Presiding over Pitti Immagine Uomo since 1995 is the affable Raffaello Napoleone. As CEO, he oversees the trade fair’s organisation and ensures its continuing relevance in Italy and beyond. He tells us more about evolving Pitti Uomo and his approach when it comes to personal style.
How do you make sure that Pitti Uomo stays relevant within the industry?
By being curious. Like everything else in life, if you want to maintain a position, you can’t rely on previous results. Season after season, fashion is a sensitive thermometer of social evolutions. The companies that are performing the best at the moment, generally speaking, are the ones that offer clothes that can perform and accompany the way that you move through your life. For example, I travel through cities by motorbike because it’s faster. Then, as an organisation, we keep track of what is becoming mainstream but also what is changing within the mainstream, from colours to the way that clothes are cut. We travel around the world 12 months a year to keep up to date. This is why Pitti continues to play a major role in the industry, because if you want to understand where fashion is going, especially when the market is difficult like it is now, you have to pass through Florence because it’s a completely different approach to the messages that are transmitted at fashion shows. A fashion show is one designer’s opinion; here you see hundreds of companies at once, from small brands to big names.
How do you achieve a balance between championing Italy while remaining a leading international fair?
This year, 53 per cent of the participating brands are Italian and the rest are from around the world. We’re in Florence, where Italian fashion was born. The city became rich from textiles [in the 12th century]. There are deep historic roots here: we have yarn production, tanneries, handmade craft. This has been passed down from one generation to the next. This manufacturing tradition now means that we have a deep relationship with, for example, Japanese brands that are close to the Italian concept of menswear. Chinese brands are producing their clothes in Prato now and using Italian fabrics. We’ve welcomed guest designers from Issey Miyake and Yohji Yamamoto to Jean Paul Gaultier and Donna Karan. We invited Vivienne Westwood to relaunch her brand here after she parted ways with Malcolm McLaren. Raf Simons has exhibited with us three times. For brands it’s an imprimatur to come to Pitti. For anyone looking to understand menswear fashion, you have to pass through Florence. There are retailers and suppliers but also an international community that revolves around menswear.
What rules do you follow when it comes to your own wardrobe?
I’m 71. I was born in 1954. I’ve been dressing the same every day for a long time. I like velvet and a sariana in the summer because it has pockets. I’ve never really felt like a fashion person. I just dress in a way that is comfortable and suits my lifestyle. I’ve never bought anything because it’s fashionable. I have a personal tailor in Rome who is now quite old but I have enough suits for the foreseeable future – as long as I don’t change my figure, so I walk and play tennis and golf.
It’s a satisfying feat of historical continuity that Florence plays host to Pitti Immagine Uomo (or Pitti for short), the biannual menswear trade fair that concludes today. The Tuscan city first made its fortune in the 12th century by trading wool and later expanding its textile expertise to silk and brocade during the Renaissance.
Since the 1980s, Pitti has been taking place at the sprawling Fortezza da Basso, a former military fortress built by the Medici in the 1530s. It is here that a complex of pavilions is divided into loose themes and given names reminiscent of Eurovision Song Contest entries, including “I Go Out” for the outerwear brands and “Dynamic Attitude” for clothes that fall under the streetwear category. More than 750 brands have participated in the January 2026 edition, more than half of them hailing from Italy.
Pitti acts as a barometer for the attitudinal shifts that can be felt from season to season. This January, the existentialism surrounding Donald Trump’s tariffs and the luxury industry slowdown seems to have dissipated and turned to resolve. German, French and Spanish buyers have been out in force while the US and China no longer represent the market goldmines they once were. Meanwhile, Japan offers a curious case study: while the weak yen means the country’s economic might has somewhat waned, it still yields an outsized influence when it comes to aesthetic sensibility and reputation for excellence. Two of this year’s guest designers, Soshi Otsuki and Shinya Kozuka, are Tokyo-based.
