T Qatar Issue 30 by Oryx Group of Magazines

Section

Sub Section Women’s Fashion February 20, 2015 Syren top and gloves. Hair by Christiaan. Makeup by Dick Page for Shiseido.

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Features

90 The Human Touch The season’s most elegant clothes honor the artisan, revealing the touches — frayed edges, exposed topstitching — that make them special. Photographs by Craig McDean Styled by Joe McKenna

100 A Local International Art Scene Thanks to a progressive sheikh and his artist daughter, Sharjah — an emirate previously overshadowed by Qatar and its flashy billionaires — is fast becoming a center for the Middle Eastern avant-garde. By Carol Kino Photographs by Bharat Sikka

INEZ AND VINOODH

82 S oul in the Machine On the eve of Bjork’s eighth studio album and a major retrospective at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, the Nordic nymph looks back on the good, the bad and the ljotur of her boundary-shattering career. By Emily Witt Photographs by Inez and Vinoodh Styled by Mel Ottenberg

ON THE COVER: Photograph by Inez and Vinoodh. Styled by Mel Ottenberg. Hair by Christiaan. Makeup by Dick Page. Bjork in a Syren top, QR1,310, and gloves, QR98.28, syren.com.

T Qatar: The New York Times Style Magazine

Lookout

24 S ign of the Times As designers stray further from their assigned lanes, one writer assesses the promise and perils of a world without trends. 26 T his and That Japanese chefs take Paris; Baccarat opens a shiny hotel; Neil Patrick Harris hosts the Oscars; the Birkin’s extreme makeover; and more. 32 The Moment From textured tights to body-hugging sweaters, spring fashion is infused with a quirky innocence. 36 Watch Report Timepieces with nude bands stand out by blending in.

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Quality

Arena

55 In Fashion Florals for spring? Mixed with utilitarian staples, it’s anything but predictable. 60 Objects Reflective hardware that makes otherwise ordinary shoes and bags shine.

38 Market Report Giddy up — the saddlebag is back. 50 Runway Report Thanks to expert tailoring, dressy denim is no longer an oxymoron. 52 On Beauty Natural, nondescript hair is remarkable for how unremarkable it is.

65 H ome and Work History courses through the loom of Alexandra Kehayoglou, whose natureinspired terrains weave modern whimsy into an intricate art that’s been in her family for generations. 67 By Design Christian Louboutin dips his signature red-soled stiletto into the beauty business. 73 Arts and Letters Stricken with a rare skin condition that forces her into constant darkness, a writer finds her light on the page. 104 Document Leanne Shapton paints the pottery of Lucie Rie.

54 Take Two Helena Bonham Carter and Kim Gordon chew on duck-fat caramels, jazzy rap and the anti-Barbie.

Left: Spools of yarn in the studio of the Argentine rug artist Alexandra Kehayoglou. Right: Roger Vivier sandals, QR3,094. Moynat bag, QR10,192. Agnona vest.

T Qatar: The New York Times Style Magazine

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: BRUNO OSIF; EMILIANO GRANADO

Page 65

THE FAST COMPANY Seyhan Özdemir and Sefer Caglar, creative minds of Autoban

Page 68

Lookout Qatar 40 This and That The Qumra Film Festival nurtures regional talent; Design Days Dubai presents desirable works of modern and contemporary design with the theme of diversity and inclusiveness; artist Sabah Arbilli reveals his art through Arabic calligraphy. 42 Market Watch The industry experts of the Doha Jewellery and Watches Exhibition tell us which pieces they love and why. 44 Creative Vibe Printemps celebrates its 150-year history, with a year-long celebration at its stunning Haussman store. 46 New Legacy Not only does Jimmy Choo craft beautiful shoes, it also represents the women who wear them. 48 Lap of Luxury E-retailer Net-A-Porter conveys stories of women, and tailors fashion into their lifestyles.

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76 A Pearl of a Story The Qatar Pearl Legacy project brings together Robert Wan and Al Fardan as they partner with HH Sheikha Moza bint Nasser to revive pearl harvesting in Qatar.

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68 In Design The design world’s eyes are on Turkey, thanks to Seyhan Özdemir and Sefer Caglar, and their Autoban design studio.

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COPYRIGHT INFO 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 2015 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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Sign of the Times

The Post-Trend Universe BY CATHY HORYN

For me, the top lemon of the spring collections is Raf Simons’s white cotton smock dresses for Dior. At the time full of manufacturers and rather timid in its ideas, a of the shows I heard people say, ‘‘Those are hideous’’ — well-known editor used to march into showrooms and drawing out the word to make it clear they thought say, ‘‘Show me the lemons!’’ She meant the styles that Simons had lost his mind by showing a high-collared buyers had deemed too unusual but which, for that dress that looked like a Victorian reason, she thought, held appeal. DATE WITH HISTORY From the full-skirted 1950s gent’s sleeping costume. But I She could be assured that no one and the mod 1960s to the flowy 1970s and the power-shouldered 1980s and beyond, influences adored it. Squeeze me a lemon! else — or, no other magazine — for the spring collections span decades. I could imagine someone, not would have those rejected styles. From left: Balmain, Carven, Christian Dior, Donna Karan. necessarily me, wearing the They were different.

IN THE WORLD OF THE ’50s, when Seventh Avenue was

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FROM LEFT: BALMAIN, CARVEN, DIOR AND DONNA KARAN

In a world where fashion moves Instagram-fast, the ‘‘look’’ of the season is a thing of the past. And that’s a cause for rejoicing.

strange cotton sack with beautiful gold sandals instead of the dark boots that Simons used. And you know what would happen: Heads would turn, looks of envy and delight would appear, and suddenly everyone would wish they had a dress as cool — and odd — as that Dior smock. I mention this because we live in a supermarket of choices, not just in what we wear but also in the kinds of food we eat, the music we listen to and the decorating styles we might choose for our homes. There is no single trend that demands our attention, much less our allegiance, as so many options are available to us at once. According to the theory of lemons, anything could be selected and prized for its very individuality and we wouldn’t look out of step. Of course, throughout the 20th century, the way women dressed was governed by trends — from the hobble skirt of the 1910s, a Paris invention that spread to small cities and was ultimately sold by Sears, to Dior’s radical New Look of 1947, to the ’60s miniskirt. But for lots of reasons, mostly to do with economics and, inevitably, the Internet, the industry has moved away from that model. The last big trend that I can recall, one that started on the runway and exploded among mainstream manufacturers, was the hospital-green cargo pants that Nicolas Ghesquière made for Balenciaga. That was more than a decade ago. Now, to look at the spring collections is to see broad categories based on distinct, vintage styles — the full-skirted ’50s dresses at Bottega Veneta and Michael Kors, among others; the ’60s mini-shifts and glossy surfaces shown at Carven, Louis Vuitton and Giambattista Valli’s younger line, Giamba; and the unbelievable amount of ’70s funk and color in shows like Gucci, Etro and Derek Lam. I could go on. The fashions of every decade since World War II are represented in the new spring collections. That may sound like more revivalism — but the ability to find styles that actually suit one’s body and personality is cause for celebration, offering women so many more forms of self-expression. In the past, trends allowed every part of the fashion business to get a piece of the action. Department stores could sell their beloved ‘‘hot items,’’ magazines could assert their authority over readers and manufacturers could produce endless knock-offs. This might have been great for business, but less so for the consumer. Now, though, every brand, and every media outlet, is focused on creating its own universe, ostensibly for the people who want its products or to buy into a point of view. As popular as fashion is today, running on a mixture of media platforms, the information is usually too diffuse. That’s why branding is so dominant; it helps establish corporate identities — boundaries, really — but branding also functions as a filter for many consumers. Fashion magazines also play an entirely different role than they did 20 or 30 years ago, when they could advise readers about whether or not pants were appropriate for the office. Almost no one cares about that sort of thing today. More often than not, the influence-makers are young people who promote their daily outfits on

Instagram, accumulating ‘‘likes’’ that are essentially data points for designer brands. It’s not unusual for some style gurus to rack up 25,000 or more ‘‘likes’’ for an outfit. Do they move merchandise? No doubt, but they don’t necessarily spur a mass following. Besides, someone new is always surfacing on social media to show off their stuff. Luxury fashion is also partly to blame for the disappearance of trends. Think of how often in the past decade you’ve heard a designer emphasize the ‘‘specialness’’ of fabrics, couture techniques or elaborate trims, details that were either too esoteric or costly to be duplicated in great numbers. Indeed, the mania for exclusivity has evolved to an extreme, and very weird, point. During the red-carpet chatter at the recent Golden Globes I heard several actresses say their dresses were ‘‘custom’’ — as in, ‘‘It’s custom Narciso Rodriguez,’’ meaning no one else will ever have one. People have always sought to differentiate themselves, but you can also see how this desire to be special has limited the influence of high fashion designers. It may even be an oldfashioned ambition, to judge from the way designers like Ghesquière, now at Louis Vuitton, smartly focus on styles that are younger and also not overly complicated or pretentious. Although the term ‘‘trendy’’ suggests speed and thoughtless consumption, the heyday of trends occurred, paradoxically, in eras when people had time to absorb change. A hemline remained in place for years, whereas today every length is on offer. In a funny way, I think we’re moving toward a more relaxed attitude about many things, if only out of necessity. We tune out the haters and the screechy TV dress pundits, and we tune out clothes that seem punishing or artificial to us. That said, we are more tolerant than ever before of the girl whose outfit and manner is intentionally gawky or who, in her wildest dreams, wants to look like an exploding Comme des Garçons flower or maybe a disciple of Gareth Pugh, with jacket sleeves falling in long streamers. If anything, we probably need more individual expressions of style, even if they are a minimalist whisper. A couple of years ago, Simons created an eclectic Dior collection around the notion of freedom, with styles loosely inspired by a variety of global influences. You may ask: Aren’t we already free to pick and choose? But Simons was really addressing fashion insiders. Because, while we may live in a post-trend universe, there is still consensus among editors and buyers about what is cool or chic in a given season. In a way, insiders cling to the notion of clearly defined themes more than anyone else; that’s why you see the same styles repeated in stores. Simons was simply arguing for more open-mindedness, more oddball gems in the mix. So I celebrate the trendlessness of fashion even as my head reels from all the choices and I sometimes feel a stranger among the competing style tribes, a latter-day Margaret Mead sizing up a flock of hippie suede or some Bardot-flirty gingham.

We are more tolerant than ever before of the girl whose outfit is intentionally gawky or who, in her wildest dreams, wants to look like an exploding Comme des Garçons flower.

