AIR Magazine - Gama Aviation - June'22 by Hot Media

JUNE 2022

MARILYN MONROE

Introducing the

Global 8000

Fastest | Farthest | Smoothest

businessaircraft.bombardier.com

The information in this document is proprietary to Bombardier Inc. or its subsidiaries. The Global 8000 aircraft is currently under development and the design tolerances remain to be finalized and certified. This document does not constitute an offer, commitment, representation, guarantee or warranty of any kind and the configuration and performance of any aircraft shall be determined in a final purchase agreement. This document must not be reproduced or distributed in whole or in part to or by a third party without Bombardier’s prior written consent. Bombardier, Global, Global 8000 and Exceptional by design are registered or unregistered trademarks of Bombardier Inc. or its subsidiaries. © 2022 Bombardier Inc. All rights reserved.

Contents

AIR

Credit: Harris Reed’s 60 Years A Queen collection

JUNE 2022: ISSUE 129

FEATURES Thirty Eight

Forty Four

Fifty

Author Joyce Carol Oates’s new book unmasks the real Marilyn Monroe.

Fendi’s artistic director, Kim Jones, traces the ghostly links between fashion, art and literature.

At just 25 he’s been immortalised in London’s V&A. Now Harris Reed is all set for for stardom.

Behind The Mask Of Monroe

Time Travellers

Reed All About It

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Contents

JUNE 2022: ISSUE 129

REGULARS Fourteen

Radar

Sixteen

Objects of Desire Eighteen

Critique Twenty

Art & Design Twenty Eight

Timepieces Fifty Eight

Motoring

EDITORIAL

Sixty Two

Editor-in-Chief

Gastronomy

John Thatcher john@hotmedia.me

Sixty Six

Ultimate Stays

ART Art Director

Kerri Bennett

Sixty Eight

What I Know Now

Illustration

Leona Beth

COMMERCIAL Managing Director

Victoria Thatcher General Manager

David Wade

david@hotmedia.me

PRODUCTION Digital Media Manager

Muthu Kumar Thirty Two

Jewellery Why Isabella Traglio sought her own pathway to the family business at Vhernier.

Tel: 00971 4 364 2876 Fax: 00971 4 369 7494 Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission from HOT Media is strictly prohibited. HOT Media does not accept liability for any omissions or errors in AIR.

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Gama Aviation JUNE 2022: ISSUE 129

Welcome Onboard JUNE 2022

Janine Tombs Managing Director Gama Aviation

Welcome to the new issue of AIR, Gama Aviation’s in-flight magazine. Gama Aviation’s started in 1983 as a bespoke aircraft manager and operator in the UK, and has since grown to be a leading, global, business aviation services organisation. With a fleet of over 230 aircraft, we have bases across Europe, the Americas, Asia and the Middle East. Our headquarters are located at Farnborough Airport, England, where we are listed on the London Stock Exchange (Gama Aviation PLC: GMAA). In 2009, we opened an aircraft management office in Dubai, and applied for a UAE Air Operating Certificate (AOC). The GCAA awarded Gama Aviation’s UAE AOC in 2010, after which we grew our managed fleet of charter and private jets in the UAE. It quickly became apparent that Dubai International Airport was becoming increasingly restrictive in terms of slot and parking availability, in addition to airspace and taxiway congestion, which is not conducive to business aviation operations. Our industry is geared towards saving time for our clients. This led to our Group CEO identifying Sharjah International Airport as an intelligent gateway to Dubai and the Northern Emirates for private jet users. In 2012, Gama Aviation was granted the concession at Sharjah International to provide VIP (‘FBO’) handling services, and in 2014 we opened the airport’s very first FBO facility. Sharjah International has since become a popular business jet hub — and fuel stop location — due to its ease of use and close proximity to the heart of Dubai and the Northern Emirates. We operate stunning passenger and crew lounges, with dedicated customs/immigration, along with providing line maintenance services and hangar/parking solutions. In a nutshell, we offer the highest levels of service delivery in our industry, for prices that are lower than the regional market rate. A very special service in Sharjah that also sets us apart is the fact we can arrange airside access for passenger vehicles to the aircraft steps on both arrivals and departures. Sharjah offers true door-to-door time savings for visitors and residents of Dubai and the Northern Emirates. An important component of Gama Aviation’s service offering in Sharjah is line maintenance and AOG (Aircraft On Ground) support in the surrounding region. In addition to our engineers holding US/FAA A&P licenses, our maintenance approvals include UAE/GCAA, UK/EASA, Isle of Man, Bermudan and Cayman registered aircraft. Our maintenance capabilities cover the Gulfstream G650, Bombardier Learjets, Challengers and Globals, Embraer Legacies, Hawker 800/900 and KingAir types. Our group services include: • Aircraft management • Aircraft charter • FBO services: VIP aircraft and passenger handling • Line maintenance for business jets • Special missions support such as air ambulance operation and engineering modifications Thank you for choosing to fly with Gama, and for being part of our continuing success. We wish you an enjoyable journey.

Contact Details: info.mena@gamaaviation.com / charter.mena@gamaaviation.com Cover: Marilyn Monroe Jasper Chamber / Alamy

Gama Aviation JUNE 2022: ISSUE 129

Business Aviation And Carbon Offsetting Why Gama Aviation is committed to carbon offsetting

We have been offsetting our own business aviation operations and the general operations of our entire organisation for over two years now. We have chosen a carbon offset partner in Carbon Footprint Ltd and are delighted to have reduced our operational emissions over the past two years. These emissions and our approach to improving our operational process are audited and ratified by Carbon Footprint Ltd and the projects we invest in are certified to ensure they have the very best and most positive impact. What is carbon offsetting? Carbon offsetting is about funding projects around the world that 10

help reduce carbon emissions by a measurable and verifiable amount. Without the extra ‘carbon finance’ from people or organisations offsetting their emissions, these projects would not have happened. How does carbon offsetting actually work? Individual carbon offset projects around the world are being set up thanks to carbon finance provided by individuals and organisations offsetting their emissions. These projects include renewable energy generation, improving energy efficiency, reducing deforestation and planting more trees. The projects our carbon offsetting

partner, Carbon Footprint Ltd, support all meet the leading international carbon offsetting standards and are rigorously inspected and regularly audited to assure that they are generating the carbon reductions. Carbon credits are only issued once these carbon savings have been made and verified. These carbon credits can then be purchased and used to offset the unavoidable emissions of organisations (‘carbon offsetting’). And now to improve further, we believe this is important. We want to make a difference. We believe in this, we are not doing this because we have to, we are doing this

With simple airside access and a quick 6 minute taxi time, the whole experience through our own dedicated, private and exclusive FBO is a decisive advantage to our clients and guests alike. If you combine this with a 30 minute transfer time to Downtown Dubai then our access to the Northern Emirates via our Sharjah facility is a compelling reason to #switchtosharjah. To discuss our services at Sharjah International Airport please call +971 65 734371 or email our FBO Services team on fbo.shj@gamaaviation.com

Gama Aviation JUNE 2022: ISSUE 129

believe that we have a responsibility to operate and perform ‘We in an environmentally responsible way, and offer our clients as much ratified and best practice information as possible so they can make their own, educated decisions ’ .

We believe business aviation can be responsible. We believe that business aviation can operate in a much more ethical and environmentally friendly way. We are constantly monitoring available technologies and also trust our carbon partner to advise us on the best practices going forward.

As such, we are now giving all our managed aircraft clients the ability to offset their aircrafts’ operational footprint. This will be on a voluntary basis, but we will provide all the data required to highlight how their emissions can be offset. We even offer the same ratified project that we invest in to our clients, to ensure the best offsetting impact. We also include and discuss the concept of carbon offsetting with all our new aircraft management clients and ensure they are fully aware of how best to operate their aircraft missions.

We hope our managed clients feel the same. We believe that we have a responsibility to operate and perform in an environmentally responsible way. We offer our clients as much ratified and best practice information as possible so they can make their own, educated decisions.

What about our charter operations? Our charter team is equally as committed to ensuring we operate in the best possible way. Once the new update to our myairops operating system is complete we will offer, as part of every charter quotation and subsequent booking, the ability to offset each flight. The calculations and associated costs

because we believe we need to. We started our monitoring and internal processes more than two years ago to ensure we knew the whole process properly.

will automatically be sent to Carbon Footprint Ltd, so our clients can decide whether they wish to offset their specific charter mission. Whilst we offer this service it is completely certified, ratified and operated by Carbon Footprint Ltd, and Gama Aviation makes no financial or benefit in kind from any of the processes. So, by the close of this year all our existing business aviation managed clients will be notified on how best to offset their flights, all new managed clients will be offered, as part of contract discussions, the ability to offset their missions from contract outset, and all our business aviation charter operations will similarly be offered the opportunity to offset. We will continue to engage with Carbon Footprint Ltd to monitor our own operational emissions to ensure we are hitting our own targets and to improve how we complete our business aviation services.

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Radar

Humanity’s fascination with the moon has fired our imaginations for centuries, influencing everything from fashion and art to architecture and film. It’s also inspired a new weighty tome from Assouline — Moon Paradise, which heralds the moon as a ‘beacon of hope.’ Alongside text by space journalist Sarah Crudda, which examines the moon as a cultural symbol, is a set of striking images, including works by digital artist Cameron Burns and sci-fi themed style from the collections of Pierre Cardin and milliner Philip Treacy.

