A Completely Honest and Mildly Delusional Edit.
Every summer, the internet floods with "essentials" lists curated by people who apparently own a Leica camera, a Hublot watch, and a clear conscience. This is not entirely that list. This is a list born of equal parts genuine love, shameless aspiration, and at least one purchase I made before checking my bank balance. Some of these items live on my bathroom shelf. Some live on my wishlist, where they have been comfortable and rent-free for longer than I care to admit. And one, the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8, isn't even officially on the market yet, which means I am already coveting something I cannot have, a skill I have clearly perfected.
What ties them all together? Hands. Quite conveniently, as this platform is called Only Hands. Whether you're rubbing on Lush coconut butter at 7am like it's a spiritual practice, dropping your Waterdrop into a glass with the quiet satisfaction of someone who has their life together because its zero sugar and zero calories, or (and I say this with full seriousness) fastening a gold Schnitzel around your neck and walking out the door like an absolute icon, your hands are always involved and starring as the main charachter.
I've linked the products in the headings. Your bank account has been warned — I take, no responsibility or liability for any of your actions.
So here it is: my summer edit. Luxurious where possible, practical where necessary, inexplicable where required. Enjoy.
Image below: ©Hublot
Hublot Big Bang Multi Coloured Ceramic
Let's get the uncomfortable part out of the way first: you will need a sugar daddy to afford this. Possibly two. One who is generous, one who is very generous, and ideally both unaware of each other. I say this not to discourage you, but to prepare you, because the moment you lay eyes on the new Hublot Big Bang Summer collection in pastel ceramic, something inside you will shift. A quiet, dignified longing will settle in your chest, and no amount of sensible financial planning will make it go away.
I speak from experience. A Hublot has been on my wishlist for years. Years. I had made a kind of peace with it, the way you make peace with a holiday home in Capri or front-row seats at Chanel. And then Hublot went and released this. Pastel ceramic. Mint, pink, and sky blue. All at once. On the same watch. I would like to personally thank the design team for absolutely destroying my emotional equilibrium this summer.
Since 2017, Hublot has been turning the Mediterranean coastline into its personal runway by staging watch launches as full sensory experiences rather than mere product reveals. Hublot Summer is less a marketing moment and more a ritual, a declaration of intent: we are here, it is warm, and your wrist deserves better. For 2026, the focus lands squarely on pastel ceramic, and the result is the kind of thing that makes you stare at your own perfectly adequate watch with quiet disappointment.
The collection introduces two Big Bang Summer models sharing an identical colour palette but housing entirely different souls beneath the dial. Because Hublot is not just selling you a colour story. They're selling you a mechanical philosophy, and they'd like you to choose which one speaks to you. As if the choice between two extraordinary things you cannot afford is somehow liberating.
The first is the 42mm Big Bang Unico Manufacture Chronograph with flyback function, limited to 200 pieces. The case in sandblasted and polished pink and mint ceramic is framed by a sky-blue ceramic bezel and a caseback to match, giving the whole thing the kind of architectural coherence that makes watch people go very quiet and then start breathing strangely. The dial mirrors the soft Mediterranean light in matte pink and mint tones. It is, in a word, devastating.
The second is where things get genuinely absurd in the best possible way: the 44mm Manufacture Tourbillon with automatic winding, limited to precisely ten pieces. Ten. There will be ten of these in the entire world. The dial is transparent pink sapphire crystal, which means you can watch the movement breathe beneath it: all depth, light, and mechanical transparency, like peering into something alive. If the chronograph is a beautiful summer dress, the tourbillon is a couture gown that only ten humans on earth will ever touch.
Both models arrive with interchangeable rubber straps in sky blue, mint, and pink and Hublot's One-Click system for swapping between moods in seconds. The idea being that your watch should adapt to your day the way a good wardrobe does: effortlessly, without tools, without drama. Unlike acquiring the watch in the first place, which will involve considerable drama.
