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Our Place Opens a Trippy West Hollywood Storefront
In her role as Glossier’s creative lead of retail experiences, Madelynn Ringo festooned the beauty brand’s stores in vibrant tones and whimsical accents. Known for its viral pastel-hued cookware, Our Place’s poppy aesthetic is a holistic match for the Instagram era. So bringing that winning formula to the retailer’s new West Hollywood storefront was a marriage made in heaven for the Brooklyn architect.
She fashioned a space with color-blocked homey vignettes, from sculptural kitchen countertops to a psychedelic mirrored room with tubular purple chairs. Cleverly displayed across the swooping installations are cheekily named products such as the Perfect Pot and the “8-in-1” Always Pan. Though it started out as a viral DTC brand, Our Place’s second brick-and-mortar makes for a good trip. —Nate Storey
Jane Fonda wearing Paco Rabanne in a promotional photo for the 1968 movie “Barbarella.” Image courtesy Silver Screen Collection/Getty Images…
Paco Rabanne, a Spanish couturier known for his Space Age aesthetic, dies at 88.
Spanish fashion designer Paco Rabanne, known for a space-age aesthetic and popular fragrances, has died at 88. His death was confirmed by the Spanish group Puig, which controlled his namesake fashion house and fragrance business. Rabanne earned praise throughout his career for his daring and provocative vision—perhaps best embodied by chain-link minidresses composed of hundreds of metal and plastic disks—that cemented him as a major fashion-world personality. Bruno Pavlovsky, president of France’s Fédération de la Haute Couture et de la Mode, described Rabanne as “a couturier who broke new ground in fashion” and “a major fashion designer who never stopped exploring traditional know-how and new techniques with audacity and eccentricity.”
Apple will not replace Evans Hankey, the tech giant’s outgoing VP of industrial design.
According to a report by Bloomberg, Apple’s outgoing head of hardware design, Evans Hankey, will not be replaced. The group of around 20 industrial designers will instead report directly to Jeff Williams, Apple’s chief operating officer, who already manages the company’s global operations, supply chain, customer support, and software engineering. The move marks a major shift for Apple’s legendary hardware design team, which was led by “design czars” who were some of the company’s highest-profile employees for decades. The impact of this organizational change on the appearance of future Apple hardware remains to be seen.
Cartier pulls back the curtain on a sustainable jewelry plant in Regio Parco, Turin.
Cartier has pulled the curtain back on a new jewelry plant in Regio Parco, Turin, which officially launched operations in January with 360 employees. The heritage jeweler renovated the 113,100-square-foot building, a former industrial boiler-making plant built in the 1970s, with the goal of establishing it as a sustainable production site that can accommodate an increased output. The Turin plant, which features 41,000 square feet of solar panels and is expected to receive LEED Platinum certification, has already started producing Cartier signatures like the Ecrou, Juste Un Clou, and Clash de Cartier. Cartier is also constructing a 55,000-square-foot production site in Valenza, Italy, which is slated for completion by 2024.
At a Singapore art fair, a video was censored for visuals “unsuitable” for children.
In January, Multimedia artist Lu Yang’s video installation, Electromagnetic Brainology!, was exhibited at Singapore’s ART SG fair, but two of its five channels were missing. According to BANK, the Shanghai gallery representing Lu, the main video was cut from 13 to six minutes to remove two of the four virtual gods in the work, which resemble Hindu deities Kali and Shiva. The gallery informed Lu that the Infocomm Media Development Authority, the government board responsible for licensing arts and entertainment, found some parts of the artwork’s visuals concerning and gave it an NC16 rating, meaning that anyone under 16 was prohibited from viewing it. The video has been well-received by visitors, with Lu noting the work was shown at Art Basel Hong Kong and Beijing’s M Woods Museum without any problems.
Luxury group Kering creates a beauty division for Bottega Veneta and Balenciaga.
Kering has created a new division, Kering Beauté, to develop beauty products for several of the French luxury group’s brands, including Bottega Veneta, Balenciaga, and Alexander McQueen. Raffaella Cornaggia, a former executive of Estée Lauder, has been appointed CEO of Kering Beauté. The move aims to ramp up Kering’s presence in the beauty space, a recent focus for the company as rival LVMH has built Christian Dior’s fragrance, makeup, and skincare line into a multibillion-dollar business while L’Oréal has helped establish Yves Saint Laurent as a global force in perfume and makeup. “Kering is confident it can create value for the group and its houses, drawing on each of their unique identities in a way that’s fully consistent with their strategy and market positioning,” the group said in a statement.
Los Angeles mayor Karen Bass appoints the city’s first Deputy Mayor of Housing.
Karen Bass, the new mayor of Los Angeles, has appointed Jenna Hornstock as the city’s inaugural Deputy Mayor of Housing. The newly created role is part of Bass’s comprehensive overhaul of the housing apparatus to tackle the city’s longstanding issues of affordability and homelessness. Hornstock brings extensive experience to the position, including serving as the acting Deputy Director of Planning and Land Use for the Southern California Association of Governments and holding an MPP in Urban Economic Policy from Harvard Kennedy School of Government. Her appointment reflects L.A.’s commitment to addressing its housing challenges and improving the quality of life for its residents.
Today’s attractive distractions:
Scientists engineer luminous trees to replace unsustainable electric grids.
Wired details the unfortunate, inevitable “enshittification” of social media.
Takashi Murakami embeds a bejeweled smiling flower inside a Hublot watch.
The Cut has an exhaustive list of new rules for existing in “polite society.”
