Every once in a while I’m tasked with designing baby patterns. While the American market predictably likes it’s pinks, blues, yellows and browns, categorized as barn animals, hearts or stars, it’s refreshing to see another take on the topic. Ratzer, a Danish home goods company’s recently sold out of their plaid baby line. The layout’s ethereal and soft in a very modern kind of way. I love the asymmetrical patchwork. What do you think?

Over the past 12 months I’ve collected lots of suiting swipes. Though the editorial’s not terribly current, the textures are timeless. Styled and shot for Dazed & Confused, Another Man, Calvin Klein and Zink, the black and white pairings are interchangeable, simplistic and a nice mixture of high and low design. Which patterns will you be wearing this Fall?

It’s always refreshing to see the art of the illustration hasn’t been completely lost to mass market CAD drawings. This past Fall, the FT Weekend ran a story by Nick Foulkes highlighting five satorial personalities coming out of new money England. The piece is tongue and cheek and I’ve held onto the scans waiting to pair them up with something, but finally figured the detailing is remarkable on it’s own. If anyone knows the artist, do share, as the credit was missing in the spread.

Mismatched patchwork is continually getting a facelift and the cubist approach in these designs reveal the latest pairing of pattern on pattern. Always the curator of cool, the latest literary addition to Colette’s bookshop, Wanderung, by Edouard Baribeaud, reveals 24 pages of painted and drawn imaginary spaces. Experimenting with this technique in the home goods sector, Missoni Home has designed a typographic pillow to reveal softer contrasts. Enlarging these black and white patterns for a throw, Bensimon of Paris has included this menagerie in their latest collection of wares.

It’s always fascinating when creative parallels emerge within unrelated markets.  Vitra, a leading furniture concept store recently unveiled it’s Vegetal chair by suspending several black and white styles in their Meat Packing District windows.  No more than two miles south, Burberry’s signature plaid has taken a similar route, by tossing it’s famous pattern in it’s Soho location window. This youthful touch looks like the work of Christopher Bailey, Burberry’s newish Creative Director.  Merging plaid elegance with organic fast food, Sis. Deli + Café, a chain of restaurants in Helsinki, Finland, has proven that consumption and convenience can be effectively translated without bombarding the customer with incessant messaging.

Tee Today, Gone Tomorrow is the motto for Tee Fury, the web’s latest solution for limited-edition, countdown t-shirts. Every midnight, a shirt goes for sale and once it sells out, or after 24 hours- whichever comes first, the tee is gone and no longer a commodity sold on the site.  This business structure appears to tap the human psyche’s need to win, particularly in the department of sales and exclusivity.  Today’s feature, entitled Plaidinum, by Dann Matthews, was forwarded along by Adam Hahn and is an interesting marriage of texture and film iconography.  For the Star Wars buffs out there, buy yours today, as Tee Today will move along, come May 13th…

I was recently alerted to Stripe Generator while perusing facebook updates this morning.  Noah Brier, a friend and fellow blogger, posted this stripe-making website to his list of running favorites.  Though I immediately laughed at the idea of designers needing assistance in pairing lines together, my dismissal was quickly silenced by the seemless usability of the toolset.  Spacing, color, background and direction can all be manipulated, similar to iPhoto’s editing capabilities.  Once I played around a bit and made a few patterns, I clicked through to Tartan Maker, an equally impressive site for designers not privy to Pointcarré.

Snow gear has become so fashion forward that a trip to the slopes can be just as interesting for the people-watching as it is for the thrill-seeking.  Over the past few years, companies such as Burton and 686 have tapped young talent to bring graphic masterpieces to winter outerwear.  While fashion brands typically refer to global trends for inspiration, both of these companies have succeeded at risk-taking within trend categories for several seasons now- one of the many traits they share with their customer base.  “It’s fun to wear crazier colors when you’re on the slopes- you can border on obnoxious and get away with it,” says Kim Devall, a snowboarder from New York.  The above jackets by Burton and 686 exemplify a growing trend that fuses neons with photography.  Below are a few [...]