On Special Objects:
Five Editors Select Favorite Finds
“Eventually everything connects—people, ideas, objects,” said designer Charles Eames. “The quality of the connections is the key to quality per se.” The objects that we choose to surround ourselves with tend to be those with the strongest and deepest connections to our past, present, and future. They may embody fond memories or represent special people, but cherished things also reveal what we value—beauty, utility, knowledge, craft—and when assembled can function as a portrait in time. It was the promise of such substantive snapshots that led us to invite five sharp-eyed, creative individuals to visit The Apartment by The Line, bringing some of their own favorite things and forming connections to new ones.
Morgan Wendelborn
Co-Founder and Creative Director, The Line
It doesn’t take long for Morgan Wendelborn to assemble a group of favorite objects from The Apartment. As co-founder and creative director of The Line, she selected each object in the airy SoHo loft with an eye to both beauty and function. Her latest finds, from handcrafted sake cups and suede slip-ons to a fuzzy white sheepskin and a rugged Perfecto inspired by her own cherished leather jacket, mix seamlessly with more personal items brought from her Park Slope home, including a well-worn bridle and horseshoes. “My twin sister Kate and I grew up riding, so we brought these things with us to New York to remember where we came from,” says Wendelborn, accompanied for the day by her dog, Eldee. The two sit on an antique Persian Esafahan rug chosen for its palette of earthy spice tones. “This is my new favorite rug in The Apartment,” says Wendelborn. “It feels different yet timeless—a great addition to an eclectic mix.”
Romy Northover’s sake cups make a great gift. You can give them to a man or a woman, your mother-in-law or your brother-in-law, and your best friend. I like that they’re both cozy and festive—a universal sign of good times.
Morgan Wendelborn
Morgan’s Favorites
Carl Auböck Key Corkscrew
“I love that it has a secret inside,” says Wendelborn of the lustrous brass skeleton key designed in 1932. “It’s a corkscrew and a bottle opener as well as a nice decorative object—an unexpected combination of beauty and usefulness.”
Barbara Morgan, War Theme (1941)
“This photograph of Martha Graham in her studio is my favorite piece of art we have in The Apartment, and I’ve been eyeing it for my own apartment. It’s an investment piece, but something that I would have and love forever.”
Black Sheep (White Light) Icelandic Sheepskin
“A sheepskin is a great way to add texture to any room, and I like how versatile it is—you can throw it over a chair or a bed, and even use it as a tree skirt during the holidays. It also makes a nice-looking cover for a dog bed.”
Woman by Common Projects Slip-Ons
“Effortless, casual, and in a good color,” she says of these Italian-made khaki suede slip-ons. “This neutral looks especially great with blue jeans. It’s an easy winter shoe.”
Daniel Martin
Makeup Artist
Daniel’s Favorites
Le Labo Santal 33 Travel Set
“Santal 33, for me, is a manly smell, and I think it’s perfect for this time of year,” says Martin. “It’s woodsy, deep, earthy—it’s like comfort food. It’s a comfort smell, so I love the travel set.”
Less Than Zero by Bret Easton Ellis
“I’ve had this book since seventh grade. It’s one of my all-time favorites.”
Guy Bourdin: Polaroids
“Bourdin’s images are so graphic, and they’re so relevant—especially the campaigns that he used to do with Charles Jourdan. He took an everyday object and made it into something. It was about the shoe, but it wasn’t about the shoe, because it was everything that he built around the shoe. Bourdin created a world that made you want to be in it, and I think he was doing this at a time when there wasn’t a lot of fantasy. He brought fantasy to the forefront.”
Binchotan Toothbrush and Marvis Amarelli Licorice Mint Toothpaste
Martin starts and ends his day with elevated, exotic essentials in basic black. “I love this Japanese toothbrush—I’ve been using one for over a year now, along with Marvis toothpaste.”
I like to give gifts that you wouldn’t necessarily buy for yourself, like a photo book or a pewter wishbone—something unexpected but awesome.
Daniel Martin
Daniel Martin’s earliest memory of makeup was watching his French grandmother put her face on for the day—a ritual that progressed from carefully prepping the skin to the application of a lipstick on both eyes and cheeks—but it was a cherished book that led him to consider making a career of the craft. “This is Designing Your Face by Way Bandy,” says Martin, reaching for his copy of the influential illustrated guide. “Bandy was the pioneer of makeup in the 70s and 80s. He made makeup artistry what it is today. I got this book around 1993—I found it at The Strand for a few dollars—and I thought, ‘Hmm. Maybe this is what I want to do.’” Today he works with the likes of Proenza Schouler, Thakoon, and an ever-growing list of celebrities armed with a makeup kit that includes Jao’s Goe Oil—“a true multi-tasking moisturizer.”
Jane Bishop
Co-Founder and Creative Director, Jean Stories
Style Director, Travel + Leisure
Jane Bishop arrives at The Apartment wearing the faded-to-perfection, artfully patched Levi’s 517s she has owned since the age of eighteen. “These are my first love in denim,” she says, “They’re the jeans that I was wearing the summer that I worked at my family’s Ron Herman jean bar in Los Angeles. It was then that I realized that you can learn a lot about someone by asking them about their jeans.” This is the idea behind Jean Stories, the “fashion site about everything denim” that Bishop founded last fall with fellow Vogue veteran Florence Kane. In addition to her trusty 517s, Bishop also keeps an eye out for vintage Levi’s--especially 501s--that she customizes with the help of fellow denim connoisseurs such as Daniel Corigan of Simon Miller. Among the favorite objects she brought from home are the Spanish cowbells handed out as party favors at her 2012 wedding, M.F.K. Fisher’s How to Cook a Wolf, and a jar of homemade jam topped with a flourish of denim.