March - April 2015

Lookout

This and That An Icon Goes Minimal ART MARKET

Downtown’s Newest Gallerist Bridget Donahue, formerly a director at Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, has opened a massive New York gallery with a refreshingly eclectic program. ‘‘I’m drawn to those who engage with the long game,’’ says the Iowa City native, who champions artists of all kinds – older, under-the-radar, anti-establishment – who might otherwise get sidelined in Chinatown’s trend-heavy scene. Her debut exhibition celebrates the work of Lynn Hershman Leeson, a 73-year-old artist whose prescient mixed-media creations began addressing the relationship between gender and technology as early as the 1960s. Following that, Donahue will host a show CLARITY OF VISION From left: ‘‘Sleepers,’’ a 1997 performance featuring the work of the artist and fashion by Susan Cianciolo; ‘‘Burned designer Susan Cianciolo, whose homespun Bride,’’ a wax-and-gauze mold of the artist Lynn Hershman zines, pillows and clothing demonstrate artisanal Leeson’s face from her 1964 flair and a subversive sensibility that fits the ‘‘Suicide Series’’ performance; the gallerist Bridget Donahue. space. bridgetdonahue.nyc — MAIKA POLLACK

FASHION MEMO

Hit the High Seas Designers are riding a wave of rope detailing and sailor stripes. ILLUSTRATIONS BY KONSTANTIN KAKANIAS

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It’s tough to improve on perfection, but that’s precisely what Hermès has done with the new hyper-pared-down Birkin Sellier 40. According to Couli Jobert, the leather artistic director at Hermès, natural brown was deemed too obvious for the new Birkin, which is only available in matte black with silver palladium hardware. As the goal was to create an essential design without clutter, the structured cowhide bag is extra-wide, has no lining and the stitching is extremely subtle. It’s a radically modern update of the elegant classic, which has been the subject of girl envy — and the cause of waiting lists — since it was first crafted in 1984. About QR54,236, hermes .com — CATHY HORYN

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: COURTESY OF THE ARTISTS AND BRIDGET DONAHUE, NYC; DAVID N. REGEN; MARKO METZINGER; MAURICIO GUILLÉN

A Cultural Compendium

This and That

Deco’s Modern Twist

From Louis Vuitton to Prada, patchwork seemed to pop up everywhere this season.

NOW BOOKING

The Crystal Palace

Clockwise from top left: Prada spring 2015. Osman spring 2015. MM6 spring 2015. Prada boots, price on request. Louis Vuitton bag, QR24,388.

Baccarat opens a glistening hotel in New York. Not surprisingly, the new Baccarat Hotel, a grand mansion that opened in March in midtown Manhattan, is a shiny affair. The French designers Patrick Gilles and Dorothée Boissier have adorned lamps, walls, arches and even armchairs with the company’s gleaming crystal. Thousands of backlit Harcourt tumblers — Baccarat’s most iconic design — flank the entrance, and tiered chandeliers hung from slack hemp-covered chains intensify deep red walls in the bar. The sumptuous guest rooms, bathed in crisp whites and grays, mix elegance with informality — which, says Boissier, ‘‘is so not French.’’ From QR3,272 a night, baccarathotels.com — KATHLEEN HACKETT

REFLECTIVE MOMENTS Below: Kiko Lopez pouring silver onto glass in his studio in Provence. Left: ‘‘Titan’s Forge,’’ a set of four mirrors by the artist.

BY DESIGN

A Gift for Glass

Kiko Lopez makes mirrors that combine an 18th-century technique with a renegade spirit. Using the painstaking process of verre églomisé, he covers engraved glass with gold and silver leaf, a skill he mastered in the South of France while apprenticing for several retired artisans after, he says, ‘‘they realized I was serious and wasn’t just going to make reproductions.’’ Although he’s committed to respecting tradition, the Puerto Rican-born artist makes pieces that feel completely modern, sometimes tweaking the patina with an accidental coffee spill or cigarette ash. Decorators such as Alberto Pinto, Chahan Minassian and Caroline Sarkozy have commissioned his work, which includes lustrous large-scale mirrors and Jean-Michel Frank-inspired glass fireplaces, and which is now available in America through the New York design shop Maison Gerard. Starting at QR54,600, maisongerard.com — SADIE STEIN

T Qatar: The New York Times Style Magazine

CLOCKWISE FROM BOTTOM LEFT: ROBERT LEVIN FOR MAISON GERARD; COURTESY OF PRADA; MITCHEL SAMS; MM6; COURTESY OF PRADA; LOUIS VUITTON; PHOTO COURTESY OF THE ARTIST. ILLUSTRATION BY KONSTANTIN KAKANIAS

Lookout

This and That

FEELING FOR

Modern Talismans Worn long and loose, pendant necklaces give a hint of hippie magic. From left: Céline, QR1,893, saksfifthavenue.com. Hermès, QR6,188. Pilar Olaverri, QR2,839, pilarolaverri.com. Edun, QR3,986, edun.com. Dries Van Noten, QR1,802, IF SoHo.

FOOD MATTERS

For years, aspiring culinary stars from Japan have been decamping to Paris to learn new techniques, but recently they’ve been leaving behind the Michelin-starred dining temples that trained them — from Astrance to Taillevent — to headline their own spots. At Restaurant ES in the Seventh Arrondissement, the chef Takayuki Honjo improvises with simple, market-driven dishes, such as roast pigeon in cocoa sauce, which are as delicate in flavor as they are graphic in presentation. At Neige d’Été in the 15th, Hideki Nishi dabbles in modern French cuisine including salmon with a Gorgonzola millefeuille. Over in the 11th, at 6036 — a 14-seat izakaya named for the distance, in miles, between Paris and Tokyo — the chef Haruka Casters plays up seasonal small plates (sake-steamed clams with cabbage, teriyaki burgers). ‘‘Paris is a cosmopolitan city with many opportunities to improve one’s cooking,’’ says Casters. ‘‘But it’s also much easier to be seen here than in a megalopolis like Tokyo.’’ restaurant-es .com; neigedete.fr; resto6036.com — LINDSEY TRAMUTA

PURE AND SIMPLE Clockwise from top: the interior of Restaurant ES; grilled white asparagus with poached egg and bottarga at 6036; the ES chef Takayuki Honjo; the facade of Neige d’Été.

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Neil Patrick Harris on the pressure of hosting his first Academy Awards. ‘‘When I used to watch the Oscars at home with my family, we would print out ballots, write down our predictions and see who won. As I got older, our viewing parties had more of a gambling slant — same ballot, different stakes. Now they just involve more drinking, and when it’s at my house, there’s a lot of Velveeta and Pace Picante. ‘‘I’ll admit that I was nervous to host, but it’s much less pressure than being a nominee, having to go down a red carpet filled with prognosticators saying, ‘I think it’s your night! I can smell it!’ Then you’re sitting in your chair, your heart’s pounding and you have 15 names that you pray to God you don’t forget — and your name’s not called. Or, even stranger, your name is called, and you’re blinded by adrenaline and panic. That’s much more nerve-racking to me than going out and saying, ‘Our next two presenters are the stars of this movie, please welcome Brad and Angelina.’ ”

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: MARKO METZINGER (5); ILLUSTRATION BY KONSTANTIN KAKANIAS; YOSUKE KOJIMA (3); COURTESY OF 6036.

The Rise of Japanese Chefs in Paris

Lookout

The Moment

A quirky innocence is informing fashion this spring, from eyelet nightshirts to textured tights. PHOTOGRAPHS BY ANNEMARIEKE VAN DRIMMELEN STYLED BY JASON RIDER

CROPPED FLARED PANTS The once geeky cut is now the look of the season, worn casually with brogues or platforms.

T Qatar: The New York Times Style Magazine

Calvin Klein Collection pants, QR6,898. Etro top, QR3,716. Margaret Howell shoes, about QR1,686, margarethowell.co.uk.

ALL PRICES ARE INDICATIVE

TEXTURED TIGHTS Youthfully sexy, especially with a miniskirt and low heels.

Falke tights, QR178, shopbop. com. Coach sweater, QR1,438, skirt, QR2,366, and shoes, QR1,074, coach.com.

March - April 2015

Lookout

The Moment

THE SHIRTDRESS Whether a cotton eyelet nightshirt or a button-down mini, the effect is one of crisp purism.

Dior dress, QR36,400.

T Qatar: The New York Times Style Magazine

MODEL: PHILLIPA HEMPHREY AT NEW YORK MODEL MANAGEMENT. HAIR BY KRISTEN SHAW AT JED ROOT USING ORIBE HAIR CARE. MAKEUP BY GIA HARRIS AT ARTMIX CREATIVE FOR CHANEL BEAUTÉ. MANICURE BY PILAR LAFARGUE AT OPUS BEAUTY USING DIOR VERNIS. CASTING BY ARIANNA PRADARELLI. PHOTOGRAPHER’S ASSISTANTS: ALEX FOREMAN AND TESKA OVERBEEKE. STYLIST’S ASSISTANTS: KELLY HARRIS AND BENJAMIN KENNEDY

A SKINTIGHT SWEATER Snug and tucked in — a fitting response to seasons of oversize knits.

Boss top, QR1,074, Hugo Boss. Gucci skirt, QR7,244.

March - April 2015

Watch Report

In the Flesh

Embrace the tonal subtlety of a rose gold timepiece with a nude band against bare skin.

PHOTOGRAPHS BY CHARLIE ENGMAN

Clockwise from top left: Vacheron Constantin Traditionelle, QR101,556. Patek Philippe 7200R Calatrava, QR106,652. JaegerLeCoultre Rendez-Vous Date, QR74,256, jaeger-lecoultre.com. Harry Winston Midnight Timepiece, QR69,160.

T Qatar: The New York Times Style Magazine

STYLED BY MALINA JOSEPH GILCHRIST. MODELS: JUN YOUNG AT TRUMP MODELS AND BEN JORDAN AT NEW YORK MODEL MANAGEMENT. HAIR BY RO MORGAN AT SUSAN PRICE NYC. MAKEUP BY ANNE KOHLHAGEN FOR DIORSKIN AT SUSAN PRICE NYC. MANICURE BY YUKO TSUCHIHASHI FOR DIOR VERNIS AT SUSAN PRICE NYCCLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: MICHAEL KORS SWEATER, QR3,622, (212) 452-4685. MAISON MARTIN MARGIELA SWEATER, QR4,623, (212) 989-7612. NILI LOTAN SWEATER, QR855, NILILOTAN.COM. SALVATORE FERRAGAMO SHIRT, QR5,424, (866) 337-7242.

Lookout

Market Report

Saddlebags

With its front closure and long shoulder strap, the sexy little ’70s throwback feels like a necessity this season. PHOTOGRAPHS BY JOANNA M C CLURE

Clockwise from top left: Proenza Schouler, QR10,192. Ralph Lauren Collection, QR4,550. Louis Vuitton, about QR13,468. Michael Kors, QR4,714. Bottega Veneta, QR8,736. Gucci, QR9,828. Hermès, QR29,302. Jil Sander, QR6,625.

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PROP STYLIST: PAUL MORENO. CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: PROENZA SCHOULER BAG. RALPH LAUREN COLLECTION BAG, RALPHLAUREN.COM. LOUIS VUITTON BAG, LOUISVUITTON.COM. MICHAEL KORS BAG,. BOTTEGA VENETA BAG, BOTTEGAVENETA.COM. GUCCI BAG, GUCCI.COM. HERMÈS BAG, HERMES.COM. JIL SANDER BAG, JILSANDER.COM

Lookout

This and That

Alternative Voices in Cinema A festival for filmmakers and those with cinema in their blood.

LIGHTS, CAMERA, ACTION Below right: Gael García Bernal discusses his films at Qumra. Below left: during a master class held at the Qumra festival.

