An airplane is the perfect, and perhaps the only, place to actually read Monocle, the globe-trotting lifestyle magazine founded in 2007 by Tyler Brûlé, a Canadian editor and erstwhile war correspondent. Its logo, an “M” with a twisted loop inscribed in a circle, lurks at airport terminal bookstores all over the world, the magazine’s glossy black cover—which the late David Carr likened to “a slab of printed dark Belgian chocolate”—conveying a placeless, easily translated sort of luxury. Inside, one encounters articles on Canadian soft power, Latin American soap operas, and Finnish domestic architecture: the casual reading of an armchair diplomat.

Over the years, Monocle has become as much a status symbol as reading material. Its editor is one of the world’s foremost lifestyle auteurs, a tastemaker of late capitalism and “a Martha Stewart for the global elite,” per New York magazine. Brûlé has promoted his personal version of the good life via high-profile columns in T magazine and, more recently, the Financial Times, where he reflects on travel etiquette and philosophizes about “relaxation” for the one percent. Monocle’s tote bags, which come with the $130 annual ten-issue subscription price, mark an itinerant tribe of 80,000 who may identify more with the magazine than with the country on their passports.

As older titles like GQ, Vanity Fair, and The Economist lose their grip on millennials, the Monocle Man—spot him by his sharp suit that ends at bare ankles, glasses with prominent frames, and wide, unbuttoned collar, just like Brûlé himself—is alive and well. In 2014, Nikkei, the Japanese media conglomerate, bought a minority share in Monocle at a purported valuation of $115 million. Although the company is private and doesn’t release metrics, it has only grown since then, launching new publications and opening several retail spaces. The editors celebrated their 101st issue this March with an understated redesign. You can’t overhaul a classic, so not much has changed: The header logo is a little bigger and the layouts less cluttered. It’s more of a victory lap than a pivot.

While Monocle projects confidence in the march of globalization, it barely hints at the growing threats to the world of open borders and free-flowing capital it depicts. The magazine’s globalist chic contrasts sharply with the nationalist movements in the United States and Europe seeking to limit immigration, including visa programs for the skilled workers in tech and finance who might read Monocle. Yet the publication shares with the right a faith in free-market economics; Brûlé himself is less a citizen of the world than a shopper in its gigantic, globalized mall. His magazine, which built its brand by identifying the world’s hippest (and most profitable) trends, feels increasingly out of touch.

Jayson Tyler Brûlé’s long, careful path to world domination began in rural Winnipeg, where he was born in 1968 to a Canadian football player father and an artist mother. His parents, rumor has it, did not include accents over their last name. In interviews, Brûlé likes to say that his international sensibility formed during his childhood, inspired perhaps by his mother, an Estonian immigrant. News and decorating magazines were plentiful in the homes the family passed through in Ottawa, Montreal, and Toronto, as was Danish furniture. Aspiration came early. When he was 14, Brûlé cleaned yachts for a summer job and bought a Rolex with the proceeds.