Issues

The Monocle Design Awards 2023: All 50 winners

1.
Tidiest two-wheeler
Kalk & by Cake, Sweden

“I was a motorcycle hater,” says Stefan Ytterborn. That is, before the Swedish entrepreneur tried a few electric ones and got so hooked that he decided to design his own. Cake’s first model, Kalk, put competitors to shame with a design weighing 40 per cent less than the average motorbike. In 2021 Cake started shipping out Kalk &, an upgrade engineered for both commutes and off-road escapades. “During the week you ride the bike from home to work, and during the weekend you bring it out to the countryside,” says Ytterborn. “It’s something to use every day.”
ridecake.com

2.
Sharpest shooter
Leica M6, Germany

Ditch your dslr or smartphone because shooting on film is well and truly back, following German manufacturer Leica’s relaunch of its iconic M6 analogue film camera. Designed in the 1980s, it still feels contemporary, thanks to its compact size and quiet shutter. As per Leica tradition, the new models will be handmade in Germany. The likes of Bruce Davidson, William Klein and Nan Goldin have all shot with the camera, meaning that any user is at least heading in the right direction when it comes to taking masterful photographs.
leica-camera.com

3.
Best at going green
Urban Farming Office by VTN Architects, Vietnam

Vietnam is one of the world’s rapidly developing economies and hyper-urban Ho Chi Minh City bustles with new skyscrapers and building projects, meaning that designers need to find savvy ways to introduce greenery into a growing concrete jungle. For an example of how to do this well, look to Urban Farming Office by vtn Architects. Its concrete frame is wrapped in vines, palms and trees, blanketing the building’s southern walls. Tucked in behind these larger plants is a vertical farm of local and organic herbs, fruits and vegetables that are planted in modular boxes that can be easily shifted around for sowing and harvesting. A rainwater-irrigation system feeds the greenery, which provides a pleasant microclimate and leafy shade for the open-plan offices inside, reducing the need for energy-intensive air conditioning. The project is an outstanding showcase of beauty and practicality, with vtn Architects eschewing the typically ornamental nature of outdoor green walls in favour of greenery that not only improves the building’s sustainability credentials but provides produce for its tenants too.
vtnarchitects.net

4.
Best in the bathroom
Roca Nu tap, Spain

This collection of taps, designed by Valencian studio Inma Bermúdez for Spain’s Roca, includes three different handles – pin, dome and striped – attached to the thinnest possible body and plumbing connections for both space efficiency and to cut down on any unnecessary material usage. Available in six colours, the bold shapes will inject a sense of style and joy into any bathroom.
roca.com

5.
Best boat
Toy 36 Fly by Toymarine, Italy

Yacht design today often leaves us cold with styling that strays from maritime references and cabins that mimic the interiors of a Manhattan loft. Ligurian boatyard Toy Marine has found the right formula with its chic range of day cruisers that update the silhouette of Maine lobster boats from the 1930s with a touch of Italian flair. Its newest addition to the fleet, the Toy 36 Fly, is no exception. A natural evolution of the boatyard’s classic 36-footer (11 metres), the new launch features a second wheelhouse on the fly to offer a wider field of view and make navigating tricky coastlines easier. “It’s a classic design with a lot of appeal that never goes out of fashion,” says Toy Marine co-founder Aldo Tomasina. The versatility of the boat is also a draw, with owners able to use it as an overnight cruiser, a tender to support superyachts or as fast commuters to arrive at the office in style.
toymarine.it

6.
Best boutique
Asaru Studio, Singapore

Asaru means “to forage”, which captures this shop’s approach. Bonsais and volcanic rock furnish the space, with steam rising from bamboo baskets in which wagashi (Japanese confectionery) is warmed. Owners Hui Shan Pang and Vincent Teng receive customers as guests, blurring the line between retail and hospitality.
asarustudio.com

7.
Best for the terrace
Crate by Rietveld Originals 3 Hay, The Netherlands

In 1934, Dutch designer Gerrit Rietveld built a furniture collection from wooden shipping crates that was honest and affordable. The collection has now been revived thanks to Rietveld Originals and Denmark’s Hay. Solid pine, treated with a water-based lacquer, the crate’s lounge chairs are equally comfortable indoors or out.
rietveldoriginals.com

8.
Best community connector
Mobile Makers, US

Mobile Makers is the brainchild of architect Maya Bird-Murphy who, with a small team, visits schools and hosts workshops in underserved communities in Chicago with a colourful truck retrofitted as a design studio and learning laboratory on wheels. The team’s aim? “It’s broad: it’s about giving kids life skills,” says Bird-Murphy. “A teenager who comes through Mobile Makers, and can now work a bandsaw, can get a job in a carpenters’ workshop. Others might just realise that design is fun.” This ambition is a reminder that raising the profile of design and educating young people about architecture can have an effect beyond simply enticing people to work in the profession.
mobilemakers.org

9.
Best small gallery
Denis Goldberg House by Noero Architects, South Africa

Designing an art and education centre in Cape Town dedicated to anti-apartheid activist Denis Goldberg is no small task. But architect Jo Noero, who knew the late Goldberg personally, tried to capture what he would have wanted architecturally. “Denis was trained as a civil engineer. He was very straightforward and he hated luxury,” says Noero, who used basic materials that could be manipulated to appear luxurious. The result is a collection of mostly white buildings that are a shining showcase of how to make the simple feel glorious.
noeroarchitects.com

10.
Best ecological effort
Grand Junction Park and Plaza by David Rubin Land Collective, US

This new park near Indianapolis used to flood during heavy rain before it was stabilised. “With a riparian corridor of plants, there is a system in place to handle overflow, making this a far more resilient area,” says Land Collective founder David Rubin.
land-collective.com

11.
Top restoration effort
Ipiranga Museum by H1F Arquitetos, Brazil

Built on the site where Brazil’s independence from Portugal was declared in 1822, this museum has been renovated by São Paulo-based studio h1f Arquitetos. The outcome is an expansion and restoration effort that allows existing features, such as the museum’s iconic façade, to reatin pride of place.
hf.arq.br

12.
Best in timber
Küng Holzbau by Seiler Linhart Architects, Switzerland

The office and gallery for Swiss timber company Küng Holzbau is made from moon wood (timber cut in winter just before the new moon rises). Stephan Küng, second-generation woodworker and co-owner, says that it’s more resistant: “There’s no metal, no glue, no chemical building materials. It’s just pure, solid, moon wood.”
seilerlinhart.ch

13.
Leading wayfinding
Collingwood Yards by The Company You Keep, Australia

This arts precinct is always in flux, so it needed a flexible brand and wayfinding system. The Company You Keep collaborated with designer Jordan Rowe and type specialist Vincent Chan of Matter of Sorts to create a system of screw-on nameplates and wayfinding signage for easy updating. The result is practical, versatile and sleek.
tcyk.com.au

14.
Leading editorial design
Studio Joost Grootens, The Netherlands

Joost Grootens is one of the world’s best book designers, as proved by his studio’s collaboration with Dutch Van Dale Publishers on the 16th edition and 150th anniversary of the Big Dictionary of the Dutch Language. The attention to detail in the three volumes extends to the colour palette used for idioms on page: a warm grey for technical information, blue for etymology and pink for illustrations that deepen the understanding of language. In a world that relies on the internet, flicking through a beautifully designed book can offer more than definitions; it’s a beautiful reading experience too.
joostgrootens.nl

15.
Top temporary activation
Mané Market by Bloco Arquitetos, Brazil

Built for the Pan American games in 2007, this structure was out of use prior to the intervention of Brasilia-based studio Bloco Arquitetos, which was founded by Daniel Mangabeira , Henrique Coutinho and Matheus Seco. The firm has transformed the site into the Mercado Mané, an open-air food market with a stunning canopy, breezy interiors and lots of green space. Global sporting events and conventions can leave white elephants in host cities but this is a reminder that sites post-event – or ones waiting for a new build – don’t necessarily have to sit empty.
bloco.arq.br

16.
Best in brick
Localworks, Uganda

Kampala-based architecture practice Localworks has mastered the use of materials native to their sites, including bricks made from local clay. Bricks can ground a project in its location and also helps to create buildings that, according to the team, “virtually don’t age, despite their dusty or muddy environments”.
localworks.ug

