Hi everyone,

I take creative days regularly — no agenda, no deliverables, just going deep into other worlds. Other cultures, other creative verticals, other ways of thinking about what an experience can be. It's one of the most important things I do for El Camino. It's how itineraries get shaped, how I figure out who to connect with on the ground, what's possible — even in destinations we're not yet building. Here are the references currently informing how I'm thinking about travel.

xx,

Katalina

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THE EL CAMINO MOODBOARD. The visual and sonic references currently informing how I’m thinking about travel.

1. We're building a trip around Art X Lagos and as part of the development process, I came across Joke Amusan's work through Affinity Gallery, one of the partners we're working with. Her current exhibition, What Shaped Us Does Not Disappear, explores memory, migration, and belonging through large-scale textile installations.
2. ​Loving all the colorful floral bedding from Lucas du Tertre, a small Paris-based brand with a store on Rue de Turenne in the Marais. All their prints are hand-printed and woven in India — block print, ikat, kalamkari — by the same artisans they've worked with for nearly 20 years.
3. ​Buried in Style — Swiss anthropologist Regula Tschumi's twenty-year documentation of funerary culture among the Ga-Adangme people of southern Ghana, where figurative coffins are built to represent the life or dreams of the deceased. A fish seller buried in a fish. A shark for someone whose family wanted to signal strength and high status.
4. The Siete Sillón is sexy. From Azotea Studio, a Mexico City furniture studio doing upcycled, restored, and original pieces. Also worth a click: the Free Form Bátara Coffee Table and the Palmas Chair.
5. This World of Interiors feature on Sylvain Sankalé’s apartment has been open in my browser for weeks. Sylvain, a Dakar-based lawyer, has spent 40 years slowly building a 1,500-piece collection of West African art — 90% of it sourced in Senegal — across a 2,150-square-foot apartment. The apartment is covered floor to ceiling in stunning pieces.

Sonic Bonuses

Just discovered that D.S. & Durga, the cult New York fragrance brand, creates a playlist for every single scent — and releases their own music on Spotify, where they're listed as an actual artist. Call me basic, but I've had the Cowboy Grass playlist on repeat. → put this in trends + scoops

Been listening to the podcast Fela Kuti: Fear No Man for the last few weeks and sent it to everyone who's expressed interest in our Art X Lagos trip. If you're curious about Nigeria, this is the best kind of entry point — it traces the country's modern history through Fela's legacy and genuinely transports you.

HOUSEKEEPING

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