(text courtesy of Julie V. Iovine) British architect John Pawson was in town recently, conferring with a client about their new apartment in one of Richard Meier's Perry Street towers and supporting another whose film was premiering at the Museum of Modern Art. He took time out for a coffee to talk about the upcoming show of his work at the London Design Museum opening on September 22, as well as his new home for the museum--announced last month--within the repurposed Commonwealth Institute, aka the Parabola Building, a swoopy 1962 white elephant designed by RMJM in West London. (Also going on the site is a controversial Rem Koolhaas-designed apartment building.)

Pawson. (JVIovine)

Pawson beat out a list that included British familiars David Chipperfield, Haworth Tompkins, Caruso St. John Architects, Stanton Williams, Tony Fretton, and the Dutch firm Claus En Kaan Architecten. Director Deyan Sudjic, the author of several books on Pawson and a close friend (the architecture circle in the UK is pretty small and tight) said that in choosing Pawson he was sure to have an architect "who will bring out the best of this remarkable building."

Pawson has been given the job of transforming the "Parabola Building" into the new home of the London Design Museum. (Courtesy LDM)

From Pawson's description, the show Plain Space promises to be an architect's architecture show that's not academic, focusing on materials--no surprise considering the man favors four-inch-thick marble slabs for his kitchen counter and 45-foot single-plank floorboards in the parlor--and process. Plain Space will avoid show and tell through models and pre-occupancy photography in favor of a more immersive experience. "At my age, I had to ask myself, Why an exhibition now?" said Pawson. "Ten years ago, the reasons would have been more obvious, now it's more like, What's the point? For me, the answer was to make it something people will learn from, to make it something about space, to make it feel like you are walking into architecture, and to make it get across how architecture gets done."

The Novy Dvur Monastery. (Richard Davies)

Back in the day arms dealer and all around rich sketchy art lover Adnan Khashoggi was the king of bling.    Hookers came and went, nations were destroyed and Texas interior "artist" Michael Reese designed  insane private jets.

Philippe Petit was a true radical.  An artist.  He still looks great!  

While in Tokyo I went to Chinzanzo gardens for a traditional BBQ lunch cooked on a Lava rock.    Unfortunately, the food was a bit bland, but the gardens and Pagoda were spectacular.   It rained for a few minutes and cleared the air which was a nice break from the heat.

By Emilie Gouband for ArtInfo France

PARIS-- After five years of renovations, the house that Jean Cocteau bought with the French actor Jean Marais in 1947 in Milly-la-Forêt, about 30 miles south of Paris, is finally open to the public. Having lived there for the last 17 years of his life with his companion, Edouard Dermit, the writer and director worked on some of his greatest projects under its roof, including the film "Le Testament d'Orphée" and the poem "Le Requiem."

In his book of autobiographical sketches and reflections, "La Difficulté de l'Etre" ("The Difficulty of Being"), Cocteau described this house as a refuge: "It gives me an example of the absurd and wonderful stubbornness of plants. Here, I find memories of previous countrysides where I dreamed of Paris, just as later, in Paris, I dreamed of fleeing elsewhere. The sun and the water decorate the walls of my room with their false moving marble. Spring rejoices everywhere." After extensive renovations, the property now offers a unique exhibition space as well as re-creations of the rooms in which Cocteau lived.

The ground floor serves as an introduction to Cocteau with an illustrated biography, video images of his self-portraits, drawings, illustrations, and various photographs of the artist in his house with Dermit and his friends. Also on this level, the grand salon has been kept intact, featuring Christian Bérard's large-scale painting "Oedipe et le Sphinx Jouant aux Cartes" ("Oedipus and the Sphinx Playing Cards"), inspired by Cocteau's play "La Machine Infernale," above the black leather sofa.

On the second floor, Cocteau's study and bedroom have been re-created so accurately that it feels as if he had just gotten up and left the room. From wall coverings and picture frames to personal touches -- boxes of pencils and a bulletin board cluttered with tacked-up photos -- these rooms give a vivid sense of his daily life.

Nearby on the same floor are two small rooms with an eclectic assortment of original drawings by Proust, Chaplin, Satie, and Picasso. There are also two exhibition spaces. The first, devoted to temporary exhibits that will change on an annual basis, currently displays a chronological overview of Cocteau's non-literary work, while the second presents portraits of the poet by artists such as Man Ray, Bernard Buffet, Modigliani, and Warhol.

