AIR Magazine - Al Bateen - November'22

BEIJING · DUBAI · GENEVA · KUALA LUMPUR · LAS VEGAS · LONDON · MACAU · MADRID MUNICH · NEW YORK · PARIS · SEOUL · SHANGHAI · SHENZHEN · SINGAPORE · TAIPEI · TOKYO · ZURICH

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Forty Eight The Many Faces of Natalie Portman

The Oscar-winner on her hopes for the next generation, and challenging body norms.

Fifty Four A Shot In The Dark Hollywood photographer

Steven Klein on why his biggest risks also turned out to be his biggest successes.

Sixty Wild At Heart

Why Sarah Burton has proved to be the perfect fit for the dark romance of Alexander McQueen.

Credit: Steven Klein, Self Portrait. courtesy Steven Klein studio

REGULARS

EDITORIAL

Editor-in-Chief John Thatcher john@hotmedia.me

Kerri Bennett

Illustration Leona Beth

Managing Director Victoria Thatcher

General Manager David Wade david@hotmedia.me

Digital

Manager Muthu Kumar

Tel: 00971 4 364 2876 Fax: 00971 4 369 7494

Reproduction in whole or in part without

permission from HOT Media is strictly prohibited. HOT Media does not accept liability for any omissions

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Welcome Onboard

NOVEMBER 2022

Welcome to AIR, the onboard private aviation lifestyle magazine for Al Bateen Executive Airport, its guests, people, partners, and developments.

We wish you a safe journey and look forward to welcoming you back to Al Bateen Executive airport – the only dedicated business aviation airport in the Middle East and North Africa – to further experience our unparalleled commitment to excellence in private aviation.

Al Bateen Executive Airport

Contact Details: albateeninfo@adairports.ae albateenairport.ae

Abu Dhabi Airports To Host Air Expo 2022

H.E. Sheikh Mohammed bin Hamad bin Tahnoon Al Nahyan to inaugurate Abu Dhabi Air Expo 2022, with 300 participating companies and 20,000 visitors expected

The Aviation elite will descend on the nation’s capital between November 1-3 where the tenth series of the Abu Dhabi Air Expo will open with huge participation from general aviation, airlines, airports and airport authorities, civil aviation, aviation technology, cargo, and so much more within the sector.

Abu Dhabi Airports (AD Airports), the operator of five airports in the emirate of Abu Dhabi, is the official host for the Air Expo 2022, this year covering an area of 80,000 square metres of exhibition space with an expected 300 companies participating, including leaders in the general aviation industry such as Dassault, Gulfstream, Cirrus, Sanad, Abu Dhabi Aviation, Royal Jet, Falcon Aviation Services (FAS), Abu Dhabi Holding (ADQ), AERO and Global Air Navigation Services (GANS), to name just a few.

His Excellency Sheikh Mohammed bin Hamad bin Tahnoon Al Nahyan, Chairman, Abu Dhabi Airports, said: “Hosting Abu Dhabi Air Expo reflects Abu Dhabi’s commitment to enable growth and development of the aviation and aerospace sectors, which continue to play an important role in the socioeconomic development of Abu Dhabi by facilitating connectivity, trade, logistics and tourism. This year is an important milestone as we celebrate the 10th year of the Abu Dhabi Air Expo, that has grown to be one of the leading aviation events, reinforcing the emirate’s position

on the global aviation and aerospace map”.

The long-awaited biannual event is back after a 4-year hiatus, due to COVID, and is expecting participants in excess of 20,000 delegates to attend from all over the world. Aviation subjectmatter experts will discuss the latest advancements, set in a background of major announcements, a newly introduced Aviation Think Tank forum and more relaxed settings for one-toone meetings.

His Excellency Eng. Jamal Salem Al Dhaheri, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, Abu Dhabi Airports, said: “We have a proud history of hosting the Abu Dhabi Air Expo with the support from our generous leadership, strengthening the position of Abu Dhabi as an international hub for aviation, tourism and commerce. We look forward to welcoming the aviation community to the Abu Dhabi Air Expo and to all the new industry announcements that will take place, injecting renewed excitement in the sector and promoting growth, through strategic partnerships, in Abu Dhabi’s economy”.

The official sponsors for the Abu Dhabi Air Expo have been confirmed as Abu Dhabi Department of Culture and Tourism (DCT), Etihad Airways as official airline sponsor, Al Futtaim Automotive Group as exclusive automotive sponsor along with Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank (ADCB) as sponsor for the Aviation Think

Tank Forum.

The Aviation Think Tank is a new addition to the Expo’s activities this year and has already attracted more than 80 aviation sector speakers who will speak on topics that include the growth and future of air cargo, the role and importance of aviation training and development, green aviation, the role of women in aviation sustainability in aviation, air traffic management & airport security, MRO’s and the future of maintenance, AI and robotics, retail services at airports, urban mobility –eVTOL hybrid aircraft as well as what the future of aviation holds post pandemic.

The Abu Dhabi Air Expo 2022 brings together industry leaders and seasoned professionals to network, exchange ideas and showcase the latest technology and equipment in general aviation. The three-day event will feature the latest innovations in private jet aircraft, helicopters, executive charter services, airport equipment and services, avionics systems, insurance and financing.

As is customary, the Expo organisers confirmed that there would be a number of flyovers for delegates and visitors to enjoy, from both commercial jets as well as an aerobatics demonstration from the Al Fursan team, part of the United Arab Emirates Air Force.

For more information about please visit: abudhabiairexpo.com

Warhol’s paintings of Campbell’s Soup cans and screen prints of Marilyn Monroe have come to define pop art, an instantly recognisable, international phenomenon that gave rise to its own cultural movement and continues to influence each new generation of artists and product designers. Its power is the subject of Assouline’s new tome Pop Art Style , which uses dynamic images from different eras to detail its enduring impact nearly 70 years since the term ‘pop art’ was first coined.

Pop Art Style, published by Assouline, is out now

OBJECTS OF DESIRE

Master craftsmanship, effortless style and timeless appeal; this month’s must-haves and collectibles

GIORGIO ARMANI SPRING 2023 READY-TO-WEAR

Titled Fil d’Or (Thread of Gold), Giorgio Armani’s spring showing shimmered under the spotlights, that golden thread running through the entire collection, whether used as an accent on the accessories that sauntered down the runway, or on gowns adorned with

golden sequins and crystals, as worn by the group of models who closed the show. “A few years ago it was out of place to wear outfits with paillettes during the day, but now it is accepted. The important thing is to wear it well,” advised Armani,

OBJECTS OF DESIRE

HERMÈS

WRTW SS23

The desert proved a fruitful muse for Hermès, the WRTW SS23 collection evoking the idea of a desert camp, set up for would-be glampers to party from dusk to dawn. In other words, Hermès told us it’s time to get out and enjoy the great outdoors again. This call to nature

was manifest in various shades of yellow, earthy tans, brown, terracotta, and sunset-evoking pink, while nods to outdoor equipment could be seen in the use of elastic cording, breathable mesh, and user-friendly zips, applied to slimline dresses.

FENDI PEEKABOO CAPSULE

The Peekaboo first hit the runway back in September of 2008. An immediate hit, it was swiftly labelled an ‘It’ bag and appeared on the arm of socialites far and wide. Today, it remains a staple accessory, thanks in part to the simplicity of its design proving

timeless. This capsule offers updates of the Peekaboo ISeeU, in medium, small and mini leather forms and colours of black, white and mint green with contrasting stitching. An additional camel-coloured version in full suede completes the offer.

The late Martha Graham was a renowned dancer and choreographer whose influence extended beyond the stage to the runway. In particular, she wore a body-enveloping tubular sheath for one performance back in 1930, which would inspire Yves Saint Laurent

OF DESIRE

LAURENT

across multiple collections. His hooded ‘capuche’ pieces from the mid-1980s have in turn provided a strong reference point for Anthony Vaccarello, whose Summer 23 collection is all elongated silhouettes and fluidity, mixed with an attitude underpinned by strong-shouldered coats.

SCHIAPARELLI PRÊT-À-PORTER SPRING-SUMMER 2023

For a brand whose designs speak very well for themselves, Daniel Roseberry’s collection notes are, refreshingly, always more detailed, more thoughtful than most. They certainly were so for his spring-summer 2023 showcase, posing the question of why the world needs another

ready-to-wear collection and answering it by outlining how it’s an opportunity for him to create pieces that are both everyday and extraordinary. That’s a neat summary for this collection, with the extraordinary saved for stunning evening gowns.

CHANEL SPRING-SUMMER 2023 READY-TO-WEAR

Alain Resnais’ enigmatic film Last Year in Marienbad (1961) is often cited as an influence on fashion – it certainly helped that Coco Chanel designed some of the outfits worn by the female lead. Virginie Viard returned to it when drawing up the designs for this RTW

2023 collection, which Kristen Stewart donned to star in a short video homage to Resnais’ classic. It’s a collection that in many ways is also an homage to the house, with all of its codes treated to a trot down the runway in various fussfree forms.

OF DESIRE

STELLA MCCARTNEY

SUMMER 2023 READY-TO-WEAR

Ever eager to draw attention to the ills within the industry in which she has made her name (with very good reason), Stella McCartney’s summer 2023 collection saw her infuse her pieces once more with the work of Japanese pop artist Yoshitomo

Nara, whose activist slogans appear sporadically as a visual call to arms. Elsewhere, McCartney was at her inventive best in her use of vegan alternatives to leather, most strikingly in a pair of denim-meets-Alter Mat chaps.