17.
Preferred production company
Shelter, Australia

Tired of the dull ubiquity of home renovation-focused television programmes, entrepreneurs and design enthusiasts Dustin and Camille Clare established Shelter, an Australian streaming service devoted to the celebration of good design. Since launching in 2020, the network has broadened its scope beyond its initial antipodean focus with an impressive and acclaimed line-up of original programming, covering everything from urban renewal public projects in Mexico City to remote cabins in Australia (pictured). There’s also a tight roster of curated series and films, including glossy retrospectives on titans such as Renzo Piano and Zaha Hadid, debates on the future of prefab housing and dispatches on design’s emerging luminaries. The result is a streaming service that fits an important gap in the market. It’s why we’re tuning in.
watch.shelter.stream

18.
Best new showroom
V-Zug showroom in Paris, France

The challenge with conventional kitchen showrooms is that you can’t actually use the appliances on display – unless of course you’re visiting a space run by Swiss firm V-Zug. Its new outpost in Paris showcases a range of the Swiss company’s premium appliances, including impressive mirror-glassed combi-steamer cookers. Yet the studio offers more than sleek displays: it hosts regular lunchtime cooking workshops run by chefs that allow guests to see the appliances in action and actually use them too, all while also learning to cook. It’s a recipe for success that more retailers should follow.
vzug.com

19.
Best restaurant design
Brutus by Sandra Tarruella Interioristas, Spain

In a confident nod to brutalism, designer Sandra Tarruella has taken the bare bones of this structure in Palma de Mallorca – a waffle-slab concrete ceiling, weathered cement columns, exposed bricks and pipes – and transformed them into features. The gridded ceiling becomes a clever magnifier of downlights, while warmth emanates from the smaller details. But what truly gives this restaurant a sense of warmth and movement is the open kitchen, against the back wall, where the food spectacle comes alive atop a stone benchtop that appears almost like a stage.
tarruellainterioristas.com

20.
Best brand collaboration
Odakyu Railway saké by Agnavi, Japan

Food and drink start-up Agnavi and its Ichi-Go- Can brand now sell limited-edition saké produced by makers around the Odakyu Railway lines, with cans designed to look like trains. It’s a perfect partnership between contents and packaging.
ichi-go-can.jp

21.
Outstanding outdoor effort
Chop by Philippe Malouin for Hem, Sweden

The Chop collection – which includes chairs and tables in a range of finishes – is built to last, yet light enough to stack and move around, making it a flexible and winning outdoor set.
hem.com, philippemalouin.com

22.
Best in the kitchen
Tinyküche, Switzerland

Kitchens and small spaces can lead to a mishmash of dysfunctional furniture – a problem that Swiss firm Tinyküche’s free-standing kitchenette solves. Created by Swiss designer Stefan Senn in collaboration with industrial designer Robert Pludra, the kitchenettes are manufactured in Basel by Senn’s furniture company Wohn Geist and his five-person team. The versatile modular design allows for customisation and can include a stove, oven and other appliances, making it a perfect fit for a variety of spaces. Available in two sizes and several natural finishes, Tinyküche integrates all the features necessary for easy cooking in a compact space. In fact, it does this so effectively that we wouldn’t blame anyone for downsizing their kitchen just to install one.
tinykueche.ch

23.
Best playspace
Tophane Park by Carve, Turkey

This playground in Istanbul’s Tophane Park taps into traditional Turkish craftsmanship. Amsterdam-based design studio Carve used local materials and integrated stone-carving and wood-carpentry techniques to make a sculpted play area.
carv.nl

24.
Most practical tool
Replica 1897 by Victorinox, Switzerland

Celebrating the 125th anniversary of Victorinox’s Swiss Army Knife, this model features the same tools with certain specifications updated (such as a stainless steel blade). It’s hard to improve on a classic but this proves that it’s possible.
victorinox.com

Still lifes: Benjamin Swanson

In focus

Model: Takayuki Suzuki
Hair and make-up: Hiroki Kojima
Styling: Kyoko Tamoto

Greek revival

Athens is rapidly becoming a prominent creative centre, as young Greeks increasingly choose to return home from overseas and take over family businesses, rather than chase opportunities abroad. Equally, expats in search of a higher quality of life have been putting down roots in a city where there is sunshine all year, lively nightlife and a lower cost of living than in many other major European centres.

This new wave of Athenians is helping to secure the future of long-standing family businesses, as well as setting up new fashion labels and creative studios offering fresh perspectives on Greek design. Believers in the value of responsible manufacturing, these designers are sourcing fabrics in Greece and collaborating with the city’s historic artisan workshops, which, until recently, had been struggling with dwindling demand. Now orders are on the rise and those visiting Athens have more opportunity to engage with local craft and new fashion names. Here, in the first of a new series, Monocle rounds up some of the best locally produced labels to discover on your next trip.

1.
Utility players
Ruben Bansie

Working exclusively with Athens’ House of Shila, artist Ruben Bansie created a line of unisex shirts for the new hotel group, handmade using fabrics sourced in the city. The linen La Camargue shirt features neat lines and an oversized workman’s fit, contrasted with bold hems and stitching around its three pockets.
shila-athens.com

2.
Fabric of the city
Unsung Weavers

Elina Tseliagkou was inspired to start fashion label Unsung Weavers when she came across an aunt’s long-forgotten dowry. In the past, brides in Greece received handwoven fabrics that were used as blankets on the marital bed. “So many of these are in drawers and forgotten about,” says Tseliagkou who went on a quest to find more examples. “These materials carry the labour of each of the weavers,” she says. Tseliagkou now designs utilitarian outerwear from these heavy blankets, which she sources from mountain villages. The one unifying trait is that these folk fabrics still tell the stories of the weavers who once spun them.
unsungweavers.com

3.
Staying in step
Melissinos Sandals

The craftsmanship needed to make durable summer footwear is still going strong in the heart of Athens. Over three generations, the Olgianna Melissinos workshop has become among the most steadfast and trustworthy of all Greek cobblers. The craft of sandal-making began in this family in the 1920s when George Melissinos opened his atelier to great success. His son then inherited the business, taking their soft but sturdy leather footwear to new levels, drawing in clients such as Jackie Onassis, Sophia Loren and even the Beatles. Now, Olgianna Melissinos, daughter of Stavros, continues in the family business, creating Greek sandals with the same commitment to handcraft and the “Made in Athens” label as her father and grandfather.
melissinos-sandals.gr

4.
Jewel in the town
Apiliotis

Unisex jewellery made from recycled silver makes up the offering from Apiliotis, a label that operates out of the Kypseli neighbourhood of Athens. The minimalist jewels are handcrafted using locally sourced semi-precious stones and recycled silver to form everyday pieces. Its undulating ring bands can be stacked, making for collectible items.
apiliotisjewellery.com

5.
Lifelong journey
Hak Studios

Hailing from Kastoria, a Greek city that has been central to the country’s fur and leather trade, Alex Kotoulas was raised in artisans’ workshops and learned to sew from a young age. Now he runs Hak Studios, a multidisciplinary brand that encompasses hand-crafted bags, leather accessories, ceramics and artwork made from materials found in Greece. Kotoulas’s first design was the Voyager backpack, which marries durable canvas with supple leather. “I wanted to create something that could transition between my Athenian life and summer on the Greek islands,” he says.
hak-studios.com

6.
Collar co-ordinated
It’s a Shirt

It’s a Shirt was born out of a father-daughter collaboration between Christina and Konstantinos Christodoulou. Raised in the port town of Piraeus, Christina was exposed to the family’s garment workshop from a young age. The firm’s studio in Athens is now dedicated to unisex shirts and smart tailoring, made using vintage and deadstock fabrics sourced in Greece. “I usually search for materials such as furniture fabrics, English wool or Italian jacquards,” says Christina. Look to the classic collection for unisex shirts that can be worn all year.
itsashirt.gr

7.
Breezy does it
Lefko

Made-to-order linen label Lefko began as a project to empower refugees and victims of human trafficking who were seeking asylum in Greece. Now the label, whose pieces are manufactured in the Votanikos area of Athens, relies on Shafi, a Tajikistani tailor who arrived in the city via a refugee camp on Lesbos, for its lightweight summer pieces. Shafi crafts every linen item by hand, using fabric produced by family-run textile business Savvidis. Lefko, which means “white” in Greek, is a nod to the label’s commitment to a transparent supply chain and fully biodegradable materials. The breezy Apollo men’s shirt is designed with a relaxed fit in mind, so wear it untucked.
lefko.co

Wear it’s at

1.
New retail
Goods is, well, very good

Julius Nielsen, an architect and Copenhagen resident, has been stocking his wardrobe from menswear store Goods for the past 15 years. He discovered the independent outpost when it opened in 2008, in a basement close to his Østerbro home. It was the shop’s selection of timeless, well-crafted clothes from Denmark and beyond that first drew him in. But he also got to know the shop’s staff and formed friendships; it’s now a regular habit to drop by for a coffee on his way home from work. “Goods quickly established itself as an intrinsic part of the neighbourhood,” he says. “It became more than a regular clothing shop.”