The hall has been transformed into a projection room where the public can watch Cocteau's films, including "La Belle et la Bête" (Beauty and the Beast)(1946), "Les Parents Terribles" (1948), and "Le Testament d'Orphée" (1960), in addition to various films made about Cocteau.

Outside, the sculpture garden still features one of the busts from the set of "La Belle et la Bête." And the pleasures of the countryside that drew Cocteau to this place can be found in the orchard and woods, where he used to stroll with his dog. Photograph by Erica Lennard and photo of Cocteau in front of his house July 1963 courtesy of Cocteau Committee.

Summer beach fun.   Sick of dirty city beaches? If  you want a clean beach with a gorgeous pool that takes reservations and is open to the public try the Annenberg.    Don't tell anyone.   The week is better.   So fun.

Picture puzzles.  Dream invasions.  Questioning memories and realities and interpreting layers of time and space perception, Chris Nolan gets it all together in a complex labyrinth you can't take your eyes off of.    If you have not seen Inception , go see it.    Loved Nolan's vision in Memento (based on a short story by his brother).   His new film which he wrote and directed  is brilliant. 

I didn't get to see the installation in person, but the work is elegantly complex and delicately decadent at the same time. Here is the video.

A room with a view.

I love this room at the Mori Museum.    Spectacular view and the exhibit is cool too.

Happoen Garden is a traditional garden in northern Tokyo where they serve tea and have weddings.   There gardens are spectacular and the KOI fish are ginormous...!

  I don't know if I will be wearing these out, but they are so fun, whimsical and sculptural.    

Critically acclaimed designer Marloes ten Bhömer produces shoes that are both provocative and otherworldly. Her work fuses artistic and technological experiment in order to discover shoes anew. Ten Bhömer's work has been exhibited in museums and galleries internationally and she gives lectures about her work worldwide. She takes on challenging commissions from galleries and private clients.  (text courtesy of Marloes ten Bhomer)

"If the key commandment of glamorous, upscale shoe design for women is to amplify and exaggerate the curves of the human foot, ten Bhömer's shoes are riotous and sensuous sinners" Shumon Basar, design and architecture 

critic.

 

Marloes site

EDWARD CELLA:
DANCING ABOUT ARCHITECTURE
 
By Shana Nys Dambrot
Image by Mark Harrington 2009
 
Edward Cella Art+Architecture is more than an art gallery - it's an exhibition program with a mission.  Over the past ten-plus years, first in Santa Barbara and on LA's Miracle Mile since 2009, the gallery's expansive activities have explored the ages-old dialogue between fine art and architecture with a sophisticated and nuanced series of exhibitions, artist grants, and public forums.  Reflecting a modern taste for interdisciplinary boundary-blurring, specifically the extensive overlapping connections and resonances between painting, drawing and modern architecture, ECAA is not an advocate of any particular aesthetic style.  Rather its focus is on illuminating the character of the creative process - the lens of Cella's personal curatorial, scholarly vision.

Abstraction's natural inhabitation of spatial, structural elements of form, its natural facility for depicting the spaces inside and between objects, makes it a natural idiomatic counterpart to the psychologically compelling quality of architectural renderings; the history of mutual influences, as well as tension between the practices of artists and builders, is certainly a story worth telling. In terms of what gallery-goers are likely to encounter, ECAA remains essentially a painting and drawing gallery - though there is a hefty presence of "alternative-process" photographers in the program; and despite its predilection for minimalism and abstraction, the work of more than a few fine figurative painters adds considerably to its depth.
A recent exhibition of meditative, elegant and quirky abstract geometrical watercolors by the renowned architect Frederick Fisher is a perfect exemplar of the ECAA mission.  A delightful exhibition in its own right, the extensive series of intimate color sketches revealed a great deal about the way Fisher plays with space and mass, theorizing by hand, if you will, as he seeks a clearing, a balance, a certain harmony-almost like working on a puzzle. Carl Jung once wrote, "Often the hands will solve a mystery that the intellect has struggled with in vain," and it's exactly that kind of process made visible that is the goal and privilege of ECAA.

