Wallpaper* September 2021 Style Issue

*Architecture � Design � Art � Travel � Entertaining � Beauty & Grooming � Transport � Technology � Fashion � Watches & Jewellery

THE STYLE ISSUE The ultimate Wallpaper* wardrobe for your alter ego

SCAN ME

september 2021

SEPTEMBER

LEFT, JACKET, PRICE ON REQUEST; JACKET (UNDERNEATH), £2,300; TROUSERS, £1,800; RIGHT, COAT, £2,800; JACKET (UNDERNEATH), £2,300; ROLL-NECK, £950; TROUSERS, £1,050, ALL DIOR A/W21 MEN’S COLLECTION, SEE PAGE 068

FASHION

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Dream team A visionary Dior collaboration Clear winner Hublot’s all-sapphire timepiece A cut above Six new labels fashioning the future Counter part At home with Till Janz and his alter ego Hugo Cosmic girl Intergalactic glitz and glamour

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ARCHITECTURE Access all areas The new Rotterdam museum that is putting everything on show

A star is reborn A Parisian retail icon rises from the ashes

ART

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All seeing eye Photographer Paul Mpagi Sepuya explores exposure and concealment All fired up Ceramicist King Houndekpinkou

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SEPTEMBER THE PARISIAN STUDIO OF ARTIST KING HOUNDEKPINKOU WITH, ATOP AN EMPTY WOODEN CRATE, THE WIDOW OF LIGHT: THE WIDOW OF LIGHT: DON’T LET THIS GOLD FOOL YOU, I’M MADE OF DARKER COLORS II, 2020, A CERAMIC SCULPTURE MADE FROM WHITE CLAY FROM WESTERWALD, GERMANY, AND FINISHED WITH WHITE GLAZE AND GOLD, SEE PAGE 100

DESIGN

090 Store rooms

Nanushka’s new Mayfair quarters

FOOD

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Artist’s palate Marina Abramović’s diet soup

FRONT OF BOOK

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Newspaper Kaleidoscopic colours, whimsical woodland gems, ritzy roller skates and polychromatic pastries

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TRANSPORT

Raw power Spare wheels are go as Paul Smith strips back the electric Mini

MEDIA

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Subscribe to Wallpaper* and save Plus receive artist-designed covers

RESOURCES

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Stockists What you want and where to get it

Wallpaper.com @wallpapermag

EDITORIAL Editor-in-Chief Sarah Douglas Digital Editor Elly Parsons

Editor TF Chan Fashion Director Jason Hughes

Head of Interiors Olly Mason

Designer Gabriela Sprunt

Assistant Photography Editor Sophie Gladstone

Beauty & Grooming Editor Mary Cleary

Fashion Features Editor Laura Hawkins Arts Editor Harriet Lloyd-Smith

Watches & Jewellery Editor Hannah Silver

Transport & Technology Editor Jonathan Bell Group Art Director David Graham

Photography Director Holly Hay

Design Editor Rosa Bertoli

Architecture Editor Ellie Stathaki

Executive Editor Bridget Downing

Producer Tracy Gilbert

Entertaining Director Melina Keays Sub Editor Léa Teuscher

Production Editor Anne Soward

Junior Writer Nuray Bulbul

Contributing Editors Nick Compton, Deyan Sudjic, Ekow Eshun, Marco Sammicheli, Tilly Macalister-Smith, Nick Vinson, Emma O’Kelly, Hugo Macdonald, Bodil Blain, Alice Morby, Henrietta Thompson, Suzanne Trocmé US Editor Michael Reynolds • New York Editor Pei-Ru Keh • Milan Editor Maria Cristina Didero • Paris Editor Amy Serafin • Germany Editor Sophie Lovell Madrid Editor Maria Sobrino • Japan Editor Jens H Jensen • China Editor Yoko Choy • Singapore Editor Daven Wu • Australia Editor Elias Redstone Latin America Editor Pablo León de la Barra • Buenos Aires Editor Mariana Rapoport

PUBLISHING & MARKETING Managing Director Malcolm Young Associate Publisher Lloyd Lindo

Business Director Kelly Gray

Advertising Digital Advertising Director Chris Goh Watches & Jewellery Advertising Director Silvia Blahutova

Bespoke Senior Account Manager Tom Hemsley

Advertising Business Manager Amanda Asigno

Digital Project Manager Katie Meston

Bespoke Director Sarah-Jane Molony

Bespoke Editor Simon Mills

Bespoke Art Director Daniel McGhee

Bespoke Producer Minna Vauhkonen

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CONTRIBUTORS JASON HUGHES Fashion Director ‘The mood for this issue is one of optimism, of looking to the future and the world opening up,’ says Hughes. ‘It’s all about the joy of dressing up again, and embracing decadence.’ Personal highlights include celebrating six up-and-coming designers (page 086), and working with photographer Till Janz and his alter ego Hugo (page 108).

A Central Saint Martins graduate and former consultant, Hughes joined Wallpaper* in 2015 and is now busy preparing a celebratory shoot for our 25th anniversary issue.

MARINA ABRAMOVIĆ Artist

AINDREA EMELIFE Writer

Contemporary art owes an immense debt to Abramović, an early champion of using one’s body as an artistic medium and, as exemplified in The Artist Is Present and 512 Hours, the patron saint of durational performance. Ahead of two new shows in London this autumn, inspired by the life and death of Maria Callas, she shares her ‘diet soup’ as part of our Artist’s Palate series (page 138), an apt palate cleanser to follow our sumptuous visual feast.

London-based curator and critic Emelife interviewed Paul Mpagi Sepuya (page 092) for us this month. ‘Juggling time zones and Sepuya’s busy schedule crystallised into a very early morning start for him,’ she says, ‘with me talking to him on the phone in a taxi en route to the closing night of my show, “Citizens of Memory”.’ A Courtauld Institute of Art graduate, Emelife is currently working on her first two books, as well as producing her first art documentary.

HUGO Till Janz’s alter ego A self-professed ‘metahuman’, Hugo could not have been nicer about this month’s menswear shoot (page 108): ‘The catering was fantastic, the stylist was great, the location insane. However, the photographer really thought he could be a model as well…

You tell me.’ At the moment, he’s building his dream house in Cryptovoxels, developing his career as a model and working on his own conceptual art exhibition. ‘You name it, I’ve done it. And what I haven’t, I will do.’

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BRILLANT NYANSAGO Stylist

OSKAR PROCTOR Photographer

Nyansago is the creative director of Petrie, an independent media enterprise that aims to break down stereotypes and celebrate the marginal. This month, the Burundi-born global citizen styled our story on young designers to watch (page 086). ‘I was pleasantly surprised by the diverse selection,’ he says. ‘One of the highlights of the shoot was discovering that one of the models, Promesse, was from Rwanda, just across the border from Burundi. It added a very personal and emotional layer to the shoot.’

This month, we tasked regular contributor Proctor with shooting our Newspaper section (page 045) and our story on Hublot’s sapphire watch (page 073). He loved the variety of subjects, but was struck by one item in particular: ‘The Loewe bracelet bag was so beautiful and tactile,’ he says. ‘And it was such a joy to work with [models] Oscar and Ngozi; they had no qualms about standing very still for hours on end.’ Proctor is currently working on a book about Europe’s historic decorative arts ateliers.

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WRITER: LÉA TEUSCHER

EDITOR’S LETTER

Vive la rentrée Newsstand cover Photography: Till Janz Fashion: Jason Hughes Till wears jacket, £2,030; roll-neck, £840, both by Gucci.

Hugo wears coat, £2,590, by Balenciaga On wall, left image, roll-neck, £840, by Gucci. Sunglasses, £325, by Balenciaga.

Right image, jumper, £1,425; sunglasses, £320, both by Balenciaga ‘CH388’ dining table, £4,105; ‘CH23’ dining chair, £816, both by Hans J Wegner, for Carl Hansen & Søn.

‘Penguin’ carafe, £30,

by Mist-o, for Ichendorf Milano; ‘Gio’ glasses, £5 each, by LSA; ‘Luna’ mug, £12, all from The Conran Shop See more of Till Janz at home with his alter ego Hugo on page 108

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Welcome to our Style issue! September marks la rentrée in more ways than one and, as our attentions turn to fantasy, we invited photographer Till Janz – alongside his fashionprovocateur alter ego Hugo, a 3D avatar – to present us with the ultimate Wallpaper* wardrobe for our newsstand cover and main menswear story. ‘He’s my second half, but he’s the half that I can’t live out in reality,’ Janz tells us. ‘I’ve always been really interested in the intersection of storytelling and technology. It’s not about perfectionism. It’s like creating an alter ego in the digital space. Which feels quite natural nowadays, because the way we present ourselves to the outside world through social media is a new reality.

All of us have a second persona.’ Please do explore its associated AR elements and virtual exhibition, accessible via the QR codes on the cover page and within the story.

Our Newspaper section embodies the same heady decadence. From a Prada dress formed of shimmering sequins to a pair of Bottega Veneta roller skates, from diamond drop earrings to mark the centenary of Chanel No.5 to polychromatic pastries and a Veuve Clicquot La Grande Dame champagne that celebrate the art of Yayoi Kusama, this is our edit of the ‘extra’. The exuberance continues through Romain Duquesne’s womenswear shoot, as well as our deep dive into Kim Jones and Peter Doig’s collaboration for Dior’s A/W21 menswear collection, which gives compelling form to the painter’s rich hues and otherworldly compositions.

Amid this extravagant excess, we have a trio of stories that explore the virtues of paring back. Our contributing editor Deyan Sudjic chronicles the making of the ‘Mini Strip’, Paul Smith’s interpretation of the new electric Mini that goes far beyond a colour scheme to consider what makes a more emotionally satisfying car. We head to Rotterdam for a first look at MVRDV’s Depot Boijmans Van Beuningen, an art storage facility with a radical approach to transparency and public access. Then to Paris for an architectural tour of La Samaritaine, the legendary department store relaunched by LVMH after a sensitive restoration by a quartet of leading design studios.

Our limited-edition cover artist and feature is photographer Paul Mpagi Sepuya, who presents a portfolio of intimate portraits that elevates studio staples – tripods and backdrops – into objects of intrigue, and speaks to writer Aindrea Emelife about the mechanics of photography, Blackness, and the processes of representation; while ceramic artist King Houndekpinkou muses on Japanese craft traditions, African Voodoo and pop culture, all of which have informed his wild and wonderful creations. And finally, we have the legendary Marina Abramović sharing her diet soup, made with flax seeds, oats and oat bran, and scantily seasoned. The artist explains, ‘it keeps your mind peaceful and clear’, which is exactly what we need as we embrace the new Roaring Twenties.

