At 91 years old, Frank Bowling is still finding new ways to let paint run its course. “I’m always following my instincts,” says Bowling, who has painted, poured, sprayed, stained and stitched vivid colours onto unprimed canvases for more than 70 years. “There was a time when I didn’t have a dealer and museums weren’t buying,” he says. “Now, my paintings are in more than 70 museums around the world.” Last year his works went on show at the 36th Bienal de São Paulo – a full-circle moment for the South America-born artist in the bright throes of his twilight years.

Now the London-based artist is set for another milestone: his first solo exhibition in Asia. Hauser & Wirth’s Frank Bowling: Like Water opens on 11 June in Hong Kong. But for a more intimate experience, make your way to the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge where Frank Bowling: Seeking the Sublime brings together a collection of 11 artworks spanning the Guyanese-British artist’s long career. Unlike the major shows that he is now used to, the cosy gallery compresses Bowling’s bright colours until they detonate.

The exhibition moves like a swift and confident brushstroke through his oeuvre: the early expressionist phase, a piece or two from his transitional period in the mid-1960s and a pair of “poured” paintings from 1976, produced after the artist moved to New York. It was this shift of perspective that led Bowling to the abstraction that would make his name. There are even two more recent works that are being shown for the first time, “Swan Upping” (2020) and “Yellow Map” (2025). 

Each of Bowling’s poured paintings begins on the floor. Every cotton-duck canvas receives its first colours in the form of drips of paint that fall from an earlier in-progress painting hanging above – a sort of artistic assembly line. “Then my assistant fills a bucket with paint and water and pours it down the canvas while I direct the flood,” he says.

When Monocle visits his studio in South London, Bowling is directing his son, Ben – who’s armed with silver glitter-laced spray paint – from a wheelchair. “Brighter,” says Bowling of a long white streak that cuts down the canvas like a coastline, “all the way.” When Ben reaches a patch of empty space, Bowling reacts instinctively. “Put red in it,” he says. But the painting is still not finished. Later it will appear “on the ceiling of my room.” Bowling’s imagination never rests. “I’m preoccupied with the search for something new in painting so I’m always working in different ways.” 

Even in his nineties, Bowling is still letting paint find its path of least resistance. Age might have hindered his movement but his imagination hasn’t wearied. “I catch youthfulness from the people around me,” says Bowling. Many of whom are family members – studio assistants and collaborators – who replenish the current of curiosity that traces back to Bowling’s childhood spent helping his mother with her sewing business in New Amsterdam. “It’s absolutely a family affair. Many years ago I told the Royal Academy that I wanted my studio to become something like a laboratory and I’m really pleased about how that has worked out.” 

Bowling still shows up to his laboratory at the same time each day. There he sits, watching how the paint pools, how it “spreads and bleeds”. “You never know what you’ll find the next morning after the paint dries overnight.” 

‘Frank Bowling: Like Water’ opens on 11 June and runs until 29 August 2026.
‘Frank Bowling: Seeking the Sublime’ runs until January 2027.

Further reading:
– The art of ageing: Inside the studios of seven in-demand artists in their eighties and nineties

For the record (a very public one), I love AI (artificial intelligence, in case you’ve missed it)! I know this might come as a bit of a shock given that it’s putting journalists out of work, killing off critical thinking and guaranteeing that anyone entering high school will be part of the dumbest, most disconnected generation yet. But dig a little deeper, with the most selfish motivations, and I firmly believe that daily life is going to vastly improve. Allow me to replay a real-life scenario that might soon be a thing of the past thanks to the wonders of AI.

Thursday evening was a night of serious celebration. After decades of diplomatic acrobatics, trade hustling, on-the-fly cultural education and general (albeit pragmatic and measured) flag-waving for Japan, Monocle friend Melanie Brock was awarded the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Neck Ribbon (no less!), principally for her contribution to Japan-Australia relations but I would add that her greatest skill in smooth negotiations is knowing her way around a Japanese corporate boardroom, tracking down the AC panel and knowing how to turn the temperature down from a nap-inducing 25C to a more contract-signing-conducive 21C.

To mark the occasion, I booked New York Grill at the Park Hyatt as it has become a bit of a company classic for significant milestones. The steak ordering comes with a proper briefing session on Hokkaido versus Sendai tenderloin cuts and there’s an ever-improving Japanese wine cellar to match. Even before bums touched seats, the sommelier was pouring a very crisp bottle of sparkling wine from Yamanashi Prefecture while Melanie passed around the medal for our gathered group to inspect. As dining rooms atop modern towers go, New York Grill is hard to beat. The Japanese waitstaff are pressed and well-tailored, the linen likewise and there’s a wonderful choreography between kitchen, bar, tables and the dazzling, endless city beyond.