The current exhibition of large-scale abstract paintings, Depth of Field by Mark Harrington (who lives and works in Bavaria, also underscoring ECAA's international scope) presents a very different exhibition experience; however, the artist's articulated interest in optical and quasi-spatial experience of the receding picture plane makes both a compelling topic of abstract painting, and an ideal overlap with the architect's creation and encapsulation of empty interior spaces waiting to be fulfilled by encounters with sentient, mobile individuals.

 
 Mark Harrington: Star Spangled Odyssey, 2009
 
Other artists and architects represented in the gallery's holdings, whose work spans the last century, help expound on the asymmetrical balance at ECAA. From Ed Ruscha'sown well-documented enchantment with LA buildings, (notably, Standard Oil and Sunset Strip edifices), not to mention his famous, ongoing collaborations with Frank Gehry - also represented in the ECAA stable; to Lucas Reiner's urban landscapes depicting the contortion and DIY vernaculars that pop up in response to the blunt instruments of committee-ordered, aesthetically analgesic, neglectful civic maintenance. From Lee Freiedlander's photo-based images poetically interpreting the experience of inside places and personal, creative spaces; to Wayne Thiebaud's flirtations with abstractions, expressing the effects of distance, perspective, and motion in the experience of a city - ECAA examines the architecture/art discourse from every angle. Deconstructivist icon Peter Eisenman; the progressive, interdisciplinary practices of Carlos Diniz, Ball Nogues Studio and Lead Pencil Studio; rarely seen personal works of titans like Le Corbusier, Neutra, Schindler whose efforts have inspired not only future architects, but also painters, photographers, scholars, and aficionados for generations - all of these elements and many more of equal stature give ECAA a flavor not unlike what a campus gallery at the Bauhaus might have had-expressing the free dialogue between equal branches of artistic endeavor, deliberated housed under one roof.
 
Philip Johnson has said that, "All architecture is shelter, all great architecture is the design of spaces that contains cuddles, exalts, or stimulates the persons in that space," and Constantin Brancusi called architecture "inhabited sculpture." But when it comes to ECAA, it's fittingly the works of Frank Stella that best express the open-ended experiment underway on its walls: "Architecture can't fully represent the chaos and turmoil that are part of the human personality, but you need to put some that turmoil into the architecture, or it isn't real."

I don't know if I would eat there, but I love sitting with a tea watching the people at Clifton's Cafeteria downtown.    What a relic.    Places like this barely exist anymore.    Here is the story:    In 1935 Clifford Clinton purchased the lease of the former Boos Brothers Cafeteria and began to transform the dowdy interior into an imaginary wonderland rivaled only by his other cafeteria, the legendary Clifton's "Pacific Seas."

As a youth, Clifford spent his summers in the Santa Cruz mountains among the coastal redwoods, not far from the famous Brookdale Lodge. This mountain feeling was the theme Clifford wanted for his new location. Working with rock sculptor Francois Scotti, Clifford created a 20ft. waterfall cascading into a quiet stream that meanders through the dining room. Redwood trees were used to conceal steel columns and a renowned L.A. muralist, Einar Petersen, created a life size forest on canvas covering one wall. A Little Chapel (click link to hear "The Parable of the Redwoods") perched high amongst the crags fulfilled Clifford's desire to feed the soul as well as the body of depression weary Angelinos.   Text courtesy of Cliftons.

Visit Cliftoncafeteria.com

One of the cutest new hotels in downtown NYC.    Affordable as far as cool hotels go.

PHONE: 212.587.7000 RESERVATIONS: 888.58SMYTH 85 WEST BROADWAY NEW YORK, NY 10007

I am totally loving German photographer Frank Breuer right now.    His minimal landscapes of factories and buildings remind me of the Becher's static images, devoid of human figures as portraits concept.  Frank is young, born in the sixties, but his images have that "ruhrgebeit" industrial style of Gursky, the Bechers, Ruff and other Koln-Dusseldorf based photographers. (Ruhrgebeit is an urban area in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany)  

   Formally, Breuer's work relates to these European and American antecedents. He has produced Warehouses and Logos, an ongoing series of color work, whilst traveling in his car across Germany, The Netherlands, Belgium and France. His classically composed photographs reflect the impersonal uniformity of the subject matter, and reveal how commercial globalization has altered the European landscape. Pre-fabricated warehouses, with company names on their exterior, appear in transitory spaces on the outskirts of towns close to airports and other transport hubs. The logos are huge sculptural signs designed to be seen from afar along motorways: Marlboro, McDonald's, Mercedes, Mitsubishi; ubiquitous structures that are symbols of corporate internationalization. In his work, Breuer dramatically reduces the forbidding scale to more intimate proportions.    Camilla Jackson courtesy of the Goethe Institute.

