SANDRA YI SECINDIVER *Building Yutani and Trusting the Silence

SANDRA YI SECINDIVER
on Building Yutani and Trusting the Silence

interview SARAH ARENDTS

Sandra Yi Sencindiver enters each project with precision that borders on ritual. Every element—tone, costume, space—serves a purpose. She talks about collaboration as architecture, where everyone builds toward the same tension.

In Alien: Earth, she gives shape to Yutani, head of Weyland-Yutani, a woman written into the myth of control. The world around her character mirrors her gravity, the sets by Andy Nicholson, the sculptural tailoring of Suttirat Anne Larlarb, and jewelry imagined from other planets.

shoes LORO PIANA

“Even though I’ve done this my whole adult life, I still have the feeling that I’m just getting started.”

Sandra Yi Sencindiver speaks with Sarah Arendts
for LE MILE .Digital

Sencindiver recalls the process as a study in trust. “You don’t need to make it big or loud,” she says. Her Yutani moves through rooms built on deference, a force measured by stillness and authority.

Between acting and directing, she occupies two distinct frequencies. In Watch, her film that unfolds like a slow pulse, she shaped rhythm through minimalism and control. As a director, she speaks of patience, tone, and the invisible choreography between crew and camera. As an actor, she returns to intuition and the chemistry of shared focus. The conversation moves through laughter, sharp honesty, and the pleasure of making. She speaks of Geek Girl, of award nights that end in chaos and applause, of risks still waiting in the dark corners of arthouse cinema. Sandra Yi Sencindiver is refining energy, tuning stories until they vibrate at the right frequency. Each project marks another layer in a career defined by curiosity, precision, and presence.

total LORO PIANA
jewellery CARTIER

Sarah Arendts
When you step into Yutani in Alien: Earth, the room changes. Do you script that power in advance, or does it arrive in the moment, born out of breath, posture, accident?

Sandra Yi Sencindiver
There is no accident involved, but there is trust. I will get back to that. So many people build Yutani up to be Yutani. It all starts on the page, the way she is written. In the way other characters talk about her. How they pay reverence to her. Then there is the choice of venues, the exclusivity and grandeur of the locations. The way Andy Nicholson dresses the set with such beauty. Suttirat Anne Larlarb, who’s just brilliant, developed this whole concept for her: exclusivity, exquisite tailoring, reptilian, almost brutalist jewelry. We imagined she wears rare stones and metals from other planets. We talked about Yutani as a woman who dresses for no one—not for men, but simply because she takes pleasure in aesthetics, in peacocking for herself. And at the same time, she knows her pristine appearance reflects her role as head of Weyland-Yutani. So, we never see her casual, never informal.

Then you have Connie Parker and Sanna Seppanen, creating a new makeup and hair look for her every single time. They are amazing.

Now back to the issue of trust. With someone who is that powerful, I don’t think you need to make it big or loud. You need to trust that a few but precise choices will be enough. I remember Noah writing: “she has the poise of someone who owns a fifth of the entire planet”. And in episode 1 we even learn she owns a lot of the solar system too, ha! So, I thought that kind of power would translate to walking on water. And I made her soft-spoken, because she’s so used to being listened to. She doesn’t need to raise her voice or move loudly—people naturally give her space. Well, until she meets Boy K, who gives reverence to no one.

Season 2 of Geek Girl is loading—
in one word, tell me the energy of your character this time around. Now expand it into a sentence that only she could say.

“Filip, tell this journalist that Yuji cannot be reduced to one sentence!”

WATCH was yours from the very first line on the page. If the film had a heartbeat, what BPM would it tick at, and who or what sets the metronome?

A very slow heartbeat, that slowly but steadily rises into an eerie, panicked pace—but eventually finds a kind, restorative rhythm at the end.
I wanted everything to feel playful and harmonious on the surface, with just a hint of something slightly off. As if all the pieces are bright and cheerful, yet there’s an undercurrent of unease you can’t quite place. That subtle tension builds quietly, until the truth begins to reveal itself. Then, a few twists shift the focus—leading toward a kind of resolution, but not the one you expect.

Seeking Hwa Sun—nominated for the Danish Academy Award Robert, an echo across the industry. Do you remember the exact second the news reached you, and what sound was in the room?

Well, a couple of months before the announcement, a jury shortlists 10 films from all the Danish entries to Odense International Film Festival and then the academy votes. And on awards night at the festival, they announce the final five nominees. So, when they called out our names, there was this huge roar of excitement and applause from the packed venue. Quite thrilling and overwhelming.

dress NANUSHKA
tights FALKE
shoes JENNIFER CHAMANDI
jewellery CARTIER

Draw me a split-screen: left side Sandra the actor on set, right side Sandra the director in the edit suite. What does each version of you whisper to the other?

They don’t speak at all, ha ha. The tasks are so different—they’re two completely different sides of me. On set, I try to be present in the moment, connect with the people around me, and focus on what the director, my co-stars, and the scene needs. I’m a piece of the bigger picture. In the editing room, I’m the one moving the pieces around, thinking about what came before and what comes after—deciding on the bigger picture. My brain is switched on in the editing room, whereas on set I try to let my body, intuition, and impulses guide me when on set.

Quick-fire, no commas:

book that shaped you

– “Trust” by Hernan Diaz, it really plays with and utilizes perspective as a storytelling device. It was conceptually something that inspired me a lot when writing Seeking Hwa Sun.

a scene that broke you

– oh, I’m such a softy when it comes to films and TV. I cry over so many beautiful and brutal pieces of art. I recently rewatched Parasite, and two scenes are just heartbreaking. The first is when Song Kang-ho’s character, the father posing as a driver, sees his daughter stabbed to death but can’t acknowledge knowing her—and so he can’t help her. And then the ending, when his son, played by Choi Woo-shik, spins this fairy tale about someday becoming successful enough to save his father from the basement. Both are devastating.

a silence you treasure

– when you’re with someone you know so well that you can share a space in silence and not feel the need to fill it with words.

a risk still waiting

– a female auteur offering me a dangerously dark part in an indie or arthouse film. Something Isabelle Huppert would have said yes to 20 years ago.

If tomorrow you had to build a film with nothing but three props and a window, what would you choose, and how would the story unfold?

Oh, what a fun task! I’d choose two characters who live in the same room but at different points in time, and they’d have the same three props: a cat, a bottle of milk, and a bed. You’d watch each of them live through one day in this room—two different people, the same three props, the same window view, but completely different perspectives on life.

Complete the chain for us:

On set I _____

try to be kind and patient. Actors spend a lot of time waiting between scenes—it takes an army to get everything just right. And then sometimes we’ll do the same scene over and over again from every possible angle. It can take hours of shooting to cover just a few minutes on screen. Both the waiting and the repeating can be exhausting. But you also want to give energy to your co-stars so they can shine, and at the same time conserve enough energy for your own moments in front of the camera—so they matter. And of course, the crew are under huge pressure too. There are so many moving parts, and the least we can do is be kind and patient, because everyone really is doing their best. Funny how the hardest work can also be the thing I absolutely love.

Behind the camera I _____

try to be calm and patient. Before I started directing, I thought it was mainly about sharing your vision and giving artistic direction. And sure, that’s part of it—but it’s just as much about setting the tone and the work ethic on set, and about seeing and bringing out the best in your cast and crew while still respecting budget and time. It was such an eye-opener to realize how important every single person and their role is. That experience has made me a more mindful actor, with even greater respect for everyone on set.

At home I _____

wish I were cooler and more patient. Most of the time I really do try to be kind—but why is it that the world gets your best bits, while the people you love most sometimes get the short end? Luckily, my husband and children show me an incredible amount of love and patience. And my kids, especially, are experts at calling me out when I’m being short-tempered. But they all know—because I tell them every single day—that they’re my favorite people in the world, and I love them to pieces.

In the future I _____

wish to bring more great stories to the audience. Even though I have done so my whole adult life, I still have the feeling that I am just getting started!

total THOM BROWNE
jewellery CARTIER

dress ISSEY MIYAKI
shoes JENNIFER CHAMANDI
jewellery CARTIER

dress TORY BURCH
shoes JENNIFER CHAMANDI
jewellery CARTIER

“She [Yutani] dresses for no one—not for men, but because she takes pleasure in aesthetics.”

Sandra Yi Sencindiver speaks with Sarah Arendts
for LE MILE .Digital

photographer + creative director IAN KOBYLANSKI
styling ELENA GARCIA
set design LOUIS TOLEDO
make up SASHA MAMEDOVA
hair ABI IGZ
lighting assistant NICOLA SCLANO

talent SANDRA YI SECINDIVER
via TELESCOPE

NARGES MOHAMMADI *The Architecture of Memory

NARGES MOHAMMADI
*The Architecture of Memory

written ALBAN E. SMAJLI

Inside Brutus Rotterdam, the exhibition No One Bats an Eye by Narges Mohammadi opens with quiet force. The Barbarella space, raw and industrial, carries the rhythm of a sewing machine that hums like breath. Sand, alabaster, and clay form a fragile architecture of remembrance. A house takes shape, not as shelter, but as memory made visible.

Narges Mohammadi, born in Kabul in 1993, brings together fragments of her early life with the material language she has refined across her practice. Trained in art history in Utrecht and visual arts at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague, she moves between sculpture, installation, and sound. Her process carries the intimacy of craft and the urgency of history.

Narges Mohammadi
seen by Laura Siliquini

Narges Mohammadi
seen by Laura Siliquini

In No One Bats an Eye, alabaster becomes her instrument. She hollows the stone until only a translucent layer remains. “The act of removing feels essential,” she says in the interview. “It reveals the fragility of what we carry and what remains when survival becomes daily work.” Around her, the space expands with sand and clay sculptures, enlarged family photographs pressed into loam, and domestic shapes that seem to breathe. Each object feels ordinary and ceremonial, the sewing machine, cast in alabaster, evokes her mother’s worktable. “That sound of stitching was always present,” she says. “It meant care. It meant making things last a little longer.” A lamp carved from stone glows faintly under the light. Nearby, eggs rest on the floor, symbols of both nourishment and expectation.

Mohammadi’s approach to sculpture stems from material empathy. Her earlier works in concrete, soap, halva, and straw explored endurance through touch and scent. Here, she turns to the quiet translucency of alabaster to explore what she calls “the skin of memory.” “When I carve,” she explains, “I am not building something new. I am uncovering what was already there.”

The exhibition forms a sequence of rooms, each suspended between intimacy and distance. A bench sculpted from sand invites pause, a doorway veiled in fabric opens toward light. The atmosphere moves between tenderness and gravity. Poverty, resilience, and dignity exist as shared presences rather than subjects. “The work is not about pity,” she says. “It is about visibility. About giving shape to what often stays unnamed.”

Narges Mohammadi
Er kraait geen haan naar, solo exhibition at Brutus, Rotterdam

seen by Laura Siliquini / courtesy of the Artist & Copperfield, London

Her vision resonates deeply with Brutus, an artist-driven space known for its openness to experimentation. Within its rough architecture, her installation extends beyond sculpture into social texture. Friends and collaborators assisted in the making — sifting, molding, and assembling. The process became a form of communal repair. “I wanted to build with others,” she says. “Each gesture carries someone’s care.”

No One Bats an Eye holds the resonance of inheritance. The materials carry weight and light at once, they suggest the persistence of memory through touch, the continuity of warmth through scarcity. Rubiah Balsem’s opening words framed the exhibition as a threshold: an invitation to see empathy as architecture. The work exists as a quiet resistance — a monument built from gentleness.

Through every detail, Mohammadi’s practice affirms the presence of life within constraint. Her sculptures stand as vessels of remembrance, translucent and porous, filled with breath. They hold stories of endurance, hospitality, and transformation, offered without spectacle, sustained by grace.

No One Bats an Eye remains on view at Brutus Rotterdam until December 14, 2025.

WOLFGANG TILLMANS *Passages Silencieux, Espace Louis Vuitton München

WOLFGANG TILLMANS
*Passages Silencieux, Espace Louis Vuitton München

written AMANDA MORTENSON

At Espace Louis Vuitton München, the exhibition Passages Silencieux opens as an expansion of Wolfgang Tillmans’ long meditation on seeing — an installation where the act of looking becomes a physical experience, drawn across space through quiet momentum.

The artist arranges his photographs as if tracing the rhythm of time itself, building a choreography that extends from wall to wall, where perception gathers and disperses in intervals of silence. Every print, whether held by glass or left exposed to air, carries its own pulse, its own measure of gravity within a larger constellation of reflections and correspondences.

HIMMELBLAU, 2005
C-Print, 61 x 50,8 cm

© Courtesy Galerie Buchholz; Maureen Paley, London; David Zwirner, New York and Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris

IN THE MORNING, 2015
Inkjet print, 40,6 x 30,5 cm

© Courtesy Galerie Buchholz; Maureen Paley, London; David Zwirner, New York and Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris

The works span more than thirty years of practice, moving through portraits, abstractions, still lifes, fragments of cities, gestures of intimacy, and the mutable surfaces of nature. Tillmans dissolves the distance between these categories, allowing each image to breathe within the next. There is no direction or hierarchy in the room, only an open field of vision where light itself becomes connective tissue. The viewer walks through an environment that unfolds without announcement, where each picture transmits its own frequency — sometimes barely perceptible, sometimes charged with intensity.

Tillmans’ engagement with materiality remains central, since his earliest experiments with a photocopier in the late 1980s, his fascination has turned around the transformation of image into surface, and the subtle instability of reproduction. The works gathered here trace this continuum, from the photocopied beginnings to the camera-less abstractions of the Einzelgänger series, where exposure becomes event, and chemistry performs as both subject and form. The paper carries evidence of touch, of dust, of manipulation — every imperfection rendered luminous through repetition. In certain works, like Berlin (2006), the texture of ink and fiber becomes as vivid as skin. The print is alive, a terrain where the physical and the optical merge.

“The image is a good starting point for thinking about the world,”

Wolfgang Tillmans

Wolfgang Tillmans à la Bpi, janvier 2025
© seen by Florian Ebner / Courtesy Galerie Buchholz

Across the two floors of Espace Louis Vuitton, the installation builds a rhythm that resists narrative. The absence of chronology allows the images to exist as fragments of a continuous present, drawing together past and recent works into a single movement. Portraits from the 1990s coexist with abstractions made decades later, their proximity generating a quiet energy that pulses through the exhibition. Time feels suspended — neither archival nor contemporary, but circular, returning upon itself through the gaze of the viewer.
The Munich space introduces its own temperature, a clarity of light that sharpens perception and gives volume to the surrounding air. Tillmans’ installation responds to it with precision, letting the architecture act as a membrane for the photographs’ frequencies. The rooms are rather tuned, the sequence of walls, angles, and voids composes a subtle resonance between image, surface, and reflection. The encounter unfolds through duration rather than direction — a process of immersion rather than observation.

Passages Silencieux extends the Fondation Louis Vuitton’s Hors-les-murs programme, which carries works from its Paris collection into other cultural contexts. Within this framework, Tillmans’ exhibition reads as a continuation of his evolving dialogue with the image — a dialogue that began in motion and remains unfinished. The works gathered here propose a language of stillness that is never static, an equilibrium in which perception moves freely through the quiet intervals between images. The exhibition feels less like a retrospective than a moment of suspension — a passage between past and what is still unfolding. The silence in the title echoes through the space as atmosphere and method, shaping the experience of looking into something almost physical. The images remain open, breathing within the architecture, waiting for the viewer to step close enough to feel their pulse. Enjoy Yourself!

Passages Silencieux is on view at Espace Louis Vuitton München, Maximilianstraße 2a, from 17 October 2025 to 14 March 2026, presenting a selection of works by Wolfgang Tillmans from the Fondation Louis Vuitton Collection as part of its Hors-les-murs programme.

