Except for the transparent earpiece curling down his collar, the man standing outside one of central London’s classic townhouses is dressed in all black. His appearance is stark compared to the pedestrians streaming past him, though few seem to notice. Our man, by contrast, is not so oblivious; his eyes dart up and down the street in methodical sweeps. What might be a suspicious tableau elsewhere is par for the course at think-tank Chatham House, where on this particular day the guest speaker is Valerii Zaluzhnyi – a Ukrainian war commander more accustomed to security protocols than cushy speaking invitations. 

Despite being Ukraine ambassador to the UK, Zaluzhnyi is better known for his role as commander-in-chief of Ukraine’s armed forces. Appointed to the post by president Volodymyr Zelensky in 2021, Zaluzhnyi did away with the military’s lingering Soviet practices, including a rigid top-down approach to decision-making that actively discouraged any criticism or feedback from junior members. The effort played an important role in the country’s nimble response to Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022. Softly spoken and a self-professed poetry fan, Zaluzhnyi quickly earned a reputation as a thoughtful and caring leader – and a potential political opponent to Zelensky. 

Yet any true plan of succession is pure speculation. Despite pressure from the US and Russia, elections in wartime Ukraine are explicitly forbidden by the country’s constitution. There’s also the small matter of organising safe and fair voting for a population dispersed abroad as refugees, deployed within the military or living in conditions too dangerous to gather for a vote. Even so, Zaluzhnyi has continued to top opinion polls. “Ukrainians are looking for someone who can preserve their security and has a record of success”, says Yaroslav Hrytsak, historian and author of Ukraine: The Forging of a Nation. “Zaluzhnyi meets that criteria.” Kateryna Denisova, a reporter for the Kyiv Independent, agrees: “Although he has never said anything about his intention to launch a political career, he has already become a political figure in Ukraine – even if that’s not something that he wants right now.”

Inside Chatham House’s auditorium, Zaluzhnyi takes the stage. In his preamble he compares news stories that suppose his presidential ambitions with the daily changes in London’s weather. “I [am beginning] to suspect that there is a [dedicated] department that wakes up every day with the thought, ‘What is Zaluzhnyi thinking today?’” he says in English. However, he stops short of giving anything concrete on the matter. 

Instead, Zaluzhnyi switches into Ukrainian to deliver a speech on subjects that he clearly feels most at home speaking about: military and diplomatic analysis. Ukraine and its allies need a new form of alliance in which the latest technology, AI developments and drone innovations can be easily exchanged, he argues. His words are soberly realistic. “We, Ukrainians, have no choice”, he says. “We will either perish or survive. The formula for [our] survival is simple: keep fighting, strengthen the economy and maintain [our] unity.”

While his address is met with warm applause in London, admiration for the ambassador remains mixed back home. “My concern is that he is just a symbolic figure rather than someone with depth. We don’t know much about him”, says Nataliya Gumenyuk, co-founder of Kyiv-based media outlet Hromadske. “People feel very emotional about him and he has this image of being an easy-going, simple man. But is there anything behind that?” 

Many in Ukraine also feel that it is too soon to talk about presidential elections with a war still ongoing. “Even though domestic politics have been back in the spotlight in the past year, it’s still not the right time to be discussing [electoral] ambitions,” says Denisova. “It could split society and shift the focus away from the battlefield.” Still, some see the conversations around Zelensky’s successors as forward thinking. “Ukrainians are looking for a new political leader but are not willing to [push for] change during the war – they understand that it is too risky”, says Hrytsak. “They see Zelensky as a good but old car that has to be replaced. But they can’t afford [the replacement] yet, so they’ll keep the old one for now”. 

While active campaigning remains off the cards, Zaluzhnyi’s popularity has posed a challenge to Zelensky. This is perhaps no better illustrated than in the president’s decision in 2024 to reassign Zaluzhnyi from the post as commander-in-chief of the armed forces to UK ambassador. With rumours of possible candidacies swirling and corruption scandals rocking Zelensky’s office last year, the president’s thoughts undoubtedly turned to his legacy. “Although current polls show that the scandal hasn’t significantly affected his trust ratings, it will certainly affect his campaign as well as the results, if [Zelensky] decides to run again,” says Denisova. 

Back at Chatham House, bodyguards quickly whisk Zaluzhnyi offstage the moment that his address is over, instructing the audience to remain seated until the ambassador has left the building. Whether through slick bureaucratic machinations or by pure chance, the level of security shows that Zaluzhnyi has become pivotal to Ukraine’s future – and someone to watch for observers keen to map the country’s political trajectory. 

The French Olympic Committee is going ahead with plans to establish “Club France” on Santa Monica State Beach for the Los Angeles 2028 Olympic Games. For 35 days, French athletes, guests and fans will gather at the Annenberg Community Beach House for all things français, from great food and hospitality to live events and programming. The deal could be finalised tomorrow with a price tag for the space at a reported $1.55m (€1.35m) – but it’s money well spent. 

