In the record business they have a refrain: you have your whole life to write your first album. A debut novel is much the same, it can feel like the statement of a long-lived thesis or the discovery of a career-defining theme. Some writers go on to elaborate extensively on that same theme – sometimes drifting from it, occasionally perfecting it. But the experience of being published for the first time is often preceded by a guiding love of literature.
Here, Monocle brings together some of the year’s most exciting debut authors for insights into their literary taste and where they continue to draw inspiration from. We posed one simple question: What is your favourite line of literature?
1.
Jem Calder
Author of I Want You to Be Happy
“He wondered could you eat the mushrooms, would you die, do you care.”
– From Suttree by Cormac McCarthy (1979)
“I first read Suttree maybe eight years ago. McCarthy has a reputation for the dense, baroque prose style that he frontloads most of his novels with – but by midway through he often settles into a second register: flinty, hyper-compressed sentences that use one word where other writers would require two or three. This is my preferred McCarthy. His obvious authority over grammar and syntax makes his work feel masterful but still so alive.”
2.
Eden Mckenzie-Goddard
Author of Smallie
“Society, civilised society at least, is never very ready to believe anything to the detriment of those who are both rich and fascinating.”
– From The Picture of Dorian Grey by Oscar Wilde (1891)
“With Smallie, my goal was to tell the stories of those affected by the Windrush scandal [where several British subjects born in the Caribbean were wrongly detained and sometimes deported due to lack of legal documentation] and the injustice of it. Windrush is at the forefront of more conversations today than when I was initially writing the novel. It’s great to be relevant to the moment but where will my novel be in years to come, if people are still reading it?”
3.
Che Yuen
Author of Tailbone
“In an ideal world, we would have been orphans.”
– From Something That Needs Nothing by Miranda July (2006)
“Both [July and I] take the inner lives of teenage girls very seriously – something still not often seen in literature and media. These characters all too quickly become relegated to being clueless, shallow or sex objects, so there’s something freeing and rehumanising when we’re allowed to focus on the world of a teenage girl who is actually wise and knowing, even if she goes about figuring her life out in unwise ways.”
4.
Eve Esfandiari-Denney
Author of poetry collection Girling
“Goodness is a part of my awareness that sensing a bird intends.”
– From Consciousness Self-Learns by Mei-Mei Berssenbrugge (2018)
“The delirious texture of Berssenbrugge’s line seemed in tune with a sudden state of aliveness: the sentence trails around and towards coherence right up until the final word ‘intends’. With this as the crux of the line, it’s as if sensing itself possesses intention and therefore gives agency or provides a quality of planning to the act of sensing. I wonder if that makes the line about faith, or a movement towards faith?”
5.
Kenan Orhan
Author of The Renovation
“On every new thing there lies already the shadow of annihilation.”
– From The Rings of Saturn by W G Sebald (1995)
“I’ve noticed something about myself, which is an obsession with death. The things that interest me often require death to ‘be’, such as memory, history and the past – and this line speaks to the desire and the necessity to hold on. I vacillate between whether death gives birth to literature or not. Without it, we wouldn’t have the desire to make something that lasts. The Renovation is a text that couldn’t exist without this shadow of death over it either.”
6.
Simukai Chigudu
Author of memoir Chasing Freedom: Coming of Age at the End of Empire
“The country that separates fathers and sons has disoriented many travellers.”
– From The Return by Hisham Matar (2016)
“So much of Chasing Freedom is the acknowledgement of differences and separations. My book begins with reckoning with what it means to be born free, to be born into a generation of my native Zimbabwe that never lived under direct colonial rule. This is in stark contrast to my father. He was a guerrilla soldier in the anti-colonial uprising. The political parties that he staked his life on turned carnivorous under the leadership of Robert Mugabe. He was twice a political prisoner. I was born on the same land as my father but a very different country. Interviews with him about it were fraught with ethical questions. How are we meeting? As father and son? Or as researcher and subject? The defining drama in our family is that same ‘separation’ and ‘disorientation’ that Matar speaks of.”
7.
Shannon Kuta Kelly
Author of poetry collection The Tree is Missing
“Your shadow covers this page.”
– From As One Listens to the Rain by Octavio Paz, tr. Elliot Weinberger (1998)
“This is the final line of Paz’s poem [“As One Listens to the Rain”]. There’s something beautiful about inviting the reader in with the second person – and I love the veil that comes down between the reader and a writer when there’s a translator in between. It feels so mysterious. Even with a really good translation, I do enjoy that it sounds ever so slightly stilted or unnatural. It has its own poetic effect. There’s so much of this poem that I find unknowable in a pleasant way, so much so that I printed it out and I had it on the door of my fridge when I was at college.”
8.
Hannah Murray
Author of memoir The Make-Believe
“I think I made you up inside my head.”
– From Mad Girl’s Love Song by Sylvia Plath (1953)
This line is repeated several times throughout the poem [“Mad Girl’s Love Song”], always in parentheses, like it’s a private thought – and I love the different ways you can read into it. ‘I must have made you up inside my head because you are just so wonderful’, or ‘I made you up inside my head, you don’t really exist and I must be mad.’ Over the years, my interpretation has shifted from the former to the latter – less romantic, more terrifying. But I love how it holds the possibility of both.