The buzz around the Qumra Film Festival was infectious. Filmmakers, screenwriters and cinema hopefuls converged on the lawns of Katara from March 6 to 11, in an effort to nurture regional talent. The event consisted of one-on-one tutorials, rough cut consultations, script discussions and group workshops, where experts and potential filmmakers found common ground. A panel discussion was also organized by The Doha Film Institute with Qatari filmmakers, whose ideas are being mentored as part of Qumra Projects. The Arabic term ‘qumra’ is considered to be the origin of the word ‘camera’, and is believed to have been used by the scientist, astronomer and mathematician Alhazen, whose work in optics underpin the principles of the camera obscura. Gael García Bernal was one of the many filmmakers in attendance. The actor, producer, director and founder of Canana films in Mexico is someone who believes in giving back to society. Born in 1978, to parents who were a part of Mexican

theater, Bernal was already a recognized figure in the arts when he was barely a few years old. He grew up when Mexican cinema was losing its relevance. “There were hardly any films made and directors like Alfonso Cuarón, Alejandro González Iñárritu and Guillermo del Toro were still at film school. Mexican films weren’t getting released in big cinemas,” he said. Bernal boldly accepted roles in what became path-breaking films. “It’s important to learn how to say no early on. If I hadn’t said no, ‘Amores Perros’ wouldn’t have been my first film and it was important that it was my first film.” The film’s worldwide release was unusual for a non-English language film. “It almost certainly changed Mexican cinema. It put a spotlight on a new continent and also was a new landmark in world cinema,” he says. From then on Bernal’s career, which now spans more than three decades, saw him nominated for a BAFTA award and various roles. He’s played a transvestite and an illegal immigrant in a film which he directed about those who cross the Mexican border. In an effort to give back, he also taught indigenous people. Most recently Bernal worked in "Rosewater", a film directed by Jon Stewart, whom he describes as a great comedian and friend. For Bernal, the Qumra experience offered "the right dynamic" and was similar to what he celebrated in Mexico with the documentary festival, Ambulante. “It has become a fulcrum of social change in Mexico and is one of the most original festivals,” he said. It is hoped Qumra inspires its own set of pioneers. — ABIGAIL MATHIAS

An Arty Kind of Furniture Design Days Dubai was open to the public from March 16 to 20, 2015, and shed light on the universal appeal of design.

BESPOKE CREATIONS Cyril Zammit, director of Design Days Dubai. Opposite page: Nada Deb's Distorted Arabesque Chair.

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The biggest Design Days Dubai yet, South Asia’s only collectible design fair, featured 44 exhibitors from 20 countries presenting desirable works of modern and contemporary design. Diversity and inclusiveness was the theme this year, with participation from around the globe. According to Cyril Zammit, the director of Design Days Dubai since its inception four years ago, the focus for 2015 was on local talent. “This year, we welcomed China and Taiwan for the first time to our exhibition. We also have a very strong UAE presence with 10 Middle Eastern participants and a better regional presence,” he said. “Mainstream galleries like Gallery Fumi, Broached Commissions, an Australian Gallery, came back for this year’s fair.” From Qatar, the Virginia Commonwealth University in Qatar (VCUQ)

IMAGES COURTESY OF DFI, BLUE SALON, SABAH ARIBILLI, NADA DEBS, DESIGN DAYS DUBAI

Lookout Qatar

From the Heart

A young artist translates his message through Arabic calligraphy. While driving past Doha’s picturesque Corniche, a 7-meter-high stainless steel sculpture, which seems like a jumble of Arabic alphabets, will definitely catch your eye. For calligraphy artist Sabah Arbilli, it is his tribute to the place he calls home. “In 2012, I held an exhibition called Al Moases (The Founder) at Souq Waqif. The artworks were inspired by poems of Qatar’s founder, HH Sheikh Jassim, which were extremely thought-provoking. After reflecting on the verses I wanted to take the poetry to a different level where more people could be impacted by it,” Arbilli says. The sculpture was installed in 2013. Set against the backdrop of the skyscrapers of Doha, the poem seems etched in time. “I felt the poem was the missing piece to connect the surroundings here,” adds Arbilli. After leaving Iraq in 1999, where he had already gained recognition for his Arabic calligraphy, Arbilli continued his studies in Britain. He believes that this experience enhanced his understanding of art and the transitioning from the traditional to the modern. “I started to explore and underpin the theory and contextualised my work,” he says. Arbilli has always been interested in the written word. “As a child I was always fascinated with Arabic letters,

the form and its structure. Being passionate about calligraphy and creating pieces each time in a different format and approach, gives me a true purpose of life,” he says. Arbilli recently collaborated with the luxury brand Aigner in a unique event. The experience allowed customers to select a saying or a verse of poetry, and have it rendered by the artist on an Aigner Cybill bag from its heritage collection. The project was the first of its kind in the Middle East. Today only a handful of artists pursue Arabic calligraphy, presenting this unique complex art in modern ways. Arbilli is not afraid to push the envelope. “One can say art is being used more universally and not limited to a canvas or space. The art work of Roy Lichtenstein, for example, was used on Boyarde’s bags.” Bespoke bags mean discerning clients will all have unique pieces. “Art pieces in a house or a fixed place are only seen by the consumer, but art on bags can be shared openly with an audience anywhere,” says the artist. “As Picasso said ‘Give me a museum and I will fill it.’ I would say, ‘Give me a bag and I will color it with letters'" he says. — ABIGAIL MATHIAS

COLLABORATION Top: artist Sabah Arbilli at the Fashion Meets Art initiative held at the Blue Salon Mall; the stainless steel calligraphic sculpture by Arbilli takes pride of place on Doha’s Corniche.

hosted two stands, one an offshoot of the work done by the students from its Master’s course, while the other focusing on the success of the university’s design festival, Tasmeem 2015. According to Zammit, Dubai has welcomed a new design philosophy ushered in by Design Days. “People now understand that we do not bring just any chair with a functionality aspect, but a chair that is unique in every aspect of design,” he said. This year Nada Debs, a Lebanese designer whose interest ranges from products and buildings to museum pieces, exhibited a retrospective of her 10 years’ worth of craft and contemporary design. “This is a great honour,” Debs said. “People are aware of the impact of design and all the media coverage has helped this definitive movement.” Debs’ space showcased the Distorted Arabesque Chair, a limited edition piece specially designed to debut in the UAE. “It is the intricacy of the work that inspires me. It is not just the product, but the inspiration behind it, the concept and the story that enthused the work, that excites me,” she said. — SINDHU NAIR

March - April 2015

Lookout Qatar

DAVID WEBB

THE NAIL RING FROM THE TOOL CHEST COLLECTION

“The idea of the nail design was born in 1971 as a unisex collection. It was about a woman’s possession of the men’s world. It’s about empowerment.” Mark Emanuel, co-owner of David Webb jewels

Market Watch

One’s Own Heart The movers and shakers of the Doha Jewellery and Watches Exhibition divulge why some pieces hold a special place in their hearts. BY DEBRINA ALIYAH

SAFARI CHRONOMETER FROM THE SPORTING COLLECTION

“It’s a serious collection. It’s got that outdoor feel and I can imagine wearing this on a safari and that really conveys the sense of adventure that the watch was designed for.”

BUCCELLATI MILAN

Nicolas Clements, brand director in Europe and Middle East of Ralph Lauren watches

THE PAOLINA NECKLACE

“I saw the sculpture of Paolina Borghese in a museum and I knew I had to design something in homage to the artwork. I am always in two minds if I should sell this necklace!” Luca Buccellati, third generation jeweler at Buccellati Milan

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CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT; IMAGES COURTESY OF DAVID WEBB, BUCCELLATI MILAN, RALPH LAUREN.

RALPH LAUREN

CARTIER

THE CROCODILE NECKLACE MADE FOR MARIA FELIX

“Mexican diva and reptile lover Maria Felix came to our showroom in Paris in 1975 with two pet crocodiles and commissioned us to make a representation of the animals on a necklace.” Laurent Gaborit, Regional Managing Director Middle East, India & Africa, Cartier

REPOSSI

REPOSSI DIAMOND RING

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT; IMAGES COURTESY OF CARTIER,SUZANNE KALAN, ROLAND ITEN, REPOSSI.

SUZANNE KALAN

“No one is able to tell that these diamonds are being worn, as they are delicately covered from the base of the finger. This makes them stand out from all the rest.”

FIREWORKS BAGUETTE RING

“I won the ‘2014 Best Diamonds Design’ award for this ring at the Las Vegas Jewelery Couture show, and anyone who sees it can immediately recognize my work.”

Gaia Repossi, owner and artistic director of Repossi

Suzanne Kalandjian, designer and owner of Suzanne Kalan jewels

ROLAND ITEN

QATAR DIAMOND CUFFLINKS

“We wanted to create something exquisite for the exhibition by imbibing 18-karat white gold to depict the Qatar flag with nine sets adorned with diamonds.” Roland A.K. Iten, designer and creator

March - April 2015

Lookout Qatar

Creative Vibe

Celebrating the Flowers of Spring The iconic Parisian department store, Printemps reflects on the emotional relationships it has built with its shoppers.

THE HIGHLY stylized Haussman store that is the heart and soul of the storied French retailer Printemps came to life in 1865 through the work of architects Jules and Paul Sédille. The Neoclassical sculptor Henri Chapu, in his love for allegory, finished the facade of the building with four figures representing the passing seasons. In all of the building’s 150-year history, it has encountered fires and wars, reconstruction and expansion, and in modern times, recognition and preservation. With a sweeping view of Paris that extends to the Opera and Eiffel Tower from its panoramic terrace and the Art Deco cupola, the building was inducted as a national historic monument in 1975. The resilient history of the Haussman building is akin to the story of the Printemps business. Founding fathers Jules Jaluzot and Jean-Alfred Duclos kickstarted a flourishing enterprise that was novel at its time, but in the 20th century the business went through various upheavals and was finally acquired by the PPR Group in 1997. But the revival and solid comeback of Printemps as a major player in the retail industry really began in 2006 when the Italian Borletti Group took over and realigned the business’s objective. Charting an impressive 40 percent growth in the last six years with 28 million visitors annually, it is no surprise that new owners Divine Investments SA — a Qatari-backed fund — came on board in 2013. Drawing its name from the French word for spring, the brand has always offered the newest, freshest and brightest, just like the flowers that bloom in the season. What has cemented Printemps as a French institution is not just what it sells but the way these commodities are presented to the French community. The monumental building was the starting point, followed by the intricate and highly detailed window and in-store displays, which began in 1910, and become an integral part of the shopping experience. As a child, Franck Banchet, artistic director for Printemps, used to visit the store with his parents as part of their family tradition to admire the festive window displays. “And for the past twenty years, I am proud to say I have been creating these displays with our team,” he says. These emotional relationships, cultivated through generations of Parisian shoppers, is unrivaled and something that Printemps highly values in its new positioning. “We know of shoppers who have come with their grandparents to buy school shoes and uniforms and loyal customers who come in once a week, so we have

