Habitat’s Very Important Products project – an invitation to 22 designers and celebs to design something beautiful and useful – inevitably turned up both the sublime and the ridiculous. Somewhat surprisingly, the musicians involved did themselves proud: Daft Punk’s disco-light coffee table, Sharleen Spiteri’s CD cabinet and, our favourite, Gilberto Gil’s guitar stool were all beyond creditable.
Ultimately, though, the gulf between amateurs and professionals was deep and wide and tall. Jean Nouvel’s metal trestle table clearly deserves better company than Lennox Lewis’s alarm clock. But it was cobbler-to-the-stars Manolo Blahnik who won many of the plaudits and much of the press for his disarmingly elegant and witty polished cast-aluminium shoehorn. A shoo-in for fashion accessory of the year.
Runner-up: Tod’s DVD holder In order to have your favourite DVDs at hand when travelling (and what could be better than watching Lost in Translation overlooking Tokyo in the Park Hyatt), Tod’s, better known for its exquisite leather loafers, has turned its attention to creating the ultimate carrier for your prized disks.
Made from fine martellata (worked) nubuck and lined in soft calf, with raw-cut edges finished with contrasting stitching, it holds ten DVDs (and even in this iPod age, your favourite CDs) but it will safely carry 20 if you double up. The clever concertina design ensures that, when the wallet’s open, your discs are simple to view and remove.
But what Wallpaper* loves most of all about this DVD holder is that Tod’s has come up with a design solution that, unlike the industry standard, does not resort to the use of cheap and sticky transparent PVC. Nick Vinson
Manolo Blahnik’s shoehorn for Habitat’s Very Important Products collection (top picture) and Tod's concertina DVD holder (above).
Subscribe to Wallpaper* magazine
Sign up for our free weekly newsletterINFORMATION
‘Manolo’ polished cast-aluminium shoehorn, £25, by Manolo Blahnik, exclusively for Habitat, tel: 44.845 601 0740 (UK),
DVD holder, €390, from Tod’s, Galleria Vittorio Emanuelle II, Milan, tel: 39.02
877 997
- Website
- http://www.habitat.net
