The independent Toronto retailer keeping magazine culture alive

Back in 2021, Nicola Hamilton, an award-winning art director for several Canadian magazines, noticed something missing from Toronto’s media ecosystem. Despite being Canada’s largest city and home to the country’s biggest print, broadcast and media-production hubs, it seemed to lack a specialist shop dedicated to selling print. “I have worked in magazines for a decade,” says Hamilton. “But I realised that Toronto hadn’t had an independent kiosk of its own in a very long time.”

That set in motion a career shift, from designing magazines to selling them. In the summer of 2022, she established her own magazine shop, Issues, in the city’s Dundas West neighbourhood, an area already rich in independent retail. “It’s really fascinating to be on the other side of this industry,” says Hamilton, who firmly believes that magazines will continue to enrich and entertain future generations of people. “I’m used to putting a title together but seeing what customers are interested in reading and what they get excited about in the shop has taught me a lot.”

It was one piece of advice in particular, offered by Jeremy Leslie, founder of MagCulture in London, that guided her initial steps into magazine retail: begin by bringing in five copies of every title that you want to stock, assess what sells, then build up the inventory from there. “I’m the first Canadian retailer for a lot of these titles so that felt very exciting,” she adds.

The pared-back space was designed by Toronto-based Company Company as a shop and also as a gathering spot for the city’s creative folk. Issues hosts live talks with editors, writers and publishers, as well as magazine launches and other events. Demand has been so high for some of these that Issues now hosts pop-up shops and live talks in other parts of the country too.

“I believe in independent media,” says Hamilton. “We encourage people to linger, browse, take a seat and ask questions. I hope that there’s plenty of inspiration to be found here.”
issuesmagshop.com

Ink big: Monetising magazine retail

Consider your inventory: Manage your stock when you start out. This will give you a clearer sense of what sells.

Expand your offering: Pop-up shops, live events, collaborations and subscriptions to monthly magazine bundles will help to broaden your customer base.

Champion harder-to-find titles: Stock familiar publications next to independent newcomers – people want to be inspired.

The small-neighbourhood renaissance

In recent years, there has been a renaissance in smaller locales that are now offering fertile ground for forward-thinking entrepreneurs. Here, we visit three neighbourhoods that have been transformed by a profusion of fresh ideas. Running west to east, Seattle’s Fremont has provided a laid-back and affordable alternative to the city’s blockbuster tech enclaves; in Copenhagen, the long-maligned Amager island now teems with exciting new companies; and Kuala Lumpur’s Chinatown (also known as Petaling Street precinct) is shaking off its seedy past and reinventing itself at pace. — L

1.
Fremont
Seattle

In 2001 professional skier Bryce Phillips chose Seattle’s Fremont neighbourhood as his base to sell used gear because his rented flat had a garage. Over two decades later, his outlet Evo is one of the leading action-sports retailers in the US, Canada and Japan, while its sibling property-development company, Evolution Projects, owns hotels, commercial buildings and residential units in outdoors-oriented cities and mountain towns. Both companies still call Fremont home. “We had to ask ourselves, ‘Who are we?’” says Ira Gerlich, Evolution Projects’ co-founder, while a team reviews lighting for the newest Evo Hotel in Lake Tahoe, California. “Are we downtown high-rise people? No. We have pride in working in the places that we do projects in.”

Like Fremont, those places are up-and-coming low-to-mid-rise neighbourhoods with eclectic, tightknit communities. As Gerlich takes monocle to Evolution Project’s latest development – encompassing more than 21,000 sq m of office space, retail, restaurants, a skatepark and a climbing gym – we pass independent shops selling vintage clothing, guitars, jewellery, records, books, bicycles, pottery, glassware and house plants. Dive bars, coffee shops and live-music venues abound, while a few light industrial businesses – a computer recycler, an outdoor-equipment repair shop – linger on.

Construction workers are putting the finishing touches on Evo Campus’s office building, fully leased by 110-year-old shoe brand Brooks Running, while staff  set up for dinner at South Korean-inflected steakhouse Joule. Restaurateur Rachel Yang, Joule’s co-owner, meets MONOCLE at her latest venture, Paper Cake Shop up the street. “Entrepreneurship is about being individual,” she says, between bites of mango black-tea cake. That profile fits Fremont, from the weekly market and annual Solstice Parade (famed for its naked bike ride) to the quirky public art, such as a Lenin statue rescued from a Cold War scrap-heap and a concrete troll lurking under a bridge.

As business mores evolve, a CBD address is no longer a necessity. Brand design agency Turnstyle invested in a canal-front townhouse in the south of Fremont in 2016. Today its neighbours are a commercial electrician, a natural-wine shop and a boutique selling high-end Japanese denim. “We had a shared vision of working in a more creative neighbourhood outside the business core,” says co-founder Ben Graham. Turnstyle still charges comparable downtown rates for its services but now clients come to them. Managers from the area’s corporate giants – Amazon is a 10-minute drive away – steal away from their offices to work on brand strategy with Turnstyle’s team while pleasure boats pass by.