As we moved to another bottle of the Koshu sparkling our attention and conversation became punctuated by the frequent distractions drifting near and far across the Grill. Often it was a simple raising of eyebrows or a rapid sideways glance that would draw our table’s attention to a visual disturbance. Sometimes it was an expanse of bad denim atop a weird athletic sandal or maybe an even larger expanse of fatty bare back squeezed into a gingham tablecloth turned prairie dress. “Honestly, what are people thinking?” started our medal recipient. “Can they not see how everyone else makes an effort in this country when they go out?” We all quickly agreed – while watching an athleisurely clad, tablet-toting family shuffle past – that things were officially out of control in many Japanese public settings and swift action was needed to remind people that the world is not an extension of their living room.

Indeed, the lack of sartorial common sense was at such a low level on Thursday evening that by 22.00 the overall elegance of the Grill had been snuffed out by couples and quads of the very poorly dressed. Need I tell you where most of these tech-bro-influenced people were from? No, I didn’t think so. Which brings me neatly to the wonders of AI. As most of this crowd are likely at the leading edge of all things digitally powered and energy-sapping, and increasingly leave all decision-making to far-flung data centres, I find some relief in the fact that soon very basic, daily exercises such as getting dressed or going out the front door will require some level of consultation with a supposed digital know-it-all.

Thanks to a bit of scraped input from the likes of the Park Hyatt, Chad and Britney will find that they won’t be allowed to show up at the Grill dressed as though they’re off to Starbucks in Santa Monica. When they ask “where should we go for dinner tonight in Tokyo?”, an AI service will respond: “Park Hyatt would be a good choice but based on your retail purchase patterns and the images that you’ve uploaded over the past 18 months, you don’t possess the appropriate wardrobe to visit this establishment. The Isetan department store is 10 minutes away and closes at 20.00. Would you like me to make a dinner reservation once you’ve updated your wardrobe with the appropriate pieces?”

For people who don’t know any better, or are simply oblivious to their surroundings, the world might just become a more attractive place thanks to the imminent collapse of basic decision-making and general self-awareness. Then again, Chad and Britney could also trot down to the Monocle Shop in Tomigaya, where not only would we kit them out with some new gear to look the part but also give them some fitting establishments to go with their new wardrobe. They would even get to interact with real, live Japanese people for a few minutes. How luxurious, how novel.

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

Scan the bookshelves of any French home, bookshop or library and there’s a title that you will invariably find: Le Petit Prince. Written and illustrated in 1942 by military pilot Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, the book is a children’s novella so synonymous with Gallic identity that the French still purchase between 200,000 and 300,000 copies a year.

Saint-Exupéry was an intrepid explorer and his narrative was inspired by his own experiences. He wrote Le Petit Prince while in exile on Long Island after being demobilised. In the story, a stranded pilot meets a prince from a neighbouring asteroid. After encountering six narrow-minded, egocentric characters, the young prince grows disillusioned with the meaning of life. It’s a wise fox who identifies the story’s moral: “L’essentiel est invisible pour les yeux” or “What is essential is invisible to the eye.” The message is impossible to misunderstand: the most meaningful aspects of life – love, kindness and friendship – aren’t visible. It’s a predictable moral, perhaps, but the book’s success is anything but. 

For a novella that has become a paradigm of quintessential Frenchness, Le Petit Prince was ironically first published in the US. The book was banned under the Vichy regime, a government that Saint-Exupéry had denounced. When Gallimard eventually published the book in France in 1946, the prestigious publishing house couldn’t have foreseen that 80 years on, it wouldn’t just be Francophone readers who would cherish the title. 

Available in more than 650 languages, Le Petit Prince has become the second-most translated book worldwide, second only to the Bible. Its uncomplicated storyline, universal themes and simple lexicon have fostered remarkable longevity. Today you can find a copy in Chinese, Hawaiian or Emirati Arabic and you can also read the enchanting fable in endangered dialects. These include Sardinian, Quechua and Toba, spoken in Argentina and Paraguay. Le Petit Prince is also one of a handful of modern works that has been translated into classical Latin. 

With more than 300 million copies sold globally, the universally understood tale has become an unlikely ambassador of French soft diplomacy and the linchpin of its well-admired literary capabilities. “Antoine was a stylish and courageous French pilot who smoked cigarettes,” says Thomas Rivière, Saint-Exupéry’s great-great-nephew and head of licensing for the estate. “A bit like Chanel, his story has become the epitome of the ‘Made in France’ brand.” 

Sales are particularly buoyant in the US – a bronze statue of the prince was installed on New York’s Fifth Avenue in 2023. The French American Cultural Foundation also champions the book as a paradigm of successful cross-cultural exchange between the two nations. Even the UN has identified the publication as aligned with its own mission to foster understanding across borders. 

