Nov 17 11 2017

17.11.17

LUXURY EDITION

Modern luxury Elfie Reigate Starring

Plus: inside the capital’s art crime boom, Life as a millennial millionaire and how being ordinary just got extraordinary‌

EDITOR’S LETTER ‘Spending time’. It’s a phrase that we use without much thought — but it refers to the value of the greatest luxury commodity in the world. The way in which we spend what precious time we have is something that we’re becoming increasingly conscious of. It’s why I feel honoured that you are spending your time reading this luxury edition of ES Magazine. Maybe you do so because you’re like me and stolen moments are your new luxury, whether it’s taking 10 minutes to read a magazine in the bath (see Annabel Rivkin, page 79), finding the motivation to do a yoga class in the morning, or even just taking the time for a straight-up lie-in, served with a side of breakfast in bed. Family moments, amazing experiences, having a well-stocked fridge after the weekly shop — that’s luxury. It’s the everyday comforts with which we are becoming increasingly satisfied (says Ben Machell, page 36) in a world that doesn’t feel as safe as it once did. And with Brexit looming, we’re tucking in and dialling down, be it in perfunctory items turned saucy, as Laura Craik writes about on page 51, or the return of dressing down and the rise of Gosha Rubchinskiy on page 27. Of course there’s living like a millionaire (see how Samuel Fishwick did it on page 15) but that’s about ‘making memories’; money is transient but experiences endure. Or perhaps true luxury is rarefied youth and beauty — fleeting and precious. Elfie Reigate, The Kate Moss Agency’s first female signing, has these precious qualities in spades and is this week’s cover star.

Cover: Elfie Reigate photographed by Jane Mcleish-Kelsey. Styled by Martha Ward. CHLOÉ blouse, £1,600 (chloe.com/gb). ALBERTA FERRETTI jumper, £370 (albertaferretti.com). MON PURSE bag, from a selection (monpurse.com). HOUSE OF GARRARD ring set, POA (garrard.com).

Editor Laura Weir

Here are the ES team’s top five ultimate luxuries

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THE STORE ‘An afternoon recharging with a good book and a delicious rose latte at Dover Street Market’s Rose Bakery is my idea of luxury.’

Jenny Kennedy, fashion editor

THE HOLIDAY ‘Is there any greater luxury than playing Robinson Crusoe on your own private island in the Maldives? Luckily Four Seasons has you covered, with its newly opened Voavah resort on the Baa Atoll.’

Dipal Acharya, commissioning editor

Visit us online: standard.co.uk/esmagazine • Follow us:

THE CLOTHING ‘Warning: once you pull on a pair of Johnstons of Elgin cashmere socks, you’ll never want to degrade your delicate toes with anything else, especially now that the cold weather’s hit. A new pair is the ultimate little dose of luxury.’ Frankie McCoy, features writer

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THE ACCESSORY ‘A co-ordinating ‘Safari’ suitcase and vanity set from Globe Trotter is the ultimate in decadence.

Famously elephant-proof (they’ve been put to the test in their 120-year history) their design was as elegant and sturdy then as it is now.’

Natalie Salmon, social media editor

THE TREATMENT ‘For me, true luxury is having a manicure, blowdry and pedicure all at the same time at 7am on a Monday morning in the comfort of my own kitchen. Beautii.co is my home beauty app of choice as all the technicians are super high-end fashion industry people.’ Katie Service, beauty editor

@eveningstandardmagazine

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@ESmagofficial

@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

17.11.17 ES MAGAZINE 5

capital gains What to do in London

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by FRANKIE M c COY The Dining is in the Detail by Matthieu Lavanchy

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Awesome auction Get your hands on seriously great artwork from seriously cool female artists like Celia Hempton and Zadie Xa (above), all while eating beautifully curated food, at the Her Stories art benefit at Protein in Shoreditch, with all proceeds going to charity. Tickets £200.

23 Nov (@her_stories_2017)

Les enfants terroirs

Hit the bottle in the name of self-improvement at the brilliant Shawarma Bar’s Dirt wine evenings, where top sommeliers pick favourite, obscure bottles from volcanic, seaside and mountainous soil.

Our kind of geography lesson.

Tickets £19. 19 Nov (shawarmabar.co.uk)

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Warning: you might delete your Instagram account after watching Ingrid Goes West, in which Elizabeth Olsen plays an influencer stalked by an unhinged fan. #creepyAF Out 17 Nov

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dinner on display Comic book cool

Think you’re too old for cartoons? Think again, as the maverick creator of Gorillaz and Tank Girl, Jamie Hewlett, publishes his first major monograph with Taschen. £39.99. Out now (taschen.com)

How does your garden snow

Illustration by Jonathan Calugi @ Machas; Allstar

Anti-social media

Head out to the sparkling wonderland of Kew Gardens, with trees draped in a million lights, a fire garden and oceans of mulled wine to sip as you reflect on this most wonderful time of the year. From £16. 22 Nov to 1 Jan (kew.org)

Justify your gluttony as totes sophisticated art appreciation, now that food journal The Gourmand has launched Gourmand Editions, an exclusive range of enticing food images in limited runs of 30, including a very Tillmansesque Lobster. Just try not to lick your walls. £250 (thegourmand.co.uk)

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last chance: the critically acclaimed (and extremely bloody) RSC production of Coriolanus closes at the Barbican on 18 Nov. (barbican.org.uk)

Elizabeth Olsen and Aubrey Plaza in Ingrid Goes West

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On point

Billy Elliot comes seriously of age, as an epic all-male ballet crowd of award-winning dancers, including Matthew Ball, Irek Mukhamedov and Daniel Proietto, flies into the London Coliseum for two nights only to perform Men in Motion. Fair plié.

Tickets from £20. 22-23 Nov (londoncoliseum.org)

look ahead: oh-so-cool alt-rock band Wolf Alice take on Ally Pally to perform songs from new album, ‘Visions of a Life’, on 24 Nov. (alexandrapalace.com)

17.11.17 es magazine

upfront Laura Craik on kids’ style, banking on bags and why all that glitters is rose gold

BAGS OF APPRECIATION If you enjoy perving over fiendishly expensive handbags you’ll never be able to afford, hot-foot it to Christie’s, which is exhibiting a selection of bags that will be sold at auction, some online and some in Paris next month. But what’s this alongside the predictable, if beautiful, vintage Hermès and Chanel? Why, it’s a Louis Vuitton

es magazine 17.11.17

Don’t stay mum: clockwise from left, Eva Chen and her daughter, Melijoe’s recent campaign, Susie Bubble and her baby

“The notion that your daughter is some sort of malleable ‘mini-me’ is a farce, a conceit fuelled by Instamums” x Supreme red Epi leather backpack (below left), valued from $10,000-$15,000. ‘Yes, this is the first Supreme lot that Christie’s has handled,’ confirms a spokesperson, adding that the auction house has had a waiting list for some pieces even before the collection was released.

Forget property: if you want a rock-solid investment, the handbag reigns supreme.

EVERY ROSE HAS ITS THORN Like all tech bores everywhere, I’m debating getting an iPhone X; not because I have a spare £1,000 kicking around, but because I’m due an upgrade, which takes it down to an upfront cost of £80 (is this the most boring sentence I’ve ever written? It’s a tough contest).

The thing is, I’m kind of attached to my current iPhone. I blame it on the rose gold finish. What is it with rose gold?

‘Maureen has a rose gold iPad,’ I heard my seven-yearold say to her friend in reverent tones (I’ve changed her name to Maureen to protect her identity). Rose gold is to 2017 what platinum was to 1997: you could make a rose gold turd and someone would pay over the odds for it. When Steven Gerrard starts boasting about buying a £1,455 18-carat rose gold iPad (above) for his daughter’s sixth birthday, maybe it’s time to move on.

HOT Balenciaga Knife boots Whatever your thoughts on sock boots, Matches says that Balenciaga’s £885 version are this season’s bestsellers.

NOT Your Christmas tree Guaranteed not to be as chic as Claridge’s, designed by Karl Lagerfeld this year.

Fluffy Choupette cat baubles are go.

Josh Shinner; Rex; A;amy; Instagram

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oh, she’s your mini-me,’ is something that no one has said to me, ever, about my eldest child. She doesn’t look like me, she doesn’t act like me and she definitely doesn’t dress like me. Whereas I’m still ‘finding my style’ (yup, even now), she arrived at hers aged eight, and has stuck to it with a level of dogmatism that makes Phoebe Philo look like post-Elbaz Lanvin. If it’s not white, grey or navy, it’s dead to her.

Though the odd ochre accent colour is permitted.

None of this is my doing. For someone who writes about fashion, I am very poorly dressed (I don’t own a stitch of Céline — basically sartorial and social suicide in my world). Besides, the notion that your daughter is some sort of malleable ‘mini-me’ is a farce, a conceit fuelled by Instamums whose kids only wear mummy-matchy outfits because they’ve been bribed, just out of shot, with a massive tub of Haribo. As someone who finds the mini-me trend kind of freaky, I’m glad to note it’s becoming passé. The luxury French etailer Melijoe (average spend £350; fans include Vanessa Paradis and Claudia Schiffer) reports that individualism is the name of the game, with parents keen for kids to express their own style rather than replicate mum’s. The poster girl for this new style of, er, indikidualism (bleurgh) is Instagram’s Eva Chen, who has more sense than to crowbar her daughter Ren into skinny jeans and mini Chanel pumps, but lets her dress like a regular kid. Much as I’d love to see style blogger Susie Bubble’s baby daughter Nico in mini Molly Goddard, I suspect she’ll do the same.

Such are the times we live in that there’s money to be made in cultivating your child’s personal style as soon as it’s out of nappies. Or even while it’s still in them.

Instagram is full of cute kids’ accounts, run by parents who charge hundreds, and sometimes thousands, per sponsored (paid) fashion post. Nor do you have to be North Kardashian West: one cute little boy has more than 200,000 followers and he’s not even two yet.

Savvy or sad? That depends on your view. At least he’ll be able to pay for his own therapy bill.

THE most WANTED Dior VIII Montaigne Tissage Precieux watch, ÂŁ30,000 (020 7172 0172)

a stitch in time: this horology hero pairs a diamond encrusted houndstooth face with a woven herringbone strap.

Precious time indeed PHOTOGRAPH BY natasha pszenicki STYLED BY sophie paxton

17.11.17 es magazine 13

Living the high life: Samuel Fishwick sets off on a private jet to the Bulgari Hotel in Milan, and top centre, at London’s Hotel Café Royal

Louise Haywood-Schiefer

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he height of luxury is at 41,000 feet. It’s Friday night, I’ve finished work and I’m being whisked over the Alps to a five star hotel in Milan on a private jet, wearing a look of smugness that can only be described as insufferable. ‘This seems excessive,’ says my girlfriend, who’s sitting next to me. ‘Are you going to propose?’

The experience economy is booming. In Western countries, millennials, The Economist noted, are ‘keener on memorable experiences than splashing out on bling’, forgoing savings and traditional courtship such as diamond engagement rings in favour of #nofilter moments. We spend less on buying things and more on doing things — then telling the world about it online afterwards. The more exclusive the experience, the greater the payoff in followers. It was recently reported that a Moscow company is renting out a grounded private jet as a photography studio for aspiring travel ‘influencers’ to pretend they’re living the luxury lifestyle they’ve always dreamed of. Never has the expression ‘fake it till you make’ it seemed more relevant.

Thanks to various apps and services styling themselves as the ‘Uber for experiences’, a luxury gig economy is arising, meaning that high living is becoming not just for the super-rich, but available on a pay-as-you-go basis. I wanted to see if I could use these to enjoy the kind of lifestyle my cashstrapped fellow millennials

Who wants to be a millionaire?

From private jets to the world’s most indulgent hotels, anything is within reach in the luxury gig economy — for a price.

Samuel Fishwick spends a week living well beyond his means can only dream of (I am, odiously, trying these experiences gratis). So for the next week I will be an out-of-pocket millennial living, no, ‘experiencing’ life like a millionaire: two nights at Milan’s Bulgari Hotel, a personal trainer in Notting Hill, a state-of-the-art ‘millennial gym’ and being swaddled in 23carat gold in a luxury London hammam.

‘It’s the online equivalent of showing off around the water cooler,’ says Zia Yusuf, whose app, Velocity Black, provides a digital concierge service that ‘powers the ultimate lifestyle from your pocket’ and counts Gigi Hadid, Martha Hunt and Poppy Delevingne among its founding members. For £2,000 a year (plus a one-time joining fee of £700) you get access to a digital ‘membership community’, a Live to experience: concierge app Velocity Black

worldwide network that sets up experiences from restaurant bookings and all-access Coachella passes to days out diving with orca whales, driving Formula 1 legend Damon Hill’s old racing car and taking fighter jets to the edge of space. Prices for these signature experiences vary. ‘It’s very much of this generation because it’s both digital and completely frictionless,’ says Yusuf. ‘You never have to pull out a credit card or provide details once you’re signed up as a member.

Our customers are busy and ambitious: they wish they had more time to do the things they love, they’re very focused on their careers and travel four times more than the average person. They live for novel experiences and to create memories. This solves that problem.’

While they’re not inclusive or affordable enough for many of us, apps have democratised and disrupted the high-threshold world of PJs

17.11.17 es magazine 15

Soak it up: below, the Bulgari Hotel in Milan; right, Samuel living the part-time dream

and personal trainers, lowering operational costs. We’ve booked a private jet via JetSmarter, a membership charter airline service that recently ferried Cara Delevingne from Europe. It aims to bring private aviation ‘to the masses over the next 20 years’ as operational costs come down. Right now, though, membership starts at an eye-watering £11,400 a year (plus a £1,900 initiation fee), although this includes free flights to all destinations under three hours away, two renewable shuttle tokens, complimentary seats on all JetDeals, access to helicopter transfers and in-flight catering. You use the company’s app to reserve flights on a private jet as often as you want.

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t is painfully obvious that I do not have the swagger for this super-rich lifestyle. I arrive late at Luton Airport just in time to catch my flight, sweating my little man boobs off after hauling a luxuriant amount of luggage across London. Being dressed to impress is causing distress. My suit is tailored (I’ve borrowed it from ES Magazine’s fashion cupboard) but among the Mulberry bags and hard-backed suitcases, I’m the only person with a camo-printed backpack. ‘Milan is a fast-paced metropolis where looking good is compulsory,’ says our Lonely Planet guide. I look at my Nike flyknit trainers and realise I’ve forgotten to pack a smart pair of shoes.

No matter, because our feet are soon whisked off the ground. After being plied with flutes of LaurentPerrier in the private lounge for half an hour, our Learjet 40 taxis onto the runway. It’s like Ub erPool for h ighnet-worth individuals (although there’s no

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Fashion credits This is a of

Aw shucks: millennials are now indulging in oyster-andchampagne ‘experiences’.

Bottom, order your personal trainer with TruBe

“With my body covered in 23-carat gold, mother of pearl and caviar extract, I have never felt so valuable” discount if the flight is full), with six plush leather seats (we’re joined by three immaculately dressed Milanese and a man who looks suspiciously like Steve Bannon).

Compared to the cramped sardine tin of economy class, everything is both intimate and immediate, as the skies break out into a glorious pastel sunset.

