BROUGHT TO YOU BY THE HOWARD DE WALDEN ESTATE AND THE PORTMAN ESTATE
Published September 2024
3
HAPPENINGS IN MARYLEBONE
Events, exhibitions, film, music, shopping, talks, theatre and walks
16 IN PROFILE: DAISUKE HAYASHI
The chef-founder of Roketsu on expressing the kaiseki tradition, creating harmony on a menu, and bringing artistry to airline food
22
I DO, I DO, I DO
As Old Marylebone Town Hall marks its centenary as a register office, the Journal explores the venue’s past, present and future
33
THE DIFFERENCE MAKERS
Matthew Gould, CEO of the Zoological Society of London
Food, style, home, wellbeing and healthcare
ROUSSET
The founder of Blandford Comptoir on Raymond Blanc, the Rhône Valley, and the secrets of perfect service
44
Q&A: LUCA FALONI
The menswear maestro on careful carelessness, crafting perfect staples and why you’ll never catch him wearing a tie
46
STYLE
PHILOSOPHY
Billy Sims-Hilditch, co-founder of Sims Wear, on Mongolian cashmere, seamless knitting, and the art of washing a jumper 56
ANATOMY OF A DESIGN
Jake Hobson of Niwaki on a gardening jacket that sums up the philosophy of the brand
Cover: A wedding at The Old Marylebone Town Hall, by Carr + Senteno
MARYLEBONE PSYCHOTHERAPY
17 Nottingham Street, London, WtU 5EW
Magda Harbour
0796 8114196
Magda is recognised as one of London's leading experts in hypnotherapy. She specialises in using hypnotherapy to resolve stress, trauma, anxiety, sleep and eating disorders, as well as chronic or non-specific pain. Magda's compassionate approach and extensive experience enable her to create personalised solutions for her clients, helping them navigate challenges and achieve lasting wellness. Beyond her clinical expertise, Magda is recognised for her unwavering dedication to the wellbeing of her clients.
Christian Morton
My world class practice offers a breadth of psychotherapy services for individuals, couples, families and groups. We help clients address their concerns and take a depth-focused approach to therapy. The ultimate goal is to help clients gain insight into both past and present experiences in order to empower themselves to make informed choices that lead to meaningful change. Our business insights program is highly successful amongst prominent business leaders in Central London area, this partnership stimulates both growth and improved performance support without stigma.
(Oxon) - MA (Tavistock Relationships) Approaches, include: Emotionally Focused Therapist (Certified) I Internal Family Systems AEDP ISTDP I EMDR I Psychodynamic www.MilesPulver.com miles@milesQulver.com
BSc (Hon) Psychology, LAPHP, MNRPC, BPS Integrative Therapy CBT I Hypnotherapy Psychotherapy I Psychosexual Therapist I Couples Counselling I Business Coaching www.inthemen.com christian@inthemen.com
Miles Pulver
0781 091112
The stuff of life: Live, Love, Work Live: With deep experience and extensive training in modern psychotherapy approaches, I accompany you through life's challenges, helping and guiding you to resolve emotional distress, trauma and
relationship difficulties. Love: I also empower couples to enhance their connection and intimacy whilst assisting individuals to explore new relationship skills and change counterproductive relationship patterns. Work: Leveraging my prior business background, I offer confidential and collaborative support to business leaders dealing with personal and performance-related issues, as well as providing "Partnership Therapy" to enhance relationship dynamics within businesses.
Luiza Neumayer
0780 337 5794
Transitioning from a background in banking and charity work, as a management trainer and CEO, I've become a chartered psychologist specialising in Jungian psychodynamic counselling and contemporary, neuroscience-informed psychotherapy. My personal experiences of working and understanding trauma have informed my practice. I now offer valuable expertise in addressing attachment trauma, PTSD, anxiety, depression, relationship and a range of other issues for individuals and couples. My approach is described by clients as safe, relational, insightful and transformative, fostering healing and growth. I am also registered with insurance companies and welcome clients to my office in Marylebone.
EXHIBITION
UNTIL 21 SEPTEMBER
RAISE THE ROOF: BUILDING FOR CHANGE
RIBA
66 Portland Place, W1B 1AD architecture.com
New works by artists Giles Tettey Nartey, Arinjoy Sen, Thandi Loewenson, Zhongshan Zou and Esi Eshun explore the deeply uncomfortable images and narratives contained within two 1930s artworks displayed at RIBA’s headquarters which celebrate British imperialism.
THEATRE
UNTIL 21 SEPTEMBER
FIDDLER ON THE ROOF
Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre
Regent’s Park, NW1 4NU openairtheatre.com
With timeless songs including If I Were A Rich Man, Jerry Bock’s exuberant 1971 musical tells the story of Tevye, a Jewish milkman in Imperial Russia, whose five strongwilled daughters challenge his old-fashioned beliefs as he attempts to push them into traditional marriages.
EVENT
14 – 22 SEPTEMBER
LONDON DESIGN FESTIVAL londondesignfestival.com
The London Design Festival returns with its usual packed schedule of exhibitions, masterclasses, talks, product launches and more. Marylebone’s participants currently include RIBA and Labour and Wait, but more are likely to be confirmed as the start date approaches. Check the festival website to see the final lineup take shape.
MUSIC
22 SEPTEMBER, 6pm SEASON OPENING CONCERT
The Church of the Annunciation Marble Arch Bryanston Street, W1H 7AH annunciationmarblearch.org.uk
Two Ukrainian brothers, pianists Alexei and Sasha Grynyuk, take the stage for a programme of Schubert and Brahms. Mezzo-soprano Alexia Mankovskaya will join them to sing rarely performed gems by Lyatoshinsky, one of Ukraine’s greatest composers.
This concert by the boundary-pushing O/Modernt Chamber Orchestra and violinist Hugo Ticciati intersperses Benjamin Britten’s landmark Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge Op 10 with songs by Radiohead, Sting and Pink Floyd, and Philip Glass’s Third Symphony for 19 Solo Strings with the epic melancholy of Nirvana.
25 SEPTEMBER, 7.30pm O/MODERNT CHAMBER ORCHESTRA & HUGO TICCIATI Wigmore Hall 36 Wigmore Street, W1U 2BP wigmore-hall.org.uk
MUSIC
O/Modernt Chamber Orchestra, Wigmore Hall
MUSIC
29 SEPTEMBER, 12pm RESOUNDING SHORES: CHAMBER AND CHAPEL
Royal Academy of Music Marylebone Road, NW1 5HT ram.ac.uk
Eamonn Dougan conducts the Academy Baroque Soloists in a programme of symphony anthems by Purcell, Byrd, Weelkes, Locke and Gibbons. Fusing the sacred and the secular, spiritual anguish sits beside dance-inspired rhythms and theatrical gestures.
MUSIC
30 SEPTEMBER, 1pm MARTIN FRÖST FAMILY TRIO Wigmore Hall
36 Wigmore Street, W1U 2BP wigmore-hall.org.uk
The multi-talented musician Martin Fröst has stretched notions of performance well beyond his solo clarinet playing and conducting. Here he is joined by members of his own family for a largely dancebased programme, including works by Bartók, Bach and Brahms.
TALK
3 OCTOBER, 7pm AN EVENING WITH ALEXANDER MCCALL SMITH
Daunt Books
84 Marylebone High Street, W1U 4QW dauntbooks.co.uk
Alexander McCall Smith returns to Daunt to discuss his latest No.1 Ladies’ Detective Agency novel, The Great Hippopotamus Hotel and his new standalone novel, The Winds from Further West, which tells a tale of love, Scottish islands and wolf cubs.
MUSIC
21 SEPTEMBER – 4 OCTOBER AUTUMN INTERNATIONAL PIANO FESTIVAL
Wigmore Hall
36 Wigmore Street, W1U 2BP wigmore-hall.org.uk
This 14-concert festival features many of the world’s finest pianists. Look out for Elisabeth Leonskaja playing Schubert’s final three piano sonatas, Jeneba KannehMason performing Skryabin and Chopin, and Chopin miniatures from Pavel Kolesnikov.
MUSIC
11 OCTOBER, 6.30pm ACADEMY MANSON ENSEMBLE: AUGUSTA READ THOMAS
Royal Academy of Music Marylebone Road, NW1 5HT ram.ac.uk
The extraordinary range and vitality of Academy alumna Augusta Read Thomas, one of the most performed American composers of her generation, is celebrated in this free concert alongside premieres of new works.
3.
1.
EXHIBITION
This show celebrates Patricia Swannell, who died last year. Patricia, whose prints, drawings and watercolours have been shown at jaggedart for years, created work inspired by the beauty and fragility of nature. A portion of the exhibition’s proceeds will go to Breast Cancer Now.
UNTIL 11 OCTOBER
PATRICIA SWANNELL: A COMMEMORATIVE EXHIBITION jaggedart
28A Devonshire Street, W1G 6PS jaggedart.com
1. Alexander McCall Smith, Daunt Books
2. Patricia Swannell, jaggedart
3. Martin Fröst, Wigmore Hall
4. Augusta Read Thomas, Royal Academy of Music
5. Water Horses by Jo Taylor, Thompson’s Gallery
EXHIBITION
This annual show features a richly varied selection of new works from some of Thompson’s Gallery’s most popular artists, from Jo Taylor’s equine paintings to Stephanie Rew’s intricate gold leaf panels, to Matthew Draper’s serene pastels.
24 SEPTEMBER – 11 OCTOBER AUTUMN ANNUAL Thompson’s Gallery 3 Seymour Place, W1H 5AZ thompsonsgallery.co.uk
5. MUSIC
11 OCTOBER, 1pm JONATHON HEYWARD CONDUCTS THE ACADEMY SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA
Royal Academy of Music Marylebone Road, NW1 5HT ram.ac.uk
Jonathon Heyward, Academy alumnus and music director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, conducts Mahler’s delightfully nostalgic fourth symphony, with opera student Erin O’Rourke performing the solo.
EXHIBITION
7 – 13 OCTOBER
THE ART OF THE GAME
67 York Street Gallery
67 York Street, W1H 1QB 67yorkstreetgallery.com
Purling is a maker of luxurious chess sets, crafted from materials such as ebony, boxwood, maple and alabaster. This exhibition presents stunningly original sets designed for the company by visual artists including street artist Sickboy and pop artist Lhouette
EXHIBITION
UNTIL 20 OCTOBER
RANJIT SINGH:
SIKH, WARRIOR, KING
The Wallace Collection Manchester Square, W1U 3BN wallacecollection.org
Through over 100 exquisite artworks, including jewellery and weaponry, this major exhibition explores the life and personality of the great Sikh leader Ranjit Singh, who in the early 19th century conquered the Punjab and became its undisputed Maharaja.
MUSIC
20 OCTOBER, 7.30pm
SIGLO DE ORO
Wigmore Hall
36 Wigmore Street, W1U 2BP wigmore-hall.org.uk
An intriguing programme from leading Renaissancespecialist ensemble Siglo De Oro sees works by the 16th century composers Thomas Tallis and John Sheppard matched with those of recent times and today, several of them specially commissioned to mirror their predecessors.
EXHIBITION
2 – 21 OCTOBER
MARIA LOIZIDOU:
THE PLACE I AM NOT
The Hellenic Centre 16-18 Paddington Street, W1U 5AS helleniccentre.org
Site-specific sculptures, drawings and sounds by Cypriot contemporary artist Maria Loizidou extend across The Hellenic Centre and the Freud Museum, exploring the connection of these buildings to mind, body and identity.
THEATRE
5 – 26 OCTOBER HOW TO START A KNIFE GANG
The Cockpit Gateforth Street, NW8 8EH thecockpit.org.uk
Told through the interwoven lives of a community of young Londoners, this hard-hitting play by Jonathan Brown explores themes of poverty, identity, masculinity, selfbetterment and the forces that push damaged people towards violent crime.