Is it on my wrist? It is not. Is it on my wrist in my mind, constantly, while I'm doing other things? It absolutely is. The Big Bang Summer 2026 collection is, without question, this season's most exquisite act of financial cruelty (€33,700) and I mean that as the highest possible compliment.
Your move, sugar daddy.
Image below: ©Samsung
I am an iPhone person. Have been for years. I say this not with pride but with the weary loyalty of someone who has simply never had a good enough reason to leave. And then Samsung invited me to an event, handed me a small pink square, and quietly dismantled everything I thought I knew about myself. The Galaxy Z Flip8 is not officially available for purchase until August but you can pre-order it now, like the extremely impatient and easily influenced person you are, which means I am currently in that particular circle of consumer hell where I want something, it exists, and I cannot have it yet. Samsung did this to me. I was fine before the event.
Here is why I fell in love with it, and I will be embarrassed by none of this.
It folds into a teeny tiny square. That's it. That's the reason. Well, that's the beginning of the reason. You see, I carry very small bags. Intentionally, expensively, unapologetically small bags. Bags that have forced me, on more occasions than I can count, to confront an impossible choice: do I carry my phone, or do I carry my cigarettes? You think I'm being dramatic. I am not being dramatic. This is a genuine daily negotiation that takes up real mental real estate. The Galaxy Z Flip8 (at a mere 6.1mm thin and 180 grams) folds down to a size that fits into my overpriced miniature bags alongside everything else I refuse to leave behind. Crisis averted. Cigarettes safe. Phone present. Order restored.
But there's more. And this is where the Flip8 stops being a clever trick and starts being something I actually want to talk about at dinner.
You stand it on a surface, like a very chic, very expensive Lego — propped open at an angle, half screen facing you. You switch to selfie mode. You wave your hand at it. And it takes the photo. No timer. No asking a stranger. No holding the phone at arm's length and hoping for the best. FlexCam, Samsung calls it. I call it the single greatest act of hands-free vanity technology I have ever encountered.
There are also real-time previews, cover screen selfie videos, and mirror selfies for when you want to look at yourself looking at yourself, which, honestly, more often than people admit and is the culmination of every narcissists dreams. The FlexCam turns flexible shooting angles from a gimmick into a genuinely useful creative tool. You can do things with this phone, propped up at the right angle on a café table or a hotel dresser, that you simply cannot replicate with a flat slab of glass lying on a surface.
Am I about to switch from iPhone to Android for a pink folding square? I genuinely don't know. What I do know is that I stood in a Samsung event, waved at a phone like a lunatic, watched it take a perfect photo of me, and thought: this is the future, and the future is going to fit in my bag.
Available for pre-order, starting at €1300. August cannot come fast enough.
Image below: ©ArionJewelry
Arion Jewelry x Figlmüller - The Schnitzel Necklace
You know a product launch is going to be something special when the press invitation is a treasure hunt. Not a breakfast buffet with a gift bag. Not a showroom with sparkling water and a mood board. A treasure hunt through Vienna, with clues that ends at Figlmüller at Lugeck, where a chef is waiting in a show kitchen to teach you how to make the best Schnitzel and Kaiserschmarrn of your life. I will not pretend I didn't find this deeply moving.
I can cook exactly two things. Two. One of them is Schnitzel. So when ARION Jewelry decided to turn Vienna's most iconic dish into a piece of fine jewellery and invited me to learn how to make it at the hands of THE Schnitzel family, the Figlmüllers, who have been doing this for generations and do not take the matter lightly, I felt, in a way I cannot fully explain, that this event was designed for me specifically. It was not. But it felt that way.
Now. The necklace.
Vienna has many symbols: the Stephansdom, the Riesenrad, the Sachertorte, the particular way Viennese people sigh when things are going perfectly fine. And of course, the Wiener Schnitzel: golden, crisp, slightly irregular at the edges, almost offensively delicious. It is not merely a food. It is a cultural monument. And ARION Jewelry, in a move of absolute creative audacity, has turned it into one you can wear around your neck.
