T-Qatar Issue 24 March - April 2014 by Oryx Group of Magazines

Women's Fashion March – April 2014

The attic of author Roddy Doyle's house in Dublin, where most of his work is set.

Page 208

Features 72

Phoebe Philo’s Prophetic Fashion

The designer’s quiet, understated clothes for Céline are redefining the notion of power dressing. Here, what her designs mean to the women who wear them. Photographs by Karim Sadli. Styled by Joe McKenna. By Whitney Vargas.

A Moment of Transparency

From open weaves to sheer fabrics and slashed fringes, designers are finding new ways to show some skin. Photographs by Mario Sorrenti. Styled by Joe McKenna.

102 The Writer’s Room

Five authors with upcoming books reveal the spaces in which their work is created. Photographs by Magnus Unnar.

80 Fashion's Purest Visionary

Rei Kawakubo brings Dover Street Market to New York and with it, her bold, original retail strategy in which her Comme des Garcons lines are sold alongside the work of other designers and artists.

By Suzy Menkes. Photographs by Paolo Roversi.

ON THE COVER: Phoebe Philo in a Céline top and her own earrings. Photographed by Karim Sadli. Styled by Joe McKenna. Hair by Paul Hanlon. Makeup by Hannah Murray.

Table of Contents

Lookout 20 Sign of the Times

As more and more fashionable women favor comfort over complicated concepts, it seems designers haven’t quite caught up. 24 The Moment

This season there’s a homespun hippie vibe to urban dressing. 30 This and That

Eyelids get the gold treatment; the lowly Teva is ready for its close-up; and more. 33 By the Numbers

The flash and folly of New York Fashion Week. Elaine Stritch and Chloë Sevigny consider perfumed oils and rap music while snacking on smoked fish.

Quality 55 In Fashion

Pleats go street when paired with boxy tops and sporty accessories. 60 Profile in Style

Snapshots from the private life of the artful designer Maria Cornejo. 62 On Beauty

When it comes to fragrances, monogamy is a thing of the past.

Arena 64 Listen Up

The soulful songstress Kelela is bridging the gap between cool-kid dance music and old-school R&B. 108 Document

India's most opulent palaces receive some unusual visitors.

Left: Valentino cape, QR42,188. Christian Wijnants dress, QR3,312; barneys. com. Proenza Schouler shoes, QR4,350. Top right: the singer Kelela in Louise Goldin dress QR5,640.

FROM TOP: TIERNEY GEARON; ANNEMARIEKE VAN DRIMMELEN.

34 Take Two

Table of Contents Publisher & Editor-In-Chief

Yousuf Jassem Al Darwish Chief Executive

Sandeep Sehgal Executive Vice President

Alpana Roy

Vice President

Ravi Raman

EDITORIAL Editor

Sindhu Nair Chief Fashion Correspondent

Debrina Aliyah

Senior Correspondents

Abigail Mathias Ayswarya Murthy Ezdihar Ibrahim Ali Sub-Editor

Sue Eedle

Lookout Qatar 35 This and That

Santoni is another Italian company that is banking on its heritage; Dunhill shows that colors are an inherent part of this season.

40 On Heritage

Tod’s has always celebrated the core, the material, its texture, bringing the luxury of its finesse to all accessories. For Diego Della Valle, that is life at its finest.

44 More Than Fashion

Brands are no longer only about fashion; they are also about a culture of art.

47 Now Showing

Mona Hatoum’s work is a study in contrast while all her pieces exhibited at Mathaf have an underlying theme of turbulence.

ART Senior Art Director

Venkat Reddy

Deputy Art Director

Hanan Abu Saiam

50 The Trend

Assistant Art Director

Senior Graphic Designer

The second edition of Jeddah Art Week and some thought-provoking artwork by female Saudi artists brought focus to the country’s ongoing art exposé.

52 Framed

Two Qatari artists are showing at one of the world’s most important photography festivals, and they are taking with them their own unique representation of the country.

Arena Qatar 66 New Talent

Qatar’s designer Wadha Al Hajri makes her presence felt in New York, in a Chelsea studio that encourages emerging designers.

68 Home/Work

Among the pivotal figures instrumental in rebuilding Beirut is London-based French-Lebanese architect and designer Annabel Karim Kassar, who now has her sights set on transforming the United Arab Emirates.

Ayush Indrajith

Maheshwar Reddy

Photography

Rob Altamirano

MARKETING AND SALES Senior Manager – Marketing

Zulfikar Jiffry

Assistant Manager – Marketing

Thomas Jose

Media Consultants

Hassan Rekkab Lydia Youssef

Marketing Research & Support Executive

Kanwal Baluch Accountant Pratap Chandran

Sr. Distribution Executive

Bikram Shrestha

Distribution Support

Arjun Timilsina Bhimal Rai Basanta P

T, THE STYLE MAGAZINE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES Editor in Chief

Deborah Needleman Creative Director

Patrick Li

Deputy Editor

Whitney Vargas Fashion Director at Large

Joe McKenna

Managing Editor

George Gustines Photography Director

Nadia Vellam

THE NEW YORK TIMES NEWS SERVICES General Manager

Left: Colorful chairs form the focus in Architect Annabel Karim Kassar 's design for the restuarant Almuz by Momo, Dubai. Top: Rasgas commissioned phtographers to click the helium plant; this picture is a result of this initiative.

Vice President, Licensing and Syndication

Alice Ting

Vice President, Executive Editor The New York Times News Service & Syndicate

Nancy Lee

PUBLISHED BY

LICENSED EDITIONS Editorial Director

T, The New York Times Style Magazine, and the T logo are trademarks of The New York Times Co., NY, NY, USA, and are used under license by Oryx Media, Qatar. Content reproduced from T, The New York Times Style Magazine, copyright The New York Times Co. and/or its contributors 2013 all rights reserved. The views and opinions expressed within T-Qatar are not necessarily those of The New York Times Company or those of its contributors.

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George Gustines Coordinators

Gary Caesar Karen Hanley

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: RAS GAS, ARR ASSOCIATES

Michael Greenspon

Sign of the Times

Slave No More

As the runway revolves, one front-row fashion fixture ponders how practical dressing has come to feel like the most modern of ideas, and why designers haven’t quite caught on. BY CATHY HORYN

IT IS BEFORE DAWN on a frozen Sunday in upstate

along in boots and a dog-haired sweater, the picture of civilized indifference. Although I like going to fashion shows, and appreciate the dedication of seamstresses and designers alike, I am not the right audience for most of what I see. But, then, how many women are? Who has the will — never mind the time and the money — to wear high fashion, at least as it has been conceived over the past decade, as something extreme, or ‘‘special,’’ in retail jargon? By now, I suspect, most people know that the purpose of runway shows is entertainment, and to create a feeling of desire. They understand that the main interest of highfashion companies is economic rather than aesthetic. It’s to sell products and capture new markets, much as Coca-Cola and Apple do. Notions like taste and practical chic are way too complex to sell today, when much of the world’s population is consumed with either acquisition or basic survival.

PICTURE COURTESY : SHUTTERSTOCK IMAGES

New York, where I have come to pack up two bedrooms. A handyman is arriving to build a small closet in one, and then both rooms will receive a fresh coat of paint. I’m sticking with the same colors — light green, a ballroom blue — that I chose 15 years ago, when the house was built. This decision to leave well enough alone, instead of hustling over to the paint store and driving myself nuts with choices, not to mention wasting my energy, seems more than sensible: It sums up everything I feel about style and comfort. Or should I say the revenge of comfort over style. Folded over the back of a chair in my room, under a mohair throw, is an old suede kilt I had meant to begin wearing again. For me, the kilt nourishes a sense of freedom from fashion. It’s a classic, it’s sentimental and it’s one of the few garments I own that has truly improved with age. I hope I am wearing it at 90, tramping

Lookout

Sign of the Times

For that reason it’s tough to talk about comfort and a moral economy of style without sounding grim or like one is trying to promote a car with three wheels (hey, but it drives!). On the other hand, this idea is not so far from something Coco Chanel offered when she arrived in New York, in March 1931. Asked by a reporter to define the fashionable woman, Chanel said, ‘‘She dresses well but not remarkably. . . . She disobeys fashion.’’ Then, perhaps thinking of her rival Elsa Schiaparelli, Chanel added, ‘‘But she is not eccentric. I hate eccentricity.’’ So she was extolling understatement and ease, yes, but also suggesting these choices reflected virtues like selfcontrol and seriousness. Lately I’ve noticed many more women, all of them in the zone of careers and complicated family routines, all of them with an eye for fashion, gravitating toward an almost boyish uniform of slim-cut trousers, pullovers and flat shoes. Or a leather jacket with bland layers underneath. They’re hardly wearing makeup, so their complexions look fresh. (We all know that too much makeup ages everyone.) At the last round of shows in Paris, I noted that even my French sisters had begun to ditch their adored stilettos for low heels. That was quite a concession for them, I thought. Something must be up, because those women don’t do anything on a whim. Of course, in the 1990s, Helmut Lang and Jil Sander led a revolution with plain tailoring, neutral colors and natural hair and makeup. Lang’s style, in particular, proved popular with editors and buyers, many of whom had witnessed the sex gags of Jean Paul Gaultier and Thierry Mugler in the ’80s, and were sickened or just bored by them. More than a decade earlier, Halston, Stephen Burrows and Calvin Klein had created a template of modern informality, with clean sportswear and lightly constructed dresses for a generation that wanted to go braless. Indeed, these styles reflected not only broad social change, but also the loosening of designers’ grip on women’s bodies. Yet, by the early ’90s, with the exception of Marc Jacobs’s grunge collection for Perry Ellis, along with Zoran and Joan Vass, New York was largely obsessed with the retro trappings of nouvelle society glamour, down to fur-trimmed pencil skirts and

It’s tough to talk about comfort and a moral economy of style without sounding grim or like one is trying to promote a car with three wheels (hey, but it drives!).

T Qatar: The New York Times Style Magazine

gloves. No wonder women sought the anonymity of Lang and Sander. What’s changed since then? From my perspective, having written enthusiastically about the conceptual, art-inspired fashion of the past 20 years — whether by Martin Margiela, Miuccia Prada or Raf Simons — I can say we’ve become increasingly weary of this approach. As the roles of women kept evolving during the ’80s and ’90s, it was easy, maybe necessary, to attach meaning to clothes. They were powerful, daring, etc. But, let’s face it, much of the language around clothes today sounds forced. I was touched when, at the January men’s shows in Milan, Prada talked about her rather straightforward tailoring, which included a few women’s looks as well, saying, ‘‘I wanted to make it real. And I like that now.’’ So do most women, though this wish doesn’t strike them as a novelty. All the same, the desire to be comfortable is profound, shaping attitudes and markets. Witness the explosion of so-called lifestyle brands like Vince, which last year became a publicly traded company, an indication that the audience is hardly baby boomers looking for less complicated stuff. For the most part, with the exception of Stella McCartney, who makes a point of including stylishly executed casual looks like this spring’s tapered track pants and tops, high fashion ignores this consumer. But things are changing. I perked up when I saw that Alber Elbaz based Lanvin’s prefall collection around chic sweatpants, mixing them with wool cocoon coats and low-heeled pumps. I had the sense that he was keen to tackle the matter of comfort without sacrificing luxury, and he succeeded. Probably no one defines the modern sense of comfort with more authority than Phoebe Philo of Céline. Not long ago, she stunned loyalists with a loosey-goosey collection of long, frayed dresses, soft pajama-like pants and sandals lined with fur. Well, guess what? Other designers are still knocking off that collection. Although Philo has steered Céline somewhat away from that specific style, as you would expect of a designer eager to stay ahead of her competitors, she remains committed to its essence. For me, that collection captured something rare in today’s world of anxious, self-created stars — and that is a woman of indeterminate age who knows what she likes and has shrugged off what she no longer has any use for, and maybe never did. If that sounds rather limited, that’s the point. I’ll stick with the same paint colors and my lovely old kilt, because, it turns out, there’s a surprising amount of harmony in unremarkable choices.

Lookout The Moment

Back to the Land There’s a handcrafted earthiness to urban dressing this season. PHOTOGRAPHS BY ANNEMARIEKE VAN DRIMMELEN STYLED BY JASON RIDER

An exotic scarf Denis Colomb scarf, QR2,348; Santa Fe Dry Goods. Derek Lam scarf (worn underneath), QR1,784. Dries Van Noten vest, $1,165; barneys.com. Chloé top, QR3,986.

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Lookout

The Moment

An organic neckline Altuzarra in collaboration with Giles & Brother necklace, price on request; altuzarra.com. Donna Karan New York top, QR4,714; donnakaran.com. Organic by John Patrick slip, QR437; organicbyjohnpatrick.com. The Row skirt, QR60,060; Dâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;NA, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, 966-11-419-9966.

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Lookout

The Moment

A makeshift belt Etro coat, QR5,915. Orciani belt, QR637.

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MODEL: MAJA SALAMON/NEXT. HAIR BY SHIN ARIMA USING REDKEN FOR FRANK REPS. MAKEUP BY ASAMI TAGUCHI USING CHANEL BEAUTÉ FOR FRANK REPS. MANICURE BY RIEKO OKUSA FOR CHANEL. STYLIST’S ASSISTANT: ALEX TUDELA.

A tapestry carryall

Dries Van Noten bag, QR10,629; A’maree’s. Hermès jacket, QR15,743, and pants, QR8,372. Trademark shoes, QR819.

March - April 2014

Lookout

This and That A Cultural Compendium

FACE TIME

Golden Eyes

From a faint sheen to a strong metallic, fashion’s top makeup artists got glowing this season. Here’s how to lay on the shine. ILLUSTRATIONS BY KONSTANTIN KAKANIAS

Pat McGrath applied a copper shadow to the perimeter of the eye, flaring it out at the corners. Estée Lauder Pure Color Stay-on Shadow Paint in Cosmic, QR87.

Magic Carpets

Peter Philips dusted the lid with a shimmery shadow, adding sparkle by gluing short threads of fine metallic cord to lashes. For a more practical look, Yves Saint Laurent Mascara Volume Effet Faux Cils Shocking in Bronze Black (#3), QR109. 32

To create a futuristic effect, McGrath coated the upper and lower lids — as well as the brow — with a strong application of gold shadow. Diorshow Fusion Mono in Météore (#661), QR109.

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Lina Zedig and Marcus Ahren, the founders of the Stockholmbased design studio Oyyo, have introduced a line of cotton dhurries that stands apart from the ubiquitous stripes and chevrons of flat-weave designs. With their soft pastels and spare patterns, these rugs have a definite Nordic accent, recalling the textiles of the Swedish designer Marta Maas-Fjetterstrom, but a closer look reveals more diverse influences — everything from the Bauhaus textiles of Gunta Stölzl to the tree markings of itinerant laborers in the 1940s. oyyo.se — TOM DELAVAN

DAVID MAGNUSSON (3)

Diane Kendal lined the eye socket with a black liner, filling in the lid with a camel shadow and finishing with a thin layer of glitter. Lancôme Color Design Eye Brightening All-in-One 5 Shadow & Liner Palette in Bronze Amour, QR182.

Clockwise from right: Brick Pastel dhurrie, starting from about QR2,548; Oyyo’s founders, Lina Zedig and Marcus Ahren; vegetable-dyed Bastian dhurrie, starting from QR6,443.

ON THE VERGE

A Star Is Born

IT’S UNCOMPLICATED Clockwise from top center: Simon Porte Jacquemus; two looks from the minimalist designer’s spring collection.

Simon Porte Jacquemus freely admits that he’s no couturier — the French women’s wear designer lasted just two months at fashion school. In 2010, after quitting a creative director’s assistant job in similar haste, he launched his own line out of his apartment, often sketching ideas while riding the Métro. Yet since debuting his first collection in the spring of 2013, the clothes have stood out. Now, some of Paris’s coolest girls are wearing the 25-year-old’s clothes, including the model Caroline de Maigret, the stylist Ursina Gysi and the fashion blogger Jeanne Damas, and he’s

selling at many of the world’s most sought-after stores, such as Dover Street Market and Opening Ceremony. His subversive fashion-week happenings have also been reinvigorating the Paris scene. Last fall’s presentation was staged at a public swimming pool, where plastic footbags were dispensed so that editors wouldn’t sully their shoes. His ravelike spring 2014 show drew what felt like a flash mob to a basement video arcade on the Boulevard des Italiens. Spring’s curvilinear shapes were inspired by the space-age architecture

of La Grande-Motte, the midcentury beach resort near Jacquemus’s childhood home in the South of France. His crisp, age-old fabrics — unwashed twill, mosquito netting — feel new amid the current vogue for digital prints and high-tech textures. ‘‘In the craziness of fashion, a strong look is something that’s not just simple, but ultrasimple,’’ he says. ‘‘Simple is a white T-shirt and blue jeans. Ultrasimple is something without details, a girl in an all-white cotton look. To me, that’s powerful.’’ jacquemus.com — EVIANA HARTMAN

FASHION MEMO

2 4

3 1

From Runyon to the Runway

Fashion has already appropriated the Birkenstock and the Bermuda short. Now the maligned Teva feels the love. 1. Teva sandals, QR146; teva.com. 2. Prada sandals, price on request; prada.com. 3. Marni sandals, QR3,021. 4. Balenciaga sandals, QR2,821; neimanmarcus.com. 5. Agyness Deyn for Dr. Martens sandals, QR582; drmartens.com. 6. Marc Jacobs sandals, QR3,076.

JACQUEMUS: BERTRAND LE PLUARD (3). SANDALS, FROM LEFT: MARKO METZINGER (2); MARNI; BALENCIAGA; MARKO METZINGER (2).

The French fashion designer Simon Porte Jacquemus is storming Paris with his superclean designs and rowdy runway shows.

Lookout

This and That 4 THE FIND 6

Studio Services After achieving success on the West Coast as one half of the furniture design duo Meier/Ferrer, Charlie Ferrer has branched out on his own and opened a meticulously curated Manhattan showroom that also doubles as his one-bedroom apartment. The 32-year-old has pooled pieces by a number of behind-thescenes talents, like the sought-after industrial designer Billy Cotton and the lighting expert Kacper Dolatowski, both of whose work had only been available to decorators seeking custom commissions. The handmade designs Ferrer displays, in a range of materials from brass to oak to plaster, feel classic yet current. ‘‘I don’t like to call it a showroom, which feels static,’’ Ferrer says. ‘‘It’s really more of a studio, an active place where artists refine, resolve and share their ideas.’’ ferrer.co

A CLEAN, WELL-LIGHTED PLACE (1) Kacper Dolatowski’s plaster torchiere lamp, QR20,020. (2) Billy Cotton’s parchment console, QR68,432. (3) Matthias Merkel Hess’s glazed ceramic ‘‘White Bucket, Small,’’ QR2,184. (4) Jed Ochmanek’s concrete artwork, QR7,644. (5) Maren Kloppmann’s black-and-white porcelain vessel, QR15,288. (6) Robert Stilin’s brass sconce, QR10,920. (7) Cotton’s Elements table, QR141,232, and (8) Cotton’s Antwerp cabinet, QR101,920, exclusively through Ferrer.

