Aj6ew45prestige hong kong may 2015

HONG KONG MAY 2015 | HK$50

ISAAC JULIEN MULTIPLE VISIONS

SUSAN SARANDON

JONATHAN ANDERSON THE LOEWE DOWN

REBEL WITH A CAUSE

DAVID LAUREN THE SON ALSO RISES

OLIVIA MUNN

“WE DON’T WALK AROUND LIFE WITH AN INSTAGRAM FILTER ON. MAYBE WE SHOULD”

HONG KONG

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FASHION I SOCIETY I DESIGN I FOOD I WINE I TRAVEL

UNDERCOVER

Behind the scenes at Prestige Towers

I DON’T KNOW HOW SHE DOES IT An actress, model, television presenter, author and now TV producer, Olivia Munn is the very definition of Renaissance woman. “It was such a pleasure to have the opportunity to spend a day collaborating with Olivia,” photographer Eric Michael Roy (pictured here) said after the shoot. “She’s a strong, smart, beautiful woman, which makes a photographer’s job a breeze!” To read our interview with the multi-talented Munn, turn to page 142.

1 PRESTIGE MAY 2015

#HASHTAG

Filipino domestic helper Xyza Cruz Bacani bought a camera as a hobby – and her Hong Kong street photography has since brought her worldwide fame

XYZACRUZBACANI

PRESTIGE HONG KONG

#dubai #uae #streetphotography #everydaymiddleeast

#everydayasia #blackandwhite #hongkong #hkig #hkigers #people

#everydayphilippines #portrait #blackandwhite #pinoy

view through the #trees #dawn #snow #arvidsjaur #sweden #scandinavia #travel

#iphone #blackandwhite #hongkong #throwback #people #everydayasia #everybodystreet

#people #blackandwhite #portrait #hongkong

#desvoeuxroad #driedfish #hongkong #iphone

#viceroy #santamonica #losangeles #california #la

#dubai #love #mydubai #uae #streetphotography #everydaydubai

#hongkong #hands #people #blackandwhite #local #iphone #art #hkigers #hkig

today i paint the boss’s whole house for the last time! #work

#koreantaco #venicebeach #la #california

MAY 2015 PRESTIGE

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CONTENTS 1 UNDERCOVER 2 HASHTAG 8 EDITOR’S LETTER 9 CONTRIBUTORS 11 NOTEBOOK 12 DIARY 135BACKSTORY

129

TRAVEL

Goss for globetrotters

AGENDA

15

THE LOOK

Rock your wardrobe

18

FOOD

Tickling the taste buds

19

WELLNESS

Pamper that body

21

AUCTIONS Going, going...

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22

TALK

Our columnists sound off

DRESS RALPH LAUREN COLLECTION CUFF AND EARRINGS PLUMA JEWELRY

EVENTS

24

VIP/RSVP

Join us at the month’s top parties

FASHION

41

STYLE

Hottest fashion choices

53

WOMENSWEAR

That ’70s Show

MIKE RUIZ

61

LOEWE

Brand New

65

DELVAUX

The Spirit Director

69

JEWELLERY

FASHION

98 WOMENSWEAR

A Room of Her Own

Rare stones and metals

71

WATCHES

Power to the hours

FEATURE

73

BEAUTY

Shades, salves and scents

75

BEAUTY

Turbo-Boosted Complexion

87

DAVID LAUREN New York Dynasty

COVER

“I’D GO OUT FOR SO MANY AUDITIONS. AND I’D BE TOLD, ‘YOU’RE TOO ASIAN,’ OR ‘YOU’RE TOO WHITE’” 77

OLIVIA MUNN

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CONTENTS 95 ART

Isaac Julien

PHOTO ESSAY

91

MARIO TESTINO Sir

TOYS

CULTURE

109

99

BMW X6 M

DESIGN

The Beast is Back

Pierre Paulin

103 FILM

Susan Sarandon

107

BOOKS

Lijia Zhang

INDULGENCE

115

SNAPPY DINING Hashtag Foodporn

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121

BOBBY CHINN Talk Soup

125

VINES OF ITALY Enoteca Exotica

129

FOUR SEASONS RESORT KOH SAMUI Samui Serenity

HONG KONG

Jon Wall EDITOR

Dennis Lai CREATIVE DIRECTOR

= Christina Ko / Vincenzo La Torre DEPUTY EDITORS

Tasha Ling

Stephen Reels

Oliver Giles

Jeremy Wong

Sheena Khemaney

STYLE EDITOR

COPY EDITOR

STAFF WRITER

SOCIETY EDITOR

FASHION WRITER

= Dawn Chuck

Simon Ho

ASSISTANT ART DIRECTOR

PRODUCTION MANAGER

Chris Lynn Au

William Dunkley

ART ASSISTANT

PHOTO EDITOR

= CONTRIBUTING EDITORS

Alison Catchpole, Max Chipchase, Amber Choy, Peter Comparelli, Mariel Goodson, Ned Goodwin MW, Zoe Lai, Samantha Leese, Paris Libby, Gerrie Lim, Stephen McCarty, Mathew Scott, Payal Uttam, Joe Yogerst CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS

Robert Astley-Sparke, Giuliano Bekor, Bleacher + Everard, Karl Chiu, Mark Liddell, Mike Ruiz, MIGS, Eric Michael Roy, Samantha Sin, Randall Slavin, Smallz & Raskind, Darren Tieste, Russel Wong

= PRESTIGE ASIA

Genevieve Jiang

Chris Hanrahan

Rubin Khoo

Monica Yang

François Oosthuizen

EDITOR, SINGAPORE

EDITOR, INDONESIA

EDITOR, MALAYSIA

EDITOR, TAIWAN

EDITOR, THAILAND

=

The Hong Kong edition of Prestige is published under licence from Burda Singapore Pte Ltd. Copyright © 2015 Hubert Burda Media Hong Kong Ltd. No part of this magazine may be reproduced without the written permission of Hubert Burda Media Hong Kong Ltd. All opinions expressed in Prestige Hong Kong are those of the writers and are not necessarily endorsed by Hubert Burda Media Hong Kong Ltd. Rights reserved. Prestige is a trademark of Burda Singapore Pte Ltd. Prestige Runway Hong Kong is a supplement of Prestige Hong Kong.

Hubert Burda Media Hong Kong Ltd accepts no responsibility for unsolicited manuscripts, transparencies or other materials lost or damaged in the mail.

Address all editorial and business correspondence to: Prestige Hong Kong, Unit 1401-04, 14/F, Universal Trade Centre, 3 Arbuthnot Road, Central, Hong Kong. Tel: (852) 3192 7010. Email: prestige@burda.hk Prestige Hong Kong is printed by Toppan Printing Co (HK) Ltd, Toppan Printing Centre, 1 Fuk Wang Street, Yuen Long Industrial Estate, Yuen Long, New Territories, Hong Kong. Tel: (852) 2561 0101.

Prestige Hong Kong is published monthly. Single copy price is HK$50. For local and overseas subscription information, please email: subscription@burda.hk. Tel: (852) 3192 7020.

MAY 2015 PRESTIGE

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HONG KONG

Anne Lim-Chaplain PUBLISHER & MANAGING DIRECTOR

Sebrina Mak ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER

= Shalin Lam ADVERTISING DIRECTOR

Bonnie Tseng / Linda Mak

Astor Chan

Jacky Ng / Prudence Ng

SENIOR SALES MANAGERS

CLIENT SERVICES MANAGER

CLIENT SERVICES EXECUTIVES

Stephanie de Kantzow PRESS, MARKETING & EVENTS CONSULTANT

Sue Cheung CIRCULATION MANAGER Vivian Ho ADMIN & HR MANAGER Cora Chung ACCOUNTANT Daisy Wan ACCOUNT OFFICER

= PRESTIGE ASIA

Melvin Ang

Ronald Liem

Patrick Omar Low

Daisy Hu

Waraporn Siriboonma

PUBLISHER, SINGAPORE

PUBLISHER, INDONESIA

PUBLISHER, MALAYSIA

PUBLISHER, TAIWAN

PUBLISHER, THAILAND

= INTERNATIONAL ADVERTISING SALES REPRESENTATIVES

BURDA COMMUNITY NETWORK AUSTRIA / SWITZERLAND Goran Vukota Tel: (41 44) 810 2146 Email: goran.vukota@burda.com

GERMANY Vanessa Noetzel Tel: (49 89) 9250 3532 Email: vanessa.noetzel@burda.com Michael Neuwirth Tel: (49 89) 9250 3629 Email: michael.neuwirth@burda.com FRANCE / LUXEMBOURG Marion Badolle-Feick Tel: (33 1) 72 71 25 24 Email: marion.badolle-feick@burda.com

UK / IRELAND Jeannine Soeldner Tel: (44 20) 3440 5832 Email: jeannine.soeldner@burda.com

USA / CANADA / MEXICO Salvatore Zammuto Tel: (1 212) 884 4824 Email: salvatore.zammuto@burda.com

BURDA INTERNATIONAL ITALY Mariolina Siclari Tel: (39 02) 9132 3466 Email: mariolina.siclari@burda.com

= Fabrizio D’Angelo CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER

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Dr Michael Stollarz

Frances Evans

Olaf Holzhauser

Claus-Thomas Kuhn

CHIEF, DIGITAL OFFICE

DIRECTOR, LICENSING & ADVERTISING

DIRECTOR, BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT

DIRECTOR, FINANCE

Friedrich von Scanzoni

Massimo Monti

Peter Kennedy

CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, ASIA

CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER, ASIA

EXECUTIVE CHAIRMAN, ASIA

EDITOR’S LETTER

Wonder Woman OUR MAY COVER personality, Olivia Munn, brings the kind of credentials to the table that mark her out as genuinely multitalented. Born in Oklahoma, raised mostly in Japan and with a Chinese-Vietnamese mother, Munn had already gained an unusually cosmopolitan outlook on the world by the time she reached her teens, when she was taking on modelling assignments in Tokyo and occasionally acting on stage. After completing university in the US, she pursued a career in drama while also making various TV appearances, including a stint on The Daily Show that offered an opportunity to show off her comedic chops, and a leading role in the series The Newsroom, while a brief but nonetheless impressive turn in Iron Man 2 confirmed her thespian talents to an international cinema audience.

Although now landing roles in major movie productions, Munn has also found time to write the autobiographical Suck It, Wonder Woman! The Misadventures of a Hollywood Geek, and appear in TV documentaries – and was recently asked by CBS to develop future shows, which surely presages a new career behind the camera as well as in front of it. She’s clearly a busy woman, who we suspect is only just beginning to explore her full potential, though fortunately for Prestige readers Munn was still able to fit a photo shoot and interview with us into her increasingly packed schedule. Refreshingly self-deprecating, she laughed about her eating habits on set – “On The Newsroom,” she admitted, “they had two different sizes of jeans for me all the time.” You can read about that, and much more, on page 142.

Another inspirational figure from American cinema, the actress and activist Susan Sarandon, also features in these pages, with an interview conducted while she attended this year’s Art Basel in Hong Kong. At the same event, we also met Isaac Julien, who took this city by storm with his multi-screen video installation, and explained to us why he so far hasn’t succumbed to the lure of Hollywood. We talk to designer Jonathan Anderson, now creative director at the Spanish house of Loewe, and we learn from Christina Zeller, who occupies a similar role at the long-established leather-goods label Delvaux, why the Belgian capital Brussels deserves to be taken seriously as a centre for luxurious accessories.

And if that weren’t enough to usher in the merry month of May, we also present our usual supersized helpings of fashion, high society, culture, food and travel – all the things, in other words, that make life worth living. Happy reading!

Jon Wall | EDITOR |

HONG KONG MAY 2015 | HK$50

ISAAC JULIEN MULTIPLE VISIONS

SUSAN SARANDON

PHOTOGRAPHY ERIC MICHAEL ROY CREATIVE DIRECTION & STYLING PARIS LIBBY HAIR CHRISTIAN MARC AT FORWARD ARTISTS MAKE-UP SHANE PAISH AT WALTER SCHUPFER MANAGEMENT

JONATHAN ANDERSON THE LOEWE DOWN

REBEL WITH A CAUSE

OUTFIT BOTTEGA VENETA

DAVID LAUREN THE SON ALSO RISES

OLIVIA MUNN

“WE DON’T WALK AROUND LIFE WITH AN INSTAGRAM FILTER ON. MAYBE WE SHOULD”

HONG KONG

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FASHION I SOCIETY I DESIGN I FOOD I WINE I TRAVEL

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CONTRIBUTORS

CHRISTOPHER

ERIC MICHAEL ROY

DEWOLF is a journalist

found success on Broadway, starring in the lead role of Frankie Valli in the hit show Jersey Boys. He took his acting talents to Hollywood where he appeared with Nicole Kidman in the HBO film Hemingway & Gellhorn, and in the forthcoming Imagine, playing the young Danny Collins (a role helmed by Al Pacino).

Roy’s parents were photographers, so his passion for the craft began at a young age, and when he isn’t acting he can be found shooting movie stars and models, such as this month’s cover personality Olivia Munn (“The Rocky Road to Success”, page 142).

based in Hong Kong. He writes about design, architecture and urbanism for a number of publications including South China Morning Post, The Wall Street Journal and Surface. This issue he discovers the legacy of French furniture designer Pierre Paulin (“A Living Legacy”, page 164).

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Wine writer GERRIE LIM has been writing for Prestige Hong Kong since 2005. Previously based in Los Angeles, where he was a music critic at LA Weekly and Billboard, he has also written about arts and culture for Details, Elle, Playboy and The Wall Street Journal. A native of Singapore, he has for the past five years been based in Hong Kong. He has written seven books, the most recent being Singapore Rebel: Searching for Annabel Chong. This month Lim talks Italian wine varieties (“Enoteca Exotica”, page 190).

KAVITA DASWANI,

formerly the fashion editor of South China Morning Post in Hong Kong and a previous fashion correspondent for CNNI and CNBC Asia, has been based in Los Angeles since 2000. She continues to contribute to fashion, beauty and lifestyle publications in Asia and Europe, and also writes for Los Angeles Times, Women’s Wear Daily and stylesectionla. com. She has published six novels, with two more on the way. She takes time out this issue to meet Olivia Munn (“The Rocky Road to Success”, page 142).

New York-based photographer MIKE RUIZ is best known for his high-impact celebrity photography and glossy fashion shoots for major international magazines.

Ruiz has also shot advertising campaigns for brands including Sean John, M.A.C Cosmetics, Reebok and Bongo jeans, as well as CD covers. In recent years he has branched out as a director, creating music videos for artists such as Kelly Rowland, Traci Lords and Kristine W, as well as the campy independent film Starrbooty. In this issue, Ruiz handles our fashion shoot (“A Room of Her Own”, page 98).

NOTEBOOK

Events, happenings, promotions

opening

product

CINDY CHAO THE ART JEWEL

ENICAR

An exclusive private showroom was unveiled on March 25 by Cindy Chao The Art Jewel with a VIP luncheon and an opening cocktail party. Located at 50 Connaught Road Central, the appointment-only showroom houses masterpieces from the brand’s Black Label series along with its White Label series art jewels.

Enicar’s CH339 is a 25mm-diameter jewellery watch featuring a pearl-white dial illuminated by crystal gems and wreathed by a gemstudded bezel. A harmonious medley of cool stainless steel and warm rose gold makes this the perfect accessory for both daytime and night-time affairs.

collections

RIGBY & PELLER Rigby & Peller’s spring/summer 2015 collection was previewed at its Landmark boutique on March 4, with a catwalk show featuring the latest swimwear, lingerie and bridalwear collections from various European brands.

launches

LEICA FURLA To celebrate its 88th anniversary, Furla created the limited-edition Piper bag in softbrushed vibrant-purple calfskin. The bag comes with a large 88-shaped metal plaque and key chain embossed with the words “Exclusively for 88th Anniversary”.

In collaboration with musician, actor and designer Lenny Kravitz, Leica Camera presented the Leica M-P Correspondent, a limited edition of 125 camera sets presented in a distinctive case. The edition comprises a Leica M-P digital rangefinder camera and two classics from the brand’s range of lenses.

VERTU The newly launched Aster T is equipped with 4G LTE capability. Handmade by craftsmen, the new model can be personalised with a monogram or engraving.

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exhibitions

BVLGARI MONTBLANC Master watchmaker Julien Miribel held a workshop during an exhibition staged by Montblanc on April 11-26 at its 1881 Heritage store. The exhibition – to help the watchmaker celebrate the debut of its 2015 novelties at SIHH earlier this year – got rolling with a cocktail party at the boutique.

BLANCPAIN Blancpain staged its Ocean Commitment exhibition during Baselworld in Switzerland, giving visitors the chance to discover the underwater universe and learn about the results achieved by organisations that Blancpain supports.

events

The 43rd Hong Kong Arts Festival joined hands with Bulgari to celebrate women’s creativity and achievements in the Voices of Women photography competition and exhibition. Fifty-one photographs were selected from some 1,500 entries for the exhibition, held on April 8-17 at Exchange Square Rotunda in Central.

charity

AMOREPACIFIC GEORG JENSEN In collaboration with the Beijing Center for the Arts, Artron group and Artsy, Georg Jensen held a private dinner on March 13 at Asia Society Hong Kong Center to promote Arts China Union, an open platform aiming to make a difference through innovation and crosssector collaboration.

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HARBOUR CITY For the second consecutive year, Harbour City collaborated with Marco Polo Hongkong Hotel to organise the Asia Hotel Art Fair between March 11 and 29, along with the Beyond the Space art exhibition in the mall.

Corporate social responsibility took centre stage at an afternoon tea hosted by Korean cosmetics company Amorepacific on March 24 at Four Seasons Hotel Hong Kong. The company is donating the entire first-year revenue from its Time Response Skin Renewal Creme to charity, with proceeds from the first quarter presented to the End Child Sexual Abuse Foundation.

DIARY

What in the world is happening this month

HONG KO K NG

ASIAA PACIFIC

EUROPE & AMERICAS

May 1-3; 7-10

May 5-9

May 13-24

JEKYLL & HYDE

JWS

CANNES FILM FESTIVAL

Following a successful run in London’s West End, playwright Jonathan Holloway’s take on Robert Louis Stevenson’s gothic novella is coming to the stage at the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts. The play, produced by Chung Ying Theatre Company, is performed by a cast of visiting a d local and l l actors..

Sparkling baubles and fancy timepieces take centre stage at this annual watch and jewellery show at Abu Dhabi National Exhibition Centre. The event, in its 23rd year, showcases more than 150 exhibitors, such as Italian jeweller Zydo and British label Yoko London.

The 68th staging of the world’s most famous film festival features the premiere of action flick Mad Max: Fury Road (starring Tom Hardy and Charlize Theron), while this year’s jury is headed by Oscarwinning directors Joel and Ethan Coen.

May 1-June 30 LE FRENCH MAY A Francophiles are rejoicing at the return of this two-month celebration of everything French. Highlights of this year’s festival include screenings of young FrenchCanadian director Xavier Dolan’s films, a concert by indie folk duo Brigitte and a pop-up artisan market at K11.

May 28-June 3 CHRISTIE’S SPRING AUCTIONS At Christie’s annual spring sales, the auction house is offering everything from furniture and watches to wine and paintings by Zeng Fanzhi, Liu Wei and Yoshitomo Nara, among many others.

Some of the lots are from the famed Feng Wen Tang Collection as well as the family of collector K’ung Hsiang-hsi.

HIGH COUNTRY HARVEST Gourmands are in for a treat at this festival of wine tastings, gourmet meals and cooking classes. The activities take place at wineries and restaurants across Victoria, Australia, including Tani Eat & Drink, which recently received one Chef Hat – Australia’s equivalent to a Michelin star.

May 19-24 SING SI NGA APORE OPE OPEN N 2015 This high-goal tournament rounds off ff the Singapore Polo Club’s Triple Crown series, with teams of top amateurs and international heavyweights battling for glory. The event comes hot on the heels of last month’s International ProAm competition.

May 16 LIFE BALL Ball goers glitz up for a good cause at this annual charity gala, which aims to de-stigmatise and raise awareness of HIV/ AIDS. Held at Vienna’s opulent City Hall, the grand affair features a fashion show by couturier Jean Paul Gaultier.

HIGH COUNTRY HARVEST HARVEST: TOURISM AUSTRALIA. AUSTRALIA A LIFE BALL: BALL CHRISTOP CHRISTOPH LEDER

May 15-24

May ay 24 INDIANAPOLIS 500 Considered one of the classic motorsport events, this race promises adrenalinepacked action as IndyCar drivers take on the oval Indianapolis Motor Speedway in Indiana. Notable winners include Rick Mears, AJ Foyt, Al Unser, Johnny Rutherford and Dario Franchitti.

