Walk The Talk: The Dazzling Materials Defining Fashion Today

From sand and flax to a disco ball and Murano glass, we can’t stop staring at the catwalks and couture from recent fashion weeks across the globe.

A Vivid Focus On Fashion Week Couture

Although designer Brunello Cucinelli’s sartorial stylings can be seen on TV, in the HBO series Succession, the set for the Milan Fashion Week unveiling of Anamnesis, the label’s Fall/Winter 2025 menswear collection, was meant to evoke a vintage radio station, one where classic silhouettes in cashmere, chevron knits, and garment-treated leathers met saturated colors, redefining quiet luxury.

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The bright, saturated color of Carolina Herrera’s Resort 25 women’s wear line, a collab between creative director Wes Gordon and Mexican artisans, as well as that of the catwalk, backdropped by the Museo Anahuacalli, derived from the luminous sunsets of Mexico City, where the show was held.

Carolina Herrera Resort 2025, where ready-to-wear pieces, such as this silk gown and dress, were presented at the Museo Anahuacalli in Mexico City.

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In addition to models donning the tailored Spring/Summer 2025 Zegna menswear collection, sustainable flax fibers not only were the focus of the Milan runway but also compose the brand’s signature linen fabric, Oasi Lino.

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For its half-century milestone, luxury footwear brand Santoni mounted “Meraviglia–Makers of Beauty for 50 Years,” an immersive exhibition also in Milan honoring the house’s artisanal legacy via portraits by renowned lensman Jack Davison, culminating in a tribute collection that embodies the label’s enduring pursuit of beauty.

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For Thom Browne’s ornithology-inspired FW25 collection during New York Fashion Week, thousands of origami doves fluttered around the runway, while a recitation of Emily Dickinson’s poem “‘Hope’ is the Thing with Feathers” and a chorus of birdsong pumped through speakers.

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A cohesive set of pillowlike soft furnishings seemingly strewn on canvas-covered bleachers, punctuated by a giant deconstructed disco ball, all by Austrian artist Lukas Gschwandtner, conjured a mood of “after-hours liberation” for Acne Studio’s SS24 women’s wear collection at Paris Fashion Week.

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Toasting Dolce & Gabbana’s 40th anniversary this year was “Du Cœur à la Main,” a 12-act tableau vivant exhibited through March at Paris’s Grand Palais where curator Florence Müller outfitted three floors in hundreds of one-off Alta Moda embroidered-silk gowns, original artworks, and handmade accessories, as well as baroque furnishings, gold-leaf paneling, and Murano glass chandeliers.

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For their SS25 menswear collection, Prada co-creative directors Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons examined perception and reality through deliberately creased and patinaed garments and exaggerated proportions amidst Milan’s Deposito of the Fondazione Prada, a meandering dreamscape by AMO, OMA’s research branch.

Journey Through A Memorable Maze Of Visionary Design

Environmentalism, inclusivity, saturated color, sport—all and more made for exceptional art and design in 2024.

Explore Breathtaking Designs From Top Projects

Commissioned for last February’s Desert X AlUla, an outdoor biennial in the Saudi Arabian desert, To Breathe, South Korean artist Kimsooja’s site-responsive spiral, was made of 42 9-foot-tall glass panels coated in iridescent, diffraction-grating film.

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In the family room of a 5,600-square-foot duplex penthouse in New York by NICOLEHOLLIS, a grid of Donald Judd woodcuts oversees a Groundpiece sectional by Antonio Citterio, coffee and side tables by Ini Archibong and Gary Magakis, and a custom oak media console. Read more about this New York penthouse here.

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2030, a nude Venus lost in a sea of detritus, is part of “To Step Beyond” at Lévy Gorvy Dayan gallery in New York, a survey of 91-year-old artist Michelangelo Pistoletto’s work that includes six decades of sculptures, silkscreens, and paintings, on view through March 29, 2025.

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Last year, for the 100th anniversary of Cini Boeri’s birth, product designer Elena Salmistaro created a 12½-inch-tall enameled statuette of the late architect that combines her physical attributes with signature patterns from her textile designs, part of the Most Illustrious series for Bosa that already includes figurines of other Italian icons: Michele De Lucchi, Achille Castiglioni, Riccardo Dalisi, and Alessandro Mendini. Read more about these stauettes here.

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In the restrooms at Escá Cueva, a restaurant in Cairo designed by Badie Architects, colored LEDs highlight the organic forms made from a steel infrastructure covered in a cement-polymer mix that’s found throughout. Discover more about this fiery restaurant here.

