AIR Magazine - DC Aviation - May'24

ALPINE EAGLE XL CHRONO

FEATURES

Why

the face that launched a million eyebrows — is adding musical theatre to her packed CV with a starring role in Caberet

The

inspired the biggest designers for decades, but what keeps it en vogue?

Famous

Sir

is a prominent collector of photography, with an impressive archive soon to be enjoyed by the public.

Thirty Eight Fashion Palace

glamour of Britain’s Blenheim Palace has

Forty Six The Big Picture

for his theatrical flair,

Elton John

Thirty Two Centre Stage

Cara Delevingne —

Credit: Kate Moss wearing Terry de Havilland

Unprecedented power and acoustic performance

STATE-OF-THE-ART FLOOR STANDING SPEAKERS

This highly intelligent loudspeaker provides you with clarity, range and a sound staging that is secondto-none. Beolab 90 features an impressive 360° design, has a variety of settings, and regardless of its placement it will give you mind-blowing sound.

REGULARS

Fourteen Radar

Sixteen Objects of Desire

Eighteen Art & Design

Twenty Two Jewellery

Twenty Eight Timepieces

Fifty Two Motoring

Sixty Two Travel

Sixty Four What I Know Now

Fifty Six Gastronomy

The meal starts at $711 a head and some diners have already walked out in disgust. So how come Danish chef Rasmus Munk’s restaurant has two Michelin stars and 10,000 people on the waiting list?

Welcome Onboard

As a premium service provider in the Middle East serving the private and business jets of the region and beyond, we are truly committed to the standards of the DC Aviation Group of companies. We are striving to deliver the highest level of quality in all areas, driven by the know-how of our people and their dedication to the business.

Be it for an aircraft owner, charter passenger, or even the flight and cabin crew, private and business jet travel revolves around time saving and maximum comfort. If you are travelling to and from Dubai, DC Aviation Al-Futtaim is your perfect choice.

From our exclusive FBO and hangar facility at Al Maktoum International Airport, we are able to save you time and offer you a luxurious ambience, whether you’re departing or arriving in your aircraft. We operate the only integrated private and business jet facility within the Dubai World Central (DWC) district where slot and parking restrictions are a matter of the past. With Dubai International Airport becoming the world’s busiest airport, private and business jet flights are severely restricted. However, that is not the case at Dubai’s new hub for executive aviation.

We welcome you onboard, and trust you’ll enjoy your flight experience — as well as our 100 percent satisfaction promise.

Holger Ostheimer Managing Director, DC Aviation Al-Futtaim

Cover : Cara Delevingne by Dennis Leupold/AUGUST

At Your Service

How DC Aviation Al-Futtaim’s myriad offerings set it apart

DC Aviation Al-Futtaim (DCAF) was born as a joint venture between the Al Futtaim Group, a local, regional, and international powerhouse with its headquarters in Dubai, and DC Aviation GmbH, with its main base in Stuttgart, Germany.

The business was officially launched during the 2013 Dubai Airshow. A grand opening ceremony in the presence of Mr. Omar Al-Futtaim, the Vice Chairman of Al-Futtaim Group, as well as dignitaries and honorable guests from within the aviation industry, took place within the impressive hangar structure and home of DC Aviation Al Futtaim at Dubai World Central.

His Highness Sheikh Ahmed Bin Saeed Al Maktoum, the President of Dubai Department of Civil Aviation, hailed the company’s launch as, “another milestone in Dubai’s ongoing development as a global aviation hub.”

Over the intervening years we have steadily grown our level of activity as well as our service offerings. We began by providing VIP passenger aircraft handling and hangar parking services,

and soon established a line maintenance station covering different aircraft types and nationalities of registrations. Since being granted an aircraft operator certificate (AOC) by the General Civil Aviation Authority of the United Arab Emirates, our fleet of managed aircraft has continued to grow and currently sits at 11, with two for charter.

As of now our services include executive charter; 360-degree aircraft management; aircraft maintenance; aircraft hangarage; consulting services; and FBO and handling services.

Our FBO is particularly impressive, offering the shortest distance between arrival to takeoff. The first full-fledged facility at Al Maktoum International Airport (DWC), it provides the highest levels of privacy and discretion and boasts a 1,300 m² lounge area, shower areas, a large conference room, individual TV, WLAN access, and a modern interior design. Additionally, 24 hours on-site security and customs and immigration services are provided, along with covered private parking slots for passengers and their guests.

‘ When it comes to aircraft management we offer all-round support under one roof in line with the highest industry standards ’

When it comes to aircraft management, we offer all-round support under one roof in line with the highest industry standards. Our client-orientated service can help customers maximise the retention value of their aircraft, make savings on things like insurance, fuel costs, and crew deployment, and reduce the costs of owning an aircraft by making it available for charter at your request.

Maintaining aircraft is our forte. We handle line maintenance for Global Express, Challenger 604/605, Falcon 900EX and Falcon 7X/8X aircraft, along with limited Airbus A320 series support; overhaul and renewal cabin equipment with the support of local partners; offer 24/7 spare parts supply, procurement and storage; maintenance

and airworthiness certification; the development and management of maintenance programmes; pre-purchase and technical inspections; wheel shop capability; and construction supervision, delivery, and handover inspections of new aircraft.

Meanwhile, our dedicated and air-conditioned aircraft hangars, located adjacent to our management offices at Dubai World Central – Al Maktoum International Airport, are available to our clients who wish to protect their valuable asset from the harsh external environment.

After celebrating our 10th anniversary in 2023, we will continue to make significant investments to enhance our services in support of our customers.

The extraordinary creative oeuvre of Messrs Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana is currently the subject of a Florence Müller-curated exhibition in Milan, the first stop of what will be an international tour. From the Heart to the Hands: Dolce&Gabbana is a window into the duo’s inspirations, all underpinned by their adoration of Italian culture and its numerous facets: visual arts through to architecture, theatre to traditions. Ten rooms in all tell their tale, including one that serves as a faithful reproduction of their hallowed workshop, at which tailors, seamstresses and artisans work every Friday to show visitors how a piece moves from conception to completion. FromtheHearttotheHands:

Dolce&GabbanaisatPalazzoReale, MilanuntilJuly31

OBJECTS OF DESIRE

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

The world of expert watchmaking meets the universe of couture in this unique piece from Chanel’s celebrated creation studio.

A musical box, clock and automaton in one, an 18k-gold key, which hangs from a diamond-dotted chain, is used to turn the mechanism that plays the melody ‘My

Woman’, a tune Gabrielle Chanel was said to have hummed while busying about her atelier. Intricate detailing includes a chandelier fashioned from 36 diamonds and an Onyx plinth ringed with 160 diamonds that evokes the upholstered sofa inside 31 rue Cambon.

CHANEL MUSICAL CLOCK COUTURE WORKSHOP

No one masters colour to the degree of skill shown by Hublot. This stunning shade of water blue sapphire – the manufacturer’s material of choice – stems from a new custom-developed chemical formula that makes it translucent in tone yet inalterable and 100% resistant

to knocks and scratches. Doing so required adhering to a very strict set of specifications across several years of development. The MP-11’s other striking design feature is, of course, its sculpted seven-barrel movement, which the soft hue does much to highlight.

HUBLOT

BIG BANG MP-11 WATER BLUE SAPPHIRE

Ever inspired by the romance of travel, Louis Vuitton turns its attention to the high seas for a nautical-themed capsule collection defined by relaxed tailoring and sophisticated, casualchic ensembles. Anchored by white and navy, with stripes (naturally) a

feature throughout, the collection spans women’s ready-to-wear, a mix of leather goods (for which red is a vibrant accent colour), accessories that include a set of brightly hued silk scarves, and fashion jewellery that has been designed with a nod to sailing ropes.

LOUIS VUITTON NAUTICAL 2024 CAPSULE

BERTONE

One of only 610 examples of the 5000 QV ever produced, it was designed as a mid-cycle refresh for the wellestablished Countach and released just prior to 1988’s 25th Anniversary Edition. But while it remained almost identical cosmetically to the original, it was a different beast under the bonnet. Building on the preceding 4.8-litre unit, the 500 QV is powered by a 5.2-litre V-12 to deliver a 0-100 km/h time of 4.8 seconds. Up for auction on May 10, it’s estimated to fetch between €400-500k.

RM SOTHEBY’S

1988 LAMBORGHINI COUNTACH 5000 QV BY

OBJECTS OF DESIRE

Since its launch, the sporty Alpine Eagle has served as something of a canvas onto which Chopard’s highly skilled watchmakers sketch their technical and aesthetic mastery. This ultra-thin timepiece is designed without a dial to showcase its intricate workings,

powered by a 3.30-millimetre calibre which features in an Alpine Eagle model for the first time. Made entirely of grade 5 titanium, which gives it a slightly darker shade than steel, the case of the watch measures just 8mm thick, yet a more rugged piece you’d be hard pushed to find.

