A few weeks back at the Brooklyn flea market, we purchased one of the most ridiculous and beautiful dresses that exists in our wardrobe right now—a glorious white-witch type caftan with hidden pulleys in the back, the kind of thing that you might don to a barefoot solstice party and something we may only wear once in our lifetime. The fact is, the clothes in our closet generally fall into three categories: 1. regular stuff that we wear all the time, 2. fancier stuff that we wear on occasion and 3. crazy stuff we never wear but feel good about owning.
Stylist Niki Hall recently opened our minds to a fourth category: the clothes that you display around the house, like pieces of furniture or art, and a gorgeous spring 2009 A Peace Treaty scarf actually hangs from the walls of her Brooklyn space. Looking at the fall collection, it's true that the intricate workmanship in each piece warrants a frame of its very own. The hand-woven cashmere shawls lined up for next season are made from the shedding hairs of the Capra Hircus mountain goat (totally Google-able) and APT duo Farah Malik and Dana Arbib worked with craftswomen in the Himalayas to produce the collection, taking their cues from central Asian carpet weaving patterns with kilim-inspired designs. We did a little research on the logistics of framing fabric, and apparently it's pretty tricky to do it yourself and probably better left to the professionals. Still it's nice to think that once we're done swathing our necks in Himalayan cashmere this fall, they'll be something beautifully handcrafted to hang from our walls too.