There’s something disarmingly honest about Sweetest Me. It doesn’t announce itself as a concept album it simply breathes. Mahiru didn’t start with a grand message or storyline; she started with truth.
Each song became a timestamp a snapshot of her emotions, her friendships, her quiet introspections. The result feels like pages torn from a private diary, where love and solitude co-exist without explanation. It’s not confessional for attention it’s confessional because it’s real.
“I just wanted to make music that felt honest like whatever I was actually feeling in that moment.”
If Mahiru’s past work lived in the fog of dreamy melancholy, Sweetest Me is sunlight after rain still tender, but warmer. Working with close friends shifted her creative chemistry; the sessions felt more like late-night conversations than studio marathons. That intimacy radiates through the record’s palette playful synths, candid laughter, and pauses that sound like she’s smiling between lines.
“I worked with people around my age friends I hang out with on a regular basis and that chill, fun energy definitely came through in the songs.”
The emotional spectrum widens from the gravity of heartbreak to the weightlessness of new beginnings. Mahiru doesn’t discard her melancholy; she redefines it.
The world of Sweetest Me extends beyond sound into the lens. Shot by Badboi, the cover captures Mahiru in her purest form: stripped down, luminous, framed by her signature Chordal Mark. The stark white studio and her minimal styling create a stage for sincerity no theatrics, no filters.
Mahiru’s vision led the process; she designed the look, the pose, the mood. Together, the collaboration crystallized into an image that feels like silence after truth still, cinematic, alive.
“Since this project is all about self-expression, I wanted the visuals to feel raw just me, in a simple space.”
When the album ends, it doesn’t fade it lingers.
The echo remains, suspended in the room, a quiet reminder that vulnerability can be the loudest thing in art.
“I want listeners to feel overwhelmed like they need to go back and listen again just to process what happened.” – Mahiru
For more than two decades, Takashi Murakami’s relationship with Louis Vuitton has reshaped how we understand the intersection of fine art and luxury. What began in 2003 with the now iconic Monogram Multicolored under Marc Jacobs has evolved into a fully realized artistic dialogue one that fuses the Maison’s meticulous savoir-faire with Murakami’s hallucinatory imagination.
In the 2025 Artycapucines collection, that conversation reaches new depth. “Over the past 20 years, from my first collaboration to this 2025 project, I believe Louis Vuitton’s atelier has made remarkable technological advancements,” Murakami reflects. He speaks with the curiosity of an artist who has witnessed the evolution of craftsmanship firsthand: three-dimensional modeling, advanced metalwork, even the inclusion of materials once deemed impossible, like denim. The collaboration feels like a reunion between two perfectionists chasing the same horizon where technology and art meet handwork and dream logic.
Each bag in the series becomes a portal into Murakami’s expanding cosmos. The Capucines EW Rainbow erupts into a prism of lacquered hues, distorting the bag’s classic silhouette into a euphoric display of color. The Mini Mushroom, with a hundred of his signature fungi hand-polished and embroidered on mirrored silver canvas, feels like a psychedelic garden you can carry. The Mini Tentacle, perhaps the most sculptural, transforms his alter ego Mr. DOB into a playful marine form a pink creature both charming and otherworldly. Then there’s the EW Dragon, a wearable echo of his monumental Dragon in Clouds Indigo Blue painting, and the Capucines BB Golden Garden, a symphony of leather marquetry and gold-leaf luminosity that nods to Vuitton’s heritage of refinement.
The most striking of all may be the Panda Clutch a silver-tone brass sculpture studded with 6,250 strass stones, bridging jewelry, sculpture, and collectible design. Together, these pieces read like a museum show masquerading as an accessories collection.
What distinguishes this collaboration is its mutual reinterpretation. “Without being fixated on my distinctive characters, Louis Vuitton incorporated motifs ranging from the classic to the majestic like the dragon,” Murakami notes. Vuitton’s artisans deconstruct his visual language his color fields, patterns, and creatures and reassemble them into handles, clasps, and inner linings. The result is not mere decoration but a synthesis: Murakami’s universe filtered through the disciplined choreography of French craftsmanship.
