But somewhere between Miranda Priestly needing governance buffers in meetings, Gen Z interns quietly moving information under tables, and everyone learning that creative brilliance no longer exempts you from accountability… The Devil Wears Prada 2 quietly stopped feeling like a fashion film.

It started feeling like a documentary.

The original film belonged to a different era of power.
One where genius, taste and intimidation were allowed to exist in the same sentence without question.

This version understands the world we actually live in now.

No one’s dramatically throwing coats at humans anymore.
Now there’s governance, optics, HR-approved intimidation, reputational management and someone whose full-time job is basically to edit Miranda Priestly in real time.

Very 2026.

And honestly? Far more terrifying.

Ashley though???
My god. That attitude. That face. That “I’ve already judged this room” energy. Perfect.

And Nigel remains the only person capable of delivering devastating sarcasm wrapped in warmth.
I don’t want career advice from him.
I want him to follow me around commenting on life.

Also — the film comparing men to patrons instead of romantic heroes was unintentionally hilarious and painfully modern 😭

Nobody has time for tortured soulmates anymore.

We’re discussing networking value, cultural capital and whether a man improves your seating chart.

Which honestly says a lot about the worlds these women operate in.

Everyone in the film is trading in proximity to power somehow — professionally, socially, aesthetically, romantically.

Even relationships feel structured like alliances now.

And the Chinese Harvard intern quietly slipping the phone under the chair was such a good detail

That’s exactly how Gen Z keeps getting underestimated.

Everyone’s busy judging them for being chronically online while they’re casually rewriting how power, information and influence move through a room.

The older guard still thinks authority looks like hierarchy and intimidation.

Meanwhile the younger ones are operating through speed, adaptability, networks and soft infiltration.

Honestly the whole film feels like watching one culture realise another has already arrived.

The sooner we adapt, the less dinosaur-coded we become

And Lady Gaga entering this universe felt completely correct somehow.
Like the final candle on an already expensive cake.

Somewhere between the tailoring, sarcasm and governance training… the film quietly stopped being about fashion.

It became about relevance.

I wasn’t trend-hunting.
Just watching what kept repeating.

If you’re building anything right now, pay attention.

THE WALL

Walls have become the art.

Textured. Built up. Treated like surfaces, not background.

Works—for a feature moment.

I still prefer art hung. And signed.

Don’t turn every wall into a statement. It gets tiring.

TECH

Finally under control.

Kitchens—integrated, quiet.

No more showing off appliances like trophies.

If it’s visible, it’s already too much.

COLOUR

Beige—lots of it. From latte to taupe.
Then—Ferrari red, in pops. White.

Used properly.

Not sprinkled everywhere trying to be “interesting.”

Decide. Or don’t use it.

FABRIC

Self-textured.

You have to go close.

If everything reads instantly,
there’s nothing left in the room.

METAL

Titanium.

Clean. Cold. Confident.

Doesn’t try to look expensive.

Good material doesn’t need help.

OBJECTS

Calmer.

Less statement pieces.
More considered spaces.

You don’t need ten ideas in one room.

SUSTAINABILITY

This one is simple.

The rest of the world has moved on.

Here—we’re still catching up.

Still equating luxury with excess.

That’s outdated.

A few are doing it properly though in India that I like.
@thevernacularmodern — material-first, rooted, not trying too hard.

We need more of this.

WHAT STAYS

Less noise.
Better decisions.

That’s it.

Wisdom, apparently.
Time. Depth.

As if growing it out slowly turns into knowing.

It’s a neat idea.

Because for a long time, women didn’t get to define themselves.
So the surface did it for them.

In India, hair wasn’t just maintained—it was staged. Long, thick, arranged—braided, adorned. Look at Chola bronzes. The hair doesn’t sit quietly. It announces itself. Extended, structured, held into place. It reads as regal. And regal is never personal. It’s constructed. Upheld. Backed. Time, labour, invisible hands doing the work. That kind of hair doesn’t simply exist—it’s produced. Length wasn’t beauty. It was evidence.

But whether simple or elaborate, it did the same thing.

It explained her.

Mayan cultures did this differently, but the logic holds. Hair marked identity, rank, belonging. It placed a woman before she spoke.

Not what she thought.
Not what she knew.

Just where she fit.

Victorian society took it further. Hair was pinned into place. Structured. Controlled. Nothing loose. Think Bridgerton—the dramatic updos, every strand accounted for. It signalled discipline, class, maintenance. Even cut hair was kept, turned into objects, held onto.

Again, the same thing.

Hair made a woman readable.

So this idea that long hair carried wisdom—

feels less like truth, more like a useful story.