OBJECTS OF DESIRE

Critique Film

Till

Dir. Chinonye Chukwu

The tearjerking true story of a mother’s relentless pursuit of justice for her 14-year-old son, who, in 1955, was brutally lynched while visiting his cousins in Mississippi.

AT BEST: ‘An assured, daring, and well-calibrated feature.’ — Robert Daniels, The Playlist

AT WORST: ‘A fairly standard historical biopic.’ — Joey Magidson, Awards Rada r

Call Jane

Dir. Phyllis Nagy

When a women’s complicated pregnancy threatens her own life, she joins an independent visionary fiercely committed to women’s health.

AT BEST: ‘A humane take on an extremely inflammatory topic.’ — Martin Carr, We Got This Covered

AT WORST: ‘Too shallow and more interested in what it’s about than how it is about it.’ — Brian Tallerico, rogerebert.com

Armageddon Time

Dir. James Gray

An autobiographical coming-of-age story which centres on the generational pursuit of the American Dream.

AT BEST: ‘It’s a truly poignant, troubling, and ultimately brilliant work of memory and self-implication.’ — Alissa Wilkinson, Vox

AT WORST: ‘A head-scratching disappointment. That a filmmaker with Gray’s talents could turn in something this bland is baffling.’ — Michael J. Casey, Michael J. Cinema

The Menu

Dir. Mark Mylod

Wild and violent events occur at an invite-only dinner hosted by a reclusive, globally celebrated chef on a remote island.

AT BEST: ‘One of the most satisfying films of the year.’ — Matthew Jackson, Paste Magazine

AT WORST: ‘Only succeeds in making you wish there were something meatier to chew on.’ — Adam Nayman, The Ringer

“Darkly funny and poignant,” says E! Online, in its review of Claire Vaye Watkins’ I Love You But I’ve Chosen Darkness. It centres on a new mother granted a break from her usual domestic duties by a speaking engagement in the town where she grew up. While there, she meets ghosts from her past at every turn. “Much of motherhood literature can radiate a sort of wounded egotism, as if the greatest crime that society might commit against a woman were to think ill of her. Watkins, though, neither stews nor panders. She just follows her light,” writes The New Yorker. “The brutal, arid, electric terrain of remote California and Nevada crackles across almost every page… trippy and beautiful, slippery and seductive — a unique psychogeography of a region that is integral to the American vision and yet seems to have too few literary chroniclers,” hails Vogue. While the Los Angeles Times calls it, “A beautifully arranged tackle box of everything Watkins does best

— cut-through-the-bone narrative of family apocalypses; custom blending of the historical, the unimaginable and the impossible; enchanting, terrifying encounters with the American West.”

In Erin E. Adams’ Jackal , a young girl goes missing during her parents’ wedding. She’s not the first to disappear from the community, and she may not be the last. “This novel is a masterful and emotionally wrenching gem of black storytelling,” hails Publishers Weekly. “Plentiful twists, keenly rendered characters, and atmospheric prose keep the pages turning,” says Kirkus Reviews of a novel it goes on to describe as, “Harrowing horror with a side of searing social commentary.” Fellow author Alma Katsu also talked up the horror. “Real horror surrounds us in plain sight, nestled in the hearts of fiends who hide behind the barest of masks. Erin E. Adams takes you on a breathless ride with Jackal, revealing the courage it takes to stand up to monsters.”

There’s horror of a different kind in Our Missing Hearts, by Celeste Ng, which tells of a mother’s unbreakable love in a world consumed by fear. “Heartwrenching and brilliant… This is the book I will pass down to my children when they ask me what it was like to live through this time in history: the pandemic, anti-Asian attacks, and the racial justice protests that have come to define our moment. It captures the difficulty of bearing witness at personal cost to oneself and caring about things even when they seem beyond fixing,” reviews The Boston Globe. “An eerie, prophetic novel [that] showcases Ng’s own ingenuity and range,” says Shelf Awareness “Brilliantly envisioned and filled with Ng’s signature tender, intimate character work and complex family dynamics, this coming-of-age story asks what it means to be a good parent or a good citizen when every child is at risk, as well as what power art has to challenge injustice.”

Culture Shock

Marina Abramović once gave audiences a gun to shoot her. Now 75, is it true she’s going to zap herself with a million volts?

WORDS: ALASTAIR SOOKE

In one of the more surprising tributes to Queen Elizabeth II, The Art Newspaper compared her to a 75-year-old Serbian performance artist. By executing her duties with such consistency for so long, the late monarch was, the paper suggested, “a Marina Abramović for the ages”.

Hang on, what? As in, the same Marina Abramović whose early performances from the 1970s were intense, violent affairs, in which she (or, at her invitation, members of her audience) inflicted pain upon her body?

In one, she stabbed manically at the spaces in between her spread fingers with a knife, frequently nicking her own flesh; in another, she brushed her hair with such frantic force that clumps of it came out. Once, she lay down in the middle of a five-pointed wooden star that she’d set alight. Deprived of oxygen in the middle of the inferno, she passed out, and had to be saved by an onlooker.

I’m no royal historian, but I don’t think

Queen Elizabeth II ever did anything quite like that. Still, when I put the ostensibly preposterous comparison to Abramović herself, she doesn’t bat an eyelid. “I was very honoured,” she says in heavily accented English, adopting the magnanimous tone of a head of state accepting praise from a foreign dignitary – albeit one surrounded by boxes in a back office at Modern Art Oxford, where her new exhibition, Gates and Portals, currently shows. “I really admired her. The discipline she exercised is fascinating.”

Ah, discipline: now that is something which Abramović knows a lot about. Not that her hardcore approach to making art won her much sympathy when she was starting out. In the “old days”, as she puts it, her performances were dismissed by critics as exhibitionist bacchanals. “I love bad reviews,” she tells me. “If you [make] good work, you have two possibilities: they love you or they hate you. I hate indifference.”

For 12 years until 1988, Abramović collaborated with her lover Frank Uwe Laysiepen, the German artist known only as Ulay, whom she met in Amsterdam in 1975. They travelled around Europe in an old black Citroën police van performing scores of astonishing new pieces, distilling the complex, timeless dynamics of male-female relationships; when they weren’t performing, they survived by, for instance, working on a farm in Sardinia’s mountains, milking goats and sheep in exchange for food.

Although Abramović and Ulay (who died two years ago) subsequently split up – by walking from opposite ends of the Great Wall of China before meeting in the middle to say one last, epic goodbye – and fought each other over royalties, she still looks back fondly on those years of “living in the van, with nothing”. They never had children.

“I’m not really the mother material,” Abramović tells me wryly. Does she regret this? “No,” she replies. “I never had this ticking [biological] clock. Mostly, the work occupied my mind.” She had a strained relationship with her own mother, Danica, who, like Abramović’s handsome, unfaithful father, Vojin, fought the Nazis as a Yugoslav Partisan under Tito, and was rewarded, after the

war, with a position in his Communist government. Abramović grew up in Belgrade in comfortable, bourgeois circumstances, but her mother frequently beat her. “It was very difficult,” she recalls. “Basically, I was never good enough for her. Yet,” she adds, with a hollow laugh, “that cold, strict military control was really to make me a warrior. And, in many ways, she achieved that.”

After Ulay, her performances, though still intense, became less obviously bellicose. “In the beginning,” Abramović explains, “I was interested in the limits of the body. More and more, I became interested in my mind.” Next year, several of her greatest hits will be reperformed (by younger artists) at the Royal Academy, London. Abramović will be the first ever woman to take over Burlington House. “The pressure is very big,” she tells me. There will be new work, too – although rumours that she’s going to zap herself with one million volts of electricity are, she says, “fake news”.

Perhaps she will end up doing something like her most famous performance, The Artist Is Present (2010), which she still considers the fulcrum of her career. Every day for almost three months, she sat, silent and immobile, in the atrium of the Museum

These pages, clockwise from top to bottom: Time Energisers © Marina Abramović. Image courtesy of the Marina Abramović Archives. Photo by Fabrizio Vatieri; Portal, 2022. © Oak TaylorSmith for Factum Arte and Marina Abramović. Image courtesy of the Marina Abramović Archives

‘ They love you or they hate you. I hate indifference ’

AIR

of Modern Art in New York, gazing back at each of the 1,545 visitors (including Lou Reed, Alan Rickman and Bjork) who took it in turns to sit opposite her.

“People think that sitting on a chair, ‘Oh, it’s so easy,’” Abramović tells me. “But eight hours [per day], and 10 hours on Fridays, never leaving for the bathroom? It is hell on Earth. I could never make this kind of work when I was 20 or 30, even 40: I didn’t have the determination, willpower or concentration.”

Many who queued to sit with Abramović wept before her sorrowful pale face. “When people have that kind of attention, and [sense that] you’re there for them, they open to you,” she explains. “I have a friend, an American [art] critic, who says, ‘I hate your art: you always make me cry.’ And that’s the thing. My work is truly emotional. You can’t escape those emotions that deal with deep things inside.”

For her current exhibition, Abramović decided to study how ancient cultures used gates and portals to convey “different shifts in consciousness” and “mental transformation.” And so she exhibits “my own gates”: seven open-sided copper kiosks with in-built magnets, each approximately the size of a telephone box, which date from 2012. Visitors enter these so-called Time Energisers after handing in their smartphones and watches, and donning noise-blocking headphones. The show’s dramatic finale, in a separate gallery, is an illuminated crystal ‘portal’ constructed from selenite, a mineral, she explains, which “amplifies everything: energy, light. This is like a portal between life and death,” she says. “I think that when you die, you’re not going to darkness, you go to light.”

