What matters here

There are certain times of year when I appreciate living here more than usual. September is one of them.

After a summer that has been wonderfully busy, very hot and full of people, the Saanenland begins to settle into a different rhythm. The mountains start changing colour, the mornings become cooler, and suddenly there is time again for an unhurried conversation when you bump into someone in the village.

It is a good moment to look beyond everything Gstaad is famous for and consider what actually makes a place work. That thought runs through much of this issue.

Our profile with Homayra Sellier introduces a woman many in Gstaad already know. Behind the familiar face are decades of work with Innocence in Danger, protecting children and young people and speaking about subjects that are anything but easy. It is an interview about conviction, responsibility and what one person decides is worth fighting for.

Then, in our final Under the Hard Hat of the summer, we turn to something entirely different: housing. Ebnitmatte may not have the glamour of a new hotel or luxury chalet, but its importance to this community's future is hard to overstate. If the people who teach our children, run our businesses, work in our hotels and restaurants and keep this valley functioning cannot afford to live here, we have a problem.

These are very different stories, yet to me they belong together. GstaadLife has never been about telling you that Gstaad is beautiful. You already know that.

Our job is to look a little closer. At the people who shape this place. At the decisions being made. At the ideas that deserve attention and occasionally the questions that need asking.

For more than two decades, that has been the privilege of this magazine: to chronicle a community that is constantly evolving while remaining unmistakably itself.

And perhaps September, when the valley takes a little breath after summer, is the perfect time to appreciate all of it. Not only what makes Gstaad extraordinary, but what makes it work.

Jeanette Wichmann
Editor-in-Chief