English Version | Editor's Letter: Kiss me, March 2026

The kiss has traversed empires. It has been a blessing and a betrayal. It has sealed peace pacts and condemned destinies. There was one that delivered a man to death, another that awakened a sleeping princess, and countless others that set anonymous rooms ablaze without ever entering history. The kiss is democratic: it belongs to everyone and to each one of us.

In art, it has become eternity. Painters have tried to capture it as one tries to capture a sigh, two bodies leaning towards each other, the instant before the world disappears. In Gustav Klimt's The Kiss (1907-1908), love is not merely painted, it is consecrated. Two figures enveloped in a golden cloak that extinguishes the world. Firm lines on his body, curves and flowers on hers. Strength and surrender. The kiss happens precisely in this encounter of opposites, where both are transformed. There, the kiss is not impulse, it is a promise. An instant so intense that the world disappears and only light remains.

Agnieszka Wesołowska Szubert and Przemek Szubert
Aleksandra Modrzejewska-Mitan

In movies, it gained a soundtrack: falling rain, a city in the background, a surrender that never needs to be spoken. How many stories begin or end with a kiss? And how many lives changed precisely in that second when two lips touched and everything else lost importance?

In fashion, a kiss has always been a promise. The red that defies conventions. The shine that suggests excess. The mark left on a white collar. Perhaps the most sincere accessory someone can wear. Because a kiss leaves traces. On the skin, in memory, in the personal narrative we tell about who we were.

And then there are the kisses we didn't share. Those that hung in the air because of pride, fear, or bad timing. Those that distance stole. Those that war prevented. Those that maturity taught us to avoid. There are motherly kisses that heal falls, farewell kisses at train stations, kisses given behind closed doors as if love were still a crime. There's the first kiss, that sweet earthquake, and there's the last one, the one we don't know is the last... until it has been.

We live in an era of quick kisses. Kisses with filters. Kisses to post. But a true kiss still demands presence, that rarity. It asks for silence. It asks for surrender. It asks for the courage to be fully present in the moment. Perhaps that's why it moves us so much.

Emily Bennett
Ekin Can Bayrakdar

And in the end, when the lights go out, when the applause ceases, when the dress is put away and the makeup removed, what remains is not the glamour or the pose. It is the memory of that instant when someone held our face in both hands as if it were something precious and, without needing a speech, made us believe that we were.

Because some kisses are fleeting. And then there are kisses that pierce us... and change us forever.

Wedding Supplement
Élio Nogueira

Translated from the original in The Kiss Issue, published March 2026. For full stories and credits, see the print issue.