Hasta La Ideas

Although known traditionally for its homeware staples and iconic meatballs dish, in recent years the Ikea brand has inadvertently become something of a status symbol among hypebeasts.

The launch of the retailer’s recent collaboration with Off-White’s Virgil Abloh at its Wembley store saw a level of hype usually reserved for the latest Supreme drop, and in 2017 it even had to call out Balenciaga for its $2,000 bag that bore a striking resemblance to Ikea’s staple Frakta shopper.

On the streets of Tokyo it’s not uncommon to see streetwear aficionados decked out in fake Ikea T-shirts, but now the Japanese brannch of the retailer has decided that it’s time for the real deal.

The Efterträda collection is Ikea’s first ever clothing and accessories range, which has been developed in-house and takes inspiration directly from the street style of Tokyo’s youth.

The collection features fashion staples such as a T-shirt, hoodie and towels, along with accessories including an umbrella and tote bag, and is accompanied by a lookbook created in collaboration with Wieden+Kennedy Tokyo.

The lookbook takes an unfiltered look at fashionable Tokyoites inside their homes, featuring imma, the most popular virtual model in Japan, and creative director, artist and stylist Bunta Shimizu, among others.

The collection officially launched at Ikea’s store in Harajuku, otherwise known as Tokyo’s streetwear heartland, last month, and will be available in stores across Japan from August 7.

Credits:
Agency: Wieden+Kennedy Tokyo
ECD: Scott Dungate
Creative Lead: Max Pilwat
Art Director/Designer: Shohei Kawada
Copywriters: Max Cameron, Haruto Murata
Head of Production: Kerli Teo
Agency Producer: Yoko Onodera, Ty Demura, Siyun Kim
Photographer: Kisshomaru Shimamura

The post From flat-pack to fashion: Ikea enters the streetwear game appeared first on Creative Review.

Store or not store, there is no try. That is the line I often use to ensure my husband replaces everything back to their place once he is done using them. While organizing and being neat is a compulsion of mine, I never really paid attention to the vessels aka furniture that carries our things from more than a functional point of view, that is until I came across these designs! Who knew a shelf could be so much more? These transforming, smart and extremely useful designs are the perfect mix of functionality and aesthetics, making them perfect for every home!

Designed to be compact enough to fit into any space, yet comfortable enough to have you sink right in with your favorite book, the Conch by Wei He comes with a molded-plywood inner body and a dual-density foam outer body, giving it structure as well as supple softness. The chair’s form conforms to the contours of the body, allowing you to sit comfortably, while also conveniently having a storage unit right under you for everything from books to a cushion to other bric-a-brac. It’s the perfect reading spot for one!

The Becky Corner Shelf by Noook comprises of a selection of stackable shelves, that turn even pointless little corners into useful storage spaces. This one’s been crafted just for your bathroom!

Vasco Cabral’s The SHELF is furniture installation made incredibly easy. With two wooden sleeves that slide against one another, The SHELF can be mounted on any drywall just simply by pushing it in. When you push forward, the outer sleeve slides towards the wall, prompting a mechanism in the inner sleeve to deploy incredibly small but powerful hooks that lock into the wall (I suspect they do this diagonally). When locked, they’re so firm that the shelves can take the weight of two cinder blocks (the largest TheShelf can carry as much as 30 lbs) without breaking a sweat. If you ever want to relocate the shelf, just pulling the outer sleeve with moderate force allows the hooks to disengage, and the shelf to detach from the drywall.

In urban homes, one often has to compromise on the kind of furniture they would like because there isn’t enough space to have a separate piece for each function – in this case, Alessio Romano’s Orte saves the space you would need for a full shelf and a mirror by blending them into one. Its limestone base supports a rotating wooden frame with the mirror on one side and six hidden shelves on the other. The pop of red brightens up the corner where the furniture will be and stretched oblong shape makes it easy to fit in any corner. It can be used as a dresser, a bookshelf, or the stuff you need to grab quickly without it being on display always.

The KUR!O was featured here on YD after Markus Hofko of Von Morgen won a Gold A’ Design Award, and has, since then, developed and refined into a product that consumers can now buy and own. The construction hasn’t changed much fundamentally, but a few tweaks make it more durable and allow you to even dock dowels/pegs into it to hang items like keys, photos, or that dreamcatcher you bought at the flea market. The base of the shape-shifting, the infinitely customizable shelf is its underlying grid, made from sandwiched wood-fiber boards. The cuts in the grid go as much as 20mm deep, allowing you press-fit powder-coated steel panels into it. The steel panels come in a variety of colors, giving the KUR!O its uniquely vibrant appeal, and feature carefully-placed cuts that let individual panels interlock into each other. The 2mm thick panels are heavy-duty enough to take on large loads, making the KUR!O robust, despite the fact that there isn’t any screwing or gluing of parts.

This conceptual side-display-table by Zinus Inc. comes either from a place of complete vanity or sheer creativity, but nevertheless, the Photo Table definitely feels like an instant must-have. Imagine never having to worry about setting up your mini-studio for a product photo-shoot. Just place it on a table, point some lights through the table’s diffuser-hood, and there you have it….perfect images for posting online. And the best part of it is not having to pack your studio up after you’re done because it goes right back to being a piece of furniture that sits somewhere in the living-room-space of your quirky studio apartment.