I am bananas for this on site installation by the Whitney Museum's Downtown Building Project.

Art is by the team of Wade Guyton and Kelley Walker.
Right under the new Highline. 
Very cool.

I love the Thompson hotels.   Here is a peak at the new hotel located on New York's Lower East Side.

Love these hand cast concrete planters by Kelly Lamb  Here is some info on the artist from her website.

Kelly Lamb
Kelly lamb is a multi-media Artist/Designer, who after 15 years of living in New
York City has moved to sunny Los Angeles. Kelly's product designs are being
represented by Areaware in NYC. Kelly has designed interiors for Malo
restaurant in Los Angles, the Echo nightclub LA, and has done interiors in NYC
as well as upstate NY. She has had two solo exhibitions in NYC and has been
included in numerous international shows and museum installations, including
the Andrea Rosen Gallery, NY, The Spencer Brownstone Gallery, NY , The New
Museum, NY, Agnes B., Paris, Beaux Arts, Paris, Art Basel, Switzerland/ Miami,
and the Armory Show, NY. Her work has received reviews in Art News, Flash
Art, The New Yorker, Time Out, and Art Net. Kelly has designed and produced
artist's campaigns with corporations such as, Salvatore Ferragamo, and Coke
Cola. Lamb's photographs have also been featured in numerous publications
including the New York Times, Artforum, W, and Surface Magazine. Lamb has
received a Bessie award and a Tiffany Grant as part of a collaborative Art group
called the B-Team. Kelly Lamb grew up in Marblehead Massachusetts and
graduated from Bennington College.graduated from Bennington College.

"I don't want to be interesting. I want to be good."    You are great- awesome in fact!!

--Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

Instituto Cultural Inhotim is located just outside Brumadinho, Brazil.     Definitely off the beaten path.  Who would have thought one of the most exciting new collections in the world be so isolated.    But if you build it they will come.   Apparently, they are reporting around 1400 visitors a week.   The institute has been around since 2004 but didn't gain international attention until this year when Paz commissioned hi profile American artists like Doug Aitken to make site specific pieces .   Created and founded by  Brazilian business man and mining magnate Bernardo Paz.    The lush landscape covering 178 acres and featuring 3500 plant species only intensifies  the setting and beauty by landscape architect Roberto Burle Marx.    Curated by powerhouse curator Allan Schwartzman.

Works from Doug Aitken, Mathew Barney, Chris Burden, Edgard de Souza, Jorge Macchi, Rivane Neuenschwander, Valeska Soares, Yahoi Kusama, and Janet Cardiff & George Bures Miller, Olafur Eliasson are all on display.   Architecturally magnificent is the Adriana Varejao pavilion.

 Open to the public.   If you want to check it out plan on a few days and stay in Belo Horizont

Stumbled upon the graffiti ridden San Antonio Dam the other day.  So rad.   I thought it would make an excellent skate spot and an awesome location for a photo shoot.  The combination of 1950's urban structure with pristine nature and the marsh was incredible.   Very GATTICA.  Pretty deserted luckily.

Downtown isn't just for the artwalk.    The Historic Downtown Los Angeles' theater district is full of history.

All information from Broadway Theater Tours, please visit their site on the many more historic theaters and their amazing past. 


"Broadway in the early part of the century was a far different place, and was the place to go see a vaudeville show, or one of those newfangled movies at a nickelodeon. When Sid Grauman opened his first Los Angeles movie palace there in 1918 - The Million Dollar Theater - the Broadway theater district had arrived. The area would be the center for movieland's World Premieres for the next decade. Grauman can also bear some of the blame for the decline of the area. Filmdom's emphasis shifted to Hollywood when he built the Egyptian (1922) and the Chinese (1927) Theaters on Hollywood Boulevard. After all, it was much easier to get there from Los Feliz, Beverly Hills, or Hancock Park - home to film's aristocrats."


