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Wallpaper is enjoying a resurgence, helped along by husband-and-wife design team Kyra and Robertson Hartnett. Frustrated by their inability to find contemporary designs in wallpaper and textiles, the pair set to work creating their own wall coverings and textiles. Their company, twenty2, with headquarters in Brooklyn, N.Y., produces collections that illustrate their sophisticated yet playful take on color palettes and patterns. The papers and textiles are all hand-printed, and customers can even select colors to match their own design schemes.
Wire
Born in Pakistan and based in London, artist Julia Condon has caused quite a stir with her one-of-a-kind mobiles. Made of cable, stainless steel, crystals, jade, Venetian glass, African beads and Peruvian opals, these rustproof pieces conjure up images of faraway galaxies. On earth, Condon scours flea markets from New York City to Paris, finding her materials from unlikely sources, once even taking apart a chandelier. She hopes her mobiles, with prices that start at $4,000, create a mesmerizing feeling for viewers. "I wanted to create something that's moving, that takes you away," she says. "When they're in motion, it's like looking at the universe."
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Xtreme Watch
Thierry Nataf, CEO and creative director of Zenith, the Swiss-based watchmaker, likes to model his most daring pieces after his own Bond-like lifestyle. This season he debuts the Defy collection, which looks vaguely like an accessory you absolutely cannot wear unless you fly your own jet and race cars. The collection, which includes the titanium-and-steel Xtreme Open, below, and the smaller Elite series, is an outsized group of graphic, chunky precision timepieces that appeal to the sportif type with an athletic build. From the decorative screw heads to the rotating bezel to the stainless-steel bracelet, the Defy collection promises to be to watchmaking what Formula 1 is to the automobile industry.
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Youth
The antiaging market has never been more firmly entrenched. Dr. Patricia Wexler launches her latest product, Intensive Night Reversal and Repair Cream with Bath & Body Works, and Lancôme kicks off its new Pro-Xylane technology in the Absolue Premium line. Even hair is getting a lift these days with Fekkai's innovative Ageless regimen, a three-step process for hair rejuvenation.
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Zimmerman
In October Steuben Glass introduced its first collection of designs by artist Jeff Zimmerman, titled Soft Explosion. Coveted by curators and collectors alike, Zimmerman's sculptures demonstrate techniques of the highest level of glassmaking, and his most recent collection is no exception. Soft Explosion comprises six designs and an ongoing series of one-of-a-kind objects, including vases reminiscent of growing trees, bowls resembling splashing water and a limited-edition centerpiece of fallen forms that symbolize a forest path. The glassmakers at Steuben gave each Soft Explosion piece, inspired by nature, an individual personality, so that they are similar but never identical. Just as Mother Nature would have it.
Zegna