Singapore’s undeserved reputation for being dull is, mercifully, mostly behind it. Anyone who has visited recently will have seen those long-promised green shoots of growth and sophistication bearing lush fruit in everything from hospitality and design to entrepreneurship. Plus, doesn’t being safe, steady and predictable seem rather appealing today, given the fractious global backdrop?

But there’s a thorny issue that still threatens the country’s success. Having finally achieved the cultural and creative cachet that they craved, Singapore’s budding restaurant, retail and hotel scenes had a slower-than-hoped-for Q1. Rent rises from private developers and landlords are now fast outstripping what smaller businesses say that they can comfortably afford.

When good businesses on tight margins go under in a squeeze, their neighbourhoods pay a steep price. Once-thriving Tiong Bahru has lost some of its former lustre and you only need to look as far as the sad closure of the Thambi Magazine Store in Holland Village to see how one lively independent operator – of more than 80 years’ standing – can unite and delight an area, then leave it wanting when it’s gone.

The issue of peaking rental prices was unavoidable among the people I spoke to on a recent reporting trip with our Asia editor, James Chambers. One Singapore-based owner of a Japanese clothing brand told us about staging a trunk show in Seoul to test the market as costs soared at home. Two others in the hospitality trade told us about upcoming trips to Jakarta to scope out spaces where their money could go further (both near Plaza Indonesia, if you’re looking yourself).

Luckily, some solutions are close at hand. Our trip to New Bahru – a handsome school-turned-shopping precinct – is a lesson in what decent, walkable, human-scale design that brings local brands together can do for footfall (plenty). Owned by The Lo & Behold Group, the space’s 40 or so tenants include a great bookshop, a spa, restaurants, multi-brands and places to drink that offer daylong allure. It’s a blueprint for designing a destination from scratch and keeping the creatives close. A much-anticipated phase two opens next year.

Over dinner at Marcy’s on Duxton Road I discussed the matter with the seafood bistro’s owner, Goh Tong Hann, who returned to his native Singapore after a stint in New York and is now patiently building a small but influential F&B outfit called Pleasurecraft Group. While he insists that his success has been a matter of luck, Hann has also demonstrated a handy resourcefulness. Rather than forking out for expensive refits, for instance, he has put his talents into designing the restaurants (see Chinese restaurant Maggie’s for a flavour) and has quickly pivoted on concepts and spaces that weren’t working. It’s a post-pandemic success story among all too many less fortunate ones.

To see where rampant price inflation leads, you need only wander through one of the umpteen over-air-conditioned malls stuffed with samey international shops that have little in the way of personality. If Singapore wants to remain an exciting place to eat, drink and shop – and end the lazy chatter about it being boring once and for all – then it can’t afford to overlook the rent conundrum. It’s the city’s vibrancy that will suffer if rents continue to rise unchallenged.

Fehnert is Monocle’s editor. For more on the New Bahru development, read our report here. And for tips to help you get the most out of your stay in Singapore, read our City Guide.

The Arabian Gulf was wide awake on Monday night as shaky footage of Iranian missiles over Qatari skies filled our screens. While it was one of the politest acts of aggression ever witnessed, the region’s centres of commerce, from Doha to Dubai, are rightly concerned. Iran had launched a carefully telegraphed barrage of missiles at the US military’s Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar – home to some 10,000 American personnel – in retaliation for Washington’s strike on three of its nuclear sites over the weekend. Doha had been given advance notice and residents knew that something was coming when the country’s airspace was closed and the US and UK embassies told all citizens to remain indoors. Then, a spectacle unfolded in the sky: striking and surreal but ultimately bloodless.

The mood in Dubai is a little more introspective today – not tense or fearful so much as eerie. There’s the usual rush into the financial district; bookings for brunches and beach clubs haven’t been cancelled; the school run continues. But people are walking a little more slowly and perhaps even speaking a tad more quietly. Everyone was glued to their phones last night because, this time, it felt different. It was right above us. 

In Doha, I’m told that the mood is less serene. Flights are resuming but the city remains on high alert – and it must. The Qatari government is balancing too many delicate relationships – with the US, Hamas and Iran – and now dealing with the prospect of incoming missiles. Qatar has played the middleman better than most countries over the years but the best middlemen know when things are getting too hot. 

If Iran’s attempt to hit a US base in Qatar looked like the most civilised missile attack in modern memory, that’s because it was. Abbas Araghchi, Iran’s foreign minister, made it clear that the goal of the attack was deterrence, not death. Donald Trump even thanked Iran for the warning, calling the missiles “weak”, and suggested that both parties had essentially done what they needed to do. Israel and the US got to flex their might as Operation Midnight Hammer severely damaged Iran’s nuclear programme. Iran got to save face with a dramatic but largely theatrical response. And Trump got to talk about peace. But what about the region? What about those of us watching from Dubai and Doha, cities that thrive on calm and continuity?

