CITYist

Each season, Claude Morais and Brian Wolk, the duo behind womenswear line Ruffian, design beautiful clothes for a very particular girl. Collection after collection consistently offering necessities like tailored blouses, sophisticated yet exciting short little dresses, and immaculately structured pants and jackets that always lead to complete cohesiveness. Whether she’s the bad boarding school girl of Fall 2008, les demoiselles de Ruffian of Spring 2010, or the girl caught in the cosmos at Fall 2010’s Big Bang show, she is always “subtly elegant,” as Wolk puts it. The women they design for, he explains, “are really educated and sophisticated. They’re worldly, they’re traveled, they’re usually from nice families.” But, just before that all starts to sound too perfect, he adds, “And sometimes they’re not. We have naughty girls that we hang out with, too.”

I just want to work,” explains actress Dominik Garcia-Lorido. “I think it’s very admirable when actors are able to work and not get caught up in the whole celebrity thing.”

It may seem a bit premature for an up-and-coming 26-year-old to worry about the pitfalls of celebrity so early in her career, yet most emerging actors don’t call Academy Award nominee Andy Garcia “Dad.” And in our current TMZ age, most of Hollywood’s golden children are more known for their escapades at Teddy’s and Les Deux than any sort of actual work ethic. Garcia-Lorido has been quietly bucking that trend, however, working steadily in small independent films over the past six years while also finding time to attend UCLA and snag one of the most coveted, albeit nepotistic, jobs in the industry: Miss Golden Globe. Her stint under the radar, however, is likely to change this year with her appearance in the new film City Island, co-starring none other than “Dad” himself, Andy Garcia.

After the jump, check out Dominik’s picks for the best spots in Los Angeles.

For both savvy marketers and anxious real estate agents, the pop-up shop phenomenon has most of the active ingredients of a retail panacea. It raises the pulse of an empty space, or obscure area, and provides the right infusion of goodwill to any particular product or entity. It is often with optimistic exclamations that one has learned to view its “now you see it, now you don’t” existence. That is, until something else takes foot.

About a month ago, CITY’s cultural historian Steven Mark Klein shot me an email simply containing a link to a MySpace page. I clicked and found myself looking at the photo of a stylish girl called either Smokey Chapman, Imogen Chapman, or Imogen and the Acoustics. I took a quick look at the “about” section and read a quote from an article that described this singer-songwriter’s sound as, “what Jose Gonzales may have sounded like if he was born a woman. Combine this thought with a sprinkling of Björk…” She’s Jose as a girl? I can get with that, I thought. I also quickly noticed that while most of the songs had the usual MySpace number of plays — 1-2,000 — one called “Green” had over 30,000 — a pretty respectable number for an unsigned artist. So I played it, and understood precisely where the writer of the snippet I read was coming from. It was a sort of quirky, angular, and offbeat acoustic piece with her voice unadorned but nuanced by occasional curious catches and breaks, and accompanied by a somewhat melancholy and unexpected acoustic guitar riff. In fact — if anything — it was a little too much like Gonzales and Guðmundsdóttir, but I’m inclined to ascribe that in a young artist more to not having yet moved beyond one’s inspirations than pure derivation.

David Bowie. Courtney Love. Marilyn Manson. Musicians and bold makeup choices go together like mascara and eyeliner. But no one has ever wed the two as perfectly as Sara Strand, the founder of POP Beauty cosmetics and indie rock diva.

For Sara’s picks on the best and brightest hot spots in LA, check in after the jump.

As the design world comes together in New York to celebrate ICFF (the International Contemporary Furniture Fair), SUITE New York, Manhattan’s foremost modern furniture showroom, is celebrating nearly four years of record growth and a move to a new location. Co-founders Kris Fuchs and Maria Sepulveda, best friends for 29 years since their first day of freshman year at college, consider this their biggest adventure yet.

For Kris and Maria’s suggestions on the best spots in New York, read on.

On the heels of his newest collaboration with Tasaki, the fine jewelry house out of Japan, designer of the moment Thakoon Panichgul continues to captivate us with his star turns as a designer and to carve out an enigmatic figure for himself, by eschewing conventions and re-setting the expectations of young American designers alike.

“I knew that I was always interested in fashion. I knew from a very early age. I just didn’t know that starting a collection was something I was going to do. I thought I was going to work for a company, thought the idea of having my own name on a label was intimidating,” the Thai-born, Omaha-raised designer, most recognized for his ebullient prints and lively color palette, says. Asked if the term “surfer samurai” aptly describes his spring 2010 collection, he declares: “I never have those kind of quick words, where I sum up a collection as simple as that. I always feel it’s such a mixture of different ideas.”

