Dörte de Jesus

@barbotbernardo and @osaberfazer will be hosting another @creativehubsnet peer-to-peer week. @dortedejesus from @thelissome (Berlin and London) will be back in Porto next week for an intense programme of studio visits, learning and conspiracy. Thursday (May 7) at 5 pm, we will host the Soil to Story roundtable. Our friends Paula Nabais (heritage scientist and mastermind of the ERC Scarlet project), Margarida Antunes and Pedro Mota (@vaivemvaivem publishers) will join us for a conversation about craft, how the past can inform the future and the role of independent publishing in telling the right stories. The entrance is free, but you need to email [email protected] to reserve your spot. The roundtable will be in English.

At the MayDay Rooms archive in London, researching pamphlets of the past with @niamhtuft for our recent publication project Drawing Lines of Care: Fieldnotes with @sustfash Pinterest is for sure a helpful tool for visual research, but it’s so much more enjoyable to step outside the virtual echo chamber and dig into boxes filled with treasures. Thank you @reemeidris for pointing me towards this gem of an archive @maydayrooms

We are delighted to share ‘Drawing Lines of Care: Fieldnotes’ with you, a three-part co-edited publication exploring how we cultivate care and solidarity through acts of joyful resistance. 🤍 Each set of Fieldnotes delves into a different theme, through myriad creative interpretations; honouring the past, critiquing the present, and imagining futures in which we can live well together in a more‑than‑human world. Compiled from over 100 valued contributions spanning multiple geographic locations, academic and other disciplines, beliefs, knowledges, and understandings. A huge thank you to all of those who were able to contribute. 🫶 Centre for Sustainable Fashion has been exchanging fieldnotes, through field days since 2012, gathering observations, samples, experiments, stories, and wisdoms from near and far. Fieldnotes can help us in navigating the tensions between the real, the possible and where hope lies. These notes are intended to be read as evidence that gives meaning and aids in personal and collective understanding. They can help sense the insensible, mark the indeterminate and deepen connections between human and more than human beings. In 2026, as the world changes and the Centre changes, the map really does not describe the territory. We invite you to get lost and found in these notes as part of making sense of souls, soils and societies. 👉 Read & explore the three-part publication on our website now – link in bio! Designer: Dörte de Jesus (@dortedejesus ) Printer: PRINT.WORK @print.work Editorial team: Anna Fitzpatrick (@anna_fitzp ), Dilys Williams (@dilys.williams ), Hannah Riley (@hannahlaurenriley ), Mila Burcikova (@milaburcikova ), Nina Stevenson (@ninstevenson ) Editorial Coordinator: Niamh Tuft (@niamhtuft ) #DrawingLinesOfCare #CentreForSustainableFashion #CSF #UniversityOfTheArtsLondon #UAL

‘Drawing Lines of Care: Fieldnotes’ is out in the world. A new publication by Centre for Sustainable Fashion at UAL, bringing together more than 100 contributors honouring the past, critiquing the present, and imagining the future of fashion and care. I contributed to this project as the designer, shaping three chapters with each as its own pamphlet, brought together in just over a month and in the end lovingly assembled by hand by all of us together. It connects in so many ways to the work I’ve been exploring with @thelissome Thank you to an incredible team - what a pleasure and honour to be working with you on this @niamhtuft @dilys.williams @milaburcikova @hannahriley4 @anna__fitzp @ninstevenson @print.work The digital edition is available via Centre for Sustainable Fashion website, and you might even spot my essay contribution, “What We Choose to Make Beautiful”, in “Critiquing the Present”. #editorialdesign #independentpublishing #printmatters #craftedwithcare #designprocess #slowpublishing

Recently, I listened to a conversation with Rebecca Solnit around her new book The Beginning Comes After the End, where she speaks about the importance of taking the long view, and how difficult it can be to perceive larger shifts while we are inside them. That thought connects to something I’ve been trying to articulate for a while: that many of the crises we are facing – ecological, social, political – are not separate, but rooted in a shared underlying logic. A way of seeing the world that places separation, extraction and competition at its centre. In a new essay, Towards a Culture of Care, I explore what it might mean to recognise that pattern, and what begins to shift when we start to move beyond it. The piece moves between personal experience and a wider cultural perspective, and traces a different orientation grounded in interconnection, reciprocity, and what Thích Nhất Hạnh poetically named interbeing. 💌 Towards a Culture of Care is now up on Substack. Follow the #linkinbio Photography by @jackrjohnstone , images and outtakes from The Lissome No. 4, Love Ethic #cultureofcare #interconnection #interbeing #regenerativeculture #systemchange #socialecology #climatejustice #futurethinking #sustainability #ecology

“The idea of separateness turns out to be not only philosophically flawed, but materially untrue.” A new essay on what begins to shift when we take the long view. Towards a Culture of Care. 💌 Thursday on Substack. Photography by @jackrjohnstone

December constellations, what’s been in my orbit: 1. My favourite place to get lost @vamuseum 2. Handwoven treasures by @olivetextiles , at Cockpit Arts Open Studio 3. @cawley at Cockpit Arts Open Studio 4. This vest by @unusuwul made from Lincoln Longwool from the Cotswolds, spun in Yorkshire, at Cockpit Arts Open Studio 5. Wool->ExchangeTwo @csm_news @britishwool 6. London does Christmas best 7. Hidden messages 8. Hyakko, 100+ Makers from Japan at Japan House 9. Brompton Cemetery 10. Think Day with William Morris 11. Women in Print, 150 Years of Liberty Textiles at @morrisgallery

