Nov 10 17 by ES Magazine

10.11.17

COLLECTORâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S EDITION

Celebrating 50 years of

gilbert & george

EDITOR’S LETTER

EDITOR Laura Weir

Here are the ES team’s five favourite free things to do in London

This week’s cover comes to you courtesy of the London-based art duo, Gilbert & George. We offered the artists the opportunity to design your cover and they took to the project like the legends they are. The end result was beardy (a theme of their latest works), creative, strange and provocative — marking 50 years of their partnership in iconoclastic style. ‘Every time we stopped working at five o’clock and we switched on the television, we just saw barbed-wire fencing and beards, all over Europe and all over the world,’ says Gilbert of their work. ‘Fashion beards, bolshie beards, Jewish beards, the uncut beards of the Muslims. But the fencing was more important, the image of barbed wire. We seem to want to protect ourselves from aliens, from people who don’t fit in.’ George adds: ‘Never did humans spend so much on security. That’s new.’ To see more of their work, head to White Cube Bermondsey to take in their new exhibition, which opens on 22 November. An (F) word of warning: the article (page 14) contains explicit content. Looking at the issue this week, I’m so excited by the mix of articles. Richard Godwin dissects the Streaming Wars (page 31) as the new Hollywood studios — Apple, Amazon, Netflix and Facebook — battle it out to dominate the future of film and television. We have a revealing piece about how decent men should navigate the world in a post-Weinstein age (page 23); model Malaika Firth showcases the most sumptuous beauty looks of the season (page 38); and another anniversary comes by way of the Feast section, with the Tart girls submitting their 100th recipe (page 51) for the magazine this week. Enjoy!

GARDENS ‘Is there anything better than wandering around Petersham Nurseries and planning your dream garden? The scenery makes for perfect (and free) Instagram fodder.’ Natalie Salmon, social media editor

POLITICS ‘PM’s Questions! Yes, on Wednesdays you can watch Theresa May being grilled by her opponents in the House of Commons for free. Either queue up on the day or email your local MP for tickets.’ Nick Howells, deputy chief sub editor

ART ‘I love spending Sunday walking through Trafalgar Square and visiting the National Portrait Gallery — it never fails to inspire me and remind me how brilliant London is.’ Helen Gibson, picture editor

COMEDY ‘Angel Comedy Club is always a winner. Enjoy free comedy almost every evening at its two north London venues: The Bill Murray and Camden Head pubs.’ Emma Woodroofe, acting art director

Visit us online: standard.co.uk/esmagazine • Follow us: Noppatjak Attanon; Alamy. Cover by Gilbert & George

FOOD ‘A stroll around the pop-up Southbank Centre Wintertime Market is a great way to get in the Christmas mood.’ Lily Worcester, deputy beauty and lifestyle editor

@eveningstandardmagazine

@ESmagofficial

Editor Laura Weir Deputy editor Anna van Praagh Features director Alice-Azania Jarvis Acting art director Emma Woodroofe 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

Beauty editor Katie Service Deputy beauty and lifestyle editor Lily Worcester

Social media editor Natalie Salmon Office administrator/editor’s PA Niamh O’Keeffe

Merchandise editor Sophie Paxton Fashion editor Jenny Kennedy Fashion assistant Eniola Dare Chief sub editor Matt Hryciw Deputy chief sub editor Nick Howells

Contributing editors Lucy Carr-Ellison, Tony Chambers, Richard Godwin, Daisy Hoppen, Jemima Jones, Anthony Kendal, David Lane, Mandi Lennard, Annabel Rivkin, Teo van den Broeke, Nicky Yates (style editor at large) 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

10.11.17 ES MAGAZINE 5

capital gains What to do in London

by FRANKIE M c COY When Girls Get Ready Together and Take a Group Pic by Alice Skinner

Halls of fame

New wine ORDER

Sod the supermarket, you deserve to fill your shopping basket at Harrods Food Halls, which have been newly revamped in a ‘Taste Revolution’ that includes a bakery and coffee roastery. Inhale… and be happy. Opens 14 Nov (harrods.com)

Raise a glass or six to the freshest Beaujolais Nouveau 2017 (made from grapes harvested just weeks before) at Winerama’s Beaujolais Nouveau party, with wine-fuelled games, street food and DJs. Pretty grape. 16 Nov (streetfeast.com)

hot ticket

Getty; Alamy; Illustration by Jonathan Calugi @ Machas

A Finnish rooftop sauna is, obviously, exactly what the Southbank Centre has always lacked. Luckily, exactly that opens on the Queen Elizabeth Roof Terrace this winter. Phew. Tickets from £15. 10 Nov to 30 Dec (southbankcentre.co.uk)

’Grammer girls

Somer-skate House

London is awhirl with skates acarving through pop-up ice rinks; now it’s the turn of Somerset House, with all-new DJ-powered Skate Lates. Tickets from £8.90. 15 Nov to 14 Jan (somersethouse. org.uk)

Social media, girl power and art combine in Katy Hessel’s The Great Women Artists: Women on Instagram at Mother London, which showcases some top female artists who launched their careers on Insta. Feel free to @ them. 13-17 Nov (@thegreatwomenartists)

SUPER MARKET

This is not your average charity sale, with pre-loved clothes donated by the likes of Kate Moss (right), Naomi Campbell and Karlie Kloss, and proceeds going to educate girls in Zimbabwe. 10-11 Nov. 21 Slingsby Place, Covent Garden, WC2 (vestiairecollective.com)

last chance: make a beeline to the Royal Academy’s lovely exhibition, Matisse in the Studio, before it closes on 12 Nov (royalacademy.org.uk)

Mad news: Bryan Cranston

Break a leg

Walter White as a disenfranchised news anchor? Such is the case as Bryan Cranston (left) stars as ‘mad as hell’ Howard Beale in Ivo van Hove’s Network at the Lyttleton Theatre. Until 24 March (nationaltheatre.org.uk)

look ahead: once Hyde Park’s Winter Wonderland has opened on 17 Nov, it’s categorically Christmas. Get hyped (hydeparkwinterwonderland.com)

10.11.17 es magazine

upfront Laura Craik on seasonal drinking dilemmas, fashion flippers and upskirting

Alexa Chung in Erdem X H&M

SLY OLD PROXY Fashion flipping is nothing new: when it comes to designers’ limited-edition collections for H&M, it’s standard to see the thing you really wanted selling on eBay for several times the price shortly after launch. Browsing on eBay the morning after the Erdem frenzy (below), I spied a new development. ‘I CAN GET YOU ALMOST ANY ITEM IN YOUR SIZE FROM ERDEM COLLABORATION!’ claimed one seller. ‘100% genuine, I will be able to provide receipts if required.’ How? Even the VIPs invited to the pre-launch

es magazine 10.11.17

Teetotal stars: clockwise from right, Blake Lively, Kendrick Lamar, Jennifer Hudson and Eva Mendes

“I follow the 4:3 diet, which is like the 5:2 diet only with portion control replaced by alcohol control” aren’t guaranteed this privilege. Another listing described an ‘H&M x Erdem Proxy Service’ costing £768. ‘Getting to the collection at 3am… proxy fees depend on items’ retail and hype,’ it said. We’ve all heard about being too posh to push, but too posh to queue? ‘Proxy buyer’ — it’s a strange way to make a living, but apparently a lucrative one. #stopskirtingtheissue A YouGov poll asked 2,775 adults what constitutes sexual harassment and found that ‘a man trying to take a photo up a woman’s skirt’ was deemed the most offensive act, with 96 per cent of respondents agreeing. More vindication, if any were needed (which, duh, it isn’t), for Gina Martin (right), who has been campaigning for ‘upskirting’ to be made a sexual offence since July, after a stranger stuck his hands between her legs during a music festival in London, took a crotch shot then sent it to his friends who were standing nearby. Martin managed to snatch his phone and find a nearby police presence, but was told there ‘wasn’t much they could do’. Search #stopskirtingtheissue for details on how to sign her petition.

HOT Camila Canicoba Peruvian beauty contestant who, instead of listing her chest measurement, listed the 2,202 cases of femicide reported in her country.

NOT Green juice It’s all about cherry juice this week, after researchers found it could extend sleep by 84 precious minutes. Josh Shinner; Getty; Alamy; Eyevine

toptober is over and everyone is drinking again. Only they’re getting even more drunk than before, on less booze, because their tolerance has plummeted. ‘I feel so pissed!’ they exclaim after a mouthful of Rioja, knocking over a vase. I never do Stoptober. It’s too drastic. Instead, I follow the 4:3 diet, which is like the 5:2 diet only with portion control replaced by alcohol control. Every week, I have four evenings off booze completely, followed by three evenings on, which means I spend 57.142857 per cent of the year sober, or, to put it another way, 42.857143 per cent of the year drunk. While a man will drink six pints then have a hangover, a woman’s trajectory is less straightforward. If you were to play #WomenDrinkingTogetherBingo, you can probably bet the following phrases would feature heavily on any given night. 1) ‘Just a small top-up, honestly.’ 2) ‘I really can’t have a hangover tomorrow — I have way too much to do.’ 3) ‘I don’t feel pissed at all… [five minutes later] I’m hammered!’ 4) ‘Put that Justin Timberlake song on again.’ We also like to discuss the finer details of our consumption on any given night. ‘Bottled beer only — that punch is lethal,’ we’ll say, before being spotted three hours later drinking straight from the pitcher with a straw. November and December are the booziest months of the year and while party season isn’t upon us yet, it’s looming. Spare a thought for the people who don’t drink (Blake Lively, Eva Mendes, Jennifer Hudson and Kendrick Lamar among them — who knew?) yet have to listen to the rest of us wanging on about how we ordered gold flares off Asos like nobody else ever drunk-shopped but us. Also, don’t pressure people into having ‘just one more’, for not everyone’s relationship with alcohol is straightforward. Between abstinence and alcoholism lie a thousand shades of grey. Drink because you want to, not because you have to, and always reserve the right not to drink at all.

