When did planes get so filthy? If passengers don’t hand over their garbage to the crew before landing, then all the pressure falls on a cleaning team that’s given just minutes to prepare an aircraft for its next journey. It’s why instead of having an engrossing book and toiletries in your carry-on, it might be wiser to take a duster and a miniature vacuum cleaner with you.

On a flight from Verona to London on Monday – and look at me all swanky in business class – the seat was crisp-strewn, the packet still in situ, the front pocket filled with empty drink cans. This is so commonplace that crews rarely apologise, they just take the rubbish from you without comment – it’s how life is now my dear.

You should be especially attuned to the potential need for a garbage-picking shift when you go on a long-haul journey. I recently found an apple core in an in-flight sock in my spot (a chocolate on my pillow would have been preferable) and, when I went looking for a dropped pen lid under my seat, I discovered a lost world of teaspoons, salt sachets and enough crumbs to bread a schnitzel. But there’s a bigger thing going on here – the failure of industrial design.

I went to a talk last year where an architect spoke about the potential touchpoints between cutting costs and doing good. For example, in say a hospital or industrial building where there will be tiled surfaces, he works out well in advance how to cover a wall without any tiles being cut (saves time, no wastage, good for the environment). But he also talked about something else that I now realise is vital – getting cleaning crews in at an early stage. Where will they keep their floor-buffing machines, their brooms? And, more importantly, will they be able to keep this space spotless without resorting to cherry-pickers or days of scrubbing?

I wonder how many times the makers of airline seats, the bosses of airlines, have emptied out packets of crisps on a new design, dropped a spoon (and a phone or two) into its recesses and asked a cleaning crew what they make of this contraption. Can they clean it in the seconds that they are given? In the meantime, if you don’t want to sit in an update of Tracey Emin’s bed, don’t forget to have Mr Sheen as your travel buddy next time you fly.

And Verona airport. It used to be cramped and a bit chaotic. Now they have lavished millions on a new terminal – and it’s charmless. The new infrastructure is part of the preparations for the 2026 Milano Cortina Winter Olympics (this will be a key gateway) and, admittedly, it’s not all finished but you have to hope that it’s going to move on from its current blandness. Simple design details seem to have been forgotten. The plaster on the corners of walls, for example, has already been knocked off to reveal the metal framing underneath. Did the architects ask the building-maintenance crew for their advice?

Sometimes things go awry because of badly managed value engineering and poor designs – but worthy legislation is also to blame. Apart from turtles, does anyone actually like the screw cap being tethered to a bottle? I’m not bothered about how they scrape your nose. My issue is that they don’t work. They show signs of incontinence – bottles leak in bags if you attempt reattaching said linked lid. Or they flip position mid-flow, causing liquid to dribble down shirts. I’m sticking to bottles of rosé with corks this summer as I take a stand on this issue.

But there are some things in life where design is all. The perfectly planned wedding last weekend in Lana, Südtirol, of two former colleagues who met at Midori House (thank you, Nolan and Hyo). The hotel that we stayed in, Villa Arnica, where every element was considered and precise, restrained and beautiful. The sets at the Kylie Minogue concert on Tuesday. The book, The Anthropocene Illusion, by the photographer Zed Nelson, which I finally saw at a launch on Thursday (we previewed this amazing project in The Forecast). All moments when someone thought about how people would feel in a space or as they turned a page. Moments when good design won the day.

It will be a very different LGBTQ Pride month this year in the US – the first since the return of Donald Trump to the White House and the implementation of his anti-diversity initiatives across every element of government and society. There’s no blueprint for celebrating a month acknowledging a minority group when diversity initiatives have essentially been outlawed. Grave consequences potentially await companies and institutions that support diversity, equity and inclusion programmes. But while the American public is still ready to fete the queer community throughout June, the private sector has become far less sanguine.

According to Heritage of Pride, the organiser of New York’s annual pride parade, 25 per cent of corporate donors have cancelled or reduced sponsorship this year, which can run from $7,500 to $175,000 (€6,600 to €154,000). Long-time supporters such as PepsiCo, Nissan, Citi, Mastercard and PricewaterhouseCoopers are not returning to this year’s festivities. Other brands are trading marquee sponsorship deals for lower-profile parade booths and product placements. 