— SARA RUFFIN COSTELLO

FERRER: JOSHUA M C HUGH (3). ILLUSTRATIONS BY KONSTANTIN KAKANIAS.

SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT

Tying the Knot Spring’s runway proved — surprise, surprise — that there’s more than one way to wear a sweater.

Knotted loose and low around the hips, a graphic knit becomes a butt-flattering train.

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Worn backwards around the waist, this nonchalant bad-girl look is the sartorial equivalent of smoking in the bathroom.

Preppy or Maasai? Either way, an asymmetrically tied knit serves up a fresh twist on the tennis ensemble.

The Houdini of fashion, a sweater cinched high on the waist creates the illusion of a slimmer figure and longer legs.

320

By the Numbers

Temporary Insanity

Approximate number of runway shows and presentations

For eight days in February and then again in September, more than 100,000 characters descend on New York City for the women’s fashion shows. Traffic grinds to a halt. Requests on Uber, the luxury car-service app, spike 40 percent. It’s harder to get a seat at certain restaurants, like Carbone or NoMad, than it is a front-row perch at Marc Jacobs. And there are enough crazed street-style peacocks clomping around and #NYFW selfies getting snapped to make the whole scene feel like some endless Kardashian nightmare. But it’s also serious business. The shows bring in an estimated $860 million for the city, more than the projected earnings of the U.S. Open, the New York City Marathon or the Super Bowl. Not bad for an event that began in 1941, when the International Ladies’ Garment Workers Union invited 30 journalists to attend a few designers’ showrooms. Here, a brief look into the harrowing and often hysterical week that kicks off every new fashion season. — ALEX HAWGOOD

ONE square foot

25 years

The breakdown of models present on the fall 2013 runway (according to research conducted by jezebel.com)

AVERAGE LENGTH OF A SHOW

Amount of time people spent watching the spring 2014 shows on the Internet

$1 million

Amount of space per photographer in the pit during a show

83% White 9% Asian 6% Black 2% Latina

minutes

Amount Marc Jacobs has spent on a runway show

$100,000 — Beyoncé $60,000 — Julianne Moore $2,000 — Iggy Azalea CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: SHUTTERSTOCK IMAGES; CORBIS IMAGES

Approximate celebrity front-row payment

Cost of renting a tent at Lincoln Center

$60,000 (seats 1,100)

NUMBER OF SPRING 2014 SHOWS WALKED BY JOSEPHINE LE TUTOUR, NYFW’S BUSIEST MODEL

2,100

Number of registered journalists

International Fashion Week hashtag impacts on Instagram:

641,935 - #nyfw 292,658 - #pfw 187,296 - #mfw

Zelda Kaplan

NEW YORK SOCIALITE AND NIGHTLIFE HABITUÉ WHO DIED AT NYFW IN 2012 AT THE AGE OF 95, AFTER COLLAPSING IN HER FRONT-ROW SEAT

‘‘When I’m sitting with Anna, I’m really sitting with Anna / Ain’t a metaphor punchline, I’m really sitting with Anna / Front row at Oscar de la Renta, posture.’’

Nicki Minaj, from her song ‘‘Come on a Cone.’’

March - April 2014

Take Two

Chloë Sevigny

Elaine Stritch

Oscar-nominated actress and perennial downtown It Girl who will next be seen in March playing a detective on the A&E crime drama ‘‘Those Who Kill.’’

Emmy- and Tony award-winning performer whose cabaret at the Carlyle Hotel, where she once lived, is a New York legend. The documentary ‘‘Elaine Stritch: Shoot Me’’ will be released by Sundance Selects this month.

I’d never heard his music. I was actually kind of surprised that it had this old-school feel to it. I haven’t bought a hip-hop record since the first Wu-Tang. I’m not so into the ‘‘bitches and hos’’ of modern party rap.

Music The rapper Riff Raff’s forthcoming album, ‘‘Neon Icon‘‘ (maddecent.com).

Book

Cindy is one of my favorite artists, and most of her greatest hits are in here. I’ve always found it fascinating how styled her photos are, but you see her in person and she doesn’t seem like a Marina Abramovic, who’s always in head-to-toe Givenchy.

The oils remind me of the ones I buy from the guys selling patchouli on St. Mark’s. I couldn’t see how these were so much nicer. Still, I’ve found myself wearing them every day.

’’Cindy Sherman,‘‘ a primer on the New York photographer (QR84; phaidon.com).

Fragrance Christian Dior’s Les Élixirs Précieux oils, meant to be paired with a perfume from the house’s La Collection Privée (QR1,092; Bergdorf Goodman).

It’s definitely exotic. Right now, I’m really into bows. I saw a girl the other night with a big one on, and she told me she got it at Forever 21. I’ve tried to never step foot in that store, but this might be my breaking point.

Being an actress, a dozen bagels doesn’t really work for me. But I tried all of the fish, and I’ve got to say, it was comparable to the smoked salmon I’d get at the Ritz in Paris.

Helmet Alexander McQueen’s gold cloche (QR26,117).

Breakfast Zabar’s Smoked Fish Kit, which includes three types of salmon, 12 bagels and cream cheese (QR637; zabars.com).

I just caught up with Elton John’s music, so I’m not ready for this. Elton is not just my favorite artist, but also my favorite human being of all time. A lot of it has to do with the fact that he adores me, honestly.

It’s a marvelous book, don’t you think? Cindy Sherman is terrific. She’s a really spooky woman. I personally love Picasso, but it’s impossible to have the real thing, and not the 189th reproduction.

I love this because it’s fresh and light, and it doesn’t smack you. I went to this dinner party once, and a woman’s fragrance was so heavy that three guys went home, and we hadn’t even gotten to the main course.

I’ve got enough problems in my head without that helmet hanging on me. Hair is a woman’s crowning glory, and I’m not covering mine up with anything unless it’s a beautiful hat with a few curls coming out the side.

The fish, the bagels and the gorgeous cream cheese with onion chopped through it — oh, it was divine! You know, when you’re not looking I’m Jewish. I’d just call up Zabar’s and tell them to charge it to the Carlyle.

March-April 2014

SEVIGNY: RABBANI AND SOLIMENE PHOTOGRAPHY/SHUTTERSTOCK IMAGES. STRITCH: WALTER MCBRIDE/CORBIS. FROM TOP: COURTESY OF MAD DECENT; COURTESY PHAIDON PRESS; COURTESY OF CHRISTIAN DIOR PARFUMS; COURTESY ALEXANDER MCQUEEN; JUAN C. LOPEZ ESPANTALEON/ZABAR’S AND COMPANY INC.

A dual review of what’s new.

Lookout Qatar

For a Modern Muse Giuseppe Santoni’s sensibility is firmly rooted in Italian craftsmanship. He strongly believes in cultivating traditional values in shoemaking, while adding a new, modern and innovative awareness to the company. Traditional values are a mainstay in most Italian companies, but combining that with innovation and an entrepreneurial skill with the mindset of global expansion is what made Santoni a successful brand in such a short span of time. “Quality and design” is what Santoni wants to be known for. But Santoni’s consumers are not “poor fashion victims” they are “modern and fashion-forward” with a “strong style sense.” “She knows her mind and has no qualms of following her own style that is more comfortand design-focused than on trends,” says Santoni, who knows his customer well and uses this understanding in designing new product ranges for the brand. On fashion trends across the globe, Santoni says that people who love fashion are the same all over the world. “People follow the same trends because of globalization. If it is popular in the Americas it is equally popular in Asia,” he says. Japan is an important market for Santoni and is much bigger than the China market. “Asia is nicely covered but there is more to do,” he says about his store expansion strategy. The Middle East to Santoni is another important market and one that has been showing positive growth signs. SINDHU NAIR

COMFORT WEDS DESIGN Above, Giuseppe Santoni is the new-age entrepreneur; below, accessories from Santoni's Spring Summer collection that is now available in Doha stores.

PICTURES COURTESY SANTONI, DUNHILL

A Dash of Color It is the colors that clinch it and announce the change in season. Elegant hues of ultramarine, sky blue, grass green and, for the more daring gentleman, sunshine yellow, cognac orange and ruby red dominate the Spring Summer collection of Dunhill’s Bourdon Bright line. Crafted from Italian cowhide leather, the Bourdon Brights provide an upbeat and cheerful approach to business leather. The unstructured design of each offers a modern alternative to the traditional leather, with durable construction and complete functionality. SINDHU NAIR COLOR CODED Clockwise from above: Blue laptop bags, red knitted tie and iconic spin cufflinks from Dunhill's Bourdon Bright line. March - April 2014

Lookout Qatar

Market Watch

Bauble Extraordinaire A decade and a year on since the first Doha Jewellry and Watches Exhibition (DJWE), the extravaganza has now moved into the new, impossibly spacious Qatar National Convention Center (QNCC). It was a much-needed upgrade to cater for the growing number of visitors and equally skyrocketing sales figures since almost all fine jewelry and watch houses dispatch their big guns and brightest of gems seeking a juicy share of the market. The new era at the QNCC also means an expanded retail space to include upcoming boutique names including QELA alongside steadfast giants like Cartier.

BEHOLD THE PEARLING TRADITION

EMERGING TALENT From left: QELA's master jeweler at work; Jouthour is a traditional design captured in two tones; Wahm is another QELA offering.

A NEW FACE at the DJWE 2014 is QELA, the country’s premier luxury label with its own dedicated jewelry atelier. Since its launch in September 2013, the label has presented delicately charming jewelry designs that are all crafted from traditional inspirations. The central masterpieces presented at DJWE were the Tarabout and Hadiya necklaces from the Erth collection, inspired by the Qatari pearling heritage. The Tarabout necklace, crafted in white gold, black onyx and white diamonds, features two lustrous, contrasting sand-rose designs, one of which is covered with pavé-set white diamonds and can be detached to wear separately as a brooch. The Hadiya necklace is a medley of white gold, pearls and pavé-set diamonds, bearing imposing, detachable tassels crafted in white gold, pearls and diamonds. “QELA jewelry pieces are understated, yet the uncompromising quality and specific design of the lines immediately identify them as QELA,” says Haya bint Khalifa Al Nassr, managing director and vice-chairperson of the board of Qatar Luxury Group. “Our new jewelry lines are supreme examples of how the QELA team breathes luminosity and life into this guiding ethos. These are designs that speak worldwide from truly local roots, not least because all of QELA’s unique jewelry pieces are designed and handmade in our workshops here in Doha.” DEBRINA ALIYAH

A PERSONAL LUXURY

obsession with mechanical creations and workings. “The demand for luxury is high in the region, though the geographical size does not indeed justify the need,” he says. Hutchison tries to justify the demand for luxury saying that it is something more than what the rational brain needs, and hence the most personal thing that a person can possess. As a creative designer he tries to bring in an emotional connection with the object, the look and the feel of the object that justifies the buy. Not an easy job, for sure, but one that Hutchison loves to perfect, making each Vertu phone meet both the rational and the personal needs of a man or woman. Strength in a Vertu is taken to an entirely different level with the forged grade 5 titanium case twice as strong as steel yet half its weight, the screen made from the purest of sapphire crystal, which makes it scratchproof, a 4.3 inch HD display that produces the highest of resolutions for the screen and hightech amplifiers that make a Vertu sound more musical. A handmade Vertu phone is just that, made entirely by one single craftsman who then puts his name in it. The Vertu Constellation is a beautiful leather-covered phone that does make someone want to possess it, and the technical specification makes it easier to justify the buy. SINDHU NAIR

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MIND OVER MACHINE: Above, Hutch Hutchison, Head of design at the Vertu stand; right, the Constellation series from Vertu.

PICTURES COURTESY QELA, VERTU, ROBERT A

HUTCH HUTCHISON, Head of Concept Creation and Design at Vertu, has a self-confessed

MAKING AN ENTRY

RARE FINDS A Nirav Modi creation in blue diamond.

THE FIRST INDIAN exhibitor at the DJWE, Nirav Modi is excited about

the prospects this event has for his brand. “It is a great place to bring our brand experience. This is the first international exhibition we have attended because this is the only place that allows us to retail. This is the only place in the world where the exhibition has a customer experience.” Three days into the show, the brand had already made a mark with a few buys and a lot of interest generated. “The people here are very fast buyers when compared to the Indian market, where people mull over their decisions for days before going in for the buy. Here they are fast and also big buyers,” Modi says. The brand is very happy with its first-time partnership with Alfardan, and it is still early to consider further visits. Talking about the luxury industry, Modi thinks it is all about craftsmanship rather than the name on the label. A third-generation diamond jeweler, Modi has taken the brand to new heights with his brilliant designs. Some are even his own patented cuts like the Ainra cut, where the diamond acts as the links, and the Endless cut, a link that is carved from a diamond. With the diamonds sourced and cut in a factory in Russia, the innovations are what make the brand unique. Branches in New Delhi and one in New York are on the agenda for the brand, and they sell internationally through Christie’s and Sotheby’s. SINDHU NAIR

MORE THAN KEEPING TIME

PICTURES COURTESY ROBERT A, JAEGER LECOULTRE

ONE HUNDRED and eighty years have come and

gone for Jaeger LeCoultre, and the legacy of the brand has expanded into areas beyond watch making alone. No doubt, the art of precision movements and horology is the antecedent of the brand’s success and an integral part of its heritage, but the wearing of a Jaeger watch these days denotes a sense of understated accomplishment beyond just a great watch. “We are very legitimate in terms of our products, but it is now time for us to focus on the aspirational aspects of the brand. It is about conveying the subtle values of what we stand for,” says Laurent Vinay, Jaeger LeCoultre’s international communication director. The short film project featuring Diane Kruger in 2013 to celebrate the brand’s 180th anniversary recently hit 5 million views online, an exciting marker for the brand’s continued initiatives in cinema. In the region, the brand is sponsor of the Abu Dhabi Film Festival annual glitterati affair, at which it recently presented Forest Whitaker with a lifetime achievement award. Its choice of a brand ambassador for the region is also rather unique, the wildly popular comedian Wonho Chung, a South Korean who grew up in Dubai and performs standup in Arabic. “We associate the brand with people who truly excel in their fields with the kind of values that we identify with — strong personalities, who are humble and low key,” Vinay explains. The brand’s position in the equestrian and polo field is unrivaled, while its CSR program this year puts the spotlight on the Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve in Alaska. DEBRINA ALIYAH

OF VALUES KEPT Clockwise from top: Jaeger LeCoultre Master Ultra Thin; Laurent Vinay, Jaeger LeCoultre’s international communication director; LeCoultre Rendez Vous Date.

March - April 2014

A FRENCH MAISON ONE EXHIBITOR that truly stood out at the DJWE was Cartier. Its exhibition booth was made to resemble a maison — a French home. What’s more, it placed two snappily dressed French security guards in red blazers at the entrance of the booth. The design of the space was inspired by Maison Cartier's legendary address at “13 rue de la Paix,” along with Place Vendôme forming the heart of Parisian elegance and luxury. Laurent Gaborit, Regional Managing Director Middle East, India and Africa, said, “We are extremely pleased to participate once more at this exhibition, which is a great platform to demonstrate Maison Cartier’s exceptional high jewelry creations and latest watchmaking innovations.” Founded in 1847 by Louis Francois Cartier, family-run Cartier has expanded to become a leading international jewellery house. “For DJWE we have more than 150 pieces of high jewelry, which is a substantial number to display. We also have various collections including the popular Panther Collection. Our selection of watches is also large. These include precious women’s watches with diamonds,” explains Gaborit. “Cartier has been making watches since 1847, and our watches are much sought after.” ABIGAIL MATHIAS

CLASSY SHOW The Cartier booth at DJWE.

A STORY TELLER JEROME DEWITT does not want to be known as a watchmaker, and rightly so, since he has been an accountant, a lawyer, an investor and, most currently, a storyteller. Not the conventional pento-paper kind of stories, but ones that gets told through complicated watch movements. Take the Academia Mirabilis, a watch with a half-opened work dial from 7 to 12 o’clock. It was designed to bring to life the flower Mirabilis that only blooms at night and to echo DeWitt’s observation that life can be as fleeting as time. And then there’s the Twenty-8-Eight Full Moon. “Every culture reveres the moon in some way, even today. The moon is still an indication of luck and fortune for many,” DeWitt says. To seal the deal, DeWitt finishes the dial with flecks of rose gold. For a relatively young watch making brand, DeWitt has achieved a lot, especially with clever presentations of what the brand has to offer. The absence of a long history means it is focused on the future and on innovations.“The world is changing rapidly and we really have no idea what kind of technological breakthrough can happen, so it is important for us to constantly be evolving,” he says. DEBRINA ALIYAH MOMENTS Academia Mirabilis from DeWitt.

REFINEMENT TAKES A NEW EDGE

THE STORIED fine jewelry house of Van Cleef & Arpels has been the vanguard of the Ali Bin

Ali’s space at the Doha Jewellry and Watches Exhibition for years, and this year the pièce de résistance welcoming visitors was the Trèfles Mystérieux necklace from the Palais de la Chance collection. The necklace, featuring diamonds and emeralds set in white gold, is a tribute to the house’s signature mystic setting and the ever-so-classic clover motif. The esteemed craftsmanship and heritage of the house have won the hearts of jewelry lovers in Qatar, and the brand is very excited about future potential in this market. “Qatar is developing especially quickly in recent times, and we are very excited to see the continued support and the growth of our brand here,” says Alban Belloir, VCA’s managing director for Middle East and India. Citing DJWE as one of the most important retail events in the jewelry calendar, Belloir also observes the increasingly discerning customer base that makes it important to preserve the essence of the brand. “We are a very subtle brand that makes highly refined pieces for a very classic niche, and it is very important for us to protect and preserve this essence that makes us desirable and truly a class on our own,” he says. DEBRINA ALIYAH

PICTURE COURTESY CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT, ROBERT A, VAN CLEEF & ARPELS, DEWITT

RICH TONES Nocturne hair ornament, in white gold, diamonds, aquamarines and ebony, Van Cleef Arpels; Trèfles Mystérieux necklace, white and red gold, diamonds and Mystery Set emeralds, Palais de la chance High Jewelry collection.

Market Watch

A DEMAND FOR MORE

Lookout Qatar

JEREMY MORRIS is not new to the exhibition; this is his 10th appearance at the DJWE. And he is planning to come back next year too, considering the appetite the region has for his products. The British jewelry brand David Morris, founded by Jeremy Morris’ father, is a current favorite. “The percentage of buyers here is quite high,” claims Morris. “Even with a population of 60 million in England, the number of potential David Morris customers could be counted on my fingers, while here with a population of 250,000, there would be at least 10,000 to 20,000 prospective buyers.” This is a good market, and they like brands and names and love to be served well, he says. While he doesn’t make any products specifically for this market, Morris does bear in mind what people are looking for and make things that are suitable for Middle Eastern clients. The next few years for David Morris will be about more stores, more points of sale and a broader range of product availability. The creativity and the technological advancements of the brand are beyond comparison, according to Jeremy Morris. With more and more rich people in the world, the demand for all luxurious products is not going to wane in the near future, he predicts. “David Morris is interested in Southeast Asia and looking at opening a shop in Monte Carlo, and also to open in Harrods to continue our Qatari connection,” he says. SINDHU NAIR

JEWEL SHOW An exhibit from David Morris at DJWE.