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In Tokyo, at the entrance to the Ginza flagship store of Ya-Man, design studio I IN lined a column with LEDs that mirror the ones found in the Japanese beauty brand’s red light–therapy products.

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Sustainability drove Milan firm Peter Pichler Architecture’s design of the Bologna, Italy, headquarters for Bonfiglioli, a manufacturer of gearmotors, drive systems, and industrial inverters, including the facade clad in pleated aluminum mesh that filters direct sun and the sloping roof that incorporates six south-facing terraces and results in an enlarged north facade for increased indirect daylight to the 67,000-square-foot interiors.

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Sticks of hand-painted driftwood suspended in an aluminum mesh explored the tension between natural and man-made in Roots, part of “The New Transcendence,” a group show including Andrea Branzi at Friedman Benda gallery in New York last January.

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Andrea Pisano, the 14th-century sculptor and architect, was the master builder of the Duomo di Orvieto, its banded white travertine and black basalt facade similar to other Gothic cathedrals built in central Italy around that time (and the inspiration for the interiors of the nearby Palazzo Petrvs, a boutique hotel by Giuliano Andrea dell’Uva Architetti which was featured in our March 2024 issue).

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The 1938 photograph of Austrian-American architect Frederick John Kiesler’s Mobile Home Library Hinge appeared in “Frederick Kiesler: Vision Machines” at the Jewish Museum in New York last April.

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Referencing a Marcel Duchamp self-portrait, the graphic designer Milton Glaser’s poster accompanied the 1966 release of “Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits” and was featured in “Art of Noise” at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art last summer.

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Known for her “art pools,” which feature vibrant murals painted onto a pool’s bottom, Alex Proba elevates her signature style with a puzzlelike arrangement of hand-glazed ceramic tiles from Cerámica Suro in Guadalajara, Mexico, into an abstraction of coral reefs for a private home in Miami.

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Occupying the four exterior Jewel Box vitrines earlier this winter at the SCAD Museum of Art in Savannah, Georgia, was “Multifaceted,”  Italian illustrator Olimpia Zagnoli’s site-specific vinyl artworks, all 8½ by 10 feet. Dive into these vinyl artworks here.

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Local artists Adriana Meunié and Jaume Roig crafted a mural of natural materials for the pine-beamed yoga studio at Son Blanc Farmhouse Menorca, a boutique hotel in Spain that had been a dormant, late 1800’s Spanish home and barn until a recent renovation by Atelier du Pont. Read more about the Menorca renovation here.

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The nearly 6-foot-tall Warren by Porky Hefer appeared last summer in “no bats, no chocolate” at Galerie56 in New York, it and the solo show’s eight other sculptures of animals, all representative of “weird talents” that benefit the planet, handmade of locally sourced materials in collaboration with fellow South African studios Ronel Jordaan, Wellington Moyo, and Leather Walls. Play around with these sustainable sculptures here.

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A custom banquette with artfully clashing upholstery patterns distinguishes the lobby of the Wayback, a 134-key boutique hotel, in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, by Nashville architecture and design firm Dryden Studio. Get retro with the Wayback hotel here.

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Multidisciplinary artist Orsi Orban and Christopher Duffy collaborated on Spirits, a limited-edition sculpture series inspired by bone formations, coral, and animal scales that combines Orban’s surface-design creation methods with Duffy’s work with CAD and AI, with the former ultimately constructing the works from hundreds of pieces of laser-cut cherry laminate paired with polyester foil. Catch this biomorphic sculpture series here.

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The 1971 image by Ghanaian photographer James Barnor of a shop assistant posing in front of the United Trading Company headquarters in Accra was included in “Tropical Modernism: Architecture and Independence” at London’s V&A South Kensington last summer.

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For accounting-software company Tipalti, abacus-inspired installations by M Moser Associates, including these 1-foot-tall ceramic beads by TAV Ceramics, in corporate branding colors, inform its 24,000-square-foot office in Vancouver, Canada. Tour around this Vancouver office here.

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Pittsburgh’s Andy Warhol Museum feted its 30th anniversary last year with “KAWS + Warhol,” which featured the painted bronze, nearly 6-foot-tall GONE from 2018 by Brian Donnelly, aka KAWS.

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Last July at Tokyo’s Roppongi Museum, “Miss Dior: Stories of a Miss” was a 9,150-square-foot exhibition by OMA that surveyed the 77-year history of the House of Dior scent, the dominant color derived from the pinks found in iterations of the perfume’s tinted formula and bottle designs. Capture the essence of Miss Dior here.

