Who wouldn’t want to live in Donald Trump’s America? In his State of the Union address on Tuesday night, the president presented a rose-tinted vision of a heroic nation awash with cheap gas, abundant jobs, affordable healthcare and a bounty of cut-price eggs.
Any Republicans worried that Trump might go wildly off script and alienate swathes of middle America with a rage-filled rant breathed a sigh of relief. He largely stayed on topic with an exuberant showman’s speech peppered with words such as “winning”, “champions” and “heroes”, telling voters that they were living in a new “golden age of America”. “The roaring economy is roaring like never before!” he declared to a chamber packed with braying Republicans and stoney-faced Democrats.
The problem is that many Americans won’t recognise the country that their leader described. From the unicorn-like $1.99 gallon of gasoline to energy-price reductions that he claimed “nobody can believe”, the discrepancy between his proclamations of abundance and the bills and receipts stacking up in people’s wallets was jarring.
There is some good economic news in the US: the stock market is up, inflation is easing and job growth is solid. Some people will benefit from tax cuts in his Big Beautiful Bill, though economists claim that it will mostly be the rich. However, while some prices are down – including eggs, which have become the unofficial barometer for food inflation – others are rising, particularly utilities, housing costs and certain foods and consumer goods. Millions of people also face soaring healthcare insurance after Trump allowed Obama-era tax credits to lapse.
The president’s advisors had clearly urged him to accentuate the positives but by refusing to acknowledge any of the hardships facing ordinary Americans, Trump risks seeming out of touch, and on occasion, living in Mar-a-La La Land. Take, for instance, when he claimed to have saved 35 million lives by preventing nuclear war between India and Pakistan or that his tariffs – deemed unconstitutional last week by the Supreme Court – will eventually raise enough revenue to repeal income tax.
Democrats have recently had successes in off-calendar elections by speaking about the affordability crisis but Trump simply dismissed those concerns as a “dirty, rotten lie”. While he extolled the greatness of himself and the country, there were few new policies. For the president, the problem will come nine months down the line, when the US votes in midterm elections for Senate, House and gubernatorial seats. If Trump’s rainbow-filled future isn’t closer to reality, voters will punish Republican candidates and hand Democrats control of Congress.
And polling suggests that Trump is lagging on the issues where he should be winning. According to a recent poll by The Washington Post, his approval rating on the economy has dropped 4 points in a year down to 41 per cent.
On immigration, a Reuters/Ipsos survey last week found that just 38 per cent of respondents thought he was doing a good job, down from 50 per cent about a year ago. While many voters wanted their borders secured and criminals deported, they didn’t want to see law-abiding Joy, who waitresses at their local diner, or Fred, who cheerily manicures their lawns each week, taken away from their families. They certainly didn’t want to see small children being detained and US citizens shot dead by heavily armed ICE agents.
In his speech, Trump didn’t mention Renée Good or Alex Pretti, the two Americans recently killed in Minneapolis by federal agents. Instead, he zoned in on his familiar line detailing horrendous attacks perpetrated by undocumented migrants, even though most of the people being detained by immigration officers have no criminal record.
But among all the bluster Trump did keep one promise: before Tuesday night, he vowed that his address was “gonna be a long speech” – and indeed it was, coming in at a history-beating one hour and 48 minutes. Just don’t expect him to live up to all the other promises that he made any time soon.
Italy’s style capital barely had time to catch its breath after a triumphant Winter Olympic Games before athletes of a different sort descended on the city: those with the stamina for multiple back-to-back runway shows and a diet of champagne and canapés. Yes, Milan Fashion Week is back. And perhaps more than any other stop on the fashion calendar, Milan is the place to watch for its number of notable debuts.
The past few seasons have been a revolving door of creative directors joining and leaving the major houses – a telling sign of fashion’s uncertain economics. In Paris, the goodwill towards the first collections from Matthieu Blazy at Chanel and Jonathan Anderson at Dior hints that steadier times might be ahead. For now, however, Milan is where the next round of appointments will be tested. Here are three brands to watch.
