We’re proud to announce the launch of Abel’s new fragrance, the Green Cedar.
With its sixth all-natural fragrance into the vita odor collection, the Green Cedar reflecting a rich scent profile of its hero ingredient, as well as a nod to the sustainable credentials of wild harvested cedarwood.  [ Continue reading ]

At a moment when the world is facing the world’s largest refugee and migration crisis since the Second World War, the latest deeply inspirational publication by Irish photographic artist Richard Mosse named 'Incoming', deals with this contemporary major humanitarian and political plight, the displacement of millions due to war, persecution and climate change. With illuminating texts by Mosse and the philosopher Giorgio Agamben, the 576-page book, published by the ever-inspirational MACK Books, combines film stills from the artist’s latest video work made in collaboration with electronic composer Ben Frost and cinematographer Trevor Tweeten – a haunting and searing multi-channel film installation, accompanied by a visceral soundtrack. Journeys made by refugees and migrants across the Middle East, North Africa, and Europe are captured with a new weapons-grade surveillance technology that can detect the human body from 30.3km. Blind to skin color, this camera technology registers only the contours of relative heat difference within a given scene, foregrounding the fragile human body’s struggle for survival in hostile environments, resulting in imagery that leaves an everlasting impression on us.

Richard Mosse's 'Incoming' marks a highly inspirational new chapter in the body of work of the photographic artist in which he tackles another extremely relevant thematic in a haunting artistic form that is among the most interesting being produced in this day and age. [ Continue reading ]

We continue to be far from as active here as we would love to be, mostly because of our schedules at ...,staat and New Amsterdam Film Company demanding most of our time, but after some time completely off the grid in (Upstate) New York and California for the both of us in May; we are really picking up the pace again. Starting it up with an incredibly stunning new book by Swedish photographer Mårten Lange published by MACK, that was presented to the world some hours ago at the gallery space of Webber in London. Named 'The Mechanism', the extraordinary publication presents a remarkably melancholic series of monochromatic photographs that form a futuristic narrative about contemporary life. Bringing together anonymous images made in multiple cities, the work deals with themes of technology, economic systems, surveillance and (dystopian?) urban society. Lange attempts to trace the effects of technological developments on human experiences, using architectural tropes to build a narrative loaded with the threats and promises of the future. Cutting back and forth between close-up views and cityscapes, the beautifully designed book offers a filmic sequence of photographs that is at once affective and estranging. We have been familiar with the impeccable work of Lange before, after just discovering 'The Mechanism' we have a new instant favorite. Make sure to order it before this book sells out! [ Continue reading ]

There was a time in which Egyptian cotton stood for the highest possible quality one could get. In particular Helmut Lang's t-shirts made from that particular fiber, for us at least, being the epitomy of understated luxury. Unfortunately, soon after the term and use became established within the globalizing luxury industry, it started to go down hill with the thriving industry. More and more farmers started mixing Indian and American seeds with their original sources for cotton, which caused both a quality drop and resulted in government involvement in the market that eventually toppled the whole industry drastically: with smaller amounts of true premium Egyptian cotton being exported every year. In spite of these developments, in our minds, cotton from Egypt never lost that connotation of the remarkable. Therefore, when at the beginning of 2016 we encountered a small Toronto-based fashion brand named Kotn —honoring the great heritage of true premium Egyptian cotton and understated basic clothing— that came as a wonderful surprise.

A year earlier, Kotn was founded by friends Mackenzie Yeates, Rami Helali and Benjamin Sehl. Based in Toronto, the company partners directly with cotton farmers and textile factories in Egypt's Nile Delta to produce their high-quality basics, including T-shirts, sweats, boxers and dress shirts. By scrapping the middleman, Kotn ensures a fair wage for their manufacturers and an honest price for the consumer. What started with a quest for the perfect white t-shirt has expanded into a full line of men’s standards – hoodies, henleys, sweatshirts, sweatpants, polos, oxfords, pajamas and underwear. Kotn launched with a direct-to-consumer online model, which has garnered a cult-following for the successful Toronto-based start-up. Last week, the company brought their vision to the next level by opening their first brick-and-mortar shop on Toronto’s Queen Street West. Whenever in Ontario's capital, make sure to drop by and get familiar with their inspirational vision! [ Continue reading ]

With the closing of the year upon us, looking back at the rather strange and undeniably eventful period of time that was 2016, there is still one important story that needs to be shared here: the transformation of Amsterdam-based perfume house Abel, which we worked on for most of the last twelve months and eventually was presented to the world at Tenue de Nîmes last month. It is a story that started already at the end of 2015 and on many levels became one of the most gratifying assignments completed in the last few years, period.