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Fashion, food, wellness, travel, auctions and opinion

'

AGENDA CAPED CRUSADER

DIOR DOLLS

THE KITE RUNNER

Tod’s new piece of arm candy, the Cape bag, comes in a variety of leathers and colours. This green model features a botanical-inspired swirling pattern.

Usher in the warmer months of spring and dress your little girls in this vibrant and season-appropriate mini couture outfit from Baby Dior.

This between-the-finger ring, from the kite-inspired Cerfs-Volants collection of jeweller Van Cleef & Arpels, makes a great Mother’s Day gift.

MIDNIGHT IN PARIS French jeweller Cartier has teamed up with girl-about-town Bianca Brandolini d’Adda, a muse to designers such as Giambattista Valli and Dolce & Gabbana, for its latest Paris Nouvelle Vague collection, which was unveiled in March during Paris Fashion Week. Inspired by the beauty and allure of the City of Light, the range includes fun and vibrant pieces such as this whimsical lapis lazuli bracelet and ring, worn here by Brandolini d’Adda.

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AGENDA

15

CUFF BY CHANEL

KE EYCHAIN BY FENDI

SUNG GLASSES BY POLICE CLUTCH BY EMILIO PUCCI

SHORTS S BY ESCADA A

TOD’S SPRING/SUMMER 2015

BLOUSE BY PORTS 1961

WORKING GIRL Famous for its luxury footwear and expertise in leather craftsmanship, Italian label Tod’s is now in its third season producing women’s ready-to-wear under designer Alessandra Facchinetti. You can take inspiration from its current line, which includes sophisticated nine-to-five staples in neutral tones and the occasional pop of colour. Hot items include above-the-knee shorts and statement jewellery.

SHOE BY LANVIN

EARRINGS BY ELIE SAAB

THE LOOK SEASONAL SARTORIAL SNAP-UPS

JACKET BY BURBERRY PRORSU UM PATRICK SCHWARZENEGGER IN TOM FORD

POUCH BY CHRISTIAN LOUBOUTIN

BRACELET

BY ISAIA

SCARF BY HERMÈS

VELVET CRUSH TROUSER RS BY Z ZEGNA

SHOE BY GIORGIO O ARMANI

SHIRT BY PYE

Model Patrick Schwarzenegger looked every inch the ladies’ man in head-to-toe Tom Ford at the designer’s star-studded autumn/winter 2015 fashion show in Los Angeles. The handsome son of Maria Shriver and Arnold Schwarzenegger put a clever spin on formal menswear in a sharp velvet jacket and white dress shirt.

SUNGLASSES

BY LOEWE

MAY 2015 PRESTIGE

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AGENDA

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THE LOOK SEASONAL SARTORIAL SNAP-UPS

SHOES BY BALLIN

SUNGLASSES BY CHOPARD

BRACELET T BY BALENCIA AGA

EARRINGS BY ROBERTO CAV VALLI

CLUTCH BY STUART WEITZMAN TOP BY MOTHER OF PEARL AT NET-A-PORTER

DIANE KRUGER IN CHANEL HAUTE COUTURE

THINK PINK Diane Kruger picked up an award for Film Actress of the Year at this year’s Elle Style Awards and stunned in a Chanel spring/ summer 2015 haute couture pink lace dress.

The 38-year-old beauty kept her look ladylike and modern by accessorising with pointed pumps and an embellished clutch.

LIINGERIE BY CALVIN KLEIN C U NDERWEAR

TROUSERS BY TSE

AGENDA FOOD ALL THE NEWS THAT’S FIT TO EAT

ABOVE IT ALL Chef Joseph Tse continues to update traditional classics at Hotel Icon’s Above & Beyond. New dishes of note include fried rice with seafood and Chinese liver sausage in casserole, a crispy beef with sesame and ginger sauce that’s deep fried and glazed in lemongrass honey, and wok-fried king prawn with champagne sauce.

Tel: (852) 3400 1318

OFFAL GOOD The man who made nose-to-tail cooking famous is back! Chef Fergus Henderson of St John in London returns to Blue Butcher on May 18 and 19 for a guest spot. The menu is a secret for now, but during his last turn in the kitchen at the meat-focused restaurant Henderson served up pig trotter, jowl and ear; ox tongue; and lamb kidneys.

Keep your fingers crossed for even more adventurous types of offal this time round.

Tel: (852) 2613 9286

LUCK OF THE DRAW Mango Tree’s Elements branch celebrates its second anniversary with a series of special dishes, an afternoon tea set and a lucky draw to win stays at Dhevan Dara Resort & Spa in Hua Hin. Order the tea set or any of the five limitededition menu items – which include yellow curry noodles with prawns, a crispy oyster omelette and a sea bass fillet tossed with sweet chilli sauce – to be eligible for prizes, which range from two nights in a four-bedroom pool villa to dining vouchers at Mango Tree and sister restaurants.

Tel: (852) 2668 4884

VANILLA NICE Café 103 at The Ritz-Carlton, Hong Kong has launched an ode to vanilla, envisioned through the eyes of Pierre Hermé. The afternoon tea, which runs until May 24, features pastries from the macaroon maker’s Fetish Infiniment Vanille collection, which combines strains of vanilla beans from Mexico, Tahiti and Madagascar. There’s a shortbread tart, a cream puff, pound cake and more, alongside savoury treats like a vanilla smoked-salmon roll and vanilla crabmeat sandwich.

Tel: (852) 2263 2270

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AGENDA

19

WELLNESS RELAX AND RECHARGE

REVITALISING RETREAT AN AYURVEDIC ARRIVAL The Ayurvedic aromatherapy experts over at Subtle Energies have just designed a new spa line for The Peninsula Spa. Called Sattva by Simply Peninsula, the line, available exclusively at the hotel group’s spas, uses the principles of Ayurveda to create bespoke treatments for customers seeking physical, mental and emotional well-being. Rituals include a Vedic Aromatherapy Massage using marma therapy and lymphatic drainage techniques, or the Khushali Himalayan Crystal Salt Scrub, which cleanses and purifies skin by stimulating circulation.

Tel: (852) 2696 6682

ADVENTURES IN ASHTANGA This month Maya Villa in Sri Lanka is hosting two 10-day Ashtanga yoga retreats, which include 12 nights’ accommodation alongside 10 days of yoga training (10 morning classes and seven afternoon), vegetarian meals and full use of the resort facilities. Although the headcount is limited to 10, the programme is suitable for anyone from beginners to advanced practitioners. The retreats take place from May 1-13 or 15-27 – or for those unable to commit, six-day series are available starting on the 1st, 7th, 15th or 21st. yogasrilanka.net

WHAT TO PACK Launched late last year by Melissa Chu, Rumi is a Hong Kong-based activewear brand that specialises in funky yet practical designs made from sustainable technology (think recycled plastic bottles). Besides awesome prints, the leggings are designed to avoid that dreaded muffin top, so you can find your Zen with confidence. rumiyogawear.com

MUMMY TIME Give mum the pampering she needs – whether for Mother’s Day or just because – with the Mamma Rosa treatment at The Mandarin Spa at Mandarin Oriental, Hong Kong. Over 60 minutes, she’ll receive a massage targeting tension in the neck, shoulders and back with Aromatherapy Associates’ Rose Massage and Body Oil, and she’ll get a Renewing Rose Body Velvet to take home, too.

Tel: (852) 2825 4888

AGENDA TRAVEL INTEL FOR THE LUXE ADVENTURER

A SHERATON FOR SAMUI

DOWN MEXICO WAY Extensively damaged during last September’s Hurricane Odile, One&Only’s Palmilla resort in Los Cabos at the tip of Mexico’s Baja California peninsula has reopened even more splendid than before. Not only have all guestrooms and suites been refurbished, but there’s also a new spa, a men’s beauty salon and a steakhouse, Seared, under the direction of star chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten. oneandonlyresorts.com

Yet another luxury property has arrived on the sunny shores of Thailand’s Koh Samui with the opening of the Sheraton Samui Resort. Located on the island’s popular Chaweng Noi Beach, the 140-plus-room hotel features four bars and restaurants, a spa, a fitness centre, a pair of saltwater pools and a water feature inspired by a lighthouse. sheraton.com

SUITE SWEETENER One of our favourites in the City of Light, the properly palatial Shangri-La Hotel Paris – once home to Prince Roland Bonaparte, Napoleon I’s grandnephew – is offering four nights in a suite (excepting its three Signature Suites) for the price of three. The summer-long promotion is available until September 15. reservations.slpr@shangri-la.com

A PLACE IN THE SUN After extensive renovations, The Sun Siyam Iru Fushi, in the northern Maldives’ Noonu Atoll, has introduced 75 Deluxe Beach Villas, each with its own private swimming pool. Some 45 minutes from the capital, Malé, the resort also offers a range of over-water villas and three ultra-exclusive retreats. thesunsiyam.com

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AGENDA

UNDER THE HAMMER

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AUCTIONS HOTTEST BIDS AROUND THE WORLD TOKYO CHUO AUCTION

HEAVY MEDAL May 13

This Open Championship medal, won by the Scottish golfer Alexander Herd in 1902, is estimated to achieve £35,000£50,000 at Bonhams Edinburgh’s Sporting Sale. Extremely rare medals such as this are seldom seen at auction. This one, made from 18k gold, has a diameter of 44mm and weighs 60g.

Calligraphy Selling for 19 times its pre-sale estimate, this scroll by Ming dynasty master Chen Chun — who is known for his rhythmic brushwork — realised an impressive ¥230 million (US$1.9million) at the house’s spring sales in Tokyo.

ANCIENT ATLAS May 19

Headlining Swann Auction Galleries’ Maps & Atlases, Natural History and Colour Plate Books sale is this beautiful piece by 17th-century Dutch cartographer and publisher Pieter Goos. Anticipated to sell for US$70,000-$100,000, the double-hemisphere world map is hand-coloured and depicts the changing of the seasons, as well as the various stages in life, from youth to old age.

Mount Tiandu Among the Chinese modern paintings on offer, Wu Changshuo’s sweeping landscape scroll of of a mountain village garnered ¥63,250,000 (US$528,000).

GOLDMAN GOLD MINE Nearly 100 esteemed works owned by the late Goldman Sachs chairman John Whitehead are being offered at Christie’s New York’s Impressionist and Modern Art sale. The star lot is Modigliani’s Portrait de Béatrice Hastings, painted in 1916.

Estimated to fetch US$7 million-$10 million, it portrays Modigliani’s muse Emily Alice Haigh, an English writer, poet and literary critic who often went by the pen name Beatrice Hastings.

Bronze Ritual Vessel There was also strong interest in a rare archaic bronze ritual vessel from the Western Zhou Dynasty, which eventually sold for ¥51,750,000 (US$432,000).

MAP: SWANN AUCTION GALLERIES

May 4-5

AGENDA TALK THE PRESTIGE PUNDITS

Ode to Wine Moments NED GOODWIN MW sets aside

scores and rankings to savour our emotional connection to wine

WINE’S BEAUTY IS

largely ineffable, quixotic even; an incandescent ember in the memory bank, while coddling the soul as a yearning, not just for another sip, but as a means to venture far and wide, to places that reverberate in the imagination or, indeed, as fond memories of places to which one hopes to return.

A liquid postcard.

After all, wine regions the world over are attractive, with fine folk working in them. When we sip their wine, we experience the lustre of place. Of course, the majority of wine has little to do with any sense of place. It’s fruit-forward, polished, eminently satisfying for most and, with that, it does its job perfectly well. However, much of this sort of wine can come from anywhere.

The best wines are different.

They speak of a place, no matter how abstract this concept is. They encompass the many variables that meld to give it its aromas, flavours, textures, longevity or immediacy, as the case may be.

Despite all of this, many of us are frequently reduced to qualifying wine’s attraction by trying to quantify it. Indeed, for some of us, a yearning for wine is driven by scores, rankings and medals, rather than any inherent deliciousness or sense of place.

Wine becomes a picture frame for its drinker, whose choices of wines are validated and vindicated further, when finding a synergy with the voices of critics, other commentators and their scores.

Scores and rankings are often justified as a simple and thus comprehensible means for the layman to appreciate wine. They are pragmatic means to some extent, I suppose, to communicate wine’s intrinsic qualities for the given critic, yet they fail to navigate wine’s emotive turns and twists while forcing the

reader into the rubric of a particular critic, often with dull and dire consequences. After all, a writer’s emotional connection to wine is difficult to gauge based on a paragraph of notes and a score.

In this column I will attempt an ode to an emotional connection to wine. In doing so, I will refrain from mentioning any particular wines, because individual wines are not the point. After all, just as the moment may command layered profundity in a glass, another may call for a wine that is frisky, pithy and deliciously simple.

In any case, the fascination for wine began at home. There was always a bottle on the table and both parents were, and still are, good cooks. They lived beyond their means and took us kids to many restaurants, where we learned that a burning candle was synonymous with time passing and an escape to that which lies beyond. Nevertheless, the labels on the bottles resonated. I wanted to go there, wherever the châteaux, billabongs or bucolic settings depicted on them were.

Years later, my first real job in wine was tearing up boxes in a wine store. Menial, yes, but a fine way to sear vinous nomenclature into the memory bank. My second job in wine was tearing up more boxes, this time in a bar in Paris. I was studying art history during the day, and it was in Paris that an irreversible connection with wine took place.

Like art in its many guises, I sensed that wine provides more than just an aesthetic experience. I am not suggesting that wine is art. But if the ability to verbalise what we feel or taste fails us, wine is a wonderful mechanism to obviate preconceptions, or to transcend what we are supposed to think, much as art is.

Sometimes it simply takes a sip for a wine to provoke curiosity and further exploration with another sip. Words are not always forthcoming to describe what we feel. While the argument exists that strong wine writing facilitates an exploration of these feelings, who is to say that sensorially we are all on the same page, or relate to the same flavours?

Similarly, it can take but a glimpse of a painting, for example, to want to fall into its world. This becomes easier if we are able to liberate ourselves from trying to “get it” and instead just feel it. But there lies the rub. Emotions are not easily explained.

Numerical scores and hyperbolic adjectives, commonly used by wine scribes, provide a quick fix.

Ironically, or hypocritically even, trying to “get it” is the game I am in. Yet I have learned to appreciate wine in different ways, even if the wine is ostensibly the same – vintage, producer, condition – depending on the abstract variables that make it different: mood, company, music and the memories that are palpable with each sip. Wine is of the moment. While I have reconciled myself with the fact that life’s great moments cannot be relived, my yearnings remain for loves lost, friends made, conversations cherished and the company that I have been graced with thanks to my connection with wine; all bound inextricably to many great glasses and a life worth living.

JANUARY 2015 PRESTIGE

22

AGENDA

23

From the dunes of Dubai to romance in Palm Springs, there’ve been plenty of desert adventures for DJ MAX CHIPCHASE this month

TALK THE PRESTIGE PUNDITS

Hot Beats in the Heat Having returned to LA after a whirlwind trip to Hong Kong for this year’s dazzling Art Basel fair, I had just over a week to recover before I was back on a plane, this time heading for the United Arab Emirates to play at the Dubai World Cup. This was my fourth year performing at the annual thoroughbred horse race, specifically at the VIP Closing Party hosted by Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum at his magnificent beach palace. As this is the world’s richest race day, featuring cash prizes totalling more than US$30 million, it attracts VIPs and dignitaries from all around the world, including former US president Jimmy Carter this year. As always, the event was an enormous success and I had a blast as I cranked out anthem after anthem for the eager crowd.

From there it was back to sunny California, where I whisked my good lady off to the tranquil desert town of Palm Springs to celebrate our four-year anniversary. Only a few hours’ drive from Los Angeles, this oasis in the middle of the desert seems to grow each year, with more restaurants and hotels appearing all the time. Once a sleepy town for retirees, it’s become a thriving community, with neighbouring towns such as Rancho Mirage and La Quinta emerging as havens for golf enthusiasts. Although I’m not a golfer, there are nonetheless plenty of activities and countless shops to satisfy all tastes. At night, you’re spoiled for choice with all the bars and restaurants on offer, and it’s easy to envisage that in the near future there’ll be even more development – especially given the fact that the Coachella music BLONDE AND ALEX NEWELL

festival, only a short drive away, is attracting increasing numbers of visitors each year.

Sadly, I had to give Coachella a miss this time. Romance and endless crowds of raving festival goers rarely go hand in hand. And besides, it was only a few days before duty called and I was back on another plane for my next adventure!

THE LIST

Places to see and be seen in Dubai ...

La Petite Maison Hailing from London, this French restaurant has become an instant success in Dubai.

Vu’s On the 50th floor of the Jumeirah Emirates Towers, this is a great choice for dinner, offering spectacular views over the whole of Dubai.

Voda Bar Super stylish new bar that’s a real show-stopper.

Very cool vibe and excellent cocktails ensure a funky crowd.

Sho Cho With all the swanky new venues opening in Dubai, it’s easy to overlook this excellent Japanese restaurant/lounge/bar, which has been a mainstay on the nightlife scene since 2000. ... and Palm Springs Colony Palms Hotel Stylish boutique hotel in the centre of Palm Springs. Be sure to try the highly rated Purple Palm Restaurant.

The Ritz-Carlton, Rancho Mirage Nestled in the mountains, with spectacular views over the valley, this newly opened hotel is a great spot for a sunset cocktail on the terrace.

La Quinta Resort & Club A short drive from Palm Springs, this charming hideaway houses a number of excellent restaurants, a first-class spa and world-renowned golf courses.

THE PLAYLIST

The month’s top grooves from the Chipchase repertoire Shine (Kygo Remix) – Benjamin Francis Leftwich Not sure how I would categorise this remix from man of the moment Kygo, but there’s no doubt that it’s catchy.

Sleepless – Lane 8 It’s always wonderful to be hear the sultry voice of Tracy Chapman, and this remix gets it just right.

Golden Mind (Pional Remix) – Debukas A dreamy, midtempo stomper that I’ve been weaving into all my recent sets.

All Cried Out (The Magician) – Blonde feat. Alex Newell Watch out for this one – it has all the makings of a summer anthem!

Finally (Tiger Stripes Remix) – Cece Peniston feat. Joyriders A blast from the past, this club classic has been brought up to date by the always excellent Tiger Stripes.

Dim All The Lights (Digital Visions Re-Edit) – Donna Summer I was so happy to stumble on this. One of my all-time favourite Donna tunes is given a masterful re-edit.

Liquid Spirit (Claptone Remix) – Gregory Porter This jazzy deep-house remix has been topping the dance charts recently – and with good cause.

VIP ISABELLA LEONG

LOUIS KOO

GREGORY SO

HONG KONG INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL

Movie Marathon This 2015 Hong Kong International Film Festival (HKIFF) kicked off on March 23 with the international premiere of director Sylvia Chang’s latest movie, Murmur of the Hearts, at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre. Chang herself attended the showing alongside the film’s stars, Isabella Leong, Joseph Chang, Lawrence Ko and Angelica Lee, as well as HKIFF Chairman Wilfred Wong and Secretary for Commerce and Economic Development Gregory So. The 15-day festival is one of Asia’s leading platforms for filmmakers, this year screening 260 titles from 56 countries and regions.

JOHNNIE TO

MAY 2015 PRESTIGE 24

VIP

JOSEPH CHANG

ANGELICA LEE

25 PRESTIGE MAY 2015

ANN HUI

JERMAINE JACKSON

LIAO FAN

ASIAN FILM AWARDS

Starry Night Many of the most illustrious figures in Asian cinema, including actors, actresses, producers and directors from nine countries, turned out in force for the 9th Asian Film Awards, held on March 25 at Macau’s Venetian Theatre. The festivities began with arrivals and photographs on the red carpet, and continued with the much-anticipated ceremony, when Hong Kong singer Ivana Wong gave a stirring performance and the 14 awards were presented by luminaries such as Aaron Kwok, Anthony Wong and Jermaine Jackson. Among the evening’s highlights were Liao Fan’s Best Actor and Bae Doo Na’s Best Actress awards; Korea’s Im Kwon Taek received a Lifetime Achievement Award, while Japan’s Nakatani Miki bagged an Excellence in Asian Cinema Award.

Organised by the Asian Film Awards Academy, the event was sponsored by BMW, Sands Resorts Cotai Strip, and The Venetian Macao.

AARON KWOK

MIYAZAWA RIE

INFINITE

MAY 2015 PRESTIGE 26

VIP

AMY ADAMS AND PETRA FLANNERY

JIMMY CHOO

Style Star Jimmy Choo Creative Director Sandra Choi and The Hollywood Reporter co-hosted an exclusive VIP lunch party at Soho House West Hollywood on March 18 to honour the 25 most powerful stylists in Hollywood. Each year, The Hollywood Reporter compiles a list ranking top stylists based on their red-carpet showing, styles they’ve created, award nominees they’ve dressed and personal brand development. The invitation-only crowd included Gwen Stefani, Emily Ratajkowski, Zoe Saldana, Olivia Munn and stylists Brandon Maxwell and Tara Swennen.

