Lake Verea

Elujay Musician, Los Angeles

Singer-songwriter Elujay makes R&B and soul with a lo-fi, indie sensibility. Tracks such as Ratrace and Farewell from his 2022 album Circmvt are light and groovy, while the arrangements are dreamy and expansive. Throughout the album, Elujay – whose voice is as soft as a cool breeze on a hot day – sings sweetly about the di icult things: capitalism, addiction, poverty, mental health, and ultimately, redemption through art and music. e melancholy tinged album charts the 25-year-old’s journey from breakdown to recovery (with a li le help from psychedelics) during the two years he spent working on the album.

Ilana Savdie Artist, New York Member, Soho House New York

Painter Illana Savdie bombards the eye with a cacophony of fluorescent colours and textures to depict extreme abstractions of the human form. Noses, eyes and the odd hand can be discerned within the mad riot of carnivalesque colour she swirls and swooshes all over the canvas, which can be seen with Untitled (2022), her piece on show at e Ned NoMad in New York. Savdie, who studied at the Rhode Island School of Design and at the Yale School of Art, is o en inspired by the scenes she witnessed as a child growing up in Barranquilla, Colombia, including the annual carnival it hosts each year.

Sara

Artist, London

Nominated by Disney

Shakeel is a former dental student-turned-award-winning artist and Instagram sensation (she has 1 million followers). e Pakistani-raised, London-based artist has no formal training, yet is renowned for her digital collages that incorporate handembellished crystals. These images came to life in 2019, when Browns collaborated with the artist on a range of gli ering merchandise. “My art is either a story I want to live for myself, something have witnessed, or a life want to give to others,’ she says. “I like to think I’m leaving behind a small piece of my heart and soul in everything create. Its sole purpose is to spark joy.”

Bella Bruzzese

Designer, Sydney

Nominated by Disney

Miranda Forrester

Artist, London Member, 180 House

Formed in 2005, Mexican art duo, Lake Verea – also known as Francisca Rivero-Lake Cortina and Carla Verea Hernández – create photographic art that experiments with the technical aspects of analogue photography using different papers, chemicals, film and a variety of cameras (some dating back to the 1800s), plus other mediums, including sculpture, textiles and performance. ese experiments lead us to see even familiar and iconic subjects in a totally new light.

The series for which they are best known, Paparazza Moderna (pictured), consists of photographs of renowned modernist buildings by architects such as Walter Gropius, Marcel Breuer, Richard Neutra, Rudolf M. Schindler, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Philip Johnson, taken between 2011–2018.

Instead of the formal, sombre and picture-perfect portraiture, which is the convention for this kind of photography, the duo approached their subjects with the immediacy of paparazzi catching a quick glimpse of a celebrity. ey came up with the idea for this candid approach while in Guatemala in 2009, photographing the works of Carlos Mérida for the exhibition Incidents of Travel. The duo found that a mural by Mérida was hidden behind the fence of a privately owned house, and so decided to jump on top of a nearby car and photograph it from above the fence. When applied to modernist architecture, this audacious method allows us to see these iconic buildings in a new light.

Instead of the clean lines and sleek perfection of the popular imagination, we also see the myriad ways in which the buildings have aged over the years: cracked windows, water-damaged rooms, overgrown foliage creeping up against windows and walls and the aged patina of once-smooth surfaces.

In short, the buildings become what Lake Verea call “living beings”, full of character and personality. e “paparazzi” approach means we never see the buildings in their full, panoramic glory – rather in snatched glimpses. is brings a new intimacy to these symbols of untouchable modernity. e duo shows us the flaws of modernism, as well as the ideals.

Lake Verea’s work has been exhibited widely in Europe and Latin America and they have won several photographic awards, including the BJP International Photography Award in 2007 and the Residence New Roots Foundation in 2019. It is also in the permanent collections of the Jumex Collection, the Rufino Museum of Contemporary Art and the Estanquillo Museum in Mexico, plus the Barragán Foundation in Switzerland, the Catherine Petitgas Collection in the UK – and, of course, at Soho House Mexico City.

