1.
My hairdresser tells me that he’s facing a growing problem: AI haircut ambitions. Gone are the days when clients would arrive with a page torn from a magazine featuring, say, Tom Cruise and the hopeful instruction: “Could you try to make me look like that please?” Now they pitch up with AI-generated images of themselves with Mr Cruise’s locks sprouting all too convincingly from their heads and a genuine belief that this must be achievable. And we’re not talking teenagers. Men in their sixties are rocking up with pictures on their phones of them sporting locks that Marie Antoinette’s wigmaker would have been challenged to concoct. My hairdresser has taken to asking them whether they perhaps failed to inform Claude that they are a tad follicly challenged out back? Indeed, just a few fallen tufts away from a Turkish hair-transplant sojourn. After a good talking to, they usually settle for “the usual”. Me? I’m thinking that something a little Marge Simpson might be good for the winter.
2.
I came up with the idea for a new radio feature the other day based around Claude and to be called simply, “Let’s ask Claude!” But instead of using the AI assistant for help, we would draw up a panel of celebrated academics, philosophers, chefs and ski instructors – all of whom are real Claudes. Listeners would send in their questions and, depending on the topic, we would then phone one of our Claude geniuses live on air. As Claude is a name sported by men and women, this would offer up a huge list of potential guests. How best to hit a puck? Let’s call Canadian ice-hockey player Claude Giroux! How do I take better pictures on my camera? Let’s call French photographer Claude Nori! How do I kill a man (on screen, my dear)? Let’s call Jean-Claude Van Damme!
3.
I just landed in Palma last night and picked up a hire car for the weekend. I seem to get a different vehicle every time and rarely what I booked. You reserve a dinky number suitable for manoeuvring through narrow roads and, after being unwillingly “upgraded”, get handed the keys to a bus. But this car marque promiscuity generates some anxiety as, every time you clamber into the driving seat, you have to work out how to drive and control the contraption. It’s always embarrassing when you need to find someone to show you how to start the engine – a tap on a screen it seems. But what’s most enervating is the beeping festival that comes with these new cars. Beep! The speed limit just changed! Beep! You are changing lanes! Beep! Your hair needs fixing! And now here’s the car that shouts at you if the camera in the steering wheel thinks that you’re not always staring straight ahead. A modern hire car matched with my driving can generate more beeps per minute than a Calvin Harris track. I’m an unintentional mobile disco.
4.
Are the old of today becoming more badly behaved? There was a delicious moment checking in to a British Airways flight the other day. A couple of years ago the airline created a new category of traveller, “group zero” which, when a flight is boarding, gives priority to its highest-spending passengers. But it’s still causing some issues because, when they start calling a flight, the slow-to-catch-on group one folk still push to the head of the queue, only to be forced to step aside. Anyway, as my flight was called, a young gay couple in their twenties walked to the front of the queue, only to be tapped on the shoulder by a bejewelled woman travelling with her gruff husband. “Excuse me young man,” she snootily barked, “we are group zero. Please step back. You need to wait.” Then this kid – with hair that Timothée Chalamet would have pined for – turned and very politely replied, “so are we”. And in that second her world, her prejudices, were all shaken up. No wonder she demanded a gin and tonic as soon as the wheels were up.
Want to read more of Andrew’s columns? Click here.
Western-style shoemaking in Tokyo began in the late-1800s, when the government of Meiji Japan established a military-boot plant in the city’s Asakusa district. To support the operation, the area soon became host to leather suppliers, tanneries, toolmakers and specialised outworkers, transforming into a hub for Japanese cobblers.
However, as workshops began shifting their production to places further afield, the “Made in Tokyo” label has become increasingly difficult to come by. Today, only a handful of shoe ateliers continue to manufacture in the city. Nonetheless, a small community of leather shoemakers remain in the city, crafting designs that reflect the unwavering attention to detail that defines Japan-made quality. Here are four of Monocle’s favourites in Tokyo.
1.
Rendo
Asakusa
Doubling as a workshop and boutique, visitors to Rendo – a shoe brand based in Tokyo’s Asakusa – are met with the scent of leather upon entering. Inside, boxes of shoes line the walls while a couple of large tables serve as workbenches and displays for finished products.
Rendo was founded by Teppei Yoshimi, who studied at London’s Cordwainers Technical College and worked as a pattern-maker for several shoe labels. Yoshimi began repairing leather footwear before branching into shoemaking, with a focus on Oxfords, loafers and monk straps. His background in pattern-making is central to his designs, which pairs classic British silhouettes with Japanese technical precision.
