OUR FRESH NEW MENUS MEXICO CITY: AN INSIDER’S GUIDE MICHÈLE LAMY DEBBIE . JEREMY O. HARRIS . SOHO HOUSE BEDROOMS UNBOXED . PAUL SMITH . STOCKHOLM’S NEW STYLE . CONFE SSIONS OF A ROOFTOP POOL ADDICT YINKA ILORI SOHO HOME’S INTERIOR DESIGN SERVICE MAX RICHTER
THE BRITISH ACTOR CONTEMPLATES HIS NEXT MOVE AT CAFE BOHEME
EPISODE 2: VOLLEBAK EPISODE 2: VOLLEBAK
From a metaphorical deep dive into your sartorial choices to a physical deep dive into our roo op pools, six global members with six unique perspectives share their stories
The wait is almost over as our first House in Latin America opens this summer. From the best beaches to the architectural finds and the delicious food, here’s how to get the most out of your visit to Mexico City
Playwright and performer Jeremy O. Harris brings high fashion and good vibes to Soho House New York
Lamy – the toast of Paris, New York, London and Milan –takes 180 House by storm
58 NORTHERN LIGHTS
Sweden’s finest fashion designers and tastemakers take centre stage at Soho House Stockholm. Skål!
78 WORLD, MEET DEBBIE
e soul-singing sensation and Soho Rising star on her newfound fame, collaborating with Stormzy and a surprising plan B
86 HAPPY DAYS
Actor of the moment James Norton hangs out at 40 Greek Street and discusses his biggest acting challenge to date. We can report he’s nothing like his Happy Valley alter ego…
94 TAKE IT TO THE MAX
Max Richter, titan of the classical music world and a headline speaker at the Soho Summit, reflects on his career so far
96 LET’S MOVE!
Our uber-cool members from the world of movement and dance showcase their skills on our finest Soho Home chairs
110
Artist and designer Yinka Ilori on the inspiration behind his brilliant and soon-to-be-revealed installation at Soho Farmhouse
120 SOHO ESCAPES
From Rome to Mumbai, our Houses with bedrooms are ready to make you feel right at home.
ese are the ones to book now
Interested in becoming a member? Scan below for more information
POP YA COLOUR
Le : James Norton, p86. Above: e Ebinum brothers, p96. Opposite page: Michèle Lamy, p50
Photography: Claire Rothstein, Fabian Martinez, Edd Horder, Rick Guest
Chief Content O icer Jonathan Heaf
Editorial Creative Director Andrew Diprose
Production Editor Olivia McCrea-Hedley
Editorial Director Teo van den Broeke
Entertainment Director James Conrad Williams
Global Director of Art Kate Bryan
Photo Director Julie e Clarke
Membership Content Director Gemma Boner
Art Director Mary Lees
Head of Creative Operations Camilla Weston
Content Editor Sagal Mohammed
Editorial Associate Anastasiia Fedorova
Commercial Director
Oliver Woodley
Head of Partnerships UK/EU/ROW
Delara Nikkhah
Associate Publisher
Andrew Chidgey-Nakazono
Senior Partnership Manager Lucy Murphy
Head of Events Milly Baker
Senior Events Producer Emily Purdham
Founder Nick Jones
Chief Executive O icer Andrew Carnie
Contributors
Justin French, Claire Rothstein, Edd Horder, Jezer Alarcón, Alicia Gutierrez, Monserrat Castera, Fabian Martinez, Chris Glass, Izogie Guobadia, Lill Lindqvist, Jo Addy, Abigail Hirsch, Lynn Visudharomn, Phachongkarn Jumpolpong, Hanna Flint, Edith Bowman, Kevin Braddock, Jessica Burrell, Gianluca Longo, Andre Pinard, Paul Flynn, Chloe Lawrance, Leo Goddard, Dom Chung, Juan Veloz, Andy Morris, David Levesley, Elisabeth Toll, Emma McCarthy, Chiara Brazzale, Lucy Jones, Karine Day, Stuart McGurk, Ajesh Patalay, Olive Pometsey, Bryony Stone, Karen Edwards, Kimberly Drew, Hanna Woodside, Rose Forde, Mobolaji Dawodu, Ayishat Akanbi, Laura Edwards, Kasia Bobula, Stephan Glathe, Rick Guest
With special thanks to
Jarre Stuhl, Anouska Ruane, Ben Nwaeke, Gareth Lewis, omas Allen, Guy Williams, Rajat
Dhawan, Ma hew McQuade, Amy Cheema, Markus Anderson, Samantha Stone, Vanessa Xuereb, Tom Collins, Guy Chetwynd, Tom Russell, Dominique Bellas, Esther Brown, Marcus Barwell, Surinder Sangha, Terence Heflin-Connolly, Kimani Roquemore, Daniel Smith, Danny Chan, Katie Smith, Olivia Sheath, George Serventi, William Baines, Wallis Hamilton, Ruggy Joesten, Camilla Barre , Jakob Hesketh, Sarah Graham, Jamila Brown, Min Shrimpton, Velma Simmons, Charlo e Read, Aurélie Vancoppenolle, Emmanuelle Palmas, Constance Lugger, Erdem Kayalar, Amera Khodary, Diana Fernandes, Josie Schiller, Olivia Seally, Andrea Noguera, Philip Spee, Alicia Langan, Kimiko Singer, Jack Rainey, Kimiko Ninomiya, Anna Robbins, Gisselle Babaran, Claire Hearn, Pablo Arango, Melina Asnani, Max Moran, Bryony Watson, Courtney Howle , Hannah Trevaskis, Sara Terzi
Promoter and cultural producer Castera is the founder of cultural projects agency MOMOROOM, based in Mexico City. Ahead of Soho House opening this summer, she writes a guide to her home city on p32. “Saying beautiful things about my city was a deeper exercise than I thought,” she says.
“I enjoyed it a lot.”
AJESH PATALAY
Patalay is a freelance journalist and contributing editor for the FT’s How to Spend It. He profiles artist Yinka Ilori on p110. “Interviewing Yinka over Zoom underlined the value of coordinating what you wear with your o ice. His shelves were pink and orange and he wore pink and orange. I was impressed. Here’s to sporting more magenta.”
CLAIRE ROTHSTEIN
Rothstein regularly photographs for Harper’s Bazaar and Vogue and captures Michèle Lamy at 180 House on p50. “Michèle epitomises female empowerment, glamour and that all-round cool factor,” she says. “Jumping up on a sideboard at 180 while everyone was having brunch was a literal high point. My kind of woman.”
JUSTIN FRENCH
French is a worldrenowned photographer whose work has appeared in i-D, Dazed and the Wall Street Journal He photographs Jeremy O. Harris at Soho House New York (which turns 20 this year) on p40: “Working with Jeremy, as always, felt familial. He possesses a comfort and confidence that is so important when capturing portraits.”
OLIVE POMETSEY
Pometsey is the features editor at e Face On p56, she interviews actor Andrew Sco – a headline speaker at April’s Soho Summit, powered by Porsche. “It was a joy to speak to the ‘Hot Priest’ himself about finding fun in every project,” she says. “He is one of the most diversely talented actors today and, amazingly, still incredibly down to earth.”
“Immersive” has become the buzziest of buzz words to describe a show, exhibition or art happening. Not since the u erance of “goblin mode” or “vibe shi ” has a term been so overused by so many, trying to impress one another with their (loose) grip on the zeitgeist.
Whether it’s a visit to David Hockney’s Lightroom gallery in King’s Cross, London, or trying to take a nonchalant selfie while standing in Yayoi Kusama’s InfinityMirror Rooms at e Broad in Downtown Los Angeles, if The Big Art Show of the Month doesn’t promise an assault on your senses then the curator has probably already been sacked and replaced by a bot. Art is no longer only for looking at, it’s for experiencing. In 2023, the ‘Mona Lisa’ doesn’t just need to smile, she needs to reach out as a dancing hologram and sell you a tote bag designed by Bode.
When planning our inaugural Soho Summit in partnership with our friends
at Porsche – an extraordinary festival of ideas involving inspiring talks, creative makeathons, one-o screenings, a little tree planting and brand-new art experiences, held over three days in and around Soho Farmhouse, Oxfordshire – we wanted enveloping, whiteknuckle immersion. Yet immersion for our members and their lucky guests doesn’t
in Stockholm to highlight the local style vanguard (p58), an insider’s guide to Mexico City forged and worked on in anticipation of our first House due to open in Latin America (p32), plus news of an improved and refreshed Soho House Festival taking place at Gunnersbury Park, London, this July (p11). All that, plus we meet some of the new members
necessarily mean an exhibition aimed at providing an algorithmic “likeable” or “shareable” social media sugar high. No, immersion for Soho House means a richness that demands deeper exploration – and who be er to provide that than the global creative community (yes, including our members) pushing the very boundaries of contemporary culture? roughout this issue (the second of our new Soho House print magazine, available worldwide), you’ll find our Soho Summit participants talking about what they do best: creating. Whether it’s artist Yinka Ilori (p110) on his brand new – and yes, immersive – installation, soon to be revealed at Soho Farmhouse, or essential American playwright Jeremy O. Harris talking style and charging at the establishment (p40), there’s provocation and inspiration here in equal measure.
Let’s face it, few of Harris’s contemporaries demand such worthy a ention, whether it be his work for TV hit Euphoria or his driven philanthropy aimed at supporting Black women playwrights. He appears alongside Irish author and journalist Sinéad Burke (p84), founder of Tilting the Lens, an accessibility and Inclusion consultancy whose powerful work champions education, equity and social justice. Soho House hopes to work far more closely with Burke in the months and years ahead.
Of course, elsewhere in the magazine we have a heap more standout Soho House initiatives worth scanning: a series of portraits taken at our House
who are part of the growing creative community at Soho House Bangkok (p14). Busy, much? Sure, like you we’ve been hustling hard, creating spaces, events, membership value and more that continuously delivers, whether you are visiting the Houses morning, noon or night. And, like you, we know how impatient one can be to see that creativity, that inspiration, that hard work, bear fruit. Well, this is only the start: if you can’t make it to the Soho Summit in the UK this year, fear not. It’s coming to North America later in 2023 and then Europe in 2024. e journey has just begun: sign up, take the trip and enjoy the ride… Immersively.
Jonathan Heaf Chief Content O icer*It was made by members, for members. All human, nothing artificial, with (hopefully) some intelligence…
e UK member event of the year is back and be er than ever. Yes, Soho House Festival is returning to west London’s Gunnersbury Park for two blissful, heady days this summer, so note down Thursday 6 and Saturday 8 July 2023 in your calendars. is year, we’ve worked hard to improve every aspect of the festival, from the playful creative on site to the range of food and
Words by Anastasiia Fedorova
Illustrations by Chiara Brazzale
drink on o er, while also staying true to the quintessential Soho House spirit. Sure, there are plenty of other festivals on the annual calendar nowadays, but we think House Festival’s uniqueness comes from its buoyant generosity, both in regards to the bountiful food and drink spread and also from the energy of those a ending – that’s you, our members. Mild, or wild, there’s a sun-dappled spot for all.
Music is embedded in everything we do at Soho House, and the 2023 House Festival line-up is undoubtedly our best yet. Although the full billing is under lock and key until closer to the time, we’ve announced our first five headliners: Pete Tong Ibiza Classics, Heritage Orchestra and Jules Buckley will be bringing their immersive Balearic experience to crown both ursday and Saturday evenings, while other big acts on the ursday include Annie Mac and Kelis, and Saturday will see us worship icons Honey Dijon and Kojey Radical. Around the site, members will enjoy a more contemporary feel, with experiential games and creative moments – although nothing will distract from the primary objectives for everyone in a endance:
eating, drinking, dancing and enjoying one another’s company.
You will still find our signature fairground, plus a new House Heroes DJ tent (in anticipation of Soho House Manchester opening later this year) and the infamous grand BBQ section, serving endless lobster, steak and salads, will also be returning. For those on a wellness kick, our menu will o er a broader range of healthy options, and there will be dishes from member favourites Pen Yen and Pizza East. Expect House cocktails, too – though we’ll be switching things up with some new flavours.
House Festival will also continue to support charitable causes, with this year’s choices being the newly launched Soho House Foundation and War Child UK, the specialist charity for children a ected by conflict. Roll on July!
Are you someone who travels frequently and wants to be part of our global community? en our Cities Without Houses membership is just the thing for you. Now in its seventh year, this bespoke Every House membership is especially for creatives living in cities with no physical Soho House spaces. From Sydney to Sea le; Dublin to Washington, D.C.; Tokyo to Taipei; Leeds to Las Vegas; this membership provides invites to regular events in over 80 cities around the world, plus access to all our Houses globally. You’re also guaranteed the best rates on Soho House bedroom bookings, as well as member discounts at our restaurants. Already an Every House member? en don’t forget you can access our CWH events on your travels and refer any friends who you feel would be an asset to our CWH community. What are you waiting for? Get involved!
Above: A Cities Without Houses dinner to celebrate Cape Town Art Week
Music is embedded in everything we do at Soho HouseBelow: Pete Tong, the Heritage Orchestra and Jules Buckley, who will be headlining both ursday and Saturday night of this year’s House Festival Photography, previous page: Madison Phipps. Photography, this spread: Madison Phipps, Robert Rieger, Dan Reid
Right: e pool area at Soho House Bangkok. Far right: Member Cindy Sirinya Bishop, a model and activist, and Ma Love, a director of social impact
Le : Members
Ploi Horwang, an entrepreneur, actor and TV host, jewellery designer Chanyaporn (O) ongthai and nightclub owner and creative and Nick Supreda. Above: e Garden Bar at Soho House Bangkok.
Below: Museum director, photographer and member Kanachai (Kit) Bencharongkul
Our new three-storey club in ailand’s capital is one of the most exciting openings of the year. It’s decked out in bespoke design and beautifully combines the indoor with the outdoor (the Pool Garden is a crowd-pleaser), but the true gem lies in the thriving community of Thai creatives who have already made the House their hub.
“I’m looking forward to connecting with fellow creatives,” says member Ploi Horwang, an actor, TV host and entrepreneur. Similarly, member Ma Love, a director of social impact, enjoys being surrounded by like-minded people: “I am excited to be inspired by the diversity of creative talent i n this constantly evolving city.” As is actor Bhumibhat (Aim) Thavornsiri: “I can’t wait to see how the emergence of Soho House will a ect these places and scenes that we’re all living in.”
Meanwhile, jewellery designer Chanyaporn (O) Thongthai can’t want to make the most of the facilities. “Soho House is like a home away from home. Hit the gym, sauna, half-price Mondays for under 27s, and then the ultimate Bloody Mary and chill,” she says. On the top of e very member’s list, however, are the endless events we’ll be hosting at Soho House Bangkok. “It’s exciting to join special events,” says nightclub owner Nick Supreda. “ ere really is no party like a Soho House party.”
This year, we are celebrating 20 years since Soho House opened its doors in New York City’s Meatpacking District in 2003 – and with it, two decades of Soho House in the United States. Set over six floors of a former warehouse, just a stone’s throw from the Whitney Museum, our first US club shaped the Soho House vision for years to come and intertwined with endless cultural moments and the many fates of creatives who call Manha an their home.
Notably, Soho House New York was home to our first-ever rooftop pool, which later inspired the layout for the one on top of London’s Shoreditch House. Today, the House has a spa, a roo op terrace and spacious bedrooms with exposed beams and big windows overlooking the bustling streets.
While Ludlow and DUMBO House are both in close proximity, Soho House New York will always have a special place in our hearts – not least for the opening night, which gathered together an eclectic mix of artists, music and film royalty, plus members from around the world. In fact, the night was widely compared to the wild days of Studio 54. Cheers to another two decades and beyond!
Nothing transforms a space like carefully curated lighting. is season’s ho est Soho Home buy is the Rowan Floor Lamp, £3,250 (right). Inspired by the interiors of London’s 180 House, the lamp is anchored by a dark Emperador marble base with an elongated, arched frame in a warm nickel finish. e best bit? It features an adjustable globular shade, great for creating a directional pool of light – the perfect addition to a spacious living room or dining space.
At Soho House, we know that talent is everywhere, but opportunity is not. Over the years, we’ve been using our knowledge and networks to open doors for those who might otherwise be shut out. At the end of 2022, we launched our own charity, e Soho House Foundation, which funds and empowers creatives from underrepresented and lower socioeconomic backgrounds. To put our resources where they’re needed most, we asked our global teams to nominate charities
working in their local community to help young people through creativity. Our first round of partners are Inner-City Arts in Los Angeles, Happy Feet Home in Mumbai, School Ground Sounds in London and Jeugdfonds Sport & Cultuur in Amsterdam, all of which will receive a grant to support their work, building a new generation of changemakers. e Soho House Foundation is registered as a charitable incorporated organisation (CIO), charity number 1199179.
This summer, we’re celebrating 25 y ears of Babington House. Located in a 1705 Grade II-listed manor in the heart of Somerset, Soho House’s original countryside escape first opened its doors in 1998, and has since become a wholesome haven for our members to bed down in.
Babington is home to a quintessentially English take on our signature design across its bedrooms, cabins and lodges – plus some major milestones for both Soho House and our members. It’s the location of our first Cowshed spa, which was literally tucked away in an old cow shed at the bo om of the building (hence the name).
Today, our spas offer treatments around the world, with a philosophy that centres on the therapeutic nature of botanical essential oils. Cowshed products are all made in England, from a variety of organic ingredients, and the signature Cowshed Shelfie Set of 11 hair, bath and body products can be found in all Soho House bedrooms
– providing a relaxing spa experience, whenever you need it.
This summer, we’re celebrating the big anniversary with a series of special events, from pool parties and live music to dedicated member events, including a Glastonbury takeover. Be sure to keep up to date with events and book your Babington House stay via the QR code below.
8
It’s not only the iconic Picante that keeps the Soho House bars buzzing. Our drinks menu comes complete with refined classics and an ever-evolving selection of seasonal cocktails. Take Rum Demure (left), an elegant blend of Bacardi Carta Negra rum, Bénédictine D.O.M liqueur, crème de mûre and Peychaud’s bi ers, created by Andrei Lima at 180 House. Sample our latest o erings at your local club.
It’s not only the iconic Picante that keeps our bars buzzing
Yes, the Soho House Awards will return for a second year, celebrating the emerging and established talents across the creative industries. Last year, we kicked o the first-ever ceremony, held in partnership with Sky, with an intimate evening at London’s 180 House. Nineteen winners – including John Boyega, Evan Mock, Ellie Bamber, Charlo e Tilbury, Yasmin Finney and Self Esteem – took home a Golden Picante, while we teamed up with Oscar-winner Daniel Kaluuya and his production company to create the 59% Gen Now award, championing the current generation of acting talent. is year, we’re stepping things up a notch by giving our members the chance to decide who wins the awards. e nominations for all 10 categories – including Artist, Actor, Creator, Changemaker, Designer and Musician of the Year – will be decided by a member vote. Stay tuned for more info.
Soho House Bangkok opened in early March. For more information and to explore membership, scan the QR code
Soho House and Porsche have joined forces to support the next generation of creative changemakers, with art being a crucial part of this collaboration. Over the course of our partnership, we have supported a range of special commissions and installations across the Houses – and this is where things get truly exciting.
is year, Soho House and Porsche launched the Soho Visionaries series, creating an
exploration of experimental forms and narratives while amplifying the voices of three artists as they reflect on their creative communities and the places that nurtured them.
