August Editor's Letter: The Summer of Reinvention
Seasons change, so do cities, and so do we.
Had someone told me half a year ago that today I would be writing August’s Editor’s Letter for my own publication, The Wonder Mag, I would have thought they were kidding.
Instead, today, having just returned to Istanbul from my summer trip to Rome, there is nothing more natural to me than writing and interviewing again.
For years, I was convinced that my work as a journalist was over, and that I had to accept the fact that I had turned myself into a full-time language teacher who had moved cities in search of escape and relief from the environment that had shaped him.
None of this turned out to be true.
All it took for the exhausted teacher to return to his actual identity was therapy that had been long overdue, personal space in which he could breathe and think without the constant noise of the outside world, a library that would become his headquarters, and the confidence to recognise that now he carried far more life experience than he had imagined.
Today, I am writing this letter not as the exhausted teacher I was at the beginning of the year, nor as the editor I hope one day to become, but as living proof that change is possible.
Proof that you can take a chapter of your life you thought had been closed, turn it around, and realise that you can redefine its ending, and then create a new beginning.
That is where August begins for The Wonder Mag.
Sure, there is a backlog from July and I was not pleased to “kill” beautiful features as I was putting August into shape, but there are moments in life when we shall learn not to regret everything that had not been done, but absorb and understand what the current situation is revealing.
Sometimes, it can reveal the strange recognition that a home can remain unchanged while the person entering it has shifted.
At other times, it reveals that the old life has stopped fitting, while the new one is not yet built.
So you keep building.
We enjoy picturing reinvention as something glamorous — glorious comebacks, transformations that prove we have changed, while having somehow preserved our core identity, but in reality, reinvention is often messy and it requires time.
This is where I find myself in August — the old life has begun to lose its grip, but the new one is still being defined.
Two weeks ago, I travelled to Rome for the first time and discovered myself walking through its streets, capturing in my mind every building, landmark, and small corner, and I felt I was breathing with ease while envisioning future possibilities.
I returned to Sofia for a week, where some old habits and family dynamics reminded me that nostalgia is real, but reinvention is never a clean escape from everything that came before.
And now I am back in Istanbul — the city where I learned independence and rebuilt my relationship with writing and publishing.
So this month, The Wonder Mag is looking at reinvention not as one of those dreamy before-and-after stories, but as a process that teaches us through its own uncertainties, strategies, and tiny bumps across the road.
August will begin by completing a conversation that started in July.
In “MODELIZERS,” we will return to the second episode of Sex and the City and examine what happens when attraction becomes part of social identity and the person beside us begins to function as proof of status or personal worth. The feature brings together ideas that emerged during my recent conversations with Bulgarian model, Ivelina Choeva, and Bulgarian fashion designer, Stoyan Dimitrov, binding their points of view and asking what we borrow from the people we crave — and what image we attempt to create for ourselves through them.
We will revisit the work and legacy of WHITNEY HOUSTON around her heavenly birthday, as I introduce you to an interview from my archives, looking again at her extraordinary achievements and at why certain artists never stay in the past, but continue to inspire.
On MADONNA’S BIRTHDAY, we will look at the woman who continues to redefine pop music and has turned reinvention into a work of art.
This issue will also include a major international interview with songwriter and artist MAURICE FONSON, one of the writers of “School” on Madonna’s new album Confessions II. We spoke about his extraordinary career, songwriting, ambition, his forthcoming EP “Fun” set to be released on August 28, and the person behind the professional credits.
Later in the month, EVAN HOLOVATSKYI, an international coach specialising in voice design, public speaking, and personal image, will speak about one of the most intimate forms of reinvention - changing the way the world hears us. Our voices reveal age, confidence—or the lack of it—and authority before we have finished the sentence. Is it possible for a person to reinvent their voice without pretending to be someone else? And can learning to sound more powerful change the way we perceive ourselves?
There will also be a new essay about ARIANA GRANDE, public scrutiny and the strange entitlement audiences feel towards women’s bodies, health and visibility. Here, the question is no longer simply how a famous woman reinvents herself, but whether disappearing from view may become the most radical reinvention on the table.
And finally, the month will conclude with an essay about Amy Odell’s beautifully written biography of ANNA WINTOUR, which accompanied me through my own period of rebuilding and reclaiming.
All of these stories ask different versions of the same question:
What happens when the identity that brought us here can no longer carry us forward?
We can never know what tomorrow will bring, but maybe, just maybe, reinvention does not require complete certainty.
Perhaps it requires us to enter the uncomfortable space between what has ended and what has not begun yet — and to start creating from there.
Welcome to The Summer of Reinvention!
Ivan Ssavsski
Founder and Editor-in-Chief
The Wonder Mag