Los Angeles spent the summer hosting World Cup matches without a promised piece of infrastructure for the occasion. Skylink, an airport train first scheduled to run in 2023, missed its debut after cost overruns of an estimated $500m (€428m). The people mover hardly looks any different from Disneyland’s Monorail, opened in 1971, which is just down the freeway in Anaheim. 

It’s tempting to explain these delays as yet another procurement screw-up but they read to me as symptomatic of a larger illness. California is in a period of managed decline that leadership at state and local levels don’t seem to notice. 

The contrast is sharpest for those of us who remember what the state used to feel like. I grew up in northern California in the early 1980s when things seemed box fresh: sparkling malls, nice lawns and new housing developments. The economy was thriving, technology companies were putting down roots and the future felt as though it was under construction. When I returned in 2020 after about 20 years away, I found the natural grandeur intact – the postcard-perfect mountains and redwoods still standing – but the civic confidence largely absent.

In many of LA’s toniest neighbourhoods, you can now hear the occasional siren or helicopter overhead. Affordable housing is scarce and basic functionality, from public bathrooms to well-maintained streets, is treated as an aspiration rather than the baseline. The population seems to segment itself into those who cashed in during the golden years of tech or Hollywood, workers who make the place run and the influencers performing for the algorithm outside Great White or Verve on Melrose Avenue. The much-mocked exodus of the Joe Rogan set to Austin and Miami gets laughed off in the capital of Sacramento but the reasons underneath it are widely understood. 

For me, the most uncomfortable part is that those early, wondrous feelings evoked by California during my youth are now felt elsewhere. Spend a week in Abu Dhabi or Dubai and the atmosphere is that of an older version of California, transplanted. 

Despite the conflict in the Gulf, entrepreneurs are opening inventive retail concepts in the UAE and the emirates’ infrastructure arrives on schedule. Dubai built a driverless metro network in roughly the time LA has spent not finishing an airport shuttle and the railway connecting Dubai and Abu Dhabi is soon to open. This comparison is not entirely fair, of course. Gulf projects often materialise rapidly as a result of sovereign financing, while in California, developments are largely decentralised and therefore take shape more slowly. What I feel most acutely is a homesickness for an older version of home. 

California has run for 15 years or so on the fiscal equivalent of human growth hormone: the compensation and stock of Big Tech company employees based here. This tax revenue has been treated by state officials as an ever-refilling well that can never run dry. Now come proposals that would tax that base, or the companies’s founders, more aggressively, still on the assumption that they and their workforces are immovable. Recent history suggests otherwise. None of these firms are perhaps the most ethical but their revenues help fund the coffers that everything else depends upon. 

States, like cities, have cycles. And perhaps California has recovered from worse. But a true recovery requires first admitting the diagnosis. Landing recently into a gritty LAX with nary a luggage cart to be seen, from a modern, gleaming terminal in Taipei, it was hard to avoid the thought that the Golden State was losing its sunny shine. It might not be beyond saving but the state that taught the world what the future would look like is currently importing that feeling from the desert – and no one in charge appears to have noticed.

Colin Nagy is a Monocle contributor. For more opinion, analysis and insight, subscribe to Monocle today.
 
Further reading:
– How a Los Angeles local created a Monocle guide to a city with no centre

– Village Green: The leafy Los Angeles neighbourhood that puts communities first

– For the UAE, culture is what binds its diverse population and gives it hope in times of conflict

In Greece, summer arrives with two questions: which way is the wind blowing and how hot will it get? Christina Souzi has spent more than 30 years answering both as a trained meteorologist and TV weather presenter (as well as a national institution). For most Greeks planning a ferry crossing or a weekend at the beach, the forecast matters. Having previously worked at the Hellenic National Meteorological Service, Souzi has become one of the country’s most recognisable faces, thanks to her daily bulletins for national commercial broadcaster SKAI TV.

The walls of Souzi’s office in Athens are lined with photographs of the Greek islands. A keen sailor and former speedboat owner, she lights up when she talks about plotting routes across the Aegean and Ionian seas or decoding the meltemi (a Greek summer wind). Monocle meets her as she readies the outlook for the sunniest time of the year.

