ISSUE
124 THE CUDDLY FACE OF SERIOUS BUSINESS Why corporate mascots are so important in Japan
LARRY PAGE
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Google’s innovator-in-chief
The crusading tabloid fights back
URBAN STOCKHOLM
CHINA’S CURRENCY EXIT
Model for sustainable development
Why $1 trillion has left the country
Our quest for perfection. Senator Cosmopolite
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APRiL issue 124
The business of life & living
Exclusive to Emirates First Class and Business Class
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Obaid Humaid al Tayer MANAGING PARTNER & GROUP EDITOR ian Fairservice EDITORIAL DIRECTOR Gina JOHnsOn GROUP EDITOR mark evans marke@motivate.ae EDITOR maTTHew POmrOy matthew.pomroy@motivate.ae sENIOR ART DIRECTOR sara raFFaGHellO sarar@motivate.ae sENIOR DEsIGNER rOui FranciscO rom@motivate.ae sUb-EDITOR salil kumar salil@motivate.ae EDITORIAL AssIsTANT lOndresa FlOres londresa@motivate.ae GENERAL MANAGER – PRODUCTION sunil kumar sunil@motivate.ae PRODUCTION MANAGER r. murali krisHnan muralik@motivate.ae PRODUCTION sUPERvIsOR veniTa PinTO venita@motivate.ae CHIEF COMMERCIAL OFFICER anTHOny milne anthony@motivate.ae GROUP sALEs DIRECTOR craiG waGsTaFF craig.wagstaff@motivate.ae INTERNATIONAL sALEs MANAGER marTin balmer martin.balmer@motivate.ae GROUP sALEs MANAGER Jaya balakrisHnan jaya@motivate.ae sENIOR sALEs MANAGER micHael underdOwn michael@motivate.ae Emirates takes care to ensure that all facts published herein are correct. In the event of any inaccuracy please contact the editor. Any opinion expressed is the honest belief of the author based on all available facts. Comments and facts should not be relied upon by the reader in taking commercial, legal, financial or other decisions. Articles are by their nature general and specialist advice should always be consulted before any actions are taken. All dollar prices throughout the magazine refer to US dollars. Published for Emirates by
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Portfolio.
THE CUDDLy FACE OF bUsINEss 48
The above mascot is called Kumamon and was originally created in 2010 for a campaign to attract tourists to the Kunamoto region of Japan. Kumamoto doesn’t charge companies for usage of Kumamon’s image and they’re happy to see him being used (on everything from pillows to posters) to promote their region. He’s just one of many corporate mascots in Japan – a country that has embraced the soft face of hard commerce.
april issue 124
contents upfront
18
information
Info presented in photography
21
dropbox
What’s the future for the tech firm sending mixed signals?
24 waLL st. noveL
A debut based on time spent working on Wall Street
26
danny meyer
Restaurateur on why he’s stopping tips
Living
72
the other ibiza
High-end living on the island that likes to party
76
return of oLd itaLy
Why the classic Italian style is back for the young of Italy
30
87
Nasa’s release of inspirational travel posters
The increasingly soughtafter Rolex Daytona
nasa artwork
34
stockhoLm
Reimagining the cities waterfront
investment piece
89
book
Celebration of the preppy look and lifestyle
90
coLumn
The importance and power of city squares
15
33,388 copies July - December 2015
Portfolio.
APRIL ISSUE 124
CONTENTS FEATURES
38 DRIVERLESS CARS
Impressive as they are, the future may not be as close as we think
42 LARRY PAGE AND GOOGLE
The Google boss may be changing role but he’s still the innovator in chief
54 NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
The New York tabloid may be losing the circulation war but it’s battling to the death
58 TATTOO RINGS
People are getting a ring tattooed instead of buying one. What price permanence?
62 CHINA’S SMURFING
Smuggling currency out of a country is known as smurfing, and it’s becoming huge
68 CONDE NAST RESHUFFLE
The big changes at the magazine publisher are ruffling feathers
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upfront
Visualising information
upfront
portfolio.
This multiple-exposure photograph of a baskeball game is part of a trend to present information in a visual way, either for fun or to show activity from a full day in one shot for analysis.
18 Nicholas Fe lton
PHOTOVIZ Visualizing Information Through Photography
Portfolio.
From Fotoviz: Visualizing Information Through Photography
APRIL Issue 124
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Portfolio.
april upfront / dropbox
tech | global
Up or down at Dropbox? Right now, it’s hard to tell. Words: Farhad Manjoo
T
here are no obvious signs of distress at the lavish San Francisco headquarters of the cloud storage company Dropbox, where on any given day, its hallways bustle with upbeat, well-compensated tech workers enjoying the customary trappings of startup life. Dropbox is not laying off workers or shrinking; it hired nearly 500 people last year, 75 since the start of this year,
and it plans to soon move into a sprawling, custom-designed office building for which it has signed a long-term lease. But that isn’t the image of Dropbox you’d encounter in the news media. Two years ago, the company raised a round of financing that valued it at $10 billion, making it one of the most highly-prized startups of the tech boom. Now it faces a stock market that has turned unfriendly to initial public offerings
issue 124 of tech companies, plus stiff competition from publicly traded companies like Microsoft, Google and Box, the similarly named firm in a similar line of business. As a result, Dropbox’s valuation has been battered by a series of “markdowns” from large investors who appear to have turned sceptical about its future. For instance, the mutual fund manager T Rowe Price now considers Dropbox’s shares to be worth half what they were at the time of the last fundraising round. So what’s really going on at Dropbox? Is it thriving or dying? Neither, yet. When you look inside the company, you find something that defies Silicon Valley’s typical straight-up or straight-down narrative: a complicated story of incremental and potentially accelerating success, but one clouded by outsize dreams of yesteryear. It’s a fate that other Silicon Valley startups may be facing, especially with the dip in public and private markets for funding tech ventures. Dropbox’s problems have less to do with the strength of its current business than with a delay, so far, in realising the expectations that once surrounded the company. What happens to a company once thought to be worth $10 billion when it turns out to be worth only $5 billion, or $2 billion? According Dropbox executives, nothing terrible – it can just wait out the market freeze and grow into its $10 billion valuation. “Sentiment about companies goes in cycles,” Drew Houston, Dropbox’s co-founder and chief executive, told me. “Google, Apple, Facebook all went through multiple rounds of this. First, you can do no wrong, then you can do no right. Then people 21 are like, ‘Actually this is a good company,’ and around it goes. So you have to ignore the noise and stay focused on building great products and making the customers happy.” Portfolio.
april issue 124 At the moment, executives said, Dropbox isn’t in any urgent danger. If it were running out of money, it might be forced to raise funds at a lower value than its previous one – a dreaded “down round” – but executives and board members said the company had plenty of money in the bank and was generating enough from operations to fund an expansion into new products and services. Other numbers are also promising, they said. More than 400 million people use the company’s service – a place to keep documents online, so they can easily be shared and synchronised among different people and different computers – and the service is adding 10 million users a month. Dropbox also has 150,000 business customers, who pay annual fees of about $150 for each employee, and those ranks are growing by about 25,000 businesses a quarter. Insiders declined to specify Dropbox’s revenue and growth rate, other than to say there had been increases since its last funding round, when the
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Portfolio.
upfront / dropbox company’s annual revenue was reported to be $400 million. Executives also said employee retention and hiring have not been hurt by the recent news. I asked several tech recruiters if they had noticed a diminished interest in working for Dropbox; none had. In the last year, Dropbox has hired from Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Twitter. “Dropbox is growing on the same trajectory as the best softwareas-a-service companies ever – like LinkedIn or Salesforce,” said Bryan Schreier, a Dropbox board member and a partner at the investment firm Sequoia Capital, which has invested in the company. “I don’t know how we couldn’t be thrilled with that kind of performance.” But Dropbox has sceptics. The company is one of several looking to ride two tidal waves now sweeping the business world – the trend toward business software that doesn’t stink, known as the “consumerisation of information technology”, and the rising willingness of companies to store their most precious data on online servers, or in the cloud.
400m Dropbox users worldwide
10m
new users joining the service every month
Dropbox’s issue is that its products for business customers are relatively new compared with those of its rival Box, which was founded before Dropbox and began focusing on business users earlier. Dropbox is behind Box in attracting the most lucrative segment of the market – the largest companies who will pay the most to get their data online. Add to this the complication that Box, which has had to spend hundreds of millions of dollars building out a sales team to go after large companies, has been pummelled by investors for its persistent losses. The stock market now values Box at about $1.3 billion, about half of its value when it went public in January 2015. This sets up an unfavourable comparison for Dropbox: if Dropbox trails Box in the meatiest part of the market, and if Box is itself losing money, how can Dropbox possibly be worth 10 times as much as Box? Dropbox argues comparison with Box doesn’t take into account the differences in the two companies’ business models. Sure, Dropbox is developing its sales team and expanding its product offerings for businesses. But Dennis Woodside, Dropbox’s chief operating officer, said that its broad brand recognition makes the sales process more efficient – and thus cheaper – than Box’s. Because one company is public and one is private, and because they operate so differently, it is difficult to say whether Box or Dropbox – not to mention Google or Microsoft – will ultimately run away with the enterprise cloud services business. Analysts say that at the moment, the market is big enough, and wide open enough, for all of these companies to thrive. The murkier issue is not whether Dropbox can build a good business, but whether it can ever become the $10 billion goose that investors had once seen it as. Reports of Dropbox’s demise are premature. But so are reports of its comeback.
upfront
24
Portfolio.