OBJECTS OF

CHOPARD

EAGLE

Inspired by the likes of Yves Saint Laurent, Rabih Kayrouz founded his eponymous label in Beirut at the age of 25 – now it celebrates the same milestone. “In every creation of mine, the essence of the East and the West seamlessly intertwine, crafting my

universe,” he says of a world that is vividly coloured. The FW24 collection is a prime example: the luminous intensity of yellow, orange and red featuring alongside the deep allure of pink, navy and black to enhance a garment’s “seductive power.”

MAISON RABIH KAYROUZ FW24

LES CABINOTIERS – THE BERKLEY GRAND COMPLICATION

Throughout its two centuries, Vacheron Constantin has always strived to innovate. As such, it has amassed an arm-length list of horological achievements. Now it can add another in the beautiful shape of Les Cabinotiers - The Berkley

Grand Complication, the world’s most complicated watch. Comprising 63 horological complications and 2,877 components, this world-first piece houses a genuine Chinese perpetual calendar, a complexity that was some 11 years in development.

VACHERON CONSTANTIN

OBJECTS OF DESIRE

Artists In Residence

WORDS: CHRIS ANDERSON

Incredible images of pop art icon Andy Warhol, taken by the late William John Kennedy, and once thought lost for 40 years, can now be viewed at the Warhol Kennedy Residence

In the heart of London, tucked away just moments from The Strand, a recently opened hidden gem offers a journey back in time. The permanent, appointment-only Warhol Kennedy Residence may look unassuming from the outside, but its interior houses an extraordinary photographic collection containing images of American pop art icons Andy Warhol and Robert Indiana, taken by William John Kennedy in 1963 and 1964, just as both artists were gaining prominence. What makes the photos even more intriguing is that they were thought lost for four decades, with the negatives and transparencies rediscovered in the mid-noughties by Kennedy and his wife, Marie, so remain largely unseen.

Today, all three men have passed on – Warhol in 1987, Indiana in 2018, and Kennedy in 2021. But Neil Bookatz, the owner of the building that contains the Warhol Kennedy Residence, is here to champion the merits of the collection. “The residence was bought by me specifically to show the work to people,” he reveals. “It was my business partner who first became aware of the archive, and he called me about acquiring it because I have always been involved in collecting memorabilia. I met William John Kennedy and we became friends, so after he died I really felt that there had to be somewhere dedicated to housing his incredible work.”

Warhol is considered one of the most important artists of the late 20th century, inspired by advertising and celebrity culture, resulting in paintings, silk-screenings, photography, film, and sculpture. Indiana is best known for his iconic typography, particularly his ‘LOVE’ image, with the letters stacked in a 2x2 grid, and the ‘O’ italicised. It was reproduced countless times by the artist during his career, as paintings, silkscreenings, and sculptures, with a 12ft version selling for US$4.1 million in 2011. In several of Kennedy’s images, Indiana can be seen holding a ‘LOVE’ painting. Bookatz describes his building as a mix of office and residential use, and believes the setting is far more intimate than a regular gallery. “It allows for really nice discussions about the work, and an exchange of ideas that is very relaxed,” he says. “There is a behind-the-scenes quality, which complements the collection beautifully, as it conveys such an important time in the two artists’ careers, right before they were celebrated icons of American contemporary art, and that is very unique.”

Kennedy first met Indiana at an art gallery opening in New York in the early 1960s, with the two becoming friends, and the photographer often visiting the artist’s Coenties Slip studio. Through Indiana, Kennedy was introduced to Warhol at an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, and from there was invited

‘ It conveys such an important time in the two artists’ careers, right before they were celebrated icons of American contemporary art, and that is very unique’

to The Factory, Warhol’s famed New York studio, where other artists, musicians, and celebrities would stop by. Kennedy began to photograph both men regularly, often suggesting to Warhol that he wear his paintings as sandwich boards or pose behind the acetate of his screen prints.

Bookatz is clearly a huge fan of the images. “Warhol became famous for being a little aloof almost, but there is no evidence of that here,” he says. “In terms of Kennedy, you sense his enthusiasm for the artists, and the feeling that both were meant for bigger things. I love the image of Warhol holding the acetate of his Marilyn Monroe print, because you see the artist within the work. The print would later become one of his most famous works, and here there’s something eerie and wonderful about it.”

A tour of the exhibition takes roughly 30 minutes, with images presented on the walls and in display racks, accompanied by a short documentary film that includes a tour of The Factory and a one-on-one interview with Indiana. “I give quite a lot of the tours myself,” says Bookatz.

“Or sometimes members of the team will receive guests. There has already been a steady stream of visitors from all walks of life, and quite a few collectors. Warhol has such a mass and enduring appeal that it is no surprise we have such a broad audience.”

The Warhol Kennedy Residence is the only venue in the world that enthusiasts can appreciate this collection in its entirety and purchase their own prints of these truly unique images. This includes the William John Kennedy: The Warhol Museum Edition limited-edition box set, signed in the colophon by the photographer himself, featuring four hand-printed gelatine silver photographs and one chromogenic print, presented in a custom hand-made aluminium case, with six smaller boxes that include a foreword, introduction, and five essays.

The box set is produced by KIWI Arts Group, created for The Andy Warhol Museum, with only 50 available.

But it all begins in London, experiencing these significant photographic works close up, while honouring the legacy of their subjects and the artist behind them. Make an appointment now.

Appointments to view are available at The Warhol Kennedy Residence, London, warholkennedyresidence.com

Crown Jewels

The military insignia of kings, tsars and maharajas are the inspiration for Boucheron’s latest high jewellery collection

WORDS: SARAH ROYCE-GREENSILL

In her 13 years as creative director of the French jewellery house Boucheron, Claire Choisne’s mood boards have featured some unusual suspects. This January she introduced the latest high jewellery collection with a picture of the UK’s late Prince Philip waving at crowds during the coronation in 1953. He’s decked out in his Admiral of the Fleet finery, decorated with military medals and orders of chivalry, white ribbons fluttering at his shoulders.

“OK, Prince Philip is not my absolute muse – but I love this picture,” says Choisne via video call from the Tucson Gem Show, where she is shopping for the stones that will feature in the house’s 2026 collections. She was drawn to the unexpectedly feminine details of the late Duke of Edinburgh’s ceremonial uniform. “You feel the power and the strength, but at the same time there are all these couture details: bows, ribbons, embroidery. It’s a paradox.”

She decided it was the perfect way to interpret the well-trodden high jewellery theme of couture. “I didn’t want to do something too girly or cheesy. I wanted to give strength to the pieces. When I saw this picture, I said to myself, ‘OK, now I know how to manage the creation of this collection.’”

The resulting 24-piece collection, The Power of Couture, is the latest chapter in Boucheron’s annual Histoire de Style series, which sees Choisne

‘I don’t want to do pieces for men or for women. I want to make beautiful and meaningful pieces’

reinterpret designs or themes from the house’s 166-year history. Its founder, Frédéric Boucheron, was the son of a draper, and so the archive teems with diamond-set bows, ribbons and lace, with gold worked into suppleas-silk scarves. A lace-like shoulder adornment made circa 1880 was a Belle Epoque predecessor of today’s white gold and diamond epaulettes, whose overlapping loops were inspired by a tiara made in 1902 for the Princess of Wales, later Queen Mary, Prince Philip’s grandmother-in-law.

Clipped across the shoulders, they’re a precious take on the traditional tasselled gold epaulettes of naval uniforms. They also transform into cuffs; such versatility is a hallmark of the collection. A set of 15 medal brooches can be strung into a bib necklace of epic proportions. A rock-crystal and diamond bow can fasten to the shoulder or chest, or be fashioned into a multi-wear necklace, while its central diamond can be plucked off to become a ring. A braided aiguillette can be worn

military-style across the chest, draped around the waist, or disassembled into brooches and a bracelet.

“In ceremonial attire there are so many rules that you have to respect. For the collection, I wanted the opposite,” says Choisne. “I wanted people to be able to play freely and design their own style.” She sees the collection as a ‘kit’ with an almost infinite number of styling combinations. Her dream, she says, would be for one client to buy the lot. Whether that client is male or female is of little importance.

“A long time ago the people who wore high jewellery were men. The maharajas, the tsars, the kings. The biggest and most beautiful pieces were designed for men.” One of Boucheron’s most famous clients was the Maharaja of Patiala, who in 1928 had his guards cart some 7,571 diamonds and 1,432 emeralds from The Ritz to the Boucheron boutique, to be set into 149 extraordinarily opulent jewels – a commission that inspired New Maharajas, the house’s 2022 Histoire de Style high jewellery collection.

Today, continues Choisne, “I don’t want to do pieces for men or for women. I want to make beautiful and meaningful pieces. And I want to show that it’s beyond gender.” She says that men do buy and wear Boucheron high jewellery, but she doesn’t know the precise proportion of male customers. “I almost don’t want to know exactly, because I’m

sure of my idea. And maybe we have to show them that it’s a good one.”

Three years ago, Boucheron’s art deco-inspired Histoire de Style collection was photographed on male and female models – a first among Place Vendôme’s traditional maisons. “I knew that some of the pieces were even stronger on men. But the idea of it was almost weird at that time. People asked me, ‘Are you sure, high jewellery on men?’ And my answer was, ‘Yes, definitely,’” says Choisne.

