I always marvel at the cathedral-like hush at the start of every fashion show. Silence descends, necks crane to see the first glimpse of something new and desire is palpable. This is the true essence of spectacle.
On Monday night in Paris, after months of secrecy and speculation, a crowd of more than 2,000 waited in a state of poised suspense for Matthieu Blazy’s Chanel debut. Sofia Coppola sprinted to her seat beneath a galaxy-inspired set at the Grand Palais as the first look emerged from 41-year-old designer Blazy: a simple, square-shouldered grey trouser suit.
The show crescendoed an unprecedented season of new artistic directors (about a dozen in total), who debuted collections – and their visions – for spring 2026. As Blazy’s solar-system set suggested, the fashion planets have realigned as a younger, millennial cohort steps forward to steer the fate of luxury houses, most of which came into being in the mid-20th century.
Blazy’s appointment last year to the helm of a brand with almost €20bn in annual revenue represents a profound leap for Chanel. For the first time since the early 1980s – when Karl Lagerfeld began his 36-year tenure as Chanel’s creative director – the house faces a major creative transition. Though her vision was distinct, Blazy’s predecessor, Virginie Viard, spent nearly three decades at Lagerfeld’s side before assuming the role of artistic director.
Paris-born Blazy is celebrated as a maestro of texture, a designer who understands the value of the artisan’s touch – a passion shaped by his tenure at Bottega Veneta. His debut collection for Chanel was a masterclass in tactile bouclé, finer-than-fine tweeds, artfully frayed hems and supple leather, all reinterpreting the codes of Coco Chanel. Iconic elements such as camellias, pearls and even wheat-sheaf motifs (Chanel kept bundles in her apartment that she considered good luck) emerged with a fresh, modern and sculptural sensibility. Modern, cap-toe heels also featured, alongside reimagined versions of iconic bags, softened and with pared-back branding, tucked under shoulders.
Having spent time in the ateliers of le19M, Chanel’s temple to craftsmanship just outside Paris, I can only imagine Blazy’s excitement at having such skilled artisans at his fingertips. Whether it’s the plumassiers at Lemarié or the embroidery masters at Lesage, Chanel’s strength in the fashion world goes beyond its iconic mystique – it’s rooted in decades of dedicated investment in métiers d’art. Lagerfeld’s visionary project to preserve fading crafts and integrate them into the house has gifted Blazy with an unparalleled network.
The human hand – and thousands of hours of work – were on full display. Wild textures appeared in spiky knitwear in Martian-red hues, embroidered organza and a knitted suit glimmering in bouclé gold. Blazy has been enveloped in the archives, drawing on the life and vision of Mademoiselle Chanel. A photo of her dressed in flamenco garb cued one of the collection’s most dramatic looks – billowing skirts made from multi-coloured feathers with a sports-inspired waistband. Paired with silk tees and shirts made by Coco’s favourite, Charvet, each piece exuded an easy, modern elegance.
Fashion has always had a way of expressing – and even ushering in – new eras. Coco Chanel forged her brand at a moment of societal change and was committed to movement, comfort, humble materials and throwing out the sartorial rules. Monday night was a handing over of the baton. With so many ardent fans of the brand and its sacred codes in the room, it was a poignant and unforgettable moment as Blazy took his bow to a standing ovation and a riot of cheers. Admittedly, it is just the beginning. At times, the collection felt like a trans-seasonal mood board of what’s to come. But the bold energy and dynamic beauty of this first act bodes very well for the next one.
Sophie Grove is the editor in chief of Konfekt. Read more from Sophie in Konfekt magazine, and in the fortnightly newsletter, Konfekt Kompakt.
Read next: Bruno Pavlovsky on Chanel’s enduring success recipe: ‘It’s brand first’
New York mayor Eric Adams finally ended his campaign for re-election last week. He partly blamed his failure on the New York City Campaign Finance Board, which refused to match public funds for his campaign on the grounds that he had not submitted required paperwork and that members of the board have reason to believe that he has violated the law – claims that the mayor denies. But it is doubtful that Adams could have mounted a credible campaign, even with the cash. By the time he quit, polls placed him in fourth, behind not only the Democratic frontrunner, Zohran Mamdani, and former New York governor Andrew Cuomo but also Curtis Sliwa, a street vigilante widely regarded as a novelty candidate.
Adams’ tenure as mayor was not without achievement. But none of his accomplishments were notable enough to counterbalance the effect of his personal style and conduct. As his mayoralty progressed, Adams’ eccentricity drifted into unravelling malfeasance severe enough to ensure that it will be the main thing for which he is remembered. He will leave office with a tainted legacy, having been charged by a federal court with bribery, campaign finance and conspiracy offences. In what has been alleged was a quid pro quo with the Trump administration, Adams managed to have the charges dropped, apparently in return for enforcing the US president’s immigration policies. In the eyes of many New Yorkers, such obsequious pandering to Trump was as damaging as any conviction. As his first and only term draws to a close, his approval rating of 20 per cent is the lowest recorded for a New York mayor since 1996.