Fast-forward to 2023 and Nielsen is working alongside Goods founder Kasper Hostrup on the shop’s first major redevelopment in years. After buying a neighbouring lot on Østerbrogade, the shop is expanding and introducing an elegant new look. “It was important that the redesign was in the hands of someone who knew the shop well,” says Hostrup, who has been the driving force behind the business’s customer-centric ethos and ongoing growth. He takes monocle on a tour of his newly refurbished shop, sharing his ambitions behind the redevelopment project: to reaffirm Goods’ position as a leading menswear retailer. “Physical retail is as much about product as it is about atmosphere,” he says, adding that he has been aiming for a gentle refresh rather than a complete overhaul. “We wanted the expansion to feel as natural as possible to our customers.”

A luminous room adjacent to the original shop makes up the main part of the redevelopment. It connects to the main shop floor through a wide opening fitted with a travertine frame – a nod to the building’s stone façade. At the centre of the room is an imposing round table that was custom-designed. It displays a selection of arrivals for the coming season, including leather sandals and a striped bucket hat by Japanese brand Orslow. Hanging over the table is a folded paper lamp by lighting brand Le Klint, a Danish design classic from the early 1900s that you still spot in many locals’ homes today. “We wanted the space to feel homey and familiar,” says Hostrup, who selects all the products he stocks at Goods. These range from all-time classics, such as New Balance sneakers and Barbour overshirts, to relaxed suits by Danish tailor Berner Kuhl and elegant staples by Goods’ in-house label – printed bandanas, suede gloves and cashmere sweaters are among the highlights.

The opening of this new iteration of Goods marks an important moment for Hostrup, who left school at 17 to pursue a career in menswear. After a few years spent abroad, he returned to Denmark and set up Goods, using his industry network to forge partnerships with designers who shared his obsession with craft and timeless design. “Quality is key if you want customers to come back,” he says.

Hostrup also understood the value of building a community that shared his values. “Starting in a basement meant that people could only get to know us through word of mouth,” he says. Today, Hostrup prides himself on a loyal customer base that combines locals who drop by on a weekly basis, with those travelling to this part of Copenhagen purposely to visit his shop. “If you know the kind of customers you cater to, it’s not as important to be located in a highly commercial area,” he says. “People will find you.”

Mitchell Dean is one of those people: a Sydney native who heads up multiple departments at the prestigious Copenhagen Business School. He speaks of Hostrup’s ability to bring together the best brands under one roof and make smart selections. “I keep coming here because the garments in stock never disappoint,” he says, adding that every visit to Goods is a new discovery. “Sometimes it feels like the selection is made specifically for me.”

The strength of the Goods community became particularly evident during the pandemic, when Hostrup was forced to shut his shop for three months. Not only did many of his regulars support the business through online purchases but they returned en masse once the shop re-opened – Goods was able to recoup the €150,000 lost during Copenhagen’s three-month lockdown within the first month of reopening. “It also proved that people love physical retail,” says Hostrup.

After experiencing the extent of his customers’ support, he felt encouraged to press on with his redevelopment plans and now he is looking ahead to the business’s new chapter with renewed confidence. He plans to reaffirm Goods’ reputation on a global scale, host more events (starting with an evening with Perfumer H), without forgetting to keep nurturing his connections with his regulars – and even welcome them in-store for their daily coffee. “We like giving our customers a little bit more than they expect,” he says. “I feel that we can achieve this in the new space.”
goodscph.com

2.
The designers
Where heritage and modernity combine

Copenhagen has long been famous for its world-class interior design brands but its fashion labels are an increasingly proud addition to the city’s creative cachet. Take a stroll around the Danish capital and you’ll spot smart workwear jackets placed next to Hans Wegner chairs in the windows of design boutiques and become taken with the locals’ elegant-yet-carefree approach to dressing.

In little more than a decade, Copenhagen has developed its fashion industry almost from scratch, as many Danes have chosen to set up their brands on home turf rather than work for heritage houses abroad – and now the industry generates 19bn kroner (€2.6bn) in fashion exports. The city’s fashion week has also evolved from a small, local event to a global industry get-together, firmly established in buyers’ calendars as an essential stopover in their seasonal tours to scout new talent and establish commercial partnerships. In a saturated market where new brands are cropping up by the hour and cities around the world, from Budapest and Sydney to nearby Stockholm, are trying to establish themselves as the next Milan or Paris, how is Copenhagen winning the race?

Danish brands’ commitment to responsible manufacturing and timeless design is proving particularly relevant. At a time when the fashion industry is seeking to reverse the environmental damage that it has been contributing to and shift the focus back to slower consumption, the Danes are leading by example. They’ve set out to create fashion that has the same pure ethos as the mid-century furniture that they’ve grown up with and been taught to treasure for a lifetime.

“The success of Danish design is rooted in sustainability,” says Ulrik Pedersen, creative director of menswear label Sunflower. “We are a small country so we need to choose an area of focus. Success means creating designs that aren’t just for today and tomorrow but for years to come.” Pedersen spends months sourcing fabrics in Japan and Italy to design Sunflower’s collections, which are sold globally; the young business’s biggest markets are South Korea and Scandinavia. “We love to play around with classics and offer one-of-a-kind fabrics that you probably wouldn’t have seen before, such as novelty jacquards or marbled denim,” adds Pedersen. “That’s why we had so much success in cities like Seoul: they appreciate Danish design and our approach to minimalism, which always has a twist. This started in the 1960s and 1970s with furniture designers such as Arne Jacobsen and then became integrated into fashion. We would not have had the same success if we were German or Italian.”

Copenhagen’s design achievements are inspiring its fashion community to focus on quality over quantity. “Craft drew me back,” says Cecilie Bahnsen, who returned to her home country in 2015 to start her eponymous label after studying at London’s Royal College of Art. “You grow up around design pieces that are timeless, beautifully made and have memories attached to them. I wanted to create dresses that are worn again and again and, just like furniture, get passed onto someone else.”

The city’s existing reputation when it came to architecture, design and (more recently) food meant that there was a healthy bias towards the place that the fashion world could capitalise on. “There are positive connotations of what you can bring to the table if you identify as a Danish brand – people usually think: Noma, best-in-class furniture and mid-century modern,” says Nikolaj Hansen, whose sportswear brand Palmes is distributed in the US, Europe and South Korea. “Danish brands might not be as glamorous as the heritage houses of Paris but we’re still drawing buyers and international customers because of everything that Copenhagen has to offer. People love to come here to cycle around, see the design museums and grab a beer by the river. The lifestyle is aspirational and connected with this image of Denmark as one of the happiest countries in the world.”

Ultimately, fashion is about more than just selling clothes – the best brands offer aspirational lifestyles and the chance to be part of a community. It’s why the Danes’ family-style fashion week gatherings, carefree approach to life and ability to marry style with good food and design have intrigued fashion audiences across the globe. Some are drawn to Bahnsen’s romantic world, which usually involves cycling around town in taffeta dresses and Salomon sneakers, as well as intimate dinners at Atelier September with fellow designer Sophie Bille Brahe and her brother Frederik, one of the city’s best-known chefs. He always ensures there’s natural wine, hearty pasta and his famous whipped butter on the table.

