Blake Matich

1 week ago | monocle.com | Blake Matich

Dining al desko is done and dusted. Office workers are reclaiming their lunch hours with the help of canteen-style restaurants that are healthy, a little smug and suddenly ubiquitous. It's a truth universally acknowledged that a Londoner in possession of a lunch hour must be in want of a decent meal. And yet it's not every lunchbreak that you can order a steak and hear it sizzling seconds later.

3 weeks ago | monocle.com | Blake Matich

"Where are we headed?" asked a moustached man in a Saville Row suit so sharp that it would have made Tom Wolfe feel underdressed. "Haven't the foggiest," said a tall gent in a pith helmet. "But someone's in charge, surely?" No one was. But that was precisely the point of this saunter sans purpose. And so the accidental leaders of some 100 dandies ambled off - perhaps by muscle memory - in the direction of Soho. Granted, the intrepid duo didn't have far to go.

1 month ago | monocle.com | Blake Matich

The 2025 Met Gala turns its spotlight to menswear, celebrating 300 years of style, identity, and resistance. Tonight the steps of New York's largest museum, The Metropolitan Museum of Art (Met), will transform into the year's most extravagant red carpet. The Met Gala, also known as "fashion's biggest night", is a star-studded charity benefit that raises funds for the museum's Costume Institute and opens its annual exhibition. For the first time in more than 20 years, the focus is on menswear.

1 month ago | monocle.com | Blake Matich

The Philippines 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.

Feb 21, 2024 | prospectmagazine.co.uk | Blake Matich

When in Venice, the American painter John Singer Sargent (currently the subject of a major retrospective at Tate Britain) was not content merely to work en plein air,preferring instead to paint en gondole—by gondola. With a canvas propped on his knees and his brush mirroring the broad strokes of the gondolier’s oar, Sargent painted Venetian life as he floated through it.