Monocle founder calls Bangkok one of world’s most inspiring cities
Tyler Brule has a lot of love for Bangkok right now.
The editor of Monocle, the high-end lifestyle and global affairs magazine that espouses good taste in everything, took a break from singing the praises of cities such as Helsinki and Tokyo in a recent article for the Financial Times.
Writing for the British paper on Friday, Tyler Brule, who founded Monocle in 2007 as well as Wallpaper* magazine in 1996, said that anyone who wanted to monitor a creative city on the up should look at Bangkok.
“To witness how trends take hold, brands fade and cultures collide, Bangkok is a lab unlike any other,” he wrote in the FT. “The city’s vibrant nightlife allows men and women from the Arabian Peninsula to cut loose in a way that’s not even possible in Munich or London. And then there’s the tropical reinterpretation of Japanese lifestyle by Bangkok’s upper and middle classes.”
Much of his argument hinged on Bangkok’s jet-setting high-society, and their ability to pluck trends from around the world to bring back home. “The Thais at the top end of the market seem to have taken all their foodie experiences from their years studying in the US, Australia and the UK and mixed them with all their ski holidays in Japan,” he wrote, singling out the renovated Central Chidlom food court for special praise, calling it a must-visit for all delicatessen and grocery group owners.
Elsewhere, he pointed to Bangkok’s confluence of cultures,vibrant nightlife, cosmopolitan restaurant scene, creative economy, and huge-scale hospitality projects (Four Seasons, Waldorf Astoria, Langham, The Edition and Rosewood are all set to open new properties here) as reasons why Bangkok is currently one of the world’s most exciting cities.
Monocle has had several ties with Bangkok in recent years. In 2012, the magazine’s partner commercial studio, Winkreative, worked with the Yingluck Shinawatra government on promoting the country’s successes, as Thailand prepared to host the 2012 World Economic Forum on East Asia.
In 2013, the magazine also worked on a widely publicized campaign with the property company Sansiri, which hosted a Monocle pop-up shop at the time it was working with Winkreative agency over the branding of its new On Nut project, Habito.
Rumors are also circulating that Monocle plans to open an official bureau here, in addition to its regional offices in Hong Kong and Singapore. On the Monocle website, the company’s official description states that its magazine is currently “seeing a sales boom in Southeast Asia.”
Advertisement