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The Council of Fashion Designers of America voters have spoken. At last night’s post-downpour awards extravaganza‎, held at Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center and hosted by effervescent Bravo exec Andy Cohen (taking the night off from his Watch What Happens Live clubhouse), Proenza Schouler’s Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez snagged their third womenswear of the year trophy in seven years–and by the looks of their fall 2013 collection, the dynamic duo might find themselves back at the podium next year at this time.

Thom Browne (pictured) continued his winning streak, picking up a second menswear designer of the year award (his first was in 2006) in the wake of his 2012 National Design Award and last month’s “Fashion Visionary” nod from Pratt Institute. After saluting fellow nominees Michael Bastian and Duckie Brown’s Steven Cox and Daniel Silver (“I feel like we’ve grown up together”), Browne gave a shout-out out to his “fearless tailor” Rocco Ciccarelli, a seventysomething sartorial whiz who owns the factory where Browne’s clothes are made.

Rounding out the night’s big three, Phillip Lim–and his highly covetable Pashli and 31 Hour bags–bested the Proenza boys and Alexander Wang to take the accessories category. Read on to learn who else went home a winner:
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Vera Wang during a conversation with Fern Mallis at New York’s 92nd Street Y.

“It was like being in designer heaven.” That’s how Vera Wang describes her stint at Ralph Lauren. “We had everything, anything we needed as designers, particularly as a design director, as a team. It just magically appeared,” she told Fern Mallis during an on-stage conversation earlier this year at New York’s 92nd Street Y. “If Ralph believed in you, he really believed you. And he really supported and believed in me. It was very hard to leave.” That difficult decision paid off and more than twenty years later, Lauren remains a Wang fan. He’ll be on hand this evening at Lincoln Center to present her with the Geoffrey Beene Lifetime Achievement Award, one of the special honors at tonight’s Council of Fashion Designers of America Fashion Awards ceremony.

What began as a bridal business backed by Wang’s father (who saw an opportunity in a low-inventory venture that would require a limited range of fabrics) has grown–smartly and steadily–from ready-to-wear and accessories to flatware, stationery, and lines for the likes of Kohl’s, David’s Bridal, and Zales. (Did you know that she designed the uniforms for the Philadelphia Eagles cheerleaders?) According to Wang, she is very involved in the array of licensing deals. “With all of these lines, you have to come up to speed, not only from a business sense but technically,” she told Mallis. “That learning curve is something I embrace because I love to learn. I’ve worked hard at it for over a decade, but it’s challenging.”

With her name synonymous with a brand that sells everything from perfume to pillowcases in 35 countries, are there any product categories still on Wang’s wishlist? Looking back to her years as an elite figure skater, Wang is eyeing activewear. “I think that for women and men today, there’s such a natural desire to be comfortable,” she told Mallis. “I’d like to do athleticwear. That kind of clothing, it’s just kind of joyous to be able to walk around it. Especially if you can bring a sense of fashion to it. I’d wear it.” She could also be sweet-talked in another deal. “I do love donuts,” she said. “I think I could do a mean donut.”

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Raymond Pettibon, “No Title (Safe he called…),” 2010. Courtesy the artist and David Zwirner.

Take me out to the High Line, where Raymond Pettibon has thrown out the summer’s first public art pitch–a baseball-themed billboard. A jumbo-sized version of “No Title (Safe he called…),” a 2010 work from the artist’s famous series of baseball drawings, debuts today in the sky above West 18th Street and 10th Avenue as the tenth installment of the High Line Billboard series. We suggest visiting with a group to discuss the array of cultural references, from the depiction of a game between the the Boston Red Sox and the Brooklyn Dodgers (before their 1957 defection to Los Angeles) and references to Moses (brokers of Biblical and civil power, who knew from exoduses) to shout-outs to Jackie Robinson and Biggie (“Where Brooklyn At?”). As the latter would say, anytime you’re ready check it, but make sure anytime is within the next month, or you’re out! Of luck, that is, because the billboard is on view through July 1.

