July 21 07 2017 by ES Magazine

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sex on set with dominic west

THE GLOUSSY POSSE

Meet the Cotswolds’ new elite

Plus:

London’s boom bars and emily maitlis’ little black book

adwoa

gurl talk with the model of the moment

EDITOR’S LETTER

EDITOR Laura Weir

COVER Adwoa Aboah photographed by Steph Wilson. Styled by Jenny Kennedy. Hair by Johnnie Biles at Frank Agency using Bumble and Bumble. Make-up by Celia Burton using CHANEL Travel Diary and Le Lift Skin Recovery Sleep Mask. COACH dress, £625 (uk.coach. com). All jewellery, Aboah’s own

Your response to our special edition London United issue and the artists’ covers (7 July) has been incredible. No other issue of the magazine I’ve produced has galvanised such an overwhelming sense of goodwill in the way that this project did. Thank you for your emails, letters, tweets and DMs, I’m still in the process of replying to each one of you — I’ll get there, I promise! In the meantime we have been thinking about how we can keep the conversation going around London’s resilience in the face of recent tragedy and terror, and continue our drive to raise money to support the work that the incredible London Community Foundation and the Dispossessed Fund are doing. Partnering with T-shirt manufacturer Everpress, five out of the six of our iconic covers, by Antony Gormley, Anish Kapoor, Jamie Hewlett, Wolfgang Tillmans and Ai Weiwei (Gillian Wearing didn’t feel her cover image was appropriate for a T-shirt so will be giving us some signed prints to auction instead), are for sale online for £25 each at everpress.com/esmagazine. Seventy per cent of proceeds will go directly to the Dispossessed Fund, a charitable fund run in partnership with the London Community Foundation. The remainder will go to Everpress to cover its production costs. The fund supports local projects, so if you buy one of these T-shirts you will quite literally be supporting your neighbours, whether it’s the little girl or boy who shares a classroom with your child, the person you sit next to on the bus or any number of the people you pass on your way to work without knowing their private struggles. These are the people in our London family who need us right now. So please buy one at everpress.com/esmagazine, wear it with pride and send me your pictures using the #esmagazine hashtag. Keep loving, London.

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Editor Laura Weir Deputy editor Anna van Praagh Features director Alice-Azania Jarvis Acting art director Wendy Tee Fashion features director Katrina Israel Commissioning editor Dipal Acharya Associate features editor Hamish MacBain Features writer Frankie McCoy

Acting art editor Andy Taylor Art editor Jessica Landon Picture editor Helen Gibson Picture desk assistant Clara Dorrington

Merchandise editor Sophie Paxton Fashion editor Jenny Kennedy Fashion assistant Eniola Dare

Social media editor Natalie Salmon

Chief sub editor Matt Hryciw Deputy chief sub editor Nick Howells

Beauty editor Katie Service Deputy beauty and lifestyle editor Lily Worcester

Office administrator/editor’s PA Niamh O’Keeffe

Contributing editors Lucy Carr-Ellison, Tony Chambers, James Corden, Hermione Eyre, Richard Godwin, Daisy Hoppen, Jemima Jones, Anthony Kendal, David Lane, Mandi Lennard, Annabel Rivkin, Teo van den Broeke, Hikari Yokoyama Group client strategy director Deborah Rosenegk Head of magazines Christina Irvine

ES Magazine is published weekly and is available only with the London Evening Standard. ES Magazine is published by Evening Standard Ltd, Northcliffe House, 2 Derry Street, Kensington, London W8 5TT. ES is printed web offset by Wyndeham Bicester. Paper supplied by Perlen Paper AG. Colour transparencies or any other material submitted to ES Magazine are sent at owner’s risk. Neither Evening Standard Ltd nor their agents accept any liability for loss or damage. © Evening Standard Ltd 2016. Reproduction in whole or part of any contents of ES Magazine without prior permission of the editor is strictly prohibited

21.07.17 ES MAGAZINE 3

capital gains What to do in London

by FRANKIE M c COY

Juniper and jalfrezi

Curry and gin are two of the most beautiful words in the English language. They’re also what Neil Rankin’s second Temper restaurant specialises in. Meatball marrow masala and artisan London dry? Neil, you legend. Opens 24 July (temperrestaurant.com)

Poignant, brutal films that force you to reflect on the horrors of the Second World War are always easier to bear when they star some of Hollywood’s hottest male stars. Tom Hardy, Cillian Murphy, Fionn Whitehead (above) and — oh yes — Harry Styles star in Christopher Nolan’s latest epic, Dunkirk. Out 21 July

London does a very cool line in multiculturalism, and the fantastically soundtracked — and fabulously dressed — Afropunk Fest at Printworks in Rotherhithe is definitive proof. Come for the music — Willow Smith (right), Jme, Cosmo Pyke — and stay for the insane costumes, food and afterparties. Tickets from £45. 22-23 July (afropunkfest.com)

Pinot party

July is made for sipping quirky wines in a shipping container, so head to New Zealand Cellar’s Garage Sale at Pop Brixton, where you can also buy Kiwi vino for a song while dancing to DJs Armistice & Friends. Tickets £15. 22 July (thenewzealandcellar.co.uk)

Illustration by Jonathan Calugi @ Machas; Getty; Royal Collection

Dunkirk spirit

Afro beats

4 6

High on Lycra

A midsummer fitness festival has to be pretty epic to tempt London from its Pimm’s terraces, but cult workout-wear brand Lululemon’s Sweatlife manages it, thanks to classes from London’s coolest studios (Kobox, Frame, Barry’s Bootcamp) and top speakers. Tickets £30. 22 July (thesweatlife.co.uk)

top billie

Missed out on tickets to the Young Vic’s revered Yerma, starring Billie Piper (right), last year? Here’s your chance to reclaim your theatre cred: Lorca’s Spanish tragedy is back this summer for a second, very limited run. Tickets from £10. 26 July to 30 August (youngvic.org)

last chance: Parade along a car-free Regent Street for the

last weekend of Summer Streets, with food, samba, free cocktails and giveaways from the likes of Hunter and Kiehl’s. (regentstreetonline.com)

5 7

Queen for a day

Don your shiniest tiara, grab a corgi and strut your majestic stuff around the Buckingham Palace State Rooms, open to mere mortals for 10 weeks while the Queen is on her hols. A right royal treat. Tickets £23. 22 July to 1 October (royalcollection.org.uk)

look ahead: Sharpen your pencils and get inspired: the World Illustration Awards Exhibition returns to Somerset House. 31 July to 28 August (somersethouse.org.uk)

21.07.17 es magazine

upfront Laura Craik on the loss of a shopping

wonderland, the woes of her crumpled Audi and the unnerving new Kim

WILD KARD Kim Kardashian has been spotted (left) with a vintage Prada nylon handbag. I can deal with her dripping in current-season catwalk, because that is her function, but when she starts getting all clever-clever, I’m like: ‘Back off and leave this to the fashion nerds.’ Now that she has parted with longtime stylist Monica Rose, I’m wondering who’s behind this sudden and newfound love of obscure, antimainstream accessories. Kanye? With his taste for Off-White, Vetements and anything made of sweatshirt/canvas/ sanforized Japanese denim, it wouldn’t surprise me. Forget Sex Tape Kim: we’re in a weird new age of Utilitarian Kim. Frankly, I’m not ready.

es magazine 21.07.17

“Colette was the opposite of #basic. Lord knows #basic needs an opposite these days” Colette Rousseau and Sarah Andelman

BANGERS AND CRASH My husband pranged the car on Monday. ‘What have you done now, mum?’ said the man who came to tow her. ‘Sheesh with your sexism — just promise me you’ll look after Audrey,’ I told him. Audrey the Audi is the love of my life. Everyone told me I should buy an old banger; that in London, it was folly to drive a new car, what with the narrow roads and even narrower parking spaces. But who wants to drive an old banger? Besides, compared with Kate Moss’s £265,000 Rolls-Royce Dawn (model above), Audrey is quite modest. She’s currently in Veetec garage, Neasden, and I’m in a courtesy car. ‘We’ve given you an upgrade,’ said Enterprise, presenting me with a giant Hyundai I’m terrified to park. Which got me wondering: what is the perfect London car? Probably a bike.