Enjoy the issue!

Sarah Douglas, Editor-in-Chief

Limited-edition cover

by Paul Mpagi Sepuya This month’s limitededition cover features Pedestal (_1180272), 2021, a self-portrait created exclusively for us by Sepuya and shot in his LA studio. See more work and our interview with the artist on page 092 Limited-edition covers are available to subscribers, see wallpaper.com/sub21

Newspaper* The sharpest trends, trailblazers and sartorial triumphs Dress, £7,500; stole, £1,100 gloves, £650, all by Prada For stockists throughout, see page 136

Paint the town in kaleidoscopic colours for the new Roaring Twenties

All that jazz

PHOTOGRAPHY: OSKAR PROCTOR FASHION: JASON HUGHES

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Newspaper Dress, £1,835; bag, £550; shoes, £535, all by Salvatore Ferragamo ‘875’ armchair, £3,770, by Ico Parisi, for Cassina

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inimalists, it’s time to rip up your reductionist rule book.

Cease your streamlining, restrict your restraint and press pause on a paredback aesthetic. Moderation has no place this season. Instead, optimism is expressed in ostentatious embellishment and kaleidoscopic colour, and excess is a signal of aesthetic excellence. Anything goes as long as it is exuberant. This was symbolised sublimely at Prada, where co-creative directors Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons

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layered up looks with shimmering sequins, retro intarsia knits and vivid Crayola colours. The most extravagant silhouette was a wrap jacket that cocooned the body in a double layer of protective paillettes and tactile fake fur. Emilio Pucci, a label that’s synonymous with glamorous getaway locations – be it sun-drenched Capri or snow-topped Gstaad – was also in the mood for extravagance. Its feather-trimmed transparent strap dress makes an exquisite party piece for jet-set style, whatever »

PHOTOGRAPHY: OSKAR PROCTOR FASHION: JASON HUGHES WRITER: LAURA HAWKINS

Newspaper

your location. Meanwhile, Salvatore Ferragamo was more fascinated by space travel, drawing on interstellar references for its vision of the future, which spanned Gattaca and Blade Runner. For his final collection for the house, Paul Andrew drew on the ‘Rainbow’ wedge shoe that the Florentine brand’s founder designed for Judy Garland in 1938, presenting its spectrum of colours as a symbol of hope.

The collection abounded in ebullient hues, with whole ensembles imagined in monochromatic shades, including cerulean, space-age silver and lilac. Saint Laurent, likewise, offered a nod to the past as the brand’s artistic director Anthony Vaccarello fused 1960s silhouettes, including furtrimmed tweed miniskirts, with bright 1980s tones, like fuschia and gold. Looks were layered up with lashings of mismatched costume jewellery, like rows of rhinestones cascading from ears and chokers blooming with twinkling flowers.

Above, top, £1,350; earrings, £970; necklace, £1,255, all by Saint Laurent by Anthony Vaccarello Right, dress, price on request, by Emilio Pucci.

Shoes, £660, by Saint Laurent

by Anthony Vaccarello.

Tights, £15, by Falke

PHOTOGRAPHY: OSKAR PROCTOR FASHION: JASON HUGHES WRITER: LAURA HAWKINS

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Newspaper ‘Plinth’ table, €1,800,

by Norm Architects, for Menu. ‘Bloom’ spice jar, £59, by Athanasios Babalis, for Shibui; ‘Sekki’ pot, £9, by Ferm Living, both from Twentytwentyone.

‘Folia’ portable lamp, from £1,774, by Noé DuchaufourLawrance, for Saint-Louis. ‘Lulu’ martini glass, £60 for set of four, by LSA International, from Amara

A portable crystal lamp with a lot of get-up-and-glow

Twinkle star Inspired by the notion of a woodland picnic at dusk surrounded by fireflies, a fairytale setting with flickering roaming lights, French designer Noé Duchaufour-Lawrance conceived the ‘Folia’ portable lamp for glassware brand Saint-Louis. A nod to the forests that surround the crystal powerhouse’s factory in Lorraine, in north-east France, the wood of which fuelled the Saint-Louis ovens centuries ago, the wireless rechargeable lamps are formed either from light or dark ash, an offering from the existing 2019 range, or charcoal black ash, which is new for this

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year. The wood is then married with a brushed brass or bronze anodised aluminium handle and a glass shade carved with geometric patterns (available in a choice of clear crystal, clear crystal with satin bevel cuts, or crystal lined with amber), which were inspired by the shape of a leaf and create mesmerising plays of light and sparkling reflections. The lamps can be used outdoors, but we’ve plumped for using ours to shed a twinkly glow over an indoor cocktail soirée, at which we’re serving up Dirty Martinis, spicy chilli prawns and edamame beans.

PHOTOGRAPHY: OSKAR PROCTOR INTERIORS: OLLY MASON ENTERTAINING DIRECTOR: MELINA KEAYS WRITER: ANNE SOWARD

Newspaper

Pint-sized purses that pack a big punch

Little wonder

Bag, £1,750, by Celine by Hedi Slimane. Gloves, £209, by Ines

The Lilliputian handbag, a style of petite proportions that is showing no sign of disappearing from the catwalks, has an inherent frivolity. In the era of new extravagance, there’s an allure to flaunting such an impractical accessory, which should ideally hang nonchalantly from the wrist or festoon a finger. We’ve set our sights on a miniscule minaudière, a rigid style that harks back to the vanity cases and cigarette boxes flaunted by Flapper girls during the Roaring Twenties.

We particularly like Celine’s bourgeois-inspired take on ostentation. The Parisian maison has swathed the

solid silhouette of its minaudière with a tessellation of its Triomphe logo, a motif reintroduced by artistic director Hedi Slimane. The style glints with gold hardware and shuts with a Triomphe-shaped clasp.

For everything from chic soirées on Paris’ Right Bank to private views in Manhattan, Celine’s minaudière will hold all your after-hours essentials: lipstick, credit card and keys. But with no space for your phone, we suggest doing away with digital devices.

After being stuck to our screens for so long, it’s time our experiences were less URL, more IRL.

PHOTOGRAPHY: OSKAR PROCTOR FASHION: JASON HUGHES WRITER: LAURA HAWKINS

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Our current style stance is everything in immoderation

Bright young things

PHOTOGRAPHY: OSKAR PROCTOR FASHION: JASON HUGHES WRITER: LAURA HAWKINS

This page, left, coat, £2,350; trousers, £495; bag, £3,200, all by Fendi Below, coat, £1,200; roll-neck, £400 trousers, £395, all by Paul Smith Opposite, jacket, £3,500; shirt, £865; trousers, £775; gilet (in hand), £5,710; shoes, £610, all by Gucci

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s the prospect of freedom looms on the horizon, we encourage you to shrug off the ritualistic objects of restriction and indulge in pieces that err towards extravagance – for example, a Gucci suit, the trouser striking in a subtle flare, the jacket sumptuous in suede and boasting golden buttons, in a head-turning colour combination of pillar box red and mauve. Strut in style with a flamingo-pink feathered stole over the shoulder.

We agree that exuberance isn’t for the fainthearted, but freedom calls for the fanciful, and liberation for something a little louche. Paul Smith and Fendi also proposed looks that luxuriate in pink hues, the former rebelling against the linearity of lockdown with a collection that blends the style codes of past British subcultures, such as Northern Soul obsessives, Mods and New Romantics, with double-breasted suits, striped knitwear and Hawaiian shirts.

The individualism in Silvia Venturini Fendi’s collection was centred on shaking off the strict sartorial codes of a ‘fashionista’ and embracing personal style. Cue fuschia tailored trousers teamed with a striped mohair sweater and an out-all-day ‘Peekaboo ISeeU’ shoulder bag slung across the body. »

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Meanwhile, a dazzling way to dial up the dandy is to accessorise your outfit with some sparkle. We suggest bringing the whimsical wonder of woodland adventure to your lapel with Van Cleef & Arpels’ brooches, which crawl across the collar as colourful ladybirds and butterflies.

Remember when people said we would never stop wearing sweatpants? Think of these effusive, colourful and luxuriant looks as covetable contradictions.

PHOTOGRAPHY: OSKAR PROCTOR FASHION: JASON HUGHES WRITER: LAURA HAWKINS

Above, jacket, £489, by Boss From top, ‘Coccinelles’ clip with rubies, spessartite garnets, spinels and diamonds set in white and rose gold; ‘Jaspée Butterfly’ clip with diamonds, tsavorite, emeralds and sapphires set in white gold; ‘Cherry Blossom’ clip with diamonds set in yellow and white gold, all price on request, by Van Cleef & Arpels

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Newspaper ‘Quilt’ roller skates in cobalt, £1,565, by Bottega Veneta

We’re in the right gear for living life in the fast lane

Rock and roll After endless months in lockdown, it’s safe to say that when we do finally re-emerge, we’ll be keen to wear pieces that don’t slow us down, but instead encourage us, metaphorically speaking, to hotfoot it to better days. At the pre-A/W21 collections, a host of Bottega Veneta’s footwear offerings conveyed this mile-a-minute message with a glamorous gait, from practical wellies in glittering rubber to chunky clogs with tyre track soles. But none did it more so than the Italian brand’s ready-to-race roller skates.

Creative director Daniel Lee was fascinated by the concept of banal clothing items, and the act of transforming them into performative pieces using

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exuberant materials – cue dressing gown coats in eyecatching bottle-green faux fur, jeans festooned with feathers, and denim jackets shimmering with metal studs. He applied the same sensibility to a pair of high-top trainers (pictured here in cobalt, but also available in grass, peachy and sea salt), which boast a speedy set of wheels. These are not just for the roller disco, but for day-to-night activities that require accelerated self-expression.

Fancy bypassing public transport and whizzing past those walking? Then we suggest you get your skates on. With optimism on the agenda, you need to ride off into the sunset in supersonic style.

PHOTOGRAPHY: OSKAR PROCTOR FASHION: JASON HUGHES WRITER: LAURA HAWKINS

Newspaper ‘No.5’ earrings in 18ct white gold and diamonds, price on request,

by Chanel High Jewellery

Celebrating a Chanel centenary with some snazzy little numbers

High five Chanel continues to mark the centenary of its No.5 perfume in style with the unveiling of a new high jewellery collection, featuring more than 100 pieces.

References to the fragrance are intertwined with the hallmarks of Chanel jewellery, with the five facets of the perfume, including the stopper, geometric bottle and sillage (scent trail), providing inspiration.