27 PRESTIGE MAY 2015

SANDRA CHOI AND SOPHIE LOPEZ

EMILY RATAJKOWSKI

TARA SWENNEN AND ODEYA RUSH

GWEN STEFANI

MICAELA ERLANGER AND OLIVIA MUNN

ZOE SALDANA

MAY 2015 PRESTIGE 28

VIP

LEE YONG-KWAN, WILFRED WONG, RUBY TANG AND FRED WANG

MOËT & CHANDON

A Sparkling Occasion The Asian Film Awards Academy (AFAA) and major international film festivals in Busan, Hong Kong and Tokyo collaborated with champagne house Moët & Chandon to host a gala dinner at PMQ’s The Qube on March 22, for the presentation of the Moët-AFA Special Awards. A wall decorated with illuminated bottles created a spectacular photographic backdrop, which VIP guests also autographed as they entered. They were further delighted during dinner when various Moët champagnes were matched with each course.

Dr Wilfred Wong, chairman of AFAA and the Hong Kong International Film Festival Society, and Lee Yong Kwan, director of the Busan International Film Festival, presented an Outstanding Asian Actor award to Aaron Kwok, and Rising Star of Asia awards to Korean actor Lee Soo Hyuk and Chinese actress Wang Likun.

29 PRESTIGE MAY 2015

LEE SOO HYUK

AARON KWOK

WANG LIKUN

MABEL CHEUNG AND ALEX LAW

RUBY TANG AND HAYLEY KAN

JERMAINE JACKSON

MAY 2015 PRESTIGE 30

RSVP

OLIVIER AUDEMARS AND WINFRIED ENGELBRECHT-BRESGES

31

AUDEMARS PIGUET

FRANÇOIS-HENRI BENNAHMIAS AND KARSON CHOI

Century Art Swiss watchmaker Audemars Piguet celebrated its involvement in art by hosting an exuberant party at California Tower on March 13, at which it announced Ruijun Shen as guest curator for the brand’s 2016 Art Commission.

The setting featured a version of the horologist’s Art Basel in Hong Kong 2015 collectors’ lounge – Mineral Lab by French designer Mathieu Lehanneur – and an exhibition of Audemars Piguet’s exceptional women’s heritage timepieces from 1900-2015.

Lehanneur was in attendance alongside actors Sandra Ng and Louis Koo.

ALLAN ZEMAN

JEFFERY AND MARGARET YAU AND DAVID VON GUNTEN MATT CHOW, LOUIS KOO AND SANDRA NG

MAX JOHNSON, CHARLOTTE CHEN AND ALEX ERRERA

CAROLINE FOK AND JENNY LAM

RSVP

BMW

Cavalcade of Conquerors Sha Tin Racecourse witnessed an extraordinary parade of BMW convertibles following the BMW Hong Kong Derby 2015 on March 15. Charioteered in front of the cheering crowd were the team behind the winner of the HK$18 million race – Luger – including jockey Zac Purton, trainer John Size and owner Terry Fok Kwong-hang. Watching the race and parade from BMW’s private box were numerous stalwarts of the social scene led by Derby Ambassador Donnie Yen and his wife Cissy Wang, while Mark Lui and Sherie Legrix bagged the BestDressed Awards.

JOHNNY LIANG, VIVIEN LIANG, VALERIE LIANG AND JOSEPHINE LIANG REGGIE AND RONALD LI

SIMON IP AND NEWMAN TSANG MONA CHONG, PAULENE CRUZ, SEAN DA CRUZ, TONY CRUZ AND ANTONIA DA CRUZ

CANDY LAW, DORIAN HO AND SHARON LUK MARK LUI, CANNY LEUNG AND MARCUS WONG

CISSY WANG, SHERIE LEGRIX AND KEVIN COON

MAY 2015 PRESTIGE 32

MARGARET QUALLEY

CHANEL

ANNA WINTOUR AND DAKOTA JOHNSON PHARRELL WILLIAMS AND BEYONCÉ

PHOEBE TONKIN

LILY-ROSE DEPP AND VANESSA PARADIS

HARLEY VIERA-NEWTON, LAURA LOVE AND ALEXA CHUNG PHARRELL WILLIAMS

JULIANNE MOORE

33 PRESTIGE MAY 2015

New York, New York Chanel presented its Métiers d’Art Paris-Salzburg 2014/15 collection on March 31 at Park Avenue Armory in New York. The show, first staged at the historic Schloss Leopoldskron palace in Salzburg, Austria in December, ended with a glamorous after-party as privileged guests nibbled on double-C-shaped pretzels and took in a surprise joint song performance by Pharrell Williams and Cara Delevingne. The previous night, the same A-list crowd was spotted with Karl Lagerfeld aboard a cruise ship on the Hudson River.

RSVP

DAVIDOFF

Smoke and Fire Swiss cigar brand Davido, associate partner of Art Basel in Hong Kong, hosted a party on March 13 at Grand Hyatt Hong Kong, where VIP guests gathered poolside to sample premium smokes and wines. On stage, Michael Wong serenaded the audience before the star of the evening, burlesque queen Dita Von Teese, whipped up the atmosphere with her captivating charms and enthralling moves.

LAURENT DE ROUGEMONT, DITA VON TEESE, DAVID HONG AND HANS-KRISTIAN HOEJSGAARD MONICA CHEN, KATHY CHIU, DONNE RAY RADFOR D AND CHRISTINE CHIN

VANESSA LAM, LAM KIN-MING AND VERONICA LAM

VALERIE LIANG, JOSEPHINE LIANG AND VIVIEN LIANG

DITA VON TEESE

MAY 2015 PRESTIGE 34

RSVP

NICOLA CHEUNG

ROGER VIVIER

Bags of Fun The world’s first Roger Vivier popup store opened at Lee Gardens, Causeway Bay on April 1, giving the gathered celebrities, socialites and fashionistas a look at the brand’s spring/summer collection of shoes and Miss Viv’ handbags. Model Kathy Chow revealed that she wears the brand’s iconic flats a lot because they’re ideal footwear for pregnant ladies.

CHELSEA CHAU

KATHY CHOW

FEIPING CHANG CATHERINE WONG

GAILE LAI

35 PRESTIGE MAY 2015

RSVP

JI CHANG WOOK AND FABRIZIO CARDINALI

ALFRED DUNHILL

Video Cube

JULIAN CHEUNG

Fabrizio Cardinali, CEO of British luxury menswear brand Alfred Dunhill, and John Ray, the label’s creative director, hosted an exclusive dinner at White Cube gallery on March 5 to view a Silas Fong video installation of Ray’s recent autumn/winter 2015 menswear collection while guests enjoyed a four-course repast by British Michelin-starred chef Tom Aikens.

WILLIAM ZHAO, ANDRÉ FU, ALAN LO AND EVAN CHOW

VIVIAN CHOW AND EDITH CHEN

WINNIE CHIU, JENNY CHAU AND JONATHAN CHEUNG

EUNIS CHAN, RICKY KWOK AND LELIA CHOW

ESCADA

Classic Elegance Prominent glitterati flocked to Escada’s party on March 26 to celebrate the first anniversary of the label’s Central flagship store and glimpse the Escada Meets Thilo Westermann collection.

Partygoers had a private viewing of the elaborately designed pieces that resulted from the Munich-based brand’s collaboration with the German artist.

EILEEN TUNG MAHNAZ LEE

MAY 2015 PRESTIGE 36

RSVP

BONNAE GOKSON

LANDMARK

Food for Thought Nine notable works of art by leading local and regional artists as well as masters including Monet and Chagall were featured in the exhibition Take Another View on Art at Landmark Atrium on March 12.

In conjunction with the exhibition, chefs from 10 Landmark restaurants created art-influenced dishes for the culinary experience The Artful Palate, combining gastronomy and art in an unforgettable epicurean fusion.

WILLIAM LIM

MARA RHOMBERG

NET A PORTER

Taking Shots

PIECCO PANG AND JOYCE TAM

Three powerhouses from different areas – art gallery Lehmann Maupin, restaurant Sevva and online retailer Net-a-Porter – joined forces to celebrate the launch of photographer Alex Prager’s new exhibition in Hong Kong. On the cocktail list was a drink inspired by the artist’s latest work.

ERICA PELOSINI

37 PRESTIGE MAY 2015

DAVID MAUPIN AND ALEX PRAGER

RSVP

CHARLOTTE CHEN AND ANA R

SHANGHAI TANG

Chic Chinois Shanghai Tang held a party at its Duddell Street flagship boutique to herald its second collaboration with photographer Wing Shya.

Delighting guests was a collection of images whose cinematic luminosity encapsulated the beauty of Hong Kong.

BRANDON CHAU

WING SHYA

TOD’S

Arm Candy At an in-store cocktail party to unveil its latest fine-leather Cape Bag, Italian luxury brand Tod’s displayed an exhibition of photographs by Olivia Tsang portraying eight Hong Kong socialites. Themed Modern Ladies, the images of the women were grouped so as to portray the new bag’s versatility in a variety of lifestyle situations.

JAIME KU AND DENISE HO

VERONICA LAM

NATALIE CHAN

FEIPING CHANG AND ANTONIA LI

MAY 2015 PRESTIGE 38

The month in chic

FASHION SURF’S UP

SUMMER NIGHTS

BEACH BABE

Emilio Pucci and swimwear label Orlebar Brown have created a 20-piece line comprising tailored shorts and long-sleeved rash guards adorned with Pucci’s signature prints. Be sure to take along your sunscreen because each pair of shorts comes with a matching waterproof bag.

Loewe has collaborated with textile designer John Allen on a summer accessories line based on his coloured British landscapes. Get your hands on prints such as Falling Leaves or Pink House in Cumbria on a large tote bag or plush beach towel.

One&Only Resorts and Missoni have introduced a line of stylish beachwear, including a bikini, a kaftan and a playsuit, fashioned with the Italian label’s famous zigzag print and a lush rainbow palette. Available at all One&Only Resorts properties.

39 PRESTIGE MAY 2015

BUCKLE UP Handcrafted in Italy, this bicolour belt by Bottega Veneta sports the label’s iconic intrecciato weave and a contrasting sheer panel, so you can wear it with just about anything.

FRAME OF MIND Italian eyewear group Safilo celebrates its 80th anniversary by partnering with industrial designer Marc Newson to produce a collection that includes two sunglasses and five optical frames.

PERFECT PAIRING Luxury denim brand 7 For All Mankind has joined forces with haute couture designer Giambattista Valli. Their new capsule collection, currently available in stores, includes fitted tops, a minidress and – you guessed it – skin-tight jeans in lipstick shades and animal prints.

MIX ’N’ MATCH Try this season’s mismatchedjewellery trend with these Pop Chips earrings from Louis Vuitton.

Make like the chic girls on the catwalk by sporting them with barely-there make-up and a beachy-waves hairdo.

MAY 2015 PRESTIGE

40

FASHION

41

R

A oom of Her Own = From the privacy of your inner sanctum to a night out on the town, these red-carpet gowns and sexy separates will certainly do the trick. Pair them with glamorous make-up and a bold bouffant and you’re set to go =

PHOTOGRAPHY MIKE RUIZ AT AARDVARK AARTISTS STYLING CANNON AT JUDY CASEY HAIR PAUL WARREN FOR RENÉ FURTERER AT ART DEPARTMENT MAKE-UP GREGG BROCKINGTON USING NYX COSMETICS AT JUDY CASEY MARKET EDITOR ERIN MCSHERRY MODEL MASHA AT WOMEN MANAGEMENT ON-SET ASSISTANT EVA ROBERTS LOCATION ROYAL SUITE, THE NEW YORK PALACE

DRESS AND SHOES DOLCE & GABBANA BRACELET SETHI COUTURE

MAY 2015 PRESTIGE

42

FASHION

JACKET GIORGIO ARMANI DRESS EMPORIO ARMANI SHOES ALEXANDRE BIRMAN RING LE VIAN EARRINGS CARRERA Y CARRERA

43 PRESTIGE MAY 2015

DRESS LANVIN EARRINGS SETHI COUTURE CUFF CARRERA Y CARRERA RING LE VIAN

MAY 2015 PRESTIGE

44

FASHION

JACKET AND DRESS CALVIN KLEIN COLLECTION NECKLACE ELIZABETH COLE RING LE VIAN

45 PRESTIGE MAY 2015

JACKET, TOP, SHORTS AND SHOES DIOR BRACELET CARRERA Y CARRERA WATCH KORLOFF PARIS

MAY 2015 PRESTIGE

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FASHION

JACKET, TOP, SHORTS, SOCKS AND SHOES PRADA NECKLACE PLUMA JEWELRY

47 PRESTIGE MAY 2015

OUTFIT CHANEL

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FASHION

TOP AND TROUSERS LOEWE HEADPIECE LEAH C. SHOES DIOR BRACELET PLUMA JEWELRY

49 PRESTIGE MAY 2015

TOP AND VEST CÉLINE RING LE VIAN

MAY 2015 PRESTIGE

50

FASHION

51 PRESTIGE MAY 2015

DRESS AND SHOES GUCCI RING (LEFT HAND) SUTRA JEWELS RING (RIGHT HAND) LE VIAN

MAY 2015 PRESTIGE

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FASHION

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That ’70s Show

= From quirky i k prints i to b bold ld colours, l style l iinspirations i i off yesteryear have come full circle to dominate the season’s offerings = PHOTOGRAPHY JOEL LOW STYLING JOSHUA CHEUNG HAIR AND MAKE-UP MANISA TAN AT PALETTE INC USING URBAN DECAY PHOTOGRAPHY ASSISTANT ALFIE PAN FASHION ASSISTANT AMANDA SEAH MODEL SYLWIA P AT AVE

OUTFIT LOUIS VUITTON

CARDIGAN, BODYSUIT AND BOOTS CHANEL NECKLACE HERMĒS

MAY 2015 PRESTIGE

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FASHION

55 PRESTIGE MAY 2015

BODYSUIT GIVENCHY BY RICCARDO TISCI BAG AND BOOTS CHANEL

MAY 2015 PRESTIGE

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FASHION

JACKET GIVENCHY BY RICCARDO TISCI BELT (WORN AS NECKLACE) CHANEL EARRINGS HERMĒS

57 PRESTIGE MAY NOVEMBER 2015 2014

COAT AND SWEATER CHANEL JEANS AND SCARF (WORN AS BELT) GUCCI BOOTS LOUIS VUITTON

NOVEMBER MAY 2014 2015 PRESTIGE

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FASHION

VEST, SCARF, SANDALS AND BRACELET GUCCI DRESS VALENTINO

59 PRESTIGE MAY NOVEMBER 2015 2014

DRESS GUCCI SCARF, BAG, BRACELET AND SANDALS HERMĒS

MAY 2015 PRESTIGE

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FASHION

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BRAND NEW Jonathan Anderson has ignited a radical – and extremely fast – transformation at Spanish house Loewe.

VINCENZO LA TORRE

meets the designer in Paris to find out how he did it

FROM ITS ACQUISITION

by luxury conglomerate LVMH in 1996 until last year, the Spanish leathergoods house Loewe, founded in Madrid in 1846, was a one-trick pony. Its signature item, the Amazona bag, represented the maison around the world and functioned as its de facto cash cow.

In spite of its storied past and unique position as Spain’s only luxury label with worldwide renown, Loewe was considered a sort of stepchild among its more successful siblings in the LVMH portfolio, brands such as Céline, Givenchy, Fendi and Kenzo, which while priding themselves on their illustrious history have managed to attract consumers thanks to talented designers and savvy marketing teams.

Loewe was clearly in need of a shake-up, which finally came in September 2013 when British designer Jonathan Anderson, a rising star of London Fashion Week known for his androgynous and directional collections, was appointed creative director. Placing a hot young designer at the helm of a legacy label is nothing new, but the powers that be at LVMH, including Delphine Arnault, the daughter of LVMH owner Bernard Arnault, clearly had big things in mind for Loewe and showed their commitment to Anderson by also investing in his label, JW Anderson.

The then-barely-30-year-old designer didn’t waste any time to radically reposition Loewe, starting with a new logo, created in collaboration with art directors Mathias Augustyniak and Michael Amzalag of M/M (Paris), and a surprisingly artsy advertising campaign, which juxtaposed images from an old Steven Meisel shoot published in Vogue Italia with current

photographs. It was quite a change for a house long associated with Spanish royalty and whose past campaigns featured supermodels such as Stephanie Seymour or actresses like Penelope Cruz holding giant handbags in glamorous, oldschool settings.

Anderson’s revamp of Loewe extended to redesigning its boutiques, opening its first US store, in Miami, and relocating the design studiocum-showroom from Spain to Paris’s Left Bank, where Anderson travels frequently from London to oversee his team.

When we meet Anderson in his office overlooking a quaint square a short walk from Saint-Germain-des-Prés, he’s taking a break from the hectic comings and goings in the showroom downstairs, where editors and buyers have come to take a closer look at the autumn/ winter 2015 collection, shown the previous day in the Unesco headquarters in the city.

The deceptively boyish-looking Anderson is extremely determined and focused, with a strong vision and clear expansion plans for both Loewe and his own label. Explaining that he believes that Loewe’s under-the-radar positioning in the fashion industry is “actually a kind of gift”, Anderson makes clear that although he did look at the archives and delved deep into the brand’s history, looking back is not his thing.

“It’s a beautiful brand that has huge potential,” he begins, after he takes a cigarette break. “But it needed a fashion-cultural approach to it. I didn’t know very much about it; it wasn’t on my radar. But when I went to the factory I kind of fell in love with it. When I met the master craftsmen, I thought they were fascinating and

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FEATURE

“I don’t work for the Spanish tourism board but Loewe”

I was really inspired by their loyalty to this brand. I just think that they wanted more excitement, more of a challenge. Their attention to detail and the product that they could make ... the product was really good but I just felt that the design ... The leather, though, is incredible. I just feel it needed a push, a different viewpoint ultimately.”

What Loewe doesn’t lack now is a strong viewpoint. As soon as those campaign images – both vintage and new – of youth on a remote beach turned up online and in glossies, it was evident that we weren’t in Andalucía anymore. Anderson wasn’t afraid to bid goodbye – at least for now – to classics such as the Amazona, starting from a blank slate and giving much-needed attention to the long-neglected ready-towear, which until his arrival had been almost nonexistent at Loewe, functioning only as a canvas for the arm candy. Although the ad campaign was a social-media success, one can’t help wonder if it raised some hackles among the management ranks at LVMH, what with its lack of in-your-face product placement.

“What it does is sell you a character,” he explains. “That’s what advertising is for. You don’t

need to be told that a woman is going to hold a bag, because humans are smart enough to know that you hold a bag. What you want to do is sell someone a dream. Ultimately, as long as it looks good, it evokes something, then it’s as commercial as you want it to be.”

As befits a designer raised in the 1990s, Anderson doesn’t see “commercial” as a dirty word and believes that creativity means little without business savvy, which is why he’s been involved in every single aspect of the brand’s new image.

“That’s very much how I work,” he explains. “I always see things that way. I care about the paint

that’s on the wall. I like the marketing aspect of it. I never wanted to be a designer but a creative director, which is a fundamental difference.

That’s what I wanted, this type of mechanism.

“Just designing a dress doesn’t really excite me. I like to make the environment that the clothes and bags are going to sit in. It’s a different method and a different path, and I have to do what I feel is right. I’m not here to make people believe I’m one thing and not the

CLOCKWISE FROM ABOVE: A CLOSE-UP FROM LOEWE SPRING/SUMMER 2015 SHOW; A POUCH FROM THE COLLECTION; A BACKSTAGE IMAGE OF A MODEL HOLDING THE PUZZLE BAG; A LOOK FROM THE SHOW

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other. I’m fundamentally the creative director of two brands.”

While press and buyers have praised his efforts so far – his first bag, the Puzzle, is a hit among boys and girls alike and is already outselling the Amazona – the designer has been criticised for departing from the heritage of Spain, which many see as integral to Loewe. He’s quick to counter that sentiment.

“I think that’s a very boring, nostalgic thing to say,” says Anderson. “If you look at something like Balenciaga, it’s from Spain, Givenchy is from France, but they don’t represent the country at all. It’s about the craft. I don’t work for the Spanish tourism board but Loewe. I’m not here to represent Spain but Spanish craft, and if people feel that I should send flamenco dresses down the catwalk, then far be it ... ” Truth be told, while his designs feel utterly contemporary, Anderson is definitely paying homage to Loewe’s deep connection with leather, which is the label’s main strength.

