What’s Happening: The color specialists have selected Viva Magenta 18-1750, a red-blue rooted in ancient pigments and aimed at virtual futures.

The Download: In 1999, Pantone greeted the 21st century by inaugurating its Color of the Year program, a prognostication of which tone will best characterize the next 365 days of interior, graphic, and product design. It picked Cerulean Blue 15-4020. And perhaps that was apt: if the vibe of any this century could possibly be close to “blue skies ahead,” it could only have been 2000.

For 2023, Pantone has selected Viva Magenta 18-1750. Perhaps it will soon tint your walls, magazine covers, and furnishings; it can right this moment rope around your neck in a Pantone Long Keychain. It’s easy to shade all this merchandise, to wonder if there are hues of colonialism in one American company dictating a color-monoculture. It’s understandable to blanche at the company’s recommendation to live with the color as “an NFT projection in a white entryway.” Some might simply empathize with Blanche Devereaux, the Golden Girl who famously felt for the color a deep, existential hate.

On the other hand, maybe Pantone is right and magenta has some currency. There’s a retro-future vibe: the Aztecs used cochineal bugs to create its ancestral red dye, which became a major trade good and fed empires; now, scientists are trying to harvest the acid in a lab. Magenta is a building block of color printing and a prominent tone on TikTok’s UX. Pantone claims its pick nods to a growing awareness of the natural world and dimming need for gender markers—here’s hoping.

“It does not boldly dominate but instead takes a ‘fist in a velvet glove’ approach,” the press release says, and, well, fisting and velvet are as popular as ever. And magenta surely fits into the ongoing revival of late ‘90s, early ‘00s aesthetics—calling back to a time before we knew how cloudy the skies of this century might be, and a moment when Pantone was virtually alone in what’s now a crowded field of chromatic fortune-telling. (For what it’s worth, Benjamin Moore says 2023 belongs to the decidedly juicier Raspberry Blush 2008-30, while Sherwin-Williams went for the earthy, coppery neutral Redend Point.)

In Their Own Words: “Viva Magenta is brave and fearless, a pulsating color whose exuberance promotes a joyous and optimistic celebration, writing a new narrative,” Pantone said when announcing the color’s selection.

Surface Says: Pantone also spent $1 million hyping up the “Magentaverse” and touting corporate partnerships at Art Basel—which looks like business as usual.

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Last week, fashion’s favorite Italian cashmere label emerged from cocooning season with a strong showing at Art Basel Miami Beach. There, Loro Piana and jewelry designer Charlotte Chesnais debuted sculptural candle holders in silver, bronze, and gold. Intentional or not, their curvature—which is a signature motif in Chesnais’ jewelry—calls to mind the rhythmic patterns of knitted textiles. Following their Art Basel launch, each of the three candle holders became available exclusively at Loro Piana’s Miami Store, and will soon be available online.

Widely regarded as a pioneer of North American lighting design and a leading figure in Brooklyn’s burgeoning independent design sphere, David Weeks established his studio in 1996 as an umbrella for his interests ranging from metal fabrication to contemporary toy culture. Though his product line has since evolved to encompass upholstered seating and sculptural objects, lighting remains at the core, with his recognizable, genre-defining fixtures marrying technical precision with an artist’s sensibility.

Within a wider body of work wrestling with his Brazilian identity, the painter illustrates a search for spirituality on the precipice of traversing time and space, likening humanity to a windswept leaf during a melancholy fall.

Here, we ask an artist to frame the essential details behind one of their latest works.

Bio: Antonio Obá, 39, Brasília.

Title of work: Orev – pouso (Orev – landing), 2022.

Where to see it: Mendes Wood DM, New York, until Jan. 21.

Three words to describe it: Memory, spirituality, solitude.

What was on your mind at the time: In general, the initial feeling that motivates me to create a work brings forward other sensations and thoughts during the production process. That’s because I allow myself to indulge in the feelings that emerge during the elaboration of a painting—both in an emotional and physical sense. Other times, the painting reveals its true content after I’m finished with it, which leaves me a little distant from its presence. It wasn’t any different with this one. I was initially thinking about concepts related to spirituality that are part of our earthly and material existence.

Fashion has always been about sex. From codpieces to push-up bras, high heels to hanky codes, what you wear often telegraphs what you want to do when it all comes off. These days, it can even get you off. Jewelry and accessory makers are hard at work blurring the lines between fashion, fetish object, and functioning sex toys—and options are flooding the market. In large part, this is thanks to Ti Chang.

Classically trained and educated in industrial design at the Royal College of Art in London and the Georgia Institute of Technology, Ti brought to market the world’s first crowdfunded sex toy. 2014’s Vesper wasn’t just a vibrator, though it certainly did that job; with its coy chain and delicate sheath of silver or rose gold, it was a necklace chic enough to wear anywhere. “Jewelry enables the wearer to feel beautiful, respected, and honored, a feeling rarely experienced in pleasure products,” she says. “The functionality of a vibrator had to be balanced with the wearability of a necklace pendant. I didn’t want to compromise.”

In 1932, when vehicle suspension engineer George Carwardine invented a spring, crank and lever mechanism that could be positioned with the lightest of touch yet would maintain its position once released, a blueprint for the first Anglepoise task lamp was born. The Anglepoise lamp has subsequently achieved iconic status and its engaging, anthropomorphic form is recognized and admired around the world.

Surface Says: The eminently recognizable Anglepoise lamp transcends trends for a timeless take on “industrial cool”—and stays true to its heritage.

Muji’s latest photography book contains 504 pages of people cleaning things.

Archaeologists unearth a 5,000-year-old home in China’s Yangshao Village.

The Victorian-era home in The Goonies is being restored to its former glory.

Duolingo puts the language-learning app’s wonkiest mistranslations on display.