It will be very easy to confuse the Folding Wall Chair by designers Ahmad Ahmadian and Reyhaneh Rajabzadeh Samani as a waffle making machine that is placed at an odd height! Open the contraption, and you have a seat for yourself. Close it, and the bottom cushion part has an exclusive niche for holding magazines and books.

GATE’s designer Artem Zakharchenko identified that a shelving unit only occasionally holds the same items for its entire life, more often than not the items will be swapped out over time and the environment that it is placed in will change, therefore the product needs to be able to adapt to this. Being able to choose where you want the shelves to be positioned is just the beginning! The ‘zones’ allow for the unit to be used as a wardrobe, storage for wine glasses, shoe shelving or even a small desk! This level of adaptability makes GATE perfect for use in the home as well as commercial environments such as bars and restaurants. I know I want one!

Made completely out of wood, the Twofold reinterprets a traditional wooden connection, turning the product into a hinge itself. Made from plywood with a melamine coating, the Twofold can simply be mounted on any wall. Without any external fittings i.e., hinges, flap-holders, Studio Michael Hilgers for Müller Möbelwerkstätten designed the Twofold to open and close, turning into a neat bookshelf when you need it to be, and a rather comfortable work desk when you want it, without disrupting the arrangement of objects kept on your shelf. Elegant, isn’t it?

Studio NINE’s Lego compatible furniture aims at being a playground for your children. The furniture comes with a machined textured layer that’s all too familiar. Made from Corian, the polymer-based marble substitute, the furniture has a premium feel and a simple design… The purpose of this simple design being twofold. It can either blend well into a house with Scandinavian styling, or can be infinitely decorated by using pieces of Lego that just simply snap onto the furniture’s dot-embossed surface. Yes, it also means lesser chances of your foot accidentally stepping on a loose piece of Lego lying around on the floor… Plus, like Lego itself, the furniture is perfect for all people of all ages!

Check out more creative furniture options in the first part of this series for the love of all things furniture!

If it were up to King T’Challa, the MIMIC e-bike would be fitted with vibranium tech, but we’re going to stick to an electric power-train for now. This crouching-jungle-cat of a bike is a concept designed by Roman Dolzhenko. Outfitted with what looks less like a body and more like armor, the MIMIC e-bike comes with a rounded, Tron Light Cycle-inspired form with rounded elements and just an overall absence of straight lines or sharp edges. The e-bike has a dual-lamp headlight fitted on the front, looking almost like a menacing pair of eyes, and a dashboard that lays flush against the e-bike’s curved panther-esque body. Wakanda Forever!

Other noteworthy details include a cantilever seat, inverted handlebars with the brake levers facing the rider, and a three-hexagon logo on both the front and back wheel, a detail that pays tribute to Daniel Simon, designer of the Tron Light Cycle, who uses a similar hexagon insignia to mark his designs.

Designer: Roman Dolzhenko

The food takeaway business is estimated to be a $53 billion-a-year industry and given the unique circumstances humanity is in, it’s probably set to grow even further at a rapid pace. PriestmanGoode aims at tackling the inherent problems within the takeaway culture with sustainable food packaging that’s molded from a bio-composite containing recycled cocoa bean waste.

Created as a part of the Wallpaper* Re-Made project, these bio-composite containers are modeled to look like bento-boxes with a modular design that stacks up as your order increases, resulting in one larger box rather than multiple smaller boxes. This unique format provides a useful alternative to plastic containers (as it’s waterproof and leakproof too) and eventually reduces components by removing elements like lids (since the containers stack over and cover each other). Materials used to craft the packaging meet a range of criteria too, being heatproof, lightweight, recyclable, and insulating. The bio-composite polymer used to mold the containers themselves are made from cocoa-bean shells (a by-product of the cacao industry) by designer Paula Nerlich. The outer bag that carries the containers is made from all-natural materials too, including mycelium to insulate the interiors, a bioplastic known as Nuatan to provide a robust outer shell, a natural leather derived from pineapple leaves called Piñatex for the outer container’s lid, and Lexcell, a neoprene-free natural rubber used for the handles and straps on the bag and the Bento containers.

PriestmanGoode’s design solution tackles the massive problem of single-use plastic packaging that’s plaguing our environments and oceans. It provides an all-natural, biodegradable solution to plastic boxes and cling-film wrappers, while also utilizing natural waste materials like cacao shells in the process. I’d argue that it looks a million times better too!

Designer: PriestmanGoode

Calling the Cuzen Matcha an ‘Instant Matcha Maker’ is as accurate as calling an airline pilot a chauffeur. I mean, it’s accurate in the fact that they both help transport you, but there’s still a vast difference in the scope of what they do. The Cuzen Matcha brews matcha tea in mere minutes, but it does so with the ritualistic expertise that’s often associated with brewing Japanese Matcha Tea. Unlike an instant coffee maker that just combines coffee grounds with water and filters it through, the Cuzen Matcha literally, mechanically conducts the matcha brewing ritual from start to finish.