The Schnitzelkette is a limited edition pendant in Gold Vermeil, handcrafted with the kind of attention to detail that makes you stop and look twice. Because yes, it is a Schnitzel. It includes, I am delighted to report, a tiny lemon slice. The lemon slice. Because of course. You don't serve a Schnitzel without lemon and you certainly don't wear a Schnitzel necklace without one either.
The collaboration between ARION Jewelry and Figlmüller is, on paper, the most unlikely pairing of the year. A Viennese jewellery brand and a Viennese institution known for serving schnitzels the size of the plate. It makes complete and total sense. This is exactly the kind of thing Vienna does better than anywhere else in the world: takes something absurd, treats it with absolute seriousness and genuine craft, and produces something that is simultaneously hilarious and covetable. For only €119.
If this is not on your wishlist by the end of this sentence, I don't know what else I can do for you.
Image below: ©Adrett/Kai Steinbeck
I go on about this constantly, and I will go on about it again: we need to support smaller brands. Not as a moral exercise, not because it makes for a nice caption but because the alternative is a world where every shelf, every feed, and every bathroom counter looks identical, curated by the same handful of conglomerates who ate up everything interesting and spat it back out in slightly different packaging. We have enough of that. We don't need more. We also don't need more celebrity make up or skin care brands. But that's another story.
What I do need, as it turns out, is a sweet package arriving at my door from a brand I didn't know yet, containing nail polish that makes me genuinely want to sit down and do my nails immediately. Which is exactly what adrett. did.
The name, for anyone without German, translates to something like neat, smart, well put-together: the kind of word your grandmother would use to compliment an outfit, and also precisely the word that describes what this brand is. adrett. is a contemporary premium nail colour line launched in September 2025 by Linie Kosmetik KG, based in Kelsterbach, Germany. It is inspired by architecture, design, and fashion, which sounds like exactly the kind of thing a brand says on a moodboard and then quietly ignores, except here you can actually see it in the colours. Intentional. Considered. Not a single shade that exists purely to fill a slot in the range.
Nineteen curated nail colours across three collections: Classics, Sports, and Codes. Plus Base Coat and Top Coat. At €14.50 for 6ml, you will note this is the only item in this summer edit that won't require a second mortgage, a generous benefactor, or a very understanding accountant. That is not nothing. That is, in fact, quite something.
The formula is vegan, cruelty-free, 18-free, and plant-based — enriched with almond oil and rose water, which sounds almost indulgent for something you put on your fingernails and then immediately use to type and do dishes. Fast-drying, no UV lamp required, up to seven days of wear on its own and up to ten days with the base and top coat. The brush is wide and professional, which matters more than people realise until they've spent ten minutes trying to apply polish with something that resembles a single strand of hair.
The bottle is recyclable glass, no secondary packaging, FSC-certified shipping materials. adrett. is not making a loud noise about sustainability: they're just doing it, quietly and consistently, in every decision from the formula to the box it arrives in. The tamper-evident quality seal is a small detail that signals a brand thinking about the full picture: hygiene, product integrity, and preventing unnecessary waste. These things matter. They accumulate.
There is something genuinely lovely about a brand that reaches out, sends a thoughtful package, and turns out to be as good as the gesture. No overclaiming, no overwhelming range of three hundred shades, no gimmick. Just very good nail polish, a clear point of view, and a name that says exactly what it is.
adrett. In every sense of the word.
Image below: ©J'Dore
J'DORE Coconut Glow Body Oil – Limited Edition
There is no feeling quite like being the best possible version of an Oompa Loompa. Glittery, warm-toned, slightly iridescent. Catching the light from across a room and making everyone quietly wonder whether you've just come back from somewhere fabulous or whether you were simply born like this. The answer, ideally, is both. And this summer, J'DORE Coconut Glow Body Glow Oil is doing a lot of the heavy lifting.
