This is the bright, unassuming site in San Francisco where an interesting experiment in retail is taking place. Living up to its name, Highlight is a new store and gallery stocked with a motley assortment of items its founder, Amir Mortazavi, discovers on trips abroad. It’s like a private cabinet of curiosities.

Mortazavi focuses on one country at a time and calls these visits “extracts.” So which country is the lucky inaugural extract? Belgium, of course, where so much in fashion and design already begins. Mortazavi’s spoils from the Low Country include previous-season Maison Martin Margiela, Raf Simons and Haider Ackermann, as well as a scary-looking antique dentistry set from the 1920s, a steel-frame bike by Eddy Merckx, and a vintage manual coffee grinder.

Wow, Belgium is almost as strange as the California suburbs.

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