2. EXHIBITION This exhibition by Belfast-born artist Dameon Priestly, designed to stimulate discussion and debate, explores how and why artists, poets and activists, from Keith Haring to Dylan Thomas, have seen their lives and works distorted, negated or mythologised by the
21 – 26 OCTOBER DAMEON PRIESTLY: WHAT DO YOU SEE
67 York Street Gallery
67A York Street, W1H 1QB 67yorkstreetgallery.com
1. The Place I Am Not by Maria Loizidou, The Hellenic Centre
2. Pauline Boty, Circus by Dameon Priestly, 67 York Street Gallery
3. How to Start a Knife Gang, The Cockpit
4. 19th century Punjabi shield, The Wallace Collection
5. Dancing Trees, Kussharo Lake, Hokkaido, Japan, 2020 by Michael Kenna, Asia House
MUSIC
29 OCTOBER, 11am-5pm
AUTUMN PIANO FESTIVAL
Royal Academy of Music
Marylebone Road, NW1 5HT ram.ac.uk
Curated by Joanna MacGregor, this year’s free-to-attend Autumn Piano Festival opens a two-year project in which Academy pianists will be performing Robert Schumann’s complete works for solo piano – over 15 hours of the most original piano music ever composed.
FOOD
16 & 30 OCTOBER
4 HANDS 4 STARS
OPSO
10 Paddington Street, W1U 5QL opso.co.uk
Marking OPSO’s 10th anniversary, its two Michelinstarred chef Nikos Roussos is teaming up with two of his two-starred peers to create Aegean-inspired tasting menus. On 16th October, Ahmet Dede will be arriving from Ireland. Two weeks later, it’s Viennese superstar Konstantin Filippou.
EXHIBITION
Japan/A Love Story celebrates half a century of work by British-American photographer Michael Kenna, exploring his enduring relationship with Japan. His mysterious images, often captured at dawn or in the dark hours of night, focus on the interaction between the natural landscape and human-made structures.
25 SEPTEMBER – 20 OCTOBER
MICHAEL KENNA: JAPAN / A LOVE STORY
Asia House
63 New Cavendish Street, W1G 7LP peterfetterman.com/ japanalovestory
Q&A: MATILDA LIU
The up-and-coming curator on international school expats, domestic environments and the cultural importance of food
Interview: Emily Jupp
Q: How did you come to be living in London?
A: I was born in southern California, and grew up in Chengdu, China, studying in international schools. I moved to London in 2016 to attend university. I studied curation at Central Saint Martins for my BA, and then Sotheby’s Institute of Art for my master’s. I’ve stayed here ever since.
Q: How has that globe-spanning experience shaped your approach to curation?
A: My experience growing up was extremely international and multicultural, and these qualities have defined my perspective on people, the world – and art. I’ve often found myself in a ‘third space’. My Chinese / Sichuanese family background made me aware of my differences from my peers in an American school, but because most of my friends were also international expats, everyone felt out of place in their own way. Every day, I was surrounded by food, cultural attitudes and traditions from a multitude of ethnicities, and that’s what I came to see as the norm.
There was a certain tolerance and worldliness among the expats I knew from international schools because everyone saw things from more than one socio-political perspective. In that sense, I’ve never personally identified with being a ‘minority’ in an alienating way. Identity crises and uncertainty are a big part of growing up, but my experiences ingrained in me a sense of plurality – I have always sought out and thrived in non-homogenous environments where internationalness and diversity are celebrated.
Q: What themes interest you? What stories do you want to tell?
A: The main mantra of Meeting Point Project, my curatorial initiative, is to discover, gather and live with art culture and cuisine. In general, the goal of my projects is to promote a more informed and curious relationship with art, culture and cuisine. Going back to my experiences growing up, I am really drawn to stories that are honest, self-aware and reveal the plurality of the world. I personally can’t ever subscribe strongly to any one political, religious or cultural agenda, because my first-hand experience tells me how diverse the world is and how valid everything
is in its own way. Whenever my exhibitions or events touch on cultural memory, heritage or identity, I want my audience to walk away reflecting on their own beliefs as well as seeking to understand others outside their own. I think art and people become more interesting that way.
Q: Tell us about your upcoming 67 York Street Gallery pop-up.
A: It is a three-week group exhibition entitled Dwelling, which looks at how our relationship with our domestic environments informs individual and collective experiences. Featuring the artists Yifan Jiang, Charlotte Keates, Iva Kinnaird, Yushi Li, Gus Monday and Tim Wilson, the show curates and contextualises their works within a gallery space that’s been transformed into a living, breathing and immersive environment.
Q: Where did the name come from?
A: It’s borrowed from German philosopher Martin Heidegger’s concept of ‘dwelling’ presented in his essay Building Dwelling Thinking (1971), in which the process of finding, creating and living in spaces is seen as a fundamental part of human existence. As part of the threeweek programme, I’m hosting three supper clubs at The Royal Oak, across from the gallery, with three different independent
chefs. Each chef has been asked to create a menu based on their idea of ‘home-cooking’. This includes Shanghainese cuisine by Shanghai Supper Club, and food by Thunder Tea, a Singaporean and Malaysian supper club in London serving plant-based recipes.
Q: Marylebone is a very international, cosmopolitan place to be. Is that part of its appeal to you?
A: Marylebone is my favourite neighbourhood! It is so central and buzzy yet has somehow also managed to retain its own neighbourhood charm. From shops and grocery stores to restaurants and cafes, it has everything you could want, from world-class to artisanal. I really do love Marylebone.
Q: Food and relationships have come up as themes in your previous exhibitions too. Why is that?
A: Diving into the socio-culturalpolitics of cuisine is one of my favourite things to do. Much more than art, I think food is such a community-building and intellectually stimulating medium which everyone and anyone can access and relate to.
16 SEPTEMBER – 4 OCTOBER
MATILDA LIU: DWELLING
67 York Street Gallery
67 York Street, W1H 1QB 67yorkstreetgallery.com
2. Dwelling, 67 York Street Gallery
3. Anthony Marwood, Royal Academy of Music
MUSIC
1 NOVEMBER, 1pm
CHAMBER MUSIC WITH ANTHONY MARWOOD
Royal Academy of Music Marylebone Road, NW1 5HT ram.ac.uk
Alongside Academy students, violinist Anthony Marwood performs Beethoven’s Op 8 Serenade, the most extensive of five string trios written in the late 1970s, and Brahms’ Piano Quartet No 3 from 1875, which represents the pinnacle of his mature chamber writing.
EXHIBITION
27 SEPTEMBER –9 NOVEMBER
YU HONG: ISLANDS OF THE MIND
Lisson Gallery
27 Bell Street, NW1 5BY lissongallery.com
For her first solo exhibition in London, Chinese artist Yu Hong presents a suite of largescale paintings, each of which explores a distinctive state of consciousness, inspired by Arnold Böcklin’s Island of the Dead (1880-1901).
3. 1. Matilda Liu
1. Baalbeks (Images through Matter), 1986-1988 by Rena Papaspyrou, The
A permanent resident of Mexico since 2017, Dexter Dalwood has recently been thinking a lot about what it means to be an ‘English’ painter. His new exhibition explores the connections between nostalgia, culture and national identity.
EXHIBITION
16 OCTOBER – 1 NOVEMBER
PETER WILEMAN
Thompson’s Gallery
3 Seymour Place, W1H 5AZ thompsonsgallery.co.uk
Peter Wileman, a painter known for dazzling abstracted oil landscapes that seek to capture the elusive quality of light, has been a fixture at Thompson’s Gallery for many years. This autumn, he returns for another highly anticipated solo exhibition, featuring new and unseen paintings.
EXHIBITION
UNTIL 3 NOVEMBER
FLORA YUKHNOVICH AND FRANÇOIS BOUCHER: THE LANGUAGE OF THE ROCOCO
The Wallace Collection Manchester Square, W1U 3BN wallacecollection.org
In this free display, two largescale, semi-abstract paintings by contemporary British artist Flora Yukhnovich, created in response to François Boucher (1703-1770), hang alongside several works by the Rococo painter who inspired them.
10 — MARYLEBONE JOURNAL / ISSUE NO. 106
MUSIC
3 NOVEMBER, 3pm
FAMILY CONCERT:
BLOWN AWAY
Wigmore Hall
36 Wigmore Street, W1U 2BP wigmore-hall.org.uk
For this family-friendly musical version of Blown Away, Rob Biddulph’s children’s story about a fearless blue penguin, flautist Meera Maharaj and pianist Benjamin Powell and narrator Polly Ives perform against a backdrop of vibrant image projections.
EXHIBITION
10 SEPTEMBER –4 NOVEMBER
RUTH SAMUELS: YOU CANNOT POUR FROM AN EMPTY CUP
The Church of the Annunciation Marble Arch Bryanston Street, W1H 7AH annunciationmarblearch.org.uk
This exhibition of photography by Ruth Samuels explores the beauty and humanity of care work, challenging attitudes towards a profession often spoken of as ‘unskilled’ or ‘low–skilled’.
Hellenic Centre
Agnes by Ruth Samuels, The Church of the Annunciation Marble Arch
A Cheetah, After Titian by Sam Wood, Gloucester Room
EXHIBITION
The body of work created by Rena Papaspyrou, one of the foremost post-war Greek artists, has been referred to as “a house built over 60 years”. Inspired by her old Athens neighbourhood, she uses found bricks, tiles and mosaics as the basis for images, sculptures and installations. This new exhibition comprises 22 representative works, spanning from the 1970s until today.
2 OCTOBER – 16 NOVEMBER RENA PAPASPYROU: IMAGES THROUGH MATTER
The Hellenic Centre 16-18 Paddington Street, W1U 5AS helleniccentre.org
3.
EVENT
Marylebone Village’s Christmas season kicks off with the traditional celebrity switch-on moment: the centrepiece of an afternoon and evening of festive activities and offers. Marylebone High Street and much of the surrounding area will be pedestrianised to make way for live music, children’s activities, food and drink stalls, and charity fundraising on behalf of Great Ormond Street Hospital Charity. Dozens of retailers and restaurants will be offering promotions, experiences, gifts and special menus.
Gloucester Room 5 New Cavendish Street, W1G 8UT railings-gallery.com
Newcastle-born artist Sam Wood is best know for his site-specific illustrations and murals, including his decoration of Marylebone’s Rixo boutique. This solo exhibition of new works was inspired by his recent travels in the French and Italian Rivieras.
SPOKEN WORD 17 NOVEMBER, 7pm VENUS AND ADONIS
Marylebone Theatre 35 Park Road, NW1 6XT marylebonetheatre.com
In the early 1990s, Mark Rylance was a month away from performing Shakespeare’s long poem Venus and Adonis when the production had to be cancelled. Thirty years later, he and his long-time friend Derek Jacobi will finally finish the job at this one-off fundraiser for the Marylebone Theatre.
1.
EXHIBITION
To commemorate its 30th birthday, Atlas Gallery is spending the rest of the year celebrating the talent and diversity of the photographic artists in its stable. This show is devoted to contemporary works, with vintage pieces to follow in part two.
19 SEPTEMBER – 21 NOVEMBER ATLAS AT 30: PART ONE
Atlas Gallery
49 Dorset Street, W1U 7NF atlasgallery.com
MUSIC
19 – 22 NOVEMBER, 7pm
ROYAL ACADEMY OPERA: HÄNSEL UND GRETEL
Royal Academy of Music Marylebone Road, NW1 5HT ram.ac.uk
Royal Academy Opera presents the work that made Engelbert Humperdinck a household name after its first performance in December 1893. When Hänsel and Gretel find themselves lost in the forest, they happen upon a house made of gingerbread...
1. Mustard by Richard Caldicott, Atlas Gallery
2. Royal Academy Opera: Hänsel und Gretel, Royal Academy of Music
3. Steven Isserlis, Gabriel Fauré Centenary Celebrations, Wigmore Hall
MUSIC
13 SEPTEMBER – 27 NOVEMBER GABRIEL FAURÉ CENTENARY CELEBRATIONS
Wigmore Hall 36 Wigmore Street, W1U 2BP wigmore-hall.org.uk
Gabriel Fauré died in 1924. To mark the centenary, Wigmore Hall presents an expansive series of concerts and masterclasses, including tenor Cyrille Dubois, soprano Véronique Gens and cellist Steven Isserlis.
THEATRE
4 OCTOBER – 23 NOVEMBER WHAT WE TALK ABOUT WHEN WE TALK ABOUT ANNE FRANK
Marylebone Theatre
35 Park Road, NW1 6XT marylebonetheatre.com
Directed by Patrick Marber and starring Joshua Malina (West Wing, Big Bang Theory), this new ‘serious comedy’ tells the story of two Jewish couples –one secular, the other ultraOrthodox – who play a drinkfuelled game that goes awry.
