When my grandmother left the UK on a ship bound for Australia after the Second World War, she took with her a rose-tinted vision of her birth country that revolved around Cornishware, wisteria in bloom and afternoons browsing the Liberty haberdashery. Since moving to London, I have found that this nostalgic perception of the UK largely fails to hold up. The Liberty department store, however, remains a beacon of considered retail in the city’s West End, where international conglomerates otherwise dominate.

There’s a time and a place for mass-market retail and denying this often sounds out of touch. Department stores have an important role to play when it comes to championing smaller, high-quality brands that might not be able to cut through the noise. I was at Liberty yesterday morning to preview a new atrium installation that celebrates a range from To My Ships, the personal-care brand founded by ex-Aesop entrepreneur Daniel Bense. Launched in September 2024, the brand is a newcomer to the beauty market but its deodorants, soaps and perfumes are a cut above anything that I have tested in recent years. The opportunity to take centre stage in one of London’s most storied department stores will help the company increase visibility and convince customers to take a punt after thorough in-person sniffing and swatching.
 
At their best, department stores such as Paris’s Le Bon Marché and Tokyo’s Isetan are tastemakers. When I spoke to Liberty employees over coffee, the process of vetting new products – from beauty to leather goods – often came up as the most rewarding part of their jobs. Before the doors swung open at 10.00, a team of shop-floor workers gathered in the haberdashery for a speedy morning run-through about available stock. It was a welcome reminder that good bricks-and-mortar retail depends on knowledgeable staff who take care of customers by curating offerings and putting novelty on show. London might not always live up to my grandmother’s descriptions – except during the two weeks of summer – but there’s always Liberty.

Charlton is Monocle’s associate editor of design and fashion. For more opinion, analysis and insight, subscribe to Monocle today.

For more about the power of department stores, read about their golden age in the US here. 

With the papal conclave that will select the next pontiff set to begin next week, all eyes are on nations with large Catholic populations and the cardinals who could succeed the late Pope Francis. Here, we get the view from the Philippines, Ghana and Brazil, three countries where the next Vicar of Christ could potentially come from.

The Philippines
The liberal pick: Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle
By Richard Heydarian, academic and columnist

As many as six million Filipinos showed up for Pope Francis’s visit to the Philippines in 2015, a world record that reflects the profundity of the country’s devotion to Catholicism. This is one of the world’s most devout nations and there’s an informal public understanding among Catholics here that it would be disrespectful to talk about succession during the nine-day grieving period for Pope Francis. Deep down, however, many Filipinos hope that the next pontiff will bring the same spirit of openness and inclusiveness to the Vatican. There are three Filipino cardinals heading into the conclave; among them, Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle is seen as the most progressive. He has made strong statements about discrimination and prejudice against the LGBTQ community and those who are going through divorce. But during my visit to the Vatican, I sensed that Italy’s Pietro Parolin is the favourite among cardinals who are invested in the continuity of Pope Francis’s legacy. Still, history tells us that early favourites are not necessarily the one who is chosen.

To read the full story from Ghana and Brazil, see here.

It has been a short two weeks since the lively opening party at Kaptain Sunshine’s new Tokyo flagship and business is brisk. Designer Shinsuke Kojima is on the shop floor as a trio of young South Korean tourists, a dapper Japanese gent and a pair of well-dressed Tokyo friends are all browsing and buying. Clearly the word is out that the brand has opened its first standalone shop. “We’re happy with how it’s going,” says Kojima, surveying the throng. “A third of the customers are coming from overseas.”

To read the full article, click here.

Following its merger in late 2024 with Asiana Airlines, one of South Korea’s dominant carriers, Korean Air is planning to build Asia’s largest flight-training school (writes Julia Lasica). Part of a larger investment of 1.2 trillion won (€741.9m), the centre will be one section of the new aviation research and training hub that Korean Air announced this week.

Based in the southern city of Bucheon, the hub will train more than 20,000 pilots a year and employ 1,000 personnel, including researchers and flight instructors. It’s an ambitious project in a nation that is itself a rising star of aviation and will make use of AI-powered software to train commercial and defence-orientated unmanned aerial vehicles. With the sector struggling with a dearth of skilled, flight-ready workers, the announcement of the flight-training school – which is expected to be completed in 2030 – comes as welcome news.

New York-based novelist, journalist and critic Katie Kitamura was longlisted for the National Book Award and the Pen/Faulkner Award for her 2021 novel, Intimacies. Her fifth book, Audition, tells the story of an actress who meets a compelling yet troubling young man. Here, Kitamura discusses her favourite writers and moral ambiguity in fiction.

The protagonist of ‘Audition’ is an actress. What drew you to this profession as a subject?      
I have always been interested in performance. She is someone who plays many roles in her life. That’s something that all of us can relate to.

Your books often explore questions of moral and narrative ambiguity. Why?
I’m rarely drawn to stories in which things are cut and dried. I prefer books that are open to interpretation. In a lot of ways, the work of a novel is to make the reader a little uncomfortable. I wouldn’t want to write a book that felt cosy.

Who are some of your favourite writers?
I love Marguerite Duras and Javier Marías. The latter was a Spanish writer who set up situations with impossible ethical questions and made the reader live in those spaces. Kenzaburō Ōe is also important to me.
‘Audition’ is published by Riverhead Books.

An ode to Italian hospitality. Two brothers from Bologna discuss the global expansion of their pizza chain Berberè. Then: we raise a glass with the long-time friends from Cosenza leading London’s Bar 45.