HOT The Givenchy cat collar As seen in the teaser ad for the first Givenchy collection under Clare Waight Keller

NOT ‘Ladies and gentlemen’ Not gender neutral enough, says TFL: Tube passengers will now be greeted with, ‘Good morning, everyone’

Josh Shinner; Getty; Rex; Alamy

olette is closing and it feels like the end of something bigger than a chic Parisian boutique. It feels like the end of imagination and independence; another death knell for stores not owned by Inditex, the Perssons or a global luxury conglomerate. Saint Laurent is in talks to take over Colette’s plum Rue Saint-Honoré location, which is good news, and infinitely better than an estate agent. But there won’t be trainers you’ve never seen, music you’ve never heard, books you’ve never read, scented pens, designer fidget spinners, mini laser guns or a water bar selling 100 different types of bottled water. To anyone wondering why I’m lamenting the loss of a Paris boutique in a London magazine: since its doors opened in 1997, Colette’s support of young British designers has been unwavering. Christopher Kane, Simone Rocha and Mary Katrantzou are but three of hundreds of London labels — many now shuttered — who owe co-owners Colette Rousseau and her daughter, Sarah Andelman, a world of gratitude. Unlike many department stores, Colette never bought the ‘safe’ clothes. It was one of the few boutiques with the balls to buy a designer’s most esoteric pieces. It was the opposite of #basic. Lord knows #basic needs an opposite these days. London is so lucky to have Dover Street Market — a rare destination, like Colette, where all things rich, strange and beautiful can have a platform. If you have the money, buy. If you don’t have the money, window-shop and make your heart sing. ‘Colette cannot exist without Colette,’ says Andelman, explaining that after 20 years, her mother wants to retire. It closes as it opened as it lived: with rare integrity.

Simone Rocha and Christopher Kane

FLASHBULB! Party pictures from around town by FRANKIE M c COY photographs by james peltekian Neelam Gill

Sharina Gutierrez

Eric Underwood

Jan de Villeneuve

Julius Getty Idina Moncreiffe Vicky Lee Mimi Xu Caroline Issa

Striking gold St James

Jasmine Guinness

Arizona Muse

Golden girls Arizona Muse, Neelam Gill and Caroline Issa glided to the Reform Club for the unveiling of Cartier’s 2017 high jewellery collection, Résonances de Cartier, where harps sang and guests got to play dress-up in some seriously luxe gems as they tucked in to egg mayo sandwiches.

Angela Radcliffe Caroline SciammaMassenet

Sophie Oakley

Marc Quinn

Matilda Lowther Stephen Jones

Emilia Wickstead Mary Katrantzou and Maria Kastani

Zawe Ashton

Arthur Jafa and Lucy Raven

Matthew Stone

Quentin Jones

Patrick Gibson

Roland Mouret and Charlotte Dellal

Flip-flop fundraising Mayfair

Nicholas Kirkwood

The Havaianas & Women for Women International party at Sketch was certainly no (flip) flop, as Emilia Wickstead, Alice Temperley and Mary Katrantzou gathered to sip gin in celebration of a charity fashion auction of artwork, all inspired by the sandals. A real shoe of love.

es magazine 21.07.17

Just Cos Kensington Alex Groves and Azusa Murakami

Jade Parfitt

Name Herexxx

Forget sculpture and installations — the food was the real art at the Cos x Serpentine Park Nights dinner, where Hans Ulrich Obrist spoke about the performances while Zawe Ashton and Matilda Lowther devoured yellowfin tuna tartare with tamari, compressed cucumber, radish and frozen yuzu so beautiful it deserved its own exhibition.

Yana Peel

GO TO eveningstandard.co.uk / ESMAGAZINE FOR MORE PARTY PICTURES

THE most WANTED

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PHOTOGRAPH BY natasha pszenicki STYLED BY jenny kennedy

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The

West way

Playing a Baltimore cop in The Wire made Dominic West a star — but The Affair turned him into a sex symbol. He talks to Jonathan Heaf about nude scenes, playing Alicia Vikander’s father and why he’s happy to be objectified

PhotographS BY charlotte hadden stylED BY Rose Forde

arly morning in Shoreditch and Dominic West and I are trying not to burn our lips on coffee as hot as molten steel. We’re in an old pub that, quite clearly from the decor (big game hunter’s lodge crossed with Soho House), has gone the way of so many of the edgier places out east and been upcycled into a member’s bar. ‘Bloody gentrification,’ West mock-grumbles. ‘This was once my old stomping ground… I went to Guildhall School of Music & Drama — I was here before the trendy haircuts and bike shops. I was thinking about this on the way here in the cab: back then it was a total s***hole.’ West, I’ll soon realise, has very little in the way of a verbal filter. The 47-year-old star of The Wire and The Affair is also an absolute riot, even at 8am, and will talk about sex with more candour than perhaps anyone I’ve ever interviewed, including Mickey Rourke — which may be just as well, given the amount of time he spends stripping off on screen. In accepting her Golden Globe for The Affair, his co-star Ruth Wilson dedicated part of her speech to him, saying, ‘Your arse is something of great beauty.’ West found the compliment

‘funny — although I’m not sure how well the American audience took it. They think the word “arse” is terribly crude — you have to say “ass” or they get fairly puritanical. But it became sort of an in joke with Ruth…’ The arse or the ass? ‘Both, I suppose. We had to do so many bonking scenes in The Affair that there was always a battle between us over who was going to go on top. If you’re on the bottom, you don’t have to take your clothes off or show anything. And Ruth always bloody won.’ Shooting the sex scenes in the show — in which he plays a writer who has an affair with a waitress, played by Wilson — is, he says, ‘absurd. I have to wear a sock over my bits for a start.’ What kind of sock? ‘Well, an actor-y sock thing — there was one that was like a jockstrap, but all of them are ridiculous.’ One they nicknamed ‘The Beast’. ‘A lot of the time the girl is wearing stick-on patches on her nipples which are also ridiculous. You look like sexless dolls. It’s farcical. In your supposed moment of passion you have a guy with a boom going, “Could you just move slightly to your left, mate?” Then you’ve got some other poor sod putting makeup on your bum.’ It doesn’t sound very sexy, I say. ‘It’s not, it’s very agricultural. It’s like giving

21.07.17 es magazine 13

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“I always find it staggering that people think I’m a jumped-up posh twat, as I’m middle-class and from Sheffield” birth. Or like a vet delivering a new calf. Sort of. I mean, it can be sexy sometimes…’ When is it sexy? ‘At all the wrong moments.’ One can imagine, at times, a man might over-think the scene, making it clear to everyone just how prepared he is. Has this ever happened to West? ‘Yes, of course!’ What do you do? Go and have a cold shower? ‘No. You’re covered up so it can’t go anywhere. It’s tied down so to speak. Also I think actresses don’t mind when it happens, in fact they quite like it. Everyone likes to be thought of as attractive.’

Today he is wearing dark blue jeans, a blue shirt and on his wrist there’s a sparkling watch from Tiffany. (‘I don’t go for accessories — I don’t even like wearing my wedding ring to be honest with you. In fact I think I might have lost it — but this is really rather beautiful.’) When I ask if he minds being objectified — the role has, after all, won him an army of female and gay male fans — he reacts gleefully. ‘Are you kidding? I love it,’ he says. Has he always been so uninhibited? ‘No. I remember soon after drama school I did A Midsummer Night’s Dream, where I had to do a love scene with Anna Friel. For some reason I had got it into my head that the thing

experienced actors do on set — someone like Richard Gere for example — is to walk around naked, just so no one bats an eyelid when you do get down to it. So that’s what I did like an idiot. I remember this props guy came up to me and said, “Didn’t realise it was so cold in here, Dominic.” I didn’t do it again.’ The sixth of seven children (five girls and two boys), West was born into a Roman Catholic family in Sheffield. His father owned a plastics factory and his mother was an actress. West was educated at Eton and as a result, he’s often been lumped together with Eddie R edmayne and Damian Lewis, and been accused of being too posh. ‘Well, I always find it staggering that people think I’m a jumped-up posh twat, as I’m middle-class and from Sheffield.’ Has it ever annoyed him? ‘It did. But I quickly realised people have a lot worse things to worry about than being pigeonholed as a public schoolboy,’ he says. ‘It’s up to the actor to show your talent is bigger than that. And being typecast as an Etonian is no worse than being typecast as something else. Even though I have never played an Etonian.’ Indeed, his breakthrough role — as the brilliant maverick cop Jimmy McNulty on the seminal HBO drama The Wire from 2002-2008 — couldn’t have been further away from that stereotype. Despite roles alongside the likes of Julianne Moore (in Surviving Picasso), Michelle Pfeiffer (A Midsummer Night’s Dream) and Julia Roberts (Mona Lisa Smile), it was The Wire, followed by leading parts in period drama The Hour and as Fred West in Appropriate Adult, for which he won a Bafta, that made him a star. The Affair has been renewed for a fourth series and The Square, an art world satire in which he stars opposite Elisabeth Moss, recently picked up the Palme d’Or at Cannes. Next year he’ll be seen alongside Oscar-

