The Pocket Square

A photo Sonya Worthy of the blog People Reading took of me on BART tonight.

As I was taking BART home tonight I met a woman named Sonya who runs a blog called People Reading. I overheard her doing this funny, very informal interview with a guy reading a computer programming book in the Montgomery Station about what he was reading and what he likes to read. She took his picture, and a picture of the book and then got on the same train as me. As soon as I sat down and pulled out my book–Wuthering Heights–she started craning her neck to see what I had. As she was rather near, I held it up so she could have a look and before long she was sitting next to me asking me the very same sorts of questions. Suffice it to say, soon I was posing for a photo and discovered tonight that I’m now on her blog.

I think it’s a great idea, figuring out what people are reading and trying to engage them about books. We both rode BART to 24th St. and chatted about Cervantes and Witold Gombrowicz and then went our separate ways, but I’m so thrilled to learn of her blog. I confess that I’m rather like Sonya, very curious about others’ books though rarely do I jump right in to ask them anything. Good on you, Sonya. Here’s the post she did on me.

Fida, Jordan and I dropped into the Kilian fragrance party tonight at the Serge Sorokko Gallery on Grant St. Kilian Hennessy, parfumier, was on hand to hawk his latest line of wares including the men’s scents Straight to Heaven and A Taste of Heaven, each of which had a strong, clean masculine smell. The usual battery of black-clad waiters wandered around with boat-like endives and glasses of bubbling Veuve Clicquot rosé, no great surprise considering Hennesy’s the heir to the LVMH empire.

The Sorokko Gallery was an apt space considering the chichi nature of the whole affair, but the usual crowd of pricily-coiffed society types trotting out the latest cotoure and spikiest heels left one rather pleased to be left out of that particular demi-monde. I did wander off with a gift bag, though, and appear to have my choice of perfume samples. I don’t typically wear the stuff, so we’ll see how a splash tomorrow morning goes over. It will have to make a pretty big impression, however, because at $225 per overwrought bottle–an exercise in useless luxury design if I ever saw one–I’ll happily stick to the Old Spice. To Hennesy’s credit though, the bottle is made to be refilled, sparing the consumer the need to buy a whole new bottle when he’s simply out of cologne. Justifying the rest of it is on your soul.

After the party we three then hopped on down to Camper where I spied, for the first time in the flesh, the pair of plimsolls that have captured my heart. Mediterranean Sneakers, you shall be mine.

Filmmaker Gary Hustwit (Objectified, Helvetica) will be one of the panelists at my April 24th Dwell Conversation. Photo from www.objectifiedfilm.com

I’m really excited to announce that I’ll be moderating a panel called Objectified in America: Design, Consumerism and Sustainability in Our Changing Economy for the next Dwell Conversations on April 24th at the AutoDesk Gallery space at 1 Market St. Suite 200, San Francisco, California.

The panelists include filmmaker Gary Hustwit, who made 2007’s wonderful Helvetica and has just come out with a new film examining our material culture called Objectified. I’ve not seen it yet, but there are some upcoming screenings co-sponsored by Dwell at the Sundance Kabuki Theaters.

Founder of CITIZEN:Citizen and my neighbor, Philip Wood (pictured here with his wife and radio journalist Tania Kentenjian) is just one of the speakers on the panel. Photo from last year's Dwell on Design conference taken from www.roseapodaca.com

Also on the panel is CITIZEN:Citizen founder Philip Wood, a very smart and charming guy who I see around town pretty often. I just got off the phone with him and he’s got loads to say about how we view objects in terms of materials and use but also for their talismanic, iconic nature. He’s spoken on Dwell panels before, and will be on another I’m doing on Design Entrepreneurs at this year’s Dwell on Design Conference in Los Angeles. Bill Moggridge, co-founder of IDEO and Tom Dair, co-founder of Smart Design will also be on the panel, round out a really bright and engaged group, one I’m quite pleased to lead in discussion.

Buy your tickets to the event here. They go for $15 and we’re expecting a big crowd, so get them soon. I hope you all can make it, and do go see Objectified. If it’s half as good as Helvetica (which you can watch On Demand on Netflix) you won’t be sorry.

Jeans galore and beers to match at the Self Edge/Style Forum party last night on Valencia St.

After a late dinner of salad and Spanish tortilla–I do make a mean tortilla–Drew and I took a walk down Valencia St. and stopped into Self Edge as the Self Edge/Style Forum party was winding down. I missed the old time motorcycles that Paul d’Orleans had brought over for the event, but was happy to arrive when I did. The chilled-out vibe and not-too-crowded lower level made for easy browsing and an unexpectedly interesting theological debate with Mark Miller, a professor of Catholic Studies at USF.