Technology firms have increasingly found a foothold in Fremont, which is home to a Google satellite office and Adobe’s research arm. Drone start-up Brinc, backed by more than $80m (€72m) in venture capital, relocated here from Las Vegas in 2022. Health innovator Path is moving in. MONOCLE ends its Fremont tour via e-bike, zipping along a cycle superhighway past boatyards and beer gardens to the neighbourhood’s newest office building, Northlake Commons, atop a lumber company’s warehouse. The Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence and its business incubator will arrive later this year in the fetching new digs, replete with paddleboard storage. The next breakthrough in machine learning might well be hatched on a lake a stone’s throw from trucks toting timber – exactly the Fremont way.

2.
Chinatown
Kuala Lumpur

With its sea of counterfeit products and underbelly of illicit activity, it’s easy to unflatteringly paint Kuala Lumpur’s Chinatown (Petaling Street) with a broad brush. But look past its central boulevard and you’ll uncover a wave of creative entrepreneurs putting the neighbourhood on the start-up map. Petaling Street is set within an area that locals refer to as the “old city”, which began as a settlement of tin miners in the late 19th century. As the city grew and modernised in the 1980s and 1990s, scores of shop houses fell into disrepair. Many were left abandoned while some became brothels.

In 2019 seeds of regeneration were planted when architects Shin Chang and Shin Tseng joined forces to transform a former cinema into a creative enclave called REXKL. Today, it is buzzing with restaurants, shops, tattoo parlours and an immersive art space. “We wanted to bring independent Malaysian brands back to this area,” says Chang. “There has been a lot of effort on our part to attract emerging businesses that are representative of Malaysia today.”

Given the perceptions of the area as seedy, some entrepreneurs were unsure of moving in but REXKL provided a way through which they could invigorate this historic but long-neglected part of the city. “Many felt sad or sorry about the state of the neighbourhood and longed to reconnect with the ‘real’ Kuala Lumpur,” says Tseng.

Chef Danial Thorlby shares this sentiment. The co-founder of Pickle Dining, a French-inspired restaurant that dabbles with fermentation and charcoal cooking, had always dreamt of setting up shop in Chinatown. “This neighbourhood was one of the first hubs of entrepreneurship in Kuala Lumpur, from the street hawkers to the artists,” he says. “Having spent much of my childhood here and witnessing its decline, I think it’s great that I can play a part in bringing it back to life.” 

An attachment to the city’s older quarters also drew Engku Roestam Alias here when he was looking for a new site for Riwayat, a bookshop focusing on sociopolitical issues. “This neighbourhood represents Kuala Lumpur,” says Roestam. “It was the high street that gave the city its cultural and economic vibrancy. There’s a mix of cultures here and both locals and travellers visit this part of town.”

Petaling Street’s rise can also be attributed in part to Justin Chen and Javier Perez. They restored a 1930s building into Else Kuala Lumpur, a boutique hotel that has drawn more affluent visitors to the area. Chen and Perez’s ethos from the outset was to craft a “globally connected, locally rooted” hospitality hub, expressed in Else’s artist-in- residence  programme and numerous creative collaborations. “We’re always looking to work with people in the community, be it gallerists or promoters, and give them a platform to showcase their work,” says Perez.

Many of these entrepreneurial newcomers are just getting started. Chang and Tseng are bringing their successful adaptive reuse approach to a five-storey building nextdoor to REXKL, this time with a focus on wellness and art, injecting vim and pep into the heart of Kuala Lumpur.

3.
Amager
Copenhagen

Visitors to Copenhagen might not notice that they are leaving Amager island as the metro whisks them into the city centre from the airport. But residents of this island in the Øresund strait have always been quietly proud of their neighbourhood. These days, numerous start-ups are also coming to appreciate the variety, flexibility and lower costs of Amager’s post-industrial building stock, the same built environment that once saw it nicknamed “Shit Island” by snobby Copenhageners.

“Our corner of Amager is an industrial area that is in transition towards a mix of new housing and industry, so it has a lot of soul and heritage,” says Rasmus Juul-Nyholm, co-founder of property company Home Earth. The company, founded in 2021, combines an exceptionally low emissions target on its new builds and refurbishments with an unusually long-term approach: it aims to own its properties in perpetuity, instead of the typical 10-year period, with tenants part-renting and part-owning.

The company is based in one of its properties, Nefa Fabrikken, a factory that once made bicycle lights, close to numerous other small businesses. “This area is such a good compromise between being central – we can bike into the city – and affordable,” says Juul-Nyholm. “It’s got a cool vibe. It’s dominated by creative industries.”

