Issues

Preppi’s Emergency Radio aims to ensure that its user looks good in any apocalyptic scenario

There aren’t many products that you purchase in the hope that you’ll never have to use them. But as fears of disaster, either natural or manmade, once again enter the public consciousness, a growing number of companies are pitching products at “preppers” – people preparing for the worst. One of these is Preppi, a Los Angeles-based company whose handsomely designed apocalyptic products include medical kits, survival backpacks and emergency radios. The radio features a USB charger powered by a large solar panel (a wind-up arm can supply power if it dies in the dark), plus an SOS siren, LED torch and weather-band frequency functionality to receive updates if there is no internet connection.

“The fires in LA at the start of this year really opened some eyes,” Lauren Tafuri, who co-founded Preppi with Ryan Kuhlman, tells Monocle. “Lots of people realised that they were unprepared in a scenario like that.” The company has support in high places for their mission. In March the European Commission made an advisory statement that all of the bloc’s citizens should assemble a 72-hour emergency kit as part of its crisis-preparedness strategy. “Our backpacks matched the specifications perfectly,” says Tafuri.

Those preparing for disaster were once considered cranks but the wider availability and effectiveness of survivalist equipment, combined with a fashion for technological clothing, has encouraged a more discerning consumer. “Our products are built to be used. If required in a crisis, they must be functional as a priority,” says Kuhlman. “But why should that mean that they have to look like they’ve come straight from military surplus?”
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How Vibram’s shoes are treading from hiking trails onto runways

Italian manufacturer Vibram produces more than 40 million shoe soles per year but now it’s trying its hand at design and broadening its appeal. Its client list ranges from sports giants to outdoor footwear makers and includes Nike, Canada’s Arc’teryx and Japanese sandal specialist Suicoke. Vibram’s bright, octagonal logo has become a signifier of quality for hikers, alpinists and trail runners, who seek that flash of yellow on their soles to ensure that their footwear will live up to performance standards. The company also makes its own shoes.

As Vibram approaches its 90th anniversary, it is working hard to stay up to date by investing in a series of design and innovation hubs in Milan, Boston and Los Angeles. At these “Connection Labs”, the company wants its creative output to match its technical standards. Several unexpected collaborations have been spawned, ranging from those with high-fashion houses Bally and Balenciaga to a link-up with trainers specialist Hoka.

The result? Vibram-soled shoes, including those in the brand’s five-toed neoprene style, are stepping into the fashion industry and appearing in streetwear looks as much as on slopes and hiking trails. The brand’s popularity has skyrocketed – there was a 110 per cent increase in online searches during the second quarter of 2025 (according to data platform Lyst), and its US business has doubled over the past four years. Vibram’s new credentials resulted in a first pop-up space at Paris Fashion Week in January, presenting specialist soles, as well as new footwear styles.

As the fashion industry moves on from a fixation with the logos of huge brands, a bigger role will be played by utility and performance wear in setting the agenda this autumn. We will be seeing more Vibram shoes on the runway.

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Can a clothing company survive without new products? Asket is betting on a yes

This autumn, independent Swedish menswear label Asket will release its 50th and final product for men: a pair of Italian merino-wool trousers. The move is part of the brand’s ambition to refine its collection into a permanent catalogue. Instead of chasing novelty for the sake of catching customer interest, it aims to perfect the manufacturing of each piece. In other words, Asket is eschewing a business model followed by pretty much every other fashion brand.

“There’s talk about improvements needed to address sustainability in the fashion industry,” August Bard Bringéus, co-founder of Asket, tells Monocle. “But it all comes down to overconsumption and overproduction.” His business partner and fellow co-founder, Jakob Dworsky, agrees. “The industry hasn’t figured out how to make a business work by selling fewer but better products,” he adds. “There is short-term thinking in that sense. We put the product first because it’s what our customers come back for.”

Since the brand’s founding in 2015, Asket has built a reputation for its European manufacturing, natural fibres and fair price point. The company’s 2024 turnover was SEK156m (€14.1m) and this year’s projected growth is conservatively pegged at 10 per cent. With a flagship in Stockholm and a new outpost in London, the brand is expanding its retail footprint, if not its inventory. Still, minimalism remains the order of the day, and the aesthetic – plain white T-shirts, straight-leg jeans and neutral knitwear – most definitely reflects the philosophy. “It’s easy to get distracted but we’ve stayed disciplined when it comes to sticking to what we said we’d do,” says Bringéus. “That’s part of the reason why we’re still around.”
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Calonge: The Spanish village given a fairytale ending by bookshops

Four years ago, Meritxell Ral was watching the news when she heard that Calonge, 90 minutes north of Barcelona by car, was offering €10,000 grants to anyone who wanted to open a bookshop there.Though only a few kilometres inland from Costa Brava, the medieval town was facing depopulation and shuttered shopfronts as businesses and young people gravitated towards the coast. In response, local leaders launched a bold initiative to reinvent Calonge as Catalonia’s first permanent “book town”. Ral jumped at the chance to start her own business. “I didn’t know the village but I needed a change,” she says. She wasn’t the only one. Within 24 hours, more than 270 people applied.

Today, Calonge is home to six bookshops, including Ral’s generalist Rals Llibres and others specialising in comics, music and history. The town attracts foreign and local visitors all year with literary events, poetry readings and a wine and theatre festival. “Over the past four years, Calonge has come back to life,” says its mayor, Jordi Soler Casals.

