The noo Nooka Zub Zayu is beautiful. The first zub to feature an off-set face (which I spied back in August), this timepiece looks absolutely badass and I need one. My collection is about to get 1 larger, now to decide on the color. Grey or blue…. hrmmmmm!

Available for pre-order directly from Nooka for $175. Nab it.

As a musician, I am embarrassed to say that until recently I never owned nice audio equipment. I recently set out to change this state of affairs and here is an example of one major upgrade – high performance headphones.

AIAIAI’s TMA-1 headphones are designed by Danish design firm KiBisi, further developed in cooperation with Tartelet Records, Mannhandle and Thank You For Clapping, and tested by a plethora of amazing DJs including Matthew Dear, James Murphy, Ellen Allien and A-Trak.

The TMA-1’s have everything I enjoy in a product.  The packaging is stunning, featuring a geometric pattern of stop, pause, play, fast forward, and rewind icons.  The headphones are housed in foam that resembles studio soundproofing.  Unlike the box, the TMA-1 name and visual inspiration comes from the monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey and it’s pretty easy to tell: matte black with minimal branding, only a slight AIAIAI imprint on the inside of the nylon headband. The headphones are beautifully simple.

Most importantly, the headphones sound amazing and are super comfortable with an easy to adjust click system. No frills or tacky shiny parts, these headphones are flat out bad-ass ear pleasers. The sound is incredibly well balanced and the high end treble isn’t too tinny so you can bump these things loud without feeling like your ears are exploding.

As Dr. Dre’s and other flashy cans are saturating the market, consider these as an alternative. The TMA-1 is just a set of headphones, and that’s all it needs to be. If you’re in NYC go pick them up at either Dijital Fix location, or otherwise nab them from The Ghostly Store. MSRP: $200.

Taking a look at the Nooka website refresh. I’m loving the new campaign! The new page is super slick and offers a ‘Watchfinder’ tool. What do we have here… do I spy a new Nooka face on the way?  Peep the image for a ZOTV face. No watches at the moment…

http://www.nooka.com/

To my surprise, I went to the keyboard page’s website to see the price SLASHED OUT. You know, one of those things where you add to your cart to find a baller deal. Check out Amazon’s killer deal.

Before cart:

In cart:

Awwww yeah!!!

I got a pack of laptop decals from one of my favorite record labels, Ghostly International. The vinyl decals feature the Ghostly logo and go perfectly with any Macbook combination. The decals fit right over the apple logo, giving your ghost some awesome glowing eyes.  I initially put on the black decal (with much luck, I was able to line it up perfectly) and later decided I would go silver. The decal is surprisingly easy to remove, leaving no residue, but is also a bit irritating to get on just right. If you mess up you don’t really get much of a second chance depending on how far along you were – trying to pull it off will warp the decal.

I busted my silver decal, and luckily, the guys over at Ghostly were kind enough to send me over a replacement decal and I put on the new one with precision. Many thanks!! I taped down a corner, aligning it perfectly over the apple logo and then proceeded to roll the guy on. Beautiful!

I actually love both decals for the opposite reasons. I love that the Black decal is incredibly striking and actually matches the silver/black look of the recent Macbooks quite well. The thing just pops (and happens to look better in pictures). The Reflective Silver decal is very subtle, but the glowing eyes still have the same effect. Silver is also flat out cool and it looks great in person. I’ll rock the silver for now but one day in the future maybe I’ll get another pack and throw on the black. Or maybe I’ll just put one on my work computer.

The decals come in a pack of 3, including a black, reflective silver, and red sticker. They can be purchased at The Ghostly Store.

This is so adorable.

Those aren’t manakins – that’s actually Weileen and Walice.

Creepy photo of me thanks to Eileen. Eyes very non-Asian here.

Dijital Fix founder David Auerbach.

I’ve been doing a decent job of Gilt abstaining, but I saw these kicks and had to spring for it. I love Generic Man. All of their shoes are hand-made in Portugal and feature high quality materials. Right here is a pair of the Academy Hi from Generic Man’s Spring/Summer 2010 collection. Beautiful shoe featuring smooth perforated suede with a rubber tip, leather accents, lined with leather on the inside, and a gum sole. Very nice deep navy color. Super stylish, great all-purpose sneaker. Would look badass dressed up or down.

I’m wearing these bad boys here at Gigantic Studios.

Generic Man | Gilt Groupe

Treating myself to birthday gifts the other week, I picked up two timepieces from Nooka – a ZAZ and a ZEM. I had the pleasure of meeting Nooka founder Matthew Waldman at the ICFF Offsite ‘Sounds Like’ opening and he’s an awesome dude. He was wearing a black Zem and asked if I had one yet – and now I do! These new high-end Nookas come in sleek gem-cut cases and are beautiful. Peep the photos below.

