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ON REPEAT...
I’m relistening to the 2021 podcast Once Upon a Time… at Bennington College, which looks at the alumni and history of the artsy Vermont school, and the formative experiences and relationships forged there between writers Donna Tartt, Bret Easton Ellis, and Jonathan Lethem, all of whom graduated in the Clklass of '86. I’m a big Tartt fan, which probably means I should dislike the podcast for being gossipy: but I’m a sucker for feeling nostalgic for things I didn’t even experience firsthand, so it’s keeping me hooked.
ON REPEAT...
Did you see that clip of Björk DJing the Venice Biennale in a fiberglass Bottega Veneta dress and an enormous alien-empress hat by CSM graduate and Dior couture junior designer Myah Hasbany? The internet understandably focused on the look, but my ears immediately zoomed in on the soundtrack: she played “On Ur Time” by Natanya and was fully singing along. Casual.
I’ve had the song on an honestly concerning loop ever since. Natanya makes the kind of music engineered specifically for walking around at night pretending you’re in a music video. She’s already been co-signed by SZA, Tyler, The Creator, and Doechii, opened for PinkPantheress, and somehow still feels like a secret you’re meant to gatekeep (whoops). Her newer track “DON’T ASK!” is another immediate brainworm currently eating through my frontal lobe.
THE SCENE...
I work at the British Library most days and it is, in my opinion, one of the best places in London to read or write, if you can overlook the arctic temperatures that they keep in the Reading Rooms in winter, or the fact they criminally overcharge you for a cup of tea.
The Rare Books and Music Reading Room is beautiful, calm, and ideal for being motivated to work by the simple social pressure of seeing everyone else around you typing away or studying. One is not allowed to speak in the Reading Rooms – and the silence is a tonic from the constant chatter of so much else of modern life.
THE SCENE...
Hausu in Peckham is the kind of place where dinner quietly turns into 5 more drinks and suddenly it’s midnight. Right by Peckham Rye station, it’s one of those rare spots that makes you want to cancel whatever plans you had after.
Downstairs, there’s smoky Asian-influenced small plates and the sort of low lighting that makes everyone look hotter. Upstairs is the real trap: a velvet-draped listening bar pouring dangerously good cocktails while jazz and post-punk crackle through the speakers (the music is seriously good). Two salted tomato martinis in, the whole place starts to feel like a lost David Lynch location scout. Lit.
GATEKEEPING...
Cafe Cecilia in Hackney remains my favourite place to eat in my neighborhood. My favourite meal there is actually breakfast: though it's the dinner reservations that everyone seems to clamour for. Eggs, bacon, coolea, guinness bread! Divine.
GATEKEEPING...
The Wallace Collection might be my favourite place in London. Hidden behind Oxford Circus in a mansion stuffed to the brim with rococo paintings, armour, and impossibly ornate furniture, it feels totally detached from the rest of the city. Vivienne Westwood loved it too—once calling it “the greatest art school in this country,” and you can feel its influence all over her work: corsets, decadence, aristocratic chaos, the general refusal to be understated.
I love museums that still feel intimate and slightly eccentric rather than engineered for TikTok. You can drift through rooms full of Fragonard and gold filigree for hours, then end up in the courtyard café feeling like a disgraced noble avoiding all administrative duties. Love.
DOOMSCROLL GOLD...
I try and fail to spend as little time as possible on Instagram. But when I am ruining my few remaining brain cells by wasting time online, I try to at least seek out things that are cheerful and/or ridiculous. Double points for if they also require some kind of skill or obsessive commitment: dogs in elaborate outfits, tiny-knitted animals partaking in perfectly rendered miniature knitted tea parties.
Fittingly, all of this is contained within the work of Masayoshi Matsumoto (@isopresso_balloon), who crafts animals and insects from balloons. He can do a lot with very little: somehow never failing to capture the cheekiness of a monkey, the quiet dignity of a swan, the menace of a spider.
MOOD BOARD MUSE...
I am, like many others, a great fan of Anne Carson. Her recent piece on Rosalía – another hero of mine – in the London Review of Books was a delight: not a single word wasted or out of place.
