In Design Rewind, AD looks back at the people, places, and things that defined 2025, from the dark woods we saw everywhere to the best place to build a home (hint: It’s not on a lot). Here’s what we saw in the year’s rearview mirror.
In 2014, Chanel sent models down a runway staged as a grocery store. They pushed shopping carts past aisles of Eau de Chanel mineral water, Tweed Tea, and Coco Pops. At the time, the gag felt absurd, as if the label’s esteemed creative director Karl Lagerfeld were turning the most mundane errand into a literal fashion show. But it worked, because grocery shopping was still just that: a weekly to-do. You went in with a handwritten list, maybe picked up whatever was on sale, and went home.
Some 11 years later, grocery shopping has become its own kind of spectacle. In LA, fans have made a phenomenon of Erewhon’s Hailey Bieber smoothie (the store reportedly sells 40,000 of them each month)—an item so popular that its recent disappearance from the menu literally made headlines. In New York, cult favorite Happier Grocery asks tastemakers what’s in their cart on Instagram and refrigerates their merch collection next to the non-alcoholic ready-to-drink drinks. The Big Apple also recently welcomed Meadow Lane, a boutique grocery shop by influencer Sammy Nussdorf. Its debut weekend, with model bouncers and an outstretched line, looked like a nightclub opening at 11 a.m. In cities across the country, cafés and “tonic-bars” can now be spotted between produce and pantry staples.
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So how did we get here? Some time between the pandemic and the direct-to-consumer boom, grocery shopping became a discovery-filled treasure hunt. The weekly shop was replaced by the small-joy stop: a quick run to the store for a bottle of olive oil that looks good on your counter or a better-for-you sweet treat that promises to lift your Tuesday. That familiar fluorescent glare gave way to mood lighting and materiality—oak, stone, linen, and chrome. The grocery store became a designed experience, one that’s as much about atmosphere as it is about what you take home. Now, a growing group of founders are pushing that idea even further. Their motivations differ, but they orbit the same question: How do you make the most ordinary part of daily life more curated or even experiential?
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When the world shut down in 2020, Katherine Lewin found herself longing for a dinner party. With Big Night—a hybrid pantry-items-and-homewares store that now boasts three NYC locations in Greenpoint, the West Village, and the newly opened Upper East Side—she set out to make hosting feel easy. She tells AD that the goal was “to create a truly shoppable apartment,” where a wheel of Brie might sit beside the perfect Sabre butter knife. Chef Flynn McGarry, who opened Gem Home in October 2024, aimed to lift the curtain on restaurant life with his buzzy café-and-provisions store. “[Gem Home’s concept] was this blending of anything that falls under what we use in the restaurant, in a way that people are able to buy it and take it home,” he says. A place where patrons can “spend $20 on lunch and then spend an hour in the back looking at ceramics and antiques.”
Design in these new markets isn’t just for decoration, it’s a core pillar of the business model. McGarry did all of Gem Home’s woodworking himself to make certain the atmosphere would remain a suitable backdrop for the space’s diverse programming. “Since there are so many objects, groceries, homewares, and antiques, the architecture had to stay restrained. Anything ornate would overwhelm it,” he explains.
That attention to flow is also present at Meadow Lane, the Tribeca gourmet grocery whose founder, Nussdorf—better known as @brokebackcontessa—drew 130,000 TikTok followers while documenting its build-out before opening in November. Nussdorf describes Meadow Lane as “a calm space in a chaotic city.” Designed with Sarah Carpenter, the store rethinks the customer’s movement with wide aisles, custom Italian refrigeration cases, and a layout that slows from the coffee bar to the produce wall. “I wanted it to feel like you’ve taken a Xanax the moment you walk in,” Nussdorf jokes. There’s a rotating art program courtesy of Creative Art Partners, handwoven shopping baskets, and a floral studio that together make an errand feel like an exhale, echoing McGarry’s philosophy that every detail works together to create an experience.
Across the pond, Corner Shop at 180 The Thames in London (which opened this summer) feels as considered as its creative director Alex Eagle’s fashion and interior projects. Here, the focus is on what Eagle refers to as “the edit,” a curation that is in constant motion. “You want the things you always buy,” Eagle says, "but also one thing you didn’t know you needed until you saw it.”
Most importantly, these spaces are designed for how people actually live now: grabbing a quick lunch, buying flowers, picking up a vintage ceramic, and attending a dinner party, sometimes all in one place. For many shoppers, the “big shop” experience happens online anyway. Instacart and Amazon handle the basics; these stores serve pleasure, catering unapologetically to a more affluent clientele.
But aesthetics and a perfectly dressed salad alone won’t keep the lights on. Every inch of these chic new shops has to earn its keep. McGarry calls it “flexing the space” not just architecturally, but economically, with each element working overtime as café, retail display, or private venue. “In theory, it’s a simpler concept than other things I’ve done, but because it’s so multifaceted, it ends up being a pretty hard business…. Everything has to fit together.” At Big Night, the bar rolls out for brand activations, while Corner Shop’s mezzanine transforms into an event space by night. At Meadow Lane, Nussdorf said he had to balance aspiration with arithmetic: “Obviously, the business needs to sustain itself, so carving out usable, sellable square footage for a moment of a beautiful exotic tree isn’t going to work, but we did it where we could.”
These establishments say as much about design as they do about desire. In 2025, people want aesthetics that work—spaces that feel intentional, but also a little indulgent. With a new vanguard of stores to satisfy both cravings at once, the quick grocery run now feels like an outing. A decade ago, Lagerfeld dressed a runway as a grocery store; now the runway is the grocery store, and the production design has followed us right into the produce aisle.
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