“Pitti is akin to the aperitivo before the men’s fashion weeks in Milan and Paris,” the founder of Paris-based accessories brand Bonastre (below, left), Fernando Bonastre de Celis, tells Monocle when we stop by his booth. “We don’t really receive orders here anymore but it’s a good way to make sure that there’s follow-through later down the line.” Many of the exhibitors echo this sentiment. The days of buyers signing off orders in Florence are almost over but establishing a presence at Pitti remains an important marketing exercise, one that lends prestige within a tightknit community of menswear enthusiasts.
Over a glass of chianti classico at Trattoria Cammillo, a collocutor at the neighbouring table tells me that he’s been coming to Pitti for more than 30 years to find new stock for his family-owned Chicago boutique, Burdi Clothing. Around us, Pitti veterans loudly greet each other over clanging plates. Cream cashmere jumpers remain miraculously unstained despite the copious amount of spaghetti alla carrettiera that is being consumed. Coats perched just-so on men’s shoulders finally come off, a signthat the 109th edition of the fair is approaching its finale. But it is these moments on the well-tailored hems of the trade show that represent Pitti at its best – stylish and besuited men gathering to see, sell and sport quality menswear away from the avant garde runways that dominate the season ahead. And while there has been talk of luxury market headwinds – a thriving Pitti is always an auspicious sign for the industry.
Want to know the spots frequented by Florence’s fashion crowd? Try these restaurants
This is Italy. Any deal worth making should be done correctly, meaning over a bistecca alla fiorentina with copious amounts of chianti classico. But which trattorias attract the Pitti set? Here are three industry favourites.
1.
Il Santo Bevitore
The Tuscan dishes at Il Santo Bevitore (pictured) are reimagined for the 21st century in an atmospheric setting complete with vaulted ceilings and dark-wood panelling. Make sure to stop by the restaurant’s lively enoteca, Il Santino, which is conveniently located next door, for an aperitivo or a digestivo.
Via Santo Spirito, 64/r
+39 55 211264
2.
Trattoria Cammillo
This family-owned restaurant is a year-round favourite of the fashion crowd – and for good reason. The trattoria has been serving up a straightforward menu of reliable Italian dishes including tagliatelle, fried zucchini and scaloppine since it opened its doors in 1945.
Borgo San Jacopo, 57/r
+39 55 212427
3.
Trattoria Sostanza
This pared-back trattoria might be small but it is mighty. Its butter chicken and strawberry-topped meringues have attracted high praise since 1869. Pitti pros know to book a table well in advance.
Via del Porcellana, 25/r
+39 55 212691
Wherever you look, from social-media snippets to politicians’ soundbites, the story is the same: London is done for. On its arse economically, socially divided and battered by a crimewave of unendurable brutality, the UK capital is written off as a fast-falling hellscape. Residents inhabiting this version of reality, we’re told, are more likely to have their bike stolen than be offered a cheery “hello”.
Well, perhaps the last part is true – it’s not always the friendliest – but most accounts of the city’s demise have been grossly exaggerated and the case against this misinformation is mounting fast. Even bike thefts have dropped by some 30 per cent over the past 15 years. London’s inbound tourist numbers and spending rose 4 per cent and 6 per cent respectively in the year to October 2025. Last year the capital gained 93,000 residents according to the Office for National Statistics and there’s increasing evidence to suggest that the abandonment of the UK by the tax-fearing wealthy (“Wexit”) is, at best, overstated.
This week the Metropolitan Police confirmed murders to be at a decade-long low in London (a rate five times lower than Los Angeles and half that of New York) and safer than Berlin, Paris and Milan. It’s better than Brussels for goodness sake (an argument that I’d say goes well beyond the murder rate). So why doesn’t it feel as though things are improving?
London has never been popular with the rest of the country but it’s not just homegrown grumblers or headbangers such as the Reform UK leader, Nigel Farage, doing it down. The US president, Donald Trump, found time to dub it a “warzone” and fret about the imminent imposition of Sharia law. That (bullshit) narrative hasn’t been helped by a rise in malicious social-media posts and AI-generated twaddle. Deeply suspect screeds, scant on detail but full of scorn for an imagined lawlessness, rose from the hundreds in 2013 to a peak of about 15,000 last year, according to new analysis by King’s College London.