The incredibly sleek looking device comes with a vertical chamber that houses a ceramic mill that finely grinds the leaves, mimicking the effect of a stone grinding mill. The matcha powder is collected in an aluminum container and is then dispensed into a cup of water with a magnetic whisk at its base that rotates to emulate the process of bamboo-whisking the powder into the water, giving you a perfectly brewed cup of fresh matcha tea. The entire process replicates/automates traditional practices, and by manually grinding and whisking the matcha, you’re left with a cup of tea that tastes as authentic and organic as it gets.

The matcha brewing process is simplified to just two button-presses. One button to start/pause the matcha grinding/brewing process, while the other button allows you to determine the strength of your beverage. The Cuzen Matcha comes with its own sachets of matcha leaves that get poured into the hopper inlet on top. The ceramic mill then grinds the leaves to a fine powder under 20 micrometers in size. This powder is then dispensed into Cuzen Matcha’s proprietary whisking cup that comes with a rotating whisk at the bottom. As soon as that happens, the whisk begins spinning (thanks to a magnetic motor controlling it from below) to perfectly incorporate the matcha powder into the water. The freshly brewed matcha can then be poured into your drinking cup, onto ice, or in cream to create a whole variety of matcha-flavored drinks.

Cuzen Matcha makes matcha-brewing incredibly easy, while still remaining true to the traditional process of matcha-making. Unlike your regular Nespresso/Keurig machines that just pump pre-brewed coffee from metallic pods (which generate tonnes of waste), Cuzen Matcha follows the matcha-brewing technique without any compromise. The leaves are ground right before they’re dispensed into each cup, resulting in fresh, organic, authentic Matcha every single time. Besides, the Cuzen Matcha appliance itself channels this incredibly calming Japanese minimalist aesthetic too, making it just the most beautiful and innovative take on this classic beverage with a cult following! Authentic Japanese Matcha is now literally just a button-press away.

Designers: Naoya Edahiro & Ayumi Ostrowski

Click Here to Buy Now: $299. Hurry, only 150 left!

Cuzen Matcha – Enjoy Organic Fresh Matcha from your Home

At the push of a button, the Cuzen Matcha produces a fresh cup of matcha with their shade-grown organic Japanese tea leaves. It’s authentic matcha reimagined for the modern world.

The Matcha Maker

They engineered this machine to maximize freshness and reproduce the qualities of a traditional stone mill and bamboo whisk.

Ceramic Mill – A complex groove pattern and super strong ceramic components set at high pressure produce a fine powder (under 20 micrometers) equivalent to a traditional 130-pound granite mill.

Tea Leaf Hopper – A brushed aluminum chamber that holds up to 20 cups of matcha leaves and prevents the leaves from losing their freshness by limiting their exposure to oxygen.

Wooden Lid – The key to keeping matcha leaves fresh for a longer time is a lid that seals tight and prevents oxidation.

Magnetic Whisk – Rotates at high speed, synchronized with the ceramic mill to produce the same effect as bamboo whisking by hand.

Platform – The other half of the magnetic whisk. Features matching notches that slide into the bottom of the whisking cup.

Strength Levels – Pick how strong you want your matcha. A single, one-and-a-half, or double shot.

Grind-Only Mode – Perfect for those who want to whisk freshly ground matcha the traditional way. Also great for cooking and baking with matcha powder.

Error Indicator – Gives you an LED error message if something’s misaligned in your Matcha Maker’s mill or cup.

Easy Clean Up – A quick rinse to wash out the whisking cup. For a less frequent, deeper cleaning just pop out the magnetic whisk and clean the cup.

Matcha Leaf

They produce two different blends of matcha. Both are from shade-grown organic harvests, with their own flavor profiles and intended uses.

Try These Classic Drinks

Straight Matcha – Enjoy a freshly made cup of matcha. Premium Matcha Leaf is recommended.

Matcha Latte – Pour 6 oz of steamed milk into a double or triple shot of fresh matcha. Signature Matcha Leaf is recommended.

Sparkling Matcha – Mix matcha shot into sparkling water for a refreshing drink. Signature Matcha Leaf is recommended.

Using the Cuzen Matcha Maker

Just pour leaves in the hopper, fill the whisking cup with water, select the strength you want, and push start. Once your cup of matcha’s ready, you can make a matcha latte, sparkling matcha, or add it beer, white wine, or cocktails.

Understanding Matcha

Unlike tea that you steep for a few minutes and throw away, drinking matcha means you ingest the entire leaf. Because you’re eating the whole matcha leaf, we think it’s important to harvest only the healthiest, most nutritious, and flavorful leaves—which is why we partner with organic tea farms in Kagoshima, Japan. Their farming process uses no chemical fertilizers and no chemical pesticides, so you enjoy the real taste of matcha.

Before harvest, our leaves are shade grown for at least three weeks until they’re vibrant green, lightly sweet, and full of umami flavor. Once they’re picked, the leaves are steamed and dried, prepared and sealed so they stay fresh right until your drink is made.

Click Here to Buy Now: $299. Hurry, only 150 left!