In the asymmetric ‘No.5’ drop earrings, it is the number itself that takes centre stage, its elongated

PHOTOGRAPHY: OSKAR PROCTOR WRITER: HANNAH SILVER

curves drawn in diamond-studded white gold, from which swings a pear-cut diamond. For Patrice Leguéreau, director of the Chanel Fine Jewellery Creation Studio, this year’s collection is a natural continuation of both the graphic codes of Coco Chanel’s perfume and her 1932 jewellery collection, ‘Bijoux de Diamants’, offering a playful wearability, interpreting olfactory pleasures in diamonds, and enveloping the body like a cloud of perfume.

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Patchouli adds elegant earthiness with an edge of sweetness to some new scents

Flower power Long before patchouli was adopted as the signature scent of hippies everywhere, the flowering herb, with its warm, woody, musky smell, was a symbol of opulence and prestige – rumour has it that King Tut was buried with gallons of patchouli oil.

Centuries later, Madonna put her own spin on the scent by infusing it into pressings of her 1989 album Like A Prayer, while in 2005, perfumer extraordinaire Serge Lutens launched iconic scent Borneo 1834, which blended patchouli with white flowers, cardamom, cacao and labdanum. Some highly glamorous new fragrances feature this intoxicating plant as their star ingredient. Perfumer Rodrigo Flores-Roux’s latest creation for Dolce & Gabbana, Velvet Black Patchouli, blends its principle ingredient with notes of Sicilian blood orange, Venezuelan tonka beans and davana oil for a scent that is earthy with an edge of sweetness. Meanwhile, Bulgari’s new Splendida Patchouli Tentation combines a trio of patchouli with white peach and velvety musk for a more powdery interpretation of its top note.

Clockwise from top, Splendida Patchouli Tentation eau de parfum, £78 for 50ml, by Bulgari.

Borneo 1834 eau de parfum, €290 for 100ml,

by Serge Lutens. Velvet Black Patchouli eau de parfum, £165 for 50ml, by Dolce & Gabbana

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PHOTOGRAPHY: OSKAR PROCTOR WRITER: MARY CLEARY

Newspaper ‘Commodore’ coupes, €70 each, by Oswald Haerdtl, for Lobmeyr.

La Grande Dame 2012 x Yayoi Kusama limited edition champagne, £160, by Veuve Clicquot.

Carrara marble platter, £60, by Serax.

‘Mambo’ vase, €2,910,

by Moser. ‘Splendido’ velvet in red, price on request, by Dedar ‘Dots Obsession – Soul of Pumpkin’ and ‘Flowers that Bloom at Midnight’ cakes, both part of Kusama Art Afternoon Tea, from £65 per person, at Rosewood London, rosewoodhotels.com

Polychromatic confections and a vivid vase lend colour to our tea party

Afternoon delight There is something about the bold, colourful, organic forms of Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama’s sculptures that make them seem good enough to eat. So it’s hardly surprising that her pieces have inspired chefs to create dishes that give edible form to the Japanese artist’s works of art. Inspired by her Infinity Mirror Rooms, currently at Tate Modern, Mark Perkins, executive pastry chef at Rosewood London, has devised a Kusama afternoon tea, combining Japanese flavours with traditional French patisserie. The tea, served in the hotel’s aptly named Mirror Room,

includes a trio of treats inspired by Kusama artworks and flavoured with the likes of yuzu, matcha green tea and praline. We got our paws on a couple of these colourful cakes and served our own afternoon tea alongside a coupe of Veuve Clicquot’s La Grande Dame 2012 x Yayoi Kusama champagne (W*259) and flowers arranged in a stunning new vase by Bohemian glass maker Moser. Echoing the harmonious riot of colour in the cakes, the ‘Mambo’ vase’s elongated cut glass body, in seamlessly graduated hues, meshes strikingly with its robust, solid-colour base.

PHOTOGRAPHY: OSKAR PROCTOR INTERIORS: OLLY MASON ENTERTAINING DIRECTOR: MELINA KEAYS WRITER: ANNE SOWARD

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Dreamlike silhouettes and tiny totes offer release from lockdown languor

Escape artist

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Pandemic dressing taught us the ease of stripped-back accessorising as we swapped shoulder bags stuffed with a host of everyday accoutrements for a simple card holder and keys tucked into trousers. But, as a new razzle-dazzle world invites us to amp up our ensembles and add flair to function, how do we hold onto that pared-back practicality? We suggest looking to pieces that dovetail extravagance and utility, with Madrid-based house Loewe demonstrating this equilibrium most skilfully for A/W21.

Inspired by escapist fashion, creative director Jonathan Anderson conjured up voluminous, dreamlike silhouettes in bold tones, like zigzag-stripe blouses, voluminous sleeve jackets, glittering gowns and gently poufing dresses, accentuated with silk tassels, metallic fringing and folds of fabric.

This was a collection for a new normal

where knockout style still prevails. Loewe’s looks were layered up with bracelets, formed from sensuous folds of coloured Nappa leather, which draped across the skin in vivid tones of sunshine yellow, aquamarine and optic white. On closer inspection, the brand’s curvaceous cuff was actually a tiny tubular bag, which fastened around the wrist with gold hardware engraved with Loewe anagram plaques. This clutch-cumevening bracelet, a miniature take on hybrid design, means that the next time you have the chance to dance, you won’t need to worry about your bag being left unattended.

Your wrist warmer will stylishly stow away all your after-hours bits and bobs while you boogie. Functional yet flauntworthy, this is an accessory that nods to the pared-back learnings of lockdown while exhibiting a farsighted flair for the future.

PHOTOGRAPHY: OSKAR PROCTOR FASHION: JASON HUGHES WRITER: LAURA HAWKINS

Models: Ngozi Anene at Wilhelmina London, Oscar J at Tomorrow Is Another Day. Hair: Chris Sweeney at One Represents using Bumble and Bumble. Make-up: Victoria Martin using Dior Forever Foundation and Capture Totale Super Potent Serum

Dress, £3,600; bags, £859 each, all by Loewe

Fashion

DREAM TEAM A collaboration between artist Peter Doig and Dior is a painterly vision of contemporary craftsmanship PHOTOGRAPHY: DOUGAL MACARTHUR FASHION: JASON HUGHES WRITER: LAURA HAWKINS

In Peter Doig’s Two Trees (2017), an impressionistic, blue, pulling out figures and fabrications, and painting dreamlike depiction of three men silhouetted against new pieces. Doig was drawn to the possibility of a moonlit sea, the colourful diamond patterns, translating paint into dense embroideries, jacquard camouflage details and citrus shades of their clothing weaves, fluffy knits and intarsia motifs. ‘Clothing that have an intense tactility. The 12ft-wide painting, had a reference in a painting sculpted into the threeidiosyncratically ambiguous in its setting, seems to dimensional form, fitting the reality of a garment on a hold secrets within its rich brushstrokes. The figure body, was an incredible process to witness,’ he explains. on the right carries a silver video camera, appearing ‘Peter was in every single meeting and fitting,’ says to film the other two men, who stand next to Jones. ‘He worked with every element of the Dior two twisted, moss-dappled trees. For A/W21, Dior studio. We’re still texting virtually every day, sending menswear artistic director Kim Jones brought a each other interesting things we’ve seen.’ Adds Doig: sartorially-inclined lens to Doig’s oeuvre, zooming in ‘It was exciting and inspiring working within a team, on the bodies in the Scottish-born, Trinidad-based rather than solo in my studio.’ artist’s paintings, which draw from a wide range of The artist was struck by the connections between photographic and artistic references (boldly hued the French maison and his own background. Doig hockey players, spectral Napoleonic soldiers, fiery had studied at Central Saint Martins in the 1980s lions, and figures that nod to Rousseau and Cézanne), with the milliner Stephen Jones, who has worked and transposing their silhouettes onto the catwalk. with Kim Jones for more than a decade and Jones’ artist collaborations have always gone collaborated with Dior for double that time. ‘Peter beyond a supplied image splashed on a T-shirt. At carried Stephen’s hat boxes to Paris when he did Louis Vuitton, he twice collaborated with Jake and his first show there,’ Jones recalls.

Dinos Chapman, and since joining Dior three years Doig was also intrigued to learn that Christian Dior ago, he has worked with a host of artists to create was once a gallery director. Between 1929 and 1931, he varied interpretations of the human figure, from and business partner Pierre Colle presented some of Hajime Sorayama’s silver cyborgs and Daniel Arsham’s France’s earliest exhibitions by Calder, Giacometti and eroded sculptures to Amoako Boafo’s expressionistic Dalí. ‘I think it’s important to tell the whole story of finger-painted representations of Black identity and Monsieur Dior’s life,’ Jones explains. ‘It’s about looking Kaws’ cartoonish forms. For the new collaboration, at the people he would have been interested in today.

Jones was fascinated with translating the surfaces of Monsieur Dior closely collaborated with Christian Doig’s paintings, rich in layers of pigment, oil skeins Bérard, and Peter is a collector of his work.’ and drips of paint, into intricate fabrications. ‘Peter In the late 1980s, Doig maintained his commitment brought in a series of amazing watercolours,’ says Jones. to figurative painting as the art world was thrown ‘I thought they’d work really well in mohair, which wide open by the conceptual and provocative Young would have the same sort of colour registration.’

British Artists movement. Since arriving at Dior, In his research, Doig dived into his own archive, Jones has also professed a dedication to time-honed, splicing starry skies from Milky Way (1989-90), artisanal craft while also bringing a fresh energy to the replicating the mesmerising landscape of Pelican Parisian salon with sportswear. His A/W21 collection Island (2006) with a single bobbing canoe, sampling features a series of bowler hats and berets, sported colours like bold orange, forest green and dusky on the catwalk with ceremonial tailoring, smart »

All clothing is Dior A/W21 men’s collection Abdullahi wears jumper, £1,900; roll-neck, £2,000; trousers, £1,300; bag, £2,800 Ronald wears jumper, £1,900; roll-neck, £2,000; trousers, £1,800; bag, £4,200

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This page, jacket, £4,500; shirt, £1,800; trousers, £1,800; boots, £1,150 Opposite, coat, £3,900; jumper, £2,350; beret, £430; brooch, £430 Models: Ronald at Wilhelmina London, Abdullahi at Milk Management Hair: Tosh using Bumble and Bumble Make-up: Nina Sagri using Dior Backstage and Dior Capture Totale Super Potent Serum Digi-tech/photography assistant: Poppy Thorpe Location: Spring Studios Post-production: Ink

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Fashion

peacoats and ribbed roll-necks. These have been handcrafted by Stephen Jones and hand-painted by Doig, with motifs inspired by Bérard, and they will be sold via private appointment. ‘I’d initially only imagined an embellished badge or print,’ Jones says.

