Loose Buttons is an independent publication, founded by Moe Ebii and Jen Liu, based in New York City. We explore community-oriented approaches in design by showcasing conversations that highlight independent designers, artists, and craftsmen.

We a primarily in print, but are also online at @fromloosebuttons on Instagram. 

If you would like to collaborate or be featured on Loose Buttons, please email us at fromloosebuttons@gmail.com.




Index
01.
02.
03.
04.
05.
06.
Issue 1
Issue 2
Issue 3
Issue 4
DIALECTIVE Runway
Loose Buttons × Amanda Zheng
from Moe and Jen
01.Issue 1

Oct 2024
Publication







02.Issue 2
Dec 2024
Publication





03.Issue 3

March 2025 Publication





04.Issue 4

Oct 2025
 Publication





05.DIALECTIVE Runway

May 2025 Showcards





06.Loose Buttons × Amanda Zheng

Feb 2025
 Photoshoot



×Charlotte von HardenburghIssue 1
Oct 2024

Charlotte von Hardenburgh is a New York-based designer, curator, historian, teacher, and, most fittingly, our resident fashion it-girl who recently turned her home into a gallery. It was a lovely, sunny day as we made our way to Charlotte’s — perhaps a little too hot, as we downed ice teas before our 40-minute subway ride. The first room we saw when we arrived was her bathroom. Beautiful black-and-white tiles, paired with a delicate lace curtain, line the floor and walls. On the sink, a single Turkish tile with a flower on it sits next to her Aesop soap. There’s one just like that sitting at her assistant Sam’s place — their friendship tile.

We settled in her living room, the afternoon sun filtering through her curtains, eating coconut ice-cream and sipping sparkling water around her dining table.


On this day, Charlotte was wearing a flowy, faint daisy-yellow two-piece set, with a bracelet, a ring on her hand, and her toe-ring — a piece of jewelry that “never comes off.”

“I love to dress. I dress very much like a blank canvas, to let the accessories be the story. I never really want my clothes to compete with the jewelry. For example, a day like today, this is a bit more of a statement for me, this is color for me, I’m very colorful today. Because I'm wearing this colorful outfit, I'm just wearing very simple jewelry. There’s this famous quote that J. Crew came out with that’s like ‘The accessories are the exclamation point of the outfit,’ which is so funny with me being like a typography nerd. I love that because it’s like ‘This is how you punctuate your outfit, with jewelry.’”
The ring she’s wearing is black — though it actually turns a dark maroon in sunlight — a piece her mother found at an antique sale in Boston. As we spoke, Charlotte guided us through a collection of her favorite jewelry pieces. First, a chunky silver bracelet from 1975 by Elsa Peretti and her first collection with Tiffany, also found by her mother at the same antique sale for $300. The bracelet is designed ergonomically, with bumps and curves made to naturally hug the wrist. She moves on to a pair of brass and pearl earrings:

“This is a designer based in Brooklyn. The name of her studio is Stvdio. I love her work, and I love baroque pearls. Baroque pearls are my favorite type of pearls to wear …  they have a very asymmetrical and textured appearance.”

She pairs these earrings with a “sculptural” brass bracelet, another piece found by her mother at a vintage market in Boston. The curator and designer in her comes out as she compares the pairing of the two accessories to putting a room together—the baroque and brass earrings visually echoing the folds of the brass cuff. 

Then, the Fran Hosken bracelets. If you know Charlotte, you know Fran Hosken — she’s been researching Hosken for her work at Weinberg Modern. Made in 1949, the bracelets are crafted from spiraled metal, creating spherical, bulbous knobs as the spirals change in size.

“Fran Hosken is one of my favorite things to wear, because I get to talk about my research, and I get to talk about it in a very tactile way. It’s one thing to talk about like ‘Oh I’m doing research on this designer and she was inspired by a spring and that’s what made her want to make jewelry’, but then you see it in real life and it’s like, ‘Oh my god.’”

She moves on to a pair of big, creamy white bracelets that sit next to each other. “These are great, this [was made by] my friend Daniela. These are actually all ceramic, these are porcelain.” She clicks them two together, making a soft chiming noise, “How cool is that?” She pairs them with a brown bracelet she found at Chelsea Flea, a Nigerian piece of bronze with the same shape as one of Daniela Jacob’s pieces. “I like how it’s the same form, but different materials.”

Next, she shows off a pair of big silver metal cuffs that curved upwards at the ends. She describes them as being like “Wonder Woman’s armor.”

“These are the pieces. This is part of a past research project on Dorothy Liebes. So my friend Suna made me these. Her work is just incredible. There was this one photo of Dorothy Liebes that, in my research, we kept coming across; Dorothy Liebes wearing these big metal cuffs. And my boss said, ‘Can you figure out who made those cuffs?’ I found out that it was one of Dorothy Liebes’ best friends that made these. Her name is Helen Hughes Dulany — and her work is actually collected by the Brooklyn Museum and the Met, but none of her jewelry, it’s just her industrial design. She used to do work for Schiaparelli too and my assistant Sam Barone has been working tirelessly to tell Helen’s story.  When I had the opening of my Liebes exhibition, my friend Suna made me these, and it was so cool cause it was almost like history repeating itself, where I had the show about Dorothy Liebes and my friend who’s a jewelry designer made me these cuffs, and it’s like Dorothy Liebes had her friend who was a jewelry designer that made her the cuffs.”
Lastly, she shows us a gold ring, with a black bead hanging from it that she made.