Fendi
One of the most anticipated moves is Maria Grazia Chiuri’s return to Fendi as chief creative officer. Chiuri began her career at the house in the 1990s, working alongside the founding Fendi sisters before making her name at LVMH stablemate Dior, where she reportedly quadrupled sales during her nine-year tenure. The question is whether she can repeat that feat this time around. Wednesday’s show will offer the first clue.
Gucci
Demna, the creative director known for divisive designs and marketing campaigns that nonetheless drove sales at Balenciaga, is already raising eyebrows at his new home, Gucci. Ahead of Friday’s show, the brand has released AI-generated promotional imagery for the collection – a provocation that has split opinion online. The stakes are high for parent company Kering: Gucci’s revenue has roughly halved over the past four years. If the images are anything to go by, Demna will keep making headlines; the test will be whether he can turn noise into desirability at the till.
Marni
Belgian designer Meryll Rogge will present her first collection for Marni on Thursday, undoubtedly with some pressure from owner OTB. Marni garnered a devoted following under previous creative director Francesco Risso, who built a brand known for its wit, playfulness and left-field design. Commercially, however, it has struggled to cut through alongside more mainstream labels. Unlike LVMH and Kering, OTB is betting on a relative newcomer, though Rogge’s eponymous unisex label has been gaining traction thanks to a slew of accolades. Expect a lively mix of colour, craft and sharp tailoring – and watch for how she evolves Marni’s eccentric codes.
Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine four years ago. In the time since, millions of lives have been taken or forever changed, parts of northern Ukraine have been captured and billions in assets have been lost. The effects of the war – including the deep emotional trauma and geopolitical ramifications – are difficult to quantify.
Negotiations between Ukraine and Russia have intensified, yet substantial breakthroughs remain elusive. European allies have found it increasingly difficult to present a united front, while the US administration under Trump has consistently pursued direct negotiations with Russia.
“War changes absolutely everything,” says Julia Jenne, a Monocle writer and researcher from Ukraine. She spoke to Georgina Godwin about the profound impact of the war on her family, the geopolitical effects and where negotiations might go from here.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length. Listen to the full conversation on The Globalist.
Julia, many thanks for coming in today. I know that it’s quite an emotional time for you and your family. I’d like to start on a highly personal note: how has the war in your country affected your life?
Well, it has exposed me to the ugliness of war. I know what it means to lose someone in quite devastating circumstances. I’ve understood what it means to be under bombardment. You think, ‘Oh, I might die now’ or ‘I might suffer unbelievable damage to my body’ and understand that your body is so fragile. And, of course, my family’s lives [have been] turned upside down.
War changes absolutely everything. I think that there’s a romanticisation of it: we read about it in poetry or in literature or we see it in films but all it does is cripple a life that was blossoming before. [You] suddenly become reliant on other people; you become a refugee. I’ve seen all of this happen to my family. I’ve seen my family members, for example, become part of the military and that’s a step that is very difficult because your life is no longer your own.
Sometimes it’s very difficult to die for the glory of your country. Beyond the personal, the ramifications of this war have spread far beyond Ukraine’s borders. Volodymyr Zelensky said in a media interview a couple of days ago that the Third World War has already started. What did he mean by that?
I think what Zelensky is talking about is the axis of evil. We’ve seen a number of countries stepping behind Russia to enable it to continue this war on Ukraine. The past four years would have been impossible for Russia without China, which has supplied Russia with absolutely critical technological components that are then used to make Russian rockets, drones, missiles and military tech. There’s also Iran, whose development of the Shahed drone is crucial. And we’ve seen North Korea, which has committed actual manpower on the ground. There are some 10,000 North Korean soldiers on Russian soil and [who are] being deployed to Ukraine and they’re gaining this invaluable military experience: how to use a drone or how to create a combat situation where they can successfully deploy. That’s what Zelensky is talking about: all these countries are using the military experience behind Russia to influence other conflicts in the future.
