Each week, Alexa is rounding up the buzziest fashion drops, hotel openings, restaurant debuts and celeb-studded cultural happenings in NYC. It’s our curated guide to the very best things to see, shop, taste and experience around the city.
What’s making our luxury list this week? Stores galore: British invasion in Brooklyn and Scandinavians in Soho, plus an over-the-top art installation in NoMad.
UPPER CRUST: Toast opens in Brooklyn
Beloved British brand Toast has chosen Boerum Hill, Brooklyn as the site of its first U.S. shop. A historic stretch of Atlantic Avenue, no less. To the uninitiated, Toast is a 27-year-old lifestyle and home goods brand that “aspires to a slower, more thoughtful way of life.” Think: flowy designs, natural fabrics, craftsmanship, traditional techniques. No trendy anything, which means pieces you’ll have in your closet (or on your shelf) for many years. Bonus: an in-house repair specialist offering free mending on Toast pieces.
367 Atlantic Avenue, Toast.com
FIBER OPTICS: Joana Vasconcelos at Roche Bobois
Fans of the renowned Portuguese artist Joana Vasconcelos can experience one of her legendary installations in New York City at the Roche Bobois NoMad showroom. The woven large-scale work is an explosion of color and organic forms (in the same family as the pieces she recently created for Dior) and dominates several areas of the showroom, including the one with her furniture designs for the company. “Amazonia” as it is called, is part of the “Valkyrie” series, named after the Norse goddess of war, and on view through October.
200 Madison Avenue, RocheBobois.com
WEAVE A TALE: Nordic Knots Floors in Soho
Nordic Knots, a Swedish rug and textile company adored by fans of Scandinavian design, has opened its first shop outside of Stockholm. It’s a 1,500-square-foot wonder, designed by Studio Giancarlo Valle, in an 1884 building on the corner of Greene and Canal Streets. Founders Liza Laserow and Fabian Berglund once lived in New York, and came up with the idea for the company during that time. They say that Soho was a “natural and obvious” choice for their showroom, the perfect place to display their “bold, minimal designs.”
6 Greene Street, NordicKnots.com
TWIN TAGGERS: Osgemeos exhibition at Lehmann Maupin
Identical twins Otavio and Gustavo Pandolfo are the duo known as Osgemeos (Portuguese for “the twins”), whose latest works debut at Lehmann Maupin on June 22nd. For more than thirty years the brothers, who hail from Brazil, have gained renown as graffiti artists who “created an entire universe of fantastical yellow characters rendered in thin outlines, enlarged faces, and simplified features,” according to a statement from the gallery. “Cultivating Dreams” is their sixth solo show with Lehmann Maupin and features 13 new paintings and a site-specific immersive installation that “transforms the gallery space into a multi-layered experience designed to provoke the sense of awe and wonder encountered in a lucid dream state.”
Through August 16th, 501 West 24th Street, LehmannMaupin.com
BOHO IN SOHO: Anthropologie’s New West Broadway Store
After an eight year absence, Anthropologie is back on West Broadway, just a bit north of its original location (now a Gucci store). The approximately 8,000-square-foot space is housed in a building that dates to 1910 and was billed as the “first gallery building in Soho” (Leo Castelli’s famed gallery was here in the 1970s). Today the storefront boasts the by-now-familiar maximalist layers of color, texture and patterned clothing, shoes and accessories that are Anthropologie’s signatures. Also in the brand’s fifth store in the city are an edited selection of beauty and home goods (although we wish there was more of the latter, specifically furniture).
420 West Broadway, Anthropologie.com