THEATRE
4 – 24 NOVEMBER VOILA! THEATRE FESTIVAL
The Cockpit Gateforth Street, NW8 8EH thecockpit.org.uk
Returning for its 11th run, the Voila! Theatre festival presents boundary-pushing work from across the continent of Europe, bringing together a rich array of languages, ideas and influences to present a colourful tapestry of theatrical performances over a threeweek period.
EXHIBITION
27 NOVEMBER – 2 MARCH
KEEPING TIME: CLOCKS BY BOULLE
The Wallace Collection Manchester Square, W1U 3BN wallacecollection.org
Working at the court of the Sun King, Louis XIV (1638–1715), André-Charles Boulle created clocks that combined cuttingedge science with staggering artistry, the influence of which spread far and wide. This free display brings together five of Boulle’s exceptional timepieces.
IN PROFILE
DAISUKE HAYASHI
The chef-founder of Roketsu on expressing the kaiseki tradition, creating harmony on a menu, and bringing artistry to airline food
Words: Clare Finney
“Once you catch the fish, the net does not matter. Once you catch the rabbit, the snare does not matter.” Upon first opening the elegant menu at Roketsu, these are the words that leap out from the page. It’s an old epigram, the menu goes on to explain, from the ancient Chinese philosopher Zhuang Zhou, which inspired the 16th century teahouse for which the restaurant is named and which has proved central to the philosophy of its chef-founder Daisuke Hayashi. Its message – according to Daisuke – is that once one has successfully conveyed one’s purpose or meaning, it no longer matters how that purpose or meaning was conveyed. It comes back to me the following morning, when I return to the scene of my evening meal to interview Daisuke about it, and the principles behind ‘kaiseki’, a form of dining rooted in Kyoto, the Japanese city that for over 1,000 years was the seat of the imperial court and the country’s cultural heartland. At its simplest, kaiseki refers to a formal meal consisting of multiple, meticulously prepared courses served in a prescribed order – though there is far more to this tradition and its modern-day interpretation than first appears. The problem is, I have eaten it. The rabbit is caught, the fish is landed and now – according to Zhuang Zhou – any thoughts as to how and why it got to me should be irrelevant. Daisuke is patient, considers my questions with care and gracefully tolerates my butchering of terms like ‘shun’ and ‘wabi’. Yet the more I endeavour to decipher my meal, the more I feel like that guy who, rather than laughing at a joke, asks the teller to repeat it more slowly because they don’t understand what it means.
Nevertheless, I persist – for your benefit, dear reader, and because the sake pairing we enjoyed last night has left my memory hazy as to the precise details of Daisuke’s nine courses. Though Roketsu is the
first kaiseki restaurant to open in Britain – the first in Europe, to the best of his knowledge – the cuisine is steeped in the Japanese tea ceremony and can be traced back to the 15th century. As the taking of tea evolved into a ceremonial ritual, so it became necessary to serve food with it. “Tea contains caffeine, which can feel heavy in your stomach, so people started having a bit of food alongside. This developed into multiple courses,” says Daisuke. Other influences include the cuisine of the imperial court, the culinary traditions of the samurai and – at the opposite end of the spectrum – the practices of Buddhist monks, who brought a purer and more ascetic approach to tea and meals, as they did to most things.
Like many of the world’s great cuisines, kaiseki has been centuries in the making, and its origins are far too complex to do justice to within the course of one short article. Its closest equivalent –in the West at least – is French haute cuisine, the history of which is similarly rooted in the ruling classes and burgeoning bourgeoisie. As with haute cuisine, there are multiple courses – at least six, and sometimes as many as 15 –all of which follow a predetermined order. The sakizuke (the equivalent of the amuse bouche) is typically something small and pickled. We had a fig with Japanese mustard. This was followed by the hassun – a vivid array of cured, pickled, grilled and stuffed seasonal seafood and vegetables designed to celebrate hyper-seasonality. The soup was a rich broth known as a dashi, and highly revered as the hallmark of a chef’s ability. The same could be said of French soups and sauces –though no French-born consommé has been brewed from bonito flakes and kombu seaweed. The seaweed –“the best in Japan,” says Daisuke – is sourced by him from Kikunoi, the famous century-old restaurant at which he learnt his craft.
“Kaiseki is an expression of Japanese culture through food. One needs a depth of knowledge and understanding in order to keep traditions and continue to make new things.”
And so it continues, course after beautifully presented course. Like haute cuisine or any multicourse dinner, kaiseki demands a quantity of crockery so great you feel obliged to raise one of the many glasses to the pot washer responsible for cleaning it all. In the case of kaiseki, this servingware changes with the seasons, so every month sees a different range of plates and bowls. “The servingware has a season because each piece is designed for the dishes,” Daisuke says simply. This ensures the overall harmony of the dish (and that is key, for kaiseki), and dictates the portion size so as to minimise
food waste. Even the garnishes come in their own bespoke bowls, like pageboys dressed up in tiny, tailormade suits and shoes.
Here the ascetism of kaiseki comes into play. “One of my fundamental philosophies is that my food is good for your health. Sushi is popular because people think it is healthy – but it has a lot of salt and carbohydrate,” Daisuke explains. Ditto tempura, which like sushi has risen rapidly to popularity in the last few years “because it’s easy to understand, and contains sweetness, fat and umami. It’s delicious,” the chef concedes, “but it is not necessarily healthy. Kaiseki
is all about finding the balance of nutrition.”
As such, anyone rocking up to Roketsu ready for an onslaught of sushi and fried stuff will be pleasantly surprised by how light the meal is. Rice featured just once over the course of nine intricate courses, as part of a hassun course that featured (among many morsels) a cool clam and cucumber salad, salmon roe stuffed into sake-cooked prawn and a slender finger of saffron-cooked rice topped with grilled Cornish mackerel. Tempura made a fleeting appearance in a featherlight batter encasing courgette flower, new ginger and
thin slices of aubergine, and even the Inaniwa noodles they came with were lighter than one might expect, thanks to being hand pulled.
Omakase – the predominant form of Japanese fine dining found in London – is a fine tradition, Daisuke explains, but it is often sushi-led, partly because the tradition is dictated by the customer’s preferences as much as it is the chef and the seasons.
“Kaiseki is an expression of Japanese culture through food. One needs a depth of knowledge and understanding in order to keep traditions and continue to make new things,” he says. “Omakase is
not so deep.” Where omakase chefs acknowledge their audience, and even adjust the courses based on their diners’ desires and needs, kaiseki chefs prefer the fourth wall to remain intact throughout their performance. Daisuke loves art and is an avid collector, and he views food in the same light. “If they can know it and understand it there is harmony there between the chef and the people who have the food.”
To Daisuke and his team at Roketsu, the parable of the fish and the rabbit says: “We don’t need words to establish a heart-to-heart conversation and understand each other.” It’s true that, upon swallowing my final scoop of peach jelly and mint ice cream, I felt a deep sense of contentment. Yet being the impatient, inquisitive creature I am, I cannot help but think contentment would have been enhanced by my knowing then what I will learn the next day.
As well as the (tightly potted) history of kaiseki, I discover several things that make Roketsu truly remarkable. I learn that Daisuke was just six years old when he first set his mind on becoming a chef, inspired by fishing with his father, and to this day – every day – he insists on seeing the fish before buying from his suppliers. His fish are all British, as are his fruits and vegetables –even the Japanese varieties, which he commissions specially from a grower in Cambridge. In fact, the only ingredient that comes from Japan beyond the aforementioned sake and seaweed is Kagoshima wagyu beef.
I learned that at Kikunoi in Kyoto, he trained for many years under the legendary chef Yoshihiro Murata, one of only 10 chefs in the world to have seven or more Michelin stars to their name. I learned to my delight – posh plane food being a particular fascination of mine – that Daisuke supervises the in-flight meals for business and first class passengers on four
“Sushi is delicious but it is not necessarily healthy. Kaiseki is all about finding the balance of nutrition.”
European routes for Japanese Airlines. “There are limitations to what I can do on board, but I was taught by my master Murata that there is no such thing as ‘no’. Nothing you ate yesterday is available in the sky,” he smiles, but it is nonetheless a distillation of his craft. “I have to think how to do the best for this situation. I think separately.”
“To work is to continue thinking how to be the best you can be,” he concludes – and I finally feel I have reconciled Roketsu with Zhuang Zou’s parable. It’s not that the ingredients, expertise and craftsmanship that go into
making a meal here so special do not matter; it’s that they shouldn’t detract from the experience as a whole. The wood panels are Japanese hinoki wood, preserved over 100 years in Kyoto and shipped from Japan. The plates and bowls are handcrafted and bespoke. The food is as fundamental as the philosophy. But the purpose is a harmony in which no single note takes centre stage; in which each plate, person and panel sings and is just so.
ROKETSU
12 New Quebec Street, W1H 7RW roketsu.co.uk
I DO, I DO, I DO
As The Old Marylebone Town Hall marks its centenary as a register office, the Journal pays a visit to hear about the hall’s history, the evolution of civil weddings, and the importance of balancing progress and tradition
Words: Mark Riddaway
Images: Carr + Senteno, Chloe Mary Photo, Joséphine Elvis, Nicole Lamparska, Paola de Paola, Christopher L Proctor, Ernie Savarese, David Wilkins, Zen Lights Photography
I first became aware of The Old Marylebone Town Hall in 1997, at the climax of Britpop’s hairraising ride from the indie music papers to the red-top tabloids. That April, at 8.30 on a Monday morning, the Oasis frontman Liam Gallagher and actor and singer Patsy Kensit, accompanied by two unnamed witnesses, tied the knot in one of the least glitzy celebrity weddings of all time, causing conniptions across the newspaper showbiz desks that managed to miss the entire thing.
The couple had originally planned a lavish event in Knightsbridge but cancelled just hours before the nuptials after a broiling mob of fans, TV crews and paparazzi ruined everything. “Obsessive and intrusive media attention has removed any dignity from what was to be a private and special occasion,” stated the terse press release explaining their decision. Thankfully for Liam and Patsy, dignity, privacy and specialness feature heavily on The Old Marylebone Town Hall menu.
In October this year, the City of Westminster’s grand register office on Marylebone Road celebrates its centenary as a venue for civil weddings, and that kind of star power has been a big part of the building’s story. “Paul McCartney got married here twice,” says Christie Junor-Sheppard, Westminster’s head of registration. (Incidentally, Liam –a man often accused of shamelessly pastiching The Beatles – also returned for a second go, marrying Nicole Appleton in 2008). Her list continues: “Ringo Starr. Cilla Black. Terrence Stamp. Antonio Banderas and Melanie Griffith – two Hollywood people coming to get married on Marylebone Road!”
“I saw Ed Sheeran twice in a month, coming to different weddings,” adds Christie’s colleague Joe Crouch, who runs the service’s business development and marketing. Some of the stars who stalk the high-ceilinged corridors bring less glamour and cause more
work. “We had a period when we seemed to constantly have ex-prime ministers in the building,” says Christie. “We had Boris Johnson, Theresa May. We had Tony Blair in for Peter Mandelson’s wedding. Their personal protection detail has to come in advance to scout the building. Thankfully, they know us quite well now.”
If you’re going to be a registrar for Westminster, administering the births, deaths and marriages of London’s most glittering borough (“the centre of the universe”, as Christie describes it), being unfazed by celebrity comes with the territory. “We have famous people just come in without any fanfare whatsoever,” she continues. “A few years ago, I remember somebody coming into our back office and saying: ‘Janet
Jackson’s sitting in the waiting area.’ I was like: ‘What?’ ‘Janet Jackson’s sitting in the waiting area.’ She’d turned up to register the birth of her baby.”
The point is that, as far as the law is concerned, there’s no distinction whatsoever between a minister and a milliner, a pop star and a publican. “Whoever you are, you’ll probably come through our doors at some point. It doesn’t matter whether you’re prince or pauper, you’ll need our services, because it’s births, it’s deaths, it’s marriages, it’s becoming British. ‘Cradle to grave’, ‘hatches, matches and dispatches’ – there are lots of phrases used to describe it.”
“The beauty of being responsible for those universal touchpoints is that we’re meeting people from
“Whoever you are, you’ll probably come through our doors at some point. It doesn’t matter whether you’re prince or pauper, you’ll need our services, because it’s births, it’s deaths, it’s marriages, it’s becoming British.”
every single walk of life, at whatever age, from wherever in the world, of whatever temperament,” adds Joe. “Life brings everyone to and through our doors. Which is just an amazing thing, isn’t it?”
