Ccercle n18

A R T S | T R AV E L | FA S H I O N | C U LT U R E | I N T E R I O R S | C A R S | L E I S U R E | E C O N O M I C S

A N E W E X PE R I E NC E BE YON D LU X U RY

IS SU E N.18

LUC Y DOUGH T Y L I FE I S N O T A Z E R O S U M G A M E

A LVA RO DE M A R IC H A L A R A M O D E R N D AY E X P L O RE R

JEAN-MANUEL ROZ A N

C HOPA R D L OV E N IGH T AT C A N N E S FI L M FE S T I VA L

K A R L - F R I E DR IC H S C H EU F E L E M Y V I S I O N O F L I FE

SOFT LANDING

C H R I ST I NA E ST R A DA L OV E - T H E U LT I M AT E L U X U RY

L E ONA KÖN IG

Golden Not e of Au st r ia

1 76 8.

In the conquest of the oc ean s, e v e ry m i n u t e c ou n t s.

Tossed about on the waves of the Atlantic Ocean a corvette sailing ship belonging to the King of France, heads for Santo Domingo. On board are two marine chronometers created

by Swiss watchmaking genius, Ferdinand Berthoud. Helping to calculate longitude to the nearest half-degree, these timepieces would guarantee the success of this 12-month expedition on the high seas. The era of great scientific

exploration is born. Two and a half centuries after this feat, the timepieces of Chronométrie FERDINAND BERTHOUD live on, in a contemporary interpretation of these extraordinarily precise measuring instruments. The Chronometer FERDINAND BERTHOUD FB1 in white gold was awarded the “Aiguille d’Or” by the Grand Prix d’Horlogerie de Genève 2016.

Chronomètre FB 1 Œuvre d’Or (Ref. FB 1.2-1)

L E C H R O N O M É T R I E R D E S E X P L O R AT E U R S ferdinandberthoud.ch GENEVA, LUCERNE, ZURICH Les Ambassadeurs · DUBAI Ahmed Seddiqi & Sons · GERMANY Wempe · MONACO Art in Time NEW YORK Cellini Jewelers · PARIS Dubail · SINGAPORE Sincere Fine Watches · TOKYO Yoshida

E D I T O R’ S L E T T E R

looking for products that support the environment and will avoid products that they know to be harmful. In order to become more sustainable companies are coming up with new business models that will be greener to the environment.

Rai Hamilton looks at the contentious issue of Brexit and considers where the British Empire will lie after the event.

The 76th International Venice Film Festival was a glittering affair opened by two of the world’s most alluring actresses, Juliette Binoche and Catherine Deneuve. Tiziana Rocca was in attendance and covers the event in this edition.

The Zurich Film Festival this year was well represented. Donald Sutherland, Cate Blanchett, Zendaya, Kirsten Stewart and Javier Barden were all in attendance. According to Maite Plimmer however the queen of the ball was Renee Zellweger, who returned to acting after a 6-year absence to star as Judy Garland in the hit film Judy.

A published author herself Caroline von Krockow reviews Michel Houellebecq’s latest book, Serotonin. It has impressed both French and International readers alike and could in time become a classic.

Dear Ccercle Friends, Welcome to the Winter edition of Ccercle Magazine. Our cover star for this edition is the beautiful and talented Leona Konig. She tells us of her passion for classical music and how that led her to establish the International Music Foundation for highly gifted children between the ages of five and sixteen.

We take a look at Chopard behind the scenes at the Cannes Film Festival. This year Chopard chose LOVE as the central theme around the activities at the 72nd Cannes International Film Festival. Here the beautiful jewellery from the Red-Carpet Collection 2019 was showcased.

The show concluded with a runway walk by Eva Herzigova, Maria Borges and Sui He. Burlesque artist Dita von Teese also gave a performance and Maria Carey sang her legendary hit songs.

In our My Vision of Life section we have Karl Friedrich Scheufele, the co-president of Chopard. He tells us how he became involved in the family business, how his proudest moment was when the L.U.C Full Strike timepiece won the 2017 “Aiguille d’Or” at the Grand Prix d’Horlogerie de Geneve. It was a model that they had been working on for 6 years and he explains how they had not expected such an honour. He tells us of his love for wine making and classic cars and the dreams he shares for the future of the family business with his sister Caroline.

Gemy Kim reports back from the Financial Times Business of Luxury Summit in Madrid.

Climate change and sustainability are increasingly pressing issues for us all, including the luxury companies. Customers are increasingly

Turning to fashion we report back from New York Fashion Week. Marc Jacobs, Tom Ford, Oscar de La Renta and many others all showcased their latest collections. Tommy Hilfiger and Zendaya held their second runway collection, by all accounts another huge success. Our London Fashion Week report is brought to you by Angelika Bolliger.

Christopher Kane, Burberry, Julien MacDonald and Victoria Beckham all revealed their latest collections. We also bring you reports from Milan and Paris Fashion Weeks.

Christina Estrada writes on the psychology of love, in her opinion the ultimate luxury.

Venice Biennale proved endlessly intriguing and thought provoking for Alessandra Zoppi. An event concluded with the Tiepolo Ball, co hosted by Venetian Heritage along with Dior and Rai TV in the beautiful Palazzo Labia. We also have Art Basel covered for you along with Frieze London and Cosmina Stan reviews the work of Aida Emelyanova in her exhibition, “I do whatever you humans do”.

Franck Drake travels to India and wonders at its mystical luxury. After taking in Mumbai and Bollywood he travelled to Varanasi, one of the few places in the world where they do cremation 24 hours a day. The desert heat at Burning Man is also covered in our travel section in this edition.

Back to psychology and we have Lucy Doughty writing an interesting piece on how life is not a zero-sum game, in fact there is no such thing as zero. Education is the foundation of everything that is beautiful.

Finally, in our In Conversation With section we have Fitri and James Hay, racing’s golden couple. Fitri spoke to us about the glamorous world of horse racing and what she loves about it.

We hope that you enjoy this edition of our magazine and wish you a wonderful holiday season,

GABRIELE SALVADORI Founder & Editor-in-Chief

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CONTENTS

MY FAVOURITES Leona König

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JEWELLLERY C h o pa r d L o v e N i g h t

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MY VISION OF LIFE K a r l -F r i e d r i c h S c h e u f e l e

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FT BUSIN ESS OF LUXURY SUMMIT G e my K i m

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SOFT LANDING J e a n -M a n u e l R o z a n

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BREXIT R a i H a m i lt o n

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VENEZIA 76 T i z i a n a R o cc a

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THE ZURICH FILM FESTIVAL Maite Plimmer

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“SEROTONINE” BOOK REVIEW C a r o l i n e v o n K r o cko w

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NEW YORK FASHION WEEK Indira Cesarine

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LONDON FASHION WEEK A n g e l i k a B o ll i g e r

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MILAN FASHION WEEK M a h s a N e j at i

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PARIS FASHION WEEK I n n a D u d a ko va

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LOVE - THE ULTIMATE LUXURY Christina Estrada

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VENICE BIENNALE A l e ss a n d r a Z o p p i

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ART BASEL A n d r e e a B e lb a

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FRIEZE LONDON K r y s ta l P r a k a i k a e w N a -R a n o n g

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I DO WHATEVER YOU HUMANS DO C o s m i n a S ta n

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EVOLUTION Christian Voigt

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CONTENTS

A MODERN DAY EXPLORER S i m o n P i g g ot t

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HIPPIES AND MYSTYCAL LUXURY F r a n ck D r a ke

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BURNING MAN 2019-METAMORPHOSES Nisha Khare

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LIFE IS NOT A ZERO GAME Lucy Doughty

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CCERCLE PARTNER HOTELS

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IN CONVERSATION WITH F i t r i a n d J a m e s H ay

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EMBRACE AMBITION WITH YOUR HEALTH Valeria Acampora

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MONIKA BACARDI’S BIRTHDAY PARTY S t .T r o p e z

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UNICEF SUMMER GALA P o rto C e rvo

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ALFIE’S BIG ONE BIRTHDAY PARTY Venice

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THE COLLECTOR PARTY AT HOTEL BAUR AU LAC Zurich

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ANGEL BALL 2019 New York

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E d ito r ia l co o rdinato r: Cathe rine M c Q ue e n info @c c e rc le .co m Fo r a d ve r t is in g p le a s e co ntac t: N adya.Ars e k ina@c c e rc le .co m | + 4 4 ( 0) 7985 3 4 2 2 4 6 Cercle International Ltd ® 5 Vigo Street, Mayfair, London, W1S 3HB, UK Ccercle is a ® Registered Trademark. Printing in whole or in part is expressly forbidden without written permission from the publisher.

The publisher declines any responsibility for manuscripts and photos sent directly.

The views expressed in the magazine are those of the contributors and are not necessarily shared by the magazine. © 2019 - Ccercle Ltd ®. All right reserved.

Design and layout: Xenia Galchenkova galoksii@mail.ru Print: Petrilli Group S.r.l - Italy Print run: 20.000 copies Follow us on Twitter @ccercle, Instagram @ccercle & Facebook

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Jacket: EVA ROJE Model: Irina Morozova Photographer: Anna Antosik Maison noir Boutique 29 rue de Millo, 98000 Monaco www.evaroje.com

M Y F AV O U R I T E S

L eona König A R T S | T R AV E L | FA S H I O N | C U LT U R E | I N T E R I O R S | C A R S | L E I S U R E | E C O N O M I C S

Cover photo:

A N E W E X PE R I E NC E BE YON D LU X U RY

IS SU E N.18

Chopard necklace from the Haute Joaillerie collection featuring oval-shaped emeralds

LUC Y DOUGH T Y

(33.24cts) pear-shaped diamonds (30cts)

C HOPA R D L OV E N IGH T

L I FE I S N O T A Z E R O S U M G A M E

round- shaped diamonds (1.34cts) marquise-

AT C A N N E S F I L M FE S T I VA L

A LVA RO DE M A R IC H A L A R

cut diamonds (5.99cts ) and brilliant-cut

A M O D E R N D AY E X P L O RE R

diamonds (4.35cts) set in white gold.

K A R L - F R I E DR IC H S C H EU F E L E

JEAN-MANUEL ROZ A N

Chopard watch from the Green Carpet

M Y V I S I O N O F L I FE

featuring two pear- shaped emeralds (47cts) two pear-brilliant cut diamonds ( 2cts) four pear-

SOFT LANDING

shaped diamonds (2.40cts) and eight marquise

C H R I ST I NA E ST R A DA

cut diamonds (3.86cts) set in white gold.

L OV E - T H E U LT I M AT E L U X U RY

collection featuring an emerald paved dial,

Chopard earrings from the Red Carpet collection

marquise-cut emeralds (11.72cts) and

L E ONA KÖN IG

diamonds set in FairMined white gold on an

Golden Not e of Au st r ia

emerald green alligator strap.

Chopard ring from the Haute Joaillerie collection featuring one octagonal step cut emerald (13.36cts) and diamonds set in white gold.

Photo: Irina Valeri Hair: Mel Michael Montajes Make up: Joana Managan Ronquillo Special thank you for the location to Hotel de Paris Monte Carlo.

CLASSICAL MUSIC

I love Puccini and Verdi Operas and their superb stagecraft,

My heart is beating for the deepness of classical music, which

the wonderful ability to unite music, words and drama in a

I have listened to since I was a child.

single moment. Verdi’s and Puccini’s Operas have the most popular and unforgettable love stories ever written.

Classical music belongs to our culture. The important part of the education of our children, which are our future, is classi-

In my opinion classical music is the finest art. I like to see

cal music. For this reason it is very important to present them

numerous artists, preparing themselves for their music. It is

the beauty of the music in the early age for a deeper under-

a big and long process of studying. Imagine Giuseppe Ver-

standing of emotions. Even in pregnancy it is important, that

di’s opera “Nabucco” with the highest number of musicians

the mother shares this love with her baby by listening to it.

standing on the stage and playing music together, this it is a big challenge.

Chopin and his romantic music is one of my favorite composers: his rare gift to create very personal melodies, expressive

I also appreciate very much the music of one of the leading

of heartfelt emotion: his music is penetrated by a poetic feel-

pianists of Russian music in the late romantic period, Sergei

ing, that has an almost universal appeal.

Rachmaninoff and the dramatic moments connected to his music.

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M Y F AV O U R I T E S

Chopard sautoir from the Happy Hearts collection featuring inlayed hearts with green chalcedony agate stone and three dancing diamonds set in white gold.

Chopard cluster ring from the Happy Hearts collection featuring inlayed hearts with mother of pearl and one dancing diamond set in white gold.

Chopard bangle from the Happy Hearts collection featuring four dancing diamonds surrounded with paved diamonds set in white gold.

Chopard bangle from the Happy Hearts collection featuring a mother of pearl inlayed heart with a dancing diamond set in white gold.

Chopard bangle from the Happy Hearts collection featuring an opal inlayed heart surrounded by paved diamonds , one dancing diamond set in white gold.

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Chopard bangle from the Happy Hearts collection featuring a chalcedony agate green inlayed heart with a dancing diamond set in white gold.

M Y F AV O U R I T E S

Jewellery by Chopard

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M Y F AV O U R I T E S

Leona König with her highly talented musicians at their latest concert “Support for Jung Talents“

With Juan Diego Florez

THE IM-FOUNDATION

INSPIRATION

In April 2016, I founded the IMF – International Music Foundation for

The inspiration for starting the Foundation was my daughter, who start-

Highly Gifted Children, based in Vienna. Its purpose is to support tal-

ed to play piano at three and a half years old. In the year of IMF’s crea-

ented children between the age of five and sixteen in their musical devel-

tion, I was living in Monaco and traveled with my daughter for her piano

opment, making classical music accessible to a broader audience, par-

competitions and concerts. Then I realized how beautiful this world of

ticularly to the younger generation. This support is carried out through

passion and love for music is, where children are the protagonists, hav-

organising age- appropriate masterclasses, auditions and concerts. Mu-

ing a lot of inner boost and motivation to win, to compete and to per-

sically gifted children are selected at an audition by professional judges,

form. I saw also how much the small musicians look for the satisfaction

who are chosen from the most important institutions of Austria. The

coming from their performances and therefore I decided to participate

finalists perform at the gala concert “Golden Note”. Here they can show

in making this musical world for talented children better. Of course, this

their talents on the big stage, subsequently receiving awards of achieve-

is only possible with the big support, not only of parents, professors,

ment presented by an honorable committee. The finalists receive finan-

music institutions, artists and politics, but especially with the support

cial support as well as masterclasses on the highest level, in order to

of sponsors who open their heart for music and children, making the

present the gifted children with numerous possibilities to receive expert

world of music better, because everything starts from the young gener-

tuition. The tuition is individualised according to their specific develop-

ations. Liechtensteinische Landesbank, as our main sponsor, Chopard,

ment needs, allowing them the opportunity to learn from experienced

Kronen, Zeitung and some others show us how important this topic is in

professional musicians. In addition to the music award Golden Note,

the cultural and intellectual world of each of us. I want to give thanks for

IMF organises benefit concerts and other events, where the young tal-

the generosity of these beautiful people.

ents may gain experience in performance.

THE FOUNDATION WITH FAMILY LIFE Take the opportunity to become a member now and help us to foster young

Since I founded the International Music Foundation for highly gifted

talents, all the informations related to our membership are on our website

children nothing occupies my brain more. The children and the music

www.im-foundation.com. @ goldene_note

became the biggest part of my life. On the other hand, I started to carry with me a huge responsibility towards the children, the music institu-

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M Y F AV O U R I T E S

With Caroline Scheufele

With Ivana Ilic-Labia

With Federico Pastorello tions, towards the sponsors and at the end also towards the public. I try to

before they are reached. But the year 2020 will bring us many great sur-

balance this pressure, thanks to my partner Federico Pastorello, who shows

prises and great success and the Golden Note will be seen on television on

big understanding and love for this project. We don´t live together, but I try

ORF III at the end of June 2020. What I plan in the near future are small

to find time for us between my work and my daughter. Until now it works

concerts and performances for the young talents and at the end of Novem-

very well and I hope as well, that we will manage to involve a new country,

ber a Press Conference where important information regarding next year

where we could help other young, talented musicians, outside of Austria.

will be shared.

The Golden Note has become a well-known name and it deserves to be

CHOPARD WATCHES AND JEWELRY

presented in other countries as well.

Chopard is for me the most beautiful luxury brand existing since 1860.

INTERTWINING MUSIC AND FASHION

Many times, the jewelry and watches have a theme, which you can see on

My first instinct would tell me to split music, children and fashion but the

their design. The palm, symbol of the Cannes Film Festival, is reflected in

best approach is exactly the opposite. Already the first year of the Golden

the watches and other jewelry pieces, touching luxury with the finest ele-

Note showed me, that we can successfully combine fashion designers and

gance and creativity. Chopard is for me a brand which carries the highest

performing musicians. I have a co-operation with the designers, who are

quality and works with 100% ethical gold. What I appreciate is Chopard’s

dressing up the performers. I enjoy beautiful things in life as anyone, there-

eco-responsibility by asserting a determination to work in a respectful way

fore I have a lot of interest in fashion and from this point of view I have

towards human beings and the environment. Chopard is for me the most

many contacts who are mostly very useful for my foundation.

beautiful and elegant jewelry maker and every person who wears this jewelry makes a lifetime investment as well as for the next generations.

LOOKING TO THE FUTURE I have exact visions for the foundation and exact ideas of how to support

FAVOURITE CHOPARD QUALITIES

young musicians internationally. This needs a lot of my energy, a lot of

Caroline Scheufele is an incredible and generous person who is dedicated

ideas regarding how to reach targets and many contacts and networking.

to her brand. She has a big heart for people who are in need and participates

I have been reaching all my targets very fast and I fully believe that I will

in helping the world to be a better place. We can see how big Caroline’s

go on in this way. I don´t want to specify the details of these targets shortly

heart is from her activities with many charities, which demonstrates her

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M Y F AV O U R I T E S

Chopard earrings from the Haute Joaillerie collection featuring oval-shaped rubies (10.43cts) and diamonds (2.37cts) set in white gold

Chopard cuff bracelet from the Red Carpet collection featuring pear- shaped diamonds (73.69cts) set in white gold

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M Y F AV O U R I T E S

commitment to noble causes. She didn´t only create the “Happy Hearts

tions, trying to build a network with other foundations internationally.

Collection”, she also supports a charity that helps rebuild schools and children’s lives after natural disasters, people affected by leukemia, as well as

FAVOURITE CITIES

supporting the families of children with handicaps. Caroline Scheufele has

The city I live in now is Vienna, I moved from Monaco. Before I was living

many beautiful sides and one of those is her love for music, which allows

Prague.

me to support musically highly gifted children.

I chose Vienna because I am of the opinion that Vienna is an incredible

DAILY ROUTINE AND BEAUTY REGIMEN

city to live in and Austria has a great education. As we all know, it has been

I don´t really know if I have a routine life. I am not sure if that is fortunate,

voted the number one place for the highest lifestyle, way before London,

or not. But as my work is not only focused in Austria and as my private life

Paris and Zurich. I suppose, it is because of the big music world and its

is concentrated in many places around the world, it is difficult to describe

events, which are taking place in Vienna thanks to the big opera houses,

a daily routine. In any case, this is the routine program of a day in Vienna:

numerous theaters, concert houses and music halls, as well as the large

Immediately when I get up I read the newspaper and then I meet my assis-

number of museums and exhibitions. Concerning the culinary aspects, of

tant, Olimpia for all the issues relating to my work for the young musicians,

course I love Sacher Cakes, sometimes I just go next to the opera house to

which takes already a couple of hours, then I have meetings with my part-

eat the best Sacher cake at the Sacher Hotel or a delicious dessert at Demel

ners and artists. The second part of the day belongs to my daughter, who I

and personally Gerstner’s chocolate in Vienna is my secret love. For the

love more than everything.

harmony of the soul we need to travel, to see other places, other cultures and other languages.

Concerning my beauty regime, every morning I do a fast make up and this is for me the best way to do it. Of course, a sports program in the day of

My favorite city to spend a couple of days in with my romantic love is Paris.

every woman should not be missed. I push myself to do three to four times

Although in the past years many terrorist attacks happened there, which I

a week a fitness lesson with a personal trainer, because it is very important

personally experienced. It is heart breaking to have seen the atmosphere

and healthy to keep the body defined and have good skin as well.

in the days after. But I believe – and we can see it already- that people are forgetting very fast and Paris is developing in a colorful way.

What has become very important for me in the past

My heart belongs to the

few years is to avoid the sun,

sea; my soul finds a spe-

in order to maintain young,

cial feeling looking at the

beautiful skin.

sunset over the sea. I just came from America and I

SOCIAL AND PHILANTHROPIC LIFE

confirmed again that we are

Of course, social life is a

because here you have the

very important part of my

most beautiful places with a

life, it always has been and

lot of quality, beauty, incred-

especially since I started my

ible nature, culture and art.

activities in the foundation,

Europe because here you

which takes most of my time

have the most beautiful plac-

and has become a tremen-

es with a lot of quality, beau-

dous part of my life. Going to

ty, incredible nature, culture

the events connected to mu-

and art.

very lucky to live in Europe

sic, visiting operas, going to the events of artists meeting other artists, taking part in the events of my sponsors, going to the events to get the right and helpful connec-

Presentation of the IM-Foundation with the Main Sponsor Liechtensteinische Landesbank 18

J E W E L L E RY

C hopard LOVE Night CANNES FILM FESTIVAL 2019

Ballerina’s performance

CANNES, MAY 17TH, 2019 – THE SCENT OF ROMANCE WAFTED GENTLY THROUGH THE DREAMY SETTING OF THE CHOPARD LOVE NIGHT DURING AN EVENING FULL OF SURPRISES, NOTABLY FEATURING A DRAMATIC PERFORMANCE BY OPERA SINGERS ANNA NETREBKO AND YUSIF EYVAZOV, A STAGE ACT BY ARTISTE DITA VON TEESE AND A RUNWAY SHOW OF HAUTE JOAILLERIE CREATIONS FROM THE RED CARPET COLLECTION. A CONCERT BY GLOBAL SUPERSTAR MARIAH CAREY WAS THE CROWNING MOMENT OF THE NIGHT’S FESTIVITIES.

Caroline Scheufele, Adrien Brody, Julianne Moore

This year, Chopard has chosen LOVE as the central theme of its activities at the 72nd Cannes International Film Festival. Among the ties between the creative universe of Chopard, the Artisan of Emotions, and the world that inspires it, LOVE is an unconditional value. Through her eclectic curiosity and tender-hearted vision of everything around her, Caroline Scheufele is capable of perceiving the energy and beauty of her surroundings. With her jewellery creations, she transforms and reinvents them in her own terms. From the people around her to the animal and plant world, from art history to research and innovation, Caroline Scheufele nourishes her benevolent curiosity with each and every detail. This pool of colours, materials, references and stories shines through the uniquely inventive collections of the Maison Chopard, where human beings are at the heart of creativity.

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J E W E L L E RY

LOVE set the tone for the grand soirée organized by Chopard; and

the Opera beneath an impressive pendant chandelier measuring five metres in diam-

at which the decoration designed by the Maison embodied a splen-

eter. The dinner notably featured a performance by one of the most talented opera

did tribute to the film sets of the great romantic movies.

singer power couples: soprano Anna Netrebko and her husband, tenor Yusif Eyvazov, who performed three of the most beautiful opera duets to a piano accompani-

Chopard and cinema are engaged in a perpetually renewed love

ment (“O soave fanciulla” from Puccini’s La Bohème; “Libiamo be lieti calici” from

story together. As the jeweller of red carpets the world over, the

Verdi’s La Traviata; and “Non ti scordar di me” by Ernesto de Curtis).

