ISSUE SIXTY NINE FEBRUARY 2017
THE STYLE ISSUE SS17
Luxury • Culture • People • Style • Heritage
Haute Joaillerie, place Vendôme since 1906
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Magic Alhambra collection
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Contents FEBruarY 2017 : ISSUE 69
Editorial Editorial director
John Thatcher Managing Editor
Emma Laurence Editor
air
Chris Ujma christopher@hotmediapublishing.com
art art director
Andy Knappett art Editor
Kerri Bennett designer
Emi Dixon illustrations
Vanessa Arnaud
Forty Four
Fifty Eight
Paul Newman: actor, political foil, philanthropist, style icon – not that he would’ve answered to the latter
Meet Gigi and Bella Hadid, the ‘It’ sisters who’ve conquered social media (and a whole lot besides)
Fifty
Sixty Four
A new coffee-table tome? It’s simply another occasion for Donatella Versace to voice her refined retorts on society
A new exhibit at Kensington Palace documents the sophistication and daring style of Diana, Princess of Wales
Cool Handed
CoMMErCial Managing director
Victoria Thatcher Group Commercial director
David Wade
Blonde Bombshell
david@hotmediapublishing.com Commercial director
Rawan Chehab
rawan@hotmediapublishing.com Business development Manager
Rabih El Turk
rabih@hotmediapublishing.com
ProduCtion Production Manager
Muthu Kumar
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Hashtag Heroines
Her Fashion Story
3 D AYS A U TO M AT I C ACC I A I O - 4 5 M M ( R E F. 6 74 )
PANERAI BOUTIQUES
DUBAI - THE DUBAI MALL . +971 4 339 8444 ABU DHABI - THE GALLERIA AT SOWWAH SQUARE . AL MARYAH ISLAND . +971 2 491 9748 AHMED SEDDIQI & SONS DUBAI - ATLANTIS . +971 4 422 0233 • MALL OF THE EMIRATES . +971 4 341 1211
Contents
AIR Magazine AIR
FEBRUARY 2017 : ISSUE 69
Tel: 00971 4 364 2876 Fax: 00971 4 369 7494 Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission from HOT Media Publishing is strictly prohibited. HOT Media Publishing does not accept liability for omissions or errors in AIR.
Eighteen
Thirty Four
Seventy
Seventy Eight
The 1960s was known for its lasting style statements, but whatever became of its unfinished revolutions?
With its spellbinding timepiece narratives, Van Cleef & Arpels is the maison that dares to daydream
A brief history of duelling American heroes with brains and brawn – the Chevrolet Camaro and Ford Mustang
Our latest private jet escape takes in the pristine coastline and natural wonder of Helena Bay Lodge
Radar
Twenty Eight
Timepieces
Motoring
Art & Design
Jewellery
From Thirty Eight
Seventy Four
Tomas Maier – art-loving creative director at Bottega Veneta – reveals the brand’s collaborative secrets
The red-carpet master plan of Harry Winston, plus an envious look at Chanel’s latest high-jewellery offering
Eight seats; limitless flavour concepts: experience ultra exclusivity at the Tapas Molecular Bar in Tokyo
Gastronomy
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Travel
TH E E TE RNAL MOVE ME NT Ulysse Nardin, from the movement of the sea to the perpetual innovation of Haute Horlogerie. For over 170 years, the powerful movement of the ocean has inspired Ulysse Nardin in its singular quest: to push back the limits of mechanical watchmaking, time and time again.
Freak Blue Cruiser Flying carrousel-tourbillon 7-day power reserve Silicium technology ulysse-nardin.com
ULYSSE NARDIN BOUTIQUES: The Dubai Mall +971 44341421 & Mall of the Emirates +971 43950577 Dubai Duty Free: Concourse A, B and C www.binhendi.com
Empire Aviation Group FEBRUARY 2017 : ISSUE 69
Welcome Onboard issUE siXTY NiNE
Welcome to this issue of AIR, Empire Aviation Group’s aviation lifestyle magazine for aircraft owners and charter clients. In this issue, we focus on the critical area of crew recruitment and training; this is an essential component of our management role/service on behalf of aircraft owners. We recruit specific experience and skills to match aircraft types, with scheduled ongoing training programmes in place to ensure the crews maintain their ratings and licences. The training regime covers every aircraft, from cockpit to the tail, including flight and cabin crew. Each onboard crew role has its specific demands and training requirements to maintain the certification and right to fly. Some aircraft will require more than one set of crew to ensure around-the-clock access or extended mission operation. So, the recruitment and training requirement for any aircraft on the fleet is quite substantial. The aviation business is one of the most regulated industries in the world – rightly so – and the same stringent regulatory approach also applies to the people in the industry, and especially the onboard crew. Pilots are some of the most highly trained professionals in any industry, and they have a very responsible role, but to maintain their licences they must adhere to a programme of ongoing training updates as set by the international aviation authorities. As an aircraft manager and operator, EAG is very active in recruiting and managing professionally qualified and experienced crew for every aircraft on the managed fleet, on behalf of our owners. We follow a very well-established and rigorous international search and recruitment process through a team of expert staff with experience and knowledge of finding and selecting the right people for the aircraft, the role – and for the owner.
Enjoy the issue.
Steve Hartley
Executive Director
Contact Details: info@empire.aero empireaviation.com 13
Paras Dhamecha
Executive Director
Empire Aviation Group FEBRUARY 2017 : ISSUE 69
Putting People First Making flying safe and comfortable for aircraft owners and passengers starts with the crew recruitment process and continues right through the period of employment with training support appropriate for the job – of course, the training demands and needs of pilots are different to those of the cabin crew. Successful recruitment starts with a professional search and an interview/screening process that is rigorous and comprehensive. For example, every EAG pilot candidate is not only screened for his or her
professional flying experience but also checked and tested to reveal any unusual flight experiences such as managing unscheduled and lastminute changes along with many other operational scenarios. Interviews also cover professional pilot technical skills and in-depth knowledge of aviation laws, and the performance limitations of the aircraft. With cabin crew, the interview approach is entirely different, and the company’s flight operations and service team look at the candidates’ previous experience in private or commercial aviation and VVIP operations. VVIP service and passenger safety are two essential components of the cabin-crew role, 14
and the company training programme reflects this. Cabin crew also play a central role in managing the delivery of various ancillary services from global flight catering companies, ground handlers and aircraft cleaning companies. Knowledge of specific aircraft types is also essential, and they must be capable of taking responsibility for the positive onboard experience of all guests and owners in every situation. The cabin-crew role is, therefore, central and critical to the overall flying experience. With around 500 flying hours each year, they are very experienced and hardworking professionals who provide outstanding customer service.
Empire Aviation Group FEBRUARY 2017 : ISSUE 69
Training In Excellence Cabin crew undergo regular refresher courses with top aviation organisations – such as safety emergency procedures training with Emirates Airline, as well as first-aid training with Medaire. All EAG crew are highly experienced, with over 4,000 hours for our Pilots in Command (PICs) and 1,500 hours for our Second in Command (SIC). Pilots follow a highly regulated year-round training programme, which includes simulator training, ground and inflight training with a senior instructor, a line check, as well as mandatory alcohol and drug screening. When you consider the large fleet of business jets managed by EAG – and the number and variety of missions flown for owners and charter clients (many of which are long-haul and even intercontinental flights) – then the need for highly experienced and trained pilots and crew becomes apparent. Aircraft teams must be comfortable and competent to fly missions to destinations worldwide and through any climate and weather conditions –
from African tropical storms to the freezing winter temperatures (minus 35°C) in Eastern Europe, to the extreme heat of the Middle East and the monsoon season in Asia. Operating to ultra-busy mega airports such as Chicago O’Hare International Airport and Hong Kong International Airport is also part of the required skillset. EAG provides ongoing crew training on various aircraft types through leading training providers around the world – in Dubai (an important hub for aviation training), the UK, US and the Netherlands. Typically, crews undertake training programmes of one to five days twice a year for refreshers, and around one month for initial training on a new aircraft type. Every new aircraft we add to the fleet creates a new staff recruitment 16
and training demand, and the quality of training is essential to ensure that flight and operations staff work efficiently as a team on the aircraft type. All EAG training programmes are approved by the local General Civil Aviation Authority in the UAE (GCAA), the European Aviation Safety Agency and the US Federal Aviation Administration. EAG’s training manager undertakes a regular review of all training programmes to meet our high standards, and they are also monitored by our Quality and Safety Department. It’s all part of the EAG service, because it’s our people who fly aircraft, deliver service and manage the aircraft. What makes the difference – to both owners and passengers – is our team.
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Radar
AIR
FEBRUARY 2017 : ISSUE 69
“You say you want a revolution,” sang The Beatles in ’68 (capturing the mood of the time), “well, you know, we all want to change the world.” The 1960s: a cultural turning point for personal expression, and now the bastion of psychedelic taste and peacefuelled ideals. And while it’s tempting to get engrossed in the hippy-hype clichés of the time, an exhibition at the V&A Museum has delved behind the aesthetics to pose a soul-searching question: how have the finished and unfinished revolutions of the late 1960s changed the way we live today and think about the future? February marks the final opportunity to peruse You Say You Want A Revolution? Records And Rebels 1966-1970 – an artistic collection that serves as a litmus test for the rousing spirit of the decade’s fashion, film, design and political activism. vam.ac.uk
Critique FEBRUARY 2017 : ISSUE 69
Film War On Everyone Dir: John Michael McDonagh Two crooked cops have been framing and blackmailing criminals all over town – now, they’re chasing the ultimate payoff At Best: “McDonagh writes his clever, coalblack heart out, delivering another firecracker script.” Variety At WoRst: “Misfiring buddy-cop comedy is a less than lethal weapon.” Hollywood Reporter
The Founder AIR
Dir: John Lee Hancock The true story of how Ray Kroc bought the 1950s burger operation that became the billion-dollar fast-food empire McDonald’s At Best: “This dumbfounding movie devises its magical recipe, and dares us to resist it: ketchup, mustard, two slices of pickle, and hold the irony. Delicious.” New Yorker At WoRst: “Like the product that inspired it, The Founder is tasty enough while it lasts but never quite fills you up.” Time Out
Trespass Against Us Dir: Adam Smith An elaborate heist goes sour, and the reluctant criminal of the family tries to escape the grasp of his outlaw father At Best: With... performances that take the cast far from their comfort zones, this is a very strong debut.” PopMatters At WoRst: “Crime thriller or offbeat family drama? Darkly funny or way too dreary? It has all of these elements, and ultimately, this thick stew is unsatisfying.” The Film Stage
Gold Dir: Stephen Gaghan A prospector, desperate for a lucky break, teams up with a similarly eager geologist to find gold in the uncharted jungle of Indonesia At Best: “A deliriously entertaining ride, as a man with a dream drops his last quarter in the slot machine and goes home with the entire casino.” Variety At WoRst: “The film unfolds like a chintzy rip-off of David O Russell ripping off Martin Scorsese ripping off real life.” indieWIRE 20
Critique FEBRUARY 2017 : ISSUE 69
Books
AIR
“A
lmost everything about Paul Auster’s new novel – 4 3 2 1 – is big. The sentences are long and sinuous; the paragraphs are huge, often running more than a page; and the book comes in at nearly 900 pages. In its telling, however, the book is far from epic, though it is satisfyingly rich in detail,” praises Publishers Weekly. Of the plot, Goodreads explains, “Nearly two weeks early, on 3 March 1947, in the maternity ward of Beth Israel Hospital in Newark, New Jersey, Archibald Isaac Ferguson is born. From that single beginning, [his] life will take four simultaneous and independent fictional paths. Four identical Fergusons made of the same DNA, four boys who are the same boy, go on to lead four parallel and entirely different lives.” Kirkus Reviews adds, “Auster’s first novel in seven years is nothing if not ambitious… he develops the book as four distinct narratives, each imagining a different life for Archie depending on the circumstances faced by himself and his family. It’s an ingenious move, and when it works, which is often, it gives a sense of breadth and scope, of unpredictability, to the
novel as a whole… [Its] history helps to keep us rooted, both because it’s recognisable and also because it remains consistent across the novel’s narratives, its variations on this single life. So too Auster’s sense of possibility, his understanding that what all his Fergusons have in common, with us and with one another, is a kind of quiet intensity, a striving to discover who they are.” Twenty-nine more countries are set to savour The Muse in 2017, as Jessie Burton’s US/UK fiction bestseller goes global. “The imaginative boldness that distinguished Burton’s 2014 debut, The Miniaturist, earned her critical raves and an international bestseller: her fans will be eager to know if she can reprise the trick with her follow-up. Having recreated the stiff-necked puritan society of 17th-century Amsterdam in her first book, in The Muse Burton has once again done the hard yards of research to reimagine not one but two distinct eras of the 20th century, and fused them to an intricate story of imposture. This is not a writer who can be faulted for ambition,” says Anthony Quinn in The Guardian. “The Muse is, aptly, concerned with the
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nebulous power of creativity – and how public acclaim can stifle it. Plotted as an intricate jigsaw puzzle, these narratives, separated by a 30year gap, must be pieced together by [both] the reader and Odelle, a budding writer from Trinidad who gets a job as a typist at the well-known Skelton Gallery… [and] embarks on a faltering relationship with a young man who has inherited a mysterious painting… As a study of female creativity, it triumphs… Burton’s muse, in whatever form it may take, is clearly in fine fettle,” enthuses The Telegraph’s Holly Kyte. Meanwhile, Melvin Urofsky’s informative paperback Dissent And The Supreme Court is “incisive”, believes Joshua J Friedman of Columbia Magazine. “It traces the dissent’s noble history and shows how many of the most important protections of American society – free speech, racial equality, individual liberty – began their lives as dissents pushing back against a court that was not yet ready to hear them.” Elaborates Dahlia Lithwick in The New York Times, “His extraordinarily careful analysis and sense of historical depth make [this] an important book, one that explores some of the most significant dissents in the history of that institution… Urofsky is riveting when detailing the arguments and rhetorical workings of the nation’s great dissenters, from John Marshall Harlan to Louis Brandeis to William O Douglas… Indeed his book can serve as a guide, a way of determining what constitutes a really fine and compelling dissent, which Urofsky distinguishes from – for instance – Justice Felix Frankfurter’s frequent tone of: ‘I am right and why don’t you people listen to me.’” Equally impressed, Kirkus Reviews adds, “The very best dissents constitute, in one scholar’s words, ‘buried ammunition for future generations to unearth when the time comes’… A lifetime of scholarship and an elegant pen combine for an outstanding read.”
