Issues
After an extensive renovation, the Centre Culturel Suisse in Paris is back to spread the word about Switzerland’s creative prowess
Making Swiss culture stand out in a global arts and design epicentre such as Paris is a tall order. But the revamped Centre Culturel Suisse (CCS) – which reopened to the public earlier this year after a four-year, CHF7.3m (€7.9m) renovation – has set a new benchmark for those seeking to promote a nation’s creativity and values abroad.
It’s the only overseas Swiss centre of its kind to be entirely funded by Pro Helvetia, a federal council that promotes the country’s artists and cultural practitioners at home and internationally. “The fact that the Swiss government has chosen to invest in this way exclusively in Paris says a lot,” says CCS’s director, Jean-Marc Diébold. It’s proof that the French capital continues to be a key European hub of cultural promotion.
Based in the heart of the Marais district, the multidisciplinary centre was established in 1985 as a response to the growing number of Swiss painters, creatives and architects calling Paris home. “They put pressure on the Swiss government to create a space in which they could disseminate their work,” says Diébold, who previously managed French and Swiss dance and theatre companies overseas. “Switzerland is a small country surrounded by large European neighbours, so it’s only natural that the country’s artists have exported their oeuvre beyond their own borders.”
The 17th-century maison particulière combines French Renaissance elegance with Swiss idiosyncrasies. In the courtyard, neighbourhood café Le Voltigeur has created a dinky Swiss buvette – a kiosk inspired by Alpine snack hatches – that offers a Swiss renversé coffee, as well as 18 types of chocolate. There’s also a library with volumes from Swiss publishers including Park Books and Edition Patrick Frey. The building was revamped by Parisian firm ASBR and Basel studio Truwant + Rodet, giving it a post-industrial ambience. CCS also commissioned bespoke LED signage from Zürich and Paris-based graphic designer Marietta Eugster.
During the renovation, CCS conducted a “tour de France”, travelling to places such as Dunkirk, Rennes and Guadeloupe to showcase its work to broader Francophone audiences. Diébold wants to retain this outward-facing approach. “There’s a danger of becoming introspective as we settle back into our permanent space,” he says. “But we want to show the world that Switzerland is far more complex than people think.”
ccsparis.com
Comment
The Centre Culturel Suisse is an important part of Switzerland’s soft-power armoury that also enriches Paris’s artistic profile. It’s a lesson in how mutually beneficial such platforms can be.
A nose for success: 25 indie perfume labels to know
In an industry dominated by a handful of big players, it takes imagination and originality for smaller brands to compete. Here are 25 whose approach hits all the right notes.
1.
Paraphrase
Canada
Natural selection
“Our customers are on the fringes of the fragrance world,” says perfumer Joshua Smith, who launched Paraphrase in 2014 and mixes its scents by hand in his studio in Edmonton, western Canada. “I’m captivated by the outdoors,” adds Smith, who once worked as a forester. “I think about the senses, how products are made and how the human body interacts with them.”
Paraphrase produces a couple of hundred bottles a year that retail at about €140. The brand’s scents are playful takes on natural settings and have evocative names such as Eros Fig and Fruit Thieves. “I make perfumes with more of a narrative than some bigger brands,” says Smith. “It’s less about a luxury born from commodity or material than the luxury of the time and the space that we give ourselves with these little pleasures.”
paraphraseperfume.com
2.
Abel
New Zealand
All in the mix
Founded by former winemaker Frances Shoemack, Abel makes scents developed with New Zealand’s only master perfumer, Isaac Sinclair, and produces them in Wellington. “It isn’t common to spend more on your perfume than on your packaging but that’s what we do,” says Shoemack, who adds that about 95 per cent of ingredients in the perfume industry are derived from fossil fuels. “We only use natural ingredients and many of them are very rare. Where other brands might use synthetic molecules, we use the real thing – for example, iris butter, which costs €10,000 per kilogramme.”
Abel received its first major investment four years ago from New Zealand-based Maker Capital, a venture-capital fund that focuses on domestic, product-led businesses with the potential to make a global impact.
abelfragrance.com
3.
Gabar
UK
Home from home
London-based brand Gabar makes unisex fragrances inspired by the childhood memories of its Myanmar-born founders, Phway Su Aye and Susan Wai Hnin – earthy jungle, still lakes and warm air – and flavours such as sesame, wild fig and smoked nuts. “We wanted to create something culturally rooted but completely at home in New York, London, Paris or Bangkok,” says Su Aye. Financed by the founders and a few angel investors, the business has seen sales doubling every year since it launched in 2021, and it now has 49 global stockists, from Hong Kong’s Lane Crawford to Stockholm’s Fablab. — Brooke Theis
gabarworld.com
4.
Jijide
Italy & China
Cultural conversation
Founded in 2016 by Adam Cavallari, Andrea Alessandri and Fanqi Guan, Italian-Chinese fragrance house Jijide eschews tradition. The brand invites different noses to create unisex scents that juxtapose Eastern and Western cultures (think notes of rice contrasted with the smell of a French boulangerie). “We bring emerging talents and diverse perspectives into dialogue to create fragrances that connect to today’s world,” says Cavallari. Every fragrance is blended within 50km of the brand’s Milan base, with prices starting at €70.
jijide.com
5.