WET ROOM (BARNABY), 2010
Inkjet print, 40,6 x 30,5 cm

© Courtesy Galerie Buchholz; Maureen Paley, London; David Zwirner, New York and Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris

TORSO, 2013
Inkjet print on paper, 207,5 x 138 cm

© Courtesy Galerie Buchholz; Maureen Paley, London; David Zwirner, New York and Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris

Banner Image
PLAYGROUND LUXEMBOURG (DOS 2005), 1986
C-Print, 30,5 x 40,6 cm

© Courtesy Galerie Buchholz; Maureen Paley, London; David Zwirner, New York and Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris

RAPHAEL DIOGO *Five Days Under Lights

RAPHAEL DIOGO
*Five Days Under Lights

interview CHIDOZI OBASI
written ALBAN E. SMAJLI

Raphael Diogo grew up between waves and asphalt, with Venice Beach feeding a body in constant movement, Jiu-Jitsu classes, soccer drills, skateboards, surfboards, mornings in Gold’s Gym where sweat turned into chance, a scout stopping, a conversation beginning, the kind that opens a door without announcing itself.

Modeling was already part of his family’s vocabulary, both parents carrying it as a lived memory, so when the first steps came it felt less like invention and more like continuation, though with the restless energy of someone who wants to carve out his own form.

total VALENTINO

“Getting the call for Jean Paul Gaultier’s Le Male campaign brought tears of joy, a moment of true fulfillment.”

Raphael Diogo speaks with Chidozie Obasi
for LE MILE .Digital

The notebooks filled with sketches, the hours of training, the steady rhythm of curiosity all folded into the way Raphael speaks about patience, about humility, about the strange elasticity of time inside this industry. He insists on gratitude as foundation, on respect as gesture, on presence as currency, and in that insistence there is no trace of calculation, only the sense of someone who has already faced enough uncertainty to know that the ground beneath him shifts constantly.

Jean Paul Gaultier’s Le Male campaign marked the rupture, five days in Bulgaria under lights and choreography, a job that required preparation of body and mind and delivered the quiet shock of tears when confirmation arrived, not from insecurity but from the sudden weight of arrival. That moment stretched into confidence, into a sense of place, into a reminder that careers are built in accumulations, in the way encounters layer upon each other, in how journeys fold back and expand again. Now in New York, Raphael continues the unfolding. Work, relationships, lessons, always the search for what comes next without a rush to define it too quickly. The horizon remains open, and with it the possibility of passing on everything he has gathered since 2019, the small fragments of knowledge, discipline, and energy that shape him in this present moment.

cap POLO RALPH LAUREN
shirt, sweater, coat + trousers PAUL SMITH
ring TITLE OF WORK
sneaker VANS

total EMPORIO ARMANI
custom eyewear KAT & PAUL AOUN

Chidozi Obasi
First things first: could you introduce yourself to us?

Raphael Diogo
My name is Raphael Diogo. I’m an American/Brazilian model, born and raised in Venice Beach, CA. I grew up staying active—whether it was Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, playing soccer for the LA Galaxy Academy, or skating and surfing with friends. I’ve also always had a creative side, spending free time painting and sketching. I now live in New York City, where I’m continuing to pursue my modeling career.

What made you venture into modelling?

Funny enough, both of my parents used to be models. I never gave it much thought until I was scouted while working out at Gold’s Gym in Venice one morning. At first, I was a bit skeptical, but then I realized I had nothing to lose—so why not take the risk? It really helped having the support of my parents when I was taking those first steps.

When did you realize you wanted to make a career out of it?

I’ve always taken pride in giving my best in anything I do. After being scouted, I spent the first few months learning everything I could about the industry. What kind of jobs are out there? Who’s doing them? Can people really support themselves financially doing this? How do I get to the top? I became obsessed with the opportunities and how much creativity the industry allowed me to express. The spontaneity of it all—every day being different—kept me excited about what could come next.

What has been the most challenging aspect of modeling?

The hardest part has been staying patient with myself and my journey. It’s so easy to compare yourself to others, especially with social media. My self-belief is strong, but there are times when I forget how far I’ve come—especially when things don’t go the way I hoped. I’ve learned that timing is everything. We all want to be part of amazing experiences and hit certain milestones, but we have to trust that the time will come.

blazer FEAR OF GOD
tank top CALVIN KLEIN
leather pants RHUDE
shoes RALPH LAUREN
jewelry TITLE OF WORK

short + vest ISSEY MIYAKE
bracelet + necklace TITLE OF WORK

 And how about your biggest pinch-me experiences?

That would definitely be getting the call that I was confirmed as the lead in Jean Paul Gaultier’s Le Male fragrance campaign. I flew to Bulgaria to shoot five days of TV commercials, print, and digital assets. It was the first time I really had to prepare myself—both physically and mentally—for a job. That experience gave me a level of confidence I hadn’t tapped into before. There were definitely tears of joy. It was a moment of true fulfillment.

 Is there anything you’d change about your career?

Absolutely nothing. I’m incredibly grateful for every moment that has brought me to where I am today. To everyone who has believed in and supported me since day one—thank you from the bottom of my heart. There were plenty of tough times, but I’ve been fortunate to have a support system that encouraged me to keep striving for greatness.

What have been your biggest lessons?

The importance of humility and gratitude. It doesn’t matter who you are or what you’ve accomplished—what matters is how you present yourself and how you treat others. I aim to show up with a positive and professional attitude and to treat everyone with respect. We’re all human, and our time is valuable. I feel lucky to work with such talented individuals, and I’ll always do my best to spread love and positivity.

Final hopes?

I want to continue this journey for as long as possible. Building relationships and creating memories—that’s what it’s all about. Since starting in 2019, I’ve learned so much, and I’d love to pass that knowledge on to anyone just getting started.

shirt, blazer + trousers ZEGNA
necklace TITLE OF WORK
sneakers VANS

beret EMPORIO ARMANI
tank top CALVIN KLEIN
leather pants RHUDE
jewelry TITLE OF WORK

“I want to continue this journey for as long as possible. Building relationships and creating memories—that’s what it’s all about.”

Raphael Diogo speaks with Chidozie Obasi
for LE MILE .Digital

neck scarf HERMÈS
coat + jacket BRIONI
trousers DRIES VAN NOTEN
jewelry TITLE OF WORK
sneakers VANS

photographer ANKA GARBOWSKA
stylist TATIANA CINQUINO
grooming AMANDA WILSON
intro text ALBAN E. SMAJLI

talent RAPHAEL DIOGO
via HEROES MODEL MANAGEMENT

AARON JOHNSON *We All Shine On

AARON JOHNSON 

*We All Shine On

written SIMON RIEPE

It’s a sunny Wednesday in Madrid - Bowman Hal, the new gallery space at SOLO CVS near Plaza de España, is filled with vibrating colours. Surrounded by floating heads, luminous orbs and smiley faces with multiple eyes the artist Aaron Johnson is guiding through a spirit realm, his solo exhibition WE ALL SHINE ON.

Aaron Johnson was born in St. Paul, Minnesota (USA) and studied molecular and cellular biology before committing fully to art. After moving to New York and with no traditional training in painting, he discovered the work of Jackson Pollock and began exploring free, gestural painting. It echoed his background in science and his atelier became a laboratory. Experiments like colour flowing over canvases consisting of used socks glued together resulted in grotesque, yet already otherworldly figures.

Until in 2018, he showed SOLO „How the Lemons Got Loose“. The painting is part of the SOLO Collection and is his first artwork made by using acrylics on a soaking wet canvas, the technique that is keeping him engaged since then. He begins with mark-making and establishing a colour sensibility. The first day is an intense, wet process on the floor. He pours paint on watery canvas, tilts, lifts, sprays. Watches colour flow, merge and transform. Johnson is happy to give away to chance and encourages the matter to reveal itself. He is especially interested in an abstract occurrence he calls ‚Orbs‘. It’s thicker colour poured on more liquid acrylic on a wet surface. The thick colour gets ripped apart creating halo-like forms that give a lead for the next day. Then, when all is dried up, he hangs the canvas upright and starts to resolve the composition. Multiple eyes, mouthes and sometimes feed are added, giving the abstract flow of colour a more figurative from. He calls them „Moon Monks“ (2025), „Star Travelers“ (2025) or „River Spirit, Tree Spirit“ (2025). Spirits which have emerged from the process itself. And it seems like Johnson merely helped them to reveal themselves to the world.

Aaron Johnson
We Wait For You, 2025
Acrylic on canvas
157.5 x 127 cm

Aaron Johnson
We All Shine On Installation View / © Bowman Hal

Missing a deeper connection with nature, Johnson moved from NYC to LA about 2 years ago. There, surrounded by cacti and green mountains, animism slipped into his body of work, believing that nature holds consciousness. His paintings have grown lighter, happier, infused with a sense of connection. Spirits rise out of rivers and trees, glowing ancestors linger in skies, pairs of figures merge into one another like lovers or reunited souls. The beings in WE ALL SHINE ON remind us, that we are all just made of stardust, that we just form a small part of the bigger picture. And they are welcoming us into their circle and let us get in touch with the interconnectedness.

It is striking that one has a hard time leaving the exhibition without feeling lifted, happy and hopeful. Do Johnson’s spirits have a healing power? In today’s climate of crisis - wars , right wing politics, ecological collapse - these canvases feel like an intentional counter-image. Johnson does not paint apocalypse. He paints visual rehearsals for connection, realism where light and colour choose kindness. We all must be able to imagine a positive feature before we can build it. And WE ALL SHINE ON helps us do exactly that.
Yet, amid the cosmic vastness, there’s always a sense of humor: big feet, goofy teeth, smiley faces. Johnson’s work doesn’t want to sermonize, it invites. Because the end is not inevitable. The door is always open.

Aaron Johnson
Ascension, 2022
Acrylic on canvas
213 x 183 cm
We All Shine On Installation View / © Bowman Hal

Aaron Johnson
Earth Angel, 2025
Acrylic on canvas
157.5 x 127 cm

The exhibition is presented at Bowman Hal, a new gallery space of SOLO CVS in Madrid, in collaboration with Almine Rech. Bowman Hal is part to the international SOLO project, which supports artists through exhibitions and commissions. It’s own collection holds over 1200 works of art. For Johnson, who’s paintings are already in the MoMa in New York or the Weisman Foundation in Los Angeles, this solo exhibition marks another step in a career that spans from science studies over sock paintings to cosmic spirits and showcases his latest body of work.

WE ALL SHINE ON is on view at Bowman Hal in Madrid until November 15, 2025. If you’re able to go, give yourself time. Let the orbs do their work. Choose your favorite and stay a minute longer than what might feel reasonable. And you might notice… the paintings breathing back.

credit for header image:
Aaron Johnson / We All Shine On Installation View / © Bowman Hal

Pictures via PR
thanks to SOLO CONTEMPORARY

Gerhard Richter *Six Decades of Images at Fondation Louis Vuitton

Gerhard Richter
*Six Decades of Images at Fondation Louis Vuitton

written MONICA DE LUNA

Gerhard Richter enters Paris once again, the Fondation Louis Vuitton opening its entire body of galleries to his universe, six decades unfolded in a single itinerary, from the trembling blur of Uncle Rudi to the last abstractions where color collapses into silence.

Two hundred and seventy works march through the halls, oil and glass, graphite and ink, water and fire, every surface pressed by the restless hand of an image maker who once said, “I’m a picture maker.” The retrospective, running from October 17, 2025 to March 2, 2026, refuses containment. It drifts through photography’s ghostly echoes, slips into the monumentality of color fields, twists into the cold sharpness of steel and mirrored panes. In the words of Suzanne Pagé, Artistic Director of the Fondation Louis Vuitton: “Gerhard Richter – a painter who defines himself as a maker of images based on subjects that he is constantly probing.”

Gerhard Richter, Ema (Akt auf einer Treppe), [Ema (Naked in a staircase)], 1966 (CR 134)
Oil on canvas, 200 x 130 cm
Museum Ludwig, Cologne / Donation Ludwig, Collection 1976
© Gerhard Richter 2025 (18102025)

Gerhard Richter, Lesende [Woman reading], 1994 (CR 804)
Oil on canvas, 72 x 102 cm
Collection SFMOMA, Purchase through the gifts of Mimi and Peter Haas and Helen and Charles Schwab, and the Accessions Committee Fund: Barbara and Gerson Bakar, Collectors Forum, Evelyn D. Haas, Elaine McKeon, Byron R. Meyer, Modern Art Council, Christine and Michael Murray, Nancy and Steven Oliver, Leanne B. Roberts, Madeleine H. Russell, Danielle and Brooks Walker, Jr., Phyllis C. Wattis, and Pat and Bill Wilson
© Gerhard Richter 2025 (18102025)

From the early 1960s photo-paintings to the 1972 48 Portraits that hung in Venice, the show stages each decade as an island of vision. Blurred faces, dissolved saints, nurses with spectral eyes. The 1980s roar with vast abstractions, their squeegeed surfaces layered like geological strata. Candle flames rise against blackened grounds, his daughter’s face hovers in light, Venice is held still in paint. The 1990s open toward chance, toward the mathematical color blocks of 4900 Farben, toward the meditative hum of the Cage Paintings.

Then the rupture: 2014’s Birkenau. Four canvases, born from four clandestine photographs of extermination, overpainted into a veil of abstraction. Richter confessed, “It was like an old debt that I finally had to repay (…) I felt like I was fulfilling a mission.” The cycle faces itself across mirrored panels, forcing the viewer into an architecture of reflection and erasure.

Richter declared painting complete in 2017, withdrawing into drawing, letting graphite and wash occupy the space that once belonged to oil. Pages marked by hesitation, frottage, compass arcs. The retrospective ends here, in the modest scale of paper, an act of stripping down after the enormity of canvas. Nicholas Serota and Dieter Schwarz, curators of the exhibition, present Richter as an accumulation of acts. Serota recalls, “Everything that he does is very deliberate. To declare a painting as painting no. 1, as he did with Table, is a powerful act of will.” That will saturates every room. It lingers in the gray paintings, indifferent yet charged, and in the strips of digitally stretched color that seem to run beyond the eye’s grasp.

Gerhard Richter, Selbstportrait [Selfportrait], 1996 (CR 836-1)
Oil on linen, 51 x 46 cm
The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Gift of Jo, Carole and Ronald S. Lauder and Committee on, Painting and Sculpture Funds, 1996
© Gerhard Richter 2025 (18102025)

Gerhard Richter, Venedig (Treppe) [Venezia (stairs)], 1985 (CR 586-3)
Oil on canvas, 51,4 x 71,8 cm
The Art Institute of Chicago. Gift of Edlis, Neeson Collection
© Gerhard Richter 2025 (18102025)

The Fondation Louis Vuitton, which first showed Richter in its inaugural 2014 exhibition, now turns over every wall to him. It is an atlas of fragments, a cartography of images remade, erased, blurred, overpainted. Richter once wrote, “In the first place, the basis is an intention – that of giving an image of the world.”

Here the image swells into multiplicity. A lifetime, distilled into 270 works, an exhibition that breathes intimacy and monument.

The Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris will host a major retrospective of Gerhard Richter from October 17, 2025 to March 2, 2026. Spanning more than sixty years of work, the exhibition brings together 270 pieces including paintings, drawings, sculptures, and overpainted photographs. Curated by Dieter Schwarz and Nicholas Serota, the project offers an unparalleled view of Richter’s artistic journey from 1962 to 2024.

credit for header image:
Gerhard Richter, Apfelbäume [Appletree], 1987 (CR 650-1)
Oil on canvas, 67 x 92 cm, Private collection
© Gerhard Richter 2025 (18102025)

DEBORAH DE LUCA *Equality at 140 BPM

DEBORAH DE LUCA
*Equality at 140 BPM

written + interview ALBAN E. SMAJLI

Born in Scampia and wired for motion, Deborah de Luca takes the booth as a surveyor might seize a blueprint, her compass a strobe that scans the crowd.

She draws tempo across faces like lines of elevation, setting three instinctive tracks as a base layer, a quiet study before construction begins. From there she lifts the room piece by piece, each transition a new frame rising into place, until the set breathes as a structure of rhythm and light. Lately the final touch often glimmers with a Gigi D’Agostino refrain — a silver filament stretched through a contemporary shell, binding past and present in one luminous design.