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Critique FEBRUARY 2017 : ISSUE 69
AIR
Art
Budgie specimens illustrating colour variations, from Trustees of the Natural History Museum
M
aking Nature: How We See Animals is a major exhibition that examines what we think, feel and value about other species, and the consequences this has for the world around us; it’s at the ever-attention-grabbing Wellcome Collection in London, until 21 May. “Mental asylums. Mind-altering drugs. Dirt. The [venue] has carved out a rep for delivering exhibitions that are outlandish without ever being sensationalist. And while the premise of their latest show – the relationship between humans and animals – might not have the same WTF factor, it’s still just as quirky and enthralling… As you’d probably expect, a heap of ethical questions emerge… chiefly about how our own perceptions of animals inevitably affect how we treat them,” says Time Out London. Writes Chris Fitch at Geographical, “The [self-titled taxonomy system] of Swedish physician Carl Linnaeus forms much of what we now know as a way of structuring the natural world… The curators don’t necessarily disagree with him per se – they just simply wish to enquire whether it is still the right classification system to
use. Should there be one at all?… we are reminded as we enter the opening exhibit,” proffers Culture Whisper. “Man’s best friends?… For thousands of years, we have divorced man from beast, viewing ourselves as the only creatures with morality, emotions and culture… The artist hopes the ‘doubly dead’ creatures will ‘trigger an encounter in the gallery, an encounter with animals, which we experience daily in their perpetual state of absence and disappearance’.” “The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles have announced a jointly organised retrospective of Italian Arte Povera artist Marisa Merz, looking back at the artist’s half-century career,” reveals Art Net of The Sky Is A Great Space. The collection of works, displayed until 7 May, “traces Merz’s oeuvre from her early work with hanging sheet metal Living Sculptures or functional objects like a plywood swing for her daughter, to her later figurative clay sculptures, and her most recent multimedia installations, besides her delicate works on paper in graphite, wax, ballpoint pen, and pastel… [all coming] together to 24
recognise [her] long career, both as a member of a historic movement, as and an artist whose prolific output can stand strong on its own”. Adds Time Out New York, “Merz was the sole female member of that otherwise all-boys’ club known as Italian Arte Povera. The late-60s movement took a somewhat nihilistic approach to form and material, with works that often looked like they’d been made out of refuse. Merz followed suit but added some definite feminist flavour to the recipe.” On Emirati soil, the Ayyam Gallery in Dubai’s Al Quoz presents a solo exhibition by local artist Safwan Dahoul, entitled Miniatures. Showing until 4 March, “[It] offers a look into Dahoul’s ongoing investigation of the principles of painting, specifically how formal elements can be used to shape the affective nature of an image,” discloses Art Daily. “As one of the foremost painters in the Arab world, Safwan Dahoul has repeatedly demonstrated how contemporary modes of figuration can describe the psychic terrain of a region that is in constant flux… Since the late 1980s, [his] ongoing Dream series has explored the physical and psychological effects of alienation, solitude, and longing that punctuate the human experience at various stages in life. Partly autobiographical, this seminal body of work uses the formal properties of painting to recreate the subconscious sense of enclosure that surfaces during times of crisis, whether in the event of mourning, estrangement, or political conflict.” The “miniature paintings demand close examination, requiring the viewer to move in closely, as to penetrate into a secret world”, says My Art Guides, while Totally Emirates expounds, “The resulting works continue his series… and treat its recurring subject matter with exacting detail despite spatial limitations. True to form, [these] miniatures carry the same psychological weight that is found in his previous works.”
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Critique FEBRUARY 2017 : ISSUE 69
Theatre
AIR
T
ake the opportunity while you can to catch The Present in New York – it’s at Broadway’s Barrymore Theatre until 19 March. Reports Alexis Soloski in The Guardian, “Oh to be bored like Cate Blanchett! In… Andrew Upton’s adaptation of an early Chekhov play, her character, Anna Petrovna, seems tired of everything – life and love, food and drink, women and men, hope and chess. ‘I’m so bored,’ she complains at her birthday dinner… [But] in Blanchett’s hands, she is sexy, antic, ferocious, imperious, mordant, and angry. ‘Truth or dare!’ she demands of her guests… And perhaps that game is the best descriptor of Blanchett’s work… Her virtuosic performance is truth and dare at once.” The limited stint is enough for Ben Brantley at The New York Times, though: “Blanchett knows how to hold a stage and, if necessary, hijack it… Such commanding, try-anything charisma is useful if you’re attempting to hold together a badly assembled party or, for that matter, play. But here [her] take-charge inventiveness is as sorely taxed as that of her character. This production… feels moribund from the beginning. Frantic attempts at resuscitation by Blanchett and her valiant leading man, a tireless Roxburgh as a hapless homme fatale, only occasionally succeed in eliciting a pulse.” The Telegraph writer Diane Snyder disagrees: “The brilliance of Crowley’s production lies in its ability to peel back the layers of its many characters to reveal relatable and laughable flaws… [they] dive into the pain and ridiculousness of their characters, and when they detonate… the results are wonderfully volatile.” The National Theatre of Scotland has transported The Strange Undoing Of Prudencia Hart Stateside, engaging audiences at The Heath in New York until 28 February. “The title character is a prickly academic, whose speciality is folkloric literature… At an academic conference, she trades barbs with her rival, cocksure and flashy Colin Syme. Following a surreal bacchanal in a pub and a blizzard, Prudencia
Cate Blanchett and Richard Roxburgh in The Present
falls under the spell of a sinister stranger, who owns a vast library that enchants our learned heroine,” summarises Time Out New York. “The show is many things: satirical, absurd, a literary parlour game… and a wild and celebratory slice of storytelling as art. From Scottish-tinged humour to a mockery of academic pursuits… it raised the heartiest belly laughs from tables containing Scots or Brits, or both,” recalls Tim Teeman for The Daily Beast. Entertainment Weekly had a jolly time, too: “[The cast] originated from The National Theatre of Scotland’s run of the show and, given all the hats (and even red feathers) they’re asked to wear throughout it and the way they play throughout the venue – on tables and laps and all… each clearly knows every beat as well as how to keep marching to it no matter what randomness the audience [conjures].” Back to British shores for a dose of more traditional theatre: the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Love’s Labour’s Lost and Much Ado About Nothing, at London’s Haymarket 26
until 18 March. “Nigel Hess’ music, from operetta to Noel Cowardstyle ballads, and Simon Higlett’s evocative sets contribute to the productions’ success. Christopher Luscombe and his team have created fresh, accessible, thought-provoking readings that, rare these days, stay true to the spirit of the plays,” writes Michael Arditti at The Express. “Luscombe’s production pairs these two Shakespeare comedies by setting them either side of the First World War and by locating them in a manorhouse resembling Warwickshire’s Charlecote Park. It has taken two years for the shows to gravitate from Stratford to London via Chichester but, although partially recast, they remain a delight,” opines The Guardian’s Michael Billington. Says The Telegraph critic Domenic Cavendish, meanwhile, “In short, this is a great feast of mirth while furnishing abundant food for thought. And you won’t encounter a better explanation as to why the RSC matters than in the across-the-board perfection of the performances.”
Art & Design FEBRUARY 2017 : ISSUE iSSUe 69
An Ode To Art Tomas Maier, art-loving creative director at Bottega Veneta, explains why collaboration is the secret to extraordinary creative campaigns
AIR
WORDS : Sarah royce-GreenSill
B
ottega Veneta’s motto may be ‘when your own initials are enough,’ but its creative director Tomas Maier stamps more than ‘TM’ over the brand’s advertising campaigns. Since 2002, the German-born designer has invited a different photographer or artist to collaborate on each seasonal campaign. Lord Snowdon, Annie Leibovitz, Peter Lindbergh, Nan Goldin and Nick Knight are among the 27 artists to have captured Maier’s creative vision, and over 1,000 of the resulting cinematic images have been brought together in a weighty new tome: Bottega Veneta: Art Of Collaboration, published by Rizzoli.
The portfolio of work demonstrates Maier’s wide-ranging inspirations – he seeks out artists from a variety of fields, not just fashion. “I decided to start the Art of Collaboration as a way of introducing deeper ideas and narratives into our own way of intending our collections. I like the idea of exploring and finding new points of view, which can be brought in by artists that don’t necessarily work in fashion and look at it from a different perspective,” said Maier in an exclusive interview with Telegraph Luxury. “Some of my favourite campaigns are with those who do not usually work in fashion.” 28
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AIR
Such campaigns include the autumn/winter 2010 images created by American artist Robert Longo, who drew inspiration from the writhing figures of his iconic 1980s work Men In The Cities, and Alex Prager’s Hitchcock-referencing spring/summer 2011 campaign. “Artists who work in photography often spend their lives taking images of clothing as it is, worn by their subjects in a natural state,” says Maier. “Their eye is used to capturing the detail of fabric, or of an accessory, and how a garment can say much about the person who is wearing it. When they come to shoot a campaign image, they bring all that skill with them, and they shoot the clothes as if they already have a life beyond the catwalk.” Raised in a family of architects and having attended a Waldorf school where creativity was encouraged, it was almost inevitable that Maier would follow an artistic career path. He studied at the Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture in Paris and designed for the likes of Guy Laroche, Sonia Rykiel and Hermès, before being chosen by Tom Ford to head up Bottega Veneta in 2001. The role afforded him complete creative control and allowed him to indulge a lifelong interest in photography. “Photography is one of my passions in life, and it has been very interesting for me to use photography to broaden the impression of what Bottega Veneta means today,” he says. “It was important for me to do something more than the usual advertising campaigns, because I know how emblematic the images can become. I wanted to use the campaigns to express a wider idea of creativity and craft that Bottega Veneta stands for, beyond the normal bounds of fashion.” This focus on creativity and collaboration extends beyond the advertising campaigns and to Bottega’s products themselves, many of which are made by artisans in the brand’s Northern Italian atelier. “I like the sense that there are skilled hands behind Bottega Veneta who come together to make our products,” says Maier. “In a way the Art of Collaboration campaign extends this sense once the products have been made, collaborating with photographers and artists to create something valid and of quality.” A longtime art lover, Maier says he “strongly believes in the importance of protecting culture as a substantial part of our history and heritage”. As such, he spearheaded Bottega Veneta’s sponsorship of the Hammer Museum Gala in Los Angeles, and co-chaired the event in 2014 alongside Julia Roberts and Danny Moder, as well as Sam and Aaron Taylor-Johnson. 2016
was the fourth year the brand supported the gala, which honours visionary individuals who have made significant contributions to the arts: in 2015 the recipients were Diane Keaton and Paul McCarthy, with Laurie Anderson and Todd Haynes honoured this past October. “When we started supporting the Hammer Museum, we felt it would have been an organic continuation of our commitment to the transmission of culture and arts to the next generations,” says Maier. “As much as we share an appreciation of artistic expression, we also share a view of the importance of the educational role, which the museum realises through a diverse range of free public programmes as a public arts unit of the University of California. This actually echoes what we do through La Scuola dei Maestri Pellettieri di Bottega Veneta in our atelier in Montebello Vicentino, to ensure continuity in centuries of tradition and cultural heritage.” Collaboration, education and safeguarding the future, not to mention designing several women’s, men’s and home collections annually: what’s next for the busy Mr Maier? “I have always wanted to work with Martin Parr, but it needs to be the right collection,” he says. “I am very careful when I choose the collaborators that their work fits with the collection we have just presented, and Martin would need something with the right colour and detail. But this is a long-term project. The right collection will come.”
