Los Angeles‑based contemporary womenswear brand Staud is best known for statement purses with bold silhouettes, patterns, and prints. From the spherical Moon Bag that went purse-platinum in 2019 to the beaded Tommy bags emblazoned with tinned sardines that went TikTok viral a few summers ago, Staud routinely delivers products with a bold—often joyful—vision. Their latest offering? A new homeware line full of organic shapes, hand-crafted textures, and vintage goods.

Courtesy of Staud.

Courtesy of Staud.

Launched in April, Staud Home combines ceramics, leather home goods, textile pieces, and vintage finds—sourced personally by founder Sarah Staudinger. At the center of the collection, Staudinger’s ceramics practice grounds the line-up in a richly textural and hand-formed materiality—from the handmade ceramic vase bookends to a speckled table lamp.

Courtesy of Staud.

Courtesy of Staud.

“Over the past 10 years, we’ve been building the world of Staud piece by piece, Staudinger explains. “Home felt like a natural next step, a way to bring that same sense of personality, individuality, and ease into the spaces we live in. This collection is especially personal to me because it was inspired in part by my own growing interest in ceramics and the kinds of objects that make a space feel unique and alive.”

Courtesy of Staud.

Courtesy of Staud.

Courtesy of Staud.

And the collection certainly feels alive. Staud Home allows human craft to shine—from the grooved ceramics to woven netting and more—creating a home that feels personal and singular. Plus, select products are one-of-a-kind, such as a ceramic sheep vases, glazed catchalls, trays, and even a ceramic tic-tac-toe set in algae green.

Courtesy of Staud.

Courtesy of Staud.

Extending its range past the wardrobe and into the house, Staud Home conjures up images of intimate dinner parties, candle-lit reading, and open windows in the warm Los-Angeles sun. And for Tommy bag-lovers, there are still a few beaded options (a bedazzled “Do Not Disturb” door sign and a beaded martini set are just two examples).

While a renovation usually begins as a purely professional exercise, this one carried a quieter personal resonance for Taylor Hahn. The Strada Vecchia residence was a Japanese-inspired home built for its Japanese owners, and Hahn, who is part Japanese herself, approached its renovation with a cultural fluency that most commissions never ask for. Alongside House of Rolison co-principal Amanda Leigh, she was tasked with carrying forward a home that already meant something, updating it without erasing the sensibility that shaped it.

On a hillside with views of Bel Air all the way to the Pacific Ocean, the home’s most meaningful design decision was not made inside. While the interiors received the expected treatment, House of Rolison’s real intervention was topographic, a network of walking trails linking the pool terrace to the guest quarters across the natural grade of the property. In most renovations, landscape is an afterthought scaled to a budget that survived the interior scope. Here, Leigh and Hahn treated the terrain as another room in the house, with its own program, sequence, and purpose.

The original home, a Japanese-inspired retreat with ocean-facing glass walls, featured architecture that doesn’t end at the threshold. The renovation needed to carry that same logic outside rathern than simply protecting what was already there. As a result, paths were created to encourage slowing down; they were designed to bend with the land instead of slicing through it, turning a walk to the guest house into a relaxing ritual.

Instead of treating health as an amenity to install, the principals let it govern the substance of the house. Bathrooms gained integrated benches, while a scattering of intimate nesting spaces offer pockets for retreat throughout the space. The team refused synthetic and off-gassing finishes in favor of materials that age honestly, with the belief that a surface should record its own weathering rather than resist it. They layered tumbled limestone, natural clay plaster, handcrafted marble, and hand-chiseled stone—all of which improve with contact and time, developing a soft patina.

The furnishing layer follows the same restraint. A furnishing layer drawn from Bocci, Larose Guyon, Lee Broom, and Olive Ateliers, Arhaus, Kalamazoo Gourmet Kitchens, and Zia Tile elaborates the palette without competing with it. The result is less a renovation than a continuation, a house updated for how the family lives now without losing what made it worth keeping.

Photography by Nils Timm.