Santa Monica might be more used to weekend-long parties with people spilling onto the sand, drinks in hand, yet Annenberg Community Beach House is removed from the raucousness of the pier. It’s an area more akin to St Tropez or Cannes. But big celebrations are on the cards once the Games kick off: the opening day, 14 July, is also la Fête nationale (Bastille Day). The 1920s Annenberg House estate, at two oceanfront hectares, offers a range of potential uses, few more envy-inducing than the house’s modernist, bare-concrete wing that harbours a swimming pool. Expect the French to be throwing an elevated take on a quintessential LA pool party. St-Germain spritzes for all, au bord de la piscine.

The committee’s decision isn’t frivolous; it’s a smart play. Team USA House in the Palais Brongniart during Paris 2024 was a great example of how countries and brands (Team USA joined up with Ralph Lauren) can build their own temporary embassies during global events. For France, securing one of the best spots in town well ahead of schedule is impressive but the programming will have to match the setting. It could prove a major soft-power win before any medals have been given out. 

Part of the magic is that this works both ways. The City of Santa Monica, struggling with a $33m (€28.6m) budget deficit, has pulled out from hosting Olympic sports (even the popular and relatively cheap beach volleyball) and instead opened its finest real estate to companies and governments looking for a base at the Games. The interest for these vacancies has been high – it takes local knowledge and careful diplomacy to seal a deal such as Annenberg House, bidding against other nations and global brands. 

What sets France apart is its know-how. The Santa Monica location of Club France is itself shrewd; west LA is home to a sizeable French-American community. There are major French schools nearby; the Alliance Française in Century City; and a slew of cafés and restaurants run by French owners. The latest newcomer is Petitgrain Boulangerie, a little shop on Wilshire Boulevard that draws long lines for its croissants lathered with butter imported from Isigny Sainte-Mère. 

This cultural overlap makes Santa Monica a natural home for Club France to support and draw in the local community. The approach is eloquently both California-centric and French-forward. And here lies the secret. The model for other countries to follow is: find your people and help them help you to stand out. Los Angeles is a city of cities; Swedes would do well to engage their community in Venice Beach; Brazilians might want to try Palms and Culver City. As ever, locals (or in this case, local emigrants) know best. What might not be possible in Malibu or Glendale could prove easy in Manhattan Beach or Burbank – and vice versa. 

LA 2028 might feel distant, especially given there’s a World Cup for the US to co-host first this summer, but considered planning can help countries to take a little bit of that Olympic legacy home with them – and, perhaps more importantly, leave a lasting impression behind. Following a wildly successful Paris 2024 Olympics, Brand France looks set to continue its run of sporting hospitality and soft-power skill. 

Kalle Oskari Mattila is a Los Angeles-based writer.

Further reading? 
– From the Olympic Village to student housing: Manfredi Catella on building Milan’s future 

– Olympiapark’s success story: How it set the gold standard in architecture 

– How three family-run French labels found new relevance in a crowded market

As we gear up for The Entrepreneurs Live, our business conference in Shanghai next month, I thought that I’d drop by to reacquaint myself with the city and catch up with a few of its movers and shakers. How has it changed since I last visited? Well, for starters, it’s a lot easier to visit. Hardly anyone needs a visa these days and some immigration officers even smiled as I passed by. 
 
A rush of inbound tourism is helping to cover up an overall drop in the number of its foreign residents but in some pockets of the city it’s like nothing has changed. At the Jing An Kerry Centre (our host in April) there were plenty of office workers from overseas picking up their morning coffees at Blue Bottle Coffee, Nodi and Ralph’s Coffee. Cash is also back in circulation thanks to a law that came into effect in February requiring all shops, restaurants and taxis to accept hard currency – a huge win for both visitors and the elderly population. Driving around town, there are not many new skyscrapers or landmarks – besides that mad ship-shaped, three-storey Louis Vuitton flagship. But, as some local entrepreneurs point out, one of the biggest transformations is happening inside the shopping malls. There are far more homegrown brands rubbing shoulders with European luxury giants. It’s an exciting time for retail and it’s one of the topics that we will be tackling during The Entrepreneurs Live. Our programme is now complete and our line-up of speakers from local brands, such as Shushu/Tong and An Ko Rau, know how to appeal to the modern Chinese consumer. 

At our event in Jakarta last year, there was a lot of talk about Chinese brands expanding to Southeast Asia. True as this is, it is encouraging to see two-way traffic. Singaporean design studio Beyond the Vines is opening a shop at the Kerry Centre in mid-April. Founder Rebecca Ting spoke at last year’s edition alongside Vorravit “Pui” Siripark, the founder of Thailand’s top luxury beauty brand Pañpuri, which is opening three outposts in China this year. We like to pick speakers who are riding a wave of success. And we also like it when these speakers go on to form friendships and new ventures together. Attendees at December’s Wonderfruit festival in Thailand were roaming the fields wearing bags from a Topologie x Wonderfruit collaboration that the two founders shook hands on in Jakarta. I have it on good authority that one or two of our Asian conference alumni will be in the audience in Shanghai this year too.
 
