Issue No. 6: “Deep Beauty”

An introduction by Dörte de Jesus, editorial director of The Lissome

Over the years, I’ve come to understand beauty not as a surface quality, but as something that re-attunes us to the living world. I first began to notice its subtle power a decade ago, when I started imagining what would become this magazine. Each time I encountered something truly beautiful, I felt a tender and expansive sensation in my body – as though something in me was being gently brought back into alignment.

The artist Agnes Martin once described beauty as the mystery of life. For thinkers, artists and wisdom seekers throughout history, beauty has belonged to the same realm as truth, goodness or love. And yet today, it can feel like an uneasy word. Hollowed out by advertising and spectacle, beauty is often reduced to surface appeal or desire engineered for consumption. So much around us claims to be beautiful, especially in this time of constant acceleration and visual saturation. But what is beauty, really? And what does it ask of us?

Beauty did not emerge to sell us things. It has moved through art, craft, science and spirituality long before capitalism or consumer culture. Mathematicians speak of elegant proofs as beautiful for their clarity and restraint. Japanese aesthetics honour imperfection and impermanence through wabi-sabi. People returning from psychedelic or contemplative experiences often speak of dissolving into unity, a felt sense that everything belongs together.

So beauty appears in form, but also beyond it – sometimes simply as vibration, atmosphere or presence. Many of us encounter it most vividly in nature: light moving across water, a sudden rainbow, the murmuration of birds. In these moments, beauty interrupts our sense of separateness and returns us to wholeness. It reminds us that we are of the Earth, not apart from it.

Perhaps this is why beauty feels especially pressing right now. We are living through a moment in which vast decisions about how we live and what kinds of worlds are built around us are increasingly made without care or consent. Ugliness, in this sense, is not incidental; it is a by-product of systems that value speed, extraction and control over dignity and life.

In such a moment, beauty is not an escape. When approached with seriousness, it sharpens our discernment. It helps us sense what kind of world we are participating in – and whether we can imagine, and practice, something different.

For this issue, Deep Beauty, we are interested in beauty as a moral and imaginative force that shapes how we pay attention and how we orient ourselves in the world. We are drawn to beauty that is calm or unsettling, quiet or overwhelming; beauty that asks us to stay present with complexity, rather than offering easy comfort. We are especially interested in how these questions surface in lived practice: in making, designing, writing, growing, repairing, teaching, organising, caring – as ways of being in the world.

At The Lissome, we follow beauty as a practice of re-enchantment with the living world. When we give it our attention, it multiplies. This issue is an invitation to journey with beauty in its many dimensions: luminous and difficult, nourishing and dangerous, intimate and political.

Submission Guidelines

Thematic lines of inquiry:
• Craft, making & artisanal practice
• Textiles & materials
• Ecology, nature & interspecies relationships
• Global, Indigenous & decolonial perspectives
• Alternative value systems, slowness & cultures of care
• Inner life, imagination & spirituality
• Technology, systems & responsibility

We’re open to a range of formats and approaches:

Fashion Editorials
In our fashion stories we explore garments as cultural, material and relational objects, foregrounding imagination and meaning over trend or spectacle.

Lived Practice / Studio Visit
An intimate exploration of how an artist, designer or maker works in practice, focusing on process, context, purpose and the conditions that shape their way of making and thinking.

Material Story
An exploration of a material, fibre or textile as a living system, tracing its ecological, cultural and human entanglements across land, labour and time.

Conversation / Long-form Interview
A thoughtful exchange that allows ideas, uncertainties and lived experience to unfold gradually, valuing listening, reflection and complexity over definitive positions.

Essay / Reflective Inquiry
A carefully held piece of writing that stays with a question over time, offering non-reductive reflection at the intersection of fashion, culture, ecology and everyday life.

Collective or Place-Based Portrait
A form of storytelling in which a place, community or shared practice takes centre stage, revealing relationships, histories and ways of working beyond individual authorship.

Poetic Pieces
Contributions that work through image, language or atmosphere, opening space for imagination and wonder.

1. Writing Proposals:

To help us understand your idea and approach, we ask for:
• Around 150 words outlining your proposed contribution and how you might approach it (including relevant links, where helpful)
• An estimated word count

If this is your first time contributing to The Lissome, please also include:
• A link to your website, or to your Instagram or LinkedIn
• One or two writing samples (ideally similar in tone or form to what you’re proposing)

We do not publish reprints or previously published pieces.

2. Fashion and Photo Stories:

To help us understand your idea and approach, please include:
• A short written description of your idea
• A visual moodboard
• An estimated page count

If this is your first time contributing, please also include a link to your portfolio or Instagram.
We do not publish reprints.

Fees & Expenses:

The Lissome is made as a grassroots, community-led publication. We work without institutional backing and are currently sustained through mutual care, volunteer labour and small, self-generated budgets.

While we cannot offer market-rate fees, we are committed to covering expenses and acknowledging contributors transparently and respectfully. We see each contribution as part of a wider cultural commons, a space held collectively where ideas and practices that often struggle to find a home can be shared and sustained.

Short-form writing: €150 (approx. 600–1000 words)
Long-form writing: €250 (approx. 2000–4000 words)
Photo essays: €250–€400 (depending on scope and production)
Fashion editorials: €400

Copyright:

All work remains the property of the contributor. The Lissome licenses First Serial Rights and Internet Rights. Contributors may republish their work after 180 days, with the credit: “Originally published in The Lissome, Issue 6.” The Lissome retains the right to archive, distribute and promote the work within the context of the magazine and its platforms.

Submission Deadline:

We welcome submissions until 16 March 2026.
Please submit your proposal via this → Google form.