Michael Kliger has steered Mytheresa for nearly a decade, turning the retailer into one of the fastest-growing and most resilient businesses in the luxury-fashion market. Last year he further established the company’s leadership position by acquiring Yoox Net-a-Porter – a rival group that includes Net-a-Porter, Mr Porter and off-price outlets Outnet and Yoox – from Richemont. Kliger is now tasked with overseeing all five businesses and turning Yoox Net-a-Porter around, which has been facing revenue issues for many years. In an exclusive sit-down interview, he shares his ambitious plans and explains why there’s space for all five brands to coexist.
Now that the acquisition is complete, how will you integrate the Yoox Net-a-Porter brands into your business?
The job is clear. Back of house, we need to become more efficient and leverage what Mytheresa has already [achieved] in IT and operations. There’s a lot to be done because there were some not-so-smart decisions in the past – but that doesn’t matter, we’ll fix it. When it comes to front of house, we need to return to the allure and excitement of assortment, service and marketing. We’re also bringing back high-quality people. We were quickly able to fill some key positions with major figures, including Brigitte Chartrand, who is now Net-a-Porter’s chief buying officer.
What were some of the issues that led to Yoox Net-a-Porter losing so much of its business?
The key mistake was bringing all the brands together – from Net-a-Porter, which is full-price, to Yoox, which is off-price – and creating one tech platform. It never worked properly, it cost a lot of money and customers were leaving because the IT wasn’t working, leading to revenue and cash issues. Then when [an unforeseen issue such as] Covid or a recession hits, you find yourself in a bad place, making cuts and rush decisions. But being steady is the only way forward; customers don’t want to wake up and hear a different story every day. It might not sound as exciting but being reliable is important. That’s why we clearly said that we want to separate off-price from luxury. This doesn’t mean that we want to sell the off-price brands, they just need a different infrastructure.
What about differentiating between your core luxury businesses, particularly Net-a-Porter and Mytheresa? Some say that there’s too much crossover.
There’s a clear strategy to keep them separate. We want as little crossover as possible, so that’s why we’re hiring separate buying, content and marketing teams. The good news is that there is currently only a 10 per cent overlap in customers. Net-a-Porter will always have a bigger portfolio, including new labels that you haven’t seen before. The customer wants to discover more and has a bigger appetite for editorial content, given the brand’s magazine heritage. At Mytheresa, the idea is to find new items from your favourite established brands. It sells exclusive products that you can’t find anywhere else and it has also always been lighter on content.
Physical activations are going to be very important for both brands but their vibes will be different. The typical Mytheresa event is a beautiful table, a beautiful dinner. The typical Net-a-Porter event is a great party, good music, people coming together.
Do you foresee growth in the current economic landscape?
Mytheresa grew by 8 per cent in the first nine months of 2025, so we’re very happy. We’re used to better numbers but it’s a very volatile world and customers want reliability. We rely more on the big spenders but that will hopefully change. As the economy recovers, the aspirational customer will return. What I don’t want is these businesses to grow by becoming broader. They need to be precise and clear about [what they stand for] because if we try to speak to everyone, we might end up speaking to no one.
Have you noticed any changes in customers’ shopping habits over the past year?
High jewellery and watches have been successful because people are looking for long-term value. They want to buy superb quality that they can keep for longer. In a time of crisis, stability and true value become the priority. When things are better, like they were in the 1980s, people start to look for more fun and more exuberance. It’s not a dramatic change, it’s just cycles. Will logos return at some point? Absolutely.
What about the executive changes taking place inside so many luxury houses? Can the vision of a new creative director increase a customer’s desire to shop?
It’s an opportunity but also a risk because the customer can get confused. “Where is the Valentino or the Balenciaga that I knew?” At the end of the day people are attached to the product – they don’t know who Alessandro [Michele, Valentino’s new creative director] or Demna [Gucci’s incoming artistic director] are, even if the fashion world knows all about them. Customers notice [the shift] immediately and the first two seasons can be tricky.
So why have houses been so quick to switch their lead designers?
It’s simply because business hasn’t been good. From 2008 to 2020, brands kept growing, so there were only occasional changes. Now there’s a crisis in China and in tourism, so numbers don’t look good. Still, magic can happen and what we’ll be witnessing in the second half of the year, with more than 10 debuts, will be incredibly interesting.
You’re known for being the industry’s best host and creating memorable events around the world. Are you thinking of going a step further and forging bigger partnerships with the world of hospitality?
The real driver is quality – I’m not interested in saying that we have a partnership with a big hotel group. We want to be in the best places in every location that we visit. There are groups, such as Rosewood or Four Seasons, that share the same mindset. But there are also smaller places that get what we’re doing and we want to partner with those companies. It’s not just about someone who has a big yacht. Do they have the same mentality of making people happy?
Listen to the full conversation on ‘Monocle on Fashion’ here.
Earlier this year, I attended Web Summit Vancouver, a global tech conference that offered the usual 2025 mix of utopian hype and doomsday predictions. After a morning of panels declaring that artificial intelligence (AI) will both cure global ills and eliminate millions of jobs, I slipped into a side event: a meet-up of Chinese entrepreneurs. Here the mood was different. In a room buzzing with Mandarin, which was interspersed with English words such as “seed funding”, young founders pitched apps and demo reels. Also present were several immigration lawyers who were surrounded by Chinese nationals seeking advice on stalled residency applications. It was another snapshot of our times: talent weighed down by uncertainty.
