When I first heard last November that there was going to be a full-scale exhibition, Savage Beauty, a tribute to Alexander McQueen, I wasn’t sure the Metropolitan Museum of Art was going to be the best venue to facilitate the retrospective show. Then again, at the time, I had yet to delve into McQueen’s work. I had heard of his exquisite tailoring often presented in obscure runway performances, I recognized the iconic skull printed on his ubiquitous ready-to-wear silk scarves and I adored the tail of the uppercase Q in his brand identity. That was the extent of my McQueen knowledge.

But the exhibit was eye-opening, and after two visits, I’d still consider a third. The first time I went, I was well prepared, armed with a magazine and iPod as I joined the queue for a densely packed Savage Beauty. While the exhibit earned outstanding critic reviews, it also received significant publicity for its notoriously discouraging wait. Since the opening, the museum has consistently estimated waiting times up to two and a half hours, fending off visitors not keen enough to join the meandering line. Still, for the Kate Moss Widows of Culloden hologram and the intricately crafted mannequin masks alone, I’d say the wait is worth it, and still is even for a second time. Read more…

Photo: Antoine Bootz

It’s all très chic and very, very white. When veteran mannequin maker and exhibitor of fine furniture Ralph Pucci got a bunch of design students from Pratt to dress up his latest line of mannequins, he knew what he was doing. Their fantastic paper garments and sculptures briefly transformed the white interior of his New York City showroom into a weird winter wonderland.

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We first wrote about the Helsinki-based design firm Company back in 2008, shortly after its founders, Johan Olin and Aamu Song, debuted their Top Secrets of Finland collection. The idea there was to commission traditional Finnish manufacturers to produce small runs of everyday products unique to the region. Now Company has expanded the line for the exhibition Secrets of Central Finland, on display at the Craft Museum of Finland until September 5. Check out more images of Olin and Song’s latest Finnish design finds after the jump. Read more…

The Designboom Mart often acts as ICFF’s palate cleanser. When the glossier offerings on the show floor start feeling like too slick a pitch, it can be refreshing to see a group of mostly young designers selling their own inexpensive wares in a PR-free marketplace. And if a few of their products are more cloying than clever, there’s usually something better at the next table. But this year’s roster of 40-odd designers, from half as many countries, seem particularly inventive, and the addition of the Mart to the show proper (as opposed to just outside the entrance) helped integrate it into the fair. Here are a few favorites. Read more…

The fashion house’s line of furniture and lighting, which will now be available through the Future Perfect, is characterized by the same kind of casual, on-the-go vibe as their trademark denim clothing. A lamp with a knit shade collapses, while another features the same kind of stitching found on dungarees. The sofa and chairs, which come in beige and indigo, are made of linen but look and feel as good as your favorite pair of blue jeans. Read more…

When Alvar Aalto helped found the manufacturer Artek in 1935, he wanted to apply new methods of bending and splicing wood across a whole range of furniture: armchairs, stools, tables, sofas, and more. It was an ambitious plan, but it’s probably safe to assume that Aalto didn’t envision his ideas being applied to the field of perfumery. Read more…

At the 2007 ICFF, one of our roving show-floor reporters caught Yves Behar engaging in a bit of an overshare: in answer to a question about his wardrobe, Behar boasted that he was wearing bright-yellow American Apparel underwear beneath an otherwise muted ensemble. Well, now the founder of San Francisco’s fuseproject is broadcasting his undergarment preferences yet again. Last week, he announced the launch of the PACT brand of organic-cotton underwear, which is made in Turkey with an eye toward sustainability (all production processes occur within a 100-mile radius) and social responsibility (10 percent of all sales will be donated to one of three nonprofits). Find out more about the PACT cause—and shop for some spiffy new unmentionables—at wearPACT.com.

Metropolis has written about design for disassembly several times in recent years, usually in connection with a task chair or another piece of green-minded industrial design. But now the practice may be catching on in other areas. The footwear company Timberland just announced that it will release the world’s first “remakeable” shoe, which can be disassembled and recycled at the end of its life cycle.

Timberland makes it pretty easy, too—an important consideration, since disassembly is moot if you can’t get people to return worn-out products in the first place. In this case, consumers simply drop off their old boots at any Timberland store. Then the company pulls out the stitching that attaches the upper to the sole and deals with the separate components: the leather gets refurbished; the rubber soles are recycled into new soles; and the metal hardware is reused. (The polyester lining can also be recycled into other products.) Ultimately, it says, 80 percent of the shoe can be recycled or reused. Read more…

Metropolis’s 2009 Next Generation competition received scores of entries, from which this year’s jury chose one winner and eight runners-up to be recognized in the May issue of the magazine. But there were far more than just nine good ideas in the bunch. The judges also selected 12 “notables”—entries that, for various reasons, fell short of the final selection, but that the jurors felt still deserved recognition. To that end, we’re posting one notable Next Generation proposal every Thursday for the next few months. (Click here to check out previous weeks’ selections.) In doing so, we hope to foster discussion that will help the teams refine their ideas, connect with like-minded readers, and perhaps even implement their projects in the real world.

This week: Samuel Formo’s No-Waste Pattern Design, for cutting garments without creating scraps of fabric, which typically get thrown away. How would it work? Read more…

This is the first big-ticket museum exhibition on the Turkish-Cypriot-born British fashion designer, whose use of novel materials, new technologies, and special-effects wizardry has made him arguably the only contemporary couturier that matters in the architecture and design world. In 2006 he caused a sartorial stir with a collection of morphing mech­anical dresses: jackets flung themselves open, skirts crept up over the knee, and one model’s dress disappeared entirely, thanks to an ingenious array of concealed motors, tiny pulleys, and invisible cables. (You can watch it all on YouTube.) A dress from his spring/summer 2008 collection (above) is adorned with more than 200 moving lasers. And now Chalayan is poised for more widespread influence. Last February, he was named the cre­­ative director of the global sportswear brand Puma—a remarkable perch for a designer who made his London debut 15 years ago with a collection of decomposed garments that he had buried in a friend’s backyard.

Hussein Chalayan: From Fashion and Back runs until May 17 at the Design Museum (Shad Thames, London; (44) 207-940-8790).

See also: Metropolis’s 2006 profile of Moritz Waldemeyer, the technical wizard behind Chalayan’s morphing dresses.