I approached Mark to compliment him on his rather natty double-breasted chambray blazer, but before long things turned to precisely why God hardened Pharaoh’s heart against the Jews as they sought to gain their freedom in Exodus. It’s been on my mind lately as Drew and I prepare for our annual seder this Wednesday, and it seems that God deliberately set up Pharaoh as an adversary to the Jews with no possible chance of his freeing them on his own. Drew made the point that the Exodus story is more about the founding of a nation than anything else, and though it works as a narrative device, it certainly appears that God’s love isn’t available to all when he sets certain people against him. Mark argued that God’s love is available to all–certainly a more embracing Catholic notion than the chosen people mentality of the Old Testament–but in my view he didn’t fully satisfy the question. He talked about Pharaoh turning away from God and essentially hardening his own heart, but I still read it as the first step in a display of God’s power to and for the Israelites (the plagues, parting the Red Sea) not to all of his creations.

Another element of the Exodus story with which I have always struggled is how Pharaoh’s magicians managed to perform some of the same feats as Moses and Aaron, such as turning their staffs into snakes. On what power do the magicians draw? Demons, their own gods? If there are no other gods than the God of Israel, and Exodus is certainly His book, whence the ability to turn staffs into snakes unless it is in fact God who is doing it. Considering that he hardened Pharaoh’s heart in order to display his might to his people, certainly doing the covert bidding of the magicians only adds to the theater. Puzzling, and at some level, rather disquieting.

Nonetheless, it was a really fun time so thanks to Kiya at Self Edge and to Style Forum for a fun night.

The very mid-century modern facade of San Francisco's new Paul Smith store at 50 Geary. Photo from www.paulsmith.co.uk

I attended the Paul Smith opening party at 50 Geary St. on Thursday, and for all the worry over who got in and out–a trio of profoundly mascaraed blonds in black busily womaned the door–the sheer number of people (about 600 Smith estimated) inside the London fashion guru’s new retail space put one in mind of a tube station at rush hour. In terms of fashion, the gents, peacocking in all manner of springy neckwear and colorful pants, far outstripped the decidedly more sedate ladies, and Smith himself looked dapper in a navy suit and pink open-collared shirt. The man of the hour moved through the crush with ease, if only because everyone wanted to shake his golden hand–though one did overhear quite a few mildly-panicked whisperers bleating, “He’s here?!?! Which one is he.” Joy Bianchi, looking like the lost bride of Le Corbusier in her signature thick black frames had little trouble finding the man, nor did Apple design don Jonathan Ive, a man whose sartorial stylings extend, thankfully, beyond iPod white. Willie Brown made nice with the swells, though his broad-shouldered woolen suit and peaked pocket square evoked the powerful torsos of the 40s and 50s more readily than the reedy chests conjured by Smith’s Swingin Sixties cuts.

Robert Wallace, a jet setting window dresser and interiors fixer in Smith’s employ aptly described the large store’s concept as mid-century modern in front with a nod to a rather more buttoned-up British clothiers, wooden wainscoting and all, in back. Vintage bric-a-brac sat alongside the pricey clothes and the break in aesthetic from front to back deftly alluded to the the two traditions out of which Smith’s aesthetic was born. Design aside, one of the most hotly-anticipated elements of the evening was of course the gift bags. A purple Paul Smith toothbrush was the most coveted swag, though the long arm of the New York media world reached even into the flimsy black totes handed out at the door: No one left without the new issue of Vanity Fair and a book of essays on the movies edited by Graydon Carter. But only to be a lonely outpost, so far from the center of the world. I’ve yet to use the toothbrush, but I did port my Paul Smith tote, a tossed-off thing at best, around Glen Park Canyon on a long walk today. It did the trick but is certainly nothing to write home about. Though apparently it is something to blog about. Hmm.

I got the purple one.

A truncated version of my thoughts on the party appeared in today’s San Francisco Chronicle in the Style Section. For a video of Smith wandering around inside his store, 7×7 has the goods.

The latest edition of my column, The Pocket Square (check out the archive here), is out in the San Francisco Chronicle today. I took up ballpark style, a tricky issue at times considering what a sartorial minefield sportswear can be. I’ll actually be attending the the A’s-Red Sox game a week from Monday at the Coliseum so we’ll see how the gents fare fashion-wise. I presume that straw boaters and spectators are out of the question, though you never know when Chicken John will show up. I went to a party at Self Edge last night where I got to chatting with the owner Kiya and it seems that he’s a massive A’s fan so here’s hoping that he and I get to take in a game or two this season. I’m so thrilled that the show starts today and actually have moderately high hopes for both Bay Area squads. Now if only my beloved Nationals could catch a break and maybe, just maybe, win 75 games.

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Drew and I took a wonderfully long walk today, hiking all over town in this glorious San Francisco weather. After browsing in shops, lunching in Russian Hill, having coffee at Stella Pastry on Columbus (yum!), and stopping into Fog City News for the latest issue of Wired and the winter edition of Antenna, our feet were sore and home we went. All told our urban hike was 5.5 miles. Exercise for the day, I’d say.