What’s Happening: As booze breaks become evergreen, the proliferation of alcohol-free wines, beers, spirits, and mocktails continues to gain momentum. In response to a new generation’s flexible drinking habits, boozeless bars are also cropping up, serving mixed drinks sans the hangover. The modern-day temperance movement has even reached the wine mecca of France.

The Download: Millennials are well-versed in the dichotomy of the New Year’s Eve rager and Dry January, but increasingly, the non-sober crowd is experimenting with periods of abstinence throughout the year. Mocktails, elixirs, and other non-alcoholic libations have been part of the movement to drink less, or at least drink mindfully for some time now—back in 2020, we charted the rise of such DTC darlings as Kin Euphorics, Artet, and Mad Tasty.

“Millennials have shown more interest in partaking in wellness-oriented activities rather than beer-pong basement competitions,” we said at the time. “This generation is more concerned with health than our forefathers were; going sober is no longer related to being a recovering alcoholic—it’s about living better.”

These days, the booze-free bar and retail scene is largely driven by people with more flexible attitudes driven by mindfulness about their drinking habits rather than an all-or-nothing idea about alcohol. New York City is a hotbed for the movement. Boisson, which sells alcohol-free wines, spirits, aperitifs, and alternative spirits (pictured above) has locations in six of the city’s well-heeled neighborhoods and has been cropping up in Los Angeles. At Sèchey, which recently expanded to New York City from Charleston with a booze-free shop and speakeasy, founder Emily Heintz told the Financial Times that “around 80 percent of the clientele ... don’t consider themselves sober.”

Everyone knows Americans love a trend, but according to the Guardian, France is one of the “fastest-growing no-alcohol markets,” largely thanks to increasing interest from Gen Z. Augustin Laborde, the owner of France’s first alcohol-free wine cellar Le Paon qui Boit (pictured), sources over 400 kinds of beverages to appeal to his growing customer base. Like Heintz, Laborde estimates that 80 percent of his patrons still drink alcohol, “but they’re interested in alternating with alcohol-free [drinks].”

The alcohol-free movement has even penetrated the fortified world of fine dining. Back in the states, Curious Elixirs’ line of zero-abv cocktails has graced the venerated menus of Cote, Daniel, and French Laundry. Curious Elixirs even operates a Brooklyn speakeasy, Club Curious. Meanwhile, non-alcoholic craft beers have become a fixture at taprooms like Brooklyn Brewery, Talea Beer Co., Gold Star, and Athletic Brewing, which operates the nation’s only boozeless taproom.

In Their Own Words: “Before, people didn’t want to openly say they didn’t drink, now they’re going into shops to ask for alcohol-free products,” Sober Spirits founder Calixte Payan told the Guardian. “France is recognized worldwide for its alcohol—fine wines and champagnes—and it could also become recognized for its alcohol-free drinks. There is still work to be done, but people like us are trying to give consumers the best experience possible.”

Surface Says: A booze-less speakeasy might make a flapper clutch her pearls, but we can’t get over the irony of needing to “know a place” for decent mocktails.

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When Charlie Jarvis and Max Kendrick launched Fairchain, an online art and design registry backed by blockchain technology, they sought to create a digital-first standard for authentication and artist compensation through the use of smart contracts. With its new Gallery Advisory Council, the platform has aligned itself with 11 visionary gallerists and professional organizations who have decades of experience putting artists first.

Together, the New Art Dealers Alliance, James Cohan, Magenta Plains, David Nolan Gallery, 56 HENRY, Praise Shadows Art Gallery, regular normal, Sargent’s Daughters, Sebastian Gladstone, Rachel Uffner Gallery, and Journal Gallery will serve as a steering committee for Fairchain’s strategic vision, as well as an oversight body to keep the platform accountable to the communities it serves. “Fairchain offers a common-sense way for artists, galleries, and patrons to develop and protect an artist’s market,” says gallerist and council member Sebastian Gladstone. “These relationships are partnerships, and Fairchain gets everyone on the same page.”

Head to Fairchain to read more about how the platform is charting a new path forward in conscious art collection.

Perched along Paris’s picturesque rue de Richelieu is the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, one of the world’s most visually arresting libraries and a masterpiece of Beaux-Arts architecture. Adorned with slender steel columns and decorative arches, the library’s soaring skylit reading rooms have for decades captivated bookish Parisians. But the landmark had become obsolete after its major collections were relocated to the library’s François-Mitterrand site amid piecemeal renovations. An extensive overhaul by French practice Bruno Gaudin Architectes, however, is bringing the historic library firmly into today—and peeling the curtain back on some of the structure’s hidden chambers that were previously unseen by the public.

The renovation, which spanned 15 years, aims to make the building feel more connected while paying homage to its layered history. Gaudin mostly accomplished that by reconfiguring circulation—creating a new entrance and landscaped courtyard along the rue Vivienne, replacing the main staircase with a swooping aluminum substitute, and linking disparate wings with a glass corridor. The centerpiece is the ornate reading room, lovingly nicknamed Oval Paradise, which was updated with modern shelving and mirrored lighting fixtures that reflect the surrounding four-story stacks housing 200,000 volumes.

The decorated “House” actress, who discovered watercolors during the pandemic, throws it back to the authentic and spontaneous images found in old family scrapbooks—a compelling rebuff to the overly doctored images of today.

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

Bio: Lisa Edelstein, 56, Los Angeles.

Title of work: Gun (2022).

Where to see it: SFA Advisory, New York, until Jan. 25.

What was on your mind at the time: Making myself a coloring book out of old family photos that told a more honest story than the posed, photoshopped memories we create today.

How it reflects your practice as a whole: I love telling stories—it’s how I’ve made a living all my adult life. So, for me, painting has become an extension of that. I look for images that tell a story beyond what the subjects necessarily intended to tell. Honest moments before the pose or those completely unaware of the camera. What took me by surprise is the unexpectedly intimate relationship I feel when I paint a moment of a person’s life that they never knew would be studied in the obsessive way I do.

Interior designer and tile expert Alison Rose will finally launch her own eponymous collections this year. But first, there’s some unfinished business with longtime partner Artistic Tile. Euclid, their initial collab, invented an alphabet of waterjet set units with Bauhaus-inspired patterns which could be assembled any way you choose. Next came geometric-minded Zephyr, a dimensional tile boasting concave marble slopes. With the newly launched Sfera, Rose comes full circle. A kind of infinite mosaic, Sfera layers spheres atop and around each other—think of cells dividing, champagne fizzing in a flute, or even a chic take on a ball pit.

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Innocad was founded in 1999 by Martin Lesjak and Peter Schwaiger in Graz, Austria. Since then, the team has completed numerous projects of various sizes and scope in the different fields of architecture and interior design such as residential, office, hospitality, healthcare, education, and retail. Renowned for their “out of the box” thinking, the firm’s pragmatic and unconventional approach seeks to create solutions with purpose.

Surface Says: A bold, forward-thinking firm with projects ranging from ornate exhibitions to light-filled chapels, Innocad brings a fresh perspective to problem-solving through design.

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