Great - For men of taste

BEING PATTI SMITH IS JOAN OF ART LIVING WHAT IF GATSBY HAD LIVED? STYLE & ETIQUETTE SAVILE ROW FIELDS FOREVER ACTION OLYMPIAN WAR HORSE

ISSUE 1, SUMMER 2012 £4 / €5 FOR MEN OF TASTE WWW.GREATMAG.CO.UK

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GREAT WELCOME AMUSE-BOUCHE

P PROLOGUE 5 Diary 6

III CHAPTER III: STYLE & ETIQUETTE 35 Cross My Legs, Swear To Die / Panache: Tony’s ‘tache 36 Dad, Take the iPad / Hunts-man 37 The Apprentice 38 Great Pocketbook: Hardy Amies’ Just so Far 39 Rowing on 41

I CHAPTER I: BEING 9 Patti Smith: Joan of Art 10 Puttin’ on the Ritz 12 Flower Power 14

IV

II

CHAPTER IV: ACTION 49 War Horse 50 Fat Chance 52 Silver Plate 53 Gym Gear 54

CHAPTER II: LIVING 17 On the Mantelpiece 18 What If Gatsby Had Lived?

22 Hello, Neighbour 30 Catch-22 32

E EPILOGUE 56

GREAT HQ

GREAT PROLOGUE HERE WE GO AGAIN, I CAN ALMOST HEAR YOU SAY. WHO NEEDS ANOTHER LIFESTYLE MAGAZINE? AFTER TALKING TO SEVERAL OF YOU – RARELY UNACCOMPANIED

BY A STIFF DRINK – THE ANSWER IS QUITE SIMPLE: YOU DO. WHAT FOLLOWS IS WHAT YOU ASKED FOR, NOT WHAT WE THOUGHT WE HAD TO GIVE. IF THIS WERE THE 60s, WE WOULD HAVE TAKEN TO THE STREETS, RUNNING AROUND WITH SHIRTS TIED ROUND OUR WAISTS WHILE DISTRIBUTING MANIFESTOS. AS IT IS, TIMES HAVE CHANGED – AND THAT MIGHT NOT BE THE PLEASANTEST OF SIGHTS. SO WE ARE LAUNCHING A QUARTERLY JOURNAL FOR GROWNUP MEN OF TASTE INSTEAD.

GREAT FOR MEN OF TASTE ISSUE 1, SUMMER 2012 WWW.GREATMAG.CO.UK INFO@GREATMAG.CO.UK THINK OF GREAT AS ONE OF THE GUYS, WHETHER HE’S THERE WHEN YOU GOLF, READ, POWER PLATE OR JET FROM ONE COUNTRY TO THE NEXT. HE’S SMART, ADVENTUROUS, ACTIVE, JUDGMENTAL AND UNASHAMEDLY WITTY. JUST LIKE YOU. IF NOTHING ELSE, FOLD IT IN YOUR BACK POCKET AND WEAR IT WITH PRIDE. IT WILL SHOW THE WORLD MATURITY DOESN’T NECESSARILY REVOLVE AROUND HIP REPLACEMENTS AND LIFE INSURANCE. NOW IS THE BEST TIME TO BE ALIVE. ANZEJ DEZAN, EDITOR

P

GREAT EDITOR: ANZEJ DEZAN GREAT CONTRIBUTORS: NILS CLAUSS, ANZEJ DEZAN, KEV GAHAN, KILEY HONG, CIRIL JAZBEC, SARAH JOYNT, ADRIANA KRAWCEWICZ, ALICE McCAFFREY, ZARJA MENART, LIBBY PAGE, ZORAN PUNGERCAR, KARI INDERGÅRD SUNDLI, MATJAZ TANCIC, DANAJA VEGELJ, ALJANA ZDOVC GREAT COPY EDITOR: CATHERINE HEWETT GREAT DESIGN: ANZEJ DEZAN GREAT COVER: ZORAN PUNGERCAR GREAT IS PUBLISHED BY GREAT HOUSE LIMITED, 144 LAUDERDALE MANSIONS, LONDON W9 1NG. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. REPRODUCTION IN WHOLE OR PART WITHOUT WRITTEN PERMISSION IS STRICTLY PROHIBITED. ALL PRICES CORRECT AT THE TIME OF GOING TO PRESS BUT ARE SUBJECT TO CHANGE. YOU’VE TAKEN THE TIME TO READ THROUGH ALL THIS? THAT’S DEDICATION.

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DIARY JULY 2012

THIS IS A GREAT MAN’S FICTIONAL JOURNAL. IT MIGHT NOT BE A LEATHER-BOUND SMYTHSON, BUT IT GETS THE JOB DONE. WHETHER YOU’RE IN A PARISIAN OR CROATIAN STATE OF MIND, WE HAVE YOU COVERED

1 SUN

2 MON

3 TUE

4 WED

• MEETING THE GRANDCHILDREN AT HEATHROW. YES, PETER, NEW YORK IS JUST AS MAGICAL AS IN THE WOODY ALLEN MOVIES. / MANHATTAN (DVD), AMAZON.CO.UK, £4.95

• WHEN IN DOUBT, CHOOSE MOLECULAR GASTRONOMY. WYLIE DUFRESNE’S PLACE WD~50 ON CLINTON STREET HITS THE SPOT. / WD~50, 50 CLINTON STREET, 212.477.2900, WWW.WD-50.COM

• MOMA IS CLOSED ON TUESDAYS. RESCHEDULE.

• RELIVE THE 60s WITHOUT HAVING TO GO BACK. BAG YOURSELF A DIANA CAMERA IN TRUE BLUE AND SOME OLD-SCHOOL ILFORD FILM. / LOMOTOGRAPHY GALLERY STORE, 106 EAST 23RD STREET, 212.260.0240, £89

6 FRI

7 SAT

8 SUN

9 MON

10 TUE

• FED UP WITH THIS CELEBRATORY NONSENSE. LONG LIVE THE MONARCHY AND ALL THAT. ESCAPING TO COPENHAGEN.

• PATTI SMITH PERFORMING TONIGHT IN BONN? DAMN, MISSED IT.

• TRICKED INTO A 35-MINUTE TRAIN RIDE THROUGH THE DANISH COUNTRYSIDE. MIND YOU, THE MUSEUM IS STUNNING. / LOUISIANA MUSEUM OF MODERN ART, HUMLEBÆK, +45 4919 0719, WWW.LOUISIANA.DK

• JETLAGGED. WHEN IN PAIN, PUT YOUR BEST SUIT ON. • TOURISTS EVERYWHERE. THE SUIT BARELY MAKES IT.

• SOMEHOW MANAGED TO END UP IN COPENHAGEN’S MEATPACKING DISTRICT. FEELS LIKE SHOREDITCH. GET ME OUT!

11 WED

12 THU

13 FRI

14 SAT

15 SUN

• BORGEN’S SECOND SEASON RERUN ON DANISH PAY PER VIEW, COURTESY OF DR1. CAN’T UNDERSTAND A WORD. WHAT’S UP WITH ALL THE “HEJ-HEJ”-ING? / BORGEN SEASON 1 (DVD), AMAZON.CO.UK, £26.49

• HAVE JUST DECIDED: RETURNING HOME VIA BRUGES AND PARIS. • READING DAG SOLSTAD’S PROFESSOR ANDERSEN’S NIGHT ON THE EUROSTAR. / PROFESSOR ANDERSEN’S NIGHT (HARDCOVER), AMAZON.CO.UK, £10.39

• FRIDAY THE THIRTEENTH. STAYING PUT.

• CAFE CHARLOT AS BUSY AS EVER. NEVER MIND, WORTH THE WAIT FOR THAT MOST EXCELLENT STEAK TARTARE. / CAFE CHARLOT, 38 RUE DE BRETAGNE, 01 44 54 03 30, WWW.CAFECHARLOTPARIS. COM

• LAST CHANCE TO SEE THE BOB DYLAN EXHIBITION. MR. TAMBOURINE MAN SPRINGS TO MIND. / LA CITÉ DE LA MUSIQUE, 221 AVENUE JEAN JAURÈS, 01 44 84 44 84, WWW. CITEDELAMUSIQUE.FR

16 MON

17 TUE

18 WED

19 THU

20 FRI

• BOUND TO RAIN.

• SAW THIS PICTURE OF A GUY WEARING RED SOCKS WITH CHOCOLATECOLOURED BROGUES. SHOULD I?

• NORTON & SONS TO HAVE A CHAT WITH MY TAILOR. GETTING A LIGHT, CREAMY LINEN SUIT. (SNEAKING IN THE RED SOCKS LATER.) / NORTON & SONS, 16 SAVILE ROW, 020 7437 0829, WWW. NORTONANDSONS.CO.UK

21 SAT

22 SUN

23 MON

• YOU’VE BEEN AVOIDING HER FOR FAR TOO LONG. GIVE YOUR SISTER A CALL.

24 TUE

• MADONNA IS TAKING OVER HYDE PARK. MIGHT JUST GRAB SUSHI FROM NOVIKOV INSTEAD. / NOVIKOV, 50A BERKELEY STREET, 0207 399 4330, WWW. NOVIKOVRESTAURANT. CO.UK

26 THU

31 TUE

25 WED • SCIENCE, SPORT AND DESIGN MEET AT THE “OLYMPIC DESIGN TO WIN” EXHIBITION AT THE DESIGN MUSEUM, OPENING TODAY. / DESIGN MUSEUM, 28 SHAD THAMES, 020 7940 8790, DESIGNMUSEUM.ORG

27 FRI

• WATCHING THE BILL CUNNINGHAM NEW YORK DOCUMENTARY ON DVD. MAKES ME WANT TO PICK UP THE NY TIMES AGAIN. / BILL CUNNINGHAM NEW YORK (DVD), AMAZON. CO.UK, £9.99

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5 THU

1 WED

28 SAT

29 SUN

30 MON

• CROATIAN ACTOR RADE SERBEDZIJA RUNS A SUMMER THEATRE ON (YES, ON) THE BRIJUNI ISLANDS. POP IN TO SEE HIM AS KING LEAR. / KAZALISTE ULYSSES, BRIJUNI, 091 796 7197, WWW.ULYSSES.HR

• OLD SONGS BLASTING FROM THE RADIO. BOUGHT AN OLIVER DRAGOJEVIC COMPILATION ON iTUNES. HELL - WHY NOT? / DVI, TRI RICI (ALBUM), iTUNES STORE, £7.99

• WHEN IN DALMATIA, DO AS THE DALMATIANS DO: GET A LARGE ROLL OF “PASKI CHEESE” TO TAKE HOME WITH YOU. TASTY.

2 THU

3 FRI

4 SAT

CHAPTER I BEING

NICKY HASLAM, INTERIOR DESIGNER, ON ALL KINDS OF CLUBBING WORDS BY ANZEJ DEZAN PHOTOGRAPH BY CIRIL JAZBEC He might have been educated at Eton, but he was brought up in the glitzy London clubs of the 60s. Falling out of the Groucho and sipping drinks at Annabel’s have left their mark. It was him and David Bailey who, according to the photographer, ignited the swinging 60s. You can’t escape that kind of legacy. Four decades on, here he is, jeans tucked into his boots, a black leather jacket resting on his shoulders, until he decides on a last minute costume change. “Much more appropriate,” he says after climbing into a suit.

Are you visualising him in a crowded Studio 54, circa 1978, dancing the night away to the beat of the disco? Well, don’t. “I went twice. I hated all those queens running around in satin shorts, pushing drugs. It was the most awful, sleaziest place ever. I’m probably the only person who thinks that.”

Although the word “socialite” gets attached to his name more often than not, he enjoys the occasional members’ club, but is worried about their criteria for prospective members: “The whole point of members’ clubs was to keep people out. Now they just pay to get in.”

He is a member of a true British “clubbing” institution, though. The Travellers Club is one of those old-fashioned gentlemen’s clubs lining Pall Mall, where politicians and other prominent men have been gathering for decades to discuss world domination.

Haslam only visits three or four times a year – “a shame, really” – to explore the library and converse with other members: “It’s one of those places where only men are allowed, the sofas are falling to bits, curtains are badly made and the food is pretty terrible … but it’s got a huge charm and you meet great literary minds there.”

Its decor agrees with him. He especially appreciates the lowered handrail on the staircase, which had to be built for the heightchallenged Prince Talleyrand so he could get up the stairs. El Morocco in New York still tops his list of ravishing club interior designs.

Back in the day, he says, it was enough for the club itself to be beautiful: “Nowadays, clubs have to have people in them, don’t they?

People have become the decor.” Not people like Nicky Haslam, surely.

I

9

EL E PE ER H

IN “GAY” MARAIS, DANAJA VEGELJ STUMBLES INTO LEGENDARY PERFORMER PATTI SMITH – SANS HORSES. DAYS LATER, SHE IS PINCHING HERSELF WHILE ASSUMING HER RINGSIDE SEAT. HOLD ON TO YOUR MARGIELAS, LADIES AND GENTS, IT’S GOING TO BE A ROCKY RIDE PEEL-AWAY POSTER ILLUSTRATION BY BLAZ PORENTA

THE GIRL PATTI SMITH: JOAN OF ART

“My sins are my own. They belong to me, me,” she said and paused briefly to allow the resonating words their rightful merit.

You don’t endure silent moments like that anymore, especially not on stage of the Olympia in Paris. Yet on the Tuesday in question, everyone was waiting for relief. Not the kind that would see dry spells come to an end with a heavy shower, not even the sort ensuing from chanting holy words or getting involved in thrilling philosophical discussions. We were waiting for nirvana that can only be brought on by rock’n’roll.

untouchable. From there, immortality was just a mere footstep away. “It’s an artist’s duty to strike the right balance between mysticism and physical reality, nothing else,” she comments, shrugging her shoulders. “But people were there and Lenny and I believed we had something to offer.” They listened. In that summer of 1974, somewhere between the Chelsea Hotel and East Village, a band was set up that would later change the course of rock’n’roll.