Calonge isn’t the world’s only book town. The concept emerged in the 1960s, when Robert Booth began filling empty buildings with books in the Welsh town of Hay-on-Wye. Now the International Organisation of Book Towns connects 25 locations worldwide, including Montolieu in France and Urueña, the first in Spain. In Calonge, the project has revitalised the local economy and attracted investment; there are now two new restaurants and a 12-room hotel. “We were surprised by the power of books to create synergies between people,” says Soler Casals.

As coastal resorts become overcrowded, Calonge offers a quieter, more thoughtful experience – a cultural model that could help to reshape the region’s future. “We need to learn to diversify,” says Soler Casals, highlighting the potential of Catalonia’s inland regions to offer culture, wine, hiking and historical heritage. “Sol i platja are important but they shouldn’t be everything.”
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How Acne Studios turned a historical Paris building into a playground for creativity

“The customer is addicted to design in whatever shape it takes,” says Jonny Johansson, the creative director and co-founder of Acne Studios. The Stockholm-based fashion label’s attention to the spaces that it inhabits, from runways to its shops and offices, is indicative of the increased overlap between design, architecture and fashion. Nowhere is this more obvious than in Paris, where part of its womenswear team and a sewing atelier are based, and where the Acne Paper Palais Royal – a permanent gallery space owned by the house – opened in the first arrondissement in June. Now it is consolidating its Parisian presence with a new, design-forward headquarters on Rue des Petites Écuries.

Johansson led the repurposing of the former 1930s laboratory of French cosmetics brand Gomenol, in collaboration with Swedish design studio Halleroed. “We talked about everything, including the sinks,” he says, adding that, having known Christian Halleröd, co-founder of Halleroed, for more than 30 years, there was an ease of understanding to their collaborative process.

About 80 employees work in the Paris headquarters, spanning womenswear, merchandising, buying, finance, HR and wholesale, as well as part of the Acne Studios atelier. “We planned the layout so that there was a flow from one department to another, from the fabric developers to the designers, for example,” says Johansson. The structuring of the building’s spaces needed to account for a showroom and a fitting area, as well as the more traditional office set-up. Communal spaces such as a courtyard with a seating area and a canteen were central to his vision of what a headquarters should provide for its employees: a place to gather and discuss creative ideas. “Conversations and employees interacting make a company interesting,” he adds. “I always think that it’s a good investment.”

Throughout the space, original features such as parquet floors, a vaulted glass-tiled ceiling and gold-painted mouldings have been preserved and juxtaposed with exposed concrete and modern furniture by the likes of Lukas Gschwandtner and marble sculptures by London-based artist Daniel Silver. A pair of sofas upholstered in light-pink vinyl by UK designer Max Lamb sit in the showroom; an ultra-contemporary series of light fixtures by French artist Benoit Lalloz illuminate the canteen. “I like contrasts and buildings with history, where the past, present and future are contained in one space,” he says. “To gut out a building is like erasing history.”

“In the future, if you looked back at our brand and why we did certain things, you would see that it wasn’t just to sell clothing,” says Johansson. “There’s also the idea of being a sign of the times in a way. I’m not saying that we’ve succeeded yet but that’s the obsession.”
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Read next: The Monocle City Guide to Paris, featuring the best hotels, restaurants and retail spots in the French capital

How Montpellier’s mayor is leading Europe’s mobility transformation

“I have a carnal relationship with Montpellier,” says Michaël Delafosse, the French city’s 48-year-old mayor, in between sips of his morning coffee.This kind of statement would raise eyebrows coming from an ordinary local politician. But Delafosse, wearing a slim-fit suit and sporting a closely cropped beard, can somehow get away with it. Perhaps it’s because his style is backed up by a track record of undeniable substance.

Montpellier is that rare thing in France, as well as the rest of Europe: a provincial city with a rising population and a flourishing economy. Nestled in the southern administrative region of Occitanie, about 10km inland from the Mediterranean Sea, it has been France’s fastest-growing city since 2000 and is now its seventh largest. The Montpellier Business & Innovation Centre (BIC), the city’s incubator, has fostered a bustling start-up scene that has attracted the likes of game publisher Ubisoft and the creative division of state broadcaster France Télévisions, both of which have relocated here.

Montpellier has also positioned itself as a hothouse of avant-garde urbanism. It became one of the first cities in Europe to reintroduce trams in 2000, having abandoned them in 1949; in December 2023 it made public transport free for all residents. The latter was among Delafosse’s key campaign pledges during the 2020 municipal election, alongside a commitment to expand the city’s cycle-lane network (which now extends to about 235km) and turn central Montpellier into the continent’s largest pedestrianised urban area.

Despite his success on what could be called the radical side of urban politics, Delafosse – a history and geography teacher by trade and a longstanding member of France’s Parti Socialiste – isn’t a straightforward left-winger. He has taken strong stances on issues such as security, increasing police funding and CCTV coverage, tough-on-crime positions that have resulted in death threats from local drug traffickers. At the same time, he has pursued environmental and social-housing policies that have drawn criticism from opponents on the right. These moves, alongside his vocal rejection of some of Emmanuel Macron’s national policies, have seen him buck the trend of a Parti Socialiste that has appeared caught in a perpetual downwards spiral.

Delafosse has been marked out as a rising star in the party and is being talked about as a future presidential candidate. Though the mayor’s approval ratings hover at the 65 per cent mark – a rare feat in polarised France – Delafosse has his critics, many of whom argue that he has always had an eye on the Élysée Palace. In a 2022 profile in national daily Libération, an acquaintance described him as “hard to pin down”. He has refused to say whether or not he will run for a second term in March 2026, insisting that he has already achieved “two mayoral mandates in the space of one” – a claim that has led to allegations of arrogance in some local newspapers.

