logo
Bloobloom in Spitalfields opening

Bloobloom in Spitalfields opening

Fashion Network08-05-2025

There are no vacancy signs up within The Spitalfields Estate retail area of east London. French eyewear retailer Bloobloom has taken up the final placement for the property group just over two years after the historic Spitalfields market destination's renovation programme began.
The eyewear brand has opened a 615 sq ft store with its interior resembling 'a serene Mediterranean escape where thoughtful design meets tranquility creating a fully immersive customer experience'.
Alongside the brand's full collection of sustainably-made sunglasses and spectacles (priced from £99), is 'the full Bloobloom experience', including walk-in eye examinations with in-house opticians, adjustment and repair services and well as personalised style advice.
Abbas Manai, co-founder of Bloobloom, said: 'Opening in a prime spot in Spitalfields E1 is the perfect next step for [us]. This location allows us to deepen our connection with the East London community. Spitalfields E1 is an exciting shopping destination, and expanding our retail presence here helps us grow our reach.'

Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

'Bezos Denied at Monaco': The $500 Million Megayacht Forced Offshore as Billionaire Arrives by Dinghy in Stunning Humiliation
'Bezos Denied at Monaco': The $500 Million Megayacht Forced Offshore as Billionaire Arrives by Dinghy in Stunning Humiliation

Sustainability Times

time5 hours ago

  • Sustainability Times

'Bezos Denied at Monaco': The $500 Million Megayacht Forced Offshore as Billionaire Arrives by Dinghy in Stunning Humiliation

IN A NUTSHELL 🚢 Jeff Bezos ' massive megayacht, Koru , was denied docking at Monaco's port due to its overwhelming size. ' massive megayacht, , was denied docking at Monaco's port due to its overwhelming size. 🌍 The yacht's environmental impact is significant, relying on diesel engines despite having sails. despite having sails. 🏆 Lauren Sanchez received an environmental award in Cannes, highlighting the irony of traveling on such a large vessel. received an environmental award in Cannes, highlighting the irony of traveling on such a large vessel. 🔍 The incident raises questions about the balance between luxury travel and environmental responsibility. Jeff Bezos, the billionaire founder of Amazon, has found himself at the center of controversy once again due to his massive megayacht, Koru. Recently, he attempted to visit Monaco, a playground for the wealthy, only to be denied mooring for his enormous vessel. Despite his wealth, estimated at over $220 billion, Bezos couldn't secure a spot for his $500 million yacht in the principality's port. The yacht's immense size poses both environmental and visual challenges, even in a locale synonymous with luxury. Monaco's Port Too Small for Bezos' Yacht Jeff Bezos' visit to Monaco with his fiancée, Lauren Sanchez, coincided with the prestigious Grand Prix of Formula 1, an event that attracts the global elite each May. The couple has developed a penchant for maritime travel, choosing to approach the glamorous event by sea. However, as Koru neared Monaco's port, local authorities requested that it remain anchored offshore. The reason was straightforward: the yacht's staggering dimensions—417 feet in length, 56 feet in width, and masts reaching 230 feet—made it unsuitable for docking in the crowded harbor. To put its size into perspective, the yacht is longer than a standard American football field, which measures 360 feet. This extraordinary scale inevitably drew attention, although it failed to secure a berth. The principality's decision to keep Koru at bay highlights the challenges of accommodating such colossal vessels, even in a place accustomed to extravagance. Autonomous 18-Wheeler Begins Freight Runs in the US as Self-Driving Tech Powers Massive Truck Through Live Highway Routes A Recurring Issue for the Billionaire Denied the ability to dock Koru, Bezos and Sanchez resorted to a more modest speedboat to reach Monaco, leaving their floating symbol of opulence anchored offshore. This did not deter the couple from enjoying the Formula 1 event in full VIP style. The incident in Monaco is not an isolated case for Bezos. The billionaire has faced similar restrictions in Venice, where local authorities have prohibited his yacht from approaching the historic city due to its overwhelming dimensions. Despite these challenges, Bezos and Sanchez continue to traverse the world aboard Koru. The yacht has been spotted near Spain, Saint-Tropez, and Cannes. Ironically, Sanchez was honored for her environmental efforts at the Global Gift Gala in Cannes, a nod to her advocacy, even as she travels on a yacht that, despite having sails, frequently relies on diesel engines. 'UN Defies US Threats': Global Carbon Tax on Shipping Passed in Historic Move That Shakes Oil Giants and Trade Routes The Environmental and Visual Impact The environmental and visual impact of megayachts like Koru is a growing concern. These vessels consume vast amounts of resources and contribute significantly to marine pollution. Koru, with its diesel engines, exemplifies the contradiction between luxury travel and environmental stewardship. While the yacht boasts three large sails, its reliance on engines for propulsion underscores the environmental cost of such opulence. Moreover, the sheer size of these yachts can disrupt the natural and visual landscape of the places they visit. Monaco, a city famous for its opulence, still found Koru's presence overwhelming. As more billionaires commission these floating palaces, questions about their sustainability and impact on local environments become increasingly pressing. 'California's Electric Train Revolution Slashes Toxic Pollution': 89% Drop in Carcinogens Marks Historic Win for Public Health and Climate Future Implications for Luxury Travel The challenges faced by Jeff Bezos and his megayacht in Monaco and Venice may signal a shift in how luxury travel is perceived and managed. As coastal cities grapple with the influx of oversized yachts, regulations may become stricter, emphasizing environmental protection and urban aesthetics. The rise of eco-consciousness among the wealthy could also influence future yacht designs, favoring sustainable technologies over sheer size. For Bezos, the recurrent docking dilemmas may prompt a reevaluation of his travel preferences and environmental impact. As the world becomes more conscious of ecological footprints, will the allure of massive yachts lose its charm? The balance between luxury and responsibility remains a pertinent issue for the affluent and the cities that host them. As the world of luxury travel continues to evolve, the question remains: How will billionaires like Jeff Bezos adapt to the growing demand for sustainability and environmental responsibility in their extravagant lifestyles? Our author used artificial intelligence to enhance this article. Did you like it? 4.6/5 (25)