april /wall street
books | nyc
Dow Jones’ Diary The semi-autobiographical comic novel from an ex-Bear Stearns executive. Words: Alessandra Stanley
S
trong, intelligent woman struggles to break through the double-pane glass ceiling of a top investment firm on Wall Street. A rich, good-looking investment banker makes a killing on mortgage-backed securities, the toxic bundles of debt that in 2008 put the economy on the edge of collapse. Actually, the two people are one and the same: Isabelle, the heroine of Opening Belle, a comic, semi-autobiographical firstperson novel by Maureen Sherry, a former managing director at Bear Stearns, which collapsed in 2008. “I don’t feel like I made light of anyone’s pain,” Sherry said, sitting at the dining room table of her Fifth Avenue apartment overlooking the Central Park Reservoir. Sherry said she wanted to write about the mortgage crisis in an engaging way that ordinary readers could understand and also show them that many bankers were as hoodwinked as the rest of the public. “It’s easy to bash Wall Street, and we hear a lot of it,” she said. “I also wanted to make clear to the reader the good that banks do as well as the bad.” Opening Belle is a twist on a subgenre of contemporary women’s fiction known as “chick lit”. Warner Bros is developing a movie version starring Reese Witherspoon. It is also the latest in a growing number of books, plays, television shows and movies addressing Wall Street during and after the 2008 crisis. There are two television series about Bernard L Madoff, who was arrested in 2008 for running the one of history’s largest frauds. Sony Pictures Classics bought the rights to Equity, a thriller about an investment banker who is undercut by rival female executives. The Big Short was nominated
for a best picture Oscar and won for best adapted screenplay. Billions, on Showtime, is a present-day Wall Street drama that is coloured by the financial meltdown. Sherry’s novel is a breezy comedy in the style of Bridget Jones’s Diary. Like her heroine, sherry worked on the Bear Stearns trading floor, then a notoriously rowdy place. She said she took the frat-boy antics in stride. “I felt embarrassed sometimes, but not unsafe,” she said. She left in 2000 to take care of her growing family, not to flee a hostile workplace, but she said she did feel frustrated by the barriers to advancement. She began thinking about what she wanted to write about women on Wall Street, got an MFA from Columbia and wrote a children’s book. She also recently wrote a New York Times opinion piece on pay inequity and sexism. In her novel, she presents those experiences as farce. A comic tone, she said, would make the subject more accessible and “widen the conversation”. Isabelle endures the lewd jokes and groping of male colleagues and bosses to sell, among other things, collateralised debt obligations, or CDOs. By 2007, Isabelle is on a bond-trading roll – until the market collapses, wiping out her gains and making more than one million people homeless. After the market begins to fall, Isabelle and a client take a closer look at the underlying bank records, zeroing in on a family in Nebraska facing foreclosure. “My eyes well up and we sit there for a moment with something bordering wonder,” Isabelle writes in what is presented as her memoir. “I never saw things going this way.” The novel’s duelling themes divide the mass-market publishing world. Some
issue 124
And how it uSed to be…
three must-read books set in ’80s wall Street den of thieves by James b Stewart This book from 1991 (based on secret grand jury transcripts, interviews and actual trading records) details the insider trading scandals of the 1980s involving Wall Street characters, including junkbond king Michael Milken. It shows how they created a huge insidertrading ring to try and make off with billions and only failed because of a few determined detectives fought them – and their top lawers – and managed to bring them to justice.
American Psycho by brett easton ellis Notorious for the violence, but Ellis’ novel – set in late’80 Manhattan – is really about status, brand-obsession and capitalism. Told by the unreliable narrator Patrick Bateman, it’s darkly funny, from trying to get reservations in the best restaurants to wearing the right labels, it’s a fine satire of Wall Street materialism. Despite being a work of fiction there’s a lot of truth in here and you’ll never admire a business card in the same way again.
Liar’s Poker by Michael Lewis Michael Lewis worked at Salomon Brothers during the ’80s and wrote this account of his time there. From the trading rooms frat-boy camaraderie to the killer instinct that made ambitious young men gamble everything on a high-stakes game of bluffing and deception, this insider’s take is frequently hilarious, often shocking and a worryingly true portrayal of greed and gross fortune. Portfolio.
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april upfront / wall street
observers say readers might embrace it as a light-hearted but inspiring empowerment parable. For other students of the genre, though, it’s a step too far in favour of the one per cent. “I would expect a novel set in the mortgage crisis to look at the precarious situations of more ordinary working women,” said Suzanne Ferriss, an English professor and a co-editor of Chick Lit: The New Woman’s Fiction. The heroine of Opening Belle resembles Sherry, but with a little less gilt and gloss. “I wanted her to be relatable,” Sherry said. Both went to Cornell. Isabelle is first-generation American. Sherry’s father was an Irish immigrant. In his younger days, her father worked as a porter in the same Fifth Avenue building where her eventual boss,
Alan C Greenberg, the legendary chairman of Bear Stearns, who died in 2014, had an apartment. Isabelle has three children and a handsome husband who doesn’t work (but still doesn’t do his share of housework). They live on Central Park West. Sherry has four children and is married to a private-equity investor, Steven B Klinsky. They have a house in Southampton, and their 4,200-foot wood-panelled apartment was once part of a triplex built for the philanthropist Marjorie Merriweather Post. In a good year, Isabelle earns $3 million. Sherry said she considered how that would play to readers, but she wanted to be realistic. “I hate the term ‘Manhattan poor’,” she said, but added that after taxes, as a couple with one income and three
issue 124 private-school tuitions, “they weren’t living large”. “Isabelle thinks it’s OK to want to make money,” Sherry said, “and ambition is not a bad thing.” Sherry interviewed former colleagues and a new generation of bankers. She said she found that while the most overt harassment has generally stopped, hurdles remain, particularly for working mothers. “They feel they never performed better, yet they feel written off,” she said. At Bear Stearns, Sherry said she and her female peers jokingly referred to themselves as “the glass ceiling club”. In the novel, Isabelle joins a secret society of the same name. Her female colleagues share their grievances about men and the young female assistants on the trading floor who flirt with their bosses and let them think all women welcome their advances. One dresses so provocatively she is nicknamed Naked Girl. Sherry said her editors took out one scene she wrote where a woman goes to lunch with her boss to discuss her accounts and he instead invites her to spend the afternoon in bed. Sherry noted that she knows women who had the same experience in real life. One is Sandra Ripert, a real estate agent today who was a Bear Stearns assistant 25 years ago and an aspiring trader who felt she wasn’t taken seriously because she lacked the right degrees or connections. “As a woman and as a Latina – I was very sultry-looking – it was hard to get ahead,” Ripert said. In the early 1990s, Ripert said, when she was earning $24,000 a year, a boss invited her to lunch and she thought it meant she was in line for promotion. Instead, she said, her boss told her he had booked a room for them. She left 27 the firm not long afterwards. Back then, Ripert said, she found Sherry “very professional and very quiet”, and also enviable. “At that time, you just wanted to be a Maureen Sherry.” Portfolio.
april issue 124
upfront / most wanted
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Most wanted 3
kettal pavilion A collection of aluminium furniture that can be personalised and configured with blinds, net curtains, panels and ceilings in various materials to create your own summer pavilion. kettal.com
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SaMSUng geaR 360 vR caMeRa Capture 360° footage (3840 x 1920 video) and 30 megapixel stills via this small system that can capture a 195° fields of view and then stitch the footage together.
boarding card via Bluetooth from your smartphone to your case, and a digital data module integrated into the side so it displays luggage data in the same size and with the same appearance as today’s paper labels. rimowa.com
samsung.com Portfolio.
upfront
Danny Meyer thinks tipping is socialist The restaurateur explains why tipping needs to go Q: Your restaurant group was in the news because it is phasing out tipping at all 13 of its restaurants. When is the last time you left a tip? A: On Saturday night. At a restaurant in Brooklyn. Q: How much? A: Probably 25 per cent. I want to be a generous tipper, because I know what the economics are like for the person on the receiving end. Q: Have you ever worked for tips? A: Never as the primary part of my compensation. But I worked for my dad as a tour guide when I was 20, and people would give me tips. Q: Did people tip you well? A: I did exceptionally well. Q: In your new compensation model, waiters will share in the restaurant’s revenue, and customers will give feedback on a five-star scale. You’ve compared this to Uber a number of times. Uber doesn’t seem like the sort of labour model I would want to imitate. A: Well, Uber treats its 30 employees like freelancers or like the croupier in Las Vegas. Our waiters work for us. In fact, they work for us now more than ever. Someone asked me, “Isn’t your model Portfolio.
socialist?” I would argue that tipping is far more socialist for this reason: in most fine-dining restaurants, tips are pooled. So when you leave your $50 tip, you think that you’re giving it to your server, but that server is actually sharing it with everybody who can receive tips. Q: You said one goal with your tip ban is to right a wrong in the labour market. Do you think that sort of correction ought to be the purview of private businesses or government? A: I don’t want this to become law. As a matter of fact, if this becomes law and every other restaurant does what we do, my concern is we will lose one of the greatest commercial advantages we have. That’s what happened with smoking at the Union Square Cafe. We banned it in 1990 and after the citywide ban, we weren’t the one island you could go to to escape smoke. Q: Before you got into restaurants, you interned on Capitol Hill and worked on John Anderson’s presidential campaign. What do you think politicians could learn from the hospitality industry? A: A lot. I think the best way to take care of your customers, or your constituents, is to first have
an amazing work culture. I just can’t believe presidential candidates are never asked, “Who are you as a boss?”
Following on from Danny Meyer’s decision to eliminate tipping, other restaurants in New York have done the same, including Eleven Madison Park, Nishi, Masa, Momofuku and Fedora. They join other New York restaurants where you are no longer expected to add gratuity, such as Thomas Keller’s Per Se, Atera and Brooklyn Fare.
Q: Trump seems to have turned that into his entire campaign. A: You know what? If I learned that the Trump organisation was a great place to work, I would actually look at him differently than I do right now. Q: When you hire people, you look for something you call “HQ”, or hospitality quotient. You believe that, like IQ, those emotional skills are innate. Do you assess this quality in everyone you meet? A: No. I have really, really wonderful friends and relatives who do not have a high HQ
Q: Have you developed a test for HQ? A: No. There’s in fact a danger: people in HR who do the interviewing tend to have high HQs themselves. That can be a liability. While conducting interviews, I have to turn off that part of me that cares about making the interviewee feel good. Q: Do you have any pet peeves about service? A: Using the third person, like: “Is the lady still enjoying her chicken?” I have a tough time with service-speak. You would never say to a friend, “Is everything to your liking?” Q: Do you think there is an industry that could be improved by switching to a tipping model? A: No. I don’t know too many tipped professions where, as a parent, I would say, “I really want my child to go into that profession.” It just feels unprofessional. It’s sad. It’s not that I want my kids to be doctors and lawyers – we don’t have any in our family – but would you tip your doctor? Would you tip your lawyer? Would you tip your architect? Would you tip the airline pilot? Implicit in the very custom of tipping is that the person on the receiving end would not have otherwise done as well for you, had you not tipped. It’s just… it’s icky.
april /restaurants
issue 124
in addition... Meyer is the founder of Shake Shack and the chief executive of the Union Square Hospitality Group, which owns 13 restaurants. These are his five leastfavourite service-isms: 1. “How is everything?” 2. “Are you still working on that?” 3. “No problem.” 4. “Are we enjoying. . .?” 5. “I have a little gift from chef.”
