The Ray, the first eco-friendly watch

TooLate watches

is it TooLate? Is it? Never! This Italian-made watch has a beautiful minimal design, comes in lots of colors, is water proof and goes for less than $30. Hot damn! 10,000 of them were sold in the first ten days after their release and half a million in it’s first year of distribution. Apparently the Italians are wearing two or three of them together as part of some bizarre fashion clique. Wonder if the rest of the world will catch on?

Chairman Mao waving arm watch

There’s ethnic tat, and there’s ethnic tat. On your first round-the-world trip, you’ll buy up the standard drapes, masks, bongs, drums, and so on. You’ll come back the proud bearer of rare and previously unseen items, before realising the exact same products are being sold in your local fairtrade shop. So on your next trip you’ll branch out a bit, and scoop up some lotions and spices you’re sure the organic market in town doesn’t sell. But it’s only when you mature to a higher level of foresight and gall that you’ll chance upon the pinnacle of ethnic tat: the Chairman Mao watch. On the last check it was still only available in China (or via mail order, but who wants that?), and therefore guarantees a genuine look of surprise and admiration upon unpacking your bags, for you must have traversed the mystical heights of the Himalayas and dodged the all-seeing eyes of the Communist Party to bring something of the other world back with you.

Tokyo Flash unleash their latest time keepers

We have featured Tokyo Flash watches before but they recently launched a new generation of time keepers, which are innovative and ahead of its time [pun intended]. The first new watch is the Rogue, which has a vivid green LED light guide that presents the time through a labyrinth of connecting LCD blocks. The outer ring of small dots represents minutes, with every fifth dot being slightly smaller to distinguish five minute groups. Read more

eVaro 3-wheel electric vehicle

This year’s SEMA show in Las Vegas was home to several electric vehicles, yet the eVaro seems to have garnered the most attention, boasting zero carbon emissions for 90 per cent of the time spent on the road and an impressive mpg of 275. Read more

American eco-fashion visionaries

Pratt Manhattan Gallery, in a show guest curated by Francesca Granata (Parsons School for Design Lecturer) and Sarah Scaturro (adjunct instructor for Fashion Institute of Technology), takes a look at American eco-fashion visionaries — such as Alabama Chanin [above], Uluru, Loomstate, and others. Read more

Eco skyscraper design in Philadelphia

Philadelphia’s 58-floor Comcast building has been awarded the Gold Certification for LEED-CS (core and shell). The obelisk-formed building, which sits right above the Suburban railway station, boasts high performance glass and sunscreens, which helps keep out 60 per cent of the sun’s heat and contains 70 per cent of the site’s available light. The building also boasts high-efficiency water utilities, allowing for 40 per cent less of water consumption than a traditional office building. The building, Gold certified LEED by the architect Robert A.M. Stern, is one of the first, but certainly not the last, skyscraper to get certified.