The Power of Couture collection, conversely, was exclusively photographed on and modelled by women; another deliberately defiant move. “When you think of ceremonial attire, you naturally think of men.

So I wanted to show the opposite. It doesn’t make sense for me to choose between men and women. Nowadays we can do what we want.”

A pair of embroidery-inspired diamond ferns have an ethereal, Greek goddess-like beauty when worn as a headpiece. But one can also imagine them pinned to a tuxedo, echoing the actor Regé-Jean Page, who wore a feather-shaped diamond Boucheron brooch at last year’s Oscars.

Although it may take a Liberacechannelling peacock to carry off a lacy diamond collar, even the most blingaverse gentleman could be tempted to affix a few rock crystal and diamond buttons to his dress shirt. Choisne says Boucheron’s clients span the whole

‘ In ceremonial attire there are so many rules that you have to respect. I wanted the opposite’

spectrum. ‘It’s the same for men as it is for women: some are more classical, and some are super edgy.” Culture plays a role. “Maybe European men are a bit more traditional, whereas in Asia men can be more openminded when it comes to style.”

It was important that the Power of Couture collection wasn’t too literal, says Choisne; it couldn’t feel like fancy dress. A restrained, all-white palette of rock crystal and diamonds helps; she champions texture and detail over bold hues or glitzy brilliance. The pieces are labelled with their carat weight along with the hours involved in their creation – many run into the thousands. “If you put a lot of little diamonds everywhere, it’s easy. It will shine, so you have no doubt that it’s precious,” says Choisne. “But I prefer to find preciousness with purity of design and elegance, which come from the craftsmanship. It’s not about having lots of diamonds. The number of hours is what makes it high jewellery.”

The transformable Noeud bow, for example, is crafted from hundreds of individually cut lines of frosted rock crystal, threaded together through

their diamond edging to evoke the texture and fluidity of grosgrain ribbon. “It would be much faster and easier to engrave a single piece, but I wanted it to be really flexible. So they cut every little line by hand. Each one is a different length. It’s crazy work to achieve that.” That’s 2,600 hours of crazy work, to be precise.

Elsewhere, sandblasted rock crystal is knitted together into the flexible, five-strand Tricot choker. “The idea was to give an illusion of knit work,” says Choisne. “The unpolished rock crystal gives the feeling of softness, like wool.”

The Médailles feature grosgrain-effect rock-crystal ribbons, from which hang 15 medallions of sculpted rock crystal overlaid on to beds of brilliant-cut diamonds. “We cut the rock crystal with the glyptic technique – it’s much more complicated than engraving. Then we set diamonds underneath so they are a bit blurred. For me, it’s more magical.”

It’s clear that Boucheron’s craft workers relish Choisne’s technical challenges. They are currently making the pieces that will launch in July 2025 (Boucheron presents two high jewellery collections a year), while Choisne is finalising designs for 2026, and developing her ideas for 2027. It’s not always easy to sleep with so many different concepts buzzing around her brain, she admits. Her approach to design mirrors the demands she asks of her atelier. “I don’t love it when it’s too easy.”

Credit © Sarah Royce-Greensill / Telegraph Media Group Limited 2024

Poetry In Motion

WORDS: JOHN THATCHER

Inside the spellbinding universe created by the métiers d’art at Van Cleef & Arpels

At November’s Dubai Watch Week there was a moment of silence that spoke volumes. Inside the beautifully designed, multi-roomed booth that housed Van Cleef & Arpels’ myriad treasures was a magnificent automaton, an amalgam of traditional craftsmanship and mechanical innovation, of creativity and beauty.

A unique table ornament standing some 30cm tall on a base sculpted from marble and shattuckite, a rare copper, Floraison du Nénuphar was designed to reveal both the time and a spectacle of nature, the maison’s enduring muse. On the hour and accompanied by soft musical notes, the petals of a blooming flower opened gently to reveal a butterfly rising majestically from a sparkling bud of yellow gold, sapphires, spessartite garnets and diamonds, its wings of plique-à-jour enamel flapping gracefully until it lowered back into the bud, the petals then closing to cocoon their secret once more.

Everyone in the room watched this in reverential silence, their phones momentarily abandoned so that they could witness this mechanical marvel with their own eyes. It was proof, if ever needed, that Van Cleef & Arpels is a maison that inspires wonder.

Fast forward to last month’s Watches and Wonders, where Van Cleef & Arpels revealed its latest captivating creations, including two new automatons, Apparition des Baies and Bouton d’Or. The former sees lacquered rose-gold leaves part to unveil a white-gold, diamond and sapphire-clad bird spreading its wings while perched atop a rose-gold branch. The latter, designed as an homage to the maison’s near centuryold jewellery collection of the same name, reveals a dainty fairy figurine — her face imagined as a rose-cut diamond, her body draped in a rose-gold gown trimmed with blue lacquer, and her wings resplendent in plique-à-jour enamel — who emerges to pirouette.

These enchanting automatons are created in partnership with SainteCroix-based François Junod, a master in his field and a man whose skills are so rare that they are forever in demand.

“My automatons are universal – you don’t need to be a certain age or have a certain level of sophistication to understand them. And, unlike electronic

This page:

Apparition des Baies automaton

Next pages, from left to

creations, these will work for ever. In a century’s time, anybody will be able to repair and restore them. They are eternal objects,” he told The Telegraph last year.

While Junod and his small team of two in the Swiss mountains contribute the mechanical know how, Van Cleef & Arpels adds the artistry. “The stories we imagine around our automatons come to life thanks to our expertise and craftsmanship,” says Nicolas Bos, President and CEO of Van Cleef & Arpels. “Beyond their technical prowess and complex mechanisms, they offer

precious moments of emotion, marked by the imagination and poetic universe of our maison. It’s quite exciting to see that there is life, ambition and movement around something like the world of automatons that would be completely gone, if not for François and two craftsmen in his atelier.

“Since its founding, Van Cleef & Arpels has sought to work with the finest craftsmen, wherever they were to be found. As such, we have partnered with outstanding independent workshops that stand out in the fields of watch movements or automatons. Nonetheless, in terms of jewellery and métiers d’art, we firmly believe in the uniqueness of our savoir-faire.”

It is the métiers d’art that conjure an element of the extraordinary, adding brilliance to the expertise of the maison’s watchmakers. “This dialogue is essential to impart beauty and mystery into the objects we create. It is a complex relationship through which two worlds, each highly demanding in its own way, join together,” outlines Rainer Bernard, Head of Watchmaking Research & Development at Van Cleef & Arpels.

“Métiers d’art tell a story on the dial, while the technical mechanism – always invisible – brings the watch to life, showing the time as if by magic.”

right: Lady Arpels Brise d’Été; Lady Arpels Jour Nuit; Lady Arpels Jour Enchanté; Lady Jour Nuit

‘ Our pursuit of perfection drives us ever further’

This marriage of mastery is brought to bear on Van Cleef & Arpels’ Poetic Complication collection, to which new timepieces were added at Watches & Wonders. Both the 33mm Lady Jour Nuit and 38mm Lady Arpels Jour Nuit, reinventions of 2008’s Lady Arpels Jour Nuit watch, house a 24-hour rotating disc that moves to reveal the transformation of day to night, depicted on aventurine glass by a diamond-paved moon and stars and the sun, fashioned from snow-set yellow sapphires in the case of Lady Arpels Jour Nuit, and from a striking guilloché yellow gold, as per Lady Jour Nuit.

Enamel corollas in bloom set the scene for the Lady Arpels Brise d’Été watch, a summer garden in which plique-àjour enamel butterflies – coloured by hand with the thinnest of brushes, the sharpest of eyes – tell the time and charmingly flutter when freed to do so by an on-demand animation module.

Joining the Extraordinary Dials collection are two new limited-edition and numbered watches, Lady Arpels Jour Enchanté and Lady Arpels Nuit Enchantée. These miniature sculptures portray threedimensional scenes: a white gold fairy with transparent wings picking flowers in the light of the morning sun; a fairy at rest in a flowerbed illuminated by the glow of the moon. The level of detail, of care and of excellence, is extraordinary.

Both pieces feature some of the complex techniques that Van Cleef & Arpels has developed in-house, namely a means of façonné enamel – which took 16 months to perfect – and setting in enamel –which took 24. “This is why we chose to develop our own enamel workshop, which no doubt ranks among the world’s most accomplished,” says Bos of their artistic achievements. “By improving on traditional techniques − such as guilloché and plique- à-jour enamel – we have succeeded in creating level surfaces

akin to a painter’s canvas, while also instituting sculptural forms in spaces as small as a watch case. Furthermore, having our own workshop enables us to innovate, adapting our techniques to suit new market standards, particularly with regard to materials. For instance, our new formulas no longer use lead, a heretofore standard ingredient in enamel.”

It is this quest for excellence that Bernard hails as the common thread that binds the métiers d’art. “This is demonstrated by the acute attention we pay to two components we see as fundamental: light and colour. All of our creations play with light. Polished, enamelled and engraved surfaces: we often spend hours deliberating on how to achieve the blend of textures that will produce the most exquisite reflection. The same goes for colours. Our pursuit of perfection drives us ever further.” We’re just enjoying being along for the ride.

