What is it with volcanoes and design fairs? There was an air of Groundhog Day last Saturday as Marc Worth, the entrepreneur behind the wildly successful online fashion industry directory WGSN, beat a hasty retreat from New York's International Contemporary Furniture Fair (ICFF). "Got to bail - can't be doing another Milan," he said, as he raced to catch a flight to London. And, with that, everyone began swapping stuck-in-Milan tales - of 30-hour road journeys or desperate searches for a hotel bed that resulted from the volcano-induced closure of Europe's air space during the Salone.
It turns out that Worth needn't have bothered, as the new ash cloud changed direction - but he has good reason to be rushing back to the office: he is in the thick of the pre-launch rush of his new venture, Stylus, a furniture-industry equivalent of WGSN, which he will launch in the autumn. It promises to be a very valuable tool for the trade. Watch this space. Stars are born Not one to hang around, Worth is already getting the Stylus name out there, by joining Jerry Helling of Bernhardt Design as co-sponsor of the American Design Honors - an award created to encourage and reward American design talent. If the winners of the inaugural awards, presented last Saturday - Jonah Takagi (best emerging designer) and Ini Archibong (best student designer) - are anything to go by, make no mistake: American design is not an oxymoron.
Takagi's American Gothic table, which he showed at ICFF Studio last year, has been snapped up by Bernhardt for its 2010 collection. More to the point, his work stands out not just among that of his American peers but also passed the tough test of a European debut at IMM Cologne earlier this year with flying colours. His Spun table lamp drew rave reviews there - and is to be produced as part of the debut in-house collection of Matter, the design mecca in downtown New York owned by Jamie Gray (another American visionary who totally gets good design).
As for Archibong, he embodies a rare combination of passion and talent. "I had no idea I could be a furniture designer until I was in my 20s," he says. "In fact, I hardly knew there was such a thing." What he doesn't say is that he dropped out of one of the leading business schools in the US (where he was a Fulbright scholar) to pursue his passion. That kind of commitment, while rare it may be, bodes well for next generation.
Places and spaces The new bicycle racks appearing on New York's streets are a much-needed addition to the cityscape - and their design mixes a spare elegance with an industrial toughness that looks absolutely right for the city. Designed by Ian Mahaffy (a Briton) and Maarten de Greeve (a Dutchman) an example of the rack is included in the current exhibition at the Cooper-Hewitt Museum. Abu Dhabi features there too, with the solar-collecting umbrellas designed for Masdar's headquarters.
It's astonishing, though, that the Cooper-Hewitt is the only museum in the US devoted to design. Perhaps that failure to honour the discipline more widely helps to explain why the nation has been a design desert for the past few decades. A newcomer to the Big Apple may help to change that: located directly opposite MoMA, a new outpost of Milan's Triennale (with beautiful spaces designed by Gio Ponti) will host a series of shows that celebrate design. It will be mostly Italian - but even so, the exposure of design, regardless of its provenance, can only be a good thing.
Flos and Moss Party of the week honours must go to Moss (the visionary, wonderful design store), Flos (Italian lighting par excellence) and Moroso, whose shops at the top of SoHo's Greene Street are linked by "secret" doors. Flos is the newest kid on the block, having taken over the former Gallery space of Moss - an amazing corner shop with six windows along West Houston Street. It's a great arrangement - and a heartwarming exception to New York's usual cutthroat rivalry for retail space (never more cutthroat than in SoHo these days): Piero Gandini, the chairman of Flos and Murray Moss and Franklin Getchell, the partners at Moss, have been close friends for many years. Indeed, it's almost a homecoming for Flos, as Gandini, Getchell and Moss had tried, unsuccessfully, to get permission to place a giant-sized billboard advertisement for the Arco lamp on the wall of what had then been a parking garage in the same place. That was a decade ago; now you can buy the real Arco - and the rest of the collection - inside.
Local colour Speaking of new showrooms, I bumped into the Dubai-based interior designer Liza de Luna, who was "shopping" at the stand of Jonathan Adler - a designer known for his colourful, funky and very well made furniture and accessories. It's a clue to what we can expect to see alongside her eponymous furniture collection in her new showroom, which she will soon open on Al Wasl Road - in a beautiful modernist villa designed by Omran al Owais.
