La Vie En Rose

Our Best and Brightest Dwell on Design Sellers

Thank you to everyone who came out this weekend to Dwell on Design at the L.A. Convention Center. Some 20,000 attendees turned out, and I think most of those folks came through our mini A+R shop in the foyer. By mid-afternoon Saturday, we were nearly sold out of many of our newest products.

The eco-friendly Plumen bulb, shown above and already on our site, drew them in like fireflies. But it was the BPA-free, microwavable Black+Blum lunch boxes that really stole the show. We sold out of our entire stock!  

Here, some of the top weekend hits...

While the colored Pop! Handsets for mobile and computers sold fast and furiously, the unveiling of the gilded version struck gold. We are only two retailers in the U.S. who scored the limited-edition edition.

The small size bento box from Black+Blum.

 

The new landline telephone by Jasper Morrison for Swiss upstart Punkt is gorgeous. And it will be ours when it debuts in the U.S. in September. We had advance samples to showcase this weekend thank to the fine folks at Jasper's office in London...so, ok, no sales on this yet. But the response for it was overwhelming. And we sold plenty of the stunning, slim alarm clocks Jasper also designed for Punkt. For me personally, I will want one of each color—black, red and white—when they finally come out.

Thanks to The New York Times shout out the week before, we sold out of most of our stock of these incredible juicers by Belgian designer Quentin de Coster for Royal VKB before DoD. The few we did have at the show were gone by Saturday morning!

 

Join Us This Weekend: Dwell on Design

 

We're back at Dwell on Design with our A+R mini shop in the lobby (next to Skylight Books). Swing by and say hello. We've got many new items that haven't even hit our Abbot Kinney store yet (they will....).

Lots of our great pals in the design world are speaking all weekend. Check out Dwell on Design site for more details.

 

See you there!

In the Details: Our Perfect Pourer

The July issue of Details Magazine features the ultimate guide to the world's highest quality olive oils and the best pourers—including the double-walled oil or vinegar carafe by the Italian glass company Ichendorf which is among our top sellers (and personal favorites) at A+R.

The mouthwatering image of oiled-up tomatoes wedges had us until we spotted the allioli recipe from the amazing chef José Andrés.

Already has us missing our recent long weekend in Barcelona...mmm.

The Bronze Age

On this, Andy's first Father's Day, I look back at my first honorary day as a parent last month, recalling how my magnificent partner in life went for the bronze—and scored gold.

Andy's flair for gifts for me has always been remarkable. There was the necklace I spotted at the Modernist Show in Santa Monica—a two-inch-wide welded strand of bronze, copper and silver links made in Taxco in the 1940s—which I coveted. He didn't go to the show. But he managed to  track down the piece from the dealer in Berkley.

Other hits: the scarce and pristine copy of Salvador Dali's volumes on gastronimical flights; the skull pendant fashioned from a large grey Tahitian pearl and sterling silver, custom ordered from Michael Schmidt; the limited-edition aluminum Olympus camera released in 1988 that looks like something out of Xanadu and was only available in Tokyo. All of them complete surprises.

So for my first Mother's Day last month, Andy announced I would receive my best gift ever. This, of course, he added was after our daughter, Nina. No thing could ever top that.

Our friend, artist Gordon Bowen, whose flights of artistry and craft have meant dabbling in everything from crochet to metalwork, had recently partnered up creatively with sculptor Erin Barrett to cast bronze. This I did not know. 

Andy took Nina to their studio to have her tiny hands and feet cast from a mold made from alginate, a seaweed-based gel dentists use. Once the alginate hardens it immediately begins disintegrating, giving the mold maker about an hour before the mold breaks down too much to be of use. Erin pours hot wax into the mold. Once it fixes, she removes the wax and resculpts any spots that did not form correctly in the original mold.

When the waxes are ready, Gordon casts them in the foundry. The casting involves dipping the wax multiple times over several days in a wet slurry to create a shell around it. After the shell is about half an inch thick, Gordon melts the wax model away, leaving a negative space in the mold.

Red-hot bronze is then poured into the shell. After the metal cools, the shell is broken away to reveal the casting. Gordon sandblasts the piece and corrects any blemishes that popped up in the casting.

The nearly final step is to give it a patina, which is Erin's specialty. Raw bronze naturally ages to a dull brown, so the patina allows the metal to keep it's lustre over time. Finally Gordon gives it a coat of wax and a polish.

The result is unlike those copperized baby booties so many of us have. These four solid, leaden pieces are sublime, a work of art.

There is very little I can do to match such a divine gift on this Father's Day. But Nina and I have a few of his token favorite things to surprise him with. And my darling Andy will be appreciated today, as he is every single day.