The story of The Old Marylebone Town Hall began in the distinctly unglitzy realm of local government reform. In the 19th century, the area’s civic centre had been an old courthouse on Marylebone Lane. After the London Government Act of 1899 divided the rapidly expanding capital into 28 boroughs with substantial administrative responsibilities, it wasn’t long before the newly minted Metropolitan Borough of St Marylebone decided that a much larger headquarters was needed,
commensurate with its status and workload.
In 1911, an open competition was announced, inviting the submission of designs for a site on Marylebone Road previously occupied by houses. The winner was Edwin Cooper, a Yorkshire-born architect who proved adept at creating grand classical buildings (and even more adept at winning competitions to create grand classical buildings). Cooper’s simple, weighty, imposing creation, with its Corinthian columns, stone lions and a Wren-inspired tower, was largely completed by 1915 when it was commandeered by the wartime government. It wasn’t until 1920 that the formal opening of the new town hall could finally be celebrated.
Christie and her team had originally planned a centenary
celebration for the spring of 2020, coinciding precisely with the sudden arrival of a global pandemic. “It all got cancelled and we were really disappointed, because we’d put all these plans in place and it was going to be great.” Then, about a year later, completely out of the blue, an email arrived from the register office at Kensington and Chelsea which brightened the mood considerably.
“It said: ‘We’ve found an old document we think you might want; shall we send it over to you?’” says Christie. “It was a notification that we’d sent, informing them that from 1st October 1924 we’d be moving our register office to this building.” It turned out that while Cooper’s building had officially opened in 1920, the registration function had for the first few years been
MASS MATRIMONY
To celebrate the centenary of The Old Marylebone Town Hall, Christie and her team have given themselves a logistical challenge that borders on the unhinged. On Tuesday 1st October, starting at 8am and finishing around 10pm, the venue will host 100 weddings in a single day. To put that into context, a busy Saturday in peak season might involve around 20 ceremonies, and the hall’s previous record – part of a concerted effort to clear the post-Covid backlog – was 30. Each ceremony will cost just £100 and priority booking has been given to people who live, work or study locally. “It’s a bit mad, but people have got really into the spirit of it. Everyone who’s signed up – and everyone here – seems so enthused about the moment,” says Christie. “There is nowhere else in the country that would be able to accommodate something like this. It’s a feat which no other venue would be able to achieve.”
accommodated in a smaller office further down the road. The Old Marylebone Town Hall has been a council building for 104 years; it’s been a wedding venue for 100. The centenary celebration was back on.
A lot has changed over the past century, not least the quantity and character of civil weddings hosted within the town hall’s suite of rooms. “Back then, most people got married in a church,” says Christie. “People who got married in register offices tended to either be divorcees or didn’t have a lot of money and couldn’t afford the big church wedding. We have photographs from the time that show people getting married in their regular day clothes, maybe with a flower on their lapel, but not the big white dress and
all that. That was only for a church wedding.”
The stigma of poverty and godlessness that attached itself to civil weddings began to dissipate in the 1960s. In an energetic and increasingly secular city, cosmopolitan types revelled in snubbing the customs of the crusty old establishment – Paul McCartney’s marriage to Linda Eastman in 1969 being a case in point. “This became the place to get married,” says Christie. “There’s a picture of Paul and Linda coming out onto the steps with policemen holding the crowds back, absolutely mobbed. You couldn’t even see the road, it was so full of people.”
The increasing diversity of Westminster’s population added to the growing demand. Until 1994,
only register offices and Christian churches were licensed to conduct weddings. “You couldn’t get married legally in a mosque or a temple, so lots of people would have a civil wedding here and then a religious blessing or service afterwards,” says Christie. The creation of civil partnerships in 2004 and the long-overdue arrival of same-sex marriages in 2014 – still shunned by most churches – added a whole new layer. A hundred years ago, fewer than a quarter of weddings in England and Wales were civil ceremonies; today, the proportion is around 85 per cent.
One notable witness to these societal shifts was a man called John Coffey. Just over 10 years ago, John was the producer of Births, Deaths & Marriages, a major ITV
documentary that explored the inner workings of the Marylebone register office. “He spent months here working with the team, shooting and editing, and he absolutely loved what we did,” says Christie. Then, at one minute past midnight on 29th March 2014, John and his husband Bernardo became the first same-sex couple to get married in Westminster. “Tommy, one of our registrars, did the ceremony. As a gay man himself, he had such joy doing it, and the fact that it was this lovely guy who had worked on the documentary made it even more beautiful.” Such was the beauty of the whole experience, John was then inspired to train as a registrar himself. “He became one of our staff members and worked for us for a number of years before
he retired to Spain. You can’t make these stories up!”
The Old Marylebone Town Hall’s stark commitment to inclusivity is occasionally challenged by the law evolving more slowly than the society it serves. “Gender is something we’re having to carefully navigate because wedding law is so rooted in husband and wife, Mr and Mrs, and those are all such gendered terms,” says Joe. While gender is no longer a factor in who can marry whom – and no longer appears anywhere within the official paperwork – it remains anachronistically embedded within the legalities of the ceremony. Christie explains: “There’s this huge misconception that it’s when you sign the register that you’re married. It’s not. It’s when you say the words. It’s
the vocalisation of taking each other as husband and wife, or husband and husband, or wife and wife. The register itself is a formality.”
“For someone who identifies as neither, or somewhere in the middle, which is increasingly common, we have to navigate that process in a way that makes them feel comfortable while actually still fulfilling the statutory obligation,” continues Joe. “We might, for example, arrange for you to do a really tiny ceremony with your two witnesses, just so you’re legally married, and then take you into the big room for your celebratory ceremony with all your guests, where you don’t have to say any of those words.”
Another area that Christie believes would benefit from reform is the strict ban on religious content
in civil ceremonies. A couple can’t vow to support each other “in sickness and in health” because those words are drawn from the Book of Common Prayer. They can’t break a glass at the end of the ceremony, because that’s part of the Jewish tradition. If you’re a non-believer who feels a connection to the cultural heritage of your forebears’ religion, most of the related symbolism is beyond the pale. Perhaps most damagingly, if you’re part of a mixed-faith couple – far from rare in such a diverse borough – and want to mark your partnership with a ceremony that accommodates both traditions, that door is firmly shut. “I can’t wait for that to change,” says Christie, “because it would open the door for people to have what they really want
“People absolutely love the traditions. They love the fact that what they’re doing is what their parents did and what their grandparents did, in almost identical ways.”
Clockwide from left: The 1952 wedding of actors Barbara Murray and John Justin, who met just a few weeks earlier on the set of the crime caper Hot Ice; Ex-Beatle Ringo Starr marries former Bond girl Barbara Bach in 1981; Film producer Roland Gillett and his new wife, actor Tamara Desni, in 1940; Screenwriter Val Guest and West End dancer Pat Watson in 1936; Pop star Cilla Black and her husband (and manager) Bobby Willis in 1969; Comedian Dick Emery after his wedding to Pip Ansell in 1946, an illfated marriage that would last barely six months.
from their wedding, rather than having to compromise.”
But while the team would love to see some changes to the rules, they remain highly protective of the underlying sense of tradition. “People absolutely love it,” says Christie. “They love the fact that what they’re doing is what their parents did and what their grandparents did, in almost identical ways.” Indeed, it was the sense of heritage that first drew her to the registrar’s profession. “I’ve got really lovely handwriting – my grandfather taught me calligraphy – and I really wanted to do a job that involved it. I thought, what jobs exist anymore where you do handwriting? That really attracted me – the idea of writing in big books with registration ink and a fountain
pen. That’s all gone now, of course, but there are still elements of what we do that are archaic, in a good way. The challenge is to keep all that while making sure it stays relevant.”
Modernising access to marriage may be a vital mission, but surely no one wants to sign the register by squiggling their finger on an iPad.
Business School, retaining just seven ceremony rooms and the hall’s spectacular entrance, and funds were freed up to give the venue the overhaul it desperately needed.
After four years of work, The Old Marylebone Town Hall reopened in 2018 featuring an aesthetic inspired in part by the tasteful stylings of boutique hotels. “There are lessons I think other register offices could learn about what they do with their ceremony rooms,” says Christie. “A lot of places go for quite an overdecorated look – it’s all about the statement – but what we wanted was something really pared back. Photography is so important. You don’t want walls full of pictures because they’re a distraction from the picture of the couple, which is the most important thing. So, we
The drive to balance history and modernity was fundamental to the venue’s recent refurbishment. Over the years, the local authority had moved most of its functions out of the town hall to bigger and less grandiose office blocks, leaving weddings to be hosted in what were increasingly tired and crumbling surroundings. In 2014, Westminster agreed a lucrative deal to lease most of the building to the London >
have a lot of plain walls with paint or wood panelling, and just touches of decoration.”
The hire fees make the operation entirely self-sustaining, and the surplus allows for an annual redecoration to keep everything looking fresh. “The whole idea is that taxpayers don’t pay for people to be married here; people who get married here pay to get married here,” says Christie. But that in turn demands a high volume of ceremonies, bringing with it extraordinary logistical challenges. “We’re very unusual that we have an ushering service, so the guys downstairs meet and greet you and bring you up. Then the people on the corridor manage the movement around the buildings.” It’s a complex dance, choreographed to ensure
that no one feels rushed, that every wedding feels like the main event. The registrars, too, are tested every day. “The skillset of a registrar is really quite odd, because you’ve got to have good attention to detail, you’ve got to have a real grasp of law and regulations, but you’ve also got to be emotionally intelligent, because you’re interacting with people at points of their life that are incredibly important. You need administrative skills and people skills. It’s very left brain and very right brain at the same time.” Registrars have to deal with important paperwork, explain complex procedures in simple language, overcome the communication challenges presented by a multilingual city and navigate the contrasting emotions of birth, marriage and death. “And
then you have to stand up in a room of 300 people and conduct a halfhour wedding ceremony. It’s hard to imagine another job that would combine such different skills.”
Those who do the work tend to love it. “Once you’re in it, you tend not to leave. Our longest serving member of staff, she’s been here 43 years. Same job, same office. Above 30 years is not unusual in our service.” Populations shift, social norms evolve, pop stars flare and fade, prime ministers pass the torch, but the registrars of The Old Marylebone Town Hall will keep doing their thing, year after year after year.
THE OLD MARYLEBONE TOWN HALL 97-113 Marylebone Road, NW1 5PT adaytoremember.london/old-marylebonetown-hall
THE DIFFERENCE MAKERS
Introducing
the people behind
central London’s vital charities and community organisations: Matthew Gould, CEO of the Zoological Society of London
The Zoological Society of London (ZSL) is a sciencedriven conservation charity that aims to preserve and protect nature and wildlife. Each year our scientific institute produces the Living Planet Index – a measure of the abundance of wildlife around the world. What that index suggests is that since about 1970, total wildlife abundance has fallen by about 70 per cent. Extroardinary damage is being done to our ecosystems, and the consequences are immense.
Climate change is undoubtedly one of the biggest drivers of this reduction in abundance. Another is a loss of habitats around the world, caused by deforestation, industry and urbanisation. A third is the level of pollution. And all of these many stresses on nature compound each other, with devastating results. Take something as precious as the world’s coral reefs – the projections are terrifying. If we hit two degrees of global warming, which I think most scientists now believe is little short of inevitable, around 99 per cent of the planet’s coral is projected to disappear.
Fundamentally, all this is a result of us treating the environment as if it were limitless and free. And the problem is, it’s neither. Part of what we do at ZSL is direct conservation – restoring ecosystems and preserving species – and part of it is participating at a policy level to try to ensure that a proper value is put on nature.
ZSL has three main facets: the Institute of Zoology, our two zoos (London and Whipsnade), and our global conservation programmes. People tend to be most familiar with us as a visitor attraction – and that is a really important part of what we do – but the vast majority of our guests don’t clock that there’s a big scientific institute doing amazing research slap-bang in the middle of London Zoo.