Silence holds a private garden key for Deborah. Life surrounds her with music in studios, in clubs, in cars, so she seeks stillness and lets it refill the body. Between the first record and the last drop new selves appear and dissolve, across long marathons of four to seven hours, a full cycle of morning energy, afternoon charge, evening glow. One word: equality, a law for dance floors where categories melt and a single pulse writes a passport for everyone.

dress VERSACE
shoes LE SILLA

“In a techno club, it doesn’t matter if you’re white, Black, gray, yellow, Christian, Jewish, atheist—inside, we’re all of the same religion: techno.”

Deborah de Luca speaks with Alban E. Smajli
for LE MILE .Digital

Her faith moves through cosmic grammar. God equals the universe, a field of energy, color, and music that answers when addressed with intention. She runs her label since 2013, appetite vivid for sound, image, cinema, miles. Tastes shift like seasons of the tongue, sometimes heavy and hard, sometimes featherlight and melodic, especially in the final hour when the sun inside her sets leans toward amber. Craft sits on both shoulders during those passages, melody braiding with steel, her signature: hard pop, techno fluent.
Small rooms feed her with a certain charge, afters where the ceiling breathes and the floor talks back, like that morning in Florence when the dial locked into hard art techno and a new facet snapped into view. The ugliest sound in her memory came from plastic whistles pecking at the kick, a fashion that squealed and left a sour ring. Spin her catalog from end to start and a path appears, a gradual climb shaped by taste and by the sound of her city, a line that rises in small steps and keeps rising.

When the lights rise and the room exhales, a ritual follows. Fifteen minutes of fierce self audit, choices weighed and corners checked, then a homing current toward bed, toward two dogs, toward the sunset that washes the house in gold and resets the chest. Flights create a sealed capsule where the pilot drives and the grid fades into distance, films flicker, thoughts wander, and nerves surrender. She wants the work to live on, a structure that other hands can lift and carry, music that glows with memory and future. Deborah de Luca composes momentum and mercy in the same breath, a builder who treats crowds like cities and nights like blueprints, and across seven hour marathons or one hour transmissions the mission stays constant, read the room, raise the structure, leave them with a song that follows them home. For a long, long while. Always.

top VOFT KNIT
skirt RICK OWENS

Alban E. Smajli
Your sets feel like architecture. What’s the last thing that shattered your sense of control?

Deborah de Luca
I take “architecture” as a compliment, but honestly, there’s not much pre-built. The first three tracks I already know, because I need time to read the room and understand who’s in front of me. Those first 15 minutes are my time to analyze. From there, I build what comes next. Maybe that’s architecture, but it happens live, piece by piece. Only when I play a DJ set that’s streamed online, like for the Street Parade or my live shows from the Vele di Scampia or at Maradona Stadium those are the only sets I prepare at home. They’re not random but carefully studied since they’ll have media exposure. I decide on the tracks beforehand, or even create some pieces specifically for the occasion, but I never fix their order.

You grew up in Scampia. Now you tour the world pulsing through Funktion-Ones. Is there still a part of you that hears silence and gets suspicious?

Actually, I love silence, I don’t become suspicious. When I get in the car, I turn the music off; if a driver is with me, I turn it off; if I’m at a restaurant, I like silence. Because I live constantly with music—when I make it, when I listen to others, when I work in clubs, or when I hear someone play before or after me. So I need silence, I look for it, it regenerates me.

How many versions of you exist between the opening track and the last drop at 4:37 a.m.?

The first track is always mine, the last one is usually not, especially lately, when I like closing with a Gigi D’Agostino piece from the early 2000s. So no, I’m not the same from the first to the last track. I take a journey, especially if I play long sets of 4, 5, even 7 hours. I’m not the same person from the first to the last record. Sometimes I come back, then I drift away—it’s the same in life. You wake up one way in the morning, by afternoon you have different energy, and in the evening it changes again.

Do you believe in God? Or just in bass?

I believe, but not in the God most people think of—not that man with long hair and blue eyes, born in Jerusalem, who should have been darker-skinned anyway. I don’t believe in that. I believe in the universe. For me, God is the universe. When you ask for something, you ask the universe. The energy comes from the universe, you attract it. To me, that’s the same thing—God is the universe. But it has no human figure; it’s everything around us: energy, colors, music. That, for me, is God.

top VOFT KNIT
skirt ISZA
lip ring ASK & EMBLA

You run your own label. Do you still feel hunger, or is it something deeper now? Obsession maybe, or ritual?

I’ve managed my label alone since 2013. I’m always hungry, and that will never pass—whether for music, colors, friendships, films, travel. Hunger will never leave me. Sometimes I just change tastes—sometimes I want sweet, sometimes salty. In music, sometimes heavier, harder; other times softer, like in the last hour of long sets. But yes, the hunger never fades.

Do you miss the chaos of small clubs? The kind where the smoke machine breaks and the floor sweats back at you?

I miss the energy of small clubs a lot. Sometimes, when after a festival I play a little after-party in a small place, I’m really happy, because you’re closer to people. It also gives me a different idea of music, I play differently. For example, last time in Florence, in a club after a festival, I was much harder than usual—very art-techno. I discovered a new side of myself there.

What’s the worst sound you’ve ever heard on stage?

When the sound system isn’t as it should be and the monitor speaker starts crackling, it’s terrible — it breaks the magic.

If someone played your full discography backwards, what message would emerge?

You’d hear the journey. Where I started slowly, climbing step by step—not mountains, just hills. I evolved with my own taste, with people’s taste, with the sounds around me, with the influences of my city. You’d hear that it’s been a steady path upward—not of highs and lows, but always slowly rising.

Techno doesn’t need words, but if it did—what would yours be? Just one.

Equality. In a techno club, it doesn’t matter if you’re white, Black, gray, yellow, Christian, Jewish, atheist—nobody cares. Inside, we’re all of the same religion: techno. And that’s something very beautiful.

What keeps you OFFLINE when your whole life runs on voltage and signal? Or is OFFLINE just a myth sold to the unplugged?

My home, my dogs, the sunset at home. Also when I fly. Yesterday I had a 14-hour flight and could have connected, but I didn’t. On planes, I let the pilot drive, I rest, I disconnect completely. When I’m not flying, it’s still my dogs and my home that keep me offline.

You’ve built something—music, myth, a kind of feminine rage wrapped in steel. Do you ever worry it’ll outgrow you?

No, I don’t think it can become bigger than me. Music is understandable for everyone, and even if it grows, it remains something elementary. I never feared it could outgrow me.

When the lights come up and the bodies thin out, when it’s just sweat on the floor and silence in the booth, where does your mind go? Who do you become when the music stops?

Honestly, I’m very tough on myself. The first 15 minutes after a set I spend thinking I haven’t done my very best—that I should have played another track, that something was too easy, too commercial, or too hard. Even when everyone says it was great, I criticize myself. Then I can’t wait to get into bed, and to go home to my dogs.

“For me, God is the universe. Energy, colors, music—that, for me, is God.”

Deborah de Luca speaks with Alban E. Smajli
for LE MILE .Digital

top YVY LEATHER
panties MAISON CLOSE

photographer NICHOLAS FOLS
styling + production ANCA MACAVEI
styling assistants JYOTHSANA SELVAM + LESLIE GUERRA
assistant on set MELISSA RUSSO

talent
DEBORAH DE LUCA

YULIA PAVLEN *When You´re Strange

YULIA PAVLEN
*When You´re Strange

written + interview HANNAH ROSE PRENDERGAST

POV: You embrace who you are, learn to laugh at yourself, and never fear standing out. —a friendly reminder from Yulia Pavlen.

Born in the early years of Ukraine’s independence, she grew up during a time of radical transformation. Ever the optimist, she carried bright, artful memories of home when she moved to Berlin in 2022.
In this new city, where being strange felt less like an exception and more like a shared language, her TikTok became an extension of how she moved through the world. If you see Yulia doing her makeup on the subway, the best thing you can do is be her mirror.

Shooting outdoors in 40°F (5°C) weather was one of my most challenging experiences. I wore five looks, most of which were lightweight—one was just a skirt and bra. I was freezing the whole time but didn’t say anything. I knew it wouldn’t be easy, so I focused on giving my best.
The team was amazing, checking in regularly, which I really appreciated.
I also faced my fear of heights: sitting on a subway exit railing, standing in a second-floor windowsill, and posing on an electrical box.
Despite the challenges, I’m incredibly grateful for the experience. I love stepping out of my comfort zone. My motto is, 'This scares me, but let’s try it. ' Taking risks and pushing myself are just who I am.
When I’m doing what I love, I forget about the discomfort. It feels like leaving the world behind and stepping into a space where I can express myself freely.

—Yulia Pavlen

Yulia Pavlen
Coverstory LE MILE Ephemeral Edition Nr. 38 / 01/2025
seen by Per Appelgren, wearing CELINE

“I was always Daddy’s little girl … riding on his motorcycle gave me my first real taste of freedom.”

Yulia Pavlen speaks with Hannah Rose Prendergast
for LE MILE Issue 38 / Ephemeral Edition SS25

coat JOSHUA SENGESPEICK

top CELINE
panties MIU MIU
shoes AEYDE
coat JOSHUA SENGESPEICK

Hannah Rose Prendergast
What inspired you to start your Get Ready With Me series on the subway?

Yulia
When creating new content, I always ask myself, ‘Would this idea hook me?’ The GRWM concept came to me almost by accident as I reflected on what would genuinely captivate me. I love makeup and often do it in public spaces, so the idea feels natural. Moving forward, I want to improve the quality of my content, especially in terms of lighting and video production. I’m always brainstorming new ideas. On TikTok, you can never be sure if an idea will succeed—you have to try it out and see how viewers respond.

How do you and your camerawoman work together to bring your vision to life?

My camerawoman, Valeria Shelihova, is also a close friend. Although we’re both from Ukraine, we met in Berlin. We have a great connection and often communicate without speaking. I provide the creative direction, and Valeria captures it all as it unfolds.

What do you find therapeutic about creating content?

It sounds odd, but I thrive on not being accepted by everyone. Not everyone rejects me for wearing makeup, but many people do. That energy of rejection, rather than breaking me, fuels my determination. I’ve learned to stand firm and not let others’ opinions affect me. When you stand your ground and refuse to let negativity define you, that’s when you truly win—and there’s no better feeling than that.

How has your artist name changed over time, and what does it mean to you now?

As a teenager, I went by 'Autistic' and even got it tattooed. I chose the name because I was reserved, shy, and had no friends. People thought something was wrong with me. At the time, I was studying in art college, immersing myself in painting and classical literature. I saw myself as a strange, lyrical character named 'Autistic.'

When I moved to Berlin, I was set to collaborate with a designer, but he declined because of my name. That’s when I realized it might be holding me back professionally. I wanted a name that feels more like me—timeless, elegant, and strong. Yulia Pavlen aligns more with where I’m heading, both creatively and professionally.

top CELINE
panties MIU MIU
shoes AEYDE

total look SPORTMAX
shoes AEYDE

“Moving to Berlin wasn’t easy, but thanks to the kindness of strangers, I never felt alone.”

Yulia Pavlen speaks with Hannah Rose Prendergast
for LE MILE Issue 38 / Ephemeral Edition SS25

top NICKLAS SKOVGAARD
tights FALKE
necklace PEARL OCCTOPUSS.Y

What was your experience growing up in Ukraine and then moving to Berlin?

I’m from Kharkiv, Ukraine’s first capital—a beautiful yet industrial city with a unique charm. I grew up in the Saltovka neighborhood, which endured heavy shelling due to its proximity to the Russian border. Soviet-era panel housing shaped much of my early years, but despite everything, I love Kharkiv and its people—they are kind, resilient, and have an incredible sense of humor.

Moving to Berlin wasn’t easy, but I was fortunate to meet incredible people who helped me with housing and paperwork and made me feel like family despite being strangers. Thanks to their kindness, I never felt alone or afraid of not knowing German. They were always there to support me. Living in Europe changed me. People here are much more supportive than in Ukraine. Back home, I often felt misunderstood or ridiculed. I guess I was a bit too different. Now, I’m excited to collaborate with talented professionals in the fashion industry from around the world.

Who introduced you to the world of art?

As an artist, my father exposed me to art from a young age. He often took me to exhibitions and museums and filled our home with books on classical and modern art. He also gave me many of his art materials, which became my first tools for creativity. I’m deeply grateful to him for immersing me in this world. I always knew I would become an artist—it was never a question. I dedicated myself to studying academic art, including drawing, painting, composition, and anatomy. I was incredibly passionate, and art became a way to express my thoughts and feelings. Although I’m not currently drawing, I may return to it someday.

How did you learn to ‘own your glow’?

The modeling industry values uniqueness and a distinctive edge more than conventional beauty. Many incredibly beautiful people struggle to present themselves. This skill comes from knowing who you are and embracing what sets you apart. Owning your glow is essential—it will shine through your work and light up the space around you.

Why should you believe in the kindness of strangers?

I always choose to believe in the good—it is a mindset that works best for me. The same goes for people I don’t know. I don’t dwell on whether they’re good or not; instead, I prepare myself mentally and emotionally to believe nothing bad will happen to me.

What change do you want to see in yourself and the world?

I want world peace. War is the worst thing that can happen. Personally, I want to be more patient with myself in achieving my goals. Good results take time.

What’s one of your core memories from childhood?

I was always Daddy’s little girl, spending most of my time by his side. He often took me on motorcycle rides, and I especially loved the thrill of racing down the expressway with him. Those moments gave me my first real taste of freedom.

top CULT FORM
skirt NICKLAS SKOVGAARD
tights WOLFORD
shoes AEYDE
accessoires CELINE

photographer PER APPELGREN
creative + art direction STUDIO NONSENS / STEFANIE SCHELLWIES + LISANNE KURTH
talent YULIA PAVLEN
styling NESSIE
hair MASAYUKI YUASA using Less is More Organic Cosmetic
make up LEE HYANGSOON using Gucci Beauty
production ENLIL via AVEC NOUS BERLIN
moving image METTE NORDVIG
light LIAM MULLIGAN
digi TOBIAS ORTMANN
social KARLA SCHRADI
retouch ROMARIO MAHEER

production coordination + booking lemilestudios

first published
LE MILE Ephemeral Edition Nr. 39 (2025)

PiTA *Sacred Territories

PiTA
*Sacred Territories

written + interview MARK ASHKINS

PiTA’s work is a current, an unseen force moving through space, unbound by time. Her process is a pulse, a frequency felt in the marrow, where every action is a spell cast in movement and form. There is no arrival, only the endless unfolding of what has already begun.

Her hands know the weight of inheritance. Walking barefoot on sun-scorched mountains, mapping invisible lines between body and land, she stitches the air with numerology’s unseen architecture. Symbols dictate rhythm, thread extends beyond the edge, fabric refuses to end. The act of making is the act of knowing, of returning to a knowledge that has never left.

Each piece, each ceremony, each moment is a gesture—a call and an answer, happening in the same breath. The body is an archive, a site of memory and inscription, absorbing and releasing. The loom moves, the body bends, the weave extends beyond its last stitch. PiTA opens a space where time moves differently, where the act of creation is simply what must be done.


“My stories have never been easy—marked by violence, discrimination, and pain. But my body, unlike any other love, taught me how to love.”

PiTA speaks with Mark Ashkins
for LE MILE Ephemeral Edition - SS 2025 Nr. 38

Mark Ashkins
From curating events to creating designs—where does the pulse of your creativity hit hardest? In the planning, the making, or that fleeting moment it al comes alive?

PiTA
When a baby was born in our family, my maternal great-grandmother always gifted a gold jewel to the newborn, believing that gold repels bad energies. That jewel became an amulet of protection and good fortune. I return to that symbolic act as a reminder of the power of intention, of the way objects carry energy. I feel deeply connected to creation through my body—my uterus, my chest. Each project, whether it’s shaping the atmosphere of a ceremony, weaving a sculpture from two hundred meters of cempasúchil flowers, or walking, unclothed in soul and skin, through the mountains to be photographed, becomes a small birth. I rest, live, and nourish myself in these moments.

