Wear + Here

July 8, 2014

Pearls of wisdom

Grand Banks restaurant on the F/V Sherman Zwicker, docked at Pier 25 in Tribeca paired with Junya Watanabe Navajo-Print Asymmetric Top.

In the 19th century, barges piled high with just-dug oysters would dock along Manhattan and sell their wares to hungry New Yorkers directly from their decks. Alex Pincus wondered why there wasn’t a modern-day version of those oyster barges, and so set out in search of a site with his brother Miles (the two have teamed up before: they founded the Atlantic Yachting school on the Upper West Side).

Enter the Sherman Zwicker, a 142-foot-long wooden schooner built in 1942 that made laps between the Grand Banks of Newfoundland and South America before becoming part of the Maine Maritime Museum. The Pincus brothers secured the ship, and then a dock. Striking a deal with the Hudson River Park, they signed a one-year lease to park at Pier 25 near Tribeca (past the miniature golf course and beach volleyball courts), and dove into designing a hybrid destination: a not-for-profit historical museum buoyed by a for-profit restaurant.

Thus reborn, the Sherman Zwicker began welcoming visitors last week. Her deck now features Grand Banks, an open-air oyster bar and seafood restaurant run by Mark Firth of Diner and Marlow & Sons fame. Down below in the hold – a space big enough to store 320,000 pounds of catch – an unconventional museum, designed by innovative New Draft Collective, mixes archival materials and new creations. An illuminated display of 150 pounds of salt shows how cod was preserved, while a sculpture made of rope celebrates its medium – still vital, not made obsolete by technology (and the inspiration for my fringe-top pairing).

Beyond vittles and visuals, the Sherman Zwicker will host talks and lectures during its residency through the end of October. Last week, Paul Greenberg, author of “American Catch: The Fight for Our Local Seafood,” spoke about the risks of world-wide fisheries over plates of wild salmon. Such chic food for thought.

July 7, 2014

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Plant the flag

A piece by Argentine artist Adrián Villar Rojas from his “Brick Farm” series paired with Pret-à-Surf for J.Crew Tank and Bottom.

A parting thought from this patriotic weekend: an American flag made by Argentine artist Adrián Villar Rojas as part of his Brick Farm series (2013) and now his Rockaway! festival installation at Fort Tilden. A subtle sentiment, nestled in nature, steps away from the surf. A moment easily missed amid sandy play.

Working in concrete and clay, Rojas wants his sculptures to deteriorate, as his High Line installation did. “The material is breathing,” he has said. This fragility makes his planted flag all the more profound: the flag will crumble into the coastline, like the coastline. All the more reason to appreciate it now.

July 4, 2014

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Broad stripes

July 4th, Provincetown, MA 1983, by Joel Meyerowitz paired with Birkenstock Multi-Stripe Arizona Sandals.

An idle walk through Provincetown, MA, some thirty years ago spawned this image of the stars and stripes. Great American photographer Joel Meyerowitz, en route to the parade grounds, stumbled upon an American flag bigger than the house behind it, a larger-than-life expression of patriotism, an antique with its 48 stars – emphatic, brilliant.

“We tend to sleepwalk through our lives, to drift,” Meyerowitz once said. “What inspires me is a response to that sharpened sense of being here now – that is the underpinning of my work.”

So today, with so much to celebrate, I would like to pause for a moment and aspire to be an acute American like Meyerowitz.

July 3, 2014

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Sedimentary dilemma

Kjeragbolten in Rogaland, Norway paired with Peters Mountain Works Ohayo Backpack.

Caught between a rock and a hard place. Indeed. Norway offers a sandstone manifestation of this dilemma: Kjeragbolten, a boulder wedged in a mountain crevasse, hovers above an abyss some 3,300 feet deep (hello rock, hello hard place). A popular tourist destination due to its equipment-free accessibility, the site also lures BASE jumpers. Gulp. Geologists believe the boulder was deposited during the last glacial period, when the fjord flooded (meltwater had already formed and reformed the valley some 22 times before). Talk about change. I’m inspired slash daunted, which means it’s time to pack this rucksack (from the inventor of the modern messenger bag) and get momentum on my side.