Maison enjoys adorning actresses and actors with its creations, whether for appearances during the premieres of their films or

At the end of the dinner, ten pairs of models adorned with the Red Carpet Collection

during the shooting process. In Paramount Pictures’ film Rocket-

brought a radiant glow to Chopard’s Haute Joaillerie creations. From the initial idea

man, Chopard gives a uniquely special touch to Welsh actor Taron

through to its fulfilment by the Chopard Haute Joaillerie workshops, the dazzling Red

Egerton by lending watch and jewellery creations for his perfor-

Carpet Collection dons its luminous apparel, driven by the expertise and talent of its

mance as Elton John.

Mains d’Art. To mark the opening ceremony of the Cannes Festival on May 14th, Caroline Scheufele unveiled 72 necklaces, bracelets, rings, earrings, brooches and

“Sir Elton John is a very dear friend of mine, hugely gifted in his

jewellery watches that she has conceptualised for the legendary ‘montée des march-

talent, whether it is in his music which I absolutely love or his

es’ red carpet ritual: an anthem to colour and daring shapes, as well as a celebration

style and persona. Rocketman emphasises further just how much

of precious stones and rich poetic references – all conveying the single and universal

of an inspiration Sir Elton is, through his incomparable panache

message of love.

and story. I was delighted to participate on this movie and wanted to ensure that Chopard jewellery and watches creations would

Among them is a set comprising a necklace and a pair of earrings in which splen-

help transform actor Taron Egerton into Sir Elton John!” Caroline

did heart-shaped tanzanites, Paraiba tourmalines, amethysts and diamonds meet and

Scheufele, Chopard Co-President and Artistic Director of Chopard.

Adrien Brody, Kelsey Evenson, DJ Cassidy

Caroline Scheufele and Julianne Moore At the party, guests were welcomed on a coloured carpet created by Aquafil from a fibre made entirely from recycled plastic such as end-of-life fishing nets – and perfectly reflecting the Maison’s ethical commitments. Among

Dita von Teese in Chopard

those gracing the event were Friend of the Maison Julianne Moore, along with Elle Fanning (member of the

mingle in beautifully light gold circles

jury of the 72nd Cannes International Film Festival),

of ethical white gold and titanium. The

Richard Madden, Liu Tao, Amber Heard, Priyanka Cho-

necklace alone called for 500 hours of

pra and her husband Nick Jonas, Adrian Brody, Araya

work, testifying to the quintessence

Hargate (Chopard brand ambassador), Izabel Goulart,

of jewellery excellence embodied by

Marica Pellegrinelli, Petra Nemcova and Catrinel Mar-

Chopard. A quest for perfection that

lon. This enchanting setting was a fitting prelude to the dinner staged in a ballroom inspired by the Phantom of

Sir Elton John

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Caroline Scheufele expresses right the way through to the choice of breathtak-

J E W E L L E RY

Zhang Ziyi in Chopard Elle Fanning in Chopard

Daniella Tarantino in Chopard with Quentin Tarantino Caroline Scheufele and Richard Madden

Tatiana Navka in Chopard

Huma Qureshi in Chopard

Natalia Vodianova in Chopard

Maria Borges at the show

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Belen Hostalet in Chopard

J E W E L L E RY

Jewellery from the Red Carpet collection 2019

ingly beautiful precious gems. Witness a 111-carat cabochon-cut emerald mounted on a floral-inspired necklace, as well as exceptional pink diamonds showcased on solitaire rings.

This year, the collection incorporates some exceptional new pieces, starting with a superb cuff bracelet featuring volutes composed of more than 25 carats of diamonds and which required no less than 340 hours of work by the Mains d’Art of the Maison. A necklace and a pair of matching earrings also join the line-up, featuring white gold and diamonds forming fine jewellery lacework emblematic of the Maison Chopard. Commensurate with the ethical criteria of the Green Carpet Collection, these three jewellery creations are crafted in ethical ‘Fairmined’ certified gold and sparkle with diamonds sourced exclusively from RJC approved suppliers.

The glittering show concluded with a final runway walk by Eva Herzigova, Maria Borges and Sui He. Guests then crossed the stage to admire an enchanted forest planted with flowering trees under a dreamily misty sky. Burlesque artiste Dita von Teese also gave a performance that was both charming and sensual.

Finally, when the clock struck midnight, international pop and R&B star Mariah Carey appeared on stage, electrifying the audience with her legendary hit songs: Emotions, Always be my baby, My All, Touch my Body, Vision of Love, We Belong Together and Hero. Following the prolonged applause honouring this exceptional concert, guests danced the night away to the sounds of DJ Cassidy on the turntables.

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MY VISION OF LIFE

K arl-F riedrich SCHEUFELE EARLIEST MEMORIES

Some of my earliest memories as a child are of taking my bicycle over to my parents’ factory in Pforzheim, Germany. I loved to handcraft collages with watch parts and other materials left over in the workshops. Then, at the beginning of my twenties I truly pursued my passion for fine watchmaking when I designed the St. Moritz watch, the first steel watch of Chopard at that time, which is the inspiration behind the new Alpine Eagle collection.

FAMILY BUSINESS

Being a family owned and independent company is one of our main strengths and this is clearly an advantage. As one of the last family Maisons in the Haute Horlogerie and High Jewellery field, we can pursue long-term visions and projects without having to please investors, seeking short-term profit. While we put a lot of emphasis on innovation and creativity, we strongly believe that tradition, respect of heritage and exceptional artisanship contribute to our success. We develop collections with passion. When entering a Chopard boutique, customers can feel the family dimension. This enables us to provide a privileged contact and added “customers experience”, which is also the case inside our Manufacture, where our staff members appreciate the “family atmosphere”.

MY PROUDEST MOMENT

When the L.U.C Full Strike timepiece won the 2017 “Aiguille d’Or” at the Grand Prix d’Horlogerie de Genève.

I knew that we had created a truly unique model, but I did not anticipate such a great honour. We are very proud of this achievement.

The L.U.C Full Strike was launched as a crowning point of the celebrations marking the 20th anniversary of Chopard Manufacture. For more than six years, we had been working on this model, which is one of the most sophisticated chiming watches to date.

BACK TO THE FUTURE (REVIVAL OF FERDINAND BERTHOUD)

Ferdinand Berthoud was one of the greatest watchmakers of his time; the 18th century, called the Enlightenment. His creations were truly visionary, both technically and aesthetically, but they also opened the way for great progress in the field of naval chronometry in France and the world over. Ferdinand Berthoud’s timepieces accompanied explorers and scientists. With our contemporary collections we wish to pay tribute to him while going further still.

We have decided to revive his famous name and transcend it. We make exceptional watches with a contemporary spirit, we interpret the vision of Berthoud with respect. Nevertheless, our approach is far from classical, the values stay but we work with new materials, innovative features, etc.

INNOVATION & CREATIVITY

When I was 22, I went to my father’s office with a concept that, in my opinion, was incredibly innovative and modern: I wanted to create a stainless-steel sports watch! At that time, Chopard worked exclusively with

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MY VISION OF LIFE

25

MY VISION OF LIFE

gold. My father accepted the challenge and the St. Moritz soon became a bestseller and one of our icons.

About five years ago, my son Karl-Fritz discovered a model of the St. Moritz watch in the drawer of my desk. After wearing it for a few days, he was certain that it could be reinterpreted without losing its character. He came to see me trying to convince me about his idea.

To be honest, I wasn’t at first particularly interested because I believed that the St. Moritz watch was an icon and icons must be preserved as such. Karl-Fritz insisted and asked my father for help. My son then worked on the first prototype along with his grandfather and introduced it to me… This is how the project started.

With the Alpine Eagle, we faced a major creative challenge, because it is a complex process

to invent a new timepiece, but it is sometimes even more difficult to reinterpret a great design. We wanted to keep the essence of the St. Moritz but add a modern twist with new and sharper designs to the watch. Key elements that we focused on were the dials, the bezel, functionalities and the aesthetic look of the watch. Another important innovation, of which the development required four years of research, is the new Lucent Steel A223, exclusively used for this watch.

It is also the first time that my father, my son, and myself have been working together on a new watch. I believe that it is quite unique in the industry to have three generations of the same family co-developing a new creation.

WINE MAKING/ WINE “AFICIONADO”

Wine is one of my passions and so, for more than 25 years, my wife and I were looking for a wine domain in France. We then fell in love with Chateau Monestier-La Tour located in the Bergerac region, in the southwest of France. We acquired it in 2012 and converted the entire vineyard to organic and biodynamic viticulture. I discovered that making wine is very similar to making watches. With wine, as with watches, the passion and the craftsmanship, a sense of precision and quality as well as patience are essential. Additionally, for wine, we must rely on nature: people are dependent on her. But even with time, people do not master nature. A wine-maker has just one chance during the year to make a great

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MY VISION OF LIFE

search, ecology, art and culture. Therefore, we have been supporting the fantastic work of Tenor Jose Carreras through the José Carreras Leukemia Foundation for years now. We also support various foundations such as the Alpine Eagle Foundation designed to raise awareness with respect to the importance, beauty and fragility of Alpine biotopes, Petra Nemcova’s All Hands and Hearts Foundation to help communities impacted by natural disasters and also Natalia Vodianova’s Naked Heart Foundation, Centrepoint charity in the UK and many other local projects…

wine – in watchmaking we have a little more room. Watches can be collected and passed down from one generation to the next, which is not always the case with wine. There are only a few wines that can span generations without a loss of quality.

CLASSIC CARS

My father shaped my passion for collecting cars. He is a classic car collector himself and he definitely inspired me.

For us, classic racing and watchmaking are all part of the same world of sophisticated and accomplished mechanical engineering. We share the drivers’ passion for high-precision mechanics and for exceptional objects. I think that lovers of fine cars often have a weakness for fine timepieces, and vice versa. In both cases, extreme precision and sporting elegance are especially important.

DREAMS

I have a dream that I share with my sister Caroline. It is about achieving more ethics in the watch and jewellery industry. We sincerely hope that more key players from our industry will join us in our movement and effort to sustainable luxury by putting ethics at the heart of aesthetics. Nowadays, it is key that the luxury business leads the way for more transparency. Ethics have always been an important part of our family philosophy.

The Mille Miglia that is called “La corsa piu bella del mundo”, is the most important and prestigious historical regularity rally, with a large panel of exceptional automobiles and we have been the official timekeeper and main partner of the race since 1988. I have participated in the race every year since then; countless times with my dear friend and racing legend Jacky Ickx but also with my wife Christine. This year was particularly special for me as my daughter Caroline-Marie took part in the race as my copilot for the very first time. She has also inherited the family passion for classic cars, and I am very happy about that.

We started the “Journey to sustainable luxury” in 2013 and since then, we are aiming to increase our sustainability approach to all the aspects of our business. 2018 was a special milestone as we committed to using 100 % Ethical gold for the production of all our watches and jewellery. It is a bold commitment, but one that we must pursue if we are to make a difference to the lives of people who make our business possible. We have been able to achieve this because more than 40 years ago, we developed a vertically integrated in-house production, and invested in mastering all crafts internally, from creating a rare in-house gold foundry as early as 1978, to integrating the skills

PHILANTHROPY

Giving back to the ones who are less privileged has always been a priority for my family. Since the very beginning, we have been involved in patronage activities in different fields including medical re-

of high jewellery artisans and expert watchmakers.

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BUSI NESS

FT Business of L uxury Summit, M adrid 2019

By Gemy Kim

T

he Luxury Summit that is held by the Financial Times every year, was celebrated in Madrid, a city full of cultural, social and culinary propositions. Full of life, it is a city where the tourism in 2018 was as high as 10.2 million visitors, spending was over 9 billion euros and GDP was €41,810. That is why it is a good location to host an event like this one for companies that provide luxury services and products. This year, some of the topics that were touched upon last year in Venice are still pertinent now. As the climate changes at an ever-greater speed, with environmental damage around the world exponentially increasing, sustainability is a pressing issue for everybody, including the luxury companies. Customers look for products that support the environment and will avoid products that become known for being harmful, so companies, both luxury and not, need to make some efforts to tackle the issue. To become more sustainable, firms have to come up with new business models that will be greener to the environment. Some examples of these new value propositions were presented in Madrid including Vestiare Collective and Panoply City.

Vestiare Collective is a platform where buyers and sellers of second-hand luxury products are matched, with the firm first curating the assortment in the catalog and receiving the merchandise to authenticate it. Maximilian Bittner, CEO, explains “We want to curate the World’s most desirable wardrobes and find the right owners for each product at the right time of its lifecycle.” One of Bittner’s ideas, which I found very interesting, is the use of block chain in the future to get the statistics to value one’s wardrobe, not only with the pricing at the point of sale, but also how

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Panel discussion new language, new leadership, new luxury

the value evolves and how much each garment is used. This would allow us to get to know our behavior better, and to be able to maximize the usage of each piece of clothing.

Another interesting example of how to utilize clothing more efficiently is the company Panoply City. Women sometimes wear some pieces of clothing very sparingly, maybe just once or twice when it’s a very special piece, these are then not put to use again and occupy space in the closet. Panoply City has a full collection of stylish clothes for rent, so that one does not need to invest so much money or space in a fashionable and contemporary wardrobe. The service includes dry-cleaning, delivery and pick up, making it is very easy for the customer to use, all for a fraction of the cost of the garment. There are two ways of payment, one is a price per garment and another is a monthly subscription price, in which the client can rent up to 8 pieces of clothing for €319 per month.

It is a great concept that is now delivering in France, the UK and Belgium. Ingrid Brochard, Co-founder of the company, very rightly says: “Own your style, not your clothes!” and that way you make less waste.

Not only is there innovation in the services offered nowadays, but also in the materials that are used to make pieces of clothing. Second to oil, the textile industry is the largest polluter in the world, responsible for nearly 20% of global waste water and 15.1 million tons of waste in 2013. Pangaia is a “material science brand and industrial bioengineering conglomerate” that researches problem solving innovations and brings these to the world, commercializing them with products sold to the end customer as well as to other brands as well. Pangaia is filling the lack of R&D in the garment industry with their strong focus in new materials research, like seaweed fiber T-shirts, flower based down for jackets, or leather made from mushrooms. It is uplifting to see that there are women-led companies out there (all the management team is made up of women) that take the time and effort to come up with

solutions and new ways of manufacturing textiles and clothing, from bio, lab-grown, recycled and natural materials.

One more interesting technological advancement in the luxury business has been the development of laboratory made diamonds. These have the same physical, chemical and optical properties as mined diamonds. They can only be differentiated using specialized equipment, but the cost for a 1 carat GVS lab-grown diamond is $300-$500, whereas an earth-made 1 carat diamond has a cost of 10 or 15 times that of a manmade one. As Laura Chavez, founder of Lark and Berry, says: “they last forever and they are real, but they do not displace land, wildlife or people,” making them the social and ecological choice of jewelry, while at the same time making diamonds more affordable. DeBeers explained that although it still has most of its investments tied to mines that extract the precious stone from the earth, they also have invested in facilities for manufacturing man made diamonds. With time, Stephen Lussier, chairman of Forevermark and Executive Vice-president of the DeBeers group, predicts that lab made diamonds will decrease in price drastically whereas the natural ones will stay at the price point they are in now due to their scarcity. He argues that there will be space for both kinds of diamonds in the market, the earth extracted ones being the more exclusive ones, for more special occasions. If only a machine can tell the difference, I wonder if the customer will appreciate the difference enough to justify the price variation.

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Emmanuel Gintzburger, Chief Executive Officer Alexander McQueen

Panel discussion diamonds disrupted

REMO RUFFINI, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer MONCLER

Ross Bailey, Founder and CEO of Appear Here and Richard Found, CEO of Foundpop and Found Associates discussed the new ways customers have changed when it comes to the spaces they shop in and how brands have had to adapt to these, making use of retail space and locations in a different way. Appear Here is a broker for retail space that has been able to succeed in a time of popup stores and short retail space rentals. Shop rentals nowadays range from 5-6 weeks to 5 years compared with rental contracts for the duration of 20 years that were done some years ago. Retailers want to book the location of their store as a variable cost and rent as they go, instead of it being an overhead cost. This means that locations are forced to be flexible and need to be able to reinvent themselves as well; today they are a subway station, tomorrow a hip men’s apparel point of sale and the day after it can be an art center. The younger consumer is looking for authenticity,

sometimes wanting to discover the “secret store” that not everybody knows from Instagram. Appear Here curates not just one store, but several spaces in the area in order to create this point of interest for the customer, sometimes taking over a whole street or roundabout instead of just a couple of stores. As Ross Bailey puts it, “Stores are becoming Billboards… We want people to stop in their tracks, stare and pause whatever they are doing” so they remember the store and its products. To complement this concept, Foundpop works together with Appear Here, to furbish Popup stores by renting them the furniture needed in their retail space. It is another way of keeping the shop a variable cost and being flexible to adapt to the wishes of the brand’s customers. For a new brand, it might be interesting to have a physical presence for a limited promotional action and the rest of the time just to be present online.

The combination of online and offline efforts in order to make a strong community is increasing in importance. Blogs can become Key Opinion Leaders (KOL’s), prescriptors of services or products, that translate their opinion into sales of a service or product, or inversely, in the non-sale of these. Frederic Court, Founder and Managing Director of Felix Capital, has been increasing the investments in online initiatives that can be then developed into sales, like Goop or High Snobiety. These were blogs that have developed online shopping possibilities which are integrated into their content, and have been able to even go further by creating physical spaces for their community, for example, Goop Café and Goop Health. The embodi-

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Gala dinner

ment of this is K11, a company founded by Adrian Cheng in 2008. With his community of over 64,000 followers, he has now built MUSEA, a $2.6 billion investment for the next 10 years, where culture, art and creativity will mesh together to make a Museum by the Sea, which is also a mall. Culture and retail mixed together. He has also created K11 Artus, serviced apartments that celebrate antique Chinese culture with a display of traditional artisanship and artisanal pieces throughout the building.

The personal goods luxury market is still a very successful area of business, with constant growth, but it needs to be rethought. The forces of pressure coming from the sustainability aspect as well as from technology and innovation, demand new products, services and selling methods. We will have to wait and see what they propose in the future.

Sidney Toledano, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer LVMH Fashion Group

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ECONOMICS

SOFT LANDING

By Jean-Manuel Rozan

E

veryone; pundits, economists, journalists, all kinds of people who are in the business of giving their opinion about the stock market are almost unanimous: the next crack is just around the corner. I think this position is essentially wrong for many reasons. The first one of course is that, since March 2009 the stock market has sky-rocketed to the biggest bull market in the history of mankind and all major stocks have reached new highs, while those mentioned earlier, the specialists, the economists, the pundits, the journalists paid to give their opinion on the stock market have all consistently predicted the next downfall every day for the past 10 years. In other words, they have completely missed the big picture, have not understood the bull market that we are in and have no clue as to what is going on, therefore they have no clue what will happen next.

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they sell it. So, all the free advice is to not be considered and to be trashed. I want to remind our readers today that for instance a company which is not an internet start-up, such as steady and predictable LVMH, traded at about 60 euros 10 years ago in March 2009, and now it’s worth 400 euros. So, should you do something as simple as buying LVMH and hold it you would have made 7 times or 8 times your money. Everyone who thought the next crack may happen tomorrow would have stopped you either from buying LVMH at 60 euros or from holding it all the way.

An object of marvel, indeed. In my lifetime as an investor and trader, which started in 1983, I have never seen such a unanimous consent that things are going to get worse every day and no one understands why stocks are going up and give a false reason. What they say is that stocks are going up because of the increase in liquidity due to the monetary policy of central banks (QE). Therefore, they deduct that when liquidity will stop stocks will crash.

If that was so simple and if markets would work in such a simple way everyone would understand what is going on and everyone would be rich. Those who give their opinion, by the way, should be reminded of the following; if their opinion was worth something why they would give it? Those who have an opinion that is worth something either they don’t give it or

So, the way to get rich in the past 10 years was to invest in stock market and to stay invested and you shouldn’t listen to what people are telling you now; that the way to get rich now is to go short the stock market.

There is a very old saying: a bull market escalates a wall of worry and anxiety, and a bear market descends a wall of confidence. Hence discard the anxiety about central bank liquidity.

I think disaster is not ready to happen. That doesn’t mean that we will continue to see capital gains and stock market gains at the pace of the past 10 years because that is not sustainable. So, between a crack and the end of bull market there is another scenario which I favour and that scenario is a soft landing.

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Soft landing is possible because what created the bull market is still in full swing but cannot continue with such strength as it has in the past.

What created the bull market of the last 10 years is an incredible technological breakthrough, often called a paleontological disruption that has affected every corner of the economy and every person in the world. This digital transformation is really a transverse way to improve the productivity of companies and people around the world thanks to digital tools. It has reached the depths of Africa where people now make transactions on their cell-phones, it has reached all the civilized world, it has reached people who do multi-tasks from work and home, it has reached everyone in the world.

This transformation that started 10 years ago is not slowing down, it’s accelerating. The pace of innovation everywhere in the world is like a sea that would start to bubble everywhere and the gain in productivity, the gain in awareness, the gain in knowledge, the gain in consumer spending, because of the ability you have to consume, all of that is snowballing, and this is what has transformed companies and economies. This is what explains the bull market. This bull market is much longer than in the past because we are in the middle of this very historical paleoethological disruption. It’s not about to stop. Technology that first changed the internet is now changing 36

ECONOMICS

the production of electricity, the production of plastic, mobility, ecology, the production of food, and new protein. It has so many aspects and so many wings and it’s going on everywhere in the world.

There are pockets of innovation everywhere in France, in Germany, in England, China, Asia, obviously everywhere in America, you don’t have just one Silicon Valley anymore that dominates, you have pools of innovation everywhere in the world. Of course many, many start-ups will fail, but the innovation of start-ups is now being transmitted to very large companies, much faster than before. This still has some time to run, maybe 10-20 years. It will also of course affect healthcare, medicine, biotechs and it’s making individuals healthier for a longer time. Because it is a truly global phenomenon that has a phenomenal strength, it cannot be stopped so soon, this is a bull market that still has time to run.

scenario is the stock market will churn until new leaders emerge.

It will take a while before we identify the leaders of this new cycle. Therefore, during that time of hesitation and churn the market will go up and down, some groups of stocks could go down, others could go up a little bit and there could be a few years (34-5-10 years) of hesitation where you don’t have a bull market anymore but you have a rotating group of stocks that go up and down. This rotating soft landing, to come at some time in the future (2-5 years), seems to me the most likely scenario.

Technology and innovation are not about to disappear and there is one thing that we can say for sure; tomorrow will be much better than today, today is better than yesterday, and that’s called progress. Progress is not about to stop.

Snowballing innovation will create new modes of consumption and that will in turn create new stock market leaders. There is a good chance that the stock market leaders in this cycle, the GAFAs have run most of their course and their prices cannot go up much more. Maybe they could even go down. So, the most likely

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ECONOMICS

The

BREXIT

kiss of death or an end in sight ?

By Rai Hamilton

B

y the time you read this, the UK will have concluded the most contentious General Election in its long history. It is highly likely that the result will herald the closing of any lasting concept of Empire and even of Great Britain remaining intact as a geo-political influence in Europe

or internationally. The United Nations was supposedly an international guide to integration, co-operation and co-habitation but there has never been any evidence of accountability and their agencies watch as schoolchildren are being slaughtered with automatic weapons in their own back yard against a backdrop of a massive and growing drug trade and associated people trafficking. Further afield, the UN looks on at the use of chemical weapons, genocide, continent wide financial fraud, decapitations and unknown numbers of babies starving to death. The EEC, where I attended the launch at Hampton Court Palace with blind enthusiasm, has similarly spawned blatant acts of corruption, self-serving nepotism, sexual exploitation and the marginalisation of the deprived and poorest communities. The self-importance in their ranks of ambassadors is blindingly obvious as their entertainment budgets skyrocket year on year.