Although it is often not the first thing mentioned when speaking on these particular things, for us it was first and foremost of the highest pleasure to experience the kind of confidence in our vision as shown by Abel founder Frances Shoemack, who started her brand with two all-organic perfumes in 2012 and came to us in the winter of last year to redefine a new direction for the future. At that point several new fragrances were being perfected by Abel's 'nose' Isaac Sinclair, which would mark an important new chapter that asked to completely rethink all the existing paradigms. Finding strong inspirational anchor points through the traditional start of our proces; a deep dive into, in this particular case, the world of niche parfums, complemented by for instance the work of British poet T.S. Eliot, having a focus on the experience of time, and subsequently finding a visual language that in the richest way possible would translate the conceptual framework on an aesthetic level — over the course of the months that passed it resulted in a sharply redefined strategy, a rigorous repositioning of the brand and aligned with that new direction a completely restyled identity for the, at this point perfected, five piece collection of elegant natural 'living' fragrances that we coined vita odor. 

With some time passed, we can look back at both the process and the fruits of the work, and it is safe to say: it makes us as proud as anything we initiated ourselves in the past and it was a unique pleasure to have been part of it all. Now it's time the rest of the world finds out about Abel too! [ Continue reading ]

In the early Seventies a young Margaret Howell found a shirt at a jumble sale. It was this fine, well-tailored shirt which sparked the initial inspiration to make men’s shirts of her own (after having designed bracelets and chokers for Browns the years before). At that time, the shirts - of Jermyn Street quality but with a more relaxed line - were made by Howell herself, and after demand grew by a group of machinists in a workshop she set up in 1973. At that point Howell's designs attracted a new influential generation of American buyers, including Tommy Perse, of concept store Maxfield’s; Ralph Lauren, who at that time also sold other brands; and also British names like Paul Smith; Browns and most importantly Joseph Ettedgui (of Joseph) who subsequently launched Howell as a clothing brand. More than 30 years on and Margaret Howell heads one of the most inspiring companies worldwide. But, despite the size of her current operation, the designer's approach has remained just the same over all these years, making her for us an often overlooked, but undeniable, visionary icon of modern fashion. [ Continue reading ]

We have been writing, indirectly, about the beautiful space at the Looiersgracht 60 in Amsterdam, which is a new project space for contemporary art, design and architecture, when they first opened their doors for De Gevonden op Marktplaats Salon earlier this year. The last few weeks the space has been hosting another incredible project named 'The End of Sitting', which closed last weekend. The project is an installation at the crossroads of visual art, architecture, philosophy and empirical science. In our society almost the entirety of our surroundings have been designed for sitting, while evidence from medical research suggests that too much sitting has adverse health effects. RAAAF [Rietveld Architecture-Art Affordances] and visual artist Barbara Visser have developed a concept wherein the chair and desk are no longer unquestionable starting points. Instead, the installation’s various affordances solicit visitors to explore different standing positions in an experimental work landscape. The project marks the beginning of an experimental trial phase, exploring the possibilities of radical change for the working environment, reminding of the aesthetic of fashion designer Rick Owens and  the work of architect Daniel Libeskind. [ Continue reading ]

The London-based artists Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin won the Deutsche Börse photography prize on the 10th of June with their fascinating 2012 book War Primer 2 which was published very limited to only 100 copies by Mack Books. They were presented with the £30,000 award by the film director Mike Figgis at the Photographers' Gallery in London. In the book Broomberg and Chanarin rework Bertolt Brecht's original War Primer from 1955 using internet screenshots and mobile phone pictures to comment on the role of photography in the "war on terror." Beside receiving praise for War Primer 2 this month, the duo also released another extremely fascinating book called The Holy Bible. In the publication the provocateurs have carefully overlaid images from The Archive of Modern Conflict onto each page of the Bible. The duo believes that their selected images are representative of the horror and madness of global catastrophes (Western) society has become insensitive to, due to the filtration of those images by mainstream media. [ Continue reading ]

In the believe that the illustrated books of the past should have a digital life, Mapp Editions was founded in 2011 in London by acclaimed art publisher Michael Mack, antiquarian bookseller and entrepreneur John Koh, and renowned digital designer Jean-Michel Dentand. Now working with international renowned museums, libraries, collections, curators and artists, they already published an extremely beautiful and fascinating list of books which are available on your iPad. Amongst them these rare works on sport in China, originally published for the use of English communities in the ports of Tientsin (Tianjin) and Amoy (Xiamen). They really incite our imagination and love for collecting!  [ Continue reading ]