July 1, 2014

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Pandamonium

A throng of papier-mâché pandas by French sculptor Paulo Grangeon appeared earlier this month on a street in Mongkok in Hong Kong, paired with Victoria Beckham Polka-Dot Mini Dress.

March of the pandas: Six years ago, French artist Paulo Grangeon made his first papier-mâché panda, a new species amid his Grenoble store’s stock of baguette-handled knives and swimsuit-clad female torsos. His wife’s twin brother Serge Orru, then head of the World Wildlife Fund in France, was searching for a way to mark the group’s 35th anniversary and so asked his artist brother-in-law to make a rendition of the panda logo. Initially trying to emulate the simplified graphic, Grangeon ultimately sculpted a more angular animal with wide-open eyes. Impressed, Orru commissioned 1,599 more, one for every panda living in the wild (based on a 2004 survey by WWF and Chinas State Forestry Administration, a count currently being updated). The embarrassment of pandas (truly the real term) debuted in 2008 in Paris, and promptly went on tour. Since then, the merry band has traveled to more than 100 cities in 20 countries, congregating around landmarks including the Eiffel Tower and Trevi Fountain.

Wherever they go, the pandas inspire happy pictures and hopefully awareness. For all their adorableness, pandas are elusive creatures in the wild, difficult to count and coax into captivity. Human encroachment and global warming are fragmenting their habitats, leaving little room for the endangered bamboo-loving bears. And we should care beyond their cuteness: Chinese researchers recently found a peptide in panda blood that could be a “super drug” for humans.

WWF’s goal is to cue people along the panda parade route to their plight. This month found the troupe traipsing through Hong Kong, communing with the Tian Tan Buddha and appearing flash-mob-style in city streets (curious cops snapped phone photos of this midnight Mongkok mirage). After weeks of travel, the pandas have taken up residency at PMQ, acronymed after its original incarnation as Police Married Quarters, now Hong Kong’s newest arts hub. The old apartments, vacant for a more than a decade, have been converted into 100-plus small, affordable studios for design firms, galleries, artisans and boutiques. The pandas are staying in these creative accommodations through July 17. If I go, I’ll bring this speckled mini and blend into the bear market.

June 28, 2014

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Rock on

The Resilience of the Dreamer by Patti Smith at Rockaway Beach paired with A.L.C. Mid-Riff Cut Gown.

Patti Smith usually spends her birthday, December 30, playing cathartic rock at the Bowery Ballroom. But to mark her 66th, destruction made her do differently: she day-tripped to Rockaway Beach, the peninsula jutting off Queens she started visiting in the 70s with Robert Mapplethorpe and where she had bought a bungalow/writing retreat three weeks before Hurricane Sandy ravaged the Atlantic shore. There, she had hoped to work on the sequel to Just Kids (one of my top five favorite books). On her birthday, Smith found the house still standing, but with 5 feet of standing saltwater. Still, she felt fortunate: most of her neighbors had lost everything in the flood and fires.

That December day, Smith assessed the damage and began the long process of recovery. As did every resident of the Rockaways. To honor their efforts and to celebrate the reopening of Fort Tilden park, she has organized a public art festival Rockaway! with friend, fellow Rockaway Beach bastion and MoMA PS1 director Klaus Biesenbach. The site-specific project starts Sunday and runs through September 1 with a star-studded opener featuring a poetry reading by James Franco and a spoken-word performance by Smith, and a suite of ongoing exhibitions: an immersive sound piece by Janet Cardiff, a seashore sculpture by Argentine artist Adrián Villar Rojas and satellite shows at Rockaway Beach Surf Club. I plan to go and tour the installations, all while staying at the new Playland Motel and making a routine of visiting Rockaway Taco, a trailblazing destination for weekend pilgrims.

Top of my itinerary is visiting Smith’s inspired transformation of a former auto warehouse into a site-specific installation, “The Resilience of the Dreamer.” In the center of the decrepit space stands a gilded four-poster bed, encircled in gossamer white fabric floating down from the ceiling, and a curated ring of rubble. For Smith, the piece channels the emotional significance wrapped up in a bed and ripped off by Sandy as the hurricane laid bare the domestic lives of Rockaway residents. Reclaiming ruin, “The Resilience” bed welcomes its exposure to the elements, its gradual transformation amid structural decay.

