March 16, 2020
3 Leading North American Design Stores Highlight Their Favorite Products
And the local talents behind them.
Design stores are eclectic microcosms of local creative scenes, not to mention broader economic and cultural conditions in their host cities and neighborhoods. (Note, for example, the closures of popular design outposts like The Conran Shop and Moss in New York City, though tchotchke shops inexplicably persist in high-rent areas.) But they also function as critical nodes in the global circulation of ideas through stock, events, collaborations, and more. Here we highlight three shops in as many North American metropolises—Inform Interiors in Vancouver, MARCH in San Francisco, and Artelinea in Mexico City—whose owners have curated some of their favorite products.
STORE: Artelinea
LOCATION: Mexico City
OWNERS: Emilio Cabrero (pictured), Andrea Cesarman, and Marco Coello
ABOUT: The Blend Design concept store long held court in Mexico City’s upscale Polanco district before shuttering last year. Now the team behind it has opened Artelinea, which continues the mission of broadcasting Mexico’s twin traditions of craft and Modernism.
STORE: Inform Interiors
LOCATION: Vancouver
OWNER: Nancy Bendtsen
ABOUT: “Because Vancouver is such a young city, we don’t have a long history of design and manufacturing,” notes Nancy Bendtsen of Inform. Thankfully, her Gastown outpost leverages Vancouver’s global reach to bring international events, products, and workshops to local designers.
STORE: MARCH
LOCATION: San Francisco
OWNER: Sam Hamilton
ABOUT: Design is difficult to break into—especially in an expensive, competitive city like San Francisco—but support can be found at MARCH in Pacific Heights, where owner Sam Hamilton relishes “the process of discovering small artisans at their start and collaborating to refine their vision.”
Click through the slideshow to see Cabrero, Bendtsen, and Hamilton’s picks.
You may also enjoy “Close Ties: Windy Chien Pushes the Boundaries of Knot-making.”
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