April is the Cruelest Month
We're bed-rotting in a design-forward Italian way, taking deep breaths in the shower and updating our emojis to get through tax day, tariffs, and tornadoes. Cin cin!
Quick Fix: Eucalyptus Showers
We’re barely a week into April, and it’s already shaping up to be spectacularly rough—dreary weather, dismal financial news, and oh yeah, tax day is right around the corner. Delightful!
Consider this your gentle reminder: there are things you can’t control—tariffs, tornadoes, and tax season among them—and things you can, like what you choose to get out of today. Maybe that means making yourself a nice dinner, taking a meandering walk, calling an out-of-town friend, or indulging in a long, hot shower.
Speaking of showers—it is April, after all—we’re loving this quick fix: for a boost of stress relief, respiratory support, and a hit of fresh energy, tie a bundle of eucalyptus behind your shower head. It’ll last about three weeks and make even an eight-minute rinse feel like salvation. Check out Martha's how-to for the details.
Deep breaths, everyone.
Milan Design Week Theme: Seeking Comfort
An Italian study (because of course it was Italian) found that eating a big bowl of pasta sparks positive emotions. A professor at the University of Milan even declared, “pasta and happiness are one.” Science! Carbs trigger insulin, which boosts your blood sugar, energy, and mood—so, what we’re saying is rigatoni is basically therapy.
So, turn on Barilla’s pasta-water timed playlist, doodle your name on a lasagna noodle, and treat yourself to a steamy bowl of cacio e pepe.
If you’re the kind of carb hedonist that seeks more than the layman’s carbonara to feel better, please get acquainted with chef Michele Casadei Massari’s above “Candied Carbonara,” a next-level twist that just debuted at Eataly Milano for Milan Design Week.
Also at Milan Design Week: Marimekko and culinary artist Laila Gohar unveiled a giant bed installation celebrating their new capsule collection, Laila Gohar for Marimekko. The piece honors the cozy, communal moments we often experience in bed—movie nights, midnight snacks, fries with friends. In other words: bed-rotting, but in a chic Italian way.
Other things we will be doing in bed this month:
📚 Starting The Lamb by Lucy Rose (s/o Lynn & Tyler).
🎨 Deep-diving LA-based artist Peter Shire’s prolific output (t/y RK).
📺 Binging Dying for Sex.
🧴 Applying nightly Retinal before summer’s UV rays find us.
🔌 Thinking really hard about charging our phones in far, far away.
News on Tap: The Burnout Emoji Just Dropped
iOS 18.4 Update: New “Face With Bags Under Eyes” Emoji is going to be heavily in rotation this year. (Fast Company)
Why Are These Clubs Closing? The Rent Is High, and the Alcohol Isn’t Flowing.
(The New York Times)
April is Alcohol Awareness Month. (NIH)
The drop in drinking is worrying big alcohol brands in Japan (Financial Times).
Why Is It So Hard to Find a Good Nonalcoholic Wine? (The New York Times).
Gen Z Isn’t Getting Drunk (Slug).
Tequila Bans Show us the Heavy Cost of Trump’s Tariffs (The New York Times)
Athletic Brewing's Nonalcoholic Empire Grows Amid Shift to Moderation
(AdWeek Podcast)
Pour Decisions: Casamara Transatlantic Sodas
It’s hard to overstate how much we love Casamara Club, the Detroit-based leisure soda company. Their wildly popular Superclasico NA cocktail was featured in our first newsletter and it’s currently in our fridge. But we are just as fanatic about their Transatlantic botanical sodas, which we’ve been drinking for a year now. They blend the sophistication of a cocktail with the refreshment of a soda, without an overly sweet taste.
Cartmaxxing: La Veste Table Linens
Please don’t threaten us with a gingham coaster, a striped napkin, or anything with ric-rac during this time of year because we will be adding it all to our cart (and then abandoning it, and then re-adding next week), especially if it’s from La Veste which brings a breezy 70s vibe to everything they do.