“I’ve slept in beds like that in my travels,” Smith says in a New York Times video. “I don’t own such a bed myself. I’ve had beautiful dreams sleeping in subway cars. It’s like a fairy tale that’s a gift to our neighbors. It’s saluting their resilience. It’s not an answer. It’s not going to really help them in any practical way. But at least, I’m hoping, they’ll know that they’ve been thought of.”

June 26, 2014

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Angle of repose

La Digue in the Seychelles (c/o Smwh.re) paired with Cynthia Rowley for J.Crew Colorblock Wetsuit.

Braque meets beach – the perfect angle from which to imagine learning how to scuba dive (number one on my bucket list). So as I spend this soggy day thinking of sunny skill building, I escape to La Digue, a 10 square kilometer island in the Seychelles, the fourth largest in the 155-strong archipelago. When not underwater, I’ll be traveling by ox-cart as the Diguois do and have done for centuries, or birding (the black paradise flycatcher, one of the rarest birds on earth, calls La Digue home), or orchid hunting (step aside “Adaptation”). Or I may just beach myself on this angular stretch of Anse Source d’Argent, a fashionable whale in this J.Crew wetsuit.

June 25, 2014

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Dogged devotion

Dog Bark Park Inn in Cottonwood, Idaho paired with Monki Lilly Cat and Dog Slip On Trainers.

My feisty dog, aka my spirit animal, turns six today, so in honor of her, a dog days destination: in Cottonwood, Idaho (population 900), the Dog Bark Park Inn (say that 10 times quickly) boasts the world’s one and only bed and breakfast inside a wooden beagle, dubbed Sweet Willy (pictured with sidekick Toby). The husband-and-wife hosts are also self-taught chainsaw artists, and the B&B grew from the couple’s cameo on QVC. After toiling for 18 months fulfilling order after order for carved wood dogs, the pair invested their earnings in developing Dog Bark Park. Toby appeared first, then Sweet Willy, who stands 30 feet tall and 34 feet long, and sleeps four in a queen bed and two twin futons. To the rear of Sweet Willy, a red fire hydrant sheathes the outhouse. With the inn only April through October, Zelle and I need to hightail it west. I’ll be sure to pack these trainers to toy with my canine-crazed companion.

June 24, 2014

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Brilliant vows

“Maxikiosko” by Tom Fruin becomes a pop-up wedding chapel this week at the Wythe Hotel in Brooklyn, paired with Mary Katrantzou Folli Rose Trinkolo Dress.

I do – to this marriage of art and pride. During NYC Pride Week, starting tomorrow, couples of all orientations can get hitched in a kaleidoscope chapel perched atop the Wythe Hotel in Williamsburg. Artist Tom Fruin made “Maxikiosko” from hundreds of pieces of plexi offcuts in celebration of the lively corner stores in Argentina, where the installation debuted in 2011 before traveling around the world, most recently stopping at Art Basel Miami. A friend of the hoteliers, Fruin agreed to loan them the rainbow shed for Pride Week as a tribute to the LGBT community that surrounds and supports the Brooklyn roost. Welcoming weddings Friday through Sunday, the hope is to marry four couples per day (afternoon, evening or midnight slots available): the $1,500 pop-up package includes an hour-long rooftop affair replete with an officiant (secular or non-secular), a wedding party portrait (Manhattan skyline as backdrop), a champagne toast and space for 20 guests (plus the many strangers milling about the bar). Late night, look for renegade ceremonies, spur-of-the-moment celebrations inspired by place and pride. Spots may still be open (I’ve got my chromatic dress picked out), erasing all reasons not to put a ring on it.

June 21, 2014

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Serif nostalgia

Kentile Floors Sign in Gowanus, Brooklyn paired with Loup Navy Bruno Dress.

Nostalgic for Saturday adventures in NYC. On Brooklyn-based weekends, I would wander with the subway (in outfits as easy as this Loup dress, sweatshirt and skirt attached): aboard the F, en route to Coney Island, the railway cresting at Smith & 9th, as if only to glimpse the Kentile Floors sign standing sentinel above the Gowanus – maroon by day, fuchsia by night –standing for a bygone time when design audaciously asserted itself in its surrounds. Lamentably, the sign is being dismantled as we speak, letters intact, hopefully bound for reassembly elsewhere in Brooklyn. But until then, nostalgia.