Editor’s Letter: How Contemporary Design Lets Us Reevaluate the Past

I often feel that we are living in atavistic times. Despite (or because of) the breakneck pace of human-caused change in (and to) the world, the calls seem louder than ever to return to some prelapsarian time when the planet was a better, less complicated place, at least for some of its occupants. I get it. The future can feel scary. But living in the past feels scarier, because it makes progress and growth impossible.

So from a traveler’s perspective, I find it deeply heartening to observe how the past is being reevaluated and remixed around the world (an idea we come back to often in these pages) to reflect all that we’ve learned in the ensuing years and signal where we hope to be headed. Take two quintessentially American cities that will play a key role in next year’s semiquincentennial: Charleston and Boston. Both are actively seeking, through food, history, and art, to broaden the narrative of how they came to be and to include all the voices that made them great in a way that aligns with their diverse, dynamic presents. Take Cairo, which, with the long-awaited Grand Egyptian Museum and numerous hotel and lifestyle projects in the central city, is channeling millennia of history through the lens of modernity. Or even Malta, which, through redevelopment efforts and ambitious curatorial projects, has made itself so much more than a dusty living museum on an island in the Med.

One of the most thrilling means of engaging with the past from a contemporary perspective is through design. In a collection of stories, we explore everything from what it means to update icons like W Hotels and the Orient Express to how modern-day artisans are breathing new life into centuries-old textile traditions in places as varied as Alabama and Okinawa. It all adds up to a reminder that the past isn’t fixed, that history is alive, and that by looking at it anew, again and again, we’ll be better equipped to face the future.

This article appeared in the September/October 2025 issue of Condé Nast Traveler. Subscribe to the magazine here.