Portfolio | September 2017

ISSUE

141

CRYPTO GROWTH

DOLCE & GABBANA

Do cryptocurrencies have a future?

The rise and rise of the Italian fashion duo

FRANKFURT FIRST

AFTER THE PODS

Can it win the Brexit battle?

Can Nespresso find new ways to profit?

SWISS WATCHES How the Swiss watch industry turned into a billion dollar business and the challenges it still faces

Our quest for perfection.

Senator Excellence

Beijing · Dresden · Dubai · Geneva · Hong Kong · Macau · Madrid Nanjing · Paris · Shanghai · Shenyang · Singapore · Tokyo · Vienna

SEPTEMBER ISSUE 141

The business of life & living

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SEPTEMBER ISSUE 141

CONTENTS UPFRONT

18

PARIS PROPERTY

Why the high-end market has bounced back

LIVING

74

HOTEL

22

HEADY BREW

How the capsule coffee industry is changing

28

LINKEDIN

After the Microsoft takeover, how has the networking site fared?

An epitome of Asian city cool in Tokyo

80

WHAT TO PACK

From Istanbul to Chicago, we’ve got you covered

84

FOOD & DRINK

40

The chef changing Italian cuisine

The Black Swan author’s fascinating follow-up

88

ANTIFRAGILE

EXHIBITION

The Toronto Film Festival kicks off

90

COLUMN

Jason Schreier on the video game industry

15

37,415 copies July - December 2016

SEPTEMBER ISSUE 141

CONTENTS FEATURES

42

SWISS WATCHMAKERS

How the world’s best watchmakers built their brand and survived the rise of Quartz

50

INTERIOR DECORATORS

We meet the interior decorators the 1% use to create their stunning homes around the world

56

CRYPTOCURRENCIES

Find out why digital currencies are emerging into the mainstream

62

DOLCE & GABANNA

The Italian design duo have stayed on top for more than 30 years. We examine how they did it

68

FRANKFURT RISING

Frankfurt is leading the charge in the race to win London’s post-Brexit business

16

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UPFRONT

18

SEPTEMBER / PROPERTY

ISSUE 141

Paris rising Charlie Mitchell explores the booming high-end property market in the French capital

A

lready bruised by the 2007 financial crisis, the Parisian highend property market was dealt a blow by the election of Francois Hollande in 2012, sparking a sluggish four years for real estate in the French capital.

“Hollande – in true socialist French fashion – sharpened his knife and pointed it at those with money,” said Roddy Aris, associate partner at Knight Frank. The market cooled as investors and locals fled Paris for more fertile ground in London and Brussels.

Prices dipped by around 11 per cent over four years and scores of picturesque Haussman-era apartments worth more than $2 million sat vacant on the market.

Today’s picture is in stark contrast to that. With a fresh, pro-business president, historically-low interest rates and a bruised UK market, confidence in Parisian property is running high. And as locals and foreigners rush to buy, the market shows no sign of waning.

The residential market has seen prices increase by seven per cent over the past 12 months, according to Savills, which puts Paris behind just London and New York on its world city ranking. Prices in

the exclusive 1st, 4th and 5th arrondissements (districts) have already exceeded their 2012 peak, while volume looks equally healthy.

“The volume of transactions is 25 per cent higher today than four years ago,” says Sebastien de Lafond, co-founder of Meilleurs Agents, a real estate intelligence website. Indeed the Chambre de Notaires – which handles property deals – chronicled a recordbreaking 10,000 transactions in Paris during the first quarter of 2017. This phenomenon is replicated across France, with apartment prices swelling in smaller cities like Bordeaux and Nancy.

“The perception of the French market is changing dramatically,” said De Lafond.

Demand is particularly high for Hausmannian apartments in the glamorous single-digit arrondissements, especially the 6th, 7th and 8th. “These are just electric right now. Some properties don’t make it to the open market, such is the demand,” said Aris. Many agents have seen a spike in high-value transactions.

“A 315sqm apartment in St-Germain-des-Pres, which needed renovation, recently sold for €35,000/sqm, and sold very fast,” said Caroline Guerrier,

19

UPFRONT

“The Macron election win was a gulp of oxygen for a country that needed it.

It transferred into the economy”

20

director at Agence Varenne, a luxury left-bank agency. Average prices across the city are on track to reach their highest level in years. The July 2017 average of €8,800/sqm exceeded the previous 2012 peak of €8,462.

Elevated demand reflects the growing optimism in the French economy following the election of centrist president Emmanuel Macron in May 2017. The taxes imposed by his predecessor, Francois Hollande – including a supertax on French earnings above €1m – provoked a wealth exodus.

Now, locals and foreign investors are returning. “It was a gulp of oxygen for a country that needed it. It transferred into the economy and into French real estate,” said Aris. The renewed optimism is reflected in recent prime property transactions. “Under Hollande, very high profile sales dried up; now they are coming back,” said Guerrier. “Macron’s election led to an optimistic trend. To many people, he is a saviour.”

Nevertheless, the market’s recovery began in 2016 – before Macron’s victory – following four years of price decreases.

“Macron arrived in a lively market and immediately increased its attractiveness,” said De Lafond.

Currently interest rates are historically low, ranging from 1.2

per cent over 15 years, to a fixed rate of 1.65 per cent over 25 years.

Buoyed by cheap mortgages, many local buyers took the plunge.

Moreover, the UK’s decision to leave the European Union in June 2016 took the shine off London, Paris’ main rival. “Foreigners investing a lot on the London market diversified their investment portfolios and looked to Germany, Spain and, of course, France,” said Nicolas Verdillon, director of capital markets at CBRE. Many French families resident in the UK returned to France to purchase property in the rejuvenated market

1.2%

Interest rate on a 15-year mortgage in Paris

while prices remained competitive.

The Parisian market is largely driven by domestic demand, with international buyers representing nine per cent of prime sales in 2016, according to Savills.

Traditionally appetite has been most hearty among European and US buyers. But with London in bad shape, Middle Eastern investors – who have largely favoured the UK since 2010 – are returning to the French capital, said Khaled Chatila, associate director of crossborder investment at Savills. “Middle Eastern investors believe in the realty asset,

SEPTEMBER

because it brings less risk. When they invest in property, it’s like investing in a stone,” said Chalita.

The central single-digit arrondissements – encompassing Saint-Germain-des-Prés, ChampsÉlysées, Le Marais and the two central Seine islands of Cité and Saint-Louis – are most popular with foreign investors, particularly those from the UK and US. Time-honoured Haussmannian properties in these districts are seen as a safe investment, while large serviced modern buildings – generally favoured in other global cities by international HNWIs –

are exceedingly rare in Paris.

French families tend to prize large family apartments or houses in the 16th arrondissement. In recent years, Middle Eastern investors have also coveted the district, particularly the broad, leafy thoroughfare, Avenue Foche, and the streets that feed it. Properties are larger, more luxurious, and more competitively priced than the central arrondissements. “In Paris, the value lies in aspirational, beautiful, Haussmannian apartments in the 16th,” said Aris.

Although the perception of France as a high-tax location has

chilled the prime property market in recent years, taxes and fees are largely consistent with elsewhere.

While Hong Kong, Singapore and Vancouver squeeze an additional 15 per cent stamp duty out of international buyers, France does not. In Paris, a buyer will generally pay around seven per cent of the purchase price on additional costs, such as notary and stamp duty, according to Aris. In addition, the ISF, or ‘wealth tax’, is levied on assets in France worth over €1.3 million, and ranges from 0.5 to 1.5 per cent, depending on the value of the asset. While Macron is not changing the law, industry insiders feel that he wants to make things smoother. Nevertheless, a rent cap – currently sitting at 20 per cent above the median rental price – and a remarkably strong Euro, could deter some would-be investors.

The commercial realty market is also booming, with a €25 billion average sales volume each year since 2014, according to Verdillon.

Roughly 80 per cent of that volume is in Paris, where transactions are increasingly global. “Korean money has arrived in Paris,” said Verdillon, who has also noticed greater interest from Malaysian, Singaporean, Japanese and Middle Eastern investors. CBRE have also seen an acceleration in the last 12 months in the retail market, as well as in alternative investments, such as elderly homes and student houses. “We anticipate the same level of volume invested in France this year as in 2016 and 2015,” said Verdillon.

Market observers are confident that the current boon will continue into 2018. “The market is growing, demand is high, but the growth is tempered. It is not a bubble,” said Guerrier. At a time of instability elsewhere, Paris is challenging its rivals. “In terms of global portfolio, it has always been New York and London. Now Paris is up there,” said Aris.

ISSUE 141

CELEBRITIES, TECH MOGULS, DRIVE UP NEW YORK PRICES The New York Post is claiming that celebrity purchases are driving up the price of New York real estate. A study has revealed that “A-listers help boost prices by 127 per cent, B-listers by 67 per cent and C-listers by 43 per cent”. The report also puts the blame on tech millionaires, including Facebook co-founder Sean Parker, who recently bought three town houses in Manhattan. With Manhattan prices already at record highs, investors will be forgiven for hoping Hollywood’s finest look elsewhere for their property.

/ PROPERTY

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SEPTEMBER ISSUE 141

22

UPFRONT / COFFEE

SEPTEMBER UPFRONT / COFFEE

ISSUE 141

Captive market Nespresso is innovating as it aims to keep leading the coffee capsule market. James Brennan examines an industry worth nearly $6 billion

P

ick up a pod, pop it in the machine, press the button and bingo – there’s a cup of fresh, hot espresso as good as you’ll find at most chain coffee shops. For millions of people around the world, grabbing their morning caffeine boost couldn’t be simpler. But for the innovators behind the ubiquitous single-serve coffee capsule, life is getting a little more complicated.

Nespresso has become a byword for fast, convenient and surprisingly decent homemade coffee. But since a number of patents protecting the original invention have expired, parent company Nestlé has faced stiff competition from rivals whose Nespresso-compatible pods are cheaper and more widely available.

In a bid to claw back some of its market share, the Swiss-owned company is allowing its coffee pods to be sold outside its own retail outlets for the first time.

Where once it was only possible to restock at Nespresso’s online or physical boutique stores, Nestlé has begun installing ‘N-Point’ terminals dispensing their pods in third party outlets such as German electronics specialists Saturn and MediaMarkt, and the department store Galeria Kaufhof. In a market worth nearly $6 billion, Nestlé now sells a third of all coffee capsules, compared to 50 per cent a decade ago. This fresh initiative is the latest chapter in a story that began with a marital tiff between a Swiss rocket engineer and his Italian wife.

Eric Favre joined Nestlé’s packaging department in the mid1970s. His initial goal was to learn the ropes at a large corporation before his next career step, but a disagreement with his wife AnnaMaria stopped him in his tracks.

She told him his home nation had no idea how to make coffee, and he wasn’t going to stand for that.

“I wanted to prove to my new wife that I have the capacity to make the best espresso,” he told journalists at a tour of the Nespresso museum in Saint-Barthélemy, Switzerland.

The challenge took Mr and Mrs Favre on a tour of the coffeehouses of Rome, in search of the perfect espresso. Together they hit upon a brew at Café Sant Eustacio, where the barista, a Mr Eugenio, made exceptional coffee with crema by pumping the espresso machine’s piston not once, but two or three times. Favre deduced that the key to great coffee was getting as much air as possible into the water before it came into contact with the coffee.

By oxidising the essential oils in the coffee, it became possible to extract intense flavours. The tiny bubbles in espresso burst on the tongue, stimulating the taste buds.

“I didn’t invent a capsule, I invented a formula,” said Favre.

From there he began to investigate ways of concentrating ground coffee in an enclosed cell, through which aerated water could pass in and out, resulting in the perfect shot of espresso. He came up with something resembling the

12,300 Number of Nespresso coffees drunk every minute, according to a 2011 report

familiar hat-shaped pod with a filter at the flat end. And in 1976, the first patent of the original singleswerving coffee capsule was granted.

Nestlé’s early relationship with the coffee capsule was an uneasy one. Favre encountered resistance to his invention from those within the company who had thrown their weight behind Nescafé instant coffee, which was a big hit with home coffee drinkers at the time.

Nestle finally embraced the new home coffee system, launching Nespresso in 1986, but the road to world domination proved rocky, and Favre left the company in 1991.

The company Favre set up to perfect his invention, Monodor, went on to produce capsules for Italian coffee giants Lavazza.

One of the innovations involved removing the aluminium filter in the capsule, which had led to so much waste. Only small volumes of the single-use capsules were being recycled, contributing to a large and unnecessary amount of a valuable energy-intensive resource ending up in landfill sites.

Even with refinements in design, environmental pressure groups continue to oppose the use of plastic and aluminium coffee capsules, leading to authorities in Hamburg banning them from all council premises last year.

The environmental backlash threatens the entire sector, but Nestlé appears to have caught most of the flak. Having George Clooney as the ‘face’ of your

23

SEPTEMBER ISSUE 141

UPFRONT / COFFEE

Nespresso has not had a smooth journey since the expiration of its patents

24

product might be great for raising your profile, but that increased visibility makes you a target when things aren’t so rosy. Nestlé insisted that there were recycling systems in 31 countries, but declined to say how many of its capsules were recycled. “Aluminium… has the unique advantage of being infinitely recyclable and eliminates the need for any additional packaging or overwrap to protect freshness,” said a spokeswoman for the brand.

