GILDED LURE

Brace yourselves, the cultural highlight of the Prague autumn season is on. The iconic and boundary-smashing Lunchmeat Festival just launched in Prague and, as with every edition, we plan to savour everything it has to offer – and invite you along for the ride. The festival’s entire programming runs between September 22 and 28.

Fashion designer Alicia Gu weaves mythology from grief and renewal, creating garments that pulse with vulnerability and ceremonial power. Discover how childhood magic, ecological loss, and the death of the last unicorn shape her romantic approach to fashion as living storytelling in today's interview.

Giusy Amoroso, also known as Marigoldff, is an Italian artist currently living and working in Berlin. Her singular work encompasses immersive media, 3D sculpting and animation, VR, and XR, and her creations feel like creatures that would be right at home in the Primordial Soup Hypothesis. Enjoy the extensive interview with the artist below, where we talk about shifting meanings, deep sea fascination, sculpting hidden reality, and “the beauty in the unfamiliar”.

Blue gold is a mystical metal; it could be everything that’s fleetingly shimmering, seducing, gently luring, glinting under the caustic light reflections of water surfaces. Another in-house editorial by house SWARM MAG will drag you down to cobalt depths only to discover Hades’ and Persephone’s guest house that you’ll never want to leave. Shot by Ondřej Szollos.

If you were to guess that the self-described “esoteric designer”, Stjorn Revali, behind the label Storrveldi, was profoundly influenced by Sergei Parajanov’s The Colour of Pomegranates, you would be right. Her garments are intricately made, sprinkled with iconographic imagery and symbolism, heavy cotton lace, and Eastern European nostalgia. With the designer, we talked about the right to demand authenticity, separating the want from the need, imbuing photoshoots with storytelling, and more.

Polish artist Marta Antoniak transforms plastic debris from 1990s capitalism into seductive yet dangerous surfaces, where childhood toys and shattered Christmas baubles become archaeological evidence of transformation. In today’s interview, you’ll get to discover how Marta paints with objects rather than pigments, creating works that sparkle with both promise and threat.

“[My] pieces aren't about hiding the body; they’re about making the internal cosmic.” Fashion designer Layla Dian Jin’s generous, sometimes even sculptural silhouettes feature striking elements covered in gold foil against dark fabric, and browsing them feels like stumbling upon scattered golden nuggets in the dark sand of a cold stream. The designer sat down with us to talk perspective shifts, the silence of empty spaces, micro and macro scales, and more.

Polish composer Rafał Ryterski creates multimedia "total pieces" that blend classical music approaches with experimental electronics to create a genrebending, political sonic landscape. Read him trace his path from childhood encounters with The Prodigy to abandoning academia, and catch him live at Sanatorium Sonorum 2025.

French photographer Camille Leprince transforms bodies into atmospheric forces through long exposures and oxidizing metals, creating portraits that pulse with erotic vulnerability and sacred darkness. Discover how cinema, intimacy, and the alchemy of time shape his haunting choreography of contemporary heroes in today's interview.

Alex Valentina navigates the fluid boundaries between digital precision and organic spontaneity, creating hybrid worlds where flora meets code and dreams dissolve into UI. Find out how the Milan-based creator uses technology not as an end but as a telepathic tool, chasing creative breadcrumbs through a practice he calls personal archaeology.

Czech photographer Stanislav Palát is the definition of a one-man creative army. In the true spirit of “if it doesn’t exist, make it yourself”, he handles his own set design, lighting, makeup, 3D modelling, accessories, grading, and an array of other skills. The result is photographs with a touch of “Neo-Romantism”, fantasy, and exciting imaginary worlds, straddling the line between a fairytale and a fever dream. Enjoy the interview with the artist below.

“Interestingly, when I sing in Bulgarian, I also sound less queer than in English.” We were lucky enough to get ahold of one of the most idiosyncratic and eye-catching acts the Slovak 2025 Pohoda Festival has to offer, just a day before the event kicked off: Bulgarian choreographer, performer, and singer-songwriter Ivo Dimchev. His enthusiastic fandom knows him for a wild and vivid mixture of folklore, catchy pop, cabaret, and opera – and this year’s Pohoda should expect nothing less. With Ivo, we talked “fame”, multudisciplinarity, inspiration, queerness, and questions that haven’t been asked yet.

“At the mountain’s cold peak, there is no wasted movement, and nothing without its shadow.” Within only a year of two shows — one at PAF film festival, Ostrava, one at CTM, Berlin — Swiss adventurous music tastemakers Danse Noire do the good thing early by releasing Theo Alexander & Qow’s collaborative performance, ‘So Afraid To Show I Care’. We are elated to welcome a first-time guest writer, Prague-based Freddie Hudson, who penned a sweeping and suggestive review of the masterfully concocted album for SWARM MAG.

“How many times are gaps filled in a narrative to paint a specific picture?” asks Berlin-based fashion designer Elodie Carstensen regarding semi-mythical historical figures, whose stories have been told by all but themselves. In the interview with the designer, we discuss Jeanne d’Arc, marrying golden statues, and creating all-powerful beings out of the women wearing her clothes.

Italian artist Chiara Baima Poma transforms ancient stories into paintings that pulse with joyful sacredness; visual incantations that embroider mystery rather than explain it away. Learn how travel, ritual, and Renaissance traditions shape her contemporary practice in today’s interview.

Is this a bombastic, ornate, and slightly disturbing version of a foodie heaven? We’ve suspended our freshest editorial in a peculiar type of timelessnes, which is both nostalgic and futuristic, and references the era when food styling was less homogenous and more unhinged. Enjoy a new collab between SWARM MAG, the award-winning photographer duo shotby.us, and Bláznivé bruschetty, an ingenious trio of food designers creating eye-catching and vibrant edible installations.

Polish artist Zuzanna Romańska wields beauty to subvert and step into its costume to excavate violence and trauma beneath ornamental surfaces. Her archetypal figures transcend time and identity, captured between worlds. Join her mythmaking rebellion against linear time in today’s feature.

On her unorthodox journey from pathology to fashion design, Sumeyya Donmez arrived at the preferred creative tool of expression: the time-intensive and unpredictable process of salt crystallisation. Reminiscent of clothes swept into the ocean at high tide, Sumeyya’s collections sit somewhere between a garment and a sculpture. Read more about the symbolism of salt, savouring slowness and waiting, and how actually wearing the clothes sometimes isn’t the point in the in-depth interview with the designer.

“Passionate love appears very similar to religious obsession.” What initially draws the eye to Edyta Olszewska’s paintings are the ubiquitous scattered glints and gleams – but once you get past the form and technique, it’s the symbolism that makes you stay. In the interview, Edyta talks about leaning into the mesmerising power of Christian processions in all their solemnity, drama, and opulence, ecstatic tensions, challenging inner dualities, and more.

Under the inspired hands of Czech jewellery maker Tereza Otáhalíková, golden foliage creeps, twists, turns, and blooms, adorning hands, necks, ears, hairdos, and clothes. In the interview with the craftswoman, she talks the processes behind her dainty floral and organic shapes, how a piece gains depth and meaning through placement and context, researching a distinctive style, and more.