A writer who I like a lot sends me a pitch for a story that he would like to report on for Monocle. But there’s something off about it. A funny smell. His usual quirky tone has been replaced by sentences that appear to be saying something big but, on closer scrutiny, are oddly hollow. I wonder, could it be?
I copy and paste the pitch into an artificial-intelligence checker, which suggests that 70 per cent of it was generated by AI. I mention this to a colleague, who tells me that he has also become suspicious and sent a reminder to this established writer about our policy on this topic.
Now, perhaps the AI checker is off or this writer has read so much AI-generated nonsense that he now sounds like a machine. But there are other tells in the spelling, the punctuation. Like a bungling burglar, AI has left fingerprints all over his email.
Yesterday morning, as on every Friday morning, I got up at 05.30, made coffee, found a quiet place to perch – today on our apartment’s terrace overlooking the Palma Sport & Tennis Club – and waited. Sometimes it takes seconds, sometimes an hour. But, so far, every week an idea for a column has dropped into my mental inbox. Then I get a few words down, then some more and I’m away. But that initial organising of my thoughts is the stressful bit – there have been a few weeks when I have thought, well, that I have no thoughts. A third coffee usually does the trick.
A couple of weeks ago, I was sitting next to the editor of a well-known magazine at a dinner and he asked about this column; he too files a personal dispatch to his readers. “I used to really struggle,” he said. “But to be honest, I now use AI to organise my initial thoughts, give me some prompts. Then I start writing. I never use AI to write my copy, just to get me going.” For him, AI is akin to Viagra for writers.
I promise that this will all come together nicely in a minute – I know where we are headed, even if you are getting sceptical of my meandering path. But I’d like to tell you one other thing about this column. It has been “subbed”.
Once I have finished writing, I send my copy to Blake, or sometimes Chloé, and they wheedle out unnecessary words, correct linguistic slips. Nothing too intrusive: jokes are sacrosanct but by the time that I get to see the edited preview of this newsletter, my words have had a nice polish. It’s like going to the dental hygienist – you leave with all your teeth intact but any annoying verbal plaque has been blasted away.
With their help, I get to publish something that mostly makes sense and, hopefully, lets readers know that there’s a real person behind these words. A real person whose ideas don’t always cascade in the logical, sequential style served up by AI.
Look, it’s going to be a battle to stop journalism from buckling under the weight of AI slop when even respected writers and editors are succumbing to its siren call, even if to “just” organise their thoughts. The only way to defend the trade is for journalists, writers, designers and creatives to trust the process. To know that there are some days when ideas will be hard to find, when thoughts are reluctant to move along in an orderly fashion. Sometimes nascent thoughts need the help of an editor to develop a story, sharpen copy.
In short, don’t just reach for the AI Botox; show your writerly wrinkles.
See? I told you. I trusted that – with a little help – I could pull this together.
For more of Andrew’s columns, click here.
Enough books have been published on US president Donald Trump during his two terms as president that a reader might struggle to get through them all between now and the 2028 election. One volume recently added to the list is Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan’s Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump. The New York Times reporters have extensively covered and repeatedly interviewed Trump. Both know what it is like to have Earth’s most powerful individual decide that you, personally, will be the catch of the day on social media.
For the book, the pair conducted more than 1,000 interviews with people in and around Trump’s second administration. The book is also studiously impartial, adhering to a just-the-facts approach which – the facts being what they are – makes it all the more damning.
Haberman and Swan know that the big picture is already well understood. It is not news that Donald Trump is ignorant, impulsive and interested in little beyond his own glorification, and that his administration is overwhelmingly staffed with toadies and grifters. What is notable about Regime Change is the detail: the obsession with gilt accessories, some of which the president personally affixed to the walls with superglue; his enquiries into whether his proposed triumphal arch in Washington might be adorned with a statue of himself; the delighted vindication that he draws from an analysis comparing him to Joseph Stalin, Genghis Khan, Adolf Hitler and Attila the Hun, which turns out to have been written by no less an authority than Gary Player’s caddy.
The reviews of Regime Change have been good, and deservedly so, though none more persuasive than that of its subject, who called it “mostly made up, fake news, largely fiction” and one of its authors “Magot Hagerman… a third-rate writer and fourth-rate intellect.” Monocle spoke with Haberman and Swan on The Foreign Desk about the book, their decade covering Trump and the president’s impact on US press freedom. This conversation has been edited for clarity and length.
You’ve both covered Donald Trump extensively, so let’s talk about his relationship to the media. With statements calling journalists ‘enemies of the people’, do you think he’s baiting the press? Is that a schtick or does he actually feel that way?
Maggie Haberman: It’s certainly not just shtick. He gets very angry about his coverage and about things that, at least in our experience, he can’t control. Trying to figure out whether he’s sincere or not is a fool’s errand. He had the DOJ [Department of Justice] subpoenaing reporters recently over specific [stories]. It sounds like those subpoenas may have been withdrawn but [he ordered them] because he was angry about leaks. You don’t do that only for show.