Acoustic treatments can make or break a space. Wall tiles that don’t integrate with an interior can be visually jarring, while skipping them altogether can leave a room loud and uncomfortable. But what if an acoustic tile could improve a space while giving new life to a natural material? That’s the concept behind Spinneybeck’s Søuld Eelgrass line, which now includes the modular Søuld Fragments.

Photograph courtesy of Spinneybeck

Spinneybeck’s Søuld collection—a collaboration with Danish material manufacturer Søuld—is made with eelgrass, a carbon-storing marine plant. At the end of its natural life cycle, the leafy green washes ashore along Denmark’s coastline. Then, it’s harvested, dried, and transformed into acoustic products that bring warmth and natural texture indoors.

As the name suggests, Søuld Fragments is made with the eelgrass offcuts generated through the production of the larger mats and boards. Rather than discarding the leftover materials, these offcuts are recomposed into modular tiles with even more variation and texture.

Photograph courtesy of Spinneybeck

Beyond its tactile appearance, the new collection achieves a Noise Reduction Coefficient (NRC) rating of 0.70. Meaning, the sustainable acoustic alternative can soften sound in workplaces, hospitality settings, and residential interiors as well as traditional solutions.

The use of eelgrass in architecture isn’t entirely new. On the Danish island of Læsø, settlers in the 1600s used the material to create thick thatched roofs for homes, earning them the nickname “seaweed houses.”

“We believe that the end-use must be considered to honor the story of eelgrass fully,” Tobias Øhrstrøm, founder, said of the collaboration. “That is why we are making products that can have a long life, be recycled, and be part of systems designed for repair, disassembly, and reuse.”

Tiles in the Søuld Fragments collection feature soft, rounded edges with chamfer detailing for precise application. They also come in two coordinating variations, so designers can create a variety of installation patterns and scales.

Whether installed in a vast, open-concept office or a compact café, Søuld Fragments offers subtle dimension and visual rhythm—all while celebrating the natural character of a sustainable material.

Fashion and film have long borrowed from one another, but architecture is increasingly joining that conversation. For Madrid-based studio El Departamento, the launch of Lady Pipa’s new flagship store offered an opportunity to blur those creative boundaries, transforming a routine retail visit into something closer to stepping onto a movie set.

Photography by Sergio Pradana

Rather than designing a conventional boutique, the studio looked to the dreamlike tension of David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive, where familiar spaces become slightly surreal and reality quietly slips into fantasy. The result is a 106-square-meter flagship in Madrid’s Salamanca district that treats shopping for occasionwear like an opening scene.

Photography by Sergio Pradana

Visitors are greeted by a continuous blue resin floor and matching limewashed walls create an immersive backdrop where the boutique feels less like a store than a carefully choreographed sequence of spaces.

Photography by Sergio Pradana

Throughout, El Departamento layers theatrical moments without sacrificing function. A checkout counter wrapped in illuminated corrugated glass doubles as a DJ booth, while three mirrored arches multiply reflections to heighten the cinematic atmosphere. Dress displays backed by silver faux fur contrast with velvet-lined niches that showcase footwear, balancing cool metallic finishes with tactile softness.

Photography by Sergio Pradana

The fitting rooms become the project’s centerpiece. Framed by shimmering gradient silk curtains, the dressing area evokes a dance floor, complete with vanity-style mirrors illuminated by dotted lights. Overhead hangs an antique Murano glass chandelier whose scale and craftsmanship anchor the otherwise contemporary interior, while chrome stools and plush velvet poufs reinforce the sense that guests are preparing for an event rather than simply trying on clothes.

Photography by Sergio Pradana

Downstairs, the mood shifts entirely. Hidden below the retail floor, a private event space known as L’Atelier trades luminous blues for dark Cathedral Sapelli wood veneer and deep green carpeting. The more intimate palette offers a quieter counterpart to the boutique upstairs, extending the narrative beyond retail into a space designed for gatherings, presentations, and celebrations.

Photography by Sergio Pradana

Stepping into this dream-like interior may feel like walking onto the deep blue set of Mulholland Drive. But unlike the tragic themes of that film (think: women weeping in a theatre bathed in blue), Lady Pipa offers a shopping experience with a happy ending.