Yoshimi believes that building a relationship with his client base is just as important as making the shoes themselves: “Many of our customers have been coming here for years,” he says. “Some come in for repairs, others for a new pair of shoes.” As buyers began looking for more comfortable shoes in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, Yoshimi launched the Tep_P collection. The casual line includes the Tyrolean leather shoe – a Monocle favourite that has also found an enthusiastic following among Rendo’s international visitors. “I wanted to develop a more relaxed option: something for casual outings that maintain an elegance,” says Yoshimi.
rendo-shoes.jp
2.
Fysky
Kichijoji
After studying shoemaking in Asakusa and working for several cordwainers in the area, Yosuke Ide launched Fysky in 2022 with his longtime friend and business partner Tetsu Ishiguro.
The intimate atelier in western Tokyo features a range of made-to-order men’s and women’s styles that can be customised from a wide variety of options, including different leathers, toe-cap styles, sole materials and other details. “Every customer works directly with us to create something personal, making the process itself part of the product,” says Ishiguro. The brand also offers custom leather accessories, such as wallets, belts and bags.
Advance reservation is required for visits and the turnaround for a pair of shoes is typically three to four months. Looking for a quick addition to the wardrobe? Worry not – the duo is planning to launch a ready-to-wear line as well as a bricks-and-mortar shop in Kichijoji next year.
fysky-shoe.com
3.
Liberato
Azumabashi
In traditional Japanese rooms, tatami (mats made of woven rush grass) are used on the floor to provide insulation and cushioning. Though its use is waning as Western-style flooring has become more popular, it is still used in many homes today. Liberato founder, Hideyuki Nagasawa, wanted to bring the benefits of tatami – comfort and breathability – to leather footwear.
Liberato’s collection features loafers, slide sandals and mules with tatami insoles. “They are meant to be worn barefoot,” says Nagasawa. The result is a gently textured liner that is naturally breathable.
Nagasawa sources the igusa (tatami rush) used in its tatami insoles from Kyushu, a region known for producing top-quality rush grass. The shoes are largely made in Asakusa and available at the Liberato showroom in neighbouring Azumabashi.
liberato.jp
4.
Hender Scheme
Various locations
Kashiwazaki’s in-house creations are inventive and use a wide range of techniques. Footwear is made from leather that is folded and stitched into shape with minimal intervention. Chunky rubber soles are used in many styles, with revealed seams, cut-outs and colourful cords appearing as playful details. His collection offers something for every occasion, from elegant city sandals to sturdy winter boots.
With six locations across Tokyo, Osaka, Fukuoka and Nagoya, Hender Scheme also sells its wares online. Regularly partnering with global names, its most recent collaboration was with Italian solemaker Vibram on the original UFO (Unidentified Footwear Object) sole unit, and leather-wrapped furniture and home accessories with Finnish design giant Artek.
henderscheme.com
In an age of short-format videos and even shorter attention spans, the two-part, five-hour-long historical biopic De Gaulle: Résistance has been an unexpected hit at the French box office this summer. Directed by former diplomat Antonin Baudry and based on Julian Jackson’s A Certain Idea of France: The Life of Charles de Gaulle, the film traces the rise of the military leader and Second World War resistance hero to French president. It also focuses on De Gaulle’s fierce opposition to the collaborationist Vichy government and France’s imperious ally, the US.
At a time of division and uncertainty for France, the title has chimed particularly well with younger generations who have found hope, comfort and inspiration in De Gaulle’s loyalty and stoicism. And, with little more than seven months until the next French presidential election, the film has also resonated across the political spectrum.
Many of those who have already thrown their names in the hat as candidates have praised Baudry’s work. Far-left leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon calls it a “magnificent film”, while his main adversary on the left, Raphaël Glucksmann, encourages voters to “race and see what liberty costs”. Right-wing Les Républicains candidate Bruno Retailleau says the title’s success highlights “a need for patriotism” in French society. Even Marine Le Pen’s far-right sidekick, Jordan Bardella – whose previous incarnation, the National Front, was partly created by anti-Gaullist former collaborators – says that he is eager to see it too.
In light of De Gaulle: Résistance’s popularity, we asked Monocle staff to recommend films that could provide politicians with inspiration or perhaps a few life lessons.
Weiner (2016)
By Josh Kriegman and Elyse Steinberg
A documentary film and cautionary tale for US Democratic primary candidates. This is a piercing portrait of Democrat congressman Anthony Weiner who, in the aftermath of a sex scandal, invited a film crew to trail him as he ran in the 2013 New York mayoral election, attempting to rehabilitate his reputation in the process. Weiner is the stuff of political nightmares: a slow-motion disintegration of both a public and personal life, and, for any hopeful candidate, a useful reminder of the pitfalls that can befall rising political stars.