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Portfolio.
april upfront / automotive
issue 124
Buy the wolf’s Ferrari
cars | London
Morgan Aero 8 The new car that already looks like a vintage classic
T
he Morgan sportscar company is now 106 years old, making it Britain’s oldest, but the demand for their retro-styled product has remained high. The Aero 8 was launched 15 years ago and was the first new Morgan design since 1948. This version replaces the existing Aero Coupe and Aero Supersports models. 32 Influenced by classic cars from the 1960s, the shape is long and low while the interior has real wood surrounds, textured box-woven carpets and fine leather trim. Under the hood there’s a 367hp 4.8-litre V-8 powering the rear Portfolio.
350
number of Aero 8 cars that are going to be built
$91k
expected price of the new model
wheels, with option of a six-speed manual transmission, or for those more interested in posing than actually driving, a six-speed automatic. But this is a car to be driven. It’s really one for the sporty lady or gentleman, the type who could tell you their tailor’s first name and recommend a discreet country hotel where they’ll make you a lavish lunch near a warm fire. Far from the brash nouveau-riche feel of modern sports cars, this is a new model but has its heart and styling in a more refined era. Roof down, scarf on, fun ahead. For more see londonmorgan.co.uk
Few cars epitomise the 1980s quite like the Ferrari Testarossa, and one previously owned by Jordan Bellfort, The Wolf Of Wall Street, has just been put up for sale. The 1991 Testarossa only has 8,000 miles on the clock, and has only had two careful owners since Bellfort was last behind the wheel. Also included in the sale is a set of matching luggage, previously owned by Bellfort, in which the current owner claims to have found a $50 bill. The bill will be included. Monaco-based dealership Monegasque Classics Sarl is only offering a price on request, but say they may put it up for auction later if there’s no early buyer. Ferrari Testarossas have become desirable again and are currently fetching between $150,000 and $215,000 at auction, but the providence of this car and notoriety of the previous owner could see it go for more.
Elevated London living built on a reputation of excellence The Penthouse Collection, Prices on Application
Chelsea Creek Show Apartments and Marketing Suite 9 Park Street, Chelsea Creek, London SW6 2FS +44 (0)20 3411 8573 sales@chelseacreek.co.uk | www.chelseacreek.co.uk Proud to be a member of the Berkeley Group of companies
Computer generated image is indicative only.
upfront
Visions of the future
1
Nasa aims to inspire future astronauts with a series of travel posters
t
he Nasa Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) has created a series of 15 posters for different destinations in our solar system with an aim of inspiring people to think about space travel. In the style of mid-Century adverts they depict a scenario when travel around our solar system is possible as a holiday. After releasing the images, Nasa said: “Imagination is our window into the future and at Nasa/JPL we strive to be bold in advancing the edge of possibility so that someday, with the help of new generations of innovators and explorers, these visions of the future can become a reality. As you look through these images of imaginative travel destinations, remember that you can be an architect of the future.” Here are five of them.
NASA’S AcompANyiNg StAtemeNt 1. europA – Life uNder ice
3. reLAx oN KepLer-16b
5. greetiNgS from
Astonishing geology and the potential to
Like Luke Skywalker’s planet Tatooine
your firSt exopLANet
host the conditions for simple life make
in Star Wars, Kepler-16b orbits a pair of
While there is much debate over which
Jupiter’s moon Europa a destination for
stars. Depicted here as a terrestrial planet,
exoplanet discovery is considered the
future exploration. Beneath its icy surface,
Kepler-16b might also be a gas giant like
“first”, one stands out from the rest. In
Europa is believed to conceal a global ocean
Saturn. Prospects for life on this unusual
1995, scientists discovered 51 Pegasi
of salty liquid water twice the volume of
world aren’t good, as it has a temperature
b, forever changing the way we see
Earth’s oceans. Tugging and flexing from
similar to that of dry ice. But the discovery
the universe and our place in it. The
Jupiter’s gravity generates enough heat to
indicates that the movie’s iconic double-
exoplanet is about half the mass of
keep the ocean from freezing. On Earth,
sunset is anything but science fiction.
Jupiter, with a seemingly impossible,
wherever we find water, we find life.
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star-hugging orbit of only 4.2 Earth days. 4. titAN
Not only was it the first planet confirmed
2. the grANd tour
Frigid and alien, yet similar to our own
to orbit a sun-like star, it also ushered in
The Voyager mission took advantage of a
planet billions of years ago, Saturn’s
a whole new class of planets called Hot
once-every-175-year alignment of the outer
largest moon, Titan, has a thick
Jupiters: hot, massive planets orbiting
planets for a grand tour of the solar system.
atmosphere, organic-rich chemistry and
closer to their stars than Mercury. Today,
The twin spacecraft revealed details about
a surface shaped by rivers and lakes of
powerful observatories like Nasa’s Kepler
Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune –
liquid ethane and methane. Cold winds
space telescope will continue the hunt of
using each planet’s gravity to send them
sculpt vast regions of hydrocarbon-rich
distant planets.
on to the next destination. Voyager set the
dunes. There may even be cryovolcanoes
stage for such ambitious orbiter missions
of cold liquid water. Nasa’s Cassini orbiter
as Galileo to Jupiter and Cassini to Saturn.
was designed to peer through Titan’s
Today Voyager spacecraft return valuable
perpetual haze and unravel the mysteries
science from our solar system.
of this planet-like moon.
Portfolio.
All of the 15 Nasa future travel posters have been made available to download for free from jpl.nasa.gov/visions-ofthe-future.
april /NASA POSTERS 2
3
4
5
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upfront
urban development | sweden
Renewing a new city The model of sustainable urban development on the Stockholm Waterfront. Words: Ingrid K Williams
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he waterfront district of Hammarby Sjostad, on the southern edge of Stockholm, Sweden, has been heralded as a model of sustainable urban development, a place where one can already glimpse the future of city living. And the area’s growth, coupled with the steadily rising popularity of the island of Sodermalm to its immediate north, is pulling the inhabitable boundaries – if not the heart – of Stockholm southward. Located along the Hammarby waterway, this newly built, ecoconscious neighbourhood had previously been home to landfills and industry, dense with factories and office buildings. But then a plan was conceived to build housing for athletes as part of an ultimately unsuccessful Olympic bid in the 1990s, and the area was soon transforming. “We had started this with great ambitions, and we just kept going with the project,” 36 said Martin Skillback, project manager for the city’s development administration office, of the planned residential district. Today, about 10,000 apartments have been built, and Portfolio.
more than 30,000 Stockholmers will call Hammarby Sjostad home by the project’s estimated completion date, in about five years. Thanks to bike lanes and convenient ferry, bus and tram links, 80 per cent of residents commute without the use of cars, a figure that’s slightly higher than average in a city already full of energy-efficient construction. But statistics alone do not a neighbourhood make. Seven years ago, Allan Larsson, a retired journalist, former finance minister and past president of Lund University in southern Sweden, moved with his wife from central Stockholm to Hammarby Sjostad, only minutes away by car, bike or rapid transit, drawn by the public transportation options, nearby nature and conscientious environmental aims. Shortly thereafter, he started a citizens’ initiative, HS2020, to further improve the area for residents, who are in some ways living in an urban experiment. “We’ve used the phrase ‘renewing a new city’ to highlight the fact that you can’t just build a new residential area or a town and then leave it,” Larsson explained.
“It has to be updated. You have to have innovation. You have to test new things.” Among the many projects of HS2020 are the creation of a foundation for widespread use of electric cars in the area and a plan for year-round use of the ski slope at Hammarbybacken. HS2020 has also supported cultural events, most notably SjostadsOperan, in which filmed opera performances from the Metropolitan Opera House in New York were streamed inside
80% of residents commute without the use of a car
april /stockholm
“We’ve used the phrase ‘renewing a new city’ to highlight the fact that you can’t just build a new residential area or a town and then leave it”
an old factory building that also houses Delight Studios, one of the city’s top photography and film production studios. For the past three years, Delight Studios has been the area’s primary – but temporary – home for cultural events, when it’s not being used to produce campaigns for companies like H&M, or stills for movies like David Fincher’s Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. Before opening Delight Studios here in 2004, photographer Guido Hildebrand said that he
issue 124
had often worked on location in the area, which stood out because of its stark, desolate atmosphere. Concerned that the neighbourhood is losing its soul as apartments fill one old structure after another, he’s now working with Helios13, a non-profit group that aims to turn the entire studio building into a permanent cultural centre – something he said he believes the area desperately needs. “What are people doing in Hammarby?” he asked earnestly. “What is there to do?” For now, one can stroll along new waterfront walkways, explore a handful of boutiques stocked with antiques and second-hand wares, and have fika (a Swedish coffee break) at cafes like Magnus Johansson Bageri & Konditori, where the prinsesstarta, a creamfilled cake draped with green marzipan, is alone worth a visit to the area. But the biggest draw is Nya Carnegiebryggeriet, a brewery housed in a former light bulb factory. It opened in 2014 in a collaboration between Carlsberg and Brooklyn Brewery. “It’s a very new part of the city, and in that sense it’s kind of like a blank slate,” Steve Dippel, the brewery ambassador, said. “The sky’s the limit as to what we can do.” Onto that slate the brewery has introduced a large outdoor terrace overlooking the water and a restaurant serving ambitious menus – think of an entree of red deer followed by a selection of Neal’s Yard cheeses – to match the craft beers brewed on-site. The brewery also seeks to root itself in this emerging neighbourhood. “Our ambition is to try to shape the community in the same 37 way Brooklyn Brewery helped to shape that area of Williamsburg (a neighbourhood in New York City),” Dippel said. “It’s part of the city that’s still developing its identity, so there’s a lot of potential.” Portfolio.
The long road ahead Why self-driving cars are still in first gear John Markoff
features
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ar enthusiasts, after hearing industry executives discussing the self-driving technology being built into their vehicles, might be forgiven for thinking robotic cars will soon drive themselves out of auto showrooms. Carlos Ghosn, chairman and chief executive of the RenaultNissan Alliance, announced during a news media event at the company’s research laboratory in Silicon Valley that Nissan would introduce 10 new autonomous vehicles in the next four years. Elon Musk, chief executive of Tesla, upped the ante. In a conference call with reporters, he asserted that the so-called Autopilot feature introduced in the Tesla Model S in the fall was “probably better than a person right now”. But there is a growing gap between what these executives are saying and what most people think of when they hear executives or scientists describing autonomous or driverless cars. What Musk and Ghosn are describing are cars with advanced capabilities that can help drive or even take over in tricky situations like parallel parking on a busy street. Truly autonomous cars that do all the work, like the bubbleshaped vehicles Google has been testing near its Silicon Valley campus, are still at least a decade away from ferrying people around town, said Xavier Mosquet, a senior partner at the Boston Consulting Group and managing director of the firm’s Detroit, Michigan, office. “This is going to be a journey, and a reasonably long one,” he said. It is increasingly a journey with significant financial implications. In 2015, Uber announced plans to open an autonomous vehicle research centre adjacent to Carnegie Mellon University. General Motors recently invested $500 million in Uber’s top competitor, Lyft, with the goal of creating an on-demand network of autonomous vehicles. Cars are beginning to drive on their own in certain situations, and in the coming years they will do increasingly more under computer control. They will follow curving roads, change lanes, pass through intersections and stop and start. But they will require human supervision. Significantly, on many occasions, the cars will in effect still tell their human drivers, “Here, you take the wheel,” when they encounter complex driving situations or emergencies.