When it comes to sourcing coffee sustainably, Nestlé does better than most. Recent investment in places like South Sudan is helping to bring peace to a region riven by war, and greater prosperity to families who can produce coffee on small patches of land. Nespresso’s global AAA Sustainable Quality programme was launched in 2003 with the Rainforest Alliance, and fosters long-term relationships and sustainable practices among farming communities. Most importantly, farmers can expect to be paid between 30 and 40

per cent more than the standard market price for their coffee.

Since around 1,700 of its patents expired, Nespresso’s journey back to market domination has been less smooth than a hot cup of its own espresso. In 2014, an agreement reached with competition regulators in France enabled competitors to make their own capsules.

Among the brands that took up production of Nespresso-compatible pods are Jacobs Douwe Egberts, Starbucks and Ethical Coffee Co. In response, Nespresso’s ‘N-Points’ are being installed in 27 locations in Germany, with plans for a further 40 in the future. But Nespresso’s fightback doesn’t stop there.

It recently launched a subscription service that allows coffee lovers to buy a regular supply of capsules with the added bonus of a Nespresso coffee machine practically thrown in for free. In the UK, $23 a month can bag subscribers 50 coffee capsules and a Nespresso Essenza Mini coffee machine worth around $116 up front, all for a year-long total outlay

A Nespresso shop in Manchester

$23

Monthly cost of Nespresso subscription service

1,700 Number of Nespresso patents to have expired

of $282. There are a further two options with increased monthly payments, offering more capsules and a better machine. According to Which magazine, they represent a good deal, with subscribers getting all their money’s worth in capsules, and machines that cost only $1.30.

With new machines being released for 2017, it’s clear Nespresso is going full steam ahead in the capsule market. But one capsule maker that challenged Nespresso’s dominance has announced plans to withdraw from the market.

The Swiss-owned Ethical Coffee Company has branded capsule coffee a “losing” format. Founder Jean-Paul Gaillard told the AFP news agency: “We’re leaving the Nespresso format market, which is totally outdated, where nobody makes money any more. Even Nestlé is on the way to lose money.”

Nestlé spokeswoman Katherine Graham rebutted the claim, saying: “The portioned coffee market is a dynamic and growing category and we are delivering solid, profitable growth year on year.”

ECC aims to continue making around 10 to 15 million biodegradable capsules for its most loyal customers, but will concentrate on creating the next generation of environmentally friendly capsules, which Gaillard thinks will “do to the coffee market what the iPhone did to the mobile phone market”. The coffee capsule wars might only just be hotting up.

STARBUCKS A VICTIM OF ITS OWN SUCCESS? A recent report by BMO Capital Markets has said Starbucks has opened so many American outlets that it is losing sales competing with itself. On average, for every one Starbucks location in the US, there are now about four others within a one-mile radius. This year, more than 62 per cent of Starbucks in the US compete with at least one other Starbucks. BMO downgraded its vide of Starbucks stock on the back of the report. Whether it will harm Starbucks share price remains to be seen.

UPFRONT

5 Bedrooms

2 Full baths

4 Bedrooms

3 Full baths

Pool

Wine cellar / grotto

Staff quarters

Movie theatre

Four-car garage

Elevator

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SEPTEMBER / PROPERTY

ISSUE 141

Ipanema style This Oscar Niemeyer designed building offers spectacular views of Ipanema

S

Images: Ricardo Perri

ituated in a notable building designed

by Oscar Niemeyer, this 1,523 square metre penthouse has a breathtaking view of Ipanema beach. It features a minimal, elegant layout, with sophisticated finishes including Ornare cupboards and Clamom woodwork. The first floor features an entrance hall, living and dining rooms, a breakfast room, TV room, a wine cellar, two kitchens (one gourmet), a BBQ area and a huge external terrace, which has its own access.

The second floor has five en-suite bedrooms, while the master bedroom has two walk-in wardrobes, two bathrooms and a spectacular ocean view. There’s also a sauna, a massage room, a Jacuzzi and an outdoor swimming pool. The third level consists of an employee area that includes five bedrooms, two bathrooms and a living room. There’s a 24-hour concierge service and four parking spaces on the ground floor. Ipanema is one of Rio’s most upscale neighbourhoods, with a glut of world-class bars, restaurants and boutiques within walking distance.

Not that you’ll ever want to leave home.

Brazil

PRICE POA

christiesrealestate.com

27

UPFRONT

The network effect Linkedin is 15 years old this year. Lauren Razavi examines why Microsoft bought it, and how it can remain relevant in the coming years

W

28

hen LinkedIn was founded in late 2002, the internet was still in its infancy. The dotcom boom and bust had shaken belief in digital innovation, but the business world still hungered for new ways to connect and network. Founded

by Reid Hoffman and a group of his former colleagues from SocialNet and Paypal, the new social media platform aimed to create a universal database where entrepreneurs and business people of all stripes could get together and carve out opportunities.

Reimagining professional recruitment and networking was no small task, but as LinkedIn prepares to celebrate its 15th birthday this December, the social media giant can reflect on how it became the world’s go-to platform for business interactions. The platform now boasts members in more than 200 countries and territories and has revolutionised every job market it has entered.

Today, members of the site can peruse and pursue 10 million active jobs posted by more than nine million companies, but the

path to success wasn’t always easy for LinkedIn. Initially, it was hard for executives to see a viable business model and it took three years for the company to achieve profitability. But when the British royal family’s household recruits staff using your platform, you know you’ve made a splash.

In 2011, LinkedIn was floated on the New York Stock Exchange as a publicly traded company at a total value of $4.25 billion. Within half a decade, Microsoft made LinkedIn the highest-value acquisition in their history, purchasing LinkedIn for $26 billion – a figure that eclipsed the $8.5 billion it paid for Skype in 2014. This valued the 106 million active user profiles at $247 apiece.

The investment appeared shrewd when the value of LinkedIn stock jumped 47 per cent in the wake of the deal’s announcement, a boost the company sorely needed.

Shortly before Microsoft’s takeover, the confidence of LinkedIn’s membership was rocked as 117 million IDs, passwords and user e-mail addresses were advertised for sale by hackers on the dark web. Not long afterwards, the platform was banned in Russia

SEPTEMBER / NETWORK

as the company refused to store Russian user details within the country, culminating in an ominous tweet by the Russian internet regulating body that consisted of the LinkedIn logo and a caption reading “R.I.P.”. This move severed six million users from the network.

ISSUE 141

The concept of the attention economy, where attention itself is considered the number one metric of success, is gaining momentum.

LinkedIn members on average spend a meagre 17 minutes per month on the site, and those minutes are valuable.

Mergers and acquisitions fail between 70 and 90 per cent of the time, according to Harvard Business Review Despite such setbacks, LinkedIn celebrated soaring growth in April this year as membership reached more than half a billion. It’s an impressive figure, but contention exists over how many users actually use the platform. Between dropouts and the deceased, thousands of profiles go dormant daily and although LinkedIn’s servers process 120 new signups every minute, the rate may be insufficient where it matters most, with just 13 per cent of one crucial generation on board.

“To stay innovative, LinkedIn needs to look closely at its strategy for attracting millennials,” explains Abigail Stevens, managing director of Think Global Recruitment and one of LinkedIn’s four bestconnected women in recruitment.

“This highly engaged and tech-savvy generation will be the kingmakers of social networks, so LinkedIn must pay attention to them.”

By 2020, millennials will represent half of the world’s workforce, according to a PwC report. To thrive and survive, LinkedIn must capture the attention of a generation for whom time isn’t just money, but a currency all of its own. In an age of constant notifications, the battle for attention is fierce. Every app on a smartphone fights to be noticed, and people are becoming more selective over what’s worth their time.

LinkedIn does however have an unfortunate reputation for wasting users’ time with spam. In 2015, the company paid a total $13 million to users whose professional reputations suffered from persistent LinkedIn invitations that were automatically sent on their behalf. In the attention economy, platforms like LinkedIn must strike a balance between being memorable and maddening to avoid alienating members.

When it comes to acquisitions, Microsoft doesn’t always get it right.

In 2012, the $6.2 billion writedown incurred by flop acquisition aQuantive saw Microsoft post a quarterly loss for the first time. In the following year, the $7.6 billion purchase of Nokia resulted in a write-off of the full value, and 7,800 job were cut just two years later.

Mergers and acquisition fail between 70 and 90 per cent of the time, according to studies by the Harvard Business Review, but not every company Microsoft touches turns to dust. Other investments like PowerPoint and Skype are now core components of Microsoft’s Office suite that have returned on their initial investments many times over. A common mistake is suffocating the brand by redefining the cultural points that made it an attractive prospect in the first place.

Recently, Microsoft incorporated LinkedIn directly as a desktop

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SEPTEMBER ISSUE 141

UPFRONT / NETWORK

“LinkedIn is a tool, not a service, where users need to define their own objectives”

app, yet the company is adamant that LinkedIn’s integration will proceed in a way that protects its independent ethos.

“LinkedIn members certainly don’t like change. There was a lot of negative noise around the major updates to desktop profiles,” says Luan Wise, author and marketing consultant, who was named as one of LinkedIn’s top five best-connected women in marketing. “It’s important to remember that LinkedIn is primarily a tool, not a service.

Users need to define their own purpose and objectives for using the platform. The value in using it can be different for everyone.”

Access to the 1.2 billion users of Microsoft Office means LinkedIn now occupies a privileged position at the meeting point of big business and big data. LinkedIn Premium offers subscribers an array of benefits but access to data and analytics is the most important reward for

30

high-level users. LinkedIn’s future will be heavily influenced by how they leverage this service.

Utilising Microsoft’s desktop infrastructure also promises to streamline the daily work of LinkedIn’s members by reducing manual effort. LinkedIn could soon suggest collaborators based on notes for a new project, or scan databases of hundreds of names instantly in order to identify employees who may have experience with a new client. With a doubled data pool to draw from under Microsoft, LinkedIn is primed to connect people and businesses in a more personalised way than ever before.

LinkedIn has established itself as the dominant force in 21st century recruitment, but its competitors are always seeking to disrupt the market with fresh ideas. One company, Pymetrics, utilises neuroscience to design interactive games and personality tests that match candidates with jobs. Innovations like this

Reid Hoffman, Chairman and CEO, LinkedIn

1.2bn

Microsoft Office users around the world

$26bn Amount Microsoft paid for LinkedIn

have caught the attention of big firms and the startup has already attracting the business of consumer goods colossus Unilever.

To prosper, LinkedIn must consolidate its roots in networking and recruitment while innovating for the future of data analytics.

“Networking is time-consuming.

LinkedIn is a very powerful and synergistic platform that has transformed the way that all of us interact,” says Ron E Bates, managing principal at RedCard Solutions and one of LinkedIn’s most connected people.

“Companies encounter problems when they fail to answer the question: ‘How do we maintain and increase our relevance?’ As long as LinkedIn continues to seek answers to this question, they’ll continue to deliver value.”

As LinkedIn approaches its 15th birthday it is entering uncharted territory. Without enticing the millennial demographic, the business world of the next decade will advance without them, and LinkedIn may dive before sweet 16. Yet, data and efficiency are the profitable resources of tomorrow, and the platform’s fate rests upon taking advantage of their capacity to optimise both. With Microsoft’s backing, LinkedIn possesses the potential to entrench itself as a social media powerhouse for another 15 years.

WHO ARE LINKEDIN’S COMPETITORS? Viadeo, a Paris-based networking site with more than 35 million users, is probably LinkedIn’s main competitor, although its user base is dwarfed by LinkedIn’s. With 10 million of its users based in France, it’s hard to see the site gaining much traction in the US or Asia, but it remains one of the few competitors LinkedIn has. Another competitor is Xing, based in China which has around 10 million users (compared to LinkedIn’s 90 million). There are plenty of networks that focus on niches areas (healthcare, blue-collar, etc) but little that looks able to challenge LinkedIn, at least in the short term.

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SEPTEMBER ISSUE 141

UPFRONT / SPEND

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UPFRONT

Local hero Yuzuha Oka discovers the Neighborhood store in Harajuku that has stayed true to its roots

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eople often associate Harajuku with the ‘kawaii’ fashion hub, a byword for the city’s often-unfathomable youth cultures.

Teenagers and tourists fill the iconic Takeshita Street eating crepes and strolling around stores filled with quirky, vivid-coloured items.

The Neighborhood flagship store in Harajuku is set apart, literally and figuratively, from the organised chaos of the main drag.

Tucked away in a laneway, it’s located in an area called Urahara, or ‘the other side of Harajuku’.

The shop is easy to miss. The sleek, all-black storefront blends into the quiet neighbourhood, which is dotted with cafes and independent clothes shops. You might notice a dimly lit neon blue sign that proclaims: “The filth and the fury.”

The streetwear brand offers traditional items such as denim and leather jackets, inspired by motorcycle, military and outdoor culture. Shinsuke Takizawa, better known as Shin, started the brand in 1994. His obsession with design initially came through when he began selling band T-shirts and hoodies for the record label he worked for.

He had been a freelance stylist

and DJ before joining his friend’s record company. “I dreamed of having a fixed source of income, so I was up for it when a friend asked me to work with him,” Shin says. As the company only had a handful of staff, he was involved in everything from recording in the studio to marketing and sales.

“All my basic knowledge on how to run a business came from the experience there,” says Shin.

It was the late 1980s and Shin had just turned 20. “Back then, the music industry was booming and labels were making lots of money.

Hardly imaginable nowadays.”

Although the record industry was doing well, he was doubtful about its business model.

“Even the big labels only had a handful of profitable artists who sold millions of CDs. The rest did not contribute much, thus the production budget allocated to those budding artists were very limited.”