The night went on in a very Van Morrison way: “Jesus died for somebody’s sins but not mine.” She was standing there, in her crisp white shirt that has permanently altered our perception of womanhood. A woman of 65, rebel, reincarnated Rimbaud, the sinless power-force because she doesn’t acknowledge it.

“Mother, worker, poet, in that exact order,” said Smith, before Lenny Kaye slid a pick against the strings of his guitar. Gloria followed and there was no turning back.

END OF PUBERTY

Patti Smith doesn’t discuss her private life. Not even after three bottles of wine we shared that evening. In our e-mail correspondence over the last couple of months, she talked about poetry, contemporary New York, which is far from the New York she once knew in the early 70s, of human values with no relevance or real sense. She discussed immortal poetry, Jean Genet, Joan Baez, protest songs and democracy, Robert Mapplethorpe, James Joyce and Allen Ginsberg. No promises, nothing but the truth – sharp and critical, wavered here and there only by soft lyrical metaphors.

STRING BREAKER, SPATTER AND CURSER When I followed up on our first meeting with a phone call to New York, I got a: “It’s fine, just don’t expect me to pour my soul out to you,” instead of a crackly hello. Here comes that moment of silence again. “That’s not what you were expecting, is it?” Deep sigh of relief. One hour in her company was enough to realise not to expect anything from a woman who breaks strings, spits and curses on stage. Her presence speaks of someone who doesn’t believe in God but isn’t a nihilist. The courage of someone who is anti-establishment but isn’t an anarchist, the incredulous perseverance of a woman who never wore short skirts but managed to maintain a gentler disposition than any pop star who ever stood on stage of L’Olympia.

“That’s what it’s all about. Nothing special, nothing you should work on, damn it. It just sort of happened.” Like that time when on the anniversary of Rimbaud’s death, she and her producer guitarist Lenny Kaye were playing Annie Had a Baby at the Diplomat Hotel’s Le Jardin rooftop and Patti spotted Steve Paul and Susan Sontag in the corner of her eye. A coincidence.

A seminal moment in time when it dawned on two kids from New Jersey that music has the power to change and touch the

When members of the Patti Smith Group launched their debut album Horses with Arista Records in 1975, a new genre was born. “Poetic rock” was a gentle manifestation of angst, rage, passion, pain, revolt. An incidental artistic expression was as honest as folk music, pioneered by Bob Dylan and Joan Baez and could match the British punk inventors Sex Pistols in terms of energy and rhythm.

Radio Ethiopia (1976) and Easter (1978) followed. The latter included Because the Night, co-written by Bruce Springsteen, which to this day, with its whiff of pop, remains Smith’s most recognised track. Members of the Patti Smith Group have created 10 albums in their 40 years of working together. The eleventh, eight years in the making, has just been released. It is an emotional product of eight years worth of thinking, concocting, living.

The most refined, elevated and exact music product of their endeavours is clear on what it is trying to put across and who it targets. Professional, because it took so long to happen.

Thought through, because it was created by post-pubescent artists: “When I listen to Horses, I can sense youthful naivety.

There’s none of that left. I’m 65-years-old, being honest is part of my artistic responsibility. I have always been an aware person, all the childish silliness aside.” It’s hard to believe that Patti ever was a child, or – even worse – that she did stupid things, although her biographical novel Just Kids, dedicated to Robert Mapplethorpe, openly deals with the time when she moved to New York and had to be very resourceful in order to survive.

“You know – I haven’t fucked much with the past, but I’ve fucked plenty with the future,” she responds with an intro line from what is probably the deepest song she ever wrote.

Babelogue is a minute and 25 seconds long catharsis, an outpouring emotive stream of someone who realises their value in the creative industry, his or her human limitations, death and provenance.

If you’re aware of the fact that it was dedicated to her friend and literary master Allen Ginsberg, you get that it is also about going against militarism, materialism and sexual repression: “I woke up one morning knowing how two-faced, immoral, idiotic and stupid the American political strategy is at the moment. I don’t believe in occupation and shattering of cultures because of your own ideology. I’m not a pacifist, but I will never believe in war.”

MUSICIAN? NOT REALLY Activism – linked to literature, naturally – has been part of the creative process behind the group’s eleventh studio album. It was heavily absorbed with the in-depth exploration of Russian masters, beginning with Bulgakov. “I have recently started thinking about the environment, everything around us, about loss, resurrection, the fluidity of combining several art fields.

Everything that can occur from past experience and present knowledge. It’s nice to see how far you’ve come, but the only important thing is where you’re headed,” she says when probed about what to expect.

It is dedicated to those who have inspired her. “There were so many,” she says, falling half silent, “there are so many who are still around, who mould me, some with their literature, art, others by just being there. They form the ‘real me.’” Speaking of which: who is Patti Smith? Mother to Jackson and Jesse first. Then a worker. A poet. A bit of a painter, photographer and visual artist, why not. And musician, I wonder? “Not really.” Snappy and to the point.

SEVEN HOURS UNDER JOAN OF ARC She never turned to rock’n’roll in its material sense. To her, rock’n’roll was always a political manifesto, a matter of ideology and being. In the last four decades, every single performance was about communicating with the audience: “A way of conversing with like-minded people about my truths, maybe even objective truths. I feel like the economic corruption, the environment, politics and living is what I need to talk about. Rock’n’roll is one of the few good things that America has done for global culture.”

You can’t corner Patti Smith into an institutional life. She once spent seven hours sitting in front of the French Senate’s statue of Joan of Arc in the Jardin du Luxembourg. The martyr has inspired many before her and made her write Kimberly, the leading song from Horses – a hymn to anxiety, pain, truth and relief, which, next to Gloria, became a classic. Similar to People Have the Power (which Patti co-wrote in 1994 with her late husband Fred “Sonic” Smith), the last song members of the Patti Smith Group rocked out on their tour in France. It expressed a deep belief in a better future, a bright tomorrow.

When she walked backstage after her concert in Paris, claiming “you people fucking wore me out!”, she was greeted by about thirty of her closest friends. She took off her worn-out motorbike boots (a present from the Belgian conceptual fashion designer Ann Demeulemeester) and closed the night by saying: “I’m going to turn these words into gold.”

You already have, Patti dear. You already have.

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PREVIEW APRIL FOOL FROM PATTI SMITH’S UPCOMING ALBUM BANGA ...

11

THE ART OF BARTENDING IS A MIX OF DEDUCTION, COGNAC AND A SATISFIED KATE MOSS, ACCORDING TO COLIN FIELD, THE HEAD BARMAN AT THE RITZ IN PARIS. ANZEJ DEZAN MEETS THE MASTER FOR AN AFTERNOON COCKTAIL PHOTOGRAPHS BY MATJAZ TANCIC

PUTTIN’ ON THE RITZ It’s 5pm. Everything has suddenly gone awfully quiet inside the Ritz in Paris. Most of the muffled noises are coming from outside, where the spacious Place Vendôme is bathing in warm afternoon light. Guests are out of their suites by now, their over-filled Louis Vuitton bags jerking from one side to another as they prance down broad Parisian boulevards.

This is when the changing of the guard takes place. It’s not as ceremonious as you might expect. Only wafer-thin French women can be seen gliding up and down the lobby, making sure everything is in place before the evening big guns – head chefs and barmen – arrive for their shifts.

Inside the notorious Hemingway Bar, one of the assistants is nervously rearranging diamond-shaped cocktail glasses in a straight line. She is trying to disentangle a bushel of mint leaves, slicing apples, lemons and limes as she goes along. You can tell her boss is not the easiest to please. A hand-written note is resting on top of a nearby wooden table. “J’arrive. – Colin.”

That’s Colin Field, the 50-year-old Rugby-born head barman at the Ritz to you and I, and Colin, just Colin, to everyone who frequents his bar. Within seconds of appearing fashionably late,

COLIN FIELD’S SERENDIPITY

IN A TUMBLER, 2/10 CALVADOS PAYS D’AUGE LE COMPTE 1 SPRIG OF FRESH MINT 1 TEA SPOON OF SUGAR 3/10 CLARIFIED APPLE JUICE 5/10 RITZ CHAMPAGNE his presence alone causes the girl to smash one of the glasses against the floor. The ensuing sound is loud and disastrous, the kind impossible to ignore. Rather than having a go at her, the master responds with a swift: “Oh, she’s having a smashing time.”

It’s difficult not to when you’re in his bar. “You may or may not have noticed, but there’s no music in here,” he starts, looking around in silence as if waiting for a single greatest hits compilation to defy him, “and people never mind.” Coming here is a test of personality. “I’m always encouraging them to mingle, however I’m only as good as the crowd. I can’t make roast beef with chicken,” he says, only introducing people he knows are bound to hit if off.

A journalist from Le Figaro will probably have nothing to talk about with a peer from Marianne magazine. “However, if I have a brilliant book writer here and another there, I am going to bring them together,” he says. It’s about trust. People put their faith in him to recognise the mood they’re in and serve a chilled cocktail accordingly.

“The other day,” he says, in a mock Etonian drawl, “an actor was here and asked the bartender: ‘Where’s Colin?’ He told him I wasn’t there because I was working for someone. And he said: ‘But I came here for Colin! I’m here because I want Colin.’ It certainly boosts your morale.” That there is a cult following is no secret among prominent Parisians, especially during fashion week.

Though it isn’t technically a “club”, it certainly operates like one.

12

Some years ago, Field started giving out membership cards to his regulars. They were a bit of a joke and only had the words: “this gives you the right to nothing and cannot be used for anything” written on them. A card holder once ordered a suit from Hugo Boss and asked for trouser alterations within three hours of the order. They said no, that’s impossible, you’ll have to wait until tomorrow. When he opened his wallet to pay for the suit, the store manager noticed his Hemingway Bar club card sticking out of one of the pockets. He merely leaned forward and said: “Six o’clock today sounds fine, sir.” The man immediately got Field on the phone, puzzled and surprised. Needless to say, so was he.

“I was watching the tables and all of a sudden he was there.

Next to him sat another old friend of mine, a famous singer. I introduced them, they had a drink. The actor started having one Sidecar after another, until my friend wanted to treat him to a round. I tried to stop him, but he wouldn’t have it: ‘No, I am French and proud of it. If I offer to pay ‘zis man a drink, I will pay him a drink.’ When he got the bill at the end of the night, he tried to convince me our prices were still in francs. They weren’t.”

Field moved to France when he was 19 to attend hotel school.

After years of study, he underwent training at the main Ritz Bar, which he always wanted to do, but asked to see the manager within days on the job: “I said, ‘I’m sorry, I cannot do this, I refuse to drop my standards to what you’re doing.’”

Apparently, he knows exactly what his guests are going to have even before they open their mouths. When asked how it works, he moves excitedly about his seat, claiming there is always a certain number of common denominators. “You’re a gentleman, I’m a gentleman, we’re both of the same age, in Paris, we are at the same bar, in a certain room temperature.” Is he the Sherlock of cocktails? He smiles courteously at this remark, algorithms continuing to form.

Not fazed by the young man’s brashness, his superiors told him to do whatever he likes with the smaller Hemingway Bar across the hall, offering him a six-month trial, during which, as he so appropriately puts it, it exploded. “Nobody could believe it.

Sixteen years ago, we were the first to introduce frozen glasses

“Then: how are you dressed? When you’re in a suit and tie, you’ll go for a dry martini. If you’re in a pullover and jeans, you won’t. When you’re 18, you’ll have a mojito, when you’re 30, you’ll start worrying about the fact that you know nothing about your sherries and your ports, so you’ll want to experiment.” A

“SERENDIPITY IS THE HOUSE COCKTAIL. IT WAS INITIALLY CREATED FOR A FRIEND, A GREAT CIGAR LOVER WHO WAS SMOKING A ROMEO Y JULIETA AT THE TIME AND WANTED A DRINK TO MATCH. AS HE TOOK HIS FIRST SIP, HE UTTERED THE WORD ‘SERENDIPITY’, SO ‘SERENDIPITY’ IT HAS REMAINED. I LIKE TO THINK OF IT AS FRANCE IN A GLASS. ALL THE INGREDIENTS ARE SOURCED FROM AROUND HERE. THE TASTE IS MARVELLOUS, REFRESHING, AND HAS A NICE, LINGERING AROMA. IT SOUNDS SIMPLE TO MAKE. YOU

PUT SUGAR AND MINT INSIDE A GLASS THAT IS CHILLED TO -22 DEGREES CENTIGRADE, POUR IN A VERY NICE CALVADOS AND SOME APPLE JUICE FROM THE CALVADOS AREA, WHICH PRODUCES GLORIOUSLY BITTERSWEET APPLES. THE TRICK IS TO POUR EVERYTHING IN VERY SLOWLY. I LEARNED THAT IN JAPAN. THE MORE RESPECT YOU PUT IN A COCKTAIL, THE GREATER THE RESPECT ON THE OTHER SIDE. AS I SERVE THE DRINK, THE MEN GET MY SMILE, AND THE LADIES WILL GET A FLOWER TO MATCH THEIR DRESS.”

in France. Thirty years after the Americans. Madness,” he remembers.

man in his 60s has already chosen what he wants before he walks into a bar, there’s no point in convincing him otherwise. He’s never going to let a young upstart of 50 like Field tell him what to drink. He’ll have a whisky. Just like Hemingway would.

Glancing up and down the cocktail list, the sight of a thousand euro cognac-based concoction called The Ritz Sidecar has been known to stop a drinker in his tracks. After all, how many people are willing to spend a third-world country’s monthly budget on a single drink? He anticipates the attack, temporarily assuming his usual place behind the bar. “Come closer, come, come,” he says, his theatrical manner suddenly resembling Noël Coward’s.