CENTRE STAGE

Model, actress, the face that launched a million eyebrows — Cara Delevingne is now adding musical theatre to her packed CV. But, as she explains, believing in herself has been far from easy

WORDS: ALEXANDRA

JONES

Saturday afternoon at an immaculately styled location house in Turnpike Lane and Cara Delevigne is watching RuPaul’s Drag Race on her phone. Barefaced, folded into a make-up chair, dressed in a black tracksuit that swamps her petite frame, she looks about a decade younger than her 31 years. The modelturned-actress smiles hello just as the hairstylist blasts her with a dryer.

We are here to talk about her role in Cabaret, the iconic musical set in the hedonistic nightclub scene of interwar Berlin; she’s currently playing the lead, Sally Bowles (opposite Luke Treadaway as the Emcee). It’s a storied part that won Liza Minnelli an Oscar for Best Actress in 1972 and — since Cabaret’s multi-award-winning West End reprisal — has seen a revolving cast of high-profile women feted for their own interpretations. “I wasn’t sure whether I should go and see it before I start, because Jake [Shears, who currently plays the Emcee] and RLT are both musicians and while I am [a musician], I’m not a singer, you know, in the same way. But I think everyone brings something different.” For her own version, she has resisted trying to emulate any one person; she doesn’t find the process useful. “I’m just not great at being a carbon copy of someone else.”

When we meet, Delevingne has been in rehearsals for the past three weeks, she explains. She should have started earlier but her schedule was upturned by the recent writer and actor strikes. “I think it is a wonderful thing that the strike happened,” she tells me, “but also a very sad thing because you see how people in power disregard and don’t care about people’s lives, jobs and what’s fair.” She feels that while they achieved much, “it didn’t really protect people as much as anyone wanted. Like, I still feel, especially with AI... there’s still so much up in the air.”

Rehearsals for Cabaret are 10am to 6pm, six days a week. The hardest part?

“Believing in myself, honestly... And not caring what other people think. Because even if I did the best I possibly could, and even if that was really good, people are still going to be like, ‘She doesn’t deserve to be here. She hasn’t...’” She pauses for a moment. “You know, I auditioned like anyone else [so] it’s just annoying, but I have to tune that out.”

Old interviews paint her as full of restless energy but when we meet Delevingne is very calm, speaks quietly and with much seriousness, as if she’s weighing up the cost of each answer before committing. It’s perhaps an indication of how fame — heaped on her from such a young age — has left her more self-conscious than before, particularly in these situations. Though she’s spoken in the past about how she was never well suited to formal learning (she attended the liberal boarding school Bedales) — “I didn’t feel smart, I didn’t feel like I was good enough. I blamed myself for a long time but now I think that it’s [a problem with the] education system itself,” she tells me — the worry about how she might be perceived didn’t come until later.

“Because I don’t think I started dealing with other people’s opinions of me until I became famous. You know, your friends love you, but then you see that other people will hate — literally hate — you and you’re like, ‘Oh that sucks.’”

Delevingne had a stratospheric rise to fame, exploding into the public consciousness in 2011 after she was selected by then head of Burberry, Christopher Bailey, to feature in the brand’s SS11 campaign. She was 16 years old and immediately touted as the face of her generation. Her brows spawned column inches and copycats and she went on to appear in campaigns for fashion heavyweights including Fendi, DKNY, Saint Laurent, and Mulberry.

Her success was, as it often is for women in the public eye, a double-edged sword: she was pursued relentlessly by photographers and hounded by journalists who knew that a line from Delevingne would be a sure-fire way to sell copies. “There’s nothing like learning how to swim by just being chucked in a pool and drowning,” she says of that period. “Life was very fast back then, in so many different ways. I didn’t get to stop and feel much of what was going on, especially in terms of, like, processing or being grateful or feeling proud or being present. It was crazy, to say the least.”

The one positive, she explains, was that it taught her “how I wanted to live my life later on... it got something out of my system. It was like, ‘Oh God I know what I want and I know what I don’t want. And I don’t want that any more.’”

By ‘that’ she means the unrelenting attention. In 2011, celebrity culture was reaching an apex, gossip blogger Perez Hilton was at the height of his powers and it was the year that Amy Winehouse tragically died. “It’s the power of what that can do to people,” says Delevingne. “I mean, no one asks for that... and once they [photographers] sense fear, they chase it. It’s horrible. They chase it, like, ‘What’re you trying to hide?’”

Later, she tells me that part of the reason she moved away from London (she bought a house in Los Angeles in 2017) was because “the press and journalism can be really rough [in the UK]... You’re either a person that people

‘

I’m

just not great at being a carbon copy of someone else ’

This page: still from American Horror Story (2023)

Opposite page: still from Only Murders In The Building, season 2 (2022)

want to succeed or you’re not. And I think once you are one of the latter, you can’t really get out of that. So I was like, ‘The only thing I want to do is leave.’” Being back in London now is a different beast: she’s older and “more boring”, she laughs. “People don’t follow me around all the time and I don’t have much [going on] they can write about.”

Last year, in a gear-shift away from either modelling or acting, Delevingne fronted a BBC documentary which earned a slew of four and five-star reviews for its clever and moving approach to the science and politics of modern sexuality. What made it such engaging viewing, though, was Delevingne’s own openness about everything.

“I think that the whole thing was deceiving,” she laughs when I say how much I enjoyed the show. “Because — and I think it’s the same for the viewer — I thought with that title, it was going be like this fun, entertaining, raucous thing... I didn’t realise how educational it would be for me in terms of what’s going on in the world, but also what was going on within myself. That was the part I didn’t realise I’d signed up for. At the time I was like, ‘Oh no, I don’t know if I want to do this,’ but it was good... getting to do a job where you learn so much about yourself and other people, it was really incredible and I’m so grateful for that.”

It also taught her something valuable about love, she says. “I went in there talking about love and relationships and saying, ‘Oh, I don’t think relationships are for me’ — but, you know, that was coming out of past relationships. I came out of [filming the documentary] going, monogamy and love really are important

‘There’s nothing like learning how to swim by just being chucked in a pool and drowning ’

to me, I just haven’t found the right person yet. So it just kind of helped me find the bookends to certain questions — which by the way, are still bookends, it doesn’t mean that the conversation is ever closed, it just means that I can feel a certain amount of contentment, joy and happiness in where I am.”

She’s currently in a relationship with an old school friend, a musician named Minke (real name Leah Mason). “It’s wonderful. I think when it’s someone you know, there’s an automatic safety and trust there that is harder to find elsewhere. You know where they come from and where they’ve been, because you’ve done the same thing. It feels like a different sense of love, home, safety.”

For Delevingne acting has always been the plan, right from school, and while film and TV (she’s recently starred in two juggernaut series: American Horror Story and Only Murders in the Building) are great, theatre is her first love, she says. “I haven’t done a play since I left school but it’s the reason why I’ve wanted to act for my whole life.” Preparing for Cabaret has been “the most incredible three weeks, like I feel more alive and on the edge of a nerve [than ever] and it’s so nice. It’s a wonderful place to be.” She pauses for a moment, before adding, “alive-slash-broken.”

Under the guise of a risqué musical, Cabaret actually deals with incredibly

dark material: the persecution of the Jews in pre-war Berlin and the steady infiltration of far-right views into every part of Berlin society. It’s a cautionary tale that will always feel relevant, says Delevingne. We are speaking a few days after the death of Russian dissident Alexei Navalny and in a period in which far-right movements have been gaining popularity around the globe, not to mention the rise of polarisation over the atrocities of the Israel/Hamas conflict.

It’s a heavy conversation and I get the sense that Delevingne thinks I’m trying to catch her out (every so often she turns a steely blue stare on me as if to say, “Really?”) but she is characteristically thoughtful on it all. “I think Cabaret shows the world as it is. There’s so much distraction, so much smoke and mirrors, to distract from the real underbelly, the truth, which is that there is a dark hatred that seems to divide people and countries and religions.”

There is something to be said for looking back in history, she continues, as a way to “learn something about what we’re going through at the moment. Because it seems like history repeats itself in so many ways.” I wonder whether that sentiment feels particularly present for her, given that she lives for much of the year in the United States, where the politics has never looked more extreme or, with a possible Trump comeback on the horizon, more frightening. Does it feel scary to be there? “I think that’s the world in general,” she demurs. “You can say that about anywhere, you can find the beauty and you can find the darkness in any place you go... I’m an extremely sensitive person; if I focus on that it will consume me. So I try not to.”

The glamour of Britain’s Blenheim Palace has inspired the biggest designers for decades but, as one new exhibition asks, what keeps it en vogue?

WORDS: LISA ARMSTRONG

These pages: Vivienne Westwood SS20

From the start, Blenheim Palace was destined to become something of a fixation for the fashion world. Excessively extravagant, it took 20 years, only finally being completed in 1725, three years after the first Duke of Marlborough, for whom it was built, died. Despite the vast sums involved (it was more than seven times over budget), many of those who worked on its construction never saw any money. How fashion.