Butcher Michael Museth was also attracted by Amager’s eclectic architectural typology. He points out a Cold War bunker when monocle visits Butcheria, his new shop-cum-restaurant. “It has the perfect temperature for us.” The bunker, adjacent to the premises, was once intended to shelter workers from the nearby oil refinery in the event of a nuclear attack but is now home to slowly ageing – and richly fragrant – cuts of beef and pork for Butcheria’s charcuterie. Museth cites the lower cost of Amager as a major draw. “We could have opened in Torvehallerne [the city-centre food hall]. But the rents are several times what we pay here.” Alongside the butcher’s shop, he also has space for events, classes and weddings, as well as a kitchen garden.

The sheer variety of premises available on Amager is matched by the diversity of businesses that have chosen it as their base: everything from coffee company Nordic Roasting and health- technology start-up Teton to Koatji, a maker of oat and koji milk. There are vertical farms, media start-ups, photographers, graphic designers and animators, as well as Moonboon, which produces hi-tech baby hammocks and was a star on the Danish version of TV show Dragon’s Den in 2021.

But ground zero for start-ups on Amager is Siljangade, a large co-working and living complex exclusively for small businesses, which opened in 2021. “We have everyone from architects and software engineers to jewellers, people who work in fashion, pole dancers and painters,” says Natalie Duggan, the manager of the building. This is the only co-living space in Copenhagen that requires residents to have a CVR – a Danish company number – which was a way for the owners, property company NREP, to get around restrictions on residential properties in this part of the island.

Some apartments are purely used as company bases, others function as company premises and homes for the company owners; rents start at DKK9,900 (€1,325) per month. There are 138 studio apartments in all, along with a gym, a café run by residents, shared workspaces, meeting rooms and a spectacular roof terrace. “Amager is a creative zone that speaks to younger people,” says Duggan, who adds that the most recent trend among residents is food start-ups. “And then you’ve got the beach nearby. Ten years ago, Amager was a little dangerous. It’s still a bit edgy but in another 10 years’ time it will be too expensive.”

Rimowa expands its horizons with a sleek entry into luxury handbags

On any given day, if you’re on a train between Köln and Paris, you’re likely to spot plenty of hard-shell Rimowa suitcases in the overhead compartments. But when entire carriages seem loaded with the German company’s wares, it’s probably a sign that the brand has been gathering its team for an all-hands meeting. Lately, this back-and-forth between its factory in Ossendorf, just outside Köln, and its creative offices in central Paris has been occurring at a much higher frequency than usual. All of this activity is in preparation for one of the brand’s most significant launches to date: its debut handbag and, notably, its first foray outside the travel sector, in which it has been operating for the past 126 years.

“It’s a leap of faith,” says Rimowa’s ceo, Hugues Bonnet-Masimbert. “Historically, our products have been associated with going to the airport or the train station but we felt the urge to enter daily commuting too.” The new bag, dubbed the Original, looks like Rimowa’s signature aluminium suitcase but it has been sized down to snugly fit an A5 book. It can be carried by leather handles or over the shoulder on a canvas strap. Getting its shape just right took more than two years. “We iterated an incredible number of times,” says Bonnet-Masimbert. “There were hours of meetings between crazy engineers, designers and myself.”

Bonnet-Masimbert meets monocle in Ossendorf, an industrial area with an unusual preponderance of factories built from grooved metal. There’s a delegation from Paris here and an excited bustle all around the campus. On the factory floor, a team assembles the Original bags that are due for delivery. In one corner, curved aluminium shells are attached and equipped with corner plates and handles. Across the room, the bag is fitted with a leather interior. The design has already made a high-profile cameo in Pedro Almodóvar’s latest Golden Lion-winning film, The Room Next Door, in which Tilda Swinton opens the bag and lets out a scream – in awe of the buttery leather lining, perhaps. The following day, it will make its way to Rimowa shops worldwide, including a dedicated pop-up in Shenzhen. It will also feature on billboards across the globe, including Berlin, Dubai and London.

Rimowa had already been working on expanding its product line to soft bags, such as canvas backpacks and weekender totes, as well as the clutch-sized Personal bag, which comes in both polycarbonate and aluminium. However, these were conceived and marketed as accessories to the suitcases, meant for carrying passports and other essentials while in transit. “In a way, they were easier to do,” says Bonnet-Masimbert. “But deep down, I’ve always wanted to make a handbag using our expertise.” It’s why the launch of the Original carries such weight for the business. It would be easy to dismiss it as a new size in an existing design – but it reflects the company’s broader ambitions to build its reputation beyond luggage and claim a stake in the competitive luxury handbag category, long ruled by Dior, Louis Vuitton and Celine, its sister brands in French conglomerate lvmh.