The 2025 Artycapucines collection isn’t just an expansion of Vuitton’s art dialogue it’s a statement on how luxury and imagination can coexist. It captures a moment where the atelier becomes an artist’s studio, and a handbag becomes a sculpture that breathes.
Maison Margiela is extending its quiet rebellion beyond the runway into the realm of living.
Its debut residential project, Maison Margiela Residences, is set to rise on Dubai’s Palm Jumeirah, with only 25 limited homes that blur the line between architecture and couture. Each residence looks outward to the sea and inward to Margiela’s philosophy: transformation through deconstruction.
For over three decades, the Maison has treated design as an act of storytelling stitching together ideas across fashion, furniture, and form. This new venture continues that language, where walls behave like garments and materials carry the poetry of imperfection. Red marble, aged mirrors, and precise tailoring become architectural gestures rather than decorative choices.
In collaboration with Alta Real Estate Development, the project imagines what happens when Margiela’s codes trompe l’œil, reconstruction, and restraint translate into space. It’s a study in controlled disorder, where the intimacy of couture meets the permanence of structure.
Italian architect Carlo Colombo contributes a collection of bespoke furnishings crafted exclusively for the residences. His approach sculptural, deliberate, quietly cinematic builds harmony between the architecture and what lives within it. The result is a world where Margiela’s unconventional philosophy can be lived, not just worn.
Beyond luxury, Maison Margiela Residences represents a shift: a home as narrative, a structure as statement.
The Maison continues its exploration not to decorate life, but to design its atmosphere.
Art has never belonged to time. It moves through it shapeshifting, surviving, leaving traces on those who dare to create. Art Don’t Die is a reflection on that immortality. A collection that honors the artists who turned imagination into rebellion, whose visions continue to haunt galleries, streets, and minds alike.
At the center of the collection stand two titans Salvador Dalí and Jean-Michel Basquiat. Dalí, the surrealist dream architect who painted the subconscious into elegance; Basquiat, the poet of the street whose chaos became scripture. Together, they represent two ends of a spectrum precision and impulse, order and riot. Studio by Pines reimagines them not as relics, but as living symbols of defiance.
Each tee is built like a relic unearthed heavyweight cotton washed into softness, carrying the weight of history. The prints are bold yet ghostly, fading as if they’ve lived lifetimes. The red Pines Studio mark bleeds like a signature of gratitude, a pulse that reminds us: true art never dies, it only finds new vessels to live through.
In Barcelo’s universe, fashion isn’t designed it’s written. Each garment, each thread, each silhouette is part of an unfolding narrative a story told in chapters, like episodes from a world that doesn’t quite exist yet, but somehow feels familiar.
“The idea was to build a brand that doesn’t follow the traditional format,” he says softly. “Something more like a series where every collection becomes an episode, revealing new characters, new cities, new fragments of a world in motion.”
This world is not so far from our own. A near future that mirrors today’s obsessions power, technology, control only pushed a little further, until it starts to blur. Here, the powerful monopolize not just economies but emotions. Here, the garments are both armor and confession.
The Story Before the Stitch
Before there were clothes, there were characters.
He began not with fabric, but with fiction imagining who these people are, what they fear, what they protect, and what they hide. “I create the characters first,” he explains. “Then I decide what they would wear, what the texture feels like, how the light would move across the fabric.”
He draws from the worlds of Blade Runner, Star Wars, The Mandalorian stories that dream of the future but ache with something human. Each piece becomes an extension of its character worn not for style, but survival.
It’s a process more like directing than designing. A cinematic ritual where concept and craft orbit the same sun.
The Language of Disguise
At the heart of the first capsule lies an obsession with concealment. The beauty of being unseen. “I’ve always been fascinated by the idea of hiding in plain sight,” Barcelo says. “The feeling of being a ghost in the crowd.”