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driverless car
In the automotive industry this is referred to as the handoff problem, and automotive engineers acknowledge that there is no easy solution. Automotive designers have not yet found a way to make a driver who may be distracted by texting, reading e-mail or watching a movie perk up and retake control of the car in the fraction of a second that is required in an emergency. The danger is that by inducing human drivers to pay even less attention to driving, the safety technology may be creating new hazards. “The whole issue of interacting with people inside and outside the car exposes real issues in artificial intelligence,” said John Leonard, a professor of mechanical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute Of Technology. “The ability to know if the driver is ready and are you giving them enough notice to hand off is a really tricky question.” The limitations of Autopilot, which Tesla describes as offering the ability to “automatically steer down the highway, change lanes and adjust speed in response to traffic”, were clearly visible in a recent test drive with Sebastian Thrun, a roboticist and artificial intelligence expert who founded Google’s self-driving effort.
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lthough Thrun left Google several years ago, he is still involved in the field of artificial intelligence. He describes himself as an enthusiastic Tesla owner. On a recent test drive, he catalogued a series of the car’s limitations and errors, including those he described as “critical interventions” in which the driver is required to override the car’s behaviour. The Tesla Autopilot system permits drivers to remove their hands from the wheel, but it prompts them to regain control after a brief period. It will also warn a driver to retake control in certain situations. The Tesla performed well in freeway driving, and the company recently fixed a bug that had caused the car to unexpectedly veer off onto freeway exits. However, on city streets and country roads, Autopilot’s performance could be described as hair-raising. The car, which uses only a camera to track the roadway by identifying lane markers, did not follow the curves smoothly. It also did not slow down when approaching turns. On a 354-kilometre drive Thrun said he was 40 forced to intervene more than a dozen times. The company recently said it had introduced a new version of the Autopilot software that offered both restrictions and improvements in handling. Like the Tesla, the new autonomous Nissan models will still require human oversight and portfolio.
Technology in the rear of a prototype of an autonomous Nissan car
“The whole issue of interacting with people, inside and outside the car, exposes real issues with artificial intelligence”
will not drive autonomously in all conditions. Nissan’s engineers acknowledged that even their most advanced models would not be autonomous in every situation, including snow, heavy rain and even some kinds of night-time driving. “There are certain limitations depending on the condition of the weather. For example, if you are in heavy snow or rain, it is impossible to have autonomous driving,” said Tsuyoshi Yamaguchi, Renault-Nissan’s executive vice president for technology development. “We should make sure the vehicle recognises it and gives a caution to the driver.” None of that has discouraged some enthusiastic Tesla owners. Doug Carmean, a Microsoft computer designer who commutes daily between Seattle and Redmond, Washington, said he had encountered the Tesla Autopilot off-ramp bug and found it “scary”. Yet as much as 45 minutes of his commute each day is in slow, stop-and-go traffic, and his car will effortlessly and predictably follow the car ahead, permitting him to surf the web on the Tesla’s giant display. “Even though it has these frightening movements, I’ve come to enjoy it,” he said. “It’s a sense of awe and pleasure.”
Larry Page, Google founder, is still innovator-in-chief Conor Dougherty Minh Uong
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hree years ago, Charles Chase, an engineer who manages Lockheed Martin’s nuclear fusion programme, was sitting on a white leather couch at Google’s Solve For X conference when a man he had never met knelt down to talk to him. They spent 20 minutes discussing how much time, money and technology separated humanity from a sustainable fusion reaction – that is, how to produce clean energy by mimicking the sun’s power – before Chase thought to ask the man his name. “I’m Larry Page,” the man said. He realised he had been talking to Google’s billionaire co-founder and chief executive. “He didn’t have any sort of pretension like he shouldn’t be talking to me or ‘Don’t you know who you’re talking to?’” Chase said. “We just talked.” Page is not a typical chief executive, and in many of the most visible ways, he is not a CEO at all. Corporate leaders tend to spend a good deal of time talking at investor conferences or introducing new products on auditorium stages. Page, who is 42, has not been on an earnings call since 2013, and the best way to find him at Google I/O – an annual gathering where the company unveils new products – is to ignore the main stage and follow the fans and autograph seekers who mob him in the moments he steps outside closed doors. But just because he has faded from public view does not mean he is a recluse. He is a regular at robotics conferences and intellectual gatherings like TED. Scientists say he is a good bet to attend Google’s various academic gatherings, like Solve For X and Sci Foo Camp, where he can be found having casual conversations about technology or giving advice to entrepreneurs. Page is hardly the first Silicon Valley chief with a case of intellectual wanderlust, but unlike most of his peers, he has invested far beyond his company’s core business and in many ways has made it a reflection of his personal fascinations. He intends to push even further with Alphabet, a holding company that separates Google’s various cash-rich advertising businesses from the list of speculative projects like self-driving cars that capture the imagination but do not make much money. Alphabet companies and invest44 ments span disciplines from biotechnology to energy generation to space travel to artificial intelligence to urban planning. As chief executive of Alphabet, Page is tasked with figuring how to spin Google’s billions in advertising profits into new companies and industries. When he announced portfolio.
Page’s new role is part talent scout and part tech visionary
the reorganisation last summer, he said that he and Sergey Brin, Google’s other founder, would do this by finding new people and technologies to invest in, while at the same time slimming down Google – now called Google Inc, a subsidiary of Alphabet – so their leaders would have more autonomy. “In general, our model is to have a strong CEO who runs each business, with Sergey and me in service to them as needed,” Page wrote in a letter to investors. He said that he and Brin would be responsible for picking those chief executives, monitoring their progress and determining their pay. Google’s day-to-day management was left to Sundar Pichai, the company’s new chief executive. His job will not be about preventing cancer or launching rocket ships, but to keep Google’s advertising machine humming, to keep innovating in emerging areas like machine learn-
larry page
Google is on pace to generate around $60 billion this year
said he enjoyed talking to people who ran the company’s data centres. “I ask them, ‘How does the transformer work?’ ‘How does the power come in?’ ‘What do we pay for that?’” he said. “And I’m thinking about it kind of both as an entrepreneur and as a business person. And I’m thinking ‘What are those opportunities?’” Another question he likes to ask: “Why can’t this be bigger?”
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ing and virtual reality – all while steering the company through regulatory troubles that could drag on for years. Page’s new role is part talent scout and part technology visionary. He still has to find the chief executives of many of the other Alphabet businesses. And he has said on several occasions that he spends a good deal of time researching new technologies, focusing on what kind of financial or logistic hurdles stand in the way of them being invented or carried out. His presence at technology events, while just a sliver of his time, is indicative of a giant idea-scouting mission that has in some sense been going on for years but is now Page’s main job. 46 In the investor letter, he put it this way: “Sergey and I are seriously in the business of starting new things.” Inside Google, Page is known for asking a lot of questions about how people do their jobs and challenging their assumptions about why things are as they are. In an interview at the Fortune Global Forum in 2015, Page portfolio.
age declined multiple requests for comment, and many of the people who spoke about him requested anonymity because they were not supposed to talk about internal company matters. Many former Google employees who have worked directly with Page said his managerial modus operandi was to take new technologies or product ideas and generalise them to as many areas as possible. Why can’t Google Now, Google’s predictive search tool, be used to predict everything about a person’s life? Why create a portal to shop for insurance when you can create a portal to shop for every product in the world? Financially speaking, Page left his chief executive job at Google at a time when things could not be better. The company’s revenue has continued to grow about 20 per cent a year, an impressive figure for any business, but particularly so for one that is on pace to generate approximately $60 billion this year. His method is not overly technical. Instead, he tends to focus on how to make a sizable business out of whatever problem this or that technology might solve. Leslie Dewan, a nuclear engineer who founded a company that is trying to generate cheap electricity from nuclear waste, also had a brief conversation with Page at the Solve For X conference. She said he questioned her on things like modular manufacturing and how to find the right employees. “He doesn’t have a nuclear background, but he knew the right questions to ask,” said Dewan, chief executive of Transatomic Power. “‘Have you thought about approaching the manufacturing in this way?’ ‘Have you thought about the vertical integration of the company in this way?’ ‘Have you thought about training the workforce this way?’ They weren’t nuclear physics questions, but they were extremely thoughtful ways to think about how we could structure the business.” Dewan said Page even gave her an idea for a new market opportunity that she had not thought of. Asked to be more specific, she refused. The idea was too good to share. portfolio.
! ! ! い い かわ cover story
Japan’s maker of mascots feeds a nation’s craving for cuteness Jonathan Soble
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japanese mascots
くまモン!!! くまモン!!!
Photo: Big Ben in Japan, Flickr
すごい!!! くまモン!!! くまモン!!! かわいい!!! くまモン!!!
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japanese mascots
! ! ! ん ゃ ち け みっ
みっけち ゃん!!!
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portfolio.
F
or some of Japan’s most adored celebrities, the journey to fame starts in a converted internet cafe above a bowling alley in Miyakaki, a sunny south-western city in Japan. This is where Hiromi Kano runs her unlikely star factory, an enterprise whose most successful creations are recognised by millions. Some have huge followings on Twitter and earn billions of yen in revenue. At least one has met the emperor. The idols churned out by Kano, 55, are mascots – the smiling, dancing animals, mutated foodstuffs and saucer-eyed humanoids that promote every conceivable thing in Japan, from out-of-the-way tourist spots to careers in the military. Kano is a costume maker, although no one in her industry would describe the job so bluntly. “We have a motto, which is that there’s no human inside,” said Kano, who oversees the workshop and its Left: Workers tend roughly 40 employees, almost all women. Whimsical mascots have become almost as closeto Mikkechan, the ly associated with Japan as Mount Fuji and sushi. mascot of Popular for decades, they have become a virtual Hirakata City obsession in recent years, and seemingly every town, of the Osaka business and arm of government now has one. Prefecture, before a So ubiquitous are mascots that last year, Japan’s photo shoot finance ministry suggested that public agencies in Miyazaki, think twice before creating more, fearing that taxpayJapan er money was being wasted. Osaka prefecture alone Below: was found to be supporting 92 of them, including two Working on a dogs for separate tax departments and a caped, flying mascot at the hot-water bottle representing pharmaceutical regulaKigurumi.biz tion. The governor ordered a cull. factory
! ! ! い すご portfolio.
