One of the pleasures of living in a city like New York is the wealth of creativity and creative venues at ones fingertips. Poking around the phenomenal gift shop of the Museum of Arts & Design recently, I came across the work of Janete Zamboni, an Italian jewelry and couture accessories designer. MAD has some of the best contemporary design product around. Functional or luxurious, there is a wide array of objects fashioned by the hands of artists and craftspeople from around the world. Zamboni’s work – even amongst the treasures surrounding it – stands out for its ethereal quality. Lustrous pearls and sizable cubic zirconia suspended in black net have a lightness of being while bestowing a powerful impact. These gleaming, inaccessible gems peeking through net at once feminine and demure yet unapproachably industrial, are intriguing. They create a statement for their beauty and their originality.
Since 2007, when fashion designer and philanthropist Donna Karan founded the Urban Zen Foundation, an inspiringly beautiful holiday market appears at 705 Greenwich Street in lower Manhattan. Each year, Karan creates a marketplace that combines humanitarianism with consumerism, promoting shopping with a purpose. The Foundation is dedicated to three initiatives: preservation of culture (past); bringing mind, body and spirit to healthcare (present); education (future.) The opening last night featured more than 40 artisans from countries as diverse as Colombia, Kyrgyzstan, India, South Africa and Mexico, artisans that exhibit at the International Folk Art Market in the Southwest each summer. The space is the perfect venue in which to display fabrics and objects, photographs and fashion in such a way that they - and you - feel instantly at home.
Of particular beauty were the feather light shrugs, coats and jackets of Farzana Sharshenbieva from Kyrgyzstan; the magnificently, finely tie dyed bandhani silk scarves of Gujarati Abduljabbar Khatri; the sensuous Zulu pots of Jabulile Nala whose mother is considered a national treasure. I adored the heavy, indigo dyed raw cotton jackets of Laotian Boukhong Signavong that greet you as you enter this magical space.
There is nothing more healing, nothing more inspiring, nothing more warming than to be in the presence of passionate artisans who draw beauty from their souls to share it with others. It was hard to leave Urban Zen last night, so hard, in fact, that I shall return tomorrow."
["post_title"]=>
string(42) "Urban Zen Promotes Shopping With A Purpose"
["post_excerpt"]=>
string(0) ""
["post_status"]=>
string(7) "publish"
["comment_status"]=>
string(4) "open"
["ping_status"]=>
string(4) "open"
["post_password"]=>
string(0) ""
["post_name"]=>
string(42) "urban-zen-promotes-shopping-with-a-purpose"
["to_ping"]=>
string(0) ""
["pinged"]=>
string(0) ""
["post_modified"]=>
string(19) "2018-12-07 17:03:53"
["post_modified_gmt"]=>
string(19) "2018-12-07 22:03:53"
["post_content_filtered"]=>
string(0) ""
["post_parent"]=>
int(0)
["guid"]=>
string(31) "http://lisalindblad.com/?p=8769"
["menu_order"]=>
int(0)
["post_type"]=>
string(4) "post"
["post_mime_type"]=>
string(0) ""
["comment_count"]=>
string(1) "0"
["filter"]=>
string(3) "raw"
}
}