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Also last July, Unreal, the Argentine artist Andrés Reisinger’s three-day pop-up installation in New York, cloaked a NoLIta storefront in 850 yards of polyester to celebrate the launch of a liquid blush product of the same name by cosmetics brand Hourglass. Explore this dreamy installation in New York here.

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29-year-old Lithuanian Barbora Žilinskaite’s anthropomorphic, 10-piece solo exhibition “Chairs Don’t Cry” at Friedman Benda Los Angeles last winter included the 6-foot-long Sunbather bench and 3-foot-tall Mr. Judgy mirror, both in pigmented reclaimed sawdust.

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Whimsical apertures, butter-yellow tile, and graphic accents welcome spontaneity at Lanwuu Imagine, a studio designed by Aurora Design in Kunming, China, that specializes in wedding and portrait photography through a surrealistic lens. Discover this photo studio capturing the imagination.

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Occupying the 9,000-square-foot mezzanine level at The National Gallery Prague is ATLAS—the acronym for Creative Studio and Laboratory of Associative Dreaming in Czech—a public art gallery by No Architects absconding with traditional museum bounds in favor of a reductive Mondrian palette, yoga platforms, movable seating, and touchable art. Pique curiosity at ATLAS inside the National Gallery Prague.

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Toasting its 20th anniversary, Toronto’s famed Lee Restaurant redesigned by Bent Gable Design and Future Studio relocated to the city’s 1932 art deco Waterworks building, where its 6,000 square feet feature walnut walls bisected by velvet patchwork banners in retro hues.

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Paying homage to Yeun Long, Hong Kong’s agricultural roots, Shun Fook Barn by ARK reimagines the humble farmhouse as a 30,000-square-foot shopping mall with indoor/outdoor appeal, from living green walls, earthy hues, and a massive woodlike tree sculpture in the atrium.

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Celebrating the Carpathian landscape, Hay Boutique and Spa by Edem Family in Polyanytsya, Ukraine, and designed by YOD Group, has dried grapevines appointed to thermos-spruce paneled walls in its Vinotheque restaurant, where local industrial designer Andrey Galushka’s pressed-hay pendant fixtures illuminate rustic tables and Emilio Nanni’s Croissant chairs. Find solace in this tranquil mountain escape.

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The first solo show since Fernando Campana’s untimely passing in 2022, and the first with older brother Humberto as sole principal designer, “On the Road,” by Estúdio Campana last spring at Friedman Benda in New York, included their 2017 cast-bronze Branches sofa.

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Celebrating late Venezuelan artist Carlos Cruz-Diez, Brazilian studio Pascali Semerdjian Arquitetos curated “Chromatic Inductions” last fall at Simões de Assis gallery in São Paulo, where large PVC sheets hung from the ceiling creating an interactive mazelike experience.

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The 47th iteration of architect Emmanuelle Moreaux’s 100 Colors series, Timeline is also her first permanent one in Paris, occupying the eight-story atrium of Le Lumière office complex, with 3,200 steel, color-graded numbers suspended in rows, each denoting a year. Unlock the magic of numbers in this captivating installation.

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Debuted during Art Basel Miami Beach, the city’s first-ever floating and transportable padel ball court by Yntegra Group, moored just off Fisher Island in Biscayne Bay, was constructed of recycled steel sourced from old shipyard materials, surrounded by glass walls, and clocked in at 84 tons.

Tiny Marvels: Unveiling High Design in Snug Spaces

From a teeny-tiny villa tucked in the Danish forest to a snug Victorian town house in downtown Toronto, high design is all in the details.

From Toronto to Denmark, How Design Thrives In The Small Details

ADR Crafts A Cozy Snowy Ski Cottage

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A spiral staircase anchored by a wood stove marks the intersection of the 1,335-square-foot cross-shaped ski cottage’s two identical volumes and ascends to attic-level sleeping quarters. Spruce defines the Horní Malá Úpa, Czech Republic, structure inside and out, constituting floors, ceilings, and custom furniture as well as the entire facade, painted a traditional alpine red that stands out against snowdrifts. 

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Frier Architecture Built A Micro-Villa Enclosed In The Woods

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Conservation laws dictated that this 950-square-foot micro-villa in Djursland, Denmark, with a shou sugi ban–treated exterior be built on a tiny footprint to disturb as little of the surrounding forest as possible. But what it lacks in size it makes up for in flair: Note the curved oak enclosures and the terrazzo flooring, embedded with overscale pieces of natural stone, that was developed specifically for the project. 