Based in Sydney, Australia, and with a background in fine art and fashion, Bruzzese has created print and textile designs for international pop icons such as Katy Perry, Sam Smith and Cardi B. She launched her artist-inresidency print collaboration with the Australian brand Sass & Bide in 2022 and was included in the Artist Profile booth curated by 3:33 Art Projects for the 2022 Sydney Contemporary Art Fair. Bruzzese has also recently had her work displayed internationally at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival and the OnePlus music festival in Mumbai.

Miranda Forrester’s art explores the queer Black feminist gaze and questions the historical conventions of male artists who paint the female form – she depicts the hidden complexities and nuances of femininity and sexuality. Forrester, who won Breakthrough Artist at last year’s Soho House Awards, lives and works in London and studied Fine Art Painting at the University of Brighton. It’s fi ing, then, that she created art for Soho Houses in both cities – painting the ceiling of Li le House Balham and a textile design for Brighton Beach House.

Hoyeon Jung became famous practically overnight a er her breakout performance in Squid Game the surprise South Korean smash hit Ne lix series that no one saw coming during the thick of the pandemic. Jung, who had never acted before the series, is now a globally indemand superstar working with some of cinema’s most celebrated auteurs, including Alfonso Cuarón in the forthcoming Apple TV+ series Disclaimer starring Cate Blanche , in which Jung will perform her first scenes in English. She’s also appeared in e Weeknd’s Out of Time video and has a part in upcoming film e Governesses directed by Joe Talbot.

CEO, Copenhagen Member, Soho House Copenhagen e CEO of Copenhagen Fashion Week cannily pivoted the event, known for Scandi-chic labels like Ganni, into a world leader in sustainability. In 2020, she launched Reinventing Copenhagen Fashion Week, a threeyear action plan for sustainability standards, which included a ban of single-use plastics. Today, every brand that wishes to show at Copenhagen Fashion Week must adhere to the requirements laid out in the plan. It’s all in a day’s work for orsmark, who was previously communications director of the Global Fashion Agenda, a group that focuses on sustainability in fashion.

Sofiane Pamart

Pianist, Paris Member, Soho House Paris

Pamart was trained in classical piano at the elite Conservatoire de Lille, where he was a gold medallist. He made his career breakthrough in the French rap scene, becoming the go-to pianist. In 2019, two singles he had worked on were certified gold: Matin by Koba LaD featuring Maes and Journal perso II by Vald. Pamart brought a new audience to the conservative world of classical piano. His performances have an otherworldly quality ,which is clearly influenced by Claude Debussy, Erik Satie and Philip Glass, and he regularly sells out solo concerts worldwide.

Priya Ahluwalia

Fashion designer, London

Member, White City House

Nominated by Disney e designer has won a host of accolades for her label Ahluwalia, from the 2020 LVMH Prize to the 2021 Queen Elizabeth II award for British Design – plus, she was named Leader of Change at the 2022 Fashion Awards.

Her creativity doesn’t stop there.

Ahluwalia – whose studio is based at 180 Strand – has turned her talents to filmmaking, and is signed as a director with Ridley Sco ’s Black Dog agency. She has also released two books: Sweet Lassi, which focuses on overconsumption in the clothing industry, and Jalebi, exploring what it means to be a young person of mixed heritage in the UK.

Nominated by Disney

Andrés Acosta Jaramillo is be er known by his stage name Gusi, the nickname his mother gave him as a child. It was during his youth that the Colombian star fell in love with music, when his grandfather introduced him to the songs of the greatest troubadours. Throughout his career, Gusi has recorded as both a solo artist and, most famously, as a member of the Latin Grammy-nominated duo Gusi & Beto. In November 2022, he made his debut as a mentor on Caracol TV’s reality show LaDescarga Another fun fact: the guitar Gusi plays today is the same one his father gave to his mother when they first started dating.