He presents a glass bottle from behind the bar, imperfectly blown and rusty – as if the clumsy young assistant had been omitting it from her prep rota for the last hundred years. “Frank Meier, our legendary barman who was at the Ritz during the roaring 20s, would only make a Ritz Sidecar with a 1858 cognac. They used to have bottles and bottles of it at the hotel. I went to the old Ritz Museum, where we keep our artefacts, in search of it. The cellar-master’s book revealed a handwritten list of our supplies.

We have about 16 bottles left. Today, this thing would fetch 150,000 euros on the market,” he says, the half-full bottle slowly swaying in his palm.

“Kate’s a pal; she has been known to order one or two,” he interjects, nonchalantly dropping his long-lasting friendship with model Kate Moss into the conversation. His army of celebrity “friends” appears to be endless. “A very famous American actor had six of them once,” he says.

There’s no escaping the writer. The place is bursting at the seams with his paraphernalia, most of which has been collected over the years by the barman himself. There’s an old phone booth in one corner of the room, his metal typewriter in the other, more than one stuffed animal on the walls and as many magazine covers as you can fit within a few square feet.

“I often wonder: how much of this Hemingway atmosphere is just flowing over me and how much of it I have actually adopted in myself,” he questions out loud. He fishes in August, used to pigeon-shoot with Jack Hemingway, the writer’s son, still hunts anything that moves and usually ends up eating it as well. “I do like rabbit when it’s nicely prepared,” he says, grinning.

An hour and a half has flown by and the bar is now open. In his interaction with the first customers of the night, you can see why Field gets hired over and over again to mix things up at prestigious social gatherings of his ritzy clientele. He’s one of those people who you would build a private bar for just to have him around all the time. Unfortunately, you can’t keep Colin Field to yourself.

Like Hemingway before him, he’s all about sharing.

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FLOWER

POWER TATTOO TOTING HIPSTERS MIGHT THINK THEY’VE TAKEN OVER THE EAST END, BUT STEVE BOWTELL WON’T GIVE UP THAT EASILY. HE TAKES 20-YEAR-OLD LIBBY PAGE OUT FOR A PINT TO SHOW HER HOW IT’S DONE PHOTOGRAPHS BY CIRIL JAZBEC

Every town has a post office and every community has a character like Steve Bowtell: someone who knows everyone and who everyone knows. Bowtell, it turns out, also knows everywhere.

We meet at the Royal Oak on Columbia Road. A traditional drinking house with a hint of new age gastro, it makes a fitting meeting place for a dapper painter and decorator with Cockney charm and discerning taste.

Within five minutes and a quarter of his pint, Bowtell has recommended around five bars and five restaurants that I “have to try.” In the same time at least five people have come over to shake his hand.

“Are you coming out tonight?” they ask him.

“I go out more now than I ever did before,” admits Bowtell, “in fact, I go out every night.”

Since separating from his wife, Bowtell is enjoying life as a bachelor. “We separated very amicably,” he explains, “I still see her all the time, but we just couldn’t live together any more. Now I could get on a plane tomorrow and go wherever I liked. I love that freedom.”

Despite occasional nights out in Brixton or Camden, East London is Bowtell’s home ground and drinking patch. He has not had far to come to meet me. His flat is directly opposite the pub.

“I love it around here because it is buzzing every night of the week, not just at the weekend,” he says. “And if I drink too much, it is not too far to stumble home,” he adds with a laugh.

Bowtell lives above the shop he ran as a video rental store for 20 years, before DVDs and downloads sent him out of a job and into a new career path: painting and decorating.

“I painted all but one of the houses on this side of the street, as well as that one, that one, that one and that one,” he says, pointing at the shops on the other side of the road.

Bowtell is no stranger to career change; after leaving school at 15 he spent 20 years as a professional footballer. “I do what I do,” he says about his varied working life, “life is what it is and you can’t predict what is going to happen to you. I am a great believer in fate.”

“I remember a time when you couldn’t give these houses away,” says Bowtell, who has moved away from the area several times, “but there is something about it that always brought me back.

You never could have predicted the growth that has happened over recent years. No one used to want live here. Now we have film stars popping into the pubs.”

Like who?

“Oh, Helen Mirren, Julie Christie, the lead singer from the Arctic Monkeys Alex Turner… Kylie Minogue was going to buy that flat,” he says, pointing to the building adjacent to the Royal Oak. “But it’s not about the celebrities. The best thing about living here is that everyone mingles. Artists, accountants, builders, you have them all. I can’t walk out of my house and not bump into someone I know.”

We are nearing the end of the pint. I have lost count of the number of hellos and handshakes that have been directed our way.

“I do stay in sometimes, honestly,” he says with a laugh. Two shelves of Bowtell’s fridge are dedicated to beer. A 15 bottle rack holds his favourite drink: champagne. “Which I only drink with friends, of course.”

“Sometimes I’ll have people round for drinks. But if I do have quiet night myself, I usually get a phone call and am out again.”

As if by magic Bowtell’s pocket starts ringing. It looks like tonight is no exception.

As we part ways I ask him what his plans are for the evening. “I am meeting friends at the Marksman and after that, who knows … we’ll see where the night takes us. You only have one life, this is not a rehearsal. So I’m going to enjoy it.”

He laughs, “sometimes I enjoy it too much, of course. But that’s part of the fun isn’t it?”

STEVE SAYS ...

STINGRAY – 109 COLUMBIA ROAD: “STINGRAY IS A PIZZA PLACE THAT IS CHEAP AND CHEERFUL AND POPULAR WITH THE YOUNGSTERS. YOU CAN GET PIZZA AND A GLASS OF WINE FOR AROUND £15.”

LAXEIRO – 93 COLUMBIA ROAD: “THIS TAPAS BAR ON COLUMBIA ROAD DOES EXCELLENT FOOD. I’M GOOD FRIENDS WITH ISOBEL WHO STARTED IT 25 YEARS AGO. THIS SUMMER I’M GOING TO A WEDDING IN SPAIN OF ONE OF THE STAFF.”

PRINTERS AND STATIONERS – 21A EZRA STREET, E2 7RH: “MY TIP IS TO VISIT THIS WINE SHOP IN THE SUMMER – YOU WILL GET THE WINE AND CHAMPAGNE FROM THE SAME REGIONS AS THE TOP NAMES BUT FROM LESS EXPENSIVE VINEYARDS. CHEAPER BUT THE SAME GRAPES. THERE IS ALSO A BAR AT THE BACK OF THE SHOP. LAST WEEK I WAS STILL DRINKING THERE WHEN THE OWNER CLOSED UP. ‘YOU ARE STAYING FOR DINNER, AREN’T YOU?’ HE SAID AND THEN COOKED AN INCREDIBLE MEAL FOR US ALL.”

CAMPANIA GASTRONOMICA – 95 COLUMBIA ROAD: “NEXT DOOR TO LAXEIRO, THIS IS A GREAT PLACE FOR A DRINK. LAST WEEK I STARTED WITH TAPAS THEN MOVED NEXT DOOR TO CAMPANIA WHEN LAXEIRO CLOSED.” THE MARKSMAN – 254 HACKNEY ROAD, E2 7SJ: “I OFTEN GO HERE FOR A DRINK AND THEY ALSO DO GREAT FOOD. DAN, THEIR HEAD CHEF, USED TO WORK WITH JAMIE OLIVER.” THE ROYAL OAK – 73 COLUMBIA ROAD: “A GOOD TRADITIONAL PUB WITH A NICE RESTAURANT UPSTAIRS WHERE I WILL TAKE SOMEONE SPECIAL FOR DINNER.” 14

Perhaps it is fate that brought him to his flat on Columbia Road; he was born just around the corner and his father used to own a stall at the famous flower market.

GOLF CLUB MEETS. IT IS CLOSING DOWN SOON THOUGH AND BEING REFURBISHED. I KNOW WHO HAS BOUGHT IT BUT I CAN’T NAME NAMES. LET ME JUST SAY THAT THE FOOD WILL BE VERY, VERY GOOD.” ROCHELLE CANTEEN – ROCHELLE SCHOOL, ARNOLD CIRCUS, E2 7ES: “THIS IS A NEW PLACE THAT I WENT TO FOR DRINKS AND DINNER RECENTLY. THE FOOD WAS EXCELLENT AND THERE WAS A GREAT ATMOSPHERE.” THE GUN – 54 BRUSHFIELD STREET, E1 6AG: “A GREAT PLACE FOR DRINKS.” THE LUXE BAR – 109 COMMERCIAL STREET, SPITALFIELDS, E1 6BG: “PERFECT FOR LIVE MUSIC.”

JONES DAIRY CAFÉ – 23 EZRA STREET, E2 7RH: “A FULL ENGLISH BREAKFAST AT JONES’ IS THE PERFECT HANGOVER CURE.”

THE CAT AND MUTTON – 76 BROADWAY MARKET, E8 4QJ: “BROADWAY MARKET IS A GOOD PLACE TO GO OUT TO EAT AND THIS IS A REALLY GOOD PUB.”

THE RAVENSCROFT – 4, RAVENSCROFT STREET, E2 7QG: “THIS IS NOT EVERYONE’S CUP OF TEA. IT IS MORE OF AN OLDER BOYS’ CLUB AND IS WHERE MY

BUEN AYRE – 50 BROADWAY MARKET, E8 4QJ: “IF YOU LOVE MEAT, YOU HAVE TO GO TO BUEN AYRE. I LOVE STEAK AND THEIRS IS AMAZING.”

CHAPTER II LIVING

SIR DOMINICK LYNCH-ROBINSON, CREATIVE DIRECTOR, ON INSPIRATION AND THE REAL MAD MEN WORDS BY ANZEJ DEZAN PHOTOGRAPH BY CIRIL JAZBEC There’s just the right amount of dishevelment in his appearance, the kind that we have grown to expect from confident advertisers. The missing cufflinks, unbuttoned shirt – even the pink socks paired with red loafers are there, as expected. Remember the Listerine Sundae ad? That was him. And the Kleenex Yes/No campaign? Him again. “I suppose the only excuse I’ve got to still be doing what I’m doing is that I work with people 40 years younger than me. They inspire me,” he says in his own defence. Whereas there was a huge generational gap a few decades ago, he thinks the changes in the way we communicate have overcome that forever.

What has also changed is that words seem to matter less and less. He finds body copy on print advertisements to be virtually nonexistent, although this doesn’t alter the way he feels about it: “I’m very old-fashioned and more of a wordy person.” He reads a lot, hardly ever British novels, but he does enjoy biographies and letters of literary figures from the 1920s onwards. He also likes detective stories and elevates George Pelecanos’ detective stories to sheer poetry.

As a fan of American fiction, surely Mad Men, the hit US drama, had to have hit home? When quizzed about its authenticity, he admits that the world of advertising used to be as decadent as depicted in the show. “It’s not anymore, though,” he says, stoically glancing at the fruit bowl on his desk that has replaced the liquor cart. “The industry was relatively in its infancy back then. Clients didn’t know nearly as much as they think they know now, so advertising agencies had an easier run.”

Does he miss the good old days?

Not really, except for the fact they used to have much more time to let things simmer before pitching them to the clients: “I would sometimes spend three or four days crafting body copy for an ad, come back to it, leave it, come back to it ... that’s unheard of now.” Although he enjoyed the process, he wouldn’t want to go back to the past. “This is an incredibly exciting time,” he says, almost convinced that those darn apples and oranges do make more sense.

II

17

ON THE

MANTELPIECE SUMMERTIME AND THE LIVING IS EASY. STOCK UP ON SEASONAL LITERARY MUSTS – SOME OLD, SOME NEW, NONE BORROWED. ANZEJ DEZAN REVIEWS PHOTOGRAPH BY ANZEJ DEZAN

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CHARLES SAATCHI: BE THE WORST YOU CAN BE

CHARLES DICKENS: GREAT EXPECTAPAUL HENDRICKSON: TIONS

BOOTH-CLIBBORN EDITIONS, £9.99

BODLEY HEAD, £20

This is like an Eton Place dinner party gone wrong. Gold headlines replace placemats and the ornamented initials are a sign of an over-zealous nouveau riche hostess trying to posh things up. After dinner, when the ladies have retired – some to throw up, clearly – an obnoxious man is dominating the crowd with clever remarks. That man is Charles Saatchi, advertiser supremo-cum-contemporary art hoarder. His newly-released leatherbound tome of an autobiography is a Q&A session with one of our generation’s most successful men. In just under 160 pages, he denounces religion as the worst human invention, refuses to accept the logic behind IQ or the fact that Clueless was overlooked for an Academy Award. The author possesses a convincing skill of self-deprecation, mainly to discourage you from taking him seriously. It’s a stellar and enticing read, though it’s worth noting it’s a compilation of barks, not bites. Someone who takes Disney’s villains or Stalin’s quotes to heart this much is hardly of any danger. He’s not a dinner party guest gone wrong – he’s a villain gone right.

Save the children and women first!

Not only is it a seeming Titanicanniversary parable, it also applies to whoever came in contact with the great adventurer Ernest Hemingway.

An author so brilliant he managed to hurt those closest to him is explored here within the context of his attitudes towards the sea. On board his beloved black-painted, two-engine vessel Pilar, he loved, wrote, despaired, spat, cursed, drank and ejaculated, often practicing more than one at a time. The 27 years spent on and around his ship are incredibly well-researched, internalised and now novelised by Paul Hendrickson.

From Paris to Cuba and back, this is a story of one man’s toy, which has permanently altered American literature. Without Hemingway, the old man might never have found his sea. Without Hendrickson, we might have never understood why he wanted to. Must be read overlooking the ocean.