Your coverage of Trump has not always been sympathetic and your book is extremely critical of him on many points, yet he agreed to be interviewed. Are you surprised that so many media organisations have capitulated to him?
Jonathan Swan: What Trump has done this term is use every lever of the federal government to squeeze organisations that he opposes. We go deep into this in the book; it’s not just media organisations, it’s civil society, universities and law firms, and he weaponised the government to try to force companies to bend the knee. Luckily, Maggie and I both work for The New York Times, [which is an] independent organisation. We don’t depend on the government for anything. There are no licences that we need but that’s a fortunate position to be in. Trump understands the power that he has over broadcast networks and other forms of media, so he’s using it very aggressively.
Trump must be aware that he has the power to drive audiences to the media, that he is good for ratings and he attracts readers.
MH: He says that constantly and there has obviously been a fair amount of interest in Donald Trump. There has also been Donald Trump fatigue that every news organisation has seen at various points over the course of the past six years. [The interest in this book shows] that there is a desire for a deeper understanding of how this government is functioning. That is much harder to establish this term than it was in his first term. As a reporter, it’s very different now: he has a hunkered down tribal group around him. It’s not just that he has cowed so many in the media, it’s also that the media landscape has changed by virtue of the industry itself – and that really isn’t about him at all.
Your book is a good illustration of Trump’s tactic of ‘flooding the zone’. It feels like every other page has yet another jaw-dropping revelation or scandal, which would end the career of any other politician. Has the volume overwhelmed even the most diligent attempts by the media to make any sense of this for readers and listeners?
JS: In daily coverage it certainly can. But in the book, we make sense of it and give it shape, meaning, context and depth. Maggie and I hoped that this book would find an audience but I don’t think we expected a Fifty Shades of Grey kind of interest. It just shows that there is a deep hunger for people to understand how the most powerful country on Earth is being run. It’s so tempting to cover Trump like a cartoon character, and he certainly can behave that way sometimes, but there’s a lot more to the story. That’s what we try to lay out in the book.
Tell me about your conversations with Trump. Because you talked to him when you were verifying the material, he was presumably aware that your book is not an advertisement for him. What was the tone of those discussions?
JS: We spoke to him at the very end of the reporting process. Three days before the interview, he attacked Maggie viciously on Truth Social and threatened to add us to the lawsuit that he already has against The New York Times. [For the interview,] we were fully expecting that he would be in salesman mode, even though he had just threatened us, and that’s exactly what happened. That’s the way he is; he’s not someone who does interpersonal conflict in a very comfortable way, so he was relaxed, unhurried.
He showed us the ballroom pictures and then we asked him about his power because Trump had been telling people that he was the most powerful American president there ever had been. He asked one of his aides to get the document that he said was written by a historian. He hands us this document, [which] he clearly is quite excited about and wants us to read. The first line [says] Donald Trump is the most powerful man who has ever walked the planet and then it goes on to compare him to what Trump says is the top 10, including f Napoleon, Adolf Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan and Attila the Hun. There was no discussion of morality in this document. It was just about the metric of raw power.
[The document wasn’t written by] a historian; it turned out to be a former golf caddy of Gary Player. What he’d written, with a few modifications here and there, was the basis of our book. It was sort of this amazing moment where Trump basically handed us our own thesis from a different perspective.
Maggie, Trump has gone after you personally several times, not just before you sat down with him for this book. What is it like to have Earth’s most powerful individual come for you? Do you think that has an inhibiting effect on press freedom more generally?
MH: He has come after both of us a number of times over the years. It’s certainly surprising the first time it happens but [it’s not as surprising] the 10th or 12th time it happens. I suspect he hopes that it will have a chilling effect – and it may on some people. But it doesn’t impact our reporting one way or the other. We are also very fortunate to work for an independent institution such as The New York Times that has no levers that the federal government can pull, [as is the case with other American broadcast media organisations]. But in terms of the attacks, he’s going to do what he’s going to do. It is what it is.
To hear more on press freedom in the US, listen to the latest episode of ‘The Foreign Desk’.
Further reading: Trump biographer Michael Wolff on the ‘moron’ president’s ‘incredible incompetence’
Serious times demand serious discussion. So let’s talk about white denim: why it’s so good and how to wear it best this summer. I love white denim with an unreasonable verve and a sentimental passion that I feel might never ebb. Slipping on a pair of ivory pantaloons isn’t like hopping into a pair of jeans ordinaire, oh no – these make me feel ready, lithe, panther-ish, Jagger-y. They’re dandy in their aesthetic overtures, which is probably why they’re so damnably impractical. Zip the fly and suddenly I’m a spoiled princeling who knows the value of everything and the price of nothing – but mostly gets away with it. Think of Blackadder’s Prince George: silly, wilful and more angry at the loss of his silk socks than being threatened with bankruptcy by Pitt and parliament.