He builds with layers, blurs, and muted reflections silhouettes that move like shadows. His garments don’t demand attention; they withdraw it. But up close, the details whisper technical fabrics, structured tailoring, a quiet sense of precision.
It’s the duality of existence: the wish to disappear, and the desire to be understood.
A World You Can Wear
What Barcelo is building isn’t a brand it’s a world you can enter. Every collection extends the narrative, and every customer becomes a participant in the story’s evolution. “I want people to feel like they’re watching their favorite film,” he says, “except they’re part of it.”
It’s fashion as fiction, garment as portal. A new form of storytelling where narrative and materiality intertwine where the act of dressing becomes the act of world-building.
In the quiet of the studio, he’s not designing clothes.
He’s designing universes.
And somewhere within the folds of fabric between shadow and light Barcelo’s story continues.
Under the watchful gaze of the Great Pyramids, Pines Studio went where few have ever gone behind the scenes of Anyma’s performance in Egypt. The desert wind carried sound instead of sand, and the lasers carved through the ancient night like a dialogue between history and the future. Our cameras caught the quiet before the chaos, the pulse before the beat dropped a crew chasing light down the highway to Giza, where myth met machinery.
The crowd tens of thousands stood shoulder to shoulder beneath the oldest wonder of the world, their silhouettes painted in orange glow. No brand had documented it like this before. It wasn’t just a concert; it was a moment suspended between centuries. A communion of dust, rhythm, and divinity. Pines Studio was there not as spectators, but as witnesses to the night technology bowed to the desert.
John Alto has never been afraid of reinvention, but with Easy Love his latest release on Swedish House Mafia’s SUPERHUMAN imprint he arrives with a sound as polished as a mirrored dance floor. Swapping his trademark heavy bass lines for something buoyant and undeniably chic, the Los Angeles producer leans into a groove that feels drenched in nostalgia yet charged with tomorrow’s energy. At the heart of the track is Swedish vocalist and producer Ayla, whose velvety delivery turns Alto’s production into something cinematic less about spectacle, more about allure.
The collaboration didn’t start in a glossy studio but with a chance online discovery: Alto stumbled across Ayla’s voice, fell into its texture, and built Easy Love around it before they even met. Months later, when Ayla flew to Los Angeles, the session wasn’t about invention but completion fusing Alto’s neon-lit beat with her raw, genre bending tone. The track resonates like an artifact from a parallel 2025, where Studio 54 never closed and the fashion crowd still moved in sync beneath disco balls and strobe lights.
With co signs from Alesso, David Guetta, and Swedish House Mafia, Alto has already carved his name into the new echelon of electronic music. But Easy Love feels like a statement of intent: a refusal to be boxed in, a pivot from darkness toward something sleek, sophisticated, and versatile. It’s the kind of release that doesn’t just hit the charts it slips into the cultural fabric, the kind of track you’d expect to hear both on a Paris runway and in the after hours of Brooklyn warehouses. Alto isn’t chasing a trend; he’s tailoring the sound of now.
Last weekend, Pines Studio was invited to witness Swedish House Mafia’s rare back to back shows first under the steel and shadows of a bridge, then inside the glowing arena of Arthur Ashe. The contrast was electric: one night felt raw and underground, smoke rising into the night air as the city skyline flickered in the background; the other was a cathedral of light, lasers carving through the dome as thousands of voices rose in unison. Each crowd moved like a single organism phones lifted, hands stretched, strangers turned into family for a few hours.
People left both nights looking like they had been part of something that can’t be repeated a mix of sweat, awe, and disbelief still on their faces. There was a sense that Swedish House Mafia weren’t just performing, they were testing the limits of what a live show can feel like. Fans talked about goosebumps, about moments where the music seemed to stop time, about being reminded why we still gather in massive rooms and under overpasses to let sound carry us somewhere else. It was more than a concert it was communion
Luxury heritage meets cult favorite art toys. Parisian trunk maker Moynat has teamed up with Hong Kong born illustrator Kasing Lung for a capsule that flips the codes of classic French craftsmanship with the mischievous world of The Monsters.