THE most WANTED ABSTRACT THEORY: ears get architectural with these sculpted adornments

Ellery earrings, clockwise from top right, £282; £330; £415 per pair, exclusively at Selfridges’ new accessories hall from 10 November (0800 123400)

PHOTOGRAPH BY NATASHA PSZENICKI STYLED BY SOPHIE PAXTON

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FLASHBULB! Party pictures from around town by FRANKIE M c COY photographs by james peltekian Iman Allana

Amber Le Bon

Penny Lane Edward Enninful Maddi Waterhouse and Isabel Getty

Stefano Gabbana

Suzy Menkes

So Dolce, Knightsbridge

Tess Ward

Pixie Lott Iris Law and Kylie Minogue

March of the millennials, as Harrods launched its Dolce & Gabbana Christmas extravaganza with a flower-drenched catwalk show of Flashbulb’s favourite party people in the food hall. Amber Le Bon, Rafferty Law and Jack Guinness waltzed past lobsters, chocolate truffles and Kylie Minogue, a million selfies were snapped, and everyone descended on Restaurant Ours for a pasta and Pixie Lott-fuelled after-party.

Lady Alice Manners

Eves Karydas

Jade Jagger and Lee Starkey Molly Moorish

Viscountess Weymouth and Jack Guinness

Professor Green Carla Ciffoni and Linde Derickx

Molly Goddard

Betty Bachz and Laura Hayden

Boutique bash, Shoreditch Skepta Roksanda Ilincic Joséphine de la Baume India Rose James

Lottie Moss

Costume drama, Mayfair

Tramp was awash with fake blood and Cîroc for Fran Cutler’s epic Halloween bash where a bloody Lottie Moss rubbed batwings with Joséphine de la Baume and Skepta came holding a pot plant. We didn’t know he was so green-fingered.

Ben Grimes

Kudos to Mayka Merino who, on a busy Halloween night across town, found time to pop into the Browns East warehouse party dressed as a bloody skeleton. Tattoos were handed out like candy and Professor Green ended up dancing on a car after one too many shots of shamanistic cacao. Scary stuff.

Mayka Merino

Fran Cutler Jana Sascha Haveman

Sandra Choi Caroline Rush

Holli Rogers

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

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Double

Vision

As superstar artists Gilbert & George celebrate 50 years of working together with a collectorâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s cover for ES, Nick Curtis meets two national treasures PhotographS BY tobias lewis thomas

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or serious artists, Gilbert & George don’t half giggle a lot. The duo, full names Gilbert Proesch and George Passmore, celebrate 50 years of living and working together this month with a show at White Cube gallery in Bermondsey. The new works, The Beard Pictures, feature the artists as digitally manipulated, brightly coloured and extravagantly bearded troglodytes wandering through a world of fences, barbed wire and concrete, rather than with burqas and amyl nitrate capsules (as in 2013’s Scapegoating Pictures) or exposing their anuses alongside massive turds (1994’s The Naked Shit Pictures). So perhaps mindful of their reputation for controversy — though George claims they ‘never set out to shock’ — they are also showing The Fuckosophy. They describe this as a philosophical way of ‘feeling through life’ in a language everyone can understand, and it involves adding the word ‘fuck’ into a huge series of phrases that they will meticulously write on White Cube’s walls. (Reader, if you are sensitive to profanities you may wish to avert your eyes.) Sitting in their studio, a former factory linking their two not-quite-adjacent Huguenot houses in Spitalfields, they are in their trademark tweed suits and matching ties. Gilbert, 74 and from South Tyrol in Italy, is in green and is tittering as brown-suited George, 75 and from Devon, reads out the invitation to their post private-view party. ‘Fucking dinner with fucking Gilbert & George at fucking White Cube gallery,’ he says in his politely vicar-like tones. He looks up. ‘You start with the fucking soup, you move on to the fucking fish and then the fucking main course.’ And presumably you end up with the fucking nuts, I say, laughing. He looks up and blinks owlishly at me: ‘Why is it funny?’ ‘Everyone is amused by it,’ Gilbert chortles. ‘It has a certain freedom. I know how juvenile it is.’ But is it supposed to say something beyond being juvenile, I ask? ‘Well, we are not juveniles,’ says Gilbert. George adds: ‘We didn’t think of it as juvenile, as children are not allowed to swear, are they?’ Now that they’ve finished The Fuckosophy they are working on The Godology — ‘God stinks. Dear sweet God. God and the scaffolder. God is

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Gilbert & George outside their Spitalfields townhouse. Below, the pair with Ronnie Wood

gays; globalists who embrace Brexit; monkish moralists who decry religion; conservative iconoclasts. If it’s a pose, it long ago obliterated whatever the drab ‘reality’ of their life was, and if it’s a joke it’s an excellent one, and it’s on us (one of their pictures, Sex Money Race Religion, sold the day before our interview for nearly £1m). Even at its most childlike or scatological, their work touches on truth, including The Beard Pictures. ‘Every time we stopped working at five o’clock and we switched on the television, we just saw barbed-wire fencing and beards, all over Europe and all over the world,’ says Gilbert. ‘Fashion beards, bolshie beards, Jewish beards, the uncut beards of the Muslims. But the fencing was more important, the image of barbed wire. We seem to want to protect ourselves from aliens, from people who don’t fit in.’ George adds: ‘Never did humans spend so much on security. That’s new.’ Gilbert: ‘In Europe we created utopia for ourselves, and everyone wants a part of that. North “The world is much nicer and America is the same.’ The pictures are like irreligious stained gentler now. [Gay] people glass, part of their ongoing protest against don’t have to worry about God. Gilbert & George think Islam is more the police. Extraordinary” dangerous ‘at the moment’ than other faiths, but view the atrocities committed in phooey,’ etc — after which ‘we can’t think of anything else. its name as part of a continuum that includes the Until we do. Maybe we won’t.’ Inquisition and the Crusades. ‘It’s the same God,’ says This is vintage G&G, a seamless demonstration of Gilbert, who was raised Catholic in a family of the act — or the life, or the ongoing artwork — that they shoemakers. George was brought up Methodist in Totnes have honed and polished since 1967, when they met at by a single mother who gave him elocution lessons: his Central Saint Martins, or perhaps since 1970, when older brother became an evangelical Christian preacher they put on suits, painted their faces and became and ‘briefly’ converted their father. Both studied art at a ‘living sculptures’, singing along to Flanagan and variety of schools before making it to London where they Allen’s ‘Underneath the Arches’ performing The found the Sixties swinging, a wealth of architectural and Singing Sculpture in the Nigel Greenwood artistic fascination, and each other. Gallery. Their art and their joint persona is Was the initial attraction physical or intellectual? ‘It’s indivisible and thrives on contradiction. They simple,’ says Gilbert. ‘I couldn’t speak very good English are buttoned-up exhibitionists; straight-laced and George took an interest. That was it. We met in

Getty Images

Hirsute pursuit: the artists reveal invitations to The Beard Pictures opening, including works from their show

The besuited pair with fellow artist Tracey Emin and, right, in their Spitalfields studio

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“we are not buying scottish tweed since that referendum. why would the scottish want to break up the Union without asking everybody?”

Stubble trouble: below, Bearding Along, 2016, and bottom, Mint Beards, 2015

woman who live on their doorstep and deliver their Evening Standard every day. Their suits used to be made by local tailors but most of those businesses have closed. Now a Greek Cypriot, Nicholas of London, runs the suits up out of Irish tweed. ‘We are not buying any more Scottish tweed since that referendum,’ says George. ‘Why would the Scottish want to break up the Union without asking everybody? Disgraceful.’ They are on chummy terms with local Muslim shopkeepers and waiters. They still feel, despite encroaching gentrification on all sides, that the East End is a microcosm of the world, which is why they barely leave. They only ever go on holiday at Christmas, to the Med, though they travel to overseas exhibitions. They are passionate Europeans but believe Brexit will be good for the country. ‘The most European place in the world is London,’ says George. ‘But it is not Europe, it is global,’ says Gilbert. ‘Europe — we mean the common market, the EEC — is protectionist in some ways. Everybody should be allowed in or out.’ ‘Art is global anyway,’ says George. ‘European art is in some ways in decline,’ says Gilbert, laughing again. They think Theresa May is doing a good job. ‘We like her, although when we met her she ran away,’ says Gilbert. They like Michael Gove, too (‘very sharp in his understanding’) and Jacob Rees-Mogg. ‘I like that he is a very clear speaker,’ says George. They are less keen on other artists and the art establishment. They are uncomfortable with the Tate’s divi-