Whether the capital is to your taste as a place to live and do business or not, it’s important to distinguish between real life and out-of-context online rubbish. So, here goes: violent crime is falling and already proportionately lower than any other UK city. Despite the headlines about knife crime, NHS data says that hospital admissions for stab wounds are at historic lows. Assaults have halved since 2000, even as the population has boomed. Abhorrent crimes against women and girls rightly make headlines when they happen but, hearteningly, the best, most serious long-term study suggests that women report feeling increasingly safe – a trend consistent over the past three decades. Air quality is up, road deaths are down and that’s before we risk naming some of the city’s pulls: opportunity, world-leading art, culture, science, history, hospitality, education and media.
Of course, the truth – as in any democratic, liberal city of a certain size – is messy and imperfect and there are issues: a rise in phone-snatching and petty shoplifting among them. There’s much still to fix in the city, from housing to the high street, but the story of London’s failure is wrong by most measures. Seeing nearly 10 million people getting on with precious little of the drama depicted online isn’t entertaining – it doesn’t serve the nonsense nativist narratives of decline – but at least it’s true. Winter can be gloomy but to understand what’s really wrong we can’t let bots, bigots and misinformation make the weather.
Josh Fehnert is Monocle’s editor. For more opinion, analysis and insight, subscribe to Monocle today.
On a weekday morning in Taiwan’s Hsinchu Science Park, delivery trucks queue outside semiconductor foundries. Just a few blocks away, meanwhile, is a hardware shop with many of its lights switched off; its owner sits idly by the counter, staring at his phone. It’s a snapshot of a place that’s experiencing a world-changing boom that doesn’t feel like one at street level. Amid all the geopolitical noise, Taiwan closed 2025 as an indispensable part of the global technology supply chain. As the manufacturer of most of the world’s advanced chips and servers, the island nation’s economic might is on course for further growth as AI continues to evolve. In October exports grew at their fastest pace in almost 16 years, largely driven by US demand for AI-related hardware (a category excluded from Donald Trump’s tariffs). This astonishing run has brought to the fore questions about who benefits from Taiwan’s economic model and its effects on the island’s security.
Success in technology hasn’t lifted all sectors equally. From tool makers to auto-parts factories, traditional manufacturers have been contending with rising costs, labour shortages and the downstream effects of a supply chain that prioritises semiconductors above all else. The stock market surge has rewarded giants such as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), the world’s largest chipmaker and the quiet engine behind everything from iPhones to the data centres that the internet relies on. TSMC’s market share exceeds 70 per cent and the company continues to post record profits – a level of dominance that only widens the gap with the island’s other manufacturers.
Currency policy magnifies the divide. The Taiwan dollar is estimated to be undervalued by 55 per cent against the US dollar – the steepest misalignment in the world. This keeps exporters globally competitive but raises the cost of living for everyone else. The strategy of currency devaluation powered the island’s industrialisation in the early 1990s; today it concentrates the spoils. Wages remain flat: the average monthly salary hovers at about NT$47,750 (€1,142). And the sector driving Taiwan’s global clout is small relative to its influence. TSMC employs some 83,000 people in total, almost 90 per cent of whom are in Taiwan; yet this represents a small fraction of a labour force measured in the millions. Outside a narrow class of engineers, the average worker here is effectively underwriting the country’s export success through lower pay and eroded purchasing power.
Housing turns that pressure into something more visible. Low interest rates have pushed demand well beyond what wage growth can support. Taipei is now one of the world’s most expensive cities to buy a home in, with a house-price-to-income ratio at 15.71 in 2023 – considerably higher than even London or New York. In the capital an average household still needs to devote two-thirds of its income to a mortgage, a burden that keeps younger Taiwanese trapped in a cycle of renting.
All of this is unfolding as the island faces volatile geopolitical pressures. The industry fuelling Taiwan’s economic rise is now at the centre of global security concerns. Beijing has intensified its military pressure, no doubt emboldened by the havoc that Donald Trump is wreaking on geopolitical norms. At the end of December, China held huge military drills around Taiwan, involving fighter planes, naval destroyers, drones and even a simulated blockade; Chinese military aircraft and naval vessels have become a regular presence around the island.