Brewing company Anheuser-Busch has ended its PrideFest sponsorship in St Louis, and the same goes for spirits giant Diageo in San Francisco. Such moves not only threaten to reduce the size of Pride events in June but also broader outreach efforts by festival organisers throughout the year. Perhaps most worrisome, nearly 40 per cent of companies plan to reduce internal Pride programming over fears of White House retribution. As Fabrice Houdart, executive director of the Association of LGBTQ+ Corporate Directors, recently told The New York Times, “there are a lot of companies saying ‘I won’t engage on anything LGBT-related because I don’t want to find myself being a target.’”

While this year’s corporate retreat may feel regressive – if not foreboding – the shift does offer a much-needed reset for a Pride industry that many LGBTQ activists felt had become more concerned with celebrating capitalism than sexual liberation. Grassroots groups such as the Dyke March and Reclaim Pride Coalition have long held alternative, “protest” Pride events – the latter under the banner: “NO COPS, NO CORPS, NO BS”. 

Even if it’s possible, ending Pride’s reliance on private sector largesse won’t be simple. Nor will it be easy for Trump to ignore the millions of LGBTQ people and allies that are expected to pour into Washington as it holds the biannual WorldPride event over the next two weeks. Hilton, Delta and Amazon are all listed as sponsors, though the extent of their contributions remains unclear. Even skittish companies such as home-goods retailer Target – which faced a backlash over its Pride fashion collection in 2024 – are finding ways to support LGBTQ causes while still avoiding White House ire: Target will reduce its visible brand presence at New York’s Pride march while still contributing cash to the event. Ultimately, of course, the show will go on. And for all the backroom corporate tussling, there remain few shows with the scale and spectacle of Pride. 

“Enter here all who welcome sitting in the dark without hope,” reads the sign. It may sound uninviting but it turns out that film lovers are happy to do just that. Los Angeles-based non-profit American Cinematheque has expanded its Bleak Week: Cinema of Despair series beyond Hollywood, where it began in 2022, to seven additional locations across the US and internationally to London.

Bleak Week, which showcases films several shades right of noir (but left of horror) was born in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. “We felt that there was a generation of children watching Marvel movies who wanted more,” says Grant Moninger, American Cinematheque’s artistic director. “There are so many films selling spectacle, beauty and fantasy. But when we put this out there, people got it. It touched on more universal truths.”

More than 100 films will be shown across 10 theatres (American Cinematheque itself runs three across Los Angeles), ranging from the utterly brutal Behind the Door, a 1919 silent war drama from foundational Hollywood producer Thomas Ince and director Irvin Willat; to the plaintive, though less harrowing, Moneyball, starring Brad Pitt. The programme highlights great filmmaking that is raw – oftentimes ugly – and whose hard-to-watch nature means that its artistic merit is frequently overlooked. “There is something about an uncompromising approach to showing the dark side of human existence that becomes great art,” says Chris LeMaire, the organisation’s senior film programmer. “These are great films that resonate powerfully with audiences.”

As part of the festival’s expansion, London’s Prince Charles Cinema will be taking part for the first time this year. “As filmgoers and cinephiles, we’re drawn to [darker themes] at some point,” says Paul Vickery, Prince Charles Cinema’s head of programming. “We get to step into a world that we never want to be in.” Guest hosts will include The Brutalist filmmakers, Brady Corbet and Mona Fastvold, who will be speaking before a showing of Lars Von Trier’s Melancholia; director John Hillcoat, who will present his gritty outback western, The Proposition; and The Northman auteur Robert Eggers, who will introduce Andrzej Zulawski’s The Devil. Bleak Week’s exploration of the underdog also includes animation and, of course, the classic heart wrencher, Watership Down. Each theatre is given free rein on which movies to show and the only rule is no documentaries.

Spoiler alert: there are no happy endings in bleak cinema. “There are rarely happy beginnings or happy middles,” says Vickery. But as Bleak Week attests, that’s not always what we want. “Personally, I find it appealing to lock myself in a dark room with people and sit through a moment that I hope I never have to actually experience,” he says. If the art of cinema imitates life, then what does our eagerness to consume such grim tales say? Instead of looking for a fairytale outcome, the relentless brutality of Bleak Week is a reassuring wake-up call.
bleakweek.com

George Washington rarely shares the limelight in the capital that bears his name but the founding father’s bust has considerable company in the marble-clad headquarters of the Organization of American States (OAS). In the Hall of Heroines and Heroes of the Americas, Washington stares down Simón Bolívar, the great liberator of Latin America, plus more than a dozen historical figures from Ecuador to Jamaica.

This statuary reflects the curious conceit of Pan-Americanism: the most powerful country in the western hemisphere is but one among equals. That, at least, is the principle underpinning the OAS, a 77-year-old multilateral institution that was founded to encourage peaceful conflict resolution between neighbours.