Europe is largely supportive of Kyiv but, of course, there is this huge row about sanctions. Hungary and Slovakia are kicking against all these measures that Europe is trying to implement. Tell us more about that.
This is the €90bn loan that was meant to be given from the EU to Ukraine as a concrete example of European support. Hungary blocked this. Hungary and Slovakia are both very upset about the Druzhba pipeline, which brings energy from Russia through Ukraine to European countries. Slovakia has halted emergency power supplies in the last two days to Ukraine because of this row. Supposedly, Ukraine is preventing energy from moving along that pipeline to Hungary and Slovakia, which have attempted to foster close ties with Russia. Slovakia halting emergency power supplies to Ukraine is particularly [brutal] because this winter has been very difficult and because Russia has been striking power stations. It has struck every single power station in Ukraine in the last couple of months. This has meant that Ukrainians have been without power, not just in their homes but also in hospitals, schools and supermarkets.
As we take stock four years into this war, where are we in terms of negotiations? How much of a possibility is there that this will not reach another anniversary?
I think the honest answer is that we’re not close at all. Of course, in Ukraine, there’s a very clear view on this. But beyond Ukraine, if we look at what analysts are saying across Europe and the US, America is not seen as a neutral host of these negotiations. Russia is on the back foot in many ways as Ukraine has liberated quite significant chunks of its territory in the past few weeks. Russia is now having more men killed on the front line than it is able to recruit.
This is a big strategy of Ukraine’s: to use automated systems and drones to show Russia that it can’t gather enough manpower on the front line as it loses it. There is a sense that if Ukraine is given the tools to fight off Russia’s advances, it can defend itself properly. It just has to be given that chance, that support by its allies. But the US in the past 12 months – really, under Donald Trump’s presidency – has pivoted. Despite all the fluster from Moscow, Trump has been interested in economic ties with the Russians and also, I guess, the flattery that comes with an authoritarian friendship.
On his first full working day as the Netherlands’ youngest prime minister, Rob Jetten did not reach for the phone to call Brussels, Berlin or Paris. He called Kyiv. The conversation with Volodymyr Zelensky, brief but pointed, carried a message that needed no elaboration: whatever had recently happened in The Hague – the collapse of a populist experiment, 11 months of dysfunction, three governments in four years – Dutch support for Ukraine was not among the casualties. It was a well-chosen opening move and it showed something about Jetten that his predecessor rarely managed to convey: a sense of where he stands.
A different wind is blowing through The Hague. Whether it builds into momentum or fades into the familiar fog of coalition politics will define the coming months, not only for the Dutch but for a continent searching for credible, pro-European leadership. This feels less like a revolution and more like a recalibration.
Jetten, the social-liberal D66 party’s 38-year-old leader, is many things his predecessor was not. He is articulate, telegenic and, crucially, competent. A low bar, given that Dick Schoof was widely regarded, by allies and adversaries alike, as the most inept premier that the Netherlands has produced in living memory. Schoof’s populist experiment collapsed under the weight of its own contradictions, leaving Geert Wilders’ far-right PVV party diminished and divided. Following January’s parliamentary split into two rival factions, it is considerably defanged.
Yet the nagging irony of Jetten’s opening days is this: at a moment when Europe’s leadership constellation looks tarnished, with Merz, Macron and Meloni locked in a triangular dispute over the continent’s direction, the new Dutch premier is reportedly not travelling to Brussels and Paris until next week. For a politician who could plausibly position himself as a fresh pro-European voice, his hesitation reads like a missed opportunity.
At home the parliamentary arithmetic is sobering. The coalition commands just 66 of the 150 seats in the Tweede Kamer, the first minority government since 1939. Every significant piece of legislation will require the cultivation of ad hoc majorities from an opposition that has already signalled its intention to extract its price. This is not necessarily fatal; minority governments in Scandinavia have produced durable policies. But it demands political dexterity and Dutch coalition culture does not always reward boldness. The Netherlands – just like the rest of Europe – needs an injection of optimism and pro-business policy.
