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Turkish cooking in London has long meant the ocakbaşı grill houses of the north-east of the capital, and few chefs have done more to move them on than Sertaç Dirik. He grew up in the kitchen of Mangal II, the Dalston dining room his father opened in 1994, and after cooking with the top names in Copenhagen, he returned home six years ago to reinvent the family business with his brother Ferhat, propelling it into the National Restaurant Awards Top 50. Kid in Soho is his first solo restaurant, and his partner is David Carter, who has spent the past decade turning out great places to eat, from Smokestak and Manteca in Shoreditch to Oma and Agora in Borough Market. Carter knows how to open a hit; recruiting Dirik has given him an extra shot of cool.

Wallpaper* dines at Kid, London

The mood: Soho, set alight

The first realisation for guests is that getting in is a challenge. Walk the length of the Frith Street frontage, and you’ll see diners having the time of their lives inside, but there’s no obvious door. That’s round the side on Bateman Street – look out for the tiny goat stamped in the metal – and the first thing it reveals is Dirik manning the flames of the grill. The second is the certainty that you’ve arrived in one of the most happening rooms in London.

Carter has worked with Box 9 for more than ten years, and here the London-based design practice has joined two units of an 1897 corner building and united them through brick: 73,000 unfired K-Briqs, to be precise, made from construction waste and used to form niches, a latticed screen, a fireplace surround and a curving wall down the stairs. ‘We studied the brick patterns and coursing found across historic London façades and worked closely with the bricklayers to understand their trade,’ says Box 9 co-founder Lou Davies. ‘The fit-out was drawn brick by brick, with every joint aligned, allowing the brick to become more than a structural material and instead a contemporary expression of Turkish symbols.’

Overhead, cork joists from Amorim in Portugal soften the ceiling, while the banquettes are covered in chocolate-brown Arc of Joan textiles, dyed by hand and embroidered with kilim motifs, and the chairs are in moss-green canvas. An oversized mobile by the Turkish artist Selin Nisa Açıkel, cast in bronze from recycled copper, hangs above the stairs that lead to the most important part of the whole operation: an open bakery.

The food: Kid gloves off

Begin with bread from downstairs: the tombik pide arrives puffed and blistered from the wood oven, the Wildfarmed pide scored and charred from the grill. Snacks come by the individual piece, so order a courgette flower in crisp batter, blanketed in grated tulum goat’s cheese and drizzled with atom honey, and chubby slices of the house sucuk sausage with a purée of grilled peach that tastes like sweet ketchup. From the meze, muhammara comes heaped with walnuts and feta-like beyaz peynir, and the hummus is all but buried under a crunchy rubble of fried chickpeas.

Skewers of lamb belly and sweetbreads, glossy and blackened at the edges, are a contrast of succulence and squidge cut through by a bed of grilled onions, but the showstopper is the mixed kebap: Adana köfte, chicken and lamb piled high with scorched peppers and a tangle of pink onions, plus a çoban salata of cucumber and tomato on the side.

To finish, the mountain tea rice pudding with orange blossom is already one of London’s most tempting desserts, like a sophisticated cross between Ambrosia and crème brûlée. And whatever else you drink, have a şeftali margarita, as peachy as a Bellini. And, happily, the door is much easier to find on the way out.

Kid is located at 55 Frith Street, London W1D 4SJ, UK

Lego’s regular forays into the infinite realms of pop culture are becoming more and more involved. Aside from the big-ticket licensing tie-ins – Minecraft, Star Wars, Pokémon, Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, etc – there have also been high-profile collaborations with Pharrell Williams, Olivia Rodrigo, as well as various football and F1 stars.

Now the brick builders have reached out and added another creative to their closet. French electro duo Daft Punk are the newest sign-ups to the world of Lego, promising a fresh take on Lego’s blend of ‘music, culture and creative experimentation’.

So what will Daft Punk bring to the party? After all, Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo officially disbanded their act back in 2021, having founded Daft Punk in 1993. The duo enjoyed a career that mixed highly performative anonymity, stunning live and video visuals, not to mention hit after hit after hit.

Few modern artists – let alone those working in the realm of dance music – have shaped, projected and sustained such a well-curated image as Bangalter and de Homem-Christo. It’s therefore unsurprising to find that Daft Punk™ (note the trademark) is very much a going concern, with creative director Cédric Hervet overseeing a host of posthumous projects that includes remixes, reissues, soundtracks, and high-profile partnerships with the likes of Fortnite.

