Dressed for Design
From Milan to Mayfair: Chairs in Uniform, PAD London, and the debut of Blind Items
Hi everyone,
A quick intro: The Design Release started in 2017 when my pal Leo Lei (of Leibal) and I (Julia - hello) were working in New York, often traveling to scout new designers for Leo’s store and exhibitors for the Architectural Digest Design Fair, where I was working at the time. We began keeping track of major design fairs and exhibitions across cities and realized that the resource we were building didn’t exist.
So we built it! Along with our third co-founder Zack Kollar (our tech genius), we created TDR as a calendar platform to track design shows and exhibitions around the world. And now - our newsletter :)
September was the perfect month: I was so happy to host Leo at our flat during London Design Festival in between his stay at Templeton Garden (book it - it’s amazing, dinner too). We had a great time walking from show to show, especially in Shoreditch, which has become the hub for the festival. If you plan to visit next year, I recommend booking a stay in East London.
A big thank you to our friend Judy Dobias, who extended invitations to her client’s magical dinners and openings during the week. I am still new to the London design world (I moved here two years ago) and it’s a little different from NYC, a little harder to penetrate, so to speak. Therefore, introductions are incredibly appreciated, and we love Judy for adopting us.
I attended a beautiful lunch at Faye Toogood’s studio in Camden to celebrate her collaboration with Noritake. Can report that Faye is as lovely as one could hope, and the collaboration of hand-painted roses on ceramic really spoke to me. As a June baby, roses are my favorite flowers, and I am always drawn to interpretations and paintings of them. Speaking of interpretations, the food by Spring was a dream (add to your lists). Look at this cake!
Later that day, with a rosebush in tow, Leo and I went to dinner to celebrate Lee Broom’s collaboration with our friends at Calico. We sat across from our buddy Wai from Dezeen, Lee’s lovely husband and company CEO Charles Rudgard, and Calico’s head of branding, the hilarious Ahsen Nadeem. A great crew, great stories, and lots of laughs.
Typically (and including the above), most bigger launches taking place in London were already presented in Milan, so it can feel repetitive for someone who goes to all the design weeks. However there were a lot of great launches and exhibitions, especially two galleries:
Grain Pile, by Max Radford Gallery was on view at Clerkenwell Fire Station, showcasing a collection of commissioned work that looked incredible against the Fire Station backdrop.
Slancha, a newer contemporary design gallery dedicated to curating art-furniture, homeware, and sculptural objects by some of the UK’s most exciting independent designers and makers. They very cleverly included merch, and I can never say no to a cap, and I’ve been wearing mine nonstop.
One of my personal favorites (yet not directly related to LDF) was the incredible auction exhibition for the collector of surrealist art and design, Pauline Karpidas, at Sotheby’s. More on that in News, below.
In this issue:
Blind Items 🙄
News News News 🚨
Exhibition of the Month 🪑🧥
Fair of the Month 🎡
Anna Monich’s City Guide 🍽️
Blind Items
After a long flight and jet lag, my grumpiness caught up with me, and I was in the mood to name names… but this might be more fun.
Which NYC art and design fair continues the ill-conceived strategy of adding random celebrities to its Honorary Committee as a strategy to make itself more relevant? It’s cheapening the brand.
Did you think you could avoid the AI slop on substack? Nope, it’s here too, and it really pmo. As more and more design celebrities join the platform, so does the word “quiet” - used up to 6 times per post. The pleonasm is a dead giveaway of GPT use (I suggest everyone avoids that one).
Speaking of AI, which well-known interior designer has been posting generated interiors for years now, insisting they are real projects, even when called out in the comments?
News News News
Following the news of their Miami expansion, Laura Young has been promoted to Managing Director of all The Future Perfect galleries. Congrats Laura! 🥂
Back to the auction: Lot 36, Claude Lalanne’s Unique Structure Végétale bed, sold for £889,000, more than double the estimate of £200,000–300,000.
Limewire acquired Fyre Festival for $245,000. LimeWire COO Marcus Feist acknowledges that they “bought a meme.” Fast Company
Demi Moore stars as the owner of both Gucci and California in Spike Jonze and Halina Reijn‘s short film “The Tiger,” and also features the latest Demna collection. Variety
“WhatsApp billionaire Jan Koum accuses star designer of ‘brazen fraud’ overcharging him millions for fake luxury goods at his mansions and yachts” Daily Mail
My favorite project of the month, via sister publication Leibal.
Exhibition of the Month
With Uniforms on Chairs, the design duo OLDER Studio playfully explores the split identity of their practice: the impersonal seriality of uniforms in fashion versus the intimate, handcrafted uniqueness of their furniture pieces. In a surprising twist, they dress iconic chairs and rare design objects from Milan’s Nilufar collection in uniforms -transforming them into “furniture in uniform.”
Uniforms on Chairs by OLDER Studio curated by Valentina Ciuffi
September 26 to October 24
Monday to Friday 10:00 AM - 1:00 PM / 2:30 PM - 6:00 PM
The Great Design Disaster: Via della Moscova 15, 20121, Milano
Fair of the Month & Anna Monich’s City Guide
PAD London is my and most of my London design friends’ favorite fair of the year, taking place in Mayfair, mid-month, on October 14 - 19. You can see details here.
For friends in town or anyone interested in a fancy little London guide, I enlisted a friend of TDR's (and fellow Substacker), London-based interior designer and gallerist Anna Monich, to create a list of places to visit in October.
Anna is one of my favorite new friends here in London, and an elegant fair such as PAD deserves equally elegant suggestions, and Anna’s taste is sublime. Anna is an international interior designer based in London, where she’s lived for over two decades. She is also a proud supporter of Ukrainian craft and design, and runs a gorgeous gallery in Chelsea (next to Manolo’s flagship 👀) where she presents a new rotation of Ukrainian ceramics, glass (vintage too), art, and design each month.
When she’s not at the gallery, Anna can usually be found wandering the streets of London, the city she calls her greatest muse. She’s partial to spontaneous detours into historic churches and landmarks, followed by a glass of champagne at Claridge’s or The Lanesborough. For dinner, it’s often a table at Noble Rot (Mayfair, ideally), or a return to perennial favorites like The River Café and newcomers like The Park, The Arlington, or Josephine in Chelsea.
Depending on her mood, you might find her at the Royal Opera House, Sadler’s Wells, a West End musical, or an avant-garde production in a fringe theatre.
Design-wise, she shops Pimlico Road, Alfie’s Antique Market, and the Battersea Decorative Fair (also taking place in the next two weeks!) - and draws inspiration from architectural gems across the city. She highly recommends the guided tour at the Houses of Parliament, and visiting converted power stations like Tate Modern and Battersea Power Station.
When it’s time to get out of town, she heads to Arundel, an old market town steeped in charm and free from chain store monotony. She suggests staying just outside at The Pig Hotel, where the food is locally sourced, the wine list is exceptional, and the countryside views aren’t bad either.
Thank you to our readers, and a big thank you to Anna! I hope you enjoyed this one.
In two weeks, we will publish our In-Sites newsletter (for our VIP subscribers), and this special issue will be more of a Q&A advice column (my favorite format). If you have any questions, including marketing, business development, PR, social media, or breaking into galleries, we have someone on our agency team who knows that world inside and out. Hit reply and send us your best question!
Thanks again, and until next time --
Julia (and hello from Leo and Zack)
got an exhibition for you, @Nadine @ The Stanza
Haha loved this one! Especially the blind items section.