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“I ask myself, ‘Why would someone buy Chinese Vogue?’ That’s easy: they read it to find out about that market. Fine, but why would anyone buy Italian Vogue? They wouldn’t–only Italians read Italian. And I love Italy and am very happy to be Italian but I always knew we would have to speak to the rest of the world, and the way to do that was through images. That it was the way to get attention: to push concepts through pictures that other countries would not do. Today, all our language is visual, and that seems normal. But when I began [in 1988, the magazine was]…a catalogue of Italian brands. And very well-organised. Every month you start with the Armani story, then the Krizia story, then Versace, then Ferragamo…but I changed everything: the graphics, the photographers.”

-Italian Vogue editor and editorial director of Condé Nast Italia Franca Sozzani, interviewed by Vanessa Friedman for “Lunch with the FT,” published in this weekend’s Financial Times

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We’ve never visited the Mall of America, but we know it’s home to an amusement park, an aquarium, a 34-foot-tall LEGO robot, and, until recently, a logo that suggested a high school show choir with a deep repertory of patriotic medleys (and hey, for all we know, such a bunch is permanently stationed between Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. and Lenscrafters). The 21-year-old Minnesota megaplex, which describes itself as “the Hollywood of the Midwest,” tapped Duffy & Partners for a fresh look–spanning brand language, logo, environment, promotional merchandise, website, social media pages and interior branding–that reflected its ever-changing assortment of outlets and attractions: today Mike & Ike and a new sea turtle, tomorrow Pinkberry and Cirque de Soleil. “For Mall of America, we knew we had to harness the dynamism of their unique experience, the equity found in their American ingenuity, and embrace all the ‘new’ that is their DNA,” says Joe Duffy. “The new identity system is a dynamic evolution that moves and morphs and wraps and celebrates and highlights.”
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This week, Northeastern University is hiring a design director, while Cafe Mom needs an interactive designer. McMurry/TMG is seeking a senior art director, and Publishers Clearing House is on the hunt for a senior web designer. Get the scoop on these openings and more below, and find additional just-posted gigs on Mediabistro.

Find more great design jobs on the UnBeige job board. Looking to hire? Tap into our network of talented UnBeige pros and post a risk-free job listing. For real-time openings and employment news, follow @MBJobPost.

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The only thing standing between you and your Yves Behar-designed pill cases, condoms, and personal fizzy-lifting-drink maker is your front door. Good news: Behar’s got an app for that, and it may make your keychain obsolete. The designer has teamed up with entrepreneur Jason Johnson on August Smart Lock, which debuted yesterday at the D: All Things Digital conference (watch the demo below, in which the founders emerge on the stage to the strains of “Let My Love Open the Door”).

The system, which installs over an existing deadbolt and makes it possible to open doors with a smartphone, is the latest entry in a nascent smart lock market that includes Lockitron and Unikey. In developing August, which will begin shipping by the end of the year for $199, the goal was to “to make home entry magical, safer than keys or keypads, and something that makes our lives a little better,” according to Behar, who describes both the branding and the app’s user interface as “warm, friendly, and elegant.”
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Hole reinforcers and pencils from Costa Rica, and founder Hen Chung in Istanbul.

Around the world in 80 writing utensils? That’s one way to describe Rad and Hungry, which aims to take lovers of interesting office supplies on a “world tour of limited-edition goods with lo-fi style, pushing design through travel and travel through design.” Founded by former graphic designer Hen Chung in collaboration with fellow globetrotters Sam Alston and Laura Dedon Oxford, the online shop assembles an ever-changing selection of country-themed kits stocked with imported pens, pencils, stationery, and other exotic desk goodies, all beautifully packaged. A Rad and Hungry subscription is the perfect gift for the design lover who has everything—except thumbtacks from Lisbon.

