🌍 The power of awe and wonder ✨

Plus Ottolenghi’s summer salad, Miu Miu’s Upcycled collection and bank holiday beats

Welcome to BRiMM, the collective, journal and planet-positive shop here to help you live a lower-impact life, without life feeling less

First things first: our most exciting headline news right now is that the waitlist for our limited founder membership is filling up fast. Make sure you sign-up and don’t forget to bring a friend as you’ll both get 10% off the already ludicrously good lifetime price.

Our second most thrilling news is that we’re having our first ever get-together – date, time and place in the invite above. 🪩

We’re partnering with the pioneering team at E.L.V. Denim to invite you to an exclusive evening of connection, creativity and conscious fashion. Not only will you get to meet the team behind the movement, learn more about the mission and have an exclusive sneak peek of our Reset Boxes, our curation of super effective, design-led items for joyful planet-positive transformation – BUT you can also try on E.L.V. Denim’s impeccably tailored upcycled clothing and explore the story behind their design philosophy, with fit advisors on hand in their London pop-up store. We’ll also be sharing unique offers on the night for those ready to take the next step as a BRiMM founder member – can’t wait to see you there. Message us now to reserve a spot and with any questions. Oh and James (our founder) and Anna (Foster, founder of E.L.V. Denim) are both nuts on negronis so do be expecting them on tap (low and no- options of course also available).

Then third on our big news list – it’s been a heck of a week – is the fact that BRiMM’s visual identity was just featured in Creative Review. Take a look to find out a few of the secret meanings in our logo and general look.

This week’s theme is… awe and wonder ✨

That trio of BRiMM updates has left us feeling, well, a little bit overwhelmed and a lot buzzed that it’s all happening. All coming together.

And that’s kind of what this week’s topic is all about: taking the time to pay attention to feelings of awe. Those moments of delicious daze, when your clock-watching control slips awhile, momentarily allowing your consciousness to fill right up with wonder.

For us, when it comes to nature, it’s the sound of a breeze flowing through leaves that triggers it. For the meticulously well-dressed crowds queuing up at annual flora-fest the Chelsea Flower Show this week, it’s the King’s newly striped roses. For others, it might be learning that mushrooms may be able to speak to each other (hello Last of Us Season 2 watchers), or seeing this eerie 1954 video of Catherine Bent of Devoran, “one of Britain’s most successful professional water diviners”, reeling around to the call of underground wells.

“Take a few seconds, a few times a day, to slow down, pay attention, and expand on those awesome moments.” That’s the advice of the Yale University professor whose fresh findings (more on them below) seem to prove that simply making the effort to truly, deeply, even just briefly feel wonder in everyday life can improve depressive symptoms and overall wellbeing. Inspired to dig deeper into how Earth soothes psyches? A Wilder Way - How Gardens Grow Us by Poppy Okotcha just dropped, after giving Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall “a renewed sense of wonder and delight”, while Dacher Keltner’s 2023 book Awe: The Transformative Power of Everyday Wonder is a bestseller for a reason.

And it’s awe and wonder at various elements of the world’s might that are at the heart of BRiMM’s upcoming product offering, too. From the natural magic discovered by ‘metaphorical travelling botanist’ Harriet Murphy and then used in her skincare brand Hotel, Mike – from bacteria to plant cells to yeast so far – to the psychic senses that inspired My Skin Feels, to the ancient grains used to create Northern Pasta Co: each of these life-improving inventions was born thanks to their founders stopping to pay attention to their own sense of wonder at some striking element of nature. And we can’t wait til it’s your moment to experience it too, through them.

Team up, tune in and let’s turn the tide,

BRiMM x

p.s. last chance to share the podcasts that bring you the most joy! Let us know which spring to mind for you and we’ll give them a shout-out in our upcoming round-up.

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The BRiMM Life Questionnaire
This week it’s the turn of BRiMM founder member Lisa Oxenham, ex-Beauty and Fashion Director at Marie Claire, ongoing advisor to boards including the British Beauty Council’s Sustainable Beauty Coalition and one of our regular Journal authors

Which low-impact life reset has brought you the most joy?
“Relocating to the countryside has been transformative. In London, nature felt like something I had to chase – a weekend escape. Now, it’s part of my every day. That shift from disconnection to belonging has been grounding in a way that feels deeply healing. Nature always brings me back to balance, no matter my state of mind. And now I get to share that with my daughter, Eliza.”

