Thousands of Waterford Crystal Discs Fall From the Sky in 2026 as Sophisticated Living Welcomes Its 14th Year
Compiled by Grayling Holmes
As 2026 dawns, 5,280 circular Waterford crystal discs will fall from the sky on the ball in Times Square. Like fine Waterford crystal, 2026 rings in the fourteenth year that Sophisticated Living St. Louis has brought you the finest.
The new ball is the largest ever, over 12-feet wide and weighs more than 12,000 pounds. The circular discs represent infinity, hope, and the 250th anniversary of the U.S., tying into “Life, Liberty, and Happiness” for the 2026 ball drop.
Largest Every New Year’s Eve Ball Welcomes 2026 and U.S. 250th Anniversary
Sophisticated Living will continue to imbue these values into its pages. During our fourteenth year of publication, we will shine a light on the people, places, things, and values that make the greater St. Louis region one of the best in the country.
Get a taste of what 2026 has in store in the pages of our first issue of the new year. If you are reading our publication for the first or close to 100 times, savor all that St. Louis’ leading luxury lifestyle magazine has to bring.
Publisher’s Letter
by Craig Kaminer / photo by Zach Dalin
Craig Kaminer
Excerpt:
As we welcome a new year, I find myself reflecting not just on the stories we tell in these pages but on the responsibility that comes with telling them. In a world that feels louder, faster and more fractured by the day, the role of the media — truly free, truly impartial media — has never been more essential. It is not merely a professional obligation; it is one of the foundational pillars of democracy itself.
A free press is the immune system of a healthy society. It identifies threats, illuminates blind spots and strengthens the public’s ability to make informed decisions. When it functions at its best, journalism helps us rise above fear, rumor and manipulation — forces that have always been the enemies of progress.
But today, the environment in which information lives and spreads is unlike anything our nation has ever faced. Trust is more fragile. Facts are more contested. Algorithms deliver tailor-made realities to every screen. And in the noise, it becomes easier for people to disengage entirely, to retreat into echo chambers or to mistake opinion for truth and entertainment for insight.
Cosmic Color Comes to Kranzbergville: Kenny Scharf and the New Walls Off Washington
by Craig Kaminer / Photo by Zach Dalin
Kenny Scharf
Excerpt:
It’s a rare thing when the art world’s cosmic energy focuses squarely on St. Louis. But in early November, that’s exactly what happened when Kenny Scharf — one of the luminaries of New York’s 1980s East Village art explosion and a close contemporary of Keith Haring, Jean-Michel Basquiat and Andy Warhol — touched down in Midtown to paint a new mural for the Kranzberg Arts Foundation.
For a few electrifying days, the alleyways behind Washington Avenue were transformed into something resembling a 1980s downtown NYC studio — spray paint cans clattering, colors colliding and curious onlookers drawn into the buzz of creativity. Scharf called the mural “Kranzbergville For EVA” — a title that riffs on the nickname for this growing arts corridor and his own boundless optimism: forever, infinite, ever-expanding.
Updating A Sweet History
by Craig Kaminer / Photo by John Lore
Dan Abel Jr., Bissinger’s Chief Chocolate Officer
Excerpt:
Walk into Bissinger’s Handcrafted Chocolatier and sister company Chocolate Chocolate Chocolate Company’s candy kitchen on The Hill in St. Louis and you’ll hear the rhythms of a factory that has never lost the human touch: Copper kettles hissing softly, caramel cooling in measured sheets, a chocolatier’s gloved hand guiding a ribbon of tempered couverture into perfect shine. For decades, Bissinger’s — one of the oldest names in American confectionery — and the Abel family’s Chocolate Chocolate Chocolate Company have been guardians of that craft. Today, they’re doing something harder: translating hand-made heritage into modern growth, with a bold expansion plan that plants the St. Louis chocolate story in two of America’s most competitive arenas — Nashville and New York City.
“My parents started a candy company and, literally, I grew up on the production floor in a candy kitchen, so my brother, sister and I have been working in the business in some fashion since I was 10 years old,” Dan Abel Jr., Chief Chocolate Officer, says. “The dinner table was the family business. Summers on the line, holidays in shipping, retail weekends, unloading trucks, loading trucks — We all wanted to get involved in the business as we came out of school.”