Not the chaotic, plastic-heavy version most of us grew up with. Not the place where you buy emergency hangers and forgettable storage boxes. Next to our store at Great World sits something called Standard Products, and honestly, it’s one of the most inspiring retail concepts I’ve seen in a very long time.

Imagine if MUJI loosened up a little, discovered color, and started designing everyday objects with actual soul.
That’s Standard Products.

The magic is not in expensive materials or luxury branding. The magic is in restraint. A tissue box suddenly feels gift-worthy. A soap dispenser becomes something you actually want to leave on your sink. Even the candles, scissors, notebooks, kitchen cloths, and storage baskets feel considered. Nothing screams for attention, yet everything quietly works together.

And the packaging. My god, the packaging. The colors are spot on. Soft earthy tones, muted greens, warm creams, dusty blues. The kind of palette that makes you realize how visuall

What I love most is that they prove something very important:

Good design should not only belong to expensive brands.
There is something deeply democratic about making beautiful objects accessible. It reminds you that design is not about price. It’s about care. About editing. About understanding proportion, color, texture, and human behavior.

They also have incredibly beautiful knives, which are surprisingly difficult to find these days. Years ago, I used to hunt for good kitchen knives at Isetan Kuala Lumpur, but now you can walk into Standard Products and suddenly find objects that feel almost Japanese boutique level, without the intimidating price tag.

It’s also the perfect place for gifts. The kind of gifts that feel thoughtful because they are useful. A beautifully packed soap. A set of kitchen tools. Elegant stationery. Tiny objects that make daily life feel just a little more beautiful.

It understands something many brands forget: people are tired of clutter, but they are still hungry for beauty.

There was a time when this was how I spent my Sundays. A newspaper, a few magazines, and a quiet table somewhere in Paris, Brussels, or Amsterdam. No rush. Just time to look, to think, to absorb.

Elle Decor UK was always part of that ritual. So was Vogue Australia. They were not just something you flipped through. They were where you went to understand what was happening in design, in style, in the way people were living.

And you did not consume them quickly. You sat with them. You went back to pages. You noticed things you had missed. You could open the same magazine a week later, or even months later, and still find something new. A colour, a composition, a detail that suddenly made sense in a different way.

That kind of looking matters.

In my world, I have always said, look for pink elephants. Train your eye to see what is not obvious, and ideas will follow. A pattern, a campaign, a direction. That does not come from speed. It comes from attention.

Magazines help with that. They activate a different part of the brain. The slower, more curious side. The side that connects things that are not immediately related.

Instagram, I am not so sure what it activates.

It is fast, efficient, and everywhere. But it rarely asks you to stay. It does not invite you to look twice. And without that second look, something is lost.

Books are finding their way back, which is good. But magazines should not disappear either. They sit somewhere in between. Accessible, visual, but still grounded in time and intention.