Editorial Transparency: This article was developed with the assistance of AI tools, which may have been used for research, outlining, editing, or copy refinement. Reporting, fact-checking, and editorial decisions were made by the Design Milk editorial team.

During design festivals, installations and pop-ups are not an uncommon sight. Milan Design Week 2026 saw the rise of giant inflatable structures, luxury fashion houses hosted legacy design brands, exclusive collabs bridged industries, and more. Last month in Copenhagen, 3daysofdesign was no different.

In the Danish capital city, the streets were full of site-specific activities—from a larger-than-life Alvar Aalto vase to a hair salon-turned-gallery showcasing textile and ceramic collections. Tucked away in the Baum und Pferdgarten flagship store was an installation by Polish artist, designer, and founder of eponymous modern accessories brand, Zofia Chylak. The oversize lace work tapped into this large-format concept, while digging into a shared cultural history between Denmark and Poland through a specific materiality.

Created for the occasion, the lace installation acts as a delicate—yet dynamic—entryway into Baum und Pferdgarten’s interior. Drawing on traditional bobbin lace techniques reworked through a modern lens, the airy net-like fabric stands in stark contrast to the cherry red doorframe behind. Blending modern design sensibilities with a heritage craft, the sculptural doorframe feels distinctly chic, with a playful horse motif that speaks to the brand’s name (which translates literally to “Tree and Horse Garden”).

Rikke Baumgarten, Zofia Chylak, Helle Hestehave.

Still, the equine theme has deeper roots. Chylak found inspiration during visits to the Thorvaldsens Museum in Copenhagen, which housed a plaster model of Polish royal Prince Józef Poniatowski riding a horse. The actual Danish-designed sculpture stands today in the Presidential Palace in Warsaw; it speaks to the long political and cultural history of the two countries. (The sculpture was recast and gifted to Poland by the Danish government in 1951 after the Warsaw Uprising.)

Photo by Piotr Maciaszek, courtesy MVPR.

Photo by Piotr Maciaszek, courtesy MVPR.

The installation also references a recent Chylak collection of hand-made jewelry, bags, and accessories inspired by traditional Polish craft, such as amber beading and Wilanów-style embroidery. Named Chylak Heritage, the project includes the Bobowa Lace Collection, inspired by the rich tradition of bobbin-lacemaking rooted in Bobowa, Poland.

A shawl with Wilanów-style embroidery by Chylak

Photography courtesy of MVPR; select images by Piotr Maciaszek.

Reimagining shipping containers as homes, studios, or pop-ups certainly isn’t new, but Milan-based architecture and design studio m2atelier took a more novel approach. The Crafted Capsule, an experiential installation housed with a shipping container is less about the limitations of its compact footprint and more about reducing contemporary living to its essentials without compromises.

Photography by Lorenzo Pennati

For Genova Design Week 2026, m2atelier worked in close collaboration with leading Italian specialists to create The Crafted Capsule. Focused on fabrication, lighting, textiles, and leather craftsmanship, each specialist helped rethink what a compact interior could become. The installation is an exercise in precision, demonstrating how thoughtful design and meticulous material selection can transform even the smallest space.

“The Crafted Capsule explores how contemporary living can be distilled to its essential elements without sacrificing emotion, comfort or beauty,” m2atelier founders Marco Bonelli and Marijana Radovic explained. “It is a project about intentionality—about creating meaningful experiences through design rather than through scale.”

Photography by Lorenzo Pennati

The Crafted Capsule comes together through a carefully orchestrated mix of materials and technical expertise. NIVA led the interior engineering and much of the fabrication, while Materica developed the installation’s textured, zinc-metallized wall panels. Luce5’s integrated lighting—including an illuminated mirror above the bed—visually expands the compact interior. Textiles from C&C Milano and rich blue leather by Foglizzo soften the industrial shell with warmth and texture.

Rather than presenting compact living as a compromise, The Crafted Capsule shows that careful attention to proportion, materiality, and craftsmanship can make even the most constrained spaces feel inviting.

