AIR Magazine - Empire Aviation - Aug'21

AUGUST 2021

KEVIN HART

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Contents

AIR

Credit: Hublot Ambassador Shepard Fairey wearing the Classic Fusion Chronograph Shepard Fairey

AUGUST 2021: ISSUE 119

FEATURES Thirty Two

Forty

Forty Six

Fifty Two

Kevin Hart, the world’s highest-earning comedian, on why he’s had it with cancel culture.

Graffiti guru Shepard Fairey talks punk, politics, being arrested and his latest collaboration with Hublot.

50 years on from Marvin Gaye’s masterpiece, Martin Chilton looks at why it remains just as relevant today.

Why Olympia of Greece is well on her way to becoming fashion royalty.

From The Hart

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Fairey’s Tale

What’s Going On

From The Crown To The Catwalk

Contents

Credit: SCHIAPARELLI HCFW21/22 Look 01 Daniel Roseberry

AUGUST 2021: ISSUE 119

REGULARS Fourteen

Radar

Eighteen

Critique Twenty

Art & Design Twenty Four

Timepieces Twenty Eight

Jewellery Fifty Eight

Motoring EDITORIAL

AIR

Sixty Two

Gastronomy

Chief Creative Officer

Sixty Six

john@hotmedia.me

John Thatcher

Journeys

by Jet

ART Art Director

Sixty Eight

Kerri Bennett

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 Sixteen

Objects of Desire Our curated pick of luxury’s finest shines a spotlight on Haute Couture FW21/22 and high jewellery creations.

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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L E A DING T H E WAY

Empire Aviation Group AUGUST 2021:ISSUE 119

Welcome to this issue of AIR, our private aviation lifestyle magazine for aircraft owners and onboard guests. If you are reading this issue onboard and flying with us for the first time, then rest assured you are in good hands and we wish you a comfortable and enjoyable flight.

As the summer travel season gets under way, you may be thinking (and dreaming) about the leisure travel opportunities, even in these unprecedented times as commercial aviation continues to operate under severe restrictions. Our own charter bookings and aircraft usage are certainly healthy at the moment, so you are in good company. As private aviation continues to demonstrate its unique advantages – convenience, flexibility, privacy, safety and security – there is one additional advantage that it brings, and this is especially apparent as the world begins to unlock and travel more freely.

Welcome Onboard ISSUE ONE HUNDRED AND EIGHTEEN

Whatever your dream destination, getting there quickly and directly can be an important factor when looking at the travel options.

Commercial airlines operate to thousands of airports around the world, but it is often the local or regional airports that are closer to the final destination. Business jets – even some of the larger ones – are better suited to dropping you into the nearest airport, rather than leaving you with the additional headache of inconvenient and long transfers to your ultimate destination. Some – but, critically, not all – business jets can fly you nonstop to long-haul destinations and then land in a small airport, close to the final destination.

In this issue, we talk more about this additional advantage of private aviation and the business jets best equipped to take you closer to your destination.

Wherever you are travelling to this summer, we wish you a safe and enjoyable journey.

Paras P. Dhamecha Managing Director

Contact Details: Cover: Kevin Hart Getty Images

info@empire.aero empireaviation.com

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Empire Aviation Group AUGUST 2021:ISSUE 119

Taking you closer: charter away to your dream vacation this 2021 The multiple benefits of flying private When you consider your travel and vacation options for the summer season ahead, you may naturally think about where commercial airlines fly and the destination airports they serve, even with the various current restrictions in place and which are constantly changing.

If it is an itinerary with multiple stops, then it may even involve more than one carrier and so increase the complexities of switching airlines, airports, and managing and tracking baggage and other valuable items (such as golf clubs). This can be challenging enough in normal times, with the inevitable queues when transiting customs and security, but today in these unprecedented times it can remove all the anticipation and pleasure of travel.

Chartering a business jet opens up a new way of thinking about travel as an independent and flexible way of accessing places that no other form of

travel can reach. A business jet – even some larger aircraft – can reach many of the smaller local and regional airports that commercial carriers cannot serve.

And for multiple stopovers, aircraft charter offers the ultimate flexibility of flying to your own schedule and itinerary.

Getting you closer to your ultimate destination – and ideally landing in your destination – is part of the trip planning process, and this is where travel and charter expertise is essential and will guide you in selecting the right business jet for the trip. If you are going longer haul (the mountain resorts of the US or the Canadian Rockies – or even Japan), then you may want to fly non-stop or prefer to make a stopover en-route and break the journey – the decision is yours but you may need a different aircraft, depending on your preference.

Africa boasts some of the most exhilarating travel experiences in the world and, of course, the safari is an

established and unique experience that draws people from all over the world. You can combine fantastic beaches and safari experiences into a single memorable trip into southern Africa, or even with the luxury island resorts of the Indian Ocean – some of which have their own landing strips.

The choice is yours, and air charter can put it all within easy and convenient reach, with all the benefits of privacy, flexibility and safety.

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Empire Aviation Group AUGUST 2021:ISSUE 119

Where can my business jet take me?

Why smaller airports are a big attraction When flying privately, for example to a major city, private flyers may still prefer to have access to a smaller airport with a private terminal, rather than land at a large commercial airport (although this is still an option). So, when flying to New York, the choice could either be to land at the smaller airports of Teterboro or White Plains, rather than JFK or Newark.

There’s a good reason for this.

Private jets provide you with access to airports that commercial airliners cannot, which means they can avoid the busy and congested commercial air space (and the stacks of aircraft that may surround airports at times).

On the ground, smaller airports are generally closer to the city and with 12

private hangars known as Fixed Based Operations (or FBOs – you can also find them at commercial airports as well, although separate to the large commercial terminals) that give you a faster, VIP experience through the terminal and an easier transfer to the city or other ultimate destination.

Landing at a smaller airport with an FBO is a very personal and welcoming experience with direct access to the terminal from the aircraft, the chance to chat with pilots and crew, help with baggage, and a speedy transit through the terminal. Airports dedicated to business aviation complement the exclusive experience of flying privately, with luxurious facilities and amenities.

However, not all private aircraft

can go everywhere. Some smaller local airports present particular challenges for some business jets – from altitude (such as Courchevel, France), to complex approaches (such as St Tropez, France) to steep approaches, such as London City Airport.

Your business jet must have the certification and performance validated by the manufacturer and, of course, the pilots must also have upto-date type rating and qualifications for these specific kinds of flying challenges. This is where the aviation specialist comes in and ensures you choose the right combination of business jet and airport for your ultimate destination.

Radar AUGUST 2021: ISSUE 119

AIR

In these exclusive images shot at the ateliers, model fittings, and backstage in preparation for the unveiling of Chanel’s Fall-Winter 2021/22 Haute Couture collection, Virginie Viard’s colourful vision for the season comes to life.

Inspired by the works of the Impressionists, Viard’s collection illustrates the art of exquisite detailing.

Read more about it in our Objects of Desire section (from p16).

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OB JECTS OF DESIRE

This month we shine a spotlight on Haute Couture FW21/22 and high jewellery creations

OBJECTS OF DESIRE

OB JECTS OF DESIRE

CHANEL

FA L L- W I N T E R 2 0 2 1 / 2 0 2 2 H A U T E C O U T U R E There was something instantly comforting at seeing Chanel’s models strut around the Palais Galliera. In dresses and blouses embroidered with flowers, an A-line skirt and coats in multicoloured tweed, this was the welcome bow of a collection that’s

both colourful and warm – the perfect riposte to the cruel bleakness of the pandemic. Inspired by photographs of Gabrielle Chanel in clothes Virginie Viard likened to paintings, here she uses her own team of artisans to paint a picture of pure optimism.

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OB JECTS OF DESIRE

BOUCHERON

ILLUSION RING Holography is the cornerstone of Claire Choisne’s latest deep dive into the transformative effects of light – the resulting collection arguably her most mesmerising yet. Comprising nine sets in all, which feature twenty-five unique pieces, Illusion is a set illuminated by

a trio of spellbinding opals. The most dazzling of the three is this 10.38 carat pear cabochon dark opal from Australia, which shares the spotlight with abundant rubies, pink, orange, yellow and blue sapphires, red garnets, tsavorites and diamonds.

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OB JECTS OF DESIRE

U LYA N A S E R G E E N K O

FA L L- W I N T E R 2 0 2 1 / 2 0 2 2 H A U T E C O U T U R E The Republic of Karelia in northwest Russia is a region best known for containing Europe’s two largest lakes and dense forest. It’s also a region that has birthed many a myth and legend.

This season it’s also inspired an entire collection, for which Ulyana Sergeenko has

employed new techniques at the atelier – novel forms of embroidery, lacemaking and laser cutting. Flowing dresses with elaborate embroidery (depicting mythical animals) neighbour more exaggerated garments with enlarged shoulders, rigid leather corsets and thick fabrics.

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CH AU M E T

TORSADE DE CHAUME T RING A tribute to the Place Vendôme, on which Chaumet was the first jeweller to open in 1812, the Torsade collection takes its design cue from the frieze which wraps the square’s towering column, making for pieces imbued with a spectacular twist. This ring is just

one such exquisitely designed example.

Crafted from white gold, it’s set with an oval-cut vivid red Mozambique ruby, weighing in at 3.05 carats, which is beautifully balanced by the brilliantcut diamonds that coil either side of it.

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S C H I A PA R E L L I

FA L L- W I N T E R 2 0 2 1 / 2 0 2 2 H A U T E C O U T U R E “For two years, I’ve been saying that I didn’t care about nostalgia.

This season, though, it’s where it all started,” said Daniel Roseberry in his collection notes. A result of the pandemic and a desire to reflect on comforting experiences? Possibly. But

what’s definite is that this collection, which he’s termed Matador, is enough to stop you in your tracks. It’s split into three parts: the first pays tribute to Schiaparelli jackets of the past; the second the body and bijoux; and the third a celebration of colour.

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OB JECTS OF DESIRE

R O N A L D VA N D E R K E M P

FA L L- W I N T E R 2 0 2 1 / 2 0 2 2 H A U T E C O U T U R E Long before the term sustainability became ubiquitous in fashion circles, Dutch designer Ronald van der Kemp had already introduced us to his wonderfully creative upcycled couture concept. Being restricted in his use of materials does not mean being restrained in ambition, and

this season Van der Kemp has pushed it to new lengths, working with students from Amsterdam’s Jean School and I-did, a company which makes new materials from textile trash, to create several looks fashioned solely from what was at hand in his studio.

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OB JECTS OF DESIRE

C H O PA R D

RED CARPE T COLLECTION NECKL ACE The red carpet at Cannes [Chopard has partnered with the Cannes Film Festival since 1998], is a fitting showcase for Caroline Scheufele’s latest spectacular collection, for which she drew particular inspiration from the idea of paradise.

Comprising 74 creations in all, it’s this

jaw-dropping necklace that took our eye. Crafted from Fairmined-certified 18-carat white gold, it has an emerald cabochon weighing 112.27 carats, and is set with round-shaped, pear-shaped and marquise-cut diamonds totalling 116.81 carats.

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OB JECTS OF DESIRE

FLIP RING ation in the natural beauty of the polar r. The sun is the architect of such artistry nets popping up in rings and earrings. But s our eye. it’s crafted from 18K white gold f sparkling pavé diamonds.