For many in the Gulf, especially the vast expat community that lives between the Middle East and Europe, the real anxiety wasn’t about politics or power plays – it was about planes. British Airways briefly grounded its routes, Flydubai held back for a while and parents started quietly wondering whether summer holidays to the Med would still happen. In truth, most people in Qatari and Emirati cities aren’t concerned about the big diplomatic picture. They’re thinking practically: will tensions affect oil prices? Will airspace closures become the new normal? For all the choreography, there’s still a deep unease. Iran is weakened but also more desperate.

Whether a lasting ceasefire will soon materialise depends on who you ask. Neither Israel nor Iran appeared fully committed to Trump’s script and tit-for-tat missile attacks quickly resumed on Tuesday morning. Can Tehran really regard Trump as a trusted broker of peace when, only days ago, he floated the idea of regime change in Iran? And can Israel be convinced to pull back on its hard-won military advantage when every instinct will push its leaders to double down and deny Tehran any chance of rebuilding? There are motivations on both sides to continue a conflict in which each sees the other as an existential threat. So, yes, the skies might have cleared and for now the missiles have stopped. But beneath the calm, the fundamentals remain unchanged. Here in the Gulf, we know better than to confuse a pause with peace. And in cities such as Dubai and Doha – outwardly calm, inwardly braced – we’ll keep watching the skies just in case.

In the internet age, it’s usually easy to pinpoint the origin of a trend. Much was made of Rihanna’s Guo Pei “omelette gown”, worn to the 2015 Met Gala, and the effect that it had on the popularity of the colour yellow. Since then, trend cycles have quickened in tandem with download speeds, to the extent that someone declaring a particular garment the new omelette gown at breakfast might well have egg on their dress come dinner time. 

But among all the ephemeral mauves, brattish greens and millennial pinks, one colour has quietly come to dominate the fashion-scape. I am referring, of course, to brown. 

Now, like a member of parliament before a debate, I feel I must declare an interest: I am a big fan of brown. Taken out of context those seven words might alarm but one glance at my summer wardrobe should steady your pulse. For in among the tobacco cords and marron moleskins of autumn-winters past are liverish linens and khaki keks. Conversations with my colleagues – a near universally fashion-conscious bunch – reveal a similar predilection for the warm-weather brown. And when anecdotal evidence matches the runways and billboards, a trend’s afoot.  

Brown’s appeal is not difficult to discern. It is, as Fiona Ingham, a colour analyst for the House of Colour (a company that helps people find which hues best suit their style and complexion), describes it, both “comforting and nurturing.” Oliver Spencer, a British menswear designer, heralds brown as “dark, rich and beautiful.” Both agree that the colour is well-suited for times when people seek a more casual approach to formalwear. “You can dress it up or down,” says Spencer. “You can buy the suit and wear the trousers on their own, while the jacket looks great with a pair of jeans.” Spencer’s eponymous label even has a “Brown Edit” page on its website. The featured pieces offer two chocolate fingers up at the old adage “no brown in town,” which was used to warn aspirant rakes against mixing brown leather shoes with a dark suit. “This [rule] still remains in the most formally dressed occupations such as law and finance,” says Ingham. “But now, men in many settings feel they can wear [brown] without recrimination.” “It also translates well in knit and cloth,” says Isabel Ettedgui, owner of Mayfair-based clothing brand Connolly, who adds that the colour “has a certain masculine energy.” 

But what of the other forces driving the brown wave? Is it part of a wider 1970s throwback or are such mass-participation trends not possible in 2025? Some argue that during times of hardship and uncertainty, people cleave to colours that suit their mood. Could our fractious world help explain a newfound fondness for umber? “No,” says Oliver Spencer. “I think that the exact opposite happens – people bring out bright colours to try to lighten things up.” I suppose that there’s no definitive answer to that question, though a look at the runways would suggest that Spencer is, at least, half-right – the Paris 2025 shows saw the return of yellow and sky blue, alongside the now obligatory 50 shades of brown. 

One famous indicator of trending hues is colour specialist Pantone’s Color of the Year. Mocha mousse, an “evocative soft brown” that “nurtures with its suggestion of the delectable quality of cacao, chocolate and coffee” was the company’s choice for 2025. 

Whether or not you subscribe to such views, it’s difficult to deny the prescience and influence of Pantone’s annual award. As well as its very effective PR stunt, the US company produces a book called the Pantone View Colour Planner that contains the pigment and textile standards of 64 zeitgeisty colours in nine distinct palettes. The annual publication, which costs around €800, is said to be a must-have for any budding – or well bloomed – clothier, couturier or modiste. 

