The Stars, They Are A-Rising
Hear ye, hear ye! My team and I did our level best, taking on the ginormous task of collecting all the selfies, candid shots, and other pics of the fab and funky designers gathering in the issue ahead. This is a feat both impressive and monumental, because we jam-packed what seems to be a legion of them into our presentation. There were so many that, I have to own up, they give our pages a faint, vague resemblance to a back-to-school issue somehow postponed to November. But high-school yearbook? NOT. This is a special, long-in-the-making reportage and celebration of designers on the rise. We cleverly dubbed them the 40@Forty, as in “around.” I mean—what does a year one way or another matter? (Only barely, I didn’t make the cut. Tee hee.) They are all young, practically just off the nipple and bottle. However, the absolute truth is: They don’t look a day less than fabulous, as my friend Roger Thomas would say.
Their talent comes in all design shapes and sizes, whether single practitioner, small studio, or young’uns at a large firm, and they can be found everywhere, their energy palpable to the touch. Who else but a youngster could dream up a staircase in the shape of an elephant trunk, like Cui Shu did in Beijing? Or what about Jean Verville, who made a laboratory out of his own backyard shed in Montreal, then continued the experiment at the home of friends? Of course, the wisdom of older mentors is occasionally appreciated. When Lily Jencks and her friend Nathanael Dorent designed a house in Scotland, her architect father, Charles, was in the background. At Rapt Studio, David Galullo was always on-hand to advise the team of four that renovated a SoCal office for Vans.
Three cheers for the next gen, then. Can’t wait to see all their excited postings, cheering the mag on Instagram when the issue comes out!