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Gurea | Arquitectura Cooperativa Crafts A Minimalist Dwelling

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With a raw palette of laminated-fir framing and eco-friendly cork sheathing that echoes the Cantabrian surrounds, the 1,670-square-foot prefab dwelling in Navajeda, Spain, was assembled on-site in less than a month. Inside is a minimalist scheme, with concrete flooring, birch-plywood walls, and blue-painted cabinetry, while a central greenhouse and subfloor radiant heating help warm the compact volume naturally, resulting in a near-zero footprint.  

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Reign Architects Makes A Sunlit Sanctuary

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A cramped 1850’s Victorian in Toronto was transformed into a sunlit contemporary 2,200-square-foot sanctuary for a growing family via an A-frame extension and a reworked rear facade, clad in locally sourced spruce shiplap and punctured with floor-to-ceiling sliders; new fenestration also frames views of a beloved maple tree. Cathedral ceilings with exposed Douglas fir beams define the parents’ wing, where the en suite bathroom is porcelain-tiled and doors beneath a 3-foot-diameter porthole window lead to a private terrace. 

5 Patient-First Healthcare Facilities Embrace Tranquility

From Ukraine to China to the U.S., these peaceful dental, medical, and skin- and pet-care facilities worldwide swap clinical for calm.

Explore These Calming Healthcare Facilities, From Ukraine to Utah

CoZy Dental by Spiegel Aihara Workshop

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Although the Z stands for founder Dr. Cici Zhou’s last name, the practice moniker is represented in its interiors via homey fluted millwork, pastel pendant fixtures, terrazzo-patterned ceramic tile, and biophilic accents. Douglas-fir ceiling beams draped with canary nylon mesh and walls painted a sunset gradient further the feeling of serenity in San Francisco.

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13 Laser Clinic by Temp Project

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Nature’s ruggedness meets 21st-century technology at the 1,700-square-foot skin-care center in Kyiv, Ukraine, utilizing organic cosmetics and advanced laser-based treatments. The concrete reception desk mimics a boulder and flooring and walls recall raw pumice, while stainless-steel shelving and neon signage lean futuristic. Soft, rounded seating adds warmth.

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Metrodora Institute by Denton House and HGA

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Residentially scaled furniture, gentle color palettes, views of and artwork featuring the surrounding mountains in West Valley City, Utah, plus a constellation of locally crafted pendant fixtures evoking flower petals are among the feminine touches at the center named after an ancient Greek woman physician, focusing on neuroimmune axis disorders.

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Dacha Center by Makhno Studio

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A sunny color scheme lends cheer to the long-term care facility in Kyiv, Ukraine, for children with cancer and their families. A plywood tree of life and hand-painted animals add whimsy, while, under a ceiling installation of wind-chimelike planks emblazoned with donor names, portraits of past residents as healthy adults instill hope.

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Gogoland by Informal Design

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Plywood veneer and exposed concrete structural beams maintain the industrial mood at a vacant factory in Huizhou, China, that’s been converted into a place for pets and owners. Amenities include cat- and dog-grooming rooms, kennels, an outdoor play area, and custom furniture with built-in leash holders and hollows for hide-and-seek.

A Look at the Art, Architecture, and Fashion That Defined 2022

Amid a sea of global ups and downs, the art, architecture, and fashion of 2022 uplifted our horizons.

Art and Design That Defined the Year and the Creatives Behind It 

Hosper

VisKringloop, an earthwork collaboration between the landscape architecture firm, artist Pé Okx, and ecologist Cor ten Haaf in Wieringermeer, Netherlands, celebrates marine ecology, where fish swim through meandering circular paths across the 40-acre site and visitors can climb a painted-steel staircase for a birds-eye view.

Guo Pei

“Guo Pei: Couture Fantasy,” the prolific couturier’s summer exhibition at San Francisco’s Legion of Honor museum, showcased two decades worth of her influence, from Olympic athletes to singer Rihanna, with such highlights as silk-embroidered and gold-foil dresses.

Mario Cucinella

Santa Maria Goretti, a concrete church in Mormanno, Italy, by the sustainability-minded architect, features a cross-shape incision at the entrance that is lit at night.

Steve Messam

The British environmental artist’s three-part exhibition, “These Passing Things,” spanned Fountains Abbey and Studley Royal Park, an 800-acre UNESCO World Heritage Site amidst the ruins of a medieval monastery in Northern England, and included the starburst yellow nylon Spiked and the scarlet polyester Bridged.

Skull Studio

The fall iteration of Concéntrico, the annual international festival of architecture, design, and urbanism in Logroño, Spain, featured this playground installation made from painted MDF boards and steel beams to convey optic and haptic sensations to visitors via stimulating colors arranged in an irregular rhythm.