Four years ago, Adams emerged victorious from an unusually progressive Democratic primary field by positioning himself as a moderate. As a former NYPD officer serving as Brooklyn Borough president, he championed a measured, incremental approach to police reform, a sharp contrast with progressive calls to “defund” law enforcement. He was able to build a coalition of wealthy and low-income New Yorkers sceptical of the idea that cutting resources would meaningfully curb police misconduct.
But from the beginning, Adams was dogged by accusations of corruption. His political appointments were glaringly unsuitable: allies implicated in bribery scandals and his brother installed in a high-paying security role. Even as serious concerns mounted, Adams continued to behave in ways that bewildered onlookers. He snapped at a reporter who asked why he had fish in his refrigerator despite repeated claims that he was vegan. He staged a glitzy rollout for a completely ordinary New York-branded rubbish bin, billing it as a “trash revolution”. He posed for photos with an NYPD patrol robot, attempting “heart hands” with the armless machine.
Some observers once believed that Adams was charting a course out of the progressive spasms that had convulsed the Democratic Party since Donald Trump’s first term, back toward a conventional centrism. That forecast now seems profoundly misguided. All momentum has shifted to Mamdani, whose campaign emphasises the interests of low-income New Yorkers more powerfully than any mayoral candidate in generations. Despite his ambitious, even radical, goals, Mamdani seems a far more serious figure than Adams ever did – the intensity of both the support and opposition that he inspires testifies to this. Adams’ legacy is a warning of how far an ostensibly sensible platform can be hollowed out by silliness, self-interest and cant.
Henry Rees-Sheridan is a Monocle contributor based in New York. For more opinion, analysis and insight, subscribe to Monocle today.
There are commercial flights that last longer than Sébastien Lecornu’s government. Fourteen and a half hours after naming his cabinet, Lecornu tendered his resignation as France’s prime minister, marking the political downfall of a man who has been a member of every French government since Emmanuel Macron’s election as president in 2017. His exit is the latest blow to a parliament weakened by Macron’s decision to call snap elections last year, which strengthened the hand of a popular but woefully unprepared Rassemblement National (RN).
Lecornu’s cabinet received immediate backlash from parties within the governing coalition. Despite the addition of a few familiar faces, the cabinet was largely unchanged from that of his predecessor, François Bayrou, who resigned last month after losing a confidence vote.
Now, Le Pen and her allies say they will vote down any new prime minister until fresh elections are called. Macron has given Lecornu until Wednesday to hold “final negotiations” aimed at ensuring “the stability of the country.” If those talks fail, the president has ominously vowed to “take responsibility” – a phrase widely interpreted as a prelude to new elections.
So what are Macron’s options now?
First, he could name a member of the left-leaning opposition as his new prime minister. But having staked its credibility on undoing retirement reform and implementing a wealth tax on France’s richest households, such a government would have little chance of surviving for long, let alone creating the consensus needed to emerge from this political crisis.
A neutral technocrat would fare no better. As Lecornu lamented after his resignation, “There are a lot of red lines in the mouths of many and hardly any green lines” needed for compromise to emerge. The third option is to call new elections but these would almost certainly result in more seats for the RN, perpetuating the gridlock.
None of this will be to the taste of investors or the markets, with crucial fiscal decision-making repeatedly delayed to accommodate the chaos. This will only fuel the far-right, enabling the RN to present itself as the viable anti-establishment opposition option. As the political cacophony grows louder and louder, it is governance itself that’s being drowned out. It leaves us to dread what a few years ago would have appeared unthinkable: that France, the EU’s second-largest economy and home to one of the continent’s biggest militaries, could be rendered completely ungovernable.
There has been ample time for steadier voices to prevail. Instead, they have fallen silent. After rising to power in 2017 as the proud champion of a neither-right-nor-left philosophy, Macron now risks being remembered as the man who presided over France’s collapse.
For more about the state of the French government, listen to The Briefing, below:
Listen to the critics and you would think Europe was finished. Too bureaucratic, they say. Cannot agree on migration. Moving at glacial pace while Silicon Valley races ahead. It has become such a tired narrative that we have almost started believing it ourselves.
But here is what the doom-mongers miss: Europe has quietly become one of history’s most remarkable success stories. We are talking about a continent that has created unprecedented prosperity while maintaining social cohesion and projecting influence. This transformation represents a fundamental shift in how we should understand European power and potential.
Consider what Europe has survived over just the past decade and a half. The eurozone nearly collapsed under sovereign debt. Britain walked away. A pandemic shut down the global economy. War returned to European soil for the first time in generations. Each crisis was supposed to be the final nail in the coffin. Yet here we are: institutions intact and co-operation deeper than ever, constantly adapting and finding pragmatic solutions. Not bad for a region that supposedly can’t get its act together.