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japanese mascots
ビズベア!!!
ビズベア!!! 52
ビズベア!!! portfolio.
Hiromi Kano with Bizbear made by Kigurumi. biz
Kano said business was still booming, though. “Japanese people have this desire to take the sharp edges off things, to take hard things and make them soft,” she said. “If you want to explain, say, industrial waste, adding a character softens the message and helps it get through to people.” There are dozens of mascot-outfit makers in Japan, but the Kano family’s company, Kigurumi. biz, stands out in the crowd. Its suits, which cost $4,000 to $6,500, are the Cadillacs of the mascot world, with features like motorised fans to keep their occupants cool during Japan’s humid summers. Most are based on existing images, but Kano employs artists who can create characters from scratch or who can refine customers’ designs. Kano’s biggest claim to fame is creating the wearable version of Kumamon, a red-cheeked bear that has become one of the most popular fantasy creatures in Japan.
Foreign companies are starting to understand you need a cute mascot to sell things to the Japanese people
すごい!!!
くまモン!!!
japanese mascots
Mascots appearing on Japanese streets, an increasingly common sight
Photos: Flickr
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he mascot for rural Kumamoto prefecture, Kumamon won a nationwide popularity contest in 2011. His image adorns bags, T-shirts, key chains, plastic chopsticks, liquor bottles and countless other items. According to the local branch of the Japanese central bank, which studied Kumamon’s economic impact, the bear earned Kumamoto 124 billion yen, or about $1 billion, in tourism and merchandising revenue in the two years after the contest win. Kumamon has 427,000 Twitter followers and greeted Emperor Akihito on a royal visit in 2013. (The monarch, who was about to turn 80, caused a small stir by asking him, “How many of you are there?” – intruding on the “no human inside” fantasy that he is a real, singular being.) Success stories like Kumamoto’s have kept the mascot addiction going. “The toughest cases are when clients come in and say, ‘Just make ours like Kumamon,’” Kano
Kumamon has 427,000 followers on Twitter and greeted the Emperor Akihito on a royal visit in 2013
said. “I try to tell them that it’s not enough to have a cute character. You have to think about how to use it to engage people.” She added, “It’s sad when a government agency orders a mascot, and it ends up sitting in a box.” Today, the company produces 20 to 25 costumes a month. International orders are growing: it has done Malaysian cartoon characters and a cuddly bear for Feiler, a German linen maker. An Italian fashion brand recently ordered a pair of mascots – design “top secret, but very edgy”, Kano said – for a promotional event in the upscale Ginza shopping district in Tokyo. “Foreign companies are starting to understand that you need a cute mascot to sell anything to Japanese people,” she said. Kano said she believed one reason for mascots’ popularity was that they provided an outlet for physical contact and gushing expressions of affection in an otherwise reserved society. “Japanese people don’t really hug, even husbands and wives,” she said. “I would never hug my employees, but as soon as they put on a mascot suit, I want 53 to cuddle them.” Still, Kano says she often wonders how long Japan’s mascot obsession can go on. “There are times when even I think, ‘Really? Is this necessary?’” she said. portfolio.
THE NEW YORK DAILY
Drop dead? Not the Daily News Jonathan Mahler
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Sasha Maslov
n a recent afternoon, Jim Rich, the editor-in-chief of the Daily News, sat at his computer playing around with front-page headlines, a few well-chosen words that would capture the day’s biggest news: Sarah Palin’s endorsement of Donald Trump in the Republican presidential primary. In a few minutes, he had what he thought was a promising candidate: “CRAZY, STUPID LOVE.” Rich walked it out into the newsroom for feedback. The paper’s copy chief, Jon Blackwell, proposed an 54 alternative: “I’M WITH STUPID!” “I said, ‘Yes, that’s much better,’” Rich recalled at the paper’s offices in Lower Manhattan. “That’s a winner.” A designer set the phrase over a pair of photographs of Trump and Palin, pointing at each other. The image portfolio.
was soon rolling off the presses in New Jersey and going viral on Facebook and Twitter. It was the latest in a series of attention-grabbing covers that have shifted the conversation around the struggling paper. Just a few months ago, after an aborted sale and sweeping layoffs, the News seemed to have completed its devolution from the model of a big-city tabloid to a battered symbol of the diminished state of US newspapers. But the recent covers, which were widely shared on social media, have sent a very different message – if not about the paper’s long-term financial prospects, then at least about its continuing cultural relevance. Put another way, Rich, a News veteran who took over the paper in October, seems determined to make sure that the tabloid that famously shamed President
THE NEW YORK DAILY
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the daily news
Comeback or going down fighing? Either way, some of the Daily News’ front pages have been as eyecatching, campagning and powerful as at any point in its history
Gerald Ford for abandoning New York in its time of need will at least go down swinging. “I think that’s fair,” said Rich, 44, of the characterisation. “I wouldn’t put the accent on ‘going down’, but we’re swinging.” William Holiber, the chief executive, who was seated nearby, said, “The mentality is that we definitely have nothing to lose, so let’s just go for it.”
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he News has certainly been going for it, most notably with its provocative front page after December’s mass shooting in San Bernardino, California. “GOD ISN’T FIXING THIS,” read the headline, accompanied by screen-grabs of tweets from a variety of conservative politicians offering “thoughts and prayers” to the families of the victims. The next day, the cover of the News identified the head of the National Rifle Association, Wayne LaPierre, as a terrorist. Gun control has been an important issue for the News since the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012, and the paper, which has long identified itself as the voice of New York City’s working class, has a rich history of championing particular causes. But even by tabloid standards, this was unusually pointed rhetoric. Predictably, the News was denounced on the right and celebrated on the left for the way it chose to frame the story. But whatever one made of the paper’s San Bernardino covers, they demonstrated that the front-page headline – “the wood,” in tab-speak – can still pack a punch, even if most readers are encountering it on their smartphones. Like popular video clips from Jimmy Fallon or John Oliver, the News’ covers are finding a new set of viewers on a different platform. The art of tabloid headline writing may yet outlive the tabloid. (“How The New York Daily News Became Twitter’s Tabloid,” read a recent headline in New York magazine.) “As someone who’s been at this in one form or another for quite a while, it’s surreal to think that 99 per cent of the millions of people who will look
Covers can now reach more people than they ever did on newsstands. The problem is that readers don’t have to pay to see them
at our Page 1 on a given day will actually never hold the paper in their hands,” said Rich. The news has cooperated with the News’ efforts to attract notice. A vocal champion of immigrants’ rights, the paper has had a field day with Trump – “he makes it easy”, said Rich – as well as Ted Cruz, who committed the unpardonable sin of criticising the city. The candidate’s attack on Trump’s “New York values” produced the headline “DROP DEAD, TED”, alongside an image of the Statue Of Liberty raising a middle finger to Cruz. Even Rupert Murdoch, the owner of the News’ bitter tabloid rival, the New York Post, provided good fodder with his recent engagement to former supermodel Jerry Hall. “BEAUTY AND THE BEAST,” blared the next day’s front page, with a photo of the couple. (“Lowhanging fruit,” Rich said of the Murdoch cover.) These covers can now reach more people than they ever did on the newsstand. The problem is that readers don’t have to pay to see them. For all of the attention the News’ recent front pages have drawn, it’s unlikely that they – or perhaps anything – can rescue the paper from its precarious financial position. It’s a familiar story. The News’ circulation has been plummeting for years; it sits at about 241,000 on weekdays. It seems farfetched to imagine that the paper will ever capture enough digital advertising to offset the declining revenue from its shrinking print base. The News, which was founded nearly 100 years ago, loses millions of dollars a year. When its owner, Mortimer B Zuckerman, tried to sell the paper early last year, interest was light. One of the small handful of prospective buyers was John A Catsimatidis, a supermarket billionaire who spent $11 million in a long-shot mayoral campaign two years ago. Six rumour-soaked months after putting the paper on the market, Zuckerman took it off. The layoffs, which claimed dozens of reporters, came soon after in September. Under Rich, the paper is showing some signs of moving in a new direction, or rather an old one, returning to its roots as a crusading tabloid. In October, the News created a new “long-form” reporting and editing unit largely dedicated to exploring social issues. And, of course, there are those covers. Whether they represent a fleeting gift from an unusually generous news cycle, a great tabloid’s final bloom or, just maybe, the beginning of a rebirth is any57 one’s guess. “Who knows what’s going to happen in three years,” said Rich. “We’re fighting like hell to succeed, and I believe in my heart that we will, but whether that’s the case or not, we are going to go at this with everything we’ve got.” portfolio.
tattoo ring
With this ink, I thee wed 58
Some couples have concluded (for better or worse) that there is no finer way to celebrate eternal love and lasting commitment than by showcasing it with a tattoo on one’s ring finger. Alix Strauss Amy Lombard
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tattoo rings
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nce you get it, there’s no turning back,” said Christopher Forsley, who was married last July to Sarah Patterson in California. For Forsley, 30, a comic book writer, and Patterson, 28, a cake maker, the factors driving their decision to get inked came down to cost, minimalism and timing – oh, and the fact that Forsley’s brother is a tattoo artist. “We’re both broke and not materialistic,” Forsley said. “We liked the idea that this wasn’t an object, but rather something that was going to become a part of us.” The bride added, “This matched who we are.” Mike Martin, the owner of Flesh Skin Grafix Tattoo in Imperial Beach, California, said, “I see maybe one couple a week, which is a lot considering five years ago almost no one was asking for them.” Given the permanence of tattoos, inked-on rings are generally for those who have recently been married rather than simply engaged. Surprising one’s intended with an unexpected trip to a tattoo parlour, perhaps on one knee, may not go over as expected. “A proposal isn’t always forever, and the wedding might not happen,” said Martin, who is also the president of the Alliance Of Professional Tattooists. He said he has never had calls for tattooed engagement rings. Like the ink itself, he added, “Once the knot is tied, it’s far more permanent.” Tattooed-on wedding rings come in an array of designs. Among the most popular are branding the wedding date, spouse’s name or initials onto the finger. Some designs are simple; a monochrome squiggle line or the infinity symbol around the digit. Some favor words: “always,” “forever” or “together.” Those who go for inked-on rings are often looking for a different kind of wedding experience to go along with them. “I never wanted to have a traditional wedding,” said Molly Serena Dorsman, 29, a music teacher in New Jersey, who married Dzermin Mesic, 32, a chef, in 2012. She contends that those who favour the traditional gold ring often get divorced. “We want to be married forever,” she said, “and this cements that.” In addition to “increasing the feeling of permanency of a couple’s faith”, said Myrna L Armstrong, a retired professor from the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center, a ring tattoo represents a “distinctive choice to have this done, and the understanding that no one else will have anything like theirs. 59 These intense meanings are very appealing to couples”. “Tattoos make people feel good, special and unique” and are particularly appealing to millennials, said Armstrong, who has studied tattoos for 25 portfolio.