White-denim disciples know that prancing around worrying about dirty seats is death – so ride that dusty old log flume of a subway seat without a care, kick-start the sticky-seated motorbike of life and fling yourself across bar banquettes with abandon. White denim implores us to bring it on!
As the regular codes of sartorial conduct don’t tend to apply to such a one-off fabric, white-denim wearers can write their own rules. But there are a few basic tenets that are worth running with before choosing to unleash some white-jeaned goodness on the world.
First of all, don’t go super-white or super-tight. Too brilliant a white makes you look like a dentist. The correct hue can be found somewhere between writing paper and a cricket jumper. On fit, controversially, you can afford to go a little tighter than you might with ordinary jeans or trousers because if, like me, you are the careful owner of a rower’s bum, tennis-pro thighs and a coquettishly well-turned ankle, you might as well put on a show. Woof. If not, let out a little sail.
You’re picking up a vibe, aren’t you? You think white denim’s a little sleazy and that nights in it are fever dreams of thirsty besmirchment and gooey folly; the one-night-only glamour of vulgarity. Well, you’re right and wrong: it’s in the eye of the beholder. White denim can possess an admirable loucheness while exhibiting weapons-grade preppiness, too: there are hectares of advertising imagery of Ralph Lauren families dressed for chic lobster-shack hominess in casually weekending white denim. It’s all about how you wear it.
Pair your white denim with brown shoes of suede or canvas (or boots for a twang of western suggestion) and a collared shirt in any dark colour that isn’t black and with three buttons loose. Find a jacket that matches your shoes and wear that hat that you might judge to be too much. You look great. White denim tidies and makes trim while suggesting summer softness and rock-star holidays remembered in Super 8 – a tough trick to pull off.
A couple of weeks ago, I was reporting a story with a cool French photographer who wished that he was better at hiking and climbing. How did he judge his progress? Well, he had recently scaled a considerable summit and, on reaching the top, found an Italian guy standing there in a jumper, trying to get a phone signal. “Just, you know, chilled and smoking and wearing white jeans,” the photographer grumbled. “Some people make it look easy,” I said. “White jeans, that is.”
And finally, when you’re walking into a room, remember to channel the opening lines of white denim’s unofficial anthem: “You walked into the party like you were walking onto a yacht…” No, you’re so vain.
Robert Bound is a contributing editor at Monocle. For more opinion, analysis and insight, subscribe to Monocle today.
Further reading:
– Embark on a grand tour of European retail with Monocle this summer
– Black has had its day – here’s why the world’s best-dressed are turning to brown
– Feel good summer fits: Three fashion designers defining warm-weather style in Rio, Milan and Palma
Cinema has always sold the fantasy of the transformative summer spent outdoors. It’s the kind found in The Sandlot’s sunburnt baseball summer; Wes Anderson’s runaway-lovers in Moonrise Kingdom and Luca Guadagnino’s Italian peach-orchard romance Call Me by Your Name. Children and adults alike doing away with the supervision and trappings of modern life to acquire grass stains on their clothing thanks to whimsical and/or sexy antics. This used to be a gentle suggestion to break free, but lately, the message has lost its subtlety.
The recently released Toy Story 5 mourns childhoods lost to the eerie hum of a handheld tablet. The bold and brilliant series Silo is a prestige sci-fi epic about the horror of not being allowed outside. With season three, viewers get to see just how we, in the imminent near future, ended up underground dreaming of fresh air. Indie horror hit Backrooms’ monster lives in an infinite windowless hallway that is, functionally, doomscrolling with teeth.
Meanwhile, the film The Last House, starring Wagner Moura and Greta Lee, traps a family indoors for years as they stare longingly at the outside that once was. Even the cosier titles are in on it: the Little House on the Prairie reboot pines for a life with no screens, and the series Every Year After finds two people falling in love on the strength of one unplugged week a year at a lake with no texts in between, and somehow none needed.
Whether they are told on TV or on the big screen, and whether they concern monsters or lovers, these stories share one message: Go outside.
Out in the real world, a spell of heatwaves has settled like a haze over Europe and many other places besides. It’s the kind of languid heat that makes running into the sea both spiritual guidance and a public safety announcement. Meanwhile, the UK has just announced a ban on social media for under-16s, hoping to usher an entire generation into the great outdoors.
At a time when many of us are worried about the prospect of soon living in a hauntingly grim tech dystopia, we must admit that our machines are giving us fair warning about the dangers of losing ourselves to screens. This summer we just have to look up from them and act on it.
Leila Latif is a film critic and broadcaster based in London.
