• TSM’s 2025 Last Minute Gift Guide

    TSM’s 2025 Last Minute Gift Guide

    Aesop Kagerou Aromatique Incense

    Presented in Aesop’s signature sleek packaging, the Kagerou incense releases a soft, woodsy scent anchored by vetiver, igusa, and sandalwood. Designed to subtly shift the mood of a space, each set includes a Kanuma pumice holder that naturally dissolves in water once used.

    Ask Yourself This By Lillian Ahenkan

    This guided journal features 190 thought-provoking prompts designed to encourage reflection, clarity, and self-discovery. Written in FlexMami’s unmistakable voice, it transforms inner work into an engaging and accessible daily practice.

    Cleonie Sculpture Maillot Swimsuit

    Aussie brand Cleonie’s take on the one-shouldered swimsuit is incredibly flattering and timeless. We especially love the option to request more or less coverage, depending on personal taste.

    Ela & Earth Insulated Water Bottle

    The kind of everyday bottle you end up carrying everywhere–practical, stylish, and easy to love. An added bonus is that it comes in a range of unique colourways.

    Fluff Refillable Cream Blush

    This cream blush, in Flulff’s signature Cloud Compact, offers a natural, dewy flush in shades designed to flatter every complexion. Refillable and made with nourishing, plant-derived ingredients, it blends beautifully and can double as a subtle wash of lip colour.

    LESSE Foundational Skincare Set

    A clean, thoughtfully considered skincare set designed to suit all skin types, featuring distinctive ingredients such as medicinal botanicals and mushrooms. The set includes a cleanser, mist, serum, and mask.

    My Mum Made It Crochet Notebook Cover

    Made from 100% organic cotton yarn, this handcrafted cover wraps a standard A5 diary in delicate crochet and includes a matching floral bookmark. Thoughtful and sentimental, it’s the perfect companion for new-year planning and reflection.

    Hinu Essential Duo

    This essential duo pairs a nourishing botanical hair growth oil with a lightweight hydrating mist. Made with high-quality, plant-derived and organic ingredients including rosemary, green tea, aloe, and argan oil, the formulas help support circulation, nourish the scalp, and leave hair softer and shinier–without the harsh chemicals.

    St. Agni 90s Belt Bag

    Everybody needs a staple, everyday bag. This nineties-inspired, minimalist design is made from 100% leather and comes in a rich, on-trend mahogany. It can be worn as a shoulder bag or a clutch.

    Tehan Threads Mini Skirt 

    Melbourne-born Tehan Threads transforms deadstock and vintage fabrics into doily and lace inspired statement pieces, creating wardrobe staples that are as timeless as they are conscious. Each piece is a forever item that blends fashion with sustainability. Love your work, @alicetehan.

  • The Commodification of Breakfast and the Rigid Compartmentalisation of Life (At Its Very Worst)

    The Commodification of Breakfast and the Rigid Compartmentalisation of Life (At Its Very Worst)

    It’s said that the word breakfast entered the English language during the Middle Ages, derived from the literal act of breaking the fast after a night’s sleep. These days, most people are typically eating between seven and nine in the morning. An assigned slot in your day: wake up—eat—work—eat—sleep—repeat.

    But it’s 2025, and we’re now carving our routines down to the minute. I’ve endured enough Get Ready With Me’s and fallen hostage to too many morning rituals to know how deranged these expectations have become.

    How many lunges can I realistically squeeze in without delaying my forty-second everything shower, followed by the lymphatic dry brushing of my lower abdomen because TikTok told me I have “PCOS belly”?

    Don’t get me wrong—I frothed these videos at first. Truthfully? I even took notes. I had an entire album saved. A shrine to these tyrannical, step-by-step guidelines on how to spend the first 72 minutes post-slumber—efficiently, and aesthetically, of course.

    But somewhere along the line I lost my mind.

    Because you know what the most deranged thing about a morning routine is?

    The fact that you could always be doing more.

    God forbid I forget to spend 5 mindful minutes alone with my thoughts. Or throw my hair back to massage a home-brewed blend of essential oils into my scalp. Or worse—forget to pat my ultra-rare Labubu on the forehead before disappearing out the door.

    Realistically, how much are we all doing here? I need all eight hours of the working day just to complete my morning routine. And then what? Do I unlock the lunch routine? Graduate to the evening unwind ritual? Someone hold me back.

    I’m not the first person to be outwardly repulsed by the performative psychomania of these viral videos. It’s the commodification of time that truly grates, though.

    This pressure to constantly optimize and schedule every waking moment. Existing as a human without the incessant need to curate your life, both on and offline, isn’t enough anymore.

    Most of us, at some point or another, have audibly cursed the man who invented the eight-hour workday (his name escapes me, and respectfully, I don’t care to look it up).

    And sure, if you’re a woman like me, you’ve probably heard the discourse that our bodies run on monthly cycles, not daily ones. Which is true. But that’s not the point.

    I’m not talking about gendered disconnects or the systemic biases that framework our society.