The ineptitude in Brussels is hushed by a culture of no-accountability. Brexit has inflamed the have nots, who for the first time are being pushed into a new and determined battle with those who are affluent. They have witnessed three years of relentless counterpunching that has exposed a wormfilled sore that extends right up to the leaders in almost every space. Now at the end of the Brexit

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ECONOMICS

trail, it’s personal between the power brokers and they will pit community against community, brother against brother and rulers against the people they represent. The inevitable result is fractionalisation of social structure with enough rope only to hang ourselves in isolated groups. The British Empire is already a joke and now the Union will crack open with Scotland on track for the financial suicide they face with independence (with what currency?) and Northern Ireland will slip away out of the Union as smugglers in the night. Their leaders thrive on confrontation and now their colours are known even to the blind. There is no co-operation without impossible demands and no contribution whichever way you offer to cut the cake. So, let’s have a border on the open sea. At the final whistle its Smugglers 8 – UK 0.

There are solutions and there are truths that need to get heard before certain disaster strikes the people of the whole world. Police imprison followers of Extinction Rebellion while the air around us becomes the catalyst for the End of Days. Nowhere is the truth more important than in our collective health. It takes sustained ignorance and sometimes an individual misjudgement like a Referendum to open the flood gates of contention and criticism. Brexit has unleashed a hatred of those elected to serve on both sides of any political debate. When the gloves are off, the political parties now seek to savage their opponents personally and an array of little personal truths emerge sufficient to keep the major truths hidden away. In the case of a solution to pollution, the scale of the problem needs to be recognised before global policies and funding is determined. Europe has been hiding the truth about everything but so has a disabled UK Parliamentary process.

Brexit has given everyone the chance to marshal a response to government inaction and false premises. The Brexiteers want a government that will listen in a rational way to critical issues and that is an impossibility with any of the authorities in a joined-up Europe with each member fighting for their own choice of action. It becomes a spaghetti junction of arguments and the way to any result is clouded. Brexit was a classic wind up by both sides of the Parliamentary arguments with the impartial Mr Speaker making sure that the Prime Minister was derailed.

National leaders have not achieved any cohesion of any solution either way.

Meanwhile they ignore garbage and sewage continuing into the oceans and fish stocks being depleted to a point of no return. There is no meaningful action because the interests of commerce prevent anything further than a local get-together and an occasional public debate and a few column inches to ease any pressure. Those few lines wrap the fish and chips the following day.

All the while the vast oceans throughout the history of the world have been acting as a sponge absorbing CO2 emissions as they came along. The truth is that the concentration of CO2 in the oceans is precisely the same as the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere. If our leaders say CO2 capture is the answer, know this. The sea will fill the air with the equivalent of the captured CO2 to maintain the balance. What now brown cow? How long have we got before the air is truly toxic and not capable of sustaining life?

Eight years? Twelve years? Maybe twenty years? There are clever people who know these things and could prepare us if they were given a voice.

Can Brexit break the deadlock and give them a voice? Not a chance even if we all die so what’s the chance on agreeing about anything else. Well met Extinction Rebellion.

We are living with Trump, Brexit and the rise of political extremes where those personality assassinations take down political opponents over even small issues. They cast into the shadows the gravity of urgent economic tragedies. We should be mindful that the Empires of history were created out of protection of wealth and the innovation that created it. Mindless destruction is unforgivable.

Brexit dithering and prevaricating is part of that curse to stymie a positive result. The possibilities of 5G are a glue that could bring Europe and even

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the world together. So, what is happening to 5G with its unbelievable road

ed by banning sales of US technology to Huawei and impeding Huawei

to future growth in productivity through digital innovation? 5G represents

sales to US networks. The United States has asked others to follow its path.

the next generation of wireless technology simply with reducing by tenfold

Australia has effectively banned Huawei from their participation in 5G and

the time it takes for signals to travel through the network. This is critical

others are considering different options. This policy of ‘punch and counter

in supporting robotics and the Internet of Things. 5G has the potential to

punch’ in politics is hugely destructive and will impact on the poverty lev-

become what’s called a ‘general-purpose technology’, analogous to elec-

els in all poorer nations. This is particularly true in Africa where normal

tricity and the Internet. These were advances that spawned the creation of

people are starving and any offer to their governments results in replies

whole new markets and the distribution of goods and services but here is

that are gibberish and any agreement is abandoned whenever a better offer

a new technology with benefits that we cannot even imagine in business

to steal arrives at the door. If one part of the world argues, then cohesion

efficiency, health and social outcomes.

is beaten to death by the media insisting on their own interpretation of the variables. This division about a new global digital divide first sparked off

Brexit has not included one word about advances in technology and con-

across the Pacific and through Brexit will end in a slower growth for all of

solidation across borders nor the two hinges on which this hangs. The first

Europe.

hinge is a reduction in scale because of competing legal and regulatory frameworks emerging between countries. The second is a willingness to

A real effort is involved in the UK behaving in an internationally coopera-

accept the foolish premise that these digital innovations can be avoided in

tive manner. The world needs cooperation, not confrontation. The national

markets which are big enough to achieve sufficient scale on their own. The

interests of countries are always Empirical but only maintained by being

United States and Europe are too scared of Chinese intrusions to see the

broadly aligned in consistent legal and regulatory frameworks. Clever

productivity growth scale that is estimated at 1 per cent within three years

people are available particularly in the younger generation to deal with

climbing to a whopping 6 per cent increase by 2040. This will open the

the multitude of issues raised by 5G and CO2 capture and extending to

doors for Japan, South Korea and India to build Empires where 5G will

cyber security, consumer protection, competition policy and the impacts

drive innovation towards many things not yet imagined. We are in danger

on trade and finance. The wrinkled old folk in the House of Lords have

of creating a ‘digital iron curtain’ while we spend months investigating and

no place at the table. In more ways than one, their time is limited and

dithering to prove a Parliamentary process and that Trump had no busi-

one glimpse of them on the telly is sufficient to suggest they go home and

ness stopping the Biden family enriching themselves in the gas production

mumble in the garden.

business in Ukraine. The Biden family, as we all know, are experts in gas transmission but the Democrats have shut up shop so no Empire build-

During three years of Brexit debate and indecision, there has been little

ing is going to happen for the remaining Trump term. If Corbyn gets into

heard of the international cooperation that is fundamental for efficient

Number 10 then there is no trade deal with Trump or anyone else. Book

solutions. Instead, we have uncovered madness in Brussels and the inept-

your flight early to avoid disappointment.

itude of EU leaders in a disfunction of caring for their poor, lonely, old, discarded, frightened, drugged and sexually abused citizens. They all want

Brexit will allow our security service chiefs to define 5G policy and they

their share and with leaders splashing the money to get votes they may

are worried about Huawei’s governance and dishonesty and, most press-

succeed irrespective of the national bankruptcy it threatens.

ingly, that Huawei is a cyber intrusion risk. The United States has respond-

40

ECONOMICS

The only starting point in a solution is to end corruption and untruth at

During three years of Brexit debate and indecision, there has been lit-

leadership level. That can be achieved by a travel ban on each ruling fam-

tle heard of the international cooperation that is fundamental for efficient

ily that has vast wealth around the world stolen from their own people.

solutions. Instead, we have uncovered madness in Brussels and the inept-

It would be the start to forging international awareness and responsible

itude of EU leaders in a disfunction of caring for their poor, lonely, old,

allocation of funding for their own peoples.

discarded, frightened, drugged and sexually

That will never happen with a crook in power

abused citizens. In the UK the leaders splashing

so isolate them and freeze their ill-gotten gains.

the money about to get votes might even suc-

It would be a wakeup call and encourage an

ceed irrespective of the national bankruptcy it

assertion of human rights. As for the UK, the

threatens.

truth will out hopefully before 12th December so we are not stuck at the borders on our way to

The only starting point in a solution is to end

the annual gatherings on the European slopes.

corruption and untruth at leadership level. That can be achieved by a travel ban on each ruling

If we are to be Empirical let us work at least get

family that has vast wealth around the world

those border regulations agreed alongside defi-

stolen from their own people. It would be the

nition of concepts like personal data and critical

start to forging international awareness and re-

information infrastructure, the design of intel-

sponsible allocation of funding for their own

lectual property protection systems and the de-

peoples. That will never happen with a crook in

velopment of principles governing the applica-

power so isolate them and freeze their ill-gotten

tion of artificial intelligence. Brexit in this mood

gains. It would be a wakeup call and encourage

of confrontation and isolation means the UK

an assertion of human rights. As for the UK, the

will become beggars who cannot be choosers.

truth will out hopefully before 12th December

Whichever way we vote, we need to stop a long

so we are not stuck at the borders on our way to

rundown of living standards. That is something

the annual gatherings on the European slopes.

that a universal system of 5G can provide.

If we are to be Empirical let us work at least The truth is that we need to be bold if we are

get those border regulations agreed alongside

to survive as people on Earth. The second truth

definition of concepts like personal data and

is for our leaders to tell us the truth so we can

critical information infrastructure, the design

do something about it. We must develop a work-

of intellectual property protection systems and

force that is hard-working, dynamic and skilled

the development of principles governing the

with a mastery in science and technology and we

application of artificial intelligence. Brexit in

will ensure opportunities to work for all those

this mood of confrontation and isolation means

communities on the side-lines. Our politicians

the UK will become beggars who cannot be

are wrapped up in so much political correctness

choosers. Whichever way we vote, we need to

and selfishness that they won’t break free to guide us. The solutions are

stop a long rundown of living standards. That is something that a universal

there for them to find if they were to work together in thought and deed.

system of 5G can provide.

A real effort is involved in the UK behaving in an internationally coop-

The truth is that we need to be bold if we are to survive as people on

erative manner. The world needs cooperation, not confrontation. The

Earth. The second truth is for our leaders to tell us the truth so we can do

national interests of countries are always Empirical but only maintained

something about it. We must develop a workforce that is hard-working,

by being broadly aligned in consistent legal and regulatory frameworks.

dynamic and skilled with a mastery in science and technology and we will

Clever people are available particularly in the younger generation to deal

ensure opportunities to work for all those communities on the side-lines.

with the multitude of issues raised by 5G and CO2 capture and extending

Our politicians are wrapped up in so much political correctness and self-

to cyber security, consumer protection, competition policy and the im-

ishness that they won’t break free to guide us. The solutions are there for

pacts on trade and finance. The wrinkled old folk in the House of Lords

them to find if they were to work together in thought and deed.

have no place at the table. In more ways than one, their time is limited and one glimpse of them on the telly is sufficient to suggest they go home and mumble in the garden.

41

CINEMA

VENEZIA 76

By Tiziana Rocca Photo by ©Daniele Venturelli

Venice Film Festival Red Carpet Mostra del Cinema Venezia

T

he 76th International Venice Film Festival opened with two of the most important international actresses Juliette Binoche and Catherine Deneuve with the movie “The Truth”. It was an edition that everyone

agreed on, from awarded movies to actors and actresses. The godmother, Alessandra Mastronardi, managed her important role with elegance, and also showcased some beautiful looks. The prestigious Golden Lion was awarded to Todd Phillip’s Joker also thanks to the great prowess demonstrated by Joaquin Phoenix. The Italian Luca Marinelli received the famous Coppa Volpi for best male performance in Franco Maresco’s Martin Eden, the Coppa Volpi for best female performance was instead awarded to Ariana Ascaride. Unforgettable the Golden Lions awarded to Julie Andrews and Pedro Almodovar for their illustrious ca-

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CINEMA

reers. To celebrate Almodovar’s great achievements, Prada and Warner

the evening. The four guests that took part in the panel are figures of

Bros dedicated to the director a great Venetian evening characterized by

great importance for cinema in general, with paths that vary from di-

the bright colours of his own cinema framed in the magnificent Scuola

recting to acting, from producing to writing screenplays all with a great

Grande di Santa Maria della Misericordia. I was present at this beauti-

amount of experience that permits them to share their creative processes

ful party accompanied by Rossy de Palma, undisputed muse of Pedro

that feed their inventive and creativity. This conversation was a chance

Almodovar, polyhedric actress capable of fusing art, cinema, style and

to examine in depth different influences and points of view of the guests,

fashion.

and to discover how their careers can be of inspiration to all young and inspiring filmmakers. The guests that participated in the panel were:

On the 29th of August I organised the presentation, among the Founda-

American director Brian De Palma, creator of some of the landmarks of

tion Ente dello Spettacolo, the book ‘Cannes Confidential’ (Donzelli Ed-

contemporary cinema like Scarface and Mission Impossible, the poly-

itore) written by Thierry Frémaux, general director of the Cannes Film

hedric icon Rossy De Palma, Valeria Golino, one of the most charismatic

Festival and director of the Institute Lumière of Lyon. My dear friend,

Italian actresses, but also a producer and director of movies like Miele ed

Alberto Barbera, general director of the International Venice Film Fes-

Euphoria. The extraordinary director, screenwriter and actress Nadine

tival, also attended the presentation adding some deep insight saying:

Labaki, the first Arab woman to receive the Jury’s Award at the Cannes

“A lot of books about cinema come out every year, but only a few are

Film Festival in 2018, she was also nominated for a BAFTA Award, a

indispensable. This book is. Not only for the passion that Thierry, my

Golden Globe, and an Academy Award for Best International Picture

friend, transmits, but also because he is a great author and director.” This

with her beautiful picture: Capharnaüm. The 1st of September was the

book depicts the literary background of the most important festival in the

day of my festival: The Filming Italy Best Movie Award held at the tensile

world. Reading this book makes you enter the pulsating heart of the fes-

structure inside the Hotel Excelsior. An important award, that is a part

tival, to celebrate, first of all, everyone that makes it possible, an exciting

of the International Venice Film Festival since 2015. This award is an

succession of encounters with stars and directors, filled with anecdotes,

acknowledgment given to the pictures, TV series, actors and also to the

and backstage stories. Without holding back pungent judgements and un-

industry that distinguished themselves particularly during this last year,

expected approvals. An unmissable book!

in collaboration with Duesse Communication. The Filming Italy Award has in-fact grown this past year becoming the Filming Italy Best Movie

On the 30th of August I had the honor to host and organise an exclusive

Award. Important names, international and Italian that have been given

event for MasterCard, the official sponsors of the International Venice

this prestigious award include: Isabelle Huppert, Terry Gilliam, Rossy

Film Festival. A masterclass, “SEE LIFE THROUGH A DIFFERENT

de Palma, Sylvia Hoeks, Claudia Gerini, Alessandro Gassmann, Isabella

LENS” that was held inside the Sala Stucchi of the Hotel Excelsior in

Ragonese, Margherita Buy, Michelle Hunziker, Laura Chiatti, Giovanni

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CINEMA

Silvia Hoeks at Filmin Italy Best Movie Award Isabelle Huppert, Alberto Barbera at Filming Italy Best MOvie Award

Rossy De Palma at Filming Italy Best Movie Award

Veronesi, Michela Andreozzi, Paola Minaccioni, Salvatore Esposito, Valentina Lodovini, Rocco Papaleo. Godmother of the award: actress Valentina Lodovini.

This year the charity event to celebrate 15 years of Diva E Donna took place on September 2nd. Diva E Donna is one of the most approved and loved female periodicals.

I organised. like every year, for the International Venice Film Festival this event among the beautiful frame of the Sina Centurion Palace, a five-star hotel in Venice. Numerous awards were given in an evening dedicated to solidarity together with the association ‘Never Give Up Onlus’, “Together to break the silence on eating disorders.” Never Give Up is an association that is born to prevent and interrupt eating disorders, anorexia and bulimia, two of the principal problems that make part of the main causes of death between the ages of 12 and 25. Eclecticism, the contrast between modern and contemporary, the refined stile, the exquisite culinary proposal and the beautiful five-star hotel on the Canal Grande all were a part of making the Diva e Donna Charity Dinner amazing. The acknowledgements Diva e Donna 2019 were awarded to many women protagonists of both cinema and television like: Claudia Gerini, Michela Andreozzi, Eleonora Dan-

44

CINEMA

Rossy De Palma, Brian De Palma, Nadine Labaki Valeria Golino at Panel MasterCard Tiziana Rocca, Alberto Barbera, Thierry Fremaux at Cannes Confidential presentation

Filming Italy Best Movie Award Red Carpet international cinema here in Italy connecting different cultures. The award was delivered to the director, protagonist and producer Tarak Ben Ammar, of the movie American Skin. All in the presence of the director of the Festival, Alberto Barbera. The motivation is the following: “Confronting the theme of racism, very present in contemporary cinema, Nate Parker Alberto Barbera, Thierry Fremaux at Cannes Confidential presentation iele, a Giulia Elettra Goretti, Miriam Candurro, and Annabelle Belmondo, godmother of the event. On the 6th of September I had the honor together with Franco Montini, president of the National Consortium of Italian cinematographic critics (SNCCI), Luciano Sovena, president of the Roma Lazio Film Commission and Vito Sinopoli, editor of the magazine Best Movie, to award the Filming Italy Award, inserted from this year in the official collateral awards of the Film Festival, for best picture in the Sconfini Section to American Skin

depicts daily elements to build a dramatic novelesque like story, and chooses a willingly provocative with the intent of raising a discussion between the viewers, in line to what is happening on the screen. The ideological implant doesn’t penalise the spectacularity of the result, always tense and vibrant.”

One of the best events was at the end of the kermesse: the presentation of the movie with Johnny Depp “Waiting for the Barbarians”. It was a great success with a glamourous red carpet, Johnny Depp was incredible with all his fans, he signed many autographs and took many photographs.

made by Nate Parker. The Filming Italy Award, created by me, is an award born with the intent of promoting Italian cinema abroad and

45

CINEMA

The Zurich F ilm F estival 2019

By Maite Plimmer

Cate Blanchett

T

he 15th edition of the Zurich Film Festival brought once more the glamour and the world of movies to our doors. The foreign press was well represented and there were many celebrities from around the globe, including Donald Sutherland who looked very dapper in his tuxedo, Cate Blanchett ever ethereal, Javier Bardem

wholesome as usual, Kristen Stewart who always looks somewhat melancholic, Zendaya (Disney star) and race car driver Lewis Hamilton with Tommy Hilfiger to name a few.... The mood was high and the fans came in droves. It is fabulous to see this festival grow year by year in popularity and attendance.

The Queen of the ball was without a doubt Renee Zellweger as Judy Garland in the new feature Judy. She was absent from acting for 6 years and has come back as a revelation. I for one, think she will be a serious contender for the cov-

eted statuette next year.

Her portrayal of Judy during the twilight of her life is extraordinary. The Director Rupert Goold and Producer David Livingstone were present at the Zurich Film Festival and explained how they were ready to find someone else to cover

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CINEMA

Joaquin portrays a down and out clown for hire that is on 7 types of medication, takes care of a delusional ill mother, who dreams of being normal and loved and who finds himself, all of a sudden, fired, with no more subsidised drugs and abused, laughed at and handed a gun. What happens next could and should have been avoided. It is scarily accurate...a MUST WATCH. I was very happy to see in this year’s edition, such a great array of documentaries about Ocean conservation. One of them was Watson about the Founder, Captain Paul Watson of the Sea Shepherd, a non-profit marine Donald Sutherland

wildlife conservation organisation. A controversial figure that some of us love to love. He calls himself the lawyer of his clients “the whales” and

the singing but were hoping Renee would give it a go. She was very shy

“sharks”. He and his team of volunteers, are very focused, determined and

initially and after a few weeks bloomed beyond their expectations. She

selfless, often risking their lives as the try to stop illegal fishing.

captured the hunched back, the mannerisms and the life long addiction to pills as well as Judy’s addiction to love. It’s all there. We all remember “The Wizard of Oz” and “Over the rainbow”, what most of us didn’t know was the exploitation child stars were subjected to. Not all that glitters is gold. The epitome of show business.

Joaquin Phoenix will win an Oscar Joker and he will dedicate it to his late brother River, was the first thing that came into mind after watch-

Kristen Stewart Another one of this kind was “Sea of Shadows” about the smallest whales in the world “vaquitas” of which only 10 remain, in the sea of Cortez, Mexico. Big efforts are made by Sea Shepherd to bring down the cartel that fishes there and by doing so, with their nets are very rapidly decimating the “vaquita” population. We are no doubt abusing our resources and the collateral damage is non-negligible.

Javier Bardem and Alvaro Longoria ing the trailer. I was very much looking forward to the premier. He is a true character actor; the movie made $230 million USD during the first week-end and it has been nothing but controversial. My opinion is that it is a true satire of the unhinged state of affairs in the USA at the moment. The script is premonitory. It is a call for action. So much comes to mind. Yuval Harari’s book (Homo Deus) talks about a useless stratus of society in the future that will/might rebel and mentions that drugs and video games will keep them calm.

Zendaya

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CINEMA

Javier Bardem was present with the director of the new documentary Antarctica, Alvaro Longoria who discussed with the public the reason behind “the making of” and the necessity of it.

The Current War was presented by the Director Alfonso Gomez-Rejon. The movie chronicles the battle to electrify the United States between Thomas Edison and his DC system against George Westinghouse and his AC system and at the time, the right to bring light to the Chicago World’s fair of 1893. Benedict Cumberbatch is great at period dramas. The dialogue and specific way this movie was filmed with its good soundtrack and special effects makes this feature a real treat.

The Laundromat with Meryl Streep is really a “Panama papers” know how for Dummies. I found it quite creative with a good dose of humour. A world of unanswerable offshore companies that “clean” shady cash and allow certain individuals to avoid paying taxes, which shouldn’t be confused with tax evasion (yes... I know...)

The Putin Interviews is a documentary by Oliver Stone, who has by the way, taken quite a liking to Switzerland and is now the President of the Jury and returned for the 5th year running, portrays in a very RAW and candid manner, the personality of Vladimir Putin, with moments of humour, solemnity and realisation and winking (he does that a lot!). Oliver Stone wanted to hear the other side. Wanted to clear the air, understand Putin’s views on the USA and mentioned there were no no-go zones regarding questions he could make. Putin in The States is always villainized by the press and Stone wanted to show the true side. Fantastic in my eyes, but then again, I do have a soft spot for this particular chess player. Putin mentions that it doesn’t really matter who becomes President in the USA because it doesn’t change a thing, “It is always the same” Incitement, directed by Aaron Zilberman, Very powerful movie. Apart from the obvious, (assassination of Rabin, at the time Prime Minister of Israel), we see the blind commitment to a religion by some, to peace by others and to survival by all. The many aspects that make Israel such a complex place to understand, even for those like me that know it well and love it dearly. In September of 1993, after decades of violence, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin announces the beginning of an era of peace between Israel and Palestine. The stalwart law student and Orthodox Jew Yigal Amir is outraged. As the peace negotiations become more and more concrete, overheated speeches among the opponents of Rabin become increasingly charged – and a fatal radicalisation takes its course. Israeli-American director Yaron Zilberman dramatizes the lead-up to the disastrous Rabin assassination from the perspective of the perpetrator, and blends a precise social study with original archive footage to create an atmospherically dense, and, unfortunately, still very topical, thriller.

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E S S AY

Book R eview: M ichael Houellebecq’s novel “Sérotonine”

by Caroline Von Krockow

M

ichael Houellebecq looks serious into the camera, his arms folded in front of his chest. He has thin, longish, grey hair and blows circles with his cigarette smoke. He seems to be a smelly homeless person angry with the world, who brings depression back en vogue. If you didn’t know who he was you might throw him a dime or feel sorry for him. But, never judge a book by its cover. The 62-year-old enfant terrible has touched both French and international readers to their core.

