Exploring the World of Luxury

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Let’s Throw Some Shade – Shop Outdoor Umbrellas & Shade

Shade began as a power move. The word umbrella traces back through Italian to the Latin umbra — meaning shadow and/or shade. Before it was a design object, before it was a considered element of outdoor living, it was the oldest status symbol in recorded history. The instinct to seek shade is as old as humanity itself. What changed, over millennia, was who was allowed to take cover under it. The earliest evidence of the umbrella as shade appeared in ancient Egypt around 2450 BC — palm fronds, feathers and stretched papyrus fastened to poles, held aloft by servants over pharaohs and gods moving in procession beneath the African sun. Not for rain but for shade from the sun and for the unmistakable power statement that came with it. In Assyria, only the king held the right to be shaded by an umbrella or parasol. The carved reliefs of Persepolis show Persian kings attended by servants bearing canopied shade over their heads. In ancient Mesopotamia the message was identical — shade was only for the powerful. China took the concept further and engineered it into something enduring. Around 1100 BC the Chinese were the first to waterproof the shade material, waxing and lacquering paper and silk canopies into all-weather instruments. Archaeological digs at Luoyang later uncovered bronze castings of collapsible umbrella mechanisms dating back to the Zhou dynasty around 600 BC — the earliest known folding design, recognizable in its geometry even today. Social hierarchy was built into every tier — the Emperor traveled beneath four elaborate layers of canopy. Only the Chinese royal family was permitted use of yellow shade. The rulers of Siam and Burma extended this tradition across the region, commanding between eight and twenty-four tiers of canopy overhead. The message was architecture as power: the bigger the shade, the greater the power being shaded by it. The Silk Road carried Chinese umbrellas into Europe by the late sixteenth century, arriving in a world that found them exotic, fashionable and expensive. For centuries the outdoor umbrella remained a luxury object — heavy, elaborate and the exclusive province of those who could afford both the umbrella and the person to shade them with it. That exclusive status finally changed in mid-eighteenth century England when Jonas Hanway became the first man to carry an umbrella regularly in public. He was mocked, pelted by coachmen who feared umbrellas would eliminate their trade, and persisted anyway. By the 1790s the umbrella had shed its associations with exclusivity and femininity and begun its migration toward everyday object. The outdoor umbrella as we know it today is the direct descendant of that five-thousand-year history — same essential architecture, same fundamental purpose evolved. Powder-coated aluminum frames. Performance canopy fabrics engineered for UV protection, water resistance and fabric color retention. Cantilever designs that shade without a center support pole. Integrated heating and lighting for use at night. What remains unchanged is what shade does for an outdoor space, and for the people occupying it. It is a stylish element that adjusts the outdoor space, making it more comfortable — hello outdoor living and entertaining. Click-through to view the luxe-edit.com curation of outdoor umbrellas and shade — from the sculptural and the statement-making to the architecturally scaled — shade your outdoor space in style.

It’s a Wrap – Beach Towels & Inspired Places to Dry Off

It begins, as so many great things do, in a hammam. Seventeenth century Bursa, Turkey. The Ottoman Empire at the height of its power, and its hammam — the communal bath — at the center of daily life. Social. Sensory. The place to be seen. The cloth used after the steam was called a peshtamal — hand-woven cotton or linen, often embroidered, narrow enough to drape, long enough to wrap. In the Ottoman world a beautifully crafted peshtamal reflected the standing of the person who carried it. Artisans who had mastered carpet-weaving brought that same knowledge to cloth, and the first looped towel — the havlu, meaning simply “with loops” — was born in Bursa’s workshops. Slow to make. Expensive to own. Unmistakable luxury. Two centuries later, a British banker named Henry Christy visited Constantinople and encountered the havlu. He brought samples home to England, and together with his brother Richard studied its construction. Their employee Samuel Holt designed a machine to weave the looped fabric at scale and terry cloth was born. In 1851 the Christy brothers took their terry cloth towels to the Great Exhibition at Crystal Palace, Queen Victoria approved, and became one of their first clients. The havlu had traveled from the hammams of Bursa to the most celebrated exhibition in the world. For centuries the beach was not a sought after destination, one endured the outdoors when necessary, that was it. That changed in 1923 when Coco Chanel returned from the French Riviera accidentally tanned making tanned skin the new currency of a life well lived. The beach, the swimming pool and the great outdoors were suddenly de rigueur. The havlu (terry cloth towel) already a century old had found its place in the world. A century of evolution followed giving the world what we know today, the beach towel. Beyond their utility they are a style statement and the design houses realized this. Which brings us to this curation, a journey into that world as well as enticing places to travel to with your luxurious, thirsty friend. Bon voyage!