The Institute of Zoology conducts a wide range of fascinating research. To give just a few examples, we have a brilliant Monitoring and Evaluation Unit that takes in vast quantities of data from around the world, from thousands of digital camera traps, acoustic sensors, satellite images and other sources, and analyses it using artificial intelligence and serious computer power to create useful insights into wildlife populations and ecosystem health. That work is so highly regarded that the government has just given us a £2.4 million grant to construct a supercomputer >
“The vast majority of our guests don’t clock that there’s a big scientific institute doing amazing research slap-bang in the middle of London Zoo.”
at the institute, putting us right at the cutting edge of conservation biology and AI.
We also have a team working on environmental DNA analysis (eDNA). If you want to know what’s in a pond, for example, you can either spend a long time watching the pond and netting its contents, or you can take a few drops of water, put it through an analysis and identify the species present through traces of DNA.
We also have the Evolutionary Distinct and Globally Endangered (EDGE) programme. In a world containing 8 million species, this is a methodology for identifying those whose disappearance would prove the greatest loss. The methodology was developed at the Institute of Zoology and has now become widely used. We have also set up EDGE Fellowships that enable cohorts of young conservationists from across Africa, Asia and Latin America to focus their efforts on individual EDGE species. They receive a two-year programme of mentoring, education and support that helps them have the greatest possible impact back home.
On the conservation side of ZSL, we are now working with over 80 countries, some of which host our field offices. We’ve planted over a million mangrove trees in the Philippines, and the government there has just asked us to set up Asia’s first large-scale marine reserve. We’ve been given a seven-year transnational grant by the UK government to work in the West Congo Basin, the second biggest rainforest in the world and the world’s biggest natural store of carbon. We are working with rhinos in Kenya, tigers across the Nepalese-Indian border, and elephants in Thailand.
We’re also very keen on conservation at home, not least because the UK is one of the most naturedenuded countries in the world. We’re doing a range of things, including trying to breathe life back into the tributaries of the Thames by monitoring pollution and supporting the critically endangered European eel and other at-risk species of fish. We’ve been setting up a big consortium of organisations working on the Thames estuary, which is an incredibly important ecosystem. We also have a project that focuses on the angel shark off the coast of Wales, working with local fishing communities to get popular buy-in for our conservation efforts. We’ve been setting up oyster beds around the UK, which sounds a bit eccentric until you realise that native oysters used to be endemic – people ate them like we eat chicken now. The European oyster is now endangered, and we need to get it back, not least because they do this amazing job of cleaning up vast quantities of water.
I am neither a zoologist nor a conservationist, although I do have a passionate interest in animals and the wellbeing of nature. I have loads of amazing experts around me, and I think my job as CEO, and
the job of the whole senior team, is to knit all our efforts into a coherent whole. We need to ensure that our conservation efforts are properly resourced, the scientists have the kit and conditions they need, the zoos are in the best possible state, and the whole operation is as effective and robust as it can be.
The reason I was willing to give up a 30-year career in Whitehall to do this job is because the mission of protecting nature and stopping species from becoming extinct is so important and exciting. Honestly, I can’t think of anything else I would rather dedicate myself to. Partly the pleasure comes from seeing huge numbers of schoolchildren and families coming into our zoos every day and be visibly inspired by what they see. There’s something magical about watching a class of kids come face to face with an animal they’ve never seen before. Perhaps you’re creating a connection for them that will last forever. I also have a brilliant team that I love working with –both humans and animals!
ZSL will celebrate its bicentenary in 2026. It was founded as a scientific society and we have stayed true to that; we’re still fundamentally all about the science. What has changed is that we’ve gone from being quite an exclusive place – during the first 20 years of the zoo’s existence the public weren’t allowed in without the specific permission of a Fellow – to an organisation that tries very hard to be as inclusive as possible. For example, about 18 months ago we introduced massively discounted tickets for anyone on benefits, complementing the ones we were already handing out to community organisations. We’ve already had about 300,000 people come through our doors on those tickets. That gives us one of the most diverse visitor bases of any leading visitor attraction in the UK, which is something we’re really proud of.
We’re also very proud of our heritage and our place on London’s cultural map. We’re currently doing this lovely project called History Hive where we invite people to send us memories and artefacts to do with their links to the zoo – we’ve been overwhelmed by the response. And it’s just wonderful to know that this institution has such a special place in people’s hearts.
But ZSL isn’t about to rest on its laurels – quite the opposite, in fact. The truth is that nature is in a shocking state. Animal species are going extinct at an alarming rate. Ecosystems are being destroyed. Natural systems have started to run out of control. Our bicentenary comes at a moment of acute urgency and renewed mission. We want the next two years, the next 20 years, the next 200 years, to be marked by successful efforts by us and everyone we work with to roll back the damage that we’re doing to nature.
ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF LONDON zsl.org
A CLOSER LOOK
FOOD » 36
STYLE » 44
HOME » 56
HEALTHCARE » 58
STYLE »44 Q&A
Luca Faloni on careful carelessness, crafting perfect staples and why you’ll never catch him wearing a tie
STYLE »46
STYLE PHILOSOPHY
Billy Sims-Hilditch, co-founder of Sims Wear, on Mongolian cashmere, seamless knitting, and the art of washing a jumper
HOME »56 ANATOMY OF A DESIGN
Jake Hobson, founder of Niwaki, on a gardening accessory that represents much more than an elegant piece of design
Q&A: XAVIER ROUSSET
The founder of Blandford Comptoir on the genius of Raymond Blanc, the quality of Rhône Valley wines, and the secrets of perfect service
Interview:
Viel Richardson
Portrait: Simon John Owen
Q: How did your journey in hospitality begin?
A: I first became interested in wine when I was 16. On a visit to a vineyard with some family friends, one of the salesmen was telling us about the wines and how the different ones were made. He talked about two which were made from the same grape variety but had very different characters. I assumed that it was all about the processing, but he pointed to two groups of vines only 10 metres apart and told us each one had produced a different wine. When he explained that the main reason for the difference was the ground they were growing in I was at first shocked. How could the earth produce two such different wines from such a short distance? Then I became fascinated. I really wanted to understand the process and started deeply researching into wine. Two years later I moved to England and joined Hotel Du Vin in Winchester. I didn’t speak English and knew nothing about wine, but I found my wine mentor, Gerard Basset, one of the co-founders of the hotel, and that’s where my real journey really began.
Q: How did your training work?
A: I started working in the restaurant and as part of my duties tasted a lot of wines on a daily basis. I was reading a lot of books on wine in my own time while learning about different grapes and flavours from those around me. Putting all that study into practice in a working restaurant made a huge difference. I then went back to France to study before working my way up to restaurants like the two Michelin star Le Laurent in Paris. I then came back to England to be the chief sommelier at Hotel Du Vin Bristol, where I stayed for about six years, before moving to Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons to work for Raymond Blanc, where I was put in charge of the wine offering.
Q: What was it like working for Raymond Blanc?
A: I loved it. It was a great time, at a great place. Working for Raymond was amazing. It was such a learning curve. I was the sommelier but remember so clearly the enormous importance he put on the quality of the ingredients when it came to the food. The gardens at Le Manoir are famous – and it is right that they are, because the ingredients they produce are wonderful and are at the heart of the kitchen. I learned so much working there by watching Raymond’s approach, whether it was the food, the wine or the way
everyone went about their work. I learned a lot about hospitality as a whole. Then in 2007 I opened my first restaurant, Texture in Portman Square, with Agnar Sverrisson who had been head chef at Le Manoir. It was a really interesting time and we went on to win our own Michelin star which was very gratifying as a recognition of everyone’s hard work.
Q: Blandford Comptoir opened in 2016. What was the idea behind it?
A: The first thing was that I love Marylebone. I’d opened the wine bar 28-50 on Marylebone Lane so knew the area well. The first things
LA MASSERIA
Andreea Dobrea of La Masseria on big breakfasts, regular customers and the hard work involved in running a cafe
Interview: Ellie Costigan
FOOD PHILOSOPHY
Xavier Rousset, Blandford Comptoir
to decide was what kind of place I wanted and what would be a good fit for the area. After thinking for a while I realised that they were both the same thing. I wanted a neighbourhood restaurant. I have worked in and run fine dining establishments, and enjoyed doing so, but here I wanted a place where you could drop by and have a plate of food at the bar and a glass of wine, or come with your family for a quiet meal or to celebrate an occasion. Something with a more casual environment but which didn’t compromise on the quality of the food or the wine.
I haven’t always worked in food. I am from Romania originally and I did my degree there, in politics. But when I came to this country, I realised that politics is not really my thing. I decided to change fields and do another degree in business management. I loved it. My passion is working with people. I took over La Masseria in 2019.
Being where we are, we get a real mix of customers –from tourists to Marylebone locals. What’s really nice is, most of our customers are regulars – we have families who come to London for a holiday every year and they
Q: As a trained sommelier, how involved were you with developing the wine list?
A: At the beginning I was doing it all myself: tasting the wines, looking for suppliers, building the wine list, buying all the wines. It was a lot of work, especially as I had other establishments that also need my attention. But now I’ve got a very good team working with me. The sommelier is Andi Harabagiu, who has been working with me for several years now and has the freedom to develop the wine list. It is not just a case of having a good palate and knowing
always come back, which makes us really happy.
If a customer makes a suggestion, we will try to accommodate it. We always remember exactly what each of them likes – we know their order before they have asked for it. Most of them have the same thing every time!
People seem to really love our breakfast menu, which is our biggest focus – full English, eggs benedict, omelettes. We also serve toasties, baguettes and sandwiches, as well as salads and pasta, which is a reflection of the original owner’s Puglian heritage.
your wine. The person who buys is the best person to sell it. We have a large wine list, well over 400 wines, and you cannot just hand that to a person and expect them to have all the information at their fingertips. When a customer is asking advice about what wines to drink with a particular meal you need to have an intimate knowledge of your list, and being involved with building the list helps develop that deep level of knowledge.
Q: How would you characterise the wine list?
A: We specialise in the Rhône >
Good service is so important, especially in a busy city like London. Often people don’t have time to waste. They want a coffee and a pastry to go, they want to know that they will get what they ordered, and they want it to be good. People keep coming back because they know that great service is what they are going to get at La Masseria.
Everything we do is homemade and we get a delivery of fresh ingredients every day. We get through big quantities of fruit, which go into our freshly squeezed juices. They’re made to order, so people can customise them how they like.
We are open Monday to Saturday, and we have an early start – we’re ready for our customers from 6am. It’s a long day, but that doesn’t stop us! When you work in the hospitality industry, you can’t be afraid of hard work. Otherwise, you simply won’t survive.
My favourite dish on the menu is our house special, of course. It is toast with spinach, mushrooms and pesto sauce. It’s lovely, there’s a reason it’s one of our bestsellers.
It’s not easy to find the right staff, particularly after Brexit and Covid – it’s one of the toughest things about working in the hospitality industry today. But we’ve done our best to build a strong team. To do that, you need to be flexible and accommodate your staff’s needs. If you can keep your staff happy, they will give their best to make the customer happy, and that’s the most important thing.
If you come to La Masseria, chances are I will be there. I spend most of my time here, but that’s what makes the difference.
LA MASSERIA
69 Upper Berkeley Street, W1H 7QZ
@lamasseriacafe
Valley, because I’m originally from the Rhône Valley region. I love the wines, like Côte-Rôtie, Hermitage and Saint-Joseph. Our wine list is mostly Old World varieties. Overall, the Rhône Valley is prominent –at least half the list – but we have wines from many other parts of France and also a fair selection from Spain and Italy.
Q: Why have you taken that approach?
A: Doing this allows us to delve very deeply into the Rhône Valley and find wines that won’t be on many other wine lists. I still visit vineyards about four or five times a year. We spend a lot of time and energy sourcing our wines and have built up a real depth of vintages, some going back to the 70s or 80s Limiting the list this way also gives us room to work with a wider range of smaller producers. I’ve been in the industry for over 25 years so I’ve got lots of friends and contacts, which really helps.
Q: What is your approach to the food menu?
A: Our menu is based around the Mediterranean. It is something I think sits well with the Old World nature of the wine list. But it starts
with the quality of produce – that is everything. Raymond Blanc always said, buy the best of what is in season and then allow your chefs to create. That is the guideline we follow.
Q: How does your relationship with the chefs work?