Because “she looks like she knows” is easier than
letting her decide what that means.

And then the early 20th century arrives—women working, bodies moving, less patience for being held in place—and something shifts.

Clothes loosen.
Corsets come off.

And hair goes with it.

Women cut it.

Not as ritual. Not as punishment.

Just because the old version doesn’t fit anymore …

Chanel wears it short. The unspoken influence of her time.

No explanation.

And that’s the problem.

Because if hair was doing the work—placing her, softening her, explaining her—what happens when she changes it without permission?

You lose the shortcut.

You can’t read her immediately.
You can’t file her away.

You have to look again.

Or ask.

Or accept that you don’t know.

That’s the disruption.

Not short hair.
Not long hair.

The loss of easy meaning.

Now hair doesn’t tell you anything useful.

Which means
you’ll have to stop guessing
and start listening.

Or don’t.

She’ll carry on either way.

It didn’t start in psychology. It comes from the Latin addicere—a legal term used when a person was bound over to another, often to repay a debt.

Not a metaphor. Not a personality flaw.

An actual loss of control.

Somewhere along the way, the word moved—from law, to medicine, to everyday conversation. And in that shift, something convenient happened.

We softened it.

“I’m addicted to coffee.”
“I’m addicted to my phone.”

We say it lightly. Almost playfully.

As if the word no longer means what it used to.

But the structure hasn’t changed.

Something works.

Not in a life-altering way. Just enough to take the edge off. To steady something. To make you more… usable. You return to it.

And then you stop noticing that you do.

What’s interesting isn’t the habit.

It’s the permission.

A cup of coffee in the morning isn’t questioned. It signals readiness. It belongs to the version of you the world rewards.

A cigarette sits in the middle. Visible, but still negotiable.

A joint softens you. Slows you down. Makes you less efficient.

Alcohol—at the wrong hour, in the wrong amount—does something worse.

It shows.

If you can continue as expected—respond, perform, hold yourself together—the dependency disappears.

It becomes discipline. Routine. Personality, even.

But the moment it interrupts that image, it changes category.

Now it’s a problem.

Now it needs control.

So the hierarchy isn’t about substances.

It’s about how much of your need is visible.

We don’t actually respect restraint.

We respect the ability to look like you don’t need anything at all.

Which makes this slightly uncomfortable.

Because it suggests that what we call “acceptable” isn’t necessarily what’s safe.

It’s what behaves.

What stays contained.
What doesn’t spill.
What doesn’t ask to be acknowledged.

And yet, underneath all of it, the pattern is identical.

A moment of discomfort.
A response that works.
A repetition you don’t question anymore.

Not because you’re weak.

Because it’s efficient.

Maybe that’s why the word addiction still feels loaded.

Not because it’s inaccurate.

But because it’s applied selectively.

Some dependencies are allowed to exist in daylight.

The rest are pushed to the edges.

I’m starting to think the difference isn’t in what we reach for.

It’s in whether we can return from it
looking like we never had to…

Recently, I happened to pick up Simone de Beauvoir. I haven’t finished the book yet, but something in her writing stayed with me—the idea that what we call “right” or “wrong” is rarely absolute. It’s shaped over time, repeated enough, and eventually accepted.

I keep seeing that play out in design.

What we call good design has never really stayed still. There was a time when ornamentation wasn’t excess; it was skill, labour, and identity. Detail wasn’t indulgent, it was the work itself. It also signalled status—the more intricate something was, the more it reflected access to time, craft, and resources.

The shifting language of style

As design moved through different eras, that definition kept shifting. Art Deco embraced ornament and geometry as sophistication. French classical and neo-classical interiors leaned into symmetry and proportion as refinement. Colonial spaces carried their own layered language of adaptation and control.

Then came the push toward stripping everything down. Modernism, and later minimalism, framed restraint as intelligence. Clean lines, absence, and reduction became synonymous with good taste. More recently, styles like Japandi and Wabi-Sabi softened that idea—less about perfection, more about balance and quietness.

Now, we seem to be moving in multiple directions at once. There’s a return to maximalism—layering, texture, objects with memory. At the same time, there’s a pull toward quieter, more intentional spaces that focus less on aesthetics and more on how they feel to inhabit. It no longer feels like design is moving toward a single ideal.

There’s a shift I keep noticing alongside this. Millennials, in many ways, learned to curate spaces with an awareness of how they would be seen—there was always a frame in mind. Lately, I find myself aligning more with a different approach, one that feels less concerned with how a space performs visually and more with how it holds up in everyday living. It’s something I notice more with Gen Z—spaces that feel less staged for an audience, and more in tune with the person actually living in them.