Consumer tastes and the overall business environment are changing quickly and are far more nuanced than the “peak China” drivel being spun in Washington. Europe’s brands are working harder than ever but the doom and gloom is not universal. Miu Miu is doing very well and the market for pre-owned luxury is booming too. But what does all this mean? Well, you’ll have to hear it from the founder of leading resale platform ZZER, who is coming to speak to us in Shanghai. 
 
In the hospitality sector, business in China is similarly mixed. The Four Seasons is struggling, while Marriott and Hyatt are said to be thriving, partly thanks to the Hyatt-owned Alila, a recent opening in Shanghai that was a fixture of the F1 weekend last week. Picking the right partners to work with is, as ever in China, imperative. Independent Chinese hotel brands are blossoming and we will hear from the CEO of one of the best in the business – all the way from Yunnan province. 
 
Back on the streets of Shanghai there are plenty of Chinese car companies that I don’t recognise and the one that I thought would be everywhere – BYD – was nowhere to be seen. Zeekr seems to be the executive’s wheels of choice, especially in the driveways of Shanghai’s smartest hotels. The Hangzhou-based brand’s German design chief will be joining us all the way from its design headquarters in Gothenburg. 
 
Shanghai’s bars were shaken by the coronavirus-pandemic lull but the city is China’s commercial capital and, naturally, there are now plenty of new entrants popping up with fresh concepts. Cocktail bars Pony Up and Root Down are a hit, as are Hong Kong imports Coa and Bar Leone. Many classic restaurants have left the Bund (Shanghai’s famous waterfront neighbourhood) but there is a lot more going on around Suzhou Creek. Mona is a lovely spot for lunch on a sunny day and one to which I will be sure to take the Monocle team. Some of my colleagues will be visiting for the first time – and they are in for a treat. Spring will be in full bloom and the weather by the end of April is going to be perfect for exploring this very walkable and increasingly liveable city. There has hardly been a better time to visit Shanghai, so book your flights and come join us in Jing’An on 29 April. See you there. 
 
Join us at The Entrepreneurs Live for lively panel discussions, sharp interviews and candid conversations about what it takes to build a business today. Book your tickets today.

James Chambers is Monocle’s Asia editor. For more opinion, analysis and insight, subscribe to Monocle today.

Three years into the most drone-dominated conflict in human history, Ukraine has accumulated something that no defence contractor can manufacture and no sovereign wealth fund can simply acquire: the world’s most operationally current, battle-validated curriculum in modern aerial warfare. Kyiv is beginning to understand that this knowledge is a diplomatic and commercial lever unlike anything else in its arsenal.

The learning process has been brutal. A generation of young Ukrainians mastered FPV-drone operation not through formal training programmes but through Youtube tutorials, first contact with Russian countermeasures and shared tactical channels. The findings were then stress-tested against a live, adaptive adversary and refined on a weekly cycle. Ukraine intercepted somewhere between 2,000 and 4,000 drones per month through much of 2024, testing every approach – from kinetic and electronic warfare to laser, net-based and AI-assisted targeting – against real conditions that no exercise could simulate. The institutional knowledge embedded in that experience is not a byproduct of the conflict but one of its most significant outputs.

The Gulf states understand the stakes better than most. Refineries such as Saudi Arabia’s Ras Tanura are now legitimate targets for weapons that cost less than a mid-range car, proving that the asymmetry between offence and defence in drone warfare has reached a strategic absurdity. Abu Dhabi and Riyadh have responded by spending billions on American and Israeli systems, which are sophisticated but designed for a different threat environment: nation-state missiles with radar signatures and predictable flight paths, not swarms of cheap, GPS-spoofing drones that evolve faster than procurement cycles can respond. 

This creates an asymmetry in Ukraine’s favour. Gulf sovereign wealth funds collectively manage upwards of $6trn (€5.2trn). Ukraine’s 2024 defence budget was a rounding error by comparison, much of it foreign-funded, but Kyiv holds something that money cannot buy: lived experience. Foreign aid operates on one set of logic – need, sympathy and political will – whereas knowledge transfer operates on another – value, scarcity and mutual interest. 

Ukraine has made it clear that this conflict is not a charity case – it is a learning opportunity. The country has built Brave1, a state-run defence accelerator that has compressed battlefield feedback into procurement cycles measured in weeks rather than years. This knowhow has real commercial and strategic value.

Ukraine could lean into this unique know-how, co-developing interception systems with Abu Dhabi’s Edge Group or Riyadh’s Saudi Arabian Military Industries. It could even help to inform Southeast Asian militaries watching in the South China Sea – not as a supplicant seeking solidarity but as a partner with a product that no one else can offer.

Volodymyr Zelensky has held drone-coalition talks and technology-sharing agreements with European partners but the pitch still undersells the asset. The product is not the hardware; hardware can be copied, iterated upon and eventually surpassed. The true asset is the institutional knowledge of failure – every interception that didn’t work, every countermeasure that was defeated, every tactical assumption that was abandoned when the next wave came in from the east.