27 87
Spain
Unexpected delights
“Perfumery is an underestimated art form,” says Romy Kowalewski, the founder of Barcelona-based fragrance brand 27 87. Since its launch in 2016, it has built a cult following by giving unlikely notes such as banana, beer and burnt rubber a starring role. Bestsellers include the woody Genetic Bliss and the minty Wandervogel. “We’re interested in what hasn’t been done yet,” says Kowalewski.
2787perfumes.com
6.
Altra
UK
Into the wild
Since launching in 2022, Altra has been radically reshaping the natural-fragrance business. Founded by perfumer and creative director Beckielou Brown with Bridget Plant, its five scents are hand-blended in the UK using only botanical ingredients. The brand’s rising star is Ghst Flwr, a full-bodied combination of tropical fruit and saffron. “People are returning to nature while still expecting perfume to feel exciting and relevant,” says Brown. Altra combines a direct-to-consumer approach with a wholesale network. Its main markets are Europe and North America.
altraprofuture.com
7.
Heir
India
8.
Eauso Vert
USA & UK
9.
Amyi
Brazil
10.
To My Ships
UK
11.
Moëhr
Monaco & Italy
12.
Dilli House
UK
13.
Hendley
USA
14.
Escentric Molecules
UK & Germany
15.
L’Unperfect
Portugal
In 2019, Seixedo Pinheiro founded the brand with her husband, Américo, following 26 years working in luxury for the likes of Guerlain, Loewe and Acqua di Parma. Entirely self-funded, L’Unperfect is made at Fábrica Confiança (one of Portugal’s oldest factories) and sold online mostly to northern and central Europe.
lunperfect.com
16.
Borntostandout
France & South Korea
Centre of attention
“When we started, niche perfumery was nonexistent in South Korea,” says Borntostandout’s founder, Jun Lim. Since launching in 2022, the brand has created unconventional scents for men and women, and expanded to more than 80 countries, while securing Series A backing from investors including L’Oréal’s venture capitalist fund. Today, Paris-based Lim flies between China, Singapore and the UAE, with a retail footprint that stretches from London to Japan, with shops in Seoul. “My biggest fear is creating something that you have no opinion about,” he says.
borntostandout.com
17.
Flâner
Australia
Everyday essential
“We aren’t third-generation perfumers, nor did we come through a big fragrance house or beauty group,” says Flâner co-founder Andrew Hardeman. The self-funded brand began with one Melbourne shop and now also has a London Shoreditch flagship, with more European openings planned. Prices sit at about AU$270 (€165) – below niche competitors, despite using premium materials such as Italian glassware, custom metal caps, French atomisers and ingredients sourced from across the globe. “We believe that fragrance should be part of everyday life, sprayed liberally and enjoyed regularly,” says Hardeman.
flanerfragrances.com
18.
One Day
Hong Kong
City hunter
One Day’s perfumes are an olfactory diary for its founder, Michael Wong. “I realised how easily we overlook smell when processing memories,” he says. With the Ethos of Cities collection, Wong sought to capture the spirit of places that have left a mark on him, from Kyoto to Berlin.
The brand’s white labels and simple packaging have no visual ornamentation. Wong wanted the scent “to remain the hero”. One Day is stocked in six cities across the globe, from Taipei to Los Angeles, with a Hong Kong showroom in the works.
onedayperfume.co
19.
Oaken Lab
Indonesia
Tales of home
Indonesian ingredients are at the heart of Oaken Lab’s growing repertoire of scents, balms and candles. Its first fougère-styled perfume, Batavia Barber, incorporates Javanese vetiver and Sumatran patchouli, while its newest, Narikela, is infused with pandan, ginger and coconut. “Rather than follow a perfume structure, every scent tells a story,” says co-founder Christopher Kerrigan, who crafts everything in Jakarta. Oaken Lab’s narrative-driven approach comes to life in Stillroom, a restaurant-bar in the brand’s Ubud Bali shop. Next up is a Jakarta flagship to complement two existing smaller shops.
oakenlab.com
20.
Ormaie
France
Matter of time
“I grew up surrounded by perfumers,” says Ormaie co-founder Baptiste Bouygues. “I loved staying late in their offices, watching them work.” Bouygues and his mother, Marie-Lise Jonak, a fragrance creative director, launched Ormaie in 2018. The house has deliberately stayed small, with about 150 points of sale across Europe, the US, Asia and Australia. “Our ambition has always been to build relationships that deepen over time,” says Bouygues. The latest collection is a haute-perfumery line four years in the making that explores the balance between freedom and control. “Every bottle has 12 facets, like the 12 hours of a day,” says Bouygues. “It’s a reminder of the time, patience and craftsmanship required to create a fragrance.”
ormaie.com
21.
Saranghaeyo
South Korea
Personal touch
After 16 years at LVMH fragrance houses, Sung Soo Kim founded Saranghaeyo to make unique unisex scents. His perfumes pair premium ingredients with slow, cool maturation processes to preserve their brightness. Kim personally seeks out like-minded independent distributors, meeting them face to face. “They should understand my brand, love the scents and become long-term partners,” he says. The South Korean fragrance sector is growing, with exports up by 45 per cent in 2025 year on year.
srhy.co.kr
22.
