T Introduces: A Fashion Designer Carries on the Legacy of a Textile Artist
The fashion designer Marco Zanini’s mother is Swedish, but growing up in his father’s native Italy, he never gave his Nordic roots much thought. It wasn’t until he turned 30 that he “became passionate about anything Scandinavian,” says the Milan-based 52-year-old, who served as the creative director of Halston, Rochas and Schiaparelli before launching his namesake ready-to-wear brand in 2019. “I started to spend my summers there, digging into anything that felt and looked Swedish.”
One of his discoveries was the work of Märta Måås-Fjetterström (1873-1941), a textile artist known for her elaborate patterns that meld Swedish folk motifs with Modernist design. After purchasing two of her rugs at auction, he became fascinated with the idea of visiting her studio (“I wanted to see those famous looms,” he says), which is still in operation in the small southern Swedish town of Båstad, and in 2016 he contacted the company that had been established to continue Måås-Fjetterström’s work shortly after she died. When Tina Swedrup, its current co-owner, received his message, “I of course Googled him,” she says. “And I realized I really loved his designs.”
When the two eventually met in person, they connected over their commitment to slow, careful production and their shared interest in traditional crafts. Last December, Swedrup broached the idea of collaborating on a rug. Not long after, Zanini was sitting on the atelier’s worn wooden floor sifting through thousands of hand-dyed wool skeins to come up with 12 different color schemes for his design called A Righe (which is Italian for “striped”).
“My motto was ‘keep it simple,’” says Zanini, who counts traditional Swedish rag rugs and the distinctively glazed mid-20th-century pottery by Berndt Friberg among his inspirations. Still, the magic of a Måås-Fjetterström creation lies in its inherent complexity. Each stripe of the rug is made up of 25 different yarns in complementary tones, the order of which is chosen by the weaver. When seen together, however, they read as a single block of color. In preparation for the process, Zanini had to handpick threads in 1,800 different hues. The resulting mélange creates the illusion that the stripes are rippling like the surface of a stream. “I thought, ‘It will never match the beauty [Måås-Fjetterström] created in her lifetime,’” says Zanini, whose rugs are available made to order from the company’s permanent collection. “But you can go near it, at least.” — Laura May Todd
The Marais, Renewed
Critics of the Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo’s campaign to limit cars in the city center worried that the ongoing pedestrianization of the Marais district would deter art collectors and displace galleries. But a half-dozen years and many bike lanes later, the Marais, the historic Jewish quarter and a center for Paris’s gay community, is in the midst of an arts-driven renaissance. “It’s more contemporary than ever,” says Paul William, 33, the French Egyptian owner of MAĀT Gallery, which opened in February and primarily represents West African artists, including Prince Gyasi from Ghana, known for his kaleidoscopic digitally altered photographs. A walk through the winding streets now holds avant-garde surprises, like the experimental bouquets — a wire-hung stalk of bananas, rare red-speckled anthurium spathes — exhibited in the window of the year-old Atelier Ko floral studio. “I had no intention of doing traditional floristry, which is why I chose this area,” says the shop’s owner, Zeguang Gao, 30. The creative synergy of the Haut Marais district south of Place de la République, along with its central location, drew the 32-year-old chef Manon Fleury to open her first restaurant, on the lively 800-year-old Rue des Gravilliers, in September. Named for an heirloom French plum variety, Datil offers an inventive tasting menu featuring dishes such as spaghetti-like ribbons of zucchini and cuttlefish served in a lardo-infused mousse. It’s part of a wave of new restaurants in and around the upper Marais, among them Géosemine, Guefen and Magma, all of which embrace the pared-back, natural epicurean style once synonymous with the city’s eastern arrondissements. A more lavish aesthetic can be found near the Square du Temple park at the fin de siècle-style Maison Proust boutique hotel, which opened last winter (rooms from about $685 a night). Closer to the Seine are the ’60s- and ’70s-inflected SO/Paris (rooms from about $525 a night) and the joyfully maximalist Le Grand Mazarin (rooms from about $685 a night). — Zoey Poll
The Thing: A Necklace That Balances Opulence and Simplicity
Crafting intricate settings for contemporary haute joaillerie can be a painstaking task, with artisans meticulously jigsawing an assortment of stones and metals into mind-bending configurations. Sometimes, though, the simplest-seeming pieces require the most effort, says Laurence Graff, the 85-year-old English jeweler and entrepreneur who in 1962 opened his first two shops in London’s Hatton Garden jewelry district and now oversees an international empire. It can take years to amass gems in coordinated sizes, colors and cuts to complete what may wind up looking like a casual, if lavish, rope of stones. “We must be patient,” Graff says. This double-strand necklace, with a total of 171 perfectly matched round white and yellow diamonds in graduated proportions (the largest is just over four carats), may be the ultimate example of why it pays to wait. Graff High Jewelry necklace, price on request, graff.com. — Nancy Hass