War is a brutal way to develop expertise. Ukraine didn’t choose the curriculum but it has completed coursework that no other nation, defence contractor nor simulation has come close to replicating. The world is only beginning to understand what that knowledge is worth on the open market.

The Bank of England’s plan to replace Great Britons depicted on its banknotes with images of wildlife has become the latest front in a tedious culture war that shows pragmatism itself has lost currency.
 
Far from trying to devalue the legacy of Jane Austen or Alan Turing, the updated designs are meant to foil counterfeiters and increase security. Sadly, this hasn’t stopped pot-stirring politicians (Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch, Lib Dem Ed Davey and Reform UK’s Nigel Farage among them) from expressing pantomime outrage. Their worry? That wanton wokery might replace Britain’s hallowed, jowly, tell-it-like-it-was wartime leader Winston Churchill with an oak tree or an otter.

To fall out over small change, however, is to miss both the issue and the opportunity. Britain is the world’s sixth-largest economy by GDP but is labouring with sluggish growth, pitiful productivity and a crisis of confidence. What do we stand for and what do we value? Ironically, the farrago is lacking some of that bluff, Churchillian confidence and humour. What would old Winston make of the electorate squabbling over whether swallows or long-dead painters should adorn the £20 note while war rages in the Middle East?
 
Point-scoring politicians aside, polling suggests that the majority of Brits would settle for wildlife on their banknotes. That said, the idea of asking people a serious question by poll is laughable at this point in history. When posed a benign question about what to name a polar research vessel in 2016, the Great British public plumped for Boaty McBoatface. That’s before we wade into the deeply unamusing consequences of the slim majority who voted for a hasty, come-what-may withdrawal from the EU in the same year. The lesson? Be careful (and thoughtful) about what you wish for – and maybe take the results with a fistful of salt.
 
Democracy is delightful but everyone getting a say isn’t so important when it comes to deft design that sends a message. We could instead seize the soft-power moment and find some fresh ideas that speak to the nation as it is today. Where’s that supposed British humour when you need it? Perhaps we could venerate the slug itself to represent the post-2008 economy? Hedgerows to hint at the national obsession with borders and neighbourly squabbles? I’m half-joking but a decent design agency with a point of view could lash something together. Which other countries discovered wonders as numerous and various as penicillin and the Premier League? Who else can lay a claim to the World Wide Web and the sandwich? 
 
Like most things in the UK, where you sit on an issue conditions your response. Promoting weeping willows at the expense of a white war leader is a dog-whistle to the right who worry that their national identity is being diluted by politically correct bed-wetters. Venerating Victorian novelists or romantic painters, meanwhile, might feel parochial and passé to progressives and lefties. 
 
What we’re really missing in the debate is some imagination. A way of depicting values that we can all agree to be proud of. My worry is that wildlife – though pleasant – is just the least-bad option. True, you can’t cancel a kingfisher or a chestnut tree but let’s not pretend that makes them an interesting or encouraging depiction of the UK today.
 
Josh Fehnert is Monocle’s editor. For more ideas, analysis, opinion and global reporting subscribe today.

On the morning of 7 March, as the debris from intercepted Iranian attacks was being cleared from streets in Abu Dhabi and Dubai, a colleague sent me a photograph. It showed the terrace of a café outside his home in the Jumeirah neighbourhood – tables occupied, the morning going about its business, faces from most of the world’s continents. Someone had drawn a large heart on the glass in marker pen. The caption read: “Still here.”

I have been thinking about that photograph ever since. The UAE is home to more than 200 nationalities. It is, by any measure, the most cosmopolitan place on Earth, with nine in ten residents born elsewhere. The country has spent five decades constructing something genuinely singular: a federation of city-states that thrives on openness. Remove the millions who came from elsewhere, the foreign companies, the cross-border trade – and there is no UAE as we know it. The country’s founders understood this. So did everyone who followed.

Iran’s missiles and drones have hit airports and ports, apartment buildings and hotels, and data centres that power artificial-intelligence projects across three continents. Tehran claims that its targets are US military assets. The geography of the damage tells a different story. What is being attacked is not only infrastructure, it is also a proposition – that a place built on authentic inclusion can survive and prosper in one of the world’s most contested regions.

The interesting thing is not that the UAE has been attacked. Plenty of successful places have been attacked. The interesting thing is what has happened since.

The people who chose to come here, by and large, have stayed. Not all – some left following guidance from their embassies; no one should pretend that the fear was not real. Seven people have died and dozens more have been injured; families are shaken. But the extraordinary social fabric that holds the country together has not torn. There is a difference between living in a country and belonging to one. In the UAE, for most of the 89 per cent who came from elsewhere, the two have quietly become the same thing.

This is not nothing. It is, in fact, everything.

An economic argument is there to be made, and it is a strong one. Non-oil activity now accounts for more than 77 per cent of the UAE’s GDP. You can model an economy. You cannot model belonging. The first can be stress-tested and quantified; the second can only be lived. What is being lived here, by the millions who chose to stay, is more durable than any balance sheet.

