Energy cannot be created or destroyed, only transformed and transferred. Nicolas Bellavance-Lecompte is a master at capturing artistic energy and letting it live, breathe and spread. The Canadian-Italian architect and curator is the founding director of travelling art and design showcase NOMAD , which he describes as a tornado that “grabs more people, evolves, avoids obstacles and adapts to any reality”.
Motion is at NOMAD’s core, and Bellavance-Lecompte simultaneously describes the showcase as “a moving caravan” that requires novel adaptation, differentiating itself from traditional art fairs to sustain its engine. The fuel is undoubtedly its community of art, jewellery and collectables exhibitors, partners such as Giorgio Armani, returning patrons and VIP guests.
NOMAD’s first showcase took place in Monaco in 2017, alongside the sapphire waters of the Mediterranean at Villa La Vigie, a historic building formerly the home of fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld. Since then, it has transformed historic locations across Capri’s emerald treetops, St. Moritz’s snow-capped peaks, Venice’s canals and Abu Dhabi’s airport terminals. While NOMAD travels, so too does word-of-mouth, like a ripple across seas, a nearly invisible thread of connection.
See the full feature now only in Schön! alive .
Nicolas Bellavance-Lecompte NOMAD St. Moritz, 2026 photography. Tinko Czetwertynski
A social experience. From the first welcome to unexpected encounters, NOMAD St. Moritz 2025 was as much about people as it was about art and design. images. Courtesy of NOMAD Circle
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words. Tessa Swantek images. Courtesy of NOMAD Circle
full look. Paula Dischinger + Sophia Sühwold
In Apfel, the Berlin-via-Paris design duo Paula Dischinger and Sophia Sühwold — known together as Fork and Knife — build a world where fruit turns into architecture, and the body folds itself small enough to sit, precarious, on top.
Dischinger and Sühwold have spent the past several years working in the space between fashion and performance — their earlier project Attention Red, staged across fifteen public interventions in New York, treated garments as instigators of accidental intimacy between strangers. Apfel feels like its studio-bound cousin: the same interest in oversized, engulfing forms, the same red thread (literal, in this case) running through the work.
Where their public performances asked passersby to react, Apfel asks the viewer to sit with something stranger — wreaths woven from what look like felted vegetables, a face built entirely from quilted cotton with a single star for a beauty mark, a woman laughing under a knitted cap shaped like a stem.
Nothing here is trying to be wearable in the traditional sense. That’s the point. Fork and Knife’s clothes function more like puppetry — costume as character, character as commentary on how absurd it is that we dress ourselves at all.
full look. Paula Dischinger + Sophia Sühwold opposite full look. Paula Dischinger + Sophia Sühwold
full looks. Paula Dischinger + Sophia Sühwold
photography. Sarah Willmeroth fashion + concept. Paula Dischinger + Sophia Sühwold model. Giulio Waiging, David Turyabahika, Julie Kutscher, Selma, Kana Tsutsui + Rob Fadlala hair + make up. Alma Falkenberg studio. Most Hours Studio
Reflections of time. The staircase designed by architect Torsten Stern of Stern Architekten wempe.com
As the fifth generation at Wempe , Chiara and Scott Wempe are in no hurry to reinvent the house their family built. They want it to last and to keep doing what it has always done well since 1878, while moving it forward into another era. The siblings share the job of heading up business development, but as soon as you sit down with them, the contrast in their personalities becomes clear.
“Chiara is the more analytic type,” Scott explains. “She listens a little bit longer before she makes up her mind, which I think is a good quality.
I form an opinion quite fast, but I’m happy to change that opinion if the arguments are there”. Chiara, meanwhile, prefers to see all the data before making decisions.
“My brother is the more creative side,” she says, “as you can see already by how much jewellery he’s wearing compared to me!”
Those instincts have roots. Chiara has a BSc in International Management and an MSc in Corporate Performance & Restructuring. She has also trained with weights since adolescence. “It’s the groundwork for everything that I do,” she tells us. “You go to the gym and you train until failure, and then you learn that you’re capable of doing much more than you think.” Scott’s formation was British, having studied at Lancing College,
The fifth generation. Chiara and Scott Wempe at Stubbenhuk 10, the historic Hamburg house that reflects Wempe’s watchmaking heritage wempe.com
left Precision in parts. A watchmaker fits the rotating bezel, with case, bracelet and crystal separated so specialists can work in parallel. watch. Rolex Submariner middle Restored to shine. Bracelets await refurbishment at the polishing station, one of around 67,000 service procedures handled by the house last year. right The final check. Every serviced watch passes a visual inspection before it returns to its owner. watch. Wempe Chronometerwerke
HWA EVO.R X Wempe created by Hanna Schönwald. As the official timing partner, Wempe ran this livery to the finish of the 2026 ADAC RAVENOL 24h Nürburgring. image. Courtesy of Wempe
words. Raoul Keil photography. Stephanie Pistel
Most people know ‘Chungking Express’ for the pineapple tins – the film’s now-iconic symbol of love with an expiry date. Lin Zhipeng , however, took something else from Wong Kar-wai’s cult classic: a name. More than 20 years later, the photographer still works under the alias No.223, borrowing the identity of Takeshi Kaneshiro’s lovesick policeman to build one of contemporary China’s most recognisable photographic worlds.
This summer, that world arrives at Saint Laurent Rive Droite Beijing , where Anthony Vaccarello has curated a new exhibition celebrating the artist’s long-running exploration of youth, intimacy and personal freedom. Opening to coincide with Qixi, often described as China’s equivalent of Valentine’s Day, the presentation continues the house’s growing commitment to photography as a central part of its cultural programme.
Long before Instagram turned everyday life into visual currency, Lin was already documenting it. His career first gained momentum in 2003 through ‘North Latitude 23,’ a personal blog where photographs sat alongside fragments of writing, attracting a generation of readers drawn to his rebellious perspective on contemporary Chinese life. That combination of self-publishing, internet culture and diaristic storytelling helped establish him as one of the country’s defining independent image-makers.
Working almost exclusively in vivid colour, Lin photographs friends, lovers and strangers with an intimacy that rarely feels staged. Bodies intertwine with flowers, fruit, cigarettes and peeling interiors, while moments that might otherwise disappear into memory become suspended somewhere between a documentary and a dream. His photographs prefer short-lived encounters that capture desire, vulnerability and the freedom of simply existing outside expectation.
The relationship between Saint Laurent and Lin stretches back several years. His work first appeared in ‘ Pink Matter, ’ the group exhibition staged by Saint Laurent Rive Droite in Paris and Los Angeles in 2022, before receiving a solo presentation the following year. The Beijing exhibition marks another chapter in that ongoing dialogue, bringing his imagery back into the cultural spaces Vaccarello has steadily transformed into destinations extending well beyond fashion.
Alongside the exhibition, every photograph on display will be available to acquire, offering collectors the opportunity to take home a fragment of Lin’s unmistakable visual language.
The exhibition runs from 6 August until 11 September 2026 at Saint Laurent Rive Droite Beijing. Find out more here .
photography. courtesy of Lin Zhipeng words. Gennaro Costanzo