It was while he was looking for a way to bump up the label’s profits so that it could invest more in young that he came up with the idea to sell band merchandise.

“It was not at all common to sell band T-shirts or hoodies in Japan back then. But as I was flipping

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ISSUE 141

through magazines, I became obsessed with logo design in the UK and the US. So, I thought of making ones myself.” Shin was one of the early adaptors of the Mac, whose first model came out in 1984. “I was hooked,” says Shin.

“The Mac brought a revolution in typography. Before that, I had never imagined I could play around with fonts, stretching out letters and aligning them as I wish. To make a logo, we had to bring it to the letterpress printing or draw

“I dreamed of having a fixed source of income, so I was up for it when a friend asked me to work with him” by hands.” He was glued to the tiny screen that took nearly 10 minutes to process a single change.

“It required a little patience but I didn’t care. I was so fascinated by the idea of making your own logo and designs.” The merchandise Shin produced sold well. He decided to follow his passion for design by creating clothes under his own label, Neighborhood.

Just a couple of years after the brand launch met with the ‘Urahara’ (the other side of Harajuku) craze in the late 1990s. “There came the boom of designers starting their own

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SEPTEMBER ISSUE 141

UPFRONT / THE BUSINESS

“There is nothing purely ‘original’ in today’s world. So I am not saying that copying is bad. You can learn by mimicking, especially when you are starting off”

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brands as the Mac opened up a new and easy way of logo designs,” says Shin. The streetwear brands on the other side of Harajuku came to be called Urahara brands.

People lined up in queues in front of those Urahara stores to buy their logo T-shirts, which cost as much as 7,000 yen ($64).

Such was the hype that resellers hired homeless people to line up and buy them. Imitations were everywhere and the shops often completely sold out. But not many of the Urahara brands stood the

test of the time. The boom lost steam in the mid-2000s. A number of iconic Urahara labels filed for voluntary bankruptcy due to lack of funds or were acquired by foreign companies in the early 2010s.

Neighborhood is one of a handful of iconic brands still run by their founders. “I believe a longlasting brand needs a story, history and style behind it,” says Shin.

He admits it is harder to be unique in today’s fashion scene. It has been the norm for the industry to release its latest collection half

$64

Cost of a logo T-shirt during the Urahara craze in the late 1990s

a year before they hit the shelves.

Now the collection is instantly shared on social media, and fast fashion brands incorporate them in their line-ups within weeks.

“There is nothing purely ‘original’ in today’s world,” says Shin. “So I am not saying that copying is bad. You can learn by mimicking, especially when you are starting off.” The key to developing a style, Shin says, is to have a variety of input and digest it thoroughly. “I am rather slack in pursuing fashion trends,” Shin says.

Instead, he devotes his attention to other stuff he loves: motorcycles, cars, watches and plants.

Neighborhood’s collection has been inspired from items around motorcycles, military and outdoor pursuits. “I would never incorporate an element into our collection without fully understanding its history and the story behind it.” Shin describes himself as curious and investigative. Once he is hooked, he absorbs as much as he can.

Although the top destinations for high-end fashion are in Paris, Milan, London and New York, Shin believes Tokyo is one of the best destinations for street fashion.

“Japanese are particularly good at adapting from other cultures and incorporating it in their own way,” explains Shin. “There are many Japanese street wear brands that have been inspired by the American or the British culture, and are now well-perceived in the countries of origin. It would not be the same the other way around.”

Nearly half of Neighborhood’s customers are from overseas, although its flagship stores are only in Japan. It boasts a wide range of international dealers, with nearly 60 stores abroad selling Neighborhood products. The brand has started expanding overseas in the last 10 years, but Shin takes pride in

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UPFRONT / THE BUSINESS

“We initially started out making products together with a friend’s brand in our neighbourhood just for fun” Shinsuke Takizawa

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not going to exhibitions to sell their products to dealers.

“I want to build a longlasting relationship with them.

In exhibitions, dealers tend to look for items that match the latest trend, often ending up in one-off purchases,” he says.

Neighborhood always has dealers come to their showroom in Japan. “It takes longer, but the brand and the dealer get a stronger bond and we can grow together.”

The overseas expansion started with references from his friends,

but now they get contacted with interested dealers around the globe.

Neighborhood has also broadened its fan base with a number of collaborations with other brands, including Adidas, Converse, VANS and G-Shock.

“Collaboration has always been in our brand spirit. We initially started out making products together with a friend’s brand in our neighbourhood just for fun.”

It seems like every business you do starts with one of your friends, I say. “After all it’s all about people,”

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International dealers selling Neighborhood products around the world

Shin says with modesty. “You can tell if a person can be trusted in the first five seconds of an encounter.”

His kind eyes look straight into mine. “I try not to be an untrustworthy one,” he chuckles.

Neighborhood plans to expand further overseas in coming years, although nothing has been finalised as of yet.

“Japan is a quality market, but it is small. The world is increasingly becoming accessible, and there are opportunities out there yet to be explored,” says Shin.

SEPTEMBER ISSUE 141

UPFRONT / CLASSIC READ

Antifragile

By Nassim Nicholas Taleb

The book is driven in part by the author’s rage: rage at bankers, at academics, even at ‘soccer moms’

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assim Nicholas Taleb is one of the more interesting authors in the business genre.

In truth, Taleb would see himself more as a philosopher than a mere pundit, one of the many classes of people he despises.

Taleb, of course, made his name with his 2007 book, The Black Swan, in which he argued that huge, improbable and highly consequential events (‘black swans’) such as the September 11 attacks or the advent of the internet, are not predictable.

In Antifragile, Taleb writes that such events are becoming more frequent as the world gets more complex. So, we need to make both our public and private lives antifragile: that is not just less vulnerable to randomness, but

able to take advantage of the inevitable unforeseen changes that will come our way.

The book is driven in part by the author’s rage: rage at the bankers who lead the world into one financial meltdown after another; rage at the academics who have no skin in the game; rage even at ‘soccer moms’ who he believes are the definition of fragile. He lists some of the following as antifragile: entrepreneurs, Mafiosi, Lebanese villagers, street fighters and artists. He believes that those who wrecked the economy (bankers, pundits, politicians) were the ones with “no skin in the game” and as such deserve all of our ire.

He writes that “we humans got a bit ahead of ourselves

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Copies that Nassim Taleb’s first book, Black Swan, has sold so far

in this large enterprise called modernity”. You get the feeling Taleb would be quite happy in Ancient Greece, holding forth to all who would listen, a world away from 24-7 news channels and smartphones. He argues that at no point in human history have so many non-risk-takers exerted so much control.

Taleb, who is now a professor at New York University, has previously worked as a derivatives trader and quantitative analyst.

Born in northern Lebanon, he prides himself on being a brave truth teller in a world full of frauds. He is filled with machismo, threats and bombast, but in truth, that makes his book (and him) all the more compelling. It is hard to imagine his Lebanese upbringing did not shape his worldview, one in which unforeseen events are always hovering over us. And it is only anti-fragility that can protect us from those events.

The book is baggy (it’s over 500 pages), and veers all over the place from Stoicism to the Industrial Revolution to Wall Street. Some may find Taleb’s tone off-putting, the rantings of a man who is too smart for his own good. Despite its flaws, however, Antifragile is provocative and entertaining, much like the author himself. In a world where we are increasingly afraid to be honest, this book is a refreshing change.

TIMELESS VOYAGE David Whelan traces the history of the Swiss watch and explores how the industry has met multiple challenges over the years

LUXURY WATCHES

Right: Blancpain, considered one of the most traditional watchmakers Below: Despite fears, the Apple Watch has not hampered Swiss watch sales

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ime is a strange one. We’re told it’s there, but it’s impossible to sit down with and enjoy. It’s always one step ahead or a few behind. And we’ve spent the vast majority of our time on this planet trying to ensnare it, wrestle it into our control and bend it to our will.

The history of time is, therefore, deeply entwined with our own history – without the universal sexagesimal system, which uses the number 60 as its base, we’d always be turning up to things at the wrong point, missing meetings, sleeping in. No way the French Revolution would have gone the way it did without a universal time system. Fast forward to today, and the global banking system would be in perpetual chaos, planes would always land out of time and, well, we’d all be more wound up. The history of horology, and its eventual domination by one nation, is a long and twisting path.

Nowadays, it is the Swiss who possess the monopoly on time. Consider the Swiss wristwatch and the brain immediately conjures up a multitude of images: stylish, simple in design, and, of course, timeless. To make a great wristwatch, as the Swiss have done, is to transcend the very thing they are trying to track. The famous face of the Swiss wristwatch – the white face, the thick black lines indicating minutes and the red seconds hand that comes to a circular tip – was actually not a wristwatch at all. Invented by Swiss engineer Hans Hifilker in 1944, the first iconic Swiss clock was designed for use by the Swiss Federal Railways, to help commuters keep track with their trains, which did not keep track of seconds. The clock face became such a sensation that it transcended its functionality and became a symbol – displayed in London’s Design Museum, New York’s Museum of Modern Art and replicated by Apple across the platforms. Nowadays, the Swiss wristwatch still dominates the luxury market, with a great swathe

of contemporary auteurs creating the pinnacle in beautiful, simple watches – but it took a long time for the journey to get there.

The first ever time keeping device were large obelisks set up by the Egyptians to track the movement of the sun, while water clocks – which record time based on the inflow or outflow of water from an object – became ubiquitous from China to Greece.

A Chinese monk named Yi Zing is credited with inventing the first mechanical clock without serious defects, poetically named the Water Driven Spherical BirdsEye-View Map of the Heavens.

Later, in 1090, astronomer Su Sung would take this model and construct a 30-foot clock for the emperor Ting Zong. The clock had multiple floors filled with mechanical puppets, which would be moved out at certain points in the day, and three celestial globes. It was powered by two huge water wheels with scoops on each side, which were constantly filled with water until they tipped, resulting in the water to spill out and the time wheel to move. The process then repeated. Trade would eventually cause Europeans to take back designs and stories of these clocks – which were replicated across the world.

By 1656, Galileo wrote about the now infamous pendulum clock, which Christiaan Huygens turned into a reality. The pendulum has since become synonymous with invention and the bleeding edge of technology. It was utterly revolutionary – slicing

LUXURY WATCHES

Germany was the first nation in the world to transform the clock into the wristwatch

and dicing the day up into that familiar tick-ticktick. The pendulum clock also influenced Isaac Newton, who noticed that pendulums around the world told times either faster or slower depending on where they were – which helped him delineate his law of universal gravitation. This then led to pendulum clocks being installed on sea voyages, as gravimeters, which resulted in the very first accurate models of the shape of the earth. Still, nobody could wear a pendulum without seeming like a character from Alice in Wonderland. Just as the home computer became the laptop became the smartphone, humans are ingrained philosophically to want to incorporate their technology as closely into their body as possible. A wall-clock was just fine. A wristwatch would be ideal.

While this story ends with the Swiss, it deviates slightly through one of their neighbours.

More synonymous now with high-efficiency and cutting edge cars (and with a growing appreciation for their wry sense of humour), Germany was the first nation in the world to transform the clock into the wristwatch. Peter Henlein, a locksmith and clockmaker from Nuremberg, specialised in shrinking down clocks to be worn as a personal effect or sewn into clothing. For around 300 years, up until the mid 18th century, Germany, and also the Netherlands, controlled the market for the perfect watch – inventing such things as the balance spring and the fusee chain. England then entered the fray with a slew of technological advancements pushed forward by luminaries such as James Cox, George Graham and Thomas Mudge.

The largest fault in pendulum clock was always the change in length of the pendulum based on temperature – thermal expansion and contraction based on geography or climate would result in the same clock telling the time differently in different places. Graham made a breakthrough by inventing the mercury pendulum. Mercury was placed in the weight of the pendulum and would expand with temperature, therefore moving the centre of mass of the pendulum closer to the pivot. This balanced out the alterations inherent in the original design. Other breakthroughs involved James Cox’s famous

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LUXURY WATCHES

The lever escapement is considered by most horologists to be the single greatest watch alteration of all time

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timepiece, which claimed to be a perpetual motion machine – with the change in the earth’s atmosphere powering the winding mechanism. Sadly, Cox did not break the rules of science, as the mercury pendulum still required energy to be powered – but he did show that there was a way to keep a clock’s engine moving, without the need to physically wind it. Finally, there was Thomas Mudge, whose invention of the lever escapement, which keeps a watch ‘ticking’ at even intervals. The lever escapement is considered by most horologists to be the single greatest watch alteration of all time.

While gigantic leaps in watchmaking were being made all across Europe, Switzerland was quietly fortifying itself in preparation of a great attack on the industry. It started from inauspicious beginnings: Jean Calvin, the pastor and Protestant reformer, banned the creation and wearing of jewellery or other similar items that veered a little too close to indulgence. He was accompanied by large groups of Huguenots, French Protestants, who fled northern France for the relative safety of the Swiss Alps. This forced the Swiss to get creative, and they began to focus their minds on the art of watchmaking, and thus began to combine the arts of jewellers into the science of time. By 1601, Geneva was a booming watchmaking city and founded the first ever Watchmakers Guild, which protected rights and shared innovations.

