DesignNew York · Design trend
Childlike design, from Kelsey Malone's party plates to a Manhattan bar
Primary colours, building-block shapes and classroom references are turning up in grown-up tableware, furniture and interiors, including a downtown New York bar.
Architectural Digest's Maya Ibbitson has noticed a trend: design for adults that borrows from the classroom, with primary colours, simple shapes and plenty of nostalgia. Her starting point is ceramicist Kelsey Malone's Busted Ceramics Party Plates. These are stoneware dishes with divided compartments and sweet-shop glazes, drawing on Montessori sorting trays, old TV dinners, animal-shaped Zoo-Pals plates and the mismatched Fiestaware Malone remembers squabbling over at a friend's house. Fittingly, she launched them with an ice cream social.
That party was held at Spring Bar in downtown Manhattan. There, designer Adrián Gonzalez covered the stainless steel walls with magnetic plastic letters, the kind children use to learn the alphabet. He describes the bar as a playground in grown-up colours. Elsewhere, Will Cooper of the brand William White has made ABCD drink tables in triangle, octagon, circle and square shapes, inspired by his childhood building blocks. They turn out to suit awkward corners rather well.
Why now? Chay Costello of the MoMA Design Store says nostalgia is driving what people buy, and Snoopy and Miffy night lights are among its best sellers. She links the appetite for play to anxious, uncertain times. As the piece points out, none of this is new: De Stijl, the German Expressionists, Pop artists and Takashi Murakami all went back to childhood before.
This is mostly a trend piece. Spring Bar is where you can see the idea in an actual room.
Our summary of a story from Architectural Digest, published 7 October 2026. Read the original
6 photos
From Architectural Digest