In the best-smelling collaboration since the scent-themed forty-second issue of Visionaire, the Six Scents Fragrance Initiative (a creation of fragrance company Symrise, Metaproject, and Seven New York) is unveiling its first series of fragrances developed by teams of artists and perfumers to raise money for charity. The first crop of artists are fashion designers: Alexandre Herchcovitch, Bernhard Willhelm, Cosmic Wonder Light Source, Gareth Pugh, Jeremy Scott, and Preen's Justin Thornton and Thea Bregazzi have teamed up with perfumers to create unique fragrances with custom packaging (pictured above). Each scent has been produced in a limited edition of 2,000 bottles that will be sold starting next month at select stores worldwide (including NYC's Oak and TG170, Colette in Paris, and Joyce in Hong Kong) with a percentage of the net proceeds benefiting the Designers Against AIDS Education Center, which is scheduled to open early next year in Antwerp, Belgium.

Curated by Joseph Quartana of Seven New York, the designer-perfumer teams have concocted scents ranging from "Urban Tropicalia" (Herchcovitch and Joachim Correll's cedar wood blend that evokes "freedom and sensuality") to the aromatic struggle between black pepper and white amber that is "Diagonal," in which Pugh and Emilie Cooperman worked to emulate Pugh's own style by "contrast[ing] diferent raw materials, masculine and feminine, rough and smooth, dark and light, fresh and sensual." Preen's Thornton and Bregazzi must have had Nirvana on the brain: the hazelnut and rhubarb-spiked scent they created with Mark Buxton is called "Teen Spirit."

The concept of crowd-sourcing design isn't entirely new. We've seen it with restaurants, t-shirts, and sneakers. However, it's a newborn concept when it comes to fabric. The latest iteration is a Finnish web site that allows patrons to submit and vote on home-design fabrics. Bonbonkakku gives free reign to crafty consumers to come up with colorful textiles, and lets voters decide which ones will go to press. Wouldn't you know it, the latest competition ends November 10, just days after the U.S. Presidential election. As Springwise so wisely suggested, the next step will be to give the designers a percentage of sales from the creations that do sell.

Now if only websites would do something like this for dress fabrics, so that home sewers could design, hit the send button, vote, and then see their handiworks on dresses and skirts worldwide.

In the beginning, there was Louis Vuitton and Takashi Murakami. And the luxury goods industry saw that it was good. Since then, the limited-edition artist "collaboration" handbags have been coming fast and furious: Kiki Smith whipped up a whimsical tote for Coach, Richard Phillips pitched in on some Jimmy Choo clutches, and Tracey Emin put a folksy spin on Longchamp bags. The latest artist to get in on the craze is Donald Baechler, who has collaborated with Samsonite-owned Lambertson Truex on the "Index of Happiness Bag" (pictured above), yours for $1,000 and with 15% of the purchase price to benefit the Whitney Museum of American Art.

The suede tote is in the boxy "caboose" style, a Lambertson Truex signature that we can't help but associate (lovingly) with Will & Grace's Karen Walker, an early fan. Both sides of the bag feature a print based on an original Baechler mixed-media canvas, but the effect is ruined by loony details like mismatched plaid-printed leather handle anchors and a leather luggage tag (embossed with the Baechler trademark figure, but still). A leather patch stitched inside is numbered (1 through 200) and signed by Baechler, while the lining is screen-printed with images of a Baechler sculpture. For those with simpler handbag needs and less spending money, Lambertson Truex offers another limited-edition bag to benefit the Whitney: a leather-trimmed canvas tote called the "Gertrude" (pictured above, at left), named for Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, sells for $120.

(Photo: UnBeige)

Earlier this week, the New York branch of Sotheby's hosted "Creative Hong Kong," an exhibit organized by the Hong Kong Design Centre and highlighted by ten unique products born from collaborations between global brands and Hong Kong designers. Among the works on view were Eric Chan's ergonomically sound bamboo chair for Herman Miller and "Flora Banquet," a set of Royal Copenhagen dinnerware tailored for Chinese cuisine with graphic designer Kan Tai Keung's Chinese brushwork-influenced hybrid of painting and calligraphy. "Hong Kong design is characterized by its international perspective...the meeting of Eastern culture with Western culture," said Lorraine Justice, director of the School of Design at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, at Monday's press briefing.