Walk through Copenhagen, Vienna or Zürich and try to argue this is a continent in decline. European cities dominate every quality-of-life survey worth its salt (read Monocle’s here). The trains run on time. You can get decent healthcare without going bankrupt. A bright kid from a working-class family can still make it to university. These are not small things – they are the stuff that determines whether ordinary people can live decent lives.
Innovation? Please. We are not trying to be Silicon Valley – and that is exactly the point. While others chase the latest app or cryptocurrency bubble, European companies are solving real problems. BioNTech helped to save the world during the coronavirus pandemic. Novo Nordisk is tackling diabetes and obesity. ASML builds the machines that make computer chips possible. Airbus keeps people flying. Our renewable-energy sector is reshaping how the world powers itself. This is not flashy disruption – it is the kind of deep, patient innovation that moves civilisation forward.
Even our supposed weakness – all that regulation – has become a superpower. General data protection regulation (GDPR) did not just protect European privacy; it forced tech giants everywhere to change how they handle data. Our environmental standards, consumer protections and competition rules get copied around the world.
Europe is second only to the US in economic clout and miles ahead of China in per-capita wealth. Ten of the world’s 20 most competitive economies are European. Luxembourg, Norway and Switzerland all outproduce US workers per hour, while still taking proper lunch breaks and holidays.
Sure, we have problems. Our capital markets are a mess of national silos. The birth rate is falling. Getting 27 countries to agree on anything can feel like herding cats. But these are fixable problems, not existential threats. Integrate financial markets, get smarter about attracting talent from abroad and commit properly to green investment. None of this is rocket science.
The real problem is in our heads. We have internalised the decline narrative so completely that we cannot see our own success. Meanwhile, the world is shifting around us. The US is tearing itself apart over culture wars and conspiracy theories. China is staring down a demographic cliff and drowning in debt. Against this backdrop, Europe’s combination of prosperity, stability and openness starts to look pretty attractive.
The 21st century will not belong to whoever has the loudest voice or builds the biggest military. It will belong to whoever can integrate diverse societies, create sustainable prosperity and maintain democratic institutions under pressure. Europe has been quietly mastering these skills for decades. The only thing missing is the confidence to recognise what it has accomplished.
Professor Arturo Bris is a Monocle contributor and director of Switzerland’s World Competitiveness Center. He is the author of ‘SuperEurope: The Unexpected Hero of the 21st Century’. Want more on Europe’s potential? Read how the continent could gain from a US brain drain.
Democratic mayors and governors are crying foul and filing lawsuits after president Donald Trump deployed the National Guard into Chicago and Portland. Regional leaders insist that their cities are doing fine and that the presence of guardsmen will not make their communities any safer.
In turn, these local officials urge citizens not to take the bait and feed into the president’s asinine perception that, say, Portland is “war-ravaged”. But of course, protesters can’t resist the chance to, well, resist, creating cover for hot-headed radicals to gear up for clashes with federal agents. The whole drama has become so predictable that it hardly seems worth our attention.
So why not call the White House’s bluff and welcome guardsmen into blue cities? After all, there is ample evidence that judicious use of reservists can help struggling local governments reduce crime.
New York’s Democratic governor Kathy Hochul called the guard into the city’s subway system last year and touted a near 10 per cent reduction in crime aboard transit. In 2023, California’s Democratic governor Gavin Newsom crowed that the state’s national guardsmen had seized a record 28,224kg of fentanyl at the US-Mexico border, stating that it was “enough to potentially kill the global population – nearly twice over.” This year, another Democratic governor, Michelle Lujan Grisham of New Mexico, authorised the deployment of National Guard personnel in Albuquerque due to a rise in fentanyl-related crime.
The National Guard operates more like a state militia rather than a federal army. However, under a 19th-century law known as the Posse Comitatus Act, military troops cannot be used for domestic law enforcement unless authorised by Congress. That distinction is what makes these recent cases different from the White House’s imperious approach that takes soldiers away from their families and civilian jobs merely to score political points. And to make matters worse, in the midst of a government shutdown, National Guard members could be required to work without pay.
Trump often has a reverse Midas touch, promising policies turn to poison rather than gold. In that vein, the idea of deploying federal troops on US soil has become yet another political football, with Republican governors from Louisiana to Tennessee calling for guardsmen in New Orleans and Memphis – both cities with Democratic mayors – as a way of tarring their political opponents for poor governance on crime.
The truth is, the number of urban crimes has continued to fall nationwide since it spiked at the beginning of this decade. But reverting to 2019 crime rates should not be viewed as an acceptable status quo. US cities are still more dangerous and disorderly than their Asian or European counterparts (a significant reason why they continue not to earn high marks on Monocle’s annual Quality of Life Survey) and insufficient police presence is one factor. The French might stage protests to raise the retirement age or to condemn the cancellation of public holidays but they do not dispute the legitimacy of the Gendarmerie nationale to police their cities.