Your connection to the land and community in Oaxaca feels like the heartbeat of your work. How does that bond weave itself into your creative world?

To help my body form the arch of my feet, my father took me every afternoon to walk across mountains of hot earth. That was my initiation, my connection to the land, my integration into the rituals of my community. My work is self-referential. I open what is inside me, decontextualizing what has always existed in a fixed place.

Numerology feels like a hidden map. How do its patterns and symbols shape the way you see or create?

Inherited wisdom and the numbers of my birth date form a path that guides my intuition. I also find guidance in textiles—their numerical patterns, sequences, and rhythms. I work with a weaving technique that restores the soul, a symbol of second chances. In Oaxaca’s prisons, this technique is taught to those deprived of liberty. From behind bars, they weave bags that their families sell to sustain themselves. Traditionally called the ‘basket weaving technique,’ I call it ‘infinite weaving’ because it is a spiral with no true end. The illusion of completion exists, but in reality, the weave always has the potential to continue.

jewelry LODEPECH

“Each project, whether it’s shaping the atmosphere of a ceremony, weaving a sculpture from two hundred meters of cempasúchil flowers, or walking, unclothed in soul and skin, through the mountains to be photographed, becomes a small birth.”

PiTA speaks with Mark Ashkins
for LE MILE Ephemeral Edition - SS 2025 Nr. 38

Using your body as a canvas and a voice—what have you learned about the stories it holds and the spaces it occupies?

My nature provokes. It reveals what others carry within them while expanding what I carry inside myself. My stories have never been easy—marked by violence, discrimination, and pain. But my body, unlike any other love, taught me how to love. Through loving myself, I came to understand all bodies as sacred territories, deserving of honor, dignity, freedom, and respect.

Your events are caled ‘unrepeatable experiences.’ How do you create something that leaves a permanent mark?

Life is an unrepeatable experience—shifting, filled with characters, emotions, scenarios, loves. If I had to illustrate the surreal, fleeting nature of the human universe, I would point to a painting by the Oaxacan artist Rodolfo Morales, where all realities coexist, happening simultaneously. I open my own universe with love and honesty, stepping with respect and without judgment into the open universe of others.

How do you create space for stillness and generosity amid the constant rush and noise?

I come from a family of farmers. Cultivating plants instilled patience, the wisdom of giving, and the humility of receiving. Living alongside plants, following their cycles, develops an intuition aligned with the rhythm of the earth—one that mirrors our own human cycles. From my family, I’ve learned that there is a time and a season for everything, that nature dictates when to move forward and when to pause, and that to understand what is inside, one must observe what is outside.

Your designs carry the soul of tradition, but they slip effortlessly into the now. How do you move between these two worlds without losing their essence?

My grandfather and father passed down a gift to me—the ability to walk without getting lost. They travel from town to town, mountain to mountain, guided only by intuition. I walk constantly. My feet are my preferred mode of transport, carrying me into the unknown. I find joy in what is unfamiliar, spending much of my time there, in the other. Yet, I always find my way back to my own.

Art often walks the line between rebelion and preservation. Where does your work sit in that conversation?

Being and doing are woven from the same thread—the one that connects past and future through the present. I have always been rooted, untamed, and free. These traits shaped my childhood and continue to define my existence. Nothing should take away our freedom.

Which designer or brand feels like a mirror to your vision—timeless, but alive in the moment?

Salo Shayo—friend, visionary, and resident designer of Mexico City. His last collection, New Ode, was a love letter to pre-Hispanic and contemporary Mexico. Through ten symbolic outfits, he captured the fusion of all of Mexico’s eras—those that have passed, the one we live in now, and, seductively, a glimpse of those yet to come.

What’s a recent fashion show, colection, or creative moment that made you stop and feel something real?

A Lucha Libre presentation at the iconic San Francisco Arena in Oaxaca. Lucha Libre is a ritual, a spectacle—martial arts fused with acrobatics, theater, and maximalist fashion. When the wrestlers enter the ring, they walk a perfect balance on the ropes, wearing masks that conceal their identity, costumes that radiate vibrancy—sequins, iridescent fabrics, bold colors. But these garments mean nothing without the force, the character, the life the fighters infuse them with. Choosing a mask and costume is a profound decision. Every shape, texture, and symbol is selected with care, for they will accompany the wrestler throughout their career. That level of intention, that search for something so deeply aligned with one's true self, moves me. Even as time passes and things change, that essence remains, unwavering in its truth.

model PITA ANTONIO VELASCO
photography TATSUMI MILORI
styling + creative direction EVA BERNAL

FRANCESCO RUGGIERO *New World Order

FRANCESCO RUGGIERO
*New World Order

written Chidozie Obasi

At a time when the climate of the global fashion industry is changing with an increasingly ferocious pace, there’s no doubting Francesco Ruggiero’s credentials are a welcome respite: the Padova-born, Milan-hailed multihyphenate knows how to swoon, surprise and stun with his arresting look, as a creative of great poise and drive; no mean feat in a world shaped by downturns.

Ruggiero, who moved to Santorini with his family aged one and then to Athens a few years later, has been on a restless pursuit to discover himself far beyond the highly-coveted fixtures of the modeling system, dwelling between joyful thrills and punchy feels in equal measure. “I've always been very open hearted and kind to people, even if I couldn't really tell if they just wanted things from me or not,” he freely admits, with no signs of peacocking braggadocio on display. Chronicling a career that could spark pangs of envy to many of his peers, Ruggiero has graced campaigns and runways of brands like Calvin Klein, Zara, Moncler, Giorgio Armani, Oliver Peoples, to name a few. But there’s more to the story, which you’ll possibly read here first. You’re welcome.

total look PRADA

jacket ANTONIO MARRAS
blazer DOLCE & GABBANA
gilet + tank top ETRO
denim TOD’S
shorts JIL SANDER by Lucie and Luke Meier
necklace SWAROVSKI

“I started giving more attention to my mental health through the whole process of growing up and the difficulties... now it's so much clearer on how to approach things and how to maintain my stability.”

Francesco Ruggiero speaks with Chidozie Obasi
LE MILE Magazine EPHEMERAL, Nr. 38

dark blazer THE FRANKIE SHOP
white blazer TAGLIATORE
shirt PAUL SMITH
pants THE LATEST
tie CELINE
loafers SEBAGO

Chidozie Obasi
First things first: How did you venture into modelling?
Francesco Ruggiero
I started in 2020, right before COVID struck. My sister had this crazy idea to go into an agency alone and sometimes, as they say, one never has to bring friends to castings and jobs. They ended up signing me and my sister, but she’s someone who hates the modeling process. After COVID, I quit my two jobs as a salesman and as a barman, and I understood that this industry had way more potential for me.

Where did you begin such a venture?
I started modelling in Greece, and I must admit I had a couple of wrong people that managed me at the beginning. I didn’t feel represented in the way I wanted, even though at the beginning it was very exciting. So when I came across the right people and the right conditions were met, it was a way to cope and do the things I wanted to do while being myself: I felt happy. I struggled a lot at the start because I did things I didn't care about for cheap prices as I didn't have money for the second part of COVID; I was in Milan, with three people in one bed, which was insane, but I would do it all over again. I'm now very grateful to be comfortable and carefree.

What does fashion mean to you?
It's a very distinct and specific way to express yourself. There's a big misconception that if one is a model, he doesn’t really care about style and fashion, or about the things around. For example, I caught myself buying cheap stuff like Zara, H&M or garments that don't last. I realised that it's my job to actually feel good in clothes. I want to be, to be represented by fashion as I represent it through the images I feature in, you know. So it's a tough gig, but at the same time I understood the value of spending more money and time to research the right pieces that made me feel even more connected to the product.

How has its significance changed for you over the years?
At the beginning, it was something very ephemeral, but then it evolved into this thing that's more and more compelling to use to learn, know, feel and see garments. For example, I was watching a movie the other day (Memories of Murder) and the clothes they wore were so important, an element which can be sometimes brushed aside in the cinema industry sometimes. But that's what separates the greatest people of the world.

coat + socks PAUL SMITH
sweater FEDERICO CINA
pants ACT N1
belt VERSACE
shoes DR MARTENS

blazers + ties PAUL SMITH
top EXTREME CASHMERE
pants MOSCHINO
loafers SEBAGO

“I've always been very open hearted and kind to people, even if I couldn't really tell if they just wanted things from me or not.”

Francesco Ruggiero speaks with Chidozie Obasi
LE MILE Magazine EPHEMERAL, Nr. 38

jacket CASCINELLI
sweater FEDERICO CINA
shirt TAKATURNA
waist sweater CATERPILLAR
pants SETCHU

What's the biggest pinch me moment of your career and journey?
I think it hasn't happened yet, I don't know why. Actually, I feel there’s been a couple, but it was never something I’d consider major, maybe because it's not the career I want to pursue for the rest of my life. I know I want to do it as well as possible, but I don’t want to be solely remembered for my beauty. I think seeing myself in a very different position would be super, like doing a fashion brand or a campaign. I think the biggest ones I would like would be either Bottega or Prada, because they’re not very me and it would be great to explore their aesthetic.

How about your most complex time?
When I was younger, because I had a very specific set of parents who are non-politically correct, as they grew up in difficult times. They all had to do their own thing in their own way. My mom had her first tattoo at 13. And so basically she was like the black sheep of the family and on the streets doing her own thing: growing up, she had to survive to get where she is. And my dad, on the other hand, was the opposite: he comes from a very wealthy family, but then just decided to do whatever and throw everything, whatever they gave him, and he became the black sheep, too. My dad is someone who moved to Mexico and lived there for 15 years. He was never there in a sense, but that's his personality. I met him better when I got older and I went there, at a time when I didn't see him for nearly a decade. But then on the other hand, my mom always loved us, because she changed a lot when she had us. However, she didn't have the means and it was even more difficult, because growing up, we wanted things that maybe we didn't have. But we adjusted and we were kind, especially to our mom, because she was alone; now she's like the most adorable, full of tattoos mom ever.

Any advice you'd give your younger self?
I would have loved to understand the people coming to me, what they actually need or what I could tell them differently.

How do you juggle mental health?
I started giving more attention to my mental health through the whole process of growing up and the difficulties. I had to meet my girlfriend three years ago to understand how important mental health was, especially for things that involve love and trust, because that's when it gets more serious trusting someone when you're so in love and you try to give everything. So I started psychology sessions and now I don't almost don't do them anymore. I only attend therapy sessions when I feel like I have to, but it has gotten me to a point where now it's so much clearer when on how to approach things and how to talk myself through things and how to maintain my stability or don't get angry, don't think too far ahead. I don’t overthink things because that was my main issue about everything.

So now tell me about the book. How did it come about?
The idea started around a couple of years ago, and it was a collection of pictures I had on my phone of lost things and randomly found objects from all over the world, from Los Angeles, Brazil, Mexico, to Iceland where I went for the first time. Objects include the likes of gloves, hats and whatever you can think of. One night I was scrolling through this album of 60-ish pictures with a friend who's a photographer, and we began writing down all the coordinates of where we found these objects - given the through line of my gallery is predominantly consumerist and materialistic. For every picture, we wrote a story of who might have lost the object, and every picture has a different writing. It then translated into more things, like a movie for the book in which the protagonist loses himself across time.

Any future hopes?
I think my biggest hope is to be wealthy enough to be comfortable. I would like to be comfortable in the way that nobody around me has to feel like a burden. At this moment and time, I’m here trying to figure out what I like exactly. And when I find that out, I would like to transition from being just a model. I don't think modelling will ever actually go away, because I like the idea and I like the retribution, obviously, and that I have to take care of myself, because I always like training. But I would like for my creative process to become the centre. Then all the rest is more than welcome to step in, as and when it wishes.

seen COSIMO BUCCOLIERI
fashion director + stylist CHIDOZIE OBASI
head of production JESSICA LOVATO
assistant editor DAVIDE BELOTTI
editorial coordinator NICOLÒ BATTISTINI
make up DIANA DJURDJEVSKI
hair DAVIDE PERFETTI
set designer IRENE COVERI
talent FRANCESCO RUGGIERO

production assistant Anja Menegon
photography assistant Antonio Crotti
set design assistant Giulia Pettinelli
fashion assistants Anna Sarr, Cloe Rubinato, Hamin Lee, Loris Vottero, Maria Teresa Jurado, Gaia Cirillo

SADIQ DESH *Sheer Delight

SADIQ DESH
*Sheer Delight

written CHIDOZIE OBASI

As a creative fresh into his path whilst showing a patience that equates to burgeoning success, 29-year-old Sadiq Desh isn’t ready to rest on his laurels just yet.

“Over the last year, I’ve had some firsts!” he exclaimed, adding that “I saw a lot of me honing on my social media style and modeling.” Born in Nigeria and now hailed in Berlin, he finished high school and moved to Canada to pursue his Bachelor’s degree, working in finance for a year before switching to the fashion sector.

Desh deems Canada “a small market,” so it wasn't until the pandemic when he moved to Berlin and started gaining more of a following on social media that he ventured into the creative world. On the impact of industry, he speaks candidly about the complexities of the system. “It still goes in waves I think,” he opines. “Just being in Germany, across the fashion scope and within the influencer community there isn’t much inclusion, which is why I'm happy independent outlets — like yours — exist and represent people who look like me, because there’s media that keep using influencers or models who look exact same, so seeing that is always a bit frustrating because they could maybe tap out of their usual zone and give people a different dimension of what they do rather than using the same kind of boys all the time,” he adds.

“Sometimes there’s things that people do that make you feel like you don't belong in a certain room… you can definitely tell when people feel entitled because of their ego.”

Sadiq Desh speaks with Chidozie Obasi
for LE MILE .Digital

Moving on to representation, Desh believes that there can still be more profiles like him in the industry. “I still think there’s things that can be done, as there’s still moments where I don’t feel like I'm being respected or treated a certain way, especially in the influencer market where you’re dealing with people with egos and followers,” he shares. “Sometimes there’s things that people do that make you feel like you don't belong in a certain room, and whether it's consciously or unconsciously you can definitely tell when people feel entitled because of their ego. I just always want to make people feel welcome no matter what level of popularity they have.” His transition to being just a set fixture to appearing on socials happened out of the blue in 2017, because the first big fashion brand that invited him was Gucci and he attended their small activation, which led to expanding his career.

But there’s more to the story. “The positives of this job is that obviously you’re lucky enough to make a living out of it, which I think in the bigger scope of things is kind of crazy that you just have this social media profile on a platform and you’re able to profit from it,” he shares. “But I think the benefits for me have been that I was able to have an avenue to meet more people and get educated on things I probably wouldn't have been educated on in other areas. Obviously the downfall with that is if you’re ignorant over certain things and you’re putting stuff out there—and it's perhaps not the right connotation—you could get some backlash as there’s no learning curve or there’s no room for learning when you have such a platform, so you kind of have to take things as they come.”

cardigan MOSCHINO
shirt DIOR MEN
shorts FENDI
tie PAUL SMITH
necklaces LAG World

top FERRAGAMO
brown vest DOLCE&GABBANA
white shirt MANUEL RITZ
pants PAUL SMITH
loafers CHURCH’S

total look MIU MIU

“What keeps me grounded is the urge to resonate with what’s authentic to me… not just the monetary gain, but what feels authentically delightful to me.”

