Monocle Weekend
Edition: Saturday

Start the weekend right with Australia’s latest brekkie banger, you’ll need the fuel for the Monocle Concierge’s Southeast Asian art tour and our look into New York’s steamy street aesthetic. Then we talk shop with fashion designer Gabriella Hearst and reel off the films that should be on your January watchlist. Setting things in motion is our editor in chief, Andrew Tuck.

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The online form asks you to input your country of residence and – though the airline, ferry company or visa office must have a pretty good idea where you are from (hello geolocation) – it instead offers you a very democratic alphabetised list of nations always beginning with “Afghanistan” (this must be one of the few times that having a Kabul address makes life so much easier. But I’ll hold off house hunting for now).

So you scroll away looking for “United Kingdom”, except it’s not next to the United Arab Emirates where you had hoped to spot it nestling. Perhaps it will be listed as “Great Britain”, or “England” or do you need to look for Reino Unido or Royaume-Uni? If you are from the UK, there are times when you have to resort to reading the list line by line to find out how your nation’s name has been secreted away.

Then comes the part that breaks the spirit: whizzing the digital dial through the ages to locate the year of your birth. My finger aches after the increasingly long period of time travel now required to return to whence I came. You have to avoid dialling away too ambitiously, however, otherwise you’re suddenly in an epoch when Queen Victoria was on the throne. One more shove and the country of origin may as well be “Roman Britain”.

This year, however, I won’t be scrolling back through time quite as far as I had feared. On my birthday the topic of age came up over lunch and it turns out that somewhere along the way I had added an extra year to my grand total. My partner – a man annoyingly at peace with everything, accumulating age included – kindly jumped in to correct me as I wailed and sobbed over the tapas (well, almost). How about that for a good birthday present?

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This year the return to the office, if not work, was delayed. In short, I took some extra days in Mallorca as the other half needed to abandon me and the dog for a trip to the US and I didn’t want to do the epic drive to London solo (plus the dog is rubbish at navigating). And, so, I lingered.

I went to see the Three Kings, Los Reyes Magos, arrive by boat in Palma (the following day, 6 January, is when many children here get their presents) and the subsequent carnival parade through the city. I went for evening runs as the skyline was blushed pink by the setting sun and I took the dog for her beach swims. Friends in Palma were back at work but still up for a drink, a coffee. The privileges of a different routine. Of life in another place.

But perhaps what’s hardest to leave is the light and winter warmth. It has been about 18C most days, blue skies throughout and the sun doesn’t set until almost 18.00 (London is dark just gone 16.00). Maybe that’s another sign of age but light now changes everything – it pulls you outdoors, out of yourself.

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One of the final tasks was to take Macy to the vet to get her post-Brexit paperwork sorted so that she could re-enter the UK. The appointment was with the same vet who first spotted her cancer last summer and set us on a treatment course that has kept her alive and by our side. He’s great and I thanked him profusely. He was impressed at how Macy had recovered, especially from the tumour that was removed from the shoulder along with a chunk of bone. “Most surgeons would have just removed the leg. I think that’s what we would have done,” he said as he bent down to gently stroke her still-attached limb. The dog’s head swivelled and she gave me a look that said, “Come on, it’s time to leave.” And so we have.

Tucked away on London’s Clerkenwell, esteemed Italian restaurant Luca is easing you into the new year with an act of generosity. Throughout January, it’s offering free coffee and sweet treats from 07.45 to 09.45, Tuesday to Thursday, in its cosy bar, now transformed into the Reading Room.

It’s going to be a screen-free zone with a collection of books on poetry, art and design to peruse and – since Monocle believes in a moment of morning calm – is supporting the breakfast with supplies of our newspapers, magazines and even our editors, who will be in occasional attendance. Starting on Tuesday 14 January, it’s all on a first-come, first-served basis, so get in early to ensure your piece of morning calm.
luca.restaurant.com

In 1993 a Sydney chef, the late Bill Granger, resisted the temptation to slice an avocado (writes Callum McDermott). Instead, he mashed it, spread it on a slice of toast and crowned it with a pair of poached eggs. The reception was rapturous. Soon enough, “smashed avo” and the other key players in the Granger repertoire – corn fritters and ricotta hotcakes – had spread to café menus around Australia. These brunch innovations, and the country’s sparkling reputation for excellent coffee, combined to create the blueprint for the Australian cafés that are now ubiquitous worldwide.

Recently, however, Australian cafés have a new top-seller: breakfast plates. Rather than being one cohesively cooked dish, breakfast plates are an elegantly arranged assemblage of foods. Toast is always present, as is a protein – generally ham, saucisson or house-cured fish. Cheese, boiled eggs, pickles and house-fermented vegetables are frequent guest stars too. Aussies, it appears, have redesigned the smorgasbord.

In the wrong hands, a breakfast plate smacks of motley laziness – a well branded but hastily assembled fridge-raid. But when it’s taken seriously, and the plate’s constituent elements are in delicious consonance, it becomes much greater than the sum of its parts.

In Melbourne, the breakfast plate is the signature dish at buzzy newcomers such as Sunhands and Florian, even infiltrating the menus of long-running institutions, including Napier Quarter. At Noon in Sydney’s Manly, your plate arrives garlanded with slithers of house-cured ocean trout and hunks of hempseed bread. Across the harbour at Kaska, the best-selling breakfast is a ploughman’s lunch.