A: Our executive head chef Edward Boarland worked in Michelinstarred restaurants before joining us and I give him the freedom to create when it comes to designing the menus. He comes to Blandford Street three or four times a week and works alongside our other head chefs on the menus. Once they have
agreed a new dish, they invite me along to give any feedback. Within our parameters, my chefs have license to be creative. It’s important that they don’t feel constrained by the wine list. Their task is to create the best dishes they can and we will find wines that match. With nearly 500 wines there will always be options that work well.
Q: What changes have you seen in the British restaurant scene since starting?
A: One of the real changes has been the attitude towards provenance. Our customers really
Bar seating at Blandford Comptoir
NEW ARRIVAL
understand its importance and want to know where the food they eat is coming from. They often have informed conversations with the waiters and sommeliers about the food, the sauces, the wines. There is a real interest in where they are from and how their taste reflects their place of origin. I have really enjoyed seeing this develop, as it shows an increased appreciation of everyone behind the scenes, from the producers to the kitchen and waiting staff. For me, it is also a sign that we have created the kind of place where people feel comfortable and are not too
intimidated to ask questions and share their opinions with the staff.
Q: Is there a guiding philosophy behind Blandford Comptoir?
A: My philosophy is that you can serve great food and wine in an atmosphere which is welcoming and engaging. I’d like them to think the food is maybe better than they expect when they first come in and experience the informal atmosphere. I’ve come across too many establishments where, in terms of their technique, the waiting staff have been perfect, but there’s no personality, there’s
no smile. I’d rather have someone more friendly and relaxed and having a good communication with the customer, rather than being stiff and a little distant but perfect, technically speaking. I want Blandford Comptoir to be a friendly, relaxed environment where you don’t feel under pressure to rush or buy more and feel comfortable engaging with the staff – a real neighbourhood restaurant.
After several years of feverishly popular, relentlessly packedout pop-up appearances all over London, the husband-andwife team of John and Desiree Chantarasak have finally found a permanent site for their AngloThai restaurant. Opening this autumn on Seymour Place, AngloThai is inspired by John’s dual Thai-British heritage. It’s all about perfect pairings: Thailand provides the flavours, England the ingredients; John does the food, Desiree the wine. Their exciting new venture is backed by restaurant group MJMK, which also launched Marylebone’s magnificently successful KOL –hopefully an auspicious precedent.
ANGLOTHAI
22-24 Seymour Place, W1H 7NL anglothai.co.uk
SZECHUAN CHILLI PRAWNS
Sonny Wong, head chef at ULI, on an authentic taste of Szechuan province
Interview: Clare Finney
Image: Charlie McKay
In a nutshell
This is a dish I love to cook: tiger prawns cooked in the wok with water chestnuts, diced onions and peppers, infused with aromatic dried chillis and peppercorns. It has some really interesting ingredients and flavours, unique to the Szechuan province of China.
The inspiration
Like many of the items on the menu at ULI, it’s a dish that has been a part of the classic Chinese restaurant menu in the UK for decades.
However, we execute it in a more authentic style, less adapted to the perceived British palate. After World War II, there was an explosion of Chinese restaurants in the UK, largely operated by Hong Kongers who offered variations on traditional dishes. This was partly due to a lack of speciality ingredients available locally but largely down to the perception that non-Chinese clientele wouldn’t appreciate a dish in its authentic form. There was also the influence of the popular American ‘Chinese’ dishes,
such as chop suey, which originated in the US and have very little connection to anything historically served in China.
The purpose
I would suggest this as a main course with egg fried rice, or as part of a collection of dishes shared among a group. The sauce and flavours are very intense, so a little goes a long way! The Szechuan peppercorns are an acquired taste; too many will leave your mouth numb, but with too few, the dish will lack its
characteristic potency.
The technique
Technique is everything when it comes to the wok. A chef’s mastery of ‘wok hei’ is essential to producing authentic-tasting dishes. Wok hei translates to English as ‘wok thermal radiation’ or, metaphorically, the ‘breath of the wok’, and it takes a chef years to master. The crunch and complex smoky flavour are created by stir frying at intense searing temperatures. Too much heat and the contents will burn; too
A GLASS APART
Laurent Faure, owner of Le Vieux Comptoir, on an unusual chenin blanc that most wine lovers will never see
Interview: Viel Richardson
The way the vigneron achieves this effect is by leaving the grapes on the vine for about two weeks longer than they would for a classic chenin blanc harvest. The way the flavours develop within the grapes is a very complex process. During this extra time on the vine, it’s the compounds that create stone fruit flavours, like white peach and apricot, that will really develop – more so than any extra sugars. So, if you like stone fruit flavours, I believe you will very much enjoy this wine. The wine is then aged in French oak barrels for 12 months. This gives the wine its structure and also brings in a subtle hint of vanilla.
little and you release water from the ingredients, leaving the dish soggy. It’s about finding the perfect balance.
The secret
One key to deliver the correct amount of ‘numbness’ without overpowering the other flavours is to use oil infused with Szechuan peppercorns rather than just the toasted peppercorns.
ULI 15 Seymour Place, W1H 5BE w1.ulilondon.com
Accord Confidentiel is a white wine from the Loire Valley, made with 100 per cent chenin blanc. It’s produced within the appellation of Montlouis-sur-Loire by Maison Laudacius, a very well-known vineyard. In this wine, they’ve produced a very good expression of the chenin blanc grape –but a very unusual one. What makes this wine interesting is that technically it’s not a dry wine, but it’s also not a sweet one. It’s what is called in France ‘moelleux’, which translates into English as ‘tender’. These have more developed sugars than dry wines, but not enough to be considered sweet.
It is very rare for a chenin blanc grape to be produced like this. If you looked in most places with a wide variety of chenin blanc wines, you would find a split of about 80 per cent dry and 20 per cent sweet. The other thing that sets this wine apart is that the winemakers only produce a very small run, so you will not find it in many places. In fact, when we get some in, we don’t even promote it on our website. I do this because otherwise it would sell out in no time at all, and we like to keep it in stock for a longer time so more of our customers can discover it when they visit in person.
This is definitely a wine that goes well with food. Cheese, a good charcuterie board and fish all pair perfectly. Interestingly, it can also go well with spicy foods. For example, when we have customers who are planning some of the spicier Asian dishes, this is a wine we recommend, and it’s a combination that our customers have enjoyed. But the main thing about it is how hard it is to find. It is Confidentiel by name and confidential
LE VIEUX COMPTOIR 26-28 Moxon Street, levieuxcomptoir.co.uk
Q&A: LUCA FALONI
The founder of the international menswear label on careful carelessness, crafting perfect staples and why you’ll never catch him wearing a tie
Interview: Lauren Bravo
Tom Trevatt
Q: As a brand, Luca Faloni is all about impeccable, understated Italian style. Will we ever find Luca Faloni – the man – in a pair of sweatpants?
A: The truth is, I developed the collection based on my own needs. I don’t wear any other brands, and when I’m not wearing the current collection I wear prototypes. I wouldn’t say I’m always impeccable, I sell this style because I like it, so I do tend to represent the brand. Perhaps on a Friday I’m more relaxed than a Monday…
Q: Of course, you know how to elevate a wardrobe basic too. Are yours the most luxurious t-shirts in town?
A: I would say that everything we sell is the most elevated version of that item. We take staples, the few items we believe all men should own, and we perfect them over the years until they’re the very best version they can be. The silk-cotton t-shirt is probably the most elegant t-shirt you can find – or the cashmere-cotton t-shirt, which is a winter version. Then there are our jeans. Jeans are usually considered super casual, but we’ve removed the metal studs and the leather patches and they don’t have any weird washed effects –they’re very elegant. Even our denim shirts are made from the best Italian linen, with mother-of-pearl buttons and a fitted silhouette. For casual items we try to make them as elegant as possible, and for elegant items we try to keep them from being boring.
Q: We hear you’re fussy about collars. How long have you spent perfecting the cut of your shirts?
A: We use what’s called a ‘paramontura’ or ‘one-piece’ collar. It’s a cleaner, more beautiful design than the average collar because it doesn’t have an internal band, so it stays up for much longer and the angle is better. It took many years to perfect, and for each different material we spend a lot of time
getting it right. Every year we collect feedback from customers and take note of things that don’t work so well. Even with products that we’ve made for eight or nine years now, we still find a couple of things at the end of each season to push the design forward. Even when you think you’ve done everything you can, you can always find something to do better.
Q: And are we allowed to leave our perfect shirts untucked?
A: Of course. The Italian term is ‘sprezzatura’, and it means when you pretend you’re not paying attention to your clothes but you actually are. Let’s say you see someone whose shirt is tucked into their belt on one side, but hanging out on the other, or the buttons aren’t in the right holes. It’s the art of careful carelessness.
Q: Linen is having a moment just now. Is it time to make peace with the creases?
A: Linen can be used for basically everything: t-shirts, shirts, trousers, suits. It’s one of the most ecofriendly materials and the most luxurious, cool material for hot weather. You can’t completely stop the creasing, but one of the best ways to fix it is to use a lot of steam –that makes the wrinkles disappear really fast. And look for a blend of linen and cotton like our linenjersey, which is less prone to creasing than pure linen.
Q: Silk, cashmere, linen, leather… will we ever find a synthetic fibre on the racks at Luca Faloni?
A: The only area we’re exploring where we’d be forced to use synthetic fabrics is swimwear. We’ve tested linen swimwear, but it doesn’t dry as fast as synthetic material and it loses its colour faster in salty water. Likewise, if we ever wanted to launch technical clothing like sportswear or skiwear, we would need to be more openminded about it. But thankfully
Portrait:
SIMS WEAR
Billy Sims-Hilditch, co-founder of Sims Wear, on Mongolian cashmere, seamless knitting, and the art of washing a jumper
Interview: Ellie Costigan
the technology is improving year on year and those materials are becoming more eco-friendly over time. And, of course, it’s important to remember that the best thing you can do when it comes to fashion is consume as little as possible. So I work with that aim: we have a permanent collection, we don’t throw anything away, and the products last a long, long time.
Q: Of course, material is only half the story. Who do you entrust to turn those fabrics into clothes?
A: All our clothes are marked ‘Made in Italy’, and it’s important to say that they actually are made in Italy
– 100 per cent of the production chain happens there, which isn’t always the case. Our production is mostly done by small, family-run laboratories, while the materials are created at larger mills, all still in Italy. Over the years, most big brands have outsourced production to cheaper countries, and if you visit one of our laboratories you’ll see that the average age of the people working there is approaching 50 –which is worrying, because younger people don’t seem to want to do these jobs. We’re doing everything we can to preserve the knowledge and the craft, but perhaps in a few years’ time ‘Made in Italy’ clothes
will become more expensive, because there will be so much less supply.
Q: You don’t ever discount your clothes. What’s the philosophy behind that?
A: Unlike most brands, we don’t release new collections every year. That’s partly because we believe men are creatures of habit and will just buy the same pair of trousers each time they wear out. But also because we’d rather sell the same item, at the same price, to everyone. We don’t rip you off for a few months a year and then give you the same garment for half the price later on.
Left: Classic shirt (£245)
Above: Silk-cashmere knitted polo (£325) and lightweight pleated trousers (£225)
STYLE PHILOSOPHY
Buy once, buy well – that’s what I was brought up with. A few years ago, I spent quite a lot of money on a jumper, only for it to fall apart. I wanted to understand why that happened. I discovered the holy trinity of producing a quality cashmere jumper: the best raw fibre, the best yarn spinner and the best knitter. These are the pillars upon which Sims Wear was founded.
I’ve always loved Marylebone. The first time I came I thought, wow, so this is where you come to get nice clothes! It’s the hub of ready-to-wear menswear. From the beginning of Sims Wear, we needed to be in Marylebone.
The cashmere industry can be likened to the beef industry. at one end of the spectrum is high-welfare, pasture-fed Hereford beef; at the other are huge, South American factory farms. While cashmere isn’t produced at that scale, the way goats are raised informs the texture of their fleece. We use nomadic herds from Outer Mongolia: the gold standard.
The traditional way of knitting a jumper is in panels (a panel for each sleeve, a back panel and so on), linked together by hand. The other way to do it is called seamless knitting, which was historically associated with fast fashion,
When you go to a restaurant, the price is the same every day. Why would you charge different prices for the same thing?
Q: Take us back to your childhood in Turin. Were you always the most stylish kid in the playground?