As lazy, sultry, summer Saturday afternoons go, today couldn’t be more perfect. The setting is the Villa Arnica in Lana, Südtirol. The temperature is hovering around 30C but there’s plenty of shade and a refreshing breeze from the Dolomites. The day started with a gentle breakfast and then a seven-kilometre walk through the apple orchards, past guest houses with well-tended gardens, and into the buzzy Kuntrawant for coffee before a retail planning meeting with Pippa and Raffi – wait till you see what we’re cooking up for the autumn season for our shops and website!
In a couple of hours, we’ll head up to Obermais to ensure that all is in order for our Merano outpost’s annual summer party. Shortly after, readers from near and far will spill out across Dantestrasse to enjoy icy bottles of Forst, chilled weissburgunder, focaccia bites from the Ottmanngut hotel team and the best bellinis courtesy of Martin and Jakob, who popped down from Munich. As gatherings go, it’s Monocle at its smaller-scale best because it mixes local talent and produce with a crowd that comes from Bolzano and Trento – but also Dubai and Hamburg.
On the more ambitious side, it’s our Quality of Life conferences that embody all we do in a live, pacy format that runs across three days. In case you missed it, we’re heading back to Lisbon this year – where it all started 11 years ago. From 3 to 5 September, we will be turning things up a notch for the 10th edition of the conference but it also becomes the official warm-up party for our 20th anniversary. While the official date is 14 February 2027, why not use sunny Lisbon as a backdrop to get things going? Since our first conference, you might have noticed that the Portuguese capital has become something of an unofficial hub and while we don’t have a shop or office, we do have some ex-staffers who’ve returned home and who will ensure that we have an insider’s edge. It also helps that I have an apartment in town and a capable Portuguese executive assistant – even if he is from Porto!
If you’ve not been to a Quality of Life Conference, here’s what you need to know. First, there are no keynote windbags. Everything is a discussion hosted by Monocle editors. Second, we bring in the audience with real questions, delivered on the spot. None of this submitting your questions on an app. No! Third, it’s a proper crowd who are paying to be there rather than a room full of bored people dispatched by their companies. And while there are many other reasons to go, the key aspect is that we seek to unravel how we can make daily life better in transport, education, media, hospitality, shopping, security and much more. But in case that’s not enough, here are 10 more reasons to join us.
1.
If you’ve not been to Lisbon in the past decade, it’s a changed city. Most of that change is for the better but we’ll also discuss how to remedy some of the kinks.
2.
We’ll be anchoring the conference from the Gulbenkian. It’s one of Europe’s best cultural enclaves.
3.
Robert Bound will be back on stage. Just you wait!
4.
The mayor is giving us the keys to the city. Well, for a brief moment.
5.
You can lose yourself among some of our favourite bookshops on the continent. Under the Cover and Good Company come to mind first.
6.
You will learn how your feet are linked to how you think and respond to the world. Promise! You might even learn how to walk better.
7.
Lisbon on the Atlantic. The sea will be perfect. A bracing 17C like it almost is all year round.
8.
We’re going to have some serious conversations about the future of retail.
9.
There’ll be plenty of tips about how and where to invest in Portugal.
10.
It’s going to be the perfect way to wrap up summer and hit Q4 in full stride, possibly with exclusive footwear from a hot new Japanese brand.
Enjoying life in ‘The Faster Lane’? Click here to browse all of Tyler’s past columns.
Air Force One, not actually a plane but the radio call sign for any aircraft carrying the US president, has traditionally been a quiet, if staid, part of the national landscape. Until recently that call sign would typically apply to two 40-year-old Boeing VC-25A (modified 747-200B) jets. Their most prominent feature of late, has arguably been the “air stairs” from which presidents climb and descend, waving and smiling. These are not only a stock image in news broadcasts but have become, with elderly presidents such as Joe Biden and Donald Trump, a measure of their fitness, with any stumble or slowness dissected and analysed by online commentators.
As he has done so often, Trump relishes a controversial revamp of a quiet, staid fixture of the national landscape (see the Kennedy Center). It began, of course, with the gifting of a plane (a Boeing 747-8) from the Qatari royal family: a constitutionally questionable $500m (€437m) “flying palace” transferred to a sitting US head of state with, apparently, no strings attached. The plan is to convert the plane into a new “bridge” VC-25B that will ultimately be squirrelled away at Trump’s yet-to-be-built presidential library. The whole tab is being paid for, curiously, by siphoning funds from a programme to modernise and upgrade the US ballistic-missile arsenal.
Then there was the jettisoning of the plane’s iconic livery – a storied collaboration between designer Raymond Loewy and John F Kennedy – in favour of a “more American” design. It’s heavy on the blue, a shade the Air Force warned could have thermal impacts. The result is rather as if you had asked ChatGPT to “give me the airplane livery version of a trad Republican politician’s suit, including the gold lapel pin.” The discreet US flag on the tail? Let’s make it bigger and let’s make it wave like some soda-pop ad for “America 250”.
But ethics and aesthetics aside, the unprecedented rushing of the plane into service (at what contractor L3Harris dubbed “maximum velocity”) raised myriad security questions. A Boeing 747-200B has anywhere between five and six million parts. Was 10 months sufficient to “scrub” the plane, even as it was being overhauled for its presidential-airlift role? As is so often the case with Trump projects (e.g. the Reflecting Pool), corners were cut. Unlike the historic Air Force One fleet, the new plane does not have the ability to refuel in midair and only possesses one set of embedded air stairs (instead of the traditional two). This means passengers and crew have to rely upon on-the-ground infrastructure to board and deplane. Air Force One planes are “speckled with missile approach warning sensors and many laser countermeasures turrets,” according to TWZ. These have not been seen so far by analysts in photographs taken from test flights of the new model. The old planes are also hardened against missiles and the electro-magnetic pulse [EMP] of a nuclear blast. “It is very unlikely, if not impossible,” TWZ notes, “that this aircraft was hardened against EMPs in the timeframe required for fielding it.”
