This week: Sip & Guzzle, perfumer and chef, Byredo on wood, Zontone pool paintings, Bang & Olufsen outdoor architecture, subtractive design logic, Miu Miu Literary Club, Fenty Beauty AI in WhatsApp

This week: AI books restaurants, emotion through scent, Nigerian handcraft, what counts as art, amapiano vs afrobeats, a 3D-printed homes, ancient grains vs GMO, new era of e-fashion and commerce.

This week: new Michelin cities, AI scent from memory, algorithmic beauty, analog tech in couture, creator streams beat official, tequila mansion, rare watches in auction, top jewelry school now free.

This week: a culinary scholarship, emotion to scent, touch in luxury, image and power in art, brain waves to make music, creator campus, 266-year watch retailer ends, multi-sensory museum experience.

This week: wine and AI, scent in VR, digital touch advancement, seeing the future in new NYC exhibit, listening lounge launch, lie-flat economy seats, AI fit and checkout, multi-sense brain model.

This week: food science and AI, a Madrid perfume laboratory, virtual try-on, urban architecture as art, music deepfake war, a Paris bathhouse, fine jewelry and time, tech company on Fifth Avenue.

What if you walked into a space where sound moved the air, the air carried scent, the scent shifted with the music, the music created visible patterns, and your own movement fed back into the system? Not metaphorically. Literally. For decades, we’ve treated "multisensory" design as a collection of separate checkboxes: a nice scent here, a cool light there, a playlist in the background. Sound8 argues for the collapse of those boundaries, and exemplifies a core philosophy of Ode.

I’ve spent some $$$ on craft cocktails in dimly lit rooms filled with vintage speakers and rare records, yet I’m far from a "vinyl head." In these listening bars, there is a feeling that you need to be an expert just to exist in the space. We usually think of these lounges as being only about the sound, but what if the music is actually secondary to the overall system? This is an exploration of how sound, taste, time, and space work together to shape our mood.

We tend to think of taste as a closed-loop system between the mouth and the nose, but the physiological reality is far more "wired." There’s a new frontier of sensory design. We are seeing the collapse of the wall between what we hear and what we consume. Products like the Lollipop Star are turning candy into a hardware device, using bone-conduction to play music through your teeth while you taste the flavor.

This piece started as a question I kept circling back to: is nostalgia really about memory, or is it about how things looked? Before you remember what was happening, you remember how it looked. A good example to reflect on this is with technology. The more I paid attention to it (old cameras, colorful computers, foldable phones) the more it felt like sight comes first. We don’t just remember what things did, we remember the glow, the grain, the way a device moved or sat in a room. This is me thinking out loud about why visual design keeps returning, and what that says about how we remember, choose, and feel around technology now.

This essay traces how color in technology shifted from function to identity, from authority to atmosphere. What began as a visual language for safety and system state evolved into personal expression, then disappeared under professional minimalism and optimization. Today, color is re-emerging as presence. Through objects, interfaces, and spaces, technology is learning how to be seen again, signaling a quieter, more human relationship between design, vision, and experience.

Every January, CES shows us where technology is headed: innovators, media, and decision-makers sharing what they've been building and what they think we'll want next. I looked through 400+ products and organized them across eight perceptual systems: sight, sound, touch, taste, scent, space, time, and system. What stood out was a pattern: these devices aren't just responding to how we live, they're learning how we sense. That shift feels worth noticing.

“Wait… this actually works.” Cécred. K18. I know you've watched those kind of videos. And I don’t think that reaction is random. For years, Black hair care leaned on oils and promises. “Skinification” changes that. It means treating the scalp like skin using proven actives, understanding biology, and repairing hair at a molecular level. When products are built this way, results should be guaranteed. This shift toward science-driven formulas truly excites me. Let's talk about all the innovation.

A couple years ago, my skin was going through it; severe acne, hyperpigmentation. I spent months following estheticians online, doing facials, learning what to use for what, trying to decode my own skin. I spent a lot on Dermalogica & some other derm-based $$$ products. My skin cleared. When my routine became maintenance, not prescriptive, I discovered K-beauty. Great ingredients, simple formulations, feels good touch and put on the skin. Quality and cost found equilibrium. (Image from Dermalogica)

Beauty was never meant to be discovered through a screen alone. It’s tactile. When beauty education majorly moved online, touch disappeared and was replaced by comparison and fatigue. Brands are rebuilding experience through stores and events, while creators gain access through PR and trips. The luxury isn’t the product anymore, it’s being chosen to experience the creation story.

The global perfume market is undergoing a technological revolution. IBM's Philyra has analyzed over two million fragrance formulas. Tom Ford’s 2025 Fragrance of the Year was AI-assisted. From Google → Osmo's neural networks mapping molecular structure to scent, to EEG headsets predicting fragrance preferences, to deep learning models optimizing how perfumes evolve through space and time. This piece explores how advanced technologies are reshaping perfumery while preserving its artistry.

Long before formal math, Tapputi of Mesopotamia was already experimenting with scent. Around 1200 BCE, she distilled flowers, adjusted ingredients, and tested how perfumes evolved on skin and made people feel over time. What she understood intuitively is what we now call the three acts of perfume: the first impression, the heart you live in, and the memory that lingers. We still experiment the same way today, through layering and building scent wardrobes for different moods and moments. Perfumery was one of our earliest systems: input ingredients, test combinations, optimize for feeling.

Pistachio perfumes were everywhere in 2025. But the sweet, dessert-style scent trend is starting to change. Perfumers are looking to experiment more with fresher, more savory smells. It feels a lot like what’s happening in food right now. There’s also an interesting angle on the reduction in appetite and turning to food-smelling perfumes. This piece looks at how food trends turn into fragrance trends, and what that means for what we’ll be smelling in 2026.

Dining in 2026 is all about the experience. I gathered data from top industry reports (OpenTable, EHL, AF&CO. + Carbonate, dsm-firmenich, and more) to break down what's actually happening. Experiential dining is up 46%. People are paying for the story, the interaction, the memory. Flights of everything, one-hit-wonder restaurants, prix-fixe menus; people want to sample & explore. And discovery is shifting: Reddit is now the #2 site by search traffic, & 44% of people plan to use AI for restaurant discovery. Here's everything you need to know about where dining is headed next year.

People are choosing trips based on how they want to feel, and that’s really what the experience economy 2.0 looks like. In this guide, I pulled insights from the biggest travel and hospitality reports for 2026 and broke down everything from high-energy trips like Rio Carnival, World Cup, and Detty December in Lagos to emerging spots like the Red Sea, Phu Quoc, and the Faroe Islands. You’ll find ideas for solo travel, beaches and wellness, food-focused trips, rare events like the 2026 solar eclipse, and more. If you’re planning travel next year, start here.