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All images: nan Goldin’s spring/summer 2010 campaign for Bottega Veneta, from the book Bottega Veneta: Art Of Collaboration
OB JECTS OF DESIRE
OBJECTS OF DESIRE
SIHH 2017 SPECIAL Our showstopping collection of must-have timepiece innovations, unveiled at this year’s Salon International de la Haute Horlogerie Genève
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OB JECTS OF DESIRE
VA N C L E E F & A R P E L S
A u T O m AT E F é E O N D I N E
The maison deems this creation its first ‘Extraordinary Object’, and the bejewelled tableau lives up to the name. This SIHH 2017 unveiling is the result of an intensive, years-long project between automation expert Francois Junod and VCA’s own savoir-faire craftsmen. In their
trademark fashion, the unique mechanism tells a dreamlike story, with this chapter unfurling the lightness of nature and the grace of a waking fairy. You can count white gold, diamonds, milky aquamarine and plique-à-jour enamelling among the details deployed to evoke awe. 1
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OB JECTS OF DESIRE
RogER du bu iS
E xCAlIBuR SpIDER pIREllI
The rock stars of high watchmaking strike another memorable chord with the Double Flying Tourbillon version of this timepiece, which is eye-catching in hue and loaded with dynamic ideas. The sturdy 47mmdiameter black DLC titanium skeleton case flaunts vulcanised blue rubber
accents, serving to highlight its titanium crown and ‘container’. Admirers of fine mechanics can enjoy a transparent look at the new RD105SQ hand-wound calibre. It’s a limited edition of eight, and an added sweetener to sealing the deal is a two-day Pirelli VIP motorsport experience. 2
OB JECTS OF DESIRE
Au dE M A R S Pigu E T
R O yA l O A k p E R p E T u A l C A l E N D A R
The leader in the perpetual chronograph field is back, in black. The beloved Royal Oak reference 5516 is cemented in horological lore and in the 2017 edition, the complex hand-finishing in matte black ceramic applies to the case, bezel and bracelet, with the clasp made of black
titanium – all of which give a suave twist to a pure classic. Inside the 9.5mm-thin case lays a calibre 5134, with a dial that shows date and month displays, a photorealistic astronomical moonphase indication and the week of the year displayed on the dial’s outer chapter ring. A truly mighty oak. 3
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This ‘bright new star’ from Vacheron puts the art of complications into another solar system; you’ll sometimes see its name, as above, include 3600 at the end. The perpetual calendar complications on the front are only the beginning, joined by sunrise and sunset indicators, seasons
and equinoxes, tidal measurement, plus a moonphase as well as a Sun-EarthMoon conjunction. Turn the watch over to further discover a tourbillon, power reserve indicator (three weeks), and a rotating celestial chart. It’s watchmaking intelligence – and innovation – galore. 4
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One of the most seismic timepiece debuts at SIHH was this piece, which includes a flying tourbillon complication on a world timer for the first time, anywhere. It harbours an in-house developed Gyrolab, possesses a 48-hour power reserve, and the orbital tourbillon navigates around
the dial with the time change – a joy to watch. In terms of looks, there’s a distinct ‘world traveller’ feel to this platinum encased timepiece, right down to the hand-guilloche portions in oceanic blue. Limited to 100, this complexity is sure to be snapped up by discerning globetrotters. 5
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Novelties from the Saxonian brand are oft drenched in heritage, and this piece is no exception – developed from its own Tourbograph Pour le Mérite in 2005, it’s the fifth in the series. It takes a trained eye (and much writing space) to catch all of the complex features and clever design
notes of this one. A perpetual calendar leads the charge, and on the dial side the tourbillon, moonphase disc and workings of the calendar can be spied, with plenty of artisanship packed into this 43mm statement piece. Moreover, it’s limited to 50 pieces; desirable indeed. 6
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From the depths of Panerai’s expert R&D surfaces this 49mm-case black beauty, which makes full use of Luminor 1950 Carbontech. The light composite graces the case, movement and dial; its presence on the latter ensures sharp legibility, and the dark face contrasts the classic
hour markers and hands, in blue Super LumiNova with Arabic numerals an option. Its P.3001/C hand-wound calibre has a three-day power reserve, and further innovation means the movements need no lubrication, leading to an immense 50-year guarantee from the watchmaker. 7
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F1 car designers work relentlessly to shave off mere milliseconds – on the racetrack, every ounce matters. Richard Mille has dedicated the same attention to its RM 50-03, making it the lightest mechanical chronograph ever made. The tourbillion weighs less than 40g, and achieves its
feathery weight thanks to titanium, Carbon TPT and a new substance called Graph TPT (a nano material that is six times lighter than steel). It’s strong: the watch emerged unscathed from 5,000g of shock loading. Light but robust, it won’t fail under pressure; champion’s pedigree. 8
Timepieces febrUary 2017 : ISSUE 69
A Sign Of The Times TARIq MALIk
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he Salon International de la Haute Horlogerie (SIHH) took place in Geneva last month, and the five-day premier event kicks off the year for watch lovers. Each January I look forward to seeing what the world’s most renowned watchmakers will unveil, and the 2017 season at Palexpo lived up to its pre-event expectations. Last year the Salon added a twist with the Carré des Horlogers section, to showcase fresh design talent and highlight independent watchmakers. Building on its success, they added five more innovators this time around – Grönefeld, MCT (Manufacture Contemporaine du Temps), Ressence, RJ (Romain Jerome) and SpeakeMarin. As ever, taking centre stage were the major players, who wowed with their inspiring new creations which will set trends for the coming year. My own selection of their attention-grabbers range from the quirky to the astronomically complex. Ulysse NardiN Hourstriker Pin-Up An age-old timekeeping tradition takes centre stage here – the art of Jacquemart. Usually found on old clock towers, it’s a bell-striker – an automaton that strikes on the hour or half hour. In this case the mechanism takes the form of miniature artwork that depicts a peacock. The pretty bird modestly conceals a dancer’s voluptuous curves, only to reveal all when the bell strikes. It’s a playful celebration of watchmaking style and teasingly provocative, but don’t let that fool you into thinking this is some gimmick: the superb selfwinding Caliber UN-610 powers the
girard PerregaUx ww.tc If you’re curious as to what ‘ww. tc’ stands for, it’s World Wide Time Control, and considering that world timers often have some of the busiest and most complex dials, this one is refreshingly simple. The design is intended to make you think of a vintage pocket watch, and it’s one of the simplest, cleanest worldtimers I’ve seen for a while. Compared to some of the ‘sportier’ watches from this manufacturer, the ww.tc stands in a class of its own, both in terms of functionality and wearability.
mechanism, and according to the creators, each dancer takes around 50 to 90 hours to complete. Such endeavour means only 28 examples of the timepiece will be created. Jaeger-leCoUltre Geophysic Tourbillon Universal Time Welome to the new addition to the Geophysic collection. Its guilloche styling is a nod to the original timepieces produced for a short time in 1958, and the vintage-inspired classic has an H-shaped ‘gyrolab’ balance-equipped tourbillon. (For the uninitiated, a tourbillon aims to counter the effects of gravity by mounting the escapement and balance wheel in a rotating cage. This makes the watch more accurate). It’s housed in a titanium case that measures 43.5mm in diameter, and production is limited to 100 pieces. 33
VaCheroN CoNstaNtiN Les Cabinotiers Celestia Astronomical Grand Complication 3600 There is no simplicity here: this is a Grand Complication with no less than 23 functions. According to the makers it took five years to develop and build the new Caliber 3600 movement. It was worth the wait. This was the most complicated unveiling at SIHH 2017, yet for such a complex timepiece it’s remarkably compact, at only 45mm wide and 13.6mm thick. The 23 complications include a moonphase, a sunrise/ sunset complication, an indication of the length of the day and night, and a sector showing the current Sun sign in the Zodiac, as well as the Equinoxes and Solstices. There’s also a beautiful sky chart on the back of the watch made of two separate sapphire discs. It’s one-of-a-kind, and the price tag reflects it, soaring into the millions. Find Tariq’s co-founded vintage-watch boutique Momentum in Dubai’s DIFC; momentum-dubai.com
Timepieces FEBRUARY 2017 : ISSUE 69
Poetry In Motion Van Cleef & Arpels is a magical, memory-making maison, creating dreamlike universes within every timepiece. But how does it marry the mortal realm with these celestial horological concepts?
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Van Cleef & Arpels timepiece is a pure artistic marvel. Each contains a complicated scene that evokes a stirring of emotion, underpinned by an overwhelming sense of wonder. There is something distinctly Marcel Proust-like about these ethereal watches (and not just because they are both French in origin): “If a little dreaming is dangerous, the cure for it is not to dream less, but to dream more, to dream all the time” being one of the author’s many appropriate musings. Alessandro Maffi is Van Cleef & Arpels’ managing director for the Middle East and India, and of its current crop of rare novelties he confides, “I’m completely in love with two of our watches, both of which are automates and spring into life at the touch of a button. One is the Lady Arpels Papillon – where the butterfly flaps its wings – and the watch interests me because, aside from being a thing of beauty, it channels the maison’s fascination with nature. Another of our extraordinary objects is the new automaton Fée Ondine – a true masterpiece that shows our ability to produce complicated mechanisms. This watch – which I refer to as a ‘clock’, considering its 40cm dimensions – represents the overcoming of a variety of technical challenges to create a reaction of enchantment.” 34
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Van Cleef and Arpels’ boutiques, meanwhile, are havens within which you can procure one of these captivating timepieces, places where their poetic stories are patiently unfurled. Maffi joined the maison in 2011 and was integral in building its network of 11 locations in the Middle East region, with the UAE presence complemented by Riyadh, Jeddah, Doha, Kuwait and Bahrain. The décor of said boutiques is crucial – a fact embodied by regularly revamped window dressings, which are carefully created to delight observers. Inside the triumvirate of UAE boutiques (The Dubai Mall, Mall of the Emirates and The Galleria in Abu Dhabi), the flavour of the month is The Poetry of Time, which showcases the house’s current nature-inspired suite of timepieces. Maffi says the aesthetic endeavour is part of the brand’s identity: “For some installations we collaborate with local artists – one such example being last September, when Emirati artist and curator Sheikha Watfa Bint Hasher Al Maktoum designed our window for Eid. Each artist has their own way of seeing things and Van Cleef & Arpels has another, so the window dressings begin a dialogue and a connection between the two parties, which always makes for an intriguing end result. We carefully plan our windows and in-boutique
displays, because customers expect to see something different from our maison, to stoke their curiosity.” Van Cleef & Arpels’ reputation is deeply entwined with high jewellery, so how did it tweak the formula to venture into the domain of haute horology? As Maffi explains, it wasn’t such a seismic shift: “Our timepieces are like jewellery timepieces; of course they have mechanisms and components that are specific and, sometimes, developed purely for us, but what is important is that we have a strong jewellery presence in terms of the use of diamonds, precious stones and craftsmanship. Our watches go above and beyond just the mechanism; you can recognise a Van Cleef & Arpels watch because of its beauty, and for a story being told within breathtaking scenes set with diamonds and choice stones. So in actuality we’re a jewellerytimepiece watchmaker, and that stays true to our tradition.” The alliance of these disciplines makes the Parisian-born maison seem almost tailor-made for the style sensibilities of Dubai and its neighbours, believes Maffi. “Timepieces with diamonds seem to appeal in this region because of the jewellery-inclined taste of Middle Eastern women, who desire something sparkling to adorn their wrists with,” he says. 36
“But moreover, they adore watches that tell a story. Our Lady Arpels Pont des Amoureux watch [which sees two lovers meet on a romantic Parisian bridge at midnight] is one particularly appealing piece, and our timepieces with a narrative have always proven popular. It seems important to our clientele to possess ‘something else’ – for the watch to be a conversation piece because of its inherent curiosity and wonder.” Globally, Van Cleef & Arpels has historic ties with art and culture. Explains Maffi, “Our link with the world of dance and ballet dates back as far as the 1940s, and we have designed decorative pieces with ballerinas and dancers ever since. Throughout the decades we have collaborated with a variety of influential choreographers, and have also been involved with The FEDORA – the Van Cleef & Arpels Prize for Ballet. The arts have always been in our DNA, and there is an inextricable link between craftsmanship and creativity.” In Dubai this lineage surges on. For example, enthuses Maffi, “Prior to the opening of the Dubai Opera we contacted Jasper Hope, its CEO, to discuss how we could cooperate with them. We were keen to build something together for a new Dubai that is symbolic of a nation becoming even more involved in art, culture and craftsmanship.” 37
Next month you’re certain to hear the Van Cleef & Arpels name associated with another of its grass-roots involvements, when finalists of the 2017 Middle East Emergent Designer Prize (in partnership with Tashkeel) are announced during Design Days Dubai (14-17 March). Be it through community involvement or timepieces that capture a universe of imagination, tasteful impact is the name of the game. “We are not merely creating timepieces as a tool to indicate time; the concept is something ‘higher’ – above and beyond the mere use of checking what time it is,” insists Maffi. “Our approach is about storytelling, enchanting the owner with nature and dreams, and we do this differently to anyone else. A lot of our competitors concentrate on the mechanism, others make watches loaded with diamonds, but I believe we are the only one who blends the two to create timepieces with an overarching story to tell.” Proust (ever the dreamer) also wrote, “Always try to keep a patch of sky above your life,” and Van Cleef (ever the dream-makers) put that sky – along with the wonders that transpire within and beneath it – beautifully, poetically, upon your wrist. Discover Van Cleef & Arpels boutiques at The Dubai Mall, Mall of the Emirates and The Galleria in Abu Dhabi
T I M E-H O N O U R E D
ROMANCE
In his tome Van Cleef & Arpels: Treasures And Legends, French journalist and historian Vincent Meylan explains that for legendary lovers Wallis Simpson and Edward VII, their royal collection of Van Cleefs & Arpels treasures “charted a map of their sentimental journey”. Indeed, since 1906, each handmade creation to emerge from the Maison’s historic Place Vendôme home captures an inspiring story – a point unequivocally made in an enchanting set of fine timepieces. A Lady Arpels Poetic Complications or Extraordinary Dials watch captures high-jewellery craftsmanship and combines it with the spirit of horological finesse. They represent pure enchantment for the senses, where ownership (and the passage of time) are handsomely rewarded by bearing witness to the revelation of cherished design secrets. The novelties are bestowed with technical mastery, delicately unfurled via the most nuanced details of an imaginary world: a butterfly taking flight; the flutter of a fairy’s wings; the revolution of the sun and moon with the glittering of stars; the meeting of two lovers, fulfilling their destiny upon Paris’ Pont des Arts. Delve into the wonder of Van Cleef & Arpels’ horology, with pieces which are certain to stand the test of time.
