Obs 133: Rimowa, Kraftwerk and the end of European obscurity
Plus enough furniture to sink the Edmund Fitzgerald herself (RIP)
Late Shabbat Shalom—so much FURNITURE this week, that’s below, but first a little bit of:
HOUSEKEEPING:
My confessional essay for the i-D—Substack collab project is live; covering my living in France a couple months a year for the past few years—and why. Here’s the link, here’s their IG post linking to it, here’s the song that plays in my head whenever I read or hear the word “confession.”
Thank you to Thom, the Substack team, my editor Ross… and Centre Recollets. Hope you like essay.
Those interested in health and muscles (and running), my dark wellness newsletter SNAKE SUPER HEALTH published a podcast the other day about Daniel Lieberman’s book Exercised (it’s good), a news index post, and has a fat essay coming next week.
They’re getting rid of Ned Smyth’s Upper Room (the big chess board) in Battery Park City—disgrace. One of the livelier and more charming pieces of design/public art in the city.
Gotta save Dallas City Hall. Imagine wanting to not keep this building around forever. I don’t have words for this building except that it’s an unalloyed masterpiece. There just aren’t shapes like this in the real world.
Thank you everyone for buying SNAKE hats. If you have bought one, they are waiting for the mailman. If you are a paid subscriber, buy them here. Thanks.
November Retail Corner: HIKERS
Buy old, buy new
I wrote a story maybe five years ago about vintage IKEA being back; in the past month I’ve heard more about vintage IKEA than at any other time during the pandemic. Design moves SLOWLY. Too slow? Or slow enough for normal people? Well… there’s a Vilbert chair on Dibs right now for a couple large, and a rip-off by some guy on Etsy for significantly less. Be early, be late, your call.
Second. This newsletter used to cover clothes—with alacrity—and I’m dipping my toe back in. I’ve been looking for a zero-drop hiker since Labor Day and haven’t found anything. There are none. (A drop is how much higher the heel is than the toe.) The best I’ve found are some Obozes with an 8mm drop (a link to the lows; I prefer the high versions more) and the Merrell Chameleon (a link to the lows; superior over the highs). If you ask me I’d get some Zamberlans (they’re Italian) but they have a 12 or so mm drop, which to me and my trained/nude feet is like wearing a Danish klomp (look it up) or the sort of high heels that people wear on Hallowe’en that have fish in them. What if they just put goretex on the Capezios in the Start Me Up video? Who would complain. There is nothing. ANyways, I like the ones in the pic above. Kind of a low drop. Dhanks to my g Tobin for alerting me to them. Merrell is not that obscure but this colorway is nowhere.
Obs 133: Florian Schneider
The Kraftwerk ledge sells his crap
This Rimowa suitcase that belonged to Florian Schneider (RIP) of Kraftwerk, it ends Wednesday and is at $25 now. It’s is a marvel of… if not design, simplicity; it’s one of the company’s earlier/eternal models, a true briefcase… flirting with industrial with the exposed gears, but smoother than that… brilliant. There’s the old logo—pre-LMVH buyout, as explained first in BBSP—but also some blue, colors.. and extras. The suitcase itself feels like the definitive non-musical piece from the auction. It’s in line, temporally and aesthetically, with a number of other German industrial products from that era: USM Haller, Braun, and, of course, Kraftwerk.
About the band… they rarely get written about these days, and certainly not in depth, which is a shame since they’re so towering… so integral to just about half of music now—and they are still around. But then, whats to say? One might better spend their time digging around the apocrypha. There’s a set of videos like the ones below, of Florian and Ralf listening to/watching techno music, spec. Detroit techno. Here’s one:
Genius. James, friend of Snake, took it. And this:
The latter comes off, when on mute, like a Terrence Malick edit. There are also like a dozen BBC docs on them too: this one, this one, this one… so many. They get it.
I don’t want to compare an artist to a suitcase, and so it’s instead worth looking at the rise of Rimowa, and how recent… the 180 was. Jonah and Erin rightly point out in the link above the framing around the LVMH buyout. Before this, the suitcase was, for years, an obscure unnameable thing… an elite piece one might see at airports: everywhere, to be sure, and not as obscure as found footage of Florian watching Kevin Saunderson, but not… everywhere everywhere. You’d catch one Rimowa now and then if you were flying: dinged up, metallic, smooth wheels, covered in stickers. Like USM, it was mostly an unnameable, vague signifier of… advanced Euro taste…
So what changed? Well, the buyout, and stuff can’t just be continental anymore. European aesthetics… are more visible. This is a gross oversimplification, but it’s true. The leverage this post…industrial aesthetic has, on luggage, also can’t be overstated. All of those new iPad luggage D2C companies (Away, the rest of them) really just functioned as smoothed-out, cheaper Rimowa clones.
And this is to say nothing of their collaborations, which might be the most… explicit example of leveraging a name that there is. In the past little while: Fendi, Dior, Supreme, Bape, which is the best one I think, Anti Social Social Club, Off White… many I am forgetting. It’s evolved things so that in 2025, Rimowa is several different things, and so the brand, for a certain type of overly vigilant person with a computer, may be played out. But there’s also not shit out there (except Pelican cases) to take its place.
Back to the auction: not much furniture here; though some was covered in last week’s letter. The best items are the ones closest to Schneider—imagine owning one of his woodwinds or his TR-606. Chills. But there are also a couple of BRNO-ish chairs (so-named as it recalls that model by Mies van der Rohe), and a couple of surprisingly chill/designed tables, and a swath of fascinating and elegant clothing. My favorite table I’d describe as resembling something someone from Kraftwerk would own. Those are addressed after the jump, along with furniture, furniture, furniture... FURNITURE.
Keep reading for 100 curated pieces of design. Specifically, chairs, sofas, settees, chairs, lamps, credenzas, bar stools, dinnerware, storage, from France, Italy, UK, Bavaria, America, Milan, northern Quebec, Europe, with auctions originating in LA, New York, Florida, Chicago, New Jersey, Bavaria, and items design comprising the years 1845 until 2016, including French, Italian, Norse and American mid-mod, Nouveau, arts and crafts, 1920, Deco and other styles.
More specific information on what’s on the block this week. Rare Aalto pieces, a dozen odd Sottsass lots (holiday stuff, a table mirror), a controversial piece of Wendell Castle furniture, a great LC2 ripoff chair, and theorizing on why:
Florida is the best place in the world to buy second-hand furniture.
Antonio Citterio is a man of many hats and styles.
No one ever makes furniture in red and one other color.
Giotto Stoppino has mastered the credenza (and has a taste for blood).
The best hanging lamp I’ve ever seen.
The best auction this week (acute)… it is near New York.
And the best house in the Northeast (general)—it is accessible and has canon and sleeper picks.