It was only my second week in Vienna when a resident took me to swim in the Danube. It was an experience that moved me – quite literally. After relocating to the Austrian capital, I fell in love with early morning swims at Badeareal an der Promenade der Unteren Alten Donau. Emerging from a brisk 20-minute trip to Donaustadtbrücke station, you navigate along paths dotted with cottages, reeds and a series of wooden piers overlooking a tranquil part of the canal. It attracts ardent, older swimmers (plus one impressively strong, grey-haired man who paddleboards). The piers are filled with students working on their tan lines and flirting in groups. In Vienna, there is a swimming spot for everyone, no matter your plunging particularities.
Walking towards the Alte Donau station, it becomes a little more crowded, with groups taking over park spots and stone steps. Those looking for something livelier bring speakers and rent small platform boats – that often have palm-tree-shaped umbrellas for shade – or take out a trusty pedalo. Most tend to bring cherries and a cool box but if you forget you can always don something presentable and book a waterside table at Das Bootshaus for a Hugo spritz and calamari. The restaurant is run by the Querfeld family group, which owns Café Landtmann and the Loos-designed Café Museum in the city’s first district – the family’s sons are competitive rowers who trained at the club next door.
But it’s Strandbad Gänsehäufel – known as “the lido on Goose Island” – for which the masses have fallen. It’s a classic, modernist swimming option that attracts families and older clientele for a small fee. Revamped by architects Max Fellerer, Carl Appel and Eugen Wörle in the late 1940s, it’s a multi-generational space with volleyball, a climbing park, schnitzel sandwiches and 2km of manicured beach. Though the water here is not without issues – its algae and underwater foliage needs to be cut back at bimonthly intervals. However, the city is vigilant about keeping the water clean and well-trimmed.
If you like things a little more bourgeois, head to Bundesbad Alte Donau, where the water flows a little faster and feels even fresher. “It is my all-time favourite spot,” says Monica Titton, who teaches fashion history and theory at the University of Applied Arts Vienna. “It used to be a military swimming school; today it is listed and owned by the Republic of Austria, so it is kept in absolutely spotless condition. The architecture folds beautifully into the landscape, with a lovely restaurant with white wire chairs, a little terrace and plenty of places to relax.”
For the wild and rebellious, Donauinsel is the pick. Don’t expect beds here, just dive in and wade through the reeds. The manmade island, originally built in the 1980s to prevent flooding, is also the place for which you’re likely to receive late-night party invites – many take place among the 1.8 million trees planted here.
The early risers working near the UN at the Vienna International Centre dive in at Kaiserwasser for a swim between meetings. Meanwhile, nudists head to the upper section of Neue Donau, near Floridsdorf, for some privacy. Many residents also jump on a train to Bad Vöslau – a Wes Anderson-style thermal spa that has been attracting people since the 1820s. Alternatively, they head to the Schönbrunner Bad pool above the imperial castle for a regal bathe that’s best enjoyed before noon, with sunbathers on the lawn drinking coffee where Emperor Franz Joseph kept his paddling pool.
Despite the city’s bounty, some residents are campaigning to increase swimming in the heart of the city. The Swimmable Cities platform aims to use urban waterways to build climate-resilient cities. “Cities should think about wastewater and flood management systems as something multiuse that could bring more vitality to a place,” says Ana Mumladze Detering, co-founder of Schwimmverein Donaukanal (Swimming Association of the Danube Canal). The group’s aim is to make swimming part of everyday life. “Vienna is really good at managing its waterways but more people need to cool down. Eventually, other cities will have to follow suit.”
Francesca Gavin is a Vienna-based journalist and regular Monocle contributor.For more opinion, analysis and insight, subscribe to Monocle today.
Further reading:
Vienna’s most naked secret lives on the Danube
Monocle’s complete city guide to Vienna
At a conference centre just south of the Virginian town of Leesburg, a Houston sheriff in a broad-brimmed Stetson sits at a table alongside two smart-suited Japanese law-enforcement officials and a Brazilian police officer with medals pinned to his khaki uniform. A few tables away, there is gentle ribbing between Belgian and Senegalese officials, as the White House’s World Cup point man, Andrew Giuliani, probes them on their teams’ respective playing styles. As security representatives from 46 nations and 16 host cities murmur to one another beneath large screens depicting national flags, the room has the feel of a UN confab – except with more cops and football talk.
While it’s a quiet morning when Monocle visits the International Police Co-operation Center (IPCC), the hub of the multinational operation tasked with keeping the 2026 Fifa World Cup safe, that changes when a match begins. “The atmosphere in the room gets pretty lively,” says FBI special agent Doug Olson, the senior co-ordinating official for this year’s tournament. “There’s a heavy bit of competition at the tables. It’s like a kind of a microcosm of the tournament itself, which is great.”
Healthy competition in the tournament comes at a time when the US has kicked off a less than sportsmanlike battle for global supremacy. From berating hisNato partners at the recent summit to threatening the seizure of Greenland and Canada, US president Donald Trump continues to busily work through a list of allies to anger and alienate.