Seaweed packaging is shifting single-use plastic out of stadiums
Seaweed packaging is shifting single-use plastic out of stadiums

Euronews

time8 hours ago

  • Euronews

Seaweed packaging is shifting single-use plastic out of stadiums

If you're lucky enough to be seeing Beyoncé at Tottenham Hotspur stadium in London this month, chances are your concert snacks will come in a container made out of seaweed. Notpla, the company which makes seaweed-based packaging to replace single-use plastics, has gone from strength to strength since winning the Earthshot Prize in 2022, bagging a prize of €1 million in the global environmental award created by the UK's Prince William. The venture started with its two French and Spanish founders, Pierre Paslier and Rodrigo Garcia Gonzalez, experimenting in their student kitchen while at Imperial College London. Now, Notpla has replaced more than 21 million items of single-use plastic across Europe, and is aiming to displace 1 billion units by 2030. In order to make a real dent in the insidious issue of plastic pollution, the 'disappearing packaging' solution is being rolled out in new venues and fashioned into new shapes and sizes. We caught up with chief revenue officer Lise Honsinger, Notpla's first employee in 2017, to find out more. Notpla's prototype was an edible water capsule called Ooho. It garnered viral interest in 2017, which Honsinger partly attributes to a 'zeitgeist' of plastic pollution awareness. The start-up partnered with Lucozade to replace 36,000 plastic bottles at the London Marathon in 2019. Then COVID hit, events stopped, and the company pivoted to focus on seaweed coatings for food packaging which make takeaway boxes compostable like fruit peel. In partnership with Just Eat, Notpla's packaging was used at the UEFA Women's Final at Wembley Stadium, London in 2022. From seven types of folded carton board boxes that year, it has grown into a catalogue of over 50 different designs. Imagine pretty much any food packaging you'd pick up from a street food van - burger clam shells, chip trays and forks, churros scoops - and there's a seaweed-coated alternative. There is a purity to Notpla's vision - which clearly impressed the Earthshot Prize judges. Winning in the 'Build a Waste-free World' category further 'unlocked credibility', as Hosinger puts it. 'We're not going for the easiest win,' she says. 'We're not going to mix our product with a bit of plastic to make a semi-natural product because that's a bit easier. We're going to go for it even if it's the hardest thing, to make sure it's truly natural.' Notpla products are now used at major stadiums and venues in the UK, including the Kia Oval, The Principality, Tottenham Hotspurs, Aston Villa, The Aviva, Twickenham and the ExCel Centre. The Johan Cruijff Arena in the Netherlands is on board too, and Levy - part of the Compass Group catering company which Notpla works with - has just won a contract with stadiums in Germany. That's all part of a 'step change' to spread across Europe and the US, Honsinger says. A post shared by Notpla (@notpla) The aim is to make the switch as friction-free as possible, and Notpla products can fit into whatever waste stream the stadium already uses, from composting to recycling or general waste. Meanwhile, IKEA has just rolled out Notpla's seaweed-based packaging in its new Oxford Street London restaurant. And the company is launching a new deli range, featuring plastic-free windows so people can see their sandwiches before buying. Honsinger hopes this will help Notpla branch out into office catering and museums, where that sneak peek is important. 'We absolutely want this solution to be everywhere. We don't want to be a niche packaging brand,' she says. The plan is to go upstream over the next few years - providing coatings to board manufacturers, for example, rather than selling boxes to box buyers. Ultimately, Honsinger wants Notpla to become a household name, in the realm of Tetra Pak or Gore-Tex. 'Everyone will know, if I've got a packaging that's Notpla, it's not got plastic in it, it's not got forever chemicals, it's not going to give me cancer - because I think the world's woken up to the health consequences of plastics as well.' With seaweed extracts from France, Spain (ROKO) and South America, Notpla is fashioning its wonder ingredient into various new shapes and sizes. The scientists are working on creating cold and hot cups, for example, while Notpla continues to develop its existing solutions - like speeding up the manufacture of Oohos. But there are limits to this R&D. 'The reason plastic is everywhere is because it's not natural,' Honsinger explains; it forms a complete barrier to oxygen, water, and grease. Seaweed is never going to be the same as plastics, she says, and that's a good thing. 