I urge mayors to treat National Guard deployment as an opportunity to temporarily bolster depleted police ranks on state and federal dimes. With municipal governments facing budget crunches nationwide, scorning public servants who come at no cost is like looking a gift horse in the mouth. If there truly isn’t any enforcement to be done by the troops, then put reservists to work picking up trash and cleaning up graffiti, just as we saw in Washington. A little clean-up never hurt anyone.
Let’s go all the way back to summer 2010 and a warehouse on the edge of Beirut’s Bourj Hammoud district. It’s all a bit dusty and scrappy, the buildings are a jumble of architectural styles, there are Syrian and Egyptian men at the roadside drinking coffees around a teetering card table and, since we can see what’s happening around us, we know that we don’t have black sacks over our heads.
Inside one of the warehouses is an atelier where metal rods are being bent, wooden panels assembled and coffee poured for someone who is acting like the owner or creative force behind this venture, perhaps even both. We came to visit a gentleman by the name of Karim and check out the progress on a rather urgent project. A few days earlier, we spotted some smart-looking storage units in a local gallery, enquired about who made them and if we might be able to order a bunch with a snappy turnaround. “Why the urgency?” asked the chic gallerist. “I’m opening a menswear store in London called Trunk Clothiers in a few weeks and these are a perfect solution for displaying shirts,” explained Mats.
In typical Lebanese fashion we’re told that anything is possible and, less than 48 hours later, we’re in Beirut’s northern suburbs to inspect Karim’s wares. The units are looking better than in the gallery and, as we nod approvingly, an apprentice is already starting to wrap and box them. We’re also travelling with my mom and we’re all astounded at how quickly the order came together and by the quality of the workmanship. The following morning we entered Beirut-Rafic Hariri International Airport with a conga line of porters, mountains of boxes (we found another Karim who also made fine-looking fixtures with a weekend turnaround) and looks of steely determination to get the entire shopfit loaded as checked baggage for the flight back to Heathrow.
The MEA desk clerk looked unfazed by the train of trolleys, asked how many of us were travelling and instructed the porters to start putting the bags on the belt. When she enquired about what was in them, we explained the shop opening and our delight at having everything turned around so quickly. The woman smiled, stepped away and chatted to a man in a boxy suit a couple of desks along. As she walked back I braced myself for an extra baggage fee but instead she handed over the boarding passes. “Thank you for supporting makers in Lebanon,” she said. “Have a good flight and a good opening.”
Those fixtures still grace the shop floor of Trunk Clothiers on Chiltern Street and were looking particularly handsome on Thursday evening for the store’s 15th anniversary. In the spirit of full disclosure, Monocle’s holding company has a stake in Trunk and we’re proud of all that Mats and his London and Zürich teams have built. Running a fiercely independent, multi-brand menswear business is no easy task but thanks to a global base of customers who appreciate the best of Scotland, England, Austria, Italy, Germany, Japan and the US, Trunk manages to add a bit of funk to solid, timeless menswear. If you’re passing through London or Zürich over the coming days, please swing by and say hello to the crew. Cheers and happy birthday Trunk!
Enjoying life in ‘The Faster Lane’? Click here to browse all of Tyler’s past columns.
As chefs and restaurateurs in the Philippines get ready for the Southeast Asian country’s first Michelin guide to be published this month, everyone is holding their breath: will restaurants serving Filipino food clinch the coveted stars? Can pioneers such as Toyo Eatery and Metiz convince clandestine inspectors about the value of kinilaw (tangy, marinated raw fish) and sisig (grilled pork)?
In Singapore, which in 2016 became the first country in Southeast Asia to get a Michelin Guide (quickly followed by Thailand), no establishment specialising in local gastronomy – including the progressive kitchens at Candlenut and Labyrinth – has earned more than a solitary star. Contrast this with the city-state’s trio of three-starred restaurants: all are helmed by European chefs doling out contemporary continental cuisine.
While it’s fair to think that Western food is predisposed to Michelin’s Eurocentric rating system, Bangkok’s Sorn, which focuses on southern Thai flavours, made the three-star grade last year. It begs the question: is Singapore’s cuisine resigned to the confines of our beloved hawker fare, or can fine dishes with local ingredients make the culinary leap?
A new crop of young Singaporean chefs – many of whom have cut their teeth in kitchens abroad – is forging ahead with flair and grit to elevate their home country’s delicacies. “Hawker food is a source of pride and we should definitely preserve it. But we can also make room for new classics that reflect who we are today,” says Marcus Leow, who opened Belimbing in April. Named after an often overlooked fruit indigenous to Southeast Asia, the restaurant has been earning rave reviews for its original menu, including a corny (literally) twist on the traditional kueh salat (a bite-sized snack of pandan custard).
The 33-year-old chef developed his freewheeling approach to food during a stint at two-Michelin-starred Ikoyi in London. “When I saw how chef Jeremy Chan didn’t shy away from his Chinese heritage in an African-inspired restaurant, I realised that it was possible to pursue new directions in the context of Singapore food,” says Leow.