Ganni – one of Copenhagen’s biggest successes, valued at $700m (€646m) and counting LVMH’s investment arm, L Catterton, as its main backer – has made its name both for its playful designs and its ability to throw a good party. “The fashion world was so closed off and exclusive, which makes no sense because you can’t exist without your community,” says Ganni creative director Ditte Reffstrup, who is usually the last one remaining on the dance floor at company parties. She has helped the brand to build a tribe of loyal customers who buy into her free spirit as much as her designs.

Beyond ready-to-wear labels, the city has also become home to popular cycling brand Pas Normal Studios, celebrated for its ability to blend contemporary design with technical expertise. Beyond its smart-looking cycling gear, it is known for its beautiful spaces, from its headquarters in Copenhagen to its new shop in Seoul, where customers regularly gather to watch cycling races.

It’s not just the consumer who has become fascinated with Danish culture but fashion professionals too – so much so that many are choosing to leave jobs at established style capitals in favour of Copenhagen’s laid-back lifestyle. “People come because they’re looking for something different and we make sure to offer it,” says Cecilie Liv Mortensen, who worked as head of design at Wood Wood, one of the city’s more established labels. “There’s more focus on wellbeing and work-life balance.” Wood Wood is taking advantage of the influx of talent in the Danish capital, recruiting designers from houses such as Balenciaga and buyers from London-based retailer Browns, who are all helping to push the brand into the luxury realm and refine its collections.

Expats are also choosing Copenhagen to start their own labels. UK-born Raphael Godfrey, who started menswear label Works and Days last year, is one of them. “I wouldn’t have felt the freedom to take the leap if I were still living in London,” says Godfrey, who first moved to the Danish city to take a job at retailer Norse Projects. “There’s a real support network here, a community of people making things happen, so it’s easier to take risks. This was the right place for me when I started thinking about settling down and starting my own business.”

Whether you’re seeking a support network or a better quality of life, Copenhagen has something to offer. “It’s a great place to live for someone like me who has kids and needs work-life balance,” says Silas Adler, founder of Soulland, known for its sharp take on casual wear. “It’s expensive but the system just works. Especially now that people are willing to travel here, we get to host them as if we were hosting them at our own homes. We don’t have to compete with the conglomerates.”

Supporting each other seems ingrained in the locals’ mentality. It’s why Ganni co-founder Nicolaj Reffstrup has made a point of using the brand’s success to help Copenhagen’s up-and-comers: he mentors new talent via the Wessel & Vett fashion award and has invested in clothing and homeware business Tekla, as well as Sophie Bille Brahe’s jewellery label. “I come from a technology background where you’re always taught to share your code,” he says.

Adler echoes those thoughts: “We recognise that to succeed we need to work together. Creatives have always been drawn to each other but here it’s even more evident because the city is so small.” When Adler started out a decade ago, the funding and support that are available today did not exist but he always felt that there was a place for him. “Other cities struggle more with inclusion,” he adds.

Soulland has since gone on to become established globally and showcase its collections as a guest at Florence’s Pitti Uomo, one of the world’s leading menswear fairs. The show, held last summer on the rooftop of the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino theatre, was a reflection of the Danes’ ambitions to conquer the international stage. They are now investing in larger-scale events, craft skills and luxury materials. “The fact that so many brands have become globally recognised really emboldens you to keep going,” says Godfrey. “There’s a real appreciation of materiality and sustainable quality here. We’re obsessed with how clothes can enhance someone’s life.”

The new generation of designers is also diversifying the genres of fashion that the city has to offer, from Sunflower’s updated wardrobe classics to the tennis-inspired collections of Palmes or the artisanal knitwear of Amalie Roege Hove, a Cecilie Bahnsen alumnus. “My generation of designers was standing on the shoulders of traditional Scandinavian brands but we never had an issue with breaking the rules a bit,” says Adler. “For the new generation, experimenting comes even more naturally and that’s how Copenhagen fashion will move forward. If we look at our cousins in food, art and film, they have been getting the most recognition for shaking up the system and moving on from that quintessentially Scandinavian attitude of modesty.”

Still, Copenhagen’s fashion designers remain invested in growing their businesses responsibly. Rather than following industry norms and making empty promises about sustainability, they have been among the first to champion circular business models and invest in recycling schemes and new material innovations. “When the local industry is just 20 years old, you can make your own rules,” says Hansen. At Ganni, the Reffstrups are making the most of the company’s increased resources to fund green energy projects and launch new materials, including a mushroom-based leather produced with start-up Bolt Threads.

Building on the brands’ own efforts, Cecilie Thorsmark, CEO of Copenhagen Fashion Week, has also established a set of minimum sustainability standards to which labels must adhere if they want to participate in the event. “We wanted to accelerate the industry and put Denmark on the map for taking responsibility,” she says. “We’ve been able to lead by example. We have proof of concept now that you can push brands, including large-scale ones, in this direction.” Her strategy caught the attention of more established fashion organisations in London and Paris. She plans to stay on the global radar by continuing to raise the bar and introduce a new set of standards every year. “We’re showing that a modern fashion week can be a platform for conversation and change,” she adds.

Beyond the runway, the city’s retail scene is being revamped. Tekla has just opened its first flagship shop. In an old publishing house near its offices, the new space aims to capture the brand’s Nordic aesthetic and pay homage to the city that kick-started its explosive growth. In five years, Tekla’s team has grown from five to 35 employees, built a global distribution network and collaborated with international labels such as Jacquemus and Stussy. “Copenhagen gave us proof of concept and the initial support we needed,” says Tekla’s managing director, Kristoffer Juhl. “We couldn’t have been here without our local customers.”

Other young brands are also experimenting with physical retail. Menswear label Another Aspect is moving to a larger space in Møntergade and Palmes has a pop-up shop in the works, which will double as a clubhouse and organise tennis sessions for customers. “There’s a great mix of boutiques in town and the shopping experience is quite straightforward,” says Hansen. “We are straightforward people and that’s also how we consume things.”

Copenhagen’s momentum isn’t going away. Food connoisseurs continue to fight for tables at the best restaurants, furniture exports remain at an all-time high and fashion brands and retailers are carving their own space in the global market. But creatives stay committed to their home city. “Being part of the Copenhagen fashion scene helps me find my own style,” says Bahnsen, who is capable of showing her collections during Paris Fashion Week, yet remains committed to open studio events and local collaborations back home.

“We owe it to Copenhagen to keep investing here,” says Juhl. “The city showed us that, with the right vision and capabilities, you can grow a global business from here. It offers good energy and work-life balance but it’s also highly ambitious.”

3.
Closer look
Copenhagen Fashion Week

Copenhagen Fashion Week is one of the world’s most responsible fashion events, with benchmark-setting sustainability standards and insightful conversations. But the Danish capital also has plenty to offer in the style department, with visitors taking note of the focus on comfort and playful use of colour. Take these street snaps from the city’s latest fashion week.

Sound and vision

Now a giant on Australia’s cultural scene, professional gambler Walsh has a reputation for being cerebral and something of a provocateur. Born and raised on the outskirts of Hobart, he made his money betting and initially began collecting art as a way to avoid cash declarations when crossing borders. But art soon became a business. He opened Mona in 2011 and it has since gained an international reputation for its inventive curation. A meandering bunker within a sandstone peninsula, the facility was built to house Australia’s largest private museum of art but has long been known as far more than that.

And so the desk made its way to Mona’s Frying Pan recording studio, designed to allow musicians to make art while surrounded by the museum’s pieces. The space launched at the beginning of the year with the Redd.17 as its centrepiece. “It’s a beautiful addition to the creativity of Mona,” says Chris Townend, perched behind some of the world’s most prized recording equipment. A veteran producer of musical acts such as Portishead, D12 and Silverchair, Townend is now at the helm of the studio.

When it came to choosing the right equipment for Frying Pan, Townend asked Walsh, “Do you want us to record punk bands, choirs, indie bands or classical music?” The creatively voracious Walsh said that he wanted all of the above – and then handed creative control and a hefty purse to the team. The budget went into buying microphones, amps, instruments, lighting, filming equipment and broadcasting technology.