UNIQUE GEMS Prologue's collection at DJWE.

PICTURE COURTESY, CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT, DAVID MORRIS, PROLOGUE , MOUAWAD

TIMELESS ELEGANCE DESPITE HIS RATHER mild-mannered demeanor, Alain Mouawad speaks with passion when it comes to jewelry. Alain, the fourth generation of the Mouawad family, says, “Qatar for us is an extremely important market. We have been in the country for a long time. Usually each year we bring special masterpieces to the exhibition. Last year we brought the biggest flawless yellow diamond in the world. This year we chose to bring high end jewelry starting from $1 million going up to $5 to $6 million.” The focus for the brand is more on diamonds. “We’ve found that the clients that come to the exhibition are very well-versed with jewelery. Many of them are connoisseurs and are aware of good quality,” adds Mouawad. The Mouawad watch brand is also a strong focus. Alain Mouawad is the guardian of Mouawad Genève, the Mouawad watch division, and is responsible for the entire manufacturing division in Geneva. He acknowledges the interest in this segment. “The classic watch is getting a lot of attention and is something we want to promote.” ABIGAIL MATHIAS

GRAND PRESENCE Flower of Eternity collection from Mouawad.

CREATIVITY IN ABUNDANCE AN EXQUISITE gemstone-paved phoenix envelops the corner of an

evening clutch from Prologue’s new collection — one of few unique pieces that include a curious repertoire of sea animals and galuchat leather. “Nobody would dare make things like these. It is technically difficult, and then you have to think about its commercial viability,” says the founder of Prologue, Pedro de Aranda. But that definitely did not stop him, and the result is essentially what the spirit of the brand is — whimsical and outof-this-world jewelery and objects of art. Atomizers adorned with smiling skulls, magnificent Arabian studs galloping into the wind, falcons perched on an unusual pedestal, and Oud bottles surrounded by coral reefs are among the pieces created from Pedro’s wild imagination, all in precious gemstones of course. “I always want a little bit of humor in what I do,” he explains. Individuality and the need to fulfill his own creative vision led Pedro to start Prologue after a long career in the jewelry and watches industry. “I created objects from a different perspective, and after a while, people began to realize that it was nice to have something novel,” he explains. Combining traditional influences with a new Western approach is what Pedro aims to convey in his designs, and ultimately a coming together of cultures. DEBRINA ALIYAH

March-April 2014

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On Heritage

An Ode to Leather

Tod’s has always celebrated the core, the material and its texture, bringing the luxury of finesse to all its accessories. For Tod’s President, Diego Della Valle, that is life at its finest. BY SINDHU NAIR

MORE TO LUXURY The newly opened J.P.Tod's store in LA.

THERE IS SOMETHING in the Milanese air that inspires creativity. It could be the beautiful Duomo di Milano in the center of the city or the heritage-seeped alleys and fashioninspired citizens, but there sure is something about the country, with its history of survival despite numerous conquerors, that has made the Milanese luxury industry resilient to market fluctuations. Basking in the creative spirit are many famous Italian brands, and placed discreetly among them in Corso Venezia is the Tod’s office building, quietly proclaiming the mastermind’s family name, Della Valle, in marble. Imposing stone-carved exteriors lead to a space that is open and surprisingly devoid of any distinction. This office in no way compares with the architectural brilliance of the Tod’s headquarters, a contemporary white marble building with large, windowed façades nestled in the Marche hills near Ancona, but then it was never meant to. The company’s headquarters is bedecked with large deconstructed images of Tod’s shoes by the Italian artist Giovanni Gastel, as well as two vast lunar

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landscapes compiled with photographs from the Apollo 11 moon landing. While the HQ is where creativity is harbored, the air of luxury business permeates the Milan office, and on a February evening everyone at Tod’s seems to be having an adrenaline rush. As one of Tod’s employees walks me down to the Tod’s showroom around the corner, she shares her excitement about the much-anticipated show the next day at Milan Fashion Week (MWF). The Tod’s womenswear at MFW was on the agenda of many journalists, and all were waiting to put their pens to writing the future of Tod’s in this new segment. I wondered how a brand that has been so successful in recent years could be so apprehensive about a new turn in its brand vision. But then the clout of the fashion weeks that bring the paramount luxury, available next season, to journalists and buyers from around the world is not to be discounted, with many a success story inked right afterwards. For Tod’s, the 2014 Autumn/Winter womenswear collection was one that reinstated its strength in leather and reestablished

PICTURES COURTESY TOD'S

THE MATERIAL Clockwise from left: Diego Della Valle belongs to the "Made in Italy" club; personalization takes on a new meaning at the J.P. Tod's; the J.P. Club in Milan spells and smells of all things leather.

the brand’s supremacy in the material with which it is always associated. Alessandra Facchinetti, the new Creative Director of Tod’s, seems to have debunked the properties of leather, worked on its inherent qualities and recreated it as a shiny, thin, breathing and immensely alluring material. It was a collection that celebrated womanhood, cloaking women in textures that while elaborating also liberated her. The collection was even compared to the spirit of Celine under Phoebe Philo. Basking in the glory of the show, an exhausted Facchinetti says the focus of the collection is “the fabric, or the leathers, the cut and the print.” Being someone who celebrates Tod’s DNA, like its creator, Facchinetti feels that the collection embodies “the made in Italy brand.”

The man, who does everything with a distinctive if luxurious abundance and had a childhood “inhaling leather” is sure about the game plan for the brand, and Tod’s is not moving away from its focus with its womenswear success story. Diego Della Valle categories the women’s wear collections as “very Tod’s” with “looks that are limited and luxurious.” He is categorical when he says: “Tod’s accessories are our core business and our main goal. We are widening the readyto-wear collection a bit but still keeping it limited and selected.” Being Italian is a large part of the success of Tod’s too, though Della Valle also insists that when it comes to Italy’s reputation, as he was quoted by The New York Times, “the best ambassadors around the world are the most successful Italian companies.” However you look at it, there is no denying the fact that Della Valle’s Italian roots are part of the success of the luxury group. He tells me that he will always be a strong supporter of the “Made in Italy” creed and insists that “Tod’s was, is and will always be a 100% Italian brand. That’s how I will keep on this tradition and our DNA.” It is also to maintain this exclusivity that he continues to insist that all Tod’s work be done close to home. What is it that makes Italian luxury so precious? Why do we religiously comb all leather products for the “Made in Italy” stamp? Stefania Saviolo, director of the master’s program in fashion at the Bocconi University Business School in Milan says that Italian exclusiveness has two strong components. The first is a lifestyle that is still very desirable and recalls timeless and authentic values of beauty, passion, style, elegance, good living. “The second component,” according to Saviolo, “which is much more rational, has to do with Italian excellence in making luxury items that are still recognized and valued internationally.” It could also be because no other country at the moment can sell “beauty as well done as Italy does,” says Saviolo. Diego Della Valle’s net worth is close to $1.85 billion, as of March 2014 (Forbes). And it is no strange twist of fate that luxury is a mainstay in Della Valle’s life — he keeps two Ferraris, among other cars; a helicopter; a private jet; and a personal bodyguard. In 2005, he bought President Kennedy’s mahogany cruiser, the Marlin, at a Christie’s auction. Today, it functions as his water taxi between the Amalfi coast and Capri. But even with his abundant riches and personal possessions he is a simple man at heart who has “traveled all over the world”

March-April 2014

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On Heritage 25 million euros toward a long-awaited, desperately-needed fullscale restoration of Rome’s Colosseum. The historic structure has been crumbling for centuries. New life is being breathed into the monument as you read this, and Della Valle says generously, “This is a monument that not only belongs to Italy’s patrimony but the entire world.” But this is much more than media hype for Della Valle, who wants to infuse the sagacity of “giving back” into all of his contemporaries, and in effect, give the tourism of the country a much-needed respite. “I did what I have done because I deeply love my country. I tried to remind my colleagues how much cultural heritage and cultural roots are important; I tried to sensitize them to follow me in the patronage and protection of the arts. I am still ready and open to every proposal to be evaluated,” he says. He hopes that the Colosseum initiative will encourage other companies and private patrons, “proud of our culture and our country, to follow.” “These could mark the beginning of a series of similar initiatives, strengthening our country’s image and creditability all over the world,” he says adding that the ancient city of Pompeii, the walls of which have collapsed due to flooding, “is an incredible

THE MEN All celebrities wearing Tod's collection. Clockwise from top left: Joseph Gordon Lewitt; Della Valle at the restoration site of the Colosseum site; Leonardo Di Caprio at the Critics Choice Awards; Will Forte at the Golden Globes 2014; Chris Pines at the Golden Globes 2014.

and has “favorite places” but still loves “staying in my small village in the Region Le Marche where I was born and grown up, where my family is and where Tod’s is based.” His possessions are a necessity given his globe-trotting engagements, Della Valle argues. “Business is separate from private life. Acquisitions belong to my business engagements; my jet is crucial for me to save time as I do travel a lot,” he reveals. He keeps the best for his family and staff. His office building also houses a staff restaurant serving simple, fresh food, a free nursery, a gym and spa facilities, so if you are under the Tod’s umbrella you are assured of a life in understated elegance. “My home is the place where my family lives and they deserve the best,” he says. “Tod’s headquarters and offices are the place where my employees work and for me it is crucial they work in the perfect environment as their happiness is reflected in what they do and in the beauty of our products.” Della Valle’s altruistic nature is not restricted to his staff and family; it encompasses the country he lives in. In January 2011, Della Valle signed a Tod’s group sponsorship contract that gave

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masterpiece which urgently needs our help.” Luxury takes a new personal turn for Tod’s. After the brisk walk to the Tod’s showroom, a prime piece of Milanese real estate, I was taken to the third floor, which houses the J.P. Tod’s Satorical Collection, an effort by Tod’s to go back to its roots (the first brand name it used) and also to give its premier customers that extra personalization that they recognize and value. The J.P Club is distinctive in its interiors; the smell of leather is strong and almost acts like a precursor to what is inside. Just like the material they perfect, the J.P. Club has rich dark tones of wood, and leather seems to be a staple on the armchairs and then on the footwear and accessories on display. The J.P. Tod’s Sartorial Collection is an idea that originated from Della Valle, who wanted to “focus on the leather used and the treatment given to it” and is translated by the philosophy “to take the hide back to its roots.” The aim of J.P. Tod’s Sartorial Collection is to select the best leathers available and to keep them looking as pure and natural as possible by using the skills of Tod’s craftsmen. “The processes used artfully employ techniques of brushing and polishing that allow the leather to display its true essence,” says Della Valle, and thus a new culture of personalization to luxury is born. “So far we have Milan and our newly-opened LA J.P. Tod’s Club. Hopefully we will be able soon to widen the project; for sure Middle East would be the perfect place to be, keeping in mind the refined clientele,” he says. Tod’s is about personalization, branding, it’s made-in-Italy exclusiveness, but it is more about the man behind the brand, his larger-than-life visions and his love for the fine things in life. Now in its new avatar, Tod’s is moving to embrace the womenswear segment and in the process rewrite the history of fashion by going back to an earlier era of celebrating womanhood. And for the man who has never lived without the brand, this is his life. “My father brought me up surrounded by distinctive leather perfumes. That’s my life. That’s a dream coming true, and I hope I will be able to do that for still many years,” he says.

PICTURES COURTESY TOD'S

“I did what I have done because I deeply love my country‚”says Della Valle. “I tried to remind my colleagues how much cultural heritage and cultural roots are important.”

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More Than Fashion

LVâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Design Cult

Brands are no longer only about fashion; they are also about a culture of art. MYTHICAL GOD The Giant Square scarf by INTI for Louis Vuitton is a homage to the important Inca deity "Wiracocha."

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BY DEBRINA ALIYAH

MR. A COMES TO LIFE Clockwise from top left: André Saraiva rose to fame with his Mr. A cartoons; the Papillon Butterfly Square Fuschia scarf; the Monogram Rayures Stripes Shawl Blue Jean.

can take Mr. A home and wrap him around your shoulders. “I really wanted to treat the scarf as a canvas, to create a painting that you can wear around your neck and keeps you warm,” André says. André along with Californian pop-surrealist artist Kenny Scharf and the mysterious Chilean mural artist Inti are the headliners of LV’s street art creative collaborations this spring. Both Inti and Scharf chose LV’s giant silk square as their canvas. Inti goes on a journey deep into the mythology of his heritage, bringing to life “Wiracocha,” an important Inca deity, while Scharf reaches out into space with a colorful collage of astronomy motifs meshed with symbols of pop culture. And it has resulted in a truly diverse look at the growth and acceptance of alternative art globally. Who would have ever imagined ancient Inca symbols would one day be intertwined with the unmistakable emblem of LV, to be presented to new audiences? “I have been particularly interested in the textile work of the people of Latin America. Creating this scarf was an opportunity to fulfill my dream of developing my own design to pay tribute to this fine craft,” Inti says. LV has long trumpeted the creative symbiosis of fashion and art through many approaches, whether in merchandizing or patronage. In the past decade there has been a focus on providing LV boutiques globally as space for artwork to be exhibited, and even the

BACK BY DEMAND A Stephen Sprouse creation from LV's 2013 collection.

IT IS ONLY FAIR to presume that by now we all know that the peddling of a luxury fashion brand name is no longer just about the label on the back of your blouse or the engraved plate inside the pocket of your bag. It is the immersing of oneself in a fantasy, in the desire for a certain lifestyle, which is often assumed to be accompanied by good taste in all things cultural, like art. Much like the democratization of fashion, a similar undercurrent is taking over the art industry. Abstract interpretations and snobbish curators are fast being replaced by grassroots artists who are more concerned about getting their message across loud and clear in whatever medium comes within reach. And if there were days when you were completely annoyed to find the wall of your building covered in spray paint graffiti, you would think twice now and see if maybe, just maybe, you have discovered the next Banksy. Street art is thriving, and to serious art collectors it is a problem. A big problem indeed, since if you would like to own it, you probably have to buy off the municipality post box that has been decorated with the unmistakable grin of Mr. A. But then along comes Louis Vuitton, the current very-fashionable fairy godmother to artists that has been championing street artists for the past three seasons with its special collaborations. André Saraiva, the larger-than-life artist-cum-entrepreneur behind the Mr. A character, has chosen the LV Monogram Shawl as the new home for the beloved cartoon that once covered the streets of Paris. Now you

PICTURES COURTESY LOUIS VUITTON

Louis Vuitton has long trumpeted the creative symbiosis of fashion and art through merchandizing or patronship.

March-April 2014

More Than Fashion

exhibited at the Singapore boutique, “to showcase our work to an audience outside of the art world without commercial considerations,” he says. Closer to home, the house celebrated its 30th anniversary in the Middle East with a photography project featuring Italian fashion photographer Giovanni Squatriti. The project featured remarkable individuals from the Middle East including Raha Moharrak, the first Arab woman to climb Mount Everest, and style icon Dana Al-Khalifa, narrating their own journeys with the brand and captured as powerful images by Squatriti. “Travel is much more than a physical act; it is an emotional and cultural experience itself,” says Roberto Eggs, President of LV Europe, on the essence of the project. Traveling is sacred ground to the nomadic cultures of the Arab world, and LV has struck the right chord. “They’re not just about handbags; Louis Vuitton is a culture. I admire that it aims to integrate itself socially wherever they are present,” says Al-Khalifa. It is a strategy that plays well in the marked shift in global luxury brand strategies, moving away from products that are immediately identified through logos to carefully-designed items that are recognized instead through a deeper knowledge of the brand. Art, it would seem, would appeal to an audience of all ages, as AlKhalifa recounts: “I remember, as a child, my mother carrying the Stephen Sprouse LV graffiti bag, and I told her I would borrow it when I am older!”

establishment of Espace Louis Vuitton, the house’s own art galleries in Paris and Tokyo. “Our collaboration with different voices, whether rap stars, artists or celebrities, has changed Vuitton’s identity,” the house’s recentlydeparted creative director Marc Jacobs said when commenting on LV’s high-profile collaboration with artist Richard Prince in 2008. Jacobs' role has been paramount in promoting the partnership of alternative artists with LV, especially the hugely successful 2001 collaboration with the late cult designer Stephen Sprouse. The initial collection of “vandalized” bags was so successful that Jacobs revived the designs along with a tribute book published by LV after Sprouse’s passing. This spring, the signature leopard motif of Sprouse makes an appearance again in the house’s scarves collection. Walking into the flagship Louis Vuitton island in Singapore, clients will see the first-ever artwork of Richard Deacon suspended in the air — “Upper Strut,” a permanent installation in the space. LV’s partnership with Takashi Murakami and Yayoi Kusama was an ode to the brand’s wide market reach in Japan, while Australian artist Nike Savvas turned the Sydney boutique into expansive blue sky with light installations. Art is rarely without controversy, and LV rose to the occasion with the 2005 installation performance by Vanessa Beecroft featuring almost-nude female models in high heels and leather straps displayed on the shelves of LV’s Maison Paris. It is opportune for artists like Taiwan-based Tsai Charwei, whose pieces were

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WEARABLE ART Left: The Giant Square by Kenny Scharf; Bottom, clockwise from top left: Monogram Shawl by Andre Saraiva; 2005 Monogram Multico by Takashi Murakami; the new Leo Spray Giant Square Piment.