Tucked away on a private drive next to a botanical garden and just steps from fashionlabel mecca, Via Monte Napoleone, Milan’s Bulgari Hotel is both trendy and tranquil. I try to maintain a quiet dignity as the concierge guides us through our palatial room’s features. Brunch at the restaurant the next day, beneath chestnut trees in gentle autumnal decline, is a cornucopia of al dente pastas and paella with saffron and cream, as staff in embroidered tunics waft around.

Could I get used to this? I stick out like a sore thumb. My trainers are a giveaway, so I tie my jumper around my neck and try to blend in. When I explain my angst to my girlfriend, she asks if I want the concierge to bring me a small violin. I feel both scrutinised and ignored by my glitzy companions.

To ease my troubled, pampered soul — and better squeeze into my

troubled, pampered trousers — I arrange some luxury fitness sessions on my return to London. On Sunday evening, eyes still starry from Milan’s twinkling Navigli canals, I head to KXU in Chelsea, a pay-as-you-go ‘millennial’ gym that is as much about the experience as the workout. If there’s a glamorous way to sweat, this is it.

On Monday morning, I try TruBe, an app which for £140 a month delivers a personal trainer for four sessions to any location at the touch of a button. It’s the international jetsetter’s workout of choice. Never an early bird, I squeeze in a gruelling 30-minute workout in Holland Park with Mohammed, who views the short time I have as a challenge rather than an impediment, putting me through my paces at double time.

For an encore, there’s the gold hammam treatment at Hotel Café Royal’s Akasha Holistic Wellbeing Centre, a 75-minute procedure where a mixture of 23-carat gold, mother of pearl and caviar extract is applied on the body and face, then exfoliated. I have never felt so valuable.

This is as good as it gets. I have peered through the pearly gates at the lives of the super-rich, only to be sent tumbling back to earth. An overdraft, rental payments and student debt are my reality. Still, at least I have something to instagram.

THE ELDER STATESMAN scarf, £475, at browns fashion.com

TRENDWATCH The artful earrings

BURBERRY coat, £1,595 (uk.burberry.com)

EDITED BY ENIOLA DARE

TWO TONE Yellow and camel are this season’s new neutrals.

WALK THIS WAY Sophistication and comfort?

It has to be a loafer.

CHECK MATE The classic raincoat gets a patterned makeover.

CARVELA shoes, £109, at kurtgeiger.com

DIOR sunglasses, £309, at matchesfashion.com

PETAR PETROV trousers, £540, at net-a-porter. com

MELLOW YELLOW Tinted lenses colour a sunny outlook.

WIDE LIFE Trousers to take you effortlessly from day to night.

PUMP IT UP Pimp your sneakers with snakeskin detail.

ROKSANDA earrings, £275 (020 7613 6499)

Maximalist earrings from Roksanda add a little artistic flair to any sartorial palette

CARD SHARP Keep your plastic happy in oldschool leather.

IRIS & INK T-shirt, £45, at theoutnet.com

TEE TIME An endearing essential for every wardrobe.

LE CHAPEAU beret, £71, at farfetch.com

SMYTHSON cardholder, £135 (smythson.com)

Natasha Pszenicki

BAGS OF STYLE Add structure with a boxy bag.

HATS OFF Fine needlework finesses the timeless beret.

ALEXANDER MCQUEEN trainers, £375, at stylebop.com

MARNI bag, £1,410 (marni.com) AURÉLIE BIDERMANN ring, £4,027 (aurelie bidermann.com)

COCKTAIL HOUR Shake to shimmer.

17.11.17 ES MAGAZINE 19

trendwatch The graphic bag

BALENCIAGA brooch, £725 (balenciaga.com)

The pin-up Add a little glamour with a sparkling brooch.

BALENCIAGA shirt, £635, at mytheresa.com

GUCCI bag, £2,500 (gucci.com)

gingham gang An elongated collar can be worn down or tied-up for an unexpected twist.

MIU MIU dress, £1,745 (miumiu.com)

get minted Fade to pastel in these sherbet sunnies.

CUTLER & GROSS sunglasses, £310 (cutlerandgross.com)

Hang 10 These sparklers lend a little elegance to proceedings.

Pleats please Calling up the season’s retro prints.

ISABEL MARANT earring, £495, at matchesfashion.com

Gucci’s collaboration with Instagram favourite Unskilled Worker — aka Helen Downie — has reinvented the statement bag Ring round Vintage inspired jewellery assures grace.

BREITLING watch, £3,690 (breitling.com)

ROKH jeans, £449, at farfetch.com

Injeanious Refresh your denim with experimental central seams.

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It’s a cinch Create feminine silhouettes with a thin belt.

GIUSEPPE ZANOTTI ring, £260 (giuseppesanotti design.com)

CÉLINE boots, £1,100 (020 7491 8200)

made for walking A modern reboot of the cowboy that few could pull off so well.

LONGCHAMP belt, £75 (uk.longchamp.com)

Palette cleanser The off-white coat is a winter warrior.

VICTORIA BECKHAM coat, £1,745, (020 7042 0700)

Natasha Pszenicki

Time out A cult classic for all seasons.

TRENDWATCH The big red coat MAX MARA coat, £1,740 (maxmara.com)

DRIES VAN NOTEN boot, £515, at brownsfashion.com

ALL WHITE ON THE NIGHT Ditch the regulation black booties and invest in this fresh pair.

SONIA RYKIEL top, £450 (soniarykiel.com)

GET STONED The elegant amulet unites pink gold, diamond and carnelian.

COTTON CLUB Introducing the hybrid shirt turtleneck.

CARTIER bracelet, £1,700 (cartier.co.uk)

TWIST AND SHOUT These sculptural and textured earrings delight at every turn.

PRADA skirt, £595, at net-aporter.com

OSCAR DE LA RENTA earrings, £224, at matches fashion.com

FINE ART No longer restricted to galleries, and now available on A-line skirts.

A coat to define the season — Max Mara combines oversized, teddy and siren red to create a piece that will shore up your style

HANDMAID’S TALE Demure silhouettes inspired by Atwood’s dystopia.

ALIGHIERI ring, £195 (shop. alighieri.co.uk)

ROUGH RIDER This gold-plated bronze ring encases a black onyx pearl.

SHEER LUXURY Transparent socks are a must-have for warming up mules and sandals.

ASPINAL OF LONDON bag, £295 (aspinalof london.com)

GABRIELA HEARST top, £455 (gabriela hearst.com)

RETURN TO OZ Dorothy-esque slippers still capture our imagination.

MANSUR GAVRIEL shoes, £379 (mansurgavriel.com)

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CROC STAR Gilded hardware offsets this festive red tote.

FUNNEL VISION Go yolo with your polo.

Natasha Pszenicki

RYAN ROCHE dress, £847, at matchesfashion.com

RAEY socks, £40, at matches fashion.com

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ace, £7,03

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TRENDWATCH The party pumps

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CHARLOTTE CHESNAIS earrings, £3,610 (charlotte chesnais.com)

CHAIN REACTION Play up your fierce side.

EAR PIECES Colourful jewels transform the humble hoop.

PATEK PHILIPPE watch, £36,220 (020 7493 2299) COMME DES GARÇONS skirt, £560, at farfetch.com

WATCH OUT This sleek timepiece dazzles by day and night.

BAD EDUCATION Box pleats plus pinafore details equals serious backto-school vibes.

VINYL VIBES The trench gets a high-shine update.

JACQUEMUS pumps, £550, at brownsfashion.com

Block heel? Check. Golden embellishment?

Yes. We think we just found your new favourite party shoes…

SLIDE AWAY Frame your face with a fancy slide.

FENDI gloves, £550 (fendi.com) ELLERY top, £440, at matchesfashion.com

ROLL UP Your pursuit of the perfect turtleneck ends here.

BOTTEGA VENETA hair pin, £500 (020 7838 9394)

WANDA NYLON coat, £1,100, at matchesfashion.com LOUIS VUITTON ring, £210 (uk.louisvuitton.com)

COACH bag, £495 (uk.coach.com)

SOCK IT TO THEM Wear with stilettos or slippers — anything goes.

HANDLE WITH CARE Ladylike frame bags are having a moment.

FALKE socks, £15 (falke.com)

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Natasha Pszenicki

HANDS ON Berry tones and luxe leather: the chicest combination.

COAT OF ARMS Because even your pinky deserves a little grandeur.

oh, GOSHA!

Courtesy Gosha Rubchinskiy

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here’s a peculiar idea in the West that Russia is a backwards country, its citizens trailing us voguish Londoners by years, decades even. What rubbish. First man in space? Russian. The major artistic revolutions of the 20th century, Stravinsky’s wild dances, Malevich’s Black Square?

Russian. Vladimir Putin was way ahead of Donald Trump with the whole fake news/ ethno-nationalist stuff. And who sensed that the time was right to rescue the Burberry camel check from early Noughties ignominy?

No, not the brand’s outgoing creative director, Christopher Bailey. It was Gosha Rubchinskiy. Russian.

‘It happened first of all because of St Petersburg,’ explains the designer/ photographer/‘image-maker’ when we meet in Paris. Over the past few years, Rubchinskiy, 33, has become the most talked-about name

He’s the coolest casual in the business, credited with redefining menswear.

Richard Godwin meets Russian fashion superstar Gosha Rubchinskiy in men’s fashion thanks to his Cyrillic slogans, constructivist singlets and distinctly Russian brand of urban pride. Back in June he was collaborating with Adidas ahead of next year’s World Cup in Russia, putting on three different shows in three different host cities. St Petersburg was where football was first played in the country, thanks GOSHA to 19th- century RUBCHINSKIY X ADIDAS hoodie, British travellers. £150; scarf, £75, both at A nd that set farfetch.com

Rubchinskiy thinking. ‘I thought we needed to have a British brand there, something that is iconic and at the same time connected with football culture. In the late Eighties and Nineties, Burberry was such a strong look for football fans. So I asked Christopher if he could participate.’ And he did. Rubchinskiy sent a series of lean young Slavs parading down the catwalks in head-to-toe Burberry check, with a few defamiliarising details: smart shoes with sports socks, daringly high waistbands. He celebrated by inviting the fashion crowd to Griboedov, a fierce electro club in an old bomb shelter left over from the siege of Leningrad. A few months later, Bailey was officially decontaminating the Burberry check at London Fashion Week, spawning a thousand fashion think-pieces about Nu Lads and cultural appropriation.

But really it was Rubchinskiy’s idea. ‘It’s good not to sit in one period,’ he says.

‘Time changes. Yesterday it was ugly

17.11.17 es magazine 27

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onsidering his designs are so evocative of the shavenheaded hooligans I used to cross Nevsky Prospekt to avoid when I was a student in St Petersburg, I had been expecting Rubchinskiy to be a bit combative.

In fact, he is shy and soulful, with soft stubble, suede head, almost blending away in a black hoodie and blue Levi’s jacket. But there is no mistaking his self-assurance. ‘To be Russian is now to be part of the world,’ he says. ‘Before, we were separated. Now a mission of my generation and the younger generation is to be together with everyone else. That’s why it’s important for me to share some culture and some things which are important to me from my teenage years.’

He was born in 1984 (a signature sweater of his celebrates that year) and retains only the vaguest memories of the USSR. He was walking in the park near his flat with his father, a fire inspector, and their hunting dog when the news arrived that communism in Russia was over. ‘My father was listening to the fall of the government on his transistor radio. And yet at the same time we were in the park having a normal day. It was a crazy, crazy time straight after that. It was not step by step, it was like: BANG.’ After the Cold War, Western bankers and politicians imposed what they called ‘capitalist shock therapy’ on the former Soviet Union.

Everything that had been controlled became available all at once. And it was this anarchic,

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GOSHA RUBCHINSKIY SS18

and not cool. Today it’s cool and beautiful. A new generation grows and they want to wear this check — that’s why I feel this is the right moment to do it again.’

I meet Rubchinskiy in a small attic room at the headquarters of Comme des Garçons in Place Vendome. He is based in Moscow but has had a presence here since 2012 thanks to a unique patronage deal with Comme CEO, Adrian Joffe. We are surrounded by rails of his signature singlets and T-shirts bearing his Cyrillic ‘PACCBET’ logo (pronounced rassvet, meaning ‘dawn’), which had drawn a die-hard following at his concession at Dover Street Market in London. Rubchinskiy is part of the same post-Soviet wave as Georgian designer Demna Gvasalia of Vetements and Balenciaga, and Vladivostok-born ‘bad taste’ stylist Lotta Volkova. It was Rubchinskiy who modelled the £195 DHL T-shirt that became a cult item for Vetements back in 2015. But he has always known which way the winds were blowing. At his debut show in 2008 he was asked what the fashion of the future would be. He responded: ‘I am the future. In 10 years, everyone will be talking about Gosha.’ And here we are.

“It’s good when people from different worlds meet each other.

This is the Gosha look” fluorescent free-for-all that formed Rubchinskiy’s tastes. ‘People were thirsty and then they were able to try many, many things.

They were drunk from freedom. It was a great moment. Some girls wanted to put on all the make-up at the same time: Dior, Chanel, Versace, all at once.’ Meanwhile vast markets popped up selling cheap, pirated tapes and CDs — ‘You could get the Radiohead album weeks before it was released!’ — along with fashion knock-offs galore.

For all that he was drawn to eccentrics and outcasts, Rubchinskiy describes himself as a reserved teenager. ‘I mainly sat at home and did drawings. Or my mother would take me to museums — my friend was my mother,’ he laughs. (When I ask if he has a partner, he laughs and says no. ‘I see my mother sometimes.’) These were desperate and uncertain economic times. ‘There was no work for my parents. And for us as teenagers, we wanted to be able to have some cool music or magazines or clothing, so we’d share it. One of my friends would buy an album, one of us a

magazine and one of us a book and we’d have it for a week each and then change.’ It informs his approach to this day. ‘Sometimes when you don’t have things but you want them, you find an interesting way to create them. I miss this time. It’s why every time I do a new project or collection I try to remember how it was to be a teenager at that time.’

His interest in clothes was secondary to his interest in creativity in general, though he does remember parading around in cowboy boots and home-made leather flares at school.

Mostly, he drew inspiration from anarchic self-published magazines such as Ptyuch and Om. ‘It was a mix of club culture, crazy fashion shoots, some art, cinema, music altogether. I was not inspired by fashion but by that world of crazy creativity. When I saw it, I realised I wanted to be one of these kinds of people.’

His early shows post art school were synonymous with a Russian cultural type known as gopnik — roughly equivalent to the English ‘chav’. (I’m pretty sure that’s where the whole Adidas sliders-with-whitesocks thing originated.) But he finds the term borderline offensive now. ‘A gopnik is like a country boy who doesn’t have any money so wears only what he can find in his local store and mixes it with no style. Adidas sneakers with a smart suit. Leather shoes with tracksuit.’ A few Moscow skaters began incorporating this into their look, and he took notice. ‘But I’m more into teenagers and skaters who like to experiment with their style. I think it’s best to call it the Gosha look.’