Even for a storied business such as Rimowa, successfully orchestrating this kind of pivot can take years of perfecting the design, working with suppliers and crafting the right marketing strategy. In fact, Rimowa has been planting the seeds of a new category launch for years. Ever since it was acquired by lvmh in 2016 (Alexandre Arnault, one of the youngest scions of founder Bernard Arnault, had long been a fan), the brand embarked on a big marketing push. It released partnerships with the likes of Supreme, Fendi, Off-White and Dior, brought most of its distribution in-house and, this spring, opened a pop-up café in partnership with La Marzocco during Milan’s Salone del Mobile. “We dabbled in the fashion space but mostly through collaborations,” says Bonnet-Masimbert, who took the reins in 2021. “Now, we are flying with our own wings.”

To be in a position to soar, Bonnet-Masimbert has been making changes inside the Rimowa campus, which has close to 700 employees. By optimising workflow and increasing the number of production lines, it has more than doubled manufacturing capacity. In the dedicated accessories section, the team has been producing small goods such as phone cases ahead of its big handbag debut. “Even our iPhone cases are made in the factory,” says Bonnet-Masimbert. “That is very unusual for the industry.”

Investing in German design and manufacturing has allowed the brand to differentiate its new handbag from competitors. For Bonnet-Masimbert, the bag’s inherently German, function-first design is its strongest selling point. He has long had a deep-seated understanding of German consumer and manufacturing values, having spent years working as a shop manager in German cities including Köln, where he was once the sales advisor of the Louis Vuitton boutique. So when he embarked on the very French endeavour of making a fashionable handbag, he ensured that the brief was tailored to Rimowa’s design dna.

“We wanted it to be both premium and functional,” he says. “Part of the headache we gave our designers was that it should be suitable for going to work, as well as to yoga and to a wedding.” The bag also needed to be unisex – unlike most luxury fashion, which is skewed towards women’s ready-to-wear and accessories, Rimowa’s customer base is split evenly between men and women. Finally, it had to be made in Köln.

Fulfilling the brief required a lot of back-and-forth between Rimowa’s design team in Paris and the r&d and engineering departments in Köln. “Producing small aluminium objects is a huge technical challenge,” says Bonnet-Masimbert. “The world of daily commuting also has a much wider scope of functionality and higher aesthetic requirements,” he adds, pointing to the numerous technical challenges that tested the Rimowa team throughout the development process.

During the early stages, the team realised that the process couldn’t easily be repeated at such a small scale and sought the help of another German company specialising in moulding aluminium objects. Switching from a canvas to a leather lining also offered another steep learning curve. The classic Rimowa clasps wouldn’t work, either – they looked clunky and required two hands to open. The solution? A new lock that lets the bag pop open at the press of a button. “At some point, you’ll be pushing your bike with one hand and then you need to open this bag,” says Bonnet-Masimbert. “It might all sound trivial but we debated every little detail.”

This kind of design process is uncommon, even in luxury fashion. For starters, the making of most handbags does not involve engineers. But going the extra mile has paid off. Unlike traditional luxury bags, seen as status symbols that are too precious to touch the ground, Rimowa’s Original can take more than a few blows. “In our minds, there is sheer beauty in a bag that ages,” says Bonnet-Masimbert, who is always looking for ways to connect the dots between the different categories and honour the company’s founding values.

In some ways, he says, the Original represents a return to Rimowa’s roots. The oldest piece in the brand’s archive, from the early 1900s, is a ladies’ baguette handbag, prophetically made from ribbed leather, resembling the now-famous grooves on its aluminium luggage. It also aligns with the brand’s commitment to serving all facets of contemporary mobility. According to the ceo, people are taking more trips and they see less of a distinction between travelling and being at home – they’re just always on the move. So it makes sense to offer a product that can be carried around in daily life. “When you’re a 126-year-old brand, you’ve accompanied people from riding horses to flying into space,” he says. “We’re trying to imagine new travel philosophies.”

The timing of the launch taps into a broader momentum in German design. “There is something extremely contemporary about the value of most exclusive German brands,” says Bonnet-Masimbert, listing Porsche, Mercedes-Benz, Leica and Birkenstock. “The ability of German product design to deliver on not just aesthetics but also on performance, longevity and durability – it echoes the aspirations of people all around the world.”