Do TV weather reports still matter when people can access the same information on their phones?
Yes. They’re still essential, especially when it comes to harsh or extreme weather events.

What’s your favourite part of your job?
I’m a little obsessed with wind patterns. I used to have a speedboat that I would steer myself. I have been all over the Aegean and the Ionian. I liked sailing with friends and everyone would ask me about the winds, especially during the Greek meltemi season, and what was the best route to take or which island to hop to next.

People used to call you up for a forecast. Do you still have that direct connection with your audience?
I still get stopped on the street every day. It’s proof that though people might not watch the bulletin on TV as much as they used to, they still care about the weather and I still have value. Sometimes they ask about the forecast or yell at me because I made a mistake. I might get the temperature in the summer wrong by one or two degrees but it’s not the end of the world. When I get it right, though, it’s the best feeling in the world. Once, I was sent a photograph of a car in Athens that was heavily snowed under. Someone had written on it with their finger, “Souzi called it!”

What are the key skills in your line of work?
You need to be able to take risks. If a meteorologist says that they never make mistakes, they’re lying. We’re not gods. As much as we try, we’ll always make mistakes. I tend to struggle with rain predictions. But I accept defeat. I often apologise on the following day’s show. You also have to be able to use AI as a tool. But you can’t trust it and you need more information than it currently gives you. I fear that people might start using it blindly to predict the weather.

How did meteorology come into your life?
It wasn’t the plan. I was studying mathematics at the University of Patras [in the Peloponnese]. I heard that the meteorology professor was good and thought, “Why not try it?” I fell in love with the class, particularly weather prediction and forecasting. After university, I sat an exam for the National Meteorological Service and was accepted. Back then, people used to call the hotline to ask us what the weather was going to be like so that they could make their weekend plans.

Is there an art to presenting the weather?
You have to combine scientific accuracy and theatricality with communication, live presenting and directing. It shouldn’t just be a simple reading of facts or data but an engaging show. You need to win your audience’s trust within a few minutes.

What are your plans this summer?
I work right up until the end of July. The seaside has always been my big love, so that’s where you’ll find me in August. We love spending time in our home in Anavyssos [on the Athenian coast]. We’ll be back there this year but last summer there was a significant wildfire in the area. We have spent all this year trying to restore the nature around our plot. Thankfully, it has been rainy, so nature has managed to revive itself in a short space of time.

We start this Sunday with a warning or two or five. First, you’re in for a bit more from Portugal as our Quality of Life Conference approaches. Second, our stage is likely to introduce you to some amazing new voices. Third, I want to get you behind the wheel or in the passenger seat of Amble. Fourth, Na Praia is going to be a name that you need to know. And finally, it’s going to be an exciting dash to the year’s end with a host of new Monocle projects on the go.

1.
We’re less than two weeks out from the start of QoL in Lisbon and it will be our biggest, buzziest and chicest yet. Alongside lessons in retail big and small, there will be a discussion about the future of drones from a global leader in the space. You’ll even learn how to walk and we will be staging a very elegant auction of fine items. Most of this will take place at the Gulbenkian, with plenty of sideshows along the way. At the time of sending this newsletter, we have 10 seats left. Drop us a note and see you there. 

2.
I just touched down in Zürich from Lisbon, en route to Tokyo. There is so much happening and the city just gets better and better – on almost all levels. There are still some kinks but the homegrown talent mixed with newcomers is a heady creative and entrepreneurial cocktail. I daresay that it’s globally unique.

3.
Did you catch our story on Amble? If not, it’s right here. On Thursday, I had the chance to sample this rugged four-wheeler and I’m lobbying hard for a special edition to mark Monocle’s 20th anniversary. You will want one for all your residences and short-range commutes.

4.
For coming on two decades, we’ve been following José António Uva on his ventures. Zé, as he’s known to his dearest, is behind São Lourenço do Barrocal in Alentejo, is a founder of Amble and will soon unveil Na Praia, an enclave north of Comporta. Full disclosure here, my colleagues at Winkreative did the brand work on both properties and I’ve had a Na Praia preview over the past few days. Yes, I’ve been very involved but it’s beyond anything that I could have imagined. We will reveal much more over the coming months but start planning for next spring. Opening is planned for May.