The Collision of Craft and Culture
For over 175 years, Moynat has been synonymous with understated elegance trunks, leather goods, and travel pieces rooted in tradition. But in this new drop, the maison hands the keys to Kasing Lung, the mind behind the globally adored characters Labubu, Zimomo, and King Mon. His creations, once confined to art books and collectible figures, now crash headfirst into Moynat’s iconic M Canvas.
The result? Bags and accessories that feel like they walked out of a gallery and onto the streets part Paris atelier, part toy convention heat.
What’s in the Capsule
Expect reimagined staples like the Moynat Tote in PM, MM, and GM sizes, a revamped Mini 48h, the everyday Hobo, plus ultra rare Mignon bags. Smaller lifestyle pieces cardholders, passport covers, charms round out the drop, all stamped with Lung’s irreverent Monsters.
This isn’t just merch. Each piece feels like a collectible one foot in high fashion, one foot in street culture, and both planted firmly in the now.
Why Now
The collab marks the 10th anniversary of The Monsters, with the first wave launching in October 2025. Availability is tight the pieces will be sold exclusively in Moynat boutiques where the exhibition lands. Translation: blink, and you’ll miss it.
Kasing Lung’s Moment
Since debuting The Monsters in 2015, Lung’s universe has exploded, turning his characters into icons of the collectible scene, from Asia to the global stage. He’s not just drawing creatures; he’s building worlds. And with Moynat, those worlds get stitched into leather, making luxury a little less serious and a lot more fun.
In an industry where sneakers often chase hype through collaborations and colorways, the Pearl Vans arrived as something else entirely, a disruption with elegance. What began as an experiment quickly spiraled into a cultural artifact. Pearls, long a symbol of luxury, purity, and eternity, were suddenly reimagined not in jewelry boxes or runways, but on the canvas of everyday footwear.
Italian designer Mattias Gollin who has cultivated a visual narrative through his Instagram describes the spark as a question that wouldn’t let go: “How can I take something timeless, precious, almost sacred and place it into a cultural icon?” That tension the sacred versus the everyday, the eternal versus the street gave birth to one of the most talked-about sneaker drops in recent memory.
For Gollin, pearls aren’t just decoration. They’re personal mythology. “An oyster turns an intruder into something precious,” he explains. “I connect with that. I use emotional factors as fuel, transforming them into creativity. Pearls feel like amulets, symbols of eternity and protection.” By embedding them into sneakers, he wasn’t just redesigning footwear; he was fusing two worlds that rarely meet.
The first drop of the Pearl Vans was less a collection than a ripple in the culture. It wasn’t designed to fit the fashion system’s seasonal rhythms. “I don’t really make collections,” Gollin admits. “My creativity moves with my own flow. When the energy feels right, that’s when I create.” That refusal to play by industry rules became part of the story, fueling both the mystique and the demand.
Still, there’s always a balance between the personal and the cultural. “I start with something deeply personal symbols, memories, vibrations and then I project it outward, imagining how culture will absorb it and remix it,” he says. “If it’s only personal, it risks being self-indulgent. If it’s only cultural, it feels hollow. The magic happens when my story becomes a mirror for someone else’s.”
As the Pearl Vans move into their second chapter, Gollin is clear but reserved. “The story has just begun. No spoilers.” What’s clear is that this isn’t just about sneakers anymore. It’s about rewriting how objects can carry memory, symbolism, and story, one pearl at a time.
At Studio by Pines, stories like the Pearl Vans remind us that culture isn’t just built through trends it’s shaped by symbols that carry weight, history, and emotion. What began as an experiment has become a movement, a reimagining of how personal mythology can slip into the everyday. And like the pearls themselves, this story will only grow more luminous with time.
