Wade and Leta

A little Wade and Leta inspiration moment and a very special memory. Last week, we headed out to Shizuoka for an overnight trip to visit .bar, one of the last remaining interior projects by Kuramata Shiro, the prolific Japanese designer who is responsible for some of our favorite design objects and brand interiors from the postmodern period.

To greet us was Nakayama-san, an enthusiast for Kuramata-san’s work and cocktail-making extraordinaire. Nakayama-san is the steward of this bar and has held a long history with it, starting as a cleaner during its opening in 1989. Around 2023, he took ownership of the space and has since been opening its doors nightly to design and cocktail enthusiasts alike.

After pouring over our books of Kuramata-san, we’re quite familiar with his design objects—especially his floating ghost-like lamps produced with , but being in his spaces is something quite new and novel to us. I’ve been fascinated by his ability to manipulate resin and create a sense of weightlessness, but seeing it in harmony with so many other materials in this space is just a whole new context. Anodized aluminum, suspended halogen light bulbs, glass, and a floating yellow resin bar sit so succinctly together to create a space that feels just as contemporary as it did when it was designed in 1988. As we are spending more time thinking about spaces and objects this year, it is places like these that really bring so much into perspective on our goals and our dreams.

My biggest regret? Not coming sooner. Thank you Nakayama-san for your kind hospitality and for being so kind to design enthusiasts like us.

I know it’s a little late for 2026 goals (we are in February after all) but despite the timing, this post is very indicative of how i’m feeling about this year. Every year, I avoid making goals. I have always had the mentality that “whatever will happen will happen,” while simultaneously maintaining this control-freak anxiety that causes me to want to control every little aspect of our practice, resulting in a few nervous breakdowns.

I have this problem where I never think anything is good enough to release, and when I do release it, I just still don’t think I should have released it. I’ll be brutally honest—i’m scared of rejection. But this year, I want to get better at so many things. I want to put more out there. I want to feel like I can be confident about what I am sharing, and what i’m experimenting with. I don’t want to listen to my anxiety!

Therefore, I want to push myself further out of my comfort zone this year and try to do more. I struggle so much with deciding what kind of creative person I want to be but I think that the reality is that I want to be creative in many different things. Perhaps this becomes confusing for clients, but quite frankly, we just need to express, and if we express enough, someone might be able to figure it out.

Anyway, over the years, we have made lots of little (and some big) wall works, but to me they have always felt a bit stiff and I haven’t known how to get past that. I got a new pen for my iPad not so long ago, and I think I may have figured out what was missing… my hand.

10 years ago, on January 21, and I decided to take it to the next level. After meeting on the online dating platform OK Cupid (desktop only at that time—oh, what a time!), things escalated quickly. We fell in love quickly, took a trip to Japan, started a portrait series together, met each others’ families, and we concluded that the only way we could continue to grow together was if we were to commit ourselves to holy matrimony and, ideally, citizenship so we could start our studio together.

I know we’re meant to only discuss 2016 in terms of nostalgia, and yes, I will, but oh, what a time, what a time. To think about so much opportunity, so much possibility—and to stare it in the face, wide-eyed and fresh-faced—is an experience that is quite unique to recount.

But in order to be nostalgic about 2016, I actually need to be nostalgic about 2013, when Wade and I met. I had no clue. I imagine we’d all say that about ourselves 10+ years ago. I wanted to be good. I wanted to be me. I wanted to design, and I wanted to succeed. I wanted love, I wanted care, and I wanted to ensure that whoever I met, they’d tick all these boxes, and some that i’d never even thought of. Personally, before meeting Wade, I felt quite certain that I was destined to crash and burn in relationships, and that all of these aspirations were just wishful thinking that would never be fulfilled. But, I was very wrong.

Wade is someone who manages to exceptionally exceed all of these margins. He’s pensive, considerate, collaborative, caring, and proactive. He makes up for what I am not, and motivates me to be the person I will always strive to be, and teaches me to be someone he can be proud of. 10+ years of this relationship has helped me grow into someone my 2013- and 2016-year-old self would admire.

I couldn’t do this alone. I have the best teammate in the world—for me. I’m so fortunate. And I can’t wait to see what we’ll be like in another 10 years together.

LOVE YOU WADE!