Mm.

I'm not saying who, but anyway, it's very nice to once again be able to go and touch something and feel it and learn firsthand about a brand.

Uh, that's, that's what's happening now.

Um, and Me and Em, I mean, they went in, they tested the market.

You know, years ago you would've had to pay, you know, uh, you know, I can't imagine, but a lot of money, uh, doing market research, et cetera.

I, I mean, now you can almost do it yourself.

So they've gone in, they've created these communities, and now they have two very successful shops in New York, one on the Upper East Side, their flagship store on Madison Avenue, and another smaller one in SoHo.

And are we seeing the big European luxury houses, which of course m- m- many times now are conglomerates like LVMH, are they showing a willingness to learn from what the likes of Ralph Lauren and Coach are doing?

[laughs]

You're absolutely right.

I mean, you want somewhere that has a little bit of character or a lot of character, um, and, and a lot of opportunities to shoot from different angles as well.

You know, we shot in Vienna, um, also for this issue.

Um, the summer issue we shot in London, but we're going to head to Paris with fabulous Daphne Hassard, and she has just this fantastic kind of light touch, but this ability to sort of see things that we don't.

You know, she knows and understands composition and, uh, how to put things together, um, with her savoir faire, 'cause she's fabulously French.

And, um, it should be fantastic.

The-

So talk us through it.

Well, there's a beautiful story on Malta, as I said.

There are, there's lots of pages of wonderfully imagined boutique hotels, um, a refurbished 1920s Palm Beach hotel, a mid-'50s Mukima Manor in Kenya.

A Confect editor, Sophie Grove, has written about that, where wildlife meets wellness, and it's off grid as well.

We've got wines from the Adriatic region, Slovenia, Croatia, Montenegro, Albania, wonderful wines from places you might not have thought of purchasing wines before.

Food from Mallorca, summer food that the Mallorcans eat.

A lamb meatball, fresh summary, herby tomato dish, uh, placed on a brioche soaked in milk.

Mm.

[laughs]

When, uh, gold wasn't at the, uh, the high that it's at right now.

Uh, yeah, but it's easy to do.

I was chatting with a friend on the weekend who said she had been given a hideous pair of grape, sort of bunch of grape kind of earrings that she didn't like, and she was very surprised when she, uh, traded in her gold.

She was able to make, you know, a number of different rings for herself, her husband, and her daughters.

Uh, so yes.

There's, uh, lots of people on sort of TikTok, uh, YouTube, and as you mentioned, sort of Discovery Channel as well, getting in on this craze, sort of filming themselves hunting for gold and, and trying to, uh, kind of encourage others to do the same.

I mean, gold is notoriously difficult to prize out of the earth.