The idea is to die young as late as possible. — Ashley Montagu — Thursday June 19th — —

I love listening. It is one of the only spaces where you can be still and moved at the same time. — Nayyirah Waheed — Thursday June 19th — —

“What art does — maybe what it does most completely — is tell us, make us feel that what we think we know, we don’t. There are whole worlds around us that we’ve never glimpsed.” Greil Marcus — Thursday June 19th — —

The Travel Almanac Editions

This week The Travel Almanac presented a great new project named TTA Editions. In each Edition a selected artist, designer or other creative entity is asked by The Travel Almanac to design a product in a specific category which has a more or less direct relation to travel, after which every product will be released in a very limited edition available in select fashion boutiques and through The Travel Almanac website. For the debut Edition, fashion designer Bernhard Willhelm has created a very unique and beautiful Imabari cotton beach towel, which were produced on the island of Shikoku in Japan, each containing 34 individually hand-stitched embroideries. The towel has just been released in an Edition of 20 pieces.

The Imabari towel company is based in the city of Imabari, historically one of Japan’s top sites for towel production, in the Ehime Prefecture on the island of Shikoku, Japan. The company has been  manufacturing towels locally in Japan for over 120 years. A trademark for the highest standard of quality set by the company is the fact that a towel must sink to the bottom within 5 seconds after placement in water. This tests a new towel’ s ability to soak up water without having to be washed first before use and proves its ability to thoroughly dry the skin. The towels are lovingly made, with great care taken to maximize the natural absorbency of cotton, to ensure that they do not become threadbare and hard with repeated laundering. A beautiful product for this  beautiful collaboration.

German fashion designer Bernhard Willhelm was born in 1972 in Ulm, the South of Germany. He studied at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp, where he assisted the likes of Walter van Beirendonck, Alexander Mc Queen, Vivienne Westwood and Dirk Bikkembergs. In 1999 he founded his label Bernhard Willhelm together with business-partner Jutta Kraus. During the years Willhelm received a lot of praise for his designs in which, like his former mentor van Beirendonck, one always finds a colorful aesthetic, influenced by folklore, tribalism and pop culture. In 2005 he was granted the first prize of the ANDAM fashion award, given by french cultural minister. Through the years, next to his collections, the designer was also featured in or created a series of exhibitions in Europe and Asia.

We love this beautiful collaboration and look forward to more!

The first TTA Edition is limited to only twenty pieces worldwide, available exclusively online and at kapok stores in Hong Kong.