What’s Happening: For some women athletes, eschewing contracts with household-name sports brands in favor of more niche names creates opportunities to use their voices and benefit from more individualized resources and protections.

The Download: Free People’s activewear spinoff FP Movement was once more synonymous with “brunching” than boundary-pushing athletic endeavors. Then tennis star Sloane Stephens signed with the brand instead of renewing her Nike contract. Stephens, who won the 2017 U.S. Open, is just the latest world-class athlete to leave behind what seemed like a dream deal with one of activewear’s biggest names. But avid sports fans may know that Nike is grappling with a less-than-stellar track record of supporting women athletes on its roster, among other issues.

In 2019, American sprinter Allyson Felix, one of history’s most decorated track and field stars, went public with her account of Nike pressuring her to reattain record-setting form as soon as possible following an emergency C-section the year prior. While renegotiating her contract, Nike was only willing to pay Felix 30 percent of her rate before the pregnancy. “I asked Nike to contractually guarantee that I wouldn’t be punished if I didn’t perform at my best in the months surrounding childbirth,” she wrote. “I wanted to set a new standard. If I, one of Nike’s most widely marketed athletes, couldn’t secure these protections, who could?” Nike declined. After a public outcry, the brand updated its maternity leave policy in August 2019. By then, Felix had inked a deal with Gap-owned Athleta, becoming its first sponsored athlete.

Two years later, gymnastics powerhouse Simone Biles followed suit. “It wasn’t just about my achievements,” Biles told the Wall Street Journal about Athleta, her new sponsor. “It’s what I stood for, and how they were going to help me use my voice.” Biles soon created her own workout and athleisure lines for Athleta, which offered her financial support for a gymnastics tour following the Tokyo 2020 Summer Olympics. The arrangement also freed her from reliance on USA Gymnastics, the sport’s disgraced former governing body.

Creative input, resources, and enthusiasm to support athletes as people seems to underscore the shift toward brands with slightly less name recognition, but which can offer more individualized attention. This is a key part of the economics of womens’ sports. Both Business of Fashion and the New York Times have noted that, compared to men, women athletes often have more engaged followings online and off. Smaller brands can be more amenable to supporting athletes’ chosen causes and initiatives, like Athleta and Felix’s grant program to cover childcare costs for women athletes who are also mothers and caregivers.

It behooves brands to show up and shell out for their ambassadors. Consider the monetary incentives: in 2021, Lululemon reported an eye-watering sales surge of 63 percent in the U.S. and 49 percent internationally. They weren’t alone. That year, the global market for athleisure was valued at nearly $307 billion with expected compound annual growth of 8.9 percent. This momentum was palpable in real time, with brands beyond those who cater to athletes and sports fans day-to-day looking for opportunities to align themselves with the world of sports.

Perhaps no one embodies this better than Naomi Osaka. In 2020, the young tennis great, a Nike-sponsored athlete, flew ahead of the curve by teaming up with Adeam founder and creative director Hanako Maeda leading up to the Tokyo 2020 Summer Olympics. Boundary-breaking partnerships with Levi’s and Louis Vuitton followed. While a Louis Vuitton ambassador, she went on to wear a couture ensemble by the fashion house as she co-chaired the 2021 Met Gala, a position with invaluable cultural cachet. Osaka’s is an interesting case study in the trajectory of women athletes as mega-influencers, illustrating the power of the deeply passionate fanbases behind them.

In Their Own Words: In 2021, Olympic steeplechaser Colleen Quigley switched sponsorship from Nike to Lululemon, whose chief brand officer Nikki Neuburger told the New York Times that sponsorship deals are changing to reflect the times. “There’s still so much tremendous recognition that comes with winning and performing at an elite level. What’s changed over time is in and of itself, that’s not what’s inspiring people—they want to know the highs and lows of the journey to get there, they want to know what you’re doing outside of the track and not just on race day.”

Surface Says: Maybe the multibillion-dollar question brands should be asking is not what their ambassadors can do for them, but what they can do for their ambassadors.