But the narrative has travelled further still. When an animated film adaptation hit the Chinese box office in 2015, it became the highest grossing title of its kind in the Chinese mainland at 158m yuan (approximately €20m), prompting more than 70 Mandarin translations and collectible prince figurines. And, in Latin America, the book is a mainstay of the school curricula as the author had personal ties to the region: Saint-Exupéry travelled to Argentina in 1929 to serve as the director of Aeroposta Argentina, a subsidiary of the French airline Aéropostale. 

Le Petit Prince is not just an unlikely bestseller, but a multifarious brand that has spawned a musical, opera, graphic novels, ballet productions and even a self-help book entitled How to Live like the Little Prince. For the 80-year anniversary of its publication, La Poste has released an official Le Petit Prince stamp featuring Saint-Exupéry’s whimsical watercolour illustrations, while the Monnaie de Paris has introduced a collectable €2 coin into circulation. 

Beyond its pop-culture prominence, the sustained global sales of that same Le Petit Prince story indicate how literary characters – even those created for children – can become dependable protagonists during fractured times. Though Saint-Exupéry, who perished in an aviation accident in 1944, never lived to see the success of his novella, his legacy speaks volumes. “The book is 80 years old and yet somehow still feels modern,” says Rivière. “I’m confident that Le Petit Prince will still resonate with readers 80 years from now.” 

I don’t want to shock you but I am very promiscuous. Well, when it comes to city transport. I’ll go home with a London taxi, an Uber driver, a big old bus, a tube too. Or, if there’s no better option, under my own steam. And, even if it never co-ordinates with my outfit, I will use a Lime bike, that ugly beast that’s now available in more than 200 cities.

But there’s one very irksome thing about them: wondering what the hell you will find lingering in the green bucket-shaped basket at the front of the contraption. Because it seems that whatever city you go to, locals are under the impression that these are garbage bins. Demi-devoured doners, half a dozen empty beer cans, unwanted boyfriends – you never know what you’ll find lingering there.

I had to nip across Rotterdam by Lime bike on Thursday (I’ll explain more in a moment) and was hoping that the Rotter folk might be better behaved. But no, each available bike had some unwanted gift awaiting me. Even when they were parked next to actual bins people had deposited their detritus in the baskets.

So, if people love Lime-disposal so much, perhaps the company should just embrace this and sponsor garbage trucks in key cities with giant green buckets attached to their fronts? No more littering – everyone would be waiting for their chance to lob a banana skin into the big green basket. And the company would get great brand kudos.

Now my Rotterdam dash combined two things: I wanted to see some of the projects that were being discussed at the Utopian Hours urbanism event that I was in town for. I had also just discovered that I needed to get a yellow-fever certificate for an epic work trip to Latin America that kicks off next week. And I had tracked down a clinic able to help with a jab. The nurse was efficient but the best thing about her was her slightly subversive bedside manner. “Be very careful of the mammals in South America,” she cautioned with a sudden earnestness. “If they bite you, go straight to the hospital because you could get rabies. And then you will die,” she concluded with a smile that seemed a little reminiscent of Mike Myers’ Dr Evil. I liked her. But she had me worried.

Later, unnerved by the Latin American house of mammalian horrors that I am about to enter, I thought it would be wise to check out some of my potential killers. Now while the big-eared opossum looks like it could be a pal, I think that the white-eared opossum might take a finger or two from you in a fight. And the red howler sounds like someone I once dated – definitely staying away from him. As for Stephen Nash’s titi – I don’t want to see one of those up close ever again. I just hope none of these beasts is partial to napping in a Lime bike basket. I have my concerns. 

I realise that I should have used this column to tell you more about Rotterdam, or at least the brilliant content of Utopian Hours but, hey, this is my column and I make up the rules here. Though I will invite you onto the roof of the year-old, migration-focused Fenix museum in Rotterdam. 

On Thursday evening, Utopian Hours, in partnership with Droom en Daad, the foundation behind the museum’s creation, held a reception here as the sun very slowly made its exit. The space is in a vast converted warehouse that was re-engineered by Mad Architects. It’s spectacular and sits on the very docks where a century ago, Europeans looking for a better life in America or Canada boarded ships to cross the Atlantic – many never seeing their birth nations again. Below us water taxis cut through the sunset-blushed waters. And Rotterdam, with its mix of new towers, 1960s architecture and wide boulevards, looked like a place of reinvention and change. Hard to pigeonhole.

As I wended my way back to the hotel, driving my bright-green garbage cycle (with one buckled pedal dancing away like it was at a rave), I thought about the power of good cities, of good conferences. But all the time I kept a watchful eye out, just in case a brown tent-making bat or Paraguayan rice rat was lingering in the bushes. You cannot be too careful – just ask my nurse.

The most exciting cultural releases of June include a dance floor-ready album, the first short-story collection from a beloved American author and a film from the master of the summer blockbuster. 