PICTURES COURTESY LOUIS VUITTON

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Now Showing

A Reflection of Conflict Mona Hatoum’s work is a study in contrast, while all her pieces exhibited at Mathaf have an underlying theme of turbulence. BY CONNOR SEARS

PICTURES COURTESY: MATHAF

FOR DECADES, MUCH OF THE MIDDLE EAST has often been characterized

CHANNELING CHAOS Top to bottom: Palestinian artist Mona Hatoum keeps a theme of conflict running throughout her work; “Bunker” (2011) is inspired by the idea of a war-torn cityscape; “Hot Spot” (2013) buzzes with the energy of neon tubes that outline the world’s continents; “Turbulence” (2012) uses light and glass to create a work that simultaneously evokes stillness and motion.

by instability. The string of revolutions and revolts across the MENA region over the past several years is a recent reminder of this theme of turmoil that has existed for ages across this part of the world. Political struggle has been responsible for the despair, displacement and death of countless families throughout the area for decades. Artist Mona Hatoum is no stranger to instability. She was born in Beirut, Lebanon, the daughter of two Palestinian exiles. As a young adult Hatoum herself was exiled when civil war broke out in Lebanon while she was on a trip to London. She started her art career as a performance artist, using her craft to make statements about her experiences as an Arab woman in London or the political disorder of her home. She then turned her focus to sculptures and installations, still often revisiting this motif of conflict and uncertainty throughout her work. Now, this theme is being deliberately channeled with “Turbulence,” a new exhibition of Hatoum’s work at Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art. The exhibition features work spanning decades of Hatoum’s career, and it includes sculptures, installations and video documentation of her early performance work. The display isn’t organized by art form, by material or even chronologically; rather, these elements are frequently juxtaposed within the same room. In one room large, imposing sculptures from Hatoum’s recent portfolio are placed beside a small television set showing clips of her early performance art. In another, fragile glass pieces are shown next to a sturdy metal sculpture, which sits across the room from a constantly-shifting piece utilizing sand. These contrasts throughout the exhibition emphasize the running theme of conflict as the pieces create a tense — yet balanced — atmosphere throughout the rooms of Mathaf. “In very basic terms, we laid out the exhibit by juxtaposing works that always add to the sense of something shifting, something moving, something interrupted from large to small, soft to hard, comforting to menacing,” says Sam Bardaouil, who, together with Till Fellrath, worked with Hatoum for about two years to curate this exhibition. “So there are always these contradictions that come together to create this sense of turbulence.” In addition to describing this environment of opposition, the name of the exhibition comes from a 2012 work by Hatoum that lies at the center of the display. “Turbulence” consists of thousands of glass marbles arranged in a perfect square on the ground. “I often like to create work that destabilizes the ground you are walking on and create a feeling of uncertainty in the space,” Hatoum says. “This work looks like a liquid ground or something organic like a cluster of cells

March - April 2014

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A PRODUCTIVE CAREER Clockwise from top left: “La Grande Broyeuse” (1999) takes the form of a kitchen tool used to slice vegetables that has been enlarged to become a threatening presence; “Over My Dead Body” (1988) reasserts Hatoum’s confidence as a woman as she stares down the diminutive male figurine; “Suspended” (2011) consists of 35 hanging swings, each depicting a map of a different major world city; “Paravent” (2008) takes another kitchen utensil and enlarges it so that it appears more akin to a piece of furniture.

— a primordial soup — and this turbulence is contained within a formal square. The turbulence which could reflect on the stormy times we live in is dealt with in a material and formal way through the aesthetics of the work.” As the focal piece of the exhibition, “Turbulence” embodies the theme of instability in more ways than one. The spherical marbles look as if they will spill out all over the floor at any second, yet they remain stable in their perfect 4x4-meter square. The way the light reflects off the glass, however, challenges the stability of the piece as a whole. As you move around the exhibit, the light dances around as it begins to bounce off different marbles in different patterns. “Turbulence” grabs your attention for longer than you expect as you start slowly moving around the room, interested to see what the light will do next. “For a lot of the works, the installation is actually key to them,” Fellrath says. “It’s really impossible to understand these works when you see them on a two-dimensional sheet of paper or on the Internet. It’s absolutely impossible to understand the impact.” According to Fellrath, the exhibition tries to evoke three different levels of turbulence inside the viewer. The first is the political turbulence of the region. The fact that Hatoum is a Palestinian artist, coupled with the often politically-charged inspirations behind much of her work, is meant to remind viewers of the ongoing struggles throughout this part of the world. The second level of turbulence is what he calls the “formalistic” layer, the juxtaposition of the pieces they as curators produced when they arranged the exhibition within the space at Mathaf. The third level of turbulence, he says, is the internal conflict within each viewer. Whether the viewer is angry or sad or confused when he or she enters the museum, these emotions can often be seen reflected in the artwork as Hatoum projects her own personal conflicts through her art. Turbulence is Bardaouil and Fellrath’s third time curating an exhibition at Mathaf. Their long process of planning with Hatoum has paid off with the largest exhibition of the artist’s work in the Arab world, something that holds significant meaning for Hatoum. “I made my career as an artist in the West, so it is always very special for me to show my work to people who ‘speak the same language,’ so to speak,” Hatoum says. “The present exhibition at Mathaf in Doha is, of course, the largest I have ever had in the Arab world. I am very happy with the way it all works in the space and with this particular selection of works and the way they create interesting connections.” Turbulence will run at Mathaf through May 18.

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PICTURES COURTESY: MATHAF

“I made my career as an artist in the West, so it is always very special for me to show my work to people who ‘speak the same language,’ so to speak.”

Lookout Qatar

In Pictures

Gaseous Content The inside of any oil and gas facility is not a pretty sight, unless of course you view it as your means of sustenance. BY SINDHU NAIR

CHEMISTRY Clockwise from top: Two pictures taken by the QPS members; Qatar's Minister of Energy and Industry, HE Mohammed Al Sada visits the RasGas photography exhibition.

PICTURES COURTESY: RASGAS

HELIUM FRAME Clockwise from top: Valantis Arsenios (center) with the Qatari photographers; three pictures by the team of photographers.

ASK AN ENGINEER to walk you through the facilities and you can see his eyes gleam with passion as he talks about the mechanics involved: the strength of the pipes that hold the subzero temperature cooled gases, the bend of the pipes which might also be a design feature to bring the temperature down, the plethora of pipes all rushing towards a single tank, all part of a striking chemical engineering design feat. Who said there is no beauty in GDPgenerating industries? RasGas, one of Qatar’s GDP-driving, LNG-producing companies that can safely be classified among the world’s most successful energy suppliers, came up with a novel idea — giving an artist’s perspective to the most “mundane” of activities in Qatar. RasGas commissioned professional architectural photographer Valantis Arsenios to photograph the world’s largest helium facility in Ras Laffan from an artistic perspective, locating and shooting details of the plant. But given the importance of this huge facility, it had an added agenda of involving Qatari photographers in the project. Arsenios was to guide the Qatar Photographic Society (QPS) through a workshop, with four of its best photographers joining his photo shoot at the plant. The resulting pictures were poetic, some of them close to melancholic. The process was not simple. Firstly there was immense pressure considering the vastness of the project and the company involved. Arsenios says: “We had this colossal company, with its huge impact on society, coming to us and asking us to look at their ‘baby’ in a new perspective.” Though the company did not use its clout to guide the photographers or to give them insights, its push for safety amazed all the photographers. “There were some pipes that were in extreme temperatures, some close to -260 degrees Celsius, and safety was an integral factor of the working of the plant. We realized that only when we went through the process,” he says. This was a first for Arsenio, who does commercial projects for a reason, to promote and to showcase somebody’s work, and has more interior than architectural projects to his credit. His favorite building in Qatar is of course the Museum of Islamic Art. “You have all the symmetry with arabesque characteristics in that building. It looks like a simple form of architecture but the complexities involved and the use of outside light is but the work of a genius,” he says. Arsenio doesn’t classify objects as “beautiful” or “ugly,” hence the facilities to him were just “objects” waiting to be captured in a new light, and the absence of guidelines or the freedom granted to the photographers gave them a blank canvas on which they zoomed in and clicked to their hearts content. The day when the helium facility was officially inaugurated, the Qatari photographers showcased the pictures of the facility and, standing near each of their pictures, they expressed their pride in being a part of this project.

March-April 2014

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The Saudi Art Spring

The second edition of Jeddah Art Week and some thought-provoking artwork by female Saudi artists brought focus to the country’s ongoing art exposé. BY SINDHU NAIR

THE STATIC of the telephone lines couldn’t hide Lina Lazaar Jameel’s enthusiasm for Saudi’s ongoing art revolution. She was not just involved in Jeddah Art Week (JAW) on a professional level as the international contemporary art specialist at Sotheby’s, organizers of JAW, but on a personal level, too, with her husband’s family known to be pioneers of art in the country. Backed by Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Culture and Information and the Abdul Latif Jameel Community Initiatives charity, Lazaar had drawn together a wideranging and sometimes edgy program of events, encompassing 13 exhibitions. I spoke to her a few days after Jeddah Art Week, but the excitement in her voice over an event that had stimulated some sentiments in the rigid Islamic country was palpable. In its second year since inception, “JAW had aims to nurture grass roots movements, whilst opening up its horizons to the global contemporary art family,” says Lazaar. “We are aware of the constraints in the country; hence the success of this year’s JAW was overwhelming. With the help of JAW we helped address numerous social taboos, but most importantly, art became much more accessible to the public,” says Lazaar. “Art was always meant for the elite in Saudi, but with this year’s participation we could touch and affect the general public. And that to me was the real reason of the success of JAW and the art movement here.” The contemporary art scene in the Middle East is

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taking a completely new direction, with museums being dedicated to this newest form of art, and my brush with contemporary artists in the region was through Qatari artist Ali Hassan, who touched various streams with his work in calligraphy with forms and colors playing an integral role. But the work that truly evoked shock at its intensity was Manal Al Dowayan’s larger-than-life prayer beads, decorated with the names of individual, anonymous women. This installation, Al Dowayan says, is the only method of getting to know a woman’s name in a society that largely ignores this powerful set of voices that are now being heard above the cacophony of restrictions through their art. Al Dowayan is currently involved in a “different” kind of project, one that refuses to be contained in the sphere of “art” as we know it. She is transforming Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art’s “Project Space” into a temporary artist’s studio. Over the course of the two-month project, Al Dowayan will open this studio to the public, unfolding the process and materials of her research on the frequent car accidents that take the lives of female schoolteachers in Saudi Arabia. These are women traveling long distances to teaching positions in villages far from their homes. Poorly paid and restricted from driving themselves by the government, they often pool funds to travel in groups, putting their lives in the hands of unreliable drivers and vehicles.

THE REVOLUTION Clockwise from top left: The Jeddah Art Week brought to The Kingdom for the first time a Damien Hirst work; Maha Mulluh's work is exhibited at JAW; Lina Lazar is one of the important figures in Saudi's art movement. Below, from top: Abdulnasser Gharem "Flora & Fauna" 148x209 cm, "Dark Side" both important works of art from JAW.

PICTURES COURTESY AMMAR NASEEF, ROBERT A

WORK ON ART Anticlockwise from far right; work of art by Nja Mohdaoui Ikhtilej; another exhibit at JAW by Mohdaoui and Maqam Essafa; Manal Al Dowayan gestures to the data she has collected of the dead Saudi teachers, which is occuping the project space at Mathaf.

If you are looking out for art installations, then be prepared to be disappointed because this is a work in progress, a work that makes you look beyond art and at stark realities. The walls of Mathaf’s project space are plastered with information on each of these car crashes; running videos show a presentation of women reenacting short clips from the lives of the dead women teachers; and the center table is piled with all the books that have helped Al Dowayan in her research. And it is around this table that we (Al Dowayan and Mathaf Director Dr. Abdellah Karroum) sat to talk about the issue that the artist had researched. Al Dowayan’s research through art brings in different layers, some of them deeply disturbing, throwing light on Saudi’s near-medieval-to-backward beliefs of discounting the power of women in society by ignoring them completely. “The deaths of these women are not registered, nor are there any names of the dead women. It seems as if there is a forced disappearance, almost as if they do not matter and what matters is just the numbers of dead,” says Al Dowayan. “And after a while, the numbers have no effect. You become numb to it. These women are dehumanized.” But if these forms of art have a shocking and depressive touch what is encouraging is that, because of these voices of art, an art revolution is in the making in Saudi Arabia. But it is not a recent one, reminds Al Dowayan. “Saudi had a strong art background. Its modern artists were in the scene since the 60s,” she says. “What has happened now, is that, the younger generation (more than 50% of the Saudi population is below the age of 21) is using this as a new medium for communication. A small but strong form of support for art is being seen. Three years back there were no art

galleries in the country, and now there are a few scattered in Jeddah.” Al Dowayan, an artist from the eastern province of Saudi Arabia, had to show her first exhibition in Bahrain. The first ripple of change was when Edge of Arabia was formed, she says. Edge of Arabia was founded in March 2003 by British artist Stephen Stapleton with Saudi artists Ahmed Mater and Abdulnasser Gharem in the mountains of southwestern Saudi Arabia and is now an internationally recognizedplatform for dialogue and exchange between the Middle East and Western world. “Now there is some sort of movement; there are a few full-time artists,” says Al Dowayan. The lower Gulf region has also helped in the art movement. The Sharjah Biennial, Art Dubai and the sprouting of close to 50 galleries in Dubai and museums in Abu Dhabi and Qatar have also helped bring the focus on artists in the region. Another artist who showed during the Jeddah Art Week was Maha Mulluh with both a solo show at the Selma Feriani Gallery and a group show with six contemporary Saudi artists at Ayyam Gallery. She is equally vocal about this change. “It is with such powerful art dialogues that Saudis are trying to break perceptions even if its political direction on foreign policy is going askew,” she says. She also agrees that what is happening today is really a “big achievement, something that none of us dreamed of a few years ago.” Who would have believed a mere 20 years ago that Saudi Arabian artists would be in major international collections and that they would have group and solo exhibitions both at home and abroad, she asks. But it is important to be critical, too. Is this enough for an art market to grow? Are the youth encouraged enough to choose a career in art? And if they do, what careers do they have other than being an artist? “We need to realize that it is the market that has dictated and controlled this growth. Now, what we need to do is focus on the pedagogy and the academic aspect of this wonderful cultural sprouting,” points out Mulluh. “We have galleries, yes, but we also need more national museums. Our universities need to respond to the change in cultural developments. We need to offer degrees in Art History and Fine Art where aesthetic theories are read, where other artistic movements can be studied and where there can be a platform for intellectual debate and discussion. Our libraries need to be stocked with material to facilitate the exchange of ideas, for our society to have an archive to refer to. Without the aid of academia, there is the fear that art in our region will become only a commodity. “We have come a long way, but there is still much to be done.”

March-April 2014

Lookout Qatar

Framed

Between Black and White Two Qatari artists are showing at one of the world’s five most important photography festivals, and they are taking with them their own unique representation of the country. BY SINDHU NAIR

KHALIFA AL OBAIDLY chose to give life to those whom we choose

not to see. “They need to be acknowledged,” says Al Obaidly of his muse, the faceless migrant and domestic workers who toil hard at projects that try to put Qatar on a par with developed countries. He drew attention to these unseen yet omnipresent workers by photographing them and then representing them with a barcode symbol, an impersonal number used for identifying and cataloging materials. “Each of the individuals portrayed could tell us a story of his/her life, points of view and emotions, yet we do not know their names; we do not care,” says Al Obaidly. “We might show our generosity by giving them money, but do we ever care to ask about them, where they are from, their names, and their families?” Al Obaidly is one of Qatar’s oldest photographers and is someone who has seen change at close quarters. In some instances, like through the “Qatar Now — Tagged” exhibition (the workers portraits) at Virginia Commonwealth University Qatar in 2010, he has also initiated change by focusing on one of the most pressing human rights issues of the Arab world. “There is change now,” he says. “We do think of the workers now. Entertainment opportunities are provided at camps, and their welfare is a priority now.” Al Obaidly is a teacher at the Qatar Photographic Society, but that is just one of the roles he fits into; he is involved in numerous projects, each more interesting than the last. He was part of the Qatar-UK project of the Qatar Museums Authority, and his project was to curate the memories of Qataris and other Arabs living at the Edgware Road, London. “Edgware Road is rich in ethnic culture and is in a very central area of London. The area is known for its distinctive and diverse communities from across the Middle East and Africa,” he says. “I lived here while I was working with the National Council for Culture, Arts and Heritage (now known as the Qatar Museums Authority), and hence the project was like reliving my life, too.” The project is in the process of being cataloged as narratives, which will finally be published. The next stop for Al Obaidly is Houston, Texas, where he will be exhibiting his work at the 15th edition of the International Biennial FotoFest, View From Inside, which has brought 45 leading contemporary Arab artists for its principal exhibitions in the 2014 Biennial. These presentations of contemporary photos and mediarelated art from the Middle East and North Africa are said to be

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LIFE IN QATAR From top: Khalifa Al Obaidly becomes his own muse in the Tagged series; desert details by Sheikh Khaled Al Thani.

NOT WITHOUT COLORS Clockwise from left: A photograph by Khaled Al Thani; Karen von Roques promotes Arab art by giving an insight into the work of selected artists from the region; another image by Al Thani; from Al Obaidly's Tagged series.

PICTURES COURTESY: FOTOFEST AND THE PHOTOGRAPHERS, KHALIFA AL OBAIDLY AND SHEIKHA KHALID AL THANI, FRANZ FISCHER.

“The desert is an important part of Qatar and has deeply influenced the life of the Qataris over centuries,” says von Roques. “It formed their character. Proud, strong people. And the desert with its colors influenced the aesthetic criteria, even the original architecture.” the largest program of its kind in the US in more than a decade. Karin Adrian von Roques, the curator of the Biennial, explains why the focus of an American-born exhibition is on Arab artists. “First of all, when Wendy Watriss and Fred Baldwin founded FotoFest International in 1983, a non-profit photographic arts and education organization based in Houston, their idea was to promote international awareness of museum-quality, photo-based art from around the world,” says von Roques. “Two years ago the Biennial was dedicated to contemporary Russian photography.” Von Roques is an art historian specializing in contemporary Arab art, and when she met with the founders of FotoFest, they decided to focus on Arab art, “especially because the art scene of the Arab countries was almost unknown in the West and there were too many stereotypes and clichés existing about Arabs and Islam.” On the direction taken in curating the selections, von Roques says, “We did not want to give the Biennial an allover theme. First of all we selected strong works. We wanted a broad and varied selection of contemporary Arab photography, video and mixed media art, which give insights into important aspects of Arab thought and life.”

These works and perspectives closely portray important social and cultural events in the Arab countries. “Each work presented in the Biennial stands for itself but stands in its context with the others, contributing to our understanding of the current situation in the art scene of the Arab lands,” says von Roques. “It is a scene shaped by changes taken place over the past years and, especially most recently, changes that the artists have studied and formulated in their works.” Von Roques has travelled to Doha and met many artists, but for the Biennial she has chosen two Qatari artists, Sheikh Khaled Al Thani and Khalifa Al Obaidly, whose works are as different as life and death, quite literally. Al Thani knows the desert and loves it, and hence his muse is always the mysterious landscape of the desert.“The desert is an important part of Qatar and has deeply influenced the life of the Qataris over centuries. It formed their character. Proud, strong people. And the desert with its colors influenced the aesthetic criteria, even the original architecture,” says von Roques. And from Al Obaidly’s work she has chosen his series “Tagged People” which will surely pave the way for discussion with the subject it has chosen to portray. Contemplating and comparing the work of artists from across the globe, von Roques feels that the only difference in the work coming from different continents is the topics the artists selected. Each artist has been affected by the country where he was brought up, by his language, his culture and tradition, by his religion, by the circumstances of his life, she says. The 15th edition of the International Biennial FotoFest will be showing from March 15 till April 27 in Houston.

March - April 2014

Lookout Qatar

Culture Cue

Under the Brazilian Sun Two artists from the tropical paradise bring their latest pieces of work to Doha; so different and yet so alike, we find out what ties these two together.

