July 28 07 2017

28.07.17

SEXUALITY and THE CITY

Meet the Londoners defining themselves on their terms

Plus:

the new ibiza and georgia may jagger’s my london

TALI

LENNOX Love, loss and making it in the art world

CONTENTS 5 The best-dressed fashion fest in CAPITAL GAINS 6 Laura Craik on the rules of holiday romance in UPFRONT 9 Our MOST WANTED are Jimmy Choo’s shiny boots 10 Tali rallies: TALI LENNOX on overcoming tragedy with art 17 How to have a SUPPER CLUB BROMANCE 21 Blinged up Birkenstocks and solid scents in STYLE NOTES 22 The new faces of LGBTQ+ LONDON

EDITOR Laura Weir

29 A flutter of colour in BEAUTY

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GRACE & FLAVOUR falls for Pique-Nique 34 Eat al fresco with TART’s barbecued mackerel 37 Soak up the London spirit in DRINKS 39 HOMEWORK pops with Memphis-inspired prints 41 ESCAPE to Comporta, Portugal 42 Georgia May Jagger’s MY LONDON 33

The ES team choose five legendary LGBTQ+ London landmarks

THE BURDETT-COUTTS MEMORIAL, NW1 ‘This sundial in St Pancras Gardens includes a commemoration to 18th-century trans French spy Chevalier d’Éon who, after infiltrating the Empress of Russia’s court by dressing as a woman, lived the last 33 years of their life as female.’ Nick Howells, deputy chief sub editor

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Cover: Tali Lennox photographed by Francesca Allen. Styled by Sophie Paxton.

ZIMMERMANN dress, £3,150; roll neck, £350; earrings, £220 (020 7952 2710). Alamy

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THE WAYOUT CLUB, EC3 ‘East London’s WayOut Club is an institution — founded in 1993, it’s one of the UK’s oldest transgender clubs and demonstrates just how all-inclusive our city is.’

Frankie McCoy, features writer

HIGHBURY FIELDS, N5 ‘Visiting Highbury Fields always makes me reflect on how far we’ve come. It hosted the UK’s first gay rights demonstration in 1970 when 150 members of the Gay Liberation Front held a rally following the arrest of Young Liberal Louis Eakes for importuning (which he denied).’

Alice-Azania Jarvis, features director

GAY’S THE WORD, WC1 ‘A true London landmark and, interestingly, also a major supplier of lesbian, gay and transinterest books to libraries across the UK.’ Katie Service, beauty editor

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ADMIRAL DUNCAN, W1 ‘This is one of the great Soho spots and a symbol of the London gay scene’s resilience.’ Hamish MacBain, associate features editor

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@ESmagofficial

@ESmagofficial

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

28.07.17 ES MAGAZINE 3

capital gains What to do in London

by FRANKIE M c COY

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Mrs Orwell

If you haven’t read 1984 since GCSEs, head to the Old Red Lion to refresh your memory at Mrs Orwell, Tony Cox’s play about the author and his young wife, starring Cressida Bonas (right). Tickets £18. 1-26 August (oldredliontheatre.co.uk)

Girl Talk

Here’s a girl gang you need to join: high-end Indian restaurant Jamavar is hosting a monthly women’s club, where the likes of chef Florence Knight, England cricketer Isa Guha and Savile Row tailor Kathryn Sargent chat success and beating the boys over supper. £45. From 31 July (jamavarrestaurants.com)

fashion tents

Learn how to look truly fabulous at the delightful Port Eliot festival this weekend, where Vogue fashion critic Sarah Mower curates the Wardrobe Department style space. There are also talks from milliner Stephen Jones, a fashion illustration gallery from SHOWstudio and conversations with matchesfashion.com. Festival chic just got chicer.

Day tickets from £60. To 30 July (porteliotfestival.com)

Illustration by Jonathan Calugi @ Machas; imagesofpolo.com

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Brassy Zédel

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Gather your most sophisticated music pals to scoff steak haché as the Philharmonic Orchestra play a one-off, super intimate concert at the ever brilliant Brasserie Zédel. La musique magnifique, n’est-ce pas? Tickets from £10. 30 July (brasseriezedel.com)

Off your bike

Psycle isn’t just about pedalpounding spin, you know — its brand new Shoreditch location also hosts barre, HIIT and yoga sessions to work every part of your body. Dare you to do all four classes in a row…

Opens 31 July (psyclelondon.com)

last chance: Visit Hackney Walk’s Hackney

Garden and do a free terrarium workshop with Grace & Thorn (29 July). Ends 31 July (hackneywalk.com)

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Chukka CHALLENGE

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Swot up on your chukkas and hooks and trot over to the Guards Polo Club for the Royal Salute Coronation Cup, where the Swarovski England Ladies play the US while you sip champagne. It’s sure to be a gem of an event. Tickets from £25.

29 July (coronationcuppolo.com)

Michelin man

London’s incredible food scene tempts yet another Michelin-starred chef across the pond, as Jean-Georges Vongerichten opens his eponymous restaurant at The Connaught. Fight you for a truffle pizza.

Now open (the-connaught.co.uk)

look ahead: Pull on your eating pants for Wilderness,

as London’s food obsessives and top restaurants descend on Oxfordshire for a weekend of feasting and music. 3-6 August (wildernessfestival.com)

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upfront Laura Craik on how not to love it up on holiday, rappy days for Addison Lee and Pirelli’s calendar progress

Josh Shinner; Rex; Camera Press; Splash; Alamy; Getty

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he schools have broken up, which means it’s the holidays, which means it’s holiday romance season, which means it’s time to issue a few guidelines before everyone goes Full Chloe Green. Oh, Chlo’. You had a yacht. Surely the main point of a yacht is the privacy it — sorry, she (#yachtlingo) — affords. No paps lurking in the bushes = no nasty surprises on TMZ when you come ashore? While most of us have to make do with a s***ty beach bar or a cronky bed in an eggbox hotel, you had the perfect, fully air-conditioned setting for a clandestine holiday romance. But you invaded your own privacy, went up on deck and snogged the life out of him. Whoops!

Clearly, Chloe is superproud of her superyacht conquest, Jeremy ‘The Hot Felon’ Meeks, a man (and now model) whose criminal record for possessing a firearm presumably pales into insignificance when she looks into his limpid abs — sorry, eyes. Which of us hasn’t had a holiday romance with a bad boy and spent the summer convincing ourselves, drunk on sunshine and vodka, that he’s The One? (Okay, me. I haven’t.

Too scared of catching an STD).

Tempting as it may be to post steamy shots of you and your oh-so-hawt catch on social media, some caution must be exercised. Have we learned nothing from Hiddleswift? Or Kendall and Harry? The internet is littered with cringeworthy visual evidence of photogenic yet ultimately doomed romances. Go careful out there. No married people. No matching tattoos. No makeshift I Heart… T-shirts. No enthusiastic sign language because you speak English and she speaks Slovak — the international language of love will only take you so far. To quote the words of Dr Seuss: don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened.

Just maybe don’t tell the world that it did, yeah? taxi rebate Tyler, the Creator might rap about his LaFerrari; Jay Z and Drake might namecheck the RollsRoyce Wraith, but if the glorification of fourwheeled status symbols is a longstanding trope of rap music, clearly Not3s (pronounced ‘Notes’) hasn’t got the memo. In ‘Peng Ting Called Maddison’, the Hackney artist waxes lyrical not about a flashy sports car but about, er, an Addison Lee. ‘I just called a driver / I slapped on a promo code to you get to my yard for a fiver,’ he raps in a bid to get his girlfriend to come over and see him (and they say romance is dead). No slouches in the PR department, Addison Lee heard the song and got in touch. ‘The first video [we did], we actually paid for the cabs, but then for the remix, they sorted us out,’ Not3s tells Pause magazine. With the song currently blaring out of every car in London, methinks Addy Lee owes him more than a free ride.