Renamed "The Palace" in 1926 when the Orpheum vaudeville company built itself a grander home up the street, this building opened June 6, 1911 and has the distinction of being the oldest remaining Orpheum theater in the United States. 630 South Broadway. Still operating.


















































The Million Dollar Theater was built by legendary showman Sid Grauman as a film theater and not as a vaudeville venue. The theater opened on February 1, 1918.
























































The Tower Theater opened October, 1927 with the silent film The Gingham Girl . This was the first Broadway theater equipped to show talking pictures, and as such, was the site for the World Premiere of the first "all-talking" picture, Warner's 1927 The Jazz Singer. 802 South Broadway. Closed and unoccupied.

If you are in Mumbai, hop a quick flight to Ahmedabad to check out some beautiful architectural sites.    This building (Textile) was designed by Le Corbusier in 1951.  There are also two private homes, Shodan Villa and Sarabhai which is open to the public.    "Corb" as all my architect friends used to call him in college,  believed "A house is a machine for living in".      This is one of my favorites.

Vegas might be the biggest growing urban city in America but it's still really a cowboy Podunk town to me.   I was greeted at the LV international airport by this billboard.  Nothing like a little equal opportunity.    I was amused and terrified.  

One of my favorite restaurants downtown is Bottega Louie.  Romantic and airy with a New York feel.  This huge room has a cafe, Italian restaurant and wonderful food and atmosphere.  My favorite is the Carpaccio.  The brick oven pizza is also delish.  Downtown hipsters co mingle with business men and artists.   
700 South Grand Avenue Los Angeles, CA 90017 http://www.bottegalouie.com

I love Kelly Wearstler's design style.    Love the hotels, the houses, the energy, the balance of family, the whole package.   She's awesome.

I adore this film by Elio Petri.   The Tenth Victim stars a sultry Ursula Andress and the always elegant Marcello Mastroianni.   Nothing like shooting a victim with a bullet bra.  You gotta love crime mixed with campy comedy and great fashion.  Elio Petri made films around the same time as Antonioni.   Not as prolific, but just as iconic.  Graphic, elegant and inspirational.   Highly recommend.  Here is the trailer and the bullet bra scene.

I was so excited to be in the Vista las Palmas neighborhood so I could be near the iconic  Kaufmann House.   The Kaufmann house in Palm Springs, California, was designed by Richard Neutra in 1946.    One of Neutra's most famous domestic projects.  I stopped to take a picture and a few others stopped as well while I was there.   So beautiful

I stayed in Vista Las Palmas in Palm Springs for a few days.   Once the stomping ground of Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr. and Dean Martin this desert retreat is uber cool.  This is my favorite Mid Century neighborhood in Palm Springs and one of the few places in the world that you can view so many incredible architectural gems.  You can walk everywhere and every house has character.  Quiet, friendly(all the neighbors walk their dogs at dusk) and so lovely.  My dream homes with dream landscaping.   I was in heaven.  The Kaufmann home is here and the others homes are mostly Eichlers and Alexanders. 

Here is some info on the Alexander builders. (courtesy of Palm Springs historical and http://www.vistalaspalmas.com/)  During the 1950's & 1960's, George Alexander and his son Robert Alexander were co-owners of a development firm that built more than 2,000 homes in Palm Springs.  The father-son team capitalized on the need for mass market housing to the upwardly mobile interested in Modern Architecturehe original Alexander homes were built on a concrete slab with no insulation, for a cost of $19,500.  Alexander construction included:  post & beam construction, clerestory windows, center halls and large lots.  The architectural style became known as Southern California Modern.   I am also including a video on the bottom from HAVERKATE Blog a great real estate resource that shows a drive through the hood.

The holidays are approaching and this year I don't want to go far.     I do want to get the hell out of dodge so Palm Springs is a great option.    Warm, balmy, quiet and a two hour drive.   Room Service's John and Taryn make great furniture and have exquisite taste.  Here is their cute little house the Pink Door.    All their homes are elegant, modern, pet friendly and reasonable.    room service  I have done a few shoots there and I always have a blast.    You can book their homes through VRBO which is also a great resource for all vacation rentals.

Not meant for walking much, but these are some lookers.  For bedroom or sit down dinner only.  I love Paris.   These Baldini heels pay homage to the Eiffel Tower.   A little out of my price range at $1800.00 but I can admire from afar.  