THE POETRY OF
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Observe the fledgling beginnings of amour with the Lady Arpels Pont des Amoureux watch. This piece from the Poetic Complications collection is devoted to love, its scene bathed in moonlight and exuding tenderness… The couple’s encounter takes place atop the Pont des Arts, which arches across the River Seine. Fear not, as these are no star-crossed lovers: on the stroke of both midnight and noon, a retrograde movement enables them to kiss, having spent 12 longing hours kept apart on separate
sides of the fabled ODQGPDUN EULGJH fabled landmark bridge. *ULVDLOOH Grisaille enamelling was used here by 9DQ &OHHI $USHOV IRU WKH ¿UVW Van Cleef & Arpels for the first WLPH ± LW¶V D WHFKQLTXH WKDW EDFNOLJKWV time – it’s a technique that backlights tableau DQG H̆HFWV D VLOKRXHWWHG the tableau and effects a silhouetted GLDO $ PP ZLGH FDVH RI FW ZKLWH dial. A 38mm-wide case of 18ct white gold is punctuated with resplendent diamonds, and the dial is totally KDQG SDLQWHG 7ime hand-painted. Time is told via the fair PDLGHQ¶V XPEUHOOD ZKLFK VHUYHV DV WKH maiden’s umbrella (which serves as the KRXU LQGLFDWRU ZKLOH WKH JHQWOHPDQ¶V hour indicator), while the gentleman’s ÀRZHU hidden EHKLQG KLV EDFN SRLQWV flower, hidden behind his back, points WR WKH PLQXWH PDUNHUV ,W¶V D EHJXLOLQJ to the minute markers. It’s a beguiling VWRU\ RI HPRWLRQ DQG \HDUQLQJ story of emotion and yearning.
A TOUCH OF
WONDER
The nymph represents gaiety and whimsy within the Lady Arpels Jour Nuit Fée Ondine watch, while the dreamlike sequence she safeguards is awash with calm and effortless serenity. But its visual ease belies the arduous craftsmanship that was poured into a timepiece such as this. Seated on a water lily with her leg dipped in the water, Ondine’s graceful silhouette recalls the feminine figures created by Van Cleef & Arpels in the 1940s. The dial’s rotating disc – which turns a full circle in 24 hours –ensures the sun (in yellow sapphires) beams
CHOREOGRAPHED
GRACE
Russian prima ballerina Anna Pavlova said she dreamed of her eventual profession as “spending my whole life dancing as lightly as a butterfly”. It’s a thought crystallised in the finesse and poise of the Lady Arpels Ballerine Enchantée watch, and its new interpretation – the d’Orient – is an exclusive for the Middle East, adding a dash of emerald green to the existing concept. In each of the exclusively numbered timepieces, a slide concealed at the eight o’clock mark brings to life the glittering tutu of this half dancer/half fairy; the two sides smoothly arch to the respective
hour and minute indication, then fluidly reassume their place (thanks to a double retrograde movement that harks back to the Magicien Chinois pocket watch from 1927). Guilloché waves lap behind a ballerina who is sculpted from gold and diamonds, with a skirt in layered veils of champlevé and translucent green enamel. A shiny alligator strap, pin buckle set with round diamonds, and crown studded with a single diamond completes a piece that is akin to an accomplished performance by the legendary Pavlova herself, immortalised in a timepiece to be eternally admired.
down on the scene from dawn to dusk, before dipping beneath the horizon to make way for an enthralling appearance by a diamond full moon. Creating this effect is a self-winding mechanical movement and a 24-hour module that was developed exclusively for the Maison. Enamelling, engraving and gem-setting techniques combine with colours from intense green tsavorite garnets, pink sapphires and yellowy orange spessartite garnets to decorate a mother-of-pearl dial. The movement brings this cycle to life – it’s Van Cleef & Arpels’ take on the ethereal, depicted with perpetual, hypnotic harmony.
THE RHYTHM
OF NATURE The natural world is an enduring muse for Van Cleef & Arpels, with Mother Nature’s influence – and, indeed, colour palette – providing a wealth of inspiration. Certain elements are conjured up in both the Lady Jour des Fleurs (left) and Lady Nuit Papillon (right) watches. They are unique yet entwined; horology pieces that seize upon natural wonder for their visual spark. The Lady Jour des Fleurs watch evokes the cycle of the seasons – its delicate foliage motif is
DAYDREAM
IN THE HEAVENS Unbounded creativity is present in every Poetic Complications piece from Van Cleef & Arpels, and the sky’s the limit for the aerial butterfly ballet that transpires in the carefully crafted Lady Arpels Ronde des Papillons watch. Their circling dance among the clouds sets the tempo for the minutes, while the hours “take flight in the wake of a swallow, a symbol of joyful portent”, in the words of the maison. Again, technical mastery is concealed by aesthetic refinement. The trio of butterflies, each moving at a different speed, are accelerated and then slowed
by an elliptical wheel inside the mechanism, their pathway expressing the passage of time. The dial can burst into life at your whim, via an animation of some 10 seconds. At the push of a carefully placed button the butterflies set off on a dance around the clouds, calmly resuming their flight at the end of the animated performance. An engraved sapphireglass window on the white-gold case back allows the decorated oscillating weight to peek through; it’s a glimpse of the mechanism that allows this virtuoso dance to perform its waltz.
adorned with berries and brought to life by changing hues, from springlike green to autumnal red. The Lady Nuit Papillon version, meanwhile, paints a wondrous scene of butterflies frolicking in the moonlight. Both possess alligator straps, white-gold 33mm cases, a specially developed 12-hour module and high-jewellery bracelets embellished with beautiful gems. Each, too, is a magnificent feat of watchmaking, in kinship with artistic finesse.
Jewellery FEBRUARY 2017 : ISSUE 69
Forever Pure
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With its new Bouton de Camélia high-jewellery collection, Chanel channels a natural beauty that was close to Coco’s heart
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simple white rounded flower: thornless, feminine and understated in appearance. However, as Mademoiselle Chanel once uttered, “Simplicity is the key note of all true elegance”; abiding by this she took this flower – the camellia – and made its femininity an enduring symbol of her maison, and mind-set. Coco’s considered decision to adopt the forbidden, geometrically rounded flower was due to its representation of delicacy, purity, and independence. Its lack of overpowering perfume allowed the complexities of her own No 5 to enchant; the flower’s stark simplicity charmed its way into the décor designs of her private world, and she boldly wore one – jewel-like upon her outfit – to visually provoke. In the present, her camellia beautifully inspires fine-jewellery pieces created by Chanel’s Lesage workshop, appearing in gems such as the exquisite Bouton de Camélia ring and necklace pairing. Each finely crafted piece to feature this bloom breathes new life into an emblem that was lovingly cherished by the late, great founder herself. In Asia, from where the flower originates, there is a belief that the camellia has one other crucial meaning – longevity. It’s little wonder, then, that the magnificent high jewellery of the Parisian maison continues to astound. 38
18ct white-gold ring, set with 70 brilliant-cut diamonds, and 18ct white-gold necklace, set with 41 brilliant-cut diamonds – both Bouton de CamÊlia by Chanel 39
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FEBRUARY 2017 : ISSUE 69
The Incredibles Oscar season marks a prime opportunity to behold the very best of Harry Winston: rare, exquisite and entirely unique high-jewellery expressions WORDS : CHRIS UJMA
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Designers and craftsmen transform each individual gem into collective works of art
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Previous page: Ruby and diamond flower earrings, necklace and ring, set in 18ct gold and platinum Opposite: Cascading drop sapphire and diamond necklace and earrings, set in platinum; diamond bracelet, set in platinum
f, on your perusal of gems throughout the year, you discover a high-jewellery piece from the Harry Winston portfolio, you’ll have laid eyes upon a creation that represents the pinnacle of the house’s craftsmanship and design. The Incredibles – one of the brand’s main pillars, which also include the Iconic and Cluster ranges – is the name bestowed upon its prized collection, and was derived from a specific line of thought. “The creation of a Harry Winston jewel begins with a study of the extraordinary – the finest diamonds and the rarest gemstones in the world,” they say. “Expertly chosen for their superlative quality, these luminous stones are the sparks that ignite the imaginations of Harry Winston designers and craftsmen, who work closely together to transform each individual gem into collective works of art. The end results are brilliant jewels of impossible beauty – jewels so remarkable and so rare, they can only be described by a single word: incredible.” Inspiration is drawn from a vast archive of references – an incredible (sorry) 100,000 unique designs from the Harry Winston annals serve as creative touchstones. But it is not just in a vault of sketches that Winston left an idelible mark; he was a pioneer of lending gems to the stars. The famously clandestine New Yorker made a savvy decision to use the Academy Awards to garner attention, with Jennifer Jones the first to be draped in his jewels at the 1944 bash. He ushered in a new dawn for the Oscars, and as other jewellery houses followed suit, the entertainment summit has morphed from being a ‘mere’ celebration of the finest actors and actresses into a red-carpet audition for the most resplendent haute-joaillerie haul. There’s no actual statuette given for the most sparkling leading lady, but 43
Charlize Theron has been one such perennial showstopper for the brand. At the entertainment showpiece in 2014 she debuted a USD15 million D Flawless cluster-diamond pendant, and in 2016 she was positively lustrous, displaying a smorgasbord of glitter – a 48ct Secret Cluster diamond necklace complemented by Winston Cluster diamond earrings, a cushion-cut diamond ring with micro pavé, a micropavé diamond band ring and Queen Diamond ring, all set in platinum. These eye-catching adornments are, naturally, examples that are counted among the Incredibles elite. Were there an Oscar equivalent for jewellery, these pieces would perhaps sweep the board: best leading performance, best newcomer and – given Harry Winston’s eight decades of red-carpet dominance and ability to translate past designs into glorious modern masterpieces – the lifetime achievement award. While the titular tradition was first unveiled in 2008, the most recent development is that for the first time pieces in the collection will be presented as a series of one-of-a-kind high-jewellery suites. Fashioned from diamonds, rubies, sapphires and emeralds, each stone is meticulously hand-set, to emphasise its individual brilliance and radiant fire. The examples showcased to us were a visual feast: chandelier earrings with 32.57 carats of diamonds; a radiant-cut yellow diamond ring totalling 15.56 carats, set in 18ct yellow gold and platinum; a cascading drop sapphire and diamond necklace; matching ruby and diamond flower ring and earrings… each distinctly unique, yet bound by incomparable beauty and brilliance. Mr Winston may have passed in 1978, but his fierce spirit for innovation and beauty lives on – carefully cultivated to shine under the Oscar spotlight, and then well beyond the big event.