Idiocracy (2006)
By Mike Judge
Donald Trump’s entire political career is eerily similar to this satirical cult comedy. Set in a dystopian future in which the US has become progressively dumber, the president, played by Terry Crews, looks like he came straight from a WWE event. Brands have taken over government departments and crops are failing because fields are being watered with an energy drink called Brawndo. The fact that Trump kicked off the US’s 250th birthday celebrations this year with a cage fight on the White House’s south lawn is so Idiocracy-coded that Mike Judge would be frustrated he didn’t come up with it himself. Nevertheless, Trump might need a refresher course to buff up his ideas.
Dead Man’s Shoes (2004)
By Shane Meadows
One of Meadows’s lesser-known films but one that the UK government figures should see. Set in the East Midlands, one of the most under-invested and economically challenged regions in England, the film touches on mental-health struggles, veterans returning home from the army, post-traumatic stress disorder and the banality of small-town life.
Do You Love Me (2025)
By Lana Daher
A documentary that Lebanon president Joseph Aoun and prime minister Nawaf Salam should watch. The film is an attempt to detail the themes of Beirut’s history, entirely through a montage of archival Lebanese film and television. It’s a picture that could help to remind Aoun and Salam of the trappings of sectarianism, one of the documentary’s main themes, as well as champion the joyous aspects of Beirut, in order to attract more investment and reinvigorate the tourism industry.
The Death of Stalin (2017)
By Armando Iannucci
A feature-length comedy for any politician who fancies taking the top job directly after a dominant personality leaves office. Many people believe that they could do a better job, either greatly overestimating their own ability, influence and charisma or severely underestimating the ferocious ambitions of their colleagues. If you think that you have allies who will back you to the end, think again – it’s something that Beria, Malenkov and Khrushchev all discover in ridiculous yet chilling ways.
Dona Flor e Seus Dois Maridos (1976)
By Bruno Barreto
The top two candidates in Brazil’s presidential election, Lula Inácio Lula da Silva and Flávio Bolsonaro, should watch this film. Dona Flor e Seus Dois Maridos (Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands) follows Dona Flor, who divides her time between her current husband, a respectable pharmacist, and her late husband, who returns as a ghost but is a more passionate lover. It’s not surprising that Brazilian audiences flocked to the cinema when it was released in 1976: it’s sexy, funny and the acting is superb. Lula and Flávio should at least agree that we need some light escapism from time to time.
This year’s Helsinki Design Week focused on design’s role in making cities more lively. The event, which finished at the weekend, included about 250 talks, exhibitions and showcases in venues across the Finnish capital. There were also interactive installations, such as “HDW Lab” on Helsinki’s main high street, Aleksanterinkatu. The project invited passers-by to share ideas for a better-designed city, which urban-development experts then discussed and used as starting points for new proposals. “What we are most excited about is our two-year plan in collaboration with the City of Helsinki on how to revitalise the city centre,” says Kari Korkman, Helsinki Design Week’s founder. “We want to make it more vibrant with the help of design.”
It’s that sort of thinking that sets this design week apart. It looks at design holistically, not just through new products. “We see design today not only as product-related,” says Korkman. “That’s how it started but today we are talking about services and how to solve urban problems through design thinking.”
Another example was the Design Diplomacy showcase, for which embassies opened their doors and welcomed speakers to discuss their work and different design cultures. Among the highlights elsewhere was the Futuro House – a unique, UFO-like, futuristic Finnish building type that was first conceived in 1968; US architectural-heritage expert Jan van Dijs recreated it using long-lost original drawings, with Marimekko designing the interiors. “We wanted to speak to the future of living,” says Rebekka Bay, the Finnish practice’s creative director. “Instead of focusing on traditional living today, we sought to propose a vision where we can downscale and live with less, but with what’s important to us.” Equally monumental was the seven-metre-tall “Aalto Vase”, made from aluminium by Norwegian materials producer Hydro and Finnish design company Iittala.
Meanwhile, Habitare, Finland’s key furniture and interior-design fair, attracted more than 40,000 visitors during Helsinki Design Week. Unlike most fairs of its scale, the showcase is consumer-oriented and Finnish brands often record good sales there. “I don’t have a physical shop and this is the only place where people can touch, feel and see my products,” says Teppo Lakaniemi of Helsinki-based furniture brand Tebian, which launched a solid-oak chair called Buddy Jr. “I sell a lot here.” Other notable launches were the modular Pause lounge chair and sofa system by Hakola, and Pahka by kitchen brand Arkken, featuring wood bent by carpenters to create uniquely shaped cabinets. Reflecting Habitare’s growing focus on circular designs was Tyyne, an acoustic panel and space divider made from wooden side-stream materials by local studio Sistem with Finnish design brand Niimaar.
