“Is anyone seriously still launching magazines?” “Why are you Ms. Digital Editor, of all people, doing this?”

“What is it with all the K’s? Couldn’t you afford a proofreader?”

The above four questions invariably follow when I bump into friends and tell them I am now the editor of a new media brand called Koktail, a quarterly print magazine and a multitude of digital things. Here’s what I think. How we consume content has without question evolved, but it has not necessarily gotten better. Sure, digital is the future. You can guarantee I believe that, I am a millennial after all. We can’t wait for print for news anymore. If that were the case, we would always be 24 hours ignorant. At the same time, the demand for shallow clicks, driven by profit alone, has also shrunken the supply of critical thinking and meaningful storytelling.

I believe we’re at a pivotal point where we can see the damage being done by reckless innovation. And that is where Koktail comes in. It’s a tall order, but we want to bring back good conversation and well-written stories. Occupying the luxury lifestyle space, we are also out to truly redefine it. Is luxury the most lavish and expensive thing you can find or is it that which is artful, authentic, honest and conscious in a world cluttered of quite the opposite?

To accomplish our goals, we reached out to the best in Thailand, including illustrator Ping Hatta for the cover art—I fell in love with Ping’s broad-shouldered women and chunky spiritual cats a while back and was waiting for the chance to collaborate. For storytellers, we also recruited those most qualified for the job. They include but aren’t limited to a veteran wildlife photographer, a surfer, two respected food journalists, a jazz enthusiast and a real-life old man who sits at the bar, complaining to himself when things are not as good as they used to be. And he has a point when it comes to magazines. 

In addition to that, we have a diverse bag of 10 Koktail brand ambassadors who collectively represent what we believe to be the ingredients to a great life—style, cuisine, the arts, travel, advocacy and everything else—and who, in turn, believe in what we’re doing. We tell you more about them in the following pages in the hope they can inspire you.