America’s fears of industrial espionage are spreading to other global tech hubs, including Vancouver. In Silicon Valley, companies are tightening vetting of Chinese employees and recruiting ex-FBI officers as “insider risk investigators”, signalling that firms suspect potential spies among their staff. Some concern is valid: this month, a US judge ordered Chinese firm Hytera to pay Motorola more than $70m (€59m) for stealing trade secrets in order to build its radios. But suspicion also reveals insecurity. Many in the West still struggle to accept the pace of Chinese innovation and that much of it is down to its openness to foreign ideas. When Chinese AI start-up DeepSeek unveiled a large language model that rivalled American ones, the dominant reaction was disbelief. To figures such as David Sacks, Trump’s AI and crypto tsar, theft, not ingenuity, was the only explanation.
Beijing has long invested in talent programmes that blur the line between overseas recruitment and intellectual property theft. For years, Western governments looked the other way, motivated by access to China’s huge market and labour force. Now the pendulum has swung sharply the other way. Western universities are severing partnerships with Chinese tech giants, visa applications are immediately denied and the country’s overseas students are interrogated for hours before being sent home. But what began as a legitimate concern is slipping into xenophobia. As Tatyana Mamut, CEO of Wayfound AI and a Ukrainian refugee, told me at the summit, “It’s true that many cyberattacks come out of China. But it’s politically harder to accept that there are also many good Chinese ideas and that we should at least try to work together.” That balance between protecting against espionage and welcoming talent is what’s missing in some policy approaches. It might be easier to implement sweeping security measures but the potential costs are high. The future of geopolitical power will rest less on armies than on technological prowess. AI is reshaping economies and societies – to harness its potential responsibly and avoid its worst repercussions, countries need to stop treating its development as a zero-sum arms race.
Big tech firms used to understand this. In the 1990s and 2000s, Microsoft and Google established research labs and incubators in China and India that have contributed to today’s breakthroughs in machine learning. They recognised that innovation thrives on global connections. Safeguarding intellectual property is vital but a climate of fear drives away the very people whose work strengthens economies and, ultimately, national security. Many of today’s most groundbreaking tech teams are dominated by people of Chinese heritage. Yet the US still cancels visas for Chinese students who could help achieve future breakthroughs.
Not every Western government is mirroring Washington’s approach. Across Europe, universities are stepping up efforts to recruit Chinese students in the wake of US visa restrictions. But as Yale research scholar Yangyang Cheng, once a physics PhD student in Chicago, told me, “When a state deems groups undesirable, no amount of degrees or professional titles can protect them.” Her words are a reminder that this debate is about more than visas or background checks. National security isn’t strengthened by the paranoid shutting of doors – America’s openness to talented foreigners helped the country triumph in the Cold War. Governments and companies should adopt nuanced security processes and work with international partners to set clear best practices, otherwise the technology of the future will be weaponised by governments and populations scared of the other.
Joanna Chiu is a Vancouver-based journalist, author of ‘China Unbound: A New World Disorder’ and managing partner of Nüora Global Advisors. For more opinion, analysis and insight, subscribe to Monocle today.
In a saturated market, how do you create phones that capture the world’s attention? Apple always leans into its heritage as a design-led brand and its latest line-up of devices combines this philosophy with what it believes are step-change engineering advances, as well as new colours and materials.
Ahead of the handsets’ release on Friday 19 September, Monocle sat down at Apple Park in Cupertino, California, with three members of the design leadership team: John Ternus, the senior vice president of hardware engineering; Molly Anderson, the vice-president of industrial design; and Alan Dye, the vice-president of human interface design, to hear about the planning and ambition behind the launches.
How to stand out from the crowd
Smartphones have started to blur together when it comes to design: a glossy screen on the front, glass on the back, and a cluster of cameras that look nearly identical from brand to brand. Apple’s challenge was clear – how do you make this year’s model feel genuinely new? Apple has sought to solve this problem with its latest releases, some of which look strikingly different from the iPhones they replace – including one that seems impossibly slim and another that’s designed to deliver new colours to market.
The company’s thinnest-ever phone is the iPhone Air. It’s just 5.6mm thick, excluding the protruding camera panel (Samsung’s closest effort measures 5.8mm). Realising this design wasn’t easy. “In my experience, the best engineering work and invention always comes from constraints,” says Ternus. “If you’re trying to solve an easy problem, you do half-arsed work. When you’re trying to solve a seemingly impossible one, that’s when the real creativity and invention happen. We love the challenge.”
So why is now the right time for the iPhone Air to glide into view? “It’s about multiple pieces coming together,” says Anderson. “A lot of material innovation allowed us to get to this point – we couldn’t make [the iPhone Air] out of aluminium, for instance.” That’s why the frame is made of titanium, a stronger material. With a phone this thin, there were worries that it would warp. In an earlier session at Apple’s HQ, a technician urged me to attempt bending the new model – I failed. Then they stress tested it in a machine at a pressure of up to 60kg and it still refused to buckle.
The bet on battery
But is all this enough to ensure the iPhone Air’s success? Though durability might not be in doubt, is there room to fit in a powerful battery with enough stamina?
“Battery quality is important in our products,” says Ternus. “To achieve great battery life in this phone we needed all the pieces to work together to realise the vision that we are always trying to achieve: where the phone disappears into the user’s hand and they’re just interacting with the content. We could have done it sooner but it wouldn’t have been this product.” That vision, of a slab of glass with nothing to keep you from being immersed in what’s on the screen, has been a north star for Apple since the first iPhone, co-designed by Jony Ive in 2007.