Launched in March 2023, each creator has produced a site-specific work to be installed at one of our Houses.
Nicole Wermers created a piece for Soho House Berlin, while Bernat Daviu’s design is on display at Soho House Barcelona
and Yinka Ilori’s immersive outdoor commission will be revealed at Soho Farmhouse later this Spring.
is collaborative art series has been celebrated across our Houses with various events highlighting the works of the three key artists, from a series of talks and workshops to dinners and performances. So be sure to keep your eyes peeled for their one-of-a-kind creations during your next visit.
Celebrate Pride with us across the Houses
Jon Aro performing at Soho Beach House Miami during Pride weekend in 2022
Right: e open-air pool at Soho Warehouse in Downtown Los Angeles
uring the past few years, we’ve started to pay more attention to our living spaces. It’s partly due to the pandemic, which saw us spend more time at home. We began to ask: how can I live be er? How can I make each room more comfortable? How can I make every corner look more interesting? It’s a shi in mindset that has stayed with us.
Now, books on decorating are being published more frequently, appealing to every taste. Interiors magazines have never had a better time, with titles increasing their circulation. More online homeware shops are popping up, while brands are expanding their por olio to homeware: see Zara, Dior, H&M, Ralph Lauren and, of course, Soho Home.
Interior decorators have also never been so busy. ey have clients wanting to go from minimal to maximal and from maximal to minimal. It’s the same for
Soho Home’s interior design service –an easy access point for those who’ve not yet dipped their toes into the fun world of decorating.
A quick explainer: first, you meet with one of Soho Home’s designers for a consultancy, considering budget and what will work best in your space. Next, the designer will present a series of concepts to pick from, and finally they will work with you to ensure a seamless integration into your space. e team will help you select pieces from not just Soho Home, but other brands – a unique flexibility (and, frankly, confidence) which ackno wledges that most of us enjoy blending items from a range of sources. Soho Home was first introduced in 2016, for those wanting to create the same ambience as the clubs in their own spaces. ough Soho House paid close a ention to its design aesthetic from day one. As an Electric House aficionado, I have always noticed the club’s details: the dining chairs in patterned velvet and brown leather (the right brown, note); the low armchairs in jacquard
Universaltapisserie (which I o en thought would look good in my flat). And when Li le House Mayfair opened, I was enthralled by the rough wood panelling on the walls, the dark red sofas and the (then) newly introduced glassware (the perfect accessory to impress a date).
Now, Soho House has become a “style”. How many times you have heard someone say that a hotel or a home has a “Soho House feel”? You’ll recognise that style in the lights, which are o en slightly old-school in shape; in the big, comfortable sofas and art deco-style armchairs. e same is true of the beds, occasional tables and stylish, so rugs. ese days, inspiration can come from anywhere, with images of beautiful houses served up by social media. People are more confident in designing their houses with these references close to hand. But if you’re not wanting to go it alone, Soho Home’s design service is a great place to start.
sohohome.com/soho-home-design
Gianluca Longo is the style director of e World of Interiors and a member of Shoreditch House
I call myself a social engineer: someone who brings people together to create positive outcomes and common objectives. It’s something I’ve done my whole life, combining passion with purpose.
I spent 10 years at Adidas as director of community, mindset and culture – a title I created a er becoming disenchanted with fashion advertising and craving a deeper sense of purpose. At the time, the word “community” wasn’t built into our vocabulary the way it is today. It’s crucial to the way we function and can be built through various mediums – running clubs being one.
Running has always been special to me for the powerful ways in which it promotes collectivity. I’m a child of immigrants from Haiti and was raised in Princeton, New Jersey. As a diaspora, the idea of community has been a consistent factor in my life. I moved to New York in 1994, which has the second largest population of Haitians outside of Haiti. New York has so much energy; there’s fashion, music, art, film – all of these creative things that are rooted in a blended immigrant culture.
I wanted to combine this lens and my background in sociology (I graduated with a PhD from e New School) with my knowledge of consumer insights (from years of working in advertising and marketing at global companies) to make space for something that centered on community. at led to the birth of the community strategy at Adidas North America and then the Adidas Runners: a global running community in multiple cities, including New York and London.
The running landscape is full, that’s no secret. ere are hundreds of
running groups in New York alone, so it was about finding a point of di erentiation. For me, that meant creating a community that was diverse by design. A club led by women and championed by people of colour. When you think of the face of running clubs, it’s someone slim, white and maybe with ta oos. But runners come in all shapes and sizes – Run Dem Crew is a great example, founded by Charlie Dark in London. He changed people’s lives through sport and that’s what Adidas Runners was about too.
To build a community, you start by identifying shared values. For a running club, it’s living a healthy lifestyle and realising you don’t have to be an Olympian to change your life through sport. For a concept like Soho House, which has created a global community, that shared value is rooted in creativity.
I joined DUMBO House when it was launching – it reminded me of a club my friends and I started in high school called the Youth Cafe, for kids to meet others with similar creative interests, learn to
New York, USA
collaborate and be inspired. Soho House is a modern version of that: a place where like-minded people can come together. e opportunity to be on the Soho House Inclusivity board came in 2020, following the killing of George Floyd and the global rise of Black Lives Ma er. It was a time when a lot of companies wanted to implement what I had been doing in my career: socially engineering passion with purpose. At Adidas, we did this through the New x3 narrative, which consisted of three pillars. “New era” referred to the changing sociopolitical climate (then, it was Obama coming into o ice and the Arab Spring). “New expression” was about fluidity and people wanting to be multidimensional (athletes wanting to be more than athletes; Black and Brown youth wanting to be seen as more than a stereotype). Finally, “new expectations” represented the higher expectations young people had for themselves and the institutions that they were associated with.
I approach my work at Soho House with the same model. As a man of colour and an immigrant, every position I take includes being a gate-opener. I want to bring in young creatives of colour to have a two-way exchange in this ecosystem. I use my social engineering skills to cultivate diversity of thought and experience because, ultimately, div ersity is essential in generating innovation – whether that’s changing your life through sport or creating a community of culture and creativity.
Andre Pinard is part of the Soho House Inclusivity Board and a member of DUMBO House
“TO BUILD A COMMUNITY, YOU START BY IDENTIFYING SHARED VALUES”DUMBO HOUSE
ou don’t need me to tell you that clothes are important. As a member of Soho House, I happily assume that you have graduated to appreciate the so power that wearing great, well-made, deeply cared-for garments can wield. My own journey to discovering the potency of a well-appointed wardrobe, on the other hand, was not even close to complete until recently.
Before joining Soho House as Editorial Director in 2022, I spent the best part of a decade and a half working as a journalist and editor at various fashion glossies. One of the earlier events I was invited to a end during the inaugural months of an internship at Wallpaper* magazine was a small soiree to celebrate the opening of the new bedrooms at Shoreditch House, our much-loved east London club.
Our founder Nick Jones hosted the dinner, the food was served family style (totally innovative, back then), House cocktails were flowing and the guest list consisted of a host of chic people swathed in expensive-looking lashings of navy blue, midnight and black.
I was seated next to the lead singer of an achingly cool Canadian dance band and I distinctly remember feeling intoxicated by the low-fi glamour of the scene. I also remember what I wore that night: a pink pinstripe shirt, undone to the base of my sternum, some over-washed skinny jeans from ASOS and a pair of beaten-up brogues unearthed at a charity shop in Leeds, from where I had recently departed university.
If I had entered the dinner feeling trepidation about my ou it, I le inspired to improve. It wasn’t the other guests that had made me feel unconvinced by what I’d been wearing, but rather the immaculately put-together waiting sta in their understated matching uniforms. Moving as one, they resembled a sea of perfectly turned-out cabin boys – if Tyler Brûlé did cabin boys – slipping smartly around the reclaimed wooden floors of the club like marbles on ice.
I made a promise to myself there and then: for any event I was invited to in the future, I would aim to look at least as considered as the waiters did that night at Shoreditch House.
London, UK SHOREDITCH HOUSE
Following my time at Wallpaper*, I did stints at two of the UK’s leading men’s magazines in the role of style director. During my tenures at both titles, I travelled the world attending fashion shows and product launches; a working rhythm which meant I spent a great deal of my time (and money) trying to adhere to the trends I was reporting on. I loved clothes – I loved looking at them, touching them, buying them, writing about them. But the more stu I bought to try and fit in with the industry, the more uncomfortable and less like myself – my slim-cut, ever-so-slightly straight-laced, navy blue-clad self – I felt. Although I was fortunate to find myself awash with clobber in my former roles, there were only ever a handful of garments that I would return to time and again. The brushed cotton navy grandad shirt I bought from Uniqlo with one of my earliest paychecks, for instance. I’d worn the shirt on more dates than I cared to remember (some disastrous, some fabulous). e fabric had so ened beautifully with age and it always fi ed like a glove, no ma er how much my weight would fluctuate with the seasons. Magic! I only threw it away because it started to disintegrate a er I accidentally put it through a boil wash. Disaster!
Likewise, the first pair of white suede Gucci loafers I bought in the sale with my Christmas money in 2003. ey cost £70 and were too big for me, but I wore them on pretty much every summer holiday for the following decade because they reminded me of the inimitable thrill
“I CAME TO REALISE THAT THERE ARE VALUABLE ENDORPHINS TO BE EARNED BY WEARING CLOTHES YOU LOVE, SIMPLY BECAUSE YOU LOVE THEM”
of being young and buying something beautiful you can’t a ord (but absolutely need to own). Eventually, I came to realise that, as much as it’s important to wear clothes for the pleasure of others, there are far more valuable endorphins to be earned by wearing clothes you love, simply because you love them.
Self -discovery and expression through clothing is a subject I examine closely in my new book, The Closet –a coming-of-age-meets-coming-out memoir published this September (Harper Collins HQ). Each chapter of the book focuses on a garment from the wardrobe of my past, from the cornflower blue princess dress I desperately wanted to wear as a toddler, but felt ashamed to do so, to the Puma Mostro trainers I bought as a teenager to impress the boy
I loved. eCloset is a paean to the clothes we care about and the stories they tell.
I finished writing the book just under a year ago, as I took up my post at Soho House, and I can honestly say that I’ve never felt more confident in my style choices than I do today. It might have something to do with the fact that I now work for a company where style is treated with equal weight to inclusivity and community; or maybe it’s because I’m constantly surrounded by people dressed in ever more inspiring and surprising ways than I am.
Every time I visit our Houses I’m freshly delighted by the bold array of sartorial statements on display. From the evening-centred elegance of 180 and the stealthy breeziness of West Hollywood to the insouciant under -
statement of Paris, each of our clubs sit s in its own specific corner of the international style smörgåsbord. It’s one of the many reasons I love being both a member of and working for Soho House.
Or perhaps it’s simply because the process of writing my book became a kind of sartorial “therapy”, allowing me to finally figure out who I am through the prism of the clothes that I love. Either way, wearing clothes that ma er, ma ers. Wearing clothes y ou care about matters. Wearing clothes for the approval of others is, well, bollocks. But then, as I say, you don’t need me to tell you that.
here’s an episode of Sex and the City in which Samantha bumps into her old friend Phoebe (played, in a peculiar cameo, by Geri Halliwell). In their brief exchange, Phoebe extols the virtues of surviving the New York summer thanks to the pool at Soho House. “I mean, what else can you possibly do in this heat?” she says. “Just sit by the pool and drink cocktails while they mist you with Evian. Isn’t it the best?” Stuck on the waiting list, Samantha claims a lost membership card in order to sneak into the ho est (or rather, coolest) spot in town
An old yarn but an ever-relevant lesson: part of the magic of a Soho House swim is that a place by the pool feels elusive, hard-won and, in a city heatwave, invaluable, whichever House you’re at, from New York to Amsterdam or London. It reminds me of one sweltering day spent on the roo op of White City House, in a novel moment of al fresco freedom post-lockdown. e water provided respite from the searing heat, but equally welcome was the glamorous chaos of the scene: the tangle of sun-starved bodies unleashed once more, the candy-striped towels doused in spilt rosé, the rounds and rounds of Picantes and wood-fired
pizza. Soaring above the urban sprawl below, you could be anywhere more reliably temperate than London. And yet you could be nowhere but here, up on the roof of the former BBC Television Centre, uplifted by 1960s spirit and screen-ready good looks.
And then there was the time in deepest Somerset, a world away from London, enacting the remote working fantasy with a laptop and pool session at Babington House – Zoom camera switched firmly o . During o ice hours, swimming there felt like the ultimate clandestine escape, surrounded by idyllic acres, laptop propped on a sun-dried towel (they’re sage green at Babington, to match the manicured lawns). Lunch took place beside the Georgian manor at the heart of the place, all that storybook charm cheering the most work-weary soul.
Back in town, I’ve often been surprised that partygoers can resist a midnight plunge when an illuminated pool gleams invitingly. Swimming stops at 10pm, to be clear, but at the a er-party of the Soho House Awards last September, I could have sworn the glittering depths on the roof of 180 House winked at me. at sirenic swell had also beckoned months earlier at the Vanity Fair pre-BAFTA party –although it would have been a bracing plunge on that chilly March night.
But the Soho House pool is for all seasons, as I recently discovered during a daring dip at Shoreditch House. To my surprise, I was not the only one braving the January dash from changing room. And li le wonder – the experience was deeply reviving, with views of the City and East End filtered in so focus by steam rising from the (mercifully) heated water. A word to the wise: one-pieces are preferable for out-of-season swimmers, though nobody ba ed an eyelid at the ostentatious Baywatch-red bikini I had mistakenly packed in a rush. Post-swim, the velvet sofas and booths on the Fi h Floor had never looked more appealing, and it felt only right to se le in for the a ernoon, as bleary-eyed brunchers gave way to the wholesome groups meeting for Sunday roasts.
Such is the seven-day joy o ered by Soho House pools. ey can transform overnight from sites of debauchery and decadence to watery temples of reflection and solitude. ey can feel like wellness-boosting beacons among the dry monotony of city life, or like the blissful cocoon of the country incarnate. But the question remains – which lucky guest will you choose to take with you?
Jessica Burrell is a freelance writer whose work has appeared in British Vogue, ELLE and Vanity Fair
“SOHO HOUSE POOLS FEEL LIKE WELLNESSBOOSTING BEACONS AMONG THE MONOTONY OF CITY LIFE”
It seemed oddly appropriate when, in 2020, Meghan Markle mentioned Ma Haig on her podcast and featured him in her guest edit of British Vogue. She was a fan of his book Notes on a Nervous Planet, the meditation on anxiety which partnered his bestselling memoir on depression, Reasons to Stay Alive
e liaison was perhaps energised by what has come to be known, since Brené Brown’s 2010 TED talk, as “the power of vulnerability” – shorthand for an openness towards mental health, mental illness and the fragility of our tender and highly relatable humanness. As the Greek tragedians knew, we need others to stage their stories so we can find ourselves in them, and Haig and Markle have become figures in contemporary psychodrama.
As with other megastar mental health authors – Ruby Wax and anxiety, Russell Brand and addiction, Stephen Fry with bipolar – both Markle and Haig have been brave and necessary in advocating for openness on the topic. If there’s a problem, it’s only that these airportpurchase standards obscure the everexpanding sum of enquiries into human pain that have gone before, many of which I’ve posted about on a platform often accused of leading such pain: TikTok.
On TikTok, I’ve narrated excerpts and insights on common human dysfunction from the books of Sigmund Freud, Taoist mystic Lao-Tzu and Hannibal Lecter’s favourite philosopher, Marcus Aurelius. Landing in the present day, I’ve presented summaries of trauma experts Gabor Maté
and Bessel van der Kolk, plus psychoanalysts Darian Leader, Nina Coltart and Nuar Alsadir, whose 2022 book Animal Joy deserves to be the next Ma Haig-sized hit. Point being, for all their value, there’s more to an understanding of “fear and trembling”* than the go-tos of Haig, Wax, Brand and others. (* is epithet comes from the 1843 book by the original angsty young existentialist, Søren Kierkegaard.)
What these authors have in common is that, beyond thinking about why it hurts to be human, they have nothing in common. But taken together, they give lie to the easy notion that mental health and illness are the same for all of us. Beyond airport bookshops, the theory about those conditions is e ectively infinite, while the practice of healing them is similarly endless as human subjectivity is so varied.
If it seems strange for a 50-year-old man – formerly a journalist and now, a er three years of training, a psychotherapist – to be doing all this on a pla orm usually identified with Gen-Z, here’s the kicker:
Brighton, UK
by Kevin Braddockit turns out TikTok (which I joined around the time Soho House did) loves books, so much so that the #BookTok hashtag helped authors sell 20m printed books in 2021, according to Bookscan. Four in five YA bestsellers have been driven by the #BookTok trend, and the success of Alice Oseman’s Heartstopper and Madeline Miller’s e Song Of Achilles are both a ributable to the pla orm.
Incidentally, tiktok.com/@sohohouse launched with the opening of Brighton Beach House last May with a video of Heartstopper star Joe Locke in the pool. As George Serventi, Soho House’s Global Social Media Manager explains: “It’s been a year since we launched on TikTok. We’ve learnt so much from our community: how to connect with them, how to prioritise creativity and originality and, importantly, how much potential the app has.”
Meanwhile, doesn’t mental health awareness need to begin young? It’s the story told by educators, who are responding to what’s often called a “mental health crisis” among young people. Given that TikTok’s content tends to be less performative and perfectionist than that of the filtered and art-directed Instagram, spontaneous spoken-word content with a valuable message finds a friendly home there. TikTok was about being real before BeReal, a er all.
I can’t do anything about my age, but I can share what I’ve read that helps me live well. One of TikTok’s articles of faith is that user mentality is be er defined by mindset rather than age, and what works well is content that’s open, playful and generous without being too serious – all qualities which, oddly enough, lend themselves to positive mental health.
TikTok might be associated with young people, who are usually smarter and more curious than their elders might guess, but when we’re interested in mental health, we’re in touch with our conflicted inner teenagers, too. So it should be no surprise that #MentalHealth has racked up 71.8bn views on TikTok – in other words, 71.8bn definitions of what it means to be human.
tiktok.com/@recoveryreader
Kevin Braddockis a writer and
psychotherapist based in LondonLondon, UK
ne of my absolute favourite locations to sink myself into film is the screening room at Soho House 76 Dean Street –not just for the plush seats, but because the sound system here is, quite simply, enveloping. It proved to be the perfect se ing for my second si ing of Todd Field’s Tár, which has landed Cate Blanchette armfuls of gongs for her remarkable portrayal of the despotic, fictional composer Lydia Tár.
e film, scored by contemporary Icelandic composer Hildur Guðnadó ir, blends fact with fiction for its narrative and characters. Tár is in the minority: she is the first female conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic, the co-founder of an organisation supporting aspiring female conductors (tragic irony when looking at her character’s reckoning), and on the threshold of recording Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 5. Kind of a big deal.