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E S S AY

Abandoned at childhood by his divorced parents, his personal story is quite sad and might throw light on his writing. His parents sent him to live with his maternal grandparents as an infant, but they did not seem to want to take care of him either. At six he was transferred to the care of his paternal grandmother, whose maiden name he later adopted. Rejected from there as well he was sent to boarding school, where he became a well-read outcast. He then studied science and agronomy in Paris and began to write poetry. Like many writers he had a rocky start and gained his first real international attention only years later with the publication of Les Particles élémentaires (1998; filmed 2006) published as The Elementary Particles in the United States. In it he presented two half-brothers, Bruno (driven by his sexual appetite) and Michel (scientist, cloning human life) who were abandoned by their parents at childhood. The book was very controversial, filled with reactionary political views, pornographic passages and a misogynistic plot. It still won the 2002 IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.

His later works include Lanzarote (2000), an attack on the European vacation practices; Platform (2001) a consideration of sex tourism and Possibility of an Island, a nihilistic book about cloning.

Despite his dark perspective he clearly has many fans! He has become a true personality being recently bestowed the Légion d’honneur, France’s highest national honor by Emmanuel Macron.

He became famous and rich for his nihilistic, provocative novels writing about sex, but also, since Submission hailed to be a fortune-teller, the Cassandra of France. His novel Submission, which envisages France voting an Islamic government in 2022 was published the very same day as the massacre of Charlie Hebdo happened. A handy coincidence for Houellebecq, who jumped on this media opportunity. On the next issue’s cover a caricature of Houellebecq smoking says, “in 2015 I lose my teeth….in 2022 I’ll do Ramadan.” His novel La Carte et le Territoire earned him the prestigious Prix Goncourt. It follows the life of the depressed artist Jed Martin and is about the state of art today. With such a track record excitement grew when his most recent, seventh novel Sérotonine hit the French book stores.

“One cannot be said to be keeping abreast of contemporary literature without reading Houellebecq’s work.” states Karl Ove Knausgaard, New York Times.

Flammerion, Houellebecq’s publisher printed 320,000 copies, 64 times that of the average novel. Sérotonine has also been published in English, German, Spanish and Italian. It is said to have predicted the “yellow vests”. The novel was written long before the protesters began barricading roads and has been saluted as one of his best. Before its publication speculation grew around the book especially since Houellebecq was notoriously secretive, refusing interviews: he played and continues to play the media well.

But what a funny title, what is Sérotonine? It is sometimes known as the

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E S S AY

happy chemical, because it appears to play an important role in regulating the mood, and low levels have been associated with depression. The anti-hero takes Captorix, which is supposed to augment the levels of Serotonine, but also leads to impotence, erection problems. The title hence is already a giveaway of the general mood of the book. “Sérotonine” is about depression, sex and the lack thereof, women, politics, milk and the question; if we can change the system. It is obviously a loaded book and perhaps a bit like the French, aggressively depressive.

himself. Sadly, not as a martyr, rather because of hopelessness as his cause seems to be lost.

With the “yellow vests” marching for the 44th weekend in Paris and other cities to maintain pressure on the government Houellebecq is clearly hitting a nerve and critics highly recommend Serotonine.

“Sérotonine” recounts the story of unhappy forty-six-year-old Florent-Claude Labrouste, who says he had great parents. Florent-Claude does not like much, not even his first name and is employed in the ministry of agriculture, writing reports for the European negotiators. The story starts in Spain 2010 when we are told that Macron was president.

Florent-Claude clearly dislikes his still Japanese girlfriend and the anti-hero’s remarks are quite racist.

When they’re both in Paris he tells us about her vulgar gang bangs, documented in various videos he watches and how he’ll move out. The book is sexist and we don’t get the impression that he values women much more beyond the physical, except perhaps his former girlfriend Camille, who he spies on.

“Houellebecq is a deeply political novelist he has said he never votes in elections, only in referendums - and Serotonine reflects his country’s present discontents ... It is revelatory how much French critics praised the book. They clearly regarded Houellebecq’s implicit denunciation of the French establishment, French society and the EU as utterly accurate. If your French is up to it, do read this remarkable novel - even though parts require a strong stomach - because Houellebecq is a remarkable stylist. If not, let’s hope the translation does him justice.”- Simon Heffer, Daily Telegraph “Michel Houellebecq has good claim to be the most interesting novelist of our times ... Houellebecq has often shown alarming prescience in his fiction ... The novel burns with anger ... Cutting between brand names and sweeping generalisations, exhilarating in its nihilism, often very funny and always enjoyable ... Yet the anger he expresses here about the destruction of the deep France that he loves could not be more to the point, reflecting deep despair about what is happening now. There’s no British equivalent to Houellebecq. After years of being shunned by the French establishment, he has now been fully embraced by it. On New Year’s Day, he was awarded the Legion d’honneur. Just so.”

- Evening Standard “Every few years, Michel Houellebecq takes his literary scalpel to French society. It usually hurts, often shocks, and always causes a commotion ... There is no equivalent in France to the arrival of a new Houellebecq novel ... The novelist’s wit, and skill at shifting from the banal quotidian to the existential, are intact ...

Mr Houellebecq has once again managed to put his finger on modern French (and Western) society’s wounds, and it hurts.” - Economist

Men are more to Florent-Claude’s liking, as for example the aristocrat Aymeric d’Harcourt, an important character and Florent-Claude’s only friend.

They became friends as students, which is when Aymeric, full of hope, moved back to take over the estate. The second half of the book is political and through Aymeric we learn about the farmer’s grievances as they try to protect French milk against imports and the impossibility of their situation. Aymeric rallies a group and they commence an armed revolt blocking the motorway, but to no avail. Aymeric’s wife also left him with their kids and desperate Aymeric kills

But will the book still be read in 100 years and become a classic? Only time will tell.

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FA S H I O N

NEW YORK FASHION WEEK SPRING/SUMMER 2020: HIGHLIGHTS

By Indira Cesarine MARC JACOBS

T

he runway shows at New York Fashion Week for Spring/Summer 2020 were an array of several identities – each designer injecting their personal DNA onto the looks and trends that will ultimately rule the streets as soon as the Summer 2020 sunrays hit the sidewalks. The trends we saw are a dynamic mashup of several identities and styles, catering to a wide variety of body types, making it a celebration of diversity, innovativeness and glamour.

In 2020, sleepwear and undergarments are not reserved for the bedroom. Designers are creatively pushing the boundaries of what is acceptable to wear in public spaces, adding corsetry and babydoll dresses into the mix. Designer Dion Lee presented clean, structured corsets and

body harnesses in off-whites paired with sleek polished suit pants. The more adventurous Gypsy Sport paired the corsets with animal prints and Marie Antoinette hairdos.

Metallics are getting a makeover next Spring. Adding more diversity to the silver and gold metallic pieces we’ve seen the past several seasons, designers are giving us more shiny options to flicker and glare against the summer rays. Chic working woman has been redefined by the catwalks. The blazer suits were modernized with odd-placement slashes, statement shoulders, and color-blocking patterns. Helmut Lang paired his blazer with metallic leather pants, taking the term “working woman” into a lively, pleasant territory.

For Summer 2020 designers are taking cues from the 1800s Victorian and peas-

54

ant dresses and upgrading them with 21st century factors. Tory Burch’s rendition was a floral jumpsuit, while Anna Sui and Ulla Johnson did more traditional takes without losing the innovativeness of our era. The color of Summer according to the NYFW Spring 2020 collections is yellow. Anna Sui’s rendition came in a two-piece set in pastel yellow, Christian Siriano amped up the brightness of the shade in a metallic fabric, and Bibhu Mohapatra’s yellow statement piece was a mustard mini A-line dress with bedazzled fringe detailing.

Denim is no longer casualwear, according to Brandon Maxwell, who showed a floor-sweeping dress-slash-top paired with high-waisted bootcut jeans at his Spring 2020 show. Cushnie, known for red-carpet ready looks, also included a 2-piece denim set composed of wide-leg jeans and a strapless denim number.

FA S H I O N

JEREMY SCOTT Alexander Wang opted for a more traditional approach: his idea of a Canadian tuxedo is a denim skirt with a long leg slit and a matching cropped denim jacket.

Move over statement tops – legs were the ones calling all the attention for NYFW Spring/Summer 2020. Whether it was hot pants, skinny smoking bottoms, or wide-legged jeans, the attention has migrated to the bottom part of our outfits. Brands like Area and Alexander Wang used iridescent and leather fabrics, while Kim Shui printed hers in Chinese lettering all over. Animal prints are going nowhere. Season after season, designers keep on bringing the classic print of zebra, cheetah, and snake–whether its summer (swimwear, mini tube dresses) or winter (fauxfur coats, fuzzy boots) brands (and consumers alike) can’t get enough of it. Some designers like Gypsy Sport concocted full cheetah-looks in different print styles, while others like Glemaud kept it consistent and monochrome.

MARC JACOBS For Spring 2020, the Marc Jacobs’ girl is an extravagant hippie living in the Victorian era – with an occasional penchant for the late 80s. Lightly touching on the 90s, Jacobs included references to his 1993 Perry Ellis collection that got him fired from the Ellis house: grunge mini dresses in striped knits (one worn on the runway by a barefoot Gigi Hadid), and oversized striped t-shirts that could’ve come from your boyfriend’s closet.

The Victorian reference comes in peasant dresses with appliquéd collars and bibs. In a modern take, Jacobs made one of them in a punchy orange hue.

There were dapper suits in zesty colors, and lots of florals. We know. Florals? For spring? Groundbreaking.

JEREMY SCOTT The Jetsons meet The Flintstones and take a trip to the moon is how we would describe Jeremy Scott’s latest collection. The intergalactic feeling

TOM FORD

JONATHAN SIMKHAI

comes from the metallic space-inspired boots that came with every look, as well as from the color clashings and eerie cutouts that came in the minified dresses. There wasn’t a look that didn’t grab your attention – whether it was the fabric or the print, everything was over-the-top colorful, shimmery, and otherworldly. Always bringing in the fun, Scott chose different fantasy-color wigs for his models hairdos. Scott’s 2020 collection looks like a cartoon character’s closet, one we highly revere.

JONATHAN SIMKHAI Johnathan Simkhai knows what women need for the hotter summer days that await us in 2020. His Spring collection was a pastel party; pistachio greens, turquoise baby blues, and creamy whites made up the maxi button-down dresses and silk nightgowns he sent down the runway. Sleepwear as ready-to-wear is a trend that dates back to the 90s, but Simkhai left the grunge where it belongs. His silk slips came in lavenders, seethrough whites (paired with pants), and blush pinks. There were several pieces in crochet, some airy jumpsuits, and lots of peekaboo bras. Simkhai says: let your clothes be breezy and fresh for Summer 2020.

TOM FORD Tom Ford concocted easy, classic separates in neutrals and blacks for Spring 2020, with the exception of several bright-hued statement pieces in orange, purple, and lime green. Tom Ford is the master of classic black; for 2020 his favorite color comes in satin pants and briefs, button-down long-sleeve shirts, leather jackets and shorts, onepiece bodysuits, halter tops and neoprene bras.

Gigi Hadid sported a metallic purple sculpt-like top towards the end of the show, which gave way to other several colored classics.

OSCAR DE LA RENTA TOMMY X ZENDAYA Tommy Hilfiger and Zendaya are on their second runway show as a design team, and the Zendaya effect is discernible. The looks are thoroughly injected with the actress’ personal fashion idiosyncrasies: high-waisted bell bottoms, floppy felt halts and androgynous blazer suits in velvets and metallics; without losing the American dose that Hilfiger’s heritage carries in his lifelong design career. More Tommy x Zendaya to come, please!

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OSCAR DE LA RENTA The designers at Oscar de La Renta have a European summer vacation on their mind. For Spring/ Summer 2020, they brought out the crochet, seethrough mesh, and breezy jersey knits in muted earth tones and classic pastels. The show started with a beach-y party blush pink look composed of a mini-dress and same-length blazer. The show slowly transitioned onto more earthy tones, and by the end, gala gowns had taken the stage: an identity aspect of the Oscar de la Renta fashion house.

FA S H I O N

LONDON FASHION WEEK

Spring Summer 2020

By Angelika Bolliger

CHRISTOPHER KANE

T

he only positive aspect of time flying by is that we get to wear new shoes accompanied by new bags and everything in between and underneath. Time mercilessly reminds us of another day gone, possibly a new wrinkle, a beginning or the end of a job or upcoming holiday and most of all the damage we have

caused our planet. We are all on the same conveyer belt, just spread apart. Now more than ever before our focus needs to shift from just looking good or impulse spending to preventing the extinction of a variety of endangered species, global warming and what it entails and climate change. Fashion is the one art form which can help us reinvent, transform and deal with sometimes grim, repetitive and busy reality. However, we need to use it responsibly. No more buying things that have not been sourced with care, that are so inexpensive that we will just toss it in a bin after wearing it 5 times. London Fashion Week was all about climate change and eco-friendly clothes. The vibe was dynamic, rebellious with a cause.

The models strutted down the different runways wearing colourful clothes in new shapes for every body type, budget and taste. London always stood out compared to other fashion destinations, it is famous for its grunge and punk, rock influence, the classic English prim and proper “City” style fashion sprinkled with wild, over the top extravagance. It is also home to international bloggers who set the trends for the rest of the world. Without further a due let’s take a closer look at some of the top shows and trends for S/S 2020.

CHRISTOPHER KANE One of my favourite London designers has traded the crystals for flowers, which go perfectly with the Spring/ Summer mood. Orange was the key colour, worn on its own or made part of a flowery pattern. Warm and light,

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VICTORIA BECKHAM Victoria brought the Shaft character back to life through her 70’s inspired designs of well-tailored suits and blazers, big, wide shirt collars worn on top of structured jackets. The palette was beautiful, very soft with a lot of beige, brown, navy, light yellow, flower patterns and blue with some very low-cut Grecian dresses in vivid green, black and yellow. Turtle necks were also spotted. Both pant suits and skirt suits. The tailoring was magnificent, I loved all the high waisted trousers with a little flare worn with thin 70’s inspired belts.

Sophisticated, confident and understated. All her designs showed great craftsmanship and superb quality. The ideal choice for busy business women and for women who dine. Victoria has come a long way, proving that people can evolve, mature and acquire a new lifestyle or fashion sense.

VICTORIA BECKHAM

JULIEN MACDONALD Julien is known for his love of a sexy female form. This time around he went for glitter, crystals, feathers and fringe. His show took place at the London Cathedral to create contrast with his party inspired collection.

High energy, loud music, celebrities in the front row and Brazilian models made for a special show. The focus was on the body; strong, toned and athletic.

The dresses were sexy and girls looked ready to go to a carnival party. Short, long with feathers or fringe they moved to the rhythm of the music. Asymmetrically shaped evening dresses were followed by glittered one-piece bodysuits.

One more shiny than the other. If you are looking to buy a party dress Julien MacDonald is your one place to shop for all your sparkle needs and fantasies, all year round.

JW ANDERSON the collection was filled with short and long dresses and skirts. Frills and balloon puff sleeves were also seen, a trend which is here to stay for a while (Isabel Marant, Iro Paris and Saint Laurent’s favourite.) I particular-

London Fashion Week was a mixture of everything, every trend from the 70’s to the 80’s and 90’s. Energetic, conscious and beautiful to look at, promising a lovely Spring and Summer ahead.

Follow me on instagram@5inchstiletto Author of How to be Cosmopolitan Kindle/Amazon

ly liked the short body conscious deep V-neck dresses with what looked like a leather bra/bustier insert in a strong blue shade.

Youthful and modern we can be sure to see it on the streets. Kane’s designs are timeless and can be worn season after season, making him sustainable.

JW ANDERSON A walk-through time and history. Provoking our imagination to wander the fields or castles of the Pagan women. It was a mixture of innovation and tradition combined. Cotton and linen dresses were adorned with heavy crystal belts sitting on a hip, making a simple peasant dress come to life, transforming it into a glorious futuristic design. Models sported capes attached to heavy crystal chokers worn over tunic dresses. Robe sandals brought the outfits back to earthy earth. Ideal pieces for a holiday in Greece or Italy, modern, comfortable and exiting yet simple. It was an interesting collection making a point of creating fashion that can last a few lifetimes or more.

JULIEN MACDONALD

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MILAN FASHION WEEK

by Mahsa Nejati

MAHSA NEJATI

A

gain, I find myself in this beautiful city for another fashion week. This year the mood has changed and Milan is back to its usual glamour and elegance. My heart is filled with warmth seeing less, almost non-ex-

istent, fur on the catwalks. Big designer houses are going fur free and finally after years of people campaigning, the tide is turning against fur in the fashion industry. Gucci and Burberry announced their shows were carbon neutral this season. A number of designers opted not to hold a catwalk this season but instead offered a digital launch or hosted small events. But the most important message this season was sustainable style. The growing demand among consumers for

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sustainable fashion saw Milan Fashion Week being dominated with everything from recycled fabrics to emerging designers working sustainably. We saw that the focus of emerging designers is no longer creating new products, but rather finding solutions. The creation was focused on, “What can I make things with that I already have”.

I couldn’t help but to admire an emerging designer, House of Mua Mua, who took over the Green Carpet Fashion Awards at Milan Fashion Week, dressing celebrities and many guests with the message, “We don’t have a Planet B”. What a great sight to see beautiful people walking the green carpet with messages that will change the way we look at fashion. And I’m hoping more celebrities will make a choice to make all their red-carpet appearances sustainable fashion.

House of Mua Mua was born in Bali in 2006. Ludovica Virga, an Italian designer, decided to produce crocheted dolls made by the island’s artisans who, after the tsunami in Indonesia in 2004, were left without work because of the tourism industry being in crises. Mua Mua is also a reality with a strong aspect of charity and humanity, where part of the sale of the collection is donated to a school in Sumbawa to help and support women’s education. Not only did these dresses have a message to spread but they were also all recycled from plastic

Melissa Satta, Ludovica Virga (Founder of House of Mua Mua), Mahsa Nejati

bottles, ethically sourced and produced. The message is no longer if it’s a beautiful piece but rather to know that it’s not leaving a negative mark.

This brings me to a subject that is very close to my heart, second hand and vintage shops, and in my future articles I will cover it more

Guests at GUCCI show

Milan Fashion Week Green Carpet and more. You will read about finding things that mean something to you in vintage shops and also looking into your own wardrobe to change and restyle what you already have. A new era has opened up, a new beginning that will change the fashion world forever and it will offer a more environmental and animal friendly future. I’m excited about this future and the change that will benefit our coming generation. We can make a change and define our style in a way that will benefit our planet and make it a better place to live.

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Alessandra Ambrosio at Green Carpet

FA S H I O N

PARIS FASHION WEEK

By Inna Dudakova

A

s last of the big four the Paris fashion week is not only an obligatory date for every fashion lover. It is more of an opportunity to collect extraordinary memories which will keep you warm and satisfied during the winter break period.

This year I decided to travel to Paris from London by using the EUROSTAR high speed train. With an average time of only two hours and sixteen minutes from city to city it connects the two European metropolis proving that a climate friendly way to travel can be much faster and more comfortable than flying. Also the service offered on the train makes you forget all your troubles and can be seen as perfect attunement for this special week.

When I arrived in Paris I was welcomed by a warm kiss of sunrays, which promised perfect weather for the upcoming fashion week. After had I checked in at my wonderful and charming hotel, the “Four Seasons”, I got to enjoy an extensive breakfast and loved the atmosphere of this wonderful building.

While having breakfast I went through my plan once again. In the next few days I would visit three fashion shows and two showrooms to make my choice for my Boutique in Vienna.

Chanel

Olivia Culpo at Ralph Russo 2020 Fashion Show in Paris.

The first fashion show of my interest was the Elie Saab Show. For this occasion I had my hair and makeup done at “Jean Louis David”, a brilliant hair dressing salon which I can highly recommend.

The amount of compliments I received for my look spoke for itself.

Elie Saab’s fashion show was thrilling and interesting. The 2020 season’s style is going to be a mixture of classy and daring with a lot of oriental influences. This inspiration by oriental styles attracted my attention in particular. I loved the look and would wear it for a special occasion.

Traditionally I go to the tried and tested “L’Avenue” or “Costes” for dinner, but this time after the show I went to a nice restaurant called “Coco Restaurant Palais Garnier”. Delicious food was served in a great atmosphere accompanied by the comforting sounds of live music.

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Elie Saab The bartender really understood his business and served outstanding cocktails. Just the right conclusion of a special and thus exhausting day.

ment process for my Boutique in Vienna. An extraordinary selection of summer shoes was displayed here and made it really hard to choose one type over another. The exhibition left no doubts

The next day brought another opportunity to visit fashion shows. Ralph Russo’s show was on my bucket list and I was already looking forward to having a wonderful experience there. The show itself was very uncommon in the best meaning of this term. A lot of sneakers dominated the presentation which offer a vast number of opportunities considering possible combinations. Weather you decide to wear them together with a dress or a trouser suit, you will always have all eyes on you and your smart casual look. Pastel colors created a feeling of spring and were the icing on the cake.

Absolutely stunning looks and a great show really inspired me for the next spring/summer season.

After the show I got the chance to visit the show room of Alexandre Birman to start the procure-

The last show room I visited was by Laurence Dacade, Chanel’s leading designer who also offers a line under her own label. Here I found myself in a paradise for fashion lovers in general in shoe lovers in particular. Again it was not easy to choose from the presented styles. But in the end I was really happy with the decisions I made and I am sure that I picked the right shoes and styles for my customers in Vienna to serve their exquisite taste. The item I loved most in this showroom are definitely the summer golden boots. So the extremely style-conscious customers will have a special opportunity to acquire these unique shoes at “DINNES” boutique in Vienna.

Over all this year’s fashion week has been not only a successful one but again a very thrilling event and a great experience. I was given the chance to discover new places, meet inspiring and beautiful people and collect memories worth sharing.

that python is going to be the material dreams (and shoes) are made of next summer.

Afterwards I completed another wonderful day with beautiful experiences at the restaurant “Loulou” on a nice terrace with a great view over the city of love.

The absolute highlight of this year’s fashion week was scheduled for the next day: The Chanel fashion show. If I had to describe the presented looks in three words, I would choose the adjectives elegant, classy and beautiful. What struck me the most were the pretty colors (red, blue and black were the leading ones), the minimalistic style and thus exquisite looks. That is just what you want to see when you come to Paris for fashion week. I loved the show and was a little sad when it ended almost too soon in my opinion.

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Ralph Russo

OPI NION

The

L ove Ultimate Luxury

By Christina Estrada

O

k, let’s talk about Love Baby. What is it to you? Is it just a four-letter word or used as a noun and a verb for displaying a seemingly romantic notion of emotional nonsense. I have witnessed many who claw their way to get to the one they say they love and try hard to be the one forever in the fairytale of life’s yearnings. Are we needing a display of ownership? No one can truly possess what someone else has in love, which, in spite of all efforts to keep love from waning it cannot be possessed. It has to land on one’s heart and come and go freely. Maybe love is the notion to truly desire and want to be possessed passionately in a never-ending cycle of give and take, push and pull dance creating love energy.

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Now what is love? A feeling of ecstasy or attraction? Frustration and patience, until you have no choice but to stay in a long-suffering selfmade vice through the rosy addictive dreaming of Cinderella stories. I take it that this is how it starts. We learn somewhere.

be easy. What about when what made you happy is hard or tough or simply not making you happy anymore? No one told us it would be easy. Ah ha! What is interesting is if no one showed you or told you, or perhaps gave you mixed messages of love, you might have a hard time being the guinea pig to love.

