🌕 Nakedness: why stripping back is so good for everything 🌎
From bold gift ideas and bareface beauty to a wave of sauna pop-ups across the UK
Yesterday was the Winter Solstice – the shortest day of the year and the longest night. From here on in, then, it’s all…
more light,
more sun,
and, hopefully, more fun.
Mid-winter is also that ideal moment for a renewal and reset, for going right back to basics and beginning again, but better.
Nothing captures all this – the joy, the rebirth, the mojo-rediscovering – more than nude wild swimming under the moon. Seriously. This 'right-side-of-woo' tradition was taken to its extreme during Australia’s 2024 Winter Solstice, when a naked throng of 3,000 walked together into the froth in Tasmania, setting a record for the biggest group of swimmers ever to wear nothing but little red swimcaps together.
“Celebrating the shortest day of the year has very quickly become my new favourite ritual,” said @sabrina_pocketsize, one of the smaller brave wet souls. “It's about learning to let go of the fears, inner tensions and inhibitions that take a hold of you for longer than they should, using nothing more than the naturally powerful combination of vulnerability and 12-degree water.”
This is exactly why we at BRiMM are hung up on nakedness. Because stripping things back, starting again and opting to live a lower-impact life does, once you've taken the plunge, lead to the sort of euphoric, natural high that's a bit like the one wild swimmers have. It's just a longer-lasting joy, that comes from having less, but better – and plenty enough.
And what does all that mean? Well, lifetimes of…
more light,
more sun,
and, definitely, more fun.
Tune in, team up and let's turn the tide.
Team BRiMM
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Naked women whip up more media coverage than your average climate-change disaster. That’s the bare truth proven by a gang of topless Italian activists who sat across a main road in Rome last May, plus hundreds of similar demos over the decades. Fellow campaigner-come-art-historian Esme Garlake reflects on the effectiveness of female nudity in protest and its interplay with art history in this smart, short essay.
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WGSN’s 'Future of Skincare 2026' report reveals that external pollutants, misuse of active ingredients and growing stress levels are all contributing to a rise in skin conditions like acne, psoriasis and rosacea. Big yikes. The fix? Streamlining your washbag. We’re feeling this neat three-piece kit from Evolve: it's everything you need for glowy chops.
What better way to celebrate the beauty of your own bod than having a sculpture made of it. Studio Bust is a brainwave of a service that creates ‘personalised lifetime heirlooms’ using a 3D scan and materials from renewable resources like sugarcane. (Bonus: you can enjoy mates marvelling at it without revealing it’s actually you.)
In the basement of London’s Finnish Embassy exists a sauna society, a space for diplomats to meet, since wearing fewer, if any, clothes chills people out, amps up trust and throws status out the small, steamy window. Now Rob and Josie da Bank are serving up the same mind and booty benefits via Slomo, the UK’s first floating sauna on the Isle of Wight, plus a six-week 'Mind Your Brain' pop-up at King’s Cross from January 2025.
Feeling the festive pinch? Try this ‘premium veg’ dish by chef Miguel Barclay: aubergine milanese with spaghetti. It will fill you right up and the ingredients only come to a quid.
MUSIC FOR CLIMATE OPTIMISTS
Joe’s up this week with his indie/electronic/6Music-dad sounds, melded together in a mix of 2024’s most uplifting beats. Perfect for a post-nut-roast pick-me-up.
FROM THE COLLECTIVE
Jen showed us how to eat up our Christmas tree with these tasty, low-impact recipes by chef, author and baker Julia Georgallis // Thom’s shared possibly the best-looking gift guide of the year, curated by Compendia for design-loving conscious consumers // And Dan brought us up to speed on plastics via this excellent Insta post by Impact.
What's BRiMM again?
We’re building a shop, journal and collective to prove that living within limits isn’t living less – and to put the profit to work for the planet.
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