Before he commits either way, Delafosse wants to show Monocle around his hometown. After a morning caffeine hit, he hops on his electric bike. We are on the outskirts of the city in Halle Tropisme, a former military warehouse that was built in 1913 and now houses 10,000 sq m of space for artists’ studios, exhibitions and events. Nextdoor is an old military barracks that is being repurposed as part of an eco-district with 2,500 new homes, a third of which will be allocated to social housing.

Together, the two former brownfield sites will form the heart of the new Cité Créative neighbourhood, which is slated for completion by 2027. From December this year, a 16km tram line will link it to the rest of Montpellier. The Cité Créative typifies Delafosse’s approach to urban renewal: developing brown-field sites rather than breaking new ground, while using buses, trams and trains as the engines of change. Not having to pay to ride into town should increase the attractiveness of the neighbourhood to prospective residents.

Perhaps more crucial to the mayor’s plans, though, is a pledge not to raise taxes on ordinary citizens to fund the city’s free-transport scheme. Its annual cost of approximately €40m is largely being borne through a mobility tax imposed on companies with at least 11 employees (which benefit from a more mobile workforce, according to Delafosse), as well as central-government funding. The mayor also points out that revenue is still rolling in from out-of-towners, particularly tourists, and that there have been savings from paring back the fare-collection infrastructure.

The city’s residents have mostly welcomed the scheme. Several informal surveys by local media suggest an overwhelmingly positive response from users, especially students, who make up about 17 per cent of Montpellier’s population. “It’s amazing,” teacher Fiona Joyce tells Monocle. “Everyone I know thinks that it is too.”

When he announced the plan, Delafosse said that he hoped to see an increase of about 20 per cent in the number of passengers on the city’s transport network by 2026. After just 12 months, the network reported a 33 per cent rise. Transport unions, however, disagree that this is unequivocally positive. Their members have decried a “degradation” of the overall service as a result of overuse, as well as the additional burden on drivers. Delafosse bats away such criticisms. “In Paris, the service is expensive and it is still overburdened,” he says. “In any case, cities that have implemented free transport don’t turn back.”

As in other places across the globe, Delafosse’s plan to pedestrianise the city centre by banishing most private cars has run into fierce opposition from shopkeepers who fear a decline in footfall. Newspapers in Montpellier have devoted countless column inches to listing noise complaints and roads closed due to construction. Though Delafosse’s enthusiasm is hard to resist, the frequent sight of cafés, épiceries and boulangeries standing empty behind metal sheets and pedestrian-diversion signs on a sunny July morning isn’t particularly reassuring.

“I was here when the first tramline was being built and we were complaining then too – but afterwards we all thought, ‘Wow, this has changed our lives,’” says Vincent Cavaroc, the director of Halle Tropisme. “We were also moaning that we would no longer be able to drive our cars into the city centre. But today everyone is happy to have one of the largest pedestrian centres in Europe. All of this has required a lot of audacity on the mayor’s part: after all, the best way to get re-elected is usually not to touch motorists. But he has carried out very important work.”

As recently as 2022, 40 per cent of journeys under 2km in Montpellier were made by car. Cavaroc echoes a common sentiment when it comes to the pedestrianisation of city centres: before it happens, some people vociferously object but many erstwhile opponents are later won over by a transformed urban space. To force through such radical change, politicians need charisma and conviction, both of which Delafosse has in abundance. The debate, however, is often divisive.

“If we want ecology to be a common concern, we must include everyone,” says the mayor as we stroll down the Esplanade, Montpellier’s historic central boulevard that makes up the main artery of its new pedestrianised zone. “That’s why free public transport is such a powerful lever. It reconciles respect for the planet with the social dimension of having accessibility for all.” A family of four, he explains, can make savings of €1,470 per year thanks to the scheme.

Under a canopy of towering elm trees that flank the main walkway, Delafosse pauses for a moment to watch a couple of children playing in water jets as their mother watches on from a nearby bench. Behind him, a few spindly specimens of the 50,000 trees that he has pledged to plant by 2026 sway in the breeze. “Show me where the children are and I will tell you what kind of city you are in,” he says. “A city that thinks of its children’s place in it is one that thinks of the future.”

As to what he believes his own future holds, Delafosse keeps us guessing, saying only that he will announce whether he will run again after a period of “reflection” with his family. If Monocle had to guess, we would wager that Montpellier’s mayor will soon be hopping on the TGV to the Gare de Lyon. He has achieved a lot in just five years and exemplifies a certain type of ambitious 21st-century politician whose views on urbanism align with a populace that’s open to reimagining the urban space. But for now, he’s back on his electric bike, riding off into the afternoon.

Montpellier mobility in numbers

Green spaces
About 500 new trees, 2,000 shrubs and 700 bushes have been planted in Parc Georges Charpak, creating wildlife corridors and boosting urban biodiversity. In Parc Marianne, wildflower grasslands now cover 1.5 hectares.

Buses
The first line of a new Bustram network opened in May. Manufacturer MAN Truck & Bus France, which has supplied 70 electric buses, commissioned illustrator Alain Le Quernec to create a design for each of the five planned lines.

Cycling
Under Delafosse’s administration, more than 150km of new cycle paths have been integrated into the city’s network. A 384-metre underground cycling tunnel will also connect the Comédie and Antigone areas of the city.