I will tell you the other reason I love this product: it's Austrian. And if you know anything about building a business in Austria, you understand why that alone deserves a round of applause. Starting a brand in this country is not unlike trying to garden on Mars. The conditions are technically possible, in theory, under the right circumstances, if you are very stubborn and have an extremely high tolerance for bureaucracy and the particular brand of scepticism that Austrians reserve for anyone who dares to try something new. And yet, somehow, people do it. Mina and Tina did it.
The two Vienna-based make-up artists co-founded J'DORE in 2022 with a very specific itch to scratch: they'd spent years testing products professionally, working on clients, developing the kind of expert eye that comes from having your hands on every formula available and they simply couldn't find exactly what they wanted. So they made it themselves. They started with lashes, built a following among make-up professionals and beauty obsessives across Austria, and clearly decided at some point that the lashes deserved company. Enter: the Coconut Glow.
The Coconut Glow Body Glow Oil is a limited edition, which means you should stop reading at the end of this sentence and go find it, and then come back. The formula is a light dry oil (genuinely dry, in the way that beauty products promise and rarely deliver) carrying golden shimmer particles that settle on the skin and do exactly what they're supposed to do: make you glow. Décolletage, shoulders, arms, legs, anywhere the light might catch and you'd like it to linger. Non-greasy, quick-absorbing, with a warm coconut scent that makes even the most landlocked of summer evenings feel like a very successful holiday.
The golden shimmer is not subtle, and that is entirely the point. This is not a "barely-there luminosity" situation. This is a considered, deliberate shimmer — the kind that photographs beautifully and makes you feel, for the duration of a dinner or a rooftop or a slow walk home at golden hour, like the most interesting person in the general vicinity. Whether that is technically true is irrelevant.
Mina and Tina built something real, against the odds, in a country that makes entrepreneurship feel like a competitive sport with very complicated rules and no cheering section. That matters. And the fact that it's also a genuinely excellent product, created by people who know exactly what they're doing because they've spent their careers doing it: that matters too.
Orange, glittery, and Austrian. My summer in a bottle for €24,90.
Image below: ©Waterdrop/MaxManaviHuber
I only recently discovered that waterdrop is Austrian. This is embarrassing on some level, because waterdrop has over five million online customers, more than 400 employees, and is sold in over 20,000 retail locations across the globe including its own stores in Europe and the US. It is not a small, quiet brand quietly doing its thing in a basement in Graz. It is enormous. And I had simply assumed it was from somewhere else. It is from Austria. And naturally, the moment I found this out, I loved it approximately thirty percent more.
The concept is deceptively simple: a small cube — a Microdrink — that dissolves in water and turns it into something you actually want to drink. No sugar. No calories worth counting. Sweetened with steviol glycosides derived from stevia, which sounds very scientific but means: something from a plant, not a laboratory. The flavours are made from natural fruit and plant extracts, and they taste genuinely good, which sounds like it should be a given but in the world of zero-sugar hydration products is, I assure you, not always the case.
My personal relationship with waterdrop is, at this point, essentially domestic. All summer, I have been making my husband a glass of water with the Mojito cube every morning. Ice, fresh mint from the garden, a few slices of lemon, cube dropped in with the quiet ceremony of someone who takes hydration seriously. He receives this as though it is the most natural thing in the world, which suggests either that he is very well trained or that the drink is good enough to seem inevitable. I choose to believe it is both.
It is also, I will say with a meaningful look, excellent for anyone who is on any kind of peptide. You know who you are. Staying hydrated is suddenly not optional but genuinely important, plain water becomes difficult to drink in sufficient quantities, and the options on the market are either full of sugar or full of things you'd rather not read on a label. A zero-sugar, naturally sweetened, genuinely delicious flavoured water that gives you no reason not to drink your two litres? Critical. Life-changing, even. Wink.