“We really try to make each kit speak to our travels in that country–the people we met, food we ate, design we saw,” Chung tells us. “As each layer is unwrapped, people share in our low-down travel. The whole experience transforms the lo-fi, often overlooked daily-diet goods into something sacred. Our ultimate goal is to connect far-flung groups of people who love style, design, and travel as much as we do.” Hung made time between scouting trips to answer our questions about creating the company, her favorite finds, and what’s currently on her desk.

What led you to create Rad and Hunrgy?
I was a graphic designer for ten years and it became time for me to move on. I knew I wanted to combine the things I love most—travel and design. One day I was sitting in my library room thinking about what my next move would be. I was staring at a section of shelves that store journals that I collected from my travels. They were all untouched–they were inexpensive journals I picked up in places such as corner shops and pharmacies. Didn’t matter that none of the pages contained any words or images, they were all so sacred to me because they reminded me of each country. And then it hit me—create a company that allows me to travel and share daily-diet design through office supplies.

You travel the globe hunting for new stuff to include in Rad and Hungry kits. What are some of your favorite finds of all time?
Probably my favorite item to date is the Soviet-era notebooks in the Latvia Kit. I love the yellowing pages, the faded mint covers, and the simple rubber-stamped logo. Close seconds are the copper-colored paper clips from our first Germany Kit and the flower-scented pencils from the Portugal Kit. I love the paper clips because they’re so opposite of what people expect of German goods—they’re delicate and not uniform in shape. And the pencils from Portugal are amazing. Their smell is unreal. Super fragrant but not in the cheap perfume sort of way. They’re made by an old pencil factory that’s still in business after all these years. I’m always stoked to discover a company with a lot of history ‘cause I’m a firm believer that old school is best!

You’re packing for a desert island and can only bring one writing utensil. What is it?
Hands down a goldenrod pencil. I figure I’ll be able to create a tool to sharpen it and find something to write on. But I don’t know what I’d do if I need a fire, hurting for wood and have to make the ultimate decision between fighting off the cold or having a trusty number 2 pencil.
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(Photo: Zoe Hitchen for SHOWstudio)

Journalist Suzy Menkes, she of the distinctively quiffed coiff and ability to draw assured seasonal trendlines through the scatter plot of contemporary fashion, hasn’t thrown anything out of her wardrobe since 1964. Rather than await the crew from a ultrachic version of Hoarders, she’s decided to sell off some of her sartorial stash at Christie’s. “If I had a large open space in my home, I would dedicate it, like an art gallery, to my collection,” said Menkes in a statement announcing the sale. “But there is something sad about clothes laid in a tomb of trunks. They need to live again and this auction provides the opportunity for them to walk out in the sunshine, to dance the night away, and to give someone else the joy they gave me.”

The online sale, which opens for bids on July 11, will consist of approximately 80 lots worth of dresses, coats, skirts, tops, jackets, and accessories. Estimates start at £200 (around $300 at current exchange), with most lots expected to fetch under £1,000 ($1,500). Highlights include Pucci ensembles from the 1960s, when Menkes was at Cambridge and chummy with the designer’s niece, and vibrantly printed Ossie Clark pieces from the ’70s. Menkes’ fondness for extravagant plumage takes a turn for the literal in a Bill Gibb suede coat–trimmed in fur and embroidered with large peacocks.
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Detail from a work by Krishna Vishvarupa. ca. 1740. (Courtesy Arthur M. Sackler Gallery)

Open your wallet and say “Om.” That’s the mantra of the Smithsonian’s foray into crowdfunding. Today the institution launches its first major crowdfunding campaign to support “Yoga: The Art of Transformation,” an exhibition about yoga’s visual history that opens October 19 at the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery in Washington, D.C. before traveling to traveling to the San Francisco Asian Art Museum and the Cleveland Museum of Art in 2014. The Smithsonian is looking to raise $125,000 by July 1 via Razoo, a crowdfunding-for-causes platform (think Kickstarter for nonprofits). Funds raised will cover exhibition production, web content, catalogue printing, and free public programs for adults and families.

