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NEW YORK—New York these days is less about a bubbly homegrown design movement—that’s happening more in Holland, with Britain and Belgium bringing up the rear. Instead, New York is where you go to discover what’s happening around the world, and the best place for that is—still—at Moss.

In fact, the history of Moss telescopes the story of contemporary design in this city— with the current chapter represented by a second wave of increasingly influential design arbiters across the river in Brooklyn. Fourteen years ago, Moss was a sliver of a shop in SoHo, surrounded by a vibrant gallery scene. It sold practical, beautiful, mostly Italian industrial design that complemented the mid-century modern stuff that was about to hit. “I was more interested in method, not the final result,” says Murray Moss, a former set designer who today runs his enterprise with his life partner, Franklin Gretchel. The galleries left SoHo years ago, but Moss remained and today it’s a multi-headed design destination showcasing furniture and decorative objects, along with a new exhibition space. Its popularity appears to be rivaled only by the Apple Store around the corner.

“In the past few years the conversation, the subject, and the audience have changed,” says Moss. “The people who went to school to become industrial designers are exploring things on their own. And what they’ve found is that there’s a market for that one-off piece that’s been sitting in their studio.” What he means is that the boundaries between categories like industrial, lighting, or furniture design have broken down and a new, very lucrative market for limited edition, more personal pieces has opened up. While the prices for these objects are often stratospheric, it is good news for those who make the objects. “It’s not so wacky for a person to become a designer anymore,” points out Moss. “In the past it was very questionable, sort of like becoming a ballet dancer. It’s now considered a possibly viable career.”

What it also means is that this new design market is sold less like fashion and more like art. At the highest end, the beautiful functional object has given way to the rarified, collectible object. This has left design editors and bloggers twisting their knickers trying to answer the question that Duchamp raised 90 years ago: Is it design, or is it art—and what the hell’s the difference anyway?

These days it isn’t just the well-heeled who are driven to design; everyone thinks that wallpaper or an iPhone reveals something about their character, and you never know who you’ll find in a design shop. “Figurines are having a complete resurgence and a lot of skater boys are coming in to buy Lladró,” says Dave Alhadeff, owner of the design store The Future Perfect in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. “OK, they’re now in their late 20s and semi-famous graffiti artists, but I couldn’t have predicted these guys’ love of the decorative object.” The same holds true with wallpaper. “I’m often surprised that so many men, dudes with chain wallets from the neighborhood, are drawn to wallpaper,” he says. “It’s black on black damask and a little punk, but I’d have thought women would control that purchase decision.”

To see where design in New York—and the rest of the Western world—is heading, I asked Moss, Alhadeff, and Jamie Gray, owner of Matter in Brooklyn and Manhattan, to choose a few talents that continually delight their eyes and their minds. Here’s what they said. 

Murray Moss
Dave Alhadeff
Jamie Gray

"The New York Eye" originally appeared in the Fall 2008 issue of Culture+Travel. For a complete list of articles from this issue available on ARTINFO, see Culture+Travel's Fall 2008 Table of Contents.