Not3s

Bad romance: left, Kendall Jenner and Harry Styles. Below, Chloe Green and Jeremy Meeks

Taylor Swift and Tom Hiddleston

“Which of us hasn’t had a holiday romance with a bad boy and spent the summer convincing ourselves that he’s The One?” pirelli good news What with the 2016 edition featuring ‘achievers’ like Serena Williams and Patti Smith, and 2017’s featuring all-ages beauties such as Helen Mirren and Julianne Moore, it’s been a while now since the Pirelli calendar was a peachy bum-cheeked staple hanging lasciviously on garage walls. In what is good news for all bar those who yearn for the days of Cindy Crawford pouting pulchritudinously in a bikini, the 2018 version (above) makes further progress towards diversity. Starring an all-black cast including Naomi Campbell, Whoopi Goldberg, Adwoa Aboah, Ru Paul and Sean Combs, it was inspired by Sir John Tenniel’s original illustrations for Alice in Wonderland, shot by Tim Walker (whose idea it was) and styled by Edward Enninful, editor of British Vogue. ‘Any girl should be able to have their own fairytale,’ says Walker, in reference to the paucity of non-white role models in children’s tales. Word.

HOT Ed Sheeran Massive tour, Game of Thrones cameo, soon to guest-present Question Time, forthcoming appearance on The Simpsons… only one of these items is #fakenews.

NOT ‘Incredible postbaby body’ So sick of this phrase.

THE most WANTED Mirror, mirror: Jimmy Choo’s hybrid pump boot is header xxx surely the fairest Thisofisthem a swathe all... of

dummy text that can be used to indicate how many words fit a Jimmy Choo Letty metallic python shoe, £1,175 (jimmychoo.com)

Caption of item goes here to fill

PHOTOGRAPH BY Baker & Evans STYLED BY sophie paxton

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ZIMMERMANN dress, POA; earrings, £220 (020 7952 2710).

RAEY jacket, £350; jeans, £140, at matchesfashion.com.

MALONE SOULIERS mules, £330, at shopbop.com

ART

helped me to

heal

Tali Lennox was out kayaking with her boyfriend when their boat capsized and he drowned. Two years on, she tells Richard Godwin about pouring her grief into her art — and why her mother Annie is her idol

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PhotographS BY Francesca Allen stylED BY sophie paxton

ali Lennox is aware that her family name comes with certain expectations. And also that the expectations surrounding the children of celebrities — particularly ones who start out as models and then announce that they are actually painters — are not 100 per cent positive. ‘It’s happened to me so many times that I’ll tell someone I’m an artist and they’ll ask to see my pictures and they’ll say: “Oh, you know, I thought these weren’t going to be very good…”’ says the 24-year-old with a rueful smile, her clipped English accent punctuated with the occasional Americanism. ‘It’s almost worth it for that kinda reaction.’

We’re sitting in a café near Victoria Park. In front of Lennox are the remnants of a coffee and some dark chocolate; she is dressed in a red sweater that she picked up at a flea market in LA. Her impeccable genes come courtesy of Annie Lennox, the feminist pop icon and activist, and Uri Fruchtmann, the Israeli film-maker.

She can thank them too for intercontinental connections: a childhood between Notting Hill and Ibiza (where Fruchtmann lives), and a post-school move to New York, leading to modelling gigs with Prada and Burberry, and a solo exhibition at the Chelsea Hotel. But the act of standing in front of a canvas, filling it with feeling, is one thing that Lennox feels comes purely from her. ‘It means that people can see me through what I actually express rather than what they project.’

When Lennox talks about her art — oil portraits, kitschy shrines, unsettling pastels — she isn’t just

talking about the perils of being taken seriously as a celebutante, but a means of coping with tragedy. Two summers ago, she and her boyfriend, American photographer Ian Jones, 32, were Art house: paintings in Tali staying at a house belongLennox’s studio ing to the hotelier André Balazs in upstate New York. One August morning, they took a kayak out on the Hudson River to visit a lighthouse before returning to Manhattan. The boat capsized in strong currents.

Neither was wearing a lifevest. Jones helped Lennox to cling to the kayak, but he was swept away by the tumult.

Lennox was rescued by a passing boat 20 minutes later. Jones did not survive.

Lennox was distraught. She Lennox and her wrote on Instagram: ‘My heart is mother, shattered. My best friend, my soul Annie mate, my partner in crime & creativity, the love & light of my life is no longer with me… Let us honour & celebrate this exceptionally beautiful soul & keep following the light.’ Over the past two years she has tried to honour this promise, painting her way

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through her grief in the apartment they shared, and finally emerging blinking in the light. ‘Art helped me to heal so much. I really don’t know how I would have coped with that experience without having that. I like forms of healing that come from within. You don’t have to go to a therapist, you don’t have to lean on someone’s shoulder.

You have a kind of sacred space for yourself.’

She speaks with the composure of someone who has emerged from a difficult period still standing. ‘It’s so surreal when something like that happens. So real and so surreal at the same time. Someone that you can be around all the time… in my case, it was my best friend.

His family were basically my family in New York. I spent all my time with them. And then suddenly he’s not there.

It’s completely bizarre to me.’

Lennox is on a flying visit to London for a collaboration with the designer Nicky Zimmermann (the pair have joined forces to create a piece of art ahead of Zimmermann’s first London store opening next week) but is also using the occasion to raid her mother’s storage space for any old Eurythmics costumes she can take back to California, where she lives having recently moved from New York. ‘When I’m in London I just hang out with my mum all the time. She’s so curious about everything. She’s got such an interesting outlook on life. We often feel the same things — but she has the experience and the history to deal with them.’

ZIMMERMANN coat, £3,150; rollneck, £350 (020 7952 2710).

LOEWE jeans, £450, at matchesfashion.com.

MALONE SOULIERS heels, £462, at shopbop.com. MIU MIU earrings, £170, at matchesfashion.com

“he was my best friend…

I spent all my time with him.

And then suddenly he’s not there” Relocating to LA — where she shares a hillside home in Silver Lake with two friends — was a way of moving on from Jones’ death. ‘The first place we looked at was the most beautiful house with all the things that New York doesn’t have. Plants. Wood. Views. Trees. That was the shift that I had been craving.’ It was New York that enabled her to go deep into her art, but it had become ‘unhealthy’. ‘I worked from home and lived alone and spent all my time by myself. I felt like a crazy old lady pottering about in my house, not talking to anyone for 24 hours. When you start talking to yourself to make it more normal, you think, “Maybe it’s time to shift.”’

John Currin is an obvious artistic influence; she also cites Roger Dean and Lisa Yuskavage, who both paint from the imagination. ‘Before the accident, I had been doing some portrait painting and learning a lot about technique — but it was all very exterior. I loved the process but it wasn’t coming from anywhere deep down. But after that happened, it cracked me open creatively. I could access something deep in the core.’

Her first picture in the aftermath was an ethereal abstract painting, full of shimmering figures. ‘It was me trying to work out where we go next. And I wanted that space to be beautiful and open and vast.’ Then she painted some ‘really heavy, dark angry ones… I guess you have to do that as well.’ Finally, for the Chelsea Hotel show, she began to collect old group portraits from junk stores and painted these lost, forgotten people. ‘I was

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Lennox and Nicky Zimmermann

With her late boyfriend, Ian Jones, in 2015

With Amber Le Bon

ZIMMERMANN jacket, £1,260; trousers, £795; rollneck, £350 (020 7952 2710).