Music 

Nova Bossa: Aquele Abraço aos Ratos Vivos
Pedro Mizutani 
A Monocle Radio mainstay, Brazilian musician Pedro Mizutani pays tribute to the pioneers of bossa nova on this new album. The sunny collection of songs, reflective of his hometown of Rio de Janeiro, not only pays tribute to the history of the genre but also plays with bossa nova trademarks to reimagine them for a younger generation. We like the suave tones of the breezy “Dia Azul” and the melancholic “Colchão”. This spring, Mizutani enjoyed a successful tour of Europe – let’s hope that he makes it back for summer.
‘Nova Bossa: Aquele Abraço aos Ratos Vivos’ is out now

If This Is It
DJ Seinfeld
Right in time for summer, Malmö’s DJ Seinfeld is back with a euphoric collection of tracks made for the dance floor. The velvety “U Can’t Come Here”, featuring TS Graye, is a highlight, while on “The Right”, Seinfeld partners with the Australian electro-pop band Confidence Man. The emotional, trance-like “Of Joy” promises to sound particularly good live at one of Seinfeld’s many performances across the world in the next few months.
‘If This Is It’ is released on 5 June

So Help Me God
Kelsey Lu
Seven years since critically acclaimed debut album Blood, singer and classically trained cellist Kelsey Lu returns with this delightful new record. The cinematic, synth-ballad “Portrait of a Lady on Fire” and the dark electronica and distorted guitars of “Running to Pain” are particular standouts. The 10-track album was produced by Lu alongside Jack Antonoff and Yves Rothman, with contributions from Kamasi Washington and Sonic Youth’s Kim Gordon. It’s a haunting album that deserves to be listened to again and again.
‘So Help Me God’ is released on 12 June

Books 

The Typing Lady and Other Fictions
Ruth Ozeki 
American author Ruth Ozeki returns with her first collection of short stories. The tales in The Typing Lady and Other Fictions follow her intricately written characters as they move through ever-changing worlds. From a Yale student’s quietly unravelling relationship with a friend to a struggling writer caring for an elderly couple, Ozeki’s deft storytelling offers intriguing perspectives on morality, relationships and what it means to be human.
‘The Typing Lady and Other Fictions’ is published on 28 May

Twenty Minutes of Silence
Hélène Bessette
The latest edition to Fitzcarraldo’s Classics series ditches the prosaic in pursuit of the abstract. A synopsis initially suggests a typical crime fiction: a slowly splintering family hears a gunshot inside their villa that overlooks the English Channel. Who was the murderer? Who was the victim? The titular length of time follows. Bessette’s story, more akin to a fragmentary poem than a novel, rivetingly dissects the whodunnit form in a constellation of language.
‘Twenty Minutes of Silence’ is published on 18 June

Depraved: The Story of Dangerous Art
Daisy Dixon 
We are afraid of finding out that our favourite artists are horrible people – but why are their works so alluring? And, crucially, what does this say about us? Art philosopher Daisy Dixon explores theories behind why the volatility of status and controversy attracts us to certain artists and simultaneously proposes a new history surrounding these “cancelled” works.
‘Depraved: The Story of Dangerous Art’ is published on 18 June

Art 

Ettore Sottsass: Design Begins Where Magic Begins
Artizon Museum, Tokyo
It’s fitting that the late Italian designer Ettore Sottsass’s playful homeware and objets d’art found a spiritual home in the land of postmodern Bubble Era design. The Ishibashi Foundation has amassed more than 100 pieces, from his red typewriter for Olivetti to later collaborations with the Memphis Group. This first Japanese retrospective based on that collection is sure to raise a wry smile.
‘Ettore Sottsass: Design Begins Where Magic Begins’ runs from 23 June to 4 October

Willem de Kooning Drawing
Art Institute of Chicago
As a New Jersey decorator and academy-trained draughtsman in Europe, Willem de Kooning created abstract art that often resembled an attempt to reconcile those two poles. This collection of “drawing” showcases traditional sketches alongside paintings, prints and even sculptures, highlighting his desire to rework and refine every line, whatever the media. The exhibition also travels to Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum in October.
‘Willem de Kooning Drawing’ runs from 14 June to 20 September

Abdulhamid Kircher: Rotting from Within
Deichtorhallen, Hamburg
Berlin-born Abdulhamid Kircher moved to the US at the age of eight while his father served time for selling drugs and attempted murder. After a teenage reconciliation, Kircher’s camera became a powerful tool for exploring family trauma. First published by Loose Joints, Rotting from Within is a harrowing portfolio rendered with cinematic intimacy and an unflinching gaze. Echoes of Wolfgang Tillmans and Nan Goldin are evident, yet Kircher provides a captivating new voice in photography.
‘Rotting from Within’ runs from 5 June to 1 November

Film

Enzo  
Robin Campillo
There is a certain kind of Cannes-adored European coming-of-age drama that’s almost aggressively tasteful – but Enzo has enough grit to sustain itself. Following a teenager drifting through one long, overheated summer, the film is less interested in neat revelations than in the awkwardness of becoming yourself. Its strength lies in its atmosphere: sun-bleached streets, stolen glances and the quiet devastation of realising that the life you imagined might not be the one that is waiting for you.
‘Enzo’ is released on 5 June