“It will pretty much be fully booked seven days a week forever,” says Townend. Acts such as Malian singer and guitarist Vieux Farka Touré, Canadian musician Peaches and Australian songwriter Kutcha Edwards have already recorded here and interest is growing. With its calming view of a placid river, the studio aids musicians’ creativity and concentration; through a glass panel, however, museum visitors can glimpse the activity within. Architect Nonda Katsalidis of Fender Katsalidis worked alongside New Zealand-based acoustic consultancy Marshall Day Acoustics to deliver a snug set-up, with parquet floors and Tasmanian oak battens extending up the walls to the ceiling.

A recording studio might seem an unlikely addition to a museum that is famously dedicated to the themes of sex and death but Walsh believes that Mona wouldn’t exist without music. For the whip-smart founder, music is inseparable from art. That’s why he started Mona Foma in 2009, an annual summer festival of art and music now spread across the cities of Hobart and Launceston. The multi-day event was launched before the museum; Walsh had decided to spend au$1m (€635,500) on it rather than allocating the budget to traditional publicity.

“I didn’t want to spend a million bucks a year on marketing,” he says when we meet on the first weekend of this year’s edition. He is sitting on the floor on the 1990s navy carpet inside Reunión District, a former vocational college that is hosting some of the schedule’s performances (people call it “Old Tafe”, for “technical and further education”). Here, he starts ruminating on the power of different creative disciplines. “Music intrinsically enables the creation of art,” he says. “Then art actually aids our survival.”

Walsh credits Brian Ritchie with Mona’s ability to reach the public through music. The bassist of iconic US punk-rock band Violent Femmes settled in Tasmania in 2008 when his wife received a research grant to study insects here. he and the Salamanca Arts Centre roped him in as the festival’s artistic director, dashing Ritchie’s dreams of a laid-back island life. Over the years, the duo have also worked on live music elements in Mona’s regular museum programming.

A tall man with a tie-dye cross-body bag, Ritchie is easy to spot on the festival grounds as he flits between acts, nodding his head and gently shepherding audiences around. “When they asked me to do the direction, I was, like, ‘Why me? I’m a performer, not a curator,’” he says. Still, because of his unfazed approach, he had no fear of stepping outside the box and exploring uncharted territory. “I had been to a lot of festivals in my life and I found all of them wanting,” he says. “So I decided to try to do something that had everything that I thought was valuable. Much of that consisted of ignoring things such as genre- based programming.”

Take the 2015 line-up. Festival-goers waiting to see singer-songwriter Paul Kelly, Australia’s answer to Bruce Springsteen, first had to watch Chinese performance artist Li Binyuan smash 250 hammers with a hammer. “Kelly asked me, ‘When do I get to play?’ and I said, ‘Well, there’s no specific time. It’s when he’s finished smashing the hammers,’” Ritchie tells Monocle, with a grin. This approach is central to Mona’s ethos: don’t pussyfoot around the audience, because people can handle far more than some curators and cultural institutions give them credit for. “We’re kind of messing with them but they deserve it,” says Ritchie. “They need to be shaken out of their complacency sometimes.”

In this attitude, Ritchie and Walsh are remarkably alike. Walsh has never had an “If you build it, they will come” mentality when it comes to devising Mona’s activities. Rather, his philosophy is simply to build what he wants to see, regardless of whether people come or not. Prior to opening the museum, he told one journalist, “If no one comes, I’ll turn off the air-con and let the art rot.” Fuelling each other’s fire, the professional gambler and the musician have created a renegade festival that’s all the more popular for its eccentricity.

On a single day of this year’s Mona Foma in February, Monocle heads across the basin from a morning meditation beneath the ferns and tall pines of Launceston’s Cataract Gorge to catch part of Korean-Australian musician Chloe Kim’s 100-hour drumming project, before jumping into the public pool to hear British electronic producer Leon Vynehall’s sound composition “Floors of Heaven” playing underwater. In the afternoon, it’s back to the Old Tafe building for performance-art duo Pony Express’s community event The Queer Woodchop, then to the main stage for a jolt of joy courtesy of Punjabi-Australian singer-songwriter Parvyn, immediately followed by the screeching Muslim death metal of Hazeen playing in an adjacent brick alley.

It’s not every festival crowd that will take in Sikh-infused pop, fierce punk, frenetic jazz and dystopian synth compositions over a single weekend. To an outside observer, it speaks of the public’s full belief in what Ritchie and Walsh are trying to do. Punters give themselves over to the school of Mona, where the lesson is that art and music come in all shapes and sounds, and everything is worth a shot at least once. When Monocle puts this theory to Walsh, he is quick to shoot down the idea of the audience’s unconditional trust, saying that he believes our sample size wasn’t big enough to draw such a conclusion.

Mona Foma might feel like a rare cultural utopia but members of the curatorial team are well aware that all places face challenges of one kind or another. At the festival, a group of Launceston-based singers in a “Complaints Choir” perform renditions of citizens’ real grievances as cheery show tunes. “There are definitely, absolutely not enough pedestrian crossings, no, no, no,” they sing. “How come the stairs always smell like piss?”

Beyond Tasmania’s idyllic landscapes and thriving arts scene, the island state is contending with a range of problems in areas from employment and education to healthcare. Walsh is the first to admit that the so-called “Mona effect” has had unintended consequences, including exacerbating a housing shortage. “There are homeless people in Hobart now: I did that,” he says. But responsibility can’t be attributed to one man. In 2018, Deloitte reported that Mona had contributed more than au$135m (€85.5m) in a single year to the state economy and supported more than 1,200 full-time jobs. Walsh, however, seems reluctant to dwell on what he has done for Tasmania or the fact that he is funding programmes to counteract its crises. “What matters is that when you do stuff locally, you can at least be accountable,” he says.

Out on the main stage, the Turiya Always quintet is performing compositions by jazz musician Alice Coltrane. Despite one young attendee covering his ears, the sounds of the double bass, drums, vibraphone, saxophone and harp are received with tapping toes and nodding heads. Walsh joins the crowd mid-set; people clock his halo of grey hair and send friendly “g’days” his way. Despite what he thinks, he is a star around here: the man who helped to turn Tassie around, encouraging residents to welcome visitors and show off the state’s natural and cultural riches.

Later that evening the crowd in front of the Old Tafe’s stage greets British poet and musician Kae Tempest with a giddy whoop. “I can’t believe Kae is here!” says Sunny, a radiant septuagenarian Launceston resident. When Tempest’s pit stop in Tasmania was announced, fans rushed to pay for tickets. A few weeks later, however, an email landed in residents’ inboxes informing them that Mona was refunding their money and granting them free admittance. This sort of generosity isn’t uncommon for Mona; it frequently hands out subsidies and holds free events. Entry into the museum, which costs au$35 (€22) for most, is free for Tassie residents.

That might help to explain why there have only ever been two months in Mona’s 12-year history when the museum has run at a profit: January 2014 and June 2020, when the federal government refunded staff wages to keep businesses afloat during the pandemic. Asked whether Mona will ever have a third month in profit, Walsh fires back, “Not while I’m alive.” Money or power isn’t what drives Walsh; that’s why he throws his own funds into the business and trusts his staff completely when it comes to Mona’s projects, big and small.

Towards the end of Tempest’s set, members of the audience get emotional, linking their arms around the shoulders of nearby strangers. The singer’s poetic prose falls on a captivated crowd. “Now I don’t have the answers,” sings Tempest. “But there are still things to say.” Walsh, Ritchie, Townend and the Mona team don’t claim to have all the answers for music, art or Tasmania – but they certainly have plenty of things to say.

Music at Mona
Every day that Mona is open, there’s music on its lawn, performers serenading diners in the on-site Faro restaurant and two musicians in residence. The restaurant’s music programme was a post-coronavirus intervention, a siren song to attract residents with something that they hadn’t yet experienced at the museum. When the restrictions were lifted, the music remained. Audiences can now see a choir walking between their tables as they enjoy their lunch. At 15.00 they’ll lean casually against a gallery wall while musician Ben Salter performs. Then, at 16.00, Dean Stevenson conducts a quartet for a rendition of a piece that he composed earlier that day. When Walsh is not away you’ll likely catch him at both shows and Ritchie will often hop up with the band at Faro. “A place like Mona almost couldn’t exist anywhere else,” says Salter.