Grittily suave on screen and positively elusive off it, legendary sartorial style defines Paul Newman – for some. Equipped with memorable musings, political fire and a thirst for adrenaline, fashion was merely his outer shell
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s any woman (and self-assured man) will testify, before being arrested by a Paul Newman garment choice, the first thing that grabs the attention is his steely blue eyes. If you’re looking at the late actor as a style muse, he has an already unfair ‘accessory’ advantage, but Newman’s take on the matter of his own knee-weakeners showed his trademark mischievous wit: “I picture my epitaph: ‘Here lies Paul Newman, who died a failure because his eyes turned brown.’” This star had an ambivalence for fame, and never bought into the hype. Close to a decade has transpired since his passing, yet Newman’s styling during his golden years compels the aspiring gent of any era to back-browse his effortless, timeless outfits. For a maverick immortalised in motion on the silver screen, there’s something awe-inspiring about Newman’s freezeframed moments – his enduring legacy as a lookbook subject, naturally suave and seemingly nonchalant. An impressive filmography is where he made his name, breaking into the industry after showing his acting clout on stage. His career comprised stellar interpretations of a variety of roles that produced 10 Oscar nominations, with a Best Actor triumph in 1987 for The Colour Of Money. But allow this to soak in for a moment, because his longevity was astonishing – those Academy Award nominations were consistent in occurrence, materialising in every decade from the 1950s to the 2000s. Newman brought his urbane charm to a host of cinema-vault staples: prime examples being Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid (alongside Robert Redford), Cat On A Hot Tin Roof (opposite the glamorous Elizabeth Taylor), The Hustler, and as Lucas ‘Luke’ Jackson in Cool Hand Luke – which turns 50 this year. Cool Hand Luke was especially resonant: a prison drama loaded with anti-establishment dialogue that captured the mood of the time – one of those cinematic watershed moments that fuelled a zeitgeist for a new way of thinking. Reviewing the chain-gang film for TCM, Rob Nixon says, “The film’s protagonist is not a recognisable figure of the era’s counterculture; he’s no free-love hippy or dedicated antiwar activist, yet younger audiences
were drawn to his rebellious nature… The script’s most famous line, ‘What we have here is failure to communicate,’ seemed to speak to the growing divide between generations, races and political philosophies of the decade.” Off screen, Newman participated in civil-rights marches, and nailed his opinions to the mast – there was no carefully cultivated self-brand preservation here, just standing up for what he believed in. Democrat Newman was a real mixer, and his outspoken political thoughts led to his most surreal moment: inclusion on paranoid Republican president Richard Nixon’s Enemies List, for ‘supporting liberal causes’, as per The White House Counsel’s Office. The initial list of 20 names – later expanded – was a compilation of the president’s critics, such as anti-war columnist Mary McGrory (for ‘daily anti-Nixon articles’) and Bernard T Feld, a scientist whose campaign against the atom bomb arose from his guilt at being part of its Manhattan Project development team. Newman, in hefty company, was gleeful, confiding in TIME, “My highest single honour is that I was No 19 on Nixon’s Enemies List. All the other actors were so jealous.” He didn’t put his price tag before principle either, reportedly turning down the part of Harry Callahan in Dirty Harry because he considered the screenplay too right wing, instead recommending Clint Eastwood for the role. But while the ideologies of Luke swooped close to Newman’s own societal sentiment, the lines between the on-screen persona and off-screen Joe should not be blurred. In Paul And Joanne: A Biography Of Paul Newman And Joanne Woodward, he recounted, “The first time I remember women reacting to me was when we were filming Hud in Texas. Women were literally trying to climb through the transoms at the motel where I stayed. At first, it’s flattering to the ego. At first. Then you realise that they’re mixing me up with the roles I play – characters created by writers who have nothing to do with who I am.” Later, after more career mileage, he echoed a similar sentiment in a talk with Craig Modderno: “I never ask my wife [fellow actress Woodward] about my 46
My highest single honour is that I was No 19 on Nixon’s Enemies List. All the other actors were so jealous
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flaws. Instead, I try to get her to ignore them and concentrate on my sense of humour. You don’t want any woman to look under the carpet, guys, because there’s lots of flaws underneath. Joanne believes my character in a film we did together, Mr & Mrs Bridge, comes closest to who I really am. I personally don’t think there’s one character who comes close… but I learned a long time ago not to disagree on things that I don’t have a solid opinion about.” His fashion sense, though? Now that was completely unmistakable. It’s not really that the frame on which the clothes were draped was particularly unique – a comical early career story is of a strapping Newman being mistaken for the legendary Mr Mumbles of film, and hamming up the error by signing around 500 autographs with ‘Best wishes, Marlon Brando’. No, his sartorial lore was written by calculated wardrobe choices. Charlie Thomas at The Gentleman’s Journal describes Newman thus: “Always classic, and in neutral colours and darker tones, Newman’s choices were exemplary. Before the sickening days of celebrity stylists, he shows how good a well-tailored suit can complement your body shape.” Citing a New York Daily News image of the star suited, booted and well accessorised (in front of the steps of a classic American Airlines craft), Thomas praised, “He’s gone for a two-button, single-breasted jacket with wide, padded shoulders that accentuate his athletic physique, as well as high-waisted, straight-leg trousers, which make him appear taller. Wearing loafers, as he often did, he adds a slice of Americana prep, but here they feature a plain front, as opposed to the apron front that defines a penny loafer. The slim, squared-off tie finishes off a smart look.” Be it on the red carpet, smoking a cigarette in an immaculate suit, or in a white T-shirt and tailored shorts on a boat in Italy, he owned the sophisticated look, ever dressed to perfection – the majority of his image catalogue being in black and white exuding an extra magnetic aura. The New York Times said, definitively, “Whenever menswear designers find 49
themselves in need of inspiration, they turn to the pantheon: Cary Grant, Steve McQueen and Paul Newman.” Newman embodied Sir Hardy Amies’ immortal quote – “A man should look as if he’s bought his clothes with intelligence, put them on with care and then forgotten all about them” – because he never really made comment on his clothing, preferring to focus on more weighty matters. He was not one to rely on looks, building a successful business empire and carving a lasting philanthropic legacy with his sense of civic duty – Esquire calls him the “polymath pin-up of 50s Hollywood”. His devilish competitive streak found a home on the racetrack (it might have been the symbolism of speeding away from the trappings of fame that appealed to him most), and with familial grounding and entrepreneurial spirit, he co-founded Newman’s Own food and beverages, donating all profits from the healthyeating organisation to charity. He managed to put his trademark reflective slant on the venture, labelling himself “the star of oil and vinegar and the oil and vinegar of the stars”. His dash of humour was here too: “The embarrassing thing is that my salad dressing is out-grossing my films.” Reading about Newman, you can’t rely on his own quotes to get a grasp of the man – he’s too damn humble, and often drenched in droll. One of his exhibits: “If you’re playing a poker game and you look around the table and can’t tell who the sucker is, it’s you.” The most decisive accounts of the man come from others. A fascinating description flowed from the pen of film critic Pauline Kael, back in 1987. “When a role is right for him, he’s peerless,” she wrote. “Newman is more comfortable in a role when it isn’t scaled heroically; even when he plays a b******, he’s not a big b****** – only a callow, selfish one, like Hud. He can play what he’s not – a dumb lout. But you don’t believe it when he plays someone perverse or vicious, and the older he gets and the better you know him, the less you believe it. His likeableness is infectious: nobody should ever be asked not to like Paul Newman.”
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VERSUS THE WORLD Designing with Zayn, eating KFC with Trump, being saved by Sir Elton – Donatella Versace opens up about her extraordinary life in fashion WORDS : Luke LeitCh
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he fat, glossy book that rests on Donatella Versace’s printtrouser-clad legs makes them look even leaner than they are. She turns a page. “Ahhh!” she exclaims as she swivels on the sofa. “This I have to say something about. It was in Trump’s place!” Of course Donatella Versace has a Donald Trump story. She knew Diana, counts Sir Elton John as a bestie (and a saviour), and currently has Zayn Malik on speed dial. This always blonde (well, since she first dyed it aged 11) concentrated personification of Italian fashion vava-voom has been a marquee member of contemporary celebrity culture since the Eighties. So then, Trump? Versace’s English can be challenging to decipher. She speaks rather low and very fast in an accent more glutinously rich than a good osso bucco. Now, though, without words, she is perfectly clear: Versace emits a strangled, gagging sound – a heaving dry retch – as nauseated affirmation. The diamonds in her gold watch glint as she waves at the pages in front of her. On them are two pictures of Madonna shot by Steven Meisel for a Versace campaign back in 1995. Madonna is lying on some stairs and standing by some palm trees. She gives it the full Madonna in full Versace sheath dresses. How could Trump resist? “We rented his place, Mar-a-Lago or whatever it is, in Palm Beach,” says Versace. “So when you’ve rented something, you don’t want the owner to come in. Well, he came in. I mean, we couldn’t get rid of him…” She reverts to the guttural, emitting a deep, primitive, horny-caveman ‘URGGGH!’ as an impression of Trump seeking entry to the set. “No, no,” she says, playing herself. “We are taking a picture inside there.” “URGGH,” Versace Trumps, “Madonna, eh!” “And he brought us Kentucky Fried Chicken!” she reverts to narration. “I mean, excuse me. Models, you know? It’s fashion!” She laughs. “He was nice, in a way. But he was pushy… And Madonna, she was fasting. So, ‘Do you want Kentucky Fried Chicken?’ No, thank you.” She shakes her head in utter disbelief. Today it is Halloween. Behind us an apricot sunset kisses the Hyde Park tree line outside this Park Lane penthouse suite. Soon Versace will red-carpetise:
Behind that curtain of artificially blonde hair there is a naturally occurring, unfiltered irreverence
she’s in London to collect an award from Harper’s Bazaar magazine. An award for what? “Fashion icon,” says Versace with relish, then delivers a fist pump. “Yes! Shall I do the fist pump when I collect the award?” She pauses. “But it’s Halloween. So maybe this is a joke, me getting the award, the fashion-icon award tonight? I want to make sure!” Versace is a pro when it comes to applying a gentle undertow of mockery to her own fearsomely ‘fashion’ image. She once memorably declared, “I sleep every night in the deep freezer,” when asked about her beauty regime (the truth was Botox), and behind that curtain of artificially blonde hair there is a naturally occurring, unfiltered irreverence. Yes, her longtime PR is sitting across from us this afternoon, yet here his role is limited to occasional translation (he speaks expert Versace), plus frequent head-shaking, eyerolling exhalations as she delivers some scathing zingers. One emerges as she discusses a recent Versace coup, also flavoured by American politics: how Michelle Obama came to wear a Versace dress to host the Italian prime minister Matteo Renzi at her last ever state dinner as first lady. It started, Versace says, when Anna Wintour, US Vogue editor, asked Donatella and several other Italian designers to submit designs for a shoot of Obama for the magazine. When Obama saw Versace’s, the designer reports, “The White House call us – me! – to say, ‘Is there a possibility of making something for the first lady?’ So of course we did it. She asked for the colour, eh? She wanted rose gold. And the only thing left to do was sign confidentiality agreements that if I broke I would go to prison! The hardest thing was that I could not tell anything to anybody… I sent my people to do the 52
fitting, and she was happy.” Rightly so, I venture. Obama looked good. “She looked amazing, eh?” Versace corrects. “The waist and the bustier! But she’s such a strong woman. You know, it’s not just the power of the dress, she showed her power through the dress. There was something behind it. It was not just a metal mesh.” Plus, I add, Gucci had been rumoured as the Obama-anointed label of the evening: was there wailing and gnashing of teeth elsewhere in Milan that night? “Oh, there were a few people crying,” she says with relish. “No. Body. Knew!” Cue Versace topic-swerve to another head of state’s wife. At the same dinner, Agnese Landini – aka Mrs Renzi – represented Italian fashion in a lacepatterned strapless gown by Ermanno Scervino. “Sorry to talk about my prime minister. But the wife… I mean, this is fashion. Italian fashion. Why did she not go to Armani, or Valentino, to anybody? It’s true! Mr Armani was invited [to the dinner], you know. I felt so embarrassed, being Italian, to be represented for America.” Whoa there, signora. Didn’t Landini wear Scervino to be loyal? Because she, Renzi and the designer go way back? “Scervino, yes. But the dress should fit! And the dress did not fit.” Fun as it is, this meeting is not dedicated only to dishing Versace’s take on politicians’ fashion policies, and that book is not there solely to be slimming. Entitled Versace, naturally, and newly published by Rizzoli, it is a 288-page Encyclopaedia Donatellica – and the putative point of this interview. A retrospective of Versace’s career, it features an introduction by her (in which she dedicates the book to Prince), reams of sumptuous photography, plus various essays on the collections and campaigns she has overseen.