Yet it’s worth thinking about how Tar’s fictional accomplishments compare with real-world issues faced by so many female composers historically. For example, Mahler forced his wife, the gifted composer Alma Schindler, to choose between marrying him or
by Edith Bowman
continuing to compose. She spent close to a decade stifled by his oppression. Female misogyny, if that’s what one should be calling it, is also present in the film. There is nothing about Tár’s character that shouts sisterhood – quite the opposite. Of course, in the real world, the journey of female composers and conductors is one that is still on a glacially slow trajectory, something the success of this film has done well to highlight. My second viewing of Tár led me to dive deeper into the subject. Quartet by Leah Broad is a new book that spotlights four women composers who seem to
have not just been overshadowed by their male contemporaries but almost erased from the genre altogether. In 19th and 20th-century Britain it was believed to be a biological impossibility for women to navigate the creativity associated with composition. is bigoted mentation is still prevalent today. According to charitable foundation Donne, Women in Music (which is dedicated to achieving gender equality in the industry), near to nine out of 10 compositions played by orchestras in 2022 were wri en by white men.
It too highlighted my own cultural blind spots: I am ashamed I’d never heard of Doreen Carwithen, the first woman to work as a full-time film composer; or Dorothy Howell, who composed her first score aged just 13; or Dame Ethel Smyth, the first woman to have her work performed at New York’s Metropolitan Opera and the composer of suffrage anthem e March of the Women
Similarly, the visibility (or lack) of Black and Asian women composers needs underlining: take Amanda Jones, who became the first African American woman to be nominated in a score category at the Emmys in 2020. Or the Kathryn Bostic, who in 2016 became the first female African American score composer to join the Academy.
I am dedicated to finding out as much as I can about these trailblazers. e member screenings at Soho House allow me to do just that. If you’re not a Soho House cinephile already, I urge you to seek out what’s coming up. ere is still much work to be done around the awareness of all women in the entertainment industry, not least the composers in film. It was 1997 when Rachel Portman became the first woman to win an Academy Award for her score of Emma. To this day, that number has only risen to three – one of those being Guðnadó ir for her work on Joker
There are so many brilliant and unique women film composers out there – a few of my favourites over the last decade include Mica Levi, Amelia Warner, Emilie Levienaise-Farrouch, Pinar Toprak and Natalie Holt. What is devastating is the lack of opportunity. Women still only make up around 7% of film composers. I think we can all agree that statistic is one which should be soundtracked by the sound of no hands clapping.
Forall upcoming SohoHousescreenings, check out listings via the SH.APP. Edith Bowman is a TV and radio broadcaster and a member of Soho House 40 Greek Street
Our first-ever Latin American outpost is opening soon – we have the intel on where to eat, drink, party and immerse yourself in culture when you (inevitably) visit this summer
By Monserrat CasteraPhotography by Fabian Martinez
is page: One of the fresco ceilings at Soho House Mexico City.
Opposite: e stained glass door of Javier Senosiain’s Casa Orgánica
exico City has always been a centre of vast cultural richness. When the poet André Breton visited from Europe in 1938, he concluded that it was the “surrealist” place he had ever been. Today, the metropolis remains as fascinating as ever – the arrival of new museums, galleries, ateliers, clubs and many musical genres with local flavour (get some Mexican reguetón in your ears, stat) over the past few decades has transformed CDMX (Ciudad de México) into a leading cultural hub.
“Soho House has always been interested in where creative and artistic communities are changing and contributing to society. Our opening in Mexico City is a natural choice,” says Jezer Alarcón, Soho House Communications and Events Director, Latin America.
“ is is truly a step to cultivating a global creative community, ” adds Alicia Gutierrez, Soho House Director of Membership, Latin America. “ e best thing is that we will ensure that the House, at its core, embodies the beauty and creativity of Mexico and Mexican creatives.”
e House is set in a restored casa in the heart of Colonia Juárez. Its design reflects the building’s historic French influences and baroque heritage, with an art collection comprising 100 works by artists born, based or trained in Mexico. You’ll also find an outdoor pool with a bright greenhouse-style bar. “It will be a great space for creatives and artists,” says Alarcón.
So, with your impending visit in mind, we’ve pulled together a foolproof guide to Mexico City for a totally beautiful and brilliantly surreal experience – using our new House as your base, claro
From street food to the ho est restaurants, these are the taco spots to visit in Mexico City:
VILSITO
Petén 248 y, Av. Universidad, Narvarte Poniente, 03020
LOS TRES REYES
Pablo Veronés 12, Alfonso XIII, Álvaro Obregón, 01460
EL PARNITA
Av. Yucatán 84, local “E2”, Roma Norte, Cuauhtémoc, 06700
EL PUJOL
Tennyson 133, Polanco, Polanco IV Secc, Miguel Hidalgo, 11550
PLAZA GARIBALDI
Garibaldi is known for its mariachi ensembles, norteño groups, trío románticos and folk musicians from Veracruz. e music, the tequila and the iconic maguey murals create an atmosphere of fiesta.
LA OPERA
La Opera is an authentic 19th-century Mexican cantina –so authentic that the bullet hole remains from where Pancho Villa fired his gun into the ceiling while sat in one of the booths during the Mexican Revolution in 1910. Its dishes are rooted in traditional cuisine and the decoration is both brilliantly pompous and incredibly meticulous.
LICORERÍA LIMANTOUR
is is not only a cocktail bar but a meeting point for locals and tourists, rated one of the World’s 50 Best Bars in 2022. e bar collaborates with some of the most renowned mixologists from around the globe, so every night o ers a new experience.
TEOTIHUACÁN
Less than a two-hour drive from CDMX is Teotihuacán, where you can climb some of the most impressive pyramids in Mexico – be sure to visit nearby underground restaurant La Gruta for a sip of pulque a erwards.
CENTRO CEREMONIAL OTOMÍ
is ceremonial space was built in 1988 to celebrate the Otomí culture and features vast plazas and sculptures. It’s also perfect for hiking and camping.
TLATELOLCO
Mexican folklore states that Tlatelolco was originally built to mimic a small city. is emblematic area of CDMX has stood for centuries, and is easily reached on the metro system.
TEMPLO MAYOR MUSEUM
e vestiges of Mexico City’s leading archaeological treasure summon the days when the ancient gods roamed the earth – a must-see to understand Mexico’s pre-Hispanic heritage.
MONTÉ TLÁLOC
is mystic mountain – a former active volcano – is the 9th tallest in Mexico. e sacred site is perfect for those seeking a complete outdoor experience, as it o ers everything from important archaeological treasures to a vast array of plant life and is the perfect place to witness beautiful sunrise views.
e Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe is one of the largest ceremonial centres in Mexico City. It is a temple built for one of the most important religious symbols of the country: the Virgin of Guadalupe. anks to its symbolic charge and its impressive architecture, this space manages to bring together both local devotees and visitors from all over the world.
THE ARCHITECTURE TO OBSERVE
CASA ESTUDIO LUIS BARRAGÁN
is UNESCO World Heritage building is located in San Miguel Chapultepec. Once inhabited by Luis Barragán himself, the home is loaded with aesthetic meaning and is the perfect way to acquaint yourself with one of the most influential architects of all time.
ESPACIO ESCULTÓRICO UNAM
Surrounded by nature, sculptures created by six di erent artists seem to rise up from the volcanic rocks that dwell at the heart of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. e works have been created to represent the cosmos, naturally.
CASA ORGÁNICA is dreamlike, plant-covered space created by architect Javier Senosiain harnesses the power of nature to maintain its temperature and is almost completely hidden from view – aside from the shark-like bedroom that protrudes from the top. A truly escapist experience.
MEXICO CITY IS MADE UP OF 16 BOROUGHS – YOU’LL FIND SOHO HOUSE IN THE CUAUHTÉMOC REGION
“This is truly a step to cultivating a global creative community”
ALICIA GUTIERREZ, SOHO HOUSE DIRECTOR OF MEMBERSHIP, LATIN AMERICA
Although Mexico City is landlocked, it’s still easy to hit the beach, whether that’s the Caribbean-facing Yucatán or the wild Pacific coast:
PUERTO ESCONDIDO, OAXACA is string of sandy beaches is one of the best tourist spots on the Pacific coast, where you can surf, snorkel, skydive and party. It’s just over an hour from CDMX by plane, or you can travel by bus or car – you’ll just have to cross the mountains to get there.
Easily the most famous stretch of coastline in Mexico, Acapulco has beaches to suit all tastes: enjoy traditional seafood, such as ceviche, sunbathe and take a dip in the cool waters of the Pacific.
Situated along Mexico’s Caribbean coastline, the Riviera Maya is well-known for its crystal-clear waters and tropical scenery, and is just two-anda-half hours away by plane.
THE FILMS TO WATCH BEFORE YOU GO
ROMA
e film bears the name of one of CDMX’s most iconic neighbourhoods, and deals with a historic moment in the city. It’s directed by Alfonso Cuarón and stars actor and United Nations ambassador Yalitza Aparicio. Roma also won the Oscar for Best International Feature Film.
AMORES PERROS
A small synopsis: a car accident interweaves three stories in Mexico City. at’s it. Oscar-nominated and directed by acclaimed filmmaker Alejandro González Iñárritu, Amores Perros provides a visual tour of CDMX – the city itself acts as one of the film’s characters.
AMAR TE DUELE
Amar te Duele tells the story of Ulises and Renata: two adolescents from di erent backgrounds who fall in love in Mexico City. e soundtrack includes some of the best songs of the 2000s so, as you may imagine, it’s crammed full of tender memories.
PUEBLOS
TO ESCAPE TO
Translating to “magical towns”, pueblos mágicos are picturesque se lements on the outskirts of the metropolis:
MALINALCO
Around two hours from Mexico City, this traditional town has everything: churches, museums, archaeological sites, sanctuaries, temazcales and galleries. e weather is perfect and the food is amazing – a small taste of provincial Mexico.
TEPOZTLÁN
South of CDMX,in the neighbouring state of Morelos, this is the perfect getaway to party or relax. e food is excellent, the streets bloom with art and tradition and the surroundings are full of flowers and open skies.
TEPOTZOTLÁN
Under an hour’s drive from CDMX, Tepotzotlán is a place where nature and tradition meet – a nice way to get in touch with Mexican history, and the small town is full of surprises.
Le : e coastline at Puerto Escondido in Oaxaca. Below: e vibrant culture of CDMX; inside ceramic store Perla Valtierra. Opposite page: A glimpse of the House’s traditional exterior
PERLA VALTIERRA
As one of the most recognised ceramists in Mexico, Valtierra perfectly combines antique techniques with modern design.
MERCADO DE ARTESANÍAS
LA CIUDADELA is traditional market in downtown CDMX o ers cra s from all over the country.
XINÚ PERFUMES
e only local perfume brand in CDMX, expect to find scents laced with everything from tobacco to floral cempazúchitl
CARLA FERNÁNDEZ
Fernández is one of the country’s most renowned fashion designers. Her boutiques – co-designed by her husband, artist Pedro Reyes –are a pleasure to visit.
“Soho House has always been interested in where creatives are changing and contributing to society”
JEZER ALARCÓN, SOHO HOUSE COMMUNICATIONS AND EVENTS DIRECTOR, LATIN AMERICA
e Soho Summit will take place at Soho Farmhouse from 26–28 April – a festival of ideas as inspiring as it will be a blast, not least thanks to rocket man Richard Browning (see p106). Open to all members, the event will feature a jam-packed line-up of creatives, artists, musicians, designers, actors and thought-leaders. e site will also be peppered with immersive art happenings and hands-on creative workshops. If you miss it, fear not, the Summit format will be coming to the US and EU soon. Here, we present all those taking part
Photography: Stephen Glathe
Right: Artist and designer Yinka Ilori, whose new installation will be revealed at Soho Farmhouse later this year
Playwright Jeremy O. Harris is one of the most important literary voices of his generation. He’s also a total riot to share an Uber with
By Paul Flynn Photographyby
Justin French
Styling by Mobolaji Dawodu
n the back of an Uber, hurtling through the final hours of Paris Fashion Week, the esteemed and disruptive playwright Jeremy O. Harris is reflecting back on his first crowning moment. At the 2021 Tony Awards, Harris’s Broadway debut, Slave Play, was nominated for an unprecedented 12 awards. “Iconic,” he notes. Tony Kushner, the previous recipient of the most Tony nominations for a single play for Angels in America, was the first audience member to lead a standing ovation while Slave Play was still in preview at e New York eatre Workshop. “To get that stamp of approval from one of my idols – one of the people who taught me to write the way I write – was very cool.”
Harris is a forthright, infectious, clever communicator, in life as on stage. He is blessed with usefully clashing characteristics: the resourceful wit of those who came from nothing and the robust confidence of an Ivy League education. Harris was born in Martinsville, Virginia, and educated at Yale. He is at the vanguard of capital ‘B’ Black and capital ‘Q’ Queer thought, injecting a new forcefield of energy and enterprise into New York’s wilfully static, conser vative theatre industry. Both facets unlock a corner of his artistry – Harris makes theatre uniquely appealing for those who might not automatically consider themselves “theatre people”. And, as well as his prodigious storytelling gi , he is enormously good fun.
Fashion loves Harris. He is the only playwright in living memory to have modelled for Gucci and simultaneously held an editorial title at the Warhol-founded Interview magazine. At the 2021 Tonys, he wore custom couture Schiaparelli by Daniel Roseberry. “ at was supposed to be my f**k-you dress,” he says with a smile. He didn’t expect to win anything. “My chest was exposed. It was a crop-top. I’m wearing a corset. Everything about it was about me being c**ty-c**ty-c**ty-c**ty.” He repeats the ultimate modern New York superlative with the same rhythmic precision Beyoncé uses on her whipsmart Renaissance album track, Pure/Honey. “It was about: I look so good that it doesn’t ma er whether I win or lose, because I’m going to be wri en about tomorrow anyway.”
Harris’s dates for the evening were his mum, his high school literature teacher (“who completely redirected my life”) and his then-10-year-old niece. “All the women that inspire me,” he adds. His niece picked a Schiaparelli piece of her own to wear. “How many 10-year-olds get to do that? It was such a nepo baby journey and I loved it.” “Nepo baby” is media shorthand for the (recently maligned) o spring of famous parents, who get a premature leg-up the fame ladder. “Honestly, nepo kids deserve rights too!” By now, Harris is
howling laughing. “Like, listen, she didn’t ask to be born into a family with a famous uncle playwright. But it happened.” is is the way conversations with Jeremy O. Harris track. You start on one subject, then he will he will take you on a sharp hairpin bend around an unexpected corner. As with mo st topics, on the nepo babies brouhaha, Harris is well worth listening to. “It’s a very complicated thing,” he says. “As someone who is class-conscious, it is horrific that classism has a ected our world to the extent that it has. But it’s very easy to hyper-focus on people who are on television or in the media as being the height of all cultural references that capitalism has wrought.” He’s a though ul, circuitous conversationalist. “I don’t know that a kid who’s mum was a playwright or a Downtown artist is necessarily the height of our country’s social ills.” He sighs. “ e people that I’m more anxious about are the people whose families have wealth that is invisible: whose dads are in finance or banking; who have millions and millions of dollars and then have kids who go on to film school or art school and never have to account for the fact that they don’t have to pay rent.”
As a child in Martinsville, Harris was hyper aware of how the class system operates in reverse. “It’s a city where the nicest restaurant is an Applebee’s. Also, once it was a thriving furniture town.” He intends to write about the demolition of his hometown one day. “It was once a significant, thriving furniture town that had some of the best factories in the country. When NAFTA [the North American Free Trade Agreement] happened, all the factories closed down. So, in the 1990s, I saw this vibrant working-class community become bere of any culture or finances. Now we have the highest per capita opioid rates of any city in America. at’s just where I’m from.”
In this regard, why shouldn’t his li le niece get to wear Schiaparelli, too? Where there is robust, blunt-talking analysis, there is usually a humorous payo with Harris. “Besides, I’m more interested in the nepo babies who are flops. ere are so many people who had wildly famous mums and dads who you never hear from again a er they do one movie, because they were not talented. I mean, yes, Zoë Kravitz’s parents are famous. But Zoë is stunning. Being that charismatic is not something you’re born with.”
Our conversational rollercoaster backshi s to the night of the Tonys. In the end, Harris’s assumption of Slave Play winning in none of its 12 nominated categories proved correct. He wasn’t concerned. Slave Play was hardly typical Broadway fair.
e story of three interracial couples undergoing “Antebellum Sexual Performance erapy” due to the Black partners no longer finding their white partners sexually a ractive was hardly set up to travel across Middle America with the mellifluous commercial ease of Moulin Rouge or Jagged Li le Pill
“My play was very much a play that was negging or antagonising the establishment,” he qualifies. “So, I don’t think that you can antagonise the establishment and then say, ‘Oh, but why didn’t they give me an award?’” Harris had a blast that night, regardless. “I told my mom early on, ‘We’re not winning and that’s going to be OK.’ It’s more punk to walk away with
Opposite: Jacket, £2,630, and trousers, £1,270, both Gucci. Boots, Harris’s own. Watch (worn throughout), vintage Rolex. Sunglasses and jewellery (worn throughout), all Harris’s own. Previous spread: Shirt, £655, and trousers, £700 both Bode. Socks, Harris’s own
Jacket, £645, Homme Plissé Issey Miyake. Top, approx £534, Nanushka
“I don’t think you can antagonise the establishment and then say, ‘Why didn’t they give me an award?’”
nothing. Suddenly, I feel like Beyoncé and Renaissance. It doesn’t need to win. She’s Beyoncé. It’s way more punk to be Beyoncé and perfect every time and still lose the big award.”
Harris feels like a more natural a endee of the Grammys than the Tonys. His rockstar demeanour is part of what makes him such a breathtaking addition to the storytelling cannon. But don’t let that distract you from the punctiliousness of his theatre methodology. “I’m a child of the underground and the experimental,” he says, “So, I guess in that way I do say, f**k the orthodoxy. But dramaturgically my plays are pre y classic. I’m a structuralist. I’m constantly dissecting and reimagining Aristotelian practises inside my work. ere’s a unity of time and space in Slave Play that I’ve seen very rarely from the type of play that I did. I wanted to make something that felt like a Porsche: it looks really sickening and complex on the outside, but you go on the inside and its very much ready to run fast.” e engine is purring. “Yes, yes, yes.”
Last year, his London debut, a staging of Daddy – the first play he wrote as part of his masters qualification at Yale –wowed audiences that looked more like nightclubbers at an east London queer nightclub than gentrified patrons of the West End, while selling out the Almeida. Daddy untangled the power dynamic of another interracial queer relationship, between Franklin and Andre, with brisk energy, a swimming
pool and cunning use of George Michael’s Father Figure at the end of the first act.
Harris is currently filming a documentary, expected to debut at the film festivals this summer, loosely based around his writing process. e process is throwing up some startling realisations about why he writes fiction. “One of the things I’ve learned is that all of my characters are me,” he says. He’s had the thought in passing before, “but started to feel it deeply now. ere’s something exhilarating about that knowledge. What that teaches me about myself is my unknowable vulnerability. I want to keep mining those: I like that my unknowable vulner abilities make people uncomfortable because that discomfort is something that they say silently to themselves; that they don’t want to see or say out loud.”
He says that the content of his documentary is still the subject of some secrecy. I suggest that secrecy is not something a gregarious and open-armed communicator like Harris would find naturally comfortable. Quite the contrary, he protests. “I’m quite good at it, actually. You know, I am one of maybe five, 10 people on Earth who knows what’s going to happen in season three of Euphoria.”