ROCHAS earrings, £279, at matches fashion.com Hair by Akiko Kawasaki using Bumble and Bumble.

All make-up by Amy Conley at Stella Creative Artists using CHANEL Les Indispensables de L’Été and CHANEL Hydra Beauty Crème.

Stylist’s assistant: Annie Ounstead

Olivia Palermo and Lennox

Lennox modelling for Marc Cain

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artistically interesting to her but as a mother it could be disturbing. I’m like, “No! I’m not going to take that photo off Instagram. It’s only a nosebleed.”’ She’s referring to the picture she recently posted of her own (accidentally) bloodied nose.

“When you go through the experience that I did, you can’t let it cripple you. You have to welcome it, understand it and embrace these heavy things in life” But it’s precisely this process of transforming pain into beauty that has allowed Lennox to let go. ‘When someone goes, of course you miss them, of course you feel pain. But with respect to them, they’re on their journey.

Who knows where we go? Maybe it’s exciting, whatever age you are. I’m trying to make friends with the idea of death. I’m not saying it should be celebrated or not, because nobody knows. But at least we should see death as something that is sacred for the person who leaves and be compassionate towards their journey.’

Zimmermann’s debut London store opens on Bruton Street on 3 August. (zimmermannwear.com)

Getty; Instagram; Rex

intrigued by the fact that none of that existed any more. It was my way of trying to make sense of what death is. I did quite a big series on the translucence of time, which helped me understand death.’ She speaks completely openly about this process. ‘I think when you go through the experience that I did, you can’t let it cripple you. You have to welcome it and understand it and embrace these heavy things in life. I think having that attitude to passing has really helped me cope with change in life.’

She credits her parents (who separated when she and her model sister, Lola, were young) with keeping her grounded — and, naming no names, wearies of other children of celebrities whose egos would suggest they’re the ones who made it. Her admiration for her mother is unabashed. When she was younger, she went through long periods of listening to nothing but her music. ‘I used to get really embarrassed about it for some reason.

There’s this album she did with the Eurythmics called Savage that’s much more experimental and weird.

There’s this song called ‘Beethoven’ where she speaks as all these characters, and it’s so bizarre and sinister. When I did my first art show, I listened to that a lot.’

They are, she says, incredibly supportive of her work.

‘Both my parents are so interested and curious about art in a very non-pretentious, open-minded manner. It’s amazing to share that language with them. But it’s strange for my mum. Sometimes I’ll take a photo that’s

boys 2 menus Family, work and life in general were causing Tim Walker to neglect his friendships. So he set up a monthly supper club where he and his friends eat their way around London cuisines from A to Z

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hursday evening at the Tiroler Hut, an Austrian restaurant in a Westbourne Grove basement that ’s decorated like an Alpine lodge. A handful of thirtysomething men sit clinging to huge, halfempty steins of lager, surrounded by the desecrated remains of several sausage platters and a cheese fondue.

We’ve just convinced our waiter — a pinkcheeked Hungarian in lederhosen — that today is one of our birthdays. So he’s brought us a slice of strudel with a candle in it, to be

illustrations BY hannah warren

consumed during the restaurant’s nightly music show: a man playing ‘Edelweiss’ on a set of Tirolean cowbells. The first act of a stag party? In fact it’s the climactic scene from the inaugural meeting of what has come to be known, between us, as the A-to-Z Dining Club.

In January, a couple of friends — Chris, an actor and screenwriter, and Dan, a magazine editor — and I decided we didn’t see enough of each other. Our mid-30s had arrived, bringing with them small children, big mortgages and increasingly busy careers.

One of us had deleted most of his social media

in an anti-Zuckerberg huff, so the others couldn’t even pretend to know what was going on in his private life by perusing his irregular status updates. Plans to meet would be mooted, postponed and quietly forgotten amid family commitments and pressing Master of None Netflix binges.

Leaving the sofa on a weekday evening when you’re a youngish father is a lot less inviting a prospect than it used to be.

Leaving the house to go for an impromptu pint-with-the-lads is

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borderline socially unacceptable. If we were to remain in each other’s lives as more than members of an old chums’ WhatsApp group, something drastic needed to be done. We could have started a book club, but since we’re all writers of some description in our professional lives, nobody wants to talk about work on a night out.

We could have started a fivea-side football game — but, again, we’re all writers.

Enough said.

We needed a project: something that sounded suff iciently important to convince us (and our wives) that it should be pursued without flakiness or excuses. And so once a month, we take advantage of London’s unsurpassed cultural diversity and stuff our faces with a different national cuisine. To give the exercise some structure, we decided to do it alphabetically: in February, we ate at the Austrian place. In March, we went Burmese. Cuban in April, Danish in May, Ethiopian in June, French in July… and so on, towards the inevitable Zimbabwean finale. The idea is not to sample the best or the trendiest food in town, nor is it to learn more about the nooks and crannies of the capital that we’ve yet to explore, although that’s certainly part of the fun. What the A-to-Z Dining Club offers is the rare chance to press pause on our hectic lives for a few hours and enjoy each other’s company.

Plus: dinner.

“last time I had a tequila slammer, Tony Blair was in No 10… By home time, I was ready to join the salsa class in the bar below” For several years in the Noughties, the three of us shared a grotty flat above a Thai restaurant in the heart of Spitalfields, where an evening out at the pub required no more than 30 seconds’ planning. Once a week — sometimes twice — we dined on takeaway curry from Sweet & Spicy, a cheap and authentic Pakistani canteen on Brick Lane. At the time we took these meals for granted — now, they are a treasured memory. A decade later, if I want to eat a takeaway, I order it on an iPhone app after my two-year-old daughter has gone to bed. Most of our gang used to be

jammed into flat-shares in the same proximate cluster of east London postcodes. These days, everyone lives in different neighbourhoods, which may as well be in different continents.

You may be aware of just how dread-inducing the prospect of ‘dinner with friends’ can be at this age. Those socalled friends could be the other parents you kept bumping into at the playground until it seemed impolite not to suggest a spag bol.

They could be an old pal of your partner, forcing you to make hours of small talk with their new boyfriend, who’s rude to waiters and voted Leave.

Dinner with old friends, on the other hand, could mean arriving at the restaurant 20 minutes late, frazzled by first-world problems and barely capable of coherent speech, sliding gently into a conversation strewn with in-jokes about new TV shows and long-ago nights out, the inevitable discussions of Trump or Brexit conducted inside a comfort zone where they won’t put you off your food.

The A-to-Z experience is a learning curve.

We’ve discovered that Burmese food (yes, I know: if we were being scrupulously politically correct, we should probably have waited for ‘M’ to eat that) is scandalously under-appreciated. At Lahpet, in a railway arch near London Fields, we feasted on fermented tea leaf salad — ‘lahpet’ means ‘pickled tea’ — and a platter of moreish sweetcorn, shrimp and tofu fritters. We’ve realised that Cuban cocktails are not to be trifled with. A couple of dark and stormys into our evening at Escudo de Cuba in Dalston, we hit the tequila slammers. The last time I had a tequila slammer, Tony Blair was in No 10 — I had to be reminded in what order to slam the salt, shot and lime. By home time, I was ready to join the salsa class that was under way in the downstairs bar. Almost.

Oh, and we’ve dis-

covered that our fantastically original idea is not that original after all. On a warm evening in May, we made our way to Snaps + Rye in North Kensington. It purports to be the only Danish restaurant at the time of writing, which means any Londoner on an A-to-Z eating lark must pass through its doors. ‘Yes, we get a lot of Ds,’ the maître d’ said.