Photography by Lorenzo Pennati

Editorial Transparency: This article was developed with the assistance of AI tools, which may have been used for research, outlining, editing, or copy refinement. Reporting, fact-checking, and editorial decisions were made by the Design Milk editorial team.

Six decades after Geoffrey Kent led Abercrombie & Kent’s first clients into the plains below Kilimanjaro, the company has returned to build a permanent lodge. Kitirua Plains Lodge, designed by Luxury Frontiers for A&K Sanctuary, occupies a 128-acre private concession bordering Amboseli National Park in Kenya, and its thirteen suites mark a pointed departure from the typology that has defined East African safari architecture for over a century. The canvas tent carries its own history – a portable stage set inherited from the hunting expeditions of the colonial era, refined over decades into a shorthand for luxury in the bush. Kitirua Plains abandons this in favor of earth-formed construction.

Exterior plaster is mixed with soil quarried directly from the site, matching the walls to the ground they rise from and cutting the need to truck in materials across fragile terrain. Ash-grey Mazeras stone, sourced nearby, serves as both cladding and flooring. Rather than clearing ground, the structure occupies an existing patch of wetland, its infinity pool absorbed into the water system already present. Where a tented camp performs impermanence while still requiring platforms, plumbing, and seasonal rebuilding, this lodge commits to its site, allowing it to shape it in return. Curved walls and fluid rooflines echo the undulating terrain, so that the architecture reads as a continuation of the ground plane rather than an object placed upon it.

The flowing black roofline and lath screens derive from the enkaji, the low, curved dwellings of earth plaster that Maasai builders have raised across these plains for generations. Hand-woven sisal grass ceilings, hand-rolled clay bead pendants, and sculpted metalwork extend the reference into the interiors, where handcrafted Kenyan mango wood furniture and cypress decking keep the supply chain close.

The palette holds to beige and soft green, tuned to the surrounding grasslands so that Mount Kilimanjaro remains the focal point of the guest experience rather than the architecture itself. Even the mosquito netting is tinted blue, dissolving the boundary between interior and the vast skies beyond. Passive design carries the environmental load, with main social spaces and unit lounges oriented for cross-ventilation, and openings angled to prevailing winds.

The eleven one-bedroom suites, each 1,250 sqft, are pared back to woven-rush detailing and natural textures, with indoor and outdoor showers, freestanding baths, and shaded verandas facing the mountain. Two two-bedroom suites, linked by shared lounges, extend the same language across 2,600 sqft. The wider concession is managed in partnership with the surrounding Maasai community, whose ancestral knowledge has shaped this landscape far longer than any safari brand.

View more info on Abercrombie & Kent’s website.

More from Luxury Frontiers here.

Photography by A&K Sanctuary.

The 1970s spawned both conversation pits and Brutalist architecture—and in a central district of Milan, Nick Maltese and Federico Pagetti of Nick Maltese Studio have allowed them both to co-exist, in a nearly achromatic, four-story home for an art collector. Stripping Brutalism down to a design philosophy where minimalism speaks volumes, the studio has crafted a space that brings both rigor and whimsy to a setting for everyday living and high-concept private events.

The project’s material palette interprets the Brutalist architectural style through an almost bespoke approach: exposed concrete, board-formed finishes, and industrial stainless steel create an intense and tactile atmosphere. Three above-ground floors and a basement are anchored by a strong vertical axis—a sculptural black metal staircase custom-designed by the studio traverses the entire home, defining views at each level.

On the ground floor, a double-height living area with a handcrafted metalwork mezzanine serves as the heart of the home. The kitchen, clad in gleaming stainless steel, echoes the precision of professional hospitality environments. Nearby, a dining table made entirely of concrete flashes the raw rebar that makes up its structure beneath. These brazen moments of exposed rebar are found in nooks and corners throughout the residence.

The focal point of the ground floor is a contemporary reinterpretation of the conversation pit: the sunken area defined by soft volumes, inviting interaction and slowing the rhythm of domestic life. All around, the client’s incredibly eclectic contemporary art collection offers bursts of color that break up the home’s deep sense of discipline. The pieces seemingly float along stone-washed walls (including a life-size hazmat suit sculpture leaning against a corner).

