Inga Sempe: Modern mother
by Jenny Dalton
FOR ALL THAT the parents whose creativity has been directly influenced by their children - and has led them to creating innovative design companies in an attempt to make life better and easier for them and other parents - are inspiring figures, it’s equally inspiring to come across women (in particular) who create some of the best designs for life in general and who just happen to be mothers too.
Like Inga Sempé - the uncompromising French product designer whose star is on the ascendent thanks to fab designs like the Vapeur lamps for Moustache (pictured left) and seating for Ligne Roset. I recently had the chance to interview her for How To Spend It magazine, and was struck by how, in a mostly male-dominated world, she is striving to create designs that aren’t dictated by her gender, but that are a mixture of poetry (she loves pleats / and the idea of lightness), technology and practicality. All this and she’s a mother of two - including a two-year-old girl, Mette. See the full interview here.
Posted 20 April 2010 in Designer Profiles
GOING GLOBAL: world decor
Illustration by Sara Barnes
DON’T BE SURPRISED if your friend’s six year old’s passport is as full of exotic stamps as your own. Our children’s generation understands travel like never before.
Whether it’s because of our own globe-trotting preferences (we are the cheap-flights, itchy feet generation), or because our families tend to be divided by thousands of miles and seas where they once were divided by mere tens or hundreds of miles, our children are au fait with, and completely at home with, the scope of the world… for them the globe holds not so much wonder but a firm belief that they will visit the locations they read about in their favourite books, or where the relatives they regularly Skype reside. None of it is out of bounds.
BozAround: travel en famille
PLANNING YOUR SUMMER holiday right now? If you need inspiration seek out Vanessa Boz’s new travel blog, BozAround, an inspiring and informative family travel sourcebook.
French-born Vanessa (pictured below with her son Marcelo as a baby) has had plenty of travel experience. In her dayjobs as co-creator of the Bubble children’s design trade shows in New York and London, and as the London-based correspondent of the superchic French tome, MilK magazine, Vanessa spends her time travelling between the three hippest cities in the world. She has lived in all three cities, travels regularly for work and fun, and spends her summers in Cesme, Turkey, with her Turkish husband and father of her two children, Marcelo and Amalya. She is now a children’s brand advisor.
Posted 24 March 2010 in Travel
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.
Real Life Mural: NYC
Photography by Akira Yamada
MURAL ARTIST AMI SUMA had an audience when she was painting Natsume’s bedroom walls in her parents’ NYC apartment. Natsume herself. “She LOVED it from the beginning. She would bring her little chair by and stare at me painting for hours - I really mean for hours! She never got bored. I was totally amazed by her. Her mom tells me she still talks about me a year later.”
But then, it would be difficult not to be intrigued by Suma’s delicate modern take on pink and brown, that was influenced by Natsume’s favourite animals - birds and bears - but also by her parents’ taste. “They left the design completely up to me but just asked me to keep the colour fairly quiet as they had to share the space with Natsume. I didn’t want it to be too childish, so I kept in mind the ‘French shabby-chic / antique’ feeling of the rest of the home, and I tried to keep the silhouettes vintage looking, and the colour minimal and chic.”
Suma pulls it off by pairing soft pinks with beiges and browns “keeping the tones of the colours similar by using soft, antique shades, to calm the pink down a bit.”
Posted 19 October 2009 in Real Life Interiors
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