The opposites really attracted in architect and designer Chi-Wing Lo's "Stringless Pleasure" mini-stereo system for KEF (pictured above), which you'll recall as the British company that partnered with Ross Lovegrove on those lovely Muon speakers. Made of shimmering antique wood accented with jade buttons and dials, the sleek stereo fuses craftsmanship and innovation, east and west, natural and synthetic—and that, and shelf space (a clever way to ensure optimal spacing between wall and speaker)! "I think of it as the mussing link between a musical instrument and a contemporary hi-fi system," Lo told us. He further described his concept, designed to celebrate last year's tenth anniversary of the British handover of Hong Kong to China, as "Hong Hong and China, bridged by sound." Click "continued..." for a closer look.

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Sisters Kate and Laura Mulleavy are the designers behind Rodarte (their mother's maiden name), the extraordinary young fashion label that won the 2008 Swarovski Award for Womenswear and gains legions of fans with each meticulously crafted new collection. Last week's standing-room-only show saw the debut of not only Rodarte's spring 2009 collection but also the fruits of the designers' collaboration with Lexus Hybrid Living, the luxury car maker's initative to showcase luxury products that prioritize sustainability. "Laura and I are very very particular about the things that we do, and particular about our own creative process, and we started working with Lexus Hybrid Living out of a mutual concern for the environment," Kate Mulleavy told us. "My dad was a botanist and my mom was an artist and we grew up in this really beautiful, amazing landscape right near Monterrey, and that's been such an overwhelming inspiration to us in most everything that we've done."

The Rodarte show's Chelsea venue was fragrant with the blend of Hawaiian orchid, camellia flower, sweet musk, Mirabelle plum, and Japanese quince that infused the natural soy candles (pictured at right) that attendees found on their seats inside glass containers (recyclable, of course) printed with rope imagery inspired by the work of Japanese photographer Nobuyoshi Araki and encircled by a removable bracelet made of recycled Lexus car leather. "Laura and I really wanted to do something special and develop a candle to explore this idea of sustainability and how you can make things that really have an impact and a meaning in people's lives—things that are thoughtful but that also do a lot in terms of getting the word out there about taking care of the environment," said Kate. As for the limited edition scent, designed by the sisters along with the packaging, "It has this really beautiful, light floral note but in a more icy way," Kate noted. "It reminds me of the idea of a blossom in snow."

In his highly amusing 1971 manifesto on postcards, artist Tom Phillips breaks down the general categories of postcards, from "news from another planet" and "o châteaux, o saisons" to "pastoral/historical" and finally, "national cliché compendium," as exemplified in a card featuring a "kilted bagpiper in the heather seen through thistles with inset of haggis." Two new projects seize upon the power and enduring versatility of the postcard, even as the art of letter-writing is in its long-winded death throes. Writer and New Yorker editor Ben Greenman is using postcards to invite reader participation in his new book, a limited-edition, letterpress short story collection, while photographer and installation artist Zoe Leonard amassed thousands of vintage postcards of Niagara Falls for her upcoming exhibition at Dia:Beacon. The show takes its title from the terse message inscribed on one card: "You see I am here after all."

Slated for release in November, Greenman's Correspondences (Hotel St. George Press) promises "a bittersweet glimpse at the lost art of letter-writing, and the manner and means by which emotions are conveyed in that form." The book will also be an art object in itself; it is being hand-crafted by letterpress and design studio Blue Barnhouse as an unfolding chip-board casing with pockets for three accordion books. A fourth pocket contains a postcard that the reader can use to fill in the gaps in the collection's final story and send in for possible publication in future online and paperback editions of the book. Greenman has also brought his experimental "Postcard Project" online, where he has issued a call for postcards bearing literary fragments that will help to bring his story "fully to life."