A: When you grow up in Italy you don’t wear a school uniform, so you look around at how other people are dressed and become aware of other people’s style. I remember when I was in middle school some of the richer kids started turning up in Ralph Lauren, and we all started asking them: “Next time
but over the past 15 years has been adopted by some of the very best factories. It’s all interknitted as one, which means you don’t have any risk of it coming apart. Our knitters in Scotland use this method.
In a way, I think I benefitted from being so young when I started the business. I didn’t have any experience – if I had, I probably would’ve been put off! It’s very hard to get a foot in the door if you don’t know anyone within the industry. My ignorance meant I kept trying, despite the difficulty of finding people to make our jumpers.
My business partner Rory and I lived together at university. We get the best out of each other and have complementary skills: he’s very strategic and operations focused. He’s brought a good balance to the business.
Everything is made in the UK – shirts in Scotland and London, socks in Wales, t-shirts in Manchester. This is by no means a cost-effective method, but it’s a conscious decision to reduce our carbon footprint and keep the tradition of making in the UK alive. If it’s not nurtured, it will die.
It’s important to me that our jumpers last – and that they’re worn. If you don’t enjoy wearing it, the cost
per wear ends up being a lot higher. While our jumpers are expensive, the value of an item doesn’t always lie in the amount you’ve paid for it.
We have a free repair service for our jumpers and we’re going to start doing it for our shirts. It comes back to longevity. Knitwear has natural weak points – the elbows, for example. If the hole isn’t too big, you can darn or knit it so that the repair is barely noticeable. If the hole is bigger, we can put patches on it that’ll make it bulletproof.
Washing knitwear is seen as a bit of a dark art, but it doesn’t need to be. If it doesn’t have a mark or a stain, leave it outside to air out – this will get rid of any odours. It works particularly well with merino wool, which is naturally antimicrobial. If you do need to wash it, do a cold wash – maximum 20C – on a low spin cycle, no more than 800. Spinning can be just as bad as a hot wash for shrinkage. Squeeze out excess water, but don’t wring it, then lay it flat on a towel to air dry. You can roll it up in the towel and give it a bit of a squeeze, but otherwise just reshape it and dry it flat. It may take a while in winter, but it really is the only way!
SIMS WEAR
20 New Quebec Street, W1H 7RZ simswear.com
came across the direct-to-consumer model that was just starting to flourish. I saw these early brands beginning to sell online, and I thought it would be cool to do that with Italian craftsmanship. That’s how the brand was born.
Q: So you only discovered you were stylish when you left Italy and saw what the rest of us were wearing?
you go to the US, can you pick up an extra polo shirt…?” And in each neighbourhood there are artisans making shoes, shirts and so on, so you always know where to buy any item. Turin is in Piedmont, a region with a lot of textile producers, and we have a culture of wanting to buy something that’s good quality and get our money’s worth. But I never thought about it from a business perspective until after I came to London to study for my master’s. For the first few years I never bought clothes here; I would always buy them when I was back in Italy visiting my family. Ten years later I was working in San Francisco and I >
A: Not at all! British people are well aware of fashion, especially in London – there’s so much culture and heritage. However, it was difficult to find the style I wanted at the price point I wanted, and the quality I wanted, in London or
abroad. Some brands could provide the quality, but the price was insane because they were selling through third-party retailers who had to add their mark-ups. Part of our proposition was to make the quality available at a price that makes sense for customers to invest in, rather than targeting the one per cent.
Q: Marylebone was your first London store. What makes the area a perfect fit for the brand?
A: Some things happen a little bit by chance and intuition. We had a small pop-up on the King’s Road to try bricks-and-mortar retail, and it worked, then a permanent store became available on Marylebone High Street and I loved it immediately. It’s a beautiful building with an incredible facade. I knew the neighbourhood but had never lived or worked there, and I didn’t fully appreciate how special it is until we moved in. It’s amazing in terms of the retail offering, the places to eat, you’re close to the park – it’s a perfect place to take a lunch break.
Q: For an Italian, does it feel like a home from home?
A: Here, you have that neighbourhood feel but with much more ‘big city’ variety – there are the locals, the tourists, the people who have lived here forever and the people staying at Chiltern Firehouse for two nights. It’s a constant flow of people and it feels very international. In Turin, there’s a lot less tourism and you have the guy who sells meat or bread, handing down the business through the same family. In London, Marylebone is as close as it gets to that feeling.
Q: What’s your fashion nightmare?
A: I hate ties. I don’t understand what they’re for! It’s the one item I will never sell. I’ve already told everyone not to put one on me when I die.
Q: Who do you dream of dressing?
A: I’m really proud of the people
who already wear our products! The Prince of Wales is probably our most famous UK customer, and we have Formula 1 drivers, famous architects, Hollywood actors… but it’s not all about the celebrities. I often spend Saturdays working in the store, and all our customers are such interesting people. Professional, creative, self-made. That’s why we love Marylebone so much – it’s not stuffy or fake, it’s exactly like our brand. Premium but not pretentious.
LUCA FALONI
108 Marylebone High Street, W1U 4RU lucafaloni.com
Above and right: The Luca Faloni store on Marylebone High Street
RAINCOATS
Was there ever a saying as infuriating as, “there’s no such thing as bad weather, just bad clothing”? It’s a platitude that maddens both in its smugness, and its simplistic denial of the fact that two things can simultaneously be true. Of course, one can be badly dressed for storms and heavy rain – but that is still ‘bad weather’, unless you are a) indoors or b) a patch of parched arable land. Alas, we cannot help this centuries-old aphorism, but we can help with the clothing, with some of the finest raincoats Marylebone has to offer. Weather, do your worst.
FOUL WEATHER SMOCK
BRYCELAND’S & CO, £325 brycelandsco.co.uk
Some people really love the sailor look – and if that’s you, then Bryceland’s has your number. Not one to shy away from calling a spade a spade, the brand has created a foul weather smock that does exactly what it says on the label: fits lightly and practically over multiple layers and keeps foul weather away. Styled after the iconic WWII US Navy foul weather parka, it is breathable, packable, has large kangaroo pockets and comes in a yellow bright enough to cheer even a dreich, damp autumnal day.
CARAMEL VENTILE COTTON DOWN JACKET
SIRPLUS, £695
sirplus.co.uk
Rain, wind, snow, sleet – the weather gods could throw the book at you and you’d be oblivious, clad in this jacket. It’s crafted from Ventile – an innovative material made by spinning high-quality organic cotton fibres into a uniformed yarn that’s 100 per cent windproof and water repellent. The warmth comes from RDScertified duck down, which provides insulation without excess bulk. Breathable, durable, and provides the reassurance of feeling in control of your own climate, if not the climate at large.
COTTON BONDED HOODED MAC SUNSPEL, £745 sunspel.com
Don’t be fooled by the brand name; Sunspel doesn’t just cater for sunshine. Nor – as anyone who has ever spent a bit of time in Milan can attest – does Italy, home of the lightweight cotton from which Sunspel’s hooded mac is made. Deep, double-entry pockets promise to protect your valuables from the elements, while the clean, modern cut is less sailor, more man about town – a level of stylishness that isn’t always guaranteed when it comes to genuinely effective waterproof clothing. 3.
FUN TIMES
Belma Gaudio, founder and creative director of KOIBIRD, on a fun, easy autumn look
I love this brand, Generation 78, which is exclusive to Koibird. Inspired by the audacious spirit of the 1970s, when gender-neutral silhouettes were the norm, the collection pays tribute to the past while adapting to modern-day wear. As the brand explains, they “thrive on a platform of eclectic fluidity transcending limitation of gender norms. Dress codes transform into a canvas for soul’s expressions.” That really resonated with us – we look for brands that have a good story and a fresh take on fashion. Each piece represents endless mix and match opportunities, creating an eclectic wardrobe that tells a story of empowerment and individuality.
I’m all about comfy day-to-day wear that remains fashionable, and Generation 78 is perfect for that. This outfit in particular will put a little spring in your step, any time you want. Embellished jeans with colourful jumpers – it doesn’t get much more fun and easy! It will be my staple this autumn, at work, on school runs, lunches and walks with the girls, and any time I want to feel cute and comfortable.
The trend for colour, embellishment and fun elements has been here a while and will stay. It’s just as relevant now as it is for the sunnier months. This time, it’s in thicker fabrics and materials – things like jumpers and jeans, with a good dose of fun. We want to dress how we want to feel, and manifesting happiness not just through words but also through clothing. This collection brings happiness, eclecticism and boundless possibilities to our everyday wardrobes.
KOIBIRD
62 Marylebone Lane, W1U 2PB koibird.com
FARM Rio
FARM Rio has nothing to do with farming and absolutely everything to do with Rio. The brand, which was founded in Rio de Janeiro in 1997 by two friends, Kátia Barros and Marcello Bastos, started with a small booth in an independent market and went on to become one of Brazil’s best-loved contemporary womenswear labels, reflecting the energy, diversity and colour of its home city. Over the past five years, those joyful colours and patterns have found an international audience, with a handful of stores opening around the world. FARM Rio’s latest boutique arrives on the high street this autumn, bringing with it a strong commitment to people and the planet and adding to Marylebone’s growing list of B Corp companies.
FARM RIO
26 Marylebone High Street, W1U 4PQ farmrio.uk
NEW ARRIVAL
THE DIVA SUNGLASSES BLOOBLOOM, FROM £99 bloobloom.com
DOROTHEA TOP JOVONNA LONDON, £50 jovonnalondon.com
WOMEN’S FAST AND FREE PONYTAIL RUNNING HAT LULULEMON, £35 lululemon.co.uk
ALL DAY CROSSBODY SWEATY BETTY, £45 sweatybetty.com
WOMEN’S TREE DASHER 2 ALLBIRDS, £125 allbirds.co.uk
AWARD WINNING CLINIC
Smart Dental & Aesthetics Marylebone
On offer is an amazing range of services for adults and children including general dentistry, hygienist services, cosmetic dentistry, composite bonding, veneers, implants, orthodontics, invisalign, dermal fillers & anti-wrinkle treatment.
Dr. Shaadi Manouchehri
CLINIC FOUNDER
Our clinical director, Dr. Shaadi Manouchehri, has dedicated her career to creating beautiful and healthy transformations for her clients. With her exceptional skills, passion for aesthetics and commitment to excellence, Dr. Manouchehri has become a trusted name in the field of cosmetic dentistry and facial aesthetics.
Implants
Veneers
Invisalign
Dermal fillers
Hollywood facial Anti wrinkle injections
To find out more, visit our website and book a consultation today and take the first step towards achieving that dream smile. We look forward to welcoming you to our modern state of the art dental and aesthetics clinic in the heart of Marylebone.
+44
ANATOMY OF A DESIGN
KOJIMA WORK JACKET
Jake Hobson, founder of Niwaki, on a gardening accessory that represents much more than an elegant piece of design
Interview: Viel Richardson
Requirement
When we were thinking about introducing some garden workwear to the Niwaki range, I thought that a chore jacket was a good place to start. Having lived and studied in Japan, I love the country and its culture, and with ‘Great stuff from Japan’ being Niwaki’s core brand identity, I wanted something underpinned by the utilitarian simplicity of the Japanese aesthetic. I wanted the jacket to have a relatively short body
Inspiration
Traditional Japanese garden wear often has a wrap-over style. Rather than being fastened by buttons or a zip at the front, one side wraps around your torso and is tied with a cord on the side. This dates back to the Japanese monks who would wear this style of clothing for their chores around the temple. Some Japanese gardeners, particularly those working in heritage gardens that are preserving these historic traditions, still wear that style of robe today and I just think they look amazing – really cool. But we were aware that this might not appeal to a Western audience more used to our traditional styles of fastening. We ended up looking for something that would combine the best of both worlds: a functionality that would appeal to European buyers while keeping that looseness characteristic of the traditional Japanese jackets.
Process
so you could reach a tool belt worn around your waist – it’s not an overcoat or waterproof jacket trying to keep your bum dry. I also wanted big, easy-to-access pockets: no zips, no Velcro fastenings, large enough to hold some kit and easily accessible even when wearing gloves. Finally, everything had to be properly hard-wearing. This is a lovely jacket and not everyone will wear it for garden work, but if you choose to do so, it needs to be up to the task.