Disclosure Day
Steven Spielberg 
Steven Spielberg returns to territory that he has always made uniquely his: the moment when wonder tips into terror. Disclosure Day imagines a world on the brink of learning that alien life exists and has already made contact – unleashing panic, conspiracy and some spectacularly Spielbergian set pieces. Josh O’Connor plays a young man determined to reveal the truth, while Emily Blunt’s weather reporter begins speaking in an eerie extraterrestrial language and Colin Firth stalks the edges of the film with delicious menace. With David Koepp, Janusz Kamiński and John Williams aboard, this looks like the summer’s essential blockbuster.
‘Disclosure Day’ is released on 12 June

Blue Heron 
Sophy Romvari
Blue Heron is the sort of film that restores one’s faith in the possibilities of understated drama. Set in a weather-beaten fishing town on the coast, it follows a woman returning home after her father’s death to confront the family that she abandoned years ago. Director Sophy Romvari handles the material with remarkable assurance, allowing every silence and sidelong glance to land. By the time that the titular bird appears in the film’s final act, Blue Heron has achieved something rare: genuine emotional grace.
‘Blue Heron’ is released on 26 June

TV 

Cape Fear
Apple TV 
A primal terror bleeds from the pages of John D MacDonald’s 1957 novel The Executioners – a sense that our private little castles aren’t as fortified against the world’s evil as we might think. Filmmakers keep circling back to it: first, in 1962’s Gregory Peck-led Cape Fear, then Martin Scorsese’s remake in 1991 and now a new 10-episode riff starring Amy Adams, Patrick Wilson and Javier Bardem that promises to blend both adaptations into a paranoia-laced portrait of true-crime obsession.
‘Cape Fear’ is released on 5 June

Sugar
Apple TV 
When Sugar premiered in 2024, it was an easy sell: Colin Farrell as a slick-haired private investigator, snooping around modern-day Tinseltown with old-world elegance. Then came the twist – one of the wildest in recent televisual history. Season two, then, offers a fascinating proposition: how will Farrell’s John Sugar balance daily detective work with the wider questions of his strange existence?
‘Sugar’ is released on 19 June

Life, Larry and the Pursuit of Unhappiness
HBO Max 
This year’s most unexpected collaboration partners comedian Larry David with Barack and Michelle Obama and the couple’s production company Higher Ground for a seven-episode sketch series commemorating the US’s 250th anniversary. David, returning to television for the first time since Curb Your Enthusiasm, will crop up at key moments in the country’s history and inevitably commit a heinous faux pas – or five.
‘Life, Larry and the Pursuit of Unhappiness’ is released on 26 June

For Iranian Sajjad Javanmardi, learning how to live amid war was a slow and difficult process. In the early days of the US-Israel conflict with Iran, he wanted to find ways to make himself useful to his community. He tried photography to “document history.” He joined relief efforts, clearing rubble after airstrikes and distributing meals. He visited graveyards to mourn with those who lost loved ones. He learned the names of shopkeepers on his street in Tehran and bought food from them instead of ordering from delivery apps.

Javanmardi’s struggle to adjust to wartime life is not a unique one. And while physical destruction tends to represent the most immediate consequence of international conflict, its secondary effects also take a serious toll on society. In Iran’s case, foreign intervention is but one of several factors causing instability – the regime’s response to the war has drastically changed life for the nation’s people. 

When the war began on 28 February, Iranian authorities imposed a near-total nationwide internet blackout, cutting off access to messaging apps, social media and other major global platforms. While some top officials, businesses and journalists regained limited access through a pay-to-access two-tiered system or black-market VPNs, these services are prohibitively expensive for most citizens.

Though a state-controlled version of the internet is available, the shutdown has had dire effects on the country, both on its economy as well as its ability to communicate with the rest of the world. For Iran’s online businesses, the impact of the blackout has been detrimental: small e-commerce companies and start-ups have been crippled, while freelancers working with international clients have lost their income. Some experts estimate that it has cost the Iranian economy upwards of $1bn (€858.7m). 

Internet connection was partially restored on 26 May after 88 days of outage. To understand what life has been like since the conflict began – and without online connectivity – Monocle spoke with four Iranians about how they have adjusted in the wake of war. 

Sajjad Javanmardi 
A few weeks into the war, Javanmardi was sitting at his favourite café in a leafy neighbourhood in central Tehran when he realised that his experience running start-ups could be a boon, even without reliable internet. The 27-year-old entrepreneur established Place-less, an offline initiative designed to support struggling online artists and businesses. “I’ve helped to set up so many start-ups but I realised that it was time to help sustain them,” he says.