5.
A bumper October issue, new Konfekt, a Konfekt book, more newspapers, The Entrepreneurs and plenty of events. Clear the coffee table and the diary for the months to come. The season has officially started. Let’s start by playing in Lisboa.

Enjoying life in ‘The Faster Lane’? Click here to browse all of Tyler’s past columns.

One thing is certain this summer: hundreds of thousands of people in Italy will be finding a shady spot in which to leaf through the pages of La Settimana Enigmistica, pencil at the ready. Loosely translated as “The Week of Puzzles”, the magazine has been publishing weekly since 1932, minus two short interludes during the Second World War. Hitting shelves every week, it features crosswords, jokes, cartoons, spot-the-difference puzzles and rebuses – a game involving finding a phrase or word from a combination of letters and images – that have made it a household staple.

“Summer for a large part of Italians is about being under the beach umbrella with La Settimana Enigmistica,” says Alessandro Bartezzaghi, who has worked for the publication since 1982 and became its editor in June 2022. “It’s the same for young people, who see it as a way of socialising, with one person suggesting a solution and another something else. I always say that our magazine is for the solitary in winter and for the social in summer.”

It’s aperitivo time in Milan and Bartezzaghi is sitting in front of an alcohol-free fruit cocktail. Getting him to sit down with Monocle feels like a coup, given that he rarely gives interviews and the publisher, Bresi, is by Bartezzaghi’s own admission “reserved” when it comes to making public statements. Which is why we meet in a bar after work rather than at the offices a short walk away in Piazza Cinque Giornate, the publication’s home for more than 90 years. “Our effort has been to adapt [to the times] without exaggerating,” says Bartezzaghi. “Meaning that even if you knew about certain linguistic novelties, you’d introduce them slowly.” He talks about needing to have “one’s feet in two shoes” – ensuring that the magazine’s reassuringly consistent visual identity isn’t meddled with too much, while also guaranteeing that a 30-year-old solving the publication’s puzzles “doesn’t feel disorientated”.

Bartezzaghi refers to La Settimana Enigmistica as a family affair and it really is exactly that. His father, Piero, was involved with the magazine for a long time and built a fiercely loyal fanbase. He submitted a crossword at the age of 15, remaining a collaborator until in 1960 – a year after his son was born. Bartezzaghi Snr was then asked to join the editorial staff to help support a jump in pagination. He remained there until his death in 1989.

“I’ve been breathing La Settimana Enigmistica since I was one year old,” says Bartezzaghi. “There was a big room in the office where women worked looking after the archive. They’d sit me on top of a pile of phone books in a chair and have me bash away on the typewriter.” His father was famed for difficult crossword puzzles under the pseudonym Zanzibar. His son has adopted the name Zanzara, or mosquito, for his most stinging contributions. The magazine has been entirely advert-free since the 1960s, surviving and thriving on subscriptions and newsstand sales. All of the weekly prizes the publication gives away have been bought rather than gifted to it. “Because we want to be independent from everything and everyone,” Bartezzaghi says. “Which is why for a period we were careful to not insert words into crosswords that might seem like advertising, such as Coca-Cola or Fiat. Now the world we live in is so full of brands that we use them.”

Because the magazine doesn’t have commercial commitments, it has no obligation to report how many copies it sells, though it is known to generate revenues of about €50m a year. When Monocle speculates that weekly sales might be anything from 500,000 to two million, it provokes a chuckle. “In the 1980s and 1990s, we hit more than a million copies a week during the summer,” says Bartezzaghi. While he acknowledges that the audience might not be as captive as it once was, the fact that a printed puzzle magazine can sell six figures per week is still impressive. “Even young people want it on paper,” he says.

A quick glance at a Milanese newsstand reveals plenty of pretenders to the quiz-magazine crown. So what makes the 94-year-old publication, to borrow one of its taglines, “the quiz magazine first for foundation and circulation”? Bartezzaghi points to several factors, including being the original title in the field and the investment in quality that leading the sales charts has allowed – from the talent putting together the 150 to 160 games that pack every issue to the ink and paper used.