21.07.17 es magazine 15

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George Clooney at Cannes last year

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“We had so many bonking scenes in The Affair that there was always a battle between us over who was going to go on top” know the way one sees oneself is at times in contrast to the reality.’ Perhaps West is being too modest. After all, he says he does still get wolf-whistled, which he describes as ‘wonderful. It’s The Affair of course, I won’t take the credit. The breadth of people who are into it is staggering. We were filming in New York recently and this bunch of doddery 70-year-olds streamed past us and one of them shouted, “Keep it up!” It’s amazing what the older generation get up to in those nursing homes nowadays with Viagra and a bit of dirty telly. If I’m relieving the boredom, I’m glad I can help out.’ Jonathan Heaf is features director of ‘GQ’

Rex; Alamy; Getty

winning Alicia Vikander in the hotly anticipated reboot of Tomb Raider. I tell West I was surprised that Tomb Raider had been green lit for a reboot; and gobsmacked when it attracted such acting West and his talent as Vikander and himself. For most wife, Catherine the video game turned movie franchise Fitzgerald conjures up images of a cartoonishly sexualised Angelina Jolie, the augmented breasts, hot pants and ponytail like a bull whip — all very Loaded magazine. ‘Well I was wondering about that before we began filming,’ agrees West. ‘They have definitely modernised it — Alicia doesn’t have ludicrously pumped-up breasts. It’s not so chauvinistic, which may come as a disappointment to some…’ The film sees Vikander play Lara Croft ‘before she becomes the Tomb Raider as we all has four children with film producer know her. She’s a bike courier with Bruce Catherine Fitzgerald, a woman he dated Wayne tendencies. It’s the origin story. I have at university then fell in love with all over to say when I found this out I said, “Well again after a break. He also has a daughter, maybe she gets a big pair of boobs from her Martha, from a previous relationship with dad on her 21st birthday?’’’ West’s deep laughPolly Astor (the daughter of the late Tory MP ter fills the room. ‘No, no I’m going to get into Michael Astor). trouble. Alicia was never going to take the job Though he says being in his 40s is ‘much if it was all tits and hot pants. So this Tomb better’ than being in his 20s (‘you have more Raider is cool rather than being objectified.’ money for a start’), he admits his slight West doesn’t play the romantic lead but panic at the sort of roles he’s being offered. Croft’s father. It’s the second time he has been ‘Next up I am playing Keira Knightley’s huscast as Vikander’s dad, also appearing in band [in Colette]. Great, I thought, a chance Testament of Youth. Does it prick his ego when for my youthful, leading man swagger to he’s not cast as the heroic come back a bit. I lover? ‘Yes it hurts. It does went to the costume and anyone who says it department expectdoesn’t is lying. Although ing to get something it’s a great privilege that snappy and I was fitsomeone as beautiful as ted for a fat suit and Alicia should be descended a bald cap. I thought, from me.’ Off screen, he “How unfair”. You West with Julia Roberts, Amal and

New Wolds order Once the Cotswolds was all muddy wellies and kitchen suppers — but an influx of glamorous new arrivals is shaking things up. Charlotte Edwardes decodes the shifting power dynamics in London’s honorary borough

ucked away on a back lane the approximate width of a Range Rover and a half is the unassuming gate to Elisabeth Murdoch’s farm. Also on the property is an enormous purpose-built party barn almost as big as Westminster Hall. Here, this we eke n d , g ue s t s w i l l converge from all over the Cotswolds — an area that is to Gloucestershire and Oxfordshire what Kurdish territory is to Iraq and Syria — to celebrate her wedding to the artist Keith Tyson. What is interesting is not the bash itself — although if her £500,000 New Year’s party is anything to go by it will be a monster with Diptyque candles the size of buckets — but the tribes in assembly. This is one of those rare occasions (like the Cornbury Festival on the Great Tew Estate) where representatives from across the adjoining counties will congregate like sultans in the pre-war Arabian desert. It’s where the shifting spheres of power can be read broadly in terms of who has the biggest parties and the most influential friends. Murdoch’s ‘party barn’ has on other evenings hosted David and Samantha Cameron, Rebekah Brooks, David Baddiel, Charles and Celia Dunstone, Tessa Jowell and her husband David Mills, Eric Fellner, Hugh Grant, Jimmy Carr and TV presenter Richard Bacon to name a few. Somehow the industries of politics, media, business, film, art and fashion can co-exist under the spell of a thumping DJ with cocktails on tap. But it’s a mistake to lump this lot under the catch-all banner The Chipping Norton Set. These party barns are actually diplomatic tents. And as the Cotswolds

swells in popularity, so it absorbs more of west London, so the tribes subdivide. On Friday evenings Range Rovers stretch the length of the M40, now dubbed ‘the west London Princess Olympia of Greece and corridor’, to this patch of a friend at her 21st birthday England 2 5 miles across and 75 miles long. ‘It used to be proper countryside,’ grumbles one early settler. ‘Now it is a suburb of London.’ Indeed. David and Victoria Beckham have joined the ranks of weekend migrants, buying a £6.15m ‘barn’ on the Great Tew Estate from Nicholas Johnston — a school friend of David Cameron. It’s a far cry Elisabeth Murdoch from Beckingham Palace in 1999. ‘You’d and Keith struggle to call it a mansion,’ says a local Tyson Kate Moss out in resident. ‘It’s an ordinary, medium-sized the Cotswolds with farmhouse’ not far from Soho Farmhouse, her dog Archie created by Nick Jones of Soho House where log cabins have bicycles and wellies parked outside, converted milk floats ferry around guests and where there are two ‘massive’ party barns.

21.07.17 es magazine 19

More recently Crown Prince Pavlos of Greece threw a party for his 50th and his daughter Olympia’s 21st up the road in Farmington. The event was so ostentatious and royalty-flecked that when pictures appeared on Instagram at a time of poverty marches in London and economic meltdown in Greece, it was compared to the

excesses of Marie Antoinette. King Felipe of Spain joined the Queen of the Netherlands, Princess Michael of Kent, Paris Hilton and her sister Nicky Rothschild, Valentino Garavani and India Hicks (who concealed her nudity with a body painted shirt). Without irony, ‘revolution’ was the dress code and Princess Olympia

David Beckham Tom Hollander

The Bamfords

Crown Prince Pavlos of Greece

Soho Farmhouse

Daylesford Farm David Cameron

Jeremy Clarkson

• •

Alex James

Farmington

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•

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Kiddington Hall

Jemima Khan

Blenheim Blenheim Palace Palace

•

Simon Kelner

Rebekah and Charlie Brooks

Kate Moss

Rosemary Ferguson and Jake Chapman

Elisabeth Murdoch

Matthew Freud

21.07.17 ES MAGAZINE 21

Noel Gallagher’s 50th birthday party at Aynhoe Park

Queen Máxima of the Netherlands, Valentino and Crown Princess Marie-Chantal of Greece

From left, Eugenie Ora Niarchos, Lauren Santo Domingo, Bianca Brandolini d’Adda, Poppy Delevingne and Princess Olympia at her 21st

