The Perfect Fisherman’s Coat
“A sketch of one of our coats almost looks like a children’s drawing,” says Camille Serra, the French designer at the helm of the new outerwear brand Kassl Editions. “It’s just very simple, graphic lines,” she adds. Launched last September in Amsterdam, the company has one clear mission: to reinterpret the classic fisherman’s coat with every collection. Founded by a 10-person team of fashion industry veterans — including Gijsje Ribbens, a former fashion editor of Vogue Netherlands, and Merel van den Bergh, a graphic designer for the Swedish clothing brand Cos — Kassl prides itself on its minimalist approach.
The brand will introduce one new silhouette per collection — released in “editions” every three months — and each style is rendered in multiple fabrics sourced from Italy and Japan. The first edition offered a short A-line button-up mackintosh, which came in a buttery cream and a lacquered olive cotton, while for spring the brand proposes an oversized, elongated trench coat, in powder pink and white. “The fashion system is crazy to keep up with,” says Isle Cornelissens, the line’s co-founder, who also founded the Granmaarkt 13 concept store in Antwerp. “A sustainable way of changing the flow would be to make sure pieces come in at the right time, so they don’t end up in midseason sales.”
The brand takes its name from Kassl, the city in central Germany where the line’s coats are made by a family-run factory which also manufactures outerwear for the German fire brigade. Minimally embellished and made from technical materials including oilcloth and rubber, the coats are built to last: velcro-fastening cuffs and sealed seams keep out wind and rain, while buttons are affixed with a metal ring to stop them ever falling off. “Brands are offering too many stories today,” says Serra, who still wears her dad’s cashmere coat that predates the 1970s. “But you can play many different games with fabrics to bring diversity in a very simple idea. Focusing on just one thing is more radical.” kassleditions.com — GRACE COOK
Vermicular’s Musui-Kamado cast-iron pot.CreditCourtesy of Vermicular
The Japanese Pot That Will Change the Way You Cook
Within Japan’s most stylish lifestyle shops and department stores, one simple cast iron pot has become a best-seller: Vermicular’s Musui-Kamado (which translates to waterless oven), a round lidded cooking vessel with an electric induction heating base. The Musui-Kamado, which will make its stateside debut next week, has earned its place among Japanese households not only for its streamlined aesthetic, but also for its ability to challenge what a single pot can do. It promises to eclipse the Dutch oven as a kitchen’s most valuable workhorse, adding the more technical tasks of sous-viding (no vacuuming required), proofing bread and fermenting to the usual roster of slow cooking, roasting, sautéing and baking.
“We simply wanted more people to enjoy the natural flavors and true essence of ingredients,” says Tomo Hijikata, who co-founded Vermicular in 2010 with his brother, Kuni. They launched the Musui-Kamado in Japan in 2016 and now also carry oven-top pots in several sizes, along with accessories including organic cotton pot holders, magnetized wood trivets, recipe books and linen dish towels.
Their goal was to design a pot that would optimize flavor profiles without the need for seasoning, sauces or even water. After three years and over 10,000 prototypes, the resulting 3.9-quart pot features a triple coating of cadmium-free enamel, a remarkably airtight seal and its namesake Vermicular graphite iron — a material that is difficult to manipulate but unmatched in its heat conductivity, lightness and durability. The Hijikata brothers practically grew up in their grandfather’s foundry, which once produced industrial dobby looms and sewing machines for Japan’s booming textile market. Vermicular was created, in part, to resuscitate the foundry after Japan’s recession in the ’90s, bringing work to the three generations of ironworkers that the Hijikatas refer to as “family.”