No cars
The city’s main thoroughfare, Avenue Georges Clemenceau, was fully pedestrianised in 2022, removing the some 11,000 vehicles that drove along it daily. A low-emission zone has also been implemented across most of the city.

Trams
Montpellier’s enviable tram network continues to expand. Line 1 has recently been extended to the city’s Sud de France TGV station, while a new station has been added to Line 3 to provide better service.

Inside Sweden’s fight to protect public-service broadcasting

You wouldn’t guess that weatherman Nils Holmqvist has already been at work for nearly five hours when he riffs on the day’s forecast just after 08.00. The meteorologist is perky, charming and on point as he makes his contribution to Morgonstudion (The Morning Studio), which will run live for the next two hours. “I’m usually a favourite at weddings – I can really talk about the weather,” says Holmqvist.

The waters are calm at Sveriges Television’s Studio 5, where the morning team of presenters, technicians and camera operators runs the show with seamless professionalism. But storm clouds have been gathering behind the scenes at Sweden’s three public media companies: Sveriges Television (SVT), Sveriges Radio (SR) and educational-content provider Sveriges Utbildningsradio. At first glance all seems well: the current broadcasting permit is set to be renewed for another eight years at the end of 2025. A new law that will enshrine the definition of public-service broadcasting as being free from political, commercial or religious interference will also soon come into effect.

Yet behind the scenes, there are problems brewing. Some commentators, including prominent journalist and author Janerik Larsson, believe Swedish public-service media will become obsolete. “People don’t gather around the campfire in the same way as we used to,” he says. “It has nothing to do with content. It’s just that we consume media differently today.”

Critics believe that public-service companies are gaining an unfair advantage over other media players because they have guaranteed financing. Meanwhile, the government wants to cut back on what it describes as bloated organisations. In response, management at the companies say that the government’s new proposed financing model of tweaking the allocation of tax funds (beginning with a higher sum that will be reduced in phases) will force additional savings. In the past two years, more than 200 journalists have been laid off across the three broadcasters.

Management at SR has also expressed dismay at the rising costs of analogue transmission over state-run network Teracom, adding to an already stretched budget. That cost could swell further now that commercial broadcaster TV4 has announced that it is going 100 per cent digital, leaving the public-service broadcasters to foot the entire analogue bill. In addition, the government wants to create an investigative panel to explore the impartiality of Sweden’s public-service companies in response to critics who say that there is a left-leaning bias at play. The proposal has ratcheted up the debate over the degrees of separation between the state and the broadcasters.

“Right now, public-service media in Sweden faces political enmity,” says Fredrik Stiernstedt, professor of media and communications at Södertörn University in Stockholm. “The government wants to rein it in. It’s an old political project of the right that now has air under its wings.”

Yet Stiernstedt points out that the picture in other European nations is worse. Reporters Without Borders describes European public-service media as being in crisis. Across the region, funding is being called into question as broadcasters compete with digital platforms. In Italy and Hungary, public broadcasters are increasingly being used as political instruments. In Poland and the Czech Republic, there has been a direct state takeover.

In August new legislation came into effect in the EU as a prospective antidote to these trends. Among other safeguards, the European Media Freedom Act sets out to protect media pluralism, editorial independence and transparency of media ownership to ensure the free functioning of public-service media in the EU. “It’s probably the most advanced media legislation ever created because it tackles several issues,” says Marius Dragomir, the director of a global think tank focused on the study of media organisations and a co-creator of online database State Media Monitor. But he isn’t very hopeful about its impact. “The act won’t have any effect whatsoever,” he says. “For example, Hungary will adopt the legislation but it won’t be implemented – at least, not under the current government.”

Dragomir believes that the sector still fulfils an important mission in Europe “but corruption will continue to be an issue for free and fair reporting,” he says. “Oligarchs buy media outlets and manipulate them. The new law will not change that.”

Despite the challenges, the conflict in Ukraine has brought the issue into sharper focus in Sweden and the Nordics more widely. The country has been expeditiously rebuilding its dismantled military apparatus to be ready to fight should the need present itself. “Even those who believe that we don’t need to be there editorially understand that we need to exist for the safety of the nation,” says Cilla Benkö, the CEO of SR. “If, God forbid, there should be a war in Sweden, SR might be the only media company in the country that can still transmit. We’ll keep broadcasting, even if the lights go out.”

Wearing an understated outfit and with her curly red hair pulled into a ponytail, Benkö sits in a sun-dappled office overlooking the rooftops of Östermalm in Stockholm. “Until now, we have been under varying degrees of economic pressure, depending on who has been in power,” she says. “But we are now moving in the direction of being under pressure politically as well as financially.”

Benkö, who started as a sports reporter 40 years ago, has had a lot of practice arguing the case for SR’s unencumbered independence and its long-term survival. “While we face the gargantuan challenge of competing with global digital-media consumption and tech giants, we also have to defend our existence in a way that we didn’t have to before,” she says. “All the while, we perceive that the Swedish people want more free and independent media. They want to be sure that what they hear is true. They turn to us because they trust our output.”

Of a population of 10.6 million people, 7.4 million listen to SR’s four main and 25 regional stations across the country every week, on both FM and digital platforms. It’s proof that, despite challenges for the overall organisation, SR’s radio programmes continue to be hugely popular.

SR celebrated its centenary this year. Its cavernous entrance reopened in time for the summer anniversary party, with upgraded security features and a fresh look. The overall refurbishment of Radiohuset (The Radio House), a concrete-and-glass monolith from 1962, has been 25 years in the making and is incomplete. There remains a neglected feel in the beating heart of SR’s news hub, Ekot (The Echo); its show has been on air since 1937. Eventually the entire Ekot team will move into a more expansive newsroom.