Growth happened fast. Almost too fast. By 1611, Geneva was overflowing with competing watchmakers – it was said that it was hard to lose track of time, such was the sheer physical abundance of watch faces dotted around the city. Creators began to move outward and, specifically, upwards into the Jura mountains – toward Bern and Basel. One such creator was Daniel Jean Richard, who created the etablisseurs concept. Fundamentally, it was the separation of labour into small component parts. Rather than

Switzerland is a nation of watchmakers and extraordinary beauty

one person making an entire watch, Richard trained groups of people to perfect one aspect of watchmaking – much like how a day is split up into 24 separate hours, each watch was now cut up into a number of smaller, more manageable, sections. Unsurprisingly, this expedited the process – but it also formalised it. Apprentices were introduced and new machinery designed, as well as set guidelines and strict quality controls.

Far from the glamorous ideals of today, the very first people to work within this structure were the farmers of the Jura mountains, who had little work but great skill to offer during the winter months. A readymade workforce set Switzerland apart from its direct competitors, whose production was mostly centred on cities.

LUXURY WATCHES

FIVE OF THE BEST Patek Philippe & Co Founded in 1851, Patek Philippe watches are the crème de la crème of the luxury timepiece.

In 2014, for example, the Patek Philippe Henry Graves ‘Supercomplication’ became the most expensive auctioned watch of all time – going for a snip at £16 million. Every watch is held to the same exacting, beautiful standards, but if you wanted to get your wrist through one of their high-end products, wait lists apply.

Urwerk Known for their innovations and playful alterations on classic designs, Urwerk is a bit of a new kid on the block. Founded in 1997, the name Urwerk is a pun on the German word for ‘clockwork’, while also referencing the ancient Sumerian city Ur, which is known for its use of sundials. Founded

by Felix Baumgartner, a master watchmaker, and artist Martin Frei, Urwerk’s philosophy is simple: creative efficiency and efficient creativity.

Breguet Breguet is synonymous with tradition, style and prestige. Founded by Abraham Louis Breguet in the 18th century, Breguet is the progenitor of the first ever Swiss wristwatch – and maybe the first ever wristwatch in the world, which was custom made for Caroline Murat, none other than Napoleon’s sister. Napoleon himself and Marie Antoinette were dedicated clientele for the watchmaker, who is still just as in demand as ever.

Jaeger-LeCoultre

It proved a booming success – and set the standard for watches across the world, and is still being rigorously followed today. By 1790, Switzerland was exporting around 60,000 watches a year – and by 1850, 2.2 million. No other nation could or would ever compete at this scale. So popular was this method and so attractive were the designs, however, that it is also spawned a swathe of copycats and counterfeits, which were notoriously hard to smell out – until it was too late.

This was remedied in part by another Swiss invention in 1886 – a seal of legitimacy, which became the calling card for most designers of repute. The Swiss, however, were not entirely clean – their level of production and expertise made it easy for them to produce watches that looked just like

Up high in the Jura mountains sits the workshop of Jaeger-LeCoultre, which is perhaps the most innovative of all watchmakers. Established in 1833

by Antoine LeCoultre, the company has more than one thousand calibrations to its name. So influential, in fact, were its tweaks that the likes of Philippe Patek are indebted to its designs. What they lack in design bombast, they make up for in craftsmanship and experimentation.

Blancpain Blancpain is the poster child for what is known as ‘the valley of watches’ and is considered to be the oldest active watch producer in the world.

Blancpain is a traditionalist – it has never produced a quartz watch, and champions the mechanical movements of old with every new design it creates. Even during the Quarz Crisis, which almost sunk the Swiss industry, Blancpain held fast to its values. A watch for the true time purist.

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LUXURY WATCHES

By 1980, more than 60,000 Swiss watch workers had lost their jobs, mainly due to the advent of quartz

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British or French ones, at a fraction of the cost.

They strangled the market from both sides.

Switzerland, being at the centre of a huge Venn diagram of European influences, is a culturally diverse nation, despite its size. This lead to a diaspora of watch creations and breakthroughs. There was Abraham-Louis Breguet who trained in Paris and invented the tourbillon, a rotating device to counter the effects of gravity on a pocket watch, while French inventor Jean-Antoine Lépine created the flat caliber, which allowed watchmakers to create sleeker, thinner designs. Swiss designers leapt on this, while other nations stalled.

America had a profound effect on Switzerland’s rise to contemporary prominence. As the nation began to solidify under the Star-Spangled Banner, they required accurate and reliable timepieces for their road and railway systems. American production was fast and efficient, and the Swiss attempted to woo the nation before their own watches took prominence. However, this act failed as most of the Swiss watches sold in America were perceived to be of lesser quality than the homemade ones. In 1868, the American Florentine A Jones moved from Boston to Schaffhausen in Switzerland and found-

Jaeger-LeCoultre, probably the most innovative of the Swiss watchmakers

ed IWC Shauffhausen, in an attempt to reconcile American production with classic Swiss style.

The First and Second World Wars had a profound effect on watchmaking, particularly in Switzerland. Soldiers pushed the need for wristwatches, and factories across Europe and America that would have traditionally been focused on watchmaking were put towards the war efforts.

Not so in Switzerland. The first self-winding wristwatch was created in Grenchen in 1926 and the Swiss began to aggressively court the largest market – America – and rebranded their product as high-end products, pioneered by brands such as Patek Philippe, Longines and Vacheron Constantine. By conquering America, the Swiss finally conquered the world.

But not for long. In 1969, the Japanese company Seiko released the Astron – the world’s first commercial quartz watch. This changed the face of watches, forever. Cheaper and more accurate than the Swiss equivalent, the Swiss Beta21, the quartz watch became the de facto reasonably priced timekeeper. By 1980, more than 60,000 Swiss workers had lost their jobs and hundreds of factories had closed. Swiss watchmakers, however, did not reach the pinnacle of the mountain by sitting idle – time after time, they saw other nations blaze new paths and still ended up at the front of the pack. Lebanese-Swiss Nicolas G Hayek, Sr, created Swatch in 1983 – a quartz-based watch that beat the Japanese at their own game. Nowadays, the most luxurious and sought after watches are created by manufacturers, such as ETA, that pride themselves in being involved in every single moment of the creation process. Swiss brands have since been solidified by a slew of investments, strengthening their core ideals with the strongest girders possible, cash. This helped solidify the Swiss as the mainstay of the luxury watch, a nation of creators unperturbed by change or location.

Some might say they’re timeless.

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THE HOMEMAKERS

Lauren Razavi explores the world of high-end interior design

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merican actress and socialite Elsie de Wolfe loathed nothing more than a drab room. “We attribute vulgar qualities to those who are content to live in ugly surroundings,” she wrote in The House in Good Taste, her 1913 manifesto on home aesthetics. While de Wolfe spent the last years of the 19th century posturing on New York’s stages, she was much more famous for her extravagant, handselected costumes than her acting abilities.

When the founders of an exclusive Manhattan social club for women, the Colony Club, decided to decorate their premises on Madison Avenue, they chose de Wolfe to spearhead the project. With just one assignment, the former actress created the business of interior design as we know it today – and the homes of New York City’s upper classes would never be the same.

From requests as eclectic as a coffee table crafted from the hides of 50 stingrays to a life-size statue of a silverback gorilla, the challenges faced by 21stcentury interior designers are a little different than they were in de Wolfe’s day. A few things have remained the same though. The design process, for example, is still often an intimate and intensive experience for designer and client alike, and the needs of every client will differ from the last.

The latter is especially true on projects with multimillion-dollar budgets. Few know this better than Alex Holden, managing director of architectural interior design studio Oliver Burns. The London-based firm was founded at the turn of the millennium and today serves a global portfolio of high net-worth and ultrahigh net-worth clients.

“We might spend a day at Chelsea Harbour going around furniture and fabric shops with a client and get them directly involved in selecting specific pieces,” says Holden. “We may also go with clients on marble-sourcing trips to Italy or to the bespoke workshops where furniture is manufactured. It’s crucial to recognise how much the client wants to be involved and to plan accordingly from the start.”

The highest echelons of the design industry are always on the lookout for innovative ways of

Nicole Fuller's New York-based interior design studio is one of the city's most prestigious

adding unique twists to their services. But the necessity to provide what the client is looking for is always different in an industry based so closely on personality and perception. As well as being a statement of wealth and taste, living spaces are often deeply personal expressions of who we are and what moves us. According to Nicole Fuller, an interior designer who specialises in high-end residential and commercial design projects in the US and overseas, this has an enormous influence on projects and client relationships.

“Interiors are a reflection of the person, so you become very close with people during the design process,” she says. “Building those relationships is a wonderful part of my job, and after you’ve worked with a client once, you often find yourself designing their second home, their third home and their boat too.”

An enticing glimpse into an abundance of inter ior design options is never more than a click or a swipe away these days. Thanks to the internet, clients now have a wealth of inspiration at their fingertips, and their imaginative horizons are broader than ever before. From YouTube to Instagram to Pinterest, just about anyone with a Wi-Fi connection can admire the tastes of the world’s best-known and most

We may go with clients on marble sourcing trips to Italy or to bespoke furniture workshops

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THE HOMEMAKERS

Sophie Paterson, based in London and Surrey

Alex Holden, managing director of Oliver Burns

Alex Michaelis, co-founder of Michaelis Boyd

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influential people: whether they be royal families, footballers or rap stars. This brave new world creates increasingly bigger and bolder expectations from clients.

“A combination of the internet and today’s ease of travel means that clients are often very well informed about interior design and the latest trends,” says Sophie Paterson, a London-based interior designer well known for fusing classic and contemporary styles. “Many seek inspiration from five-star hotels and designer boutiques. Our interiors offer the same level of luxury and attention to detail as some of the world’s top venues.”

The shift towards more digital connectivity isn’t the only technology-oriented trend having an impact. The lines that distinguish design, architecture and technology are blurring, and clients today

are on the verge of a fully immersive and interactive redesign experience. It’s the recognition of sweeping industry changes that convinced architectural practice Michaelis Boyd to expand its operations into the lucrative sectors of interiors and furniture design.

“The boundaries in design are slowly eroding and we’re working to create a design firm that’s increasingly multidisciplinary,” says Alex Michaelis, co-founder of the practice. “Until recently, even model-making in 3D wasn’t worth doing in-house, but architecture, interiors, product design and 3D visualisation are all becoming one now. The old-fashioned profession is going and we have to be much more adaptive [going forward].”

Michaelis Boyd isn’t alone in its future-proofing mission. A survey by Zweig Group found that the majority of architecture and interior design firms

THE HOMEMAKERS

AUTUMN 2017 INTERIOR DESIGN TRENDS

 Greens: Each year a new colour comes to the fore and this year it’s all about green. The colour was named the 2017 Pantone Colour of the Year. Warm, dark shades associated with refreshment and revitalisation have replaced navy and midnight blues as this year’s must-have shade. It’s particularly popular for cushions and armchairs to take on the colour of the outdoors.

in the US are considering mergers and acquisitions within the next five years, reflecting a need to obtain new service offerings quickly and think differently about how to do business in the ever-evolving sector.

As digital innovations continue to create new opportunities in the workplace, those same technologies are being adapted and recontextualised within homes everywhere. According to research firm Gartner, there’ll be 20.4 billion smart devices connected to the Internet of Things by 2020 and they’re going to change the way we live. Smart technology represents a new frontier for interior designers looking to stand out from the crowd. In the future their job will become much more complex as they balance form, function and taste in increasingly connected homes.

At the same time, virtual and augmented reality is driving rapid developments across the architecture and design industries, especially for projects with the high budget needed to access the cutting edge.

Designers are now able to create more options for their clients than ever before, and they can express them as digital environments with accurate space mapping and without physically moving a thing.

 Craftsmanship: Instagram, Pinterest and Etsy have created an obsession with DIY goods, but now the trend is towards more artisanal craftsmanship. Difficult materials that require a high degree of skill to work with have never been more fashionable. Look out for ornate glass blowing, intricate porcelain and complex copper mechanisms this autumn.  Raw white: Sometimes there’s nothing bolder than the absence of colour. Chalky whites, bone whites and creamy whites are making a resurgence. This timeless look complements any style, but requires a strong texture to avoid it looking cold and sterile.  Velvet: There’s no material quite as soothing as velvet. The luxurious fabric feels just as appropriate whether it’s summer or winter; in busy rooms or quiet rooms. Its irresistible tactile quality adds cosiness to any home and provides a touch of class to furniture and accessories.  Brass: For the last few years it’s seemed like the world has gone copper crazy. Light fittings

made of copper started appearing everywhere and were quickly followed by copper kitchen surfaces and copper chairs. But now interior designers have had enough and are transforming the industrial aesthetic with brass.

Expect to see brass lamps making much more of an appearance this autumn.  Terracotta: The warm earthenware feel of terracotta comes and goes from interior design trends, but this autumn it’s definitely in. The classic material lends a farmhouse vibe to any interior and adds warmth to cold rooms. Unlike the past when terracotta was primarily used as border tiles, expect this autumn to bring feature walls and fireplaces made of terracotta.  Woven objects: The big trend this year has been towards exploring new textures and woven objects are really becoming a big hit. Hang baskets and wicker stands add intrigue and coarseness to dull or sterile rooms. The roughness of woven textures provides the perfect counterbalance to the smoothness of velvet. Expect to see contrasts between velvet and woven ornaments take off this autumn.  Cork: Another material that had fallen out of fashion is making a comeback. Not only is cork an attractive and stylish material, but it’s practical too. As homes continue to become more and more open plan, cork can play a crucial role in absorbing sounds and softening echoey rooms.