Though much of the fair was about showing these new pieces, it was also about driving broader discussions around furniture design. “We want to be in a real dialogue with the industry and young designers, sensing what is in the air,” says Habitare’s creative lead, Päivi Helander. “And we want to encourage prototyping, showing that not everything at a furniture fair needs to be finished.”
It seems that in Finland, whether designing for the city or designing a seat, the focus isn’t just on what’s new but on using design to continually evolve and improve our lives.
Petri Burtsoff is Monocle’s Helsinki correspondent.
I’m now old enough that, when people say, “Ah, but they were different times” – meaning that different moral codes applied – they’re often referring to a period that I can clearly recall. And I’m pretty sure that those times weren’t all that different. I have been thinking about this in the wake of the promotional brouhaha for Tony, the biopic of the chef and TV personality Anthony Bourdain. When he was a little-known chef, Bourdain wrote an article that found its way into The New Yorker about his experiences working in a professional kitchen. He depicted this as a kind of cross between a Navy Seal boot camp, an episode of Master Chef and a crack den. The restaurants in which he worked were awash with drugs and booze; shifts involved abusive language, physical violence and dirty dalliances in equally dirty places. Women were mostly treated as servants or sexual objects. The general consensus, it seemed, was that if they couldn’t take the abuse, they should stay out of the kitchen.
Bourdain showed us all of this and then, once he had left that world, built his brand around it. We were all expected to believe that this was how all kitchens had been during those “different times” and that everyone was fine with that way back in the 1990s.
Bourdain’s reputation took off in the early 2000s – along with various other horrendously behaved chefs, such as Mario Batali, Gordon Ramsay and Marco Pierre White (note to any lawyers reading this: I realise that Batali is in a vastly different category). He helped to turn cooking into the new rock’n’roll and was a role model for young chefs. Male chefs, that is. Later on, Bourdain did try to row back on some of the attitudes and activities that he had glorified earlier in his career but, to me, he always seemed to be having his moral cake and eating it. In effect, he was saying, “I don’t endorse this behaviour now but it was actually kind of cool, lots of fun and there was nothing really wrong with it back then.”
I have a theory that a lot of this alpha-male posturing – the flaming pans, the shouting, the banal sexism – is compensation for working in a job that requires the wearing of aprons, the drizzling of jus and the tweezering of chervil but we can perhaps take that on another time. No matter how much he dressed it up in iconoclastic, leather-jacket-and-Marlboro nihilism, the masculine aggression, the ill-treatment of subordinates and violence were always destructive.
While I never met Bourdain, several of my friends and colleagues did and invariably described him as kind, polite and, surprisingly, quite shy. Perhaps his kitchen-pirate persona was a bit of an act. He was Billy Idol to Pierre White’s Johnny Rotten, if you like: affecting an outlaw swagger when, really, he was a relatively privileged young man whose mother worked at The New York Times.
It would be nice to think that the adolescent chef-bro behaviours that Bourdain once depicted are gone but his influence lingers, largely thanks to his undeniable charisma and talent as a writer and presenter. Meanwhile, Ramsay is edging towards national-treasure status in the UK and Pierre White continues to peddle his cod-mafioso schtick.
For all the greatness of his travel shows and his prose, Bourdain’s impact on the foodie world, for which I have so much love and respect, is regrettable. To me, restaurant kitchens, much like any workplace, should nurture creativity and excellence – not deliberately set out to push anyone to the brink. Claiming “different times” is a distraction: a smokescreen for behaviour that anyone could see was wrong, even at the time.
How long will it be, I wonder, before people start talking about the extremes of influencer culture, the Tate brothers, Donald Trump’s corruption or even Jeffrey Epstein’s crimes as “different times”? I would give it a couple of years. But here’s an idea: let’s keep this approach for people a little further back in the past, shall we? The Vikings. The Romans. Genghis Khan. Those were “different times”. Social and cultural norms evolve but fundamental principles, common to most of humanity, have applied for quite a while now.
At the very least, can we all agree that when we look back on the present day 20 years hence, we won’t use “different times” as an excuse for past behaviour – whether in kitchens, the media, politics or boardrooms?