Versace and Lady Gaga backstage at Paris Fashion Week, 2014 © Rahi Rezvani
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Versace with the late Franca Sozzani. Photograph by Sante D’Orazio
Everything crashed around me. Nothing was right. I had to find who I am without Gianni – because I was his shadow
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The publisher first approached her, Versace says, nearly three years ago. “So I didn’t know whether to take it as a compliment or as a tip: ‘Okay, this is your career – you can leave!’” She laughs – she laughs a lot – then adds, “I decided to take it as a compliment.” Reading the book a week before, I’d been enthralled by the first essay, written by the former Interview magazine editor-in-chief Ingrid Sischy (who died in 2015). A close friend of Donatella’s brother, Gianni, Sischy delivers a fascinating mini-memoir of her Versace experience – with plenty of Donatella in there, too. It spans the Versaces’ upbringing in Reggio Calabria, retelling tales first told by Gianni, such as when he persuaded Donatella, then 11, to dye her hair blonde in honour of the famous Italian pop singer Patty Pravo. Later he commissioned his little sister to pinch the keys to the family’s Fiat convertible and drove her to Sicily to see Pravo sing live. When the car broke down on the autostrada they left it and hitchhiked to the gig. The car was lost for good. Sischy charts Gianni’s precocious facility for sketching, honed at the feet of their mother, Francesca, his first jobs as designer at Callaghan and Genny (alongside Donatella, then studying in Bologna), and the fateful moment in 1978 when their brother Santo – “He believed in budgets and respected them, not Gianni and me,” says Donatella in the essay – suggested they start Versace the label. Later, Sischy reports, it was Donatella who secured the family’s palazzo in Milan at auction (ironically, its previous owners were the Rizzoli family – founders of the publishers of this book). The story then arrives, reluctantly, at 15 July 1997. Sischy is phoned from Rome by Donatella: Gianni has been
shot and killed at his house in Miami. She meets the family there, and recalls, “Suffice it to say that I have never witnessed raw pain like the grief that Donatella and Santo demonstrated during those days of the aftermath… and waited for the FBI to capture the serial murderer who had taken the lives of Gianni and at least four other individuals in his three-month killing spree.” Later, Sischy recounts the decision – “in the name of their blood ties” – to continue the company. “Gianni would be very upset if we didn’t go on,” Sischy reports Donatella as saying. “The king was dead but we had to give hope to the people around him and to the company. I felt obligated to assure the creative team around Gianni that we were going to row the boat together.” Fittingly so, avers Sischy: for Donatella was already designing collection pieces when Gianni was alive – “She was always way more than a muse.” We sit on the sofa and flick through the book. Regarding a bountiful double-page collage of her collections, Versace observes, “Coffee-table books can be boring. We live in an Instagram time. So this is what I like.” There are pictures of Donatella with her daughter, Allegra, and her Jack Russell, Audrey (who has her own, excellent Instagram account and can’t be here, Versace laments, because British Airways will no longer let her travel in the cabin). Of Allegra, who is instrumental in the running of Versus, Versace’s second, millennial-pitched line, Donatella says, “She is very, very into Versus. Because it is a different generation… She has a very strong point of view. And we fight, of course. Because a mother and daughter in the same company are going to fight! But then in fact if she wants to do something she does it and 55
she does it better than I ask.” Alongside Allegra and the rest of the Versus team, Donatella is currently planning a twoseason capsule collection with Zayn Malik. They have been on the phone a lot, she says, “But he is a night owl and I am a day owl.” He is pitching some strong ideas: “He has great taste.” One particularly extravagant notion, Versace had to tell him, would be just too expensive to produce. “Because who is going to buy it apart from me, you and Gigi?” Gigi is Hadid, the model, and Malik’s girlfriend. Although she’d met Malik when he was in One Direction (she does not like One Direction at all), Versace first struck on the idea of recruiting him when she encountered him with Hadid: “He’s a real rock’n’roll guy.” Speaking of which, what about Daniel, her son, pictured in Versace as a bambino with his favourite toy Jeep – is he interested in design? The Versace visage darkens. “No! He hates it. He cuts all the labels out wherever they are because he hates labels…” She pauses, galled. “He doesn’t want people to know that he is my son. It’s all true! But he’s going to kill me because he made me promise not to talk about him – ‘Don’t talk! You promise! Don’t talk!’” Unfortunately for Daniel, Donatella is disinclined to stick to that promise. Versace Junior lives in London – “in Shoderidge” (Shoreditch) – and has just unwisely opted not to head west and meet his mother while she’s in town. She is clearly very proud of him. This, though, has riled her. “He is a great musician. He has his own punk-rock band. He played at the Isle of Wight festival and Iggy Pop was playing too. I said, ‘Daniel, you should meet him. He is an icon,’ and he said, ‘No! Because it is not coming from me.’” So, I venture, he wants to find his own path? “Absolutely,” she replies. “But I want people to know that I have a son! Or else [they think] that he is dead or disappeared!” Sorry, Daniel. Although excited by the book – “There is not one photographer who isn’t legendary. Richard Avedon. Helmut Newton. Irving Penn. Bruce Weber. Steven Meisel. You know? I worked with all of them” – Versace isn’t afraid to criticise it, too. Take one image, early on, that shows her cooking spaghetti in miniskirt and tank top.
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“That’s so fake!” she exclaims. What, she wouldn’t cook pasta dressed in such a flagrant violation of health and safety rules? “No! I wouldn’t be cooking the pasta. I am not interested.” So you don’t cook? “No! I’m not a cook. I can do steak, but I wouldn’t. Cooking isn’t something that makes me relaxed or anything. It makes me nervous.” Although it’s fake too – purposefully so – Versace lingers over an image taken by Jean-Paul Goude in 2003. It shows her lying in the lap of Linda Evangelista on a sofa that’s strikingly similar to the one we are are sitting on now. She says, “This was in my house, when it used to look like this. Linda is supposed to be me. My twin. She had one of my dresses fitted on her, we put a wig on her and she was supposed to be me.” She pauses, inspecting the gilded, crowded, rich intensity of her old interior décor. “This was a particular time for me,” she ventures, before expanding. “Gianni died in 1997. I could not just get on with everything in only a few years. Everything crashed around me. Nothing was right. I was still trying to find my way, but I knew it wasn’t the right way. I knew. And I had all these people around me. They were saying, ‘You should do this.’ Or, ‘You should do that.’ Or, ‘You should do Gianni things.’ And I was there a long time. I had to find who I am without Gianni – because I was his shadow, you know?” So when does she think she found her own, 100% Donatella voice as a designer? “More or less five years ago. And it took a long time to get there.”
So, the journey to find that voice… “Was horrible,” Versace interjects. “Horrible.” Context: following her brother’s murder, she reacquired a habit she had already managed once to quit – narcotics. In 2004, at Allegra’s 18th birthday party, Sir Elton John and her family staged an intervention. Her rehabilitation began. Although she does not mention these facts explicitly now, they lurk implicitly as she explains that horror. “First I had a very bad feeling, in myself. Because of… problems and troubles. Then I was over those troubles. But I found a new world in front of me. I was seeing things like I had never seen them before.” What, when you emerged from these troubles? She nods and gestures at the picture of her and Evangelista. “I went into this room and saw it as I had never seen it before – real, in front of me, and so in the right place. I [had] thought I was in the wrong place, not the rest of the world. So I started to work on myself. And I never looked back.” And, I imagine, as a designer it had been difficult to create items to inhabit the world when your view of it had been so distorted? “I was confused. I was making collections that were half good, half confused. I mean I wouldn’t follow one route, one feeling, one thing – capisce? – one path. I was a little bit of this and a little bit of that. Because I was afraid I was not presenting enough, shall we say.” This is a bold statement for a designer leafing through a tribute to nearly two decades of her collections, but according to Versace she has only truly hit her stride during her last three womenswear collections – and her most recent menswear collection. The womenswear revelation coincided with her decision to move the show out of the garden of the family palazzo alongside Gianni’s mausoleum: “Out of my comfort zone.” To specially recorded soundtracks exhorting gender equality, all three women’s collections saw Versace modulate the house codes incorporating military and sportswear fabrications, spearheading a radical (for Versace) insertion of flat shoes, while retaining a very powerful punch of sexiness and display. This, though, represents a contradiction – or at least what some might think is one. For surely many contemporary feminists, 56
misogynists and unreconstructed highcourt judges might discern friction between a narrative of equality and empowerment that’s illustrated with looks so fruity Trump would start flexing his fingers at first glimpse? Versace grimaces at this latest mention of Trump, and concedes, “I know exactly what you are saying.” Then she elegantly negotiates the point. “You know, I was thinking of Michelle [Obama] as I was hearing your questions about feminism and clothes. She is feminist! She is glamorous, she has heels, but nobody is a stronger ambassador for women than her.” She adds, “We are strong. Women are strong… and sexiness does not have to go against power. Glamour. Not sexiness, glamour… I can be more powerful than you as a woman and keep what I like. I don’t have to change myself to reach you, to talk to you, or to be relevant. That is what I’m saying.” Hmm. That makes sense, but leads to another source of potential friction. For Versace is in a minority of fashion designers on the schedules of New York, London, Milan and Paris who are female, and isn’t she hinting that it takes a woman fully to understand the experience of the woman she is designing for? “If you ask me, yes. Because we understand a woman’s body. A woman’s security. A woman’s attitude. So for me, yes.” She adds, “Some of the designers, when they design for a woman, they design for the woman they want to be, you know. They are thinking of themselves. But themselves and the woman are not the same… I want to design clothes that say, ‘This is a woman’s clothes.’ Riccardo Tisci is amazing, so many [male] designers are amazing, too – but sometimes there is this little thing where they need to make themselves a little bit behind who they are, and to look at the real woman.” It makes some sense – maybe not about all male designers, but certainly some. Either way, Donatella Versace seems entirely unafraid both to face and to share inconvenient truths. So what is the craziest story she’s heard told about herself? She laughs one more time before going out to be confirmed a fashion icon. “So many! And you know, the craziest stories about me, mostly, they are true.”
Photograph © Rahi Rezvani
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THE IT SISTERS How Gigi and Bella Hadid became darlings of the front row and queens of social media WORDS : Harriet Walker
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ou might not have heard of Gigi and Bella Hadid by name, but you may have seen their faces – pouting, almond-eyed – on magazine covers, ad campaigns, billboards, the sides of buses, and writhing in music videos with their pop-star love interests or papped on their way to lunch with songstress Taylor Swift. They’re all hair and waspy waists in crop tops and ripped jeans – the uniform of today’s fashionable young woman. The model sisters from California have, in less than a year, become the pin-ups of teen girls and the world’s top designers. Gigi, the elder sister at 21, exudes Californian glamour with sun-bleached blonde waves, golden limbs and a baby-faced kittenishness redolent of Brigitte Bardot, while Bella, 20, is more hip Morticia Addams – paler, darker and more hollow-cheeked, but no less sultry. And like all power couples, they’re all the more fascinating for coming as a pair. Gigi has starred on 14 Vogue covers; Bella was a fixture of the 2016 couture shows in Paris and bagged the closing slot on Fendi’s Trevi Fountain catwalk in Rome. But high-end fashion is hardly a conduit for mass appeal – the Hadids’ modelling careers are a function of their fame rather than a springboard for it. Their USP is that they’re at the centre of social media’s jeunesse dorée, whose feeds full of turquoise swimming pools and famous friends fuel the daydreams and aspirations of the consumers of tomorrow. It used to take USD10,000 to get a supermodel out of bed; now brands only book girls with that many Instagram followers. Between them, the Hadids have more than USD37 million. Suffice it to say, they’ve pretty much cornered the modern-day ‘It girl’ market. When Bella Hadid wore a slashedto-the-hip, plunge-fronted red silk Alexandre Vauthier gown at Cannes last May, she bumped A-list actresses off the front pages with what the tabloids called her ‘Jessica Rabbit look’. When she was snapped in a red Adidas tracksuit a few days later, the style became a high-street bestseller. That sort of reach – from luxury to leisurewear and red carpet to ‘real’ life – is what makes the sisters such a valuable tool for the brands falling over themselves to book them.