Ultimately, love is like a kaleidoscope of something physical, mental, emotional and yes spiritual!

I decided to just do it! Jump in and discover what it takes to love unconditionally.

So, let’s go there. Let’s start with your first need to be loved. Sustenance in the mother’s womb. Sheer breath of life. Affection from the mother and father. Or other. Appropriate stages of learning and growth, which without much trauma or unpredictable bad news everything feels pretty good. Right? Sort of like building a company.

There is a happy ending just stay with me. I can’t pretend any longer. I have to be honest with you or you might accuse me of not giving you my best. Love is the ingredient that propels us into life. Again, and again in order to live. Thank goodness we got here to experience this sensation of pure heavenly bliss with all the trimmings that make life worth living. Sadly, it lies mostly in our imaginations and Christmas only comes once a year. So, does Hanukkah and Ramadan. Without excluding all the other religions and philosophers and poets who celebrate the love of something or someone; God or whomever you might believe in to show us what the idea of that might look like. You must trust to become more beautiful in love, or hopelessness and depression could set in. Not a good look if that happens!

Can you remember a good memory or early feeling of love for someone or something? The wind on your face perhaps or the stroke on your head from a loved one, your grandmother for a soothing cup of tea. A favourite song or soft voice humming sweet notes. Uuummm feels like happiness to me. Oh, lovely now I’m wanting. Let’s keep going! A good meal? Winning at a big sporting event or getting attention through the feeling of love from an admirer. Yes, even good old lust plays a part. The scent and sweat of anticipation!

So, again, I decided to go and drink wherever I’m thirstiest. To feel alive instead of flatlined from love and listen to how I feel. I realise that love is never wrong. Love only knows love from whatever stage it is in. Kindergarten to a PHD degree. “To love or not to love?” Is that the question? I say not. It is a question really, as love bequeaths us to choose it. To understand the depths of what love can do to us must stay constantly stuck at a lower level of consciousness as we yearn for it.

The pain. We almost forgot the pain of love. Disappointment and heartache. Betrayal and denial. Suppressed feelings of hurt, anger, abuse or violence committed in the name of love.

Does it ring a bell? Surely this thing called love cannot be all it’s cracked up to be. I have been both an observer and a victim of love until I learned I was probably loving myself the wrong way.

Whether in love with the idea of love, with someone or not or about to leave them, I think this is where respect comes in. Aretha Franklin stepped in reminding men and women to respect themselves and each other or was it just for men? You could say you loved something but did something different than what love is. Without respect there is not love. And by not being honest with your feelings or respecting yourself how could another feel the vibration of a higher place to go with that love to someone or something else?

Firstly, I must have done something right because a lot of people wanted to love me. Then of course there were many I felt nothing remotely equaled to what I could call love. Let alone what I thought was real love.

All of this wanting is because we want love to enter our hearts so we can be happy, light and fun. Why then is it so illusively tricky and excitingly dangerous? There is a sense of discovery in the idea of sharing a part of yourself with another person, let alone your whole self, warts and all. The real problem starts with either sharing too much of yourself or not giving enough of yourself. How do we get the recipe right for the balance of love to come in the forefront at the right time?

I must remind you that men and all kinds of men for that matter are beautifully sensitive loving creatures with very direct needs to be met.

Whether Gay, Trans, Bi or other it takes a Goddess to ignite a God. So, to speak. So, read between the lines here.

Well, it’s a mystery really until you can find it in yourself first. Balance is the key and honesty. Somehow one must learn what it means to love yourself before bringing anyone else into the danger zone. So, how does that look? Ok listen up, it’s called letting go a bit. Finding what makes us feel good, happy and loving it. Right? Well, that would

‘When a man loves a woman (or whatever), nothing he can do is wrong’. When a man doesn’t he runs the risk of not completing his full potential as a human being and vice-versa. With a good woman who is aware, awake and otherwise, he must be awake and aware as much or more than she (or otherwise) to keep her interest.

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Let’s not forget when the emotional ups and downs arrive. It would help if someone is there to support, if not, the risk of shrinking into a violet rejection of oneself. YIKES!! I am talking here about a higher love. The kind where people are able to hold their values of what love does. It’s unrealistic to think we all can at the same time or there would not be schools of Religion, self-help books or good romance movies, right? Which, is why we need to look at our responsibility in loving someone who needs us once in a blue moon.

That is why most bump into the ceiling or keep going round and around falling into the pits of despair when attacked or detached. Love demands everything at once be present so love can survive.

Somehow something needs to balance out the yin-yangs and lower the pressure in the game of the game as it goes, perhaps it could get to the point of the dance between life and death and love and war. See the extremes starting to show. Don’t be afraid, embrace the extremes and choose what love looks like. If one can see the future way into the whole world pushing the nuclear button (PLEASE NO) or creating continuous wars (NO PLEASE. Nuking doesn’t serve anybody well. Including disturbing our sea life).

Does this not reflect the type of political fractions we create at home and abroad? So, are we not going to fix this or anything other than ourselves first? How? The Psychology of Love.

Do you dream? Ok let’s dream of a world with balancing by example, working towards clearing the way to loving our neighbours as ourselves. Who has the guts to do it and stick to it? Are you committed or are you embarrassed, aloof and afraid of your emotional response? Ever heard of Emotional Intelligence?

Listening to what the heart is telling you. It happens from practicing; it’s like riding a bicycle. Let’s just say the intelligence of love always knows another way to reconcile without damaging future generations.

Love is patience love is kind. Take these words and use them! Often! Can we start with the basics and repeat? I am in love with love. Always have been, but hey guess what? Do you know what to fight for in terms of love? To stand up for love. In that spiritual way. To defend love for the prime source that is. True love has many uses when connected with our inner being. It captures our inner knowledge.

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OPI NION

There is a matrix to love and energetically we can feel it. To the point we can almost read the other’s mind, and feel without thinking. We adjust our EGO’s for LOVE. Have you ever made love to love? Like a trans state of being. Becoming one with love and expand it into the universe let alone a person. I knew a drummer who once had an orgasm whilst drumming. The music carried him away! Ecstatic love. Blending and integrating with the emotion of loving what you are being. Goodness gracious me. Imagine a shared experience of listening to the same tune.

Good, stay with me now. What if what you love is bad for you? Oh no! Are you ready for the rollercoaster ride? Is responsibility in the room yet? This is where the good and the not so good parts of learning come in. One must learn one’s limits.

What? Did balance step out of the room? Warning: crash and burn etc.

Does that sound familiar. Years of pain etc. Remorse after you loved the wrong person. Is that love or discovery? It’s part of our growth until you recover what that means. Part of understanding is what good feels like.

What healthy feels like too. Beautiful inside and out. It smells and looks good, like respecting oneself does. This helps one to love better within the realms of a higher potential.

Sounds like there is a place for love to exist where you can be your authentic self and find out who you are in this world. What a gift. How exciting. Like something nice, if not, at least that is honest then acceptance says it is what it is! Sorry, I don’t care if it’s easy or not, by the time you do get to the easy part you will start attracting different kinds of loving.

Work out the challenges we were given by our parents and their parents and say thank you to them for bringing me my challenges, for they gave me strength and taught me who I am can see the pain and beauty in life as it takes me to where I needed to be. Grow past someone else’s shit. Aaaahhhhhh …breathe, ok I said it. Yes, anything more? Gratefulness allows love to be in places you might not know exists yet, but we can hold that space and be thankful anyway. It changes everything!

The true ultimate luxury is rare and hard to find. Once found it never dies. It is the inexhaustible, and the basis under which we agreed to come here to live out our stories. Why? To make the world a better place of course! You know why? We have no choice but to evolve, Love or die. The best part is you choose. It’s still about free will of choice after all, and our continued choices.

Our chosen environment to which we create from and evolve through is our home; Earth. Think about it. How we treat it. What it gives to us. This awareness is love too. The Universe reminds us of something more out there in a multitude of dimensions that we all go in and out of. Love the idea of where we come from.

Luxury respects balance between craftsmanship and integrity, giving it strength. Like any relationship luxury can signal comfort, or what feels good in our heart of hearts, therefore it cannot be fake. The love of a true heart is precious. It vibrates out and is a conduit of love looking for a place to thrive on this earth! A heart also needs to be appreciated in order to receive love and function well. We are sometimes young, arrogant, tough or sometimes naive or thoughtless for a reason, we don’t know any better. Who is ready to accept themselves as they are? The next level of loving is waiting? Why do we stop loving if we value it so? Answer that question and you will love yourselves only in ways those who never closed their heart to love know. It’s the only luxury money cannot buy and the very thing that changes the hearts of others to love again.

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VENICE BIENNALE 2019

By Alessandra Zoppi

Icelandic-Pavilion

V

ENICE IS ONE OF THE WORLD CAPITALS FOR CONTEMPORARY ART. Coming to Venice during the “preview week” of the Biennale is certainly an overwhelm-

ing experience in every sense. After dealing, among the countless openings and multiple parties, with the frantic race to get from one place to the other in a city that relies only on water transport, you can start enjoying the wonderful show that Venice offers with its atmosphere and the mixture of ancient art, ancient buildings and contemporary art. I begin the visit from the Arsenale. In the sixteenth century Corderie, the exhibition unfolds curated by Ralph Rugoff, artistic director of the Biennale di Venezia 2019, themed to the concept “May You Live in Interesting Times”.

It is endlessly intriguing and thought-provoking.

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Karlie Kloss at TIEPOLO BALL

Decoration at TIEPOLO BALL

Monica Bellucci at TIEPOLO BALL

Sienna Miller at TIEPOLO BALL Going on there are the most recent national participations, such as Singapore and Peru, India and Ghana which are unmissable and emotional. Up to the Chinese pavilion and the Italian one, curated by Milovan Farronato who, beginning with the title NEITHER NOR: The Challenge to the Labyrinth, led me on an emotional journey that I found fascinating. Out of the Bienniale many other extraordinary exhibitions and retrospectives, such as Jannis Kounellis at the Fondazione Prada at Palazzo Corner della Regina, Alberto Burri and Sean Scully at the Giorgio Cini Foundation on San Giorgio Island, Georg Baselitz at the Gallerie dell’Accademia and Arshile Gorky at the museum of Cà Pesaro, complete the panorama of the art of the last decades and of the twentieth century.

During the “Biennale preview week” every place, among the most secret and suggestive, opens to host exhibitions, events and celebrations. In the deconsecrated Church of San Lorenzo, closed for years and restored thanks to TBA21 Academy (founded by Francesca Von Habsburg - Thyssen Bornemisza 21st century Art) takes place the SWATCH (main partner of La Biennale di Venezia) event to celebrate JOE TILSON’s 90th birthday. His work FLAGS, a site-specific installation,

Tilda Swinton at TIEPOLO BALL

is presented to the Gardens, the main venue of La Biennale. The dinner party is characterized by color, the same as the works of Tilson, yellow, orange, white, blue and red that color flowers,

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food and light by immersing the austere complex in a pleasant atmos-

ABBEY OF S. GREGORIO

phere POP ART.

The IXth century Benedictine Abbey hosts for six months “The home of a XXIst century Grand Tourist”.

The glorious event at the conclusion of the “Biennale preview week” was the TIEPOLO BALL, co-hosted by Venetian Heritage and DIOR

The exhibition wanted by London based COLNAGHI gallery with in-

and RAITV in the spectacular Palazzo Labia, frescoed by G.B. Tiepo-

terior designer CHAHAN mix Old masters masterpieces with modern

lo, 70 years after the “Bal du Siecle” of 1951. This spectacular party,

design pieces, to recreate the spirit of the Grand Tourist in a contem-

organized to celebrate the official opening of the Venice Biennale, was

porary settings.

also the occasion of an opulent charity dinner to support the artistic heritage of Venice, our fragile city. Guests from all over the world and

The association introduces world museum quality old masters’ paint-

celebrities, including Monica Bellucci, Tilda Swinton, Sienna Mill-

ings and sculptures to a contemporary lifestyle, and the exceptional

er, Francesca Amfitheatrof and Jhon Elkann, gathered around tables

location of the Abbazia San Gregorio, and indoor and outdoor histori-

sumptuously laid and decorated with dreamy floral compositions, wait-

cal architecture will allow for the perfect contemporay interior setting.

ing to participate in the fundraising auction of works of art offered by

Among the displayed works of art there are a pair of 18th-century por-

Anish Kapoor, Vik Muniz, Georg Baselitz and Edmund de Waal. After

traits by Pompeo Batoni of Thomas and Mary Taylour, the Viscount

the success of the auction, the dances went on until late at night. In ad-

and Viscountess of Headfort, monumental Harry Bertoia sculptures

dition to contemporary art, this year the “preview week” has been en-

and staying true to “Grand Tour” style, everything is for sale.

riched by three great-looking event exhibitions designed for Venice, to merge into the extraordinary places that host them. Domus GRIMANI

The exhibition shows that a collection is not just a pool of assets: its real

(thanks to the contribution of the Venetian Heritage Foundation, Toto

value lies in its connection with the life of a collector and is built from

Bergamo Rossi and Peter Marino Architect) is an exhibition that shows

memories, experiences, friendships and discoveries. Building a col-

the incredible collection of ancient, Greek, Roman and Renaissance

lection is a voyage of discovery and it needs a guideAs art and design

statues, donated by Cardinal Grimani to the Republic of Venice in 1587,

collaborations continue to proliferate, this couldn’t be a better match.

at Palazzo Grimani in the place that had been built to collect and display them, over 4 centuries earlier, the Tribune of Palazzo Grimani. The

At the Giorgio Franchetti gallery in Cà d’Oro, a fifteenth-century

effect is astonishing

Venetian palace now home to an important collection of ancient art,

Saudi Arabia Pavilion

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CARPENTERS WORKSHOP Gallery presents DYSFUNCTIONAL an exhibition of collectible art - design where the works and site-specific installations of contemporary artists such as Studio Drift, Nacho Carbonell, Verhoeven Twins, Vincenzo de Cotiis interface and converse with Andrea Mantegna, Jan Van Eyck, Francesco Guardi. The purpose of DYSFUNCTIONAL is to question what defines an artwork; why can art be functional and why does design become art? A suggestive exhibition that introduces the new trend in the world of art and design. In the wake of this trend this year’s Venice Biennale welcomes (for few days in September), the design fair NOMAD, a much sought-after traveling exhibition of collectible design, which after Monte Carlo and St. Moritz lands in Venice in the frame of the greatly gothic Soranzo Van Axel palace , in which some of the most avant-garde galleries of the sector participate, such as Fumi Gallery, Nilufar, David Gill, Galleria Luisa delle Piane and others.

Nomad Venice is taking place in partnership with Venice Glass Week, an international festival dedicated to the art of glass, with a particular focus on that of Murano. The Festival, in its third edition, involves many of the major institutions in Venice and galleries and artists .

For one week in September throughout the city, in galleries, museums, cafes and shop windows, the story and evolution of Venetian glass art is told through installations, exhibitions and conferences.

Lithuanian Pavilion

Le Stanze del Vetro , at the Cini Foundation , host the exhibition that inaugurates the Venice Glass Week: Thomas Stearns at Venini.

Palazzo Loredan exhibits the beautiful works by Simone Cenedese and Massimo Micheluzzi, winners of the Glass in Venice 2019 Award.

Alessandro Zoppi Gallery presents CANDELABRA, a collection of fine Murano glass candleholders and candlesticks from the XIXth and 20th century through contemporary pieces, recreating the soft and vivid candlelight atmosphere.

At Caffè Florian in Piazza San Marco the suggestive installation

Building bridges Lorenzo Quinn

by Fabio Fornasier - Murano Sottovuoto is on view.

Next year Biennale Architecture will be on stage .

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ART Basel 2019

By Andreea Belba

I

n the lovely medieval ambiance of Basel city, an effusive June spread renews its fragrance, heralding the 50th edition of the exclusive international Art Basel Fair, the “Olympics of art world” as titled by the New York Times. Inaugurated in 1970, Art Basel with its sibling reflections in Miami and Hong Kong has kept being

revisited annually by famous artists, gallery owners, top collectors, museum directors, art enthusiasts, who along with modern and contemporary paintings and sculptures, could enjoy installations, photographs, prints, video, multimedia art, performances and discussions. With a strong European presence, the fair featured both famous exhibitors like Kerry James Marshall at David Zwirner, Tomás Saraceno at Tanya Bonakdar, Pace, Perrotin and Farah Al Qasimi at the Third Line, but also returning and new galleries from Asia, the Middle East, North and South America and Africa. These gallerists dealt with classical Modern to postwar contemporary pieces emphasizing the remarkable quality of works from 1900 to 1970.

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GALLERIES This sector included 232 international leading galleries, illustrating high quality paintings, sculptures, drawings, installations, photos, videos and editioned works. This year seven newcomers previously present in Feature or Statements revived the Galleries (Galerie Pietro Spartà from France; Peres Projects, Société and Wentrup from Germany; Hollybush Gardens and Sprovieri from the United Kingdom; P.P.O.W from the United States) exhibiting the variety of their programs. Additionally, the Spanish gallery Travesía Cuatro was new to the show, while Galerie Thomas rejoined Basel after a short break. Art Basel’s novelty materialized in a 20 percent reduction per square meter price in the first year, and a 10 percent reduction per square meter price in the second year granted to new entries to the main sector.

Gagosian (Galleries)

Peres Projects (Galleries) Kewenig (Galleries) Art Basel’s configuration into eight sections: Galleries, Feature, Statements, Edition, Unlimited, Parcours, Conversations and Film created the same exciting and stimulating Art region. From the 13th to 16th June,

FEATURE Exhibiting 24 outstanding booths, the Feature sector showcased daring exhibits of both historical and emerging artists with 11 galleries as newcomers and a remarkable stand dedicated to the German conceptual sculptor Bernd Lohaus. The section included a two-person show belonging to the American

2019, Art Basel Fair gathered together more than 290 leading galleries from 34 countries with works of over 4,000 artists. 2019 brought a lot of newcomers among the participants including Barro Arte Contemporáneo from Argentina, Tommy Simoens and Vedovi Gallery from Belgium, Galeria Jaqueline Martins from Brazil, Temnikova & Kasela from Estonia, Galerie Crèvecoeur and Galerie Christophe Gaillard from France, Daniel Marzona from Germany, SpazioA from Italy, Vadehra Art Gallery from India, Travesía Cuatro from Spain, Galerie Knoell from Switzerland, Project Native Informant from the United Kingdom, David Lewis Gallery from the United States. Special emphasis was laid upon artists like Joan Semmel with his monumental painting “Skin in the Game”, and the Romanian artist Alexandra Pirici with her work entitled “Aggregate” (20172019) in the Unlimited sector.

Vedovi Gallery (Feature)

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STATEMENTS This sector with 18 solo presentations belonging to upcoming artists at recent international galleries included Rose Salane’s new commission by Carlos-Ishikawa; Argentinian artist Ad Minoliti at Galerie Crèvecoeur; Bangladeshi artist Ayesha Sultana’s work incorporating sculpture, drawing and painting at Experimenter; Sable Elyse Smith, an artist and writer concentrating on the American colonial state, at JTT; Farah Al Qasimi’s body of work analyzed hospitality and interior design in public and private places in the Gulf countries, states shown by The Third Line. Two artists displaying in Statements were awarded The 21st Baloise Art Prize, their works being donated to two leading European museums.

Galerie Crevecoeur (Statements)

Carlos Ishikawa (Statements)

EDITION This sector displayed 14 global leaders in prints and editioned works: Alan Cristea Gallery, Niels Borch Jensen Gallery and Editions, Sabine Knust, Lelong Editions, Atelier- Editions Fanal, Gemini G.E.L., Carolina Nitsch, Paragon, STPI, Two Palms and Durham Press, Polígrafa Obra Gràfica, Susan Sheehan Gallery that joined the Art Basel show for the first time.

UNLIMITED This platform was conceived for Art Basel’s large-scale projects that went beyond the limits of a traditional art-fair booth. It enabled galleries to exhibit imposing installations, massive sculptures, video projections, huge wall paintings, and extended photographic series. It was curated for the eighth and final year by Gianni Jetzer, Curator-at-Large at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington DC. The 75

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Alan Cristea Gallery (Edition)

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large-scale pieces by famous and emerging artists included Larry Bell, Andrea Bowers, Jonathas de Andrade, Alicia Framis, Abdulnasser Gharem, VALIE EXPORT, Kapwani Kiwanga, Daniel Knorr, Jannis Kounellis, Zoe Leonard, Sarah Lucas, Kerry James Marshall, Rivane Neuenschwander, Hélio Oiticica, Joan Semmel, Do Ho Suh, Fiona Tan, Franz West, and others.

Gagosian (Unlimited) Alexander Gray Associates (Unlimited) Some of the presentations criticized political upheavals and tensions e.g. Rivane Neuenschwander’s interactive installation entitled “Bataille” (2017) that explored the power of words from protest banners in France. Kerry James Marshall in “RYTHM MASTR Daily Strip” (2018) expressed African-American superheroes, whereas Alicia Framis’ amazing installation “LifeDress” (2018) created women’s clothing against harassment. The artist imagined a group of nine women wearing outfits made of auto airbags that inflated to protect wearers if harassed in the workplace.

Framis’s idea was to enable viewers to reflect on the similarity between women’s fashion and frailty in contemporary society whereas Bonvicini’s “Breathing” rendered a revelatory display of the mystical and the mechanical, of the feminine and the masculine, of the profane and the divine.

Andrea Bowers’ installation “Open Secret” (2018) described the evolution of international movements, “#MeToo” and “Time’s Up”, against sexual harassment. Moreover, Kapwani Kiwanga’s and Kiluanji Kia Henda’s presentations explored Africa’s colonial history, Austrian artist VALIE EXPORT’s 1983 video “Syntagma” explored female identity related to body image, while Joan Semmel examined the body as landscape in her newest and largest canvas.

PARCOURS Parcours, the sector curated by Samuel Leuenberger, founder of the non-profit exhibition space

SALTS in Switzerland, returned this year to Art Basel with performances, specific sculptures, and interventions.

lectivity is rebuilt by means of selective recollection, multiplication, knowledge, and information hybridization.

CONVERSATIONS The Conversations section, famous for its talks series, brought together artists, gallerists, collectors, historians, curators, museum directors and critics from all over the world. Being programmed for the first time by the German artist Julieta Aranda, the sector provided a platform for dialogues and discussions on actual subjects offering a comprehensive view on collecting and displaying art and first-hand information concerning the international art world.

Xu Zhen’s “Nirvana”, a specific installation made of sand, wood, and acrylic, included six roulette tables and baccarat, a sand mandala for the graphics of the game pattern with comedians at each table. Tibetan Buddhist monks’ handled ritualistic ephemeral sand to create patterns in tune with time and people intervening to gambling and chance.

FILM The Film program was curated by director of the Dortmund I Cologne International Women’s Film Festival, Maxa Zoller, famous for her experimental film series. She prepared a challenging works program on media’s major role in the actual global world. A remarkable artist curated by Cecilia Alemani for Basel’s Messeplatz was the Romanian Alexandra Pirici with “Aggregate” (2017-2019).

Making use of gestures and sounds from nature and popular sources in order to express various forms of heritage and cultural memory, Pirici rendered “Aggregate” as a time capsule containing pieces of authentic culture, art history and daily life turned into new living embodiments. Actually, “Aggregate” invited the viewers to analyse how identities are created and performed, and how col-

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Another remarkable painting on canvas at Peres Projects, Berlin, Germany, was Brent Wadden’s “Score 1 (Salt Spring),” made of wool, cotton and acrylic, exploring the artist’s painting practice to adapt abstract patterns to weavings employing repetitive geometric shapes.