The security repercussions have been wide-ranging. Many European nations, including the UK and France, stopped sharing some intelligence with the US because of their lethal strikes on boats suspected of carrying drugs in the Caribbean. The Netherlands also scaled back co-operation, concerned that intel could be used to violate human rights or assist Russia.
All of which makes international co-operation at the 2026 World Cup just a little bit eyebrow-raising. “The work that’s coming out of this IPCC has been absolutely key to making sure that this [World Cup] is safe and secure,” says Giuliani, son of Maga stalwart and former New York mayor, Rudy.
Pressed by journalists on whether ill-tempered relations between the US and its neighbours to the north and south had affected efforts to keep everyone safe, Giuliani and Olson insist that there has been no impact. “I can’t speak to any of the issues surrounding the World Cup but I can tell you that the security co-ordination with our Canadian counterparts has been outstanding,” says Olson. The Mexican contingent have similarly “been great partners”.
After gushing about working with the tournament’s co-hosts, Giuliani launches into Trumpian hyperbole. “I said that there’s going to be no larger platform to be able to show off true American exceptionalism,” he says. “People are seeing that now… the great hope and promise that the United States offers over our next 250 years.”
When Giuliani was appointed as executive director of the White House Task Force for this year’s event, there were whispers of nepotism and broad scepticism about his ability to manage such a huge sporting tournament. But as Sunday’s final approaches, there has been scant drama off the pitch. Much of this is down to the security co-operation by all the participating nations – except for Haiti and Iran, which were excluded from the IPCC.
During every match, the tables are rearranged so that representatives from each competing team are seated alongside officials from the host city. Then they can talk in real time about any intelligence coming from the ground or from online spaces warranting investigation or response.
If Trump bothers to pay attention, he will see the benefits of multilateralism in action. One nation cannot go it alone and browbeat others into co-operation. Keeping the world safe means some give and take, with cross-cultural understanding and respect helping forge alliances that will benefit everyone.
While there is no way that Giuliani would concede such a political point, one example he gave encapsulates it perfectly. He said thatwhile a US security apparatus might know the threat environment around a New York Giants or Philadelphia Eagles game, they need input from other nations to understand the behaviour of a global fanbase and to decode any warning signs of trouble.
Olson agrees. “Safety and security aren’t accidental,” he says. “We do these things deliberately every day and we receive threat information every single day. That is shared with all our partners at the local, state and international level. That’s how we’ve been able to maintain a safe World Cup.”
At the Nato summit in Ankara last week, Trump abruptly announced that the ceasefire with Iran was over and harangued his allies for not doing more to assist him in a conflict that he unilaterally started. It was classic Trump: combative, unco-operative and it didn’t win him any of the extra assistance that he was hoping for.
When Trump attends the World Cup final on Sunday, many of the US’s traditional allies will be hoping that some of that footballing goodwill flows off the pitch and helps the president understand that alienating your neighbours is a geopolitical own goal.
Charlotte McDonald-Gibson is a Washington-based journalist and regular Monocle contributor. For more opinion, analysis and insight, subscribe to Monocle today.
Further reading:
– The biggest contest of the 2026 World Cup is off the pitch
– A sticky World Cup tradition: Tracking down Panini football stickers
– Tacky? Yes. Patriotic? Often. But the World Cup needs its anthems
On my first trip to Tokyo in the late 1990s, I bought a minidisc player and a small microphone. Then I set out to record sounds around the city. When I walked into a central Tokyo pachinko parlour, I was met with a wall of sound as chaotic as it was beautiful. I stayed longer than I intended, just listening.
That experience introduced me to Tokyo’s very particular relationship with sound, which is layered and complex, and unlike any other place that I’ve visited. Since that trip, my field-recording practice has taken me around the world. I’ve created site-specific soundtracks for buildings and public spaces, and worked with architects and developers in cities from London, Oslo, Singapore and Beijing. At the centre of my work with Mscty Studio, which I founded in 2010, is the idea that if cities sound better, people feel better. Sound is as fundamental to good urban life as clean air or safe streets.
You can learn a lot about a place just by listening. Now that I live full-time in Tokyo, the city is not just my home – it’s my school too.
The FamilyMart jingle
Take the Familymart jingle. Step into one of these chain konbinis (convenience stores) and you’re greeted by what might be Japan’s most recognised piece of functional music. It’s cheerful and bright, sitting somewhere between a doorbell and a lullaby. A shop attendant might hear the melody hundreds of times over the course of a shift or an office worker might hear it once on their way home – but the jingle has the same effect. People have a real affection for it. That’s a harder thing to achieve than it sounds, and most businesses haven’t bothered to try.
Train station melodies
Every Tokyo Metro train station has its own departure melody that is chosen for how they affect passenger stress and behaviour on the platforms. Many of the melodies have been composed by serious musicians: Minoru Mukaiya, who wrote more than 170 of them, was also the keyboardist in celebrated jazz-fusion band Casiopea. Each piece is short enough to avoid irritating commuters, yet long enough to signal that it’s time to move.