Everybody on my list gets jam! And the Uka nail oils are my new favorite thing to give, because it’s something that is very hard to convince people that they need, but once they have it, they love it. It’s the best little luxury.
Jane Bishop
Janes’s Favorites
The White Album by Joan Didion
“This is the seminal book of my life. It made me want to be a writer,” says Bishop of Didion’s 1979 collection of essays. “I grew up in Joan’s house in Los Angeles, so I feel a weird kinship with her. We met once. I’ve always loved her work.”
Homemade Jam
“Every October I make some sort of green tomato something, because I always have leftover green tomatoes in my garden. This summer, I had five pounds of green tomatoes that just didn’t turn, so I made a green tomato jalapeño jam, which is actually really good. And then I like to dress up the jars—the denim on this one is from the leg of a pair of pants that I cut into shorts.”
NewbarK Yasmin Sandals
“I love NewbarK. I actually was the first person to write about them, I think, for Vogue.com when they launched. Vogue.com was really new, the Web was really new—it might have been the third thing I wrote for the Internet. So I have a special fondness for them, and I love a slide.”
Smythson Diary
“I’m very digital in my life—of course, I run a website—but I write my schedule down in a notebook, and I always have. I started using a Smythson planner in 2009, and it’s fun to go back and see everything that you were doing in your life—what you were thinking and where you were going.”
Bettina Prentice
Founder and Creative Director, Prentice Art Communications
Bettina’s Favorites
Mementos of her Grandmother and Grandfather
Among the family photos that Prentice treasures is one of her grandfather, Frederick Schrady, a sculptor who during World War II helped to retrieve looted art as one of the Monuments Men. Another favorite heirloom is the prayer book created for her by her grandmother, Maria Schrady, a Catholic theologian. “She filled the book with prayers that she hoped would get me through my life,” says Prentice. “So it’s very meaningful to me.”
Man with a Blue Scarf: On Sitting for a Portrait by Lucian Freud by Martin Gayford
“This biography of the artist Lucian Freud is one of the best artist biographies I’ve ever read. The author had to sit for [Freud] every day, so it’s about Freud’s moods and methods on a daily basis.”
Sand from the Sahara Desert
“In 2005, I went out into the desert with a group of Berber nomads who were camel herders. We slept under the stars—it was really desert living. I love the color of the sand. It’s always been incredibly evocative for me.”
Egyptian-Style Bookends
“These bookends are Egyptian revival, and they were given to me as a gift by the artist Michele Oka Doner when she found out that I was an ancient Egypt fanatic.”
A career working with artists, dealers, and other colorful characters of the art world has given Bettina Prentice the deep knowledge and contagious enthusiasm of a curator. The latest object of her affection is also her most recent acquisition: a 1981 collage by the late Ray Johnson, whose work is the subject of an exhibition (on view through January 16, 2015 at New York’s Richard L. Feigen & Co.) that her five-year-old boutique communications firm helped shepherd to success. “All of Johnson’s subjects sat for portraits—he would make silhouettes and then collage them,” says Prentice. “This one is the silhouette of the famous collector Christophe de Menil. If you look closer, you’ll see a snake, in several pieces, on which he has etched letters that spell ‘Picasso.’” Along with books that have become enduring favorites, Prentice brought with her to The Apartment This Is a Soul by Marilyn Berger. “I’m reading this right now—it’s about Rick Hodes, a doctor in Ethiopia who treats children that are untreatable. It just kind of powers you through the day and puts things in perspective.”
Last Christmas, my husband gave me the book Art & Place, and it’s become a kind of bucket list for me—pieces that I must go and see.
Bettina Prentice
Elin Kling
Co-Founder and Creative Director, Totême
“Effortless” is one of Elin Kling’s favorite words. It describes the prevailing aesthetic of Totême, the clothing line she founded earlier this year with her husband and fellow Swede, Karl Lindman, as well as the people, places, and things that inspire her. She arrives at The Apartment swathed in her cozy Chelsea coat—a piece that evokes the sculptural volume of couture yet had far simpler origins. “I was walking one Saturday morning in Chelsea and saw this older gentleman walking his dog. He was basically out in his robe, and I thought it looked so cool,” explains Kling. “So I wanted to do my own take on the robe.” And while she favors the casual luxury-meets-androgyny of a typical Scandinavian wardrobe, another side of her comes out at home. “My house is sixties style but very modern sixties,” she says. “When it comes to interiors, I like strong colors.”
I like to give family and friends a towel from Totême. It’s a perfect gift—most people don’t have a really nice beach towel, and it gets them thinking about their next vacation.
Elin Kling
Elin’s Favorites
Turning Tray by Finn Juhl
“These trays have been favorites of mine for a while. I’m going to give one of them as a Christmas gift to myself.”
Altuzarra D’Orsay Heels
“I really like to pair these burgundy leather pumps with a chunky camel-colored v-neck sweater. The combination of the warm colors is divine and creates the perfect outfit, especially when worn with raw denim.”
Andrianna Shamaris Wood Cube and Las Venus Mirrored Cube Tables
“I love the idea of decorating with these cubes. They come in so many styles and colors. Another one of my favorites is the cube that combines wood and cracked resin. It looks like marble.”
Pallas Isis Skirt
“This is the skirt I’ve been looking for. The slit is almost too high up on the hip, and yet it’s beautifully subtle.”
Shop all gifts in The Objects
Explore another chapter in The Stories:
Portrait of a Collaboration: Deborah Ehrlich and Blue Hill