But portals, crystals, visions of the afterlife: isn’t this all a bit mystical?

“Every time you do anything labelled ‘spiritual’, it is dismissed as ‘New Age bull’,” says Abramović, who resists the notion that “art always has to be so intellectual”.

Ordinarily, I’d be cynical. But Abramović can make almost anything sound compelling. Yes, she can be melodramatic, a touch diva-ish, even vain. One minute, she is showing me a letter from the Ukrainian first lady Olena Zelenska, thanking her for demonstrating “solidarity with Ukraine”. (A few months before Russia’s invasion, her Crystal Wall of Crying, a 130ft-long Holocaust

memorial, was unveiled in Kyiv.) The next, she is scrolling through pictures of her meeting Harry Styles backstage at Madison Square Garden. She giggles. “He saw me and said, ‘I love your work.’ We kissed each other. It was just so sweet.”

Her baka, or grandmother, a deeply religious woman who lived to 103, once told her that life begins at 70 –and Abramović it seems, is having a ball. She cheerfully tells me about her many recent magazine shoots: “When you’re 70, and you’re on the cover of a fashion magazine, it is so much fun.” The flak she started taking after The Artist Is Present, for being excessively (as she puts it) “jet-set” and “glamorous”, doesn’t seem to bother her.

Underneath, Abramović remains a sincere and original artist, whose Spartan methods can yield revelatory, moving results. Rightly, she remains “very proud of my early works, before Ulay, because I went very far”. Rhythm 0, for instance, which she performed in Naples in 1974, involved 72 objects laid out on a table – including a bullet and a gun – which, for six hours, her audience was invited to “use on me as desired”.

“I was in my 20s, and I was ready to die

for art,” she says. “I was lucky I didn’t.”

Even if her peers remain ambivalent about her work – “My generation sucks!” she tells me – she is revered by a younger crowd, mostly under 40. Earlier this year, she gave a lecture in Lithuania that proved so popular it had to take place in a sports arena. When she arrived, she recalls, she found “this incredible sea of people. I mean, honestly: artists don’t speak to 6,000 people. Rock stars, yes, but not artists.” Who wouldn’t love such attention? Especially since, as she points out, “when I did performances in the 1970s, [there were] maybe 10 people. Thirty was like, ‘Oh my god, big audience.’ Fifty was a huge crowd.”

Why does she think people today respond to her in such large numbers?

“My work is very direct,” she replies. “I never lie. I don’t make compromises to the market of any kind.” I wonder, though, if her popularity also has something to do with her art’s underlying message. Slow down, urge her performances. Resist the franticness of modern life. “If we don’t go back to simplicity,” Abramović tells me, “we are going to be really lost.”

Gates and Portals is at Modern Art Oxford, UK, until March 5

‘

If we don’t go back to simplicity we are going to be really lost ’

This page: Marina Abramović, Presence and Absence, 2022. Courtesy of the artist and the Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford. Photo: Tim Hand

FUTURE PERFECT

BMW’s new 7 Series has come to define not only automotive luxury but technological advancement. The new BMW 7 and the first-ever fully electric BMW i7 mark the beginning of a new era of luxury. From its dramatically redesigned presence to its immersive and inspired interiors, the BMW flagship sedan undertakes an executive evolution to begin a new chapter in its legacy – one designed for those who drive the world. Replete with showstopping features – including an optional 31.3-inch rear entertainment Theatre Screen – this is a car for the ages. A car for now. Take your place at the helm in the epitome of luxury. Pick your purpose – The New 7 & The New i7.

ART DIRECTOR: KERRI BENNETT PHOTOGRAPHER: GREG ADAMSKI

LOCATION: ALIF – THE MOBILITY PAVILION AT EXPO CITY DUBAI

Stylist Chloe Bosher

Hair and Make-up Yulius, Bareface Models

Ley, MLN Model Management Sajad, Bareface

Clothing

Page 1

Suit and shirt: Brunello Cucinelli Sneakers: Tommy Hilfiger Page 2

Suit and shirt: Brunello Cucinelli Sneakers: Tommy Hilfiger Page 3

Abaya: SERRB Dress: Maureen Shoes: Malone Souliers Page 4

Abaya: SERRB Shoes: Model’s own Page 5

Suit: Brunello Cucinelli Jumper: Brett Johnson Shoes:Tommy Hilfiger Page 6 and 7

Abaya: Ahlam Shain Dress: SERRB Shoes: Malone Souliers Page 8

Suit: Husbands, matchesfashions.com

T-shirt: Stylist’s own Shoes: Tommy Hilfiger Abaya: Ahlam Shain

Whenever a brand installs a younger person at the helm, it is typically an attempt to shift the sales focus to a younger demographic, to harness a more modern outlook. A fresh vision. Yet when in 2017 Julien Tornare took over as CEO at LVMH-owned Zenith, following seventeen years at Vacheron Constantin — and in the process becoming one of the youngest CEOs in the luxury watch industry — he looked to the past for inspiration.

“I entered this new adventure with Zenith for several reasons,” Tornare tells us. “First of all, Zenith is one of the most beautiful Swiss brands, with an extremely rich and beautiful history of manufacturing and quality products — one of the only brands to produce entirely in house. At the time, it had a deficiency in notoriety and was not always positioned where it deserved to be. Zenith’s background is a real jewel. The first lever was to reposition the brand and then, highlight the innovation, remembering that the brand has won over 2,300 chronometry awards.”

Back To The Future

Since taking over as CEO, Julien Tornare has reawakened a sleeping giant of watchmaking in Zenith. Its future now appears brighter than ever –in more ways than one

Indeed it has. The manufacturing of chronographs is a field of watchmaking in which Zenith has blossomed since its establishment in 1865, and Tornare was determined to shout about it.

At this year’s Watches & Wonders, Zenith claimed for itself the title of ‘Master of Chronographs’, under the banner of which the manufacturer launched a multi-faceted platform to showcase its movements and mastery of high-frequency chronographs.

The exhibition element of the initiative featured fifteen rare and historically significant pieces dating from the late 19th century to the present, exceptionally designed chronographs endowed with fractional measurement of time with 1/10th and 1/100th of a second precision. In support of it, a touring Watch Clinic made its way across the world, granting participants a unique hands-on experience under the guidance of a watchmaker to learn the inner workings of movements like El Primero, arguably the watch world’s most famous movement.

“For Zenith, Master of Chronographs

is not just a claim, but an aspiration,” says Tornare. “It’s a mission and a commitment. It’s something that we have cultivated and, I would say, rightfully earned over many years. We’ve contributed so much to the advancement of the modern chronograph that we feel a certain responsibility to continue leading its evolution.”

Alongside El Primero at the pinnacle of innovation stands Zenith’s calibre 135. Produced from 1949 to 1962, it had two versions; one commercial, the other – labelled with an ‘O’ – made solely for observatory chronometry competitions. The latter would receive over 230 chronometry prizes, a record in the history of watchmaking. Such competition-grade movements were never meant to be encased in a wristwatch. But for two years between June 2020 and June 2022, master watchmaker Kari Voutilainen was tasked with painstakingly taking apart and refurbishing a very small stock of the historical Cal 135-O movements and fitting them into a wristwatch. The result was the Zenith X Voutilainen

WORDS: JOHN THATCHER

AIR

X Phillips 10-piece limited edition platinum Cal 135-O, which, not surprisingly, sold almost instantly.

The ten were cased in platinum with a black dial. But there was another, an eleventh movement held back for a unique piece to be sold for charity this month. This movement dates to 1953 and ran in the Neuchatel Observatory trials the same year, when it received the highest points. Crafted in niobium with a striking salmon guilloché dial, the unique timepiece that houses the celebrated calibre will be offered at The Geneva Watch Auction: XVI on November 5, with all proceeds from the sale subsequently donated the Susan G. Komen® Breast Cancer Foundation.

“This stunning salmon colour dial Zenith Calibre 135-O, with the unique history behind it, in a unique case, with a unique dial, will be the only one now and forever,” said a proud Voutilainen.

With one eye on Zenith’s distinguished past, Tornare’s other looks very much to future innovations. Last month Zenith unveiled its third special edition watch commemorating an Extreme E race, specifically the first electric rally racing championship to be staged in South America.

It takes place In the Atacama Desert, Chile, one of the world’s foremost copper mining areas, a location that served as an inspiration for the design of the DEFY Extreme E Copper X Prix watch. Based on the DEFY Extreme Carbon, the world’s lightest and most robust 1/100th of a second automatic high-frequency chronograph (the fastest automatic high-frequency chronograph calibre in production), the Copper X Prix is crafted from highly durable carbon fibre, features elements with coppery-brown accents evocative of the Atacama Desert, and is issued with a rubber strap fashioned from materials of upcycled Continental CrossContact tires that were used in the first season’s races. It will be made in a limited edition of only 20 pieces.

Zenith’s DEFY collection has proved fertile ground for innovation. In 2020, the contemporary artist Felipe Pantone was invited to use the façade of Zenith’s main building as a canvas for expression. Shortly after, the artful collaboration with Pantone was extended to timepieces.