Indie record store tip
“I don’t own a record player anymore, but I used to love flipping through vinyl at the music shop by Afflecks Palace in Manchester when I worked there. I have so many records. There’s something so romantic about discovering music that way.”

Which issue do you care most about changing?
“The ongoing wars and humanitarian crises. We need empathy, not just policy. Peace feels far away sometimes, but we must keep fighting for it – in big ways, and in our small, daily choices.”
Watch out for the rest of Lisa’s answers on our site soon. Fancy doing our BRiMM Life Questionnaire yourself? Get in touch

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FROM THE COLLECTIVE

Rick’s flicking through the new print version of conscious food and culture Substack Vittles, that launched on its 5-year birthday

Sam’s checking out Miu Miu’s latest Upcycled collection

Rebecca’s listening to Jefferson Hack chat to mycologist Merlin Sheldrake in a recent episode of AnOther’s podcast ‘Where It’s At’

We love to hear what our collective is finding. Share your links with Becky

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LITTLE WONDERS

Most of us have known about the benefits of getting fresh air/taking a daily constitutional/stopping to smell the roses and all those other clichéd snippets of advice pretty much since we learned to walk – and then had them underlined circa 2020 when we all started suddenly noticing blossom again on our daily lockdown circuits. But this week, a newly published paper from Yale University shows that taking a moment during our al-fresco trips to be ‘awed’ by nature, the universe and everyday life in general can be a drug-free way to quantifiably improve our mental health. The research showed that experiencing regular wonder like this led to a “17 per cent decrease in depression symptoms, a 12 per cent decrease in stress and a 16 per cent increase in wellbeing” for the study group, to be rather specific. Which all sounds wonderfully awesome.

→ DISCOVER MORE

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BIG SKY AT NIGHT
Simply listening to Hardeep Kaur’s calm, considered tones is enough to inspire awe, whatever she’s saying. The writer, creative director, designer, founder of storytelling studio per se, creator of The Age of the Steward and contributor and editorial member of planet-positive fashion magazine The Lissome is also the host of the podcast, The Architecture of Contemplation. She’s also extremely Zen for someone so incredibly active and productive. In this particular episode of companion series Contemplation, she considers the term ‘sky grief’ – the “feeling that we inherently intuit in spaces and places, city escapes and urban sprawls, a loss of the great, awesome, frightening grandeur, that is the night's sky”. To learn a little more about Hardeep herself and her general life views and philosophies, check out this PRINT magazine interview with her, too.

→ LISTEN MORE

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THE MINISTRY OF SILLY WALKS
No, we’re not talking about Monty Python. Instead our headline is a reference to responsible self-care brand Mirror Water’s new ‘Silly Little Walk’ events, which kicked (stepped?) off this week. Organised by founder Estée Lalonde, they are an opportunity for the team and their community to reconnect with the world around them, and themselves. “Whether it’s between meetings or a way to find inspiration, walking brings us clarity, grounding and creativity,” explains Estée, who grew up in the expansive, grounding Canadian countryside. The change of scene to urban London led her to dream up Mirror Water, as a much-needed new way to unite with both herself and nature.

→ SEE MORE

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FLOATING AN IDEA
Another way of regularly ushering in more wonder into your life is by immersing yourself in water: “the driving force of all nature” – as Leonardo da Vinci once described it, back in the 15th century. While increasingly more floatation tanks can be found around the UK – along with the potentially bar-setting Origin Pool at the Mandrake in London, which may be the latest and greatest in the bobbing stakes – 1997-founded Koan Flot in Amsterdam is the original G. Located on the attractive Herengracht canal – a sight for refreshed eyes when you exit – you’ll find yourself constantly ‘wondering’ whether your eyes are actually open or not. (We’d plump for ‘very much open’.)

→ DIVE IN

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MAD ABOUT SAFFRON

“This is one of our absolute go-to recipes for a summer BBQ,” says BRiMM’s Sustainability Advisor, Tom Berry, of Ottolenghi’s roasted aubergine with saffron yoghurt salad. Does that mean if you make it, summer’s officially started? We’re going to say yes.

→ MAKE THIS

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MUSIC TO DRINK A LAZY LIMONCELLO TO

BRiMM’s Head of Beauty Sam and husband Greg are back with more sunshiney beats to lure us all into thinking it’s Saturday again – because, this week, it can be. Cin Cin.

The carbon footprint of an email depends what device you use to open it, but sending you this one used about 3.5g of carbon.