Michael Booth is Monocle’s Copenhagen correspondent. For more opinion, analysis and insight, subscribe to Monocle today.
One thing is clear: Germany’s firewall – the refusal of moderate parties to work with the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) under any circumstances – has failed. After emerging as the largest party in this weekend’s elections with almost 44 per cent of the vote, the AfD gets first dibs this week on putting together a state government in Saxony-Anhalt. To prevent it from taking power there, quite literally every other party in the state – from the centre-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) to the far left – would have to form a coalition. But I’d argue that the best solution would be for Chancellor Friedrich Merz and his CDU to jump into the fray and join a coalition with the AfD while they still can.
Many historians and those on the left will retort that Adolf Hitler rose to power with the same concept. But despite the country’s history of liberal democrats allowing budding autocrats into government, hear me out: can the centre realistically hold the AfD out of a future government at this point? Waiting until they gain an absolute majority is far more dangerous.
Germany’s current right-left coalition between the Christian Democrats and the Social Democrats has failed to govern effectively. Along with Merz’s inability to implement reforms, two ideologically opposed parties – even those on relatively central ground – tend not to mesh well (try picturing Mitt Romney and Barack Obama in a cabinet together).
Voters tend to want bold plans and ideas, which is impossible when you’re forced to compromise with your ideological opposite. Merz came to power promising to take the wind out of the AfD’s sails, which was never going to happen while governing with a party that forced him to tack to the centre instead. Many voters have had no choice but to head to the fringes and, thanks to the firewall that protects it from having to govern effectively in a coalition, the AfD has been able to maintain its anti-establishment narrative for more than a decade now.
A coalition with the Christian Democrats would present a stark contrast to voters and test the AfD’s actual governing chops, tempering the far-right party’s instincts and distinguishing its own approach and policies more clearly. The left could then rebuild in opposition and present a viable alternative when the next election comes around.
An example of this strategy isn’t hard to find. Twice in the past three decades, the far-right Freedom Party (FPÖ) in Austria was brought into government under the watchful eyes of the centre-right People’s Party. The country was excoriated for breaking a perceived political firewall and both coalitions ended in scandal for the FPÖ, whose popularity then plummeted as a result.
The trick – at least from moderates’ perspective – is to work with the extremes when the centre still controls the levers of power. It’s a strategy that only works before the far-right becomes powerful enough to govern on its own, which in today’s Germany is not a question of “if” but “when”. For now, other parties can still control the “how”. Perhaps Germany should try the Austrian method and let the foxes into the henhouse.
We’ve all been there: the night before seemed like it would stretch on forever, fold itself into a dawn that might never come, holding every promise of the long night, the eternal party. And then it’s 09.03, and your alarms go off like crazy – phone, front desk, animal instinct – and suddenly you’re at the airport, beetle-browed, far too warm, eking through security and it’s now that you really have to ask yourself: what’s that in my pocket?
Airport security contains multitudes. For most travellers, it’s the necessary evil, the paint-drying minutes spent with arms tensely folded, one eye boring into the back of the nice lady who is being patiently asked about the Thermos of guandolo, flagon of water and gallon of breast milk in her carry-on. Oh and: “Is that a roller blind you’re carrying, madam?” The other eye, meanwhile, beadily regards the trays clattering down the conveyor. Perhaps yours contains the nice watch that you shouldn’t have had to remove but were asked to anyway, a cap from Lock & Co Hatters that looked so much smarter before it was just squashed by the flaps of the X-ray machine and a Montblanc pen which – who knows? – might yet have made it safely through. It’s still called “security”, though, so maybe it’ll be OK. It’s bloody awful, though, isn’t it?
Besides the sensible desire to inaugurate a secondary filter-lane next to Fast Track – perhaps (in the style of “EU” and “non-EU”) titled “Morons” and “non-Morons” – what should you be able to take through security that you are currently barred from transporting in the cabin of a commercial flight?
Well, you’ll have doubtless bought some regional produce on your holiday: Istrian honey, jam from Alentejo, olive oil from Patmos, a wheel of Reblochon from Haute-Savoie, some Chiang Mai massage oil, a small-calibre ivory-handled ladies’ pistol from Louisiana, some challenging German… magazines. If ever there was a more wholesome panoply of locally made acorn-fed goodness that, on making landfall in your home, instantly summons the magic and memories of your holiday, then I’d like to see it. But woe betide you bring any of that lot through security! Whoa there, slow down. Cool it.