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THE HOMEMAKERS

Many clients are moving away from tech and want homes that emphasise wellbeing and nature

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During this year’s NYCxDesign festival, artbuying platform Twyla collaborated with designer Tom Hancocks to create seven virtual reality rooms at the Sight Unseen OFFSITE gallery. Each of the virtual spaces depicted trends in interior design and could be viewed in 360-degree panorama through a VR headset. David Alhadeff, owner of design gallery The Future Perfect, also used VR headsets to allow NYCxDesign attendees to “look around” Casa Perfect, the firm’s exhibition space in the Hollywood Hills.

In combination, virtual reality, 3D printing and smart devices will converge to make interior design much more dynamic than ever before. The way we live is changing and as our homes become more complex, so too will our interior design needs.

The challenge for those working in the industry is to stay on top of both the emerging styles and the emerging technologies. But not everyone is convinced by the new, tech-driven world of design.

While robots enter the home and new entrants threaten disruption, a growing number of interior design clients are shying away from all the action in favour of human connection and an emphasis on wellbeing. Designers are receiving more backto-basics requests, and are being asked to focus on creating natural and holistic environments.

Shalini Misra, who runs a London-based interior design studio

Simon Rawlings, creative director of David Collins Studio

“There’ll always be trends in terms of materials, textures, colours and things, but there’s another, more interesting trend right now,” says Simon Rawlings, the creative director of David Collins Studio. “Everybody is [interested in] the idea of wellbeing in design, which is interior design that promotes a good feeling when you’re using the space. It’s something we’re seeing more and more.”

Shalini Misra, a multi-award-winning interior designer who works on residential projects all over the world, agrees that space planning is good for wellbeing and key to creating the best of designs. “I look carefully at spaces and play between spaces,” she says. “A lot of space planning comes down to function, to how the client wants to use the room.

From there, it’s my job to make that space really inviting and luxurious to use.”

The best way to achieve maximum wellbeing in a design varies from project to project, but Rawlings believes that a few fundamentals remain across the board. “The materials you’re using are an important factor. We choose natural materials that don’t have toxins and glues,” Rawlings explains. “We also think about how rooms are laid out: Is there plenty of daylight? Are we encouraging people to move around? Does the space promote exercise?”

Luxury interior design has come a long way from the hand-drawn sketches and black-and-white catalogues of its earliest years. Creating unique environments that will be used and loved by real people is close to every designer’s heart.

The Colony Club’s Manhattan venue was first unveiled in 1907, with Elsie de Wolfe’s favoured synthesis of floral fabrics, soft colours and ample natural lighting in pride of place. The building is still in use today, and de Wolfe’s sophisticated style blazed a trail that is still burning bright more than a hundred years later. Just as in every other industry, the next frontier of interior design is integration with technology. Whatever the medium, design will inevitably stay in high demand. Beautiful homes may come and go, but the connection and memories that come from working with a skilled designer will almost certainly never fade.

CHAIN GANG Jennifer Johnson explores the world of cryptocurrencies and finds out why the blockchain is emerging into the mainstream

CHAIN GANG

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ceptics are fond of saying that blockchain technology is a solution looking for a problem. But if the growing number of companies working with blockchains is any indication, it’s safe to say that entrepreneurs and fintech startups have found problems aplenty. Just two years ago, the blockchain technology market had an estimated value of $509 million and capital market investors would probably have associated it with cyber crime and Bitcoin geeks – not jaw-dropping returns. But it hasn’t taken long for blockchain to emerge from the basement and step into the financial mainstream.

From land registries in Brazil to airline booking systems in Russia, startups all over the world are finding innovative ways to build digital services on top of blockchain technologies. In the first half of 2017 alone, entrepreneurs in this space raised more than $620 million in early-stage funding to support their ideas, though traditional angel investors and venture capitalists aren’t the driving force behind this support. Part initial public offering (IPO) and part crowdfunding, initial coin offerings (ICOs) are a new funding model that is already generating blockchain startups more money than venture capital firms.

Blockchain technologies were first created to ser ve as a digital ledger for Bitcoin transactions.

Most financial transactions, from cross-border payments to the transfer of land titles, rely on third-party intermediaries to be validated and completed. In contrast, blockchains operate as a vast network where every participant, or node, receives and maintains a copy of the ledger. The idea is to distribute transactional data as widely as possible so that there is no single point of failure that can be hacked, corrupted or otherwise compromised.

“Blockchains are going to change the financial services ecosystem as we know it. For instance, if you’re looking at buying a house, the technology could streamline that process to happen in one day instead of two weeks or more,” says Matt Dibb, founder of Picolo Research, a Singaporebased research firm with a focus on cryptocurrency markets. “However, there is innovation that is also taking place in other sectors. I saw a concept the other day for a company that wanted to create a customer loyalty scheme on a blockchain.”

The creators of the much-hyped software platform Ethereum drew on Bitcoin as the inspiration for their own blockchain network. But instead of tracking ownership of a digital currency, Ethereum is designed to run the code of decentralised applications, or Dapps. Most applications, like Facebook and WhatsApp, rely on centralised servers to transmit and receive data. This means that information is passed through the data centres of these major corporations. Because Ethereum’s Dapps run on a blockchain network, they can’t be tampered with or manipulated by one individual or organisation.

Like Bitcoin, Ethereum’s nodes all maintain an up-to-date copy of the blockchain. Network participants are compensated in Ether, the platform’s cryptocurrency, for providing their computing power and resources.

Ethereum’s creators also decided to fund the platform’s development by hosting a public crowdsale of the Ether coins, also known as tokens, from July 22 to September 2, 2014.

During this time, participants purchased the digital currency using Bitcoin, ultimately raising more than $ 14 million in one of the world’s earliest ICOs. As of July this year, Blockchain companies have already hosted 80 ICOs, compared to only 69 for the whole of 2016. Firms aim to secure funding for their blockchain projects by pre-selling tokens to supporters interested in backing their ideas. But before a sale can begin, businesses must entice would-be investors with a unique use case and value proposition.

The process of launching an ICO typically begins with the release of a white paper detailing a venture’s aims and means for achieving them. In this document, firms lay out their funding requirements and research and development timeline, as well as establish the price and number of tokens that will be offered to the public. Like Ether, the tokens created for ICOs must serve a functional purpose within the project being funded, such as enabling transactions or rewarding participants for their contributions. As demand rises for a company’s application, the value of the token increases.

“Blockchains are going to change the financial services ecoystem – like buying a house – as we know it”

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“Right now, people are purchasing tokens because they want to use an application or protocol in the future, or they think that others will want to use it,” explains Spencer Bogart, managing director and head of research at Blockchain Capital, the first venture capital firm to invest solely in blockchain companies. “Investors want to buy tokens today anticipating that people will pay more to use that application in six months to a year.”

Tech startups have traditionally relied on venture capital investments to raise funds for their development. However, the process of approaching venture firms and connecting with angel investors is time consuming for young companies, which must also devote energy to honing their products and services.

With a token sale, blockchain firms can ensure that raising funds doesn’t detract from business growth.

“Accessing private venture capital can take months and there are often delays in drawing up contracts, for example,” says Dibb. “Lack of finance can kill a business quickly. But with an ICO, a company is able to go from concept to liftoff in a matter of 12 weeks if it has a unique value proposition.”

Early Ether backers know better than anyone that returns on token investments can be phenomenal.

For the first two weeks of Ethereum’s ICO, supporters were offered 2,000 ether for a single Bitcoin.

At the time, the value of Bitcoin was fluctuating between $570 and $630. This means that one Ether was worth around $0.30 when it was first offered to the public. Anyone who held on to their coins for the next three years was in for a wild ride this spring and summer when Ether rallied from $15 in early March to reach a high of nearly $400 in mid June.

Returns like these are part of the reason that investors far and wide are turning their attention to the crypto market. The relatively low cost of tokens means that supporters don’t have to be ultra wealthy angel investors or venture capitalists to buy into an early-stage company. Traditional capital market traders can only gain exposure to a high-growth company by purchasing shares once it’s been listed on a stock exchange. But ICO supporters can get involved with a company at the beginning of its journey, and at a much lower cost.

“Very few of us had the opportunity to invest in Facebook when it was valued at $10 million,” says Jan Isakovic, co-founder and CEO of Cofound.it, an ICO accelerator firm that hopes to create a marketplace to help startups crowdsource token sale services. “Until now, investments of this kind were promised to a small number of people working in venture capital. With ICOs it’s not only easier to invest, but the opportunities are also much more significant for smaller investors.”

Vitalik Buterin, a RussianCanadian programmer and the founder of Ethereum

CHAIN GANG

The challenge for investors is knowing which companies are just capitalising on the hype and rushing their application to market

For Isakovic, holding a token sale was also an opportunity to galvanise Cofound.it’s base of supporters who believe in the company’s mission. In June, the firm held a pre-sale of its CFI tokens for members of its priority pass programme, which lets members purchase the coins before anyone else. The company had planned a public ICO for June7, but after reaching its $14.8 million funding cap in just 60 hours of the pre-sale, it cancelled the event.

“Our investors are our evangelists and early adopters,” says Isakovic. “This is why things have happened so quickly in the blockchain space, because startups like ours have the ability to execute as fast as they can.”

As the ICO market grows more crowded, the challenge for investors becomes telling the difference between a good investment and firms trying to capitalise on the hype or rush an application to market.

There are already plenty of examples of investors losing money to token sales that didn’t take proper cybersecurity precautions.

Most notably, hackers targeted the ICO donations of a group called The DAO in May 2016. Over the course of a 28-day funding period, the organisation managed to raise $150 million in Ether, making it the largest token sale of its time. Concerns had been raised about bugs in The DAO’s code prior to its ICO, but they weren’t believed to be serious.

However, an anonymous hacker managed to exploit the project’s vulnerabilities before its developers could act to mend them – and ran away with $50 million in the process. A firm called CoinDash suffered a similar compromise this July after an anonymous hacker managed to change the Ethereum address that it was using to raise funds.

The key to ensuring that a blockchain project is actually worthy of investment is to scrutinise the team behind it. While individual investors new to the blockchain space may not be able to spot shaky code,

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they should be able to identify bandwagon-jumpers who are eager to cash in on enthusiasm for ICOs. “Investors should research how many of a company’s listed members have a strong background in the work that is claimed to be underway,” says Mike Schwartz, partner and managing director at BCG Digital Ventures, a global corporate venture group that invests in innovative startups, including those in the blockchain sector. “Investors might choose to avoid organisations with prominent roles filled by exCMOs, venture capitalists or generalists. Are great team members adequately incentivised and locked in over time, or can they ‘cash out’ and run early?”

Despite the runaway success of ICOs this year, regulation could soon put a damper on enthusiasm for the blockchain market. On July 25, the US Securities and Exchange Commission issued a ruling stating that tokens sold through ICOs are securities and will now be subject to the country’s federal securities laws. What this means for the industry’s immediate future is uncertain, though it’s clear that blockchain’s ‘Wild West’ days are over.

Even companies outside the blockchain sector – such as the messager service Kik – are considering fundraising through coin offerings

KNOW YOUR CRYPTO: DIGITAL CURRENCIES BEYOND BITCOIN Ether Currently the second largest cryptocurrency by market capitalisation, Ethereum’s network token has made headlines this year for its rapid rise in valuation. Ether miners are now scrambling to buy the graphics cards necessary to generate new coins. Some are reportedly leasing Boeing 747s to fly the cards direct from manufacturers to their massive mining operations.

Dash The founders of Dash, the sixth most popular cryptocurrency by market capitalisation at present, intended for the coin to serve as an impossible-totrace form of digital cash. Dash’s anonymisation technology makes it so that users can’t be tracked, and its network of servers known as ‘masternodes’ confirm transactions almost instantly, meaning there’s no waiting around for a confirmation.

Litecoin Created by a former Google engineer in 2011, Litecoin was designed to be the silver to Bitcoin’s gold. While it has never attained the level of widespread adoption enjoyed by its predecessor, Litecoin does boast improved transaction speeds and a large pool of available coins. While Bitcoin’s supply is fixed at 21 million, there will be 84 million litecoins created over the currency’s lifetime.

Ripple XRP

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“Once you have one major regulator coming down with a certain position, it’s far easier for other regulators to follow in its footsteps,” says Colin Hanna, an associate at Balderton Capital, a London-based venture capital firm that invests in early stage tech companies. “Blockchain companies now have to do their due diligence and divulge data that, quite frankly, a lot of them don’t have prepared. Until now, many of these firms have been conceptual and theoretical.”

Regardless of any future regulation, the token funding model has profoundly disrupted the way that blockchain entrepreneurs raise money for their ventures. Even companies outside the blockchain sector are considering coin offerings as a fundraising method. For instance, Canadian instant messaging app Kik has said it will introduce a cryptocurrency called Kin so that users can transact on the platform. The firm plans to sell 10 per cent of the Kin it creates in an ICO, with the aim of creating a cryptocurrency that will ultimately be traded outside the app.

Many of the world’s major financial institutions are currently trialling a decentralised currency exchange and real-time settlement network known as Ripple, which is designed to speed up remittances. XRP is the network’s native currency and payments made using the token can settle in four seconds compared to the hour or more it can take Bitcoin.

For investors who remember the dotcom bubble of the 1990s, the ICO boom’s combination of speculation and easily accessible capital might look familiar.

But it’s important to remember that the underlying technology that drove the dotcom craze – the internet – is still around today, even if many of the companies in the sector folded when the bubble burst.

Once the dust has settled on the ICO boom, only the most innovative companies will be left standing. If blockchain is truly a solution looking for a problem, it has found a formidable opponent in the venture capital model. And this is only the beginning.

