What’s Happening: Iris Van Herpen stole the runway with an otherworldly couture gown made of cocoa beans and inspired by Magnum’s vegan dessert.

The Download: “Always,” Iris Van Herpen told Surface during an interview once when asked if she’s experimenting with any new fabrics. “It’s a continuous process, and I don’t think I’ll ever stop.” The Dutch couturier has long captivated the fashion world and beyond with her otherworldly garments that employ forward-thinking technologies to capture a dazzling futurism. Her latest runway outing celebrates her studio’s 15-year anniversary through the lens of Ovid’s 8th-century masterpiece Metamorphoses.

Each dress skews sci-fi—a Van Herpen signature—but one copper-toned garment stands out from the rest. The billowing dress, worn by Cindy Bruna, is the result of an unlikely union between Van Herpen and Magnum ice cream. Fashioned entirely with sustainable materials that reference the Belgian chocolatier’s plant-based dessert, it’s the first haute couture vegan dress made using cocoa beans.

While most brand collaborations of this type can feel gimmicky and engineered for social media shareability, the gown’s pioneering use of green materials is noteworthy. Van Herpen’s fluid forms evoke the viscosity of melted chocolate. Plant-like body embellishments are draped and entwined with upcycled and pliseed organza, while other 3D elements were printed using innovative Selective Laser Sintering technology.

The dress arrives as an unexpected reprieve as the fashion industry navigates its fraught relationship with sustainability. Consumer appetites for ethical fashion are rising, especially as textile waste accumulates in landfills, harmful production processes become transparent, and truths about plastic-based vegan leather emerge.

Major brands like Stella McCartney and Allbirds have embraced plant-based leathers that are cruelty-free, low-impact, and made of natural sources such as pineapple leaves, mushrooms, and kombucha cultures. Much work remains, however—one of the industry’s leading sustainability rating systems was recently exposed as rating synthetic, petrochemical-based textiles known for their poor environmental impact more favorably than natural textiles.

It’s hard to discuss transformation and the future in 2022 without mentioning Web3 and the metaverse. Fashion brands have made stilted forays into the next frontier by dressing cartoonish avatars in awkward digital clothing, with mixed results. The metaverse was indeed on Van Herpen’s mind when devising her milestone runway show, and she had partnered with Microsoft to fuse the digital and physical realms using AR, but a last-minute Covid diagnosis prevented it from happening. Technical mishaps aside, Van Herpen remains bullish on blurring the lines between digital and physical, telling Grazia that she anticipates our eventual acceptance of a hyper-real future will create demand for stylish avatars. For now, her physical creations are doing the trick.

In Their Own Words: “The materials are very future-orientated, but with a natural twist,” Van Herpen tells British Vogue. “[The work] we’re doing with these materials is not exclusively for us; these materials are available for other brands too. A very important part of the solution is collaboration; we have to think more like a community.”

Surface Says: We’re all for sustainability, but we’ll be more impressed when the dress is actually edible.

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In 2021, chef Sean Brock tapped into his Appalachian roots with the debut of the rustic, art-filled Audrey in East Nashville’s McFerrin Park, complete with an on-site research and development lab and an ambitious ground-to-glass cocktail bar where local produce like pawpaw and Jimmy Red corn anchor three-ingredient drinks. Now the final piece of the multi-phase project has landed. Below, Brock previews the new experimental tasting-menu spot, June.

For the uninitiated, what are some of the differences between Lowcountry and Appalachian cuisine?

The South has so many micro-cuisines. Cultural influences and geography play an important role—in the low country, you see West African flavors with amazing products from the ocean. In Appalachia, you see a lot of preservation influenced by indigenous practices mixed with German. Picture a sauerkraut of sweet corn. That’s what I grew up eating.

What are some special design elements at June?

I have become obsessed with the work of George Nakashima. He looked at trees and furniture making the way we look at our food products and cooking.

How does the design approach differ from Audrey?