ILLON es, wristwatches, dome clocks, and table arters in Geneva. However, the stars of the ellished interpretations of familiar models), uble-face Sky Moon Tourbillon wristwatch ase with a decor in brown grand feu

C A RT I E R

PHA AN RING A stunning 8.20 carat ruby is the headline stone of this exceptional piece, a stone made all the more remarkable by the 4.01 carat rose-cut diamond it sits atop. This tiered construction allows for light to play a unique role, passing through the ruby to the diamond below

and greatly intensifying the ruby’s rich red hue. Surrounding them is an arrangement of triangular diamonds and miniature ruby balls, positioned with subtle gaps between them to catch and cast further light on that magnificent ruby.

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OBJECTS OF DESIRE

Critique AUGUST 2021 : ISSUE 119

Film How It Ends Dir. Zoe Lister Jones, Daryl Wein A feelgood apocalyptic comedy in which Liza scores an invite to one last wild party before the world ends. But making it there won’t be easy.

AT BEST: ’There is a feeling of real heart in the film’s idiosyncrasies and glimmers of standout comedy.’ – Caitlin Quinlan, Little White Lies AT WORST: “There are a few laughs, but not enough for me to say the film did enough for me to enjoy it.’ – Dennis Schwartz

Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain Dir. Morgan Neville AIR

An intimate, unflinching, behind-the-scenes look at how an anonymous chef became world-renowned before taking his own life.

AT BEST: ‘A wonderfully engaging and revealing biography that may alter the way you perceive Bourdain.’ – Steven Prokopy, Third Coast Review AT WORST: ‘The director’s structural choices make the picture come off as slippery.’ – Jason Bailey, The Playlist

First Date Dir. Manuel Crosby, Darren Knapp A shy teen’s eagerly-anticipated first date implodes as he finds himself targeted by criminals, cops, and a crazy cat lady.

AT BEST: ‘A very ambitious independent film with a charming, casual attitude.’ – Bob Strauss, San Francisco Chronicle AT WORST: ‘ Silly, empty, and entirely perplexing.’ – Candice Frederick, The Grio

The Night House Dir. David Bruckner When her husband dies to leave her alone, a woman soon discovers that her husband harboured a number of disturbing secrets – now they will haunt her.

AT BEST: ‘A horror film of the mind and the heart and a very successful one at that.’ – Dolores Quintana AT WORST: ‘Its attempts at eschatological dread don’t quite stick.’ Matt Cipolla, The Film Stage 18

Critique AUGUST 2021 : ISSUE 119

Books A

for the author. “Shipstead’s writing soars and dips with dizzying flair . . . With detailed brilliance, she lavishes heart and empathy on every character (save one villain), no matter how small their role. Many authors attempting to create an epic falter at the end, but Shipstead never wavers, pulls out a twist or two that feel fully earned, and then sticks the landing.”

Malibu Rising, by Taylor Jenkins Reid, tells the story of world-famous Nina Riva, whose legendary end-ofsummer party is the hottest ticket in town. In fact, the only person not looking forward to the party is Nina herself, who has just been very publicly abandoned by her pro tennis player husband. “Reid has once again crafted a fast-paced, engaging novel that smoothly transports readers between decades and story lines,” said The Washington Post.

“Mesmerizing…beautiful… Will keep readers captivated until the very last page,” champions US Weekly. While critic Fiona Davis calls the book, “A glamorous romp through Hollywood in its heyday, Taylor Jenkins Reid’s latest offers up unexpected twists

and a dazzling, ambitious movie star who will break your heart.”

From Charlie Kaufman, the Oscarwinning screenwriter of Being John Malkovich, comes Antkind.

It tells the story of a neurotic and underappreciated film critic (who sleeps in a sock drawer) who hits upon a hitherto unseen film he’s convinced will rock the world of cinema to its core. “Outrageously funny,” hails The Washington Post. “A dyspeptic satire propelled by Kaufman’s deep imagination, considerable writing ability and bull’s-eye wit.”

Said Booklist: “With this surprisingly breezy read, given its length, Kaufman proves to be a masterful novelist, delivering a tragic, farcical, and fascinating exploration of how memory defines our lives.”

Also lavishing praise of Kaufman, Kirkus Reviews said, “Antkind commands attention from start to finish for its ingenuity and narrative dazzle. Film, speculative fiction, and outright eccentricity collide in a wonderfully inventive yarn – and a masterwork of postmodern storytelling.”

Credit: Penguin Random House

century after Marian sets off on her dream trip to try and circumnavigate the globe by flying over the North and South Poles, Hadley Baxter is cast to play her in a film that centres on Marian’s disappearance in Antarctica. That’s the premise for Maggie Shipstead’s Great Circle, which fellow awardwinning author J. Courtney Sullivan describes as “A masterpiece … One of the best books I’ve ever read.”

Writing in The Washington Post, Ron Charles described the book as “A soaring work of historical fiction . . .

So convincingly does Shipstead stitch her fictional heroine into the daring flight paths of early aviators that you’ll be convinced that you remember the tragic day her plane disappeared.

Great Circle is a relentlessly exciting story about a woman maneuvering her way between tradition and prejudice to get what she wants.

It’s also a culturally rich story that takes full advantage of its extended length to explore the changing landscape of the 20th century. My top recommendation for this summer.”

The Boston Globe was full of praise

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Art & Design AUGUST 2021: ISSUE 119

Digital Love Sculptor and digital artist Julian Opie explains why it’s every artist’s right to break rules WORDS: CHRIS HARVEY

AIR

J

ulian Opie thinks we’ve got it all wrong about artists – and Vincent van Gogh is to blame. The image of the tormented Dutchman “not selling anything and struggling with painting after painting”, he says, has left us believing “that’s what honourable artists should be doing, and anything less is seen as some kind of corruption”.

We’re in Shoreditch, east London, in the four-storey 19th-century warehouse that Opie, now 63, bought in his late 20s, and has transformed into the busy HQ of a highly successful 21st-century artist. On the ground floor are packing crates, sculptures, lightbox paintings and a walk-through model of a French village that he’s created for a new exhibition. Up a steep staircase sits one of his three studio managers. There are artworks coming in and out, processes to be outsourced – with fabricators, 3D printers and LED makers (“I can’t build LEDs. It’d slow me down”).

A technician is experimenting with an image created by arranging individually painted black and white beads to form a pixelated portrait. On a computer screen, a man in a dark raincoat can be seen walking, endlessly, with a swing in his step, across a busy road. He’s on a video loop, created by another technician, soon to be immortalised via Opie’s mastery of line in a further piece for the new show.

In today’s multi-billion-pound art market, “there’s often a lot of pressure to kind of withhold works or make it look as if you don’t make as much work as you do,” says Opie, sipping tea from a mug available on his website. But, he 20

adds, “I like making a lot of work.”

He also likes buying art. Behind him are displayed Roman and Egyptian treasures. On the wall hang beaded baby carriers from Borneo and a large portrait

by Charles II’s court artist Peter Lely.

“Once you break a kind of barrier about what you’re prepared to pay up for an artwork, all hell breaks loose,” he says.

Aspects of Opie’s collection find their way into his own art (which sells at auction for tens of thousands of pounds): the beads and shells on the baby carriers inform the pixelated portraits; the fragments of Egyptian reliefs influence the slabs of carved stone depicting walking figures that more of his technicians have been painstakingly painting for the past two years. This sense of Opie’s work responding to other artforms has been a constant, from pop, in his famous band portraits for The Best of Blur (2000) album cover, to video games, with new works for the Pitzhanger show influenced by the 1997 graphics of Tomb Raider II. Opie is interested in the mental projection of reality experienced in early computer games, the boundaries between human vision, perception and space. “Is the picture in you,” he asks.

Or “are you looking at something and imagining yourself in that world?” When Opie talks about his work, he uncovers a complex “back end” behind pieces that appears simple and accessible on the surface. In computing, they’d call it the user interface. “It has always seemed to me that communication is key,” he says. “I started work in the

1980s, and there was a general sense of art having become cut off from how people looked at the world.”

The idiom he developed in response is as instantly identifiable as that of any artist working today. Primary school pupils across the UK are taught to create a portrait “in the style of Julian Opie”, which, he says, “feels really exciting”, although he notes, “I don’t really draw like that now.”

I wonder if he ever reaches the outer edges of his style and discards things because they don’t look enough like his. “If anything, it’s the other way around,” he tells me. “I’m always trying to somehow get away from the smell of myself, and the look of what I do. I’d love to look more like Clint Eastwood, and I’d love to have long black hair that I could flick out of my eyes, but I don’t, and I never will. And likewise, I notice that every time I undertake a project, it always ends up looking like my work.”

Dressed in understated dark blue, with greying curls, Opie is the picture of the urbane, handsome, successful artist; one of a small group of international stars from the same generation, whose fame and financial success have been hard to replicate by the artists that followed them.

His mother was a teacher, his father an economist from Adelaide who arrived as a Rhodes scholar in the early 1950s and became an Oxford lecturer, regularly appearing on TV on The Money Programme in the 1970s. I wonder if his father’s profession helped Opie to make smart decisions at the

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Opening page: Julian Opie. Julian. 2013 These pages, clockwise from below: Julian Opie.

Vic Fezensac 1. 2021; Crows by Julian Opie at Pitzhanger Manor & Gallery, 2021. Continuous computer animation on 5 double sided LED screens. Photo © Andy Stagg

‘

beginning of his career? Not long after leaving Goldsmiths in 1982, the artist had already found a gallery to represent him, and bought the warehouse we’re sitting in five years later.

Opie laughs. “My dad was hopeless at business… They were comfortable, my parents. They kind of stumbled through life. They bought a house in the Vale of Health [a desirable enclave in Hampstead] for like, £10,000 in the 1960s, but they didn’t mean to, it was just next door to where they were staying. They were quite innocent, I think, in a lot of ways.”

Opie has been through the “process of parenthood” himself: he and his wife Aniela (a frequent sitter in his work) have three daughters and a son, aged from late-20s to 15. “They certainly have provided an enormous amount of subject matter and material through the activities that we do together… and maybe also the way that they are engaged with the world.”

This presumably brings him into close contact with the ideals of Generation Z, ideals that led, for example, to the signage in Tate’s current Rodin exhibition warning visitors that the relationship between the artist and his models was “starkly unequal”. Has Opie felt the pressure of this school of thought on his own work? I’m thinking of his 22

’

mid-2000s portraits of pole dancers.

Would he hold back from showing them now in case they got criticised as examples of a toxic “male gaze”?

“What I would find a little tedious would be if everything has to be read through the filter of the day,” Opie says. “I’ve always tried as a white, male kid from the 19-whenevers to be straightforward and to draw things as I see them. I used to draw nudes at art school… you’re in your jeans and T-shirts and then one person walks in with no clothes on at all.”

The strangeness of it stayed with him. “I draw all the time, and I draw people mostly and we’ve all got bodies.

So I was thinking: how do these things exist in society? […] And it seemed like pole dancing was an interesting way of approaching that, an honest way. It’s happening every night. I’m not saying it’s good. And I’m not saying it’s bad.

That’s what’s actually out there.

“I’m not a scientist. I’m an artist.

So I don’t have to follow rules but I do follow the logic that the world seems to throw at me,” he continues.

“And if it leads me into pastures that are dodgy, or unresolved or unclear, for the time being, then I don’t see that as a shut door.”

Julian Opie is at Pitzhanger Manor & Gallery, London, until Oct 24

Credit: ©Credit: Chris Harvey/ Telegraph Media Group Limited 2021

AIR

It’s tedious if everything gets read through the filter of the day

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Father Time

Patek Philippe’s president Thierry Stern on a turbulent twelve months, keeping designs fresh, and discontinuing iconic watches

AIR

WORDS: THIERRY STERN

T

he past year has not been easy for the watch industry but, looking back, I am impressed with how fast we adapted at Patek Philippe. We had to shut our factory for two months, but we came back even more determined to deliver. We ended up being about 20 per cent down on production and sales, which is a lot, but it’s something we can recover from.