HEMINGWAY’S BOAT

PENGUIN CLASSICS, £14.99 Sick of Dickens on the bicentenary anniversary of one of our greatest writer’s birth? How very dare you?

The title itself was too tempting for Great to resist. Think of it as a refresher course in English classics.

On top of that, this hardbound, saddle-stitched edition with C.B. Smith’s chandelier cover is a bookcase must. In light of all the recent exhibitions and BBC period drama remakes, sticking to the original guns is always best. Skip the celebratory nonsense and honour the author by rereading one of his most enduring works. All 500 pages of it.

HARUKI MURAKAMI:

WHAT I TALK ABOUT WHEN I TALK ABOUT RUNNING VINTAGE BOOKS, £7.99 Pace yourself. If anything, Murakami’s reflections on running are about rhythm. The build-up to one of his annual marathon events – he has been taking part in them for over two decades – is chronicled in diary form. Faithful to his gripping literary style, this is where columns, travel journals, novels and memoirs finally catch up with one another.

One of the most interesting notions to surface is how writing informs running and vice versa. They are both based on graft and training. You start slowly, building up your strength, pushing through, until all of a sudden the activity has become a part of you.

You don’t have to be an athlete to understand where he’s coming from.

This isn’t just about an ageing man coming to terms with his time-ticking body, it’s also a paradigm shift, calling for quality over quantity – in terms of setting records or churning out novels.

TIM WINTON: LAND’S EDGE PICADOR, £12.99 The protruding briny smell of salty waters is omnipresent in Winton’s latest masterpiece. In contrast to what you might expect, a maritime tale doesn’t necessarily have to be based on sea. It can also be a nostalgic personal memoir of a life-long obsession with living right next to it. Consequently, it isn’t only emblematic of the man holding the pen, but rather of an entire nation.

The Australians have developed a somewhat unique relationship with their surroundings. On the one hand, they possess spectacular sea views, whilst having dry deserts constantly on their backs – metaphorically and literally speaking. This leads to a dualist tension which at some point prompts the author to say: “I love the sea but it doesn’t love me.” You’ll be glad to hear the novelist’s confession is purist, devoid of romanticism.

Unless agony uncles with octopuses up their legs or deadly dunes tickle your fancy. Land’s Edge is an inspiring coastal recollection, making you want to dive right in.

AGATHA CHRISTIE: DEATH IN THE CLOUDS COLLINS, £12.99 We were taught not to judge a book by its cover. To hell with that. Agatha Christie’s hardbacks, recently revamped with stunning historic Crime Club covers, are a testament to a new publishing stance. It is an offence against the written word to go Christie-less for a full summer, so you might as well do it in style. Hercule Poirot, the dapper Belgian detective, is back, his sense of proportion and detail unaffected by a short break across the Channel. In Paris, he boards a plane to Croydon, which, as was to be expected, results in a tricky murder for him to solve. Death in the Clouds ought always be read whilst flying.

(The word “ought” uttered as often as possible in passing conversation, even when it makes no sense.) Not only will it make Pan Am’s American panache for vintage aviation seem amateurish, it will make you long for the glamorous times when coffee was still served to every passenger and Ryanair plebeians were sparse. Go on, indulge.

THE PRINCE CHARLES LETTERS AURUM PRESS, £10.99 When he’s not narrating environmental documentaries or, you know, being curtsied to, Prince Charles would get out his Duchyengraved blotting paper and share his strong opinions with the world elite.

This was especially popular amongst his aides who had to deliver them.

By hand. One of them, currently unemployed, decided to leak seven decades worth of personal letters to a noted publisher before bidding the originals on eBay. Though this is pure humorous fiction – psst, don’t tell anyone – it’s a belly cheeky read.

His outpourings to Céline Dion, that “Black Spice Girl”, his Holiness the Pope or Nelson Mandela leave little to be desired, but it’s his letters to fellow Royal Family members that provide good-value entertainment.

Signed: lots of love, handshakes and so on.

ELISABETH LUARD: CLASSIC FRENCH COOKING MQ PUBLICATIONS, £14.99 This is one of those culinary feats with hardly a picture in them. It is intended to be kept by the bed and read, a regular daily dose of cookery to rock you into sleep. Luard’s prose rises to the occasion and is suitably dreamy.

She grips the reader from the get-go as she introduces her grandmother’s housekeeper Bernadette, a stout, authoritative French woman who taught her how to cook. In my book, any recipe collection with an extensive section on eggs is worth investing in.

You might be interested to know why French housewives rarely dabble with patisserie, why truffle hunters store their earthy jewels with fresh eggs or why a store-bought chicken has to come with its head and legs still attached.

What makes a Breton pancake stand out from its fluffy relatives and how can the scent of a certain kind of thyme give away a cheating spouse? Guaranteed to bring on the sweetest of dreams. Shame it doesn’t make you want to get up and cook.

SIMON CROMPTON: TAILORING HARDIE GRANT BOOKS, £9.99 Starched, upright collars, horn buttons, a DB (double-breasted suit in Savile Row lingo) and a stiff upperlip. It’s Le Snob’s guide to tailoring.

An intriguing book series, which also consists of separate guides on cigar and champagne varieties, equips men of taste with concise, dictionarylike basics about each of its topics.

Here, tailoring is explored through a bespoke novice’s eyes. While it’s definitely an interesting read, it doesn’t really offer much to someone who’s been around the block a couple of times. It feels and look nice, demurely stylish, but unlike a passme-down Savile Row suit, it probably won’t age as well. When I think of Hardy Amies’ ABC of Men’s Fashion, setting the tone for authoritative style advice, in comparison, this modern flicker of gentlemanly etiquette already seems a bit dated.

Practical advice on where to find the best shirt and suit makers is a nice, hands-on addition, but it reduces the companion to a GQ featurette. What I’m saying is: consult your tailor first.

19

WHAT IF GATSBY HAD LIVED? ILLUSTRATIONS: ALJANA ZDOVC STYLING: ANZEJ DEZAN 22

“A big man has no time really to do anything but just sit and be big.”

- F. Scott Fitzgerald

BROWN RAFFIA COLLAR LAMBSKIN TRENCH COAT, BURBERRY, £3,195, BURBERRY.COM FORMAL NAVY TROUSERS, DRIES VAN NOTEN, £375, BROWNS CORK SOLE LEATHER MOCCASINS, BURBERRY, £550, BURBERRY.COM BROWN LEATHER SATCHEL, LOUIS VUITTON, £2,246, MAISON LOUIS VUITTON BMW Z4 sDRIVE 28i IN ATACAMA YELLOW, FROM £35,000, BMW DEALERSHIPS 23

“All good writing is like swimming underwater and holding your breath.�

- F. Scott Fitzgerald

24

TWO-PIECE LIGHT BLUE SUEDE SUIT, HERMÈS, PRICE UPON REQUEST BLACK LEATHER SANDALS, DRIES VAN NOTEN, £345, TRESBIENSHOP.COM CAP WITH FLIPPED BRIM, 3.1 PHILLIP LIM, RUNWAY ITEM VINTAGE MAHOGANY PIPE, STYLIST’S OWN WOODEN SUNGLASSES, ILESTEVA, £180, LN-CC.COM 25

“I like large parties, they're so intimate.

At small parties, there isn't any privacy.”

- F. Scott Fitzgerald, THE GREAT GATSBY

PARADISE-PRINT COTTON SHIRT, GIVENCHY, £375, MRPORTER.COM PARADISE-PRINT COTTON-JERSEY T-SHIRT, GIVENCHY, £435, MRPORTER.COM LIGHT GREEN JACKET, ERMENEGILDO ZEGNA, £1,940, STORE.ZEGNA.COM FORMAL TROUSERS, ERMENEGILDO ZEGNA, £350, STORE.ZEGNA.COM SHAWL LOAFER, SALVATORE FERRAGAMO, £549, FERRAGAMO.COM COCCO LAVE TOTE, BOTTEGA VENETA, £23,170, BOTTEGA VENETA SLOANE STREET

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27

“I’ve been drunk for about a week now, and I thought it might sober me up to sit in a library.”

- F. Scott Fitzgerald, THE GREAT GATSBY

MULTICOLOURED DOUBLE-BREASTED BLAZER, Z ZEGNA, RUNWAY ITEM FORMAL SLIM SHIRT, GUCCI, £190, GUCCI.COM BLACK BOW TIE, E TAUTZ, £118, ETAUTZ.COM CHINO SUIT TROUSERS, J CREW, £120, MRPORTER.COM MONOGRAMMED VELVET SLIPPERS, HARDY AMIES, PRICE UPON REQUEST FROM EDWARD GREEN OVERSIZED BROWN LEATHER BIRKIN BAG, HÈRMES, PRICE UPON REQUEST WHITE LEATHER EGG CHAIR, £10,013, SKANDIUM KAISER IDELL DARK GREEN TABLE LAMP, £655, SKANDIUM THE GREAT GATSBY FIRST EDITION, PENGUIN, DEPENDING ON THE BID, EBAY.CO.UK

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29

LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION. FOR MANY OF US, THE CAP FERRAT VISTA WOULD SUFFICE, BUT NOT FOR 72-YEAR-OLD MONTI BORGIA. HE TELLS ANZEJ DEZAN IT’S NEVER TOO LATE TO NETWORK ILLUSTRATIONS BY ZARJA MENART

HELLO, NEIGHBOUR

“I spent most of my life on the outskirts of Bologna. Running a successful financial enterprise for 35 years, I have learned to rely on a daily routine. I got up at 5.30am every day, trying to fit in a game of tennis with my business partner before work. Needless to say, this was quite a sacrifice for two middle-aged Italians. You probably think we’re all just a bunch of balding Berlusconi look-alikes, but Italian men tend to be quite persistent when it comes to turning a profit. By the time I turned 65, getting up with the chickens was becoming a burden. I knew it was time for a serious change.

The missus dropped her dinner plate when I told her I was going to call it quits. The idea of me finally retiring seemed incomprehensible to her. I wasn’t giving up on life, I tried to explain. It just meant we could have more time for each other, golfing whenever our hearts desired, jetting here, there, everywhere, just like she always wanted. She didn’t think I could go through with it in the end, but I did. I sold my stake in

the company and put the family house up for sale. It wasn’t long before it got snapped up by some overachiever. Infuriated children were part of the sell, of course, but we decided to ignore their protests. It was our turn for happiness.

It doesn’t pain me to admit I’m used to the finer things in life. Heck, if I want to drink a bottle of an excellent vintage Pinot grigio, I’ll damn well have it. If a suit, made by my tailor Pietro, looks five-times better than anything I could ever find in Milan, I’ll very happily get five, not one. This is the way I’ve always lived – I wasn’t about to change that anytime soon. So when I pleaded with my wife about possibly moving to the south of France, she took me up on it much faster than accepting my hand in marriage.

The Côte d’Azur has always been our thing. There is a bit of strand we especially enjoy and liked coming back to season

GREAT LOVES

CAP FERRAT after season. It starts in Beaulieu-sur-Mer on the main NiceMonaco-Menton-Ventimiglia line, a small, sea-side village, which likes to call itself a town, but is in fact much more suited to be a village. The local bakery is where we would get our morning croissants, followed by a freshly-pressed orange juice and a long stroll along the coast. In our 30s, we fantasised about owning a semi-detached bolt-hole of a house, tucked away in some god-forgotten alleyway. When we got to our 40s, we were time-sharing an apartment in Nice. In our 60s, we went through an adventurous phase and trekked the Himalayas, and in our 70s we were finally ‘wise’ enough to get a place of our own.

From Beaulieu, named accordingly because of its ‘lovely setting’, Cap Ferrat – the exclusive neighbouring peninsula – is accessible by road and foot. The first I heard of it was during poker, oh, it must have been decades ago. Someone brought it up during a particularly tricky round, distracting us with the tales of prominent figures who lived there. My wife became obsessed with trying to scoop out Tina Turner’s villa and was really disappointed when a mutual friend told us she didn’t even live there. The wife – not my wife, the other guy’s wife – heard Mrs Turner talking about it at the local pharmacy. It’s such a small world down here. Anyways, to get to Tina’s place, you have to turn right after Beaulieu, not left.

30

The left will lead you to Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat, guarded at both ends. Somebody could easily rebrand it as ‘CEO-ville’.

Except for Sir Andrew Lloyd-Weber, but surely he’s a CEO of something by now. On the surface, there’s not a lot to see.

Driving there in our BMW 7 Series, we felt a bit out of place, to be honest. Copper metal bars protect the inhabitants from prying eyes. The only glimpse into its luxurious nests comes when the doors begin to open, slowly, slowly, to reveal hacienda-like villas, shaded from the heavy sun by overgrown trees.

I immediately knew this is where I wanted to end up. This was it, I thought: this is what I worked for all my life. All it took now was to put my plan into action. During our many explorations of the Riviera, we had made several friends. These friends had friends whose twice-removed relatives have just now decided to sell their house.

LATITUDE: 43°41’N LONGITUDE: 7°20’E ---------------------------------------------------------------NEAREST AIRPORTS: TOULON-HYÈRES, MARSEILLE-PROVENCE & NICE CÔTE D’AZUR AVERAGE SUMMER TEMPERATURE: 23°C AVERAGE WINTER TEMPERATURE: 9°C POPULATION: 2675 AVERAGE AGE: 47

Buying a house in Cap Ferrat is never just about ‘buying a house’. My wife couldn’t see it at the time, but I certainly could.

This was my final opportunity to make it big. So when I was looking to buy, the person living next to us mattered just as much as the bricks and the mortar. It was a very powerful American CEO who eventually made it to the top of my list. For obvious reasons, I can’t name him – firstly, because a gentleman would never kiss and tell, but also because we have since become great friends. In Cap Ferrat, the doors will open one at a time. You make friends with one of your neighbours, this extends to two or three additional households, and by the end of the season, your investors are lined up, all ready to go. I have never seen anything like it.