As for our wives — they appear to view our culinary quests with a mix of amusement and curiosity. After several conversations beginning, ‘So what actually happens when…’, we broke with convention and invited them to come along. Instead of a table for three at Lalibela, an Ethiopian eatery in Tufnell Park, we booked for six.

My wife seemed mildly disappointed by just how un-raucous it all was. She was expecting The Hangover — she got The Trip.

We won’t reach the end of the alphabet until early 2019, but the A-Z Dining Club has already highlighted this city’s staggering depth and breadth. There are few other places in which it would be remotely sust a i n a ble . Ye t i n London, we’d visited four continents before even crossing the river. Admittedly, we’re likely to run into difficulties when we arrive at ‘O’ in April 2018, since apparently there are no Omani restaurants in London (recommendations on a postcard please). Perhaps we’ll bend the rules and go Oaxacan.

For ‘P’, it would be poetic to return to Sweet & Spicy, but sadly our Brick Lane favourite closed in 2013, to be replaced by a buffalo wings joint. Some restaurants on our list are staples like the Tiroler Hut; others will be gone before we reach ‘Z’, like Lahpet, which only has a one-year lease.

London changes, yet it stays the same — and so it goes with our friendship. We’ll all soon go grey or bald, develop back trouble or knee trouble or put on too much weight — but at least, this way, we’ll be putting on weight together.

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style notes What we love now H&M trousers, £39.99 (hm.com)

EDITED by KATRINA ISRAEL

The big picture

Pre-fall trousers are looking long, wide and even cuffed. For autumn the preppy chino has been re-spun as supersized trousers in stiff drill cotton. Wear yours with a throwback 1990s-era cami to balance the extreme volume below.

Top collar

You’ve probably already heard of American jeweller Diane Kordas, famous for her cult-issue evil eye bracelets, inspired by her home in Mykonos no less (lucky lady). But we’re just as smitten with her new rose-gold and diamond choker that takes its cue from Ancient Greek warriors.

Eye necklace, £856; Evil Eye bracelet, £1,102; Armour choker, £5,934 (dianekordasjewellery.com)

GANNI top, £140 (ganni.com)

EQUIPMENT top, £100, at net-aporter.com

ULLA JOHNSON trousers, £395, at net-a-porter.com

InSTARglam

THOUGHT CLOTHING trousers, £49.90 (weare thought.com)

Former PR guru Sidney Prawatyotin’s humorous style spoof turns up the volume on fashion’s absurdities by placing catwalk looks in everyday situations. Case in point: Calvin Klein’s plastic-covered AW17 faux fur coat paired with a similarly wipe-clean front room.

Raey chinos, £225, at matches fashion.com

MAJE trousers, £199 (maje.com)

@Siduations

GUCCI top, £365, at matchesfashion.com

PRADA sandal, £555 (store. prada.com)

BIRKENSTOCK sandal, £25 (birkenstock .com)

Illustration by Jonathan Calugi @ Machas

Follow us at @eveningstandardmagazine ROGER VIVIER sandal, £785 (store.roger vivier.com)

TOPSHOP sandal, £39 (topshop.com)

Go walkabout KURT GEIGER sandal, £120 (kurt geiger.com)

The rootsy appeal of Birkenstock’s signature ‘footbed’ is currently fuelling footwear creativity with a spree of buckled sandals bridging the gap between SS17 and pre-fall.

Distilled design

Comme des Garçons has laid a new olfactory foundation in its latest eau de parfum, Concrete. The woody fragrance fuses key notes of sandalwood with artificial rose oxide, poured into — how fitting — a minimal concrete shell. £120, at shop.doverstreetmarket.com

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We’ve come a l PHOTOGRAPHS BY JOHNNY COCHRANE ILLUSTRATIONS BY ASHLEY MARY

Fifty years after sex between gay men was decriminalised, Kate Spicer meets the Londoners changing perceptions of sexuality and gender today

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22 ES MAGAZINE 28.07.17

LYALL HAKARAIA, 49 Creative director, designer, owner of VFD and fairy godperson to the LGBTQ+ scene ‘I’m bisexual, homosexual, I’m pansexual, I fall in love with who I fall in love with. I am not gay. I am male, but I love being androgynous,’ says Hakaraia, a key nurturing figure in the queer community and a dad of one ‘typical teenager’.

He arrived from rural New Zealand in 1990 and fell in love with the mother of his child, with whom he parted amicably — ‘It just happened’. Having designed costumes for Madonna and Beyoncé, seven years ago he opened Vogue Fabrics — a club, arts space and ‘crazy bubble of acceptance’ — in an old Dalston haberdashers. He changed the name to VFD, but it remains a beacon on the queer landscape. Its influence on fashion is undeniable, too, Charles Jeffrey’s LOVERBOY line having sprung from its shabby shopfront. (vfdalston.com)

Make-up and grooming by Yulia Yurchenko

nyone who went to Pride or Queer Picnic this summer will find it hard to believe that it was only 50 years ago on 27 July, 1967, that this country decriminalised — and only partially at that — homosexual acts in private between two men over the age of 21. It was not an Act passed graciously, either: one law lord, Lord Arran, insisted that ‘ostentatious behaviour’ should be avoided, as it would be ‘utterly distasteful’.

How far we have come. Today, we live in a multigendered, sexually and socially inclusive city where the freedom to be whoever you want to be — and to fancy whoever you want to fancy — is cherished and celebrated. Our lexicon has expanded: while not everyone’s chosen self-description, the word ‘queer’, for example, has been reclaimed as a positive and inclusive term, representing many shades of identities in the not-straight world. Once a Victorian term of abuse, it can now mean everything from women who want to be men, to people who prefer to express no gender, to drag kings and drag queens. Likewise, our understanding of gender has evolved, moving away from the strict binary choice of male or female as prescribed by born sex.

Sexuality, too, is viewed with more nuance; as writer and activist Charlie Craggs points out: ‘We’re in an interesting time, moving towards a more liberal age. Fifty per cent of millennials don’t consider themselves straight and see gender and sexuality in shades of grey, not black and white.’

The city has risen to the occasion, as it always does, as a place where all human life is welcome. Here, we meet the Londoners at the vanguard.

Vivienne Westwood gold jacket, POA (020 7439 1109)

a long way, baby

TAYYLOR MADE, 26 DJ and club promoter

SADIE SINNER, 26 Founder and curator of Cocoa Butter Club

‘Coming to London from Washington DC four years ago I was like, “Wow! Look at all these girl-oriented venues,”’ says the woman born Taylor Hilton, whose roving east London Vibrate night is one of the city’s coolest lesbian club events. She began DJing aged 12, growing up with culturally open, ‘very cool’ middle-class parents in predominantly white, suburban Potomac, Maryland, and is unbothered by labels. Calling her lesbian, queer or gay is fine, but one thing that does rile her is ‘the disbelief that a feminine-looking woman can’t possibly be lesbian’.

Based in a warehouse in Tottenham, she shares her home with all types of people and says that ‘the best parties are the ones where just anybody turns up. The sickest warehouse parties are full of all kinds of people.’

‘Really, I feel off the binary,’ says ‘black, queer, female’ Sadie Sinner. ‘More part woman, part goddess.’ A contemporary dance graduate who grew up in Enfield, Sinner was born to Zambian parents — her father was once the country’s vicepresident, while her mother is a doctor — and now lives with friends in Islington. ‘London is doing the best it can. So many people call it home because it’s multicultural and accepting. You leave this city and it’s not so great out there.’ Her fury and energy is poured into her Cocoa Butter Club cabaret collective. ‘We do things differently,’ she adds.

‘Just because it’s not all pin curls and shaking tits and ass doesn’t mean it’s wrong.’