Both my grandfather and father [former presidents Henri and Philippe Stern] weathered worse crises than this one and, because of their experiences, we were ready to act fast to find a solution. So, 2020 was definitely not a record-breaking year, but it doesn’t matter because what I care about is product, quality and service, and we delivered on those for both our retailers and our clients.

A lot of brands have been pushing to sell to the tourist market. But, even before the crisis, most of Patek’s sales were to a local clientele so, when people weren’t travelling, it didn’t affect us too badly. Retailers could still sell by phone and deliver the watches directly and we were there to work with them. Unlike others, I’m not aiming to have lots of brand boutiques – I’m a watchmaker, not a retailer, and this works well for us.

In 2020 we opened a new manufacturing facility, which may seem excessive when we only produce around 60,000 watches a year, but it was not about increasing production – we will only ever grow by about one per cent a year – I am preparing for 20 years into the future.

We need to be more efficient but without 24

Timepieces JULY 2021: ISSUE 118

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Opening pages: Grand Complication In-Line Perpetual Calendar Ref. 5236P-001 These pages, from left to right: 5711/1A - Nautilus; Thierry Stern

‘

Only about 15 per cent of clients want manual wind, but it’s still important to have the option for connoisseurs not easy to control. When I decided to do this dial, I knew demand would be high and I accepted it. People will be disappointed that they can’t get one.

Even my sons are asking, ‘Can I have one?’, but the answer is no. On the positive side, though, it’s part of the beauty and myth of Patek Philippe.

The Calatrava is 90 years old this year and it’s still a hugely popular model. We gave it a makeover with a new movement. Some said we should make the calibre automatic but I was determined from the start for it to be bigger, slimmer and manually wound. It has been a big success and that makes me very happy as it means that the vision I had was right.

Only about 15 per cent of clients want manual wind, but it’s still important to have the option for connoisseurs who enjoy the routine of winding their watches in the morning. The new piece feels very modern and, interestingly, I see a lot of younger people wanting to wear it – in fact, it is my 18-yearold son’s favourite watch. One trend I am noticing is the new generation’s

’

passion for customising their watch by changing the colour and material of the strap. When I’m presenting a watch, I have to select a band that will suit everybody, but I see clients in our Geneva showroom, spending hours changing them to suit their own style.

Perhaps the most personal watch we have released this year is the new Grand Complication In-Line Perpetual Calendar Ref. 5236P001, which is really a collaboration between me and my dad. He had the idea many years ago, but at that time we didn’t have the know-how to create the movement at a small scale, so the linear dial arrangement was only seen in our pocket watches.

Now, though, we have developed the technology to allow us to finish the project. I’ve been dreaming about this and I was very happy to be able to show it to my dad. He loved it, although perhaps he would have chosen a more classical case and dial for it. Maybe we will do this in the future, but for now I wanted to present one of the oldest complications in a contemporary way.

Credit: © As told to Tracey Llewellyn / Telegraph Media Group Limited 2021

AIR

sacrificing quality and this means having everything under one roof and enough space for production, plus training facilities for watchmakers and retailers, room for our rare handcrafts department, and for teaching young artisans. We don’t need all the space today, but we didn’t want to have to rebuild in a decade.

I’m going to close off some of the space for the future, but we won’t have to build from scratch for a while.

Being a family business means advice is always available. I try to improve myself year on year and take the right decisions, but I’m not perfect.

Earlier this year, I announced that I’d be changing how old a watch needs to be in order to obtain an Archive Extract [documents kept by the brand], but with hindsight I realised I was perhaps being too restrictive.

After talking it over with my dad, I realised that although my idea was right, the execution wasn’t, so I changed the parameters. We all make mistakes; what matters is how you correct them. I learned that from my dad and also from my own experiences. You need to have the courage to say: ‘Sorry, I was wrong and I need to put it right.’ I think people are forgiving if you’re honest – that’s something I’m teaching my own sons.

Some would say that deciding to stop production of the iconic blue-dial Nautilus Ref. 5711/1A-010 was also a mistake, but to me it was necessary.

We don’t want to produce too many of any single reference as this will lower the value, which is not good for our collectors. Another potential danger with such a strong reference is that it can turn you into a monoproduct brand and that is not what I want. If suddenly the market decides that it has had enough of the design, I need to be sure that we have many others in our arsenal. But you know, I’m not stopping the entire Nautilus line, just this one reference. And, of course, I have a plan B. I’m not going to stop such a piece without having another idea – I may be crazy but not that much. You have to wait a little bit but, yes, something else is coming.

Already there is talk of the 2021 green-dial Nautilus being sold on for more than 10 times its retail price.

We try to avoid selling to people who will flip the watches like this but it’s

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Jewellery

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AUGUST 2021 : ISSUE 119

The Ultimate Power Statement Where once Empress Josephine donned a Chaumet tiara to signify royalty, now business leaders wear them to meetings WORDS: SARAH ROYCE-GREENSILL

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to translate 2D gouaches into wearable jewels. "The jewellers really give birth to each piece."

Chaumet specialises in tiaras, having created over 3,000 since its beginnings in 1780. Worn by the likes of Empress Josephine, Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna and Lady (Edwina) Mountbatten, an entire salon above the flagship is decorated with maillechort maquettes of archive designs.

Nature is a recurring motif: ears of wheat, en tremblant flowers, and ivy, laurel and acanthus leaves feature prominently, but there are also towering kokoshnik-style designs, ornate belle époque crowns, and art deco diamond aigrettes. The house still produces four or five tiaras per year, at least one of which is included in the annual high-jewellery collection.

Where previously tiaras were the preserve of royalty and aristocrats, today there is a huge appetite from Asian clients who want to build their own collection of future heirlooms.

"Over time tiaras have gone from being an expression of power to a fashion accessory," says Jean-Marc Mansvelt, Chaumet's CEO. "Our clients order tiaras for weddings, as the ultimate symbol of love that can be passed to the next generation.

But we also have Asian customers who order them for business meetings.

One lady told me that when she wears her tiara in front of her team she feels confident, like an empress. It comes back to the tiara's original function: as a symbol of power."

One of the most memorable projects in Verhulle's three decades at Chaumet was the restoration of the papal tiara of Pope Pius VII in 2017. Created by Chaumet's founder, Marie-Etienne Nitot, in 1805, the tiara had been stripped of its 4,000 jewels – they were sold and replaced by glass imitations in order to raise money for victims of the First World War – save for the 414ct gadrooned emerald mounted on top.

Verhulle was the first person to remove it from its setting since its creation.

"I felt like I was living through history. It took two months to rebuild entirely. Jean-Marc asked me to bring it back to the Vatican, so I really felt like I was retracing the steps of Nitot."

Credit: ©Sarah Royce-Greensill/ Telegraph Media Group Limited 2021

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verybody says we have the most beautiful workshop in Place Vendôme," says Benoît Verhulle, proudly gazing out towards the bronze statue of Napoleon that surveys this historic centre of jewellery savoir-faire. Even through the grainy picture afforded by our video call, I agree with him.

Chaumet's workshop director and his team of 15 craftspeople moved into the newly refurbished atelier, three floors above the 241-year-old maison's flagship boutique, last May. At 3,767 sq ft, it's almost four times the size of the previous workshop, and full of state-ofthe-art equipment alongside traditional goldsmithing tools – with space for the team to grow.

"We get this beautiful light, which helps a lot in our work," says Verhulle.

"Collaboration is much easier; people interact a lot more. The team is very happy here."

Verhulle joined the Parisian house as a 26-year-old jeweller in 1990, and worked his way up through the ranks, learning the Chaumet codes from veteran goldsmiths who helped him hone his skills. In the early 2000s he received the ultimate mark of trust from his workshop director: the task of crafting a tiara. "I still remember that day and that tiara: it had a geometric structure – very difficult technically.

Although I'm not sure whether that was down to the design or because I was nervous."

In 2017, Verhulle became the 13th workshop director in Chaumet's history. He supervises the creation of high jewellery and special orders, as well as the repair and restoration of heritage pieces. It's now his job to decide who will be given the honour of creating the next head-topping masterpiece.

"You can feel when someone is ready to work on a tiara," he says. "Of course, they need to have a lot of experience and to understand the Chaumet style.

But they also need to be willing to embark on a marathon."

The Chaumet style is "all about elegance, delicacy and movement.

Emphasising the stones, making the metal almost disappear. Tiaras need to be majestic but comfortable to wear."

He works closely with the design team

It can take 1,200 hours to ‘make a tiara, over the course of a year ’

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Kevin Hart, the world’s highest-earning comedian. on why he’s had it with cancel culture WORDS: JONATHAN DEAN

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evin Hart is the highestearning stand-up in the world right now, and the next highest — Jerry Seinfeld — isn’t even close. Over 16 months from September 2017, Hart’s Irresponsible tour filled 119 arenas around the world.

Meanwhile, as an actor, his prolific output of comedy blockbusters such as Ride Along and Night School have made more than $4 billion at the box office. “I’m extremely attracted to business,” he tells me, adding later that he thinks he could be a billionaire by the time he’s 45. He turned 42 last month and is worth $200 million, so he has some work to do. But work is his thing and he lacks neither confidence in his abilities nor motivation.

Born in Philadelphia in 1979, Hart was raised by his single mother, Nancy, while Henry, his drug-addicted father, was in and out of jail. His older brother, Robert, was kicked out of the house and legally emancipated from Nancy after committing a series of crimes including drug dealing and theft.

Desperate, perhaps, to avoid the same happening to him, Hart studied hard and graduated from high school. While he was working as a shoe salesman a friend suggested he try an open-mike night and he realised he could be funny for money. His freewheeling style is like Richard Pryor after a focus group — they share an energy, but Hart feels less unhinged, more practised, with skits ranging from family-friendly jokes to full-on X-rated rants. He is an elaborate, physical performer and that is his appeal to his global audience — he is raw, he is rude and he is very funny.

His current film, Fatherhood, is a departure from all of this. He plays a man left to raise his daughter alone when his wife dies after giving birth and it will surprise many to see this brash loudmouth conveying the numbness of grief very convincingly. “I say this humbly — but I’m as talented as f***,” he says, which is not him being arrogant, more what he considers to be an honest reflection of his skills.

“I’m really good at what I do.”

Hart is speaking from a hotel room in Budapest, where he is making a film in which he plays a “military-trained specialist”. To show that he can do the work better than anyone else — which is what he always wants to do — he

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overprepared for the role, training with US Navy Seals. It shows — he fills a tight white T-shirt and looks more athlete than comedian. He is also the most professional celebrity I’ve met over Zoom, with big headphones and a studio microphone set up.

Most of his peers turn up with a bad connection and hope for the best, but Hart does not leave things to chance.

Off screen he types away on his phone, messaging whoever, yet somehow he never seems to drop his attention from our interview. It is almost as if, rather than one big brain, he has four smaller ones, so he can split focus between his multihyphenate career and his family back in California.

Financially, then, he is doing well. But his commercial success in film has so far failed to translate into any sort of critical acclaim — something he claims not to care about. It was all smiles and laughter when Jimmy Fallon, The Tonight Show host, joked: “You’ve made

so many films in the last few years, have you ever thought of just slowing down and making one good one?”

But then there’s the story of the critic who wrote a scathing review of one of his films and received, from Hart, a cardboard cut-out of the comedian plus an $8,000 bottle of wine. I’m tempted to write, “Kevin Hart drowns cats!” to see what turns up in the post, but he claims that gift was just a one-off.