The iPhone Air feels almost like a single sheet of glass with a screen made from Apple’s proprietary material, Ceramic Shield, which is toughened to withstand scratches and resist damage when dropped. The phone’s thinness gives it a conspicuous lightness that is different from other models and takes a moment to get used to.
Why colour matters
The iPhone Air comes in four shades: cloud white, sky blue and light gold in a glossy finish and a matte, space black. “We’re always looking at refining the colour and texture on the back glass, and there’s extreme subtlety to that. It was unclear whether we were going to do a black because we love how the lighter hues evoke the feeling of airiness and lightness,” says Anderson. “But with the black it becomes a monolithic piece of glass. You almost don’t see the beginning and the end of the glass, as the part lines just disappear. And we felt it was the perfect complement because the black makes the phone feel even thinner,” she adds.
In the flesh, the matte finish almost seems to absorb light, like a tiny black hole. Black is regularly the most popular colour choice for tech products, so it makes sense that Apple would include it in the line-up as well.
The Silicon Valley giant is also launching the iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max this month – its most advanced and powerful handsets. Phones with powerful processors tend to get hot, so Apple has switched from the titanium used in previous iPhone Pro models to an aluminium unibody to allow better heat dissipation. “The thermal conductivity is 20 times better than the titanium we previously used,” says Ternus. There’s another benefit to the change: colour. Until now, all iPhone Pro models were only available in muted hues. This year, alongside deep-blue and silver options, there’s another, surprising choice: cosmic orange.
“The colour, material and design start together,” says Anderson. The process involves a conversation about what materials we’re going to use, what finishes and how we want to colour it. The lovely thing about aluminium is that it anodises. Anodising is an incredible process and we love the shades that can be achieved from it. We wanted to use colour to express the updated material and see the joy in that.” Apple has used orange before, for instance, on the iPhone’s ringer switch. “Orange was specifically chosen because it’s a very utilitarian colour, such as Safety Orange and International Orange [a standard hue that’s most known for decorating the Golden Gate Bridge],” she adds. “We felt this was a great place to express the performance quality and the tool-like characteristics of the iPhone Pro in a way that’s different to the finishes and the palette of the iPhone Air.”
The other new element for the latest iPhones is the software. A striking design called Liquid Glass mimics the appearance of glass in digital form. “We wanted it to feel very tactile,” says Dye. “When you push your finger down, the glass effect comes up to meet your finger, on the volume slider, for example. On the iPhone Air, the sensation is heightened even more because it feels like you’re in direct contact with the digital content beneath the effect. We love it when hardware and software feel connected.”
Much of the smartphone industry is laser-focused on artificial intelligence and the features and benefits that it will bring. Yet Apple’s AI innovations are due to bear fruit in the coming months rather than now. Instead it has chosen to emphasise the idea that good design, both in hardware and software, is more important. And it hopes that this will see the new products win favour with its audience, even as prices hit new heights.
Read next: By focusing on human interaction, Apple proves that there’s more to get excited about than AI
The second project from longtime collaborators and Trivet co-founders Jonny Lake and Isa Bal has finally opened its doors in Mayfair. Lake, a Canadian-born chef whose career has taken in acclaimed kitchens from Canada to Italy, and Bal, one of the world’s most respected master sommeliers, first joined forces at Heston Blumenthal’s three-Michelin-starred restaurant The Fat Duck in Bray. In 2019 they struck out on their own with Trivet, which earned its first Michelin star in 2022 and a second in 2024.
The pair’s new venture, Labombe by Trivet, is at the Como Metropolitan on Old Park Lane, taking over the space that once housed the legendary Met Bar. The name comes from Lake’s school days in Canada, when he dreamed up an imaginary French restaurant called Labombe for a class project. Thirty years later, that idea has come to life.
Labombe displays the easy confidence of people doing what they love: relaxed, welcoming cooking with brilliant wines and the same attention to detail that made Trivet so special – an exciting addition to Mayfair and a lighthearted continuation of their story.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity. Listen to the full conversation on ‘The Entrepreneurs’, from Monocle Radio.
When you first started working together at The Fat Duck, did you immediately sense this was a partnership that could go further?
Jonny Lake: It was an intense, exciting period when it felt like the world’s attention was on this tiny restaurant. We clicked straight away and what struck me was that if I showed an interest in Isa’s world of wine, he always made time for me, which was rare. In most restaurants, if you were lucky enough to work with a wine team they didn’t want to talk about wine to people outside of that team. Isa was different.
We were a similar age, came into the industry in similar ways and shared a real passion for what we were doing. We never said it out loud at the time but it was clear that we both knew where we wanted to go. You can even see it in old photographs – the body language shows a partnership forming, even before we ever spoke about it.
Like a great wine and food pairing, it comes down to chemistry. What was your approach to building the business when you were starting?
JL: From the moment that we said out loud we were going to do something together – even though it had been in our minds for a while – we had to work to figure out what we wanted to do. It was great that we wanted to have our own restaurant but what did that look like? That took us a few years because it wasn’t super obvious and we didn’t know what we were doing operationally.
There’s creating the concept and then there’s actually doing it. We worked with some great people and had some good conversations to draw what we wanted out of ourselves. Once we had that, we had to think of the practical considerations, such as location. But among everything, we tried to stay true to what we wanted to achieve, knowing that we didn’t know what we were doing and asking a lot of questions to try to figure it out. It was a valuable experience of learning – maybe we would do it differently another time, but we gained a lot through that experience.
It’s amazing how many entrepreneurs claim that early-stage naivety was a superpower when it came to launching their businesses. Do you have any regrets about the moves that you made?
Isa Bal: It brought out the fighting spirit in me. We were going to find a way to make what we wanted to happen, happen, one way or another.
