The Pantone licensing machine is chugging along nicely, even if Emerald and Tangerine Tango make for rather tough sells when it comes to cosmetics (Sephora remains undaunted). The latest focus for the company’s rainbow tour is the home. JCPenney is rolling out a Pantone Universe line of bed and bath items, from Peach Parfait sheet sets and Purple Magic pillows to Blue Aster shower curtains and Macaw Green toothbrush holders, that arrives in stores next month. That gives you a few weeks to colormatch your walls with Pantone paint. The new collection, a partnership with Valspar, offers color lovers a selection of 100 “on-trend hues” that runs the gamut from classic neutrals to eye-searing brights. The colors are available exclusively at Lowe’s for approximately $30 per gallon.

Blik isn’t sticking to walls. This week the self-adhesive wall graphics company launches Surface Skins, a new line of durable decals that promise to “bring some graphic goodness to humdrum furnishings everywhere.” Designed to cover desks, tables, cabinets, bookshelves, and other smooth surfaces in need of a boost, the removable stickers (which start at $42) debut in a dozen bold designs that are based on the artfully crafted gift wrap of Wrapped, Blik’s design-minded neighbor in Venice, California. Pattern options include a rainbow of Hirstian spots, AbEx-style flourishes, pseudocowhide, or good ol’ plywood. “We had the idea a few years ago and finally found a new material that made Surface Skins a possibility,” said Blik co-founder Scott Flora in a statement issued Monday. “Wrapped’s designs are so graphic, that you can take an ordinary object and make it really dynamic.”
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Having passed the century mark and then some, New York luxury emporium Bergdorf Goodman is ready for its close-up in Scatter My Ashes at Bergdorf’s, a documentary that arrives in select theaters on Friday. Filmmaker Matthew Miele explores the inner workings of the famed department store through the eyes of a designer-heavy cast that ranges from Iris Apfel to Rachel Zoe. Enjoy the trailer:

It is both surreal and disturbing to watch people–Very Important People, no less–stagger around an art fair carrying unwieldy cardboard boxes, but such was the scene at yesterday’s Armory Show preview, where a rapidly shrinking tower of the colorful crates made famous by Andy Warhol was there for the taking. And take they did. The flurry of grabbing, folding, and foreign accents was apropos, as this was “Babel (Brillo Stockholm Type)” (2013) by Charles Lutz. The work was commissioned for the fair by Eric Shiner, director of the Andy Warhol Museum. He also curated the special “Armory Focus: USA” section of the fair, which includes Gagosian Gallery, making its Armory debut with a booth wallpapered in Warhol–the man, the myth, the camouflage.

This outbreak of Brillo Box fever is not an isolated incident. Belgian furniture brand Quinze & Milan has inked the appropriate licensing paperwork with the Andy Warhol Foundation to produce the Andy Warhol Brillo Box pouf (at left), a cushy foam cube screen-printed with the Brillo logo. The stool-sculptures will be unveiled next month at MOST in Milan, but the online retailer Fab is now taking pre-orders at $425 a pop.

At 85, Mickey Mouse is spry as ever and fronting a Moleskine notebook that debuts today in stores worldwide. The notebooks, available in two sizes, feature Moleskine’s signature black covers debossed with Mickey being seized by creative inspiration (lightbulb hovering over ears, hoisting a giant pencil). Inside, there’s a booklet with instructions on how to draw the beloved mouse, Disney-style. Milan-based studio SVPERBE Creative Visionaries got into the spirit with this video that takes Mickey from sketch to screen.

In the town of Secaucus, New Jersey (which we like because it suggests a high-level meeting about oceans), there is a place where dreams are made—dreams of fully licensed, if slightly scuffed, design classics. We imagine this place to be at all times filled with directionally bespectacled people, many of whom as infants were soothed not by kitschy musical mobiles but by the comforting presence of a George Nelson ball clock. This place is the Design Within Reach Outlet, which on Saturday, February 16, begins a three-day megasale. Grab a friend–preferably one with a vehicle and/or a pack mule–and get there early (doors open at 10 a.m.), because DWR’s 12,000-square-foot discount design wonderland teems with “non-pristine” furnishings discounted up to 75% off retail price. As for carting that dinged Saarinen table home, you can arrange for delivery. Bring a tape measure and an open mind.

Whether you’re looking to wow your Valentine, wish yourself a happy Chinese New Year, or find the perfect birthday gift for Mayor Bloomberg (who turns 70 on Thursday), we present ten lovely ways to do so:

1. MZ Wallace Valentine’s Day Hamish pouch and card ($35, available from MZ Wallace). It’s impossible to go wrong with a gift from MZ Wallace–particularly when the NYC-based company is in collaboration mode. This cheerful coated linen pouch comes with a valentine printed by the letterpress wizards at Swayspace.

2. Framed John Rawlings print ($139, available from One Kings Lane). Skip the perishable blooms in favor of this enduringly rosy vision by Rawlings, whose haunting brand of glamour has aged remarkably well. Plucked from the Condé Nast archive, the photo originally appeared in the June 1952 issue of House & Garden.