She describes watching her in concert. “At her every inhalation of breath the entire audience screamed as if she were raking their individual spines with her fingernail, each spine,” Carson writes. I’m jealous of those who haven’t read it already.
ON REPEAT...
I’m relistening to the 2021 podcast Once Upon a Time… at Bennington College, which looks at the alumni and history of the artsy Vermont school, and the formative experiences and relationships forged there between writers Donna Tartt, Bret Easton Ellis, and Jonathan Lethem, all of whom graduated in the Class of '86. I’m a big Tartt fan, which probably means I should dislike the podcast for being gossipy: but I’m a sucker for feeling nostalgic for things I didn’t even experience firsthand, so it’s keeping me hooked.
THE SCENE...
I work at the British Library most days and it is, in my opinion, one of the best places in London to read or write, if you can overlook the arctic temperatures that they keep in the Reading Rooms in winter, or the fact they criminally overcharge you for a cup of tea.
The Rare Books and Music Reading Room is beautiful, calm, and ideal for being motivated to work by the simple social pressure of seeing everyone else around you typing away or studying. One is not allowed to speak in the Reading Rooms – and the silence is a tonic from the constant chatter of so much else of modern life.
GATEKEEPING...
Cafe Cecilia in Hackney remains
my favourite place to eat in my neighborhood. My favourite meal there is actually breakfast:
though it's the dinner reservations that everyone seems to clamour for. Eggs, bacon, coolea, guinness bread! Divine.
DOOMSCROLL GOLD...
I try and fail to spend as little time as possible on Instagram. But when I am ruining my few remaining brain cells
by wasting time online, I try to at least seek out things that are cheerful and/or ridiculous. Double points for if they also require some kind of skill or obsessive commitment: dogs in elaborate outfits, tiny-knitted animals partaking in perfectly rendered miniature knitted tea parties.
Fittingly, all of this is contained within the work of Masayoshi Matsumoto (@isopresso_balloon), who crafts animals and insects from balloons. He can do a lot with very little: somehow never failing to capture the cheekiness of a monkey, the quiet dignity of a swan, the menace of a spider.
MOOD BOARD MUSE...
I am, like many others, a great fan of Anne Carson. Her recent piece on Rosalía – another hero of mine – in the London Review of Books was a delight: not a single word wasted or out of place.
She describes watching her in concert. “At her every inhalation of breath the entire audience screamed as if she were raking their individual spines with her fingernail, each spine,” Carson writes. I’m jealous of those who haven’t read it already.
The Archive
INSIDE OUR WORLD
Shade Growing
To grow the leaves that will later become Matcha, layer of shape are added to the fields a month before cultivation, eventually blocking 90% of the sunlight.
1
Inside our world:
ALEX KESSLER
Discover the people behind our world.
This May, Alex shares the places, objects and obsessions currently shaping his universe.
Refining: Meat of the leaves
After cultivation, the stems, veins, and unwanted particles are removed, leaving only the purest flesh of the leaves. The leaves are now called Tencha.
3The Archive
IN OUR ORBIT
Shade Growing
To grow the leaves that will later become Matcha, layer of shape are added to the fields a month before cultivation, eventually blocking 90% of the sunlight.
1ALEX KESSLER
Discover the people behind our world.
This May, Alex shares the places, objects and obsessions currently shaping his universe.
LAURA JORDAN
This July, Laura shares the podcasts, the pictures, the people she can't stop thinking about.
Read nowALEX KESSLER
Discover the people behind our world.
This May, Alex shares the places, objects and obsessions currently shaping his universe.
LAURA JORDAN
This July, Laura shares the podcasts, the pictures, the people she can't stop thinking about.
Read now
MARTHA WARD
Martha’s August: cultural conversations, Scottish escapes, London gems and Cornish inspiration.
Read nowRefining: Meat of the leaves
After cultivation, the stems, veins, and unwanted particles are removed, leaving only the purest flesh of the leaves. The leaves are now called Tencha.
3ALEX KESSLER
Discover the people behind our world.
This May, Alex shares the places, objects and obsessions currently shaping his universe.
LAURA JORDAN
This July, Laura shares the podcasts, the pictures, the people she can't stop thinking about.
Read nowThe Archive