Available for purchase on January 31 on Vermicular’s U.S. website, and shipping mid February, the Musui is the very definition of user-friendly. When paired with the precision Kamado base, adjustments can be made in 1ºF increments, and can go as low as 90ºF. Better yet, an illustrated touch-pad allows you to cook a specific strain of rice, poach eggs, roast pork loin, sous-vide pâté, or make yogurt with the touch of a few buttons. And the abbreviated color range of black, charcoal and off-white serves as a quiet reminder that when it comes to kitchen cook wear, less is always more. $300-$670 welcome.vermicular.us — MACKENZIE WAGONER
A Candle Inspired by the Scent of Balthus’s Studio
In a sense, the creative partnership between the Paris-based home wares brand Astier de Villatte and the Polish-French artist Balthus began in the 1960s. During that time, Balthus served as the director of Villa Medici, home to the French Academy in Rome, and the parents of the brand’s co-founder Benoît Astier de Villatte, who lived there as pensioners, befriended the artist. (Ivan Percoli, Astier de Villatte’s other co-founder, spent time in Rome as a child as well, and considered the villa’s garden “an occasional playground,” he says.) In recent years, the designer duo has grown closer to Setsuko Klossowska de Rola, Balthus’s widow, and their daughter Harumi, regularly traveling to the Grand Chalet in Rossinière, Switzerland, where the Klossowskas reside — a camaraderie that has now resulted in a pair of new products.
“Harumi has been asking us for years to work on recreating the scent of her father’s studio, because, for her, it’s one of the most fabulous smells,” Percoli explains. Combining hints of turpentine, linseed oil, canvas, wood and tobacco (“Balthus was smoking all his life,” Percoli mentions), they came up with the Atelier de Balthus scented candle, packaged in a ceramic paint can. For Percoli and Astier de Villatte, another intriguing bit of Balthus lore is “Mitsou,” the book the artist made at age 11 about his cat (with a preface by the poet Rainer Maria Rilke). “We noticed that the many reprints that have been done since it was published in 1921 were not very faithful to the original,” Percoli says. In 2015, he and Astier de Villatte jointly acquired a printing press — among the last to use linotypes — and it is there that they’ve produced a reissue of “Mitsou” to perfectly match the first edition. Watch a short documentary on how the project came together. astierdevillatte.com and johnderian.com in the U.S. — HILARY MOSS
Go Inside a Black Hole — in Virtual Reality
Barring space travel or universal cataclysm, most of us will never get to experience the sensation of being swallowed by a Black Hole. But that doesn’t stop us from wondering: What would it feel like? What would it look like? And what would being swallowed by a black hole actually sound like? Those were a few of the questions dogging the filmmaker Eliza McNitt as she set out to create the three-part interactive virtual reality film “SPHERES,” which picked up the Grand Jury Prize for the Best Immersive Virtual Reality Experience at the Venice Film Festival last year — and which is on view now at Rockefeller Center.
Executive produced by Darren Aronofsky, the three 15-minute episodes each take on a different element of space — inside an Oculus Rift headset, you fall into a black hole, skip on Saturn’s rings, and see Earth from the vantage point of a star — all scored with original music by Kyle Dixon and Michael Stein (of “Stranger Things”) and rendered in thrilling CGI. “My first virtual reality experience ‘Fistful of Stars’ showed the universe through the eyes of the Hubble Telescope,” McNitt told T in an email, referencing her 2017 film. “It was about everything in the universe we can see with our eyes. It led me to wonder what happens when we listen. Space is not silent. It’s actually full of sounds. For thousands of years we’ve looked to the stars to find our place in the universe but for the very first time we listen to its music.”
The first episode, “Chorus of the Cosmos,” is narrated by Millie Bobby Brown, the second, “Songs of Spacetime,” by Jessica Chastain, and the third, “Pale Blue Dot,” by Patti Smith. “I’ve grown up with the voices of Carl Sagan and Stephen Hawking guiding me through the cosmos,” McNitt says. Now, she adds: “I wanted to hear the voices of three different generations of women tell me the story of science in the universe.” “Spheres” is on view through March 3 at Rockefeller Center, 600 Fifth Ave., rockefellercenter.com — ISABEL WILKINSON