The Zaz features an off-set translucent Zen-V face. The time is told through 4 vertical bars over a backdrop of the wearer’s skin. This is maybe my favorite among favorites in my ever-growing Nooka collection. When I wear it I feel like time is hovering over my wrist. The Zaz is available in three different band options, silver mesh, black leather or white leather. I chose the silver mesh so I could capitalize on shine. Tell me this is not one of the coolest watches you’ve ever seen.

The Zem is a fun new watch that brings a new feel to wearing the future. The Zem features a gem-cut minteral crystal lens and in-person, these things look borderline computer-generated. I had a hard time picking out the color and the Zem is available in a few different forms. You can get the Zem with four different face styles (zot, zen-v, zen-h, and zoo), ‘night’ or silver face, and a black or silver high-gauge stainless steel bracelet or smooth black leather band. After a long time of mulling it over, I decided to opt for a little contrast with a Zen-H silver face and a smooth leather band. This watch is badass.

What’s next up for my collection? I’m eyeing a Pink Zub Zirc….

Here are the watches actually being rocked.

http://www.nooka.com/

So, as you may know I recently ordered a few things from Graniph. I’m wearing their Crazy Pattern Shirt.  Pretty self-explanatory, I love the mix of patterns - it’s standout but subtle at the same time. This shirt is fresh. Other items that make this outfit are a pair of the Jump Vanquish, a black Nooka Zub with a Zot face, and G-Star 3301 jeans.

One of the things I love about Gilt is exposure to brands I hadn’t heard of before. Zuriick is a great example of one such brand. Zuriick is a small-time 3-year-old footwear company that doesn’t “overdo branding.” Their main bit of branding is that all of their soles are purple. Zuriick features a lot of cool, colorful shoes. I love this pair of Alpha Beatas. Love the blue accents on the lace-holes.

Zurrick currently runs their entire online business on Big Cartel. I checked out their online store and lo and behold, they had a sale that I had to get in on. I got their Albert Ocean, which are hip and comfortably puffy hi-tops. Love that signature purple sole! They don’t even have a size printed on the tongue.

Here is a mini-documentary with the guys from Zuriick discussing their mission and how they use Big Cartel to run their business.

Zuriick | BigCartel | Gilt

I picked up this pair of Paxton kicks from Jump in Soho the other weekend. These shoes are somewhere between dressy and casual – a nice all purpose pair. The shoe is patent leather with a pony hair upper. Very nice. I believe these are a relatively old release from Jump, so they’re pretty cheap at the Soho store if they still have them in stock.  I love that Jump has such a wide variety of shoe styles, but manages to kill it on all fronts.

http://www.jumpcorp.com/

I went to the ICFF Offsite opening of Sounds Like at DDC Lab this past Friday. The exhibition is curated by Joey Roth who released his Ceramic Speakers earlier this year. The speakers were given to nine of his favorite artists and designers to “modify and reshame using their own visual languages.” The exhibition features designers Srull Recht, John Pomp, David Lynch, Stanley Ruiz, Toblas Wong, Sougwen Chung, Matthew Waldman, Savania Davies – Keiller and Roberto Crivello and music from Miho Hatori, Matmos, Ben Frost, Sepalcure (collab between Machinedrum x Praveen & Benoît!), and Gunung Sari.

It amazes me the power of social media. I got to meet one of my favorite designers, Matthew Waldman, founder of Nooka, at the event, and from our previous contact through twitter and facebook it felt like we already knew each other. He didn’t even realize we hadn’t met in person before. Matt was (and is) super friendly and nice enough to introduce me to a bunch of cool people like Miho Hatori, Shinya Nakamura, Sherwood Forlee and Mihoko Ouchi from The. and many more. I got caught up talking to amazing people and only later realized I should’ve taken more photos! Alas.

w/ Matthew Waldman of Nooka

w/ Sherwood and Miho of the.

Matt modeling his piece which featured music by Miho Hatori.

http://soundslike.org/

Some photos from the ICFF opening of 400 Square Feet Later: Cite Goes America curated by Alissia Melka-Teichroew and Jan Habraken.

http://www.citegoesamerica.com/

This shirt is a badass special limited edition collaboration between Matthew Waldman (of Nooka) and Graniph. The shirt features the Nooka “creatures of the night” design found on the Nooka camo watches. Also loving the little ‘Matthew Waldman’ signature on the back. At 20% polyester and 80% cotton, this shirt is super comfortable. Knowing Japanese sizing tends to run small I’m glad I made the right choice of getting my Graniph gear in medium. They fit perfectly! Catch me rocking this piece soon.

Coming in at ￥2,500 (around $23.75 USD), this stylish shirt is quite cheap and with the order processed early Monday morning Japan time, I got my package in the morning on Thursday in New York. I had some strange issues navigating through the english Graniph site but their customer service was great and made sure that the order was all good. I will definitely be getting more Graniph gear in the future. Get the shirt here!

Matthew Waldman | Graniph | Nooka

I couldn’t resist snapping a great photo of my Gourmet L’Nove kicks while I was at Prospect Park even as Gao Di and Alexa made fun of my ridiculous shoe obsession. Ah, so pretty.