Style findings: December dispatches from the Wallpaper* fashion team

Hat trick
12 December

The hat box that accompanies Maison Michel’s expertly crafted designs is a style signature of its own, emblazoned with repeated serif typography and imagined in an elegant black and white colour scheme. It’s this formulation which has inspired the Parisian milliner’s new London boutique in Mayfair. The space, housed in a turn-of-the-century building, features a wall lined with perforated white metal columns, which curve like the contours of piled hat boxes and a carbonised black parquet floor. Since joining as creative director of the Chanel-owned hatmaker in 2015, artistic director Priscilla Royer has worked to bring a sense of modernity to the 83 year-old house, creating felt caps with cat ears, bucket hats formed from quilted PVC and trapper hats with snuggly shearing linings. The new store is a marker of Maison Michel’s hat-trick focused future, as memorable as the hat box that inspired it. Chapeau!

Photographer: Andrew Meredith. Writer: Laura Hawkins

Crafting makes perfect
11 December

Step into Spanish luxury leather goods house Loewe’s new two-floor store in SoHo, New York, and you’ll step into the brand’s latest iteration of its art-filled and craft-obsessed universe. Here, the clean silhouettes Jonathan Anderson presented for the brand’s A/W 2019 collection are complimented with William De Morgan-inspired embroidered pieces and a rainbow offering of leather goods – including the New York Postal Bag – framed by works from eight artists from Loewe’s ever-expanding collection. Sri Lankan photographer Lionel Wendt’s serene black and white nude studies and South African artist Lisa Brice’s grey-tone hand-painted screen define the ground floor space, but the eye is drawn, also, to smaller artworks and crafted objects. Kitschy foil rodents by Thomas Lanigan-Schmidt, a tea bowl by Loewe Foundation finalist Takuro Kuwata and, upstairs, finalist Joe Hogan’s woven basketry – these, and many other elements have the feel of an organically formed collection of very singular acquisitions. Quite simply, Loewe’s intensely curated vision of art, craft and design in action.

Writer: Siska Lyssens

Artistic license
10 December

Cult filmmaker and artist Harmony Korine is a longtime friend of Proenza Schouler’s Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez. Now the label has enlisted the renowned Kids, Spring Breakers, and Beach Bums director, who also creates abstract graphic artworks using squeegees and leftover household paint, to create three limited edition styles of its PS1 bag, featuring archival paintings. The 400 piece offering celebrates the tenth anniversary of the label’s famed accessory, which was introduced as part of its first handbag collection. Consider it therefore, a work of art in not one, but two senses.

Photography: Jeff Henrikson. Writer: Laura Hawkins

Spot property
9 December

British artist Damien Hirst, Palms Casino Resort in Las Vegas and cult shoe brand Vans are releasing a limited-edition collection. The range of six different motifs features some of Hirst’s most recognisable work, including his signature spots, butterflies, spin paintings and skulls on classic Vans Sk8-Hi and Slip-On shoes. ‘I’ve always loved Vans and the artwork works brilliantly on these shoes. I can’t wait for people to see them,’ says Hirst.  Early this year, Hirst opened the Empathy Suite in the star-studded Las Vegas Palms Casino, one of the world’s most expensive hotel suites featuring the artist’s most famous works, along with a massive suspended tiger shark divided into three parts in the hotel lobby called ‘Unknown.’ Coming full circle, the collection will be available at the Palms Casino Resort, located at 4321 W Flamingo Rd in Las Vegas and at the Vault by Vans retail store located at 219 Bowery in New York City.

Writer: Carole Dixon

Best lab
6 December

The microscope may be honed in on the art and design goings on during Miami’s Art Week, but LA is also looking up in terms of creative output. For Athletic Propulsion Labs has opened its first 3000 sq ft brick-and-mortar boutique at The Grove – a sleek and sparse construct, lined with tessellated wall indents housing its high performing, multi hued sneaker designs. ‘The store’s long and narrow dimensions were inspired by both runways and tracks, since APL sits at the intersection of luxury and performance. This layout purposefully ties back to two of the greatest design influences behind APL, the automotive and aviation industries,’ say founders Adam and Ryan Goldston . The duo enlisted Belgium-based Bernard Dubois Architects – who have worked on recent retail spaces for Aesop, A Bathing Ape and Isaac Reina – to carry out their attenuated aesthetic. ‘We were looking for a design architect who had designed monolithic yet inviting structures’ they add. ‘Typically those two words are at odds with one another, but Bernard had demonstrated that it was possible and something he had done before and specialised in.’

