BEAUTY: Photography--Linda Westin

Stockholm-based photographer Linda Westin took a detour into science and obtained a PhD in neuroscience, specializing in super-resolution fluorescence microscopy, a technique that allows scientists to illuminate the structures inside cells by making them glow under specific wavelengths. She now uses this same idea to photograph trees and plants in dense natural settings. Her work is startling and enigmatic, and her images play as though they are illustrations from fairytale stories about magical forests full of night time intrigue and possible dangers ... Where The Wild Things Might Be ...

https://www.instagram.com/_cometalktome_/

BEAUTY: Clothing--Simone Rocha

Simone Rocha's FW '26-'27 co-ed collection at London Fashion Week featured her regular vocabulary of details: lace, ruffles, bows, pleats, cockades, and the rhinestones of costume jewelry. But it was tempered with a trio of of inspiration sources.

To start, there is a story from Irish mythology where a boy falls in love with a woman and they go to live in Tír na nÓg, the land of eternal youth. Second is the Yeats family. For her color palette, Rocha looked to the painting In Tír na nÓg by Jack B. Yeats. She also took inspiration from his sisters Elizabeth and Lily, who ran the Cuala Press, a women-only arts enterprise producing handcrafted books, cards and prints from 1908 to 1940. And finally, she liked the rough-and-tumble secondhand clothing worn by Irish kids in Pony Kids, a renowned photography book by Perry Ogden documenting the vibrant, marginalized horse culture among Dublin's working-class youth in the 1990s.

I personally love the mix of high and low...bomber jackets with oversized suiting, skirts with workwear, and a trade jumpsuit but in black lace. Shearling lined jackets and stoles are a great touch. And please take a moment to zoom in on those amazing tooled leather shoes.

In Tír na nÓg by Jack B. Yeats | sold through Sotheby's 9/25

https://simonerocha.com/

The Annual Christmas Installation at Dennis Severs' House 2025

Once again, the magical Annual Christmas Installation at Dennis Severs' House in London will be open for tours this holiday season!

In 1979, creative dreamer Dennis Severs, after moving from America to England a few years prior, bought a ruined house in the Spitalfields area of London and set about returning it to its former state. After several years, he ended up creating something very special that he called a "still-life drama," with vignettes spread across the ten rooms and four storeys of No. 18 Folgate Street. Each room is dressed like a stage or film set in a different historic style, mainly from the 18th and 19th centuries. He invented a back story for this house: the fictional Jervis family (a name anglicised from Gervais), originally Huguenot (French Protestant immigrants) silk weavers who lived at the house from 1725 to 1919 are still present but just out of sight. Dennis opened this "time-machine" to the public and invited people to take a tour, not of an historic house, but to step into the Jervis' lives in a very immediate and visceral way. In what is more like an immersive theatrical experiences or performance art, he left half-eaten meals, half-full chamber pots, lit candles and blazing fireplaces scattered about while sound effects of the period softly emanated from hidden speakers as though the family just stepped out for a moment. Each room evokes incidental moments in the lives of these imaginary inhabitants. Writer Peter Ackroyd, author of LONDON: THE BIOGRAPHY, wrote, "The journey through the house becomes a journey through time; with its small rooms and hidden corridors, its whispered asides and sudden revelations, it resembles a pilgrimage through life itself." Artist David Hockney called the experience of touring the house one of the world's greatest works of opera.

After Severs died in 1999, the Spitalfields Historic Buildings Trust, an architectural preservation charity, took over the property and has kept it open to the public. But the best time to go is during the holiday season. The Annual Christmas Installation at Dennis Severs' House sees the property decked out in its period holiday finery. Photos are normally not allowed (guests embark on a 45 minute tour of the house but are encouraged to do so silently, without taking any photos) but a few years ago, London-based photographer Skye O'Neill was permitted to tour and photograph the house for this year's Christmas Installation. She shared some of these lovely images.

And here is a great interview with Dennis Severs about his home and why and how he created it.

If you live in London or will be there during the holidays, you have a chance to see the Christmas Installation in person through the 11th of January 2026. Admission times sell out quickly. Check the website for more details.

https://www.dennissevershouse.co.uk/

BEAUTY: Photography for Autumn--Xavier Portela

For autumn, here is a gorgeous set of the changing leaves in Japan captured by a fantastic photographer, Xavier Portela. He describes the inspiration on his site:

"Kōyō (紅葉) refers to the Japanese tradition of admiring autumn foliage, when trees, leaves, and entire forests turn glowing in red, orange, and gold. This new series explores that fleeting moment."

Gorgeous.

https://xavierportela.com/

The Underlying

Departure by Thomas Hager

“Stillness is your essential nature. What is stillness? The inner space or awareness in which the words on this page are being perceived and become thoughts. Without that awareness, there would be no perception, no thoughts, no world.

You are that awareness, disguised as a person.

You can become aware of awareness as the background to all your sense perceptions, all your thinking. Becoming aware of awareness is the arising of inner stillness.

Is stillness just the absence of noise and content? No, it is intelligence itself—the underlying consciousness out of which every form is born. And how could that be separate from who you are?

The form that you think you are came out of that and is being sustained by it.

It is the essence of all galaxies and blades of grass; of all flowers, trees, birds, and other forms.”
--Eckhart Tolle, from his book STILLNESS SPEAKS

Photo by Gabriel Wickbold

“We have learned that beneath the surface of an ordinary everyday normal casual conscious existence there lies a vast dynamic world of impulse and dream, a hinterland of energy which has an independent existence of its own and laws of its own: laws which motivate all our thoughts and our actions.”
--Robert Edmond Jones

Shoegazers by Nicholas Bohac

BEAUTY: Interior Design--Hendricks Churchill

For this 4,000 square foot apartment in a new building in New York City's Carnegie Hill neighborhood, architecture firm Hendricks Churchill took a route that is unexpected. So many of these of these new high-rise apartments are designed in a style that is a little on the minimal side, a little on the neutral side, and, while appointed with well-made and luxurious items, can read a little on the uneventful side. But here, the team furnished the spaces with color, pattern, wood, and an appealing artistic sensibility, mixing contemporary and antique pieces, bringing a delightful sense of life and interest to the entire home.

Photos by Chris Mottalini
https://mottalini.com/

https://hendrickschurchill.com/