Getty Images

September and in October, November we walked the streets and started to talk about London and art.’ Although they refuse to see a distinction between gay and straight, London in 1967 was less friendly to two besuited men cohabiting. ‘It was just after partial decriminalisation [of homosexuality],’ says George. ‘It used to be very aggressive. ‘We went to a café here for 30 years but at the beginning the market porters tried to keep us out. Wolf whistles, all that stuff. The world is much nicer and gentler now. People don’t have to worry about the police. Extraordinary.’ They both still proudly describe themselves as ‘lower class’: their smartness and politeness was in part a riposte to the slovenly, hippyish, middleclass art students they met at Saint Martins. And they retain a working-class work ethic: George gets up at 5am every day to read (‘South African history at the moment’), they go out for breakfast, then they work until 5.30pm when they watch Heartbeat to ‘wipe the mind’. They buy drip-dry shirts and ‘knickers’ in bulk at M&S and purchase ‘100 rolls of lavatory papers, 100 bars of soap, 100 tubes of toothpaste, one dozen catering cans of instant coffee’ once a year. They eat out for every meal, going to Mangal 2 in Dalston each night if it’s just them, La Chapelle or Wright Brothers if they are entertaining. The house they live in, which they initially rented for £16 a month and bought in 1973 for £22,000, famously doesn’t have a proper kitchen. It is narrow, immaculately panelled and full of gorgeous but unfashionable Sir Edmund Elton pottery and furniture by Pugin, Godwin and Eastlake. Their other house, two doors down, is less cluttered and contains a velvet throne they made, embroidered with a large pubic louse. The studios behind are clean, factory-like spaces. There are rows of their books and DVDs, a couple of naïve pictures given to them by a local Iranian, and some very camp photos from a nearby pub’s ‘moustache night’. Back in 1970 their decision to turn themselves into living sculptures was a rejection of ‘a formalistic art based on shapes and colours’ but also a way of embracing the fact that they were outsiders with no models, no studio, no money. They talk about a ‘human’ art and for all their strangeness they are populists, with a common touch. They get on well with all classes and nationalities, from the sweary builders who inspired The Fuckosophy to the homeless man and

“The most European place in the world is London. But it is not Europe, it is global”

Bronze ambition: Gilbert & George, left, performing their career-making The Singing Sculpture in 1970 Through the roof: at their Spitalfields house in 1986, below, and in 1987, right

G&G on the bus in 1997 and, inset, with White Cube founder Jay Jopling in 2012

because their legs get tired and they underwent a civil partnership in 2008 to ensure that if one of them dies, their artworks would revert to the survivor. They claim it is ‘far too early’ to talk about mortality but they are planning their legacy. For many years they have paid themselves an annual salary of £40,000 each, and the rest of their earnings has gone into their foundation. Recently, Gilbert says, the foundation purchased ‘a small, old-fashioned 18th- century brewery next to The Pride of Spitalfields free house just off Brick Lane. You walk in there and it is like a magic garden and we [will] try to keep that, because it is extraordinary.’ His architect nephew is converting the premises, which will eventually provide 3,000 square feet to house their artworks. ‘Why?’ says Gilbert. ‘Because the Tate never shows our work and they will never, because nothing is good enough for them.’ George adds: ‘We tell our young friends we are doing it because we want to be immoral. They say, “Don’t you mean immortal?” I say, also please, that too.’ Gilbert & George: The Beard Pictures And Their Fuckosophy is at White Cube Bermondsey from 22 November. ‘The Beard Pictures’ (White Cube Publishing) and ‘What is Gilbert & George’ (Heni), £9.99 each, out now.

Rex Features; Getty Images

sion of art into modern and British (though they had a Tate exhibition in 2007). ‘We don’t like the separation,’ says Gilbert, ‘the racial divide. We hate that. You have modern art and your so-called English art, and that’s not right.’ They stopped socialising with other artists in 1979. ‘We don’t want to be socially involved. We were friends with all the artists in London, Paris and New York. And Dusseldorf. Then we stopped one day because we didn’t like the gossip. And the talking about money. So we gave them up. And it’s much better since. We will say good morning to anyone, but that’s it,’ says George. They claim they are shunned by the wider ‘frowning classes’ of ‘intolerant liberals’. They never go to exhibitions and rarely to parties, and deal with their post with ‘a big shredder’. Although they have one assistant, Yigang Yu, who has been with them since the 1990s, they are snippy about artists who use battalions of helpers to create work. Gilbert & George make, pay for and install all their own work. ‘We have always said we have two main privileges,’ says George. ‘One is to come out of the house, walk through the yard into the studio and make whatever pictures we want. We don’t have to check with anyone. The second privilege is to take them out into the world: 60 pictures to Spain, 20 to New York. Nobody can say anything.’ Gilbert says: ‘Roughly, we can do what we want — not completely, but more than anyone else, we believe.’ But the future must be thought of. They no longer walk all the way to Mangal 2

Men behaving BADLY With accusations of harassment emerging everywhere from Hollywood to Westminster, the battle of the sexes has taken a new turn. So how can you make sure you’re being a decent bloke in 2017? Redefine masculinity altogether, says Richard Benson

‘T

o be honest,’ says Dom, a 32-year-old management consultant from Wa nste a d , ‘ the physical side isn’t a problem. I’d never have groped the knee of a woman from work or anything anyway. But now a lot of those little vague things you might have suggested to someone at work who you liked, like, “Let’s go and talk about it in the pub,” or whatever, they sound like lines Harvey Weinstein or someone could have used. You hope women can tell the difference, but it’s also how you feel saying it, innit? You let your arm brush against hers and you’re thinking, “Oh no!” Does that seem like the first stage of sex pestering, or am I overthinking it?’ It is 9pm in a bar in the City, and Dom (not his real name) is trying to describe the challenges of being ‘just a decent bloke’ in 2017. To be clear, he is not saying, as John Humphrys cringingly did to William Hague on the Today programme this week, that the increasing awareness of sexual harassment will make men afraid of asking women out. Like most men with brains, he knows the vast

majority of emerging stories are about assaults and rapes rather than unwelcome passes, and that women can tell the difference. What he’s talking about is the poisoning of the language and the atmosphere between men and women, and how that makes him worry that even his innocuous comments sound a bit predatorial. When rich and shameless sleazebags have used the same excuses to get girls on their own, does it sound dodgy to suggest that you and a workmate pop outside the pub to share a quick social smokers’ fag? When people claim that date rape drugs have been used to spike drinks even at Pestminster, do you give off a Possible Creep vibe just offering to buy a round of Sauvignon Blancs? Yes, these are first-world problems. And yes, talking about them runs the risk of making the debate about Poor Men again, when it needs to be about victims. But this stuff still matters, because in London so many relationships begin at work. Sure, in the countryside you might get introduced to someone drinking in the village tavern or whatever people do there, but the capital has a far higher proportion of single people of working age than the rest of Britain, and offices are social hubs. For the shy and tongue-tied Londoner, getting pissed and

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“You let your arm brush against hers and you’re thinking, “Oh no!” Do es that seem like the first stage of sex pestering, or am I overthinking it?”

clumsily snogging someone from another department in the pub on Friday nights are what balls and dancing were to Jane Austen. Definite figures are hard to come by, but in US cities between one and two people in 10 meet their future spouse through work, and it’s hard to imagine the London numbers being any lower. (And no bad thing: relationships that begin at work are far more likely to end in lasting marriage than those that start on social occasions.)

o knowing how to behave is important if we’re going to get along, but it’s also important for its own sake. The past few weeks have been genuinely shocking for a lot of men to learn from women the extent and extremity of workplace harassment. It’s also been hard to know what to say about it when some critics have accused men of being too silent. For me, that’s because when I hear the other, less violent, misdemeanours mentioned — the talking-over in meetings, the ‘mansplaining’, the patronising attitudes and the rest of it — I have to be honest, and say: I know I have been guilty of those things, I will listen more and try to be better. As Dom says: ‘Most men don’t actively want to be wankers, do they? A lot of them want to be more enlightened. But sometimes you need to be told what people [by that he really means women] want.’ And when it comes to ‘what people want’, things can be confusing for a man trying to do the right thing in 2017. Because while it’s very clear from the media that men and masculinity have a lot of toxic problems, it’s pretty much impossible to find anyone talking about masculine virtues that we should be playing up. These days, referencing and celebrating ‘feminine’ values is routine and widely accepted: ‘Feminine Values Can Give Tomorrow’s Leaders an Edge’, declared a Harvard Business Review story, listing the most important values as expressiveness, planning for the future, reasonableness, loyalty, flexibility, patience, intuition and collaboration. There’s nothing wrong with that of course, at least not until you ask what the corresponding ‘masculine’ values are meant to be. In October, as the scandals over alleged harassment rumbled on from Weinstein to Kevin Spacey and on to Westminster, several TV news programmes covered a new University College London/Harris report on modern men. While all the interviewees cheerily agreed that men were changing, no one ever said into what they were supposed to be changing. ‘I read it and I was so excited,’ said one thrilled female commentator on Sky

24 es magazine 10.11.17

News. ‘Men are really ready to be a little bit redefined!’ Redefined as what, though? She didn’t say. But it’s a fair bet that had anyone put for wa rd some p o sit ive masculine values — discipline, rational problem solving, concentration, restraint, extrospection, perhaps — a female contributor would have surely, and correctly, pointed out that women could embrace those values, too. As a culture we have become uneasy with the idea that there is anything good about ‘traditional’ masculinity, unless it’s seen at a distance. That is why so many TV programmes with a contemporary setting are full of creepy or ineffectual men (Doctor Foster, The Fall, Happy Valley) and the ones with traditionally strong men (Game of Thrones, superhero films, Life on Mars) are all in the fantasy, sci-fi and time-travel genres. And why manly heroes with a more modern sort of manhood (David Beckham, Ryan Gosling, Stormzy, Harry Styles) are said to have become more modern by being in touch with their ‘feminine sides’, as if there were not enough good to be had in traditional maleness. Think of how daft it would sound if we were told that Lena Dunham or Cara Delevingne were modern because they had embraced their ‘masculinity’. So if, as a man, you think about all this, you can end up in a bit of a quandary. And that doesn’t help those of us who are best represented not by the powerful grabbers and gropers but by the tongue-tied, awkward English archetype such as Hugh Grant in Love, Actually, or Trevor Howard in Brief Encounter (ask your nan). This is a nation, remember, whose greatest male romantic film hero, Mr Darcy, declared his feeling for the love of his life by jumping fully clothed into a pond. We need guidance.

nd the fact is, nothing about dividing virtues between men and women helps. When it comes to the real challenges in life — hard things, such as sticking with relationships in the bad times, being kind to people who don’t deserve it and admitting you were wrong — neither ‘masculine’ nor ‘feminine’ qualities will aid us at all. That takes qualities that are really worth having, like bravery, self-assurance, substance and integrity, and those, thank God, tend to be gender-free. My hope is not so much that we redefine manhood — though obviously the harassment must stop, and men have to shut up and start listening more — but that one day we will transcend the whole stupid, 19thcentury gender nonsense altogether. One of the many reasons to despise Donald Trump, Weinstein and the rest is that they have pushed that day a long way back for me, you, Dom and everyone else.

style notes What we love now

THEORY blazer, £525, at net-aporter.com

LOEWE card holder, £625 (loewe.com)

EDITED by KATRINA ISRAEL

COS scarf, £49 (cosstores.com)

M&S collection coat, £99 (marks andspencer.com)

Craft CLASS

Jonathan Anderson found inspiration in the archives of British textile designer William Morris for his latest Loewe collaboration, which reinterprets Morris’s Honeysuckle and Strawberry Thief prints across autumnal accessories and clothing. Liberty, the emblematic home of William Morris, will hold a special pop-up from 15 November to 24 December to celebrate. (loewe.com)

COMME DES GARÇONS wallet, £129, at doverstreet market.com.

