STYLE’S SOFT POWER

by Teo van den Broeke

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, travelled the world attending fashion shows and product launches; a working rhythm which meant 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 would return to time and again. The brushed cotton navy grandad shirt 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! 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 of being young and buying something beautiful you can’t a ord (but absolutely need to own). Eventually, 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 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 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 sits 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 you care about matters. Wearing clothes for the approval of others is, well, bollocks. But then, as say, you don’t need me to tell you that.

Teo van den Broeke is the Editorial Director at Soho House and a member of Soho House 40 Greek Street 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 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.

London & Somerset, UK

A Better Splash

by Jessica Burrell

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

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 it 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. 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 Braddock

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 Braddock is a writer and psychotherapist based in London