3. Keith Haring iPhone 5 Case ($35, available from Urban Outfitters). Shield your Valentine from heartbreak–or at least a shattered smartphone–with the help of a Haring illustration.

4. Julia Chiang’s “Because of You” edition for The Standard ($300, available from The Standard). Get a piece of Brooklyn-based artist Chiang, whose handmade ceramic links are stamped “Because of You” along with her initials, date, and edition number.

5. Lisa Black Butterfly Dome ($288, available from Fab). “Literature and butterflies are the two sweetest passions known to man,” said novelist and lepidopterist Vladimir Nabokov. You’re halfway there with Black’s pair of Ulysses butterfly specimens.

6. The Missing Ink by Phillip Hensher (published by Faber & Faber). Do you know what the handwriting of your closest friends looks like? Hensher considers this endangered art.

7. Vintage pencils from Italy ($28 per packet of five, available from Terrain). Ready to preserve handwriting? Stock up on utensils with personality. We like these 1940s pencils, found amdist a cache of vintage art supplies in Rome’s Antica Cartotecnica stationery shop.

8. Robert Longo skateboard ($975, available from AHALife). Who wouldn’t fall for the Sk8room’s signed, limited edition plywood skateboard silkscreened with Longo’s “Eric”? And 20% of the proceeds go to Skateistan, a non-profit organization for kids.
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“Big Waffles,” a 2010 painting by Mary Ellen Johnson

Lately Larry Gagosian has been the subject of even more media scrutiny than usual, fueled by assorted lawsuits (Ronald Perelman, Jan Cowles) and high-profile artist defections (Damien Hirst, Yayoi Kusama). New York magazine accompanied Eric Konigsberg‘s investigative profile with a photo-illustration (by hitandrun) that attempted to depict the uberdealer as Hirst’s famous diamond-studded skull, although it succeeded only in evoking Jambi the Genie. Well, meka leka hi meka hiney ho, haters, because Gagosian has something delicious up his well-tailored sleeve. Never underestimate a man who knows the power of waffles.

In March-ish (our best guess after peeking into the construction site earlier today), Gagosian will open a restaurant downstairs from his Upper East Side gallery. Designed by Annabelle Selldorf, the eatery will be managed by nearby Sant Ambroeus, so fingers crossed that they bring on Mucca to mastermind the menu design. There will be waffles–and wine, and chili, and fun!–as Gagosian revealed in an interview with Peter Brant that appeared in the December 2012/January 2013 issue of Interview:

It will be a neighborhood restaurant. Bill Acquavella already reserved a table. He was one of the first to say, “I want to have my own table.” So that’s good news. We’re going to try to have it be a destination for people who like wine and try to get wine companies to bring us special wines. We’re going to have international cuisine. We’re going to have waffles for breakfast because I love the waffles at the Beverly Hills Hotel. I put some things on the menu that you can’t get in every restaurant, things that I like. I love chili, so we’ll have a good chili. We’ll have a couple of Armenian dishes. But we’re going to have fun with it. I could have done a menu by consensus, but so many people were telling me what to do that I finally said, “Screw it. This is what I want.” I just want to be able to go down there and have a good time and be able to entertain my friends.

We love a sale, and some of our favorites take place at the handful of Taschen bookstores scattered about the globe. And Taschen “SuperSale” time is again upon us. The stateside sales (at the Taschen emporiums in Beverly Hills, Hollywood, Miami, and New York) begin tomorrow and run through Sunday, offering beautiful books of “art, anthropology, and aphrodesia” at 50% to 75% off their retail prices. Come early and wear your game face, because we may look sweet, but we will totally jump you for the last discounted display copy of the amazing new Neo Rauch monograph. Can’t get to a Taschen store? Check out the just-posted sale offerings online.

In 1977, all of the special people spent Halloween night at Studio 54 to celebrate Liza Minnelli‘s buzzy Broadway turn in The Act. Oscar Abolafia snapped this photo of a group of post-show revelers that included Andy Warhol (clutching a Playbill), Diana Vreeland, and Steve Rubell. The following year, Vreeland, then in the Costume Institute phase of her legendary career, joined Rubell to celebrate his 35th birthday and followed up with a thank you note that rather mysteriously enthused about his “adorable children.” The note and photo are among the Studio 54 memorabilia that will be auctioned tomorrow by Palm Beach Modern Auctions. In addition to photos from Rubell’s personal collection (including some Warhol Polaroids and the artist’s bronze dollar sign sculpture, estimated to fetch $30,000 to $50,000), there are V.I.P. drink tickets, party invitations, and a guestbook from the famed nightclub. The auction house has also studded the sale with some glam design pieces by the likes of Paul Evans, Vladimir Kagan, and Milo Baughman, whose sleek 1970s sectional comes with a revolving cocktail table: drink up and boogie down.