The Gosha look is ever-shifting. He professes himself uninterested in high fashion and concentrates on the project in front of him: first a collaboration with Burberry; then with 1990s sportswear brand Fil; then with Russian rock band Mumiy Troll. But he falls back on the Moscow skate scene. ‘Skating unites people. You find crazy rich kids and poor street kids and they’re all wearing the same stuff. I like that. Some will like rock, some will like hip-hop, but they party all together. It’s good when people from different worlds meet each other. This is the Gosha look.’ He tries to keep his prices relatively affordable to remain in reach of his young fans: £55 for a T-shirt, say, £155 for a hoodie — a fraction of what Vetements charges.

If you mention anything like Putin or hacking, he doesn’t look uncomfortable so much as bored. He is adamant he carries no political message, but he does hope to show that Russia is as much part of the 21st century globalised world as anywhere else. ‘Politics separates people. Artists, musicians, fashion people have a chance to keep people together.

That’s why it’s important for me to do shows in Russia and invite people there. We need to have this kind of cultural exchange.’

Stealing

beauty

Art theft is the world’s third most profitable criminal enterprise, and London is a hotspot for it — as well as the people trying to put a stop to it. Kate Wills delves into the murky world of art detectives

I

t’s pouring with rain when I go to meet Charley Hill in the café at The National Gallery, and the sky is so moody one might be tempted to call it ‘Rothko grey’.

He is waiting for me with a white paper envelope and a golf umbrella, and has greying curly hair, kind crinkly eyes and round tortoiseshell glasses. In contrast to Hill’s usual meetings with gangland informers and kingpins of the criminal underworld, all that’s in my envelope are three postcards he’s bought for me from the Sir John Soane’s Museum where, 30 years ago, he foiled an armed attempt to steal two Hogarth paintings. Once DCI of Scotland Yard’s Art and Antiques Unit, Hill has worked as a private detective since 1997 and has contributed to some of the biggest art crime recoveries in history.

‘I don’t break the law but I do deal with people you wouldn’t want to talk to,’ he tells me in his soft, mid-Atlantic accent.

‘Using informants is the only way to get these things back.’ The ‘things’ he refers to have included Goya’s Portrait of Doña Antonia Zárate, which he discovered rolled up in a sports bag, Vermeer’s Lady Writing a Letter with her Maid, retrieved from a multistorey car park in Antwerp, and Titian’s £5m Rest on the Flight into Egypt, stuffed into a red and blue striped laundry bag and found at a bus stop outside Richmond station. One of the best stories he tells me — over two prelunch Screwdrivers — involves accidentally bumping Munch’s The Scream on the headrest of his associate’s Mercedes sports coupé, having gone undercover at an Oslo hotel to retrieve the masterpiece. ‘It’s just on a piece of cardboard so it’s like carrying

30 es magazine 17.11.17

Art work: private detective Charley Hill

a big packing box,’ he says of rescuing one of the most famous paintings in the world, valued at the time at £35m.

Whether it’s an elaborate forgery of a Damien Hirst Spin painting, a Banksy swiped from an Islington flat by Airbnb-ers, or ISIS’s looting of historical antiquities in Palmyra, art crime is happening every day.

It is now ranked the third highest grossing criminal enterprise, behind drugs and arms dealing respectively. In 2013, figures suggested that thefts of art and antiques in the UK alone totalled more than £300m.

‘London is an ideal site for moving art because of its position as a centre of the art world and global art market,’ explains Lynda Albertson, CEO of the Association for Research into Crimes against Art. ‘The British Art Market Federation reported that there were 48,500 people directly employed in the art and antiques market, and the UK has a 21 per cent share of the $56bn global art market, which gives you an idea of London’s muscle.’

Yet in August Scotland Yard announced that it had seconded the three remaining detectives from its specialist unit to the Grenfell Tower investigation, and there are fears that its Art and Antiques Unit might well be closed indefinitely. ‘The loss would be felt across the globe,’ says Vernon Rapley, who was in charge of the unit for 10 years before becoming head of security at the V&A in 2010. ‘We dealt with everything, from ancient Assyrian reliefs to contemporary painting to vintage wine — all sorts of things came through that office door. It takes a long time to understand these crimes, so having a small, specialist team frees up other officers’ time when these cases do come in.’

The Metropolitan Police did not respond to our queries about the future of the unit, but with police funding tighter than ever there’s a sense that picture-napping isn’t the most pressing concern.

‘I’m sympathetic to the view that knife crime is more important than art crime,’ says Saskia Hufnagel, a senior lecturer in

17.11.17 es magazine 31

T

hen there are the inside jobs and questions of provenance.

‘A lot of theft from museums will be an item taken from the archives which isn’t detected for years and is never reported,’ says Hufnagel. For the V&A’s Vernon Rapley the most pressing concerns are ‘fakes and forgeries — not just those objects directly penetrating the collections, but also the attributions or provenance of those objects. Sometimes the things coming in to our collection are more dangerous than the things going out. There was a point in the past when people were borrowing a tray of coins for “study purposes”, taking the most valuable ones out and replacing them with forgeries.’

From a nondescript office in Hatton Garden with a few watercolours on the wall, Julian Radcliffe runs The Art Loss Register, a global database of stolen art and antiques which has recovered over £100m worth of paintings, statues and sculptures since 1991.

According to The Register (as it’s known in the trade), there are more than 500,000 stolen, fake or looted items floating around, including more than 1,000 Picassos — the most stolen artist. Clearly, criminals love a bit of fractured perspective.

Radcliffe is a former risk consultant for Lloyd’s of London, who once specialised in kidnap negotiations, a skill that presumably comes in handy now he spends his days trying to talk back Old Masters. ‘We often

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Edvard Munch’s The Scream, left; Christopher Marinello, below; Titian’s Rest on the Flight into Egypt, bottom

“art is almost not stolen because it’s beautiful. it’s a commodity that can be used for other illicit activity” get calls from individuals who say they know where an item is and that they want money for [that knowledge],’ he says. ‘We fill in the gaps between the police, the governments and the art industry.’ The company charges people £10 to register their lost or stolen item on the database and takes a percentage of an item’s ‘ultimate net benefit’ if it’s recovered. It had a turnover of £1m last year.

In 1999, Radcliffe made $2million for reuniting a stolen Cézanne painting, Pitcher and Fruit, with its owner. (There are more successes but not for such large sums of money. For example, he recently made £100,000 after recovering some pictures that were part of an insurance fraud.)

The sometimes murky distinction between paying rewards to informants, as opposed to ransom money to thieves which is illegal, means that the work of the private art detective can be controversial. In 2000, the Tate reportedly paid £3.5m to lawyers on behalf of informants with strong connections to the Serbian underworld, to retrieve two stolen Turners worth £20m. ‘There are a lot of disreputable companies operating in this grey area,’ says Christopher Marinello, who set up the non-profit register Art Recovery International and has been dubbed the ‘Sherlock Holmes of Nazi-looted art’. ‘Paying criminals for information encourages art crime, and withholding information from victims or museums unless you get paid isn’t ethical.’ Marinello says he does a lot of probono work, particularly for churches, museums and artists who can’t afford his fees. ‘I’m a sucker for religious artefacts,’ he says. ‘I recently recovered a Masonic sword which had

been stolen and sold at a car-boot sale and ended up at an auction house in London. The auction house had done no due diligence whatsoever — if they’d even googled it they would’ve seen that it had been stolen.’

The idea of masterpieces being stolen to order for a criminal mastermind, such as the James Bond villain Dr No with his misappropriated Goya, is nearly always Hollywood fantasy. ‘It’s almost never stolen because it’s a beautiful object,’ says Vernon Rapley. ‘Rather, it’s a commodity that can be used as collateral for other illicit activity.’ He adds that to understand art crime you need to look at the bigger picture (pun, presumably, not intended). ‘There are trends — a few years ago Chinese gangs were stealing Chinese antiquities to use as currency,’ he says. ‘Similarly, when drugs were being bought from Turkey there would be peaks in the theft of art that would appeal to that market. At the moment we’re quite concerned about our collections which feature rhino horn — they might not be the most valuable items but they’re high risk because they are desirable [in Asia].’

Technology may have led to cybercrime and more sophisticated forgeries, but it is also being turned on the criminals. ‘There are new inventions being tried such as genetic fingerprinting for paintings, analysing cryptocurrencies and blockchain software to track provenance,’ says Lynda Albertson.

‘Recently, a team of undercover operatives and Syrian archaeologists applied a tracing liqu id to a ntiqu ities wh ich uses nanotechnology to encrypt data into water.’

A solution of small particles suspended in water is painted on to objects to track where they’ve come from; it can’t be removed and it’s only visible under UV light.

For the most part, art crime cases are solved the old-fashioned way, and occasionally, quickly. Marinello recalls posing as a buyer for a job that took 15 days in total, from the time of the theft to the day the photograph — worth about £350,000 — was back on the wall of the museum it came from in Prague. ‘The stars aligned for that one,’ he admits. More often, though, unravelling the threads requires huge patience and skill. Julian Radcliffe recently recovered the Hooke manuscripts, original minutes of meetings at The Royal Society between 1677 and 1682, as recorded by scientist Robert Hooke, which were stolen 300 years ago. Charley Hill has been on the trail of the Mafiainspired theft of a Caravaggio for 30 years.

Will he ever give up?

‘Never — I’ll be doing this until I drop.’

Getty Images, Alamy

criminal law at Queen Mary, University of London, who writes about art theft and forgery. ‘But when we think about how stolen art could be used as a currency to fund arms, drugs and terrorism, we’re talking about more than just losing cultural property.’

Although it’s the Thomas Crowne-style museum heists that make the headlines, art crime has now gone digital. This summer hackers stole sums ranging from £10,000 to £1m from nine galleries and individuals, including the Mayfair-based Hauser & Wirth gallery when they used an email scam to intercept payments between galleries and collectors. The notoriously unregulated art market, combined with large sums of money changing hands, make this type of con particularly lucrative. ‘You can’t buy a $1m condo without three weeks of paperwork and 100 checks and balances, but art dealers and their clients will wire $1m after a single conversation,’ says one US dealer who asked not to be named.

VALENTINO skirt, £870, at 24sevres.com

style notes What we love now EDITED by KATRINA ISRAEL

le, ng Ba

rket.com etma stre r e v t do 0, a ,78 0 £3

Love 30

The tennis bracelet takes an avant-garde (and very expensive) turn at the hands of Sophie Bille Brahe.

TORY BURCH skirt, £365, at net-a-porter.com

SKIRTING THE ISSUE Whether box or knife pleated, the kilt-ish midi is one of AW’s strongest skirt trends. Team yours back with a blouse or fine knit and the season’s scrunch leather boots.

curated cool

mulberry aw17

Olivia Palermo in Fendi

ZARA skirt, £29.99 (zara.com)

doing-good diamonds

Sustainability is once again at the top of the fashion agenda — first Gucci banned fur and now Swarovski is growing diamonds.

To celebrate Atelier Swarovski’s 10th anniversary, Nadja Swarovski has debuted a finejewellery collection starring labgrown diamonds and emeralds. atelier swarovski ring, £13,265 (atelier swarovski.com)

34 es magazine 17.11.17

Kerbside at Paris Fashion Week

here’s looking at you kid Gigi Hadid gives Stuart Weitzman the evil eye with a new collaboration of shearling-lined, suede slippers.

InSTARglam

Is imitation the sincerest form of flattery?

Keeping the industry on its toes, this lol comparison account pairs designs, shoots and even hairdos that are a little too close for comfort @diet_prada

Stuart Weitzman x Gigi Hadid Eyelove mules, £480 (stuartweitzman.com)

Pearly queens

During the SS18 show season, there was barely an editor on the ground not in possession of a freshwater white pearl earring dangling from one or both lobes. We’re upping the game with a jewelled baroque pair by Londonbased jeweller Maviada.

Maviada pearl and topaz earrings, £845 (maviada.co.uk)

Follow us at @eveningstandardmagazine

Getty

VICTORIA BECKHAM skirt, £1,250 (victoria beckham.com)

Following in the fashionable footsteps of Erdem Moralioğlu and Anya Hindmarch, Tank magazine fashion director Caroline Issa (above) is the latest creative to edit Sotheby’s Contemporary Curated sale.

Featuring works by Andy Warhol, Nan Goldin and Sigmar Polke, Issa’s diverse pick goes under the hammer in New Bond Street on 21 Nov (viewing from 17 Nov). (sothebys.com)

MEN’S STYLE What to buy now

Big Ben’s bit on the side

by TEO VAN DEN BROEKE, style director OF esquire UK

Hot boxers and beer in the bath — Ben Machell discovers luxury living

Tanks for the memories

I

Cartier Tank Louis Cartier, £11,100 (cartier.co.uk)

Guccify yourself

Personalisation has always pulled in the punters. Tod’s has recently launched its online Gommino customisation service, and Louis Vuitton has been encouraging its customers to monogram its bags, trunks and wallets for decades. For AW17, Gucci is tempting customers to customise its sneakers, loafers, bags and jackets in ever-more inventive ways. The best example? The Ace sneakers, which have metal poppers each side of the tongue so that patches emblazoned with UFOs, tigers and rainbows can be clipped on and off at will. Snaps to that.

lonb Vagabond bag, £1,950 (lonb.com)

GUCCI Ace sneakers, £585 (gucci.com)

Bags of cool

Super on-trend but often prohibitively heavy, or limp and liable to break, a good bag is surprisingly hard to find.

In recent years, however, independent manufacturers have addressed these issues and the results are impressive.

One such brand is LONB, which launched earlier this year and offers handmade totes, perfectly proportioned holdalls and slick backpacks, all of which are worth shelling out for. lonb Rider bag, £2,480 (lonb.com)

36 es magazine 17.11.17

like luxury. Some people — some men, mostly — like to pretend that they don’t, which is a shame. In their minds they are hardy Bronze Age warriors who regard lovely things like bubble baths and 20-quid Prosecco with contempt.

But it doesn’t have to be like this. Honestly. I spend half my waking life fantasising about being a hardy Bronze Age warrior and the other half fantasising about nice things I can’t afford and probably don’t deserve. It doesn’t make you any less of a man.

Of course, ‘luxury’ means different things to different people. A lot depends on circumstance.

Right now, as the father of two small children, the release of new episodes of Peter Rabbit or Octonauts on iPlayer feels like a treat. New episodes! My friends and I gleefully text each other, spreading the news like a bunch of oligarchs’ wives who’ve just caught wind of a designer sample sale.

“Do I deserve this? I wonder as I feel my undercarriage tenderly enveloped by luxuriant warmth. Am I worth it?”

On a cold November morning, pulling on a pair of boxers that have spent the night on a hot radiator feels decadent to the point of being shameful. Do I deserve this? I wonder as I feel my undercarriage tenderly enveloped by luxuriant warmth. Am I worth it? It’s not like I’m a Hollywood A-lister or anything.

I’m just a normal guy. But I suppose that sometimes you have to allow yourself these moments.

Lately, if time and budget allow, I’ve taken to drinking very cold beer in a very hot bath. It’s quite a mystical experience, really. By the third glass you start to go a bit out-of-body, and the whole thing leaves you with a real glow. I might suggest it to some high-end spas. If I had a little bit more cash I’d definitely pay for regular massages. Ever had a massage? I had one once and it was amazing — my entire body went slack and I thought I was about to die. But in a really good way. I’d also eat a whole lot of sushi. Not while having a massage although, thinking about it, that would work for me too.