You could politely look away and hope your exciting bags trundle through the scanner unmolested – but that only invites the slowest and most boring form of torture this side of filing a tax return. Your holiday haul would open the floor to medal-winning jobsworthiness masquerading as diligence. A man with a cotton wool swab, a pinched expression and a uniform that’s surely flammable will offer a withering look and ask: “Is this your bag, sir? Mind if I have a look, sir?”
That sinking feeling is the worst. Everything removed, inspected, peered at, pored over. YES, YES, IT’S A JAR OF HONEY WITH A PLASTIC SEAL AROUND IT. NO, I DON’T TRAVEL WITH A VACUUM-PACKING MACHINE TO SEAL JARS OF SEMTEX DISGUISED AS WILD HONEY – IN FACT, I’D GO SO FAR AS TO CALL IT “TANGY” AND “COMPLEX”, A WORLD AWAY FROM THE STUFF AT SAINSBURY’S – is what you’re shouting on the inside while officer J Obsworth invites you to throw it all in the bin and purchase a €42 jar of similar from the shop that’s suspiciously-right-there in Departures. You almost miss your flight.
It needn’t be this way. On a trip to report on the winningness of Taiwanese pop stars some years ago, I bought and brought back a foldable bicycle – a Taipei must-have – as hand luggage. This was enabled by good old Eva Air not giving a toss and using the if-it-fits-it-fits stowage philosophy. I’ve brought quite big artworks back from Hong Kong, rugs from Morocco, a hoard of pokey Mezcal from Oaxaca. And more besides (is that root ginger in your luggage, sir? Why, yes!).
I have friends who’ve done the whole bringing-home-a-poor-ickle-cat-from-Greece thing and it’s a bad idea – even if it were a dog. But, man alive, I’d love to usher a massive, bright-plumed, aggressively territorial parrot from Ecuador through an airport and home. I’d have started the language lab over in Latin America, teaching Cortez the macaw the basic linguistic repertoire of a Millwall football hooligan (so he fits in) and take it from there. It would obviously be cruel to put him in a cage in the hold, plus I need a profoundly rude emotional support parrot, so in he swoops to perch on seat 7B. With his suspiciously large, very padded collar. And what’s that in my pocket? Bird seed. Very fine bird seed. For God’s sake, give us a carry-on-baggage-shaped break.
Robert Bound is a contributing editor at Monocle. Read more from Rob here.
Further reading:
– Cathay Pacific’s cargo hub at Hong Kong International Airport is a telling insight into the state of the global economy
– Can building Africa’s largest airport turn Ethiopia’s fortunes around?
– When it comes to Dulles airport, Trump might actually have a point
Last week, the age-old wheeze of saying something is what it manifestly is not took an ominous turn. Such things can happen when perpetrated by the world’s most powerful man.
In response to an executive order from Donald Trump, Apple Maps and the good folks at Google have faithfully renamed Lake Ontario “Lake America” for US users. The cartographic chicanery follows strained trade talks with Canada and the choppy wake of the US president’s unilaterally boosterish renaming of the Gulf of Mexico.
Rewriting labels is surprisingly easy: ask the cities formerly known as Constantinople (née Byzantium), Peking and Bombay, for that matter. But making it stick usually takes consensus, not caprice – a proper plan, not pencil-and-rubber diplomacy. Some names resist the mapper’s hand for harder-to-explain reasons too. Take Manhattan’s Avenue of the Americas (or 6th Avenue, as it’s still stubbornly known despite a 1945 rebrand). Restoration and counter-restoration are also a regular battleground for culture warriors. Think of Mount McKinley in Alaska, which was renamed Denali to acknowledge an indigenous name under President Obama in 2015. It then boomeranged back to McKinleydom in 2025 by executive decree. A sign of the times and a parody of the pendulum of progress, if ever there was one.
The Lake Ontario furore (call it one-mapmanship?) is easier to navigate. While Trump is well within his rights to rule on US federal nomenclature, private companies such as Apple and Google are playing politics by going along with it. Would they wince if the White House decided to rename Greenland, Venezuela or Panama? Would things be different if China marched into Taiwan tomorrow with a fresh set of road signs? Maps are never fully neutral, and making them is a responsibility.
The summer’s hit novel, Land by Maggie O’Farrell, is a worthwhile read on this topic and a canny counterpoint to this kind of short-termism and self-indulgence. Starting in 1865, its elegant plot unspools around a family in the wake of the Irish potato famine (with moments of joy as well as the hardship). The British are mapping an island caught between cultures and landed between lexica. Charts and names – even those of fields, humdrum hills and a mysterious thicket around which much of the action unfolds – are inescapably political. The novelist’s deeper insight is in parodying the short-sightedness of plastering words onto places that will long outlast us. There’s something almost Cnut-ish (yes, you read that right) about Trump’s attempts to command the waters with his hollow call.