LOEWE hammock bag, £1,350 (loewe.com)

CHECK, PLEASE

You’d have to be clueless to have missed this AW memo. Cross check your winter wardrobe with plenty of plaid. Here’s our colourful edit that even Cher and Dionne (above) would totally endorse.

Spiritual hearing Protect your aura with east London jeweller Gala Colivet Dennison’s agate earrings.

Topshop skirt, £55 (topshop.com)

Gala Colivet Dennison earrings, £475 (galacolivetdennison.com)

zara shirt, £24.99 (zara.com)

InSTARglam With the patience of a saint, Austrian photographer Stefan Draschan hangs around galleries matching people to artworks

@Stefandraschan

SELF PORTRAIT trousers, £220 (selfportrait-studio.com)

Erika Boldrin

PAPER LONDON coat, £495 (paper london.com)

A visitor spotted at Paris Fashion Week

BURBERRY sandals, £550 (uk.burberry.com) Getty

Jess Cole

10.11.17 es magazine 27

MEN’S STYLE What to buy now

Big Ben’s bit on the side

by TEO VAN DEN BROEKE, style director OF esquire UK

Foot lights

Puma x Tomas Maier sneakers, £120 (tomasmaier.com)

Kent & Curwen blazer, £995 (020 7240 6618)

In addition to being the creative director of low-key Italian luxury brand Bottega Veneta, Tomas Maier has his own eponymous label, producing brilliantly understated basics. This autumn, the softly spoken German designer has teamed up with Puma to create a limited-edition sneaker, the Roma 1968, taking inspiration from a trainer the sportswear giant released half a century ago. Retro, low slung and embossed with Maier’s signature palm tree logo, these bad boys are indoor wear only until March.

Trousers, £345

Top, £135

Ben Machell sings the praises of the unsung suburbs

went to Surbiton for the very first time in my life recently. It was brilliant! One minute you’re trying to cross the concourse at Waterloo without having to resort to medieval weaponry, then the next thing you know you’re on a train which, in no time at all, drops you off at a place that looks like something from a Ladybird book about pleasingly anonymous dormitory conurbations. I knew I was still in London but it wasn’t London London. There was a high street. Old people. Vacant parking spaces. I went to a café and the coffee was unspecific and milky, the kind you get in a care home and just how I like it. I was served an egg-mayonnaise sandwich. On normal bread! I don’t think they serve egg-mayonnaise sandwiches inside zones 1-3. They do in Surbiton. I felt at ease. For the first time in months, nobody did a double-take at my anorak.

“I don’t think they serve egg-mayo sandwiches inside zones 1-3”

Jonny Cochrane; Josh Shinner

Golden halls

Kent & Curwen has been producing classic British men’s apparel for almost a century. Last year, however, at the hands of David Beckham and creative director Daniel Kearns, the label was given a much-needed injection of modernity, producing sports-influenced tailored pieces with a focus on quality. This month, the brand opens a new flagship store on Covent Garden’s Floral Street. As well as all the core items (such as the peg-leg trouser and the classic rugby shirt), there will also be a series of exclusive pieces available such as the new bullion blazer, which is inspired by the label’s long collegiate history.

West is best

We love a bit of homegrown talent here at ES, and when it comes to menswear, Brit designer Oliver Spencer is the cream of the crop. Known for his boxy worker jackets, widelegged judo pants and ultracomfortable granddad shirts, Spencer has recently opened his sixth store on Notting Hill’s Kensington Park Road. To celebrate the launch, Spencer has teamed up with artist David Austen to create a run of limited T-shirts (to be sold exclusively in the store). The space also plays host to a range of Austen’s light sculptures, which are available to buy on request.

Oliver Spencer x David Austen T-shirts, £65 (oliverspencer. co.uk)

Over the years, I have developed an appreciation for the hinterlands of Greater London. For a long time I was snobby about places that couldn’t boast the heady glamour of a Tube stop, but experience has proved me so wrong. I once, for example, spent the weekend with English Civil War re-enactors in Waltham Abbey, just off the M25, and had the time of my life. I can’t go to Croydon without feeling a warm pang of familiarity: change people’s accents and triple the number of Greggs and it could be any number of mid-sized Northern towns. I’ve got nothing but good things to say about New Malden ever since I won a laser-tag tournament there. Snigger all you want, but is there laser tag in Dalston? Or Brixton? I don’t think so. Where else? I once had to abandon a train near Chertsey. It was dark and wet and we all had to walk down the tracks for what seemed like a mile. When we finally got to the station, a few of the passengers suggested going for a curry while we waited for the replacement bus service. I went along and it was probably the best meal I’ve ever had. Cheers Chertsey. I adopted my cat from a shelter in Enfield and… speaking of which, have you ever been to the garden centre at Crews Hill? Makes other garden centres look like trash. I could go on. London’s great. But Greater London’s not bad either. Not bad at all.

10.11.17 es magazine 29

illustration BY anna bu kliewer

you stream if want to go

faster

With Apple pumping a cool $1 billion into original content and Netflix plotting even more shows for next year, Richard Godwin looks at how the small screen became seriously big business

ast month, Apple made an announcement that may prove even more significant than the animoji function on the new iPhone X. The world’s most valuable company (it has $262 billion just chilling in the bank) announced that it is going to spend $1 billion on content for its streaming service, Apple TV. One woman who will be doing a lot of that spending is Jay Hunt, newly poached from Channel 4. She’s the woman who bought The Great British Bake Off from the BBC for £75 million, who launched Gogglebox, Catastrophe and Black Mirror, and who was responsible for Luther and Sherlock — and thus turbocharging the careers of Idris Elba and Benedict Cumberbatch — when she was head of BBC1. She will be a formidable piece of weaponry for a TV service whose big hit to date is Planet of the Apps (no, me neither). But Apple TV has also secured Jamie Erlicht

10.11.17 es magazine 31

“Netflix has 80 original movies slated for 2018 — more than Warner Bros, Disney and Universal Pictures combined”

Clockwise from left, Orange is the New Black; Apple CEO Tim Cook; Jay Hunt, who has joined Apple TV

and Zack Van Amburg (who brought Breaking Bad to our screens) from Sony, signed up Steven Spielberg to revive his Amazing Stories at $5 million an episode, and there are wild (ie eight-figure) rumours flying around about the amount it’s bidding for Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon’s show about a pair of rival morning TV hosts.

Getty; Rex

till, $1 billion on content? That’s chump change next to the $2.5 billion that US streaming giant Hulu spent on content in 2017 (and the company has already won an Emmy for The Handmaid’s Tale). And that sum pales next to the $4.5 billion that Amazon Prime has spent on originals such as Transparent and The Man in the High Castle. Mark Zuckerberg wants in on the streaming game too: Facebook is trialling its Watch service in the US. And then there’s Netflix, which has laid down $6 billion on 1,000 hours of original content this year and wants to spend $8 billion in 2018. The jump alone is what HBO — for years the benchmark in quality TV — spends on programmes in a year. What does $8 billion buy? Well, Netflix has 80 original movies slated for 2018, which is more than Warner Bros, Disney and Universal Pictures combined. It has original series in German, Danish, Polish, Swedish, Spanish, Italian and French, plus 30 Japanese anime projects planned, signalling its plans for global domination. It recently bought up the comic book publisher Millarworld with a view to creating its own superhero universe. It should be able to absorb the end of its signature series, House of Cards (already planned before stories of star Kevin Spacey’s sexual assault allegations surfaced), with Stranger Things 3, Bojack Horseman 5