This winter I’ve decided I’m going to treat myself on a regular basis: scented candles, new socks, that tuna that comes in jars rather than tins. Big mugs. Warm boxers every single morning. Why not? You only live once, don’t you?

Jonny Cochrane; Josh Shinner; illustration by Jonathan Calugi @ Machas

The Cartier Tank Watch by Franco Cologni, £65

With a design inspired by the angular wheelbase of early 20th century military vehicles, the Tank timepiece has, over its 100 year existence, become perhaps the most recognisable (not to mention desirable) dress watch on the market. In celebration of its centenary, Cartier has unveiled an anniversary collection of Tanks including this elegant rose gold Tank Louis Cartier on a chocolatebrown strap. In collaboration with publisher Rizzoli, meanwhile, it has also released a book (left) celebrating the enduring appeal of this most classic of watches.

Digital dons: Farfetch founder José Neves, left, and LVMH’s Ian Rogers.

Below, Farfetch’s Store of the Future concept

I

t’s a sunny Saturday morning in Paris when two tech titans sit down to discuss the future of the luxury fashion industry over turmeric lattes and granola pots. LVMH’s chief digital officer Ian Rogers, 45, has invited José Neves, 43, CEO and founder of Farfetch.com, over to his apartment during Paris fashion week at ES Magazine’s request to digest the future of luxury shopping, AI and why big data and cryptocurrencies are the next wave of innovation.

Rogers, an American in Paris, joined LVMH from the music industry in October 2015. He now oversees some 70 LVMH websites, including 24 Sèvres, the new online extension of Parisian destination store Le Bon Marché, along with high-end beverage platform Clos19.com and beauty giant Sephora. Born in Indiana, Rogers studied computer science before moonlighting as a roadie for the Beastie Boys. He would later become president of new media for the band’s record label, Grand Royal. Roles at Topspin Media, Yahoo Music and the streaming service Beats Music followed, before its $3 billion takeover by Apple in 2014, when Rogers joined the tech giant, too.

Neves, the Portuguese tycoon at the helm of the billion-dollar Farfetch empire, started coding at the age of eight, before studying economics in Porto, Portugal. In 1996 he established the shoe brand Swear in London, followed by retail venture B Store in 2001. In 2007 he founded the technology platform Farfetch.com, which now unites 700 of the world’s designer boutiques on one single site and has a potential IPO on the horizon.

TECH That

One founded Farfetch.com, while the other is pushing LVMH forward into the digital age. Katrina Israel brings tech titans José Neves and Ian Rogers together to discuss the future of luxury fashion

PhotographS BY antoine doyen

17.11.17 es magazine 39

ES Magazine: You two are the definition of global citizens — where are you based?

José Neves: London, two blocks from the office in Old Street. But we have operations everywhere and half of our offices and engineers are in Portugal, which means a lot of travel.

Ian Rogers: I am primarily Paris, but the travel adds up when you go to Asia and the US at least once a quarter.

ES: What is the tech scene like in Paris?

IR: I was at Viva Technology conference this year with Bernard Arnault and he introduced me to President Emmanuel Macron, which was an amazing moment, and the first thing he said to me was, ‘I am glad that you are here.’ At first, I thought, ‘Here, in technology?’ He later announced a four-year visa for people building start-ups.

With Station F [the world’s biggest start-up campus, backed by French billionaire Xavier Niel] that opened this year, it’s like Shoreditch eight years ago.

ES: José, has the momentum of London’s silicon roundabout slowed?

JN: I think the Government needs to pay attention. Especially regarding talent around Brexit. I look at our workforce and we have 57 nationalities in our office. I think it’s the talent that the Government really needs to be aware of.

ES: Ian, you were working in the music industry during the streaming revolution. How does it compare to fashion?

IR: It’s tough to be in an industry where they lose 50 per cent of the gross revenue overnight. You can’t take the entire product catalogue of Louis Vuitton and put it on a thumb drive and hand it to a friend, thankfully, but that is the position that the record labels were in.

So, the LVMH job was interesting to me because there were things like Farfetch in the space and you could see the disruption coming.

ES: Why was LVMH late to the digital party?

IR: I actually think they were really early if you go back and look at eLuxury [LVMH’s multi-brand platform founded in 2000 and closed in 2009]. In the first phase of e-commerce it was about price and convenience, and those are two vectors that the luxury business doesn’t generally compete on. E-commerce has now moved on to our playing field: it’s about the customer’s time, an incredibly valuable asset, and then convenience in terms of the internet has really changed our expectations of customer service. LVMH has been smart to say, ‘Okay, now it’s starting to feel like us, let’s jump in.’

ES: José, Farfetch has been a big part of that change, introducing local boutiques to global customers. When and where did you have the idea for it?

JN: I was here in Paris with my shoe brand in the showroom. It was 2007 and heartbreaking to see amazing boutiques, that are great curators of fashion, becoming very safe and buying everything in black and grey. Their function is to take risks, to discover new brands, and so it was very clear that unless there was a platform for the luxury industry, 99.9 per cent of the

40 es magazine 17.11.17

On the record: José Neves, above, and Ian Rogers DJing in his Paris apartment

“I think the government needs to pay attention.

Especially regarding talent around Brexit”

companies would not be able to pursue the opportunity.

Someone had to do it.

ES: José, you made a high profile hire with Natalie Massenet earlier this year…

JN: Yes, Natalie is co-chairman, so she has a prominent role on the board of directors for Farfetch. But being an entrepreneur, a pioneer of online luxury, she is very proactive and it’s a very fluid communication, WhatsApping back and forth with ideas.

ES: What do the Beastie Boys think of your luxury remit, Ian? IR: [Smiles] Mike D is about to visit Paris for the fourth time…

ES: As more UK magazines transition from print to online, can a publisher ever be a successful retailer?

I ask in the wake of Style.com’s closure after nine months of trading.

JN: It makes total sense for [publisher] Condé Nast to try to leverage its audiences and connect it to commerce.

IR: From my perspective and having had this conversation with Jonathan [Newhouse, Condé Nast chairman], the challenge is: when you are kind of an affiliate, you are kind of a boutique, and there is so much competition across this whole spectrum, you have to know who you are and be better than anyone else. If you try to be multiple players, it’s just hard to be successful.

ES: Why did you decide to integrate the failed Style.com platform, José?

JN: It was a very organic conversation. Condé Nast was an early backer of Farfetch and Jonathan Newhouse is our board member. Fundamentally, for Condé Nast one of the strategic objectives is how does it bridge content with commerce? So you are reading about something, you want to buy it — it’s an added service. And now time is the biggest luxury because you can mine extra diamonds, for the next 20 years I hear, or you can even produce them, but you cannot create time.

IR: I’ve tried. [Laughs] ES: How many hours of sleep do you both need, and what’s your morning routine?

JN: Normally seven. I’m a very early bird — 5.30am, 6am, I’m up. I walk my dog with my wife, which is a fantastic moment. And then I do an hour of exercise,

Lines online: clockwise from top left, Le Bon Marché; LVMH’s new e-commerce site, 24Sèvres.com, the digital extension of the Parisian department store; 24Sèvres.com’s personal stylist video chat service

“we are reaching peak internet… platforms like augmented reality and cryptocurrency will be the next big waves of innovation” 42 es magazine 17.11.17

because I’m a runner is Plume Air Report, which tells you the air quality in the city that you are in.

ES: José, in April you introduced Farfetch’s augmented retail Store of the Future concept. Talk us through it…

JN: The less you notice technology the better, so it’s not about mannequins with cyberscreens, it’s not about gimmicks. The first step is to recognise your customer and provide them with a more personalised consumer experience using technology. Take a Chinese consumer who spends $5 million in Beijing. She lands in Paris, she’s been running, is sweaty. She pops into that same maison’s shop on Avenue Montaigne. She will probably be ignored because she is not recognised — this is not acceptable. Because of the Ubers, Netflix and Spotify, these experiences are highly personalised. Data is the new currency. We are quite happy to give our data in exchange for value. The proof is Instagram. Nobody opens Instagram and later logs out because their data is being captured.

ES: Let’s talk in relation to Gen Z? JN: The new generation is very pragmatic. They care, firstly, ‘Do I get value in exchange for my data?’

Secondly, ‘Is this company ethical?’ These two things are fundamental.

IR: Privacy is becoming a bigger issue. Just in the same way that we are trusted in terms of quality, we have to be trusted when it comes to data.

ES: Are you using AI on the customer service side?

JN: We use chatbots for customer service.

IR: As e-commerce grows, remote care will grow.

Whether it’s 24 Sèvres or Tag Heuer, we have chatbots for customer care, but we also back that with human beings.

ES: Do you think that is going to be dangerous in terms of the workforce going forward?

JN: I think that AI is one of those mankind-invented things and sometimes used for good purposes, but sometimes used for evil. The things themselves are neither good or bad. Nuclear power is neither good nor bad, and some environmentalists think that it is the only salvation for the planet, because it’s one of the cleanest — you can agree or disagree with that. But with AI and machine learning, we have to be careful to make sure that the tool is used for improving other people’s lives.

IR: I agree 100 per cent. I’d say that you can use a brick to build a house or break the window. It’s just a tool and you have to try to use it for good.

Alamy

either yoga or running, or go the gym, every single day, which gets me into the office for 9am.

IR: I’m up between 5am and 6am. Since I moved to Paris I’ve doubled down on running.

I recently finished my sixth marathon in Berlin, not a bad time for me as a 45-year-old man. But I really do miss my morning CrossFit routine in LA. There’s no 5am CrossFit in Paris. [Laughs] ES: What are you both currently reading?

JN: I am reading a book called The Invisible Partners. I love psychology, philosophy, how the mind works, left brain, right brain, all of that.

IR: I have just read Sapiens, which everyone is talking about, and also Mastering Bitcoin. We are reaching peak internet, because it’s more a part of our lives and less of a brand new innovation. That means platforms like augmented reality and cryptocurrency will be the next big waves of innovation.

ES: Are you buying bitcoin?

IR: I am, yes. I think that everybody should be frankly, not because I think it’s a sure thing investment vehicle, but when it comes to technology the only way to understand it is to experience it. Even if you only took $20.

ES: What are you currently listening to, music maestro?

IR: The new Mount Kimbie record is incredible, and Broken Social Scene and The War on Drugs are amazing.

ES: What are your most used apps?

JN: I’m a very basic app user. Instagram and Snapchat to talk to my kids, because that is the only way I can reach them. They don’t answer the phone, SMS barely works with them.

IR: Instagram, WhatsApp, Citymapper, Pocket — which saves links that people send me so I can read them later on the metro. Another one I use every day

POWER of the PUFFA Good news for those of us who like being warm in the winter: the cosiest, most practical of coats is now also undoubtedly the most fashionable, says Frankie McCoy

Getty Images, Rex Features, Jason Lloyd-Evans

P

Camille Charrière Anna Dello Russo

Bella Hadid

Julia SarrJamois

CANADA GOOSE X OPENING CEREMONY

uffa jackets scream practicality. They are the ultimate functional coat, transcendent of gender and age. Look around any London street and you will see countless puffas bouncing along, in varying shades of shiny taupe and navy, keeping commuters warm as they wait in sleet for the 159 to Brixton.

Such pedestrian objects of necessity aren’t what we’re talking about here, of course. This season is all about the luxe puffa, worn as a fashion statement by people who never have to worry about internal combustion on the Central line. Puffa sales on Net-A-Porter are up 864 per cent on last year, while earlier in 2017 Harvey Nichols was selling one Canada Goose jacket every 38 minutes.

And there are myriad iterations: subtle army chic at Isabel Marant, Mira Mikati’s millennial-approved technicolour dreampuffa and Dalston’s Marques’Almeida’s asymmetric safety-pinned puffas.

Gigi Hadid Brands such as Canada Goose, meanwhile, which has just opened a flagship store on Regent Street, have turned their coats into bona fide fashion icons — while keeping firm roots in premium outerwear for weekend warriors crosscountry skiing in Antarctica. CEO Dani Reiss describes the brand’s down-filled jackets as ‘function-first’: ‘Sure we want our products to look good, but they have to work.’ Makes sense — it has been 60 years since it first started making seriously warm coats for people working near the North and CANADA South Poles. The sartorial central heating comes from the GOOSE down with which jackets are padded: soft, fine, quill-free Mystique parka, feathers that trap air and therefore provide insulation. Down £900 has an actual technical ‘fluffiness’ measurement, known as (canada goose. fill power; its 675-fill Snow Mantra is supposed to be ‘the com) warmest coat on earth’. ‘Once people put on our jackets they understand, often for the first time, what it means to be truly warm,’ says Reiss.

A Balenciaga Outerspace, on the other hand, is not MONKI advisable outerwear for a GoPro-ed ascent to base Macy jacket, camp, although it will keep you toasty when £50 (monki. com) sashaying from the front row to a Michelin-starred

Kendall Jenner

restaurant. It was Balenciaga that kickstarted the super-luxe, non-functional puffa love. The French fashion house is king of luxing up things previously thought solely functional — see, for example, AW17’s Ikea shopping bags — and Demna Gvasalia’s debut AW16 collection of off-the-shoulder puffas were immediately sucked up by fashion bloggers and street-style girls. Witness Camille Charrière waltzing about in her brown vegan leather Nanushka jacket, now a long sold-out Insta hit.

The luxe puffa is the non-polyester equivalent of a Slanket: a coat for people who don’t get out of bed for less than £10,000 but, when they do, like to take their down quilt with them. We might have just spent an uncomfortably sticky October sunbathing in shorts but temperature is irrelevant. Rihanna rocks summer puffas from the likes of Rick Owens with the self-assurance of someone who has futuristic air conditioning in their limo, while Canada Goose also boasts a flagship in Dubai (average annual temperature nearly 30C). The puffa is less about warmth, more an emblem of survivalist dressing in the time of climate change, Trump and Brexit — a buffer against predators, human or otherwise.

And life can be measured in puffa jackets. A silver-blue lurex puffa as a spherical six-year-old; a navy regulation faux Barbour crushed daily into a secondary-school locker.

As a teenager, possession of a Jack Wills padded gilet determined your social status. Then there was mudcaked Duke of Edinburgh’s Award, clad in The North Face. The outdoors brand has squashed damp memories of weekends lost in the New Forest with its super slick collabs from the likes of Sacaii, Junya Watanbe and, obvs, Supreme. The last of which it has worked with for 10 years, blending rock climber with A$AP Rocky in the latest Supreme x The North Face Nuptse, made of leather with 700-fill goose down insulation. Clearly, when it comes to luxury this winter, it’s all filla, all killa.

17.11.17 es magazine 45

Getty

M

oney can buy you happiness — you simply need a concierge to source it for you. It’s 17 years since Quintessentially launched: a millionaires’ club for the new millennium that offered to get you anything you like — at a price. Since then, concierge services, or ‘luxury lifestyle management services’, as they prefer it, have proliferated, with every other management graduate with a suit and an app offering up tickets to Mamma Mia! and ‘premium’ tables at the latest gold-lacquered Wagyu-bluefin restaurant in town. Beyond these companies, however, there’s a coveted trove of smaller, boutique concierges, that exist to not only fulfill your every desire, but to pre-empt those desires before they even occur to you.