Sadiq Desh speaks with Chidozie Obasi
for LE MILE .Digital

total look LORO PIANA

total look VALENTINO

sweater + shirt + tie PAUL SMITH
pants ZEGNA
shoes SEBAGO

Desh has always taken a personal approach within his platforms. “I mostly gain traction because of my thoughts on things and obviously fashion but my personal say about topics or how I’m feeling is what keeps people,” he opines, reflecting on the notion of authenticity. “I think it's a double-edged sword, because one wants to be authentic, but then people have a short attention span on the internet so one minute you're viral and the next minute you’re forgotten,” he concludes. “What keeps me grounded is the urge to resonate with what’s authentic to me, and to be honest sometimes I've lost that because of the commercial process of social media; however, what I've been pushing forward since last year is not just the monetary gain, but what feels authentically delightful to me.”

blazer JIL SANDER by Lucie and Luke Meier
sweater CANALI
shirt ALESSANDRO GHERARDI
pants MEIMEIJ
loafer CHURCH’S

blazer ISABEL MARANT
shirt DIOR Men
pants JIL SANDER by Lucie and Luke Meier
shoes FERRAGAMO

photography ANTONIO CROTTI   
fashion director + stylist CHIDOZIE OBASI   
head of production JESSICA LOVATO   
fashion coordinator LUCA MICELI   
make up AMY KOUROUMA via WM MANAGEMENT using Nabla Cosmetics   
hair ALICE FANTINI using Davines   
talent SADIQ DESH   
set design IRENE COVERI
fashion assistants LORIS VOTTERO + CLOE RUBINATO + ANNA REGAZZONI + JORDAN MAX BAGLIONI + ALBERTO MICHISANTI + MARTINA MANENTI + MARTINA MUSMARRA + EDWARD PUSCA  

ALI GUTY *Action of Becoming

ALI GUTY
*Action of Becoming

written + interview MARK ASHKINS

Ali Guty arrives in a way that makes arrival feel like an outdated concept, because she’s already in the room before she steps into it, already occupying the gaze before the lens has the nerve to blink, already shaping the air before the stylists even begin to fuss with the hem of anything, because presence doesn’t begin or end, it spills, it stretches, it slips under doors and over walls and between the seams of whatever someone once tried to call fashion, or work, or image, or identity.

There is a pace to her, the kind that folds time in on itself, the kind that turns a set into a stage into a space into a world where cameras become guests and nothing—absolutely nothing—is static, because static things break and Ali doesn’t do broken, she does bending, reshaping, reworking, reappearing, again and again and again, in forms that flicker just long enough to be felt but never long enough to be held.

Fashion loves a narrative but she refuses punctuation, lets the story spill out of her limbs, her shoulders, her neck, the angle of her jaw in late afternoon shadow, and there is always shadow, and there is always light, and between the two she moves like she invented both, like someone who doesn’t need costume or cue because expression lives in the body, and hers writes paragraphs in silk, in denim, in latex and cotton, in things you forgot were supposed to be clothes because they start to feel more like skin or muscle or the inside of a thought that never needed words.

dress ONRUSH

There was Jean Paul Gaultier, of course there was, because some people spot truth without needing it explained, because identity comes to some as intuition and others through decades of misdirection, and Ali holds it with the kind of grip that just rests firm, like someone who’s never had to borrow power because hers came with a fuse already lit.

There are shoots, there are rooms, there are teams and tables and call sheets and sponsored water bottles, but also—there’s motion, breath, the way her hand interrupts the air and tells it to pay attention, and it does, and so does everyone else, because rhythm doesn’t require music and energy doesn’t request permission, and when presence hums, everything else becomes chorus. So she moves—forward, outward, upward, inward, all at once, without a map, without a pause, into the spaces that recognise her even before she’s named them, because naming is for those who need labels, and Ali has already lived the thing.

dress LARHHA

Mark Ashkins
What’s the frst fashion moment that made you stop and think—this is where I belong?

Ali Guty
Refecting on my journey in the fashion industry, there was a moment that made me think, “This is where I belong.” It was the realization of how beauty standards are manipulated, and how, depending on the prevailing trends, one’s body type can be in Vogue or sidelined. The resurgence of 2000s fashion has brought back the ultra-thin ideals of that era, sidelining curvier fgures that once gained acceptance. I don’t like to see how our bodies are treated as mere trends, leading to a draining experience where opportunities diminish for those who don’t ft the “regular” model mold.

The cyclical nature of fashion trends often leads to the resurgence of past styles. The return of Y2K aesthetics brings back not only the fashion but also the body ideals associated with that era. This can perpetuate a narrow standard of beauty, sidelining those who don’t conform to these ideals. It’s essential to challenge these patterns and advocate for a more inclusive approach that celebrates all body types. Our presence and voices are essential in challenging these standards, advocating for genuine representation, and ensuring that fashion celebrates diversity in all its forms.

You move between high fashion and commercial work efortlessly. Is there one space where you feel most challenged?

I honestly enjoy both high fashion and commercial work, and I think they both bring something valuable to my experience as a model. Commercial work is very structured, there’s a clear order to follow, and everything is carefully planned to appeal to a specifc audience. I appreciate that because it teaches me discipline, adaptability, and how to work within a well-defned framework. It’s a great learning experience.
That being said, I feel more at home in high fashion. It’s where I feel the most creative freedom, where I can move, express myself, and contribute my voice. There are fewer limitations, and it’s not necessarily about making something that “makes sense” for a broad audience—it can be abstract, experimental, or even purely artistic. That level of creative expression is something I truly love.

So while I enjoy both worlds, I’d say I feel the most comfortable and fulflled in high fashion and editorial work.

If you could only wear one designer for the rest of your life, who would it be and why?

Jean Paul Gaultier is the frst high fashion brand that truly believed in me. I love the team, their values, and the community they’ve built. It’s a brand that feels full of life, authenticity, and meaning. JPG vibes deeply with the way I express myself and how I experience love, friendship, strength, and the divinity within me. There’s an undeniable sense of empowerment in everything the brand represents, and that’s exactly why I love it. If I had to choose one brand to wear for the rest of my life, it would be Jean Paul Gaultier, without a doubt. It gives me that strength and confdence that makes me feel like the woman I am.

shoes COPERNI

“Our bodies are treated as mere trends, leading to a draining experience where opportunities diminish for those who don’t fit the ‘regular’ model mold.”

Ali Guty speaks with Mark Ashkins
for LE MILE Ephemeral Edition - SS 2025 Nr. 38

Fashion thrives on the ephemeral. Do you see that as liberating or unsettling?

Both. The feeting nature of things can feel unsettling because nothing is permanent, but at the same time, it’s incredibly liberating. It reminds us that nothing is ever too serious everything fades, shifts, and transforms. Life itself is ephemeral. We try to hold on to control, to certainty, but the truth is, everything around us is constantly evolving: fashion, culture, our personal lives… Instead of resisting change, I think there’s power in embracing it, in letting it inspire us rather than unsettle us. Fashion is a refection of this fuidity, an invitation to play, reinvent, and move with the rhythm of time.

What’s a trend you loved but knew wouldn’t last?

The clean girl look, with glossy skin, laminated eyebrows, and polished buns dominate but fashion always oscillates between the immaculate and the maximalist. Life as trends are cyclical as we already mentioned, so what’s next?

The industry is fast, demanding, sometimes unforgiving. What keeps you grounded in it?

I know it's easy for me because I'm the same person in my personal life and working as a model, I have fun working while creating timeless art and memories that last forever. It's the way I express myself and I don't take everything so seriously, but the most important thing for me is to connect with others while working and inspire others along the way. The industry can be demanding, but I choose to see it as a moving space where there's always something new to discover. It anchors me in the idea that at the end of the day, the most important thing is to enjoy the process. I have friends who work in the industry and friends who have nothing to do with the fashion world, and I find balance in the people around me as well because they keep me connected to both realities.

People assume modeling is just about being in front of the camera. What’s the part of the job that no one sees?

What many don't see is the connection you build with people on set. It's not just about being in front of the camera, but about contributing creatively. Every day it feels frst day at work and also I love that. Sometimes, you're given the freedom to add ideas and be part of the creative process because, as the main character, you also have a voice. You're more than just a body; you have personality, opinions, and things to say. That’s how I experience modeling because of who I am and the way I approach it.
But there’s also a lot that goes on behind the scenes. The time spent alone, the rejection, the uncertainty. You never really know what will happen until the last moment in your life plans, and the idea of long-term planning in this industry is almost impossible. It’s an unpredictable journey, where you have to embrace the unknown and trust that each step leads to something new, even if you can’t always see the bigger picture. A LOOOOOOT of faith in the process.

If you weren’t in fashion, where would your creativity take you?

TV host, actress, casting director, model agent…There are things I still think about today. But most of my thoughts are still around the fashion industry.

Social media can turn a face into a brand overnight. How do you define success beyond the numbers?

For me, expressing yourself in a way that both inspires and allows you to be inspired is everything. It’s the heart of why I love social media and connecting with others. Social media gave me a lot of opportunities to be seen frst that model agencies for example did, it was where all it began. The true reward comes from using your success to create something meaningful that positively impacts those around you. It's about using your power and your voice for good and making a diference.

Is there something next already planned, or are you letting the moment decide?

This year, I decided to surrender to the process and let life take me a little, without planning too much, leaving many doors open to new possibilities. A few months ago, I started an acting course, and I’m excited about it. Nobody knows what will happen tomorrow, but I always have new concerns and new things to learn that will help me grow both as a person and as a professional. There is a saying in Spain: “Caminante, no hay camino, se hace camino al andar.” This refects the idea that life doesn’t come with a pre-determined path; it’s created through the actions we take, the choices we make, and the steps we choose to follow.

coat NEXT COUTURE
shoes COPERNI

shoes COPERNI

model ALICIA GUTIÉRREZ via JAG MODELS
photography + creative direction ARDEN
styling SERGI PADIAL
styling assistant PAULA SÁNCHEZ
retouch ISMAEL VILLAR
set design JORGE GARCÍA

set assistant BLANCA DE LA CIERVA
film developing + scanning CUARTO COLOR LAB
photo assistant NANO HERNÁNDEZ
second photo assistant MARINNA BORHAN
location RUGE STUDIO

GORDON MASSMAN *The Single-Hearted Octopus

GORDON MASSMAN
*The Single-Hearted Octopus

written + interview KATE HOAG

Gordon Massman is a Massachusetts-based poet and self-taught painter known for works too big for doorways, or polite living rooms—what he calls “shameless confessions of the human psyche.”

Drawing from Abstract Expressionism, confessional poetry, and Beat Generation literature, Massman creates works that balance deep psychological tension with a sharp wit.

Whether referencing myth, religion, or raw emotion, his work is guided entirely by instinct—part catharsis, part confrontation, and always unfiltered truth. In this conversation with LE MILE, Massman opens up about what it means to paint like Kodiak bear, seeing art as a single-hearted force, and using each brushstroke to expose the self and universal truths.

Gordon Massman
Cabinet of the Soul
Courtesy of the artist

Kate Hoag
You’ve said you “paint like a Kodiak bear attacking fresh carrion.” What does that look like in practice?


Gordon Massman
I paint with my stomach to survive. I squeeze colorful fingernails from tubes with which I slash the canvas. The meat tears in ragged lines which I have no interest in aesthetically purifying. My “skill” lies in rawness, imperfection, dominance—one might call it “un-skill.” In practice I fill my studio with grunts, curses, degradations; I break nails; I cry; I jubilate; I reject civility. At best my paintings resemble something savagely torn rather than neatly sliced with a knife and fork on tablecloth and chinaware. Ugly, like life itself, with its jealousies, betrayals, fears, compulsions, cruelty, demands. Painting is the catharsis of materializing emotion.

Your canvases are often impractically large. How does using a vast amount of space help you express what you’re after?


Rage cannot flow through needlepoint brushes. Nor can passion. Both require smashed up bristles and brushes thick as shovel handles. Likewise, only canvases torn from mizzen masts can contain the reflection of psychological pain, physical lovemaking, deaths of children, war and genocide, guilt and shame, the horror of roadkill. These are my subjects and fastidiousness on preordained practical canvases cannot contain it. I paint neither for money nor living rooms nor average size doorways. I’ve said this before: “There’s the tube of paint, the canvas, and the sum-total of your life. That is all.” I purposely omit critics, audiences, appeasements, conventions. Art is solitary, selfish, and practiced without compromise in a cave.

Although many of your paintings are “abstractions without identifiable subjects” others reference religious histories, political realities, or myths. What goes into deciding your subject for each work?

When I approach a blank canvas, I am innocent—a newborn. The instant I mark it, and again mark it, and mark it yet again, I begin maturing from baby to boy to adolescent to scholar to man to bitten prophet. Within this process, from the white fog, the subject appears—two vague faces, a human ribcage, a peacock riding a bicycle. The physical manifestation of the subconscious dictates my subject which does not become knowable until before me it galvanizes. At that juncture, I become a strong-handed, purposeful storyteller. I never identified as a Rorschach abstractionist, but rather, at my best, as a guide through our collective subconscious wilderness.

Your work often contains deep psychological tension while also using humor and vibrancy. Why is that combination important to you?

I inherited a rarely expressed sense of humor from my mother. On her hospice deathbed in late April, she thanked God for sparing her from the torture of another southern Texas blast-furnace summer. She found the upside to her own extinction. Oftentimes, profundity occurs at the collision of opposites, when for example, fine dining runs contiguous with rampaging revulsion. I do not like peaceful representations devoid of cogitation and conflict. As an incorrigible analysand, I prefer art to blossom outward from the deepest psychological kernel imbued with the weight of revelation, and yes, perhaps humor.

You have noted that Abstract Expressionism, confessional poetry, and Beat Generation Literature all shape your practice. How do these seep into your paintings?

Ted Hughes’s 1970 volume of confessional poems, Crow, with its blunt statements on love, greed, God, instinct, and survival released me to myself. For the first time this naive conformist realized the power of visceral truth, of taboo celebrated. It took two decades and an emotional crisis for me to enter this sacred realm of exquisite turmoil in the deepest regions of the mind and heart. I excavated obsessively and still excavate. Likewise, Jackson Pollock opened my mind to dictatorial urgency, damn tradition. These artists, along with many others, unlocked for me my very nature’s raging fire—independence, filthiness, brutality, courage, clarity of fact. This informs my best work.

Gordon Massman in atelier
seen Charles Carroll

“I paint with my stomach to survive.”

Gordon Massman speaks with Kate Hoag
for LE MILE .Digital

Gordon Massman
The Mad Draftsman’s Instruments
Courtesy of the artist

Gordon Massman
Apollo’s Little Cabinet of Distractions
Courtesy of the artist

You taught literature for years at The Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts and have written thousands of poems. Does being a poet influence how you paint?

I think of collective art as a single-hearted octopus residing in the gut with each appendage a genre—painting, sculpting, dancing, acting, writing, musical composition—one or two of which extrudes and writhes from the artist’s orifices. Artists are not the appendages but rather the life force of their octopus. Poetry is painting, painting is sculpting, sculpting is acting. It’s the life-furnace which creates, not the mode of expression. Every serious artist honors the fire, not the genre. For me poetry and painting are one in the same.

You often say your paintings are like “shameless confessions of the human psyche.” What are you confessing through your art?

The seven deadly sins, plus hilarity.

Your paintings have been described as having been unfolded in graphic, chaotic detail. Do you see the chaos in your paintings as a mirror of the world, or more of what’s happening internally?

I hypothesize that all living beings are one single organism nurtured by a worldwide interconnected subterranean root system of the psyche. As one being in that system, I strive to lay bare universal truths such as hunger, desire, insecurity, fear, self-hatred, megalomania, procreation, shame, and cruelty. I embody that, as does everyone but the godlike few. When successful, my paintings reflect simultaneously the world and myself, or, more aptly stated, the collective unconscious. I believe innumerable great paintings have been obliterated by overthinking.

Your new mirror works bring viewers inside the painting, literally and emotionally. What does the mirror mean to you in this new work?

I see my own brush meet itself when I paint a mirror, and my own hand clutching the brush, and my own posture, and my own expression. Gradually, I create upon my peaceful visage something strange and alien—a portrait-blob of my very subconscious, like a turbulent bog or science-fiction monster. I thrill at this decimation. I see myself unadulterated in the finished work. Finally, my inner being starkly stares back at me, who I am, what I am, what I am capable of, my conquest-fantasies. I may be hideous; I may be delectable. But finally, I am really me.

What’s next for you? And what else do you look forward to exploring in your work?

