In a year marked by unprecedented protests in Iran, one object is the global symbol of women's rights claims in the Middle Eastern country, where cutting one's hair becomes an act of rebellion against the government and repression.

Gaetano Pesce's collaboration with Bottega Veneta resulted in four hundred resin chairs, all alike but all different from each other. Like human beings, similar but different. A tribute to diversity: a strong, clear and political message, conveyed by an object designed by a master for the brand on which Kering is betting so much.

Rolls Royce and EasyJet join forces and unveil a hydrogen engine that could become the benchmark for aviation between now and 2050, the symbolic target date for the global goal of net zero carbon emissions. In fact, hydrogen does not produce carbon dioxide, but water, when used as fuel. This engine is a prototype that has particular importance given the many criticisms for the use of air transportation, private jets in the first place, because of the impact on the environment, and because of the large increase in airfare prices.

The jacket designed by Alessandro Michele and presented during the Gucci SS23 fashion show pays tribute to FUORI! (Fronte Unitario Omosessuale Rivoluzionario Italiano), Italy's leading militant organization for gay rights founded in 1971. The jacket, which reproduces the cover of the anthology dedicated to FUORI! by NERO Edizioni, captures the dominant culture's rediscovery of a fundamental part of civil rights history, but it has also been widely criticized for turning a fundamental page of activist history into a commodity.

Apple's headphones had been met with coolness and some sneers at launch: more expensive than average, with unusual lines and materials, and oversized. This year they became ubiquitous, thanks to their unique audio performance, and a trend ignited by personalities such as Dua Lipa, Bella Hadid, plus endless tiktokers and influencers, becoming one of the symbols of the Y2K aesthetic.

In 1972, Mario Bellini's Citroën Kar-a-Sutra concept was presented at MoMa among the environments of “Italy: the New Domestic Landscape”: it was a car-not-a-car, a residential hybrid that had very little of the motor vehicle. Half a century later, it is another Citroën that stands out as part of the new urban landscape: tiny and essential, electric, rentable with a Netflix-like monthly subscription: it is the object that represents a new model of mobility.

Squared, two-dimensional, two-tone yellow and blue, the flag goes viral when Russia invades Ukraine on February 24, 2022. Simple as a digital icon, it is the global symbol of the first war we followed live on TikTok and Instagram.

999 copies of a unique object: a set of personal cutlery, not a service, held together by a ring. They are designed for Alessi by Virgil Abloh, who passed away in late 2021. From the lines are essential, they come across as a noble version of the camping set, with an eco prepper that inescapably ties them to today.

The new remote control by Samsung needs no batteries but recharges using the available light and turning the router's radio waves into energy through RF charging. Narrow and tapered, it integrates a solar panel on its back. According to the Korean company, it can avoid disposing of nearly 100 million spent batteries within 7 years.

In collaboration with Danish audio masters Bang & Olufsen, Balenciaga reimagines the bag as a hybrid, stylizing the lines of the fashion house's iconic It bags in solid form and twisting their function by integrating a speaker. The result is a functional sculpture of lambskin and metal, mirroring the post-Covid years obsession with fashion accessories and the popularization of always-on portable speakers.

Superstudio's table was put into production by Zanotta in 1972, symbolically crowning Italian radical design as a season of rupture and transition between modern and postmodern, between different relationships of design and production. Simple in its materials, honeycomb wood and laminate print, it gives precedence to communication over technique, deriving directly from the Continuous Monument and the Supersurfaces of the late 1960s, true idols of the radical revival of recent years.

The popularity of this little white box is a reflection of something that is instead disappearing, cash, supplanted by cashless payments by card or directly from the phone. SumUp is symbolic of this momentous shift, a portable device that allows anyone to cash out using just a smartphone.

Citybike nearly doubles the number of electric bikes for sharing in New York (9000), Barcelona is ready to roll out its new all-electric AMBici service, and Lime's red-green ebikes, after its acquisition of Jump, are rampant in Europe's major cities, becoming a mobile part of street furniture.

“Wordle” is the most searched word of the year on Google: a digital object of disarming simplicity but with an essentially perfect game design. The New York Times acquired it in early 2022 to integrate it into its site, thus crowning it as the heir to the crossword puzzle in the 21st century.

A sprayable dress is not only an innovation in the field of dematerialization (although it is a fiber for all intents and purposes, although not woven), but also a new horizon of gestuality and poetics. This was demonstrated at Paris Fashion Week by designers Sébastien Meyer and Arnaud Vaillant of Coperni, making a fabric materialize live on Bella Hadid’s body.

With a name that is at once hyperbole but also paradoxical, Ferrari has launched a vehicle with the least Familienähnlichkeit - family resemblance - of anything seen coming out of Maranello from 1947 to the present. An ultra-luxury SUV, the first 5-door, 4-seater Ferrari. With Purosangue, the Cavallino Rampante dilutes its identity with a car that embraces market trends, but still remains a Ferrari.

First launched in 2020, Merrell's Hydro Moc can be considered the design that paved the way for the exponential rise of polyurethane and 3D-printed clogs, which became new footwear status symbols during 2022, but also signaled the increasing integration of technical and technological elements into how we dress.

The debut of the watch born from the collaboration between Omega and Swatch was greeted with long lines outside stores, the first in the post-Covid era for a non-first commodity. MoonSwatch is a collection of bioceramic wrist timepieces that pay homage to the Speedmaster model and especially to Omega's Moonwatch, the first watch worn by an astronaut on the Moon. There are eleven different colorways, each dedicated to a planet or satellite in our solar system, including its star: the Sun.

In 2022 the lamp created by Pier Giacomo and Achille Castiglioni for Flos turned 60 years old, along which it has never left the scene, becoming an absolute of design, almost an archetype, the image automatically associated with the word “lamp.” The sought-after simplicity of its form and technology (the marble base, the telescopic arch in U-shaped steel profiles, the double adjustable dome) have remained virtually unchanged throughout 6 decades of production, and have earned it a huge success celebrated this year with the Compasso d'Oro Career Award as an undisputed long-seller. A limited edition, Arco K 2022 , was produced for the anniversary, with the base consisting of a crystal block.

From those fired in Ukraine, often with customized inscriptions “to the recipient”, to space launches, with giant rockets soon to be used for tourist flights for a very few super-rich people, the rocket is an object we have seen in abundance this year and in some cases would have gladly done without. The modern rocket myth turns one hundred years old in this very decade: the symbolic date with which it coincides is the release of Fritz Lang's 1929 film Frau Im Mond, The Woman on the Moon.