“Felipe Pantone has reimagined

Zenith’s most advanced chronograph to date, creating an object that is at once a feat of exceptional watchmaking prowess and a piece of wearable kinetic art in Defy Extreme,” enthused Tornare. “Just as Felipe Pantone constantly explores novel techniques and tools to create his bold works of art, Zenith pushed the boundaries of innovation when it came to executing Felipe Pantone’s version of the DEFY 21 — to the extent of having to develop new techniques previously unheard of in watchmaking.”

It proved an instant success, selling out its full run. Now comes another must-have, the DEFY Extreme Felipe Pantone, a limited edition of just 100 pieces. “For the first time, I intervened a piece of sapphire, creating a radial hologram that appears only under

the right light in an astounding way,” says Pantone of his colourful creation. Using a transparent sapphire disk as the dial’s base, an innovative physiochemical process was used to create micro-engraved patterns that are just 100 nanometres deep, providing an iridescent effect when caught by light.

It’s offered with a choice of three interchangeable straps; one in steel, another made from black Velcro, and the third created from a translucent blue silicone, matching the bezel and chronograph’s pusher protectors.

Each of the 100 pieces is delivered in a book-like box also designed by Pantone, who used an entirely different method on it to mirror the same iridescent effect as the watch’s dial.

As innovative as ever, Zenith’s future appears as bright as its past.

Opening pages: Defy Extreme Felipe Pantone Left Julien Tornare These pages, clockwise from top left: Felipe Pantone; DEFY Extreme E Copper; Zenith X Voutilainen X Phillips Cal 135-O

‘We’ve contributed so much to the advancement of the modern chronograph, that we feel a certain responsibility to continue leading its evolution ’

Flower Power

WORDS: JOHN THATCHER

Opening page: necklace in platinum with a morganite of over 43 carats, hand-carved milky quartz, pink sapphires and diamond

This page: Tiffany & Co. Schlumberger® Orchid Branch brooch in platinum and 18k yellow gold with pearshaped pink sapphires of over 9 total carats, pear-shaped emerald, round yellow diamonds and round brilliant white diamonds

In mining its rich heritage for this year’s Blue Book, Tiffany & Co.’s master craftspeople have cultivated a garden of extraordinary beauty. Released in three parts, the final offering numbers 77 floral-inspired pieces, each a mesmerising marriage of resplendent gemstones, platinum, and gold.

Comprised of four floral themes that have previously blossomed in Tiffany’s archive – wisteria, magnolia, orchid, and the masterpieces dreamt up by the legendary Jean Schlumberger’s unique vision –today’s artisans have reimagined

them through a modern gaze.

“Wisteria is an homage to the archival Tiffany & Co. flower that also honours Louis Comfort Tiffany’s colourful leaded-glass creations,” said Victoria Wirth Reynolds, Chief Gemologist and Vice President at Tiffany & Co. “The hand-carved chalcedony petals have these beautiful, translucent hues with an intentional gradation of colour.”

Hand-carved chalcedony also features in the Magnolia theme, a flower with a long history at Tiffany. It has featured in everything from jewellery designs and leaded-glass windows to the prized Magnolia Vase, which

was displayed at the 1893 World’s Colombian Exposition in Chicago and is now housed at The Met.

Another flower of historical significance to Tiffany is the orchid, brought to life here via an Orchid Curve theme defined by its dazzling diamondrich designs. While the fantastical designs of Jean Schlumberger – the French jewellery designer who in his time at Tiffany became one of the twentieth century’s most revered artists – are respectfully reimagined in the most magnificent of chapters. A fitting ending for the incomparable BOTANICA: Blue Book 2022.

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Hamad Hassani on why the launch of Centurion Living by American Express adds to an elite-level service for the privileged few

Living For The Moments

Unarguably the most desired (and cherished) piece of metal in the world, the invite-only American Express Centurion Card is both status symbol and passport to a world of unmatched privilege.

Centurion members benefit from having a dedicated relationship manager and team of concierge executives, on hand to curate highly personalised experiences and cater to their every need, whether that be booking a table at the hottest spot in town or arranging access to an exclusive cultural event.

“Exacting standards are central to the Centurion offer,” says Hamad Hassani, Vice President of the Centurion Business, Middle East and North Africa (MENA).

Those standards ensure such services are delivered swiftly and seamlessly. But also with style. Last year, Amex Centurion paired with storied Milanese fashion powerhouse Prada to create an item of wearable technology for card members in the form of a fashionable unisex bracelet. Crafted from the finest full grain Saffiano leather that Prada is revered for, the bracelet’s metal buckle houses a tiny microchip, imperceptible to the eye. As with contactless cards, this chip allows for contactless payments to be made anywhere in the world.

Now this elite level of service and privilege has been augmented by the launch of Centurion Living, a global arts and culture programme designed exclusively for Centurion members.

“Centurion Living is an unparalleled global art and culture programme that eligible Centurion members around the globe will be able to participate in, complimentary,” highlights Hassani.

The select programme of staged events has two pillars: Great Performances and Experiences and Centurion Living ‘Introductions’.

The former is “an opportunity to indulge and enjoy things you may already love,” outlines Hassani, with recent

events including intimate performances in both Paris and Munich by Grammy award-winning superstar Alicia Keys, whose debut album in 2001 went platinum five times over. On the back of her 2022 Grammy win for Best Latin Jazz Album, internationally celebrated virtuoso pianist, vocalist, composer and arranger Eliane Elias wowed the privileged few with performances in New York, Miami, Zurich, Dubai, Frankfurt, Milan and Stockholm. While legendary American jazz artist Diane Reeves –

who has been nominated for a Grammy on nine separate occasions, winning five – played exclusively for Centurion members in New York, Miami, Geneva, Milan, Dubai, and Los Angeles.

Spanning cultural interests, another highlight saw award-winning dancer and choreographer Aakash Odedra perform the classical Indian dance Kathak to select audiences in Rome, Dubai, Los Angeles and Amsterdam.

Billed as a programme specifically curated for those who have always wanted to know more about certain arts and culture ‘territories’ but have never had the time or knowledge of how to delve deeper, Centurion Living ‘Introductions’ is a fascinating agenda, rich in opportunity for learning, understanding, and appreciating different cultures around the world.

Earlier this year, Centurion members were invited to escape to the 5-star Fife Arms Hotel in the highlands of Scotland to learn more about heritage, craftsmanship and culture by foraging alongside winding brooks, swinging their way around St Andrews Old Course (the world’s first), and visiting centuriesold castles.

The Far East also welcomed Centurion members keen to acquaint themselves with Japanese culture, affording them the opportunity to indulge in the Millenniaold traditions of tea ceremonies and classical theatre at events in Tokyo.

Promising another rich line-up of global events and experiences, the second edition of the Centurion Living programme will be unveiled later this month.

While all Centurion members can attend these unique events and experiences, Centurion membership remains accessible to only the few. A few whose reward is an elite level of service characterised by the extraordinary Centurion Living.

americanexpress.ae/centurion-living

Hamad Hassani, Vice President of the Centurion Business, Middle East and North Africa (MENA)

‘ Centurion Living is an unparalleled global art and culture programme that eligible Centurion members around the globe will be able to participate in, complimentary’

THE MANY FACES OF NATALIE PORTMAN

The Oscar-winner and Dior Beauty ambassador talks to Richard Godwin about her hopes for the next generation, moonlighting on a hit Aussie cartoon, and challenging the norms of the female body

It ’s hard to think of an actor, male or female, who has navigated 21stcentury Hollywood with as much skill as Natalie Portman. She is, let’s not forget, the only Harvard graduate ever to win a best acting Oscar. From her debut as a 12-year-old orphan in Léon to her haunted ballerina in the body horror Black Swan , from the Star Wars prequels to Closer and on to Jackie, her range is unmatched. Even the films that have failed to light up the box office have usually faltered because they’re a bit too intelligent.

And in 2022, Portman has appeared in a role that, more than any other, demonstrates her superior discernment and willingness to confront gender stereotypes in her laughably regressive industry. No, I don’t mean Thor: Love and Thunder. I mean Bluey, the cult Australian cartoon about a family of blue dogs, beloved for its larky humour and depiction of the modern working family in which both parents play supportive roles.

“It’s such a great show,” says Portman, who makes a cameo in the third season. “In so many kids’ shows and books, there are traditional mum and dad things that the parents do. In Bluey, it feels more like they both work, they both cook. It has quite an even relationship between the parents, too, which I think is really nice.”

The cameo came about as her role in the aforementioned superhero movie required her to relocate to Australia last year with her husband, the excellently named French dancer Benjamin Millepied, and their children Aleph, 11, and Amalia, 5. One

of Portman’s co-stars there, Daley Pearson — a friend of the director, Taika Waititi — was also a key creative force on Bluey. “I had asked him for tickets to a live show in Sydney and so he knew that I was a fan. We were shooting together and he asked if I would be interested ever and I was like: ‘Of course!’”

Portman is not primarily, you’ll be shocked to learn, speaking to me to discuss blue dogs. For the meantime, we are talking over Zoom, chaperoned by Dior Beauty, for which Portman, 41, has been a face since 2010. The call comes as the new Rouge Dior Forever

Lipstick premières but unfortunately, I am denied a glimpse of this expensive visage: “It’s meant to be just audio,” she says kindly when I express confusion at her black screen. The relationship has been remarkably long by the usual standards of celebrity endorsements and it’s not hard to see why Dior has been so keen to retain her services. “I always carry the Dior [shade] 999, red lipstick in my purse because it gives me a sense of boldness and strength when I need that little extra boost,” she informs me with what truly comes across as unfeigned enthusiasm. “I think it’s really miraculous how a

‘ My experience has been that the work that you make never correlates to the response at the time’

AIR

different look can give you a different persona. It’s kind of the way everyone can bring what I’m lucky enough to do as a job into their own life and bring out different sides of themselves.” Lucky us, eh?