All these suspicions came bubbling to the surface earlier this week when the president, at the behest of the Secret Service, switched to a legacy Air Force One plane for his return from the Nato Summit in Ankara. Was there a security threat or, as the president claimed, did he just want to send the plane on a victory lap of US bases? Is the plane truly fit for duty – not just to transport the president but also to serve as a mobile command post – in hazardous foreign skies or is it just a ceremonial trophy plane?
The fact that another plane was on standby speaks to the seriousness of the enterprise. As the national security historian Garrett Graff has noted, the plane from which the president steps down to the tarmac is just one in a shadow air force. Apart from the primary plane and the backup plane, the president is typically accompanied by Marine One helicopters. “The US,” says Graff, “is the only country in the world that provides full helicopter lift capability to its head of state when travelling abroad.” Then there are Boeing E4-Bs, or the “National Airborne Operations Center,” capable of litigating nuclear war from the skies. There are even, Graff notes, a “secret fleet of unacknowledged planes,” unmarked Gulfstream jets, a sort of back-up to the back-up.
All of which is why the seemingly feckless addition of a foreign-sourced Air Force One plane, with a breakneck overhaul, seems so remarkable, and why the events in Ankara muddy the waters. “There are certainly times when presidents have flown on other aircraft – for instance, on unmarked cargo jets into war zones – and occasionally a president will switch to a back-up aircraft mid-trip if there’s a serious maintenance issue,” Graff told me. “But this mid-trip switch stands out for suspicion.”
I am always surprised that there are not more one-eyed people in Mallorca.
On Sunday, we drove to the east of the island, parked under the shade of a pine tree and made our way down the track to the beach. It wasn’t too busy and in this heat people tend to stay a few hours then depart for a siesta, a lunch, so there’s always more sandy real estate available among the beach umbrellas.
As the afternoon slid along on a timeline eased by suntan cream and a pint of piña colada from the chiringuito, I noticed that the gentle breeze’s soundtrack was occasionally giving way to proper blasts of wind. I knew then that it would only be a matter of time before a beach novice was left humiliated and facing a potential lawsuit.
And sure enough, just a few metres from us, the first beach umbrella took flight à la Mary Poppins. It somersaulted across the beach with gymnastic grace. Would the spike take out an eyeball, impale an abuela, send a cerveza flying? Not this time: its athletic owner leapt into action with a diving save. I held off from applauding.
This very thing happened to me some years ago but my parasol came dangerously close to widowing a member of a nearby couple. So now we always have a screw on the beach – a big one. You corkscrew the plastic contraption into the sand and then insert the umbrella’s stand, which gets held in place with the aid of a bolt. We got ours from a Chinese store in Palma that has everything from paint to Post-it notes and is marvellously called Wan Ke Long. Very handy.
Anyway, I love the drama of a day at the beach and from behind my sunglasses find myself becoming drawn into the myriad little scenes and stories that play out across la playa. My partner gets a little cross when, halfway through one of his fascinating anecdotes, he realises that I am actually lost in the squabbling of our neighbours.
On Sunday, however, I caught sight of something that required his advice. Next to us was a man, Spanish, handsome, in his forties, perched on the edge of his sun lounger reading a book. But little did our man realise that he had suffered a gusset malfunction and that one of his croquetas had made a bid for freedom.
After some cajoling, the other half turned over to take in the scene and agreed that it was unfortunate. “Shall I go and tell him,” I asked, thinking that it was the decent thing to help safeguard this gentleman’s reputation. David suggested that while this might be well-received, it could also come across as a little odd. And as I didn’t know the Spanish word for testicle, the whole interaction would be dependent on me doing an unwise mime and lots of inappropriate pointing. So, I left him – and it – to their own devices.
After all, there were more stories around me that required my full attention. Why, for example, did the muscular tattooed man have a bunny tattooed on his bicep (some childhood pet he never got over?). Would the two men playing a vigorous game of padel on the shoreline hit anyone with their ball? I hoped so. Is selling watermelons on the beach good business?
I had barely turned a page of my book by the time we needed to leave this sandy live telenovela whose cast of characters had kept me entertained all afternoon. A Mediterranean beach truly trumps any streaming service. There’s romance, danger and the ever-present potential of an eye being lost. I will be back for another instalment very soon.
For more of Andrew’s columns, click here.
In an episode of the beloved BBC comedy Blackadder, the eponymous character connives to get his idiot sidekick Baldrick elected to parliament. Among Baldrick’s rivals for the seat of Dunny-on-the-Wold is an oppressively jovial figure identified as Ivor Biggun, representing the Standing At The Back Dressed Stupidly And Looking Stupid Party. The gag might have bewildered non-British viewers: it was a weary commentary on the phenomenon of the novelty candidate, a perennial pestilence upon UK politics. In coming weeks, the world will learn more than it wants or needs to about one such character.
Nigel Farage, leader of Reform UK – the party presently topping British polls – announced this week, in his usual tones of petulant self-pity, that he would resign his seat of Clacton to run for it again via a by-election, apparently hoping to deflect attention from his unorthodox finances.