‘I love the level of craftsmanship behind the pieces.

Each hat really tells a story.’

In Gasthof (2002-04), two phantasmagorical figures, one in a Napoleonic jacket and the other in a ceremonial fur-trimmed coat, stand against a colourful brick wall and a starry midnight-blue sky.

The work is inspired by a photograph of Doig and

a friend in a crowd scene for Stravinsky’s Petrushka while working as dressers for the English National Opera in the 1980s. But it also resembles two moustachioed self-portraits. The figures stand as gatekeepers to Doig’s dreamlike world, one which has been reinterpreted by Jones, as if they have walked through the foreground of its long green grass onto the runway. Like the layered pigments and wide-ranging references in Doig’s pieces, which span location, genre and time, so Jones is keen to delve even further into the artist’s otherworldly universe. ‘We’ve only just scratched the surface,’ he says. ∂ dior.com

Watches Big Bang Integral Tourbillon Full Sapphire, £349,000, with 43mm case, HUB6035 automatic tourbillon movement and sapphire crystal bracelet,

by Hublot, hublot.com

Clear winner

Hublot’s all-sapphire timepiece sheds a new light on its intricate movement ‘Sapphire crystal is a hard material, but at the same time it is also fragile,’ says Hublot CEO Ricardo Guadalupe, who has just unveiled the first Big Bang model featuring an integrated case and bracelet both crafted from the unyielding material. The Big Bang Integral Tourbillon Full Sapphire builds on foundations laid with an earlier model, 2016’s Big Bang Unico Sapphire, but this new limitededition piece goes one step further, integrating the case and the bracelet to create a streamlined silhouette, hitherto thought to be an impossible technical challenge.

The watch is an elaborate puzzle of solid sapphire pieces, with 37 in the case alone – five of which are made

PHOTOGRAPHY: OSKAR PROCTOR WRITER: HANNAH SILVER

solely from sapphire – and 165 parts in the bracelet, a third of these designed specifically to be flexible and comfortable against the wrist. Each sapphire crystal component was milled and polished in a risky process that only exposes imperfections upon completion, making errors expensive.

The result is a watch with bridges and movement plates that appear to hover in space. ‘The most complicated part was to work on a design with maximum transparency,’ says Guadalupe. ‘It is very difficult to precisely position the wheels in relation to each other. We had to add brass plugs [which contain the watchmaking rubies] glued to the sapphire bridges. This is a real challenge for production.’ ∂

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Transport

RAW POWER Paul Smith takes the new electric Mini for a spin, fashioning a one-off model that reveals the car’s inner workings PORTRAITS: BAUD POSTMA WRITER: DEYAN SUDJIC

This page, British designer Paul Smith and, opposite, Mini’s head of design Oliver Heilmer, both shot via Zoom in July 2021

When Oliver Heilmer, head of the Mini design studio in Munich, called Paul Smith last spring to talk about working together on a new project, neither of them knew quite what they were letting themselves in for.

Heilmer had loved Smith’s stripey version of the original Alec Issigonis-designed Mini, one of three commissions (Kate Moss tattooed hers with spider’s webs, while David Bowie went for an all-over mirror finish) unveiled at London’s Design Museum to celebrate the Mini’s 40th birthday in 1999.

So he asked Smith to come up with something similar for the new electric Mini.

The call came as a welcome distraction for Smith, who was alone in his Covent Garden HQ while his team worked from home. But he wanted to make more of a mark on the car than just putting his signature on the bodywork. When Heilmer came to London to talk to Smith about the latter’s involvement, he quickly realised that this collaboration wasn’t going to be limited to a colour scheme. »

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Transport

The wheel arches on Smith’s ‘Mini Strip’ are held in place by visible bolts finished in contrasting ochre paint, in a departure from the usual invisible internal fixings of a production model Photography: Uwe Kristandt

‘We started with the idea of how to make a more emotionally satisfying car,’ explains Heilmer. That meant staying focused on the essential qualities of the Mini, an unusual blend of frugality with charisma. ‘The Mini can be seen differently in different contexts.

It can be surprisingly expensive in China because of the taxes, while in Europe it’s almost affordable enough for students, but our aim is to keep the identity of our car classless everywhere. We thought, let’s do as much as we can, while keeping it drivable.

A lot of design work for the Mini is about

common sense: keep it as small as possible, and please keep the round headlights.’

Smith agrees: ‘It’s very much about respecting the origins of the car.’ The starting point for Smith was a memory he had of seeing a car body before it had been painted and fitted with all the trim. ‘I didn’t want to change the shape, but talked to the team about how to show the steel with all its imperfections and the traces of the manufacturing process. It’s like the suit I’ve just had made. I asked the tailor to put the sleeve head in by hand. That way you get »

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Transport Left, the car’s steel body panels were zinc-galvanised, but otherwise left as they were from the press Below, the interior features cork details, specially made toggle switches, a bright blue floor and door handles in orange mountaineering rope Photography: Uwe Kristandt

‘I wanted the steel to show the traces of the manufacturing process – it’s the little imperfections that I love’ little dimples in the cloth, and the little imperfections that I love. Tadao Ando’s concrete architecture, with its perfect little circular indentations, has the same quality.’

Smith went to Munich to meet Heilmer’s team. They had taken a brand new car from the production line in Oxford before it reached the paint booths, shipped it to Germany and stripped it back to raw metal.

The steel body panels were zinc-galvanised, but otherwise left as they were from the press. They took out the original dashboard, the trim on the inside of the door panels, the covers on the airbags, the door opening mechanisms, the instruments, the dashboard controls, the carpets and the steering wheel.

Seeing the car in that state gave Smith the idea for a radical new aesthetic for Mini.

‘A bit of my dad came out,’ says Smith. ‘He used to drive a Morris Oxford, and had a workshop. He did everything himself, rather than get someone in to do it for him.’ That’s why the wheel arches on Smith’s Mini are held in place by visible bolts, rather than the invisible internal fixings on a production model. ‘What was wonderful was how much the team embraced the project. They were brave to allow me to do so much to a car.

I hope they like my lateral way of thinking, even the naivety of my rather childlike approach,’ says Smith.

For most of last year, a stream of samples went back and forth between London and Munich. ‘You need to feel the textiles and the metals when you are working remotely,’ says Heilmer. Instead of covering the inside of the door panels, Smith suggested a layer of mesh, so that you can see the steel inside. Exposed cables run up the middle of the car; and the

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driver’s airbag is visible behind a grille in the middle of the cork-lined steering wheel. The side airbags are held in visible cylinders clipped in place over the doors. ‘It’s a way of valuing things that are not usually valued.

It’s the principle of making good and getting by,’ says Smith, who left a little cluster of hand-painted stripes on the edge of the door panel, as a memory of his previous project for Mini. There is also a dock for an iPhone on the dashboard, rather than a fixed satnav and music system, and a charging cap identified by a little doodle hand-drawn by Smith.

Tagged ‘Mini Strip’, the resulting car is a one-off – drivable but not exactly legal.

It’s Smith’s love letter to the aesthetics of make-do-and-mend engineering. It’s a celebration of the essentially imperfect qualities of materials that the modern auto industry, focused on quality control, has spent billions on finding ways to hide under layers of glossy perfection. ∂ ‘Mini Strip’ will be on view from 13–17 August at Paul Smith, 9 Albemarle Street, London W1, and from 7–12 September at IAA Mobility, Munich. paulsmith.com; mini.com

Architecture

ACCESS ALL AREAS MVRDV’s new Depot Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam blows the dust off art storage by welcoming the public at its heart

On average, most international museums only show six to seven per cent of their collections to the public at any one time.

The rest is often off site and hidden from view, tucked away in closed depots.

The new Depot Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam, designed by architecture firm MVRDV, is bucking this trend, making 99 per cent of its building accessible to the public and its entire collection of some 151,000 artefacts available for viewing.

Technological innovation was key to this bold move, says MVRDV founding partner Winy Maas. ‘We put technology on the same level as sociology, ecology and the

economy,’ he says. ‘Innovations and achievements in all these aspects are equally important.’ Indeed, the Depot’s ovoid, monolithic appearance belies the most sophisticated engineering. The 39.5m high, bowl-shaped structure is 40m in diameter at the bottom and 60m at the top, and its overhanging part has no direct supports.

Additionally, the openings, including the visitors’ entrance, and the entrance and exit for the exhibitions, create weak points on the ground floor. The task, therefore, was to come up with a design in which the lowest (and narrowest) part of the building could withstand the high load from above. »

PHOTOGRAPHY: OSSIP VAN DUIVENBODE WRITER: YOKO CHOY

The new building’s curved façade is made of 1,664 glass panels, designed to reflect the greenery of Rotterdam’s Museumpark, which was created by landscape architect Yves Brunier and OMA in the 1990s

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Architecture Right and below, the Depot’s central atrium features five staircases, as well as a transparent express lift and 13 gigantic display cases designed

by Dutch artist Marieke van Diemen

The central atrium’s criss-crossing staircases lead visitors through various public areas, all the way up to the rooftop The solution lay in the foundations: the first two floors were made from concrete poured in situ, functioning as a structurally solid plinth for the building upon which the remaining four storeys could be constructed.

These upper floors are made from prefabricated concrete elements. Below ground, the architects were keen to keep the foundation work strong but also as discreet as possible, to avoid obstructing the natural flow of underground water. ‘The foundation piles of the Depot are kept limited and narrow.

We trialled this with our design for the Oslo headquarters of the Norwegian bank DNB, where we guaranteed that water could flow through subterraneously using the same

of the glass panels was another challenge. principle,’ says Maas. ‘It is important for the ‘Most of the panels had to go in the oven environment that no blockage is created by two or three times to gain the perfect shape. underground garages, metro lines and so on.’

It was a labour intensive process,’ says Maas.

Covered by 1,664 mirrored glass panels, The experimentation did not end there. the 6,609 sq m façade appears to multiply the On the roof are 75 birch trees, each several greenery of the surrounding Museumpark.

A number of different types of glass were used, metres high. ‘We started growing them in the south of the Netherlands. By keeping the including standard reflective glass; reflective water level just beneath the surface, we glass with a film coating, which is used trained them to grow their roots horizontally. opposite the Erasmus medical centre to When we moved them from the nursery, we safeguard the patients’ privacy; transparent glass for work spaces that need more daylight; knotted the roots together, then spread them out on the rooftop, as the overlapping of the and a type of gradient glass that goes from roots creates a strong structure,’ says Maas. mirror to fully transparent for the entrances ‘Growing them was a simple but lengthy and the roof, so that visitors can enjoy the process that took five years.’ » long views from inside, too. The curvature

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Architecture

Ahead of the Depot’s November opening, 151,000 artefacts will be transported to the new building, where they are stored in five different zones, following the objects’ climatic requirements rather than chronology.