And oh, the glamour. Easy to see why Vivienne Westwood, Jean Paul Gaultier, Christian Dior, Karl Lagerfeld, Azzedine Alaïa, Ralph Lauren and Erdem Moralioglu have all been seduced by aristocratic style.

Coco Chanel had a love affair with the English upper classes: a friend of Sir Winston Churchill (who was born at Blenheim) and a lover of the second Duke of Westminster, she spent large chunks of time in Britain.

The affair between fashion and Britain’s top tier continues. See twinsets (Prada A/W 2024), pearls (everywhere), Savile Row tailoring, which in turn carries the influence of British military uniforms (again, everywhere). Meanwhile, on film, Saltburn introduced a generation of TikTokers to the coded snobbery and eccentricities of the British elite, prompting news outlets to declare the ‘Saltburn Effect’ had taken over London Fashion Week in February.

They may have got carried away; designers such as Simone Rocha, Emilia Wickstead, Molly Goddard and Richard Quinn have long been making dresses that would appeal to the tragicomically awful Lady Elspeth Catton, played by Rosamund Pike. But the timing couldn’t be better for Blenheim, a Unesco World Heritage site, to stage its largest fashion exhibition to date.

Icons of British Fashion amounts to a take-over of the palace: each of 11 rooms on the visitors’ trail has been dedicated to a specific designer or label, including Stephen Jones, milliner extraordinaire to royals, aristos and Dior, Dame Zandra Rhodes, Stella McCartney, Bruce Oldfield

‘The palace’s place at the nexus of the fashion firmament may be restored, if it ever went away’

and Turnbull & Asser. The last was a favourite of Churchill, with which he co-designed the siren suit, a riff on the working man’s boiler suit that he popularised during the Second World War, and which remains a staple in women’s wardrobes to this day.

Each designer, explains Kate Ballenger, keeper of palace and collections, was invited to look round and pick their ideal backdrop. Oldfield, whose embellished evening gowns have adorned many a grand English ball, chose the chandeliered Green Drawing Room, inspired, he says, by the 1948 photograph by Cecil Beaton of a group of society women wearing Charles James in a similarly spectacular room. One might imagine there was friction between designers but Stephen Jones says the choice of salons was squabble-free. “I went for the one that seemed the prettiest to me, lots of sand colours and mirrors. That said, when the hats are smaller than the clocks, the scale is challenging.” In the end Jones selected three hats from his three decades working with Dior.

For Ballenger, a photograph of Churchill in his siren suit, accessorised with snakeskin shoes and a homburg hat, tells us the most about Blenheim’s relationship with fashion and costume. “It’s so beautifully tailored with lustrous fabric and it’s both functional and stylish. It continues to inspire designers today, 80 years on.” We shouldn’t be too surprised that Churchill cared about his dress. His mother Jennie, Lady Randolph Churchill, a noted American beauty married to the third son of another Duke of Marlborough, had a passion for fashion (but also, unfortunately for her, a tenuous grasp of personal fiscal responsibility).

Sometimes it seems as though Blenheim’s influence on style operates osmotically. During a lull in the

pandemic, I was shown around an exhibition of the painter Cecily Brown there (artists are often inspired by it too) by a tour guide who gave off strong ‘1940s female British spy’ vibes. I asked her about her beret and she said her muses had been the women working for British intelligence who were relocated to Blenheim following bombing in London during the Blitz. Ironically, given the intelligence service’s billet there, or perhaps because of it, Hitler was also besotted by Blenheim; allegedly, he earmarked it for his future home when in Britain. At points, Blenheim really must have seemed the centre of a certain world perspective.

“It represents a picture of a time in history when England had an image of grandeur and splendour. When I think of Blenheim I think of fabulous paintings, interiors, heritage, wonderfully laid out grounds by Capability Brown,” says Zandra Rhodes. Perhaps you can’t live or work in such grandiose surroundings and not have it affect the way you dress.

Stephen Jones suggests that fashion’s fascination with British aristocracy runs on a deep, subconscious level.

“If you think about the hierarchy at a fashion show – the backstage area with all these make-up artists, stylists, hairdressers and assistants scurrying around working, and front row where you have the clients sitting in outfits that cost thousands, it’s totally Downton Abbey.”

From the start, the exuberantly baroque Blenheim, the only palace in the land not owned by the Royal family or Church (“We have nothing to equal this,” King George III is said to have expostulated when he and his wife Queen Charlotte visited the 12,000-acre estate in Oxfordshire in 1786), oozed charisma through association with its residents.

In the early 18th century, Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough – wife of the bellicose first Duke, to whom Blenheim was supposedly gifted by a grateful nation as a reward for his war heroics – was widely considered to be one of the great beauties of her day. She also had an influential

This page, clockwise from left: Alice Temperley; Terry de Havilland; Amy Winehouse wearing Terry de Havilland

This page: Lulu Guinness

Opposite page: Bruce Oldfield

‘The British aristocracy have often been a little punk in spirit’

(some suspect physically intimate) relationship with Queen Anne.

The Duchess was played by Rachel Weisz in the 2018 film The Favourite, and her style legacy further boosted by Sandy Powell, the multi-Oscarwinning British costume designer who envisaged her as a proto punk. (No wonder the late Dame Vivienne Westwood’s husband Andreas Kronthaler, who now oversees her label, was keen to take part in the exhibition.)

Memorable scenes of Weisz in androgynous, monochrome riding dress are not entirely inaccurate. Samuel Pepys, who died in 1703, complained that with women dressed for riding in “men’s coats, nobody could take them for women in any point whatever”.

The freedom of a riding habit and other athletic clothes may have been one reason the British female aristocrat was so enamoured of outdoor pursuits. Sport also provided another foundation for clothing that British labels, from Burberry to Barbour (the latter has a room in the exhibition too), still export around the world.

“The British aristocracy have often been a little punk in spirit,” notes Jones. “There’s no shortage of

characters among them and I think that’s a big attraction for fashion designers of all nationalities. In a world of temporary celebrities and politicians, they have an air of permanence. Yet they can also seem archaic and that makes them romantic, especially if you live in Korea or Ohio. They’re like glamorous aliens.”

Sarah was the first of several stylish duchesses of Marlborough, the second most famous of whom is arguably Consuelo Vanderbilt, wife of the ninth Duke of Marlborough. Born in 1877, she was outrageously rich (the money came from US railroads) and the ultimate hothouse flower of America’s Gilded Age. She was said to be one of the inspirations for The Buccaneers, Edith Wharton’s unfinished final novel about the wealthy American heiresses who were married off to relatively impoverished British upper-class men. Another great beauty, who was captured by society-darling portraitist John Singer Sargent, she was forced to marry into the Spencer-Churchill dynasty by an abusive mother. Consuelo’s fortune is credited with saving Blenheim but it was a loveless marriage, and

despite the rubbernecking crowds outside St Thomas Episcopal Church in Manhattan, where she wed the Duke in 1895, she reportedly wept her way down the aisle. They divorced in 1921.

Gladys Deacon, who became the second wife of the ninth Duke, had big shoes to fill, but since she’d lived in Paris during the Belle Epoque, and had Rodin and Proust commenting on her bewitching beauty, style, intelligence and wit, and Boldini and Cecil Beaton painting her portrait, fill them she did.

Then there was Mary, wife of the 10th Duke of Marlborough, who invited Christian Dior himself to stage a fashion show at her home in 1954. “She went to see Dior in Paris and fixed the whole thing up with him,” her daughter Lady Rosemary Muir, now 94, recalled in 2014.

Dior, a committed Anglophile who adored, inter alia, houndstooth, a full English breakfast and of course the statelies, wrote admiringly in his autobiography that ‘when an English woman is pretty, she is prettier than a woman of any other nationality. I adore the English, dressed not only in the tweeds which suit them so well, but also in those

Above and right: Stephen Jones Below: Zandra Rhodes

page:

‘ Blenheim represents a picture of a time in history when England had an image of grandeur and splendour ’

flowing dresses, in the subtle colours, which they have worn inimitably since the days of Gainsborough.’

He needed little persuading to bring his show to Oxfordshire, especially as proceeds from the five-guineasapiece tickets would go to the British Red Cross. More than $9,000, or $400,000 in today’s money, was raised; a ‘robe Blenheim’ debuted; and Princess Margaret, who had famously worn a fairy-tale ivory-coloured tulle Dior gown for her 21st birthday a few years earlier, was in attendance. On the day of the event, Red Cross nurses stood in a line to the side of the catwalk wearing full uniform.

A 22-year-old Yves Saint Laurent, who took the reins of the house when Christian Dior died suddenly in 1957, brought another Dior show to Blenheim in 1958; Princess Margaret sat front row once again, dressed in green silk. In 2016 Dior came to Blenheim for a third time under Serge Ruffieux and Lucie Meier, who held the creative fort between Raf Simons’ departure and Maria Grazia Chiuri’s arrival as the maison’s first woman creative director.

