THE INSPIRATION ISSUE - HILMA AF KLINT
She painted for a future that was not ready. Now the future is finally looking.
A woman who does not always appear in the manuals. A woman who painted abstraction before many of its so-called fathers. A woman who created for a future that was not ready to understand her yet.
The unknown mother of modern abstraction: Hilma af Klint.
REHEARSED: The Quiet Theatre of the Self
There is something quietly theatrical about the way we move through the world.
A gesture, a pose, a carefully chosen image, the version of ourselves we decide to present before entering a room (or before posting online). Performance has never belonged only to the stage. It is something inherently human, present in the way we dress, speak, look, behave, and construct meaning around who we are. Today, however, the rise of social media and the culture of constant visibility have made these everyday performances feel more present than ever.
Life, Measured in Depth: A Conversation with Lauren Kolodin.
Some books are written. Others are poured out. Lauren Kolodin's how to live; written by a girl who's going to die is the second kind. She has already lost someone who cannot be replaced. And somewhere in the aftermath of that, she sat down, shampoo still in her hair, and started writing. What came out was a raw and honest book: part diary, part guide.
We spoke to Lauren about grief, about writing without permission, and about what it means to measure a life not in length or height — but in depth.
Everything Intentional: Mona Lou on What Gives Her Art Its Substance
At 22, Mona Lou launched her new single “i know” the way you do something when you actually mean it: a cinema, a room full of people, scratch-art cards made on a plane to Dakar, and a music video built entirely by hand. We sat with her to talk about making something that is fully yours — and why, in a world that keeps offering shortcuts, she wasn't interested in taking them.
Milan Design Week Review: Designers or Party Planners?
Bread chairs. Cigarette tables. Furniture wearing piercings.
"I understand the world is chaotic these days, so I am not surprised design is signalling us to have a break." Our product & furniture design writer Alice Semenenko was on the ground in Milan — and what she found says a lot about where our generation is right now. Food, smoking, jewellery, sustainable materials, and the quiet return of social furniture: here's what stuck with her, and what we think you need to be paying attention to.
Still on the way to Ithaca
Why your twenties are less about arriving and more about learning how to travel
The prison of an abundance of choice
It was lunchtime. I sat at the table and started looking for some sort of entertainment. I began scrolling through an abundance of choice — from YouTube, to Netflix, Substack and Instagram or TikTok — it felt as though the options were infinite, and in fact they were. In the blink of a scroll, the time I had carved out for lunch was gone, and the only media consumed were the first three lines of a random article.
The chase of gold. The chase of the better option.
Designing Meaning
Lodovica Gay on bespoke jewellery, intuition, and the story behind the Keshi Ring
What the Strelitzia keeps
A personal reflection on how flowers come to hold meaning — not through tradition alone, but through memory, intention, and the honesty of those who give them.
What lights your fire?
A personal reflection on Christian Dior and the inspiration that changed everything.
The “Rosewood” Chair
A message on the ongoing rosewood crisis and the responsibility of young designers to create meaning and transformation through design.
We Know All the Rules, and Still…
I asked ChatGPT to tell me the most absurd questions people have asked it — the ones that should only ever belong to humans. The first one it gave me was: "What does it feel like to fall in love for the first time?"
And its answer made me think about us more than it made me think about the machine.
My mother was right, beauty will save the world.
The environments we inhabit shape how we feel, often in ways we don’t consciously notice.
In a world obsessed with speed and productivity, choosing beauty can even feel like a quiet form of rebellion.