Oddity
Hong Kong
Better by design
What began as a design studio grew into perfume business Oddity in 2021. “The core of our practice is creating brands so we felt that making one could be exciting,” says Alice Mourou, who co-founded it with Kirill Runkov and Nikita Shchukin. The trio, she says, are drawn to fragrance because, unlike the agency’s visual work, “scent can’t be seen”. Oddity takes a high-concept approach. Delulu embodies “fading youth”, while Naked Dance evokes the feeling of being comfortable in your own skin.
oddityfragrance.com
23.
Matiere Premiere
France
Difference in the dose
Founded in 2019 by seventh-generation Grasse perfumer Aurélien Guichard, Matiere Premiere builds scents around a single ingredient, such as saffron or oud, used at about 10 times the industry-standard quantity. “I want people to feel the quality,” says Guichard. Though Kering took a stake in the firm two years ago, the brand remains independently owned, giving Guichard the freedom to shape it on his own terms. With an HQ in Paris and shops in London, Berlin and Saint-Tropez, Matiere Premiere will soon expand with its second Paris shop and a first in Shanghai.
matiere-premiere.com
24.
Coqui Coqui
Mexico
Mapping history
Nicolas Malleville and Francesca Bonato, the entrepreneurs behind Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula-based boutique hotel business Coqui Coqui, founded their scent brand of the same name in 2003. Its fragrances are inspired by the places that have shaped the business’s story, such as Italy’s Riviera dei Fiori and Argentina’s Sierras Pampeanas. They are made in various locations, including Mexico, France and French Polynesia. This year its European sales have risen by 70.6 per cent, reaching 4,237 bottles, with a retail price of about €145 for 100ml. Coqui Coqui is now planning to expand its distribution network to stockists in Japan.
coquicoqui.com
25.
Montroi
UAE
Making memories
Co-founded by Enrique Hormigo-Scarlett and Samir Aghera, Dubai-based Montroi takes an artisanal approach to fragrance. Its 24 scents are inspired by places and people encountered along the modern Silk Route, with rare oils sourced from producers worldwide and the perfumes crafted in Grasse. “We don’t make perfumes,” says Hormigo-Scarlett. “We make memories.” The approach has found a discerning clientele in the UAE. Montroi sells through One&Only resorts globally, while the US is its main online market. A European studio is in the works.
montroi.com
Writers
Tomos Lewis
Chloé Nakao-Pelata
Rossella Frigerio
Florian Siebeck
Brooke Theis
Fernando Augusto Pacheco
Joana Moser
Ed Stocker
Adrian Kai Fraile Itagaki
Divya Venkataraman
Laura Kramer
Alexandra Aldea
Joseph Koh
Tom Webb
Natalie Stoclet
Fashion weeks are no longer just about clothes – they’re becoming cities’ biggest branding billboards
Fashion weeks are increasingly becoming entertainment events, with attendees including not only buyers and magazine editors but also actors and sportspeople. Off the runway, such occasions are big business: Paris Fashion Week – one of the French capital’s busiest trading periods for hotels, shops, chauffeur services and restaurants – now generates an estimated €400m every year for the local hospitality sector according to the French Fashion Federation.
In smaller urban centres, the financial boost is less substantial but the buzz that surrounds fashion week can help to affirm a city’s cultural relevance for years to come. Copenhagen, for example, has been working particularly hard over the past decade to become the “fifth fashion capital” by highlighting local brands’ environmental agendas and luring designers to the city with the promise of river swims and dinners by star chef Frederik Bille Brahe.
Amsterdam is the latest to claim a place on the circuit. Under Danie Bles, a former stylist and creative agency owner, Amsterdam Fashion Week relaunched in 2018 as a yearly gathering that includes as many panel discussions and street parties as runway shows. Brands don’t have to focus on the ready-to-wear category as per tradition. Denim, couture and streetwear are also welcome, while the guest list skews towards Dutch designers and museum directors.
“The goal is curation – the days when fashion week was about a new collection are gone,” says Bles, adding that she’s far more interested in highlighting “people with stories to tell” and communicating Amsterdam’s free spirit and high-low approach. “It’s about a certain vibe, about the Dutch culture and community. I want people to have time to discover the city, to have a full 360-degree experience and leave inspired, rather than exhausted from having to attend 100 events in one day.”
The latest edition, in September, opened with a dinner by designer Sabine Marcelis and stone supplier Solid Nature. A canalside gathering by knitwear specialist Extreme Cashmere followed, before a show at a supermarket by emerging designer Camiel Fortgens. “Brands should have the opportunity to show in their home country,” adds Bles. With a relaxed take on an industry staple, Bles has shown how cities can use fashion weeks to tell local stories about hospitality and creative exchange.
The artistic ‘wall dogs’ giving luxury street advertising a personal touch
Nick Metz is six storeys off the ground, paintbrush in hand, hanging from the side of a building on the corner of New York’s Canal and Lafayette Streets with a fellow “wall dog”. They are there because, even in an age of digital billboards, a mural company from New York has found itself in demand from the biggest names in luxury. Today its artists can be spotted dangling from walls in many of the US’s largest cities.
