The Color Authority™

This first episode of 2026 of The Color Authority podcast features an in-depth conversation with Salvador Reyes and Josefina Larrain of the Mérida-based studio Reyes Rios + Larrain Arquitectos. The discussion centres on the studio’s philosophy of "living heritage," where they restore historic Yucatecan haciendas and manor houses not as static monuments, but as functional, contemporary spaces that preserve ancestral knowledge and memory.
Design Studio based in Mérida, Yucatán, Mexico, founded by architect Salvador Reyes Ríos and Josefina Larraín Lagos. Since 2001, they have equally devoted themselves to contemporary architectural design and restoration of old haciendas, manor houses, buildings, and heritage sites, adapting them for new, compatible uses. A local and modern sensibility, combined with a comprehensive approach to architecture, interior design, furniture, landscaping, and construction coordination, characterizes their new buildings and restoration/reuse projects. Other contributions to Mexican architecture include the revival and reinterpretation of local materials and techniques, such as Chukum-based mortar and structural concrete blended with red earth known as kancab. Reyes Ríos + Larraín are also recognized for creating an original architectural language that has shaped the contemporary identity of Yucatán’s built environment, as well as the ongoing experimentation with local materials and processes. Their work has been featured in specialized books and magazines across the United States, Europe, Asia and Latin America, earning both national acclaim and international visibility. The book Place, Matter, and Belonging, published in two editions by Arquine in 2017, is the first monograph dedicated to their body of work. The studio is currently designing projects in Mexico, United States and Dominican Republic.
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Jerusalemite designer Lameice Abu Aker creates at the intersection of emotional resonance and cultural memory, exploring how form, color, and material embody the poetry of domestic rituals. Now based between Jerusalem and Milan, where she earned her Master’s in Furniture Design from Politecnico di Milano, her work fuses Mediterranean nostalgia with sculptural whimsy.
In 2021, she founded Ornamental by Lameice, a studio dedicated to glassware that blurs the line between sculpture and tableware. Collaborating closely with a family of artisans in the Palestinian village of Jaba’, where glassblowing is a centuries-old tradition, Lameice introduced an unprecedented palette of pastel hues and whimsical designs as an entirely new chromatic language within their heritage of earth and fire.
Each piece is shaped without molds or mechanical constraint, allowing the molten glass to reveal its own peculiar grace. The artisan’s breath lingers in every curve; light, once captured, seems reluctant to leave.
Drawn to the table as a stage for life’s theatre, Lameice designs vessels that hold moments of dates, spirited debates, and family stories in awkward elegance, unexpected colors, and playful forms that carry optimism, intimacy, and the sense that the object might be a character of its own.
Her collections Dreamlike, Eye Candy, and Teta Edition have been exhibited internationally from Paris and London to New York, Singapore and Monaco, each piece a small ambassador of whimsy, heritage, and light.

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Geraldine Wharry is one of the world's leading Fashion Futurists. As a Regenerative Futures Architect, she helps partners decode emergence and implement change, whilst adopting strategies leveraging creative, systemic and environmental imperatives.
Trusted by organisations ranging from Nike, Samsung, Afterpay, Christian Dior to Seymour Powell, Geraldine's blend of strategic, regenerative and creative foresight has been applied across fashion, beauty, technology, sustainability, culture, media, gaming, the arts, health, travel and industrial design. Geraldine is also a regular speaker on stages ranging from SXSW to the Adidas global headquarters. 
Her views on a future of fashion that stands at the crossroads of Tech, Purpose and Sustainability are regularly featured on the BBC, Vogue, The Financial Times, BoF and other international press publications. She writes about strategic futures for Dazed Beauty and in her monthly column 'Tomorrow' for Spur Magazine in Japan.
Questioning established future foresight methods and innovation implementation problems, by applying regenerative futures thinking and Biomimicry, has been a running thread in Geraldine's practice and the school community hybrid she founded, Trend Atelier. She is a regular guest lecturer at leading universities in Europe.
As a Fellow of the Royal Society for the Arts and a member of the United Nations' Conscious Fashion & Lifestyle network, Geraldine Wharry's mission is to inspire leaders, industries and people to enact visionary futures, for the greater good of the people and planet.
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This first autumn podcast episode features Finnish fashion designer Sofia Ilmonen, who discusses her approach to creating modular, transformable garments that can be reshaped and reassembled like building blocks. Ilmonen details how her use of simple square or rectangular modules contributes to her sustainability goals. She also explains her focus on "sizeless" garments aiming to increase longevity by addressing the poor fit, which she identifies as one of the biggest reasons for discarding clothing. 
Sofia Ilmonen is a fashion designer whose work centres on modular, transformable clothing that merges sustainability with innovative garment design. At the core of her concept is adaptability — both in silhouette and size — with the aim of promoting a more responsible and inclusive fashion culture. The modular approach extends garment lifespans by allowing pieces to be reassembled and reshaped endlessly.
All garments are built from square-shaped modules, a form that not only follows zero-waste cutting principles but also embodies the idea of continuous design. Each module is compatible with any part of a garment and is joined using a unique system of specially designed 3D-printed buttons. This enables infinite transformations without sewing and makes the garments sizeless, adaptable to many body shapes and styles.
Sofia’s work has been presented in international exhibitions and featured in publications such as British and Scandinavian Vogue. Her Aalto University thesis was recognized with the Marimekko Award and the Finnish Textile and Fashion Prize, and she received the prestigious Mercedes-Benz Sustainability Prize at the Festival de Hyères. Her modular collections have also been showcased at Berlin and Copenhagen Fashion Weeks.
Before founding her own label, Sofia worked extensively in London in roles ranging from seamstress and creative pattern cutter to designer. Her three years at Alexander McQueen, immersed in the world of high fashion and craftsmanship, left a profound influence on her design philosophy and continue to shape her practice today.
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Laura Luchtman talks to TCA about her journey from fast fashion to sustainable fashion looking for a greater purpose. She experiments with natural pigments and materials, always searching for solutions to problems that exist in the fashion and textile industry. In this episode, Laura explains how she experiments with color-growing bacteria and how this process creates a new aesthetic, researching to answer that big question: can our what we wear heal us? 
Laura Luchtman was born in the Netherlands where she lives and works in Rotterdam. She is a textile and surface designer investigating the social, cultural, and ecological dimensions of color. She develops new ways to experience color through bio-based pigments, inclusive systems, and translating color and pattern across different contexts. From her chromatic atelier Kukka in Rotterdam, she works with brands like Puma, ranging from conceptual presentations to applied collections. Her research into sustainable dyes highlights her hands-on approach and commitment to conscious design. Laura’s work has been shown globally, published, and presented at TEDx. In 2023, she won the DNA Paris Design Award for Chromarama Riso.
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