Madonna, Bono and Stella McCartney at Noel Gallagher’s 50th

Matthew Freud and Jony Ive

22 es magazine 21.07.17

wore £640 Gucci trainers with a couture gown. The extravaganza near-eclipsed ‘probably the most incredible party that’s been held in the Cotswolds ever’, two months earlier. That was Apple chief designer Sir Jony Ive’s 50th birthday party thrown by Matthew Freud, which had U2, Jools Holland and Lily Allen playing live and novel features such as ‘make your own spin painting’ which could then be verified by Damien Hirst. Speeches were made by everyone from Ben Stiller via satellite link to Stephen Fry and Noel Gallagher — it ‘set a new benchmark in the arms race to throw the most extreme party for miles’. It was pure Freud in that his guest lists tend to include a changing cast of characters, from Hollywood A-listers to game show hosts to Gordon Brown the former Prime Minister. (Fortunately for Ive there was no Instagramming and therefore no backlash.) A few weeks later Noel Gallagher ventured up to the Cotswolds to have his storming 50th up the road in Aynhoe Park rather than in London. So where does the flashy Cotswolds scene fit in with the older, scruffier Chipping Norton one? And how as innocent Londoners are we supposed to navigate the complex social networks? In a tired voice, one long-term resident explains. ‘This is going to sound ridiculous but there are two sides to Chipping Norton, and it’s a bit like north and south of the river in London.’ Murdoch, like her ex-husband Matthew Freud, lives near Burford, which ‘might as well be France’ to those in Chipping Norton. Pavlos of Greece, meanwhile, is in Farmington, ‘a totally different town. It’s like putting Chelmsford in with Guilford’. In the middle is Kingham, home of Lord Bamford of the JCB family, and his wife Carole, founder of Daylesford organics. ‘You can’t lump the Cotswolds in with each

other. You can’t say, “Right, there you are, there’s the Cotswolds and it’s presided over by Matthew Freud,” because it isn’t. Matthew is Burford. That’s 11 miles away for f***’s sake.’ The Chipping Norton Set, as they were known, are east. Once the centre of the political universe, their houses were a brisk walk over a couple of fields from each other. David Cameron, the most important man in politics, and Rebekah Brooks, the most powerful woman in the media, enjoyed — we learned — ‘kitchen suppers’, presumably roasted in an Aga and sloshed down with a couple of bottles of Burgundy. Meanwhile — we imagined — Jeremy Clarkson and Sam Cam smoked fags and flicked between Holby City and House of Cards on the telly. It always sounded oddly cosy for what was supposed to be an intriguing power nexus. Up the road fellow ‘Set’ member Alex James from Blur was making cheese and boring Radio 4 programmes, and throwing raves with Charlotte Tilbury in his party barn. This all still goes on, I’m assured — people ‘popping round to each others houses to eat sandwiches and sausage rolls’ — but, despite counting billionaire businessman Tony Gallagher in their number (he owns Sarsden Estate and hosted Cameron’s 50th birthday party), the Chipping Norton Set are emphatically ‘not flashy’. Nor are they the star attraction any longer.

“it’s a mistake to lump this lot under the catch-all banner The Chipping Norton Set. These party barns are actually diplomatic tents” ‘Put simply,’ says the old-timer, ‘everyone in the Cotswolds drives a Range Rover. But there are those with green Range Rovers with muddy back seats covered in dog hair and those with shiny black Range Rovers that are parked if the traffic is bad in favour of a helicopter. The little group that live in one end are perfectly happy with their lives and there’s all that other flash stuff at the other end.’ One lot are ‘hunting, shooting, fishing’, the other ‘pouting, shopping, tanning’. ‘They tend to come up for

The centre of Burford

Getty; Alamy; Rex; Instagram

The Swan pub in Ascott-under-Wychwood

the weekend, go to Soho Farmouse, go swimming, look out of the corner of their eyes to see how thin the person on the next bed is,’ explains a resident. ‘Then they compete to see who can eat the smallest amount of food and then just go back to London. It’s not like tucking in to a f***ing great roasting pig outdoors or whatever.’ In the week, adds another resident, the Farmhouse is full of ‘London graduate sexy mummies feeding their kids when they can’t “be arsed” to cook’. To confuse matters there are many groups and subgroups in between, cross-pollinating and trading in different currencies (one is ‘power’, I’m told; another is ‘connections’; another still is ‘taste’). Elisabeth Murdoch’s crowd incorporates big money and media: she is friendly with Charles Dunstone and his wife Celia (who went on her hen night) as well as Brooks and her husband Charlie; who in turn overlaps into the horsey, hunting, Chipping Norton scene along with his eccentric sister Annabel Brooks. Murdoch also straddles the ‘creatives’ — artists, actors, architects, writers and film-makers that span a sweep of territory in the east: actor Tom Hollander, architect Tom Bartlett, artist Johnny Yeo, as well as Working Title founder Eric Fellner and his partner Laura Bailey. Elsewhere in the area are Jemima Khan and journalist Simon Kelner, the philosopher Alain de Botton, film-maker Nick Love and writer Alice Brudenell-Bruce. What about Kate Moss? ‘She has the best party weekends,’ says a former guest, who lists Rita Ora, Kyle De’Volle and Rosemary Ferguson (who lives with her husband, artist Jake Chapman, only a few miles from Moss) as fellow attendees. But as far as locals are concerned, ‘Kate Moss lives miles away. I’ve never encountered her in the country, I only ever see her in London. Same as everyone else.’ The younger scene, a more Tatler tribe described as ‘cool not cash’, orbits around the pubs. Among them are Charlie Crossley and his florist wife Willow, who own The Swan in Ascott-

under-Wychwood and the Bull Inn in Charlbury. Chloe Delevingne has her sisters Poppy and Cara to stay and the artist and photographer Nadav Kander is believed to stay in Great Tew. The history of the long march from London into the Cotswolds started with a fashion for renting cottages on the three great estates — Great Tew (owned by the Johnstons), Blenheim (owned by the Marlboroughs) and, later, Sarsden (owned by Tony Gallagher). ‘And then their friends started to venture up to have Sunday lunch with the very, very few people who actually lived here,’ explains one resident. ‘And they thought, “God they’ve got electricity and water and they haven’t got scurvy, so we could actually live here. And it’s only an hour from London” — their bit of London. So more and more and more people started moving there.’ Freud and Murdoch were among these early pioneers, renting from Sunny Marlborough (they even married at Blenheim, before moving to Burford), as was Simon Kelner before he ‘bravely’ moved to Woodstock. ‘And then once everyone started writing about the Chipping Norton Set, everyone wanted a piece of the action. Even Amanda Holden tried to get in.’ Demand became so strong there were waiting lists for the smallest hut and hovel. To say the Chipping Norton Set are ‘relieved’ that the heat of the spotlight has swivelled on to new money is an understatement. But there are drawbacks to the arrival of the new, more glamorous scene.

Alice Brudenell-Bruce and Nick Love

“Matthew Freud’s party for Apple chief designer Jony Ive’s 50th birthday ‘set a new benchmark in the arms race to throw the most extreme party for miles” ‘It used to feel very much like the countryside. When you go through that cut on the M40, the cut that you see in the credits of The Vicar of Dibley, an amazing view reveals itself. You always felt that you’d left the home counties and you were in the proper countryside. But now it’s just a funnel for Range Rovers. It’s almost as if Notting Hill has absorbed the Cotswolds.’ Perhaps the final comment should come from one observer who has been a long-time regular at Cotswolds events. ‘I think what we’ve seen is the creation of a British version of the Hamptons. It’s all very Gatsby-ish. It’s where fashionable London wants to be seen at play. Everyone vies to own the swankiest estates and throw the most lavish parties. They say they want privacy, but actually they want everyone to know how special they are, how charmed their lives are. In a way it’s a product of the 25 years of City boom we’ve witnessed. I wonder whether it will survive the ice chill of perennial Brexit.’

