Mid-Autumn Festival, also known as the moon festival, falls on the 15th day of the 8th month in the Chinese lunisolar calendar. This year it takes place on 25 September, and as always it is celebrated with moon gazing, family feasts, and sumptuous mooncakes. The London Cantonese eatery Bun House is prepped and ready to dish up the latter, in an array of four flavours.

Co-founded by Alex Peffly and Z He, the Chinatown hotspot is best known for its soft, pillowy steamed bao buns and molten salted-egg custard lava buns. To celebrate the Mid-Autumn Festival, the second most significant date in the Chinese calendar after the Lunar New Year, Bun House presents a playful twist on the mooncake, with two new flavours inspired by nostalgic Asian desserts, along with two classic Cantonese flavours.

Discover Bun House's mooncakes

The mooncake set offers one of each flavour. Lava custard, which is a sweet and creamy take on traditional flavours, while the red bean mooncake stays true to the classic. New editions include the mango sago mooncake and the mango matcha, which unites earthiness with a fruity profile.

The sets can be enjoyed at home, or at Bun House in Chinatown with a complimentary tea. Bun House Disco, the sister site which offers a retro disco theme in Shoreditch, also has mooncakes available.

For those unfamiliar with the festival, it dates back to ancient times and began with the worshipping of the moon and thanking it for a bountiful harvest that year. The custom of eating mooncakes during this time has a much more intriguing story. According to historical records, the first mooncake was introduced during the Tang Dynasty (618-907 AD). On the 15th day of the 8th lunar month, General Lijing, commanded by Emperor Li Shimin of the Tang Dynasty, led his troops to victory against the Turks. As a token of appreciation, a Tibetan trader offered the emperor some round cakes which quickly gained popularity and were named ‘mooncakes’.

These parcel-sized treats were also used to overthrow the government centuries later. In the 13th century, the Mongols succeeded in invading China, with Kublai Khan establishing the Yuan dynasty. The new rule was oppressive, and many Chinese people were monitored under close guard and expected to give up their own food and wine. Liu Bowen, a rebel leader, decided to plan a rebellion during the Mid-Autumn Festival, and distributed mooncakes to Chinese residents in the guise of a blessing to the longevity of the Mongol emperor. As Mongols didn’t eat mooncakes, a hidden message was placed within each pastry parcel saying, ‘attack the Mongols on the 15th day of the 8th month.’ This simple plan succeeded, and the Mongols were overthrown.

Now, it is a time for gathering, sharing food, and, of course, mooncakes; the festival is celebrated across Chinese communities and in countries including Singapore and Malaysia.

The mooncake collection is available at both Bun House locations and online bun.house

‘For me, heritage is a foundation, not a limitation,’ said the Scottish designer Christopher Kane as he embarked on his latest chapter today: creative director of British leather goods brand Mulberry, which was established in 1971 by Roger Saul.

Taking place at the Queen Elizabeth II Centre in Westminster this afternoon as part of London Fashion Week, Kane – who shuttered his eponymous label in 2023 – said that he was imagining the act of a tree surgeon chopping away branches to encourage new growth (the symbol of Mulberry, after all, is the Mulberry tree; a series of Instagram teasers before the show saw a figure hacking away at the trunk of a tree).

Christopher Kane debuts at Mulberry

So there were narrow bags shaped like the blade of an axe, slung over the shoulder and completed with Mulberry’s signature Postman’s Lock fastening. Though the idea of sharpening, of slicing away the extraneous, also inspired the collection’s garments, which were largely stripped of adornment. ‘A very streamlined, modern, stripped-back look,’ is how Kane described it after the show.

Leather, Mulberry’s signature material, was the collection’s primary material, crafted into a series of boxy silhouettes with ‘notched’ edges, recalling the construction of the flap on the brand’s Bayswater handbag (the It bag, introduced in 2003 by Nicolas Knightly, remains the brand’s bestselling handbag). These notches transformed into scale-like layers of an iridescent, organza-like fabric on a series of mini dresses, or became a split hem detail on wool sweaters.

Elsewhere, there was the element of fetish which defined some of Kane’s most memorable collections (for A/W 2019, T-shirts were adorned with ‘Rubberist’ and ‘Looner’, while the use of latex, vinyl and clear plastic – the hallmark fabrics of fetish wear – has run throughout his career). One backpack, fastened across the chest with a Postman’s Lock clasp, recalled a leather harness, while a checkered overcoat was crafted from wipe-clean vinyl and printed with trompe l’oeil tartan. Even the palette of corporate grey, beige and white had an almost banal perversity.

Kane’s early memories of Mulberry came from the ‘football casuals’ he grew up around near Glasgow, Scotland. This inspired a series of oversized polo shirts adorned with vintage Mulberry branding, while outerwear recalled 1990s parkas, albeit with the hoods extended into elongated funnel-like forms (one orange parka drew a resemblance to South Park’s Kenny). ‘It’s really about town, city, country,’ he said, imagining his protagonist for the season traversing these various worlds. Other references included school uniforms, rugby kits and British tailoring.

Alongside the axe-shaped handbags, another style saw the archival Piccadilly bag blown up in size and in new mock croc iterations. Shoes, meanwhile, featured the signature Postman’s Lock as their clasp. ‘There’s a lot of Mulberry heritage here, but it’s also very Christopher Kane,’ he said.

Kane, who continues at Mulberry to work alongside his sister and creative partner Tammy Kane, is one of the British fashion industry’s most beloved designers (evidence of this was the roaring ovation at the end of the show). His eponymous label, which at one point was part of the Kering luxury conglomerate, was founded in 2006 following his graduation from the Central Saint Martins MA and found critical acclaim, with Kane winning four Fashion Awards across his career.

The closure of the label in 2023, indicative of the wider challenges of being an independent designer in London, was met with an outpouring of disappointment from the fashion community. ‘Since he closed his business in 2023, the absence of Kane had felt like almost criminal oversight of a major talent of his generation,’ wrote Vogue’s fashion critic Sarah Mower, a longtime supporter, earlier this year.

Now, though, Kane has a second chance – and a first as creative director of a major fashion house. It is one he is clearly approaching with confidence. ‘I want to write my own codes,’ he said.

Elevated above the banks of the Garonne River in Toulouse, a 1950s house by the architects Bernard Calley and Georges Alet could now be yours. Designed in 1953, the home, now listed for €1,450,000, is brimming with bold colours and modernist architecture curves and layers, which make it stand out in its sleepy suburban context.

Tour this French 1950s house for sale

Situated on stilts on a 615 sq m plot, the house stretches over three levels. It features two interlocking volumes. The first defines its brick façade, with a ship as its obvious inspiration. Two porthole windows add to the composition's maritime references, which continue inside, in the second floor's cabin doors, for example.

The second volume is crisp and white – a nod to the surrounding buildings of Toulouse, a city defined by its ‘O’-shaped layout. With its offset space-age roof, the structure displays influences of the International Style, as the movement pushed the avant-garde away from art deco and towards the familiar midcentury modernism found across France.

The building feels eclectic and intriguing. Across a gangplank-like walkway, the house opens into a spacious entrance that leads to a bright living area with a decorative fireplace. Some original details remain, including a fitted canary-yellow kitchen and an office that overlooks the Garonne River.

A grand marble staircase sits at the core of the house, taking visitors up to a library area and lounge. Also on this level are three bedrooms and a bathroom with a large dressing room.

Venturing away from the marble staircase, another – this time bright red and almost pop-art-inspired – one leads up to the remaining levels. Here, visitors will find a reading nook and two attic bedrooms with porthole openings and skylights.

A ground level that hosts an additional bedroom, a laundry room, and a double garage completes the residence. There is also a motorhome garage leading to a separate, private terrace.

It all comes together to form a striking 1950s house – a finely tuned example of French 20th-century architecture.

Fifties House by Bernard Calley and Georges Alet is listed for €1,450,000. To find out more, visit architecturedecollection.fr

Jonny Trunk has a keen eye for casual graphic brilliance. Over a series of volumes collating imagery from the past, what was once dismissed as mere retro-fetishism is revisited and reassessed in the face of contemporary homogeneity, visual sludge and creative slop.

From Audio Erotica to Auto Erotica, through to the fetish style of Dressing for Pleasure, and the supermarket sweep of Own Label, the published output of this prolific archivist, collector and record label owner continues to delight.

Holiday Exotica is Trunk’s take on the best of vintage holiday brochures. This is where graphic designers and illustrators had to really step up to the plate, because their artwork was often the sole lure for the unsuspecting holidaymaker, designed to conjure up both the thrill of travel and the delights of the destination.

In addition, the Trunk archive provides plenty of examples of deft graphical elegance that transcends the relatively prosaic service on offer (‘Business Travel by British Railways’, anyone?). In addition, there are destinations that feel undersold by the simplicity and purity of vision on show.

From far-off destinations that must have boggled the mind in the early days of jet travel to places that are much closer to home, you’ll find something within the pages of Holiday Exotica to spark some kind of wanderlust, even if it’s just the pleasurable art of armchair travel.

Holiday Exotica, Johnny Trunk, £26.95, Fuel Publishing, Fuel-Design.com, @FuelPublishing

Also available from Amazon

In a Wallpaper* summer series, architect Carlo Ratti explores Italy through the ordinary objects that define daily life. Meet the Mutti tomato tin, a cooking classic in Italy and beyond

Carlo Ratti on the Mutti tomato tin

'La calle se llenó de tomates.' Or, 'The street filled with tomatoes.' Thus begins one of the Odes by the great Chilean poet Pablo Neruda. And so begins our own late-summer day, in the small town of Montechiarugolo – a community of 10,000 people some 20km from Parma, right in the heart of Italy’s Food Valley, the stretch of Emilia-Romagna behind your favourite Parmesan cheese, Parma ham and balsamic vinegar.

Here, the streets are indeed covered in red, as if Neruda’s poetry had become matter. We are at the headquarters of Mutti, a leading producer of premium tomato products. It is a place I know well, having worked on the company’s masterplan for several years.

In Montechiarugolo, summer itself is a concentrate. Everything has to happen within a few short weeks, during which the town becomes a magnet, drawing trucks loaded with red from across the region. They pour their tomatoes into vast water-filled tanks, where the transformation process begins: sorting, peeling, canning. What our grandmothers used to do in the countryside, multiplied to infinity by mechanical and human arms alike. And then, voilà: a gleaming red-and-gold tin.

The design of that tin is rather retro. The two gilded lions, the symbol of the company, set against an intense red background, guarding the gold medal that Mutti won at the International Industry and Agriculture Exhibition in Rome in 1911. The whole thing is embellished with a touch of white and graphics reminiscent of the mid-20th century. The abundance of gilding would probably not look out of place on one of the shelves of the White House, following the revamp promoted by its current occupant.

The tin, though, has something undeniably pop about it: Andy Warhol could have adopted it for an Italian variation of the Campbell’s Soup tin.

Then there is the tube. In 1951, when refrigerators were still a luxury, Ugo Mutti (1893–1980) had the ingenious idea of packaging tomato concentrate like toothpaste. He sealed it with a cap that doubled as a sewing thimble.

Mutti’s packaging, like other objects we have encountered this summer, tells us something more general. Think of Thorstein Veblen, the early-20th-century American sociologist who theorised the idea of conspicuous consumption. The things we surround ourselves with tell the story of who we are and what we value. So even a tin of tomatoes can become a statement. Design becomes a semiotic system, in which a container is also a sign.

Among these signs is summer itself. That tin will accompany us through the coming winter months. From next week, when this summer column will have closed its doors, and the annual 'sexual orgy of pulp and juices' – to borrow the Italian novelist Cesare Pavese’s definition – will be no more than a distant memory, the Mutti tin will keep summer alive. Summer in a can.

About 'Objectify' – a summer series from Italy by Carlo Ratti

Italy’s design canon has been told many times. The Bialetti moka pot, the Vespa, the Fiat 500, the Arco floor lamp: you know the list, and so does every airport bookshop and first-year design student. This column will discuss, poke, investigate, prod, ridicule and beatify the less glamorous Italian objects. They are the ones you ought to know, so that when you visit Italy, or spot apparitions of it on a friend’s social media, you can smugly point out: ‘Did you know the mosquito coil is a masterpiece of Italian design? The condom? The motorway toll transponder?’ Objects so ordinary that Italians walk past them, or handle them every day, without registering that someone, with a mellifluous surname, designed them.

Proust wrote a seven-volume novel because a small cake dipped in tea, the madeleine, unlocked an involuntary flood of memory. For followers of the Italian version of this column, published weekly in Il Sole 24 Ore, the nation’s favourite Sunday read, perhaps these objects will have a similar effect. For you, anglophone readers peering at this somewhere between Rummidge and Euforia, they offer something else: beach conversation topics, an eye trained on unexpected places, and perhaps a few new madeleines for when you visit the peninsula yourself. After all, objects are never just objects. As the great Milanese designer Achille Castiglioni of Arco-floor-lamp fame once declared: ‘objects should keep us company’. Especially during this scorching summer.

carlorattiassociati.com

Electrolyte specialist Humantra and SR_A design studio founder Samuel Ross have joined forces to launch a new product that blends wellness and cutting edge design thinking. Humantra's latest electrolyte flavour, Carbon Grape, was developed in collaboration with the multidisciplinary British designer, and includes a series of wood-fired glass vessels.

A leading brand in the electrolytes sector, Humantra was founded in 2021 by British entrepreneur Charlie Wright. As it often happens with successful start-ups, the idea was simple: to offer a powdered wellness drink aimed at a wider audience (not just for athletes) with a strong focus on flavour. The Humantra portfolio ranges from Himalayan Lime to Lychee, Black Cherry to Apricot.

Ross has been a fan (and customer) for a long time, so much so that he contacted Wright and the initial conversations led to a fully-fledged collaboration that expands the brand's scope into objects and brings it at the forefront of a wider creative scene. 'The best collaborations don’t start in a boardroom. This one started with an Instagram DM,' says Wright. 'Samuel was already drinking Humantra every day, and I had admired his work for years. When we first spoke, he literally showed me the glassware he used to drink Humantra from. There was something incredibly authentic about that moment: he genuinely understood and loved what we were building, while I had this enormous respect for the world he had created.'

The new launch includes the Carbon Grape flavour, a dark-toned electrolyte inspired by the carbon mineral rich beaches of volcanic island St Vincent. Accompanying the new flavour is a collection, designed by SR_A, featuring sculptural glass decanters, vases and drinking cups, hand-blown in South London.

For the design, the SR_A team looked at the volcanic formations of St Vincent, as well as London’s brutalist and contemporary architectural language, from The Shard and Leadenhall Building to the National Theatre. The monumental structures of the city are translated into geometric vessels that expand the electrolyte experience into new dimensions. 'I’m interested in world conversions that are formed from necessity, myth, emerging technology and new frontiers: recreation and health being relatable, democratic pillars when justly developed,' said Ross in a statement introducing the collaboration. 'SR_A often reflects collective contemplations through design, in particular the body: a proximity to the organic, a desire to redefine collaboration, and a need to establish the experiential.'

It is a novel approach to a category that has been gaining momentum with a wider public, but that had so far been largely untouched by creative practices. ' The electrolyte category was ready to be reimagined,' observes Yi Ng, Co-Founder & CEO of SR_A. 'Luxury is increasingly defined by how we live, not simply by what we own, and wellbeing has become fundamental to that. At SR_A, we move fluidly between industrial design, fashion, art and architecture – from museum collections to the main street – so we saw an opportunity to bring that design sensibility to a category historically defined by function.'

A quiet icon of high-tech architecture, La Voile sits on a hillside site above Cap-Ferrat, one of the most desirable spots along France’s Mediterranean coast. Conveniently located between Monaco and Nice, without the sprawl and bustle of either, it’s also a landscape with a long history of avant-garde artistic and architectural associations. Just a short distance down the coast is Eileen Gray’s E-1027 villa, adjoining Le Corbusier’s Cabanon, and classic Belle Époque villas are interspersed with spectacular modernist outposts.

La Voile is one of the latter. Designed in the late 90s by Lord Norman Foster for his own use and constructed between 1999 and 2002, the new house began life as a modest 1950s structure that was expanded and upgraded on an ad-hoc basis as the peninsula grew in status and desirability.

Sited just a stone’s throw from the Four Seasons Grand-Hôtel du Cap-Ferrat, the plot is near the southernmost tip of the peninsula. It cascades down the hill to the rocky coastline, with unencumbered Mediterranean views.

Foster first became aware of the site in the 90s when he lived in the French village of Grasse. Having acquired the original house, Foster stripped it right back to its core, using the five-storey structure as a framework for a new construction of glass and steel that drinks in the sea views, whilst also extending the accommodation up, down and to the sides.

Strict planning rules prevented an all-new construction, so the project was a masterful exercise in renovation, all done by the book under the watchful eye of the exacting French planning authorities.

The main focal point of the house is the spectacular double-height living space, set behind a 7m-tall sloping wall of glass that in turn is shaded by giant steel brise-soleils. This glazed surface slides open to bring the outside in, with each pane weighing in at around 18 tonnes. The towering rear wall is adorned with a vast mudwork mural by the artist Richard Long, commissioned for the house and created in situ.

A living area on the lowest level is overlooked by a dining room on the mezzanine, flanked by staircases that lead to the upper levels, each with an internal balcony above the inner void. The house’s name, ‘the sail’, comes from the canvas sails held aloft by two large steel arches that rise up from the lowest level and rise up and over the upper floors to shade the house in the summer months.

Four bedrooms are housed in the lowermost level, while the swimming pool is at the uppermost level swimming pool, along with discrete parking, services and the main entrance. Opaque glass walls shield the property from the roadway, giving little indication that a seven-storey structure lies beyond.

After Lord and Lady Foster moved on a few years after completion, the house was sold to the late CEO of Marimekko, Kirsti Paakkanen, and the house is now being sold by her estate.

La Voile, Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat, guide price €29.5m, Riviera.Savills.fr, @SavillsFrenchRiviera

Out of all track and field world records, the women’s outdoor 800 metres has remained uncontested the longest, thanks to the blazing time of 1:53:28 set by Czech middle-distance runner Jarmila Kratochvílová way back in 1983.

British track phenom Keely Hodgkinson is excruciatingly close. In February, she shattered the women’s indoor record. Then, in June, she clocked 1:54:33 in Stockholm – a British national record and the 6th-fastest women’s outdoor time in history.

Hodgkinson runs her final race of the season tonight at Athlos, a star-studded women’s-only track and field meet taking place at London’s StoneX Stadium. And while her dreams of being the 800 metre GOAT may be on hold due to injury, Hodgkinson is stepping up to the line in swiftness and style, thanks to a show-stopping custom Nike speed suit.

The fierce black ensemble features a full-length silhouette, an open back and a hood designed to make Hodgkinson as aerodynamic and unencumbered as possible as she flies around the track. Equally important though, according to Dan Farron, Nike’s vice president of innovation apparel product design, was the ability of the suit to make the Olympic champion feel powerful. ‘She has her own style and her own aesthetic. We cannot compromise that,’ he says.