T Qatar: The New York Times Style Magazine

IMAGES COURTESY OF PRINTEMPS

BY DEBRINA ALIYAH

of the surroundings,” de Cesare explains. And in the world of social media sharing, the vibrant backdrop makes for great snapshots, especially for the droves of tourists who visit Paris annually. With a 40 percent international shopper base, Printemps is equipped with staff members who speak a total of 14 languages. “A strong point of fashion selection combined with highly dedicated service staff, we are really about giving the complete experience,” de Cesare adds. After posting a profit of close to 1.5 billion euros (QR6.09 billion) in the year ending 2013, last year saw the first time in 32 years that Printemps opened new outposts — one in Louvre and another in Marseilles. The company currently operates 18 stores across France and this year’s anniversary will mark another new-concept opening in the south of the country. “The strategy now is very focused on iconic locations with a very high bar of standards. It’s difficult to meet our criteria but when we do find something, we will consider,” de Cesare explains. This year marks an important milestone for the brand, and a year-long celebration has commenced to commemorate its 150-year-old history. With the legendary buyer Maria Luisa as a consultant for the store, the fashion collections feature special limited edition collaborations with major brands including Dolce & Gabbana and Fendi, created specifically for the celebrations. Luisa herself also launched a capsule collection for the season. The facade of the to keep innovating to continuously provide a new experience for building will be lit up in flower monochromes, and the Japanese them,” says the company's CEO, Paolo de Cesare. The construction artist Hiroshi Yoshii brought to life the anniversary mascot, Rose these experiences elaborate projects begins up to eighteen months — a flower-adorned character. “The unifying element of all window before the event. In the last few years, the department store has displays is the flower, that is directly linked to our name Printemps collaborated with luxury brands to create its themes; Christmas at and eleven artists have been approached to express themselves the Castle with Lanvin in 2010; Around the World in 48 Hours with around this theme,” Banchet explains. Chanel in 2011; Parisian Inspirations with Dior in 2012; and With the inclusion of food kiosks, workshops and the traditional Christmas Codes and Humour with Prada in 2013. handing out of roses to shoppers on the first day of spring, the It is also a perceptive business decision to preserve this visual brand is on track to create memories niche, to stay competitive in a retail for the next generation. “We have environment that is increasingly been in operations spanning through dominated by online shopping. “We three centuries, and the celebration have to give customers a reason to will reflect on our history. We really come to the store by providing an SPRINGTIME Clockwise from top left: the Art Deco cupola; the understand our past and constantly experience that is not only about the personal shopper lounge; Céline’s special edition bag for envision the future,” de Cesare says. products. It is a narrative about Printemps; the Haussman building; the celebratory rose facade for the anniversary event. service, animation and the architecture

IMAGES COURTESY OF PRINTEMPS

The fashion collections feature special collaborations with luxury brands created for the anniversary celebrations.

March - April 2015

Lookout Qatar

New Legacy

The Sole Supremacy Jimmy Choo is not only just about crafting beautiful shoes, it's also about representing women through transformational soles.

AT THE RECENT OSCARS, Anna Kendrick appeared as Cinderella in the award show’s opening skit, holding the famous "glass slippers" which turned out to be a pair of gold Jimmy Choo Darilyn pumps. It could have been assumed to be a sponsored stint, but it wasn’t, and it was the biggest surprise of the night for the Jimmy Choo team. It was a moment to reflect on the full circle that the luxury shoe brand has come since its early days, when the founding partners earnestly hosted annual suites at the Oscars to dress celebrities. The strategy to align to the world of the stars has always been integral to the story of Jimmy Choo, a brand founded on bespoke services that has charmed early fans such as the late Princess Diana. Carrie Bradshaw may have started it all in her Jimmy Choo ‘moment’ on Sex and the City, but the influence has reached new heights, with even Kate Middleton and Michelle Obama donning the ‘Choos’. “It is a reflection of the diverse appeal of our brand,” says Pierre Denis, the CEO of Jimmy Choo Ltd. This award season has been particularly successful; powerhouses Meryl Streep and Scarlett Johansson were among many spotted in the brand’s pieces. The luxury shoemaker now

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designs an annual Awards Collection geared toward celebrities and stylists for the red carpet season. And with the premiere of Disney’s new Cinderella tale, Into The Woods, comes the design collaboration between various shoemakers and the filmhouse to reimagine the "glass slippers". Jimmy Choo’s version draws on the feminine and magical elements of what we remember as young girls. “I think every girl desires a Cinderella moment in their lives. This story ignites a love affair and fascination with shoes that never dies. I wanted to create a timeless silhouette evoking those childhood emotions,” says the brand’s creative director, Sandra Choi. Fulfilling the ‘Cinderella’ moment of women’s lives and creating an aspirational fantasy through celebrities has brought the brand so much commercial success that as a privately held company until only recently, it regularly made headlines in business news as it does in the fashion pages. After a few ownership changes in its history, the brand went public in October last year with steadily increasing share prices and has now been included in the FTSE 250. For Denis, it is business as usual with the company seriously committing to the growth possibilities that comes with the initial public offering. “Shoes

IMAGES COURTESY OF JIMMY CHOO

BY DEBRINA ALIYAH

BESPOKE MOMENTS Clockwise from top right: Choi goes back to the origins through the bespoke service; Denis, Jimmy Choo Ltd.'s CEO; the Jimmy Choo for Cinderella sketch; monogramming of soles for special orders.

that are all specialists in different fields,” he adds. But going public has drawn criticism that perhaps the brand will lose its luster in its bid to expand. However recent innovations, including the introduction of the Made To Order (MTO) service have proved otherwise. “The preservation of exclusivity starts in the integrity of our design and quality. We are also constantly innovating and surprising our customers each season while providing core collections that they can rely on,” Denis says. The MTO service, is something akin to paying homage to the roots of the brand, when the man himself, Jimmy Choo (who

IMAGES COURTESY OF JIMMY CHOO

Preserving a heritage of personalization allows every woman to have a unique pair of Jimmy Choos.

and bags are our core but we have already successfully established fragrance, eyewear and soft accessories including scarves and furs,” Denis explains. There’s also the expansion of the global store network starting with three regions: the U.S., Europe and Asia. “We are rolling out a new store concept and working with the best partners in all our markets.” At every juncture of change for the brand, it has always emerged stronger in business performance, becoming a valuable case study in the luxury goods sector. “There’s a strong identity and people really develop an emotional attachment to the brand,” Denis says. Beyond the commitment to crafting beautiful shoes, the brand has managed to capture the transformational power of what shoes represent for women. And there’s also the consistency of the creative vision that drives the product offerings — Choi has been on board since the inception of the brand. “Sandra and her team have a very hands-on relationship with the artisans in our Italian factories

departed the company in 2001), crafted shoes for his clients, but updated them with a modern playful twist for the woman of the moment. “Bringing this service allows us to faithfully preserve our heritage of personalization, and allows every woman to have a unique pair of Jimmy Choo shoes,” Choi says. From a selection of the brand’s signature roster, customization can be done in heel heights, materials or colors and the monogramming of soles. “It is an especially poignant way to celebrate a special moment such as a wedding,” Denis explains. It is also a trending expression of individuality to show off a sneak peek at your initials as you walk down the street. “Our more colorful shoes and bags and heavily embellished styles have always been received well in the Middle East. The MTO service has been instrumental in enriching this experience,” Denis comments. This spring, Choi merges ethnicity with bold geometric designs referencing diverse influences, including the abstract artwork of Swedish artist Hilma af Klint and African handicraft for the women’s collection. The men’s collection had its own spotlight when it was presented as a catwalk show during the London Collections, telling the story of the Jimmy Choo man who goes on a journey to broaden his cultural horizons. “We have a defined vision of who the Jimmy Choo Man and Woman are, and these qualities impact every element of our work. We need to continue to engage in that emotional connection,” Denis says. And though the shoes are stellar pieces that speak for the collections, some lusciously soft yet versatile bags have slowly been taking centerstage. Jimmy Choo is now ready to bring the transformational power of bags to life too.

March - April 2015

Lookout Qatar

POWER OF CONTENT Lisa Bridgett, Net-APorter’s global sales and marketing director, leads an award-winning marketing strategy for the online retailer.

Lap of Luxury

For Women, by Women Net-a-Porter is all about the relevance of conveying stories of women and fitting fashion into their lifestyles.

IT IS ONLY FITTING TO EXPECT a barrage of shoppable fashion items within the pages of luxury magazine, Porter. After all, it is published by the e-retailer, Net-A-Porter. But in place of product-driven content lie stories of women who live real lives, in both ordinary and extraordinary circumstances. Take, for example, the struggles of Marina Litvinenko, who is battling for justice for the murder of her Russian dissident husband, or Chitpas Kridakorn’s decision to run for prime minister of Thailand, peppered with light musings of what Anna Calvi is currently listening to, or Helena Christensen’s preference for Ernest Hemingway. The crux of what fuels the success of the brand goes beyond the offering of the new and the chic; it is a deeper

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understanding of what it means to be a woman in these times. The relevance of conveying the stories of women and fitting fashion into their lifestyles is especially important, and something that the site’s founder, Natalie Massenet, strongly champions. Massenet's vision to bring fashion to the world is complemented by the content director of the site, Lucy Yeomans, who translates the pieces for real women. “Lucy speaks the lifestyle language for all women, on realness, on beauty and substance behind each individual,” says Lisa Bridgett, NAP’s global sales and marketing director. The global reach of Net-a-Porter’s distribution network also means that these stories emanate and there are constantly new places and ideas that come to the fore.

ALL IMAGE S COURTESY OF NET-A-PORTER

BY DEBRINA ALIYAH

Bridgett’s childhood, which was spent in Iraq and Kuwait, has kept her connected to the region, and its inspiring tales of female empowerment. “Women in the Middle East are increasingly engaging in the workforce and having tremendous impact in their communities,” Lisa says of her conversations with influencers from the Arab world. That pattern is consistent with NAP’s audience in Qatar — local women who are very involved in businesses, work or their own specialities across the industries of media, finance, politics and medicine. That thread of familiarity opens the conversation for the e-retailer in connecting with its clients here, with Bridgett exploring the topic of "Women of Substance" in her address at a private event co-hosted with Qatar National Bank. “This is the time for the Middle Eastern women, who are highly educated and style conscious. It is very relevant to us as a company that’s founded by a woman and largely run by women,” she explains. It has been almost 13 years since NAP was introduced to the Qatari market, and the continuous empowerment of women in the country’s cultural and educational policies has shaped some interesting patterns in style consumption. There’s a deep understanding of the delicacy and nuances of fashion trends that drives the purchases and often, they point to niche and peculiar statement items. “The shoppers are younger compared to our average client worldwide, and I guess this attributes to the playfulness and willingness to experiment,” Bridgett comments. Inevitably, the large disposable income of women here plays a pertinent role in this growth, but NAP’s ability to cultivate client relationships has kept it at the top of the online game. A big part of the company’s operations is dedicated to service, especially one-on-one experiences that extend to home visits and social lunches. Hopping on a flight to deliver a dress half a world away to a client is part of the personal shopping team’s brief, and so is a jubilant supportive cheer for a husband who consulted to buy his wife the gift of 365 pairs of shoes a year. Bridgett is also convinced that their global head of personal shopping, Lupe Puerta, has a magical touch in connecting with women. “She can relate like a great friend in a short time,” she says. It would seem that NAP has overcome the one hurdle that online shopping presents, the lack of human interaction, through an intricate formula of content vision and customer service. While Porter goes on stands globally six times a year, The Edit is NAP’s weekly online magazine that is no second fiddle to its print sister. Extremely relevant to current happenings, The Edit has profiled heavyweights such as Salma Hayek and Sarah Jessica Parker. “We invest so much in content creation and even our marketing is content-driven. It is the marrying of pure fashion with the readability and understandability of fashion delivered instantly through

POWER OF CONTENT Clockwise from top: Puerta introducing seasonal trends to a Qatari audience; Porter magazine is internationally distributed with a focus on women’s stories.

technology,” Bridgett explains. But then, of course, there’s the core of it all that put NAP on the map in the first place: the strong edit of fashion pieces that came from Massanet’s origins as a fashion editor. “It’s not just a commercially satiating. We have a point of view around fashion and we are constantly looking, whether it’s from Australia or Russia, for quality collections,” she says. Instantaneity, however, means that there is a need for NAP to constantly innovate in order to capture attention. The company has launched successful specialized business units, Mr PORTER for the boys and Net-ASporter for fitness apparel. Last year it took home an advertising award for its Net-A-Porter Live digital campaign that visually mapped out products in online transactions on a billboard in Canary Wharf, London. “I am in a very lucky position that we are able to take advantage of so many channels,” explains Bridgett. In the next few months, a new mobile application will be launched where shoppers can see what their friends, celebrities, and fashion influencers are buying. From dropping NAP-branded boxes in front of homes around the world, to same-day delivery campaigns on mopeds all over London, consistency is the formula for Bridgett. As she puts it, “That consistency is the woman. Who is that woman? What is she wearing?”

