Culture

Fall 2025 Bags: Textures, Shapes, Desires
Fall 2025 Bags: Textures, Shapes, Desires

In Fall 2025, fabrics and finishes are key. Quilted leather is making a comeback, but in softer, slightly puffed versions. Many bags mix it up: smooth leather, grained leather, croc effects, fuzzy finishes, or even touches of bouclé wool and knit details. This variety makes each bag a pleasure to carry, soft or textured depending on the ...

Information: A Fundamental Right in the Digital Age
Word of the weekInformation: A Fundamental Right in the Digital Age

On September 28, 2025, the International Day for Universal Access to Information (IDUAI) celebrates its tenth anniversary, proclaimed by UNESCO. This year, UNESCO and the Philippine government are hosting a global conference in Manila on September 29–30, under the theme “Ensuring Access to Environmental Information in the Digital Age.” The ...

Paris Fashion Week to Open With Bold Industry Transformations Ahead
Paris Fashion Week to Open With Bold Industry Transformations Ahead

Paris Fashion Week kicks off on Monday with a dozen new faces set to make their debuts at major labels, including Matthieu Blazy at Chanel. Reflecting an unprecedented shake-up of creative directors, the Spring-Summer 2026 season will showcase the renewal of the top ranks of the global luxury clothing industry on a scale rarely seen. The sector, ...

Bottega Veneta Debuts Soft Functional Style at Milan Show
Bottega Veneta Debuts Soft Functional Style at Milan Show

British designer Louise Trotter showed her debut collection for Bottega Veneta in Milan Saturday with a collection focused on "soft functionality", with structured clothes in supple, draped fabrics. In front of an audience that included actresses Uma Thurman and Julianne Moore, the models wore leather coats and suits with wide shoulders as well ...

Cinema Hits the Runway
SpotlightCinema Hits the Runway

Fashion and cinema have long shared a mutual fascination, but during Milan Fashion Week in September 2025, the dialogue reached a new level. Gucci unveiled its ‘La Famiglia” collection not through a traditional runway show, but with a short film titled The Tiger, directed by Spike Jonze and Halina Reijn, starring Demi Moore, Julia Garner and ...

Georges Khabbaz Shines at the Hamburg International Film Festival
Georges Khabbaz Shines at the Hamburg International Film Festival

Lebanese actor and playwright Georges Khabbaz is taking part in the 32nd edition of the Hamburg International Film Festival in Germany with two major films in which he plays leading roles. The first, A Thousand Secrets, a Thousand Dangers, directed by Oscar-nominated Canadian filmmaker Philippe Falardeau, was chosen as the festival’s opening ...

Italian Luxury Faces Turmoil as Armani Era Closes
Italian Luxury Faces Turmoil as Armani Era Closes

The first Milan Fashion Week without Giorgio Armani marks the end of an era in Italian luxury, at a time when houses across the sector are already in transition. After defending his independence throughout his life, the legendary designer, who died this month aged 91, entrusted his heirs with the task of selling his group. He cited French ...

Ivory Coast Launches Major Art Space in Historic Coastal Town
Ivory Coast Launches Major Art Space in Historic Coastal Town

A new contemporary art museum has opened in Ivory Coast's UNESCO-listed beachside town of Grand-Bassam in a building that is a remnant of its colonial past. Twenty-eight artists from nine African countries feature in the inaugural exhibition of paintings, sculpture, photography and design at La Maison de l'art (The House of Art). The former post ...

Patrick Watson’s ‘Uh Oh’: A Soundtrack to Unsettled Times
Patrick Watson’s ‘Uh Oh’: A Soundtrack to Unsettled Times

Top-streaming Canadian singer Patrick Watson says he called his new album Uh Oh, which released Friday, to capture the sense of fatalistic doom felt by many people when they wake up and read the news. The bilingual 45-year-old multi-instrumentalist, whose ballad Je te laisserai des mots is the most-streamed francophone title ever on Spotify, said ...

When Fashion Brings Masterpieces Back to Life
SpotlightWhen Fashion Brings Masterpieces Back to Life

Fashion Week is no longer merely a stage for new silhouettes. It has become a platform where art and clothing engage in a dynamic dialogue, each collection telling its own story. Every season, on the runways of Paris, Milan, London and New York, artistic references abound. Fashion draws from the great masters, summons icons of painting, sculpture ...

From Survival to Revival: The World’s Last Beetling Mill Eyes a Bright Future
From Survival to Revival: The World’s Last Beetling Mill Eyes a Bright Future

The noise is deafening and the work can be lonely, but to William Smyth, who toils in the world's last commercial linen "beetling" mill, his job is unique. "There's nothing modern about it, I'm doing the same now as they were doing 100 years and more ago," said Smyth, 59, at the mill in Northern Ireland in a village some 45 miles (70 kilometers) ...

Pop Art Brings Royal Tradition to Life in Luxembourg
Pop Art Brings Royal Tradition to Life in Luxembourg

As Luxembourg awaits the coronation of a new Grand Duke, local artist Jacques Schneider is planning to jazz up the occasion with a splash of pop art. A set of new "monarchical" paintings are among the works on show at a retrospective on Schneider's 20 years in the art industry that opened on Thursday in Berchem, a small town in the south of the ...