A golden age. A golden age? Well, it probably warrants a superstitious knock on wood, but here goes: when it comes to design and style, today’s Portlanders live in a golden age. And we love covering this stuff at Portland Monthly—the stories are great, the people are fascinating, and the pictures are pretty. And so we happily introduce Lookbook, our new blog covering Portland design and style in all its brilliant and beautiful manifestations. There’s lots of exciting stuff to talk about, and this will be our new place to talk about it all.

Portland’s ambitious designers (and residents) are reinventing our living spaces. After a solid century and a half, our still-young city can point to a deep heritage of great buildings and civilized spaces, from reborn turn-of-the-century homes to mid-century modern classics to some of the lushest gardens anywhere. Our fashion scene has gone from scrappy outsider to international trendsetter in record time. And our explosion of high-craft furniture, striking jewelry, and ingenious, often-crowdfunded gadgets and gear has been fascinating to watch.

On the fashion front, our style editor Eden Dawn brings the sass, sensibility, and peerless local connections that power her monthly columns in the magazine. Eden keeps an eye on the scene that’s spawned hits like the wooly Pendleton Collection and Bridge & Burn’s razor-sharp Northwest tailoring, and buzzes with fresh ideas, like Emit’s line of laser-cut patterns unveiled during the recent Fade to Light show.

One way or another, we cover home design, great spaces indoor and out, and architecture just about every month in print. Our city produces individual talent as bright as Allied Works architect Brad Cloepfil (whose modernist vision for the Willamette Valley wine country we examined recently). Collectively, Portlanders love to reimagine what home can look like, as we discovered not long ago in some of the city’s smallest (and coolest) spaces. Lookbook will put all that under its lens.

“Design” and “style” mean lots of things, of course, particularly in enterprising and eclectic Portland. Poler Stuff devised a whole lifestyle brand around a few great products. Schoolhouse Electric leapt straight from lighting to a full-fledged housewares line. Photographer/blogger Lisa Warninger has helped take quirky Portland street fashion national. As we do in our magazine, this blog will treat just about all of Portland’s designy ambition and creativity as fair game.  

If you’re especially intrigued, sign up for our biweekly email newsletter, which launches tomorrow. Meanwhile, thanks for reading, now and in the future.

(PS: Lookbook’s debut means our Shop Talk and At Home blogs wrap up their run. At Home writers Kristen Belz and Kate Bryant continue as Portland Monthly contributors, and can be reached at kristinbelz [at] gmail.com and kate [at] kate-bryant.com.)