Harris has been a consultant on his old friend Sam Levison’s HBO series – a magical address to American youth in the age of opioids – since the beginning. As such, he’s in a unique position to comment on exactly where it went right. “ e magic that, despite what the internet thinks it knows about Sam Levinson, and they think they know a lot, he and his wife Ashley, his production partner Kevin and everyone else involved in the show create a lovely home for people to be their best selves.”
Harris and Levison first met in New York, when they were struggling through their early twenties to get their storytelling voices heard. He points to the crucial casting choices of Euphoria as another example of how the show has become such a lightning rod for contemporary screen culture. “We now know that Zendaya is one of the great actresses of our generation,” he says. “But I think that even I would have questioned, early on in the casting process, whether she would have been able to show the range she has in this series. is is a girl who doesn’t got out to clubs. is is a girl who goes to work and goes home to play with her dog. It’s hard to imagine that actress
Make-up: Ayaka Nihei using Surra Beauty. Nails: Leanne Woodley. Photography assistant: Pierre Bonnet. Styling assistant: Ibrahim Omisore. Additional photography: Hippolyte Petit/Ge y Images
Hair: Karen Zamor.
Below: Jacket, £2,450, Gucci. Trousers, approx £998, Nanushka. Shoes and socks, Harris’s own. Below right: Jeremy O. Harris sat front-row at New York Fashion Week, February 2023is able to play a heroin-addicted teenager with the level of complexity she does. Sam saw that early on.”
He describes his involvement in the show as “family sh*t. I’ve known Sam since I was 22 years old.” Harris is now in his early thirties. “[Sam had] only made one film that I really liked, called Another Happy Day – which everyone should see, by the way. He was just hanging in New York. He and I would hang out together. I would pitch him my ideas and let him read early scripts and he would pitch me his and let me read his early scripts. I trusted him a lot and he trusted me a lot to tell each other the truth about what we were writing. And a lot of that truth was, ‘I f*****g love this.’ at’s really lovely.”
Levison is just a small corner of Harris’s impeccable New York contact book: a generation who came to smash what went before and carve a new aesthetic according to their version of the world. His associated network is now the building blocks for a new New York, post-pandemic. “It’s very kind to say,” he says, unusually demur. “I’m a racted to talented people and I think that like a racts like, you know. I feel very lucky that because I am so social, I’m able to really celebrate and be in a community with some really f*****g talented and outstandingly unique individuals. If I meet you at a dinner and we vibe, I will go to bat for you until the end of time. If you need a place to stay, I will open my home to you,
much to the chagrin and frustration of my fiancée, who is an only child and does not like our apartment being a hostel for complex communities. But it’s true.”
In this regard, Jeremy O. Harris is playing to a classic rulebook when it comes to becoming one of the literary greats of our time. To become mythological, one must understand how myths are made. “You read Susan Sontag’s journals,” he notes, as his Uber finds its destination. “You read Truman Capote’s diaries; James Baldwin’s diaries. ese are people who stay part of the historical narrative, the cannon, forever, just because they listened deeply and opened their homes to others. Whenever I read about those people, I think, I want to be one of those people.”
I always knew I wanted to have my own brand one day, but I didn’t plan on launching as soon as I graduated. During my MA, I made a book called Sweet Lassi about the global secondhand clothing industry in India and Nigeria, where I’m from. I released the book on the same day as my graduate show, and the combination of the collection and the storytelling made quite a buzz – it got lots of press, kickstarted conversations and a few stores started approaching me straight away with orders. I didn’t even have a logo at that point, so I really had to hit the ground running.
My advice to budding designers is to think editorially. Figure out who you are creatively. Ask yourself: what is it you love? What is it you care about? What is your unique point of view that is different to everyone else? That is key to having a brand that excites people. en, think about everyone you work with – photographers, stylists, make-up artists – who can help shape your vision. Visuals are equally as important as the product.
If you start your own brand, it’s great to have ideas but what’s really beneficial is to understand how you want to communicate them. I feel like my job really sits between the two areas – I’m constantly selling the idea of myself on the brand, whether it’s through partnerships or product placement. ere are so many brands in the world, it’s important to think about how you di erentiate.
have to constantly worry gives me space to do other aspects of my job.
By Emma McCarthyTo be a new business owner, you need to get to grips with numbers. Because no ma er how good your ideas are, if you run out of cash you can’t turn that into something tangible. I’m fortunate because my mum is my financial director. I love working with her. I trust her so much and the fact that I don’t
Collaboration is the best way to learn. I learnt so much about how huge fashion businesses operate through projects with Gucci and Adidas. My collaboration with Ganni taught me a lot about m erchandising and range planning, but it also made me think about the best strategy for hiring a team. For example, when you’re busy on your own, you might think you need more designers, when in reality a new recruit in marketing may be a be er hire.
I wouldn’t do anything differently, except… Now I always interview people for jobs twice.
For the British designer and Soho Summit speaker, it’s all about the power of partnerships, product placement and social mediaPhotography: Philip Sinden, courtesy of Priya Ahluwalia
I see the Ahluwalia Instagram as a por olio. If I’m talking to someone unfamiliar with the brand, I’m more likely to pull up the IG page than the website. e great thing about social media now is that everyone can market themselves to a global audience without having to go through the traditional channels of fashion communication. It’s not only about your brand’s page but your appearance on other pages, too. Having a presence doesn’t necessarily mean those people are going to buy anything – it’s about building a community.
I never think about creating a trend or designing something so it can go viral on the internet. Everything I do is really research-based, so I care more about whether I’m creating work that will leave a lasting memory in someone’s mind or that people will emotionally connect to.
When I was growing up, there were no Black and Brown female designers Representation is really important to me – to be able to amplify my culture and my community. Fashion for a long time has been Eurocentric. I think a lot of Black and Brown people, especially Gen Z, really resonate with our brand because they see themselves reflected in a way their parents never have.
I think of menswear and womenswear as one collection. A traditionally menswear skew may have a “sister”, but the clothes we produce can be worn by anyone, in any way they want. What makes it di icult to be fluid is that the entire system needs to change, from wholesale buyers through to pa ern cu ers. It’s going to take time for all the di erent elements to catch up.
I don’t want to be called “sustainable”. It’s such a wide term and so reductive. I’m already a Black and Brown woman in fashion, I don’t need another label for the industry to typecast me with. I make clothes the way we should be making them, as responsibly as we can, and I think that my work should speak for itself. Our goal is to be a leader and inspire others. The whole point as creatives is to innovate so that future generations can find an even better way forward.
The whole point is to innovate so that future generations can find a better way forward”
Partner of Rick Owens, occasional cabaret performer and living art piece, the indefatigable Michèle Lamy
takes 180 House
By Bryony Stone Photography by Claire Rothstein
“I always think tomorrow is going to be so exciting”
or her entire life, Michèle Lamy has defied easy definition. But since this is a portrait of the artist, let’s begin. For the past three decades, Lamy has worked with her business partner and husband Rick Owens to build OWENSCORP. Ostensibly a luxury fashion and furniture business, OWENSCORP has come to function beyond the purely transactional, elevated to near-spiritual status by hoards of devotees who worship at the altar of Rick and Michèle.
Lamy, the co-founding partner and managing director art/ furniture at OWENSCORP, has her role in the brand’s shows and gives her perspective on every part of the production. In this guise, Lamy advises her well-known friends on interior design. Her taste, if her Parisian home and OWENSCORP’s furniture output is anything to go by, merges the angular with the sculptural; concrete Brutalism with raw natural materials, including bone, marble, alabaster, bronze, leather and the occasional moose antler. “It sounds eclectic when I talk about it, but rappers are the poets of our time,” Lamy says. “I like to talk with poets; they leave a lot to the imagination, but it feels more resonant for this moment. I think the world is ge ing pushed forward by artists.”
OWENSCORP is a sensibility; a darkly poetic mode through which Owens and Lamy engage with the world they inhabit. It is housed in a five-storey building which, in a former life, was the administrative headquarters of the French Socialist Party. As our conversation begins over Zoom, I find Lamy at home, framed by the camera in front of a swirling mural painted by her daughter, Scarle Rouge. She is dressed in a long-sleeved jumper in her now-signature black (Lamy wears a combination of bespoke pieces created by her husband and archive Comme des Garçons), with a line of charcoal kohl streaked vertically down her forehead. Her fingers are tipped down to the first knuckle with a midnight black Japanese dye made from vegetables, and e very digit is ta ooed and stacked high with silver rings.
Dangling between her first and second fingers is a whitetipped cigare e, smoked and replaced at regular intervals throughout our hour-long conversation.
Michèle Lamy is a woman always in motion. She’s not one to dwell on the past, but during her years on this earth, she has lived one thousand lives. Born in Jura, France, her grandfather made accessories for French fashion designer Paul Poiret, who is o en credited with establishing the modern fashion industry. Lamy studied philosophy under poststructuralist Gilles Deleuze and worked as a defence lawyer and a cabaret dancer before moving to New York and onwards to Los Angeles, where she launched her mononymous clothing line Lamy, hired Rick Owens as a pa ern cu er and opened Too Soon To Know, a shop on Santa Monica Boulevard.
With her first husband Richard Newton, Lamy launched two restaurants in Los Angeles: French bistro Café des Artistes and Les Deux Cafes, a two-storey 1904 Arts and Crafts bungalow situated in Provençal-style gardens with interiors designed in partnership with Hollywood great Paul Fortune –who later went on to design the interiors of the Tower Bar on Sunset Boulevard. Taking notes from old-world Hollywood nightlife haunts including Chasen’s, Scandia and Brown Derby, Les Deux Cafes was a den of iniquity. Situated in a former parking lot, hidden further still behind an unmarked steel door, Les Deux Cafes a racted a crowd of the biggest celebrities of the 1990s – among them Heath Ledger, Al Pacino, Nicole Kidman, Ridley Sco , Lenny Kravitz, Madonna, Bill Murray, Gore Vidal, David Lynch, Pu Daddy and Doug Aitkin – who came perhaps less for the food than to drink and dine in proximity to Lamy; to experience her unpredictable, riotous allure and to feel part of her world, if only for one night.
Lamy’s tiny frame – usually elevated by vertiginous leather pla orm boots – is impossible to miss at art fairs, where she has carved a path as a curator with a succession of bargebased events mirroring the unpredictable, interdisciplinary nature of the 1960s art movement Fluxus. At Frieze London, Lamy helmed Bargel, a cruise-turned-floating party; at the
Venice Biennale was Bargenale, a barge docked at Certosa with a roster of guests including A$AP Rocky and UNKLE founder James Lavelle; at the Barbican in London, Bargican became part of Doug Aitken’s art project Station to Station In his Fluxus manifesto, founder George Maciunas laid out his vision for a movement that would fully integrate art and life, creating a “living art, anti-art…NON ART REALITY to be fully grasped by all peoples, not only critics, dile antes and professionals”. Lamy embodies Fluxus for the present day, becoming the catalyst for collective experiences which force unlikely guests together by demanding active participation.
For LAMYLAND – the umbrella term for all of Lamy’s creative endeavours – she pushed the concept further by placing a boxing gym inside Selfridges London for a performance in which boxing became an unlikely vessel for cultural, spiritual, social and ultimately existential questions. Lamy herself has practised boxing for over 40 years, citing Downtown New York’s Overthrow Boxing Club as her favourite place to train. en there are her musical performances, best showcased perhaps by Lavascar, the noise band she formed with daughter Scarle and artist Nico Vascellari. “I enjoy performance, singing,” she says.
n April, Lamy is set to appear at the Soho Summit, the festival of ideas spanning design, art, technology, fashion and sustainability held at Soho Farmhouse. “It was a surprise to me that I was [asked] to do Soho Summit, but at the same time I am so excited about it,” she says. “Soho House is not an obvious Rick Owens world, but it is completely my world. We put each other in each other’s worlds, just for a glimpse or to react to something.” Just don’t expect a keynote speech. “I already have someone in mind that I would like to do something with,” Lamy says. “ is world is important to me. It’s coming from Les Deux Cafes and going to Soho House, being with artists who are creating their environment and sharing a part of their world with installation and live performances.” 180 House, where this photoshoot took place, happens to be one of Lamy’s favourites. “I love going to 180 Strand whenever I am in London because there is everything that I like over there,” she says. “ ere is also 180 Studios, where the headquarters of Je erson Hack are. And they organise the best art exhibitions… I can go on and on.”
With her 80th birthday edging ever-closer, Lamy shows no signs of slowing down. For the inaugural issue of System Beauty, she was shot for the magazine’s cover by Juergen Teller and captured in conversation with artist Anselm Kiefer. “Perhaps they put me on the cover because I’m the only one who hasn’t had any surgery,” she laughs. “I am not the specialist of beauty products or beauty… I think it was giving a spirit.” Reflecting on her life, Lamy tells me, “I am happiest when I bring things together and a er, in the li le time of quiet but when you know already that something else is going to happen. I am like One ousand and One Nights –there is one story, but it is followed by another one. I always think tomorrow is going to be so exciting.” Lamy considers herself lucky, but not as the recipient of pre-determined luck or cosmic destiny. Put simply, she exists in thrall to her instinct and her desire to experience every facet of life. “I’m
Hair: Muriel Cole using Mflorens, Hair by Sam McKnight, Olaplex and Oribe. Make-up: Esther Edeme using Pat McGrath Labs. Photography assistant: Sandra Seaton
seduced; I want to follow, I want to participate,” she says. “ ere are so many things to do; it could be boxing or participating with the greatest architect in the world. I can’t say it was luck, but at the same time I feel lucky.”
All of which is to say, Lamy is insatiable and indefatigable. “I’m always ready to see something new and make sense of it later,” she says. Her formidable image commands not only magazine covers but, in late 2022, a series of screenings on billboard spaces at London’s Piccadilly Lights and in Berlin, Melbourne and Tokyo. e film, titled LIMBO, was created in partnership with the Cultural Institute of Radical Contemporary Art (CIRCA) and directed by Amanda Demme and Mollie Mills. It depicts an unretouched Lamy lying on her stomach on crumpled linen bedsheets. Her gaze is unwavering, her voice silent; she is both subject and audience, the watcher and the watched. “Beauty is being yourself,” she says. “To be naked at Piccadilly Circus, having this voice that CIRCA gave me… I hope people understood what I was trying to say, because being me in this moment in time, I thought it was the thing to do.”
She is the antithesis of the voiceless female muses who sat for portraits by the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood — women who were artists themselves but unable to access formal training due to the restrictions of their gender. Instead, Lamy considers herself a “companion” to Owens. “ ere is a routine; it’s a continuation of the story,” she says. at story has been wri en and re-wri en many times over the three decades since the pair met in Los Angeles, when Owens started working for Lamy. In 2017, Rizzoli published Rick Owens: Furniture, which opened with the following quote from Owens on Lamy: “No one makes me lose it like the Hun.” eir union endures, at least in part, due to OWENSCORP, which functions as a shorthand for their shared commitment to challenge and disrupt. Lamy’s politics are transmi ed through gatherings and performances, which range from quietly political (consider the radical undercurrents of her silence at Piccadilly Circus), to the overt, such as WHAT ARE WE SKATING FOR? – a 2022 skate art show with the mission to raise funds for a new skatepark build in Tameslouht, Morocco. “I am trying to do something and participate in the good side of humanity,” she says.
Michèle Lamy spent her 79th birthday in Egypt with Owens, cherishing stillness; that rarest of states. “We were staying in this place – we didn’t even touch a tomb!” she says. “We were more in the mood to be very quiet, to not do much. Enjoying the same thing, talking, reading and being in this remote place.” Lamy travelled to North Africa when she was around 17, where she saw Berber women with ta ooed faces – an ancient signifier of tribe, social and marital status. “I’m a nomad,” she says. “It’s why I feel super well in the desert, carrying everything with me in case I decide not to come back. My rings, my bracelets, everything I need to survive!”
“I am trying to do something and participate in the good side of humanity”All clothing, Rick Owens. All jewellery, HUNROD. Michèle Lamy was photographed at 180 House, London
Ask an average person what it means “to play” and you’ll probably get an answer which alludes to having fun and laughing with friends until stitches set in. An actor, however, might take a di erent view: to play a role is to fully inhabit another character; to express their “truth” even when it’s a work of fiction. For Andrew Sco , though, there’s no in between. All work is all play.
“I don’t think I’ve ever played a role where there’s no comedy,” says the 46-year-old, who is taking the stage at this year’s inaugural Soho Summit, held at Soho Farmhouse. Keep in mind that this is a man whose CV includes turns as the criminal mastermind Moriarty in
subject and circumstance of a project make the process of bringing a character to life more challenging. Such was the case with Ripley, a new Ne lix series adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s classic novel e Talented Mr. Ripley, in which Sco plays the titular character.
“It was an extraordinarily di icult job to do. He’s a very intense character,” he says of the charismatic con-man-turnedmurderer, whose swindles lead to a life of isolation and paranoia. It didn’t help that filming took place in New York and
By Olive Pometseyhunker down and give up my life. I [felt] so lucky to play the part that there was no choice but to just succumb to it.”
Did Sco take a well-earned break once filming wrapped? Not quite. Instead, it was back to London for Andrew Haigh’s new film Strangers, also starring Paul Mescal, Claire Foy and Jamie Bell. An adaptation of Japanese writer Taichi Yamada’s novel of the same name, the plot follows Sco ’s Adam, who begins to see his dead parents a er an encounter with Mescal’s character, Harry.
Sherlock, a broken lieutenant in Sam Mendes’s World War I film 1917 and Shakespeare’s tragic hero Hamlet, at London’s Almeida theatre in 2017. “You know, Hamlet is a really funny play –all great tragedies have good comedy as well,” he argues. “One of our unique traits as human beings is our ability to be able to have a sense of humour, so when you’re representing humanity, that’s a very important thing to remember.”
Finding the funny isn’t always easy. In an ideal world, it’s already wri en into the script – see Sco ’s internet-breaking role as the “hot priest” in Phoebe WallerBridge’s Fleabag. But sometimes, the
Italy during the pandemic, uprooting Sco for a year with li le opportunity to see friends and family. “I’ve never been away for that long. I found it really tough.” e actor o en found himself alone on set, too. “Usually, TV shows are about couples, families, a police department –groups of people,” Sco explains. “ is one was unusual in the sense that it’s based around one man. I was on set the whole time, with long shooting days, so it was hard to escape the character.” A er work, Sco would “draaag” himself to the gym, eat, then go straight to bed. On weekends, he’d make up for the sleep lost during night shoots. “I just had to
Photography: Josh Shinner/KINTZING, Darren Gerrish/Getty Images Below: Andrew Sco with Strangers co-star and friend Paul Mescal SOHO SUMMITe shoot for Strangers was a li le more relaxed. “We were just having a laugh. I love Claire and Jamie, and Paul is a great friend,” he says of his Oscarnominated co-star and countryman. “It was wonderful to work with him – you do have a shorthand. We know a lot of the same people and we’ve been brought up in the same culture.” Plus, being in the city he calls home helped Sco to regain a sense of normality: “I would
get the Tube to work because I was so happy to be back in London.”