28.07.17 ES MAGAZINE 23

CHARLIE CRAGGS, 25 Writer and activist Defining herself as ‘just a straight woman’ who ‘since four, just felt like a girl’, Charlie Craggs is the brains behind Nail Transphobia (motto: ‘Fight transphobia, fabulously’). ‘I sit down and do someone’s nails and have a chat,’ she says of her pop-up salon. ‘They can ask whatever they like. It might be about my transition or it might be about The X Factor. The goal is to bring humanity to a media narrative about trans people that can feel pretty alien.’

Reflecting on past experiences as ‘an effeminate gay guy’, Craggs, who grew up in west London, says she knew she was trans — but ‘didn’t want to go there. It just seemed too much until I saw [trans actress] Laverne Cox, and suddenly saw what I could be: intelligent, beautiful and most important, happy.’ After some harrowing times — ‘I’d say a hail Mary every time I left the house’ — she says her company has made her realise she has ‘more allies than expected. London is built on respecting differences. For all the prejudice out there, I live in a city where I am allowed to be me.’

TETE BANG, 26 Club personality, drag artist, DJ, professional fun producer A ray of exuberant sunshine, Bang calls herself ‘queer. Gay is not the right word: it’s too limiting because I’ve dated men, women, transgender men and straight drag queens.’ She identifies as a woman, ‘but when I’m in drag, I’m someone else’. Known for her events such as Jingle Mingle at Her Upstairs, she also DJs at nights like Dollar Baby. Bang grew up in the Lake District and Spain with a ‘very glamorous’ stripper mum and a construction worker dad who is ‘not as homophobic as he was’. In her teens, dating another girl, Bang ‘experienced so much hate’, but a decade on, living in Manor House, straight culture fascinates her. ‘ They think there are only certain options in life based on their genitals. Once you get used to dressing like a drag queen, it’s difficult to go back to being a normal girl.’

LASANA SHABAZZ, 30 Performance artist, actor and writer ‘I am queer and I don’t like to gender myself. I’m gender non-binary. I’m me,’ says lifelong Londoner Shabazz, whose highly politicised cabaret pieces can provoke ‘shock, rolled eyeballs and tuts’ at their commentary on sexuality, race and class. Shabazz is also a teacher, working for clients including Camden Council, the British Museum and the V&A, and ‘once did a vogueing workshop for OAPs’. Shabazz’s childhood was spent in Kilburn and Clapton, though now they are based in Haggerston. The current visibility of queer culture, says Shabazz, ‘means we’re at the start of a slight revolution’.

D’RELLE KHAN, 29 Creative director D’relle Khan (born D’relle Wickham) describes himself as gay, but says he ‘never really came out. I just fell in love with someone when I was 14 who happened to be male.’ An east London boy who recently became a Vauxhall resident — which is ‘the new Soho, the new gay hub, supposedly’ — he defines himself more by his lifelong passion: dance. As a 15-year-old he flew to New York in search of ‘the vogueing houses: the LGBT dance families that were created because people in them had been abandoned due to their sexual preferences.’ Since then he has revitalised the UK vogueing scene — in 2010 even performing ‘Vogue’ at a Mayfair club for Madonna as her birthday present — and is now European Father of the Big Apple’s famous House Of Khan. On 5 August he will present Werq: A Voguing Ball to a crowd of 700 at the Barbican. Given that he has had his house set on fire, been kidnapped and been stabbed because of his sexuality, it’s unsurprising that he thinks ‘we still have a long way to go’ in terms of collective attitudes. ‘The gay scene is still so segregated,’ he says. ‘Where can we go to be one big celebration without all the hierarchy and divides?’

ALEXANDRE SIMÕES, 22 Artist, muse, nightclub promoter Growing up queer in Lisbon, Simões says, was not easy. ‘I had to move to London so I could actually find people like me.’ He is now admired for his ability to unite the queer art world in one room at his ‘creative and political’ Rad Festa at VFD (the next one is on 15 September). Poets, artists, fashion designers and filmmakers from the best of London’s art colleges including the Slade, Central Saint Martins and his own college, Goldsmiths, all come together. Simões, who lives in New Cross, has also been a (reluctant) muse and model for several London designers. After a few attempts at nailing down how he feels about his sexuality and gender, he settles on ‘non-binary, gay man’.

28.07.17 ES MAGAZINE 25

WHISKEY CHOW, 27 Artist and drag king Chow’s story began in her native China, where she founded the first LGBTQ+ music festival in the country, the Lover Comrades Concert. Ultimately though, she left. ‘They say in China that people have freedom, our country is democratic, rich and powerful,’ she says. ‘Yet all queer people in China are excluded because “homosexualism is a foul offspring of capitalism”.’ Chow, who identifies as lesbian and lives in Battersea, arrived here two years ago to study for an MA at the Royal College of Art, and now her work explores ‘female masculinity, stereotypes and cultural projection of Chinese and Asian identity’. She likes London because ‘people are being given more space to explore their desire and identity’, but also says that ‘those spaces can be overwhelmingly white’.

She looks forward to the day when ‘we won’t need categories to empower ourselves’.

26 ES MAGAZINE 28.07.17

BISHI, 34 Singer, composer, co-founder of WITCiH, label boss at Gryphon Records Bishi says it is her duty to speak up because ‘sex is something you don’t talk about in my conformist Bengali culture’. Defining herself as ‘a queer woman and a person of colour’, she lives in Earls Court and describes London as ‘historic in its acceptance of people’. As a young artist she performed with Minty: the band behind the late and astronomically influential performance artist Leigh Bowery, whom Lucian Freud so loved to paint. Since then, she has performed with big acts such as Yoko Ono, the London Symphony Orchestra, Pulp and Goldfrapp and also composed film scores. Her WITCiH (Women in Technology Creative Industries Hub) project brings together and celebrates ‘brilliant women pushing the boundaries and narratives of creative technology’.

DOLLY PAWTON, 2 Instagram star LUCY LONDON, 40 Fashion lecturer STELLA CLEMENTS, 34 Writer When gay (not lesbian) couple Lucy London and Stella Clements posted a rainbow pin on the Instagram feed of their dog Dolly Pawton, it quickly became a focal point for LGBTQ+ activism. ‘We get 100 messages a day,’ says London. Clements comes from a religious conservative family who have given the couple what London describes as ‘years of hell. None of her family came to our wedding three years ago. It was during this stressed and unhappy time I decided to get Dolly.’ Today Dolly has 80,000 followers and her fans, London says, ‘made us feel accepted when our families rejected us.’ They prefer describing themselves as gay over lesbian. ‘We don’t really use the term lesbian: it’s too loaded by the thought of what lesbians do,’ says London.

KRISHNA ISTHA, 23

Performance artist and actor It’s hard to nail a gender on Istha .

‘Trans-masculine’ (meaning a woman who identifies as a man) is as close as you can get, ‘but when people read me as a man, it freaks me out so I wear these.’ Istha waves some talon-like nails. ‘I don’t identify as a man, I just want to look more masculine.

I’m gender-queer. I don’t mind if people call me he or she, but if they can’t tell either way that is a great result.’ Sexually, things are more straightforward: ‘I’m a greedy bisexual. Gimme everyone!’ Istha is half American, half Indian, and moved to London six years ago but is currently living in Derby rehearsing a play, Bullish, which opens 12 September at the Camden People’s Theatre.

‘London’s the best place in the entire world,’ Istha says, because ‘there are so many layers to its queer underground.’