“I like leather, I even use it in my own brand,” he says. “I feel it’s a modern product, very dynamic in its approach, and it will always be modern because you can change it all the time and do so many things to it. And Loewe is Spanish – it’s the best nappa you can get. It’s as Spanish as the brand will ever be. What’s incredible is that it ages so well. It always gets better as it gets older.”

Anderson has his work cut out for him. In spite of its big presence in Spain and Japan, Loewe is virtually unknown in the US and has only a smattering of boutiques elsewhere. These

would have been major issues only a few years ago, but in this era of whispered luxury, Loewe seems to be the perfect candidate for a successful renaissance.

“The great thing about Loewe is that it’s very agile,” says Anderson.

“We’re at a point where we can change with the wind quite quickly because we don’t have so many things holding us down, like hundreds of stores. We have 170 years to reposition, but I think ultimately it has to feel new. When brands start celebrating their birthdays, it’s over. It’s the most boring thing. If I hear again about the birthday of a brand, every six months, or the anniversary of a bag, a designer ... There’s nothing worse than a retrospective; they destroy you.”

Whether or not in three decades Loewe will be celebrating its 200 years in business, there’s no escaping that it’s an example of how a no-holds-barred approach and a strong vision can change the perception of a brand almost overnight. It’s certainly a lesson that all those executives and creative directors trying to revive moribund houses right and left should take to heart.

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FASHION

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THE SPIRIT DIRECTOR One of the oldest leather-goods makers in Europe, Belgian house Delvaux has been given a new shot of vitality thanks to designer Christina Zeller.

VINCENZO LA TORRE hops on a train from Paris to Brussels to meet her

A TOUCH OF

snobbery plays a significant role in the mystique associated with luxury labels.

There’s nothing like the feeling that you got there first, that you discovered a young designer or a long-established but previously dormant brand before it became cool. It’s like a badge of honour, the feeling of belonging to a club of in-the-know insiders.

If you’re looking for an accessories house that currently has that rarefied cachet and is building a global but not yet far-reaching presence among connoisseurs of the finer things in life, you’d be hard pressed to find a better example than Delvaux, a Belgian (yes, not French or Italian) maison founded in 1829 and still operating out of a workshop in Brussels.

The low-key and self-deprecating attitude associated with Brussels, a city that often gets a bad rap as a dull bureaucratic capital, is also a trademark of Delvaux. The company makes bags that are luxurious but not ostentatious; expensive looking but never in your face. For most of its long history, the label was a sleeping beauty, lacking the cool factor that finally emerged when Christina Zeller, a veteran of Karl Lagerfeld and Givenchy, took the reins in 2011.

The super-chic and impeccable Zeller, a Parisian who’s always clad in sky-high heels, skin-tight leggings and oversized blouses, and dripping with jewellery, engineered a complete turnaround at Delvaux, injecting a much-needed dose of energy and managing a hard-to-pull-off balance of tradition and modernity.

We met the fun, approachable and businesssavvy Zeller in her loft-like office overlooking Delvaux’s Brussels atelier, where we also met

workers who’ve been with the company for three decades as well as recent hires repairing longworn hand-me-downs that loyal customers send to the workshop for mini-facelifts.

WHAT WAS YOUR PERCEPTION OF DELVAUX WHEN YOU JOINED? I knew about its craftsmanship, its beautiful classic bags and its tradition, but I was afraid that it would be too difficult to put the brand back on the map. But after just one week I fell in love with the product. I also wanted to keep my mind free from influences. I had no obligation to look at the archives; I just wanted to feel what the company was about. I had a crush on the brand; something happened. It’s a sign of destiny, too, because Le Brillant, Delvaux’s iconic bag, was designed in 1958, which is also my birth year, so I felt it was a sign.

DO YOU THINK IT WAS AN ASSET THAT IT WAS LITTLE KNOWN AND BELGIAN? Yes, because luxury clients are very spoilt and always looking for something new, so we had the advantage of offering history, craftsmanship and modernity, which was what people were looking for. It’s not just a fashionable bag, but a product with a soul. It’s not something you buy for three seasons, but something that even if in five years you’re bored and put it in the closet, you can always bring it back out because it’s so timeless that you’ll carry it again. Or if it’s not you, it will be your daughter or granddaughter.

Belgium is not a country known for luxury products or fashion in spite of the well-known Antwerp designers. One of the assets of the

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FEATURE

“You have to make people dream of what they’ll buy next”

Belgian fashion industry is that brands here have always been independent and never part of a luxury group with huge teams, in which a brand’s identity is often diluted by too many marketing people. Belgian brands have always been focused on their values without pleasing everybody and every market.

YOU SEEM TO BE VERY INVOLVED IN THE BUSINESS SIDE.

It was very important at the beginning for me to be hands-on because the most challenging part of a business is to be coherent and focused; the communication and marketing have to match the product. It may seem like a kind of dictatorship, but I’m not against dictatorship if it’s needed.

Paris wouldn’t be what it is without Haussmann [who rebuilt the city in the 19th century] because he had a vision. It’s very important to have a strong vision.

Delvaux needed a new proposal for the international market. It’s a huge help for me to be business-minded; that’s my background. I like to say that I stick to the floor but my head’s always in the clouds. For me to have this double responsibility of design and marketing is very helpful because I know the rules of marketing and my challenge is to balance the two. Achieving a balance between creation and marketing is key.

The business cannot survive without creativity.

One of the nicest compliments I got is that I’m not only the artistic director but the spirit director. The success of a company never belongs to just one person. If you can get people to follow your vision, you’ll be successful. You have to convince them to follow you and this new energy. Everybody in the company has their responsibility, but it’s like you’re the chef in a kitchen. Everybody could be a good player

alone, but they can be much better working together. The team here had a lot of talent, but it just needed to be awakened.

DID THEY WELCOME YOU WITH OPEN ARMS OR WAS IT CHALLENGING AT FIRST? At the beginning they were resistant: a French girl, a Parisian from the fashion world, must be very arrogant, coming here to teach.

They were probably concerned about me because there are some bad clichés of fashion people acting like stars. But because of the small scale of this company I couldn’t act this way. I turned up my sleeves, and if I have to help clean the shelves before a presentation, I’ll do it. That’s how people will respect you. It’s not just saying what I like or don’t like but convincing people that you’re professional and that you’re not the star in the company.

The star is the company.

It may sound surprising for a creative director to behave like that, but for me it’s just normal.

That’s why maybe recently we’ve seen unknown members of studios

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: LE BRILLIANT BAG, DESIGNED IN 1958; BRUSSELS’ MANNEKEN-PIS DRESSED AS A DELVAUX CRAFTSMAN; A SUEDE AND CROCODILE VERSION OF LE TEMPÊTE, ORIGINALLY CREATED IN 1967

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becoming creative directors, because the success of a company is not only in the hands of the artistic director. I need around me people who are competent and know about leather, research and development and quality control so I can put my ideas to the test and make them happen. By being surrounded by professional people, you understand that no one is more important than the rest of the company. Many brands have made

the mistake of making creative directors too powerful, with no limits in what they could do.

HOW DO YOU GO ABOUT CREATING NEW PRODUCTS AND REVIVING THE CLASSICS?

The first challenge was to identify the bags with the potential to be successful. Le Brillant is a great example, and it also reflects my sensibility because I like radical lines and graphic design, strong statement pieces. Le Brillant, Le Tempête and Le Madame are like that because they’re matching market needs and are both beautiful design pieces but also functional. We fine-

tuned small details such as the construction, the thickness of the hardware, the ropes of the handle.

The look is the same but there were in fact many changes that are not visible to the eyes. The challenge was to bring some modernity, which can be just a small detail. You don’t need to kill a bag to revamp a bag.

HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT WHAT YOU’VE ACCOMPLISHED FOR THE LABEL SO FAR? We’re very happy to see the growth of the brand, but we’d been unseen for so many years that we have to manage the growth. We like the fact that we’re very discreet, almost like a secret, a hidden brand, known through word of mouth. And people enjoy the story of our brand, so the key is how to keep this sense of being exclusive. This also links to the size of our shops. I believe that shops that look like a department store don’t feel exclusive, and that’s why the format and size of our boutiques reflect the strategy of the entire company. We’re not trying to be everywhere.

I feel that a lot of brands now are realising that they’re overexposed in markets such as China. In the end, too much kills desire. You have to make people dream of what they’ll buy next. Maybe now when they’re young they can’t afford Le Brillant, but one day they will.

I remember when I was young I wanted to buy a Birkin, and I’m glad I couldn’t buy it then because I still kept it in mind and then got it when I got older. I’m always happy when I hear daughters of friends or young girls say that one day when they have money they’ll buy a Delvaux.

That to me is real success: that I’m preparing the next generation for Delvaux. The point is not just to sell to people who can afford it now but to future generations too.

You have to seduce the ones who one day will be able to buy Delvaux. I want them to discover why they have to buy it, because they’re buying not just a bag, but our legend, a piece of history.

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JEWELLERY

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ALL EARS

BLUE MOOD

GÜBELIN Gübelin celebrates the mysterious allure of azure with a set of sapphire pieces that includes this gorgeous necklace.

CARTIER The Bleu-Bleuet platinum ring features a 29.06-carat, cushionshaped, cornflower-blue Kashmirri sapphire, a pair of triangular diamonds (2.43 and 2.17 carats) and caliber- and brilliant-cut diamond ds.

RONALD ABRAM All eyes will be on you when you wear these earrings featuring fancy vivid-yellow pear-shaped diamonds.

LOUIS L V VUITTON T se Galaxie Thes Mono M ogram pendant earrings in the Voyag oyage danss le Temps se d eries combine white go old, blue ceramic powder, two 6.58-carat sapph 6 hires and marquise-cut dia m amonds.

TIFFANY & CO. This ring Thi ing of diam diamonds and sapphires set in n platinum forms p part of the Blue B Book 2015 The Art of the Sea high h-jewellery c collection.

CHOW SANG SANG The new art deco deco-inspired inspired g g* Collection by Chow Sang Sang includes these 999.9-gold and chalcedony earrings.

A CORNUCOPIA OF STONE AND METAL

CHARM SCHOOL

DE BEERS PANDORA The Delicate Hearts collection bracelet lets you mix and match from a selection of dainty charms.

Versatile and contemporary, these Infinity bands with white diamonds come iin pink i k gold, ld platinum l i and d yellow gold.

SHE COMES IN COLOURS

HARRY WINSTON The One micropavé engagement ring is available in coloured diamonds with a platinum setting.

THOMAS SABO Recalling the romance of the Raj is this Maharani pendant with milky and rose quartz, in sterling silver with 18k rose-gold plating.

VAN CLEEF & ARPELS This Two Butterfly Between the Finger ring dazzles in white and yellow gold, tsavorite garnets and diamonds.

CHOW TAI FOOK An ex xquisite red stone forms the centrrepiece of this ruby and diamond ring.

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WATCHES

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DIAMONDS FOR DAMES GRAFF

GOLDEN GIRLS

British jeweller Graff ff has again drawn inspiration from the kaleidoscopic colours of butterflies’ wings for the latest version of the Disco Butterfly watch. The new models come in red, blue or green, embedded with rubies, sapphires or emeralds. The colourful gemstones hover above a dial di l off di diamond d pavé. é

PARMIGIANI

BVLGARI Following the successful launch of its Lvcea collection last year, the Roman jeweller has added a new model to the range. It comes with a deep-red alligator-leather strap, a white mother-of-pearl dial and a diamond-studded bezel. The 18k pink-gold case is 33mm across and houses a mechanical movement movement.

CHOPARD The classic Happy Sport Auto omatiic model has been redesigned and is now availab ble ass a dainty 30mm timepiece. Just like the origina al Ha appy Sport watch, these latest versions are made from m stain nless steel and diamonds.

The new models also include the range’s r trademark moving diamonds, five stoness thatt slide around the dial.

In honour of its 15-year-long partnership with Bugatti, the Swiss watchmaker has released three new watches inspired by the French marque. The new models are called the Bugatti Mythe, the Bugatti Victoire and the Bugatti Révélation (pictured).

RICHARD MILLE The new Open Link bracelet is now available with the RM 07-01 and the RM 037 ladies’ models.

Each piece of this precious metal bracelet is micro-blasted and satin brushed.

FINE ART FOR THE WRIST

CLASSIC CHRONOMETERS RIDING HIGH

BREGUET The Reine de Naples Princesse Mini 9808 by Breguet has a rose-gold case and a domed dial made from Tahitian mother-of-pearl. As a finishing touch, the crown is set with a briolette diamond.

IWC SCHAFFHAUSEN To celebrate its role as official timing partner for the Goodwood Members’ Meeting, IWC Schaffhausen has revealed the new Ingenieur Automatic Edition “AMG MG GT”.

GT .

ROLEX Often referred to as the “president watch”, Rolex’s Oyster Perpetual Day-Date became a classic almost as soon as it was released in 1956. The new-generation model retains all the original elements of the design but is powered by a new mechanical movement, called the calibre 3255, which sits inside a slightly updated 40mm case.

The new Oyster Perpetual Day-Date is available in gold and platinum.

OMEG GA The Globemaster bemaster is the first Omega watch to have the title of Master Chronometer conferred upon it, a new certification by the Swiss Federal Institute of Metrology. The certification tests the timepiece’s performance under conditions of daily wear, and also ensures that its calibre 8900/8901 continues to function even when exposed to magnetic fields of up to 15,000 gauss. The watch is available in various finishes including 18k Sedna or yellow gold and stainless steel.

ULYSSE NARDIN An especially feminine watch, the Marine Chronometer Manufacture Ladies has a diamondencrusted bezel and a mother-of-pearl dial that’s lined with pastel blue or pink Roman numerals. The watch is powered by the UN-118 calibre, best known for its patented Diamonsil escapement and silicon balance spring, which ensure that the movement doesn’t need lubricating.

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The goss on the gloss

BEAUTY PLUMP IT UP Sun-kissed locks are just one shower away with Fekkai’s summer haircare series, which comprises a Full Blown Volume Shampoo and Conditioner and a Citron et Menthe Hair Fragrance Mist. The former duo plumps tresses for a thicker look, while the fragrance includes an energising scent, and also tames flyaways. Available at Joyce Beauty.

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TAKING A SHINE ESSENCE OF LIFE Estée Lauder’s new Micro Essence Infusion Mask continues the miracles brought to your skin by the rest of its Micro Essence series, featuring the key ingredient Micro-Nutrient Bio-Ferment with its nourishing properties. The essencein-lotion sheet mask infuses radiance while softening and soothing the complexion.

“Shocking shine. Excessive colour. Stay-on power.” So touts Make Up For Ever about its new Artist Plexi-Gloss lipgloss, which comes in 35 shades and promises to deliver pigment and sheen in equal measure. The wand is specially designed with a groove in the middle of the applicator to allow more product to flow through, so the colour pay-off is even more intense.

X MARKS THE SPOT Two new products have been added to Rodial’s popular X-treme line: the X-treme Brightening Cleanser and the X-treme Glycolic Daily Serum. The former uses fruit acids and enzymes with glycolic acid to exfoliate without abrasion, evening skin tone. The latter reduces lines and wrinkles while hydrating and brightening skin, prepping it for moisturiser.

JUST SAY YAZ Parisian accessories and jewellery designer Yazbukey is the latest to collaborate with Shu Uemura for a makeup collection, bringing her pop-art sensibilities to play in fun packaging emblazoned with lips, eyes and fun speech bubbles. Must-have items from this series include the I Love My Shu Shu Palette featuring seven eyeshadows in four finishes plus one blush, and the Flip Color Yaz pink-and-black feathered false eyelashes.

THE ROOT OF IT ALL

FLORAL FANTASY

Iris florentina root is the newest miracle ingredient touted by Kiehl’s as an age fighter. Rich in nutrients, it’s a key provider of flavonoids, which protect plants and help them to regenerate, benefits that extend to the skin as well. The new Iris Extract Activating Treatment Essence thus reduces damage to skin and injects it with youth, improving the skin’s structural properties to decrease the appearance of wrinkles.

Fresh founders Lev Glazman and Alina Roytberg were in the medieval town of Penne-d’Agenais in Lot-et-Garonne, France, when they came upon the overpowering scent of honeysuckle.

That smell forms the basis of the brand’s new Honeysuckle Eau de Parfum, a floral fragrance that calls forth images of sunshine, flower beds and salty air.

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BEAUTY

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Recharge your regimen with super-powered serums designed to kick your skincare game into high gear.

MARIEL GOODSON offers some tips

SUFFERING THROUGH A

skincare slump? Don’t let a rinse-and-repeat routine cloud your complexion’s potential. Supercharge your skin with turbo-boosted serums that’ll breathe new life into a lacklustre regimen, no matter what’s plaguing your face.

Eye Boost: If eight hours of sleep is a pipe dream, invest in Clé de Peau Beauté’s Concentrated Brightening Eye Serum, which is so potent that tired eyes look more alive after one use. The formula’s Illuminating Complex also works over time to improve radiance and translucency, so dark circles feel like a long-forgotten nightmare.

Detox Boost: Living in a hot, smoggy city like Hong Kong means an uptick in oxidative damage thanks to pollution and UV rays. Enriched with red hibiscus, Dior’s One Essential Intense Skin Detoxifying Booster Serum targets 100 percent of toxins both on the surface and within the cells, instantly purifying and deeply regenerating so that skin functions at its best.

Zzz Boost: Cellular renewal peaks while you sleep, so when you skimp on zzz’s, your skin doesn’t have a chance to repair itself properly.

To put the beauty back into beauty sleep, Helena Rubinstein’s Powercell Skin Rehab relies on 150 million plant stem cells to bolster the after-hours rejuvenation your complexion so desperately needs.

Moisture Boost: Dehydration exacerbates the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles, so Fresh’s Black Tea Age-Delay Serum offers 24 hours of moisture thanks to spongy Hydropatch technology that traps and releases water molecules. If you tend to wake up to parched skin, SK-II’s Mid-Night Miracle Essence touts a MoistureLock Complex containing Sodium PCA,

which binds water within skin tissue to lock in hydration while you toss and turn.

Brightness Boost: To immediately perk up a dull, dreary complexion, apply Giorgio Armani’s Luminessence Glow Activator, which contains five corrective activators that are clinically proven to encourage more light-reflective skin. To whiten a wan complexion, Lancôme’s Absolue Precious Cells White Aura Regenerating and Whitening Global Serum uses a pearly, quick-absorbing essence that spurs epidermal regeneration for a brighter, more luminous finish.

Healing Boost: Harnessing the remarkable healing power of honey, Guerlain’s Abeille Royale Daily Repair Serum mends micro-tears in the skin using a highly potent strain cultivated from

TURBO-BOOSTED COMPLEXION the black bees of Ouessant. These micro-tears, caused by stressors such as repetitive facial expressions and UV damage, can speed up the first signs of ageing when left unchecked.

Lifting Boost: Defy the downward tug of gravity with La Mer’s The Lifting Intensifier, which is infused with Blue Algae Lift Ferment to instantly tighten and support the skin’s structure. Results are even

more dramatic when applied in an upward motion with The Treatment Massage Tool.

Smoothing Boost: In just two short weeks, La Prairie’s Anti-Aging Rapid Response Booster irons out the appearance of wrinkles with a cutting-edge neuro-calming peptide that targets cells responsible for the production of collagen and elastin. Sulwhasoo’s Capsulized Ginseng Fortifying Serum enlists Ginsenisphere – a compound of four proteins crucial to the elastic membrane – to bolster the skin’s matrix for a smoother, firmer effect.

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COVER

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DRESS ROBERTO CAVALLI

The

Rocky Road to Success She’s already had some big breaks in her career, but OLIVIA MUNN believes the best is yet to come. KAVITA DASWANI talks to the in-demand actress and fledgling TV producer about seizing opportunities – and resisting ice cream

PHOTOGRAPHY ERIC MICHAEL ROY I CREATIVE DIRECTION AND STYLING PARIS LIBBY I MAKE-UP SHANE PAISH AT WALTER SCHUPFER MANAGEMENT HAIR CHRISTIAN MARC AT FORWARD ARTISTS I MANICURE CHRISTINA AVILES AT OPUS BEAUTY I STYLING ASSISTANTS SHEENA KHEMANEY, BRITTANY ROMANO AND PAUL TEDESCO I PHOTOGRAPHY ASSISTANTS TOM HENRIKSEN, CORY WHITTED AND RICH FURY PRODUCTION ASSISTANTS COREY BOARDMAN AND LANDON BEARD I LOCATION EDGE STUDIOS, LOS ANGELES

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COVER

t

HE

NIGHT

BEFORE

she’s going to be photographed in body-hugging designer outfits – including a Spanxlike pair of hot pants – Olivia Munn does what very few other actresses would: she consumes a copious quantity of rocky road ice cream.