DARK HUES of midnight blue overpower one half

COLOR PALETTE Clockwise from top right: Padero Varela's midnight blue obsession in "Dawn to Dusk"; Carolina Ponte's "Threads of Infinity" are woolen sculptures; the artist in Ponte abhors the erosion of beautiful accessories.

of the room. Pedro Varela’s “Dawn to Dusk” takes the viewer into a secret world deep inside the virgin Amazon, where sunlight seldom seems to reach the forest floor. In the isolated spotlight that the artist shines on this mysterious world, there is a sinister bend in every vine and a menacing bloom to every flower, and yet their dark beauty cannot be denied. With his finetipped pen, Varela weaves a tapestry of distant worlds, ones that we could only hope to see in our dreams or on his canvas. Be it an ambiguous Mediterranean city or an undiscovered thicket of the forest, Varela’s intricate drawings reveal so much using so little, just all kinds of blue imaginable. Even when he obliges to let some color into his world, they only serve to exaggerate the more somber shades. His inspiration comes from scientific drawings made by the early conquistadors, Varela says. When he found the sweet spot in the collision between these stark drawings and his own unique style, he settled down to churn out these arresting images. Directly opposite to these artworks, both in placement and in style sit Carolina Ponte’s riotous knitted threads — “Threads of Infinity.” The greens and yellows and pinks tumble around, crash into each other, merge and rush forward endlessly to create bizarre and wonderful forms. Nothing is what it seems. The woolen sculptures, as they hang from the walls, sweep the floor and rest on a shelf are comfortably, even brazenly, devoid of identity; no two parts of the installation are the same despite there being an illusion of symmetry. “This is my effort to step away from modernism,” she says. Despite her best efforts, she can’t hide her disdain as she utters the last

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word. She laments the erosion of beautiful, useless details and the artistry behind little frills that are there for aesthetics alone. Our obsessive worship of functionality is spilling into the art world, and this is something Ponte will not tolerate. “We have forgotten how beautiful accessories can be,” she says pointing at a particular sculpture, an ornate mirror frame where, instead of the all-important mirror, a thousand multi-threads come pouring out of its gaping mouth. Both Varela and Ponte will be exhibiting some of their latest work at Anima Gallery till April as part of the Qatar Brazil Year of Culture. When the gallery was researching some of the best, young and talented artists from São Paulo to host in their gallery at the opposite side of the world, these two stood out, head and shoulders above the rest. Their styles were different but the story they told was the same, they said. When viewed side by side, the contrasts didn’t seem to matter any more. And unknown to the curators at Anima, there was a reason for this. Because the artworks were dreamt up over the same cups of coffee; they were born in the same studio, slowly brought to life by the two creators as they bumped elbows, joked, laughed and loved together. You see, Varela and Ponte are a couple, and have been since their art school days, something that Anima Gallery didn’t realise till their air tickets were being processed. It’s one of those cosmic coincidences that are best shared over a cocktail, until you look closer and come to terms with the inevitability of it all. "Dawn to Dusk" and "Threads of Infinity" will be on exhibition at Anima Gallery in The Pearl-Qatar till April 9.

PHOTOGRAPHS BY ROBERT ALTAMIRANO

BY AYSWARYA MURTHY

In Fashion

Parochial Modern Below-the-knee pleated skirts — when contrasted with boxy shirts and sporty accessories — are the breakout stars of the new fashion season. PHOTOGRAPHS BY ANDREA SPOTORNO STYLED BY JASON RIDER

GRAPHIC CLASH Ralph Lauren Collection dress, QR6,898; ralphlauren .com. Ralph Lauren Blue Label skirt, QR2,177. Prada shoes (worn throughout). Efva Attling necklace, QR2,002; efvaattling.com.

March-April 2014

Quality

In Fashion

LEAN LAYERS Carolina Herrera dress, QR13,432. Prada top (worn underneath), QR3,567. Damir Doma skirt, about QR3,964; shop.damirdoma .com. J.â&#x20AC;&#x2030;W. Anderson bag, QR2,621; shopbop.com. On right arm: Georg Jensen bracelet, QR4,004. On left arm: CĂŠline bracelet, QR2.075; bergdorfgoodman.com.

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AGGRESSIVE LINES Salvatore Ferragamo jacket, QR8,918, and pants, QR3,094. J.â&#x20AC;&#x2030;W. Anderson skirt, QR1,809; saksfifthavenue.com. Efva Attling rings, QR2,748 and QR3,203.

March-April 2014

ATHLETIC ADDITION Tommy Hilfiger jacket, QR1,707. Nomia skirt, QR1,223; totokaelo. com. Derek Lam skirt (worn underneath), price on request. Georg Jensen necklace, QR6,916. Lynn Ban bracelet (right arm, worn over jacket), QR24,752; barneys.com. Efva Attling bracelet (left arm, worn over jacket), QR1,656. HermĂ¨s ring, QR2,912; hermes.com.

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FEMININE CONSTRAINT Dior top, QR14,196, and skirt (worn under dress), QR8,554. The Row dress, QR1,638; bergdorfgoodman.com. Alexander McQueen backpack, QR6,643; atriumnyc.com. On right arm: Céline bracelet, QR2,075. On left arm: Céline bracelet, QR3,094. Efva Attling bracelet, QR1,656.

March-April 2014

Quality

Profile in Style

The Independent For nearly 25 years, fashion designer Maria Cornejo has remained true to herself and her artful vision. BY MAURA EGAN

EMERGING TALENT From left: a sketch from the first Maria Cornejo collection in 1989; John Richmond and Cornejo in the British magazine Harpers & Queen in 1985; the designer in Paris in 1989, where she and Mark Borthwick lived.

Richmond from Manchester, England, to London to study fashion. After selling her senior thesis collection to a local boutique — Chrissie Hynde and Iggy Pop bought pieces — she and Richmond launched the Richmond Cornejo label. ‘‘The clothes were very urban-cowboypunk,’’ the 51-year-old designer recalls. Soon, they had a fervent following in Japan, their designs were making the pages of i-D and The Face and they were regulars at buzzy spots like Taboo and the Wag. ‘‘I was very hip,’’ she says with a slight wince. In 1987, she and Richmond ended their relationship as well as their business partnership. DESIGNING WOMEN From far left: Cornejo on the cutting-room table at her original NoLIta store and studio in 1999; an early sketch for Zero + Maria Cornejo; Stella Tennant modeling the label’s first triangle top in 1998; a dress from the spring 2014 collection.

THE ETHOS BEHIND ZERO + MARIA CORNEJO After marrying the photographer

Mark Borthwick and living with him in Paris for several years, the pair moved to New York in 1996. Cornejo wanted to create a couture T-shirt line because ‘‘every woman in the city wore jeans.’’ She was bored by the formulaic ways of corporate fashion so she only worked with easy shapes like triangles, squares and circles. She scissored out asymmetrical blouses, sculptural dresses and drapey trousers. The result was clothes that could appear tricky on the hanger but, once on, looked elegant and fluid. When she opened her first Zero + Maria Cornejo store in NoLIta in 1998, she displayed a few pieces in the window. ‘‘Our first day, we made $2,500 dollars. We thought it was a good sign,’’ she says. Her first fashion show wasn’t so auspicious. Instead of models she used friends. As Cornejo explains, ‘‘It went down like a ton of bricks.’’ 62

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CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: COURTESY OF MARIA CORNEJO (2); MARK BORTHWICK; COURTESY OF MARIA CORNEJO; COURTESY OF WANGECHI MUTU; © 2013 CINDY SHERMAN; RODRIGO CORNEJO; BIBI CORNEJO BORTHWICK; MARK BORTHWICK (2); COURTESY OF MARIA CORNEJO; MARK BORTHWICK; COURTESY OF MARIA CORNEJO; VANINA SORRENTI.

GETTING STARTED In 1980, Cornejo followed her boyfriend John

INSPIRATION Cornejo credits

CREATION THEORY Clockwise from above: Wangechi Mutu’s ‘‘Once upon a time she said, I’m not afraid and her enemies began to fear her The End,’’ 2013; Cornejo keeps the image of Cindy Sherman’s ‘‘Untitled #92,’’ 1981, in her office for inspiration; ‘‘Love Lasts Longer Than Death,’’ 2009, a work by the ceramicist John Pagliaro, whom she met on Shelter Island.

her husband, who is known for his ethereal, sun-drenched photographs, with teaching her to ‘‘find beauty in the unexpected.’’ ‘‘I’m a nervous nelly but Mark is very sky-is-the-limit, so I get a lot of joy from him,’’ she says. The designer frequently finds herself snapping iPhone photos and then manipulating the images onto her designs. (A candid shot of her son’s reflection in a pool evolved into an evil-eye print for a recent collection.) It’s no surprise that she also looks to artists for ideas, like the ceramicist John Pagliaro’s pottery and the paintings of Wengechi Mutu, which are ‘‘a clashing of colors and tribalism and women. All my favorite things.’’

FAMILY LIFE While her 22-year-old daughter, Bibi, has turned into a talented photographer like her father, Cornejo’s 16-year-old son, Joey, is interested in following in his mother’s footsteps. ‘‘He likes the business side and the super-high-fashion brands, Balenciaga, Givenchy . . . ’’ she says. Borthwick uses their house as a location for many of his shoots for magazines like Purple Fashion and Self Service, while Cornejo likes to disconnect after office hours. ‘‘I come home and don’t want to think about fashion and then there’s a stylist and a rack of clothes in the corner,’’ she says. Borthwick, however, manages to prepare dinner for them most evenings. ‘‘He likes to cook and entertain and I like to clean, so it balances itself out.’’

HOUSE PROUD Clockwise from left: Cornejo’s son, Joey, and daughter, Bibi, in their Brooklyn backyard in 2007; the living room of the family’s townhouse has a laid-back feel, which makes it ideal for casual dinner parties; Borthwick and Cornejo, photographed by Bibi in 2006; a photo from Zero + Maria Cornejo’s spring 2007 campaign, shot by Borthwick.

March-April 2014

Quality

On Beauty

The Perfume Diaries A life lived as a series of love affairs with scents might sound flighty or hard to please — but the science of smell and memory explains this kind of promiscuity. BY PAMELA PAUL

I WOULD LIKE TO BELIEVE that every woman should have a signature scent, and that I am one of those women. A woman who swears by one perfume alone — Marilyn Monroe said she slept in the nude, wearing only Chanel No. 5 — literally knows her own essence. She is imbued with

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self-knowledge, unquestionably confident, bien dans sa peau as the French (who else?) put it. But here’s what I actually believe about wearing a single perfume forever: Eccch. Inhaling the same smell on your own skin day after day? It barely sounds good in theory.

Like always eating pizza for lunch: enticing in the realm of childish fantasy but bordering on revolting in practice. Each fragrance that is momentarily so right — so me — inevitably loses its spell. And then it has to go. A scented but wordless diary could easily propel me from the tumult of my teenage years through my 30s and into my 40s. But scientific research on scent and memory suggests that this sort of serial monogamy just might make sense. The idea of a signature scent has a storied history. Caterina de’ Medici was said to have brought her preferred fragrance (along with her perfumer, known as René le Florentin) when she went to marry the duke who would later become Henry II of France. Today, the Florence-based Santa Maria Novella pharmacy still sells this cologne, sometimes called ‘‘Acqua della Regina’’ (Water of the Queen). Several centuries later, another royal, Princess Diana, boosted sales of Penhaligon’s Bluebell, said to be her floral of choice. ‘‘I think the signature scent is a fantasy for a lot of people,’’ says Denyse Beaulieu, author of ‘‘The Perfume Lover: A Personal History of Scent.’’ ‘‘Women love this idea that their children will associate them with a scent. But in truth, there’s the first big-girl perfume, the first ‘I’m hanging out with a cool crowd’ perfume, the varying scents with various partners. We no longer stick to one scent the way our mothers or grandmothers did.’’ Scent is so powerful in its capacity to muster dormant memories that this effect has been referred to as the Proust phenomenon, or what the author described as ‘‘the vast structure of recollection’’ inspired by his madeleine. What makes perfume especially distinctive is its complexity. ‘‘Like a computer password, the doors to your memory don’t open until you get every character and number right,’’ says Luca Turin, a biophysicist and author of ‘‘The Secret of Scent: Adventures in Perfume and the Science of Smell.’’ ‘‘You can smell hundreds of perfumes and feel nothing, and then you smell that particular perfume your mother used to wear, and boom, it all comes back.’’ Andy Warhol, a great lover of perfumes, actually created a bottled archive of scented memories. In ‘‘The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (From A to B & Back Again),’’ the artist wrote: ‘‘If I’ve been wearing one perfume for three months, I force myself to give it up, even if I still feel like wearing it, so whenever I smell it again it will always remind me of those three months. I never go back to wearing it again; it becomes part of my permanent smell collection.’’ I still remember the first perfume I wore as if it were yesterday. I was in eighth grade and

under the heady influence of Ingrid, whose French mother had the unimaginably glamorous position of working the cosmetics counter at Lord & Taylor. Anaïs Anaïs was also French, the first fragrance from Cacharel, a brand as closely associated with boatnecked Gallic girlishness as Petit Bateau. It went without saying that all the girls in Ingrid’s orbit wore Anaïs Anaïs. With its sweetness spritzed liberally on my wrists, I felt as half-French as Ingrid and even contemplated replacing my ’80s layers with a Jean Seberg pixie cut. But by midyear, Anaïs Anaïs felt as seventh grade as Sun In hair lightener. Worse, it soon, inexplicably, smelled like cat urine. (It still does.) I, along with my claque of eighthgrade sophisticates, dumped the baby perfume for Yves Saint Laurent’s Paris.

REMEMBRANCE OF THINGS PAST The author wore Yves Saint Laurent’s Opium in high school during the heavy-scented ’80s, Chanel’s Coco while living in the South of France and in Thailand, Guerlain’s Jicky during a stint in London and YSL’s Paris as an eighthgrade budding sophisticate; she wears Guerlain’s Cologne du 68 at the present moment.

THIS WAS HOW MY INFATUATIONS

always played out: I’d become convinced I’d found the only appealing bottle out there, the one scent that truly suited me, and we were one. Then I’d wake up one morning and wouldn’t feel like putting it on. It wasn’t that kind of day. I wasn’t in that kind of mood. Until, inevitably, the cold realization: It just doesn’t smell like me. How could I have been so wrong about Anaïs Anaïs? How, indeed, could I have been so wrong about YSL’s Paris, which in its turn grew sickly sweet and cloying, or about Poison, stickier still, or Opium — like a 65-year-old Park Avenue matron hauling old Bonwit Teller bags — or any of the perfumes that followed during the heavy-scented ’80s? ‘‘Odors are particularly good at what’s called classical conditioning,’’ says Richard Axel, who, along with Linda B. Buck, won a Nobel Prize in 2004 for his work on the power of smell. ‘‘If you pair an odor with a salient situation, one that could be pleasurable or one that can be

painful, then the subsequent administration of that odor in a neutral environment will elicit behavior reminiscent of the past experience.’’ Exactly. Coco, a spicy Oriental scent closely associated with Karl Lagerfeld’s then-muse Inès de la Fressange, a model, designer and

inhale it now, somehow all I smell is durian, the so-called stinky fruit of Southeast Asia. And what happened to Guerlain’s Jicky, a mix of vetiver, bergamot and amber, which I first put on as a student abroad? I remember curling up in London with my then boyfriend to watch ‘‘Jamón Jamón,’’ the 1992 comedy that marked Penelope Cruz’s film debut, and crowing with delight when one character remarked to another that any woman who wore Jicky had to be beautiful. (It was reportedly Brigitte Bardot’s scent.) But while Jicky is widely considered a timeless classic, for me, the allure faded with the romance. Perhaps I was just ahead of my time. The whole idea of signature scents may in fact be a relic of the 20th century. At cosmetics counters and on perfume blogs, young women now flit through dozens of fragrances, never bothering to choose and commit. Science seems to back up the wisdom of this particular promiscuity. Why shouldn’t we run through a personal reel of perfumes, whose scents can conjure at will an earlier persona, but whose bottles can also be tucked away like a journal that doesn’t bear revisiting? For now, I am happily wearing Guerlain Cologne du 68, a unisex scent meant to recall the perfumer’s original address on the Champs-Élysées. By this time next year, it will almost certainly remind me of newspaper deadlines and frozen sidewalks.

aristocrat to boot, made a huge splash when Chanel launched it in 1984. Wearing it was like wrapping a scarf around my neck with just the right drape. Yet when I moved from the South of France to northern Thailand in the early 1990s, the floral notes positively wilted. If I

March-April 2014

MARKO METZINGER

Here’s what I actually believe about wearing a single perfume forever: Eccch. Like always eating pizza for lunch — enticing in the realm of childish fantasy but bordering on revolting in practice.

Listen Up

Melody Maker

STANDOUT The Los Angelesbased singer Kelela wears a Louise Goldin dress, QR5,642; louisegoldin.com. Anndra Neen for Chadwick Bell rings, QR309 (index finger), QR346 (ring finger), and QR400.

Mixing soulful R&B with thumping club beats, the singer Kelela is bringing her underground dance mash-ups to the mainstream. BY KEVIN M C GARRY PHOTOGRAPHS BY TIERNEY GEARON STYLED BY JASON RIDER

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MAKEUP BY SARAH USLAN AT JED ROOT FOR MAKE UP FOR EVER. HAIR BY MARCIA HAMILTON AT CELESTINE AGENCY FOR ENJOY. FASHION ASSISTANT: ALEX TUDELA. CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: JAKE MICHAELS; DONATO SARDELLA/WIREIMAGE/GETTY IMAGES; BEN GABBE/GETTY IMAGES.

TALENT SHOW The D.J. and producer Total Freedom, a frequent collaborator

‘‘ABOUT TWO YEARS AGO I went to a potluck at an apartment in Bushwick. Everyone and their mother was there,’’ recalls the singer Kelela, 30 — a critical darling poised to soon cross over from the realm of cool-kid dance music into that of popular R&B, or perhaps to bring those two worlds together. She was referring to the indie musicians and artists at the party, most were strangers but many were to become trusted collaborators of the then-fledgling singer. Fatima Al Qadiri, a Kuwaiti-bred composer and D.J., was reading palms and took Kelela’s hand. ‘‘She told me I was going to make the most money and be the most visible of anyone there, and that it was going to happen in my 30s.’’ At the time, Kelela, who was born Kelela Mizanekristos to Ethiopian parents, was feeling doomed by the hourglass running out on her singing aspirations. ‘‘I’d been dealing with it for a while. Especially for a singer, especially for a girl, especially for a black girl — you’re not allowed to just be 30 and starting out, like, ‘Hi guys! It’s me.’ ’’ Growing up in Maryland, she never formally studied music, though she auditioned and was accepted to a performing-arts high school that was ruled out as too expensive. She went on to study international relations and sociology at American University, but dropped out and headed to Los Angeles to stake her claim as a singer. Weeks before her clairvoyant encounter, she had landed a gig that required her voice — as a telemarketer — but she spent her evenings collaborating with underground musicians and producers like the Oberlin grads and electronic duo Teengirl Fantasy and the cult D.J. Total Freedom. Meanwhile, as some of her projects gained traction, she used an insurance payout from a minor car accident to finance some recordings. One night at a

‘Especially for a singer, especially for a girl, especially for a black girl — you’re not allowed to just be 30 and starting out, like, ‘‘Hi guys! It’s me.’’ ’

warehouse in East Williamsburg, Solange Knowles’s manager showed up by chance to Kelela’s late-night set and was impressed by her unique blend of wistful vocals riding over computer-wrought beats, enough to request a demo. Within a few weeks, Knowles asked Kelela to open a few shows for her. As it turns out, her former telemarketer employer called up, begging her to return (analytics revealed she was very persuasive on the phone). ‘‘But I had just booked my first Solange show, so I was like — bye!’’ she recalls. She spent the next six months on tour with Knowles. ‘‘In the world of electronic and more experimental music, the actual voice is often almost used as an ambient afterthought,’’ Knowles explains. ‘‘I think one of the reasons Kelela and I have really connected is we both really value the art and the skill of an R&B vocal.’’ As Kelela sees it, ‘‘I think I have these soft and pretty, Mariahish tones, and it sounds balanced to pair that with something hard-hitting instead of pretty on top of pretty on top of pretty.’’ Kelela’s influences run the gamut of contemporary R&B, from the titans of her childhood like Michael Jackson and Whitney Houston to the soulful singers of her adolescence — ‘‘Lauryn Hill’s and Erykah Badu’s slowed vibrato, Faith Evans’s and D’Angelo’s falsetto, Toni Braxton’s belt, Brandy’s runs. . . . ’’ As she matured as a singer, jazz and gospel became increasingly important, particularly Kim Burrell. ‘‘I remember my friend Janelle putting me on to her. I would shred to that in her garage nonstop.’’ As for what an adult Kelela sounds like today, the first taste came from her acclaimed late-2013 mixtape, ‘‘Cut 4 Me,’’ released by the D.J. collective and label Fade to Mind. She’s sprung onto this new electronica scene as its literal and figurative voice, breathing melodies and emotion into the typically cold, robotic soundscape. This disparate harmony has galvanized a sound that is boiling over into the mainstream. ‘‘I have zero desire to be underground,’’ she proclaims, ‘‘I want to be pervasive.’’ With any luck she may succeed in bringing the underground with her to center stage.

