Author name: Odalisque

Leica M EV1: The First M with an Integrated Electronic Viewfinder   images courtesy of Leica  Leica unveils the M EV1, the first M-System camera to feature a fully integrated electronic viewfinder: a milestone that ushers the M range into a new era of precision photography. The M EV1 remains faithful to the M philosophy: pure design, exceptional materials, and a focus on the essentials of image-making. While maintaining the unmistakable silhouette of a classic M, the M EV1 combines tradition with cutting-edge innovation. Its high-resolution electronic viewfinder with dioptre adjustment offers a real-time preview of the final image, allowing for an intuitive and highly accurate manual shooting experience. Whether framing, focusing, or adjusting exposure, the photographer sees precisely what will be captured. At its core lies a full-frame sensor with Leica’s Triple Resolution Technology, producing images in 60, 36 or 18 megapixels. Paired with the Maestro III processor, it ensures remarkable image quality and rapid performance in both DNG and JPEG formats. Files can be stored either on the built-in 64 GB memory or an SD card, providing flexible storage options. Connectivity is seamlessly integrated, with Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and USB-C enabling swift transfers via the Leica FOTOS app. Images can be shared or edited instantly (even in the background) thanks to energy-efficient Bluetooth Low Energy technology. The M EV1 is also the first in the series to feature Content Credentials. This relevant feature affirm each photograph’s authenticity with a bitcoin-esque credential that in turn provides proof that AI or photoshop hasn’t tweaked or disrupted the images.   True to Leica’s design ethos, the M EV1 follows no trend but sets its own standards. Its clean lines, robust metal construction and refined leather trim convey both durability and timeless style. An optional ergonomic handgrip with matching leather covering is also available separately. The Leica M EV1 was made available on 23 October 2025 in Leica Stores, the Leica Online Store, and through authorised dealers worldwide. Released in the year marking 100 years of Leica photography, the M EV1 stands as both a celebration of heritage and a statement of modern craftsmanship; a new icon for the next century of image-making.

PENTATONIC The Infinite Loop: Design’s Missing Nervous System text Christine Deckert images courtesy of Pentatonic In fashion and design we obsess over the moment of first sight—a perfect line, a pristine surface, a product as promise. What happens after that moment has long been a blind spot. Pentatonic, a London-based circularity company, argues that the most important design phase begins after purchase. By converting returns and post-use objects into structured data, it claims to give designers a live feed of reality—how things are actually used, loved, broken, repaired, and reborn. Inside Pentatonic’s lab, shelves hold everything from box-fresh returns to battered veterans. “Every mark is data,” co-founder Johann Boedecker says, tracing a worn edge on a luxury bag from a household-name client he can’t disclose. The proposition is stark: if designers could “read” wear like language, they could design for what life does to objects—rather than for what a photoshootpromises. The feedback you never getPentatonic’s platform photographs, weighs and analyses returned products using computer vision and machine learning trained on millions of samples. Patterns—friction points, stress lines, off-label use—are turned into dashboards, design briefs and material recommendations. It’s quality control flipped: not to reject, but to learn.Vova Nesin, R&D and Innovation Director, calls it a “grammar of wear”. Shoes reveal gait; jackets reveal the choreography of daily life; toys reveal creative misuse. In one anonymised programme, Pentatonic’s data suggested 73%of returns showed off-label usage; re-engineered connections and material blends reportedly cut structural-failure returns by 34% and sparked new lines built for how people actually play. The thesis: misuse isn’t failure—it’s information. Beyond fit and finish: the emotional lifecycleThe company combines return reasons with sentiment streams to model when attachment peaks, plateaus and drops. Jamie Hall, Chief Commercial Strategy Officer, draws a line between tags-on returns (desire decisions) and returns after years of use (completed relationships). The latter, he says, carries deeper design insight: why someone stayed. For a winter coat, abandonment mightcorrelate less with wear-out than with shifts in climate, size or style. Designing for these transitions—clean alterations, re-dye programmes, modular add-ons—becomes part of the brief. Material intelligence, not material virtue                                                     Sustainability stories often sit on packaging; circularity lives in disassembly, sorting and value-retention. Pentatonic’s Product Genome Graph tracks how specific blends age, separate and recycle. In one cosmetics project (confidential), a plant-based plastic performed worse in the circular system than a conventional alternative: it degraded in use and resisted clean separation. A hybrid redesign reportedly improved durability by 67% and enabled a fully circular end-of-life. Thepoint is uncomfortable but useful: “bio-based” isn’t automatically best; verified circular performance is. Designers working with this data are starting to specify temporal materials-combinations intended to age legibly, separate cleanly and reconstitute predictably. The repair renaissanceRepair is no longer an admission of defeat; it’s a chapter in the product’s story. Pentatonic’s repair heat maps show where failure is most likely—and when visible mends increase value. In certain luxury categories, the company reports a 15–30% uplift in resale for beautifully repaired items. Cue a new philosophy: break beautifully. Not planned obsolescence, but designed reparability—failure that can be forgiven, even celebrated. Design for second and third livesThrough resale and reverse-logistics partners, Pentatonic follows products into subsequent ownerships. The best circular products aren’t immortal; they’re transformable. A chair that accrues character. A bag whose patina is a feature, not a flaw. A phone case refreshed seasonally without landfill. For brands, this becomes a new P&L: value captured at repair, refresh, refit and resaletouchpoints—relationships instead of single transactions. The algorithmic atelierIn Pentatonic’s visualisation rooms, returns scatter like weather systems. Teams filter by geography, seasonality, construction, failure mode. Correlations surface—useful, sometimes surprising. Boedecker is quick to say the goal isn’t to replace intuition: “AI doesn’t design. It validates and amplifies hunches with evidence.” The outcome is a different designer archetype: data-literate, materially fluent, emotionally aware. From ownership to circulationWhen designers see lifecycles rather than line sheets, ownership looks more like stewardship. Pentatonic’s internal models suggest products designed for multiple relationships can deliver ~3× higher lifetime value and ~60% lower total environmental impact versus like-for-like linear baselines. Whether those figures hold across categories is a fair question; the strategic direction isharder to dispute.   Predictive design The endgame is foresight: adjust a material thickness by 0.5 mm, and the system forecasts a trade-off between structural failures and weight-related returns; shift a colour palette, and it models refresh timing and second-life value. It is not prophecy—but it’s closer than moodboards. What changes if we design with this information? Fewer flawless first impressions; more pieces that age with grace. Durability that includes the right to repair. Materials chosen for how they come apart as much as how they hold together. Products that know how to die—and be reborn.