And Belimbing’s menu shows just that. Leow’s clam custard combines three iconic dishes – steamed egg, asam pedas (spicy and sour stew) and white pepper crab – in one bowl. Meanwhile, the smoked wagyu ox tongue melds starfruit and cincalok (a fermented krill condiment) with stracciatella. Some have questioned the fare’s Singaporean-ness but the chef sees them as an extension of the nation’s East-meets-West entrepôt history. “It was our immigrant forefathers’ openness to ideas and cultures that gave rise to innovative recipes,” he says. “That’s how simple ingredients and even scraps became classics, such as bak kut teh [pork rib soup].”
The conversation about elevating Singaporean food is not new. It began 20 years ago when chef Willin Low opened Wild Rocket, which paired laksa with linguine and roti prata (Indian flatbread) with tuna and caviar. A modern Singaporean or “Mod-Sin” movement was formed and a slate of intrepid chefs soon followed, deconstructing hawker meals in innovative ways and infusing classic street food with lavish ingredients. However, Low eventually closed the restaurant in 2018 – without ever earning a spot in the Michelin Guide – to focus on new ventures overseas. He returned to the city-state last year to open Pastaro, a Mod-Sin pasta bistro.
Ming Kiat Gan was one of the first to step into Low’s shoes. The chef-owner of fine-dining restaurant Mustard Seed takes no issue with the Mod-Sin label but he also believes that Singaporean food has made great strides. “Ingredient manipulation and the deconstruction of classic dishes are today seen as surface-level cooking,” he says. “The scene has evolved tremendously, where chefs are able to consider the cultural context and layer on fresh techniques to create sound dishes.”
Gan’s cooking style came to a boil when he felt a cultural disconnect after five years at a traditional Japanese kaiseki restaurant. “There are many cultural nuances and practices to kaiseki food, and since I wasn’t living in Japan, I couldn’t see myself as a full-on Japanese chef,” he says. Learning a gastronomic culture vastly different from Singapore’s clarified his own culinary convictions. “I saw how proud the Japanese were of their cuisine and I wanted to connect with food in the same way, which meant taking a Singaporean slant to my dishes.”
After running a successful private dining pop-up with his wife, Shin Yin Wu, they opened Mustard Seed in 2019. The restaurant presents a tasting menu rooted in Singaporean flavours but packed with new pairings and techniques. For one of the first iterations, Gan distilled two of his favourite rice dishes – nasi lemak (coconut rice) and nasi ulam (herbed rice salad) – on a plate bursting with originality. Basmati rice cooked in a fish stock was finished off with spicy threadfin floss.
Desmond Shen, a rising star of Singaporean cuisine, joined Gan’s team last year. He too had worked in acclaimed kitchens overseas, such as Narisawa and Central, before returning home with a passion for his hometown fare. “Like most local chefs, I wanted to train in European restaurants and climb the ladder – but at the end of the day, the dishes didn’t speak to me,” he says. “How can I connect with a butter sauce when I don’t even know how butter is made?”
Despite a typical Mustard Seed meal costing 20 times that of a hawker meal, the restaurant has been booked out since it opened. Most of its diners are Singaporeans hungry for something different. “Many of our guests are pleasantly surprised by the food,” says Gan, who recently added nine seats to the space as part of a revamp. “Our dishes have left them feeling excited and comforted at the same time.”
Two decades on, Mod-Sin cuisine has finally come of age and it no longer matters if or when Michelin’s inspectors take notice.
1.
Last Saturday I headed to London’s Jermyn Street to continue my hunt for a pair of good loafers. Online searches had suggested that Crockett & Jones might offer up the solution to my quest. The elegant street was sunny and calm, although I noticed that Crockett & Jones had two burly security guards at the door. I know that shoplifting is now something of a fun weekend pastime for oik-y vagabonds but have the baby-faced hoodlums that plague our city suddenly developed a penchant for velvet slippers and chukka boots? Were the thieves now making grab-and-go raids in order to dress like country squires? I headed into the shop, the muscle wall courteously parting for me. I was just about to ask for my chosen loafers in a size nine please, when I recognised the voice of the only other customer in the store – a well-known prime minister who, only that morning, I had read was in town for a meeting with the Brits. We have met before, so I found myself exchanging pleasantries but it didn’t half put me off my stroke. It felt discourteous taking off my shoes and going stocking-footed while in the presence of a global leader. So, in short, I don’t have any new loafers.
2.
This week I got an award. I know, how fancy am I? It was from the Spanish Luxury Association and I went to Madrid to attend a special lunch for the 25 winners and later a ceremony at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando, where I was presented with my trophy (a giant diamond-shaped piece of glass that I am thinking of having fashioned into a necklace). The prize was in recognition of my “excellence” as editor in chief of Monocle. Quiet now, no heckling from the back. Even if it wasn’t merited, I was taking that gong – hell, I even got to make an acceptance speech. The only wrinkle? It was black tie. Now, some men have all the gear (my other half for example) and some don’t. There are no decorous cummerbunds or patent pumps in my wardrobe. I have the apposite suit, but it’s chunky and woollen and was not the right vibe for a trip to still-hot Madrid. Anyway, thanks to some speedy shopping, borrowing cufflinks and a suit, I somehow managed to arrive at the gala sort of correctly dressed. But I still had to spend much of the evening avoiding eye contact with other guests in case they asked me to top up their glasses.