The Gulf has long been caricatured in certain quarters as a transient place – a collection of sojourners passing through, owing nothing and expecting nothing, ready to disappear at the first sign of difficulty. That caricature has never done justice to the reality of what has been built here. Mureeb Zaman, the Pakistani driver who was killed by falling debris on 7 March, had lived in and raised a family in the UAE for more than a decade. He was not passing through. He was home.

What Iran’s regime has stumbled upon, perhaps without fully understanding it, is the central paradox of the model it is attacking. The UAE’s openness is not a vulnerability. It is its greatest source of strength. A country where the bonds of community are forged not by ethnicity or religion or language but by shared investment in a place – its institutions, its ambitions, its particular way of being in the world – turns out to be remarkably difficult to destabilise. People do not abandon what they have helped to build together.

There is a lesson here that extends well beyond the Arabian Gulf. The world is full of leaders who promise cohesion through homogeneity, security through exclusion, identity through the definition of enemies. The UAE has spent 50 years building a different case: that the most stable societies and economies are those with the most to lose from instability; that openness and security are not opposites; that a country of some 200 nationalities can be, in an age of fracture, the most consequential experiment of our time.

That experiment has already returned its verdict.

The photograph from the café confirms it.

Badr Jafar is the special envoy of the UAE minister of foreign affairs for business and philanthropy. For more on the conflict in Iran, read John Bolton’s thoughts on what should happen next here.

San Francisco-born and New York-based costume designer Miyako Bellizzi might have begun her career in fashion editorial but she has since become celebrated for her ability to unlock characters and build entire filmic worlds through costume. Across a decade-long collaboration with the filmmaking duo Josh and Benny Safdie, Bellizzi has delivered costumes that feel as essential to the films’ visual language as the restless camerawork and erratic plot lines. Some have become enshrined in the public consciousness: take Connie Nikas’s (Robert Pattinson) red hero jacket in Good Time or Howie Ratner’s (Adam Sandler) canary-yellow polo and black leather jacket in Uncut Gems. 

Yet Bellizzi’s real craftsmanship often happens at the edges of the frame. Her meticulous attention to background costumes – paired with the street-cast ensembles selected by Jennifer Venditti – gives the Safdies’ films their gritty, documentary-like atmosphere. Every extra is given their own sartorial story, turning the screen into a vibrant mise en scène. 

Bellizzi’s latest project reunites her with Josh Safdie – this time without his brother – for Marty Supreme, starring Timothée Chalamet and Gwyneth Paltrow. The film marks A24’s most ambitious project to date: it is the production house’s highest-budget feature and highest-grossing release. 

Set in 1952, the film is anchored in New York’s Lower East Side but cuts between a range of settings: Japan, New Jersey, London and even Auschwitz. Following her work on The History of Sound with Paul Mescal and Josh O’Connor, Marty Supreme is Bellizzi’s second period piece – unless, as some suggest, Uncut Gems (set in 2012) now qualifies as vintage. 

Ageing the costumes was central to the film’s hyperrealism. Out of the more than 3,500 garments seen across the 149-minute table-tennis spectacle, Bellizzi and her 20-person in-house tailoring team built nearly half themselves, distressing fabrics to achieve their lived-in quality. 

At this year’s Academy Awards, Bellizzi earned her first nomination for Best Costume Design. In the lead-up to awards season, Monocle’s Annelise Maynard spoke with Bellizzi to discuss her route into costume design, what changes – and what doesn’t – when moving to a production of this magnitude, and which costume from Marty Supreme she thinks might become the film’s defining image. 

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity. Listen to the full conversation on Monocle on Fashion. 

Many people might not know that you began your career in fashion media, working at ‘Details’ and ‘Vice’. How did that experience inform your approach to costume design?
When I moved to New York more than 20 years ago I had this big dream of working in fashion. I started my first internship at Details, assisting the editors. That was my introduction to men’s fashion. I then moved to Vice at a time when they were very anti-fashion. They came at fashion from a photojournalism approach, which opened my eyes to how fashion captures stories. When people ask me how I got here, I feel like that’s not the normal approach of how you get into costume design. When I left Vice I was making small independent films with friends in New York. I remember my first small film. I used all my own clothes, worked with friends, had no budget and wasn’t getting paid. I think about those years and how informative they were to my career now. 

You’ve worked with the Safdie brothers before on ‘Good Time’ and ‘Uncut Gems’ but ‘Marty Supreme’ operates on a completely different scale. Not only was it A24’s highest-budget film, it has now become its highest-grossing release. Did stepping into something of that magnitude change your process?
Marty Supreme is Josh [Safdie] and I’s third feature together over the course of 10 years. We have this spirit – it’s like Marty’s spirit – in the way that we approach films. You see it in the way that it’s presented; you have to go into it head-on. The stakes were higher, and there were more cooks in the kitchen, but really it’s the same approach that we had for Good Time and Uncut Gems. 