The governing challenges are formidable. The country faces a housing crisis of near-structural severity, a shortage so acute that urban planners speak of it in the same breath as climate adaptation: systemic, expensive and generational. The target of 100,000 new homes a year remains politically popular and practically elusive. Defence spending must rise sharply to meet Nato obligations. Infrastructure investment has been deferred for too long. All of this against a fiscal backdrop demanding restraint, despite the Netherlands remaining one of Europe’s more robust economies. Austerity and ambition make uneasy partners.
But Jetten’s broader significance should not be understated. A pro-European, pro-business, pro-Nato and socially liberal party has emerged – narrowly but decisively – as the largest in the Netherlands after a populist implosion. Across Europe this is being read as a recipe for reversal. If his call to Kyiv was about certainty abroad, the real uncertainty lies at home. Governing by minority demands stamina and if Jetten possesses it, then it’s Europe’s gain as well as that of the Dutch.
Stefan de Vries is an Amsterdam-based journalist.
We’re not ones for kicking folks when they’re down but things seem to be going from bad to worse for Danish pharmaceutical giant Novo Nordisk. The drugmaker was once Europe’s most valuable company thanks to its discovery of obesity treatment Wegovy. But since peaking in 2024, its share price has fallen by roughly two-thirds amid disappointing clinical trial results, a poorly handled change of CEO and mass redundancies. Increasing competition and a lack of control over copycat drugs produced by US compounders have also hit hard.
It was hoped that the approval of an oral version of Wegovy in December would help to pull the company out of its slump. Instead, more disappointment has followed. Novo’s next would-be breakthrough weight-loss treatment, Cagrisema, appears underwhelming, even before launch. A study published yesterday found it to be less effective than rival Eli Lilly’s Tirzepatide. Novo had been counting on Cagrisema to reignite growth in a market already unsettled by concerns over side effects and the tendency for users to regain weight after stopping treatment. By now, shareholders must be hoping for a miracle.
After announcing 9,000 redundancies in September in response to lowered growth forecasts and a rapidly changing market. The company’s decline has been as swift as it has been surprising – to the Danes, at least.
By late 2023, sales of Novo’s diabetes drug, Ozempic, and its obesity treatment derivative, Wegovy, helped it become Europe’s largest company by market capitalisation. The first shock to what had been a sky-rocketing share price appeared in December 2024 with disappointing trial results of its next-gen obesity drug, Cagrisema. Meanwhile, the company was failing to meet demand, allowing rivals such as US-based Eli Lilly to increase their market shares. Growing online sales of counterfeit drugs compounded the challenges.
In late 2024, I visited Novo to interview Dr Lotte Knudsen, who leads the team whose research resulted in Ozempic. She was deeply impressive but I did sense an odd complacency about Novo’s production bottlenecks, their rivals and those aforementioned counterfeiters. The prevailing attitude seemed to be that “there are plenty of fat people in the world to go round.”
A few months later, at a get-together at an ambassador’s residence here in Copenhagen, I shared my concerns for Novo with a former executive of the company. She grabbed my arm as if she were an escapee from a cult: “Yes, exactly,” she said. “But it’s worse than that.” She described an organisation that was reticent to the point of self-harm when it came to seeking leadership from outside of a small cabal of top-level executives, all of whom were Danish.
On one hand, it seems fair that Danish companies are led by Danes. After all, the Danes’ confident leadership style is sought after in neighbouring Sweden, which is often hamstrung by consensus-driven decision making. But Danish CEOs are a strikingly homogenous bunch: predominantly males in their 50s, they inhabit the same wealthy enclave on the coast north of Copenhagen and even have a de facto uniform: a navy, two-button suit, with no tie. (It’s perhaps a trivial point but their cultural hinterland seems mostly limited to cycling and running.) Mads Nipper, the former CEO of crisis-hit Danish energy company Ørsted, is a classic example. His replacement, Rasmus Errboe, is a mere 46 years old – but he too was promoted from within the company.