The clientele differs, from boho luxe ravers in Ibiza to space cadet City boys and Middle East-Monaco petrolheads, but all share a taste for fine wine, personalised presents moved across the world on private transport and super-slick, highly Instagrammable money-can’t-buy experiences (that prove that actually it can). Nothing is impossible: Paola Diana’s lifestyle management company Sigillus calls itself ‘luxury fixers’, while the guys at new upstart 360-LDN insist that no

The

impossibles White roses flown in to Ibiza on a private plane? Bespoke car to drive around Burning Man festival? No problem.

Frankie McCoy investigates the can-do world of the world’s finest concierges

problem is unsolvable. As co-founder Nathan Wills laughs, ‘There are a million ways to skin a cat. We like to think of ourselves as the puppeteer in the background making everything run smoothly.’ Deliciously Sorted Ibiza’s Serena Cook, meanwhile, gets a kick out of making the impossible possible.

Working with the rich and roséd in Ibiza, she says, means ‘you’re planning people’s fun, so all clients are delightful to work with’.

These elite concierges are your personal genies: from astronaut gloves to fantasy weddings and unsourceable wine — if you’ve got enough gold to rub, they will grant any wish. As Diana says: ‘The sky is the limit for our clients.’

17.11.17 es magazine 47

The Party Starter Serena Cook

Company name Deliciously Sorted Ibiza Who is she? Fortythree-year-old foodie Cook first encountered the ‘beauty and magical bohemian vibe’ of Ibiza after hers and Sheherazade Goldsmith’s ‘before its time’ organic café, Deli Organic in Battersea, closed. She upped sticks and went to work as personal chef to Jade Jagger on the island, and quickly got a reputation for not only knowing the coolest, under the radar spots, but being able to get pals in too.

‘At the time Ibiza was more of a rough diamond, so as well as making recommendations and reservaSorted: Pixie Lott, left, tions, I was also a with Cathy Guetta reassuring voice.’

Who are her clients? Johnny Depp, Hugh Grant, Kim and Kanye, Kate Moss and every other beautiful, demanding, fashionista hedonist who wants sun, rosé on tap and personalised vibes. Anyone looking for a luxed-out, chilled-out, five-star holiday that can cater both to the needs of their totes adorbs kids and their own, devious, inner wild child.

Incredible feats? Getting you into the hottest restaurants (El Chiringuito, Peyotito) and club nights (Cathy Guetta and Black Coffee at Hï Ibiza), securing the How would you like most elite music for a your butterflies private party (clients will delivered? happily splash out six-figure sums for their favourite DJ). Cook can also sort out the transport, from anywhere, of literally anything you need: from a birthday cake shaped like a Hermès Birkin bag brought in on a private jet from London, to an extreme feat of flower power (‘when we had exhausted the island’s supply of white roses, a particular client got us to charter a plane to fly to Barcelona on a Sunday to pick up more’). She was also unflappable when a bride decided 24 hours before the big day that she just had to have live monarch butterflies released at the end of their ceremony — ‘you can’t get these in Ibiza and they were sold out on the Spanish mainland.

In the end we sourced them from Portugal.’

Ibiza on tap: Kanye Price From €500 a and Kim week; one-off services start at €50.

48 es magazine 17.11.17

The Millennial Mind readers

Nathan Wills and Daniel Gainsborough

Company name 360-LDN Who are they?

The ever so charming Wills, 26, and Gainsborough (left, in glasses), 25, met working at super-luxe Chelsea gym KX Life, where members seeking a bit of cool started asking them for recommendations around town. Perceptions of concierges have become ‘stuffy’ thanks to the likes of Quintessentially, says Wills stuff: — 360-LDN bills itself as Hot Burning Man ‘a breath of fresh air’.

Who are their clients?

City hipster bros who like their wine old, rare and extremely enviable, with dreams of staying in Richard Branson’s or Elon Musk’s space hotel (one day); until then you’ll find them parachuting into Burning Man. Incredible feats? Boys toys and then some.

Outerspace fan? ‘We have a few connections.

In of all places Roscosmos (the Russian Nasa); we were able to get our hands on a pair of genuine space gloves that had been in outer space’. How about the ultimate ego trip of a festival entrance? ‘One of our clients wanted to go to Burning Man and being one of our clients he wanted to stand out. For eight months before the event we liaised with an artist to build a completely bespoke art car [the Mad Max-cumparade float vehicles some revellers drive through the desert]. The completely specced-out car ended up on all the magazines that year.’ Want to show off your sophisticated taste? ‘Another of our clients, a serious oenophile, had a small gathering at his home in Chelsea. People were due to arrive at 7.30pm on a Friday; that morning at 10.30am we had a request from the client to source a 1997 Screaming Eagle Cabernet Sauvignon (above). But there was only one reported bottle in the whole of Europe at the time. We sourced it from a well-stocked cellar in Paris, jumped on the Eurostar and had it back in time for the start of dinner.’

Price Flat fee of £15,000 plus VAT per annum (they claim that by pre-empting clients’ wishes rather than dealing with expensive last-minute requests, they will recoup 60 per cent of that).

The new money Miracle worker

Paola Diana

Company name Sigillus Who is she? Forty-twoyear-old single mum Diana, a feminist entrepreneur and author, founded Sigillus in 2014 after clients at her highend childcare search consultancy, Nanny & Butler, started requesting access to private jets, off-market property and celebstudded events.

Who are her clients? The New Euroflash — 25-65-year-old royals and nouveau riche HNWs from the Middle East, Russia and China who play in Monaco and holiday in the Maldives — as well as corporate bigwigs with clients to woo.

Incredible feats? Basically, ensuring the best days of your life are exactly that, such as organising every detail of a client’s spectacularly lavish wedding in Capri and the honeymoon in the Maldives, including cocktail parties, the clifftop wedding Dream honeymoon: ceremony, the The Maldives post-nuptial cruise to a Unesco World Biosphere Reserve… Diana is also your saviour when it comes to filling the vast empty walls in your new 14-bedroom palazzo: a keen art fiend herself, she’s known for sourcing off-market Picassos (below) for clients who want to save face.

Then there are tickets to the Oscars, yacht parties next to the Monaco Grand Prix, finding the best private tutors for your little darling, and getting you in before anyone else to see the latest offmarket mansions with planning permission for all the iceberg basements you could want.

Price Annual memberships start from £7,000, going up to £45,000 for private memberships.

“there was only one bottle in the whole of Europe… We jumped on the Eurostar and had it back in time for dinner”

ANYA HINDMARCH AW17

CHRISTOPHER KANE SS18

MOTHER OF PEARL SS18

Domestic Policy T

Shell suited and booted: backstage at Gucci SS18

Rubber gloves. Vileda mops.

Seemingly mundane, day-to-day objects have been elevated to the catwalk by the biggest high-fashion labels. Laura Craik reports

(Vetements), shell suits adorned with jewels (Gucci) and rubber gloves made precious by the addition of gemstones (Kane again). Call it normcore on Viagra, if you like.

That these everyday objects have appeared so frequently on the catwalk — both for AW17 and SS18 — is significant.

Forget the familiar fashion realm of stealth luxury, private jets and unthinkable wealth — welcome to fashion’s great staycation, whereby the mundane has become exotic. It’s a long-held tradition for designers to cite ‘the jewelled hues of Rajasthan’ or ‘the breezy boho allure of Ibiza’ as inspiration for their shows.

This is usually because, as soon as said show has finished, they jet off to exotic foreign climes to rejuvenate and seek fresh stimulation. So what are we to make of this vogue for finding inspiration closer to home; so close that a designer’s biggest muse appears to be their own front room or kitchen?

Is it a Brexit thing? Is it a time-constraint thing?

Is elephant trekking in Namibia simply no match for the sweet satisfaction of pulling on your rubber gloves and giving the oven a good scrub? I think we must be told. So I asked Christopher Kane, a designer who stands at the vanguard of the normalling movement. After all, this is

Anya Hindmarch scourer charm, £197, at matches fashion.com

mary katrantzou SS18

here’s an episode of the cult US comedy 30 Rock in which Jenna and her boyfriend, Paul, having exhausted every sexual proclivity in the book, decide to invent a new one after boringly falling asleep on the sofa one night. ‘It’s a whole new fetish called normalling,’ they decide. ‘I just had the sickest idea,’ adds Jenna, lasciviously. ‘We go out as a couple to Bed, Bath & Beyond and shop for… home necessities.’

‘Normalling in public?’ asks her partner. ‘You delicious whore.’

We all know about normcore, the word coined in 2014 to describe the trend for anonymous jeans, unbranded sportswear and other middle-aged American tourist tropes. While it’s related, normalling is different.

Normalling is the elevation of the mundane into something alluring, exciting and — yes — even a little bit kinky, and come the new year it’s all you will want in your 2018 wardrobe. It’s Vileda mops made into shoes (Christopher Kane’s SS18 show, above), fluffy house slippers (Anya Hindmarch, above), bags inspired by ruffled pillowcases (Mother of Pearl, Maison Margiela), Lego skirts (Mary Katrantzou), string shopping bags

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House rules: Anya Hindmarch SS18

52 ES MAGAZINE 17.11.17

VETEMENTS bag, £2,890, at matches fashion.com

Jason Lloyd Evans; Alamy; Rex Features

the man who turned humble Crocs into objets d’art.

‘No one ever goes there — people are scared to,’ is how Kane explains his fascination with domesticity, ‘because they think it’s not good enough or grand enough.’ Kane grew up in a large working-class family, in a community where all the women were immaculately turned out, regardless of whether they had any money or not. ‘You made do and kept things good,’ he says. ‘I’ve never been brought up to be a snob. Things are not good or bad taste.

I don’t think you’ve got the right to say something is ugly or beautiful — it’s in the eye of the beholder.’ His background explains his fascination with the everyday and objects that loftier designers would fi nd boring.

‘Cleaners were always people I related to,’ he says of the 1940s housecoats, dusters and rubber gloves referenced in his show. ‘The men thought they ruled the house, but these women were big, hardcore matriarchs who raised five kids and were also clean freaks. They really were domestic goddesses. How could you not find that amazing?’

In Kane’s hands, the suburban theme becomes a comment on the class system. ‘I love how middle-class people are always trying to be something they’re not,’ he chuckles. ‘Where I grew up in Scotland, we made things look good no matter what they were. You were always well presented, no matter how you were brought up. Who cares if it wasn’t designer? The idea of class is even more apparent now,’ he adds. ‘Brexit left you feeling as though you thought you knew people, but actually you didn’t know anyone. That’s really sad,’ he says.

Anya Hindmarch’s take on suburbia is different — unsurprisingly, given her comfortable middle-class upbringing. While her presentation back in February of this year featured such desultory household objects as scouring pads, her SS18

CHRISTOPHER KANE SS18

“THINGS ARE NOT GOOD OR BAD TASTE. I DON’T THINK YOU’VE GOT THE RIGHT TO SAY SOMETHING IS UGLY OR BEAUTIFUL”

show took the fetishisation of suburbia even further.

For her stage set, Hindmarch constructed a ‘house’, complete with a ‘loft extension’ from which a glitterball dropped down for the finale. Pastel hues of sugar pink and mint green were lifted straight from a suburban front room, as were the textures and fabrics, with fluff, quilting and wallpaper-esque brocades writ large.

Accessories were fashioned in the same vein: totes came printed with cats or budgies — surely suburbia’s favourite house pets — and shaggy mules aped oldfashioned house slippers.

‘I’ve always loved the idea of taking something you know and doing it in a really luxurious way. It comes with an automatic point of view before you’ve even started, and then you can mess with it,’ says Hindmarch, who famously turned a crisp packet into a clutch. ‘There’s something comfortBack to basics: ing, funny and creatively challenging Maison Margiela’s SS18 catwalk about subverting the way people perceive things they already have an opinion of.’

Hindmarch says she also enjoyed experimenting with some of the techniques used to fashion the objects she was surrounded by in childhood, such as pouffy cushions and candlewick bedspreads. ‘It’s such a personal thing, suburbia, and what it means to us.

Most people who live in it try to escape it, and yet in a funny way, there’s comfort in the uniform nature of it. There’s something fascinating about that.’

Shrimps’ Hannah Weiland, whose brand logo is a salute to that 1980s hostess favourite, the prawn cocktail, agrees. ‘There is joy in the repetitive beauty of suburbia,’ she says.

I wonder whether, as a mother of five, Hindmarch’s interest in the ephemera of household life was piqued by her own experiences of keeping house, and a consequence of being surrounded by household objects. ‘For me, the subject of suburbia was not at all related to that,’ she says. ‘It was more about the architecture. I’m fascinated by its rather beautiful-ugly nature. I fi nd it quite hypnotic when you’re driving along a road and see cookiecutter houses all the way. That was my starting point.’

There can be few better emblems of sexy suburbia than Cynthia Payne, whose Streatham sex parties were frequented by peers of the realm and became a national scandal in the 1970s. Payne was a key inspiration for Kane’s collection because, he says, ‘She took the piss out of the Establishment, had a sense of humour and looked BALENCIAGA great. I’m sure people were like, “OMG, that’s so not shoes POA feminist”, but I’m always striving [to represent] those (balenciaga. com/gb) characters because they bring so much story and background. Why can’t a prostitute be considered a muse? Cynthia was a working woman. She probably threw great parties.’

She probably did — and would have died to wear Kane’s jewel-encrusted rubber gloves. After all, if normalling isn’t just a little bit saucy, you’re probably not doing it right.

Rosetta Getty dress, £2,000, at Liberty (020 7734 1234). Giorgio Armani cape, £1,400 (020 7235 6232).

Pandora rings, £60 each (pandora.net) Opposite page, Erdem trousers, £1,065 (erdem.com).

Preen blouse, £775 (preenbythornton bregazzi.com). Prada cardigan, £2,795 (020 7647 5000).

William & Son white sapphire and diamond necklace, £70,890 (williamandson.com)

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Heavenly creature

Rich textures, winter pastels and exquisite embellishment. Elfie Reigate, the first signing of Kate Moss’s new agency, models the season’s luxurious mood…

PhotographS BY Jane M c Leish-Kelsey stylED BY martha ward 17.11.17 es magazine 55

Gucci jacket, £2,700; shirt, £850; skirt, £750 (gucci.com)

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Dolce & Gabbana dress, £5,250 (020 7659 9000). Anya Hindmarch satchel, £1,095 (anyahind march.com). Jimmy Choo boots, £625 (jimmychoo.com)

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Burberry dress, ÂŁ2,495 (burberry. com). Cartier necklace, ÂŁ97,000 (cartier.com)

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Christopher Kane dress, £3,995 (christopherkane. com/uk). Dior Joaillerie earrings £2,600; ring, £6,750 (dior.com)

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Vetements dress, ÂŁ1,430, at brownsfashion.com.

Mappin & Webb earrings, ÂŁ3,000 (mappinandwebb.com)

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Mary Katrantzou dress, £3,450 (marykatrantzou.com).

Russell & Bromley flats, £265 (russelland bromley.co.uk).

Atelier Swarovski ring, £199, at Fenwick of Bond Street (020 7629 9161).

