Salt House Collateral

Salt House is one of our favorite places to celebrate in the city. We like to sit upstairs, order cocktails and a shellfish platter to share, and watch everyone talking down below. Their design details are charming.

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Hand-stamped coasters cut from corrugated cardboard.

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Vintage playing cards used as coat-check numbers.

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Seafood shipping tags as business cards.

I love it when businesses find clever ways to distinguish themselves without impacting the bottom line adversely. Smart.

Mighty Closet: Mai Le, Outfit 5

Whoops. Future posting snafu — sorry if you were looking for this on Friday. Now without further ado:

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Ka-POW! That that, little black dresses.

This is Mai’s cocktail dress, the kind of thing she’d wear as a wedding guest. It’s a Diane von Furstenberg column dress, which she picked up at a vintage store on Divisadero.

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Her shoes are certifiable. They’re by Walter Steigler, and I’m still trying to figure out the physics involved. The downside is the pain, the upside is that Mai never has to carry around a compact when she wants to check her lipstick.

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Mai looks so badass in this picture. We should have posed her with a baseball bat beating down an intruder. Hindsight.

Anyway, it’s cold at night in San Francisco, so every dress needs a layering piece. This denim jacket is Junya Watanabe for Comme des Garcons.

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The jacket has so much detail, stitch patterns, shoulder slits, but the printed lining is particularly fun. Mai’s Caveman hammered ring from is from Fancy Jewels, and her square ring is from a trip to Mexico City.

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Another piece that’s even cooler from behind. Mai is the master of walking away from you.

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She picked up this two-finger ring in Bangkok. It’s the kind of accessory that elevates the most boring outfit. Not that Mai has ever had that problem.

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Thanks for letting us into your closet Mai! You have me thinking very differently about shoes, my friend.

Broad Summit: Feisty Elle Favors

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This is the adorable Leslie Yang of Feisty Elle, a San Francisco accessories shop I fell for when I was hunting down Mighty Goods posts.

A few months after posting her Red Dahlia Earrings, I ran into Leslie at the Renegade Craft Fair and told her I was planning the Broad Summit. I asked if she’d like to include her work in the gift bags, and gave her my mailing address. A few months later a gorgeous package showed up at the office.

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Leslie had made wooden, laser-cut versions of her earrings, painted them gold, and used thin black elastic to secure them to craft paper boxes. The result was so chic, don’t you think? I think they’d make great packages for wedding favors, and I’ve had mine propped up on my desk since it arrived.

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The packaging was so cool, we used them as turn-down favors at the retreat, and several of the girls even wore their earrings the next day, which is the ultimate endorsement.

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Go Leslie! Thanks so much for the lovelies.

Broad Summit Prints

One of the happiest parts of organizing the retreat was working with Eric Rewitzer of 3 Fish Studios. Eric and his wife Annie Galvin (who is also an artist) are friends I met through Evany years ago.

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Eric made us these lovely limited edition linocut prints to commemorate the weekend, and took a few photos of the process for me.

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California iconography is a running theme for 3 Fish Studios:

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(Update: Oops. My original upload contained some similar work by Annie, these are Eric’s prints.)

When I told Eric we were staying in a redwood forest, he already had a few photos of redwoods he’d taken as inspiration. He even surprised us by hand coloring the prints.

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They were so lovely, we decided to use them as favors instead of adding them to the gift bag. If you’d like to learn to make your own and you’re near the Bay Area, 3 Fish Studios offers linocut printmaking classes pretty regularly, so drop them a note and they’ll notify you when space opens up. Thanks again, Eric!