Farron and his team began working with Hodgkinson on the one-of-a-kind uniform earlier this year. While Nike has designed plenty of bespoke speed suits (take Faith Kipyegon's knee-length kit worn during her attempt to run the world’s first sub-four minute women’s mile) the 800 metre – considered one of track’s most grueling events – presented a very different beast: ‘Is it sprint? Is it distance? It's a bit of both. Like, it's the last tipping point before we get into endurance,’ Farron says. ‘That as a challenge is incredibly exciting.’

The designers needed to develop a specialised kit that could strike the perfect balance between thermoregulation, speed, mobility and comfort. The Nike team, based on the company’s years of product engineering, research and testing, presented a radical hypothesis to Hodgkinson, Farron recalls: ‘We think we can make you faster if we cover more skin.’

Hodgkinson was all in.

Using a 3D scan, Nike was able to create a digital avatar of Hodgkinson’s body so that they could develop prototypes without the need for Hodgkinson to travel to Nike’s HQ in Beaverton, Oregon from her training facility in Manchester.

Nike incorporated a number of technical innovations to reduce drag. ‘Although it looks like one slick second skin, there are different materials in different zones,’ Fallon explains. The polyknit fabric, for instance, incorporates mini vortex generators – tiny, wing-shaped 3D protrusions across the fabric– to allow the athlete to slice through the air. Strategic cut-outs in the underarms and back assist with mobility and temperature regulation. Finger gloves eliminate fabric creases and decrease wind resistance. Superfluous elements, like a zipper, were also removed.

One compromise the team wasn’t willing to make was taming Hodgkinson’s signature ponytail. Enter an element that Nike hasn’t revisited since the 2000 Sydney Olympics: a hood. ‘The hair can create a lot of turbulence, so we've curated this hood to be perfect for her,’ Farron says – which includes an opening to allow for her ponytail to fly behind her.

‘It’s drastically different to what she normally wears,’ Farron says. ‘It stands out from what you're going to see at the starting line.’

According to Fallon, Hodgkinson is thrilled with the results – and that enthusiasm, perhaps, might be the final winning ingredient.

On our first visit to The Horses, the final details were being attended to. In serendipitous timing, the new pub’s sign – a Renaissance-style painting of, you guessed it, horses – had been brought out, ready for installation. ‘It’s perfect. This is my first time seeing the sign,’ exclaimed Phil Winser, co-founder of Public House Group, with James Gummer and Olivier van Themsche, the trio behind London’s ‘posh pub’ favourites including The Pelican (Notting Hill), The Hart (Marylebone) and The Hero (Maida Vale). Tucked down a side street, around a ten-minute walk from Farringdon station, the new pub retains the group’s elevated take on the traditional boozer, while incorporating an elegantly casual seafood dining room upstairs that leans into the best of the British coast.

Wallpaper* dines at The Horses, London

The mood: a casually elegant ode to the sea

The interiors for The Horses were designed in-house and spearheaded by Winser himself. The team wanted to draw on the site’s history: it sits near the former Central Fish Market in Smithfield, Farringdon.

What makes The Horses so beautiful is its departure from seaside cliché, instead welcoming abstract references to the UK coastline. ‘The biggest challenge was weaving the seafood narrative into the design in a way that felt fresh and subtle, while still creating a sense of enchantment and immersion for guests,’ Winser tells Wallpaper*. ‘We spent a long time exploring familiar nautical references – light reflecting across the kitchen tiles recalls sunlight breaking on waves; delicate wool curtains reference fishing nets; and vintage motorboat ventilator covers have been cast in porcelain to create bespoke wall lights.’

The team succeeds in its restraint. Orange and yellow circular stained-glass panels divide the ground-floor dining areas, recalling washed-up sea glass. One of Winser’s favourite details is the cast-brass push plates on the doors.

‘It’s a tiny detail,’ he explains, ‘but one with a wonderful story: they are antiques salvaged from the SS Amerikanis, an old ocean liner. There’s something particularly poetic about these objects having travelled the seas and now finding a new home in a space dedicated to celebrating the produce of them.’ These details reward eagle-eyed diners – and those versed in maritime history.

The food: fresh, simple, and well executed

The dining experience shifts from floor to floor, each with its own distinct character. The pub has a warm, convivial feel, with tall panelling, upholstered ceiling panels and intimate nooks arranged around a central bar. Here, British beers are served alongside classic bar snacks, including pork pies and a scallop and bacon bap. The first floor is home to a classic oyster bar, with a large sharing table and counter seating overlooking the fish display, framed by timber cabinets.

Up another level sits the main dining room. A long, snaking banquette traces the room’s curve, while bar seating on the right follows its contours like a wave. Winser notes that the open kitchen is the focal point: ‘Low-level lighting creates a moody, theatrical atmosphere, and the bespoke wine fridges sit alongside diners, reinforcing the sense of being right at the heart of the action.’ Finally, beneath the eaves, the top floor has been designed to feel private, with a log burner and layers of soft upholstery creating a more intimate setting.

From the grill, order the Dover sole or monkfish, both well suited to the peppercorn sauce and herby garlic butter. Add a fresh salad, zingy tomatoes and, naturally, extra chips. We were advised to try the restaurant’s ‘lighter’ take on sticky toffee pudding. There was no need for a second look at the menu: a sumptuous caramel tart arrived with hints of almond and pear, alongside boozy Chantilly cream.

The Horses has an air of nostalgia, the sort of place where a smartphone feels out of place. It comes through in the setting, but also in the attentive service, which gives the experience its easy rhythm.

The Horses is located at 26-28 Ray Street London, EC1R 3DJ, United Kingdom

Designed by architect Alex Michaelis, this spectacular Cornwall beach house is on the market for the first time since completion. Originally designed as the architect’s own family retreat, Little Cottage is located above Praa Sands, a justifiably famed Cornish beach on the UK’s south coast.

Tour the Cornwall beach house now for sale

The house presents an unsullied view of the English Channel and the Atlantic beyond; it’s right there at the end of the garden, with the sandy beach itself just steps away. Arranged over two levels, with a separate self-contained bedroom shack tucked away behind the house, Little Cottage is not the ersatz rural dwelling implied by its name. Instead, 2,422 sq ft of accommodation is contained within a sculptural white box that owes more to Le Corbusian modernism and noughties minimalism than conventional seaside architecture.

The coastal façade is an exercise in asymmetric reductivist design. The ground floor is given over to a 50ft-long living room and kitchen, with central sliding glass doors that open it out onto the lawn. On the west side, the principal bedroom suite is tucked away behind a private sitting room, while the east wing houses the entrance, hallway, with the cylindrical stair tower leading off to the right, illuminated by a circular skylight.

Upstairs, there are three more en-suite bedrooms, all of which have views across the water. Curved walls create a sculptural upper level, with access to a balcony one end of the bedroom corridor. Detailing is minimal throughout, with white walls, floors and ceiling paired with frameless glazing to bring in as much light as possible. The material palette includes French-plastered walls and limestone, with Corian worktops in the kitchen, mosaic clad bathrooms and wide cedar floorboards throughout.

The ground floor also hosts a cloakroom and utility room, along with a wet room with direct outside access and special provision for drying and storing wetsuits. The stair leads up to a light-filled landing and corridor, while two of the three upstairs bedrooms occupied the curved ends of the first floor; all have free-standing baths while the bedrooms have Juliet balconies.

In addition to the separate Shack, which could also double up as a studio space, the property has a pair of sheds/surf stores and a number of parking spaces, as well as the rights to a mooring at nearby Porthleven Harbour. Michaelis, who founded Michaelis Boyd with Tim Boyd in 1996, has created a rare piece of uncompromising contemporary seaside architecture, a house that is as aesthetically rigorous as it is warm, inviting and functional.

Little Cottage is for sale through Lillicrap Chilcott for £2.5m, Tel: +44 1872 273473, LillicrapChillcot.com

Wedgwood and JW Anderson continue their partnership with the release of Volume II , which features a series of ceramic mugs. The new collection follows the success of their first collaboration, which saw reissues of British studio potter Lucie Rie's works, dating back to 1964.

Volume II leans into light, shadow, colour and form. The Northern Irish fashion designer, founder of his eponymous label and creative director of Dior since 2025, has been an avid collector of ceramics and was inspired by fifth-century Greek mugs from his personal collection.

The collaboration seeks to bridge the gap between antiquity and modernity. Made from Jasper stoneware in Barlaston, England, the collection is defined by the distinctive ribbed edges, which have a faint echo of Loewe’s grooved candles (Anderson was previously creative director at Loewe) and come with a matte finish.

'We’ve remained true to the Wedgwood palette, drawing on the surrounding landscape that I believe would have inspired Josiah Wedgwood himself,' said Wedgwood creative director Emma Glynn.

'Wedgwood has always had an incredibly nuanced relationship with colour – it’s never simply about a single shade, but how colours sit alongside and respond to one another. That really comes through in this edition: each set has its own character, yet together they feel part of the same landscape.'

The ceramic shades were chosen to counterbalance each other, acting like opposites. This includes Mercury Blue and Jasper Blue is inspired by the original Wedgwood colours; Dark Brown and Terracotta, nodding to Greek terracotta pottery; and Marsh Green and Sage Green, a reference to the Barlaston landscape where the ceramics are made. There is also a Harrods exclusive shade, Meadow Green and Shadow Grey.

The collection is the result of a natural pairing: distinctly Anderson’s style, fired up with Wedgwood’s ceramic expertise, making a chic addition to teatime.

The JW Anderson x Wedgwood Volume II collection is £305 for a set of two, and is available via JW Anderson, Wedgwood, and Harrods

Take a tour of Europe’s rich heritage of music and architecture courtesy of this new monograph from Thomas Aujero Small and Wallpaper* contributor Michael Webb. Subtitled ‘Opera Houses and Concert Halls of Europe, 1672–2022’, the duo’s new book from ORO Editions is both architour and musical history lesson, tracing the association between opera, aristocracy, and architecture over the centuries.

Discover the powerful relationship between music and architecture

In total, there are ninety featured halls, ranging from the gilded excesses of high Baroque (like the magnificent Markgräfliches Opernhaus in Bayreuth) to modern iterations of the opera house, from sculptural Brutalism through to Baroque’s contemporary equal, the ultra-high-modernism of projects like Herzog & de Meuron’s Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg and the Oslo Opera House by Snøhetta.

Webb brings his architectural knowledge to bear on the physical form of the concert hall, and how changing modes of performance, taste and technology have seen the form factor evolve. The role of the acoustician is also considered in detail, with interviews with the legendary Yasuhisa Toyota, exploring not just how the expression and projection of sound have shaped modern halls but also how classical structures have been subtly updated to keep track of the times.

Thomas Aujero Small is a music impresario and writer who contributes to ConcertoNet, one of the longest-running online classical music portals. Together, the duo travelled around Europe to undertake what sounds like very enjoyable research – visiting halls, attending concerts, etc. Nearly 200 images capture the scale, grandeur and richness of the venues.

The book is arranged chronologically, with a special focus on Europe’s so-called musical capitals - Berlin, Vienna, Paris, Prague and London. If nothing else, the monograph provides the enthusiast with the ultimate bucket list of performance venues, complete with helpful histories of artistic directors, orchestras, opera companies and festivals.

'Music and Architecture in Harmony: Opera Houses and Concert Halls of Europe, 1672–2022', Michael Webb and Thomas Aujero Small, ORO Editions, is released on October 19.

The 500 Scattante from new British Automotive Studio La Cinquecento makes a welcome change from the deluge of fire-breathing, ultra-high-performance restomods that have come to dominate the market in restored and uprated classic cars.

The 500 Scattante is the exact opposite yet has equal amounts of charm. Featuring a new engine – sourced in this case from the Fiat 500’s successor, the 1970s Fiat 126 – with all-new suspension, braking, steering, cooling and electrical systems, the Scattante (Italian for ‘sprightly’) also has renewed and refreshed bodywork and details.

Founder Max Kindersley approached Milan-based design consultancy BorromeodeSilva to hone and refine the familiar original, reworking every facet of the form without losing sight of the qualities that make the 1957 original such an icon with added functionality for the modern driver.

The project was born out of a long-standing fascination with the car. A Fiat 500 had been in Kindersley’s family for decades, spending the last 25 years or so tucked away forgotten in a barn. This 1973 car was to form the basis of the new project and new company.

’I’ve always loved what the Fiat 500 represents,’ says Kindersley. ‘It’s simple, light, full of character and makes people smile. The idea was never to change that. We wanted to take everything that makes the original so special and see how far we could develop it – to make it faster, sharper and better engineered, without losing the reason you wanted a 500 in the first place.’

BorromeodeSilva’s bodywork widens the car’s stance, adding side skirts and adding minimalist wheels and rally-inspired additional front lights. To the casual observer, it might not be much, but for a true aficionado, something special is clearly afoot.

That attention to detail continues under the skin, with a meticulously installed Fiat 126-derived two-cylinder engine with a twin-spark ignition system. All the revisions and updates have been created to make the Scattante more engaging and responsive.

Potential customers are now being invited to contact La Cinquecento with plans of their own as a limited series of individually numbered cars is in the offing.

Enquiries to 500.design

Announced today, the RIBA International Prize 2026 shortlist reveals just four buildings – one of which will be announced as the year's best. The diverse projects, spanning from Belgium to Bangladesh, each offer an exciting architectural proposition. Their common ground? 'Design improves daily life while responding to a changing climate,' RIBA's representatives explain.

Ranging from cultural space to urban transformation, there is certainly variety in the mix. From now till 15 October 2026, when the winner will be unveiled, the judges will visit, examine, debate and eventually decide which project merits the coveted top spot. The winner will be announced alongside the recipient of the RIBA International Emerging Architect award.

The RIBA International Prize 2026 shortlist

Neil Gillespie, chair of the RIBA Awards group, said: 'The RIBA International Prize shortlist represents the full range of what the prize seeks to recognise – buildings that are rigorously designed, deeply considered, and genuinely meaningful to the people and places they serve. Each project demonstrates an exceptional understanding of its context, showing how architecture can enrich everyday life while responding with imagination and purpose to the complex challenges shaping our built environment.'

It all comes together to mark an important moment for RIBA awards; 2026 marks the tenth birthday of the RIBA International Prize. Meanwhile, the RIBA Stirling Prize, also to be revealed at a dedicated ceremony in London come October, is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year, having been first awarded in 1996 (and indeed sharing its birthday with that of Wallpaper*).

BRAC University by WOHA, Dhaka, Bangladesh

A formidable reinvention story, this project transforms a former landfill site in Dhaka into a vertical, 13-storey campus serving 20,000 students and a variety of public spaces. Passive cooling strategies, natural cross-ventilation and extensive landscaping are just a few of its sustainability strategies, making this scheme an exemplar in how to bring life back into neglected urban space.

Green Field Factory of Karupannya Rangpur Limited by Nakshabid Architects, Rangpur, Bangladesh

What if a textile factory were treated not as industrial ground, but first and foremost as workplace, wellbeing hub and space for community? The result might look something like the Green Field Factory, a deceptively large, seven storey building that takes its cues from its country's vernacular and rural Bengali homesteads.

Royale Belge by Caruso St John Architects and Bovenbouw Architectuur with DDS+, Watermael-Boitsfort, Brussels, Belgium

Surrounded by leafy, south-east Belgian forests, Royal Belge brings a modernist landmark into the 21st century. The original structure, designed by Belgian architect René Stapels and Pierre Dufau in the 1960s as the headquarters of the insurance company, has been sensitively reused, protected and adapted, showing how 20th-century heritage can play an important role in today's life too.

Z33 by Francesca Torzo Architetto, Hasselt, Belgium

Hasselt’s historic Beguinage, a walled garden enclave of brick buildings that used to be an almshouse, has recently been brought into the 21st century. Now, with Torzo's new building at its heart, it also has a dedicated, fresh space for contemporary art, design and public gathering. Adaptive reuse is executed on another level here, as local materials meet traditional craftsmanship to impressive results.

riba.org

Frank Lloyd Wright was nothing if not prolific. The great American architect was both a workaholic and a natural self-publicist, pioneering the use of elaborate conceptual schemes to draw attention to his studio and his work. Over the course of a long, long career, Wright reputedly designed over 1,100 buildings, of which around 46 per cent were actually built. A substantial number of these were houses, ranging from hilltop mansions to World Heritage-listed sites of global importance, and more modest, out-of-the-way buildings.

This house in Michigan is one of the latter. For sale through Signature Sotheby’s International Realty, the Samuel Eppstein House dates back to 1953, when Wright was very much in the twilight of his career (he was 85 when the house was completed). Nevertheless, the house, in Kalamazoo County, is a finely realised example of his ‘Usonian’ vision for middle-class housing, often located in pre-planned housing developments and intended to be a more generous and creative response to the homogeneity of suburban design.

The Eppstein House is modest in scale, at 2,500 sq ft. Containing five bedrooms, four of which are little more than compact sleeping cells, the house saves its powder for the primary living space at one end of the linear plan. Set beneath a soaring monopitch roof above an array of glazing leading out onto a terrace, this room stands in stark counterpoint to the rest of the single-storey, low-slung structure.

In common with the majority of the Usonian houses, the Eppstein House is made from monumental concrete blocks, visible both outside and in. Largely modified – and certainly not extended – it survives as an expression of the original architectural vision.

The surrounding areas are also pretty special. The plot is located on the Galesburg Country Homes community, a 70-acre spread of land half way between Detroit and Chicago that gives each house a unique rural outlook. In fact, it’s one of four Wright-designed houses at ‘The Acres’ – the others include the Weisblat House, the Curtis Meyer House and the Eric & Pat Pratt House. All follow similar design principles, animated by the use of sculpted building blocks, bespoke joinery and linear floor plans.

Joining the community of Frank Lloyd Wright owners is not for the faint-hearted, such is the demand for information, rentals and photoshoots. If you have the enthusiasm and passion for one of the true masters of modern architecture, then it’s good to know there are still opportunities for ownership.

Samuel Eppstein Residence, 11090 Hawthorne Drive, Galesburg, Michigan, USA, $2.1M at Signature Sotheby’s International Realty, SothebysRealty.com, @SothebysRealty

When Italian designer Dario Vitale exited Versace after only a single season, the announcement was met with some disappointment from the fashion community: here was a designer who had proposed a distinct new vision for the Italian house, imbued with a charge of sex appeal inspired by the early collections of Gianni Versace that felt unmistakably now. In a review of his first (and what would be only) collection, we called him a ‘disruptive force, stripping back conceptions [of Versace] and ushering in an energetic new vision’.

Today, though, Dario Vitale – who was at Miu Miu for 15 years, including as design director, before heading to Versace – has taken on a major new role as creative director of Emporio Armani, as well as heading up Giorgio Armani’s accessories line. Coming in the wake of founder Giorgio Armani’s death in September last year, the appointment marks the first time someone from outside of the family will undertake these roles. It ends months of speculation as to who would succeed in securing Vitale for his next move.

