Here’s Everything Dwell’s Creative Director Loved at the First "Collectible" Design Fair in New York

The first New York edition of Collectible, an annual contemporary design fair founded in Brussels six years ago, opened on Wednesday during what always feels like the city’s cultural "back-to-school" moment, with fashion week, art fairs, openings, and other events all colliding on the calendar. The Belgian import’s debut stateside fair, which closes today, featured one-off and limited edition work from dozens of galleries, designers, studios, and collectives spread out over two raw floors at 161 Water Street, a corporate office building in the Financial District that has become an improbably located hub for creative businesses. The show included sections organized by the Female Design Council, architecture-focused nonprofit The World Around, and several other curators and organizations, which gave it a feeling of many connected environments. The fair was also heavy on emerging designers and featured galleries from far-flung parts of the world. The whole show had a sense of playfulness and energy. 

Dwell dispatched our Creative Director, Suzanne LaGasa, and photographer Ben DeHaan to take it all in and report back on the best things they saw. "I loved work with unexpected colors, big gestures, sharp points, and lots of rubber, metal, and delicate glass," says LaGasa, "as well as the push and pull between surrealist goth clubhouse aesthetics and unapologetically colorful sculpture. It was as if Niki de Saint Phalle and Dracula lived together."

Here are their picks.

Featured Above: @farrahsit, @vyvoistudio, @richaybar

Featured Above: @studio.s.ii