Since then, Sco ’s had a chance to flex his funny bone in the more traditional sense. Last year, he appeared in the Lena Dunham-helmed comedy Catherine Called Birdy opposite The Last of Us star Bella Ramsey. And the day before we speak, fans caused a Twi er frenzy a er they spo ed Sco filming Back in Action around Richmond, London –a Ne lix action-comedy with Cameron Diaz and Jamie Foxx. Sco delicately evades any attempts to glean more information about the project. e most he can give away: “It’s been good fun.”
e playful spirit sounds like it’s here to stay, then. Sco is able to find joy in every project because, ultimately, he knows that good art celebrates the highs and lows of human existence, even when one threatens to eclipse the other. “ e great gi of my job is to be able to understand why somebody might behave the way they do. It’s not about what you think you see, but what you actually see,” he concludes. “I’m just endlessly fascinated by the idiosyncrasies and the surprising nature of people.”
Worn by Louise Xin, creative director and founder of Louise Xin Couture
Self-taught Xin works largely with upcycled and deadstock fabrics for her brand, which is Scandinavia’s first rentalonly, none-sale couture label. “We came to this world with nothing, and we are leaving it in the same way,” says Xin. “ e beauty and magic of the earth can’t be owned, they are there to be shared – just like Louise Xin Couture.” Dress, approx £880 (excluding VAT) per day to rent, Louise Xin Couture
Soho House Stockholm is fast becoming a beacon for Sweden’s fashion pack. We’ve brought together some of the most notable names under one roof for a celebration of local design talent
Words by Teo van den Broeke Photography by Elisabeth Toll
Worn by Louise Xin, creative director and founder of Louise Xin Couture
Founded in 1996 by Jonny Johansson, Acne Studios has become synonymous with o -kilter Scandi style and killer denim. Who be er to showcase this than Izogie Guobadia, who was instrumental in the opening of Soho House Stockholm.
Fronted by designer and activist Louise Xin, Louise Xin Couture is Scandinavia’s first rental-only, none-sale couture brand. Self-taught Xin works largely with upcycled and deadstock fabrics and is fast becoming a
“I first loved Acne’s perfectly fi ing jeans,” she says. “Its pieces are timeless with a twist, which makes them fun to wear.” Coat, £2,700, Acne Studios. All other clothing, Guobadia’s own
Worn by Andreas Palm, co-founder of CDLP
“CDLP is a luxury essentials design house that I founded with my best friend Christian Larson in 2016,” explains the perpetually upbeat Andreas Palm. “I wear this,” he says of the brand’s signature “Home” robe, which he is pictured in, “when working in our Maison, or to external meetings in the House. It feels e ortless but tailored; I have worn it to all occasions.” Robe, £418, shirt, £218, and trousers, £180, all CLDP. Trainers, Palm’s own
Worn by Nelly Skog, founder and creative director of Imaskopi
Swedish designer Nelly Skog creates genderless kni ed clothes with a playful edge for her label Imaskopi. “I want to challenge norms of aesthetic, gender and handicra ,” she explains. “ is look is from my upcoming collection, which is more melancholic than the previous one. is time I’m inspired by res ul boredom and non-demanding grey days.”
Jumper, approx £355, skirt and legwarmers, both price on request, all Imaskopi. All other clothing, Skog’s own
Worn by Karin Söderlind and Sofia Wallenstam, co-founders of House of Dagmar
Sisters Karin Söderlind, Kristina Tjäder and Sofia Wallenstam established their label in 2005, naming it a er their grandmother. “ e Swedish woman is our biggest source of inspiration,” says Söderlind. “House of Dagmar has this Swedish minimalistic side: we want you to feel sensual but also e ortless. at’s the typical Swedish woman: she’s never too much but she’s there.”
Worn by Stefan Söderberg, co-founder of Adnym Atelier
Acne Alumnus Stefan Söderberg co-founded Adnym Atelier with Frippe Persson in 2016. “Adnym’s progressive, genderless designs meet your everyday needs,” he says. “We will always design for individuals, not gender. We reach out to people who want to wear clothes that strengthen who they are, rather than becoming what they wear.” Jacket, approx £575, jumper, approx £250, and trousers, approx £250, all Adnym Atelier. Glasses, Söderberg’s own
Worn by Per Håkans, marketing director of Tiger of Sweden, and his daughter Selma Håkans, artist Tiger of Sweden is “not just any brand”, says marketing director Per Håkans, pictured with his daughter Selma. “We’re celebrating 120 years. With that, I think, comes responsibility.” Per is wearing a jacket from the recent Ben Cobb for Tiger of Sweden collection. “When we started the project, we agreed that we should have fun doing it,” he explains. “We also had fun when this shoot started,” adds Selma, “but you owe me one now – just so you know.”
Selma (le ) wears: jacket, £639, and jeans, £179, both Tiger of Sweden. Per (right) wears jacket, £719, Ben Cobb for Tiger of Sweden. Jumper, £399, shirt, £339, and trousers, £429, all Tiger of Sweden. Boots, vintage Tiger of Sweden. All other clothing, their own
Worn by Saif Bakir and Emma Bakir Hedlund (with their son, Idris), founders of CMMN SWDN
Husband and wife design duo Saif Bakir and Emma Bakir Hedlund established CMMN SWDN in Malmö in 2012.
“Our considered approach is the coming together of contrasts – a result of our diverse backgrounds and design disciplines,” explains Bakir Hedlund. “Our collections seek to traverse the boundaries between masculine and feminine sensibilities.”
When I have a subject in mind, I like to imagine the session we’re going to do together. en I get prepared. I think of the best location and start to build the team I will work with on the day. Good chemistry on a shoot is key. And then I like to leave a li le space for that unplanned magic to just happen on the day. at’s the exciting part!
e secret to making people relax in front of the camera is to show them your idea, give them direction and then collaborate with them to make it happen. Make them feel included and light it well, so that they feel really good. Be prepared and organised, but don’t overthink it. Allow some space for the unexpected and keep on shooting at any opportunity you get, so you can build up your confidence and perfect your style. And don’t be too hard on yourself.
Find a creative mentor. At the beginning of my career, I had my mum, Linda McCartney, as my creative soundboard. I could always rely on her for honest and direct advice. She was one of my creative icons, alongside Diane Arbus, Bernice Abbot and Garry Winogrand for photography, and Hal Ashby and Kathryn Bigelow as film directors.
Inspire yourself. Go to a museum to wander and daydream. Paintings, their composition and lighting, can be hugely inspiring. London’s National Gallery, Tate Britain and the National Portrait Gallery are some of my favourites.
Photographer and film director Mary McCartney – whose first documentary If eseWallsCould Sing will be screened at Soho Summit – discusses finding inspiration in the Old Masters and the trick to making her subjects feel relaxed.
Do work you feel passionate about. I’m very proud of If ese Walls Could Sing
It was a challenge to tell that story in 90 minutes. It was important to convey why I feel so passionately about Abbey Road Studios; I needed to infuse it with that emotion. When it premiered at Telluride Film Festival, to see the appreciation of the audience was such a great feeling.
I would describe my style of direction as collaborative. I don’t tend to go on set and start bossing everyone around! It comes down to teamwork. I need to be on the ball and give a clear vision, but I also need to let the team excel at what they do best. I like to create a comfortable space for my subjects. That way, once I start shooting, we can connect.
Photographing Her Majesty e Queen le an indelible mark. It was incredible to be invited to Buckingham Palace. It was very relaxed and I was allowed to observe her character and how engaged she was in the whole process.
Keep Busy. ere are so many things still to capture. I’m currently searching for my next directing project and finishing preparations for my new photographic exhibition Can We Have A Moment? Plus, I’m deep into making a new portrait/cook book called Feeding Creativity, due out later this year.
I’ve never cared much about what people think about me, other than my friends. I think it’s always been embedded in me. I’ve always had strong female role models – especially in my family, but also in music. There’s always been a Madonna, a Whitney Houston, a Grace Jones – a strong musical role model who, publicly at least, was fearless and didn’t give a f**k.
We all know the RuPaul quote: “We’re all born naked and the rest is drag.” My ou its – which are escapism, but also a work uniform – add a layer of armour and a “let’s go” mentality. I don’t need it, but I like it to perform and present in.
DJing is 50% entertainment, 50% education, 100% party. It’s half playing stu that people really want to hear and half playing new stu , too.
I never plan my sets. I’m not there like a robot, just playing songs I’ve already thought about in order. It takes quite a big level of fearlessness to be there,
in front of the crowd, going: “I don’t know what I’m about to do, but we’re in this together, and the energy that you give back to me is going to dictate how I’m going to perform to you.”
Very rarely have I gone to a work thing and thought, “I wish I didn’t do that.” I just go with it. I facilitate fun, so I’d be a bit of an arsehole if I was moaning about my job all the time. I constantly r emind myself how lucky I am to be making a living doing the things I love.
I started my artist project three years ago. I’d done bits of production and some writing previously, but it got to the point where I had loads of stu made and it was like: do I keep giving this to other people or do I just bite the bullet and start releasing music on my own?
I always get anxious pre-release. e song that’s lived in your laptop for six months, a year, is about to be given to everyone and you’ve not got any control over it. I never worry if people will hate
it, or I wouldn’t put it out. It’s more that I hope people like it as much as me.
I love being queer. It’s my favourite thing about myself. I’ve always naturally been very di erent and I’ve always liked to stand out from the crowd.
Hone your cra before you present it to others. Be willing to get out there and do your thing – don’t do what someone else does, because that person already exists.
I’ve already planned my funeral. It’s going to be the biggest rave. I hope people remember me for being really fun; for creating a place you can escape to.
By David LevesleyThe queen of the London club scene on owning your confidence and the key to a killer DJ set – like the one she’ll be delivering at Soho SummitBy Teo van den Broeke
who I have been with since I was 21. Since the beginning, her standards have impacted the quality, cut and shape [of my designs]. She’s also helped me to keep my feet on the ground. It’s about good quality products and never living above your station or means.
I didn’t model my career on anyone else’s, but Pauline set a high standard. She was living in London, where she’d been studying at the Royal College [of Art]. She worked with London designers, so her references were not provincial but based on international and city culture. One of the first things we did was mount fashion shows, albeit tiny ones, in Paris during fashion week. We were put into the category of “international designer” because there was no London or Milan, there was just Paris. We’ve stayed showing there ever since.
ere are designers whose work I appreciate, of course. At the same time as m e, there was Yves Saint Laurent breaking down barriers in the way he designed clothes for women. ey were so different. Four years after me, Mr Armani started. He was such an exceptional designer. He always had the back c over of L’Uomo Vogue and he built a very strong business.
Alw ays work with people who have strengths you don’t. In the 1980s, I was lucky that my accountant joined the company as my financial guy. Although he knew nothing about fashion, he stayed with me for many years – my strengths were his weaknesses, and vice versa. Pauline’s standards, my enthusiasm and eventual design ability and John’s financial abilities made it work.
I always advise budding designers to find their own point of view. e truth is, nobody needs another designer, so you need to figure out what you’re about if you want to succeed. en it’s figuring out your style of design before starting in a low-level job with a company that suits your mindset. Creativity is important, of course, but you have to be able to understand modern communication, marketing and the way it all works – the actual design process is just part of the ingredients list these days. Right: Paul Smith at his design HQ in London
When I first started as a designer, you could only find a brand like Louis Vui on in a small number of countries. Now, big brands are distributed worldwide. en there is the comms: social media is reliant on how much cash you’ve got and how much you can get your brand in front of people. It’s a challenge if you’re an independent brand, like us.
e key to my success is that I started working in a shop, then I had my own. I understand shops and the supply you need to curate them. A flow of ideas is essential. You have to understand about promotion and display. e key to my success is also my wife Pauline,
Somehow, we’ve always been a relevant brand. If there was a survey in the 1980s or 1990s, we’d have been at the top, and that’s where we’ve remained. It’s about good quality clothes that have relevance: modern but never over the top.
The initial clothes in the Paul Smith collection were ones I wanted to wear. My character isn’t confrontational. It’s about looking nice but not in a catwalk sense – clothes that an average man would like. My designs just had that extra nudge of a bright lining or contrast cut, so they were very wearable but also made the wearer feel special.
Regarding my success in Japan, people have said to me, “Of course you’ve been lucky.” But Pauline says, “It’s not called luck, it’s called hard work.” I started going to Japan in the 1980s. Many others my age – from Italy, France, America –went at the same time. Most of them didn’t have a business in Japan, or a business at all. Much of the reason it worked out for me was because I was going two to four times a year. Now, I have an o ice there. It’s about working hard and having your feet on the ground.
I’ll stop when I fall over. Either literally falling over or dying. I don’t consider what I do work. Many young people now want to create a business to then sell.
at’s never been my purview. I’m not looking to sell Paul Smith. I’ll have to slow down because of health or age, maybe I’ll look for a buyer then. It’s not on the cards now. Let’s wait and see.
I’ve never thought about my legacy. It’s only ever been about today or tomorrow. Over the past few days, I’ve been writing postcards to sta who have an anniversary coming up. I think I wrote 30 or more cards to people who have been with me for over 20 years. If there is an image of the company, it’s that we are nice, polite, reliable and well organised. It’s very down to earth. [In 2020,] I started Paul Smith’s Foundation. I’m hoping it will provide opportunities for people to seek advice if they’re a bit lost in life. Hopefully.
“It’s not luck, it’s called hard work”Above le : Paul Smith’s SS23 show in Paris. Above right: Smith in 1970 at his first shop in No ingham
A new season marks a fresh start for food at Soho House. We’re going back to doing what we do best: focusing on fresh produce to create dishes our members will want to eat time and again. It all comes down to working with trusted suppliers for quality produce and locally sourced ingredients – we’re showcasing six of the best here
Photography by Laura Edwards
Words by Anastasiia Fedorova
All our chefs are commi ed to cooking with seasonal ingredients. Not only is the practice environmentally friendly, it also allows for the freshest flavours to come to the fore. Case in point, asparagus: the woody vegetable is only really worth eating between the months of April and June (the season is finally here, huzzah!) and is grown at a number of our Houses, including the Wall Garden at Babington.
Juicy scallops are the true jewels of the sea. When it comes to eating your favourite seafood around our Houses, La Caseta restaurant by Li le Beach House Barcelona focuses on Mediterranean dishes with next-to-zero food mileage, while Brighton Beach House sources fresh fish and seafood from the local Newhaven fish market.
Tart, sweet and precociously pink, there’s very li le not to love about rhubarb. e season begins in April and stretches through to July, which is when the vegetable (yes, it’s a vegetable) is truly in its prime. We source our rhubarb from local producers, such as Chef’s Farms, and it’s best used in seasonal fools, cakes, trifles and desserts – its sharpness cu ing through rich creams and custards.
Sometimes the versatility of a single vegetable can be so stark that it transcends the status of mere “ingredient”. Case in point, the regal radicchio. With its bi er taste, crunchy texture and classic Dutch still-life aesthetic, it’s a hit at Soho House Rome and beyond. Best paired with citrus and salt – in fact, bacon is a dream partner for radicchio. Spring salad, anyone?
As far as pop star unveilings go, Debbie Ehirim has set the bar. The south London-based singer, known professionally as Debbie, was playing open mic nights across the capital as lockdown struck in 2020. She emerged from that strange time signed to 0207 Def Jam with a debut single: Is is Real Love? featuring Lucky Daye. Since then, the 23-year-old has opened for John Legend and Maverick Sabre on tour and achieved her first collaborative UK Top 10 with Stormzy’s Firebabe “I was telling myself to se le my dreams a bit, to humble myself,” she smiles.
“I tried to keep my expectations low.” ere was, of course, no need.
A soul artist in the truest sense of the word, Debbie describes her style as “raw”, “authentic” and “in the moment”. She never thinks too hard about the music she’s writing because, she says, “that’s how art dies off”. Instead, her songs embody whatever spirit comes out at the time. “I’m really good at pu ing emotion into my music. I feel like I can talk [about how I feel] through my melodies.”
ree years ago, life was heading in a di erent direction. Debbie was a finance undergraduate at Pearson College London, on target to be an investment banker, underwriter or marketing strategist. “I loved business and numbers,”
she admits. She was brought up in a “strict, religious house” and her younger days were very much “church/school, church/school”. Singing, however, was as natural as breathing. Music was rooted in her way of life. “I always had natural rhythm and harmony,” she says, so she wasn’t surprised when her mum told her she “was singing from the womb”.
Debbie admits it was a lack of confidence that stopped her pursuing music from the get-go. “But I couldn’t stop that creative itch.” So, in her first year of university, she took the leap. “I remember it clearly, sitting in my living room and making the conscious decision: I would rather be broke doing
By Karen EdwardsShe’s impressing music fans and industry heavyweights alike –oh, and some guy called Stormzy. But this is just the beginning for the Soho Summit performerPhotography: Sirius, Dave Bene /Ge y Images
what I love than rich doing something that didn’t fulfil me.”
She worked two part-time jobs, doing the marketing for a start-up and as a learning advisor at a local college, all while completing her degree and a ending open mic nights and studio
sessions in central London. “My mum would have been annoyed [if I didn’t finish university] and I’m a big believer in [having a] plan B,” she laughs. Not long a er, she met an A&R scout who introduced her to 0207 Def Jam – the label to which she eventually signed in November 2020. “It felt surreal.”
So, how does a finance studentturned-soul singer connect with the likes of Stormzy? e same A&R from Def Jam sent the grime star her music. When Stormzy came back saying he wanted to “jump in” on one of her sessions, Debbie was “freaking out a li le”. ankfully, “Stormz”, as she calls him, was “natural and normal. I looked at it as two people coming together to
create music. But I was also trying to keep my cool so bad.” Since then, more studio time has resulted in numerous co-written tracks and Debbie’s silky vocals on Firebabe, from Stormzy’s chart-topping LP is Is What I Mean “I was humbled,” Debbie confides. “Art is personal, and for someone to say they trust you so much that they want you to feature on their art – let alone that person being Stormzy – is an honour.” is year, a European tour beckons, supporting four-time BRIT nominee RAYE. And, according to Debbie, we are yet to see what her music can really do. “I want to show the world more of that ‘Debbie flair,’” she says. e glint in her eye tells us she’ll succeed.
No Passengers is a joint endeavour from Soho House and Porsche, highlighting creative pioneers who are pushing culture forward. Over the past few months, we’ve released three docu-shorts, each focused on an individual who is a cultural leader in their field. Enter artist and designer Mac Collins, Steve and Nick Tidball of future-forward clothing label Vollebak and multi-hyphenate designer and filmmaker Dr Nelly Ben Hayoun-Stépanian
SOHO SUMMIT
By Sagal Mohammed
Photography by Kasia Bobula
When it comes to innovation, Steve and Nick Tidball are experts. The British entrepreneurs combine science with creativity for their boundary-breaking label Vollebak. “Instead of designing for the next fashion season, we design for the next century,” says Steve.
e idea came to the brothers in 2015 during an arduous run in the Namib desert, when their clothes weren’t fit for purpose. And so began Vollebak, a brand which makes clothing capable of withstanding cataclysmic world events. “Resource scarcity, space colonisation and climate change are things we factor into our design process,” says Steve. e “Apocalypse” jacket, cra ed from a material invented for NASA, is a prime example. As is their latest invention, the first computer-programmable “ ermal Camouflage” jacket.