Portman also discusses the recent revamping of the Miss Dior perfume, originally created in 1947 by Christian Dior. Covid has not only made her newly appreciative of her own olfactory apparatus (“very, very sensitive”, apparently); it has reframed her entire conception of beauty.

“I think I was kind of worried that beauty was superficial as a kid,” she says. “As I’m older, I feel like I see it as a mode of expression and play and joy — and also, like, indulging yourself and treating yourself. Whereas I felt before a little bit like: ‘I should be writing a book right now, why am I sitting in this chair?!’”

But perhaps Portman simply has less to prove these days. She may not have fulfilled the academic promise that her Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz once saw in her (“a terrific student”). However, she has actually written a book — Natalie Portman’s Fables, for children, released in 2020 — and meanwhile runs the impressively highbrow Natalie’s Book Club on Instagram. Recent authors under discussion have included Rachel Cusk and Natalia Ginzburg. Meanwhile that other big summer role of hers, Jane Foster in the campy Marvel romp, Thor: Love and Thunder — has allowed her to explore her physicality in a different way.

Portman made peripheral appearances in the first two Thor

movies before evidently deciding there were more rewarding ways to spend her time. However, she was persuaded to return for the fourth instalment by Waititi, who put her character front and centre and gave her a terminal illness storyline. For much of the film, Jane inherits the Thor mantle, so she spends quite a lot of time prancing around with a large hammer.

“I loved Taika’s work so much and I’m such a big admirer of his and of course also love [co-stars] Chris [Hemsworth] and Tessa [Thompson], so it wasn’t very hard to convince me to be there,” she says. There was also the enjoyable challenge of acquiring a Hemsworthian physique. “I feel like every previous experience of training or exercise for me as a woman has always been about being smaller, so this is pretty amazing. This is something most of us don’t question. When most men go to the gym, the aim is to become bigger. When women go to the gym, the aim is to diminish. It’s something that we ignore as an aspect of the ideal woman’s body being thin. So it’s pretty incredible to celebrate a character who is large, where the goal is to be as big as possible.”

The reception to the film was decidedly mixed. “You know, I really don’t pay much attention to any of it, honestly,” Portman says. “My experience has been that the work that you make never correlates to the response at the time. If you get a good response right away, that doesn’t mean people think it’s great forever.”

Does she feel things have appreciably changed since the industry’s #MeToo reckonings? A founder of the Time’s Up

movement, Portman spoke about the “environment of sexual terrorism” that had shaped the way she made choices in her career. “I think there’s been some progress and also a far way to go still,” she says, diplomatically. “There’s been a lot more consciousness of hiring women in leadership positions throughout the industry. There’s been a lot more awareness of people’s behaviour. But there’s still a lot more that needs to happen.”

Such as? “Oh, I don’t know that I have solutions but we still see large disparities in hiring. We still see large disparities in compensation. We see a lot of toxic discourse in many places. And there are actual legal challenges to our full autonomy in the United States.” Roe vs Wade was, she says: “crushing”. “My child will have fewer rights than I did growing up. That is certainly not what I ever dreamed of. It’s absolutely a crushing moment but I am hopeful that it will unite a new generation of people demanding full freedom and full autonomy for all people.”

In these uncertain times, what scares Natalie Portman? “Well, of course I always want the world to be a safe and joyful place for my kids. So you know, the environment; climate change is quite a scary thing.” However, our time is nearly at an end and she must wrap up fast. “But what I’ve been really happy with in this relationship with Dior is that they’ve really moved toward sustainable and clean products, which has been really, really happy for me!” You cannot fault the woman’s professionalism. I compliment her on a masterful segue and we return to our separate worlds.

Credit:Richard Godwin / ES Magazine / The Interview People

‘

I think it’s really miraculous how a different look can give you a different persona’

WORDS: LISA GRAINGER

Not many fashion photographers get their leg-up from the master Irving Penn, or lasso a Dior campaign for their first assignment, but Steven Klein did. And he wasn’t yet 21 when those things happened in the mid 1980s.

“I’ll tell you a story about that,” says Klein. “A good one…”

The photographer and film-maker is speaking over Zoom, after ditching our meeting in London. He has a good excuse, though: he’s with Madonna in Sicily, where the singer is celebrating her 64th birthday with a five-day party.

She and Klein have been close friends and artistic collaborators for more than two decades. “You are a [unicorn emoji]!” Madonna wrote to him in a Twitter notelet last year.

Images of her ripple through his new book. Steven Klein is his first monograph, and spans his work from its tendril beginnings in Paris, to his apotheosis among fashion and celebrity crowds in the present day. Both relish the way he turns the unctuous world in which they are required to operate, inside out.

The book also includes actors Brad Pitt and Scarlett Johansson, models Kate Moss, Kylie Jenner and Linda Evangelista, and singers Lady Gaga and Justin Timberlake. But you may take a moment to recognise them. Klein’s images are less mirrors of reality than conceptual set pieces. “I try to use my celebrities more like actors,” he says. “I don’t like to celebrate celebrity.”

In extremis, the undertow of menace can make your eyeballs flinch — subjects appear bruised or cut, in a meat locker, a burnt car, even a pool of blood — but they are always the result of a collaboration. “When people come to me and say, ‘Create something for me and do whatever you want,’ I tend not to do those things,” Klein says. “I need something from the other person. So maybe I’ll say to Brad [Pitt], gimme a word, and he’ll say ‘painting’, and then we throw things back and forth.”

Klein has never sought to avoid controversy. A photograph of Kevin Federline (Britney Spears’s ex-husband) with his throat slashed notched up a few column inches, as did a set of Pitt and Angelina Jolie in eroticised

Previous page: Steven Klein, Self Portrait. courtesy Steven Klein studio

Right: Steven Klein, Suburbia #11, Montclair, NJ, 2007. © Steven Klein. All RightsReserved Next pages, from left to right: Steven Klein. Madonna, Hotel Glória, Rio de Janeiro, 2008. © Steven Klein. All Rights Reserved; Steven Klein. ‘Super Linda,’ Image No. 11, Linda Evangelista, New York, 2012. © Steven Klein. All Rights Reserved

scenarios that included a gun, though that was mainly because they hit newsstands at the moment Pitt split from Jennifer Aniston. Even the late Alexander McQueen deemed Klein’s imagery sometimes “too subversive for the mainstream”.

“The thing is, I know there’s a line,” says Klein, “but I always try to go to that line, I like to hit it. If I’m working for Tom Ford – I do a lot of work with Tom – then I put my brain somewhat behind Tom’s eyes, to know his sensibility. Or if I’m working for Anna Wintour – and Anna’s been very kind with me my whole career, allowing me to print some pretty risky images – I know if I go over that line, she’ll find it inappropriate for her magazine. Obviously if I’m doing my own project, then I’m in another mode. But if you’re being hired, you have to consider: who are you working for?”

Klein is 57, though he looks much younger. He is handsome in a Greek statue sort of way, with tousled curls, graven cheekbones and pillowy lips. Part of the reason he wanted to make a book now, he tells me, at this heated cultural juncture, “is that a lot of the images in it, you can’t do them any more. A lot of things have become taboo or inappropriate. And I think the change is good. But as an artist, and as a journalist, I think you have to dive into things that are uncomfortable for people to look at.”

Many of the more radical magazine editors he rose up through the business with are no longer at the helm; those in their place operating in a different

‘

To be creative, you need absolute certainty. You need people that are willing to take risks’

AIR landscape. “In the 1990s, I remember I worked really, really hard, because the criteria was, what kind of vision did you have? But today it’s not about an individual vision. Magazines are unstable, and when people get fearful of losing their jobs, or not selling [magazines], then it’s hard to be creative. To be creative, you need absolute certainty. You need people that are willing to take risks. For me, the biggest successes that I’ve had, are the biggest risks that I’ve taken.”

He may currently be in Sicily, but travelling has become the exception for Klein. He prefers to work close to his home, in Bridgehampton, New York. It’s a 15-acre farm, and he lives there with his seven-year-old son, Ace, who was conceived with an egg donor and a surrogate mother. During lockdown, they collaborated on a photo story for Vogue Italia. Is Ace into photography then? “He likes the equipment, the big stuff I use on film sets,” says Klein, “but mostly it’s BMX bikes and skateboarding.”

Klein also keeps horses (Crystal and Paloma) and dogs (Prince, Ava and Harlow). The names of two other, since departed dogs are tattooed on his forearm (Brandon) and above his heart (Axel). Later, I get a full tour: a heaven

and earth symbol on his wrist, a crown on his upper arm and a Picasso bull on his back. Klein has loved Picasso since he was a teen. “He opened up my eyes.”

Klein grew up in New England. He starts out telling me his childhood was “kind of monochromatic” but then changes his mind. He did a lot of thinking for the book, he says, because “there’s a part of my work that’s violent… A part of my work that involves some like, voyeuristic things. They’re all part of my childhood. I wasn’t abused, not that kind of thing. I didn’t have a horrible childhood. I’m saying things made a big impression on me. I was always snooping around and watching, you know, and if you find a gun in your dad’s bedroom, those things kind of stick with you.”

He took his first photo at 13, partly to counter shyness, partly out of boredom.