Taiwan’s strategic value cuts both ways. It heightens Beijing’s incentive to pressure the island while strengthening Washington’s belief that it is too crucial to lose. Washington has tightened export controls on advanced chips bound for China while pouring billions into domestic production, including a subsidy of more than $6bn (€5.2bn) for TSMC’s new fabs in Arizona. Europe and Japan have followed suit, courting Taiwanese firms as they race to build their own chip-making capacity.
Translating Taiwan’s technological stature into broader domestic prosperity remains an unresolved challenge. The geopolitical backdrop adds another layer of uncertainty to an economy already struggling to spread its gains.The island is being asked to anchor the world’s AI ambitions while absorbing the political and security risks that come with it. This year will be a test of whether the benefits of this extraordinary boom can finally filter down to the households carrying its weight.
Clarissa Wei is a US journalist based in Taiwan. For more opinion, analysis and insight, subscribe to Monocle today.
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The design industry’s year kicks into gear this week in the French capital. Paris Déco Off, which starts today and focuses on textiles and wallpapers, will see exhibitions and product launches take place in showrooms across the city. Featuring name brands and smaller makers, it complements one of the industry’s largest trade shows, Maison&Objet, taking place in the halls of the Nord Villepinte Exhibition Centre. Here, we take the creative scene’s temperature with five of the week’s exhibitors.
1.
John Pomp at Triode Gallery, 28 Rue Jacob
There’s a back-to-school energy in Paris as old friends catch up post holidays and new introductions are made – a boon for designers such as John Pomp and a reminder that in-person events remain important for the creative community. “We are prioritising personal connections,” says Pomp. In Paris, he’ll meet clients and potential partners at Triode Gallery, where he’s showing new work. “Paris Déco Off has become a destination for the international community to celebrate and share inspiring pieces. Many US clients come here and it’s a pivotal moment for us to connect with them and others from all around the world – France, the UK, Spain, Russia, Germany and Japan.”
2.
Haydn von Werp at Librairie Michel Bouvier, 14 Rue Visconti
As much as material innovation is lauded, knowing when to use a specific material is important. It’s something that Haydn von Werp is executing perfectly in his new furniture collection, Arcus. “For my designs, materials are allowed to speak through their inherent qualities: stone for its gravity, wood for its warmth, metal for its precision,” says Von Werp. “Balance, rhythm, weight and clarity have endured because they respond to us in the same way that cities such as Paris or Rome do. The shapes [of the Arcus collection] are simple because they come from buildings and ideas that people already know.”
3.
Pierre Frey at 47 Rue des Petits Champs
For brands such as Pierre Frey – a French design house renowned for its fabrics, wallpapers and custom-made rugs – Paris Déco Off is key: it’s the most significant event that focuses on the sectors of the design industry that the 90-year-old family firm specialises in. This week it will show its new collection alongside a performance by fresco artist Raphaël Schmitt. “Innovation in our sector lies in the dialogue between heritage and experimentation: new fibres, sustainable processes, digital tools and renewed interest in artisanal techniques, especially in wallpapers,” says communications director Pierre Frey. “The future of interiors will be increasingly tactile, narrative and responsible.”
4.
Sandra Benhamou at Galerie Dina Vierny, 36 Rue Jacob
The lines between art and design are becoming increasingly blurry. It’s something that Sandra Benhamou is capturing with her exhibition As de Rêve – a showcase at Galerie Dina Vierny that presents her furniture alongside works curated by the gallery. “Art nourishes the imagination, opening emotional and conceptual territories, while design translates that emotion into something tangible and lived-in,” says Benhamou. “Together, they enrich one another: art brings depth and narrative, while design brings presence, intimacy and duration.”
5.
Toyine Sellers at Hästens, 52 Rue de l’Université
Craft’s resilience – and resurgence – has been well documented. Despite being defined by the use of the human hand, we’re still seeing new machines and materials applied to the creation of furniture and objects. South African-born, France-and-Sweden-based textile artist Toyine Sellers is turning that idea on its head. “Using traditional looms is fundamental to my practice because they embody a deep history of knowledge and skill, and operate at a different pace – one that privileges the journey over the destination,” says Sellers, who is presenting her first outdoor collection this week. “Opportunities for material and textile innovation come from pushing traditional techniques into new contexts. By using historic looms and methods in unexpected ways, new textures and functions can emerge without losing the integrity of craft.”