“We’re on borrowed time,” says Billy Abraha, a producer at Ekot. “We have developed our digital content enormously over the past few years. We’ve improved SR’s app and created great content on the landing page that complements the output on FM.” Despite the digital transformation, Abraha is cautious about the future. “It’s tricky to say what things will look like going forward when we’re not sure about funding levels and how they will affect staff,” he says.

Abraha’s colleague Helena Gissén, who joined Ekot as a political commentator after 25 years at commercial broadcaster TV4, agrees that the mood at work is at times subdued. “At TV4 we got used to savings packages every few years,” she says. “People are not used to that here and many are worried about more budget cuts.”

On call to provide analysis around the clock, Gissén has just signed off her shift on P1 Morgon, SR’s most popular programme with a reach of 900,000 daily listeners. On today’s show, Gissén commented on the legal case against Henrik Landerholm, a former national security adviser accused of leaving classified documents at a conference centre. “In the end, we do this work for the public,” she says. “That is why we are here.”

In the newsroom at SVT, there is a reassuring hum of voices and engaged prepping for the day’s shows. The journalists, producers and editors are back from their morning meetings. The head of SVT news, Karin Ekman, delivers an update on the segments that did well over the weekend and those that could have done better, and welcomes two new political reporters into the fold.

The teams then huddle together in editorial discussions specific to every news programme, deciding on what to broadcast over the next 12 hours. The big-ticket item on the agenda for the flagship news programme, Aktuellt, which airs every weeknight at 21.00, is an interview with Ukraine’s former foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba.

A large portion (81 per cent) of Swedes watch SVT every week, which is broadcast from Stockholm, Malmö, Gothenburg and Umeå in the north. About one million viewers over the age of 25 watch evening news programmes Aktuellt and Rapport. But despite high ratings, SVT journalists understand that they need to remain in the viewers’ good graces and prove themselves worthy of the taxpayers’ kronor that keeps the lights on in the studios.

“It’s up to the public to decide through their elected representatives what they want our service to be,” says Jon Nilsson, a longstanding presenter of Aktuellt. “Even if I believe that the work that we do is important, people are allowed to voice opinions on how much it should cost to produce. So far, we are still here – alive and kicking.”

As his Aktuellt co-host Cecilia Gralde gets ready for the interview with Kuleba, she talks about the need to stay connected with the public. “We constantly have to renew ourselves; we can never stay idle,” she says. “The goal is to be engaged with our audiences.” Although Gralde has extensive experience as a news journalist – she began her career in 1998 – she took on a temporary posting as SVT’s Europe correspondent over the summer. While in that role, she covered, among other events, the pride parade in Budapest, wildfires in Spain and the Nato meeting in The Hague. She was looking “to experience what it’s like on the ground, being questioned from the studio back home”, she says.

In contrast, Gralde’s colleague Samir abu Eid is on his first day back at headquarters after 15 years posted in the Middle East. He is trundling through the newsroom on crutches because of a bandaged foot. “It’s not what you think,” he says. “I didn’t get hurt covering Gaza. I was playing basketball.” Abu Eid has become a familiar face to Swedes who watched his Middle East reporting almost daily. Today he is on his way to provide expert commentary on the region live from Studio 5. He confesses that he is already longing to be back in the field. “It’s very odd to be asked if I’ve brought a packed lunch to the office,” he says with a chuckle.

Whereas SVT’s former Middle East correspondent might be itching to get back into the thick of things, his boss has a resolve to stay at the helm, steering the ship. Ekman has a firm vision for the new direction of SVT news. “Public-service broadcasting isn’t immune to challenges,” she says. The focus is on capturing younger audiences by, without abandoning facts, moving away from doom-and-gloom journalism as much as possible towards solutions-focused reporting and “storytelling”. Though difficulties appear to be coming from all sides, Ekman is clear in her belief in the unique role played by public-service media in today’s world. “We have the experience and heft to continue to be the trustworthy haven that we always have been,” she says.

The architect who built work-life balance (and his family) into his own office

The idea of living in a flat above your workplace might raise questions about the pitfalls of being in constant proximity to your job. But French architect Jacques Moussafir couldn’t resist the chance to renovate a 10-storey structure in Paris’s Haut Marais neighbourhood, combining his home and office life in a single building.

Does he mourn his commute or cherish its abolition? And does he miss the mental separation between life and work that physical distance brings? “I find it very practical,” Moussafir tells Monocle with a smile when we meet him at his Parisian base. “There are some inconveniences, such as the temptation to go downstairs and work just a little longer – the boundary can become porous. But it’s my way of working as an architect. I can’t separate the two.”

With its aluminium-and-glass exterior, the imposing building on Rue du Vertbois stands in stark contrast to the historic structures that surround it. “We were already living in the area when the opportunity to take over the building came about,” says Moussafir. “We were looking for somewhere with a terrace and space for an office. What we ended up with was a little bigger than we had anticipated.” Originally designed in the 1970s by French firm Biro Fernier as a commercial building, the concrete behemoth exemplifies the architecture of France’s three-decade postwar economic boom and comprises seven storeys that sit atop a three-level underground car park.

When the building came up for auction in 2012, it required a complete renovation of the façade and the insertion of structural and safety elements, including staircases and guardrails, as well as floor and ceiling coverings. The works were completed in 2022 and the building is now mixed-use, with different areas sectioned off and rented out. Meanwhile, Moussafir occupies the top three floors with his family; another level houses his architecture firm.