A statement from the house today (16 September) said that the ‘arrival marks the beginning of a new chapter in the brand’s history’, with Vitale chosen for ‘his keen sensitivity to product, quality, consistency and contemporaneity’. Silvana Armani, Mr Armani’s niece and head of womenswear design, and Leo Dell’Orco, head of menswear design of the Armani Group, say that Dario will interpret Emporio Armani’s spirit of ‘freedom, experimentation and energy’ with ‘respect and authority’.

‘I am honoured to take on this dual role across Emporio Armani and Giorgio Armani, and deeply grateful to Silvana and Leo for welcoming me into their world,’ says Vitale, who was born close to Naples and began his career at Bottega Veneta under Tomas Maier and DSquared2.

‘Armani has a powerful legacy and unmistakable design language; a heritage that has spanned decades and shaped the history of fashion,’ he continues. ‘I approach all of this with a deep sense of responsibility and excitement as we build upon that rich foundation, defining a new era together.’

That era begins with immediate effect, says the Armani Group, though it has not yet been announced when Vitale will make his runway debut.

Better known for their mega-structural cultural works around the world, such as the monumental Beijing City Library, Norwegian practice Snøhetta have dialled the scale right down for this new project in their home city of Oslo.

The new élan coffee bar in the historic Kvadraturen district spent the past decade as the showroom for Magnat Kaffehus, a commercial-grade supplier of high-quality coffee to businesses around the city. Seeking a way to put their wares before a wider market, the company turned to Snøhetta to shape élan, transforming the showroom into a public coffee bar that blends the Nordic Neo-Baroque of the original Sjøfartsbygningen building with contemporary forms and materials.

The historic façade is certainly intriguing, with curved brick, oxidised copper detailing and fluted stone columns anchoring the retail site to the ground. Inside élan, there are some clear material and stylistic parallels, from the rich turquoise colour of the sculptural, torus-shaped ceiling-mounted speaker installation to the way that the stone columns have been paired with semi-circular timber benches.

The rest of the décor is very coffee adjacent, with dark stained oak and natural cork finishes evoking the richness of the blend itself. All-in-all, it’s the art, craft and ritual of the coffee-brewing process that is being celebrated, with that unmistakable scent permeating through the space. The central circular oak counter is paired with a solid, highly sculptural chunk of heat-treated cork supplied by Corkinho, drawing an unmistakeable parallel with coffee grounds and a steaming stimulant.

‘Rather than creating a conventional counter where guests and baristas stand on opposite sides, we wanted to create a new centre point for the interaction,’ says Snøhetta’s Peter Girgis, the Interior Architect on the project, ‘I think there's magic in creating curiosity around everyday routines. One way of achieving that is to shuffle the pieces around a little.’

Elements like the oversized menu board, the bean-like circular sofa (actually Snøhetta’s own Array modular sofa designed for MDF Italia) and the array of beans for sale all conjure up a rich, evocative atmosphere. It’s all very intentional, with the red skinned coffee berry providing a visual jumping off point, with other quoted colours include the green of the raw bean and the dark browns of the drink itself.

The ceiling speaker installation plays a bespoke soundscape, with Snøhetta designed designing the fixtures and fittings in house, executed by specialist contractor Henriksen Snekkeri.

‘We didn’t want furniture with too much character of its own. Instead, we wanted pieces that would complete the overall expression while allowing attention to remain focused on the heart of the space, creating a sense of calm and balance,’ says Marlene Fenger Vedal, Head of Interior Architecture at Snøhetta and project lead for élan, ‘The ceiling and the counter are the lead actors here, while the furniture belongs to the ensemble, functioning as an integral part of the fixed interior.’

This monolithic interior is complemented by Jonas von der Fehr’s specially commissioned soundscape, The Sound of élan, which serves as an aural guide through the different spatial zones. ‘The compositions evolve gradually, allowing listeners to discover new details along the way without having to follow the music from beginning to end,’ says von der Fehr, ‘The score was also conceived with a sound shower in mind, where audio is delivered through a directional horn suspended from the ceiling. As a result, the music is designed so that guests can move in and out of it, whether they pause for a brief moment or stay to listen for longer.’

Whether your tastes run to sound design, bespoke design or simply an impressive cup of coffee, élan is a destination worth seeking out.

élan coffee bar, Kirkegata 7, Oslo, elancoffee.no, @elan.Oslo, MagnatKaffehus.noSnøhetta.com, @Snøhetta

Summer is only just ended but Healf is already preparing for the holidays, with its viral advent calendar launching today, 15 September.

The online wellbeing platform, known for its exacting edit of both niche and commercial brands, has packed its annual launch with 26 brands, 24 of which have full-size products. The names inside include Dr Barbara Sturm skincare, Kaicao cacao, What’s That Patch transdermal wellness patches, Humanrace skincare, Momentous supplements, AG1 pro health drink and more. All of this comes courtesy of Healf’s experts, but reflects the approach of someone who is so skilled in the practice of looking good that she’s made a career out of it: Claudia Schiffer.

The supermodel is an investor and ambassador for the platform, and both the calendar’s appearance and the products inside chime with her thoughtful approach to wellbeing. Packaged in a sleek silver case, Healf’s advent calendar forgoes the chintz of traditional Christmas fare in favour of a more minimalist, design-led approach.

‘Christmas is traditionally a time of indulgence and excess, so I liked the idea of turning that concept around and having an advent calendar that promotes wellbeing habits that take you from Christmas and beyond,’ Schiffer says about the design. ‘Quite often we get to January and decide to reset. With this curation, you can discover new products to kickstart that journey early, by making small changes that can be truly beneficial in the long term.’

When it comes to the products inside, Schiffer notes that Fatty 15, the omega fatty acid supplement, is one of her favourites, an essential in her morning routine. The Momentous Ashwaganda and Thorne Magnesium Glycinate are also up on the list as part of her evening wind down, and Honestly Manuka honey is a must-have when she has a sore throat.

When asked about the other features of her daily routine, Schiffer says: ‘Taking vitamin D3 + K2, Perfect Aminos, 15-30 minutes of deep breathing, hitting a minimum of 10,000 steps, weight training, ensuring I have at least three palm-sized portions of protein a day, and drinking around two litres of water. I also love to use my PEMF (pulsed electromagnetic field) mat whilst reading a book and wearing my Oura ring, which has taught me a lot about improving sleep – taking magnesium in the evening has made a big difference and I stop eating at 7pm.’

Those interested can find the calendar online now, but we recommend acting fast.

Acts of reinvention were on the mind of American designer Ulla Johnson this season, choosing New York’s Gotham Park to show her latest collection on Monday morning. The park, which sits under the Brooklyn Bridge on its Manhattan side, has over the past century, been a shopping parade, a skate park (Brooklyn Banks, as it was previously known, was the cradle of street skating in the 1980s), before falling into disrepair and eventually locked away to passers-by.

In 2020, a grassroots movement to save the skatepark and reclaim Brooklyn Banks began. The newly named Gotham Park opened in 2023 and will eventually stretch nine acres and include a detailed planting project to make the park into a green space. ‘We all know the importance of green space within the urban landscape, especially as the world changes,’ said Johnson, who, after the show, donated 750 native plants and 12 trees in a collaboration with Field Operations, the agency responsible for landscaping the High Line. ‘Creating these spaces of oasis is, I think, critical to the future of our urban life together.’

The project is a response, says Johnson, to the ephemeral nature of a runway show. ‘There's so much impermanence to what happens in these 15 minutes,’ she said. ‘As we grow and develop, we have to think about what we stand for: having a lasting mark, bringing beauty to where we are [and making things] that live past the moment are all incredibly important to us.’

Gotham Park also provided an apt stage for a collection which Johnson said was an ode to the ‘self-expression’ and ‘self-invention’ of New York women (‘all New York’s runway,’ began the collection notes). ‘It’s this lived experience that we create every day: the act, the performance of dress, and the act of coming together with loved ones, but also with passersby,’ she said. ‘That impromptu joy that only New Yorkers understand, when somebody compliments their outfit or when there’s that unstudied interaction between strangers.’

It lent the collection an eclectic mood, which Johnson described as ‘urban pastoral’, juxtaposing the elements of a city uniform (tailored jackets and shorts; trench coats; macintosh jackets), with moments of whimsy – gowns came ruffled or adorned with flowers, while shoes featured raffia pom-poms. Which in turn brought it back to Gotham Park.

‘Showing in this space, we were thinking about the idea of appreciating a moment of beauty or a flower against something that feels quite industrial, gritty, you know, true to itself,’ she said. ‘It’s the tension between something very lyrical and something very urban.’

Stay tuned to wallpaper.com for more coverage from New York Fashion Week S/S 2026.

If the words 'Mykonos house' bring to mind island parties, beachside negronis and the big blue Aegean Sea, you might be surprised to find out that only one of these things define the experience at Anamesa. The new home, designed by Athens-based practice K-Studio, is a private residence in one of Greece's busiest, buzziest islands; yet it was designed to bring peace and balance to its inhabitants, who were keen to make the most of the island, and all its different facets.

Explore Anamesa, a new Mykonos house by K-Studio

Anamesa means 'in between', the architects explain, and it was the liminal place between buzz and quiet, business and domestic calm that they tried to capture for their client through this design. To achieve this, the plot, set above Kalafatis beach, on the quieter east side of the island, was picked for the choices it provides – activities on offer nearby range from social spots to sporting sites and more low-key corners, something to suit every mood.

This tension, option and balance set the scene for a Mykonos home that draws on local land and intelligence. The architects explain: 'Anamesa draws from this expanded field: inseparable from the rawness of its elements, the island spirit is honed by the Cycladic light, the meltemi winds and the salt of the sea force, into a culture of openness, conviviality, and exchange. Alongside this primal condition, Mykonos has evolved into a cosmopolitan crossroads defined by nightlife, multicultural energy, and a globally influential hospitality culture.

'At the same time, the ancestral presence of Delos with its open-air archaeological landscape bridges contemporary life with memory and heritage.'

The architects describe the forces at play here, such as solitude and celebration, rawness and refinement, stillness and movement, tradition and contemporary existence, 'not as oppositions, but as overlapping conditions'. The result is a home that feels at once welcoming and clearly defined, full of character yet not shouting for attention.

Soft corners, natural materials, neutral colours that sit comfortably within the broader context and an effortless transition between inside and out that helps to negotiate seasonal changes and different weather conditions make for a residence designed for easy living, to be used year-round.

Textures and surfaces were selected to complement each other - you will not find sharp juxtapositions and intensity here. The home's grandeur comes from its majestic poise as it sits nestled into the island's rocky terrain.

Semi-buried into the hill, the structure is orientated to look out towards the long views of the Aegean, while cosy – yet still expansive – rooms inside offer options to feel open to the horizon on offer, or remain cocooned within the land.

The interior spans private bedroom suites, wellness areas, and service functions, connected by a softened, skylit circulation system. Meanwhile, the outdoor areas and landscaping complete the composition.

'The landscape is not an extension but a continuation of the architecture, where stone retaining walls, native vegetation, and crafted outdoor moments include a Citrus House for dining and a circular threshing-floor fire lounge, gradually blurring the separation between built form and ground,' write the team.

Indeed, elements such as Citrus House, a round-shaped stone structure – a site-specific version of a conversation pit – on one of the open terraces, bring local vernacular elements into the contemporary design solution.

'Situated by the entrance, [it] reinterprets a vernacular typology as a gesture of protected openness, to express a culture of hospitality where what arrives from elsewhere is welcomed, adapted, and allowed to belong,' the architects explain.

To perfect their vision, the architects worked with local Cycladic craftspeople and their time-honed skills, putting together a material palette of stone, lime, and timber in a composition that feels appropriate and elevated.

Traditional techniques have been reinterpreted and enhanced through modern technology, while bespoke furniture, lighting and curated spatial sequences make this Mykonos house a truly one-of-a-kind, tailored experience.

k-studio.gr

Hedley Studios, formerly known as The Little Car Company, has built its brand around making classic icons available for a fraction of the price and a fraction of the size – usually 75% scale. We’ve already sampled the Bentley Blower Jr. and the Ferrari Testa Rossa J, now it’s the turn of another classic brand.

After three years of development, the company has announced its first collaboration with Porsche, the 550 J. Powered by an 8kW (11bhp) 48V motor, it’ll hit 40mph (if you’re brave enough) and go for 30 miles before it needs recharging. As a nod to Porsche’s contemporary motorsport-focused models, an RS pack doubles the power, ups the top speed to 50mph, increases the range to 50 miles, as well as adding drilled brakes and adjustable dampers.

Hedley Studios commands a unique position between child-like fun and grown-up art, so picking the right Porsche model to shrink was crucial. Ben Hedley, founder and CEO of Hedley Studios says, ‘With Porsche, you’ve got a few options. The 911 is an obvious one, but so far we've strayed away from more modern cars. The 356 was another great candidate from the early days, but I love the shape of the 550. It's a work of art, it's a beautiful, elegant shape.’

Since it was so small in the first place, the 550 was scaled down to 80% to make the ergonomics work, so there’s still room for two adults to sit next to each other. While Porsche provided access to an original 550 (one of just 90 examples ever made) and archive materials, the goal wasn’t to make an exact replica.

Hedley says, ‘We're not slaves to everything that was done before. We can act like the naughty little brother of the brand, which is a real tribute, actually, a real honour and privilege.’ This shows up in tasteful little quirks like custom switchgear to select the drive modes you’d find in a Porsche Taycan.

The attention to detail continues under the carbon fibre body where Hedley Studios prides itself on maintaining the same handling characteristics as its original inspiration. Trailing arm suspension, famously the same setup you'd find on a classic Volkswagen Beetle, was shrunk down to fit the new car with a few modern tweaks like Bilstein coilover dampers, Eibach springs and Brembo brakes.

Weight placement was also finessed to give the 550 J a mid-engined feel with the batteries tightly packaged behind the seats. ‘Back in the day when it was racing, the 550 had a tiny engine compared to the people they were racing against, but it was so light and so nimble,’ says Hedley, ‘It truly was a Giant Slayer and we wanted to reinterpret that as part of our commission.’

It’s certainly a lively machine. ‘I took this thing out on track for the first time, obviously not being a responsible car company CEO, instead hammering around the track as quick as possible,’ Hedley continues, ‘It was brilliant. You could feel the trailing arm suspension, which is a very different feel to modern double wishbone suspension. I am embarrassed to say I spun it twice because I was driving too fast. It’s really fun and playful, I was just laughing through my helmet.’

Whether the 550 J ends up as a track weapon, art piece or garage queen, Hedley hopes it will resonate with Porsche lovers and automotive enthusiasts alike. He adds, ‘We have a theme where we take these very special cars that have their place in history and respectfully reinterpret them and bring them to a new audience because most of these cars we will never get the chance to drive. They're too rare, they're too expensive and we are trying to open that up.’

The 550 J will be limited to just 250 examples. Pricing starts from £69,500 and deliveries are expected to begin in Spring 2027. HedleyStudios.com, @Hedley.Studios

Rolls-Royce has undertaken yet another foray into exotic, off-the-beaten track materiality. The new Rolls-Royce Phantom Hummingbird, unveiled today, is the latest Private Commission from the company’s Bespoke division, along the lines of the recent Phantom Dragon and the Phantom Goldfinger.

It’s a patient, deep-pocketed customer who chooses to indulge themselves in all that Rolls-Royce Bespoke has to offer. For a start, craft takes time, as does the process of ensuring that new finishes and surfaces can be made sufficiently safe and durable for use in an automotive environment. These cars should be considered closer in spirit to one-off superyacht commissions, where every facet of the design is effectively a prototype made real.

The Phantom Hummingbird is no different. You all know what a Phantom looks like, which is why the images here focus on the interior processes and not the imperious bodywork (even though it does look rather impressive in a two-tone mix of Wildberry and White Sands, along with a hand-applied White Sands Coachline and hummingbird rendering along the flanks).

The innovation here is the use of iridescent abalone shells to create the marquetry patterns across the interior of the car, the first time these sea snail shells have been used in a Rolls-Royce. The shifting, iridescent surface is used to evoke the plumage of a hummingbird, images of which are inlaid in each rear seat picnic table.

In addition, the rear centre Waterfall section also uses a mix of mother and pearl as the basis of a unique botanical pattern. As Phil Fabre de la Grange, head of Bespoke at Rolls-Royce, explains, ‘our clients continually invite us to explore that inspiration in new and unexpected ways, as this remarkable Private Commission so perfectly demonstrates. The introduction of abalone shell into Rolls-Royce marquetry presented our designers and craftspeople with a fresh creative and technical challenge.’

The car was commissioned as a present for the client’s wife, a project handled through the company’s Private Office Dubai. It’s projects like this that maintain Rolls-Royce’s rarefied status; it took nine months to develop the process and application, with each hummingbird formed from 53 laser-cut pieces of abalone and mother-of-pearl. Each piece was cut, hand filed and reduced in thickness to allow for seamless application, giving the car the same aura as a piece of heirloom furniture.

The wood surround is Ash Burr veneer, along with pieces of Silver Birch to supplement the bird and flower design. They’re paired with Creme Light leather with Moccasin and Tan detailing and everything sparkles beneath the familiar Rolls-Royce Starlight Headliner.

There’s a lot of debate right now about contemporary craftsmanship and how volume brands are looking to get in on the act and upgrade their interior quality through techniques, materials and processes that mimic traditional crafted surfaces.

Make no mistake, Rolls-Royce still demonstrates what craft really means, not some ersatz approximation of bespoke. After all, craft is skill multiplied by time, and it’s only at this rarefied level that the investment and ability exists to make such things come true.

Rolls-RoyceMotorCars.com, @RollsRoyceCars

Jeremy and Cath Brown founded Feldspar, the Devon-based design studio, to create pieces they needed for their own home. Working from their workshop, a 500-year-old cider farm, they focus on creating items of longevity in the form of dainty bone china tableware, elegant homewares, Feldspar's first furniture collection (which debuted in 2025 at London Design Festival), lambswool blankets, and more. Now, they have translated their simple, cosy, and playful dimpled aesthetic into a new lighting collection.

Discover Feldspar's first lighting collection

‘We always wanted to be able to create anything we needed for our home, and so we've been experimenting with larger-scale items for years now – last year's furniture collection included the very biggest things we can physically fit into our kilns, [such as] the “Merrivale” side-table base. With the pendants, the main challenge was to find the balance between casting them finely to ensure the light glowed through, and ensuring they are still structurally strong,’ Cath Brown tells Wallpaper*.

The collection comprises a series of four new pendants and two table lamps. What the founders loved about the fine bone china is that it seems white and opaque by day, but takes on a warming, paper-lantern glow during the evening.

The table lamps, the larger ‘Merrivale’ and smaller ‘Burra’, have a base made from fine bone china – thicker than the pendants for a sturdier result – with all made at Feldspar’s Devon studio. The table lamps’ shades come in pale-blue and grey linen, and are handmade by designer Eloise Scotland, based in Bath. Here, she uses traditional hand-stitching techniques. Clean lines are used for the construction, which means there are no requirements for any trim or tape around the edges.

