Mover Skiwear

by Lost At E Minor

Recently coming across the smart skiwear made by Mover, I realized how completely deprived I was of snow this season—which is what's great about the brand. Their classically chic designs work just as well in city streets as they do on alpine slopes, making for a perfect compromise.

Pairing an old-school aesthetic with futuristic techniques, Swedish (though Switzerland-based) label takes wool—one of the oldest natural fibers known to man—and fuses it with the latest in fabric technology. The result is a New Zealand-and-merino wool combination laminated with a stretch lycra fabric on a Diaplex membrane.

Made entirely in Europe, the innovation is exclusive to Mover and offers extreme comfort with a snug yet flexible fit, optimal thermal protection, elegance and functionality. Just how legendary skier Dominique Perret and I like it.

Mover is available for both men and women, and can be purchased on their website.

BigChief Meets Furni in SpareSpase

by Karen Day

Milan-based digital communication and graphic design group BigChief Design will transcend their studio space during this year's Milan Design Week into an exhibition area showcasing their collaborations with Dutch interior and product designer Jack Brandsma and Montreal's wood-loving design duo Furni.

Divided into two congruent components, one area of the gallery will feature Brandsma's SpareSpase crate furniture and lamps, which transform empty shop and office buildings into mobile offices and creative hives. The focus of SpareSpace is on providing beginner entrepreneurs in creative industries affordable and representative offices that can be packed up and relocated, while keeping to an attractive but aesthetically economic design.

The other portion will be dedicated to Furni's work, with large-scale installations by BigChief that play on themes current to contemporary graphic design and illustration, focusing on their established DIY three dimensional paper architecture pieces inspired by Furni and Jack Brandsma's work.

Launching at the exhibition will be Furni's Staab clock for BigChief, featuring the mustache-driven BigChief logo character laser-etched into a wood block and offering a new medium for the much-loved, originally cardboard cutout toy.

BigChief Meets Furni in SpareSpase is an interesting way to combine various applied arts, making them relevant to one another by working off of each others ideas and talents while maintaining their own individual techniques.

Watch the videos on the construction of Jack Brandsma's work and the making of the Furni's BigChief logo character here.

BigChief Meets Furni in SpareSpase
BigChief Design Studio
22-25 April 2009
Via Cimarosa 12/2
20144 Milano, Italy map
tel. +39 347 0868023

Tod's x Cappellini: Design Icons

by Karen Day

Luxury loafer extraordinaire Tod's teamed up with the equally remarkable and stylish design and furnishings group Cappellini during this year's Salone Internazionale del Mobile in Milan. Part of an ongoing project (Tod's president Diego Della Valle tasked his friend Giulio Cappellini with curating their windows starting in 1998),the Via della Spiga storefront will display their classy JP Loafer alongside eleven chairs chosen by Cappellini, including Patrick Norguet's Rainbow chair and Marc Newson's Felt chair (pictured above). The collaboration is a testament to both companies' commitment to honest design, allowing the pure aesthetic of both the loafers and chairs to play off each other while speaking for their own iconic design.

Design Icons
Tod's Boutique
22-27 April 2009
Via della Spiga 22
Milan, Italy map
tel. &343;39 02 76002423

via Wallpaper Magazine

The Neo-Con Collective: Hollowood

by CH Contributor

by Ariston Anderson

The Neo-Con Collective, made up of New York street artists Aakash Nihalani, Ellis Gallagher and Poster Boy, along with U.K. graffiti legend Zeus, hit up West Hollywood recently with a group exhibition of prints, photos and mixed media. Their shared technique of playing off what already exists in the urban landscape defines the group's work. While these tweaks to city sidewalks and walls tend toward minimal, the results are enormously impactful. And being as prolific artists as they are, it’s almost impossible not to see one of their pieces on most daily urban commutes though each has their own distinct style.

Aakash Nihalani works with isometric rectangles and squares, playfully highlighting the geometry of New York City. “My work is created in reaction to what we readily encounter in our lives, sidewalks and doorways, buildings and bricks,” he says, “I’m just connecting the dots differently to make my own picture.” Nihalani's work pushes urbanites to draw their own connections between city lines whenever they encounter it on the streets.

Artist Ellis Gallagher chose a medium as unobtrusive and temporal as sidewalk chalk for his work, yet the results stunningly enhance pedestrian paths. By tracing the shadows of objects such as locked-up bikes, parking barriers, fire hydrants and milk crates, he points out the poetic qualities of daily life, once again adopting the streets as a gallery.

The only artist unable to make it to the L.A. opening, Poster Boy most likely skipped it because the last time he showed up at his own opening earlier this year, he was arrested by an undercover cop. With only a razor and glue, Poster Boy influenced an army of like-minded subway artists who take apart advertisement and rearrange them into satirical collages.

London artist Zeus, who came out of the traditional '80s graffiti school, since turned his calligraphy into sculpture, reflecting on both his street work and his formal training at the Chelsea College of Art. Installed throughout the gallery, his large-scale letters modeled after the Hollywood sign, ties the show together.

More images after the jump.

The Neo-Con Collective: Hollowood
Carmichael Gallery of Contemporary Art
Through 30 April 2009
1257 North La Brea Avenue
West Hollywood, CA 90038 map
tel. +1 323 969 0600