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Looking for a surefire way to quell that queasy feeling you get in your stomach when the Dow Jones plummets 500 points in a single trading day? Try decoupage! Discounted pseudodecoupage, that is. Now hitting Target store shelves nationwide is John Derian's new, limited-edition line of antiquey homegoods—flora- and fauna-sprinkled picture frames, melamine plates, vases, photo albums, magnets, and such—for the style-conscious discount retailer. Gina Sprenger, Target's senior vice president for merchanidising, describes Derian's stationery and home decor items as "breathtaking and original" pieces that "feel like one-of-a-kind creations." But they're priced like ones produced on a massive industrial scale: from from $1.99 for tissue paper to $29.99 for a large vase painted with a leafy motif. Here at UnBeige HQ, we're using the charming alphabet tray (pictured above, at right) to serve recession-themed cocktails (ice-cold tap water and a dropperful of blue food coloring, garnished with a colorful umbrella).

New York City-based Derian is known for his whimsical decoupage art, which looks to be sourced from a musty encyclopedia found at the estate sale of a kooky common cousin of Albertus Seba and William Morris. His work has the power to convince even the most zen clutterphobe that now is the time to invest in an agglomeration of art-adorned paperweights, urns, coasters, and decorative plates. "I was excited to share my work with a larger audience and Target has helped me to do that," writes Derian on his company's website. "I hope those that collect my work will see these pieces as a complement to items they may already own."

There is a wiki for just about everything these days. This writer knows about a vintage pattern wiki, so isn't it timely to have one all about pattern-making? Interestingly enough, we found out Drittofilowiki by way of BurdaStyle, an open-source sewing web site where sewers and sewists can download patterns ranging from dresses to pants to bathing suits all for free. We're thinking that there's going to be a lot more free sewing patterns online as the cost of paper rises which may mean the 99 cent pattern sales at Jo-Ann Fabrics and Hancocks could go the way of the T-Rex. In any event, we think the pattern wiki is a good resource (it even has job listings)for designers who aren't near a fashion school.

For nearly 40 years, the cover of New York University's School of Continuing and Professional Studies (NYU-SCPS) bulletin has featured everything from a
painting on hand-tooled tin (by Joel Nakamura) and an ambitious LEGO sculpture (assembled by Eric Harshbarger and Henry Lim) to the assured, economical lines of Al Hirschfeld and Takashi Murakami's pair of Japanimated figures jumping for joy beneath a rainbow-limned Washington Square Arch. For its fall bulletin (pictured in background, at right), NYU-SCPS has commissioned another work by artist William Wegman, who also created the spring bulletin cover (in foreground). As with his creation for spring, there's not a Weimaraner in sight. The fall cover features one of Wegman's recent cycle of landscapes that combine found scenic souvenir postcards with drawing, collage, and painting. From the skyline postcard at the center radiate abstract blocks of color and squiggles that visually approximate a bird's eye view of Manhattan, while the card's outline is a ghost of the Washington Square Arch that is usually found on bulletin covers. Floating above it all is "New York," written on the steamy mirror of the city sky.

In a move that has us wondering who will be lucky number 13, bullseye-lovin' retail giant Target has officially announced that Richard Chai (at right) is the twelfth guest designer for its GO International line of limited edition collections that aim to bring high fashion to the masses. A veteran of Marc Jacobs and TSE, Chai launched his own collection in 2004 and recently tweaked his label's branding with the help of Fabien Baron.

Available in most Target stores July 20, the Richard Chai for Target collection (NYLON has a sneak peak here) is an assortment of dresses and separates that somehow manage to feature "Chai's signature craftsmanship" yet sell for between $12.99 to $79.99. According to a press release issued by Target today, "Key pieces include a leather vest, colorblock front-tie dresses, graffiti rose printed cotton sundress, plaid trench coat, and satin tuxedo racerback dresses." Just remember not to wear them all at once! Also coming soon to Target stores are limited-edition accessories lines designed by Monica Botkier (handbags) and Dean Harris (jewelry). And we hear the retailer's 'Design for All' ethos extends to cosmetics, with makeup mavens such as Jemma Kidd and Napoleon Perdis creating lines for Target slated to launch next month.