Brown says, ‘The lampshades we designed with Eloise were inspired by the shape of a bowl of her Grandpa's, an avid ceramics collector, and each has a hidden cobalt-blue rib inside, a nod to the cobalt blue we use on our ceramics. The finishing touch is a hand-carved brass dimmer switch, tactile and unexpected.’

The pieces are elegant, but not serious, an important combination for creating a space that feels tasteful, yet lived in. ‘We took inspiration from the rooms in our home and were inspired by shapes we like from our existing collections,’ shares Brown. ‘Our kitchen has a high ceiling, so we wanted a taller pendant to sit within the space there.’ The result was ‘Big Slim’, a tall and elegant pendant to hang above a table. Another pendant in the series, meanwhile, ‘Big Bell’, has a shade that references the ‘Merrivale’ table and lamp base, ‘echoing the curves of that graceful bell shape’.

Feldspar is named after the abundant mineral found in granite that gives ceramics their strength. And strong they are, as the studio is all about designing everyday functional items that are also intended to be treasured – influenced by the longevity of pieces previous generations used to own. Brown concludes, ‘Our new range is what we call the 'staples' – classic pendants and lamps in a collection of different sizes, for all eventualities. We wanted to create truly bespoke and unique objects; each is beautifully hand-crafted.'

feldspar.studio

Hull, in Yorkshire, is a city shaped by water, industrial history and generations of seafaring. For London Design Festival 2026, internationally acclaimed sound artist Chris Watson draws upon this rich maritime heritage in Trent Falls. This immersive spatial installation takes listeners on a sonic journey along northern England’s Humber Estuary.

‘This is a sound voyage that moves with the tide, down the estuary and eventually out into the North Sea,’ explains Watson.

The journey begins at Goole Docks, where the rivers Trent and Ouse converge to form the Humber. Following the ebbing tide, the piece moves through the reeds of Faxfleet Nature Reserve before a freight train rattles past the former Oxmardyke signal box. According to Watson, this sequence draws on the railway and Charles Dickens’ mystery story, The Signal-Man. ‘These sounds connect the industrial landscape with the human story of the estuary.’

The soundscape then passes beneath the Humber Bridge, announced by the thunder of vehicles crossing its expansion joints. Later, it gathers the cries of a local fairground, cathedral bells and the roar of supporters at a Hull Kingston Rovers home game.

Further along the estuary, birds scour the mudflats while their calls mingle with the distant echoes of Saltend Chemicals Park. ‘The piece is a mix of wildlife and industrial sounds constantly interrupting one another,’ states Watson.

The journey eventually reaches Spurn Point, an extraordinary, remote spit of land extending into the North Sea. Here, the haunting calls of grey seals drift across the water alongside the rolling wash of the waves. ‘I regard my work as cinematic. I want it to fire people’s imagination,’ notes Watson.

Created from recordings gathered over nearly two years, Trent Falls compresses time and collapses distance, drawing geography, seasons and memory into a single continuous passage. Originally commissioned as part of Hull’s year as UK City of Culture (in 2017), the work extends beyond the city to capture the wider character of the Humber Estuary.

‘The piece is inspired by Hull, but it’s really about listening to the whole estuary and how it changes as you move through it,’ says Watson.

At its heart, Trent Falls is an invitation to slow down and hear both Hull and its surrounding areas. ‘With my installations, I give people the time to listen. I want them to turn their phones off and allow themselves to be taken somewhere else.’

This exploration of water, infrastructure and industry finds a fitting setting at Wapping Hydraulic Power Station. Built in 1890 and closed to the public for 13 years, the building is hosting its first cultural programme under the custodianship of the Glass Castle Foundation. Here, Trent Falls is presented through L-Acoustics’ immersive sound system as part of The Art of Sound programme for the London Design Festival.

Running until 15 September 2026, The Art of Sound also features work by Max Cooper, alongside Hollie Buhagiar’s Lengua Desollada and Helen Lyon’s A Decade Is a Long Time. Both works were created in collaboration with L-Acoustics and the Alliance for Women Film Composers.

Follow the latest from London Design Festival 2026 with our live blog.

Venture into any one of L’Objet’s boutiques in the Saint-Germain-des-Prés neighbourhood in Paris, or on London’s Sloane Street, and you’ll feel transplanted into a jewel-like cove adorned with treasures – in this case, elegant homeware, fragrances and decor. Now this treasure box of curiosities has expanded, thanks to the brand’s latest collaboration, with jewellery designer Jessica McCormack.

Discover the L'Objet x Jessica McCormack collection

L’Objet founder Elad Yifrach and McCormack have long admired each other's work from a distance, and finally met through mutual friends and collaborators, the Haas Brothers. ‘Jessica and I talked, on and off, about working together, but it wasn't until one of our launches in London that it actually took shape,’ says Yifrach. ‘She showed up with a set of drawings, put them in my hands, and that was it. That's how it started.’

Both designers are deeply influenced by the sea – as evident in McCormack’s 2023 ‘Beaches’ collection and L’Objet’s shell-inspired vessels. For the new collection, techniques used in jewellery making, such as hand-sculpting and fine metalwork, are translated to porcelain and metal objects.

‘Jewellery techniques have always been part of our design language, part of our craftsmanship – but it's a different thing entirely to explore them alongside a master jeweller like Jessica,’ Yifrach tells Wallpaper*. ‘She brings a completely different set of eyes to the table, a different way of thinking, and it pushes you to pay attention to the smallest details. That's what sets this collection apart.’

The debut collection comprises art de la table and singular vanity pieces. A highlight to note is L’Objet’s first-ever cutlery set. There are also festive serving pieces – champagne and ice buckets, platters, and a sculptural caviar dish. A recurring twisted cord motif nods to shells and maritime ropes. The pieces are rendered in fine bisque porcelain with hand-painted 24ct gold details.

Says Yifrach, ‘The Mediterranean Sea has always been a source of inspiration for me and part of L’Objet’s DNA. What excites me is taking something that feels simple, almost obvious, and bringing it to life with real precision and an iconic sensibility, the kind that only comes from true mastercraft.’

L'Objet x Jessica McCormack collection is now available via uk.l-objet.com

After the dust has settled on LDF 2026, the exhibitions and installations demounted and the talks archived, it would be nice to have a physical keepsake of this particular moment in time.

That’s the intention behind Design Burger’s new monograph, The Product Design 100, published to accompany an exhibition and event space held as part of Shoreditch Design Week. Billed as the first volume in what will hopefully be an ongoing series, it’s a handsome hardback monograph that neatly encapsulates the current design ‘scene’, and the products and studios we commonly associate with good contemporary industrial design.

In the days before our feeds were swamped with memetic examples of ‘design’, old and new, retro and futuristic, classic and contemporary, such books were two a penny, but as the appetite for print tailed off, so did the desire to publish compendiums of consumable objects when all that imagery could be sourced for free.

These days, if something is being piped into your socials sans commentary or attribution, it might not even be physically real, let alone be shaped by a human hand. That’s why a return to a curated, edited physical compendium is so welcome. Admittedly, you’ve probably spotted a fair few of the inclusions in the real (and virtual) pages of Wallpaper*, but Design Burger can’t be faulted for their diligence in putting together these 100 projects across 324 beautifully presented pages.

The studio was founded in 2018 by industrial designers Alex Philpott, Oscar Pearce, Kester Page and Joe Slatter in order to connect designers, promote their work to a growing international audience and organise studio visits, interviews and gatherings and exhibitions.

It’s taken those eight years to knock this book into shape, with graphic design undertaken in collaboration with Collaborate London. The 100 featured products come from big brands and small consultancies, the studios of established star designers and fresh-faced start-ups.

There’s no common theme save for a consistent thread of quality. Yet out of this curation emerges some of the headline trends of the modern era, from a focus on contemporary luxury craft to idiosyncratic, highly focused single-use devices, as well as environmentally driven solutions that seek to re-shape and redirect existing categories.

There are more focused sections on several key players, ranging from big names like the now defunct Barber Osgerby, Naoto Fukasawa, Jasper Morrison, Konstantin Grcic, Marc Newson, Cecilie Manz and Tom Dixon, alongside those companies who have become a byword for a relentless fixation on the integration of function into aesthetics, such as Rimowa, Vitra, Nothing and teenage engineering, amongst others. Finally, there are those firms whose influence is inescapable – Nike, Google, Meta, and Microsoft – yet who still manage to make a meaningful contribution to material culture.

Not all the featured products are slam-dunk commercial hits and not all will be able to deliver on their promise. In fact, some have already fallen by the wayside thanks to the modern era’s chaotic hybridisation of entrepreneurship, media hype and slick imagery.

Whatever the outcome, The Product Design 100 is a welcome snapshot, a compilation of a moment in time ripped from our fast-moving visual culture. Not every product can look like these, but it’s always good to have to have something to aspire to.

The Product Design 100: A Snapshot of Industrial Design Today Vol.1, Design Burger, £48, DesignBurgerShop.com, @Design_Burger

The new book is being launched alongside an exhibition at Kachette Annex, 1 Kingsland Road, London E2 8AA, during Shoreditch Design Week, ShoreditchDesignWeek.com

For its latest collaboration, Rimowa partnered with artist favourite Faber Castell on an Artist Case that honours the German luggage brand's history of supporting artists and creatives.

Since its founding in 1898, Rimowa has been known for its grooved cases, featuring an impossible to miss aluminium aesthetic that has become a signature of the German luggage maison. Through artist collaborations and partnerships with institutions (most recently, Museum Ludwig, with which it created a series of artist stickers that offer a new creative dimension to the traditional luggage sticker), it has been able to expand its universe and place itself at the centre of artistic invention. Meanwhile, its annual design prize has been instrumental in supporting and fostering a new generation of creative thinkers through mentorship and exposure to the industry.

Rimowa x Faber-Castell Artist Case launches

Ninth-generation family-owned Faber Castell was founded in 1761, and its precisely engineered writing instruments have been a staple of creatives' desks globally throughout this time. The Artist Case honours this legacy, featuring Rimowa's distinctive grooved aluminium shell containing every artist's staple imaginable.

The complete set of drawing instruments (all made in Germany) are conceived to support the artistic process from sketch to colour: the case includes a series of grooved 2B graphite pencils inspired by Rimowa's grooved aluminium motif, 120 Polychromos colour pencils, as well as specially-created Rimowa platinum plated sharpener and eraser.

The practical object opens to reveal a two-tiered system to display the pencils, and features a leather handle for smooth carrying.

With this collaboration, Rimowa once again affirms its ongoing participation into wider creative conversations, and its growing role as a key figure of today's culture and design.

The unofficial rule of the countryside is that if you’re bombing around in anything that looks remotely like a brutalist building, then you’re probably a farmer. No sweeping rooflines or curvaceous windscreens, to be part of the club it’s strictly straight lines and subpar aerodynamics. Watching the Ineos Quartermaster’s angular visage appear above the hedgerow amongst Dorset's rolling hills, it looks at home.

Gone are the days when double-cab pickups qualified as vans for UK tax purposes. Even before the change, the Quartermaster never fell into that category since it can’t carry more than 835kg in the petrol version or 760kg in the diesel. Compare that to the farmer’s true friend, the Toyota Hilux, which can lug around 1,065kg for £20k less than the Ineos, and questions start to arise on the newcomer’s legitimacy.

The Quartermaster undeniably looks the part, but at a starting price of £63,495 the truck bed will likely see nothing more egregious than some muddy boots, wet dogs and anything that would otherwise leave a lingering scent, stain or scratch in the cab. Think of it more in terms of private school pickups in the shires, rather than a tradie and his pickup for hire.

Inside, the cabin takes heavy inspiration from aviation, like its sister model, the Grenadier. Even the passenger airbag light looks like the seatbelt warning sign in a plane. Tactile buttons line the upright dash and spill over onto the ceiling where you can select all manner of off-road performance-enhancing modes.

The small semblance of a driver’s display is a faceless rectangle that houses warning lights and indicators. It’s refreshing to find yourself not sitting in front of yet another screen while driving. Of course, important information like speed and fuel are still visible, just on the right-hand side of the central display (which can be used as a touchscreen or controlled with a rotary dial).

Enjoyably, nestled under the rear seats is a reggaeton-shaming subwoofer, contributing to one of the crispest and loudest sound systems you can find in any pickup. Two pop-up safari-style sunroofs and Popemobile-esque glass all around fill the cabin with light but despite this it still feels quite tight and a bit van-like.

Somehow, despite the interior featuring gorgeous supple leather and well executed technology, alongside plenty of hard plastics and water-resistant features, it neither feels luxurious enough to rival a Range Rover, nor robust enough to live forever like an old Land Rover.

For 2026, the Quartermaster has been updated in line with its SUV-styled station wagon sibling. The most notable improvement is significantly better steering feel and a turning circle that has been cut by a metre . Don’t be fooled though, it still possesses the agility of a 12-tonne truck and any tight situation normally handled with a swift three-point turn will result in no-less than seven shunts backwards and forwards, plus or minus expletives.

Wider and taller than a Defender, old or new, the Quartermaster is the antithesis of what you want on narrow country lanes. It certainly has a commanding presence; just as you’re always forced to give way and reverse at the sight of a tractor trundling towards you on a single-track road, the Quartermaster serves as an automatic stop-and-reverse sign to those coming the opposite direction. Might is right.

Rightly or wrongly, such a vehicle is always going to be something that justifies itself on want alone. The absurdity of the Quartermaster’s 5.4m length has you pouring out of any parking space you manage to squeeze into. Throw in the towering 2m+ plus height, lifted stance and old school Defender-thieved silhouette, and it often ends up looking more parody than pedigree.

A cynic might say that the Quartermaster is not a “Built Tough” Ranger or an unbreakable Hilux; it's a Cheshire-spec Chelsea tractor for cosplaying farmers. That downplays its very real off-road ability however. It probably fares much better in the US, where space is unlimited and code-switching via your choice of truck is a national pastime.

A week stomping about the south coast in what could easily pass for the hero car in a Jurassic Park sequel, and the conclusion is this: much like an actor, the Quartermaster can play a pickup. It can't haul or manoeuvre quite like a farm-hardened Hilux, its size and steering make it too clumsy for work on the yard and it’s far too precious for tools on the back seat.

Nevertheless, the Quartermaster still larks about the countryside like it owns the place, content as a chariot for daily dog walks, trips to the beach with bikes in the back or just the morning coffee run. However you use it, you're definitely playing a part.

Ineos Quartermaster, from £63,495, IneosGrenadier.com, @Ineos_Grenadier

Last performing from the Eiffel Tower at the Paris Olympics Opening Ceremony in 2024, Céline Dion has taken some time away from the stage due to her battle with Stiff-Person Syndrome - a rare neurological condition marked by a heightened sensitivity to noise and stress, as detailed in her unfiltered documentary I AM: Céline Dion, released in the same year. On Saturday, her fans welcomed her back to the stage at the largest indoor arena in Europe: the 45,000 capacity Plenitude area, a cavernous venue known for hosting global superstar concerts, rugby matches and high-octane spectacles including monster truck racing.

Céline Dion's comeback as staged by Willo Perron

To bring her comeback show to life, she collaborated with Willo Perron, the Grammy award-winning multidisciplinary designer whose work spans set design, high fashion creative direction, and industrial design to lead the creative direction of the project. Beyond massive live productions, Perron’s portfolio covers everything from retail spaces for Adidas and Stussy to luxury furniture lines, culminating in his accolade as the 2026 Wallpaper* Designer of the Year. Known for his hyper-sleek minimalist aesthetic, the French-Canadian creative artist built his reputation as a trusted visionary for hip-hop and pop titans. His iconic stage architecture includes Rihanna’s floating platforms for the 2023 Super Bowl Halftime Show and landmark builds for Jay-Z, Drake, and Lady Gaga.

'Everything designed for this show came from conversations with Céline that centered around the fact that she never really got to do the show that she wanted to do,' said Perron the day after Dion’s opening night performance. 'When you meet her, she has a larger-than-life personality - overflowing with strength and energy. We felt her show needed to be supported by a design that was monumental and theatrical to reflect that.'

Those qualities are anchored by three massive, tactile 'stone' monoliths that play a central role in the performance, gracefully gliding across the stage to reveal and obscure her musicians, including a live rhythm section and a gospel choir. The monoliths were designed to be reconfiguring continuously throughout each act 'We didn’t want the design to feel like your standard pop show set up,' Perron explains. 'We wanted to avoid the saccharine. To balance her sensitivity, her grandness demanded a heavy materiality and almost sculptural masculinity that feels grounded and powerful.' One stand out moment from the show sees a jagged rock formation rise dramatically from the center of the stage, where Dion strides onto its precipice to sing a breathtaking rendition of 'La Wally' by composer Alfredo Catalani as snow falls onto the crowds below.

Perron worked with Dion’s ecosystem of talent to execute the vision of the show including Emmy award-winning lighting designer Rob Sinclair. Sinclair illuminated the monoliths from both within and without, casting a dramatic game of light and shadow across the arena. Halfway through the set, a custom chandelier resembling blocks of chunky quartz crystals descended over the stage; minutes later the brutalist structure started to spin and light up, turning the fixture into a dazzling disco ball washing the audience with light.

Across the show’s four acts, expansive video imagery shot and directed by renowned French creative Thibaut Grevet unfolded across massive LED screens flanking the stage. The visuals extended the physical monoliths by directly echoing their brutalist forms as well as featuring short narrative motifs. These films transitioned from grand, isolated sand dunes into a community of musicians, a visual metaphor for the chapters of her career and the full-circle moment of her return to the stage in Paris.

In the show’s final act, the LED screens slowly wheel away to reveal the structural ‘guts’ of the show's rigging itself. Stripping away the fourth wall and bathing the monoliths in raw light to strengthen their heroic form. Dion stood centre stage looking as strong and triumphant as she sounds – leaving only her soaring, unvarnished vocals to bring the night to a close accompanied by thunderous applause.

Fuel’s latest foray into the crumbling ruins of architectural good intentions is Socialist Hotels, a photographic monograph by Elena Amabili that traces the state-sponsored holiday industry in the former Eastern Bloc. It follows on from works like Soviet Scientific Institutes, the Soviet Bus Stops series and the Spomenik Monument Database, all of which pair a fascination with monumental mid-century ambition with a study of a lost era of architectural politics.

Socialist Hotels is no different. Amabili is a Berlin-based Italian photographer whose work mines this rich but vanishing seam of socialist brutalism. Her extensive travels for this new book took her to, deep breath, Abkhazia, Albania, Armenia, Belarus, Bulgaria, Crimea, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Ukraine, Uzbekistan and many more, a comprehensive laundry list of countries who laboured under the yoke of Soviet influence. In all, over 150 hotels are featured, ranging from modest writers’ retreats to time honoured classics of the genre, like Crimea’s Hotel Druzhba.

Like many visual travelogues of these regions and styles, part of the fascination lies in the apparent stasis of the subjects – décor that feels unchanged in decades, along with crumbling façades and the occasional modern ruin. But many of these outfits are still in operation, fulfilling their original function as affordable palaces of the people, seaside destinations for everyday workers to enjoy.

