Dokonoko was launched by Tokyo-born graphic designer Reina Sugiyama and her fellow New Yorker Lacey Voss, who has designed for American Outfitters and Victoria’s Secret. The brand describes itself as “a play on many things: Japanese and American cultures, femininity and feminism, identity and stereotypes, and the seriousness of the retail world.” The quintessential “Dokonoko woman,” according to the brand’s manifesto, had an international upbringing (Sugiyama was a globe-trotting diplomat’s daughter) and “found her freedom to be truly herself” in New York City.
designers
This Design Collective’s Debut Show Aims to Be a ‘Reactivation of People’
This Friday, among the plethora of white-gallery shows opening in Lower Manhattan, an old metal shop originally meant for rolling noodles will creak to life on Ludlow Street once more. Only this time, instead of noodles, there will be painstakingly crafted patterns, lines, vectors, and collages.
Yes, this odd little space will be the location for Obsessive Tendencies, a exhibition of new graphic design work by multidisciplinary designers Claudine Eriksson, Andrea Johansson, and Darcy Moore. The opening reception will also act as a launch event for the trio’s new collective, 3xStudio. It will be hosted by Solie, singer and curator of Den Entertainment, who is also assisting the collective in producing the show. True to the “3” in the collective’s name, they will be showing three works each.
This Latex Baroness Is Bracing For the Fifty Shades of Grey Effect

(Courtesy of The Baroness)
Fifty Shades of Grey is out in theaters today, amidst a flurry of criticism that its portrayal of BDSM closer resembles domestic violence than a consensual erotic relationship. In search of an authority on the matter, we ventured over to East 13th Street to spend an afternoon with The Baroness, a dominatrix and latex clothing designer who, rumor has it, once spit-roasted a man for three and a half hours.
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Cloak-Loving Designer Lindsey Thornburg Digs a New Trench On Orchard Street
Kelsy Parkhouse of Carleen Shows You How Not to Blow Out Your Crotch
Welcome to Pro Tips, where master makers share their expert advice.
Kelsy Parkhouse – one of four Brooklyn designers featured in a sample sale at Horizons in Williamsburg this weekend (details below) – thinks you should be doing more darning. The laid-back 28-year-old behind Carleen began sewing even before she was in middle school, when she used ’50s patterns to make dresses that adhered to the letter of the school’s dress code – “but not the spirit of it at all.”
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A Visit With Karen O’s Designer, Christian Joy, Before Her Big Show This Weekend
In the heart of working-class Greenpoint, a few blocks from McGolrick Park, lives the fashion designer who dresses one of our favorite rock stars. Christian Joy is responsible for creating the amazing and often outlandish vision that is Karen O, lead singer of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs.
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How Your $200 Steve Jobs Sweatshirt Gets Made
There’s a Steve Jobs biopic on the way, and Mike Eckhaus and Zoe Latta know exactly what you’ll want to wear to the premiere. As you can see in our video, the Williamsburg-based designers have created a limited-edition line of $200 sweatshirts emblazoned with the face of the Great One.
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