Carla was furious with me once she put two and two together.

Although our retirement was supposed to be a retreat, it didn’t exactly turn out that way. Three years on, I have helped launch three new businesses, one of them performing really well. Could I have done it without moving to Cap Ferrat? Probably. But then I couldn’t wake up to French croissants and my wife wearing something oddly resembling a kimono. (I know better than to ask.) As for my alarm clock: it never goes off before 9 o’clock.

That alone was worth the move.”

BREAKFAST AT ...

GRAND-HOTEL DU CAP-FERRAT

THERE ARE BREAKFASTS. AND THEN THERE ARE BREAKFASTS IN BOLD AND CAPITAL, THOUGH THIS FONT MAKES IT HARD TO DISTINGUISH BETWEEN THE TWO. GRAND-HOTEL DU CAPFERRAT IS ONE OF THOSE MARBLE ANCIENT BEAUTIES, USED TO HOUSING PRESIDENTS AND RUSSIAN OLIGARCHS. EARLY MORNING BREAKFASTS ON THE TERRACE ARE ESPECIALLY SPECTACULAR. LITTLE FRENCH WOMEN WILL RUN AROUND IN THEIR PRESSED APRONS, SERVING YOU HAND AND FOOT. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------GRAND-HOTEL DU CAP-FERRAT, 71 BOULEVARD DU GÉNÉRAL DE GAULLE, 06230 SAINT-JEAN-CAP-FERRAT, 04 93 76 50 50, WWW.GRAND-HOTEL-CAP-FERRAT.COM

SUNBATHING AT ...

CLUB DAUPHIN

AT LEAST YOU WON’T HAVE TO WALK FAR TO GET THERE. CLUB DAUPHIN LIES JUST ACROSS THE ROAD FROM THE GRANDHOTEL DU CAP-FERRAT. AFTER A REFRESHING BREAKFAST, A WALK DOWN TO THE BEACH CLUB MIGHT DO YOU A LOT OF GOOD. IN CASE YOUR SHOES WEREN’T MADE FOR WALKING, YOU CAN ALWAYS TAKE A GILDED CAGE - A FUNICULAR DOWN THERE. THE VIEWS ARE ALMOST AS STUNNING AS THE POOL WAITING FOR YOU AT THE OTHER SIDE. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------GRAND-HOTEL DU CAP-FERRAT, PAYING HOTEL GUESTS ONLY

OPERA FESTIVAL AT ...

VILLA EPHRUSSI DE ROTHSCHILD

YOU CAN’T ESCAPE A BIT OF CULTURE, EVEN WHEN TAKING A BREAK. THE ANNUAL ANGLO-FRENCH OPERA FESTIVAL LES AZURIALES, TAKING PLACE IN AUGUST ON THE GROUNDS OF BARONESS BÉATRICE DE ROTHSCHILD’S FORMER PALAZZO, IS BOTH INTIMATE AND IMPERIOUS. THIS SUMMER, SALLY BURGES TAKES TO THE STAGE - AGAIN. UNMISSABLE.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------17-19 AUGUST 2012, VILLA EPHRUSSI DE ROTSCHILD, 1 AVENUE EPHRUSSI DE ROTHSCHILD, 06230 SAINT-JEAN-CAP-FERRAT, 04 93 01 33 09, WWW.AZURIALOPERA.COM

31

CATCH

22 DO THE TWO EXITS AT THE FRONT AND TWO AT THE BACK MAKE YOU WANT TO JUMP OUT OF A 22-HOUR FLIGHT FROM LONDON HEATHROW TO SYDNEY? INSTEAD OF MUNCHING DOWN ANOTHER PACKET OF CRISPS, SWITCH YOUR iPHONE TO AIRPLANE MODE AND DISCOVER THE 22 APPS TO GET YOU THROUGH ILLUSTRATION BY KEV GAHAN

SWARM

3 MARVEL COMICS

4 A LITTLE

STREETSTORIES

Take-off is a good time to start exploring what you’ve just left behind. / FREE

Stop the creatures by blasting them.

Enough said. Take that, annoying flight attendant. / £1.49

Iron Man, Thor, Captain America, Wolverine and Spiderman. Take your pick. / FREE

You might not find it amusing, all things considered ... But we do. / £0.69

Granted, it’s a silly name. And yet, tracing words from a grid of letters is actually addictive. / £1.49

6 SOUNDHOUND

7 PICTUREKA

8 8MM HD

9 PAPER BY

10 ROLLER

Can’t name the song someone is blasting on board? Record it and find out later. / £4.99

Search for a needle in a haystack against a ticking clock. Such.

Fun. / £0.69

Give The Artist a run for its money.

Create stunning 8mm cinematography. No Marilyn Monroe, though. / FREE

FIFTYTHREE

JOURNAL

Doodle while everyone else is having a nap.

Neighbour caricature time? / FREE

A journal that asks all the questions, not the other way around. / £1.49

11 DANCING

12 GARAGE BAND

13 SUDOKU

14 MADONNA

15 COLOR

ON ICE

Hit that note!

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CHAPTER III STYLE & ETIQUETTE

COLIN McDOWELL, FASHION FRINGE FOUNDER, ON MENTORING WORDS BY ANZEJ DEZAN PHOTOGRAPH BY CIRIL JAZBEC

“I’m going to read you a little poem now,” he says, stopping mid-answer in an apparent attempt to schmooze the room. He flips through his notebook until he truffles out the buried treasure. It’s a poem by Christopher Logue, a “marvellous man” he once knew. He clears his throat. Come to the edge. We might fall. Come to the edge.

It’s too high! COME TO THE EDGE! And they came, And he pushed, And they flew.

According to the distinguished fashion commentator, this is what Fashion Fringe, an initiative he set up eight years ago, is all about.

“London fashion was in a really bad place back then. The top journalists and buyers didn’t want to know about us, all the top

designers went to work for Calvin Klein and Prada ... I just thought: this is too depressing. We’re a major city, something has to be done,” he explains. John Galliano, Donatella Versace and Roland Mouret were some of the power forces he managed to get on board over the years. With their support, the project has grown from a design competition into a mentoring scheme, helping design graduates cope with the business side of things as well as being artistic.

He was especially impressed with Donatella Versace’s performance. Of course, she is Italian and values the comfort of “la famiglia” above all. “She took our people over there, gave them front-row seats for

their menswear show, which didn’t go down terribly well with the English press, as they were nicked from them. The next day she took them round to her couture ateliers.

They were in tears,” McDowell remembers.

The writer read English at university and claims to have been mentored by great thinkers he discovered in books rather than a single person. “I could never be a mentor myself,” he says, “I’m not clever enough to help.” He will only admit to being tutored sexually, “but I’m hardly going to talk about that.” Hardly.

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CROSS MY LEGS,

SWEAR TO DIE CROSSING YOUR LEGS CAN BRING YOU CLOSER TO CLOONEYDOM, ACCORDING TO ANZEJ DEZAN ILLUSTRATIONS BY ZARJA MENART

If my handbook of literary clichés is anything to go by, this should probably start with a friend. The kind in inverted commas. Shall we call him Robert? Max. Max is a good name. So, last week, “Max” and I were at a pub – yes, really – entangled in a profound discussion about our carbon footprints, when I noticed there was something off about the way he sat.

Arms resting uncomfortably on his crossed legs, as opposed to the relaxed look I grew accustomed to over the years, he looked as if he was trying to win the argument by means of gesticulation.

“Drop the act, you’re not fooling anyone,” I said, slightly embarrassed on his behalf. He immediately resorted to a verbal attack on how desperate times call for desperate measures.

Apparently, this particular attempt at being a Homo erectus was prompted by George Clooney. George – bloody – Clooney?

“Have you not seen him in interviews, showing off his Italian desert boots? This is the way to go for a guy my age,” he says, resuming his caricature of a pose. Body language analyst Judi James is far from judgemental about his approach: “You watch someone like Clooney who can get dates and you might make changes accordingly. Body language is a skill that we should be learning all our lives, not something in our DNA that makes us hopeless social rejects.” So now you not only want us to think about our dress, style and haircut, but the way we take a seat as well?

The expert says there are three main ways in which crossleggedness occurs. Some men cross their legs at the thigh, which is the way most women sit: “This pose looks calm and confident although not in an actively powerful way. If a guy wants to impress, he will usually spread his legs to extend his space. The leg cross is more polite and has the whiff of a barrier about it. If his arms are open he will look confident but if his arms are crossed too, or his hands covering the crotch then he will look as though he feels threatened or under pressure.”

Some men stretch their legs and cross them at the ankle. A more informal and relaxed pose can border on arrogance: “Because the legs are stuck out they will steal space from other people or even trip them, making the crosser look rude.” Things can only go from bad to worse, if you then allow your ankle to take a break and let it rest on the lower thigh. Strangely enough, in James’ experience, this pose is often performed by overweight guys with short legs, despite that fact it is hard to achieve unless your legs are extremely long.

Men with crossed legs have often been deemed effeminate, because they give off the impression of shielding their crotch area.

If you’re out to impress, it makes much more sense to keep legs far apart. “The best combination is when the arms are crossed but the legs splayed. This tends to be a favourite of blokes who are trying to look really hard,” James explains.

Body language theorists are not out to change people’s habits by making them consult a guide before daring to make a move.

It’s enough to realise that: “the way we cross our legs will send out subliminal signals that other people might pick up as a gut reaction.” Sitting down differently might be a good place to start, but there’s a lot more to Clooney than his legs. Take a note, Max.

PANACHE

TONY’S ‘TACHE ONE GREAT MAN’S STYLE STAPLE, AS TOLD TO ANZEJ DEZAN ILLUSTRATION BY ALICE McCAFFREY “What I like about my moustache is that it goes up at the end. This makes people think I’m constantly smiling, which is a good trick particularly for when I’m not in a very smiley mood.

I used to have a little Vandyke to go with it. In Paris, they used to think I was the Duke of Richelieu’s great-greatgrandson or something. I first started growing it in the early 90s, when I started focusing on journalism – first at The Independent, then the Financial Times and later when I went to Vogue Australia. I kept it all the way through until I returned to England about 12 years ago.

When I finally did shave it off, most people didn’t even notice it missing until I grew it back again 18 months later.

Since ‘Movember’, there are a lot of moustache artefacts about. Urban Outfitters had black curvy moustaches 36

in snow globes, they had the necklaces, brown leather moustache brooches ... The reason I know about this is I am bought all of these as gifts from friends. Against my will, I am acquiring quite a collection of moustachioed elements. The only one that I love is a moustache mug because it has my moustache, almost to the tee, painted on the front.

Taking care of it is easy: wash it, trim it and wax it with Dax Wax, not the moustache wax. I sometimes get people walking past me, going ‘cool moustache,’ which is really unnerving. You get that a lot. I can’t wait to get rid of it when I retire. Eventually.”

- TONY GLENVILLE, CREATIVE DIRECTOR OF THE LONDON COLLEGE OF FASHION

HUNTS

MAN EVERY NOW AND THEN, YOU CAN GIVE HUNTSMAN A MISS. THE HIGH STREET MIGHT SEEM LIKE A KIDS’ PLAYGROUND FROM AFAR, BUT FEAR NOT. REGENT STREET SCOUTS ARE HERE TO HELP II

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DAD, TAKE FOR KOREAN MEN, LIFE BEGINS AT 60. BEFORE THEY START DUSTING OFF THEIR DANCING SHOES, THEY NEED TO LEARN HOW TO SPLURGE. KILEY HONG JOINS THEIR EFFORTS IN SEOUL

THE iPAD

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PHOTOGRAPH BY NILS CLAUSS V

Showing respect for your elders used to be a South Korean national pastime. But recently, the money-thirsty, younger generations have slowly started phasing out their older counterparts, those that used to receive the utmost care and respect at the cushy end of age hierarchy. Feeling sorry for them? Don’t. The newly old aren’t going down without a fight. Well, if you can call golfing fighting.

Monocle has recently addressed South Korea’s booming golf culture, reporting that “with membership fees in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, clubhouses designed by star architects and troupes of attentive young female caddies – golf is the ultimate statement of wealth in South Korea.”

The elite and serene sport activity is especially popular amongst the older generations – where a breadth of money lies at the moment – as one of their top leisure activities, a perfect dose of exercise and social networking at the same time.

A tailor who proudly guards his humble shop situated in a little alley off the traditional street of Insadong, claims to have been offered a spot to work near one of these courses. His past record will substantially benefit the town’s marketing value. “I’m excited about this new location. I still have my loyal customers but it’s been years since I’ve gained new ones. The mass market of cheap suits has brought a decline in tailored suits. Business is stable, but only because of the fashion design students who bring their piles of technical flat sketches for me to produce. I do miss the days of making real suits for real gentlemen, though.”

The playing field is set: but where are all the old men when they’re not golfing? The idea of a Savile Row-esque Korean man is quite enticing. Yet, hidden behind every thoughtfully tailored stitch, are buried memoirs of raggedy hand-medowns. It wasn’t until recently that men started thinking of themselves as worthy of lifestyle attention. The current social

seniority committed their lives to their children, sacrificing everything they earned in the rice paddies and markets.

“My father supported me all the way through high school in Seoul and sent me to America so that I could have a better future. It wasn’t easy taking his hard-earned money when I knew that he and my mother had to feed and raise my four sisters and kid brother.” Jung-hoon Shin (not pictured above), a philosophy professor at Seoul University, reminisces: “I remember how he used and reused those cheap razor blades that would eventually cause skin irritation. In secondary school, I got caught delivering milk around the neighbourhood as a part-time job and he reprimanded me for it. I didn’t understand it at the time, but all he wanted for me was to study hard and prolong my innocence as much as possible, because he knew what the real world was capable of.” Professor Shin’s two daughters and son currently study abroad while he continues to live in the suburbs, commutes by public transport and refuses to throw away anything just because it’s old.