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FASHION FORWARD David Taylor profiles a fashion duo that have managed to maintain relevance – and court controversy – for more than 30 years

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here’s no room for improvisation, not in fashion,” Stefano Gabbana told author Tibor Michaels for his e-book Lords of Fashion: The Stories Behind Prada, Armani, Gucci and Dolce & Gabbana. In a way, it’s a surprisingly candid statement from one half of the elite fashion house Dolce & Gabbana. However, the more you learn about the controversial design duo, the less you’re likely to be taken aback by anything they say – or do.

“It’s easy to fall in love with your own ideas,” Domenico Dolce adds by way of explanation.

“Like [when] we decided to do everything in turtleneck… only to discover that women would rather wear décolleté. We’re not working with a needle and thread all day. We’re also entrepreneurs. By running the statistics and cross-checking the best-selling items, we try to understand why one garment works and the other doesn’t. These are messages our clients are sending us, at times even against our own convictions.”

Evidently, Dolce & Gabbana are a design duo for whom the words ‘fashion business’ are inseparable. “What the fashion system says and what the fashion customer says are really two different things,” Gabbana told Interview magazine in 2009.

“It’s always the same – all men and women want to be sexy. In the last three seasons, when we tried

to change shapes with the new volume, customers altered the shape in the shop to be tighter – like before,” he added.

Cue the sound of an exploding myth. Anyone who imagined these outspoken designers saw themselves purely as ‘artists’, were precious about their creative ideas or oblivious to economic realities, have not been paying attention. What is clear is that the duo’s hard-nosed business ethic was deeply ingrained during their lengthy struggle to the top of the fashion tree.

First meeting in the late 1970s, the designers found they shared a creative vision and soon became inseparable, working together at top fashion houses such as Max Mara. They set up their own business in 1982, but it wasn’t until Mario Boselli, chairman of Italy’s National Fashion Chamber of Commerce, invited them to show at Milan Fashion Week in 1985 that the brand Dolce & Gabbana presented its first proper collection.

“For years we carried on tirelessly, presenting our creations here and there, packing my old Renault to the brim,” Dolce says in Lords of Fashion. “So when Mario Boselli invited us to Fashion Week, it was a clear sign that Milan had taken notice.”

Despite the positive attention that debut womenswear show garnered, it didn’t bring the immediate success and cash flow that the

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team might have hoped for. “After that they still had to struggle quite a bit because nobody wanted to produce them,” Tibor Michaels told Portfolio. “Finally, Domenico’s brother agreed upon giving them a hand, so they started out as a family business.”

Unlike Prada, Versace and Missoni, however, the designers didn’t come from moneyed dynasties – Dolce’s father was a Sicilian tailor while Gabbana’s dad worked in a printing factory, so it took some time and effort to build up the Dolce & Gabbana brand. Initially the pair began making a name selling underwear, swimwear and leotards, and the 1990s brought an upturn in fortunes and expansion in the Japanese and American markets.

Wider international recognition came in 1991 when Madonna wore a headline-grabbing Dolce & Gabbana gemstone encrusted corset at the New York premiere of her behind-the-scenes

documentary In Bed with Madonna. In 1992, the duo launched their first menswear collection and, crucially, the first perfume – one key element in the brand’s success. However, celebrity endorsement has played a major part in the Dolce & Gabbana’s story; whether by design or accident, it was perfectly in sync with the global obsession with celebrity culture as it escalated throughout the 1990s. Madonna’s support, in particular, has been pivotal. She went on to ask the duo to design 1,500 costumes for her Girlie Show international tour in 1993, stating: “Their clothes are sexy with a sense of humour – like me.” And by the end of the decade, the company’s turnover was in excess of $500 million.

In 1994, an era when supermodels were at the height of their influence, Dolce & Gabbana named a signature double-breasted jacket ‘La Turlington’ after the internationally famous model Christy

Top left: Madonna has been one of D&G’s biggest supporters Top and above: D&G fashion shows.

FASHION FORWARD

Turlington. Then in 1996, another publicity coup emerged, when they designed the big screen costumes for Leonardo DiCaprio and the cast of Baz Lurhman’s hit romantic tragedy, Romeo+Juliet.

Soon, famous names from Britney Spears to Daniel Craig were seen sporting the label publicly and the media lapped it up. They still do. In 2015 the British edition of Elle magazine ran a photoheavy ‘news’ story entitled ‘The A-list loves…

Dolce & Gabbana’, in which they named Cara Delevingne, Beyoncé, Katy Perry, Sienna Miller and Chloë Sevigny as ardent fans. “Little wonder,” gushed Elle’s editorial, “Dolce & Gabbana’s flattering, nipped-in silhouettes are so very wearable.”

What is it that separates D&G from the legion of other luxur y fashion brands, I ask Mark Tungate, author of the acclaimed book Luxury World: The Past, Present and Future of Luxury Brands. “All great brands are consistent, and if you look at the history of D&G, there are some very strong themes that have run through it since the beginning,” he says. “They’ve frequently mined themes such as Sicily, classic Italian cinema, the ideal of the extended family, and the crafts heritage of Italy in general. All this laden with heaps of hedonism, sexiness and bling. The result is an almost unbroken narrative that paints a clear picture of what D&G ‘is’.

That’s the essence of branding, a collection of ideas and associations that have a life beyond a mere product or service.”

“Sicily, tailoring and tradition” are indeed the three fundamental obsessions behind the D&G concept, Dolce told The Guardian newspaper.

“Our dream is to create a style that is timeless, and to create clothes with such a strong personality that whoever sees them can instantly say without a shadow of a doubt: this is a Dolce & Gabbana.”

However, it’s the dynamic dissonance of the design duo’s distinct personalities that international style consultant Daniel Johnson attributes their success to. “Domenico comes from the Polizzi Generosa in the south of Italy and prefers simple tailoring with immaculate cuts, borne of growing up in his father’s tailoring shop,” says

Johnson. “Whereas Stefano hates to wear a suit and prefers colour and ripped jeans, originally studying as a graphic designer. I think that this balance of personality results in a brand that has a wonderful cut in the tailoring for both men and women whilst offering quite outlandish designs and opulence.”

Attributed with popularising the ripped jeans with blazer ‘look’ and known for its use of print and Sicilian emblems, “the biggest inspiration for their designs is La Dolce Vita – Italian for ‘the good life’,” insists Johnson. “Watch the film starring Marcello Mastroianni and you’ll struggle to disassociate the main character from that of Dolce & Gabanna.

The slick black suit, pressed white shirt and slim black tie of Mastroianni,” he says, “is essentially the Dolce ‘look’ that is offered in their suiting.”

That’s the D&G style explained so on to the moneymaker. In 1993 Dolce & Gabbana’s Parfum won the Perfume’s Academy ‘Most Feminine Flavour of the Year’ – the first of many awards for women’s perfumes and men’s colognes that includes the The Fragrance Foundation’s FiFi Awards’ ‘Fragrance of the Year 2007’ for Light Blue Pour Homme.

As the fashion world reviews the brand’s latest 2017 fragrances, such as the Easter n-influenced Velvet Amber Skin, I ask Tungate how important have scents been in expanding the D&G brand?

“The worst-kept secret of the fashion business is that it doesn’t actually make money from clothes,” says Tungate. “The bulk of its profits come from fragrances and accessories. D&G understood that very quickly – and the TV ad for their first fragrance in 1995, starring Monica Bellucci, was a kind of quirky masterpiece. Once again referencing classic Italian cinema and torrid Mediterranean culture, it featured a fisherman pounding an octopus against a rock. It was hilarious and ran for ages,” he says. “There have been loads of others but that one set the tone, I think.”

“They were kind of rebels,” Michaels says as he explains public perceptions of the Dolce & Gabbana brand. “With younger, more daring, transgressive ideas and tastes; about 10 or more years younger, hungrier and more hip than Prada, Armani and Versace,” he adds. “Later that gap went into tech and social network innovation.”

“They intuited the power of social media early on,” Tungate says of their pioneering

The bulk of the fashion industry’s revenues don’t come from clothes but from fragrances and accessories

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Dolce & Gabbana are known for their spectacular catwalk shows that showcase the duo’s creativity

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approach. “In common with many luxury brands, they’ve identified millennials as the next generation of luxury consumers and often feature young influencers in their print advertising. Their Instagram feed is visually stunning, but that’s the minimum requirement for a luxury brand. D&G go further by engaging directly and frequently with consumers via responses to comments,” Tungate states. “As a result, they have a far higher level of engagement with their fans than most luxury brands. Their website is a trove of colourful behind-the-scenes stories about their advertising locations, inspirations and favourite cities. They also cleverly allowed audiences to access all these channels from one place: a ‘Follow Us’ tab on their Facebook page,” he says.

“They have been quite the forerunner in the digital world,” Johnson agrees. “They were one of the first brands to put social media ‘influencers’ on the front seats at their fashion shows rather than the usual celebrities. This really helped to promote their brand to an audience, that otherwise might not have looked at the clothing.”

Whether this millennial demographic can afford much from Dolce & Gabbana’s range is another matter. “Existing shoppers may not want to be dressed in the things being coveted by their teenage children,” wrote The Telegraph when news of the #DGMillenials campaign broke earlier this year. “But perhaps Dolce is playing the long game here,” it speculated, “to get ahead and foster its next wave of customers.”

That can be seen in its online campaign: #DGMillenials pictures cool, young social influ-

“Fashion brands have a duty to be edgy. It’s a difficult line to walk: you want to be provocative but not offensive”

encers such as Instagram star Cameron Dallas and singer Zendaya, plus a whole host of celebrity offspring. These include Cindy Crawford’s son Presley Gerber, Pamela Anderson’s sons Dylan Jagger and Brandon Thomas Lee, Gabriel Kane, son of Daniel Day Lewis and Rafferty Law, the son of Jude Law and Sadie Frost. Shot on the streets of Capri, the images show a fun, young side to D&G – noticeably tamer – with little flesh or overt sexuality on show.

Does the maverick brand actively court controversy to publicise Dolce & Gabbana and has it been a successful strategy? “Fashion brands have a duty to be a bit edgy,” Tungate says. “That’s part of what tempts us to reach for our wallets, so we can feel risky and dangerous too. But D&G occasionally push it too far: one of their ads was heavily criticised for its depiction of a woman apparently pinned to the ground by one guy while others looked on. It was during a period when fashion brands found it fun to flirt with pornographic imagery. Happily, they’ve left that behind. It’s a difficult line to walk: you want to be sexy and provocative without being offensive. D&G often flirt with vulgarity, but by and large they inject just the right dose, so that you raise your eyebrows but don’t look away.”

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Emma Woollacott examines why Frankfurt is leading the pack when it comes to poaching post-Brexit business

BANKING ON BREXIT

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ondon has long been the established banking capital of Europe – and, until last summer, it looked set to stay that way. It has the world’s largest number of banks and the largest commercial insurance market, managing more than a third of Europe’s financial assets – more than twice as much as its nearest European rival, Paris.

And as if that weren’t enough, the British capital also has the largest foreign exchange market and the second largest derivatives market in the world; euro, yen and dollar trades worth around $ 869 trillion are made in London every year.

However, following last June’s vote to leave the European Union, all this looks likely to change.

Currently, banks with a base in the UK are able to access customers and financial markets in the rest of the EU, as well as the slightly wider European Economic Area (EEA), through a mechanism known as financial passporting. This eliminates the need to set up headquarters and show compliance with regulations in each country across the EU. However, if and when the UK actually leaves the EU, British operations will lose these automatic rights, creating barriers for business with the rest of Europe.

There are, of course, some moves within the UK to try and keep London’s banking crown. The House of Lords is currently considering a ‘regulatory equivalence’ scheme to replace financial passporting that would see the UK applying similar financial rules to those in the EU in return for access. However, this is widely seen as inadequate, and too easy to revoke; and, certainly, the idea isn’t gaining much traction outside the UK. And while Nicky Morgan, the new chair of the UK parliament’s Treasury Select Committee, has called for a transitional deal that would extend beyond the 2019 Brexit deadline, banks have to plan ahead and aren’t going to risk their business on that chance. As a result, says Brussels-based research group Bruegel, London-based global banks look set to have to shift €1.8 trillion of assets, representing 17 per cent of the UK banking system, to the continent, putting as many as 30,000 British banking jobs at risk.

And, unsurprisingly, a number of European cities are seeing opportunities in this potential exodus and are furiously trying to position themselves

BANKING ON BREXIT

The race has been between Amsterdam, Paris, Frankfurt and Dublin; each trying to win investment

Above: Dublin is probably Frankfurt’s main rival when it comes to winning postBrexit business.

Bottom Right: Frankfurt’s leisure activities are a big draw

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as Europe’s future financial capital. Some started early: shortly after the Brexit referendum, for example, a truck was seen driving around London with the message ‘Dear start-ups, keep calm and move to Berlin’ emblazoned on the side, while France moved quickly to establish a team of corporate leaders and politicians to woo international banks.

The main contenders to replace London as Europe’s banking capital so far appear to be Dublin, Paris, Amsterdam and Frankfurt, with some pitching for specific areas of banking. Irish finance minister Michael Noonan, for example, has called for Dublin to be considered as the new home of the European Banking Authority (EBA). “Ireland has a significant financial services sector, efficient transport links to other European capitals and the capacity to absorb the European Banking Authority’s re-location to Ireland,” he said late last year. “As a country with experience in providing links to banks and companies in the UK market, Ireland provides an ideal new home for the staff of the EBA.”