What conversations happen around you when you start to see success? Once things go well, is everyone knocking on your door with new opportunities?
JL: It’s good to explore opportunities when they present themselves but only within what makes sense for you. We didn’t have any prospects for a long time, so when interest arrived, we couldn’t take it for granted. From the start, we had ideas beyond just a single restaurant but Trivet is such a personal project that we could never replicate it. Over the years we have explored a few opportunities of varying scales but they didn’t come to fruition for different reasons. We turned down some because they weren’t right for us, while others fell through on the other side. This new restaurant is the first one that has worked and feels right for us – and we’re excited about it.
Where did the seed of Labombe first appear?
JL: The name comes from a school project I did when I was about 12 or 13, growing up in Canada. In French class, we were given an assignment to create a menu for a restaurant and I called mine Restaurant Labombe. I rediscovered the project in my parents’ basement a few years ago while I was helping them move.
Inside was a handwritten menu: some simple bistro dishes and others completely over the top – things you would only see in royal banquets. Prices were all in French francs and the teacher’s only comment was that I’d forgotten to list any drinks. It felt oddly fitting that, decades later, I would end up opening a restaurant with a sommelier, finally completing the missing piece of that school project.
IB: He brought the folder back to London and showed it to me at the restaurant. As soon as I saw it, I said, “That’s it – that’s what we’re going to call the next one.”
At the time, we were trying to open Trivet an extra day each week, because we were closed for two days. But honestly it wasn’t possible because it would have put too much pressure on the team. So we began thinking about what we could do with fewer people, less intensity.
We’ve always enjoyed wine bars and wine-focused restaurants, so we thought, “Let’s do Labombe on Monday evenings at Trivet.” The idea was to have a simpler menu – though of course it turned out to be more complicated than expected – and highlight a few wines while keeping the full list available. That’s how it started.
Isa, your approach to wine is unusual. Instead of focusing on geography, you have looked at chronology, tracing wines back through history to their origins. Why is that important?
IB: When I was at The Fat Duck, I had the chance to taste wines that people worship but, after a while, it became repetitive. I realised that I was focusing my career on three or four regions and maybe 20 producers. I needed a way to keep myself excited.
Being from Turkey, which has one of the world’s oldest winemaking histories, I began to think about wine differently. I recalled a lecture from Patrick McGovern, a biomolecular archaeologist, about the origins of fermented drinks. That inspired me to create a wine list in chronological order. I even emailed him to check the sequence and he suggested a couple of tweaks.
What resulted was an engaging and informative wine list, without the preachiness. It sparked better conversations between guests and staff and it reignited my passion. The chronological approach is something I’ll carry into the new restaurant too, though in a slightly different form.
Jonny, do you feel the same with food – that you sometimes need to step back and re-energise your own creativity?
JL: Ideas can come from anywhere and we have always worked on new dishes together, often with input from the whole team. We don’t keep track of what other restaurants are doing, strangely enough, but it’s worked for us.
Dubai Hills could easily pass for a suburb of St Petersburg these days. Drive through and you’ll find Russian cafés, Slavic bakeries and restaurants that wouldn’t look out of place on Nevsky Prospect. My neighbours in Dubai Harbour are Russian, the café on the ground floor of my building is run by Russians and the menu is unapologetically Slavic. Borscht, draniki and beef stroganoff are no longer niche comfort foods for expats – they’re edging into the city’s mainstream dining mix.
This is what happens when geopolitics reshapes migration patterns. Since the war in Ukraine began, circumstances including sanctions have forced many Russians to choose Dubai as their new base. More than two million Russians and Eastern Europeans visited the UAE in 2023, about 13 per cent of the Emirates’ total tourists. By early last year, some 700,000 Russians had secured UAE residency. That influx is remaking neighbourhoods, property markets and, increasingly, the restaurant scene.
A few years ago, Russian restaurants were a curio. Now, press releases for Slavic concepts hit my inbox most weeks. At Gulfood, the world’s largest F&B sourcing event, nearly 100 Russian food companies exhibited across a sprawling pavilion in Dubai this year. The emirate is clearly where Russian culinary entrepreneurs see opportunity and where they’re innovating.
Restaurant consultant Alexander Syrnev has had a front-row seat to this evolution. He brought Babushka and Novikov, two successful Slavic concepts, to the city. “When we opened Babushka, it was right as the political situation started,” he told me. “For us, it was a big challenge – people thought that Russian cuisine was just borscht and caviar. We wanted to show that it is heartfelt food that anyone can enjoy.” His restaurants doubled as cultural bridges: a touch of nostalgia for the Russian-speaking crowd but also an introduction for those curious about Slavic flavours.
Russian chefs marvel at how quickly they can source produce here. What has become expensive or scarce in Moscow can be bought in Dubai in a matter of hours. Syrnev recalls a chef telling him, “Dubai is the best city in the world for sourcing. Any seafood, any spice, anything a chef wants, it’s here.” The city’s supply chain, paired with its open wallets, makes it fertile ground for culinary experimentation.
What’s most striking, however, is that even as the war in Ukraine continues, Dubai’s dining rooms don’t mirror the divides of geopolitics elsewhere. I’ve seen Ukrainians happily seated in Russian restaurants, chatting with Belarusian hostesses and Kazakh waiters. The Slavic staff who front these establishments, whether Russian, Ukrainian or otherwise, often work side by side with little friction. It’s a reminder that the UAE operates on a different wavelength: people are welcomed on the strength of their bank balance, their investment and their ability to buy property or open a business. Politics is replaced with transaction.