TV players: Netflix CEO Reed Hastings, Steven Spielberg and Mark Zuckerberg

and Orange is the New Black 7(!), all due. Netflix CEO Reed Hastings recently announced a third quarter of rising subscriber numbers (up 5.3 million to 109.3 million worldwide) and celebrated his ascent to the Forbes 400 list of the richest Americans with an estimated net worth of $2.2 billion. He recently commissioned four Adam Sandler movies. Why? Computer says yes. ‘Netflix is without a doubt the most talked about company in Hollywood,’ says Matthew Belloni, editorial director of The Hollywood Reporter. (Not entirely true: almost every actor and writer I reach out to can’t talk about it as they don’t want to jinx the series they’re pitching to Netflix.) ‘The fact a Silicon Valley company that didn’t produce any original shows five years ago is now spending billions on original content at a time when the traditional studios are pulling back is extraordinary,’ he says. It’s tempting to compare the landscape in these early days of the Streaming Wars to pre-First World War Europe — only the outcome will (hopefully) be a lot more entertaining. Here are the Imperial powers of the digital era, itching to exploit their new technology, prepared to dig deep in an economic war of attrition. Only you wonder if they know what they’re letting themselves in for. Apple has signalled a desire to create dramas and comedies with ‘broad appeal’; CEO Tim Cook is notoriously prudish and according to reports, delayed the release of Carpool Karaoke as he didn’t like its foul language and references to vaginas. Facebook Watch hopes to exploit its interactive features à la Facebook Live, but its mission statement feels like precisely the sort of thing a techie would come up with. Apparently we can look forward to ‘shows that engage fans and community’ and ‘shows that follow a narrative arc or have a consistent theme’. Netflix, meanwhile, wants to be all things to all people, says Belloni. ‘They want a show that’s going to appeal to hipster thirty-somethings. They want a show that’s going to appeal to African-American women. They want Adam Sandler movies too. They’re trying to win every single category. And when you do that you’re going to spend and spend and spend.’ In many ways, Hastings — a cerebral

10.11.17 es magazine 33

Rivals to the streaming throne: clockwise from left, Netflix’s The Crown and Bojack Horseman; Amazon’s Transparent

“Netflix has become like a utility… You have electricity, gas and water, and then you have this storytelling utility”

Capital Picture

but down-to-earth 57-yearold, who lives outside San Francisco with his wife, two teenage children, and some chickens and goats — is different from the average tech CEO. He’s celebrated in S i l i c o n Va l l e y fo r a PowerPoint presentation deta i li ng the compa ny culture of ‘freedom and responsibility’. Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg (of Lean In fame) has lauded this as ‘the most important document ever to come out of the Valley’ — it stresses that Netflix has no space for ‘brilliant jerks’, it doesn’t throw huge parties and unless your boss would ‘fight’ to keep you, you will be given a ‘generous severance package’ and told to go home. Employees are trusted to set their own holidays and new parents are allowed to take ‘whatever time they feel is right’ in the first year of their child’s life. Which sounds commendably grown-up.

ut Netflix has also followed the classic Silicon Valley disruption playbook. It began life in 1997 as a Bay Area DVD rental business and ‘pivoted’ to streaming in 2007, providing shows on demand and short-circuiting what Hastings calls the ‘managed dissatisfaction’ of the TV schedules. Why wait until 8pm on a Wednesday to watch your favourite show? Why pay for hundreds of TV channels you never

Praise be: Emmy winner, The Handmaid’s Tale

watch? Why not binge on what you want right now? ‘Netflix has become a bit like this utility in people’s homes,’ is how Brit Marling, creator and star of The OA puts it to me. ‘You have your electricity and your gas and your water, and then you have this storytelling utility.’ It was only in 2012 that Netflix began producing its own content. ‘The aim is to become HBO before HBO becomes us,’ chief content officer Ted Sarandos said just before he dropped the first series of House of Cards, having paid $100 million for the first two seasons. Now the series dump has become standard practice. Even the BBC made Top of the Lake: China Girl available in one go. While Netflix is notoriously reluctant to release ratings, it does proudly offer a list of its most ‘binge-raced’ shows, which it defines as the ones fans watch the whole of within 24 hours of them appearing on the service. G ilmore G irls is currently at the top. Is it healthy to watch an entire series in one go? Who cares! Netflix’s lack of transparency over its ratings is one way it causes resentment among traditional studios. Another is its lack of profitability: Netflix has accumulated $20 billion-odd in debt in its rapid expansion; HBO actually makes money but receives a fraction of the attention. And meanwhile, it’s getting ever harder for British companies to compete as ‘content’ prices become ever more inflated. Craig Holleworth, a senior BBC commissioner, recently warned: ‘I wonder when the bubble will burst. At some point it probably will. About five years ago, we could make a programme for £1 million. Now they’re costing two, three, four million.’ Case in point: series one of Netflix’s The Crown was the most expensive series ever made at £100 million. Series two is said to have cost £200 million. The tech titans justify all this cash spend by pointing not to ratings but to daily active users. Series such as Transparent or Orange is the New Black are loss-leaders, designed to encourage new subscribers to sign up to a platform and stay there. It’s especially worth it for Amazon, because once you’re locked into Prime, you’re more likely to buy your underpants and your breakfast cereals from Amazon, too. The same will be true of Apple TV. Disney, meanwhile, has ended its distribution deal with Netflix with a view to creating its own streaming channel — and considering Disney owns Pixar, Marvel Studios

10.11.17 es magazine 35

Eat your eyes out: above, Netflix’s most-binged show, Gilmore Girls; Stranger Things, right

and Lucasfilm (ie Star Wars), that will be equivalent to America entering the war. But the sheer range of Netflix’s spending suggests its ambitions may be even bigger: to become a Disney before Disney becomes Netflix. Meanwhile, all this is changing the sort of programmes that get made. ‘I don’t think we can even call it television anymore,’ says Ed Finn, academic and author of What Algorithms Want. ‘You have these data-driven companies trying to get their heads round this idiosyncratic thing that is Hollywood and the movie industry. But the weird thing is, Netflix has done it more successfully than anyone else has.’ Netflix likes to claim that its algorithms are its ‘secret sauce’. It tracks data not only on who watches what, but how quickly they watch it, when they pause, what they watch afterwards, what they abandon. It combines this with a ‘human element’: a person grading each piece of content: happy/sad, light/ dark. ‘They have organised all movies that have ever been made or ever will be made into 76,897 categories. If you want an uplifting buddy Second World War movie with a strong female lead, you can search for that,’ says Finn. And these algorithms feed into the commissioning process — whereupon creators are given artistic freedom. And it seems to be working. This year, Netflix scored 91 Emmy nominations as well as an Academy Award for its documentary, White Helmets. One director who is currently making a documentary for Netflix says its approach is liberating: ‘With TV, you feel you’re part of the enormous spreadsheet that is the schedule. You’re constantly having to cut bits out of your film to make it fit. Netflix is quite happy to let it run to however long it needs to be.’ Still, Adam Tandy, producer of The Thick of It, Catastrophe and Inside No.9, sounds a cautionary note. ‘There’s a notion that the current glut of programming

“Netflix likes to claim that its algorithms are its ‘secret sauce’”

Gotta watch: Netflix series She’s Gotta Have it directed by Spike Lee (who made the original film) will debut this month

that’s being produced for Netflix and Amazon has created a Golden Age of Television that we should all be celebrating. I’m not so sure. Streaming culture is all about gorging on one thing. It’s not exactly a varied or nutritious diet. Their business depends on people subscribing to their service and staying there. The most efficient way of doing that is encouraging you to watch a single series and nothing else. It’s in nobody’s interest to say, “let’s make it shorter”.’ He believes this has led to ‘a world without beginning, middle and end’, where shows are designed to draw in a devoted fandom and keep them on the platform. ‘It ends up like an interminable day at a theme park. There are good bits. But there’s an awful lot of hanging around.’ But such complaints may come to seem increasingly quaint. The printing press spread Protestantism; the vinyl long player shaped the classic rock album. Why shouldn’t streaming suggest bold new forms? Sarandos doesn’t seem to be finished yet: ‘Why not premiere movies on Netflix the same day that they’re opening in theatres? Listen to the consumer, give them what they want.’ Perhaps though, it was the LA songwriter Father John Misty who provided the most compelling vision of the future in his song, Total Entertainment Fo re v e r : ‘ When the historians find us we’ll be in our homes / Plugged into our hubs, skin and bones / A frozen smile on every face as the stories replay / This must have been a wonderful place.’

10.11.17 es magazine 37

The

AGEof

opulence Rich textures, luxurious tones and a lot of glow — beauty’s getting ready for winter. Malaika Firth models the season’s key looks PhotographS BY olivia frØlich stylED BY sophie paxton Beauty editor Katie Service

38 es magazine 10.11.17

ERDEM dress, POA (020 3653 0360). V BY LAURA VANN earrings, £75 (vjewellery.co.uk) Urban Decay Naked Heat Lipstick in heat, £15.50; Naked Heat Eyeshadow Palette, £39.50; All Nighter Liquid Foundation, £29; All Nighter Long Lasting Makeup Setting Spray, £10; 24 / 7 Glide on Lip pencil in liar, £13.50 (urbandecay.co.uk). 3INA The Ultra Curl Mascara, £9.95 (3ina.com)

DELPOZO shirt, £1,650 (020 7881 0950). CÉLINE earrings, £520 (020 7491 8200) Urban Decay All Nighter Liquid Foundation, £29; All Nighter Long Lasting Makeup Setting Spray, £10; Heavy Metals Metallic Eyeshadow Palette, £43 (urbandecay.co. uk). Victoria Beckham EstÉe Lauder Matte Lipstick in Victoria, £50, at net-a-porter.com

OSMAN top, £1,820 (osmanlondon.com). DIOR JOAILLERIE Rose Dior Bagatelle garnet earring, £1,350; diamond earring, £1,600, both worn as choker with velvet ribbon (020 7172 0172) Urban Decay All Nighter Liquid Foundation, £29; Vice Revolution High-Colour Lip Gloss, £15; Afterglow Highlighter Palette, £27 (urbandecay.co.uk). Chanel Le Vernis de Chanel longwear nail colour in particuliere, £20 (chanel.com)

