Kinfolk, Volume 59 – Clean

Delving deeply into home, work, style and culture, Kinfolk promotes quality of life and connects a global community of creative professionals from London to Tokyo. Since 2011, Kinfolk has become a leading lifestyle authority with a dynamic mix of print and online media, including a quarterly magazine sold in over 100 countries in four languages, daily posts on Kinfolk.com, bestselling books, plus international events and a gallery space in the heart of Copenhagen.

Printed four times a year, Kinfolk magazine is translated into Japanese, Chinese and Korean and seen by a readership of 170,000 25- to 35-year-olds. Mixing long-form journalism, interviews and shorter essays with concept-driven visual stories from contributors across the globe, Kinfolk magazine fosters a sense of curiosity about the art of living.

In this issue:

Issue Fifty-Nine of Kinfolk considers the meaning of “clean” as a ritual, a feeling and an instinct. If you’re starting to think about spring cleaning, you can read our longform essay, which examines how clean we really need to be; or else find solace in Dirty Habits, which turns its attention to the universal pockets of imperfection we all have—dead plants, missing mugs or a junk drawer.

We chart the boom in public bathing culture among younger generations in Tokyo and ask five perfumers and an expert to identify what “clean” actually smells like. We also meet David Bronner, whose soap company has taken on a life of its own: a family business turned countercultural force. And while you may expect to see an issue full of “clean lines” and minimalist design, we instead speak to Leonard Koren, one of the world’s leading aesthetes, who has an entirely different proposition.

Elsewhere, we meet Jessie Ware—the down-to-earth, bluntly funny British pop star who turned her mother’s weekly Friday night dinners for family and friends into a beloved podcast. Plus, our contributors spend time with a dry cleaner, a dermatologist and a saxophonist, ask whether culture is dead, and try to make sense of Theseus’ paradox.