Ireland’s also hoping to attract new investment from financial firms themselves, claiming that as many as a dozen international banks are already making plans. Bank of America recently announced that it will make Dublin its new European base, bringing as many as 700 jobs.

Barclays has said it is talking with regulators about extending its activities in the city.

France, meanwhile, has set its sights on the lucrative clearing business. “With Brexit, Paris intends to consolidate its position as a clearing and settlement centre in euros,” French financial lobby group Europlace stated late last year.

Paris is already mainland Europe’s top centre for interest-rate swaps trading, handling around $141 billion of derivatives every day, and hosts some of Europe’s biggest banks, including Societe Generale and BNP Paribas. More than 180,000 financiers already work in Paris, and the city has the second-largest number of asset managers.

Up to now, Paris has suffered a little from comparatively high taxes, a relative shortage of English speakers and labour laws that are widely seen as inflexible, with constraints on working hours and the ability to hire and fire. However, the government is now considering abolishing the highest bracket of a payroll tax levied on each salaried employee and cancelling plans to increase a 0.3 per cent tax on financial transactions, while simplifying the way EU financial regulations are incorporated into French law.

Paris has already attracted the interest of HSBC, which has said that it may move 20 per cent of its London banking operations and 1,000 staff there, in an operation set to cost up to $300 million. Other financial organisations shifting emphasis away from London include Lloyds of London, which earlier this year said it plans to open an EU insurance office in Brussels.

“It is important that we are able to provide the market and customers with an effective solution

BANKING ON BREXIT

that means business can carry on without interruption when the UK leaves the EU,” said chief executive Inga Beale. “Brussels met the critical elements of providing a robust regulatory framework in a central European location, and will enable Lloyd’s to continue to provide specialist underwriting expertise to our customers.”

Rounding out the list of places jockeying to attract banking business post-Brexit are Frankfurt and Amsterdam – the latter looks set to win the investment operations of MUFG, Japan’s biggest bank, according to the Financial Times.

“Market friendly policies and the population’s excellent English language skills keep barriers for movement relatively low, even though a 20 per cent cap on bankers’ bonuses might be seen as a negative for some parts of the financial services sector,” says Gunnar Herm, head of real estate research and strategy for Europe at UBS Asset Management.

“As the EU’s four th largest major airport, Amsterdam offers excellent transport links to all parts of Europe, but also to the rest of the world.” Amsterdam also has

plenty of fluent English speakers and good international schools, and the Netherlands is already a major centre for international trade.

But it’s Frankfurt that looks set to win the lion’s share of banking business post Brexit, with Bruegel predicting that it will win 45 per cent of the European wholesale market if the UK’s share drops from 90 to 60 per cent because of Brexit. Under this scenario, it believes, Paris – home to the markets supervisor ESMA and several large banks – could win 20 per cent of the market with Dublin and Amsterdam getting 15 per cent and 10 per cent, respectively.

A l r e a d y, C i t i g r o u p h a s announced plans to make Frankfurt its hub for sales and trading in the EU, moving 200 odd jobs; Reuters has reported that it plans to make the city its main European centre.

Meanwhile, Morgan Stanley is said to have picked Frankfurt for its new EU hub in a move that could see 200 jobs shifted away from London; and Deutsche Bank, too, is believed

Frankfurt is predicted to win more than 45 per cent of Europe’s wholesale banking market

COST OF LIVING IN SOME OF THE CANDIDATE CITIES FOR EUROPEAN BANKING CAPITAL (Sources: Numbeo, UBS, Cushman & Wakefield)

Brussels Corporate tax rate: 33.99% Office space vacancy rate: 9% Population: 1.14 million Four-person family monthly costs without rent: €2,733.38 Single person monthly costs without rent: €756.76 Rent for three-bedroom apartment in city centre: €1,545.24 Rent for one-bedroom apartment in city centre: €775.45

Paris Corporate tax rate: 33.33% Office space vacancy rate: 7%, apart from La Défense Population: 2.244 million Four-person family monthly costs without rent: €3,134.96 Single person monthly costs without rent: €870.45 Rent for three-bedroom apartment in city centre: €2,293.33 Rent for one-bedroom apartment in city centre: €1,093.15

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BANKING ON BREXIT

Frankfurt Corporate tax rate: 15% plus solidarity surcharge (5.5% of corporation tax) and trade tax (averaging 14% as of 2008). Total tax on corporations in Germany is just below 30% Office space vacancy rate: 12% in the traditional locations of Bankendistrikt and Westend Four-person family monthly costs without rent: €2,947.64 Single person monthly costs without rent: €837.08 Rent for three-bedroom apartment in city centre: €1,705.29 Rent for one-bedroom apartment in city centre: €927.20

Luxembourg

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Corporate tax rate: 29.22% for commercial activity; 5.718% for intellectual property income and royalties.

Office space vacancy rate: 4% Population: 583,000 Four-person family monthly costs without rent: €3,148.72 Single person monthly costs without rent: €897.10 Rent for three-bedroom apartment in city centre: €2,571.43 Rent for one-bedroom apartment in city centre: €1,356.82

to be preparing to move much of the trading and investment-banking assets it currently books in London back home. Other firms that have said they plan to expand their operations in Frankfurt include Goldman Sachs, Standard Char tered, Daiwa, Sumitomo Mitsui, Nomura and VTB, as well as Woori Bank of South Korea.

Indeed, Frankfur t Main Finance says it expects at least 12 – and possibly as many as 20 – banks to relocate to Frankfurt this year. So what makes the German city so appealing?

Frankfurt has a long history as a trading centre – indeed, the Frankfurter Messe trade fair was up and running by the late 12th century. The city also minted money for German and Austrian monarchs. However, it really rose to prominence as a modern financial centre after the Second World War. Centrally located for the American, British and French occupation zones, the city became the headquarters of the united economic area bank of German countries, which later became the Deutsche Bundesbank.

And alongside the Bundesbank, Frankfurt is home to the European Central Bank, as well as the national regulatory authority BaFin –

widely acknowledged as the best-equipped outside London to handle banks’ complex derivatives business. It’s already got the biggest concentration of US investment bank operations outside London.

Frankfurt also has excellent transport links, with the third-largest airport in the EU – and plenty of office space vacant. There are half a million square metres available in the city centre, says UBS, about 12 per cent of the total. And the city has other things going for it too.

“Frankfurt’s profile is slightly more biased towards banking and less towards asset management. Financial companies may find it attractive to be close to the European Central Bank (ECB), other European regulatory bodies and being based in EU’s biggest economy,” says Herm.

“Labour laws are not as flexible as in the UK; however, there are no major constraints for management positions. With the EU’s third largest airport, Frankfurt not only offers excellent connectivity within Europe but also to the rest of the world, actually having the highest number of flights to China of any European airport.”

And Frankfurt has already created plans to loosen certain labour laws, suggesting that by this time next year it could be easier to hire and fire financial services workers who take big risks while earning big rewards.

Frankfurt really rose to prominence as a centre of finance after the Second World War

BANKING ON BREXIT

Left: Frankfurt started growing its finance industry in the 1950s. Below: The city has more office space than many of its competitors

Economists expect Frankfurt to pick up at least half the jobs in the financial sector that London will lose

Economists at German commercial bank Helaba believe that Frankfurt has a good chance of picking up at least half the jobs in the financial sector that will be shifted from London over the coming years – at least 8,000 in total, with more than 2,000 jobs expected to be relocated by as early as the end of 2018.

One thing that is often largely overlooked in discussions of this sort, though, is the human factor. Many London-based bankers will have homes that they love, networks of friends and children in local day schools – and will be unlikely to want to move to another country unless it can offer a similarly appealing lifestyle.

And here, too, Frankfurt is a winner.

“I am a great fan of Frankfurt. It is small – around 600,000. The real advantage is that it is surrounded by exceptionally beautiful countryside

in all directions, and because of its small size you have a really short commute,” says Geoffrey Townsend, a former partner with KPMG who lived in Taunus near Frankfurt for almost 20 years. “For a city of its size it has an exceptional cultural offering. It is very safe – especially in the surrounding countryside. I think it is a good place to bring up kids. Transport connections are outstanding. Apparently the international school offering is good now.”

Anecdotal evidence indicates that banking staff are increasingly attracted to the city.

There’s particular interest from India, for whom Frankfurt is already the preferred investment destination within the Schengen zone, and many senior banking staff currently in London and elsewhere are making enquiries.

“London’s banks are behaving increasingly hesitantly. Our contracts there have reduced dramatically and recruiting has declined by 30 to 50 per cent,” says Thomas Deininger, managing director of Deininger Consulting, a global consultancy headquartered in Frankfurt.

“On the other hand, we have increased interest in Frankfurt. The number of unsolicited CVs has certainly increased by 20 per cent.

There are a lot of actors in the financial sector currently taking part in exploratory talks with us.” Townsend says he’d recommend Frankfurt for anybody considering taking the plunge, both for professional and personal reasons. “It is a really international city, and the locals are very friendly,” he says. “And then there is [the] Eintracht [football club].

What a team!”

Amsterdam Corporate tax rate: 25% Office space vacancy rate: 12% Population: 822,000 Four-person family monthly costs without rent: €2,965.35 Single person monthly costs without rent: €821.68 Rent for three-bedroom apartment in city centre: €2,371.25 Rent for one-bedroom apartment in city centre: €1,385.04

Dublin Corporate tax rate: 12.5% for trading income; 25% for non-trading income Office space vacancy rate: 6% (though office space is expected to increase by 12% over the next three years) Population: 527,600 Four-person family monthly costs without rent: €2,970.34 Single person monthly costs without rent: €832.12 Rent for three-bedroom apartment in city centre: €2,419.10 Rent for one-bedroom apartment in city centre: €1,399.91

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SEPTEMBER ISSUE 141

City lights The Park Hyatt Tokyo is one of Asia’s best city hotels

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LIVING / HOTEL

PARK HYATT TOKYO

WHERE TO STAY

Japan

PRICE From $750 per night

tokyo.park.hyatt.com

 NRT

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M

ade famous by that appearance in Sophia Coppola’s Lost In Translation, the Park Hyatt is the epitome of Asian city cool. Set 50 storeys above the throbbing heart of Shinjuku, the hotel combines stateof-the-art technology with a Japanese twist. From the floor-to-ceiling bathroom windows offering jaw-dropping views of the city to the 22,000sqft wellness centre, it’s hard not to fall in love with this place. The staff, as you might expect, are exceptional: discreet, welcoming and conscientious. Equally impressive are the huge rooms, the amazing beds (replete with Egyptian cotton sheets) and, of course, the New York bar. Set 52 stories up, this is a huge glass pyramid, filled with guests, shoppers and tourists, all enjoying the jazz, the views and the huge whisky menu. While Tokyo has countless attractions on offer, the Park Hyatt is a very hard hotel to leave.

SEPTEMBER ISSUE 141

FROM THE CONCIERGE

SEE

Sensõ-ji is a Buddhist temple located in Asakusa district, a beautiful (and huge) structure spread over several acres. It’s possible to spend hours wandering around here and it’s a great way to see some of the old Japan in the heart of the city.

EAT

Tokyo is the ramen capital of the world and there are countless hole-inthe-wall joints that are amazing. Try Kagari in Ginza, which is the first Michelin-starred ramen shop. It’s tiny (with only eight seats) but it’s worth the wait.

SHOP

Tokyo is a shopper’s paradise with thousands of incredible stores offering everything you can imagine.

For luxury goods, head to Ginza Six, a 13-storey luxury department store, with a wonderful roof garden.

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SEPTEMBER LIVING / INVESTMENT

ISSUE 141

The Jaguar 2.4 MK1 A classic piece of British automotive design

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This was the first Jaguar with a unitary construction of the body and chassis

Like most Jaguar cars, it has a central dashboard where all the dials and switches are located

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The car came in two versions: standard or with special equipment.

The ‘special equipment’ included a heater, windscreen wipers, fog lights, a trachometer and a cigarette lighter

T

he Jaguar 2.4 MK1 has a flair all its own. With its Art Deco styling and a gorgeous rounded exterior, it’s no surprise this model is catching collectors’ eyes. With models on the market for $20,000-$30,000, this could be a nice little investment with prices set to rise in the coming years. This was the ultimate family saloon car and allowed Jaguar to target the family market. Although the classic car market has slowed recently, we expect it to pick up again in the next two to three years, which make investments such as this a good option.

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LIVING / STYLE

What to pack ...for autumn weather in Istanbul and beyond

Average temp

21°c

London New York Sydney Melbourne

ALSO WEAR IN...

17°C 20°C 16°C 16°C

SEPTEMBER

ISTANBUL

Chance of rain: 37%

WHAT TO SEE

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AYA SOFIA The Aya Sofia has finally had the scaffolding removed from its interior, which means visitors can take in its splendour for the first time in decades.

Formerly a church, then a mosque, and now a museum, it’s hard to overstate how beautiful this building is. A number of galleries play host to

some stunning mosaics, while there are tombs featuring a number of Ottoman sultans and their sons. There are also plans to showcase the city’s finest carpets later this year. Built in 537, the building is a testament to Istanbul’s place in the world and is regarded as one of the most important pieces of architecture ever built.