“I’m not a model,” she says with a laugh. “They can’t get mad at me if I don’t wear the clothes.”

(She does wear the clothes for the shoot – and there’s no evidence of the previous night’s sugar overload.)

Munn’s lack of affectation and selfconsciousness are part of her immediate likeability, along with an easy honesty and a refreshing absence of pretension. Combine those qualities with brains, beauty, acting chops and an engaging sense of humour, and it’s no surprise that her face time is growing on screens big and small, or that she’s being afforded opportunities not generally granted to even more experienced actresses – such as a production deal at CBS, which has invited her to start creating television shows.

Munn, 34, first came to the notice of mainstream audiences in 2010, when Jon Stewart hired her as a correspondent for his hugely successful The Daily Show. After Munn

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left a year later, the bounce in her visibility led to calls by the likes of Steven Soderbergh, who cast her as the girlfriend of Channing Tatum’s character in the hit movie Magic Mike. Aaron Sorkin then gave her a prominent role in the acclaimed TV series The Newsroom, in which she played flinty, feisty brainiac anchorwoman Sloan Sabbith. More recently, Munn co-starred with Johnny Depp and Gwyneth Paltrow in the crime-caper comedy Mortdecai and has just wrapped the sequel to the popular Ride Along with Kevin Hart, Ice Cube and Ken Jeong.

Still, despite the growing momentum of her career, the half-Asian actress – her mother is of Chinese descent from Vietnam – thinks she has some way to go before genuinely finding her groove in the tumultuous world of entertainment.

In a quieter corner of a photo studio in East Los Angeles one recent afternoon, she talks about segueing behind the camera for future projects, and why food services on film sets are nobody’s friend.

YOUR AMBITION IS TO MAKE TELEVISION SHOWS HOW’S THAT GOING? There are a lot of talented people I’ve worked with over the years and I’m meeting up with them now. They’re clever and smart, and we’re looking at opportunities to work together. It will be fun to collaborate with them, and it will give them a platform and opportunity as well. I’m hiring executives right now. I don’t have a name for the production company yet, but I have some ideas.

INSTEAD OF STARRING IN THEM.

OUTFIT DOLCE & GABBANA

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COVER

DRESS TOM FORD SHOES CHRISTIAN LOUBOUTIN

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“I know I’m just giving myself an excuse to eat ice cream”

But I’m very excited to get behind the camera and try to create shows – not for me to be in, just to create.

It’s an amazing opportunity that doesn’t come along very often.

WAS PART OF YOUR DECISION TO MOVE IN THIS DIRECTION AN ANSWER TO

THE

ONGOING

you do comedy?” and you say yes and hope you can do it on the day. You just want to be able to work, whatever those opportunities are that come our way. “Can you fly a plane?” “Sure!” The things that have happened in my career have really been about an opportunity and me taking it and putting myself up for these moments and hoping that I don’t mess up too much.

tell, but you can always see things yourself. I’d ask the wardrobe people if I could wear a cardigan, and they’d tell me we already shot part of the scene when I’m not in a cardigan. Or I’ll ask if I can sit down the whole time. I need to have more self-control over what I eat.

ON THE NEWSROOM LOOKED – ALL THAT SORKIN DIALOGUE AND LOTS OF SCREEN TIME. HOW DID YOU DEAL WITH THE RIGOURS OF A WEEKLY TV SHOW? I was lucky because my character didn’t have to be in the background that much. Sloan’s office in the newsroom was upstairs, so a lot of the time whenever I was on the set I was shooting scenes. Some of the other actors had to be in the background a lot – their characters were answering phones or running around. I didn’t have that much hanging-around time. [Co-star] Dev Patel and I are really close, and we both have ADD, while the other actors have such patience.

They’ll sit there with a book.

SO YOU’RE NOT A CALORIE-COUNTING SORT OF PERSON WHO’S IN THE GYM FOR HOURS A DAY? There are people who look amazing, and they go to yoga and Pilates and talk about their diets and they look great all the time. I wish I could do that. I tell myself that I’m going to start doing yoga every single day and that I’m not going to eat carbs any more, because they make me bloated and tired. And then I tell myself, “Hey, you’re not a model!

You’re an actress! Eating makes you more relatable!” Of course, I know I’m just giving myself an excuse to eat ice cream. Yesterday, before this shoot, I wasn’t stressed out or tired or sick. There was no reason for me to have to eat the rocky road ice cream. But in my head I tell myself it doesn’t matter because I’m not a model and they Photoshop everything anyway. The reality is, we don’t walk around life with an Instagram filter on. Although maybe we should. I should ask

CONVERSATION

ABOUT THE LACK OF GREAT ROLES

YOUR

ROLE

FOR WOMEN IN

HOLLYWOOD? WILL YOU BE FOCUSING ON THAT? Not especially. It’s always hard to find interesting parts, no matter if you’re male or female. A lot of male actors will tell you it’s hard to find great stuff. And it’s not about great stuff because that’s all subjective and relative. It’s about what you think is great for you. This was really because the opportunity just came up, and I’ve always wanted to do it, and I’m excited to become a producer and create.

CHALLENGING

YOU SEEM TO GLIDE PRETTY EASILY – OR MAYBE YOU JUST MAKE IT LOOK EASY? In every drama there has to be a sense of humour and levity in there somewhere. I think it’s more the opportunities that I’ve been given, from The Daily Show and then going to Sorkin and Soderbergh, which is more dramatic. You ask any actor, “Can you do drama? Can

THEN HOW DO YOU PASS THE TIME ON SET WHILE WAITING TO FILM A SCENE? We hang out outside. And there’s a lot of eating that goes on, which is not the best if you’re an actor. My weight fluctuates on a weekly basis.

I’m trying to get to a place where I’m better about what I eat. On The Newsroom they had two different sizes of jeans for me all the time. An episode would be shot over two weeks, but one week I’ll be in a smaller size jean, and the next in a bigger one. I guess most people couldn’t

BETWEEN COMEDY AND DRAMA

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COVER

OUTFIT LOUIS VUITTON

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“All it takes is one role.

One job can turn your whole life around” everyone to wear Instagram filter glasses so we all look amazing all the time. In reality, though, instead of feeling bad, I should really just be as healthy as I should be.

ARE YOU MORE DISCIPLINED WITH YOUR CAREER? DO YOU SET GOALS AND HAVE A GRAND PLAN? I don’t always do a lot of goalsetting, only because I’m afraid, “What if I don’t make them?” It’s easier if you kind of know what your goals are instead of just completely setting them out there. It’s too hard to set career goals, especially in a career when a lot of the time it’s not up to you – it’s up to producers, directors, writers, the audience. If I don’t make the goals, then I don’t have to feel bad about not achieving them.

DID YOU ALWAYS WANT TO BE AN ACTRESS? Always. I grew up in a family of five siblings. I’m the second youngest. I loved making everyone laugh and impersonating teachers. If we all got into trouble at home and were sent to our rooms, I’d be the one to get everyone to laugh. I’d make everyone re-enact an entire movie.

“Let’s all do Star Wars”! I’d be Han Solo, but my brother would tell me I was Princess Leia. I just loved being able to play around. I always wanted to do it, but of course you never think you’re going to be able to.

DO YOU FEEL LIKE YOU’VE HAD

YOUR “IT” MOMENT YET, WHERE EVERYTHING HAS SHIFTED FOR YOU?

I think if you don’t know what my moment is, then clearly I haven’t had it. I’ve had moments that have definitely changed my life and helped my career, but it’s not been “the moment”. You can look at people who’ve had that and you know what it is. It happens for very few people, and you can name who they are. But the day that Jon Stewart asked me to be on The Daily Show was a huge moment in my life. It allowed my career to open up into a different world, and gave me the opportunity to be seen by some of these other people and to show them some of the things I was capable of.

Even just being on The Newsroom allowed me to be seen in a different way by people. But I haven’t had that pivotal thing yet.

DO YOU AT LEAST FEEL SECURE IN YOUR LIFE AND WORK?

Yes. Yes, I do feel secure. Because I have work and I have opportunities and my production company, and I’m in a position where I can financially make decisions where I can and cannot do certain things. I’ve been working long enough in my life that I feel secure financially.

YOU LIVED IN JAPAN FOR A TIME WHEN YOU WERE YOUNGER. HOW DID THAT SHAPE YOU? I come from a military family, so we moved around a lot. We lived in Tokyo, then Utah, and moved back to Oklahoma when I was 16. For me, living in Japan made me more comfortable going to new places. It helped me establish a centre within myself and a strong sense of self.

I think when people have the opportunity to grow up in a different country than where they’re from, it makes them more settled in their world.

Otherwise, your sense of the world is only as big as you see and feel it. Now, I have a sense of how small I am in the scope of the whole world.

DO YOU GET MUCH OPPORTUNITY TO USE YOUR FLUENT JAPANESE? No, not really. But I was lucky on The Newsroom, because Sorkin wrote an amazing episode where I could. He asked me if he could put a few Japanese words in, and I said sure. Then he said, “Do you mind if it’s a sentence or two?” and of course that was fine. And then I get the script and it’s full-on massive dialogue. Sorkin dialogue is hard enough to do in English – imagine doing it in Japanese. He wrote it out in “Sorkin”, then put in parentheses “in Japanese”. I had to go back and forth between English and Japanese. But I was very happy to use it. Even though I’m half Asian, most people didn’t know that I could speak a second language.

WHAT WERE SOME OF THE STRUGGLES YOU ENCOUNTERED AS YOU TRIED TO ESTABLISH YOURSELF? I’d go out for so many auditions, for everything. And then I’d be told, “You’re too Asian” or “You’re too white”. I remember someone telling me, “Don’t feel bad. One day they won’t be trying to match you to fit with anyone else. You’ll just be hired for you.” So you can’t help but get frustrated. That’s part of it all. There’s always competition in any business. And all it takes is one role. Not even necessarily a great role. Just one job that makes you feel like you’re a working actor.

One job can turn your whole life around.

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JACKET, SHIRT, SHORTS AND SOCKS PRADA SHOES CHRISTIAN LOUBOUTIN JEWELLERY KARINE SULTAN

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FEATURE

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NDynasty ew York

Ralph Lauren has built an empire founded on vision and entrepreneurial spirit. Now his son David, as VINCENZO LA TORRE discovers, is taking the family business into the 21st century

ANDREW LAUREN, DYLAN LAUREN, RALPH AND RICKY LAUREN, DAVID LAUREN AND WIFE LAUREN BUSH LAUREN IN PARIS

OU WOULDN’T EXPECT

the scion of one of America’s wealthiest families to take a break from his privileged life and embark on a backpacking trip around Asia, but that’s what David Lauren, he of the Ralph Lauren fashion dynasty, did 16 years ago, as he tried to “learn about” himself before joining the family company.

It was his first trip to Asia, a far cry from his most recent visit to the region, a quick sweep through Beijing and a muchchanged Hong Kong, where as soon as he landed he was shuttled to the recently opened Ralph Lauren boutique in Causeway Bay and welcomed like the top-notch luxury executive he is now.

David, the middle child of Ralph and Ricky Lauren, is the unofficial heir to the empire that Ralph started almost 50 years ago. One half of one of the most pedigreed couples in the US (he married into another dynasty when he tied the knot with Lauren Bush, granddaughter of former US president George HW Bush, in 2011), David Lauren is executive vice president of global advertising, marketing and corporate communications at the company. He’s the

FEATURE

“Ralph Lauren has always been about contrast, like wearing a Purple Label suit with jeans” expressing that contrast. It’s really meant to tell the brand story more clearly.

WOULD YOU AGREE THAT NOWADAYS A COMPANY LIKE RALPH LAUREN IS man behind pioneering projects such as the 4D fashion show the brand created in London and New York a few years ago, the house’s sponsorship of Wimbledon and even a recent foray into wearable technology.

We met the elegant and courteous New Yorker in the plush bar of the Causeway Bay store for a laid-back conversation.

the brand itself is so cinematic, so it’s perfect. The question for me is not being interested in technology as much as having a story I can tell with the Ralph Lauren brand, but can I match it to the right technology to tell our story ... so learning about technology but also asking questions about how to tell our brand story and just finding the right match-ups.

YOU’VE

HOW DO YOU RECONCILE THIS ASPECT THE COMPANY’S CLASSIC AND QUINTESSENTIALLY AMERICAN IMAGE? America is evolving and changing and growing and pioneering and entrepreneurial, and this brand is all those things. So technology to me is interesting because the contrast of this modernity makes it much younger and newer and more exciting. I think Ralph Lauren has always been about contrast, like wearing a Purple Label suit with jeans. My father was the first person to take a tuxedo and wear jeans and cowboy boots with it. That created a major fashion trend, so he’s always liked the mash-up of taking something very sophisticated and making you look at it differently.

Technology is just another way of

BEEN

INSTRUMENTAL

IN

RALPH LAUREN’S DIGITAL PLATFORMS. WHY DID YOU DECIDE TO FOCUS ON DIGITAL? We were one of the first fashion brands to sell on the Internet and definitely one of the first to sell on a mobile phone. I’ve always been interested in new ways to express our brand. I didn’t know anything about technology when I was hired to do our website, I learned on the job.

So in many ways technology is for me just an interesting tool, because what Ralph Lauren has pioneered, building out these glamorous stores or lifestyle advertisements, is just storytelling and what he calls lifestyle marketing, which he helped to create for our industry. The fact that I can bring it to life with new technology is very exciting because THE SUCCESS OF

WITH

NOT JUST A FASHION BRAND BUT IN A WAY ALSO A MEDIA COMPANY? Ralph Lauren pioneered something called lifestyle branding, which was the idea that he was not about fashion but a lifestyle story, not about a single shirt or tie or a trend or a dress but about a story. When you buy a shirt or a pair of shoes, it’s an entrée into this glamorous life, old-money sophistication. What we do in our media and marketing is to help express that story. We don’t look at them as ads, we look at them as movies, and we live in that movie.

We can live in that aspirational world, and it’s much bigger than a fashion brand. Ralph Lauren would say he’s not about designing a shirt or designing a dress, he’s creating a culture, and it’s much bigger. I think he’s more like Walt Disney than a fashion designer; he’s a much better thinker, and that’s why the brand has transcended fashion trends, because people coming here have an experience. You’re sitting having a drink, you’re shopping because you like this taste level, and that’s what we’re doing. What the Internet has done, I call it “merchantaining”, so it’s about reinventing the way we approach fashion, style and shopping to be more seamless with

ABOVE: AN ARCHIVE IMAGE OF THE LAUREN FAMILY; RIGHT: THE RHINELANDER MANSION IN NEW YORK, WHICH HOUSES ONE OF THE BRAND’S BOUTIQUES

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our lives and to be more about living than just a product that goes out of style. [It’s about] products that you live with and make your life better.

DESPITE YOUR ONLINE PRESENCE, YOU STILL INVEST IN STORES LIKE THIS ONE.

ARE BRICK-AND-MORTAR

are more complicated because it’s a richer experience and it’s not just glass walls. I think we’re living in an age when technology is very relevant, and brands that can develop technology and use it to their advantage will lead and will change the world. And customers are interested in connecting to each other and to brands that can speak to them in this language.

STORES HERE TO STAY?

The store experience is very unique, and we invest a lot in that. We also invest in the shopping experience and in the service and in the branding you find online, and we find that our best customers are cross-channel; they tend to shop online and in our stores. I think the technology online is still to be developed to make it a really deep luxury experience, but we’re working really hard to pioneer that, and in many ways we’ve built a very successful business online and in our stores and it’s important to develop both. The shopping experience is already seamless for brands like Apple, but it gets complicated when products

HOW WAS IT, GROWING UP THE SON OF RALPH LAUREN AND THEN WORKING FOR HIM? I would say that Ralph Lauren the man and the company are very interconnected. He has had a very fortunate life, and this is a very personal expression of his vision and his dream. And when you step into a Ralph Lauren store or you buy a dress or a suit or you go to a Ralph Lauren restaurant, you’re living in his vision, and it’s a personal expression. I’m inspired by the fact that he makes his life and his work so personal, and I think that’s the key to your happiness in whatever job you do. Whether you’re a journalist or you work in marketing, it’s to express yourself and make sure you have an impact in whatever you do. His leadership in that area I find very inspiring, so when I think of ideas and when I help him to express his vision, I make sure that my own personal passion and personal love of

the brand are real, and that keeps the brand strong.

HOW’S YOUR WORKING DYNAMIC? DO YOU AND YOUR FATHER EVER DISAGREE? My father and I have a wonderful working relationship.

It’s compounded by the fact that he’s my father, my boss and my mentor, so when he likes an idea I feel great times three, but if he doesn’t like my idea it’s three times the frustration. But he’s been incredible at supporting my ideas as long as they’re part of his vision, and he’s been great at teaching me his vision so I can be more effective.

But I would say that everyone who works for Ralph Lauren feels lucky to be mentored by him, and many of them feel like they’re part of his extended family, because he has a very paternal way of teaching and connecting with everybody. So I feel very privileged and very lucky to contribute.

IS THERE SOMETHING ABOUT YOUR FATHER

THAT

WOULD

SURPRISE

PEOPLE?

I think people need to know that Ralph Lauren is very real and he’s very basic. And while he has these very glamorous stores, he’s the first person to be outspoken and funny, the first person to crack a joke in the room, the first person to tell it as it is and to keep it simple. And while sometimes the brand looks very sophisticated and posh, the real Ralph Lauren lives a very simple life, a comfortable life, his priorities being with his family. He’s just at home sitting on a park bench or throwing a basketball around as he is designing a fashion show, and he’s just as happy standing on a street corner talking about the cool new Brad Pitt movie or the Yankees or a world issue.

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DAVID BECKHAM AND ORLANDO BLOOM IN MILAN, 2009

anly M Pursuits Photographer MARIO TESTINO has collected his most striking portraits of leading men in an elegant tome, Sir, a gallery of male beauty and style WE’RE

USED TO seeing Mario Testino, the Peruvian-born photographer, train his lens on beautiful women and capture their allure like no other image-maker. His pictures of figures such as Princess Diana, Madonna, Angelina Jolie and countless models have come to define modern glamour.

Men, however, have also been the subjects of some of his most memorable shots, both the famous party pictures Testino loves to take at fabulous soirées around the world and the cover

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stories he shoots for top glossies such as Vanity Fair and Vogue.

His latest photography book, Sir, published

by German house Taschen, pays homage to the male figures that Testino has immortalised in his career: from Josh Hartnett splattering lipstick on his mouth and looking like a 21st-century version of a glam-rock legend to a black-andwhite portrait of David Bowie in an all-white suit and a candid shot of David Beckham and Orlando Bloom displaying some brotherly love at a party in Milan.

Featuring more than 300 images, including previously unpublished ones, the book charts the evolution of men’s style and beauty over the past three decades. It comes in a limited edition of 1,000 numbered copies, each signed by Testino, bound in Japanese cloth and encased in a metal slipcase.

CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT: CARLOS BOKELMAN IN LONDON, 2000; YUYA SARASHINA IN TOKYO, 2004; DAVID BOWIE IN NEW YORK, 2002; AND JOSH HARTNETT IN NEW YORK, 2005

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eel Rebel

I MEET ISAAC JULIEN in the UBS lounge at Art Basel in Hong Kong, where he’s enjoying a momentary respite from the frenzied event unfolding around us. It’s the fourth day of the fair, and this may be Julien’s first quiet afternoon, though the genial British artist is far too polite to admit how tired he is. Over the past few days he’s mingled with the champagne-swilling crowd on the fair’s opening night, hosted a panel discussion with Simon de Pury and Hans Ulrich Obrist, overseen the opening of an exhibition of his work at Cattle Depot Artist Village and given a talk to an audience of curators, critics and collectors.

But the long days have been worth it, because Julien has emerged as one of the undisputed stars of this year’s art week. There are certainly few other artists who have received quite so much attention.

He first gained international recognition in 1989 with his black-and-white film Looking for Langston, a non-narrative, impressionistic tribute to the Harlem Renaissance poet Langston Hughes that combines archival footage with a stylishly shot love story between two gay black men. These themes of racial and sexual identity have since become key ideas in Julien’s work.

They were central to his next film, Young Soul Rebels, which won the critic’s prize at the 1991 Cannes Film Festival, and to later films such as The Attendant, The Darker Side of Black and Frantz Fanon: Black Skin, White Mask.

Alongside those works, which were generally shown in cinemas, Julien was busy making video installations for art galleries. One of the most famous of these is Ten Thousand Waves, an expansive, nine-screen piece that loosely weaves together the story of the 2004 Morecambe Bay tragedy, in which 21 Chinese migrant workers died while cockle picking on the British coast, and the ancient Chinese myth of the sea goddess Mazu, played in the film by actress Maggie Cheung.