That doesn’t mean those moving here are devoid of political leanings – far from it. Many bring strong opinions with them, forged by events back home. But Dubai’s promise is precisely that those opinions can be parked at the door. For Russians, Ukrainians and everyone else, the city offers a space where business, hospitality and pragmatism matter more than ideology. Whatever your political leanings, Dubai is a place where people often come to escape politics itself – just as much as conflict and sanction.
But what isn’t as easy is Dubai’s unforgiving restaurant market. More than half of all new concepts fail and Russian restaurateurs are not immune. “Some come here thinking they’re kings and queens,” says Syrnev. “But Dubai slaps them hard. Rents are high, staffing is tough, competition is fierce.” The winners are those who adapt – who tweak menus, appeal to Dubai’s diverse clientele and meet the city’s exacting standards.
Yet the trend is undeniable. You can now order pelmeni on delivery apps, find blini in mall cafés and sit down to a Slavic fine-dining experience that rivals anything in Europe. Dubai has become a laboratory for Russian culinary soft power.
From my vantage point, living in a building where Cyrillic menus greet me downstairs, it feels like something bigger. Dubai has always been a city of hybrids; Lebanese food adapted to Gulf palates, reinvented Japanese cuisine. Russian meals seem next in line. And if history is any guide, once a cuisine takes root here, it rarely stays confined to an expat bubble.
Inzamam Rashid is Monocle’s Gulf correspondent.
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“Il faut cultiver notre Jardin [We must tend our garden],” Voltaire famously penned in his 1759 masterpiece, Candide.That bucolic phrase has travelled through the centuries, interpreted as an encouragement to tend to one’s own affairs. Yet, as humanity faces escalating heatwaves, floods and a multitude of social upheavals, the Age of Enlightenment, which Voltaire represented, has come under scrutiny. Back then the natural world was seen as something to be tamed. But we are part of nature, not apart from it. So if we’re serious about a climate-resilient future, nurturing the entire ecosystem seems to be a logical move.
With its Haussmannian vernacular, pitched roofs and bustling boulevards, Paris might not seem the obvious candidate for the gold medal in sustainability – but there is hurdle on the horizon; Paris could hit summer temperatures as high as 50c by 2050 according to a recent study.
The French capital offers remarkably few opportunities for nature to thrive. With only 1,883 hectares of publicly accessible green space – less than 9 sq m per capita – Paris trails far behind Vienna, Rome and London (the World Health Organization says the ideal is 50sq m). But plants still push their way through the concrete, and with them come ideas of almost revolutionary potential. We survey the city to find the places where green ideas are taking root.
Nature Urbaine
Spanning 14,000 sq m, Nature Urbaine, or NU-Paris, is perched atop a pavilion in the Porte de Versailles exhibition centre. It is the largest rooftop urban farm in Europe. Fruit and vegetables are grown using a mix of hydroponics and aeroponics: coconut fibre is used to retain water and nutrients, while white, guttering-like structures tap the fresh air to allow plants to grow without soil. Roots are constantly misted with a nutrient solution for more precise control of the growing conditions. It’s a closed-loop system, recycling nearly 90 per cent of water. Six to eight tonnes of produce are harvested every season.
Strawberries dominate. “We’ve planted 20,000 seedlings,” says Flore Canonge, gardener and head of learning at Nu-Paris. Elsewhere, you’ll find tomatoes, aubergines, chillies and Armenian cucumbers. “We aim to offer a diverse array to satisfy the culinary needs of our clients,” says Canonge. Those include local gourmet spots such as Le Perchoir – sharing the same rooftop – and prestigious hotels such as Le Meurice.
Fresh produce is mostly delivered by foot, cargo bikes or public transport. Excess is collected by Re-Belle, an organisation aiding people’s reintegration into the workforce, transforming crops into jams and chutneys. “Anything that remains is composted, contributing to the virtuous cycle we strive to maintain,” says Canonge.
Is this a silver bullet to rising food insecurity? “Rather than a standalone solution, we see it as a powerful tool for reconnecting city dwellers with the origins of their food,” says Canonge. Both the corporate crowd and high-school pupils flock in to learn the art of growing everything from radishes to courgettes. Get in touch for a guided tour or community garden slots.
nu-paris.com
Faculty of Pharmacy
A verdant oasis in the heart of Paris? This botanical haven belongs to the Faculty of Pharmacy, Universite Paris Cite, overlooking the entrance to the Zadkine Museum in the 6th arrondissement.
Founded in 1882, the enclave serves primarily educational and research purposes. “Students collect plants for identification. Occasionally, the pharmacognosy laboratory might request samples for extraction and analysis,” says Florence Chapeland-Leclerc, professor of botany and mycology in charge of the premises.
Here, nature isn’t admired for its aesthetics. “Most current medicines originate from plants or fungi. Efforts molecules, particularly for the development of new drugs,” she says.
The stakes lie in striking a balance between ensuring respect for traditional knowledge and sustainable practices while probing for potentially beneficial substances. “Our goal is to study them, under agreements signed with the countries concerned, of course, so that we can understand whether there really is an active compound of interest.”
The academic premises aren’t always open, but free guided tours and group visits are held regularly. To keep everything in place, head gardener Olivier Babiar indulges in his favourite activities: composting and propagating cuttings. “I have no favourite plants,” he tells Monocle, adding that all plants are his favourite. Naturally.
Only a fraction of the 400,000 known plant species have been studied so far. “A vast array of plants or fungi are still unknown. We estimate that the reservoir is extraordinary,” says Chapeland-Leclerc. An antidote to our ignorance of nature may be hidden somewhere too.