March - April 2015

Lookout

Runway Report

Dress Blues From double-breasted jean jackets to starched culottes, tailored denim is the next big thing. PHOTOGRAPHS BY LENA C. EMERY STYLED BY TRACEY NICHOLSON

Burberry Prorsum jacket, QR10,902, burberry.com. Burberry Brit skirt, QR1,001, burberry.com.

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ALL PRICES ARE INDICATIVE

MODEL: MAE LAPRES AT FM LONDON. HAIR BY LOK LAU AT CLM HAIR AND MAKEUP USING BUMBLE AND BUMBLE. MAKEUP BY GEMMA SMITH-EDHOUSE AT LGA. SET DESIGN BY GEORGINA PRAGNELL AT WEBBER REPRESENTS. STYLIST’S ASSISTANT: HOLLY GORST

Above: Michael Kors jacket, QR3,622, and jeans, QR1,802. Proenza Schouler shoes, QR4,295. Top right: E. Tautz top, QR1,627, and shorts, QR1,492, eastdane.com. Right: Burberry Prorsum jacket. Sophie Bille Brahe earring, QR3,203, Dover Street Market.

March - April 2015

Lookout

BYE TO THE DYE Clockwise from left: at the Row’s spring show, models sporting various shades of brown hair, which appeared not to have come from a bottle; slightly messy, mousyhued locks that seemed unstyled at Mary Katrantzou; at Dries Van Noten, a middling cut — neither here nor there.

On Beauty

Meh Head BY ALICE GREGORY

EVEN THE MOST AVID style.com clickers might not have noticed the uniting factor across the

spring 2015 catwalks. It wasn’t anything so dramatic as scarlet lips or as romantic as high blush. But it was there, complementing the golden trompe l’oeil lip rings and Goa-appropriate caftans at Dries Van Noten, as well as the Row’s cult-leader robes, the starched white collars at Chanel and Isabel Marant’s perennial heathered crewnecks. It looked like nothing. And in many ways it was. Adjectiveless in color, lank and complete with flyaways, non-hair appeared again and again: not ‘‘chocolate,’’ not ‘‘chestnut,’’ not bluntly cut nor superlative in length. This was passive-aggressive hair, proof that the head from which it came looked enviable without any help at all. If the ombre of seasons past telegraphed a beachy disregard for appointments and status quo, non-hair is a full-out (if faux) throw-the-Filofax-away refusal. And in its visually subtle noncompliance, it more successfully captures the laissez-faire attitude that imbues so many attempts at stylized apathy: dewy skin, unpolished nails, the proud and public consumption of Coca-Cola (not Diet). According to Garren, the hairstylist and co-founder of the hair-care line R+Co, designers for a few seasons were scrambling for models with short hair, shag and bowl cuts. Now the look is no look: ‘‘a real girl with hair tucked behind her ears.’’ The allure, of course, is in the apparent effortlessness — and the tantalizing threat of a thwarted approximation. The desire for drab non-hair rekindles that specifically middle-school shame of trying, and failing, to achieve the perfectly undone ponytails of girls more popular than yourself. ‘‘It’s a status symbol in a way,’’ says Bumble and Bumble’s editorial stylist Jimmy Paul. ‘‘These 54

T Qatar: The New York Times Style Magazine

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: ARNO FRUGIER/COURTESY OF THE ROW; SCHOHAJA; INDIGITAL IMAGES

The hairstyle of choice this season seems like no hairstyle at all. Unremarkable in color and length, and replete with flyaway bits, the look is effortless, but of course, it isn’t.

This was passive-aggressive hair, proof that the head from which it came looked enviable without any help at all.

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: INDIGITAL IMAGES; CATWALKING/GETTY IMAGES; SHUTTERSTOCK. PRODUCTS: MARKO METZINGER (9)

A MOUSE IN THE HOUSE Clockwise from above: a too-busy-for-a-cut-or-brush look at Dries Van Noten; natural-seeming flyaways at Chloé; a parade of not-quitestraight, not-quite-wavy tresses at a fashion show.

women, they do nothing to their hair, but the clothes are right, the shoes are right, they’re fit, their skin is beautiful.’’ It’s true that without gamine hips and the perfect leather boots, one is apt to look more like an Alice Munro protagonist than a postcoital chanteuse. Paul, who styled the admirably unremarkable hair of Freja Beha Erichsen for the latest Louis Vuitton campaign, confesses that though the locks look undone, they’re actually quite considered. ‘‘It’s the elegance of restraint,’’ he says. ‘‘Whoever is cutting hair this way has that sophistication that you get from just being in a city like New York.’’ Practically, and to the chagrin of many, the style demands patience and pricey redress: the growing-out of layers, the investment in salon-corrected color. ‘‘It’s an expensive thing to do if you don’t have it naturally,’’ admits Paul. Time-consuming, too. Non-hair, like any other fad, is readily available to only a select few: Those with curly hair require a flat iron, black girls a chemical relaxer. Even silky-straight towheads, so tiresomely the ideal, need some hands-on texturizing. ‘‘It’s funny, most of this hair is colored,’’ says Rita Hazan, who has an eponymous Fifth Avenue salon. ‘‘It seems natural, but it’s a whole process.’’ Hazan, who likes to think of the trend as the natural vestige of the once-trendy bob, speculates that non-hair is a remedy to recent peroxide-happy seasons. ‘‘So many women come in, and their hair has just taken a big beating recently, mostly from bleach. It’s so fried,’’ she says. ‘‘They come in saying, ‘I really need to get my hair back in shape.’ ’’ The restoration often involves staining artificially pale strands with a mild, non-damaging vegetable dye. If non-hair has an exemplar, it’s the endlessly Instagrammed Jane Birkin (and her daughters, Lou Doillon and Charlotte Gainsbourg). In her heavily documented heyday, Birkin had the luxury of being not only rich and rail thin, but also of looking intoxicatingly good without either makeup or bras. Her hair — flat on the top, heavy on the bottom, and fringed with schoolgirl bangs — was the perfect correlative for her seductive-virgin sex appeal: the woman who doesn’t shower but still seems clean. The trick to achieving non-hair, apart from lucky genetics and/or a good stylist, is using minimal product to add weight but not grease. A shower in Paris, where the water is hard, might help too.

NOT NOTHING Clockwise from above: Rahua shampoo for an organic wash, QR116, rahua.com; Phyto 7-day cream, to keep hair hydrated and silky, QR102, phytousa.com; L’Oréal Paris Txt It spray for a tousled texture, QR18, drugstore.com; David Mallett Australian salt spray for a beachy look, QR164, david-mallett.com; Philip B. Maui Wowie mist to create volume, QR80, philipb.com; Living Proof PhD5-in-1 styling treatment to condition, QR95, livingproof.com; Philip Kingsley Elasticizer Extreme for bounce, QR182, philipkingsley.com.

March - April 2015

Lookout

Take Two

A dual review of what’s new

Helena Bonham Carter

Kim Gordon

Oscar-nominated actress and mismatchedshoe advocate who will soon be seen as the Fairy Godmother in Disney’s live-action adaptation of ‘‘Cinderella’’ and as a psychiatrist in Steve McQueen’s new HBO drama.

Noise-rock pioneer, lo-fi style icon and acclaimed visual artist who rose to prominence in the ’80s as a founding member of Sonic Youth. Her memoir, ‘‘Girl in a Band,’’ came out in February.

This is for young, angry people. I like Edith Piaf and Fred Astaire. I have a self-playing piano, and I have people over to record show tunes.

Lammily, a doll with realistic body proportions (QR91, scar and cellulite stickers sold separately; lammily.com).

Jazzy Rap

It was hardly jazz. To me it was more, like, jazzy. It was really just rap with easy music behind it. I think they should collaborate with Fiona Apple.

‘‘Sour Soul,’’ an album by Badbadnotgood with Wu-Tang Clan’s Ghostface Killah (lexrecords.com).

Greasy Treats My first thought was to become a vegetarian. Or just not a ducktarian, I guess. But they’re delicious.

I’m not into incense, but I have spent the last week on the Internet trying to acquire a kitten. We have a tortoise. We tried a chameleon but it died after six weeks. R.I.P., Kevin. He died green.

It’s not really my style, but I’m not a great barometer of taste. I make a lot of unfortunate choices — there’s a cat’s tail I’ve been wearing lately. It helps the silhouette and there’s something sexual about a perky tail.

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I thought her body looked kind of weird. It’s swayback, but it also looks like she has a terminally popped-out chest. I guess that’s to signify, ‘‘I’m open to what’s coming my way!’’

Olive & Sinclair’s Duck Fat Caramels (QR73, oliveandsinclair.com).

Smoking Cat Astier de Villatte’s incense holder, designed by Setsuko Klossowska de Rola, Balthus’s widow (QR1,052, 212-677-3917).

Alexander Wang Bag Inspired by the soles of classic sneakers (QR5,078, alexanderwang.com).

I’m on a low duck-fat diet, but I like the idea of putting it in sweets. I don’t really have much of a sweet tooth, although someone gave me half a caramel last month and it was pretty good.

I love it. It looks really French, not kitschy. I probably wouldn’t use it as a diffuser, though. I’d just put my pot stash in it.

I hadn’t thought about Air Jordans in a long time. It’s kind of amazing, but it’s also quite heavy for how big it is. Like, who wants to carry around a sneaker?

BONHAM CARTER: SHUTTERSTOCK. GORDON: SHUTTERSTOCK. FROM TOP: LAMMILY (2); THOMAS DAGG; HANNAH MESSINGER (2); ASTIER DE VILLATTE; ALEXANDER WANG

The Anti-Barbie

I’m afraid that rather than make little girls feel better about themselves, it might send them into depression: ‘‘All you’ve got to look forward to are stretch marks, cellulite and acne, possibly all at once.’’

In Fashion

Beautiful Unrest Vivid botanical prints lose their ladylike sweetness when paired with utilitarian staples. PHOTOGRAPHS BY BEN GRIEME STYLED BY JASON RIDER

Sacai dress, QR16,504, net-aporter.com. Marc by Marc Jacobs boots (worn throughout), QR1,813.

March - April 2015

Quality

In Fashion

Max Mara coat, price on request. T by Alexander Wang tank top, QR928, alexanderwang.com. Marc Jacobs pants, QR4,368.