“We’re trying a new (to us, at least!) and innovative fundraising approach worthy of a new and innovative exhibition,” wrote Miranda Gale, project manager of the campaign at the Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, in a recent blog post. “Since so many people practice and are enthusiastic about yoga, we’re choosing a format that allows everyone to get involved, not just those who have the means to make large donations.” Donors can contribute at a variety of levels, from “serenity” ($25 to help create tranquil galleries) to “flight” ($1,000 to transport yoginis across the world) and a sky’s-the-limit fill-in-the-blank amount that just might help you reach nirvana.

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“When I started with Halston, it was go-go-go fantastic. He loved my pieces, and they loved his clothes. It was great when he used my big belts in his fashion shows. I worked my ass off with him. He was working day or night, coke or no coke. We were going to Studio 54, but he was impeccable in everything. Halston gave me the discipline. He also gave me advice: when I started doing jewels that I thought were great but too expensive, he said, ‘Make small, medium and large.’ It may sound simple, but it was very useful, and I have never forgotten it.”

-Designer Elsa Peretti, in the spring 2013 issue of TIME Style & Design

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David Rockwell has parlayed a knack for creating “immersive environments” into a discipline-shattering firm that can move seamlessly from designing luxury hotels and the set for the Academy Awards to reinventing playgrounds and dreaming up some damn fine rugs. We asked writer Nancy Lazarus to immerse herself in all things Rockwell when the man himself took the stage last week as a keynoter at Internet Week New York.

Treading the boards, on treadmills. The “abstracted collage of a factory” created by Rockwell Group for the musical adaptation of the 2005 British film Kinky Boots.

David Rockwell gave a whirlwind tour of selected design projects during a session at Internet Week in New York. The Rockwell Group founder offered insight into how his firm’s interactive design LAB operates as they solve design dilemmas for clients in the worlds of hospitality, travel, and theatre. He also previewed pending assignments.

Rockwell observed that as his career progressed, technology has taken center stage. “The technology lab is embedded in my firm, and my work now with the lab is the most exciting. It engages technology to connect people more in real-time.” From the Cosmopolitan Las Vegas to the JetBlue terminal at New York’s JFK airport to the set design for the Broadway musical Kinky Boots, Rockwell has incorporated technology and choreography-focused designs. Below are his comments on selected projects.

On the Cosmopolitan Las Vegas:
“The promise of Las Vegas is of a place that reinvents itself, but in reality that’s not true, since visitors can’t move freely,” said explained. “The hotel lobby was fourteen feet high and had massive Egyptian-style columns. Our designers worked to dematerialize the walls in an open-source way so people would have a different experience each time they entered. The casino, unlike others in Vegas, was vertical, so we blew a forty-square-foot hole through the podium.”

Rockwell Group used an “environmental choreography system and created a hall of images in the hotel lobby, to allow more personal interaction.” The effect has been “somewhat hypnotic”, though the hotel would prefer visitors to linger in the casino, he noted.
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The Art Directors Club was founded in 1920–with a vision of “elevating and celebrating advertising and design with the same care and craftsmanship bestowed upon fine art”–but all of that elevating and celebrating was men-only until 1942, when the organization admitted its its first female member. Seven decades later, there’s still plenty of room for improvement. The ADC is addressing the gender imbalance in the fields of creative communication with its 50/50 initiative, which calls for an equal level of participation for both genders across award show juries, boards of directors, and events/speaker lineups. “By increasing the number of qualified women in senior positions in all facets of the creative communications industry, we believe our industries will both flourish and lay a foundation for generations of female talent,” according to ADC leadership. “We call upon our community to help shed light on these amazing women, because they are out there.” In New York? Head to Thursday’s lunchtime photo shoot (think: massive class portrait of women in the advertising, design, and digital disciplines) with photographer Monte Isom that will kick off the initiative. Here’s ADC executive director Ignacio Oreamuno with more details on why now is the time to make the industry 50/50.