Moon Paradise, published by Assouline, is out this month 14

Credit: Oversized sunglasses and vinyl necklaces from the Pierre Cardin fall 1970 collection. Photography by Yoshi Takata/© Pierre Pelegry

AIR

JUNE 2022: ISSUE 129

OB JECTS OF DESIRE

OBJECTS OF DESIRE

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

OB JECTS OF DESIRE

CHANEL

22 BAG The latest soon-to-be ‘It Bag’ from Virginie Viard debuted on the runway at Chanel’s Spring-Summer 2022 Readyto-Wear show. Functional, light, and made of an extremely supple yet resistant leather, it comes in three sizes (small, medium and large) and as a backpack

version. It closes with a magnetic button and purse-like drawstrings, and features an inside zipped pocket and a removable pouch, held in place by a snap hook. Choose from colourways of navy blue, purple, two shades of pink, white, and black. 1

OB JECTS OF DESIRE

DOLCE & GABBANA

P R E - FA L L 2 2

Dolce & Gabbana did not have to search far to find inspiration for its pre-fall offering, turning to the region of Caltagirone in south-eastern Sicily, where Italian Maiolica pottery is a centuries-old tradition. Rich in colour, elaborate patterns are used on a white

background to decorate ceramics, a style which Dolce & Gabbana pays homage to here. Such patterns are repeated on many fabrics throughout the collection: dresses in ultra-light chiffon, silk twill pyjamas, jumpsuits, and oneshoulder kaftans. 2

OB JECTS OF DESIRE

GUCCI

25H SKELE TON TOURBILLON Housed in an 8mm-thick case and visible through the dial, where it’s positioned at 6 o’clock, is Gucci’s newlydeveloped flying tourbillon. A highlight of the brand’s eagerly-awaited high watchmaking collection (its second only), this complication regulates timekeeping

while its sparse technical design adds a contemporary, decorative touch, highlighting Gucci’s commitment to style in whatever form it’s found. It is crafted from 100% recycled gold — in white and yellow bracelet variations — and in slategrey titanium with a rubber strap. 3

OB JECTS OF DESIRE

ASCOTS & CHAPELS X K HALID AL BANNA

BESPOKE SUIT JACKE T

Across 2022, Dubai-based, Britishheritage influenced tailors Ascots & Chapels will champion the UAE’s burgeoning and eclectic art scene by having one artist per month design an artwork that will feature as the lining of a limited-edition jacket. First to commit

their work to cloth is contemporary Emirati artist Khalid Al Banna, whose inner-lining design serves as an ode to his practice of fine art, featuring the Sharjah-based artist’s signature technique of etching, along with collages that celebrate Emirati heritage. 4

OB JECTS OF DESIRE

HUBLOT

B I G B A N G U N I C O U E FA C H A M P I O N S L E A G U E For the past seven years Hublot has served as the official timekeeper of the UEFA Champions League — they’re the ones to thank if your team scores an all-important goal in injury-time (or the ones to blame if you’re a Man City fan). As part of its sponsorship, Hublot

also produces the official watch for the tournament, and has this year launched an exclusive edition of the Big Bang Unico, which is limited to 100 pieces. Sized 42mm, it’s coloured Champions League blue, and is cut from microblasted ceramic. 5

OB JECTS OF DESIRE

ROL L S-ROYCE

PHANTOM SERIES II When creating each iteration of its cars, Rolls-Royce always canvases opinion from its clients before deciding on what alternations to make. Though they did likewise this time for the Phantom Series II, the considered feedback was that nothing could be done to improve it.

As such, the team at Rolls-Royce has chosen to merely polish perfection through ‘light-touch’ visual and aesthetic enhancements, one of which makes the ‘RR’ Badge of Honour and Spirit of Ecstasy mascot more prominent when viewed from the front.

OB JECTS OF DESIRE

MESSIK A

LUCK Y MOVE COLOUR RING When the Lucky Move collection debuted in 2020 it drew from a palette of nine shades to enliven a range of rings, necklaces and bracelets. Adding to it, Founder and Artistic Director Valérie Messika has chosen to hone-in on the use of only

onyx and rose gold, keen for them to reflect the union of two opposites, like Yin and Yang, which nonetheless complement one another. That’s certainly the case here, with the two producing a striking base that allows the diamonds to truly sparkle. 8

OBJECTS OF DESIRE

Critique JUNE 2022 : ISSUE 129

Film Dinner In America Dir. Adam Rehmeier A punk rocker on the run and a fan obsessed with his music embark on an unexpected trip across small town America. AT BEST: “An offbeat romance served with rumbustious energy and a punk spirit.” — Allan Hunter, Screen International AT WORST: “Requires a star performance by Kyle Gallner to carry it through some of its rough spots.” — Dennis Schwartz, Dennis Schwartz Movie Reviews

Watcher Dir. Chloe Okuno

AIR

A young actress new to a town must deal with the unwanted attentions of a man watching her from across the street at a time when a serial killer is on the loose. AT BEST: “Sustains a viable ambiance of dread simply via someone looking out the window.” — Jordan Mintzer, Hollywood Reporter AT WORST: “Ultimately undone by its clench-fisted resistance to budge from textbook tropes.” — Jeffrey Zhang, Strange Harbors

Lost Illusions Dir. Xavier Giannoli Set in Paris at the turn of the nineteenth century, an idealistic young writer achieves material success at the expense of his conscience by witing rave reviews for bribes. AT BEST: “One of the funniest and most romantic films of the year.” — Adam Solomons, Little White Lies AT WORST: “Overstays its welcome by cramming too much into a demanding running time.” — Jonathan Romney, Screen International

Benediction Dir. Terence Davies An exploration of the life of WWI poet Siegfried Sassoon, who returned from the horror of the trenches as a vocal critic of the British government’s continuation of the war. AT BEST: “An elegant balancing act of both internal and external warfare.” — Darryl Griffiths, Movie Marker AT WORST: “Lifeless and completely full of itself.” — Jennifer Heaton, Alternative Lens

Critique JUNE 2022 : ISSUE 129

Books

In Emma Straub’s This Time Tomorrow, a woman on the eve of her 40th birthday wakes up next morning back in 1996, about to celebrate her 16th birthday. “Known for her plucky voice and sweetly amusing ensemble comedies, Emma Straub returns with her most emotionally resonant work yet…Beneath the layers of ’90s nostalgia and sci-fi portals to the past lies something even more satisfying: a complicated tale that doesn’t feel the slightest bit complicated,” hails Vogue. “A rare one-in-a-million novel that not only pulls you wholly into itself, but leaves a lasting mark when it finally releases you,” says fellow author Emily Henry. “Never has Straub’s writing been more incisive, clever, and emotionally generous — which is really saying something. The kind of book that will make you laugh, make you cry, and make you call the people you love. Exceptional.” The Chicago Review of Books was also full of praise for Straub, who they say “excels at capturing the essence of a specific place and time from Mallorca to the Hudson Valley. In doing that,

she reflects back to us an image of the people we want to be. Within her sprawling cast of characters, there often is a better version of the person we want to be.” The debut novel from Stacey Swann, Olympus, Texas fuses elements of classical mythology with a modern family saga, for a story that People Magazine describes as, “A gorgeous debut that conjures one small town and the big emotions of its wealthiest family, the Briscoes, whose saga plays out over six days of pain, rage, and love.” Oprah Daily describes it as “The Iliad meets Friday Night Lights in this muscular, captivating debut that reimagines Greek myths in a backwater east Texas town. The abrupt arrival of a ne’er-do-well son disrupts the fragile balance amid a family plagued by erotic trysts, broken promises, and social envy. Readers will thrill to Swann’s classical allusion.” It’s the characters that found favour with other reviewers: “There is a surplus of buried hurt and unspoken disappointments within the Briscoe family. It may be difficult for these characters to realise

their flaws and tangled desires, but it sure is pleasurable to read about them…I experienced the characters’ grief and regret as if they were my own,” says New York Times Book Review. While fellow author Sarah Bird champions the “endearing characters” who “gallop through a plot luscious with secrets and scandals. Escape to Olympus for the rollicking fun. Stay for the heartbreakingly lyrical writing and tender message about the enduring gift that is family love.” In Andrew O’Hagan’s Mayflies, lifelong friends must confront their own mortality head-on. “A joyful, warm and heart-filling tribute to the millionpetalled flower of male friendship. This book will last beyond these feverish times: it’s not just a reminder that culture makes the worst things bearable, but a beautiful example of it in action,” says The Times. “An assured and self-contained piece of theatre,” hails The Herald. “O’Hagan’s achievement is not to flinch from reality, nor to wallow in misery, but to fill the pages with roaring life, right up to the last kick of the ball.” 19

Art & Design

AIR

JUNE 2022: ISSUE 129

Moving Pictures How Frank Horvat started a revolution in fashion photography by taking couture off the catwalk and into the street WORDS: LUCY DAVIS

AIR

n 1947, when Frank Horvat was 15, he sold a precious stamp collection to buy his first camera, on the advice of a friend who assured him that taking pictures was a sure-fire way to get closer to girls. And so it proved: by the mid1950s, Horvat was photographing top models for fashion magazines in Paris, New York and beyond. After settling in London for two years in 1954, he was so in demand that he lived at Claridge’s, ordered his suits from Savile Row and drove to jobs in a white Rolls-Royce. “He was really a big star there,” says Horvat’s daughter Fiammetta, “and he loved playing at being dashing. But that was very different from the man I knew.” Horvat, who died in 2020, had five children, of whom Fiammetta is the youngest. A former theatre designer, she now presides over her father’s archive in his former home near Paris, and has curated a retrospective of his work for a show this month at the Jeu de Paume. The exhibition contrasts Horvat’s early shoots for magazines such as Vogue, Elle, Life and Picture Post – in which he set models in elaborate haute couture in incongruous, everyday situations on the street – with a more

journalistic series on Paris by night. “Poor and dilapidated” is how he later described the city, in its otherwise heavily romanticised post-war moment. “It was sordid and dirty. But that kind of thing can make great photographs, too.” Horvat was born in Abbazia, Italy (now the Croatian city of Opatija), in 1928. He is less well-known in Britain than his fresh, instinctive — and much imitated — photographs merit. That’s chiefly because, in the 70-odd years he was making pictures, he diversified over and over again, trialling different subjects, styles and techniques. “He was quite a geek,” Fiammetta says. “Anything new he would immediately want to try.” Such eclecticism had its drawbacks. “Some questioned my sincerity,” Horvat said, in 2015. “Some found that my photos were hard to recognise, as if they were by 15 different authors.” Horvat’s own mother berated him for his choice of career. “She adored him, and she supported him financially until he found his feet,” says Fiammetta, “but they argued a lot and she was very critical of what she called his running after nitwit, empty-headed ladies, which was probably true. He was always in love.”