“I’ve only had two good movie reviews,” shrugs the star of more than 60 films. “It doesn’t bother me. I’m no stranger to negative feedback.” So why send the expensive wine? What point was he trying to make? “It was a nudge,” he says. “This guy always wrote something bad and he has to realise these movies make hundreds of millions; there may be a following attached to stuff I do. But the bigger that you get the more people poke at you. I don’t know why. The road to success is amazing. Then you get

We are so caught up in everybody ‘feeling like they have to be right and their way is the only way ’

These pages, clockwise from left: still from What Now? (2016); still from Fatherhood (2021)

there and opinions about you grow.”

Opinions grow and personal histories are raked through. In 2018 Hart was announced as the host of the Oscars ceremony; a huge accolade for an entertainer. But there was an immediate backlash as homophobic tweets he had sent nearly ten years previously — plus some dubious old stand-up material — resurfaced.

The tweets contained offensive references to Aids, while a routine from 2010 featured the quip, “Being a heterosexual male, if I can prevent my son from being gay, I will,”

which was followed by a joke about knocking his son to the ground.

The Oscars organisers asked him to apologise. He refused and said that he had addressed it in an interview in 2015, when he said he would no longer tell that joke, and that he had also apologised — even if said apology proved difficult to unearth.

Faced with a rising tide of anger, he stepped down from the ceremony and issued a statement, apologising. It was an extremely fraught and tricky time. A few weeks later he apologised again and said that was that.

Today he tells me: “If people want to pull up stuff, go back to the same tweets of old, go ahead. There is nothing I can do. You’re looking at a younger version of myself. A comedian trying to be funny and, at that attempt, failing.

Apologies were made. I understand now how it comes off. I look back and cringe.

So it’s growth. It’s about growth.”

His latest stand-up show, the aptly named Zero F***s Given, was released on Netflix in November and has already been viewed more than 21 million times. “I mean, I personally don’t give a s*** about it,” he says of cancel 35

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These pages: still from Ride Along 2 (2016)

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culture. His raised eyebrows suggest he really means that too. “If somebody has done something truly damaging then, absolutely, a consequence should be attached. But when you just talk about … nonsense?” He flicks his hand dismissively. “When you’re talking, ‘Someone said! They need to be taken [down]!’ Shut the f*** up! What are you talking about?” On stage he is full of movement, and he is now chopping at the air wildly. It feels like the start of a routine. Except he’s deadly serious.

“When did we get to a point where life was supposed to be perfect?

Where people were supposed to operate perfectly all the time? I don’t understand. I don’t expect perfection from my kids. I don’t expect it from my wife, friends, employees.

Because, last I checked, the only way you grow up is from messing up. I don’t know a kid who hasn’t messed up or done some dumb s***” There is a scene in Fatherhood in which Hart’s character, Matt, goes into his daughter’s school because she has been told she cannot wear trousers. The teacher asks: “What if a boy wanted to come to school dressed in a skirt?”

“Well, that’s that boy’s business,” Matt replies. “It’s the 21st century!” Which is exactly the kind of acceptance the actor has been criticised for lacking.

“Yes, yes,” says Hart, pre-empting my question. “But the crazy thing is that was in the script. It’s a well-written line, because our job is to help [a child] truly feel like they can be themselves. It’s not our job to prohibit them.” He knows how people might take the scene — a not-so-subtle attempt to prove he isn’t the bigot he has been accused of being.

“But it’s a message the world needs,” he sighs. “The importance of support.”

As a child Hart shared a one-bedroom flat with his mother that had tape on the floor to catch cockroaches. Part of the reason that he works so hard must be because of where he comes from.

Though now reconciled, the relationship with his dad was tough — “I love him, there’s no grudge. I don’t have the time to find anger” — while his beloved mum died when she was 56. He says people born with money take it for granted.

Hart takes nothing for granted.

His focus now is on creating 37

generational wealth for his family: wife Eniko and four children — teens Heaven and Hendrix from a first marriage, who split their time between parents, toddler Kenzo and baby Kaori from the second.

In 2014, emails from Sony Pictures were leaked as part of a cyberattack on the company. In the deluge of leaked correspondence it emerged that Clint Culpepper, a production executive, had called Hart a “whore” in a message to the boss, Amy Pascal. Hart was negotiating more money to promote a film on his social media channels, in an era before that was built into contracts.

“I don’t consider that being a whore,” Hart shrugs, as he so often does. “I just consider that understanding your brand. The assumption of ‘money whore’ is that needing money is a bad thing. It comes with the assumption everybody is OK because you are OK. There’s a high level of ignorance attached to that.”

Hart never has to work again, but he continues to travel the world, touring his routines and shooting films.

Yet he talks about the importance of close-knit family and how, like wealth, that was something he did not have growing up. He was in a serious car crash in 2019 in which the vehicle veered off the road and down an embankment. As a passenger he sustained serious back injuries and that only increased his sense that “it can all go away”. Now he wants to prioritise the important things. Not money, he says, but family — being with them on a day-to-day basis. Does he, then, see the disconnect between having the home life he so cherishes 38

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and being away so much for his work?

“Well, I do it in a way that makes sense,” he says, a little put out. “So if I do a movie for a couple of months, if I’m in the States, I fly home every weekend. Or the family come out. If I’m touring I might just do Friday, Saturday and Sunday, so I’m at home all week. Maybe I’ll take two months off and then be home with the family.”

In 2017 Hart publicly admitted to cheating on his wife, Eniko, after a friend used a tape to blackmail him.

Hart did not pay, but came clean to Eniko, who stuck by him. “Yeah, we’re close,” he insists. But can’t Heaven and Hendrix find out all the details, sordid and otherwise, of their father’s life by going online? “Yeah, but we’re fine,” he reiterates with added buoyancy. “There are no secrets.

You can’t be that way today. There’s too much floating around and a high percentage is bull, because that is what the internet does. It creates, spreads so fast that you’re playing a game of what’s true and what isn’t. But that should never happen in your home.”

There is no doubt that Hart is extremely unflappable. This might be because he talks of himself not so much as a person sometimes but a project — as though Kevin Hart is just another part of the Kevin Hart empire.

He is so in love with his HartBeat Productions company that he can come across a little Gordon Gekko — “I love the CEO lifestyle. World of VC. Investing. Creating entities and IPs.” He also makes motivational audiobooks — “I’m having a lot of fun in the literature space” — and even has a young adult novel out: Marcus

Makes a Movie, about dreaming big.

“I have navigated it correctly,” is how he describes his controversy-laden career and, to be honest, you can chuck so much water his way — poor reviews, Oscars, car crash — but he just remains the duck’s back.

There is no doubt, though, that his apologies can sound more like explanations — as if, deep down, he really just wants to prove he was right all along. Or, at least, to show that there was a reason for whatever happened at the time. He was young.

The scene was different back then.

He’s grown since. Yet there is sincerity here, and persuasiveness, not to mention a willingness to address anything he is asked, which, in a world full of dubious Hollywood apology and question dodging, is not only refreshing, it is rare.

“If there’s a message to take from anything I’ve said,” he concludes, “it’s that in this world of opinion, it’s OK to just disagree. It’s OK to not like what someone did and to say that person wasn’t for me. We are so caught up in everybody feeling like they have to be right and their way is the only way.

Politics is messed up because, if you don’t choose our side, you’re dumb.”

He is gesticulating now, hands like a conductor, building up to a crescendo.

“It’s a divide. It’s messed up. But I’m not about to divide. I don’t support the divide!” His voice is rising. It squeaks. This is how he works in his big arenas. “I put everybody in the building,” he continues.

“We all come into this building Kevin Hart is in and we all laugh. I bring people together — like it or not.”

Credit: The Sunday Times Magazine \ News Licensing

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If people want to pull up stuff, go back to the same tweets of old, go ahead. There is nothing I can do.

You’re looking at a younger version of myself

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These pages, left to right: Fairey’s iconic Obama poster; Fairey in his studio, wearing the Hublot Classic Fusion Chronograph Shepard Fairey

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The graffiti guru famously depicted André the Giant and Barack Obama - here, Shepard Fairey talks punk, politics, being arrested and how art meets money WORDS: ALASTAIR SOOKE

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S

itting in a studio in Los Angeles, Shepard Fairey, the American artist and activist, is reflecting on the past year. Because he has type 1 diabetes (he has a side hustle performing in nightclubs as DJ Diabetic), I assume that he and his wife, Amanda, who has multiple sclerosis, have been taking it easy, holed up with their daughters, Vivienne, 15, and Madeline, 13, in the hillside neighbourhood of Los Feliz, just east of Hollywood.

Not so, he tells me, when we connect via Zoom. Sure, he says, he would feel “more vulnerable if I were to get Covid - but I’m not a fearful person, you know, living in a bunker”. If anything, he adds, “Covid has been good for me, because I have no night-time social obligations – and I’m a workaholic.”

It’s true: Fairey, 51, whose Hope poster became the defining image of Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign, has always been driven. He emerged during the 1990s, when he ignited the East Coast graffiti scene by carpet-bombing the streets of Boston, Philadelphia, Providence and New York with his André the Giant Has a Posse stickers, featuring the scowling face of a French professional wrestler.

The campaign later diversified into stencils, posters and, eventually, various other media – on the streets, online and in galleries, all with a stylised version of André’s face above the word ‘Obey’, capitalised in white against red. According to Interview magazine, Fairey’s Obey imagery became “as much a part of the American urban landscape as glass skyscrapers and chewed gum”. Achieving such ubiquity was a Herculean effort. “I put a lot on myself,” says Fairey, who has the clean-cut, virile air of a retired all-American action hero.

So, despite LA’s “heavy lockdown”, as he describes it, it’s been full steam ahead. Fairey says his work is not “impaired” by his diabetes, which he has managed “very well for 16 years”, by exercising regularly and watching his diet, following some “serious eye issues”. His wife has trouble with movement on her left side, which means she can’t walk long distances. “Amanda and I are both aware of our mortality and how fragile good health is,” he says.

As well as making art, he runs a

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design agency, Studio Number One, which he founded, with Amanda, in 2003. Over the years, it has worked with lots of blue-chip clients, from Honda to Levi’s, Saks Fifth Avenue and Nike. “Mostly,” says Fairey, dressed in a slim black T-shirt produced by the streetwear clothing company he started in 2000, “people come to us for the strength of the illustration.” Anyone who has encountered Fairey’s striking art – instantly recognisable, thanks to its retro, Russian constructivist vibe, and repeated use of motifs such as stars

and red rays – will understand why.

In the past year, when he wasn’t at the agency’s HQ, which also houses his art gallery, Subliminal Projects, Fairey was working with a small group of masked-up assistants in his fineart studio, known as ‘The Deuce’, in a secret location nearby. Otherwise, he spent “a lot of quality time” at home: a modern property with, he tells me, a “small” pool and “beautiful” view.

How did he find homeschooling? One daughter, reveals Fairey, didn’t take to remote learning. But the other, he adds

These pages, left to right: a slection of Shepard Fairey’s street posters

proudly, “is getting straight As, and I don’t know whose kid that is because I hated school. I never got good grades.”

He may not have shone academically, but his willingness to graft was apparent by the time he was a punkobsessed teenage skater, flogging customised T-shirts to make a little pocket money. Curiously, though, his move to the West Coast – he arrived in LA in 2001, after five years in San Diego – came about because he grew fed up hanging around similarly driven peers.

After studying illustration at the Rhode Island School of Design, where he made his first André the Giant sticker, in 1989, as a joke, he lived on the eastern seaboard, in Providence; and New York, with its exciting and expanding street-art scene, wasn’t far away. There, he tells me, “If you had the drive, you could make things happen.” Yet, he continues, people in New York are “perpetually hustling and competitive”, and over time, he

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Perfect intellectual consistency within the minefield of the world is impossible

found the city “really exhausting”.

