Wear + Here

May 5, 2014

Frayed perfection

Bún Bò Nam Bộ in Hà Nội, Việt Nam (New York Times photo).

Maiyet Denim Dress.

This dress seems perfect to me, fitted yet frayed. It reminds me of a jacket I had tailored while living in Việt Nam: a blue jean blazer that shed white strings every time I wore it. Ergo a personal pairing. If good fortune found me back on the streets of Hà Nội, I would wear this Maiyet dress to one of my favorite spots in the city: Bún Bò Nam Bộ, an unassuming street stall serving unimaginable bowls of beef vermicelli – seasoned grilled beef over cold rice noodles, topped with herbs, peanuts and fried shallots, all doused in sugared fish sauce and fresh lime juice. Forgive me a flashback: Within days of my arrival in Hà Nội, with only one dish on the menu, without saying a word (I had none), I sat down at one of the communal tables, and just as I realized I was the only foreigner in the jam-packed joint, a sublime bowl appeared, dissolving my self-consciousness. Mid-bite, a girl sitting beside me introduced herself and offered to teach me chopsticks 1.0 (a year later, I would be in her wedding). How I miss Việt Nam, its cacophony, its candor. Unpacking memories as I imagine packing for a future trip.

May 3, 2014

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Winging it

Interior Photo by Anson Smart.

Stella McCartney Hawk Print Sweater.

I rarely envy birds flight, so enamored I am with the rhythms of travel. But today I do: What I would give to glide across the globe to this interior Eden captured by Aussie photographer Anson Smart. The leather lounger, cracked with love, would be my throne; the roomy raptor sweater my magic cloak; the colossal key a reminder of the dreamworld I had unlocked with hawkish abandon for my everyday. A flyby Saturday.

May 2, 2014

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Fringe benefits

Design Build Adventure’s Palm Park Tree Installation in Austin, TX.

Nanushka Ekat Fringe Dress.

Waller Creek, the largest urban stream in the country, snakes from the northern part of Austin southward, through the University of Texas campus, along downtown, before emptying into Lady Bird Lake. With a new conservancy set up in its honor, Waller Creek is getting a full makeover (or makeunder, as preservation is the point). To test creative interventions, Austin artist/designer/builder Jack Sanders led a pop-up adventure picnic a year ago in Palm Park, a community art-raising that installed massive accordion rings around a campfire and this tree. Sanders regularly stages such happenings through his company Design Build Adventure, a program of camps and workshops for people interested in collaboratively exploring new perspectives on the built environment (the 4-day workshop in Marfa, TX is calling me). Channeling the play inherent in this project, I couldn’t resist pairing the tree skirt with its sartorial twin: a fleece dress with hand-woven flare by Hungarian line Nanushka. Fringe for all.

May 1, 2014

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Avant outpost

Downstairs Bedroom at Hauser & Wirth Somerset.

Suno Plaid Dress.

One hundred acres as canvas: a contemporary art powerhouse has reimagined a centuries-old farm in rural England into a campus for experiencing art and architecture, antiquity and avant garde, in situ. In a bold move away from urban markets, Hauser & Wirth decided to add Durslade in Somerset to its holdings (joining galleries in Zurich, New York, Los Angeles and London). As derelict as it was historic, the farm (perhaps familiar as the set of “Chocolat” starring Johnny Depp and Juliette Binoche) has taken two years to transform: to resuscitate buildings (including my favorite, the Piggery), add galleries, carve out courtyards, concept a restaurant, landscape the grounds (the doing of Piet Oudolf, High Line designer). Deliberate juxtapositions of old and new abound. In the central Farmhouse, restored fixtures and vintage furniture share space with commissioned work by the gallery’s artists: Argentine Guillermo Kuitca filled all four walls of the dining room with a fractal mural (glimpsed from a downstairs bedroom; when not occupied by private guests of the gallery, the Farmhouse’s six bedrooms welcome reservations). On July 15, Hauser & Wirth Somerset will officially open with an exhibition of new work by Phyllida Barlow. The British artist channeled inspiration from Durslade and its surrounds into color-rich, ragged assemblies; for my part, I would express the farm-gallery binary in this Suno mash-up of country plaid and geometric pattern.

April 30, 2014

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Quirky equus

Hermès installation by Olaf Breuning in Tokyo’s Shibuya Seibu district.

Céline Crushed Cuffs.

An Olaf encore. In researching Clouds, I learned of Breuning’s simultaneous installation for Hermès in the Shibuya Seibu district of Tokyo. Channeling a parallel strain of whimsy, he took Hermès’ equestrian aesthetic to a playful place, fashioning makeshift steeds by draping sheets over indistinguishable structures (Den furniture? Kitchen chairs?). By Breuning’s hand, the brand’s venerable horse-drawn carriage becomes rudimentary: four wheels, thin platform. The bling is in his bold palette; his horses’ hairs are loud – canary, cobalt, teal, tangerine – and their googly eyes are fixed on the sidewalk, inviting further rifts on luxury goods and lifestyle. These Céline cuffs seem similarly self-deprecating in their folded forms, at once tactile and tattered and totally perfect.

April 29, 2014

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Cumulus crop

Clouds by Olaf Breuning, 2008, C-Print.

Ilana Kohn Milly Dress.