Studio Odile Decq

At Antares Barcelona, a luxe, wellness-focused residential tower in Spain, the subterranean swimming pool occupies a grottolike room with a mirror-polished stainless-steel ceiling that’s the underside of the building’s parking-garage ramp.

Vitale

Geometric archways and neo-Memphis colors create a playful, anxiety-reducing environment for young patients at Isabel Cadroy, Dentista Infantil, a pediatric dental office in Castellón de la Plana, Spain.

Craig Green

Elemental and multifunctional fashion constructions reminiscent of insectlike exoskeletons and circus tents presented at the sixth edition of the annual Moncler Genius campaign harmonized with the alpine brand’s adventurous aesthetic.

Big-Bjarke Ingels Group

Although LEGO House, a 130,000-square-foot experience center in Billund, Denmark, comprised of 21 staggered blocks that recall the toy company’s plastic bricks, was completed in 2017, LEGO Group celebrated its 90th anniversary in 2022.

Yuko Nishikawa

The ceramicist and industrial designer stood amid Memory Function, her temporary installation of over 200 mobiles crafted from paper-pulp waste, commissioned by the Brooklyn Home Company for a model apartment at Butler Collection, a residential complex in Park Slope, New York.

Piet Mondrian

The 1916 oil landscape Farm Near Duivendrecht was part of “Mondrian Evolution,” a summer exhibition at Fondation Beyeler in Basel, Switzerland, that marked the 150th anniversary of the Dutch painter’s birth by tracing the development of his style, from early fig­ur­ative works to the abstract color studies for which he would become best known.

Virginia San Fratello

The architect and Emerging Objects cofounder’s 1-foot-tall Sexy Beast vessel is covered in a “shag” of earthenware extruded from a 3-D printer, then cut and blown dry.

Field Conforming Studio

Laser-cut plates of Cor-Ten steel form the Vanished House, a permanent installation in China’s Wuhan Shimenfeng Memorial Park conceived as a memorial to home, life, and loss.

Kate Millet

Piano & Stool, in­corp­orating found leather boots, and the Bachelor’s Apartment cabinet were part of “Fantasy Furniture, 1967,” a retrospective at Salon 94 Design gallery in New York.

Consequence Forma

The 9,700-square-foot gymnasium at Czechia’s Nový Hrozenkov Primary School Sports Hall, which is also open to the public, has a James Turrell–style skylight that visitors can reach toward as they ascend its colorful climbing wall.

Aulík Fišer Architekti

Aerial, a concrete installation by Federico Díaz weighing 125,000 pounds and standing 25 feet tall, towers above a piazzetta at the firm’s Borˇislavka Center, an office and retail complex in Prague.

Cecilia Vicuña

The Chilean artist’s nearly 90-foot Brain Forest Quipu, a mixed-media installation in sculpture, sound, and video, hangs until April 16 in the Turbine Hall at London’s Tate Modern, the interwoven, skeletal forms suggesting the delicate forces of our ecosystem.

4 Global Firms Reinvent Outdoor Space

From Prague to St. Louis, firms are inventing and repurposing outdoor space with newfound creativity.

Wutopia Lab

Golden Barnyard, Cockaigne of Everyman, Shanghai

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On a working rice and rapeseed farm, a 2-acre expanse once used for food processing has been converted into a place for outside movie screenings and similar activities, named after the land of plenty from medieval lore, complete with rolling piles of “grain” in porous yellow concrete.

Hosper

VisKringloop, Wieringermeer, Netherlands

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A collaboration between the landscape architecture firm, artist Pé Okx, and ecologist Cor ten Haaf, visitors can climb a painted-steel staircase for a birds-eye view of this earthwork, its ripplelike forms symbolizing the life cycle of the fish that live within and part of a 40-acre site devoted to improving their migration between fresh and salt water.

KOGAA

Air Square, Prague

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A partnership with hot-air balloon maker Kubícˇek Visionair yielded prefabricated, recyclable partitions of inflatable FR-coated polyester that, when supported by a base of CNC-cut plywood planks, can be arranged into a 20-foot-high, interlocking circle for a partially shaded and protected plug-in park or performance locale.

Kiku Obata & Company

Spring Church, St. Louis

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Courtesy of the Pulitzer Arts Foundation, the limestone shell of a 19th-century Gothic revival–style church ravaged by fire has been fortified and revitalized into a combination open-air house of worship/public art space, which recently featured Jordan Weber’s installation All Our Liberations, its three tiers painted with words by local poet Cheeraz Gormon.