UMBER GHAURI, 25 Make-up artist ‘Labels have always frustrated me,’ says Ghauri, who identifies as ‘agender’ (‘It means I just don’t have preferences’). Ghauri found success doing make-up solely for the LGBTQ+ community: especially for trans people of all skin colours — ‘I help them use make-up to get a more masculine or feminine look.’ Their proudest moment so far is working with the American rapper and activist Mykki Blanco, one of hip-hop’s queer pioneers. Having grown up in a Pakistani British household in Richmond, Ghauri studied art history at The Courtauld and talks about the recognition of a third sex going back many thousands of years. ‘I find it comforting,’ says Ghauri, who is now based in Chiswick. ‘We’re not just millennial aberrations.’

28.07.17 ES MAGAZINE 27

beauty by katie service

On the lash

Replace your monochrome mascara with jewel tones for a vibrant splash of colour

DIEGO DALLA PALMA Purple Volume Mascara, £17.50 (diegodallapalma.com)

MARC JACOBS BEAUTY O! Mega Lash Volumising Mascara in peacock, £22, at johnlewis.co.uk

3INA The Color Mascara 107, £8.95 (uk.3ina.com)

YSL Beauty Luxurious Mascara for False Lash Effect in bohemian pink, £25.50 (yslbeauty.co.uk)

GIVENCHY Noir Couture Volume Waterproof Mascara Gypsophila Les Saisons, £25.50, at escentual.com Kidney paint palette, £2, at hobbycraft.co.uk

PHOTOGRAPH BY amy currell STYLED BY LILY WORCESTER

GIVENCHY Noir Couture Volume Mascara Waterproof Les Saisons Gypsophila Collection, £25.50, at

28.07.17 es magazine 29

beauty

You beauty!

ON THE SOAPBOX

Everyone is talking about charcoal in skincare, but is there substance behind the buzzword, asks dermatologist Dr FrancEs Prenna Jones

W

Origins Clear Improvement charcoal mask, £25 (origins.co.uk)

Headspace

Research has shown that if your adrenaline is high, just trying to meditate can generate stress. Sensate is a device (right) that attaches to your chest and emits a low frequency to ease your nervous system into a peaceful state.

It’s still at the crowdfunding stage but worth the wait. (getsensate.com)

30 es magazine 28.07.17

I Annabel Rivkin joins the club

magine a beauty streaming service. You would pay a minimal membership fee, say £10 a month, and you would have access to properly top-notch skincare and make-up at factory prices. That would disrupt the status quo, wouldn’t it? You might, having parted with your tenner, fancy an incredibly luxurious moisturiser, the kind that would cost you £100 in duty free. Suddenly, it sets you back less than £10; £8.12 for product and packaging, 17p for warehousing and 4p for safety and (cruelty-free) testing.

Welcome to Beauty Pie, the enfant terrible of the beauty industry, which makes you ask, ‘Why wouldn’t I?’ It seems there is no catch. The transparent price breakdown is sobering and the company only makes money on the membership fee: it makes absolutely nothing on the product. Cost price, simple as.

Beauty Pie is from break-out beauty entrepreneur (Bliss, Soap & Glory, FitFlop) and all-round sensation Marcia Kilgore. And I am just going to give you a little list of my favourites: the aforementioned moisturiser is its Super Healthy Skin Ultimate Anti-Ageing Cream (£10) and it’s all hydrating hyaluronic acid, plumpers, proteins and antioxidants. The Plantastic Micropeeling Super Drops (£6.97) are a generous bottle of poreshrinking, skin-refining serum that delivers a noticeable glow. The Micro-Mineral Serum Foundation is feather-light, highly pigmented, sheer and £4.64.

Honestly, it’s hard to fault. Yes, it’s online so you can’t try things out, but if the lipstick you bought for £2.24 doesn’t work, then it cost you less than a Tube fare and you can play swapsies.

Beauty Pie Plantastic Micropeeling Super Drops, member price £6.97 (beautypie.com)

Read your stars by Shelley von Strunckel at standard.co.uk / horoscopes /today

Josh Shinner; Tobi Jenkins; Getty

hat I like about charcoal is the fact that it has antiinflammatory properties.

Because it is such a good source of minerals including copper, zinc and calcium, it helps to calm down the chronic subliminal inflammation in skin that you can’t see, which causes ageing — and also the visible inflammation on the surface of the skin such as redness and Dr frances Prenna Jones swelling. It’s brilliant for acne, too, charcoal sponge, £24 since it dampens the inflammation for four (drfrances prennajones.com) that surrounds blemishes.

What I disagree with is how many of the charcoal products on the market are claiming to really clean or detoxify your skin. That’s just not true. Yes, charcoal is a natural antibacterial, which is why you might find it in a cleanser or embedded in a sponge, but it won’t pull nasties out of your skin like so many charcoal masks claim to do. It’s also all about the quality of the charcoal. Cheap, unconcentrated charcoals won’t do much, whereas I find good quality charcoals from Korea, mostly charred bamboo, perform a lot better. Price is genuinely a good guide but it’s still hard to tell what you are getting when you buy from the high street.

You have been warned.

feast

grace & flavour Grace Dent falls head over heels for the charm of Pique-Nique

“I didn’t know whether to eat the vol au vent or ask my lawyer to draft me a pre-nup and marry it”

Ambience food

Jonny Cochrane; illustration by Jonathan Calugi @ Machas

M

y brain, as you might imagine, is terrifically cluttered with memories of restaurants. Ones that sparkled, others that fizzled and ones I thoroughly resent. If I have spent an evening daubing on primer, composing my face with kohl pencils and pouring myself into a pencil skirt in the past decade, rest assured I have a resounding memory of the vibe I felt there. Hervé Durochat’s Casse-Croûte on Bermondsey Street, which regretfully I have not visited for about four years, lives on in my mind as one of London’s loveliest restaurants. It’s the sort of place that makes me gently disgruntled with my jammy, greedy, everstimulating schedule that stops me going back.

But if anyone asks me where to eat, last-minute, south of the river, I’ll say dreamily, ‘You could try Casse-Croûte, this tiny, perfect French place… but it’s small and just absolutely gorgeous, so you’ll probably not get in.’

My memories of Casse-Croûte are of balmy Saturday nights spent in this shack-like, modestly hewn, single room, applying my A-level French to the simple menu du jour chalked up on the blackboard, of demolishing pissaladière and mousse au chocolat, and if I’m honest, flirting with the young, Gallic male staff. Gosh I hope Durochat pays them danger money for that.

There comes a point in the life of every female diner where in your mind you are all vibrant, sparkling and naughtily charming cleavage, but in the kitchen you are merely the red wine stained sexual harassment vehicle on table three. With all this in mind, news of the arrival of Pique-Nique, Durochat’s second place, sparked joy.

pique-nique Tanner Street Park, Bermondsey, SE1 (020 7403 9549; pique-nique.co.uk)

1

Glass of Chiroubles

£7

1

Glass of Rully

£7

1

Maigre

£9

1

Vol au vent

1

Selle d’agneau

£19.50

1

Turbot

£19.50

1

Carafe of Le Grappin

1

Soufflé

1

Glass of Le Grappin

Total

£9.50

£32 £7.50 £16 £127

I’d tell you Pique-Nique is just down the road from Casse-Croûte, but this is not the full picture. Initial trips will involve a confused trek up and down Bermondsey Street, then into a park, mumbling, ‘Why is my phone sending me into a park? It can’t be behind these tennis courts.’ But Pique-Nique does indeed live in a sort of re-purposed park kiosk, which is all at once strange, wrong, right and totally charming. It’s open from 9am until 10pm, serving ferociously delicious jambon beurre baguettes heaving with cornichons. There’s croque monsieur, poulet de Bresse et frites and glasses of Domaine de la Tournelle. From midday a simple menu of three starters and three mains offers something for anyone who simply wants to be fed in a French manner; deftly and deliciously.