Every other major party has correctly declined to participate in the circus. As things stand, Farage’s main rivals include Laurence Fox – an actor who should otherwise only appear in a seaside town such as Clacton playing the hind legs of a pantomime horse in an end-of-the-pier production of Dick Whittington – and a man with a bin on his head.
Count Binface – the creation of comedian Jonathan Harvey – is the most prominent current heir to Britain’s wretched tradition of novelty candidates. If we’re looking for someone to blame, we might choose Bill Boaks – a Second World War naval officer who was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross at Dunkirk, then from the 1950s onwards made a nuisance of himself in 28 elections and by-elections. Boaks was morbidly obsessed with road safety and campaigned on a self-built armoured bicycle; other stunts included stopping his placard-bedecked car in the middle of motorways.
Boaks’s tactics were noted by David Sutch, a hapless rock singer who reinvented himself as Screaming Lord Sutch and founded the Official Monster Raving Loony Party (OMRLP) in 1982. Its subsequent escapades have done nothing to disprove the ironclad law that anybody who advertises themselves as “loony” (see also “zany”, “kooky”, “barmy”, “madcap” or “mental”) is an excruciating bore. The OMRLP is still plodding obstinately along, doubtless greatly delighting the sort of person whose office wall bears a sign saying, “You don’t have to be crazy to work here – but it helps!”
The OMRLP also intends to field a candidate in Clacton, possibly their current leader, Howling Laud Hope, who – like Count Binface – contested the recent Makerfield by-election that returned presumptive prime minister Andy Burnham to parliament (Hope polled 45 votes; Binface 95). Burnham also found himself obliged to accept the congratulations of another candidate in a fox costume: a few weeks earlier, the same person, wildlife campaigner Rob Pownall, ran for Scotland’s parliament dressed as a gannet.
There is obviously nothing wrong with making jokes about politics. But Binface and other novelty candidates contrive to make politics a joke. They are trivial attention-seekers, making witless japes. In so doing, they reinforce the notion that this is all a lark and that none of it really matters. Any such debasement of discourse only abets cynical populists like Nigel Farage, who profit from citizens internalising the idea that politics is unserious.
In the peculiar case of Clacton – a party leader running against a slate entirely composed of novelty candidates – voters have the opportunity to exact a splendid vengeance upon these pests. Electing Binface and burdening him with the responsibilities of being an MP would be an instructive cold shower. It might even work out. In 2002, the people of Hartlepool elected the mascot of local football team Hartlepool United, H’Angus The Monkey, as their mayor. The 28-year-old call centre operative inside the ape suit, Stuart Drummond, turned out to be a pretty good leader: Hartlepool re-elected him twice.
Mueller is a Monocle contributing editor and the host of Monocle Radio’s ‘The Foreign Desk’. For more opinion, analysis and insight, subscribe to Monocle today.
Further reading: Who is Andy Burnham? The man hoping to be the UK’s seventh prime minister in 10 years
Three Summers
Margarita Liberaki
This story of three sisters growing up outside Athens before the Second World War is set over three warm summers during which Maria, Infanta and Katerina live, love and discover who and what they want to be. A replenishing book about the strange and exciting state of adolescent girlhood, it is part of the Penguin European Writers series – a list of forgotten classics by European writers, launched by UK-based imprint Viking in 2018 as a response to Brexit.
‘Three Summers’ is published on 8 July
The Union of Synchronised Swimmers
Cristina Sandu
In an unnamed Soviet state, six cigarette factory workers meet daily to swim in the river that separates east from west. At first they’re just messing around between shifts, but over time their movements become “determined” and turn into a single entity, “inseparable from the river as the reeds and the stone”. Granted visas to represent their country in the Olympics, these girls grasp at their only chance for freedom, scattering to six strange new lives all of their own.
‘The Union of Synchronised Swimmers’ is out now
Small Bodies of Water
Nina Mingya Powles
In this book, poet Nina Mingya Powles examines her experience of growing up between cultures separated by immense bodies of water. She was born in Wellington to a Malaysian mother and grew up between the Antipodes, New York and Shanghai. Memoir, nature writing and cultural criticism combine in these essays to examine a host of subjects from food, language and family to butterflies and earthquakes.
‘Small Bodies of Water’ is out on 5 August
Ride a Cockhorse
Raymond Kennedy
Originally published in 1990, and harking back to the late 1980s financial crisis, this swashbuckling story of small-town rabble-rousing is an unexpectedly hilarious delight. Almost overnight, 45-year-old Frances Fitzgibbons, a widowed mortgage officer at a Massachusetts bank, discovers both a gift for “persuasive speech” and a “sudden quickening of her libido”. Without further ado, she starts wreaking havoc all over town, with her minions (her dedicated hairdresser and her adoring son-in-law) in tow. Soon to be a film starring Rachel Weisz in the lead role, this welcome reissue is a force to be reckoned with.
‘Ride a Cockhorse’ is out now
Screen
Deerskin
Quentin Dupieux
In Deerskin, Jean Dujardin finds himself captivated by a jealous, volatile, enchanting and impeccably styled lover; in short, the archetypal femme fatale. Except that “she” is a suede jacket that demands Dujardin steals and destroys all rival coats. To try to find any parable of vanity or obsession in this absurdist story is to miss the point of Quentin Dupieux’s deliriously strange, eminently entertaining comedy-horror film. At a pithy 77 minutes, the weirdness doesn’t outstay its welcome.
