Another Something & Company

Last month was a crazy one. We traveled form Amsterdam to Tokyo, to Basel, to Lisbon for both business and pleasure. In the coming days we’ll share some of our experiences here. To start with Japan. Together with Menno and Rene – Tenue de Nîmes – we went to Japan to get some serious indigo and retail inspiration. Besides our amazing visit to Takeo Paper, we were invited to visit this indigo paradise of the legendary Bryan Whitehead. read more…

Our friends from London recently brought the in 2011 founded menswear label Harry Stedman under our attention. Based in London, the brand champions key facets of classic American and European attire, actively blending old with new to achieve a modern style that resonates with today’s discerning gent. In the pursuit of truly timeless style they secure only the finest fabrics and have forged valuable relationships with leading domestic and international manufacturers. read more…

The new concept perfume-bar named Liquides in Paris which opened on the 17th of April and was founded by David Frossard’s Different Latitudes, a label for independent perfumers founded in 2005, and designer Philippe Di Méo, is a true mecca for fragrance lovers. Located conveniently at 9 rue de Normandie in the historical Marais neighborhood; which has the air of 17th century Paris and over the last couple of years has become the destination of choice for niche fragrance connoisseurs. On that part Liquides adds significant value to the neighborhood’s reputation offering a broad scala of scents, from rare personalized perfumes, to fragrances from major perfume houses including Byredo, Miller Harris, Odin, Arquiste, Jardins de France and Olfactive Studio. read more…

Lisbon-based couple Nuno Neves and Susana Viela of Serrote make limited-edition notebooks for connoisseurs and collectors of typographical gems. Printed on vintage Heidelberg presses, their graphic design is inspired by items from popular Portuguese culture such as tablecloths found at traditional luncheonettes and the shape of traditional biscuits. They also make special editions of notebooks experimenting with designs and materials, using their craft to the fullest.  read more…

After having met while studying at the Design Academy Eindhoven, Kirstie van Noort and Rogier Arents each went their own way. Van Noort prefers to do extensive research on materials or processes beforehand, using the information resulting from the research as a fundament for the story behind the end product. Rogier Arents on the other hand is a designer and communicator of scientific research. And although these approaches inhabit their differences, their first joint project distinctively named Color Collision turned out to be very interesting.
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Last few days we stayed in Alentejo’s countryside, close to the beautiful beaches of the southwest Portuguese coast, at Casa da Diná. A bed & breakfast run by the Portuguese and Uruguayan couple Dina Medeiros and Walter Betbeder Rosso. Traveled the world themselves they decided to set home at Malavado and combine Walter’s atelier with this lovely bed & breakfast of four double rooms, a delicious homemade breakfast and now and then a dinner to share Dina’s love for Portuguese cuisine.

While enjoying this lovely place, we got inspired by the works of Walter and his atelier. The beautiful earth-toned palette, the geometrical forms, simplicity and cubist style in contrast to his palettes incorporated in this world of simplicity. read more…

We really love the incredible ceramic sculptures designed by Japanese Kanazawa College of Art Bachelor graduate Hitomi Hosono. After complementary studies at The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts and the graduation of a Masters degree at the Royal College of Art in London Hosono has perfected her craft and creates one of a kind botanical ceramic sculptures. The proces of creating her artworks roughly breaks down as follows; firstly it takes one month to create the mold, three intense weeks follow to attach the folliage, and it lastly takes up to five months to let the sculptures dry. The now London-based artist’s lifelike depictions of leafage were recently awarded with a Perrier-Jouët Arts Salon Prize, a new award officiated by the producer of Champagne from the French Épernay region.

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After a somber and electronic influenced Another Spring mix tape it’s now time for something different. And with some new and crazy good tunes by James Blake, David August, The Knife, Grasscut amongst others, the first few months of 2013 already brought some iconic music. Starting easy, slow and classical, moving more towards electronic sounds and ending in what we think is the ultimate summer midnight ‘end-of-the-night’ tune by Cold Cave. read more…

We really like Sleepy Jones, the latest endeavor of the ever-inspiring Andy Spade and long-time collaborators Anthony Sperduti and Chad Buri. After years of working together at kate spade, Jack Spade and Partners & Spade, the three set out to create a company that believes, in contrary to contemporary stimuli-fueled life, in the virtues of taking your time, wondering and pondering about whatever crosses the mind. The result is an impressive collection of sleepwear, underwear and not-quite-ready-to-wear for men and women inspired by the lifestyles of people like George Plimpton and Pablo Picasso.  read more…

Today we’ve received this lovely new tool called Lapka. Lapka is a tiny, beautifully designed personal environment monitor that connects to your phone to measure, collect and analyse the hidden qualities of your surroundings in a highly aesthetic and playful way. The precise sensors respond to the invisible world of particles, ions, molecules and waves. But read more…