“We start with problems we’re trying to crack, or with a crazy material. For instance, due to climate change, parts of the world are becoming colder. We’ll design not for the coldest place on Earth but in our solar system: Jupiter’s moon, Titan,” says Steve. “So we developed the ‘Titan’ fleece jacket – as the weather gets colder, the material gets stronger.” In the second instalment of our No Passengers series, we put the brand’s “Indestructible” pu er to the test. An electric Porsche Taycan Cross Turismo drops Swedish ultra-runner Jakob Åberg (who is wearing the jacket) in the wilds of Northern Sweden. Enduring temperatures as low as -22°C, the jacket, stitched from a fibre 15 times stronger than steel, sees Åberg safely to central Stockholm, where he enjoys a muchdeserved cocktail at Soho House.
“ The most challenging aspect is where clothing will go next,” the brothers say. “It will start to combine with data, e lectronics, AI and robotics.” Ge ing people to wrap their heads around this hasn’t been as much of a task as you’d expect. “If someone had a empted this in the 1990s, the brand wouldn’t have made much sense,” says Steve. We’re living through times of outlier scenarios: wildfires, floods, people heading to Mars, a pandemic. It has made the public more receptive to a brand like ours.”
Newcastle-based artist and designer Mac Collins crafts objects encompassing innovative design and inspiration from his Caribbean and African heritage. Experimenting with various artistic practices, he specialises in creating statement furniture, with one of his pieces – the Concur chair – included as part of the permanent collection at London’s Design Museum.
“I consider my practice to be at the intersection between commercial or rational design and contemporary or conceptual art,” he says. “I started in furniture, so furniture is a language that I have predominantly used [to describe my work], but as my practice matures and grows, I find more opportunities for it to shi in scale and ambition.”
Last year, Collins was awarded one of the Black British Artist Grants, designed to champion outstanding talent and created by Samuel Ross, winner of the 2022 Soho House Award for Changemaker of the Year. A few months later,
Coll ins was the subject of our first No Passengers film in collaboration with Porsche, where we visited his No ingham studio for an insight into the emotive and innovative nature of the creator’s hands-on practice. “I start each project by building the narrative and trying to define exactly what I want to communicate,” explains Collins. “Using machinery and being able to see and find the evidence of human interaction in the creation of these things is par ticularly important for me.”
One of Collins’s most recent creations was an installation exploring the game of dominoes, which holds a significant place in British-Caribbean communities.
“Playing dominoes and engaging with objects associated with the game has become a key for me to engage with aspects of my lineage,” he says. “ ese objects, like a single domino, become tokens to a larger concept.”
Collins is a shapeshi er in the world of fine art and design – his work highlights the importance of telling diasporic stories through realms of creativity that have historically been gatekept. By taking up space on his own terms, he is not only telling his own story, but spotlighting the untold stories of others and breaking barriers for a future generation of artists. “My dreams for the future of my practice is to reach different audiences with di erent languages,” he says. “I don’t want my practice to sit within a particular category of creative expression, but instead to flow between them, whether that’s commercial design, installations or smaller, tactile objects. I hope to push culture forward by offering new and divergent visual language to the established canon of Western material culture.”
Photography (Mac Collins): David ClevelandDr Nelly Ben Hayoun-Stépanian is quite the force – just ask NASA. e multihyphenate is the founder and director of the International Space Orchestra, the world’s first to consist of space scientists. It’s just one of the many ventures led by her uncategorisable creativity.
Ben Hayoun-Stépanian started her creative journey at the age of 19, when she spent six months perfecting the traditional cra of Kimono-making in Japan and became fascinated with design. is, combined with her experience as a child of Armenian and Algerian immigrants in France – many of whom were prominent
in politics and activism, advocating for the recognition of the Armenian genocide – shaped her approach to creativity.
After a BA in Textile Design, she secured an MA in Design Interaction from the Royal College of Art. “ e course was about creating a movement in design that thought about things critically. We weren’t just making products, we were asking questions and building scenarios,” she says from her o ice, a former London Tube carriage on the roof of Village Underground, a nightlife venue in east London.
In the final episode of No Passengers, Ben Hayoun-Stépanian designs a limitededition Porsche Taycan wrapped in a fluoro colour pale e. e film follows her design process, from conceptualising an alternative world with an industryleading 3D artist in Unreal Engine to the grand finale, where she drives her custom Porsche through the dusty surface of the 3D world she has created.
The No Passengers project brings together Ben Hayoun-Stépanian’s experiences as both a student and company founder. While studying for her MA, she developed an interest in theatre. is led to a course at RADA, which in turn led to the birth of Nelly Ben Hayoun Studios –the design agency she launched in 2009: “I wanted to create design experiences that act as an entry point for audiences to critically reflect on the way they do things.”
Today, Ben Hayoun-Stépanian (who has since added a PhD in Political eory to her list of achievements) is not only an award-winning designer of experiences but a director and producer of films – eInternationalSpaceOrchestra, 2013; Disaster Playground, 2015; I am (not) a monster, 2019 – and the founder of the tuition-free University of the Underground, which includes Arjun Appadurai and Noam Chomsky as professors. “I started the University to create a space where we think and teach outside of the traditional box,” she says. “Society isn’t wired to open the minds of the public because there’s a power dynamic in place. We don’t activate our imaginations because we’re stuck in these ways of thinking. It’s time to change that.”
Sinéad Burke is a once-in-a-generation catalyst for change; an architect restructuring the operational foundations of the culture sector, from fashion’s fr ont rows to industry boardrooms. rough her company, Tilting the Lens, the Dublin-based, physically disabled activist is on a mission to remind us that visibility is just one step on the journey towards building equity for the 1 billion people living with a disability, as she explains here, in her own words.
“One of my strongest memories is being 12 years old and going shopping
with my three sisters: all younger than me, and none of them were disabled. As the eldest, I thought it was my responsibility to show them the way in fashion. As a li le person, fashion was a visual methodology by which I could translate who I was. I wanted to extend this vocabulary to my sisters, not realising that as young, white, cisgendered, non-disabled women, their physical existence was cued to so many cultural signifiers of acceptance that they didn’t need fashion in the way that I did.
This humbling experience was a professional catalyst for me. I realised that not only was this a market that was neither considered nor catered for, it
was a perspective and an expertise that was wholly invisible within the wider fashion system. I wanted to move the dial on how disability was framed and positioned within the industry.
As a physically disabled queer woman, I am driven by the mission of building and designing a more equitable and accessible world. My advocacy is rooted in my lived experience of disability – the mismatch between how the world is designed and my existence in a disabled body. Tilting the Lens was founded in the midst of a pandemic. Overnight, remote working became a possibility and through the prevalence of long Covid, more people were selfidentifying as and becoming disabled.
Yet as individuals, we developed a further complacency with the loss of disabled lives. In the UK, for example, six out of 10 deaths from Covid-19 were disabled people. Our lack of conscience was shrouded in language of ‘underlying conditions’ or ‘those who were
The disability educator, advocate and author explains how we can all assist in making virtual and physical spaces more accessibleAbove: Sinéad Burke front-row at Gucci’s AW23 show in February
vulnerable’. I couldn’t understand how our proximity to experiencing disability was more tangible, and yet the prioritisation of the non-disabled continued.
As someone who has the capacity, skills and a network that could create change, I felt that an organisation rooted in community was the most meaningful
way to design new systems to support the delivery of equity, dignity, respect and interdependence.
Over the past year, the Tilting the Lens team has grown to five people, all of whom work remotely and the majority of whom identify as disabled. eir journey of self-identification and in
Le : In addition to her work as an advocate, educator and author, Burke is the founder of accessibility consultancy Tilting the Lens
feeling comfort, pride and empowerment with the lexicon of disability has been very fulfilling and inspiring. As someone who was born with a congenital, physical and visible disability, being an observer to other people’s discovery of who they are is one of the greatest gi s.
My time in the fashion industry has taught me that change will only truly be embedded when disabled people are in decision-making positions. It’s vitally important that we continue to advocate for disabled people to be represented on runways and for adaptive clothing to continue to evolve, but I want disabled people in design rooms and boardrooms.
For example, we recently worked on a project supporting the development and design of an accessible playground. To ensure that we designed with disabled people, rather than for disabled people, we created focus groups with disabled parents across the spectrum of disability and identity. To learn about the ways in which access needs might support their children to play, imagine and explore was incredibly humbling and reinstated my desire to continuously reiterate the definition of accessibility.
Leaders need to understand that accessibility and disability justice are strategies that must be implemented by them, and that they must continuously ensure their teams and colleagues are accountable for their progress. Organisations need to see this work as an in vestment, not a cost. Visibility and representation cannot be limited to marketing. Eighty per cent of disabled women are outside of the labour market and the pay gap between non-disabled men and disabled women is 35%. Redesigning the employment process to be equitable and accessible is vital for systemic change. Awareness is a starting point, not a destination.”
Not content to simply ride the wave of Happy Valley’s success, the British star is embarking on his greatest acting challenge to date
By Hanna Flint Photography by Edd Horder Stylingby Rose Forde
Jumpsuit, £4,900, Hermès. Sunglasses, £382, Oliver Peoples. Chain, Norton’s own
i ing still for a long time is not something that comes easily to James Norton. e chipper British actor tells me as much at Shoreditch House on a late Tuesday a ernoon in spring. I’ve secured us a private table for two as you walk into the main bar on 5th floor. It’s a good spot for people-watching; the buzz of members taking meetings, catching up and enjoying an end-of-day glass or two of Picpoul vibrates around us. Norton, however, has sworn o alcohol since January, so we’re sipping on fresh lemon and ginger tea as he opens up about his deep-seated desire for exploration. “I love to travel,” he says. “I love jobs that get me around the world. I’ve had a nomadic thing forever.”
We’re about 45 minutes into our chat, so I’m impressed he hasn’t already skedaddled. Fortunately, he not only arrived 10 minutes early but he sticks around for an extra half an hour so we can talk in candid, sometimes earnest, detail about the career he’s steadily built over the last 15 years. It’s been a riveting journey.
On the small screen, Norton’s roles have ranged from a delightful sleuthing vicar in ITV’s Grantchester and a mournful prince in the BBC’s adaptation of War & Peace to a British-raised son of a Russian mafia boss in McMafia And, of course, there’s his chilling turn as the psychopathic killer Tommy Lee Royce in Happy Valley, the BBC’s celebrated crime series, which returned for a third and final season this year to huge acclaim and record viewing figures.
In film, he’s appeared in glossy Hollywood fares including Greta Gerwig’s Li le Women and the 2017 Flatliners remake. He also recently charmed in the intimate indie drama Nowhere Special. All the while, Norton’s maintained a love a air with theatre, which began a er leaving the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art before graduating to star in the original 2010 production of Posh at the Royal Court eatre. He last trod the boards in 2018, garnering rave reviews for his perfor-
mance in Belleville at the Donmar Warehouse opposite British actress Imogen Poots. Despite playing a newlywed American couple in trouble, they have been happily together ever since.
So far, Norton has plo ed significant points on his professional and personal map. But to be able to go to so many places – physically, emotionally and creatively – building a home has become a vital anchor. “Even if I’m never there, to know that it’s there is a big stabiliser for me,” he explains, pointing to his childhood experience at boarding school. “You have a very specific relationship with home and space. You go away from your home, and the stability of your family, to spaces which are quite hectic. For me now, when I go away on a job, I find myself doing coping mechanisms that I used to do when I was a teenager.”
Such as? “Telling a room that I’ll be back,” he o ers, slightly embarrassed, before deciding not to divulge any further “weird idiosyncrasies”, as he puts it. Luckily, Poots has no qualms with his quirks or nesting habits. “She lives more in a cerebral space,” Norton smiles. “She’s very happy with a book and I’m more in the physical space. I’m probably overly o icious when tidying up. It’s why we work so well together, because we come at life from slightly different spaces. As a result, I’m certainly house proud.”
As the floor lamp next to our table dims for the evening, the Soho House member says he’s enjoying the perks of having access to the Soho Home collection. “ ere is an amazing range of furniture – it’s f*****g great!” e couple were in the throes of renovating their Peckham property, but that has been put on hold for now as he embarks on his greatest acting challenge yet in the play adaptation of A Li le Life
When we meet, Norton is five weeks into rehearsals for Ivo van Hove’s latest stage adaptation of Hanya Yanagihara’s renowned bestselling novel. e actor takes the lead as troubled lawyer Jude St. Francis, and to say his protagonist is dealing with trauma would be a gross understatement. Life has, and continues to come at Jude hard, pounding him with physical, psychological and emotional abuse as he navigates work, relationships and personal demons alongside his college friends in New York. To prepare for the role, van Hove told Norton everything he needed was in Yanagihara’s 814-page novel, which was a small relief. “ e pressure isn’t so much about finding the character, writing the biography, going into the backstory and knowing what my bedroom smelled like or what my favourite colours are, all that s**t,” he says. “ e challenge is trying as much as I can to honour the character people have already fallen in love with.”
Norton took his time reading and digesting the story a er being cast in October 2022. It was a “profound experience” and he believes the story could only be successfully be adapted for the stage. “It’s so big and sprawling, and there are elements of abuse that I don’t think can be adapted with a child actor playing it,” he explains. “ e medium of theatre allows us a sort of abstraction. We have a string quartet playing the whole way through. It’s very nonlinear –it’s this wonderful, choreographed milieu with only specific
Shirt, £275, trousers, £350, boots, £494, and tie, £110, all Paul Smith. Watch, Norton’s own
sections [of the book] chosen. It’s 50 years of these people’s lives and you want to go on that journey.”
Having a safe space to go home to has never been more essential. For three hours and 40 minutes each night, over its nearly four-month run at the Harold Pinter eatre in London, he will have to shoulder the heavy burden of what that tormenting performance will require. He’s anxious.
“I’m going through it,” the actor admits. “I have to put an insane amount in every night; there’s sexual violence, there are beatings, there’s self-harm. I don’t know what the cost is going to be.” Yet Norton has long strived to draw a firm line between fiction and reality. “ ere’s an expectation that I’m going to go to hell and back in order to give this book its due justice,” he says. “I will be using all the tools available to me to get as close to it as I possibly can but I’m going to come o stage, grab a beer and I’m going to hug my friends and be James.”
Strange dreams are currently a byproduct of this theatrical endeavour – though it’s nothing new. While shooting Happy Valley, Norton’s sleep went to unusual places due to spending each day in the mindset of a murderous manipulator. Now, as he gets to grips with the play alongside castmates Luke ompson (Bridgerton), Omari Douglas (It’s A Sin) and Zach Wya ( e Witcher: Blood Origin), Jude is bleeding into his subconscious. But that’s the only way he will allow his characters to come home with him – especially when they are so dark and tortured. It’s why he’s not one for Method acting. “I’m not from that school,” he says. “I do not begrudge anyone if they want to do that. ere’s a line; this is as much as I can give and if I give more than that, then it starts to really hamper my own life and my relationships su er.” e antisocial element is also rather unappealing: “One of the best parts of a stage rehearsal process or film set is hanging out. e idea of spending every co ee break and every lunch on my own in character? F**k that!”
Managing his food intake is a major part of Norton’s creative process. He has Type 1 diabetes, which can complicate things when doing stage work especially, but he and the production team have a plan: sugar tablets and his insulin
pens hidden onstage and his blood sugar levels monitored by a Bluetooth device a ached to his body that someone can track from his phone o stage. “We’re working in a way where we can have a cue light just in my eyeline, so if it goes red, it means one thing. If it goes green, it means another,” he says. “If I need to eat some sugar or to inject, I’ll just surreptitiously do it.”
e subject reminds me of the diabetic drug Ozempic, which Hollywood types are using to stay slim. He whips out his phone and scrolls to a message from a friend with a link to a viral e Cut article on the topic. He’s not had time to read it yet, so I give him the bullet points about the massive expense to secure versions of the drug to stave o hunger, the high demand from non-diabetics and the problems this causes for those who actually need it. A perplexed look washes over his face. “I’d never heard of it and I don’t want to suppress my
“Soho Home has an amazing range of furniture. It’s f*****g great!”Above: Coat, £1,800, Connolly. Jumpsuit, £4,900, and shoes, £780, Hermès. Below: Norton as Tommy Lee Royce in Happy Valley
appetite,” he says. “I f*****g love eating and having a drink! Luckily my diabetes is well-controlled and totally manageable.”
His health condition has not prevented him freedom to work but in the past, he did worry that being typecast as a “privately educated, floppy-haired period drama guy” might limit his opportunities. “I don’t feel like I was born into some period drama but producers like to categorise people because it makes their life easy,” he says. “I don’t want to be that. If people think I’m that, then fine, but I’ll do everything I can to fight against it because it’s not as interesting as all the other roles out there.”
To be fair, he does have a great head of hair. And he was privately educated. Born in Lambeth, London, Norton’s teacher parents moved him and his sister to Malton in the Ryedale district of North Yorkshire, where he a ended the fee-paying Ampleforth College with some financial support from his grandparents. “I feel very lucky,” he says. “My mum and dad worked hard and my grandparents worked hard, so I owe them a lot. But I’m aware that a lot of people work hard and can’t a ord private school.”
Peppered throughout our conversation is this selfconscious acknowledgement of his privilege. “It might appear to some people that I’m apologising for my past but I’d much rather run that risk than feeling like I was entitled,” he says.
“I guess it’s like, ‘Why me? Why do I deserve this?’ I don’t deserve it. I think what I do is far less than most people. I got lucky. People ask me for advice for young actors and that question is hard, because I didn’t do anything di erent from thousands of other actors who work hard. I got some great gigs early on, the right people saw me in the right role and that bred more work.”
H e also finds the negative framing of diversity as the industry “untangles ourselves from old a itudes and structures” reductive. “I do believe that all industries are massively benefited by listening and educating ourselves,” Norton says.
“Does every single role need to be played by someone who has lived that experience? No. But there are roles which do require [that]. It’s not about forcing tokenism on people. It’s about acknowledging that a role will be massively improved by someone who has lived that experience.”
Time, place and unconscious bias are important things to consider when looking at certain actors’ success stories, but there’s no denying that talent is a major factor in Norton’s case.
He’s a transformative performer who brings emotional intelligence and physical depth to his roles. During the season three finale of Happy Valley, I caught myself welling up as I watched his ill-fated monster deliver his final few words opposite Sarah Lancashire’s formidable police sergeant Catherine Cawood. He’s pleased to hear it. Tommy is a role he cherishes and the series represents a community he fondly remembers. “ ere’s a temperament and that world of endless cups of tea around kitchen tables was familiar to me – I grew up in that,” he says. “Although some people did get upset, saying I wasn’t a Yorkshireman, and reviewers said my accent was bad. I was like, ‘F**k o !’ I came from Yorkshire. I literally had the accent until I was about 13!”
Now 37 years old, the actor excitedly credits himself as a producer through Rabbit Track Pictures, which he co-founded with Ki y Kaletsky. eir first feature Rogue Agent, with Norton in the eponymous role, launched to acclaim on Ne lix in 2022 but it’s not “one of those vanity projects built around an actor”. Actually, he tells me, 70% of their current projects in development won’t feature him.