Mameg designed by Johnston Marklee & Associates.    Run by Sonia and Ari.   One of the best curated stores in Los Angeles.    Maison Martin Margiela is next door.  How great is that?  Kill two birds with one stone.

 LA-based designer William Stranger has his  Second Life Collection on exhibit at Fifth Floor Gallery in LA.  Made from recycled bowling alley pieces.  

I love this new Sosushi restaurant by UAU.   This one is in Turin, Italy.   Every corner, nook and cranny is being used.    Elegant and utilitarian.   Can they do my office like this?

I love old buildings that are recontextualized and made new.    New York has some great old firestations  that are being renovated, gutted and re-vitalized. 
Rescue Company 3, the Bronx.    Photo: Jeff GOldberg/Esto for Polshek Partnership

firestation photo courtesy of NYCDDC and STV Engine 277 Bushwick.

Minimalist artist Donald Judd will have his home in NYC renovated by his children.   The 5 floor studio- home is at 101 Spring street. Part of the Historic Soho Cast-Iron District.  The home features over 500 of his works and his private collection.  There were many parties during Judd's years in NYC,  I read recently that Judd used to curate the food on the plates at his dinner parties.    That is some meticulous handling.   

This is truly one of the coolest things I have seen in LA.   Drive by the LACMA and see the Berlin Wall.  To commemorate the 20th anniversary of the fall of the wall.   (I was just in Berlin and there is not much left of the wall. so this is pretty spectacular and yes, it is small and not very high)

Text and photos by Dakota on Curbed LA blog

It's not often one spots pieces of the Berlin Wall along Wilshire Boulevard, but last night, a crowd of about 30 came out to watch a series of the panels (decorated by Berliners nearly two decades ago) rise on the lawn of 5900 Wilshire Boulevard. The exhibition is part of Culver City-based Wende Museum's commemoration of the 20th Anniversary of the fall of the Wall. The panels came from Berlin via boat--a trip that went through the Panama Canal---and arrived to Wilshire Boulevard via flatbed truck at about 7 pm last night. By 9 pm, three four panels were up. When finished (a total of 10 panels will go up), the exhibition will constitute the largest concentration of Berlin Wall panels outside of Europe.

Given that the panels are already decorated, the Wende Museum plans to continue the art theme: The museum has invited artists Kent Twitchell, Thierry Noir, Marie Astrid Gonzalez, and Farrah Karapetian to add their own touches to the panels, according to Justinian Jampol, president of the Wende Museum. An ongoing process, the artists will start working on the panels this Saturday.

Additionally, Jampol said he is considering letting the public decorate, scribble or paint on the panels. Good lord! People are going to Buket these panels beyond recognition, Jampol! Well, perhaps. Jampol acknowledged that the idea of letting people have a go at the panels is still just in the consideration phase. But he also said the public art component has always been part of this installation.

"It's always been about being an organic art piece," he said. "It's ok that these pieces are being re-contextualized in Los Angeles."

Meanwhile, the 11-foot-high panels, which were originally housed on a private property near Potsdamer Platz in Berlin, won't be blocked off by any ropes at the 5900 Wilshire site.

Soho is back to being bohemian again.   Yeah, not just chains and make up stores. Love the Crosby Street Hotel, reminds me of the Bowery hotel which I love.  

Tim and Kit Kemp, perennial darlings of the London hotel world, have finally crossed the pond: the Crosby Street Hotel marks the first American venture of their celebrated Firmdale hotel group. The impressive 11-story construction was built from scratch on the site of a former parking lot in downtown New York, right in the heart of SoHo, famed epicentre of Manhattan chic. The interior look is classic Kit Kemp - elegant and quirky yet entirely cosy. Each of her 86 individually designed rooms and suites comes fully equipped with flat screen LCD television, DVD/CD player, iPod docking station, WiFi and custom-made Miller Harris bath products, while the top-floor headline suites offer the additional luxury of uninterrupted, 360-degree skyline views. Further highlights include a leafy courtyard garden, ground-floor bar and restaurant, well-appointed gym, guest-only drawing room and several private event spaces, all impeccably designed and peppered with art works selected by Kemp herself. This impressive list of facilities is rounded off by a luxurious private screening room - a perfectly-executed Firmdale trademark sure to be as big a hit in New York as it has been in London.