Alongside what Bartezzaghi sees as a superior product is what he calls the “spectacular planning” that goes into making the magazine. “You can’t put something that is incorrect,” he says. “If you betray the faith of people, they’ll stop playing.” The magazine works so far in advance that when the team goes away for the Italian summer shutdown, it will have already closed its mid-November issues. Each edition goes through fact-checking that includes drafts and three rounds of corrections. There will also be people who are tasked with solving the entire magazine.

Bartezzaghi compares his role to clearing a way through a jungle, machete in hand, as others follow. “There’s a job of shaping and refining the magazine,” he says. “To such an extent that it almost seems like the whole thing has been written by the same person.” So, this summer, Italians will hardly perceive any changes from one issue to the next.

Here’s the scene. We’re spending the day in Mallorca with two friends from California before they set sail on a handsome yacht which they charter for one week every summer. It’s a proper sailing yacht, not a gin palace. Forty-metres long and with a crew of six. They take the same group of friends away each year but this time there’s a wrinkle. Ash from an erupting Mount Etna has closed Sicily’s Catania Airport and so two of their Italian guests are literally going to miss the boat.

“So why don’t you come for a night?” asks H.

Unfortunately, we already have plans, having promised to see people we love for dinner the next night at a cool beach club, so there can only be one answer. “What do we need to pack?” I ask a little breathlessly. Then I remember the other half once spent an entire 12-hour Greek ferry trip spewing into a supermarket carrier bag. But he’s already doing a hornpipe jig (that’s something to behold). So it seems that we are good to go.

I have been on boats before. Just this past Christmas I sailed to and from Mallorca, though it was on a Baleària car ferry and most of my fellow passengers were nice truck drivers. We still hang out together.

The plan is to meet at 09.00 sharp the following morning in Port Adriano and then sail to Menorca (having only lost my Menorca virginity the week before, I am delighted at the thought of having a second bash so soon). We get to the dock early – no risks to be taken – and I just pray all the time that Mount Etna is still doing its impersonation of my partner on a Greek ferry.

Off we go. The captain explains that there are some simple rules. No shoes – definitely no cha-cha heels on the teak deck. No oily suntan sprays (the teak again). And if you swim in the sea, shower at the back of the deck to avoid salty feet marking – you guessed it – the teak. Really, wouldn’t it make sense to put down some nice teak-print linoleum? Would save a lot of bother.

I think we prove to be good guests – I forget about the salty feet business only once and the captain gives me a bit of a look but somehow doesn’t make me scrub the deck.

H and her husband M are skilled at this yacht business. They have planned the menus weeks in advance, had the wines they love delivered to the boat, thought about at-sea entertainment. It’s the sort of meticulous preparation that makes it all look effortless. We sail around the coast of Mallorca and then, in the late afternoon, over to Menorca, dropping anchor as the light fades. In the softening glow the nearby cliffs look charcoaled onto the horizon. Above us the stars seem to be winking at me. 

Then my dear friend Etna comes good again. Catania Airport is still closed. “Would you like to stay another night?” I think you know what I replied. 

We end up spending three days on the boat, time for life to slow, for long and funny conversations. To find joy in such unexpected things. M encourages me to jump off the boat (in a friendly way), to slide deep into the dark water. He also gives me diving lessons (Tom Daley has nothing to fear). There’s something about jumping into the unknown that’s addictive. I go again and again. 

When I was a child and jealous of a friend’s endless fancy holidays, I remember my dad helping me rethink the issue. “When you get to do these things one day they will feel very special. It’s OK to wait,” he assured me. I thought about his wisdom as the tender took me to shore in Mahon. I had had a blast. I had drunk in every moment. I was grateful to my dad and my hosts – but mostly Mount Etna.

Want to read more of Andrew’s columns? Click here.

Spend any time in an airport bookshop and you’ll see stacks of brightly coloured books promising to impart the secrets to success. These volumes – presumably, given their proliferation – do pretty well for their authors and publishers, but are of more debatable value to their readers. The success of other people is rarely that interesting or instructive. Failure, on the other hand, is often a better teacher and usually a more compelling story.

By most measures, Mike Grossman is a successful serial entrepreneur: he has been, among other things, a CEO of six venture-backed Silicon Valley technology companies, including Zetta, Inflection and Live Capital. As he cheerfully admits, he has also failed frequently and, occasionally, spectacularly. His latest venture is a contribution to the business shelves: Failure Is An Option: Reflections Of A Silicon Valley CEO. 