These values will help to guide Bonnet-Masimbert’s decisions as he develops the brand’s product ranges further. He has already installed a team of engineers to work on new projects and plans to open an innovation building on the Ossendorf campus by 2026. As the worlds of fashion and travel continue to evolve, there’s plenty left to explore but Bonnet-Masimbert says that nobody should expect Rimowa to follow in fellow lvmh brands’ footsteps and start offering fully fledged runway collections or seasonal items any time soon. “We’re different. Our dna is deeply connected to our history and industry know-how.” His approach is proof that no matter the size or age of a brand, diversifying takes time – and only those that are patient will be able to guarantee their businesses’ futures. — L
rimowa.com

How Balneário Camboriú became Brazil’s mini-Dubai

Not so long ago, the Brazilian town of Balneário Camboriú was best known as a quiet coastal outpost where holidaymakers from neighbouring states would come to enjoy the beach. In recent years, however, it has undergone an abrupt change and has the skyline to prove it. It’s here that you’ll find the country’s 10 tallest buildings under construction – remarkable for a city with a population of about 139,000 (though that rises to almost a million in peak season).

As you approach Balneário Camboriú, you’ll see a long line of oceanfront skyscrapers on the horizon. It’s an impressive sight – no wonder the city is known as Brazil’s mini-Dubai. Driving the property boom is a combination of fresh opportunities, the arrival of new wealth, enviable security (by Brazilian standards) and a bit of luck too. “Balneário Camboriú is sui generis,” TV presenter and journalist Dagmara Spautz tells monocle. “It’s unique. I can’t say that its qualities would be good somewhere else. The city built itself like this and it works.”

Balneário Camboriú is in the wealthy southern state of Santa Catarina, which has low levels of unemployment and an enviable safety record – a significant draw for those from urban centres in the north with high crime rates. When monocle visits the office of its mayor, Fabricio Oliveira, he offers an explanation for the boom that his city is currently experiencing. “In recent years, there has been a repositioning of Balneário Camboriú, especially since the pandemic,” he says. “With some infrastructure and action, we have managed to establish it as a cultural and economic hub, bringing in international events such as Fight Week, a martial arts tournament. For our New Year celebrations, we partnered with the uae, which sent more than 1,000 drones for Brazil’s largest-ever show of its kind. We have also worked on the expansion of our beach, creating economic benefits. We have shown that we are an entrepreneurial city that is capable of change and innovation.”

Like many residents, the mayor was not born in Balneário Camboriú. “I am from Curitiba,” he says. “I came here in 1986. I sold ice cream on the beach and worked in a nightclub, then became a city councillor. I always knew that it was a place of opportunity, no matter your surname.”

Bruno Cassola, one of the city’s most in-demand estate agents, was preparing to move his business to a new office to cope with the influx of Brazilians seeking to buy a home here. “Balneário Camboriú is small but there are so many things happening that it gives off the vibe of somewhere bigger,” he says. His clients range from industrialists from wealthy southern cities, such as Joinville and Blumenau, to people who have made money in the country’s flourishing agribusiness sector. This explains why Balneário Camboriú now has the most expensive property per square metre in Brazil.

The region’s leading construction company is FG Empreendimentos. You can see the fruits of its labour across the city – as well as its poster campaign that highlights its partnership with the Aveiro clan, Cristiano Ronaldo’s family. “The Aveiros are wonderful,” says Jean Graciola, ceo of FG. “And Cristiano is such a cool guy. We started the partnership with them in 2021. They wanted an apartment here and the partnership has worked very well.” Graciola is responsible for many of the tallest buildings in Balneário Camboriú, including the 290-metre One Tower, which has 84 floors, and FG’s Triumph Tower, now approved for construction, which, at a planned 544 metres, will be the world’s tallest residential skyscraper.

The city’s Expocentro exhibition centre is helping to make Balneário Camboriú an important host city for trade events. “We have a huge area and can do six events simultaneously,” says former commercial manager Cristine Fabbris. “This city used to be a summer destination but now it’s buzzing all year round, thanks to places such as Expocentro. The average business-tourist spend is three times that of a leisure tourist.”

Vanessa Lima, who moved here from Porto Alegre in the neighbouring state of Rio Grande do Sul, is the founder of Boutique do Pão de Ló. She launched her bakery in 2013 with a food truck and recently opened a branch of her business in a space designed by architect Vanessa Larré. The new outpost (there are others in Itajaí, Itapema and neighbouring Praia Brava) is doing well. “Balneário Camboriú is a city that’s growing,” she says. “We opened a few months before the pandemic, which was challenging, but the growth has been incredible.” Vanessa’s husband and business partner, Tomás Santos, says that one of the reasons why the city works so well is that it’s open to those from other places. “We have people from everywhere in Brazil so they are receptive to new ideas,” he says.

Larré is one of the city’s key architects and is adapting her practice to designing for high-rise buildings. “I really enjoy living here and especially appreciate the security,” she says. “I have a teenage daughter and I am glad that she’s able to be out and about, having fun with her friends. It’s a safe city. The place is also very alive. There are always people in bars and restaurants.”