Sonar and the city
Take a train to somewhere like Kagurazaka or Koenji, and you’ll hear a different tapestry of sound. In the quieter parts of Tokyo, the sounds of daily life weave through the atmosphere. Head to a café in the morning and you might hear temple bells cut through the whir of coffee grinders while the sound of a tofu maker’s water sloshes out a rhythm. Walk through narrow streets after a spring rain and you’ll hear a serene silence that only happens after a big storm. These are sounds that build into something special: a distinct arrangement that tells you exactly where you are – if you know what to listen for.
Intersection of sounds
It’s impossible for a city of some 14 million people to have a curated soundscape everywhere. There are plenty of spaces where no one has thought about sound at all. Visit one of the city’s many construction sites, a crossing in Shibuya at rush hour or a department store’s basement food hall, and you’ll be treated to a cacophony of footfall, cookery, voices, cars and clattering machines of all kinds.
But if you stop long enough to listen, a place’s story begins to emerge. And while Tokyo sounds much the same today as it did when I first started making minidisc recordings back in the 1990s – some things have disappeared. Once ubiquitous, the garakei (push-button flip phone) with the clickety-clack of its physical buttons, the snap of its clamshell case and the custom ringtones people chose with care, has largely disappeared. It has been replaced by the near-silent smartphone. But something else has arrived. Walk through Asakusa or Nakameguro today and you’ll hear a sound that wasn’t common 25 years ago: the persistent clatter of rolling suitcases on stone and pavement. It’s percussion in a city that has welcomed record numbers of tourists in recent years.
When I listen to Tokyo, I hear both its history and its future. The music of this city has become so familiar to me but I still notice new notes.
Nick Luscombe is a broadcaster for BBC Radio, presenter of Monocle Radio’s ‘Tokyo Music Hour’ and sound artist based in London and Tokyo. He is the founder of Mscty Studio; mscty.space
Unsuspecting shoppers turning up at FamilyMart’s latest convenience store in Tokyo last Friday were met with scenes reminiscent of a new release from the hottest of fashion brands: two-hour queues, a cap on purchases and a crowd ravenous for merchandise. Exterior details immediately announced that this was a special opening and a fresh departure for FamilyMart, which operates 16,400 shops across Japan. There was a redesigned logo – still in the company’s signature blue and green – a sharp new look for the interior and a rooftop luxuriantly planted with trees.
This isn’t any old FamilyMart: it’s Famima – in this case, Famima Park Azabudai. The new concept was devised for the company’s 45th birthday and brings together some of Tokyo’s most prolific creators: Nigo, the creative director and the man behind streetwear brands A Bathing Ape (which he established in 1993) and Human Made; Masamichi Katayama, whose studio Wonderwall has, for more than two decades, produced some of the city’s most memorable retail interiors (including many for Nigo); and Hiromichi Ochiai, the fashion designer behind Convenience Wear, FamilyMart’s inspired line of basics that took the market by storm in 2021 and has already shifted more than 30 million pairs of socks.
“It all started with the idea of ‘I wish there was something like this in a convenience store,’” says Nigo, Famima’s creative lead. Just over a year after his partnership with FamilyMart was announced and following many discussions, this abstract thought has taken a tangible form: a next-generation convenience store on the fringes of the Azabudai Hills development that breaks with typical konbini design convention. The goal was to make a convenience store so special that people would go out of their way to visit it.
Nigo’s magic touch is everywhere – from the logo to cushions, T-shirts, stickers and tote bags. He is a man who understands the power of the ordinary; under his inspired eye, cheap boxes of tissues become collectables. Even the blue, green and white striped staff uniforms, in a robust cotton-look fabric rather than the usual wash-and-wear konbini nylon, look good enough to buy.
Convenience Wear’s concept – “good materials, good techniques, good design” – continues to go from strength to strength. The new Famima has limited-edition exclusives, fitting rooms and clothing assistants. There are denims (jackets and jeans that quickly sold out) and a new brand ambassador in the shape of popular actor Tadanobu Asano. Ochiai’s unerring sense of colour has created a delicious wall of socks and T-shirts wrapped in now-familiar clear packaging. Before Convenience Wear, most thought that no fashion brand could thrive in the confines of the konbini. Ochiai is proving them wrong.
Neat touches from Katayama’s Wonderwall include Famima Stand – a window where shoppers can buy takeaway goods, including Fami-Chiki (FamilyMart’s relentlessly popular boneless fried chicken), then sit on a bench outside. The eccentric rooftop forest is a stroke of genius, creating a welcome thicket of greenery. Occupants of the surrounding high-rises are afforded their own view, a giant “F” sign not visible from the street. As ever, Wonderwall has brought the fun factor to what could be a quotidian shopping experience.