it once, ‘andYouyougetnever get it again. A good photograph is a kind of miracle

’

Opening pages, from left to right: Coco Chanel, watching her fashion show in Paris, 1958; fashion shoot for British Vogue, 1961 These pages, from left to right: Monique Dutto at a métro exit in Paris, for Jour De France 1959; fashion shoot with Deborah Dixon on the steps of Piazza di Spagna, Rome, for Harper’s Bazaar, 1962

Right: Anna Karina at Les Halles, Paris, for Jour De France, 1959

Horvat had three sons by his first wife, Mate, plus a son from another relationship. Fiammetta, who is now 43, was six when her parents divorced, and only got to know her father in her 20s — “by which time he was less pushy, more gentle. He had been a terrible father to all of us. He travelled a lot and he was not the sort of person to live with children, anyway. He liked to be flexible. But I decided I could put my pride to one side and see what was good about him.” To begin with, they met “maybe only once a year, but very soon it was obvious that we really got on. We discovered we liked to travel together. We knew each other’s minds. By then, he was in a mood for transferring knowledge, for telling his story. I was lucky, because he spoke to me about everything that really mattered to him. Now, when I need to make a decision on his behalf, I always know what he would have wanted.” Their first trip together was to Ireland, in 1999, driving cross-country and stopping at “all those little pubs where you get stared at. He was quite shy, but he had such a curiosity about people that it sort of took over. When he saw something he wanted to photograph, he’d just jump.” Horvat had conceived the trip as a way to survey European identity in the shadow of 24

’

the coming millennium. When they got to Britain, having not spent any length of time there since the 1950s, “he was confused, because he remembered it as miserable and poor, and now it was all Blair and Cool Britannia. He told me he adored English culture, but it also intimidated him because he could never quite understand it.” Horvat also told Fiammetta that he had struggled to make his slice-of-life, beyond-the-studio fashion photographs work in 1950s Britain because it was always too rainy and cold — though one of her favourite images from that period, she tells me, is of a model in upscale tweed, surrounded by ruffians on a cobbled Yorkshire street. He shot the same model in a nearby back garden, along with the elderly owner and her weekly wash billowing on the line. That “prepared and directed” type of fashion photography, however, very soon came to bore him. “You have a situation,” he said. “You choose a model, you choose a dress, you choose a location, and you go there and you take not one, but three, or 20 rows of photos to get it exactly right. There is something where you say you’ve done it, but it can be done again. I didn’t want that.” What he wanted — what he always tried to do — was to create a situation

where something happened that could never happen again. “A good photograph is a photograph that cannot be redone,” he explained. “You get it once, and you never get it again. A good photograph is a kind of miracle.” Ironically, as he grew more proficient, those miracles became more elusive. “In a way, the further I got, the more clever I became, the more difficult it became,” he explained. Besides, by the mid-1960s, the market for his style of photography was shrinking. Irreverent photographers such as David Bailey and Terence Donovan had come to the forefront. Horvat eked out a living in fashion until the late 1980s, but put his heart into the work he made on the side: portraits of trees, and photographic studies of sculptures by Edgar Degas. “In those later years, he never seemed to sleep,” Fiammetta tells me. “He was always awake, writing, drawing, thinking, having ideas. “What I loved was that he never thought ‘before’ was better. He’d never moan about things changing, or go on about the old times. He never understood why people liked the images he had taken 40 years ago. He was always looking to the future.” ‘Frank Horvat 50-65’ is at Jeu de Paume until Oct 30; jeudepaume.org

Credit: Lucy Davis / Telegraph Media Group Limited 2022

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‘

He was always awake, writing, drawing, thinking, having ideas

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Stylist Gemma Jones Hair and Make-up Katharina Brennan Model Tais, MLN Model Management Page 1 Dress: Elisabetta Franchi Shoes: Giuseppe Zanotti Bag: Valentino Page 2 Blouse, skirt and hat: Kristina Fidelskaya Sandals: Bally Page 3 Full look: Givenchy Page 4 Full look: Prada Page 5 Full look: Chanel Pages 6 & 7, from left to right: Full look: Valentino Full look: Valentino Top, skirt and jacket: Max Mara Shoes: Giuseppe Zanotti Page 8 Full look: Dior

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The World

Timepieces

JUNE 2022: ISSUE 129

Is Not Enough For Hermès’ first world time function wristwatch, a new world was imagined. Hermès Horloger Creative Director, Philippe Delhotal, takes us on a tour WORDS: JOHN THATCHER 29

AIR

t doesn’t take long for the meticulous eye of Philippe Delhotal to spot an anomaly. “Please can I have your watch?” he asks, nodding at my Hermès H08, the screw-down crown of which isn’t flush with the case. A few seconds later it is, Philippe handing it back with a smile, as I tell him how I rushed from the house this morning. There is a time for everything. And for Hermès, the time is right for its first travel watch. Launched at Watches and Wonders in Geneva, Arceau Le Temps Voyageur is pride of place at Crafting Time, the brand’s presentation of its watchmaking mastery at The Dubai Mall boutique, where Philippe, Hermès Horloger Creative Director, is eager to stress its credentials. “It is the first time we create a world time function wristwatch,” he enthuses, his hands expressive as he talks of its differentials. “Arceau Le Temps Voyageur goes beyond a GMT thanks to its satellite and the display of the 24 cities represented; and it differs from a world time model, on which the time is generally simultaneously displayed

for the various time zones. On this timepiece, it is the satellite that travels from city to city, changing the face of the watch as it does so. It takes us on a journey of discovery around the world.” Except, that only tells part of the story. As the world of Hermès isn’t quite as we know it. “Maps and atlases feed the imagination and invite us to remake the world, as much as to travel it,” suggests Philippe. “For the launch of Arceau Le Temps Voyageur, we needed a different world map, reflecting the promise of a journey to dreamlike horizons, where borders become blurred. At the same time, we wanted to find the idea conveyed by the watch of being able to discover the world while letting ourselves be carried away by the imagination.” That desire led Philippe to graphic designer Jérôme Colliard, who designed the ‘Planisphère d’un Monde Équestre’ motif for Hermès in 2016. “Like a fresco adorning the Grand Palais, it presented an imaginary world in the way that Hermès interpreted it, nourished by its equestrian universe: the material, the gaits or the figures give whimsical names to the

‘

To wear a Hermès watch is to love a style that is rigorous yet devoid of formalism

continents, bays and other places,” outlines Philippe. “Like a topographical map found in the archives of a geographer of invisible worlds, the design represents continents, seas and oceans, and tells the story of a metaphorical world of love between riders and their mounts... The love for horses cultivated by the maison. “It is therefore only natural that we should take you on a journey through the world of Hermès with this design. On the one hand, we can dream of the world through this unique planisphere; and on the other, we discover it through our peripheral satellite.” Colliard’s equestrian world features on both executions of the timepiece, one with a black dial, sized 41mm, the other with a blue dial, sized 38mm. The cities listed around the ring are notable for the exemption of Paris — in its place is 24 FBG, an abbreviation of 24 Rue du Faubourg, the location of Maison Hermès. “To wear a Hermès watch is to love a style that is rigorous yet devoid of formalism. It means asserting oneself as an individual freed from temporal constraints and relaxed, sometimes whimsical.” The gravitating satellite, with hours and minutes depicting local time, is a 122-component complication that was three years in the making. The

way it glides over Colliard’s fantastical map, free of constraint, speaks loudly of Hermès’ symbolic representation of travel. “For Hermès, travel is more than just a journey, it is and always has been a state of mind. Although he undertook long journeys, Émile Hermès was also a great collector who travelled through objects,” says Philippe. “He was interested in other cultures, in craftsmanship and in the pursuit of beauty. He could travel while in his library, as well as by train or boat. Jean-Louis Dumas [Chairman of the Hermès group from 1978 to 2006] was no different when he lamented the fact that humankind was moving en masse yet no longer travelling. As for Pierre-Alexis Dumas [Artistic Director at Hermès], he maintains that one does not necessarily have to go far to travel; one need only change perspective in order to see the world in a joyful, optimistic and enthusiastic way. And he likes to say that discovering the Émile Hermès collection, going to a museum or reading a book, are other ways to travel.” The first time a timepiece bearing the Hermès signature was issued was close to a century ago, in 1928. Yet it was fifty years later, in 1978, when the company set up a dedicated watch division in Switzerland. Since then, it has been on

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a never-ending journey of its own in the pursuit of excellence. Along the way it has either bought up or bought into smaller companies renowned for their watchmaking prowess, chiefly, Vaucher Manufacture Fleurier, which has a pedigree for making movements that dates to the 18th century. Craftmanship of cases and dials now occurs in the one place, under the banner of Les Ateliers d’Hermès Horloger. The results, some award-winning, have helped to firmly establish Hermès in the horological world. “Watchmaking is a competitive industry with many players,” outlines Philippe. “We worked a lot on our legitimacy and singularity, and they have been reinforced globally in our collections. Since the establishment of La Montre Hermès in Switzerland in 1978, we never stopped developing our craftsmanship internally. and we are happy to be 100% ‘Swiss Made’ since many years, with our components produced in-house. Every year we come up with new specific designs, with a recognisable style imbued with Hermès DNA, offering new materials, new shapes.” Which is the achievement of Arceau Le Temps Voyageur, an expressive timepiece that embodies the very foundations of Hermès’ renowned craftsmanship. 31

