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.

Toilets and urinals aren’t typical fodder for red-carpet conversation, but stall talk dominated on Monday evening as galagoers ascended the steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in ensembles that ranged from clownish to sublime. Guests were buzzing about the recreated CBGB bathroom (pictured) that is among the first things visitors encounter in the museum’s “PUNK: Chaos to Couture” exhibition, which opens to the public tomorrow. The cave-like space, scrawled with circa-1975 graffiti, is adjacent to monitors playing a looped selection of films and footage–of Blondie, the Ramones, Patti Smith, and Television–selected by Nick Knight and edited by Ruth Hogben.

“We’ve had great [design] moments in punk, but I’ve very excited about the urinal–a urinal at the Met!” said André Leon Talley at Monday’s gala. “According to Patti Smith, punk began in a urinal downtown somewhere that I never went to, so I’m excited to see that.” The Vogue veteran was dressed in an elaborately embroidered cape–think Joseph’s technicolor dreamcoat meets MacKenzie-Childs–designed for him by Tom Ford. “I love this coat and I don’t consider it punk. I just consider it appropriate for this occasion,” said Talley with a chuckle. “I said to Anna [Wintour], I didn’t do punk. I skipped punk and went straight to couture.”

(Photo: Maharam)

After four generations of family ownership, Maharam is changing hands. The beloved New York City-based textiles firm, founded in 1902 by Louis Maharam, is being acquired by Herman Miller for $156 million, the company announced this week. “Much as we’ve struggled with this decision, our philosophical kinship with Herman Miller helped make this difficult step a far easier one,” said CEO Michael Maharam, who along with his brother, Stephen (who serves as COO), will remain active in the day-to-day management of the company for the next couple of years. “Herman Miller’s potential to provide the wherewithal to pursue important new initiatives, as well as an established reach into both retail and international markets and the greatest possible strength of association, offers a powerful lever in achieving our design-centered strategic vision.” Maharam is perhaps best known for its re-editions of iconic 20th century designs, including the work of Anni Albers, Charles and Ray Eames, and Alexander Girard. In recent years the company has developed textiles with collaborators such as Hella Jongerius, Paul Smith, Marian Bantjes, and Sarah Morris.

Casa Lever is a feast for the senses. Tucked inside Gordon Bunshaft‘s eternally modern Lever House in midtown Manhattan, the restaurant features a beehive-gone-nautical interior dreamed up by Marc Newson, a fit-for-Fellini brand identity by Matteo Bologna and the gang at Mucca Design (don’t miss the wine list, studded with lovely and informative maps!), and, for dessert, a mind-blowing gianduia that suggests Nutella as reimagined by a band of pastry-loving cherubs. And then there are the Warhols.

Thanks to a lending arrangement with Lever House owner Aby Rosen and his Lever House Art Collection, Casa Lever patrons dine with a wall of Warhol portraits: a pair of Hitchcock profiles here, twin Jerry Halls there, the sassy Aretha that covered Ms. Franklin’s eponymous 1986 album–and proved to be Warhol’s last work–eyeing the exit. It’s always fun to play a round of “Which would you like to own?” while waiting for your ravioli di brasoto (or your third gianduia, as the case may be) to arrive, in which case one’s eyes are inevitably pulled to the rear of the restaurant, where the elevated private dining room–aglow with the best Warhols of the bunch–floats behind a Newsonian trapezoid of glass. Until recently, that’s where they kept the pair of pastel Dennis Hoppers from 1971, which stared down a couple of Giorgio Armani portraits in which the blue-eyed designer resembles a debonair Siberian husky.

As of today, there’s a new girl in town: Judy Garland. The recently acquired Judys (above), made by Warhol in 1978 and circa 1979, debuted today in the private dining room. They are best admired in the company of a newly created “Judy Garland” cocktail. Casa Lever “mixologist” Cristina Bini‘s commemorative blend of bourbon whisky, barolo chinato, mint essence, and absinthe is sure to take you somewhere over the rainbow in no time. “Edie [Sedgwick] and Judy had something in common–a way of getting everyone totally involved in their problems. When you were around them, you forgot you had problems of your own, you got so involved in theirs,” Warhol once said. “They had dramas going right around the clock, and everybody loved to help them through it all. Their problems made them even more attractive.”

Imagine swimming through your day in an ocean of blue expertly matched to a series of David Hockney pool paintings.

In the latest episode of Cubes, we show you the New York offices of Morris + King public relations. Lead partner and co-principal Judith R. King takes the mediabistroTV crew on a musical journey featuring chairs from the Stella Solaris cruise ship and 1970s French jumbo jets, specially chosen chandeliers and offices painted any color you like as long as its blue.