21.07.17 es magazine 23

MOLLY GODDARD top, £295; trousers, £220, both at Dover Street Market (020 7518 0680). Jewellery, Aboah’s own

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gurl power She’s the west London model whose drug abuse left her suicidal. Now Adwoa Aboah is teaming up with Coach to help young women fulfil their potential. She talks to Hamish MacBain about rehab, conquering the catwalks, and her BFF Cara Delevingne

PhotographS BY Steph Wilson stylED BY Jenny Kennedy

n a swelteringly hot summer’s day in the gardens of Chiswick House, Adwoa Aboah and I are sitting outside the café. Dressed in a white oversized men’s shirt, black sunglasses and battered Reebok Classics, she sips bottled water and smokes Camel Lights (‘Do you mind?’): the latter, given that she has now been drink- and drug-free for almost two years, being the last vice that she has left. Sobriety, of course — and talking about sobriety in the context of all the other issues she has faced — is now a big part of Aboah’s life. Because as much as being a successful model who has walked a huge number of high-profile shows, appeared in campaigns for the likes of Calvin Klein and Marc Jacobs and who in March featured on the diversity-celebrating ‘Women Rule!’ cover of US Vogue (alongside Gigi Hadid, Kendall Jenner and Ashley Graham), she is now just as well known for Gurls Talk, the online platform she founded to encourage girls to open up about mental health, body image, addiction, sexuality and ‘just whatever we want’. This, she says, is now her primary focus. ‘When I first talked about my mental health and my addiction background it was a massive responsibility,’ she continues, in a deep, world-weary voice that belies her 25 years. ‘I was like, “Okay, if I’m going to do this, then this is a journey.” I can’t just put a foot in and then be like, “I’ve done my work.” This is what I’m going to have to do.’ Aboah has kept this promise to herself. On the first of this month, she put on a free, one-day Gurls Talk festival in London. A collaboration with Coach — ‘I’ve known Adwoa for many years and we’ve also worked together lots so it felt very natural,’ says executive creative director, Stuart Vevers — it saw more than 700 young women turn up for a day of talks, workshops and pop-

ups, and was the culmination of ‘a year and a half’s work’. Sporadically, too, she has been going into schools talking directly to girls of the age she was when her own troubles started. ‘We get a lot of girls writing in and asking if I’ll come and speak at their school and that’s where I want Gurls Talk to be. When we get to a place where we’ve done our groundwork, I’d love it to be part of the academic curriculum, so [schools] have to give an hour out of their week where someone comes in and talks from a place of experience.’ It was when Aboah first talked of her own experience that she really captured her generation’s imagination. The video she made in April last year for StyleLikeU’s What’s Underneath Project — in which subjects remove their clothes while describing their own personal battles — still seems superhumanly brave. ‘I’d only ever talked about it in front of my parents or my doctor,’ she says, ‘so to be talking about it with strangers was cathartic and amazing. But I think I blocked it out. It came out and I went, “Wow, okay… my life is out there.” I mean it was quite scary… but it was amazing, the response that I got.’ The story that Aboah told, her true story, goes like this. She was born in west London in 1992: not far at all, in fact, from Grenfell Tower. ‘I flew from the US that day. I landed that evening and it happened that night,’ she says. ‘[My family] knows everyone: those people in that Moroccan shop we know, the people in the corner shop we know. It’s this amazing, beautiful community and then this has happened. We might not know the people personally but, say, the person you buy your electronics off: their uncle’s died. It’s just so close to home, and it’s awful, and it makes you so angry because it’s something that shouldn’t have happened. But the way in which everyone’s pulled together is amazing.’ Her parents were ensconced in the fashion industry: her mother, Camilla Lowther, the founder of highly

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COACH jumper, £625; skirt, £375; sandals, £275 (uk.coach.com)

PREEN BY THORNTON BREGAZZI blouse, £490; skirt, £665 (preenby thorntonbregazzi.com). COACH sandals, £275; socks, POA (uk.coach.com)

regarded creative agency CLM (which represents the likes of Rankin, Katie Grand and Juergen Teller), her father, Charles Aboah, the head of a location scouting company. They knew everyone, though ‘my mum never put those fashion ideals into the house. I didn’t wear make-up and I had my hair all frizzy’. She went to private school at the Harrodian in Barnes, which she describes as ‘a very sweet school. I had lovely friends. It’s a lot different now, but I went when it was, like, portacabins and really sweet families.’ She says that she just remembers ‘being very happy and at ease about life and everything that was coming my way at that time.’ Her problems began when she started, aged 13, as a boarder at Millfield School near Glastonbury. ‘My parents sent me there because they wanted me to do sports and they wanted me to do activities, and I’m grateful to them for that,’ she says, ‘but I looked a lot different to all the other girls: everyone was blonde and blue-eyed.’ At Millfield, she continues, ‘it was, “This is how you dress. This is how you do your hair, and you put loads of foundation on and wear high heels.” And I was like, “F***, I don’t even know how to be this person.”’ Even being scouted on the street ‘a few times, when I was like 15-ish’, didn’t help her confidence. ‘I felt very unattractive at that school. I based my worth on how

26 es magazine 21.07.17

many boys fancied me. And even though back in London my parents’ friends were like, “Oh your daughter’s so beautiful, would she like to model?” that didn’t matter. It was the kids, and the boys, and the fact that I didn’t have blonde hair. That’s all that mattered to me.’ It was at this point that her experimentation with drugs began. She smoked her first spliff at the nearby house of a day girl on her 14th birthday. As a first-time attendee at Glastonbury in 2008 — a mere 20 minutes down the road from her school — she took ecstasy for the first time. She tried but ultimately ‘wasn’t into’ cocaine. She did a lot of mephedrone, which in 2009-10 was briefly semi-legally available by mail order in the UK, but it was ketamine that she really fell for. Aboah stresses that she ‘never felt peer pressure to do anything. I think there can be an assumption that when you’re growing up you go, “Oh everyone else is doing it, I should do it.” No. I wanted to take drugs, I wanted to drink, I wanted to stay out all night.’ She says, for example, that at first she ‘loved how comfortable’ that first pill made her feel, and of ketamine that she liked ‘that oblivion, that quietness that you get with all the stuff up here’. She taps her head. ‘That’s what I wanted all the time, and that’s why it just got more and

“I wanted to take drugs, I wanted to drink, I wanted to stay out all night”

COACH jumper, £625; skirt, £375; sandals, £275 (uk.coach.com)

PREEN BY THORNTON BREGAZZI blouse, £490; skirt, £665 (preenby thorntonbregazzi.com). COACH sandals, £275; socks, POA (uk.coach.com)

26 es magazine 21.07.17

“I wanted to take drugs, I wanted to drink, I wanted to stay out all night”

COACH dress, £625; collar, POA; sandals, £275 (uk.coach.com)

PREEN BY THORNTON BREGAZZI coat, £4,160 (preenbythornton bregazzi.com). COACH dress, £775; bag, £150 (uk.coach.com) Hair by Johnnie Biles at Frank Agency using Bumble and Bumble. Make-up by Celia Burton using CHANEL Travel Diary and Le Lift Skin Recovery Sleep Mask. Nails by Sabrina Gayle at The Wall Group using YSL Beauty. Fashion assistants: Eniola Dare and Amanda Emme. Photographer’s assistant: Alice Bullough Location provided courtesy of Chiswick House. Gardens and café open year round; Chiswick House open April to September (chiswickhouse andgardens.org.uk)

“I like to remember where I was and where I am now. I could have very easily not been here” more and more and more, until it was just dark and depressing, and very insular.’ Her usage only escalated as she began studying drama at Brunel University, culminating in her arrival home after a Glastonbury binge in 2014: so bad that her parents sent her off to a place in Arizona called Cottonwood, an addiction rehab and behavioural health treatment centre. When she got back to London she was installed in a South Kensington halfway house called Start2Stop, but by her own (retrospective) admission, wasn’t ready. She overdosed almost immediately ‘because I just didn’t want to take anyone’s advice. I was like, “No, I can go back to university, I can do this, I can do that, I can live in London, I can hang out with the same people and do all those things right now.”’ It was at this point, while staying at Start2Stop, that she took another, this time deliberate, overdose and tried to kill herself. She remembers the date: 3 October 2015. ‘In a weird way it’s like a birthday for me. I like to remember where I was and where I am now. It’s not something I’m going to forget. I could have very easily not been here, so I feel like it’s respectful to remember.’ Almost two years on, things are much better for Aboah. She has gone through more successful treatment. She spent time away with her family, including a road trip across the US with her two-years-younger sister, Kesewa. She describes the fact that she made it through Glastonbury last summer completely sober as ‘such a breakthrough.’ And now she just wants to focus on work. Happily, sobriety has coincided with her modelling career really taking off, with 2017 thus far feeling very much like her year. She’s already extremely wellconnected: her Instagram featuring photos of her with Edie Campbell, Lily James and Lily Donaldson, Zoe Kravitz (‘photo by Mr Frank Ocean’), Jourdan Dunn