Dior admired Mary SpencerChurchill’s poise and height and she clearly had something about her, as many of Blenheim’s duchesses did,

although, drained by the palace’s upkeep (the interiors alone span seven acres), they frequently lacked ready cash to splash on couture. Glamour returned, intermittently, with John Spencer-Churchill, 11th Duke of Marlborough, whose four wives included socialite Athina Livanos, formerly married to Aristotle Onassis, the painter Rosita Douglas, and Lily Mahtani, the immensely wealthy ex-wife of Nigeria-based tycoon Ratan Mahtani. Zandra Rhodes recalls attending a ball at Blenheim with Tommy Nutter, one of the great characters of Savile Row: “It was very warm. I wore one of my own floaty net ballgowns and bumped into the newly married Mick and Bianca Jagger. Bianca was wearing Zandra Rhodes which she accessorised with a walking stick.”

The 11th Duke died in 2014, and his son Jamie, who had been in and out of rehab and, at a certain time, prison, became the 12th at the age of 58. His second wife, Edla Griffiths, is more artist (a ceramicist) than fashionista. The couple married in a register office in 2002. By contrast his son George, the future 13th Duke, and his wife Camilla upped the ante six years ago when they wed in full

pomp at Blenheim in front of 600 guests. The bride wore miles of Dolce & Gabbana lace. The palace’s place at the nexus of the fashion firmament may be restored, if it ever went away.

Yet much of its stylish credibility is due to the property itself. The man who designed it was a celebrity. Sir John Vanbrugh, arguably the first starchitect, was also a celebrated playwright of exceptionally, even for the times, bawdy plays such as The Relapse; or, Virtue in Danger and The Provoked Wife, which teemed with characters with names such as Sir Tunbelly Clumsey. In his second act, he masterminded two of England’s greatest statelies – Blenheim and Castle Howard. He fell foul of the capricious first Duchess, who also fell out with Queen Anne. But despite the rows, and the withdrawal of royal funds, Sarah and Vanbrugh between them saw Blenheim through to its completion, almost 300 years ago – though before it was quite finished Sarah banned Vanbrugh from passing through its gates. The rest of us are free to enter, as thousands will for this exhibition, lured by the ever-enchanting promise of aristocratic style.

Icons of British Fashion is at Blenheim Palace until June 30

This

Stella McCartney

THE BIGGER

PICTURE

Famous for his theatrical flair, Sir Elton John is a prominent collector of photography, with an impressive archive soon to be enjoyed by the public

WORDS: CHRIS ANDERSON

The world knows Sir Elton John as a hugely successful singer-songwriter, topping the charts in the UK and the US with such albums as 1973’s Goodbye Yellow Brick Road and 1997’s The Big Picture His love of photography is perhaps less obvious, but after many decades in the limelight he happily lists it as his second passion behind music, and with husband David Furnish has amassed an incredible collection of more than 7,000 prints over the span of 30 years, featuring many of the great photographers, events, and celebrities of the 20th century.

Now there is an opportunity for the public to discover what John and Furnish probably only invite their closest friends to experience. Starting this month, Fragile Beauty: Photographs from the Sir Elton John and David Furnish Collection, in partnership with Gucci, will be a major exhibition at the V&A in London, and the museum’s largest temporary exhibition of photography to date, spotlighting 300 rare images from 140 photographers.

Fragile Beauty’s project curator Lydia Caston was one of the people tasked with narrowing down a collection involving thousands of prints to mere hundreds. “Making our selection took a number of research trips,” she explains. “Elton and David were both very helpful, with the images we’ve chosen stretching from the 1950s to the present day, taking in fashion, abstract works, and also American photography, as the couple spend so much time in the States.”

Caston reveals that the exhibition is organised into eight themed sections, including reportage, celebrity, and masculinity. She is quick to reel off the list of photographers featured, which includes Robert Mapplethorpe, William Eggleston, Diane Arbus, Sally Mann, Zanele Muholi, Ai Weiwei, Carrie Mae Weems, and more. There are also portraits of famous names, such as Aretha Franklin, Elizabeth Taylor, the Beatles, and Chet Baker.

Other images illustrate key moments from history. “We see photography from the American civil rights movement of the 1960s, the AIDS activism of the

‘The images are all era defining, demonstrating the connection between the strength and vulnerability inherent in us all ’

1980s, and the events of September 11, 2001,” Caston continues. “There are fashion photographs by Horst P Horst, Irving Penn, and Herb Ritts, and we have Elton’s very first acquisitions – six prints purchased from American artist Cindy Sherman’s Untitled Film Series at a New York fundraiser in 1991 – as well as some of his most recent finds, featuring the likes of Tyler Mitchell, Trevor Paglen, and An-My Lê, bought around 2022. What the images have in common is that they are all era defining, demonstrating the connection between the strength and vulnerability inherent in the human condition.”

One of the most anticipated sections of the exhibition revolves around Marilyn Monroe – who John famously

This page, clockwise from top left: ; Versace Dress (Back View), Herb Ritts, 1990 © Herb Ritts Foundation. Courtesy of Fahey Klein Gallery, Los Angeles; Poppy, Robert Mapplethorpe, 1988 © Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation. Used by permission; Zachary, Adam Fuss, 2011 © Adam Fuss. Courtesy of the artist and Fraenkel Gallery San Francisco; Crying Men (Laurence Fishburne), Sam Taylor-Johnson2002 © Sam Taylor-Johnson

Opening page: Egg On His Face, David LaChapelle, New York, 1999 © David LaChapelle Opposite page: Dakota Hair, Ryan McGinley, 2004 © Ryan McGinley Studios

‘ Photography reveals something important about the human experience’

wrote about in his hit single Candle in the Wind. Three striking portraits of the iconic actress will be presented together for the first time, offering viewers a rare opportunity to witness Monroe’s timeless allure, captured through the lens of renowned photographers. “These candid portraits – taken between 1957 and 1962 – show Monroe at the height of her fame, in moments between scripted scenes or staged shoots,” Caston continues. “Richard Avedon’s image is a well-known early photograph of the actress in New York in 1957, while Eve Arnold’s portrait of Monroe shows her rehearsing her lines on the set of The Misfits in 1960, and Bert Stern’s The Last Sitting from 1962 captures her lost in thought two months before she died.”

Nan Goldin’s intimate Thanksgiving series, which documents moments of joy and sorrow within the artist’s community, will be showcased in its entirety, comprising 149 prints, displayed floor-to-ceiling, providing a raw and unfiltered glimpse into human emotion. “What’s great about the exhibition is that visitors may recognise an image, but not know who it was taken by, or might have heard

of a photographer, and not be aware of the breadth of their work,” Caston adds. “Or they might recognise figures like Macolm X and Miles Davis, but not have seen these particular images of them before. I think there will be a few surprises for everyone.”

Naturally, with celebrity being such a prominent theme, and considering John’s own stardom, a playful image of the musician himself is included, courtesy of David LaChapelle. Taken in 1999, entitled Egg on His Face, the photo shows John sat at a Formica table, with toast, orange juice, and a set of music sheets before him, enjoying a cup of tea, looking at the viewer with fried eggs covering his eyes, still wearing his glasses.

“Also, we interviewed Elton for the exhibition’s accompanying book, and he talks about the difference between being photographed as a celebrity and wanting to enjoy photography, so it’s an interesting juxtaposition,” says Caston.

Celebrities form part of Sam TaylorJohnson’s Crying Men series from 2004, also featured, where the artist asked some of Hollywood’s greatest actors, including Laurence Fishburne, Robin Williams, and Daniel Craig, to

cry on camera in character. “Whether through the elegance of fashion photography, the creativity of musicians and performers, or the exploration of desire and identity, photography reveals something important about the human experience,” Caston concludes.

In an era dominated by digital imagery and fleeting snapshots, Fragile Beauty serves as a reminder of the enduring value of the printed photograph, with viewers invited to slow down, immerse themselves in each shot, and reflect on the stories they tell. It also continues John and Furnish’s enduring relationship with the V&A – first loaning a selection of Horst photographs to the museum in 2014, then offering a major donation to the museum’s Photography Centre in 2019, which resulted in one of the galleries being named after them. As the couple said in a statement: “Fragile Beauty takes our collaboration to exciting new heights. Working alongside the V&A again has been a truly memorable experience, and we look forward to sharing this exhibition with the public.”

Fragile Beauty: Photographs from the Sir Elton John and David Furnish Collection is at the V&A London from May 18, 2024-January 5, 2025

These pages, from left to right: Malcolm X, Eve Arnold, Chicago, USA, 1962 © Eve Arnold/ Magnum Photos; Marilyn Monroe on set for The Misfits, Eve Arnold, Nevada, USA, 1960 © Eve Arnold/Magnum Photos

GForce

Forty-five years in the making, the all-new Mercedes-Benz G-Class pays homage to its military off-roader heritage while simultaneously enhancing its technological and luxury features

WORDS: CHRIS ANDERSON

The Middle East is famous for its love of super-luxury SUVs. For every top-spec Range Rover, there is a Bentley Bentayga or Lamborghini Urus, cruising the highways or pulling up to a hotel entrance. And you will no doubt spot several of these, the Mercedes-Benz G-Class, which offers something that many of its peers lack: namely 45 years of history, military origins (so it means business off-road), and a distinctive boxy shape, largely unchanged throughout its existence. In short, this is an SUV icon.