Here is the issue, though: Novo Nordisk is a profit-driven company but some of those profits (notably dividends) end up in a philanthropic foundation. Dr Knudsen proclaimed herself “a proud socialist”. Altruism and philanthropy are of course deeply admirable but one sometimes wonders if Danes are hungry or ruthless enough for the global corporate environment.
In May of last year, Novo’s board sacked its own identikit Danish CEO, Lars Fruergaard Jørgensen, without having a replacement lined up. Interviewed on Danish television on the day of his firing, he seemed in shock but assured the interviewer that he would handle his defenestration like “a professional” (odd that needed saying). Jørgensen maintained his belief that the US authorities would crack down on counterfeit products. To me this seemed somewhat delusional, given the same US authorities were hurling tariffs at the world, threatening Danish interests in Greenland and then cancelled Ørsted’s crucial Rhode Island wind-farm project, which resulted in the state-owned energy company’s share price plummeting to a record low.
Novo Nordisk finally appointed Jørgensen’s replacement – Mike Doustdar, an Austrian-Iranian company vice-president, is the first non-Dane to run Novo since it was founded in 1923. Although he sometimes wears a tie, things don’t seem to be looking up.
This article was originally published on 12 September 2025 and was updated on 24 February 2026 to reflect the result of the Cagrisema study.
Michael Booth is Monocle’s Copenhagen correspondent. For more opinion, analysis and insight, subscribe to Monocle today. To read Booth’s interview with the quiet scientist behind Ozempic, click here.
From Tuesday 24 February, Stone Island settles into The Monocle Shop in London for a two-week residency. Our Marylebone address will present an edit of the Ghost spring/summer 2026 sub-collection – as featured in Monocle’s February issue – with a custom window installation.
Stone Island’s Ghost collection is where the label’s fabric research comes to a point. Leather, suede and linen do the heavy lifting in this edition, each chosen for its unique attributes and rendered in a tight seasonal palette. Rooted in the idea of camouflage, Ghost looks to keep to a single hue from collar to cuff – even the brand’s iconic compass has been tonally reworked.
This season’s designs nods to Californian workwear; a standout sand-coloured suede jacket references the tone of traditional worker’s gloves. Elsewhere, a blue linen field jacket is bonded to an internal cotton layer, giving the piece structure while keeping the softness that makes linen such an easy summer companion. Careful construction across the edit turns familiar materials into items with understated yet precise detailing.
Staged against stone and open skies in rural Sicily, Monocle’s February photoshoot sharpened the collection’s tonal discipline and heightened its interplay of texture and light. Now the pieces arrive in London for closer inspection. Drop by before 10 March to see how they look – and feel – in person.
The Monocle Shop, London
34 Chiltern Street
London W1U 7QH
The concentration of US firepower around Iran now looks less like signalling and more like sequencing. For months, tensions between Washington and Tehran have simmered over nuclear thresholds, regional proxies and the careful choreography of red lines repeatedly tested but never quite crossed. What distinguishes this moment is not the rhetoric but the hardware. The assets now in play suggest that the US is no longer merely demonstrating resolve – it’s positioning itself for choice.
Since late January, a carrier strike group built around the USS Abraham Lincoln has been operating in the region – substantial enough on its own. But increasingly, there are more. The USS Gerald R Ford, the largest aircraft carrier in the world, has been positioned at the mouth of the Mediterranean and is moving eastward. Two carrier strike groups – one in the Arabian Sea and one in the Mediterranean – would give Washington overlapping arcs of airpower and cruise-missile reach. Around them sit at least 11 air-defence destroyers, three littoral combat ships and two to three attack submarines equipped with Tomahawk missiles. That is the naval element of the equation: visible, mobile and readied to project force.