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ALL PRICES ARE INDICATIVE

Fendi dress, QR19,838. Alternative Apparel T-shirt, QR138, alternativeapparel.com.

March - April 2015

Quality

In Fashion

Diane von Furstenberg dress, QR2,177.

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MODEL: TAMI WILLIAMS AT ELITE NEW YORK. HAIR BY TOMI KONO AT JULIAN WATSON AGENCY USING BUMBLE AND BUMBLE. MAKEUP BY JUNKO KIOKA AT JOE MANAGEMENT USING CHANEL. MANICURE BY YUKO TSUCHIHASHI FOR DIOR VERNIS. STYLIST’S ASSISTANTS: KELLY HARRIS, RAYNER REYES

Marc Jacobs jacket, QR4,368. Missoni dress, QR12,776.

March - April 2015

Quality Objects

Points of Interest

Reflective metal hardware turns otherwise architecturally simple shoes and bags into modern art. PHOTOGRAPHS BY BRUNO OSIF STYLED BY EKATERINA SKURIKHINA

Bally sandals, QR3,258. Todâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s bag, QR8,245. Salvatore Ferragamo dress, QR12,376.

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ALL PRICES ARE INDICATIVE

Loewe shoes, QR3,458, and bag, price on request, loewe.com. Vetements jeans, QR6,006, lagarconne.com. HermĂ¨s shirt, QR5,915.

March - April 2015

Quality

Objects

Proenza Schouler shoes, QR4,295. ChloĂŠ bag, QR6,880, Intermix. Loewe coat, QR43,280.

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ASSISTANT STYLIST: ADELAIDE VASATURO

Calvin Klein Collection shoes, QR4,714. Jil Sander bag, QR4,186. Milly coat, QR2,275. Hermès shirt, QR5,915.

March - April 2015

MAGIC CARPET Clockwise from right: the rug artist Alexandra Kehayoglou, with unfinished pieces at her studio outside Buenos Aires; her hanging work titled ‘‘Shelter for Some Happy Days’’; the artist’s covered chair, meant to evoke winter, in her studio.

Home and Work

Dream Weaver Born into Argentina’s first family of rugmakers, Alexandra Kehayoglou creates topographical wonders that elevate ancient craft to modern art. BY STEPHEN HEYMAN PHOTOGRAPHS BY EMILIANO GRANADO

LAST SEPTEMBER, during Paris Fashion

Week, the Belgian designer Dries Van Noten sent a parade of wisplike models in flouncy silk and chiffon down a runway that resembled a mossy forest path. Nearly twice the length of a tennis court, it was actually a carpet created by Alexandra Kehayoglou, a 33-year-old Argentine artist who spent 16 days stitching it together, then shipped it in pieces to Paris and reassembled it right before the show. Kehayoglou started making these landscapes — some of them pure white, others depicting trippy Patagonian glaciers and fields — shortly after finishing art school in 2008. Her

medium is closely connected to her family history. Kehayoglou’s Greek grandparents began making Ottoman-style rugs in Isparta, in present-day Turkey. After war broke out, the family fled to Argentina, arriving in the 1920s with their loom and little else. Today the family owns El Espartano, one of South America’s largest carpet companies. ‘‘I love the fact that her art is based on a craft that has been in her family for four generations,’’ says Van Noten. ‘‘I believe that this informs the clear truth of her work that some might confuse for naïveté.’’ In her workshop, an industrial space attached to the El Espartano factory,

March - April 2015

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Home and Work

THE BRIGHT SIDE Clockwise from left: Kehayoglou’s grasslandsinspired textured rugs on the floor of her living room; a color key; the artist trimming individual strands for a new piece; Kehayoglou’s painting of a shoe to which she matched hues of yarn; her brushes, balls of yarn and a watercolor; in her studio, hand-tufting a rug on a large scaffold.

‘I grew up around rugs. And when I started to do it myself, I discovered that the process was far deeper than just using yarn.’

Kehayoglou hoists up her rugs perpendicular to the ground on a large scaffold, and wears headphones that block out the noise made by her hand-tufting machine. The textured, multicolored terrains come together in roughly two months, but she also creates carpets that look more like paintings — depicting a beach in Costa Rica, or a deer in the tall grass at night. These take several months to execute. She recently collaborated on an installation in Berlin with the artist Olafur Eliasson, but also exhibits her own room-size works, such as ‘‘Shelter for a Memory,’’ which had a moonlit jungle covering the walls. On the ground, the piece sprouted tufts of grass. A real swing was suspended from the ceiling. ‘‘It’s hard for people to understand that a rug can be art,’’ she says. ‘‘But maybe that’s changing.’’ 68

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By Design

Louboutin Nails It The maestro of the stiletto opens the chicest polish boutique in all of Paris. BY DANA THOMAS PHOTOGRAPHS BY BENOÎT PEVERELLI

WHEN THE SHOE DESIGNER Christian Louboutin decided to extend his empire into the world of beauty — and to start with nail polish — the move actually made some kind of sense. After all, he came up with his signature scarlet soles 20 years ago by impulsively painting one in the factory with a colleague’s red nail varnish. He wanted his first beauty boutique to link back to those early days, both in location and in look. That meant staying in the Galerie Véro-Dodat, the slightly shabby yet ornate 19th-century covered passage in Paris where he opened his original store in the early 1990s, as well as recreating that shop’s intimate, jewel-box ambiance. He found the perfect space next door: a tiny shop that had served as the headquarters for a gemstone hunter. But who would do it up for him? Louboutin had long admired the work of the Paris-based interior designer Pierre Yovanovitch who has worked with Hermès and the Hôtel Marignan Paris. ‘‘In Pierre’s work, there are very few details — it’s clean,’’ he says. ‘‘I’m used to baroque spaces with lots of objects. When I look at one of his spaces, I wonder, like a child, ‘Why do I find a space so beautiful with so little?’ Pierre is a master of that.’’ Louboutin showed Yovanovitch the nail-polish bottle shape he had designed, with a bottom of thick glass cut like a multifaceted jewel and a soaring black spear top inspired by calligraphy brushes. Yovanovitch ran with it: When you enter the new boutique, it is as if you have stepped into the flacon. Imagine a minimalist version of the ‘‘I Dream of Jeannie’’ bottle. The front room is curved, lined with Louboutin’s signature arched niches, each containing a bottle of polish, and lit with a rotating rainbow of light, emphasizing the polish hues, including a sole-matching Rouge Louboutin. The ceiling is open, like a skylight, revealing on the second floor’s white plaster plafond a video projection of the Paris sky — ‘‘like a James Turrell work,’’ Yovanovitch explains, citing the American installation artist. Perhaps not surprisingly, the beauty line is now influencing Louboutin’s footwear design: In his latest collection, there are heels decorated with disembodied Rouge Louboutin fingernails and little manicured hands. In the old days, he explains, ‘‘you mated your shoes with your gloves. Today, it’s your nails.’’

ON DISPLAY Clockwise from top: Christian Louboutin (left) and the designer Pierre Yovanovitch in the new store; the skylight on the second floor features a video projection of sky on the ceiling; a bottle on a crystal formation; the exterior of the building; the view down to the first floor through a mirrored shaft; Louboutin’s signature red and other shades along the walls; Louboutin’s own Hopi masks decorate the shop.

March - April 2015

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THE CREATIVE DUO Architect Seyhan Özdemir and interior designer Sefer Caglar (right); below: Nopa, one of Autoban's restaurant designs.

In Design

The Highway The design world is sitting up and taking notice of Istanbul, thanks to the homegrown design duo Seyhan Özdemir and Sefer Caglar of Autoban, the most exciting design studio to emerge from Turkey in the past decade.

FOR THE ARCHITECT SEYHAN ÖZDEMIR and

the interior designer Sefer Caglar, Autoban — the name of the studio they founded in 2003 — means much more than the German word for “highway," it represents freedom, a means of escape, of taking their design beyond existing borders and the discovery of new horizons. Credited with redefining Istanbul’s cityscape, they have designed the interiors of the Witt Suites, The Marmara Sisli, The House Hotels, Ayazpasa House, Beyoglu House, a string of restaurants in the city, boutiques and the Turkish Airlines CIP Lounge at Atatürk Airport (named among the 10 best airport lounges in the

world). Their portfolio now extends to London, Madrid, Hong Kong and Moscow. They are also known for their architectural projects like The House Café Canyon, Nilufer apartment and Nef Flats 163, and products such as the Box Sofa, fashioned out of a wooden box, and the whimsical, organic Cloud Table, inspired by clouds in a blue sky. But if there’s one project that stands out, it's their unconventional interior for the new terminal of Heydar Aliyev International Airport in Baku, Azerbaijan, completed last June — their largest public commercial project to date, which gave them the opportunity to apply their

IMAGES COURTESY OF AUTOBAN

BY NINA STARR

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“Airport projects usually have an industrial feel, but this one is very much centered on the human experience,” says Caglar.

expertise in hospitality on a much larger scale and to a wider audience. The team stayed clear of impersonal passenger experiences and brought a huge 45,000-square-meter space back to a human scale through thoughtful, functional micro-architecture, creating a warm homely atmosphere that feels nothing like an airport. This is demonstrated by an intriguing landscape, where custom-made cocoons of different sizes are clad in wooden panels to provide travelers with opportunities to meet or retreat. Designed as flexible, multifunctional zones, they house everything from children’s playrooms and wellness centres to cafés, champagne and caviar bars and a bookstore. Özdemir discloses that the terminal is their most challenging project ever, as “it covers almost everything that we have done in the past and we are doing it now because there is a huge hospitality focus.” Caglar continues, “Airport projects usually have an industrial feel, but this one is very much centered on the human experience.” At the Maison&Objet home furnishings fair in Paris at the start of the year, Autoban presented Union, a new collection composed of a sofa and bed in American black walnut, American white oak or European ash finishes, which will be followed by tables, consoles and lighting, for furniture manufacturer De La Espada, with whom they have collaborated for the past seven years. While their previous furniture and

lighting lines have stemmed from commercial projects such as hotels and restaurants, custom-made specifically for public spaces, Union is focused on form and comfort for private home environments with its rounded silhouettes and use of soft, tactile natural materials that combine traditional craftsmanship with modern technology. “Most of our products are based on our interiors projects. When we create a story for a project, we complete the story with our products, but this collection is different. It's for residential purposes and it creates its own identity in a space,” says Özdemir. Autoban also debuted the Maze table, featuring a bold, graphic aesthetic that uses the intersection of two patterns, playing on a series of optical illusions. A contemporary take on kündekari — a timehonored woodworking technique from the Anatolian Seljuk and Ottoman eras — the table also embodies their architectural approach to design and their characteristic themes of layering of materials, geometry and textures. In creating the design concept for Nopa, Autoban applied its signature aesthetic by proposing a holistic approach that maintains unity, where it was responsible not only for the interiors but also the products within, which varied from classical leather sofas with wooden

PUBLIC SPACES Flexible cocoons in different shapes and sizes demarcate public and private spaces at the Heydar Aliyev International Airport in Baku, Azerbaijan.

March - April 2015

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In Design

“As designers, we don’t believe that nationality is the most important thing," states Özdemir.