Pâté en croûte and entrecôte sit alongside grilled things such as turbot and selle d’agneau roti aux herbes. Expect petits pois à la Française, fine salads, nine whites, nine reds and Herve himself on hand being knee-weakeningly charming as usual. Pique-Nique’s vol au vent sauce Nantua will feature, I predict, on end of year London ‘2017 dishes’ round-ups. Any British person mentally scarred by the piffling dry British vol au vents our Aunt Sheila foisted upon us at family parties, probably filled with tinned chicken supreme and left by a radiator to grow a skin, must do themselves a favour and visit Pique-Nique. Here the vol au vent is enormous, warm and unctuous with bechamel and crayfish.

I didn’t know whether to eat it or ask my lawyer to draft me a pre-nup and marry it. There was a perfect raspberry soufflé with a sorbet on offer the evening I visited, which still clouds my mind’s eye.

There’s a stiff curfew of 10pm, I’m guessing as the place is inside a municipal park, which is good as it saves a woman like me from herself and another carafe of wine. It also makes the end of the evening quite gloriously silly as you totter tipsily past the tennis courts. Here’s another place for me to be furious over never having time to visit. Please go and enjoy it for me.

28.07.17 es magazine 33

feast

tart london Jemima Jones and Lucy Carr-Ellison fire up the coals for some bay-smoked mackerel

Got beef? Lucy primes some steak

Jemima Jones (left) and Lucy Carr-Ellison

34 es magazine 28.07.17

Serves 2

bbq mackerel

2 whole mackerel, gutted and cleaned Large handful of bay leaves 4 sprigs of rosemary Large bunch of parsley 3 garlic cloves, finely chopped Juice of 1 lemon 3 tomatoes 6 tbsp olive oil Salt and pepper

Light the barbecue and wait until ready to cook. Wash the mackerel and pat dry. Stuff the cavity of each fish with the bay leaves, rosemary, parsley and garlic and drizzle over the lemon juice. Chop the tomatoes in half. Smother the fish and tomatoes in the olive oil and scatter over salt and pepper, rubbing the seasoning into the skin of the mackerel.

Place the tomatoes cut-side down on the hot barbecue and leave until well blackened (there’s no need to turn them over). Carefully place the mackerel on the barbecue and cook for 5 minutes on one side, then take the bay leaf branches and slide into the coals under the fish: you want them to catch light so that the smoke infuses the fish. Turn over the fish and cook for another 5 minutes, until the flesh is opaque.

Arrange the tomatoes and mackerel on a serving platter and dig in.

3 bay leaf branches, to smoke

Josh Shinner

R

aw, smoked, pickled, roasted or grilled — there are so many wonderful ways to prepare mackerel. Smoking is particularly fantastic, because it really holds in the flavour. Once, on a cooking job in Scotland, we were presented with lots of mackerel someone had just caught. We filleted and thinly sliced the fish and served it as sashimi with dipping sauces. It was the freshest mackerel we’d ever tasted.

Mackerel is also a brilliant source of omega 3 fatty acids and vitamin D — something we all could do with more of in cloudy old England.

Luckily it’s also really versatile and easy to prepare as a snack. We often make a smoked mackerel bruschetta when we’re in a rush and don’t have time for lunch.

Mackerel is also perfect for a summer barbecue, as it’s an oily fish that holds together well and soaks up lots of lovely flavour, while the skin crisps up deliciously. Here we’re keeping it simple and stuffing it with lots of punchy herbs, lemon and garlic before smothering it in olive oil.

The key ingredient here is the bay, which works wonderfully. For maximum flavour, stuff as many leaves as possible into the fish cavity, then place whole branches of bay leaves on to the barbecue coals while you’re cooking the fish to infuse the smoke with wonderful bay fragrance.

In the MIX

FEAST

Douglas Blyde meets the man putting Canadian wine on the map

B The stills at East London Liquor Company

Distill seekers words BY Frankie m c coy

Think of a London-made alcohol and you probably jump straight to beer and gin.

But while our railway-arch craft distilleries and micro-breweries are bottling topnotch London dry and double IPAs, some inventive boozers are branching out to make small batch, city-brewed rum, vodka and even the first whisky to be made in the capital for more than a century. Here are three of the best distilleries boosting London spirit.

Stellacello’s Amaro

East London Liquor Company Glenfiddich what? Jameson who? London is about to get its very own whisky, the first distilled in the capital for more than 100 years, courtesy of the East London Liquor Company. The threeyear-old Bow Wharf distillery, which also produces four different gins (right), a British wheat vodka and some dangerous sipping rum made from 100 per cent demerara sugar, will be bottling its first London Rye at the end of 2018, each with different barrel finishes for different flavours. Visit the distillery for its Whisky Lover’s Tour and Tasting. (eastlondonliquorcompany.com)

Our /London

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

Stellacello Forget the sickly Lemsip hit of a free limoncello. Stellacello might be inspired by such Italian digestifs but alchemist Joe Stella, whose lab is based in Bethnal Green, has added a healthy dose of London cool to produce Pompelmo: a super smooth, grapefruity liqueur that works quite brilliantly as a spritz with soda water or fizz. Try it instead of Aperol for a less garish sip. Then there’s Amaro, its latest product — a herbal, bittersweet liqueur that you can drink neat over ice as a digestif to look almost unbearably sophisticated. (stellacello.com)

Bottle-cap vodka? Yep, Our/London is that achingly cool. The Our/Vodka brand has equally cool micro-distilleries all over the world, with each sourcing ingredients from hyper-local producers. In the case of our capital’s voddy, that means founders Clive Watson and Neil Chivers use British wheat for a creamy, fruity taste and produce, blend and bottle all their spirit under the arches of Hackney Downs station. They also have a great space for regular vodka-fuelled events: head up on 17 August for a masterclass in drinking vinegars (yes, really) with Kylee Newton or Tom Hunt’s five-course Earth, Metal, Water, Wood, Fire supper club on 1 September. (ourvodka.com)

orn in Johannesburg, raised in Botswana and educated in wine in Dijon, Norman Hardie was sommelier at the first Four Seasons in downtown Toronto when he befriended senior vice-president of food and beverage, Alfons Konrad. ‘He treated me like a son, but thought I was a f***ing idiot when I told him I would make wine,’ he tells me as we tuck in to chicken Kiev at The Game Bird at The Stafford in St James.

But Hardie was not deterred.

Despite Canada’s harsh climate, in 2003 he traded in his Armani suits to craft impeccable wines in Prince Edward County and the Niagara region, from resilient vines grown in chalk and a limestone soil.

Konrad had to concede that the project was a success.

A purist at heart, Hardie avoids ‘quick-fix’ chemical jabs and desensitising bought-in yeasts, and laments how ‘place’ is often forgotten in modern winemaking, which he fears is becoming as automated as ‘a self-driving car’.

At his tasting bar in Canada he also stocks ‘maple syrup, embroidery and Joe Beef [steak] sauces from Montreal. And last year we sold £150,000 of goods in addition to wine.’ Hardie also built a pizza oven so guests at his vineyard could stay and experience wines alongside ‘upbeat indie rock’ chosen by his young team.