Lego is the latest brand to come knocking. The collaboration was made concrete by a film featuring Daft Punk’s tracks ‘Voyager’ and ‘Human After All’. It’s a pairing that has its origins in a couple of Lego-related events, starting with the duo’s minifig cameo in the Pharrell Williams 2024 brick-built biopic Piece by Piece, followed by an appearance on the Lego Ideas fan creation site, with Daft Punk Concert, a set suggested by super-fan Patrick Harboun and his son.

That representation of the Daft Punk ‘pyramid’ stage set (from the 2007 Alive tour) will go into production next year, the first in what is hoped will be a series of related sets. It's only hinted at in today's launch film, which follows the Daft Punk robotic minifigures along a holographic red brick road through a neon-streaked landscape, leading to a concert venue that builds itself around them.

Wallpaper* spoke with Cédric Hervet about the scope and scale of the collaboration and what it means for the enduring power of the Daft Punk name.

Wallpaper*: What can the Lego Universe do for DP's legacy, given that the group only exists as a cultural force and not an active music duo these days?

Cédric Hervet: To me, Daft Punk never stopped existing. A legacy doesn't end when you stop making new work. Our creative outset with the Lego team has been to look at legacy not as something static, but an invitation to innovate and create. The music, the robots, the pyramid all live on through the fans, who keep making them their own. My role today is to look after that world and open up new territory for it. And that's exactly the spirit of Lego creativity: you build, you take it apart, you build again.

W*: Do you see any parity between the technology of the Lego brand and the way DP presented themselves over their career?

CH: For me, the common ground is imagination. Lego bricks are an extraordinary tool for creativity: you're handed some bricks, and it's up to you to build whatever is possible with them. That's also how Daft Punk started. Thomas and Guy-Man wanted to make electronic music, so they bought a bit of gear, figured it out, and created with what they had.

As a kid, just the Lego packaging or the pages of the holiday catalogues made me feel like I was stepping into another world. You wanted to know what was hiding behind a Lego City building. With Daft Punk, we always played on that: leaving people room for their own imagination, their own interpretation.

W*: What are you most excited about with this collaboration? The sets? The technology? The new audience?

CH: First, something very personal. I've always loved Lego toys, and I dreamed about this collaboration for years. I still have to pinch myself. I played with Lego bricks as a kid, I spent many hours being creative with my children using them and as recently as last winter I was still giving them Lego Advent calendars. They're 20 and 19 now, which tells you it hasn't aged a day.

I also sometimes ask them whether Daft Punk's music sounds dated, because when you're inside it, it's hard to have perspective. Apparently it still feels very current to them. And then there's the pyramid. I was lucky enough to work on the stage design for the Alive 2007 tour.

Every night, I watched the show from the side of the pyramid. I was the audience's audience. Seeing thousands of people dance with smiles on their faces for an hour and a half was the greatest reward. So, seeing that pyramid come back in bricks, imagined by a father and his son during lockdown, is the link between generations I'd been dreaming of.

W*: How did the collaboration come about - who approached who?

CH: To be honest, on our side, we had tried to approach the Lego Group several years ago. To me the connection was obvious, but the timing probably wasn't right yet. What really unlocked it was the fans.

The Lego Ideas Daft Punk Concert project won the Music to Our Ears challenge in 2020, then reached 10,000 supporters. This gave us an opportunity to see how naturally the two worlds fit together: ethically, aesthetically, culturally. The fact that fans made this collaboration possible is wonderful to me. Daft Punk's story is also a story of fans inspired by other artists.

W*: How do you see the partnership with the Lego Group evolving over time?

CH: We're only at the first few bricks. The Lego universe is vast, and just seeing the two little robots, GM08 and TB3, step into it means a lot to me. They'll get to live their own lives there. I really love the Lego tone, especially in its animated content. It's a lot of fun, and it reveals a different, slightly offbeat side of the characters.

You get a first glimpse of that in the AV. The pyramid set is a first step. Beyond that, I can't say more for now, but I can’t wait to see this partnership unfold based on what brought it to life: fans sharing with each other and passing on creative experimentation from one generation to the next.

Lego.com, @Lego, DaftPunk.com, @DaftPunk

Many of us already live with some kind of domestic digital companion, even if it is in the acceptable form of a smart speaker like an Amazon Echo or Google Nest Hub. But what if these inanimate objects were imbued with a little more character? Would interactions become less fraught, frustrating and functional (‘Google, what’s the weather like in London today’)? Might we all just slow down a little, snagged by the lure of a ghost in the machine?

