Aesop Cambridge by JamesPlumb

Design, Retail

For their new collaboration with Aesop on the brand’s Cambridge store, the English design duo JAMESPLUMB, who have already developed a reputation for using the most seemingly pedestrian materials to magical effect, used bulrush, the wild plant that typically grows on the banks of lakes and rivers. The plant grounds the two-room space both physically and metaphorically, an English answer to the Japanese concept of wabi-sabi, which has perhaps unfairly hogged the spotlight when it comes to matters of finding beauty in earthiness and the aging of organic matter. To that end, JAMESPLUMB commissioned Felicity Irons – one of the last English rush weavers – to create extra long shelves using bulrush. The plant was also used to inlay the display cabinets and the sinks.

TAKAHIROMIYASHITATheSoloist. SS23 Collection

Fashion

We would like to present to you the S/S 2023 collection of TAKAHIROMIYASHITATheSoloist, titled “GRAY.”

In this collection, inspired, again, by one of his heroes, Kurt Cobain, the cult Japanese designer Takahiro Miyashita continues his experiments in back-to-front and inside-out tailoring and gender neutral clothing, turning imperfection into an art form. The tromp-l’oeil effect of the first part of the collection is created by hand painting on medical gowns – after all, Cobain spent a lot of time in hospitals, and we can attest through an in-person experience that the back-to-front tailoring is gravity-defying in terms of design and continues to prove that Miyashita remains a decidedly singular talent in a sea of grayness that defines contemporary fashion.