Larré’s office is at Casahall Design District, an open-air mall with shops, architecture offices and Brazilian design brands such as Artefacto that want to ensure that they have a presence in a city that’s experiencing a property boom. Larré’s next project is the interiors of a high-profile residential building by Tonino Lamborghini of the Italian automotive empire. “We have done projects in São Paulo, Miami and Qatar but, because of the high-demand, we mainly stay in Balneário,” she says.

The city is attracting people from other countries too, such as Serbian chef Bojan Petrovic who, with his partner, Venise Manif Petrovic, opened Maka, a Latin-American restaurant in a charming boulevard full of bars and restaurants. Manif Petrovic is entranced by the city. “It has the soul of a big city but it’s safe, clean and growing gastronomically,” she says.

But this city that everyone is talking about can also be a divisive subject because of its politics: it voted overwhelmingly for hard-right candidate Jair Bolsonaro in the 2022 presidential elections. “Santa Catarina is a conservative state,” says Dagmara Spautz. “Bolsonaro had about 70 per cent of the vote here.”

But one thing that Balneário Camboriú has in abundance is a sense of pride. It’s not a perfect city but in a country known for its social inequality and sense of insecurity, it is like no other. — L

Meet the Annecy creatives redrawing the animation industry

At a screening of an AI-generated music video, there are blank faces in the audience. Moments later, boos fill the hall. It is the first sign of discontent at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival. About 16,000 people from 102 countries have gathered for the flagship event of the animation industry, which is projected to grow by €200bn in the next decade. Despite these positive numbers, mass layoffs at major studios and the arrival of generative AI have left animators fearing that human artistry could soon be left behind. But Monocle finds a wave of artists who are redrawing the industry by blending traditional craft with new technology.

“I love the artistic possibilities of animation and the breadth of trades that you encounter on set,” says Argentinian director Rosario Carlino, who has come to pitch her film Karetabla as part of Women in Animation, a programme promoting animators from the Global South. There’s a growing confidence among artists who are embracing their heritage through animation, not least thanks to the booming export of Japanese anime to the rest of the world. “With streaming, animation has become a more global movement,” says Mitchel Berger, the senior vice-president of global commerce at Crunchyroll, who is credited with distributing almost half of the top-grossing anime films in North America. “What people once thought of as uniquely Japanese now has an audience everywhere.”

Among those present is Pakistan-based Mano Animation Studios, which entered The Glassworker, its first hand-drawn feature. “In the beginning, people said that we were crazy,” says film director Uzman Riaz. “Why would you do animation by hand when you can do it with the click of a mouse?”

However, this mouse-clicking mentality misses the point of what inspires many animators. “We put in all of this work out of our love for the art form and the audience can feel that,” says Canadian filmmaker Denver Jackson, who wrote, directed and painstakingly animated his new film, The Worlds Divide, by himself. “I won’t deny that some audiences will watch AI content,” says the film’s producer, Nicole Sorochan. “But is this algorithmic ‘more of more’ approach really what we need to be focusing on?”

Investing in craft in an industry fast becoming automated might not be as naive as it seems. “Because of AI, things that are handmade are more appreciated,” says Australian stop-motion director Adam Elliot, this year’s Annecy Cristal prize winner for best film, with Memoir of a Snail. “Films that used to be niche are reaching more people through digital technologies such as streaming.” Swiss director, producer and writer Claude Barras also believes that digital advances have benefited the creative process of stop-motion filmmaking, including his award- winning film My Life as a Courgette. “I think that 3D printing and digital cameras have removed a lot of barriers by making the process more affordable and fluid,” he says.

It’s a paradoxical claim often repeated at the festival: technological advances are allowing independent artists to preserve traditional animation approaches long abandoned by legacy studios. Smaller studios are now on track to snatch about half of the market from industry giants in the next few years. The success of these outsiders should be a reminder that, in this medium, the people who are doing the drawing are often the ones drawing in the audiences.

The disappearance of the business breakfast

If you work in fashion, you’re likely to be familiar with the breakfast menu of every restaurant in your vicinity. After a decade in the industry – today, I’m monocle’s fashion director – I learnt a few things: where to get the best shakshuka in London, which restaurant is the most creative with its breakfast and which one overdoes it with the cream in its scrambled eggs. I have also seen the popularity of “breakfast hour” (a US tradition adopted by Londoners) fluctuate.

Before the pandemic, the industry’s most productive meeting window was between 08.00 and 10.00, a time when connections were forged, deals clinched and plans hatched. This wasn’t limited to the fashion industry: entrepreneurs met investors, bankers met private clients and expense accounts were limbered up without fear of the bill being too big.

I loved it – a breakfast meeting finds you relatively clear-headed, doesn’t last as long as lunch or dinner and, while the food is rarely life-changing, there’s less room for error if you’re ordering poached eggs.

But breakfast hour has been losing popularity. Fewer brands are willing to host group breakfasts and invitations are switching to 11.00 coffee dates or worse – virtual meetings on platforms such as Zoom.

