Press
bondtoo fosters creative ideas and collaboration in the realm of design. Occupying a half-basement in the Noho district of New York, it houses an agency, a studio residency, the clothing retailer chcm, and a gallery/boutique for temporary collections.
Founder Josée Lepage works as a creative consultant and curator. Conceiving and managing projects that push the boundaries of design’s confluence with art, fashion, and popular culture, her expertise extends to art direction, etiquette and branding, event production, and visual merchandising.
In 2005, Lepage co-founded Commissaires, an experimental design gallery in Montreal, where she mounted exhibitions of the work of several emerging talents including Maarten Baas, Tobias Wong, 5.5 designers, and Bless. In 2010, she curated the show From Quebec: In New York City, a three-week long showcase of trend-setting products by designers in Quebec.
Her longstanding collaboration with Tobias Wong produced a series of innovative, playful and participatory retail events. These include Mementos, a line of New York ephemera for the Ace Hotel’s No. 8a store, and the pop-up store events The Candy Shoppe: Papabubble x Cappellini, The Wrong Store, and As Long as it Lasts… at Art Basel Miami.
Lepage was also the co-creative director of Japan C, an 11-week showcase in 2008 of contemporary Japanese design and culture at the Felissimo Design House in New York. Her projects have received widespread attention in magazines like Dazed & Confused, Core77, I.D. and Frame, in The New York Times, Financial Times, San Francisco Chronicle, and in sites like MoCoLoco