The project has rethought the konbini, a beloved and fundamental part of daily life in Japan, while keeping its DNA. Famima is still a convenience store – it has all the food, essentials, cash machines, delivery services and microwaves that any other would have. “We wanted to embrace the rationality of the Japanese convenience store but explore the sense of enjoyment and richness that lie beyond it,” says Katayama. “We didn’t want to create a place that people would visit just for convenience; we wanted to refine its appeal and uniqueness so that people would feel compelled to go there.”
There are now around 56,000 convenience stores around Japan – engines of innovation that have the customer base and ubiquity to drive trends. Used by all walks of society, regardless of age, gender or wealth, the konbini represents retail at its most democratic. “Convenience stores are a type of business that Japan can be proud of on a global scale and represent a unique culture,” says FamilyMart’s representative director and president Tatsuo Odani. For him, the Famima project not only reboots the standard convenience store but also offers a route forward for the business. “To achieve sustainable growth in the future, transformation and evolution are essential,” he says. FamilyMart, he hopes, can become a “global brand that cannot be imitated”.
As it explores new possibilities for the konbini format, FamilyMart says that lessons here can be implemented at other locations. For now, there are no concrete plans for other standalone stores but Famima elements are being rolled out in regular FamilyMarts across Japan. Nigo, as always, is at the forefront of this shift. “We hope that this next-generation convenience store will allow people in Japan and around the world to experience Japanese culture and lifestyle.”
family.co.jp
Finland’s reputation as a heavy-metal hotbed was perhaps a deciding factor in Freddy Lim’s appointment last May as Taiwan’s envoy to the Nordic nation. Lim has an unlikely side gig: fronting Chthonic, the Republic of China’s biggest heavy-metal group. It’s a hinterland that has come in handy as Taipei faces mounting diplomatic challenges from Beijing. “Metal is a universal language,” he says. “It makes it much easier to make friends.”
Lim’s transition from long-haired, leather-clad caterwauler to polished diplomat hasn’t been as abrupt as it might sound. From 2016 to 2024, he was a member of Taiwan’s parliament, the Legislative Yuan, and of its foreign-affairs committee. “We have played in Finland many times so some people in the government already knew me,” he says. “Finns are sometimes considered to be quite distant and quiet but when they find that you share the same musical aesthetics, they open up.”
Taiwanese diplomacy is a matter of existential seriousness. China, which regards the territory as a temporarily rogue province, has spent considerable energy and resources undermining its diplomatic networks. Since the UN admitted China and ejected Taiwan in 1971, countries have effectively had to choose between them. Beijing’s campaign to persuade Taipei’s remaining partners to switch sides has left the latter with just 12 such allies. Technically, Finland is not among them – Taiwan’s outpost in Helsinki is only a de facto embassy.
For Lim, that makes it all the more urgent to tell his people’s story. “I find so many parallels in Taiwanese and Finnish history,” he says. “There are similar struggles among small countries like ours – how we survive, find our identity and battle with bigger powers. These few months in Helsinki have already inspired me to go deeper and more universal in my music.”
Since Lim stepped into his post, he has performed several times in Finland. “People easily see that Taiwan and Finland need to work on our democratic resilience,” he says. “But there has to be something deeper within our societies that isn’t just about our neighbours but is about us. Metal is a far more natural way to create understanding.”
Here are five other unlikely statespeople who have applied their skills to international relations.
1.
Shirley Temple (USA)
The 1930s child superstar pivoted to diplomacy later in life, serving as the US ambassador to Ghana (1974 to 1976) and Czechoslovakia (1989 to 1992). “Politicians are actors too,” she once said. “If you like people and you’re outgoing… you can do pretty well in politics.”
2.
Gabriela von Habsburg (Georgia)
Georgia’s ambassador to Germany from 2009 to 2013 was a curious choice: the granddaughter of Austria’s last emperor, she is also a sculptor. Von Habsburg could see the overlap, however. “When you do art in public places… you need to defend what you’re doing and be convincing,” she said.
3.
Saint-John Perse (France)
Winning the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1960 might not even be the most interesting thing about Perse. He was dispatched around Europe before the First World War and in 1916 was sent to China. He headed up the French foreign service for much of the 1930s and was later exiled to the US by the Vichy government.
4.
Sidney Poitier (Bahamas)
Poitier was a 70-year-old Oscar winner and Hollywood icon when the Bahamas appointed him ambassador to Japan in 1997. He served in this role for 10 years and was also the country’s ambassador to Unesco from 2002.
5.
Vikas Swarup (India)
While on an extended posting in London in 2003, career diplomat Swarup wrote a novel about an unlikely quiz-show winner, which was later adapted for the screen as Slumdog Millionaire. He went on to serve as India’s high commissioner to Canada.
The big adventure of summer is a blast of cheer wrapped up in hopes and dreams for that perfect parity between work and play, the making of fun new friends in fresh locales, flaunting alluring tanlines as subtly as you wish and, of course, enjoying the fruits of a little retail safari.