When Gigi shot a Tommy Hilfiger advert on the streets of New York, paparazzi images went global within hours, effectively trailing the advert before it had even been released. That lenses are trained on the Hadids 24 hours a day makes them not only the most immersive marketing opportunity yet, but also the most efficient. The sisters have the potency and impact that the advertising community has been searching desperately for in order to seduce the next generation. Millennials are notoriously difficult to target via traditional media, and innately sceptical of digital marketing. To reach them, brands have gone native; their best bet to create sales is to turn the likes of the Hadids into virtual hoardings for their products. “Bella and Gigi come up in our meetings every day,” says Lorraine Candy, the editor-in-chief of Elle, which featured Bella Hadid on the cover of its June 2016 issue. “They’re cool, pretty and they work hard at styling themselves the way my readers want to look. They’re how you’d want to dress if you were a young woman today.” They’re also part of a winningly wholesome crowd – Taylor Swift’s ‘squad’, which also includes Kendall Jenner, Karlie Kloss and Girls star Lena Dunham – that has not only inspired solidarity as a way of life among teenage girls, but also feeds its own fame on a daily basis. The mini-me hordes on the high street, with their linked arms and group selfies, are proof enough. The shops are awash with the Hadid uniform of leggings and crop tops, bomber jackets, highwaisted vintage-fit jeans, topknots and chokers – a Nineties wardrobe revival spearheaded by two people born in 1995 and 1996 respectively. You’re more likely to see them in jeans or athleisure than you are in a red-carpet gown, something that roots them in the same reality as those who follow them – albeit a rather sunnier, glossier version. There are more than 200 products on sale in the UK womenswear market named Gigi, from sparkly heels to a swimming cap. The shirt worn by Bella in Topshop’s spring 2016 catwalk show became the bestselling item in the entire collection; the brand swiftly rebooked her for its subsequent festive campaign. 60
They’ve displayed a canny pickiness over the projects they put their names to 61
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“The girls have some amazing designer gear, but they’re just as keen on Topshop,” says Hannah Almassi from celebrity fashion site whowhatwear.com, adding, “They create micro-trend booms on an almost daily basis, constantly influencing the way girls dress.” She cites styling tricks such as ‘lampshading’ – wearing over-the-knee boots with a short skirt – and the current street-style vogue for wearing coats and jackets shrugged off the shoulders to the elbow. “They feel genuine, but also small-scale enough to be replicable and to catch fire quickly.” This is no rags-to-riches story – the Hadids were born into a life of celebrity, money, penthouses and the A-list. Raised in Los Angeles, they – and their transfixing physiognomies – are of Palestinian and Dutch descent, the daughters of the property developer Mohamed Hadid (who has 15 RitzCarlton hotels on his books) and the former model Yolanda van den Herik, now an interior designer. They have one brother, Anwar, who is 17 and a cover star of Teen Vogue. After divorcing Mohamed in 2000, Yolanda married music producer David Foster. From an early age, the sisters mixed with the likes of Whitney Houston and Christina Aguilera at their home in Beverly Hills. And, because no parable of modern celebrity is complete without them, the Hadids have strong ties to the Kardashians – Foster’s ex-wife Linda Thompson was married to Bruce (now Caitlyn) Jenner and is mother to Brody and Brandon, the half-brothers of model (and Gigi’s best friend) Kendall Jenner. But that isn’t to say they’re quite as fame-hungry: during their adolescence, the Hadid sisters avoided the TV cameras that followed their mother as one of the stars of the reality series The Real Housewives Of Beverly Hills. “We didn’t want to be the girls from The Real Housewives,” Bella has said. Since then, they’ve displayed a canny pickiness over the projects they put their names to: luxury brands and upper-tier editorials, only the coolest music videos – and certainly no licensed clothing lines or smartphone apps à la Kim or Kylie. Yet. “There’s a level of management around the Kardashians and an overarching plan for the entire family, 62
Traditionally, models haven’t spoken much. But right now, you’ve got to have an opinion
whereas the Hadids don’t approach things as a unit,” says Grazia editor Natasha Pearlman. “Despite the fact they’ve come from a reality-TV background, they defy those origins and seem authentic and unfiltered.” Part of that is their Instagram and Snapchat presence, which is where their fans know them from. Posts are, for the most part, glamorous selfies, behindthe-scenes images at shoots and fashion weeks, and the odd promotion of covers they’re on or campaigns they’re in. But it’s also the medium in which they address their fans, much more so than any newspaper or TV interview – and with far wider-reaching effect. When, at the beginning of her catwalk career, online trolls (and some fashion editors) accused Gigi of not being skinny enough (at 35-25-35, she’s curvy in comparison to most runway models), she replied directly to them in an Instagram comment: “I have boobs, I have abs, I have a butt, I have thighs, but… I’m fitting into the sample sizes. Your mean comments don’t make me want to change my body… If I didn’t have the body I do, I wouldn’t have the career I do.” “Don’t follow me if you don’t like it,” she told British Vogue, before asking of her detractors, “What’s going on in your life that makes you feel the need to do that?” When her boyfriend (and former One Directioner) Zayn Malik cancelled live shows because of anxiety attacks, she took to Twitter in support in typically millennial therapy-speak: “Your bravery… makes me proud… Those who can find compassion now are the ones that deserve to watch you continue to grow.” 63
Bella is no less outspoken. In 2012, she was diagnosed with Lyme disease, a flu-like condition carried by ticks from the horse she used to ride daily. It affected her energy levels, brain function and sight, leading to a car crash that was reported as a drink-driving offence, but which Hadid maintains was caused by exhaustion and memory loss. Her riding career – she was an Olympic hopeful with sights set on Rio 2016 – was ruined by the illness, which has also affected her mother and brother. Now she’s promoting Yolanda’s book on the subject. “I’ve seen you in bed, struggling for the past five years,” she wrote on Instagram during a heavy time: “I would cry to myself knowing that there was nothing I could do to help… This book shows kids and adults with Lyme across the world that you are not alone.” “Traditionally, models haven’t spoken much,” says Pearlman. “But right now, you’ve got to have an opinion. The Hadids aren’t threatening, because they’re on the side of women. So you don’t envy them; you want to be them.” They share just enough on social channels to let fans feel that they’re getting the inside scoop. And, because they are a pair, they’re a marketing dream: anyone trying to sell to a teen market knows how appealing it is to be able to have a favourite. Numbers-wise, that looks to be Gigi, with 28 million Instagram followers to Bella’s nine million. But the younger Hadid is catching up fast. “They reflect how young women want to live life,” says Pearlman. “I don’t think the Hadids are a flash in the pan.”
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Diana, Princess of Wales. Her name alone conjures visions of unforgettable elegance and shy grace; her statuesque frame was a designer’s dream, be it for a glamorous ballgown or diplomatic power-dressing statement. A new exhibition – at her beloved Kensington Palace residence, no less – narrates the fascinating fashion story of one of the world’s most photographed women
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t’s easy to forget that style icons are not born but refined over time; looking good requires self-awareness, taste, planning and precision. It’s a salient point captured by Eleri Lynn, the curator of Diana: Her Fashion Story, an exhibition that charts the Princess of Wales’ most breathtaking sartorial expressions. “One of the most surprising things I’ve discovered during the course of my research is that before she got engaged, Diana only owned three items of clothing herself: a long dress, a smart shirt, and a pair of smart shoes. The rest, she shared with her flatmates,” Lynn reveals. This flirtation with fashion innocence, back when she was a nursery assistant, would not last long for the pre-princess once vaulted into the public eye in 1981. “Lady Diana Spencer had to very quickly learn the rules of royal dressing, and at the same time, her own personal style was evolving,” the curator expounds. That evolution would power Diana’s ascendency from wardrobesharing roomie to a muse women the world over sought to emulate. “Diana became a fashion icon in the same way as Jackie Kennedy or Audrey Hepburn – timeless, elegant and, to this day, still so relevant,” contextualises Lynn. “She had a strong sense of what she liked from the beginning – but her sense of style really evolved throughout her life, and she grew more confident about what suited her.”
Soft-spoken Lady Diana was fairy-tale-like nobility, put little girls’ jaws agape, and set an impeccable standard for royal dressing – one only need look at the scrutiny that befalls Catherine, the Duchess of Cambridge, to see how Diana turned royal analysis into a ‘whatever will she wear next?!’ frenzy. Modern-day social-media influencers with a smattering of followers are left in the shade when compared to the influential reach of the power princess. Explains Lynn, “Everything Diana wore had a huge impact and was copied by the high street. She helped popularise the romantic look in the early 1980s, the fabulously glamorous Dynasty look later in the decade, and the sleek silhouettes of the 1990s. Each of these looks reappears on the catwalk from time to time, and are inseparable from Diana. Perhaps her greatest influence, though, will be her championing understated British tailoring in the 1990s – a move that put many of them on the international stage.” As a style idol the princess’ chronicles of chic are impressive. Among the volumes: a shimmery, mermaid-like Bruce Oldfield dress that earned her the ‘Dynasty Di’ moniker; the grey silk sarongstyle Catherine Walker dress with embroidered pearls, worn for her coy Mario Testino Vanity Fair portrait; a sleeveless violet Versace (and matching clutch) for a 1996 dinner in Chicago; the figure-hugging LBD by Greek designer Christina 66
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Stambolian; conservatively styled in an eggshellblue suit for a Shaukat Khanum Memorial Hospital visit in Pakistan, coquettishly peering out from under her sweeping fringe. But Diana’s standout style moment in the limelight, Lynn believes, was the so-called ‘Travolta’ dress – the ink-blue velvet Victor Edelstein gown she wore to a White House function in 1985, five days before her engagement to Prince Charles was announced. “It is undoubtedly one of the most iconic pieces in our exhibition, and the picture of Diana wearing it as she danced with John Travolta at the White House is among her best-known photographs. One of the great pleasures of my job is being able to see such iconic gowns close up, and this dress really is deserving of its reputation – it is beautifully tailored and perfectly made for that iconic photograph: it has to be seen close up to be believed.” (An enchanting aside: Travolta recalled, years later, of the waltz, “I didn’t know or expect to dance with Princess Diana, and it was the president’s wife, Nancy Reagan, who said, ‘It is her wish.’ At midnight, I had to tap her on her shoulder, and I had to say, ‘Would you care to dance?’ She turned around and dipped her head in that Lady Diana way and we were off for 15 minutes of dancing. I’ll never forget it.”) She was adventurous – as any sartorial zeitgeist must be to turn heads their way. “It’s been fascinating to look at some of the risks she took with fashion,” says Lynn. “She learned the unwritten rules of royal dressing but liked to break them sometimes, even with tiny touches of something daring. She often didn’t wear gloves or hats, and was the first female royal to wear
She learned the rules of royal dressing but liked to break them sometimes, even with tiny touches of something daring trousers to an evening event. She liked to wear tuxedo-style outfits and she wore a lot of black – a colour usually only worn by the royal family for mourning, but which is obviously highly fashionable. One outfit that particularly springs to mind was a flamenco-style Murray Arbeid dress worn with one black evening glove, and one red.” Diana was a fashion figurehead, yet she was the front for a host of designers and stylists who helped curate her style persona. Designer David Sassoon (who would go on to dress a whole host of royals) was there from the beginning, introduced to Diana by her mother. Edelstein designed some extraordinary showstopping evening gowns for her in the 1980s, while the more streamlined look
the princess adopted in the 1990s was a product of her enduring relationship with Catherine Walker, who was an integral figure in Diana’s fashion narrative. So too was Paul Costelloe, her personal designer from 1982 until 1997. The insight and support of Princess Diana’s key designers – Sassoon, Edelstein, her head designer Said Cyrus and Elizabeth Emanuel (who worked with her husband, David, on Diana’s silktaffeta and antique-lace wedding gown) – was all invaluable to piecing together Diana: Her Fashion Story. It is they who recollect tales of Diana’s kind personality, which brought softness to the gradations of elegance. Lynn divulges, “She was conscious of the message she was conveying with her clothes, but also very conscious of the people she’d be meeting. So, for example, she had a Sassoon dress she referred to as her ‘caring’ dress, because it was brightly coloured and she’d wear it to hospitals. She didn’t wear gloves, as she liked to make contact with the people she was meeting, and she often wore chunky jewellery when visiting children, so they had something to play with.” Diana’s home for 16 years, Kensington Palace, is just as much remembered for being the focal point for tributes after her death in 1997. The stylish residence serves as a fitting setting for the exhibition, which opens on 24 February, and its gardens are another way in which the palace will mark the 20th anniversary of her death. “Our gardeners wanted to dedicate this year’s planting scheme to the princess. They hope to create a simple and beautiful space to celebrate her life, where visitors can come to remember her in a spot she enjoyed. What’s inspiring is that the garden design takes inspiration from the colours and textures of garments on display in the exhibition,” explains Lynn. When in residence, Diana was known to admire the changing floral displays in the Sunken Garden, and would often stop to talk to the gardeners who tend to it. The dresses themselves have been protected by a world-class conservation team at Historic Royal Palaces. Says Lynn, “Our exhibition follows her journey, beginning with the dress often referred to as Diana’s ‘debutante’ dress, which she wore at a family ball at Althorp in 1979, concluding with some of the stunning evening gowns she famously sold at a Christie’s auction for charity in 1997. By that point she had really learned what suited her, and was one of the most famous and most photographed women in the world.” From tiptoeing the high life in ballgowns at state dinners to campaigning against landmines in a sleeveless jean shirt and chinos, she was the People’s Princess and hers was a public who simply couldn’t avert their eyes. She fittingly rewarded every admiring gaze. Diana: Her Fashion Story opens on 24 February; hrp.org.uk/kensington-palace 68
Opening page: Princess Diana, in a Victor Edelstein gown, dances with John Travolta at the White House in 1985 Previous page: The Flamenco dress by Murray Arbeid Opposite: A closer look at that ‘Travolta’ dress
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Motoring FEBRUARY 2017 : ISSUE 69
Lift-Off
2017 marks the 50th anniversary of the Chevrolet Camaro, whose arrival heralded the first real challenge to an existing icon – the Ford Mustang, released in 1964. It’s been a muscle-car tussle of power, status and style between these two American heroes ever since