The second part is both logistical and defensive. In the past month, more than 250 US military airlift flights have landed in the Middle East and surrounding hubs, moving large equipment and air-defence assets. Over the past two weeks, C-17 Globemasters and C-5 Super Galaxies – the US Air Force’s broad-shouldered, heavy-lifting aircraft – have been shuttling equipment into American facilities across the Gulf. The likely purpose is straightforward: harden bases against retaliation before any strike begins.
At Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, aircraft numbers have climbed from 16 to 29, including seven C-17s and 17 KC-135 refuelling tankers. Unlike those behemoth aircraft carriers, tankers are a more subtle indicator of intent. They extend range, loosen political constraints and allow aircraft to operate from further afield if host nations hesitate.
The final element is geographical. Flight tracking over the past week shows multiple waves of KC-135 tankers moving from the US via the UK to bases in Greece and Bulgaria. Six were tracked on 16 February; another 10 followed on 18 February, staging through the UK before heading southeast. The message is implicit. Even if access to some Middle Eastern bases becomes politically fraught, aircraft could operate from southern Europe, with tankers bridging the distance. The movements of US assets confirm that Washington is deliberately widening its geography.
Overlaying all the traffic and hardware is command and control. Six E-3 Sentry AWACS aircraft – the distinctive radar-domed platforms that map the battlefield in real time – are now in theatre. With sufficient tankers and airborne early warning cover, a large-scale air campaign moves beyond theory and threat.
Diplomacy, for now, is running in parallel. A fresh round of US-Iran talks is scheduled in Geneva this week, with Oman mediating. The timing is awkward; negotiations are resuming just as the military appears closest to operational readiness. Taken together, the naval mass, reinforced air defences, tanker bridge to Europe and expanded airborne command assets suggest that Washington could sustain a significant campaign. Today’s US administration, perhaps more than others, is capable of tilting leverage toward action. The open question is not capability, it is intent. Hopefully this military posturing is enough to lure Tehran to the table and strike a deal.
Inzamam Rashid is Monocle’s Gulf correspondent. For more opinion, analysis and insight, subscribe to Monocle today.
The autumn/winter edition of London Fashion Week concluded last night with British luxury fashion house Burberry showing its collection at Old Billingsgate – a former Victorian fish-market-turned-events-space. Providing the soundtrack to the evening was British DJ, producer and radio presenter Benji B, who has collaborated with the brand since Daniel Lee was appointed chief creative director in September 2022. “When I see feet tapping at a show I know that I’ve done a good job,” he tells Monocle. We hear from Benji B about this season’s inspiration and why the UK’s music scene is a soft-power tool.
How does this season’s show soundtrack represent an evolution of your collaboration with Burberry?
With Daniel at Burberry, I wanted to develop a story that celebrates a single artist – and British music – each time. I think of the shows as a box set. Each episode makes sense on its own but if you zoom out and look at them all together, you’ll see the arc of a story. [The inspiration] was a cocktail of different things that put me into a pocket of sound. This season’s strong themes were London at night and femininity. All the planets eventually settle into orbit but generally it’s a combination of seeing what the expression of the set is, as well as the initial mood boards with Daniel and the collection itself. We often go through a few ideas and options of different sequences and artists before landing on the final selection. Obviously, Daniel has the big picture. It’s always a back-and-forth process.
The UK’s music scene is an incredible soft-power tool for Britain. Which heritage elements do you tap into for a project like this?
It’s very easy to focus on the elements that are celebrated. It’s important to note that it doesn’t come from some overly patriotic standpoint but how beautiful, varied and diverse the contribution of British music is to the world. It doesn’t have to be musical heritage either – it can be contemporary. I’ve used songs by Dean Blunt and then Amy Winehouse. Last season in Hyde Park we celebrated Black Sabbath and Ozzy Osbourne because we have always been fans of the song ‘Planet Caravan’. I’m very proud to say that tonight’s artist, FKA Twigs, is someone who is very contemporary but sits in the same space as all those people.