Véronique Nichanian, art director of menswear for Hermès, is charmingly coy when asked what treats await customers inside the house’s new men’s store, currently an alluring four-story tall Hermès gift box complete with embroidered ribbons. “Surprise!” she says. “You’ll have to wait!” We’re sitting upstairs in the current unisex store, directly across Madison Avenue from its brother-to-be, which occupies the lot on the north-east corner with 62nd Street. Mme. Nichanian’s reticence notwithstanding, one thing we know for sure is that we will find the storied French house’s trademark costly to-die-fors. And she does go on to allow that, naturellement, we will find all of the items of menswear and accessories — the sweaters, pants, belts, shoes and sundries — on display, as well as some special (and for now secret) features, which I predict to be the type of bespoke and grooming salons and lounges found in that other mecca of male elegance located just up the street, Tom Ford.

In just three shorts years, Croatian-born German menswear designer Damir Doma has made quite a name for himself in the fashion industry. After graduating magna cum laude from fashion school, he had the insight to head to fashion hot spot Antwerp, where he worked first for designer Dirk Schoenberger and then for Raf Simons.

It was his time spent assisting Simons that broadened and shaped Doma’s perception of fashion and the arts. Simons — a pioneer menswear designer who so eloquently mixes high fashion with street wear and did so with the precision of a master artisan — created a new genre of menswear like nothing we’d seen before. His atelier was the perfect place for Doma to not only fall in love with fashion, but to hone his craft.

Most bands toil in obscurity, dreaming of the day they may catch some small break. Then there is Passion Pit. Fronted by 22-year-old Michael Angelakos, the Cambridge-based group has watched their career explode in just over a year following the release of their first EP. They have gone from playing Boston area gigs to securing spots at festivals such as Bonaroo and Austin City Limits, touring with Girl Talk and Death Cab for Cutie, and lending their song to a national advertisement. It seems a “How To” guide might be their next logical step.

With her translucent skin and thick raven tresses it’s easy to see why Krysten Ritter has been cast in dark roles. Characters like drug addicts, vampires, and outcast black-sheep types make perfect sense — until she opens her mouth, and her bubbly personality shines through.

You can sense her small-town naivety in the sweetness of her demeanor; you want to coddle her and protect her from the cruel industry she has eagerly joined. And now — only now, does it make sense that she was cast in romantic comedies like Confessions of a Shopaholic and 27 Dresses.

Sometimes, the most successful businesses go big with simple-yet-smart products. For designers Brooke Bresnan and Christine Marchuska, it all started with a T-shirt. One of these sharp-as-a-tack entrepreneurs began early — Bresnan’s interest in fashion drove her to sell her own line of tees to her friends in middle school — while Marchuska started later in the game, founding a namesake line of unisex shirts and scarves with her brother in 2009. But cotton tops weren’t all the girls had in common; both had a knack for finance and a passion for giving back to the community. Meeting at a fundraiser for Safe Horizon, an assistance organization for victims of violence, the two hit it off and C. Marchuska was born. “We have the same type of style and the same backgrounds. We’re both very business-minded,” says Marchuska. Becoming equal partners in the company, Bresnan and Marchuska expanded the line from unisex styles to a versatile mix of fresh, modern frocks and separates, with a Fall/Winter collection debuting in February 2010 at Eco Fashion Week; an impressive feat, but no surprise considering the girls’ expertise in business.

We’re really good at telling a designer’s story, so customers know something about this person that’s creating the beautiful piece that you’re going to wear every day. That’s the editorial side to what we do.

It’s evening in Fort Greene, Brooklyn. The sun has just set on DeKalb Avenue near the park, and a group of neighborhood kids are playfully teasing each other, their shouts ringing out across the avenue. A car passes blasting shoddy bass, and in its wake the strains of an old Biggie track: “Spread love it’s the Brooklyn way…”

If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a million times: there’s so much music on the market now that it’s impossible to keep up. Thankfully, though, I did my homework and got to interview one of the more sought-after acts of the moment: London’s The xx. While The xx has gotten a lot of buzz in the UK, they’re still relatively unknown in the U.S. It was one faithful trip I made to Young Turk’s site (that’s their label) to check out a video by The Big Pink when my curiosity got the best of me and I watched the video for Crystalized. Midway through the first listen, I was hooked. The deep, breathy vocals (half male, half female) are soulful and sexy, and the music is melodic and mesmerizing, with perfectly mixed guitars, synthesizers, and ethereal bass lines countered by amazing uses of negative space that pull it all together perfectly.

’Im kind of sneaking away a bit,” says Rachel Comey, with a conspiratorial stage whisper.

Having just wrapped up her Spring 2010 show on a Chelsea rooftop with a performance by St. Vincent, the New York designer is preparing to head west to Zion National Park in Utah while her team travels to Paris for market. Though her voice betrays a twinge of guilt, the trip will be a necessary refuel and revamp as she shifts gears and begins thinking about her fall collection. The idea of trekking so far from the fashion world’s pulse points to find inspiration seems like a seamless fit for a designer who has made her name largely by following her instincts.

