Unagi Club

Four magazines every creative should know.

Taste

No matter how small, no matter how hidden.

Culture

Back to old school, back to making things with our hands.

Design

Men’s shirting, feminine frills and a little Oxford education.

Taste

Instagram is wonderful, but let’s face it, most of what we see disappears in a second. We scroll, we like, we save, and then we forget.

Design

There’s nothing quite like summer in Europe. The long evenings, the warm light, and that magical golden hour when everything seems to glow.

Culture

We’re opening a little art gallery upstairs at our Beach Street shop in Penang and it’s beautiful.

Design

On Saturday, that artwork becomes a mural, painted live by Jefr at Strawberry Fields. It also becomes a small collection of objects: hand silk-screened T-shirts, bags, pillowcases, an embroidered cap and a limited series of artworks that Jeff will sign on the day.

Travel

About a month ago, I made a T-shirt with a tennis racket on it. Someone looked at it and asked, “Could you put the Twin Towers on the T-shirt?”

Culture

I’ve always loved personalisation.
We used to do it a lot at nala, and somewhere along the way, I forgot about it. More importantly, I forgot how happy it makes me.

Taste

Last Sunday, I invited fifteen of our longest-standing nala clients in Singapore for high tea at nala Great World.

Taste

One of the nicest things about moving into JAM is discovering who our neighbours are.
And then I walked into FTMD.
I love this shop.

Food

I had dinner at Towzen the other night, and as a vegetarian, this is exactly the sort of restaurant I love finding.

Culture, Events

We are opening a new nala shop: Strawberry Fields at JAM
Soft opening: Saturday, 26 September, from 10AM
Official opening: Saturday, 3 October

Design

Our picnic mats are making a comeback in a handful of prints and very limited quantities. They will not be available online.

Culture

A year ago, someone used the words blind spot to describe something I knew all too well: making the same mistakes again and again without understanding why. That was what made me join Landmark.

Taste

Some designs begin with a sketch. Others begin with a person. The Gerald Bag is one of our oldest bags, and its story goes all the way back to a contractor I worked with many years ago. His name was Gerald.

Design

There is a dress in my cupboard that I have worn for years. I reach for it when the weather is hot, pack it when I travel, and feel good the moment I put it on. That dress inspired our new Nala Muumuu Dress.

Culture

This book collection is personally chosen by my daughter, Nala, who shares the books that have caught her attention and stayed with her.

Travel

Nobody told us you could drive almost all the way to Monkey Beach, so there we were at 7.30 in the morning, carrying an entire Aloha collection through the jungle, down a rather steep path, trying desperately not to crumple the clothes.

Design

The Mid-Autumn Festival has been celebrated for more than a thousand years, traditionally on the 15th day of the eighth lunar month, when the moon is at its fullest and brightest. The round mooncake echoes the shape of the full moon and symbolises reunion, completeness and togetherness. Families gather, share mooncakes, drink tea and, my favourite part, light lanterns.

Food

We’ve been in Shanghai for almost two weeks, and I never thought I would say this, but there comes a moment when even I need a little break from dumplings. Enter Sloppy Gin.

Taste

We went to Fotografiska Shanghai with every intention of seeing the exhibitions. We still haven’t made it upstairs.

Culture

Yesterday we walked into Pillars Gallery along Suzhou Creek and were told there was a 50 yuan entrance fee.

Design

We’re printing just eight of each illustration. They’ll be available framed or unframed from our Penang store, and we can also ship them anywhere in the world.

Taste

I came across these photographs on Instagram and loved them so much that I had to share them. And I learned a new word in the process: Freakebana. A wonderfully strange, playful take on ikebana, where flowers meet fruit, vegetables and the most unexpected everyday objects.

Taste

For our second Aloha drop, I wanted to show a little more of where the patterns begin, from the original hand-drawn illustrations to the repeat patterns and finally the finished prints.

Design

Aloha was always meant to come in three drops. Rather than showing you everything at once, we wanted the collection to unfold slowly, with each new chapter bringing something a little different.

Culture

I received the most beautiful book for my birthday from Soraya, the wife of the Dutch ambassador: The Hidden Histories of Flowers by Maddie and Alice Bailey. Besides being a beautiful book to look at, it is filled with exactly the kind of stories I love.