OFR is going to see a lot of TI this week

Downstairs from where I'm staying is the brilliant bookstore for Ofr. (library and gallery) and TI is deeply in love.

Perfect view of Mount Fuji from Room 4615 at The Park Hyatt

I had one of the best days of my life last week in Tokyo, exploring the city's art gallaries, boutiques, style districts , restaurants and bookstores. It really was the dream of theimagist come true...setting down in a foreign town and gorging on all its hidden lusciousness in a 24 hour span. For this I thank Mana Igarashi at Spur with all my heart. Tokyo completely seduced me and I can't wait to get back in April.

Everybody knows everything these days

More than ever, there seems something dated in the existence of these people, publicists who glory in their task as guardians of precedence. Like the eunuchs of the Ming dynasty, they tend to forget their place as servants of the imperial luxury goods industry. And, like the eunuchs of the Forbidden City, they may wake up one day to find that those with real power — in this case, Bernard Arnault, Robert Polet, François Pinault — have noted that the bottom line is not being well served by lackeys with attitude.

Guy Trebay in The NY Times on fashion show publicists and their Marie Antoinette complex

Bless Celebrates 10 years of Themelessness and that's inspiring!

I can't call it "Current Reading" because I just finished ordering it 30 seconds ago, but I can't wait for this retrospective of this Paris and Berlin based design team. Bless first surfaced on the fashion radar in the winter of 97/98 when Margiela used some of their wigs for the show. Since then the trajectory of the Bless team has been a blur. Though what they do seems to be defiantly anti-commercial, it has also proven to be very influential and incredibly rewarding (even in the financial area). Bless slides from fashion to beauty, interior decoration to art exhibition, to collaborations with other brands to stylized advertising. I love that and find the ideas from Desiree Heiss and Ines Kaag to be a big influence on the multi-disciplinary way I've been forced to think these days.

Edited by Desiree Heiss, Ines Kaag, Manuel Raeder.

With contributions by Thimo te Duits, Elein Fleiss, Nakako Hayashi, Stéphanie Moisdon, Ulf Poschardt, Pro qm, Adriano Sack, Barbara Steiner, Olivier Zahm

Interviews by Manuel Raeder with Nobuyoshi Tamura Shihan and by Jan Winkelmann with Bless.