Art at Mona Foma
A common theme at Mona is the daring, unconventional characters with whom Walsh chooses to surround himself: people willing to take risks, put together festivals with idiosyncratic line-ups and address alarming gaps in society. Among them is Emma Pike, the curator behind the artwork at this year’s Mona Foma. Pike wanted to lean into Old Tafe’s college motto, “Fantastic futures”. “I commissioned a lot of socially- or community-engaged artists to create unlikely collaborations throughout the space,” she says. The result included Willoh Weiland’s ode to female volunteering, “Chant”, and Kenneth Tam’s mock-men’s-social-club film, Breakfast in Bed.

Tried and trusted

“So much about the marketplace involves monopoly platforms shaping your consumer experience. There’s an enormous amount of power that needs to be held accountable”

A spinning metal drum is suspended centimetres above the track of a treadmill. Rubber nubbins protrude from the drum’s surface. As the treadmill moves, the nubbins press into the track, simulating the pressure and pattern of a runner’s stride. A technician stands by, monitoring the performance and interaction of the machines. The rotating nubbin drum is called Johnny Walker Black. It’s the younger sibling of Johnny Walker Red, which does the same job: putting treadmills through their paces as part of an evaluation that takes into account ergonomics, construction and ease of use. When the testing is complete, the treadmills will be reviewed and ranked, and the information made available to the six million members of Consumer Reports.

Founded in 1936, Consumer Reports is a non-profit organisation that advocates for the interests of US shoppers. The organisation is best known for its product reviews, which are available online and in a monthly magazine. Its marketplace involves monopoly platforms shaping your consumer experience,” the organisation’s CEO, Marta Tellado, tells Monocle. “There is an enormous amount of power that needs to be held accountable.” Consumer Reports’ financial independence allows it to maintain a degree of objectivity that’s rare in a world of top-10 lists stuffed with affiliate links. The products that it tests are purchased by a national network of unidentified “secret buyers” from the same shops that ordinary consumers use. This mitigates the possibility of manufacturers supplying unrepresentative, cherry-picked items. Once testing is complete, the goods are sold to Consumer Reports staff through an internal auction.

The most striking embodiment of the organisation’s commitment to rigour is its anechoic chamber. It’s built on foundations that are separate from the rest of the building to isolate it from vibrations. The inside of the room is lined with large fibreglass teeth arranged to eliminate sonic reflections; as a result, all of the sounds that you hear inside are direct. To human ears, the effect and, for some, can evoke a similar feeling to the one you can get when descending in an aeroplane. Others have to flee the room, perturbed by the sound of the blood rushing through their own head. Anechoic chambers are often built as part of physics laboratories for experimental purposes or used for hi-tech industrial applications, such as testing jet engines. Consumer Reports uses its chamber to review consumer audio equipment.

Some might dismiss this as overkill but Tellado is not for turning. “Technology is moving so quickly and our rights and protections aren’t keeping up,” she says. “The balance of power has shifted away from consumers and it’s making us incredibly vulnerable. We need to do the work that we do.”

Clock and dagger

In from the cold

Last year began badly for Russia’s intelligence agencies and it was Vladimir Putin, a former officer of the country’s Committee for State Security (KGB), who delivered the first blow. During a televised meeting of the Security Council of Russia on 21 February 2022, Putin announced his intention to launch a “special military operation” in Ukraine. The president also made a point of humiliating Sergei Naryshkin, head of the Foreign Intelligence Service of the Russian Federation (SVR). He kept interrupting Naryshkin until the confused spy chief was reduced to mumbling incomprehensibly. Putin loves humiliating his bureaucrats from time to time as a way of reminding the country who is in charge. However, he had never before attacked the intelligence agencies in public.

A few weeks later, as the world was watching Russian tanks burn on Ukrainian streets, Sergei Beseda, head of the foreign intelligence branch of the Federal Security Service (FSB) – the official successor of the Soviet Union’s KGB – lost his job and was made incommunicado for several months. His department had briefed the president about the political situation in Ukraine. Things had gone so wrong for Moscow’s troops that purges in the FSB seemed inevitable. It was at this moment that Western nations began to expel Russian “diplomats” from their capitals. These expulsions were accompanied by arrests of spies lacking diplomatic cover in countries from Norway and Italy to Germany and Slovenia. Of these arrests, perhaps the most scandalous was that of Carsten Linke, an officer in Germany’s Federal Intelligence Service (BND) in December, on suspicion of passing sensitive information to Russia, including about the Ukraine war.

It was a high-level penetration that recalled the Cold War years and suggested that Russia’s spies weren’t as incompetent as many had begun to believe. Linke was not just any agent: he was a rising star in German intelligence. A division head at the bnd’s signal intelligence unit, which spies on communications, he was responsible for vetting candidates for bnd jobs. In this capacity, he was privy to top-level material but also information that could be used to blackmail German spies. Linke was a youth football coach in the Bavarian town of Weilheim. It was during a fundraiser barbecue for his club that he made contact with Arthur E, a Russian-born German businessman in the pay of Moscow. The Germans admitted that Linke had passed on sensitive information regarding Ukraine’s battlefield tactics on two separate occasions in exchange for money. That was very smart of Russia; money is a better motivator than ideology. The infiltration was embarrassing for Berlin and it begged the question: was Linke the only Russian agent inside the bnd or, indeed, Nato?

As they tend to have diplomatic cover, most Russian spies are merely expelled once they are discovered so the public is kept in the dark. Counterintelligence services hate arrests and expulsions. Their job is to identify a spy, then flip them to feed disinformation to their masters. As a rule, they agree to arrests only under political pressure – for example, when their government seeks to send a message to Moscow.

Russian spy chiefs have attempted to get around these diplomatic expulsions by recruiting the children of Russian oligarchs and top-level officials living in the West. Artyom Uss, son of the governor of Russia’s Krasnoyarsk Krai region, was arrested in Italy in October. His company was trying to acquire semiconductors and microchips used in military jets and missile systems from US manufacturers. Uss escaped from house arrest in Milan in March, tearing off his ankle tag and jumping into a getaway car. Shortly after Uss was detained in October, Andrey Yakunin, son of former Russian Railways boss Vladimir Yakunin – previously a KGB officer and confidant of Putin – was arrested after allegedly flying drones over Norwegian military sites in the Svalbard archipelago. Yakunin claimed that he flew drones for recreational purposes only but when Norwegian authorities seized his yacht, Firebird, they found surveillance equipment. Both cases show that Moscow is recruiting the children of the elite, no matter how incompetent, to do its dirty work. That might seem like a sign of desperation but it’s also a way for the agencies (and the Kremlin) to signal that it’s time for those who have succeeded in 21st-century Russia to repay the favour and to bind them to the regime.

Putin’s people

At the height of its power, the Soviet Union had two intelligence agencies: the KGB and the Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU). The KGB was used for espionage and spying both inside and outside its borders. The gru dealt exclusively with military intelligence and still operates today. Putin’s Russia has three intelligence agencies: the gru, the svr and the FSB, the KGB’s theoretical successor.

The gru’s job is to steal military secrets, disrupt enemy supply chains and assassinate dissidents. In the 2010s, when the agency was expanded, it focused on recruiting special forces (spetsnaz) officers, rather than university students. Members of this new intake brought to the department a military ethos: they don’t much care about operational costs and pride themselves on getting things done. It was a gru team, Unit 29155, that organised the attack on the Czech Republic’s Vrbetice arms depot in 2014 and tried to poison Bulgarian arms dealer Emilian Gebrev in 2015 with the nerve agent novichok (both missions had the aim of disrupting arms supplies to Ukraine). It was also gru operatives who poisoned their former colleague Sergei Skripal in the English city of Salisbury in 2018. These three operations had one thing in common: an utter disregard for collateral damage.