Place-less organises in-person events in Tehran and other areas, bringing artists, designers, poets, jewellers and other independent creators together for pop-up marketplaces. With limited access to the internet, the events are marketed by word of mouth. “When airstrikes were still hitting Tehran, many people were trying to figure out how to get back to their routines and recover lost income,” says Javanmardi. “At our last event, we had about 20 businesses and 17 artists, selling everything from artwork and photography to jewellery. Place-less has turned into a support network for many.”

Darya Nazeri
As negotiations between the US and Iran have stalled, with only a fragile ceasefire remaining in place, coming together in physical spaces has helped people to cope with and navigate everyday realities. While social meet-ups – such as run clubs, park picnics and mountain hikes – were common before the war, they have since taken on a deeper meaning for many Iranians. From the early days of the conflict, people began attending community gatherings, which then transformed into informal support networks.

The war altered Darya Nazeri’s routine completely. A biomedical-engineer-turned-artist and street photographer, she sells her work through an online shop. When the war began, she started spending more time painting and taking photos with friends. The 33-year-old artist lives with her husband, Milad, in central Tehran. When an airstrike hit her neighbourhood, shattering their flat’s windows, the couple decided to leave the city temporarily. They traversed the country by train and bus, selling their art and inviting people to draw with them in cities as far away as Mashad, near the Afghan border. “In a way, we transformed my online art shop into something physical,” she says. “The direct connection with people across the country had a very positive impact on me. It reminded me that we are all in this together and it has somehow made me feel proud to be Iranian.”

Marjan Rabiee
When an airstrike destroyed her printing house, Marjan Rabiee lost her entire source of income. At a loss of what to do, the 40-year-old turned a long-term passion into a new career. An avid motorbike rider, she won a national championship several years ago. In the wake of losing her business, she began teaching “women how to ride motorbikes and scooters,” she says, “even though women can’t officially hold a motorbike licence in Iran.”

While street riding is prohibited, racing is different – Rabiee explains that women are allowed to participate in official competitions. “Here motorbike racing [is] still a sport that is mostly practised by men,” she says. “While I race other women, it’s a very limited space. Racing is mostly funded by brand sponsorships and there’s little financial support from companies for women, as few of us [practice it].” By teaching them how to ride, Rabiee hopes that it will open the door for more women to try the sport.

With constrained access to the global internet, Iranians looked for ways to get outside. “Since the ceasefire, my client base has been increasing,” she adds. Rabiee believes that the sport provides a good reason to get out of the city – she often takes her 19-year-old son on rides to the mountains “to breathe”.

Reza Talebzade
Reza Talebzade left Tehran in the early days of the war. His cousin was killed in a US-Israeli strike in Iran last June, devastating his family. When the airstrikes began again in February, he didn’t want to take any risks. 

Since returning to Tehran, the 25-year-old tattoo artist has thrown himself back into his work, operating out of a small basement studio. Business was hard even before the war, as sanctions made it difficult to source equipment, causing long delays and rising costs. Since the conflict began and internet access was restricted, Talebzade’s appointment list has shrunk. “A lot of my clients look for tattoo designs online,” he says. “Without that access, many cancelled their appointments.” But the lack of internet connection hasn’t stopped people from getting memorial tattoos, with requests coming in for names and pictures of loved ones who were killed. “I’ve had a growing number of clients asking for tattoos related to the war,” he says. “People who have lost loved ones want a permanent reminder and a way to cope with the loss.”

At this time of year, Ibiza likes to talk big. Party promoters, concierge planners and the island’s PR machine all dance with a shared, joyous sense of optimism for the imminent summer windfalls. Believe their hype and it’s already another record-breaking season. Popular holiday hotspots elsewhere in Spain might be putting the brakes on the mass-tourism model but Ibiza’s decades-old brand – built around disconnect and escapism – disrupts an industry rule of thumb. Because here, any whiff of global crisis usually means soaring profits and record numbers. The Balearic island is doubling down on its bigger-equals-better strategy but questions are starting to swirl about how long it can last – and who it wants to invite to the party.

Some are already labelling the season as “Dubai summer”. Conflict and uncertainty still cloud parts of the Middle East. Many spooked travellers are switching first-choice leisure playgrounds in the UAE, Qatar and even Turkey for Spain’s reliable bastion of hedonism on the Med. As geopolitical negotiators drag their feet, cowed holidaymakers are making other plans and opting for calmer waters. 

The island is well placed to pick up the footfall. Recent years have seen high-end hotel consortiums snap up rickety resorts and reopen more well-heeled enclaves. Mondrian Ibiza converted a block of seaside apartments into a 154-room hotel in 2023. This followed Six Senses’ 137-key complex draped across a northern cliffside in 2021. And in July, Nômade, a luxury hotel chain from Mexico, is promising to transform the quiet northern seaside town of Portinatx with more than 150 new rooms, three restaurants and facilities including an in-house recording studio.