Pepins production
Surrounded by a freight railway, the perpetually jammed Boulevard Peripherique and the river Seine, Bercy Charenton is a seemingly overlooked pocket of land with an industrial feel. But plans are under way for a new eco-quartier, a mixed-use development with 45 per cent greenery. Before that happens, time to play with the large brownfield site on the disused Petite Ceinture rail tracks.
Overlooked by Jean Nouvel’s imposing Duo Towers, two raised beds are brimming with cabbages, verbascums and passion flowers. Part of the Berey Beaucoup, it has become the latest outpost for Pepins production, a collective running neighbourhood nurseries or pepinieres de quartier.“The idea was to create a community around urban gardening, and to show that anyone can grow plants,” says project manager Eloise Bloit. With food prices soaring, Pepins production proposes a solution. “Eating fruit and vegetables has become expensive,” she tells Monocle. “So how can we produce them for less without compromising on the quality?”
Besides their Bercy site, other locations include a garden tucked behind a stone wall at the Belleville cemetery, or greenhouses nestled in a block of flats in the bohemian I1th arrondissement.There’s a social dimension, too: the nurseries serve as a work reintegration scheme for those who struggle to return to employment. “We like diversity in both people and plants. There’s plenty to cultivate,” says Bloit, hinting that the potential extends beyond mints and basils. The produce – predominantly medicinal herbs, edible plants, ornamental and wild flora native to the Paris region – is organically grown using recycled materials and peat-free soil made from leaf compost sourced from the suburbs.
Open days are regular, with plants available only to association members – options start at €2 per year.
pepinsproduction.fr
Merci Raymond
“Paris is one of the world’s most densely populated cities. And the only way to embrace this, especially in the era of global warming, is to create space for greenery,” says Hugo Meunier, founder of Merci Raymond. Originally trained as a lawyer, he named his venture in homage to his nature-loving grandfather. At first responding to the millennial house-plant craze by greening offices and bistros with monsteras and fiddle leaf figs, nearly a decade later, their activities range from community gardens in banlieues to urban-redevelopment projects in the corporate La Defense.
“We work on streets, in the courtyards and especially on rooftops,” Meunier tells Monocle. Edible gardens, such as the one at the Hotel des Grands Boulevards, are quickly becoming their clients’ favourites. Before the herbs make their way into the culinary creations of the hotel’s celebrated chef, Giovanni Passerini, they allow the guests to enjoy the perks of the urban version of farm-to table while attracting bees and butterflies.
Merci Raymond’s commissions include Pare de la Villette landscaping overhaul, becoming the French National Agency for Urban Renovation’s official advisors on urban agriculture-related matters. They have also taken part in the Pavillon d’ Arsenal’s Natures Urbaines exhibition.
For Meunier, rethinking public space is about fostering a relationship between people and plants. “The idea is that instead of seeing an empty space every morning and avoiding it, people should reclaim it and install a garden – and host birthday parties there.”
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Roofscapes
“Every year the hot climate shifts away from the equator. But the cities are staying put. So they have to face temperatures vastly different from those they were built for,” says architect Olivier Faber. While visually striking, the iconic zinc-pitched roofs absorb substantial heat, exceeding 80C in summer and further exacerbating the urban heat island effect. “Zinc is both our greatest asset and our biggest thermal challenge,” Faber tells Monocle.
He and colleagues Eytan Levi and Tim Cousin propose an ingenious solution. Instead of dismantling what is effectively a French national treasure, they designed a modular, fully reversible structure that envelops the roofs in gardens full of lush greenery.
The trio met as undergraduates in Lausanne but reconvened in Paris to consider climate-adaptation issues; the Roofscapes studio was established in 2021. This spring they got the go-ahead from the Mairie de Paris, collecting several prestigious awards alongside.
Currently, a 1oo sq m pilot is under way at the Academie du Climat, Paris’s official climate education agency. A platform made from lightweight wood minimally contacts the building, blending seamlessly with existing rooftops. “This allows us to preserve the traditional craftsmanship of zinc workers, crucial for adapting to the new climate. Simultaneously, we create a space where both humans and other beings can thrive.”
For Faber, greener cities won’t save us from climate disaster unless they’re designed with a multi-species perspective in mind. “We need to give power back to non-humans and learn how they live,” he says.
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As Donald Trump begins his second state visit to the UK, the absence of London’s former ambassador to Washington, Peter Mandelson, continues to make headlines. It remains to be seen whether he will be widely missed on Capitol Hill. He has always been a controversial figure and while Trump took a shine to British politics’ “Prince of Darkness”, there were many others with misgivings about the scandal-prone operator’s suitability in these highly charged times.
But one member of his team had been an unmitigated success in his posting, throwing himself into his new role with an enthusiasm that put seasoned diplomats to shame: Jock, Mandelson’s 10-year-old, brown-and-white border collie. Sniffing heels at official events, the “ambassa-dog” was expert at working the crowd, finding the right people to target with puppy-dog eyes and a tennis ball dropped for a toss. Racing around the grounds of the Edwin Lutyens-designed ambassador’s residence, Jock would charm distinguished guests, who were all too ready to throw him a bone.
As Mandelson cultivated his relationship with key figures in Trump’s orbit, Jock put in the time to get to know Atlas, the two-year-old German shepherd owned by the US vice-president, JD Vance. The pair often had free rein to patrol the embassy grounds as their owners chewed over matters of foreign policy. Jock had the vital diplomatic skill of being able to connect with dogs from across the spectrum of breed and size, whether that be a lolloping German shepherd or a diplomatic sausage dog.