This countrywide avocado exodus is as transgressive as it is tasty. But Australia wrote the rules of modern breakfast – so perhaps it has earned the right to break them.

The Monocle Concierge is our purveyor of top tips and delectable recommendations for your next trip. If you’re planning to go somewhere nice and would like some advice, click here. We will publish one answer each week.

Dear Concierge,

In Friday’s The Monocle Minute you described Japan’s booming art market – where else in Asia would you recommend for an art lover’s escapade?

Thank you,
Michael,
London

Dear Michael,

At the start of every year the art world’s attention turns to Asia as Singapore and Hong Kong hold trade fairs in January and March respectively. However, as globally significant as both shows are, my tip for 2025 is an alternative itinerary that will allow you to discover what the rest of the region has to offer. February’s Art Fair Philippines is a standout favourite. The country’s unique blend of Asian, European and American influences produces some of the continent’s best contemporary artists.

From one Southeast Asian capital having a big moment to another: Bangkok. Depending on the time of your trip, you could be one of the first to see the soon-to-open Khao Yai Art Forest. Sculptors and land artists from Japan, Colombia and Italy are descending on this former tapioca plantation, a three-hour drive north of the Thai capital, to create site-specific works that respond to the rural environment. There’s a refreshing earthiness to this gallery and Mother Nature has as much of a hand in its curatorial programme as its founding director, Stefano Rabolli Pansera.

Try to visit in the dry season if you can. Pansera, a former Hauser & Wirth executive, compares the site’s preparatory work during 2024’s monsoon season to Oliver Stone’s muddy Vietnam War epic Platoon. And if you still need convincing, keep your eyes peeled for our exclusive coverage in the magazine.

While art fairs and design weeks bring cities an added buzz, it is institutions such as Bangkok Kunsthalle – housed in a former Chinatown printing house – that enhance daily cultural life. Considering a Richard Nonas exhibition opened yesterday, the Concierge’s weekend plans are set. For though the art markets in Thailand and the Philippines remain burgeoning, these countries’ art scenes are brimming with creative energy.

For more travel tips and insights, reach out to theMonocle Conciergeor, better yet,subscribe.

New York street style has long been the muse of the fashion industry (writes Henry Rees-Sheridan). Street photography blogs such as Scott Schuman’s The Sartorialist accelerated this effect in the 2000s; in the 2010s, the two worlds merged when the runway embraced elevated streetwear brands such as Hood by Air.

Particularly in the winter months, there’s one New York street-style icon that has turned heads without concession to the runway for more than a century: the steam plumes that rise from the city’s roads and sidewalks.

Introduced as a subterranean-heating mechanism by the New York Steam Company in 1882, visible steam vapour is caused by a leak in the system or by cooler water (such as rain) contacting the outside of a steam pipe.

Over the decades the steam has settled on a capsule wardrobe of three basic looks. The most stripped-back of these is when it emerges from a manhole cover. In this guise, the steam is understated yet impossible to ignore. The look is a modest one, with the steam drawing as much attention to the manhole cover – an underappreciated piece of street furniture – as to itself. Often situated in the middle of carriageways, the steam imparts a cinematic mystique to the vehicles that drive through it.

But some New Yorkers crave more intimate contact with this trendsetter. Luckily for them, the vapour’s second look, coming up from grates in the sidewalk, gives passersby an opportunity to get steamy without breaking their stride.

For the design of the steam’s final and most eye-catching pose, we can thank Con Edison, which took control of the city’s steam system in 1954. At three metres tall, these statuesque orange-and-white hooped stacks send out an “I’m too hot to handle” message.

Responsible for heating some of the city’s most iconic buildings, including the Empire State Building and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the steam system saves skyscrapers from having to sport chimneys of their own – a saving grace for New York’s skyline. So whatever you think of its style, the city’s street-level steam is a look in more ways than one – even at 143 years old.

New York-based Gabriela Hearst is the founder and creative director of her eponymous fashion label. The Uruguayan designer has set a new industry standard and has come to represent modern American luxury. She caught up with Monocle on Fashion to talk about her creative process, prioritising sustainable manufacturing practices and investing in physical retail.

Can you walk us through the process of creating a collection?
I trust the path that I am shown and the coincidences that guide me to where I have to go. It’s a journey of weaving something and the more I go down that rabbit hole, the more I notice why I am going there: to empower women. It’s like a dance between the heart and the mind.

How significant is it for a business to prioritise sustainable manufacturing practices?
When you put the environment first, you can grow in a better way. It is a false narrative that it costs too much, that it’s too complicated and that you cannot grow if you do things the right way. To be conscious of waste is cost-efficient and environmentally friendly. We aim to cut any excess and strip pieces down to the bare minimum while still offering a luxurious experience. It’s more about changing the elements and questioning how things are done.

Is it worth investing in physical retail?
Absolutely. The type of product I want to create is high calibre, meaning that I aim for the best products and ingredients I can get my hands on. In monetary terms, the only way to do this is by operating mostly physical retail – the margins are better and buyers can feel the clothes.

Our full conversation with Gabriela Hearst is available onApple Podcasts, Spotifyand onthe Monocle website. While you’re at it, don’t forget tosubscribe. Have a super Saturday.