design

Louis Vuitton unveils the inner workings of its new 18-karat white gold timepiece, the Tambour Minute Repeater, a collaboration with Swiss master horologists La Fabrique du Temps. True to the brand's renown for handcrafted luxury travel accessories, Louis Vuitton’s Tambour employs complex mechanics to display one time while being able, upon request, to chime an alternative 'home' time. Hamdi Chatti, Louis Vuitton’s Vice President of Watch and Jewelry, explains: “No matter where you are, you always have two times. One of travel—often the one of business—and the one the watch guards for you. It’s romantic to think about ‘home time,’ because you’re always set to your own time and your own emotion.” As watches emerged from the shadow of pockets to perch, appreciated, upon wrists, so too did the beauty of their engineering. Dotted throughout with “infinity”-inspired figure eights, the Tambour’s transparent sapphire face and base reveal miniscule gears set with 34 jewels, including brilliant crimson rubies chosen for their ability to reduce friction on their axis. “Watchmakers used to hide the movements,” says Chatti. “We wanted the mechanism to be part of the beauty of the watch.”

Creative director, gallerist and raconteur Andy Spade invited filmmaker Alison Chernick to his Southampton family residence for an anecdotal overview of his high-low artworks. The light-flooded 19th-century house was originally the site of the Shinnecock Hills Summer School, a plein air painting academy run by William Merritt Chase, founder of Parsons. But Spade and his wife Kate, with whom he created preppy handbag empire Kate Spade and its men's offshoot Jack Spade (both sold to Neiman Marcus in 1999), have transformed the space into a showcase for their cache of treasures—from a rare Tony Alva skateboard to an original René Ricard to faux Picassos to model airplanes, picked up in flea markets across the country and through friends including Julian Schnabel. Ask him for his favorite hunting grounds and beyond the obligatory Paris, New York and Morocco mentions,  he'll note less obvious locales: "Kansas City for gems; Tucson, Arizona for Native American arts and crafts." The range is testament to Spade’s emotion-driven collecting philosophy, which extends to his gallery-cum-design studio with Anthony Sperduti, Partners & Spade: The NoHo headquarters serve as a base of operations for the pair, who design ads for the likes of J.Crew, with the building's storefront playing host to exhibitions spanning a menagerie of vintage globes to a Glenn O'Brien-curated group show featuring pieces by Richard Prince and Robert Hawkins.