The book is a collection of thoughts on what went wrong along the way, why it happened and whether there is anything useful to be learned from the experiences. One of its strengths is its humour; it shows that with any success, it is necessary to be able to laugh at your failures. Monocle Radio’s Andrew Mueller spoke with Grossman about the book, how to avoid taking setbacks personally and whether you can truly learn from others’ shortcomings.

Why was it important to write a book about failure?
I wasn’t interested in writing a book that was like everybody else’s. It seemed to me that when I looked at business books, they fell into two categories. The first is how to sell, how to market and how to raise money. The second is biographies or autobiographies, which are all very similar: business starts in great excitement, adversity strikes, people get through the adversity and then there is enormous success. My experience in Silicon Valley has been that there are ups and downs in random sequence. It’s a wild roller-coaster ride. It doesn’t always end in success and there is always failure along the way.

Is there a formative failure that you reflect on in particular?
I have run six venture-funded companies and we [began] experiencing failure from moment one. I started one company [on] the same day that my wife went into labour with our first [child] and we were incredibly excited. I say ‘we’ because I had a business partner and then [that became] two business partners. Within six weeks, it looked like we were going to successfully raise money but, for reasons that I describe in one chapter of the book, it fell apart very quickly. We spent two years in the wilderness, metaphorically, trying to build something [without being] able to raise any money. Eventually, we broke through and started making progress. Those first two years were fun but were more about failure than anything else. 

That’s how I entered the entrepreneurial arena. What I found is the condition of doing entrepreneurship. The truth is: companies struggle mightily, even the ones that are successful in the end. You can’t avoid the struggle.

One of the more bracing lessons of the book is that you can do everything right – work hard, assemble a great team – and still fail. What can we take away from that?
Just because things often fail doesn’t mean that they will always fail, and companies can find a way forward. There are opportunities to pivot and pivot again, and eventually, you find a way. One of the things that I have learned is that when things are going well, you should [also] expect them to not go so well. But when things are going badly, if you have a committed team that works hard and is adaptable, you’ll eventually start doing better. Having a realistic view of the challenge is very useful. Once I accepted it as a working condition, I was able to ride the ups and downs much better.

How important is not taking failure personally?
People often identify the outcome with themselves. So if the outcome is good, they feel better about themselves, and if the outcome is bad, they feel worse. But the truth is that you can’t control the outcome, you can control how hard you work. You can control whether you have a great team. You can control whether you’re approaching a problem in a thoughtful way. One of the lessons I have learned is: don’t think of the company as connected to yourself. You’re not your situation, you’re not the company.

At the risk of undermining the premise of your book, can we really learn anything from other people’s failures? Isn’t it human nature that we have to learn everything the hard way?
That’s an interesting question. It reminds me of something that my father told me when I was younger. He said that when I was little, he wanted to teach me all sorts of things. [But] somewhere along the line, he concluded that I needed to experience it all myself or I wouldn’t really understand it. I believe that we ultimately learn the most when we experience things ourselves. Having said that, I thought that it would be interesting to reveal what it feels like to be in this type of entrepreneurial context, failures and all.

Here we round up five ways to spend your money this week, including a new collaboration, some summer tailoring and more. First up, a brand with a knack for designing clothes that can be worn as easily behind the scenes as they can front of house. Enjoy. 

1.
The outfitter for a timeless uniform: Service Works

After Tom Chudley made the move from working in kitchens to fashion, he realised that the staid uniforms in which he had spent years cooking had been researched for a brand idea.

Launched in 2020, Service Works makes organic cotton workwear that’s breathable for hot kitchens and able to withstand countless washes. Its checkered chef trousers, designed to conceal stains, pay playful homage to the traditional version, while the seersucker suit jacket recalls traditional waiters’ tailoring. “It was never about making fashion inspired by kitchens – it was about making better products for the people working in them,” says Chudley. “A uniform doesn’t need to look intimidating. Comfort, personality and practicality can all exist together.”

