This is kind of an ironic post for The Swag Mag. We preach and support a lavish, fashionable, and often materialistic lifestyle. However, we like to take a step back at times and take a look at our lives; whether it be financially, socially, the fact that we have clean drinkable tap water, or that we have four walls and a roof over our heads. Some people, through hard work and determination, have truly advanced in the world, they deserve to be where they are, but most of us are who we are based on the situation (with some variation) that we were born into.

Area432 and Uthando have started a campaign called Help Us Build Homes in which every rug that is sold by Area432, Uthando will pledge a basic new home for a family in the township of Khayelistha, Cape Town, South Africa. Many people want to help, they want to be charitable; however, sometimes life just happens and you miss the big picture. Well if you’re considering a rug to improve your home, remember area432, as they will not only improve your home but improve the life of one family by providing them a new home. Thank you.

We featured some really cool and really diverse stuff over the last week and we thought that these were definitely worth a second look.

1) Cut It Out – We love well designed things, really doesn’t matter what it is so long as it is designed well. These negative space prints will definitely give you something to think about while also sprucing up your space.
2) Rata Vulc – It’s summer. You need boating shoes. Vans are always a good choice. These will look good on your feet. Check them out.
3) James Perse – Beach cruisers are pretty cool. This Beach cruiser is bad ass. Matte black is always cool.
4) Ludo Bites 007 – If you care for good food, and don’t care that you’ll be hungry after reading this post, then read it. If you don’t like good food. Skip it.
5) Jaguar XKR175 – Sports cars, mmmm, limited edition ones, mmmmmm. 75th year anniversary Jaguar, check it out.
6) Energie Shoes – Need some sweet high tops? Sick of chucks? Energie’s might be perfect for you.

If you were one of the few fortunate enough to get a reservation for Ludo Bites 007 in Los Angeles you don’t need us to tell you it was an amazing and innovative meal. Since reservations only took minutes to fill up we know a lot of you missed out so we at The Swag Mag wanted to share with you our experience (truth be told we also failed to get our seats but a good friend couldn’t make the time and we happily took his place).

To start, if you don’t already know, Ludo Bites is the creative effort of Chef Ludovic Lefebvre and his team who take over another restaurant, this year it was Gram and Papas which in itself is a great spot, for a period of time to wow us with a wonderful and new restaurant experience.

After looking over the menu the table was hard pressed to decide what to get. After a short debate, instead of picking items we were only able to eliminate one dish we could do without, the fried chicken wings. These were a sacrifice as we figured it would be similar to the Ludotruck, which if you haven’t tracked down yet you need to get on it. Anyways, as each dish came we each, there were four of us, grabbed at least one fork full of each dish. Although the dishes were small this really is the only way to go for a dining experience like this, because you just have to try it all.

The table favorites were by far the Egg, sea urchin, caviar, champagne beurre blanc and the duck with cherry, spicy saucisse, beets and radish. Every morsel was perfectly cook and seasoned. Even though each plate had many components they all worked together beautifully with a high level of conceptual development which makes it hard to believe the menu changed everyday for the duration of the pop up. It was also encouraging to see the man himself in the kitchen cooking and laughing the entire time since we know a lot of those other executive chefs don’t spend a whole lot of time in their own kitchens. We ended our meal with a little Smoked vanilla bacon creme brulee with red berry and really you can’t go wrong with bacon for dessert.

Our only wish is that the chef would just settle down a bit and open up his own restaurant so we could more easily enjoy his food but we know Chef Ludo is doing what he does best and will go whereever he pleases in order to push his food further and we can’t hate that.

August, we love August, but it also means that summer is almost over. It feels like it just started right? Well we’re planning a last minute trip to Europe and have laid out our shortlist of places, one activity, and a must-have app.
Moving left to right, top to bottom our first option is The Zetter Hotel in London because if it’s ever not raining in London, it’s probably not raining in August.
Next option is Paris, we loooove the city of lights, we love to eat, we love to shop, we love good looking people. This city has them all and the Seven Hotel in Paris is a wonderful place to stay.
Spain anybody? Barcelona is a beautiful, metropolitan city, that doesn’t feel that way. Plenty to do without getting bogged down by city life. For this stay we’re thinking Hotel Omm, but if the Omm is not your thing, you can’t go wrong with the Mandarin Oriental in Barcelona.
Been to Berlin? Amazing city, multi-cultural, plenty to see, modern yet has that old world feel at the same time. We want to stay in Berlin Mitte so we’d probably check out Soho House Berlin.
We have lots of places we want to go, and we like to see touristy things, but since we’re also so interested in design we always carry around our Wallpaper* City Guide around with us, this one just happens to be in the form of an iphone app, making it THAT much more convenient. There’s a great selection of available cities.
The above selections are all great but sometimes you just want to get away, a country vacation, and The Castello di Vicarello in the heart of Tuscany would definitely be EXACTLY what the doctor ordered.
Trains… There really is no better way to see the country side than hitting the railways. Why not do it in style with the TGV High Speed Train, we will be in Europe after all.
Another alternative to the whole country escape would be a small quiet town. Vorstadt 14 is reason enough to pay a visit to Switzerland, any other adventure would just be an added bonus.
Finally, Istanbul is always on our mind. Amazing food, amazing party-scene, and great historical attractions. We’ll be staying at The W Hotel for a great mix of Ottoman and modern styles.
Decisions, decisions. Luckily, we really can’t go wrong with any of the choices listed above.