10.11.17 es magazine 41

alaika Firth’s story is the kind of story that, were you to read it in a Hollywood script, you would think was too farfetched, too unbelievable, too good to be true. As a 17year-old living in Barking — having moved there from Kenya with her family at the age of seven — she was obsessed with Channel 4’s The Model Agency. She harangued her mother into calling the agency featured in the show, Premier. And that was that. ‘She rang them and said: “My girl loves your show, she would love to model for you guys.” They went: “Yeah, bring her in.” They didn’t know how I looked, they didn’t know anything.’ She was signed on the spot, picked out a new name (there was already a model with her birth name, Tamara, making waves at the time), and within weeks had her first job offer. ‘I was still in sixth form and I had to choose between school and Burberry. I chose Burberry.’ Working ‘nine to five, every single day’ under the soon-departing Christopher Bailey, other offers quickly followed, from ASOS to Marc Jacobs to Prada (she was the first black model to star in a Prada campaign since Naomi Campbell). From the outset, Firth had a very clear plan for what she was going to do with the money she made: namely provide for her family. She has been able to build a house back home in Kenya (her dad designed it), where they all now live. ‘I’m like a film to them,’ she says, when I ask how they have reacted to her success. ‘That’s what I am. I feel like they’re just watching me on TV and they’re seeing me coming up and they’re just like, in awe of me. One day I can be Tamara, at home on the sofa, and the next day I’m like dressed up Malaika. If I’m going out to a party or an event, for them it’s just like a roller coaster, just watching me going to all of this stuff.’ For just a few months now, Firth has been residing, solo, in her first-ever parent-free home on the Upper West Side of New York City. She is single and happy about that fact (‘I don’t want to be held up by anyone,’ she says). Anyway, she notes, there is plenty to be getting on with. The campaigns keep coming in and she is about to start taking acting classes, ‘because I really want it, the acting thing. Just have to push’. She is ambitious. Very ambitious. For example, when I ask her whether fame on the level of a Cara or a Naomi would scare her, she gives an answer that sits in stark contrast to pretty much everyone else to whom I have ever put that question. ‘You know what?’ she says. ‘I lived a completely different life when I was young. I didn’t have anyone following me around. So I think I’d like it!’ Interview by Hamish MacBain

This page, OSMAN dress, £5,950 (osmanlondon.com) ATELIER SWAROVSKI X PAUL ANDREW earrings, £249 (atelierswarovski.com) Urban Decay All Nighter Liquid Foundation, £29; 24 / 7 Glide-On Eye Pencil, £15.50; Troublemaker Mascara, £19.50 (urbandecay.co.uk). Pat McGrath Labs Skin Fetish Illuminator Kit, £70, at net-a-porter.com Opposite page, LOEWE dress, £1,725 (loewe.com) GARRARD earrings, POA (garrard.com) Urban Decay Nagel Vice Lipstick Palette, £30; All Nighter Liquid Foundation, £29; Naked Skin The Illuminizer Translucent Pressed Beauty Powder, £24 (urbandecay.co.uk). Elizabeth Arden Grand Entrance Dramatic Volume Mascara, £22, at net-aporter.com Fashion assistant: Eniola Dare. Make-up by Mel Arter at CLM using Urban Decay. Hair by Leigh Keates at Premier Hair and Make-up. Nails by Sabrina Gayle at The Wall Group. Set designer: Victoria Spicer. Model: Malaika Firth at Premier Model Management

10.11.17 es magazine 43

beauty by katie service

another dimension

Varese Blossom fabric, £69 per metre (designersguild.com). Waterford Mixology glass, £145 for a set of four, at selfridges.com

Combination colours will contour and sculpt. Drink it in

Clockwise from left, Givenchy Le Rouge Sculpt, £25.20, at debenhams.com. dior Rouge Dior Double Rouge in Miss Crush, £27.50 (dior.com). smashbox Be Legendary triple tone lipstick in Berry Ombre, £17.50 (smashbox.co.uk). benefit They’re Real! Double the Lip in Pink Thrills, £16.50 (benefitcosmetics.com)

PHOTOGRAPH BY aleksandra kingo STYLED BY lily worcester

10.11.17 es magazine 45

beauty

You beauty!

ON THE SOAPBOX

Beauty editor Katie Service finds a way to hug trees and smell fabulous at the same time

‘W

hen a beauty writer starts waffling on about sustainability, it’s easy to switch off. It’s all a bit worthy, isn’t it? Vegan this and microbead that. The thing is that times are changing, and what we once thought was impossibly chic (mountains of weighty, click-together plastic compacts wrapped in ribbon and a hundred layers of tissue paper) starts to look laboured and uncool. Enter Floral Street, an all-new fragrance concept that recently launched in Harvey Nichols. The woman behind the brand is Michelle Feeney, former chief executive at tanning brand St Tropez. The first thing you notice about the bottles is that they are beautiful — like mini Nick Knight floral glass explosions — followed by the boxes (below), which are made from recyclable pulp cartons bound together with a bright reusable plastic band. What’s that? No plastic cellophane? No laminated boxes or polystyrene filler? Hallelujah. The fact is that some 8 million tonnes of plastic are dumped into the ocean every year and, according to a report by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, by 2050 the weight of plastic in the sea will match the weight of fish. Floral Street is proof that perfume doesn’t have to be trussed up like a Christmas tree FLORAL STREET to be appealing. Iris Goddess, £55, at harveynichols.com The perfect ecoconscious scent.

Josh Shinner; Natasha Pszenicki

Headspace

’

I Annabel Rivkin is beaming over blusher

Toni Dicks and Jasmine Hemsley, aka Sound Sebastien, are hosting a singing bowl sound bath pop-up at the Devonshire Club. The slow sound waves produced by the crystal bowls soothe the nervous system and reduce stress, and complimentary Tempur foam pillows and lavender eye masks will help you maximise the relaxation vibes. (soundsebastien.com)

’m all about the double-up. I double cleanse because I do not believe that one go will fully remove a full face of slap. I double mascara: first Eyeko’s peerless Rock Out & Lash Out to fan out the lashes, then Max Factor’s 2000 Calorie or Diorshow to thicken and dramatise. In winter I double moisturise: an oil (Votary or Darphin) and then rub on a night cream. I double base: a tinted moisturiser given muscle by a liquid blendable concealer like Tarte’s Aquacealer, which has changed my life. I double scent: for a zingy day it’s Jo Malone’s grapefruit body wash followed by Miller Harris’s sparkling Citron Citron, which dies down to a gentle, sunlit, woody delight. Now I double blush. Glossier, lately having arrived on these shores from New York, has sprung from the cyber loins of beauty website intothegloss.com. The result is a range of truly excellent products, among which Cloud Paint stands out as a fantastically buildable and sheer cheek colour in tiny little gouache-like tubes. Infused with collagen to plump, blurring powders to airbrush and pops of delicious colour, it is a gorgeous blusher base. My new constant companion is ‘beam’, a perfect apricot for a subtle coral radiance. When night calls, Cloud Paint becomes my undercoat, pumped up by a powder blusher such as Bobbi Brown’s Nude Peach — or, if I’m wanting to be grown-up and mysterious (I’m never mysterious, but God loves a trier), then it might be Charlotte Tilbury’s sophisticated yet idiot-proof Cheek to Chic blusher in sex on fire. Double trouble, my beauties… Cloud Paint in beam, £15 (glossier.com)

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

10.11.17 es magazine 47

feast

grace & flavour Grace Dent loves the food at Ceremony, a restaurant joyously bucking the vegetarian clichés

“I’d prefer to eat things that didn’t once have a face and my eyes glaze over at tales of respectful nose-to-tail eating”

Ambience food

Jonny Cochrane; illustration by Jonathan Calugi @ Machas

am asked so many times a week by strangers how I choose which restaurants to review, that a lot of the time I make the answer up. Purely to entertain myself. ‘God guides me,’ I say. Or, ‘A team of curiously hospitality-obsessed otters push a list though my letterbox.’ Or even, ‘I am led in most life decisions by Gregg Wallace.’ None of these is true, but nobody, I’ve found, endures more than seconds of the real response, as it’s led by gut and festooned with variables. Ceremony, for example, in Tufnell Park, is the name of one of my favourite New Order songs. It’s also a restaurant, they say, which happens to be vegetarian rather than a vegetarian restaurant. Heavens, I’ve endured many of the latter, having been vegetarian for several years in my teens and 20s. Even today, I’d prefer to eat things that didn’t once have a face and my eyes glaze over at tales of respectful nose-to-tail eating because, let’s be frank, the last thing that pig thought was, ‘Blimey, this all feels so respectful’. Still, if you want a good reason to kill pigs, it is the landscape of vegetarian restaurants which is, even now, a bit joyless; all hairy toes in Birkenstocks and a clientele comprising mainly those puritans from Blackadder II who arrive for dinner demanding a raw unpeeled parsnip and the chairs to be replaced by spikes. Twenty-five minutes in Vanilla Black in Holborn and I’d have strangled a veal calf myself just to pep things up. So, the fact that Ali and Joe at Ceremony were opening for boozy brunches and dinners of hearty British classics, in a neighbourhood joint with a sit-up bar and raffish cocktail list, won me over. Ceremony looked noisy. Ceremony looked fun. It

ceremony 131 Fortess Road, Tufnell Park, NW5 (020 3302 4242; ceremonyrestaurant.london)