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(Photo: David W. Oliver)

Warming oceans. Changing ecosystems. Pollution-busting innovations. Adorable turtles. It’s all in a day’s work at the Environmental Defense Fund. Lucky for you, the non-profit’s “passionate, pragmatic environmental advocates” are in want of a designer to join their New York-based creative team. Brush off your eye-popping portfolio of online design work and be ready to convey your interest in conveying ideas and inspiring action for this position, which involves “developing aesthetically engaging concepts, compositions, and campaigns for the EDF’s interactive experiences, brand communications, and digital media.”

Learn more about this designer, Environmental Defense Fund job or view all of the current mediabistro.com design/art/photo jobs.

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A still from Detropia.

God save Detroit. In 1930, it was the fastest growing city in the world. Today a governor-appointed emergency manager is eyeing the collection of the Detroit Institute of Arts as a way to pay off some $15 billion in debt (the prospect of selling off the DIA’s masterpieces has, of course, been met with outrage from within the community and beyond). Get a closer look at the long-stalled Motor City in Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady‘s Detropia, which makes its television debut tonight on PBS’s Independent Lens (click here to check your local listings). No postindustrial gloomfest, the documentary follows several Detroiters–including an owner of a blues bar, an auto union rep, a group of young artists, and a gang of illegal “scrappers”–in an attempt to illuminate both a city and a country grasping for a new identity. Say Ewing and Grady, “We hope that the rest of America can see that they may have more in common with Detroit than they thought.”

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Whether you’re bound for the beach or just your own backyard, make it a summer to remember with this bathing beauty, captured in 1997 by photographer Martin Parr while prowling the beaches of Benidorm on the coast of Spain. Our friends at Aperture are celebrating this month’s release of the beach-bag-sized edition of Parr’s Life’s a Beach with not only an exhibition of highlights from his beach photography but also a limited-edition terrycloth tribute (read: towel). Grab yours for $75 here before the supply of 150 sells out, and then toss it lovingly in your Roy Lichtenstein beach bag with some SPF 50.

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Presto. An image from The Big Book of Magic, new this month from Taschen.

• Our favorite way to make $70 disappear is The Big Book of Magic. Newly conjured by Taschen, the century-spanning tome features hundreds of rarely seen vintage posters, photographs, handbills, and engravings as well as paintings by the likes of Hieronymus “Abracadabra” Bosch and Caravaggio.

• Take an object, leave an object. Such is the invitation of “Museum as Plinth,” an interactive exhibit that opens today in the lobby of the Museum of Arts and Design. Consider the role of museums, curators, and the general public in validating what is and what is not design as you ponder your souvenir–stamped “From the Collection of the MAD Museum.”

• It’s official: Paul Schimmel, formerly the chief curator of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, is hooking up with Hauser & Wirth. He’s joined the gallery as a partner and will run a new L.A. arts space called Hauser Wirth & Schimmel. Expected to open in 2015, the new venue is “envisioned as a museum-like destination for experiencing art in context,” according to a statement issued yesterday by the gallery.
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Architectural historian Spiro Kostof described architecture as “the material theater of human activity,” which makes renovating an actual performance space a daunting prospect (and possibly a meta-performance). Enter Ennead Architects, starring in the multi-year production of renovating New York’s Public Theatre. We asked writer Marc Kristal to survey the project’s latest stage.


The New York City landmark’s new stoop and canopy at dusk. (All photos © Jeff Goldberg/Esto)

“This space has always been about community,” says Patrick Willingham, executive director of The Public Theatre at Astor Place, the magisterial 19th-century Renaissance Revival building that, since the late 1960s, has served as a multi-stage venue for founding director Joseph Papp’s vision of a new and groundbreaking American theatre. Architecturally, at least, that has never been more the case: the capstone of nearly two decades of renovation/restoration work, to the tune of $42 million, by Ennead Architects (formerly Polshek Partnership), the recently completed revivification of the structure’s entry and lobby have dramatically expanded the Public’s public component–making the place that brought you (among countless theatrical high-water marks) Hair, A Chorus Line, and The Normal Heart a crowd-pleaser in every sense.