The best producers in Unlimited were the Angolan filmmaker, Kiluanji Kia Henda who explored Africa’s colonialist history, and the Dutch-Indonesian artist Fiona Tan who depicted an equivocal dystopia or utopia.

Shaped as a cradle of vintage and modern architectural styles, invigorated by high-quality international art participation, the city of Basel kept morphing incessantly into an iconic canvas with vastmuseums, panoramic views, and a vibrant world-class Fair embodying art in its purest form.

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F rieze L ondon 2019

By Krystal Prakaikaew Na-Ranong

T

he Frieze art fair does give London a very colourful week in October for serious art collectors as well as for the general public. What is beautiful about art is that you are free to interpret it’s meaning the way you wish. There are no restrictions to it. Frieze is one of the best fairs for you to explore art as the exhibitors have the freedom to showcase their booth, which takes your visit to another dimension. Although Frieze is a trade fair, one important thing to note is that there is no price tag on the artwork, making it unintimidating for people to approach and explore the works.

Frieze London is definitely not a conventional art marketplace, it is in my opinion a pop-up venue that offers a multi-sensory experience that comes in many different forms including tastes, scents, creative sounds, performances and talks. The fact that the public have to pay highly priced tickets to attend the fair, means there is a certain level of quality one can expect to have. Exhibitors are trying to outdo each other one way or another, which you can witness in their booth installations that are very well curated and thought out.

Art can be experienced from everywhere around you from the moment you step into the fair ground. Glass sculptures hanging from the ceiling, the installation of a tree trunk lookalike that arouses your curiosity, scents and playlists have also been designed to immerse the audience in the experience, a massive steel art piece emerging from the floor, bright NEON messages that put a smile on your face, inventive kinetic art on the wall, definitely a mesmerizing environment to be in.

I was particularly drawn to the floor art by Martin Creed at

Shared Roots by Vik Muniz

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fair is done with quality at the top of the organiser’s priority list. Every little element makes a statement.

I would like to share some of my favourite artworks at Frieze this year. The first set of paintings which immediately caught my attention was Helios by Sterling Ruby: all of the paintings are in vivid yellow and orange. Standing in the middle of the booth among all his artworks, feels very much like being outside in the garden enjoying a beautiful sunny day. Taboo by Lara Favaretto, fun kinetic art consisting of two car-wash brushes Helios by Sterling Ruby

Gavin Brown’s Enterprise. Eye-catching acrylic-on-cotton strips in vivid colours and stripes.

The fact that it is something quite unusual to look down on the floor to see art, makes it even more special. It certainly gives you a sense of discovery.

Frieze London is also a venue where you can see people dressed up in creative patterns and colours. Your time there can pass by very fast as you always bump into something that invites you to explore. It goes without saying that the selection of restaurants and lounges throughout the

Taboo by Lara Favaretto

in chocolate brown and vivid orange which takes turn to spin against an iron wall, a great sense of humour. Although, it is hard to imagine where to place this piece of art at your office or your house, it certainly draws a big crowd for photos and video recordings.

I very much enjoyed walking around Olafur Eliasson’s geometry artwork, “No Symmetry in the Ocean”. Stimulating lights and shadows in different perspectives can be viewed around the work.

The effect changes with your movement. This work does invite viewers for an interaction and certainly keeps everyone totally engaged.

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Nick Cave’s Tondo: an assemblage of unconventional materials such as wire, bugle beads, sequined fabric and wood were used to form a colourful, round-shaped wall art. From the distance, you have an impression that the artwork resembles a piece of soft rug but when you approach it, you realise how genius the artist is to come up with such an unexpected combination of elements which gives his art this effect.

Kaari Upson’s SEVEN: an installation which comprises of seven components made from urethane, wood and pigment. During the visit to her childhood home in San Bernardino after the wildfires hit Los Angeles, Kaari found only one tree left standing. And from that visual appearance, she was inspired to create SEVEN. The work has a form of tree trunk and human flesh which also includes the shape of Tondo by Nick Cave her mother’s knee. All of the 7 pieces of work have different colours but shared the same muted hues such as pale pink, coffee, chocolate, charred wood and aubergine. They are suspended from the ceiling with thin wire, almost invisible to the eye. It gives an impression as if this tree-leg installation was floating in the air, which I find very amusing.

Will Boone’s Oleum 4: resin, enamel, acrylic on canvas. Enamel paint gives the work its glossy finish thus bringing other elements in the surrounding into the work. I like the mix of jade green and glossy black colours, which gives this work a peaceful look and at the same time an avant-garde feel to it. This is definitely a beautiful creation. I trust that you would appreciate it even more if you read about the inspiration that had led him to his works. The contents of his art are created from sources so diverse such as

music subcultures, the visual vernaculars of cattle ranches and barrooms. Boone is by all means a very interesting artist whose works I will keep following.

Neon work in red by Tracey Emin and its powerful message: “I THOUGHT ABOUT FUCKING THE INSIDE OF YOUR MIND” A striking piece of art in its simplicity.

I walked by David Kordansdky’s gallery and discovered artworks by Ivan Morley. Stunning works of embroidered thread on canvas. The woven work from stitches of a sewing machine, then stretched on canvas is a technique you do not come across often. Interestingly, I have learned that the artist considers his embroidered works paintings and not tapestries.

The sold-out collection on the first day of the fair only justifies the value of these unique pieces.

It is very rewarding to see how international brands embrace art in different concepts and formats. Ruinart for instance has very strong commitments to contemporary art. This year they have commissioned Vik Munik, a Brazilian multi-disciplinary artist and photographer to create a beautiful series of works called “Shared Roots”. Photographs of blackened wood and charcoal were displayed at the Ruinart lounge, giving it a monochromatic feel.

At the center of the BMW lounge, we can view a stunning 8series convertible with a bespoke Verde Ermes paint and merino leather. The sales manager on the floor explained to me that the car customization, “BMW individual” was introduced at Frieze

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as customers can have their BMW tailor-made as their own art piece, very smart idea. BMW has collaborated with a French artist, Camille Blatrix to create artworks using current and future technologies as tools for innovation. His works were conceptualized from the relationship between desire and obsession and personalization of the mass-produced, basically a dialogue between different subjects as well as dialogues between the artist and people who made contributions to his art. One of his sculptures was smartly placed in front of the convertible and lit by the car’s headlights. I particularly like the space they created as it gives a fun and interactive experience. Visitors were invited to go inside the car to view details or for photos, unique pieces of art specifically created for the brand were displayed around the lounge, champagne and cocktails could also be ordered from the bar.

The Frieze experience was not only restricted to Regent’s Park, Frieze made collaborations with various establishments throughout Lon-

No Symmetry in the Ocean by Olafur Eliasson

SEVEN by Kaari Upson

don. For instance, DRAF was one of the most exciting multisensory experiences during the Frieze week taking place at The Ministry of Sound, an iconic nightclub in London. An evening of performances that brought together artists, musicians and choreographers for an evening of live artworks. A combination of choreography, video and sound-based practices, performances which pushed the boundary of artistic expression.

Many interesting art talks were also organised at The Standard as part of the Frieze programme during the fair.

Frieze London is indeed an annual pop-up fair filled with treasures and surprises. It is an event to mark in the calendar for the month of October in London.

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Guests at Frieze London 2019

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A ida E melyanova:

I D o Whatever You Humans D o

By Cosmina Stan

W

e had the pleasure to meet the Kazak-Russian artist Aida Emelyanova who had an outstanding exhibition called ‘I Do Whatever You Humans Do’ in Mayfair’s Socialista Members Club during London’s iconic Frieze week. Following her controversial show ‘I Do Whatever You Animals Do’ and

‘Fate and Fortune’, ‘I Do Whatever You Humans Do’ was inspired by the role of women in today’s society. In 12 distinct photography pieces and one surprise sculpture, Aida created a connection between a human being and an object.

Aida, who is also the producer and director of photography says, “When I take photographs, create a story board, draw and sculpt I try to convey a certain message behind each piece of work. I look at it as a way of escapism. An escape from reality, from day to day life, from the mundane we are so often stuck in, not even realising it. Some-

times I see some wild images in my mind and I immediately make sketches and work with and through them until I can see a link and a coherent story coming together. I love the idea that in my art I can make any fantasy come to life, make it so real. When I start to work on a new project I try to make my pictures unique, something that I have never seen anywhere before. I put a great deal of energy into each concept and each photo shoot. My goal is to make people notice, to stop and wonder and ask questions rather than just to create an aesthetically correct or pleasing image leaving no trace of wonder in the viewer’. Every image depicts a scene from Aida’s internal

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The center piece of the exhibition was a 1.3m x 1.7m picture representing the old-fashioned propriety and drabness of life in the Soviet Union. In the post war era sexuality was deeply hidden and there was little question of a Western style sexual revolution taking hold. The socialist USSR lacked the capitalist West’s commercial culture that used sex to promote consumption. Soviet media were tightly controlled by a very prudish censorship. The regime forbade private, non-governmental organisation, so feminists and sex radicals could not agitate publicly for change. There was a sexual revolution in the Soviet Union during 1960s and 1970s and it was marked by significant differences to the simultaneous revolutions in the West and this is exactly what Aida wanted to express through the ‘NO SEX IN USSR’ piece.

Since 2015 Aida is represent-

monologue; every image is like a mov-

ed by Belsta Art and Events, a

ie with complex and imaginary stories.

London based art consultancy

Every photograph has a past, a future

that focuses on events man-

and an end; Aida also incorporates de-

agement, PR, highly tailored

sire, beauty, complexity, fashion and

events that match collector to

lust into her stories.

artist. You can see more of Aida’s artwork at

Having graduated from Chelsea Col-

www.aidaemelyanova.com

lege of Art with a degree in Fine Art,

or contact the ‘Belsta Girls’ for

Aida has focused her work on the world

more information

around her while also channeling her

www.belsta.co.uk.

memories as a young girl and challenging our perceptions of reality. With an emphasis on crossing the line between normalcy and insanity, Aida hopes to channel feelings of loneliness, suffering and madness in her work.

On her return to Mayfair, Aida stated: “I was very excited to bring my work back to Mayfair with the hopes of inspiring art lovers with my thought-provoking images. The show brought together my love of surrealism, politics and sensuality.”

This was Aida’s third solo-exhibition following her previous showcases ‘I Do Whatever You Animals Do’ at 12 Hay Hill Member’s Club in November 2015 and ‘Fate/Fortune’ at 99 Mount Street in 2012. Aida has also exhibited at the Chelsea College of Art and Design Show (2011), Air Gallery at Dover Street London (2010) and “I Want to Go Back Where There Is More to Life than You” (2010).

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EVOLUTION CHRISTIAN VOIGT

S

OMEONE ONCE WROTE THAT YOU CANNOT PASS BY CHRISTIAN VOIGT’S PHOTOGRAPHS WITHOUT STOPPING FOR A CLOSER LOOK. ALL HIS IMAGES CAPTURE YOUR EYE AND YOUR ATTENTION. FIRST YOU ARE TAKEN ABACK, THEN

YOU ARE DRAWN IN. AND YOU NEED TO STEP CLOSER TO IDENTIFY THE CAUSE. HOW CAN A SUBJECT YOU HAVE ENCOUNTERED A THOUSAND TIMES BEFORE SUDDENLY SEEM SO FRESH AND NEW, AS IF SEEN FOR THE FIRST TIME? AND YOU BEGIN TO MARVEL WITH CHILDLIKE AMAZEMENT AT THE BEAUTY OF THE WORLD. THIS IS HOW FIRST-TIME VIEWERS OF CHRISTIAN VOIGT’S WORK RESPOND TO HIS MONUMENTAL, HYPER-REALISTIC LANDSCAPE AND ARCHITECTURAL PHOTOGRAPHY. INITIALLY, THE IMAGES FEEL FAMILIAR. BUT THERE IS THAT SENSE OF PUZZLEMENT. AND THE MORE THE BEHOLDER ATTEMPTS TO COME TO GRIPS WITH THE SOURCE OF THAT PUZZLEMENT, THE FURTHER THEY ARE TRANSPORTED ON A HALLUCINATORY JOURNEY INTO THE DEPTH OF THE S URFACE OF THINGS.

Tyrannosaurus Rex Tristan, Museum für Naturkunde, photo by Christian Voigt

Tyrannosaurus Rex Tristan, Museum für Naturkunde, photo by Christian Voigt

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Now we have Evolution, a series on prehistoric skeletons.

Surely, we have been here before? T-Rex, the pop star, its jaws agape, towering threateningly on its hind legs? The feathery Archaeopteryx, flying away across a primitive, rocky landscape with its prey in its claws? Brontosaurus, the gigantic herbivore, each of its steps causing the ground to shake? Dinosaurs, the “terrible lizards” (from the ancient Greek deinós for “terrible” or “huge” and sauros for “lizard”), have fascinated us all since childhood. They have formed iconic imprints on our visual memory, in the same way as the Red Cross, the Union Jack and the Coca-Cola logo. We have seen them a thousand times, read about them in children’s books, collected them as figurines, adored them as cartoon characters, learnt about them in biology class, visited them in natural history museums, and quaked in our cinema seats as they appeared as Hollywood-style monsters in Jurassic World. Christian Voigt has again ventured into photographic territory that has been measured, mapped, studied and trivialized to the nth degree.

Triceratops Duo, Senckenberg Naturmuseum, photo by Christian Voigt

And despite, or because, of this fact he again instantaneously succeeds in casting an enigmatic spell over us.

“

WE DON’T SEE THINGS AS THEY ARE WE SEE THINGS AS WE ARE”

Triceratops Unio, Senckenberg Naturmuseum, photo by Christian Voigt

At first glance, the figures depicted in his monumental, large-format, deep-black photographs appear to be drawn from fantasy fiction — something from Tolkien’s world, but suddenly reality. They are three-dimensional, huge, almost alive. At second glance, however, we detect something strangely familiar. Our body releases an extra rush of adrenalin. But our brain activates its critical faculties. Human intelligence begins to analyse these strange photographs. Is this authentic?

Why this colour? Is this genuine? If so, why does it look so hyper-real? They have an almost physical impact on us — precisely because there is no addition, intention, or guile. They simply are. This is how Christian Voigt works.

“

THEY ARE THREE-DIMENSIONAL, HUGE, ALMOST ALIVE. AT SECOND GLANCE, HOWEVER, WE DETECT SOMETHING STRANGELY FAMILIAR”

Born in Munich, and with homes in Hamburg and the south of France, Christian Voigt is a restless traveler, always in

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search of the “city beyond the hills.” Travel is his life’s purpose, encounters are his life’s elixir, the search for beauty his life’s motif — underpinned by all-pervasive perfectionism. These are the keys to his unfathomably sumptuous images of landscapes and architecture, his unmistakable photographic technique, and visual language — that have catapulted him to rapidly growing, international fame, and made his works sought-after acquisitions in an increasing number of private collections.

For Christian Voigt the artist, it would probably make sense to leave his unique visual language unaltered, and to simply collect new images on new travels to new locations. But for Christian Voigt the traveler, that it is not an option. It would feel as if he had come to the end of the road. “To me, the purpose of travel is the journey itself, not reaching a certain location. As a traveler, as a human being, and as a photographer, I don’t want to be at a point where I say: I’ve reached my destination. This is where I am going to stay.”

Elaphrosaurus Bambergi, Museum für Naturkunde, photo by Christian Voigt

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“

I TRADED MY WIDE-RANGE VIEWPOINT FOR AN UP-

of today’s photographic techniques and technology. They are the

CLOSE VIEW OF THE DETAILS, BUT KEPT WORKING

result of meticulously planned, extremely time-consuming mul-

WITH MY TECHNICAL MEANS.”

tiple exposures taken with large-format analogue cameras. These images are subsequently layered on top of each other, exposed

With Evolution, Christian Voigt has radically expanded both his

again and printed on paper to create a single picture. It is a process

visual vocabulary and his portfolio of photographic techniques.

that often takes weeks. Without adding anything extra to the image

These are not carefully sought-and-found subjects, as is the case

itself, each individual bone and each individual detail is modeled

with Voigt’s landscape and architectural panoramas. Instead, he

one by one, and staged to perfection. The result is more real than

presents us with objects as they are — captured under almost labo-

reality. But their puzzling mystery remains.

ratory-like conditions. This is not a heightened depiction of reality, but the systematic staging of it, even to the extent of eliminating the surroundings in favor of black non-light.

Smilodon Californicus, Senckenberg Naturmuseum, photo by Christian Voigt

“The idea for Evolution came to me in 2017 when I was photographing the huge blue whale skeleton suspended from the ceiling of the Hintze Hall in the Natural History Museum in London.

For me, there was an odd tension between the archaic power of this huge skeleton and the strict order of the surrounding architecture,” explains Christian Voigt. “I continued to pursue this tension — and arrived at this radical depiction against a black backdrop.

Usually, I want my pictures to convey how I see something. But with the dinosaurs, I want to show the impact they have on me.

And to do that, I had to find new methods.”

What remains is an X-ray-like view of the surface of things that is so detailed it feels like a hallucination. Much like his landscape photographs, Christian Voigt’s Evolution images push the limits

Stegosaurus, Senckenberg Naturmuseum, photo by Christian Voigt

Stygimoloch Spinifer, Museum für Naturkunde, photo by Christian Voigt

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A lvaro de M arichalar A Modern Day E xplorer

by Simon Piggott

Alvaro de Marichalar

O

On 10th August 2019 Alvaro de Marichalar, a member of the Yacht Club of Monaco’s Explorer Club, set off from Seville for his Solo World Tour aboard “Numancia”, his 3m water scooter, the smallest registered craft to attempt such a voyage. We met him in Monaco on 7th November when he set off for his second stage of his journey towards the Canary Islands.

The venture marks the fifth centenary of the first circumnavigation of the earth initiated by the famous Portuguese explorer Ferdinand de Magellan and completed by the Spanish explorer Juan Sebastian de Elcano.

After King Manuel I of Portugal refused to support Magellan’s proposed expedition to reach India via a new route by sailing around the southern end of the South American continent, Magellan found a willing patron in the Spanish King, Charles I to seek a westward route to the Moluccas or Spice Islands in the Indian Ocean. Commanding a fleet of five vessels, he headed south across the Atlantic Ocean to Patagonia. Despite storms and mutinies, they made it through the Strait of Magellan, which bears his name, into a body of water named the “peaceful sea” - the Pacific Ocean. The expedition reached the Philippine Archipelago where Magellan was killed during the Battle of Mactam in 1521. In the same year the expedition reached

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the midst of the elements he is pushing himself to the limits of endurance in what can often be a hostile environment. It is a unique personal experience.

However his expedition does not stop at his personal experience but has a far greater mission. It has an educational element as well as a humanitarian one. Throughout the years and especially with this World Tour he continues his vocation of explaining to all, and especially the younger generations, the respect and love that we need to have for our oceans and how we need to protect them from pollution, especially plastic, as well as over-fishing, so that the balance of the ecosystem is maintained.

Alvaro and Ursula Andress the Spice Islands and one of the surviving ships, the Victoria, eventually returned home via the Indian Ocean, completing the first circumnavigation of the globe. Of the five ships and 240 men which set sail from Seville in 1519 thus only one, with a crew of 18 men achieved the feat in 1522!

However Alvaro’s journey is not just about celebrating the first circumnavigation of the globe (thereby proving that it is round) but it has a more profound significance.

We started by asking Alvaro why he named his vessel NUMANCIA and here is his interesting answer which characterizes the adventurer and his

This is achieved by giving lectures at his ports of call at local yacht clubs, community centres or wherever he is invited. He is also involved in producing TV documentaries for the National Geographic Channel and others, illustrating the beauty of the oceans and the problems they face. He therefore becomes a motivational speaker who can transmit through his experiences at sea and through the encounters he makes that we need to focus on what is important for mankind and especially preserve our environment.

To understand better who Alvaro is and why he has embarked on this tour it is worth taking a look at his background and experience: Álvaro de Marichalar y Sáenz de Tejada, was born in Pamplona fifty-eight years ago to an aristocratic family from Navarra, his father being the 8th Count of Ripalda, his mother Concepción Sáenz de Tejada also a descendant of another ancient aristocratic family from the Rioja area. One of his brothers, Jaime, married the Infanta Elena, daughter of King Juan Carlos and his family motto is ‘Faithful to the King, God and the Nation.”

An Academician of the Royal Sea Academy of Spain, having served in the Royal Spanish Air Force as a pilot, Alvaro describes himself as an Explorer, Sailor, Entrepreneur and Lecturer.

In 1984 he founded TeleSat, one of the first companies to supply systems for satellite television reception in Spain, England and France and presently he manages his telecommunications company which also involves mobile-phone recycling both in Spain and other European countries.

His passion has always been sailing aboard water scooters and since 1982 he has combined this with his business commitments. Since

Numancia 3m mission – Numancia is in fact the tiny Iberian town which heroically resisted the Roman Empire’s army some twenty two centuries ago and never surrendered. Numancia embodies the concepts of resistance, commitment, combat and honour and it is believed that the Spanish National conscience first originated in the term Numancia. Alvaro is particularly attached to the place as the archeological remains of Numancia where found at his family’s ancestral property in Soria, in the Kingdom of Spain and the family still keeps and protects part of the Site to this day, having donated it to the Nation.

We then asked Alvaro what motivates him to embark on such a journey after having already travelled to many destinations in the past on Numancia. In his book “Rumbo al Horizonte Azul” (“Heading into the Blue Horizon”) he describes the experience of navigating solo on a water scooter. It is the most incredible feeling of being on the smallest floating raft in the immense ocean with only the noise of the wind and waves to accompany him on his travels. In

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plorer yacht M/Y Yersin, also owned by a member of the Yacht Club of Monaco. Following the transatlantic crossing to Guadalupe, in the French West Indies, the trip will continue to Venezuela and through the Panama Canal into the Pacific Ocean. The next stages will take him up the eastern pacific coast of North America via Mexico, California and onwards to Canada and Alaska. From there he will cross the Bering Sea to Russia. It will then continue via Japan, India, and back through the Suez Canal to Monaco ultimately to his starting-point in Seville!

then he has carried out 40 Solo maritime expeditions, achieving 13 World Records.

Alvaro is not new to a challenge and here below are some of his previous expeditions: Seville - Genoa Tour of Spain and Portugal (San Sebastian - Lisbon - Seville - Majorca Barcelona) Majorca - Sardinia - Majorca Canary Islands - Bilbao Tour of Sri Lanka Paris - London Moscow - Saint Petersburg Rome - New York (Transatlantic) Hong Kong - Tokyo Barcelona - Odessa Tour of the Caribbean (Puerto Rico - Florida to Mexico - Panama - Trinidad & Tobago - Puerto Rico)

However this trip cannot be achieved alone and Alvaro is particularly grateful for the support given by Yacht Club de Monaco, the OceanoScientific Foundation and the educational institution SEK/IES (International Education Systems).

As Ccercle members we would also like to open up an appeal for help in whichever way possible both for financial partnerships and on a technical support basis to all our members and friends to support this important mission of awareness for the conservation of our oceans for our children and the generations to come – 71% of the earth is composed of water and it is the source of life so creating a consciousness and real impact to preserve it is essential for mankind to survive in this increasingly polluted world!

His 2019 World Tour is certainly the most challenging he has embarked upon so far. He expects it to take over a year. The tour started along the Spanish and Portuguese coastline to commemorate the departure of Magellan and his fleet on 10th August 1519 five hundred years to the day.