Music plays a crucial part in setting the tone and the mood of a fashion show. How do you hope people feel when they watch something that you’ve created the soundtrack for?
I hope that people can leave inspired. You don’t want the music to distract from the fashion. We’re supporting the work of a designer that is showing on the runway. But we don’t want it to just be background noise – it has to have dynamic range. It’s amazing what sound can achieve in 12 to 15 minutes. What I love about FKA Twigs is that her music has that dynamic range across different albums and eras. I hope that people experience a journey and find a soundtrack that feels contemporary. What we often take away from runway shows is the last thing that we experience, so I want people to leave feeling energised.
The biggest exhibition of artist Rose Wylie’s work to date opens on 28 February at London’s Royal Academy. Rose Wylie: The Picture Comes First brings together some of her most enduring paintings, alongside new work. Wylie is known for her bright, bold canvases, which reference ancient history, popular culture and her own life.
While Wylie was preparing for the exhibition last year, Monocle visited her studio in Kent to get a sneak peek at some of her paintings, as well as works in progress. Read on for Monocle’s profile of the sprightly Wylie and a behind-the-scenes look at her famous (and famously messy) studio. Rose Wylie: The Picture Comes First is on at the Royal Academy from 28 February to 19 April.
When a particularly big globule of paint falls off Rose Wylie’s brush, she’ll simply cover it with a sheet of newspaper to stop it getting on her shoes. “I’m not a precious worker,” she says as we stand in her studio. A soft layer of newspaper carpets the floor, paintbrushes stick out of cans stacked on chairs and colourful splatters obscure the skirting board. Wylie’s unruly garden has crept up the side of the house and into this first-floor room – a jasmine plant pushes through a window in one corner. “Mostly you’re criticised if you don’t tidy up,” she says. “But if you get through a certain threshold, it becomes iconic.”
Wylie’s artistic training went unused for years while she raised her family but, since returning to painting in her forties, she has become a critical and commercial darling of the art world. She is currently working on a painting that features a large, “nonchalant” skeleton. It will appear in her upcoming exhibition at London’s Royal Academy in early 2026, her biggest show to date.
Wylie’s bold canvases often combine text and figures from history, mythology or contemporary pop culture. And while Wylie’s process can be messy, she is exacting about her practice, regularly working late into the night wrestling with a painting. “Often it’s horrible, slimy, trite, pedestrian,” she says. “There are 100 things that can go wrong, particularly with faces, and then, for some odd reason, suddenly it’s alright.”
Born: 1934
Breakthrough moment: Women to Watch exhibition in Washington (2010)
Elected to the Royal Academy: 2014
This article was originally published 15 October 2025 and was updated on 23 February 2026 to reflect Wylie’s show at the Royal Academy London.
Read more about well-aged artists
On the wall of Ramesh Shukla’s Dubai home hangs a 50-dirham note in a simple frame. Visitors often assume that it is there for the currency’s novelty value. It is not. The note carries his photograph of Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan signing the Federation agreement in 1971 – an image so embedded in the UAE’s psyche that it circulates daily in wallets and tills. When the design was first issued, his son Neel tells me, Shukla went around handing out crisp notes to friends and strangers alike. “He was giving out free 50-dirham notes to people, proudly showing off his work.”
It is an endearing detail but also a revealing one. For a man who never chased a salary, never invoiced a ruler and never built a property portfolio, that small rectangle of polymer was proof of something more enduring than wealth.
I meet Neel and his mother, Taru, in the family apartment where Shukla lived for the past 20 years. The walls are dense with art – not only the black-and-white photographs that documented the rise of a country but paintings he later made of those same moments. History, then memory, then reinterpretation. There are pictures of Bill Clinton, a youthful King Charles III, Gulf rulers, Bollywood stars. “He’s seen it all,” Neel says. A tour of the house reveals thousands of prints and canvases – enough to fill a museum easily. And yet the most interesting thing about Shukla is not his proximity to royalty. It’s his position behind them.
