Nendo- cabbage chair

Nendo chair via Brocade Design etc. Made for XXIst Century Man exhibition that was curated by Issey Miyake. Miyake wanted Nendo to make a piece of furniture out of paper that is used during the process of making pleated fabric and which is typically discarded after production as unwanted by product.

Check our more innovative paper furniture via Cool Hunting, Inhabitat and Treehugger.

Nendo chair:






Molo Designs' furniture via treehugger

Building a website?

The ultimate resource for people wanting to build their own website- the Agency Tool. It's the "definitive resource list for designing, developing, marketing & maintaining websites." Look up everything from web safe colors, to picking a domain name to SEO optimization. via Swiss Miss

We didn't exactly use this because a) we didn't know about the Agency Tool and b) if you don't have the time to do it well, hire someone talented to help out.. so we had two amazing graphic designers (*plug)- Jared Stone and Christopher King build and develop ours.

Kenneth Snelson- sculptor

We love art and nature inspired and informed by mathematical principles. American artist Kenneth Snelson's sculptures are some of the most inspiring works based on this idea.

Using the concept of tensegrity- his sculptures' structural integrity is based on the simultaneous pushing and pulling of components- creating a strong but flexible form. If a wire is cut, it will cause a major deformation or collapse of the sculpture entirely.

See other works via Treehugger and Inhabitat based on the same principle. Check out Richard Buckminster's table via Treehugger (which you can also create a DIY version here) or new forms in architecture that uses tensegrity to flexible, dynamic buildings via Inhabitat.

Sublet Clothing's summer sale!

Our summer sale starts this week. We have limited availability on some pieces, but we've reduced prices to the following:

Alison dress: was $242, now $150
Anais cardigan: was $110, now $55
Amirah dress: was $143, now $98
Alex tee: was $55, now $38
Anne top: sold out

We're on ZOOZOOM!

Our Belinda jumper dress from our Fall '08 collection made its debut on the opening page of ZOOZOOM's "You Are What You Wear" story.

Be sure to stay tuned, as we'll be releasing the rest of our Fall collection online soon! Until then, you can see the Belinda and read the rest of the ZOOZOOM article here.

Marks & Spencer starts charging for plastic bags

Marks & Spencer, the UK based department store, started charging customers 5 pence (10 cents) for every plastic bag they use (via Treehugger). So far they've seen an 80% reduction in plastic bag use- that's 70 million fewer bags already! Money raised by the surcharge will be used to improve parks and play areas across the UK.

Between 500 billion to a trillion plastic bags are used every year, so we think it's fantastic that our neighbors across the sea have found a way to significantly reduce plastic bag waste.

If you have plastic bags and want to recycle them, find a place near you through plasticbagrecycling.org or even better bring your own to the store! Envirosax's graphic series or Baggu's super bright totes are our picks!

Envirosax:


Baggu:

International Graphic Design Competition

Designboom is holding their 2nd annual International Graphic Design Competition.

Pairing up with Tobu Department Store, the competition is in an effort to raise awareness and protect the Earth.

Enter in either of 2 competitions- and the first place winner gets 500,000 yen and will have their winning design used for Tobu Department Store's promotional material. See all the details here.

Check out last year's 2nd place winner (our favorite!) by naoya yoko + jun tashiro (agasuke) from japan below.

Also check out some of the other runner's up from last year here.