A collaborative series by nik bentel and kortney hinden.

New York Picnic Series

A celebration of central park, hotdogs, sunshine, and all things summer in new york city.

Picnic Series

A collaborative series by nik bentel and kortney hinden.

A celebration of Central Park, Hot Dogs, Pizza, and all things summer in New York City.

The I <3 NY picnic collection, a collection of absurdist picnic objects to celebrate New York City pop-culture and picnics

It includes two handbags, one for a hot dog and one for a slice of pizza, limited to 20 units each each; and a limited edition picnic blanket of 100 units.

How can we create a world of surrealist objects through the landscape of a quintessential Central Park picnic?

We love the picnic, and the way they are a design-oriented approach to entertaining; It's impromptu, spontaneous, and shared across urban America. We sought to create a collection both humorous and playful, while maintaining the question of what a surrealist New York picnic could look like. Our collection questions the New York art of picnicking. We imagined the two most iconic New York street foods, and the icon equivalent in clothing form, and sought out to stretch their absurdity, through methods of supersizing or a food playing the “starring-role” in bag form.

A celebration of Central Park, Hot Dogs, Pizza, and all things summer in New York City.

The two handbags take inspiration from surrealist objects, specifically where the work can imagine the object, in this case food, as a physical embodiment itself; one to be dressed and displayed. One example is Meret Oppenheim’s, Ma Gouvernante, imagining high heels as a whole chicken. Can objects be imagined as food, and food as an object? The picnic blanket is an homage to Milton Glaser’s iconic I <3 NY design. The enlargement of the t-shirt nods to each occurrence of an impromptu picnic; where you're all sharing whoever's extra t-shirt was in their bag, except this one is sized properly for 2-4. It's also large enough, and soft enough, to have a double life as a blanket.

- How can we heighten the experience of having a central park picnic with everyone?

- What really is a bag?

- Can food, even the greasy ones, be an accessory?

- What would the Great Lawn, look like scattered with I <3 NY t-shirts?

- How can distorting the size of a common object create something spatial?

These are all questions that are being asked through the creation of the I <3 NY picnic collection.

Behind the Project

Coming soon!