Socks, stylist’s own Hair by Earl Simms at Caren using Hair by Sam McKnight. Make-up

by Celia Burton using Chanel Numero Rouges and No 5 Fragments D’Or. Fashion assistant: Kate Sinclair. Model: Elfie Reigate at Kate Moss Agency

17.11.17 es magazine 61

urbane outfitters Today’s discerning A-list gentlemen are heading to the Mayfair atelier of Thom Sweeney for their bespoke tailoring. Katrina Israel meets the British duo bringing the classic sharp suit up to date

t’s hard to think of a better notes, has always been an intimate one: ‘It’s way of spending a Tuesday like going to a barber. The key part is underafternoon than undressing standing where he likes to go out to eat, what Hollywood’s leading men he doesn’t like about his old clothes, how he with Thom Whiddett, 37, and wants to look. They get to know and trust Luke Sweeney, 38 — the you. It’s always been that way.’

British tailoring duo who The pair met Fassbender, for example, founded Thom Sweeney, and through Whiddett’s wife, who is friends with whose A-l i st cl ientele Alicia Vikander. ‘He’s genuinely interested,’ includes Michael Fassbender, the Battersea resident says of Fassbender’s Bradley Cooper and Ryan Gosling. ‘I can penchant for a well-cut, three-piece suit. tell you his inside leg,’ Sweeney says of ‘He’s got opinions. He’ll be like, “Can we get Gosling with a twinkle in his eye. I soon a bit more shape here or there?” He’s into learn that these two could charm the pants putting his own thing together.’ Sweeney’s off anyone: although it turns out Bradley sartorial prowess, meanwhile, recruited Cooper did the reverse at their first meeting. former England footballer Jamie Redknapp ‘He actually took my suit, didn’t he? My during dinner at Zuma. ‘I was with my wife favourite navy!’ Sweeney exclaims. ‘He loved and he was sitting next to us and kept lookit so much and said, “Can I have it?” and I ing at my suit,’ the Kensington local recalls. was like, “Yeah, all right”.’

‘Then he goes, “Excuse me mate, your suit is Hanging around with these two at their really nice. Where’d you get it from?” I said, Weighhouse Street atelier, it’s easy to see “I made it myself”, and he goes, “Oh wow, I’d why clients often pop in for a fitting and end love to come and see you.” I gave him my up staying for drinks. The vibe is akin to a number and the next day he came.’ contemporary gentlemen’s club (if you ignore ‘Their clothes make you feel special, espethe paper patterns neatly hanging from the cially if you are into fashion like I am,’ ceiling), complete with a fully stocked bar Redknapp tells me down the phone later. and truffle-infused nut mix. But just how did ‘They are very young, but they are the best two nice blokes from Essex (Sweeney) and in the business.’ They’ve since done some 60Kent (Whiddett), who skipped college to 70 pieces for him, and he later passed on the become apprentices at east London tailor recommendation to comedian Jimmy Carr.

Timothy Everest some 17 In stitches: Thom Whiddett ‘Some guys get protective years ago, end up suiting and Luke Sweeney and they won’t introduce,’ the stars? ‘You know, we’re Sweeney adds. ‘Jamie’s not qu ite rela xe d g uys ,’ one of those.’

Sweeney explains of their Now a booming bespoke, unpretentious approach. made -to -measure and ‘It’s not superficial. You try ready-to-wear menswear to build decent relationbrand, Thom Sweeney was ships,’ Whiddett adds. The founded with six clients a bond between a gentleman decade ago. Sweeney grew and his tailor, his partner up in the rag trade — his

62 es magazine 17.11.17

dad was a trimmings merchant, his mother a factory seamstress — and he learned everything on the job. ‘I just fell in love with it,’ he says of that Timothy Everest apprenticeship. ‘Everyone was dressed so beautifully and I just wanted to be a part of it.’

Whiddett came to tailoring via work experience at Esquire magazine. He met Everest through a piece that the publication was working on. An internship led to an apprenticeship, the pair got on, and a few years later they were out on their own. At the time ‘Savile Row would look at City tailors as not as good, but Tim was kind of in-between, and made a point of being in his own area in Spitalfields — a destination,’ Whiddett reflects. That gave the pair the confidence to repudiate a Savile Row address. ‘Dougie Hayward was on Mount Street,’ says Sweeney of the thinking behind their Bruton Place retail space. ‘He’s an icon of our industry and he made it work.’

In addition to their two Mayfair loca-

Wenn; PA; Splash News; Rex

I

PhotographS BY dunja opalko

Suit boys: Luke Sweeney, left, and Thom Whiddett.

Below, a jacket in the making

tions, the duo now have their first New York outpost opening this week. To man the Soho location Whiddett is upping sticks with his wife, two-year-old and four-month old baby for three months to set up shop in Manhattan, while Sweeney, who has a seven and nine-year-old, holds the fort back home. They are both incredibly busy.

Today, for example, Sweeney has seen six clients already. Is it hard to retain the personal touch? ‘It’s really important that no matter how many stores we open we still take care of our bespoke customers,’ he says. So just how does one join the club? ‘You book an appointment’ — which takes between half an hour and 45 minutes, moving from fabrication (weight, durability, feel) to styling details and fit.

Two or three more fittings will follow, while the whole process takes 12 to 14 weeks and starts at £2,850

for a two-piece suit. A made-to-measure version starts at £1,475 and is based on an existing block with the same Italian construction as their ready-to-wear pieces. The latter was introduced in 2013 when Mr Porter came knocking and starts at £1,395. ‘They have taken the underpinning of what makes a good piece of clothing — the balance, fabrication, texture and cut — and continuously create timeless and seductive tailoring,’ says Mr Porter style director Olie Arnold. ‘Simply put, Thom and Luke understand their customers’ evolving needs from both ready-towear and bespoke tailoring, making them some of the nicest and most successful British tailors around.’

Serving up impeccable style without snobbery, Thom Sweeney proves that the art of tailoring is anything but an endangered craft. ‘When I first got into the business my dad said I was mad because it was a dying trade,’ Sweeney recalls. ‘It was an old man’s business, quite stuffy and there weren’t many young guys. But we don’t hear that anymore. Tailoring is in a really good place.

London College of Fashion is inundated with tailoring students. It’s a vibrant trade that young kids want to be involved with and prosper in.’

‘When we were young, it was all about dress-down Friday,’ Sweeney adds. ‘Now more than ever, if you pick up any magazine, social media, blogs, people are dressing up.’

There’s no doubt that the charismatic duo would like to return the modern man’s ward“Their clothes make you robe to the glory days of style icons such as McQueen, Michael Caine, Dean Martin feel special… They are Steve and Frank Sinatra. The framed suited-and very young, but they are booted images watching over clients from the the best in the business” walls of their workshop are reflected in their designs. ‘It’s grown-up, but modern,’ explains Sweeney of their signature double-breasted suit that features a soft shoulder line with high armholes and slim sleeves that give shape to the waist. Read: polished yet relaxed enough to reveal the hint of a bulging bicep. ‘Thom’s been working Sween team: out,’ Sweeney jokes, turning to his from left, Ryan Gosling, Jamie friend and adding, ‘It’s actually a Redknapp, really wide sleeve.’

Michael Fassbender And with that, they are off. Just and Bradley like their clientele, you’ll find them Cooper after hours at 5 Hertford Street, The Arts Club or Soho House. Either that or back at work, burning the midnight oil while dutifully measuring the inside leg seams of Messrs Gosling, Fassbender or your good self.

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GIFTING From the finest perfumes to the smartest timepieces, six pages of glittering gifts to dazzle your loved ones

PhotographS BY Marie valognes edited BY lily worcester and sophie paxton

DIOR amphoras, ÂŁ10,000 for set of three, at selfridges.com

french fancies This trio of crystal amphoras is Parisian luxury at its most decadent 17.11.17 es magazine 65

cometh the hour Stay on schedule with these superior timepieces

From left,TUDOR Black Bay Chrono watch, £3,390 (tudorwatch.com).

OMEGA Seamaster Aqua Terra watch, £4,000 (omegawatches.com).

TAG HEUER Carrera watch, £1,250 (tagheuer.co.uk)

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snapchat Capture the party spirit with a single click

From left, HASSELBLAD X1D-50c 4116 Edition camera, £11,988, at harrods.com.

LEICA TL2 camera, £1,700; lens, £1,300; yellow case, £105 (leicastore-mayfair.co.uk).

FUJIFILM X-T2 camera, £1,899, at selfridges.com

68 es magazine 17.11.17

NICE ICE, BABY Get your glitter on with some seriously flashy rocks

Clockwise from top, MAPPIN & WEBB Empress white gold and diamond earrings, £16,000 (mappinand webb.com). MESSIKA Angel white gold and diamond earrings, £20,900, at harrods.com.

GARRARD TwentyFour white gold and diamond earrings, £9,800 (garrard.com)

17.11.17 es magazine 71

top of the pops Up the ante with a swish bottle of fizz

Clockwise from far left, DOM PÉRIGNON P2 2000 £290, at clos19.com.

BILLECART-SALMON Cuvée Elisabeth Salmon Brut Rosé 2006, £156, at hedonism.co.uk.

LAURENT-PERRIER Cuvée Alexandra Rosé 2004, £229, at selfridges.com.

MOËT & CHANDON MC III £390, at clos19.com.

BOLLINGER Vieilles Vignes Françaises Blanc de Noirs, 2006, £570, at bbr.com.

William Yeoward pearl champagne coupe, £195 (williamyeoward.com)

72 es magazine 17.11.17

speak easy Crank up the volume, it’s (almost) party time

DEVIALET Gold Phantom speaker, £2,190, including three months’ free access to Tidal music streaming service (devialet.com)

17.11.17 es magazine 75

beauty Treasures of the Deep

by katie service

Set by Elena Horn. Coral bookend, £645, at uk.l-objet.com

Underwater beauty trinkets housing Estée Lauder perfume balms and pressed powders

Clockwise from back left, Shimmering Sea Urchin solid perfume, £300; Sea Goddess solid perfume, £300; Jewelled Starfish powder compact, £200; Dancing Starfish solid perfume, £300; One of a Kind Seahorse solid perfume, £300, all at Harrods (020 7730 1234)

PHOTOGRAPH BY aleksandra kingo STYLED BY lily worcester

17.11.17 es magazine 77

BEAUTY

You beauty!

ON THE SOAPBOX

Jet-setting facialist to the stars NICHOLA JOSS has recently added piercings to her treatment roster. She shares her tips on how to use them to help contour your face

D

id you know that the placement of your ear-piercings can help contour your face shape? For the past year I’ve been studying computer generated images of ear piercings — by moving the piercing around to various sides and positions of the ear you can see subtle alterations and lifts in the face shape. Equally, covering your ears with sparkly diamonds works like an optical illusion; the earring draws the eye out making the cheekbone seem more lifted. The effect is very subtle and unique to each person’s face shape, but these little tricks 100 per cent make a difference.  If you want to lift the cheek area, draw an imaginary line from the cheekbone with your finger towards the ear. Place your ear piercing slightly higher than where the line ends on the outer rim of the ear.  Sometimes people want to make their ears look smaller. To do this, place an earring in a position close to your face on the inner part of your ear, where it will draw the eye back in to the face as opposed to outwards to the edge of the ear.  To soften a heavy jawline, keep any outer piercings about 3mm lower than the middle point of the ear, just at the top NICHOLA JOSS earrings, of the lobe. from £470 Nichola Joss has treatment rooms in Covent Garden (nicholajoss.com)

T Annabel Rivkin melts away in bath oil bliss

Josh Shinner; Natasha Pszenicki

HEADSPACE

Hotel Café Royal’s Poetry in Water treatment combines muscle stretching, joint mobilisation and Shiatsu massage in its heated private pool. These movements allow your spine to elongate, your body to unwind and your heart rate to drop, resulting in waves of relaxation. Poetry in Water, 50/90 minutes, £150/£210 (hotelcaferoyal.com)

his week we are all about luxury, but I’m going to leave the gold-plated face packs and milliondollar fragrances alone. We’re all weary; worn down by these troubled times. So, from where I’m sitting, you can keep your caviar serums. I’m not in the bloody mood. Let’s instead turn our limited attention to everyday luxury. Granular luxury. Democratic, accessible, nurturing luxury. The luxury of a bath.

Your bath is your spa, your cave, your mountaintop.

Your bath is your sacred space. Get a lock on the damn door and claim that space. I cry in the bath, I think in the bath, I read in the bath and — at this time of year — I eat satsumas in the bath. I add hot and cold and hot and cold, twiddling the taps with my toes. No candles.

No whale music. Just me. Alone. It’s really hard to feel lonely in the bath because the warm water helps you to feel held. Oh, yes. The luxury of a bath.

And, the bonus ball is a beautiful bath oil. Like Miller Harris’s Rose Silence. Rose is the red lipstick of the fragrance world. You love it or you can’t cope with it. And, if you do love it, one size absolutely does not fit all. So try this absolute sensation on for size. First of all it transforms bath water into a kind of nourishing milk, rich in vitamins A and E. But the smell, dear God, the smell. A modern rose, fresh and clear, enlivened with blackcurrant and mandarin but anchored with musk.

I’ve developed a Pavlovian response whereby I only have to see the damn bottle and I start to feel melty.

Now I think it’s time you just… left me alone for a while. In a loving way.

Rose Silence bath oil, £38 (millerharris.com)

READ YOUR STARS BY SHELLEY VON STRUNCKEL AT STANDARD.CO.UK ⁄ HOROSCOPES ⁄TODAY

17.11.17 ES MAGAZINE 79

Virtual reality Glitter

Glitter lips just got hi-tech.

The buzz backstage at fashion week was all about holographic textures and virtual reality.

TIP: choose lip glosses with micro-glitter particles and layer over a nude lip liner The Lip Kit: Pat McGrath Labs Cyber Clear Eye Gloss, as part of the Dark Star 006 Eye Kit, £120, at net-a-porter.com. Giorgio Armani Smooth Silk Lip Pencil in 1, £19 (armanibeauty.co.uk) Halpern top, £1,082, at matchesfashion.com Opposite page

Button Up

Plasticised liquid lip colours now hug the lip so that they look almost spray-on.

TIP: avoid lip liners with these ultra-thin finishes — if you need the definition, get help from a flat, angled liner brush The Lip Kit: Giorgio Armani Lip Magnet Liquid Lipstick, £29 (armanibeauty.co.uk) Jane Kønig earrings, £115 (janekoenig.co.uk)

Lip service PhotographS BY karina twiss fashion by sophie paxton

From new levels of latex shine to velveteen topcoats, Katie Service presents this season’s new lip wear

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Sheer Genius

The latest in translucent lipstick allows you to rock a bright red and still feel minimal, or build up the colour with abandon for a punchier finish.

TIP: the more relaxed, the better with these — apply straight from the bullet and veer outside the lip line The Lip Kit: Giorgio Armani Ecstasy Shine in 505, £29 (armanibeauty.co.uk)

82 es magazine 17.11.17

Shine on

Gone are the days of tacky lip gloss that draws strands of hair to it like a magnet. New formulas are non-sticky, boast enduring shine and stay in place.