Where this leaves us

Maybe we’ve spent so much time curating spaces to be seen that we’ve forgotten how they’re meant to be lived in.

Because design isn’t moral. It doesn’t exist to be right or wrong. At its best, it is led by a way of living, a way of seeing, an instinct.

What feels excessive in one moment can feel necessary in another. What feels quiet today might feel empty tomorrow.

So maybe good design isn’t a style we arrive at, but an alignment between how we live and what we choose to make around us.

Not the work itself. That part is easy now. We’ve seen it enough. We know how to read it. The light, the softness, the repetition—
it all feels familiar. Almost obvious. But it wasn’t always like that.

What stays with me is not what he painted,
but how he worked. He built his days around light.

Returning to the same subject
at different hours—
morning, noon, dusk—

Sometimes working on multiple canvases at once,
moving between them as the light shifted.

Not chasing variety. But staying with change. The same water.
The same surface. Never the same moment.

He kept returning. Not to perfect or finish it.

But to remain with it. There’s something almost uncomfortable about that kind of commitment. To stay with something without knowing if it will ever fully make sense to you, or to anyone else.

To keep going without the reassurance that it’s working. We’re not built for that anymore. We look for response. For some indication that we’re on the right track.

And if it doesn’t come—
we move on. Monet didn’t move on.

He stayed.

Not because there was no audience—
but because he wasn’t negotiating with one while he worked. Through the same subject, through the same questions,
through the same unresolved edges.

And maybe that’s what I find difficult to sit with. Not the work.

But the refusal to abandon it.

In my own work, I notice the opposite pull.

The urge to resolve.
To clean it up.
To make it legible faster than it needs to be.

To make sure it reads.

But the spaces I’m most drawn to
are never the ones that reveal themselves immediately.

They hold back.

They ask you to stay a little longer. Maybe that’s what I’m learning.

Not how to create something new.
But how to stay with something
long enough for it to change—or for me to. Because sometimes the first version is too eager. Too clear. Too willing to be understood. And what actually matters only begins to surface after that.

Monet’s work makes sense to us now.

But I don’t think he was painting for this moment.

He was painting within it.
Without the distance we now have.

Without knowing how it would be received. And that leaves me with a question
I don’t have a neat answer to.

Would I still stay—

if I didn’t know
whether it would ever be understood?

We’re quick to label these as nothing.
A non-event.
Dead space.

But that feels a bit lazy.

There’s a word in French — néant.

Jean-Paul Sartre writes about it not as emptiness, but as something far more structural.
A kind of gap that sits at the centre of how we experience anything at all.

For him, nothingness isn’t the opposite of being.
It’s what allows us to step back, question, hesitate.

Without it, everything would just… be. Fixed. Given. Final.

But because this gap exists, nothing is ever completely settled.

Not everything is meant to conclude.
Not every moment needs to convert into something useful, visible, or worth explaining.

And yet, we rush to close it.
Fill it.
Name it.

Because staying in the in-between requires a certain kind of restraint.

The kind where you don’t reach for meaning too quickly.
Where you let something remain undefined a little longer than is comfortable.

It’s not that the urge isn’t there.

To finish the thought.
To land the moment.
To make it mean something.

The beauty is in not touching it.

Not turning it into something.
Not assigning it a role.

It’s not empty.
It’s doing exactly what it’s supposed to do ;)

Around the same time, I went down a small rabbit hole on how humans “broke” horses.

Turns out, we didn’t start there.

Early evidence from Botai culture shows horses were first kept for milk and meat. Riding came later. And when it did, it wasn’t some heroic conquest. It was slow, selective. People worked with horses that didn’t panic around them. That tolerated closeness.

Because horses aren’t built to fight you.
They’re built to run.

So the earliest “training” was basically:

make it feel safe enough not to bolt.

That’s it.

“Breaking” came later — faster methods, more control, less patience. A shift from:

let me understand this animal
to
let me make it obey.

Now here’s the part I can’t ignore.

Every time I see a horse run in the wild, something in me goes a little… feral.

Not metaphorically. Physically.

The rhythm, the muscle, the sheer don’t-care-who’s-watching of it —
it does something to me before I can even form a thought.

And I think that’s the whole thing.

We’re drawn to it, not because we want to own it…
but because we recognise it.

That feeling of moving without checking the room.
Without softening first.
Without asking if it’s allowed.

Which is probably why we tried so hard to tame it.

Not just the horse.

But anything that feels like that.

And still, the best horse people will tell you:

You don’t actually break a horse.
You just get close enough…
that it decides not to run.

I think about that more than I should……..

But for me, the concert had already ended.