Autumn constellations – what’s been in my orbit: 1. Everything is in movement, everything vibrates, reminder by Niki de Saint Phalle @hauserwirthsomerset 2. In awe of the otherworldly Oudolf Field @hauserwirthsomerset 3. Welsh designer @paolocarzana working with plant-based, recycled, organic and repurposed materials and natural dyes at the Dirty Looks exhibition @barbicancentre 4. Loved this set design by @chloerood and jewellery by @holliepeck at @hardeep.earth ’s beautifully immersive event “What do I owe the cosmos?” that brought together so many precious people 5. Forest dream walking with @sophiejanesnaps 6. Thinking about cyclical living, playing with pottery – this is Mercury, the ancient ruler of Wednesday. Thinking about the energy that he brings to the day. 7. Sometimes more is more. Painting by @ben_edge_art at his solo show “Children of Albion” @fitzroviachapel 8. What does a chair look like when its intended users are insects, not humans? The Chair by Marlène Huissoud at the “More than Human” exhibition @designmuseum 9. Finally seeing @british.pasture.leather in real life, with furniture designed by @otziltd 10. @schoolofsustainablefloristry at London Design Week 11. Antique silver DIY brooches via Pat Scherzer 12. Ceramics at @vamuseum 13. Outside @maydayrooms 14. Inside @maydayrooms – thank you @reemeidris for sending me on this little adventure 15. Autonomy via @manfantastic at @magculture Live in London 16. Interconnectedness via Gauri Gill and Rajesh Vangad, The Eye in the Sky (2016) @tate 17. Neighbourhood beauty 18. Ace of Cups, the card I pulled with @hardeep.earth this week 19. Cups overflowing Cover image: Me in @devlynvanloon , prepping the styling for our @the_book_of_kin editorial shoot, feeling right at home in this look 😌

My contemplation on beauty, to accompany the launch of our first limited-edition print with @belamoraleal Over the years, I’ve come to understand beauty not as a surface quality, but as a living force and practice that re-attunes us to the living world. I first began to sense its subtle power a decade ago, when I started imagining what would become this magazine, and noticed that each time I encountered something truly beautiful, I felt a tender and expansive sensation in my body and heart. The artist Agnes Martin once described beauty as the mystery of life, and indeed, for wisdom seekers throughout the ages, it has belonged to the same realms of high consciousness as truth, goodness or love. But in today’s world, the word beauty can feel so uneasy. Many shy away from using it, as it has been co-opted and hollowed out by advertising and show business. So much around us claims to be beautiful and appears so on the surface, but let’s pause for a moment to think about what beauty truly asks of us, to contemplate its essence and its purpose. My hunch is that the deep beauty of beauty lies in its magic to connect us with the awe of life, in ways that may be calm and almost invisible, or equally soul-stirring and earth-shattering. At The Lissome, we follow beauty as a practice of re-enchantment with the living world. When we give it our attention, it multiplies and we begin to see it everywhere. Life reveals itself as an orchestra of beauty. #thelissome #onbeauty #beauty #contemplation #limitededitionprint

“It’s really about distinguishing between fashion as an engine of consumption, and fashion as a lived culture of clothing. The first is impossible to reconcile with sustainability, but the second can be incredibly beautiful and regenerative – a mindful, nourishing, and even loving way of being in relationship with what we wear.” My thoughts on how fashion, defined as ‘clothing culture’, can co-exist with the need for a more sustainable world. Thank you @magculture for inviting me into your “At Work With …” series. Link in bio. #slowfashion #slowmedia #independentmagazine #regenerativefashion #indiepublishing

I’m back in London for a few months, and it makes me think about the last time I lived here, almost exactly ten years ago. It was a pivotal moment, I had just left my job at ELLE in Munich, swapping my career in fashion media for an unconventional life on the canals. I remember the restlessness I felt, aware of the destructive nature of fashion, media and commodity culture, while sensing that there was another way to relate to clothing, to creation, to life itself. I was tapping into a vision of regenerative culture, where how we relate to clothing reflects how we relate to each other, the Earth and the sacredness of life. But back then, I had no language for it. Just an intuition, like walking through deep fog towards a light. This past decade has been a wild journey of learning and unlearning. I’ve met many teachers, in people, books, conversations, wisdom traditions. Ideas like deep ecology, pleasure activism, the meaning of beauty… they’ve helped me make sense of the world and grown into something grounded that now lives in me and my work. Ten years ago, I took a big leap of faith, and I think about how terrifying and disorienting it felt at times. How things like public speaking were once physically impossible for me. I had no idea how to start a magazine, build a business, find my people or place in the world, and often wondered if I was utterly mad. But when I think about what’s grown from that leap – The Lissome, this beautiful publication, a team and community I love, a wide circle of contributors connected by shared values – I feel deeply grateful and moved by what I allowed myself to grow, and to grow into. Being back in London, I feel like I’ve come full cycle and it feels like a good moment to honour the journey by saying: Thank you for taking the leap. Thank you for listening to your heart. Thank you for taking your inner voice seriously, for letting it guide you, even when it terrified you. Thank you for believing in beauty – in the deep kind of beauty that carries goodness and awe and truth and transcendence – and allowing to be a vessel for it. Thank you for caring deeply, and for remembering: you belong in this world exactly as you are.

“There’s a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.” Photography by @theasnevelovstad The Lissome No. 5, Rise Up Rooted, Like Trees