Our friends at Charles & Marie have received a great treatment in Time Magazine, courtesy of Messenger Josh:

‘What’s next for those who want to be ahead of the curve? For Spear, one goal is to cut through the clutter of blogorrhea to create an all encompassing digital destination for people with discerning taste. “We’re sick of mediocrity,” he says, speaking for his cool-loving friends and colleagues. To sort through the growing mass of trendy tidbits, he’s working with an international team of experts on a shopping, travel and socializing site called charlesandmarie.com billed as the Web’s first “lifestyle navigator” for lovers of all things cool. “Cities around the world are starting to look the same,” he says. “We want to highlight what’s unique.”‘

Congrats guys, well done!

Business 2.0 and frog design announce their 2nd “Bottom Line Design Awards”

Good design is nice to look at, but great design exhibits beauty that’s more than skin-deep — it integrates form, function, and market need. The best place to see the latter, of course, is the bottom line, which is why Business 2.0 and frog design created the first industrial design awards to honor products not just for their beauty but also for their commercial success.

For the last competition they assembled a panel of nine expert judges—from industries as diverse as advertising, fashion, and technology — who were asked to consider everything from a product’s success in the marketplace to its impact on a corporate culture. And, of course, how nice it was to look at. Here are their picks for this year’s best-designed products.

Recently they started the nomination for the 2nd award in 2006 - only accepting third-party nominations for the competition. To nominate a product that has been released in the 2005 year, download the nomination form (PDF).

NOMINATION DEADLINE: December 1st, 2005

For further details check out…
www.bottomlinedesignawards.com
www.frogdesign.com
www.business2.com

…is a Gaetano Pesce exhibition of the Triennale di Milano curated by Silvana Annicchiarico. Until January 8, 2006 you can enjoy the exhibition at the Vitra Design Museum in Weil/Germany.

Born in La Spezia, Italy, in 1939 and a resident of New York from 1980 to the present, Gaetano Pesce is one of the most internationally influential designers of the last 40 years with his politically engaged and highly authentic body of work. Yet the exhibition is not honouring him with a classic retrospective. Instead, it employs individual stages of development to illuminate theoretical approaches and problems in Pesce’s work that have their roots in the past and yet were and continue to be forward-looking. Didactically, it does not focus on distanced objects, drawings and texts but also engages visitors on an emotional level through its radically staged presentation.

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Hadi Teherani and his architectural office BRT are well known for an architecture that is awaking emotions, leading to striking buildings and simultaneously being sensitive parts of the urban context.

The same standard will be applied when he recently establish a brand with Hadi Teherani AG – starting with architecture, the topics will further more comprise lifestyle, living and others.

Latest outcome: A CD playing 60 minutes elegant lounge music compliled by Chris Le Blanc, who also works for “Cafe del mar”.
MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM
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This book serves it’s purpose well… portraits of 44 women wearing nothing more than Jimmy Choo’s and a single piece of Cartier jewelry, but it’s all for a greater good. The Sir Elton John AIDS foundation. An amazing book, the most amazing pictures of Christina Aguilera, Kate Moss (pictured) and Serena Williams and many more and a good cause. Nuff said. Amazon.com will get it to you in a couple of days and your purchase supports AIDS research, which in itself is reason enough to pay the money, let alone the book you get for it.

“Four Inches” (Scriptum)

..some of the most amazing fabric around… Close your eyes, think of a farm. A small one. Green all around, nothing fancy. That’s where Ocke Maeker looks at medieval tiles and gets her silk screens revvd up to print amazing patterns on the most amazing fabrics. Chinese silk, Crepesatin, Organza… Her sensibility when it comes to color and composition are extremely rare in this area and Tricia Guild was probably the last amazing fabrics person around. The beauty of her work: you can choose what ever pattern you fancy and she’ll create the exact measurements. Be it for a beautiful paravent hiding your desk or a fabric you want to use as a piece on the wall of your loft. You name it.

We obviously all know Molteni for their exquisite Chairs and Sofas, but a La-Z-Boy??? Nah.

True, they could never, ever create something as hideously ugly, but with the help of Paola Navone they have created the most elegant daybed cum massage chair ever. Their Marais series actually employs a similar technology as the infamous counterpart, yet with amazing grace. Don’t tell your friends though, otherwise your new favorite piece of furniture will soon become occupied. Don’t forget to think of a good excuse for your massage therapist for not showing up the last three sessions… Oh, and you can’t get it at Brookstone either. Thank god…

Regulars will have read about my eye masks that I got from Flight001… not just did I have 5 hours of bliss, without anybody waking me up for what the airlines call ‘food’ but I could have also sold a dozen of them, because everybody around me loved them… We will be heading to Europe again soon, for Maison et Objets and I couldn’t stop myself browsing 001 last week again and got myself some really nice ‘TOWELETTES’… Stop, don’t say it, I know… but this just sounded too good, and they are…
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We wanted to personally welcome all of Josh Spear’s readers to our site! Josh gave us a nice mention today and I want to personally thank him for that. I am very glad he likes what we are doing and I am looking forward to serving up the freshest lifestyle news to all of you as well! Let us know what you like and don’t like and we’ll incorporate your feedback.

Today we start posting at our new “lifestyle navigator” blog. This is part of a big project starting during the next months.

With a lot of experience in the design, brand and lifstyle-world and a deep personnel ambition to these themes, we want to provide our like-minded audience with fresh and relevant information.

Cool products, destinations, must-haves - all of this will here be at your fingertips in the near future.

We’d appreciate your feedback on our work!