Justin Hurwitz met his most famous collaborator, the director Damien Chazelle, as bandmates and Harvard freshmen before working together on 2009’s Guy and Madeleine on a Park Bench is helped to establish a creative partnership that has gone on to include major movies such as Whiplash Babylon First Man and 2016’s La La Land which won the Best Original Soundtrack Oscar and Best Original Song for City of Stars (a joint victory with co-writers Benj Pasek and Justin Paul). e friends have now worked on a total of five feature films, with Chazelle stating that he doesn’t shoot until he has some music from Hurwitz to work with.

Designer, Zurich

Member, Cities Without Houses

Operating at the “epicentre of anti-fashion”, Swiss designer Yannik Zamboni, is on a mission to shake up the industry. The former model and marketing executive received US$1 million after winning Season 3 of the Amazon Prime fashion talent show Making the Cut to fund his brand Maison Blanche. Established in 2020, the label specialises in deconstructed designs and has been swi ly followed by Rare/Self – a co-branded line with Amazon Fashion designed to bring an “avant-garde fashion perspective to an assortment of wardrobe essentials that can be worn every day, anywhere and by anybody.”

In a world dominated by digital photography, the Iranianborn American artist Sheree Hovsepian works with filmbased cameras, light-sensitive papers, natural materials such as wood and ceramic, and images of her own body to create sensual analogue artworks. Hovsepian’s photographs – which are on display at our Houses in New York and Chicago – remind us of the power of the real thing. In 2022 she had a room dedicated to her work at the 59th Venice Biennale – a festival which has traditionally been the domain of male artists.

Born in Osaka in 1987, Verdy moved to Tokyo in 2012 to join the esteemed illustration and graphic design group, VK Design Works. A graduate of the Tokyo street scene, today he is arguably best known for his pioneering projects Girls Don’t Cry and Wasted Youth.

How do you set yourself up for a productive day of work?

I start my day really early, drinking lots of water and spending time with my daughter. My process is very intuitive, so I design based on my emotions. I enjoy working in a silent environment – I don’t really like to set a schedule for my design work.

What piece are you proudest of and why?

I’m proud of all my projects and love them all for many different reasons, whether they are big or small. ey’ve helped me accomplish many di erent things and have brought me to where I am today. But Wasted Youth is special because it’s the first project where I began designing for myself.

Where do you go when you need to feel inspired?

I don’t seek specific places, listen to music or watch movies just for the sake of ge ing inspired. I just find inspiration in my everyday life.

Who are your creative heroes?

I have many heroes that draw inspiration from, but the ones that have inspired me the most are Raymond Pe ibon, Nigo and Mickey Mouse!

What book, film or a piece of art has had such an impact on you that it’s a source of constant inspiration?

Fucked Up + Photocopied: Instant Art of the Punk Rock Movement by Bryan Ray Turco e and Christopher T Miller is my favourite book. It’s a compilation about American punk show flyers from the 1970s and 1980s, which I o en refer to for inspiration.

What city do you find the most inspiring and why?

Los Angeles, because it has a whole generation of people who are influenced by Japanese Harajuku culture. It also reminds me how lucky am to have grown up around that culture. When was starting o , I wasn’t well received in Japan but the people of LA have always supported and encouraged me.

Whose feedback do you trust the most?

I trust my wife’s feedback the most. She’s always by my side and understands me the best and can judge things objectively.

What’s your trick to overcoming a creative dry spell?

Nothing, I don’t force it. I just wait for it to pass because I know that I can’t create good work with that mindset. So I only design and draw when I genuinely feel like doing it.

What do you do to escape or unwind?

I like to watch yoga videos for beginners on YouTube. Eventually, I’d like to try Pilates but I don’t have the courage or time right now!

Fryd Frydendahl is a fine art photographer who takes candid, pared back-portraits of young people – usually friends and relatives, but also of strangers and famous people – in a way that brings us emotionally closer to the subject. A sense of intimacy, tenderness and vulnerability pervades Frydendahl’s portraiture – a range of which can be seen throughout our House in Copenhagen. Her work often feels like documentary photographs, but is in fact often staged to create that effect – as seen with the Danish photographer’s new book, Salad Days

Chelsea Sco -Blackhall’s label Dzojchen (pronounced “doh-jen”) started out as a denim specialist brand before restructuring to o er the kind of high-end luxury tailoring and separates. It was a bold move that paid o for the Eurasian designer, who now dresses the Hollywood A-list, including Austin Butler, Pedro Pascal and Ryan Gosling. Her slinky, shimmering, free-flowing tailoring, which incorporates jackets with kimono-style openings as a key design feature, are an elegant blend of European and Asian sensibilities.