He arrived from Gujarat by boat in the late 1960s with hardly any cash and a camera. He left India not as a businessman or engineer – the archetypal Gulf migrant – but as an artist. In Bombay, he had supplied photographs to newspapers. “He never got any job, never took a salary”, Taru tells me. “Whatever he photographed, they’d give some money”. It was a precarious existence even then. In the Emirates, it would be more so.
Within days of landing he was photographing a camel race attended by local rulers. When he showed the prints to Sheikh Zayed, something shifted. “Eye-to-eye connection”, Taru says, locking her fingers together to illustrate the point. Zayed recognised the talent and told him to stay.
From that point on, Shukla became a constant, crouched presence at the birth of a nation. But he did not experience it as history. “He just saw human beings with incredible charisma,” Neel insists. The famous Federation photograph was not taken with a sense of destiny but with technical obsession. He focused on the nib of the pen; Taru developed the negative at home in improvised trays. “If you give too much time, it’s overexposed; less time, it’s underdeveloped”, she says. The stakes felt personal: “Our life will be spoiled”.
The image would later become the visual shorthand for unity. At the time, it was simply the best frame he could make.
It’s tempting to romanticise the title “royal photographer” but it risks obscuring a more telling narrative. Shukla was an Indian immigrant who recorded the ascent of Dubai and the UAE from the shadows. His Rolleiflex sat low at waist level; his lens looking up at leaders who were building a state. The symbolism is almost too neat. Millions of expatriates – Indian, Pakistani, Filipino and beyond – have constructed the Emirates physically and economically. Shukla constructed it visually. All in their own way were present but peripheral to the official story.
“‘My bank balance doesn’t dictate who I am’”, Neel recalls his father saying. “‘My work is my bank balance’”. While others bought land, he bought film. While contemporaries moved into commerce, he doubled down on craft. Even as he gained extraordinary access – travelling with Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum on hunting trips, photographing leaders at home and abroad – he never leveraged it into business. “He never said, ‘Give me money’”, Neel says. “There was no ‘give me’”.
That choice came at a cost. The life of an artist in a boomtown is rarely straightforward. “It was very hard, very challenging”, Neel says. “As an artist, there’s no progression”. Yet perhaps that was precisely why the rulers trusted him. He was not there to extract but to observe.
There is a story Taru tells about Sheikh Mohammed asking her husband how many girlfriends he had. “Twenty,” Shukla replied, referring to his cameras. It is a line that captures his singularity. He loved equipment, light, composition – not mere accumulation.
In the days since his death, tributes have flowed from across the Emirates, including from Dubai’s Crown Prince. They recognise a man who dedicated six decades to documenting the country’s transformation. But perhaps his deeper legacy lies in what his vantage point represents.
To look at modern Dubai is to see skyline and spectacle. To look at it through Shukla’s archive is to see something quieter – leaders squatting on sand before there were chairs, handwritten documents before ministries, desert hunts before highways. His photographs anchor a narrative that might otherwise drift into myth.
Neel, dressed in a black kandura – a subtle signal that this is home – speaks about stewardship now. The family has resisted commercialising the archive. “We want this to have a meaning,” he says. It is not just a trove of images but a record of immigrant contribution rendered visible.
Shukla died with a camera nearby and his signature Panama hat on his head. Even in his final days he was signing prints as part of a vast project for the UAE’s president. “‘Son, this is what I live for,’” Neel recalls him saying.
In the end the most striking image is not the one on the 50-dirham note. It is the idea of an Indian man, waist-level camera in hand, steadying his frame while history unfolds inches away. He rarely appears in the photographs that define the UAE. But without him and without those like him, the picture would be incomplete.
Inzamam Rashid is Monocle’s Gulf correspondent. For more from Rashid, click here.