Via Roztayger we’ve found out about Kika NY and their leather Postal Backpack. Kika NY has been producing artisinal leather goods since 2009 and was founded by the Dutch MA gaduate in Economics Kika Vliegenthart and former interactive designer Sabine Spanjer. It has slowly been expanding since. Vliegenthart who rigorously changed course and became a leather smith under Barbara Shaum in Manhattan after her studies and her business partner Spanjer have their workshop in the old Brooklyn Naval yard and therefore have both moved to New York from their native the Netherlands. They work with materials sourced from Europe, including leather from Portugal, Italy and Belgium. Their solid brass hardware is hand-tooled in an old family-owned foundry also in Europe. In a way one could say that the products of Vliegenthart and Spanjer emphasize the largely European lineage of their adopted new home New York City. read more…

Find. Eat. Drink. is an online database and iOS app that highlights the best restaurants, drinking holes, and food shops around the world, according to professionals in the industry. This includes experts like Michelin-star chefs, coffee roasters, bartenders, sommeliers and food writers giving their personal recommendations in a fashion that reminds of the recently released printed guide Where Chefs Eat. Find. Eat. Drink. lets one browse offerings in over 120 major cities worldwide, utilizing the app there’s the option to use your location to show you what’s nearby, filtered by particular cuisine and price class. read more…

The project named A Borderless World recently caught our attention. The core of it are Andrea Calandri, Armando Romano, Gabriele Greco and Giulio Menichini and their Land Rover Defender which they drove for 33.000 kilometer in a journey that few have managed to do. It brought them from Italy to the Middle-East, Central Asia, South-East Asia, Eastern-Europe and back to Italy. With the heartfelt intention read more…

While running around with our Tenue de Nîmes crew I was invited by Takeo, to visit their head office and showroom in Tokyo. Takeo, a paper trading company founded more than a century ago, in 1899, brings the tradition of Japanese paper (wash) to a next level. Entering the high-white showroom you could easily thinking you arrived in a laboratory. Small cabinets filled with a rainbow of paper. More than 9000 kinds of paper, in every colour of the rainbow, from super light weight to massive cardboard, this place is a walhalla for everyone who loves paper, textures, tactility and luxurious materials. read more…

While we are crossing Japan, enjoying some real Japanese traditions, here’s some more Japanese inspired European business. Paper & Tea founder, Jens de Gruyter and his team, have made it their mission to make fine teas and tea culture more accessible to a broad audience in Western-Europe. In order to achieve this they opened a bright store on the first of December 2012 at the Bleibtreustrasse 4 in Berlin. In the store the presentation system of the teas encourages self-directed discovery, through a immediate sensory experience and dialogue in order for the customer to familiarize with the wide range of the offered. The store’s interior, designed in collaboration with product designer Fabian von Ferrari, resembles a mix of aesthetically purist concept store and natural history museum. read more…

It is believed that wasabi was first used where it was found, growing wild in Japan’s valleys of Mt. Heike, Mt. Mizuo, and Mt. Bahun. The locals gathered wild wasabi to use as a condiment with slices of raw yamame, and raw venison. In addition to use as a flavoring, the stems and leaves of wasabi were also pickled and eaten as a vegetable. At one point the wasabi was shown to Tokugawa Ieyasu, a Japanese warlord of the era, who liked it so much declaring it a treasure only to be grown in the Shizuoka area. Although centuries have passed since, today wasabi still has a reputation of being extremely difficult to grow, largely because it requires cold, pristine water with just the right balance of minerals. Basically most wasabi (wasabia japonica) is still solely grown by farmers in different parts of Japan.
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I was honoured to become one of the One Minute Wonders of Present Plus, the creative outlet of my good friend Nalden. One minute wonders is just that: a series of video portraits featuring wondrous people telling their personal story in 60 seconds flat. Artists, entrepreneurs, designers, and rain-makers offer insight into their individuality, their motivations, and what really makes them tick.
Introduced as ‘Eternally curious designer, editor, curator and creative director’, here’s 60 seconds of my vision – to make the world a little better by creating and sharing everything beautiful. read more…

For its 5th year anniversary of the passport size TRAVELER’S notebook, Midori teamed up with the Hong Kong-based ferry company,  “STAR” ferry, Limited. Midori designed a whole stationery and accessory range to personalize your STAR EDITION notebook within the STAR ferry theme.
Available for limited time only, the STAR EDITION Passport size TRAVELER’S notebook is made of a beautiful camel colored leather and comes with a emerald elastic band, which makes a perfect combination. At the back the collaboration is embossed in the leather cover. It has the same features as the original Midori TRAVELER’S notebook passport size, and one can update its interior with either the 004 card/zipper file or the 010 kraft file. read more…