The future is unrevealed to me. I am the timeline of my own evolution. I can only perceive my present incarnation. Tomorrow, who knows. I could become a race car driver, an elephant whisperer, or the undertaker to my own death.

header Credit
Gordon Massman
Patriotic Fugue
Courtesy of the artist

MAAYAN SOPHIA WEISSTUB *She Cuts the Body, Stitches the House, Feeds the Silence

MAAYAN SOPHIA WEISSTUB
*She Cuts the Body, Stitches the House, Feeds the Silence

written + interview JONATHAN BERGSTRÖM

As a multidisciplinary artist, Maayan Sophia Weisstub’s work examines the relationship between identity, space, and the broader human experience.

Based in the United Kingdom and a graduate of the Royal College of Art, Maayan works in sculpture, collage, and kinetic art, often centering on themes such as domesticity, gender, sexuality, and mortality. Her works have been exhibited internationally and have earned her recognition as a finalist for prestigious awards like the Robert Walters Group UK New Artist of the Year Award.

In this interview we speak with Maayan about her current projects, her approach to materials, and how she brings together the body, home, and identity in her artistic practice.


Maayan Sophia Weisstub
Courtesy of the Artist

The Bed, 2022
wood, foam, silicone
95 x 123 x 198 cm
Courtesy of the Artist

The Bed, 2022
wood, foam, silicone
95 x 123 x 198 cm
Courtesy of the Artist

Jonathan Bergström

Themes of domesticity, gender, mortality, and sexuality seem to be central to a lot of your work. What initially drew you to these subjects?

Maayan Sophia Weisstub
Sexuality, domesticity, gender, and death occupy my thoughts and are an inseparable part of my life, as they are an inseparable part of the universal human experience. The home represents a safe and protective environment- from the primal womb, through the family home and its transformations, to the final home where we will reside. It is a familiar and safe space on one hand, and on the other hand, it holds secrets and traumas.

As you’ve mentioned yourself, the domestic space has historically been seen as a place that restricts women. How does your work respond to or reframe that idea?

For example, in my sculpture The Bed, I give space to the traumas and violence that occur within our domestic environment. The bed, usually covered in our sheets, appears as battered skin, covered with bruises, scratches, and scars. In another work, Dine with Me, I present a dyadic configuration which embraces the concept of oneness between man and woman, symbiotic-patriarchal relationships, and the problematic nature of such dynamics.

What’s your process for creating one of your collages?

The process of creating a collage is relatively simple, at least once I have an idea. Once I have an idea, I either photograph or search for images as similar as possible to the visual concept I envisioned in my mind. Then, I combine the images and edit them into a collage on Photoshop.

What role do materials play in your practice, and how do you select those that enhance the emotional or conceptual impact of your work?

Usually, when I have an idea for a new piece, the concept appears intertwined with the material in its final form, and I can "see it" in my mind. This is why I work with and create in a variety of different media.
At the same time, there are the limitations of reality, and for some works that I would like to see in a particular material, I choose a more creative and practical solution.

How do you approach the creation of kinetic works, like your lightbulb sculptures?

Kinetic sculptures are technically complex, so when I have an idea for a kinetic sculpture, I develop the concept, create sketches and simulations, and when it comes to the technical execution phase, I work closely with technicians and professionals, guiding the process every step of the way.

“The home represents a safe and protective environment—on one hand. On the other, it holds secrets and traumas.”

Maayan Sophia Weisstub speaks with Jonathan Bergström

for LE MILE Issue 38 / Ephemeral Edition SS25

Familiar Fracture
The Vase
Courtesy of the Artist

Familiar Fracture
The Vase
Courtesy of the Artist

What do you want viewers to take away from the way you deconstruct and reassemble body parts and everyday objects?

I don’t want anything specific to be taken from my work; my creations are not didactic. I do, however, hope that my works evoke emotions, imagination, and creativity, connecting viewers with new ideas in the hope that they will resonate within them.

Your piece The Weeping Tap started as a video on Instagram. How does social media impact the way you create your art?

The Weeping Tap started as a video and was later uploaded to Instagram—it wasn’t originally conceived with Instagram in mind. Social media doesn’t have a conscious influence on my creative process; however, there is an acknowledgment of the dialogue that forms after the work is created. I feel its influence more in how I share my work—the immediacy and openness with which I expose my sketches or thoughts.

Duality is also a recurring theme in your work. How do you balance contrasting ideas, such as vulnerability and audacity?

Duality is an inherent part of reality, such as light and shadow. Whether the duality is overt or hidden, it will always exist, and it is what allows for depth. I don't aim to balance it but rather to give it space, to make the differences present, and through that, to reveal complexity and multiple layers.

How do you decide when to leave something open to interpretation versus when to make it more literal or explicit?

Even when the message is simple and literal, there is always room for interpretation, and anyone who experiences a work of art brings their personal perspective, which, in my eyes, enriches and enlivens it. Some works have a more straightforward and immediate concept, such as the video collage works on sexuality, which are playful and clear to the viewer. Other works, like 'The Breathing Table,' have a quieter concept and message, dealing with loss and memory, and require more patience as they are not immediate.

In addition to your visual work, do you have any interest in exploring other mediums, such as performance or sound art?

I am always curious about other and new mediums, and sound is very interesting to me. I really love sound, but unfortunately, I don't have much experience in the field. However, I would love to experiment and collaborate with more experienced creators. I also love and appreciate performance, but I don't see myself creating in this medium, at least not in the foreseeable future.

Are there any new directions or creative concepts you're planning to explore in your next body of work?

These days, I am very interested in the concept of the 'other' in society. As I delve deeper into understanding the meaning of the 'other' and its place in society, both culturally and socially, it naturally expands my awareness of the hidden parts within the depth of my unconscious.

Video Credit
The Weeping Tap
Courtesy of the Artist

ILONA *Always The Bride

ILONA
*Always The Bride

written + interview HANNAH ROSE PRENDERGAST

"In some way, I always knew," ILONA says of her call to fashion. Born in Paris and raised in LA, the odds were set. In 2022, she made it official, launching her label on home soil.

Each piece is handmade with love, guided by self-taught haute couture techniques and the meticulous instinct of a Virgo. After all, psychological armor is heavy; the wearer must feel unbridled, deranged, and somewhat aggressive.

In this spirit, ILONA’s second collection, Psychosis, recounts her time as a teenager in a psychiatric hospital. Rather than relying on the darker, more literal tones often tied to mental illness, she stains warm off-whites and soft pastels for a more poignant touch.

The mood exists somewhere between frayed cotton, silk linings, weathered lambskin, distressed tulle—and lots of sparkle. Ask Esther. Here, ILONA emerges from under her rock, roaming the streets of Carroll Avenue in her own creation—a pink and gold lamé bridal gown with Calais lace.

ILONA seen by Miriam Marlène

ILONA seen by Miriam Marlène

ILONA seen by Miriam Marlène

Hannah Rose Prendergast
AS OF LATE

Ilona
I’ve been in LA planning some exciting future projects and taking a small break since the release of my latest collection.

LA EXPORTS

I brought back Betty Crocker fudge brownies and a sunny attitude, both lacking in Paris.

SHUTTER MEMORY

I got my first film camera when I was 16. It was a manual Nikon FM2, and I wanted to figure out how to use it. I had a photography teacher in high school who was really influential and taught me the ins and outs of the darkroom. It helps me today because I still shoot film occasionally and sometimes incorporate it into my work.

PLAY BY EAR

Music inspires me during the design process and keeps me going during the sometimes tedious sewing stages. I also always listen to music during my cigarette breaks and come up with new ideas.

BERLIN BRAIN

I moved to Berlin when I was 20 and knew only one person there. On a gloomy winter day, I decided to study neuropsychology. It was an enriching experience for which I’m grateful. I love Berlin and cherish my time there.

ILONA seen by Miriam Marlène

“After all, psychological armor is heavy; the wearer must feel unbridled, deranged, and somewhat aggressive.”

Ilona speaks with Hannah Rose Prendergast
for LE MILE Issue 38 / Ephemeral Edition SS25

NOBLE CAUSE

In the past, I struggled with the idea of working in fashion, thinking it was a selfish or superficial profession that didn’t contribute much to the world. As I’ve grown older, I’ve realized that the creative process of making garments makes me happy. Some people resonate with the clothes, and I’m okay with it being my calling.

CASTELLUCCI’S PARSIFAL

It inspires me to this day. The colors, costumes, and set design are insane. Castellucci creates a world like no other.

DEADSTOCK VALUE

I’ll continue using deadstock fabrics, as there is way too much waste in the world. I can also source unique couture fabrics I don't believe are made anymore. I like the individuality they bring to the garments.

NEVER THE BRIDESMAID

Most of all, I love the couture looks that take weeks to make. I included some more ready-to-wear elements for my second collection, which I hadn’t done in the first. I wanted some garments to be wearable every day. But I’ll always include a bride because I love to do it and think it really ties a collection together.

THE GOOD NURSE

I included quite a few nurses who were definitely my saviors during that time, as well as my friends who stuck with me through that traumatic period. I usually name my garments after my friends and people I love.

LAMB OF GOD

I sent Brodie Kaman pictures of all my stuffed animals, and we decided the lamb made the most sense. There’s a stuffed bunny that I've had since I was born, which I also included in some of the imagery for the collection.

LIGHTEN UP

Now, people think goth has more colors..

HAPPY IS

Iced coffee, puppies, cake, books, palm trees, my family, and my friends

NEXT LEVEL

I’m in a transitional phase of my life, figuring out where I might relocate as I plot my next collection.

LIFE ADVICE

Be delusional.

ILONA seen by Miriam Marlène

ANA POLVOROSA *The Threads Are Still Moving

ANA POLVOROSA
*The Threads Are Still Moving

written + interview Alban E. Smajli

You see some actors once and that’s it — you’re in. Like a crush or a weird fever. You follow them through all their stuff, even the bad stuff, like they’re a cousin you sort of invented.

Then there’s the other kind — the shapeshifters. The ones who never show up the same way twice, who make you feel like you're watching them for the first time every time. Ana Polvorosa? She's that second kind. A glitch in the system. She’ll do twisted comedy, ghosts, heartbreak, mystery — whatever.

She folds roles inside out and wears them like borrowed jackets. Now she’s back, or sideways, or upside down, in Last Night at Tremore Beach, a Netflix storm-drenched, genre-melting thing, directed by Oriol Paulo and co-starring Javier Rey. And yes, she’s done it again, of course she has. What did you expect?

total look DIOR

Juan Marti
Ana, how have you experienced the days following the release of your new series, The Last Night at Tremore Beach?

Ana Polvorosa
Honestly, it's been a lovely few weeks. Many colleagues and dear friends have watched the series and left very positive comments. They're saying they really enjoy it and appreciate the work that went into it. So, overall, I'm really happy.

I’ve also watched the series, and I found it very intense. I have to admit that there are some things I think I didn’t quite understand …

Don’t worry. In the end, it’s a series that, precisely because it has so much to unpack and unravel, leaves room for many different viewpoints and ways to interpret it. This is due to how the story is told and what the series is like in itself. So really, don’t worry about that.

How did this project come to you?

Oriol Paulo, the director, got in touch with me and told me he’d written a story that was going to be adapted into a series format. He sent me the scripts and mentioned it was an adaptation of Miquel Santiago’s novel. He asked me to read them and share my opinion. I read the scripts and found the story fascinating on all levels, very… I don’t know, spectacular, impressive. What also caught my attention was how Oriol wanted to approach it, the perspective he wanted to give it. In short, there are many things, but what really connected me to the project was the character of Judy.

The series has a very complex plot, did you understand it during the first reading of the script?

Well, you obviously have to read it and reread it. Even then, there’s something in the story that makes you think way beyond what’s immediately apparent. But, for my taste, that’s what makes it interesting. It’s one of those stories that leaves you in a kind of limbo, like: “Is it telling me what I think it’s telling me, or is it really telling something else?” And that’s fine too, because it gives the viewer the chance and freedom to draw their own conclusions or have their own point of view.

Sometimes I feel like we’re too used to being given the answers instead of being allowed to ponder a bit …

I think right now we’re in a moment where we’re driven by a wave of action and reaction, quick responses, things made easier, so we don’t have to think too much or get stuck in universes that make us reflect or that allow room for different opinions. And it’s true that stories like this, at least, give us the opportunity for personal reflection and the chance to draw our own conclusions.

A story with so many plot twists and where the characters are not who they say they are must be quite a challenge as an actress. To what extent do you really need to understand what happens to your character?

It really depends, I think, on each project, each story, and where you are at the moment. It also depends on the colleagues you have, who is directing, and the vision they want to give it, how you feel with the character, or how you approach it. I think there are a lot of factors that influence how you approach all of that. At least, that’s been my experience. Maybe what I’m trying to say with this is that, in some cases, I start creating or connecting with the character from a more intuitive or sensory place, depending on how I live through the moment.

Did you discover Judy’s truths from the beginning, or did you keep being surprised by each script?

In this case, there was a previous novel that you could read or not. Then you have scripts to base yourself on, which are the ones you’re going to work with. Those scripts are written as they are, and you understand them as you read them. I mean, the way the information about the character comes to you is similar to how you later see the episodes.

You must have had many surprises!

In this series, the characters develop as the story progresses. I think that’s one of the hallmarks of the show, something that's really well done. I think Oriol has done this in other works and other stories as well—he often focuses on episodes that center more on certain characters, to delve a little deeper into their backgrounds. In this case, for example, you can see it in episode four or five, where the characters' past lives, traumas, or lived moments are explored. These elements continue to affect them, and in the end, it's not so important to know a character's pastto tell their present, but it certainly helps to understand them better.

As a viewer, do you like these kinds of series that make things easier for the audience?

Like everything in life, it depends on the moment you’re in. As a viewer, there are times when I feel like I want the story to be a little more complex, where I’m suddenly surprised or given something more "unusual." And other times, I prefer simpler stories, without flashbacks or unexpected twists, that are told from beginning to end, depending on how I’m feeling at that moment.

The series presents certain terrifyingly supernatural nuances. I think there are a lot of prejudices in the industry toward the horror genre, especially toward supernatural horror. How do you feel about these kinds of stories?

I think, in the end, what matters is that there’s some kind of relatively coherent justification, you know what I mean? Although, many times, I also like things that are... more "crazy" ideas, even if they’re a bit inexplicable. I don’t know, I think it’s not so much about wondering if a story has supernatural themes or something like that, because I’m not entirely sure what you mean by that. But I imagine you're referring to things that are more inexplicable, or stories that go beyond the ordinary. In the end, I think I focus more on the story itself, on what it wants to tell, what kind of story it is, rather than the twists or the themes it might explore or where it’s heading.

I love talking about supernatural experiences with my friends.

I don’t really pay much attention to those things (laughs).

Have you never experienced something supernatural?

Not that I’m aware of! Though I might have experienced something and just not realized it.

One of the things I liked most about the series was its foggy, menacing atmosphere. It’s a town that invites mystery …

I found the story attractive, and it also seemed like a great opportunity to work with Oriol. I’ve seen some of his previous works, and there are things I really liked. So, I saw this as a wonderful opportunity: to work with him, develop this character, and be part of this story. I don’t focus so much on whether the settings are more aesthetic or even more "flashy."

total look BIMBA Y LOLA

trench TERESA HELBIG
tights CALZEDONIA
shoes VERSACE

“Acting makes you evolve professionally, as an artist, as a creative, but also personally, a lot. You grow, you delve into other places, you mature, you learn.”

Ana Polvorosa speaks with Juan Marti
for LE MILE Issue 38 / Ephemeral Edition SS25

total look VERSACE

Are you a fan of mystery movies?

I think, initially, I’m interested in any kind of story. It’s true that, perhaps, mystery attracts me a bit more, but horror, not so much, actually. I don’t know, because then it’s true that sometimes I watch horror movies and think, "Hmm, I liked that." I’m not sure if, as a viewer, I usually focus on this type of story, but there are some films in this genre that I’ve enjoyed.

Would you like to work with horror filmmakers like Jaume Balagueró or Paco Plaza?

Why not? I’ll repeat a bit of what I mentioned before: within whatever genre it is, what really attracts me is the story itself. If there’s something in the story that connects with me, if the character touches me, and everything that the story encompasses, then yes, I’m interested. It’s not so much about the genre, but about what the story conveys to me.