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and of course Cara Delevingne, who she has known for a decade and with whom she is particularly close (the pair have matching half-heart tattoos). If she baulks at the idea of fame on the level of her long-time friend — ‘I mean it is mental; I’ve been there from before she was famous to when it boomed up and just got more and more. But she’s kept grounded and amazing and the same’ — then she is happy to use whatever attention does come her way for good. As well as Gurls Talk, she speaks out constantly on the issue of diversity in fashion, which she says is ‘not even close to where it should be. The industry is still very lazy in terms of casting and is not looking outside the box. Diversity can’t be a fashionable thing: it should be here to stay.’ She is, however, optimistic about Edward Enninful’s arrival at Vogue and the impact that will have. ‘I didn’t even think about it when everyone was like, “The first male, black editor of Vogue!” It’s more just: “It’s Edward Enninful. Have you seen what he’s done?”’ Since February, she has been based in Brooklyn, which she likes because she feels the same sense of community as she does in Westbourne Park. ‘I like that the kids play outside of my door,’ she says. ‘I really, really need community. I’m a Taurus, I need a home.’ Having split from her boyfriend of six years, photographer Tyrone Lebon, last October, she has for three months been seeing a ‘really handsome’ guy that she’s known ‘for ages’ from London named Riccardo Ambrosio, now a student at NYU, who she bumped into again during her first few days in New York for Fashion Week. ‘I don’t know how it’s got to this place,’ she smiles. ‘It just did. I’m happy.’ Adwoa Aboah wears Coach 1941 Fall 2017 collection, available in store and at uk.coach.com from 1 September. (gurlstalk.com)

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COACH dress, £625; collar, POA; sandals, £275 (uk.coach.com)

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beauty by katie service

mind the bump The best natural solutions for stretch marks, morning sickness and hormonal skin

Paper from GF Smith

From top, MAMA MIO Pregnancy Boob Tube bust cream from the Pregnancy Saviours Kit, £48.50 (mioskincare.co.uk). COWSHED Udderly Gorgeous stretch mark oil, £18 (cowshedonline.com). BLOOM AND BLOSSOM anti stretch mark oil, £24 (bloomand blossom.com). MYRTLE & MAUDE Bon-Bons with natural peppermint oil from the Mum-to-Be Pregnancy Pack, £24 (myrtleandmaude.com). BURT’S BEES Mama Bee nourishing body oil, £9.99 (burtsbees.co.uk)

PHOTOGRAPH BY AMY CURRELL STYLED BY LILY WORCESTER

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beauty

You beauty!

ON THE SOAPBOX

YouTube’s most glamorous vlogger Lisa Eldridge on the latest make-up innovations

s a make-up artist I am fascinated with cosmetic science. It’s the new rock’n’roll, as I like to say. The two main hubs of innovation are Asia, specifically Korea and Taiwan, and now the West Coast of America, where cosmetic scientists are working with Silicon Valley tech companies to produce some really exciting products. Here are a few of the trends I’m picking up on.

Apps. I recently helped develop an app in China called MakeupPlus that more than 100 million people have downloaded. It uses 3D facial scanning so that users can virtually try a make-up look I have created. Because it uses 250 facial recognition points, the resulting image actually looks like real make-up and not an artificial filter. Water-based eyeliner. These have a much quicker ‘flash off’ (beauty speak for drying time), meaning you don’t have to wait for ages for it to set. The new Lancôme one also has a Korean-inspired bendable wand so that you can access Lancôme the inner corners of the eyes more easily. Grandiôse Liner in saphir Sheet masks. At Cosmoprof Asia mirifique, £25 (the global beauty trade fair) I (lancome.co.uk) saw masks specifically targeting the jawline and lips, bioaqua hydrating and intelligent lip mask, £3.50, at masks that deliver thisisbeautymart.com different ingredients to different areas of the face.

Annabel Rivkin pumps up the volume

Josh Shinner; Jean-Philippe Woodland

Headspace

Yogis have long known the benefit of meditation after exercise, giving the body time to reboot. For the uninitiated, luxe Kensington gym Equinox has recorded four free meditation podcasts for Londoners who want to give meditation a go post-workout. (equinox.com)

WATCH: Our beauty editor @katieservicebeauty complete the #redlipchallenge with @lisaeldridgemakeup on Instagram @eveningstandardmagazine

have stumbled across a miracle worker and it would be a dereliction of duty not to tell you about it so — if you have fine hair — prepare to be thrilled. Fine hair is a bane. A nuisance. A misery. Particularly when it’s a bit kinky, which doesn’t mean, ‘Oh, lucky you with your natural wave.’ It means, ‘Oh, poor you with your three strands of string dripping in different directions.’ Volumising products are all fine and good as a base (Aveda Thickening Tonic is by far the best, in my mind) but styling is horribly hit and miss. So, the other day I was slightly backcombing my silky clean hair and I grabbed what I thought was hairspray to give it some muscle and hold, whacking it on at the roots and all through the length. Suddenly my hair was doing exactly what I wanted it to do. This never happens. In a happy accident, it turns out the can I was wielding wasn’t hairspray after all but Ouai Dry Shampoo. It is completely undetectable (no powdery effect) apart from the amazing scent; Italian lemon, rose de mai, magnolia, amber and white musk. But what it did, more than any hairspray, was add grit. And, for fine hair, grit translates as body. Usually I can bouffe all I want, only for it to flop after an hour or so — particularly in hot or humid weather. But this was long-lasting and you can’t really go over the top with it: it never gets sticky. It is obviously too expensive for a dry shampoo. But if you reframe it as a life-saver for date nights, big meetings, high-pressure situations, then your £20 becomes less painful to part with. Ouai Dry Shampoo, £20, at selfridges.com

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feast

grace & flavour Grace Dent is left cold by hotly anticipated new Taiwanese opening, Xu

“The place rocked with foodietypes, super-aloof music industry sorts and even Alan Yau of Park Chinois and Hakkasan pedigree”

Ambience food

Jonny Cochrane; illustration by Jonathan Calugi @ Machas; Carol Sachs

few of the 200 or so restaurants that plop annually on to London’s landscape arrive fully pre-imbued with hotness. They ping to life festooned with praise, laden with influencer-driven merry piffle, often before the stoves have been fitted. Xu, a Taiwanese 1930s-style restaurant/teahouse on Rupert Street, is such an arrival. I could explain how buzz starts buzzing — the culprits involved, the phrases that pay and so on — but I’d need at least three hours, an A2 flip chart, several Sharpies, an intense spider diagram and 5g of Valium afterwards just to take the edge off. Suffice to say, the thing you need to know for now is, Xu is pronounced ‘sheuuuu’. Not zoo. Not Sue. Pronounce it in a manner that suggests it’s utterly commonplace to pop in for tiny lunchtime foie gras terrine ‘gold coins’ embossed with a layer of Shaoxing wine jelly, a terrine of wobbly, glistening, numbing beef tendon. ‘Hang on,’ you’re thinking. ‘Isn’t this a restaurant by Erchen Chang, Shing Tat Chung and Wai Ting Chung? The lovely Bao people who serve those nice, fluffy buns that foodland filled up Instagram with for months, bellowing “Get in my mouth” and “This just happened. Nommity nom nom?”’ Yes, the same folk. But Xu is fresh ground. It’s backwards-looking progress. The buns are gone, the gloves are off. Xu is a rather gorgeous, slightly peculiar, cramped yet characterful, wood-panelled, Wes Anderson-style reinterpretation of yesteryear Taipei. Tea is available, but the cocktails are serious. Try a Daiga, a tiny, fearsome, delicious sipping glass of amontillado sherry, cognac, Chinese mushroom and liquorice root. I guarantee

xu 30 Rupert Street, Soho, W1 (xulondon.com)