Korean men aren’t stingy. They are just used to giving relentlessly to their loved ones. Modern living may be the norm, but Korea’s older generation will probably never become the Johnnie Walker Blue-drinking, Cohiba-made cigar-smoking or Rolex-wearing ‘Frivolous Kim’. In the meantime, Shin’s son Dong-hoon is giving his father an iPad3 for his upcoming sixtieth birthday – or “hwangahp” – which marks a person’s biggest birthday celebration for having soundly reached the big six-oh.

“Our entire family has iPads, and of course, Dad bought them for us. Year after year, my dad has been contemplating on getting one for himself but can never pull the trigger. It’s about time that he treats himself to something – anything decent.” It’s time the young ones start taking care of them for a change.

I CORK-PRINTED WALLET, ZARA, £15.99 / YOU MIGHT BE DISCOURAGED BY CARRYING A CHOPPING BLOCK IN YOUR BACK POCKET, BUT THINK OF IT AS A GOOD CONVERSATION STARTER. II POCKET SQUARE, REISS, £20 / NOTHING SAYS SAINT-TROPEZ LIKE LINEN. BREATHE, AND LET YOUR POCKET SQUARE RESPIRE WITH YOU. III COS HERITAGE SHIRT NR 4, £55 / COS HAVE RECENTLY BROUGHT BACK THEIR FAVOURITE DRESS SHIRTS. THIS REINTERPRETED COLLARLESS TUXEDO, BIB AND ALL, IS OUR FAVOURITE. IV POLKA DOT TROUSERS, TOPMAN, £32 / IT’S ABOUT EMBRACING STRONG PATTERNS THIS SUMMER. WHEN PAIRED WITH A CRISP, WHITE SHIRT, THEY CAN DO NO WRONG. V LEATHER SANDALS WITH WOVEN SOLE DETAILS, ZARA, £39.99 / THE NEXT BEST THING TO COME OUT OF SPAIN AFTER THE INVENTION OF ESPADRILLES. OLE!

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THE

APPRENTICE LORD SUGAR CAN TRY, BUT HE CAN’T FIRE EVERY APPRENTICE. NOVICE TAILORS OF SAVILE ROW - OR RATHER THEIR MASTERS - ARE A TESTAMENT TO A LONG AND SKILLED TRADITION. SARAH JOYNT INVESTIGATES PHOTOGRAPHS BY MATJAZ TANCIC

ap·pren·tice noun, often attributive \ə-pren-təs\ 1 a : one bound by indenture to serve another for a prescribed period with a view to learning an art or trade b : one who is learning by practical experience under skilled workers a trade, art, or calling 2: an inexperienced person : novice Word association is a variable game. It wholly depends on the player. Take the word apprentice, for example. A term that once denoted a person of great discipline working to excel in their chosen field has now been equated with another get-rich-fast business proposition.

When Mark Burnett’s The Apprentice came to the UK in 2004, the network’s captive audience was enthralled by the quick wins, losses and forced bouts of innovation. Many forget that before ambitious executives took to reality television, the word carried great responsibility.

The word association may have changed but the true apprentices still lie in speciality trades.

In the world of bespoke tailoring, flash means nothing. Efficiency is essential and training is paramount to success.

Peter Ward (not pictured above) is the head cutter at Savile Row landmark Dege & Skinner and has trained and shaped dozens of apprentices in his four decades in the industry. He knows that in this, and most other industries, quality is most important. “I’ve now been in this trade for nearly 40 years, and I reckon it wasn’t until 35 that I knew what I was doing,” says Ward. “That gives you a scale of roughly how long it takes. It is probably just about the hardest apprenticeship anyone could take on.” The relationship between an apprentice and his mentor grows from a level of trust and the knowledge that the mentor has been there himself. Ward apprenticed under John Dege, the founder’s grandson, and this fact is surely comforting to his current apprentice, Tristan Thorne (not pictured above).

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Thorne has been working under Ward for four years and while it’s not always easy, the pair wins or loses together. “It’s quite a slow process,” says Thorne. “Only now am I starting to feel more confident.” In spite of Thorne having a college education, Ward noted that apprentices don’t really know tailoring for three years, and cutting for about five. “Coming up on three years, you think, I’m getting there,” he says. “And then you get a couple of new customers and you come back down to earth.”

So many ambitious young people are leaving education with grand dreams of a quick ascent into their chosen field, and bespoke tailoring is not exempt from that notion. “You get taught a certain number of skills at college or university, but you learn more on the job,” says Thorne.

“Tristan will agree – he didn’t actually know a vast amount,” his mentor hastens to add.

In the current economic climate, investors often dictate the direction of a business. Return of investment is the priority and the client comes second. In tailoring, the client is not only always right, but is the lynchpin of the business. “The relationship between a cutter and a customer will go on for many years. It’s important that they feel happy and when they get exactly what they want, they’ll want to come back,” Thorne finds.

“I still have customers that I had when I first came here,” says Ward, and it’s that dedication that keeps this niche industry thriving. Not only is the tailor’s reputation dependant on the product, but the brand itself. “I don’t want to say that a Dege suit is this, that and this, because it is a customer’s suit,” he adds. “The customer says what he wants. As the name bespoke tells you, it is the customer that’s speaking.”

The relationship isn’t always pleasantries and joyful clients, but the effort put forth by both apprentice and master is equal. “I think, overall, there’s an awful lot of tongue-biting

and swallowing,” says Ward. “I’ve got to not throw sheers at Tristan and he’s got to learn not to throw them back.” It’s a far cry from the tyrannical demands of a television personality, but with added humility, the learning experiences far out value the frustrating moments.

As of late, school leavers and university graduates have been coming out of education with far less direction than generations past.

Whereas once a degree meant a guaranteed career, the recent graduate unemployment rate is all that it takes to see the lack of direction and opportunity. The fast pace of the business world reflects the increased speed of many other industries. In fashion, the skilled tailors of the Row are often overshadowed by the dominating world of fast fashion. Much ink has been spilled over the high street’s imminent arrival on the famed golden mile of tailoring but those with their hearts invested in the industry don’t share the fears of masses. “It doesn’t affect my job,” says Ward. “They’re not going to take my customers. So what’s the problem?”

High street aside, Lord Sugar could learn something from the tailoring industry. There’s a reason Peter Ward has sustained his job for over four decades and it’s not because of self-importance or grandeur. Doing a job well beats doing a job quickly, any day. Where many businesses are going wrong is thinking in small terms. Rapid growth often leads to an even more rapid decline and while bespoke tailoring will never make for good television, it’s an industry that has survived and thrived amongst a sea of bold ideas.

TEAR HERE

BREAK WITH FINGERS HERE

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of luxury and chic. I am sure I was not disappointed, but was also not unhappy to move on to stay with friends in a charming, quiet villa at Cagnes-sur-Mer. I went and looked at the outside of the Villa which had contained the English school at Antibes where I had worked. I walked boldly into the Casino, feeling that at last I had some right to be there, and the weather fortunately allowed me to spend all day on the beach, without any children to look after. If there were peculiar things going on in Abyssinia we refused to take them seriously. It is so easy to paint a happy picture of past holidays, but this does seem to me to have been a particularly successful one, and I was able to remember it with gratitude during the War years which were about to begin.

although my powers were limited. For instance, I could not engage any staff or increase any wages without Mr. Shingleton’s consent, all of which seems fair enough now. But I remember getting extremely disappointed when he would not allow me to engage the model girls I wanted because they asked too high a salary.

POCKETBOOK

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Mr. Shingleton himself had some years before bought a farm in Hampshire, and shortly after my arrival he gave up his flat and only came to London once or twice a week. On those days he had three, often four, businesses to visit, so that he would be at Lachasse sometimes not more than half an hour. He would often not even see me but would remain closeted with a woman who was really the Managaress of Paulette Limited. I have already tried to explain that the premises of Lachasse and Paulette were in the same building and were often so mixed up inside that you could not tell one from the other. Canteen, Counting House, and many other offices were shared by both. Any orders that Mr. Shingleton would give to Paulette would often automatically apply to Lachasse, and it was the duty of Paulette’s Manageress to see that they were executed. By the end of my stay at Lachasse I got to know this woman quite well, and to understand how difficult and delicate were her duties, but for several years I disliked her intensely. She did indeed have a dragon-like quality which aroused the animosity of my own staff. My position was made a little easier, when, after a year, Mr. Shingleton offered me a contract in which it was necessary for my duties and position to be more clearly defined and I was called in this contract “Managing Designer.” (When I was planning to open my own business I wondered if he ever wished he had had me called “Designing Manager.”) By this time I was doing absolutely all the designing in the house, and I was also managing it,  the broad shoulders and narrow hips that were then fashionable, and she wore her hair very short and bunched forward into what she called the wind-swept style. She had big, rather prominent blue eyes and very beautiful teeth, and about the sulkiest expression a pretty girl could wear.

Fortunately, she was also rather silly, and having been given a position of some importance in the house—indeed almost that of a temporary designer—she gave such a spectacular display of tantrums that after a few months Mr. Shingleton dismissed her, but he only did so after he had asked me whether I felt capable of designing the collection in August.

Morton’s new business was in Palace Gate, an unusual situation, chosen because his contract with Lachasse restrained him from opening in a nearer neighbourhood; but his reputation and talent had taken a great many customers from Lachasse, in spite of the fact that only one of the Lachasse fitters who had worked for him had followed him into the new business. This was greatly to my advantage. There were also around the house quite a number of copies of models that Morton had designed and these I examined with great care, getting some of the sales girls to show me some of the finer points of their planning and construction.

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There were two head tailors, Mr. Ernest and Mr. Todd. Mr. Ernest must have joined the firm as a very young man, for he is with me now at Savile Row and cannot be more than in his early forties. Mr. Todd joined Lachasse a little after Mr. Ernest, and I think he had been a sailor at one time. Mr. Ernest was of German extraction and his training had been in tailoring of a slightly more Continental trend than English. Mr. Todd never stopped wanting to learn and I used to listen to Mr. Ernest answering certain of Mr. Todd’s queries over a cup of tea in the canteen.

Mr. Todd is still at Lachasse now and so is Miss Joyce, one of the two dressmakers who were there with me. It is impossible for me to explain how kind all these people were to me. Incidentally, it is rare for a fitter or a tailor to be jealous of a designer. They are usually only too anxious to see anybody with ideas in the business.  I went on a tour of the tweed mills in Cumberland. At first, tweeds I was shown seemed no different from those in London; then suddenly something caught my eye in a pile of scraps of old material lying abandoned in the corner. It was a soft tweed made in a mixture of dark plum sprinkled with specks of vivid cerise and then crisscrossed with a fairly large overcheck in emerald green. I know it sounds awful, but the whole tweed glowed. I can describe it in no other way. I made it up into a little jacket and had a skirt made of the tweed without the green overcheck.

I remember we called the model “Panic.” We always rather enjoyed naming the models. The names must never be eulogistic: if you call a model, as the French used to, Mon favori or Irrésistible the customer would always be on her guard. “Panic” was shown in the spring Collection of 1937—the year of the Coronation of George VI.  For the first month or so after joining Lachasse, I stayed at home and travelled each day on the crowded L.N.E.R. to Liverpool Street, and

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By the Spring of 1939 this international situation was calm enough, or rather we had deliberately allowed ourselves to be lulled into the feeling that it was, for me to take an early holiday in the South of France with Nina, a mutual friend and Alexis ffrench. I remember I had just signed another three year contract with Mr. Shingleton and, pleased with its terms, I had agreed, or even perhaps made the suggestion, that we should stay at the Carlton Hotel, Cannes, which seemed to me then the epitome  thence by tube to Bond Street, exactly as my mother had done years ago. For lunch I would go, like her, to Fleming’s Restaurant in Oxford Street, but somehow the boiled fish and parsley sauce which I had found so delicious years ago, no longer tasted so good—my palate having been vitiated by my stays in France and Germany; but of course I soon found this way of living too dull and tiring, and after a short stay in furnished rooms, I was able to take a small flat in Pont Street just off Belgrave Square.

In the furnishing and decoration of this I was greatly helped

by Alexis ffrench. He was one of the band of new acquaintances I was gathering about myself: some of whom, like Alexis, John Fowler and Nina Leclercq, still remain such close friends. Both Alex and John had already established themselves as antique dealers and decorators. I would listen intently to their talk on furniture: go with them whenever I could on their expeditions to country sales or to the antique shops in the Lanes at Brighton, and try to learn all I could. I would be amazed to see how quickly Alex would pick out what he wanted from a crowded junk shop, or notice with what assured eye John would choose his colours for a decoration scheme. In those days the Brighton Pavilion was neither as well restored or as well known as it is to-day, and I would listen to long arguments and explanations of its beauties and its significant place in the history of English furniture and taste.

Nina Leclercq was at this time Assistant Fashion Editor of Vogue magazine. I remember so well how we first got to know each other. We arranged to go to Cheltenham Races, she with Francis Marshall the artist, to do sketches for Vogue, and I just to see what sort of clothes were worn.

The weather was beastly and I think all any of us saw was a handsome line of mackintoshes. She subsequently left Vogue and joined Fortnum and Mason’s as head of the Women’s Fashion Departments, a position she held until after the War. You will read later on how she came to work with me. Many people thought that a friendship would not be strong enough to withstand the troubles of business life, but so far, I am happy to say, there is every sign of their being disappointed.