The svr is Russia’s closest analogue to mi6 or the CIA. It conducts political and industrial espionage, and monitors Russian émigrés. Despite the name changes, Russia’s spy agencies were never reformed after the Soviet Union’s collapse and stick to their Cold War traditions. British double agent Kim Philby holds an almost godlike status inside the svr. Its spies cherish their postings abroad and aren’t enthusiastic about taking on adventurous missions, such as assassinations, that might result in a return to Russia.

The second successor to the KGB, the FSB, also deals with foreign intelligence but its main role is to conduct political warfare rather than to spy. As such, the FSB is most active in former Soviet states, with the goal of keeping Kremlin-friendly regimes in power. In the 19th century, Russian tsars earned the label “gendarmes of Europe” for their efforts to suppress the revolutionary or liberal spirit on the continent. The FSB’s foreign branch is intended to be a new gendarmerie for Russia’s immediate neighbours. This was the agency that assisted pro- Russian Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych as he tried unsuccessfully to suppress Kyiv’s Maidan revolution in 2014 and briefed Putin about the political situation in Ukraine before the 2022 invasion (it predicted that there would be minimal resistance).

All three agencies have suffered losses in their international networks but remain resourceful and innovative. They will be drawing new recruits from the huge exodus of Russians who have fled since the war began. This will be easy, since many will have families back in Russia who are vulnerable to pressure.

Russia’s intelligence agencies have been weakened over the past year but not neutralised. Their fate, as they see it, is bound to that of their benefactor, Putin, who has increased their power and granted them generous salaries. In 2022 many Western countries sought to signal that Russian espionage activities on the scale of the past 20 years would no longer be tolerated. Indeed, Russia’s foreign ministry admitted that it had only two diplomats left in some countries, seriously damaging the Kremlin’s intelligence-collecting abilities. But in Moscow, the purges that everyone expected didn’t materialise. Even the humiliated Naryshkin kept his job and Beseda was quietly returned to his position. This prompted some to wonder: was Ukraine really an intelligence disaster or are the rules that Russian spies live by different from those of their Western counterparts?

Beneath the surface

Russian embassies and cultural centres have traditionally provided cover for the country’s spies. A typical posting in New York – which has one of the largest spy stations in the world, probably because of its sizeable Russian-émigré population – involves long hours on the eighth floor of the ugly concrete high-rise on 67th Street that houses the country’s mission to the UN. The station is known by the agents who work there as “the Submarine” because there are no windows and no phone lines connected to the outside world. Its ceiling is about 30cm lower than on other floors as a result of its extra-thick walls.

Intelligence officers here spend much of their time writing responses to daily requests from Moscow – for information on the intricacies of US financial regulations, for example, or reports on where African states stand on Russia’s UN initiatives. To do so, they consult spies attached to other Russian institutions in America, such as banks. Evgeny Buryakov, arrested by the FBI in 2015, was an svr officer working as the deputy head of the Manhattan office of Russia’s state-owned Vnesheconombank. He pleaded guilty to spying and received 30 months in a US prison; in 2017 he was put on an Aeroflot plane back to Moscow.

From time to time, a spy will leave the Submarine for meetings. Most of these will be innocuous to fool the FBI. Among them, however, will be significant encounters, which aren’t always in person. At a prearranged time, an officer might have a laptop open in his car, parked near a particular corner with a private wi-fi network launched. At a nearby coffee shop, an agent will have his or her laptop open too, connected to the same network.

This is how Russian spy Anna Chapman communicated with her handlers until she was arrested in New York in 2010. Chapman, who was a member of the so-called “Illegals”, a group of Russian spies who the FBI uncovered in 2010, became a minor celebrity following her capture. She had been working in New York’s property market, able to pass herself off as English thanks to her surname and UK passport – both gifts from a rather meek ex-husband. Chapman took the glamorous route, attending Manhattan’s high-society drinks parties. Most Russian agents in New York are required to live in a guarded compound in Riverdale, a suburb in the Bronx, to prevent them from defecting.

New blood

In February 2022 a top student at one of Moscow’s most prestigious universities was invited to a quiet, nondescript office on the second floor of a building usually used by admissions staff. The student knew what this would entail – it wasn’t his first meeting – and decided to covertly record the conversation on his smartphone. “How did your parents take it?” his interlocutor asked. “Positively,” replied the student. “OK,” said the man. “In that case, let me lay out what’s coming next…”

His real job, of course, wasn’t to supervise admissions but to recruit promising students into the svr. He began his pitch, mapping out the career path of a 21st-century Russian spy. By the summer of 2023, explained the recruiter, the agency would have completed the student’s assessment, which would include conversations with a psychologist and polygraph tests. Drug use would be a red flag. Certain political views could be a problem too, especially in these difficult times. There would also be two language tests. The results would not be used to disqualify a candidate; rather, they were to determine his linguistic ability and how long it would take to teach him (and it’s always “him” in Russian intelligence) a language. In any case, the student had been approached because of his linguistic skills – he could speak three languages, one of which was considered rare – so those tests would probably be a formality.

Such interviews are designed to facilitate a smooth transfer of potential spies from universities to the svr. When the student received his master’s diploma, he would be expected to sign a contract. This initial agreement would be for five years’ work (others would follow almost automatically, he was assured, unless he failed particularly badly). He would be awarded the rank of officer and provided with an apartment in Moscow for the duration. Perks would include medical treatment at special facilities and holidays at svr hotels – sanatoriums and rest houses in the Moscow region, on the Black Sea and at Lake Baikal – for the employee and his family, including his parents, free of charge. Finally, his salary: he would initially be paid 85,000 roubles (€1,060) a month but wouldn’t need much money, since his time would mostly be spent in further education at the Academy of Foreign Intelligence.

The first assignment for a new spy is usually three years if the recruit is married or two if single. That’s how a spy’s career is modulated: three years abroad, two years in Moscow; rinse and repeat. The best part, the recruiter emphasised, was that the recruit would have three salaries while working abroad. The first would come from Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs; the cover position of attaché or third secretary offers a starting salary of about €3,500 a month. The second consisted of 45 per cent of the recruit’s salary in Moscow (about €800). The third would be paid by the foreign ministry in roubles: a further quarter of the Moscow salary (about €500). The recruiter repeated this part about the salaries several times.

“What about the risks?” asked the student. “Is there any danger? Might I get killed in this line of work?” “No way,” said the recruitment officer. Expulsion was the worst thing that could happen to him and, even then, he would be given a job in Moscow or another region. But what was unfair – he added, seemingly upset – was that those who are expelled would lose access to the triple-salary scheme. The student collected his various forms and promised the recruiter that he would return them soon. Both were relaxed: the recruiter believed that he had found a way to win the student’s trust and the student was excited to join the country’s true elite, the Russian intelligence community, which had grown unstoppably in power and influence under Putin.

But two weeks after the university student’s conversation, the president launched Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The student promptly left the country in disgust, leaving behind the chance of an intelligence career but taking his smartphone, whose contents he made available to monocle for this article. Russian intelligence will be denied access to many such recruits. The brightest are fleeing and the country is becoming even more nationalistic – bad news for intelligence gathering, which relies on clear heads untainted by political machinations. It’s worth remembering that paranoia and purges almost destroyed Soviet espionage under Stalin. What is clear is that when Russia thinks of itself as a fortress besieged by enemies, its security agencies will play an increasingly large role in its citizens’ lives.

Back on track

Beside a brass-and-leather-trimmed bar cart, in the middle of an old locomotive train, a posse of jovial passengers has sprung to their feet and is now holding on to each other’s hips or jacket tails as they form an impromptu conga line. In a scene that filmmaker Federico Fellini would have been proud to have staged, a dog-collared Monsignor is following a cream-blazered culture minister and a besuited rail executive through the seemly carriage of the just-renovated ETR 252 L’Arlecchino train as we rattle from Rome towards Naples.

One man in the throes of the conga line is Luigi Cantamessa, director of the Fondazione FS, a branch of Italy’s state-owned railway company. From the carnival atmosphere onboard it’s clear that he’s excited about the relaunch of this iconic green-and-grey classic but that’s also because trains represent something rather important in Italy. “Our railway services are a state within a state,” he said recently about the foundation’s unimpeachable position in national life.