Jewellery

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JUNE 2022 : ISSUE 129

My Way

Why Isabella Traglio sought her own pathway to the family business at Vhernier

WORDS: JOHN THATCHER

egardless of the wealth of knowledge you can acquire from reading, listening or watching, there’s nothing quite like learning by doing. It’s what has propelled Isabella Traglio to the position of Deputy General Manager at Vhernier, the latest step in a career she has shaped to her will, turning a passion for jewels into a profession. “What at first was a light ‘falling in love’ moment became a real passion when I started polishing jewels in the first Vhernier store in Milan, during my university years,” cites Traglio, whose father Carlo purchased the brand in 2001. While it may be easy to assume that Traglio’s pathway to Vhernier was

already mapped out, the course she took ensured she entered the family business with knowledge gleaned from outside it, first through study at both New York’s Gemmological Institute of America and the SDA Bocconi School of Management in Milan, then via jobs at luxury brands Loro Piana and Christie’s. “Those experiences were crucial for my business training as well as for my creative side,” says Traglio. “At Christie's, I was with the jewellery auctions department, where I was lucky enough to admire some wonderful pieces: magnificent stones, amazing crafting, the unique way materials were worked and paired. I can say I had the opportunity to see

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Opening page: Isabella Traglio

new and different has always ‘ Being completely been at the heart of the brand ’

how jewellery evolved through time and came to understand the real meaning of timelessness. I’ve been able to train my eyes to recognise beauty.” It was no surprise, then, that when the time came for Traglio to join her father at Vhernier, it was to the workshop she headed first, sharpening her knowledge of precious stones and crafting techniques, alongside the founder of the brand, Angela Camurati. She’s since worked in departments as diverse as human resources and retail. Did she do so in order to get a firm understanding of everyone’s role in the company before she became Deputy General Manager? “It was important for me to have a clear understanding of Vhernier, which has some peculiarities as a small company with production totally handcrafted in Italy, yet having a global ambition. Precisely because of these specificities it is crucial to have relationships with different 34

people, who have very different roles and backgrounds and come from very different cultures: our highly skilled master craftsmen, the staff of the stores, the managerial functions, our business partners. There are perhaps few situations like this one, which put you in touch with such a diversity of cultures and points of view. The various roles I covered within Vhernier have given me a great enrichment and beautiful training. And then I am a great supporter of teamwork: the success of a company, of a project, is given by the team. There must be respect and empathy to achieve goals, a mutual knowledge and trust.” Trust is something Vhernier’s founders had in the Traglio family, to whom they agreed to sell the company they launched in 1984, a company renowned for its preference for sculptural shapes, solid materials, and precious gems. Does Traglio

view Vherneir as being ahead of the curve at the time of its launch? “Definitely. In 1984, when Vhernier was established — and, even at the beginning, Vhernier was a very small and creative workshop with wonderful ideas and the commitment to never compromise on quality — the common offering in jewellery stores was very conformist. On the other hand, the vision of Vhernier has always been that of creating 'the jewel that does not exist yet’; pieces completely unseen, that do not resemble anything else, and that, by going beyond trend, are appropriate in any situation, becoming timeless. Being completely new and different has always been at the heart of the brand. This choice was very courageous and still, into the 90s, Vhernier was an extremely niche brand, known by very few and appreciated for its distinctness, as well as for the excellence of manufacturing.”

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You can find me on the shop floor and talk to me about what you like and I can then make that happen

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‘ I’ve been able to train my eyes to recognise beauty’

It remains the case today, Vhernier’s vision very much in synch with its founders. “Vhernier has a strong identity which has been maintained with courage and consistency since the beginning,” declares Traglio. “Our identity dictates the codes we use when we create each piece. These codes are totally ours: they’re not the common codes of jewellery, we have created our own according to our DNA. Each time, the creation of a piece involves a lot of research because there is a fundamental requirement, which is that each piece has to have exceptional wearability. Without wearability there is no contemporary jewellery. For us, the biggest challenge is this: offering something new, extremely contemporary, that has the greatest wearability and that is totally recognisable as Vhernier.” It is a challenge that has been met time and again, particularly in collections such as Aladino, to which a new ring and earclips are recent additions. “This is an emblematic collection of our style for the way it 36

interprets colour and volume. The sculpture ring is slanted and has soft and ergonomic curves, in the purest Vhernier tradition. The new earclips are bias cut, so that they harmoniously accompany the facial features, adding an idea of movement.” The Aladino collection also showcases ‘trasparenze’, a technique unique to the company. “It’s a way by which beautiful cabochons of rock crystal are superimposed on opaque stones, illuminating them in an extraordinary way: seen from above, the colour of the main stone shines through in infinite shades that change with every movement, while the profile view reveals the transparency of the rock crystal,” outlines Traglio. “In each piece, the materials blend seamlessly with each other.” Traglio’s remit in her broad role at Vhernier encompasses product development, a far from easy task when having to create ‘the jewel that does not exist yet’. From where does she draw inspiration? “Inspiration can be ignited by many things — a work of

art, a gesture, a wave in the sea. In any case, there is always a striking element which clicks, and from which the whole creative process starts. And this element, this inspiration, every time is filtered through the eyes of Vhernier: the brand’s idea of essential shapes, of enveloping lines, of a bold understatement. Once the creative process starts the initial idea can be reworked multiple times and, in most cases, the final piece of jewellery can be very far from the first sketches. Very often, this detail, which was the starting point and still lives in the jewel, has to do with movement. It can be the light shining on certain bold and rounded forms, such as those of Constantin Brancusi. Or it can be the twists, as in certain sculptures by Jean Arp, or sharp cuts, such as those of particular works by Lucio Fontana. Or it can be the movement of an animal: a jumping frog, which we have portrayed in our animal brooches.” Just as she did on her career path to Vhernier, Traglio leaves no stone unturned as she learns from what’s around her in her pursuit of excellence.

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As her novel Blonde gets the Hollywood treatment, author Joyce Carol Oates unmasks the real Marilyn Monroe WORDS: IONA MCLAREN

A person who’s so ‘wounded in childhood can never, never get enough love ’

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ll my life I’ve played Marilyn Monroe, Marilyn Monroe, Marilyn Monroe,” wept the actress in 1960. “I’ve tried to do a little better — and find myself doing an imitation of myself. I so want to do something different.” Unfortunately, movie audiences wanted the exact opposite: more Monroe, maximum Monroe. In her lifetime, their appetite was rampant enough to sustain the careers of shameless imitators, such as Jayne Mansfield (“the poor man’s Monroe”) and Diana Dors and make 20th Century Fox millions — of which Monroe herself

saw so little that on her death, in 1962, she didn’t leave enough money to pay for a funeral. Joe DiMaggio, the second of her three ex-husbands, forked out for the private ceremony she had wanted, only to find fans tearing apart the floral tributes for souvenirs, like maenads. Today, anything Monroe touched is coveted with a religiosity comparable to the medieval mania for the relics of saints. Collectors fight for pots of makeup in which you can still see her trailing finger marks. The tag and licence for her pet poodle (Maf, short for Mafia, a present from Frank Sinatra) sold in 1999 for $63,000. In 2016, the dress

she wore to sing “Happy Birthday, Mr President” to JFK in 1962 was bought by Ripley’s Believe It or Not Museums for $5 million [and worn by Kim Kardashian to this year’s Met Gala]. “We believe this is the most iconic piece of pop culture there is,” said Ripley’s vicepresident. “I cannot think of one single item that tells the story of the 1960s as well as this dress.” Just last month, Andy Warhol’s 1964 portrait, Shot Sage Blue Marilyn, was sold at Christie’s New York for $195 million, a new record for a work by an American artist at auction. What is it that makes people want to get their fingers on a part — any part — of Marilyn Monroe so badly? It’s a question that Joyce Carol Oates, author of Blonde, a 2000 Pulitzer-shortlisted novel about Monroe’s life, plays with in a new short story, Miss Golden Dreams 1949, out now in a collection called Night, Neon. In it, a doll made from Monroe’s actual DNA whispers to bidders at Sotheby’s, goading them to outbid each other to take her home. “It’s a surreal story, even a sort of horror story,” Oates tells me, from her home in Princeton. “But it’s metaphorical. So many people tried to possess Marilyn while she was still alive.” Blonde — a 740-page epic — has now been made into a film by Andrew Dominik, with Monroe played by the Cuban actress Ana de Armas. Long in development and shrouded in secrecy, it is expected to premiere at the Venice Film Festival this autumn — and Oates is one of the few people to have seen it (in a near-final cut) already. “I thought it was extremely intense,” she tells me. “Very stylised and beautiful.” And what about the gore? Her novel is relentlessly frank about the messy realities of Monroe’s much-drooled-over body. Will the film do for Monroe what Spencer, which shocked audiences with its unflinching depiction of bulimia, 39