Thursday’s are our main happy hour day here at The Swag Mag, lately we’ve been consuming more and more wine, and we consider ourselves “wine enthusiasts”, definitely not wine connoisseurs but we like it, so we drink it. Today we wanted to share with you how happy hour went last night, and basically how it has gone for the past few weeks.
We’re firm believers in the following ridiculous statement: just because you ride your bike to work doesn’t mean you can’t bring along a bottle of wine to enjoy after (or during if you’re slick) work, the Leather Bicycle Wine Rack solves that problem, bottle of wine to pre-drink for the happy hour event. Happy hour is usually a blast, wine, friends, coworkers, blah blah blah. We ride home with zero recollection (bike is there in the morning), somehow we make it every week.
Next step will be to probably stumble on some pre-opened bottles of wine, give it the sniff test, take a swig and realize we failed miserably at the sniff test, happens every week. This can be easily avoided with the A Date with Wine Wine Stopper. So it’s time to grab a new bottle, luckily we have a great wine rack, not quite as cool as the Nek Rite, but it does the job. Now comes the most difficult part, you see we have one of those really stupid pressurized goose neck fancy wine opener things, the thing hardly ever works and it never, ever, EVER works on happy hour night, so really it’s time to invest in a nice little set like the Normann Wine Collection.
One thing we do know for sure (already had this one planned out) is that we will end up drinking a bottle of Burn Cottage Wine, because it looks as amazing as it tastes, and although we weren’t feeling so hot after happy hour, we definitely looked amazing.

Whether it be by planes, trains, or automobiles; you gotta look good when you hit the road. Just because you’re on vacation doesn’t mean you have the right to look like a slob. Do us, the people you travel with, and yourself a favor and dress up a bit for your out of town trip.
Uniform Wares Watch to stay on time – J. Crew Dress Shirt because cotton breathes – Briggs Adams Bow Tie for bonus points – Webb by Warby Parker glasses so you can get your read on – J. Fold Trooper Trip Bag, leave your gym bag at home – Thursom Brown by Hudson will help you pack less, these shoes are comfortable and can go casual or dressy – Big Apple hat, because you shouldn’t have to comb your hair on vacation.

There is no better way to experience a culture than through the food that they make and love. O’ngo Food, which was established in 2007, tries to bring together Korean traditions with others around the world. Their main services include food tours and cooking classes. Both of these will immerse you in all the bulgogi, kimchi and tofu stew you could ever dream for. The classes range from beginner, intermediate and advance so you can move your way up the ranks of Korean culinary expertise. Can you smell the spicy deliciousness like we can?

We give our thoughts and condolences to all of those effected by the earthquake and tsunami in Japan. Designer Tokujin Yoshioka has sent out a letter and video (click play above) to inspire the people of this world to help by donating to the Red Cross which we would like to share here. We also believe and support the efforts of Save the Children and Global Giving. Remember every thought and every dollar makes a difference.

Tokujin Yoshioka’s letter follows:

Dear friends,

As you may already have known, Japan was hit by the largest earthquake ever recorded on Friday, March 11th.

The huge quake and devastating tsunami has left the overwhelming damage to the country and we are still facing this terrifying conditions.

As I have received the message from all over the world, I would like to take this opportunity to extend my sincere appreciation for your warmest concerns.

This is the time for us to think what we can really do. I have thought what I could do now, at this moment.

I believe that there would be more than just watching the situation of this disaster on television to help the lives of people there. I know I am not in place to ask such thing, yet one of the thing that we can do for the people in the afflicted area is to donate for their relief and recovery.

There are babies in need of milk, people who has lost their families, and houses.

Here are links to the donation for the relief and recovery of the Japanese earthquake and Pacific tsunami afflicted region:

Japan Red Cross Society

American Red Cross

We truly appreciate your support, even the very small support from your pocket, for the relief and recovery of my country.

Deepest regards,
Tokujin Yoshioka

We had some great posts this week and we couldn’t it to just six, so we decided to increase our weekly picks to nine.
Here they are:
(1) Tank Theory T-Shirts – Spring is upon us and here are some stylish t-shirts to get ready for the season.
(2) Matt & Nat Bahaus Bag – Weekender that’s as green as it is stylish.
(3) New Majestic Hotel Singapore – In your face design hotel in Singapore.
(4) Xperia Play – PSP on your phone. Enough said.
(5) Hanebrink All-Terrain Electric Bike – An electric go-anywhere bike.
(6) Supratuf Society – What all high-tops should aspire to.
(7) Umeox Apollo – Solar powered cellphone.
(8) Disposable Thumb Drives – Tear away, disposable thumb drives, pretty much like the description says…
(9) Social Print Studio – Posters of your twitter followers or facebook friends.

It has been called the anti-hotel. It has been compared to a Hollywood Mansion. This exotic destination is the New Majestic Hotel in Singapore that contains 30 unique rooms designed by remarkable artists and designers. Each eye-catching room features a different theme such as the Loft Room, the Hanging Bed Room and the Aquarium Room which features a glass encased bathtub that sits directly in the middle of the room. An award-winning chef pairs modern Cantonese food with Singapore’s best wines all while you enjoy the atmosphere and the glass windows on the ceiling looking directly into a swimming pool above you.