‘Deerskin’ is released on 30 July
Tove
Zaida Bergroth
Finland’s most beloved cartoon, The Moomins, made the leap from page to screen long ago but Tove is the first film to feature its creator, author and illustrator Tove Jansson, as its subject. Compared to her books, this biopic set in the years just before and after she achieved international renown is a more conventional affair – a portrait of an artist. It is elevated, however, by Alma Pöysti’s magnetic lead performance as a charismatic, sensitive woman who didn’t always experience the joy that her work elicited in others.
‘Tove’ is released on 9 July
The Sparks Brothers
Edgar Wright
Who are Sparks? The question that is posed at the very start of this documentary captures the essence of a cult band relatively unknown to mainstream listeners and enigmatic even to devotees. Director Edgar Wright presents a laudably exhaustive effort at providing answers as he traces the group’s 50-year journey from artsy glam-rockers to indie outliers via innovative electronica. Interspersed with archive footage and a killer soundtrack are a host of talking-head testimonies from famous fans and musical disciples, as well as commentary from the brothers themselves, who are as weird and wonderful as ever.
‘The Sparks Brothers’ is released on 30 July
Luca
Enrico Casarosa
After spending some three decades creating unique and fantastical worlds, the team at Pixar seem to have realised that there really is no place they could conceive that is more magical than the Cinque Terre. That’s the premise of their latest film, Luca, which is a story about a young, shape-shifting sea-creature who wants nothing more than to live as a fish-out-of-water in a sun-baked town on the Italian Riviera. An adventurous tale replete with characteristically luscious visuals, it promises to be an endearing summery hit.
‘Luca’ is out now
Summer of Soul
Ahmir-Khalib Thompson
The year 1969 will always be associated with Woodstock. But in New York, another equally defining event took place that summer. Nearly 300,000 people went to The Harlem Cultural Festival to witness its celebration of black music and culture, with magnetic performances by Nina Simone, Stevie Wonder and BB King. Until now, footage of the festival has never been televised. In his first feature film, Thompson (aka Questlove of The Roots) has painstakingly sifted through the archives to tell the event’s story. The result is a joyous picture that’s been praised by critics; it has also won the Grand Jury and Audience Award at Sundance.
‘Summer of Soul’ is released on 16 July
Audio
Jubilee
Japanese Breakfast
After two albums and a book dedicated to the pain of losing her mother, Michelle Zauner, the frontwoman of Japanese Breakfast, is closing the book on grief and opening the door to joy. Co-produced by Zauner’s frequent collaborator Craig Hendrix, Jubilee is a personal and playful record that contains a whole lot of horns, saxophones, trombones, trumpets, strings, songs about billionaires’ bunkers and a couple of melancholy tracks for good measure.
‘Jubilee’ is out now
Sensational
Erika de Casier
Erika de Casier spent much of her adolescence glued to mtv, digesting the huge number of brilliant r&b songs and videos it showed in the early 2000s. Born in Portugal and raised in Denmark, she now writes and records music inspired by the soft beats she listened to as a teenager. Her latest album, Sensational, sees De Casier maturing vocally and evolving from sparkly Destiny’s Child-style tracks into soulful Sade territory.
‘Sensational’ is out now
Art
Into the Blue
Rose Gallery, Los Angeles
From Titian’s perfect ultramarine skies to Picasso’s blue period and Yves Klein’s conceptual monochrome brilliance, blue has arguably been the most obsessed-over colour in art history. This exhibition promises to explore even further the potential for mystery and intimacy that blue in all its hues promises. There’s a nude figure reclining on blue velvet, beachgoers bathing under blue skies and abstract colour-field explorations. Across painting, photography and installation by the likes of US photographer Kennedi Carter and Massachusetts-based illustrator Gayle Kabaker, this show takes a deep dive into the colour’s symbolism.
‘Into the Blue’ runs until 14 August
Sun and Sea (Marina)
Various venues
An opera on an artificial beach was the surprise hit of the 2019 Venice Art Biennale. Twenty-four performers lounged on the sand singing songs about everyday worries and impending climate-change doom, winning themselves the Golden Lion in the process. It’s a surreal, affecting and wistfully unique work of art that is now travelling around Europe, with forthcoming stops in Germany, Italy and Sweden.
‘Sun and Sea (Marina)’ is showing at E-Werk Luckenwalde, Teatro Argentina in Rome and Malmö Konsthall until November
Still life: Tony Hay.
Images: 2021 Disney/Pixar, Blue Finch Film Releasing, Focus Features, Peter Ash Lee, Andrej Vasilenko, Courtesy of the Artists
Best for resort wear
Kalita, Spain
Kalita Al Swaidi has been designing elegant resort wear for her eponymous fashion label for nearly 10 years, dividing her time between bustling capitals such as London, her home city, and the island of Bali, where her collections are produced. More recently, Al Swaidi made Ibiza her permanent base, seeking a gentler pace for her professional and personal lives. Now fully settled into island life, she meets monocle on a sunny afternoon near Sant Joan de Labritja on the north of the island. She is strolling barefoot across a dusty path, having just finished picking herbs and vegetables from the nearby finca – a small regenerative farm run by one of her friends. This is a place that she returns to often, both to work and to unwind. “It cancels out the noise and reminds me of what matters,” she says.
