The Color Authority™

In this episode, the Forecast Club comes together to unpack what really stood out at Milan Design Week 2026. Moving beyond the hype, they share honest reflections on shifting aesthetics, the rise of multi-sensory experiences, and the growing divide between design for the few and design for the many. From material-driven color stories to questions around relevance, affordability, and authenticity, this conversation offers a sharp, insider perspective on where design is heading next.
The Forecast Club is a global collective of leading, award-winning trend experts,  one from each country. While each member operates independently, they collaborate periodically on exclusive projects known as “Drops.” This podcast episode features the following team members: 
Alina Schartner, based in Austria, is an internationally recognised colour and interior design consultant, trend forecaster, and designer. She creates purposeful strategies, concepts, and collections for major brands. Her futures-focused approach, rooted in longevity, balances relevance, emotional and functional value, profitability, and sustainability. Alongside bespoke services, Alina shares her insights through keynotes, workshops, webinars, trend reports, and expert panels. Since 2021, she has also been the brand ambassador for RAL COLOURS, promoting colour literacy worldwide. 
Stefan ”Trendstefan” Nilsson, based in Sweden, is one of Sweden’s and Scandinavia’s most influential trend experts. Constantly on foot, he visits fairs and world cities to scout the latest in design, lifestyle, sustainability, retail and hospitality. He looks for new colours, shapes and objects, but the main driver is to try to analyse new demands regardless of if they are for Gen Z or regular men on the street. These insights are shared in various magazines and at seminars all over the world. He is a regular contributor to magazines like Elle Decoration, Residence, Plaza as well as morning shows on TV and radio. Trendstefan runs his own digital platform Trendstefan.se since 2006 and the trend seminar “Stora Trenddagen” since 2011. On the side he curates exhibitions both at fairs, museums and how own mobile exhibition platform Designgalleriet. Swedish magazine Rum have listed Trendstefan as one of the most influential people in architecture and design in Sweden. Trendstefan is also the founder of The Forecast Club. 
Susanna Björklund, based in Finland, is a futures thinker, trend analyst, journalist and a designer. As a Senior Lecturer she teaches emerging talents at LAB Institute of Design, LAB University of Applied Sciences. Susanna is also an international speaker and moderator for panel discussions. Susanna is known for curating and producing SIGNALS, the official trend exhibition of Habitare, the interior fair of Helsinki, 2015-2022, linking visual and societal trends. Her passion is design and to look for changes in everything around us, to analyze and cluster those signals into thinking where the futures might be heading. Societal shifts, design for the planet and changes in consumer behaviour as well as in values are interesting ingredients for her work.
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This episode features Ramy Elnagar, founder of White Mirror, talking about how color acts as a frequency and a sensory tool to bridge the gap between our inner and outer worlds. Ramy elaborates on his studio's philosophy of "experiences as medicine," which utilizes nature-inspired awe and sensory congruence to move beyond mere engagement toward profound physiological and psychological transformation. The conversation explores the future of "secular spaces of worship" ultimately advocating for intentional design that helps individuals navigate loneliness and environmental anxiety through clarity, quietude, and ritual.
As the founder of White Mirror, a wellness innovation studio at the intersection of science, arts, and technology, Ramy believes the environments we design shape us, influencing how we think, feel, and connect. Guided by this philosophy, he applies evidence-based approaches to create spaces, experiences, and interventions that improve quality of life across the hospitality, real estate, automotive, and wellness sectors. He works toward building the future we want to live in, exploring how wellness can become part of our spaces and systems. Ramy’s holistic approach to human health addresses our emotional, psychological, spiritual and physical wellbeing through what he calls “experience as medicine.” 
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Louise Byg Kongsholm explains in this episode that companies must navigate "trend stuffification" by distinguishing between short-term noise and long-term strategic patterns that address fundamental human needs. She advocates for life stage segmentation over traditional demographics and warns that AI should be treated as a tool rather than a business strategy to protect the essential human "creative spark". 
Louise Byg Kongsholm is CEO of pej gruppen – scandinavian trend institute, a company with more than 50 years of experience in decoding trends and making them actionable for Scandinavian companies.
She works as a trend researcher, author, speaker and advisor across Scandinavia. She is also editor-in-chief of three professional magazines and has written several books on topics such as trend sociology, the future of retail, life stage segmentation and creativity. She is known for translating complex societal and cultural shifts into clear strategic insight.
Her work centres on zeitgeist analysis, megatrends and consumer behaviour, with a strong focus on how uncertainty, values and cultural change shape markets and everyday decision-making. Rather than treating trends as isolated phenomena, she analyses patterns, signals and underlying drivers. From this perspective, colour is not a discipline in itself, but a visible expression of deeper cultural moods and collective states of mind.

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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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