TIP: apply the gloss just up to, and not over, the inner edge of your lip line to keep the shape looking crisp for longer The Lip Kit: Giorgio Armani Ecstasy Shine in eccentric, ÂŁ29; Ecstasy Lacquer in 500, ÂŁ28 (armanibeauty.co.uk)

84 es magazine 17.11.17

Velveteen Habit

For those who can’t get their heads around gloss, hope lies in the softer, more matte suede lipsticks of the season.

TIP: counter the softness of this texture with some sharp outer corners (as seen at Helmut Lang) and extremely dewy skin The Lip Kit: Christian Louboutin Velvet Matte Lip Colour, £70 (harrods. com). Giorgio Armani Lip Maestro Lip Gloss in 402, £28; Smooth Silk Lip Pencil in 10, £19 (armanibeauty.co.uk) Maya Magal gold textured hoops, £71 (mayamagal.co.uk) Make-up by Ariel Yeh at Saint Luke Artists using Giorgio Armani Beauty and Skincare.

Hair by Roku Roppongi at Saint Luke Artists. Nails by Sabrina Gayle at The Wall Group. Model: Cassey Chanel at Wilhelmina

17.11.17 es magazine 87

beauty

Sound

advice

Nothing could cure Clemency Burton-Hill’s panic attacks — until she set aside a little time each day to listen to her favourite classical music and everything changed

t started with Bach. A suite called The Well-Tempered Clavier, to be precise. I began to notice that, whenever I took the rare luxury of stopping, pressing play and actively listening to this 300-year-old piano music, the thoughts scrambling madly around in my head would subside. My heart would stop racing and my breathing would deepen. I branched out — cello suites, cantatas — and felt somehow equalised, internal equilibrium restored. What was this minor sonic miracle? How could the simple act of listening to a piece of music have such a positive effect? And what, I wondered, if I were to turn it into an positive daily ritual?

I delved deeper: instead of a mindless Instragram scroll hole on the way home from work, keyboard works by Liszt and Scriabin; soulful instrumental pieces by the contemporary composer Max Richter; sublime Renaissance choral works that were more than just spiritually nourishing.

Classical music, it turned out, would become my salvation.

It was early in 2015 that my panic attacks began. I would be standing on a Tube platform and suddenly everything would start to feel wrong. Despite freezing temperatures outside, down here it would feel like a furnace. I’d yank off my coat, frantically unwind my scarf. All around me commuters would be engaged in the usual rushhour transaction of forcing themselves on to the carriage. Caught in the middle of that scrum, I’d be immobilised, seemingly unable to breathe. It was terrifying.

This sort of thing should not have been happening

88 es magazine 17.11.17

to me. I’m a born and bred Londoner. I’m also a grown woman, a wife, a mother, a functional thirty-something in apparent control of my life. Extracting the most out of every minute of every day is my standard M O. Obviously the Tube at rush hour does not bother me (unless, of course, we’re talking about someone standing on the left of the escalator): nothing holds me back.

My life has always been lived, like so many of us, at a certain frenetic pace and with unrelenting expectations about what it means to be a human being in the greatest city on earth. So what was going on?

I put it down to the chronic sleepdeprivation of parenthood, tech overuse, and always-on freelancer burnout. I tried to ignore stress-inducing headlines and reminded myself that people everywhere were battling situations far harder than mine. But then the going got tougher. Over the next year, I suffered three traumatic miscarriages and lost a beloved parent. I felt like I was in a sinister game of a Whac-AMole: every time I raised my head, something else would slam me back down. You’d have never known it from my Instagram or Twitter feeds, of course, because we are all complicit in the great digital game of curating and semaphoring perfection. As I spun out behind screens, however, an increasing number of well-intentioned friends suggested I take up meditation and, sigh, mindfulness.

Oh, mindfulness. I have no doubt about the power of mindfulness meditation if you are the sort of person who can actually make it work. I, it turns out, am definitively not that person.

My abject failure to get

mindful, even after shelling out for a specialist course and various apps, teas and colouring books, only left me feeling even more stressed and depressed.

All this time I was neglecting what had always been in the background. I have played the violin since childhood and music has long been a central part of my life. I’m a radio presenter who hosts a daily breakfast music programme on BBC Radio 3; a TV presenter who works on shows such as BBC Young Musician of the Year and The Proms. My life, supposedly, was ‘filled’ with music. And yet in the relentless roller coaster of a freelance career that encompasses journalism, writing books, producing documentaries and hosting live events, not to mention family, friends and parenthood, I was — I am — a classic millennial time pauper. How often did I

Charlie Forgham Bailey

I

illustration BY Olivia whitworth

“Classical music has been proven to have the capacity to rewire our brains” actually give myself the time and space to really listen? Answer: never.

But I shouldn’t have been surprised by music’s restorative effects. The science speaks for itself. Classical music has been proven, again and again, to have the capacity to rewire our brains. And in our age of tech overload there is increasing research to suggest that in never detaching mentally from our inboxes, apps and social media, we are losing a crucial part of what it means to be human: that which requires us to stop, reflect and let our minds wander. Such music, increasingly marginalised in our culture despite being

accessible to anyone with an internet connection, can help us do precisely this.

Throw together the words ‘luxury’ and ‘classical music’ and what is likely to spring to mind is people in black tie drinking champagne in a gilded opera house. But the true luxury of what it means to have a life containing this kind of music has taken on new meaning for me. It has nothing to do with being ‘posh’ or fancy concert halls.

It’s about the gift of taking time, just a few minutes out of each day, to press play — whoever you are, wherever you come from, whatever you’re doing — and get lost. I promise that you will never feel so found.

‘Year of Wonder: Classical Music for Every Day’, £20, by Clemency Burton-Hill is out now from Headline Home. Clemency appears at Hampstead Arts Festival on Friday 17 Nov at 7.30pm (hampsteadartsfestival.com)

NOW HEAR THIS

Clemency’s classical musts When you need a spiritual detox: Max Richter On the Nature of Daylight When you need a total mental reset: JS Bach The WellTempered Clavier, Book 1, Prelude No 6 in D minor When you want to immerse yourself in beauty: Camille SaintSäens ‘The Swan’ from Carnival of the Animals

When you need an injection of sonic peace: Morten Lauridsen O Magnum Mysterium When life calls for the ultimate de-stresser: Arvo Pärt Spiegel im Spiegel

Audeze LCD-XC, £1,599, at spiritland. com

17.11.17 es magazine 89

feast

grace & flavour Grace Dent longs for some real luxury treatment at the Mandrake Hotel’s Serge et le Phoque

“The small plate of darkly umami protein and carbs left my guest wondering why I’d spent 24 hours fighting for his seat”

Ambience food

Jonny Cochrane; illustration by Jonathan Calugi @ Machas

T

he Mandrake Hotel on Newman Street where Serge et le Phoque lives is one of the most luxurious, yet ridiculous, places I’ve been to in 2017.

The first time I visited was for the opening party, when the place was full of west London billionaires in bejewelled Eyes Wide Shut masks and Dodi al Fayed film producer-era lookalikes.

And some bloke carrying a live bird of prey. The London landscape of ‘fancy people’ divides into many different boroughs. I myself, being firmly of far east London, fancy media-muppet class, found the bird of prey problematic and the live bongo playing unpalatable. I soon left for the relative sanity of Oxford Street at 11pm.

This isn’t to downplay The Mandrake’s opulence, oddness and ambition. It is a surreal, dimly lit pleasure palace of the five-star variety, littered with objets d’art, abundant greenery and commissioned graffiti. A suite with a Bedouintented bed costs £2,964 per night. For this, one must still pass a door girl with a clipboard — as I did on my second visit — who will sneer: ‘How can I help you?’ I wanted to reply, ‘By stopping that attitude immediately, cupcake’, but thankfully, my guest took over and made nice.

I’d booked dinner for two at Serge et le Phoque 48 hours previously under a false name.

I was asked for a credit card and warned of an £80 charge if we didn’t show. I then spent the next 24 hours making numerous phone calls, to try to extend my party to three. This was apparently impossible, although by their tone it

sERGE ET LE PHOQUE 20-21 Newman Street, Fitzrovia, W1 (020 3146 7770; themandrake.com) 3

Nordic still water

£9

3

Foccacia

£0

2

Pinot Grigio

£90

1

Cevice

£16

1

Onion soup

£14

1

Foie gras

£14

1

Monkfish

£26

1

Pigeon

£29

1

Lamb

£28

2

Grilled broccoli

£12

1

Pomme purée

£8

1

Cheese

1

Rhum baba

£8

1

Lemon cream

£3

Total

£10

£267

was clear that no one would try. However, I’d lose £80 if I had dinner elsewhere. It’s not hospitality.

At Brasserie Zédel, they treat every single person who dines there at £30 per head like a duchess.

Obviously, this all changed once I reached Serge et le Phoque and the ‘f*** it’s a critic’ klaxon sounded. Soon after that a small army of people were treating me like peak season Gaga, as though dispatching one of them to Habitat to buy a chair would have been their pleasure.

This is how you whip through £300 in a luxury, French-influenced, Euro-elite magnet like Serge et le Phoque. The water is Nordic Still and costs £9, although, to be fair, they did not charge us for the large squares of dry-looking focaccia. We shared a bottle of the most costfriendly Pinot Grigio at around £45, and quickly, as the starters appeared, realised we’d need another. A ceviche of Sicilian red prawn and turbot with passionfuit was genuinely delightful.

Sharp, meaty, welcome. Another starter of a pale Cévennes onion soup lacked any meaningful trace of onion, but definitely boasted several assertive olives. The foie gras starter was as life-enhancing as tiny cubes of liver diced into a clear broth, poured from a white china teapot, can possibly be.

We ordered a main of pigeon with arroz negro and boudin noir, a small plate of darkly umami protein and carbs that left my guest wondering why I’d spent 24 hours fighting for his seat (to which the answer is: ‘Shut up and eat your tiny bowl of grilled broccoli with sesame’). My monkfish was delightful, because monkfish is always delightful. It came with radicchio, which we can’t hold against it. Small suggestions of trimmed lamb sat close to puddles of pommes purée and slivers of smoked eel. We left two puddings — a rejigged rhum baba and a titivated crème brûlée — largely abandoned.

We had spent £300 including £33 pounds service. It all felt so luxurious.

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feast

tart london Jemima Jones and Lucy Carr-Ellison taste the

high life with decadent millionaire’s shortbread

Just the tonic: Lucy picks sloe berries ready for winter gin

Jemima Jones (left) and Lucy Carr-Ellison

Josh Shinner

T

his naughtily luxurious shortbread is a caricature of a quintessential English afternoon treat. Picture tea with an ageing aunt in a dated café, rain lashing against the windows, some buttery scones, a pot of tea and a large pile of these on a plate between you. Either that or served on bone china at The Ritz or Claridge’s.

Millionaire’s shortbread is triple layered. At the bottom, you have the buttery, salty shortbread base, then thick, gooey caramel and finally, a layer of chocolate on top. Quite a decadent step up from the classic Scottish shortbread.

The internet is inconclusive as to how millionaire’s shortbread got its name. Perhaps it has something to do with the rich ingredients, as even plain shortbread was once a luxury item, due to the scarcity of butter and sugar. Or perhaps the name refers to the millions of calories each bite contains. Sometimes just one of these chocolate caramel treats can seem indulgent, even if shared with a friend, so we decided to make a variant on the classic. This recipe is a little simpler: not baked, yet made more substantial by adding nuts. These little beauties will leave you feeling good rather than overly full, from the crunchy base of pecans and coconut oil to the deep, rich maple-nut butter — and of course, the silky, salted chocolate. In the unlikely event that there are any left, they’ll keep in the fridge covered for a week — but when we made a batch to serve while catering recently, they disappeared before we could blink.

Makes 16

millionaire’s shortbread

For the base 250g pecans, toasted 200g digestive biscuits 250g prunes 150ml water 2 tbsp coconut oil

Line a 20x20cm tin with cling film. Crush the pecans and the biscuits into a sandy texture, either in a food processor or by putting in a bag and bashing with a rolling pin. Heat the prunes in a small pan with the water and coconut oil until it starts to simmer, then place in a food processor and pulse into a paste. Transfer to a mixing bowl with the pecan-biscuit blend and stir together until combined. Press the mixture evenly into the tin and put in the freezer for 30 minutes to harden.

Stir together the nut butters, maple syrup and salt, and pour on top of the chilled biscuit base.

Finally, melt the chocolate with the coconut oil in a small pan and pour over the maple-nut butter.

Spread evenly to the edges and sprinkle over the salt. Return to the freezer for 30 minutes then cut into squares to serve.

For the centre 300g almond butter 300g peanut butter 200ml maple syrup Pinch of sea salt For the topping 250g good quality dark chocolate 2 tbsp coconut oil Pinch of sea salt

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In the MIX

FEAST Sixth sense: Out of the Blue at The Berkeley, right; augmented cocktails at City Social, below

Dive BARS

Want a richer drinking experience?

Take a dip into the world of multisensory cocktails, says Frankie McCoy

Jonny Cochrane; glassware available at waterford.co.uk

S

imply sipping an award-winning masterpiece of maverick mixology in a fancy bar is so yesterday: what the flâneur in search of their next luxury booze hit needs is an immersive drinking experience. And naturally, the supremely lovely Blue Bar at The Berkeley can provide, with director of beverages Daniel Baernreuther’s new Out of the Blue experience. A year in the making, OOTB is, as Baernreuther puts it, all about ‘cocktail escapism’: total immersion in a sort of sensory chamber, where you drink unidentified cocktails while stimulated by sound, smell and visuals to guess your poison.

The OOTB experience is about ‘stripping back the cues that we are so used to in a bar, like garnish, glass, menu description, and allowing your senses, rather than your opinion about an ingredient or spirit, to take the lead,’ says Baernreuther. Without a description, entrenched whisky deniers or celery haters might discover a love for a drink they’d never normally order; lacking visual cues, like a drink’s colour, your brain doesn’t make the same assumptions about flavour (eg, that an orange drink will taste citrussy, or a purple or pink drink of berries).

Science aside, you’re at The Berkeley, so every cocktail tastes amazing.

Guests kick off with water and some rather lush lemon sorbet as a palatecleanser, ‘in case you’ve had three pints of Guinness before you get here’, then head over to a discreet door that opens into a small blue-lit box with a table and four chairs, each with four doublewalled ceramic Dark matter: glasses laid out to Dans Le Noir drink. Not only do these keep all four mini cocktails cold

throughout the 30-minute event, they also make it impossible to tell what’s inside — every liquid looks black.

Then, we begin. Colourful videos worthy of an ICA installation play on all four sides, smells are pumped into the room and sounds echo around. And every sensory change really does affect the taste of the drink in front of you. Not to give too much away, but here are a couple of tips: the sound of cracking ice should help you define the spirit in one, while the smell of baking brioche brings out caramel sweetness in your next sip — and whisky doesn’t always burn.

“There’s surely no better form of relaxation than being slightly tipsy in a sensory bath” And a heads up, if you happen to be a booze hound who knows they should meditate for their sanity but never finds the time for it: you get a 30-minute reprieve from your mental turmoil at Out of the Blue. There’s surely no better form of relaxation than being slightly tipsy in a sensory bath.

The Berkeley isn’t the only bar challenging drinkers’ booze perceptions.