In LA, making “a brutal grind for myself” is, he says, “my choice, not something that’s forced upon me”.

Fairey, then, is a workaholic who relishes California’s slacker lifestyle – one of several seeming contradictions that make him such a fascinating figure. In filmed interviews, for instance, he comes across as an ageing rocker in a Sex Pistols T-shirt. Until, that is, he casually name-drops a philosopher. His 1990 manifesto, available on his website, begins by mentioning the 20th-century German phenomenologist Martin Heidegger.

Then there’s his rebellious persona

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as a street artist who’s been arrested 18 times (most recently in Detroit, in 2015). “When I started,” he tells me, “I was considered a vandal.”

Occasionally, he still makes street art without permission. “Most of what you see on the street is government signage or commercial advertising,” he explains, “so an individual expression with a message disrupts the usual flow of visuals – and I like that. It opens people’s minds.”

Yet he is also a successful businessman who employs 24 people, and is happy to take on commercial partnerships, including a new collaboration (his second) with the 43

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Money is a tool of empowerment that allows me to support things and create art that I believe in

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I was born with.” (His first name is Frank, but like his father before him, he has always gone by his middle one.)

What especially frustrates Fairey is the knee-jerk assumption, in certain quarters, that capitalism is intrinsically bad. “People have some unrealistic idea that existing without being a Wall Street banker means they’re not part of capitalism,” he tells me. But, he continues, “we’re all part of it. It’s how we decide to make smart choices and represent our values that makes the difference.”

Money, per se, “isn’t evil”, Fairey says. “I like to make money. Money is freedom. But that’s not my primary driver.” Rather, commercial partnerships are, he says, “a tool of empowerment that allows me to support things and create art that I believe in”. Fairey is a prominent social-justice activist, and he gives a lot to charity. Some of the proceeds from the new watch, for instance, will go to Amnesty International.

Which brings us to another contradiction: this dyed-in-the-wool Democrat, known for his liberal views (last year, Fairey produced a series of posters celebrating healthcare workers and volunteers), hails from the Deep South. The son of a doctor and an estate agent, he was born and raised in Charleston, South Carolina – a state that, in last year’s presidential election, voted for Trump.

Yet, he points out, Charleston, which backed Biden, is “more progressive than the rest of the state”, and has produced lots of successful cultural figures, including Stephen Colbert, the talk-show host, who attended Fairey’s private school, Porter-Gaud.

When he was a boy, Fairey’s parents used to pay him to make pen-and-ink drawings of their neighbours’ houses,

which they gave as Christmas presents.

“Some of their friends still have [my drawings] framed from 35 years ago,” he says, smiling. The going rate was $10 per drawing – an early lesson that art could make him money.

Charleston, which Fairey describes as “a racially divided town”, also opened his eyes to social inequality.

“I felt a general dissatisfaction with aspects of that without being able to understand why I felt the way I did – until I discovered skateboarding and punk rock, which were a window to a broader world of questioning things.”

At the time, he was a “somewhat frustrated” 14-year-old, and almost four decades later he still speaks about punk with the rapture of a fan.

Above all, it demonstrated to him that, “Young people could transform culture in a way that was so, so profound and motivating.” Suddenly, he was channelling his creativity “within the culture that was meaningful to me: making homemade stickers and T-shirts and stencils, repainting the bottom of my skateboard, designing covers for mix-tapes”.

In particular, British punk bands “really just blew my mind”, says Fairey. “My parents had always said that you will ruin your life by rocking the boat, by questioning the status quo. Actually, that you can build a life that looks like doing what you want was proven by the Sex Pistols and the Clash.” Punk also taught him how to “circumvent mainstream structures by building your own,” and what he now calls his “inside-outside strategy”: “infiltrating the system, whatever it takes, to make things happen.

“For me, it’s really important that I’m not just preaching to people who think like me,” says Fairey, who wanted to “convey peace and

Credit: © Alastair Sooke / Telegraph Media Group Limited 2021

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Swiss watchmaker Hublot, creating a titanium timepiece. “I’ve always been a fan of watches,” he says when I bring it up, swivelling his wrist for the camera.

He sounds excited talking about his design, which features his signature star icon within a mandala (Sanskrit for ‘circle’), a geometric design with spiritual significance for Hindus and Buddhists, extending “from underneath the crystal and within the mechanism out to the case”. He chose a mandala, he explains, because it’s circular, and so “makes sense with the shape of the watch”. It also symbolises “wholeness” and “unity”, which chime “conceptually” with the way a watch synthesises disparate, intricate parts.

Still, retaining credibility among followers who revere his street art while taking on projects for luxury brands must be tricky. Fairey barely flickers.

“As a portion of my art practice, I feel 100 per cent comfortable with it,” he tells me, “because doing something like this, with Hublot, is not at the expense of making my work accessible.”

As Fairey sees it, he has many different audiences, from the suburban kid with only a few dollars to spend on a poster, to the high-end collector willing to splurge tens of thousands on a painting. (Recently, he tells me, he sold his first NFT, or non-fungible token, ie, a tradeable piece of digital cryptoart, for almost $180, or “three times as much as a very nice painting of mine”.)

Fairey aims for “cross-pollination,” making “appealing art pieces that start a conversation in any place within culture and society that might not happen otherwise”. The “through line,” he adds, is “questioning the status quo”. Besides, “Perfect intellectual consistency within the minefield of the world is impossible,” he says.

Still, there is, he concedes, a “fine line” – and even if those who object to him “stepping out of the expected lane”, as he puts it, are “narrow-minded”, criticism rankles. “It does hurt my feelings when people have a problem,” Fairey says. He’s even taken flak for his name. “Some people have said, “Oh, your nom de guerre says everything about your huge ego,”’ – assuming, I suspect, that Fairey chose a quasireligious sobriquet, conceitedly casting himself as graffiti’s Good Shepherd.

“But,” he continues, “it’s the name

harmony” while also appealing “to people interested in fashion.”

Ultimately, though, for Fairey, luxury isn’t something expensive like a painting – or a watch. Rather, it’s the freedom “to focus on what I enjoy and truly believe in; that’s the greatest luxury one could ever ask for”.

Still, it must be exciting when the fruits of that focus find a receptive audience in the wider world. Looking back, how does he account for the astonishing success of his famous poster of Barack Obama, captioned simply ‘hope’ and coloured with red and blue? (A painting of the original artwork – based on a photograph taken for the Associated Press – is now in the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC.) “It felt patriotic enough, with the colourway, and connected to traditional political iconography,” explains Fairey, “yet also different. It rode that fine line of being unusual and new, but still relatable and understandable.” Also,

prior to the poster, he says, “There was no visual symbol attached to the feelings of experiencing Obama’s oratory. I just made the avatar that got to ride that wave.” It was, he tells me, “lightning in a bottle”.

Eventually, though, Fairey became disillusioned with aspects of Obama’s presidency, such as his use of drone strikes. As for Obama’s successor: “Trump put a lot of poison in the bloodstream of the nation, and it’s going to take a while to detox.”

Today, America seems so divided: hasn’t his dream of hope turned to dust? Fairey shakes his head. “Hope is always one of the drivers for my work,” he says. Without it, he explains, there is no possibility of change. Art, for Fairey, is “a tool of empowerment”. Otherwise, what’s the point? “I can mud-sling at individual politicians or systemic issues till I’m blue in the face,” he tells me, “but until people understand their actions are part of fixing the problem, it’s not going to matter.”

Below: Fairey at work, wearing the Hublot Classic Fusion Chronograph Shepard Fairey

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Marvin Gaye’s 1971 album is now considered one of the greatest musical recordings of all time, but it came perilously close to never ‘Halstonette’ seeing the light of day. As What’s Going On Cleveland celebrates its 50th anniversary, Martin ChiltonPat looks at the making of a politically charged the today masterpiece that remainsremembers just as relevant real story of when Halston WORDS: MARTIN CHILTON came to Paris and how the legendary Le Palace became the beating heart of the era WORDS: EILIDH HARGREAVES 46

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ut it out or I’ll never record for you again” was Marvin Gaye’s stark warning to Berry Gordy, after the founder of Motown Records refused to release the single What’s Going On in the summer of 1970.

Berry – who was Gaye’s brotherin-law at the time – told almost anyone who would listen that he detested Gaye’s protest song, which he thought was too long, too formless and not commercial enough to be played on radio, a prerequisite for the scores of hit songs he’d crafted at his Detroit studio known as Hitsville USA. Gordy was even quoted as describing What’s Going On as “the worst record I ever heard in my life”.

In his memoir Smokey: Inside My Life, soul legend Smokey Robinson recalled telling Gordy he thought Gaye’s track was “brilliant”. The Motown boss was sure he would talk Gaye out of it.

“That’s like trying to talk a bear out of s***tin’ in the woods,” Robinson replied. “Marvin ain’t budging.”

Gaye held firm during a sevenmonth power struggle that eventually concluded with the hit single becoming the centrepiece of the groundbreaking album What’s Going On, which explored the issues of poverty, racial discrimination, environmental destruction, urban decay, police brutality, drug abuse, political corruption and the devastating effects of the Vietnam War. David Van DePitte, the album’s arranger, later revealed that Gordy thought Gaye “was absolutely insane” to want to feature social commentary on a record “that was going to be the biggest fiasco that ever was”.

Fifty years on, What’s Going On is now widely recognised as one of the most important musical works of the 20th century, a song cycle that gave black artists a licence to push the musical and political boundaries of their art. In November 2020, Robinson told USA Today that this “profound” masterpiece was perhaps the greatest album of all time, one that is “even more poignant” in the era of Black Lives Matter than it was when released in the summer of 1971.

Gordy might even have won the battle of wills had it not been for Harry Balk, Motown’s no-nonsense head of A&R, who had once notoriously thrown a tax officer down the stairs of the label’s

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Detroit headquarters during a row over an audit. Balk, who was 91 when he died in 2016, told Detroit News that he received a demo 45rpm pressing of What’s Going On by mistake. “This Marvin Gaye acetate was mixed in with a stack of other records and just fell on the floor. I loved it, and made a tape of it before sending the acetate on. I listened to it over and over, and fell more in love with it. I started playing it for people who came into my office.

Of course, now everybody will tell you how wonderful they thought it was, but I played it for the hot producers and got nothing but negative opinions. The only one that was really knocked out with it – the only one – was Stevie Wonder.”

Balk repeatedly tried to convince Gordy of the song’s merits, but the Motown boss criticised its jazz influences. “Ah, that Dizzy Gillespie stuff in the middle, that scatting, it’s old,” Gordy told Balk. Undeterred, seizing an opportunity while Gordy was away travelling, Balk went to Barney Ales, vice president of sales, and told him that unless they released What’s

Opening pages: Gaye at Royal Albert Hall, London 1979 Above: Gaye at a recording studio, 1964 Below: Gaye, holding his happy looking four-year-old son Frankie, 1980

For the first time I really felt ‘like I had something to say ’

Going On, they would have nothing new to release from Gaye, a performer who’d made the company millions of dollars.

Without Gordy’s knowledge, Ales commissioned a pressing of the 100,000 copies of What’s Going On, and the single was sent out to radio stations on 17 January 1971. Within four days, after enthusiastic plays from DJs across America, every single copy had sold out. It would go on to sell two million copies, hailed by Jackson Browne as “the most articulate and deeply felt anti-war song of the time”.