“We’ll be up here every day for a week,” says Metz, who has been working for Overall Murals, the country’s largest independent hand-painted-advertising company, for four years. “Every day, people stop and stare. That’s what I did too when I first saw someone doing this.” Wall dogs – so named because they’re leashed to buildings with safety lines – are the public face of the business, which was founded in 2010 by media planner Angel Saemai and artist Dmitry Pankov. Their first office was the size of a walk-in closet. Now, Overall Murals has a client list that includes Chanel, Google, Coach, Porsche and Häagen-Dazs, with a team of 60 painters who travel across the country. Key to its success is that, as well as the creative and engineering sides of the enterprise, it also leases locations. There are currently more than 80 across the US. Once a wall is leased, the hard work begins.
“If a surface has never been painted, it’ll be porous, so you have to build up primer and paint,” says Pankov. “In the US, creatives and advertising agencies often like to have squares and rectangles [in their imagery], and they want them to be seamless.” Working outdoors has its challenges. “We seldom miss a deadline,” adds Pankov. “We work in the heat and when it’s below zero. Oil paints don’t freeze. The viscosity changes but that doesn’t stop us.”
The scale of each project varies. “It can take between one and 10 people,” says Saemai. The walls range from a few meters square to as high as 18 meters and as long as 30 meters. The company is keen to innovate; one Ray-Ban ad featured 3-D panels allowing viewers to see a different version of the art depending on where they stood. A rain-activated project in Seattle for Ore-Ida French fries involved hydrochromic paint that displayed a message only when wet.
By the end of the week that we visit, a mural for retail giant Target will dominate an entire wall in Soho. It will stay there for two months but some advertisers purchase campaigns that last for years. These cost between $30,000 and $200,000 (€25,700 and €172,500) – about 200 to 360 per cent more than an ordinary digital billboard. “There’s something people connect with when they see a person on a wall, painting an image over several days,” says Metz. “People stop, watch, take photos and share them. The making of the advertisement becomes part of it.”
While hand-painting might seem unusual to many, heritage clients such as Chanel were around when all adverts were done this way. “This approach has been part of advertising for generations,” says Saemai. “There’s nostalgia in it. In a world where so much is instant, something made slowly stands out.” The break’s over and the wall dogs return to the job. There’s no time to waste.
overallmurals.com
Francis Belin’s plan to turn Mytheresa into luxury’s best-connected club
Francis Belin has big shoes to fill. He took the reins of online fashion retailer Mytheresa from Michael Kliger at the start of this year – a time when the business was already at the top of its game, beating market trends, posting double-digit growth and becoming a retail partner for brands from menswear behemoths such as Zegna to Kering stalwarts Bottega Veneta. Under Kliger, Munich-based Mytheresa has become a luxury multi-brand digital platform, with some of the highest-spending customers from around the world. In 2025, it acquired one of its largest competitors, the Net-a-Porter Group, to form LuxExperience. In the third quarter, net sales rose 10 per cent to €250m. Europe remains the company’s biggest market, with the US and Middle East following behind.
When Monocle meets Belin on a sunny afternoon in Los Angeles, it quickly becomes evident that he’s more than up to the task of continuing this growth trajectory as CEO. “Let’s make it clear: if I didn’t see further opportunities, it would be very dangerous for me to take the job,” says Belin, who has spent the past 21 years working across the luxury industry in Asia, starting with a managing director post at watchmaker Jaeger-LeCoultre in Tokyo. More recently, he served as Asia-Pacific president at Christie’s in Hong Kong.
Fresh from a trip to New York, by way of Munich, he’s preparing to welcome top-spending clients and influential US editors at Dawnridge house in Beverly Hills, the former home of Hollywood interior designer Tony Duquette. “I sold part of Duquette’s collection at Christie’s, so it’s a full-circle moment,” says Belin, as he takes us on a tour of the house’s maximalist, jewel-toned rooms. The occasion is an intimate dinner held alongside Valentino, one of Mytheresa’s top-performing brands.
Since joining, Belin has also hosted dinners in the Hamptons for East Coast clients, attended fashion shows in Milan and Paris, and overseen the summer edition of Maison Mytheresa – a two-week residency on a yacht that sailed between Monaco and Saint-Tropez, offering trunk shows, cocktail parties and private shopping appointments. Belin, who enjoys the occasional late-night party, certainly matches the sociable, high-flying spirit that has been integral to Mytheresa’s success.
He’s convinced that this people-centric approach will ensure that the business stays on top. “I don’t even like the term multibrand retailer,” he says, explaining that Mytheresa has moved past the traditional wholesale model that has slowed many competitors. It’s also a host, entertainer and private club of sorts, with access to high-spending fashion clients from across the globe. “If you scratch beneath the surface, it becomes clear that we’re not just an ‘e-tailer’. We’re all about relationships, first and foremost with our customers but also with the brands that we sell. We’re extremely focused on who our customers are and what’s interesting to them. We then remove everything that’s not relevant, so there’s no clutter.”
Investing in logistics and a seamless online experience remains “the bedrock” of the business, says Belin, yet he keeps returning to more traditional values, primarily relationship building. “That’s the part that ties this to my previous experience at Christie’s, where it was all about people’s relationships with sellers who would trust you to sell some of the most prized objects in the world,” he says. “With buyers too, there were generational relationships. You got to know the whole family.” As luxury prices rise and clients start to adopt a collector’s mind-set, Belin’s approach feels timely. In his eyes, curation is more important than ever, even in a digital-first world where there are fewer space limitations on stock. “We don’t want to be a place where you have everything for everybody,” he says. “Mytheresa is the place where you have exactly what a specific audience is looking for. That’s real curation.”