Glasses of Crémant

£30

Glasses of oloroso

£18

Glasses of Madeira

£15

Water

Raw veggies

Courgette fritters

£4

Vegetable crisps

£3

Charred leek rarebit

£8

Duck egg and wild mushrooms £9

Sweet potato curry

£15

White bean stew

£16

Grilled lettuce

£3

Cheese board

£9

Total

£1 £4.50

£135.50

appeared to be serving a cheese board with four accoutrements: homemade bramble jam, piccalilli, quince jelly and walnuts. Plus Madeira and oloroso by the glass. Also challah French toast and sweet potato curry. And no children after 7pm. These people understood me. Thank God, as the restrictive eating, holier-than-thou brigade tends to raise mini-savages and if permitted, will still be there with one tit out feeding a toddler at 10pm, putting me right off my crème brûlée. Ceremony was, so I thought, my little secret, until just before my Thursday-evening booking when it was warmly frottaged by another critic. Giles someone or other. I’d never heard of him. Regardless, days later Ceremony was in full swing. I wasn’t drinking, so we ordered Crémant fizz (which I class as purely elegant hand decoration). Snacks of hot, fresh, cloud-like courgette fritters, a bowl of vegetable crisps and a plate of raw radishes and beetroot with a vibrant romesco sauce arrived. This was all slightly worthy, but not to worry as along next came a charred leek rarebit; a mini roasting tin full of oozy, unctious leek, mustardy cheeses and breadcrumbs. Then a plate of buttery polenta strewn with wild mushrooms and a breadcrumbed yet runny duck egg. Patently, there will be vegans tantruming ‘but are there vegan options?’ again and again throughout this review, sounding like an ignored car alarm, to which my answer is a firm ‘probably’. The sweet potato curry, to me, chimed heroically and fragrantly with coconut milk. It is the stuff of dreams. But I did not go into the kitchen and demand a forensic. The white bean stew was blandly satisfying and so far, so vegan, yet came with delicious, plump Parmesan dumplings. My advice would be to call them, but they may be too distracted to answer as Ceremony plays quite loud music and is full of people of the youngish and fun-ish category. And right now they appear to be turning away walk-ins — because it feels like when, if one decides to make a vegetarian restaurant resolutely non-vegetarian feeling, well, like Field of Dreams, you build it and they come. And I went, and I’ll be back.

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feast

tart london Jemima Jones and Lucy Carr-Ellison cook up

a campfire-style brunch of eggy bacon and beans

Talking tables: the Tart girls set up for a blowout Mediterranean feast

Jemima Jones (left) and Lucy Carr-Ellison

Josh Shinner

n a recent bright autumnal morning we decided to prepare brunch outside in the garden. We had been talking about the fun of preparing meals while camping and how there is something so rewarding about cooking over a campfire. We wanted to make a hearty, warming, one-pot breakfast dish. So we decided on this smoky bacon and beans with eggs. So we got to it and went fully primal, constructing a table out of two bricks and a plank of wood (don’t say we’re not handy) and we called in the troops — our friends turned up with some fresh crusty bread and a thermos of bullshot. Think of bullshot as a wintry alternative to a Bloody Mary — a real hair of the dog drink. It is a mixture of vodka, beef consommé, Tabasco, Worcestershire sauce, lemon juice and black pepper, served hot. It’s a bit odd, but it really does the trick on a cold morning. This dish has inspired us to consider investing in a fire pit for our small London garden. You can pick them up quite inexpensively online. We have barbecues in the summer, so why not a fire pit for the winter — even if all you toast is marshmallows. In case you don’t want to go to the trouble of cooking your brunch outside, this works equally well on the hob, and a dash of chipotle paste will ensure you still get a lovely smoky flavour.

Serves 4

SMOKY BACON WITH EGGS AND BEANS

1 tbsp olive oil 4 rashers of streaky bacon, chopped 1 onion, chopped 3 cloves of garlic, peeled and chopped 1 tbsp chopped fresh thyme 2 bay leaves 1 heaped tsp smoked paprika ½ jar chipotle paste 1 tsp cumin seeds 1 tbsp tomato paste 2 tins chopped tomatoes 1 tbsp maple syrup 2 tins cannellini beans, drained 4 eggs Small bunch coriander, chopped

Heat the oil in a pan over a medium heat and add the bacon. Once it has started to crisp, add the onion, garlic, thyme and bay leaves. Cook for 5 minutes until softened. Add the smoked paprika, chipotle, cumin seeds and tomato paste then stir in the chopped tomatoes, maple syrup and beans. Simmer for 10 minutes, then season to taste. Use a spoon to make four wells in the bean mixture and crack in the eggs. Keep over the heat until the eggs are cooked, then sprinkle over the coriander and serve with lots of warm bread for scooping.

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In the MIX

FEAST

The in CIDER London’s first urban cidery is making waves. Time to jump aboard the apple cart, says Frankie McCoy

Jonny Cochrane; glassware available at waterford.co.uk

orget stickily warm Kopparberg sloshed down your back at teen music festivals, or the existential hangover-inducing scrumpy of post-exam celebrations — and please, please don’t mention snakebite. Cider is being redeemed, one pint of single variety at a time. Starting in Bermondsey. While Druid Street is known among craft beerophiles as the start of the Bermondsey Beer Mile, packed with blood orange double IPAproducing microbreweries, there is a new craft pint puller in town. Hawkes Cidery bills itself as the first urban cider maker, and founder Simon Wright is on a mission to get us sinking good cider. ‘For years, mainstream cider has been mass produced, and of mostly poor quality,’ he says. ‘Craft cider has been a thing for a very niche group of people in places such as Somerset or Herefordshire. But British apples are wonderfully varied, they’re also cheap and provide nuanced flavour profiles when you play with them. We’ve had the craft gin revolution, and craft beer just gets bigger and better, so I truly believe it’s high time that cider has its day in the sun.’ Ciders in the taproom are ranked by their various levels of sharpness, sweetness and tannin, with some of the super-dry, super-tannic tasting almost like Syrah. Brothers Toffee Apple this is not. Its own brand, Hawkes Urban Orchard, is not challenging cider — it’s simply very crisp, alcoholic apple juice, easy sipping at 4.5 per cent and, when I visited on one hungover Sunday, Rosé outlook: blissfully revitalising. Sassy Cidre There is an apple donation scheme for anyone with an overloaded fruit tree dropping Granny Smiths quicker than you can say ‘Newton’s law of universal

‘W

Tanked: cider tasting at Hawkes Cidery

gravitation’. You are given one bottle of Urban Orchard for every 3kg (about 15 apples) donated — and on 11 November you can even brew your own Bramleys at its Urban Cider Making Masterclass. The revival of cider is long overdue — the UK has for some time been pipped to the post by the States, where craft cider is big business. Still, London is finally getting aboard the apple cart. Scandi-inspired restaurant Rōk is pouring its own brewed ciders at its new pop-up spot in Old Spitalfields Market, while at the new Farm Girl café in Sweaty Betty Carnaby Street, you can chase your in-store Paola’s Body Barre with a glass of hydrating Hoila, an Alpine cider made in South Tyrol and served in an extremely Instagram-friendly bottle. The same can be said of French brand Sassy Cidre and its admirable determination to make cider cool again with graphic bottles and a rosé variety.

“British apples are wonderfully varied and provide nuanced flavours” Need something to soak up the juice? The Cider Box, campaigners for real cider, hosts regular cider and cheese evenings — most recently at Kennington’s Old Red Lion — to encourage consumption of Braeburns in booze form and Brie. And if you’re steering clear of the booze but need to keep warm this season, sip yourself silly on Dominique Ansel’s hot cinnamon apple booze-free ‘cider’ while insulating yourself for the winter with a cronut or six. What are you waiting for? Get some cider inside ya.

Douglas Blyde on the rise of innovative Chinese winemakers

e’re hungry hunters,’ says Lenz Moser, lifting chopsticks, conductor-like. We eat at Andrew Wong’s avant-garde Pimlico dim sum house, where croquettes conceal rabbit curry and torched mushroom buns sprout from ‘turf’. Moser, a fifth-generation Austrian winemaker, is famed for popularising sprightly whites from the national grape, Grüner Veltliner, via ‘friendly’, ‘charming’ and ‘singing’ renditions. However, he long harboured a fascination for China. When on a mission to sell Austrian Veltliner to the People’s Republic 13 years ago, he piqued the interest of the CEO of Asia’s oldest winery, Château Changyu, who insisted he ‘prove himself’ by making Chinese Cabernet. Rather than Shandong, the east-coast home of most of China’s wineries, Moser chose Ningxia, 600 miles west of Beijing. ‘Ningxia, washed by the Yellow River, is an oasis,’ he says. It also basks in 3,000 hours of sunshine a year with cool nights and altitude, preserving freshness in fragrant wines. With cupolas, fountains and a statue of Moser’s grandfather, ‘the first person to trellis vineyards’, Château Changyu Moser XV winery and museum transforms a landscape of coal mines into a tourist hotspot. Convinced the secondlargest trading nation has terroir and drive to become a global wine player, Moser makes quarterly working pilgrimages. ‘China’s 1.3 billion are waking up to the Western lifestyle. And in Germany, Xi Jinping is a superstar.’ Noting any suffering ‘is outweighed by the goal’, Moser taught his eager Chinese team that ‘it can be okay to say no’ and stopped traditions including harvesting by rote. ‘Typically, grapes were picked before the moon festival. But grapes don’t care about festivals — let them ripen.’ Showing China is an innovator, Moser’s apple-scented white is made entirely from red grapes, while inky reds, including Moser Family Cabernet (£14.95; bbr. com), deliver a big bang of pure fruit.

