I was raised, Paul Lowe Einlyng, in Oslo, Norway by two little old ladies, my great aunt, Auntie Gunnvor and my grandmother, who I lovingly referred to as Mormor. Ever since I was small, I’ve been obsessed with cooking, crafting and decorating. It’s in my blood. Both my grandmother and great aunt were excellent cooks and crafters with impeccable taste. But they were not perfectionists. Their cakes tended to be a little lopsided and their craft projects definitely weren’t up to Martha’s standards.
But they always had such fun! I’ve adopted my grandmother’s motto, “fullkommenhet er kjedelig...” which means “perfection is boring,” and I have incorporated it and her sheer joy of creating into everything I do.
In October of 2007, I was living in New York City as “Paul,” a successful craft and food stylist. I unwittingly transformed myself into Cafe 5.0 when I chose the name for a little blog that I started to highlight some work I was producing for my clients. In order to carve out my own little niche on the web, I expanded my postings to include brand new content featuring what I loved: food and crafts filtered through the lens of my seasoned stylist’s eye. I did not intend the blog to garner 200,000 hits a month or give rise to an online magazine, which has become something of a phenomenon.
Here’s how that happened: By 2009, my friends and colleagues in the magazine industry were lauding my work and asking if they could contribute to the blog. I decided that I should go out on a limb and create my own magazine that would leverage not only my years of experience, but also showcase the work of my incredibly talented posse of food-geek, photography-obsessed, craft-genius friends! I wanted Cafe 5.0 magazine to be an anticipated quarterly that readers could use to sweeten their everyday life. I strive to put out a magazine that is as creative and visually stunning as any other food and craft magazine out there but without being weighed-down with impossible recipes and projects developed for expert chefs and crafters.
Full of easy-yet-elegant recipes, stylish crafts, entertaining ideas, shopping tips, recurring features and more, Cafe 5.0 magazine is the source people all over the world turn to for inspiration. We are on the radar of every stylist from food to props to crafts. Magazine editors from the most popular shelter and food magazines use tear- sheets from Cafe 5.0 for their shoots. I regularly, and humbly, notice references to my work in popular mass-market magazines. When I’m on a shoot with a client, I always seem to have several people pull me aside to tell me how much they love my Cafe 5.0 magazine for its creativity, beautiful photography and unexpected ideas.
In Spring 2012, the first print edition of the magazine was launched in Anthropologie stores nationwide. Now I’m working on distribution in Anthropologie UK and specialty stock lists worldwide. Like the magazine’s tagline, I am continually “chasing the sweet things in life.”