Seals of approval from the likes of London restaurants Impala, St John and Wildflowers are a compelling sales pitch, while Service Works also weaves its utilitarian aesthetic into everyday wear. “Good uniforms shouldn’t just look good on opening day,” says Chudley. “They should work for their lifespan.”
serviceworks.xyz

2.
Get your wardrobe autumn ready with Aaron Levine’s new Zara collection

Now for something of a reality check: autumn is coming. Here’s how you can prepare for it in style. Before starting his label in 2024, US menswear designer Aaron Levine created high-quality, ready-to-wear collections for multi-billion-dollar brands such as Abercrombie & Fitch, reviving their creative fortunes in the process. His latest collaboration – and his third with Inditex’s Zara – is yet another success.

The autumn/winter collection references vintage workwear and preppy styles. Items such as leather loafers with Vibram soles, checked trench coats, wool-silk ties and waxed-effect jackets make up a fraction of a capsule that could quite easily fill your entire wardrobe. Whether you’re in need of extra base layers or new staples, it’s all effortlessly wearable.
zara.com; aaronlevineny.com

3.
Bring the Barbican into your living room

Unless you have access to a resident’s key, London’s Barbican Estate can feel impenetrable. Its light-sapping concrete and labyrinth-like pedestrian system might feel disorientating but its verdant balconies, tranquil pockets and modernist forms offer captivating spaces to live and work, especially for the design-minded. Now, thanks to a collaboration between the Barbican and London-based interiors brand Made, you can purchase sculptural interior pieces for your own home.

The new range includes smaller furnishings from table lamps, rugs and plates to pieces that can elevate an entire room, including chairs, sideboards and sofas. If you want to take a closer look, the wares will be displayed in and around the Barbican during the London Design Festival from 12 to 20 September.
made.com; barbican.org.uk

4.
Suit up in a linen ensemble from Mohawk General Store

Such-and-such’s wedding is just around the corner. You have worn the same seersucker number to your past two summer soirées and you don’t have long to come up with a new ensemble. So, what are you wearing? Here’s a tip: Mohawk General Store, Los Angeles’s best spot for menswear, has a peerless in-house line called Smock. 

The shop’s founders, Bo and Kevin Carney, have a good eye for buying great pieces but Smock is their more hands-on approach to showing their keen sense of style. We particularly like the brand’s Sun Dried Linen suiting in ivory. There are other options in silk or wool gabardine, as well hues such as tobacco, navy, black and emerald green.
mohawkgeneralstore.com

5.
Look after your skin and nature with Sol de Ibiza’s suncare

A day at the beach calls for a sunscreen that protects both your skin and the sea. Sol de Ibiza was co-founded by Linda Maroli after she struggled to find a product free from harsh chemicals, sticky formulas and plastic packaging – the sort of thing that picky porpoises tend to dislike.

The result is a sunscreen made from organic oils and non-nano zinc oxide (a mineral, reef-safe powder) that’s produced in Spain and Italy and packaged using sustainable materials. It’s a smart companion for long days in the sun, wherever the final days of summer take you. Your skin, as well as those porpoises, will thank you.
soldeibiza.com

When it comes to beachwear, fashion brands are missing a trick. Their summer collections for men focus almost exclusively on eyewear and swim shorts, leaving the entire top half of the male anatomy uncovered. Frescobol Carioca from Rio de Janeiro and Ripa Ripa from Milan rely on linen shirts and regular T-shirts to fill the gap. Orlebar Brown and Vilebrequin both have a rashguard range but these handful of items – compared with literally hundreds of pairs of shorts – can kindly be described as an afterthought designed to be hidden under a wetsuit. It’s high time that they smarten up. Sun protection has become a hot trend and there’s clearly a gap in the market for beautifully designed beach tops made from breathable materials that suit a languid day on the sand. 

I speak from personal experience. I’ve been covering up for the past few years and my default top is a rashguard made by US diving brand Scubapro. I acquired it to report a Monocle story on kayaking in Hong Kong and I’ve been wearing it in the seas around Asia ever since. I also have a few Uniqlo Dry-Ex sports T-shirts on rotation. Not ideal but better than my poor back getting another roasting on the boozy beaches of Bali or while snorkeling in Lombok. Now that I have two kids to look after on the sand, I spend most of my time in Thailand standing in as a sunshade while slathering SPF50 onto the tiny slithers of young skin that are not covered by a waterproof hat or rashguard (which they wear like most other children as a matter of course). 