“My camera gave me an excuse to go out, searching.” On one occasion he and his best friend snuck into a strip club and took a polaroid. At 16, he went to Rhode Island School of Design, to study painting and anatomical drawing.

Those “hours and hours of bodies” still inform his photographs: “When I pose a model, I think about the muscles. I see it as a nude.”

In fact, it was a drawing – large scale,

of a man sitting in a chair – that got Klein his break; the one he says he has that good story about. It begins when he took a job at a studio on Fifth Avenue. “I was the person that cleaned the floors,” he tells me, “but [Irving] Penn was using the studio. There was this peephole in the office, and I would watch him – for me it was like looking at Hollywood. At night, I would go in and make a note of every set-up.”

Penn – a stickler – sat religiously at the same table, so one day, Klein stuck his drawing right above it. Weeks later, “I was walking to the bathroom, he was walking to the bathroom, and he said, ‘Oh. I like your drawing very much.’ He introduced me to the director of Dior, who had admired it too. He said, ‘If you ever come to Paris, call me up.’ I know now that people say those things all the time and they don’t really mean them, but I took it seriously. I sold everything I had and I went to Paris. I called him up, and I said, ‘I’m here!’”

It’s a little sad, after all that, to learn that Klein doesn’t draw any more. Films are becoming his focus, he says, even if making the book has made him realise “how lucky I have been to have the opportunity to do all this work.

I think it’s the end of an era, though, isn’t it?”

‘ I try to use my celebrities more like actors. I don’t like to celebrate celebrity’

Plucked by Lee McQueen straight out of Central Saint Martins in 1997, creative director Sarah Burton has proved to be the perfect fit for the dark romance of Alexander McQueen

WORDS: SASHA SLATER

You can spot an Alexander McQueen dress at 50 paces and not because of a lurid print or giant logo scrawled across the back. The tells are more subtle than that: the sharpness of the waist, the set of a shoulder, the flow of the skirt... All too often, the best-dressed woman in a room is wearing McQueen.

Not that the fashion house’s creative director Sarah Burton shies away from drama. In fact, she specialises in splashy moments. This label is supermodel Kaia Gerber’s go-to for grown-up glamour on the red carpet, and Catharine, Princess of Wales, reaches for McQueen whether she’s watching Trooping the Colour, on parade at Ascot, or on a royal tour of Sweden.

As for weddings, the future queen of the UK wore Sarah Burton to watch her sister, Pippa Middleton, get married and to see Meghan Markle walk up the aisle at Windsor Castle, and, of course, she chose a McQueen lace gown for her own marriage to Prince William at Westminster Abbey in 2011. All exciting moments, but challenging ones, too.

Burton understands the appeal of McQueen for the biggest occasions.

“You’re providing a woman with the armour she needs,” she explains. “Immediately you put a jacket on, you stand differently. You feel empowered.”

She offers her clients a potent cocktail of romance and danger, clouds of tulle and slashed leather, clumpy boots

and dagger stilettos. But standing at the heart of her own kingdom — on a quiet street just off Clerkenwell Green in central London — Burton has no need of a jacket to feel strong.

Indeed, she’s very relaxed in a navy shirt, white chinos and trainers, her fair hair hanging to her shoulders. She strolls around her studio looking at mood boards, rails of clothes and the foot-high maquettes her team makes of every piece in each collection — a perfect paper miniature of each garment.

Alexander McQueen is one of only a few major fashion labels to operate out of London, and although it’s been owned by French luxury conglomerate Kering since 2001, it is a very British company. This is not least because Macclesfieldborn Burton finds inspiration on her doorstep: “I’m a complete magpie,” she confesses. “What I love about McQueen is that it’s always a story but it could come from anywhere.”

Recent collections have riffed on Cornish beaches, the gardens at Great Dixter near Rye, East Sussex, or mudlarking on the banks of the Thames. “It’s really because I grew up spending a lot of time in the countryside,” she says. “I love the contrast of it.” On a research trip recently, she travelled to the Shetland Islands. “There was this crazy wild sea and cliffs and then tiny delicate wild flowers growing there. So there’s a contrast of the

very wild and very powerful and very fragile and beautiful.” Perfect for this idiosyncratic fashion house.

The idea for her autumn/winter 2022 collection was even closer to home. During lockdown, a large and florid fungus grew on the deserted balcony of Burton’s white-painted studio. It was lumpy, frilly and deeply unlikely. For the show, Burton magicked it into a spectacular silversequinned one-shouldered mini-dress that Gerber wore on the runway.

The collection was showcased in an industrial warehouse in Brooklyn. “We have such a strong relationship with New York,” explains Burton of the decision to show the collection there rather than in London. “And the first McQueen shop outside the UK was in New York’s Meatpacking District. After so many years of everything being flat and two-dimensional, it was nice to be able to show people some clothes that are not designed just to look good on a screen. They have got to be living, breathing and moving.”

As well as the rogue Clerkenwell mushroom, ideas for the shapes and colours on view came from Entangled Life , the book by the biologist

Merlin Sheldrake about how trees communicate with one another using a network of fungal threads in the soil, known as mycelium. Translated into fashion, this meant deconstructed jumpers trailing neon threads and tasselled, fringed mini-dresses

‘

Lee McQueen is always present. But I learnt from him that you have to tell your own story’

AIR

embroidered with vibrant yellow, green and orange fungoid shapes.

There were, of course, beautifully cut black leather suits and romantic ruffled dresses to please her loyal customers, but all the colours — no matter how fluoro — were taken from nature. They were strange and beguiling, and the models threaded their way around giant slag heaps of woodchips that lent the factory space a musty, cedary smell. It was as if a deep forest had suddenly arisen in the inner city. Backstage, one journalist asked if Burton had been microdosing on LSD.

But that’s not her style at all. Growing up as one of five children, she went to Withington Girls’ School and then Central Saint Martins to study fashion and was, according to her mother, Diana Heard, a straight-A student. Burton, now 47, thinks her parents’ greatest gift to her was to teach her a love of nature, “and also my dad and my mum worked very, very hard. I took that from them”. She was, she admits, a swot, “and I know that if you want to achieve something, don’t do it by halves.”

She’s married to David Burton, a fashion photographer, and has three daughters, but on the hot July day that we meet, he has taken the girls off camping so, she confides, “I’m out tonight, shock horror!”

Calm, confident and straightforward, she seems the very antithesis of Lee McQueen, the fashion prodigy who, at

23, founded his own label based on a combination of superlative tailoring and a preoccupation with death. His graduate show was called Jack the Ripper Stalks His Victims , and his last collection was shown in Paris after his death by suicide in 2010, aged 40.

He had recruited Burton straight out of fashion college in 1997, and they were professionally inseparable.

“I was 20 when I started working for him,” she recalls. “He was a complete genius and it was my education.” It was McQueen who taught Burton to see the beauty in anything, from crumpled-up rubbish bags, to the innards of washing machines. She calls this the “nonsnobbery of ideas”, where anyone’s thoughts are welcome and there is, she says, “a constant dialogue with amazing young people” in her studio.

But working for McQueen also meant that Burton got to grips with the technical challenges of everything from knitting to leather, to printmaking.

He would produce a photograph of a jellyfish and they would create a chiffon dress based on its tentacles. As Burton points out, “It is an experimental process with art at the end of it.”

From a rail of archive pieces, she pulls out a pink brocade coat cut and pieced together with meticulous care and then daubed with a stripe of violent blue from a spray can. “I sewed this,” she recalls. “It’s a $3-a-metre fabric and I remember getting an East End metal worker, a bloke, to

stand wearing it while I pinned it.”

The past, whether it’s a Maggie O’Farrell novel about Shakespeare’s son, or Burton’s childhood memories, is vital to her ideas. So is the label’s own history. “You have to go back to go forward. I’m very obsessive about the archive,” she says. “Only a few people are allowed to touch them, look at them and study them.”

Burton opens a huge cupboard in the immaculate open-plan design studio where she and her team work on the top floor of the McQueen building. Inside are hundreds of identical box files, but instead of reams of paperwork, their spines have tempting names such as ‘shell elements’ and ‘3-d beetles’, and they are full of swatches and embroidery samples. She keeps everything.

Her wardrobe at home is also filled with pieces she made under the aegis of the late designer. “I collected a lot of pieces from Girl in a Tree ,” she says, referring to a 2008 collection based on an ancient elm tree in Lee McQueen’s Sussex home. “And I have a black-andwhite embroidered cape that I love, and a jacket from one of my first collections which has a very neat shoulder that always makes me feel strong.”

Wearing a piece that was designed by her mentor creates an emotional link to McQueen: “Somehow the past and the present almost blend,” she reflects. And because of the personal source of all the design inspirations,

‘ There is always a darkness to the romance of these dresses’

Burton says, “these are very emotional clothes. People buy the ready-towear in an emotional way, and it’s the same for the people who come to the shows or work in the company.”

There is, says Burton, a sombre thread that runs through the fashion house and everything she creates. As we talk, she’s fingering a charm necklace that her design team gave her with amulets hanging from it. There is a spider, an owl, and a skull. “There’s always a darkness to the romance of these dresses,” she says. “There is always a light and a darkness, and to ignore the dark is wrong.”

She talks about a gown she created to resemble a withered rose, and another whose anemone pattern also looks like dripping blood. No wonder that when the V&A staged a 2015 exhibition of Alexander McQueen designs they called it Savage Beauty. Almost half a million people visited the museum to see it, setting a new record.