Nic Monisse is Monocle’s design editor. For more on Paris’s outstanding creative community, head to monocle.com to read our report on its impressive design ecosystem. And don’t forget to consult our Paris City Guide.
When I have asked a number of Danes how they would feel if they “lost” Greenland, two points have been raised: first, that it’s not theirs to lose and, second, that many of them would not be all that bothered. When I point out that their kingdom would lose the largest island in the world, a crucial territory in what is rapidly becoming the 21st century’s most important geopolitical conflict zone, I have been met with shrugs. “We would only be proud if the Greenlanders took control of their country and if we helped with that in an orderly way,” the director of a Danish technology company told me over lunch last week. A senior civil servant, also at the table, agreed. “I think we’d be very satisfied if they felt they could go it alone,” she said.
With a population of about 56,500, “going it alone” is not really an option for Greenland, which has always been an economic burden on the Danes. Denmark spends about DKK5bn (€670m) a year on the territory – not just within it but also, for example, on flying hundreds of Greenlanders to Copenhagen every year for often relatively routine medical procedures. But it has also been a long-term moral burden. Denmark’s colonial past is much like that of every other nation with such history: there are incidents of which it is not proud.
Last year, for instance, the Danish prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, apologised for contraceptive devices fitted to thousands of Greenlandic women without their consent by Danish healthcare workers in the 1960s and 1970s.
But Danes can also get a little weary of these kinds of grievances. A while ago, I was invited for a presentation at Det Grønlandske Hus in Aarhus. I expected a forward-looking pitch about the wonders of Greenland’s nature and landscape; perhaps something positive about independence. Instead, I received an hourlong lecture about the injustices and hardships suffered by Greenlanders under the colonial yoke over the centuries and a contemporary portrait of social hardship, neglect and victimhood. I left feeling marginally more sympathy towards the Danes than the Greenlanders, which I don’t think was the aim.
There is, of course, the eternal promise of the mineral riches beneath the Arctic permafrost that would be lost. But Danish friends point out that those riches are as yet largely unverified and will be hugely expensive – perhaps impossible – to extract, even with the ice gone. There is almost no infrastructure in place in Greenland and its hostile climate makes the construction of roads and ports prohibitively expensive, they say.
What Greenland has brought Denmark over the decades is international status, a seat at the Arctic table and the proud if rather hollow boast about the sheer quantity of square mileage at its command. This might explain why Danish politicians have remained so actively engaged in the matter while the populace at large is, at best, indifferent.
When the US president, Donald Trump, first voiced his wish to make Greenland the 51st state of the US during his first term, Frederiksen openly mocked him. She isn’t laughing now but is instead playing the Nato card. The US taking territory by force from another Nato member would mean the end of the Western alliance and of the postwar world order – which is why European leaders have been unusually trenchant in their support of Denmark too. (In a debate in the European Parliament, one Danish right-winger told Trump to “fuck off”. Only time will tell if that was a counterproductive strategy.)
But who really controls Greenland? Not the United States. But not entirely Denmark either – the Danes run foreign and defence affairs only. Even Greenlanders don’t really “own” it, at least not individually. Under Greenlandic law, no one can own the land on which their property stands – they merely lease it from Greenland’s government. Does that make it simpler or more complicated to “buy” the island? To be honest, at this stage, I have absolutely no idea. But what I do know is that the fate of Greenland would seem to offer no upsides for Denmark, either way.
Read next: Shake in your boots, Russian soldiers – I’m prepared to die for Denmark
The Islamic Republic, which was born of revolution in the late 1970s, is still using 20th-century tactics to suppress dissent. Last week the country’s government turned off the internet to stem the protests that have brought what could be the largest crowds to the streets since the Green Movement of 2009. It isn’t working. Cutting off electronic communications in an age of widely available, privacy-enhancing technology is near impossible.