The Great Adventure Begins

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here must be thousands of young men and women who are to-day in jobs, even more uncongenial than mine was at Avery’s. Permit me to say to them that I feel Life is “Just, so Far,” in that their labours will always be rewarded. It is so true that you can only get out of life what you put into it. If you give your best to the work that lies immediately before you, you not only train yourself to undertake more important things but you build around yourself an atmosphere that reacts favourably to you. No one should be content with what they are doing if they are ambitious or frustrated, but I never believe in forcing open fresh doors. All that is required is to keep on your toes, so that the moment a new door is opened for you, you can decide in a flash if the adventure in the next room would be good for you, and then leap unhesitatingly.

During all these years my mother had kept in touch with Mr. and Mrs. Shingleton. Her visits to Miss Gray Limited in Brook Street were extremely infrequent as most of the people she knew there had left. Since I had been a senior boy at school, however, I had always been invited by the Shingletons to join their party at a dance given about Christmas time in aid of the Middlesex Hospital, where there was a Dressmakers’ Ward which they supported. I had been to such an entertainment late in 1933, and at Christmas time I had written my usual letter to Aunt Louie in Nice. I had told her how well Mrs. Shingleton looked and described her dress, which was a pleated black chiffon with a bodice embroidered in grey and silver, and said how well it suited her white hair and slim elegant figure. Aunt Louie, in her Christmas letter to Mrs. Shingleton, had reported how vivid she found my description. Mrs. Shingleton threw the letter across the table to her husband and said, “You ought to get that boy into the business in Digby Morton’s place.”  Morton’s philosophy was to transform the suit from the strict tailleur, or the ordinary country tweed with its straight up and down lines, uncompromising and fit only for the moors, into an intricately cut and carefully designed garment that was so fashionable that is could be worn with confidence at the Ritz. Such clothes have become so much a part of the fashion picture in all parts of the world during more than the last -2-

twenty years that it is hard to realise how much they owe to Morton’s original ideas. It would appear that Morton did no think Mr. Shingleton realised it enough either; for in autumn of 1933 (Mrs. Phillips having died shortly after his arrival in the firm) he left to open his own business in his own name. This made a void which I was to fill.

It was only this last point that my parents, or indeed I, properly understood. None of us had ever heard the name Lachasse before, and I rushed up that Sunday to have a look at the outside of the premises which told me precious little, except that the dust-bins were collected at the front door. However, I went up to see Mr. Shingleton myself and I knew that I was going to accept the job. My enthusiasm was not even damped by his offer of a salary which was less than half of what I was earning.

I suddenly realised how aimless my life had been up until then.

Certainly the years in France and Germany had enabled me to learn two languages so that I could speak them fluently and read them with pleasure. I had learned how to look after myself and how to get on with all sorts of people. I had seen, if only from the outside, the luxuries and riches of the Riviera, and the industry and application of the inhabitants of the large German towns. I had some idea of how commerce worked, and I knew how even a medium-sized business should be run, but underneath I had a gnawing sense of frustration, and above all, I was deeply discontented with myself because I had seemed always to take the easy line of accepting life as it came to me, making no effort properly to fulfil myself or to make use of such creative talents as I knew were latent in me. It is only now that I have come to the conclusion, as I have said before, that it was right that I should have been content merely to do my duty in the best possible way, until luck, which always comes to us some time or other, came to me in the series of coincidences which I have related.  I started work on 1st February, 1934. I was put into the showroom, principally because there was nowhere else for me to go, and after a few days began to talk to the customers as they came in for their fittings. It was a comparatively quiet moment as the Season had not yet commenced. The Spring Collection was being made behind the scenes under the supervision of the only permanent mannequin, whose name was Ann. All Morton’s clothes had been made on her for several seasons, and as she was greatly interested in dress, she had managed to think up some twenty or thirty suits and dresses which bore a reasonable likeness to those of Morton’s design. She was a particularly striking girl, with -3-

POCKETBOOK

CHAPTER III

SAVILE ROW FIELDS FOREVER. HOUSED BY MAYFAIR’S PRESTIGIOUS W1 ADDRESS, THE STREET SPEAKS OF TAILORING HISTORY AND THE ENIGMATIC MEN WHO HAVE TRODDEN IT. PHOTOGRAPHER MATJAZ TANCIC LETS HIMSELF IN

ROWING ON

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1 Savile Row institutions might smell of formaldehyde to the blissfully unaware, but they have in fact progressed with the times. Feel free to play “Where’s Wally?” in trying to pin down this imperious stag, a minimalist piece of interior design.

2 Three or four fittings with an experienced cutter are needed for a bespoke suit to materialise.

3 Once they take your measurements, your body’s “blueprints” are stored and guarded by your tailor. It’s a relationship that lasts a lifetime.

4 There’s something about a bespoke suit that speaks of worldly allure. The attention to detail is impeccable, making the three to four thousand price tag worth the money.

5 Amongst its glitzy clientele, Savile Row has seen the likes of several kings - and Gary Cooper - line its pavements.

6 Several establishments still cater to the glorious army men on her Majesty’s service. Gieves & Hawkes at № 1 is a prime example of this.

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CHAPTER IV ACTION

NICK NORDEN, ARCHITECT AND SAILING ENTHUSIAST, ON LIFE ABOVE WATER WORDS BY ANZEJ DEZAN PHOTOGRAPH BY CIRIL JAZBEC

For someone who spends his life setting things in stone, his attraction to the great, big seas seems peculiar. “It’s one of the very few things left in this world where no one can tell you what to do. Anybody can buy a boat and just go,” he says, gladly dispensing with planning officers and strict regulations for weeks at a time.

Life at sea confronts him with a completely different set of problems, allowing him to take his mind off work. And then there is the practically nonexistent mobile reception, of course. “People do tend to leave you alone when you’re out there,” he says, visibly relieved.

He rarely ventures out alone. One of the best trips he had was with his family in the Sea of Cortez five years ago.

During a sailing holiday there, they moored in a little bay one night – about 30 feet from the shore. “What I didn’t realise was that the wind went round 90 degrees, and in the middle of the night, the boat started to tip. When my wife fell on top of me, I knew exactly what it was.” They got up and there was no water to be seen – they were virtually on the beach.

“We’re sitting on the rail, pitch black, our legs dangling on the other side. There was a fifty-fifty chance that we would go back down with the water as it came back. My daughter was just about to file a lawsuit when dawn started to break and the pelicans started flying over, right above the water. They could detect the fish in the sea because of the early morning light. It was a completely surreal ending to it. Night without sleep and then, suddenly, all was good,” he reflects.

He sits behind a wooden table in one of “his” mansions on South Hill Park Gardens, a familiar North London milieu he has helped shape. “The guys who did the glass work on this house are the same ones who did the glazing on the London Eye,” he says proudly. When he talks about the hole in the kitchen floor, making way for natural light to enter the basement – now a gaming room – he resembles those pelicans who spotted fish in the water. He, too, saw the light.

Maybe his two worlds aren’t that far apart after all.

IV

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IT’S BACK TO THE STABLES FOR HIROSHI HOKETSU. THE 71-YEAR-OLD JAPANESE EQUESTRIAN IS THE OLDEST OLYMPIAN AT THE LONDON 2012 SUMMER OLYMPICS. ANZEJ DEZAN PAINTS A PICTURE OF PERSEVERANCE PHOTOGRAPH BY THE HONG KONG JOCKEY CLUB

WAR HORSE

Watching Hiroshi Hoketsu go, performing dressage, you can’t help but wait for the music to come in. His raven-like hair is motionless, limbs relaxed, arms held strong and at the ready, he’s poised, collected … It’s one of those rare moments in life when a corny Richard Clayderman melody could actually do everyone a lot of good, yet all you can hear is the sound of horse hooves clicking away. Not a pianist in sight.

Hoketsu, the willowy Japanese jockey steering the animal, wouldn’t care for all that nonsense anyway. He might seem like something a clever novelist would muster up – a Japanese exexec Olympian, living alone with his horse in west Germany, but he is very down to earth. Although he has grown accustomed to a German existence in the last five years, he still finds “a good fresh fish is difficult to find.”

At 70, he won a place at the London 2012 Summer Olympics by beating men half his age at the International Equestrian Federation’s Asia-Oceania dressage rankings. Four years ago, he became Japan’s oldest Olympian when he took part in the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games at 67. He’s now ready to take on London as a swan song to his illustrious career. “When everybody started approaching me because of my age, I thought, wow, growing old isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It’s definitely good for equestrianism in Japan, because the sport isn’t as popular as in Europe,” he tells Great over the phone.

Hoketsu finds the noble Olympic spirit quite changed since his first attempt at a medal in 1964. “Participating used to be enough,” he says. “Now, winning a medal or even reaching for

“ANCIENT” OLYMPIANS HOKETSU MIGHT BE ONE OF THE OLDEST, BUT HE IS CERTAINLY NOT THE ONLY MATURE OLYMPIAN. MANY SEXA- AND SEPTUA-GENERIANS HAVE FOUGHT FOR THEIR COUNTRY’S PRIDE AND GLORY. RULE, BRITANNIA? NOT AS A RULE, SADLY

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gold has become much more important.” That’s why he’s not counting on climbing the winners’ podium come London 2012.

If he manages to break his previous Olympic score, that’s enough for him. It’s about breaking your own boundaries, not those set by anyone else.

Where there’s a strong man, there’s an even stronger woman.

Or, in this case, a woman and a Chestnut mare. Whisper, Hoketsu’s 15-year-old banana-addicted horse, has been his loyal companion for the last five years. Due to a recent health hazard and three subsequent vets unable to diagnose the problem, Hoketsu was sure he could scratch the upcoming Olympics off his list.

It was only thanks to pure luck that a vet chiropractor managed to help Whisper back on her feet. Hoketsu has told the Guardian that this was nothing short of a miracle: “I had totally given up on trying to go London. But then in mid-November a friend introduced me to a good vet and one month later I was training again, and in January I started competing again.” They are currently both stationed in Aachen, where they can be observed perfecting their skills in preparation for the Olympics, aided by their Dutch trainer Ton de Ridder.

Motoko Hoketsu, on the other hand, had to stay behind in Tokyo. In a recent interview with the Telegraph’s Ian Chadband, he named his wife as his main source of inspiration, adding, “this one’s for her.” It was she who brought dressage to the table after, at the age of 35, horse racing was no longer an option. A gallant, more genteel version of horseback riding was just what

OSCAR SWAHN WON SILVER FOR SHOOTING AT THE 1920 OLYMPIC GAMES IN ANTWERP AT 72. FOUR YEARS LATER, HE WAS SELECTED AGAIN BUT ILLNESS FORCED HIM TO WITHDRAW. LORNA JOHNSTONE WAS BRITAIN’S OLDEST OLYMPIAN, AWFULLY NICKNAMED “THE GALLOPING GRANNY” - PROBABLY BY THE FRENCH. AT 70, SHE COMPETED IN DRESSAGE AT THE 1972 MUNICH OLYMPICS.

he needed. He could combine riding in the mornings with an international career in pharmaceuticals, jetting back and forth to the States, before retiring from his job eight years ago to focus on dressage.

He and his wife have a mutual understanding that he will not try out for the 2016 Rio Olympics. Whisper will probably want to throw in the towel by that point as well. Nineteen years in horse age can turn the fastest of mares into grannies. She is already becoming particular about her surroundings. At the previous Olympics in Beijing, Whisper was so put off by seeing herself on the big screen that the pair only managed to finish 35th. It was the lack of make-up that did her in.

Formality is key when it comes to dressage. Everybody dresses to impress. The official rider uniform consists of white breeches, white gloves, a bowler and solid black coats with metal buttons.

Freshly-polished black boots are a must. The animals, on the other hand, get away with a far more minimalist approach. Some horses will have their manes braided, but their tails can’t be adorned by bangles, ribbons or other decorations.

Whisper and his slender Japanese master fit the bill. They both fail to look their age, are well-mannered and highly experienced.

Hoketsu’s third Olympics are surely going down in history, even if a medal does escape him. Age sells.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------WORDS AREN’T ENOUGH? CHECK OUT HIROSHI HOKETSU AND WHISPER IN ACTION ...

GALEN CARTER SPENCER WAS 68 WHEN HE WON SILVER IN ARCHERY AT THE 1904 GAMES IN ST LOUIS. 65-YEAR-OLD PAUL CERUTTI COMPETED IN TRAPSHOOTING FOR MONACO IN 1976. HE WAS DISQUALIFIED IN THE END, THE DOPER. IAN MILLAR, 61, WAS A CANADIAN SHOWJUMPER WHO COMPETED IN BEIJING IN 2008, TAKING SILVER IN THE TEAM EVENT.

OUT WITH THE CARBS, IN WITH THE FATS. KARI INDERGÅRD SUNDLI MEETS VIDAR SAETRAN AND HIS CONTROVERSIAL DIET REGIME, WHICH REPLACES CARBS WITH FATS, COURTESY OF THE LOW CARB HIGH FAT MOVEMENT ILLUSTRATION BY ADRIANA KRAWCEWICZ

FAT

CHANCE Scandinavian design is known for being both functional and eye-catching. This not only applies to the world of interiors, but a Scandi lifestyle as well. Vidar Saetran, a 69-year-old Norwegian pensioner, a father of three and a grandfather of 15, who spends half a year surrounded by sun in the Canary Islands and the other half ensconced in Norway, is a prime example of this. In a country where the National Council for Nutrition and Physical Activity believes that at least 55 – 60 per cent of energy intake should come from carbohydrates, and a maximum of 30 per cent from fat, Saetran demonstrates how this can be a destructive plan, ignoring what the individual body needs. Or in his case, what it doesn’t need: carbohydrates.

Low Carb High Fat (LCHF) is not a diet, but a lifestyle.