Mia Moretti bucks the recent trend of socialite / model DJs, somewhat. She doesn’t have a contract with a fashion house (yet), and she does actually spin vinyl (or at least did). As a matter of fact she learned her DJ chops hanging out with buddy Cut Chemist, king of the vinyl archeologists, dusty-groove specialist ne plus ultra. With that kind of pedigree, it’s not surprising that for her, job one isn’t being a cover girl — it’s moving butts. “Everyone who’s ever said to me they wanted to learn to DJ, I’ve just said ‘Well start listening to music’,” she explains. “It’s about creating the environment. You can be the best most technical DJ in the world, but if you can’t walk into a room and know what everyone wants to hear to have a good time . . . ”

Do clothes make the man? That is a question that artist Greg Lauren is very well qualified to answer. Fashion is in his genes; he is the nephew of Ralph Lauren and the son of Jerry, Ralph’s long-time business partner. And, as a former actor, style was always a design and creative issue. Now he is tackling the relationship between clothing and the wearer with innovative constructions — like an impeccable three-piece suit that reveals itself to be a straight-jacket from behind — in his new exhibition “Alteration”. All designed to scale and meticulously hand-sewn, the works beg to be worn — but that is impossible, for these garments are made out of paper.

Hunched over a Saul Steinberg book, Folkert Gorter and Atley Kasky analyze various components of the images before them — line, composition, color, etc. They discuss whether it jibes with their sensibilities, and they ask themselves one simple question: does it float?

Whether something floats refers to its ability to rise to the top, thus forming the argument for an image’s longevity and relevance. This query filters the good from the bad and determines which images Folkert and Atley will post to their design blog, butdoesitfloat.com. The blog runs on Cargo, one of Folkert’s side projects, which is being developed as a Twitter-like social network and publishing platform for creative people.

Elliot Aronow is the type of music wunderkind that will inevitably change the face of the recording industry. He has worked with more bands than most people can name, held stints at numerous print and online magazines, and currently serves as Creative Director for online site rcrd lbl (www.rcrdlbl.com). At 28 years old he has carved out a career that most are unable to achieve in a lifetime. Today, however, he faces a very different task —  finding someone to hang up his bedroom blinds.

Ric Pipino may be the only man in the world to have gotten his hands on Naomi Campbell, Elle Macpherson, Lindsay Lohan, and Eva Longoria Parker — follicularly speaking. The internationally renowned hairstylist has made a career of being the go-to guy for every major model, celebrity, and socialite on the scene with his distinctive cuts and masterful coloring. Now, after stints on three continents, Pipino has taken on his latest endeavor; opening a New York City salon.

Berlin is the city for emerging artists. London is the city for flourishing museums. And New York City? It’s the best place for all the art market players to come together. At least, that’s what the directors of the popular line of European galleries Hauser & Wirth believe. This fall they expanded their exhibition space across the Atlantic with the hopes of making a new impact on the art scene: Hauser & Wirth New York.

When christened after a certain identifiable icon, in this case The High Priestess Of Soul, it is assumed you share some of the signature attributes of your namesake. Though the ASPCA rescue that Jennie Jones scooped up earlier this year shows little of Ms. Simone’s commanding presence, this Nina makes it quite clear, using her own impassioned vocals, when — and if — she’s feeling good. “She’s had a stressful day,” Jones offers by way of explanation. “The vet gave her a shot and she cried like crazy. But later she had her hair combed.” Upon hearing this, Nina whisked herself over and sat on the couch, as if expecting to be stroked. Just like a woman, indeed.

Christopher Coleman and Angel Sanchez will be the first to admit that they don’t always agree when it comes to designing. So combining Coleman’s interior design aesthetic (bold colors and shapes) with Sanchez’s fashion aesthetic (sleek black and white forms) may have seemed like a gamble. But by capitalizing on one another’s strengths, the two are building a joint design empire that rivals their commanding individual visions. “I try to control him in terms of being just decorative, and he always tries to push me in taking more risks,” Sanchez says. “I guess that balances our styles.”

When artists Brad Davis and Janis Provisor traveled to St. Barth’s last year, they searched for a house with a veranda over the roof where they would be able to paint all day. “Natural phenomenon are how we draw our inspiration — trees, plants, air, even rocks,” Davis says. This trip was how Davis and Provisor’s newest collection, Glimmering, for their carpet company Fort Street Studio, came about.

You could call him a Renaissance man, but “schizophrenic” is the word that comes to his mind. Swedish artist Andreas Nilsson is best known for directing irreverent, arresting music videos for some of the brightest of the Baltic — including The Knife, Peter Bjorn and John, and José González — but he also has his hands in illustration, costuming, installation, and now, theater.