Norton’s not done with acting, of course. But after a growing awareness of the small part actors play in the grand scheme of filmmaking, he’s plo ed a new path to bring him closer to the world he loves. “I would arrive on a film set and so much of the creative process was all pre y much done, and I just had to facilitate someone else’s creative dream,” he says. “ is is definitely a much bigger contribution. I’ve learned a new skill set as a producer and, in development, script editing through Ki y and just being thrown in the deep end. ree years in, I love it.”
Max Richter is arguably the most popular classical musician of his generation. Here, the Soho Summit speaker talks creativity, soundtracks and social media
Given the global range of his work, he is an unabashed fan of Soho House, regularly visiting the Houses in Malibu, Hollywood, New York and Toronto. “First of all, I love the conviviality of it. It’s a place where you encounter lots of interesting people. Secondly, it’s also a place wher e you can sort of tuck yourself away from the racket that’s going on out there and just hibernate for a moment. I travel quite a bit, so I love that feeling of recognition and being ‘home’.”
At the age of six, Max Richter witnessed a global extinction twice in one day.
Watching Walt Disney’s Fantasia at a cinema in Bedford, he saw the rise and fall of the dinosaurs, soundtracked by Stravinsky’s e Rite of Spring. It was the first time he truly appreciated music’s extraordinary power of connection. It showed him that there was more to life than listening to his parents’ Bach records, being bullied at school for being a red-haired immigrant and hating your piano teacher for hi ing you with a ruler. As soon as the lights came on, Richter – a cripplingly shy child – asked his mother t o take him to the second showing. He started to compose his own future
Fi y years later, Richter sits in the custom-built Studio Richter Marr, not far from Soho Farmhouse in Oxfordshire, which he planned for two decades with his wife Yulia. e former alpaca farm now caters to his every creative need, with space for a 30-piece orchestra, huts for the resident musicians, a Yamaha grand piano and a steampunk’s
dream of synths from the mid-1970s. There are no clocks on the walls.
Richter himself has the measured response of the very smart and the half-Germanic: he comes from the Brian Eno school of elegant, profound bo ins. “I think of my studio a bit like a compost heap,” he explains, nodding to the packed bookshelves and recording devices. “It’s a place which is sort of fecund and pregnant with potential. Having all these objects can catalyse ideas in unexpected ways, which is a fun part of doing creative work, isn’t it?”
Richter is certainly having a lot of fun. He is arguably the most popular contemporary classical music composer and his work has been streamed over 3.3 billion times. Signed to the austere Deutsche Grammophon, he’s spent his career pushing sonic boundaries, including writing an eight-hour lullaby called Sleep and reclaiming Vivaldi’s Four Seasons from hold-music hell. Today he is working simultaneously on four separate projects: a film with Chernobyl’s Johan Renck, the soundtrack for a TV series, a production at the Royal Opera House in London and a performance under the huge Lovell Telescope this summer.
“MusicRichter is also adjusting to his new global status, including those fans who first heard On the Nature of Daylight during episode three of HBO’s fatal fungus drama e Last of Us. “I think of it as a tremendous privilege when anything like that happens. I’m not precious about how people encounter the work. I think every piece has got many doorways into it, whether that’s through a concert, a ballet, a TV show or a movie. People encounter it in their own way and they find a place for that piece of work in their life, in their own way.” For Richter, art must still be focused on powerful ideas and emotions.
Above: Richter and his ensemble performing in Berlin Photography: William Waterworth, Stefan Hoederath/Ge y Images SOHO SUMMITis not a job. Music is a 24/7 way of existing. It allows me to express the things that m atter to me without having to say them in words, and to be able to say them in di erent ways.” As his preferred method of communication, he also doesn’t take the easy route. As a young boy, he was introduced to the band Kraftwerk by a nature documentary that featured Autobahn – he wrote to the BBC, identified the record and then proceeded to build his first synthesiser aged 13. When he became bored with school, he started reading Byron, Joyce, Pound and Elliot under his own steam, then got a job at an overnight garage and would take mischievous delight in reading e Waste Land over the tannoy. Such unusual behaviour was rewarded karmically; in his late teens his milkman heard him practising and started dropping o experimental Phillip Glass albums to his house for him to check out.
He also wasn’t afraid of creative setbacks. Richter’s debut album, Memoryhouse, released in 2002, was recorded with the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra for the short-lived BBC Late Junction classical music label. ere was, in his own words: “No advertising, no reviews, no performances.” Sales were so bad that at one point, his family had to move house. He took ma ers into his own hands. “I wanted to be a classical music composer. But no one was interested in what I was doing, because it didn’t fit in with what classical music was supposed to be. So I had zero opportunities to hear my work and actually got into recording as a kind of act of expediency.”
For Richter, live music is still of paramount importance – a next-level experience. “Live music is about a community of people coming together to play, and a community of people coming together to listen. It’s real time, in that moment, in that room uniquely, once and once only.” Recently, he was asked by Dior creative director Kim Jones to perform at the pyramids in Egypt. “It was just extraordinary in every way. We took an orchestra of 24. ey built a stage for us and as a backdrop, we had the three pyramids of Giza. Dior have this incredible passion: they’re really aiming for the best that they can possibly do. ere’s no compromising on anything. They asked me at one point, “What colour do you want the pyramids, Max?” I hadn’t really thought about that.”
Sleep: Tranquility Base by Max Richter is available now via Deutsche Grammophon
Royal Ballet principal dancer Francesca Hayward has been dancing since she was just three, when her grandparents showed her a video of e Nutcracker and she became, in her own words, “Totally hooked. When I’m dancing, I forget all my problems and just tune in with myself. It’s emotionally cathartic.”
Francesca joined the Royal Ballet in 2010, dancing in shows such as Swan Lake and e Nutcracker (a full-circle moment). You might also recognise her as Victoria in Tom Hooper’s 2019 film Cats
By Chloe LawrancePhotography by Rick Guest
Styling by Ayishat Akanbi
Shirt and shoes, Hayward’s own. Hayward dining chair, £495, Soho HomeWe asked a few Soho House members – who just happen to be some of the most exciting figures in the world of movement – to prove that our great chairs are for more than just si ing in
e multidisciplinary artist began his career choreographing and dancing for artists such as Dizzee Rascal and Neneh Cherry. In 2016, he founded CRXSS PLATFXRM, a unique arts incubator helping street culture artists to develop their practice while also helping programmers and brands to discover talent. “I’ve always been open to sharing myself artistically,” he says. “I’ve never felt I was just stuck on one thing.”
Jumper, £990, and trousers, £1,700, both Louis Vui on. All other clothing, Blackstock’s own. Garret Armchair in Boucle, £1,695, Soho Home
Self-taught artistic communicators Victory (le ) and Marvel Ebinum were born and raised in Lagos, Nigeria, where they pursued creative expression through making films. ough they describe growing up with very li le – “We had no shoes… No money, no phones” – the pair knew from the beginning that their purpose was to communicate through their art: “Movement for us is like a superpower. It’s the means we use for expression.” Now based in London, the brothers have featured in campaigns for Vivienne Westwood and H&M, and performed onstage with Kendrick Lamar at Glastonbury.
Victory (le ) wears: red jacket, price on request, Casablanca. Green trousers, £440, Ami. Marvel wears: green jacket, £820, Ami. Red trousers, price on request, Casablanca. All jewellery, their own. Herly Armchair in Fleck Eco, Burnt Orange, £2,495, Soho Home
At just 13, McKenzie was a British rhythmic gymnastics champion. By 17, she was a triple medallist at the Commonwealth Games. en came a hugely successful career in dance. ese days, she’s the CEO of AMCK Dance Agency, where she nurtures boundary-pushing talent: “When I started as a dancer, there was no space for me. I made it my mission to open that door for generations to come.”
Dress, £445, and trousers, £395, both Joseph. Shirt, £325, Studio Nicholson. Boots, £120, Steve Madden. Rolland Armchair in Pierre Frey Bakou Noir, £2,495, Soho Home
Sam Salter arrived late to dance. In fact, he didn’t take it up as a hobby until he was nine – long a er most of his contemporaries. “I have my mother to thank for where I am. It all started with her saying, ‘Just go for it, Sam,’” he says. “She made it seem so simple; like I had nothing to lose.” His mother was right: since a ending the Sylvia Young eatre School as a teenager, Sam has earned credits in Ma hew Bourne’s Swan Lake and in West End productions including Wicked and On the Town
Jumpsuit, £570, Homme Plissé Issey Miyake. Jewellery, Salter’s own. Romi Footstool in Velvet, Lichen, £550, Soho Home
For Peloton spin and tread instructor Hannah Frankson, moving her body is “the most consistent thing” in her life. “ rough good times and bad, moving my body has kept me mentally grounded,” she explains. Before she won her spot at Peloton, Frankson was a personal trainer, modelled for major sports brands and trained as a competitive triple jumper. ese days, she continues to do sportswear modelling and leads some of Peloton’s most popular spin classes.
Coat, £2,150, Esaú Yori. Top, £230, and trousers, £328, both A-Jane. Boots, £750, Casablanca. Karine Armchair in Midtone Oak, Grey Blue Velvet, £995, Soho Home
Edward Watson has played many iconic roles for the Royal Ballet, from Lewis Carroll/ e White Rabbit in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland to Leontes in e Winter’s Tale. Watson describes his 27-year career in dance as one of “blood, sweat and tears. It’s been a lifetime of hanging in there and picking myself up.” A er celebrating his final performance as principal dancer with the company back in 2021, he now spends his time coaching and mentoring emerging talent as the Royal Ballet’s répétiteur.
Jacket, £725, trousers, £505, and trainers, £295, all Ami. eodore Armchair in Boucle, £995, Soho Home
Sharon June began her career dancing on popular children’s television shows in her home country of the Netherlands. As a teen, she auditioned devotedly, sometimes spending up to 18 hours on a coach to travel across Europe. “Movement has always been my therapy,” she says. “It helps me to express myself.”
Her persistence paid o , and in 2012 she booked a job dancing for Taylor Swi . A decade later, she has just finished a year touring the world as Dua Lipa’s dance captain.
Jumper, £1,800, and trousers, £1,900, both Louis Vui on. Boots, £170, Steve Madden. Horton Armchair in Chestnut Leather, £2,995, Soho HomeEllie’s love of dance dates back to when she was just three. For the next 15 years, she trained regularly and at 18 she decided to move to London to pursue a career in dance. She describes dance as the “one constant” in her life, adding, “[It] focuses my mind and body and allows me to feel both present and completely free.” On the horizon comes filming for a major new film and a European tour with a big-name musician – watch this space.
Jumpsuit, £550, Tolu Coker. Boots, £750, Casablanca. Molina Upholstered Armchairs in Velvet Mustard, £1,995 each, Soho Home
Hailing from north-east London, Nash is a movement director, choreographer and menswear designer specialising in luxury sportswear.
“Movement has always been healing for me,” he explains. “It li s me up to a euphoric place.” rough his designs, Nash tells personal stories of the cultural and societal landscape he grew up in. Each of his collections a empt to challenge limiting ideas around masculinity – while allowing for full creative expression through movement, of course.
When Richard Browning – inventor, ultramarathon runner and now best known as the “real-life Iron Man” – bought a jet engine in 2016, it was more out of curiosity rather than with any grand plan in mind. He was an oil trader at the time, working for BP, but his father (an inventor) and grandfathers (both pilots) had instilled in him a taste for the extraordinary.
He ordered it o the internet, paid £2,500 and a small, kerosene-fuelled micro gas turbine, just over a foot in length, 1.9kg in weight (essentially a shrunken plane engine), arrived a few days later. is type was mostly used by model plane enthusiasts. However, Browning knew that advances in these engines had been huge, thanks to them being unencumbered by the regulations applied to their larger counterparts. He calculated that, together, six or so engines could do what had never been done in any practical way before – they could allow someone to fly.
In his garage, the 44-year-old strapped the engine to his arm, fed a fuel pipe into a bucket and turned it on. It cleared the room and sent a 100kg washing machine flying. Yet the force itself – 20kg of thrust, like leaning on a table – was entirely manageable. He realised: it could work.
Seven years and countless iterations and bruises later, his “jet suit” has made that age-old lament – wewere promised jetpacks – a reality. One pack, made up of three jets, is worn on the back for stability, while two on each arm control the direction, allowing the wearer to fly like a superhero. Browning demonstrates, arms straight to his side: there is a roar, then, suddenly, he’s in the sky.
e obvious question that arises is: what can it actually be used for? Browning’s jet suit may be more practical than jetpacks of the past – ones that simply
shot you skywards like a human firework – but with a total flying time of around seven minutes, you’re not about to be using one for your morning commute. e main use, Browning tells me from the workshop in his garden in Salisbury, England – which remains Gravity Industries’ de facto HQ – is for the military. Specifically, the special forces, where stealth and speed is key. With a record speed of 85mph (“it wants to go 200” – but, Browning says, the air pressure at that point starts to crush your neck back into your shoulders), you could easily cover eight miles in that time. “It doesn’t look real, but you can get in out of nowhere, perform a task and get yourself back out again, going over minefields, rivers, lakes, accessing buildings, whatever,” he explains.
According to Browning, the Gravity team is “working with six different special forces around the world. We’ve got Tier 1 US special forces involved.” In February, eight special forces soldiers from a “friendly European nation” travelled over to train with the suits, with a view to using them in operations by the end of the year. Meanwhile, “the biggest allied marine group”, Browning
Photography: Tom Jackson/ e Times/News Licensing…and all expectations. Richard Browning’s jet suit – which will be on display at the Soho Summit –may have started out as something of a gimmick, but it’s on the cusp of making serious military manoeuvres and could soon be saving livesSOHO SUMMIT
says, “has talked at a very senior level of this being the revolution it needs”. He thinks he is two or three years away from the first military contract, which would surely start in the tens of millions of pounds and go from there.
One concern from the military, he adds, was that using both arms to fly le soldiers vulnerable and unable to fire weapons. So Browning developed a shoulder-mounted, “helmet-steered” weapon system that tracks your head movement and aims accordingly. You shoot via a bite-trigger. e patent is currently pending.
After seeing videos of his jet suit, which invariably go viral, other industries started to get in touch. ere was interest in the medical uses. A jet suit can only propel one person into the air, so the wearer couldn’t fly someone to hospital, but it could allow a trained professional to reach them within moments and get their heart started. e team plans to fly up Ben Nevis in Scotland at some point to show how the suit could be used in mountaineering emergencies.
For now, Gravity Industries, which has a full-time sta of five, makes most of its income from entertainment. Punters
can book a half-day Flight Experience (£2,200 plus VAT), in which you get three “flights” but are safely tethered so you can’t dri o . You can also sign up for Flight Training (£6,600 plus VAT), which is a course of eight to 12 flights.
Browning and his team, meanwhile, routinely charge six figures for literal flying visits, livening up the celebrations and birthdays of the rich and famous. He was once hired to fly around at Je Bezos’s garden party (“Jeff loved it. I keep in touch with him. His girlfriend wants to learn to fly at some point”). Even the Kardashians booked a fly-by, but he “le that to someone else”. To transport a jet suit abroad, he says, it is taken apart and packed into large suitcases to be checked in. He often takes the jet engines on as hand luggage, which he says causes great consternation at security. “When you say that it’s a jet engine, you can see them thinking, This can’t be allowed. But it’s not on their list next to lighters and knives.” Browning still has plans for a “Gravity race series”, which was originally cancelled just as Covid struck and will see flyers compete in tracks over water. “It looks like a Marvel episode,” he says. And the jet suit is about to come full circle. For an invention that looks too Hollywood to be real – Is that guy, you think when you first see it, flying with his arms? – Hollywood has come calling. Tom Cruise got a demo, albeit a safe one (“ ey put him in an armour-plated box because they were worried about me killing Tom Cruise”). Its debut will be in an action blockbuster he won’t mention, except to say, “It’s not Bond or Mission Impossible, but a big film has used it.”
Back in the UK, Gravity Industries has mostly shunned startup funding, choosing instead to pay its own way via what Browning thinks of as the entertainment division. But a new major r ound of funding, he says, will soon see the company moving to a much bigger multimillion-pound dedicated facility, which will house both training and testing. It does sound, let’s face it, more than a li le Tony Stark…
“I mean there’s definitely no point in fighting it. I can’t deny, I liked the first Iron Man film…”
Golden Globe nominee and Soho Summit speaker Emma D’Arcy on the life-changing role that brought them to the a ention of a global audience
Stepping into the Game of Thrones universe – arguably this century’s biggest entertainment phenomena –was a risky business for the cast of its prequel series House of the Dragon. But British actor Emma D’Arcy is up for taking risks. “ e whole cast was aware that we were borrowing treasured possessions when we took on the roles, and that takes trust,” says D’Arcy, who plays Princess Rhaenyra Targaryen, one of the central players (and most fascinating characters) fighting for power in the fantasy world of Westeros. “As a newcomer to the universe, I felt very moved to be so kindly welcomed.”
Since House of the Dragon aired last summer (production on season two is imminent) the 30-year-old has established themself (D’Arcy is non-binary and uses the pronouns they/them) as one of the most exciting new actors working right now. And thanks to the global promo juggernaut behind the show, D’Arcy is an exciting red carpet presence whose avant garde looks are a much-needed breath of fresh air.
On screen as Rhaenyra – whose claim to the throne is disputed mainly because she is a woman – D’Arcy has a quiet ferocity and mesmerising power, which makes them shine among an impressive cast. eir co-stars include Ma Smith, Paddy Considine and Olivia Cooke, who play Rhaenyra’s uncle/lover, her father and her BFF-turned-stepmother-turnednemesis respectively. It’s complicated.
“ I think what is interesting about Rhaenyra, and I hope very relevant, is that she presents an opportunity for an audience to watch a woman navigate a patriarchal system,” says D’Arcy. “She
has a clear insight into how that system operates against her. But, ironically, that kind of insigh ul thinking does nothing to remove the systemic obstacles.”
Bookending D’Arcy’s Golden Globenominated performance in season one are two very visceral birth scenes, which caused more consternation for their brutality than the beheadings and other bloody acts of violence that li er the series. D’Arcy drew on poet and literary critic Maggie Nelson’s eArgonauts for those scenes: “She calls [birth] a ‘going to pieces’ of sorts, of both the psyche and the body.” Anyone who has watched those scenes, heart in mouth, will know how powerfully D’Arcy conveyed this.
D’Arcy came from a predominantly theatrical background (having studied at Ruskin School of Art, they went into set design before moving into acting and
unique and unexpected. ey’re o en devised with stylist Rose Forde: “We have a lovely conversation about what character, what persona would feel most freeing. I have an extraordinary capacity for awkwardness, so it really is a case of finding what will be the most releasing.”
With a spotlight shone on D’Arcy’s considerable talents, other projects must be beckoning. “I have a fairly good barometer for bad writing. I want to be thrilled by what is on the page,” they say. But having been joint artistic director for a theatre company, working behind
directing) and had previously made some appearances on TV (in Amazon’s Truthseekers and as Toni Cole e’s daughter in BBC’s Wanderlust), but nothing near the scale of HouseoftheDragon. Being in the public eye “is hard to prepare for”. For instance, who could have guessed that a clip of D’Arcy sharing their favourite drink, a negroni sbagliato, would go viral, causing a surge in online searches for the recipe? “I like to be prepared for any event, but [fame is] one you have to just muddle through as you go along.”