Now for the pragmatic part. Lake Ontario as a place and name is, of course, many orders of magnitude older than either of the nations that now bestride it. Literal millennia more ancient if you mean the geographical feature, and at least centuries older as a name. That will take more than a whim to alter. The lake is enshrined in history but also the present: family boat trips, memories and cross-border conviviality bred across shared shores.
Far from showing US strength, the new name gambit reveals desperation and might have fatally misread Canadians’ cherished connection to their history, nature and land. If you need to rename a lake to establish your importance, you may already be less important than you think.
Long after the midterms, the ripples of this reactionary little episode will dissipate like the water’s surface momentarily disturbed by the passing of a lame, ungainly duck. And in a bout of poetic justice a novelist might relish, the last laugh might well be on the biddable, never-neutral mapmakers who toady to the politics of the day.
On a late summer afternoon, well-dressed women are walking in and out of a townhouse in London’s Mayfair neighbourhood. They’re here to pay a visit to Tibi, the womenswear brand that has taken over the 12-bedroom house to host styling appointments and meet-and-greets with founder Amy Smilovic. “We’ve had appointments with the most incredible women who come from every kind of industry,” says Smilovic, as she lays back on a chair after a long day welcoming customers old and new.
Smilovic didn’t always have such a direct line of communication with the women wearing her clothes. When she founded her brand in Hong Kong in 1997, she began by following the industry rulebook: multiple collections a year, large-scale fashion shows, trend-driven designs and hundreds of stockists around the world.
When the pandemic exposed the cracks in the traditional system, Smilovic decided to reassess her definition of success: design only the clothes she wanted to wear and start talking to her customers directly through events and style classes. Her new book, Almost Reckless: A Creative and Pragmatic Approach to Taking Risks, charts the journey of rebuilding her business on her own terms.
Here she shares some of the most valuable lessons with Monocle.
1. Spend time getting to really know your customers
You have to be present and part of these conversations. It just keeps you on your game. You’re constantly coming up with new ideas when you talk to your customers: women who wear Tibi started cryptocurrency funds or they’re heads of boards of finance companies. We’ve created our own mini Davos [during our styling days]: in one room you have more than 30 industries being represented. We don’t even have a merchandiser at Tibi anymore – what would a merchandiser be able to tell me from a spreadsheet that I don’t get by just sitting in these rooms and hanging out with these people? Our conversations help me to make sure that with every new collection, I’m fulfilling their needs: maybe there’s a new mum who needs to feel cool again, or maybe someone needs a jacket for travel. It helps me create storylines for the product to meet different audiences.
2. Ideas aren’t developed overnight
I called the book Almost Reckless because I like taking big swings but doing things pragmatically is equally important to me. I understand that everything is a slow build-up. When we started doing these styling days, we did one per year and assessed what worked and what didn’t. Only then did we start increasing their frequency.
3. Design your business according to your lifestyle and your principles
In 2020 we came very close to shutting down Tibi. We decided to keep the business but only if we could run it exactly as we wanted. One thing that you can do is define your core principles. Mine was agency: having control over my own life, working with people who shared my mindset and being allowed to be creative. You then need to think about how much money it would take for you to always have those elements in place and also be able to take care of yourself in an emergency, such as a catastrophic illness.
We were a $70m (€60m) business looking to be a $150m (€129m) business so that we could sell it to become a $300m (€259m) business. But to live by our principles, we didn’t need to generate $70m in sales anymore, so we downscaled. I can be completely happy and content at $25m (€21m) in gross sales. When the bar is clear, you have nothing to lose and things begin to work out because you decide what works out for you [and] that gives you a tremendous amount of confidence.
4. Write your own definition of success and don’t follow pre-existing rules
Right now, I think we are wildly successful – even if a venture capitalist would disagree if they came in and looked at our ebitda [operating profits]. Everything is subjective: what I find reckless might seem completely safe to someone else.
People believe that we’re part of an industry but in reality no one can even articulate what that means. I mean, what is the fashion industry? Is it Walmart or is it LVMH? Who’s writing the rules? I hated being beholden to the fashion industry. We shouldn’t convince ourselves that there are set ways of doing things and set levels of achievement.
5. There are opportunities in operating outside the mainstream
You might think that you can follow the same systems as those who came before you and use your product as the main differentiator. But brands are more than products. It has always been about so much more: retail, people, stories.
