Diamonds crash. Luddites win.
On craft, collapse, and the case for buying nothing new.
Internet Microdoses
Diamond prices hit a century low as natural 1-carat stones average ~$4,200, down from $6,000 in 2021. De Beers, once the global leader, is sitting on roughly $2 billion in unsold stock while lab-grown stones flood the market at 80% of the cost. Diamonds may be forever, but their market dominance is another story.
Jil Sander opened a records store in Ginza, reviving Cisco Records in its Tokyo flagship. The shop previously shaped Shibuya’s subculture scene before closing in 2007. It’s further proof that luxury brands still have power to move the needle.
Lego announced its largest set ever: a 12,506-piece replica of the Sagrada Família cathedral. The real one has been under construction since 1882 and will finally be completed this year. The Lego version honestly might take just as long to build.
Hideo Kojima and Nicolas Winding Refn take over the Hotel Chelsea for Satellites II — the fourteenth edition of Prada Mode. Opening June 5, it’s the sequel to their Prada Aoyama Tokyo collab last summer. Even if you’ve just played Death Stranding, you know to expect the unexpected when these two team up.
LVMH just posted its worst Q1 ever as shares dropped 28% — a steeper slide than during COVID or the 2008 financial crisis. CEO Bernard Arnault himself personally lost $55.4 billion. New creative directors — Jonathan Anderson at Dior, Proenza Schouler at Loewe — were meant to boost interest, but tariffs and global spending decline are proving hard to design around.
Aesthetic Study · The New Luddites
The original Luddites weren’t anti-technology — they were textile workers in 1811 who smashed the machines that threatened their livelihoods and craft. Two centuries later, similar problems result in a similar resistance: Brooklyn teens are founding Luddite Clubs built around flip phones and Prospect Park reading circles. The Light Phone III just launched the waitlist for its third-generation dumbphone. Meanwhile “naive design” — hand-drawn, deliberately imperfect visuals — is one of the defining graphic trends of 2026.
There’s a look, too. In Oaxaca, the Du Xhil cooperative is reviving backstrap loom weaving with natural indigo and cochineal dyes. Bode is building a whole label on deadstock fabrics, hand-quilting, and trims pulled from antique button jars. 11.11/eleven eleven dyes everything with plant-based pigments. At Paris Haute Couture last year, Vaishali Shadangule’s Kintsugi collection made mending the entire point. There’s a common palette: clay, indigo, walnut, unbleached cotton. The New Luddites are online. They just want the things they love to outlast the algorithm.
Nik Arthur is a Montreal-based animation director who has worked with YouTube, Vice, and Psycho Films — but his own projects don’t look anything like that work. His Organima series is animated by the likes of engraving directly into stone with a rotary drill, rearranging the skin on a leaf skeleton, or carefully shaping refracted light. He’s currently writing a new film about a very smart splash of water. We collaborated with Nik in our recent film (and you can watch the BTS on our Instagram). Below, he talks Ted Chiang, mechanical pencils, and his other life volunteering on farms in Japan.
What do you do when you hit a creative block?
I don’t think we need to be in output mode all of the time. When output isn’t feeling natural, I try to intake until output comes naturally. Usually through talking, reading, and watching.
What’s the worst recommendation someone’s given you?
Post more on Instagram.
What’s the last film you watched that moved you deeply?
Cave of Forgotten Dreams by Werner Herzog… absolutely mind-boggling.
What book have you gifted most?
What’s something you bought under $100 that changed your life?
I bought this nice, metal, kind of heavy mechanical pencil for like $15 that helped me love to write things down again.
Where do you go to find peace?
There’s this town in Japan that I visit sometimes to farm mulberry and help at a family-run paper mill.
Who is your forever inspo?
My partner.
What’s the last article you sent to a friend?
“Why Science Fiction Can’t Predict the Future — and Why That’s a Good Thing”
What’s the best investment (money, time, habit) you’ve made?
Learning a new language.
Write us a fortune cookie.
You are in control of your sense of time.
Follow Nik on Instagram and Cosmos.
Object Love · Cybersyn Opsroom Chair
In 1971, Fernando Flores — a 28-year-old government official in Salvador Allende’s administration — recruited British cybernetician Stafford Beer to build a computer network that could manage Chile’s nationalized economy in real time. The result was Project Cybersyn, and its most iconic artifact was the Opsroom: a hexagonal control room with seven white fiberglass swivel chairs designed by a team led by Gui Bonsiepe. There were no keyboards. Instead, they opted for buttons that were embedded in the armrests alongside built-in ashtrays and whiskey-glass holders. The data displays on the walls were designed by hand, then photographed as slides projected from behind — they had more faith in what a human could render than what a mainframe could output.
The Opsroom was destroyed after Pinochet’s coup in September 1973. Only photographs survive. Bonsiepe, who led Chile’s first state-run industrial design group at INTEC, is 92 now. The most beautiful command center ever built for a country that no longer wanted it.
Quick Hits
Two extremely rare Monets are up for auction.
Maison Margiela expands into China.
Vivienne Westwood is getting a massive retrospective.
Le Labo celebrates 20 years with a new book.
Keith Haring’s rare art cars to land in NYC’s West Village.
Tania ✨
This post was originally sent out to Cosmos members on 04/08/26.