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Way Out
Lexon, the company responsible for the rubber radio, is now intent on keeping us on the right track. It’s introducing Frederic Lintz’s foldable and lightweight compass. His has a flip-open magnifier for reading maps, a mirror plate with an alignment hole, and almost fathomable directions for taking the magnetic-azimuth reading of an object and for finding your way even in the dark ($30).
MXYPLYZYK/125 Greenwich Avenue/212-989-4300
Sweet Slumber
Here’s a sleeping bag so perky you’ll want to keep it in plain sight, not hidden away. Tucked In, a California company, stitches it up in a crazy mélange of patterns – check, floral, gingham, stripes – yet somehow it all works. The zippered bag is cotton (the comfy filling, polyester), and it comes stuffed into a striped jersey-knit sack that doubles as a pillow case. Sleepovers have never looked quite this dandy ($100).
E.A.T. GIFTS/1062 Madison Avenue, near 80th Street/212-861-2544
Sexual Heeling
Though A. Marinelli, a Coral Gables shoe company, calls its new slides Hyacinth, they come in all sorts of unpurpley shades. There’s fuchsia, petrol, OJ, turquoise, and lime. But it’s not just the hot colors that sets these slides apart from the hundred others around: The see-through soft-latex uppers match the polymer soles, and the result is sexy-looking feet ($65).
ERIC SHOES/1333 Third Avenue, near 76th Street/212-288-8250
Sack It to Me
Frenchman Frédéric Périgot’s crisply modern little shop near the Louvre is filled with all manner of storage solutions for closets, bathrooms, laundries, and such. Recently, however, Périgot has turned his organizational talents to travel and come up with these awesome nylon travel bags. Underwear and chaussettes (socks) go into one – each with its own zippered compartment – bras and culottes (tights) go into the other. For speedy unpacking, the bags have a nylon strap, which means you can hang them up in your hotel closet when you get to where you’re going. Périgot’s tie-up sacks for packing shoes and T-shirts are simpler but graphically fun. (From $10 for the shoe bags to $30 for the chaussette one.)
AD HOC SOFTWARES/410 West Broadway/212-925-2652
FLIGHT 001/96 Greenwich Avenue/212-691-1001
Forever Blowing Bubbles
The year 2000 finds Steuben – that venerable house of fabulous crystal – going both forward and backward in time. It has just moved into a sleek new light-filled space topped by a soaring 23-foot ceiling designed by Ralph Appelbaum – and it has reintroduced some splendid vintage stemware. One example: the champagne Trumpet, introduced in 1935, before the dominance of the flute. Today its flared bowl is just the thing for martinis or New York’s newer love, Cosmopolitans. Each glass is handblown and -formed; Steuben’s signature trapped-air teardrop sparkles in the base ($600 a pair).
STEUBEN/667 Madison Avenue, at 61st Street/212-752-1441
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