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1. Prada lightweight hooded jacket $1,001, matchesfashion.com 2. Citizens of Humanity Davis light grey tapered cotton chinos $285, harveynichols.com 3. Versace sneakers $754, raffaello-network.com 4. Aspesi washed cotton-twill shorts $134, mrporter.com 5. Thom Browne slim-fit skier-embroidered cotton-piquĂŠ T-shirt $867, mrporter.com

ACCESSORIES 1

2

G-Shock X Maharishi black chronograph watch $1,009 harveynichols.com

Takahiromiyashita The Soloist allen square-frame acetate sunglasses $756 mrporter.com

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4

5

81 Globe-Trotter green multi centenary 30 suitcase $1,925 matchesfashion.com

LIVING / STYLE

What to pack ...for autumn weather in Chicago and beyond

Average temp

19°c

Barcelona Toronto Buenos Aires Perth

ALSO WEAR IN...

21°C 18°C 16°C 17°C

SEPTEMBER

CHICAGO

Chance of rain: 35%

WHAT TO SEE

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ARCHITECTURE TOUR Chicago has one of the most impressive skylines in the world and is known for the quality of its architecture, as well as being the first city to embrace the skyscraper.

There are more than 35 architecture tours to choose from, from river cruises to tours that focus on the

history of the high-rise. With the Art Institute of Chicago, Sears Tower, the Wrigley Building and the John Hancock Center, the city is a mustsee for architecture lovers. We love the river cruise where you can take in the best of the city’s buildings from the waters, and get a close-up view of Chicago’s history.

SEPTEMBER

ACCESSORIES

ISSUE 141

Jude Frances diamond earring charms $1,061 neimanmarcus.com

Helen KaminskiNewport SB almond raffia sunhat $239 harveynichols.com

Roksanda aplin appliquĂŠd textured-leather pouch $925 net-a-porter.com

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2

3 1

4

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1. Maison Rabih Kayrouz double-breasted wool coat $2,539, matchesfashion.com 2. Alice + Olivia Bella Eliza washed-silk maxi dress $441, net-a-porter.com 3. Roksanda Celeste colour-block midi dress $1,933, harveynichols.com 4. Nancy Gonzalez holly crocodile 50mm pump $1,995, neimanmarcus.com 5. Hubertus Donna Flat $934, eu.christianlouboutin.com

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LIVING / FOOD

Italy’s New Wave James Brennan meets an Italian chef pushing the boundaries of his country’s cuisine

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MILAN, ITALY

A

sk most people about Italian food and they’ll picture something simple and rustic.

Plates of pasta and tomato sauce garnished with fresh basil. Some hearty focaccia bread, perhaps, with a nice Chianti. Now ask them about cuttingedge cuisine, and chances are they’ll envision something Spanish or Nordic: a molecular sphere of olive oil, maybe, or fresh North Sea shrimp with live ants.

Perhaps because of their simplicity and integrity, the traditional mainstays of Italian cuisine have become deeply ingrained in our subconscious as something immutable. It’s comforting to know, wherever you are in the world, those much-loved dishes will always be there, in varying shades of authenticity.

But the Italian cucina has moved on, and Luigi Taglienti is one of a new wave of chefs pushing it forward.

His LUME restaurant, occupying a converted factory off a nondescript postindustrial side street in Milan, opened in June last year. Six months later it was awarded its first Michelin star, and in May of this year it was named Best New European Restaurant in the Opinionated About Dining awards in Paris.

Driving its sharp upward trajectory are dishes like Taglienti’s risotto with turmeric root juice with wild black pepper, laurel leaf powder and lemon – a familiar Italian staple with an international twist. LUME has just installed a new orto, or vegetable garden, which surrounds a pristine white conservatory-cum-birdcage, erected in homage to the traditional bird-keeping Italian grandmother’s backyard, as if to anchor its cutting-edge Italian food to some semblance of tradition.

 MXP

“I prefer the word ‘heritage’ rather than ‘tradition’,” says Taglienti. Sitting in the vegetable garden, under the elegant arches of his new oversized birdcage, he is describing how the cuisine of Italy’s past is inextricably linked to the food of its future. “It’s about history, and knowledge of the territory and the local producers.

It’s the memory of my past experiences rather than the memory of somebody else’s traditions. We don’t talk about tradition, we talk about memories of our own experiences, and how we elaborate on those memories to make our own cuisine.

That’s where the heritage comes from.”

The modernisation of Italian cuisine is nothing new. For years, Massimo Bottura’s Osteria Francescana restaurant in Modena has been testing the boundaries of EmiliaRomagna’s culinary heritage. In 2016, those champions of the avant-garde, the World’s 50 Best Restaurants awards, named it number one on their list. Dishes such as ‘Oops I Dropped The Lemon Tart’ and ‘Beautiful Psychedelic Veal, Not Flame-Grilled’ (inspired by the art of Damien Hirst) are storied splatterpaintings of modernist cuisine, which aim to change our perceptions, not just of Italian food, but of all food.

Elsewhere in Italy, the likes of MasterChef Italia star Carlo Cracco (under whom Taglienti once worked), ‘salad master’ Enrico Crippa and Davide Scabin have been at the forefront of progressive Italian cuisine. Scabin’s Combal Zero restaurant in Turin restaurant has won fame and a Michelin star for its artistic creations, which sit on the menu alongside classic Piedmontese dishes. But even Bottura’s futuristic fare is grounded in memories of his

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Luigi Taglienti

LIVING / FOOD

“The best thing is to give people from outside of Italy something innovative, while respecting traditional flavours. If you have an open mentality, but you still respect tradition, then you don’t need to have something like spaghetti Alfredo” grandmother’s tortellini, and guided by the hand of matriarchal pasta-maker Lidia Cristoni, who has taught legions of stagiaires at Osteria Francescana how to make tagliatelli.

For an Italian chef, it seems, no matter how far you push the possibilities of Italian cuisine, it’s hard to completely let go of your grandmother’s apron strings.

For Taglienti, though, it’s more about honouring that which made today’s innovations in food possible. “We need to respect where we’ve come from, but look ahead,” he insists. “My cuisine is very personal. It’s my own vision. I respect what previous chefs have done, but I elaborate on that in my own way. That’s how I find a balance, through a very specific and personal vision of the cuisine.

My mission is to evolve Italian cuisine. It’s evolution, not revolution.”

“For example, the risotto with turmeric is a dish in my own vision,” he continues. “Some people might say the turmeric is not traditional, but by elaborating on the risotto in my own style,

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we manage to combine the turmeric, the laurel leaf and lemon so it resembles the traditional basil flavour, but it isn’t basil. The preparation is very traditional, though, because risotto is risotto.”

Of course, it goes way beyond throwing a bit of turmeric into a risotto. It’s about bringing the best out of local, natural ingredients. “The starting point is always the Italian kitchen and the territory. Then there’s the theme of my own heritage. The food I had when I was a boy in Liguria,” Taglienti explains. His ‘Ligurian Picture’, a simple shrimp dish delicately blanketed with layers of zucchini, is a snapshot of the region’s seafood, vegetables and citrus fruit. “I want to tell the story of the region through my food, and this dish summarises the key elements of Liguria. You have the sea and the mountains and the soil.”

Another dish showcases a variety of morone fish (striped bass), which can only be found in the darkest depths of the Ligurian Sea. It arrives on the plate in a firm, flaky cube with patisson (pattypan squash) and fresh kiwi fruit.

So while Taglienti’s passion for localism is evident, his international outlook is also clear to see.

But how does the rest of the world perceive modern Italian cuisine? “The best thing is to give people from outside of Italy something innovative, while respecting traditional flavours,” he says.

“If you have an open mentality with an international approach, but you still respect tradition, then you don’t need to have something like spaghetti Alfredo.

Where is Alfredo? Who is Alfredo?” he laughs, calling mockingly into the distance. The birdcage has a ‘whispering gallery’ echo effect in miniature, which sends his words right back at him.

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So which country’s cuisine does he draw most inspiration from? “French comes first,” he says. “The base of the kitchen is French, not only for its classic recipes, but for its mentality. If in Italy the chef is passionate first and foremost, in France the chef is professional. I have a big passion for the kitchen, but I want to be a professional. This is the right balance to make an important, but personal kitchen.”

A personal touch is crucial in the competitive world of progressive Italian food. Taglienti counts the likes of Calabrian chef Luca Abbruzzino and Pino Cuttaia of La Madia in Sicily as kindred spirits. But talk of a new wave of cutting-edge Italian chefs makes him uneasy. “I don’t want to classify myself as someone who wants to rewrite Italian cuisine, but I feel that because I have very innovative ideas I am considered part of a new chapter of Italian cuisine.

It’s not up to me to say whether I can do it, but if somebody else wants to say so, then that’s fine.”

Critics are beginning to say so. The Michelin guide praised Taglienti for his elegant, inventive cooking, and the awards are stacking up. Do the plaudits weigh heavily on him? “Recognition is important but it’s not the main motivator. I don’t do my job because of it,” he asserts.

“If recognition is the only thing, it can narrow your perspective. If it doesn’t arrive, what are you going to do?”

Start cooking spaghetti Alfredo?

Maybe not. More likely it would be something his grandmother cooked in her little home kitchen, rather than some foreign mass-market interpretation of Italian food. “One of the most important memories I have is of the food my grandmother cooked on an iron stove, my grandfather picking the vegetables from the vegetable patch,” he says wistfully.

What would his grandparents think of his food at LUME? Taglienti laughs: “You know, they were always supportive and enthusiastic when I started, but if I gave them one of my more innovative dishes they might get up and walk out.

My grandfather would probably prefer my grandmother’s cooking.”

When it comes to food in Italy, choosing between the old and the new is always a tough call.

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LIVING / ART

Lights, camera, action The Toronto Film Festival is a movie lover’s dream 88

F

rom its first year in 1976, TIFF has become one of the most respected film festivals in the world. With its People’s Choice Award seen as a bellwether for the Oscars, it’s also one of the most important.

This year will be no exception, with programmes including: Contemporary World Cinema, Discovery, Gala Presentations, Masters, Midnight Madness, Platform, Short Cuts, Special Presentations, TIFF Cinematheque, TIFF Docs, TIFF Kids,

TIFF Next Wave and Wavelengths.

Held in the TIFF Bell Lightbox, which takes up an entire block in the centre of Toronto, the 10-day festival is a must for film lovers.

The Toronto Film Festival runs from September 7 to 17

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Left: Fans line up at last year’s event. Below: Scarlett Johansson, Leonardo DiCaprio and Justin Timberlake press the flesh

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LIVING / COLUMN

Blood, Sweat, and Pixels

By Jason Schreier

S

ay you want to make a video game.

You’ve got this killer idea – it’s about a moustachioed plumber who has to rescue his princess girlfriend from a giant fire-breathing turtle – and you’ve convinced an investor to give you a million dollars to make it happen. Now what?

Well, first you need to figure out the exact number of people you can afford to hire.

Then you need to call up some artists, some designers, some programmers. You’ll need a producer to keep things running smoothly, and a sound department to make sure the game has, you know, sounds. Can’t forget to hire some quality assurance testers to check for bugs. And a marketing savant – how else will everyone know about your future bestseller?

Once you’re all staffed up, you’ll need to make a strict schedule that determines how much time your team will spend on each part of the game. If all goes well, you’ll develop a demo in six months, then be “feature complete” by the end of the year.

After a few months, things seem to be going well. Your artists are drawing all sorts of cool enemies for your plumber to fight: ghosts, mushrooms, that sort of thing. The designers have sketched out some clever levels that will guide the player through raging volcanoes and fetid swamps. The programmers just figured out a fancy rendering trick that will make the dungeons look more realistic than anything you have seen before. Everyone is motivated, the game is making progress, and you’re handing out stock options like they’re free newspapers in the subway.

One morning you get a call from your producer. Turns out that rendering trick is useless, because it knocks your games frame rate down to 10 frames per second.

The playtesters keep getting stuck on the volcano level, and your marketing guy is

grumbling about how that might affect your Metacritic score. Your art director insists on micromanaging the animators, which is driving them crazy. Your demo is due in two weeks and you know there’s no way you can get it done in less than four. And suddenly the investors are asking if maybe you can slash that $10 million budget down to $8 million, even if you have to let go of a few people to make it happen. A week ago, you were fantasising about the speech you’d make at The Game Awards after winning Game of the Year. Now you’re wondering if you’ll ever finish.

I once had drinks with a developer who’d just shipped a new game. He looked exhausted. He and his team had been near the goal line, he said, when they were hit with a revelation: one of the game’s biggest features wasn’t actually fun to play. The developer’s team had to spend the next few months “crunching”, working eighty to one hundred hour weeks to scrap the feature and overhaul everything they had done to that point. Some of them slept in the office so they wouldn’t have to waste time commuting, because every hour spent in the car was an hour not spent fixing bugs. Up until the day they had to submit a final build, many of them doubted they’d be able to release the game at all. “Sounds like a miracle that this game was even made,” I said. “Oh, Jason,” he said. “It’s a miracle that any game is made.”

Every single video game is made under abnormal circumstances. Video games straddle the border between art and technology in a way that was impossible just a few decades ago. Combine technological shifts with the fact that a video game can be anything from a two-dimensional iPhone puzzler to a massive open-world RPG, and it’s not shocking to discover there are no uniform standards for how games are made.

Video games straddle the border between art and technology in a way that was impossible just a few decades ago

90 From Blood, Sweat, and Pixels by Jason Schreir © 2017. Reprinted courtesy of Harper, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers

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Prices and details correct at time of going to press. Computer Generated Images are indicative only. *Travel times based on google.co.uk/maps. From White City station.