OKA was founded by Wesley Chen and Hua Wang, a self-described ‘nomadic entrepreneur’ with a very specific reason for his approach to robotics. ‘I spent ten years designing mechanisms to make people come back to their phones,’ Wang says candidly, explaining how his new robotics venture OKA (One Kind Artifact) set out to be something different. ‘I watched Fritz Lang’s 1927 film Metropolis and it made me question why robots are still not a part of our lives, nearly 100 years later,’ he says over video from New York.

For Wang, the answer boiled down to two things; the expectations that a robot should be able to do everything a human could do, and the corresponding need for them to be human-scaled, large and mechanical. ‘I couldn’t imagine having such intrusive machinery in my house,’ he admits.

The answer is Mori, a ‘robot that belongs in a home’. At 30cm tall, roughly the same size as a desk lamp, Mori (Japanese for ‘forest’) is explicitly not an appliance, nor a Terminator-style humanoid that needs a whole afternoon to fold your laundry.

The most obvious visual metaphor is a mushroom, with an illuminated hat/cap above a bulbous fabric-covered stem. In between the two sits Mori’s ‘face’, two illuminated eyes and a button (camera) nose. Servos activate a discrete range of fluid movements, eyes dart left and right, eyelids flutter and the little robot offers a convincing portrayal of an introvert tucking itself away beneath its hat and hiding from the world. It’s a distinctly non-threatening piece character design, a static yet personable object that feels part Pixar, part Studio Ghibli, part Flos.

Switch Mori on and tap the stem to wake the device and an elaborate start-up theatre ensues, with the device appearing to run through phases of shyness and curiosity as it wakes. The illuminations cycle through a range of colours, responding to touch and voice, while the fabric body (25 per cent real wool and available in four colours) also incorporates sensors. Mori’s onboard AI will, in time, learn to recognise different people and environments, as well as run through actions in response to commands or taps. New 'personality' quirks and responses will continue to evolve and emerge.

So what’s it all for? Wang describes the device as ‘something to relax and calm you down’, with inbuilt relaxation programs triggered by resting a hand on Mori’s 'head'. In this mode, ambient sounds and lights are generated as part of a guided breathing session. These immersive sessions – forests, seashores, etc – are all accompanied by a swirling light show to help transport you into a different state of mind. Of course, Mori also functions as a regular light.

Ultimately, OKA wants Mori to be a piece of mindful technology, an object that becomes more and more in sync with the humans around it, thanks in part to the company’s ‘Attentive Intelligence Engine’. Think of it as an alarm clock with character, one that welcomes you home after work, with eyelids that flicker and droop as the evening turns into the small hours, perhaps encouraging you to finish up and go to bed.

This dependence on contextually powered AI also shapes Mori’s response to other stimuli, which it usually translates into movement and light, rather than speech and sound. In this respect, it’s more adjacent to a giant Tamagotchi than it is to an Alexa, but still a step down from a cat.

Mori is the first in what OKA hopes to be a suite of five such mindful ‘Artifacts’, each of which uses robotics and AI technology to offer a new spin on emotional response. Mori’s role is to ‘explore the relationship between humans and their immediate physical environment’, rather than chase diary dates or offer reminders for chores. No two Mori devices will ever be alike – put two or three together and watch them communicate in different ways.

Whether you treat it as animated nightlight, spirited sound therapist, or just a digital pet, Mori shows the potential of immobile yet highly engaged AI-powered objects. With OKA poised to reveal its portfolio of more animated Artifacts in the months to come, we’ll keep you posted.

Mori Founder Edition (limited to 500 units), $649, OKA, OneKindArtefact.com

The reveal of the annual Margaret Howell calendar serves not only as a reminder of the passing of another year, but an insight into the perennial British designer’s interests and inspirations; previous editions have featured archival posters from London’s Design Centre (2017), the textile works of designer Lucienne Day (2025), and the ‘British landscapes’ of photographer Edwin Smith (2015).

For 2027, the theme is altogether more personal: titled ‘Photographs by Margaret Howell’, the project will see each month feature an image taken by the designer herself on her Nikon SLR camera or smartphone, spanning various decades and capturing ‘places, objects and details’ – from beach walks in Suffolk to self-portraits in her Blackheath workroom. Without a specific theme, they instead offer a glimpse of how Howell sees the world: most notably, through moments of everyday beauty and a fixation with surface, texture and found objects.

‘It is always when you see something that’s either unusual or really beautiful,’ says Howell. ‘If you can capture that – quite often you can’t ... [If it] surprises you or excites you, you just want to take a photo.’