Beef tendon

£5.50

Gold coins

£5.50

Lotus crisps

£2

Fried chicken wing

£6

Taro dumpling

Seabass

Kale lap yuk

£5.50

Lard rice

£3.50

Ma lai cake

£6.50

Glasses of Peter Lauer

Diaga

£9

Tamshui

£11

Total

£5.50 £16.50

£16

£92.50

the world will feel better within two tiny mouthfuls. ‘Xu was a free spirited, charismatic gentleman, a journalist,’ a footnote on the single sheet papery throwaway menu reads, describing Erchen Chang’s grandfather. Xu even has Mahjong rooms for hire. It’s not often a restaurant inspires you to take up a hobby, but then almost everything about Xu makes my heart thump at its chutzpah. The set-up is undoubtedly a huge labour of love for the owners. Insulting it would feel like slapping their faces. On the lunchtime I ate there, the place rocked with foodie-types, families, super-aloof music industry sorts and even Alan Yau of Park Chinois and Hakkasan pedigree. At this juncture I should say I wish I’d loved the food more than I did. I adored the peanut lotus crisps in slightly damp chilli peanut powder and a winter melon syrup. The foie gras ‘gold coin’ was a slightly soggy, somewhat underwhelming affair. More of a test than a treat. Three rather chewy Taiwanese sausage taro dumplings arrived in a puddle of green kow choi chilli dressing. I ate one and donated the others to my companion. The numbing tendon terrine was certainly hot and numbing, but not to my taste wholly enjoyable. It was here I started to fret that perhaps our meal more broadly was not going to be ‘to my taste’, but instead to the taste of someone who hankers for their grilled seabass fillet to come covered entirely in a two-tone red and green pickled chilli, sitting in a pool of bone sauce and grilled bone vinegar. The dish was pretty but wet without much texture. A bowl of kale and lap yuk (soy cured pork) was inoffensive. Lardo and lard onion rice was neither decadent nor massively memorable. The ma lai warm sponge cake is a simple steamed brown sugar affair, which arrived with condensed milk and orange butterscotch sauce. Xu is both one of the most important openings of 2017 and at the same time disappointing. That’s the London food scene for you. I never said anything was straightforward.

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feast

tart london Jemima Jones and Lucy Carr-Ellison

slow cook butterflied shoulder of lamb

Easy like Sunday morning: baby Eliza enjoys the day’s most important meal

Jemima Jones (left) and Lucy Carr-Ellison

Josh Shinner

he flavours in this marinade are a bit of a global fusion, mixing Middle Eastern cumin and pomegranate molasses with traditional British herbs such as rosemary and bay leaves. It is the perfect marinade for lamb and would also work well with cuts like the leg, shank or rack. Given our changeable English weather we chose to slow cook this recipe in the oven, but you could easily cook it on the barbecue, which would enhance the flavour. Butterflied simply means the shoulder bone is removed from the lamb, leaving a flat piece of meat. It’s a brilliant way of cooking for numbers, as it’s simpler to prepare and is much easier to carve. The shoulder is a cheaper cut of meat that is usually used for hearty, warming dishes in the winter months. But slow cooking makes the meat so deliciously tender that there’s no reason not to use it in the summer months, before tearing up the amazingly soft meat and tossing through a salad. We often serve this on photo shoots. It’s a favourite of Tim Walker, who, as well as being one of the most acclaimed photographers around, has always been really kind and supportive of us, so we always think of him when making it. If you do want to give this a go on the barbecue, there’s no need to bother with the salad. As soon as it is meltingly tender, simply tuck in to buns with good barbecue sauce, crunchy coleslaw and lashings of mustard. It’s a lovely alternative to pulled pork.

Serves 5

Butterflied shoulder of lamb salad

850g shoulder of lamb, de-boned

Mix the marinade ingredients together (except for the wine) and pour over the lamb. Leave for at least 3 hours, or overnight, in the fridge. Heat the oven to 170C. Place the lamb in a roasting tin, pour over the white wine and cover with tin foil. Cook for 3.5 hours, removing the tin foil halfway through cooking. Remove from the oven and leave to rest for 20 minutes. Use two forks to shred the meat, turning it about in all its delicious juices. Plunge the peas into a bowl of boiling water for 30 seconds, then drain. Arrange the salad leaves on a platter with the peas, then scatter over the lamb, feta, pomegranate seeds, mint and spring onions. Whisk together the olive oil, lemon, honey and salt and pepper and drizzle over.

For the marinade 3 garlic cloves, finely sliced 50ml pomegranate molasses 1 tbsp honey 3 tbsp olive oil 2 tsp ground coriander 2 tsp ground cumin 2 sprigs rosemary 4 bay leaves 1 large glass of white wine For the salad 150g fresh peas Handful of crunchy salad leaves 100g feta, crumbled 100g pomegranate seeds Bunch of mint, woody stems removed 4 spring onions, sliced For the dressing 3 tbsp olive oil Juice of 1 lemon Squeeze of honey Salt and pepper

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FEAST Sounds like DREAM SPIRITS

In the MIX

Spritland sports custom-built speakers by Living Voice

words BY Frankie m c coy

Banging tunes and top-notch booze don’t have to be mutually exclusive when planning your Friday night. There’s a new generation of cocktail bars in which the quality of the liquor is matched by the quality of the sound system pumping stellar tracks from top London DJs, with music buffs and cocktail snobs clinking glasses until the wee hours. Here’s where to get your boozed-up beats. The decks at Brilliant Corners

Jonny Cochrane; Alamy; glassware available at waterford.co.uk

Brilliant Corners

‘T Spiritland Dodge the snaking Dishoom queue in King’s Cross and dive into Spiritland, which describes itself as ‘London’s first listening bar’. ‘You need great drinks to accompany the music and vice versa,’ says founder Paul Noble. That great music consists of resident and guest DJs (Andrew Weatherall and Hot Chip have both turned up) and an astonishing set of speakers, custom-built by super luxe Living Voice. ‘We’re in pursuit of excellence and creating the best listening experience in the world,’ says Noble. A haunt for audiophiles who don’t want to dance in Fabric but do want delicious drinks, such as sweetly herbal Queen of Hills: East London dry gin, Darjeeling tea liqueur, grapefruit, elderflower and hops. (spiritland.com)

Since brothers Amit and Aneesh Patel Behind This Wall opened the tiny Behind This Wall is designed to be ‘a bit like Brilliant Corners on being in your mate’s living room’, according the carswept, dingy to co-founder Alex Harris. If, that is, your Kingsland Road in mate happened to have a one-deck vintage Dalston in 2013, the Tannoy Gold sound system, an oyster happy bar — influenced by Japanese kissaten (coffee hour and innovative drinks such as the ‘no shops cum jazz bars) — has gained legendary poblano’: a mad Mexican concoction of status among music fans. This is partly due pisco, absinthe, chilli, honey, salt water, to the Klipschorn speakers pumping out molé and hellfire bitters. ‘We really wanted genre-spanning tunes; partly its impromptu to make the aural part of the environment parties, the most recent of which saw James as important as the design: to match it,’ Murphy debut the forthcoming LCD Harris says. He and his co-founders (who Soundsystem album to a crowd including all hail from legendary clubs such as Plastic Jude Law and Jarvis Cocker; and also People) were ‘sick of DJ bars where the because of the food and drinks — fantastic jockey would be living in the headphone mix octopus sashimi, three types of and not concerned for the punters in the mescal, six types of sake, a space’. Instead, pals like Aaron DJs regularly spin from the bar at Behind This Wall dangerously excellent Coultate share their favourite Tommy’s margarita records and have a few strong and orange wines pilars (rum, red vermouth, by the gallon. kombucha, dried lime (brilliantcorners syrup and hibiscus flower). london.co.uk) (behindthiswall.com)

Douglas Blyde finds the soul of Metaxa rests in the Greek isles

wo and a half years feels like six,’ says hard-working Vasilis Kyritsis of incongruously titled The Clumsies in Praxitelous, Athens. Inscribed with as many tattoos as there is graffiti on an average Athenian wall, Kyritsis is one of five partners who took just two months to restore the centuryold property into a labyrinthine bar, now ranked No 9 by the World’s 50 Best Bars. ‘We are the architects, ideas, PRs and bartenders.’ We climb time-worn marble steps past a long, buzzing table by the sunlit courtyard to a salon where tree-like exposed timbers carve through the centre. ‘It’s like the building took its clothes off,’ I remark. We then return to a stairwell encased in an elevator-like cage. ‘But there’s no elevator to success,’ says Kyritsis, irony-free. ‘I believe in hard work, focus, not the illusion of talent.’

