Stories by name

Panajachel: The legendary allure of Vivian Suter’s life on a coffee plantation amid the Guatemalan rainforest falls into a romanticised storyline reinforced by the undeniable beauty of the setting, yet it fails to encompass the intricate choices it entailed, let alone the simplicity of her own account: ‘I just ended up here’. Born in Martínez,…

Paris: Vincent’s Darré’s life has been full of grand influences; he was the nephew of Jorge Semprún (one of the key figures of Spain’s transition to democracy) and the late Karl Lagerfeld was his mentor. I’ve been lucky enough to know Vincent since I was six or seven years old, and we are still connected now…

New York City: In 2009, Victor Barragán was a hyper-creative 17 year old living with his family in Postal, a neighbourhood in Mexico City. In high school he studied architecture, bartended at his father’s taquería, and experimented with his sexuality at public cruising spots. Because he couldn’t afford the clothes he desired, he began silk-screening…

A man among men New York City: Day and night Vince Aletti is surrounded by thousands upon thousands of highly curated groupings of two-dimensional men. These men, mostly anonymous at first, later become established members of his household. He adds his own story to their lives, his own meaning to their gazes. Simply put, he…

In 1999 Vinca Petersen published her first book, No System, a compilation of photographs documenting a decade of her life as a nomadic raver travelling throughout Europe in a series of repurposed vans and buses. Although never conceived as much more than a good way of recording her travels and life spent on the road…

Violet, yellow, red, black, and blue—we like colours at our loft in central Eastern Berlin. The multicoloured space is situated in the former Jewish brewery Königstadt that used to be in a rough and ambitious area only for the adventurous. But, alongside the rising hipness factor of the area, it got greyer and more civilized….

Design mom Helsinki: Vuokko Eskolin-Nurmesniemi is my favourite Finnish designer and Issey Miyake’s fashion mom. One of the most influential characters in the local post-war design scene, Vuokko has made a significant contribution to the field both in Finland and abroad. She introduced minimalist cuts and voluminous prints in her work for Marimekko in the 1950s,…

What makes a power couple? This very strange but sometimes useful notion requires two people who are equally talented and successful. In Paris, one example of this surprising notion comes in the form of Victoire de Castellane and Thomas Lenthal. Her: the great-grandniece of Parisian dandy legend Boniface ‘Boni’ de Castellane turned ‘90s model and…