Though Papp’s intervention, in 1966, saved it from demolition, the building, at 425 Lafayette Street in Manhattan’s East Village, was hardly insignificant. Completed in three phases (by three architects) between 1853 and 1881, it was commissioned by John Jacob Astor and served as the city’s first free public library. In 1921, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society purchased the property and converted it into a shelter and all-purpose gathering place for newly arrived European Jews; the letters HIAS, in faded paint, are still visible on the northern elevation. Under Papp’s supervision, architect Giorgio Cavaglieri carved out five theatres of varying sizes and configurations, home to some of the great productions of the last half-century. But the communal spaces remained less than stellar: during the HIAS years, the original grand entry podium was lost, replaced by an interior stair that consumed 30 percent of the lobby. And subsequent to Papp’s original renovation, the structure received almost no upgrading until Ennead began substantive work in the mid-nineties.

Things have changed, changed utterly. Without, project architect Stephen Chu restored the original auspicious sense of arrival with a three-sided grand stair, measuring seventeen by seventy feet and constructed from solid blocks of black granite, protected by a new glass canopy. In addition to extracting the steps from the lobby and enabling theatre patrons to enter at the original level of the three arched front doors, Chu’s stoop serves as a welcome outdoor destination on a street previously lacking one, a magnetized urban gathering place akin to the monumental stairs in front of the Metropolitan Museum on Fifth Avenue (though less imposing and more boho).
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Heifer International, the organization behind those buy-a-llama-oh-it’s-for-charity-they-don’t-really-send-you-a-llama catalogs, has teamed with photographer and publisher Rankin to spotlight world hunger and poverty with the launch of a worldwide photography competition. The just-launched contest is open to amateurs and pros alike. Rankin will select the winning photograph, which will be showcased at Fahey-Klein Gallery in Los Angeles and published in his biannual fashion and culture magazine, The Hunger. “We hope that vivid and unique photographs will encourage individuals to stop and contemplate the sharp inequalities that exist in our world,” said Pierre Ferrari, President and CEO of Heifer International, in a statement issued this week. Entries must be received by July 2, so start sourcing theoretical livestock now.

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Athens-based Bernier/Eliades gallery at Art Basel Hong Kong. (Courtesy MCH Messe Schweiz)

Art Basel continues its expansion, adding yet another stop on the global art calendar. Post-Frieze New York and pre-Venice, it’s all about Hong Kong, where the first edition of Art Basel Hong Kong opens to the public today. The Swiss company that owns Art Basel entered the Asian market with a splash in 2011 with its acquisition of Asian Art Fairs, the organizers of ART HK. Last year’s edition of that fair, established in 2008, kept the ART HK name, but now the neon pink-and-gray rebrand is complete, and 245 galleries (more than half from Asia and the Asia-Pacific region) have converged on the Skidmore, Owings & Merrill-designed Hong Kong Exhibition and Conventiona Center for the third event in the Art Basel empire.

“The debut of Art Basel in Hong Kong is but one example of the global reach of today’s art world, and yet I have to think that Art Basel Hong Kong forces a confrontation with its locale in ways that differ from Art Basel Miami, perhaps, or even Art Basel in Basel,” said Pauline Yao, curator at the new M+ museum, at Sunday’s kickoff panel at the Asia Society Center in Hong Kong. “Perhaps this stems from an appreciation of difference and a desire to have a more nuanced understanding of the context here and as well to recognize that Hong Kong has its own legacy of artistic production.” Yao also pointed to the “topophilia” of Hong Kong. “There’s a strong sense of place or love for a certain kind of place which overwhelmingly becomes mixed with a cultural identity,” she said. “So even if we admit that the power of place is increasingly diminished and occasionally lost here it certainly thrives, with implications that are quite complex.”

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