Not because the rest wasn’t good, but because something fundamental had shifted. The first half asked something of me. The second half didn’t.

I’m beginning to realise that there are two very different ways music can exist. Not genres, not skill, not even tradition—but posture.

There is music that moves towards you. It reaches, opens itself, offers familiarity. You recognise something almost immediately—a phrase, a mood, a memory. You don’t have to work very hard because the music does that part for you. It meets you where you are.

And then there is music that doesn’t move at all. It stays where it is—contained, precise, almost indifferent to whether you are ready for it. It doesn’t explain itself or simplify. If anything, it asks you to come closer, to sit longer than you are used to, to listen without expecting reward. It asks you to arrive.

These two experiences live very differently in the body. When music meets you, you feel held. There is ease in it, a kind of emotional generosity. The room softens and people lean in together.

But when music asks you to arrive, something else happens. You become sharper—more alert, but also more still. You start noticing things you might otherwise miss: the way a note bends before settling, the space between phrases, the discipline behind what sounds effortless. It is less comforting, but it lingers longer.

I’ve noticed this in my own listening across traditions as well. When I listen to Hindustani music, I often feel like I’m being carried—through mood, through texture, through something that is difficult to fully name. There is a kind of je ne sais quoi to it, an atmospheric pull that allows you to enter without fully understanding. When I listen to Carnatic music, I feel like I have to sit up straighter. There is more to track, more structure to hold, more responsibility on the listener. It is less about being taken somewhere and more about how deeply you are willing to enter what is already there.

Perhaps that is the real distinction—not complexity, not accessibility, but responsibility.

Some music takes responsibility for your experience. It ensures you feel something, understand something, connect. And some music hands that responsibility back to you. It simply says: come if you want to.

What stays with me, more often than not, is the latter. Not because it moved me more, but because I had to move towards it.

Not everything that reaches you stays with you.

Two curves and a point.

We see it everywhere—messages, jewellery, packaging, notebooks. It shows up so often that we’ve stopped really looking at it.

Love. Done.

—

Except, it’s not a heart.

Not even close.

The real one is asymmetrical, slightly tilted, and far less interested in being aesthetically pleasing.

This one, on the other hand, is… convenient.

Symmetrical. Soft. Balanced. Easy.

Almost like it was designed to behave.

—

But no one actually designed it.

There isn’t a single person behind it. No origin story we can neatly point to.

It just started appearing—drawn, repeated, passed along.

And with every version, it became a little simpler, a little smoother, a little easier to recognise.

—

Until this was the version that stayed.

—

Which is kind of fascinating.

Because across cultures, across time, with no formal agreement—we all just went along with it.

Not the real thing.

Just the one that worked.

—

And to be fair, it does.

You can draw it in a second.
You can recognise it instantly.
You don’t have to explain it to anyone.

It doesn’t look like a heart.

It just… reads like one. ( we’ve trained it to 😜 )

—

There’s something about it that feels resolved.

Just a shape….
that solved for recognition
better than anything else.

A circle with an arrow.
A circle with a cross.

You’ve seen them on washroom doors, biology textbooks, medical forms, jewellery, protest signs, emojis you don’t even think twice about.

Male. Female. Done.

Clean. Efficient. Universal.

Almost stupidly simple.

—

But the symbols themselves weren’t designed for us. They existed long before we needed to label ourselves. The arrow wasn’t drawn to represent a man.
It was a weapon. The cross wasn’t drawn to represent a woman.It was a handle. What we now read as identity once described objects. A shield and a spear. A mirror.

—

The circle with the arrow comes from Mars — the god of war.Violence, direction, expansion.
Something that leaves the body and moves outward.The symbol is literally a shield with a spear pointing away from it.

—

The circle with the cross comes from Venus — the goddess of love and beauty. Again, not a woman. Reflection, attraction, inwardness.
Something that gathers rather than pierces.

—

At some point, much later, a botanist (Carl Linnaeus) needed a quick way to mark plant reproduction. So he borrowed these.Not because they were “male” and “female” in the way we understand it today, but because the metaphors already existed:

One that reaches.
One that receives.

And just like that, mythology slipped into science. And science made it official.

What fascinates me is not that these symbols became universal.

It’s how little they needed to change.

No redesign. No rebranding. No explanation.

Just context.

And suddenly, a weapon became a man.
A mirror became a woman.

—

Graphic design often gets credit for simplifying the world.

But sometimes it does something quieter. It takes something ancient, strips away the story, and leaves behind a shape that still remembers.

—

Maybe that’s why these symbols feel so obvious.

Not because they are logical. But because they are layered.

