07/12/2010

A Euro-NY couple

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A Euro-NY Couple

Creative gurus running side by side in a New York City stride. They are the influencers, carving stylistic decadence that we eagerly eat up with flittering voracity. Delfina Pinardi and James Timmins are the admired and sought after, the desirable doublet.

Pinardi fostered a riveting working timetable from the blooming age of 19 where she skipped between Paris and Milan and began her styling yellow-brick road under the eyes of Giambattista Valli at the Maison Emanuele Ungaro. It was a beauteous precursor to the years that would follow at Elle Italia. Pinardi then turned her sails after this European surge and blew west to New York City where she currently resides with her striking partner James Timmins of Atelier1880. A former model with edible good looks, Timmins’ portfolio feathers extensively over the designing of print, web, and branding for fashion editorials, with served up specialties such as art directing Dossier Journal and acting as senior designer at CoolGraySeven, the boutique advertising agency.

Celebrations of their own romance, Pinardi and Timmins’ ingenuity is contagious. Pinardi’s influence spreads broadly over the Vogue Italia family, but where the heart and business of creativity so efficaciously collide is at Ponytail, where she calls the shots as fashion editor at large, and Timmins as art and design director. Turn the pages and each simmers with energy. This twosome is on an upward escalade inviting the young and sophisticated along for the escapade.

Coco Brown, Images courtesy Atelier1880 and Ponytail.

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06/12/2010

Wooliweiss + Casarialto at Verger

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Wooliweiss + Casarialto at Verger

We met designer Catherine Urban, créatrice behind the complimentary Casarialto and Wooliweiss lines, at her temporary shop inside Verger this weekend. The French-born, Institute Français de la Mode alumnus, who worked for more than a decade at Louis Vuitton and Chanel, has a well-honed penchant for detail and a conviction that finer things shouldn’t be relegated to occasional use. It is precisely this aversion to prohibitiveness that has driven the creation of a truly welcoming, everyday luxury brand. Urban partially credits her success to the the unique Italian business ecosystem, which defies economics to remain a patchwork of small, focused and nimble companies. This along with its unrivaled manufacturing savoir-faire, enables responsive, detail-driven boutique businesses to emerge, and allows companies like Urban’s to personalize, quickly adapt and maintain superfluous quality.

The at once cosy and luxurious Wooliweiss was born of a delightful children’s line (doesn’t the name even the name sound warm and inviting?) but has grown to include womenswear, as well as cashmere “Cashpets” and a squeezable and engaging “Hug Me” line, which cleverly encourages the re-imagination of forgotten cushions. The dovetailing Casarialto line, on the other hand, includes deceptively svelte Murano-made glassware, linens, cushions and sumptuous merino blankets. With a word-of-mouth impetus, a real familiarity with her clients and a well-deserved reputation for quality, Urban’s clientele has steadily, organically grown to stretch from end to end of the globe. And with a fountain of fresh ideas on tap, a continuing evolution of product, a new line of kitchen accessories in the works, and the possibility one-offs and personalisation, we see good things in store!

Text and photo Tag Christof

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03/12/2010

Vicky Trombetta / Young Designers

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Vicky Trombetta / Young Designers

YOUNG DESIGNERS by Vicky Trombetta from Vicky Trombetta on Vimeo.

While on assignment for Wonderland’s September/October issue special on young designers in London, 2DM’s gallant Vicky Trombetta orchestrated this dreamy-delightful short. 

Styled by Julia Sarr-Jamois, the sequence was mostly shot above the canopy of the city. The resulting etherial dreamlike sequence speaks volumes about the artist’s sensibility and connection to subject: his ability to charge with emotion, yet step back and reveal fleeting glances of sublime beauty, works especially well here with Ford NYC/ Premier newcomer Hilde Gifstad. From the visceral, textural, structural space she inhabits to the raw light and erratic lines of the majestic, organic spliced-in scenes of nature, this is a haunting blend of the elemental and the rarified, of intimacy and distance. More, please.

Vicky Trombetta, edited by Daniele Testi, text by Tag Christof.

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02/12/2010

apartamento #06


apartamento #06

The new issue of apartamento has arrived! As always the nearly pocketable little rocket packs a punch with more than 230 pages of refreshing anecdotes, poetry, interviews, interjections and excellent photography. Most importantly, this “everyday life interiors magazine” exposes the fascinating and extraordinary habitats of some particularly inspired individuals. It feels charmingly like a well lived-in home itself, so carefully curated are its bounty of contents.


This time around you’ll find a whimsical reflection on plastic (which amounts to a half lament for a utopian past that never came), an ingenious New York penthouse shack, fornicating frogs, kitchenware robots, a colouring book, mushrooms, and sizzling Paz de la Huerta. Miranda July even makes a cameo! Creative direction (and many of its photos) comes from 2DM’s Nacho Alegre.

This one’s staying on our coffee table for a long time.

Find it at cool bookshops, design stores and boutiques the world over. Like colette and Post Poetics.

Tag Christof, photos from the bureau. Special thanks to Marco Velardi!

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01/12/2010

Yvette Van Boven / Home Made

Yvette Van Boven / Home Made

2DM’s food styling and illustration wizard Yvette Van Boven, whose giant ice cream sundae was featured on this month’s cover of Wallpaper*, released a delectable cookbook, Home Made, earlier this year. Met with huge critical acclaim, the book is dripping with gorgeous images, illustrations and hand written recipes of all sorts. The scrumptious baked goods, hearty winter fare and summer snacks run the gamut of world fare, with a particularly Dutch flair – it was, in fact, the winner of this year’s Kookbook van het Jaar (Cookbook of the Year) award in Holland

Yvette’s inspiration for the book has its roots in her formidable food culture, which includes a highly-regarded catering business and a private dining restaurant, Aan de Amstel, in Amsterdam. Regular readers of the Blogazine will know her well from her mouth-watering Sunday Brunch column.

The book is available for order on Yvette’s website, and comes highly recommended for adventurous cooks, even those who don speak Dutch! Our tummies are rumbling.

Tag Christof, photos courtesy 2DM and Yvette Van Boven.

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