on Cool Hunting: I Heart Tripods Tee

Three White Chandeliers at 100% Design London

by Leonora Oppenheim

The lights at 100% Design this year were big, beautiful, complex and dramatic. The overriding theme was the reinvention of the chandelier as a format to explore the interaction between form, texture and light on a large scale. Here are three of our favorites.

Central St. Martins graduate Winnie Lui wowed the crowds with "White," her amazing chandelier of collected objects. Trained as a jewelery designer Lui has applied her love of detailed form and texture to lighting design. In collaboration with U.K. lighting company Innermost, she will produce 50 white and 50 black chandeliers, all from objects she has been collecting for many years. Lui says for her it's an exercise in composition and she loves contrasting textures and reflections by placing different objects next to each other. Essential to her design work is celebrating the inherent beauty of everyday objects.

Christopher LaBrooy's giant Felt Chandelier, also in production with Innermost, floated delicately, like a large jellyfish, above the heads of those browsing through the 100% Design bookstore. We love this exploration of form using the looping strips of felt to make sinuous patterns around the light, like a doodle drawing.

We could hardly miss Dominic Bromley's Shoal light which at two meters tall and 1.5 meters in diameter was surely the largest light on show this week. For all its enormity, however, Shoal still manages to be beautifully delicate with hundreds of small, finely cast, bone china fish swimming around the central light source. Bromley works as a sculptor and lighting designer in the U.K. under his own label Scabetti.

Disposable: The History of Skateboard Art

by Fiona Killackey

For many skateboard artists the pavement is their only audience. In 2004 renowned skater Sean Cliver attempted to change this with the launch of his book Disposable: The History of Skateboard Art, a 228-page full color text showcasing 1000 of the best skateboard artworks from the last three decades. While local skate stores picked up the text, Cliver found his message wasn't really getting out to the public. This year (thanks largely to a new distributor deal with Ginkgo Press) Cliver has re-launched the book in hopes of granting this art medium exposure. We caught up with Cliver to chat about art snobbery, skateboarding and devil-worshipping. (Contact Gingko for ordering info.)

Is this your first book?
I've had one other book published prior to Disposable: A History of Skateboard Art and that was theJackass: The Movie Official Companion book (I'd worked as a co-producer/photographer on the film). Actually, that was one of the main things that gave me the false impression I'd have a much easier time getting a second book published, like it gave me clout or something as an author. Guess I kept forgetting what the subject material was in most peoples' eyes—pop culture crap. (Click image at left for detail.)

Do you believe skateboard decoration is a true art form?
What's that age old question, is it art? Yeah, sure. Why not? There's a lot of other stuff whipped out through the decades and centuries that is equally debatable, but has still wound up in collections, galleries, and museums throughout the world. The only downside is it'll probably all get lumped into the pop-culture waste paper basket, or worse that whole urban guerrilla thing. To tell you the truth, though, I could care less about trying to justify it as an art form. That whole art philosophy thing is for the birds. In fact that is one of the main reasons I did this book: I wanted to portray the art and history as it was and is, not as some random outsider went and theorized.

What's the best thing you've ever seen on a deck?
The first time I can remember being truly surprised by something on a deck was in 1990 when the World Industries Randy Colvin Censorship model came out with a graphic featuring full-frontal female nudity, like with the legs spread and everything. Up until that point graphics had always toed a line, never really crossed over into out-and-out shock value, but this one did away with that. The fact that it came in a sealed black bag was also pretty cool. But then a year later the 101 Natas Kaupas Devil Worship board came out and really threw everyone and their silly religious superstitions for a loop. Yeah, graphics had looked mildly evil and all in the past with the skulls and daggers and shit, but no one at all was prepared for decapitated babies and nude popes strung up on an inverted cross behind the Devil Himself. Since then there's been arguably worse graphics, but these were the true pioneers. (Click image at right for detail.)

Who was involved and how did you get them interested in contributing?

New Balance Super Team 33, Elements Collection

by Josh Rubin

The fourth and latest edition of New Balance's quarterly Super Team 33 (ST33) collection, available in three exclusive designs, was designed by the Asia Pacific Team. (The first quarter was U.S.-designed, the second was developed by Japan and the third by the Europe, Middle East, Africa.) The 1400 model serves as the canvas again, this time for a theme inspired by the natural elements (wood, water, earth, metal and fire).

Each design reflects one of the elemental concepts, for example, the "Earth and Wood" version is mostly brown with distinctive tree patterns strewn throughout. "Fire and Metal" features a bold black and red design incorporating metallic embroidery and a silver insole and the "Water" model has a blue and white with a transparent outsole with some small water bubble details.

Extremely limited and keeping in line with the collection's name, like always, the shoes will be sold at only 33 retailers globally and each store will only stock 24 pairs of each style. They will be available for purchase beginning 20 October 2007 for $200.

The list of 33 retailers and a peek at the shoes after the jump.

Hoodfix

by Jacob Resneck

Since this spring, San Francisco-based fashion designer Zoe W. Brent has been giving used “hoodies” a new lease on life with her line called Hoodfix. “I guess I started getting into hoodies particularly when I started living in SF where there's no season where you don't want to be wearing one, since it's foggy so much of the time,” Brent tells Cool Hunting.

Featured in Thrillist which noted that Brent is a “one-woman operation”, each garment is hand-sewn from quality, preowned hoodies that have been abandoned by their previous owners.

“I work very spontaneously, no patterns, each piece starts from a used garment and then ends up as unique item that incorporates the eccentricities of the piece it started from,” Brent says. Starting around $50, Brent takes orders on her website in which you can describe, in a few sentences, what kind of style you are after. Once that's done, you'll just have to have a bit of faith. But from the samples we've seen, you're in good hands.

“I really like collaborating with people so that the result is something special for that person,” she says. Still another option is to provide her with an old hoodie of your own which she will retool into a new-styled garment that still has the sentimental value of its earlier incarnation.