Reduced budgets might explain the shift but it’s also a case of people becoming less willing to leave their house and come into town in a timely manner – no doubt a side-effect of the work-from-home trend and, in the world of fashion, the unfortunate rise of intermittent fasting. Colleagues across the pond and ever lark-like Australians seem to be the only ones who still set their alarms and even love to squeeze in a workout before their 08.00 appointments.

“Breakfast is for Americans,” a UK newspaper editor tells me, arguing that Londoners should have never jumped on the breakfast bandwagon. “I only accept lunch or dinner invitations.” Italians, who prefer to have a quick espresso at their local pasticceria, and the French, who grab a croissant on their way to work, seem to be in broad agreement.

We might never go back to a time when breakfast rooms fill up like they used to but at least now the best tables are easier to secure and the service is speedier. For those still open to a business breakfast, there are rules: make sure to show up early, keep the small talk brief and order smart. And whether you’re working in fashion or not, there’s no excuse for looking like you just rolled out of bed. A little effort goes a long way.

Forum: The commercial hub redefining Marbella retail

The golden mile of Spain’s upscale resort town of Marbella has a new attraction. This summer, a three-storey space called Forum gradually opened its doors as a commercial hub with cafés, delicatessens, restaurants, shops and a gym. For Norwegian-born and Marbella-based siblings Sander and Synne Brendmoe of the family-owned company Antima Group, this project is about providing a year-round meeting point for locals as well as visitors.

“Beyond the beach, Marbella was missing somewhere you can enjoy a coffee while reading a newspaper,” says Sander, Antima Group’s fourth-generation CEO. “We wanted to gather everything under one roof so you could buy fresh bread, milk and coffee in the morning and enjoy a jamón serrano and a glass of wine in the evening.”

Many of the businesses involved in Forum are local. “We grew up in Marbella so it was more about finding what already works here and bringing them along,” says Synne, the company’s creative director. But there will also be a Scandinavian touch to the project, courtesy of a Swedish-owned bakery and delicatessen.Raised between Norway and Marbella, the pair have observed a compelling shift over the past few years, with new businesses setting up shop here and greater numbers calling this slice of the Costa del Sol home. “Marbella used to just be a holiday destination but more people are now spending half of their time here,” says Sander.

This retail project is a new challenge for the siblings, who have focused on smaller-scale residential projects until now. However, a strong background in property development with Antima Group has helped them to feel confident embarking on their idea for Forum.

“We have been working with the same construction companies and carpenters for more than 10 years,” says Sander. “We called on Norwegian architects for the logistics and a Spanish team for the beauty. It’s what we call a ‘Spandinavian’ blend.” The result is an elegant and welcoming shopping centre in a chic building with plastered details and rounded windows that catch the sea breeze. Centred around a main staircase, floors effortlessly communicate with each other, thanks to an open patio plan that blends the indoor spaces with the outdoor areas, all the way from the plaza level to the rooftop garden.

To make Forum a vibrant proposition, the siblings are planning experiences such as cooking classes, flower-arranging workshops, live music and pottery making. Its tenants include Sander and Synne themselves, who have taken more than 950 sq m for their interior-design brand, Sandon; they have also moved the Antima Group’s offices to the retail complex. Together, the siblings represent a new, more low-key vision of Marbella and the next generation of the Antima Group. Of course, Marbella will continue to entice a designer-bag crowd (and we wouldn’t want it any other way) but a thought-out retail project such as Forum is also ushering in a new era for the resort town and its permanent residents. The Mediterranean lifestyle has never looked so inviting.
forum.es

Havana’s neighbourhood hotel revival is transforming its hospitality scene

On Sunday mornings, the tinkle of piano keys can be heard on the streets of Havana’s artsy Cayo Hueso district, between the 16th-century Old Havana and Vedado. After the hospitality sector opened up to private and international operators in 2016 (when Cuba’s socialist government relaxed its regulations), a new crop of hotels has been helping to revitalise once-forgotten neighbourhoods for locals and visitors alike.

The source of these particular neighbourhood melodies is the large, high-ceilinged café at the Tribe Caribe hotel, which opened a year ago in a grand, finely restored former apartment building that dates back to the 1920s. In the 1940s and 1950s, it housed one of Havana’s most storied jazz bars.

“It feels like a bit of a miracle that we were able to restore a building so important to the musical history of the neighbourhood,” says co-founder Andrés Levin, a Grammy award-winning Venezuelan-German musician, producer and songwriter who has lived in Havana for almost 30 years. He undertook the hotel’s revival alongside his business partner, Canadian investor and property developer Chris Cornell. Given how young Cuba’s private hotel sector is, Levin adds, the role that hospitality businesses can play in their parts of the city is still in flux. “We wanted to restore the building to the glory of what it once was,” he says. “But we also wanted to create a ripple effect throughout the neighbourhood.” It has begun to draw visitors to a part of the city that was often sidestepped by the million or so people who travel to Havana every year, he tells Monocle.