A ending the Golden Globes “felt like such a foreign environment. It’s a bit like being a child taken to a party by a parent and suddenly rubbing shoulders with adults you don’t know.” eir approach to red carpet events has been to create characters through fashion, playing with experimental make-up and theatrical silhoue es. ink: a voluminous Vetements suit with pla orm Balenciaga crocs. Or head-to-toe Alexander McQueen biker leathers. And for the Globes: blue hair, an Acne Studios tuxedo with exaggerated lapels, a skirt over the trousers and studded boots.
Aside from what is becoming D’Arcy’s signature accessory – a statement glove – each red-carpet appearance is
the camera could be on the cards, too. “I don’t know if it’s writing or directing, but I know that I have to spend some time sort-of in charge. Being in charge and being incredibly stressed makes the moments where you’re not in charge, and crises are not your problem, feel like miracles. So they serve one another. I definitely require both sides of the coin.”
Seeing what D’Arcy is able to achieve in any arena – from subverting style expectations to bringing nuance to a blockbuster franchise – you can be sure the next step in their creative journey will be nothing less than extraordinary.
I have a fairly good barometer for bad writing. I want to be thrilled by what is on the page”Below: D’Arcy with co-star Ma Smith in House of the Dragon By Ajesh Patalay
Photography by Stephan Glathe
Internationally renowned artist Yinka Ilori is set to reveal his outdoor installation at Soho Farmhouse as part of Soho Visionaries, powered by Porsche. Here, he shares how a recent visit to the German car marque’s headquarters in Stu gart inspired the creation
ou can expect a few eyebrows to be raised when BritishNigerian designer Yinka Ilori unveils his latest outdoor sculpture at Soho Farmhouse later this year, as part of the Soho Visionaries series powered by Porsche. e 36-year-old Londoner recently shared what he had in mind with a few of his closest friends. “Wow!” and “Really?” were their responses. “
ey were really surprised,” Ilori confirms from his studio in west London. “But that is the reaction I want.”
e reason for their surprise is simple. e work represents a major departure for Ilori, who over the last 10 years has earned a reputation for being an exuberant and playful colourist. One newspaper profile likened him to Willy Wonka from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, a book that happens to be an obsession of his, along with Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland Among his many projects, Ilori is perhaps best known for ‘ e Colour Palace’ (2019), a 10m-high temporary pavilion on the lawn outside Dulwich Picture Gallery, London, which boasted a multi-hued façade inspired by the vibrant fabrics found in markets in Lagos and nearby Peckham (AKA “Li le Lagos”).
Ilori was also responsible for the colourful ‘Be er Days Are Coming I Promise’ mural (2020) on Blackfriars Road, London, intended as a message of hope for key workers during the pandemic; he transformed an underpass in Ba ersea into the kaleidoscopic ‘Happy Street’ (2019); and installed the pop-tastic ‘Laundere e of Dreams’ (2021) in east London, incorporating hopscotch on the floor, vending machines, slides and more than 200,000 bricks of Lego. An ongoing exhibition at London’s Design Museum dedicated to his work is a gleeful explosion of colour. at graphic pale e carries through to his wardrobe, too. Today, he is sporting a bright orange cap and fuchsia pink hoodie that match the technicolour shelving unit behind him. e rest of his o ice is a similar splash of rainbow.
His latest commission for Soho Farmhouse appears to lie in stark contrast. “Yinka was a natural choice because his work is so distinctive; he really knows who he is as an artist,” says Kate Bryan, Soho House’s Global Director of Art. “ e piece will add a real point of di erence at Farmhouse while also managing to be universal in its language and message.” At first glance, the giant structure seems to be devoid of colour – its ribbed
Below: Yinka Ilori’s ‘Filtered Rays’ (2022), at Estrel Berlin. Previous spread: Yinka Ilori at the Porsche Museum in Stu gart
Photography: Linus Muellerschoen
exterior the purest, monolithic white. “Last year was very fast-paced,” says Ilori, explaining the origins of the idea. As well as installing the show at the Design Museum, he spent 2022 finalising a maze-like piece for the V&A Dundee and working on commissions for premium clients. “ e whole world was fast. is year, I wanted to step back and process my thoughts.”
In discussions with his team about mindfulness, the name Eckhart Tolle came up. Ilori picked up his 1997 bestseller e Power of Now and its teachings got him thinking about how we all stay present and in the moment. His mind went back to a childhood memory: “Going to the seaside, picking up a seashell, pu ing that to [my] ear and just being still.” As an experience, it exemplified what he was searching for – a moment when he could “really stand still and collect my thoughts and tap into Yinka”. Could that seashell be the starting point for his piece at Soho Farmhouse?
e final work, which he calls a “shell of peace”, will be a large conch-like structure split down the middle, which visitors ca n enter via a spiralling ramp. Once inside, they can take a seat and listen to a specially recorded soundscape, which may incorporate a recitation of poetry. e sculpture’s inner chamber will be a space where visitors can stop and reflect.
“I want it to be a beacon,” says Ilori, “to facilitate meditation.” Only there will visitors encounter any colour – in fact, “A kaleidoscopic array of colours that reflect mindfulness,” says Ilori of a textured interior filled with pinks, oranges, yellows and greens.
is aspect of the installation was inspired by his recent visit to the Porsche Museum in Stu gart, where this photoshoot took place. As a car enthusiast, this part of the commission was particularly fun. As well as drawing from colours used in the Porsche range, Ilori was inspired by the story of the founder’s son, Ferry Porsche. “ e reason [he built the first Porsche],” says Ilori, “was because he couldn’t find the car he wanted. He decided to design his own. He had this dream. Essentially, I think everyone would love to create something or do something based on their dreams.”
Dreaming – and the joy implicit in that - has always been central to Ilori’s work. But while his previous designs evoked dreaming and joy through splashes of colours that were writ
large for all to see, this piece references the inner dreams that nourish and sustain us, and the colour that radiates from within. “ e reason I decided to take the colours internally is because joy doesn’t have to be loud,” he says. “You don’t have to wear joy. You can experience joy inside. at is its power and the message I wanted to get out.”
Ilori cites the example of his parents. “My mum and dad came [to the UK] as immigrants,” he says. “ ey are in their sixties. And they are just starting to dream. eir dream is not to grow old and retire here. eir dream is to go back to Nigeria, build a school, a nursery, have a farm, tend chickens and goats, [plant] a cashew tree. at is joy for them. And I love that that is their dream. ey have found something that makes them happy, something they have thought about and worked hard to build up. It’s all about those internal dreams and internal joy.”
“When I started out,” he continues, “I really wanted to express my culture and my in-between heritage as British-Nigerian. I wanted to belong to something. at meant being super loud and expressive [in my designs] because the clothes [Nigerians] wear are very loud. Now I’m at a place where I don’t have to express my joy to the public. For me, it’s more about presenting the unexpected and trying to make people rethink how we look at and internalise joy.” Does he see this as a turning point for him as a designer? “A hundred percent. I think it’s just growth.”
Ilori grew up around “geezers and cockneys” on a council estate on Essex Road in north London. His father was a store manager for B&Q and his mother ran a corner shop and later worked as an events caterer. e vibrant Nigerian garments they wore to church and other social gatherings – and which he and his siblings were sometimes made to wear themselves – would be a major influence on his work.
“I remember my sister’s birthday party when she was maybe 10. I was 12 and my older brother was 14. It was held at a community hall in north London – one of those multipurpose spaces where people throw weddings and hold church meetings that has all these layers of experience and memories, which I love. Well, it was my sister’s birthday and my brother and I wore these beautiful purple and lilac traditional Nigerian ou its: a hat, trousers, a top. My brother was two years older but we dressed
“For me, it’s about presenting the unexpected and rethinking how we look at and internalise joy”
in matching clothes like twins. at is very Nigerian. And cost e ective. It also causes less arguments,” he adds, laughing.
“All my friends were in their Nike tops and Ralph Lauren trousers. I was in traditional Nigerian a ire. I didn’t get it. I was too young. But as I got older and saw the way my parents dressed – my dad in pink and other colours that maybe were considered feminine, but which he wore so well – it made me more comfortable wanting to wear traditional Nigerian clothes and fabrics. And those clothes weren’t cheap. My parents wore Swiss voile lace and jacquard weaves. ey saved up and invested their hard-earned cash into making sure they looked their best.” Trips to Nigeria only deepened his appreciation for “the richness of [Nigerian] culture and people. Everyone was wearing colour,” he recalls. “I didn’t see one person in black. It was pre y special. e energy. en sun. e smells. e noise. For me, it all made sense.”
A er high school, Ilori enrolled at London Metropolitan University to study product and furniture design. Inspired by Italian designer Martino Gamper’s project to make 100 chairs in 100 days, he started dismantling old chairs and refashioning them as new chairs with their own layered narratives. It opened his eyes to the possibility of telling stories through furniture. It led to his Parable Collection (2013), a series of upcycled chairs that referenced Nigerian parables, and his breakthrough project If Chairs Could Talk (2015), exhibited at London concept store Bluebird, which comprised a collection of multicoloured upcycled chairs inspired by boyhood friends. His embracing of colour was partly for dramatic effect. “I remember experimenting with colour and [understanding] how it could tell a story about a feeling or emotion,” he says. Being adventurous with colour was also something that came easily: “I grew up with it. It was around me every day. Going to church on a Sunday was like a rave; a celebration. I found it easy to mix colours [because I understood] there were no rules.”
In some ways, adopting a vivid colour pale e was also a cultural stamp: “When I finished university, I was like, the work I’m seeing around me doesn’t reflect Yinka and my heritage, why is that? ere was no one telling stories I could connect with,” he explains. “When I was studying, my reference points
were Picasso, Bacon, Ron Arad. I love and respect [those artists]. But you want to see yourself.” Black creatives were largely absent from the canon. ey were certainly scarce in contemporary design. He understood the British scene was crying out for an injection of colour. And why shouldn’t he be the one to administer it?
Responses to Ilori’s work over the years have been almost universally positive. His recent public commissions struck notes of a irmation that felt particularly welcome in the wake of the pandemic. Since his show at the Design Museum opened in September, he’s been receiving a daily “influx of direct messages filled with positive words”. He explains: “Everyone has taken something away from the use of colour. People want to experience joy [through colour], whether in a mural, their phone case or the clothes they are wearing.”
But not every reaction has been celebratory. When ‘ e Colour Palace’ was unveiled in Dulwich in 2019, one MP wrote a le er to the architects saying the piece would be be er suited to a Lagos shanty town. “It’s interesting to see how space and culture give people a sense of entitlement,” Ilori observes. “It gives them a sense that they own space. No one owns space. We share space. In everything I do, I try to educate people and tell stores. Dulwich is middle class and posh, which is cool. But we live in London, a multicultural city [with] di erent cultures and languages. at is why I love London. You didn’t see that diversity or cultural exchange in Dulwich. What I wanted to do [with ‘ e Colour Palace’] was bring people from Dulwich into Peckham and people from Peckham into Dulwich.”
To that extent, his use of colour has sometimes been a political act as well as a personal one. But ultimately, colour for him is a means of bringing people together, particular when you use it in your wardrobe. “ e thing I have learned about colour is that when you wear it, you open yourself up to conversations,” he says. “People want to talk to you. ey want to comment on what you are wearing. Colour makes you approachable.” e beauty of his latest shell-like installation at Soho Farmhouse is that it also celebrates colour as the language of private passion, and the stuff that all our dreams are made of.
Above and opposite: Ilori in Porsche AG’s Corporate Archives, wearing shirt, £250, Our Legacy. All other clothing, worn throughout, Ilori’s own
As she launches her fourth collection in partnership with Woolrich, the Dutch designer talks finding inspiration at the Houses and bringing her own design aesthetic to a classic American fashion label
By Teo van den Broeke Photography Juan Veloz
If Parisian fashion is all about cra ed elegance and Milanese style, full-thro le zhuzh, then Amsterdam is the cradle of easy-wearing, functional gear with a playful edge. It’s an approach embodied by Dutch designer Daniëlle Cathari, who recently unveiled her fourth collection with American outerwear label Woolrich.
“I o en take a classic item as a starting point and give my take on it, adding an unexpected element or a subtle twist on the fit or construction,” Cathari says, fresh from her shoot at Soho Warehouse in LA. “I always think of how a woman should feel. I aim to create sophisticated and timeless but also playful designs.”
The resulting capsule consists of low-key staple pieces with a subversive edge. ere’s an ultra-wearable trench coat, a bandeau top in wool bouclé and a bomber jacket embroidered with swans. Founded in Pennsylvania in 1830, Woolrich is globally renowned for producing element-tackling outerwear
and separates, and its mood a orded a contemporary edge by Cathari’s easy approach to femininity.
“If I had to pick one item in the collection, it’d be the trench coat,” says Cathari. “It’s such a timeless piece, but with subtle elements like a detachable pocket in the belt and dark green detailing, which you’ll only see when wearing the collar up. I also really like the silk and wool-blend scarves.”
Cathari’s eponymous brand focuses on “complimenting contrasts”, meaning she mixes elevated fabrics, such as silk and wool with nylon and football jersey, to create off-kilter pieces: part streetwear, part future-forward
everyday gear. She’s collaborated with Adidas (Kendall Jenner has modelled her designs) and boasts just under 100k followers on Instagram (an important measure of success in today’s social media-obsessed world).
Cathari, a Soho House member, called on her experience around the Houses as inspiration for the Woolrich capsule. “The collection embodies the elegance and calmness of being outdoors,” Cathari exudes. “ e English countryside, where Soho Farmhouse is located, is exactly what I had in mind while creating. I can’t wait to bring the collection there this spring!”
Is Farmhouse Cathari’s favourite club? “I have many! It’s always nice to have some sort of home during fashion weeks and business trips.” She laughs. “My favourite memories are meeting new, inspiring people. And late-night eating the cookies they leave in your room – they’re the best.”
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From our membership to our clubs, everything about Soho House is local, yet connected globally – a fact neatly encapsulated by this atlas (a Soho Ordnance Survey, if you will), which showcases all of our properties. e breadth of our global reach is worth bearing in mind as you start booking your spring breaks and summer holidays, as you won’t find be er than our Houses with bedrooms. Here are the ones to book, for every kind of trip.
In a turreted building dating back to 1883, just a pita’s throw from the shores of the Mediterranean, our Israeli House is the perfect bolthole to bask in lowkey sublimity among the most beautiful people in the world. Ah.
What to wear: Pack a piece from the late Israeli designer Alber Elbaz’s brand AZ Factory – a ribbed-knit beach dress, perhaps? What to eat: Challah French toast with fresh fruit for breakfast, fa oush salad for a light lunch and taboon fish for dinner. What to read: e Seven Good Years: A Memoir by Etgar Keret reflects on the idiosyncrasies of life in Tel Aviv. Why you won’t want to leave: e sta are among the most welcoming in the world – ask for Moran, our radiant GM.
e bedrooms at Soho House Tel Aviv, Ja a feature parquet flooring and Bauhausinspired furniture
With beautiful architecture, a network of canals and a banging nightlife and culture scene, Amsterdam is arguably Europe’s most enchanting city – and Soho House is the only place to stay.
What to do: What’s not to see, more like. For us, it’s all about Amsterdam’s music festivals: Milkshake, Dekmantel Lowlands, North Sea Jazz and Best Kept Secret. Pride is ace, too. What to read: Packed with immaculately cra ed vigne es of the city, Amsterdam Stories by Nescio is essential reading. What to eat: Moules marinière with frites – elegant but rustic. What to wear: A cross-body mini bag (with space for your Soho House room key) by Dutch fashion natives Viktor & Rolf.
All the bars in Soho House bedrooms are stocked with the finest Barwell crystal
Nestled between downtown and South Austin, our 46-bedroom base in Texas is the perfect spot to discover the delights of the o icial “live music capital of the world”.
What to do: A trip to SXSW Festival is essential – as are our a erparties – but you’ll need to wait until 2024 for the next one. What to read: On-the-road novel Under the Same Stars by Tim Lo is a love le er to the Texan capital.
What to wear: Some sexed-up uber-specs from Austin’s most famous fashionable son, Tom Ford.
Why you won’t want to leave: Because you’ll always leave feeling warm and sonically sustained, whenever you visit.
Every Soho House bed features a ma ress by Hypnos – a brand that holds a Royal Warrant for supplying to British Royal Family
Above: e roo op of Soho House Austin features a pool area along with a restaurant Photography: Chase Daniel, Giulia Venanzi, Mark Anthony Foxe Italian capital is so much more than the sum of its parts (though its parts – unimpeachable pasta, awesome architecture, fine art, delicious wine – are pre y near perfect) and Soho House Rome makes the ideal San Lorenzo base.
What to see: Grab one of the electric scooters that line the streets and start your sightseeing journey with the Trevi fountain. Or hang out at the Soho House spa – one of our best. What to read: Mary Beard’s SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome to learn more about the history beneath your feet.
What to eat: Indulge in Cecconi’s signature spaghe i lobster on the roof terrace, which is do ed with lemon trees.
Our spot in Mumbai is a jewel in the Soho House crown: delicious food, great events and the team is as warm as the breeze o the Arabian Sea. Oh, and the rooms. e rooms
What to do: Walk down Colaba Causeway for a beer at Cafe Mondegar, admiring the murals by cartoonist Mario Miranda.
What to read: Salman Rushdie’s e Moor’s Last Sigh is an elegantly-wri en paean to old Mumbai.
What to eat: Yellow chili paneer tikka, tandoori seafood and flame-grilled meatballs from the House Kitchen.
What to wear: Be ready for all the action with some freshly dropped sneakers from streetwear mecca Jaywalking.
Above: e 11-storey Soho House Mumbai sits right on Juhu Beach
Le : Alongside House classics at Cecconi’s and Pen Yen, the food served in the Club is inspired by local Indian flavours
e views of Juhu Beach from the rooms at Soho House Mumbai are second to none
Photography: Ashish Sahi, Simon Brown, Markus Mainz, Mark Seelen.
Illustrations: Leo Goddard
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When it comes to socialising, few cities facilitate it be er than Berlin. Whether you opt for an LGBTQIA+ crawl on Nollendorfplatz or a round of cocktails at our Club Bar, be sure to make time to soak up the abundant culture the city has to o er.
What to do: Our Berlin spa comes complete with a hammam, and be sure to check out the many galleries, such as C/O and the freshly renovated Neue Nationalgalerie.
What to read: Christopher Isherwood’s Goodbye to Berlin –the novel on which Cabaret is based.
What to eat: Veal schnitzel with potato cucumber salad and cranberry sauce, for a Soho House take on local favourites. Why you won’t want to leave: Did we mention the hammam?
In this self-portrait, Marcus Maddox juxtaposes two roles against each other: the artist and the si er. We witness the careful mechanism by which he captures himself – the camera on the tripod through the mirror – but he has equally been painstaking in the formal presentation: the way the light falls on one side; the stark contrast of the tones; the body language occupying space in an original way without feeling forced. Part of a series entitled Figures of Color, it continues Maddox’s interest in the way that Black bodies have been presented in art history. Ultimately, it’s a photograph that makes us think of great historic painting – the artist cites Jon Key and Alex Gardner as inspirations for his work. Born in Nashville in 1994, Marcus Maddox now lives and works in New York City.
Explore the art in all our Houses