To coincide with Julien’s multiple appearances at the art fair, Hong Kong’s M+ museum temporarily

GRAEME ROBERTSON

= Video artist ISAAC JULIEN is still breaking boundaries with his multi-screen, nonlinear films. OLIVER GILES meets the British artist to talk about race, sexuality and why he’s not tempted by Hollywood =

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installed a three-screen version of Ten Thousand Waves at Cattle Depot Artist Village. Hong Kong was only the latest stop for the work, which premiered at the Biennale of Sydney in 2010 before going on a 15-city tour of institutions including Shanghai’s ShanghART Gallery, the National Museum in Norway and the Museum of Modern Art (Moma) in New York. Moma’s installation of the piece was particularly striking, with the nine double-sided screens hanging at varying heights in the museum’s soaring atrium, so that the onscreen airborne goddess Mazu appeared to be flying above gallery-goers.

“It’s more fun making multiplescreen works than it is making a single-screen work,” Julien explains.

“I enjoy the bricolage effect, the

“Hollywood is very resistant to lyricism and experimentation” montage effect and the excitement it produces in the spectator, to be able to view all these different images at the same time. In a work like Ten Thousand Waves, a nine-screen work, you literally move around, you enjoy being able to have the different vistas on the work.

“But I never really try to prioritise one over the other,” he continues. “I always [also] make singlescreen versions of my work and three-screen versions of my work. That’s because they can be shown on different platforms. In a way it’s also about flexibility as well. So for example, when it came to installing the work for M+, they didn’t have the space to show the nine-screen, so I can show the three-screen work. I don’t think one is necessarily better than the other. But I do think one is more fun than the other.”

The imposing scale of Ten Thousand Waves and the international reach of its story have both influenced Playtime, Julien’s latest film. A study of the movement of money and the impact of capitalism, Playtime is a sevenscreen piece that follows a series of storylines through the cities of London, Reykjavik and Dubai.

The eclectic cast of characters includes a wheeler-dealing art adviser, a Filipina maid working in the United Arab Emirates and an Icelandic artist who loses his home in the 2008 financial crash.

Just downstairs from where we’re meeting, London’s Victoria Miro Gallery is exhibiting a series of large, circular photographic portraits of the characters from Playtime that Julien took to accompany the film.

ABOVE: TEN THOUSAND WAVES (2010) INSTALLED IN THE ATRIUM AT MOMA. OPPOSITE, CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: MERCEDES CABRAL IN EMERALD PORTRAIT, MAGGIE CHEUNG IN INTERVIEW PORTRAIT AND JAMES FRANCO IN DEALER PORTRAIT, ALL FROM PLAYTIME (2013)

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THIS PAGE: COURTESY ISAAC JULIEN; VICTORIA MIRO, LONDON; METRO PICTURES, NEW YORK AND GALERÍA HELGA DE ALVEAR, MADRID. OPPOSITE PAGE: COURTESY ISAAC JULIEN AND VICTORIA MIRO, LONDON

CULTURE ART

“Ten Thousand Waves is very much looking at this very long view of the search for a better life,” Julien says. “So thinking about the relationship as to why people move around the world, it’s normally in search of capital. So that’s really why Playtime came about. You could say the difference between Playtime and Ten Thousand Waves is that Ten Thousand Waves is in a way more lyrical and poetic. I would say Playtime is kind of ironic and sometimes factual. I don’t think it’s factual in a way that a news report is, but it’s quite strongly based on characters in real life and people that I know. So it has a kind of more grounded aspect to it.”

At first glance, both Ten Thousand Waves and Playtime seem broader in scope than Julien’s earlier works, which were often pigeonholed as “black, gay” films.

But Julien sees them as part of a natural progression. “Talking about a work like Looking for Langston, it’s a work about Langston Hughes and questions of homoeroticism, so in that sense has these black gay themes. But it was a film ostensibly based in Harlem in New York and I’m from London. A lot of people think it was shot in America and it [fits into] a certain American canon, especially in black literary studies, so I think it transcends some of these questions around race and sexuality because it’s a work about art, it’s about painting, it’s about the role of artists.

“Looking for Langston was one of my first works that got reviewed in Artforum, so I think the themes have always had this sort of international aspect to them. The response to it has always been quite international. So in a way I can link it very strongly in my mind to works like Ten Thousand Waves, although of course the content is different.”

Julien’s next project is Stones Against Diamonds, a meditation on the work of Brazilian architect Lina Bo Bardi, a prelude of which will be unveiled this month at the Venice Biennale.

These adventurous, multilayered films have been made with the help of an impressive roster of collaborators, including Maggie Cheung and Tilda Swinton, the late cultural theorist Stuart Hall, poet Derek Walcott and actor James Franco, who plays the art adviser in Playtime. Julien also briefly taught Steve McQueen, who has gone on to direct the critically acclaimed Shame and win an Oscar for 12 Years a Slave.

Because they’re both black British film-makers, comparisons are sometimes made between Julien and McQueen. But their careers have actually moved in almost opposite directions: McQueen started as a video artist before becoming a more mainstream director, whereas Julien started as a director and has moved into video art. Yet seeing as Julien regularly collaborates with writers, actors and artists of all descriptions, does he think the boundary between film directors and video artists is even a useful division any more?

“Steve is the perfect example of those categories blurring,” he says. “I think he’s always seen himself as an artist. I think he would say that when he does a film he’s engaged in a novel, and when he’s doing films in the art context they’re poems. That’s quite a good analogy, actually.

“The categories to a certain extent are breaking down, but I do think there’s a stubborn resistance in that Hollywood or mainstream cinema is very resistant to lyricism and experimentation. But there are always breakouts, interventions.

So I think in that sense I would like to keep it open. But for me, in a personal sense, I value the freedom that I have of showing my works in an art context very much.”

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BENJAMIN AND MAÏA PAULIN

A

L

iving Legacy

= CHRISTOPHER DEWOLF visits Louis Vuitton’s pop-up L’Appartement, which for six weeks served as a local showcase for the work of French furniture designer PIERRE PAULIN =

IT WAS THE LAST place you’d have expected to find a den of luxury.

For six weeks this spring, Louis Vuitton hosted clients and VIPs inside L’Appartement, a showroom and event space tucked behind a fire exit in the drab, unassuming basement of the Bank of America Tower in Hong Kong. Passing through an unmarked entrance, visitors emerged into the world’s most stylish bunker: a long room with a curved ceiling, sedate lighting and a remarkable collection of curvaceous chairs, sofas and tables by the avant-garde French designer Pierre Paulin.

Paulin, who died in 2009, never

lived to see the collection. Dubbed La Maquette – ”the model” – it was conceived as a modular system that could be arranged to create an almost endless number of living spaces, from bedrooms to closets to dining areas. It was originally produced for office-furniture pioneers Herman Miller, but the 1973 oil crisis derailed the company’s plans to move into the residential market. Until now, the collection existed only in the form of a scale model housed in the Centre Pompidou’s archives in Paris.

“For Pierre, one thing would bring another one, and a detail would inspire another programme,” said his widow, Maïa Wodzislawska Paulin. “This was part of his bold thinking. You could find little bits [of his previous work] in everything he would do. Like you see this library here – it was also part of the library in the Élysée Palace for

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CULTURE DESIGN

President Pompidou.”

It was the weekend of Art Basel in Hong Kong, and Maïa was sitting in L’Appartement with her son, Benjamin, and his wife Alice Lemoine, a fashion stylist. “It’s like somebody working on an alphabet,” continued Maïa. “Or like a musical variation,” added Benjamin, no doubt speaking from experience – in addition to working for his family’s design firm, Paulin Paulin Paulin, he’s a singer who recently recorded his fourth album.

His work for the family business is more personal than professional.

Paulin junior recalls growing up surrounded by his father’s work, but what marked him most was his steadfast dedication to his craft.

Now that Benjamin is married with a baby, he also appreciates the fruits

of his father’s labour: his apartment in Paris is stocked with a number of Paulin designs.

“I like almost everything about it,” he said. “It has an elegance, a sense of modernity.”

“And it’s comfortable,” added his mother.

Pierre Paulin employed a sinuous, colourful aesthetic often described as “pop”, but he was always quick to reject that label. “I’m not pop, I’m pre-pop,” the designer said in 2005. “I don’t belong to any stylistic school or political party.” It’s a point that Paulin’s family is eager to emphasise. What made him great, they argue, was not just the sensuousness of his furniture, but its functional innovations.

Born in Paris in 1927, Pierre Paulin trained first as a ceramist and then as a stone-carver, but his plans of becoming a sculptor were dashed when he injured his right arm in a fight. “He had nerve damage,” said Maïa. “He had to invent a new way to hold a pencil.” Paulin instead studied at the École Camondo design school in Paris and was taken by the minimalist yet approachable

furniture being produced by modernist designers such as Ray and Charles Eames.

Paulin’s work was innovative from the beginning. He started experimenting with stretch fabric in the 1950s, when he attached bathing-suit material to chair frames. When he was hired by Dutch furniture manufacturer Artifort in 1959, he embraced the latest and most technologically advanced materials – lightweight metal frames, foam, rubber and stretch fabric – to create the Mushroom Chair, a seductive fauteuil that proved an instant classic.

“It represented the first full expression of my abilities. I considered the manufacture of chairs to be rather primitive and I was trying to think up new

THIS PAGE AND OPPOSITE: PIERRE PAULIN’S DESIGNS ON SHOW IN L’APPARTEMENT

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processes,” said Paulin in 2008. “I have always considered design to be a mix of invention and industrial innovation.”

Many of Paulin’s designs remain in production today, but it was his catalogue of unrealised work that sparked the collaboration with Louis Vuitton. Early last year, the luxury brand’s creative director, Nicolas Ghesquière, approached Benjamin and Maïa about featuring Paulin’s demi-arc Osaka sofa in the label’s cruise 2015 fashion show.

That’s when they suggested he delve into Paulin’s archives. “It was like a puzzle – all the pieces came together and just matched,” said Maïa.

The result, unveiled at Design Miami in December, was Playing With Shapes, which brought to life 15 pieces from La Maquette. Many of those pieces were brought to Hong Kong for L’Appartement, whose space was inspired by the private apartments that Paulin designed for French President Georges Pompidou in the Élysée

Palace in the early 1970s. “Obviously, here we don’t have 14-metre ceilings [as in the palace], so it’s about getting the atmosphere right – it should be friendly,” said Maïa.

Pieces from La Maquette weren’t the only works that were revived. Louis Vuitton also produced a dining table designed in the 1980s that was used for dinner parties in the subterranean

hideaway. Because the table is narrow and oval-shaped, it created a more intimate atmosphere than a traditional European-style rectangular table. “Everybody could speak to their neighbours – it was not isolating,” said Maïa. “It was a really great atmosphere. Everybody was talking.”

Maïa pointed out that the table was made partly of wood, an unusual material for the 1980s, when it was considered dowdy and outré. “Pierre was always avantgarde,” she said. “He always thought wood would come back. That’s why he’s still seen as relevant.” One of his standout wood pieces from the early 1980s was the tulip-shaped Siège Curule, a folding chair made of leather and sycamore.

Much of his relevance comes from the changing attitudes towards design, which is increasingly seen as a crucial part of everyday life.

“You’d be amazed at all the pieces Pierre designed in the 1950s that were just thrown away,” said Maïa.

“Design was a service back then,” added Lemoine. “These things were not meant to be kept.” It’s exactly the opposite of today, when even Ikea works with renowned designers to create limited-edition collections.

Paulin might have grown weary of such attention; he was never a fan of the celebrity designer. “Objects should remain anonymous,” he once said. “It’s extremely dangerous to give too much importance and status to people who are only doing their job. Working for the enjoyment of the greatest number is very gratifying, much more so than any official honour.”

But each designer has a legacy to explore, which is exactly what Maïa and Benjamin Paulin and Lemoine have been trying to do with projects such as L’Appartement. The trio is planning more exhibitions and special projects, as well as some limited-edition reissues of Paulin’s designs. “We don’t want to flood the market,” said Maïa, “but there are a few more pieces we want to bring back.”

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cting for Change SUSAN SARANDON HAS graced many venues in her

time, ranging from the red carpet at the Cannes Film Festival to the rather less glitzy setting of the Occupy Wall Street protests in New York. But nothing in her long career has quite prepared her for today. “I feel like this is kind of like a performance-art piece,” Sarandon declares, laughing. “I have to say this is a first for me.

Maybe we can all get up at some point and do a choreographed dance?”

It’s the weekend of the Art Basel fair and we’re sitting at the Swire Properties lounge in the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre.

Although Swire’s space is technically private, it’s separated from the adjacent public walkway by only a few strips of delicately bent wood, through

which passers-by can (and unashamedly do) stop and stare at Sarandon.

Inside this fishbowl-like lounge there’s a small group of invited guests who have gathered to hear Sarandon talk about her life and work, an event that’s the highlight of this month’s Liberatum, a roving cultural festival that has landed in Hong Kong to coincide with the city’s annual art week.

Sarandon’s involvement with Liberatum began when she was interviewed for the organisation’s short film Artistry/Technology, which had its world premiere in this lounge on the opening night of the art fair.

Dressed almost entirely in black and with her famous red hair pulled back into bunches, Sarandon seems remarkably unfazed by the

LARRY BUSACCA / GETTY IMAGES / AFP

= SUSAN SARANDON has starred in more than 90 films, won an Oscar and emerged as one of the leading celebrity activists of her generation. So what’s next? OLIVER GILES discovers that she’s still on a mission to change the world =

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“Sure I’m a feminist. And most of the men I really love are feminists”

unexpectedly public setting as she begins her talk. Managing to be eloquent and considered, but at the same time unabashedly outspoken, Sarandon is an entertaining speaker who races through stories about some of her most famous films, including Thelma & Louise, Pretty Baby, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Dead Man Walking (for which she won an Oscar) and Cloud Atlas, before stopping for a brief but cryptic meditation on acting. “Acting is a strange thing,” Sarandon muses, “I mean, anybody can do it. Kids do it all the time. It’s a business where mediocrity is rewarded.”

The film world summarily dealt with, Sarandon

moves on to what she may actually be more famous for: her political activism. “I was very lucky because I came of age in the ’60s and ’70s,” she explains. “Part of being young and even slightly present was thinking you could make a difference.” Having joined antiVietnam War protests when she was a student, Sarandon has since gone on to become a Unicef Goodwill Ambassador, a prominent critic of the 2003 US invasion of Iraq and a staunch supporter of LGBT rights.

She’s also an unfailing advocate for gender equality, declaring warmly during the event, “I just love women and what women manage to do. Somebody has to do that heavy lifting that happens for the first however many years [of a child’s

CLOCKWISE FROM ABOVE: SARANDON IN THELMA & LOUISE, CLOUD ATLAS, DEAD MAN WALKING AND THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW

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life] and somehow women manage to hold down a full-time job as well.”

With her talk over and the audience dispersing, Sarandon carefully unhooks her microphone, takes a sip of her drink and sits down for a more private conversation.

Her thoughts on gender equality seem a good place to start, so does she consider herself a feminist? “I think that for a long time the word feminist seemed very alienating to some people, but it seems to have gone through a rebranding, so I kind of like that, that all these young actresses aren’t afraid to say that [they’re feminists].

“But I’m always afraid of labels.

I mean, I think we need men who are feminists, so it shouldn’t be a term that’s divisive. I think that it’s been perceived as shrill and antimale, and I can understand why

that happened, but I don’t think that it needs to be that.

“I think that what’s happening now with all these young gals that have inherited everything that came from the early days of feminism, is that they’re saying, ‘Yeah, yeah, but it’s not really a big deal – you don’t have to go on and on about it.’

I think that’s good. But sure, I’m a feminist. And I think that most of the men I really love are feminists.”

As befits such a strident supporter of gender equality, the now 68-year-old Sarandon continues to work and earn plaudits in the notoriously sexist and ageist world of film. One of several movies she’s appearing in over the next two years is The Death and Life of John F Donovan, an upcoming feature by Xavier Dolan, the 26-year-old director whose debut film, I Killed My Mother, took the Cannes Film Festival by storm when he was just 20. “[Dolan] told me it now isn’t going to film until the beginning of next year,” Sarandon reveals. “It’s Jessica Chastain and myself, and Kit Harington is the main guy. Kathy Bates is in it also. It’s kind of a complicated plot, actually. It’s a Hollywood story, Kit’s a big Hollywood star and I’m his mum.

[Dolan’s] really interesting. I like him a lot, and I find there’s an amazing amount of energy in his films.”

On top of acting, Sarandon owns and runs her own production company, which she uses to make documentaries to shine a light on social issues. “I have a film company called Reframed Pictures and we’ve done a few documentaries.

Actually, I just curated a whole bunch of [documentaries] for the Sundance Channel.

They ask you to curate some of your favourites, [and I picked] two that we made; one that my son Jack Henry [Robbins] directed, called Storied Streets, is a story of homelessness. He went across the United States after he got out of USC [University of Southern California] and he recorded and interviewed a lot of different demographics of homeless people and then talked to people who worked with homeless people, kind of dispelling all the myths surrounding who’s there and how and why.

“And then I nominated a woman named Pushpa Basnet, who won the CNN Hero Award a few years ago.

She lives in Nepal, and if you get put in prison in Nepal, your kids go with you. So she started taking the kids out during the day and educating them and housing them and adopting them until their mothers could get out of prison. We made a film about her called Waiting for Mamu, and that’s been on airplanes.

These have both been in a lot of festivals.

“The idea of the company is to encourage some kind of social change. What we’re trying to do is hook it up with very specific outreach or education [programmes]. We’re working on something now about Hedy Lamarr, whose hobby was science, believe it or not. She invented the technology on your cell phone and gave it to the navy. It’s a crazy story.

“There’s a bunch of different things [we’re working on], all kinds of stories, but things that you wouldn’t normally know about in hopes that you can reframe people’s preconceived notions.”

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Mission: Impossible?

= Global misconceptions about headline-hogging China still abound, says LIJIA ZHANG. It’s her calling, she tells STEPHEN MCCARTY, to bridge the divide = LIJIA ZHANG RODE a rocket to stardom.

She blasted off as a hopeful, callow author, zoomed smoothly through the stage-two transition from hometown celebrity to national talking head, then went international when she attained orbit as a regular guest at literary festivals around the planet. And all under the auspices of one book, long in the gestation but rapid in the widespread recognition.

Not bad for a writer whose dream of becoming a journalist seemed to have been throttled in its toddlership by a mother who believed in a lifetime of secure, state-sponsored drudgery and in bursting her daughter’s balloon.

For 10 years from 1980, Zhang worked at the Liming Machinery Factory in her hometown, Nanjing, an armaments plant that built, among other agents of annihilation, intercontinental ballistic missiles designed to deliver nuclear warheads. It was there that her salutation to the world, the ironically titled coming-of-age memoir Socialism is Great! was spawned. But the frog in the well, as she memorably described herself therein, was destined to jump higher than it ever thought possible, beginning with sales of tens of thousands of copies of the book and its translation into seven languages.

A promising scholar at 16, Zhang was forced by her mother to abandon school and succeed her in her rocket-making job. However charitable her intentions, they left

Zhang misplaced among lacklustre workmates, furious and appalled – but undefeated.

Determined and indefatigable, Zhang, assigned to a backwater workshop, found herself with abundant free time, which she filled by secretly learning English through reading novels and poetry and, improbably, listening to The Carpenters. As a rival attraction to the delights of political education classes, she also discovered the joys of sex, and her amorous adventures, as much as reflections on a country realigning itself post-Mao, inform the memoir.

The book’s success has also shaped her purpose in life. “My self-appointed mission is to

serve as a cultural bridge between China and the outside world, helping people understand where China is coming from and what’s happening,” says the Beijing-based Zhang.

“China has grown far too important to be ignored, yet there’s so much ignorance and misunderstanding. China is heaven for writers and journalists, and Beijing is such a vibrant city. Like any society going through such a fast transformation, there will always be tension and drama – exactly the stuff we want.”

Zhang and her two teenaged daughters live on the eastern outskirts of the capital; she describes home as “the sort of place known as ‘a village within the city’, and it’s populated by migrant workers. Most of my neighbours live in squalid housing with no running water or heating. I have the good fortune to live in a comfortable house with two bathrooms and a garden. Life is meaningful here, and I don’t expect any dramatic changes in the near future.”