This includes the painting zone, right, and large object zone, below

The bowl shape means that the building has a limited footprint on the ground floor, while the roof is roomier, also offering wider views over the Museumpark and the city beyond.

To ensure energy efficiency, MVRDV installed underground thermal storage for climate control; solar panels; LED lighting and high-performance insulation. Rainwater is stored for use in irrigation and the toilet facilities, while the remaining water run-off is directed into a neighbouring pond.

Maas also invited other creatives to contribute to the project. The ground floor comprises two half moon-shaped spaces separated by glass; one of them contains the entrance hall and the other a loading dock.

Artist John Körmeling took advantage of the high ceiling here to create a mezzanine, so visitors can watch art handlers at work on the other side of the transparent wall.

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Amsterdam-based design firm Concrete created a mobile table system for the rooftop restaurant, which means it can be turned into a gallery or performance space at any time. Artist and photographer Marieke van Diemen designed the atrium’s 13 floating glass display cases: when an artwork is removed from storage, it will immediately be put into a case for protection, but will still be on view.

‘You can see the exhibits at all angles; you can even walk on top of them,’ explains Maas.

There will be storage depots on floors one to five, the education centre will be on the second, galleries on the third and fourth, and the Stichting De Verre Bergen suite (named after Rotterdam’s social investment fund, which covered the building cost of the Depot alongside the City Council) on the fifth. The atrium occupies the central space on all floors and its criss-crossing staircases lead

visitors through various public areas, all the way up to the rooftop. Each atrium staircase will have a landing exactly in the centre of the building, allowing visitors a panoramic view from the heart of the Depot.

An architectural marvel and instant landmark, the Depot marks the start of a new wave of urban development for Rotterdam.

The next few years will see the unveiling of MVRDV’s Harbour Experience Centre; MAD Architects’ Fenix Museum of Migration and OMA’s Feyenoord Stadium, to name a few.

As one of the draughtsmen of the city’s bold architecture statements, Maas calls it ‘a kind of laboratory’, adding: ‘The process has actually been going on for 50 years and we have made a very beautiful collection of urban interventions; here you see the experiments of our time.’ ∂ Opens on 9 November, mvrdv.nl; boijmans.nl

Photography: Aad Hoogendoorn

Technological innovation was key to this project, says MVRDV’s Winy Maas: ‘We put technology on the same level as sociology, ecology and the economy’

Fashion

A CUT ABOVE A new take on old traditions helps these six young fashion labels come to the fore

PHOTOGRAPHY: DOUGAL MACARTHUR FASHION: BRILLANT NYANSAGO WRITER: LÉA TEUSCHER

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MAXIMILIAN

ERNEST W BAKER

STEFAN COOKE

A tribute to his Trinidadian roots and selfdescribed mix of ‘West Indian elegance and sex appeal’, Maximilian Davis’ breakout collection featured cut-out dresses and silky shirts inspired by the 19th-century carnival outfits of Trinidad and Tobago. His latest offering, pictured here, is inspired by his grandma’s Sunday best closet and 1960s space fashion. Originally from Manchester, the London College of Fashion graduate launched his label after having worked with Grace Wales Bonner. Expect more ‘Black elegance’ from him very soon. @_mvximilian_

The Portugal-based brand Ernest W Baker’s latest 1970s-inspired collection features 14 offbeat looks that blend Italian tailoring, Portuguese craftsmanship and American style. Having met while studying in Milan, its founders Inês Amorim and Reid Baker (the brand is named after the latter’s grandfather) are now based in Amorim’s hometown in northern Portugal; their designs, including this hand-crocheted scarf with red roses and white trench coat, are locally made in factories and workshops near their studio. @ernest_w_baker

London-based designer Stefan Cooke and professional pattern-cutter Jake Burt both studied at Central Saint Martins, launching their menswear line in 2017.

Inspired by outfits they wore as teenagers, their signature creations include both cut-out pieces such as this slashed Argyle sweater and woollen cape, as well as perfectly tailored coats, thigh-revealing kilts, and tweed bomber jackets. With its fun twist on ‘boring’ clothing, it’s no wonder the British brand is enjoying both critical and commercial success. @stefan_cooke

Hood, price on request; dress, £965; arm warmers, price on request, all by Maximilian

Coat, €1,200; scarf, €325, both by Ernest W Baker

Cape, £653; jumper, £594; trousers, price on request, all by Stefan Cooke

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Fashion

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RENÉ SCHEIBENBAUER

COMMISSION

TALIA BYRE

The Austrian fashion designer and Central Saint Martins alumnus René Scheibenbauer uses his designs to create spaces for diversity, performance and queer bodies. Inspired by childhood dance lessons, his focus on the garments’ movement and interaction, as well what he calls ‘emotional dressing’ – how clothes make their wearers feel – results in precisely cut outfits that are meant as total experiences. Both practical and elegant, his pieces feature fabrics that drape beautifully, but also extremely useful hoods, pockets and drawstrings. @renescheibenbauer

New York-based designers Huy Luong, Dylan Cao and Jin Kay launched Commission in 2018 with a womenswear collection inspired by their mothers’ 1980s work outfits. Now the trio have designed their first menswear offering, this time looking back to the 1970s to update Far East classics such as silk wool polo shirts, boxy ‘Communist’ suits and satchel bags. Highlights include this gabardine coat with a curved flap, as well as a fuzzy pastel-pink cashmere jumper and a leopard-print shirt with a plunging neckline. @commission_official

A graduate of Central Saint Martins, Talia Lipkin-Connor launched her label after a pandemic-induced bout of introspection.

The brand name nods to the family’s role in building the Lucinda Byre boutique in Liverpool in the 1960s. Featuring hand-dyed midi skirts and deconstructed knitwear with exposed seams, her autumn collection of monochrome looks brings a much-needed sense of comfort and warmth. It also features a range of fabrics from local suppliers, and techniques that reflect her family’s long fashion tradition. @talia_byre

Dress, £1,360, by René Scheibenbauer.

Shoes, £525, by Malone Souliers

Coat, £1,290; shirt, £500, both by Commission

Jumper (worn as head wrap), £485; top, £465; skirt, £540, all by Talia Byre For stockists, see page 136

Models: Promesse Kayumba at JM Scouting, Abolaji Oshun at Supa Model Management.

Hair: Tosh using Bumble and Bumble. Make-up: Nina Sagri using Chanel A/W21 Collection Tone-On-Tone and Chanel Sublimage Le Baume. Photography assistant: Poppy Thorpe. Post-production: Ink

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π For our interviews of the young designers, see Wallpaper.com

Design

This picture, the dining room, with bespoke oak tables and ‘Cesca’ chairs by Marcel Breuer for Knoll Below, custom-designed armchairs on the shop’s second floor

Store rooms

Living above the shop has never been so tempting, thanks to Nanushka’s new Mayfair pied-à-terre

With luxury consumers now so attuned to online shopping and virtual fitting rooms, brands need to find a way to draw them back to a bricks-and-mortar boutique. One answer is to create a retail environment that’s less shop, more social hangout spot: a place to relax without the pressure of making a swift purchase. But what if, once you’d had your retail hit, you could stay on for a night or even a whole weekend? That’s exactly what the Hungarian label Nanushka is offering with its three-storey townhouse in Mayfair, which comes with a top floor you can book for the most sophisticated of sleepovers.

‘We wanted to create a retail space which felt like a hotel or home,’ explains Nanushka CEO Peter Baldaszti of the pared-back space, complete with café and indoor garden. Here, original 19th-century features are juxtaposed with midcentury furniture courtesy of fellow Hungarians Paul László and Marcel Breuer.

The Paris-based studio Festen was a natural bedfellow for the project. The indemand interior designers have racked up an impressive portfolio of hospitality projects,

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including the revamp of Splendido Mare, a Belmond Hotel in Portofino (see W*265).

Nanushka first worked with its co-founders Hugo Sauzay and Charlotte de Tonnac on the design of its 2019 New York boutique, the brand’s first store outside Hungary. ‘Festen Architecture know how to create a whole universe from their spaces, says Baldaszti.

‘They were the only people on my list.’

The apartment has a more intimate atmosphere than the store’s majestic rooms below, thanks in part to its warm furnishings.

There’s a 1970s sway to the interior design, with rich oak cabinets concealing a sleek stainless steel kitchen. ‘You almost forget there is a store below,’ says Sauzay. ‘Hosting a dinner for friends here, you’d feel like you owned the place.’ The apartment will also double up as an events space for exhibitions, artist residencies and talks. ‘Our community can just enjoy the space,’ says Baldaszti. ‘The future of retail isn’t just transactional.’ ∂ The apartment at 30 Bruton St will be available to book via Nanushka’s website from September 2021, nanushka.com; festenarchitecture.com

PHOTOGRAPHY: ALINA NEGOITA WRITER: LAURA HAWKINS

Art

ALL SEEING EYE American photographer Paul Mpagi Sepuya holds a mirror up to the relationship between subject and camera WRITER: AINDREA EMELIFE

Mirror Study (0X5A9954), 2020, above, and Screen (0X5A3778), 2020, opposite, both by Paul Mpagi Sepuya

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All images courtesy of the artist, Document, Chicago, and Vielmetter Los Angeles

Art

P

aul Mpagi Sepuya has one of the most distinctive aesthetics in 21st-century photography. In an age of ripe discussions about representation and identity, Sepuya, who is known for placing himself and his camera in the centre of his portraits, exposes the mechanics of image-making and identity construction with each shutter release. His use of mirrors to explore the unbound possibilities of portraiture reveals the complicated system of self-perception. Thrusting identity into our eyes, he questions and explores the multifaceted nature of humanity, and negotiates the complicated notions of the gaze. How do we see and how are we seen? Sepuya, a Black queer man, explores the intersection of contemporary social discourse in his work. Questioning how categorisation frames our way of seeing, he is turning the mirror on the viewer to question their complicity in this gaze.

In some instances, the body is obscured, in others, entirely exposed – this concealing and revealing creates a dynamic confusion that awards agency to the subject and emphasises the idea of identity as fragmented. ‘Something may be concealed, or hidden from view, but nothing is ever actually concealed.’

Sepuya discusses his new work: ‘There’s a lot of playing around with the formal and compositional elements of the images and the studio. In some of the recent images, you see someone looking into a mirror from a position where the viewer is unable to see the reflection of the person. You can see the image of the person, but the viewer is excluded from the enclosed loop of self-gratification that the subject is engaged in.’