In the innermost quarters of the residence is the introspective and sensory basement, which houses a private wellness area complete with a counter-current swimming pool, sauna, and hammam.

As experienced practitioners in the design and fashion space, Maltese and Pagetti know how to redefine luxury—and here, it is the expressive, raw power of materials that trumps conventional excess. A savvy host’s dream, the Milanese residence unapologetically characterizes what its designers boldly call the “courage of subtraction.”

Photography by Simone Nicolaci.

How do you distill a nation into a single volume? That’s the ambitious question behind America: The Imagination of a Nation, Assouline’s latest oversized coffee table book celebrating the ideas, people, and cultural touchstones that have shaped the United States over the past 250 years. Timed to coincide with the country’s semiquincentennial, the book offers a visual meditation on the American spirit through moments of creativity, innovation, and reinvention.

Courtesy of Assouline

Written by journalist and author Joel Stein, the 200-page volume traces a path through American history and popular culture, bringing together 150 illustrations that span everything from the Founding Fathers and the Constitution to Marilyn Monroe, James Dean, Martin Luther King Jr., Michael Jordan, and the Williams sisters. Rather than presenting a chronological history, the book assembles a constellation of images and stories that reflect the country’s evolving identity.

‘Lodestar’ is a 50-foot-tall work of art by Randy Polumbo, partly made from a 1940 military jet, at Burning Man in 2018. Photography by Julian Walter; courtesy of Assouline.

The visual narrative is equally expansive. Historic photographs sit alongside fashion imagery, contemporary art, architecture, and pop culture, creating unexpected connections across generations. The result is less a history textbook than a curated archive of the people, places, and ideas that have shaped America’s cultural imagination.

A fashion shoot featuring a model and a 1965 Cadillac DeVille for ‘Vogue’ US in 1964. Photography by Gene Laurents/Condé Nast/Getty Images; courtesy of Assouline.

America: The Imagination of a Nation continues Assouline’s tradition of pairing thoughtful storytelling with striking visual presentation. The large-format hardcover invites readers to linger over each spread, encouraging browsing as much as reading.

As the United States approaches its 250th anniversary, America: The Imagination of a Nation offers an opportunity to reflect on the country’s complexity through the lens of design, photography, and visual culture. Rather than defining America with a single narrative, the book embraces the many stories, icons, and moments that continue to shape its identity.

Editorial Transparency: This article was developed with the assistance of AI tools, which may have been used for research, outlining, editing, or copy refinement. Reporting, fact-checking, and editorial decisions were made by the Design Milk editorial team.

Boutique hotels often draw inspiration from their surroundings, but the newly opened Faraway Sag Harbor looks deeper into the village’s history. Occupying the former Baron’s Cove property, the 67-room hotel reimagines the waterfront destination through an “Oceanic Revival” design concept by Jenny Bukovec Studio, weaving together Sag Harbor’s maritime heritage with a contemporary sense of ease.

Faraway Sag Harbor is in the former Baron’s Cove hotel. Photography by Matt Kisiday.

Developed by Blue Flag as the first New York outpost for its Faraway Hotels brand, the property joins sister locations on Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard. Rather than recreating a traditional nautical aesthetic, the interiors embrace a softer, more layered interpretation of coastal living. Sea-toned palettes, custom furnishings, textured materials, and shell-inspired details evoke the movement and light of the harbor, creating spaces that feel both collected and transportive.

The hotel features 67 rooms, including lofts and suites. Photography by Matt Kisiday.

The design extends throughout the guest rooms and shared spaces, where a lobby bar, covered porch, and outdoor patio encourage guests to linger long after check-in. Thoughtful material choices and curated decorative objects reinforce the sense of discovery that has become a hallmark of the Faraway brand.

The outdoor patio is a perfect setting for morning coffee or an evening cocktail. Photography by Matt Kisiday.