Never one to abandon an ambition, Zhang did indeed become a journalist. Having met future USA Today reporter Calum MacLeod in Beijing, she left China for England in 1990 as his fiancée and studied creative writing at London’s Goldsmiths college. Returning home a few years later, she began her journey into print media – The Observer, The New York Times,

Newsweek, among others – by working as an assistant to foreign journalists. Today, as that “cultural bridge”, she can be found in the studios of CBS, CNN and the BBC, where she comments on Chinese topics of all stripes, “particularly gender issues – I believe the way women are treated reflects a lot about society”.

Public speaking, at home and overseas, broadens her audience farther. “I spend a lot of time travelling for business and pleasure – it’s one of my passions,” she says. “I used to live in such a small, confined world. Now that I’m out of it, I try to make the best of this freedom.” On a recent trip to the US, Zhang “gave a breakfast talk at the Four Seasons Hotel to HSBC New York and some of its clients”, she says. “I talked about my life and recent social and cultural changes – stuff you don’t read in newspapers.”

Then it was on to Chicago and “a discussion at the Association for Asian Studies Annual Conference, where my focus was Xi Jinping”.

Yet Zhang has required still more avenues for the dissipation of a restless energy that perhaps built up during her decade in the depths of the well: witness the writing of her forthcoming debut novel.

Titled Lotus and set in Shenzhen, it stars a photojournalist and a young sex worker who, like much of China itself, is torn between ineradicable tradition and the temptations of a mutating modern world.

“I’m interested in prostitution because my grandma was a working girl in her youth,” reveals Zhang. “She was sold into prostitution after becoming an orphan. Since I discovered her secret, by her deathbed in 1998, it has fascinated me and I’ve wondered how the girls cope with life.”

Zhang’s research was empirical. “I made a huge effort to befriend prostitutes, especially a lady who’s a former sex worker and who now runs an NGO helping girls on the street,” she says. “I worked for her organisation, distributing condoms, chatting with the girls and gaining invaluable insights.

“But leaping into fiction writing has been an extremely difficult transition,” she admits. “Coming from a journalistic background, I find the freedom to create a believable world exciting but utterly intimidating. It’s taken me 16 major rewrites and more than 10 years to complete the book.”

The girl whose international success is a direct descendant of The Carpenters’ hits turns 51 this month and is “feeling young and much happier with myself than in my earlier days,” she says. “I have a clearer idea of who I am and what I want from life.”

Nor has she forgotten her musical inspiration.

“When I hear The Carpenters I sing along happily,” says Zhang. “I sing their songs in the bathroom – the only place I’m allowed to. My children have banned me from singing in public.”

THANKS FOR THE MEMOIRS First-hand accounts of extraordinary lives

WILD SWANS

BORN ON A BLUE DAY

Jung Chang’s Wild Swans (1991) was the trailblazer for personal, eyewitness historical accounts of privation and survival in violent, tumultuous China. One of the best-selling volumes of nonfiction in the annals of publishing and a revelation for the rest of the world, it was critically lauded and made a beacon of its author.

Born on a Blue Day (2006) dissects what it’s like to be special – but not just any old special. Author Daniel Tammet has savant syndrome and can perform the sort of extraordinary mental gymnastics that allow him to memorise pi to 22,000 digits. His autobiography describes life for the real Rain Man.

MY LIFE

TRAVELLING TO WORK: DIARIES 1988-98

Two lives for the price of one: in My Life, his 2004 reflection on his personal and political times, Bill Clinton, the 42nd US president, is almost schizophrenic in sketching his “internal” and “outside” lives. Which must be how one reconciles Whitewater and Lewinsky with running the world’s only superpower.

Talking of which ... there must be several Michael Palins constantly travelling the world, writing and performing. How else to explain Travelling to Work: Diaries 1988-98 (2014), volume three of his recollections?

How could one man do all that and still keep up with Bowie, Rushdie and Clapton?

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Beast Back is

= Part SUV, part coupe, BMW’s brawny X6 is what you might call an acquired taste. But, writes JON WALL, its second-gen, high-performance M variant isn’t only just blisteringly fast, it’s also hugely capable =

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THE URGE TO develop ever more diversified model ranges, which has seized several motor manufacturers and especially those in Germany, occasionally results in cars that cause us seriously to wonder whether they answer a question anyone in their right mind was asking. Think, for example, of the late and largely unlamented Mercedes-Benz R-class, which, depending on how you look at it, was either a station wagon on an overdose of steroids or a severely sat-upon SUV, but never the “sports tourer” of marketers’ hype. Clearly a case of back to the drawing board – or to be more accurate with the R-class, discreetly kill it off and pretend it never happened.

Beauty, though, is definitely in the eye of the beholder. Many of us blanched when we first clapped eyes on Audi’s truck-like Q7 and the BMW 5-series GT, and perhaps even pondered what on Earth the guys in Ingolstadt and Munich were smoking when they signed off on such monstrosities. Yet so successful have both been in the marketplace that a replacement for the former was unveiled early this year (the bad news: it doesn’t look much better), while a secondgeneration GT is said to be well on the way.

Part SUV, part four-door coupe, BMW’s X6 crossover also provoked extreme reactions on its arrival in 2008. Some loved its idiosyncratic boldness and tall stance, and others frankly loathed it, with those in the

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middle being simply baffled. Yet like the Porsche Panamera, another vehicle whose looks have tended to polarise opinion, once you’ve actually driven the thing it all begins to make sense. For, over time, the X6 has turned out to be really rather good – so good, in fact, that we’re not only inclined to forgive its curate’s-egg styling but have even stopped finding it offensive. It, too, has carved out a niche for itself in the market, with sales of around a quarter of a million – a niche deemed sufficiently lucrative that rival manufacturers (hello, upcoming Audi Q6) are busily readying their own contenders.

Stealing a march on its competitors and underlining its “ownership” of a segment that the company refers to as “sports activity coupe”, BMW announced its second-gen X6 last autumn, following it up in February with the launch of a somewhat more berserk, M-badged version at the Circuit of the Americas (COTA) in Austin, Texas. While surprising to those inclined to doubt the X6 M’s pukka performance credentials, that choice of venue was clear evidence of the Bavarians’ confidence that this hefty new beast really can cut the mustard on one of the most technical F1 racetracks.

For a largely new car, the 2015 X6 looks so similar to its predecessor that many will have problems telling them apart. If you really need to know, however, it’s a few centimetres longer and there’s a swage line above the rear wheel arches.

BMW X6 M Engine: 4.4-litre, twin-turbocharged V8 Transmission: eight-speed automatic, four-wheel drive Max power: 567bhp Max torque: 750Nm Max speed: 250km/h Acceleration: 0-100km/h in 4.2 seconds Weight: 2,350kg

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In spite of the X6 M’s weight, the car’s performance is shattering

Distinguishing it from less powerful models, the X6 M also gets bigger front intakes, side vents, a rear diffuser with a pair of twin exhausts, a rear-deck spoiler and 21-inch alloys. All the test vehicles lined up on the COTA infield wear a handsome metallic blue paint job – the colour du jour, it seems – that visually at least helps shed kilograms off the M’s corpulent physique (it remains a big and heavy car, though, tipping the scales at 2.35 tonnes).

Underneath, it’s superficially similar to the earlier M version, with an identical wheelbase, all-wheel drive and a 4.4-litre V8 occupying the engine bay. With the exception of its dimensions, however, the power unit is almost entirely new, featuring a pair of twin-scroll turbos and a raft of completely changed internals that help lift maximum output towards 570bhp and torque to earth-moving levels, at 750Nm. Out, too, goes the old six-speed automatic, to be replaced by an eight-cog unit that, once we’re out on the circuit, proves unexpectedly quick to shift, especially when using the paddles. In spite of the M’s weight, the car’s performance is shattering: maximum speed is a limited 250km/h (though in some markets BMW can raise this to 280), with 0-100km/h in a fraction more than four seconds.

Playing follow my leader behind DTM (Deutsche Tourenwagen Masters) and former F1 driver Timo Glock, who BMW has flown in for the occasion, the X6 M is not only unfeasibly quick – on COTA’s kilometre-long main straight I’m pushing 220km/h before I stop checking the speedo – but also massively assured on corners, where with stability control engaged, virtually zero body roll, hugely impressive grip and phenomenal braking power I’m finding it hard to believe we aren’t about to make a spectacular diversion into the scenery. Quite how BMW has engineered such ability into a vehicle like this is hard to fathom, but that they’ve made it behave and sound almost like a proper M-car (it even fractionally shades the brilliant M5 up to 100km/h) deserves serious praise.

Off the track, we’re sent out to explore the back roads around Austin, where the X6 M reverts comfortably into the cruising mode that one assumes will be its more customary gait. The cabin, of course, is impressively luxurious and as ergonomically excellent as I expect (with the exception of BMW’s gear selector, which after all this time I still can’t get my head around). Ride,

though on the harder side of supple, is perfectly acceptable, and with so much torque on hand the throttle just begs to be dumped whenever we hit a straight. Do that and the M fairly flies, while some especially fruity engine noises are piped into the cabin.

Impressed though I am with the X6 M, I’m still not entirely sure who’d want to buy one – not that BMW has any worries about that, as it clearly expects this explosive new behemoth easily to replicate the sales success of the outgoing car. I don’t, however, harbour any such reservations about the 228i Convertible in which I end my brief tour around this tiny corner of the Lone Star State with a late-afternoon spin through the countryside.

One of the sweetest cars I’ve had the pleasure of driving in a long time, this newly launched cabrio embodies almost everything a compact BMW should be, from its responsive and punchy twolitre turbocharged four-cylinder engine to its precise steering and gloriously predictable rear-wheeldrive handling. With a proper ragtop rather than the retractable hardtop that’s sadly becoming de rigueur these days, it looks just like a classic convertible, too, and with the roof folded (raising and lowering takes just 20 seconds, and can be done at speeds up to 40km/h) the redleather interior of our silver test car is shown off to stunning effect.

In fact, I have only two gripes about this utterly desirable little runabout. The first is that it only comes with an eight-speed automatic (though a six-speed manual can be ordered for the hotter M235i version). The second is that there are currently no plans to bring it to our part of the world.

The campaign for a rethink starts here.

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ashtag Foodporn

= This guide to Hong Kong’s most Instagrammed and Instagrammable dishes will help you achieve gastronomic street cred in no time. CHRISTINA KO gets the shot =

CHINO’S CHICKEN & EGG TOSTADA Former Nobu InterContinental Hong Kong chef Erik Idos opened his Japanese-meets-Mexican effort Chino with no PR agency, in an out-ofthe-way district (Kennedy Town) and following in the footsteps of that dreaded no-reservations trend. It didn’t matter. His chicken tinga and egg tostada continues to dominate Instagram.

Style it: Top down, at a slight angle – you want to see that full moon of a yolk, but also get a bit of that shredded chicken and guacamole to peek out from the side.

Suggested hashtags: #chinohk #whichcamefirstchickenoregg #noreservations #tostada #eggcellent KISHOKU’S UNI GUNKAN The majority of Kishoku’s customers go for the omakase set, but even when the chef’s choosing, you can be sure there’ll be a gunkan with a mound of sea urchin shovelled atop. It’s sweet, briny and substantial – everything an uni lover could ever want.

Style it: Low and from the side, so everybody knows just how big and soaring your tower of uni is. Hurry, before it topples!

Suggested hashtags: #kishoku #uni #sushi #leaningtowerofurchin TATE DINING ROOM’S ZEN GARDEN The end to a meal both aesthetically and gastronomically pleasing is this Zen garden replica, which is entirely edible, from the sugary “sand” to the black sesame macaroon or panna cotta “rocks”. For the debut of her catering business, Butler, chef-owner Vicky Lau also created a life-sized version of the garden – just as tasty but, thanks to the attention it garnered, not so easy to Instagram.

Style it: Go helicopter style from the top, and since Tate is only open for dinner, you may have to obnoxiously ask a friend for a little phoneflashlight action.

Suggested hashtags: #tatediningroom #zengarden #asias50best #ediblestories

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come early winter, it indisputably dominates social media. At 8½ Otto e Mezzo Bombana, you’ll see chef Umberto Bombana travelling between tables all through dinner service, tableside truffleshaving having become his fulltime occupation as he grates the expensive fungus over eggs, risotto, pasta, ice cream and more.

Style it: Once the truffles have landed generously atop your dish, you won’t even know what lies beneath. Ready your camera and go for an Instavideo – there’s nothing sexier than watching those flakes fall.

Suggested hashtags: #ottoemezzo #truffles #everydayimtrufflin THE CHAIRMAN’S STEAMED FRESH FLOWER CRAB WITH AGED SHAOXING WINE, FRAGRANT CHICKEN OIL AND FLAT RICE NOODLES This boozy crab dish is named to sell. Flower crab? Good. Shaoxing wine? Good. Fragrant chicken oil?

Very good. Flat rice noodles ... you get the point. And the point is, this dish lives up to its hype among food lovers, at a prime destination for escorting tourists who know their

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Cantonese food.

Style it: A low side shot means you’ll get ample room in the frame for those scrolls of noodles while also making contact with the cute beady eyes of the crab. If you’re going to eat him, the least you can do is look him in the eye.

Suggested hashtags: #thechairmanhk #feelingcrabby #drunkinlove 8½ OTTO E MEZZO BOMBANA’S ALBA WHITE TRUFFLE MENU White truffle isn’t available year round, but

SUNDAY’S GROCERY’S SCOTCH EGG SANDO Brunch on Sundays is prime social-media time, and the sublime simplicity of this takeaway dish makes it a magnet for “likes”. A perfect soft-boiled egg is encased in sausage, breaded, fried, stuffed in a bun and then halved to show a stunningly oozy cross section.

Style it: Make sure that yolk is on

display, and see if you can work in the colourful crate seating that flanks Sunday’s Grocery.

Suggested hashtags: #sundaysgrocery #scotcheggsando #yolkporn #sundaysarebetterthanothers CARBONE’S SPICY RIGATONI VODKA Lack of natural lighting aside, Carbone is an eminently Instagrammable restaurant, from the Zac Posen-designed burgundy waitstaff uniform to the gangsterluxe interiors to the artfully crumbled chunks of cheese served (for free!) at the beginning of each meal. And while pasta is not normally the most photogenic of foods, the signature Spicy Rigatoni Vodka has a strong presence in cyberspace.

Style it: Get real close so you can see all the grated cheese, the grooves that run along the tubular pasta, and all that luscious sauce.

But make sure to leave some of the clean plate in the shot so it’s not all just a hot mess.

Suggested hashtags: #carbonehk #vodkashot #carbcrazy #pastaparty THE ENVOY’S DINOSAUR And you thought dinosaurs came before the age of Instagram. One of The Envoy’s signature cocktails is based on the non-alcoholic drink

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called the Milo Dinosaur, invented in Singapore as a typical Milo chocolate drink with spoonfuls of Milo powder on top. This naughty version is spiked with vodka and Godiva chocolate liqueur, but still has the requisite Milo powder.

Style it: Thanks to a beautiful cracked-egg vessel, you can shoot this drink from pretty much any angle, but make sure you can see

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some of that choco powder.

Suggested hashtags: #theenvoyhk #milodinosaur #cocktailhour #drinkdrankdrunk LITTLE BAO’S ICE CREAM BAO Doesn’t matter how simple the concept is – and in this case, it’s very simple – as long as it’s iconic.

Like a Hirst spot painting, Little Bao’s ice-cream sandwich inspires

HONORARY MENTIONS For those who just can’t get enough

SOCIAL L PLACE’S TRUFFLE SHIITAKE BUNS a little of that “I could do that at home” attitude, given it’s just a deep-fried mantou with ice cream and some sort of sweet sauce ... but you didn’t do it. So you can shut up and Instagram it.

Style it: A side shot will show off all the layers nicely, especially the artful drips of caramel or condensed milk that inevitably run down the sides.

Suggested hashtags: #littlebaohk #icecreambao #justdesserts #baodown GENIE JUICERY’S PRESSED JUICE CLEANSE If you’re going to do a crazy thing like a juice cleanse, you sure as hell want people to know about it.

Though Instagram might seem like a strange place to advertise your lack of consumption, given how much #foodporn inevitably appears on a feed (I mean, it’s called a “feed” for a reason), never has anyone embarked on a liquid diet without showing it off. And Genie Juicery’s pretty products make any photo look great.

Style it: Get creative! After all, you have all this time on your hands now that you don’t get to eat breakfast, lunch or dinner. But we recommend an aerial shot, preferably styled with the colourful ingredients that form the basis of your juices. Which you can eat, afterwards ... er, in three days’ time.

Suggested hashtags: #juicecleanse #geniejuicery #raw #healthy #painandsuffering

It’s a bun … that looks like a mushroom. This trompe l’oeil styling of a basic shiitake bun is catnip to ’grammers, amateur and pro alike. Put it on the restaurant’s creepy plates, which feature ants that look realistic enough to chomp on your dim sum.

ODDIES FOODIES’ NIGHT WOLF This teensy, out-of-theway ice-cream shop in an alley off ff Wanchai Road is a testament to the power of social media. The street outside the shop is lined daily with people waiting to indulge in wildstyle soft-serve creations merged with panna cotta, egg waffles, brownies and more.

MOYO’S CARBONARA A RICE CAKES To be fair, School Food popularised the dish, but since acquiring an empty table at that casual eatery proves near impossible, Moyo has swooped in with its creamy, Italianinspired tteokbokki. It’s only a matter of time before every Korean restaurant is doing it.

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Talk Soup

= The outspoken BOBBY CHINN speaks out on managing a fund, being funny and having fun in the kitchen. CHRISTINA KO lends an ear = BOBBY CHINN LIKES to talk. It’s a characteristic not prerequisite to becoming a chef, many of whom prefer to let their dishes speak for themselves, but it’s exactly this deviant trait that has enabled Chinn to rise to fame as a food personality and television host on the Discovery Channel’s World Café series. An early champion of Vietnamese cuisine, he’s owned eponymous restaurants in Hanoi and Saigon, though his efforts now are more concentrated on a London outpost called The House of Ho, offering “the taste of Vietnam with a modern twist”.

Chinn didn’t begin his career in food. A sometime banker and stand-up comedian, he stumbled into the industry as a self-described bad waiter while supporting his comic career – and with a stroke of rebellion ended up learning to cook, as well. He shares notes from his journey with Prestige Hong Kong during his last trip to our city for a pop-up with Chom Chom and Sook.

YOU’VE FOLLOWED A COLOURFUL PATH. TELL US ABOUT IT. Like every kid I went to school with, everyone wanted to be rich in the ’80s. And so everyone studied finance, and I was really no

exception. I was a research analyst, I was working for a hedge fund on the buy side. I did the IPO market. I worked as a cold caller in New York, I was at the New York Stock Exchange trading ADRs. And I was like, this sucks. This is really work.

So I had kind of a soul-searching mission after that. When I was on the floor of the exchange I would always make everybody laugh. I would do this Chinese Billy Crystal. I was told a lot that I was in the wrong business, because I would make people laugh.

So I was applying to the Culinary Institute of America and the French Culinary Institute [now the International Culinary Center] in New York and I asked my parents and they were like, “No, we’re not going to help you. You can’t hold a job.

You got attitude. We don’t have cooks in our family, we hire them.”

I moved to LA and I got into The Groundlings, one of the top improvisational schools. I worked as a waiter and got demoted to busboy. I decided to move to San Francisco and do the [comedy club] Holy City Zoo thing, which is where Whoopi Goldberg, Robin Williams, all those guys were.

And then I started working in a restaurant so that I could feed myself. My father comes in and says, “So excuse the cliché, but what are you? A standup comic waiter? Number one, you’re not funny.

Number two, you’re a shitty waiter. Three, your education is far too expensive for you to think you’re a funny waiter. Vietnam is the future.”

SO YOU MOVED TO VIETNAM, WHICH IS WHERE YOU OPENED YOUR FIRST RESTAURANT. WERE YOU INTO COOKING IN THE PAST?

I ate at really great restaurants because I was privileged. I went to international schools, so I can distinguish shit from not-shit food. You go to boarding school in England and it’s dog food with mashed potatoes on top. Call it shepherd’s pie if you want but that to me is dog food. I didn’t know food to be a bad experience until English boarding school. I was eating great Chinese food from my Chinese grandmother. I was eating great northern African food from my Egyptian grandmother.

I didn’t know what to talk to my Chinese grandmother about, so I told her, “Teach me how to cook.” So she would talk me through the recipes and I would video it. Sadly I’ve lost them. But I remember a lot. I always used to love watching Julia Child as a kid because she was funny. She was drunk. I liked the idea of starting with raw materials and getting to a final product. And then it just hit me when I was working in the restaurant as a waiter, that I knew nothing about food. Then I was like, how am I going to sell it if I don’t know how it’s made? I started volunteering my time between my shifts. I’d never done this before. Work for free for a hotel? You’re supposed to steal from hotels. And then I volunteered in one

of the top kitchens in San Francisco.