Lee McQueen’s wholly unexpected death caused a tidal wave of shock in the fashion industry, and made headlines around the world. As his right-hand woman, Burton was, of course, horrified and desperately sad. She also had a huge task on her hands. “Carrying on was a very, very, very hard decision,” says Burton.

“It wasn’t a natural thing. When he died, everyone thought that was it. It was over. And the team said, ‘If you don’t stay, we’re not going to stay.’ In that moment of terrible grief it was about keeping people together.”

She says now, “It was a very strange time. I had always thought I supported Lee but I think he really protected me in many ways and it takes a while for you to learn that you can’t be that person. I couldn’t be him but it took me a while to find my own voice, to go, ‘What do I want to say? And how do I want to say it?’ The knowledge is key to Burton’s current success: “His collections were very personal and mine also are personal.”

That individual touch extends to the catwalk shows and, particularly, to their casting. Burton is not a designer who insists that everyone on her runway is either a rail-thin size zero or a billowy size 24. And you don’t have to be 6ft tall to wear her clothes, either. “A catwalk show is a completely theatrical thing,” she says. “But it’s about clothes on people, and I have always wanted people who look like people.”

It seems ridiculous to say that a size 12 or size 14 woman on a runway is still revolutionary, but sadly it is. “The stereotype is that you have to look a certain way, but that’s not how I

dress women,” asserts Burton. “When I cast a show, if I have something I want someone to wear and it doesn’t work for them, or doesn’t fit, or it’s black and they want to wear colour, I won’t kick them out of the show, I’ll make them something else. I know that I can make a woman look good and feel empowered whatever size she is, and I shouldn’t have to talk about that. It should be a given.”

This extends to her ready-to-wear collections: if you want to buy a dress and they don’t have it in your size, they’ll make one for you. “I feel that’s really important,” she says. “Especially having girls. You feel a responsibility.” This is not, she insists, “a trick or a gimmick. It’s about dressing strong, beautiful women we believe in. It’s not just ‘here’s my design, wear it’ — it’s definitely more of a conversation.”

Each design is also, in part, a dialogue with Burton’s idea of Lee McQueen himself. “He’s always present,” she says. “But I learnt from him that you have to tell your own story. They will always have McQueen DNA in them because I have been here so long that it’s embedded. But we don’t ask ourselves, ‘What would Lee do?’, we say, ‘Is it McQueen enough?’”

In Burton’s hands, it certainly is.

‘

The stereotype is that you have to look a certain way, but that’s not how I dress women’

Tax

Year after year, the UK – and London in particular – has topped the list for overseas property portfolio investment as an attractive, safe haven investment destination with solid long-term ROI, the advantage of clear legal title, and access to a highly desirable lifestyle.

Recent changes to the UK inheritance law, however, have raised a red flag for foreign investors and triggered a need to act now to secure portfolio assets for the future.

These changes are prompted by the economic fallout as a result of Brexit, post-Covid impetus to boost government coffers, as well as the impact of recent events in Europe, which has resulted in a laser focus on identifying and confirming asset provenance.

Historically, foreign investors have purchased through trusts, special purpose vehicles, or other offshore company structures in order to mitigate exposure to capital gains and inheritance (also referred to as death or estate) taxes.

Recent legislation has changed all that, with liability for 40 per cent inheritance tax now the standard across the board – and backdated to April 2017.

In tandem, it also ensures that foreign investor details are made a matter of public record, something that many high-net worth individuals seek to avoid, for a number of reasons.

In August 2022, the Register of Offshore Entities set the wheels in motion with the requirement that overseas owners of UK property register and report beneficial ownership to Companies House when owning, buying or selling property.

Failure to comply effectively prevents future transaction registration with the UK Land Registry, in other words stalling any possibility to buy or sell property across the United Kingdom.

Levied at the time of passing and calculated against the value of the property at that time, inheritance tax must be paid within a short six-month timeframe, before any asset can be released to the family, heirs or estate.

If the tax bill isn’t paid, then His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC) has the right to initiate a fire sale and/or confiscate the asset in order to recoup the monies owed.

But that’s not all. Bequeathed family is also prevented from selling the inherited asset in order to pay the

40 per cent tax bill. Instead, it must be settled in its entirety, in cash, before HRMC will grant access.

For high-net worth individuals (HNWIs) with an international property portfolio, and with assets in multiple jurisdictions, there is an additional stumbling block, as probate needs to be granted in all locations before assets can be released.

This presents a challenge in terms of liquidity, with financial pressures adding to the emotional angst of dealing with the loss of a family member and, potentially, even the loss of the asset(s).

Individuals, or their property portfolio managers need, therefore, to plan ahead now to avoid issues down the line. And, while the options are limited, there are ways to mitigate a future financial hit for your family.

The first option is to sell the property. This may not be something you wish to consider, particularly if your property assets form part of a legacy intended to be passed down through future

generations. Also, buoyant UK property prices may be another deterrent especially in prime market locations.

There is also the opportunity to gift the property. This effectively disconnects you from your legal rights to the asset, however, you must live for at least another seven years in order to avoid incurring inheritance tax upon your passing.

The recipient of the gifted asset would have full control over the property, but obviously this then has the knock-on effect of having to manage their own inheritance tax position in years to come.

A third and final option is to protect the property. Put simply, this means putting in place an insurance policy that pays the inheritance tax bill once you are gone.

Insurance policies are removed from the probate process and are a great ‘quick cash’ source in times of need. This makes it a cost-effective solution to protect the asset(s) for your family while still maintaining portfolio control and meeting HRMC deadlines.

NEED TO KNOW

I’m not a British citizen, so am I exempt?

No. This is applicable to owners of UK residential property, regardless of nationality.

My assets are held under an offshore company or trust, so am I inheritance taxprotected?

No. Offshore structures are no longer protected under the new legislation.

How will HMRC be notified of my passing?

Since April 2021, the UK Land Registry is now a matter of public record, detailing the beneficial owner(s).

JOHN THATCHER

Racing driver, balloonist, aviator and, of course, one half of the venerable RollsRoyce partnership, Charles Stewart Rolls was known for many things during his short but eventful life, yet nowhere is it written that he was also a clairvoyant. And yet, consider these words, delivered by Rolls way back in 1900. “The electric car is perfectly noiseless and clean. There is no smell or vibration. They should become very useful when fixed charging stations can be arranged.”

As foresight becomes fact, it was the turn of Rolls-Royce’s current CEO, Torsten MüllerÖtvös, to look to the future, committing the luxury marque to a production line free of the internal combustion engine – by 2030, all Rolls-Royce models will be entirely electric.

AIR

It was the first of these models that the world’s press gathered to see in a leafy corner of the English countryside at Rolls-Royce’s Goodwood home, its name already revealed but its form kept strictly under wraps until this moment. In keeping with its supernaturalnamed stablemates Ghost, Phantom, and Wraith, Spectre is a remarkable sight, capable of haunting those who eschewed the opportunity to put down the deposit pre-reveal, to ensure delivery of the car’s first run in Q4 2023. Not that those missing out number many –orders have been as swift as the car itself, which belies its weight to sprint from 0-100km/h in an anticipated 4.5 seconds.

Seeing Spectre was love at first sight. Billed by the design team at Goodwood as an Ultra-Luxury Electric Super Coupé, they set about their historic task with the idea of there being no greater luxury than that of space. As such, the headlights are split across two levels, while between them is the characterful Pantheon grille, at its widest ever dimensions on a Rolls-Royce. At two metres, Spectre is also wide, its cabin bestowing back seats you’d likely describe as roomy and the width of its two doors coming in at one and a half metres. It is also the first production two-door coupé in almost one hundred years to be fitted with 23-inch wheels. Still, its proportionally elegant, sleek, even, with every little detail granted large consideration. Take for example the vertical taillights, which are colourless so as not to potentially clash with whatever hue a client chooses for his Spectre – they have a reported 44,000 to choose from.

Look at Spectre front on and it’s muscular, yet its stunning fastback softens it, creating a car that is the most aerodynamic ever to emerge from the Rolls-Royce factory.

As a first of its kind for the luxury marque, the testing of Spectre has been predictably rigorous. In fact, it amounts to the most exhaustive testing programme Rolls-Royce has ever undertaken. In all, some 2.5 million kilometres of road will be covered by the time it wraps early next year, a journey which commenced from near the arctic circle in Sweden in temperatures as low as -40 degrees and moved onto southern Africa, where the mercury level topped 55 degrees. Even the Spirt of Ecstasy was put through her paces across a combined 830 hours of design modelling and wind

tunnel testing to successfully shape her strikingly aerodynamic silhouette.

All this testing feeds into what Rolls-Royce is calling ‘Decentralised Intelligence’, a “revolutionary” system of more than 1,000 vehicle functions that ensure the marque’s celebrated smooth ride emigrates seamlessly to electric.

Bright sparks were also employed to ensure that for the first time on a series production Rolls-Royce, Spectre is available with Starlight Doors, for which 4,796 twinkling lights are handthreaded. There’s a further cluster of 5,500 stars on the passenger side of the dashboard, putting the name Spectre in lights, an illuminated

fascia two years in development.

Take a tour of the Goodwood plant – as I did in the hours after Spectre’s launch – and you’ll be immersed in a world of personalisation. There are clients who spend more on bespoke paintwork than on the actual car, and in turn Rolls-Royce has built an ever-growing team devoted to accommodating their every desire.

