Sometimes, I dream about a slower, simpler kind of life. Not necessarily about leaving everything behind for the countryside, but about what that kind of life represents: slower mornings, fresh food grown close to home, knowing where the things on our table come from. More nature. More space. A life that feels healthier, more intentional, perhaps a little less hurried.
But the truth is, I have always been—and I know I will always be—a city girl. I love the energy of a city. The busyness. The lights. The feeling that something is always happening somewhere. I love getting dressed for events, discovering a new tasting menu, walking into a beautiful store, seeing an art exhibition, finding a new café, watching neighborhoods and skylines evolve. I love the access, the convenience, and just the modernity of it all.
And maybe what I’ve realized is that I don’t actually dream about leaving the city for a different life. I dream about what city life could be.
Can we truly have both? A city that gives us ambition and balance? Progress and nature? Great restaurants and healthy, honest food? Convenience and conscious living? A life that moves quickly when we want it to, and gives us room to slow down when we need it?
Perhaps that’s part of why we wanted to create Beauty in the City. On the surface, this is our city guide: The Beauty Edit’s take on the places, people, products, rituals, and discoveries that make living here interesting right now. But as we put this volume together, I found myself thinking about something much bigger.
Why do we stay?
Not long ago, I was with a group of fellow entrepreneurs talking about business. Real business—the numbers, the economy, the realities of building and employing people here. The conversation became increasingly bleak. When you look too closely at everything that isn’t working, it is very easy to become discouraged. To lose hope.
And then one person in the room reminded us that she still believed.
She believed in the Filipino and she reminded us that as entrepreneurs, perhaps we had a purpose beyond keeping our own businesses alive. It changed the energy in the room. Because hope, I realized, can be contagious too.
Every time someone chooses to build something here, there is an element of belief involved. Every new homegrown brand, every global brand that chooses to invest here, every restaurant, store, studio, product, or idea begins with someone deciding that this place—and the people in it—are worth betting on.
Loving a place doesn’t require pretending that everything about it is wonderful. In fact, perhaps loving a place means wanting more for it.
Beauty might seem like a small thing in the face of much bigger realities. But I have spent enough of my life in this industry to know that beauty has never only been about how things look. Beauty is possibility. It is the instinct to care for something. To make something better. To imagine what could be there that isn’t there yet.
In these pages, you’ll find our edit of a city we know isn’t perfect. The places we return to, the people doing interesting things, the discoveries worth making, and the little rituals that make city life more beautiful.
Think of it not only as a guide to the city we have, but also as a love letter to the city we are still becoming.
Sometimes, the most beautiful thing about a city isn’t what it already is. It’s that there are still people who believe in what it could be.
We’re still here. We’re still building. And we still believe.