Hailing from Atlanta, Georgia, the actor and singer Halle Bailey first found fame with her sister as one half of the duo Chloe x Halle, racking up millions of views for their YouTube videos, in which the duo would belt out astonishingly good covers of R&B and pop songs. That’s how the sisters were discovered by Beyoncé, who signed them to her label, Parkwood Entertainment, in 2015. In 2019, Bailey landed the lead role in the live-action remake of The Li le Mermaid which premiered in May this year. As the first Black Ariel, Bailey has become an inspiration to millions of children worldwide.

The self-proclaimed “Renaissance Boy” has the kind of scarcely believable multihyphenate CV that justifies the hype. He designed the set for Lady Gaga’s Enigma tour, devised and shot all of the Kardashian-West family polaroids and has produced music for Teyana Taylor and Kid Cudi. Take a deep breath – there’s more. He’s also done graphic design work for Comme des Garçons, collaborated with Kim Jones at Dior for the brand’s spring/ summer 2023 collection (pictured) and is currently designing clothes for ERL – a fashion brand the designer founded in 2018.

Graphic designer, Tokyo Nominated by Disney

Charlotte

Sco ish filmmaker, writer and director Charlo e Wells shot to fame with her 2022 cinematic debut A ersun. Set in the 1990s, the film stars Paul Mescal as Calum and Frankie Corio as his 11-year-old daughter Sophie, as they go on a package holiday together in Turkey. Based partly on Wells’ own life, the film premiered in Cannes to win a jury prize in the Critic’s Week for its finely wrought and subtle study of fatherdaughter dynamics. It won a host of accolades, including a BAFTA for Outstanding Debut by a British Writer, Director or Producer and a Directors Guild of America Award for Outstanding Directing of a First-Time Feature Film.

“I’m grateful to Soho House to have had the chance to screen my film in London,” says Wells (pictured below with Mescal and Corio), speaking of the member screenings of A ersun held across the Houses last year. “I hope to spend some time at the Houses over the summer, particularly in New York for the roo op pool,” she adds. Wells grew up in Edinburgh, Scotland. Aged 14, she stood up in class and declared that she wanted to be a film director – without really knowing what it entailed. All Wells knew was that she wanted to be involved in filmmaking a er many visits to her local Cineworld, plus lots of television at home. Contrary to the dreamy arthouse atmospherics of Aftersun, her initial tastes were distinctly mainstream – think Buffy the Vampire Slayer She studied classics at King’s College London, followed by a Master of Arts at the University of Oxford, before ending up in financial services and then running post-production agency Digital Orchard, which did a lot of film work. Wells used this experience to enrol in New York University’s joint business and film graduate programme with the intention of becoming a producer. Instead, she ended up directing three short films: Tuesday (2015), for which she was nominated for Best Writer at the BAFTA Scotland New Talent Awards; Laps (2016), which won the Special Jury Recognition at the SXSW Short Film Awards; and Blue Christmas (2017), for which Wells was nominated for the jury prize at the Sundance Film Festival. Now, aged 36 and with the ability to do pre y much anything she wants in cinema, Wells is instead playing it cool and waiting to see what her next move will be – as is the rest of the film world.

Tsellot Tesfaye Haile

Director, host and founder, Berlin

Tsellot Tesfaye Haile is a Berlin-born film and casting director, host and presenter. As a Black woman growing up in an urban environment, she always felt that nature and the great outdoors was something exclusively reserved for rich white people. It was not until her thenboyfriend took her on holiday to the German countryside that she realised how much she loved it – and how accessible it could be. In response, she founded 030 Black Canary, an outdoors club aimed specifically for Black FLINTA (female, lesbian, inter, non-binary, trans and agender people), with the aim of diversifying the image of

Lukas Gage Actor, Los Angeles Member, Holloway House

For an actor, fame and opportunity can arrive in unusual ways. Take Lukas Gage, for example. In November 2020, the actor posted a clip of an audition he’d done over Zoom, in which a director can be heard complaining about the state of Gage’s apartment. e actor may have not won that role, but the clip went viral and eventually led to him being cast in e White Lotus in which he played a key role in one of its most infamous scenes (if you know, you know).

