SOFT BABY - outstanding organic
YOU CAN’T ALWAYS TELL when you’re eating organic food. But you can always tell when you’re wearing organic clothes. And once you’ve felt your baby in organic cotton it’s hard to go back to anything else, particularly as non-organic cotton can be one of the most chemically-treated fabrics around.
So points out Yee Wong, owner of our current favourite new organic baby brand, SOFT baby - not least for its interesting genesis. China.
Although China has become synonymous with poor work practices and cheaply made products, there is good to be found there too, says Yee, who grew up in Hong Kong before moving to New York to study graphic design.
Posted 17 March 2010 in Textiles
YOU NAME IT: The growth of personalisation
Illustration by Marina Kharkover
by Jenny Dalton
IN THE EARLY 80s when it became fashionable to own accessories with your name attached (remember the original script name necklaces, way before SATC’s Carrie got her mitts on one?), I remember being constantly thwarted when I hit the shops looking for named items. A million Jennifers, but never a Jenny.
So, what must today’s kids feel like rifling through those souvenir racks, name-cards and the like, all of which are rendered pretty pointless in the face of a million and one children with exotic, one-off, individual, even made-up, names.
Posted 2 March 2010 in Products
BUNK MATE: Ace hotel bunks
LOOK NO FURTHER for inspiration for your pre-teen or teenage son’s room than the recently opened Ace Hotel in New York. One of our (male) colleagues spent a couple of days there recently and is still extolling the virtues of the large canvas laundry bags with Navy-style typography, the masculine-chic toiletries from Rudy’s barbershop, the blankets embroidered with the Ace logo, and the mix of vintage and new interiors, devised by NYC design firm, Roman & Williams.
Our favourite part, however, confirms the return of the bunkbed: the ensuite bunk rooms in the NYC hotel are a perfect stopover for singles, guys on their stag weekends, grown-ups reliving their childhoods, or teens who you’d prefer to have their own room. We can’t help falling in love with the almost military issue, sleek, fuss-free, heavy-duty, powder-coated bunks sourced from American Bedding that would clearly last a lifetime and beyond. Can we have, please?
*Bunk rooms in March 2010 are approximately £150 per night. www.acehotel.com. Ace Hotel New York City, 20W 29th Street, New York City, NY 10001; tel: + 212 679 2222.
HEART OF GLASSES: Zoobug
IF YOU’VE TRIED unsuccessfully to get your wee ones to wear sunglasses, then you probably haven’t heard of Zoobug.
Zoobug’s founder, 33-year-old Dr Julie Diem Le, the Vietnam-born ophthalmologist who moved to the UK aged four and trained as an eye surgeon, might not have had to do the persuading first hand, but as an aunt to her niece Emma, she’s been known to trawl the shops in search of the best in everything from snowsuits to sunnies.
Which is how Zoobug came to pass. “I was trying to find some suitable sunglasses that had enough UV protection, looked good and could also take the strain of being handled by children,” says Julie. “Since I couldn’t find any, I decided to create them myself. At the time it was an innovative idea to have adult standards of protection in kids’ sunglasses.”
The admission comes as a bit of a shock. But indeed most of us haven’t questioned the quality of cheap plastic highstreet sunglasses too rigorously.
“We’ve become used to buying ‘toy’ sunglasses for kids because there are so many available on the high street,” answers Dr Julie. “But the problem with these types of sunglasses is you can’t be sure they offer the maximum UV protection that complies to stringent international standards. Nor do their lenses necessarily offer optical clarity which means you do not see clearly when you look through the lens. It is only recently that parents have started to be more aware of the variations in quality and the different type of lenses on offer, and I’d like to see much more being done to educate parents about the importance of quality UV protection for their kid’s eyes.”
Posted 23 February 2010 in Products
SIT DOWN: chairs for children
TO COINCIDE with Sit Down, the new V&A Museum of Childhood’s touring exhibition of children’s chairs, we asked child chair expert, collector and exhibition advisor, Molly Price of Molly Meg for her favourite, and lesser known, chairs for kids.
1. I love UK designer Peter Murdoch’s spotty chair from the 1960s. How modern does it look? This chair was incredibly forward-thinking for its use of polyethylene-coated laminated kraft paperboard, and was the first piece of commercial furniture made of paper. It was designed to be assembled at home by simply folding along the pre-scored lines: it’s an icon of the Pop era. Read the rest of this article
Posted 4 February 2010 in Furniture
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