I think the first time we’ve mentioned a big redesign of Another Something & Co was more than a year ago. Another Something & Co is still a side project. So while we were busy working on the Blue Jeans exhibition, a new Tenue de Nîmes store, the KLM inflight sales programme, the identity for Skins Cosmetics and much, much more, we collected some lost hours and worked on this big restyle.
The new site is build by my good friend Wilco of Drost & Co. It is the ultimate fusion between the blog, our social network, and the work we do with the company. read more…

Since it’s still cold outside in this parts of the world, and it looks like winter can’t turn its back, our Spring playlist isn’t really feeling like spring. With the new tunes by James Blake, Atoms for Peace, Jim James, Apparat and Dark Star it became an electronic influenced mix tape which feels more as our winter compilation. Let’s all hope for some more sunshine and spring temperatures! Enjoy the mix tape on Spotify, and get the track list after the click. read more…

Chanel n°5 first saw day in 1921 within a highly dynamic creative context. Since the Cubist revolution brought about by Picasso’s Demoiselles d’avignon, in 1907 and the advent of Futurism in italy in 1908, the avant-garde ceaselessly went about writing a particular modernity which would finally triumph at the dawn of the 1920s. From that moment abstraction spanned all forms of creativity, equally inspiring art, poetry, literature and music, and the fragrance of this new perfume which evoked a very mysterious flower, unless of course it didn’t firstly evoke a woman. read more…

We really like this Kickstarter project which envisions a new direction for plants in an urban environment. Plant-in City is a collaboration between architects, designers, and technologists who are building new ways of interacting with nature. The sculptural Plant-in City terrariums combine modular architecture, basic laws of physics, embedded technologies, and mobile computing to construct a Plant City where the read more…

This beautiful H. Lorenzo retail space in Los Angeles was designed by Jared Frank. Frank, who up to this point had mostly worked as a production designer and residential decorator, made some pleasing aesthetic choices creating a fitting environment for the fashion sold at the store. When Lorenzo Hadar purchased the building next to his men’s store in West Hollywood he wanted to turn the ground floor into an annex that could function as a stand alone shop. A place to try out new clothes, ideas, and designers before committing to carrying them at his other locations in Los Angeles.  read more…

A few weeks back we were invited by Miscellaneous to visit Le Typographe. This lovely company with its tiny storefront and amazing workshop in the back, located at Rue Américaine 67 in Brussels, makes beautiful notebooks, envelopes and cards. Housed in the Elsene area of Brussels one finds their store and atelier connected by a little, lovely well-kept garden. Just as in the maintenance of their garden, in all of their products one can find excellent craft and the highest care for detail.  read more…

The latest and possibly last installation by the legendary Christo is called the Big Air Package. Everything concerning the project is impressive, starting with the exhibition space. Built in the 1920s, the Gasometer on the Rhine-Herne Canal in Oberhausen, Germany, is one of the more appealing industrial monuments of the country. The former gas storage container is 117 meters tall and 67 meters wide, towering over any living creature. The inflatable Big Air Package itself, erupted within the Gasometer, is 94 meters high and 54 meters wide. read more…

In Closed Cities published by Kehrer Verlag, Gregor Sailer examines the forms taken by closed cities in Siberia, Azerbaijan, Qatar, Chile, Algeria/Western Sahara and Argentina. The term ‘closed city’ was originally coined for the Soviet Union, where, for various reasons, the existence of numerous towns was long kept secret. Some of them were not officially revealed and added to maps until the beginning of this century.  read more…

For me, traveling means collecting stories, sounds, fragrances and images. Not in the big statements–the overwhelming music or megalomanic architecture–but in details. I’m attracted to the details: the small stories behind one image, the sound of a city awakening, that tiny shop around the corner and the subtle smell of flowers along the way. It is those details that make my travels so inspiring and addicting.  read more…

One year ago this amazing floating cinema premiered as part of a new film festival in Thailand that was curated by Apichatpong Weerasethakul and Tilda Swinton. This impressive project was named the The Archipelago Cinema.  Built in the middle of the water the platform provided breathtaking views from every angle which included two towering rocks emerging from the ocean.  read more…

The newly opened seafood takeout restaurant LobsterHouse + studio at the Frederiksplein 6-8 in Amsterdam really pleases our senses, both aesthetically ànd what we tasted when we dropped by. The seafood takeout restaurant, which is the latest project of Steven Pooters who also founded Café George, has a menu consisting of whole and half lobsters, three different kinds of oysters, lobster- or crab burgers, but also a pasta Vongolo, and Niçoise or Bouillabaise salads. All the takeout meals are prepared daily. read more…

Everyday Needs is an online store mixing pragmatism and aestheticism in a superb way. The utilization of the store needs no explanation, as it should be, and through tasteful curation and product placement in the store, a perfect environment for the products has been created. With this as the context Everyday Needs ensures that what a costumer gets is not only good-looking but also carefully manufactured and with a quality that will last the test of time, completing the hybrid.  read more…