Like all the most intriguing architecture of the period, the best works here excel in geometric invention and richness of fittings and fixtures, from elaborate chandeliers to murals and signage. The book also contains an introduction from food writer Caroline Eden, setting these structures in their social and historic context, as well as sharing her own personal experiences staying in some of these locations.

Described by the publishers as a ‘fascinating legacy of a social and cultural idiosyncrasy,’ many of the featured buildings are under threat of destruction, redevelopment or ill-considered ‘modernisation’, making Socialist Hotels another valuable study of an intersection of time, place and politics that may never again come to pass.

Socialist Hotels, Elena Amabili, £28, Fuel Publishing, Fuel-Design.com, @FuelPublishing

Düsseldorf’s Caravan Salon is one of the RV industry’s biggest trade shows, a chance for innovation to shine in a sector driven by aspiration, technology and the romance of the unencumbered road trip. This year, there were some clear universal trends.

Off roading was the order of the day, with several key players offering up spacious campers on heavy-duty 4x4 chassis, while new materials and new form factors also got a look in. Here are nine of our favourite new homes from home revealed at the 2026 show.

Reisemobile ATventure 1070

We start with road-going titan, the ATventure 1070 by German manufacturer Reisemobile. Based on the Mercedes-Benz Actros HGV platform, the 1070 is the largest of Reisemobile’s three ATventure models, measuring in at a mighty 10.7m long by 2.5m. All of this onboard space is dedicated to luxury for two, rather than rugged overland capabilities for a large family.

A slider expands the kitchen/dining area in the centre of the truck, while the mid-section is taken up by a spa-like bathroom, with the double bedroom at the rear. Uniquely, this is also the location of a staircase to the upper deck, a lightweight demountable structure that adds a private terrace on the roof.

ATventure-Reisemobile.de, @ATventure_Reisemobile

Dethleffs c.core concept

This VW Crafter-based concept camper was created by German manufacturer Dethleffs as an experimental platform for future material and feature research. For a start, the camper body is made of a new lightweight material called Necto, derived from bonded aluminium sheets for stability and strength and excellent insulation values. It’s also flexible, allowing the c.core to be slightly more aerodynamic than the usual brick-shaped RV.

Flush windows and doors give the c.core a stealthy, futuristic feel, while the internal skylights come from the marine industry. Not only is the aluminium light but it also vastly improves the camper’s total recyclability, as does the use of recycled PET (polyethylene terephthalate). An expandable photovoltaic array on the roof helps top up the battery and doubles up as an awning. Other innovations include a pressurized water filtration system.

Inside, the c.core offers a restrained, tasteful palette – not always a given in this industry – and a flexibly arranged lounge to maximise space both at camp and on the move. Space saving features like an ultra-short-throw projector, sliding kitchen worktop and in-built outdoor kitchen also add to the mix of function and practicality. The c.core also includes fixed two berth bunk at the rear with a shower room opposite the kitchen.

Dethleffs.de, @Dethleffs_official

Beauer X6

French caravan manufacturer Beauer specialises in sliding mechanisms that double or treble available floor space once camp has been struck. Their newest model, the X6, was shown in prototype form at Düsseldorf. Unlike the familiar X3, with its circular, shell-like form, the X6 is a more conventionally boxy caravan, with a single slider that effectively doubles the space to create a 3.6m wide camping space.

The main module houses the kitchen, living room and bathroom, complete slide-out terrace and awning. Around the back, the lightweight sliding module, provides generous space for a double bed and a pair of bunks. The company also showed its new double slider X8 model at Düsseldorf.

Beauer X6, from €74,990, Beauer.fr, @Beauerx

Bürstner Habiton 6.1

The new Habiton 6.1 from Bürstner is a two- or four-person camper based on the tried and tested Mercedes-Benz Sprinter platform. Designed for go-anywhere self-sufficiency, the raised 4x4 chassis has impressive off-road capabilities, whilst interior space is subtly improved by the expanded side pod that gives you space for your feet in the transversely positioned bed.

In addition, the mattress in the pop-up is heated for cold winter nights, while an optional large capacity battery helps expand the 6.1’s off-grid endurance.

Bürstner Habiton 6.1, €78,999, Buerstner.com, @Buerstner

VW California Beach inflatables and ID. California Cruise

Think camper and most uninitiated folk think Volkswagen. The company continues to bolster its reputation as a supplier of well thought out, premium small campers with two world premieres at Caravan Salon 2026. The first is a conceptual furniture set for the new California Beach. Developed in collaboration with camping inflatables specialists Stuff Bubble, the Beach was shown with two modular interior concepts, an inflatable kitchen and bed system.

Both components mark a new direction in camper interiors, away from rigid fixed structures and towards a more flexible architecture inspired by contemporary inflatable tent design. Not only do they allow the California Beach to be used as a regular vehicle most of the time, the modules take just minutes to install and cut down on excessive weigh – the kitchen comes in at 10kg, the double bed just 12kg.

The inflatable ideas were joined by a long-awaited member of the California family, the all-electric ID. California Cruise. Based on the well-established ID. Buzz, it’s the first in a series of EV campervans that’ll be introduced by VW’s commercial arm from 2027 onwards.

Volkswagen-nutzfahrzeuge.de, StuffBubble.com, @StuffBubble_original

Norantz IPAR 4

Mining a similar seam to the Habiton 6.1, Norantz’s IPAR 4 is a go-anywhere machine that uses either a Mercedes or MAN chassis to deliver a robust off-roader. The 4-berth model includes a fixed roof extender and the IPAR is also available as the 2+2 pop-up and the pop-up-less IPAR 2. There’s a welcome on quality fixtures and fittings, plenty of storage and extras like a snorkel exhaust for fording rivers.

Norantz.com, @Norantz

Westfalia Columbus Liner

The Fiat-based Columbus Liner from industry stalwart Westfalia has one unique trip up its sleeve. Available with 2-4 berths, the 6.36m camper includes a permanent King size bed in the rear, a convertible double in the front and an optional SkyLounge pop-up, complete with terrace and, should you so desire, espresso machine.

Westfalia Columbus Liner, from €83,900, Westfalia-mobil.com, @Westfalia.fr

Rapido V64

Another compact motorhome that manages to squeeze more space out of a Ducato, the V64 from Rapido incorporates a fixed central rear bed and WC/shower unit, with a single berth space up front in the cab. A clever sliding mechanism stashes the dining table within the kitchen units when not in use and the seating area is positioned alongside the sliding door for al fresco dining.

Rapido-Motorhome.co.uk, @Rapido.campingcar

Adria Supertwin 4x4

Finally, another rugged machine that blends campervan scale with explorer truck ability. The Supertwin 4x4 is the most advanced variant of Adria’s Mercedes-based camper, also available without the raised ride height and additional pop-up sleeping area. A large front skylight brings daylight into the interior, while timber veneer trim options create a warm and welcoming ambience.

Adria Supertwin 4x4 600, from €128,299, De.Adria-Mobil.com, @AdriaMobil

A modern passive house has replaced a tired, existing bungalow in this idyllic spot in a Hertfordshire valley suburb. Welcome to Three Rivers Passive House, the newest residential offering by London-based Gbolade Design Studio.

Explore Three Rivers Passive House by Gbolade Design Studio

The project, a generously sized two-storey, 5005 sq ft home, is entirely newly built. It spans five bedrooms and a lush surrounding garden, which helps negotiate the site's slope - the entry is approached via a steep incline, which helps create an impressive moment as the residence reveals itself from the street.

A simple material palette of Belgian long-format bricks, glazing and smoke grey charred larch cladding makes for an elegant, geometric composition that cuts a contemporary figure among the greenery and surrounding, more conventional homes.

It is a special moment when the American Oak pivot front door, flanked by slender 4.5 m-tall glazing, opens to a striking double-height interior entry hall. This space anchors the home, flooded with light via a large circular rooflight above and leading to a central courtyard.

This is 'inspired by the practice’s West African heritage and the client’s desired way of living, which prioritises communal, interdependent and a fluidity of indoor-outdoor connection around multiple habitable spaces,' the architects at the dynamic studio, founded by Tara Gbolade and Lanre Gbolade, explain.

The ground floor has a flowing plan that contains the entrance hall, a gently sunken living space, dining and kitchen space, as well as a gym, a home office, a swimming pool, gym and sauna facilities. Bedrooms and further private areas are located upstairs. Meanwhile, conceived for multi-generational living, the property also includes a ground-floor private senior-living guest suite that can act as a fully independent living unit.

'The project really allowed us to bring a striking and bold vision to life, whilst achieving a home for our client with exceptional sustainable performance levels and regenerative credentials,' says Lanre Gbolade. 'The client’s understanding of the value of architecture, sustainable design and collaborative teamwork made this a genuinely pleasurable project to work on. As a practice, we prioritise a contextually responsive approach to all projects and ensure they give back more than they extract.'

And it is true. Gbolade Design Studio is a deft hand at incorporating environmentally friendly approaches in their designs - delicately and almost imperceptibly. Here, too, they crafted a home that meets RIBA 2030 Climate Challenge embodied carbon and operational energy targets, but is also Net-Zero.

Construction was carried out with off-site manufactured, low-carbon Cross-Laminated Timber (CLT) and Glulam superstructure and complementary renewable technologies. The result is a high-performance yet low operational energy home through gestures such as the inclusion of Air Source Heat Pumps, PV panels and biodiversity enrichment through sedum roofs.

gboladedesignstudio.com

In a new Wallpaper* summer series, architect Carlo Ratti explores Italy through the ordinary objects that define daily life. Meet the Monoloc, the omnipresent plastic chair that inspires strong emotions

Carlo Ratti on the Monobloc plastic chair

Italy's most hated piece of design might also be its most beloved. We are talking about the monobloc plastic chair.

I also cannot make up my mind. Love or hate? Fieri sentio et excrucior — I feel it happening, and it is torture, as the poet Catullus might have put it. This summer, we encountered it everywhere: at Aunt Mariuccia’s barbecue. At an improvised open-air cinema in Lipari. Under the umbrellas on Ipanema Beach. Even on the cover of Bad Bunny’s latest album, DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS. And yet, in the garden of our Italian offices, it is banned. The same went from 2008–2017 for the Swiss city of Basel.

Its origins are more noble than one might think. Many trace it back to Joe Colombo, one of the great masters of 20th-century Italian design. His Universale 4867 chair, produced by Kartell and now part of the collection of MoMA, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, revolutionised design in the 1960s.

It stacks easily, one chair on top of another. And it celebrates the possibilities of a material that was then revolutionary: plastic. Unlike traditional woodworking objects, made by subtraction and the assembly of separate parts and joints, in the Universale 4867 chair, everything is created through addition. Plastic injected into moulds. Psssst.

The monobloc is not as elegant as the Universale 4867. Yet it stacks better. And, above all, it has conquered half the world. It is estimated that more than one billion have been produced. One Italian company alone produces around ten million a year, at a unit cost of just a few euros.

And this is why the most beloved chair also becomes the most hated. First of all, because our relationship with plastic has changed. Once seen as a marvellous material, it has become a symbol of one of the great environmental challenges of our time. As it breaks down, it turns into thousands of fragments, which then fragment further into microplastics. We find them practically everywhere: from Antarctica to our brains, as well as throughout the food chain that connects them.

But beyond environmental concerns, there is another problem: repetition. The monobloc chair has become so ubiquitous that it can make you nauseous. Like Vivaldi’s Four Seasons: beautiful, but unbearable after the umpteenth replay in a neighbourhood pizzeria. Everything can be poison, Paracelsus said: it is the dose that makes the difference.

And perhaps the same is true of design. Objects, ultimately, tell us something about ourselves. From the primordial artifacts our ancestors displayed as trophies — the pelt of a bear, the pendant carved from a sharpened stone — to contemporary design products, there is always a story behind them. But what remains of a story when everyone tells it? According to my MIT colleague Ethan Zuckerman, the monobloc may have reached a state of ubiquity. So ubiquitous that it has disappeared.

And so, let us allow ourselves a brief moment of rest. As the back of the monobloc chair creaks, our gaze settles on the barbecue. There, between the Pachino tomato sizzling and the red Rotonda eggplant browning, another kind of design comes into view: the kind that tells us a story about who we are and what we have become. As yet another monobloc chair fades into the heat.

About 'Objectify' – a summer series from Italy by Carlo Ratti

Italy’s design canon has been told many times. The Bialetti moka pot, the Vespa, the Fiat 500, the Arco floor lamp: you know the list, and so does every airport bookshop and first-year design student. This column will discuss, poke, investigate, prod, ridicule and beatify the less glamorous Italian objects. They are the ones you ought to know, so that when you visit Italy, or spot apparitions of it on a friend’s social media, you can smugly point out: ‘Did you know the mosquito coil is a masterpiece of Italian design? The condom? The motorway toll transponder?’ Objects so ordinary that Italians walk past them, or handle them every day, without registering that someone, with a mellifluous surname, designed them.

Proust wrote a seven-volume novel because a small cake dipped in tea, the madeleine, unlocked an involuntary flood of memory. For followers of the Italian version of this column, published weekly in Il Sole 24 Ore, the nation’s favourite Sunday read, perhaps these objects will have a similar effect. For you, anglophone readers peering at this somewhere between Rummidge and Euforia, they offer something else: beach conversation topics, an eye trained on unexpected places, and perhaps a few new madeleines for when you visit the peninsula yourself. After all, objects are never just objects. As the great Milanese designer Achille Castiglioni of Arco-floor-lamp fame once declared: ‘objects should keep us company’. Especially during this scorching summer.

carlorattiassociati.com

London Design Festival is back for another year, spotlighting the very best of design across the city. Emerging designers and independent studios present an array of pieces; some look to new and ingenious ways to create, while others focus on fine-tuning a craft rather than reinventing the wheel. What we're looking for is a blend of ingenuity, functionality, and, of course, beauty. With this in mind, each year we dissect how design is applied to lighting – and what we are seeing so far is an ode to the portable light. With that being said, here are seven designs that we are looking forward to seeing illuminate the festival.

LIGHTING DESIGN AT LONDON DESIGN FESTIVAL 2026

Bocci x Bethan Laura Wood

Bocci is known for its orb-shaped lighting designs. In tandem with London Design Festival, the Canadian lighting brand is unveiling a new purple colourway of its 14p design. The glass ball-shaped light fits in the palm of your hand and is easily portable. What we are looking forward to seeing is how it slots into Bethan Laura Woods' installation, specifically designed for the occasion. Inspired by the movie Labyrinth, starring David Bowie, the designer playfully dubbed the light the 'Bowie Ball,' which later became the foundation for her sculptural installation. Expect to see maze-like architecture that unites colour and structure – formed from colourful totems that glow with the arrangements of the purple 14p.

The Bocci x Bethan Laura Wood installation is located at 15 Bateman Street, London, W1D 4AQ between 12 - 20 September, 2026

Lee Broom's 'The Chant Chambers'

Last year we saw Lee Broom’s original piece ‘Beacon’ light up the South Bank. This year, the British designer has decided to create a continuation of his portable ‘Chant’ light – welcoming you into the ‘Chant Chambers’. The collection will now include oversized chandelier compositions, sculptural wall lights, linear pendants and architectural lighting structures. Says Broom, ‘I’ve always loved lighting that can really inhabit a space, rather than simply sit within it, and that became the starting point for expanding the collection.’

The cubic design is easily stacked and placed together, allowing it to effortlessly flow through a room and intertwine within the interior, sitting at the intersection between architecture and decor. Presented in a new smoked glass finish, the darker tones echo a 1970s interior.

The full installation will be on view to the public during London Design Festival, 15–20 September 2026, at Lee Broom, 91, 93 and 95 Rivington Street, Shoreditch, London, EC2A 3AY

Faye Toogood

Faye Toogood presents Johnny. If you are familiar with British slang, you may note it is another name for a condom. The series of crumpled paper lanterns reminded the studio of just that, as Toogood explains, ‘During the design process, the studio was full of paper experiments. Stitched forms draped over tables and chairs that with a quick crumple and tug became standing oversize paper totems. We started to call the human height models “Johnny” as something of a joke – as they really did remind us of gigantic condoms.’ There is the ‘Johnny’, the largest of the lights which stands tall, yet crumpled, the Johnny pendant, and table light ( in two different sizes), are more compact, and squashed. The playfully phallic-looking lanterns bounce light and shadow. Switched on, the designs are delicate and show off the dainty stitching and its wrought iron skeleton.

Faye Toogood, 48a Union Street, SE1 1TD

Tom Dixon

Located in the Tom Dixon Coal Drops Yard flagship, the brand's presentation is titled ‘Have you seen the light?’. Visitors will see the brand’s latest collection in full, while also offering an early look at future launches. Nestled under each arch of the space will be the Flare, Melt Nickel, and Whirl copper lights (pictured above), alongside the Smash and Spot tables.

Upcoming releases include the Groove furniture collection in a glossy black finish, an armchair addition to the Plump series, a small outdoor-rated Melt light, and Pose task and portable lights in bronze. The display also includes new textiles, candles, and decorative vases.

Located at Tom Dixon, Coal Drops Yard, 4-10 Bagley Walk, London N1C 4DH

Studio Waldemeyer

Also focusing on smaller lighting is the London-based design practice Studio Waldemeyer, which will present its ‘Lumeable’ rechargeable candle lights. . Each rechargeable candle is housed in a hand-formed glass vessel, with a patented electronic flame, bespoke to the studio. The candles have different brightness levels, replaceable batteries, and are easy to repair.

The collection is showcased through an installation at the church St Stephen Walbrook on 15 September 2026. Creating a warm atmosphere to accompany a charity concert, the installation will raise funds for the care and maintenance of the church, and will surround the altar. Each rechargeable candle is housed in a hand-formed glass vessel, with a patented electronic flame, bespoke to the studio. The candles have different brightness levels, replaceable batteries, and are easy to repair.

The Lumeable Candlelit Charity Concert, with the Square Milestones jazz band, will take place at St Stephen Walbrook, 39 Walbrook, EC4N 8BN, on Tuesday 15 September 2026. The concert is free to attend; no booking or tickets required

Made x Barbican

At the end of summer, furniture company Made unveiled its collaboration with brutalist landmark, Barbican. The 23 piece collection was designed to bring home a slice of the building’s raw concrete aesthetics. It also found inspiration inspiration not only in the estate’s public spaces – such as the concert hall and raised walkways – but also in some of its original apartments.

The ‘Curve’ lamp series, nodded to the Concert Hall’s tubular acoustic panels. The ‘Coffer’ series of ceiling lights and wall lights drew from the pick-hammered textured concrete and the rounded shape found in the building’s ‘waffle’ ceilings – a concrete-saving structural grid that also creates a great pattern in the Barbican’s indoor and outdoor spaces. To see the collection in full head to a free immersive installation at the Barbican Centre located at the Barbican Level G Hub Space.