An Intergenerational Fashion Collaboration
In the early 2010s, when the American designers Dylan Cao, 31, and Jin Kay, 36, were students at Parsons School of Design in Manhattan, they often found themselves stopping on the way to class to admire the looks in the windows of the Paul Smith boutique that was located on the corner of Fifth Avenue and West 16th Street. “His clothes are wearable, but with such a sense of character,” says Cao. Now, the duo — who co-founded the ready-to-wear brand Commission in 2018 — are collaborating on a men’s wear collection with Smith, 77, as part of the ongoing &PaulSmith program, which invites young fashion industry talent to co-design with Smith and provides them with mentorship. For their own brand, Cao and Kay are often inspired by images of their parents from the 1980s and ’90s and, for this project, they went with a similar approach, turning to “Father + Son” — a book of photographs taken by Smith and his father, Harold, that Smith published in 2000 — and the Paul Smith archive as starting points. The resulting 22-piece capsule includes a scarlet bomber jacket with patch pockets, roomy striped track pants that pool at the ankle and a circa 2002 yellow T-shirt adorned with a pair of black lips. “The pieces from the archive were already so good, and the construction is thoughtful,” says Cao. “We were just there to sort of modernize it.” — Jameson Montgomery
Soaps for Some Good, Clean Fun
The produce and lifestyle-goods purveyor Flamingo Estate may offer heritage olive oil and manuka honey but, by the Los Angeles brand’s own admission, the most nutrient-rich thing it makes is actually soap: clean-edged cubes in earthy shades of chartreuse, malachite and terra cotta. Founder Richard Christiansen, 47, is particularly proud of the Jasmine & Damask Rose variety, which contains the nectar of the night-blooming flower harvested just before sunrise at a third-generation Egyptian farm.
They’re just one entrant in a new wave of extra-fancy soaps made with rare flowers and aromatic herbs and oils. In Paris, the three-year-old company Orris offers richly pigmented, small-batch, cold-processed blocks with ingredients like Egyptian geranium and camphor. In New York, Redoux produces vegan bricks infused with a red clay and safflower oil blend and inspired by a late-night hotel tryst. “An oversize bar of soap wrapped in paper feels so nostalgic and special,” says the London-based creative director, designer and boutique owner Alex Eagle, 40, who recently introduced a namesake line of soaps handmade in the English countryside. Opening one of the little packages is “akin to unwrapping your favorite chocolate bar,” she says.
Also in London, Bridie Hall, 45, a co-owner of the décor shop Pentreath & Hall in Bloomsbury, is making soaps that feel more like design objects. She casts her creations in silicone molds that she modeled after grand tour-era intaglios and the carved heads of Roman emperors. But such beauty has its downside, too: “When I gave my soaps to friends to test out, they all said they were too pretty to put in water,” she says. A compliment, yes, but also a commercial challenge. Or not: If you can’t bring yourself to use them, you can always keep them on display, a little piece of art to decorate whatever space they’re in. — Alexa Brazilian
A Bee’s Feast
“Waxy” has never been a compliment when applied to food — which is perhaps why honeycomb has always been a niche ingredient, used mainly in preserving and in molecular gastronomy. Now, though, chefs like John Shields, 46, are discovering beeswax’s floral aromas and toothy texture. At Chicago’s Smyth, Shields — who likens the taste to “a bouillon of what’s going on in the garden” — ladles melted beeswax into mustard seed oil, then drizzles it over waffles piled with white asparagus. He also uses the wax to create a lacquer to coat his saffron, honey and apricot kernel ice cream and to add a “delicate sweetness,” as he says, to his poached king crab claws. Shields isn’t the only one experimenting with the ingredient. The London-based chef Jackson Boxer, 38, grew curious about honeycomb after coming across the Old World technique of lining canelé molds with melted beeswax butter. The wax, says Boxer — who relies on hives at his recently opened Cowley Manor in the Cotswolds to supply his Notting Hill restaurant, Orasay — gives the tiny cakes a “lovely, caramelized exterior with an ever so slightly crackly crust.” In search of other applications, Boxer and Orasay’s head chef, Vagelis Dagdelenis, 31, also recently infused it into ice cream, which they spooned onto a bed of white chocolate crumble and coated in a fragrant pine oil. “Sugar to me is one of the flattest flavors — it just sits on your tongue,” says Boxer. In contrast, beeswax “has all these perfumed, aromatic, nuanced characteristics.” In San Francisco, the pastry chef Melissa Chou, 40, of the bakery Grand Opening, also praises its “pure perfume.” She steeps it in cream to make a sabayon, which she then pipes onto burnt honey pie sprinkled with bee pollen. Chou scoured California for the ideal product, a mellow floral one with “not too much funk,” she says, and ended up finding “this guy with just a few hives at his house.” Part of the appeal is that the flavor varies a bit from week to week. As Boxer says, “It all depends on what the bees are feasting on.” — Lauren Joseph