Vidar is clear on this; maintaining a healthy weight throughout a lifetime depends on being in sync with the food one is consuming. Dieting, he says, is a negative word, full of limitations. LCHF is based on the absence of carbohydrates whilst consuming huge amounts of fat. The body starts to burn fats instead of glucose. Because unlike carbohydrates, fats have a high satiety factor, they help you stay fuller for hours. And as carbs are stored longer, they are harder to burn, whilst fats to the body are like petrol to the car; they burn as you consume energy.

Vidar decided to give LCHF a try after a visit to the doctor when he was instructed to start taking blood pressure medicine. At that point he weighed a whopping 103 kg. He had had enough. He saw an article about LCHF in a Swedish magazine and the idea of eating fat sauces, mayonnaise and egg and bacon for breakfast didn’t sound at all off-putting.

His wife was very supportive, even baking LCHF-sanctioned bread for him. Two years have passed along with 25 kilos.

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1 JANUARY 2011 “AT THIS POINT I HAD LOST ABOUT 10 KILOGRAMS. I FELT ENORMOUSLY PROUD OF MY ACHIEVEMENT. I STILL EXERCISED AS MUCH AS INITIALLY. I ATE THE SAME AS WHAT I DO TODAY; TWO WHOLEMEAL SLICES OF BREAD WITH BUTTER AND ANY TYPE OF SPREAD FOR BREAKFAST, NATURAL YOGHURT WITH BERRIES AND ALMONDS FOR LUNCH AND ANY TYPE OF MEAT FOR DINNER, OFTEN FISH OR CHICKEN. I ALSO ENJOYED A NICE GLASS OF WINE WITH CHEESE. ALCOHOL IS IN GENERAL A NO-NO WHEN LOSING WEIGHT, BUT WINE IS PERFECTLY FINE AND DOESN’T CONTAIN TOO MANY CARBS. SUGARY FOOD IS OFF THE LIST, I CAN EAT A SLICE OF CAKE NOW AND THEN, BUT I AM ALWAYS VERY CONSCIOUS ON MY SUGAR INTAKE.”

1 JULY 2010

1 JULY 2011

“BEFORE EMBARKING ON SUCH A RADICAL LIFESTYLE CHANGE, IT WAS IMPORTANT FOR ME TO READ ABOUT IT IN ADVANCE SO I COULD UNDERSTAND HOW IT WORKS. PEOPLE LAUGHED AT ME, TELLING ME THAT HIGH AMOUNTS OF FAT WOULD TAKE ME NOWHERE. I EXERCISED TWICE A WEEK, WHILST SCHEDULING IN A ONE-HOUR WALK WITH MY WIFE ONCE A WEEK AS WELL. YOU NEED TO BE REALLY CLEAR ABOUT THE CHANGE IN YOUR RHYTHM; EATING CARBS WOULD BE THE SAME AS TELLING YOUR CHILDREN NOT TO SMOKE WHILE SMOKING YOURSELF. INITIALLY, I ATE EGGS AND BACON FOR BREAKFAST, LEFTOVERS FROM THE NIGHT BEFORE FOR LUNCH AND ANY TYPE OF MEAT AND FATTY SAUCE FOR DINNER. AT THIS STAGE, I CONSUMED LESS THAN 20 GRAMS CARBOHYDRATES AND LOST ABOUT A KILO PER WEEK. I WAS JUST GLAD IT WAS OVER ON THE FOURTH WEEK, BECAUSE IT WAS ‘FATTY’ TO SAY THE LEAST.”

“MY NEW LIFESTYLE WAS WORTHY OF A MEDALLION AS MY DOCTOR TOLD ME I COULD STOP TAKING MY BLOOD PRESSURE MEDICINE. HE WAS CONFUSED, AS HE WAS TELLING HIS PATIENTS TO INTAKE LESS FAT ALL HIS PROFESSIONAL LIFE. I HAD PROVED HIM WRONG. HE STARTED TO CATCH UP WITH HIS READING OF STEN STURE SKALDEMAN, THE LCHF EXPERT, AND ENCOURAGED ME TO GO ON WITH MY NEW LIFESTYLE. PEOPLE OFTEN ASK ME: ‘DON’T YOU MISS EATING PASTA, RICE OR POTATOES?’ AND I REPLY: ‘WHO MAKES US EAT TOXIC AMOUNTS OF WHITE FLOUR ANYWAY? NO ONE! WE JUST ALL DO IT, AND WE THINK IT’S HEALTHY! IT’S NOT. WELL, AT LEAST NOT FOR ME!’”

SILVER

PLATE STRAPS-ASSISTED SQUATS Mount the Power Plate, adjust the settings, then stand facing away from the machine.

Lift the straps and start applying pressure to them.

Stay put with your knees slightly bent.

Don’t give up.

IT VIBRATES, YES. IT’S AS FAR AWAY FROM ZEN AS POSSIBLE, BUT IT IS A GUARANTEED WAY TO PUT YOU INTO TIP-TOP SHAPE FOR THOSE LATE NIGHT BEACH WALKS. ANZEJ DEZAN ATTENDS A CLASS SO YOU DON’T HAVE TO ILLUSTRATIONS BY ZARJA MENART

3-IN-1 UPPER BODY LIFT Adjust the settings. Make sure a mat is placed on the Power Plate.

“I CAN’T HONESTLY PRETEND NOT TO HAVE HEARD OF IT BEFORE. AFTER ALL, THEY DO SELL THEM AT PETER JONES. WALK INTO MY GYM ANYTIME OF THE DAY, AND WHAT YOU’LL FIND IS A CONSTANT STREAM OF MIDDLEAGED WOMEN DISAPPEARING INTO A CAVERNOUS SPACE BEHIND A LARGE GLASS PANEL. ON IT, WRITTEN IN TRANSLUCENT LETTERING, IS THAT MOST EMPOWERING OF NAMES. POWER PLATE.

Let your elbows rest on the mat, supporting your upper body - legs stretched, buttocks slightly suspended.

Listen to the cops you see on TV and don’t move.

This exercise will activate your biceps, shoulder and back muscles. 3-in-1.

SIDE-ABDO Let’s not pretend you’re not out to impress by building up the nearest possible thing to a six-pack.

Adjust the settings. Place your right lower arm on the mat, supporting your entire body. Keep legs extended.

To make it harder for yourself, move your body up and down while waiting for the vibrations to come to a halt.

Change arms and do it all over again.

THE ULTIMATE SPIN Adjust the settings. Sit on the Power Plate, facing away from the machine.

Pick up a 2- or 3-kilo kettle ball, place it between the palms of your hands and keep turning your torso from left to right while keeping legs lifted and extended.

It’s easier than it looks or sounds.

We promise.

I FELT RIDICULOUS APPROACHING THE RECEPTION DESK AT FIRST. ATTENDING POWER PLATE CLASSES IS JUST NOT WHAT MEN DO. AN EQUALLY DISTRAUGHT RECEPTIONIST FELT IT NECESSARY TO EXPLAIN THE RISKS. IT VIBRATES. NOTHING WRONG WITH THAT, IS THERE? IT CONDENSES A ONEHOUR FITNESS REGIME INTO A MERE 20 MINUTES. EXCELLENT! PREGNANT WOMEN CAN’T USE IT. I CAN’T REALLY SEE THAT BECOMING A PROBLEM ANYTIME SOON. SO WHY NOT? LET ME IN. I WAS THE ONLY GUY IN MY CLASS, EXCEPT FOR THE EAGER SOUTH AMERICAN TRAINER. IT WAS A 5PM, POST-WORK DAY SLOT, SO EVERYONE SEEMED APPROPRIATELY DISCONTENT AT HAVING TO SPEND THE FINAL HOURS OF THEIR DAY JUMPING UP AND DOWN A TREMBLING MACHINE. WARM UP IS ALSO KNOWN AS FIVE MINUTES OF HELL. I ADJUSTED MY SETTINGS TO A BEGINNER’S 30/35/1/LOW MEANING 30 SECONDS, 35 SHAKES, A NON-RAISED PANEL AND A LOW VIBRATION. THE HIGH NUMBERS MADE ONE OF MY FELLOW SUFFERERS TURN AUBERGINE ONLY A COUPLE OF SECONDS EARLIER, SO I DECIDED TO GIVE THOSE A MISS. ONCE YOU GET INTO IT, IT ACTUALLY BECOMES A LOT OF FUN. YOU WORK IN STAGES. WARM UP – LEGS – THIGHS – BACK – BICEPS – TRICEPS – SHOULDERS – ABDOMINAL MUSCLES, JUST AS YOU WOULD NORMALLY. YOU WILL ALMOST CERTAINLY BE ON THE VERGE OF COLLAPSING AFTER THAT INITIAL HALF AN HOUR, BUT DON’T DESPAIR. I MADE AN EFFORT OF DRAGGING MYSELF TO THAT CLASS TWICE A WEEK FOR ALMOST A MONTH, REALLY GIVING IT A GO. AS THE FIRST APPROPRIATION OF RESULTS STARTS KICKING IN, YOU FORGET ABOUT BEING THE ONLY GUY THERE, PAR FOR CARLOS. YOU EVEN EMBRACE SAMBA. KIND OF.”

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TRAINERS? SHORTS? T-SHIRT? CHECK. AND YET, LIFE COULD HARDLY BE WORTH LIVING WITH JUST THE BASICS COVERED. UPGRADE YOUR GYM BAG WITH SOME OF OUR FAVOURITES. APPLY WITH CARE PHOTOGRAPH BY ANZEJ DEZAN

GYM GEAR PULSIN’ NATURAL SOYA PROTEIN, £4.79, 74 kcal/serving * MAGIC POWDER

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ORGANIC HOMME DEODORANT, £6.79, * ROLL-ON HERBAL BONANZA

SUNNY STUDIO’S MINT & POPPYSEED HANDMADE SOAP, £3.50 * TEA-TIME INSPIRED SNACK FOR YOUR SKIN

BURT’S BEES PEPPERMINT FOOT LOTION, £12.99, * NOTHING FEELS BETTER POSTWORKOUT. WELL, ALMOST NOTHING ...

ORGANIC FOOD BAR PROTEIN BAR, £2.29, 128 kcal * BEFORE YOU PASS OUT

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DIPTYQUE PHILOSYKOS FIGFRAGRANCED PERFUME, £70 (100 ml) * SMELLS OF PRE-RECESSIONAL ATHENS

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EPILOGUE

MEDITATIONS GREAT’S PHILOSOPHERIN-RESIDENCE CARLGUSTAF WIKSTRAND TAKES TO HIS BOOKCASE AND DISCOVERS THAT STOICISM CAN OFFER RELIEF TO AGEING MEN. YES, REALLY. AS TOLD TO KARI INDERGÅRD SUNDLI ILLUSTRATION BY ADRIANA KRAWCEWICZ

Where do we begin? Well, not exactly with philosophy in the academic sense of the word. The point of departure is more likely to be our own tangible questioning of life and its meaning.

A major concern that men our age have to face is that “most of what we have not achieved so far will never be achieved at all.”

When we were younger, there were so many things we needed and wanted to do. The future was open wide with an unlimited space to discover. Now that scope appears to be much narrower.

Philosophy might be a way of coping with that prospect.

How? Discovering our great ancient philosophers can point you in the right direction. Let’s take the stoics, for example.

One of their main tenets was that we should make our happiness independent of external occurrences which we ourselves cannot change.

We must then realise that it isn’t what happens that counts, but what we make of it. And while we often cannot do much about the way in which our lives unfold, it is within our reach to change the ways of interpreting these events. Have I lost something that is very dear to me? Well, perhaps I can regain my peace of mind by knowing I didn’t really need that thing after all.

Stoics can be rather extreme. The Roman emperor and philosopher Marcus Aurelius (121-180 AD) wrote:

“PAIN IS EITHER AN EVIL TO THE BODY – THEN LET THE BODY MAKE WHAT IT WANTS OF IT – OR TO THE SOUL; BUT IT’S IN THE POWER OF THE SOUL TO MAINTAIN ITS OWN SERENITY AND TRANQUILLITY, AND NOT TO THINK THAT PAIN IS THE EVIL.” It might be impossible not to regard pain as evil, but it illustrates the stoic thought model, which can be of some therapeutic use in many other circumstances, for example if you lose your job, are short on money, if your position in the society is waning ...

Let’s say you aren’t that young anymore (bare with me, “young at heart” counts as well). This can either make you feel sad or frustrated, or you can follow Marcus Aurelius’ line of thinking, realising that getting older is not an evil. You can be as happy as when you were younger, or even happier.

According to the Roman philosopher Seneca (4 BC-65 AD), some forms of happiness are much more attainable once you’ve grown up. In his Moral Epistles, he writes: “Each pleasure reserves to the end the greatest delights which it contains. Life is most delightful when it is on the downward slope, but has not yet reached the abrupt decline. And I myself believe that the period which stands, so to speak, on the edge of the roof, possesses pleasures of its own.” (Epistle XII) But still the stoic philosophy may seem somewhat depressing.

Is all that we value just some sort of an illusion? Is happiness a matter of renouncing everything that makes life worth living?

The ancient Chinese philosopher Lao-Tzu wrote about letting go in Tao Te Ching (The Book of Tao). One of his formulations went like this:

“ACT AND YOU RUIN IT. GRASP AND YOU LOSE IT. THEREFORE THE SAGE DOES NOT ACT, AND SO DOES NOT RUIN, DOES NOT GRASP, AND SO DOES NOT LOSE.” If we manage to reach a state of relaxed detachment, we might find a well of positive energy within. And as long as we are in contact with our inner self, we need not worry about ageing.

How old or young you are isn’t measured in days or years.

Some can be old at 20 or young at 85. Surely that counts for something?

E

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