So when Monocle takes a seat under the crystal chandeliers in the Hall of the Americas during a recent meeting of the Permanent Council, diplomatic protocol insists that the voice of St Kitts and Nevis, which has a population of about 47,000, has the same weight as the host country’s. Under the flags of 34 nations, delegates take turns interrogating the Colombian and Peruvian candidates for assistant secretary-general, one of whom will join the new chief, Albert Ramdin. Hailing from Suriname, Ramdin who assumes office on 30 May, is the first Caribbean OAS secretary-general. He takes up his role at a turbulent moment for the organisation and multilateralism more broadly.

Since its birth, the OAS has undeniably been a creature of Washington. Headquartered in the shadow of the White House, half its $99m (€88m) budget flows from the US Treasury. Outside, the monuments reinforce this idea. While a bronze Bolívar sits powerfully astride his horse in an adjacent plaza, his figure is dwarfed by the nearby obelisk bearing the name of the American Cincinnatus.

To its critics, the OAS is a mouthpiece for US foreign policy to enforce the 200-year-old Monroe Doctrine. Leftists deride it as the “Ministry of Colonies” or simply as an irrelevant organisation that has been unable to resolve chronic issues in counties such as Haiti and Venezuela. “If you look at the region’s most pressing challenges, where is the OAS?” says Rebecca Bill Chavez, president of Inter-American Dialogue.

Its adherents concede the inter-American system’s imperfections but argue that it has evolved to operate more independently from the US through laudable election-monitoring methods, a respected human-rights court and valuable regional co-operation on organised crime, narcotics and migration. From tense elections to disputed borders, the OAS has a track record of effectively wielding diplomacy in smaller countries. These elements, as well as the US stance that the region constitutes its backyard, are core ingredients of the western hemisphere’s relative geopolitical stability in the 20th and 21st centuries.

“Peace has been established in the western hemisphere for a long time – we don’t have open wars or major conflicts,” Ramdin tells Monocle, weeks before he takes office. But as Donald Trump’s administration reviews US membership and funding in all international bodies, the OAS presents a special case. Historically, Washington has propped up the organisation because it provides a multilateral veneer for advancing US interests. As the OAS ambassador from Antigua and Barbuda Sir Ronald Sanders puts it, “They regard the OAS as their property.” At a time when Washington is stripping away veneers, will the US invest in the plumbing and the fixtures or dispose of its pet diplomatic property entirely?

On the day we arrive in Washington, the news cycle is consumed by Benjamin Netanyahu’s second visit to the White House, a reminder of the current president’s Middle Eastern focus and preference for bilateral negotiations. Latin America and the Caribbean might feel like perpetually neglected neighbours but it wasn’t always this way. Monocle meets Brazilian ambassador Benoni Belli, the current Permanent Council chair, in the OAS headquarters’ interior patio, which flourishes with verdant gardens representing the flora of North, Central and South America, and the Caribbean. Inaugurated in 1910, the Pan American Union building embodies the era’s transcontinental spirit. It’s an amalgam of English, French, Portuguese and Spanish architectural influences that heralds co-operation among the New World’s young republics.

Belli leads the way to a well-appointed office decorated with Brazilian artwork supplied by the OAS’s in-house museum and gives a history lesson. Founded in 1948 amid anti-communist fervor, Belli says, “The OAS gave a seal of legitimacy to the Monroe Doctrine.” At the height of the US-Soviet rivalry, the OAS turned a blind eye as military dictatorships committed gross human-rights violations in the name of anti-communism. Cuba’s communist revolution led to the island’s suspension in 1962 (the ban was rescinded in 2009; Havana declined the invitation). When the Reagan administration invaded fellow OAS member Grenada in 1983 without repercussions, the secretary-general resigned in protest over the institution’s perpetual sidelining in hemispheric geopolitics.

But with Latin America’s transition to democracy and the easing of Cold War tensions, the OAS flexed its muscles to operate with autonomy from Washington. Belli cites Nicaragua in 1990 when the socialist Sandinistas – a fervent foe of the Reagan-Bush administrations – agreed to elections and invited the OAS to monitor, on the provision that the US government stay out. The Sandinistas lost and couldn’t charge the Yankee imperialists with meddling.

“It was a golden era,” says Belli. “The OAS was able to safeguard democracy without giving the impression that it was simply a vehicle to impose American power in the region.”