Mandelson’s political biography is dotted with canine anecdotes. Gerry Adams convinced him to buy his first dog shortly after he was appointed Northern Ireland secretary in 1999. During his time as Sinn Féin’s leader, Adams even offered to buy him one, Mandelson recounted in his memoir – but that was vetoed by his security team “because they feared a listening device would be embedded into one of the dog’s paws”. Mandelson ended up acquiring Bobby, a golden retriever, who became a minor celebrity in Northern Ireland. Jonathan Powell, Tony Blair’s then-chief of staff and now Keir Starmer’s chief foreign-policy adviser, recalled Mandelson bringing Bobby and his other dog Jack on the private jet between London and Belfast, where the truculent hounds kept trying to eat his sandwiches.
The usual canine appetites notwithstanding, at Monocle we have long recognised the unique talents of a canine to smooth the edges of a difficult meeting and improve the atmosphere at any gathering. Diplo-dogs can give opposing sides a point of commonality and help to break the ice, as well as offering stress relief in high-pressure environments.
There can, of course, be bad examples. Joe Biden’s German shepherds, Major and Commander, were exiled from the White House after biting staff. For Mandelson, however, dogs have helped to soften the image of a man whom the media has depicted as a cunning and ruthless spin doctor. But even Jock could not save his master from the Jeffrey Epstein scandal – and Mandelson was rightly sacked last week for his links to the convicted sex offender.
But Jock was loyal to the end. The Financial Times reported that it was Jock who first alerted his owner to his impending firing, barking at 05.40 as staff approached his bedroom door with the bad news. Politics is a dog-eat-dog world.
Charlotte McDonald-Gibson is a Monocle contributor based in Washington. Further reading? When it comes to airport security, canines are still indispensable. Here, Monocle visits the TSA dog training centre.
It has been a busy, award-winning few years for Michael Anastassiades. The Cypriot-born, London-based designer picked up a prestigious Compasso d’Oro from the Milan-based Association for Industrial Design in 2020 and was distinguished as an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) last year. This week he also won the London Design Medal, which was presented during the city’s namesake design festival. The award is a recognition of more than three decades of outstanding work from his studio, which commands international attention for its refined approach to lighting design and partnerships with brands, including Flos.
Tell us about your design ethos.
My work is about layering. You have to introduce layers otherwise your work will remain very superficial. If you’re addressing only one small thing then there is no chance that the project will have longevity or relevance. You need to keep people excited about something that they see every day. Excitement should grow if something, from furniture to lighting, is part of your house – every time that you use it should trigger your imagination.
How is this ethos expressed in your work?
I’m able to express it through my own brand. We never put any protective layers on our products. The brass, for instance, is unfinished, so it develops its own patina over time. You can polish it if you want. This allows you to build a relationship with the object.
How does this approach speak to the design industry more broadly?
It’s important to remember that you cannot control everything. This is what makes an object feel alive. Take vintage pieces as an example – there’s amazing demand for them because they have had a life that is clearly visible in the way that they have patinated. But a lot of the companies are now putting protective layers, such as lacquers, on their products. It means that they can’t age and remain pristine. We don’t see leather upholstery developing beautiful cracks and folds. All of a sudden, everything looks plastic.
You studied civil engineering, then industrial engineering, and then immediately set up your studio after graduation. Why take this route?
I started my studio because I thought that I had something different to say. As a model, my planned approach didn’t seem to exist around me. Usually you have a model of somebody – a practice or an individual designer – that has done something amazing that you can relate to. And it seemed that at that time, in London in the 1990s, there was nothing like I wanted. Similar approaches had existed in the 1960s – radical designers, especially in Italy, were doing amazing things with extreme and conceptual design ideas. I wanted to do that but serve the time that we were living in.
What design movement has influenced you the most?
Modernism is what I’m drawn to. But at the same time, it doesn’t mean that I am absolute in that relationship. I allow space for everything else to exist too.
What’s a recurring source of inspiration?
I love art. It really nourishes my mind. I’m fascinated by people’s creativity. I tend to venture to a museum, exhibition or gallery every weekend. It doesn’t matter whether they’re famous institutions or small ones – I believe that every place has something special to offer if you’re open to it.
When you started your studio, you also worked as a yoga teacher to supplement your income. How did this other career affect your work?
Everything you do in life affects the next thing that you try. Yoga definitely was and is a big part of my life. It taught me to approach what I do from an outside perspective. Whenever I feel that I’m too invested in design, it allows me to step back and be critical of what it is that I’m doing for myself.
What’s a priority for you and the industry going forward?
Design is deeply personal and it’s also a dialogue. As a designer, you have something to say with your products and it’s an opportunity to trigger somebody’s imagination. There has to be an open door for the dialogue to pass through and people should want to engage with it.
The fall of Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil’s mercurial hard-right former president, came gradually and then suddenly. After a steady, years-long drip of revelations about his time in office and months of judicial procedures and hearings, Brazil’s Supreme Court convicted the 70-year-old ex-army captain of plotting a coup d’état and seeking to illegally retain power after his 2022 election defeat. The five-member panel reached a majority verdict and quickly handed down its sentence: 27 years and three months in prison.
The significance of this was lost on no one. Bolsonaro was sentenced alongside several co-conspiring military officers and government officials. His conviction marked the first time that Brazil – a nation that has suffered more than its fair share of coups – had successfully punished the leaders of one of them. In reading their verdicts, the four convicting justices highlighted the vulnerability of democracy and the need to protect institutions against the whims of would-be authoritarians. And that meant dispensing justice, even to the most powerful.