As more high-end hotels land on the island, the longstanding tourist demographic of wide-eyed youngsters and family holidaymakers is slowly being sidelined. Industry data shows that visitors are spending more (2025 expenditure topping €4.25bn – about 85 per cent of the island’s GDP) but their stays are shorter. Nevertheless, nearly 3.4 million travellers touched down on the island last year, up from 3.27 million in 2024 and 70 per cent higher than in 2001. 

Predictably, a lack of affordable housing has become a flashpoint. Local NGO IbizaPreservation estimates that in 2023 the tourist-to-resident ratio was 21 to 1. As seasonal workers scurry for rooms and hospitality businesses struggle to find staff, tent encampments – or shanty towns – have begun springing up in the periphery of major population centres. Last year, a Dutch entrepreneur proposed bringing in decommissioned cruise ships to house workers. It was not a popular idea. 

One of the island’s more infamous stretches of beach and budget stays, Platja d’en Bossa, is also pivoting with a large new development called The Site. Set to open in June in the former Hard Rock Hotel, it’s pitched as a “luxury lifestyle” complex, featuring a five-star hotel, premium retail and a row of beach clubs. This rather ambitious reimagining from the Palladium Group, which owns and operates most of the island’s blockbuster nightclubs and much of its hotel bed stock, is poised to lure legions of the “Dubai summer” footfall. Part of the glow-up includes Ibiza Gallery, which opened last year and includes a Dubai-inspired open-air shopping mall, with island flagships from Jil Sander and The Attico.  

Ibiza is still a nexus for nightlife too. UNVRS, one of the world’s biggest nightclubs, opened last year on the site of the legendary 1980s-era club KU. The “hyperclub” (one notch bigger than a superclub, if you’re wondering) is spread across 6,500 sq m, with a capacity of 10,000 people and supercharged for spectacle – think LED screens, dazzling lighting rigs and a DJ booth designed like an ascendant altar. Despite the epic scale, the dancefloor is rather a non-starter; the majority stand motionless as they capture the high-tech wizardry via a forest of phones. 

The colossus has sparked conversation about the industrialisation of the island’s clubbing scene. A gradual move towards the Las Vegas model – stratified VIP sections, bottle-service pageantry and an oversized yet dance-deficient dancefloor – might turn a tidy profit but it dampens the party spirit. Nocturna, a new nightclub opening this summer, is touting a much smaller experience; 380-person capacity, a hi-fi bar-style sound system and a strict no-phone policy. Perhaps there is still some hope amid all the hype.

But the island should be no less defined by its discotecas than London by its football stadiums. There is plenty of other vibrant life swimming around the edges of the megaplexes. Wellness tourism is on the rise. Soho Farmhouse, which transformed one of the island’s first agroturismos (traditional rural hotels) last July, has only 14 rooms and two residences, and also offers members an expansive semi-outdoor spa spread between pine trees. Meanwhile, retail outposts such as Parada offer a more considered take on the souvenir shop, with upscale keepsakes, books, and homeware, and is open all year.

As June approaches, most industry insiders seem unbothered by geopolitical clouds, even though jet-fuel shortages, airfare inflation and timorous tourists could yet rain on everyone’s projected profit parade. Many seem more focused on another celestial spectacle: a total solar eclipse that will dazzle the Balearic Islands on 12 August.

Soaking up the salty air while watching the sunset at iconic chiringuito-styled eatery Fish Shack, you are reminded of the island’s unvarnished pulling power. A clutch of rustic tables, people tucking into grilled fish and salad, a first-in, first-served approach that is the antithesis of a VIP guest list. In its quest to lure in legions of cashed-up travellers, Ibiza best not forget the simple staples that made this glitzy island such a beacon in the first place.

Income from Chinese tourism is significant enough to make or break neighbouring economies. But today, with Beijing encouraging consumption at home, domestic travel is increasingly coming into focus. Independent brands are building some of the best examples of this new kind of luxury, rooted in local traditions, geography, cuisine and design. Songtsam, a peerless hotel group from Yunnan province, is a case in point. Join us on a tour of its latest property, designed by Pritzker Architecture Prize winner Wang Shu.

The world can be divided into just two types of people: coffee devotees and tea drinkers. I am a proud member of the coffee tribe and, frankly, harbour a distrust of anyone who outs themselves as a lover of the teapot and all the stewed, tannin-laced evil that can spurt from its spout.

Coffee is about speed, energy, focus. It’s about having a stand-up espresso in a Milanese café, surrounded by people in good suits, or sitting outside a Sydney café enjoying another flat white with ready-for-fun friends. Coffee is also about well-designed cafés, clean aesthetics. And tea? Well, tea is all about becoming a permanent resident of Sleepy Town. It’s a world of slipper-wearers who say things like, “What I need is a nice cup of tea and to put my feet up.” Yes, bubble-tea bars and matcha cafés have proliferated but these are drinks that obscure their tea element using fruity flavours or Day-Glo green colouring. Really, if you need to get anything done, make sure that you find a coffee drinker.