Some protestors are calling for the return of Iran’s royal family through the former Shah’s son, Reza Pahlavi, who has spent most of his life in exile in the US. But the regime’s opponents should be wary of harking back to simpler times. In many ways, nostalgia for the old system is unsurprising. Iran’s youthful population, which has a median age of 34, has little memory of the Shah’s era, so it is natural that they would look back on photographs of pre-revolution Tehran, with its stylish, miniskirt-clad women and disco-playing nightclubs, and yearn for what their country lost. On top of this, the Islamic Revolution has been delegitimised by 47 years of brutality under the guise of a morally righteous theocracy. Over the past decade, Iranians’ living standards have been battered by soaring inflation, largely as a result of US sanctions. This is particularly galling when the sons of mullahs drive around in luxury cars.
However, nostalgia for the system that was deposed in 1979 is both dated and dangerous. The old Shah was already seriously ill when he was overthrown and died a little more than a year later. His son has not been to Iran since he fled as a teenager. In recent days, Pahlavi has begun speaking publicly in support of the protests. While he has said that it is up to Iranians to decide what kind of system of governance they want, he is apparently keen to wield some influence, either as a figurehead or a political powerbroker. If he really wants to help his country and perhaps atone for the mistakes of his father, he should rule out a return to power.
The problem is that Iranians have few other good options. Most of the organised opposition is murky and compromised, particularly the most vocal group, the People’s Mojahedin Organisation (MEK), which is cult-like and archaic, having started as a leftist opposition to the Shah. Today it is based in Albania and has won the backing of only a few fringe figures, including Rudy Giuliani, Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer. Some opposition leaders are viewed as aligned with Saudi Arabia, a country that would have much to gain by destabilising its regional rival – but little reason to promote democracy there given that it is also an autocratic state.
Nostalgia is a powerful force in modern politics but it necessarily glosses over anything that detracts from its roseate view. The Shah’s regime was not as tyrannical as that of the Ayatollah but neither was it democratic or free. These two things are what Iran’s people need and want. Reza Pahlavi’s rhetoric offers a good impression but there was genuine popular appetite for the Shah’s overthrow in 1979. By rallying around an avowed monarchist, Iran could simply slip from one form of autocracy to another. To reach something better, nostalgia should be tempered with honesty and the courage to forge a new, brighter future for Iran.
Hannah Lucinda Smith is Monocle’s Istanbul correspondent. For more opinion, analysis and insight, subscribe to Monocle today.
Saks Global has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Marc Metrick resigned as CEO last week, just 13 months after the company penned a multibillion-dollar deal to merge US department stores Neiman Marcus and Saks. The demise of this retail behemoth, which includes dozens of shops across the country, as well as two Bergdorf Goodman locations, raises renewed questions over the future of US department stores.
While online shopping has affected in-store sales, other problems have plagued the retailer. “Notions of breadth have been lost – these locations have become speciality shops focused on fashion and beauty,” says Monocle’s editorial director, Tyler Brûlé. In their prime, these institutions treated visitors to an array of products, from linens and porcelain to fine wines and fashion. The owners of department stores sometimes indulged in engaging, often whimsical marketing strategies that today’s consolidation-focused CEOs seemingly wouldn’t dare to invest in.
An aura of legend exists around America’s mid-century department stores. The May Company in Los Angeles, for instance, had models walk around its restaurant wearing select garments and holding up a number so that diners could order an outfit directly to their tables.
Today the old May Company building is a museum about films. Most of the US department stores that defined the era are either teetering on oblivion or have been hoovered up by big retail groups or private-equity firms. Macy’s has already closed its branch in Philadelphia’s Wanamaker Building, part of a wider plan to shutter 150 of its shops over the next three years. And then there’s Neiman Marcus: its flagship store had been due to close its doors on 31 March but a last-minute intervention by the city of Dallas has kept it open until the end of the year. However, its ultimate fate and future remain uncertain.