We are invited to discover the relationship between the photographer and the subject, and the stories in the space between the camera and two bodies.

In recent years, Sepuya’s work has gained acclaim at full speed, featuring in galleries worldwide, including the 2019 Whitney Biennial and a travelling solo exhibition organised by the Contemporary Art Museum St Louis. In this exhibition, as in the image created for our limited-edition cover, Sepuya questions our perceived reality while constantly reminding us that the world we live in can be as constructed as the set-up for a photograph. Smudges and smears on mirrors suggest human touch, indicating that the mirror’s surface is not a trick ‘non-space’ but a direct inclusion to create a multi-layered universe. When set against the white walls of the studio, they act like fossils, memorialising time and humanity’s attraction to leaving a mark on this world. When set against darkness, they create a pattern of lived experience – a mapping of identity and moments – as the latent image is made visible. Darkness – dark material, dark skin, the absence of light – awakens these histories.

At times, as in Darkroom Mirror Study (_1990750), 2016, we only see the tools – the camera, the tripod – reflected in a mirror. These become extensions of Sepuya and neutralise the subject-photographer relationship. The drama of cloaking oneself under the drapery of the camera obscura is contemporised via the lens, voyeuristically peeking from an opening in between plain white material, or from the camera, watching lonesomely as its operator is disguised by a wooden pedestal, revealing but a solitary hand.

Sepuya works in front of, straddling, and behind the backdrop and props, sometimes turning himself into a backdrop that delineates a space intended to be seen.

‘It’s about making the viewer aware of where they are.

Above, this month’s limitededition cover (available to subscribers, see Wallpaper.com) features Pedestal (_1180272), 2021, a self-portrait created exclusively for us and shot in Sepuya’s LA studio Opposite, clockwise from top left, A Ground (0X5A4842), 2019; A Conversation Around Pictures (0X5A4722), 2020; Drop Scene (0X5A9913), 2021; Screen (0X5A2655), 2020, all

by Paul Mpagi Sepuya

It’s a closed loop – both voyeurism and exhibitionism are enclosed.’ Hands touch, delicately grazing against each other, with the charged anticipation influenced undoubtedly by Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam.

The Black hands that command the camera become catalysing agents of memory. Approaching wideranging themes of beauty, trust, desire and hope, Sepuya wields the camera with sensitivity, questioning and longing. He says, ‘I want to infiltrate conversations that otherwise would not want to include images of Blackness.’ He encourages us to look around and think about what it means to be human.

When trompe l’oeil succeeds, it makes us see, but also obscures. Its triumph is measured in two instances when the eye is deceived and when it is undeceived.

Sepuya brings us to and from these moments through powerful jolts out of reality, asking us to question what we believe to be true. Reality is splintered through his eyes. When we look in a mirror, we see an image of ourselves behind the glass. What does it mean to be fragmented by the refraction of the mirror surface?

When we do see full faces, Sepuya captures a full emotional register in their frank stares. The matter-offactness of the composition and subjects resonates deeper than is instantly apparent. The mechanics of the photo, the people, the nonchalant gaze, the languid bodies of men at home with their nakedness are all very ‘so what’. Sepuya’s subjects become part of a rich tradition of queer male portrait photography, alongside Carl Van Vechten’s Harlem Renaissance performers, Peter Hujar’s downtown New Yorkers, and Derek Jarman’s Super 8 lovers. ‘I’m interested in how visualised racial difference works in pictures and how representations of queer and homoerotic acts get to the fundamental and underlying formal, technical and historical processes that make up photography.’

If queerness is seldom seen in traditional photography, representations of Black queer bodies are even fewer.

‘That being said, I’m not interested in making a series of work that says, “Here, look at pictures of Black people. This will tell you something about the conditions of a certain political or social moment.”

I have always been resistant to that.’ Sepuya’s lens sees a truth and a utopia that frees us from the didactic questioning of queer male nudity.

‘I try to understand how my body, other Black bodies, white bodies, or white-passing bodies work in pictures. How Asian bodies who are often misread as white bodies work in pictures,’ he contextualises.

Originally, Sepuya began documenting his friends and acquaintances, mostly queer men of colour in Brooklyn. ‘I’m interested in Blackness, and thinking about it materially and visually for what it produces in images, and how it’s inseparable from the production of photographs,’ he says. ‘I want to force conversations on the formation of queer spaces, homoerotic activity and mutual envisioning, objectification, etc, tied to the fundamental, indefinable space for desire for seeing that photography comes from.’

His images are testament to the intimacy of strangers, lovers and friends, rendered with further intensity by way of the relationship between artist and subject, between photographer, photographed and photograph. His archive of human contact, through refractions, reflections, smudges, smears and stares, casts the viewer, not the photographer, as voyeur. The world cannot stop looking at Sepuya’s community. ∂ paulsepuya.com

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A STAR IS REBORN

A Parisian retail icon rises from the ashes, all contemporary guns blazing, thanks to an extensive and sensitive renovation by a quartet of design studios PHOTOGRAPHY: PATRICIA SCHWOERER WRITER: AMY SERAFIN

When Paris’ iconic department store La Samaritaine closed in 2005 for safety reasons, it had clearly seen better days. It was once the place you went to buy a new broom, or to take visitors for a spectacular view of the Seine, but its art nouveau interior had aged into a state of permanent melancholy.

A salesman named Ernest Cognacq, with his wife Marie-Louise, opened a store on this spot in 1870. As it grew, the architect Frantz Jourdain convinced them to erect a new building that would bring ‘art into the street’. They inaugurated his light-filled, iron-framed art nouveau building in 1910, followed by Henri Sauvage’s art deco extension in 1928. But by the 1970s, the Samaritaine’s sales were in decline and,

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in 2001, the luxury goods group LVMH acquired the store’s four timeworn buildings.

After 16 years of legal wrangling and construction, LVMH has finally unveiled the new Samaritaine, run by the group’s travel retailer DFS. LVMH hired four separate firms to redesign different parts of the store, while specialist contractors were brought in to painstakingly renovate historical features, such as the magnificent glass roof, grand staircase, peacock frescoes on the top floor, and enamelled lava panels on the façade.

Japanese architecture studio SANAA was given the task of unifying the store.

It added two glass-roofed courtyards and replaced a nondescript 19th-century building on Rue de Rivoli with a new

structure fronted by rippling glass. Though detractors compare this to a shower curtain, it provides a strong, minimalist contrast to the ornate art nouveau façade. SANAA also created a glass mosaic floor for the top level of the art nouveau building, referencing the glass floors that covered the entire store in Jourdain’s original design.

Each level is now dedicated to a carefully curated shopping category, with islands of discovery here and there (art from Galerie Perrotin, customised Ruinart bottles, ‘street caviar’ sandwiches). There are 12 unique food vendors scattered throughout, and the top floor is completely devoted to food.

The Toronto/New York firm Yabu Pushelberg redesigned the art nouveau »

Architecture

This page, the store’s floor pattern was used to create a top-lit metal and glass pavilion for the ground floor atrium Opposite, design studio Yabu Pushelberg softened the Samaritaine’s original signature colour in egg yolk yellow to more golden tones, which sit well against the grand staircase’s grey-blue ironwork

Architecture

‘The Samaritaine seduces you in a serene and intrinsically beautiful way without trapping you like an old-school department store’ interior, now known as the Pont Neuf side.

The original brief was aimed at foreign tourists, but the designers were determined that the store maintain a Parisian flavour.

‘The Samaritaine had been a big, giant, glorious general store for the people of Paris,’ says George Yabu. ‘So we thought, why don’t we make it resonate with the locals as well?’

The firm set out to find a balance between history and modernity. The art nouveau context was a challenge and, at times, historical choices were questioned, such as the original store’s signature colour, an egg yolk yellow. (‘Maybe the architect had a bad day?’ says Yabu.) The shade was softened, and the store’s colours are now an eyepleasing mix of golden tones, such as bronze metals and blond woods, and the ironwork’s original grey-blue. The flooring – 6,000 sq m of terrazzo handlaid with marble insets – is the work of the New York-based Karen Pearse. The designers had to argue for it, since terrazzo is not French, but it makes

a nod to Paris’ cobblestones and its fluidity works well with art nouveau. Says Glenn Pushelberg, ‘The pattern gives another layer of character to the whole thing, a romantic meaning that’s appropriate for Paris.’

Inspired by The Flâneur, Edmund White’s book on Paris, the designers wanted the Samaritaine to be a place for strolling, and the building’s bones lent themselves to this.

‘The floor plates are shallow,’ says Pushelberg.

‘You understand what’s around you, and it seduces you in a serene and intrinsically beautiful way without trapping you like an old-school department store.’

Rather than interior walls, the space has been divided using custom-made rugs and furniture in simple shapes and classic materials. DFS wanted to put merchandise in the ground floor atrium, so the original floor pattern was used to create a graceful metal and glass pavilion. Lit on top, it adds to the building’s intricate layers of perspective, pattern and light.

The basement level is now home to the biggest beauty department in Europe, covering the entire 3,400 sq m footprint of the store. This section was designed by Hubert de Malherbe, who also imbued it with a sense of place. When he won the commission, the first thing he did was go to the top of the building and look down at the view. The islands in the Seine and the medieval streets of the Marais inspired him to create a meandering promenade through the beauty stands. Point de Hongrie parquet serves as alleys, while patterned mosaic tiles delineate different spaces – flowers for fragrances, houndstooth for make-up, geometric tiles for skincare. The ceiling is broken up with delicate curving structures of gilded metal tubing. Some resemble café awnings, others the feminine crinolines of Second Empire dresses.

De Malherbe brought elegance to the Eiffel-era columns by adding decorative corbels to the tops and pedestals to the bases.

The store’s historical features, including the golden-hued peacock frescoes under the glass atrium roof, above, and the swirling wrought iron balustrades, opposite, were painstakingly renovated by specialist contractors

‘These add a certain sophistication, so people think “this can’t be a basement”,’ he says.

Though the ceiling isn’t high, the space never feels underground, thanks to a combination of artificial light and daylight from above.

As you reach the north end of the beauty department, the wood floors turn to concrete, and the decorated white ceilings to industrial metal. This is the Rue de Rivoli side, where the feel is more street than rue. Paris studio Ciguë designed its three levels – young beauty brands underground and two floors of edgier fashion above. SANAA’s transparent wall creates visual continuity between the street and the interior, and Ciguë’s design brings the city into the cylindrical space.