Summer shopping is a unique joy conducted under the rippling canvas of a canopied market or in a well-stocked, air-conditioned shop: the respite of the cool changing-room, with an iced-coffee (or clear Chablis), chilled just right, while you browse the shelves of plenty. There’s a lot to be said for shopping in the season of generosity and sunshine.
Two of Monocle’s key preoccupations are, of course, travel and retail. Can you guess where this is headed? In a match made in summer heaven, we’ve planned an itinerary for a pan-European tour of Monocle’s shops and cafés, abetted by other great places to browse, eat, drink and sleep (perhaps to dream of the perfect pair of swim-trunks). Check out this little old plan of azione.
📍Paris
Great love affairs start in Paris and so will our roll through Europe. Our café and shop on Rue Bachaumont in the second arrondissement adds neighbourhood frisson and friendliness to a morning café au lait, a late-afternoon aperitif or a small retail haul (our Breton T-shirts always play well at home and our Zipper duffle bags are good for deterring deft Métro pickpockets).
Our neighbourhood offerings include bright Med flavours at Chez Carrie, classic Escoffier treats at Aux Crus de Bourgogne and wine at Avant Comptoir des Halles for a classic lost afternoon. You might not want to leave such splendours at speed but it’s a hot summer and you’re now in need of a cooler Swiss breeze.
📍Zürich
Take a direct train from Paris to Basel in time for lunch at Brasserie Les Trois Rois, a tour of the beautifully refreshed Fondation Beyeler and a snooze on the ride down to Zürich, where we’ll be waiting at 90 Dufourstrasse to mix you the perfect negroni while you browse the Monocle Shop.
Would you believe it? Your Parisian purchases are tumbling out of your loaded Zipper duffle and our shop manager, Guy, has just the solution: the FreeWalker GL suitcase. Guy is full of wheelie good ideas.
Next you’ll be heading to the heart of Küsnacht, near Lake Zürich, to pull up a chair at the Oxen restaurant. You’ll find fresh takes on hearty classics, perfect for a post-lake-dip refuel (and there’s a Monocle apartment upstairs if you then need to nap it off).
A grilled branzino for dinner, just a block away at Amalfi, keeps it simple and local. If you’re part of a crew of up to six, we’ll personally place the chocolate on your pillow at The Monocle Townhouse at the Widder Hotel. A nightcap at the Widder bar is essential before lights out (or lights still on: what happens at the Widder stays at the Widder).
📍St Moritz
The train to St Moritz is a beautiful ritual that’s just as magical in the summer as it is stunning in the winter. The three-and-a-half-hour ride into the Engadin is the perfect time to dive into our bumper July/August issue or make headway on a holiday read before you roll into the station by the brilliant blue Moritzersee. Suvretta House has sent its driver, liveried in forest green, to collect and take you to Trutz – where lunch awaits.
The Moncler shop toward the Kulm Hotel is a beauty, as is a tour of the lake and the ride up to Piz Nair for a photogenic coffee-spot at an altitude of about 3,000 metres. Buy our navy seersucker shorts for the walk to Lej da Staz and change into our cheery vanilla-toned swimmers for a dip in the Alpine lake – or head out early and go trunk-less, if you dare.
📍Merano
Now, ideally, you would have chatted up a well-heeled local in the Suvretta bar (or a well-refreshed loony at La Baracca) and be making a private-plane trip from Samedan Airport to Bolzano (which might be the best approach in European airspace). Otherwise, rent some chic wheels and drive to Merano. The only route is the scenic route, and you will not be disappointed. By now you have bought a gift-supply of our cotton baseball caps, including one for yourself in navy – ideal for the sun-shade-sun drive through the mountains and valleys as you head east to Südtirol.
Park in your berth for the night at the stunning Villa Arnica and take a stroll (or a hike, if you prefer) to Via Dante, where our shop offers a range of smart choices. Our retail team is there to help and Villa Arnica is good at sending a car for those who couldn’t choose whether to throw on our Valstar suede jacket or Oktoberfest cardigan when the breeze comes down from the mountains.
With your suitcases and bags packed with gifts, goodies and treats, it’s time to fly home. We’re going to miss you but know that you’ll be back for our autumn/winter styles – and a frosty grand tour is every bit as refreshing as the negronis at Dufourstrasse and the (skinny) dip at Staz.
Passing through Zürich Airport, you have just enough time to pick up a freshly printed copy of the annual Mediterraneo newspaper and a bottle of syros at our air-side shop on the second floor of departures. Who would let such a fine airport opportunity go to waste?
Thank you, as ever, for reading, and for being such discerning arbiters of retail. Embark on our adventure and there might well be some prizes for those who can collect the set (email Tyler Brûlé with your proof!).
In the meantime, happy summer from all of us at Monocle.