I look back fondly at the heyday of department stores, with their cocktail hours and clued-up clerks who knew their best customers’ measurements by heart. But it’s not just this retail experience that I’m nostalgic about; I’m also nostalgic about the way that these retailers were run. In their prime, their owners took luxuries that most of today’s finance-focused CEOs simply wouldn’t indulge: whimsies and joyful extravagances that made department stores celebrations of fashion and life rather than just selling products. In recent years the in-store experience hasn’t been able to keep up with the pace and ease of online shopping. A physical retailer simply cannot cut through as it once did if it’s just another multi-brand boutique that prioritises returns over the experience of its clientele.
When Neiman Marcus opened its first Dallas outpost in 1914, it was a gamble to bring high fashion to a market far from New York’s Fifth Avenue. But the shop tapped into the ascendent purchasing power of banking families and the oil-rich. Neiman’s was more like a film studio than a shop, with hammered-together runways for impromptu fashion shows and salons where the latest designs from Paris were debuted over drinks. Writing about Neiman’s in 1945, Life described attentive staff doling out fashion advice to clients. “They have been known to stop a $1,000 [€929] sale because they thought that the article was unsuited to the customer who wanted to buy it.”
There were no algorithms at work here. Success required deep experience of the market, locally and globally. This meant investing in staff whose job it was to know who was living and spending in the city, as well as attending fashion shows with those customers in mind. All of this still happens, of course – but it’s fast disappearing. Some years ago I wrote about Hall’s, a family-owned department store in Kansas City that has held on against the odds. The leadership put this down to the personal connection that the buyers have with their clientele. Freshly returned from ateliers in Europe, buyers call up their best customers to invite them to the shop, first for drinks or dinner and, then, to reveal their latest finds.
Every time that a US department store closes, I lament the disappearing golden age of American retail. But I see reasons to be optimistic: Paris institution Printemps opened its first North American venture in New York in March. The interiors are extravagant – a bit wild, even – and there are promises of a reinvigorated retail model. Let’s see how it fairs.
When you’ve finished reading this piece, I hope that you will pause to mull it over and consider the team that brought it to life.
That might be a lot to ask of those reading a short article but until quite recently, sitting through end credits was a reasonable expectation for audiences of TV series that had taken hundreds of people months to create. For instance, AMC drama Mad Men (2007–15), despite being about people who produced punchy advertisements, lingered deliberately at the end of each episode, pairing its credits with carefully chosen songs that invited us to sit with what we had just seen.
Still, that sense of an ending carried an economic risk: viewers might switch off, with traditional broadcasters having no way to prevent it. Streaming services, on the other hand, have a way of ensuring audience retention. With a few seconds’ grace, the credits are overridden and the next episode begins – whether you are ready to watch it or not.
And it works. A December 2024 study by researchers at the University of Chicago found that “disabling autoplay on Netflix significantly reduced key content consumption aggregates, including average daily watching and average session length”.
It’s a tiny change in our habits but it reflects several broader shifts, starting with people’s lack of awareness of what goes into making a programme. Every one of the many specialised jobs that television dramas require takes time to learn and to carry out well. Even half-watching the credits and wondering what a best boy does is a way to acknowledge that. After a theatre production, no one resents the curtain call because we recognise that the work involved gives value to a performance. But autoplay turns this into a skippable chore, like reading the terms and conditions.
If we come to believe that our demands should be instantly satisfied, expectations – not only of entertainment programmes and businesses but of larger systems such as governments – will eventually become impossible to achieve. Watching the credits is a reminder that things are more complicated than what we see and that what happens “behind the scenes” is not a matter of shadowy figures conspiring against us but of ordinary people struggling to get things done.
The determination of streaming services to maximise our screen time is not a conspiracy either – it’s just a function of the competition for our attention. But removing the credit sequence is also an example of a mindset that has driven the internet since it was invented: optimisation.
Optimisation has improved life in countless ways. But it works by elevating a single variable, brushing aside any side effects in the name of efficiency. That sense of irritation you feel when the next episode launches as you fumble for the remote control comes from this logic. Autoplay is a minor assertion of power and one of the many, easily overlooked ways that the attention economy leans on us every day.
Opposition to this way of being treated appears to be gaining ground. GWI, an audience research company, reported that 19 per cent of viewers in the US “prefer streaming a series with scheduled weekly releases” – a 40 per cent increase since 2020. Netflix released the final season of its blockbuster series Stranger Things, not all at once, but in batches. There is value in watching TV programmes from beginning to end.
