#2 - MISE EN PLACE - Creative freedom

On Preparation

At the back of David Chang's Eat a Peach, there's a section where he answers questions he is asked often, the obvious one everyone asks: How do you become a chef? Buried in his response is this passage about mise en place that's stuck with me since I first read it.

He's not just talking about prepped ingredients at your station. He's talking about self preparation. Get some sleep. Exercise. Take care of your back. Use the bathroom before service. Set boundaries with self-destructive habits. The mise en place does not happen if your body can't get to your station everyday.

He speaks about mise en place as a philosophy that extends beyond the kitchen, into how you approach everything.

That idea - preparation as the foundation for freedom - became this collection.

Respecting Culture, Earning Innovation

Chef Łukasz makes a dessert called Churamisu. Spanish churros meet Italian tiramisu. Two distinct culinary traditions that would not conventionally be placed together.

Yet, Chef has earned the right to do this. He routinely travels to France, Spain, Italy and goes to the source. He took five of his head chefs to Madrid on his own dime to learn how Ibérico pigs are raised, slaughtered, and prepared. 

Through his efforts, he has built a foundation of knowledge and respect. Not just for individual ingredients and their origins, but for the people that are steeped in that culture, the stories that brought them to shepherd those ingredients into our lives in the current time. Through that effort, he earned the freedom to innovate and abstract. To take a churro and recognize it shares enough of the same qualities with lady fingers to be used in that context. To build something that honours both traditions while being entirely new.

Culture is available for everyone if you do it respectfully. Respect isn't just appreciation from afar - it's putting in the time to understand deeply before reinterpreting, if that’s what you plan to do with it.

How This Shows Up Everywhere

There's a guy I found on Instagram called @teds_zaza who lives in New York and fell in love with making pizza. Recently he posted a pastel de nata pizza and someone commented that he was "shitting on two different cultures" and should be banned from Instagram.

Ted has built enough credibility by taking his pizza craft seriously, by melding traditions thoughtfully, that for me, earned the creative freedom to experiment. Same principle. For all we know, that pastel de nata pizza might taste awful. That's completely fine. He has spent copious amounts of his precious time cultivating his knowledge in the space, developing his own dough mix, and honouring the scene he's a part of. Now, he's trying new things, and not all of it will land. We see this happen in nature constantly - evolution through experimentation. The things that work persist and develop further. The things that don't fade away. The respect is in doing the preparation, trying the thing, and learning from what happens.

If we consider grappling - in my mind, it's not Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu anymore; it's not Japanese judo; American wrestling; Russian sambo. It's just grappling. There are no owners of techniques, the modernisation of the sport has brought athletes from each cultural corner of the grappling world to one stage. The result of that is an amalgamation of the disciplines that used to be individual, into one thing. That evolution is now the standard; personal representation of that evolution exists, and is important, but failure to adhere to the standard results in stagnation. I feel the same way with MMA. It’s not really “mixed martial arts” anymore, it’s its own thing that’s evolved from that.

Whether we like it or not, we're in an era where culture blends. The question isn't if, but how. With respect and preparation is my personal preference.

What Worked, What Didn't

I will be honest about Mise En Place: we lost our way with the content.

The product stayed true - the three colorways representing the individual elements of the dessert, each able to stand alone or combine (the dark chocolate kit is my favourite thing I've ever designed). The development with Chef, the unboxing experience with the recipe book, Clara filming Chef in the kitchen - that all felt right.

But the content campaign? We found ourselves led by other ideas that we were developing from the wide scope in front of us, rather than sticking to the core of the collection. We ended up exploring food rituals, cooking content, adjacent themes that were interesting but weren't really about what inspired the collection to begin with.

What Mise En Place was actually about - what excited me when I started - was creative freedom. The freedom to cross cultures when you do it with integrity. The effort that earns you the right to innovate. It excited me that Chef spent over a decade dedicated to his craft, exploring the roots of any food culture he could get his hands on, just so he could innovate at his own will. He took Spanish and Italian traditions and created something that truly respects both while being entirely his own.

We didn't tell that story well enough.

Not everything has to be perfect. But we should be honest.

Practicing What We Preach

Balance itself is doing exactly what we're talking about. We're experimenting, trying things, seeing what works and what doesn't. When we get it wrong, we try to be honest about it and adjust.

It was always my intention to build the brand with my family and friends. Developing The Seasons felt like it was mostly me and my wife Imogen, with a great group of friends coming together to help out as consultants and doers when things needed doing. Mise En Place started to feel different. There's a team forming behind the scenes that lives the brand (Immy, Euan, Carl, Xanthippi) - sponsored athletes who are genuinely invested (Pia, Alex, Zain, Ollie), and talented people like Clara, Hasan, Herb, and Franco bringing their skills.

I hope that this is just the beginning of realising that intention.

What Stays

The churamisu exists. The three colorways exist. The recipe card in the box exists. People wearing it, connecting with it at whatever level - whether that's the full conceptual depth or just loving the aesthetic - that exists.

For those who saw what Chef was doing, who understood the bridge he was building between traditions, who appreciated the preparation that makes innovation possible: we appreciate you, unknowingly you act as fuel to the people who push scenes, cultures and traditions forward.

For those discovering this later: this is the archive. This is us putting in the work, learning as we go, trying to earn the freedom to create something that matters.

HP