I’m not a clothes designer, but I do like to draw and imagine. With regular trips to Japan and time spent looking at designs from the web, ideas began to coalesce in my mind about how I wanted the jacket to look. When I’d taken my sketches as far as I could, my business partner Will introduced me to a Japanese friend in London, and she translated my drawings and ideas into a usable pattern. We then had two or three mockups made using denim bought from a market in London. The development of the fine details went through a very organic process. A lot of it was about what felt right. When we felt we were ready to get the jacket made, we had no clothing contacts in Japan at the time, so we actually produced it in Turkey. That was just a great solution at the time. The first batch was excellent, but there was a major issue with the second, and around the same time someone recommended a denim company in Japan. Having met, we decided to go
with them and they’ve been making the jacket ever since.
Materials
We always knew that we wanted to make it in denim –for the colour and the look as well as the properties of the material. The jacket is made from a 12oz indigo selvedge denim with 2 per cent stretch. It’s produced in a small town called Kojima in Okayama Prefecture, using indigo-dyed denim from nearby Kurashiki. This is the centre of denim production in Japan, where small family factories pool their skills, each specialising in the separate elements required to make the very highest-quality fabric. The company really helped us with the detailed specifications for the material. Because they know denim intimately well, they understand the advantages and disadvantages of different specs. For example, it was they who suggested building a little bit of extra stretch into the fabric, as that would help a lot with movement and comfort. A lot of the changes both here and in the design stage were made for practical reasons, not aesthetic reasons. The final jacket actually looks very close to my original rough sketches.
Philosophy
Simple material, simple design, truth to materials and well made. If you start with a clean, simple idea with a degree of subtlety and style, the design you end up with is something a bit more than a nice garment or a pretty object. We design with a firm belief in what we think is good and works well. We find the right material and make it as well as we possibly can. That applies to everything we make. It imbues this garment with a sense of who we are. My hope is that when you slip it on you experience the heart of the brand and the history that sits behind it.
NIWAKI
38 Chiltern Street, W1U 7QL niwaki.com
THE EDIT BABY SLEEP AIDS
CHARLIE CRANE X JACADI KUKO BASSINET WOODEN STAND JACADI, £145 jacadi.co.uk
SLEEPING BAG PETIT BATEAU, £79 petit-bateau.co.uk
ORGANIC COTTON WOODLAND EMBROIDERED SLEEPSUIT THE WHITE COMPANY, £26 thewhitecompany.com
PURE WOOL BABY BLANKET BRORA, £45 broraonline.com
REWILD THE WORLD AT BEDTIME BY EMILY HAWKINS DAUNT BOOKS, £14.99 dauntbooks.co.uk
CERISE NIGHT LIGHT BONPOINT, £185 uk.bonpoint.com
BRIGHT SPARKS
Swapnil Gadgil, nonclinical director of Harley Street Physiotherapy, on innovation, assistive technology and the challenge of creating meaningful change from cutting-edge research
Interview: Viel Richardson
Q: Before Harley Street Physiotherapy you ran a company called Therapy Box. What was the idea behind it?
A: My partner Rebecca Bright is a speech and language therapist and as part of her work she’d gathered a very useful range of speech therapy resources. It was a lot of effort and she thought there must be hundreds of practitioners out there who would need the same range of materials. She looked to see if they were being gathered, curated and sold as a package but she couldn’t find anyone doing that. So, we decided to gather a selection of these resources and sell them in pre-packaged boxes, hence the name, Therapy Box.
Q: Your breakthrough came with an app called Predictable. What does it do?
A: Predictable is a text-to-speech app. It’s designed to help people communicate. In particular, it assists people who have good cognitive ability but don’t have the physical ability to speak. A good example would be Stephen Hawking. He was a wheelchair user who had a communication aid in the form of a computer attached to his wheelchair. That is the type of user we have tended to help –
those with motor neurone disease, cerebral palsy, multiple sclerosis, people whose physical challenges are limiting or, in some cases, completely removing their ability to communicate verbally.
Q: Your website uses the term ‘assistive technology’. What does that mean?
A: Assistive technology refers to any device, software or equipment designed to help individuals with disabilities to perform tasks they would otherwise find difficult or impossible. There are lots of very familiar examples all around us. A hearing aid is a good example, spectacles another, as are wheelchairs, and so on. But in our context, the term refers to communication aids.
Q: You take a very innovative approach to what you do. What sparked that philosophy?
A: Rebecca was working with a non-verbal 19-year-old resident in an assisted care home who was using the SMS message function of an old Nokia phone to communicate. Rebecca thought she could do with a professional communication aid, so bought the girl a standard professional device. It looked like an old-fashioned typewriter, and after one look the girl wrote a very colourful ‘not interested’ message and showed it to Rebecca. In her mind she was not disabled and Rebecca’s device shouted to the whole world that she was. The healthcare system was doing the opposite of what this patient wanted. She didn’t want to announce to everybody that she has a problem. That’s when Rebecca and I started thinking about solutions from her perspective. That was when we realised that we needed to be really innovative in our thinking.
Q: What was the result of that encounter?
A: We found an app that we thought was promising and showed
it at a med-tech convention using an iPod Touch. Most of the speech therapists recognised it as their kids’ music device, and thought it wouldn’t work at first, but some were convinced and asked what it cost. The devices available at the time cost about £6,000 and when we told them that this device cost £550 that really piqued people’s interest and some orders started coming in. We still had our day jobs so people would leave us orders over the phone and on Saturdays we would take them to the Post Office to send them out.
Q: I believe this won you awards for innovation.
A: We were awarded the Queen’s Award for Enterprise: Innovation in both 2014 and 2019. The 2019 award citation referenced the 2014 award and said that the company had shown a high level of ongoing innovation, which had a very positive impact on the app’s users. It was hugely gratifying to be recognised in this way as it highlighted the hard work and ingenuity the teams brought and continue to bring to their work every day. It is that kind of thinking that we now want to bring to the world of physiotherapy.
Q: What drew you to Harley Street Physiotherapy?
A: I broke my clavicle while riding my bike on a cold January morning in 2022. The orthopaedic surgeon said I was lucky and the type of break meant that it should heal with just physiotherapy. Working with my physiotherapists I was back on my bike in about six months. That was my first contact with physiotherapy and it piqued my interest in that world. At about the same time, Rebecca and I were also looking for a new challenge. We wanted to take on something a bit more clinical but which would allow us to use our experience from a research and technology perspective. Looking >
“Innovation has to lead to something meaningful. If a new product, procedure or protocol does not allow you to make a meaningful improvement to the lives of the people you’re serving, then no matter how interesting it may be, it does not count as innovative.”
A: The first thing to make very clear is that Rebecca and I hold non-clinical roles. We have highly trained, experienced staff who will continue to work with the patients. We see our role as helping create an environment that enables our staff to do their best work. That means first really getting to understand how the place operates. From the time we acquired the practice, I answered phones, checked emails, sat at reception. I spent three to four months trying to understand the mechanics of the clinic and what our clients are asking of us. It has been a real learning curve.
staff, they all have their duties, but whatever they do needs to feed into creating the highest-quality customer experience.
Q: You’re always looking to innovate. What does innovation mean to you?
around, we saw that there was a lot of research going on in the world of physiotherapy and thought there might be an opportunity there, especially with the rise of health wearables and other devices. We started looking at practices, with a clear idea of the kind of clinic we were looking for. We wanted somewhere with the highest standards, offering the highest quality of clinicians and an openness to research. And there is really only one area that offers all of those things, and that’s the Harley Street Medical Area.
Q: Why this particular clinic?
A: Harley Street Physiotherapy was the first private physiotherapy practice in Harley Street, having been set up in 1987. It was founded by Lizzie Buchanan and Pippa Warrell. Having been a forwardlooking clinic for decades, this seemed like a perfect fit for us. Lizzie and Pippa are still very much involved with the clinic on a daily basis, and I think one of the major factors in our decision was the fact that they were happy for us to acquire the practice. Knowing we had not only their support but also access to their real depth of experience was a huge plus point.
Q: What role do you see yourselves playing in the clinic?
Q: What were you trying to understand?
A: I wanted to get a feel for every touch point and interaction between our team and our clients. What are they interacting with us for? What makes a session enjoyable? Physiotherapists sometimes have to really push patients, so how can this be done while maintaining a positive attitude and outlook? What breaks a session and has them feeling it didn’t go well? I was developing my instincts about the whole physiotherapy experience from both perspectives.
Q: Why was that so important?
A: I feel that building the team culture is one of the most important things we can do. In my career, sometimes I haven’t got that right, and I know how corrosive it can be if negativity sets in. Here, we prioritised nurturing a positive, customer-focussed, staff-friendly culture right from the beginning. The thing about the Harley Street district is that it attracts a very discerning client. They expect the highest standards. I think that was one thing that I learned very early on, and we put things in place to ensure that continues. From specialists who look after the accounting and bookkeeping to our reception staff and marketing
A: It means disrupting the status quo to solve a problem more efficiently, and we want to do that to improve productivity. It’s about finding ways to do more with what you have without sacrificing quality. That way you’re able to help more people. I also feel innovation has to lead to something meaningful. If a new product, procedure or protocol does not allow you to make a meaningful improvement to the lives of the people you’re serving, then in my eyes no matter how interesting it may be, it does not count as innovative.
Q: What does that look like from a Harley Street Physiotherapy perspective?
A: The most important thing is that it translates into improved quality of service. The driver for innovation is to help individuals improve their quality of life. In the case of the Predictable software, that came by giving people the ability to communicate better. At the moment, we’re working on a project with Sheffield University to help screen for the risk of Alzheimer’s and stroke, creating an early warning system that allows clinicians to take corrective action or slow down the progression of conditions like these. Here at Harley Street Physiotherapy, our focus is partly on finding better ways to do things we’re already doing. But the really exciting challenge is the innovations that we haven’t thought of yet, the innovations that will in the future transform the experiences of our patients and staff for the better.
HARLEY STREET PHYSIOTHERAPY
25 Wimpole Street, W1G 8GL
harleystreetphysiotherapy.co.uk
Meet your personal Men’s Health experts
At King Edward VII’s Hospital, we know there’s more to healthcare than just the treatment. From the first time you call us, to your discharge back home and beyond, our aim is to make every patient feel like the only patient.
If you’re experiencing symptoms of prostate cancer or an enlarged prostate, we’re here for you every step of the way. From ground-breaking cancer treatments with minimal side effects, to ongoing one to one support, our urology team are here to help you get back to living the life you want.
A stunning two bedroom duplex apartment just minutes from Regents Park with underground parking and porter.
020 7486 6711
sales@mcglashans.co.uk
lettings@mcglashans.co.uk
CHILTERN STREET, MARYLEBONE W1U
£1,600,000 STC
A delightful, completely refurbished in a contemporary style flat. Living/dining room, kitchen, 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms (1 en suite), EPC – C, Leasehold – expires September 2145.
If you are thinking of Selling or Renting your home, please call us for a Free Valuation.
HARLEY STREET, MARYLEBONE VILLAGE, LONDON W1G
A unique long-leasehold building for sale, sold with vacant possession. The building is arranged over lower ground, ground and four upper floors. The medical accommodation is located on the lower ground, ground and first floors with a residential apartment on the second, third and fourth floor. The building benefits from a passenger lift serving ground floor to lower ground floor only.
Situated in the heart of Marylebone Village, on the west side of Harley Street and conveniently located moments from Marylebone High Street, together with the open spaces of Regent’s Park.
Leasehold
£6,000,000
NEW CAVENDISH STREET, MARYLEBONE VILLAGE, LONDON W1G
We are delighted to bring to the market this spacious one bed apartment in the heart of Marylebone Village. The apartment is approximately 720 sq ft (66.9 sq m), located on the third floor and served by a passenger lift. The property comprises of entrance hall, reception room, bedroom, double bathroom and cloakroom. The building benefits from a day porter.
Kingsley Lodge is located moments from Marylebone High Street, moments away from Bond Street and Oxford Circus underground stations. The A40/M40 are within close proximity and the open spaces of Regent’s Park are also nearby.
Furnished
£975 PER WEEK
A contemporary three-bedroom, three-bathroom mews house located moments away from Marylebone High Street.
3 bedrooms • 3 bathrooms • Garage • Approx 2,328 sq ft • Patio & balcony Clay Street London W1U Mayfair & St James’s 020 7493 0676 mayfair@carterjonas.co.uk Guide price £4,000,000