If a marriage doesn’t work out, one can’t simply tug off a tattooed ring
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years. “It’s become a common and comfortable means of providing a message to themselves and to others.” Anthony Botiglione, 43, who married Jennifer Fiorenza, 35, a publicist, in Baiting Hollow, New York, said, “You can’t take it off, you can’t lose it, you can’t put it in your pocket, which some men do to show the world they’re not married. “I don’t want to be that guy,” Botiglione said. “I want to look at my hand and know this huge commitment I’ve made is forever.” Gold wedding bands typically cost $300 to $700 each, according to a representative of the Jewellers Of America trade association. Martin said his shop typically charges about $60 for a simple design that the couple brings in. If he is creating it, and there are a number of colours or it’s a technical piece, it could be $100 or more. The latter price is what Forsley’s brother said that he would have charged per ring to other clients. But for Forsley, the fact that the rings were free was not as important as “having my brother design and tattoo us. It was far better than going to a store and having a salesperson talk you into something”. Dorsman and Mesic recall paying the personal friend who inked their wedding bands about $50 each. That doesn’t mean that Mesic skipped over presenting her first with an engagement ring.
“My husband did give me an engagement ring,” she said. “It was a plastic one from 7-Eleven. I was pretty gung-ho on not wanting a ring.” Tattoos can cost less than traditional jewellery, but that doesn’t mean they are cost-effective or long-lasting. Inked rings do fade with time. The skin on hands sheds more quickly because of constant use, and gets the most exposure to sun. To compensate, tattoo artists must inject the ink deeper than the customary two levels of the dermis. Recently, almost every chair in Kings Avenue Tattoo in Manhattan was filled, as Devin Ikram, 32, and his wife, Kayla, 31, sat on the padded black seats while Zac Scheinbaum fixed the triangle tattoo he had inked onto Devin’s ring finger four months earlier, when the couple wed. Ikram, a graphic designer, had created the triangles after he spent two weeks researching symbolism, alchemy and elemental shapes. “These represent a dichotomy of polar opposites and the fitting together,” he said while Scheinbaum re-inked his ring finger, a process that took only minutes. “A triangle pointing up is masculine. One pointing down is feminine,” he added. If a marriage does not work out, one can’t simply tug off a tattooed ring. Among those who may now wish they hadn’t gotten inked are Rosie O’Donnell, who has an “M” – her second partner’s first initial – tattooed on her ring finger, and Pamela Anderson, who had her “Tommy” ring tattoo removed. “In the past two years, we’ve been getting approximately one patient a month asking for the tattoo to be removed,” said Dr Roy G Geronemus, director of the Laser And Skin Surgery Center of New York. “Prior to that, I’d not seen them at all.” Geronemus said women were more apt to appear in his waiting room, eager for the deletion. “More women come in, some are angry, some convey concern, some remorse,” he said. “The tattoo now is a constant reminder of a failed relationship. Women want it off and they want it off quickly so they can move on psychologically.” That is very expensive. The tattoo may have cost $50 to $150 and taken a short time to ink, but to make it vanish, Geronemus said, could take four to five office sessions, costing $400 per visit.
CHINA CURRENCY
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CHINA CURRENCY
SMURFING USD China’s wealthy move $1 trillion out of the country as their economy slips Keith Bradsher
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s the Chinese economy stumbles, wealthy families are increasingly trying to move large sums of money out of the country, worried that the value of the currency will fall and their savings will be worth less. To get around the country’s cash controls, individuals are asking friends or family members to carry or transfer out $50,000 apiece, the annual legal limit in China. A group of 100 people can move $5 million overseas. The practice is called Smurfing, named after the blue, mushroom-dwelling cartoon characters, and it is part of an exodus of capital that is casting doubt on China’s economic prospects and shaking global markets. Over the last year, companies and individuals have moved nearly $1 trillion from China. Some methods are perfectly legal, like investing in real estate elsewhere, buying businesses overseas and paying off debts owed in dollars. Others, like Smurfing, are more dubious, and in certain cases, outright illegal. Chinese customs officials caught a woman last year trying to leave the mainland with $250,000 strapped to her chest and thighs and hidden inside her shoes. If the government cannot keep citizens from rushing to the financial exits, China’s outlook could darken. The swell of outflows is a destabilising force in China’s slowing economy, threatening to 63 undermine confidence and hurt a banking system that is struggling to deal with a decade long lending binge. The capital flight is already putting significant pressure on the country’s currency, the renminbi. PORTFOLIO.
china currency
How the money is getting out There are various methods, legal and otherwise, to move capital out of China. FINDING ‘SMURFS’ Chinese citizens who want to send more than $50,000 (the max allowable limit) out of the country can arrange for relatives or friends to exchange the money for them. BUYING OVERSEAS BUSINESSES Businesses and wealthy families can spend up to $1 billion on acquisitions with minimal scrutiny. BUYING LIFE INSURANCE By purchasing a policy denominated in American dollars, and paying for it in Chinese renminbi, individuals can take money out of the country, although China is now tightening limits on this. TINKERING WITH TRADE A company that exports goods declares only a fraction of the goods’ value to the authorities. An overseas buyer wires money to China for that fraction, and puts the rest of the money into the exporter’s overseas bank account. This very dubious practice is now known as underinvoicing exports.
The government is trying to prevent a free fall in the economy grew at annual rates in the double digits. currency by stepping into the markets and tapping A largely closed financial system kept China’s own its huge cash hoard to shore up the renminbi. But money corralled inside the country. a deep erosion of those reserves may set off further Now, with growth slowing, money is gushing out outflows and create turbulence in the markets. of the country. And the government has a looser China is also trying to put the brakes on outflows, grip on the spigot, because China dismantled some by tightening its grip on the country’s links to currency restrictions to open up its economy in the global financial system. The government, for recent years. example, just started to clamp down on people’s use “Companies don’t want renminbi and individuals of bank cards to buy overseas life insurance policies. don’t want renminbi,” said Shaun Rein, the founder Such moves have trade-offs. The limits create of the China Market Research Group. “The renminbi concerns that the government is pulling back was a sure bet for a long time, but now that it’s not, a on reform efforts that lot of people want to get out.” China needs to keep growth The Chinese central bank is humming in the decades to The renminbi was a fighting the downward pressure by come. But the near-term purchasing large sums of renminbi, sure bet for a long pressure also requires serious selling dollars from its currency time, but now that attention, given the global reserves to do so. China’s reserves shock waves. sank by $108 billion in December it’s not, there are a “The currency has become and an additional $99 billion in lot of people who a very near-term threat to January, to $3.23 trillion. A yearwant to get out financial stability,” said and-ahalf ago, they stood at $4 65 Charlene Chu, an economist trillion. And the renminbi still faces at Autonomous Research. plenty of headwinds. For years, China soaked The government has been cutting up much of the world’s interest rates to stimulate the investment money, as the economy, making it less attractive for portfolio.
china currency
How bad is it? “Among the companies I have been in contact with, all of them have the intention of moving money out of the country”
savers to keep their money in the country. Corporate profits are shrinking because China has too many spare steel mills, car factories and empty houses, leading investors to seek better returns elsewhere. Ronald Wan, a Hong Kong money manager who is on the boards of numerous state-owned enterprises in mainland China, said that pessimism was becoming the consensus. “Among the companies I have been in contact with,” he said, “all of them have the intention of moving money out of the country.” While individuals are limited to moving $50,000 a year across China’s borders, companies and sophisticated investors have more freedom to send out money legally for big-ticket purchases and investments. Overseas and domestic companies, which maintain bank accounts in various currencies, can also shift their cash, as well as borrow based on which currency they think will fall in value. But unofficial methods abound. Companies have inflated trade invoices to keep more profits outside the country, although Chinese authorities have cracked down on the practice. Two years ago, the government gave permission for insurers to invest 15 per cent of their assets overseas, up from 1.5 per cent. But China abruptly told insurers this winter to suspend many of their overseas plans, according to Hong Kong financiers. Beijing has restricted the withdrawal of renminbi from overseas branches of Chinese banks. In Shenzhen, banks have begun requiring that residents make reservations up to a week in advance if they want to change the daily maximum 66 of $10,000 worth of Chinese currency into dollars. In January, Zou Tai, a hospital worker from east central China, caught an early morning flight to buy a $50,000 life insurance policy in Hong Kong. Scores of Chinese customers have been doing the same to get money out of the country, since the portfolio.
policy is bought in renminbi and can be cashed out in US dollars. “The buying power of the renminbi keeps dropping,” Zou said. “I feel that China’s leaders will have no choice but to devalue the renminbi.” Zou acted in the nick of time, because the government is now pushing back. UnionPay International, a government-controlled bank card company, recently announced that it would start strictly enforcing a pre-existing but widely ignored limit on overseas insurance purchases of $5,000 a year per card.
Condé Nast adapts to new forces… …unsettling some inside Ravi Somaiya
A
few years ago, Anna Wintour, David Remnick and Graydon Carter went to see SI Newhouse Jr, the man who turned Condé Nast into a gilded publishing empire and who handpicked them to lead its flagship magazines. The economy had crashed. The publishing industry was fighting a financial crisis that amounted to an existential threat. Newhouse, in his 80s, was approaching the end of his career. They were concerned, they told him at his apartment, decorated with selections from a post-war American art collection, about Condé Nast’s future. To succeed, they said, Condé Nast needed strong creative leadership across its portfolio of disparate magazines, the kind of leadership that Newhouse and his longtime artistic director Alexander Liberman had provided for decades. It was Wintour herself, the longtime editor of Vogue and one of the most powerful figures in fashion and publishing, who was eventually appointed as Liberman’s heir – artistic director of Condé Nast, overseeing its portfolio. She and Bob Sauerberg, Condé Nast’s chief executive, have introduced a rash of changes, both cultural and literal, that have left some in the company reeling. “Those who want things always to stay the same are not living in the real world,” Wintour said in a recent interview at her office overlooking the Hudson River at Condé Nast’s new headquar-
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ters, One World Trade Centre. “It’s like perfection. Doesn’t exist.” New editors have been appointed at Allure, Condé Nast Traveller, Architectural Digest and Self. And in recent months, a round of layoffs struck GQ, Teen Vogue, Glamour, Self and Allure. Details, the men’s lifestyle magazine, was shuttered entirely after 33 years. In a separate interview, Sauerberg confirmed that Condé Nast took in more than $1 billion in revenue in 2015. The company said that while its print business, spread across nearly 20 magazines, remained profitable, revenue there had been flat since 2012. Its digital business is up nearly 70 per cent during the same period but that component, as with virtually every other legacy media company, represents a much smaller percentage of overall revenue, which has declined in recent years. Sauerberg’s plan focuses on maintaining print share, and increasing digital revenues through a focus on video and selling some publications to advertisers as a bundle, for example, and by increasing web traffic. Shortfalls in the meantime mean cutting costs, as Condé Nast is required by its parent company, Advance Publications, to show a profit. In interviews, nearly a dozen current and former employees, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive internal matters, lamented a focus on the bottom line and a relentless pursuit of web traffic.