Having already worked on significant projects, including the Museum of Fine Arts in Dijon and the Institute of Civilizations in Paris, Moussafir didn’t hesitate to commission himself. “It can be difficult to be your own client,” he says. “I have a friend who is also an architect and when it came to her own apartment she chose to hire someone else. It was easier, mostly for her partner, I think.”

For the exterior, Moussafir chose glass and aluminium planes that jut out at unexpected angles to create an intriguing play of light and shade. Entering an elevator in the building’s lobby, you make your way to an upper floor, where Moussafir’s open-plan office can be found through floor-to-ceiling glass doors. Here, oak finishings and wooden ceiling panels arranged in a grid formation soften the effect of the exposed stone walls, concrete beams and steel shelves.

“I like materiality,” says Moussafir. “When we moved in, I removed all of the paints and varnishes to emphasise the raw concrete.” For the carpentry, he enlisted Martin Bereuter, an Austrian cabinet-maker and longstanding collaborator. His use of honey-hued oak across every level brings visual harmony to the large-scale project. Northeast features a Japanese maple, bamboo and a fig tree that bears fruit twice a year (once in June and again in September). As Monocle takes a seat outside on woven-rope Ami chairs by Paola Lenti, the view from our perch is typically Parisian, with zinc-grey roofs, sand-tone walls and curlicue wrought-iron balconies extending as far as the eye can see.

Moussafir opens the sliding doors and windows on either side of the living room to catch a cross breeze and a continuity between the indoor and outdoor spaces is quickly established. From here, the family’s tennis-ball-yellow On the Rocks sofa by Italian furniture company Edra is an unexpected injection of brightness amid the cooling palette of concrete and oak. Behind it, a statue by Antony Gormley sits in dialogue with an Isamu Noguchi-designed Akari UF3-H paper floor lamp and vintage armchairs inherited from Aubépine’s parents. Aside from these pieces, the decoration of the space is mostly provided by bespoke, minimal black-steel shelves stacked with books ranging from a hefty volume on Bob Dylan’s lyrics to works by Molière and some cookbooks.

It’s a varied combination partly inspired by Moussafir’s peripatetic life – one that spans the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Greece, England and France. “My childhood in these places was no doubt important but I’m more influenced by remarkable architects,” he says, citing Estonian-born American master Louis Kahn, Swiss Pritzker Architecture Prize-winner Peter Zumthor and Australia’s Sean Godsell as sources of inspiration.

“I look to Nordic architecture but my main interests are materials and details,” he says. “Even without a budget, you can create beauty from raw materials, thanks to expert joinery and some contrast.” A case in point is the undulating wooden bench on one side of the kitchen table that Moussafir asked Bereuter to install as a space-saving solution.

“We’re actually on the second iteration of our kitchen,” says Moussafir. “My first idea was very conceptual: it was contained within a round structure and the dining area surrounded its perimeter. It was beautiful but sadly impractical. That’s the challenge when you’re your own architect: you have to live with the mistakes that you make.”

The final stop on Monocle’s visit is to the top floor of the building that can be accessed via a grey-metal spiral staircase. In this concrete attic, Moussafir and his wife’s bedroom is cradled between angled beams. A bed takes pride of place, with blue linen that matches a vertical headboard, while more bookshelves and oak finishings echo the other floors. But the secluded nature of the space brings a layer of intimacy to Moussafir’s home. “I love the separation between the floors,” he says. “In the morning, when I go down to the kitchen and the living room, it feels totally different. The rooms that are used throughout the day and those that I occupy at night feel cut off from each other.”

Ultimately, the configuration of the different levels that house the office and the various areas of the home is the trick to successfully balancing work and personal life when these two coexist closely. “I have friends who are able to disconnect at the weekend but, for me, the two parts of my life are interlinked and I like it that way,” says Moussafir. “It’s a luxury just to go downstairs in the morning and get to work. And if I have a little free time, I can also go upstairs and see my children for lunch. The absence of limits goes both ways.”
moussafir.fr

Peter Copping charts a new future for Lanvin couture

British-born designer Peter Copping is a collaborator at heart. Ever since his student days at Central Saint Martins in London, he has always been drawn to group projects and creative dialogues. “For graduation, three of us went to our professors with the idea of having a joint show, which had never really happened before,” says Copping, sitting in the Paris studio of French luxury fashion house Lanvin. Today he serves as its artistic director, tasked with the label’s revival. “We even got sponsorship, which wasn’t spent very wisely. We just went out having fun – things you’re allowed to do when you’re that age.”

After graduation, Copping went on to the Royal College of Art. He then began building one of the most impressive CVs in the fashion industry, working with some of the best designers of his generation. A chance meeting with Christian Lacroix at The Conran Shop in London led to a stint as a couture apprentice at the label in Paris; he later secured his first full-time position at Iceberg in Milan. In the early 1990s he returned to Paris to work for luminaries including Sonia Rykiel and Marc Jacobs at Louis Vuitton. “I always knew that I wanted to come back to Paris and make it my home,” he says. “Everyone from Jean Paul Gaultier to great Japanese designers such as Yohji Yamamoto was here in this city. I wanted to be right in the middle of it.”

Creative-director roles naturally followed, first at Nina Ricci in 2009 and then at the US-based Oscar de la Renta in 2015. But two years later, Copping was ready to return to Paris and to the couture atelier, working behind the scenes to relaunch Balenciaga’s couture line with the house’s then-creative director, Demna. “It was nice being able to work at a slower pace and really having time to investigate things,” adds the designer, admitting that he is as obsessed with the artisanship of couture as he is with the clients who commission these one-of-a-kind creations. “I would always sneak out from backstage and take pictures.”