March-April 2014

TUNE IN Kelela in a T by Alexander Wang romper, price on request; similar styles at alexanderwang.com.

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New Talent

What Is in The White Space? Qatar’s designer Wadha Al Hajri makes her presence felt in New York, in a Chelsea studio that encourages emerging designers. BY DEBRINA ALIYAH

THE MOST CRUCIAL process at fashion weeks is the coming together of buyers and designers to seal the deal that will ensure the viability of business in coming collections. Yet in recent years it has become one of the most difficult engagements during New York’s biannual fashion week, a calendar that is so jam-packed that industry insiders often find it exhausting to keep up. Between rushing from presentations to shows and keeping up with the fast-growing number of designers who are trying to stand out, it is a colossal task for buyers to carefully and tastefully curate collections to excite their audiences. While major brands have nailed down their back of house formula on securing orders, it is the waves of new talents that are trying to get their voices heard. New York has long been a firm favorite for emerging designers from around the world as the market is deemed to be more receptive to different aesthetics. Bahraini brand Noon By Noor has been wildly successful in NY after several showings, paving the way for other Middle Eastern designers, and this season Qatar’s own Wadha Al Hajri makes her debut at a new hip collective initiative aimed entirely at bringing the focus back to the clothes, away from the circus of the main shows. The initiative, the brainchild of stylist Alison Brokaw and fashion consultant Ruth Runberg, is aptly named The White Space, a tribute to its

purpose and its venue, the all-white Chelsea studio of Jeff and Justine Koons. “As artists, we are acutely aware of the pressures of promoting and finding space to showcase your talent and creativity,” Justine told the press on the project. The Koons may have provided the space and their star-power, but it is the gallant efforts of Brokaw and Runberg that put The White Space on the radar. The fashion duo has worked extensively in the industry and wanted to build a bridge between really deserving designers and retail stores that might otherwise have no access to these global talents. “I am very interested in championing young entrepreneurs and want to help them enter the market,” says Brokaw. The four designers who showed with the initiative this season truly reflect the widereaching network of the duo and give solid affirmation of their intention to bring something unique and compelling to the table. Among them are Yaser Shaw, a fifth-generation textile artisan from Kashmir, and of course Al Hajri, the designer who has been the talk of the town in Doha for the past two seasons. Both the designers’ aesthetics are deeply rooted in cultural influences and could have easily been brushed off as novelty collections, but Brokaw knew the intimate environment of The White Space would allow editors and buyers to fully understand the designers’ works. “All of the

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designers are very much at the top of their fields; their work speaks for itself. Editors and buyers are curious to see their collections and their progression from the previous season,” Brokaw explains. Shaw, along with the other two designers, Lee Savage and Lucas Hugh, had showcased at The White Space last season. “It is essential that the right people have a chance to see the collection; this is what The White Space delivers. With the right exposure, anything is possible,” Brokaw says. Lucas Hugh, a highfashion athleticwear line, has charted dynamic growth since its previous seasons due to the soaring popularity of the sporting trend. The White Space has received many influential buyers and editors who were very agreeable to the efficient idea of meeting several designers in one venue. It is a measure of cost-effectiveness for the designers too. “It is difficult to find appropriate and economical venues, but here I can join forces with other brands at similar levels and reach a wider audience as a group,” says Savage, whose designs of clutch bags made from brass objects has since been picked up by giant retailers including Barneys. For Anjhe Mules, the creative behind Lucas Hugh and Shaw, the opportunity to meet and review their designs with industry heavyweights has greatly benefited their creative process. “It is ideal and intimate for me to connect with press and retailers and have

PICTURES COURTESY THE WHITE SPACE AND GETTY IMAGES

EMERGING TALENTS Clockwise from top: Al-Hajri, Mules, Brokaw, Savage and Shaw at The White Space; a clutch designed by Savage; Savage turns brass objects into covetable clutches; Mules redefines luxury sportswear.

direct feedback,” says Shaw. The one-to-one face time goes beyond just the technical detailing of the designers’ work; it helps break down preconceived notions and cultural stereotypes, especially of Middle Eastern designers, as in Al Hajri’s case. The soft-spoken Qatari in her hijab surprised many with her contemporary minimalist silhouettes and fielded questions from many editors, including Suzy Menkes, on how she is being received in her community for designing modern womenswear instead of abayas. Al Hajri was first introduced to Brokaw via D’NA, the cult multibrand boutique of the region, with stores in Riyadh and Doha and now with an online presence through Farfetch. Her collections made fashion insiders in Doha sit up and pay attention; it was the first time, a homegrown brand had displayed a collection that was so directional and promising. Shortly after, she was handpicked by Franca Sozzani of Vogue Italia as one of the designers to show at the region’s much-anticipated Vogue Dubai Fashion Experience. That opportunity opened another door, to a special showcase of emerging global designers during Milan Fashion Week initiated by Vogue and online retailer Thecorner.com. “She has a very clear vision for her work. She uses very simple lines, impeccable construction and a quiet color palette to deliver an extremely strong yet feminine aesthetic,” Brokaw notes. Though the designer had only been producing for three seasons, Brokaw knew that Al-Hajri was a new bright star from the region and was ready to break into the international scene. Wadha’s A/W 2014 presentation at The White Space draws

architectural reference from the traditional Bedouin tent, a minimal but intricate structure. “It is the concept of Bedouin women weaving and building the tent. The tents are sharp, minimal and mostly black just like my pieces,” says Al Hajri. It has been a fruitful enterprise for Wadha Al Hajri at The White Space, considering the positive impressions from international press and buyers, an opportunity she credits Brokaw particularly for. “I can’t even begin to express how grateful I am. Alison’s support for young designers is incredible,” she says. There will be little rest from now on for the prodigious multitasking creative as she heads home to her full-time job and the undertaking of orders for her pieces. And then there’s the Spring 2015 collection to consider, as now the world will be watching.

NOMADIC PRINTS Looks from Al-Hajri's A/W 2014 collection which draws inspirations from Bedouin tents.

March - April 2014

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Home/Work

Reinventing the Orient Among the recent pivotal figures instrumental in rebuilding Beirut, London-based French-Lebanese architect and designer, Annabel Karim Kassar now has her sights set on transforming the United Arab Emirates. BY NINA STARR

IT’S 9:30 P.M. on a cool Wednesday night in Dubai, and I’m waiting for Annabel Karim Kassar to arrive. We’re meeting for dinner at an Indian restaurant at Pyramids at Wafi with its extremely kitsch Egyptian-Turkish décor beset with Christmas trees, a rather strange mishmash of styles. It’s little wonder she chose this place. The laid back, quirky, Paris-born architect and designer with the can-do attitude has an intense passion for travel and loves to discover new cultures, having lived in France, England, Morocco, Lebanon and the UAE. She tells me that she established her architecture practice in 1994 in Paris, and today it has offices in Beirut, Dubai and Chengdu. Not only does she work on commercial, industrial, hospitality and residential architecture and interior projects, but she also designs furniture and lighting. Intrigued by transforming tradition and memory into contemporary designs, Karim Kassar is credited as a major player in the renaissance of Lebanon’s capital. She reconstructed the fabled souks of Beirut that had been destroyed beyond recognition by the 15-year-long civil war — resulting in a daring reinterpretation of a cultural icon — and created extremely trendy venues that helped the city regain its pre-war reputation as the cultural capital of the Middle East. Examples of her work include the former cinema that she converted into an after-hours chill-out spot known as the Strange Fruit nightclub, featuring shiny red industrial plastic, silk-printed portraits on the walls and tabletops, and silhouettes and slogans recalling the 1970s;

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DUAL DESIGN Clockwise from top left: Annabel Karim Massar has "collaborations" with her clients; Momo at the Souks, Beirut; Apartment in Jean Walter Building, Paris

PICTURES COURTESY AKK & ASSOCIÉS

GLOBAL FLAIR Clockwise from top left: Brightly-colored chairs pop out at Almuz by Momo, Dubai; Notting Hill House, London; a reflective setup at Almuz by Momo; HSC Headquarters, Dubai.

the Bali-Balima corner terrace café/bar in contemporary black and stainless steel facing the Intabli fountain in the Beirut Souks; the Souks Entertainment Center comprising theatres, food courts, shops and offices with its brightly-lit façade; and the four-level Momo at the Souks restaurant opening onto terraces and gardens and featuring handpainted and embossed Cordoba wallpaper and colorful fabrics. French-Algerian restaurateur Mourad Mazouz, whose food empire stretches from London and Paris to Beirut and Dubai, says, “I first started working with Karim Kassar buying her design pieces for my restaurants Sketch and Momo in London: the deer head lights, stocking and splashing light fixtures and colorful plexi trays. Her objects were very architectural, unique and modern yet retained a craft identity that never made them outdated, and they are always beautiful and real. We then started collaborating architecturally on the Almaz restaurant in Dubai, then Momo at the Souks in Beirut, Almaz Abu Dhabi and soon the Almaz beach club. I say ‘collaboration’ because Karim Kassar has a quality that I cherish: she regards her client’s ideas and

opinions as creative and valuable. It allows her to modify her incredibly original, beautiful ideas into practical yet one-of-akind commercial ones. She is very versatile and inspired by so many different cultures. She can do buildings, restaurants, bar and club interiors, objects and homes in London, Paris, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Beirut and never be out of place. She is a true out-of-the-box, talented thinker.” Karim Kassar has an intense appreciation of the modern influenced by the oriental. It was because of her experience in Morocco — where she had opened an office and taught architecture at the University of Rabat — that she could easily understand the functioning of the souks of the past and present and uncover their future potential. She recalls, “I was trying to share my knowledge of Arabic ornamentation and how to use it well because it’s not well used in many Arabic countries, even in Morocco. I learnt Arabic ornamentation by travelling to places — you can see what it’s made of, and in a way, it’s extremely modern. So I’m not afraid of doing new things in an oriental way because I’m very used to the Arabic essence and structure — the real power of Arabic ornamentation.” Her Notting Hill House in London shows off her signature style of blending different materials, patterns, textures and textiles, mixing North African ethnic flair with modern design and eclectic pieces of furniture. A 19th-century Ottoman villa, Domaine Cochrane, located in one of Beirut’s most traditional neighborhoods that retains an original mix of residences and commerce, allowed her to work with the past in a contemporary manner far from the pastiche afflicting many similar constructions. In its high-ceilinged rooms with tall arched windows, light floods in, and a rich variety of furnishings and materials are juxtaposed in an unrestrained interpretation. The dramatic, color-rich interiors of Villa Gemmayze in Beirut were inspired by a palm tree with orange dates and green leaves standing in front of the house. The pink, orange and green walls are matched with customized and contemporary furniture, gold leaf doors, oversized lampshades, spot lighting projecting motifs onto the walls and geometric-patterned flooring. The same freedom to experiment that Karim Kassar felt

March - April 2014

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Home/Work

in Lebanon is what she is now experiencing in the UAE. Having fled Beirut during the 2006 Lebanon war to move to Dubai for its stability and security, she is today based in London, where she is planning to open a new office along with a showroom to display her furniture and lighting. She laments, “I’m still working in Beirut, but with the situation, it’s not easy. You do something one day, and the next day you can’t go out. Everything is blocked. As architects, we are really linked to the economic or political undercurrents of a city.” Karim Kassar and I visit the Al Zorah Pavillon, her new project under way in Ajman in the north, the smallest of the UAE’s seven emirates by area at just 260 sq. km. The land here is relatively untouched by human hand as the expected development boom never took off, with most planned real estate projects having fallen wayside due to the 2008 global financial crisis, and since then, many have been delayed or abandoned. Business is picking up, though, and Dubai will play host to World Expo 2020. Likewise, Karim Kassar’s pavilion, first conceived in 2007, with construction beginning in 2008 before coming to a standstill in 2009 because of the economic downturn, was left abandoned as a skeleton structure. A new investor was subsequently found but with a scaleddown budget and a change in the building’s program: the rooftop café became a guest residence for the owner’s personal use, with a large staircase running up the middle of the building providing direct access. Emphasising the light, the residence features ample use of materials that reflect, shimmer and sparkle. The interiors are made from wood, glass, mirrors, stone, marble and lights custom-made by her lighting company Caï that she runs with two other French designers. Responsible for all aspects of the building — which includes an auditorium, exhibition hall, café and administrative office — Karim Kassar took care of the exterior, interior, furniture, lighting and landscaping. She notes, “It’s very rare that you can get to work on everything. Because in Ajman they realised, ‘OK, she’s an architect, she will do the building; she’s in interior design, so she will do that; she’ll also do the landscaping.’” Set to be a new cultural landmark for Ajman, the ultra-modern building with its matte granite flooring and rigid geometry, located just off one of the main roads that connects all the emirates, is a radical departure from the existing architecture in an area abounding in townhouses adorned with arches in a style that architects believe to be Islamic but in reality is extremely kitsch and caricatural. Karim Kassar believes in being regional and working in context without being tasteless.

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Sitting on virgin land in a preserved site, the pavilion with its dark glass façade turns its back to the south and opens towards the north to avoid the heat from the sun’s rays. The large belvedere faces the natural surroundings, which consist of mangroves dotted with pink flamingos, the sea just beyond where future marinas may be built and the skyline of the conservative, Saudi-influenced emirate of Sharjah to the west. The folding, cantilevered roof clad in resistant, fishscale-like zinc tiles, which isolate and shine at times, features spotlights resembling birds that project a tartan pattern at night. Karim Kassar will build a golf club on the hill of sand dunes opposite, which is oriented toward the pavilion, and maybe a yacht club and wellness center thereafter. Over in Abu Dhabi — which has taken on a more considered, sober and human-scale development than Dubai, with a focus on arts and culture — we head to the brand-new Sowwah Square shopping mall. The Almaz by Momo restaurant is buzzing. In shades of orange, brown and pink that blend Moroccan style with contemporary lines, the eatery opens up through extensive glass windows to a large outdoor covered terrace for smoking shishas, which faces the water and the Abu Dhabi cityscape. Karim Kassar worked from the outside in, as the space was deep, and she played with different levels so everyone could take advantage of the views of the water. There are layers of ornamentation, a complex grooved wooden blade false ceiling like in traditional markets, zellige tiled walls, hexagonal oak wood parquet, marquetry and leather tables and a juice bar as no alcohol is served in the restaurant. “I don’t do the same thing, but I take into account what I’ve done before,” comments Karim Kassar, who had created a convivial, sumptuous Arabian Nights atmosphere at the first Almaz by Momo restaurant that opened in 2006 in Dubai's Mall of the Emirates, her first project in the UAE. The new Almaz Dubai at JBR will launch in May 2014, its main feature is a tree-like structure spanning two floors, the result of much architectural reflection on how lines bend and transform. As an outsider driving the aesthetic revolution of the UAE, Karim Kassar says, “I’m very proud in a way. I understand that if I create a good project and put in all my energy, I will connect with people, and it’s working because I’m rewarded when I do projects that can be appreciated. I have made a connection that has opened me to new people and a new way of thinking. And I start to exchange ideas with people with whom I would not otherwise have had the opportunity to meet in my life.”

PICTURES COURTESY AKK & ASSOCIÉS

A SPLASH OF COLOR From left:An apartment in Paris; Villa Gemmayze, Beirut.

March - April, 2014

FROM LEFT: PAOLO RO VEERSI; KARIM SADLI; MARIO SORRENTI.

Phoebe Philoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Prophetic Fashion Page 72 Fashion's Purest Visionary Page 80 A Moment of Transparency Page 92 The Writers Room Page 102

March-April 2014

HUPPERT: STYLING BY SUZANNE KOLLER. HAIR BY MARTYN FOSS CALDER AT AIRPORT AGENCY USING BUMBLE AND BUMBLE. MAKEUP BY BRIGITTE HYMANS AT MARIE-FRANCE THAVONEKHAM. MANICURE BY ELSA DURRENS USING CHANEL. PROP STYLING BY ALEXANDER BOCK. STYLIST’S ASSISTANT: RAY TETAUIRA. TAILOR: MICHAEL GUNTHER. PRODUCTION: BRACHFELD, PARIS.

A b i b

‘How can I look my best? Do I want to be visible or not too much visible? You are not visible with Phoebe’s clothes. It’s not too obvious. It’s a way of not being seen.’ ISABELLE HUPPERT, ACTRESS

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At Phoebe Philo’s Céline, boundary-breaking fashion is secondary to the meaning behind the clothes.

PHOTOGRAPHS BY KARIM SADLI STYLED BY JOE M C KENNA BY WHITNEY VARGAS

March-April 2014

On Sophie Hicks: Céline jacket, QR8,372, top, QR2,657, and pants, QR4,004. Previous page, on Isabelle Huppert: Céline top, QR4,550; bergdorfgoodman .com. On Phoebe Philo: Céline top. Her own earrings.

