Hasta La Ideas

It’s David Byrne month here at UnBeige. Between chapters of the design-minded, art-loving, bike-riding maestro’s freshly released book, How Music Works (McSweeney’s), we’re savoring tracks from his new album with St. Vincent (a.k.a. Annie Clark). Love this Giant, out today from 4AD and Todo Mundo (Richard Burbridge and Gabe Bartalos are to thank for the spooky cover art, and that delightful typography is the work of Steve Powers), is a brassy revelation. But don’t take our word for it. Treat yourself to the debut video, “Who,” directed by Martin de Thurah:

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Blu Dot’s Real Good Chair, Medium Strut Table, and Perimeter Light, part of a custom color collaboration with Fab.

• Perhaps envisioning the day when the globe will be saturated by Ektorp sofas, IKEA is diversifying. The company’s real estate development arm is building an IKEA village, “Strand East,” on 26 acres in London. Expect underground parking and plenty of meatballs. Meanwhile, those who can’t score one of the 1,200 new homes in IKEAville will soon be able to spend the night in an IKEA-owned hotel. The company plans to build 100 hotels across Europe, according to a Reuters report. Rather mysteriously, the budget chain will contain no IKEA furniture. The first hotel is expected to open in Germany in 2014.

• And if those room vignettes in the IKEA catalog appear more alien than usual these days, you’re not losing your Ekenäs. In a move to cut costs and get more bang for its Boksel, the company is increasingly using 3-D graphics to fill its pages. “This year 12% of IKEA’s content for the Web, catalog, and brochures were rendered virtually,” notes Jens Hansegard in the Wall Street Journal. “That number will increase to 25% next year.” The army of photographers, carpenters, and set designers that produce the IKEA catalog (in 62 different versions in 43 countries) are being retrained to apply their skills to spaces that do not exist.

• Just when Restoration Hardware was firing on all cylinders with its ersatz Axel Vervoodt vibe, even heeding the call of urban dwellers for chunky armchairs fit for tiny apartments, chairman and co-CEO Gary Friedman has stepped down from his posts after an internal inquiry into an intimate relationship he had with a 26-year-old female employee. Carlos Alberini is now the sole CEO as the company prepares for an IPO. As nonexecutive chairman emeritus, Friedman will continue in an advisory role as he starts a new “incubator” company with ties to Restoration Hardware.

• In cheerier news, our friends at Fab have cooked up a unique partnership. Tomorrow the flash sale site will unveil seven furniture pieces from Blu Dot in exclusive custom colors. “Fab is offering Blu Dot design staples in bright orange, black, gray, and crisp white—that’s right, ladies and gentlemen: we’re one step closer to ridding the world of boring beiges,” noted a post on the company’s blog. Available through September 29, the pieces include a desk, tables, and a loopy floor lamp. We’re partial to the mod seating: shipped flat and folded into sturdy shape along laser-cut lines, Blu Dot’s Real Good Chair ($120) lives up to its name.
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(Photo: RM Auctions)

• This sleek little 1968 Ford GT40 now holds the title of most expensive American car ever sold at auction. It fetched $11 million in spirited bidding at an RM Auctions sale held last Friday in Monterey, California. Built for the J.W.A./Gulf team, the car raced extensively throughout 1968 from Daytona to Le Mans. “Its genesis alone is the stuff of legends and the subject of countless books, summarized most succinctly as a failed buy-out of Ferrari by Henry Ford II,” notes the RM catalogue of Ford’s GT40 program, which celebrates its fiftieth anniversary in March 2013.

• From a record-breaking Ford to…scent-captured food! An industrial design student at China’s Donghua University worked with Sony to develop a device she calls a “food printer.” Combining a camera with a smell extractor and a printer, it allows the user to photograph a food, capture its aroma, and then print out the image on a smell-infused postcard (wish you were here…to taste this!). The concept recently earned the “most-fun” award at a Sony-sponsored student design competition.

• If you’d rather smell like a freshly printed book than a foodstuff, feast your nose on Paper Passion. Created by Wallpaper* in collaboration with publisher Gerhard Steidl, fragrant bibliophile Karl Lagerfeld, and perfumer Geza Schoen, the bookish (and beautifully packaged) scent—a minimalist juice that includes ethyl linoleate and a selection of woody components to add dryness—is now available for pre-order from our friends at Aedes de Venustas in New York.

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It’s not easy to improve upon a Rolex—and legions of chronophiles will tell you that it’s sacrilege even to contemplate doing so—but our fashionable friends at Moda Operandi flouted the watch mafia and invited 10 stylish types to “customize” a Rolex from Bamford Watch Department, a London-based company that specializes in tweaking pricey timepieces. Thanks to a relatively limited menu of adjustment options, the resulting Rolexes are striking, and the flash sale site has put them up for sale in an online “trunkshow” that runs through Thursday, August 23. Models ranging from the streamlined Milgauss to the rugged Yachtmaster, all blackened with Bamford’s signature physical vapor deposition process, have been given bold makeovers by the likes of street style photographer Tommy Ton, Marie Claire‘s Nina Garcia, and vintage fashion maven Cameron Silver, who opted for a hot-pink face. But it’s stylist Brad “Pop of Color” Goreski whose signature aesthetic really shines through. “I’m a big fan of pops of color, but I thought I would take that to the next level and do a color-blocked Rolex,” he said of the steel timepiece that he gave a bright yellow face with contrasting silver hands, purple hour markers, and a pink second hand shaped like a lightning bolt. “This watch is the perfect accessory whether you’re wearing a tee and jeans or a well-tailored suit.” It’s yours for $15,200.

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Composed of 5,600 silicon rods that function as a digital canvas, Ron Arad’s “720°” debuts tomorrow at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem.

• As Banana Republic prepares to roll out its Anna Karenina-inspired holiday collection (velvet! lace! cryptic messages! tragic ends!), the Gap-owned brand has tapped Narciso Rodriguez to act as an advisor. The designer starts the consulting gig on Monday, August 20 and will work in partnership with Simon Kneen, Banana Republic’s executive vice president of design and creative director. In announcing the new relationship yesterday, the company praised Rodriguez’s “modern aesthetic and passion for great American sportswear.” Look for his influence beginning with the fall 2013 collection.

• Ron Arad goes digital with “720°,” a multimedia installation opening tomorrow at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. The monumental work, part of the 2012 Jerusalem Season of Culture festival and nestled in the museum’s Isamu Noguchi-designed Billy Rose Art Garden, consists of 5,600 hanging silicon rods that act as a 360-degree canvas. Evening screenings will loop film and video works by the likes of Christian Marclay, David Shrigley, and Ori Gersht. For a more immersive experience, visitors can push back the rods and step inside to watch from the interior.

• New York magazine’s The Cut is in expansion mode. The fashion blog relaunched this week as a standalone fashion and lifestyle website with a more magazine-like format and a focus on top-notch imagery. With a photo gallery that offers full-screen images, zoom functionality, and alternate views, The Cut is also investing in both original photography—fashion shoots, street style, product coverage—and archives of vintage photographs to populate unique celebrity “Look Books.” They had us at the Brigitte Bardot slideshow.
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