The “dad bod” is another factor. A friend and fellow father in Dubai has started wearing a rashguard for this reason – getting in beach shape is one of the first things to go out of the window in parenthood. Two Western swallows with flabby tummies may not make a summer but how about a few hundred million Chinese, Japanese and Korean men? Both of us live in the East and this has certainly helped normalise our beach style choices. Since moving to Asia in 2014, I have been amazed by the lengths to which people will go to avoid getting a tan, protecting their faces and elaborate hairstyles with sun umbrellas and wide-brimmed golf visors. South Koreans lead the way. Beach parasols sit on street crossings in Seoul so that pedestrians waiting for traffic lights to change can stand in the shade. I once did a story about a surf town called Yangyang and the tiny amount of skin on display among the novice longboarders would make a Saudi Arabian beach look utterly debauched by comparison. 

Some parts of the world will take more convincing than others – and there will be holdouts. I was recently back in Wales and the men in my hometown, Swansea, need little excuse to walk around with their tops off. But give it time. Fashion trends increasingly flow from east to west and this particular one taps into several major global shifts, including wellness and sustainability. Sunscreen is a smart choice for exposed skin but reusable hats, sleeves and rashguards are even better for our bodies and for the planet. They may even work out cheaper too, especially when factoring in all the lotion-damaged linen shirts and T-shirts hanging in wardrobes around the world. 

Don’t get me wrong. Youngsters heading to the beach this summer can still flaunt their gym-sculpted torsos and reckless disregard for their skin health. Just spare a thought – and some fabric – for the rest of us.

James Chambers is Monocle’s Asia editor, based in Bangkok. For more opinion, analysis and insight, subscribe to Monocle today.

In the past few days, the US president, Donald Trump, has turned his curious loathing for his country’s allies towards South Korea. He has complained that the nation free-rides on the US military presence on the peninsula and did not participate in the Iran war. He has also talked up his rapport with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un. To date, Trump has focused his anti-ally ire on Western partners such as Canada and Denmark; this turn towards Asian allies is new.

It’s also risky. The US has fewer allies in East Asia than in Europe and faces higher stakes there. China is a far greater challenger to US power than Russia, which means that Asian allies are much more important than European ones. While Europe has the combined weight to resist Russian regional ambitions, Asian partners do not have the same power regarding China nor are they effectively co-ordinated through a multilateral body such as Nato.

More broadly, a decade into the Trump era, his entrenched loathing for US allies and comfort – even glee – while tearing down long-standing US relationships is still rather a mystery. There appears to be no strategic rationale. The reasoning seems nothing more than petulance.

Trump has long complained that allies take advantage of US security guarantees. His claims began as early as the 1980s when he was a New York businessman. He appears to see US alliances as protection rackets rather than embodiments of international liberal solidarity. Hence his constant refrain that allies “rip off” the US and his demand for cash payments – he says that he has just asked South Korea for $10bn (€8.6bn).

The US president has, to be fair, identified a genuine issue. Many allies, especially in Europe, underspent on defence after the Cold War (a complaint also raised by American secretaries of defence for the past three decades). Perhaps a blunt force such as Trump was necessary to compel change – Europe, for example, has the wealth and industrial base to fully support Ukraine in its war against Russia.

But South Korea’s defence spending is higher than most US allies: 2.6 per cent of GDP and trending upwards. It has a large army to defend itself against its northern neighbours and a modern, if small, air force and navy. Most of its American assistance is logistics, intelligence and command-and-control. And the East Asian nation does pay. The terms of the agreement that allows the US to have a presence in South Korea means that Seoul gives about $1bn (€860m) annually – a number that has been rising for years.

Trump’s complaints miss the obvious value of US alliances. In South Korea, the pact gives the US access to bases on the peninsula where the Americans can do mostly what they want. The Iran war has illustrated the importance of such friendly bases. After Iran bombed US sustainment sites in the Gulf early in the war, American ships could no longer use the sites and are now accruing a backlog of maintenance needs. Conditions on some ships have become so bad that crew members’ families have complained to Congress.

