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Case Closed
Stephane Kélian, the maestro of woven leather, is not content with merely designing great shoes. He’s recently turned his multiple talents to luggage, and the results are handwoven beauties. His weekenders are made in France and though they’ll breeze through those airline carry-on gauges they’re roomy enough to hold more than a week’s worth of beachy essentials ($1,390; in green, too).
STEPHANE KELIAN/717 Madison Avenue, near 63rd Street/212-980-1919, and 158 Mercer Street/212-925-3077
Tile Fish
Sallie Trout is best known for designing witty furniture and commercial interiors, but when she needed aluminum tiles for a job and couldn’t find any around, she came up with a line of her own. Trouttiles are made of recycled cast-aluminum, and they’re available in seven basrelief patterns – pears, petals, hearts, swirls, and such – as well as plain. The tiles can be ordered with ball-burnished or semi-polished finishes (both of which are low maintenance) and they’re installed like their ceramic cousins ($16 each).
ARTISTIC TILE/79 Fifth Avenue, near 16th Street/212-727-9331
It’s a Grind
The food mill, that old-fashioned kitchen staple, has finally entered the modern age. Now instead of manually puréeing fruits and vegetables into baby food, potatoes into mashed, apples into applesauce, you can do it all with a push of the Passi mill’s button. It’s made in Italy of stainless steel and plastic and comes with three disks – extra-fine to coarse – and a roomy bowl. Since the handgrip has ridges, the mill fits securely over any size container, turning a two-handed process into a job that requires only one ($90).
S. FELDMAN HOUSEWARES/1304 Madison Avenue, near 92nd Street/212-289-3961
Clown Time
Brand-new moms and dads live by the clock: Is it time for a feeding, time for a diaper change, time for baby’s nap? Clocks are a nursery necessity, but when they’re as sweetly silly as Kerri Lee’s birchwood clowns, they go far beyond mere practicality (around $80).
AT HOME GRAMERCY PARK/234 Third Avenue, near 19th Street/212-673-4463
ECLECTIC ENERGY/102 Christopher Street/212-727-2126
Stripe It Rich
Diane and Evelyne De Clercq startled the fashion world when they opened their shoe-box-size Thompson Street shop: The windows were filled with itty-bitty sweaters. Many mistook it for a doll store, but these teeny knits were Diane and Evelyne’s way of keeping a record of their bold and witty designs. Though the Belgian-born, Umbrian-trained sisters closed their SoHo shop in 1988, they’ve been busily designing sweaters and marvelous slippers ever since. Now they’ve added homewares to their oeuvre: Diane turns her signature knits into pillows, Evelyne her vivid stripes into woven-cotton table runners; iron bars at each end of the runner keep it firmly in place (86-by-17-inch runner, $165; pillows, $175 to $240).
BARNEYS NEW YORK/Chelsea Passage
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