🌐 Global Design Themes: Insights from 6 Trendsetters like Edward Llewellyn Hall to Draga & Aurel

🌾 Feminist Second-Wave Revival – By Faye Toogood

Designer Faye Toogood taps into the spirit of second-wave feminism through her recent work, such as the Rude Arts Club line for cc‑tapis and Tacchini. She explores sensuality and human form from a distinctly female perspective. As a woman in design, she long resisted highlighting gender in her work — until now. In her Squash seating collection for Poltrona Frau, she merges classic frame structures with soft, pillow-like elements that envelop the sitter. The sculptural curve conveys protection and serenity—an embrace through design.

In Toogood’s vision, feminine creation is relaxed, modern, and forward-thinking—soft yet potent.

🌱 Sustainable Humility – By Diebedo Francis Kéré

Architect and Pritzker Prize laureate Diebedo Francis Kéré champions minimalist sustainability. He emphasizes regeneration over extraction—favoring materials like earth/clay instead of mined minerals. For Kéré, true sustainability means using minimal, renewable resources suited exactly for the architectural need, not luxury or excess.

Design must respect nature’s systems. Every building is a moral act: don’t take what you don’t need, even if you can.

🔮 Material Polyphony – By Draga Obradovic & Aurel Bazedov (Draga & Aurel)

This design duo is fascinated by transformative materials like translucent lucite (acrylic resin). Through experiments with light, color, and texture, they create pieces whose hues shift depending on the viewer’s angle. Inspired by op-art and retrofuturism, their practice revels in spontaneity—embracing unexpected beauty in minimalistic yet dynamic forms.

Expect upcoming design trends rich in optical play, soft futurism, and material poetry.

🇮🇹 Craftsmanship Amplified – By Marco Credendino, Founder of Artemest

Marco Credendino’s Artemest platform celebrates Italian handmade excellence. What began with ~60 artisan studios has grown to over 1,500, showcasing 60,000+ handcrafted creations. Initiatives like L’Appartamento exhibitions bring together curated interior vignettes using these objects, merging objects and environments elegantly.

Artemest aims to share Italian craftsmanship globally—where heritage, quality, and beauty converge.

🌸 Garden Narratives & Textile Storytelling – By Edward Llewellyn Hall

Designer Edward Llewellyn Hall draws design inspiration from his English garden surroundings. His eclectic patterns—floral, geometric, stripe—blend classical motifs with modern whimsy. His textile collections for Rubelli mix mythology, vegetation, stars, and architectural references.

For Hall, design, fashion, and interiors are genres of storytelling—where unexpected combinations reveal fantasy, balance, and emotional resonance.

🎬 Leisure Scale & Casual Luxe – By Ashley Harrison, Design Miami.LA

Ashley Harrison, director of design curatorial programs for Design Miami.LA, observes Los Angeles culture’s appetite for bold living. In a city where villas become stages and homes double as entertainment spaces, interiors are expansive, daring, and unapologetically expressive.

Design here is casual scale and theatrical: large comfortable spaces, outdoor connectivity, and vibrant palettes. It's the design of “immediate lifestyle,” where comfort meets performance.

Synthesis: A Future in Design That Is Empathetic, Sensual, Sustainable & Surprising

From feminist softness to ecological restraint, from luminous materials to heritage craftsmanship, these six thought leaders define a vision of design that is layered, humane, and dynamically engaged with the living world.