Read more about the Made x Barbican collection here

Raw Edges design studio

Yael Mer and Shay Alkalay of Raw-Edges first launched LightMass^, a collection of lights, two years ago at London Design Festival. Now they add to the collection with the new LightMass^ Table Lamp series. Here, the designs take a sculptural form, with each piece crafted from a single material to help minimise waste. As a result, the table lamps have an airy, weightless quality, with each design named after its individual mass and weight. They are dainty, delicate and offer a slight phytoid quality, with curved petal-like shapes.

Raw-Edges' LightMass^ Table Lamp series will take over the third floor of the Shoreditch Wax Building , 4 Garden Walk, London EC2A 3EQ, from 15 –20 September 2026

Revealed to the public for the very first time since it was completed in 1952, this is the Mahogany House, a richly detailed piece of mid-century residential design by the architect Fred Thornton Hollingsworth. The British-Canadian designer (1917-2015) moved to Canada as a child, only qualifying as an architect in 1959 after an early career as an ad-hoc architectural designer in and around Vancouver.

The Mahogany House shows some of Hollingsworth’s early fascination with the work of Frank Lloyd Wright (he met the legendary architect at his Taliesin West studio). The house is located in Sunset Gardens, a neighbourhood of nearly 50 houses in North Vancouver’s Canyon Heights district.

Sunset Gardens was planned by Hollingsworth, who brought a wealth of influences from West Coast modernism and European residential to bear on his ‘Neoteric’ style, which was better suited to the Vancouver climate and warmer in material palette. This four-bedroom house is almost entirely original, having been in the same family since 1970.

The house was originally commissioned by the owner of nearby millwork business, Frank Paxton. Paxton specified external cladding in mahogany boat plywood, with a similar plywood veneer throughout the interior spaces. The result is a warm jewel of a structure, with precise cabinetry and carpentry paired with solid painted concrete blocks, large panes of glass and high-level windows.

Arranged over one level, the house is a modest 1,990 square feet and contains four bedrooms, two bathrooms and two separate living rooms. The private garden originally included a mature cedar tree that the dining room was built around, while even the front door is discretely positioned out of sight of the street.

These are the first images of the house taken since it was finished and will surely entice a new owner to take on this impressive structure. The current owner recalls their first visit in 1986. ‘I was eight years old the first time I entered [what was then] my uncle's home, she says, ‘I remember thinking the house was huge. I was impressed by the wall of windows at the back, the two living rooms, and all the trees — a very different kind of home for an eight-year-old who grew up in the city.’

Mahogany House, 4065 Sunset Blvd, Canyon Heights, North Vancouver (Fred Hollingsworth, 1952), CA $2,599,000. WestCoastModern.ca, @WestCoastModernHomes

This season at Calvin Klein Collection, Veronica Leoni’s impulse was to strip things back. Gone was menswear from the runway for a start, with the Italian designer instead casting her attention to six ‘foundational pieces’ that define Calvin Klein the brand, but also happen to be the elements of most women’s wardrobes. Namely: ‘the coat, the shirt, tailoring, the trouser, the pencil skirt, the slip.’

One inspiration was the work of American Minimalists, whose mid-20th-century principles of reduction were no doubt an influence on Calvin Klein himself (in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the American designer created clothing that was a riposte to the previous decade's excess). ‘American Minimalism was a discipline of removal: take away everything that does not carry the work, until only what is necessary remains,’ said the Italian designer, whose S/S 2027 runway show marked her fourth as creative director.

‘Calvin drew from that and turned it toward the body. I turn it toward the woman inside it,’ she continued. ‘My minimalism begins there, in the relation between design and a body, with nothing in between. Take everything away. What is left is desire.’

Held in Terminal Warehouse, a 19th-century former freight hub in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighbourhood, the stripped-back showspace was installed with sculptural works by the artist Walter De Maria, a pioneer of American Minimalism alongside figures including Donald Judd, Sol LeWitt, and Frank Stella. They had been curated by Antwaun Sargent, an New York-based writer, curator, and director at Gagosian, who authored The New Black Vanguard Photography Between Art and Fashion in 2019.

‘I first became involved through a meeting with Veronica, when she shared the show’s theme of American Minimalism and asked me to curate the art for the space,’ he tells Wallpaper*. ‘Given the iconic setting of Terminal Warehouse, Walter De Maria immediately felt like a natural choice. As a key figure of American Minimalism, with landmark New York installations such as The New York Earth Room (1977) and The Broken Kilometer (1979), his work offered a compelling dialogue with Calvin Klein and the architecture of the space.’

Spread across three rooms, the pieces chosen were Truth / Beauty (1990–2016), ‘a series comprised of stainless-steel polygonal rods set on granite bases,’ as Sargent describes; 14-Sided Open Polygon and 16-Sided Open Polygon (both 1984), ‘geometric stainless-steel sculptures punctuated by a single steel ball’, and 13, 14, 15 Meter Rows (1985), which features 42 ‘precisely arranged’ steel rods and was the first work to greet guests on arrival.

‘[They all] speak to De Maria’s fascination with geometry, repetition, and mathematical order, while their polished steel surfaces interact with the architecture, light, and movement of the fashion show,’ explains Sargent. ‘De Maria was equally concerned with how viewers experience his artworks as he was with the works themselves. The sculptures achieve a paradox: [they] maintain intense physical heft while appearing delicate through precise geometric fabrication and the reflective nature of stainless steel.’

‘There is a natural connection between the principles of American Minimalism and the design language of Calvin Klein, particularly in their emphasis on clarity, restraint, and essential form,’ he continues. ‘Calvin Klein has long embraced this sensibility through clean lines, precise proportions, and simplicity, while always maintaining a close relationship to the body. De Maria similarly uses repetition, geometry, and precision to reduce sculpture to its essential elements, while still creating works with an extraordinary physical presence.’

Stay tuned to wallpaper.com for more from New York Fashion Week.

A new high-end ‘gateway’ to London has just opened – but you’ll need to be arriving by private jet to use it. Flexjet, the leading luxury private aviation provider, has unveiled its new dedicated terminal at Farnborough airport in Surrey that sets a fresh benchmark for the company’s infrastructure design – and is all set to soothe, support and pleasantly surprise its well-heeled clientele.

Two years in the making, the two-storey, 2,098 sq m terminal offers not only hospitality, relaxation, working and meeting space exclusively for Flexjet ‘owners’, as members of its fractional ownership scheme are known; it also hosts a finishing school for cabin crew; doubles as an event space; and houses Flexjet’s European HQ on the upper floor.

It’s what Flexject CEO Mike Silvestro calls a ‘blueprint terminal’ that sees the company ‘jumping ahead in terms of hospitality’ as it aims to offer the highest quality guest experience.

‘This opening establishes one of the most significant branded luxury environments in private aviation and is a defining moment in Flexjet’s global expansion,’ says Flexjet chairman Kenn Ricci.

The interiors, by Canada-based Carver Hain Art + Design, are inspired by ‘what you see from the sky’, says practice co-director Tracy Hain, referring to the space’s rich textures and warm hues – the latter also tying in with those of Flexjet’s visual identity. ‘I didn’t want it to feel like an airport lounge,’ adds Hain, who previously designed the interiors of Flexjet’s Mayfair office. Here, she has created what the company refers to as a ‘home from home’ for its owners.

There’s topographical carpeting, and softly tactile seating in buttery leather and earthy-toned or rich blue textiles, the fabrics largely from Casamance. Forms are rounded; lighting, including decorative designs by Bert Frank, as well as Cassina and Artemide, is soft throughout; and curved walls and columns are skirted in an embossed liquid metal bronze.

Commissioned artworks comprise a sculpture by British-Canadian artist David Spriggs – a cloud-like whirl, formed of layered acrylic panels and inspired by the vortices that form beneath a plane’s wingtips – and a wood-veneer marquetry work by London-based Olly Fathers in the meeting space.

The latter room, ‘my favourite space’, notes Hain, envisioned not just for meetings but also events, is comfortably cocooning, with wall-to-wall carpeting, fabric wall coverings, an inviting sofa as well as the formal table seating – and all the connectivity you’d expect. It’s set beneath a ‘liquid effect’ painted ceiling achieved through what Hain describes as ‘a rather arduous process requiring many layers, almost like lacquer’.

The oval bar, a centrepiece of the main space, is a natural gathering spot. Flexjet owners will be able to request bespoke dining, with the focus on smaller bites and dishes that can be enjoyed easily in any part of the space.

‘I wanted to evoke a club,’ says Hain of the whole space, ‘somewhere you want to spend time, have a martini at the bar.’

The true party piece? The Fuselage Lounge, which recreates the cabin interior of a Gulfstream G700 jet, at actual size. Fitted out with precision by Hain, it’s complete with a master bedroom. Not just a cute space to work, relax or meet for Flexjet owners, it will also be used for sales and marketing, and is the perfect practice area in which staff attending the training academy can hone their skills.

A galley module can even be rolled out and slotted onto the end of the lounge to facilitate this – an example of the whole hub’s embrace of functionality as well as flair.

The training academy space itself – populated by a series of galley modules – can be open to the rest of the ground floor during events, for example, or curtained off from the lounge space when privacy is required.

The new private terminal is Flexjet’s first in Europe and Silvestro describes it as a ‘gateway to Europe’ for the brand. The US-headquartered company already has nine other terminals either built or being developed Stateside, and an infrastructure presence of some kind in 25 locations globally.

Those using the Farnborough terminal can take advantage of helicopter transfers in and out of London, should they wish (we did the ’copter commute from Battersea to attend the Farnborough terminal launch and it took just 20 minutes, less on the way back). He also notes that owners might simply fly into Farnborough, hold their meeting within the hospitality-focused terminal, and fly out again.

Asked how Flexjet owners and their expectations have changed over the last few years, Silvestro says they are getting younger, buying larger and flying longer distances. ‘The average age has dropped ten years,’ he says.

The company gives that average as around the low-fifties, noting that it is seeing increasing numbers of owners in their forties. Now, at 45, adds Silvestro, if they have the money, rather than starting with smaller planes and working their way up, ‘they are buying straight into big planes, and travelling further. The world is smaller.’

There should be no shortage of takers, then, for Flexjet’s new hub for high flyers.

Flexjet.com, @Flexjetllc

London design agency Heirloom has given shape to the newest iteration of the Yoto audio player. We talked to Heirloom founder Jack Godfrey Wood, designer Yemima Lorberbaum, and Tom Ballhatchet, VP Innovation at Yoto, about the 4th generation Yoto Player and Yoto Mini, two devices aimed squarely at de-screenifying the childhood experience of the modern audio and media landscape.

Yoto was born via Kickstarter nine years ago, with the idea of building a friendly, child-focused audio player for telling stories, telling the time and providing access to curated daily content. It was a cult hit, and over three iterations the design language was honed and refined to make it more suitable for little hands without deviating from the strong values of the founders.

Ballhatchet (who designed and assembled those very first units) and the Yoto team turned to Heirloom to make the card-driven player more scalable, adding greater scope for accessing content without ever letting users fall down the rabbit hole of screen addiction. The utter simplicity of the original – two buttons, a low-resolution screen, card slot and inbuilt speaker – has been retained and refined, with the newest innovation being the addition of a navigation wheel, the ‘Green Button’, to aid discovery.

Featuring softer corners and radii, the Yoto Player is still friendly and lightly anthropomorphic without dipping too much into a cartoon-like creature. ‘It’s a fine line,’ Ballhatchet admits, ‘we didn’t want to be a character, but we wanted to be characterful.’ ‘With a grown-up product, you’re often forced to be quite serious,’ admits Godfrey Wood. Yoto’s primary colours, chunky buttons and satisfying click mechanisms are anything but, although behind the simplicity of the interface is a sophisticated content creation operation.

Yoto was originally pitched at three- to five-year-olds, although the upper age range has crept up to twelve and even beyond as the device and audience have grown up. Yoto has found that children favour hanging onto to their players rather than age out of it.

So too does the impressive roster of content Yoto has built up over the years, from classic audiobooks to new releases, in-house commissions and Yoto Daily, a pint-sized podcast aimed squarely at the target audience with songs, facts of the day and a breezy disposition. Nearly 3,000 episodes have been made. It’s a little cultish, but in a good way, with many of the tech company’s family members having been willing guinea pigs for the devices from the outset, feeding back into what works and what doesn’t.

Most importantly, the Yoto Player is substantially more palatable than letting a young child loose on the platforms to find content themselves. With screen-driven parenting is becoming more and more socially unacceptable, Yoto wants to provide a true alternative.

The Player is a true 360-degree product in the way that it is shaped – no one way is up. A wedge shape on one side allows the player to be angled and flipping it turns on the nightlight. Ballhatchet admits that the Green Button is a ‘big bet’ innovation, one that triggered fierce internal debate, along with back and forth with the team at Heirloom.

In short, the youngest users tend to access content via the smartcards, which don’t contain any media but act as a switch to listen to a story or audiobook. Player can store this media on the 64GB of internal memory, and whilst earlier iterations allowed this library to be explored via the two buttons, the new button makes for more intuitive navigation.

As Godfrey Wood reiterates, ‘it’s a menu, not a screen’, and time was spent making sure the graphics, icons, and reactive animations weren’t too ‘sticky’. ‘Animation, etc., is counter to the goal [of the device],’ he clarifies. ‘We consciously didn’t want to make [something like] a fidget spinner,’ says Ballhatchet, ‘there’s a happy friction, but you can’t scroll infinitely…. Our original Kickstarter manifesto stated that we wouldn’t employ manipulative tricks.’

Avoiding the urge to weaponize distraction is definitely counter to the ambitions of most tech companies. ‘Our key metric is weekly active families,’ Ballhatchet says, explaining how family engagement is the goal, making the Yoto Player a part of a supervised routine rather than a digital babysitter. Parents control the set-up and content via a separate app and while the simple card system lays out the available content is easy-to-understand ways for smaller children, there’s also the ability to create personalised custom audio – reading a bedtime story, for example.

All this is supported by the newest addition to the Yoto family, the Yoto Mini, which gets the same Green Button navigation system, alongside physical changes that enhance its tactile feel and the same playful aesthetic. Reference points included classic toys from the American giant Fisher-Price, while the timeless look and feel of the hardware cloaks all the heavy lifting done by the software and the back-end content team. Detail design extends all the way to the USB cables, with grips designed to be friendly to small fingers (as well as a little winking face Easter egg).

‘We definitely leave room for joy,’ Ballhatchet confirms. ‘The designs aren’t austere,’ Godfrey Wood acknowledges, ‘it’s one of the rare kids’ products that adults are happy to have in their home.’ According to Ballhatchet, ‘it was a conscious decision to create something that endures long after the kids have grown-up.’

‘What’s unique about working with Yoto on future products is that it becomes a big discussion about morals,’ says Lorberbaum, ‘often the designer is the one representing the human side, but here it is Yoto. It’s very rare that a start-up makes a decision to follow a simple strategy so early on.’

The more tech-savvy can eke out a little more from their Yoto devices. A burgeoning community and the occasional hacks have surfaced, allowing cards to carry routines like toothbrush timers or tap into plane identification software. You could even create a card that turns the speaker into a radio after the children have gone to bed.

Yoto Player and Yoto Mini excel at their primary purpose of opening up worlds of imagination. Yet like all the best technology design, the hardware has longevity baked in, helping ensure a long lifecycle and flexible future use.

Available to order now from UK.YotoPlay.com, @YotoPlay

Heirloom.co, @h_e_i_r_l_o_o_m

There’s an elusive sweet spot in the midst good design, admirable function and inoffensive pricing, and the Romanian car brand Dacia wants to be right in the heart of it. Over the past two decades, with close collaboration from Renault, Dacia has built itself a rock-solid reputation as a no-nonsense bargain brand.

Models like the ultra-compact Spring city car, no-frills Sandero, seven-seater Jogger, and the perennial favourite Duster crossover have all brought a robust and spirited functionalism to the market. Upcoming models include the more premium mid-size Striker, while last year’s self-consciously cute Hipster Concept showed there’s also scope for the brand to downscale further.

Announced in 2024, the Dacia Bigster is the company’s first push into the ‘proper; SUV market. Available in two flavours of hybrid, the Bigster is one of the most literal car names you’ll find. Measuring 4.57m long, 1.81m wide and 1.71m high, the Bigster is a strict five-seater (Dacia’s seven-seat option remains the Jogger) with chunky, almost Tonka-toy like styling.

It’s big, but not vast (certainly not in the realm of American XXXL SUVs) and therefore avoids all the pitfalls of navigating such a car betwixt town and country – you won’t be hated in the former and narrow country lanes aren’t too much of a trial.

We spent a week with the Bigster, during which time Dacia’s attention to detail really stood out, as did the car’s abilities and interior features. Not all Bigster’s have four-wheel-drive, but the high ride height and dedicated terrain modes make these variants pretty handy off the beaten track. This is always nice to have and in the Bigster’s case, it’s functionality that follows form, emphasising that the black plastic clad wheel arches and business-like bumpers aren’t just for show.

In fact, inside and out there is a pretty heavy concentration of black plastic. Dacia is one of the few car companies who commit to the bit and make a virtue of the cheap and durable material, refused to dress it up with soft touch surfaces or unnecessary trim. What you see is what you get, a rare honesty that really shines through.

The interior layout is also impressive. Yes, there’s a central touch screen display but it doesn’t dominate the dashboard and it’s accompanied by physical buttons for the heating controls. There’s also a built-in smartphone dock, made slightly redundant by the inclusion of Apple CarPlay and Android Auto. The digital dash is clear with consistent graphics, backed up by physical buttons – not haptic switches – on the steering wheel.

So far, so good. You also get regular air vents that can be moved by hand, not given over to servo motors buried deep in the dash and accessible only via the screen. It’s all very much on brand for a company that makes a virtue of building ‘cars for real life’.

Usually, real life means getting from A to B without fussing too much over things like dynamic abilities and other performance metrics. It's absolutely not a criticism of the Bigster to say that it's a fairly forgettable thing to drive, with great ride and economy on the positive side. It simply works.

Inevitably, the innate value of such simplicity has become a form of signifier just like any other brand. Dacia is the Uniqlo of carmakers, starting off as a welcome distraction from excessive label-consciousness but eventually circling round into an identifiable brand all of its own.

It should be pointed out that this pathway only works when the product truly does its job. Just as the Duster has become shorthand for canny, tasteful, inconspicuous consumption, the Bigster looks set to follow suit.

The interior volume is flexible and generous, while another brand differentiator – practical thinking – is in evidence throughout, from clips and storage compartments to modular roof bars, and quirky features like a second room armrest that transforms into a backpack.

Dacia is also on trend with its optional Sleep Pack system, which gives the Bigster a leg-up in the burgeoning world of car camping. Accessories include a rear bed system for the load deck and an awning. All this and more makes the Bigster one of the friendlier, more accessible and acceptable iterations of modern SUV culture. Look after it well, and it’s the kind of car that only gets better with age, as time and experience add a little patina to the palette while the basic functionality remains undimmed.