Have Cap Will Travel | Designer Baseball Caps

In 1849, the New York Knickerbockers baseball team took the field in straw hats — impractical, itchy, and almost immediately abandoned. After a few seasons they had switched to a cap featuring a crown made of panels of merino wool, topped with a star-like pattern and a short front visor to keep the sun out of a player’s eyes. The Brooklyn Excelsiors refined the shape in 1860 to a rounded cap with a long brim and a button on top. This style became known as the Brooklyn-style cap and spread across American baseball through the end of the century. In 1894, the Boston Beaneaters baseball team became the first team to stitch monograms onto their caps as team identity, the earliest signal that the cap was becoming more than a sun shade. Then in 1901, the Detroit Tigers went further: they put their mascot animal on the front of the cap. Through the early decades of the twentieth century, manufacturers refined construction — reinforcing the front panels, lengthening the brim, and standardizing the six-panel crown that remains the blueprint today. Wool gave way to cotton twill as the game expanded into warmer climates, and the cap evolved from equipment into emblem. By the 1930s, professional teams were working with sporting goods companies to produce versions for team supporters, an early precursor to licensed merchandise and the beginning of the cap’s migration from ball field to main street. In 1954, New Era introduced the 59FIFTY, establishing the modern cap shape: structured crown, stitched eyelets for ventilation, fabric-covered top button, and a flat brim designed to be shaped by the wearer. Major League Baseball adopted this version as its official on-field cap. Television carried the image nationwide, and what began as a practical solution to sun glare became a recognizable symbol of allegiance, geography, and team identity. By the late twentieth century the baseball cap had moved decisively beyond the ball field. Youth culture embraced it first, then music, then fashion. The cap became both uniform and anti-uniform — worn forward, backward, curved, flat, pristine, or deliberately worn in and even distressed. Logos communicated belonging; the absence of logos communicated intention. Designers began exploring the form not as novelty but as archetype, translating cotton twill into suede, cashmere, baby cashmere, leather, and technical fabrics. Luxury houses understood something the Brooklyn Excelsiors could not have anticipated: the cap’s proportions were already perfect. Today the baseball cap occupies a rare position in the modern wardrobe — equally at ease paired with tailoring, knitwear, or swim shorts. It travels easily between city and resort, between anonymity and statement, between sport and style. More than 160 years after a group of amateur players abandoned straw hats in favor of wool panels and a modest brim, the essential architecture remains unchanged. A small adjustment for comfort became an enduring object of design — proof that when form follows function closely enough, function eventually becomes form’s greatest style advantage. Explore the luxe-edit.com curation of men’s designer baseball caps — from heritage interpretations in cotton twill to elevated versions rendered in baby cashmere, suede, and technical performance fabrics — each grounded in the same structure first refined on a nineteenth-century baseball field. Click for more…

Exploring the World of Luxury

Latest Articles

Let’s Throw Some Shade – Shop Outdoor Umbrellas & Shade

It’s a Wrap – Beach Towels & Inspired Places to Dry Off

Have Cap Will Travel | Designer Baseball Caps

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