This means a constantly reviewed edit of up to 250 fashion brands and 30 fine-jewellery labels. There are also ongoing efforts to secure access to exclusive capsule collections and brands that are hard to find elsewhere, such as Phoebe Philo. “It’s all about access,” he says. “In the art world, we would have pre-sales and here we have exclusive capsules, pre-launches and trunk shows for our customers.”
The fact that brands – from the digitally shy Phoebe Philo to established names Brioni and Miu Miu – are willing to offer this level of access is remarkable in itself. “It goes beyond being able to sell their products at full price,” says Belin. “It’s the way we tell their stories, put together campaigns and address our top customers’ needs. So many of them want to have access to a curated selection, instead of spending three days going up and down Fifth Avenue or Avenue Montaigne. Mono-brand retail can’t replicate this.”
Belin plans to scale initiatives such as Maison Mytheresa, creating more seasonal residences and money-can’t-buy experiences to keep customers entertained – and his own curiosity fed. “I do all of my market research at our events,” he adds. “If you’re sitting next to me at dinner, I’m going to grill you. I want to know everything.” It’s why travelling to LA with Valentino and pulling out all the stops was a top priority. The event that he co-hosted included everything from a live orchestra to an alfresco dinner in Dawnridge’s garden and a desert room filled with towers of cannoli and giant bowls of tiramisu. Despite the grandeur, by the end of the evening, guests were unwinding in the cosy lounge, tasting the sweet treats and getting to know each other. “We create those rare occasions where people barely touch their phones – that’s luxury to me,” says Belin. “We have to keep investing in technology for various reasons but that’s something that AI can’t crack. We won’t be replacing the taste of our buyers, or the real-life events that our team puts together, with technology.”
Takashi Fukuchi is betting Japan’s foot health on zero-drop shoes
Step by step, Stride Group’s Takashi Fukuchi is reshaping the way that we move and the shoes that we wear. Since 2016, the Tokyo-based entrepreneur has been building Stride Lab, a network of shops that specialises in running gear and zero-drop shoes – a footwear design that places the heel and forefoot on the same level. Along the way, he has become the distributor of brands including Denver-based Altra, while creating new ultra-light-shoe brand Notace, which was launched in 2025. Designed to support the body’s natural movements, its shoes provide balance and comfort, plus an amplified sense of ground contact.
Stride Group has seen a 30 per cent increase in year-on-year growth, with annual revenue predicted to reach ¥3.5bn (€18.8m) by the end of this fiscal year, all without the aid of outside investment. The entrepreneur plans to increase Stride Lab’s retail footprint; it will have one shop in the US, two in South Korea and 20 in Japan by 2027. He aims to have 100 Stride Lab shops in his home country within the next decade. Monocle stops by the Stride Lab flagship in Nihonbashi to find out more.
How did you become involved in the shoe industry?
My background is in physiology and I have been involved with the health industry for a long time. One day, at an outdoor retailer show in Utah, I met the gentlemen who started the shoe brand Altra. Their background was in biomechanics so, while other brands were talking about cushioning and performance, their focus was on how to run more healthily. I was surprised and even though I had never been in retail or wholesale before, I decided to become their distributor in 2011.
What motivated you to open the first Stride Lab shop in Tokyo in 2016?
For a few years, I insisted that people should wear zero-drop, foot-shaped shoes. They look quite different to conventional footwear and it wasn’t easy for people to understand why they were better. That’s why I opened the first Stride Lab shop and trained the staff to grasp the importance of choosing the right shoe to meet people’s needs. It was an immediate success.
Our Tokyo flagship has a basement training facility where we assess people’s foot strength, based on a foot-health index that we created from more than 1,000 tests. Our foot-health programme is led by a trainer who worked with the Tokyo Yakult Swallows baseball team and also teaches professional strength coaches and trainers effective testing protocols and exercise prescription. We’re not only selling footwear. Shoes are great but they don’t magically make you healthier. We also need to educate people about the natural movements of their feet and their whole body.
What does Notace aim to bring to the market?
After working with many different brands and requesting a particular kind of shoe without success, my co-founders and I decided to do it on our own in 2024 [before officially launching in 2025]. We knew the shape, construction and cushioning required. We removed all of the unnecessary parts to simplify and reduce the shoe’s weight. The next-generation ETPU [expanded thermoplastic polyurethane] midsole is an important feature. It’s not only lightweight but provides both protection and flexibility too.
When we set out to create our shoes, we didn’t rely on modern, maximalist technology. Instead, we looked to ancient wisdom – specifically, to waraji, the traditional Japanese sandals woven from rice straw that travellers and marathon monks wore across rugged terrain for more than 1,000 years. Studying this type of footwear was a brilliant, centuries-old masterclass in biomechanics. Traditional waraji were woven to a thickness of about 15mm to provide just enough protection to take the edge off impacts, while letting the foot feel the earth. They were also flexible, as they were made from straw. To replicate this, we build our shoes to be highly pliable. They move with your stride, never against it. Your foot has 26 bones and 33 joints. Each has a specific function. Our shoes are designed to allow them to move naturally. Waraji were also shorter than the foot, allowing the toes to hang off and grip the ground directly. We designed a wide toe box and flexible forefoot to give toes the room to splay and engage with the trail. Whether you are walking, running or standing, to keep your posture right, every movement needs ground stability. In Japan, people used to be offered giant waraji shoes at temples to pray for strong legs and feet. It’s a culture that honours the body’s inherent abilities. Notace was born from this philosophy.