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shells to mid-century-inspired brass pendant lighting. Babaji, a traditional Turkish pizza restaurant in central London by renowned restaurateur Alan Yau, reveals a strong story connected to the menu and traditional Turkish design, yet still applies a contemporary perspective. The materials showcase the country's artisanal culture and forgotten artistic crafts, such as vivid blue ceramic tiles designed by Autoban and handmade by artisans in Istanbul. Turkish Iznik patterns are used on soft furnishings, and inlaid brass detailing on the wood banquette seating and tabletops echoes that which is found in traditional Turkish culture, but is given a contemporary spin with a special dotted design. Autoban designed most of the furniture exclusively for Babaji, and supplemented signature pieces from its existing furniture collection. Özdemir and Caglar first met in 1995 as students at Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University, graduating three years later with a strong grounding in the Bauhaus style, as their school was regularly filled with German architects. They have been inseparable since. As Caglar's father ran a furniture-making business, the pair immersed itself in the trade, trying to understand production methods, before spending countless hours with small local manufacturers. Özdemir says, “As a world, we

are losing local techniques, manufacturing processes and craftsmanship, so we always want to find local craftsmen and support them. That's why we like to create almost all of our prototypes with them because it's important to continue their work and to learn from them, mostly understanding the capacity of materials. At the same time, we use high technology and innovative materials. We like to mix them.” Özdemir is driven and likes to dive headlong into new projects while Caglar is patient and obsessed with details. Their design practice — working across architecture, interiors and product design on hospitality, retail, commercial, residential and transportation developments — employs a team of 35, comprising architects, interior designers, furniture and lighting designers and engineers. Their 500-squaremeter studio is housed in a 19th-century marble-floored townhouse with high ceilings by French-Ottoman architect Alexander Vallaury in Taksim, one of Istanbul's oldest quarters known for its cafés, restaurants, art and design galleries and nightlife. Purpose-built as the Union Française for the French community in Istanbul, which was quite active in the social life of the city back then, the building's facade is neoclassical in style with Belle Époque details and elements of eclectic Ottoman architecture. “We work in multidisciplinary areas, but it's

IMAGES COURTESY OF AUTOBAN

THE DETAILS Left: Autoban presented Union at the recent Maison&Objet home furnishings fair in Paris; Below: the Maze table features a bold geometric design that uses the intersection of two patterns.

all the same approach,” Özdemir remarks. “We are responsible for finding a solution to a problem, whether it's a small object or a huge project. We start with a story and then we improve it with our design, material choice and little details.” Approaching each project as storytellers, Autoban's work aims to understand the characters and cultural, social and geographical context specific to each space or object, while placing the user at the heart of it. They choose shapes and materials that relate a narrative, highlighting historical facets before adding on layers to the living memories of an existing building, to inject depth and perspective. This creates a distinct timeline, exhibiting different time periods of a property's past. Although combining minimal shapes, attention to detail and rich materials, with forms inspired by 1950's modernist furniture and countless visual references influenced by Charles and Ray Eames, Jasper Morrison, Carlo Scarpa and Scandinavian design, Istanbul's culture has shaped their personalities and naturally finds its way into their work. For example, Autoban's Deco sofa is an updated version of an Ottoman divan, and their Pumpkin

table unwittingly resembles a typical Ottoman hat. Özdemir states, “As designers, we don't believe that nationality is the most important thing. Of course, it helps to identify our design approach. Coming from a specific area that the world doesn't know well adds a bit of difference and spice, which is always nice.” Caglar adds, “Our DNA is from Turkey, but our design language is international.” Özdemir explains why they are particularly attracted to hospitality projects. “We always put humans at the center of our work, and we try to form a connection between people and space. We want to create unique experiences for users. Until that point, we don't talk about design. And then we try to create a strong story around people for the space. We like to work on public commercial projects because it's not for one person, but for many people, for humanity,” she says. “It's important that our projects create a new social life for the location. Design must help people evolve. This is the responsibility of architects and designers. We are not making art or theater sets; there should be a social reason behind everything we do. We try to add value to people's lives, to make their lives better.” Currently working on several private houses and two major apartment buildings in Istanbul, one named Nurol Life and the other Nef Ataköy, Özdemir divulges, “We don't work on residential projects much, but if there's a hospitality approach to the residence, yes, we like to work on it. We also work on large-scale residential projects, which are not for one family but for the whole community, where we are trying to create a new lifestyle because everything is changing all around us, technology is going fast and city living is changing as we speak. We use technology, but always add a human touch with craftsmanship and natural materials.” “There is a strong relationship nowadays between hospitality and residential sectors. Residential needs have come closer to hospitality needs because we don't spend much time in our homes. Now we spend time outside, at offices and restaurants and that's why residential design is close to hotel design,” says Özdemir. “We are looking not only for a space to sleep, but for something very similar to the comfort of our homes. This is our focus now, trying to find that connection to create a new way of life for hospitality and residential sectors.”

WITHIN OUR WALLS (top and bottom left) The interior details of Autoban's office.

March - April 2015

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The Thing

IMAGE COURTESY OF QELA

All eyes were focused on QELA, Qatar’s own homegrown brand, when it announced its new collections this March. QELA, for this season in collaboration with the Doha Jewellery and Watches Exhibition, brought out the Erth (Legacy) line, originally inspired by the tiny nation’s long pearling heritage. Tawam, an extension of QELA’s jewelry line to its leather craft, is a clutch in arresting ochre with a clasp that reflects the heritage of the country, the pearling tradition and the desert rose design. This show-piece in flawless amber crocodile has a yellow-gold and diamond pavé closure in the form of a sand-rose.

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Arts and Letters

Permanent Midnight What is a true self? For an author whose rare illness forces her to live in literal darkness, the issue is far from metaphorical.

PHOTOGRAM, ‘‘KASSEL, 1967,’’ BY FLORIS NEUSÜSS. COLLECTION OF STAATLICHE MUSEEN KASSEL. IMAGE COURTESY OF THE ARTIST AND VON LINTEL GALLERY

BY SOPHIE ELMHIRST PHOTOGRAPH BY FLORIS NEUSÜSS

ANNA LYNDSEY’S CONDITION is the ultimate empathy test, impossible to pass. The only way to imagine oneself with it would be to live it, but no one in her right mind would choose this life. Lyndsey exists, but on the surface her days bear no resemblance to life as most of us know it, as most of us live it. Nine years ago, after the skin on her face reacted to her computer screen, to fluorescent lights and then to the sun, Lyndsey was diagnosed with photosensitive seborrhoeic dermatitis, in its usual form a well-recognized skin complaint. This later developed into a chronic and severe reaction over her entire body. When her skin meets light, even through protective clothing, it burns. Not a ripped-off wax-strip burn but a blowtorch burn (her metaphor). The extremity of the reaction means she barely leaves her small house in Hampshire, and as specialists in London have denied her requests for a house call, she hasn’t seen one since her initial diagnosis. She spends her days in a blacked-out room, building up pockets of resistance which allow her out for a brief walk, before dawn or after sunset.

So it’s like being in prison, people tend to ask on hearing her story. Sort of, except she’s free. It’s a prison where she’s both jailer and jailed, body trapping mind. Could it all be in her head? A skeptic might suggest the condition is psychosomatic; either way, the body’s response is pain. Then, the inevitable: How does she cope? Doesn’t she go insane? And then people usually go silent for a while as they try to imagine living like that for an hour, let alone a year. Nine. In a new memoir called ‘‘Girl in the Dark,’’ Lyndsey, who uses a pseudonym for privacy’s sake, describes her life as one that has stopped, as ‘‘impossible.’’ And so here is a question: If your life ends, but you’re still alive, who are you? LYNDSEY’S HOUSE LOOKS EXACTLY like every other red-brick house on her road, except the curtains are all drawn. There are rules that accentuate the strangeness. Visitors have to wait on the doorstep after Lyndsey unlatches the door so she has time to retreat from the daylight that will follow them in. All electronic equipment — phone, laptop, iPad, anything that might ooze light, however faint — must be switched off. A minute too long out of her room, and her skin riots. She sits across the table, a slight woman, wearing small, oval glasses, a long red velvet coat and a corduroy beret. Her skin is pale, of course, and I don’t want to think that there’s something ghostlike about her, but there is. Maybe it’s the outfit: just what you’d wear to night-stalk the halls of a Victorian mansion. Or maybe it’s just the darkness of the living room where we sit, illuminated only by a slim crack in thick curtains. Compared to her quarters upstairs, it’s Miami Beach. ‘‘There’s so much of me which is just the same as it was,’’ she says. She doesn’t mean her former self in the practical sense, the one with the government job and the flat and the life beyond these red-brick walls. She means her self, the self we like to think we own, a continuous core, the internal

NOT I ‘‘Girl in the Dark’’ by Anna Lyndsey details her decade-long struggle to avoid light.

March - April 2015

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Arts and Letters

identity that overcomes circumstances. For Lyndsey, that self might have become an article of faith: proof that the darkness hasn’t taken everything away. ‘‘I don’t think you ever completely adapt. I’ve always got a vision of myself. . . .’’ She trails off. The vision is painful: a past self, or a future one, in the light. ‘‘All the hang-ups I used to have — I’ve still got them. It’s so annoying.’’ Talking in public, worrying whether people like her — futile anxieties now that she hardly sees anyone. Never mind: The flaws are who she is, postcards from a former life. Inevitably, a new self has had to emerge, the one that exists in the dark and can find joy in cleaning the loo when she hasn’t left her room in a while. Any faith she has is in the god of tiny pleasures. Her creed is pragmatism; you’ll find no spiritual epiphanies here. ‘‘If it had happened to somebody else. . . .’’ she says, amused. I skirt around the issue, nervously praising her honesty in the book, until she cuts right through. ‘‘It’s the obvious question. Didn’t you

she tried to write about her experience, but even the act of writing ‘‘I’’ was enough to make her wretched. So she wrote in the third person instead. ‘‘The girl in the dark did this, she did that . . . it was a bit like a fairy tale.’’ It was only after an agent, who had heard about her situation, asked to read her work and requested she change voice that Lyndsey entered her own story. She found that, with practice, she could write in her head — marshal thoughts into sentences, arrange sentences into paragraphs — before writing longhand in a notebook. It was liberating, not being able to see her words on the page. Darkness, it seems, is also a cure for self-consciousness. WHEN DEALING WITH LIGHT AND SHADOW, the temptation is to say all sorts of grand things about revelation and shrouds. On page 133 of her book, Lyndsey warns readers of the lure of metaphor with the salutary lesson of the reiki healer who came to treat her one day: ‘‘I wonder,’’ says the healer, ‘‘when you’re in the light, do you feel . . . exposed?’’ ‘‘Exposed?’’ ‘‘Open to people’s gaze, lots of eyes looking at you.’’ ‘‘What I feel is, I’d better get out of this light before I have a painfulskin reaction,’’ I say, ‘‘which, given my experience, is a pretty rational response.’’ Lyndsey writes of wanting, when the healer suggests that there is always some hidden benefit to being ill, to smash in the woman’s face. At another point in a memoir that is otherwise funny, sharp, mostly devastating, she devotes several pages to her battle with the local council over the lamps on her street. They’ve threatened to change the bulbs to the fluorescent kind — torture for her skin and a threat to her brief, beloved after-dark excursions. So she sends letter after letter until she finally receives assurance that the bulbs on her particular route will remain as they are. Victory. And, at the same time, an illustration of what this illness actually is: not an excuse for bad poetry, but a procession of daily mundanities, starts and stops. Lyndsey can write with intense lyricism, but this is how she described living with her condition at the end of our conversation: ‘‘I feel like a big bouncy thing that keeps throwing itself against a wall, hitting its head and then bouncing back.’’

feel like killing yourself at some point? Well yeah, obviously.’’ She didn’t, only in part for the sake of those who love her. When a chronically ill friend admitted that he was contemplating taking his life, she told him not to, because ‘‘he’d be letting the side down.’’ It’s the pact. Endure.