Tell me about a piece of fiction that has touched you recently.

It’s true that right now I’m a bit disconnected, but what I’ve been able to do lately is read more. Look, I’m going to mention a book I just finished. I’ll tell you the author exactly because I finished it the other day, and I read it super fast. You know, those books that just grab you. I went to the bookstore to buy other books I needed, and suddenly I saw this one, The Vegetarian, and it caught my attention. It was written by Han Kang, the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature this year, 2024. And, wow, it really disturbed me a lot. In fact, I read it very quickly, but that’s because it hooked me so much. What’s curious is that, when I finished it, I was really shaken. I mean, it affected me quite a bit. It’s a very disturbing novel, but at the same time, I find it fascinating. I got trapped in such dark and eerie worlds that… I don’t know, it was a strange feeling. Kind of in line with this more mysterious and dark genre.

I’m curious about what you did during your free time on the set of Last Night at Tremore Beach.

The truth is that, you know, during shooting periods, when I’m immersed in a project, I find it quite difficult to disconnect during the process. Well, I do disconnect, obviously, because when the shoot is over, I go home and have time for myself, but it’s true that I’m so immersed in the universe of the story… I don’t know, I tend to stay focused on the work, looking at the scenes for the next day or reviewing what I have coming up the following week. Sometimes, I even go back to check what we filmed the previous week to try to improve details. I’m really focused on all of that. As for disconnecting, well, the most we did was go out for dinner or make plans with the crew, because since we were shooting outside of Madrid, in Asturias and Barcelona, we formed a really close bond. Sometimes we’d step out of the characters’ bubble, but honestly, I didn’t do much to disconnect. I was very caught up in the universe of the story.

Isn’t it exhausting to get so involved at that level in your projects?

When it’s shoots like this, that deal with more delicate themes or, well, when the shoots are complicated, they inevitably affect you. There’s something you’re experiencing firsthand, and those complex themes, in some way, stay with you—in your body, in your mind.

How was the return to your life after a shoot like this?

Well, in this case, since the shoot was so long, and also intense, with a lot of commitment and responsibility, the excessive duration of the project added to it. Afterward, I needed some time to readjust to my daily life and routines. I mean, I had to normalize my life again, pick up my habits. I needed a period of time to settle back in because I was completely in another place, in a different context.

I guess it must involve a lot of personal work?

Yes, there’s a lot of personal work involved as well. It’s part of the process. For me, being quite reflective, I like to go over the moments I went through during the shoot, because in the end, that’s what leaves you with the learning, in some way. How have you evolved? Because shoots are incredible experiences. Acting, in itself, makes you evolve professionally, as an artist, as a creative, but also personally, a lot. You grow, you delve into other places, you mature, you learn. They are very powerful journeys.

What have you discovered about yourself during the shoot of Last Night at TremoreBeach?

Well, I’m still discovering myself. That’s not something that ends at the end of the shoot. It’s not like you finish shooting and say, "That’s it, I’ve got it all figured out." In fact, it’s been a year since we wrapped the shoot, in October or November of last year, and I’m still thinking and reflecting on many moments from the shoot. I’m still reaching conclusions about what it has taught me. So, I think it’s not something immediate, it’s not about finishing and knowing everything right away.

After this experience, don't you feel like doing something more naive and silly?

With stories, when they come to you, I think there has to be a connection, both with the story and with the character. When you read the scripts or when you get the casting calls, there has to be something that hooks you, something that makes you feel connected. Because if not, it doesn’t make much sense. I’m not sure if it’s something intuitive or sensory, I’m not sure how to call it, but it’s that feeling of reading the script and thinking: "Wow! Here’s something on an energetic level, something that connects with me and excites me." I don’t know, I think it depends on that, regardless of whether it’s comedy, drama, tragicomedy, theater, film, or television.

Are you an actress who is guided more by your head or your heart?

There’s a part of me that’s inevitable, a very passionate side, both with life and with my profession. That part is there, and it’s beautiful, I love it because I think it brings very intense things. But, of course, there are also moments when you have to stop, reason, think, and weigh things out. I don’t know, I think there’s a balance between both parts, depending on the moment.

What are you craving as an actress right now?

I think, precisely, what we were talking about earlier, about evolution, learning, and growth… I believe that stories come to you that move you from within, that make you say, "I want to dive into this, I want to explore it, I want to understand what this is, how I approach it, from what place I do it." It’s a continuous learning process, in the end. And that’s one of the most beautiful things about this profession, because you never stop learning, and at the same time, you never stop getting to know yourself.

suit BIMBA Y LOLA
earrings SUOT STUDIO
shoes VERSACE

total look ZIMMERMANN

talent ANA POLVOROSA
photographer DANNIEL ROJAS
stylist SERGI PADIAL
make up + hair MIGUEL ANGEL TRAGACETE for CHANEL BEAUTY + KEVIN MURPHY SPAIN
producer JULIA NAVARRO via SUNSEASANDS AGENCY
words JUAN MARTI
photo assistant JAVIER BLANCO
stylist assistant PAULA SÁNCHEZ

special thanks ESPACIO LA CANDELARIA + MESALA FILMS

ANXHELA *Plays and The Room Follows

ANXHELA Plays
*The Room Follows

written + interview ALBAN E. SMAJLI

Anxhela moves with steady momentum. Her sessions open when the day allows for it, tracks surface with the kind of weight that feels tied to place and time, and each one holds its shape without needing to explain how it formed.

She releases music in a way that suggests she’s already past the part where it needs to be explained — each piece arrives formed, quiet, intact, without scaffolding or commentary, and then lives where it lands. The tone across her output remains steady, and the surrounding space—both physical and digital—feels maintained with the same attention, creating a rhythm where every release holds its own position, shaped by a sense of timing that reflects the internal pace of her process, with no visible urgency or external structure, and everything aligned with a working method that keeps expression at the centre and lets the material speak without interference.

The same applies to how she dresses. There’s alignment without overthinking, detail without decoration. Each look feels connected to the environment she enters, whether that’s a small club, an outdoor stage, or a studio session in progress, and the alignment between sound, space, and image settles without commentary. Nothing leans toward performance and everything in view appears selected with quiet precision, creating an overall impression that builds naturally as part of the experience she’s creating, rather than functioning as a separate layer around it.

total look JUUN.J

Kosovo sits in recent memory — the kind of night that works in layers, with a familiar crowd positioned close to the stage, a set that held its shape across its full length, and a kind of energy that remained steady from beginning to end. Family watched. Energy held. Nothing overstated. Just the kind of connection that registers in the body and stays there for a while. Right now the work is happening in parts. Studio sessions, fragments, outlines, days where something clicks and the rest falls into place. The process stays active, shaped by the environment and the rhythm of her own attention, with new material appearing as part of that motion, guided by feeling and sustained by structure.

Playing live remains essential. The volume in the room, the faces, the architecture of the room and the way bodies move inside it. Each set builds on instinct, adjusted in real time, shaped by the way the crowd responds without language. She approaches the set as a whole structure, one that forms through presence and holds together through instinct, with every element placed deliberately and nothing overstated. The direction stays inward, the delivery stays exact, and the result maintains a kind of clarity that travels well beyond the night itself. That balance works. It’s already working.

total look DIESEL
jewellery ARCHIVED PROTOTYPES

jewellery ARCHIVED PROTOTYPES

Alban E. Smajli
Please, define your sound without limitations. What does it evoke, where does it live, and who does it belong to?

Anxhela
Yes,my sound is an emotional journey and it reflects what I feel, what I imagine, and what I want others to experience. I stay true to what moves me, but I also think of the listener because I’ve been on that side too, waiting to be transported by music.
Every track I play or create carries a piece of my mood, joy, sadness, energy, nostalgia. It’s a mix of instinct, emotion, and connection. My sound lives between my inner world and the dancefloor, and it belongs to anyone willing to feel something real.

Fashion and music—does one dictate the other for you, or do they move in tandem as part of the same vision?

For me, fashion and music move in harmony, they’re both expressions of the same inner world. Just like sound, what I wear reflects how I feel, what I want to say, and the atmosphere I want to create.
Sometimes a look can amplify the energy of a set, or help tell the same story the music is telling. I don’t see them as separate, they evolve together and complete each other as part of my artistic identity.

Albums seem like a relic, streaming is a battlefield. Where do you stand in this war for attention?

Streaming is important, it’s where people discover you, connect with your music, and follow your journey. But I don’t create just to grab attention. I create to express something real and to connect with the listener. Whether it’s one track or ten, the emotion behind it is what matters most to me. I released singles so far, because I like focusing on each track as its own story. Every release is a moment, a feeling, something I want to share without waiting for a full project.

At the same time, I really admire the idea of building something bigger, like an EP or album. I haven’t done that yet, but it’s definitely something I think about for the future. I don’t follow a fixed strategy or release constantly, I create when it feels right. But at the same time, I know how important it is to stay visible, especially today. So I try to find a balance: I want to stay true to my sound, but also be smart about how and when I share my work. I’m learning to combine both sides: the passion and the planning, without losing myself in the process.

total look JUUN.J Archive

“Every track I play or create carries a piece of my mood, joy, sadness, energy, nostalgia. It’s a mix of instinct, emotion, and connection.”

Anxhela speaks with Alban E. Smajli
for LE MILE Digital SS25

Are clubs sacred spaces, or are we witnessing the birth of something new?

I think clubs will always have a special place. There’s a certain and real energy you can feel there,but at the same time everything is evolving. Music evolves, and we see new collectives, new concepts and new ways to connect. I think we’re already in the middle of this change.
I love playing in clubs, but I’m also excited to explore other spaces and see how electronic music keeps evolving.

Festivals—have they lost their cultural significance, or are they evolving into something new in the live music experience?

I don’t think festivals have lost their meaning,I think they’re just changing, like everything else in music.
Today, festivals bring people together in a big way. It’s not just about the music anymore, it’s about the full experience, the community, the energy, the visuals, the feeling of being part of something. I think they’re evolving into something new, and that’s not a bad thing. As long as the music stays at the center, festivals can still be powerful and emotional moments, just in a different way than before.

Your music is a world of its own—what stories echo through it, and what emotions form its foundation?

My music is built on emotions. Every time I create or play, it depends on how I feel.
Sometimes I’m happy, sometimes nostalgic, sometimes sad, I try to express that through sound. I don’t follow one story, but I want the listener to feel something to connect with the mood. For me, music is a way to speak without words. It’s like sharing a part of myself, and at the same time imagining what the people on the dancefloor might need in that moment. I don’t follow one fixed story, it’s more like a journey through feelings.

If you could construct the perfect performance from the ground up—what does it look like, sound like, feel like?

My perfect performance would be in a special place, maybe outdoors, in nature, or somewhere unexpected. I’d want the music to be emotional, and full of energy. A sound that makes people feel something and takes them on a journey.

The lights, the space, the people, everything would come together. But the most important thing is the connection. I’d want everyone to feel free and present, just enjoying the moment with the music.

Kosovo—Europe’s youngest pulse. How did this performance come to life, and what was it like to play in a place so charged with energy and change? What’s next for you? A whisper, a roar, a new world?

Playing in Kosovo was a really emotional experience for me. I’m Albanian, and having my family there, people I love made it even more special.The energy was powerful, I could feel the crowd connecting with every sound, and I felt so free to express myself. It wasn’t just a performance, it felt like home.

What’s next?

I think it’s a mix of all three: a whisper, a roar, and maybe even a new world. I’m in a phase where I’m discovering myself more through music, step by step. I don’t always know where it’s going, but that’s the beauty of it. I just follow the emotion, stay true to what I feel, and let the sound lead the way. Whatever comes next, I hope it surprises even me.

dress HADERLUMP ATELIER
shoes DR. MARTENS
jewellery ARCHIVED PROTOTYPES

talent ANXHELA
photographer PASCAL SCHONLAU
production + styling BASAK SAYGIN
makeup & hair GIOVANNI ZUMMO
production assistant ANETA TARASEVICIUTE

PRESTON DOUGLAS BOYER *Styling Hope

PRESTON DOUGLAS BOYER
*Styling Hope

written + interview SAVANNAH WINANS

Preston Douglas Boyer is a multidisciplinary artist working across some of the most mutable disciplines: fashion, fine art and music. Between his independent art practice and his busy schedule of collaborative projects, Preston has no trouble keeping up with these ever-evolving industries.

So far in 2024, he’s staged several public art performances, curated a 12-artist exhibition at Wienholt Projects, had a museum exhibition at LongHouse Reserve in East Hampton, released his album REPURPOSED RELIGION on Spotify, and dropped his first series of NFTs on Wise.art—and he’s got more in the works. Preston provides insight into how he stays grounded in our fast-paced world, whilst working towards his vision of the future of culture and creativity.

Preston Douglas Boyer
seen by Zach Gold

Preston Douglas Boyer
Single scanned element for upcoming zipper painting

“The only real constant between shifting mediums is the deeper reason why I create: to make physical representations of the spiritual experience.”

Preston Douglas Boyer speaks with Savannah Winans
for LE MILE Dazed Edition - Nr. 37

Preston Douglas Boyer
Forcing Forgiveness, 2024
at CALIFORNIA LOVE, Wienholt Projects
seen by Anya Gta

Preston Douglas Boyer
Detail shot of Triumphal Entry, 2024

Savannah Winans
As a multidisciplinary artist, you wear a lot of hats: painter, fashion designer, performer, musician, curator, et al. When you’re switching between these roles, what stays constant?

Preston Douglas Boyer
The only real constant between shifting mediums is the deeper reason why I create: to make physical representations of the spiritual experience. An exploration of the search for intimacy with God through beauty, whatever I understand that to be at the time. The theme of darkness to light also is a consistent theme in all of my work. Those are some elements at the core of everything I do when getting down to true causes and conditions.

What changes would you like to see in both the fashion industry and the art world?

I love seeing the fashion industry embracing the idea of performance art, which fashion inherently is in many ways. I really loved Rick Owens’s latest runway show with all of the models in a communal parade of sorts. Haunting and hopeful at the same time. As far as the art world is concerned, opening the gallery doors to more mediums of art that aren’t just wall-based works, and being able to sell conceptual and or performance works by fostering a collector base for these works. I think this is the future. We all love beautiful works on our walls, but art goes beyond that. And there’s beauty in minimalism in the home.

You recently curated the group show CALIFORNIA LOVE at Wienholt Projects. What defines California artists?

In a way, contemporary California artists don’t rely as much on the “art world” because historically the art world hasn’t been here as much. Artists had more freedom to make all sorts of styles and mediums of work and not be limited to just being a “painter.” The space and sunlight has an effect on the work and overall there’s less visible darkness, but often through the beauty, there is an underlying sense of distress, which I really sense for example while driving around this city.

Your zipper paintings have these beautiful custom decals on the zipper pulls. Some of them read “HOPE IS ALIVE.” What does this phrase mean to you?

This mantra reminds me that optimism is a choice. We can live in hope or we can live in despair, it’s up to us to choose on a daily, hourly or minute-by-minute basis. Individually and collectively. In the face of fear, uncertainty and pain, we can still have hope.

Your paintings can be zipped or unzipped, and one of your collectors commented that this was effectively “styling the painting.” Since you’ve also designed clothes, how does styling a person differ from styling a painting?

A model inherently brings their energy to a fitting or photoshoot, which can be a great collaboration, but when I’m in the studio alone it’s much more of a self reflective and contemplative process. I love fashion because it is so collaborative. At the same time, I fell so deeply in love with painting because it was such an immediate and intimate ordeal with myself, my pain, suffering, anguish, and God, if I allow Him into the studio that day. I try to think of life, and therefore my work, as a collaboration with Spirit, i.e. the my will vs. thy will paradox, and things tend to work out better that way when I’m able to surrender.

Preston Douglas Boyer
seen by Zach Gold

Luke Kruger-Aimone recording vocals for REVIVAL
the next REPURPOSED RELIGION performance
seen by Alex Conradt

“This mantra reminds me that optimism is a choice. We can live in hope or we can live in despair, it’s up to us to choose on a daily, hourly or minute-by-minute basis.”