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did for Diana, Princess of Wales? “It’s very intimate,” confirms Oates. “There are elements of the movie that are quite horrific. In a very brilliant way.” Dominik bills the movie as “a tragedy… an unwanted child who becomes the most wanted woman in the world and has to deal with all of the desire that is directed at her, and how confusing that is. It’s kind of a nightmare. It’s about being in a car with no brakes. It’s just going faster and faster and faster.” Oates loves de Armas in the lead role — “she looks just like the young Marilyn” — but isn’t it a doomed exercise, I ask, trying to impersonate the most famous film star of all time? Oates disagrees. “Marilyn Monroe was a performance. It was a whole persona of infantile female sexuality, a strange conjoining of innocence and this seductive, over-the-top glamour, with her platinum blonde hair and her whole manner — very breathy. If people called her at home, she wouldn’t answer that way. She would answer the way we’re talking. Her housekeeper said that too. When she was around the house in her jeans and a sweatshirt, she was nothing like that. “Marilyn Monroe was a performance — by Norma Jeane Baker. And so, in a sense, we could all try to do Marilyn.” Born in 1926, Norma Jeane’s surname was first Mortensen, then Baker, as stepfathers came and went. Rare among stars, she was a literal child of Hollywood: her mother, Gladys Baker, was a studio film-cutter. And her life began with a movie-esque mystery: who was Norma Jeane’s real father? Gladys was never sure. The only thing certain, as Monroe later put it, was that “I guess I was a mistake.” It was a photograph of Norma Jeane Baker that gave Oates the idea for Blonde, precisely because the girl in the picture wasn’t blonde at all. “She was 16 and had this brunette hair and she was very pretty — but not glamorous,” Oates tells me. “The kind of girl who smiles, who goes into nursing — something that makes other people like them.” Monroe’s miserable childhood — “Dickensian”, Hollywood was quick to brand it — reminded Oates of her own mother, “the ninth of nine children, and she had to be given away. Marilyn Monroe was also given 40

away by her mother — she was put in an orphanage. And it was so unfair because her mother [by then in and out of institutions for schizophrenia] prevented her from being adopted.” But Blonde — which Oates wrote as her own father was dying — could just as aptly have been called Daddy Issues. Norma Jeane, Oates tells me, “felt she had to live up to her invisible father… [and] she always felt inadequate about that. And when she got to be about 12 or 14, she noticed that men and boys would really look at her. And kind of smile at her. And she’d smile back. She was getting from the world these gazes of approval and interest that were new to her, and that buoyed her up and made her feel better. Unfortunately, there’s no end to that. A person who’s so wounded in childhood can never, never get enough love. “So she wore people out — her husbands.” (Before DiMaggio came police officer James Dougherty; after, the playwright Arthur Miller.) “She called them Daddy. It sounds like a sad cliché, but she really called her lovers Daddy,” says Oates. “I can’t imagine being married or involved with a man whom I would call Daddy. To me it just would be… really, really weird.” This “whispering, simpering, bigbreasted child woman” so infuriated the teenage Gloria Steinem that she walked out of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes “in embarrassment.” Cecil Beaton found a diplomatic compromise when he called it “pure charade, a little girl’s caricature of Mae West. The puzzling truth is that Miss Monroe is a make-believe siren, unsophisticated as a Rhine maiden, innocent as a sleepwalker. She is an urchin pretending to be grown-up, having the time of her life in mother’s moth-eaten finery, tottering about in high-heeled shoes and sipping ginger ale as though it were a champagne cocktail. There is an otherworldly, a winsome naiveté about the child’s eyes…” For Oates, fatherlessness explains Norma Jeane’s drive to be perfect, taking night courses, acting lessons, dance classes — anything to better herself. “Norma Jeane always felt that if she could just be a little bit better, her father might actually acknowledge her. I think she felt that she had a father out there in the Hollywood hills, watching her career, and if

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Marilyn Monroe was a performance. A strange conjoining of innocence and this seductive, over-thetop glamour

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she really, really did well, he would acknowledge her and bring her home.” Monroe’s most famous loves were the American equivalent of aristocrats: a president, a baseball hero (DiMaggio), a literary lion (Miller). But she saw her appeal as proudly blue collar: “the kind of girl a truck driver would like.” The studios may have invented Marilyn Monroe but it was the people who made her a star. In 1951, she was named Miss Cheesecake of the Year by the army newspaper Stars and Stripes. While still being cast in bit parts, she was getting more fan mail than Gregory Peck: up to 3,000 letters a week. By 1953, it was up to 25,000 a week — a Hollywood record. But she had no clout: Jane Russell was paid $150,000 for Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, and Monroe only $15,000. What Oates calls Monroe’s “sweetbaby cosmetic mask of a face” was a feat of plastic surgery (new nose, new jaw) and at least two hours a day in the make-up chair. But underneath it, she was no dumb blonde. She dreamt of playing Grushenka in The Brothers Karamazov. She was political: she forced a Hollywood nightclub to break its colour bar and book the jazz singer Ella Fitzgerald. “Sincerity and trying to be as simple or direct as possible is often taken for sheer stupidity,” she wrote. “But since it is not a sincere world — it’s very probable that being sincere is stupid.” After a succession of sexy-childingenue parts, she longed to stop being Monroe for a while. “I had to get out, I just had to. The danger was, I began to believe this was all I could do — all I was — all any woman was.” So in 1955 she went to New York, to live with Lee and Paula Strasberg, of the Actors’ Studio. But although Henry Hathaway had publicly named her “the best natural

Opening pages, from left to right: Monroe in Misfits, 1961; Monroe takes time out from filming, 1952 Previous page: Monroe performs for American troops in Korea, 1954 These pages, from left to right: Below: Monroe, then known as Norma Jeane Mortenson, in 1946; Monroe on the set of the movie Let’s Make Love, 1960

She was sort of doomed. In the ‘end, glamour killed her ’ novel, full of clunky foreshadowing. No wonder that, decades later, Miller told Oates everything that had been written about Monroe was a kind of fiction. Her story attracts it, even before all the unreliable and conflicting testimonies — people claiming to have been her best friend, or even her secret husband — that since her death have accrued like barnacles on a sunken wreck. People want to insert themselves into Monroe’s story, to own a piece of her, because she feels like America’s closest equivalent to a Greek myth. Her sphinxlike smile has become shorthand for all that was delightful and all that was shameful about 20th-century America. And we can’t let her go. The recently-released Netflix documentary, The Mystery of Marilyn Monroe: The Unheard Tapes, picks over the convoluted mystery of Monroe’s death, this time through little-heard tapes from her inner circle. In Oates’s novel, Monroe takes an accidental overdose — but there follows a scene

where “the Sharpshooter” from “the Agency” comes to deliver a lethal dose of nembutal in a hypodermic, and clear her house of written “materials”. Does Oates share the view that Monroe was killed because of the Kennedies, because of the Mafia, or both? “That could be something like a hallucination,” she tells me. “But I also wanted to leave the possibility — like an alternative universe. It’s quite possible — not probable, but possible — that she was assassinated.” It’s more probable that “she might have been allowed to die” after telephoning for help. Oates points out that Monroe’s house had been cleaned out, and her telephone records expunged before the LAPD arrived at the scene. “They came after some other law enforcement — probably the FBI.” Either way, Monroe “would have probably tried to commit suicide at some other time. She was sort of doomed. She was in a kind of tunnel.” In the end, says Oates, “glamour killed her.”

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actress I’ve directed”, the Strasbergs’ pop-Freudian ‘method’ acting insisted Monroe go back to her childhood and rake up all the abuse of her foster homes, and express that misery in her performances, which took away what little confidence she had, and left her in the clutches of some extremely dubious therapists, who funnelled her full of pills like a foie gras goose. She started talking about Marilyn Monroe in the third person. “I just felt like being Marilyn for a minute,” she would say, stopping the New York traffic. When Truman Capote found her glued to the mirror, she explained: “I’m looking at Her.” Then Arthur Miller, her impecunious new playwright husband, wanted to write a film for her. “One of the fantasies in my mind was that I could get away from Marilyn Monroe through him,” she said. So she went back to Hollywood. But the result, The Misfits, cast her as a wan version of the old Monroe — minus the humour. “He could have written me anything, and he comes up with this,” Monroe fumed. “If that’s what he thinks of me, well, then, I’m not for him and he’s not for me.” When Monroe appeared to sing “Happy Birthday, Mr President” to JFK in 1962, his brother-in-law Peter Lawford announced her as “the late Marilyn Monroe”. Three weeks later, she was dead. Earlier that year, she had bought a hacienda in LA with the words ‘Cursum Perficio’ engraved on a flagstone: Latin for ‘I have run the course.’ Monroe had been planning to make a biopic of her childhood obsession, Jean Harlow, Hollywood’s original peroxide sex symbol, who — like her — loved disastrous men, was better than the movies she was in, fought the studio system, and had a complicated mother. “I kept thinking of her, rolling over the facts of her life in my mind,” she said. “It was kind of spooky, and sometimes I thought, ‘Am I making this happen?’ But I don’t think so. We just seemed to have the same spirit or something, I don’t know. I kept wondering if I would die young like her too.” Harlow was dead at 26, of kidney failure, after endless shots of sedatives by the studio doctor. The unembroidered facts of Monroe’s life — spawn of Hollywood, doomed to be Harlow — already feel like a

Time travellers

The Bloomsbury Group was beguiled and inspired by Rome, which they visited as the Fendi dynasty founded its fashion empire there. Fendi’s artistic director, Kim Jones, traces the ghostly links between fashion, art and literature

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WORDS: JULIET NICOLSON

im Jones, creative director of both Fendi and Dior Homme, is unpacking a large monogrammed holdall on my dining table in Sussex. I am watching with the innovative photographer Nikolai von Bismarck, his long-time friend and collaborator as Jones pulls from the carpet bag some gems of his exceptional Bloomsbury archive. Kim Jones is not only one of haute couture’s most celebrated designers; he is also a pre-eminent collector of books, letters, paintings and furniture of the Bloomsbury Group, the early 20th-century patternrupturing, boundary-dissolving artistic circle. In pursuit of freedom of expression, they were summed up by the American poet Dorothy Parker thus: ‘They lived in squares, painted in circles and loved in triangles.’ As a rainbow of slipcases fans out in front of us, the gold-printed spines reveal an unprecedented assemblage of signed copies of Virginia Woolf ‘s novels, including To the Lighthouse, as well as Orlando, the time-travelling, gender-fluid fiction inspired by her love affair with my grandmother Vita Sackville-West. One copy of Orlando is inscribed to Vanessa Bell ‘from her slave and sister’, another to Noël Coward; the jewel of them all is Vita’s own conker-coloured leather-bound copy inscribed in Virginia’s beautiful handwriting, ‘Thursday, October the Eleventh, Nineteen hundred & twenty eight’ — the words with which the novel ends. There had been no room to bring one of only 460 copies of TS Eliot’s The Waste Land, the edition I long to see one day, handset by Virginia and her husband, Leonard Woolf, almost 100 years ago on the Hogarth printing press. A gift from Virginia to Vita in 1930, the black iron press remains in a tower room at Sissinghurst, the Elizabethan house in Kent that was my grandmother’s home. Back in London, Eliot’s poem is shelved alongside the other 500 or so volumes that make up Jones’s ever-expanding library. Jones’s passion for this century-old bohemian entanglement began when, aged 14 and at school in Lewes, he visited nearby Charleston, the