How can wearing the correct shoe improve people’s everyday lives?
Stride Lab believes that footwear is the foundation of a healthy life. A major cause of declining health is a lack of daily exercise, which is often caused by pain. When our feet or lower back hurt, we move less. While experts recommend walking 8,000 steps a day and engaging in light exercise, doing so consistently requires pain-free feet. That is where choosing the right shoes becomes crucial.
Numerous studies show that regaining lost foot function and strengthening your feet can help to prevent future internal diseases. We address this by restoring foot function so you can keep moving. We design shoes that help to rebuild the natural strength of your feet. We focus on the perfect fit for every individual.
All in good time: Peerless timepieces to enhance your style
Stylist: Kyoko Tamoto
Reborn from a historic 1930s art deco bathhouse, the Rockaway Ocean Club is reclaiming the Big Apple’s beach cred
It’s a late-summer evening on the Rockaway Peninsula in Queens, New York, and a salty Atlantic breeze is blowing. The sun’s out, music is pumping from speakers and lobster rolls are being served at The Courtyard, just off the boardwalk at Jacob Riis Park beach.
The scene feels a million miles from the pavement-pounding pace of Midtown Manhattan, where steel and glass can dupe residents into forgetting that the city is surrounded by water. “My uncle has lived in New York since 1970,” says Ursula Damani between greeting guests at The Courtyard. “He had no idea that this place exists.” We meet Damani at the soft-launch party for Rockaway Ocean Club, of which she is a founding partner. The club occupies the Jacob Riis Bathhouse, a sprawling art deco building from 1932 that is undergoing an $88m (€76m) restoration. Phase one of the project, which opened at the tail end of the 2026 season, includes a café on the boardwalk and The Courtyard, which will host events. A pool fringed with sunloungers is accessible to club members. Next year, first-floor membership spaces will be added, alongside a 28-key hotel and four food concessions.
The push to give this stretch of coastline a new lease of life comes at a crucial moment. Though New Yorkers experienced a wet summer this year, the season here is growing ever hotter, with heatwaves becoming more frequent and continuing for longer. As a result, there’s an increasing need for places to cool off. City and state administrators agree. Two publicly owned, bay-facing facilities – East Bathhouse at Jones Beach State Park on Long Island and Orchard Beach Bathhouse in the Bronx – were recently refurbished and a floating, water-filtering swimming pool is being piloted near Pier 35 on the Lower East Side.
Damani compares the original Jacob Riis Bathhouse to “a sandcastle on the ocean”. Architect John L Plock designed it in 1930 as a place where New Yorkers could take advantage of their coastline, which, at almost 850km, stretches longer than those of Los Angeles, San Francisco, Miami and Boston combined. The bathhouse offered subsidised showers, changing rooms, an open-air dance floor and a solarium, making for an affordable day trip. But this vision for the beach was cut short in 1972 when the facility closed after years of mismanagement and underinvestment from the city, which was then heading for a fiscal crisis. Ownership passed to a federal landlord, the National Park Service, which kept the building boarded up for half a century. Without the budget to do the necessary work, the government agency eventually turned to private-sector companies, including developer CBSK.
Completion of the first phase took almost a decade. The project was hit by delays, some of which were caused by the complexities of dealing with a preservation project – not to mention the pandemic. “I always joke and say, ‘Give me a government acronym: we have probably been in front of them at some point,’” says Damani.
The Rockaway Ocean Club is a little different from the original 1930s vision – a sign of both evolving beach habits (the need to change from formal attire into swimwear is no longer an issue) and the fact that the project will need to be profitable to pay off its loans.
At the soft opening, an Italian-American originally from Gravesend in Brooklyn tells Monocle that he is “worried about change” in the area. Another man overhears and counters, “Everything will turn out fine.” That brief exchange captures the tensions surrounding Rockaway Ocean Club. There has been talk of gentrification and accusations that “The People’s Beach”, as Jacob Riis Park is known, is being privatised; this has led to plenty of online vitriol and calls to boycott the project, even though the beach itself remains public.
What does Damani make of all this? She points out that the bathhouse always used to charge for entry and adds that 60 per cent of the restored site will remain open to the public, including the entire span of the ground-floor boardwalk, with the remaining 40 per cent for members, who pay a fee that starts at $1,000 (€858) a year for Rockaway residents. “There’s a plaque on the building that says, ‘Erected by the City of New York for the recreation of its citizens’. That has been our North Star,” she says. “We’re thoughtful about the diverse traffic that will be coming.”
Pierre Antoine Dourneau, formerly of Soho House, is Rockaway Ocean Club’s chief operating officer. He knows that the club will need buy-in from locals. “We won’t survive without them,” he says. “We’re coming onto their patch so we must be good neighbours.”