Preston Douglas Boyer speaks with Savannah Winans
for LE MILE Dazed Edition - Nr. 37

Your paintings often incorporate abstracted corporate logos; it’s a Warholian gesture with a twist. How do these logos change the overall aura of the painting?

On a physical level, these large blocks and swathes of mainly black-and-white abstracted text provide structure to the compositions. Viewers may not initially know that they are looking at a distorted Blackrock or Björk text logo, but when they either find it for themselves or hear me talk about the work, the aura definitely shifts. The work becomes less about beauty and more about cultural critique. I strive for works that have a real balance between the two. But then the zippers come into play, and we look beyond the surface to a blank white wall, and that’s where our truth really is.

How does your spirituality influence your perspective on corporatocracy and the ways you critique it?

Money is not inherently bad. The love of money is where we run astray. God wants all of us to be abundant, but we are so quick to make money our higher power. Money is an exchange of energy, and, to say the least, there are extremely disparate financial realities happening concurrently. LA is such a prime example to be witness to this. The art world serves the .01%, the people who really do have dominion in this physical realm. I see my role as serving these individuals and being a teacher in their lives through my art, in addition to the physical objects I create that inherently have these challenging questions in their spirit.

What aspects of culture do you find most interesting right now?

There seems to be some semblance of a revival starting to take place. We’ve been living in this “post-truth” reality for some time now, and with the ever-increasing dependence on technology, and intentionally divisive energy being mainlined into the veins of society, there seems to be a pushback from a primal, spiritual level. A revival of realizing who we really are when we strip away everything culture tells us who we should think we are.

What’s next for you?

My fiance and I are planning our wedding, which is a major performance piece in itself in many ways! We are also working on the next RR performance work entitled REVIVAL, that will hopefully debut in September, with a second performance in another city later in the fall. I’m painting every day recently, and honing in on these zipper paintings.

SUN YUAN & PENG YU *The Last Laugh

SUN YUAN & PENG YU
*The Last Laugh

written + interview HANNAH ROSE PRENDERGAST

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust—everything returns to its original state, endlessly transforming. Art, too, is reborn with each encounter.

If you are lucky, you will find yourself as a Sun Yuan and Peng Yu original—a couple from Beijing who have been making art together for twenty-five years.
There are many great options.
If we look to Civilization Pillar (2001) for answers, what binds us is nothing more than liposuction fat. Yet you are far more complex—a silicone human capable of floating on water, soaring through the sky, and falling flat on land (not necessarily in that order).
From a dead fly on the wall to an industrial robot trapped in an infinite loop: the choice is yours.
At least, that is the idea.

(c) Sun Yuan & Peng Yu
Teenager Teenager, 2011

(c) Sun Yuan & Peng Yu
Teenager Teenager, 2011

“The distance between me and weapons is the distance between me and freedom.”

Sun Yuan speaks with Hannah Rose Prendergast
for LE MILE Ephemeral Edition - SS 2025 Nr. 38

(c) Sun Yuan & Peng Yu
Teenager Teenager, 2011

(c) Sun Yuan & Peng Yu
Can't Help Myself, 2016-2019

(c) Sun Yuan & Peng Yu
Can't Help Myself, 2016-2019

Hannah Rose Prendergast
You reposted Hey Brother (2022) after the U.S. presidential election results, writing, 'Although the future is full of uncertainty, we are together.' What moved you to express solidarity with the American people in that moment?

Sun Yuan / SY
Unity may not be so important, but people of different races and beliefs living in the same country and on the same planet must always face their relationships with one another. This is an eternal theme. The same piece of cloth connects two shovels; they wrestle with each other but cannot be separated. The tension created forms the internal relationship of a work. Likewise, the relationships between people within a country are the same.

Peng Yu / PY
People’s emotions were twisted with excitement and nervousness. Many countries, including China, delayed decisions and policy changes until the results were announced. As a result, methods of warfare in different regions will also shift. The entanglement of forces for survival shapes human relationships. Being together may be helpless and unavoidable—it can mean unity or struggle.

Freedom (2009) and Dear (2015) feature violently animated hoses in confined spaces, symbolizing the chaos of unregulated authority. What is the ongoing dialogue between these two works?

SY: The basic principles of these two works are the same, but one is powered by a water pump and the other by an air pump. It is like two people with different temperaments responding in a confrontation. Freedom generates tremendous force to strike the iron plate, while Dear thrashes into the chair and glass, leaving scratches behind. The recurring theme of struggle appears in many of our works.

PY: Some people see Freedom as a trapped dragon, while Dear represents the soul of a person controlled by power. Both express a natural, uncontrollable force.

The tension running through Open Sesame (2012) and If Seeing Is Not an Option (2013) stems from the fact that private gun ownership is illegal in mainland China. In 2002, you started building arsenals abroad with the help of Taiwanese and Swiss collectors. What does this separation mean to you?

SY: I need to possess weapons in my own way. Without weapons, you cannot have freedom. The distance between me and weapons is the distance between me and freedom. The feeling of freedom is strongest when you do not yet have it. Therefore, I cannot touch guns. This is the stage when they hold the most meaning for me.

PY: The title Open Sesame comes from the magical incantation that unlocks a treasure-filled cave in fairy tales. It symbolizes the gateway to a new world. If Seeing Is Not an Option was completed in Kyiv, Ukraine, resembling a weapons training camp inside the art gallery. Looking back, it seems like an early warning, a crisis-awareness training for what might come. I hope the young volunteers who participated in this work are all doing well. Our weapons caches are like tentacles in consciousness, with which we can feel and care for the world across dimensions.

Your use of live animals started and stopped in 2003 with Keep Dogs Away and Safety Island. Was this a conscious decision, or did it occur naturally over time?

SY: That was a conscious decision because the following works used the most cunning animal: humans. Animals cannot perform falsely—they do not follow commands, and instinct determines their behavior. Human nature is more complex. Not only do they have the combative traits of animals, but they also adopt strategies and schemes to achieve their goals. This is politics. I have always focused on and been interested in exploring these complex and instinctive relationships.

What draws you to working with animal specimens, including taxidermy? What do you find rewarding or meaningful in using it as a medium?

SY: An artwork is, in essence, a specimen of art. Creating art with specimens does not bring a sense of accomplishment. However, animal specimens help us imagine how the animal looked when it was alive. Similarly, artwork enables us to imagine the process of its creation—how it looks when conceived or deconstructed in our minds. In this way, the artwork gains meaning.

“Art cannot always develop according to the artist’s original wish. Sometimes, it needs to leave the artist and introduce the will of others.”

Peng Yu speaks with Hannah Rose Prendergast
for LE MILE Ephemeral Edition - SS 2025 Nr. 38

(c) Sun Yuan & Peng Yu Old
People's Home, 2007

(c) Sun Yuan & Peng Yu Old
People's Home, 2007

Can’t Help Myself (2016) is a friendly reminder that humans program robots. How does this piece comfort us in an era of rapid AI development?

SY: This work explores a relationship of mutual control—a dynamic that permeates every corner of the world, including social interactions. When the machine operates, viewers can immediately sense the entanglement and constraint within this relationship. By engaging their own bodily experiences, they can either confront or relieve this tension. Ultimately, the viewer develops an understanding of the work: empathy through shared form. However, I do not seek to impose specific opinions or suggestions; the meaning is for the viewer to interpret freely. My role is simply to provide a framework for 'gazing.'

PY: I like the word 'gaze.' It is different from appreciation or simply watching. Gazing involves doubt, and where doubt arises, interpretation follows. Finding an answer is humanity's way of saving itself. The answer offers a form of comfort without a definitive right or wrong. We must also gaze, doubt, and judge when artificial intelligence arrives. People fear the unknown but will find comfort once they obtain some answers. When we proposed this project to the Guggenheim Museum in 2005, most people were unfamiliar with the concepts of artificial intelligence, programming, and robotics. Some feared the mechanical arm might shatter the glass and escape. Today, it stands as a representative work ushering in the era of artificial intelligence.

How often has the ‘uncanny valley’ of your replica humans gotten you into trouble?

SY: I do not attempt to explore the "uncanny valley." This effect attracts the public, but to me, it is shallow. Therefore, I do not have high expectations for the reactions caused by imitating reality in the work. It is merely a guide, making it easier for people to immerse themselves, just like watching a movie. The more vivid and specific the actor’s image, the easier it is for the audience to enter the story.

If I Died (2013) represents Peng Yu’s mother’s perception of death. What did it mean to construct this for her?

PY: Perhaps it is precisely because of her bold conception of death that she lives so happily. Art cannot always develop according to the artist’s original wish. Sometimes, it needs to leave the artist and introduce the will of others. By relinquishing authorship, the artist gains a certain freedom—not much, but enough to deceive oneself. It is like showing an elderly person herwish. For her, it is both illusory and comforting. It is like knowing a religious statue is just a sculpture, yet still able to strengthen one’s faith and find comfort in it.

How has your perspective of impermanence evolved over the years?

SY: Impermanence is an inherent method of artistic creation. Artists must constantly make their works unfamiliar to avoid falling into a fixed pattern. Therefore, changes in impermanence cannot be a regular evolution. Once the change has a pattern, it is no longer impermanent. A predictable trajectory surprises neither the creator nor the viewer.

As artists who have been labeled “controversial,” what are your thoughts on cancel culture?

SY: Although it may cause controversy, I try to maintain a certain distance from reality. This helps me observe clearly and avoid getting trapped in the meaning or interpretation of reality. The superficiality and extremism of cancel culture are both a human need and a defining characteristic. People do not completely hate their flaws; sometimes, they even take pleasure in them—like smelling their farts or scratching an itchy mosquito bite. So, I neither support nor oppose it; I simply observe. When humans think, God laughs. To keep God laughing, humans can think a little more.

Why do you think the world is a fine place to fight for?

SY: I actually have no answer. However, if striving keeps God laughing a little longer, I am willing to try.

What is next for you?

SY: I have no plans ahead.

GUY REMMERS *The Duke Goes Off-Script

GUY REMMERS
*The Duke Goes Off-Script

written + interview Alban E. Smajli

There’s something about Guy Remmers. Maybe it’s the voice — precise but unbothered. Maybe it’s the posture — somewhere between centuries-old nobility and Gen Z’s nonchalance. Or maybe it’s the fact that he’s straddling about five different lives at once and making it all look impossibly casual.

You’ve seen him as Theo, the Duke of Tintagel, in The Buccaneers — Apple TV’s velvet-clad, chaos-laced, post-bridgerton fever dream of a period drama. He plays it with just the right amount of restraint and emotional slippage, like someone holding a glass of brandy they’re about to smash. Now, with Season 2 freshly dropped last week, and the one and only Leighton Meester joining the cast, Theo’s world is about to get flipped on its finely groomed head. No spoilers, but let’s just say Remmers is riding the heartbreak horse hard this time around.

total look ANN DEMEULEMEESTER

But The Buccaneers is just one thread in the tapestry. Before screen, there was stage — and before that, Bristol. Guy trained at the Bristol Old Vic and made his debut at The National Theatre in The Grandfathers, a moment he still talks about like a first kiss. “Being a Bristol boy at that age in London… that was the moment I knew,” he says, and you believe him. His presence off-camera feels less rehearsed. You might’ve seen him walk for Burberry, pose for Jimmy Choo, or drift across a moody editorial like he woke up in a 1970s issue of The Face. But fashion, he insists, is its own thing — something he enjoys, but doesn’t conflate with his work as an actor. Still, there’s a symmetry: both spaces let him play with image, identity, and what he calls “the evolving shape of masculinity.” You get the sense he’s aware of how he’s looked at, but not defined by it.

Ask him what he wants next, and he lights up. A detective role (“Life on Mars” energy), a comedy-drama à la The Thick of It, something American-accented. What you’re reading is a man who wants to stretch — not because he’s bored, but because he knows how good the view is from the edge. In an industry obsessed with immediate heat and viral cool, Guy Remmers is moving differently. He’s not here to be loud. He’s here to last.

total look ANN DEMEULEMEESTER

Alban E. Smajli
So you’re the Duke of Tintagel—old money, stiff collars, and then boom: American chaos. What made you say yes to Theo, and how did you find your way into all that aristocratic angst?

Guy Remmers
Thank you! Theo's constant battle with the benefits and disadvantages of his title has always fascinated me. I did a lot of work on what his upbringing would have been like and how he physically carries himself and speaks. A lot of suppressing his emotions but the really exciting part was then allowing him to be swept off his feet by this new unique ball of energy from overseas. 

Season 2’s loading, Leighton Meester’s crashing the party, and Theo’s still stuck between duty and desire. Where’s he heading this time—and what happens when fresh blood hits old money?

New faces and characters are super exciting as it means you get to meet and work with incredible new actors. I loved seeing how they all seamlessly intertwined into the story. Theo's journey in this season is an absolute rollercoaster and his world flips upside down when he has to decide if love is more important than the institution he has been born into.  

You started on stage, Bristol Old Vic, National Theatre, all that velvet and sweat. Now you’re in streaming land. What do theatre and screen give you that the other can’t?

They are both magical in slightly different ways. I haven't done theatre in a few years now and the thing I miss most is the feeling of being part of an ensemble where you all rehearse together and feel like one organism. The Buccaneers is an ensemble cast but it is rare for us to all be on set at the same time. But I have now done two seasons of seeing the world through Theo's eyes and growing with him and that is equally as special.  

You’ve done Burberry, Jimmy Choo, the whole fashion orbit. What itch does that scratch that acting doesn’t or is it all just dress-up in different lighting?

I feel very lucky to have done those things, especially as I have a love for fashion. To me they are completely separate, neither offers me something that I would need from the other.  

You move between film sets and fashion shoots, all soft tailoring and sharp stares. Do you see yourself as part of a generation that's reshaping what masculinity looks like, or does all that talk just feel like another box to be put in?

I definitely feel like 'masculinity' is evolving into more open and expressive ways and I think one strong representation of that is in fashion. I hope it keeps moving in that direction. 

You’ve done corsets, campaigns, a bit of everything in between. Is there a role or genre still lurking on your wishlist, just waiting to be cracked open?

I've always wanted to play a detective, that would be super cool. I loved watching police dramas like 'Life on Mars' and 'Ashes to Ashes' when I was younger, I think that's where my love for them started. My favourite TV series is 'The Thick of It' so I'd love to do a comedy drama in that tone too.  Also a big goal is to do a role in an American accent.  

Was there a moment where it all just clicked and you thought, yep, this is it, this is the thing I’m meant to do?

When I was 18 I did a play called The Grandfathers at The National Theatre - it was an extremely special experience. Being a Bristol boy at that age in London doing a play at that theatre was the best feeling in the world and a moment that I knew I was doing what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. 

total look PAUL SMITH
shoes JIMMY CHOO

“I definitely feel like 'masculinity' is evolving into more open and expressive ways, and I think one strong representation of that is in fashion.”

Guy Remmers speaks with Alban E. Smajli
for LE MILE Digital SS25

blazer + beret EMPORIO ARMANI
trousers ANN DEMEULEMEESTER
vest SUNSPEL

coat + trousers ISSEY MIYAKE
shirt DAVID KOMA
trainers ADIDAS X WALES BONNER

jacket + trousers Y-3
shirt BRUNELLO CUCINELLI
boots DAVID KOMA
gloves HANDSOME STOCKHOLM
tie TURNBULL & ASSER

“Theo's journey this season is an absolute rollercoaster. His world flips upside down when he has to decide if love is more important than the institution he was born into.”

Guy Remmers speaks with Alban E. Smajli
for LE MILE Digital SS25

total look VERSACE

total look DANIEL W FLETCHER
trainers ADIDAS x WALES BONNER

photographer ANTONIO EUGENIO
stylist JUSTIN HAMILTON
grooming TRAVIS NUNES
photo assistant GEORGE TAYLOR
styling assistants KATIE SOMAVIA, LORNA LANE
videography VALENTINA VILLA
talent GUY REMMERS

Special thanks to Caroline Fergusson + Grace Yeoman, PR Pinnacle