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HOMEWORK

Wallpaper* editor-in-chief Tony Chambers on the West End’s burgeoning design district, high-spec specs and the 2,000-year-old temple reopening in the City

Mayfair CLUB

Chris Floyd; Rex Features

“We want to break down barriers between affordable design and limited-edition works” Beyond drawing footfall into Mayfair, the Design District has a more noble goal. As its initiator, James Malcolm Green, explains: ‘We want to break down any perceived barriers between affordable design and limited-edition works, which often, when placed in a gallery environment, can seem daunting.’ Thus the inclusion of furniture dealers Christian Liaigre and Holly Hunt, concept store The New Craftsmen, bookshop Maison Assouline and Italian brand Alessi, a key player in democratised design. By mixing price points, Green hopes to raise awareness and appreciation of collectible design beyond aficionados to the wider general public. Mayfair Design District looks set to flourish in the coming months with no shortage of exciting shows, including a solo presentation by French designer Olivier Gagnère at Kreo; vases and vessels curated by Gianluca Longo at David Gill; and a winter group show at Fumi that includes Max Lamb, Glithero and Sam Orlando Miller. And the imminent addition of Dutch gallery Priveekollektie and local newcomer 18 Davies Street will add to Mayfair’s appeal and help transform it into an international design destination. (mayfairdesigndistrict.com; @mayfairdesigndistrict)

The product

While ready-to-wear spectacles are rising in quality, there is still no rival to a made-to-measure pair and in the UK, it’s hard to beat the work of Tom Davies. In the 15 years since founding his eponymous eyewear label, Davies has perfected every element of the bespoke experience, from instore consultation and hi-tech eye testing to hand-production of the frames, each requiring from 16 to 22 hours to make. In a vote of confidence for British craftsmanship, he has also begun to move his production from China to London. (tdtomdavies.com)

ondon has no better place for collectible contemporary design than Mayfair. There’s the all-singing, all-dancing PAD art fair, which brings design icons and tomorrow’s masterpieces to Berkeley Square every October, and regular design sales at the likes of Sotheby’s, Phillips and Bonhams. Gallerywise, European imports such as Carpenters Workshop, Kreo, Patrick Seguin and Achille Salvagni complement British stalwart David Gill (nearby in St James’s) and new arrival Gallery Fumi (previously in Hoxton). Other local businesses have been eager to take on design-led collaborations — recent examples include sculpture dealer Daniel Katz showing Thomas Heatherwick’s extendable ‘Friction Table’ on Hill Street, Paul Smith putting on a display of Finn Juhl furniture upholstered in new fabrics at his Albemarle Street store, and art gallery Ordovas pairing Lichtensteins and Warhols with a limited edition of Gufram’s Cactus. With so much to shout about, it’s only appropriate that design-led establishments would band together to form the Mayfair Design District. This came into being with September’s London Design Festival, which saw Mayfair join the likes of Clerkenwell, Shoreditch and Chelsea as a designated hub of activity. The alliance has been growing strong since: an official website offers up a comprehensive list of events, while a diligently maintained Instagram feed showcases at least one thing of interest per day.

t ec

r um

: J oh

n Pawson

The person

John Pawson is not only a creator of sublime spaces such as the Design Museum, but also a skilled shutterbug. His upcoming book, Spectrum, offers up a journey through his photographic archive, revealing the moments and details that inspire his architectural output. He’s also bringing his minimalist aesthetic to this year’s Fashion Awards, working with Swarovski on a series of crystal trophies (left) with lacquer cores in varying colours, to be handed out at Royal Albert Hall on 4 December. ( johnpawson.com)

The tech

Having established its reputation with the ultra high-end Phantom speaker, French audio outfit Devialet has now set its sights on a larger market, collaborating with Sky on a new Soundbox. The unassuming, allin-one device features six woofers and three full-range speakers, producing a surround sound effect. The inbuilt volume control system can adjust audio levels to accommodate both quiet dialogue and explosive action, while Bluetooth connectivity means it can be paired with a range of electronics. (sky.com/skysoundbox)

The building

Opening on 14 November, this cultural destination beneath Bloomberg’s newly unveiled European HQ houses the reconstructed remains of the Roman Temple of Mithras, discovered there in 1954. Complementing the archaeological finds, artist Matthew Schreiber has created an installation of haze and light to evoke the atmosphere of the original temple, while the ground-level space will feature a rotating display of contemporary art amid the ruins, beginning with a painted steel sculpture (left) and a 19m tapestry based on the ancient Walbrook River, both by Dublin-based artist Isabel Nolan. (londonmithraeum.com)

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escape

EDITED by dipal acharya

Ancient and modern: a view across Granada; below, a suite at Hotel Tribal

WHERE TO EAT & DRINK

WHERE TO STAY

Jicaro Island Lodge is an eco-luxe retreat on an islet just a short boat trip from Granada’s Puerto Asese dock. The emphasis here is on sustainability, excellent food and relaxation — including free morning yoga classes (private casitas from £380; jicarolodge.com). With chic design from New York hospitality veterans (of Indochine, Acme & Tijuana Picnic) and slick service, Hotel Tribal is the hippest of the city’s boutique hotels. Breakfast is served on your private balcony or by the highlyInstagrammable pool (suites from £140; tribal-hotel.com). Make yourself at home at Miss Margrit’s B&B, set in a lovely restored colonial villa; British owner Chris is a natural host and very knowledgeable about local tourism (rooms from £50; missmargrits.com).

Alamy; Getty; Tribal Hotel; Julien Capmeil

WHAT TO SEE

glorious granada

With the rainy season in Nicaragua now over, Amber Dobrzensky discovers the tropical splendour, breathtaking sights and local crafts of its most charming city

And relax… poolside at Hotel Tribal

Explore more than 360 islets — La Isletas — by stand-up paddleboard with Livit Water (from £35 per person; livitwater. com). Hike Mombacho Volcano (left) for breathtaking city views, or swing like Tarzan through the forest canopy on a guided zipline adventure with Tierra Tour (from £55 per person; tierratour.com). Charitable foundation La Casa de Los Tres Mundos, set in a majestic old villa overlooking the central park, hosts changing art exhibitions, performances and events (c3mundos.org).

Seek out Espressonista for lunch, dinner or a perfect latte. This stylish restocafé-gallery serves award-winning microlot coffee from Finca Las Golondrinas and the finest national produce — including Matagalpa Camembert, organic rocket from Rivas and smoked Mombacho ham — in a glamorous old villa. El Tercer Ojo is a buzzing cocktail and craft beer bar with an eclectic menu and occasional live music, set in an old cinema overlooking the main street, Calle La Calzada. Start a night out with its signature strawberryjalapeño margaritas. Not for vegetarians, El Zaguan is the country’s most famous steakhouse and a Granada institution, serving top-grade Nicaraguan beef. Try the best-known local dish, vigorón — yuca, pork crackling and cabbage salad — here if you aren’t braving the street food.

Local flavour: Espressonista

WHAT TO DO

Indulge at the ChocoMuseo. Make, eat and learn all about cacao or just shop the in-house products (below) including powders, spreads and liquers. Roll your own custom-blend cigar at Doña Elba’s, a family-run tobacco factory. Pamper yourself at Balance Spa with massage and acupuncture from talented local healer Amos. Treatments are a bargain from £20, despite popularity with visiting A-listers.

WHERE TO SHOP Browse the huge selection from Thousand Cranes at the Garden Café, which features locally made craft goods, accessories and recycled, natural products. Pick up a gorgeous, handwoven hammock (above) at social enterprise Centro Social Tío Antonio in the Café de Las Sonrisas. And visit traditional ceramic workshop Ladrilleria Favilli for a fantastic array of handmade tiles, which are ubiquitous in the city.

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my london

alexander wang as told to lily worcester

Home is… Manhattan.

also happens to be my dog’s name. I also adore Scott’s — I usually order the simple grilled fish of the day or oysters (above), and their mignonette is incredible.

Where do you stay in London? The Rosewood hotel (below) in Holborn — it’s the perfect home away from home. It has the best wonton soup of any room service anywhere.

Biggest extravagance? Skincare is my biggest extravagance. I’m a junkie and I’ll do anything if someone I trust recommends it, even if it involves pain or extremely bad smells, including blood and placenta. Where would you go for a nightcap? The Fumoir Bar at Claridge’s for a Tito’s and soda.

What’s the most romantic thing someone has done for you in London? I’m still waiting… What do you collect? Anything black and exotic. The last thing I added to my collection was a black watersnake travel bag. Favourite London discoveries? I was in town for a few days last summer and managed to see Drake and Skepta (right) play Wireless festival; they were amazing. It was cool to experience such a large music festival in the middle of the city.

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The designer loves the seafood at Scott’s, gets his flowers from McQueens and enjoys a night out at G-A-Y Best piece of advice you’ve been given? Always trust your first instinct — I can’t remember who told me, but it stuck. Where in London do you go to let your hair down? G-A-Y is actually one of the best gay parties in the world, and there’s a room for every kind of music. There’s one for hip-hop, pop, etc, but there’s always a crazy line situation so you have to prepare for a long night ahead.

Which shops do you rely on? McQueens for flowers (left). White peonies and white cabbage roses are my favourite. Last album you bought? The most recent Drake album, More Life, is on repeat. My favourite song is ‘Gyalchester’. Best meal you have had in London? I always try to make a stop at Umu in Mayfair. I love how experimental the dishes are, particularly the ones infused with uni (sea urchin), which

Who do you call when you want to have fun? Fran Cutler hands down. Everything that women says and does is entertainment. We recently had a night at Chiltern Firehouse (below) and closed the place.

Who is your hero? Ralph Lauren is a constant source of inspiration for his ability to create a ubiquitous and encompassing world that is instantly recognisable. What would you do if you were Mayor for the day? I’d switch the direction of traffic so I wouldn’t get confused every time I cross the street. Alexander Wang, 43-44 Albemarle Street, Mayfair, W1 (alexanderwang.com)

Getty; Alamy

Earliest London memory? Going to London by myself for a summer programme at Central Saint Martins and taking the bus in the middle of the night from where I was staying to go out partying. One crazy night I went to this amazing rave in a tunnel in King’s Cross.