And it seems that much of the world agrees with me. Certainly, the money people do. The coffee shop has become one the hottest investment sectors for venture capitalists, alcohol businesses trying to diversify and community-building fashion brands (you may have also noticed a media company close to my heart that likes to take care of its coffee-drinking readers).

And you can see why. A good coffee shop has universal appeal and has cut through in wealthy markets such as the UAE and Saudi Arabia, where socialising often takes place over a coffee, not with booze. The audience is young, design-aware and ambitious. So if you can create a cool brand, it’s possible to grow a healthy business. And it’s this latest iteration of the coffee trade that we pore over in this issue. We’ll meet the biggest players (China’s Luckin Coffee now has 30,000 outlets) and guide you to 25 of our favourite cafés around the globe.

This magazine also contains two further surveys. The first is our annual examination of the world of art and collecting, in which we meet seven players with deep insights into very varied sectors of the market, from rare posters and antiquities to contemporary art. Collectors are motivated by many things: obsession, passion, money. Perhaps the most fascinating part of our report is the unpacking of the cravings that drive people to fill their homes with objects and art.

US gallerist Easy Otabor, for example, tells Monocle that he has always collected. First it was training shoes. Now, with the art that he buys, he asks himself, “Are these [works] by good people? Would I enjoy having dinner or working with them?” Meanwhile, Pertti Männistö has gathered one of the world’s largest Alvar Aalto furniture collections. Over the past 30 years he has put together an array of pieces so large and of such significance that only a tiny portion of them will fit in his house, with the rest now in storage. Yet he continues searching for rare prototypes.

Then there’s the Class of 2026 Expo, masterminded by our editor, Josh Fehnert. He’s worked with Monocle’s writers and correspondents to spotlight 16 rising talents in everything from photography to architecture and cartography. Why? At a time when many media organisations focus on the negatives – what divides us – we wanted to put the spotlight on people forging ahead, tackling issues and delivering change, with hope and ambition. It’s a very uplifting conclusion to this issue. And I imagine that there’s a lot of coffee drinkers among them.

If you would like to drop me a note, please feel free to send thoughts and ideas to at@monocle.com.

There’s a challenge for owners of coffee-shop brands who dream of taking their companies to the next level: how do you hold on to your independent, neighbourhood vibe and have 10, 20 or 100 outlets? It’s tricky to pull off – yet not impossible.

But before we tackle the intricacies of global marketing, a brief coffee break. Because how did we get here? How did we get to dinky coffee-shop companies being valued at more than $1bn (€850m) and becoming the investment darlings of venture capitalists and global food brands?

When Monocle launched some 20 years ago, the coffee story already seemed piping hot. It was a moment when the Aussies and Kiwis were perfecting their soon-to-go-global flat whites and defining a new coffee-shop aesthetic. It was a time when being a barista was suddenly one of the higher callings in the world of F&B. When “latte art” was taking hold – and finding many of its finest practitioners in Japan. And, in the US, it was when a new generation of coffee pioneers was out to break the Starbucks model.

A so-called third wave of coffee culture, with lighter roasts and intense bean knowledge, was coming to the fore. There were several components to this then-DIY world that were set to catch the attention of ambitious entrepreneurs and investors. Drinks brands wanted entry to a trade that served young people who were imbibing less booze. Fashion companies saw a way of making a community by using their brand’s halo effect in the world of coffee. And others spotted that coffee, served in an impeccable setting, could prove lucrative in markets such as the UAE and Saudi Arabia, where people gather and spend their social time not in bars but cool iterations of the café (though this is not a one-way street because Emirati and Saudi brands are now going global too).

This all means that there is a lot of money to be made if you can crack the coffee-shop conundrum of growing big while looking small. Luckily there are models beyond coffee that show how it can be done. Take Aesop, which was founded by Dennis Paphitis in 1987. Today the body-care brand is owned by L’Oréal (which paid over €2bn for the pleasure), yet Aesop retains much of its initial indie DNA by keeping its branding almost unchanged, investing heavily in good shop architecture and appearing at design events such as Salone del Mobile. UK coffee shop company WatchHouse is aiming for the big time but through good design (and coffee). And it still feels cool despite having raised money from Mark Bezos’s private-equity firm. There are lots more following the same playbook.

It’s stories such as these that made us intrigued and, below, we will take you round the world to visit coffee-shop brands both big and small with interesting and surprising stories to tell. After that, we take you to 25 nice cafés – just places that we like. We hope that you find it refreshing.

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More stories about the world of coffee:
Editor’s letter: Andrew Tuck on the booming business of coffee
Breaking new ground: 25 exceptional brands that are leading the coffee industry
Not your average joe: 25 of the world’s best coffee shops, run by next-generation owners