‘The clothes are not tricky and they’re never vulgar. If you want to feel right in your clothes and you don’t want to show off, or show your wealth, then you wear Céline. There are no connotations to do with class or background.’ SOPHIE HICKS, ARCHITECT 76

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Invisible. That is what Phoebe Philo’s clothes for Céline make you feel. Not romantic, like Valentino. Or dark and edgy, like Saint Laurent. Simply invisible. A woman in a perfectly cut shirt and a pair of pants. And, oh, what a relief! Because we are busy. We work. We wipe our children’s mouths with the backs of our hands as we rush out the door. We don’t have time to consider whether our prints match or our buttons align. To try on different outfits each morning, like so many different personalities. To fuss and preen. That seems silly, somehow weak. Despite Philo’s many best efforts, there is a Céline uniform: large, slouchy trousers; a collarless shirt; flats; a tuxedo jacket — preferably in navy, black or cream. The clothes are quiet and not meant to make a statement. And so you look invisible. Able to be viewed for more than your surface appearance. This is power dressing. The idea that quiet fashion now conveys power is ironic, given that for years that spot has been defined by bright colors, broad shoulders, wide lapels, cinched waistlines — caricatures of exaggerated severity. Since Philo took over as creative director of Céline six years ago, she has consistently designed collections that have changed the course of fashion, steering women toward a more classic and practical way of dressing. There are many designers who make beautifully constructed clothes of the highest quality, Philo among them. But her specialness lies in synthesizing how women want to dress with how they actually live their lives. And how we want to see ourselves: sophisticated, knowledgeable, not victimized by fashion. Increasingly, comfort is the ultimate commodification of luxury. At Céline, this has translated into silk pants that puddle at the ankles, roomy coats that borrow from men's wear, even fur-lined Birkenstocks. More concerned with the subtraction of details than with their addition, Philo is often labeled a minimalist. But that couldn’t be further from the truth. Open a wool coat, and the seams are lined in rubber. Notice how a cashmere sweater is knit so densely that it hangs away from the body. (The main criticism against Céline is that the clothes are too expensive. For that, we now have Zara.) Yet as subtle as the Céline code is, each season there are giveaways that are recognizable to those in the know, such as a longer sleeve or a topcoat without a closure. Things look accidental but are actually entirely purposeful. Adding to the Céline mystique is the designer herself. For anyone who follows fashion, it’s impossible to think of the French house without first thinking of Philo. She’s the best advertisement for the brand. A mother of three who quit the top position at Chloé, in part to spend time with her new daughter, then famously refused to relocate her family from London to Paris when she got the Céline job, she has firmly prioritized what matters most. Her intentionally mousy hair and no makeup are the mark of a woman who relies on more than looks to get her way. And she rarely talks to the press, preferring that her collections speak for themselves — which, of course, is its own brilliant marketing tool. But, really, what would she say? That she’s a woman who thinks about women? That she was inspired by these modern times we live in? That’s already abundantly clear. Ultimately, for Philo, it’s about the work. And isn’t that what all of us ever hope to say?

March-April 2014

‘I love the simple, effortless, chic look that Phoebe brings to Céline. For me, it is the modern woman, a woman who is engaged and busy but also takes the time to dress chic.’ LIYA KEBEDE, MODEL AND ENTREPRENEUR 78

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‘I’m particularly fond of anything that apes men’s wear and Céline comes the closest with its craftsmanship. They have a deep affinity with that feeling of luxury within structure and materials. Wearing Céline is like driving a very, very expensive car.’ SADIE COLES, GALLERIST

On Sadie Coles: Céline coat, QR11,648, and top, price on request. Opposite, on Liya Kebede: Céline jacket, QR10,010. Céline tops, QR6,370, QR8,554 (worn underneath), and skirt, QR7,462; barneys.com.

March-April 2014

Second row: Spring 2011 Philo loosened up and kick-started the craze for a roomier, luxe silhouette, featuring silk pajama dressing, woven Baja sweaters and racer-back jumpsuits. Fall 2011 Suddenly, a simple color-block sweater became high fashion. Resort 2012 In one of Philo’s best collections to date, she moved toward bolder statement pieces: leather patchwork, floral leather biker jackets, super-wide pilgrim belts. Third row: Prefall 2012 Defined the slouchy Céline silhouette, with oversize suiting and coats influenced by men's wear. Fall 2012 A continuation of oversize volume and color-blocking, this time with fur, in primary colors and shots of hot pink. Spring 2013 Philo’s nod to the ’90s, done with a deconstructed ease: ankle-grazing dresses with raw edges, pants that pooled on the floor and the now-ubiquitous fur Birkenstocks. Bottom row: Fall 2013 Céline’s season of cozy. Philo created the idea of comfort as the ultimate luxury: Dresses were knotted in the front for a bundled effect; fabrics were nubby; bags were cuddled like water bottles. Resort 2014 Philo continued to challenge the fashion calendar and designed seasonless clothes, showcasing Céline’s trademark fur coats alongside linen canvas cargo pants. Spring 2014 Surprised the industry once again with a colorful collection of artful tribal prints and exuberant accessories.

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MANICURIST: TRISH LOMAX AT PREMIERHAIRANDMAKEUP.COM. SET DESIGNER: MAX BELLHOUSE. DIGITAL OPERATOR: EDOUARD MALFETTES. PHOTO ASSISTANTS: ANTONI CIUFO, JP WOODLAND, SIMON M C GUIGAN. STYLIST’S ASSISTANTS: JOHN PASHALIDIS, MATT KING. HAIR ASSISTANT: PIERPAOLO LAI. MAKEUP ASSISTANT: LINDSAY LILLY KEYS. SET ASSISTANTS: ALEXANDRA LEAVEY, TILLY POWER. PRODUCTION: RAGI DHOLAKIA PRODUCTIONS. PRINTS, THIS PAGE: MARKO METZINGER.

THE MAKING OF THE MYTHOLOGY Top row, from left: Resort 2010 Philo’s first collection for Céline, which marked the new dawn of minimalism and the importance of perfect separates. Spring 2010 Confirmed some of Céline’s signatures, including utilitarian fabrics such as jute, pique and leather trim. Fall 2010 Showcased Philo’s restraint when it comes to color, focusing on black, navy and cream. Winter staples, like shearlings and knits, were subtly updated to feel modern.

On Camilla Nickerson: Céline top, QR5,824, and pants, price on request. Hair by Paul Hanlon at Julian Watson. Makeup by Hannah Murray for Art and Commerce.

‘She understands how a working mom and a woman in today’s world needs to move and get through her day. She also can easily absorb and translate the culture. So her clothes make you feel connected to what it is to be in today’s world.’ CAMILLA NICKERSON, VOGUE CONTRIBUTING EDITOR March-April 2014

ON-SET PRODUCER: MARION NOBLEAUX. PHOTO ASSISTANTS: Mร LANIE REY, BARBARA MARANGON, FELIX SEILER-FEDI. DIGITAL TECH: MATTEO MIANI.

Comme des Garรงons dress, QR15,961, boots, QR2,748, and shoe cover, QR1,183. Models: Maja Salamon/Next Models; Ine Neefs/ Elite Models; Elodia Prieto/ Silent Models.

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F ASHION’S PUREST

V ISIONARY, REI KAWAKUBO, REDEFINE SHOPPING IN NEW YORK CITY. HER LATEST COLLECTION FOR

COMME DES GARÇONS IS STRANGE, BEAUTIFUL,

SINGULAR AND, FOR MOST OF US, UNWEARABLE. YET FASHION’S MOST POWERFUL

PROVOCATEUR IS ALSO ONE OF ITS SAVVIEST COMMERCIAL MINDS. WHILE SHE IS SILENT ABOUT HER OWN CREATIVE PROCESS, KAWAKUBO IS A KEEN NURTURER OF YOUNG TALENT, BRINGING UNKNOWN

ARTISTS AND DESIGNERS INTO HER FOLD. WITH THE DECEMBER OPENING OF

D OVER STREET MARKET NEW YORK, THE SLEEPY

N EIGHBORHOOD OF KIPS BAY

I S POISED TO BECOME THE

E PICENTER OF THE CITY’S

F ASHION MAP. BY SUZY MENKES PHOTOGRAPHS BY PAOLO ROVERSI HAIR AND FACE PAINTING BY JULIEN D’YS 83

Comme des Garรงons dress, QR11,757. Opposite: Comme des Garรงons dress, QR7,844, harness, QR2,621, boots, QR2,748, and shoe cover, QR1,238. 84

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March-April 2014

THREE PILLARS — FANTASTICALLY DECORATED BY THREE DIFFERENT

ARTISTS — RUN VERTICALLY THROUGH SIX floors of a vast former school building in Manhattan’s Kips Bay neighborhood. Surrounded by curry and sari shops, it is the unlikely new home of New York’s first Dover Street Market, the multibrand store from Comme des Garçons. But this noble old building on Lexington Avenue has two other metaphoric pillars, and these are names that lie at the heart of the current fashion establishment. Miuccia Prada built a permanent space on the top floor, while Louis Vuitton is creating a three-month pop-up store in the main entrance area. ‘‘Prada have been amazing, and have created a special collection just for us, with their iconic shapes in new materials and classic prints from 20 years ago,’’ says Adrian Joffe, chief executive officer of Comme des Garçons International and the husband of Rei Kawakubo, who, for once, has broken her inscrutable silence. The lauded Japanese designer, who recently turned 71, has a great deal to say about this new Manhattan project as well as about the design transformation of her existing flagship Comme des Garçons store in Chelsea. ‘‘For Dover Street Market New York, I wanted to keep the no-rule, beautiful chaos feeling of the first two Dover Street Markets,’’ the designer says in Japanese as Joffe translates. She is referring to the existing stores, one in London’s Mayfair section, which opened in 2004 on its namesake Dover Street, and another that opened in Tokyo’s Ginza district in 2012. (They also have a franchise in Beijing.) ‘‘But in contrast to New York itself, I wanted to design it with extreme simplicity, unsophisticated, almost primitive and with naïve artlessness,’’ Kawakubo says. The designer, who came onto the international fashion scene in the 1980s with distressed black clothes that served as a counterpoint to the era’s thrusting, androgynous outfits, has always led her own counterculture movement. It hasn’t been so much a political as a visual challenge to clothes based on cut, stitch and shape and definitions of current society. Kawakubo still thinks along those lines and avoids pigeonholing or developing one particular style in her stores as much as on the runway.

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‘‘In conceiving seven floors and the interior design of each space, I took no notice of the traditional need to separate by category, by sex, by lifestyle or by age,’’ the designer explains. ‘‘And by designing a transparent elevator that pierces all seven floors through the middle of the store, I have tried to make the whole shop as if it is one shop — one total experience.’’ The sheer bravado of taking on this massive 18,000-square-foot building is breathtaking. It once housed the New York School of Applied Design for Women, which was for a time associated with Columbia University and helped young women to pursue careers in arts and crafts. On the worn boards and plain walls you can imagine the spirit of female endeavor. The pillared structure dates back to 1909 and is classified as a New York City landmark building. But none of that was likely to put off a designer who never compromises her aesthetic vision and continues to push the boundaries of what ‘‘fashion’’ is and whether that word even has to translate into wearable clothing. Her recent spring 2014 collection used elaborate workmanship to created curvilinear designs that seemed more like body architecture than clothing. Like her poetic 2012 ‘‘White Drama’’ collection and her 2005 ‘‘Broken Bride’’ collection, these designs appear to be outside commercial conventions. Yet the ‘‘hyper-imaginative’’ collection clothes are always on sale right alongside the more commercial Comme des Garçons lines, like Play and Black, that provide a sturdy base for the sales pyramid. The clothing that seems most unlikely to end up in customer closets — like the now infamous ‘‘lumps and bumps’’ collection of 1997 — is similar to any other modern art form designed to stir the mind and surprise the eye. Kawakubo’s conception of the new Dover Street Market store as ‘‘beautiful chaos’’ thus has a method to its apparent madness. The idea is of a magical coalition of fashion, art and commerce. While the store will feature all 15 Comme des Garçons brands (Homme Plus, Shirt, Junya Watanabe, to name a few), the list of other designers who will be showcased in their own individual spaces reads like a who’s who of inventive fashion today,

Opposite: Comme des Garçons dress, QR7,844, shoes, QR2,457, and shoe cover, QR1,620.

March-April 2014

THE MAKING OF DOVER STREET MARKET NEW YORK REI’S FAMOUS The Comme des Garçons designer Rei Kawakubo is bringing her Wonkaesque approach to retail to New York. A sample of installations from existing Dover Street Markets in London and Ginza offer a hint of what’s planned for her new outpost on Lexington Avenue (center).

DESIGNING CHAOS ‘‘The only thing I was hoping she wouldn’t do is move the elevator, because it’s so expensive,’’ says Adrian Joffe, husband of the runway renegade Rei Kawakubo and chief executive of her $230 million fashion brand Comme des Garçons. A compact man who resembles Pablo Picasso, Joffe is dressed head-to-toe in Comme (save the hard hat), leading a walk-through before the late-December opening of the new Dover Street Market, a carnivalesque fashion wonderland ‘‘Of course, moving the lift is all she wanted to do,’’ he c ontinues with a sigh. It’s worth the effort: 64 square feet of glass and polished steel, the elevator is the focal point of the seven-story space, which occupies a stately Beaux-Arts building on Lexington Avenue and 30th Street. Not only will the shop carry Comme and its many offshoots, including Play, Black and Shirt, it will feature a smartly edited if riotous mix of other brands, from Saint Laurent and Louis Vuitton to Simone Rocha, Rick Owens and an exclusive collection by the

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cult designer Andre Walker. ‘‘It’s the beautiful chaos,’’ Joffe says, ‘‘the synergy that comes out of the clashing together of creative minds in a haphazard, accidental way.’’ Though Kawakubo allows Joffe and his team to select the merchandise available at DSM — and then ‘‘complains, terribly, bitterly,’’ he says with a laugh — she designed the interior herself and set the overall tone, an emphasis on designers and artists with an uncompromising vision and ‘‘something to say,’’ Joffe notes. Though DSM plays an important role in introducing the Comme philosophy to new consumers, it’s really ‘‘a labor of love,’’ says James Jebbia of the cult skate wear label Supreme, which has been granted a prized berth on the seventh floor, just opposite Prada. ‘‘They want to open peoples’ eyes to great things. I’m very proud to be in there.’’

After the basic construction is complete, the plan is for the designers and artists to arrive with their furniture (many of them have designed their own spaces), and the chaos will begin in earnest. ‘‘Then the real fun starts,’’ Joffe says.

‘The synergy that comes out of the clashing together of creative minds in a haphazard, accidental way.’ ‘‘There’s egos to deal with, politics to deal with.’’ Finally, the hermetic and mysterious Kawakubo herself will materialize, shortly before the doors open, at which point, ‘‘There might be some major changes,’’ he predicts warily, ‘‘like, ‘Move the elevator back to where it was.’ ’’

CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT: EXTERIOR: NICHOLAS CALCOTT; INTERIORS: COURTESY OF DOVER STREET MARKET (6); GERBASE: RORY VAN MILLINGEN; CATWALKING; CHRISTOPHER DADEY; YANNIS VLAMOS; COURTESY OF PHOEBE ENGLISH; CHRISTOPHER DADEY (3); PIERRE ANGE CARLOTTI; ENGLISH: RORY VAN MILLINGEN; PROPER GANG: NICHOLAS CALCOTT; SKETCH: COURTESY OF COMME DES GARÇONS.

BRIGHT YOUNG THINGS Called the ‘‘Energy Showroom,’’ DSMNY’s fourth-floor mezzanine will be given over to a cast of emerging brands, including Paula Gerbase’s wonderfully austere 1205 line; the dance-music-influenced KTZ; Sibling, the innovative knitwear label; and the men’s wear designer Craig Green. Each has been granted a small piece of real estate (approximately five feet by seven feet) all their own. ‘‘They can hang up posters, whatever they like — treat it like their own space,’’ Joffe says. Kawakubo’s influence on up-and-coming young designers is immeasurable. ‘‘Everything she approaches comes from a very pure creative strain,’’ notes Phoebe English, whose astonishing graduate collection was made largely out of black hair. Comme’s commercial support is also critical to those who make the cut. Inclusion in DSMNY ‘‘confirms that I am doing something right,’’ says Max Vanderwoude Gross of Proper Gang, ‘‘and that validation strengthens my resolve to stay true to the brand I am building.’’ So how will New Yorkers receive the DSM invasion? Simon Porte Jacquemus, designer of Jacquemus, emails his prediction: ‘‘Like a creativity BOMB.’’

WORK IN PROGRESS Rei Kawakubo’s sketch for Dover Street Market New York, seen at left, which offers a prominent showcase to emerging design talents, including 1205’s Paula Gerbase (top), Phoebe English (above) and Proper Gang’s Max Vanderwoude Gross (left). From top: runway looks by Craig Green, Lee Roach, Shaun Samson, Phoebe English, KTZ Men's, KTZ, Sibling and Jacquemus.

March-April 2014

Being carried by DSM ‘confirms that I am doing something right,’ Max Vanderwoude Gross says, ‘and that validation strengthens my resolve to stay true to the brand I am building.’

WHAT’S IN STORE The variety of collections carried by DSMNY will include pieces by (from top) Thom Browne, Undercover, Simone Rocha, J. W. Anderson, Sacai, Saint Laurent, Saint Laurent Men’s, Prada Men’s and Prada.

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EATING AND SHOPPING Providing sustenance to DSMNY’s shoppers and likely to become a destination itself is Rose Bakery, the beloved Paris cafe, set to colonize the first floor and mezzanine. Outposts of the brunch mecca have flourished in the London and Ginza Dover Street Markets, each with a distinct personality. The menu of salads, soups, quiches, savory tarts and pastries changes daily based on the recommendations of local purveyors, and regional tastes also play a role. ‘‘In Tokyo, they’re crazy about carrot cake,’’ explains Jean-Charles Carrarini, who oversees the operation with his

wife, Rose (Adrian Joffe’s sister). ‘‘In Europe, they love cheesecake.’’ In New York, of course, pizza is king, though it may not be available at Rose Bakery right away. ‘‘Rose is very nervous to make pizza in New York,’’ Jean-Charles admits. ‘‘I don’t think she will touch bagels either.’’ The couple is considering one big concession to local custom: accepting reservations. Takeout will also be available, but that’s as far as it goes. ‘‘I love New York, but I’m not going to deliver,’’ he insists. ‘‘We want people to come in. No delivery — at all, at all, at all.’’

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: KELLY: RORY VAN MILLINGEN; GINS: NICHOLAS CALCOTT; LONDONFIELD WORKS: RORY VAN MILLINGEN; WALKER: NICHOLAS CALCOTT; TOBY GLANVILLE/COURTESY OF PHAIDON PRESS; COURTESY OF ROSE BAKERY; BRIAN W. FERRY; COURTESY OF PRADA (2); SAINT LAURENT (2); MELODIE JENG; MARIA VALENTINO/MCV PHOTO; COURTESY OF SIMONE ROCHA; COURTESY OF UNDERCOVER; DAN AND CORINA LECCA.

PARIS MATCH The artist Lauren Kelly (right) is among those creating new work for the space. The first floor will be home to Rose Bakery, a much admired cafe run by Rose and JeanCharles Carrarini (below). Rose Bakery in the Dover Street Market Tokyo (left).