You can view our other MediabistroTV productions on our YouTube Channel.

Rotterdam-based Studio Makkink & Bey, led by architect Rianne Makkink and designer Jurgen Bey, has long envisioned a progressive office in which the multitasking extends to the furnishings: a seat that doubles as a self-contained desk and cupboard, a flexible “WorkSofa,” a cozy chair that can be coupled up to create instant meeting space (the “EarChair,” pictured above). The studio is showcasing these designs and more as part of “Fantasy Room for Working,” an exhibition on view through Sunday within the Creative Lounge MOV, a huge shared office space in Tokyo. Earlier this week, among the KadE Chair, Vacuum Cleaner Chair, stools, and aprons, was Bey himself–he put his designs to the test by working from the flexible fantasy office for eight days. Studio Makkink & Bey’s Prooff (Progressive Office) “working and living landscape” interior was also recently acquired by Utrecht’s Centraal Museum, where parts of it are on view through May 25. Take note, Marissa Meyer.

The Azzedine Alaia boutique in Paris.

“It’s one of my little marble fantasies. I started used marble a lot in 2005, 2006–in fact, Azzedine’s shop was one of the first things I did. At the time, no one was really using marble in a contemporary way. Marble was considered a really old-fashioned material. I’d picked up a little bit of experience over the years from going to Ferrara in Italy where they carve a lot of marble. People are always looking for new materials and new technology, like brand new high-tech things, but they don’t really exist. All of the materials that we think of as new materials have actually been around for at least ten or fifteen years. Doing something new is really about re-appropriating something, using a new material in a different context. As a designer you can only really do that if you work in different disciplines. That’s why I like doing all these different things and learning about different things. I designed a range of luggage for Samsonite ages ago, and the technology I used was something I had learned from designing trainers for Nike.”

-Marc Newson, interviewed by Jonathan Ive in i-D magazine

Contract magazine has named Joey Shimoda (pictured) its 2013 Designer of the Year, praising the Los Angeles-based architect and designer for the “quality and breadth of his design work, his ability to transform the mundane, his consistently strong client relationships, and the respect he garners in the profession.” With the motto “extra superfino,” 13-year-old Shimoda Design Group has completed projects ranging from interior architecture to “building rejuvenation” for clients such as Steelcase, Rolex, and MTV Networks.

Also honored this morning at Contract‘s 34th annual interiors awards, held at New York’s Cipriani 42nd Street, was Michael Graves, who received the 2013 Legend award for lifetime achievement. (Graves is a past Contract Designer of the Year, having clinched that title back in 1981.) Among the projects that bested the competition in 13 categories are INNOCAD’s Vienna office for Microsoft, complete with gleaming silver slide; the Bentel & Bentel-led transformation of the public areas in the Grand Hyatt New York; Rockwell Group’s Untitled restaurant at the Whitney; and Wuhan Pixel Box Cinema, a pixel-themed, 95,000-square-foot movie theater in Wuhan, China, designed by One Plus Partnership.

“Having to do a hotel where I was given an almost incomprehensible [very tight] budget, so ridiculous, led me to black and white. I had to use the lowest priced tile in the United States. At first they brought me little pink tiles for the bathrooms. My voice trembling with despair, I asked if they came in white…They said yes! Suddenly I realized, that’s going to be horribly dull!…And in black? Yes…A-ha! We’ll do the bathrooms in black and white. A sort of potluck, with a nice metal washbasin and a few good lights…Suddenly, we had a really nice bathroom. The black and white label comes from there.”

-Interior designer Andrée Putman, who died Saturday in Paris at the age of 87

In a recent 60 Minutes segment, Charlie Rose and producer Katherine Davis profiled IDEO co-founder David Kelley (and revealed that even Steve Jobs himself struggled in getting AT&T to activate one of the first iPhones). This part of the piece, in which Rose pays a visit to Kelley’s Ettore Sottsass-designed home near Palo Alto, ended up on the cutting room floor, but CBS has released it as an online extra. “It’s supposed to be a humble, private house, where you don’t make a big deal out of it,” Kelley tells Rose. “That’s why it’s so plain on the front.” Sottsass studded the living room with bluish green boxes, to break up the space and make it more cozy. Here, Kelley reveals what’s inside them. Plus, his teenage daughter has an entire little (Monopoly-style) house to herself. Notes Kelley, “Ettore thought that if you were a kid you should have your own house rather than your own room.”

Read more