Dacia Bigster, from £25,215, Dacia.co.uk, @Dacia_UK

If you want to admire one of the landmark architectural collaborations on show in Paris this week, you’ll have to look down. Opting for a more experimental ‘passion project’ to launch in conjunction with this season’s Maison & Objet, local practice RDAI, led by Denis Montel and Julia Capp, teamed with Canadian rug manufacturer Creative Matters on a product of an altogether different nature.

Frequent partners on RDAI’s commercial contracts, both sides have harnessed their artistic sensibilities to create Zoometry, a collection of six fine rugs, now on display at Galerie Mouvements Modernes, in a classical arcade building overlooking Palais-Royal.

The (seemingly) abstract compositions represent a first for both sides. In his work at RDAI, interior architect Johan Thuillot had been exploring ways to mimic the structure of living creatures. When the opportunity presented itself, he says, ‘The idea was not to design a carpet with a bird on it.’ Instead he zoomed in. Using the cutting-edge (and appropriately named) parametric 3D modelling software Grasshopper, he replicated the microscopic workings of Earth’s tiniest creatures, flattening their biology in a pattern that could be rendered in Tibetan wool and Chinese silk.

He shared his layouts with Anna Panosyan and Clémence Hardelay, textile artists from Creative Matters, who suggested corresponding colours, gently graduated to suggest movement, depth and the way pigments intensify to attract prey. The partners edited back and forth for nearly two years, giving new credence to the word ‘micromanagement’.

Panosyan refers to the final creations as ‘couture’. She points out the masterful colour gradation in the Coral rug, and the moire effect created by the contour lines in Butterfly 03, drawn to mimic the curvature of a wing poised for flight. ‘We concentrated on just a few elements but pushed them to the max,’ she says. Set out on tables at the gallery, laser-engraved glass blocks demystify the process: the delicate structure of butterfly wings and spiderwebs twist and flow in 3D when viewed from the side, while the bird’s-eye view encapsulates the 2D facsimile. The show’s centrepiece is the Butterfly 02, laid out on a long plinth, its hundreds of rectangular cells reminiscent of the creatures’ trademark ocelli, or ‘eyespots’.

‘These pieces are for life,’ says Panosyan. ‘People can keep them for their children and grandchildren.’ At 35kg, they are deceptively heavy, yet they couldn’t withstand the foot traffic of a hotel or retail space. Creative Matters had to search beyond their usual mill in Nepal to recruit artisans versed in a specific Tibetan knot. They worked three or four astride on a single 3x2 metre rug, completing no more than 7cm, or 400 knots, each day. Each rug’s total density is 1.8 million knots. ‘It’s not what we usually do with our more durable hand-tufting,’ says Panosyan. An artist by trade, she says she felt an enormous sense of creative freedom on Zoometry. ‘You can sense some imperfections from the hand, which adds dimension to the product,’ she says. ‘You can feel this is handmade.’

Zoometry is on view at Mouvements Modernes until 23 September 2026.

Jardins du Palais Royal, 11 bis rue de Beaujolais, 75001 Paris

This new residential project from Dallas-based Smitharc architecture + interiors continues the studio’s run of elegant contemporary houses in the area – see this house in Greenway Parks, the St Andrews Residence and Griggs Residence for earlier examples.

The Northaven Residence follows an established template of a flexible pavilion that combines a strong sense of transparency with careful planning to ensure privacy for the occupants – from outside and from each other – as well as a baked-in longevity that’ll allow for evolution and growth over the years.

The client is a professional mother with three young sons, and the tailored brief not only gives the family space to grow over the decades to come but also provides the children with their own ‘zone’. This takes the form of a dedicated upper-floor wing containing three identical en-suite bedrooms and a separate sitting area, raised up and away from the living room (and the mother’s room).

These rooms are reached by a striking sculptural oak and steel staircase, with a satin brass railing. At the top of the stairs, a circular rooflight, or oculi, illuminates the curved and polished plaster walls. From the outside, a corner window reveals the form of the stair, treating like a vignette in a case.

Everything else takes place on the L-shaped ground floor, with architectural elements that spread into the generous one-acre lot. A large, covered terrace adjoins the outdoor pool, which overlooks the sloping, wooded garden. There’s plenty of space for everything from cookouts to soccer parties, with lawns scattered with mature oak trees.

Directly beneath the boys’ rooms you’ll find the triple garage, utility area, gymnasium and a second snug, while the entrance foyer with the grand stair serves as the dividing space between utility, sleeping and the living spaces.

These are collected together in one long linear double-height space, a Great Room with banks of windows to the north – the public-facing façade - and south across over the pool. A separate formal dining room adjoins the kitchen and pantry, with a kitchen table and island unit adjoining the main living space.

Tall custom-built metal screens provide separation in the space. The covered terrace is set beneath a spectacular raised roof which oversails the living room and creating views through the entire structure.

The principal bedroom suite is housed in another wing, accessed through a discrete opening in the monumental limestone clad walls. This is treated like private sanctuary, with a generous walk-in closet and a large private bathroom with a view into its own walled-off area of the garden.

In total, the living spaces run to a generous 4,500 square feet. In addition to the extensive use of Texas limestone, the materials palette includes plaster, white oak and cypress. Despite the open expanses of space and the large windows, the house still offers plenty of places to retreat into.

Although there is a clear mid-century modern influence running throughout, the Northaven Residence is no retro throwback. Instead, it offers a luxurious expression of a well-defined brief with a consistent aesthetic approach.

Smitharc.com, @Smitharcarchitects

Cutting-edge contemporary furniture and iconic archival rugs come together in ‘Progressive Permanence’, an exhibition for London Design Festival hosted by Max Radford Gallery and rug producer Christopher Farr. Works by emerging designers such as Lewis Kemmenoe and LS Gomma are paired with designs by acclaimed artists including Gary Hume and Louise Bourgeois, in an installation that shows how creativity across eras and geographies can come together to produce new interior dialogues.

Rugs meet contemporary furniture

Both Max Radford Gallery and Christopher Farr are keystones of design in east London, with the exhibition taking place in Christopher Farr’s Shoreditch studio, where custom rugs are developed in wool and silk. While Farr started out in 1988, setting out to preserve weaving traditions while exploring new design expressions, Radford established his eponymous gallery in 2020, seeking to platform London’s emerging talent combining craft with artistic experimentation. ‘Progressive Permanence’ marks their first collaborative exhibition.

Radford describes Christopher Farr as an ‘OG supplier’ of rugs in London, and the fact the company has worked with such illustrious artists ‘speaks volumes’, he says. For ‘Progressive Permanence’, Radford – who is an interior designer as well as gallerist – was invited to select pieces from Farr’s impressive archives to combine with furniture made by the contemporary names he represents.

‘All the rugs have been chosen because we love them as individual textiles, but also love how they sit with the works from our roster of designers,’ Radford says. ‘It also enables us to put our designers on a platform with respected names of the 20th century, which is a new for all of us. I think presenting these contemporary works alongside such heavy hitters reinforces our belief that the designers we work with can go on to become the respected names of the 21st century.’

In the exhibition, ‘Graywacke OffCut Chair’ (2024) from artist-designer Carsten in der Elst – a brutalist assemblage of discarded stone blocks – is paired with ‘Plate 111’, an abstract and geometric tapestry of colour by Bauhaus artist Gunta Stölzl.

An orange chair made from polyurethane rubber and industrial metal mesh by LS Gomma (‘XR Mesh 2-seater (orange)’, 2025) is placed against Louise Bourgeois’ ‘Has The Day Invaded The Night? Has the Night Invaded The Day?’ (2009), a striking text-based monochrome work by the artist, inspired by insomnia.

A new bench from designer Tessa Silva – who uses smocked textiles to create sculptural furniture pieces – is offset by a colourful rug from fashion designer Romeo Gigli featuring a painterly sun. And chairs from Lewis Kemmenoe’s recent ‘Quilted Fragments’ series, in which timber offcuts are crafted into wooden patchworks, are united with minimalist green rugs from the painter and sculptor Gary Hume, which depict hospital doors.

The rugs and furniture works are presented ‘as a foil to each other – matching or contrasting sensibilities’, says Radford. ‘The rugs create spaces in which they are in dialogue with the furniture, rather than simply being surfaces for them to sit on.’

For Radford, the show celebrates the designers his gallery works with – people that he builds long-lasting relationships with, transcending notions of market trends. ‘We believe these works will be the masterpieces of the future,’ he says, ‘and, much like the classics of the 20th century, they deserve to be visited and revisited to fully appreciate their beauty.’

‘Progressive Permanence’ takes place 15 to 20 September at Christopher Farr, 18 Calvin Street, London, E1 6HF

‘What does America look like?’ is a question whose answer has shifted incessantly across National Geographic’s 138-year history, from frontier landscapes and postwar prosperity to a nation tussling with its own complexities and contradictions. A new tome from Taschen meshes those perspectives together, using the magazine’s archive to survey the United States through a century of photography.

Tour the history, people, and beauty of the United States 

On the cover, the Mayflower II – a reproduction of the 17th-century ship – enters New York Harbour in 1957, greeted by a flotilla beneath a silver US Navy airship, with the Manhattan skyline hovering in the distance. Captured by B Anthony Stewart, the brilliant photograph perfectly frames the country’s founding mythology, technological ambition and appetite for spectacle, setting the tone for the 792 pages that follow.

National Geographic. The United States of America takes shape as a substantial XL Taschen edition. Organised geographically, the title journeys alphabetically through all 50 states before turning to US territories. Each chapter opens with a quote that waxes lyrical about its destination, drawn from figures ranging from musicians and scientists to authors and poets, which is then followed by an introduction by travel writer Joe Yogerst that traces the state’s history, culture and regional identity alongside National Geographic’s own coverage.

Recurring subjects include the grandeur of the American landscape, the growth of its cities, industrial and agricultural labour, transport, leisure, religion and regional traditions – all captured through a candid, occasionally irreverent lens. Collectively, the photographs chart the country’s shift from an agricultural and industrial power towards an increasingly urban, suburban and consumer-driven society, while objectively registering the environmental damage and social tensions that accompanied its growth.

National Geographic. The United States of America also maps the evolution of photographic technology. Early black-and-white images and Autochromes from the 1920s and 1930s give way to the saturated Kodachrome photography that came to define National Geographic’s postwar identity. During the 1970s and 1980s, staged scenes and picturesque travel imagery were increasingly joined by documentary work confronting pollution, poverty, urban decline and cultural change. Digital photography closes the century with an expansive, often ambiguous portrait of American life.

Photography editor David Walker examines this evolution in his introductory essay, ‘America the Beautiful’. He considers how the magazine’s photographers helped construct an aspirational national image rooted in exploration, prosperity and individualism, while frequently reinforcing the perspective of white, middle-class America. As its editorial priorities evolved, the archive began to accommodate a fuller and increasingly complex picture of the country – one marked by social unrest, ecological damage and regional identities threatened by economic and technological development.

The evolution can also be traced through the photographers themselves. Early figures including B Anthony Stewart, J Baylor Roberts, W Robert Moore and Willard R Culver arguably initiated the magazine’s carefully composed visual language. Later generations – among them William Albert Allard, Jodi Cobb, Nathan Benn, Jim Richardson, Cary Wolinsky and Michael Melford – introduced documentary immediacy, psychological depth and increasingly individual approaches to colour and composition.

Edited by Reuel Golden and designed by Andy Disl, the book pairs its photographs with captions by Jeff Z Klein and illustrations by Cristóbal Schmal. Its generous format allows each image to act as historical evidence, editorial construction and object of visual nostalgia. The 250th-anniversary edition revisits material first published by Taschen in 2016, presenting it anew at a moment when American identity is once again under intense examination.

‘National Geographic. The United States of America’, published by Taschen, is available now, priced £125

Moncler’s story began in the mountains outside of Grenoble, France in 1952. Now, nearly 75 years later, it’s taken root amid Manhattan’s skyscraper canyons.

Today the luxury outerwear and lifestyle brand opens the doors to a new global flagship on Fifth Avenue, New York’s most famous shopping district. At nearly 24,000 sq ft, the store marks the largest Moncler location in the world, a destination where shoppers can immerse themselves in the brand’s latest collections; exclusive collaborations; and performance gear across two floors of dazzling retail spaces.

The store is also a love letter to New York. ‘When this iconic location on Fifth Avenue became available, we saw the opportunity to create something unique,’ explains Remo Ruffini, Moncler’s executive chairman. ‘Not just our largest flagship in the world, but a place to welcome existing and new communities, to express Moncler DNA at its best.’

To translate that ethos, Ruffini enlisted longtime collaborator Patrick Gilles of the acclaimed Parisian design firm Gilles & Boissier. ‘Patrick and I have worked together for more than two decades,’ Ruffini says. ‘Over the years, we have built a relationship based on trust and a shared vision. I do not need to explain everything; he instinctively understands what I have in mind, sometimes even before I say it.’

Gilles & Boissier had worked on Moncler boutiques in the past, and helped develop the brand’s architectural language when Ruffini took the helm 23 years ago. But for a New York flagship of this scale, Gilles knew he had to create something unique.

The store takes over the base of the GM Building, a 50-storey modernist tower designed by Edward Durell Stone in the mid 1960s. More recently, it was the location of FAO Schwarz, the beloved toy store that closed its doors a decade ago. ‘Every time that I went to New York there were a few things to do, FAO Schwartz was a destination,’ Gilles says – and whatever his firm created had to be just as memorable.

One opportunity was the scale of the space itself. ‘It’s super deep, and super big. It has nine-meter-high ceilings so it is something quite impressive,’ the architect says.

That allows for a grand entry sequence, an experience Gilles likens to the anticipation of stepping inside of a darkened theatre. From there, visitors step into a dazzling retail wonderland that marries the exhilaration of whizzing down slopes with the energy of Times Square. Collections are organised into enveloping bays that reveal themselves as you make your way deeper into the store – a sensation the architect compares to progressing through Manhattan’s neighbourhoods.

On the ground level, shoppers encounter the Moncler Collection encompassing men’s, women’s and children’s apparel; Moncler Genius designer collaborations; as well as accessories. Here, Gilles re-interpreted the General Motors Building’s modernist facade language – defined by vertical bands of white marble – with strips of bright white light on the walls and ceilings, a move that contrasts with gray-and-black checkerboard marble floors, and stone-clad columns. Whimsical house-shaped ‘curiosity cabins,’ clad in a mirrored finish, punctuate the space, as do towering evergreen trees and a monumental artwork by Ugo Rondinone. ‘It’s full of surprises,’ Gilles says.

Nods to the mountains appear in the store’s raw material palette of textured stone, timber and icy textured glass. But there are also nods to French culture, an important element of Moncler’s history, even though the brand is based in Italy today. Retail niches feature elegant details, including intricate plaster mouldings, and fanciful wood boiserie. ‘The story of Moncler comes from nature and from French culture,’ Gilles explains.

There’s more to discover upstairs, a level that’s devoted entirely to Moncler Grenoble, the brand’s collection devoted to life on the slopes. Here, guests can discover high-performance apparel and accessories for mountain activities ranging from skiing to snowboarding to trekking or simply relaxing in a chalet. This section also displays partnerships with Stöckli skis, POC helmets and even snowboards creed in collaboration with champion snowboarder and Moncler brand ambassador Shaun White.

The mood is slightly more hushed on this level, not no less dynamic thanks to illuminated ceiling panels (another modernist hat-tip) and dramatically-lit niches that elevate ski equipment into works of art. ‘The purpose was really to be in the Moncler style, which is quite discreet, but at the same time take the level of sensation as high as we could,’ Gilles says. ‘You will be in the shop, but also a part of the shop.’

The unique flagship experience is not just limited to the design; shoppers can also discover the latest LoveFrom, Moncler collection, an exclusive collaboration with designer Jony Ive, or customise their own jackets with Moncler to Measure, the brand’s first-ever bespoke atelier. Don’t know what to pick? Just consult Moncler’s AI-powered Outerwear Guide, another innovation coinciding with the boutique’s opening.

It’s all about leaving guests with a memorable experience, whether they’re selecting a new down jacket or encountering Moncler through its latest open-air art program, now on the streets of New York.

‘It’s more a project of sensation than anything else,’ Gilles reflects. ‘Your experience could be different than mine.’

Moncler New York is located at 767 5th Ave New York, NY 10153 USA

Lego House has launched a Ready, Set, Build experience to encourage Formula 1 fans to visit the company’s iconic headquarters in Denmark. The new activity will inspire families and children of all ages to design and test their own Lego race cars, then put them through their paces in a series of interactive challenges.

It's not just about building a car either. Visitors to Billund become the engineers, experimenting with aerodynamics, speed and performance. They also take on pit-stop style build challenges, with giant F1-themed installations throughout the Lego House, all part of an ongoing partnership with the sport that has activations at the Miami Grand Prix and elsewhere.

Known as the ‘Home of the Brick’, the Bjarke Ingels-designed Lego House has become a bucket list destination for build enthusiasts. Filled with more than 25 million bricks, the Jutland attraction – a 90-minute flight from Heathrow - is the ultimate hands-on day out.

Lego’s automotive history now dates back decades. The company first offered model vehicles made of plastic or metal in 1953, long before the DIY modern brick system existed. Models of real world cars and trucks like the Volkswagen Beetle and Ferguson tractor thrilled children, until Lego designers finally reinvented the wheel.

The arrival of the Lego wheel in the early Sixties saw rubber ‘tyres’ mounted on plastic wheels, with a metal axle that could be plugged into a specific brick. Set 400 launched in 1962 and marked a massive evolution in model building, allowing children to create their own wheeled vehicles for the first time. Since then, Lego cars have become some of the brand’s most popular sets.

From the Batmobile to the James Bond Aston Martin DB5, The Back to the Future DeLorean to the Lamborghini Countach, there's a Lego kit for every four-wheeled eventuality. Today, the detail on modern Lego Technic sets – the most advanced line of building kits – is staggering. The 3,599-piece Bugatti Chiron featured a modelled W12 engine with moving pistons and originally cost around £450, rather more than my first road car.

If that’s beyond your skillset or budget, the Red Zone at Lego House is a vibrant play area where enthusiasts can let their imagination run wild. Beside a giant, cascading waterfall built from 2 million bricks, I set about creating a replica of the Porsche 911 Targa that brought me to Billund.

With a huge smorgasbord of colourful bricks at every turn, Lego fans from around the world are here designing their own unique creations. However, built in an era when Lego consisted of simple bricks and not much else, I’m helped by a master builder who could probably knock up a Porsche with his eyes shut.

Surrounded by intimidating Lego masterpieces, including life-size dinosaurs, planes, trains and automobiles, my modest motor looks a rather feeble effort. Other Porsche 911s kits are available off the shelf but at least none are quite like this – one that includes a matching ‘mini me’ figure.

Lego House so proud of its Danish roots that a special edition ‘I Love Billund’ miniature of the building is now available exclusively at the venue. The 1,404-piece set costs £88.

Lego House spokesman, Soren Bering Andersen, said: ‘We wanted to capture not just the landmarks but the feeling of what the town means to us. Billund is at the heart of our story. It’s where Lego play began and where it keeps evolving. This place reflects how a small Danish town grew into the global home of play and creativity.’