The costumes have this beautifully lived-in feel. How did you achieve that and why was it essential? 
Ageing the pieces was super important to us. In period films it’s a big pet peeve of [Josh Safdie’s and mine] when you see that everything is brand new. It was really important to make sure that everything was lived in. Having the support of a team experienced in working on period films really helped me because I don’t know everything. I had an incredible MTO (Made-to-Order) and ager/dryer team. It was tricky because when you’re using vintage from rental houses, you can’t ruin the beautifully preserved clothes from the 1930s and 1940s. They’re very delicate, so ageing the pieces was out of the question. We decided to build a lot of [the clothes] ourselves so that we could break the costumes down.

​​When we first meet Kay Stone (Gwyneth Paltrow), she feels muted and unhappy in her life. But by the end, whether for better or worse, she’s found a new vigour through Marty’s youth and passion, represented by the red cape gown. What choices did you make in curating this evolution, and what fashion houses or figures informed Kay’s style?
Kay was a 1930s film star but we meet her 20 years later. I wanted to showcase what it was like to be a woman at that time. I wanted to show what it would be like to be in her marriage and how to keep up as a socialite in New York. She’s dead inside and so she begins in these muted black and whites. In the 1950s there were so many new designers – Dior, Givenchy and Balenciaga. For me it was about considering someone that was aware of these changes in fashion but kept it understated as an older woman. Marlene Dietrich and Grace Kelly were big inspirations for me. Meeting Marty brought colour back into her world a little bit. I [showed that] with colour theory and fabric but also in the silhouettes. I wanted to keep her very sophisticated.

And then with Marty, there’s obviously so much going on with his character. His clothes are often a bit too big, almost like a boy performing his masculinity. For such a complex character, how do you capture that reach, that pretence, in his costumes?
Showing Marty’s reach and pretence was the biggest challenge when designing his costumes. Considering how we could show these qualities without overdoing it, in much more subtle ways. I selected styles mainly from the early-to-mid 1940s, the jackets were longer, the shoulder pads were bigger and the pants were wider. I wanted things to look ill-fitted. We made the sleeves and the body of the shirts larger so that they’d billow more. It was also about what a person like Marty would have realistically bought in the neighbourhood. He’s not shopping at the best places. I wanted it to feel like he had his own sense of style, without it being overly stylised. 

Your work on previous Safdie films has created instantly iconic looks. Do you have a sense of which costume might endure as the defining image of this film? 
There are so many characters in this film so it’s really tough to choose one look. When I think about what will be the defining costumes of this film, I think about Rachel (Odessa A’zion) but it’s Marty’s suits that are really the look of Marty Supreme. I go back and forth between the brown one and the grey one. Ultimately it’s the culmination of all of the characters and how they come together that makes the world of the film so vibrant, but also real. Having glimpses of all these different worlds within Marty’s world was very important. 

You are nominated for your first Academy Award for Best Costume Design. How does it feel? 
It’s interesting because when I think about costume design, I usually think about the fantastical types of films. My work on Marty Supreme – being deeply rooted in hyper reality – feels a bit different. I think about some of the other women who are up for nominations, such as Kate [Hawley] for her dresses in Frankenstein that are just so unbelievably beautiful. It feels surreal to be compared to all these other films and their costumes. It’s very cool to be recognised, and having so many people resonate and be inspired by this film and the costumes.

Pretty much every headline that has heralded Nepal’s new prime minister, Balendra Shah, has referred to him as a “rapper”. This is not inaccurate – he owed his early prominence to his prowess on the mic – but it is a little misleading. More pertinently, if less picturesquely, Shah is also an impressively qualified structural engineer, and has served a stint as mayor of Kathmandu. 

The emphasis on Shah’s career in hip hop – Nephop, as the local variant is known – is mostly an attention-seeking device employed by headline writers for global news outlets wearily aware that Nepalese election results do not usually rivet the passing scroller. But there is an implication of frivolous novelty, a suggestion that we should be amused and/or horrified that a mere “rapper” has been chosen to lead a nation.

The transition from rapper to prime minister is not necessarily as incongruous as it might seem. If nothing else, “successful rapper” is a more convincing résumé for a candidate for high office than “serially bankrupt real estate huckster and failed casino proprietor turned game show host”. There is an overlapping skill set between the rapper and the politician. Both need some command of rhetoric. Both need to be able to hold a crowd. Both require expertise in distilling complexity into punchy, memorable phrases. 
     
And Shah is not the first. His most obvious kindred spirit is the Ugandan rapper Bobi Wine, who was elected to parliament in 2017 and ran for president in 2021 and 2026, losing both to interminably serving incumbent Yoweri Museveni, amid plausible claims of dodgy dealing, including repeated arrests of Wine – who has been in hiding since casting his vote in January. Elsewhere in Africa, Tanzanian rapper Professor Jay, prominent practitioner of the local genre known as bongo flava, served a term as MP for Mikumi. Julius Malema, combustible figurehead of South Africa’s Economic Freedom Fighters, is not a recording artist as such, but his rallies regularly feature call-and-response chants: much to the discomfort of his opponents, these are very much not of the wave-your-hands-in-the-air-like-you-just-don’t-care variety.
    