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Many acknowledged “I decided that the era of lavlong ago that ish spending at Condé Nast, with clothing if my style is allowances and town too direct for cars idling outside the some, maybe headquarters, waiting they should to whisk employees to appointments, was not toughen up sustainable. But they a bit” suggested that financial survival and journalistic swagger – the kind that made Condé Nast an emblem of the golden age of publishing – need not be mutually exclusive. Sauerberg defended the recent upheaval as vital restructuring. His aim, he says, is to ensure that his company continues to influence the world. “I am the top of the list,” he said. “I am incredibly competitive. I want to win. I want to be the 70 best,” he said. The decisions made in recent months have been Sauerberg’s. But for those who work at Condé Nast, or follow the company, it is Wintour, or at least the myth that surrounds her, that looms behind every change. portfolio.
David Remnick, editor of The New Yorker
condé nast
Financial survival and journalistic swagger – the kind that made Condé Nast an emblem of the golden age of publishing – need not be mutually exclusive
In addition to editing Vogue, she oversees magazines as varied as Brides and Golf Digest (Remnick, at The New Yorker, and Carter, at Vanity Fair, are largely left to their own devices). She has also grown increasingly influential in Democratic politics. And she has been actively involved with the recently named Anna Wintour Costume Centre at the Metropolitan Museum Of Art and the annual Costume Institute Benefit at the Met. It is easy to forget that she has been making magazines for decades. Half a dozen current and former Condé Nast employees described working with Wintour as a privilege in some ways – she has access to improved budgets, the best photographers, and celebrities and socialites to fill pages – and a fraught experience in others. She gravitates toward her own distinctive visual style and can be dismissive when displeased, some staff members said. When asked about those accounts, Wintour stared stonily. “Come on,” she said. “I am decisive, you know. I don’t believe in wasting anybody’s time. I like to be honest. I like to be clear. In my own personal career, I have felt almost the most difficult thing to deal with is someone who doesn’t tell you what they are thinking.” She agreed, when asked, that there was an element of sexism in the way she is viewed. “But I decided long ago that I can’t let any of that bother me,” she said. “If my style is too direct for some, maybe they should toughen up a bit.” She strongly disagreed that the magazines she most closely oversees have begun to resemble Vogue, saying each of them has “a very original voice”. Sauerberg, Wintour said, was not the same as Newhouse. But she says he is passionate about the magazines, and has his own skills: “Everybody brings something different to a position. And it’s not cookie-cutter. Nobody is ever the same.” She spoke warmly of Newhouse and Liberman, who she said had always encouraged her to take risks. But when asked whether running a publish-
ing company at a time of web-traffic targets and downsizing was less fun than in the prior era, she reacted strongly. “I don’t like that word ‘fun’ because it sounds light,” she said. “It’s intriguing. It’s intellectually stimulating. It’s different. Why do people want to get stuck in the past?” “If we sit back with our quills and the visors on and, you know, the old kind of printing presses that I used to see with my dad,” she said, referring to her father, Charles, who edited The London Evening Standard, “what is the point of thinking that way? Come on.”
Top: Graydon Carter, editor of Vanity Fair, which is published by Condé Nast Bottom: Anna Wintour, the artistic director of Condé Nast and editor of Vogue
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The other Ibiza... There’s more to Ibiza than hen nights and ravers staggering about San Antonio. Most of it is lovely. Starting here‌
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living / retreats
me ibiza
Where to stay
Urbanizacion S'Argamassa, 07840 Santa Eulalia del Río
From $247 per night
melia.com
IBZ
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T
he Spanish Melia hotel group has a division of hotels with ME designation. They appear in London, Milan, Miami and other cities, and are being increasingly celebrated as the perfect mid-point between luxury and party. So it’s only fitting that they should open one on the most famous party island on the planet: ’Beefa. This month sees the start of the Ibiza season (the hotel is open from mid-April until November) that will culminate this summer in the small Balearic island becoming one of the biggest party places on the planet. But here is not the Ibiza of package holidays full of gurning students; this is something totally different. Taking the best of the relaxed 1960s Ibiza (before it got hectic) and the modern luxury of a five-star hotel, the ME brand have created something more relaxed. The guests here are F1 drivers, Real Madrid footballers and the best-paid DJs relaxing before a night’s work rather than 15 teenage lads shouting lager, lager, lager. That’s not to say the hotel ignores where you are. DJs play throughout the hotel, but volume is toned down, it’s chill-out rather then banging techno and there’s a lie-in-friendly no music before midday rule. If you do want to use it as a base for nights out, it’s around eight miles from Ibiza Town and transfers can be arranged via one of the hotel’s fleet of white Range Rovers. When you get back in at 8am, there’s a huge breakfast terrace with life-affirming coffee and a
Words: Matt Pomroy
Price
april issue 124
in the hotel
spread of breakfast options that would grace any fivestar anywhere. It’s clear they know post-club breakfast is important here. Afternoons mean poolside and we’ve encountered few hotels that do it better. Loungers, cocktails, DJ and perhaps a massage. There’s free yoga sessions three times a day, with a glass of Champagne thrown in at the evening class. The hotel’s 205 rooms and suites are set over three floors with minimalist all-white decor, excellent Aptiva products (including sun protection and aftersun) as well as a maxi- rather than mini-bar. Just enough to help relax and tan throughout the day then get ready for another night out, either large in town or relaxed in the hotel bar. Nikki Beach Club is next door to the hotel if you want a change of scene, while the ME’s boat is moored in front of the hotel for trips over to the little Formentera island, with clear water for snorkelling, great beaches (be warned/delighted: nudity is common here) and causal seafood restaurants. There really is something to be said for experiencing places like Ibiza with a bit more money and leaving the Vicks and white raving gloves at home. You may have already been to Ibiza in your 20s, but now you’re a bit older it might be time to revisit the island and relax and party in more sensible measures. This place is a very happy medium. The party is still going on, but here you can do it with a bit more class and a lot more style.
SPA
Treatments are given on the rooftop, so no windowless room with bad panpipe music, as you’re on a day bed in the sun, with chillout tunes
bAr
The bar on the roof has 360º views out over the sea and includes a restaurant, day beds, pool and DJ. Everything you need for loafing.
ExtrA touch
Pets are welcome, and there’s a dog walking service and a plan of activities available on a daily basis from the hotel entertainment team.
And their jet… Not only does the Me Ibiza have a fleet of Range Rovers to ferry guests around the island, they also have their own private jet – they’ll pick you up and 12 friends, if your pockets are deep enough. We can highly recommend getting the Emirates flight to Milan for a city break at the new ME Milan hotel, then letting them take you on to Ibiza in superstar DJ style.
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Carlo Borromeo at home
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A return to elegance Why Italian men are now reverting to a classic style
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t was vulgarity and not elegance that ruled the day in Italy when Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi was simultaneously running the country and staging his “bunga bunga” bacchanals. Berlusconi was hell on traditional Italian cultural values, his years in office a prolonged populist takedown of the highminded intellectual and aesthetic achievements that defined Italian architecture, art, industrial design and, not least, its fashion for much of the 20th century. If all you ever knew of the country derived from the clownish antics of its prime minister, it would be hard to believe that La Dolce Vita had ever existed. And wasn’t that, after all, the premise upon which the 2013 film La Grande Bellezza spun out its Fellini-lite lament for a bygone world? The world-weary tone adopted by Jep Gambardella, the Academy Award-winning movie’s protagonist – who drifts in his
pastel linen suits through a social Rome altered almost beyond his recognition – struck a chord with Italian audiences. “We had to kill our masters at some point,” Carlo Borromeo, a Milanese industrial designer, said in an interview recently, referring to Italy’s unparalleled aesthetic legacy. “We had this huge inheritance from the past, and then somewhere along the way we had to get rid of it.” Yet, as it happens, what Italian style journalist Angelo Flaccavento recently termed the “slow poisoning of the past” was not irreversible. Sure, a generation that came of age in the Berlusconi era might have gotten stuck wearing pointy shoes and whiskered jeans. Just as American men born under the shadow of casual
Friday suddenly discovered the wonders of pick-stitching and captoed Oxfords, so have increasing numbers of Italian men gone in search of their nation’s rich sartorial legacy. “The kids, are superelegant,” said Borromeo, who is in his 30s. “They’re discovering the old codes, adapting and twisting them their own way.” To the surprise of Flaccavento, who curated an exhibition in the summer at the Museo Marino Marini in Florence dedicated to the personal wardrobe of Nino Cerruti – the 85-yearold menswear designer who epitomises Italian male elegance – the biggest response came from the young. “It was this huge reaction,” he said by phone from Milan. “Everybody was touched by how contemporary and elegant Mr
A generation that came of age in the Berlusconi era got stuck wearing pointy shoes and whiskered jeans
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VINTAGE 2006
The Power of Creation
april living / style
issue 124
Guglielmo Miani, chief executive of the tailoring company Larusmiani, at the Camparino bar in Milan
Cerruti’s looks were, how fresh and unpeacock-y.” With its emphasis on sleek lines and subdued colors, and on the countless refinements made possible by a profound tailoring legacy, Cerruti’s style is light years away from the cartoon dressing of the peacocks who have dominated the scene over the last several years at Pitti Uomo, the twiceyearly menswear show that draws exhibitors and buyers to Florence. “Pitti turned into a circus completely,” Flaccavento said. “It’s sad but true.” Raffaello Napoleone, director of Pitti Imagine, the parent organisation of the Florentine trade fairs, said: “For a long time, things
became quite ugly” – referring to the Berlusconi years. “Gradually, that is correcting itself.” Increasingly, a different style avatar has been spotted at Pitti and around the European capitals of fashion, a man who looks to be the inheritor of another variant of Italian taste. Think of him as a man in a supplely tailored suit like those created by the Neapolitan tailors of the 1920s, whose Anglophile clients sent them on espionage trips to Savile Row. Think of him as that guy on a Milanese street whose softly burnished lace-ups bespeak a level of careful maintenance that has nothing to do with turning up in some social media feed. Think of him as a man like Borromeo,
“Wear clothes that are simple, not loud and that show respect for materials, and cut”
79 Gianmaurizio Fercioni in the Brera area, where his tattoo studio is located
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who eschews coats in favour of jackets or puffer vests and ties in favour of scarves, and who has what would seem to be a uniquely Italian ability to sport trousers in colours it used to be thought only Gianni Agnelli, the Fiat heir and storied playboy, could wear. Agnelli’s is a useful name in this context, since his is the image reflexively conjured up when the subject of great Italian clotheshorses come up. Yet, like his grandson Lapo Elkann, who famously inherited and still wears things from his grandfather’s wardrobe, Agnelli was as much a creation of the modern publicity machine as Instagram regulars like Nick Wooster would become. And the style gestures for which Agnelli became best known – Tod’s boots left unlaced, wristwatch worn atop a shirt cuff, necktie left flapping outside a pullover – were a bit too considered to be truly elegant, after all. If elegance is refusal, as the famous formulation has it, there is everything to be said for a group of men that includes designer Stefano Pilati, who since joining Ermenegildo Zegna in 2013 has delved deep into the milling traditions of that label and the sartorial history of his native land with each successive season; or coolly casual dressers like Borromeo, the industrial designer; or people like Flaccavento, who learned to dress, he said, through close observation of men of his grandfather’s generation in a small Sicilian town. “Italian elegance,” said Antonio 80 Rummo, the scion of a pasta dynasty, is “defined by an ability to mix small gestures, wear clothes that are simple and not loud and that show respect for materials, texture and cut.” Portfolio.