Flash forward a quarter century and the OAS’s gilt has tarnished. While there are still success stories such as an OAS diplomatic mission that mediated the post-election crisis in Guatemala last year, they are more the exception than the rule. In Nicaragua’s case, Sandinista revolutionary leader Daniel Ortega had the last laugh. Ortega runs a dictatorial regime with his wife, Rosario Murillo, and withdrew from the OAS two years ago. Venezuela, a perpetual thorn in the side of the organisation since Hugo Chavez’s rise to power, left in 2019. But under byzantine rules, Cuba and Venezuela continue to formally count as OAS members for voting purposes as the US made the sad spectacle in 2019 of seating an ambassador representing failed opposition leader Juan Guaidó.

“They must be laughing their heads off in Caracas and Havana every time we have to cast a vote knowing fully well that they are the jumbies – the ghosts – haunting this place,” says Sanders. Known as el decano or the “dean” as the body’s longest-serving ambassador, he holds court in the Delegates Lounge, shooing away a trio of Spanish-speaking staff and chiding Belli’s secretary for interrupting his soliloquy.

With his institutional wisdom, Sanders takes the Trump administration’s early moves in stride – and sees the OAS’s cosy relationship with its host country as an existential benefit. “President Trump will not release an advantage if he has one,” says Sanders. “To the extent that the US has dominated this place for such a long time, I think he might keep it in his back pocket.”

That perceived domination has spurred detractors and alternatives though nothing has yet supplanted the OAS entirely. The Union of South American Nations sits moribund 17 years after its founding while the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States has puttered along for more than a decade without a major splash. In 2021 former Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador went as far as calling for the OAS’s replacement with a more autonomous organisation that would be “nobody’s lackey”. But the common thread among detractors is often bristling at criticism from the organisation, especially its non-partisan umpire the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. In Mexico’s case, the commission has called out judicial reform as threatening the rule of law. And in March, it expressed concern over potential human-rights violations by the US for sending migrants to El Salvador’s notorious mega-prison.

The latter communiqué will surely not endear the OAS to Trump but defunding the organisation would, ironically, hand a political victory to the Latin American left. During his last term, Trump became the first US president to skip the OAS’s flagship Summit of the Americas, a move interpreted as consistent with his disdain for Latin America. His predecessor’s signature foreign policy initiative, meanwhile, was the pivot to Asia. “The truth is that we have been at a crossroads for some time,” says Sanders. “The US has been ambivalent about the OAS for the past 20 years.”

But US secretary of state Marco Rubio, himself Cuban-American, has showered the region with attention, albeit to articulate Trump’s dim view of Latin America and the Caribbean as a hotbed of security concerns and the source of his immigration nightmares. Days after being confirmed in January, Rubio visited five Central American countries on his inaugural trip and stopped in the Dominican Republic, where he affirmed support for the host nation of the next Summit of the Americas in December (whether Trump will attend remains unknown). In March, he made a whistle-stop tour of the Caribbean, meeting six heads of state and publishing an op-ed in the Miami Herald asserting an “Americas, first” foreign policy.

The US did not immediately back Ramdin, who was initially tarred as a Chinese agent in right-wing circles. Rival candidate Rúben Ramírez Lezcano, the Paraguayan foreign minister, mounted an intensive pro-US lobbying campaign and even landed a coveted selfie with Trump at Mar-a-Lago. But the OAS’s independent streak reared again as the 14-vote Caribbean bloc held steadfast, insisting it was finally their turn to lead the body, and once four more votes were confirmed heading Ramdin’s way, Washington joined the bandwagon – currying favour with a newly oil-rich nation was ultimately deemed good politics.

For Rebecca Bill Chavez, who served in the Biden administration in Western Hemisphere Affairs and counts several OAS ambassadors among her confidants, the administration’s moves thus far are encouraging that the organisation has a future despite Trump’s hostility to multilateralism. “All the signals are the right signals,” she says.

Leading said future falls to the mild-mannered 67-year-old former Surinamese foreign minister and career diplomat. Ramdin is widely viewed as a technocrat who will keep a low political profile in stark contrast to his predecessor, Luis Almagro. The 10th secretary-general elevated the OAS’s profile with his poetically vociferous critiques of leftists authoritarians – much to the US’s delight – but also raised the hackles of member states frustrated at his freelance advocacy. 

“[Almagro] was more general than secretary,” says Bolivian ambassador Héctor Arce Zaconeta, whose socialist government blames the OAS for an election audit that precipitated Evo Morales’s fall from power in 2019. “The new secretary-general has to facilitate dialogue as an international functionary, not a political activist,” says Belli more diplomatically.