“We knew that we wanted the hotel’s public spaces to pay homage to the city’s musical and cultural heritage but also to generate opportunities in the neighbourhood,” he says. To do so, a dedicated exhibition space, The Black Box, was incorporated into the ground floor, which hosts performances by emerging Cuban musicians, contemporary art exhibitions and film screenings.

A portion of the revenue from the 11-room hotel, which has been furnished with work by contemporary Cuban artists and antique fixtures and furniture, will be invested nearby. That includes the proposed revitalisation of a historic park and a long-term plan to restore Havana’s international jazz festival and invest in local talent.

“We want this to be a model that can be replicated in other parts of the city,” says Levin. “We hope that other businesses will see what we have done here and take it as a starting point for themselves.”
tribecaribecayohueso.com

Boys and their toys: What happened to the playthings of the yuppie office?

In the corporate world of the 1970s and 1980s, when businesspeople were businessmen and lunches were liquid, the executive toy was one of the essential markers of bossdom. The executive desk might not yet have boasted any computing power but it surely would have sported a Ballrace (a chrome Newton’s cradle) or a sleek black Mercury Maze – a puzzle game whose goal was to coax a silver blob into the centre of its small labyrinth. It might also have featured an Aquabatics puzzle filled with the ingredients of said power lunch: champagne, caviar or Perrier.

These distracting office decorations and dozens more like them were dreamed up by impish English art-school pals Richard Loncraine and Peter Broxton, whose creations are now being celebrated in a new book named after their firm, Loncraine Broxton.

“I rather dislike puzzles,” says the somewhat mischievous-sounding Loncraine. “I had a background in making kinetic sculptures out of all of the postwar rubbish that was still lying around in the late 1960s. I wondered whether we couldn’t make these things smaller and shinier, and sell them as toys for adults.” Thanks to the burgeoning market for gifts bought on corporate expense accounts, Loncraine Broxton’s star rose, with a yearly turnover of about £8m (€9.5m) in the 1980s and a staff just shy of 100 people.

“It was great fun,” says Loncraine. “Research and development consisted of us having a drink at the end of the day and asking, ‘What shall we do tomorrow?’” The toys were all possessed of a wit that lightly mocked the go-getter culture while happily feeding on it: the Decision Maker allowed the busy yuppie to scribble, say, “buy”, “sell” or “golf” on a plinth beneath a swinging ball, which would randomly land on a word.

At this time, Loncraine was also directing television commercials and branching into feature films (including the 1982 adaptation of Dennis Potter’s Brimstone and Treacle, starring Denholm Elliott and Joan Plowright). He and Broxton bowed out of making executive toys in the late 1990s. As Loncraine puts it, “Secretaries were no longer wondering what they could buy their bosses for Christmas.” The book is a charming look at the ingenious minds that allowed entry to the yuppie club for less than the cost of pinstripes or a Porsche. 

‘Loncraine Broxton: Innovations & Executive Toys 1969-1997’ is published on 30 November by Four Corners Books.

The Welsh mill securing its future by becoming an employee-owned enterprise

From the outside, the whitewashed stone workshops nestled in the Welsh countryside look remarkably similar to how they appeared a century or so ago, when the Melin Tregwynt wool mill was established. But step inside the facility, where some of Wales’s most striking fabric designs are made, and you’ll see that a quiet transformation has taken place – and a new yarn on how to overhaul the business model of a heritage brand is being spun.

Melin Tregwynt’s 40-plus employees recently became the mill’s indirect owners, when it was transferred from the Griffiths family’s ownership to that of a trust for employees. “They weren’t quite sure what they were letting themselves in for,” says Eifion Griffiths, the third generation to run his family’s mill. “We knew that we were getting ready to retire,” says Eifion, who took over the company from his father with his wife, Amanda, in 1986.

“We don’t have children so we haven’t got anybody to pass it on to,” he says. “It is a big deal passing a family business on.” Selling the company outright felt like the wrong decision. “It would have been very difficult to see it being run by somebody else,” says Amanda. “This is a sparsely populated area so we are a focal point in terms of employment. We’re knitted into the community.”

The restructuring has allowed production to continue uninterrupted (five looms produce more than 1km of fabric per month), while ensuring that there is flexibility and time to develop new designs, collaborations and additional products, such as a collection of premium Melin Tregwynt yarn for home-knitters to weave with, which is currently under development.

“It is very important to evolve all the time because you don’t ever want your business to turn into a museum piece,” says Eifion. “In the world of smaller businesses such as ours, there has to be some room for natural growth and this feels like a better, more modern way of passing our business on.”
melintregwynt.co.uk