Words: Guy Trebay, Photos: Alessandro Grassani
Gianmaurizio Fercioni at home
living / style
what to pack ...for warm weather in Los Angeles, and beyond
W Average temp
16°c
Las Vegas Cape Town Rome Sydney
also wear in...
15 °C 17 °C 14 °C 19 °C
april
los angeles
Avg hours of sun: 12
additional info Musso & Frank The oldest restaurant in LA (established 1919) is still going strong and while the food is good, the bar and staff are better. Ruben Rueda (pictured left) has been there since 1967 and has served most of Hollywood. For one, the seat on the end of the bar was writer
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Charles Bukowski’s regular spot (Ruben used to serve him martinis and drive him home) but everyone in Hollywood has drunk here. Tip well, ask questions and let the best bartender in the city serve up some great drinks and stories. 6667 Hollywood Blvd, Los Angeles / mussoandfrank.com
april issue 124
city look
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accessories
1. Ted Baker jacket $554 2. Alexander McQueen T-shirt $393 3. Incotex chinos $380 4. Paul Smith socks $30 5. Tumi archer backpack $695 6. Canali slim-fit cotton-piquĂŠ polo shirt $290
Thom Brown sneakers $680
Aesop skin parsley cleansing oil $39
The Fade Out graphic novel $18
Cutler & Gross tortoiseshell frames $495
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what to pack ...for warm weather in Lisbon, and beyond
Average temp
18°c
22 °C 26 °C 13 °C 25 °C Florida Dubai Madrid Manila
also wear in...
lisbon april
Avg. hours of sun: 9
additional info
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If you’re in Lisbon, make sure you visit the Santa Maria de Belém area...
Portfolio.
Pastel de nata You’ll see these little yellow pastries being sold right across the city, but the best place to head to to get the best ones is the Fábrica de Pastéis de Belém in Santa Maria de Belém. Originally created by monks at the
Jerónimos Monastery, these egg tart pastries are made around the clock here and queues form outside the door. Get there early and buy a box full, top with a little icing sugar or cinnamon and eat with a strong early-morning coffee.
april issue 124
city look
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Fornasetti Thyme, Lavender and Cedarwood candle $175 3
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Lanvin notebook $90
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Monica Vinader teardrop rose goldearrings $200
85 1. LK Bennett bree floral dress $356 2. Longchamp dress $395 3. MiuMiu cat-eye sunglasses $310 4. Savage Lee cross stack bag $1,395 5.Chloe knotted leather wedge sandals $705 6. Gucci stripetrimmed jersey mini skirt $590
Valentino rockstud pale gold-tone enameled cuff $625
Portfolio.
Cleveland Clinic, ranked as the #1 heart hospital in the US for 21 consecutive years, is now available in Abu Dhabi. The Heart & Vascular Institute specializes in cardiology, vascular medicine and cardiac, vascular and thoracic surgery.
TO BOOK A NEXT-DAY APPOINTMENT IN THE HEART & VASCULAR INSTITUTE, PLEASE CALL 800 8 CCAD (800 8 2223) INSIDE THE UAE +971 2 501 9000 OUTSIDE THE UAE www.clevelandclinicabudhabi.ae MOH/ZB59803/15-04-16
april issue 124
living / investment
Rolex Cosmograph Daytona
investment piece
The most sought-after vintage watch
2
Stainless steel Rolex Oyster bracelet 1
Tachymeter scale printed on the watch’s bezel rather than the dial. The first Rolex model to do this
4 3
Tri-compax dials
A screw-down crown at 3 o’clock and two push pins above and below the crown at 2 and 4 o’clock.
5
37mm width, although later models increased to 40mm
The story goes that prior to Paul Newman wearing one, Daytonas were sitting in shops for $300. But the actor popularised the model
87 when he began wearing a 1972 Daytona his wife had given him after he took up car racing. Has name has been linked with this watch ever since. The one pictured is a Ref: 6263 model, which was made from 1971 to 1987. This exact one is from 1980 and was listed at an auction for $25,000 but prices for Daytonas can get steep with the early models being scarce. In 2013 a Rolex Daytona chronograph sold for a record $1.1 million at a Christie’s International auction in Geneva and prices are increasing every year with numbers of collectors growing. Not especially popular in their first two decades, the Rolex Daytona is now arguably the most sought after model of vintage watch in the world. Portfolio.
The new suites at Bupa Cromwell Hospital (Just what the doctor ordered)
The Royal Suite London’s Bupa Cromwell Hospital has a global reputation for clinical excellence, covering everything from diagnostic tests and cosmetic procedures to complex surgery including organ transplantation. Our patients expect a high level of service and comfort in every aspect of their life, and there’s no reason to compromise when they need it most. The new Royal and Presidential suites are amongst the most luxurious in the world, and offer the ultimate healthcare experience. Patients will have access to a team of dedicated VIP coordinators and 24 hour private nursing, amongst many other services. For enquiries please ring +44 (0)7809 316 205 or email thesuites@cromwellhospital.com. Expect the exceptional.
april living / Book
issue 124
Prepped for life… A
merica doesn’t really have an upper class in the way that Great Britain does, instead it has WASPs. An acronym for White AngloSaxon Protestant, it has now, however, come to be more associated with a particular preppy style than class of person. That style has influenced countless trends in the worlds of fashion, home design and pop culture, and has become a timeless look associated with the privileged life, from Ivy League colleges to boating in Nantucket. It’s a look that has been co-opted by the mainstream, but for inspiration, it’s always best to go back to some of the originals and those who have carried it off well.
This coffee-table book, compiled by Susanna Salk (self-confesed WASP and Vassar alumna), is a brilliant collection of preppy style inspiration. From the well-decorated home of socialite Sister Parish to the popular pink-and-green colour combination of casual chic to iconic photographs of the style makers who embody the WASP spirit like Grace Kelly, Truman Capote, or Jacqueline Kennedy [pictured horse riding, top left], it celebrates the fascination with America’s leisure class. A Privileged Life: Celebrating WASP Style by Susanna Salk, published by Assouline, is out now for $50 Portfolio.
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APRIL ISSUE 124
LIVING / COLUMN
Hip to be in squares By Catie Marron Until recently, I’d never thought much about city squares. I’ve certainly enjoyed visiting some of the most famous, such as Place des Vosges, Piazza di Navona and Djemaa El-Fnaa, and I have taken advantage of the ones near home in New York City. But their power – in humanity, urban life and history – had never fully registered with me. A few years ago, that changed. On holiday in Rome in 2013, we stayed around the corner from the Piazza del Popolo. Whenever I’m in Europe, I find I feel closer to major events occurring on the continent. On this trip, every morning in the hotel, I read all the newspapers and accounts I could find on the uprising in the main square of Kiev. The insurgence was quickly coined the Euromaidan, “maidan” being the word for “square” in several languages, including Ukranian. Commentators compared the Euromaidan protests to those in Istanbul’s Taksim Square two years earlier. I’d spent an hour there just three months before the protests. As it was commuter time, people were on the move; an old-fashioned cable car passed by. I never could have guessed that very site, like the Euromaidan, would soon become the headquarters for masses of citizens who put their lives on the line in protest against their governments. Suddenly, I thought about the stark contrasts among the spaces: the everyday bustle of Taksim Square and its political unrest; the classic, peaceful beauty of the grand Roman squares; and the revolt erupting in Kiev’s Maidan, another square of Old World character. I explored further, which led me to putting together this collection: a series of essays created for a book, which considers the square from different points of view, from the intensely personal to the expansively global.
Each square stands for a larger theme in history, culture and geopolitics. This deeply free and public space plays a vital role in our world, equally important in our digital age as in Greco-Roman times, when they were marketplaces for goods and ideas. As common ground, squares are equitable and democratic; they have played a fundamental role in the development of free speech. When citizens wanted to convey their message to those in charge they flocked to their square. As David Remnick says, “Authoritarians don’t realise what a dangerous thing it is to have a city square.” Each writer contributed his or her own special mix of innate talent, prodigious research and local knowledge. Rory Stewart told the story of a introduction square in Kabul, which has come and gone several times over five centuries, due to both the local culture and, equally, the will of one individual, the latest iteration involving Rory himself in the leadership role. Rick Stengel recounted Nelson Mandela’s choice of the Grand Parade, Cape Town, a huge market square that was transformed into a public space of historic magnitude when he spoke to the world right after his release from 27 years in prison. In Euromaidan, Tahrir and Taksim squares, social media (the new virtual square) summoned people to the physical square. Michael Kimmelman describes the construction of a new square in a Palestinian refugee camp, first questioned, then embraced. It is now where children play, young couples marry and women feel free to socialise. Everyone uses this newly created public space just as people did in the agoras of ancient Greece. If there’s one essential urban space, it is the square. They have stood the test of time. After all, squares are all about, and for, people.
“When citizens wanted to convey their message to those in charge they flocked to their square”
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Catie Marron is the editor of City Squares, a collection of 18 essays from 18 writers. PORTFOLIO.
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