Last year, Mercedes-Benz reached a significant G-Class milestone, with its 500,000th edition rolling off the production line in Graz, Austria. The four-wheel-drive off-roader has always been built there, commencing in 1979 as part of a cooperative agreement between the famed German carmaker and another manufacturer, Magna Steyr (formerly Steyr-Daimler-Puch). Mercedes-Benz engineers in Stuttgart took charge of design and testing, while those in Graz handled the actual build.

It was apparently the former Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who suggested to Mercedes-Benz that it create a military off-roader, and while many were sold to various armed forces around the world, with testing taking place in the German coalfields, the Sahara Desert, and the Arctic Circle, it quickly evolved into a civilian vehicle, with iterations becoming more advanced and refined over the decades.

In 1980, the Vatican bought a custom

‘The all-new G-Class raises the bar for real adventure’

G-Class with a clear thermoplastic top to serve as transport for the Pope, and a modified version took first place in the 1983 Paris-Dakar Rally. Years later, in 2006, another delivered the first foreigner to Siberia, the world’s coldest region, traversing 19,000km without a single breakdown, in temperatures as low as -53 degrees C.

It means that anticipation is high for the all-new 2024 model. According to Mercedes-Benz, the biggest updates are the hybrid powertrains, the modern drive assistance, increased comfort, and advanced digitalisation. The iconic exterior is largely unchanged, which means you still get the square, rigid shape, protective moulding, and exposed spare wheel on the rear door, although the front radiator grille now sports four horizontal louvres instead of three, the bumpers feature a new design, and there are cameras front and rear, with the one on the reverse including a wiper water nozzle to blast away dirt when off-roading. The adaptive Multibeam headlights also promise to adjust automatically to any road situation thanks to 84 individually controllable high-performance LEDs.

Further cosmetic changes might be evident according to which of the new G-Class models you opt for. There is the

diesel-powered G 450 d, for example, the G 500 with its 3-litre twin-turbo V8, and the top-flight AMG G63, which has a 4-litre twin-turbo V8, plus the Manufaktur hyper blue magno exterior colour as an exclusive option. Also note that the all-electric G 580 with EQ Technology will arrive later, and there is a lengthy list of customisation options, including six different wheel designs.

For now, each of the current engines is an electrified hybrid, using 48V technology to offer increased performance with reduced fuel consumption. In the case of the flagship AMG G63, that means 585hp, with 850Nm of torque, and electrification adding 20hp and 200 Nm, respectively, for a brief time. Expect a 0-100km/h time of 4.4 seconds, plus a 220km/h top speed, with the optional AMG Performance Package boosting this to 4.3 seconds and 240km/h.

The interior is designed for comfort, with its multi-function steering wheel covered in Nappa leather as standard, and the temperature-controlled cup holders, wireless charging system for mobile devices, the Burmester 3D surround sound system, and the rearseat entertainment system, with its two 11.6in touchscreens, available on request. A 12.3in MBUX (Mercedes-Benz User Experience) screen in the dash comes as standard, featuring Apple and Android smartphone integration, and navigation that displays the traffic light phases at a junction, plus an adaptive voice assistant

understanding simple commands.

The G-Class features a range of driving programmes for both road and offroad driving, as well as independent suspension, with double wishbone front and rigid rear axles, active roll control, and high ground clearance. Adaptive adjustable damping also comes as standard, compensating for uneven surfaces, with an intelligent multi-plate clutch to regulate vehicle behaviour.

Active Steering Assist and a 9G-Tronic torque converter automatic gearbox are among the other features.

Mercedes-Benz seems rightfully pleased with its new G-Class offering. As Markus Schäfer, chief technology officer, and member of the board of management, explains: “The all-new G-Class raises the bar for real adventure on and off the road yet again. With an electrified drive portfolio, our pioneering MBUX infotainment system, and additional comfort and off-road functions, it is poised to continue its success story as the ultimate ‘Geländewagen’ [cross-country vehicle]. The all-new G-Class combines an outstanding driving experience with a state-of-the-art digital experience.”

Credit where it is due. Not only will the latest G-Class feel right at home in the Middle East, but it continues to show how Mercedes-Benz balances heritage with modernity.

A Matter Of Taste

The meal starts at over $700 a head and some diners have already walked out in disgust. So how come Danish chef Rasmus Munk’s restaurant has two Michelin stars and 10,000 people on the waiting list?

WORDS: CHARLOTTE LYTTON

It’s a freezing Tuesday night in Copenhagen, and I’m chasing a bodysuit-clad woman around a mirrored room while a booming voice asks, “Who are you, really?” over the speaker. So begins dinner at Alchemist, the two Michelinstarred behemoth ranked fifth best restaurant in the world.

Part restaurant, part lab, theatre and soapbox, my 50 ‘impressions’ (that’s Alchemist for ‘courses’) go on to include freeze-dried butterfly, lamb’s brain served in a custom-made ‘head’ featuring real human eyebrows, and a caged chicken claw served while 3D images of fowl are projected overhead on the domed ceiling. Four hours later, and after the same bodysuited woman has burst out from a ball pit as Freedom by George Michael blares out,

I am released into the snowy Danish night amused and a little gastrically confused, although certainly clearer on why a tabloid recently dubbed this place ‘the weirdest restaurant in the world’. Alchemist, where a meal with the most expensive wine pairing costs just shy of $2,000 — is the work of millennial provocateur Rasmus Munk, whose restaurant has a ‘larder’ of chicken blood, lamb brains, fish eyes and cow’s udders. Little wonder some have compared it to a scene

from The Silence of the Lambs

On his website, the 32-year-old chef promises that his dishes will “create a new understanding of the world order” capable of “transcending time and space”. He makes clear that his aim is not simply to feed each night’s 52 guests (or the 10,000 more on the waiting list), but rather to use this 24,000sq ft former shipping warehouse “to change the world”.

“That’s been the ambition with Alchemist from the start,” he tells me later. “How can you use that platform to push as many agendas as possible?”

Short answer: by challenging diners on every front and with every course. Each dish seems to have been conceived to push a particular button. Earlier creations of Munk’s have included an ashtray inspired by his grandmother’s

death from lung cancer (actually a carcinogenic-looking dish of potato, onion and bacon), and a funnel through which diners are fed ‘ethical’ foie gras. My plaice dish is shrouded in edible ‘plastic’ made from algae and fish skin collagen to highlight the detritus in our seas, and pig and deer blood ice cream comes with a QR code linking to a blood donation site. Caviar-topped lobster tartare is served inside an ‘eye’ based on the chef’s own, in a nod to the fact that “Big Brother is always watching”. A chocolate bar served in the final gasps of this culinary marathon comes with a spiel from the smiley waitress about the horrors of child labour in Africa, with more information on the subject printed on the back of the wrapper.

On paper, it is the kind of experience you’d pay not to be put through, but

mindful of the price tag I resolve to consume everything laid in front of me. Many of the dishes disappear in a lick or a puff, so I find myself devouring the more substantial ones. The ‘Plastic Fantastic’ plaice goes down well, as do a frozen meringue made with tonic water and fat-washed sea buckthorn vodka, and a reconstituted crab claw. But I falter at the arrival of ‘the Kiss’, a striped concoction on a silicone tongue, the waitress disappearing with the words, “We’ll discuss the ingredients later.” It sounds like a threat and after a few sour licks, I accept defeat, disappointed to learn afterwards that it is a comparatively innocuous combination of peppers and anchovy. Is dining here the best food you’ll ever eat? Probably not, but I find myself curiously swept along by the

playfulness of it all. It’s also much less pretentious than it sounds. Inevitably, not everyone enjoys the experience. Munk has had five walkouts (the chicken dish, designed to raise awareness of battery farming, being the most common trigger) and plenty of tears, and he regularly sees groups sitting in angry silence before they reach the end of the meal. Dining alone means I’m limited in whom to pick a fight with, but I can’t help but feel that halving the number of issues (and indeed courses) might prove more effective. One article summed it up less charitably, accusing Alchemist of being “hellbent on making a statement, though what kind of statement isn’t exactly clear”.

I’m pleased to find Munk significantly less strident, diffident almost, in

‘ We try to calm guests down if they’re very angry’

person when we meet after dinner beneath the fungus-shaped lights on the restaurant balcony. Dressed all in black, the trade’s requisite tattoos on his forearms, he comes across more baby-faced Ed Sheeran lookalike than social justice warrior. While admitting that he enjoys causing ructions, he says that he doesn’t set out to provoke just for the sake of provoking. He’ll make substitutions for those struggling with some of the more outlandish dishes, and when diners really kick off, the staff and then Munk himself will intervene. “We try to calm them down if they’re very angry,” he says, “try to defend what we are doing.”

