Dearest Readers,
When we conjured our next issue, one threaded with golden celebratory notes of Her Majesty’s Platinum Jubilee, we couldn’t imagine during such a euphoric year where the effervescent pleasures of the British summer were felt with such sharpened rapture, that our joy would be stunted by the stark ending of Britain’s most iconic reign.
We’ve spent much time reflecting on those ten days of mourning. Whether it was moments from The Queue, where businesses running along London’s South Bank banded together in a community spirit one can only liken to wartime years, providing cups of warming tea to thousands of cold, patient hands. To the gilded gates of Windsor Castle, before which floral tributes laid often exceeded the height of the small Britons laying down carefully chosen Paddington Bears, whilst their parents wordlessly adjusted the folded over corners of Union Jacks placed in the days prior.
What stunned us most during those ten days of pause was the sheer force of solemnity which rippled throughout the Kingdom and world as a whole. As much as we long accepted The Queen’s remaining years were a numbered reality, each of us found that the instantaneous removal of a presence so constant in our lifetimes created a wobble in our collective gravity. Queen Elizabeth II was the quarry from whom every notion of regality was creatively mined, a woman who exuded a reigning elegance of geniality from an era most of us never breathed but looked to for magic. She was the Monarch whose steadfast composure and unswerving dignity were the paramount values many of us quietly took example from when confronted with adversity in our own lives. When that collective gravity wobbled, irreversibly shifting in seismic force the Elizabethan Era to the future beyond it, our eyes looked toward the stately mannerisms of her family, one which with the same flawless movements of their matriarch, opened that first crisp white page of the modern monarchy to us all.
Going through the issue we had conjured with ardent jubilation, it became humbly clear to me as editor that we needed to pause and take time to quietly respond on our pages to this new era. We needed to move toward our own charted course as a publication calmly with the same staunch steadiness Queen Elizabeth II illustrated for 70 years.
The next issue of The Modern Jetsetter, an ode to life as a Londoner, is now to be released in Summer 2023. Readers can pre-order the issue in our online shop.
In these pages readers will find a bejewelled tribute to Queen Elizabeth II and look to the coronation of King Charles III as the modern monarchy guides us into the new dawn of Britain’s soft power. Nestled in these pages is the design of a wedding dress by London designer Emma Victoria Payne, a gown inspired by a beloved Duchess of Carnarvon. We will take you behind the glittering façade of Spencer House, along with sharing our Little Emerald Book, a guide to London’s most glittering venues and vendors for a town fete.
Doors will open to the Royal Suite of one of London’s most iconic hotels, The Goring, a societal haven which will be stage for upcoming coronation celebrations just as it was for The Queen’s own in 1953. We will share a modern guide to Mayfair, where one can sleep in a hotel largely inspired by literary imaginings of Oscar Wilde and find our favourite “pop in” haunts. Our diary, typically a Smythson, will open to London’s summer season, a time beloved by The Queen for both racing and its bright display of Britain’s most iconic fashion designs (the latter of which a small tweedy taste of our Winter 2023 issue). Our cover will be a textured chinoiserie marvel from a particularly beloved London-based artist, and rest of the pages, from the introduction of our motherhood section and royal milliner secrets to the charities softening the inflation crisis for British families, we shall keep close to heart as we finish off quietly.
What humbled us most in the creation of this issue, and what I hope will humble readers as well, is that some of these pieces were created with Queen Elizabeth far from mind; we discovered she possesses a rather famed Roman trajectory, all roads in Britain leading to her legacy in some small, quiet way.
We will be opening our pages to British businesses for advertising in 2023 & our beloved Continent pillar will be reserved for luxury guides released with our winter editions as we devote our publication and the future as publishers to British elegance.
You can continue to appease your appetite between issues with our Society Chronicles, which will continue to grow as we step into our next chapter.
As ever, with gratitude for your devotion to our pages…
K