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East Sussex farmhouse that was the country hub of Bloomsbury creativity. While intrigued, he says, by the artists who expressed themselves through “writing, painting and living”, he was also enthralled by the interior. Every wall, surface and object in the house was hung, painted and decorated by the resident painters, Vanessa Bell, Roger Fry and Duncan Grant, their distinctive cross-hatchings, circles and squiggles covering everything from beds to curtains, plates to lampshades. Jones still has the guidebook from that first visit. A confessed ‘completist’, he is forever seeking to perfect his archive, and he invites anyone interested to come and view the library. “It is important to share these things,” he says, insisting he is simply the fortunate caretaker of these precious objects, which he intends one day to give to an institution so that fellow enthusiasts will be able to study them. In 2020, when Jones began planning not only his first couture collection for Fendi but also his first ever for women, he was in lockdown in London, spending valued time in his library. When his eye ‘locked’ on Vita’s copy of Orlando, the vision for his debut Fendi show “clicked into place.” His designs were to be for ‘strong’ women; Fendi was founded in Rome in 1925, just when Virginia and Vita’s love affair was at its most intense. Crystallising in his mind was the connection between Orlando, Virginia, Vita and Vanessa, and the story of Fendi, where his fellow artistic directors Silvia Venturini Fendi and her daughter Delfina Delettrez are the third and fourth generations of Fendi women to work for the house. Jones was struck by parallels between then and now. Released by the 1904 death of their authoritarian father Leslie Stephen, Vanessa and Virginia immersed themselves in Rome’s cultural vibrancy. By the 1920s, a melancholy had swept the world as the Spanish flu killed an estimated 50 million. Now, with the pandemic, climate change and political uncertainty, “we are living in a very 46

melancholic time,” Jones says. “And it echoes the public mood of a century earlier.” He feels a new generation can pick up Orlando, written 100 years ago, and “find hope in its forwardthinking, courageous outspokenness,” “The sign of creative genius,” he continues, “is when things that mattered then continue to matter now.” Just as the ‘Bloomsberries’ (as they are sometimes known) worked together as painters, publishers and designers, so the professional gifts of Jones and Bismarck merge with their friendship. They had already collaborated on a Dior book when Jones invited the photographer to join him in producing The Fendi Set: From Bloomsbury to Borghese, to showcase the serendipitous connections. They are part of a new generation of artists embracing Bloomsbury’s pioneering spirit, including composer Max Richter, filmmaker Sally Potter, actor Tilda Swinton and photographer Annie Leibovitz (under whom Bismarck learnt his craft). The triumph of Bismarck’s images, Jones believes, lies in his ability “to photograph looking at the present while at the same time reflecting on the past.” On his first visit to Charleston, where he found “not a spot of white”, Bismarck was drawn to the ghostliness of the place, picking up a bleakness within a sometimes muted palette and detecting the locked-in tensions of long ago as he wandered through the house. The pair agree that Charleston must have witnessed “a lot of arguing, a lot of fights” amid the competing ambitions and jealousies, both professional and romantic. Jones tells a story embedded in Bloomsbury mythology of how biographer Lytton Strachey was once heard howling in despair on learning that economist John Maynard Keynes had replaced him in Duncan Grant’s affections. Looking for a way to “reflect the Bloomsbury aesthetic”, or “the beauty in the melancholy”, Bismarck sought to echo the pictures taken by Virginia Woolf ‘s great-aunt Julia Margaret Cameron. His research was

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The sign of creative genius is when things that mattered then continue to matter now

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Bismarck’s images lie in his ability to photograph looking at the present while at the same time reflecting on the past

The Fendi Set, From Bloomsbury to Borghese, text by Kim Jones, photographs by Nikolai Von Bismarck, out now, published by Rizzoli

forensic. Feeling the impression of an “expired Polaroid” might be the answer, he discovered Parisian JeanFrançois Fresson, the only remaining practitioner of a printing technique created in the 1890s, which gave him his desired effect. Travelling between England and Italy, Bismarck assembled a portfolio of landscapes and houses associated with Bloomsbury. His dreamy, sexy, transcendent pictures link those past lives to our own century. Here are mystical Sussex landscapes, as well as interiors of Virginia’s writing room at Monk’s House, and Vita’s childhood home at Knole. Here is the glorious actor Gwendoline Christie in the garden at Sissinghurst, and here is Bismarck’s girlfriend, Kate Moss, captivating, luminous, at Charleston itself. Together with Jones, Bismarck explored the palaces and streets of Rome that so entranced the young Stephen sisters. His timeless images of the city — the Borghese Gallery where Vanessa painted, the Protestant Cemetery where Keats and Shelley are buried and which affected Vanessa so deeply — are enchanted, the city suspended in beauty. In the book, these ethereal photographs are interleaved with facsimiles of some of the most intimate and revealing letters exchanged between members of the group. Jones’s first Fendi couture show took place in 2021 in Paris’s huge 19thcentury Palais Brongniart. Recorded in photographs by Bismarck but almost unwatched in real time, due to the pandemic, the show encapsulated the stream of consciousness that defined Virginia Woolf’s literary contribution to the modernist movement. But Kim Jones is a magician, a dissolver

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of boundaries, bringing the show to us through film, floating it up to us through time, while making the grandest couture feel desirable and wearable. The androgynous Bloomsbury look that Jones describes as “a beautiful bohemian mix, slightly dishevelled round the edges” is the magical element of his designs. As the soundtrack of Virginia Woolf speaking across the years gives way to Max Richter’s score, Demi Moore, in billowing black satin and carrying Vita’s own copy of Orlando, walks slowly through a glass maze. She is followed by virtually every superstar of the modelling world, with clutch bags modelled on books, boots with elaborately painted heels. Dressed in Jones’s gowns and suits, often with flowing capes that ripple across the floor, the procession includes Kate and Lila Moss, Naomi Campbell, Christy and James Turlington, Adwoa and Kesewa Aboah. The Bloomsbury story, including the view that they were an elitist bunch of privileged intellectuals, is something I have grown up with. But the perspective of yet another generation is inspiring. My own contribution to the table display is the original framed photograph of Virginia Woolf in an embroidered coat, leaning against an archway at Knole, beside my uncle Ben, aged 14, and my father, Nigel, aged 11. It was taken by my grandmother when Virginia was completing Orlando in 1928. As the precious books are carefully packed up again, the three of us, collector, photographer and descendant, remain united in the fascination and inspiration we find in these enduring and ground-breaking figures. 49

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REED ALL ABOUT IT At just 25, Harris Reed has dressed Harry Styles and Adele, been immortalised in the V&A museum, and is now set for stardom WORDS: HARRIET QUICK

On screen, Olga Kurylenko plays Bond girls and Marvel baddies. In real life, she battles to save children from orphanages

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“W

hen I started my collection and termed it fluid, people would ask me what fluid meant,” says Harris Reed. “My answer is that it’s a spectrum, it’s moving, it is fluidity in life — the ability to go back and forth and not be set in stone. It is having the right and freedom to experience how you are in that moment.” The AngloAmerican designer, who has waistlength marmalade-coloured hair, a 6ft 4in frame and an ethereal demeanour, would make any Pre-Raphaelite painter swoon. At 25, Reed is also a modernday pin-up for diversity, creating flamboyant fashion for anyone with the figure and pizzazz to wear it. In the two brief pandemic-obliterated years since he left Central Saint Martins in 2020, Reed has been catapulted into the limelight. He dressed Harry Styles for the cover of American Vogue in a ruffled gown and tuxedo jacket. Iman wore his giant golden headpiece and hooped gown (800 hours in the making, with fabrics by Dolce & Gabbana) for last year’s Met Gala in New York. It was her first red-carpet appearance since her husband, David Bowie, died, and the gown transformed the 66-year-old Somali-born supermodel into a radiant sun goddess. A host of singers including Adele and Sam Smith have worn Reed’s custom-made sheer pussy-bow blouses and tailored bell-bottoms. Smith returned the favour by performing at Reed’s London Fashion Week show in February. “That meant the world to me,” recalls Reed. “When the clothes are so big, I rely on musical talent to bring the collection to life.” That recent show helped to gel the ‘fluid’ strands of the Harris Reed brand. The grandiloquent silhouettes,

lustrous velvets, sequins, and airy volumes recalled the high glamour of the fashion designer Thierry Mugler in the late 1980s. “I’m finding my version of a salon show, with a performance creating an atmosphere,” explains Reed. A week later, on the day we meet, Reed is sitting by the open fire at the Standard Hotel in London’s Kings Cross, a picture of serenity in a white blouse, honey-brown suede flares, and platforms by the London shoemaker Roker. On his wrist is a Cartier Tank watch. “So classy,” he says. The combination of youthful looks and sophistication is captivating. One could imagine Reed as a Shakespearean player in As You Like It, or wafting through a David Lynch film. Reed is one of the few fashion designers — alongside Olivier Rousteing, Tom Ford and Marc Jacobs — who enjoy performing for the camera. He knows a whole litany of supermodel poses, from vogueing stances to the angelic and innocent. He has walked in a Gucci show, been the face of its 2019 fragrance Mémoire d’une Odeur, and collaborated on a line of make-up for Mac. These commercial gigs provide an injection of cash that helps fund his nascent clothing brand: one almighty boost for an emerging designer still finding his feet. It helps that hobnobbing with random — even famous — strangers doesn’t faze him. At the Met Gala he found himself seated with Iman, along with the media tycoons Rupert Murdoch and Michael Bloomberg. “It was the most surreal thing — definitely a no-elbows-on-thetable moment,” Reed says, laughing. His career is elastic — part model, part designer. “I grew up in LA, where every waiter is also an actor, and every start-up tech entrepreneur is

