Hasta La Ideas

Photographer Julien Lanoo has sent us his series of the Rolex Learning Centre in Switzerland, designed by Japanese architects SANAA. (more…)

A CH favorite, Erik Schedin of Sweden makes a finely edited collection of essentials, accessories and products sharing a pared-down aesthetic. Proving his chops as a designer, standouts include items that Schedin created himself, which have just been newly relaunched.

First dropped in 2008 in just one size, his white leather sneakers—the epitome of understatement—are back in production in sizes 41-45 (8-11.5 US) for around $200.

Schedin also re-released his tote bag ($353). The new version, made from boat-cover fabric, features hand-dyed, tonal cotton handles and an off-white drawstring with matching tape covering the interior seams.

The sneakers and tote are available now on his online shop and Dover Street Market.

Expressing to Mom just how much you appreciate her can stump even the most clever gift-givers. To help with the last-minute quest for the perfect gift, we reached out to some of our favorite mother-and-child partnerships to see how they celebrate the holiday in their family.

Emily and Joan Sugihara

Creators of one of our favorite on-the-go essentials, Baggu‘s Emily Sugihara and her mother Joan have been crafting together since Emily was a toddler, now regularly collaborating on new bag designs. For the enterprising duo, Mother’s Day means handmade gifts and personal touches. Emily tells us about making a small storybook about their family when she was 10, told from the point of view of her then two-year-old brother Nicky. With clever captions for photos of family members, pets and favorite items, the keepsake charmed her mother to tears.

Joan fondly remembers a Mother’s Day when Emily prepared lunch for the entire family, as well as a gift she gave her own mother. While in college, Joan (a consummate seamstress) crafted a Boho-style dress out of an rose-colored Indian batik bedspread. The gift delighted her mother, who wore the dress for the rest of her life.

Allison and Rhonda Kave

Peddling pies with more flavor than those found south of the Mason-Dixon Line, First Prize Pies‘ Allison Kave attributes much of her baking knowledge to her mother Rhonda, who also delights in the dessert business with her shop, Roni-Sue’s Chocolates. You can catch the both of them on weekends at the new Hester Street Fair, where this Mother’s Day they’ll be featuring Mother’s Day items and goods to benefit breast cancer in their shared booth.

The Kave family celebrates Mother’s Day by planting annuals in the yard, a tradition that formed during Allison’s youth. They also give gifts, which usually involve activities than can be done together, such as a cooking class taught by professional pastry chef Carole Walter or brunch at the James Beard house (where the above picture was taken last year). While Allison recalls the experiences, Rhonda remembers a symbolic sculpture of a mother and daughter that she says is “one of the loveliest Mother’s Day gifts” her daughter ever gave her.

Akaash and Jasleen Mehta

Contemporary Indian artist Jasleen Mehta moved to NYC with her son Akaash when he was just a baby. Her passion inspired her son, who created “a special sketch or drawing” every year for his mother on the holiday. Now an assistant director at Eden Fine Art gallery in NYC, Akaash first work at Sotheby’s and Christies, using these experiences to give his mother the ultimate Mother’s Day gift.

For the 30-year retrospective of Jasleen’s work in India last summer, Akaash helped to curate the exhibition while also creating the 100-page catalog for the show. This massive task included sifting through interviews and news articles from the past and present, getting some of her major collectors to add additional write-ups, and going through all the images and slides of her paintings from the late ’70s to the modern day for an incredible tome chronicling her entire career—”something she has never had before.”

Earlier this week, Time celebrated its annual selection of the 100 most influential people in the world with a gala in New York, and while we’re suspicious of any list that includes both Ashton Kutcher and Amartya Sen, we enjoy the logistical wonder that is the Time 100 double issue. The massive editorial effort, led by assistant managing editor Radhika Jones, commissions a diverse group of notable figures—many of them Time 100 alumna—to write a paragraph or two about the chosen influencers. Yes, this strategy can result in a Ted Nugent-penned paean to Sarah Palin, who he would “be proud to share a moose-barbecue campfire with” provided that he can shoot the moose, and Palin’s own ode to Glenn Beck (“America’s professor of common sense”), but it also gives us Ruth Reichl on David Chang (“Whipped tofu with sea urchins and tapioca? Bring it on!”) and sphere-headed prophet and monkey newsman Karl Pilkington on Ricky Gervais (“He opens the locks on toilet doors with a coin when I’m using them”).

Time tapped Shepard Fairey to muse on the elusive Banksy, who created this self-portrait for the magazine. “He has a gift: an ability to make almost anyone very uncomfortable,” writes Fairey. “He doesn’t ignore boundaries: he crosses them to prove their irrelevance.” Ryan Pfluger‘s elegant full-bleed photo of Marc Jacobs, standing pensively beside his desk (on which sits a Philippe Starck for Flos gun lamp) offsets Victoria Beckham‘s less than memorable prose (“You can always tell when someone is wearing Marc Jacobs,” she writes, wrong-headedly, considering the designer’s astonishingly diverse output). Meanwhile, Donna Karan discusses Zaha Hadid—who is grouped with the thinkers, not the artists—and compares her buildings to a gust of wind: “organic, forceful, and utterly natural.” Our favorite matchup? Steve Jobs as exalted by Apple fan Jeff Koons, who brings his usual up-with-people verve while invoking a rival operating system. Writes Koons, “The tools [Jobs] has given us, from the Macs at my studio to the iPhone in my pocket, are like clean new windows, fitting between our selves and our work elegantly, naturally, and unobtrusively.”

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By Davis Silis