Political leaders and parties come and go but trains remain a unifying symbol of Italian nationhood. Perhaps that’s understandable in a country of such vast regional differences and disparities which only unified in 1871. The association between Italy’s fascist leader, Benito Mussolini – who famously got the trains to run on time, though that’s not what he should be remembered for – and railways endures but, even now, they remain a platform for politics. “Trains,” Cantamessa has said, “are at the heart of what it means to be Italian.”

The pomp and pageantry onboard is to mark the tenth anniversary of Fondazione FS; the company is in the process of trying to restore and revitalise Italy’s heritage rail infrastructure. Monocle boards L’Arlecchino promptly at 08.30 at Ostiense station to experience the benefits of taking in our surroundings a little more slowly. Our three-hour journey would take little more than an hour on modern, high-speed services.

Named after the colourful Harlequin figure of 16th-century Italian theatre, L’Arlecchino launched in 1960, ahead of the Summer Olympics in Rome, and captured a moment of breezy optimism in Italy; of economic postwar miracle. Architects Gio Ponti and Giulio Minoletti were charged with designing the interiors and branding, while the engine’s shape, with its aerodynamic nods to the jet age, was modelled on the larger etr 300 Settebello from the 1950s. L’Arlecchino was one of four built as part of a First Class-only fleet of high-speed (for the time) trains that celebrated travelling in style.

The ETR 252’s quirky design was revolutionary, with drivers’ cabins at each end that perched the driver up high. This decision created panoramic lounges and views for any passenger who was sharp-elbowed enough to commandeer the swivel chairs (from which you are today encouraged to enjoy a cocktail muddled by the on-board barman). Meanwhile, each of the carriages was colour-themed in blue, gold, red and green, respectively, and each of the 170 seats was designed to be First Class.

Today the train’s gleaming, retro-futuristic appearance belies the painstaking effort that’s gone into its renovation. “As time goes by the numbers of any particular type of train decreases,” says lead engineer Riccardo Natali, who wears tellingly clean vintage overalls. It’s clear that this one-off has a special place in his heart. “Any trains that survive this long require an increasing amount of care.” Until 2020, this L’Arlecchino lay graffitied, stripped of its seats and interiors, and derelict in a railyard, its curvy carapace the only hint of the design’s important history. “We have to be innovative to restore a train like this,” he says. “You have to mix technologies from different eras.” Aside from helping the 60-year-old engine hum again, Natali relished learning about the softer side of train design in the 1960s. “The velvets that we used were selected to meet all the requirements of modern standards and are of a better quality than period textiles,” adds the engineer, his aspect suddenly softening.

You don’t need to be onboard L’Arlecchino for long before realising that the design of this train is about so much more than getting from A to B. It’s really about the enjoyment of travel, of seeing and being seen. As if to prove the point, Monocle spots politician and entrepreneur Daniela Santanchè – a chum of former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi – swivelling on her chair in the front-facing lounge on this anniversary special journey. She’s also the government’s minister for tourism. “This is not transport,” she says, taking in the blurred landscape of suburban Naples from the panoramic windows. “This is travel.”

Behind the minister, the windows are decorated with jolly, green-and-white-striped sun blinds with a wiggly trim. As we talk, a man in a starched white uniform appears and offers us diamond-shaped biscuits, iced brightly to match the train’s vibrant interiors and served in silver bowls bearing the FS insignia. Like the branding of the larger Settebello model in the fleet, there’s a fine line between gaudiness and good taste. If, as Cantamessa says, FS is a little like a state within a state, then travelling on L’Arlecchino is akin to flying on Air Force One: it’s a statement of prestige and Fondazione FS only plans to use L’Arlecchino for very specific trips.

Santanchè says with considerable glee that tickets for a short ride from Venice to Trieste in 2022 “sold out in less than 24 hours”. The train is available to charter – one to book for your corporate awayday maybe? A moving wedding venue perhaps? In truth, it’s hard to imagine a practical everyday use for this strange, old, mid-century bird.

As we pass the commune of Pozzuoli on the outskirts of Naples, the train begins to chug a little – as if it’s breathing deeply. Natali informs Monocle that the train is no slouch, with a maximum speed of 160km/h, but the modern Frecciarossa fleets that crisscross the country regularly reach speeds of 300km/h. Though the etr 252 has not been surpassed in ambition, it has been swiftly overtaken by what’s possible. “Our objective is not [always] about getting to the destination quickly,” says Natali. “It’s to enjoy the journey.”

With those words ringing in our ears, our carriage emerges from a dark tunnel and a gap between buildings offers a postcard-pretty glimpse of the Bay of Naples with Capri and Ischia in the distance. The hum of the carriage falls silent as the old engine chunters on towards its final destination. Santanchè is right: this is travel.

Into the fold 

Find N2 Flip
Oppo

This folding phone from Oppo has an outside screen so your photo subject can decide whether they like how they look before you snap, plus a hinge designed to hide the middle crease better. You can also set it at various angles – in an L-shape for video calls, for instance. The N2 Flip is one of the best folding smartphones.
oppo.com

Watch Buds
Huawei

Press on the edge of this watch and the display flips up to reveal tiny capsule-shaped earbuds that are held in place magnetically. The earbuds have good audio, with strong active noise cancellation and rich sound overall. There are three sets of silicone ear tips for the best fit. While regular in-ear headphones are marked left and right, here they’re identical and are reset each time you put them back. The smartwatch is attractive too, with decent battery life and features such as heart-rate monitoring and 80 modes for measuring your sporting endeavours.
huawei.com

SuperConnect Stereo
Revo

Revo was founded in 2004 and has grown hugely, with a special-edition Monocle Radio as one of its many highlights. One of its most popular models, the SuperConnect, has been updated with the same design language, stereo speakers and DAB1, as well as FM tuners. If that’s not enough, the wi-fi connection can access 36,000 internet radio stations. You can also listen to streaming services and it has Bluetooth. The sound quality is exceptional: warm and rich with lots of detail, and the twin speakers ensure that the radio has a wide soundstage.
www.revoaudio.co.UK

Staying power

At the heart of Capella Sydney, the Harbour City’s most ambitious new hotel in years, there’s a plant-filled oasis called Aperture. Today guests and Sydneysiders are busy ordering coffee under a constellation of flowers created by Amsterdam-based designers Studio Drift. But Make Architects’ Michelle Evans, who led the painstaking restoration of the 107-year-old sandstone building, tells Monocle that the site looked rather different when the project started seven years ago.

Tasked with designing “the best hotel in the world”, Evans began with a “treasure hunt” for heritage features. A painstaking restoration revealed the bones of the building, which once housed government offices. Now the low ceilings and cubicles are gone, replaced by 192 guest rooms and suites, a bar, lounge, spa and Brasserie 1930, the fifth restaurant from Sydney’s Bentley Group.

Capella Sydney is the first Australian outpost of Singapore-based Capella Hotels. As such, it was crafted to reflect and celebrate aspects of Antipodean culture, says Nick Hildebrandt, sommelier and owner of the Bentley Group. Executive chef Brent Savage’s menu includes Flinders Island scallops and Kinross Station lamb; throughout the hotel you’ll spot artwork by Australian artists such as Judy Watson or Otis Hope Carey and design details from Melbourne stylist Simone Haag. You can even drink a Capella Sydney beer. Marc von Arnim, the hotel’s general manager, talks us through its thoughtful fit-out.

Sydney’s hospitality scene is finally coming back to life. What makes Capella Sydney stand out amid all of the recent activity?
We had an amazing building from the get-go. Make Architects and interior-design company BAR Studio transformed what was once a government facility into a luxury hotel. There’s nothing else like it in Australia.

How important was attention to detail in the redesign?
We wanted to work with someone who didn’t “do hotels” so we chose stylist Simone Haag, who is from a residential background. We also worked with curators Artlink. We procured 400 pieces by Australian artists – some emerging, some Indigenous. Otis Hope Carey has created a mural in our McRae Bar. Max Berry has made a beautiful piece for us too.

Are there any spaces that you particularly like?
When you look up inside the building, you see the sky through all of its internal façades and an installation, “Meadow”, by a Dutch company called Studio Drift. Its 19 lights represent flowers and they open and close. The calmness there instantly relaxes you.
capellahotels.com