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All pages: Harris Reed’s 60 Years A Queen collection

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My parents taught me a sense of adventure, risk-taking and how to hustle

also a personal trainer,” he explains. His parents are the Oscar-winning British documentary producer Nick Reed and a Mexican-Swedish former model, Lynette Reed. After his parents divorced, the young Harris and his sister, Isabelle, who is currently studying at Arizona State University, were continually on the move — from Arizona and Seattle to Oregon — propelled by their mother’s wanderlust. Reed always had an eye for style and a craving for beauty, he says, and dived into both fashion media and thriftstore shopping. His mother, who is now an artist and the owner of a candle company, has been married five times and currently lives with her fiancé in Italy. “I think she becomes ever more beautiful as she grows older,” Reed says. “She’s successful, happy — and her studio is bigger than mine.” Harris has rejected the modishness of playing with how he describes his gender: “I am very visible on Instagram, and as they/them I had so many job offers that were to do with marketing and the need to tick a box. I looked at my super-skinny self in my $10,000 hair extensions in the Mac campaign and asked myself if I was not creating another impossible stereotype, as unreal as the Abercrombie & Fitch archetype or a Victoria’s Secret model? I realised my career is about breaking boundaries.” He has a thick skin as well as adaptability. “My parents taught me a sense of adventure, risk-taking and

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how to hustle,” says Reed. But it was his arrival in London to study fashion at Central Saint Martins that opened his eyes to the capital’s sense of style. “I would go to college in fullface make-up, chest out, hair puffed up, wearing charity-shop finds, like a Hollywood showman declaring, “Amazing!” The tutors would be like, “Mate, pipe down!”’ says Reed, laughing at his own braggadocio. While at CSM, Reed approached Gucci’s creative director, Alessandro Michele, for an internship. Michele, who has turned the brand on its head with his retro cocktail of idiosyncratic beauties, had already clocked Reed on Instagram and invited him to join his tribe of “weirdos”. For eight months at the Gucci design studio in Rome, Reed thrived. “I found my campest version of me in Rome wearing marabou, brocades and pieces from vintage stores mixed with Gucci samples,” remembers Reed. “Part of it was Roman culture — I would wake up to see elegant women at 6am at the butcher’s in their best heels, jewels and furs, — it was a complete melting pot and I felt so inspired. My boss would say, “I don’t know what you do exactly, but damn, do you look amazing!”’ After he graduated, his first catwalk show, in September 2021, titled Found, was an ingenious DIY remake of wedding dresses that Reed had bought at an Oxfam shop. Upcycling precious vintage fabrics — including ‘deadstock’, or offcuts — is a pillar of 55

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When the clothes are so big, I rely on musical talent to bring the collection to life

his brand. He sold three gowns, with actor Emma Watson wearing a chiffon backless design to attend the Earthshot Prize in October, in the company of Prince William and David Attenborough. For his new collection Reed worked with 100-year-old upholstery fabric from the Italian weaver Villa Bussandri. Italy may well be where his future lies. Reed has already struck up a relationship with Etro, a bohemian family-run fashion house known for its paisley fabrics, based in Milan. “When we reached out to fashion houses for deadstock, we contacted Etro, and [creative director] Veronica Etro and her brother wanted to meet and talk. They suggested we use Etro’s atelier, resources, and fabric from the archives to make a capsule with my designs and patterns,” says Reed. The upshot was a line of flouncy blouses that are sold at Etro and at Matchesfashion — the online retailer is one of Reed’s 56

early champions. “Twisting an Italian DNA is exciting to me,” says Reed. Veronica Etro was intrigued and charmed by the designer’s approach. “From the very beginning, Etro has never really observed a boundary between men’s and women’s wear — we are known for kaftans, pyjamas, outsize jackets, shirts that are genderless — so it was a natural match,” she explains. “I want to open the brand to different things. We went to the archive and the mills outside Milan to find fabrics for Harris to upcycle. And it just flowed.” Veronica is keenly aware of generational shifts in outlook. “I have two boys, aged 17 and 13. They ask themselves questions that maybe we did not ask ourselves at that age. This generation is open to more things — it is not just black and white. It is about individuality and personality, and whoever you are it is OK. After

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all, the power of fashion is allowing people to express themselves.” Remarkably for an emerging designer (there are just two people on the Harris Reed payroll), his business is turning a profit, with sales from demi-couture designs and collaborations with jewellery brand Missoma, for which he designed snakemotif diamond-and-pearl pieces made of upcycled gold, as well as Etro. Reed deftly couples design with memorable media appearances. At the same time, he’s smart enough to heed friendly advice from older Saint Martins’ graduates, including the designers Giles Deacon and Christopher Kane. “I’m no Lady Gaga,” he says. “But here is Harris Reed — the performer, the person, the designer, the brand. I like wearing my creations and I’m comfortable in my skin.”

Motoring JUNE 2022: ISSUE 129

Bright Sparks British company Lunaz is finding the electrified restorations of its classic cars so popular, it can’t build them quickly enough

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WORDS: CHRIS ANDERSON

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n April 9 this year, the celebrity media were busy getting excited about the wedding of former footballer David Beckham’s eldest son, Brooklyn, and actress Nicola Peltz. The occasion even caught the attention of the automotive world when they found out what the proud father was presenting the couple as a wedding gift — an electrified Jaguar XK140, originally built in 1954, restored and modernised by British company Lunaz. An incredible open-top two-seater, the car was a gorgeous light blue, with an upcycled cream interior and the latest technology, including the new electric drivetrain, discreetly hidden, with dials and switches to reflect the original design, but with subtle updates to showcase the battery level and operate the modern features. It drives like a modern car too, with uprated suspension and steering, fast-charging capabilities and regenerative braking, and was hand-built at the Lunaz workshops in Silverstone, with the company’s 120-strong team of craftspeople, designers and Electric Vehicle (EV) technicians working thousands of hours to complete the Jaguar on time. No doubt Brooklyn and his new bride were appreciative, as would David himself have been from the attention and hype that ensued — Beckham Senior is actually an investor in Lunaz, owning a 10 per cent stake in the company. Those are some pretty extreme lengths to go to just to make sure your own restoration is given top priority, as Lunaz is currently receiving so many requests. Its time slots are fully booked until 2024. But that just shows the company is onto something. Established in 2018 by entrepreneur David Lorenz (he named the business after his daughter, Luna), and managing director and technical lead Jon Hilton, who has a background in Formula 1 and worked at Rolls-Royce, Lunaz claims to be Britain’s fastest-growing clean-tech company. It is also in the process of building the UK’s largest remanufacturing and electrification

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We are engaged in the preservation of some of the most significant objects in history

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facility next to its current home at Silverstone Technology Park, taking its total manufacturing footprint to 210,000 sq. ft, just to keep up with demand. In order to do this, it conducted a private investment round last year to boost its growth, attracting Beckham alongside other big names. For Lorenz himself, the ability to preserve and extend the life of muchloved classic cars is important. “The world is changing, and my daughter’s generation will not enjoy the same access to classic cars we have,” he says. “We are engaged in the preservation of some of the most significant objects in history, and it’s a joy to know that these cars have a bright future under electric power.” The original mission of Lunaz was simple: to upcycle and electrify disused passenger, commercial and industrial vehicles, from classic cars to refuse trucks, to help the public and businesses transition to clean-air powertrains. By upcycling and returning a vehicle to a factory-new standard, with electric power, Lunaz estimates that it saves 80 per cent of the embedded carbon versus building an all-new car, and lowers spending. Companies benefit from cleaner, greener fleets, with major savings, while other customers can enjoy an electrified classic. No wonder the company is proving popular, with plans to offer its services across Europe and North America. In terms of electrified classics, the first to be upcycled by Lunaz, back in 2019, was a 1953 Jaguar XK120 with an 80kWH battery, producing 700Nm of torque

and 375hp of power, and twin motors propelling the car from 0-100km/h in under five seconds. Today, you can opt for an electrified Range Rover Classic; a 1956 Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud, or an awardwinning 1961 Bentley Continental Flying Spur; a 1961 eight-seater Rolls-Royce Phantom V; or a top-of-the-range late1960s Aston Martin DB6 — all British manufacturers, just like Lunaz itself, and each said to offer a range comparable to a brand-new electric car. The creative process behind each model is impressive too. Every car undergoes a total restoration before it is converted to electric, stripped down to the bare metal, rebuilt by hand using modern coachbuilding techniques, with its combustion engine and associated parts removed. The vehicles are analysed thoroughly, often using 3D scanning techniques, to create the most appropriate in-house powertrain solution, respecting the weight distribution of the original driving experience. Modern technology, such as satellite navigation, smartphone connectivity, full climate control and power steering, and other personalisation requests, may be added discreetly later on. Lunaz says it breathes new life, usability, and relevance into some of the world’s most celebrated classics, which due to increasing legislation around petrol engines, and complete bans taking effect in some markets within 10 years, would otherwise be lost to the history books — or the scrap heap. Through companies such as Lunaz, these cars live on, presented to a new generation, with improved reliability and sustainability credentials. As a joyful David Beckham explains, “Lunaz represents the very best of British ingenuity in both technology and design. I was drawn to the company through their work restoring some of the most beautiful classic cars through upcycling and electrification. David Lorenz and his team of world-class engineers are building something very special, and I look forward to being part of their growth.”