ART IN COMMERCE ‘‘We’re not fashion people, so this is a completely different realm,’’ admits Bruce Gilchrist, one half of the ‘‘performative architecture’’ duo London Fieldworks. But when DSMNY invited Gilchrist and his partner, Jo Joelson, to create a site-specific work for one of the three columns that cut through the space, they happily accepted the challenge. The final product touches on everything from outsider art and the Japanese Metabolism movement to ‘‘animal building — particularly the way small-brained creatures put structures together.’’ Looking to make the store a showplace for the work of artists with strong, often idiosyncratic personal visions, Kawakubo and her team have commissioned pieces that are conceptual, challenging and about as far from Santa’s Village as you can get. Madeline Gins of the procedural architecture practice Arakawa and Gins is installing what she calls a ‘‘reversible destiny space’’ around a staircase. She won’t disclose much — ‘‘I think they want me to be hush-hush about it’’ — except to say that Joffe took a particular liking to an approach she terms the ‘‘biotopological scale-juggling procedure.’’ The sound artist Calx Vive (an alias borrowed from the esoteric practice of alchemy) is creating a variety of sonic experiences designed, as she wrote in her proposal, to leave customers feeling not ‘‘bombarded but rather curious, amused, periodically transfixed.’’ In addition to

Dover Street’s art installations are conceptual, challenging and about as far from Santa’s Village as you can get.

audio compositions — and silences — that will rotate throughout the space, she has created a number of ‘‘dilapidated sculptural objects that will be emitting sound.’’ Meanwhile, the street-knitting pioneer Magda Sayeg, known for ‘‘yarn bombing’’ random objects on city streets — she once covered a bus in Mexico City — has been working around the clock with a team of eight craftswomen in Austin, Tex., painstakingly creating a 60-foot sleeve of yarn by hand for another of the store’s columns. The idea evolved gradual-

ly. Sayeg’s initial proposal was meant to be ‘‘as conceptual and out-of-this-world as Comme des Garçons,’’ she recalls. Kawakubo was unimpressed, and Sayeg finally realized the designer really just wanted her to be herself. It’s a common experience for Kawakubo’s collaborators. ‘‘People shiver and shake when they meet her, and they come with new things they think Rei wants,’’ Joffe says. ‘‘They always fail. All she wants is their core and what they stand for.’’ — AARON GELL

CREATIVE CONSTRUCTION Among the artists and architects whose original installations will occupy the store are Madeline Gins (above) of Arakawa and Gins, and Bruce Gilchrist and Jo Joelson (right) of London Fieldworks.

COMEBACK KID DSMNY will carry an exclusive new collection from Andre Walker (left), who has worked with Willi Smith, Kim Jones and Marc Jacobs. ‘‘I’m so nervous,’’ he says. ‘‘I have not designed a collection in 12 years!’’

March-April 2014

and includes Prada, Saint Laurent, Azzedine Alaïa, Thom Browne, Rick Owens, Sacai and Undercover. The main floor is where Louis Vuitton will set up its popup shop; and Rose Bakery, the cult French bakery that is also in the London and Tokyo stores, is on the first floor and mezzanine. But just in case that might seem too ‘‘establishment,’’ Joffe has installed an ‘‘experimental’’ sound system from the Brooklyn-based musical artist Calx Vive, which will play from various sculptures throughout the building. Always ready to support new talent, Joffe and Kawakubo have made space for burgeoning British talent like Simone Rocha and J. W. Anderson, and a fourth floor ‘‘incubation’’ area with small customized spaces for young designers like the Russian Gosha Rubchinskiy, known for his skate-inspired fashion, and Max Vanderwoude Gross, the 27-year-old behind the up-and-coming New York label Proper Gang. Other designers on the floor, which will be called the ‘‘Energy Showroom,’’ include Lou Dalton, Phoebe English, Craig Green, Lee Roach and Sibling. ‘‘Dover Street Market’s core value is to share a space with people with vision, people who have something to say,’’ Joffe says.

BUT WHAT ABOUT THIS

UNCONVENTIONAL, OUT-OF-LEFT-FIELD LOCATION, SO UNCOOL AND FAR FROM ANY STYLISH SHOPPING ZONE? Kawakubo has an exceptional sense of place. When Comme des Garçons opened in Tokyo’s Aoyama district in 1975, the neighborhood was far from bustling, but it eventually evolved into a fashion hot spot. Similarly, when she opened her first Comme des Garçons store in New York in 1983, she chose SoHo, which was mostly a place for artists, not the downtown epicenter of fashion. And since she moved the shop to Chelsea in 1999, that area has evolved into a district of high-end galleries. Now it’s all changing in Chelsea, as the famous aluminum tunnel weaving through a former automobile repair building is spun with gold. Make that GOLD! For in order to emphasize the spirit of Comme des Garçons 92

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and redefine it for the arrival of Dover Street Market, Kawakubo has gone on a gilt trip that starts with golden tree sculptures designed by the Japanese artist Kohei Nawa inside the store. ‘‘For the renovation of Chelsea, I wanted to create an even stronger, even more forward-looking, even more stimulating shop — to try to fulfill the hopes of our core Comme des Garçons customers,’’ explains the designer, who sees the actual Comme des Garçons stores as havens for ‘‘the fundamentalists,’’ as Joffe calls the hard-core fans, the people who might have started buying the label during the years when the Comme message was almost entirely black. But black is now, apparently, no longer the signature color. ‘‘I imagined this time a magical world using my third color after black and red: gold,’’ the designer explains. ‘‘I know that when babies are given the choice of colors, they often choose gold.’’ ‘‘So in this spirit of gold being the most enjoyable color,’’ she continues, ‘‘I have transformed the existing space and architecture to create a new intimate and concentrated shop. And as well as Comme des Garçons, I have also chosen to add personally, for the first time, some other brands and accessories that I like. Everything here is 100 percent my eye.’’ The store will carry brands like the Pop Art-inspired British designers Meadham Kirchhoff and the New York-based leather designer Zana Bayne. The notion that a designer’s store expresses the creative personality behind it is a given. But constant change is not. At Comme des Garçons, the search for the new and the need to evolve is part of the brand’s DNA. Joffe says creative retail strategies embody the main pillar of Comme des Garçons’ sense of values: the neverending search for something new. ‘‘We are always forward-looking, always evolving,’’ he says of the company’s pioneering spirit and its essential beliefs. Kawakubo expressed the same idea but put it more profoundly. ‘‘Without creation,’’ she says, ‘‘there can be no progress and man cannot evolve.’’

A NEW KIND OF TRANSPA�ENCY IS COU�SING TH�OUGH FASHION. FROM OPEN WEAVES AND SHEER FABRICS TO SLA SHED F�INGING AND LASE�-PRINT CUTOUTS, EACH LOOK OFFE�S A UNIQUE WAY TO EXPOSE SOME SKIN. A new kind of transparency is coursing through fashion. From open weaves and sheer fabrics to slashed fringing and laser-print cutouts, each look offers a unique way to expose some skin.

PHOTOGRAPHS BY MARIO SORRENTI STYLED BY JOE M C KENNA

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ChloĂŠ dress, QR17,654; bergdorfgoodman .com. Cartier diamond stud earrings (worn throughout), QR9,428; cartier.us. CĂŠline shoes (worn throughout), QR3,094, and bracelet (on left arm), QR4,732. Sacai bracelet, QR2,293; sacai. jp. March-April 2014

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Chanel dress, QR13,104. Sacai bracelet (top), QR2,293. CĂŠline bracelet, QR4,732. Opposite: CĂŠline top, QR10,738, and skirt, QR11,284. Sacai bracelet, QR2,293.

March-April 2014

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Azzedine AlaĂŻa top, QR12,849, and leggings, QR4,222; barneys.com. Sacai bracelet, QR2,293. Opposite: Calvin Klein Collection dress, price on request. Sacai bracelet (on right arm), QR2,293. CĂŠline bracelet, QR2,257.

March-April 2014

Giorgio Armani dress, QR23,387. CĂŠline bracelet, QR2,257. Opposite: Alexander McQueen dress, QR32,578, and leggings, price on request. CĂŠline bracelet, QR4,732.

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MANICURIST: CASEY HERMAN AT KATE RYAN INC. FOR CHANEL. SET DESIGN: PHILIPP HAEMMERLE INC. TAILOR: TODD THOMAS. DIGITAL TECH: XANNY HANDFIELD. LIGHTING TECHNICIAN: LARS BEAULIEU. PHOTO ASSISTANTS: JOHNNY VICARI, DANIEL AKSELRAD. STYLIST’S ASSISTANTS: CARLOS NAZARIO, JOHN PASHALIDIS. HAIR ASSISTANT: SHINGO SHIBATA. MAKEUP ASSISTANT: SUSIE SOBOL. SET ASSISTANTS: THEO VOLPATTI, RYAN STENGER.

Ralph Rucci top, price on request; bergdorfgoodman .com. Leg Avenue tights, QR27; amazon .com. Sacai bracelet, QR2,293. Opposite: Junya Watanabe Comme des Garรงons top, QR4,823, and skirt, QR3,258. Model: Binx/ Next Model Management. Hair by Recine for Rodin by Recine Luxury Hair Oil. Makeup by Diane Kendal for Marc Jacobs Beauty.

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THE WRITER’

UPSTAIRS, DOWNSTAIRS, IN A CORNER, AT A DESK, ON THE BED, WITH A VIEW OF TREES, WATER, THE STREET, THE SKY. FIVE WRITERS, WHO ALL PUBLISH NEW BOOKS THIS YEAR, EXPLAIN HOW THE RIGHT SPACE CAN UNLOCK THE MIND AND LET THE WORDS FLOW. PHOTOGRAPHS BY MAGNUS UNNAR

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ROOM

Colson Whitehead

The author in the sitting room of his West Village duplex apartment, where he finished his latest book after moving his desk from an upstairs room.

WE MOVED AROUND the city a lot when I was growing up. Uptown, downtown. Another kid, a bigger apartment. Kid off to college, lose a bedroom. We lived in one building for six whole years, although we switched apartments halfway. Someone upstairs committed suicide, and they were still hosing him off the pavement when my dad said, ‘‘I wonder if his place is available.’’ There’s always a better apartment, that’s the rule. I’m sedentary now, but I keep up the hunt by moving my desk around. Where’s the mojo these days? What room, what corner? How about by the window, one story above the street? Pluses: taking in ‘‘the life of the city’’; nose-picking deterrent. Minus: overhearing ‘‘Who’s that sad man sitting there all day?’’ A hundred pages in the dining room, 100 pages in the living room while the kid’s at school. It adds up. For the first half of a new book, maybe you want your

back against the wall. Gunslinger style. Nothing can sneak up on you except your own bad sentences. Try it. I wouldn’t mind ghost-hunting gear, fancy goggles and meters, because looking for a mojo spot is like looking for the paranormal — you know it’s there, but it’s invisible. Only pages are proof. For the final push of ‘‘The Noble Hustle,’’ I moved to a corner of the den. The new baby was getting my office in a few months anyway. View of the garden, big-ass TV on one wall. I can see my grill. Makes me happy. There’s good mojo here, similes poppin’ and the like. Until it runs out and the hunt begins anew.

In ‘The Noble Hustle: Poker, Beef Jerky and Death,’ Whitehead recounts his journey from amateur to unlikely contestant in the World Series of Poker (Doubleday). March-April 2014

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Douglas Coupland

The author's study in his house in Vancouver is full of collected oddities, like a painting that acts as a porthole.

FIVE YEARS AGO, two things happened. One, I installed

really good Wi-Fi in the house, and, two, I broke my left leg. Suddenly every room in the house became a new room, and what used to be the ‘‘sculpture pit’’ beside the living room became my new office. I painted it black, which you think would make it scary, but instead it makes everything in the room turn warm. My window looks into trees and ferns, and there’s a creek just below that’s a highway for animals on the mountain slope, so on any day I’ll see raccoons, skunks, bears and, once, an otter that cleaned out all the koi in the pond two summers ago. That was cute but annoying. On the shelves are a variety of architectural models and shapes derived from building kits. When I’m writing I look at them to cleanse the palate of my brain. Writing takes place in time, while objects take place in space, and entering space for a few seconds helps me mentally change gears. I’m a visual thinker, but most writers are not. Writing in a big empty room would give me the 106

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Coupland’s ‘Worst. Person. Ever.’ follows a hard-luck cameraman who travels from London to the South Pacific to shoot a reality TV show (Blue Rider Press). bends. I need density around me. I write on an escritoire I found on Craigslist. I refinished it in Japanese red lacquer, put some holes in the back for cords, and it’s great because the moment I close it I look like an organized person. It’s such a good system that I ended up producing escritoires with a friend who has a furniture factory called SwitzerCultCreative. The round naval bombing painting is by a Chilean painter, Adrián Gouet. The explosion it depicts looks just like one piece from a series I did a few years back of Andy Warhol wigs. The similarity is haunting and utterly unexpected.

Mona Simpson

The novelist at the kitchen table of her Santa Monica home, with Bartleby, her Labradoodle.

I’VE NEVER HAD an exclusive

relationship to a room where I write. I used to want one. In my 20s, I’d look up and see the windows in New York and think of the apartments left empty all day by their owners who went to work in offices. ‘‘I need an office!’’ I thought. I could have used one of those empty rooms. In my 30s, I wrote in the back house of a ramshackle Spanish Revival we rented across from the ocean in the Santa

In ‘Casebook,’ Simpson tells the tale of a young boy who endeavors to find out the secrets behind his parents’ failing marriage (Knopf).

Monica Canyon. I wrote thousands of pages there, but in order to see another adult human being I had to steal out through the brambly side of the house, along the driveway down to the street. I was usually spotted by my child, who was still young and would cry for me. When I started writing ‘‘Casebook,’’ I needed to be watched while I worked. I’d rented an office but I was recently divorced and traveling too much for a family illness. I thought that I could hold it together for a day’s work if other people were around. I wouldn’t let myself cry in public. I wrote the first draft on a table in the Santa Monica Public Library. Now I write at home. I revised the last 11 drafts, red-penciled the copy

editing and marked the first-pass galleys at different places in the house; sitting on the floor next to the heating vent, on my bed, at the kitchen table, leaning back in my chair with my feet up on the desk. Writers collect stories of rituals: John Cheever putting on a jacket and tie to go down to the basement, where he kept a desk near the boiler room. Keats buttoning up his clean white shirt to write in, after work. Instead of a dedicated room, my best trigger is the actual habit of reading over the texts from the day before. Marking. Changing. Fussing. This ritual amounts to a habit of trust. Trust that I can make it better. That if I keep trying, I will come closer to something true.

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Joyce Carol Oates

The National Book Award–winning author in the second-floor study of her home just outside Princeton, N.J.

‘‘NO IDEAS BUT IN DREAMS’’ — or rather, daydreams. I spend much of my time gazing out the window of any writing space I have inhabited. This is particularly true of my present study which overlooks, from the second floor of our house, the rear of our property sloping down to a creek that flows into a lake. There is surely some subtle connection between the vistas we face and the writing we accomplish, as a dream takes its mood and imagery from our waking life. Among my earliest memories are the fields, woods and creeks of my childhood in western New York State, where I grew up on a small farm north of Buffalo. I could see the

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Tonawanda Creek from the upstairs windows of our farmhouse. This writing room replicates, to a degree, the old, lost vistas of my childhood. What it contains is less significant to me than what it overlooks, though obviously there are precious things here — photographs of my parents and my grandmother. Photographs of my husband Raymond Smith, who died in 2008, and of my second husband, Charlie Gross. Portraits of me by my friend Gloria Vanderbilt. Like all writers, I have made my writing room a sanctuary of the soul. Bookshelves contain copies of most of the books I have written from 1963 onward. How stunned I

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would have been to imagine, at the outset of my writing life, that, in time, I would write so many books! — when each day’s work, each hour’s work, feels so anxiously wrought and hard-won. My writing begins in ‘‘longhand’’ sketches and notes. I write at my beautifully carved little ‘‘antique’’ table where I can gaze dreamily toward the creek and lake and be distracted by birds at the feeders below. My larger, more utilitarian

desk contains my laptop and it’s here that I type seriously, often for hours, expanding on ideas that I’ve written by hand in what is called, quaintly, ‘‘cursive’’ — soon to be a lost or even secret skill, like Gaelic. I love my study and am unhappy to leave it for long. Yet I think I most envy writers who look upon the sea or rivers — I would be enthralled facing such a view where time would pass virtually unnoticed, in anticipation of something wonderful.

In ‘Carthage,’ Oates conjures the harrowing story of a young woman who goes missing and the decorated Iraq War veteran who becomes a suspect (Ecco).

Roddy Doyle

The attic of the author's house in Dublin, where most of his work is set, including the 1993 Booker Prize winner, ‘‘Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha.’’

‘The Guts’ revisits the workingclass characters, now almost 30 years older, of ‘The Commitments,’ Doyle’s debut novel (Viking). I WORK IN THE ATTIC of my home, in Dublin. There are three skylights, so I have good light as I work but I can see nothing but the sky. Except in the winter months, when the geese come to stay, from Canada. I hear them first, at about 4 p.m. — every day — and I look up through the window right over my head and see the geese, in the battle-formation V, charging across the sky to Dublin Bay. It’s a sight — and a sound — that never fails to make me grin. It’s so impressive, and comical. It’s the sounds that reach the attic that inspire me.

Sirens from the local police station, children’s laughter, the noises of construction — a shout in Polish, followed by laughter — the DART, Dublin’s commuter train, passing, dogs barking. Constant, welcome reminders that I live in a city, and that my characters live in a city. The approaching geese are my daily alarm clock, a push to get some words down before the end of the working day. But it’s the seagulls that I love. I’ve always lived near the sea and the squawks and thumps of the gulls have been a constant. They land on the roof, right over my head. I often see them perched beside one of the skylights. They look so earnest. They’ve made their way into several books. I even made them talk in a children’s book — it seemed quite natural. Once, I heard a particularly urgent squawk, looked up and saw a seagull chasing a heron. The urge to open the window and shout ‘‘Why?’’ was almost overpowering. There might be a book in the answer. March-April 2014

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Wild Kingdom In ‘‘India Song,’’ the latest series by the London-based photographer Karen Knorr, a sarus crane strikes a statuesque one-legged pose — a proud avian sentinel watching over a spunsugar white marble chamber in Udaipur’s City Palace. A cheetah gazes contemplatively out the arched windows at the afternoon light like a Vermeer housemaid. A Bengal tiger luxuriates on a bed in the ornately decorated Mehrangarh Fort, the very model of feline hauteur. Redolent of fairy tales and ancient myths yet grounded in contemporary politics, Knorr’s mysterious, stately images prompt a host of questions: Could this albino blackbuck be a spellbound 110

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prince from a Sanskrit fable? Who will dare displace this zebu bull from the magnificent china shop that is Rajasthan’s Samode Palace? In what Knorr calls ‘‘a memento mori for our species,’’ the sight of this resplendent menagerie — a lion-tailed macaque, a snowy egret, a hoopoe — inhabiting such grand interiors evokes a curious sense of dislocation, a realization that for all their affluence, power, taste and vanity, the well-born nobles of the Mughal Empire are long extinct. Amid India’s rapid modernization and population boom, these particular nonhuman species may well soon join them. As Knorr notes, the series ‘‘uses animal characters to playfully evoke the foibles of power and the melancholy of its abuses.’’ — AARON GELL

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