Canada’s best-known football fan – prime minister Mark Carney – was recently in Ottawa to greet the sport’s most coveted prize ahead of the kick-off of the Fifa World Cup next week. Beaming as though he had won the tournament himself, Carney kissed the trophy and lifted it high into the air for the cameras. “It’s magic, eh?” asked Fifa’s president, Gianni Infantino. “That is magic,” Carney replied, all smiles. 
 
It is not unusual for elected leaders to hitch themselves to the big, global events that overlap their time in office. London’s then-mayor, Boris Johnson, infamously dangled from a zipwire above an agog crowd in the run up to the 2012 Summer Olympics. Twelve years later, French president Emmanuel Macron strained every sinew to ensure that Paris’s glorious Olympic Games were very much his gloire too. But Carney exuded the genuine joy of a fan, one for whom the fairytale of hoisting that storied trophy in the air had, by some miracle, come to pass.

South of the border, however, the public build-up to the World Cup has been defined by a more corporate dialogue, by a transactional president and a profit-hungry organising body. Indeed, the attorneys general of two host states – New York and New Jersey – are launching investigations into Fifa’s alleged manipulation of ticket prices for World Cup matches. Throw in the fact that international tourism to the US is down more broadly and it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the American Hotel & Lodging Association is reporting much reduced hotel bookings across the US’s 11 host cities than was previously forecasted. 
 
Despite all of that, the World Cup remains a significant soft-power star in its own right. The jubilant scenes in capital cities from Sarajevo to Willemstad, in Curaçao (whose sharp World Cup away kit has also become a surprise global bestseller for its manufacturer, Adidas), when their national teams qualified for this year’s tournament, demonstrates how coveted a currency the World Cup still is. And that’s where Canada, as co-host, comes in. 
 
Its own standing in the world’s imagination is higher than it has been for years, spurred, in part by its prime minister’s admirable ascent to high office in a turbulent time. Inward investment into Canada’s economy is up. As are the numbers of tourists, international and domestic, venturing to all corners of the country. 
 
Yes, Canada might have begun its World Cup co-hosting duties somewhat reticently; one by one, most of the six cities vying to stage games – Montreal, Edmonton, Ottawa and Regina in the western, prairie province of Saskatchewan, all withdrew, citing high costs and limited stadium capacity per Fifa’s guidelines. This left Toronto and Vancouver as Canada’s only formal World Cup venues, which will host 13 games – of the tournament’s 104 - between them. “To some degree, [Canada] has not optimised this opportunity,” says David Soberman, a professor of marketing at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management. “But at least we haven’t missed it completely. And when something is scarce, you tend to maximise the return from the events that you do have.”
 
There is still good reason for Canada to embrace the World Cup. And the timing – as international travel to the US lags and security concerns in Mexico persist – couldn’t be better. “Most of the world has a pretty idealised vision of Canada,” says Ryan Abrams, publisher and co-founder of Darby magazine, which launched in 2019 to report on Canada’s ascendant football culture in print. “Any time that we have the opportunity to host big sporting events, it’s a platform to show off how diverse the country is. The excitement here is definitely growing.”
 
In the spirit of a football manager pacing the sideline, devising strategies to secure an 89th-minute winner, here are some last-minute plays that Toronto and Vancouver should make to ensure that Canada gets a kick out of this World Cup. 

Tomos Lewis is Monocle’s Toronto correspondent. For more opinion, analysis and insight, subscribe to Monocle today.

Whether fashion is art is a timeworn debate but one that offers fertile ground for exploration (writes Lily Austin). In recent months, London’s Victoria and Albert Museum and New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art have both put on exhibitions entertaining the idea. Even the recently released The Devil Wears Prada 2 engages with the subject, as editor Miranda Priestly (played by Meryl Streep) battles to preserve fashion’s cultural integrity. 

But major institutions and films aside, perhaps no designer’s body of work offers a more resounding yes to the question “Is fashion art?” than that of couturier Iris van Herpen.

Constructed from flowing silk and carefully placed ribbing, the Dutch designer’s sculptural gowns have an ethereal quality inspired by the movement of water or a bird’s wings. Van Herpen is a pioneer of new technologies, including the use of 3D printing to create wearable garments, and she has collaborated with biophysicists to make a dress from bioluminescent algae, which emits light in response to the wearer’s movement. In 2011, Van Herpen joined the Fédération de la Haute Couture et de la Mode at just 27 years old.

Some of these works have now made their way out of the privacy of her atelier and into museums. Iris van Herpen: Sculpting the Senses first opened at Musée des Arts Décoratifs in 2023 and has been travelling the world ever since, with additional elements added for each leg. The show has now made it to the Brooklyn Museum in New York, where it will be on view until 6 December 2026. Here, Van Herpen speaks to Natalie Theodosi, Monocle’s fashion director, ahead of the showcase.

Here are three soft power stories from the continuation of France’s Olympic legacy building, Fifa’s shameless sycophancy and a word from man who coined the term.