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Gastronomy JUNE 2022: ISSUE 129

This Time It’s Personal After bringing the heat to celebrity flytrap Chiltern Firehouse, Nuno Mendes is promising a taste of home at his latest London opening

uno Mendes has family on his mind. The explorative chef, famous in a few ways — for the cult Loft Project, the four years of Michelinstarred Viajante, his stint as executive chef at celebrity flytrap Chiltern Firehouse — has been thinking of his grandmother while working on his new restaurant Lisboeta, which has just opened on London’s Charlotte Street. “We have these prawn turnovers, prawn rissois, as a snack. They’re just… her, you know?” he says softly — his Portuguese accent coloured by a decade-and-a-half training in America. “The other day I was making them and I was following her footsteps. It was so emotional. That was my biggest influence, that cooking based purely on love. It marked me, it formed me. And when I tasted them, there was that feeling — these are part of my culture. That’s so special.” Though his grandmother died when Mendes was 13, it’s perhaps no surprise her memory is helping inspire Lisboeta. The word, a term for someone from Lisbon, champions his hometown, just as he did with the 2017 cookbook that shares 63

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the name. Whereas much of Mendes’ reputation was built on intricate, molecular cooking, in Fitzrovia he hopes things will flourish in a different direction. “The tone here is informal and casual and good fun,” he says. “It’s bohemian. It starts with me capturing the rhythm of the day in Lisbon.” And what is that rhythm? “If you live and work in Lisbon, you have all these pit stops that you do,” he says, detailing a roll-call of bitesized meals from 11am through to 5am: snacks and beers and lunches and suppers and drinks through the night. It sounds pretty full on, I say. “Well,” he smiles, “it’s not always that every day.” Still, Mendes is hoping the restaurant will facilitate that all-day, all-night approach across its three storeys (although a 5am closing time is sadly impossible). From top to bottom, the first floor is open only for lunch and supper, the ground offers both but also serve snacks and drinks through the day, while the basement area will offer what his most ardent fans will have been hoping for — a private dining counter with its own wine cellar, where a separate menu is offered and the vibe is distinctly high-end. “It’s slightly more immersive, and a longer experience,” he says. And exclusive too, with room for just 10. A thread tying it all together is Mendes’ desire “to champion Portuguese food, to celebrate it”. Living in Miami in his twenties, some 20 years ago, he was astonished that “people would be like: you’re Portuguese? Where’s that? South America? I felt like ‘f***!’, you know, ‘forget about the cuisine, people don’t even know where the bloody country is!’” But even over here, he says, Portuguese cooking has long been misrepresented. “There’s been a sort of lumping everything up in one pot and saying, oh, the food of the Portuguese, it’s just like Spanish food — but it’s not, it’s very different. Our coastline is totally different, and we have the African influence, the Indian influence…” It sounds a far cry from the Chiltern Firehouse menu, somewhere which, he says with affection, is “basically a steakhouse serving, you know, burgers and pizza”. Why did he leave? “I felt like I had nothing else to give the project that I felt that was relevant,” he replies. 64

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People get completely broken in kitchens and they lose their sense of selfpride, their sense of self-esteem

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Does that mean things were good or bad? “Oh, it’s an amazing project and I really enjoyed doing it. I just decided that I would like to have one restaurant at a time in central London. And I wouldn’t feel comfortable with having the Firehouse and then having Lisboeta less than a mile apart, trying to draw the same people.” He says he and the Firehouse founders are still in touch. Less happy, seemingly, are relations with Mãos, the fine dining spot he parted ways with suddenly in 2020, and with no public explanation. What happened? “No no, Let’s not talk about it. That’ll just p*** me off.” That bad? “I mean I got a Michelin star there.” He catches my eye: “I did.” He emphasises the “I”. At the Chiltern Firehouse, the menus were Mendes’s, though he hadn’t cooked there for a long time. I suggest Lisboeta feels like a London comeback of sorts. “Everybody keeps saying that, and I’m like ‘Shit! I live in bloody London Fields!’” Still, with his name above the door, it marks Mendes stepping into a kitchen for the first time in four years or so, and he’s determined to create a culture that encourages chefs, not demoralizes them. He says: “When I look at turning 50, I think that we need to be aware of ourselves and to try to preserve ourselves.” What does he have in mind? “People get completely broken in kitchens and they lose their sense of self-pride, their sense of self-esteem. I don’t like that and I see that a lot. I think that we need to strike that balance of work life. I want to have quality of life, and I want that to feed into into my work. That’s something I think a lot of chefs want.” The menu is split between cured meats and cheese, snacks, petiscos (small plates), bigger bites like goose

barnacles (“treasures,” he calls them) and scarlet prawns, all of which will come directly from Portugal “because Lisboeta is about the produce.” “But I don’t want to put a lot of air miles on everything that arrives at the restaurant, so most of the rest will be British produce, but interpreted through a Portuguese eye,” he adds. Bigger still are the sharing pots and platters, tacos and travessas, designed for two. There’s that family influence again.“When you’re going to Grandma’s house or something like that, you know, a big pot just lands on the table. Something you can just tuck into.” He was determined to open “a place that has a very accessible entry point. But if you want to go crazy, you can go crazy.” It’s not just his grandmother Nuno has on his mind. His father, who died not long after Viajante won its star in 2011, moulded some of his son’s tastes, but the relationship came from fraught beginnings. “I was an only child, but my mum and my father, I think they felt the pressure to stay together because of me and I think they really didn’t like each other,” Mendes remembers. “The only way he connected with me was actually through food because my mum was not really that interested in it. I remember I would go [out to eat] with him, I remember eating things like raw squid, oysters, raw prawns. Some very strange things at the age of six, seven, eight years old. But I was curious about food, I was loving it. So my father and I were really connected with that.” While most of his projects have come and gone in after just a few years — enjoying a flash of success before starting on the next idea — Mendes says he wants the legacy of Lisboeta to live on. Some of that seems tied up in an uneasy home life, though he won’t be drawn on details. He mentions wanting to share some of his past with his children. “My children, they’re threequarters Portuguese but born and raised in London. But I wanted them to feel like Lisbon is their own city, too.” Does he get a chance to show them their heritage at home? “My passion for cooking came from that; that love that comes with people that you love being in the kitchen and chatting, and cooking and working together and tasting and all that. Hopefully I’ll be able to share that with them now.”

Travel JUNE 2022: ISSUE 129

ULTIMATE STAYS

Brown’s Hotel AIR

London

t doesn’t take long to feel at home. Reaching into his pocket like a magician mid-trick, the top-hatted doorman at London’s Brown’s Hotel reveals a chocolate gold coin, much to the delight of my two daughters. They’re aged thirteen and eleven now. And the same doorman did the same thing for them when they were barely at the height of his knee. Hence the smiles. Tradition is the very fabric of this storied hotel, London’s oldest. It was from Brown’s that Alexander Graham Bell made the first ever UK telephone call; where countless authors of note — from Agatha Christie through to Stephen King — have written books while guests; and where the likes of Laurence of Arabia and George Orwell have rested up. It was also the first hotel to house a restaurant. But it’s a hotel that also moves with the times, its most recent refurbishment adding a sophisticated touch of flair courtesy of Olga Polizzi, Rocco Forte’s Director of Design, whose unrivalled eye for striking, quintessentially English wallpaper elevates every room in which it features. You’ll see it at check in; the light-filled lobby given the look of a country garden in bloom. And in the Drawing Room, where the hotel’s ever-popular afternoon tea is served against a backdrop of walls depicting London’s history, colourful characters included. Yet Polizzi’s polished skills are perhaps best showcased in The Kipling Suite (pictured), the hotel’s largest, which across a three-month period was transformed 66

into what is now unquestionably one of London’s finest dwellings. Named after Rudyard Kipling, the author of The Jungle Book (which he penned part of while a regular guest at Brown’s), the suite features floor-to-ceiling windows, shedding light on a number of antiques hand-picked by Polizzi and a framed hand-written letter from Kipling, composed during one of his visits. Timber flooring runs throughout, from the entrance lobby and sitting room, to the bedroom, chandelier-adorned, marble-lined bathroom, and sizeable walk-in wardrobe. It’s a suite that’s every inch Mayfair. Further enhancements to the hotel include the expansion of the oh-so glamorous Donovan Bar, home to Salvatore Calabrese’s cabinet display of rare vintages (from which he mixes one of the world’s most expensive cocktails) and the largest private collection of Terence Donovan photographs, the revered 60s’ snapper from whom the bar takes its name. Then there is Charlie’s, the celebrated British restaurant helmed by Michelinstarred chef, Adam Byatt. Like the hotel itself, it marries the traditional to the modern to faultless effect. 185 years old this year, Brown’s Hotel is a national treasure, a thoroughly charming hotel that not only makes you feel at home, but makes you feel like part of the furniture. A private chauffer transfer can be arranged from whichever London airport you land your jet at.

What I Know Now

Mary Katrantzou

Credit: Leona Beth

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JUNE: ISSUE 129

FASHION DESIGNER Some of the best advice I’ve ever been given was from the late Louise Wilson, my Professor at CSM, who sent me this quote from Robert Hughes: “The greater the artist, the greater the doubt. Perfect confidence is granted to the less talented as a consolation prize.”

shifts, making it more difficult to discover your own bandwidth. As a new mum, I am much more protective of my time and have rediscovered the joy of creativity, outside the limitation of seasonal collections. That spontaneity is the reason I fell in love with fashion in the first place.

One thing I do every day is catch up with my team. Whilst every day is different, from design meetings to business strategy discussions, I always try to be present and brainstorm with my team to strengthen and refine our vision.

Inspiration can be found everywhere and I always draw it from very diverse ideas. I find beauty in so many facets of life, be it design, film, nature, art or an everyday object. Creativity creates more creativity and I’ve always been inspired by pioneers who challenge the boundaries of their respective fields.

It’s very easy to push yourself to work in an unsustainable way because of the pace and demands of our industry. As your company grows your ambition 68

Personal success is staying true to myself, creating consistency between my actions and my values.

I would advise my younger self to always follow her instinct. As you evolve as a designer, you can start doubting your decisions, but you have to have the strength of your own conviction. Especially when you are a woman, you are driven by a concern for performance and efficiency, while setting the bar very high. I wish my younger self could embrace her selfdoubt as an indicator for breaking new ground. We must dare and not be afraid to fail. My ambition is to always stay true to my brand’s aesthetic and create timeless designs that extend beyond fashion, to all areas of applied design. It’s also very important to me to consistently grow creatively and emotionally.