These days Robert Geller, a New York-based menswear designer, is busier than ever, which is just the way he likes it. Besides his successful eponymous line and a collaboration with Levi’s, Geller is launching a new retail venture, called Key Shop. The temporary store, a partnership between Geller and Greg Armas, the owner of the eclectic Lower East Side boutique Assembly, will feature a carefully edited selection of Geller’s products, many exclusive to the store.
 Geller has quietly become a fashion fixture of the downtown scene, his slim and pale dandy aesthetic fitting well with skinny dudes of unspecified occupations that roam the streets below Houston and well east of Broadway. “I feel that the Lower East side is where the Robert Geller guy likes to be,” wrote Geller in an email message. “The area has a lot of stores and restaurants popping up, and is still developing nicely. The guys (and girls) there get our aesthetic and will understand the store. I feel like it is the most exciting area of New York right now.”
 So, if you want your key (get it?!) Geller items, like a poncho made of cupro and cotton and suede ankle boots, they will be waiting for you at 129 Rivington St., but only until April 15, when the temporary shop will close its doors.

Ever wanted to touch a cloud? Now you can. Because that’s what a Faliero Sarti scarf feels like in your hand. For Monica Sarti, the head designer, the tactile experience is of paramount importance – her company’s most popular fabric is a cashmere/silk blend that infuses the scarves with extraordinary softness.
     L’Accessorio Faliero Sarti was founded in 1949 in Tuscany, Italy. It started out as a fabrics house, supplying the newly reborn Italian clothing industry with high quality textiles from its mill. As its reputation grew, so did the list of their clients, which now includes Chanel and Donna Karan.
     But Monica Sarti wanted to take the company further than a mere textile manufacturer. Making accessories seemed like a first logical step, since Sarti already possessed extensive expertise in fabrics. Nevertheless, she wanted to push her obsession with manipulating the yarn further. I caught up with co-owner Federico Sarti at Pitti Uomo in Florence to discuss their fabric choices and methods of production. “We are famous of course for using traditional fabrics like cashmere, wool, and modal,” said he, “but we are now also experimenting with more innovative materials such as protein and bamboo.”

Photography by Hendrik Kerstens via The New York Times

Today is a sad day in the world of fashion. Alexander McQueen, the notorious British designer, passed away at the age of forty, cutting short one of the most illustrious creative careers. He apparently committed suicide just days after his mother passed on. He was supposed to present his next women’s collection in Paris in a month.
     McQueen was a genius. He relentlessly pushed the boundaries of fashion, especially with his phantasmagoric runway presentations, shocking his audience not only by the sheer force of his imagination, but also by his willingness to engage controversial topics in the industry that is immune to seriousness. For the Fall/Winter 1995 collection, titled “Highland Rape” he reflected on the English rule of his native Scotland, sending out models in airy clothes that were shredded at the breast. For the Spring/Summer 2001 collection, McQueen tackled the behind-the-scenes tragedy of the picture-perfect model image, putting models in a reflective-glass house. It was narcissism bordering on insanity. As the finale, another glass box was presented with writer Michelle Olley, naked, her body fat, face hidden by a mask, hooked up to a life support machine and covered with moths. There has never been a more poignant commentary on image obsession in fashion, and there probably never will be.

Maria Cornejo, a Chilean-born designer, has long been an underground fixture in the fashion world. Not exactly famous, not exactly unknown, she has consistently put out beautiful womenswear since her club kid days in London three decades ago. After growing tired of London Cornejo moved to Paris and then Tokyo, finally settling in New York City in 1996, where she opened an atelier in Nolita under the name Zero. She has become known for her unconventional, fluid garments that may look perplexing on the hangers but morph and fall gracefully once on the body.
     This season Cornejo decided to dip her toes into the overheating men’s fashion market by creating a capsule menswear collection, which she showed with her womenswear during the Spring 2010 New York fashion week. With admirable consistency she transferred her design signature into a concave-shaped rain jacket, a seamless one-piece shirt, an oversized sweater with dropped shoulder, and slim bias-cut pants, among other pieces. The resulting silhouette is perfectly laid-back – no easy task to achieve when everyone these days seems to be trying their hardest to look nonchalant. The fabrics echo the comfort of the slightly asymmetric cuts – soft cottons and spring weight wool are predominant. The muted and discreet colors – black, white, and navy – create a gentle quietness around the collection.

Ann Demeulemeester

Queen Ann is the last romantic left in fashion. In the 21st Century, she is the one designer who can speak of poetry in her work unselfconsciously. Perhaps this collection was Demeulemeester sensing that our world is becoming increasingly prosaic. Backstage after the show, Demeulemeester said, “I started this collection by imagining a duke. Left in his castle, cut off from the world, what would he wear?” The answer — long black coats, high-waist riding pants, and leather rope belts. The tall young men Demeulemeester sent down the runway were every bit uninvolved, lost in their own thoughts, lost in their own clothes, lost in their own world. These days, Demeulemeester likes to puncture her usual black and white palette with a choice of color. For this show her color of choice was olive-gray, which translated well into the capes and asymmetric, voluminous jackets.