Hollywood Stripped: Debbie Reynolds, Carrie Fisher and a Life's Work Undone

This Saturday's auction—and break-up—of the most comprehensive single collection of Hollywood's greatest costumes is a major blow to all of us fans of cinema and clothes. After decades of trying to realize a museum for the hundreds of costumes and artifacts she's rescued over four decades, legendary actress and film buff Debbie Reynolds is going to put them on the auction block, not because she wants to—but because she simply cannot afford to maintain them.

Her heartbreak and that of her daughter Carrie Fisher, who is truly pained to see her mother's wish unrealized, was not something I first learned about when I sat with Carrie at her home in April for a story in this month's Harper's Bazaar about the auction. When I got the call to do the interview, I didn't need much of a backstory: I'd stayed in Ms. Reynold's short-lived Las Vegas casino with the in-house showcase of so many of these iconic costumes when it opened in 1993. When it closed six years later, I was both saddened because it didn't succeed and hopeful the museum would be embraced by some institution or wealthy benefactor in Los Angeles.

Preservation and presentation of clothes is an expensive proposition. Take into account the fragile quality of so many of these costumes—from Charlie Chaplin's bowler to Elizabeth Taylor's Cleopatra headdresses, the white Marilyn Monroe Seven Year Itch pleated halter dress to Bette Davis' Queen Elizabeth gowns—and the undertaking requires the financial and maintenance means of, say, an institution like the Metropolitan Musuem of Art, the V&A, or (here's a thought) a hometown home such as the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (paging Michael Govan!).

Auction house Profiles in History in Beverly Hills estimates the nearly 600 items on the block (conducted both inhouse and online) could bring $10 million in the sale (a second phase will take place in December).

But at what a cost to our heritage? Yes, heritage. These frocks are a part of our collective history, as important or even moreso than cars or neon lights, both which boast museums of their own in this city. If a museum here can step up with donors' millions to scoop up European fashions from centuries before this town was a sparkle in the eye of those created Tinseltown, then why can't that same spirit and drive come together to acquire the whole kit and kaboodle of Ms. Reynold's life's work? 

A final public viewing of the collection is being held from noon to 5 on Friday, June 17 at the Paley Center for Media, 465 N. Beverly Drive, Beverly Hills.

The Extraordinary Coverage in the LA Times

Los Angeles Times fashion critic Booth Moore extended coverage on my second book, The Extraordinary Difference, in both the magazine and, this last Sunday, with a lengthy feature in the Image section subtitled: "Rodeo Drive used to be a regular street. Then Fred Hayman arrived." That pretty much says it all.

It's worth reading both pieces, of course, but this Sunday's story marvelously summarized the book.

Picture This by GPP

If you are not a follower yet, then don't delay another day on checking out the postings by celebrated fashion illustrator Gladys Perint Palmer on her new eponymous site.

They are near-daily dose of color and line from the artist's archives or current sketchbook during her travels covering the runway circus in Europe and New York and other ports of style. Each work is accompanied by a pithy quote by some infamous or famous individual, as much an observation, shrewed or giving, about the world she has illustrated, well, forever.

Mrs. Perint Palmer lives in San Francisco where she also serves as the steadfast executive director of the School of Fashion at Academy of Art University there. Annually, she has provided an image for the school's biggest event, its May fashion show, such as the one above of the stunning Italian actress-model Benedetta Barzini featured above.

I was happy to include a few of GPP's anecdotes in my recent book about the time she illustrated several ads hawking Manolo Blahnik and Norma Kamali for the Fred Hayman Beverly Hills boutique during the 1990s. Those ads are also in the book.

"Although I am thin in appearance, the Empire is fat," Emperor Xuanzong, Tang Dynasty

Pantone Breaks 175 New Colors

 

Pantone, the international standard of colors, announced this week 175 new colors to its Color System, bringing in its total to 2,100.

The broader, complex range includes more nuanced neutrals and mid-tones, more vibrant brights, more subdued variations of popular colors. That means cherry reds with both blue and yellow undertones and a deep rose with blue nuances, truer yellows, lusher greens and a greater variety of blacks, whites, mauves and greys, among other shades of the rainbow.

We have several items officially brandishing the Pantone color stripes, which are an absolute hit, of course, with the many architects, designers, graphic artists and other creatives who frequent A+R.

Top of the Pops!

Today's Daily Candy features editor's picks of gifts for dad, and among the top for pop's is the wood tool set by Jonas Damon for Areaware that we sell at A+R. The four-piece set, made in New York, comes in a handy hemp sack and is compact enough to store in a kitchen drawer or glove compartment.

Father's Day, in case you forgot, is Sunday, June 19...order now have it in time to say happy day.