What’s Happening: The early 20th-century illustrator, the subject of a current show at the New York Historical Society, mastered a commercially lucrative style that exposed millions of Americans to a steadfast queer message.

The Download: J.C. Leyendecker illustrated countless magazine covers and ads throughout the early 20th century, but one in particular brilliantly showcases the subversion the queer German-born painter often hid beneath the surface. The crisp canvas depicts a robe-clad male model examining a bar of Ivory soap before a bath. Look closer and one shadowy detail becomes hard to unsee: it suggests an erection. A covert sexual gesture may seem unlikely to clear Madison Avenue, but for Leyendecker, they were standard fare. He slyly brought ads suffused with homoeroticism to the masses during his zenith in the Roaring Twenties; they now star in a current show at the New York Historical Society.

Leyendecker, who studied in Paris and trained in Chicago before settling in New York in 1902, is most remembered for depicting the “Arrow Collar Man.” An early 20th-century sex symbol who hawked crisp collars and cuffs, the suave hunk’s all-American allure proved potent, shaping the era’s Gatsby-esque aesthetics and spawning loads of fan mail. (Daisy Buchanan even name-drops him in The Great Gatsby.) In reality, the figure was modeled after Charles A. Beach, a model and Leyendecker’s life partner. They delighted in depicting men whose breezy, detached demeanors don’t tell the full story, leaving one’s mind to wander.

Millions of Americans were exposed to Leyendecker’s visuals—he was behind 322 covers for the Saturday Evening Post, one shy of protégé Norman Rockwell—perhaps an indication that homophobia wasn’t nearly as aggressive in the Jazz Age, and LGBT individuals had space to thrive. Still, his commercially successful style fell flat in the ‘30s, when the unsparing realities of the Great Depression shifted the national mood away from Art Deco stylings and flapper dresses to cautious conservatism. But it’s difficult to imagine Abercrombie & Fitch catalogs or Calvin Klein underwear ads existing without his influence.

In Their Own Words: “There are different definitions of masculinity and male behavior, and it’s mutable, it’s not fixed,” Donald Albrecht, who guest-curated the New York Historical Society show, tells The Guardian. “With Leyendecker, you’re never going to get what Harry Styles does. It’s never that overt. Instead, it’s nuanced and subtle.”

Surface Says: Sex sells, but does repressed desire sell more?

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Reach the design world every morning. Find out more about advertising in the Design Dispatch.

Jaipur is often lovingly referred to as the Pink City due to the pink and terra cotta hues of its distinctive ancestral architecture. The Rajasthan capital’s vernacular of recurring stairs and arches has long captivated Asha and Arshana Chaudhary, whose father established Jaipur Rugs there in 1978. That’s precisely what the duo, who now helms the business from Atlanta, sought to channel when they commissioned local interiors studio Roar to envision their latest showroom, a cavernous 8,400-square-foot ode to their hometown in Dubai’s bustling Alserkal district.

Visitors enter a vast open space clad in sleek warm-gray micro-cement combined with hints of rose and blush tones, where floor-to-ceiling rug displays evoking Jaipur’s celebrated stepwells immediately set the tone. Embedded within are niches entirely upholstered with carpets, with each alcove echoing the hues on the adjacent stairs to form a mesmeric color gradient that recasts rugs as fine art. Case in point: two immersive Sapphire and Emerald rooms, fully blanketed in luminous hand-woven rugs from Jaipur’s acclaimed Manchaha collections.

When: Until July 23

Where: Barcelona Pavilion, Spain

What: Drawing attention to the major environmental and human toll of global capital, Mark Cottle fashions two large carpets made from networks of nearly 10,000 single-use plastic bags that blanket Mies van der Rohe’s pavilion and signify the residue of consumed goods. “I’ve wanted to bring the discussion on the steep human price capital exacts,” Cottle says, “especially for the most vulnerable populations and at enormous expense to the environment.”

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

Man Behind Viral Dress That “Broke the Internet” Accused of Trying to Kill Wife [Metro]

How I Survived a Wedding in a Jungle That Tried to Eat Me Alive [Outside]

An Otter in Santa Cruz Is Hassling Surfers—and Stealing Their Boards [NPR]

Nevada License Plate That’s Short for “Go Back to California” Is Revoked by DMV [AP]

Canadian Farmer’s Thumbs-Up Emoji Leads to $62,000 Fine for Undelivered Flax [Reuters]

“Like a Very Pungent Office Fridge”: Rare Corpse Flower Blooms in San Francisco [The Guardian]

Magniberg’s bedwear breaks the mold—the Swedish favorite encourages mixing and matching colors and textures to create sheet sets tailored to each customer, and doesn’t shy away from incorporating cultural references in a product category that often plays it safe. Lover, a line of beach towels named after Dee D. Jackson’s classic 1978 song Automatic Lover, is no different. Each organic cotton towel bears an embossed mantra spanning the surface in a jacquard pattern—See Me, Feel Me, Hear Me, Love Me, Touch Me—and comes in four vivacious colors inspired by the artwork of Jeff Koons. 40€–200€ ($44–$222)

Roughly a decade after ground broke at Hudson Yards, Related’s promise of “the new Park Avenue”—a tony destination on Manhattan’s Far West Side—hasn’t quite panned out. The pandemic halted foot traffic and spooked major tenants, its nondescript towers irked critics, a spate of suicides closed The Vessel, and controversy brewed around how the operation was financed. The barrage of bad press has yielded meager sales. At 35 Hudson Yards, only 50 percent of the units have been sold a whole four years after sales launched. Related is slashing prices and offering incentives, but some active listings are struggling to sell at an even 50 percent discount.

Flavor Paper is a Brooklyn-based wallpaper company that specializes in hand-screened and digitally printed designs. Flavor Paper is eco-friendly, using water-based inks and PVC-free materials when possible. All products are print-to-order for easy customization. Residential, commercial, and specialty products are available.

Surface Says: This studio’s colorful creations are a feast for the eyes, and sometimes even the nose: Their range of clever and often humorous designs includes Pop Art–inspired scratch-and-sniff options.

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