Photography by Julius

Black is the most misunderstood color. In fashion, black has been co-opted by two groups of people: the Balmain-sporting fashionistas who think that chic is a value in itself, and the misguided (by Hot Topic) teenagers who worship Satan and Marilyn Manson in the safety of their suburban homes. But black is not the color of chic or nihilism. For Tatsuro Horikawa, the young Japanese designer behind the cult clothing label Julius, black is the color of depth. It is not there to promote aggression and destruction – the pop version of black – but to display his awareness of the world that is subject to aggressive and destructive forces. And, as unexpected as it might sound, it is also a color of hope. “Black is the color of complete and utter grief,” says Horikawa’s manifesto, “and redemption through atonement.” This view is a kind of existentialism – the idea that we alone are responsible for our fate and carry the full burden of responsibility for our actions, and thus must bear witness to the world’s evil. This view can be easily traced in Horikawa’s uncompromising designs – the oiled leather jackets, heavy jeans with multiple pockets, and drapey, shredded tops. Their purposeful ruin is the reflection of our imperfection. But these clothes are also indestructible, like the human spirit.   
     Horikawa started out as a graphic designer in the late ’90s, forming a Tokyo-based art collective that produced multimedia installations. He considers the clothes to be the project’s extension.

Steidl Books

The world is divided into three types of people: those who are conscious about the environmental damage we inflict on our planet, those who do not care, and those who are inclined to care but need some prodding. Sometimes it takes an artist to put things into perspective, to provide the visceral impact that can shock us into awareness. Edward Burtynsky’s new book, Oil (Steidl, $128), is just the ticket.
     Burtynsky has long been fascinated with what he calls “human-altered landscapes,” the vast vestiges of industrial activity. After a while he realized that oil production is the force behind many of these landscapes. Burtynsky began photographing human-made sites that have direct and remote relationships with oil. These include oil fields, refineries, car lots and scrape yards, and highways. The ten-year project resulted in a book containing a hundred panoramic shots from all over the world.
     This panoramic view is certainly an eye-opener. Let’s just say that whenever we take an exit from one highway to another, we don’t really think about the intricate anthill infrastructure of the roads. And, of course, some of us would rather not think about the mechanical ugliness of an oil refinery, the unfamiliar, repelling apparatus that we rely on for the modern world to function.

Ever wanted to own something truly unique? Now you can. No Editions, a new label designed by Christian Niessen and Nicole Lachelle, takes inimitability to a new level. The idea behind their designs is deceptively simple: take high quality garments with basic shapes and put prints on them. No two prints are alike, so you get a one-of-a-kind finished garment with a numbered label. No duplicate will ever be produced, not even in a different size or shape.
     Niessen and Lachelle met in the early 90s while working for the iconic Austrian designer Helmut Lang in Vienna. Several years after Lang was bought by Prada, they decided to strike out on their own, doing technical research for various clothing companies. After that Niessen and Lachelle started producing video installations. The idea for No Editions came out of their desire to translate the transience of the moving image into something less ephemeral. They also did not want to play the fashion game – no catwalk shows, no seasonal collections, and no advertising. “I never bought into the idea of ‘a lifestyle,’” says Niessen. “I don’t care about projecting an image. I want the wearer to make the garment her own.”
     All prints are produced through extensive manipulation of videos. Niessen is fascinated with the amount of information on the Internet and its malleability. For the next round of prints he used websites where one could access public cameras for a short period of time and record raw video footage.

Some time ago, Ann Chapelle, owner and CEO of  BV32, a company that runs Belgian fashion houses Ann Demeulemeester and Haider Ackermann, was pondering the state of the fashion industry. She hardly liked what she saw – a world dominated by marketing and designers diluting their brands by sticking their name on anything from house paint to helicopters. In this world, branding trumped quality, and young designers could hardly develop their own voice.
     To change the status quo Chapelle created a new project, called “…a moment in…” At its core is a platform for creating and distributing clothes and accessories – “… a moment in…” is neither a fashion house subjected to the whims of a star designer, nor is it another uninspired luxury goods manufacturer. Its goal is to introduce different lines of products in limited quantities, concentrating on design and quality. Each line, introduced at six-month intervals and then continuously run, will address different market segments. Each will be created by a young designer, and allow the expression his or her vision. “One of the reasons I wanted to create this project is that there are so many young talented designers who struggle to get on their feet,” Chapelle says. ”This project allows them to apply their skills.” At the same time, each designer will have the support of a team of nine professionals familiar with different aspects of the business, handpicked by Chapelle herself. The first line, women’s knitwear, was launched in March 2009. The heavy wool and cashmere knit pieces are cozy, understated, and luxurious.

Sex is a luxury. Or so Coco de Mer, the purveyor of fine erotic objects, insists. As our society keeps loosening up about sex, erotic play becomes acceptable. No longer associated with perversion and thus banished into the sleaziness of the red light districts, sexual play is now a pastime. Like many leisurely activities, it allows room for luxury and good taste. After all, what girl wants to be satisfied with a cheap plastic vibrator bought in a seedy porn store? This is the line of thinking Sam and Justine Roddick, the co-founders of Coco de Mer, took. “One of the thoughts that came out of my involvement in a feminist rights movement,” Sam Roddick says, “was the idea that women deserve a space where they can feel comfortable and not ashamed of their sexuality. That is the type of store I wanted to create.”
     The first Coco de Mer New York store, opening today in Nolita, certainly reflects this manifesto. It is an inviting space with an intimate atmosphere, a boudoir and not a brothel, reflecting the implicit understanding that kinkiness arises out of feeling of comfort and that true pleasure only comes from the willingness to please. And there is no shortage of kinky, but sweet, touches, from the purple silk blindfold that reads, “Freedom is deciding whose slave you want to be,” to the improbably sexy lingerie.