This lesson applies more broadly to US partnerships elsewhere. Canada maintains early-warning radar for North America to detect missile launches across the Arctic. Okinawa in Japan houses a huge American presence without which the US cannot contest rising Chinese naval power.

The bigger takeaway from all this is an unmoored US grand strategy. Since 1940, the US broadly pursued an internationalist posture of alignment with fellow liberal democracies against the world’s various tyrannies. Strains were always present but the notion that the US would defect to the other side was never entertained. Yet today, Trump seemingly prefers North Korea to South; Russia to Ukraine.

If Trump were not so chaotic and undisciplined, this would be a revolution in US foreign policy. But it probably is not. Although American administrations are required to produce a formal statement of their national security strategy – and the White House released one last year – it has been a useless guide to Trump’s actions. Since its release last December, US foreign-policy behaviour has rarely conformed to it. While it speaks of restraint and caution, Trump has recklessly used force. 

What “strategy” there is appears to turn on Trump’s pique. Rather than drop both literal and verbal bombs, the US president should take note from his predecessors: alliances are a force multiplier. The US is lilting and Trump has neither the discipline nor desire to steady the ship.

Robert E Kelly is a professor of political science at Pusan National University.

Don’t sit next to me at dinner. It’s not that my table manners are that bad – it’s just that one minute you will generously be telling me some interesting fact about your life, then the next I will be suggesting that you should tell this story to Monocle’s readers. Perhaps pen a few hundred words or jump on Monocle Radio.

It’s a warning that I offer to my team at Monocle too. Earlier this year, when we were in Shanghai for our Entrepreneurs Live conference, I was able to spend time with our Asia editor, James Chambers. He happened to mention that he and his wife had decided to home-school their two children; more than that, they were “unschooling” them, letting their offspring help choose what they wanted to do and learn every day. James explained that it was going well – his children are inquisitive and already, instinctively, excelling in languages and mathematics (James’s wife is Chinese and they are based in Bangkok, so there are lots of linguistic opportunities).

So, of course, when we started planning this issue themed around knowledge, lifelong learning and education, James found himself swiftly commissioned to write an essay about the experience and how we should all question how children are taught. His is just one of many fascinating looks at education over the following pages but I am delighted that he has told you his story – one that challenges us all to question how we should teach young people.

And we definitely need some new thinking because AI is set to undermine many of the old certainties about work and life, forcing governments to scrub down their national curriculums as they think how to help young people gain skills that won’t be erased by machine learning. One of the big shifts that we are seeing is a re-embracing of the value of learning a manual trade, gaining craft skills. That’s why for this issue we also set out to find “masters and apprentices” in everything from shoemaking to boatbuilding to hear about the growing allure of making and building with your hands. I was struck by how, in Australia, an advertisement for a plumbing apprenticeship received 300 applications and also by the relationships between all these teachers and students. One skilled educator can reorientate a life.

I was diligent but slightly plodding at school and only found my footing once I reached university, where I could follow my own path more and teach myself. So, while I did all the prescribed reading for my course, I also lost myself in books about art and design, took myself to the theatre and to see arthouse films and started writing for the university paper. When I began looking for work, I knew that I had to find a way into journalism and somehow landed an internship at Time Out in London. There, I met Tony Elliott, the title’s founder, who was probably the first person to see in this awkward but keen young man someone who might be worth employing – and a long career in journalism commenced. Often, that’s all anyone needs: some mentoring, a few words that help focus a young mind. That’s why we have asked 25 successful people to tell us about the one life lesson that they most cherish; the one piece of advice that provided a ticket to a different future.

Among the answers are numerous nuggets of inspiring wisdom. Gildo Zegna, of the famous fashion house, says that he has been guided by his grandfather’s advice to “do what’s right, not what’s convenient”. Automotive CEO Klaus Zellmer urges you to “be bold enough to step into unfamiliar territory”. I also like architect Amanda Levete’s belief that you should “hold onto your passion. You can figure out the rest as you go.” Perhaps it resonates because I think that this has been my plan too.

I hope that you enjoy our September offering – and learn a few things along the way. And if you would like to send me a report card, perhaps even a gold star, you can always find me at at@monocle.com. Here’s to staying inquisitive.