The trip started from Seville with the first stage to Sanlucar de Barrameda continuing to Lisbon, Guetaria (birth place of Elcano) and Bayonne. This was a practice run for the world trip which restarted from the Monaco Yacht Club (YCM) on 7th November involving a 16-hour non stop trip to Marseille. The next leg was to Barcelona, to be followed by Valencia, Malaga and Gibraltar and onto the Canary Islands. As Numancia’s range is around 240 nautical miles, with its extra tanks fitted, the transatlantic crossing to Guadalupe will be accompanied by a support vessel, the ex-

Alvaro can be contacted on the addresses below and his tour may be followed on https://my.yb.tl/NUMANCIA and on marine traffic as NUMANCIA SOLO-11FT. Instagram AlvaroDeMarichalar; Twitter @DeMarichalar; Facebook Alvaro De Marichalar; YouTube AlvaroDeMarichalar and send Email: spinnotecmc@gmail.com

Fr. Michelangelo, Simon Piggott, Susan Feaster, Mr and Mrs. Yvan Griboval, Serge de Yugoslavie, Alvaro, Helga Piaget, Irina Pederson, Bernard D’Alessandri (YCM), Francois Fiat (MY Yersin), Thomas de Brouwer(YCM) and Kate Powers

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Be part of the unmissable show where novelties are revealed and trends are set

APRIL 30 – MAY 05, 2020 B ASELWORLD.COM

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HIPPIES AND MYSTICAL LUXURY The

growth of happiness

By Franck Drake

I

was always fascinated by hippies without knowing the true meaning of their ideologies. As a child, their colourful Indian-style clothing, long hair and flowers, body painting referencing elephants and their legendary motto “Peace & Love” remained mysterious to me. Like every other child, I was naive and didn’t realize until later just how toxic our world is. I had to wait many years to have a revelation, to discover where their inspiration, where the birth of their mind-set and culture originated. I admit that I had acquired an undeniable interest in other aspects of spirituality during my life and I felt a tremendous calling to explore that further. But one query breeds an almost indecipherable drawback, as so numerous and varied are the definitions and interpretations of that which is “spirituality” today. Is it a wholeheartedly cerebral inducement? In my opinion, yes and no. Some of us have a natural gift and were born

with it; for others, it involves daily intellectual work and a let-go of all attachments, in order to access elevation and ultimately, enlightenment. This is our own understanding of spirituality, both experiencing the mystical and learning to integrate it and transmit it to others, accepting and recognizing the beauty of the present even when it’s not seemingly beautiful. We are all spirit and no single place defines us. It is tricky to stay in that exquisite realm all the time. Superficialities are to be observed and remain as curiosities.

So, what happens when we are in a fabulous luxury environment? I believe that luxury is not superficial if we are not attached to it and if we use it as a retreat for spirituality and transcendent thinking. Every luxury hotel can be a sanctuary when we already are in the bliss bubble of the magic and comfort of not

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having to deal with real life. This influence should change our perceptions, reminding us to appreciate our life style and be thankful to the universe for being so fortunate.

I never realized how good my karma was until I travelled to India. I believe people there are exceptionally spiritual: fasting, meditating and praying, because if they lived only in the physical world, their lives would be too painful. Consequently, many depend on spirituality for sustenance, and have elevated themselves to a level where they dwell in bliss amidst abject poverty and chaos. Everything can be spiritual, the way we eat, the way we sit, the way we stand, the way we breathe, the way we conduct our body, our mind, our energies and emotions.

Yes, luxury is extravagance and spirituality is purity. But an abundance of ultra-comfort and special treats can only lead us to smiling, happiness, wellbeing, sharing and compassion. If we understand it as a source of pure joy, luxury is a form of spirituality that increases empathy, connectivity, health and can reduce loneliness, isolation, anxiety, fears and worries.

It was February when I arrived in MUMBAI. My eyes were burning. Each breath tasted like a thick miasma of dirt, filth and gasoline in the air. I was desperate for oxygen. The extreme

pollution and the insane traffic echoing with ceaseless loud horns filled me with exasperation.

My mood soon steadied when I arrived in Bollywood (The nickname for India’s booming film industry) where my dear friend, the gorgeous Mallika Sherawat, a major Indian actress, was on the set for her new movie BOOO. Seeing her, I don’t think there is a better way to start a day in Mumbai. The comedy-melodrama filled with musical numbers will conquer the screens in theatres later, but for now, there weren’t any obstacles between the 2D girl and me. She was real, like she had jumped out of the screen to give me a warm welcoming hug.

The humidity and the heat quickly soaked my linen shirt but I was fortunate in that during breaks from the arduous work of shooting her scenes, Mallika and I were able to cool off in her trailer. Her words fascinated me. She said,

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– “While you are here, you absolutely have to go to Varanasi. It is the Vatican of India”.

– “Yes Mallika”, I urged, “it will be mind-blowing to all be together in such a powerful atmosphere. Let’s do it!”

She knew of my interest in spirituality. Mallika was also excited to talk about a phenomenon that happens every 12 years when over 120 million sadhus (holy men) and pilgrims attend the festival called Kumbh Mela.

One week later, I reached the banks of the Ganges in Varanasi, one of the most sacred sights for pilgrimages by Hindus and one of the oldest cities in the world, inhabited for 5,000 years. It felt like I travelled in a time machine when I ended up there, where everything was unfamiliar. I wasn’t ready for such a cultural shock, the evolution of life immobilized more than 300 years ago, or at least, that’s how it appeared to me. Women in their colourful saris, men wearing merely a strap and children bathing naked, some venerating the Ganges by immersing themselves in the Holy River for purification. The city has been built on one shore of the Ganges that took its source from the Himalayas, waters flowing down to the Bay of Bengal. Varanasi faces east towards the rising sun, with large steps descending and plunging into the river, where cows are free to walk as individuals.

She added, “It is the largest assemblage of human beings on earth. It’s related to the alignment of certain planets that creates a positive energy, providing a perfect atmosphere for spiritual growth and enlightenment. It is irrefutably spiritual. Some sadhus are completely naked with ash-smeared bodies and rush into the cold water for a bath”.

At this exact moment, Sanjay Mishra, a leading actor and friend of hers, knocked on the door and suggested we meet in his trailer. Sanjay was born in Varanasi and was keen to tell me all about it. We quickly became friends and he invited me to join him in Allahabad, a three-hour drive from Varanasi, before attending Kumbh Mela. – “I will be there next week and I will have a tent for you. Meet me,” he insisted. “And you too Mallika, you should take the opportunity as well.”

Mallika loved the idea of all of us meeting there if her schedule allowed.

On the last step of the stairs known as ghats, I embarked on an old-style wooden boat and started my journey cruising on the Ganges. The wind caressed my face under a torrid sun. I enjoyed those spontaneous transcendent pure moments of joy. Hundreds of boats of all styles were floating on the Holy River passing intriguing sandstone palaces, entering a melting pot of spirituality, mythology and religion. A thought crossed my mind: is it conceivable to think that this is the place where the original hippie proclivity acquired its inspiration and influences? Sadhus and hippies share a parallel philosophy: peaceful spirits, love of life and freedom, a simpler lifestyle in harmony with the earth, their long hair, their colourful clothes when they wear some, artistic experimentation, respect for nature, vegetarian diets based on unprocessed foods and usage of holistic medicine.

I recognize myself in most of their practices. I guess I am somehow a hippy of the modern society, exploring these new paths. The interaction with sadhus and my interest in documentation of hippies during my childhood lead me, subconsciously, toward these steps. (That is, unless I was Indian in a past life, as a sadhu told me during one of our dialogues.)

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A powerful smell of smoke was more and more palpable when we passed by one of the ghats. Several large bonfires were consuming themselves on the big stairs. The boatman said to me: – “Each flame contains a dead body. Varanasi is one of the few places in the world where they do cremation twenty-four hours a day. 150 to 200 bodies are cremated daily. People come from all over India to die and to be cremated here, because the ceremony breaks the cycle of reincarnation and offers access to eternal life. After the cremation, the ashes will be thrown into the Holy River and the current will carry their souls to heaven.”

His words were echoing in my mind while the ceremonies were proceeding and the fragments of bone still smoking were dumped into the Ganges. The eerie vision reinforced by pungent smoke transported me to a state of transcendent reflection, almost as if I absorbed LSD. I was completely disconnected from reality and my brain froze, creating a blur that was bewitching my view. I never felt so close to death, and to life. Long after, when my mind functioned enough to appreciate the beauty surrounding me, the boat approached the dock leading to the majestic Brijrama Palace, awaiting me with all its splendour. Originally a fort, it was built in 1812 and took the last owner 18 years to restore and convert into a luxury hotel with all the amenities. I was welcomed by a ritual consisting of smearing saffron powder between my two eyebrows, creating a third eye on the sixth chakra point in order to retain energy in my body and to control concentration. A necklace created from seeds was placed around my neck while musicians performed traditional harmonies. A tiny antique elevator took me up to a spectacular column-filled courtyard overlooking the banks of the Ganges. On the other side of the river, the desert was offering a declination of sand colours fading into the perfect blue sky. Camels were passing in the distance. Down below, the reiteration of what I’ve seen earlier: sadhus meditating, chanting, people bathing, cows, monkeys, merchants ...

The swarming outside world contrasted drastically with the sumptuousness of this highly polished luxury hotel. The kind and professional manager, dressed in native clothing, accompanied me across the atrium to the Maharaja Suite. I was torn between playing it safe by enjoying the cocooning within this stunning palace, sipping tea and observing Varanasi from the terrace above or joining the excitement of the mysterious outside world. I followed my stronger impulses towards the authenticity that was waiting for me on the ghats where I strolled along the alleys of the backstreets, discovering a universe of colours, smells, animals, people... A group of people were coming my way along a tiny street, chanting with arms uplifted, holding bamboo stretchers, transporting a dead body wrapped in bright orange material covered with flowers. I felt trapped and squeezed myself against an enormous wooden pink door as to not intercept them on the narrow street. I was not unnerved as I assumed they were heading toward the cremation site.

Each exchange of ideas with several sadhus had revealed an incredible understanding about superficiality, “letting go” and that which was “unnecessary”. Some of them smeared the remaining ashes of dead bodies upon my forehead, ashes penetrating my mouth and my eyes. In the evening at around 6pm, a veil was escalating due to the evaporation of the humidity. The daylight was fading, turning dusk into an auburn sky. It was cooler, getting almost cold. I hopped onto a boat to assist in the blessing ceremony of the Ganges performed twice a day, morning and evening. I could hear a large crowd in the distance intoning holy chants in accordance with repeated drumming, immersing me in a hypnotic state.

Back to the Palace, after a memorable candlelight dinner in the Dhruvnanda Restaurant with delicious gourmet fusion Indian cuisine, I fell asleep in my suite and woke the next day at sunrise to be present at a yoga rendezvous, without a trace of nightmare. The saffron sky and the Ganges in the backdrop were exhilarating. It was another moment of pure joy on the terrace of this magnificent palazzo. Mallika and Sanjay were on their way from Mumbai to meet me, making my day even more magical. The session started with meditation.

I was wondering: Do we have to be a sadhu or hippie to be spiritual? I don’t think so.

Can we live in luxury without forgetting the fundamental basics of life and without losing our connection with the universe? Of course we can and we will, but only if we choose to become aware.

Edited by Elizabeth Sobieski.

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Burning M an 2019 – M etamorphoses

By Nisha Khare

Stephen Greaves Burning Man2019

O

n the morning of August 24th, 2019, my husband Sharad and I were celebrating our 17th wedding anniversary by leaving Vancouver, Canada and getting onto a flight to Las Vegas, Nevada. This experience wasn’t going to be a marathon weekend of drinks by the pool, shopping, and eating all day while dancing in clubs at night. Although we did dance, that was the only resemblance to past trips of our journey to Gerlach, Nevada.

We landed at 2:30 pm, then grabbed our taxi to the RV rental agency we had booked a month before. You see, it was one of the only 25 footer RV’s left in the vicinity that allowed Burning Man rentals. We were told that the dust from the Playa would get into every crevice, nook and cranny of our vehicle, not to mention our clothes, our skin, and everything that was exposed to the natural environment. They did not lie. ;)

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Photo by Nick Harborne

We proceeded to drive around Las Vegas to get supplies. As no money is exchanged at Burning Man, one must come prepared with absolutely everything you could need for this 9-day arts event. Our first stop was a large warehouse retailer where we purchased food, provisions and ice. From there, our next destination was a retail store that had everything under the sun, and we proceeded to pick up our pre-ordered bikes, food and supplies. However, the most important thing we bought was 25 gallons of water that would allow us to survive the desert heat we were going to embark on over the next six days. Five hours later, we raced to a home improvement retailer where we purchased supplies to wrap our RV windows, interior floors, seats and anything that could get dust on our survival home for the next week. After closing down the store, we then sat in our RV. We looked at each other and laughed while almost crying because we were so exhausted, sweaty, but also totally elated with the fact that we had done the work needed to get us to Burning Man. It was midnight, and we decided we would drive to the Playa. We hit the road and drove through small towns. Many of the vehicles on the road were going to the same destination. We could all feel the anticipation of the unknown, but we were committed to make the best of what was to come.

Photo by Shelley Mantei

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In addition to the purchased supplies, we had three suitcases filled with the most elaborate outfits, lights and accessories to add to the total enjoyment of our adventure. We had a first aid kit in case of emergency and flushable wet wipes in case our RV shower water ran out. We had read & reviewed the 10 Principles of Burning Man, including radical self-reliance, decommodification, gifting, immediacy, communal effort, civic responsibility, leaving no trace, participation, and radical inclusion. We were prepared for what was to come. Or were we?

Ten hours driving into the desert, and then another eight hours in a line up to get into Burning Man, we finally found our camp. Forty of our existing and new friends descended into the magical abode to create a camp built on hard work & happy vibes. Our dear friends Dawn and Jordan were getting married at Burning Man, and we were there to celebrate with them. It was tough to imagine that we were embarking upon a space that would welcome over 70,000 people into all its glory and wonder where previously there was nothing but empty desert.

The heat! The Heat! THE HEAT! Did I mention the heat?!? There was no escaping the heat that was there from morning to night, in the open and in the shade. Eventually, you just got used to it. Then at night, the temperature dipped & out came the fur jackets to keep us warm paired with essential accessories such as dust masks & sealed eye goggles. We ensured we had water, food and snacks to get us through every day we were there. However, I have to say, as many say, when you need something, the Playa Provides. That statement was one of the truest experiences I have ever witnessed. For example, our camp was part of a beautiful art build. We were assisting the awe-inspiring Dawn, Jordan, Dorian and the talented team to assemble one of the most complicated and massive

art pieces I have had the privilege to put together: ‘Signed, Love Earth’. This comma cathedral would not only be the largest love letter seen from space with a thousand love letters within, but it would also be the altar at which our friends would exchange their vows and commit to each other in a deeply moving wedding ceremony. It embodied love in every way.

After hours of work, sweat and some tears of joy at the ‘Signed, Love Earth’ art piece, we were all hungry and at the point of exhaustion. I turned to a friend and said, “We just need a little food to keep us going.” We were so far into the desert that our nearest nourishment was a 20-minute bike ride away, and that was precious time we didn’t have on our tight build schedule. From out of nowhere, a woman carrying boxes of pizzas appeared and asked us if we were hungry. We were in shock and grateful because there was no way to predict that in the middle of an incredibly vast and empty land that a lone woman on her bike would bring us hot and delicious pizza. Only love could provide that type of generosity.

After that first 9 hours of the rigorous & fulfilling build day, we rode our bikes back to our camp, where we were encouraged to get ready for our first big night of riding. We cruised with our campmates to see the sights, hear the DJs and express ourselves through fashion freedom. We were mesmerized as we saw brilliant lights and listened to the uplifting music pumping through the best sound systems. We were shocked that somehow, we still managed to fall asleep with the bumping beats that play 24 hours a day. We fell in love with Burning Man for its openness, creativity & mind-blowing art.

The theme this year for Burning Man was Metamorphoses. The changing of our lives to changing the world. We definitely were open to what was going to transform us and all that was about to happen.

Photo by Sharad Khare

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Photo by Sharad Khare hours a day. There were art cars that would cruise around to entertain us. We danced with smiles on our faces till the sun rose.

You see, there was no one paying attention to clocks or time.

We were in an eternal bliss of happy energy, creative energy, and magical energy that could only be described as something divine.

The MAN... the central hub of this incredible place was where the massive towering art structure of a man that would be burned on the Saturday of the week ahead. It was beautiful and reminded me of a digital avatar. It would be a symbol of how humanity reveres idols and then releases that energy to the world during the burn.

The Temple was one of the most sacred places I have ever witnessed in my life. We rode toward this massive structure that could only be described as a combination of a spaceship and Stonehenge, all made of wood. As we got closer, we could feel a peace that I have never felt before. It was a sacred place that people would gather to meditate, contemplate, and remember loved ones that were gone, passed away and no longer here in human form. People would post photos and memorials everywhere on the structure. It was non-denominational, it was about humanity, and above all, it was about remembering the loved one’s energy on this earth. You could feel that energy in your core; it would never escape you.

That structure would also be burned at the end of the week. I hope that someone remembers me there when I am gone. That memory was one of the most beautiful displays of human sharing I can ever remember in my time in this life.

The fashion ranged from elaborate hats, hippy gear, wigs, sparkly garb, goggles, flashing lights, fur, stockings, pasties, bodysuits, right down to seeing people in complete nakedness that became the norm in this dusty oasis. It was beautiful as no one judged anyone for anything. In fact, people embraced the differences, and if you wandered, you were welcome everywhere for food, drink, hugs, and just company. It was how the world should be every day, and my faith in humanity was restored.

Every day as we listened to music, meditated with loved ones and strangers while creating art in the deep heat of the mystical desert, I was evolving into someone who wanted to be a part of this world: no judgement, no schedule, no status, just happiness, just love. LOVE. I am love. I believe that my Metamorphoses was the ability to learn to love others, but more importantly, love myself. I will continue to share that love and the idea that creativity, humanity, and generosity are the true manifestations of success, happiness and ultimately LOVE.

There was no status, no one spoke about work, what they did for a living, there was no money, just an understanding that everyone was there to contribute and be respectful of one another. The first transformation that I undertook was deconstructing my biases that had been built up in my mind subconsciously throughout my life. We build walls around ideas and put boundaries on what is possible, both physically and mentally. Here I truly understood that our only limitations are self-imposed and that everything you desire can be created. The imaginative art cars, structures and people existing in harmony all around us were perfect examples.

As we departed from the Playa, we realized that we were leaving an old sacred friend. One fundamental rule to remember was to leave no trace. To clean and cleanse where we celebrated, danced, cried, slept, and learned about ourselves. We learned to respect that space so we could come back and create that energy again and again without harming it. Burning Man became a part of our family, and we became part of a magical community.

Forever transformed & eternally grateful.

Nisha Bio

Every day I witnessed talent in the form of art, music, and true humanity.

I was transforming to the point I loved myself more and deeply appreciated everyone around me without any hesitation. We were in sync with the Playa, and there was nothing that would change that.

Transportation was necessary to get from one place to the other. Our bikes were our survival transports that would whisk us anywhere we needed. At night we would turn on our bedazzled lit up two-wheelers. We would bike 20 to 30 km per day. It was hard, but eventually effortless because if you did not move, you would have the biggest FOMO (fear of missing out) you could imagine. You did not want to miss a moment of the action, and boy was there action from the lights in the sky to the world-class DJs playing 24

Nisha Khare BA, BEd, MEd, RCC, is a Director/Producer, Documentarian, a partner at Human Biography, a brand ambassador, a Registered Clinical Counsellor and proud mom of two.

Instagram: @NishaKhare Facebook: @NishaKhareNK LinkedIn: @NishaKhare

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a

L ife I s Not Z ero Sum Game

By Lucy Doughty

F

irstly, life is LIFE, it is not a game – we only get one round of innings (depending on individual beliefs), and there is no such thing as ‘zero’, ask any mathematician, it is not even technically a number.

Even in the beginning, of earth or of you dear reader, you did not materialise magically out of a void in thin air, but, a group of cells joining romantically with a different group of attractive cells, that grew into something truly miraculous, a whole new life, you! So even at the beginning, there was a lot of something, pure potential, ready for the moment when it could grow into something else. As such, we continue this path of growth, mentally, emo96

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tionally, physically, throughout our mortal existence. Of course, the extent of this growth is down to us, what we are willing to become aware of and how much we are willing to shed the confines of our comfort zones and allow ourselves to excel beyond our wildest imaginings of what we could be and achieve. It is already greatly powerful to realise that this is in fact a decision that we make for ourselves, no matter where you are in life, or where you are in the world, the way you see and deal with the world is your choice.

The friction so many of us encounter in our lives often comes when we resist the lessons and opportunities to adjust our viewpoint when we encounter something our current state of mind was not expecting, from the small inconveniences, to the largescale shocks that life serves up on a regular basis to varying degrees. Even more incredible still, is that in this age of hyper-connectivity, where we have such an unbelievable quantity of constant information, images, inspirations and temptations literally at our fingertips, on phones, tablets, screens and everywhere in-between, it seems shocking that this actively proves that more does indeed equal more: but more misery, uncertainty, procrastination, envy, distress and finally mental illness. It feeds the eternal fear of lack perpetuating society, that if someone somewhere succeeds or has more, then the other person somehow

loses out, is the loser in an imaginary equation. This perpetual state of envy and misery is incredibly stressful and untrue, yet is of course beneficial to some, such as pharmaceutical companies and retailers, but crippling for anyone actually going through it.

In nature, old lore states that often the remedy to anything unpleasant or toxic grows close at hand to that which caused pain or discomfort, such as the humble dock-leaf that commonly grows next to stinging nettle plants: dock leaves when rubbed on nettle stings automatically eradicate any pain. So as in our super connected world, where individuals’ isolation is being pushed to dangerous extremes, the ironic cure is the formation of nurturing communities of actual human beings emerging with the deep desire to learn, grow and heal themselves with the support of each other. Never before has there been so many ways in which to connect and freely grow such communities, whether to find cures for rare cancers, to educating others about transitioning genders, human rights, bereavement, women’s empowerment, the list is endless and wonderful. Our own community at Con-

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versation Loves is also one that is vitally linked to the community we have also created online for our members to continue learning and discussing important topics, many of which are centred around empowering women in all aspects of their lives and professions, the feedback and momentum it has created still overwhelms us and the platform is still in what we consider to be its infancy! Giving truly is receiving, as the more we put into what we do, the more support, knowledge and growth seems to happen, as if by magic the energy of generosity is matched, and usually multiplied exponentially.

By supporting others, whether it be through acts of daily kindness, or aid and charity, you are directly adjusting the flow of energy to yourself as well by creating more hope, happiness, love, education, revelation, abundance, success, unlocking potential and helping to create more constructive members of humanity – things that we want more of in our lives too. Of course, this also automatically reduces negativity, greed, selfishness, sadness, depression, hopelessness, lack, envy and resentment – things that we want less of and hopefully to eradicate as much as possible in our own lives too!

The more we give, the more we get, but as with everything we need to be switched on and grateful for the point at which we are starting from, but so many people seem stuck in a state of self-in-

flicted misery, moaning about something they don’t like that is happening to them, there is always a way to change that, and the power is in their hands to do so, but the discomfort of changing their mindset can be more daunting than staying in the same headspace with a sad broken record. Eventually they have to make a choice, stay in their own cage or build a door and move on.

Try as people might to ignore the natural blueprint of cyclical structures in whatever they do, it inevitably comes back to haunt us all. Linear structures are finite as we have seen in the cases of world financial collapses and global climate crisis as a result of negligent consumption. Everything is a cycle, from our lives, to our planet and the structure of the solar system, “What goes around comes around”, only it usually comes around in a totally different form, context and from left field! Imagining that we are somehow separate to the ebb and flow of everything around us, including the things we cannot see with the naked eye, is ludicrous. The moon’s gravitational pull affects even the tides of the sea, and considering humans are 70% water, how could our little bodies, so insignificant to the scale of an ocean, fail to be affected on some level then of the moon’s phases? To believe we remain unaffected as such is simply the ego at play, and if you pay enough attention you start to see when our frenemy ego starts to impose its complicated complaints about…most things, people and places!