The inspiration for What’s Going On came from Four Tops singer Renaldo “Obie” Benson, after seeing an incident of police brutality in San Francisco. In May 1969, during a tour of California,

the band were stuck in a traffic jam when they saw young protestors at People’s Park being savagely attacked by cops in riot gear. “The police was beatin’ on them, but they weren’t bothering anybody,” Benson told Ben Edmonds for the book What’s Going On: Marvin Gaye and the Last Days of the Motown Sound. “I started wondering what the f*** was going on.

What is happening here? One question leads to another. Why are they sending kids so far away from their families overseas? Why are they attacking their own children in the streets here?”

Benson and fellow Motown writer Al Cleveland shaped a tune about the violence, but it was rejected by Benson’s fellow Four Tops bandmates as being

“too political”. Joan Baez also turned down the song before Benson offered it to Gaye. The Washington-born singer, who was 31 at the time, said he wanted to add his own input and Benson agreed. “Marvin definitely put the finishing touches on it,” Benson explained. “He added lyrics, and he added some spice to the melody. He added some things that were more ghetto, more natural, which made it seem more like a story than a song. He made it visual. He absorbed himself to the extent that when you heard the song you could see the people and feel the hurt and pain. We measured him for the suit, and he tailored it.”

One of the key changes that Gaye made to the song was to remove the question mark that Benson had originally fixed to the track. Gaye was adamant that the song was a statement rather than a question. Gaye was becoming more politicised and wanted to respond creatively to a tumultuous period in American history. “For the first time I really felt like I had something to say,” he commented.

One of his rows with Gordy over a change in musical direction came when the Motown boss was on holiday. “I was in the Bahamas trying to relax,” Gordy recalled in the 2016 documentary Marvin, What’s Going On? “He called and said, ‘Look, I’ve got these songs.’

When he told me they were protest songs, I said, ‘Marvin, why do you want to ruin your career?’” After the success of the single, however, Gordy realised that it was in Motown’s interest to capitalise on the sales and release a whole album of Gaye’s new songs. He realised he’d antagonised Gaye and devised a way to entice him to record the album: he bet Gaye that he could not deliver an album in just 30 days. Neither men ever disclosed the amount they wagered.

The core inspiration for the protest songs came from Gaye’s personal life.

His younger brother Frankie Gaye had been stationed in Vietnam, working as a radio operator. The pair had an uneasy relationship and Frankie felt let down by the lack of contact from his famous brother while he was facing carnage nearly 9,000 miles away.

“The death and destruction I saw in Vietnam sickened me,” Frankie told Gaye’s biographer David Ritz. “The war 49

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I couldn’t sleep, couldn’t stop crying.

I was terribly disillusioned with life in general

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that it was a concept record without being cursed by that name. It was a record that had a thread you can follow from the first song to the last and it created a world that you could walk into and then come back out of.”

Although Gaye, who said that all the inspiration for the album “came from God Himself”, won his bet with Gordy – the album was completed in under 30 days – there has been plenty of mythologising about the recording sessions, during which Gaye supposedly worked constant 16-hour days to cut the nine tracks. The sessions at both Hitsville and Golden World Record studios were, in truth, chaotic, often not starting until midnight. “It was a prolonged process because Marvin didn’t turn up half the time. He would have an afternoon or evening appointment and he’d not show,” said Van DePitte, who admitted to Billboard that he had been warned the singer would be “a pain in the ass”.

At the end of a month of recording dates, Gaye took some of the master tapes with him when he flew from Detroit to Sylmar, California, to play the role of a biker called Jim in

Chrome and Hot Leather, a movie about a young Green Beret. “He didn’t talk about his music much,” said cinematographer John Toll. “We just knew him as a lanky, friendly guy who asked a lot of questions about the process. We talked a lot about football too. He became one of us.”

Although Gaye tinkered with the mixing of the songs up to the point of final production, he conceded that Van DePitte had helped fulfil his vision, orchestrating versions of Gaye’s inventive words and melodies in a skilful blend of jazz and soul musicians, the Detroit Symphony Orchestra and Gaye’s smooth, soulful voice. “Marvin couldn’t read or write music per se. He needed not only a musical secretary, but somebody who knew how to organise the stuff and get it down on tape,” Van DePitte said. The arranger brought in the brilliant drummer Chet Forest and saxophonists Eli Fountain and Wild Bill Moore, as well as suggesting the musical bridges between the tracks as way of helping Gaye’s “little stories” flow into one another. Although Gaye was pleased with the results, he was miffed about the praise for Van DePitte’s orchestration. “I’m gonna learn to write music,” Gaye said in the liner notes for the album. “Why? Because I want all the credit.”

One of the stand-out tracks was Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology), written solely

by Gaye, which lamented the ecological nightmare of “oil wasted on the ocean and upon our seas, fish full of mercury and radiation underground and in the sky”. The song was performed by musicians Ledisi, Grace Potter and PJ Morton at the 2021 Grammy awards ceremony, evidence that this prophetic anthem about environmental pollution resonates half a century later.

Art director Curtis McNair explained the care that went into the album cover. “I could see how emotional Marvin was in terms of the essence of the album, and I wanted to match that,” he told Boston newspaper The Bay State Banner in 2008. “We had 100 slides of photographs from Jim Hendin and I picked this one when the sleet made his hair turn white, and on top of that you have the moisture on his trench coat and that wonderful expression on his face. I thought all of that added to the drama.”

Credit: © Martin Chilton/The Independent/The Interview People

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seemed useless, wrong and unjust. I relayed all this to Marvin and forgave him for never writing to me while I was over there. That had hurt, because he was a big star and none of my buddies believed he was my brother. ‘Wait,’ I told them, ‘He’s going to write me back and prove it to you.’ He never did.”

Gaye tried to put himself in Frankie’s shoes by writing the song What’s Happening Brother, about the disillusionment of war veterans returning to President Richard Nixon’s America, a country in which unemployment was running at six per cent in 1971. Frankie said the song was “so personal and heartfelt” that he wept after hearing it for the first time.

Gaye was in poor shape mentally during the making of What’s Going On. His marriage to Anna Gordy was coming apart at the seams and he was still grieving for his singing partner Tammi Terrell, who had died of brain cancer in March 1970, when she was just 24. “Marvin was depressed just before What’s Going On,” the singer’s American football star friend Mel Farr said. “He’d been holed up in his house for a long time.”

Gaye was taking increasing amounts of hard drugs. He was traumatised by the daily news, especially the killing of four young students by the National Guard at Kent State University two months after Terrell’s death. “I couldn’t sleep, couldn’t stop crying,” he told Ritz in Divided Soul: The Life of Marvin Gaye. In his one interview in the summer of 1971, with Disc and Music Echo magazine’s Phil Symes, Gaye admitted “I was terribly disillusioned with life in general.”

He channelled all that despair and anxiety into What’s Going On. He brought in Farr and his Detroit Lions colleague Lem Barney to be part of the vocal chatter that launches the title track. The LP, which subverted every aspect of the Motown template of carefully crafted love songs and ballads, went on to become the label’s biggest-selling album of all time.

“The entire What’s Going On album, from start to finish, is a masterpiece,” Bruce Springsteen told BBC’s Desert Island Discs. “It was sultry and sexual while at the same time dealing with street-level politics. That had a big influence on me. Along with the idea

Hendin took the portrait at the singer’s Detroit home on Outer Drive. “Marvin couldn’t have been more cooperative. Marvin went out into his backyard, and as I clicked away, it began to snow. The drizzle added everything to the shots. Luck, or something stronger, was with us that day,” said the photographer.

McNair’s supervisor Tom Schlesinger initially rejected the cover shot – for the “ridiculous” reason, in McNair’s words, that you could see too far up Gaye’s nostrils – until McNair demanded that Gaye had the final say. “That’s it. This is definitely the cover right here,” insisted the singer.

The album made millions of dollars, but the financial rewards did little to help Gaye escape his demons. Gaye’s second wife Jan, the 17-year-old daughter of Slim Gaillard, met the singer, then 34, during the making of 1973’s Let’s Get It On. She experienced some of his most appalling behaviour.

She said Gaye’s moods grew ever more erratic and violent as he began regularly “freebasing cocaine”. One day, high on psychedelic mushrooms and cocaine, he attacked her. “He took a kitchen knife and put it to my throat,” she recalled in her 2017 memoir After the Dance: My Life with Marvin Gaye. “I was petrified, paralysed. I thought it was all over.”

Gaye saw his own downfall as somehow fated. He remembered his mother Alberta’s melancholy warning about fame – “first ripe, first rotten” – as his life slowly crumbled in the late 1970s and early 1980s, even with the global success of his hit single Sexual Healing. Frequently high, he became increasingly paranoid and even suicidal.

There were divorces, bankruptcy and continuing emotional turmoil with his parents. It all seemed so far from the moment he told Disc and Music Echo that he had made What’s Going On “not only to help humanity but to help me as well, and I think it has. It’s given me a certain amount of peace.”

The peace did not last, of course, least of all with his own father. Despite the fact that Marvin Sr, a minister of a Pentecostal church, had beaten Gaye on an almost daily basis throughout his childhood, the singer paid tribute to him in the liner notes for What’s Going On, declaring: “While I’ve got you reading, I’d like to first give thanks

to my parents, The Rev & Mrs Marvin P Gay, Sr, for conceiving, having and loving me.” There now seems a dreadful sense of foreshadowing when Gaye sang “father, father/We don’t need to escalate” on the seminal title track. The violence between the pair spiralled out of control on 1 April 1984, a day before Gaye’s 45th birthday, when the 70-year-old killed the singer with three gunshots to the chest, following a physical altercation about a missing insurance company letter.

Marvin Sr was handed a suspended sentence and lived out his final days in a nursing home, dying in 1998. His

son’s legacy lives on, especially that 1971 masterpiece. What’s Going On moved to the very top of the revised edition of Rolling Stone’s “500 Greatest Albums of All Time” list in late 2020. Yet it remains a bitter, grim irony that Gaye, whose sublime What’s Going On stands as such a clarion call against the senselessness of violence, met such a brutal end.

Left: Gaye with the late Tammi Terrell Below: in the studio 1977 © Capitol Photo Archives

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FROM THE CROWN TO THE CATWALK Her family may have lost the Hellenic throne, but Olympia of Greece is well on her way to becoming fashion royalty WORDS: HERMIONE EYRE

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right and breezy, stirring an oatmilk tea and talking superfast in a lightly American accent, Olympia of Greece, 24, is full of life, plans, hope and energy. “My firecracker daughter”, Crown Prince Pavlos calls her; also, “the apple of my eye’” She is the eldest of his five children, and the only daughter. If her family were still ruling Greece there would surely be a row brewing about changing the law of male succession so she could ascend the throne in her turn.

But her grandfather, Constantine II, was deposed when the monarchy was abolished in 1974, so although she does tell me about the lingering sadness of her grandfather’s exile, her own life is a carefree whirl of parties, pools, pooches and Louis Vuitton photo shoots (she’s the face of the Capucines bag), with a New York University fashion-marketing degree thrown in. Olympia makes being a princess without a kingdom look a lot of fun.

“I’m kind of in-between. I am quite lucky because I can do what I like, just walking around” – ie, unnoticed and without a bodyguard. “I can wear what I want; I can wear short skirts.

You have to behave differently if you’re going to be part of public life.”

She is inadvertently describing the dilemma currently facing the Duke and Duchess of Sussex. “If I did go back to live in Greece my life would be insanely different. But at the same time not that different because I was brought up by my mother to behave myself at all times – especially now there are phones everywhere – be nice to everyone and always be polite.”