'You've got to remember the reason why it hasn't got as extreme properties as plastic is the reason it will break down in nature.' Notpla created the Natural Polymers Groups with some of its competitors last year. It bears the distinction of being the only plastic-free alternative to meet the EU Single Use Plastics Directive (SUPD), according to the Dutch government, which carried out extensive testing in 2023. With regulations on single-use plastics and forever chemicals (PFAS) tightening up, the future is bright for alternatives like Notpla. Are plastics companies aware of their seaweed competitor yet? 'I think mostly at the moment we're not big enough to scare them,' says Hosinger. 'But I think they know it's coming.' Cutting off the horns of sedated rhinos with a chainsaw has been viewed by wildlife conservationists in Africa for more than 30 years as a necessary evil to save the iconic endangered species from poaching. They hoped the drastic action was working, but evidence was scarce. Now, a study published Thursday in the academic journal Science has found that dehorning rhinos has led to a large reduction in poaching in game reserves in and around the Kruger National Park in northern South Africa. The area is home to 25 per cent of the world's rhinos and is especially vulnerable to poaching. The results of the seven-year study that ended in 2023 are seen as long-awaited evidence that removing rhinos' horns - which needs to be done every one to two years because they grow back - helps them survive, even if the animals lose part of their makeup. The conclusions seem obvious. Lucrative illegal markets in parts of southeast Asia and China crave rhino horns for use in traditional medicines, and removing the rhinos' horns takes away what poachers are after. But Tim Kuiper, a biodiversity scientist at South Africa's Nelson Mandela University and the lead author of the study, said it was new to have long-term data from multiple sites on dehorning rhinos. He said the study, conducted between January 2017 and December 2023, focused on 11 reserves in the Kruger area and compared data from eight that dehorned their rhinos against the three that didn't. It also analysed data from the reserves before and after they dehorned their rhinos. The study showed that dehorning consistently reduced poaching, Kuiper said. It found that the dehorning of more than 2,000 rhinos resulted in a 78 per cent reduction in poaching in those eight reserves, providing some confirmation that such an invasive intervention was worth it. 'It is a big part of what a rhino is, having a horn,' Kuiper said. 'So having to remove it is kind of a necessary evil, if I can put it that way. But it's very effective. There's no doubt it saved hundreds of rhinos' lives.' South Africa has the largest numbers of black and white rhinos. Namibia, Zimbabwe and Kenya also have significant populations. There are around 17,500 white rhinos and 6,500 black rhinos left in the world, with black rhino numbers reduced from 70,000 in 1970 to less than 2,500 by the time poaching reached a crisis point in the mid-1990s, according to the Save the Rhino organisation. Dehorning rhinos started in southern Africa as early as 1989. It has not been accepted without question. There has been opposition from animal rights activists but also questions from conservationists over what impact it has on a rhino's wellbeing, and what a future might look like with more hornless rhinos. Vanessa Duthe, a rhino researcher in South Africa not involved in the study, said rhinos use their horns to defend themselves against predators, to compete for territory and, in the case of black rhinos, to look for food. There is also evidence that dehorned rhinos adjust their movements to live in smaller ranges, she said. She said conservationists don't know the full impacts of dehorning, but research had found it had no adverse effect on rhinos' breeding rates or mortality rates. 'What we do know is that the benefits of dehorning by far outweigh any ecological cost that we're aware of today,' Duthe said. She said dehorning a rhino now takes around 10 minutes and the process causes minimum distress. Blindfolds and earmuffs are put on sedated rhinos during dehorning, which also provides an opportunity to microchip rhinos and collect samples that aid research. Conservationists agree that dehorning alone will not end rhino poaching and Kuiper said he saw it as a short-to-mid-term solution. Other efforts like more effective law enforcement and better support for game rangers on the frontline are key. While South Africa has helped pull rhinos back from the threat of extinction, more than 400 rhinos a year are still killed by poachers in the country. The dehorning study was a collaboration between scientists from three South African universities, Oxford University in England and game reserve managers and rangers. It also involved the South African National Parks department, the World Wildlife Fund and the Rhino Recovery Fund.

