By Lee Carter
“It started on a visit to the Los Angeles Timesbuilding to shoot a Polaroid campaign [Spring ’13] with Frank Ocean,” said Sternberg at his preppy, youth-y presentation today, referring to the quirky seasonal campaigns he himself shoots with celebrities in uncelebrity-like locations around SoCal. “I was looking at the building and thinking about the end of print, when I felt a deep sense of, not sadness, but nostalgia.”
Sternberg thus channeled the buzzy, frenetic spirit of old-school newsrooms, cobbling together mismatched patterns like windowpane and polka dot in clever and appealing ways. Some of those polka dots were filled in with classified copy, which could also be found on ties. The palette pinged between black and white, sticking mostly to gray scale, occasionally darting into lush green dégradé or red-blue tartan. Squint and you could almost make out Clark Kent in Sternberg’s thought process, but no, these were old-fashioned newsboys, topped with jaunty little newsboy caps to prove it.
Nostalgia aside, Sternberg has plenty to look forward to. Namely, his first store, right where his presentation took place, at 70 Wooster Street in Soho. When the space, which will include his showroom, opens in the summer, it’ll look nothing like the raw concrete storefront it is now. Expect an eccentric, lovable California vibe.