War, beauty.
Movement, stillness.
Projection, reflection.

All collapsed into two marks we draw in under a second.

—

And we call that clarity. But maybe it’s just…

how the simplest things stay

The premise is simple enough. Eat it now, or wait a little and get two.

Then the adult leaves.

What follows is usually summarised as a test of discipline. Some children wait. Some don’t. The ones who do, we’re told, go on to be more successful—more focused, more in control, generally better at life.

It’s a neat story. Reassuring, even. Sit still long enough, and the world will reward you.

But if you stay with the moment a little longer, the scene doesn’t feel quite so clean.

The children aren’t serene. They don’t sit in quiet, monk-like restraint. They fidget. They lean in and pull back. They sniff the marshmallow as though it might reveal new information. They cover their eyes. They talk to themselves. They negotiate.

One of them licks it. Carefully. As if that still counts.

This isn’t discipline in the way we like to narrate it. It’s something far more active. Almost tactical. The child isn’t just resisting the marshmallow—they’re managing themselves in real time.

And more importantly, they’re making another decision entirely.

They’re deciding whether to believe the adult.

Because waiting only makes sense if the second marshmallow is real. If the person who promised it actually comes back. If the world behaves in a way that justifies patience.

That belief doesn’t come from optimism. It comes from experience.

From whether, in the past, things have arrived when they were supposed to. From whether promises have held. From whether waiting has actually led to something more.

In other words, the child isn’t just deciding what to do with the marshmallow.

They’re responding to a pattern.

Later research complicated the original story in exactly this direction. Children from more stable environments where promises tended to hold—were more likely to wait. Those who had learned, for whatever reason, that things don’t always arrive as promised were less inclined to take that risk.

Which reframes the entire exercise.

The choice was never just discipline vs impulse. It was trust vs uncertainty.

And once you see it that way, it becomes harder to keep the experiment neatly contained in childhood.

Because we don’t outgrow this. We just become more articulate about it.

We don’t sit in small rooms anymore with something placed neatly in front of us. But the structure is familiar.

We pause.

We tell ourselves to wait. To give it time. To see how things unfold.

We revisit the same decision in different forms. A situation we “let breathe.” An outcome we assume will improve if we just hold out a little longer.

And underneath all of it, the same calculation is running.

Quietly.

Not based on hope. But based on what we’ve learned tends to happen next.

We call it patience now. Or timing. Or thinking things through.

But the mechanism hasn’t changed.

So the question shifts.

Is it discipline?

Or is it trust?

And more importantly—is that trust still valid?

Because waiting, as it turns out, isn’t a personality trait you either have or don’t. It’s a response. To what you’ve seen work. To what you’ve been promised. To how reliable the world has felt so far.

Which makes the original lesson feel slightly incomplete.

It wasn’t about raising children who could sit still in front of a marshmallow.

It was about understanding the conditions under which sitting still makes sense.

And recognising—

when it doesn’t.

Not as enemies.
Not even as rivals, not really.

Just… there. Expanding. Watching. Becoming.

On one side, Rajendra Chola I — the Chola Empire, stretched along the coast, open to the sea, facing outward.

On the other, Suryavarman II — the Khmer Empire, rooted inland, held together by rivers, forests, and an idea of the center.

Two kings.
Standing across the same waters, becoming two very different answers to the same question
Does power expand… or stay rooted?

The land almost tells you everything.

One grows along the edge — ports, tides, movement, departure.
The sea is not a boundary, it’s an invitation.

The other grows inward — reservoirs, axes, alignment, return.
The land is not something to cross, it’s something to organise.

There’s something about Rajendra I don’t even try to dress up nicely.

I don’t just like him. I love him.

He’s fucking badass.

That he doesn’t negotiate with doubt.

He moves with a kind of clean, almost ruthless clarity — see it, go there, take it.

He’s not “good” in the way we like to label things.

It’s the part of him that doesn’t ask for permission that gets me.

The part that doesn’t need the room to agree before it decides.
That doesn’t over-explain itself. Doesn’t soften the edges to make it easier for everyone else to sit with.

There’s something very uncomplicated about that kind of power.

And I recognise it.

And then there is Suryavarman.

I don’t love him the same way.

I admire him.

There’s an intelligence to the way he holds power that feels… deliberate.

Not reactive or rushed.

Accounts suggest he secured his position early, eliminating rivals within his own circles before he could truly settle into power.

Not chaos.
Not impulse.

Calculation.

He doesn’t move just because he can.
He moves because it fits into something larger he’s already decided.

He builds like that too.

Angkor Wat is not just scale.
It’s placement. Alignment. Intention made permanent.

