ICFF We just returned from the amazing Design Week and the International Contemporary Furniture Fair (ICFF) in NYC. Initially intended to be a reconnoitering trip to see how or even if loll should show in 2008, to our great surprise we ended up showing in three locations! Haute Green Running simultaneously with ICFF is Design Week which is off-site from ICFF and located in different locations in the city including the Meat Packing District and Soho. There were gobs of temporary installations and permanent exhibitions of furniture to peruse and ogle over. One exhibition, HauteGREEN, highlighted the best in sustainable design for the home. Loll was one of 70 showing and was selected from more than 240 submitting designers. We were proud to have our Armless Series right in the middle of the exhibition. The opening night of HauteGREEN (Friday Night of course) included beer and energy drinks and the Rolling Stones blasting throughout the well attended venue. (The pic above is from a tamed down Saturday morning).The queue at the door was long and people could only get in as people left. It would be easy to say it was for the free drinks but there was a rumor that Robert Redford was attending and I think that created a draw in itself. We met up with Josh Dorfman, aka. The Lazy Environmentalist. It turns out that Josh is not so lazy about his dancing as we discovered after we left HauteGREEN. We met John Stein from Organo. John makes wonderful and functional interior pieces from natural materials. John had a great passion for doing the right thing with the environment and he also knew how to attack a late night New York deli. Although Friday night did come to a close, the exhibition was a great success and carried on through Monday. DWR There was also a satellite exhibition at the Design Within Reach store located in the Flatiron district. You can imagine our surprise as we walked up to the store through the rain and smells of Manhattan to find the red Loll Armless in the front window! The quote from George Nelson in the window looking in at the Loll chair reads: “What you make is important.” This really summed it well. At loll we always put quality first; quality in materials, design, construction, and comfort. But quality is lost, for me, if what you make isn’t green.