Soon enough Ramdin will be called upon to mediate the region’s flashpoints. The OAS has a long-running role in keeping peace over disputed territory between Belize and Guatemala, which could erupt when The Hague rules as soon as this year. Tensions continue to ratchet up between Venezuela and Guyana regarding the disputed Essequibo region with March seeing a British, Dutch and US naval exercise to counter Venezuelan warships. The US’s newfound expansionist designs on the Panama Canal also threaten regional stability. Haiti, where the OAS has operated a birth certificate and national-identity-card scheme for decades, remains a basket case, though Ramdin has credibility in Port-au-Prince, having made more trips to the troubled capital than nearly any other Caribbean diplomat.

It will fall to this representative from the region’s odd duck, the only Dutch-speaking country with a mere 700,000 inhabitants, to keep the peace. Ramdin sees his unique perch as an advantage. “Small countries can play an important role in international diplomacy because we are not threatening,” he says. “Therefore, we can be an honest broker.”

A former assistant secretary-general, Ramdin knows the institution’s inner workings. He’s well poised to rein in the bureaucracy and the budget if given a green light for reforms at June’s annual assembly in Antigua and Barbuda. Regardless of what the US decides on funding, “The truth is that the OAS has been broke for some time,” says Sanders. Contributions are proportional to national income and several countries are in arrears. USAID cuts have already cost the OAS some $4m(€3.55m).

Ramdin says that his meeting with Rubio in March was “open and frank” and that he has met with other high-level US officials about the OAS’s future, which largely hinges on Washington’s whims. To make the case, Ramdin appeals to the turn-of-the-last-century vision of regional co-operation that manifested in bricks and mortar. From his new office, he can peer into the courtyard where the rubber-fig “Peace Tree” planted by William Taft in 1910 still grows. One Republican president oversaw the building’s inauguration; now Ramdin must ensure another Republican president doesn’t oversee its closure.

“We need to demonstrate to the US how building a united hemisphere will be in their benefit: a flourishing regional economy where investments remain within the Americas and where we support each other’s development,” Ramdin says. “That goes to the essence of what Washington and Bolívar wanted to achieve.”

It is late at night in a park in Sumy, a city in northeastern Ukraine, not far from where the latest Russian offensive is taking place. Chef Oleg Bibikov is sitting at a picnic table where his team has laid out an impromptu dinner for us. Over tinfoil boxes of kebabs and cucumber salad, he is working out the next day’s logistics for his charity food truck, which provides more than a thousand hot meals a day for people displaced by the fighting or otherwise in need. His phone rings incessantly while the sky lights up with incoming drones, red tracer bullets fired from air-defence systems and the thuds of explosions in the distance. “Your night’s entertainment,” he says. But this is not new. I travelled via Mykolaiv, Odesa, Dnipro and Kharkiv in search of how Ukraine receives its daily bread. Keeping bellies full after more than three years of war is just as much a logistical exercise as running ammo and troops to the front line.  

At dawn the next morning, Oleg and his team are already up: preparing hundreds of kilos of chicken wings in a special spice marinade; tending to huge vats of buckwheat and fresh cabbage salad mixed with herbs, vinegar and salt. Everything is portioned into boxes with a slice or two of bread, stacked up high into huge crates, ready to serve to the steadily forming queue. A truck turns up from one of Sumy’s front-line villages, which are pounded daily by Russian artillery and FPV drones. It leaves with a crate or two of meals for the residents determined to remain in their homes. It is exhausting, dangerous work – but Oleg says that he could not have simply stayed at home, running his restaurants: he is here to help and here to stay. 

Hundreds of miles to the south, in Mykolaiv, volunteers at a community hub called DOF are learning how to make sourdough aboard a 50-year-old Swiss Army mobile bakery provided by the not-for-profit Bake for Ukraine. They are baking loaves of traditional Ukrainian palyanytsya bread and Darnitsky rye, which are soft and plush, and will stay fresh and nutritious for days. 

Every other day, they load up vans and head into the regions of Mykolaiv and Kherson where de-occupied villages have been half-destroyed by Russian forces. Volodymyr Alekseev, who runs the centre, says that they choose the places that are hardest to reach, where few other volunteers go, bumping down jagged roads and across pontoon bridges, through countryside littered with mines. The women who take charge in these shattered villages are always happy to receive fresh bread. It is the centre of their table – a precious resource and a taste of normality.

In Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, another vehicle is bringing food to those in need – but on a much bigger scale. With funding from The Howard G Buffett Foundation, Ukrainian Railways has created the world’s first “food train”, complete with a generator, hot and cold kitchens, water filtration and accommodation for staff who spend two-week rotations on board, preparing thousands of meals a day. 

All morning, vans line up alongside the train, loading up boxes of hot food to deliver to hospitals and charity hubs, as well as elderly people and families who have fled their homes and are starting again with nothing. Recently (they tell me), it travelled to Mykolaiv and Kherson, bringing Easter bread and other treats for local children. With Ukraine’s electricity infrastructure under repeated Russian assault, it has been vital to find new and creative ways to keep food and water supplies going through bombing and blackouts. 

And so it goes: a food truck feeds hundreds from a city-centre park; an old mobile bakery has been given a new lease of life; and an entire train has been turned into a self-contained kitchen. After more than three years of war, everyone is exhausted; there is loss and heartbreak everywhere you look. But life and community still thrive, not least in Ukraine’s new kitchens.  

Spector is a senior producer at Channel 4, currently travelling through Ukraine after the release of her book, ‘Bread & War: A Ukrainian Story of Food, Bravery and Hope’. 

As the third edition of Lisbon Design Week kicks off across more than 90 venues today, it’s clear that Portugal’s craft culture is the event’s defining strength. Running until Sunday, the event focuses less on polished brands and sleek product lines, and more on the tactile stories behind each piece and participating project. 

While other European creative scenes trade off their industrial manufacturing prowess, a lack of major furniture brands and clearly established career pathways means that many Portuguese designers pay more attention to materials, techniques and connection – to the land, to traditions and to each other. The result is a creative culture of experimentation and learning by doing. For many, this involves stepping away from computer screens and into workshops, where artisans take a hands-on approach to making furniture and objects, exploring traditional and innovative techniques with freedom.

For Portugal-based French designer Noé Duchaufour-Lawrance, this allows him to explore beyond the expectations of his established practice. His “Made in Situ” project – on show at Lisbon Design Week – creates designs using a location’s raw materials and knowhow of local craftspeople. Such work doesn’t allow production at scale but still finds a market as a new generation of interior designers seeks to furnish projects with pieces that reflect a sense of place. The heads of international buyers are also turning as they look to take away a slice of the Iberian peninsula.

This year’s edition of Lisbon Design Week also encourages collaboration between collectives such as Bora and Luso Collective, the latter founded by Tomás Fernandes and Natasza Grzeskiewicz (pictured above left), and disciplines from wood and glass to ceramics, textiles and metal. Visitors benefit from these exchanges too, with much of the week’s programme unfolding in working ateliers where audiences get to meet people rather than brands. Even in commercial venues, the directive is to host a maker and shine a light on a craft: event attendees will be able to see ceramicists working in the windows of real-estate offices while showrooms stage live tapestry stitching.

Such events are a reminder that, unlike other European design capitals, Lisbon’s design scene is typically more intimate, open and accessible. And while there is still plenty of room for growth and professionalisation, as well as more top-down support, staying close to its craft roots has paid off so far. 

Lutz is Monocle’s Lisbon correspondent. For more design news and analysis, subscribe to Monocle today.

The Danish government recently increased the state pension age from 67 to 70 years, the highest level in Europe. I spent the first couple of days after the new law was passed wondering why none of the Danes I asked seemed that bothered. “Well, what else are you supposed to do? Retire and sit and eat and look out of the window?” shrugged a friend, 58, who works for the local council. His response was typical: 67 or 70, it wasn’t a big deal. The Danish media made a half-hearted attempt to interview working Danes who felt a bit disgruntled but claims by international media that there was an “outcry” or that the new law was “controversial” are off the mark. 

Having been told that they must delay their dotage by another three years, why were the Danes not making placards and lighting the torches for a march on parliament? After all, attempts to raise the retirement age from 62 to 64 in France brought down a government. 

Meanwhile, Denmark has never been wealthier, the state treasury is constantly revising its revenue forecasts upwards (by many billions in the past year alone) and, incidentally, pension age is projected to rise to 74 by 2040. So what’s going on?

Essentially, workers trust that the state will take care of them if they aren’t able to continue working. In 2021 the government introduced something called the Arne pension (named after a brewery worker called Arne), which offers a special early retirement provision for people who have worked in more physically demanding jobs, typically since their teens. On top of that, many Danes have private pensions or are part of union-run schemes, which makes them less reliant on the DKK15,000 (€2,000) per month paid by the state. 