Azure clouds hover above the southeast entrance of Central Park. No, this is not a meteorological phenomenon, but rather a public art installation, a playful inversion of blue sky, white clouds. The plump aluminum panels, perched atop 35-foot-tall steel ladders, are the doing of artist Olaf Breuning in conjunction with the Public Art Fund. Installed in March, Clouds initially offered a color infusion as winter dragged on, and now, as trees bud nearby, the sculpture inspires wisps of wonder and humor. Clouds is based on a photograph Breuning staged in 2008 in Italy. Using cherry pickers and cardboard cutouts, he created a quick installation and documented it on film (for me to borrow, six years later). Keen to reconceive the image, he designed a new cumulus outcropping minus the climb-able cranes. Why clouds? In conversation with Vogue, Breuning suggested, why not? Everybody likes clouds. “There are those moments on a summer day when you’re lying on the grass and you look up and there are clouds,” he said. “I didn’t really think about the clouds; I could have prepared a lot of things to say, but I just now that clouds are recognizable and each person has their own thoughts about them.” Clouds invite the mind to wander, aloft, untethered. And by painting them blue, he channeled an age-old abstraction, the childhood instinct to scribble blue clouds against white skies. “See, my work is as simple as possible,” he said. “When you are a kid, you draw a cloud, and you make it blue. I don’t know why. I think it’s a design thing, and after I made it, I realized, Oh shit, clouds aren’t really blue. But it looks nice, the different colors.” The color puffs on this dress look nice too, camouflaged to a leisurely stroll past public art (before Clouds closes August 24).

April 28, 2014

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Rugged antidote

Tramuntana Hotel in Cadaqués, Spain.

Valentine Gauthier Augustine Jacket.

Snow clings to the ridgeline framed by my bedroom window. So as escape, I imagine another rugged white landscape: the Mediterranean coastline of Spain. The small fishing village of Cadaqués exudes charm with its bohemian meets cosmopolitan vibe, a place long loved by artists and writers now primed for an even greater following with the new Tramuntana Hotel. Anchored in the old town, Tramuntana’s 11 rooms, beautifully designed by Barcelona-based firm Intsight, come in M, L and XL sizes. A locavore breakfast and a pillow-plush lobby pulls guests from their stylish slumber, ready to embrace sun-washed adventures. Wedged between the sea and mountains, Cadaqués calls me from my snow-steeped sleep, into this perfectly playful spring jacket by Valentine Gauthier.

April 27, 2014

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Concrete cove

The Hideway at Hotel Lautner in Desert Hot Springs, CA.

Maison du Soir Begonia.

Surprising. Sexy. Fearless. Joyous. Timeless. These are the words director Murray Grigor used to describe the quintessential California architect John Lautner in his documentary, “Infinite Space: The Architecture of John Lautner” (2008). Over the course of his half-century career, Lautner created modernist poetry in concrete. Born in Marquette, Michigan to aesthetically-oriented parents of Irish-Austrian descent, Lautner parlayed his early years working under Frank Lloyd Wright into a visionary portfolio in Southern California. While many of his contemporaries experimented with glass and steel, Lautner considered concrete his muse, and developed progressive engineering methods to make the structures he imagined, spaces at once futuristic and organic. His goal: “architecture that has no beginning and no end.” I imagine such transcendence would translate into a transcendent Sunday spent in the resurrected Hotel Lautner in Desert Hot Springs, California, a site he designed in 1947 as part of master plan for a never-realized desert community. Legendary in his approach to light, Lautner conceived of each room as a concrete cove harboring sunshine. Honoring his intentions, the hotel eschews blinds in favor of face masks, to my benefit: I would spend the day (in this silken Maison du Soir tunic) reading by natural light.

April 25, 2014

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Attainable texture

“False Ceiling” by Richard Wentworth at Istanbul Modern, Turkey.

Love Moschino Short Dress.

I’m feeling the ceiling today. Of place. Of profession. Of person. Coming across Richard Wentworth’s “False Ceiling,” a site-specific installation at the Istanbul Modern in Turkey, gives me hope that I can decide my ceiling’s texture. His is one of cultural and intellectual commentary: the books, sourced from Eastern and Western cultures, rest just beyond reach, removed from their purpose as portals to knowledge, removed from the act of reading. His barrier of distance nullifies any of the information printed on their pages. These are books closed to learning, eroded of authority. No longer tomes of truth, they become merely material, forming a permeable, symbolic surface. This Love Moschino dress seems like an exuberant complement to Wentworth: Channeling the pop pows of Roy Lichtenstein, the words stand less for meaning, more for pattern and visual exclamation. Maybe these Wows will inspire you too.

April 24, 2014

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Map quest

Foster Huntington’s original VW Syncro.

Chuck Taylor Washed Canvas in Foam.

Three years ago, Foster Huntington quit his job in New York City, bought a Volkswagen Vanagon, and hit the road. Eighty thousand miles on (and counting), he published a Kickstarter-funded photography journal, “Home Is Where You Park It,” chronicling the kindred characters he met out west, who too transformed axels into abodes (Huntington’s initial sojourn has since morphed into a way of life). I’m inspired by these nomad narratives, by the adventure, the asceticism. By the 1970s Dodge Sportsman, canary red no less, parked amid Central Baja’s sea of subcompacts and pickups. By the Honda Civic transformed into a polyhedron sleeper. By the family of five’s second home on wheels: a camping tent strapped to the top of a van, surf boards propped outside. Only classic essentials would come with me on my driveabout, like these Chucks.