What’s Happening: Pet-centric design is getting conspicuously fancier. From staging home renovations and decor overhauls that prioritize Fido’s needs and perfumed pooch products from a 12th-century fragrance house to paws-itively extravagant fine dining, the power of the dog is irrefutable.

The Download: In a recent Instagram post, splurgy British paint brand Farrow & Ball shared an aspirational shower photo; it featured Shaker-style cabinets done up in the brand’s self-described “moody” mustard-yellow paint, complementary toile wallcoverings from 19th-century wallpaper brand Morris & Co., hefty brass cabinet pulls, and magnificent stone flooring that wouldn’t look out of place in a 16th-century abbey. The photo—which amassed more than 30,000 likes, well over triple the usual for the brand—doesn’t show a human’s status-shower, but a Weimaraner’s.

The shower is the centerpiece of a utility room designed by Stephanie Sabbe of Nashville-based firm Sabbe Interior Design for House Beautiful’s 2021 showhouse. “This is actually the laundry room/potting room/craft room and it also just happens to include a dog washing station,” Sabbe tells Surface. “It’s hands down the hardest-working room in this house, and whoever lives here is going to be in here a lot. People should ask themselves, ‘why wouldn’t you use all the pretty things in this space?’”

Though the room in question is more of an all-purpose chore den than a dedicated doggie spa, Sabbe’s statement is a reflection of a growing market segment that wants to bring the indulgent touches from their own self-care routines to their pets. At Martha O’Hara Interiors, senior designer Gabriela Laboy made sure to include a custom cabinet in the kitchen plans with the express purpose of tucking food and water bowls out of sight. For another home, the firm added a pet shower station to the mudroom.

With high-end pet grooming products, brands like Santa Maria Novella, an Italian fragrance house that predates the Renaissance, are taking the urge to splurge on pets to the bank. The brand offers a $20 white musk pet deodorant, along with a $40 rose and orange blossom dry shampoo. The likes of Santa Maria Nolla and Aesop, which offers a $40 pet shampoo redolent of lemon rind and tea tree leaf, have put pet products in their rotations for some time now.

Jane Wagman, a co-founder of upstart pet grooming line Pride and Groom, is pushing for the category to mirror humans’ highly customized beauty rituals: “Different dogs have different needs,” Wagman told Town and Country, “from whether they have fur or hair to whether they have an undercoat to whether they have dandruff or dry patches.” The brand offers various grooming products tailored (or, tail-ored) to dogs’ coats and skin types.

Earlier this year, Peter Scott, chief executive of the American Pet Products Association, told the Wall Street Journal that Americans spent more than $100 million on pet toys in 2022—artisanal grooming products and dog-centric home renovations notwithstanding. According to Scott, 70 percent of U.S. households own a pet. Meanwhile, newly released data from the National Center for Health Statistics suggests “families are smaller and people are waiting longer to have children than in years past.”

According to survey findings from the American Pet Product Association, some of the cost savings from delaying—or opting out of—parenthood are instead being showered onto people’s furbabies. “It’s the humanization of pets,” Scott says. “We’re seeing more young people who may not be ready for a kid, but they are ready to come home after work and take care of a dog or a cat.” And on special occasions when a quiet night at home won’t do—be it a pet’s birthday, adoption anniversary, or even a dog wedding—pet parents can now order “pupcakes,” or a $75 chef-prepared tasting menu from paw-tisseries like Dogue for their furry friends.

In Their Own Words: While her internet-famous dog shower was commissioned for a showhouse, Sabbe has recently noticed an upward trend in homeowners asking her for pet-related design features: “In the past year, I’ve designed a kitty litter box cabinet, built-in dog crates, and multiple dog showers,” she tells Surface. “A client with pets is having slipcovers made out of the same material we used to upholster all of their furniture; they want it covered but they do not want to sacrifice the pattern.”

Surface Says: This guy sure could have used a puppy shower:

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In her role as Glossier’s creative lead of retail experiences, Madelynn Ringo festooned the beauty brand’s stores in vibrant tones and whimsical accents. Known for its viral pastel-hued cookware, Our Place’s poppy aesthetic is a holistic match for the Instagram era. So bringing that winning formula to the retailer’s new West Hollywood storefront was a marriage made in heaven for the Brooklyn architect.

She fashioned a space with color-blocked homey vignettes, from sculptural kitchen countertops to a psychedelic mirrored room with tubular purple chairs. Cleverly displayed across the swooping installations are cheekily named products such as the Perfect Pot and the “8-in-1” Always Pan. Though it started out as a viral DTC brand, Our Place’s second brick-and-mortar makes for a good trip.