To ensure that visitors entering from the street do not automatically take the lift down to the beauty section and swan off into the historic part of the store, the architects use circular floor inserts and overhead lighting to coax them to either side. Drawing a link between the city’s heritage and SANAA’s

contemporary design, the Ciguë team came up with a ‘collage’ of brute materials and historical fragments. Sawed-off pieces of Haussmannian architecture serve as dressing rooms. Classical statues, Morris columns and blocky stools (like road barriers, perfect for checking your phone) punctuate the space. Everything can be moved around, like a construction set, as more experimental brands come or go. ‘The interior is supple and chaotic, in a positive way,’ says Ciguë’s Alphonse Sarthout. ‘It’s alive, fluid, and in perpetual evolution.’

Flexibility will be key to any modern store’s survival in an era where nobody has to leave home to shop anymore. Department stores used to be cathedrals of consumption but now must offer unique, ever-changing experiences. With its exclusive brands, tapasand-cocktails and 21st-century Parisian vibe, the new Samaritaine aims to do just that. ∂ samaritaine.com; sanaa.co.jp; yabupushelberg.com; malherbe.paris; cigue.net

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Art

ALL FIRED UP King Houndekpinkou’s other-worldly ceramic art connects Japanese craft, African Voodoo and pop culture PHOTOGRAPHY: ALEXANDRE GUIRKINGER WRITER: MINAKO NORIMATSU

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enin in West Africa and Japan in the Far East.

Ancestral pottery and space-age video games.

King Houndekpinkou, an emerging ceramic artist based in Paris, pulls together these seemingly disparate influences to create sculptures characterised by bursts of bold colour, playful spikes and cracked surfaces. They are not indebted to any style or school, but instead reflect his background and perspective: a life defined by happy accidents.

Of Beninese origin, Houndekpinkou, 34, was born and raised in the suburbs of Paris. As a video game-

Above, photographed in June 2021, some of the 40 ceramic works King Houndekpinkou is currently creating for his next solo show, ‘Dans Mon Jardin...’, at Paris’ Galerie Vallois Opposite, the ceramic artist in his studio in Antony, a southern suburb of Paris

obsessed kid, he developed a fascination for Japan’s pop culture. ‘My favourite was Zelda for its colours and motion graphics. I also loved the solution-seeking side of the games. For me, Nintendo also meant getting to spend time with my cousin, who was my playmate,’ recalls the ceramist. Today, his creative universe still feeds off this childhood passion: he is fond of dynamic forms, eye-popping colours and human connection.

Houndekpinkou made his first trip to Japan when he was 22. There he stumbled upon traditional ceramics, which sparked his curiosity. Back in Paris, »

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Art Right, one of the artist’s latest creations, this untitled sculpture features multiple layers of glaze and is made of a mix of clays collected in Sè (Benin), Iowa (US), and Bizen and Tamba (Japan) Below, Houndekpinkou kneads the clay for hours to remove any air bubbles, like a baker preparing a perfect dough

‘Our countries are 13,000km apart, but what a resemblance between Shintoism and Voodoo’

he trained with a Japanese ceramics teacher, Kayoko Hayasaki. While accompanying Hayasaki to central France for a project with Japanese ceramicists, he met the ceramics master Toshiaki Shibuta, whom he now refers to as his spiritual father. ‘I was drawn to the animist rituals they practised. They prayed to the “kiln god”, drank sake, heaped up salt and scattered flowers to ward off evil, so that the firing of their ceramics would go well,’ explains the artist. ‘Our countries are 13,000km apart, but what a resemblance!

Shintoism and African Voodoo share a strong connection to nature. Our rituals are about humility.’

Following this epiphany, Houndekpinkou made a second trip to Japan, this time to Bizen, home to one of the oldest kilns in the country. Since then, ceramics has become a medium for interrogating his identity and his roots; his 2016 Terres Jumelles (Twin Soils) project uses ceramics to foster cross-cultural dialogue between Benin and Japan. Each year, he travels to both countries, bringing back to Paris a bit of soil from each location that he blends into a hybrid clay. ‘The

nature of clay – whether it is soft or sturdy, or what its mineral content is – depends on its geographical origin.

I recognise each variety by its colour and texture.’

The artist experiments with different ‘cocktails’ of clay until he arrives at a formula that suits his purpose.

‘If I want something sturdy, I opt for sandy clay, which absorbs thermal shock. Touching the soil with my fingers, I feel so peaceful, spiritual and playful,’ he says.

His sculptures have ranged from huge vessels to more complex compositions. For example, using an upturned bowl as a base, he uses clay to attach more bowls, cups and handles to it, creating an evolutionary form of pottery. ‘I assemble functional pieces to become sculptures.’ While the Mingei movement, an influential force within Japanese culture, is based on finding beauty in daily and utilitarian objects, Houndekpinkou instead elevates them to another dimension.

One of Houndekpinkou’s signatures is an inventive use of glaze. ‘I was inspired by dripping liquid on a Voodoo altar,’ he explains, showing a few dozen pots of pigment and notebooks full of his own recipes. »

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Art

‘My studio wall is a self-portrait of sorts. If ever my brain is printed out, it should look exactly like this.

Everything is logically connected, in a never-ending story’

‘It can take a combination of hundreds of these powders to obtain a particular colour or texture. Sometimes I rework a piece that is ostensibly finished, applying another layer of glaze and firing it again. Then a new piece is born!’ He thrives on the alchemy of technical prowess and creative experimentation. ‘The more technically trained you are, the more creative you can be. To be technical, you need discipline and balance.’

He then switched the conversation to another of his passions: his wheels. ‘I love feeling the wind and speed when I’m riding a motorbike. And to get it working, I need to be mechanically precise. It’s exactly like pottery,’ he says, pointing to a photo of an old motorbike pinned on the wall of his studio. A red

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Among the pictures pinned to Houndekpinkou’s 11m-long inspiration wall are, from left, an image of an ancient Peruvian Moche erotic ritual vessel; a black-and-white photo of young Senegalese wrestlers; a postcard featuring the work of Beninese artist Cyprien Tokoudagba; an image of the work of Japanese artist Toshio Saeki; a portrait of Senegalese historian and anthropologist Cheikh Anta Diop

thread links this image to another photo, a bit further down on the same wall: a portrait of George Ohr, an idiosyncratic American ceramic artist known as ‘the mad potter’. Back in 2017, Houndekpinkou was among a group of artists featured in a show in Florida that paid tribute to Ohr. The motorbike, it turns out, once belonged to Ohr. Many more photos, notes and press clippings fill the wall. Is it a mood board? ‘Not exactly,’ he says. ‘It’s a self-portrait of sorts. If ever my brain is printed out, it should look exactly like this. Everything is logically connected, in a never-ending story.’ ∂ ‘Dans Mon Jardin...’ by King Houndekpinkou runs from 7 September–2 October at Galerie Vallois, Paris, vallois.com; kinghoundekpinkou.com

SEPTEMBER IS ALL ABOUT...

REINVENTION AND RECALIBRATION p108 ME, MYSELF AND I Quality time with Till Janz and his alter ego p122 THE FUTURE IS NOW Space-age sartorial sophistication p138 LIGHT REFRESHMENT Marina Abramovic’s diet soup ∑

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Hugo wears towel, £30, by The Conran Shop. Till wears nightshirt, £135; trousers, £110, both by Tekla Celestial Black Diamond contour gel, £90; day cream light, £450; eye mask, £12, all by 111 Skin.

Costa Azzurra eau de parfum, £85 for 50ml, by Tom Ford. Glasses, £250, by Balenciaga. Issa electric toothbrush, £129, by Foreo. Fresh mint toothpaste, £6, by Horace

COUNTER PART At home with photographer Till Janz and his alter ego Hugo

Photography till ja nz Fashion Jason hughes

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This page, Hugo wears jacket, price on request; jumper, £830; necklace, £1,400; trousers, £740, all by Celine Homme by Hedi Slimane. Boots, £1,045, by Bottega Veneta. Socks, £35, by Pantherella. Till wears coat, £5,960, by Brioni. Roll-neck, £295, by Margaret Howell. Glasses, £250,

by Balenciaga. Socks, £35, by Pantherella.

Slippers, £390, by Church’s Image on wall, suit, £1,500; roll-neck, £950, both by Prada

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‘Utrecht’ armchairs, £3,607 each, by Gerrit Thomas Rietveld, for Cassina. ‘Louisa’ table, from £1,341, by Vincent Van Duysen, for Molteni & C. ‘Bamboo’ pale gold rug, from £1,116, by The Rug Company. ‘Gio’ glass, £5, by LSA, from The Conran Shop Opposite, Hugo wears jacket, £4,505; jumper, £655; trousers, £655; boots, £1,045, all by Bottega Veneta. Till wears jacket, £1,850; roll-neck, £655; trousers, £715; sunglasses, £330; boots, £1,045, all by Bottega Veneta

Fashion

Fashion

This page, Till wears jumper, £570; trousers, £650, both by Fendi.

Hugo wears coat, £3,400; jumper, £595; trousers, £520, all by Fendi Image on wall, Till wears jumper, £570; trousers, £650, both by Fendi.

Hugo wears coat, £3,400, by Fendi ‘Utrecht’ armchairs, as before Opposite, Hugo wears jacket, £2,000; trousers, £1,510, both by Paul Smith.

Till wears jumper, £650; trousers, £550, both by Emporio Armani.

Sunglasses, £320, by Balenciaga

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Fashion Till wears jacket, £2,030; roll-neck, £840, both by Gucci. Hugo wears coat, £2,590, by Balenciaga On wall, left image, roll-neck, £840, by Gucci. Sunglasses, £325,

by Balenciaga. Right image, jumper, £1,425; sunglasses, £320, both by Balenciaga ‘CH388’ dining table, £4,105 ‘CH23’ dining chair, £816, both by Hans J Wegner, for Carl Hansen & Søn. ‘Penguin’ carafe, £30, by Mist-o, for Ichendorf Milano ‘Gio’ glasses, £5 each, by LSA; ‘Luna’ mug, £12, all from The Conran Shop

Fashion

Our photo shoot took place at Concrete House, near Lewes, in East Sussex. This powerful, brutalist residence – the brainchild of owners Adrian and Megan Corrigall, who worked in collaboration with Raw Architecture Workshop – feels solid and dramatic, but at the same time balances warm textures and a domestic scale. Stepping inside, a combination of large openings, strategic surface and volume compositions, stylish furniture and greenery work together to produce the perfect family home. This is also the world’s first building made using advanced fibre-reinforced concrete,

a durable anti-cracking material, developed by Cemex, that does not require reinforced steel bars. ‘This home is the polar opposite of what you’d expect from a completely concrete structure,’ says Adrian. ‘It’s warm and inviting, it has beautiful light qualities that shift throughout the day, from soft and tonal to almost over-bright Brasilia in full sun, and the acoustics are fantastic. The building far surpasses what we wanted it to do, and that’s something we’ve only been able to experience with time.’ Ellie Stathaki For more information about the project, visit Wallpaper.com ∏

This page, Till wears jumper, £1,709 trousers, £1,331, both by Ermenegildo Zegna XXX. Hugo wears jumper, £730,

by Jil Sander by Lucie and Luke Meier. Underwear, £32, by Sunspel.