Her recent collections, which are built on a principle of elegance without excess, reflect this sense of clarity: think floor-skimming kaftans, breezy shirts, feather-light jumpsuits made from lightweight silks and natural-dyed cottons. “You wear these clothes,” she adds. “They don’t wear you.”
Born in London to a Texan mother and an Iraqi father, Al Swaidi grew up surrounded by vibrant colours and textures. “Middle Eastern fabrics, sequins, patterns – my parents had a strong sense of style,” she says, recalling how clothes became her language at a young age. “They helped me to feel as though I had arrived. They gave me a presence.”
In her early twenties, she quickly gained recognition as a lingerie designer but was still feeling unmoored. During a solo trip to Greece a few years later, however, the idea for her brand began to take shape. She remembers seeing a woman on the beach, barefoot and wrapped in linen, her hair wild from the sea. “She looked incredible without trying – natural, free and not styled in any way,” says Al Swaidi. That image and everything that it represented became the inspiration for her debut collection for Kalita, which was quickly picked up by renowned retailers such as London-based Matches Fashion.
It was the same pursuit of freedom that drew Al Swaidi to Ibiza: she had been visiting the island since her twenties and had always been captivated by its layered history, open spirit and unpolished corners. “It was rougher then, less about brands and more about character,” she says, as we sit down for dinner with her friends – a group of entrepreneurs and creatives who have also chosen to decamp here. Much has changed since Ibiza’s countercultural 1970s heyday but artists, musicians and designers are still drawn to this corner of the Mediterranean. “There are tribes,” she says. “The mystics, the makers, the old hippies: people building things slowly and consciously. That’s who I connect with.”
Al Swaidi’s days follow a rhythm shaped by nature and intuition. Morning swims in Los Enamorados cove, hikes through pine forests, meals with plenty of vegetables and olive oil – here, summer is a state of being. Ibiza is her muse and her new lifestyle informs her collections. A recent range called Journey pays homage to moonlight swimming and watching shooting stars at the rugged beach of Pou des Lleó. “The island’s energy can be grounding,” she says. “If you’re off course, it puts you back on track.”
Al Swaidi recently pared back her label’s production to focus on smaller runs and made-to-measure orders, with pieces still handcrafted in Bali. This summer the collection will be available at a few specialist retailers, including Ibiza’s Agora, a boutique dedicated to slow fashion inside the Six Senses hotel.
“I don’t want to grow the business for the sake of it,” says Al Swaidi. “Instead, I want to make things that feel right. Style should be freeing.”
kalita.co
Al Swaidi’s Ibiza shopping tips
Agora at Six Senses hotel
The place I go to when I need a hit of all that is sustainable and beautiful.
Carrer Camí de sa Torre 71, Ibiza 07810
Luna Menta
A gem of a shop that’s hidden at the base of the Old Town.
Carrer de Manuel Sorà 18, Ibiza 07800
El Chiringuito at Salinas beach
Everything you hope to find at a good beach shop is here.
Camí des Cavallet, 07818, Ibiza
Best for footwear
Akvo, France
It’s highly likely that the sandals you wear to nip down to the beach are made from PVC or one of the other synthetic materials plaguing the footwear market. Belgian-Canadian designer Daphne Wattiez wanted to offer an elegant alternative. After years of research, she debuted her sustainable footwear brand, Akvo, just in time for the arrival of sunny days in the northern hemisphere. “I realised that when people were shopping for sandals, they only
really had two options: it was either pvc flip-flops or, at the higher end, leather,” says Wattiez, from her showroom-cum-office in Paris’s seventh arrondissement. “We want to revisit very universal, classic styles, marrying artisanal craftsmanship and bio-sourced materials.”
The result is a collection of easy-going unisex styles, including flip-flops, pool slides and cross-over sandals made using a trio of co-certified, bio-based parts: a natural latex rubber outer sole, a sugarcane-foam foot bed and hemp-and-Tencel-blend straps.
“Usually, you would go to your shoemaker with your sketch, asking them to work with whichever material that they think is most suitable,” she says. “In my case, the materials are a big part of the added value, so I had to do [three years] of research and test it all myself.”
For instance, the natural fibres that she chose for the straps were selected for both strength and softness, and consist of two-thirds hemp for durability and one-third Tencel (a common silk replacement). Woven in a small atelier in Italy, they are designed to stretch gently over time, moulding to the wearer’s foot, much like denim.
After finally settling on the components, Wattiez scoured the Mediterranean to find a manufacturing partner who was willing to experiment with materials other than leather and synthetics. “You need to find a person who is open-minded but also has the know-how,” she says. Her search eventually led her south of Porto, where she discovered an artisan workshop, which now hand-assembles all of her collections.
Working with someone from Europe’s sunnier, southern side was equally important, since the spirit of the Mediterranean is a big influence on the brand, from the sun-soaked colour palettes of terracotta and yellow to the Roman numerals stamped on the foot beds of every pair of Akvo shoes.
But to call Akvo a label of eco-friendly beach shoes wouldn’t do Wattiez’s ambitions full justice. She believes that the sandals, with their sturdy rubber soles, are just as suited to urban environments as they are to the beach. Keep an eye out for them: you’ll probably spot just as many handwoven slides on the streets of Athens or Rome as you will on the Croisette.
akvoshop.com
Best for linen
God’s True Cashmere, Italy
Designer Sat Hari Khalsa and actor Brad Pitt launched God’s True Cashmere in 2019 with a simple mission: to create the perfect shirt using the material. Khalsa journeyed across Italy in search of manufacturers that could craft a shirt made from pure cashmere – she has zero tolerance when it comes to elastane or other synthetics – and hand-carved gemstone snap buttons.