Coinciding with the calendar’s release, a series of images will be displayed in the designer’s Wigmore Street store in London, while a new book, titled Margaret Howell: Life and Work, offers a companion piece. Published by Japanese company Shueisha, the bilingual book explores Howell’s ‘pragmatic approach to living and designing’, featuring a series of images, including several shot by Howell herself. Her mantra, ‘good design is thoughtful and works well in everyday life’, provides the book’s common thread.

A continuation, of sorts, from Margaret Howell Houses (2006, also published by Shueisha), which has sold over 50,000 copies, the new book situates her work within her everyday life – most notably, her home in Suffolk, documenting the furnishings, objects and scenery which surround her while she designs her collections. Elsewhere, there is an exploration of the materiality which remains at the heart of her collections – including an insight into her work with British fabric producer Fox Brothers of Somerset – and her London Shirtmaking Workroom, which recently got an upgrade.

‘Photographs by Margaret Howell’ runs from 23 October – 15 November 2026 at Margaret Howell Wigmore Street, London. Margaret Howell: Life and Work and the 2027 Margaret Howell calendar are both available from 22 October 2026 at Margaret Howell Wigmore Street and soon from the Margaret Howell website.

When does a watch become a cult model even before it’s launched? When, as Casio discovered a few months ago, a leak from its Japanese website took news of its forthcoming 2500 model viral. 'Casio has always had a lot of passionate fans, but the 2500 has somehow really tapped into their imaginations, I think because it’s what diehard fans have been asking for for a long time,' says Warren Halliwell, Casio’s UK senior content manager.

The watch in question, the 2500, which launches in early November 2026, is Casio’s first fully analogue watch in decades, with a case shape that nods to both the brand’s 1980s 5000 series and its 2100 series, launched in 2019, with their signature case ‘bumpers’. Inevitably, following Casio’s fanbase nicknaming its 2100 series watch the ‘CasiOak’, for its resemblance to Audemars Piguet’s Royal Oak, the 2500 series – notably the full metal version – has already been dubbed the ‘CasioNaut’ for its indirect homage to Patek Philippe’s classic Nautilus.

'For the watch to have a nickname before it’s even been launched is a reflection of the affection that’s already grown for the model,' reckons Halliwell. 'We’re flattered by it. And there’s been a lot of talk about it at Patek too no doubt. But to even be mentioned in the same sentence [as that brand] is nice'.

'As the product has not yet launched, we’d hesitate to describe it as having achieved cult status,' adds a more cautious Tomohiro Yuasa, product planner at the timepiece division of Casio’s R&D Center. '[But] we're very grateful for the interest it has received ahead of launch. It has a balance of familiarity and freshness that may be one of the reasons it has attracted attention'.

The 2500 – which is available in resin and full-metal variants, this being the first time Casio has launched an entire nine-piece collection all at once – is intended to fill a gap in its range, adding to the already extensive roster of full digital and analogue/digital display models. It’s also being launched with an economic case in mind. According to Halliwell, 'gone are the days when someone would have a watch for the office, one for the gym, one for going out, and so on. Customers are looking more for an adaptable model, a watch for life.'

The 2500 aims to offer G-Shock’s signature toughness with a slightly dressier aesthetic and at a more affordable price (from £110 to £230). The brand’s only other full analogue watches have been part of its Gravitymaster or MRG collections – between £600 and £6,000 and aimed more at professional pilots and the military.

Naturally, while it’s the more heritage aesthetic of the 2500 that seems to have tickled the zeitgeist – Casio will be leaning into this as it approaches G-Shock’s 45th anniversary in 2028 – under the bonnet, there’s plenty of Japanese tech.

The ‘multi-mission’ date window can show date, elapsed stopwatch minutes, setting information and calendar details, depending on the function selected, while the watch makes use of Casio’s magnetic shock release system. The minute hand isn’t fixed to the shaft mechanically, as is standard in watchmaking, but held in place magnetically, allowing out to absorb the force of impacts before resetting at the correct position.

'In analogue watches the size and weight of the hands can create constraints in shock-resistant design,' explains Yuasa. 'This is particularly significant for G-Shock, given its rigorous shock-resistance standards, and making the balance between design and toughness a major consideration. The Magnetic Holding Structure offers a new way to address this challenge but, in the 2500 Series, it also plays an important role in achieving the expressive qualities of an analogue watch too'.

Dark and moody interiors serve up a delicious sense of mystery. Drawing from Gothic narratives, whether Bram Stoker’s Dracula or Netflix’s Wednesday, spooky décor does feel rather glamorous. While you may or may not have a haunted manor or abandoned castle to adorn, ahead of Halloween, we've put together a selection of six small accessories that show the darker side of design.