Field note · The desk
The invitation
The editor’s letter from the first issue. Why the journal is called Invite Only, and what it refuses to become.
By Val Okolu · 2 February 2018 · 5 min · Issue No. 1
We called it Invite Only because the experiences were the invitation. Not a club. Not a rope line. Not a way of telling a reader they had failed to be important. A world worth being invited into is a world someone has taken the trouble to explain: why this hotel, why this table, why this night and not the louder one beside it.
The sections were decided before the first feature. The Stay, for rooms and the people who run them. The Table, for meals with a standard. The Moment, for gatherings - a carnival, a new year, a race week, a fashion season - that justify a flight. The Journey, for the shape of a trip. Field Notes, for the parts a polished feature usually sands off.
We intended to publish when there was a story, not when a calendar demanded one. Ten years on, that remains the rule. Issues have been late. One issue, in 2020, was about not going. We kept the name anyway. An invitation is also the right to decline.
An invitation is also the right to decline.
This letter stood at the front of Issue No. 1, February 2018. We keep it on the site because new readers still ask whether the title is a door policy. It is a standard.
Val Okolu · Field Notes · Issue No. 1 · Invite Only