With their beautifully draped silhouettes and extra-soft textures intended to mimic the feeling of a “loving embrace”, the results set new standards in the luxury market. Prestigious retailers such as Selfridges in London and Antonia in Milan soon invested in the label and its collections expanded to include cotton-cashmere denim and cosy blankets.
This summer the brand is expanding its scope to include linen, which, says Khalsa, has significant health benefits. She is a firm believer in adopting a holistic approach to life and that includes the fabrics that we put on our skin. “Linen is a natural fabric, it’s sustainable and it’s antibacterial,” she says. “In the army, they used to wrap up wounded soldiers in linen sheets because it would help to heal them. It’s so calming.”
The summer-clothing market is flooded with extremely lightweight linen pieces – the kinds that crease after a few minutes of wear. Khalsa was determined to make a far more elevated proposal. “We wanted to give it our own twist and use heavier linen, so that it hangs and drapes in a different way,” she says. She also points out the collection’s vibrant colour palettes, from breezy banana-yellow tunics to the azure stripes on shorts.
The collection is produced from start to finish in Italy, where Khalsa, who is based in Los Angeles, spends weeks visiting the brand’s manufacturing partners. “We want to work with artisans who share the same values as us,” she adds. “If you look for them, these people
are out there and when given the opportunity, they are very excited to create to such a high level. But it takes patience to get to know your partners – and kindness too. We’re a small company so I always have to approach manufacturers and explain that we might not be producing in the thousands but we will create these small, beautiful collections and we’ll take care of every step of the way. The answer is usually a resounding yes.”
The close-knit relationships that Khalsa and Pitt have nurtured have helped to bring to life one of the most luxurious linen ranges of the season, with pieces that are guaranteed to last for years to come. We’ll be wearing the range’s blue Amalfi shorts for sundowners on the beach.
godstruecashmere.com
It has been quite the Nato Summit in Ankara over the past two days. US president Donald Trump renewed his interest in grabbing Greenland and went on to direct some particularly harsh words Spain’s way. Goodwill between much of the 32-member North Atlantic alliance and the US is at an all-time low. Amid the chaos though, the unflappable figure of Giorgia Meloni stands out. Not so long ago, the Italian prime minister was projecting an image of herself as a natural “bridge” between the EU and its ally on the other side of the pond. With that idea apparently lying in tatters, there now seems to be a focus on renewing Italy’s position as a natural link between Europe’s southern flank and Africa.
How times change. Trump had nothing but warm words for Meloni after her decisive election victory in late 2022 and she was the only EU leader invited to his second inauguration ceremony. This year, however, relations have nosedived.
The two leaders have been at loggerheads since June. During the G7 summit in Évian-Les-Bains in France, Trump accused Meloni of “begging” to have her photo taken with him. She then took to social media to deny the allegations, asking Trump to spend more time focusing on the enemies of the West. Just days before Ankara, Trump posted an image of Meloni gazing into his eyes with the caption “Restraining Order Needed”. This time around, Meloni held her tongue (and thumb).
Is Giorgia Meloni done with the US? Unlikely. Despite her change of language towards Trump, she has left the heavy lifting to foreign minister Antonio Tajani and defence minister, Guido Crosetto. In truth, a spat with Trump – even if the reality is more complex – plays well for Meloni at home. In Italy conflict with Iran is unpopular and a poll published by the Italian Institute for International Political Studies (ISPI) and Ipsos at the end of June found that 51 per cent of Italians no longer found the US a reliable ally (38 per cent also thought that Italy needed to be more autonomous).
Meloni will be eyeing up two pivotal political events. The first is the US mid-term elections in November, when Trump looks likely to lose control of at least one of the houses of Congress. The president won’t be a lame-duck – but his wings might be clipped. The second is Italy’s own election next year, in which Meloni will be hoping for a decisive victory. Appearing too chummy with Trump isn’t a good look. Meloni, a keen operator who lost an important referendum in March, knows that perception is more important than ever.
Ed Stocker is Monocle’s Europe editor at large, based in Milan. For more opinion, analysis and insight, subscribe to Monocle today.
If cities and societies really run on whispers, subtleties and secrets – as opposed to regulations and timetables – then clubs are the epitome of a certain civic spirit. Once seen as fusty or old hat, members clubs have been rethought and are finding fresh relevance everywhere from London townhouses and swimming clubs in Rio to private tennis courts in Bangkok.
Sports clubs are enjoying a particularly active moment. And it’s a good thing, too, because it’s in these athletic circles that the three most vital things that a person should master are codified and celebrated: competition, quality and conviviality.
Another hallmark of such clubs are rules (often quaintly written in club literature as “laws” but we all know what we think of those) and clubs work best when those rules are mostly followed or stylishly pushed. After all, clubs are allowed to be silly because they’re accountable only to their members and not the expectations of anyone else. Making your own rules? How civilised.