I wanted Audrey and June to feel totally different. Audrey is filled with nearly 70 pieces of folk art all over the place. June has around 10 pieces. It’s more Zen.

What are you currently working on in the lab?

We focus on extraction and concentration. Our goal is to take every seasonal ingredient that walks through the door and explore ways to unlock hidden flavors of sweet, sour, umami, salt, and acidity.

You’ve stated that Audrey and June are essentially your final projects. What are the chances you venture out again at some point and do something different?

Audrey and June are it for me. I want to grow old in these restaurants and spend as much time here as possible. I’m sure I’ll open more casual places throughout my life, but right now all I can think about is what these two restaurants will be like when I’m 70.

When: Until Sept. 2022

Where: Château La Coste, Aix-en-Provence, France

What: The British sculptor’s totemic towers of vibrant, hand-carved plaster and sand orbs pleasantly contrast the vineyard and arts destination’s recently completed Oscar Niemeyer Pavilion, a swooping structure that stands as the Brazilian architect’s final building. Each artwork’s silhouette recalls the female form and pregnant bodies—a poignant memorial to Morris’s stillborn child—and “are about holding onto something that’s false, and to express the hope and defiance of life,” Morris says.

As a global leader in the creation of infant care products, MAM and its employees bear a great responsibility. For their new product design offices, laboratory, and prototyping workshop in Austria, called the MAM Competence Center, the company worked with architecture firm Innocad to build a facility with a footprint inspired by cellular biology and interiors anchored in biophilic design.

“Implementing biophilic design strategies in the built environment, especially in workspaces, is ever more important as they ‘reduce stress, enhance creativity and clarity of thought, improve health and wellbeing, and expedite healing,’” says Innocad co-founder and design director Martin Lesjak, referencing “14 Patterns of Biophilic Design,” a study on the impact of the nature-inspired approach on wellbeing, commissioned and published by environmental consultant Terrapin Bright Green.

The study’s findings were just a starting point for the Innocad team, who thought about details as granular as whether the floor coverings could contribute to the overall calming effect of the workplace. The answer, as developed by Dr. Richard Taylor, chair of the physics department at University of Oregon in partnership with Mohawk Group, was a resounding yes. Then again, a go on the playground-style slide between the green atrium’s two levels may help also workers decompress.

The crypto market has seen better days. Bitcoin, the largest cryptocurrency, plunged below $18,000 in June—its lowest price since December 2020—but has shown meager signs of recovery as it recently plateaued at just under $20,000. The NFT market is also slowing down, with insiders describing it as “evidently dead” amid daily sales dipping to one-year lows. It’s a stunning reversal—NFTs and digital art were the topic du jour in 2021 as artists, influencers, and celebrities raced to cash in on the gold rush but soon fell victim to a ruthless bear market, waning investor sentiment, and hype that all but evaporated.

The slump doesn’t mean that NFTs have disappeared entirely. Sales may have reached an all-time low, but a global cadre of creators and collectors are working to create stable ecosystems to help their communities thrive. The market is booming in Africa, where $105.6 billion in crypto payments took place between July 2020 and June 2021.

That’s a 1,200 percent increase from the previous year—a remarkable feat given how initial skepticism caused governments to ban banks and financial institutions from using cryptocurrency in Algeria, Egypt, Morocco, and Tunisia. After initially taking a hesitant posture, Nigeria has eased its restrictions and now ranks in the world’s top ten countries for crypto use with Kenya and South Africa. China, meanwhile, is putting cryptocurrency under a magnifying glass.

Studio Plow is a San Francisco–based architecture and design studio known for an aesthetic that’s restrained, yet warm and soulful. Each project is seen as a new opportunity for discovery, resulting in completely bespoke design. Working in collaboration with clients, the studio crafts a narrative that uncovers the soul of each space, mapping its full potential.

Surface Says: Studio Plow excels at creating expressive interiors with a strong sense of place. The soul of each space shines through every commission and is contextualized by Plow’s dedication to creating interiors that perfectly balance contemporary design and warmth.

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