At the moment, the market is conducive to entrepreneurs who want to run smaller businesses, meaning those under $100m (€86m). The door is wide open for people to do things in their own way. But for big businesses, it’s impossible for them to be on the pulse of things or create real communities made up of people who don’t just share similar bank accounts but also similar mindsets.
Many entrepreneurs have been conned into this concept that if you are not in pursuit of scaling at all costs, you’ll die. I used to say that if a shark stops swimming, it will drown. That was my mantra: to surge ahead. But I don’t believe that anymore. There’s something beautiful about just staying healthy and small.
6. Friction makes room for creativity and unexpected opportunities
I have a chapter in the book called “Lead with a compass, not a GPS”. That’s the beauty of a compass: it lets you feel your way out and you don’t know exactly where you’ll end up. We often fall into the trap of comfort, thinking that all knowledge is now all available online. But you have to go out and research. If you’re on a train, look around you or, if you’re on a plane, talk to strangers.
7. Get to know yourself
When something feels right, take a moment to codify it, to put it into words. It helps to be able to describe yourself in a few adjectives. It has worked for me: knowing deeply who I am creates a through line when I’m designing. It’s not easy but it certainly is less nerve-wracking than it used to be. If I’m designing something that I want to wear, I know that I’ll find a way to sell it to someone. It can only go wrong if I start looking at trend reports.
Donald Trump has said that the most beautiful word in the English language is “tariff”. But recent evidence suggests there is another noun with a more lyrical quality that might have supplanted it in his affections: “ballroom”. Barely a speech goes by without the president musing about the wonders of the vast construction project rumbling on where the East Wing of the White House used to stand. He has even described the constant noise in his backyard as “music to my ears”. A $400m (€344m) vanity build is not, however, music to the ears of many Americans in a country grappling with a cost-of-living crisis and an interminable war overseas.
It’s no surprise that Trump loves a construction project: he did make his fortune in real estate. On Monday the Supreme Court ruled that the ballroom construction could continue, overturning an earlier federal appeals court ruling that ordered building work to stop because it did not have congressional approval.
But his overwhelming obsession with a building that most Americans couldn’t care less about is befuddling Republicans who are battling to keep or win seats in the November midterm elections. The Pew Research Center asked voters which issue they would like to hear midterm candidates talk about the most: the economy came out on top, with 29 per cent of respondents listing it as their top concern, and the cost of living came second at 15 per cent. The word “ballroom” did not make the list.
The Politifact fact-checking website has crunched the numbers and found that Trump has mentioned his various Washington construction projects at 84 public events since January. He has devoted nearly 45,000 words to projects such as the ballroom, the Reflecting Pool and the Arch de Trump, compared to 41,655 words on foreign policy and just 39,744 on the economy. Only Iran got more air play, with almost 56,000 of his words dedicated to the war in the Middle East.
The motivation behind the 8,360 sq m behemoth that will dwarf the White House keeps changing. Trump has long been obsessed with building a ballroom, in the same vein as his gold- and chandelier-bedecked hall in Mar-a-Lago. Early in the planning phases, Trump claimed that the White House needed a larger venue for hosting foreign dignitaries and events. After a foiled attack on the president at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner in April, he then said it was a security necessity. And now, designed for both cocktails and bunkers, he has taken to calling it “the greatest military-complex-slash-ballroom anywhere in the world”.
While the exact details of what is being built on the site are classified, Trump has said that the ballroom will go six storeys deep, complete with bomb shelters and medical facilities. The roof will be drone-proof, with measures to protect against missiles and biohazards, though little of this has convinced the electorate. In July, a poll from The Washington Post and Ipsos found that 65 per cent of respondents were dissatisfied with the ballroom and the other prominent vanity projects.
Trump’s approval plummeted to a record low of about 33 per cent in August and, with no end in sight for the Iran War, it makes sense that the commander-in-chief is looking for distractions. As the conflict drags on and pulls the US economy down with it, Trump is desperate for things he can control – and what can be more comforting to a luxury real estate magnate than bricks and mortar and marble and gold? Then there’s his legacy. Barring any attempt at a third term, Trump has some two years left in office and, with his domestic and foreign policy legacy looking precarious, he wants to make sure that a physical reminder of his presidency will stand long after he has departed.
On Wednesday evening, Trump finally reassured Republicans that he would get on the campaign trail and speak in key battleground seats ahead of the midterms. They’ll just be hoping that he manages to stick to the script and doesn’t drop too many b-words.
Charlotte McDonald-Gibson is a Washington-based journalist and regular Monocle contributor. For more from her, click here.