Writer: Laura Hawkins

Art of glass
5 December

We’re raising a glass to Tiger of Sweden’s third iteration of its Objects series, culminating in a range of bulbous and undulating handcrafted vases, formed from blown glass in retro shades of icy blue, brown and powdery yellow. The pieces – designed in collaboration with Pilglas and glassblower Lennart Nissmark at Studio Glashyttan in Åhus – have been formed using moulds made from locally grown willow, picked by Tiger of Sweden founders Markus Schwartzman and Hjalmar Nordström. Designed by Studio Trokja and Jonas Larsen, the limited edition vases are each unique, with the mould of each piece changing during the glass blowing process. A bark-infused scent also spreads into the coloured glass, for a timber focused finish. 

Writer: Laura Hawkins

Miami magic
4 December

In 1928, twenty years before becoming a revolutionary couturier, Christian Dior opened an art gallery on Rue La Boétie, in Paris. It’s certain that he would have been astonished by the luxurious booths, installations and activities that occur each year as part of Art Basel in Miami, the currently critic-filled city where the maison’s men’s artistic director held Kim Jones held the brand’s much Instagrammed Pre Fall 2020 show yesterday evening. Kaws, Hajime Sorayama, Daniel Arsham: the artist’s that Jones has collaborated with since joining the brand in 2018, form and impressive roster. ‘Dior has always cultivated a passionate relationship with art, and this fascination is at the heart of Dior’s inventiveness now more than ever,’ Jones tells Wallpaper*. 

For yesterday’s proceedings, Dior teamed with Shawn Stussy, who penned new versions of the label’s logo which were emblazoned across the pieces in the collection and splashed across the show space’s zingy-hued facade and interior. ‘Positioned at the intersection of counterculture and the creative world of surfing, he [Shawn] has reinvented the Dior logo in a graffiti style and created new prints, such as the “psychedelic surf motiv” featured in the show space. The runway has been transformed into an abstract barrel wave lit by a sunset and tagged with myriad iterations of the letters in "Dior",’ Jones adds. Sure to send sneaker heads into a frenzy, Dior also revealed its take on the American Air Jordan 1, completed with a monogrammed Swoosh. The show was set up just across the road from the yet-to-open Rubell Museum designed by Selldorf Architects. ‘The Rubells are fabulous and have the same joie de vivre and passion for art that the House of Dior was built on,’ Jones says. We’re sure M Dior would concur.

Photography: Kris Tamburello. Writer: Laura Hawkins

Positive stance
3 December

In today’s environmentally conscious era, we’re looking for ways to make our wardrobes go further. Lucky for us, new label Marfa Stance – the brainchild of Georgia Dant, who has worked for both Burberry and Rag & Bone – is proposing snuggly, utilitarian outwear with a two-in-one élan. The brand serves up seasonless, sustainable bomber jackets and comfort-giving coats in shearling and shiny quilted fabrics, which have customisable and removable collars, or can be worn in a variety of ways. This multi-functional piece can be worn in six different styles (think with or without a removable hood, boasting a soft shearling collar, or buttoned into one of the brand’s parkas) and for that added lasting wardrobe mile, it is even reversible. How will you wear yours?

Writer: Laura Hawkins

Coming up roses
2 December

In autumn 2006, just moments before Alexander McQueen’s S/S 2007 show, the designer made drastic amends to a gown with a sugary pink tulle layer, encasing a patchwork of fresh flowers beneath. McQueen removed this gauzy top film, exposing the blanket of purple and green blooms beneath, which tumbled onto the catwalk as the model descended on the runway. This romantic piece, alongside a petal-like 3D dress from McQueen’s A/W 2019 collection, with folds of stiff bright red tulle with resemble the concentric formation of roses, forms the focal point of ‘Roses’ an exhibition on the top floor of the British label’s Smiljan Radic-designed Mayfair flagship. The show - the third exhibited at the free, education-focused top floor space, focuses on the exploratory and experimental elements behind the brand’s creation process, which includes endless toiles, fabric tests and model fittings. Original McQueen designs are presented against recent creations by current creative director Sarah Burton, representing the visual dialogue between the two designers, including the duo’s experiments with dense pleating and corsetry, the use of rough jute fabrics and delicate bee embroidery. The show represents not only the blooming of a single collection piece, but the blossoming of a brand too.

Photography: Tim Beddow. Writer: Laura Hawkins