It’s fair to say Miami has earned its reputation for doing the most: from Art Basel Miami Beach’s high-octane nightlife to Art Deco roots that influence the city’s decadent architecture. Gilberto Cioni, a Brazilian-born interior designer who has cultivated a reputation for executing in Miami’s well-appointed residential towers, kept the latter in mind when a young couple enlisted him to breathe new life into a sumptuous high-rise apartment overlooking the ocean. There, Cioni struck a tasteful balance between the Magic City’s vernacular and Modernist influences from his home country, with streamlined furnishings and warm Ornare millwork.

This week, the Whitney Museum hosted its fundraising event Art Party, which returned with a stellar zodiac theme. Hosted by the Whitney Contemporaries, the annual event provides crucial support to the institution’s Independent Study Program. Throughout the star-studded evening, guests sipped on specialty “Margaritas in Retrograde” by Casa Dragones, dined on hors d’oeuvres by Olivier Cheng, and danced to DJ sets by Questlove and The Muses. True to the zodiac theme, astrologer Francesca Villein gave revelers individual readings while artist Devin Kenny offered limited-edition temporary tattoos.

When was it? Jan. 31

Where was it? The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Who was there? Karen Elson, Jennifer Fisher, Miles Greenberg, Genesis Tramaine, Chloe Wise, Kimberly Drew, Liv Schreiber, and more.

Where: Monique Meloche Gallery, Chicago

When: Feb. 4–March 18

What: Lavar Munroe incorporates a range of materials—from acrylic to beads, jewelry, ceramic tiles, glass, textiles, chicken hides, and feathers—into his practice, described by the gallery as something of a “medium between painting and relief sculpture.” In “Sometime Come to Someplace,” the Bahamian-American artist takes inspiration from recent travels to Zimbabwe to explore the notion of home and the cultural similarities between the Caribbean and southern Africa. The artist employs sherbet-like hues to articulate the magic of starlit nights, coming together over a fire, vast naturescapes, and finding a home away from home.

Our weekly roundup of the internet’s most preposterous headlines, from the outrageous to the outright bizarre.

Your Therapist Shouldn’t Be on TikTok [The New Statesman]

Missing Dallas Zoo Monkeys Found Inside Closet at Texas Home, Police Say [Washington Post]

Wetsuit Shaming in San Francisco Divides Bay Area Swimmers [WSJ]

Blood-Flavored Ice Helps Zoo Animals Beat Rio’s Heat [AP]

A “De-Extinction” Company Wants to Bring Back the Dodo [Scientific American]

Data Scientist Suggests Many Bigfoot Sightings May Be Bear Sightings [Phys.org]

Six Doctors Swallowed Lego Heads for Science. Here’s What Came Out [NPR]

Commuting from Long Island to New York City isn’t exactly the most pleasant experience. Arriving to the perennially gloomy and overcrowded Penn Station—Manhattan’s only Long Island Rail Road (LIRR) terminus—on the city’s west side, thousands of LIRR straphangers traveling to the east side are left with a hectic subway transfer that adds around 20 minutes each way to the commute.

Nearly six decades after the initial proposals, East Side Access is complete. Last week, the first train pulled into the gleaming new terminal, christened “Grand Central Madison” after the Art Deco landmark it sits beneath and the nearby avenue. Clocking in at eight tracks across 700,000 square feet, the terminal’s design was first envisioned two decades ago by the project’s chief architect, Peter Hopkinson, who replicated Grand Central’s sweeping curved archways. Enlivening the glossy white stone walls are site-specific artworks by Yayoi Kusama and Kiki Smith paying homage to New York City.

A third-generation family-owned Swedish design company and the creator of woven-vinyl flooring, Bolon offers products that are trendsetting, with a distinct focus on innovation, quality, and sustainability. The designs deliver the beauty of a woven textile with the benefits of resilient flooring—long life cycles and ease in maintenance.

Surface Says: Marie and Annica Eklund have captured the design world’s attention with their texturally rich, durable flooring. With fans including fashion giant Giorgio Armani to design mind Tom Dixon, the sisters have expanded the reach of their late grandfather’s local weaving mill across many design disciplines.

The pristine marble floor at the World Trade Center Oculus is crumbling.

Nike’s latest book will uplift the next generation of creatives and athletes.

New Mexico considers making roasted green chiles its official state aroma.

Archaeologists unearthed a 1.2-million-year-old “workshop” in Ethiopia.