The same design language continues at Zagara, the hotel’s Amalfi Coast–inspired restaurant led by Executive Chef Jarad McCarroll. Pearlescent wood beams, cerulean pinstriped walls, an iridescent Venetian plaster fireplace, and antique mirrors create an understated backdrop for Mediterranean-influenced cuisine, while nautical artifacts and shell motifs subtly connect the restaurant to the rest of the property.

Faraway Sag Harbor draws inspiration from the village’s maritime history and whaling heritage. Photography by Matt Kisiday.

Located just steps from the waterfront and within walking distance of Main Street and Havens Beach, Faraway Sag Harbor expands the growing collection of design-forward hospitality destinations redefining the Hamptons experience, balancing local history with contemporary comfort.

Editorial Transparency: This article was developed with the assistance of AI tools, which may have been used for research, outlining, editing, or copy refinement. Reporting, fact-checking, and editorial decisions were made by the Design Milk editorial team.

Immersive exhibitions have become a defining museum format, but the most memorable experiences do more than surround visitors with dazzling visuals. They use technology as a storytelling medium. That’s the approach behind Football is Freedom, the latest exhibition at Mercer Labs Museum of Art and Technology in New York, where artist Roy Nachum, in collaboration with Rohan Marley and the Marley family, explores football as a shared cultural language through architecture, interactive media, and spatial design.

Rather than tracing the history of the sport, the exhibition examines football as a universal connector—one that shaped Bob Marley’s life alongside his music and continues to bring people together across cultures and generations. Spanning 40,000 square feet over three floors, Football is Freedom unfolds through 15 installations that combine 360-degree projection, volumetric light, robotics, digital media, and interactive systems into a single narrative experience.

Football is Freedom spans 15 immersive installations across three floors at Mercer Labs in New York City. Photography by Peter Murdock.

The exhibition is organized around three conceptual chapters: the past, present, and future. The first draws from Marley’s lifelong relationship with football, weaving his words, imagery, and legacy throughout the experience. The present captures the collective energy of the modern game, while the future imagines how emerging technologies might reshape both sport and shared experience.

Rather than relying on a single immersive environment, Mercer Labs treats each installation as its own distinct spatial experiment. Field of Dreams surrounds visitors with a 360-degree cinematic landscape, while The Journey transforms mirrored surfaces, light, and reflection into an infinity environment inspired by the idea of movement and collective experience. Nearby, Future imagines a speculative training ground where glowing architectural forms, robotics, and athletic performance converge inside a futuristic arena.

Light, projection, and interactive technology transform football into a shared cultural experience. Photography by Peter Murdock.

Interactivity also plays a central role throughout the exhibition. Visitors can create digital characters that become part of the evolving Crown Kids ecosystem, while The Cello invites audiences to shape an ever-changing musical composition performed by robotic instruments. Elsewhere, Words of Freedom features a robotic arm continuously writing and erasing messages in sand, turning language into a meditation on memory and impermanence.

Even the exhibition’s quieter moments emphasize material experimentation. In Unity, Bob Marley’s lyrics are translated into Braille before being converted into mechanical musical compositions, reframing language as both tactile and auditory experience. Across the exhibition, familiar technologies are repurposed as creative tools, blurring the boundaries between installation art, digital design, and museum experience.

Reflective surfaces, volumetric light, and digital environments create a series of immersive spatial experiences. Photography by Peter Murdock

As museums continue to embrace immersive storytelling, Football is Freedom offers a reminder that technology alone isn’t what creates meaningful experiences. Instead, Mercer Labs uses light, movement, interaction, and spatial design to build environments that encourage participation, inviting visitors to explore how play, creativity, and collective identity can occupy the same space.

Football is Freedom is on view at Mercer Labs Museum of Art and Technology in New York City until Jul. 31.

Editorial Transparency: This article was developed with the assistance of AI tools, which may have been used for research, outlining, editing, or copy refinement. Reporting, fact-checking, and editorial decisions were made by the Design Milk editorial team.