“The scents of the powdery, peachy, cerebral 2013 Pinot Noir grip me” Gino Nardella, master sommelier of The Stafford, pours Hardie’s unbelievably sapid, citric, complete Niagara Chardonnay 2014 (£23; thewinesociety. com), the antithesis of ‘tutti-frutti’, then powdery, peachy, cerebral 2013 Pinot Noir (£33; lastdropwines.com). Its scents grip me. I fully appreciate how leading wine critic Matt Kramer was momentarily silenced by the profoundness of such breathtaking wine. (normanhardie.com)

28.07.17 es magazine 37

HOMEWORK

Rubber Band, Nathalie Du Pasquier Notebook A5, £12.50, at selfridges.com

BY lILY WORCESTER

Cosmic non-electric pendant light, £13 (jdwilliams.co.uk) Pistachio birchwood tray, £45 (lisatodddesigns.com)

Camille Walala’s immersive installation, Walala X Play, is at the Now Gallery

Carmina tripod lamp, from £55 (vitacopenhagen.com)

Famously collected by Karl Lagerfeld and the late, great David Bowie, The Memphis Group’s Eighties aesthetic is back in the spotlight. The loud primary colours and wacky patterns of the famous design movement are referenced in Valentino’s recent AW collection and the zany prints populating Camille Walala’s current Now Gallery exhibition. Get the look by pairing bold block colours — try Lisa Todd’s hand-painted birchwood trays — with graphic black lines, such as the tree-trunk vase by Hay. Keep your eyes peeled for the two Memphis-style BMWs that were recently launched at the Milan design fair, Salone De Mobile, which embody both these elements.

Modular candlestick, £66 (outthere interiors.com)

From £95 (darkroom london.com)

Tree Trunk Vase by Hay, £69, at liberty london.com

Valentino AW17

memphis blues

One Button chair, from £995 (steuart padwick. co.uk)

Electric BMW i3, starting from £33,070 (bmw.co.uk)

COS x HAY Kaleido Tray, from £12 (cosstores.com) Cushions and throw, from £110 (tomdixon.net)

Outdoor cushions in jacquard, from £520 (uk. hermes. com)

Visioni B

by Patricia Urquiola, £5,726, at monologue london.com

28.07.17 es magazine 39

escape

EDITED by dipal acharya

Dine beachfront at Comporta Café

WHAT TO DRINK

Comporta is a secretive little spot in which socialising tends to take place behind closed doors (the designer Philippe Starck, artist Anselm Kiefer and Christian Louboutin all have houses here).

Glimmers of a scene can be found at Comporta Café, a beachfront restaurant with straw parasols and colourful flags that billow in the wind like sails. Order a bottle of local green wine or a pitcher of sangria and settle in for a sundowner.

WHAT TO SEE

Boardwalk empire: the port of Carrasqueira

call of the wild

Comporta has been touted as ‘the new Ibiza’ — but the countryside on Portugal’s south-west coast still has nature at its heart. This idyllic region sets you free in ways that no trance party ever could, says Kate Hamilton

Comporta is set in the Sado Estuary Nature Reserve, which is home to dolphins and a wealth of birds — look up to catch a glimpse of local storks, flamingos and eagles. Historically, this part of Portugal was based on the pillars of salt production, ricegrowing and fishing, the latter of which is still very much alive at the port of Carrasqueira.

Visit at high tide when you can walk along the jetties, perched on stilts, and suss out the daily catch.

WHAT TO EAT Fish and seafood are the name of the game

Alamy; Instagram

WHERE TO STAY

In a forest of umbrella pines and cork trees, Sublime Comporta (sublimecomporta. pt; rooms from €300) is the area’s coolest hotel. The 14 suites here are spread across a blush-pink main house and a series of airy cabana villas (above) — all have polished concrete floors and cavernous bathtubs. Keep even closer to tradition by staying at an original converted fisherman’s hut at Cabanas No Rio (cabanasnorio.com; rooms from €200), designed by Lisbon architect Manuel Aires Mateus.

here. Make for O Gervásio, a rustic, familyrun tasca (tavern), which is a hub for local fisherman and well-heeled summertime guests at lunchtime. We love the fried cuttlefish, which costs less than €10 and serves two. In the evening, Dona Bia comes alive on the edge of the rice paddies outside Comporta village and serves grilled fish by the kilo (sea bass, sole, squid — take your pick) alongside jumbo prawns and rich dishes of risotto-style coriander rice.

WHAT TO DO

For those craving something a little higher-octane, pick up a board at Carvalhal Surf School. Ninety-minute classes cost €40 (book at surfincomporta @gmail.com). Want to stay dry?

Venture over the paddies and dunes on a horse from Cavalos na Areia (30 minutes from €30). Madonna couldn’t get enough last May (check her Insta).

WHERE TO SHOP

Seafood is the main event at Dona Bia

You’ll find a handful of artisan shops tucked away in the heart of sleepy Comporta village.

Loja do Museu do Arroz (above) flogs delicate ceramics and art prints by photographers such as Slim Aarons, while Vintage Department houses a curated collection of reworked furniture and retro light fixtures that will make you wish you booked a bigger baggage allowance.

GETTING THERE

Comporta is just over an hour’s drive from Lisbon. A car is essential once you’re there if you want to explore beyond your hotel or villa.

28.07.17 es magazine 41

my london

georgia may jagger as told to lily worcester

Home is…

North London. I found my house there three years ago and did it up. I was living in New York before and had no garden, so a requirement of this place was lots of surrounding green.

Earliest London memory?

I grew up by Richmond Park (above), so it would probably be being bitten on the finger by a squirrel when I was feeding it a Skips crisp. I received a lot of tetanus shots growing up.

Where would you go for a nightcap?

A nice hotel. I like to feel transported to another era, so the Savoy or somewhere equally fancy.

Which shops do you rely on?

I like Vivienne Westwood but I’m not allowed in there any more because I buy too much.

Last play you saw?

I go to the ballet more than I go to plays. I also love to go to the Hackney pantomime (below) every year.

Best meal you’ve had in the city?

I’m obsessed with the spicy Asian soups at Caphe House in Bermondsey.

Who’s your hero?

I love Oprah because she’s so kind-hearted. I’d like to come back as one of her golden retrievers. I also love Drew Barrymore. She’s very real — I met her recently and she’s so nice and normal.

She’s an inspirational businesswoman.

42 es magazine 28.07.17

The model drinks at the Albion in Islington, shops at Vivienne Westwood and is obsessed with the spicy Asian soups at Caphe House If you could buy any building in London, which would it be?

The store, Liberty, because it’s made using timber from an ancient ship and it’s so visually stunning. You’ve got the café, the wine bar, all the clothes and you can play around in the candle and cosmetics area. It’s so beautiful. I’d definitely live there.

Best piece of advice you’ve been given?

My mum says: ‘Always be on time and always be nice to everyone, even if they are not nice to you.’

Where do you go to let your hair down?

I used to go to The Box, but I haven’t really been clubbing in ages. I’d love to open a roller disco club, make it completely retro with Coke floats and maybe a pool table.

What would you do if you were Mayor for the day?

Make the Thames less smelly.

Last album you downloaded?

Probably Requiem by Goat (left). I saw them play at Glastonbury — they were so good. Or a band called Deap Vally; it’s my friend’s band and they have an amazing album called Femejism.

What do you collect?

What don’t I collect? Rocks from every beach I go to, troll dolls (above), plants — when my dog died I put a plant in every place he’d hang out and now I have a jungle in my house.

What’s the best thing a cabbie has said to you?

The worst thing a cabbie has said to me was right after the Women’s March. My friends and I were in the back of a cab, all worked up about it and chatting.

When we paid the cabby he said, ‘Well you girls have had fun at the Women’s March. Now you can go back to cooking, cleaning, doing the laundry and doing all the things you do best.’

Volcom x Georgia May Jagger collection is available now (volcom.co.uk)

Getty; Alamy; Rex

Favourite London pub?

The Albion (above) in Islington.

It has a great beer garden and it’s fab in the summer.