They met at Luisa's 18th birthday party at Villa Medici in Rome. What sealed the friendship wasn't fashion — it was a broken fridge with an almost identical sign in both their kitchens. From that moment, everything followed: evenings painting and drawing near Piazza di Spagna, a first pochette folded and hand-sewn by candlelight, a move to Paris, and TL-180.

Brendan Wenzel visits the IUCN Red List nine times a day. That probably tells you everything. The Caldecott-honored illustrator — best known for They All Saw a Cat — has spent years drawing the wild creatures of Southeast Asia not as decoration but as documentation, collaborating with conservation groups in Vietnam and Cambodia to make visible what is quietly disappearing. This is the interview we did with him, and it still resonates.

Colombian-born, Diamond Baratta–trained, New York–refined — Melissa Pinto on jet planes, grandmother's clocks, and why every second in this city is a precious inspiring moment.