I was very resilient. I was the first one in and the last one out, because I was bad. I was slow. It was humiliating, I was living just above poverty to work these ridiculous hours. If I’m doing it for the money then I’m stupid, and I don’t think I’m stupid, so I’m doing it for the experience.

IT WAS BEING ON TV THAT REALLY TOOK

YOUR

NAME

TO

THE

NEXT

LEVEL.

WHEN DID YOU REALISE YOU’D GONE FROM CHEF TO CELEBRITY? It’s a weird concept because I’ve been treated like shit most of my life. And then all of a sudden, one day, they tell you, “We’ve upgraded you to a suite. We have a bottle of champagne chilling for you. You like Billecart, don’t you?” And all of a sudden it’s like, what did I do?

I don’t really feel like I contributed to doing anything exceptional. And it’s weird because it came after 40, so I don’t feel special. But I think maybe it’s a saving grace, maybe it’s my upbringing, maybe it’s fate that while I’m on this parallel path of being more well known, my normal life has got a foot in the gutter. It keeps me balanced.

[And then there’s the] flip side of the fame card. Chefs that work in the kitchen 24/7 hate people on TV, chefs on TV. “Screw him for being on television. That’s not how it’s made.

He’s a hack.” Or, “They’re making entertainment of my profession.”

WHAT’S THE DREAM SHOW, IF YOU WERE DRIVING EVERYTHING? It would be a project showing people that I can do something that’s sustainable and farm-to-table – to create dishes that have medicinal properties and taste good, which could be tailored to people’s dietary needs or to help relieve them of various ailments they may have.

Food as medicine.

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DOM PÉRIGNON P2 1998 AND (OPPOSITE) RICHARD GEOFFROY

AGED TO PERFECTION Dom Pérignon has a new method of setting aside its most exclusive vintages, which it has just revealed to champagne lovers THERE’S A LONG-ESTABLISHED

and very particular vocabulary that’s used to describe wines. Oenophiles refer to a drink’s “bouquet” and the “notes” of different flavours, as well as discussing the “finish” of a particular vintage. But last year Dom Pérignon introduced a new word to this specific terminology: plénitude.

Dom Pérignon uses the word plénitude to describe the three distinct moments of transformation that champagne undergoes while it’s being aged. The first plénitude occurs after a minimum of seven years of maturation on the lees, though the exact moment each vintage experiences this first change is ultimately decided by Dom

Pérignon’s Chef de Cave, Richard Geoffroy, so may actually occur a year or two after the seven-year mark.

The second plénitude is reached after 12 to 15 years of ageing, and bottles that have reached this stage will be labelled simply as P2. The first bottles to receive the P2 labels were the 1998 vintage, which Dom Pérignon released last year. When it first tasted the 1998 P2, the Wine Spectator enthusiastically said that it “offers precision and finely detailed form, powered by an expansive palate of flavor. Mouthwatering and persistent on the zesty finish.”

Finally, the third plénitude occurs after a minimum of 20 years of ageing on the lees. As you’d expect of a drink that’s judged to have reached its highest point of maturation, and is therefore worthy of the P3 label, these are the most complex and exclusive champagnes in Dom Pérignon’s cellar. It’s rumoured that the first bottles of P3 champagnes will be released

before the end of this year, probably from either the 1971 or the 1982 vintage.

However, as it’s up to Geoffroy to decide when the champagnes have reached this third and final plénitude, oenophiles may have to wait a little longer to sample Dom Pérignon’s first P3. But seeing as the P2 has already received rave reviews, there’s no doubt that this particular champagne will be worth the wait.

To explain and explore the different characteristics and traits of each plénitude and to introduce champagne lovers to these new vintages, Dom Pérignon is hosting an event at Central’s Pier 4 from May 18 to 20.

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125

Enoteca Exotica = Our resident wine wonk GERRIE LIM tries to dispel the confusion caused by the sheer multitude of Italian grape varieties =

MANY AN ASPIRATIONAL wine drinker has been perplexed by the surfeit of Italian grape varieties. There are an estimated 3,000 (though nobody knows the exact number), many of them relatively unknown and creating enticingly mysterious wines. I encountered this challenge a few years ago when I asked ItalianAmerican celebrity chef Mario Batali a question I usually reserve for winemakers: “If you could be a wine, one that best reflects who you are, what would you be?”

He paused for a mere two seconds before uttering the magic word. “Sciacchetrà,” he replied, completely serious and unfazed by my puzzled look when I confessed I had never heard of it.

“Not many people have,” he said.

“It’s a delicious dessert wine from Liguria. A white dessert wine that’s exotic, delicious and hard to find.

Because I like to think of myself as exotic, delicious and hard to find.” When I asked how one might procure some, he shrugged. “They might ship some to the States but I can’t even get hold of it. I’ve love to, but we can’t find it.”

I researched Sciacchetrà and, according to Hugh Johnson, it’s

the name given to the sweet version of Cinque Terre, a dry white wine made, as he wrote, “from obscure grapes grown in the steep, rocky paradise on the Riviera coast,” that area known as Liguria. The region just north of there, Piedmont, is better known to people familiar with Italian wine because of the production of Barolo and Barbaresco, which features the Nebbiolo grape – arguably the second-most famous viticultural product after Sangiovese, most identified with Tuscany through the wines we call Chianti and Brunello.

Ever the nosy wine wonk, I’m always on the lookout for the exotic, delicious and hard to find, like the time in 2007 at a restaurant in Montreux, Switzerland, when I ordered a bottle of Sagrantino di Montefalco made by the Umbrian producer Arnaldo Caprai. I’d only read about it in A Hedonist in the Cellar, a wine book by my favourite novelist, Jay McInerney (yes, beyond Bright Lights, Big City, he’s written a few), and the wine turned out to be magnificent, every bit the bold and bodacious red I needed to go with my rib-eye steak, a true revelation. Wine lovers live for such moments.

Sagrantino is actually one of those magic words that wine insiders whisper, like a password to a secret club. The Sagrantino grape is grown only in a tiny area around Montefalco, halfway between Perugia and Spoleto in Umbria; only a dozen serious producers exist, all making a ridiculously small amount (a few thousand cases a year, at best), the least obscure ones being

Arnaldo Caprai (who pioneered it in 1971), Antonelli, Alzatura, Còlpetrone, Paolo Bea and Scacciadiavoli.

“The ideal Sagrantino,” McInerney wrote, “tastes like blackberries and bitter chocolate dusted with cinnamon, nutmeg and clove.” There’s a growing consensus among wine writers that this is one Italian wine worthy of greater recognition. However, Sagrantino di Montefalco’s current vintner, Marco Caprai, told me recently that he doesn’t really care about widespread fame, because the segment of wine drinkers who know it really love it, and that matters more to him than mass appeal.

Some of us are fans, though, helping him spread the word – such as wine scribe Sarah Heller in a recent South China Morning Post piece about wine collecting. “If you’re buying today to stash away, Italians are the horses to back: all life-lengthening acid-tannin ‘backbone’ and very little fat,” she wrote. “And I don’t necessarily mean an iconic brand such as Sassicaia.

The true beauty of building a wine collection is saving bottles nobody would necessarily think to keep. A VALLE DELL’ACATE

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decade from now, drinking that ’14 Sagrantino may be a transformative and genuinely unique experience.”

Transformative and unique – that’s what I thought when I met Gaetana Jacono to learn about her 100-hectare estate, Valle Dell’Acate, in Sicily. I lunched with her recently to taste three of her wines: Insolia (a white, made from the Insolia grape), Il Frappato (a red, 100 percent from the Frappato grape) and Cerasuolo di Vittoria (a blend of Frappato and the better-known, dark red Nero d’Avola). She’d just discovered that her wines match perfectly with dim sum, particularly cheung fan, siu

mai and char siu bao. This vindicated her belief that great wines pair wonderfully with great cuisine.

“Frappato is a food wine, and normally it’s very good with cheese and also pomodoro, our tomatoes,” she told me. “If you serve Frappato chilled, you can have it with fish or shrimp, or tuna or crab. My family has had long experience with the Frappato grape and we believe that our terroir is special. We’ve tried other Frappato from around the area and they’re not the same as ours.

We make our Frappato wines with no oak – all in stainless steel, completely – and we try to make it rich, not too heavy. We’re organic in the vineyard, we try to be natural, because if you do less to the Frappato, it will come out great. We suggest drinking young, inside two years or maximum

three years. It’s not made for ageing.

The 2013 vintage is great.”

Wine should not assault you with fruit, she said, like many of the New World “fruit bombs” that hide elegance in a wine. If it has a floral character, like hers tend to, a certain amount of “lift” occurs that results in a freshness in the mouth, overriding residual tannins and a state enabled, arguably, by organic or biodynamic winemaking. “We’re an organic, sustainable vineyard and we’re very lucky,” she said, “because of the weather and the soil in Sicily. My father taught me that – to respect nature and the time for

ABOVE: VALLE DELL’ACATE. OPPOSITE: GAETANA JACONO

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the wine to happen.”

“My father built the winery in 1981,” she added. “He fell in love with the valley we’re in and wanted to give it a name that would be remembered that way, so it became Valle Dell’Acate, the valley of Acate, which is our little town. I was born in the area of Ragusa, a beautiful place, but when I was young and travelling I would tell people I was from Sicily and the only word I usually heard back was ‘Mafia’.

“And I would say, ‘No, that’s not true!’ It’s also full of good things, and I want people to know that. When I started in 1992, Europe was not prepared for this type of wine – very

“When I started in 1992, Europe was not prepared for this type of wine” Gaetana Jacono

elegant and very clean, like the Burgundy style.

And from Sicily, especially, people expected the wines to be overpowering, very strong, but I tell people they’re not strong but elegant. In our valley, the gap between day and night is very high, hot during the day and cold in the night – very good for grapes. We’re also a windy valley, 10km from the sea, so we have the maritime influence in the wine.”

Inspired by this, Jacono decided to travel herself, starting in 1999 with trips to the United States as the company’s global ambassador, and

today 65 percent of Valle Dell’Acate’s production is exported. “By 2012 we had the privilege of having seven different soils in our vineyard, seven soils for seven wines,” she recalled.

“So my father and I decided where was the best soil for each grape.

Our first two white wines, Insolia and Zagra, come from the first soil, a yellow soil. Insolia is very dry with good acidity because it’s made in 100 percent stainless steel, no barriques, and Zagra is made from the Grillo grape.” Zagra, matured in steel vats for four months and in bottles for a further four, is a bright yellow wine full of peach and exotic fruits, perfect for seafood and summer and, like Insolia, best when drunk young.

Her flagship wine is Cerasuolo di Vittoria, the one I liked best, made from 60 percent Nero d’Avola and 40 percent Frappato. “This is the 2011, the current vintage,” she said as we savoured it together, “released after 18 months, food friendly and an easy combination with chicken, lamb and spicy food even – because you have the full-bodied Nero d’Avola presented in a delicate way and then you have more versatility because of the Frappato.

You can recognise the strawberry and blackberry smells from the Frappato, but in a quiet way. The body is full but the Frappato gives freshness to the wine. I believe this wine has a big chance to become very famous because it’s elegant and delicate and very versatile with a lot of food. I wish the world will fall in love with this wine.”

Indeed, there are many wines that can compel that sensation, if only we knew of them. “Frappato is pretty hipster these days,” my colleague Ned Goodwin MW notes, citing COS Cerasuolo as a prime example. That’s one of Gaetana Jacono’s competitors, but it’s all good if you ask me. They’re trying to make better known just a few more of the staggering number of Italian wines, many of them promising the exotic and delicious, many of them masterful expressions of amore.

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129

amui S Serenity

= No longer a magnet for backpackers, Thailand’s secondbiggest island has morphed into an idyll of lotus-eating luxury, writes MADELEINE FITZPATRICK = LYING ON A HAMMOCK over the waters of the Gulf of Thailand, the late-afternoon sun on your skin, the sound of the surf in your ears, you feel your eyelids grow heavy ...

This is a holiday. Your partner and child call to you to come kayaking – which you do, at first reluctantly, only to find yourself refreshed and smiling afterwards. As the sun sets, you all lounge on rattan furniture and sip drinks from the beach bar, marvelling at the clouds scudding across a pink-and-orange sky. A few steps away, your dinner table by the beach awaits.

It may be Thailand’s secondlargest island, but Koh Samui was without roads until the early 1970s. Largely impenetrable, with mountainous, tropical jungle in its centre, the island was a backpacker haven from the ’70s to the midnoughties, with basic bungalows for accommodation and within easy reach of Koh Pha Ngan’s full-moon parties. All that’s changed, however, now that the verdant outcrop has become a fully fledged luxury destination of the tenties.

This progression was far from a given – Samui might have gone

the way of Thailand’s largest island, Phuket.

Instead, it has become more developed in the luxury segment while remaining less developed overall. A case in point: Four Seasons opened its Chiang Mai resort in 1999, its elephant camp near Chiang Rai in 2006 and its Samui resort in 2007. Noticeably absent from the Thailand roster of locations? The country’s largest island. Considering that the backpacker-party atmosphere has increased in amplitude in Phuket over the years while receding in Samui, this seems altogether appropriate.

To say that the location of Four Seasons Resort Koh Samui is appropriate for a luxury resort is to put it mildly. Built into the hillside jungle on the island’s north-western coast, the Bill Bensley-designed property makes a dramatic announcement of its intentions the moment you lay eyes on it. In a feat of architectural genius, a doorway the width of a single person leads you from the driveway onto a stage Bensley has orchestrated for showcasing his symphony of landscaping leading down to the sea. In this open sala, a smiling staff member behind a single desk is ready to offer you a refreshment and check you in, as you attempt to absorb the marvellous sight of the lush forest and Gulf of Thailand.

This same panorama will have you catching your breath over a breakfast spread of fresh tropical fruit, homemade granola with homemade yogurt, chocolate-and-kaffir-lime latte, and poached eggs or a Thai prawn omelette FOUR SEASONS RESORT KOH SAMUI

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The view is all coconut trees and glistening ocean – and during cocktail hour, which can be enjoyed on the glass-fronted terrace of Koh Bar. The bar itself is but an antechamber to the upscale Koh restaurant, presided over by Executive Chef Alex Garés and Sous Chef Sumalee Khunpet.

Here you’ll find Thai cuisine that naturally comprises the classics but also incorporates typical Samui ingredients, such as “stinky beans”, local seaweed, local oysters and sour tamarind leaves. A unique variant of a classic Thai dish, Spicy Fresh Palm-Heart Salad with Peanuts and Lime substitutes the usual papaya with the hearts of Samui’s indigenous coconut palms.

Wine pairing is another specialty of Koh, with an extensive list of suggestions, and the restaurant offers the widest selection of Thai wines by the glass on the island.

It’s possible to work off all that overindulgence, of course – but not just at the resort gym: Four Seasons Resort Koh Samui offers beginners’, intermediate and advanced Muay Thai sessions, taught by professionals. For the uninitiated, there’s nothing like kickboxing training to have you pouring sweat and crying mercy (were it not for the fact that you’re too breathless to speak). But here again, Bensley surprises: the view from the boxing ring – all coconut trees, whiteTOP: THE PATH TO THE SPA AT THE FOUR SEASONS. ABOVE: INSIDE A POOL VILLA AT AKARYN KOH SAMUI RESORT AND SPA

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CHECKING IN

The private pool with your villa is a given. But how many beds, what facilities and which coast of Samui? The choice is yours

sand beach and glistening ocean – is enough to have you grinning through the pain.

At the end of your one-hour session, you’ll have earned every minute of your Muay Thai Recovery treatment. The full-body massage enlists the help of essential oils of black pepper, clove and ylang ylang in warming tired muscles. But even before it begins, you’ll be smiling to yourself as the path to the spa takes you through lush tropical jungle – a little piece of untouched Samui.

Four Seasons guests enjoy a private beach, with hammocks over the water, kayaking, a swimming pool, a cocktail bar and Pla Pla restaurant – made for sandy, flip-flops dining. With the beach blissfully empty – not to mention entirely free of the souvenir vendors you’ll find in so much of Thailand – you begin to understand how a stay at this Four Seasons can relax and inspire you to the point where, some time on the second day, feeling energised and serene becomes the new normal.

Other options for luxury privatepool-villa accommodation abound on Samui, though. At the eastern end of the island’s north shore, not far from the airport, Akaryn Koh Samui Resort and Spa bears the distinction of offering larger private pools than Four Seasons’ – albeit at a lower level of luxury (and price).

To enjoy your own private, eightmetre pool – long enough to swim mini-laps in – and a stone-carved freestanding bathtub inside, book a Pool Villa. The more basic option, Pool Suites come with a 3.5-metre plunge pool, with a handful of Akaryn’s 29 endowed with beachfront sea views. Either way, whiteness and wood will form your tranquil surroundings here. So will the fluid bass and Ibiza-style beats

CONRAD KOH SAMUI On a hill on the south-western tip of the island, Conrad Koh Samui’s onebedroom villas come with their own infinity pool, a marble bathroom and a west-facing view of the Gulf of Thailand.

The resort also has a residential wing on the Phang Ka Peninsula, offering a choice of two- or three-bedroom, oceanview villas with two storeys and a larger infinity pool.

INTERCONTINENTAL SAMUI BAAN TALING NGAM RESORT Set on a cliff in the island’s west, the InterContinental offers dramatic views on a par with those of Four Seasons.

Beachfront Pool Villas come with a private swimming pool, wine bar and sundeck, and the resort also offers twoand three-bedroom villas, as well as the three-bed Napa Reserve Villa.

KANDA RESIDENCES In a secluded cove on the north-eastern coast of the island, Kanda Residences offers one-, two-, three- and fourbedroom pool villas, most of them with sea view. Set alongside the resort’s private beach, the Oceanfront Pool Villas offer uninterrupted views of the Gulf of Thailand. Resort facilities include a Thai spa, a fine-dining restaurant and in-villa cooking classes or barbeque.

SANTIBURI BEACH RESORT & SPA Located on a private section of Mae Nam beach in the island’s north, Santiburi recently underwent renovations, reopening in 2014. The resort’s Equatorial Duplex Villas are designed in traditional Thai style and come with a private terrace overlooking the beach or gardens. The Spa Pool Villas offer sea views and private spa facilities for two.

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of the superior playlist preloaded into your in-room iPod. At breakfast, seated on decking by the beach with nothing between you and the Gulf of Thailand – the morning sun, the ocean, the horizon – you’ll be served by staff a tad less genuflecting than at Four Seasons, but every bit as warm and friendly.

In the evening, treat yourself to a meal at Akaryn’s Ochos Steakhouse, helmed by the talented Chef Christophe Lindner. The setting is as romantic as it gets: from the soft orange light illuminating the terrace to the sounds of the elemental jungle – insects singing, toads croaking – that’s everywhere in Samui. And once you’ve tried a perfectly seared steak with its deliciously blackened

edges dipped in an expertly melded Thai sauce, you’ll wonder why you’d ever settle for gravy and mustard again.

Yet for all that it offers in the international, five-star bracket, Samui is still a place where you can have off-road travel experiences – like sipping rum under attap roofs at a local distillery.

Only the cognoscenti bother to track down this experience, which can be had at the Magic Alambic Rum Distillery. It’s near Na Muang falls, should the well-known sightseeing spot take your fancy, but there’s an argument to be made for heading straight to the distillery bar and lining up the tasting measures. Magic Alambic’s five rums, brewed from local sugar cane, include four flavoured spirits, with the coconut varietal a particular winner.

Speaking of coconuts, the presence of a delectable Thai classic in authentic style also says something about Samui’s rootsiness amid

the luxury. On the road from the rum distillery back to Akaryn, a popular cliff viewpoint near Chaweng Noi is the parking place of the Lamai Fresh Coconut Ice Cream van, with the traditional confection made from coconut milk instead of cow’s milk. Served in a coconut shell, the ice cream comes with a choice of toppings ranging from sticky rice to salted peanuts to steamed pumpkin and sweet potato. Share at your peril.

Back home at Akaryn under your 430-thread-count Egyptian-cotton sheets, you’ll remember that while cheap and cheerful works well while you’re out and about, there’s no substitute for luxury when it comes time to relax.

BREAKFAST SEATING AT AKARYN KOH SAMUI RESORT AND SPA

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BACKSTORY

Let’s Get Digital COME NEXT MONTH, when the menswear shows hit London, Florence, Milan and Paris, you can expect quite a few

editors and buyers to sport this customisable jacket from Ports 1961. Designed by the brand’s recently appointed men’s creative director, social-media maven Milan Vukmirovic, this conversation starter is sure to gain you some coveted followers. Just add your Instagram handle to make it truly yours.

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