Weird concept, I know, but I couldn’t help but think of Cheez-Its when I looked at Kate Spade’s homepage this evening….I’ve been thinking about the Cheez-Its box style for awhile since the yellow and red color combinations right now are so popular, but it just spoke so clearly to me from the Kate Spade page I was moved to finally post about it.

The one thing Cheez-Its doesn’t have though are those cool leopard print sling backs……work on that, okay, Cheez-Its?

Now, I guess I’ll be in trouble with this post for the link to Kate Spade’s homepage when it changes as I am sure it will with the season at minimum, but the Cheez-It box, now it has been that color combination forever, right? Wonder if their sales have increased at all this year because of fashion’s current love affair with red and yellow? Does anyone else think of Cheez-Its when they see these colors combined? Surely I am not the only one with that association in mind…the real question is, who is the beneficiary of the association?

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This line of product, reduce, is from basebrands and I found them to be particularly creative, nice and helpful regarding these items and their claims of environmentally friendly materials….also quite solution oriented.

The first is called Melaboo (isn’t that clever?) and is made up of 60% bamboo fiber and melamine compounds. This makes it 100% biodegradable……primarily because of the bamboo, but also because the melamine compounds themselves will break down in the environment, it’s just that the bamboo makes it break down faster and in landfills……then there are the colors we can talk about, which is a pretty wide range to choose from. They were particularly careful to choose colors that worked because the bamboo had a tendency to lighten what colors they used, but these still came out fairly saturated to me, and the dyes which came from the melamine are FDA approved.

Next, WaterWeek, the reuseable water bottles created to address the overuse of plastic water bottles use a material called SAN and are BPA free so you have no leaching of the material into the liquid which is what makes them reuseable, over and over. And if any of you out there are House (the irreverant Dr. House) freaks, like I am, you saw the show where the guy was poisoning himself because he was drinking from plastic water bottles and refilling them repeatedly everyday; because of the type of material the plastic water bottles are made of, you can’t do that……..too much bacteria buildup, as well as the toxins from the BPA leaching. ICK! The reduce bottles are dishwasher safe, made to slip over one of the spindles in your dishwasher and you are good to go. These can be purchased in 5 day packs so you can fill one up for each day and take with, and keep refilling. Fill, chill and go!

Hey, it’s a step toward reducing the over 30 million bottles of water that are thrown out everday. In case you haven’t seen it, I did a post on this devastation in landfills per the CondeNast Portfolio story on photog and artist Chris Jordan’s show “Running the Numbers.” If you haven’t seen it, I strongly encourage you to visit…..it’s an interactive slideshow so you’ll have to be a little patient with it, but the rewards are beyond words, literally. Jordan, in this case image number 2, Plastic Bottles, photographed 400 plastic bottles he had in his driveway over and over and over until he reached the 2,000,000 number which are the number of plastic bottles used every five minutes, and that’s just in the U.S.. When you look at his image from far away it’s hard to break down what it is, but use the reset button in the top right hand corner and you can zoom in to see that these are plastic bottles…..a picture is worth a thousand words on this one. It’ll make you want to buy a WaterWeek five pack for each member of the household.

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Sarut Group (pronounced sa roo) who owns the Pylone Stores, (pronounced pee lone) four of them in Manhattan (Grand Central pictured top) but with a website and distribution in thousands of specialty retailers, catalog and chain stores. However, seeing all of it in one place is nothing short of a thrill.

New York Soho location

It’s a U.S. division in partnership with a French company….need I say more? I kept wanting to understand their design aesthetic better because it is not falling into any of my neat little trend descriptors. Is that because it is French? Because it is not retro….it is not this minimalist contemporary aesthetic…it is not referencing the Japanese Manga movement, so it is kind of going against the tide so is it ahead of it?

Fun, kitchy yet cool, and very clever. Clever. That’s my final word. Oprah named one of their items in her must have list, the umbrellas; and overall the press has loved the company, being referenced in In Style, O Home, and others….looking at it, I felt happy, it was a happy visit in their booth. And while the gents in charge were in and of themselves cool dudes, they were, dare I say, nice? A sort of French “Charles In Charge.” Ooh la la.

Tell me you wouldn’t be happy popping toast in those first thing in the morning (better than sugar, less fattening, less sweet and yet the results are the same…..a lift!).

They also have the answer for hip happening lighting, desk and ceiling.

But, they also have very cool kitchen utensils. You can see much more than I’ve represented here on their website, Sarut.com.

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The standout themes of this show were sustainability (and the definition and education of same), materials innovation, and color.

This last one, color, is of no surprise to my readers as that is what I earlier stated as one of the top 5 2009-10 top trends (color cornucopia), and for that matter sustainability will be of no surprise to either my readers or my clients–the fact that housewares companies stepped up their game for all of the above is surprising though as aside from tabletop a lot of the housewares companies stick with their same programs for as long as they can. In other words, innovation has NOT been a hallmark of this industry, but I will say that this show in Chicago has most definitely and finally changed with the times.

That said, there are stand-out companies who have exemplified the attributes of these themes above and beyond, and that is how I hope to personalize each of the aforementioned themes (trends if you will) of the show.

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LOL. You all must realize how much I like color by now. A fun topic, it’s changing like crazy of late, which gives me much to talk and therefore write about.

Alas, its time to move on from red. So, where shall we go? From images of Maison Objet 2008 and the ever so creative and innovative Campana Brothers, it’s a little bit of everything with heavier influences of pink and purples which is putting the reds into blues and popping it with greens and yellows.

Campana Brothers Sushi Chairs: (above left: Sushi IV Chair) (below Sushi II Chair)

Maison Objet 2008 (taken from NY Times article) and Dior Fall 2008 (Style.com):

Maison Objet 2008 (Image taken from 3 Layer Cake blog):

New York Gift Show 2008 (Pablo Pardo, images from Apartment Therapy):

NY 2007 Gift Show: John Pomp Glass

I want to talk more about the Campana Brothers, because those chairs are from 2003 and produced in limited editions. They’ve come out with some more recent stuff that I think will also have a waterfall effect in home design (next post). If you are wondering where to find the chairs featured here MossOnline, ExtremeMoss, carries them or you can go directly to the Campana Brothers website.

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