Inside France: Paris' in-Seine plan and the adventures of wax Macron
Inside France: Paris' in-Seine plan and the adventures of wax Macron

Local France

time10 hours ago

  • Local France

Inside France: Paris' in-Seine plan and the adventures of wax Macron

Inside France is our weekly look at some of the news, talking points and gossip in France that you might not have heard about. It's published each Saturday and members can receive it directly to their inbox, by going to their newsletter preferences or adding their email to the sign-up box in this article. Loopholes Can you really have the butter and the money to buy the butter, as the French say? Anti-fraud officers used to use the phrase 'if it seems too good to be true, it probably is' as a way to warn people about scams, and I think we need to create a new version of this - 'with French admin, there are no loopholes'. While it's possible to benefit from gaps in the French residency and tax system, almost without fail, this ends up causing further problems down the line. For example, if you claim French residency while really being a second-home owner, you'll find yourself ensnared by the tax requirements for French residents. Conversely keeping yourself as a non-resident in order to avoid French taxes means that you won't see any of the benefits that French residents enjoy. Here at The Local we often deal with people who have found themselves in a French admin tangle by trying to exploit some loophole - in almost all cases it's simply not worth the hassle. That's not to say that there aren't aspects of the French system that are genuinely confusing, contradictory or a legal grey area - one of these is remote working for foreigners, although this became a little clearer this week after clarification from the French tax office . READ ALSO What you need to know about remote working in France Advertisement Talking France We discuss how to move to France as a remote worker in a way that won't create residency or tax problems on this week's Talking France podcast, plus smoking on café terraces and how Uber changed France (via an anecdote about a foul-mouthed Courtney Love tirade to president François Hollande). Listen here or on the link below. Good goddess Paris city hall announced this week that it is seeking 'legal personhood' for the River Seine . While this might sound like an in-seine idea (sorry), it is part of a coordinated international environmental campaign to gain more protection for natural sites. Advertisement It's an interesting plan, although not certain to succeed - but let's not forget that the Seine already has a personification. Remember the rider on the ghostly horse galloping down the Seine during the Olympics opening ceremony last summer? That was Sequana, the goddess of the river. I hope she approves of the mairie 's plan. Floriane Issert, a Gendarmerie non-commissioned officer of the National Gendarmerie, rides on a metal horse up the Seine river during the opening ceremony of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games in Paris on July 26, 2024. Photo by Kirill KUDRYAVTSEV / AFP And talking of rivers, Paris in fact has not one but two - although the other is underground. The Bièvre river was covered over in the 19th century, mostly because it had become so polluted it was judged a health hazard, but there are plans , albeit at an early stage, to open it up again. Skulls, beer and a river: Discover the secrets of underground Paris Kidnap victim Also in France this week we've been following with amusement the kidnapping of president Emmanuel Macron. In case that sounds slightly flippant, it was actually his waxwork that was snatched from the Musée Grévin, Paris' equivalent to Madame Tussauds. Advertisement Wax Macron joined a protest at the Russian Embassy and then popped up protesting outside the Edf headquarters before his kidnappers - who turned out to be Greenpeace activists - returned him safely to the museum. No ransom was demanded - and it might have been an expensive one since wax Macron is apparently worth €40,000, due to his painstaking and labour-intensive production methods. The wax statue of French President Emmanuel Macron was delivered back to the Grevin Museum in a flight case. Photo by Xavier GALIANA / AFP Inside France is our weekly look at some of the news, talking points and gossip in France that you might not have heard about. It's published each Saturday and members can receive it directly to their inbox, by going to their newsletter preferences or adding their email to the sign-up box in this article.

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into the world of global news and events? Download our app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store