At least two rappers have sought their homeland’s very highest office. The artist formerly known as Kanye West ran for the presidency of the US in 2020, and received 66,641 votes across the 12 states where he got on the ballot. Wyclef Jean attempted to run for president of Haiti in 2010 but was disqualified for failing to meet residency requirements. That election was won by another musician – Michel Martelly, who, under the name Sweet Micky, had been a huge star of the Haitian dance music known as kompa. In power he proved, regrettably, both a thug and a crook, a gangster politically if not musically.
     
Rappers who enter politics might reasonably observe that far more politicians have attempted to rap. This usually occurs in mercifully brief bursts when the office holder or office seeker in question is attempting to demonstrate their down-ness with the kids – but at least one has taken it more seriously. Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov, former president of Turkmenistan (now Chairman of the People’s Council of that eccentric central Asian nation after handing the job off to his son), has occasionally released videos of his self-composed hip hop stylings, which have been of a quality you can really only get away with in a country where laughing at the head of state is punishable by a stretch on the salt piles. Justin Trudeau, former prime minister of Canada, has appeared in a rap video, though he has the excuse of parental obligation, the artist in question being his son Xavier, who trades as Xav.
     
It is no more or less absurd for a rapper to be prime minister or president than it is for any other type of performer. As long as people insist that their politics be entertaining, entertainers will prosper in politics. It doesn’t even have to be a bad thing: the greatest national leader of our age also voiced Paddington Bear and won the Ukrainian version of Dancing With The Stars. The test is always how well any given troubadour, jester or harlequin adjusts from the dramatic, simplistic sloganeering of the rebel outsider to the minutiae, nuance and drudgery of government. NWA did not urge “Reform The Police”; Public Enemy did not implore fans to “Legally Seek and Then Judiciously Exercise The Power”.

Andrew Mueller is a contributing editor at Monocle. For more opinion, analysis and insight, subscribe to Monocle today.

If you were to look up at the Finnish firmament over Joensuu and see a large, shiny silver object floating silently through the air, you could be forgiven for thinking that you’ve seen a UFO. Though it looks like a product of extraterrestrial fabrication, it is simply an airship developed by Finland-based company Kelluu to gather high-resolution data over vast areas. Measuring 12 metres in length, these high flyers hark back to the Zeppelins of the early-20th century, though they combine the precision of drones with the scale of satellites.

Hydrogen-powered fuel cells keep the airships aloft for long periods of time, even in extreme cold – such as a recent trip over Lapland at minus 30C – and all while delivering scalable, high-quality data that has drawn Nato’s attention. Joensuu’s proximity to the Russian border means Kelluu regularly contends with signal jamming and spoofing. The result is a fleet designed to operate reliably even in heavily contested electronic environments.

The company was co-founded by Jiri Jormakka, who previously ran a software business and developed a deep interest in aviation. Yet it was the challenge of merging hardware, software and operational logistics that truly drew him in and led to him setting up Kelluu. Jormakka joined Monocle to discuss the company’s airborne technology and why its silent, hovering presence has caught the attention of conspiracy theorists.

This conversation has been edited for clarity and length.

When I hear of airships, I think of the Second World War or 20th-century blimps that soared above sporting events. Tell us a bit about how Kelluu’s airships differ from those Zeppelins of old.
Technically, the term we use is unmanned. They are like drones but they use lighter-than-air tech to stay up, and they are 12 metres long. So compared to a fixed or multi-computer drone, they’re big, but if you take an airship that was used 100 years ago, they’re small.

As hydrogen is lighter than air, what does that mean in terms of range and reliability? 
Because we use hydrogen as a lifting gas [and as a power source], we are not using any energy to stay up. We use energy only if we move or stay in one location when there’s wind. This gives us extremely long operational flight hours. We are also not using batteries as a main power source but with the hydrogen fuel cells we can do missions in extremely cold weather. 

What floats to mind are the incredible applications this would have from, say, a military or defence perspective. But I guess there are so many others, such as infrastructure or environmental monitoring. That must be one of the great selling points.
Exactly. What our tech actually can do better than others is that it enables a super-accurate digital model of the world. We are basically doing aerial photography in the same way drones do: we are close to the object ground surface, so we get really high-quality data. Unlike drones, our airships have the quality to stay up for an extremely long time and therefore provide the most accurate data.

What led you to start this company? 
I have a sports background and a business education. I had a software business earlier and I knew a bit about aviation. But in the beginning we only had the idea, so I needed to be simple and dumb enough to not know everything. If I had known how hard this would be, maybe I wouldn’t have done it.

Almost every entrepreneur that I speak to on this programme says something along the lines of ‘my naivety is a superpower’. Does naivety help because you can ask questions that a veteran of this sector wouldn’t think to ask?
That might be true. Now we have really good professionals working at Kelluu, and we’re scaling up rapidly.

Talk to me about manufacturing. Does Kelluu own the whole process from supply chain to delivery?
It’s a service. We decided to build and operate the system, collect data and process the data. It’s our turnkey solution because on the civilian side customers don’t want to buy anything that moves or is a machine, they only want the information. On the defence side, they want to buy actual things [such as hardware].