It’s hard to identify the nascent activist — or indeed chef — in Munk’s youth. He grew up on a farm in Randers, Jutland, three and a half hours from Copenhagen. There was no gastronomic culture to speak of at home — his mum can’t cook, he says, and his dining experiences extended only to a weekly trip to McDonald’s — but at 18, needing to make some cash, he was convinced by a friend to train as a chef. It made sense to Munk who, as a

boy, had always loved pulling apart his bikes and putting them back together; this way of getting under the skin of things. After working in kitchens in London for a few years, and stints at the Fat Duck and Noma, he quickly became a head chef on his return to Denmark in his early twenties — before quitting a job he could do “with one hand behind my back” to enact his own vision. This would not be a paean to the Noma-inspired world he had grown bored with: all foraged herbs and picture-perfect dishes on neutrally toned plates. Instead, he wanted to produce an altogether more meaningful menu, with a relevance beyond the confines of the restaurant walls. “At the start I thought it was just about food,” he says, “but my drive now is to create a legacy that is more than just Michelin stars.”

Yes, he wants a third star, but also, he sheepishly admits, “a Nobel peace prize”. No one can fault his ambition.

The first iteration of Alchemist in 2015 — which Munk fitted out himself — had 15 seats, making it the smallest in Copenhagen. He earned a

Michelin star before closing it down to open today’s version, less than 20 minutes’ walk from Noma. Those early months triggered a whirlwind of plaudits — he made Michelin history by earning two stars within seven months of opening and the international media fawned over his “provocatively boundary-pushing and prodigiously kooky” work. “It should have been like a fairytale,” he says of that time. “But honestly, I think it was one of the worst periods of my life.”

Munk, then 28, would often drive home in tears, overwhelmed by the feeling that his feet “never touched the ground, and [I] never had time to breathe… Suddenly, I was not in control of anything and it was crazy.

“I don’t see myself as a very confident person,” he adds. For all his single-mindedness, he admits that negative comments on social media get him down, and he’s constantly questioning himself. “We start the dream, but at the same time, I question everything. How do we do this? Will this ever be a success?”

Covid shutdowns less than a year

after opening appeared, paradoxically, to help. The enforced break allowed some time to recalibrate and cook for the homeless (Munk does a lot of charity work). Yet a few years on, he finds his mind veering back into unsettled territory. “What is the next experience? What is the next station? This kind of mad circus and endless loop of work is quite…” he trails off. “I feel it can easily kill off creativity.”

Still he pushes on, in search of something bigger, better, strange. Recently he staged a pop-up with Ferran Adrià, the molecular gastronomy pioneer behind El Bulli, swiftly followed by a Super Bowl event in Las Vegas. He is designing the menu for a children’s hospital in Denmark, while his newest lab enterprise, Spora, has recently graduated from Alchemist’s test kitchen to a $1.8 million site where he will develop a sustainable man-made protein, initially for dinner service and then, he hopes, commercially. Control remains Munk’s greatest internal struggle. Alchemist does not open if he’s not there; he knows the working of every element, from

‘My drive now is to create a legacy that is more than just Michelin stars. I want a Nobel peace prize’

the lifts to the sound system to the iPad drinks menu. One moment he is perfecting 3D-printed bananas at the pass, the next he is kneeling beside diners serving cocktail shots in custom-made gold daisies. It must be exhausting, but he finds being here five nights a week is less stressful than delegating and sitting at home.

“It’s about prioritising,” he reasons, perhaps more to himself than to me. He talks of maybe trading it all in for a family with his girlfriend of seven years, front of house manager Lykke, but until then, “I have this as my baby.”

For all the toil, the spoils are apparently few. “It costs a lot to run a restaurant like this,” Munk says. “We’re not earning anything.” There are 100plus staff to pay, including chefs and waiters who have to sit exams to ensure they have mastered the changing menus. There’s a visual effects artist, a composer, a glass blower, tea sommelier and actors hired as human art installations. They also recently employed the services of a mentalist, to experiment with dinnertime mind games. “If the place were not full every night it would be a disaster financially,”

he acknowledges, but he says his “holistic dining” mission “is more important than the financial outcome”.

Munk is certain that Alchemist has a shelf life, though it’s hard to imagine him handing over the reins. It might not be to a chef, he says, but to a movie director or a dramatist, to push the restaurant in directions new. “Am I the best to do that? I don’t think so, actually.”

More time off the hamster wheel might allow him to reach new levels of audacity, he thinks. He almost chastises himself for the experience being so traditional as to include amuse-bouches and drinks, dinner and petits fours. (No matter that it also involves the lift being transformed into an art installation, ant-filled candy and a gluten puff that emits a waft of smoke on first bite.) “I want to push the envelope,” he says. “In some ways, we are not. We could be bolder.”

Everything once seemed doable, if he just put in all the hours God sent. But now, “I’m getting more anxious. Is this mission so big that I will never achieve it? I feel for the first time that I’m running out of time.”

Credit: The Times / News Licensing

The Lanesborough London

Vast sums were splurged on building London’s lion-guarded Peninsula and transforming the vacant Old War Office into an opulent Raffles, their much trumpeted openings last year designed to elevate the city’s hotel offering to a whole new level of luxury. Both reportedly cost north of a billion dollars. And yet both should perhaps find a little extra to bid for the secret of what it is that makes The Lanesborough – still a young pup itself when compared to London’s historic hotels, some of which are over a century old – feel so entrenched, as though it’s been welcoming well-heeled guests since the Regency era its décor apes.

Some elements are obvious: the service is outstanding. It begins before you arrive, when you’re asked for your preferred room temperature (no walking in to a room seemingly prepared for penguins, as appears the norm elsewhere); whether you’d like still or sparkling water aside your bed; a sweet or savoury bite (some wonderful, full-flavoured cheese, in our case); and, arguably best of all, what time you would like turndown service, which other hotels tend to time with you always in a state of undress, reading yourself to head out. The welcome flute of Champagne at check in scores additional points.

It’s all underpinned by round-the-clock butler service for every room (each dressed in Regency-period finery, flamboyant elements abound) which makes you feel as though you’re a guest at a storied mansion, the roaring fire in the wonderfully welcoming Withdrawing Room and the house cat who roams assuredly – a staple of Oetker Collection hotels – adds further fuel to the feeling. Of course, long before it became a hotel in 1991, the Lanesborough was indeed a house, built in 1719 by James Lane, the second and last Viscount Lanesborough. A century later it was redesigned by that period’s starchitect, William Wilkins, who also designed London’s National Gallery, with some of his signature elements, including the entrance foyer, still intact.

Since then, The Lanesborough has of course enjoyed additional makeovers, most notably in 2015 when Oetker Collection took charge, yet it’s always maintained a homely atmosphere that no amount of money can simply replicate.

Home comforts include what remains one of London’s best bars, The Library Bar, all candlelit comfort and cocktails mixed by the best in the business (their vesper deserves legendary status) and the Shay Copperhelmed Lanesborough Grill. Copper led two of his previous restaurants to Michelin star glory and his sourcing of the finest ingredients from the British Isles, including Hereford beef for his rich and rewarding beef wellington, puts this place on the culinary map.

Speaking of maps, due to the structural plotting of the old building you’ll need directing to the easterly wing of the hotel to access its award-winning subterranean Club & Spa. Design wise, this is a fine marriage of the hotel’s old and new – a state-of-the-art members’ club, complete with its own restaurant, which hotel guests can access to enjoy complimentary fitness classes and a long soak in the muscle-melting hydro-pool.

Not that you’ll need to feel any more relaxed while very much at home here.

Grosvenor Suite

Lobby

Restaurant at the Club & Spa Park Suite

Patrick Woodhead

EXPLORER AND CEO OF WHITE DESERT

I am reminded of Oscar Wilde, who said: ‘The best thing to do with advice is to pass it on to someone else.’ When crossing Antarctica, my old friend and famous polar guide, Paul Landry, told me that when presented with a crisis, the first thing you should do is pause and not react. Too often, gut reaction and panic confuse a situation. Taking a beat, just to assess the situation before acting, is vital.

One thing I do every day is a cold water swim. I live in Cape Town, surrounded by freezing cold oceans, and swimming daily is the most life-affirming way to wake up. It reduces inflammation, sparks a surge of endorphins, and makes me start the day with a shiver and a smile.

A lesson I learned the hard way was the danger of crevasses. These fissures in the glacial ice can be immense in depth and utterly terrifying. Snow bridges often cover their yawning mouths, concealing the danger that lurks beneath. I have spent a very long time rescuing someone from the bottom of a crevasse and lost a couple of friends to them.

I am inspired by nature. In Cape Town, I am surrounded by oceans, mountains, and freedom. Being able to be amongst nature so quickly is incredibly important to me, and it allows my mind to quieten and get things straight.

Raising good children is my definition of personal success. When I was younger, success was all about me

and what I could achieve. As I near 50, I’ve realised that my part is just a small one, and the real success is having kids that I am proud of.

I would tell my younger self to be patient. You can’t build anything worthwhile in a short time. I was always in such a hurry to complete, achieve, and move on to the next thing. Sometimes, being patient can also be considered ‘doing something’.

I always seek meaning in what I do –whatever that may be. I want to be proud of my daily work and find real substance in it. There is lots more of the planet I need to see and experience, so I guess an ambition would be to do some wider travelling to non-freezing locations on Earth. Apparently, they are very nice!

POLAR