The best fan merch doesn’t simply recreate a familiar image—it rewards the people who know the work best. That’s the idea behind the new LEGO Editions Olivia Rodrigo collection, a five-set collaboration that invites fans to build their way through the Grammy-winning artist’s world one Easter egg at a time. Rather than focusing on a single album or performance, the collection pulls from across SOUR, GUTS, and you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love albums to translate recurring symbols, iconic stage moments, and deeply personal references into brick-built objects designed to be explored as much as displayed.

The LEGO Editions Olivia Rodrigo Secret Storage set is filled with hidden references to the artist’s music and career. Photography courtesy of the LEGO Group.

The lineup includes a collectible Vinyl display, a Concert Moon inspired by Rodrigo’s GUTS World Tour, Secret Storage, a Dual Guitar, and the first-ever personalized LEGO Botanicals collaboration, a Flower Bouquet that swaps traditional blooms for playful musical references. Each set is packed with details ranging from handwritten notebooks and red megaphones to butterflies, stars, backstage spaces, and hidden compartments waiting to be uncovered.

What makes the collection particularly interesting is that it wasn’t designed solely by LEGO and Rodrigo: According to Amy Corbett, Senior Design Manager and Product Lead at the LEGO Group, fans became an integral part of the creative process from the earliest concepts.

“One of my favorite things about working on this project was the three-party collaboration,” Corbett says. “Not only did we work closely with Olivia and her team, but we also connected with her fans during the design phase, from initial ideas to sketches and eventually brick-built concepts. This allowed us not only to get hidden details and secrets from Olivia about her music, but also an idea of how her songs make her fans feel and how we might translate that into bricks.”

That feedback shaped a collection that balances collectible appeal with LEGO’s signature sense of play. While the finished models are designed to look at home on a shelf, they’re far from static objects.

Olivia Rodrigo with her LEGO Editions Vinyl set. Photography courtesy of the LEGO Group.

“At first glance, the models may look like they are for display,” Corbett explains, “but take a closer look, and they are packed full of playful details.” Among those surprises are secret stages and dressing rooms tucked inside the Dual Guitar, a pop-out star hidden within the Vinyl set, and even miniature guitars forming the petals of a flower.

Instead of treating each set as an isolated object, the designers approached the collection as a cohesive visual system. Corbett says the team imagined how fans might display all five pieces together and searched for elements that could unify them without sacrificing individuality.

Olivia Rodrigo’s signature purple became the common thread throughout the collection, including the use of a new purple LEGO color introduced this year. Butterflies and stars appear across multiple builds, while each set interprets those recurring motifs differently. Like Rodrigo’s songwriting, the designers also leaned into layered storytelling, embedding hidden references that reveal themselves over time. “We wanted to pack each set full of hidden Easter eggs and surprises for fans to find,” Corbett explains.

That emphasis on discovery also helped solve one of the project’s biggest creative challenges: translating the emotional resonance of Rodrigo’s music into LEGO’s inherently geometric design language.

“Much of the magic is in the hidden details and clues that you don’t see at first,” Corbett says. “We really leaned into that common ground and had a lot of fun interpreting the details of her music into brick form that the fans would also be excited to discover.”

LEGO Minifigures of Olivia Rodrigo in various concert looks. Photo courtesy of the LEGO Group.

The minifigures required their own careful balancing act. Rodrigo’s performance looks have become instantly recognizable, but recreating them within the limitations of the LEGO minifigure meant distilling each outfit down to its essential details.

“The team worked closely with Olivia to capture the essence of her style,” Corbett says, “and pack in as many details as possible to bring the minifigure to life.”

The result is a collection that feels less like traditional celebrity merch and more like interactive storytelling. Rather than asking fans to simply recognize familiar imagery, the sets encourage them to hunt for clues, decode references, and discover new details long after the final brick has been placed—an experience that mirrors the layered storytelling Rodrigo has built into her music from the very beginning.

The LEGO Editions Olivia Rodrigo collection launches globally on Aug. 1, with select sets available for pre-order now.

Editorial Transparency: This article was developed with the assistance of AI tools, which may have been used for research, outlining, editing, or copy refinement. Reporting, fact-checking, and editorial decisions were made by the Design Milk editorial team.