Let’s talk about Arctic security, because Finland has a very long border with Russia. This technology must be increasingly valuable in terms of monitoring. What kind of role are you playing, or hoping to play, in that space?
We are a Nato Diana Phase 2 company, so we’ve been working with Nato and defence for a few years now. As to what is happening across the border: I see it as multi-layered, in the sense that you need information from different layers including space, high altitude (aeroplanes and so on), lower altitude (drones), fixed wing and then ground layer. We are really good at low altitude – below cloud level – and Arctic conditions. That is our niche area.

You have a marketing hat as well. Do you have to go back to basics when you’re selling this product?
The best-case scenario is that I can show, not tell. We are deploying our capabilities across the EU right now and even North America. It helps that people are seeing what we can do, and seeing our data feed and how it helps the end users in different nations. I hope lighter-than-air will come back and will play its part in the big Nato picture.

Where could this technology go at a greater scale? The loads are relatively modest in terms of what these airships can carry. But what about other potential civilian deployments? Could they be a mobility solution down the track?
These are mass manufacturable and we are building more all the time. They are emission-free, a really cost-efficient way to have assets in the air and collect data worldwide. The plan is that we will build hundreds of thousands of these and it will help the whole of humankind to understand what direction Earth is going in. So far this is the best way to collect super-high-quality data from large areas.

What about integration in broader civil-aviation infrastructure? There are big narratives about drone interference around commercial aircraft operations, for example. How does Kelluu fit into and work with those existing frameworks?
Our headquarters and factories are located just next to the Russian border in Finland. So we have 24/7 free GNSS [Global Navigation Satellite System] timing, and that’s where we are doing all the R&D. It’s safe to say that we are GNSS resilient when we are operating. So I hope that we will be part of a nationwide aerial survey solution in which unmanned aviation and manned aviation can co-operate to provide information on different things.

The aircraft have a spaceship vibe about them. Do you hear from people thinking that they’ve seen a UFO? 
The airship floats so it’s super silent and it moves differently compared to drones or fixed-wing assets. So yes we have some UFO action happening. There’s all kinds of video footage, rumours on X and on Reddit from people who don’t know what they have seen. I’m sure that we are the most famous UFO company from Finland.

Listen to the full conversation on ‘The Entrepreneurs’. 

Read more about the airship industry.

“Shall we go for a little walk? Grab a coffee nearby?” he asked. It sounded like a perfect start to a sunny Saturday in March. After all, we’d both earned it. He’d already been up and at it for a few hours while I’d stayed out far too late on a school night. Nevertheless, we were both in position at 08.50 sharp on an upper floor at the Embassy of Canada to Japan and for the next 40 minutes it was Monocle in conversation with prime minister Mark Carney. (If you’d like to watch, listen or read one of the leader’s biggest sit-downs since taking office, be our guest. But if you’d prefer to flip through an extended version with some added tips for brand Canada, you can subscribe or pre-order the April issue here.) 

I’ve known Carney since he was governor at the Bank of England and as his friend for the better part of a decade it was an added bonus to wander the back streets of Akasaka, enjoying a coffee in the sunshine and watching him greet visiting Canadians and local Japanese who wanted a photo or to simply say thank you. While I’ve always felt Canadian (despite a strong Estonian upbringing and living in Europe for more than 30 years), I can’t say that I’ve been particularly proud of late. There have been a few moments of pop culture and brand greatness that gave a nudge of patriotism and perhaps the first 10 days of Justin Trudeau felt promising – but it has been a lacklustre run for Canada despite all that it has going for it.

When I went to visit the PM shortly after he took up residence at Rideau Cottage early last summer (the country is in dire need of a new official residence but Carney has done a decent job with this family-sized fixer-upper), you could tell that things were about to change – or better yet, tighten up. Out went the comedy socks and footwear with Trudeau. Gone too are the poorly cut suits and weird ties. Carney is cutting a proper dash around the world (how fitting that he features across six pages in our April style issue) as he not only shows up for summits looking the part but dazzles with the quality of his speeches and conversation. For sure it’s important to be judged on what is said, agreed and delivered but Canada has been in need of a leader who shows up looking presentable and knows what’s required to host, impress and build bonds.

Canada is starting to rekindle dormant relationships and reboot areas that were closest to being defunct. To be sure, the task of sharpening brand Canada is considerable but thankfully the resources are bountiful and the human capital formidable. From aviation manufacturing (Bombardier) to agriculture, payment platforms (Shopify) and cranking out the hits (Shania, The Weeknd, Celine, Mendes, Alanis, Drake, Bublé), there are plenty of global brands that might want to shout a bit louder and not allow themselves to be mistaken for hailing from south of the border. Likewise, young Canadians need to get out into the world for years and not weeks, to build international experience and networks to match. If Carney can secure a majority government in the coming months and govern with confidence, then Canada has a handsome future ahead. Cheers to meeting and greeting the world pressed, polished and on point.

Enjoying life in ‘The Faster Lane’? Click here to browse all of Tyler’s past columns.