At Jason Atherton’s City Social there’s an augmented reality cocktail menu to pep up your post-work session: download the app, point the camera at your drink when it arrives and it’ll be brought to life with video on screen. And for a not particularly sophisticated but crowd-amusing Christmas gang, Clerkenwell’s Dans Le Noir lives on plunging giggling boozers into the dark to fire up taste buds.

There’s never been a better time to immerse yourself in alcohol. (the-berkeley.co.uk)

P

Douglas Blyde meets an old school winemaker from the new world

aul Pujol quotes late, great AngloAustralian wine personality Len Evans as he pours laser-sharp Riesling, harvested from vines clinging to vertigo-inducing slopes. ‘People who say, “You can’t drink the good stuff all the time,” are talking rubbish. You must drink good stuff all the time. Every time you drink a bottle of inferior wine it’s like smashing a superior bottle against the wall.’

I meet Pujol — skier, snowboarder, whitewater kayaker and world-class winemaker of Prophet’s Rock — at the sharp Nobu, Shoreditch. His fluffy stubble and lumberjack shirt contrast both with the controlled environment and strict suits of the sommelier fans who turned out to meet him from China Tang, Chiltern Firehouse and Four Seasons at Ten Trinity Square.

Pujol is arguably New Zealand’s most deft winemaker, panning golden Riesling, textured Pinot Gris and grownup Pinot Noirs from two wildly different vineyards a mile apart in Central Otago, a 12-hour drive from Marlborough and its tanker loads of often garish Sauvignon Blanc. ‘We have crazy weather,’ remarks Pujol of the marginal but cinematic territory, regaling stories of how snow fell perilously close to harvest. ‘But the serious gear’s always on the fringes.’

His neighbours are the ghosts of the gold rush at nearby Bendigo.

Pujol’s wines feel stylistically old world and art house, hence it comes as no surprise to learn his father is French. He also aced in France, becoming the first non-family winemaker at revered Kuentz Bas, Alsace, since 1795. And at Domaine Comte Georges de Vogüé, Burgundy, he befriended patriarch, François Millet.

Described as ‘God among men to lovers of Burgundy’, Millet now makes pilgrimages to work with his protégé at Prophet’s Rock, fashioning uncannily Burgundian and ethereal Pinot Noir, ‘Cuvée Aux Antipodes’.

Find Pujol’s wines at thewinesociety.com (£19-25); for Antipodes, visit Highgate’s Red Lion & Sun (theredlionandsun).

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HOMEWORK

Best buds: Harald Altmaier with his dog Eddie in the Pulbrook & Gould HQ

Flower ranger

He’s one of London most distinguished florists, supplying blossoms for everyone from the royals to the trendiest ready-to-wear brands. Dipal Acharya meets Harald Altmaier, creative director of Pulbrook & Gould, to talk about how business is blooming

I

PHOTOGRAPHs BY JAMES GARDINER

t’s barely November but the sleek yet discreet Battersea headquarters of Pulbrook & Gould has already been transformed into a pseudo Santa’s grotto. The atelier’s blank white walls are being studded with oversized wreaths prepped for the festive rush (which begins in October) while a team of five florists beaver away on elaborate Christmas arrangements for some of their more daring clients (goat-horn centrepieces covered in real snake skin? No problem).

To an outsider, it feels, well, a bit premature. But for Harald Altmaier, the company’s senior florist, it’s perfectly normal. ‘We started working on Christmas in January,’ he deadpans.

Altmaier, 53, heads up the creative vision of one of

London’s most prestigious flower houses. Established in the 1950s by Lady Susan Pulbrook and Rosamund Gould (one of Constance Spry’s protégées) the company operated out of ‘Lady P’s’ basement at her Halkin Street home before moving to a proper shop off Sloane Square (the shop relocated in the Nineties to Mayfair, driven out of SW1 by the hike in rents). The clientele was naturally from the upper echelons of London society, ‘weddings for the Duchess of Kent and Princess Alexandra, or the ladies of Kensington who would send their butlers for the London house on Monday and the country house in Norfolk at the weekend,’ says Altmaier.

These days Pulbrook & Gould’s client base might remain faithful to the ‘aristocracy, politicians and highnet-worth individuals’ (the aforementioned wreaths start

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Fresh take: Harald Altmaier works on a display

“I work with colour all day long so I just need to keep a quiet eye at home, to relax me”

Alamy

Power plants: Pulbrook & Gould’s Battersea studio

at £300 and can cost up to £2,500) but the work is often far more international. ‘We fly to Rio, Los Angeles, Monte Carlo, the UAE to dress private events and residences —whether it’s a chalet in Switzerland or a yacht on the French Riviera.’ Anyone we might know?

‘The thing is, Pulbrook & Gould is notorious for not bragging about who they work with,’ Altmaier demurs (although a quick scan of the @pulbrook_and_gould Instagram account shows its most recent — and fabulous — collaboration with the rebooted Fiorucci brand along with various royal houses).

You wonder to what lengths Pulbrook & Gould goes to satisfy its customers. ‘Anything is possible. Except planes. We once tried to dress a private plane for a pop star who wanted to impress his girlfriend on a flight to an exotic island, and he wanted the inside of the plane completely decorated with flowers. They wouldn’t let us take off. On planes, everything has to be secured or stowed away. We had to abandon the project.’

Altmaier learnt his craft back in his native Germany, in the town of Saarlouis near the border with France and Luxembourg. With no family link to floristry (his mother was a seamstress, his father a mechanic) he had ambitions to ‘go into visual merchandising, photography or floristry’.

He settled on the latter, training as an apprentice for three years — ‘learning all the botanics, how to run a business, how to deal with clients’ — and attending floristry school once a week in nearby Saarbrücken, before moving to Australia to work with the floral wizard of Oz, Kevin O’Neill, in Melbourne. ‘Oh he was the

darling of the social scene. We did all these huge weddings, balls and parties throughout the high-flying Eighties, for the Kerry Packers and Alan Bonds of the world.’

Moving to London in the early Nineties was a pure fluke: ‘A friend of mine suggested it and I said “Well, London? It’s all smoggy and smelly and they have bad teeth.” She laughed, and said I was more English than I thought.’

And she was right: the blooms and materials that Altmaier had worked with in Australia paled by comparison. ‘I love the softness of English flowers and the greenery of London — the trees, the parks and beautiful private gardens. It’s like a collection of villages sewn together.’

Altmaier’s adopted village is Kennington, and a home he shares with his partner, Terry, a baker. His home is nothing like the floral cacophonies that are the Mayfair shop and Battersea HQ: ‘I have a little garden with nothing but white roses, olive and bay trees and buxus balls.’ Inside the house, it’s ‘white jasmine and white hydrangeas’ — the lack of colour quite deliberate. ‘I work with colour and patterns all day long so I just need to keep a quiet eye at home, to relax me.’

Returning to the shop, Altmaier says that Pulbrook & Gould’s high-net-worth male clientele seems to be its biggest spenders. Are more men starting to take more of an interest in flowers? ‘It depends on what sort of man.

There is a type of man who doesn’t “see” anything — the type of furniture he has at home, how his wife wears her hair. They have a nervous breakdown if their wife spends £70 on tights, but think nothing of spending £2,000 on a cigar or blowing money on a weekend fishing. They don’t see beautiful things. But you’ll be surprised at the growing number of men that have a great eye, are extremely detail conscious. That’s the market.’

And what of the proliferation of those trendy online companies, jostling for ‘likes’ and so keen to woo millennials? ‘Online is different. It’s for people looking for a quick and efficient way to send a thank-you. People come to us because they like the generous lush look of our arrangements. They want to feel that they get given a proper service. And that you know them by name.’ (pulbrookandgould.com)

17.11.17 es magazine 101

FLASHBULB! Party pictures from around town

by FRANKIE M c COY photographs by james peltekian Katie Lyall Candice Lake

Charlotte Stockdale

Derek Blasberg Molly Goddard and Edie Campbell

Sandra Choi

Christabel MacGreevy

Chaos theory Mayfair

Alexa Chung and Jack Guinness

Francesca Versace

Choos life Knightsbridge

Lottie Moss

Trashing hotel rooms is so last year — the chaos in Claridge’s penthouse suite was purely of the glossy sort, as Charlotte Stockdale and Katie Lyall launched Chaos SixtyNine, an offshoot of their accessories brand with a Guinness and cottage pie-fuelled get-together for collaborators Princess Beatrice, Georgia Georgia May Jagger and May Jagger Edie Campbell.

Princess Beatrice

Sarah Ferguson

Jenna Coleman

If the Choos fit, go dancing — especially when Jimmy Choo teams up with Annabel’s for a good ol’fashioned disco party, with flowery cocktails and sequins all over the shop, Derek Blasberg lording over the photo booth and Alexa Chung and Jack Guinness toe-tapping on the light-up dance floor. Ever the life and sole of the party.

Naomie Harris

Kate Moss Stella McCartney and Stella Tennant Stormzy

Jourdan Dunn

Alicia Vikander

Jean Campbell

Adwoa Aboah and Edward Enninful

Erin O’Connor and Stephen Jones Giles Deacon

Sarah Ann Macklin Tania Fares

The December Issue Hammersmith

Lady Mary Charteris and Alice Naylor-Leyland David and Catherine Bailey

go to eveningstandard.co.uk / lifestyle / esmagazine for more party pictures

The new Voguettes united to celebrate Edward Enninful, who launched his first issue of British Vogue as editor-in-chief with all his most beautiful pals at the River Cafe: a suitably Stella line-up (McCartney and Tennant) joined Stormzy, Kate Moss and a very giggly cover star Adwoa Aboah for truffle ravioli and chocolate nemesis.

17.11.17 es magazine 103

Lily James

escape

A bigger splash: the pool at Kasbah Tamadot

EDITED by dipal acharya Blue wonder: Jardin Majorelle

where to STAY

made in MARRAKECH

Rex Features; Getty Images

what to SEE Situated next to the lush Jardin Majorelle and close to his former home, the Musée Yves Saint Laurent (right) is hidden behind terracotta walls studded with decorative brickwork. Inside is a smooth arts centre, complete with auditorium and a permanent exhibition of some of Saint Laurent’s most iconic looks, including Le Smoking and the bougainvillea cape. Clever projections tell the story of the Algerian-born couturier and his creations, which took inspiration from the local textile and jewellery traditions. The design by architects Studio KO (also responsible for Chiltern Firehouse) features richly coloured tiles and stained glass windows in the Saint Laurent palette.

Funded by Saint Laurent’s life and business partner, Pierre Bergé, who died only weeks before they opened, it’s a fitting tribute to one of fashion’s greats.

EAT AND DRINK

Head to the Ville Nouvelle (the colonial quarter) for a drink and a sunset view from the Sky Bar at La Renaissance Hotel. Back in the medina, Dar Zellij serves great Moroccan dishes from a 17th-century riad at 1 Kaa Essour.

An exquisite museum dedicated to Yves Saint Laurent has just opened in the city that had been his retreat since 1966. Robert Bevan makes a stylistic pilgrimage

Commissioned by King Mohammed VI, the Royal Mansour hotel is a series of private riads and a main building that shimmers with ornate tiles, fretted plaster and metal. The exquisite craftsmanship is a showcase of Morocco’s traditional talents, which are best enjoyed at Le Jardin, the languorous pool area and restaurant serving delicious light bites and cocktails. High in the Atlas Mountains but just 45 minutes from Marrakech, Kasbah Tamadot is a former governor’s mansion that is now part of Sir Richard Branson’s collection of resorts. Sleep in the main building among the turrets or in a series of luxe Bedouin pavilions that overlook a river valley.

Rock the Kasbah: inside the Tamadot mansion

where to SHOP

VISIT

High-end jewellery and contemporary Morroccan clothes are sold at Boutique Majorelle, while just across the road are a clutch of designer stores that include 33 Rue Majorelle, a twolevel treasure house of modern Moroccan designs.

Looking for classic leather goods and ceramics?

Pay a visit to Original Design, a small-butperfectly-formed lifestyle shop just a short walk from the medina. Aya’s — whose celebrity fans include Julia Roberts and Tom Hanks — is the place to go for chic kaftans, tunics and accessories, while Heritage Berbère does a fine line in artisanal scents (right), which come in flight-friendly 100ml bottles.

Go to the medina to see the grand Koutoubia Mosque and the madhouse of the JemAa el Fna main square (above).

Medersa Ben Youssef, a former 16th-century religious school, boasts some of the best Islamic art in the city.

PS...

In Paris, 5 Avenue Marceau, YSL HQ for more than three decades, is now also a museum. Highlights include a recreation of the designer’s studio, replete with original sketches, bolts of fabric and objets d’art.

17.11.17 es magazine 105

my london

jourdan dunn Home is…

West London. My earliest London memory was experiencing Notting Hill Carnival (below) for the first time with my grandma and younger brother. I think I was about seven years old and I just remember loving the energy of the people. I truly cherish that memory.

Best place to let your hair down?

I like the Rum Kitchen in Notting Hill (cocktails, left) — it’s a Jamaican spot where I can eat jerk chicken and then head downstairs and whine-up myself. It’s got the best of both worlds.

Last play you saw?

I took my seven-year-old son, Riley, to see Aladdin recently.

We especially adored the genie who had us both dying with laughter. My friend Jade Ewen played Jasmine (below), so it was also pretty cool to watch it and support her.

Biggest extravagance?

I’m someone who loves skincare products and hoards them. I am always testing the latest and greatest, and often spend a pretty penny on the premium remedies for clear skin. I really enjoy online beauty shop Cult Beauty. It has a great selection of skincare brands and they have great reviews and advice to help you chose the right product for your skin.

Favourite discoveries?

Clutch Chicken in Hackney (right).

I can’t believe it has taken so long for me to find out about this little gem.

It’s so cute. I love its quirky menu names — ‘No woman, no thigh’, ‘Love me tenders’ and ‘Put a wing on it’. It’s fun vibes.

First thing you do when you come back to London?

Make a fry-up. Nothing really beats an English breakfast. I love it.

106 es magazine 17.11.17

The supermodel loves Hackney’s Clutch Chicken, the jerk chicken at Rum Kitchen… and guess what she orders at Red Rooster?

Best place for a first date?

Red Rooster at The Curtain hotel. Live music, fried chicken and cocktails.

Favourite pub?

I would love to say that I have a favourite pub where I go for Sunday lunch, but I’m Jamaican and my mother makes me have Sunday lunch at home with my family. It’s a thing! My biggest craving is homecooked meals.

Best thing a cabbie has ever said to you?

‘You look a lot like that supermodel Jourdan Dunn.’

What was the last album you bought?

I discovered this new group called Brockhampton.

Their sound and style is just really refreshing. I would highly recommend downloading their album, Saturation (left).

What do you collect?

Various pieces of Swarovski jewellery, in particular the Swarovski Remix Collection.

Who’s your hero?

Tyra Banks (right). She broke so many industry standards, built an empire and paved the way for myself and a great number of other young girls to be their best selves. She is a inspirational and I really admire her.

Jourdan Dunn stars alongside brand ambassador Karlie Kloss in the Swarovski Christmas campaign

Christian Ferretti; Getty; Alamy; Jourdan wears Haute Couture earrings, £199; Crystal Dust cuffs, £79 each (swarovski.com)

as told to lily worcester