Power, for him, is not about how far it can go.

It’s about where — and how — it sits.

There’s something deeply calculated about that.

The ability to step back, to see the whole, and then place things exactly where they need to be — not just for now, but for what comes after.

That kind of thinking doesn’t shout.
It just… holds.

And I think that’s what I admire.

Not the scale. Not even the ambition.

But the restraint within it.

The understanding that power is not just taken — it is composed.

That it can be shaped, aligned, designed… until it stops needing to prove itself.

If Rajendra feels like movement,
Suryavarman feels like intention.

One unsettles me.
The other steadies me.

And I don’t trust either of them fully.

Because the same energy that moves without hesitation… can override.
And the same mind that defines the center… can decide too much for everyone else.

But somewhere between the two —
between disruption and design, between force and form is a space I recognise.

A space I find myself returning to.

Maybe power has never been one thing.

Maybe it has always been this tension between the urge to go further
and the instinct to hold still long enough for meaning to settle.

Some build until the world feels within reach.

Some build until the world feels aligned.

And some of us…

are still learning when to do which

And if I’m being honest…

I think I know which way I lean.

For all the admiration I have for Suryavarman II — the thought, the precision, the way he builds something that holds —

I’m still pulled toward Rajendra Chola I.

Badass, for me, always.

There’s something about that kind of clarity — that refusal to hesitate and that instinct to go — that I can’t seem to look away from…

People start sounding slightly edited. Jokes come with disclaimers. Thoughts are delivered like they’ve been pre-checked for approval. It’s not dramatic, just enough to make everyone a little more careful than they need to be.

And the strange part is, most people don’t even realise they’re doing it.

They soften a word here, skip a thought there, quietly abandon anything that feels like it might land wrong. Not because they don’t have things to say, but because they can feel themselves being read while they’re saying it.

And then, every now and then, that whole layer disappears.

Same people, same conversation, but suddenly no one’s buffering before they speak. No one’s doing that mid-sentence u-turn. Things come out a little less polished, a little more direct.

There’s usually a brief moment at the start where people are still a bit measured, like they’re waiting to understand what kind of room this is.

And then it becomes clear.

No one’s scoring this.

That’s when it shifts.

People don’t just talk more, they talk closer to what they actually mean. A thought gets to land before it’s adjusted. A sentence is allowed to exist without immediate clean-up.

And in that space, something else happens.

They start hearing themselves properly.

Which is rare, because most of the time we’re too busy managing how we sound to notice what we’re actually saying.

That’s also when people feel seen.

Not because someone analysed them well, but because no one interrupted the process.

It’s a small shift, but it changes the entire texture of a conversation.

Because most people aren’t quiet.

They’re just used to speaking with a running commentary in their head.

Take that away and they stop performing long enough to actually recognise themselves in what they’re saying.

It doesn’t sit where you expect it to.
Not in the way it sounds, not in the place it appears.

A king in Borneo, on the island of Borneo, and yet the name carries the weight of somewhere else—
of Sanskrit, of ritual, of a world already old.

Before him, there were crossings.
Not armies, not declarations—just quieter movements.
Words travelling with merchants,
rituals carried by those who knew how to perform them,
ideas of power slipping across water and settling where they could.

And then, suddenly, it is carved in stone.

Mulavarman.

A name that does not emerge from where it is spoken,
but arrives already carrying meaning.

Who chose it?

Was it his—
or was it given, suggested, shaped by those who stood around him,
who knew what such a name could do?

To be Mulavarman is not just to be named.
It is to step into a language of power that already exists elsewhere.
To align oneself with a world that has its own stories, its own hierarchies,
its own ways of being seen.

And yet, here it is—far from where it began.
Not copied exactly, not entirely foreign either.
Something in between.

Why here? Why now? Why him?

Not because this place suddenly became something else,
but because it was already in contact.
Ports do not just move goods.
They move language, ritual, the idea of what power should look like.

So here is not distant. It is connected.

And now is not sudden.
It is the moment when what has been moving quietly
gathers enough weight to be seen.

And him—

Not necessarily the most devout or the most original.
But the one standing at the right intersection:
a local ruler,
with access to travelling knowledge,
and the need to be seen differently.

What does it mean to be the first to embody a change publicly?

It is not to begin something,
but to give it a form that lasts.

Until then, the shift is diffuse, carried in movement, in exchange, in memory.
Present, but not fixed.

With him, it becomes record.

A name, an inscription, a ritual performed and witnessed—
something that can be pointed to, dated, remembered.

And because it is recorded,
it begins to shape what we later recognise as history.

Not the full story,
but the version that survived. Not the origin of a change,
but the reason we can see it at all.