I watch from the wings as she poses with her favourite Capucines, in khaki taurillon leather. “Such a good bag: classic, elegant. I would wear it on a casual day with combat boots and a sweater, and funk up the bag.” Her mother, Marie-Chantal, an American heiress turned children’s clothing entrepreneur, is not easily impressed but adores the Capucines design. “My mother and grandmother say you must always have a bag, because it ‘closes the look’.”

Olympia is warm and vivacious in person, but in front of the camera she assumes a cool, rather regal pout, so that I am suddenly reminded that her paternal genetic inheritance includes 54

most of the crowned heads of Europe.

One great-auntie is the Queen of Denmark, another is Queen Sofía of Spain; one of her great-grandmothers was Ingrid of Sweden, while another was Frederica of Hanover – among the few relatives of Prince Philip who was invited to his wedding to Queen Elizabeth II. It is said that at that event Winston Churchill remarked to Frederica that she was the kaiser’s granddaughter, to which she replied that she was also Queen Victoria’s great-great-granddaughter.

“It makes my head swim to work it all out,” says Olympia, understandably.

The Duke of Edinburgh, who died recently, was her father’s first cousin twice removed. “Yes, my greatgrandfather’s cousin. I never met him, but my father always spoke so highly of him, and so did my grandfather. He was an important man who touched a lot of people. My parents and brothers are all in the States at the moment [they relocated from London to New York last year], so it was really nice that I was in England experiencing what everyone was going through.”

Prince Philip was born in the Greek royal family home on Corfu, a Palladian-style villa called Mon Repos.

“And my father was born there as well,” says Olympia. “I have been there, but we couldn’t go inside; it was all locked up. It’s really sad it’s not a museum.”

Mon Repos has since been semirestored and opened to visitors. The Tatoi Palace, just outside Athens, was modelled on part of Peterhof in St Petersburg by the Romanov Queen Olga in the 1880s, and used as the royal summer palace – until Olympia’s grandfather was forced to leave when tanks surrounded the building. Long derelict, with abandoned vintage cars rotting in the garages, it is now a huge restoration project.

The ructions of the last century saw the monarchy in Greece abolished in 1924, restored in 1935 and pushed out again in a colonels’ coup in 1967.

That the transition was bloodless was thanks in no small part to the determination of her grandfather. “I have a lot of admiration for him. It’s an incredible story and a sad story.

My grandfather inherited the throne [in 1964] when he was such a young man, only 23. It’s very hard for him,

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I get to do a lot of things I’d never have been able to do

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Opening pages: Olympia of Greece walks the runway at the Dolce & Gabbana show during Milan Men’s Fashion Week Spring/Summer 2018 These pages, clockwise from above: Olympia of Greece sits alongside Kate Bosworth on the front row of New York Fashion Week, 2017; attending the Michael Kors S/S 2020 show; a young Olympia attends the christening of Prince Achileas of Greece, 2001 Next pages: Olympia attends the Schiaparelli Haute Couture Spring Summer 2019 show

thinking about it: becoming king and then having to leave your country.”

His queen, Anne-Marie of Denmark, was just 18 when they married the same year Constantine inherited the throne.

She went from Swiss finishing school to being part of a counter-coup. When this failed in 1967, they fled to Rome, bundling two-year-old Princess Alexia and seven-month-old Prince Pavlos into a plane in the middle of the night. Soon after, Anne-Marie had a miscarriage.

After spells in exile in Egypt and South Africa early in the 20th century, then Rome in the late 1960s, the family put roots down in London in 1973, and founded a school for the children of Greeks, Hellenic College of London, in Knightsbridge, which ran for 25 years.

They bought a Lutyens-style mansion in Hampstead Garden Suburb. “We would go there every weekend,” says Olympia.

“My grandfather tells so many stories, I can’t even keep up… They’re dramatic and heartbreaking and also often very funny. We’re a loud family. My mother sometimes gets his stories on camera.”

Ties with Britain’s Royal family were affirmed when Constantine II was asked to be Prince William’s godfather; Prince Charles returned the favour for Olympia. Is he a good godfather? “He’s the best; he always remembered my birthday. He’s such a nice man, has done so much for the environment and has such great stories. He would nail my present: something from Gap when I was really into that, or maybe a little necklace, and once he sent me a fountain pen.

Of course, presents stop when you’re 18, but we still write to one another.”

As a godfather, Prince Charles was present at her Greek Orthodox baptism in Istanbul. At that point the family were personae non gratae in Greece.

“We didn’t go there for years,” says Olympia. The rule was relaxed only for a matter of hours, in 1981, to allow Constantine and Anne-Marie to attend his mother Frederica’s funeral, and bury her in the royal cemetery at the decaying Tatoi.

Olympia learnt about Greece through stories, photographs and treasures, cufflinks and smoking jackets. “Which all fit! It’s really nice to see these things passed down, eldest son to eldest son.

My grandfather has a lot of heirlooms in his office – little pieces from churches, 55

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I told myself I would never be that person, but yes, sometimes I carry my dog in a duffel bag!

etiquette, Manners Begin at Breakfast, which implies Olympia had a pretty exacting upbringing. “Yeah,” she says, suddenly sounding like a truculent teen. “It wasn’t that bad. My mother cleverly made it all like a game for us.

Whoever had the best manners got to pick what the meal would be on Tuesday or whatever. We were all very competitive and kids always want a prize. Anyway, we inspired the book with our bad behaviour! Just kidding.”

Whatever her mother did worked, because Olympia radiates poise, “always” writes a proper thank you, and manages to resist looking at her phone until about halfway through our interview, when she cracks and shows me a picture of her “baby”: a sausage dog named Eccho, dressed in stone-coloured knitwear. Does Eccho ride in a handbag? “Erm, I told myself I would never be that person, but yes, sometimes I put her in a duffel bag.

She doesn’t like walking that much.”

Getting Eccho was part of basing herself permanently in Notting Hill, away from the former family home in Cheyne Walk, Chelsea. “She’s giving me structure. Now that I’m a mother, I always have dog treats in my handbag.”

As well as Eccho, she has a boyfriend of one year’s standing: Peregrine Pearson, son of Viscount Cowdray and heir to Pearson publishing. “I got to bring him to the Nicolas Ghesquière Vuitton show at La Samaritaine in Paris in October last year,” she says.

“He was in a green-screen room so he was like, floating, apparently, so that was really cool. I actually do enjoy watching shows on screen; it’s less about who’s there and what they’re wearing, more about the show.”

The other side of her inheritance is

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very business-savvy. Marie-Chantal runs an eponymous high-end children’s clothing label; Olympia’s maternal grandfather, Robert Warren Miller, co-founded the original Duty Free Shoppers in Hong Kong in 1960, significantly changing the luxury market and founding an American dynasty. His three beautiful It-girl daughters, the Miller sisters, married respectively Christopher Getty, Crown Prince Pavlos and Prince Alexander von Fürstenberg. (All three sisters have recently worked together fixing their father’s vaccine appointments.) “I really look up to him,” Olympia says.

At 88, Mr Miller – “I love that! I’ve always known him as Mr Miller” – is now a landowner in Yorkshire, naturalised British and last seen on UK rich lists at number 63. “He’s very much on the go,” she says.

“When my grandfather wants us out on the moors, we’re all there. If you’re not ready, he doesn’t care; he’s out the door. I love that. We go there for Thanksgiving, and the Glorious 12th in August. My brothers shoot, we invite our friends and all go for long walks. It’s a beautiful place. My grandfather loves to hear news of what we’re doing. He’s very strong – says, ‘You must keep going,’ and ‘Never be bored.’ He’s always telling us, ‘Push yourself!’ and ‘Do more.’ At school he would ask me how many classes I was doing. ‘Not enough!’ he would say.”

Olympia’s voice shrinks to a wobble as she impersonates her cowed younger self: “But it’s the required amount.”

Her next step is making her own way – she has a “fashion business idea”.

“I really want to work,” she says, “and I’m trying to now. I’ve learnt a lot from my mother and grandfather.”

Credit: © Hermione Eyre / Telegraph Media Group Limited 2021

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ceremonial swords – and my brother spent the night there once and had the weirdest dreams…” Olympia has a coat of her grandmother’s with a secretly spiffy lining: baby-blue silk and monogrammed initials with a crown.

Of course, her best inheritance might be her title – “Oh, I don’t use it! It’s an amazing thing to have, and I’m so lucky, but I was always just Olympia at school.” The Windsors have a surname, but I put it to Olympia she does not. “Of Greece. That’s my name. It’s in my passport.”

In 2003, relations between the former king and Greece improved when reparations for the confiscation of Tatoi were paid to Constantine and Anne-Marie, by order of the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.

In 2013, the couple made a quiet return to Greece, selling up in Hampstead and retiring to a villa in Porto Cheli, in the Peloponnese. Olympia and her family spend every summer there with them. A happy ending, in a way – but when I ask if she would ever wish to return to rule, should the moment come, she speaks from the heart.

“That would be amazing. Amazing for my father. He was two when he left. He’s so gentle and sweet. It would just be the most incredible thing for him. Anyone would just pick up and go. I would. I always think about that.

It would make my family so happy.”

But there are consolations. Freedom, for a start. “My life is very different to how it would have been if I’d grown up in Greece,” she says. “I get to do a lot of things I’d never have been able to do. There are no rules about what I can and can’t wear.”

Earlier this year, Olympia posed astride a bicycle for an “amazing, really fun” Louis Vuitton shoot in Paris. It was beside the Seine, near rue Neuves-des-Capucines, where the first Vuitton atelier was founded in 1854 – the address giving the name to the Capucines bag. Even her endless legs couldn’t reach the pedals. “It was a man’s Louis Vuitton racing bike!” she exclaims. “It was really high. I was wearing a little skirt as well.”

Her sense of regal decorum is strong – and no wonder, because her mother not only wears a sash and tiara wonderfully well, but she is also the author of a handbook on family

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Motoring AUGUST 2021: ISSUE 119

A Grand Day Out Does the McLaren GT deliver on its promise to reimagine the grand tourer?

WORDS: JOHN THATCHER

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s is their nature, McLaren’s take on the grand tourer was always going to be unique. How to marry the aspects of the quintessential, growling supercar to the needs of a grand tourer (primarily, to take at least two people and their luggage on a fast, cross-continental drive, as was the purpose of the original grand tourer) – was a puzzle posed at England’s McLaren Technology Centre, and it’s one that they have solved with aplomb.

Of course, when it comes to crosscontinental travel, our busy lives dictate that we’re now more likely to fly via private jet than drive, a fact that has given McLaren enough wriggle room to play around with the very idea of a grand tourer.

There are no hard and fast rules in terms of where the engine should be positioned in a GT (most examples have it at the front) so it comes as no surprise to see that McLaren has placed theirs in the middle of the car. And this is no ordinary twin-turbocharged V8 engine, either. This one is shorter than usual, which creates space underneath a stunning, sloping tail of glass for the passengers’ luggage.

The idea of that ‘luggage’ is more in keeping with what we really need a grand tourer to deliver these days – a speedy weekend getaway. As such, you can probably fit one from a couple of soft bags, a bag of golf clubs, or a pair of skis (the latter not so important when you live in the desert). The space, though, is the perfect size and shape to accommodate a thoroughly decent number of dress and suit bags, while a deep bucket of additional luggage space under the bonnet will comfortably house another soft bag.

In that respect, the McLaren GT is a bit like Dr Who’s TARDIS – much roomier than it appears from the outside. That’s also true of the cabin, which although shorn of any notable compartments for things like your phone, does feel fairly large and contains thoughtful touches like a pouch at the end of the driver’s seat, into which you can drop the key.