3.
On Thursday night there was a party to celebrate the 15th anniversary of Trunk, the menswear store run by the ever-dapper Mats Klingberg. It was held at The Hart, the new smart pub and restaurant that’s but a few steps from the front door of Trunk’s London shop. In part, Mats has found success because he’s a good editor, buying with a clear sense of what his audience needs, putting together stories and ideas with how he displays the Trunk stores – the shop windows are as alluring and considered as any good front page. Now there’s a man who will never be mistaken for being part of the catering crew.
4.
One of the people at the Trunk party was Nick Shelton, the Australian publisher of Broadsheet Media. I’d seen him the night before too, at the launch party for the arrival of his operation in London (I do go home some nights). Broadsheet is a city guide, online, sometimes in print. It makes books, has newsletters. It’s been a hit in Melbourne, Perth, Sydney, Adelaide and Brisbane – now it’s seeing if it can become the go-to in this city. There’s a gap for a good London guide as Time Out has created one of the messiest websites known to man and The London Standard (formerly the Evening Standard) is a pale shadow of its past self. Let’s see what happens.
5.
And here’s some other good publishing news. The Monocle Book of Designers on Sofas is now available to pre-order and will be dispatched mid-October. It’s a book about 50 designers, their sofas and their lives. It’s a finely upholstered gem of a book all about interiors, design and plump cushions. Also look out for the first-ever Monocle Design Directory, an epic annual that’s about to hit newsstands. Now that’s genuine excellence (and I didn’t edit either of them). But I’m keeping the diamond.
To read all of Andrew’s past columns, click here.
Graphic designer Jim Parkinson was a lettering artist and type specialist who created the now iconic logos for magazines such as Rolling Stone, Newsweek and Esquire. He died earlier this summer at the age of 83. In 1963 he graduated from California College of the Arts with a degree in advertising design and painting. His career took off during the analogue heyday of graphic design, when lettering for logos and logotypes was done by hand – an approach that many fear is being lost.
Today’s desire to use digital tools is understandable. Advances in technology mean that you can now sketch with an ever-improving array of pencils on your tablet – but even these tools need to be turned into zeros and ones in the digital world. In contrast to the warm, hand-drawn feel of Parkinson’s work, graphic identities are now slick, sleek and sit perfectly on a page, in shop windows or on the fenders of cars. The kerning is precise but everything looks the same – the result of computer-led design. This is compounded by the desire for brands and companies to have visual identities that can be presented across different mediums at a variety of scales. There is, as such, a lack of certainty, serendipity and human touch – a loss of “happy accidents” as my Harvard Graduate School of Design professor Holly Getch Clarke called them.
Despite this, there is reason to be optimistic. US restaurant chain Cracker Barrel has long had a logo that only a human could have envisioned: a man in overalls sits on a cane chair and leans on a large wooden barrel next to a large yellow blob emblazoned with the company name in unbalanced, un-kerned lettering. In a bid to correct this, the company carried out part of a $600m (€510m) rebrand in August, removing the overall-clad man from its logo and digitally homogenising the typeface. The following day, Cracker Barrel experienced a $100m (€85m) drop in value. It seems that you can put a price on the use of technology in branding after all.
Thankfully, some of today’s creatives are making the case for doing things by hand. Swiss firm Pank, founded by Paula Troxler and Kleon Medugorac, recently exhibited a multimedia installation with digital and analogue elements at Zürich’s Museum für Gestaltung called I Don’t Need Graphic Design, I Need a Little of That Human Touch (pictured). The showcase was an unabashedly human and messy collage that put a finger on what much of contemporary graphic design misses: the human hand. In just the title, they were able to articulate the approach of designers like Parkinson.
Jessica Bridger is a contributing editor at Monocle.
Update, October 2025:
In the past month, European airspace has once again come under threat from unidentified drones, prompting flight diversions in Norway and a military alert in Denmark. These incidents, described by Danish officials as potential “hybrid attacks,” have reignited urgent discussions on airspace security across the EU. As a result, Australian counter-drone technology is back in the spotlight.
EOS’s newly unveiled high-energy laser system, “Apollo,” capable of neutralising dozens of drones per minute at just $1 per shot, has already been ordered by a NATO member. DroneShield has also seen surging international interest, driven by its rapid software updates and non-lethal jamming systems. Both companies have recorded significant stock gains on the ASX in recent days, underscoring Australia’s growing role in shaping modern air defense.
