"I CAN’T CHANGE THE WORLD, BUT MAYBE I CAN CHANGE THE IDEA OF BEAUTY"

 

Yohji Yamamoto speaks the way he designs, with precision, with pauses, with an undertone of defiance. At eighty, his words carry the calm gravity of someone who has walked through anger, chance, and creation, and returned with nothing to prove. 

For System, Tim Blanks sits across from the legendary designer in a filmed conversation that unfolds like an intimate meditation. Yamamoto reflects on the fury that shaped his youth, on the fate that led him from law to fabric, and on the enduring tension between Tokyo and Paris, two cities that taught him how to listen to silence. 

THE RETURN I LOST COUNT OF

 

    ©tedorè

Venice, the second weekend of September 

Returning to Venice is like returning to a lover one cannot keep, yet cannot erase. You arrive knowing it will not last, that it cannot grow into a future, but still, the body remembers, the pulse quickens. A prolonged weekend, no more, yet thick with the same fever as June. I came not seeking answers, only the confirmation that longing is reason enough to return. Palazzo Grimani opened its ribcage of marble to me again. Those rooms are not rooms but organs, resonant cavities where light and shadow perform their duet. Frescoes above me cracked with dignity, fragments of myth staring down in faded triumph. The air carried a mineral chill, laced faintly with the scent of damp plaster and the ghost of citrus left by some long-closed window; the walls seemed to exhale centuries of whispered devotion.

I brushed my hand along the balustrade, cool, veined, strangely human, as if to measure time in temperature. Grimani does not seduce; it absorbs. You leave with less than you entered, as though the walls themselves drink from your veins. 

Then Fortuny. Always Fortuny. To step inside is to inhale another century whole. The fabrics do not hang, they hover, velvet turned into atmosphere, pleats breathing like the lungs of a sleeping deity. Dust gathers there with a kind of grace, golden in the slanting September light, transforming neglect into sacrament. A faint scent of wax and dried roses lingered in the air, mingling with the slow decay of textiles that had belonged to bodies. I stood before a window half-covered by textile, where the outside world dissolved into muted blue; it felt less like a museum than a chapel devoted to the fragility of beauty itself. Every time I go, I leave with the sense that I have been confessed, judged, and forgiven all at once. 

PHAEDRA

 

    image courtesy of ©Bregje Sliepenbeek

In the luminous interplay of metal and flame resides the Phaedra candle holder, a sculptural reverie by artist Bregje Sliepenbeek, hand-forged in Amsterdam. In Size L, its dimensions unfold with commanding presence: sweeping curves of hammered aluminium reflect the candle’s dance, casting shifting light across surfaces. It invites grandeur, a centrepiece that holds space as much as flame. In Size S, the same design is distilled, petals of metal pressed close, intimate, perfect for smaller settings where subtlety matters as much as form. 

Each piece is cut, shaped and polished from fine aluminium: delicate in weight, strong in personality. The metal’s mirror-like surface amplifies every flicker; beeswax candles supplied with the piece enrich every glow with softness and natural warmth. The Size S candle holder measures approximately 18 × 15 cm, making it an ideal artwork for a sideboard, writing desk, or windowsill. The Size L version magnifies that effect, becoming a gathering point, a silhouette set against shadows. 

EASE AS A RADICAL ACT

 

          image and video courtesy of ©Fforme

The first sound was not applause but the faint slap of rubber against floor, jandals, flip-flops, walking into New York light as if the runway were a strip of black sand by the sea. Frances Howie’s FFORME Spring/Summer 2026 collection opened with this disarming gesture, setting the mood: a refusal of hauteur, a declaration of intimacy with the everyday, an insistence that luxury can arrive barefoot. 

From there, the clothes unfolded with a dual discipline: the strict clarity of construction and the looseness of garments designed for ease. Black, camel, and white grounded the palette in elemental calm, but were pierced by eruptions, a linen-silk suit in grass-green with a saturation that seemed almost alive; hammered gold draped across a halter dress; silver and royal blue satin dresses gleaming with liquid reflections. These colours did not decorate so much as strike, like sudden sunlit interruptions of cloud. 

Materials extended the dialogue between utility and elegance. Bonded seams, recalling the functional logic of wetsuits, erased distraction and let the eye travel unbroken along the body. Silk satin carried a mirror’s liquidity; washed metallic cotton satin gave black dresses a velvet-like depth; airy knits were hand-embroidered with feathers so light they seemed always on the verge of departure. There were frayed fringes, lace, and woven linens that remembered touch, that carried the mark of weather as much as the discipline of tailoring. 

LETTER TO THE END OF SUMMER

 

©tedorè

Dear Summer, 

You have always arrived like an untamed guest, barefoot, salt still clinging to your skin, eyes glittering with the kind of laughter that makes everything around you seem more alive than it really is. You never knock. You simply burst in, fling your arms wide, and suddenly the days are longer, louder, more excessive. 

For a while, I believe you might stay forever. But you never do. And now I see you slipping away, dissolving into the horizon the way a candle melts into its own wax. Your body leans against the sea, and your departure is almost indecent in its beauty. A last flare of orange, a wound of red sinking into the water, a hush that feels like both a goodbye and a dare. 

You have been too much, Summer, and also never enough. You drenched my skin in warmth, yes, but left me thirsty for more than the body can hold. You spoiled me with sunsets so swollen with gold they felt almost arrogant in their perfection, as though beauty had forgotten its duty to be merciful. And yet, you also reminded me that even the longest day dies quietly, that light, however fierce, must bend into dusk.