The boat at night
A pair of heavy loafers led me back to Sea Scouts, hardy cloth and the sound of water against a small sailing boat under a sky full of stars.
June 2026Colour after the fire
Rotterdam rebuilt its centre with art in the streets. I knew Jan Gat and Gabo's steel construction long before I knew their names; the city taught me to look before I knew I was learning.
May 2026Company without an appointment
An Italian piazza makes ordinary company easy. London has plenty of places to linger; I wanted to understand how people make one of them part of a social life.
May 2026Speed-running taste
Over sixteen months, I taught myself to read cloth, colour, fit and proportion, then turned those judgments into a wardrobe that works.
May 2026From Winnie-the-Pooh to CoBrA
The design began with books I loved, crossed into Scandinavian modernism, and eventually showed me how much of Rotterdam I had carried into it.
February 2026Britain's usable war
I'm Dutch; my war begins with family absences and a city centre bombed flat. That makes Britain's heroic version difficult to share.
February 2026England's class problem is bigger than its aristocracy
England depends on people coming here to work, while housing scarcity and accumulated ownership make an ordinary settled life increasingly difficult to afford.