Founded in Vienna in 2016 with a mission so clear it fits in three words — Drink More Water — waterdrop has built something that the wellness world needed and didn't know it was waiting for. The environmental case is compelling too: compared to pre-filled 500ml plastic bottles, the Microdrink format saves up to 98% of plastic. The brand also makes reusable bottles and water filter systems, approaching the full experience of hydration (for €8,99) as something worth redesigning from the ground up.
Five million customers later, they were right.
A cube. Some water. Fresh mint if you have it. A husband who has come to expect better than tap water every morning. This is the waterdrop life, and I am not leaving it.
Image below: ©Sisley
If the J'DORE Coconut Glow Oil handles the body, the Sisley L'Orchidée Highlighter handles the face. Together they form what I can only describe as a complete system for achieving the finest possible version of luminous, sun-kissed, arguably iridescent personhood. The Oompa Loompa look, but make it Sisley. Make it French. Make it the kind of thing that costs enough that you apply it with a very small brush and full concentration.
Sisley does not do anything by accident, and the L'Orchidée Highlighter is proof of this. The texture is powder-gel: a combination that sounds like it shouldn't work and then absolutely does. It melts into the skin with the kind of effortlessness that more expensive things tend to have, leaving behind a finish that is flawless without being stiff, radiant without being reflective in a way that reads as craft glitter applied by an overenthusiastic child. There is no mask effect. No settling into lines. Just skin, but better — the version of your face that seems like it arrived somewhere nice recently and slept extremely well.
The shade is universally transparent, which is either very clever or very French or both: rather than trying to match a skin tone, it simply enhances whatever it lands on. It works on every complexion, subtly flattering without taking over, a guest who improves the party by showing up and then knows exactly when to stop talking. The pearl-like effect catches and reflects light in a way that is, frankly, a little magical; you move your head and something shifts, something glows, and you understand why the word "luminous" was invented.
The range of what this highlighter can do is also its great appeal. Apply it lightly and you have the kind of gentle, believable glow that makes people ask if you've been somewhere nice. Layer it up and you have a full glamorous evening situation. Cheekbones that could cut glass, a collarbones moment, a general aura of someone who has thought carefully about light and its relationship to their face. Both outcomes are valid. Both are worth having a product that can deliver either depending on your mood and the hour. Prices at €119, it is available for purchase online at Douglas, or at Maison Sisley Vienna.
Body glowing. Face glowing. Everything glowing. Summer, properly done.
Image below: ©Leica
Full disclosure, delivered with no shame whatsoever: I recently bought a Canon G7X Mark II. It is a very good camera. It is compact, capable, and cost a fraction of what I am about to write admiringly about for several paragraphs. I bought it because I could not afford a Leica. I am writing about the Leica anyway, because this is my list and I make the rules, and also because the SL3-P is currently reserved for sugar daddy number four, who does not yet know he exists but will presumably be very generous when he arrives.
The Leica SL3-P is, by every serious account, the highest-performance camera Leica has ever made and for a brand that has been defining what a camera can be since 1913, that is not a small claim. The "P" variant comes paired with the Vario-Elmarit-SL 24–70mm f/2.8 lens, which alone tells you the kind of company this camera keeps. The package sits at around €5.990... a number I have read several times and each time it feels like a personality test.
The sensor is 44 megapixels, which is enough resolution to capture a moment in such precise, merciless detail that you will see every pore, every strand of hair, every crumb you thought you'd dealt with at the dinner table. Video capabilities include 8K Open Gate, 6K at 60fps, and 4K at a smooth 120 frames per second. Burst shooting hits 40 frames per second. The camera is IP54 weather-sealed because apparently you should be able to take it places where water exists, which is advanced thinking from a camera at this price point. It is also heavy, substantial, authoritative in the hand in the way that things built with genuine intent tend to be. One review called it "a minimalist full-frame mirrorless camera with machismo." I've been thinking about this description ever since. A camera with machismo. Only Leica.