Slippers, £470, by John Lobb ‘Togo’ sofa, by Michel Ducaroy, for Ligne Roset, original to the house Opposite, Hugo wears jacket, £2,750,

by Stone Island. Trousers, £2,325, by Saint Laurent by Anthony Vaccarello.

Sneakers, £215, by MHL by Margaret Howell. Till wears jacket, £4,800; jumper, £600; trousers, £950, all by Hermès. Cap, Till’s own

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Hugo wears coat, price on request; jacket, £2,900; trousers, £690, all by Louis Vuitton. Boots, £1,045,

by Bottega Veneta. Till wears sunglasses, £320, by Balenciaga For stockists, see page 136 Body model: Marllon at Body London Grooming: Eliot McQueen at Future Rep using Kiehl’s Interiors: Olly Mason Photography assistant: Okus Milsom Digi-tech: Neil Bennett Fashion assistant: Kris Bergfeldt Retouching: The Hand of God With special thanks to the owners, Adrian and Megan Corrigall

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Fashion

Fashion

SCAN ME

This page and opposite, self-portraits taken in July 2021 showing artist Till Janz in the present, aged up and aged down. They form part of his ongoing Generations series, which will encompass 122 triptychs that explore age, gender and what the passage of time means both for the fashion industry and for individuals Janz’s virtual exhibition ‘Past, Present, Future’, hosted by Lemniscap, runs until 8 September. To view the exhibition, scan the QR code

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FACE TO FACE

Till Janz’s foray into the world of alternate realities and virtual viewings Self-portraits till ja nz Writer m a isie sk idmor e The photographs in our fashion shoot read as ordinary snapshots of two housemates messing about at home. Except the home is a spectacular concrete monolith, dotted with icons of furniture design; the housemates wear A/W21 Gucci and Balenciaga to eat breakfast, Fendi to arm wrestle, and Bottega Veneta to take selfies; and one of the pair, his lips full and luscious, his brow and cheekbones razor-sharp, is clearly not human at all.

The feature is the work of photographer Till Janz, whose experiments in art and technological innovation led to the conception of Hugo, a magnificently antagonistic digital persona, who has entered into this fantasy world explicitly to make Janz’s life difficult. ‘I’ve always been really interested in the intersection of storytelling and technology,’ explains the Germany-born, London-based image-maker. A few years ago, Janz began to explore the possibilities of 3D avatar creation. ‘Hugo was the first character I created once I learned how to use the software,’ he says. ‘I kind of fell in love with him.’

Hugo became an alter ego of sorts for Janz. ‘It’s an interesting coexistence,’ says Janz. ‘I’m living in my head with him all the time now. I even reply to people on Instagram as Hugo. He’s my second half, but he’s the half I can’t live out in reality; he’s a bit more rude and arrogant.’ Through Hugo, Janz gently lampoons the fashion industry, interrogating its hypocrisies, tongue firmly pressed in

cheek. ‘I’ve spoken to a few model agencies who are interested, so I’m in talks at the moment to get him onto the roster,’ he adds, earnestly.

Make no mistake: during shoots, the role of Hugo is performed by a body model, whose head is then replaced with that of Janz’s meta-human. But in the age of Instagram, in which digital portraiture is often filtered and edited beyond recognition, Janz’s creation of Hugo is akin to our own experience of our identities.

‘It’s not about perfectionism,’ the photographer explains. ‘It’s like creating an alter ego in the digital space. Which feels quite natural nowadays, because the way we present ourselves to the outside world through social media is a new reality. All of us have a second persona.’

Hugo is far from Janz’s only foray into digital imagery. With his ongoing, as-yet-unpublished body of work, Generations, he manipulates familiar faces, ageing them up and down and tweaking them to create new, alternate realities. It’s executed so flawlessly that the artifice would be almost imperceptible were the images not placed side by side. The triptych on these pages, created specifically for Wallpaper*, is his first set of self-portraits within the series.

He’s also working on an ambitious digital exhibition within Cryptovoxels, a virtual world powered by the Ethereum blockchain.

It’s all the fun of gallery representation without the obligations, contracts or commission, he tells me, smiling. Now all he needs is to make sure Hugo behaves at the private view. ∂ tilljanz.com

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COSMIC GIRL Glitz and glamour from another galaxy Photography Rom a in Duquesne Fashion Jason hughes

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Fashion

This page, jacket, £11,352, by Lanvin.

Shoes, £1,045, by Bottega Veneta.

Sunglasses, price on request, by Acne Studios. Tights, £15, by Falke Opposite, dress, £680; boots, £850, both by Courrèges

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This page, jacket, £5,490, by Givenchy. Hood, £181, by Raf Simons Opposite, cape, £1,250; gloves, £320, both by Jil Sander by Lucie and Luke Meier.

Shoes, £750, by Gucci. Tights, £16, by Calzedonia

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Fashion

This page, dress, £2,710, by Saint Laurent by Anthony Vaccarello.

Boots, £1,200, by Prada Opposite, jacket, £4,740, by Bottega Veneta. Gloves, £209, by Ines

Fashion

This page, bustier, £4,380, by Gucci Opposite, jacket, £545; roll-neck, £120; skirt, £389, all by Boss.

Boots, £425, by Courrèges. Sunglasses, price on request, by Acne Studios

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This page, jacket, £33,848; dress, £14,996, both by Dolce & Gabbana. Shoes, £750, by Gucci Opposite, dress, £1,550, by Fendi. Hood, £181, by Raf Simons. Gloves, £209, by Ines

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This page, coat, £2,700; gloves, £850; boots, £1,200, all by Prada Opposite, jacket, £12,525, by Chanel.

Shoes, £1,045, by Bottega Veneta.

Tights, £15, by Falke

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Fashion

This page, dress, £1,415, by Sportmax. Shoes, £750, by Gucci. Tights, £16, by Calzedonia Opposite, jacket, £8,000, by Hermès. Hat, price on request, by Nina Ricci. Tights, £15, by Falke For stockists, see page 136 Model: Margherita Boffetta at Select London. Casting: Svea Casting. Hair: Tosh using Bumble and Bumble.

Make-up: Victoria Martin using Nars. Digi-tech/photography assistant: Daniel Gurton. Fashion assistant: Kris Bergfeldt

Stockists

111Skin 111skin.co.uk

Ermenegildo Zegna XXX zegna.com

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Ernest W Baker ernest-w-baker.com

Acne Studios acnestudios.com Amara amara.com

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Balenciaga balenciaga.com Boss boss.com Bottega Veneta bottegaveneta.com

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Givenchy givenchy.com

Carl Hansen & Søn carlhansen.com

Horace horace.co

Celine celine.com Chanel chanel.com Christofle christofle.com Church’s church-footwear.com Commission at Ssense ssense.com Courrèges courreges.com

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Dedar dedar.com Dolce & Gabbana dolcegabbana.com

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Cassina cassina.com

John Lobb johnlobb.com

Foreo foreo.com

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Calzedonia calzedonia.com

Jil Sander by Lucie and Luke Meier jilsander.com

Fendi fendi.com

Gucci gucci.com

Ines inesgloves.com

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Falke falke.com

Bulgari bulgari.com

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Lanvin lanvin.com Lobmeyr lobmeyr.at Loewe loewe.com Louis Vuitton louisvuitton.com

Hermès hermes.com

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Maximilian at Net-a-Porter net-a-porter.com Menu menuspace.com

Raf Simons rafsimons.com

Molteni & C molteni.it

René Scheibenbauer renescheibenbauer.net

Moser moser.com

Resident resident.co.nz

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Nina Ricci ninaricci.com

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Pantherella pantherella.com Paul Smith paulsmith.com Prada prada.com

Malone Souliers malonesouliers.com

TILL JANZ

‘PAST, PRESENT, FUTURE’ VIRTUAL EXHIBITION HOSTED BY LEMNISCAP

FEATURING GENERATIONS PREMIERE HUGO ARTHOLE RETROSPECTIVE FUTURESPECTIVE

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Saint Laurent by Anthony Vaccarello ysl.com Saint-Louis saint-louis.com Salvatore Ferragamo ferragamo.com Serax serax.com Serge Lutens sergelutens.com Sportmax sportmax.com Stefan Cooke stefancooke.com Stone Island stoneisland.com Sunspel sunspel.com

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Talia Byre studio@taliabyre.com Tekla teklafabrics.com The Conran Shop conranshop.co.uk The Rug Company therugcompany.com Tom Ford tomford.com Twentytwentyone twentytwentyone.com

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Van Cleef & Arpels vancleefarpels.com Veuve Clicquot veuveclicquot.com

Emilio Pucci emiliopucci.com

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Raawii raawii.eu

MHL by Margaret Howell margarethowell.co.uk

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Emporio Armani armani.com

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12 AUGUST–8 SEPTEMBER 2021

Left, turn to our fashion menswear story on page 108 for more on Janz’s exhibition

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Artist’s Palate

MARINA ABRAMOVIC’S Diet soup

#124

Photography: Neil Godwin at Future Studios for Wallpaper*

Marina Abramovic knows the power of a simple idea. Her seminal works, from walking the entire length of the Great Wall of China to locking eyes with 1,000 strangers from across a wooden table, strike an emotional chord with audiences far beyond the art world. Her enormous self-discipline, and her willingness to push the boundaries of the human body and mind, are evident in the dish she has chosen for us, a recipe by Austrian doctor Nonna Brenner. The artist explains that the barely seasoned ‘diet soup’ of flax seeds, oats and oat bran is meant to be consumed on the first day of fasting: ‘Monastic, simple and pure, it is deeply satisfying and keeps your mind peaceful and clear.’

‘Seven Deaths’, 14 September-30 October, Lisson Gallery, London, lissongallery.com.

For the recipe, see Wallpaper.com ∏

‘Offset’ dining table, £3,670; stool, £358, both by Philippe Malouin, for Resident. ‘Strøm’ bowl, €83, by Nicholai Wiig Hansen, for Raawii.

‘Moon’ tablespoon, £10, by Cutipol; ‘Terrier’ tumbler, £90 for set of two,

by Waterford, both from Amara For stockists, see page 136

138

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INTERIORS: OLLY MASON ENTERTAINING DIRECTOR: MELINA KEAYS WRITER: TF CHAN

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