Original article published in Monocle magazine, November 2024:
In a nondescript industrial park on the outskirts of Canberra, the future of warfare is being redefined. It might be thousands of kilometres from any active conflict but the whirr of movement on the warehouse floor at Electro Optic Systems (EOS) tells its own story. EOS develops and manufactures a range of military and space-related technology but in recent years has become known for one thing: anti-drone systems. Its pre-eminent status in this nascent field has been underlined by the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, where more than 100 EOS products are in use every day. As drones become cheaper and more deadly, nations around the world are racing to secure technology that can counter the threat, meaning that EOS is suddenly in high demand.
On the factory floor, dozens of anti-drone systems are packaged up ready to be delivered to customers, while others undergo testing to ensure that they can operate continuously in the most challenging of conditions: some are in temperature chambers at a balmy 60c, while others are set to a frosty minus 32c. In the early 2000s, the US was the only military with high-quality drone technology – the Predator unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), which was deployed in Afghanistan and Iraq. But since then, as the technology has proliferated, its costs have plummeted. “Now it’s an asymmetric form of warfare,” says EOS’s CFO Clive Cuthell, whose thick Scottish accent belies his 30 years in Australia. “You can spend $1,000 on a drone and attack an asset that costs $10m, $100m, even $1bn. You no longer need to spend a fortune to attack high-value targets.”
Dealing with one drone is hard enough but the low cost means that an enemy can now launch 100 or even 1,000 drones at a time. “It’s very difficult to deal with that oversaturation,” says Cuthell. “You can overwhelm almost any defence system.” This is a tactic that was deployed in 2024 by Iran’s air force against Israel. One of EOS’s newer systems, the Slinger, which went on sale in 2023, has seen great success in Ukraine, where 200 are currently deployed in the field, many of which were purchased by Western powers as military aid. Weighing fewer than 400kg, the Slinger can be mounted on the back of a pick-up truck and has a radar and camera system that can detect and neutralise even the smallest drone. Its demonstration video on the EOS website is captioned, “No one kills drones like EOS.”
Most of the company’s anti-drone bestsellers feature “multi-layered” responsive weaponry – meaning that operators have a selection of ways to take UAVs out of the sky. For example, a battlefield anti-drone platform like the Slinger might have a third-party missile system to take down longer-range drones; a built-in laser to “blind” drone sensors; or a chain-gun, which acts as more conventional anti-aircraft artillery. But companies such as EOS are engaged in a literal arms race when it comes to countering drones.
Initially, “soft-kill” mechanisms, such as jammers and spoofers, could easily neutralise UAVs but militaries have adapted them to counter such interference, meaning that “hard-kill” methods, which destroy the devices completely, have become essential. “That provides a strong tailwind for us to commercialise our innovations,” says Cuthell. As he inspects a new order bound for Kyiv, EOS vice-president of international programmes Glenn McPhee, a former Australian army officer, says that he was attracted to the company both for the “cool Australian technology” and “helping Nato soldiers defend themselves”.
EOS began life as an Australian government research institute with a focus on the space sector, including optics and laser technologies. In the 1980s the firm was incorporated as a private company and, in the early 2000s, listed on the Australian Stock Exchange. Ben Greene, one of its original founders, is a world-leading space physicist who began working in the sector not long after the first moon landing. Today he serves as EOS’s chief innovation officer. Perhaps reflecting its academic origins, EOS has always excelled at research but traditionally had less success on the business side of things. “It was a strong scientific, engineering, military and academic culture that had invented many things – but not commercialised them,” says Cuthell.
The arrival of Andreas Schwer in 2020 signalled a turning point. A bespectacled German with grey hair and a firm but understated manner, Schwer has decades of experience in the space and defence sectors, including at Airbus and Rheinmetall. In 2017 he was asked by Crown Prince Muhammed bin Salman to build up his country’s defence sector by taking the helm at Saudi Arabian Military Industries, where he stayed for three years. “When I was working in Saudi, we had selected EOS as the partner for high-energy laser-weapons systems and I had done a deep due diligence,” he says. “I had found out that the company had a huge innovation and intellectual property rights portfolio but is not the best in terms of commercialising it. We wanted to take what was sitting on the shelf in terms of innovation and make real-life products.”
The arrival of new management coincided with significant geopolitical shifts – the Ukraine war, later the conflict in Gaza and rising tensions in the Indo-Pacific. All have led to a surge of interest in EOS’s products. “Investment in defence by national governments is higher than it has ever been,” says Cuthell. “Defence is an industry where technology really matters. The technological edge can often be decisive in conflict – and we’re at the cutting edge.”
Part of the leadership team’s ambition is to transform EOS into a bigger global enterprise. The firm already has four offices around the world, operates in almost 20 countries and is growing its manufacturing operations in the US and the UAE (where Schwer, who became CEO in July 2022, has a base). In 2024 it opened a laser-innovation centre in Singapore. Schwer hints that increased onshoring requirements and supply-chain concerns mean that joint ventures and localised manufacturing will play a big part in EOS’s future. “Part of the strategy is to become a truly global player,” he says. Canberra is not known as a hi-tech hub but the Australian capital has a strong university sector (EOS sponsors two research chairs) and a large defence industry, with the Australian military’s headquarters just 20 minutes down the road from EOS. The buzz of activity on the factory floor suggests that Schwer’s mission has been a success so far. Revenue to December 2023 was up almost 60 per cent year-on-year; while in the first half of 2024, it has almost doubled again. Schwer insists that the push to take products to market is not coming at the expense of ongoing research. “Research was the core,” he says of EOS’s history. “And it still is.”
