FROM THE DESK OF THE LIFESTYLE EDITOR
So, here we are at the end of the first quarter of 2025, and – true to my character – I feel my mind still reeling from the start of another year, each one seemingly passing in quicker and quicker succession.
Indulge me in a musing, if you will. A strange phenomenon occurs around the end of each December, reaching its peak in that odd in-between period – the dead week that lies between the final flourishes of Christmas dinner and the first clink of a Champagne flute on New Year’s Eve. It’s a collective delusion; the belief that once the first days of the year roll around, some great reset button will be pushed and all will be right with the world once more. We saw it hit new heights of oddity during the lost years of the COVID-19 pandemic; as 2020 began rumbling towards its end, we all told each other that once the year was done, things will be OK again.
It’s a uniquely human peculiarity. It speaks to our fatalism and optimism in equal measure, while also paying service to our hubris, as if our abstract division of the march of time into months, weeks, days, hours and seconds has any meaning. We face an undeniable and strangely comforting truth: there is no reset button, neither at the beginning, middle or end of any year – our struggles and successes won’t just step onwards, but rather build upon the foundations already laid. The change of the calendar is not a time for fresh starts, but instead for the continuation of our focus and – hopefully – better days to come.
It’s an area of thought that was on my mind for much of the production of this, our Spring issue of The Review Magazine for 2025. So much of what we deal with here in the luxury sector swings happily between the classic and the contemporary, the vintage and the avant-garde. However, when pondering such things, it’s impossible not to find one’s mind settling upon those remarkable individuals who endeavour to not merely live in their own time, but rather make the history on which the future is built. This is most evident in our cover star Jade Holland Cooper, whose designs are blazing new trails (although with plenty of timeless appeal) in the world of equestrian-adjacent fashion and beyond. Hers is a tale as old as time, told anew with ferociously literal horsepower: inspiration, heritage, foresight, hard work and relentless dedication, all resulting in something really rather remarkable.
Indeed, our pages are full of such contemplations, of the past informing the present and the future to marvellous effect: the great pilot watches of 2025, for example, have built upon a half-imagined history of a century of moustache-twirling aviation. Safari adventures forever exude the sepia glamour of a Rider-Haggard adventure novel, while changing with the times for the betterment of all involved. The new Morgan Plus Four – which our motoring editor and managing editor were lucky enough to get up-close-and-personal with – has been produced with every effort made to pretend the golden age of motoring never ended. The quest for beauty, which our own Naomi Lake handles with her typical aplomb, remains the same crusade for the spring of eternal youth our ancient ancestors wrote epic poetry about.
Foolish is the man who only ever looks forward and forgets he stands on the shoulders of giants. More foolish still is he who longs for a past he cannot remember or perhaps never knew – and we’re certainly not in the business of wearing rose-tinted spectacles or overindulging in nostalgia. The world changes, the world stays the same. What can we do but shine a light on its high points, achievements, and the pleasures that make our days worthwhile?
So, onwards we go with a feature-packed issue covering all our and your favourite topics of delight, with yet another season unfurling at our ever-searching feet. There may not have been the pressing of a big red button solving all the world’s ills once the midwinter solstice passed, but we’ll keep doing what we do best… and may the glories of 2025 surprise us yet.
Benjamin Norris
Lifestyle Editor, The Review