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In nature, as with everything, it is all give – give both ways, even when it appears at first glance to be more akin to give – lose. For example, plants and flowers freely give up parts of themselves, their pollen to feed bees, their leaves to feed other insects, this keeps all the insects alive, great! But what about the plant being pillaged? The bees and other insects help greatly to pollinate and regenerate the plant, thus keeping the cycle of life and biodiversity going. So, the plant gives something in order to get something.

Everyone wins!

Obviously, we as humans are a little more complicated than plants, but the principle remains the same, the energy that we emit, returns to us magnified. There are no victims in the equation, victimhood is a choice, whether conscious or unconscious.

Life will continue to happen to us, that’s a fact, however you perceive and deal with it, or don’t, is a choice. Watch passively or take action (this does not have to be physically!). Not dealing with something you perceive as negative is also a path of passive action. Being aware of this becomes empowering because sometimes it may well be the best course of action in a particular situation.

A great way to increase whatever it is you have in life, is to share such. By inspired giving and empowering others you are not weakening yourself, you are strengthening the knowledge you already have, building on it and in return you are guaranteed to learn new things and have rare insights of yourself.

Change the view from where you are standing and amazing things start to happen, for you!

What is amazing is that so many of us choose to negatively see everything when in a seemingly unpleasant situation, as if somehow this will make us feel better. That makes zero sense. Being in a bad mood and choosing to see everything negatively only feeds the ego’s constant need to be right whatever the cost, to dominate your life even when it is killing you, mentally or literally. Conversely, if you feel bad and force yourself to think up a few ways that you are a positive force, you will gradually lift your mood.

Start with small things and build up from there, whether it’s being grateful for your cup of coffee or finding a seat on the train.

You can be in a mood, experience a mood, but you are not a mood!

Education is the foundation of everything beautiful. This beauty begins in the knowledge you already matter in the great scheme of things, what you take for granted about yourself, is something somewhere someone else, dreams of! And therefore, something within you, you can share to great effect, rare earthly magic in that with the power of abundance and greatness for all.

Through the gift of sharing, we multiply for all, including ourselves. Abundance does exist for all, the inconveniences arise because we are misled to believe that it is supposed to look the same as everyone else’s, which is impossible, not to mention extremely boring!

It is important to realise that success doesn’t look nor feel the same for everyone. The meaning of wealth is not the same for everyone. Winning does not look the same for everyone. Just like trees are not identical, there is no such thing as “best tree”, all trees are successful. Even if they are cut down, they can be used to create great things, like wood, paper, a roof to cover someone’s home, or the pages of a book that inspires someone to change their life. It is all a choice of lens through which to view the world around us.

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C C E R C L E PA R T N E R H O T E L S

The Peninsula Paris

Mandarin Oriental Paris

Hotel de Sers Paris

Marriott Opera Ambassador Hotel Paris

California Champs Elysees Paris

Hotel Chateau Frontenac Paris

Hotel Hyatt Paris Madeleine Paris

Le Royal Monceau Raffles SPA Paris

InterContinental Paris Avenue Marceau

Hotel Sofitel Paris Arc de Triomphe Paris

Hotel Regina Paris

Hotel San Régis Paris

Lancaster Paris

Hotel Montalembert Paris

Hotel Rochester Champs Elysees Paris

Hotel Splendid Etoile Paris

Cheval Blanc Courchevel Courchevel

Le Lana Courchevel

Le K2 Altitude Courchevel

Le K2 Palace Courchevel

Le Saint Roch Courchevel

Alpes du Pralong Courchevel

Hotel Annapurna Courchevel

L’Apogée Courchevel

Hotel Manali Courchevel

Hotel Barriere Les Neiges Courchevel

La Sivoliere Courchevel

Carlina Courchevel

La Pomme de Pin Courchevel

Le Cap Horn Courchevel

JW Marriott Cannes

Radisson Blu 1835 Hotel & Thalasso Cannes

Hyatt Regency Nice Palais de la Méditerranée, Nice

Boscolo Exedra Nice

La Perouse Nice

Fairmont Monte Carlo

Cirpiani Restaurant Monte Carlo

Monte-Carlo Bay Hotel & Resort Monte Carlo

Monaco Yacht Club Monte Carlo

Palazzo Naiadi Rome

C C E R C L E PA R T N E R H O T E L S

Ambasciatori Palace Hotel Rome

Aldrovandi Villa Borghese Rome

Hotel de Russie Rome

Sofitel Rome Villa Borghese Rome

Hotel Majestic Rome

Rome Cavalieri, Waldorf Astoria Rome

Grand Hotel Ritz Rome

NH Collection Palazzo Cinquecento Rome

Grand Hotel Plaza Rome

Grand Hotel Via Veneto Rome

Terme di Saturnia Spa & Golf Resort, Manciano

Principe di Savoia Milan

Bulgari Milan

Excelsior Gallia Milan

Grand Hotel et de Milan Milan

Hotel Manzoni Milan

Hotel Magna Pars Milan

Mandarin Oriental Milan

Four Seasons Milan

Melia Hotel Milan

Palazzo Matteotti, The Dedica Anthology, Milan

Palazzo Parigi Hotel & Grand Spa Milan

Savoia Grand Hotel Cortina d’Ampezzo

Rosapetra SPA Resort Cortina d’Ampezzo

Cristallo, A Luxury Collection Resort&Spa, Cortina d’Ampezzo

Villa Oretta Restaurant Cortina d’Ampezzo

Hotel Danieli Venice

Hilton Molino Stucky Venice

Bauer Palazzo Venice

Monaco and Grand Canal Venice

Westin Excelsior Florence

Savoy Florence

Portrait Florence

Hotel Villa Cora Florence

Hotel Principe Forte dei Marmi Forte dei Marmi

Grand Hotel Continental Siena

Grand Hotel Majestic Già Baglioni Bologna

Due Torri Hotel Verona

Verdura Resort Taormina

Royal Hotel Sanremo Sanremo

C C E R C L E PA R T N E R H O T E L S

Sacher Vienna

The Ritz-Carlton Vienna

Bristol Vienna

London Hilton on Park Lane London

The Grosvenor London

The Connaught London

The Lanesborough Club&Spa London

Mandarin Oriental Hyde Park London

The Kensington Hotel London

Flemings Mayfair London

St James Hotel and Club London

Marriott Marble Arch London

The Bailey’s Hotel London

Metropolitan by Como London

Dukes London

The Courthouse Hotel London

The May Fair Hotel London

Baglioni London

Bulgari London

Westbury Mayfair London

London Marriott Hotel Park Lane London

The Montcalm At Brewery London City, London

ME London London

The Waldorf Hilton London

The Savoy London

London Marriott Hotel West India Quay, London

Marriott County Hall London

Harry’s Bar London

Beaverbrook Hotel & Spa London

Grayshott Health Spa Surrey

The Royal Crescent Hotel & Spa Bath

Lainston House Winchester

The Grand Hotel Eastbourne Eastourne

Tylney Hall Hotel Hook

Raithwaite Estate Whitby

Chewton Glen Hotel Hampshire

South Lodge West Sussex

Cliveden House Buckinghamshire

Danesfield House Hotel and SPA Buckinghamshire

The Langley, A Luxury Collection® Hotel, Buckinghamshire

C C E R C L E PA R T N E R H O T E L S

Stoke Park, Country Club, Spa and Hotel, Buckinghamshire

Ashdown Park Hotel East Sussex

Waldorf Astoria Edinburgh - The Caledonian, Edinburgh

Rocco Forte Balmoral Hotel Edinburgh

Radisson Collection Hotel, Royal Mile, Edinburgh

La Réserve Genève - Hotel and Spa Geneva

Kempinski Geneva

Ultima Gstaad

Gstaad Palace Gstaad

The Alpina Gstaad

Grand Park Hotel Gstaad

Le Grand Bellevue Gstaad

Olden Gstaad

Huus Gstaad

Le Grand Chalet Gstaad

Ermitage Wellness and Spa Hotel Gstaad

Hotel de Rougemont Rougemont

The Chedi Andermatt

Mont Cervin Palace Zermatt

Tschuggen Grand Hotel Arosa

Hotel Eden Roc Ascona

BEATUS Wellness & Spa Hotel Merligen-Thunersee

Carlton Hotel St Moritz

Kempinski Grand Hotel Des Bains St Moritz

Kulm St Moritz

Grand Kronenhof St Moritz

Monopol St Moritz

Grand Hotel du Golf & Palace Crans Montana

Hotel Splendide Royal Lugano

W Verbier

Chalet d’Adrien Verbier

Widder Hotel Zurich

Baur au Lac Zurich

Park Hyatt Zurich

The Dolder Grand Zurich

Alden Suite Hotel Splügenschloss Zurich

Atlantis by Giardino Zurich

Savoy Baur en Ville Zurich

Storchen Zurich

La Réserve Eden au Lac Zurich

I N CON V E R SAT ION W I T H

F itri and James H ay R acing’s G olden C ouple Interview by Catherine McQueen

Birch Grove

FAMILY LIFE I was born in Jambi, Sumatra and my husband in Glasgow, Scotland, we met in Jakarta, Indonesia and got married on the 25th of August in 1996. We have 2 daughters, Jasmine, who is studying for her Masters at Oriel, Oxford having graduated with a First in Economics, History and Politics from UCL and Catriona, who is in her final year of the International Baccalaureate program at Ardingly College.

THE JMH GROUP Fitri Hay

My husband graduated from Strathclyde University with a BSc in Applied Chemistry and a doctorate in Physical Chemistry. He worked at BP for 27 years, gaining significant international experience, before establishing the JMH Group. The JMH Group was established in 2002 with the formation of the holding company JMHfzco, which is based in the Jebel Ali free zone in Dubai, UAE. The largest and founding entity is Fosroc, which was acquired in 2002. Fosroc has over 50 year’s worth of experience in servicing the construction industry with specialised products and services that provide tailored solutions to the many challenges faced in major construction projects around the world.

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I N CON V E R SAT ION W I T H

Family Photo Harry’s Bar, Mrs Hay’s Birthday 2018

Dr and Mrs Hay

The Great London Scottish Awards at The Savoy, Dr Hay recipent of the award for outstanding achievement in Business.

Fosroc has 16 factories in 13 different countries, plus 5 manufacturing li-

HIGHS AND LOWS

censees. Fosroc Global Trading services operates in a further 70 countries.

We have won over 250 races including a good number of Group 2 and 3

Direct staff total around 1700 with a similar number of contract staff. Fosroc

races. Our best win at Group 1 was the Sussex Stakes in 2018 by our horse

continues to operate its first manufacturing site at Tamworth in the UK.

Here Comes When, a multiple winner at Group 2 and 3. 2011 was an ex-

There are further businesses in Europe, notably Denmark and Spain, but

cellent year in partnership with the Irish Coolmore Team. Our half share

the key focus of activity is the Middle East, India, & Asia. Research and

in Fame and Glory had us winning the Ascot Gold Cup. While our 50% of

Development is centred in Bangalore. I am a chairman of Fosroc as well as

Cape Blanco had him winning three Group 1 races in the USA and being

a director of the JMH Group. My degree was in Economics and Marketing.

voted their turf horse of the year.

I also graduated from the Jakarta branch of the Fashion School, ESMOD. The highlights for us are the race meetings: Newbury in May for the Lock-

THE WORLD OF HORSE RACING

inge meeting; Newmarket for the Guineas, then York for the Dante followed

James has been involved in the world of horse racing for over 50 years. This

by the great Epsom Derby. Then Royal Ascot in June followed by the Eclipse

started with his Grandmother teaching him mental arithmetic by pretending

at Sandown. Then Newmarket on its beautiful course in July. The Glorious

to place bets on horse races covered on TV. The love of the thoroughbred

Goodwood and so on. Great days in France include Longchamp for the Arc

started there. I became a racing widow when we came to live in the UK in

as well as Deauville. Then there is the fantastic programme in Dubai.

1998. It seemed that I should join the club, which led us into full ownership of horses.

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I N CON V E R SAT ION W I T H

In terms of the lows I would say that bad behaviour in the crowds is a

Our racehorses are spread over several trainers. This is to reduce the risk

growing issue. There are far too many low-class races, which results in

of a virus or other problems at a racing stable wiping out our stock.

the prize money being spread too thin.

DRIVERS

OBJECTIVES

Developing top class bloodlines is where the value lies. This means pur-

Our main aim is to develop top class stallions to go to stud. This requires

chasing stock with top class pedigrees and defraying the costs of doing so

a horse to win Group 1, 2 and maybe 3 class races; The Derby, Prix de

by breeding stock from our own mares. This does not necessarily mean

Arc de Triomphe etc. are all Group 1 races. These really need to be races

that we need to own and operate a stud as these services can be outsourced

in the UK, France, and Ireland or in the USA. Although top class races

to established players. Prize money can also be regarded only as another

in Dubai have big prize money, they do little to boost a stallion’s value at

method of defraying costs. UK prize money is poor covering around 25%

stud. A top-class stallion such as Galileo commands fees of around $500k

of training fees for a decent horse. Winning top class, not necessarily

for a live foal. They can cover up to 200 mares in a season. This number

valuable, races is essential to developing top class stallions and mares.

can be doubled if they are “shuttled” to cover the season in the Southern Hemisphere. Apart from winning races, the horse needs to have a good

This sets out our business approach to horse racing. However, that is not

pedigree. There are occasional freak winners without the pedigree, but

the sole reason for our major interest. There are several aspects that can-

they do not command the top fees. Pedigree and winning are linked. Good

not be defined in monetary terms. There is firstly the enormous thrill

bloodlines do not guarantee top class winners, but poor ones almost cer-

of owning a horse that wins a race. This applies to all races. The thrill is

tainly guarantee losers. This near axiom is what drives the industry. We

magnified when it happens in a big race. Here Comes When was 7 when

have owned racehorses since 2001 but have to date only had one signifi-

he won the Sussex Stakes. An outstanding achievement in a very hard

cant stallion; Traffic Guard now based in South Africa. We have a num-

race with a very narrow winning margin. The thrill is further magnified

ber of good mares who have bred good quality racehorses. However, we

when the horse has been bred by us.

remain on a journey to breed the best. Prince Khaled Abdulla has bred superstars like Frankel, but that has been on a journey spanning almost 50

Another great intangible is the interaction with the racing in crowd. There

years.

are always plenty of stories and great days out. Some days can be beyond fable. On the day when Fame and Glory won the Ascot Gold Cup we were guests of the Queen for lunch at Windsor Castle. Much to our surprise, this was followed by being included in the Royal procession down the track in one of the Queen’s carriages. An unbelievable experience.

Gold Cup presentation ‘Fame and Glory’ Dukes of Hazzard

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I N CON V E R SAT ION W I T H

THE FUTURE This year our three year old Duke of Hazard has improved all season. He

planning consent. There may be two competitions run for charity during

has grown from winning Listed races to Group 3 and then Group 2. Next

the year with the number of players limited to 40. These will of course

year he will be running for Group 1 prizes. Our Racing Manager, Alex

be managed to ensure minimum disruption to the local community. Fol-

Cole, plots the paths for every horse with our trainers and ourselves. The

lowing on the tradition, support where possible will be given to Cumnor

path often starts with deciding which stallion will cover our mares. It is

House School, and other local entities.

all about pedigrees. There is then the anticipation of the birth of the foal and watching it mature to race at 2 years old. Will it be any good? This is

All activities on the estate will be managed to protect and improve the

linked closely to purchasing yearlings at the sales. We buy based on their

environment whenever possible. Many of the barbed wire fences have

pedigrees and confirmation with much input from our trainers, vets, and

already been removed, and hedgerows improved to the benefit of small

jockeys. The sales auction is an adventure in its own right. It can be a real

birds and other wild life. Deer are now being carefully managed, hope-

bidding war.

fully reducing their hazard on local roads.

In the future I hope that the sport stays much as it is but with a reduced number of races in the UK. Stop pandering to the Bookmakers!

Mrs Hay with Carole Middleton, Getty Images

PHILANTHROPY Royal Ascot 2011, Royal Procession, Getty Images

Both through the Group and personally we support various different charities. These include being a major donor in the establishment of a

BIRCH GROVE We returned as a family to live in the UK in August 2011 following the purchase of Birch Grove House and Estate in West Sussex. Our businesses remain headquartered and managed from Dubai, so we still spend a significant amount of time there. The Birch Grove Estate is being developed to upgrade various properties; re-instating the golf course to its

new Institute of Pharmacy and Biomedical Sciences at James’ alma mater, Strathclyde University in Glasgow. I myself am a major supporter of various projects to help and educate street children in Indonesia. The Group supports various charities in the Middle East and in India including support on various disaster relief projects.

previous 18-hole splendour as well as developing a top-class game shoot.

OTHER INTERESTS

This work is being undertaken by local developers and whenever possi-

As well as our philanthropic and racing activities we enjoy hunting,

ble with goods from local suppliers. Staff on the estate are also largely

shooting, fishing, golf, rugby and soccer. And we love to travel.

local. The golf course remains private in adherence with the original

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H E A LT H

EMBRACE AMBITION WITH YOUR HEALTH: EMBRACE HEALTHY AGING THROUGH BIO-IDENTICAL HORMONE REPLACEMENT THERAPY

By Dr.Valeria Acampora Anti-Aging Medicine, London Be willing to invest into what keeps you healthy and makes you feel good every day of your life. As human beings, we are born with this evolutionary instinct to improve the quality of our lives. Every one of us has a different idea of what constitutes a high-quality life: investing in expensive cars, clothing, houses, taking care of relationships, being involved in meaningful activities, etc. However, whatever the elements are, what we all have in common, is that we associate a high-quality life with the one that makes us feel good. However, as we age, the definition of a high-quality life changes and becomes the same for all of us: good health. Imagine asking yourself the same question but assume your health is poor.

Imagine that you are 45 years old and have a chronic disease such as rheumatoid arthritis. Your joints are inflamed and beginning to become disfigured. You can’t climb stairs, open jars or perform routine tasks without pain. In other words, the quality of your life is significantly less than if you weren’t suffering from a chronic disease. If your body doesn’t work “properly” then you cannot feel good. You cannot appreciate all the other beautiful things that you have in your life.

This is what I see every day, in my practice, among my patients. I work with people coming from all different kinds of backgrounds: people struggling with money, wealthy people, married couples, lonely people, etc.

At a certain point of their lives, they all have one thing in common: aging and the effects of aging.

The aging process doesn’t discriminate. The most widely accepted idea in regards of aging is that it is just a part of the life cycle: a person is born, goes through childhood, adolescence and adulthood and, at a certain point in time, begins to age. However, inevitably, the aging process is also associated with illness. Aging starts early and affects every cell and organ in the body. Aging decreases the quality of our everyday life: we need glasses to see up close; we hear less; our skin becomes wrinkled and dry; our energy levels decline; we lose motivation; our mood becomes low; anxiety appears; we lose muscle tone and strength; our joints hurt; we experience a low sex drive; our memory starts to fade; we can’t focus and concentrate properly; we have difficulty in falling or staying asleep; we gain weight, etc. Furthermore, as previously stated, aging favors the emergence of a number of diseases: lung tissue loses its elasticity and the amount of air that can be inhaled decreases; production of digestive enzymes

slows down, affecting how nutrients are absorbed; fatty deposits build up in the blood vessels of the heart and the brain, leading to heart attack and stroke; our bones lose their density, causing osteoporosis and spontaneous fractures; our immune system becomes fragile, leading to cancer; our brain function declines affecting our memory and mood with dementia or depression, etc.

Do we need to accept all of this and spend the last 20-30 years of our lives battling with those chronic age-related diseases? Luckily, no more! We all know that a healthy lifestyle (think good diet, no smoking, no excessive sun exposure, enough sleep, proper stress management, good relationships, etc.) is very important in order to maintain good health, however, it’s not enough.

Something else happens in our body as we age. that can’t be addressed just through a good lifestyle. By our mid-40s, for both men and women, hormones in the body (to name just a few: estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, DHEA, thyroid, etc.) begin to lose their perfect pitch balance; we either figure out how we can get them back into balance, or we become sick, overweight, unhappy, asexual, sleep deprived, depressed, and start to age rapidly and acquire chronic illnesses.

Both men and women need a balanced endocrine system, as hormones regulate every function in the body.

They serve as an internal communication system between cells throughout the body. They coordinate everything from digestion and growth to appetite, immune function, mood and libido, etc. When our hormones are in balance, we feel healthy, energetic and more in control of our lives. In contrast, when they are out of balance, even slightly, it can have a big impact on our health and well-being. Therefore, a key component of healthy aging is restoring the hormones that are declining as we age, to levels that are associated with the highest quality of life and lowest incidence of bodily decline and degenerative diseases (such as osteoporosis, cardiovascular disease, dementia, diabetes, stroke and other serious ailments).

The best way of treating hormone deficiency due to aging is through Bio-identical Hormone Replacement Therapy (BHRT). Bio-identical, also known as natural or better yet, human identical hormones, are synthetically manufactured hormone drugs that look identical to the human hormone molecules our bodies make.

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These hormones are made from soy and yam oils by the pharmaceutical processes of concentration and purification that produce hormone powders. These powders are then placed in different preparations for us to take (pills, patches, gels, lozenges, creams, and pellets). Synthetic doesn’t mean bad. It just refers to the process of creating specific molecules in a laboratory, in this case, hormones that look identical to our own hormones. I believe a better way to identify them is to call them human identical hormones to distinguish them from other hormone molecules that do not look like the hormones our bodies make.

Bioidentical, or human identical hormones, are recognized by the human body as our own and no adverse reactions to the hormones occur if, when treating humans, we follow the individual person’s need for hormones carefully and respectfully. Unlike non bio-identical hormone therapies (such as the old HRT), BHRT should be continued indefinitely. Non bio-identical hormones can, on the other hand, have long-term detrimental consequences and unwanted side effects. Furthermore, bio-identical hormones, differently from non-bioidentical ones, are individually formulated by a doctor, leading to the possibility of having a customized medication. Individualization in dosing, as well as combinations and delivery methods can therefore be possible. This is very important since, in regards to hormone treatments (and I see it every day in the clinic with my patients) there is no “one dose or one combination fits all” solution. Each one of my patients needs customized hormone medications. This is why often patients don’t respond well to non-bioidentical hormone medications mass-produced by pharmaceutical companies. When it comes to hormones, we need to be extremely precise and give back to the body exactly what it needs. Through bio-identical hormone replacement therapy, I can prescribe dosages and formulations that are just right for each and every one my patients. Prevention is better than cure. Being in good health comes not just from receiving quality medical care when you need it, it also comes from finding and preventing health problems before they start. Luckily, today it is possible to age without getting the diseases our parents did through Bio-identical Hormone Replacement Therapy. Nowadays, growing older doesn’t have to mean growing sicker. Embrace ambition with your health. Ensure you add quality and not just quantity to your life span.

SOCIAL SEASON

MONIKA BACARDI’S BIRTHDAY PARTY, ST. TROPEZ

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SOCIAL SEASON

UNICEF SUMMER GALA PRESENTED BY LUISAVIAROMA, PORTO CERVO

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SOCIAL SEASON

ALFIE’S BIG ONE BIRTHDAY PARTY, VENICE

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SOCIAL SEASON

THE COLLECTOR PARTY AT HOTEL BAUR AU LAC, ZURICH

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SOCIAL SEASON

ANGEL BALL 2019 HOSTED BY GABRIELLE’S ANGEL FOUNDATION, NEW YORK

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