Since then, he’s appeared in Ne lix’s You and has two films on the way later this year: Parachute and Down Low

Flo

Musicians, London

Members, Shoreditch House and 180 House

As FLO, Jorja Douglas, Stella Quaresma and Renée Downer are putting a new spin on the traditional girlband. Their signature sound evokes that of classic 1990s and 2000s R&B, with a 2023 spin. So far this year the band has collaborated with Stormzy and Missy Elliot, topped the BBC’s Sound of 2023 poll and won the BRITs Rising Star Award. Not bad, considering they haven’t yet released their debut album (but it’s coming, later this year). is summer, they took centre stage at a host of major UK events, including Wireless, Isle of White Festival and Glastonbury.

RAYE

Musician, London

Member, 180 House

Rachel Agatha Keen, better known as RAYE, initially found fame as a featured vocalist on smash hits for David Gue a and Jax Jones. e British singer has also penned tracks for the likes of John Legend and Beyoncé. But it’s since she parted ways with her label and became an independent artist in 2021 that true mainstream success has come her way. Her single Escapism topped the UK chart back in January and was her first hit on the Billboard chart in the US. Her debut album 21st Century Blues was subsequently released to huge critical fanfare, cementing her reputation as one of the most exciting artists of her generation.

Director, New York

Member, Soho House New York

Yendry

Producer, Mumbai

Member, Soho House Mumbai

Guneet Monga has made history twice at the Oscars. The first time was in 2019 for winning Best Documentary Short Film for Period. End of Sentence – the first time ever for an Indian director. is year, she won her second Oscar for e Elephant Whisperers, which follows an indigenous family as they care for two orphaned baby elephants in Tamil Nadu’s Mudumalai Tiger Reserve. e film, which celebrates the unbreakable bond between the family and the elephants, is a celebration of unconditional love – and the crowning glory of Monga’s 20-year career in film.

Paula Mendoza

Fashion designer, Colombia

Member, Cities Without Houses

Paula Mendoza designs jewellery that has been deeply influenced by her Colombian heritage, especially El Dorado and the rich colour of Colombian gold that she uses to make her pieces. She works with local artisans across South America, blending their cra smanship with her vision to create the brand’s signature ear cu s and rings with oversized orbs. ese bold sculptures can be seen adorning Beyoncé in her XO music video, which gives you an idea of the kind of confident and strong woman Mendoza envisions wearing her designs.

Artist, Mexico

Nominated by Disney

Lobeira discovered her love of art at the age of five. She began her formal education in fine art at Mexico’s University of Monterrey, and continued her studies in New York, Paris and Mexico City. Her signature style is reminiscent of magical realism: poetic, richly coloured works inspired by nature, fashion and music, all steeped in symbolism. Lobeira is a hugely successful independent artist – her resume boasts more than 25 exhibitions at galleries across Mexico, the USA and Europe, such as her recent solo show Retrouvailles at the Pinacoteca de Nuevo León in Mexico.

Musician, Italy

Nominated by Disney

Singer-songwriter Yendry Cony Fiorentino grew up between the Dominican Republic and Italy. A er a turn on the Italian X Factor earlier on in her career, Yendry finally burst onto the music scene in 2021, with notable collaborations with J Balvin, Damian Marley, Mozart La Para and Emotional Oranges. One Barack Obama also declared her track YA as one of his songs of the year in 2021. She cites her musical influences as E a James, Frank Ocean and Beyoncé, and her upcoming debut album – a marriage of meringue, salsa, R&B and electro – is already one of 2023’s most hotly anticipated releases.

Drinks, dancing and a dip in the indoor pool – everything you can expect from a night at Soho House Hong Kong, as showcased by our members