    Take Greece, for example.

    Relatives and friends still ask me what an authentic Greek breakfast entails. To this day, I still can’t say.

    Some Greeks tell me they sleep in late enough that their first meal isn’t until midday. Others swear that the jet-black, sketo elliniko kafe and the blazing sun are enough to propel them into the evening—where true living begins.

    Free from regimes, or routines. Or the neurotic need to curate every moment.

  • Dead Sea Dreaming

    Dead Sea Dreaming

    If you visit the Dead Sea during the summer, when the days are long and sticky, it’s best to dip into the water just before sunset or just after sunrise. It’s only an hour’s drive from Amman, a trip marked by a long highway lined with resorts and sun-bleached shops–each one conjuring memories of childhoods spent in the sun, the scent of plastic inflatables and sunscreen thick in the air.

    I’m used to visiting the water at dusk, just before dinner. In recent years, the make-shift beach reserved for our favourite hotel, the Kempinski Ishtar, has been enlarged, decorated with a drink stand and two brand-new outdoor showers.

    Standing at the shoreline is a meditative experience. You’ll find that the water tends to blend into the sky, creating the illusion that the sea stretches on forever. That couldn’t be further from the truth: the Dead Sea is evaporating at a rapid rate. Its exclusive salinity will soon be a thing of the past–a chapter closed forever, along with Egyptian mummification and centuries of conflict.

    If you ask, staff will source you some souvenir salt crystals, and if you’re fortunate, you’ll get a pretty one. However, there is a kind of guilt that comes with taking away from something as ephemeral as the Dead Sea.

    If you look like a tourist, someone will inevitably explain the “right” way to enjoy the sea.

    1. First, you should float in the water for five minutes. It’s no secret that the exceptionally high concentration of salt and minerals nourishes the skin.
    2. Then, dry off and apply mud to every visible inch of skin (avoiding swimwear, which the mud will permanently stain).
    3. You’ll be ready to go back into the water once the mud dries under the sun in ten minutes–pass the time by taking photos of your muddy limbs, or conversing with the medical tourist sitting next to you.

    It’s best not to spend too much time in the sea, because the salt is almost too potent, and can cause swollen legs. The water has a way of finding every vulnerability and making it sting: a paper cut you didn’t know you had, a tiny scrape barely exposing flesh.

    Anecdotally, spending time in the sea heals superficial skin issues like psoriasis and acne. I recall a woman who was often by the water, sitting on the edge of a sun lounger, with dried mud on her arthritic knees. The supposed benefits of the Dead Sea range from miraculous to modest–fifteen minutes of stillness, if nothing else.

  • Clean, non-toxic fragrances that will keep you smelling amazing—without the harmful chemicals.

    Clean, non-toxic fragrances that will keep you smelling amazing—without the harmful chemicals.

    Fragrance sits at the heart of my beauty ritual.

    My morning routine is not complete without a generous misting of my favourite scent. But what if the perfumes we’ve come to love are laced with ingredients our bodies don’t?

    As someone who’s long romanticised perfume—the realisation that many mainstream fragrances are made with synthetic fillers and hormone disruptors was a sobering one. Parabens. Phthalates. Sulfates. Words that are not made for consumption. And as the BeautyTok saying goes—your skin is your largest organ. A canvas. Why douse it in toxins when cleaner alternatives exist?

    So after years of curating what goes into my body, it felt only natural (lol) to redefine what goes on it too.

    After sleuthing through my socials and the wider web, I sat back and let the algorithm do its thing. In no time at all, I found myself blissfully scrolling through a quiet corner of the internet—a micro-community of perfumiers bound by a shared ethos: transparency, thoughtfulness, and the art of balanced composition. Here are three of my favourite clean fragrance brands that are redefining what it means to smell luxurious, without the toxic footprint.

    Recreation Beauty
    Australia’s answer to a conscious cult classic. Recreation Beauty offers luxury in a bottle, without compromising on quality. Vegan, cruelty free and ethically sourced— their scents are formulated without synthetic fillers, hormone disruptors, or questionable chemicals. Redefining decadence with integrity.

    Try: At Night We Dance
    Notes: Musk, magnolia, orange, vanilla, wood.

    Orb Oils
    Orb is a sensorial deep-dive—a blend of notes that conjure mood and memory. Their formulas are free from parabens, silicones, and all the usual harmful suspects. Think archival deity—rich, earthy layers blended with the finest essential oils for a scent that feels both grounded and divine.

    Try: Bobby  Fragrance Oil
    Notes: Sandalwood, spice, fresh, unisex.

    Tulita Fragrance

    Founded with the intention of setting a new benchmark for luxury, Tulita commits to formulations completely free from chemical compounds known to be carcinogenic or hormone disruptors. Their elixirs are 100% naturally derived, with over 55% organic ingredients. No parabens, no phthalates, no petroleum derivatives. Tulita Fragrance are the first of their kind—merging both fragrance and wellness into a natural elixir of vitality.

    Try: Agati
    Notes: Woody, earthy, green.