Sabine Marcelis has become a design breakout star, her minimal-yet-colorful work in glass and resin having penetrated the worlds of architecture, fashion, music, and TikTok. Now she’s conquered yet another realm of wider culture — beauty — through a major collaboration with the Swiss skincare brand La Prairie, with whom she’s just launched a vanity tray that marries her signature use of resin with the brand’s signature shade of cobalt. We decided it was a good moment to catch up with Marcelis, and talk to her not only about this project, but also about what materials she’s been experimenting with lately, how she feels in the wake of all the social media hype, and why she — cobalt excluded, of course — doesn’t actually like the color blue.

Marjan van Aubel calls herself a “solar designer,” and since she graduated from the RCA in 2012, she’s devoted her career to finding ways of making solar power more beautiful and accessible, using projects like solar-cell window hangings and rainbow-gradient solar roofs to inspire people to look at and use the technology in a new way. This week, she’s applying the same approach to the automotive realm, with a colorful interactive installation for Lexus in Miami that proves design can help speed us toward the future of environmentally conscious driving. We took the opportunity to sit down with van Aubel and learn more about the project, how she fell in love with solar energy, and why its future shouldn’t be dominated by men in blue suits.