EOS’s anti-drone technology has the capability to be fully autonomous, though, for now, many of its customers use human operators. The company’s systems can track and identify drones within a 5km radius, drawing on a database of almost 600 drone types constantly updated by a partner firm. The technology can identify the location and model of the drone, and whether it is friend or foe – an increasingly important function as both sides in many conflicts deploy their own UAVs. But armed forces are not the only users of this technology. Drones increasingly pose a domestic risk – whether deployed by local agitators or international terror groups. EOS systems are being sought out by organisers of major events. “That has started and will become the standard in the future,” says Schwer. He is tight-lipped about specific civilian deployments. “That’s classified.”
Space also remains a major focus. Not far from the factory, EOS shares the Mount Stromlo Observatory with the Australian National University. The firm’s laser technology can track objects in orbit down to the size of a coin, an important capability as the planet’s stratosphere becomes more cluttered with debris. “There is nobody, outside the US, that has this kind of highest accuracy tracking of objects in space,” says Schwer. “So one major application is that we track debris and provide anti-collision warnings to any kind of satellite operator. With our latest evolutions in technology, we can also move space debris, actively avoiding collisions.” Such technology also has military application. “In the long run, war will be decided in space,” he adds. Schwer pulls up a photo on his phone showing a bright-green laser beaming into the night sky. “This is not Photoshop,” he says. “This is how we use laser systems to track objects in space.” Though separate arms of the business, the anti-drone and space sectors are deeply interconnected. The success of the former builds on EOS’s decades of research in monitoring objects outside Earth’s atmosphere. “We can track any object in space,” says Schwer. “So it’s easy to downscale this sensor technology, to see further and better than anyone else on the battlefield.”
It is a long way from Canberra to Kyiv. But the cutting-edge technology being manufactured at EOS is playing an essential role as Ukraine seeks to defend itself. The conflict in the country has demonstrated in real-time how critical drones and anti-drone technology are to modern warfare – and is setting the tone for conflicts to come. Schwer was one of the first foreign business executives to travel to Kyiv after the war began. He vividly remembers his initial visit: crossing the Polish border at night, in the snow, on an arduous rail journey to meet Ukrainian officials. “Those times were challenging,” he says. “We spent many nights in the bunkers. Many meetings had to be interrupted because of missile alarms.” He laughs and says that the trip was almost derailed by difficulties securing travel insurance. “It was super expensive,” he says. But for EOS, the demonstration of commitment to supplying Ukraine with market-leading defence technology was worth every cent. “They will never forget about your engagement and commitment in the early days,” he adds. “You came to them when you were exposing yourself to significant risk.”
Schwer and his team have been back many times since – he estimates that every second month an EOS representative is in Kyiv, or often even closer to the frontlines in the east of Ukraine. “We’ve established very close contact to the leaders, to the commanders, to the officers at the frontline, to get first-hand experience and have those lessons learned introduced to our ongoing development programmes,” says Schwer. That information feeds directly into product development: EOS has simplified systems to make them more user-friendly in the field. “We are learning day by day, week by week.” The EOS boss cites the example of the Abrams tanks donated to Ukraine by the Americans. “The US has lost more than half of its donated Abrams in Ukraine by drone attacks,” Schwer says. The remaining tanks have been removed from the battlefield, awaiting an upgrade; EOS systems are being trialled for possible integration. Sometimes videos appear on social-media platform Telegram of EOS weapons protecting key Ukrainian infrastructure from Russian drone attacks. As soldiers cheer in the background, half a world away, Schwer’s team is energised. “That makes us proud.”
EOS’s other hot products
Part of EOS’s recent success has been built on the integration of its different systems – the anti-drone technology can integrate remote weapons systems, which draw on the success of laser products.
Remote weapon systems
EOS’s range of remote weapon systems combine heavy firepower with advanced surveillance capabilities. These include the R400, a lightweight model that can be mounted on trucks, tanks and ships; the mid-range R600; and the heavy-duty R800, which has a cannon and machine gun.
Lasers
In September, EOS announced it was finalising deals for its high-energy-laser weapons systems to two undisclosed international clients, in what is believed to be the first export sale worldwide of a laser weapon at that power domain. “We will be the first mover,” says Schwer. The laser weaponry can engage drones between 200m and 3km away.
Space
EOS has a range of space-related products and services, including satellite laser ranging stations, which track satellites in orbit, and space domain awareness, monitoring objects in space. One EOS brochure describes the technology as “space intelligence for battlefield commanders”.