Dourneau is passionate about building a community and bringing economic development to this low-income corner of New York. His plans include holding swimming lessons for children and bringing a farmers’ market to what he describes as a “bit of a food desert”. With ambitions to keep the club open from mid-spring through to early autumn, he is already thinking about holding a pumpkin-patch event. If all goes to plan, a new crowd will discover what the Rockaways have to offer: a change of pace, with the Manhattan skyline a distant presence on the horizon, and a welcome respite from the heat. “We’re reminding New Yorkers that we live in a beach town,” says Damani. “That’s one of the biggest joys of this project.”
rockawayoceanclub.com
City of rivers
New York is a city of waterways but you wouldn’t always know it. Its rivers, canals and docks were long treated as dumping grounds for sewage and heavy metals from local industry. Brooklyn’s Gowanus Canal earned the undesirable accolade of being one of the most polluted waterways in the US, while the Hudson also suffered from contamination. The 1930s were the heyday for swimming here but dips were taken far from the canals and rivers.
Robert Moses, who was the city’s parks commissioner from 1934 to 1960, undertook a series of significant infrastructure projects funded by the Works Progress Administration. In addition to the Jacob Riis Park Bathhouse, he oversaw McCarren Park Pool in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, and the bay-facing Jones Beach State Park. But over the decades, many of these spots fell into disrepair and were forgotten – until the recent resurgence in interest.
New York is beginning to re-evaluate its relationship with water. In 2012 a $50m (€43m) renovation brought the long-closed McCarren Park Pool back to life. The East Bathhouse at Jones Beach State Park, shuttered since 2009, reopened this year, thanks to a $100m (€86m) investment. The Bronx’s Orchard Beach Pavilion also reopened to the public this year after receiving $114m (€98m) in funding.
The rivers and canals, however, still have a long way to go. Gowanus Canal is undergoing a multimillion-dollar clean-up but remains toxic. Swimming in the East River and the Hudson remains off limits too but a pilot scheme for a water-filtering floating pool on the East River (named +Pool) is nearing completion and could prove to be a game changer. With summers getting hotter, these projects will be sweet relief.
“We are explaining. We aren’t preaching.” Mina Al-Oraibi on the role of journalism in the Gulf
Mina Al-Oraibi enters the Abu Dhabi headquarters of The National in a flash of burnt orange – a bright contrast with the newsroom’s cool blue-and-grey palette. As she cuts across the open-plan floor towards her glass-walled office, she greets staff and stops to check in on an editor who had difficulties on his commute to work. “That’ll teach you to get an Italian car,” she says, with a laugh.
In the nine years since Al-Oraibi arrived in the Emirati capital to relaunch the English-language title, she has become one of the most recognisable figures in Gulf media. As editor in chief, she oversees a newsroom producing print, digital, video and magazine journalism for a publication whose ambition is captured in its tagline: “The Middle East. Explained”. In addition to The National’s day-to-day operations, she can be found moderating panels at the World Governments Summit, speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos or fielding questions on CNN and the BBC. “I never thought that I would end up leading a newsroom,” she says, fishing for earrings in a taupe Mulberry Bayswater bag. “But I have always loved being a journalist, getting stories and meeting people on the ground.”
On a table in Al-Oraibi’s office sits a large white dallah filled with Arabic coffee, beside a neat row of cups. She offers Monocle one before pouring her own, then lifts the lid of a dish filled with pistachio-stuffed dates.
Al-Oraibi was born in 1980 in Stockholm to Iraqi parents and raised in the Middle East and the UK. After university, she started at London-based Arabic daily Al Hayat. In the run-up to the Iraq war, there was demand for those who understood the region’s geography and politics but didn’t have “an axe to grind”, as she puts it. Soon she was appearing on British television as a commentator and reporting as a roving correspondent, before being sent to Washington to run a bureau for international Arabic newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat. “The centre of the political universe is Washington,” she says. “You learn things there that shape how you see the world.”
She went on to become the youngest and first female assistant editor in chief at Asharq Al-Awsat in London before burning out. In 2015, after years covering the destruction of Arab cities and the rise of Isis in Mosul – her father’s hometown – she stepped away to take up a fellowship at Yale University. “I was heartbroken by what was happening in the region,” she says. “We would review the front pages and it was destruction, destruction, destruction. You couldn’t tell if it was Syria, Libya or Iraq.”
Following this break, Al-Oraibi joined The National in 2017. The mission was to rebuild the publication as a digital-first title. “I remember thinking, ‘Please stop saying digital-first,’” she says. “How do we just make sure that we’re getting through to audiences?” Today more than 80 per cent of The National’s readers access it via smartphone. But print still matters. A copy of the day’s broadsheet newspaper lies on her desk beside the latest issue of the title’s glossy weekend magazine and several branded stress balls. “I have used those a lot,” she says wryly.
Her digital instincts extend to artificial intelligence. The National has integrated AI into the less-glamorous mechanics of the newsroom – tasks such as transcription, audio clean-up and video editing. The question of jobs is hard to avoid: the business laid off 28 journalists as part of a restructuring in 2025, with further staff made redundant this summer (though Al-Oraibi is adamant that AI was not a motivating factor). The challenge, she says, is ensuring that efficiency doesn’t come at the expense of people learning the craft.
Al-Oraibi’s glass-walled office means that she can scan the entire newsroom in a single sweep, while staff know whether she is available. “If there’s breaking news, I can immediately see whether anyone is on it,” she says.