But in the age of Instagram and Pinterest, can there still be top-down progenitors of chromatic trends? Are we still living in a world in which Miranda Priestly, Meryl Streep’s character from The Devil Wears Prada, could so haughtily deliver her “cerulean blue” monologue? “I don’t think so,” says Monocle’s fashion director, Natalie Theodosi. “The runway plays a role but trends now move much faster and are determined by social media, music, films, even current affairs. In some ways it has become the reverse, brands and media follow online trends.” Perhaps therein lies the appeal of brown: it is a fundamentally adaptable colour – both neutral and statement, workaday and fashionable, of its time and timeless – making it perfect for our lives in the permanent now.

When I boarded a plane last weekend to attend the spring/summer 2026 edition of Milan Fashion Week Men’s, which concluded yesterday, I knew that this would be a different kind of show season. First, there were notable absentees: many of the usual headliners, from Gucci and Fendi to JW Anderson, chose to sit out this year’s event as they attempted to rebrand and rethink their strategy under new executive teams.

Given the wave of hirings and firings that has been sweeping through luxury houses, it didn’t come as a surprise. But this was the first season in which the effect of the industry’s HR crisis was so visible. There was less excitement or novelty on the runways than in recent years and fewer international attendees too. The disruptive cycle doesn’t seem to have reached its end either: yesterday, Prada announced the departure of its CEO, Gianfranco D’Attis, just a few days after Francesco Risso stepped down from his position as creative director of Milanese label Marni and Ben Gorham left beauty label Byredo, which he founded in his native Stockholm in 2006. The biggest news, though, was François-Henri Pinault handing the reins of Kering, the luxury group founded by his father, to former Renault CEO Luca de Meo.

However, there are brands proving that they have lasting power, delivering artisanal quality and desirable collections season after season. At Brioni, Norbert Stumpfl has continued to refine his tailoring with feather-light fabrics; Canali has crafted leather outerwear inspired by vintage cars; meanwhile, Zegna’s Alessandro Sartori continues to raise the bar with new fabric innovations, from washed silks to hand-woven suede cardigans that take as long as a year to craft. In most cases, the winning businesses are still run by their founding families, with a clear vision about who they are and a strategy of pursuing slower growth.

Like other industries, fashion is also having to grapple with the current geopolitical situation. News of the US bombing of Iran broke hours before the Prada show in Milan, where models walked to an ominous soundtrack, though they were wearing optimistic primary colours. “What can we do but try to put a smile on people’s faces?” said Raf Simons, the brand’s co-creative director, while a pensive Miuccia Prada nodded in the background. “We have been trying to change the tone to something more gentle, looking to nature,” she said. “It’s the opposite of aggression, power and nastiness.” In such moments, big thinkers such as Prada are the ones who will hold on to their relevance. As Milan passes the baton to Paris Fashion Week Men’s, which starts today and runs until 29 June, all eyes are on the larger-scale luxury houses to see who will rise to today’s challenges.

Here, we round up the brands that stood out in Milan and approached a testing season with grace. 

The British delegation
With London Men’s Fashion Week cancelled, the UK’s leading menswear names are making a new home in Milan, where they can continue a dialogue between the worlds of British and Italian tailoring. Paul Smith, who is usually a regular in Paris, chose to invite the industry to his own Milanese showroom – a modernist space near Porta Romana – for his Milan Fashion Week debut. “[Owning property] is a big advantage, especially in this world that we live in,” said Smith backstage. His spring/summer collection, which featured sleek pinstripe suits and splashes of vibrant colour inspired by the bazaars of Cairo “and all the trinkets you discover in a street market,” offered a much-needed moment of lightness – as did Smith’s joyful skip down the showroom stairs before taking his final bow. 

A day later in a hidden Milanese garden, Simon Holloway, creative director of London-based label Dunhill, presented a more formal version of British tailoring, while still sprinkling the right touches of humour: bright stripes and straw hats for garden parties, with patterned ties and linen suits channeling Bryan Ferry. “I love that [Ferry] wears the most classic, English clothing but maintains a cool factor – it’s a studied kind of wardrobe,” said Holloway during a preview. His precision is a joy to observe: everything is considered, from the vintage watches and signet rings accessorising his looks to the impeccably groomed dogs walking down the runway alongside some of the models. It’s no wonder that he has reignited interest in Dunhill so quickly.

A welcome return 
Off the runway on the quiet Via Bigli, Turkish designer Umit Benan opened the doors to his first boutique – a space dressed in dark mahogany inspired by yacht interiors, filled with mid-century design pieces. His collection of relaxed tailoring, cotton basics and intricate tunics is on show alongside Jacques Marie Mage eyewear and jewellery. Head downstairs to place a bespoke order and keep an eye out for more retail projects from Benan. With a new investor on board, the designer is broadening his ambitions and plotting openings in more fashion capitals in the near future. 