There’s another key factor at play here: the Danes work fewer hours per year than almost any other nation in the OECD so perhaps extending their working years doesn’t seem so onerous. They tend to be well informed about the realities of the global economy and geo-political turmoil so there is a general public acceptance that defence spending needs to increase significantly in the coming years and revenue from Ozempic won’t cover it all. 

There is one aspect of the pension story that did inspire expressions of mild resentment among the Danes who I surveyed. In a last desperate attempt to provoke them, I pointed out that their politicians – those who pushed Denmark to be at the vanguard of pension policy – voted to receive their very generous state pension from the age of 60. Now that did get a reaction. No one likes to see their politicians feathering their own nests – not even the Danes. 

Michael Booth is Monocle’s Copenhagen correspondent. For more opinion, analysis and insight, subscribe to Monocle today.

There have been many calls for resistance against president Donald Trump since he returned to the White House in January – but surprisingly little action. New York, however, appears to be stepping up and taking the fight against executive overreach to the streets – literally. 

Just weeks before Trump’s inauguration, New York introduced the most expansive congestion-pricing scheme in the nation. Under the plan, drivers travelling below 60th Street are now charged $9 (€8) during peak hours – 05.00 to 21.00 on weekdays and 09.00 to 21.00 on weekends – and $2.25 (€2) during off-peak hours for the “privilege” of driving below Midtown. Viewed as an eco-friendly, pedestrian-friendly and cyclist-friendly revenue-raiser, congestion pricing brought in a respectable $159m (€140m) in its first three months of operation, according to New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) – well on its way to reaching the $500m (€440m) goal set for its first year. The money will go towards new subway infrastructure along with closing the MTA’s projected $3bn (€2.6bn) budget deficit. 

First proposed back in 2019, congestion pricing has not been without controversy: a group of small-business owners filed a suit in February 2024 to halt its implementation over fears that it would hurt restaurant traffic. But backed by both New York’s state governor, Kathy Hochul, and New York City mayor (and avid cyclist), Eric Adams, the pricing plan commenced this year. And that’s when Trump stepped in. 

Within weeks of his inauguration, the White House pulled the federal approval for New York’s pricing plan granted by the Biden administration back in May 2023. The move was not entirely surprising – in 2019, Trump held up federal approval amid fights with then-governor Andrew Cuomo over immigration reform. New York, it seems, needs White House support for the scheme because it includes highways that receive federal funding.

Five years on, Trump has returned to Washington and congestion pricing has emerged as a high-profile power struggle between frustrated big-city progressives and a regressive (and repressive) White House. The latest flare-up played out this past week when New York ignored a third White House deadline to end congestion pricing — with little to suggest that it will pause the programme anytime soon. The White House, however, appears to have had enough, with secretary of transportation, Sean Duffy, threatening to freeze federal funding for Manhattan transport projects as early as 28 May if the scheme is not paused.  

Hochul, for her part, appears unmoved. “Congestion pricing is lawful – and it’s effective. Traffic is down, business is up and the cameras are staying on,” her spokesperson said last week. The numbers are clearly on Hochul’s side: since congestion pricing began, New York has seen two million fewer car trips per month, according to the MTA, while public transport ridership is up. Most crucially, according to Hochul’s office, rather than businesses such as restaurants and theatres seeing declines in the “congestion” zones – they have actually seen an increase in reservations and sales.

Despite the gripe with Trump, other US cities are taking note of New York’s congestion-pricing wins as they weigh up the implementation of their own traffic tolls. San Francisco, in particular, could take the plunge as it faces major budget shortfalls for its beleaguered public-transport system, which has yet to fully recover from pandemic-era declines. 

In the meantime, all eyes will be on Manhattan this coming week as it faces the first real test of its White House defiance. Without federal support, New York’s already ailing subways will fall into further decline. But this time, rather than blaming Covid, New Yorkers – who overwhelmingly support congestion pricing – will have a more tangible target for their ire: one Donald J Trump. 

Kaufman is an editor and columnist for the ‘New York Post’. For more opinion, analysis and insight, subscribe to Monocle today.