There is also the matter of the autofocus, which is both a technical development and a quietly historic moment: the SL3-P is described, with some reverence in photography circles, as the first Leica that can "shoot anything." AI-assisted autofocus that actually works. This is the kind of statement that makes Leica traditionalists, who have historically viewed autofocus the way a serious novelist views autocorrect, inhale sharply and then reluctantly admit it is very impressive. Because it is. The camera tracks subjects with a precision and speed that puts it in genuine competition with Canon, Nikon, and Sony at the top of the market, while the image quality and colour rendition remain unmistakably, irreplaceably Leica.
My Canon G7X Mark II is doing an excellent job. It fits in my bag, it is quick, it produces images I am genuinely happy with. It is the sensible, responsible, financially coherent choice, and I respect it enormously.
It is not a Leica.
Sugar daddy number four, whenever you're ready.
Image below: ©LushCosmetics
Harvest Moon Shower Gel & Coconut Drench Body Butter
The Harvest Moon Shower Gel has gold glitter in it. That's it. That's the review. We can all go home.
For those who require slightly more context: Lush's Harvest Moon Shower Gel (€14) is a full-moon fantasy in a bottle — the idea being that you shower in its light while osmanthus, described as "the herald of autumn," greets you like an old friend with a warm embrace. This is the most romantically written shower product description I have ever encountered, and I would like whoever wrote it to narrate my mornings generally. Alongside the osmanthus flower infusion, which is deliciously juicy and soothing on skin, you get bergamot oil for a bright, subtly spicy lift, and davana oil, which is syrupy, sweet, and fruity in the particular way that makes a fragrance feel like a memory you can't quite place but definitely want to return to.
It also, per Lush's own description, is "ideal for harvesting compliments." This is not marketing hyperbole. This is a promise, and the gold glitter is how they plan to keep it. Before you worry: the glitter is plastic-free, because of course it is: Lush has been making that choice long before it was fashionable — and it catches the light in exactly the way you want it to while you are standing, glowing, smelling of osmanthus and bergamot, waiting for someone to notice. They will notice. The product is self-preserving too, meaning no artificial preservatives, which at this point feels almost beside the point because you are GLITTERY and FRAGRANT and standing in a golden haze and details about preservation are secondary.
And then there is the Coconut Drench Massage Bar (€14), which is where the scent situation gets genuinely dangerous. Brazilian babassu oil and cold-pressed coconut oil. Intensely moisturising, deeply nourishing combined with tonka and vanilla absolute in a fragrance combination that is warm, sweet, and extraordinarily compelling. Lush's own press materials include the line: "Many will want to sniff you." This is correct. I have nothing to add to this.
The formula uses organic fair-trade cocoa butter and organic shea butter, both naturally rich in Vitamin E, and only the finest essential oils, selected for scent, skincare properties, and their effect on mind and body. The cocoa butter comes specifically from Sierra Leone, sourced exclusively from communities living on the edge of the Gola Rainforest — a biodiverse and remarkable place that is, among other things, home to pygmy hippos. The supplier works directly with farmers to protect and preserve the forest, actively discouraging deforestation and supporting biodiversity-friendly cultivation. Lush calls their philosophy "leaving the world Lusher than we found it," which sounds like a clever brand line until you read the actual sourcing detail and realise they mean it entirely literally.
It is not lost on me that on a list that includes a Hublot watch and a Leica camera, the most genuinely moving story belongs to a shower gel and a massage bar. That's Lush for you: accessible prices, serious ethics, gold glitter, and the constant quiet suggestion that the best version of your morning is one that smells extraordinary and involves a pygmy hippo somewhere in the supply chain.
Use the bar. Shower in golden light. Harvest the compliments. You've earned them.