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WORDS : CHRIS UJMA
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s any dedicated gym bunny knows, skeletal muscles work in pairs; you can’t operate the bicep without the triceps putting in counterpart effort. The Chevrolet Camaro and the Ford Mustang are locked in a similarly eternal back and forth but, rather than recognising the mutual need, it’s painted as a fraught brawl – a fierce battle between robust, rear-wheel-drive foes. For five decades now, the companies behind them have sought to gain the crucial edge in the rivalry, with furrow-browed design teams retreating behind closed doors to mastermind the other’s downfall, motivated by sales and the attainment of new technological milestones, and underpinned by mutual respect. While their destinies are entwined, the Ford Mustang was first on the scene, further bolstering Detroit’s auto-making chops on its release in 1964. The Mustang spawned a new genre of ‘Pony cars’, named after the galloping steed on the grille. Vehicles in the category carry five personality traits: they’re American-made; they’ve two doors and carry four passengers; the design includes a long hood, short deck and ‘open mouth’; they’re built with mass-production parts; and they sit at an affordable base price with an abundance of available upgrades. It’s the latter four words that explain a curious twist: how vehicles with accessible price tags can still manage to amass jealous stares and slack-jawed wonder. It’s because visual cues on a ‘look at me’ (or, given a throaty V8 growl, ‘listen to me’) level create scrutiny. Trained eyes and ears spot unique modifications to each soupedup, beautified Pony – tweaks that secure added kudos and cool. The chiselled Mustang provided Ford with a market monopoly, and with the first Camaro still a twinkle in the eye, the company made hay while the sun shone during its three-year head start. A clutch of flashbulb moments captured the public imagination. In April 1964, at the World’s Fair in New York, the first-ever Mustang was unveiled and it was a sensation: Ford took 22,000 orders on that first day, and two years later sales had clocked the million mark. Later that same year, the Mustang appeared on the silver screen in the Bond film Goldfinger, driven
You’re urged by diehards to pick a side in this rivalry – gold bowtie or silver equine by the villain chasing 007 through the Swiss Alps. The third impactful moment was Ford approaching designer and racing driver Carroll Shelby to create a performance version of the Mustang that could legally gallop the streets. His tweaks resulted in the 1965 Shelby Mustang GT350, powered by a V8 engine that produced 306HP. The first generation of fluid-shaped Chevy Camaro – the Z28 – arrived in 1967. It too was a ‘racecar for the street’ (initially developed for the Trans-Am Series, it went head to head with the Mustang Boss 302S), but this was no mere pretender to the throne. It squared up to the Mustang pound for pound. While the Ford hailed from the Motor City, the Camaro was outta Ohio, from the Norwood Assembly Plant that put together General Motors’ cars, and 72
the Central Office Production Order (COPO) policy meant that individual dealers could custom-order purposebuilt performance Camaros for their customers. Sure, now we’re used to getting exactly what we want from the goods we purchase, but back in the 1960s, 81 factory options and 41 dealer accessories put the immensely customisable Camaro on the map. Both had achieved a winning formula: cheap and sporty cars to attract younger buyers, with optional V8 engines to ramp up the excitement. A glut of copycats swirled around – the Plymouth Hemi’Cuda, the Dodge Challenger and Charger, and the Pontiac Trans-Am, to proffer a few legitimate alternatives. The tale is not all guts and glory, though; if the late 1960s was the golden age for the muscle
Opening page: 1964 1/2 Ford Mustang Clockwise from below: 1969 Chevrolet Yenko Camaro SE; 1964 1/2 Ford Mustang interiors; 1969 Camaro SS interiors
car, the 1970s stopped the music and turned on the lights, with factors like the Arab oil embargo halting the fun. The story’s taken many twists but in 2017 it’s now safe to say the American muscle car is enjoying a renaissance, spurred to new heights thanks to engineering developments, and becoming a more interesting contest than ever. Despite the age of its lineage, the 2016 Camaro was incredibly only the sixth edition, but it’s a universe away from its great (x4) grandfather in performance terms. The changes have been seismic: even opting for a once derided, now fuel-saving V6 garners less snobbery; in the mid-1990s the Mustang had a 3.8l with 150HP – by the late 2010s, its 3.7l had more than double the power and 90HP more (though you’re still strongly urged to
‘pony up’ to a V8). Road And Track purred about the 2016 Camaro SS, “There’s no doubt… with its Cadillac platform and Corvette engine, [it’s] the thoroughbred of its class… the balance is sublime. It’s refined and exciting. Has this once fat lout of a car become a bona fide sports car?... It happened.” Car Magazine said of the Mustang’s 2016 5l V8 GT, “It’s a hugely charismatic, deeply pleasing performance car with an uncomplicated likeability that eclipses almost everything at its price point… [It] elevates every journey, however mundane, into something to be cherished for the undiluted joy of spending time with a car brutal of form and wondrous of engine.” In short, you don’t only have to scour the classic-car market to possess either retro icon. And yes, ‘icon’ is oft 73
overused, but the silhouettes alone scream open highways, roadside diners, roaring engine thunder and open skies reflected in aviator shades. They epitomise cool: the legendary Steve McQueen manoeuvred a Mustang GT Fastback in Bullitt. How do you outboss that? Try being a 16ft-tall kickass robot – the vehicular form of good-guy Autobot Bumblebee in the cinematic Transformers series is a yellow and black painted Cammy. If you find these Ponies equally appealing, whisper it quietly; you’re urged by diehards to pick a side in this rivalry – it’s akin to being Yankees or Red Sox, Coke or Pepsi, Marvel or DC. You’re either gold bowtie or silver equine… but should you not have settled on a victor, fret not: this is a muscular road war with plenty of time remaining to work itself out.
Gastronomy Gatronomy
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FEBRUARY 2017 : ISSUE 69
Small & Mighty One room, eight seats, 17 dishes and a little bit of magic: enter the world of Ngan Ping Chow, the culinary ringmaster of Tokyo’s Tapas Molecular Bar WORDS : EMMA LAURENCE
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Opening page: Chef Ngan Ping Chow in action This page, clockwise from right: Ping’s signature ‘cigar’ comes to life; inside the Tapas Molecular Bar; more creative offerings from the menu
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t makes sense that the world’s largest city, and the capital of the world’s oldest country, is also the epicentre of probably the most expansive food culture, history and scene on the planet. If we’re simply talking numbers, Tokyo has the most restaurants of any city on Earth – and the most Michelin stars (a blinding 305 at last count). But one of those shines all the brighter when you consider its space-to-star ratio: Tapas Molecular Bar, a full-service sushi bar-cum-kitchen flanked by just eight barstools, which, if you’re lucky enough to bag one, will transport you on a unique culinary adventure that departs but twice a night. “Diners experience a two-hour journey of being together with the chefs in a very relaxed atmosphere. Each chef is not just cooking or plating up in front of the diners, but also interactively letting them know how and why every dish has been made, composed and created,” explains Ngan Ping Chow, head chef and the grand master of proceedings at Tapas Molecular Bar since 2014. Hong Kong-born Ping left his Chinese home, and the acclaimed one-thirtyone restaurant, for what he describes as a “once-in-alifetime opportunity to take the Tapas Molecular Bar to the next level”. And that he did, winning his (and its) first Michelin star in his first year there, and retaining it every year since. Before setting foot behind the bar, Ping spent months soaking up the intricacies of Japanese cooking, learning its secrets and developing his own molecular style in tandem with that discovery – something he’s never stopped doing. “The local produce and the cooking tradition in Japan is a marriage of culture and art,” he says. “As a foreigner, I must make an effort to study and experience it, to understand more in order to best use the resources from this land. The produce and culture influence the cooking; they also enrich 76
I would say that it is like a concert, composed of many elements that are all linked together my knowledge of the culinary world.” As a result, his menu is an intriguing mix of Japanese delicacies and Western favourites – all with a considerable twist. The traditional onsen tamago (hot-spring eggs), for example, get a Mediterranean kick from orzo and Parmesan; the Waldorf salad, on the other hand, comes with a yuzu flourish. The 17-course molecular tasting menu, made up entirely of small, tapasstyle plates, changes every four months – but there’s one dish that endures. Ping’s signature ‘cigar’, which looks exactly like its namesake, even down to the sesame ash sprinkled at one (artfully blackened) end. It is, in fact, a potato-tuile meat cylinder flavoured with apple, cucumber and hoi sin, a personal tribute to the Chinese classic Peking duck. “It delivers my most memorable childhood experiences of Peking duck,” says Ping. “It is a dish composed with flavour, technique, a fun factor and my memories.” A philosophy that courses through every tantalising aspect of Ping’s menu, and indeed the whole restaurant, some 38 floors up at the Mandarin Oriental, Tokyo. On taking your seat at the Tapas Molecular Bar, you’re invited to unlock your own personal toolbox (and I mean that literally) – an array of unlikelylooking implements designed to aid your navigation of the edible odyssey that lies ahead. There’s even a tape measure, which you pull to reveal your menu for the evening. It’s the first of many clever tricks devised by the showman chef, who says, “It helps to bring out the imagination of the diner, when they see the menu. Because once we start, it will become more like a performance of presenting flavours, textures and techniques. For me I would say that it is like a concert, composed of many elements that are all linked together.” Such elements include liquid nitrogen (so far, so 77
molecular gastronomy), edible beaches (which really must be seen to be believed) and so-called miracle fruit, all prepared right in front of you. Theatre, then, is clearly a huge part of the meal, but it’s not merely an attention-grabbing aside. Says Ping, “To have a perfect dining experience, no doubt the ingredients, taste and technique of the dish itself are the basics, but I also believe that the way we present and showcase every dish helps diners understand the story and spirit behind it. The element of theatre leaves an impression with the diners and creates memories that will stay with them.” It’s a mutually rewarding process, admits the chef, who sums up his own experience in one word: “Satisfaction.” “As a chef,” he adds, “to present your dishes in such close proximity to diners that have their eyes on your every action and movement is very different to just directing in a kitchen. Not only is the taste and the presentation of the dish judged and discussed, but also your overall performance. Therefore I need to be a multi-role player in this environment. I play the role of a chef to make sure the taste and presentation of all the dishes are accurate. I also play the role of a director for every show, to control the pace of the night and performances of the team, according to a group of diners who have different and varied reactions. Lastly, I play the role of entertainer, maintaining a friendly and relaxed atmosphere in order to make sure that every diner feels comfortable to communicate and interact… because their mood also determines the atmosphere of the night.” The production, its cast and its platform may be small, but the premise, the impact, and the buzz that surrounds each and every performance – sorry, service? Quite the opposite.
Travel FEBRUARY 2017 : ISSUE 69
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journeys by jet
Helena Bay Lodge, New Zealand
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Gently lapping waves cease metres before lush, green manicured lawns
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ct one, scene one: the panorama is spectacular. The setting for this lodge both defies words and is capable of hijacking an entire paragraph, but we’ll say this: if the exquisite factors of this luxury retreat are the starring cast members, then the coastal backdrop against which they perform is simply breathtaking. Located in ‘the winterless North’ with its Māori and European heritage, the intimate cove of Helena Bay is nestled between Whangaruru and Mimiwhangata bays, on 3km of pristine coastline that belongs to the residential resort itself. Giant firs tower protectively behind the lodge, from within which the natural landscape can be admired from many vantages. Take Kiwi and Kotare, for instance – a pair of beautifully dressed villa suites, where every tactile experience is met with the finest quality (mosaic tiles from Italy, Swiss-made guest robes and such). The sophisticated abodes are replete 79
with log-burning fires and waterfront balconies – open the terrace doors to allow a gentle breeze, mixed with the scent of fresh flowers in bloom, to invigorate the lungs. It’s a pretty, intimate property where the Michelin-starred ensemble behind Italy’s Ristorante Don Alfonso 1890 creates a daily, changing ‘estate to plate’ menu, where orcas play in clear blue waters, where ancient landscapes are UNESCO protected, where alpacas will nibble food out of your hand, where gently lapping waves cease metres before lush, green manicured lawns. This is luxury, discreetly wrapped in natural beauty at its apex – both quietly waiting to be discovered. Fly into either Whangarei or Kerikeri regional airport, then step into your chauffeur-driven limousine transfer to the lodge. Alternatively, arrive in (even more) style on Helena Bay’s top-ofthe-range Augusta Westland AW109S Grand helicopter, from Auckland Airport; helenabay.com
What I Know Now
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FEBRUARY 2017 : ISSUE 69
Robert Tateossian Founder and Ceo, TaTeossian
I wanted to be in control of the decisions I make on a daily basis, and not have to report to anybody. Back when I was working in finance, to accomplish anything you had to copy 25 people into any given email chain. Today, I wake up in the morning with the independence to create and to develop ideas. Not having to constantly check with a board of people who are restricting you within a corporate structure, is what – over time – I discovered really appeals to me. The best piece of advice I’ve acquired is to distinguish yourself and to grow the business within your means. I’ve seen friends who started at the same time lose everything
for being over-ambitious, and others become billionaires because they were aggressive. My formula for happiness is to have my signature, and be individual. While we have extremely coveted limited-edition and bespoke pieces, our square gear cufflinks are our most successful, selling in the tens of thousands each year. It is also the most copied cufflink style we’ve ever had – yet when I launched it 10 years ago I was naive and didn’t register the design as a patent, which meant anyone could copy it exactly and I couldn’t do anything about it. If someone dares copy a style now, we’re going to nab them right away; lesson learned. 80
When I started, cufflinks were an undeveloped segment. They were something that a father passed on to his son, and featured monograms, chains, simple ovals… My motto from the beginning was: ‘How can I have the best product in the world in this particular niche?’ That is what I have strived for all of these years, constantly researching new items, challenging myself to incorporate new stones and materials – such as a slice of the moon, a piece of meteorite or 10,000-year-old fossilised palm wood. Telling a story is essential, and all of our accessories have personality and a tale to tell – just like the clientele who choose to wear them.
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