“It’s so substantial it feels like it could break the sides of my small glass” Nikos Bakoulis, another partner, perfects a potion alluding to the ingredients of a Greek salad in the kitchen-like ‘Lab’ at The Clumsies’ heart. Balanced on a well-scrawled whiteboard, an evil eye looks on. Adjoining, 10 guests may, for a total of €100, hire ‘The Room’, playing pool on red baize while absorbing bespoke cocktails. For mine, Kyritsis takes inspiration from Metaxa, a smooth rose, violet and orange-scented, mahogany-hued spirit distilled in Athens and blended with island Muscat wine. ‘It’s not a cognac, it’s Metaxa,’ he says, delivering a ‘hypnotic’ from the boldly illustrated Genesis menu. Evoking a Manhattan, it fuses Metaxa with bourbon, fig and goat’s cheese and bears leather and barrel cellar notes, being so substantial it feels like it could break the sides of my small glass. The drink’s soul is in its link to Samos, an island 170 miles east, full of olives, lemons and, of course, Muscat, stroked by the eastern Aegean... (theclumsies.gr)

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HOMEWORK

Wallpaper* editor-in-chief Tony Chambers on the Barbican’s most eclectic show yet, new walls of sound and the art of glass

Step forward

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“A fictional encounter between two dance pioneers and radical fashion designer Rei Kawakubo is presented as a belly dance” Hoochie Koochie may be its most eclectic exhibition yet. Harrell is one of the most innovative minds working in dance today, exploring diverse forms from classical Greek to Japanese butoh to erotic dancing. Anchoring the Barbican show is his most recent piece, Caen Amour — a fictional encounter between two dance pioneers and the radical fashion designer Rei Kawakubo, presented as a seductive belly dance-like spectacle. Another highlight, In the Mood for Frankie, has three dancers performing within an installation of Harrell’s own design, comprising low square platforms, a small fish pond and a series of rugs. There’s also a solo performance by Harrell, The Return of La Argentina, bringing together butoh and vogueing to ponder ideas of race and gender, as well as a more conceptual piece, Untitled Still Life Collection, involving a single line of blue string and jointly conceived with American visual artist Sarah Sze. Harrell’s show promises to be unlike anything London has seen and is a bold move on the Barbican’s part. As curator Leila Hasham tells me, ‘It’s fun, playful, but also conceptual. It straddles the worlds of visual art, design, dance and theatre, so there is something for everyone.’ Which is also a great description of what makes the Barbican so special. To 13 August (barbican.org.uk)

The technology

The much-anticipated BeoSound Shape, by Danish designer Øivind Alexander Slaatto, finally hits the market next month. A cross between a wireless sound system and wall art, it features a series of hexagonal, wool-clad tiles, each serving as a speaker, amplifier or acoustic damper. Available in 10 colours, they can be arranged in endless configurations to deliver both aural and visual pleasure. (bang-olufsen.com)

Sta n’s y

or the title alone, this is a must. This week marks the opening of Trajal Harrell: Hoochie Koochie at the Barbican Art Gallery, which focuses on dance and in particular the practice of American choreographer Trajal Harrell. The gallery will play host to more than 14 live performances of works from 1999-2016 in a changing, daily programme featuring a cast of 18, interspersed among stage installations and film projections. Visitors will be free to roam the space and in some cases even walk into the performances themselves. It promises to be something special. The gallery is one of my favourite artistic institutions in London and I’ve seen almost every show over the past two-and-a-half decades. I’ve been a Barbican resident for 23 years so the convenience helps (I can pop down in my slippers), but more importantly it’s due to the gallery’s experimental approach. Though a middleweight in terms of space and resources, it has consistently led the pack in shining the spotlight on all visual disciplines, with its recent line-up comprising a retrospective of Icelandic performance artist Ragnar Kjartansson, a survey of the vulgar in fashion and a showcase of Japanese domestic architecture.

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idas’ latest

The product

Adidas Stan Smith trainers, which have seen multiple design collaborations including with the likes of Raf Simons and Pharrell Williams, have now been overhauled by Danish textile manufacturer Kvadrat. A homage to the city of Copenhagen, this special edition is available in three iterations, constructed from dotted fabric by designer Vibeke Rohland. The sports brand’s triple-stripe motif is represented in subtle embroidered detailing, while a leather patch on the heel adds a splash of bright colour. (adidas.com)

The experience

Not to be outdone by the Barbican, Tate Britain is also embracing dance this summer with a series of performances by local company Fevered Sleep. Titled Men & Girls Dance, it features five male professional dancers performing with nine little girls who dance for fun. It pushes the boundaries of choreography, challenges negative assumptions about gender dynamics and celebrates both friendship and art. 27 July to 6 August (tate.org.uk)

The person

French artist Jean-Michel Othoniel (left) is best known for Les Belles Danses, a monumental fountain in the Water Theatre Grove of Versailles comprising 1,751 bowling ball-sized glass orbs. He is now lending his exuberant aesthetic to the new Jean-Georges restaurant at The Connaught, which opens this summer. A series of stained-glass windows, representing different stages of the day (from sunrise in the east to sunset in the west), will tint the space in rich hues of orange and gold as sunlight streams in. Othoniel currently has solo shows in the south of France and is working on a show opening at Galerie Perrotin, New York, next year. (othoniel.fr)

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my london

emily maitlis as told to lily worcester

Home is… Kensington, which I just adore — I’ve lived there for 12 years with my husband, two boys and whippet, Moody. My parents live at the end of the road; it’s a very Maitlis-centric part of the world.

Favourite pub? The Dove (right) in Hammersmith. It’s on the water and it’s teeny. Most romantic thing someone has done for you? You know in When Harry Met Sally when he says to never pick someone up from the airport because the next time, if you don’t, they will start thinking that your relationship has dropped off the boil — we live by that in my family. Sweetly my husband came and picked me up the day I came back from a 24-hour trip to California. I found that really romantic.

42 es magazine 21.07.17

The news presenter performs karaoke at Lucky Voice, enjoys drinks by the river and calls Piers Morgan for a good time Best piece of advice you have been given? My colleague Kavita [Puri] said, ‘You have to ask for things at work — women sit there waiting for things to come to them and not realising that actually all the men are running off asking for them. Things don’t just happen, you don’t get something because you sit politely and are well behaved — that’s not how it works.’

Where do you go to let you hair down? I love karaoke at Lucky Voice (right) on Poland Street. I have a very beautiful voice after three dirty vodka Martinis. If you could buy any building, which would it be? The French embassy — it has a lovely garden and they’ve got impeccable taste. Who do you call when you want to have fun? Piers Morgan (left). He used to have a pub — evenings there were legendary… and painful.

Best meal you’ve had? Six Portland Road. I turned up there with my dad, who is in a wheelchair, and they were like, ‘Who are you? We don’t have a booking.’ So I hit the roof — I was really quite rude. I had booked completely the wrong restaurant, called The Portland, which is miles away. It could have been so embarrassing but they were so brilliant and so welcoming, they made us amazing cocktails and the food was to die for. Ever had a run-in with a policeman? I have run over a policeman while I was rollerblading, not in a bad way, in a kind of ‘that’s the only way I know how to brake’ way. He was very nice and gave me his arm. I was rescued by the strong arm of the law. Emily Maitlis presents ‘Newsnight’ on BBC2 and is an ambassador for Centrepoint

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Last play you saw? Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are Dead at The Old Vic (above). I found it had dated a bit. I remember seeing it as a student and thinking it was just mindblowing and now as a grumpy forty-something I was like, ‘Oh yeah, this.’

Which outlets do you rely on? My Persian beautician called Sima, from Sima & Fe’ on Kensington Church Street. During the facial she’ll start quoting Rumi or Hafez at me, all these wonderful Persian poets — it’s actually quite restful. She uses completely raw elements, so you kind of go, ‘Oh my God, my face is on fire’, and she says, ‘Yes, I just put chilli flakes on it.’