There are clues to Al-Oraibi’s personality in the objects that surround her. Several notebooks, each with “different roles to play”, sit alongside a fountain pen that was given to her by Riyadh’s King Abdullah Financial District and shaped like one of its towers. “It’s pretty,” she says, “but it would be insane to actually use.” There are no family photographs. “My work is work,” she says. Her Mulberry Bayswater – an almost permanent fixture on her arm – is crammed with the essentials of a life that’s lived between meetings: two phone batteries, make-up, reading glasses and sunglasses. “Everybody comments on how heavy my bag is,” she says.
The National is state-owned. Perhaps inevitably, Al-Oraibi is frequently asked about press freedom in the UAE. The question clearly irritates her. “My answer is always: read it,” she says. “If you have read The National and can point to something that doesn’t hold water, then we can have a conversation.”
Every country has media laws, she says. The UAE’s are stricter than some but clearer than many. Privacy laws, in particular, shape reporting. “There isn’t the same societal acceptance of digging into people’s private lives,” she says. “In much of the region, that is off limits.” She is equally forthright about journalism elsewhere: British royal correspondents protect access; Washington reporters can become too close to administrations. “There are always trade-offs,” she says.
As a female editor in chief leading a prominent newsroom in the Arab world, Al-Oraibi represents a generational shift. The National’s staff includes journalists from across continents. “Someone will shout across the newsroom, ‘Does anyone speak this language?’ – and someone always does,” she says.
That breadth in terms of backgrounds became crucial during recent coverage of the conflict in the Middle East, when the UAE came under attack from Iranian drones and missiles. Al-Oraibi’s first concern was not headlines but staff welfare. “Everyone reacts differently,” she says. “Some had never lived through war before.” The National’s newsroom became both reporting engine and international resource, fielding requests from global broadcasters. “Covering a war can make or break a newsroom,” she says. “It made us. It didn’t break us.”
When it comes to Al-Oraibi’s reading habits, she consumes news quickly and mostly online: Reuters, AP, AFP, X and Instagram, alongside international titles. But some preferences remain analogue: the weekend Financial Times is a fixture and she regularly buys Monocle. A print subscription to Vanity Fair has been arriving at her London home for more than 20 years. Books are also always physical. She is currently reading Departure(s) by British writer Julian Barnes. “I’m obsessed with history, memory and how things are reported,” she says.
In the office, the television is almost always tuned to the BBC. At home, Al-Oraibi unwinds by watching series on Apple TV – Shrinking, The Morning Show and Slow Horses. Since leaving Asharq Al-Awsat, she has had one rule that dictates her viewing choices: no miserable television. “We do enough sad,” she says.
As Monocle departs, Al-Oraibi’s office door remains open. In a media industry that is contending with market forces and collapsing trust, she remains ambitious and clear about journalism’s purpose. “We are explaining,” she says. “We aren’t preaching.” It sounds simple but in this part of the world – and increasingly elsewhere too – that might prove to be a radical editorial philosophy.
CV
1980: Born in Sweden to Iraqi parents.
1982–1986: Lives in Baghdad during the Iran-Iraq War.
1986: Moves to Canberra, Australia, where she learns English.
1999: Enrols at University College London to study history.
2002: Completes a master’s in history at UCL and joins Al Hayat as an intern, before becoming a current-affairs journalist.
2005: Moves to Asharq Al-Awsat, going on to serve as a roving correspondent, Washington bureau chief and assistant editor in chief.
2015: Selected as a Yale World Fellow.
2016: Becomes a senior fellow at the Institute for State Effectiveness.
2017: Joins The National in Abu Dhabi as editor in chief, overseeing the publication’s relaunch.
How Italy’s Modiano keeps playing its cards right in an age of digital distraction
Drop in on any beach bar in Italy and you will spot a recurring cast of characters: tanned and concentrating, dedicated cardplayers sit around a shaded table that they will barely leave all entire afternoon.
Cardplaying is not only a seaside activity: from social clubs to neighbourhood bars, parks and ferry-terminal queues, Italians love to whip out a deck and get stuck into one of their favourite games – be it briscola, scopa, scala quaranta or canasta – using cards that, like the country’s traditions, look different from region to region. Teenagers are also increasingly keeping packs at the ready to kill time, rather than giving in to the lure of their phones. “In this hyper-connected but disconnected world, card games engage the mind and are enjoyed with other people,” says Stefano Crechici, the president of Modiano, the Trieste-based company that manufactures about half of the nation’s decks. “You could also play cards on your computer but it’s about being present with your team-mates. You get to know people’s strengths and weaknesses; their character.”
Modiano started out in 1868 producing cigarette papers and expanded into lithographs, posters and eventually the playing cards beloved by Trieste’s dock workers. During the Habsburg era, the city was an important trading hub: Modiano’s products travelled as far as India; the company had factories in Budapest and Rijeka.
Today, half of its €10m turnover comes from exports, including to Greece, Central Europe and the United States. Casinos across the globe use Modiano cards and the company is the World Series of Poker’s official supplier. Playing cards’ popularity increased during the pandemic and they are still the company’s main focus. But over the years, Modiano has also started printing Tarot cards and personalised decks. Making the cards that are used in a number of popular board games has also shown the company that screen-free pastimes are on the up. “Playing has always been part of human life,” says Crechici. “The more immediate a game, the more successful it is.”
modiano.it