Thankfully, that’s where the comparisons with Dr Who’s blue telephone box begin and end. This is a sleek and stylish-looking GT that is stunning from front end through to back, striking enough to draw gasps of appreciation from my two kids as I rolled it into our driveaway – and gasps of despair when it dawned on 60

them that it was not a four-seater.

Which is just as well, as they’d only have left their sticky fingerprints all over the carbon black Nappa leather seats and configured the central infotainment screen (a neatly proportioned seven inches in height) to link with their own devices – safe to say, Bowers & Wilkins didn’t have Baby Shark in mind when creating the car’s 4-speaker system.

And so, it was alone that I put the GT through its paces, which got off to a bit of a bumpy start. Literally. Living in a community where there is one speed bump per resident (only a slight exaggeration), the GT hopped along, clearing each hurdle with room to spare, like a champion steeplechaser.

You see, at the push of a button this lowrider raises its front nose the number of inches required to safely navigate each speed bump without the threat of a costly scrape. Doing so takes roughly six seconds, and the button can be triggered only when the car is moving at a suitable speed – read, not anywhere close to its 326km/h limit.

The nose lowers itself when you exceed 55km/h, or thereabouts, which is when the fun begins.

There are three driving modes (Comfort, Sport and Track) and two analogue dials – one for performance, the other for handling – which gives you great scope to alter the driving dynamics of the GT on a whim. Each does as you’d expect; the Sport option adding zip; the Track option adding a growl. Turn both dials to Track and it sounds as though a grizzly bear has tagged along for the ride.

It’s in Comfort mode, however, that this model should ultimately deliver if it’s to be considered an everyday car, and it does nothing to disappoint while there. It is as advertised – comfortable.

A smooth ride free of histrionics. It never feels as though it’s straining at the leash, even though the power and speed is immense when you call on it, while it handles majestically throughout.

Would it suit as an everyday car?

Possibly. Though it probably falls slightly short in terms of practical features – and would inevitably disappoint both my kids, whom I’d force to take the school bus. However, as an incredibly fun addition to a fleet it’s a no-brainer.

It offers something different to the other grand tourers in its field, and that something is a little bit special.

‘

This is a sleek and stylish-looking GT that is stunning from front end through to back

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Gastronomy AUGUST 2021: ISSUE 119

Down by the Riverside

Alain Roux on the most important things his father taught him, and how the fine dining industry can be brought back to life

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WORDS: BEN MCCORMACK

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These pages, from left to right: Courgette flower filled with wild mushrooms, spring vegetables tossed in a warm olive oil with chopped truffle; Alain Roux at The Waterside Inn

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Each year’s scholar wins the prize of completing a stage in a threeMichelin-starred restaurant anywhere in the world – Alain spent seven years gaining experience in France at the three-starred likes of Maison Pic in Valence before being recalled to Bray by his father.

Alain and Michel Jr are now cochairmen of the scholarship, so what are his thoughts on the traditional career path of the fine-dining chef in light of the pandemic?

“The past year has been extremely difficult for people running or owning a business,” Alain says. “But I think it’s been even harder for the younger generation because they haven’t been able to keep busy or keep their mental health on track. Young people need to realise that this is still a lovely profession. The best restaurants in the world are in the UK and they should think about working here rather than travelling abroad for a job. We must open our doors to young people to share the knowledge of what it’s

like to work in a restaurant – even if it’s just a day’s work experience.”

Alain began working at The Waterside Inn in 1992 as a demi chef de partie, one of the most junior roles in a chef brigade. “My dad and my uncle were old school that way, which I think is great. You can’t tell people what to do if you don’t know how to do it yourself. I think that is one of the downfalls of the younger generation of chefs. Some should take more time before setting themselves up as restaurateurs. Owning a restaurant is not only about cooking. You have to be flexible and do so many other things.”

Alain became chef patron of The Waterside Inn in 2002 – Michel Sr, however, was always known as ‘the big chief’ – and admits that the restaurant is pretty much his life. He lives nearby in Bray with his wife and two children and relaxes when he can with them on the river or in his garden, where his pride and joy is the orchard of 40 trees which bear fruit for the restaurant kitchen – though

Credit: © Ben McCormack/The Telegraph Media Group Limited 2021

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s a member of the closest thing that UK hospitality has to a culinary dynasty, it’s unsurprising that the word ‘family’ is never far from Alain Roux’s lips.

The chef-patron of The Waterside Inn in Bray (a charming village an hour or so outside of London and a culinary hotspot) is the cousin of Michel Roux Jr, the chef-patron of Le Gavroche, the Mayfair restaurant founded by Alain’s father Michel and uncle Albert in 1967. The brothers opened The Waterside Inn in 1972 and, when they separated their business interests 14 years later, Albert kept Le Gavroche and Michel The Waterside.

The Roux, then, are the royal family of British restaurants, with the line of succession assured by Michel Jr’s daughter Emily at her restaurant Caractère in Notting Hill. But like so many families, they have experienced terrible losses over the eighteen months. Michel Sr died in March 2020, a week before the first lockdown was announced; Albert passed away the following January. The pain was deepened for Alain by the body-blows suffered by the restaurant industry during the pandemic. For Alain, 53, hospitality itself is a family.

“The most important thing my father taught me is to be there for your colleagues,” Alain says. “As a family business, there’s nothing nicer than working together. If you respect the people you work with, they will respect you.”

Lockdown restrictions meant that Alain had to rearrange his father’s funeral three times. The small ceremony was eventually held at The Waterside Inn for the few guests that were allowed. “Dad was resting in the main dining room. We had no other choice. It was sad, but it was maybe the most beautiful thing that we could have done for him.”

The Roux brothers invented the template for British gastronomy with Le Gavroche. Although Alain feels the duty of maintaining his father’s legacy at The Waterside Inn, it is the Roux Scholarship which will perhaps prove the more lasting testament to Albert and Michel Sr. The Scholarship was founded in 1984 to provide young chefs with the opportunity to train in some of the world’s best kitchens.

guests who are here for the first time will say that ‘Some there’s no wow factor. That’s not what we’re about.

Instead, we offer pleasure ’ mostly jams for breakfast, he laughs, rather than the signature dishes such as the warm raspberry soufflé.

He says he does not envy the TV fame of his cousin Michel, because the Roux name is fame enough in itself.

In any case, why would Alain need the affirmation of being on the telly when The Waterside Inn has held three Michelin stars for 36 years (the longest of any restaurant outside France), a phenomenal achievement that he puts down to having team members who have been by his side for many years. His head chef Fabrice Uhryn has worked here for 21 years while general manager Frédéric Poulette’s first job at The Waterside was in 1996.

Customers love the three Michelin stars, Alain says – as long as they understand what sort of experience The Waterside Inn offers. “Some guests who are here for the first time will say that there’s no wow factor. That’s not what we’re about. Instead, we offer pleasure. Our guests can relax with

good service and good food in a lovely environment – all the little things that add up to the whole experience, which even our youngest member of staff will play a part in. Luxury for me means quality. It doesn’t need to be flashy, it can be very simple. I think that’s the style of the family.”

A quick glance at the reservations book should dispel any doubts that, post-pandemic, there is still an appetite for this kind of formal fine dining: there are almost no free tables until November. If anything, the eternal comfort of classical French cooking served in the most English of riverside settings is needed now more than ever.

As to the future, Alain admits that the next few months will be tremendously difficult for restaurants. “I just hope we will see the young generation returning to work in hospitality. I know some of them have unfortunately had to do other things to earn a bit of money. But they should come back. It’s lovely work that we do. It’s a big family at the end of the day.”

These pages, from left to right: pan fried lobster medallions with a white port sauce and ginger flavoured vegetable julienne; artichoke heart chartreuse with peas and asparagus, soft boiled pheasant egg and parmesan vinaigrette; warm raspberry soufflé; taïnori dark chocolate indulgence, with a smooth milk chocolate filling, mango sorbet

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JOURNEYS BY JET

Amangiri,

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Travel AUGUST 2021: ISSUE 119

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drian Zecha, founder of the Aman brand, has an eye for the extraordinary.

His portfolio of bespoke boutique hotels are as much renowned for their breathtaking (and curious) backdrops as for the levels of exclusivity that prevail within.

In this instance, the sweeping, sprawling landscapes of the American Southwest serve as the canvas upon which to situate Amangiri – and while the peace makes the 600-acre property feel distinctly ‘middle of nowhere’, the luxury experience at this hideaway puts it on the map as a ‘somewhere’.

You’re urged to switch off, and while the spa, fine dining (dishes inspired by traditional Navajo recipes) and hiking each deserve plaudits, it’s nature that is the main protagonist here; 60 million years of activity have carved landscapes that, as light plays with the outcrops and crevices, create fascinating silhouettes.

Outdoor lounges, sky terraces and courtyards provide a hushed setting in which to enjoy such captivating surrounds. It’s from these Homes, Suites, and Tented Pavilions that uninterrupted views of undulating dunes and stark plateaus can be savoured – ideally while wrapped in a blanket beside a crackling fire, just as the night temperature drops and the stars come out to play.

Natural materials maintain purity and ensure a visual softness shaped into monolithic architecture that will appeal to those with an affinity for modernism.

Uncluttered clean lines, white stone floors, and a maze-like personality add to the mystical aura dictated by the silent mountains.

Amangiri is private, serene, and your every whim is pre-empted, with levels of sophistication which – like the well-weathered setting – took time to hone yet appears oh so effortless.

Land your jet at Page Municipal Airport in Arizona, which is tailored to serve private jets. It’s then a short, scenic 25-minute chauffeured ride to the resort.

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What I Know Now

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AUGUST 2021: ISSUE 119

Sylvie Millstein FOUNDER, CEO & CREATIVE DIRECTOR, HELLESSY The best piece of advice I have ever received is to follow your passions. Take risks. A good friend reminded me of this after I moved to New York to take another senior merchant job at another big fashion house, when my actual dream was to start my own label. And so, aged almost 40, I took the risky route of launching Hellessy, with no experience of designing, patternmaking, production, etc. That said, I wasn’t new or averse to taking risks. I went through a highly competitive process to enter the best business school in France with the sole aim of working at Chanel. I have been obsessed with Chanel since I was 13, and my dream was to live in Japan. Right after I graduated, I moved there with no money and unable to speak the language.

I took a crash course to learn the language and financed myself by giving French lessons – and landed a buying manager job at Chanel a couple of years later.

I first felt successful when I received my first Hellessy orders.

It was in 2013, and I was still learning how to run a small label, sketch, design, source fabrics and set up production. The orders were small but from very established stores – what a validation.

A lesson I learnt the hard way was fashion is fickle. You cannot rest on your laurels. We are a small label and as the CEO and creative director, I have to weather the good and bad reviews, 68

growth and slower sales. I realised one needs to start a new collection without dwelling on the previous one. One also needs nerves of steel, and I get better at it every year.

For me, it has always been a struggle to find balance between my family life and work. I was born a workaholic. However, I always wanted a big family and to be very hands on, yet there are only so many hours in a day. Striking that balance and managing my time between both has been a process, and I think I finally got good at it.

If I could tell my younger self anything it would be make time to save time. I was so impatient, I would not invest time to wait for outcomes or invest time in solving issues. I was a bit shortsighted and I definitely loved skipping steps. But frankly, I don’t think I would have listened to my own advice anyway!

Fashion is going through significant changes and self reflection after the pandemic. Refocusing on a core and unique product will be the saving grace for small labels like mine. I am focusing on creating those glamorous but timeless wardrobe pieces that my women will desire each season. Nothing makes me happier than to see a woman radiate wearing Hellessy. To keep dressing her is my ambition.