The contrast with the US is clear: whereas America has failed to bring to account a political leader who has chosen to defy democratic rules and norms, Brazil has held firm. On social media, left-wing Brazilians have been revelling in Bolsonaro’s conviction, crowing proudly about the country’s commitment to democracy. On the right, the response has been muted: no mass protests or widespread outrage. Politicians on that side of the spectrum are already plotting what comes next.
The most immediate backlash is likely to come from Donald Trump’s White House. The US president has openly and frequently sympathised with Bolsonaro’s plight and drawn parallels with his own legal strife. As the latter’s trial reached a crescendo in recent weeks, Trump sought to bully Brazil into dropping the case. First, the White House slapped 50 per cent tariffs on the country’s imports. Then it cancelled visas of Brazilian judges and politicians, and hit Alexandre de Moraes – the Supreme Court justice leading the case against Bolsonaro – with Magnitsky Act sanctions. Such sanctions, which freeze De Moraes’s US assets and block him from US financial infrastructure, were once reserved for the world’s worst human-rights offenders. Brazil is now bracing for more.
What happens next to Bolsonaro is less clear. Pending court procedures, his sentence is likely to begin before the end of this year, though it is still undecided whether he will serve it in prison, a federal police facility or in a military barracks, or under house arrest. The man once hailed by supporters as a “messiah” is pinning his hopes on congressional allies passing an amnesty. That would, at the very least, keep him out of prison and, at best, rehabilitate him politically so that he could contest elections next year. Bolsonaro has sought to keep his options open by refusing to name a political heir; if he does name a successor, the decision will be just as significant as that of the courts, showing that he knows his race has been run.
For the incumbent president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Bolsonaro’s trial (and the unprecedented intervention of Trump in the court proceedings) has been a blessing. Serving a third, non-consecutive term, Lula’s latest stint in power had until recently been uninspiring. But in the face of attacks from the White House, he has managed to cast himself as a defender of national sovereignty. His administration has even come up with a catchy slogan – “Brazil belongs to Brazilians” – to emblazon on caps and T-shirts. In a New York Times article directed squarely at the US president, Lula said that he was proud of the Supreme Court’s verdict and that Brazilian sovereignty was “not on the table” for negotiations. His efforts appear to be working. A poll released on the day of Bolsonaro’s conviction showed Lula’s approval rating at its highest point this year. Thank you, Donald Trump.
Bryan Harris is a journalist based in São Paulo. For more opinion, analysis and insight, subscribe to Monocle today.
It’s not always easy being rich – just ask Norway’s prime minister. Following re-election last week, Jonas Gahr Støre holds the nation’s purse strings as a cast of competitive coalition partners and critics from the populist right-wing Progress Party pull him in opposing directions. Having grown immensely wealthy from its oil and gas reserves in the North Sea, Norway and its politics have come to be defined by how to use its abundance. As of today, it has successfully squirrelled away €1.7tn into a handy sovereign wealth fund.
A savvy fiscal rule says that no more than 3 per cent of the fund’s returns can be spent each year. But that is still a huge pot – more than €50bn on top of Norway’s annual GDP. The Labour Party preaches prudent spending on Norway’s already generous welfare system, while its supporters in parliament – the Socialist Left, the Centre Party, the Communist Red Party and the Greens – want to spend more oil money on everything from regional development to green-energy initiatives. The Conservatives and the Progress Party, however, want to cut taxes and offer other incentives for businesses to stimulate growth. A tale as old as time, maybe. But there’s concern that the nation’s affluence has fostered a sense of economic complacency. The title of Norwegian economist Martin Bech Holte’s bestselling book earlier this year is telling: Landet som ble for rikt (The Country That Became Too Rich).
Yet there are more pressing problems facing the Labour government – and indeed the entire Norwegian nation. The wealth fund’s mandate is to grow Norway’s petroleum revenues, which it seeks to do by investing in some 9,000 companies globally. But it has recently come under fire for investing in Israeli companies involved in the war in Gaza.
The Socialist Left has said that full divestment from all companies that contribute to Israel’s “war crimes, occupation, or genocide” is a condition for them propping up Labour in parliament. Along with the Greens, they also want to reform or even replace the wealth fund’s independent ethics council, giving parliament greater control over ethical guidelines. This is problematic.
The fund is supposed to be – and must be – apolitical. Some ethical investment decisions are relatively straightforward, such as avoiding companies involved in tobacco or nuclear weapons. An issue arises, however, if the fund could be accused of making decisions based on the political leanings of a sitting government. Both the wealth fund and the country would become vulnerable to foreign political pressure. The Trump administration, for instance, has already shouted foul over the fund’s divestments from US construction company Caterpillar, whose machines are used by the IDF in Gaza. Trump could choose to impose further tariffs on, say, Norwegian salmon as a retaliation.
The Norwegian case, while a first-world issue, is singular. Other major sovereign wealth funds do not face the constraints of public and political pressure that exist in Norway’s liberal democracy. The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, China Investment Corporation and Singapore’s Temasek Holdings are all free to focus on financial returns over ethical or political considerations.
Yet unlike the Gulf and other petrostates, there is still broad agreement from citizens on the need for some form of moral process as to how the money is invested. Norwegians will be tackling a far more fundamental question in the coming parliamentary period: when to cease extracting oil and gas from the North Sea?
Lars Bevanger is Monocle’s Oslo correspondent. For more opinion, analysis and insight, subscribe to Monocle today.
Read next: The Green petrostate: Can Norway really become carbon neutral?