Armani reigns supreme 
This season we lost a moment that never fails to bring a smile to even the most stone-faced of fashion editors: Giorgio Armani didn’t take his famous finalé bow, as he was recovering from a short bout of illness at home. But the two collections presented by his teams (for his eponymous label as well as for his Emporio Armani line) were still momentous. At Emporio Armani, the audience was brought to Central Asia by way of Africa. Armani revisited his love of travelling and discovering new cultures by adding patterned tunics, intricate bead embroidery and crocheted bags to his usual repertoire of silk sets, collarless shirting and loose tailoring. His consistent commitment to elegance, refinement and trend-free design is a breath of fresh air during a time when the fashion industry’s constant search for novelty is getting old. 

Natalie Theodosi is Monocle’s fashion director. Look out for reports and interviews from Paris this week on monocle.com and Monocle Radio. And subscribe to never miss a beat.

In the US and elsewhere, those aggrieved by US action against Iran this weekend have fallen predictably back on comparisons with the events of 2003, when the US and its allies invaded Iraq. 

Twenty-two years ago the US justified this drastic action with the prospect of a rogue regime developing weapons of mass destruction, along with the vague notion that toppling said tyranny would usher in a new dawn of peace and democracy, not only in the country on the receiving end but across the wider Middle Eastern region. The weapons turned out not to exist, while peace and democracy remain works in progress: Iraq might now be a broadly better place than it was under Saddam Hussein but that is a low bar cleared at horrendous cost, most of it borne by Iraq’s people.

But while there might well be reasonable grounds for protesting the decision by Donald Trump to join Israel’s assault on Iran’s nuclear – and other – facilities, they are not to be found anywhere in Iraq. Iraq is not Iran and then is not now. 

For a start, nobody is suggesting that the US or its allies mount a full-scale invasion of Iran. But the threat posed by the country is – and has been for decades – substantially less imaginary than that ever posed by Hussein’s Iraq. Iran has long operated and facilitated a network of baneful proxies across the Middle East, greatly to the detriment of the people of Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen. Iran has also officially pledged itself, time and again, to the destruction of a fellow member of the United Nations, Israel, a country entitled – if not obliged – by history to take such threats seriously. 

One does not need to be especially twitchy to dislike the idea of all of the above underpinned by the power to deliver cataclysm, and in June, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) – not a noted coterie of yee-hawing warmongers – declared Iran in breach of non-proliferation obligations, in enriching uranium far beyond what is necessary for civilian power generation. The IAEA estimated that Iran was close to having enough weapons-grade uranium to make nine nuclear bombs. 

The anger from some Democrats that Trump has not sought Congressional approval for these raids is performative. There is a probably unresolvable glitch in the American system, to the effect that while the power to declare war theoretically does belong to Congress, the president is the commander in chief. Besides which, formal declarations of war are a relic of an older world: no US president, Republican or Democrat, has sought such authority from Congress since 4 June 1942, when the US declared war on Bulgaria, Hungary and Romania. 

At this early stage, Trump’s decision looks more opportunist than strategic. The US president appears to have calculated that with Israel having started operations against Iran’s nuclear apparatus, the US could finish the job (the degree to which any of this was choreographed in advance between Jerusalem and Washington is, at this point, unknowable). He further seems to believe – and correctly – that Iran is in a weaker position than it has been for many years. Its proxies Hezbollah, Hamas and the Houthis are substantially withered; its former puppet Bashar al-Assad is banished. The Iranian regime also fears the frustrations of that (large) portion of its own population that would prefer the nation to be, as it could and should be, a prosperous and marvellous modern state, as opposed to a bankrupt and ossified theocracy. Iran’s options for retaliation, whatever apocalyptic threats that it utters, are limited. 

Trump could certainly have banked that, whatever pro forma diplomatic harrumphing is being emitted from some quarters, nobody is really much upset by Iran’s nuclear ambitions being curtailed. While Iran has had clients and vassals, it has no friends. Even Russia and China, Iran’s current sort-of allies of convenience, were signatories to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action – the deal brokered by the Obama administration that limited Iran’s uranium enrichment before Trump flounced from it during his first term. 

As is always a possibility where Trump is concerned, he might just be acting on inchoate impulse – and his instincts, it is fair to say, have been short of 100 per cent reliable before now. But any serious objection to the action taken by the US this weekend – and Israel in recent days – has to acknowledge what an Iranian bomb would mean – or, perhaps, would have meant. 

For more updates and insights, tune in to Monocle Radio.