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From the whitewashed villages of the Algarve to creative energy–filled Lisbon to the increasingly stylish beach town of Melides, Portugal’s hotel scene continues to evolve in spectacular ways. This week, we’re surveying the landscape.

On the outskirts of Melides, 20 minutes down a choppy dirt road, past oak groves and rural quintas, one of the most intriguing new projects in all of Portugal recently soft launched. After 15 years of meditating on the idea, owners Sofia and Miguel Charters found the right opportunity. They knew exactly who to call to bring their vision to life: Portuguese architect Manuel Aires Mateus, a longtime collaborator and friend known for minimalist style, authentic materials, and interest in voids.

Crafted with concrete, natural stone, and European oak, the four brutalist casas at Pateos pose against the landscape like sculptures, with views spanning the bucolic countryside to the north and the Atlantic Ocean to the west. Filling out the scene is an angular infinity-edge pool fringed by olive and strawberry trees used to make aguardente, a brandy-like spirit distilled from wine.

In typical fashion, Mateus blurs the line between the interiors and nature. The living room areas have retractable floor-to-ceiling glass walls that open to private patios and allow the temperate breeze in. Courtyard moments abound with the architecture, framing the sky like a James Turrell installation.

Inside the one- to three-bedroom suites, tastefully spare interiors are serene but the details sing. Earthy tones and oak furniture add organic energy. British perfumer Lyn Harris designed an original fragrance that bottles the olfactory memory of the region, while local artist Olga Sanina produced original works composed of foliage collected around the property. In lieu of a restaurant, private chefs are available to book for meals, and each morning begins with a picnic basket delivery with fresh fruits, bread, cheeses, and coffee. In the works for 2023 and beyond: A wine-producing project that will transform the surrounding land into vineyards growing native grapes.

Effective schools offer students a diversity of perspectives. And if you’re Reggio School, recently completed in Encinar de los Reyes on the northern outskirts of Madrid in a fanciful building by Office of Political Innovation, students will also be exposed to a diversity of architectural styles. The six-story building is a mélange of cork walls, concrete arches, porthole windows, and zigzagging roofs that together rivals a child’s imagination in boldness and whimsy. Classrooms and other teaching spaces neighbor an atrium greenhouse and indoor gardens, which step up the sustainability factor alongside reclaimed water tanks and cork insulation.

Firm founder Andrés Jaque, who also serves as dean of Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, likens the building to an educational ecosystem that “avoids homogenization and unified standards,” with each level having a different feel and the age of pupils increasing as one moves up, he said in a statement. “It operates as an assemblage of different climates, ecosystems, architectural traditions, and regulations.”

When: Until Jan. 15

Where: MAXXI Museum, Rome

What: Using the writings of Aldo Rossi to explore virtual worlds and our movement between digital spaces, “Search History” features a doughnut-shaped pavilion made up of overlaid curtains depicting vibrant, multilayered images of a metaverse city whose doorways serve as portals. Space Popular founders Lara Lesmes and Fredrik Hellberg aim to show how the Italian architect’s ideas about how real-world cities—specifically theories from his book The Architecture of the City—can be applied to the metaverse. “What does it mean to click on a hyperlink?” Hellberg asks in a video. “Do we open a door or do we slide something up?”

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 and Artet.

“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.

M. Shively Art and Design crafts furniture, lighting, and sculptural objects for the home and hospitality settings that are distilled from childlike curiosity and expressed in exquisite forms.

Surface Says: Imaginative home furnishings and custom jobs are M. Shively’s specialties. One of its seminal designs, the Beam Table, illustrates its unconventional approach; it boasts a singular wooden plank encapsulated by lucite, giving the beam the appearance of being suspended in thin air.

A whimsical animated film celebrates Diptyque’s breezy Do Son perfume.

We certainly weren’t expecting this Saint Laurent x McDonald’s crossover.

A swarm of 300 rare Star Wars action figures is hitting the auction block.

Today’s cult of consumerism is giving rise to piles of poorly made products.