Last week I was invited to preview the MoMA Store's Fall/ Winter collection. Like their current Spring/ Summer collection, the products they showed were smart, playful, and only vaguely articulated the season. The buyers seemed to be particularly into monochromatic colors, geometric patterns, and use of materials that pushes the boundary of manufacturing, in a few cases subverting accepted material applications. More after the jump. JR

Naoto Fukasawa's restrained chair uses bare aluminum and washed-out wood to channel a snowy day at the beach.



While I don't usually write about jewelry, these vegetal silk and silicone pieces by Tzuri Gueta were impossible to ignore. The designer pushed molten silicone through woven silk tubes, where it cooled into those wonderful growths. I loved how the necklace's complexity was unforced, and resulted from such a simple action.



This Stone Chrystal stool/ table by Marcel Wanders encapsulated the feeling of the collection more than any other single piece. Essentially a large glass vase turned upside-down, the stool's structural strength seemed to come from the triangles embossed on its surface, which also bent light and translated anything viewed through the stool into an impromptu pattern. While it's a stretch to call the piece seasonal, the glass could have been carved from a block of ice, and it could be compelling (or horrible) if stuffed with a tangle of Christmas lights.

Unbeknownst to me, Paola Antonelli, director of MoMA's design department and a wonderful design thinker, reviews every product that's carried by the design store. As one of the buyers told me, the MoMA store isn't really a museum shop; products are design to be sold, so carrying them as a retailer is often more true to their narrative than displaying them in a gallery.