A celebrity home.

Perfect lighting.
Perfect art.
Perfectly undone.

And then:

“I want this.”

Fair.

It’s a good image.

But here’s the part that sits just outside the frame.

A lot of those homes are not designed in the same way yours will be.

Because the brief is different.

When a celebrity is involved, the project isn’t just about the home.
It’s about visibility.

The designer knows the house will be seen.
Published. Circulated. Picked apart. Saved.

Eyeballs are guaranteed.

Sometimes pieces are placed because the vendor wants part of the PR pie.
Sometimes the project is held together by a mix of sponsorships, placements, and making the numbers work.

Because the return isn’t just the project.
It’s the attention.

And attention has value.

Which means what you’re looking at is not just a home.

It’s a very strategic moment.

Built to travel.

So when that becomes a reference, something gets blurred.

Because now we’re trying to recreate an image that was created with a completely different upside.

Different economics.
Different expectations.
Different intent.

This doesn’t make it fake.

It just makes it… specific.

To that context.

References are still useful.

They tell us what you’re drawn to.
What you respond to instinctively.

But they’re a starting point.

Not something to replicate.

Because your home isn’t being designed for circulation.

It’s being designed for you.

Which means it has to hold up differently.

Over time.
In use.
Without the safety net of a perfectly staged photograph.

So yes, bring us your references.

Celebrity homes included.

We’ll look at them.

Break them down.

Understand what’s actually working.

And then design something that doesn’t rely on being seen to make sense.

Not confusion. Not disagreement.

Just a pause.

Because for a second, the room feels done.
Console styled. Lamp glowing. Bowl sitting there like it owns the place.

And then:

“Can you share links for all of this?”

Fair.

We’ve trained ourselves well.
See it. Like it. Add to cart. Move on.

But what we’re showing you isn’t a cart.

It’s a composition.

Every piece on that board has been placed there on purpose.
Because we know where it’s coming from.
Who’s making it.
And who we’ll be on the phone with for two hours to get that one detail right.

That console? Designed. Not sourced.
That finish? Chosen after ten others were rejected.
That lamp? Available. Approved? Not yet.

Nothing there is random.

But — and this is where it gets inconvenient. Not everything comes with an “add to cart” button.

Some of it has to be made.
Some of it has to be adapted.
Some of it has to be chased down through three vendors and a slightly chaotic workshop.

Which means we can’t always hand you a neat list on day one.

Because the instinct is to translate everything into a product.

To pin it down.
Price it.
Secure it.

But what you’re actually buying into at this stage isn’t a set of objects.

It’s the vibe. The language. The point of view.

The objects will follow.

And yes, eventually you will get your list.
With links. Prices. Vendors. All of it.

But that comes after you’ve said yes to the idea.

Not before.

Because if we reduce the entire exercise to “send links,” we flatten the work.

It stops being design.
It becomes procurement.

And those are not the same thing. Especially in a context like ours.

Where a lot of what we do sits in that in-between space — not fully off-the-shelf, not entirely custom, but carefully composed.

Which means execution needs a little room.

A little trust.

So when we don’t immediately send across a shopping list, it’s not hesitation.

It’s intent.

The moodboard isn’t a menu.

It’s a commitment to a direction that has already been thought through, piece by piece.

We see it through.
Even if it demands craft, not convenience.

Salons. Spas. IV lounges where you walk in looking like the night won.

You can be:

• tired

• hungover

• mildly irritated with existence

Nobody minds.

In fact, the whole space is built to receive you exactly like that. You sit down, someone hooks you up to fluids, and you slowly return to being a person.

The person doing it?

Absolutely not allowed to be in a mood.

They could have:

• a headache

• a long shift

• a life that is not particularly cooperating

And yet.

“Just a small prick.”

Said with the calm of someone who has never known inconvenience.

You never stop to think,
I wonder how she’s feeling today.

Because she doesn’t let you.

There’s something very precise about it.

The lighting is soft. The voice is even. The movements are efficient but gentle. Not rushed, not slow. Just right.

A perfectly calibrated human.

A tattoo artist could have:

• a back that hurts

• a client before you who tested their patience

• a day that didn’t start well and hasn’t improved

And yet.

“We’ll take a break if you need.”

Said calmly, steadily, like they have all the time in the world and none of it is personal.

And honestly?

You prefer it this way.

You didn’t come to absorb someone else’s bad day. You came to fix yours.

Which is fair.

But it does make the whole thing feel like what it is.

A highly edited experience 😏

If something looks easy, I assume it is.
If it doesn’t resist me, I don’t stay.

