Hasta La Ideas

It’s been quite a year for Stella McCartney. She followed up her “Team GB” Olympic gear with a smashingly sporty spring 2013 collection and last night trumped fellow nominees Christopher Kane and Mary Katrantzou to take home Designer of the Year honors at the British Fashion Awards (a full list of winners is below), held at London’s Edwardian-meets-Art Deco Savoy Hotel. Her 11-year-old label also took home the prize for Designer Brand, awarded to a fashion company that has “focused growth strategy with each new product range receiving media praise and achieving high levels of sell through.”

Owner PPR seized the moment to announce that it has added Stella McCartney to a newly-created joint venture with molto clever e-tailer YOOX to manage online stores of PPR brands such as Bottega Veneta, Yves Saint Laurent, and Alexander McQueen. The Stella McCartney online store will be launched globally by the end of this year and will go live in China by the end of 2013, according to a statement issued this morning.
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CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund winner Greg Chait with runners-up Tabitha Simmons and Jennifer Meyer Maguire. (Photo: CFDA)

Greg Chait has a golden goose. OK, technically it’s a bronze swan, but you get the idea. The French-born, New York-based designer was presented with the Rachel Feinstein-designed avian trophy by actress (and Vogue cover girl) Emma Stone on Tuesday evening at New York’s Center548, where the Council of Fashion Designers of America and Vogue announced the recipients of the ninth annual awards from the CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund. Chait, who helms Los Angeles-based cashmere label The Elder Statesman, bested nine other finalists to take home the $300,000 Fashion Fund prize and a steady stream of business mentoring from industry veterans.

Runner-up honors–$100,000 each and a lovely bronze egg–went to accessories designers Tabitha Simmons and Jennifer Meyer Maguire. The other finalists were Andrea Lieberman (A.L.C.), Greg Armas (Assembly New York), Sofia Sizzi (Giulietta), Justin Salguero, Daniel Silberman, and Alina Silberman (Illesteva), Jennifer Fisher (Jennifer Fisher Jewelry), Max Osterweis and Erin Beatty (Suno), and Wes Gordon. Get to know them better by tuning into The Fashion Fund, a seven-part series that premiered on Vogue.com last month. Here’s the climactic final installment, complete with footage of the judges’ deliberations and Tuesday’s awards ceremony.

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This just in: Brooklyn-based architecture and design collaborative Acconci Studio, founded in 1988 by Vito Acconci, will be honored as Designer of the Year at this year’s Design Miami, (December 5-9 in Miami Beach). Awarded to a designer or studio “that has made a mark on design history, pushing the boundaries of the discipline through a singularly innovative and influential vision,” the honor has been bestowed in previous years on the likes of Zaha Hadid, Konstantin Grcic, and David Adjaye.

Among the perks of winning Designer of the Year is the opportunity to whip up a large-scale installation. These commissions have typically consisted of site-specific, temporary installations for the fair iself, but now Design Miami is setting its sights on projects that will be both permanent and public. Acconci Studio will get the ball rolling with “Klein-Bottle Playground,” the Moebius strip-style climbing structure in the above rendering. Originally developed for the “Art for the World” program, as part of a touring exhibition of experimental recreational equipment and toys for refugee children, it will be permanently installed in the Miami Design District in 2014. The structure was inspired by the German mathematician Felix Klein, whose “Klein Bottle” had no identifiable “inside” or “outside.” Acconci Studio’s playground-ready riff will consists of a series of tubes extending out from and into a central sphere, allowing children to climb in, through, and on top of it.

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What do the Chrysler Building, the Dunkin Donuts Logo, and Big Bird have in common? All were designed by alumni or faculty of New York’s Pratt Institute—William van Alen, Lucia Derespinis, and Kermit Love, respectively. Tonight the school celebrated its 125th anniversary with the help of the Empire State Building, which glowed gold in a one-night-only birthday salute (pictured). Several blocks uptown, at the Waldorf=Astoria, designed in 1929 by Pratt architecture alum Lloyd Morgan, revelers including Stefan Sagmeister, Sylvia Plachy, and Marc Rosen (alums all) turned out in black tie and festive gilded attire for Pratt’s 125th anniversary gala, which raised more than $1 million for student scholarships. The evening also honored the latest recipients of the Pratt Legend Awards: The Pratt Family, who have actively supported the Institute since its founding; Maximilian Josef Riedel, CEO of Riedel Crystal of North America; Tony Award-winning director Julie Taymor; and artist Kehinde Wiley.
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Earlier this year, AIGA put out the call for “stories that reveal the value design creates for clients, the public and, most especially, customers” for Justified, a new kind of competition. Hundreds of entries poured in—from design firms, in-house design departments, design entrepreneurs, and freelance designers—and a jury of top designers chaired by Terry Irwin, head of Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Design, has selected 18 exemplary case studies that serve as an effective tool to explain design’s value to clients, students, peers, and the general public. Five entries made the shortlists of all of the jurors: the Feed the Future Website, Make Congress Work!, Earth Lab: Degrees of Change, HTML & CSS: Design and Build Websites, and CODA Experience Center. “In a challenging economic climate, articulating what we do has become more important than ever,” said juror Petrula Vrontikis, creative director of Vrontikis Design Office, in a statement issued by AIGA. “It is possibly the most useful skill we can master, allowing us to keep good clients and make purposeful (and beautiful) work.”

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