Headlines in the luxury-retail sector suggest fear and uncertainty. This is particularly true in the US, where famed department-store group Saks Global is struggling to execute its turnaround plans. Yet when you step off the world’s renowned shopping avenues, quite a different story presents itself. In London, a few minutes away from the hustle and bustle of Oxford Street, a jewel box of a boutique, Koibird, has curious passersby dropping in to discover its edit of independent designers. In New York one of the best shopping addresses is now located on Brooklyn’s unassuming Atlantic Avenue, where in-the-know locals hunt for new-season items from luxury labels such as The Row and Dries Van Noten, as well as independents, including Beirut’s Super Yaya.

Running an independent boutique involves risky investments with little guarantee of turning a profit. This is why, over the past decade, we’ve seen the eclipse of the multi-brand boutique and the concept of curation itself – only to be replaced by shop-in-shops operated directly by big luxury groups. The return of the boutique highlights an urge for discovery and connection. It’s no longer about convenience above all else. In fact, retailers are discovering that a little inconvenience doesn’t hurt sales. It’s why opening shops in quaint neighbourhoods has become increasingly popular, as has the printed shopping catalogue.

This spring, both Koibird in London and Outline in New York announced plans to shutter their e-commerce sites completely, sending physical catalogues to customers instead. You might no longer be able to make a purchase with a few clicks but you can submit your address online and receive a beautiful, printed catalogue that features the shop’s seasonal buys. Flick through all the different looks and place an order by visiting the boutique or texting the sales team. In the case of Outline, whose catalogue was shot in a modernist Brooklyn home, there’s even a section for taking notes as you peruse. This tactile focus is tied to co-founders Margaret Austin and Hannah Rieke’s refreshed vision of what it means to run a successful retail business: serving the neighbourhood with “one excellent shop” rather than updating a website on a daily basis and aiming for bigger numbers. “We’re tired of doomscrolling,” said Rieke when I visited Outline. “There’s way too much product out there, it’s almost like going grocery shopping. But it seems that the pendulum is now swinging.”
 
The return of the catalogue could easily be dismissed as a one-off marketing experiment steeped in nostalgia, not unlike the brief revival of early-2000s fashion and gadgets such as CD players. But it might also signal the return of a more mindful way to shop – and a more human-centric approach to luxury.
 
Theodosi is Monocle’s fashion director. To read more about the designers bringing slow fashion to New York’s rapid retail scene, click here. For more opinion, analysis and insight, subscribe to Monocle today.

Qatar’s reported offer of a Boeing 747 to US president Donald Trump is not the first such gratuity in the history of US-Middle East relations. The same gift was presented in the opposite direction in February 1945, when US president Franklin D Roosevelt gave Saudi Arabia’s founding king, Ibn Saud, a Dakota DC-3.
     
The Dakota was a less exclusive aircraft than the Qatari 747 coveted by Trump. The military variant of the Douglas DC-3, the Dakota was a basic twin-propeller workhorse – but it was, at the time, pretty much the state of the art. After taking his first flights on it, Ibn Saud was sufficiently dazzled to purchase two more.

The history of national leaders being impressed by aircraft is almost as long as the history of powered flight. In 1910, just seven years after the Wright brothers took off from Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, Tsar Ferdinand I of Bulgaria became the first airborne head of state during a visit to an aerodrome in Belgium. According to a contemporary newspaper report, he was “highly enthusiastic”.
     
The feeling has been widely shared among subsequent heads of state and government, and intermittently exploited. Circa 1963, US president John F Kennedy followed Roosevelt’s lead and gave a DC-3 to loopy despot Mobutu Sese Seko, then-president of then-Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo). This might have inaugurated Mobutu’s taste for aviation: he later installed a special runway near his palace at Gbadolite so that he could go shopping in Paris via Concorde.
     
The Soviet Union also sought the favour of various leaders during the Cold War by distributing airborne largesse, including an Ilyushin Il-14P to Josip Broz Tito in Yugoslavia, an Ilyushin Il-62 to Kim Il Sung in North Korea and a Tupolev Tu-134 to Samora Machel in Mozambique. The latter proved an extremely mixed blessing: it crashed in 1986, killing president Machel and 33 others. 
     
There are other hazards attached to accepting such gifts. As more than a few national security experts have attempted to caution Trump, there is be a fine line between an executive aircraft and Trojan horse. In 2002, China took delivery of a Boeing 767 for use as a presidential transport – built by Boeing in Seattle and fitted out by private companies in Texas. President Jiang Zemin’s staff, perplexed by a whining sound on test flights, eventually found 27 listening devices, including bugs located in the bathrooms and in the headboard of the presidential bed. 
 
Mueller is the host of ‘The Foreign Desk’ on Monocle Radio. For more opinion, analysis and insight, subscribe to Monocle today.