Some of their work is extraordinary. I witnessed an artist, a former furniture maker, handmaking three-dimensional, highly detailed leaves from veneer and applying them to a panel of a car’s dashboard. And another using a computer to plot over one hundred thousand stitches to form just one part of a bespoke

embroidery design, which will be fitted to the interior roof of another model.

This is what elevates Rolls-Royce beyond a mere motor car.

“At Rolls-Royce Motor Cars, perfection is about more than making the very best products,” said Torsten Müller-Ötvös at the launch event. “It is a culture, an attitude and our guiding philosophy.”

The name Spectre led some to mistakenly think that this car might have something to do with James Bond, following 007’s 2015 film of the same name. But while James Bond has license to kill, Rolls-Royce has only license to thrill. With the debut of their first fullyelectric motor car, they’ve done just that.

‘

At Rolls-Royce Motor Cars, perfection is about more than making the very best products’

Family Man

Rafael Cagali’s reward for bringing his unique take on Brazilian food to London was two Michelin stars. Now he’s following it up with a restaurant that’s very personal

WORDS: JOHN THATCHER

AIR

While some chefs feel the pull of the kitchen from a tender age, spoon-fed a passion for food that runs through familial lines, others arrive at the pass more by chance than design. Rafael Cagali was very much in the latter camp.

Unsure of what he wanted to do when he entered adulthood but aware of the need to support himself financially as his parents’ business slipped into liquidation, he cut short an economics degree in his native São Paulo to head to London, where in order to pay for English language lessons he washed pots in a tiny trattoria.

Though small, that trattoria sparked big ideas in Cagali, igniting a passion for cooking that was latent (his mother owned a restaurant in São Paulo) and stirring him into action. “I worked my way up into Michelin-starred kitchens and it was in these places that I truly fell in love with hospitality and cooking.”

It’s a love story that, after chapters set in Spain and Italy and the award of two Michelin stars for his own restaurant, London’s Da Terra, continues with last month’s opening of Elis, a restaurant that comes from the heart. “Some of my earliest memories are of my mother and grandmother cooking in the kitchen, and of being inside my mother’s restaurant and jazz bar in São Paulo; Elis’s Piano Bar,” recalls Cagali, hence the name for his new venture. “A strong childhood memory of food I have is of eating feijoada, typically on Saturday, a stew of black beans and different cuts of pork and beef served with rice, kale salad, orange and farofa. I have wanted to explore some of the more relaxed elements of Brazilian and Italian food culture for some time; drawing on everything from my favourite street food to family meal celebration dishes that my grandma used to make.

“Elis will represent recipes I grew up eating. They are personal to my roots, but also dishes that I hope everyone will find some nostalgia in. It’s a good chance to show another side of our [Brazilian] food culture.”

The other side of the food culture

Cagali refers to is critically acclaimed at Da Terra, where highly original dishes of Brazilian origin are sprinkled with influences gleaned from Cagali’s time in celebrated kitchens in Spain and Italy, from where his great grandfather hailed. “Firstly, there’s a big focus on creativity and nostalgia within my cultural frame. I like to take key ingredients or flavour profiles and add touches of my own ideas, as well as things I’ve learnt in my career to create unique and interesting dishes. There’s also a big focus on quality ingredients. We are constantly looking to meet and work with new and different suppliers to ensure that we have the best quality produce, from meat to our micro herbs and garnishes.”

Da Terra has enjoyed rapid and significant acclaim since opening, winning its first star within nine months and gaining another in the very next edition of the Michelin Guide. What does Cagali think really captured people’s imagination?

“I think the experience we offer at Da Terra is really unique. Each dish is based on a memory or inspiration of mine, which is explained tableside by an incredible front-of-house team led

by my husband, Charlie. My chefs also come out and engage with the diners all evening as well, which I think adds even more personality to the experience.

“In London, Brazilian cooking doesn’t get put in the spotlight very much and I think Da Terra is often an opportunity for people to experience it for the first time. As a team, we never stop pushing to make sure our guests have a special experience, which I think is why we have such a dedicated base of regulars.”

Those regulars will not have to venture far to try Cagali’s latest offering — Elis sits in a room beneath Da Terra in a Victorian-era hotel. “When the opportunity for a new site under the same room became available, I felt a lot more comfortable about going ahead with Elis. But I don’t feel any trepidation or pressure about following up Da Terra. I have an incredible team.

I see Elis as Da Terra’s younger sister, more relaxed and casual. I will always be focused on Da Terra and pushing the boundaries of where we can take it, but I like the idea of introducing a space that feels like home and creating a restaurant that is focused on comfort.”

Though representing his heritage remains “fundamental” to Cagali, his style is a marriage of myriad career influences. “Having Italian heritage and working in Italy has really cemented the pillars of Italian cooking as an important reference point for the way I think about food. At Da Terra, we have had pasta in some form on the menu for almost the entire time we have been open. Working with Martin Berasategui in Spain taught me a lot about how to establish a unique experience through cooking using your own cultural framing. And I had the pleasure to work with both Heston Blumental and Simon Rogan in the UK, seeing how they worked with British produce to create world class dining experiences. That was a big inspiration for me to actually settle down and open a restaurant in London.”

Now there are two, the “younger sister” Elis having the perfect role model in her elder sister Da Terra. Let’s hope she’s a quick learner.

‘ As a team, we never stop pushing to make sure our guests have a special experience’

Opening pages, from left to right: dish at Elis; Rafael Cagali These pages: dishes at Elis, courtesy of Arianna Ruth

Four Seasons Hotel Ritz Lisbon Portugal

The coastal city of Lisbon continues to ride a wave of popularity, visitors descending en masse to its seven steep hills, on which up-and-coming neighbourhoods stand cheek by jowl with those seemingly immune to the passing of time.

It’s an old great with a storied past – Europe’s second oldest capital city – facing a bright future with a hip new identity. But while its central streets are nearly always thronged, refuge awaits in the most glamorous of settings – Four Seasons Hotel Ritz Lisbon.

Head to the hotel’s rooftop, home to a circular running track for early morning jogs, for a farreaching view that stretches across Lisbon’s brightlytiled, dusk-hued buildings to the historic River Tagus, the gateway to the city for centuries past.

But if you want a deep dive into the city’s heritage, Four Seasons Hotel Ritz Lisbon will organise a history lesson like no other. Strap on a helmet and take your seat in the sidecar of a WWII-era motorcycle, from where you’ll cruise through the city’s cobbled streets to its must-see sights – the hilltop Castelo de São Jorge, the 10-acre botanical garden, Belém Tower (the city’s ceremonial point of entry and departure from Roman times), and the sprawling Jerónimos Monastery.

You’ll know you’re at the latter when you see an always-long queue of tourists. They’re not there for the monastery, but for its still-secret recipe for pastel de nata, Portugal’s world-famous custard tart served up at the next door Pastéis de Belém, keepers of the monks’ cherished baking methods. But here’s another benefit of your private tour and in-the-know guide: while the wait time to enter Pastéis de Belém is long, across the street is the relatively new and lesser known (read, no queue) Manteigaria. You’ll have to whisper it quietly around these parts, but Manteigaria’s pastel de natas are the better of the two. You’ll also be taken for great coffee at what is the world’s oldest bookstore, and inside Barbearia Campos, a barber shop that dates to 1886 and whose interiors have barely changed since.

Your own tour of the Four Seasons Hotel Ritz Lisbon will also provide historical insight into the city – an eclectic mix of mid-20th–century Portuguese art (sculptures, paintings and tapestries) are dotted throughout, making the hotel home to one of the largest and most important privately-owned collections in the country.

You’ll welcome a refreshing dip after all that, and the Four Seasons Hotel Ritz Lisbon has two pools to choose from – one outdoors in perfectly manicured grounds, the other an instantly calming indoor lap pool.

Instantly memorable is dinner at CURA, the hotel’s Michelin-starred restaurant that continues to draw acclaim for its seasonallychanging menu of artistic dishes, the ingredients for which are deliberately limited to small local suppliers to ensure impeccable flavour.

For myriad reasons, there is no better place than the Four Seasons to get your fill of Lisbon.

Gaia Repossi

CREATIVE DIRECTOR OF REPOSSI

Work without the fear of failure. There will always be ups and downs but, generally, when you apply this mentality to your work that’s when doors open. It gives you the ability to have unlimited ambition but also regulates your ego, as you remain conscious of your limits while still trying. It’s my key.

The best piece of advice I’ve ever received is ‘less is more’. My mother gave me this advice, saying that when wearing jewellery it wouldn’t be elegant to overdress. I must have been a young girl when she said it and I always apply the idea to my jewellery designs, creating pieces that

are never over ornamental but always elegant and understated. To me, it makes it even stronger.

One thing I do every day is my yoga practice. It sets me up for what’s ahead and I really do not start a day well if I haven’t practiced. It makes me feel deeply connected with my body and has been a priority of mine for the past fifteen years.

A lesson I learned the hard way was the need to wait for the aesthetic answer to come when working on a design. It’s something you learn with experience. Gradually, the variations and

systems among your designs become your signatures.

If I could go back in time I would tell my younger self to misbehave more. I’d also advise myself to follow my gut instinct.

I aim to project a louder, clearer expression of what I do. During the pandemic, the idea of curating collections that didn’t necessarily match came and to me, along with the idea of offering statement and limited-edition pieces. I want people to know that what we make – and what they buy – is special; manufactured and designed in a unique way. To me, offering fewer items is the future of luxury.

Illustration: Leona Beth