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A Colorful New Hotel in Luang Prabang, Laos
Hotels in Luang Prabang, Laos’s temple-dotted former royal capital, have long taken their design cues from the town’s French-colonial past with teakwood floors, louvered windows and creamy stucco walls. Against that backdrop, the new Senglao Boutique Hotel, which opened earlier this month, is a brightly colored standout. Its Laotian owners hired the Bangkok-based designer Saran Yen Panya, who created interiors that channel the nostalgia of the Senglao Movie House, an erstwhile part of the owners’ family business and a fixture in Luang Prabang during the 1980s. “I looked at the quirky and whimsical side of the city’s heritage,” Saran says. For the 31 rooms, some of which open to private terraces, he sourced vintage furniture and commissioned bespoke wallpapers and neon-lit art pieces inspired by traditional textiles and local embroidery. A custom stained-glass window takes center stage in the lobby, as does a work by the British artist David Shrigley, whose tongue-in-cheek work shares similarities with the embroidery commonly found in Laos’s night markets. From $55 a night, senglaoboutiquehotel.com.
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Jewelry that Traces the Landscape of the Sierra Nevada
Playful yet understated, the jewelry line Mociun opened its first brick-and-mortar store in New York in 2012 and has taken inspiration from the city in the years since. In 2018, the brand released charms that miniaturized the city’s most famous street food, including pizza slices, pretzels and hot dogs. But the designer Caitlin Mociun traces her fascination with glittering gems and alloys to Nevada City, Calif., the former Gold Rush town in the Sierra Nevada mountain range where she grew up and where she has fond memories of seeing people pan for gold in the Yuba River. Such precious metals, and particularly silver, are at the forefront of the designer’s latest venture, a line of genderless jewelry called CRZM (her initials) that launches this week. CRZM’s debut collection features 28 different styles of rings, bracelets, earrings and necklaces that draw their sculptural, imperfect shapes from the rugged natural landscape of the Sierra Nevada. Most of the spiral-motif necklaces and puffy mariner chains are fashioned in silver, which means they are more affordable than Mociun’s primary line of gem-centric fine jewelry, but CRZM also offers select pieces in 22-karat yellow gold, one of the purest forms you can wear. “I like the idea that these metals would be touching your skin,” Mociun says, “so that the energy they hold affects you more.” From $350, mociun.com.
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A Furniture Collection That Combines Wood and Clay
When the ceramist Danny Kaplan and the woodworker Vince Patti were introduced at a Manhattan party in early 2023, a fast friendship led the way to a furniture collaboration. Kaplan, who needed a bed frame, initially approached Patti with a sketch to help bring a custom design to life. “I was inspired by a Deco-era Jean-Michel Frank sofa with a screen placed elegantly around it. I envisioned [a curved screen] as a headboard, and I wanted a tile component in it,” says Kaplan. The two designers swapped reference images like Bauhaus, Brutalist and Chinese architecture, as well as the works of Frank Lloyd Wright, Tobia Scarpa and Carlo Scarpa. Ideas for other décor emerged. The Delf collection, a partnership between Danny Kaplan Studio and Patti’s art practice, Lesser Miracle, comprises a bed, an armchair and two bedside tables. Each piece features both artists’ signature materials of clay and wood: To showcase Kaplan’s handmade tiles, Patti carved out pathways and sections in white oak that accommodate the inlay details. Patti describes the collection as “ceramic pieces encased in wood.” The final iteration of Kaplan’s dream bed frame has tiles in seven earth tones nestled in the side and top edges of the multipanel screen, which is supported by sturdy, custom-made hinges. “This collection forced both of us to push our practices forward in ways that I don’t think either of us expected,” says Patti. The Delf collection launches May 30; from $4,500, dannykaplanstudio.com.
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The Playlist From a 1984 New York City Dance Party, Recreated for One Day at MoMA
On Valentine’s Day in 1970, a young D.J. named David Mancuso threw the first of what became known as the Loft parties in his downtown Manhattan apartment. He needed to make rent and, for around $2.50, guests could enjoy food, drinks and dancing while Mancuso played records from his collection of deep cuts on carefully calibrated Klipschorn speakers. He conceived of these gatherings as a more inclusive, intimate alternative to the nightclub culture of the time, and they drew a diverse, largely queer crowd unified by a love of dancing. The Loft, which is still held quarterly, has bounced around to different spaces over the years, but the 10-year run at its second location, 99 Prince Street in SoHo, is considered to be its heyday. One of the last parties there was on June 2, 1984. Exactly 40 years later, visitors at MoMA can experience the music of that singular night. For his immersive installation “Last Night,” the artist Martin Beck reconstructed Mancuso’s set list and filmed the records playing in full, just as Mancuso had D.J.ed them, for 13½ hours straight. Though it will run into the night, the work is meant for close listening more than dancing. (The museum will provide seating in the exhibition space.) “Collecting the songs and listening to them in sequence late at night felt like moonlighting as a pleasure detective,” Beck says of his research. Although he began sleuthing for Loft music online in the late 2000s, Beck didn’t attend the party himself until 2014. “I was overwhelmed with excitement,” he remembers, “and I tried to absorb whatever I could about the party.” “Martin Beck: Last Night” will be on view in the Kravis Studio at the Museum of Modern Art on Sunday, June 2, from 10:30 a.m. to 12 a.m., moma.org.
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Glass Lamps Inspired by Greco-Roman Antiquities
When Valerie Name Bolaño encountered a small glass vessel in a Swiss gallery in 2023, the Venezuelan-born, Athens-based interior designer was entranced by its textured, weatherworn appearance. “I didn’t know if it was from the third century or the 1920s,” she says. “It was completely mysterious.” She dug deeper into its provenance and discovered that its patina was not the result of millenniums spent underground but rather an early 20th-century glassblowing technique known as scavo (“excavation” in Italian). Now, after a year of experimenting with various materials and minerals alongside a Brooklyn glassworker, she’s reviving the archaeological-inspired practice with her own collection of decorative home objects and lighting. “I realized that you’d appreciate the material even more if it had a glow,” she says of the made-to-order table lamps, ceiling pendants and sconces, which take their delicate, hand-formed contours from Greco-Roman antiquities. Though clients can choose from a range of jewel tones, such as a subtle Bordeaux or translucent sea green, “the process ultimately decides the outcome,” she says. “That’s the beauty of it.” From $650, studiovaleriename.com.
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’70s-Inspired Sportswear and Beach Towels, Made in Los Angeles
Growing up in West Los Angeles, Madelyn Somers spent many afternoons browsing a local surf shop with her father. Though she never quite learned to ride waves like him, she thinks of her time rifling through the racks as a formative experience. “That surf aesthetic, it always stuck with me,” she says. These days, as the creative director of the sportswear brand Made Some, which she founded in 2020, Somers designs clothing and accessories with the same athletic, sun-drenched style that captured her imagination years ago. The brand’s latest offerings include punchy nylon board shorts in two lengths that Somers describes as “’70s by way of Y2K,” unisex shirts inspired by vintage souvenir tees and a collection of towels that resemble minimalist midcentury travel posters created with the Los Angeles-based brand Mare. All of Made Some’s pieces are made in Los Angeles, and Somers does much of the sourcing herself. “I drive all over town to find the right drawstring and then the right ends for the drawstring and the grommets,” she says. “There’s so much that goes into one pair of shorts.” From $36, madesome.world.
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The post One Designer’s Take on the Perfect Silver Chain appeared first on New York Times.