The premise of streaming – that you can go on drinking in content forever – is a fallacy. There is a personal limit on how much you can watch, even for the most active viewers. Part of the point of dramas is to help us come to terms with the fact that our lives don’t just go on forever. They help us cope with that by giving us the sense of an ending.
Phil Tinline is the author of ‘The Death of Consensus: 100 Years of British Political Nightmares’ and ‘Ghosts of Iron Mountain: The Hoax That Duped America and Its Sinister Legacy’.
I ask this, having frequently been told a variation of the same story by friends, who have been on the phone to a bank or an airline, an internet service provider or an energy company. The organisation has screwed up and they, the customer, are attempting to rectify things.
In response, the customer-care call-centre employee is parrying their efforts with a rota of empathetic phrases that they were taught on a one-hour induction course. Finally, exasperated, my friend will have expressed their frustration a little more firmly. Not the F-bomb. No raised voice. Nothing personal. But at this point a ripcord is pulled: “I am sorry, I do not have to accept language like that, I am transferring you to my supervisor.” The supervisor, without being privy to what has preceded, informs them that the call is being terminated because they, the customer, have not remained civil.
It has happened to me too. A young plumber, visiting to fix a repeatedly failing pump in our basement, explained that the problem was a faulty batch from the manufacturer. He removed the pump and returned an hour later with a new one. On closer questioning, he conceded that it was from the same faulty batch. I hesitated, fearful of appearing naive. “But mightn’t that also be unreliable?” The plumber admitted that, yes, there was that possibility. But I could always go down to the basement and just, you know, nudge the ballcock, if the drain filled up. Presumably he imagined that I should sit all night beside it, like an Inuit at a fishing hole.
Instead, I made him an offer. “If the basement floods, you come on Monday morning and clear up the water. Or pay me compensation. How does that sound?” He blanched and stuttered. A few moments later, his boss rang me. “You should talk nicely to people,” he admonished. “You should behave properly. It isn’t Alan’s fault.” Alan was upset. I apologised to Alan. He replaced the faulty pump with the other potentially faulty pump. And so, the circle of life continued. I hadn’t raised my voice to Alan. I hadn’t insulted him personally; I had merely expressed my frustration and offered what I thought was a reasonable solution. But I had supposedly overstepped the mark.
I have been reflecting on how that mark must have moved in recent years, without anyone telling me. Or had there been some other shift, a diminishment in a sense of personal responsibility, an increase in the fragility of the collective ego?
I offer these stories not with any eyeroll about snowflakes or political correctness gone mad. The most famous perspective on all this is probably Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt’s The Coddling of the American Mind, which focuses on the youth of their homeland, but I don’t think that the issue is generation-specific.
What is odd is the anonymising distance afforded by the digital world, turning a large section of the population into total monsters, unafraid to hurl obscenities and wild accusations. Similarly, offence can now be taken so easily and, it seems to me, arbitrarily.
So who is to blame? Well, as ever, it’s the politicians: this kind of tactical, performative offence-taking is particularly loved by the right wing. Here in Denmark, one far-right politician often deploys the “Are you accusing me of being a racist?” defence in the manner of an affronted maiden aunt fluttering her lacy handkerchief at the mention of sexual impropriety. In the UK, Nigel Farage uses the technique of pretending to get upset at some imagined slight, raising his voice in protest – “How dare you suggest…!”; “That is grossly offensive!” – when he knows that he is on shaky moral or factual ground.
Politicians might be beyond saving but the rest of us really need to buck up. If the Russian army really is about to roll across Western Europe, are we as robust as we need to be? Before we spend billions on our defence hardware, shouldn’t we also spend a little time considering our mental resilience to the quotidian vicissitudes of life? If we indulge in offence-taking to evade our basic responsibilities, is that likely to help us resist the crushing heel of the Russian jackboot? And if anyone has a good water pump spare, feel free to drop me a line.
Michael Booth is Monocle’s Copenhagen correspondent. For more opinion, analysis and insight, subscribe to Monocle today.
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