Ten Objects I’d Rather Own Than Explain

There is a particular satisfaction in being asked to point at things and say: this one. A design shop called Selekkt asked me to pick ten objects from their catalogue and write something about each of them, which is basically a formal version of what I already do constantly and without invitation. The list I assembled says more about me than most things I’ve written: a handmade screen print with a koi on it, a white bicycle, a book about living creatively, a t-shirt with pugs on it, an iPhone sleeve, a hat, a magazine with a teenager on the cover, a rosé-and-lemonade mix that sounds terrible and isn’t, a list for optimists, and a skateboard that sold out before the page even went live.

The pug shirt was not ironic. The koi print was silk-screened by hand. The optimist list was an object that asked you to make decisions—the kind of thing that either sits untouched on a shelf for years or gets worn to nothing in six months, no middle ground. I like objects that force that outcome. Either they matter to you completely or they don’t matter at all, and there’s no comfortable ambiguity about which it is. That’s as good a criterion for buying something as any I’ve found.