What’s Happening: Most popular for blood-infused Nikes and cartoonish Big Red Boots, the subversive art collective embarks on a museum survey chockablock with cheeky meditations on contemporary culture that cast consumers as characters in their performance art spectacles.

The Download: You’re probably familiar with MSCHF’s shoes. The offbeat Brooklyn collective sparked what co-founder Kevin Wiesner deemed a “satanic panic” when it collaborated with Lil Nas X to drop Satan-themed sneakers to promote the rapper’s video for “Montero (Call Me By Your Name).” Each modified Nike Air Max 97, decorated with pentagram pendants and a drop of human blood in the soles, drew outrage online and led to calls for boycotts of Nike, who had nothing to do with the stunt and sued. Then came the inescapable Astro Boy–inspired Big Red Boots, an unlikely New York Fashion Week favorite worn by Dorian Electra, Sarah Snyder, and TikTok influencers galore. Impractical as the boots may be, they got people talking and are still raising the internet’s eyebrows.

The collective’s first museum survey, “MSCHF: Nothing Is Sacred,” at Seoul’s Daelim Museum, elicits the same effect—and proves its penchant for freaky footwear only scratches the surface of its prolific output. Across five floors, the group gathered 130 objects spanning four years of viral stunts and fashion drops that unpack the machinations undergirding our social, economic, and cultural realities. Self-serious brands are easy targets for their tomfoolery. There’s a wall of empty shopping bag replicas—Hermés, Kith—on sale for $40, affording thrills of performative consumerism. The Cease & Desist Grand Prix trapped companies like Tesla and Disney in a race to send MSCHF cease and desist orders to stop using their logo. A tiny Louis Vuitton bag reduces haughty brand moments to a microscopic scale.

It turns out MSCHF can also cheekily critique the art world with a similar devil-may-care sleight of hand. Severed Spots (2020) chopped up a Damien Hirst dot painting by framing the individual dots, selling them for $480 each, and offloading the hole-filled paper for $261,000. “I’d like to say it’s a hopeful sign the art market still has hunger for innovation,” Wiesner said at the time. But perhaps not the type MSCHF provides. Just two years later, the group unveiled ATM Leaderboard, putting the bank accounts of Art Basel Miami Beach fairgoers on display for everyone to see. The group’s stunts fall squarely into the realm of performance art—only we’re the unwitting participants, and our reactions shape how the subject is perceived.

In Their Own Words: “We’ve been looking at MSCHF’s output as a digitally mediated performance art practice from day one,” Wiesner told Fast Company. “The objects are the anchor point for a lot of these projects, but the enterprise is more holistic than that. There’s a lot of different ways we can think about that, a basic heuristic that asks, ‘Does every additional viewer-participant of a project make the concept better?’”

Surface Says: Their stunts seem to have achieved the desired outcome.

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Picking a gift for the discerning aesthete in your life is often difficult. Just about everyone’s social media feeds and email inboxes are chockablock with gimmicky “must-haves” that place Instagram-friendly style over substance and longevity. This season, we’ve decided to cut through the noise and provide a guide to the year’s most covetable and giftable objects of desire that are sure to make a lasting impression—even for the person who’s seen everything.

What makes Italian design so special? That question has no quick answer, but one can easily find out at Artemest’s refreshed gallery in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood. There, the lauded interior designer Samuele Brianza has devised a tightly curated display of furniture, lighting, and one-of-a-kind objects by 50 artisans and designers hailing from the country. “Working between Milan and my home base of Manhattan gives me a unique and very global perspective on what Italian design means and how we can communicate this ethos in just one exhibition,” Brianza says. “I focused on the core values intrinsic to Italian beauty and the tectonic value between architecture, design, and even fashion, and how they relate.”

Employing time-honored materials and traditional techniques from specific regions, each piece tells individual stories of creativity and craftsmanship to imbue Artemest with an unmistakably Italian ambiance. Rubelli fabrics reference refined Milanese interiors, polished stucco Veneziano surfaces are juxtaposed against warm lime-finished walls, and earth tones throughout recall the breezy hills of Tuscany. “We want people to know that every time they visit the gallery, they will discover new pieces and learn a new story,” says Artemest founder Ippolita Rostagno. Among them: a spectacular custom walnut counter carved by master artisan Giuseppe Rivadossi, a floral-inspired Mechini chandelier illuminating an array of hand-painted Murano glass objects, and one-of-a-kind works nodding to Antica Roma archetypes by Antonio Fabozzi.

Earlier this month, SoHo’s glitziest row of fashion and furniture shops added another to their ranks with the Wooster Street outpost of Yohji Yamamoto. A who’s who of the industry toasted the opening night of the concept shop, which will rotate through showcasing his 14 brands, and featured the Yohji Yamamoto and Yohji Yamamoto POUR HOMME collections upon opening.

When was it? Nov. 15

Where was it? Yohji Yamamoto, New York

Who was there? Colm Dillane, Christopher John Rogers, Wale, Rachel Tashjian, Bach Mai, Sharmaine Harrison.

When it comes to balancing strength and airiness, Massimiliano Raggi’s Fly collection of lighting for Contardi is a masterclass in making a statement with simplicity. Its minimal form is rooted in the Italian architect and interior designer’s fascination with linear forms, particularly in the fixture’s trompe l’oeil effect wherein its frame seems to disappear when the light is aglow.

Fly is available in five form factors ranging from floor lamps to task lamps and even an outdoor series. Perhaps the most captivating, though, is the Fly Multiple ceiling pendant. Crisscrossing nickel beams seem suspended in midair, radiating light fit to illuminate everything from a museum gallery to the most lavish holiday table spread.

The detail-driven minds behind F05 Studio seek to instill architecture with meaning, achieving harmony and functionality in the built environment. An ever-evolving practice, F05 works in the pursuit of creating timeless spaces that emphasize seamless interactions between people and their surroundings.

Surface Says: As a full-service interior and architecture studio, F05 approaches spaces with a nimble and fresh point of view, with the versatility of experience and perspective necessary to execute anything from modern minimalism to Brutalist-inflected futurism.

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