For opening hours, tickets, and more information, visit LegoHouse.comPorsche 911 Lego, set 10295, £149.99, Lego.com

This Toronto home has two personalities. From its street-facing exterior, HCD House presents itself as a cosy neighbourhood home with red slate roof tiling and large window frames – a reasonably low-key period design, friendly and inviting. Its rear end, however, is more raw and modern, comprising cubic volumes and a stripped-back brick façade. What unites both façades is the interior they enclose, which is an ode to local heritage and craftsmanship.

Tour HCD House, a new Toronto home

COMN Architects, an architecture and interior design firm based in the city, was asked by the clients to preserve the home, which is designed in the Craftsman style (similar to the Arts and Crafts movement) and its original 1921 façade. ‘The main inspiration was finding a way to allow the original 1920s Craftsman house and the new contemporary addition to coexist naturally,’ Clarissa Nam, founding partner of COMN, tells Wallpaper*.

Nam continues, ‘Rather than treating the heritage portion as something separate or simply preserving it as a façade, we wanted the original character, proportions, and craftsmanship to influence the design of the entire home. The clients’ love of books, music, and entertaining also became a major part of the design. This led to the idea of the two-storey library and intimate music space as the heart of the house, creating a central space that connects the old and new portions of the home.’

As a result, the project naturally slots into its Toronto neighbourhood, nodding to its architectural history while also supporting contemporary functionality. Inside the two-storey home, the heritage section features the living room and dining area, with large original windows.

At the rear of the residence, the clients had an unexpected request. They desired a solarium with buckets of natural light. To accommodate this, the architects installed large windows and skylights, while a newly landscaped courtyard acts as a divider between the kitchen and solarium and the remaining living spaces.

Throughout the home, the joinery is something to be marvelled at. ‘We sought to honour the authentic spirit of craftsman design in this portion of the interior, which inspired our choice of custom wall panelling,’ notes Nam. ‘An existing wood-burning fireplace was also preserved, offering a subtle modern interpretation of historical elements.’

Peter McNeil, also founding partner of the firm, adds that their favourite part of the residence is the library and music space: ‘It became the heart of the project and is where many of the ideas behind the house come together. The library brings natural light into the centre of the home, while the plaster stair and walnut shelving create a layered backdrop for the grand piano and intimate concert space. We also like that it was carved out of the existing structure. It feels simultaneously connected to the history of the house and completely new.’

The Toronto home now sparks warmth and curiosity, and is designed as a slow reveal. Despite the openness of the spaces, the firm describes the sense of intimacy as you move through each room, and the relationship between the original house and the new addition gradually becomes apparent.

The architects conclude, ‘Natural materials, custom millwork, books, music, and carefully framed views give the house a lived-in quality. We wanted it to feel like a home first and a piece of architecture second.’

comnarchitects.com

This year’s ‘September Event’ was something of a double whammy for Apple, which not only introduced the world to a shiny new CEO in the form John Ternus, but also unveiled the iPhone Duo, its first ever folding phone, alongside the new iPhone 18 Pro and 18 Pro Max, Apple Watch Series 12 and Ultra 4 and AirPods 5, plus iOS27. Ternus, who took over from Tim Cook earlier this month, had the privilege of standing on stage at Apple Park and casually saying ‘there’s one more thing’, the traditional prelude to an earth-shaking announcement.

So what’s the big deal? It wasn’t as if the Duo was unexpected (although some thought it would be called the iPhone Ultra). The physical form is certainly unconventional (although Apple was beaten to the wallet/passport size ratio by both Samsung and Xiaomi), but what really matters is how it performs and what Apple has done to make the two-screen format feel essential rather than an impressive gimmick.

After all, this is the first change of form factor for a device that has sold upwards of two billion units (a figure that’s hard to verify as Apple doesn’t disclose sales figures), and while folding screens are a pretty technology at this point, Apple’s engineers and technicians are pretty much second to none, so any hardware-related issues feel extremely unlikely. At nearly $2,000 for the base model, rising to $3,199 for the 2TB model, this is the flagship phone to end all flagship phones.

Ternus began the presentation after extolling the extensive abilities of the iPhone 18 Pro, more of which later acknowledging that we all consider smartphones to be our ‘intelligent portable hubs’. ‘A larger display would open up entirely new possibilities,’ he continued, explaining how Apple didn’t want its foldables to look like ‘two phones stuck together’.

Instead, Ternus described the company’s quest to create ‘a larger display that feels as natural and intuitive as iPad – we believe it’ll redefine the experience of using a foldable phone.’ Design chief Molly Anderson called the iPhone Duo ‘new but remarkably familiar – the same size as your passport’.

With its rounded corners, asymmetric shape and sized to feel right in both open and closed modes, the key thing is the proportions. ‘We designed iPhone Duo around a consistent aspect ratio that is the same across both displays,’ said Anderson.

A lot has had to change to make the experience work, both in hardware and in software. For a start, there’s a hidden facetime camera behind the main display, along with the sophisticated new hinge system which includes magnets to snap the device satisfyingly shut. When open, it’s the thinnest iPhone ever made, while the frame is made from mirror polished Titanium for strength (available in two finishes, Star White and Night Sky).

The inner screen measures 7.6 inches (80 per cent bigger than iPhone 18 Pro), while the outer display, slightly shorter and wider than a ‘regular’ phone is 5.4 inches. When closed, the operating system orientates status and navigation to the right-hand side of the screen; open it up and content scales but controls stay in the same place. All apps have been redesigned to accommodate the screen sizes, while orientations happen naturally – when open, closed, propped half open.

A lot of what the Duo can do – run two apps at once, swapping them around sharing info between them – is par for the course on rival folding screen phones, but don’t forget this is Apple’s first swing at the form factor. You can be sure that a lot of these transitions will be a lot smoother and more intuitive than the occasionally hacked-together feel of Android-based systems. It’s all very sleek, from the alarm clock mode to the animation that expands the outer image onto the inner screen.

Apple Pencil compatibility is also coming, the first time the iPad accessory has been applied to the iPhone. The twin batteries provide up to 31 hours of video watching on the larger inner display, while the new flagship doesn’t scrimp on camera quality, with the same camera unit as iPhone 18 Pro. Helpful features like Duo Preview allow subjects to preview their own photograph on the outer screen as it’s being taken.

It was a good thing that the Duo was saved to last, because it would have made the regular hardware and software updates seem rather pedestrian. The new iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max doubled down on the scope and power of Apple Intelligence. It’s all part of the ongoing Mexican stand-off taking place in Silicon Valley; in the ultimate scenario, the first company to blink faces ruin as everyone else swoops in and gathers up all the addicted AI users. One sign that Apple is taking AI ennui seriously is the new Apple Reference Image, all part of the substantial camera upgrade.

New image-making features include aperture control on the 48MP main camera with a physical shutter with blades thinner than a human hair. Apple Intelligence has been deployed to amp up the Photographic Style function for added texture and tone, while new Cinematic Effects can be applied to regular video in onboard ‘post’. 4K time-lapses have been added and a new set of Pro Controls have been added for greater manual control and custom controls. Apple clearly wants to take back the crown as the king of smartphone cameras.

Apple Reference Image is a new function that ‘signs’ each photo at pixel level at point of capture by creating an unalterable ‘reference’ version of every photo you take – a ‘digital negative’ – that can be used as verification after intensive editing and generative work.

Battery life is improved, with the 18 Pro offering the same durability as the ‘old’ 17 Pro Max, while 18 Pro Max has the longest battery life of any iPhone to date, 45 hours of video playback. A new A20 Pro chip sits at the heart of both phones, squeezing on even more transistors with a 6-core CPU and 7-core GPU. Visually, there’s now a smaller ‘dynamic island’ at the top of the screen, although it’s more flexible now with up to three different status indicators on screen at once. All this is powered by iOS27.

The new AirPods 5 (pre-order now, available 18 September) come with improved personalised spatialised audio and Active Noise Cancellation, offering up to 50 per cent more noise reduction than the previous generation, as well as Adaptive Audio that automatically adjusts between ANC and transparency depending on background noise. Total integration with Siri AI allows hands-free, context-rich access to info on your device and in your messages. The Live Translation feature has been updated.

Apple Watch Series 12 (pre-order now, available 18 September) includes a new chip to power a host of Audio Intelligence features, along with much more accurate fitness metrics. New features include Live Rewind, which can transcribe the last 15 seconds of audio as well as Siri Recap, coming soon, which uses the watch’s ambient listening abilities to take away, decode and summarise key points from meetings and events (very much like what standalone devices like Plaud already do, effectively ending their small window of advantage in the rampant AI device sector). Notably, Apple pointed out that Siri Recap will deliberately not be able to identify speakers or store audio.

There’s also more customisation on watch and band – ‘it’s not just a watch, but it’s your watch’. Series 12 finishes include Space Grey, Black, White Gold and Dark Bronze, all using recycled aluminium, with tougher glass and surfaces. Polished finishes in titanium (also recycled) are available, while a Pearl White and Night Blue ceramic finish has been introduced. The new flagship Ultra 4 model (pre-order now, available 18 September) gets up to two days of battery life, better durability and even more finishes.

When the dust settles and the analysis, stress tests, and teardowns begin we’ll see if Apple has made a smart move waiting for folding tech to reach full maturity before throwing its hand in the ring.

Alternatively, Apple iPhone Duo could simply be a low-volume, high status flagship device that further broadens the iPhone’s global appeal.

Apple iPhone Duo starts at $1,999 for 256GB with pre-orders from October 16
Apple iPhone 18 Pro, from $1,199, Apple iPhone 18 Pro Max, from $1,299, Apple Watch Series 12, from $399, Apple Watch Ultra 4, from $799, Apple AirPods 5, from $129, Apple.com/store

The winners of the 2026 London Design Medals have been announced as the London Design Festival prepares to kick off (12-20 September), with Jonathan Anderson, Sir Christopher Frayling, Anab Jain and Solveiga Pakštaitė awarded the annual design accolade. The winners were selected by a jury of global creatives led by the festival’s director Ben Evans, and will be celebrated at RH London, The Gallery, on 14 September.

The winning quartet embodies the breadth of creativity and ingenuity at the heart of London's creative industries. 'This year's medal winners demonstrate the transformative power of design, from Jonathan Anderson’s work blending high fashion, art and craft, to Sir Christopher Frayling’s lifelong dedication to design education and cultural history, Anab Jain’s pioneering work in speculative futures, and Solveiga Pakštaitė’s solutions for intuitive, inclusive and considered design,' comments Evans. 'Each medal recipient exemplifies how creative innovation shapes our culture, industry and shared future.'

LONDON DESIGN MEDALS 2025: MEET THE WINNERS

London Design Medal: Jonathan Anderson

Blending his work in fashion with a lifelong dedication to craft, both historical and contemporary, makes Jonathan Anderson a fitting winner for one of London's most important creative accolades. 'It is a true honour to be recognised by the LDF for my work within the field of craft and design, which have always been a personal passion of mine,' says Anderson.

Throughout his career, and both as a personal pursuit as well as through his work for brands like Loewe and Dior, as well as his eponymous label JW Anderson, Anderson has operated, a note from the festival reads, as a 'creator and curator'. Through projects such as collaborations with The Hepworth Wakefield and the Offer Waterman gallery, and the founding of the Loewe Foundation Craft Prize, he transformed the role of creative director with a distinctive cultural perspective.

Lifetime Achievement Medal: Sir Christopher Frayling

British cultural historian, academic, broadcaster and champion of design education, Sir Christopher Frayling represents the festival's belief in the importance of fostering and nurturing the industry's future. Frayling recognises the similar mission the two share: 'Since 2003, the London Design Festival has been drawing the public's attention to the key importance of design in everyday life,' he notes. 'Through my teaching, my publications, my broadcasts – and my leadership of the Royal College of Art (RCA) – I have been on a similar mission.'

Frayling is a former rector of the RCA; among his achievements, he set up the pioneering History of Design postgraduate course with the V&A Museum, contributing to bringing modern and contemporary design at the forefront of the academic discourse. His belief in the accessibility of design education and the industry has led him to write and present programmes for the BBC and Channel 4, and to be a key voice in the crucial conversations surrounding funding for creative education.

Design Innovation Medal: Anab Jain

The co-founder of challenge-facing, future-oriented studio Superflux, Anab Jain is a futurist applying creative thinking to 'the complex and deeply interconnected nature of the challenges we face today'.

Today led by a mission of 'meaningful legacy', Jain was born and raised in India, where she studied filmmaking at the National Institute of Design before moving to London for a master’s at the RCA. Founding Superflux with Jon Ardern in 2009, her work has focused on designing speculative solutions where technology, politics, and nature are considered to confront the increasingly complex challenges facing current and future generations (as seen in the studio’s recent exhibition ‘The Craftocene’ in Venice). 'For us, [the award] is recognition that speculative and future-led design is inherently innovative and entrepreneurial,' she says. 'At Superflux, we have always believed that design’s greatest power lies in making complex, systemic futures viscerally felt, so people can step outside established narratives and find the courage to imagine alternate futures.'

Emerging Design Medal: Solveiga Pakštaitė

This year's Emerging Design Medal winner is chief design officer and founder of tech venture Mimica, and runs a multidisciplinary practice that deals with user-centred and sustainable design. Among her early achievements is Bump, which she developed while attending the Industrial Design & Technology course at Brunel University London: the surface of a temperature-sensitive label is applied to food, and its tactile pattern changes when the food is about to go bad – the mission being to cut food waste and support visually impaired individuals in their everyday life.

'I'm passionate about promoting inclusion and sustainable habits through design, and I think it's wonderful that work that makes the world a little bit better is being recognised,' she says. 'I feel very honoured! I'm proud of what I have worked on so far but I'm even more excited by the design challenges yet to come.’

Storied jewellery and silverware house Buccellati and Armenian-Lebanese interior designer Chahan Minassian work together like caviar and mother-of-pearl. Having previously collaborated on the expansion of the Maison’s Milan flagship store with the opening of a grand ‘Piano Nobile’ showroom on its first floor, their creative partnership is back in bloom with an intimate caviar bar overlooking the courtyard.

Experience Buccellati’s Art de la Table in Milan

Dedicated to the art of entertainment, the new space visually references Buccellati’s timeless caviar tableware collection: an emblematic range dating back to the 1930s and beloved for its signature micro-beaded motif and exceptional silversmithing craftsmanship. The Palazzo’s Neoclassical bones, originally designed by Luigi Chierichetti and completed in 1839, converse effortlessly with the soothing colour palette that defines the furnishings and fixtures.

‘Maintaining a residential spirit was essential,’ says Chahan Minassian. ‘The objective was to create an interior that felt welcoming and lived-in while preserving the architectural grandeur of Palazzo Gavazzi. The mirrors introduce light, movement and depth, while the materials, textiles and Murano glass bring warmth and intimacy.’

Past a gallery-style entrance, the caviar bar unfolds across two levels, with a glazed mezzanine overlooking a central bar and an arrangement of plush lounge chairs and sculptural bistro tables that are reserved for clients and guests. Above, vaulted surfaces, clad entirely in copper, silver and smoky-grey mirrored panels, split daylight across the room.

Throughout, silvery greys and taupes co-exist with accents of bronze and gold, while velvet, Fortuny fabrics, textured leather and custom rugs counter the harder reflective surfaces. Minassian designed each piece of furniture for the room, then added vintage Murano glass chandeliers with a characteristic amber light. The same colours and materials appeared in Minassian’s earlier work on the Piano Nobile, creating continuity between Buccellati’s retail and hospitality spaces.

Alongside the micro-beaded caviar line-up, including wine glasses, holders, and serving plates, are Buccellati’s pieces made with Ginori, coloured glass from its Murano Collection and the Furry Animals series of sculptural silver creatures, as presented during the 2025 edition of Milan Design Week.

Buccellati is located at Via Monte Napoleone, 23, 20121 Milan, Italy

For most people, a retrospective of their life’s work is the ultimate occasion to celebrate themselves, but for Charlotte Mensah, her new exhibition, ‘Charlotte Mensah: Community Matters’, is, as its title suggests, as much about the people who helped her become a pioneering force in Afro, mixed, and curly hair culture as it is about how she got there.

Open in London’s Ladbroke Hall 8-13 September 2026, ‘Community Matters’ is a mixed-media exhibition that traces Mensah’s life and career, from her childhood in Ghana to the opening of her famous salon, Hairlounge, on Portobello Road, and her position as one of Britain’s most influential hairstylists. In doing so, it showcases the people who inspired Mensah along the way and highlights the larger conversations around culture, creativity, and belonging that have always informed Mensah’s practice.

According to Mensah, the ambition was never simply to take things from the salon and put them into Ladbroke Hall. ‘We wanted to translate something of the feeling of the salon into an exhibition context: the intimacy, the conversation, the photography, the objects and, most importantly, the people,’ she says. ‘To do that, we had to look at my whole life and understand how it had informed my practice.’

Working with friends and Hairlounge customers, senior curator at V&A East Madeleine Haddon, and interior designer Jacqueline Douglas, Mensah filled the space with images and artifacts, creating an immersive space that will also, for the duration it is open, play host to talks and workshops like ‘Beauty, Business & Belonging’ and ‘The Modern-Day Salon: A Cultural Institution.’

Seeing her life presented before her in this way was an illuminating experience for Mensah. ‘It confirmed something I have always felt: none of this happened overnight, and none of it happened alone. My practice has always been social and relational. The work is hair, but around the hair there has always been family, friendship, conversation and collaboration.’

That was especially true when it came to Mensah’s family: ‘What surprised me was how present my children were at so many important points in the story,’ she says. ‘My son’s bedroom became my first salon in the mid-1990s. Then, while we were going through the archive, I found a photograph of my daughter in 2002 hiding inside the counter that was being made for the salon. That same counter is still there on Portobello Road today. The salon itself was designed by my neighbour, the architect Robert Grace. So even when I look at the physical space, I can see relationships embedded within it.’

Importantly, the exhibition also highlights Mensah’s trailblazing role in the history of afro and textured hair, and how that history has changed over the past 40 years. Mensah says he has seen the visibility of Afro hair change ‘enormously’ but, ‘visibility is only one part of progress’.

‘The conversation I want us to have much more seriously now is about education. There is an art to hairstyling, of course, but underneath the artistry, there has to be knowledge. You have to understand the fundamentals before you can improvise. You crawl, then you walk, then eventually you can run.

‘That is why I believe we need clearer standards and qualifications that properly demonstrate a stylist’s skill set, and that should apply across hairdressing. It is also why education has become such an important part of my own practice.’ To that end, Mensah runs Curl Workshops for families and delivers professional masterclasses for salons because, as she says, ‘ultimately, my idea of inclusion is very simple: somebody with Afro, curly or textured hair should be able to walk into a salon anywhere in this country and know that their hair can be cared for properly.’

'Charlotte Mensah: Community Matters' is on view at Ladbroke Hall until 13 September 2026