It’s a bland post-Covid truism to say that good business is conducted in person – better business is done at the club (this time we’ll do mine, next time we’ll do yours, thank you.) What kind of loony would lean on Zoom when they could discuss the deal over tennis and drinks? Far more enjoyable to review the blueprints or finesse advertorial language in the changing room, sauna or bar than some airless office or high-street café that – after the interminable hours presumptuously defrayed by a round of americanos – would like its table back, please. No such harassment at the club, where conviviality should be contagious. Do you know of a city that couldn’t do with an epidemic of cordiality?
And the other great thing about clubs is that they tend to annoy all the right people. They’re exclusive, there are gates, you have to be a member, clearly. Any Tom, Dick or Harriet can come for a swim, a round, a rub-down – but they need to know someone. Like in life, it’s good to know people. Then, once you’re in? There’s the boss of so-and-so, she’s the head of such-and-such, blah-blah is looking for a new creative director, financial officer, personnel guru. Clubs, too, then, are networks tingling with life and in themselves a lesson: it pays to join the club.
Robert Bound is a contributing editor at Monocle. For more opinion, analysis and insight, subscribe to Monocle today.
Agriculture might not be the first thing that comes to mind when sampling the delights of Berlin. It’s a sprawling metropolis, cross-hatched by boulevards and large cement buildings. Yet tucked between the city’s warehouses, apartment blocks and train lines is one of Europe’s largest collections of urban allotments.
For well over a century, Berliners have used allotments – kleingärten or schrebergarten in German – to spend time outside and grow fruit, vegetables and herbs. This land was especially crucial during times of war and instability, when shop shelves were often empty and fresh produce commanded extremely high prices. At roughly 24 sq m per plot, the allotments were large enough to help provide food security for many families.
Today, Berlin has 870 community gardens with roughly 70,000 allotment plots. Though the majority of Berliners no longer depend on them for food, they are increasingly popular for hobbyist farmers; wait times for an allotment can reach eight years. The plots preserve a “cultural memory of urban cultivation” and reinforce the idea that “food production belongs in the city”, says Dr Monika Egerer, a professor of urban productive ecosystems at the Technical University of Munich.
Egerer views allotments’ modern value less as a matter of production volume and more about keeping culinary heritage alive. “Kleingärten aren’t feeding cities quantitatively at scale,” she says. “But qualitatively, they’re very significant. They maintain practical knowledge of cultivation, preserve local and heirloom varieties, and sustain a culture of seasonal eating and food literacy that’s increasingly rare in industrial food systems.”
In recent years, many of the city’s most ambitious dining rooms have started connecting their kitchens with allotments. Chefs have built direct relationships with small growers across Berlin, designing menus around what the land can provide. Dubbed “brutal lokal” by Berlin restaurant Nobelhart & Schmutzig, the movement’s central principle is strict enough to warrant the name: nothing reaches a diner’s plate that couldn’t be grown, raised or foraged in Berlin or the fields around it.
For Vadim Otto Ursus, the founder of acclaimed restaurant Otto, brutal lokal improves both the food and the dining experience. “Local ingredients taste of your surroundings. They give you a sense of time and place,” he says. “It’s one of the best ways to get to know a culture.” Working closely with small suppliers, he adds, also opens up ingredients that commercial supply chains don’t offer: seeds, sprouts and vegetables picked unripe or overripe.
To help support small farmers, a number of Berlin kitchens have joined charity Die Gemeinschaft (the community). Founded in 2017 by Nobelhart & Schmutzig and fellow Michelin-starred eatery Horváth, Die Gemeinschaft brings together a network of German farmers, food producers and restaurants in a bid to create a “better food system” that uses regionally grown food and promotes equitable working conditions. The charity currently has 145 members across Germany.
“[Berlin] is an incredibly green city and people genuinely want to know where their food comes from”, says Nikodemus Berger, the head chef at Michelin-starred vegan restaurant and Die Gemeinschaft member Bonvivant. The focus on sourcing food from the region has, he believes, helped the city define its identity within the fine-dining scene. “We don’t need to import everything to do fine dining anymore,” Berger continues. “We take pride in showing what the region can do. Vegetables harvested in Brandenburg in the morning and arriving by midday simply taste better, crisper and more intense.”
Few places embody the kleingärten spirit as literally as Café Botanico in Neukölln, where a 1,000 sq m permaculture garden supplies the restaurant with herbs, vegetables and edible flowers. Its founder, Martin Höfft, didn’t set out to run a restaurant. “I’m a geographer and permaculture gardener,” he says. He kept an allotment of his own for years and admits that Café Botanico “was essentially built to market my herbs because I had more than I could eat and I needed money to come in to pay for the garden’s rent”.
Unlike the city’s Michelin-starred brutal lokal restaurants, Café Botanico is not a fine-dining establishment – and that’s entirely by design. Offering high-quality, garden-grown food at mid-range prices, the restaurant is metres from where the ingredients are picked, allowing the plot-to-plate journey to become part of the meal. During service, the grounds – which were an allotment prior to Höfft’s arrival – stay open to anyone who wants a mid-meal wander.
Growing your own food, Höfft says, takes “more thought, more patience, more creativity”. Dishes have to be built around whatever the season delivers. But that constraint is exactly what many Berlin chefs have come to value. When winter leaves Berger, Bonvivant’s head chef, with little but cabbage and root vegetables, he turns to fermentation and preservation, using koji, pickles and aged vegetable garums to build variety from a thin harvest. With fewer ingredients on hand, he becomes more inventive. “If you have access to everything all year round, you get lazy,” he says. “Seasonality forces us, in a very positive way, to dig deeper into our technical toolkit.”