“I make a lot of jewelry too. Olives are my favorite food. So this ring here, I call it the droop ring. What’s so great about it is that olives are within the category of drupes in fruits—it means it’s a stone fruit, which means it has a hard center. But also the word droop in English means to sag. So I call this my Drupe Droop ring.”


What are your fashion rules?

Fashion rule number one: check the weather. I am a huge fan of knowing if it’s going to rain, if it’s going to get colder later. Especially where we live, you need to dress according to the weather, so check the weather that’s my first rule. 

Second rule: I let different things inspire me. I’m not the type of person where I let my shoes dictate my outfit, or my jewelry, or a certain article of clothing dictate my outfit. I switch it up all the time. I guess the rule is: I don’t have a rule. Sometimes I’ll be like, “Oh, I know specifically I want to wear this cuff,” and I’ll build an outfit around it. Or, I’ll be like, “I feel like wearing these pants today. What goes with these pants?” So for me, it’s all about letting different parts of your wardrobe inspire you and [help you] figure out what you want to celebrate. Then, from there, put your outfit together. That way, it highlights whatever it is.

Third rule: I love the idea of something a little unexpected. I love the idea of wearing something that’s a little off. Obviously for me, I like to wear all of the same color oftentimes. I like to layer a lot of the same hues, but that’s mainly because I just think you can put anything in your wardrobe together and it looks good. Sometimes I’ll wear a little something that’s like “huh?” With my outfit, it’s like very silk and very flowy and everything, and I was wearing very stiff, dark shoes with it, and I think that kind of contrast is beautiful. Imagine me coming up an elevator, and the door is open, you’d be like, “Okay, okay, makes sense,” and then you see the shoes and you’re like, “What?” So, a little something unexpected, a little mismatch, and make it so that the eye doesn’t get bored.

Fourth rule: take something from your mom. Anything I ever take from my mom ends up being my favorite thing. The last time I saw her, I stole an entire vintage St. John ensemble from her, and it’s now like my favorite thing to wear.

Even though I feel like I don’t have rules, those are my rules.
What trend predictions do you have for Fall?

I think there’s gonna be a huge emphasis, maybe on, like, tonal dressings, where it’s like people wearing one shade. Obviously monochromatic is always kinda a thing, but I think it’s gonna go big. Especially because of layering, and so many New Yorkers love to layer. So many of my friends are like, “Yay, it’s Trench Coat Season,” so I think it’s gonna be layering shades of the same color. For me, it’s gonna be like shades of green or shades of camel, but I think there’s gonna be a huge trend in tonal dressing, specifically with layering. 


For a jewelry trend — I’m gonna put out a trend there. I think there’s gonna be a trend in more humble materials for jewelry. So, instead of people wanting something that’s gold or silver, I think people will want something that’s like a piece of silk ribbon or something that’s a bit unorthodox in its materiality. With Fran [Hosken], it’s these very industrial materials such as brass and copper. And porcelain. I think there can be something with jewelry and its materiality, have it kind of shy away from what’s traditionally thought of as jewelry. Even wood. There’s always wood bangles and wood earrings, but maybe there’s gonna be a bit more interesting take on jewelry.
Recently, Charlotte opened CvH, a gallery within her home. At the time of the interview, ODA GALERIE was using the space for a furniture showcase.

What is CvH, and what inspired you to start it?

Basically, what I wanted to do was have this space be open to designers, curators, furniture dealers, who want to use it in a creative way. So, I rent out this space, I put together a show, and it’s very specifically curated. The upcoming one is going to be all ceramics from 1964 that were made, actually, for the New York World’s Fair. People always say my house is like a gallery anyway, and so I was like, why don’t I actually turn that dream into a reality, of like having a space where people can come together and look at beautiful things, but also learn a lot of cool things about it too. For example, the Josef Hoffman chair you’re sitting in, and thinking about how cool it is that it’s a part of design history and learning about the motifs of Hoffman. I just think that’s kind of cool to be able to share with people like the pieces of furniture, what’s unique about them. 

Like, look here, this chair I’m sitting in now, this is a Thonet chair. If you’ve ever heard of the brand Thonet, and I have a white one in the [living room], but Thonet was actually the very first time that flat pack furniture was invented; Flat pack furniture, that’s how we get everything now. You buy something from IKEA, it's a flat pack. You buy something off Amazon, Wayfair, it’s coming to you flat pack. But that’s not how furniture was, once upon a time. And so, the German brand, Thonet, did this amazing thing where they were able to really make furniture that could be collapsible, but then also, on top of that is the fact that, often times you think about something wooden — very straight lines, very rectilinear — however, gosh, this Thonet, what they did was they were steaming the wood, so that you could bend it and make these gorgeous curves. And also what I love is that it folds, and so you can store it away.

And so I love being able to have pieces like that, I love history in my house, so that way it’s a celebration of what people were doing in the past. And then also inspiration of like, okay, if you were to make a chair, would you take any inspiration from this? 
What’s the most exciting part about having CvH?

With this space, obviously you guys know my assistant Sam, he did the interior design for the previous pop-up because he’s an interior design student. And so what he did was put an entire floor plan together, he has mapped out my entire apartment. When he found out about the pop-up, one of his projects he had in his classes was to curate a retail space, and they had to design the interior of a retail space. Sam literally showed up and got to work on a real life pop-up shop — he’s so professional. He figured how we should have the tables arranged, where we should put the mirror, how we should have the shoes displayed. He even did a whole installation on the wall with these beautiful bags from one of my friends’ brands. I get excited too because I think about when I was a student, I would’ve loved to intern at a place like this. Although, admittedly sometimes I feel like Tilda Swinton’s character in Problemista and Sam is my Julio Torres.