So when I first looked at Keith Haring, I thought I knew what I was seeing.

Bold lines.
Flat figures.
Animals slipping into other animals.

It felt immediate. Almost obvious.

The kind of work you think you’ve already understood.

But I didn’t move on.

My eye kept circling back not to anything in particular, just… back. There’s no centre to hold on to, no hierarchy telling you where to begin or end. Everything exists at the same volume.

And somehow, nothing collapses.

That’s where it starts to feel slightly unsettling.

Because it looks like it shouldn’t hold.

The lines feel too quick. The forms too casual. Like they were drawn without the weight of correction or doubt.

And yet the proportions don’t slip. The spaces between figures don’t choke. Even when bodies fold into each other, they don’t lose their structure.

There’s control in it. The kind that doesn’t need to prove anything.

I kept expecting to be done with it.

To take it in, file it under “simple,” and move on to something that asks for more effort, more decoding, more… seriousness.

But it doesn’t let you leave that easily.

It just holds you there, without insisting.

Which, in its own way, feels more deliberate than anything that tries too hard to be understood.

And I think that’s what stayed with me.

Not the imagery. Not even the style.

But the quiet confidence of something that looks like it could have been done in a single breath — and knows exactly what it’s doing.

The moth is not foolish. It is following an instinct.

For most of human history, light meant something very specific. It meant fire. Fire meant warmth, protection, food being cooked, voices gathering in the dark. It meant a circle of people sitting close enough to see each other’s faces, while the world beyond that circle disappeared into night.

The human nervous system learnt something very early on: move toward the glow.

That instinct is still alive inside us.

It is why a lamp across a dim room feels inviting.
Why a lit window on a quiet street feels reassuring.
Why people unconsciously gather in kitchens when someone is cooking.

We are not responding to design.
We are responding to ancient signals.

And yet the modern living room, strangely, has begun to misunderstand this instinct.

Many homes today are filled with light. Ceiling panels blaze. Spotlights wash every wall evenly. Chandeliers perform dramatically from above. Every object is visible, every corner perfectly illuminated, every surface ready for photography.

The room glows.

But something in the body remains unsettled.

Because brightness was never the thing we were seeking.

What we were seeking was the feeling of gathering around a fire.

For thousands of years, humans sat in loose formations around a flame. The light did not erase darkness. It simply carved out a small island within it. Faces leaned forward and fell back into shadow. The edges of the space remained soft, mysterious, alive.

There was always light.

But there was also darkness allowed to exist.

When a living room is lit entirely from above, that ancient rhythm collapses. The space becomes evenly exposed, almost clinical. Every corner is visible, but nothing feels intimate. The body registers this immediately, even if the eye admires the room.

People shift. Someone instinctively dims a light. Another person turns on a table lamp. Guests drift toward the lowest light source in the room, almost unconsciously.

They are not adjusting the lighting.

They are trying to rebuild the fire.

Watch where conversations deepen in a house. It is rarely under the chandelier. It happens near the side lamp beside the sofa. Near the glow of a floor lamp tucked into a corner. Around the coffee table where a small pool of light quietly gathers people together.

This is not aesthetic preference.
This is biology.

The living room, at its core, is the modern version of the ancient fire circle. The furniture may have changed, but the choreography of human bodies has not. People still prefer a wall behind them, a sense of enclosure, a nearby glow that lights the immediate circle without exposing the entire room.

We want to feel partially sheltered.

When living rooms are designed primarily to look good on a screen, this instinct often gets ignored. The space becomes a composition. Furniture aligns symmetrically. Surfaces gleam. Lighting flattens textures so the photograph reads clearly.

The result is impressive.

But it can also feel strangely restless to inhabit.

Our eyes admire the room, but our bodies keep searching for somewhere softer to land.

This is why materials matter more than people realise. Wood that absorbs light. Fabric that holds shadow. Stone that deepens as the evening settles. These materials slow a space down. They give the light somewhere to rest instead of bouncing it relentlessly around the room.

Atmosphere is not created by brightness.
It is created by contrast.

Shadow is not the enemy of a living room. It is the thing that allows intimacy to exist.

The moth was never wrong to seek the moon. It was simply misled by a light that imitated it.

In much the same way, many living rooms today imitate warmth without actually creating it. They glow beautifully. They photograph well. They perform perfectly.

But the body knows the difference.

Because somewhere deep in our nervous system, we are still looking for the fire.

And the fire was never the brightest thing in the room.
It was simply the place where people gathered.

—

If you’re building a space where atmosphere matters as much as aesthetics, my studio, Neon Attic, takes on a limited number of residential projects each year.

Reach out if you’d like to explore working together.