Last year, when fashion houses began reshuffling their executive teams and creative-director positions began opening one after the other, Copping’s name unsurprisingly started to circulate in HR departments across Paris. Though he wasn’t “desperate to be an artistic director” or to be back in the spotlight, when he was offered the opportunity to take the creative lead at Lanvin it was too good to refuse. “It’s a beautiful house with a beautiful history,” says Copping of the Parisian brand, founded by Jeanne Lanvin in 1889 as a small hat shop.

Though it’s a leadership role, Copping’s job presents endless opportunities for collaboration. Rather than putting himself at the centre of the story, he is passionate about mentoring – and learning from – the brand’s young design team, who Monocle sees whizzing in and out of the studio. Equally, he has made it his mission to dig deep into the brand’s archive and pay homage to its pioneering founder. “I couldn’t wait to see it,” says Copping. “As soon as I got through the door, I asked, ‘Well, where is it?’ It’s all about going back to the roots of the house so I have been exclusively looking at the Jeanne Lanvin period, which feels very relevant today.”

Unlike in many fashion buildings, there is no sign of excess in his light-filled office on Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré – just practical furniture, piles of sketches and books on muses such as US socialite and interior designer Lee Radziwill. Copping has spent months here going through the Lanvin archives, including those at the Palais Galliera. “The museum has a lot of amazing pieces from the 1930s,” he tells Monocle. “I’ve found myself particularly drawn to them because the era’s silhouettes have a certain ease and comfort.”

Visiting Lanvin’s bedroom out of hours at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs (where it has been installed since 1965), Copping was also able to step inside the cordoned-off area and better understand her refined taste, as well as her appreciation for fine materials and decorative art. “Seeing that level of sophistication really gave me quite a sharp understanding of who she was and how she lived her life,” says the designer, who shares a similar love for interiors and collecting textiles from his travels.

For his debut autumn/winter 2025 collection, presented this January, he loosely evoked Lanvin’s sophisticated style in the form of column dresses, sumptuous velvet, leather fabrics and subtle sleeve embellishments. He was cautious about translating anything too literally, conscious of the need to avoid veering into costume territory. “I didn’t want to be overly academic about it,” he adds. “I cherry-picked items and tried to make them feel contemporary.”

This ability to tell Lanvin’s story through a modern lens immediately grabbed the industry’s attention and reignited hopes about the revival of the storied house, which is owned by the publicly listed Lanvin Group (formerly Fosun Fashion Group) and for years had struggled to maintain momentum beyond its robust business in trainers. “Lanvin has always been known for evening wear but there’s more that we can offer in day wear and particularly knitwear, which takes me back to my days at Sonia Rykiel,” says Copping, who also presented his first menswear collection as part of his January debut. “There’s an element of precision in men’s tailoring that I really enjoy. Lanvin used to have a huge menswear business so hopefully we’ll get back to that. We just need to let people know that [aside from the trainers] there’s a full fashion collection here again – nice knitwear, good coats, tailoring – so that men will start to return.”

As part of Lanvin’s transformation following the arrival of Siddhartha Shukla, its deputy CEO, in 2021, the company has been rethinking its branding and the artistic director has been playing around with the label’s powder-blue house colour. “Jeanne Lanvin had her own dyeing plant and books filled with different versions of blue, almost like a modern-day Pantone book,” says Copping. “I want to have it in every outfit, even if it’s a small detail inside a garment.”

The brand’s emblem, an illustration of the founder and her daughter, can also be found on Copping’s mood board. “For me, it represents family and a community that extends across different generations,” he says. “Today, family means so much to so many people. And I like the idea that the house reflects a modern family in some ways.” Having made a successful debut, this September the designer is returning to Paris Fashion Week to present his sophomore collection. “We’re sandwiched between Louis Vuitton and Dries van Noten. That will make for a great day of shows and it’s important for us to be among the competition,” he says with a smile.

To prepare for it, he has continued to explore the art deco era through Jeanne Lanvin’s eyes, examining sharp graphics from the 1930s and observing the works of other designers referencing her, including Geoffrey Beene. “When people ask what I plan to do for my next collection, I simply say, ‘We’re going to do the same thing.’ There are so many facets of Lanvin’s work to draw upon, from her personal style to the way that she put things together. She really deserves to be much better known.”
lanvin.com

How Catherine Rénier is turning Van Cleef & Arpels into living art

Luxury brands are always pursuing cultural relevance. Where many once focused their attention on pop culture and celebrity endorsements, today’s heritage fashion companies, jewellers and watchmakers seem more interested in forging partnerships with literary luminaries, choreographers, filmmakers and artists.

Founded in 1906 by husband and wife Alfred Van Cleef and Estelle Arpels on Paris’s Place Vendôme, Van Cleef &Arpels has always immersed itself in culture. In the late 1960s, an encounter between Claude Arpels and choreog- rapher George Balanchine resulted in the creation of Jewels, a ballet dedicated to precious stones and presented at the NewYork State Theatre.

Today the house plays a major role in supporting some of the world’s most important dance institutions, from The Royal Ballet in the UK to the Kanagawa Arts Theatre in Japan. It has also just introduced its own imprint with Italian publisher Franco Maria Ricci and runs L’École, a school of jewellery arts with campuses in Paris, Hong Kong, Dubai and Shanghai. There, people of all ages can sign up for courses in diamond grading, gemology or the history of art deco jewellery.

All of this is part of the reason why Van Cleef &Arpels is now in a position of power, with a growing appetite both for the stories that it has to tell and for the products that it has to offer. Signature jewellery lines, including the Alhambra, have found a new generation of fans, while its watch business continues to expand, with one-of-a-kind automatons and complications produced in-house. Its jewellery watches are also growing in popularity among female collectors and soon the house will also be renewing its focus on men’s timepieces – Pierre Arpels designed the brand’s first men’s watch in 1949 for his own use.

The brand’s new custodian is its CEO, Catherine Rénier, who spent 15 years in senior positions in the company before leaving to lead fellow Richemont house Jaeger-LeCoultre. Here, she tells Monocle about her homecoming and how she plans to maintain momentum.

Why did you want to return to the brand as CEO?
I spent 15 years at Van Cleef &Arpels in the beginning of my career so coming back felt very natural. The maison has remained true to its identity: it has always offered a very positive vision of life and that hasn’t changed. But everything is now on another scale and the initiatives are more impactful. L’École, for instance, now has four permanent addresses. When I was leaving in 2018, we had hardly opened one. Our festival Dance Reflections has also greatly developed. The project has taken on a life of its own and has a big impact on choreographers and the world of contemporary dance. My role is to continue that and, of course, make sure that the brand’s very old identity continues to blossom.

Dance has long been a source of inspiration for the house. Is there power in consistency?
Nature, dance, everything related to love or luck – all of these territories of expression are very clear within the maison. You know whether something belongs within the Van Cleef &Arpels’ world or not. Even when you look at nature through the eyes of the maison, it’s about colour, blossoming flowers and spring – it’s not an aggressive kind of nature. There isn’t only a territory of expression but also a specific view of that territory. Our strength is in being clear about our identity and being consistent over time in expressing it and fuelling our designs with it.

The market constantly demands novelty. How do you find balance?
Being consistent doesn’t prevent creativity. You don’t always have to change your source of inspiration. Take love – it’s a universal theme and we can express it in one way through the complications on traditional watches and in a completely different way in our automaton watches. There’s no need for us to perpetually look for new themes. We fuel ourselves from our patrimony.

Speaking of your poetic complication, have you had to reconsider the purpose of the watch and even the way in which we tell time?
Watches started as useful objects, which people used to tell the time or even help them as they travelled between time zones. They played some of the roles that our phones now play. For a house such as Van Cleef & Arpels, it’s now a lot more about the poetry of time or presenting another view on time. For another watchmaking maison, it might be more about technical expertise and the mechanical engineering that goes into the watch as an object of craft and complexity. For us, the mechanics will always come after the story – we do it the other way around. We are thinking about storytelling first and then put the mechanism at the service of it. Watches now have to play a different role – they’re less practical tools and much more art objects. This really is important when it comes to the way that the public looks at mechanical watches.

With its signature padlock-shaped clasp, your Cadenas watch has stood out in the market this year. Why do you think that this design in particular appeals so much again?
It’s a piece that dates back to the art deco period, which was an inspiring time for the maison and the art world in general. It has aged extremely well because it hasn’t changed – it has just improved. It’s a bold design but also remains discreet.You have to wear it to really understand it. I hope that it will take more of the spotlight this year. There is a love story that’s built around it [it was inspired by the duke and duchess of Windsor] and this year it’s clearly one of the stars of the show for us.

Van Cleef & Arpels is primarily known as a jeweller. How did you go about developing your watch-making expertise?
We started with a partnership and looked for experts who could assist the maison in expressing its vision of time. So the first poetic complications were done with watchmaking experts who brought in the solution. But over the years, our vision of time required new developments, new patterns and innovations. We began to integrate this know-how within the company so that the collaboration between the research and development teams, the design studio, the enamelling team and the watchmakers became more fluid. Now they’re all based in our workshop in Geneva. Since 2022 the development of all of the modules for the poetic complications has been done in-house to enable the story to go a step further.

Is that why investing in education has been a focus?
We spend time and effort talking about these jobs. What does it mean to be a jeweller? What type of career can you have? We educate people about this side of our world. It’s like a pépinière[nursery], a breeding ground for young jewellers. Students are nurtured so that they can move on to take a role in one of our workshops. It’s a necessary effort because these jobs rarely come to mind when a young student is choosing their career path. You can’t just decide that you will go to an enamelling school – you have to find a spot in a workshop and be taught by a qualified enameller. So we have a role to play in creating more opportunities for older generations to share their experiences and convince younger people to join.

Slowly but steadily, interest in craft jobs is increasing. Is that the result of technology fatigue?
The world is always in search of balance. So traditional craftsmanship is serving as an answer to modern technology, to the very short life cycle of objects nowadays. You come to our world and you’re looking at timeless products.

As your watch business grows, so does your presence atWatches andWonders in Geneva. Why is the fair worth the investment for you?
It’s important for us to have a dedicated watchmaking moment to focus our attention on our watches, the novelties and the stories around them. More generally, the fair has risen to another level. It’s now a place where members of the public come at the weekend. Sales are not the objective; you have the boutiques for that. It’s more about education and bringing a new crowd into our world. I’ve seen young people and I’ve seen families with strollers – people are curious. It’s a rendezvous with watchmaking, like an art fair. It’s important for the industry at large because it shows how relevant watchmaking is today, even if you don’t need a timepiece to tell the time.
vancleefarpels.com