HERE ARE SOME OF THE THINGS that happen to you when you live in the dark: You lose touch. Radio news only takes you so far. Lyndsey knows the facts of contemporary life, but not its nuances, has no way of keeping up with MAYBE THIS IS THE QUESTION INSTEAD: Strip a life of all its usual business those imperceptible shifts in culture you inhale only by walking the streets. and paraphernalia, of activity and variety, of the ability to have children or You become deeply aware of other people’s limitations. Screens of all kinds imagine a future, and what’s left? are banished, so the only way Lyndsey can access the Internet is through an Lyndsey and her husband, Pete, got together before she fell ill and in her assistant. Other people, it turns out, are hopeless at Google searching. ‘‘They book she writes about her guilt, the sense that she’s somehow trapped him in haven’t got the thought process!’’ the darkness with her. But a strong love is gymnastically flexible, able to You sharpen your mind. In her book, interspersed with her adapt to the most hostile environment — practically, not just accounts of her life in the dark, Lyndsey describes the various metaphorically, speaking. The pair of them, for example, word games she plays, often alone, sometimes with visitors. My invented the ‘‘puppy cage’’ — a black felt contraption that covers favorite is Crazy Daisy: One person comes up with a two-word her in the car so he can drive her short distances; they got clue for a two-word solution that rhymes. Lunatic flower = crazy married in a half-lit church; and yes, they have sex, in the dark. daisy. I set her three just before I leave (visual tailback; happy There are the friends with whom her relationship is fruit; angry soup) and she solves two of them before I make it to exclusively telephonic; this book, her missive from the darkness the front door. to the outside world. And, perhaps strangest of all, ‘‘I have this Your sense of time collapses. Lyndsey lives by ‘‘natural time.’’ massively increased awareness of light, and also love of light.’’ The hours of sunset and sunrise are her markers, dictating when Her enemy? ‘‘Yes.’’ She describes the rainbow of colors she sees she can leave the house. ‘‘In midsummer I’m completely thrown, in the house depending on the weather outside, the various because of the sun coming in from the northwest.’’ Her existence stages of dusk, the subtle differences between the light at is elemental, I suggest, pretentiously. ‘‘Stone age,’’ she replies. sunrise and sunset. ‘‘I went for a walk at dawn on Christmas You learn new skills. To fill the hours and years, Lyndsey Day, which was the first time I’d managed to do that for years,’’ listens to audio books, one after another like someone lighting a she said. ‘‘It was absolutely deserted, and the sky was this PAST AND FUTURE From top: Lyndsey in Corsica cigarette off their last, whatever she can get her hands on — lovely peachy, bluey gray, very tasteful, and there were all these in 2000, before the thrillers, whodunnits. ‘‘I know how to break people’s necks,’’ she magpies flying round the houses.’’ It’s the kind of thing most of us onset of her photosensitive says. The literary deep-dive had another effect. After a woeful see without seeing, a scene so ordinary it barely registers. condition; her memoir, attempt at blind knitting, she began to write. Fiction was off-limits Sky, magpies, houses: nothing of note. For Lyndsey, rare and published by Doubleday in March. — she felt too divorced from the world to tell stories about it — so beautiful — art.

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FROM TOP: COURTESY OF ANNA LYNDSEY; COURTESY OF KNOPF DOUBLEDAY

‘All the hang-ups I used to have — I’ve still got them. It’s so annoying.’ Talking in public, worrying whether people like her — futile anxieties now that she hardly sees anyone. Never mind: The flaws are who she is, postcards from a former life.

FROM LEFT: INEZ AND VINOODH; CRAIG M C DEAN; IMAGE COURTESY OF SHARJAH ART FOUNDATION

March-April, 2015

Hello Spring!

A Pearl of a Story 76 The Peculiar Genius of Bjork 82 Fashionâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Artisanal Movement 90 Thinking Global, Curating Local in Sharjah 100

March - April 2015

IMAGE COURTESY OF ROBERT WAN

The Tahitian Pearl King, Robert Wan

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A PEARL

The Qatar Pearl Legacy, a project close to the heart of HH Sheikha Moza BINT NASSER, INTENDS TO revivE the pearl harvesting industry of the country. It is also the coming together of similar minds from across the oceans: the technical expertise from Robert Wan, aka the Emperor of Pearls.

OF A STORY BY SINDHU NAIR

March - April 2015

obert Wan’s success story reads like a movie script. It has all the right ingredients: a serene location, characters of perseverance and passion and a product that is perfect in its formation. But the local connect of this master craftsman is the story of the revival of the dying art of pearl exploration in a country that is progressing in the glory of its new natural wealth, oil and gas. “Wan first approached Mikimoto with the promise of a pearl harvest from the islands in the Pacific Ocean. They assured him that if Wan could produce enough Tahitian black pearls of high quality, the brand would forever be a loyal customer," explained CEO and creative director of Robert Wan, Audrey Tcherkoff. After three years of hard work, Wan’s entire first harvest was bought by the brand as promised and this tradition has continued till today; Mikimoto is currently one of Wan’s biggest clients, according to Tcherkoff. Wan wanted his pearls to be the best quality, raised in the most environmentally untainted surroundings, and for this he started buying remote islands in the “middle of nowhere," according to Tcherkoff. “Wan zeroed in on one of the remote islands off the Pacific Ocean that takes four hours by air from Tahiti and inhabits just 300 people,” she says. “Not surprisingly, the 300 people on this island have just one occupation: pearl harvesting.” Robert Wan Tahitian pearls are recognized for their exceptional quality, their luster and their color, transiting

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from peacock to gray, right through to cherry. They are especially coveted for their remarkable size of 13mm or more, those at the exhibition included. “One of the secrets lies in the quality of the hosting oyster, the Pinctada margaritifera. Indigenous to French Polynesia, this oyster gives birth to pearls of great beauty and rarity,” shares Tcherkoff. Looking at the flawless blackish-gray pearls in sizes that range from 6mm to 13mm, or even more than that, the location of this beautiful harvest is not difficult to visualize: a blue canvas of isolated beaches and skies, clean air; in short, a paradise for all living beings, oysters included. With such care taken of the location of pearl harvesting, Wan started supplying to wholesale markets and big brands, but still he could only sell about 5 percent of his yearly pearl harvest. “Wan found out that these brands were very careful in their selections and only choose round shapes and consistent colored pearls, while we harvested a variety of shapes and colors, all of which were not used,” she says. Wan then decided to start his own jewelry line to integrate the variety of pearls harvested. Twelve years later, Robert Wan has eight shops in French Polynesia, one in Paris, Shanghai, Dubai and Doha. It may seem like slow growth from a marketing perspective but Wan prefers to invest his energy and resources in intense scientific experimentation in the pearl harvesting. Tcherkoff spins another stimulating tale that throws light on Wan’s intuitive skills and how this has been the source

IMAGE COURTESY OF ROBERT WAN

INSPIRED TALES CEO and creative director of Robert Wan, Audrey Tcherkoff.

PEARLS OF WISDOM Clockwise from top left: Empress necklace from Robert Wan's new collection called Drops from Heaven, QR1,100,000; pearl being extracted at Qatar Pearl Legacy; the oysters being harvested at the Qatar pearl farm; Tahitian pearls come from oysters that are almost eight times the size of the Qatari pearls.

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“THE HIGHEST AUTHORITY OF DOHA CAME TO TAHITI, SAW THE FLOURISHING PEARL INDUSTRY, AND PERSONALLY MET WAN AND REQUESTED HIM TO BRING HIS SKILLS TO DOHA.”

IMAGE COURTESY OF ROBERT QELA

The Method Clockwise from top left: Pearl harvesting at Qatar Pearl Legacy; Marutea, one of the islands in French Polynesia where Wan cultivates his pearls; the oysters at the Qatar pearl farm; the Tahitian pearls known for unique colour and texture being examined by Wan.

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THE NEW LEGACY Left: Pradeep has learned the techniques from Tahitian experts and uses them at the farm here; Right: Rewaya, from QELA’s collection features pearls from the first harvest of Qatar Pearl Legacy.

“ONE REPRESENTED THE BLACK PEARL AND THE OTHER THE WHITE, ALMOST CREAMY PEARL ACROSS THE OCEAN,” SAYS TCHERKOFF, “AND FROM THE INSTANT THEY MET, THEY SHARED A CLOSE BOND.”

of the success of his multi-million dollar enterprise. “When I was called for an interview with Wan in Paris, he asked me about my Chinese star and we spoke more about Feng Shui, trust and vibes than what was on my CV.” She calls the meeting between herself and Wan “magical," touching on the spiritual rather than on skill sets or job requirements. It is these very down-to-earth philosophies, his love for the pearl harvesting industry and for humanity, and the trust that he places on relationships, that have made him pursue the resurgence of the Doha pearl harvesting industry, which finds itself in a lean phase with no active participation from earlier incumbents. “The highest authority of Doha,” says Tcherkoff, “came to Tahiti in 2007, saw the flourishing pearl industry, personally met Wan and requested him to bring his skills to Doha to infuse the dying art in the Middle East region with his expertise.” Wan complied and was soon on a plane to Doha to analyze and decide on the way forward. This is where Tcherkoff’s role gains prominence, as she was chosen to take the reins of this project. The first meeting of Wan and Hussein Al Fardan, whose company here in Doha is Robert Wan’s authorized dealer, was equally memorable, recounts Tcherkoff. “Both are from the same generation, believe in the same principles, and share the love for pearls and the process of harvesting it,” she says. “One represented the black pearl and the other the white, almost creamy pearl across the ocean, and from the instant they met, they shared a close bond, a friendship based on mutual understanding.” While Robert Wan expanded his presence in Doha, he also started work on the Qatar Pearl Legacy, an initiative by HH Sheikha Moza bint Nasser. “Technical experts from Tahiti started visiting Doha three times a year. They had to study the pH of the water, the difference in temperature and the place where the oysters were to be stored,” says Tcherkoff. Now, some years later, Qatar Pearl Legacy, under Qatar

Foundation, is a company formed as a joint partnership with the Qatar Luxury Group and Robert Wan. It currently employs 35 people at the farm. “The strategy and plan is being worked on and will be announced after summer,” says Tcherkoff. While the Tahitian pearl, and the oyster it is harvested from, looks much bigger in size than its Qatari counterparts, the latter’s value is indubitable. “The Qatari pearls come in a beautiful luster of cream and yellow, and 27 pearls from the first harvest have been used by QELA in their latest collection,” explains Tcherkoff. This is echoed by Sheikha Noor Bint Hamad Al Thani, QELA’s vice president of brand image: “Our new line draws inspiration from Qatar’s vibrant yet tranquil natural landscapes and the natural crystalline forms of sand-roses in the desert. We showcased for the first time ever, our unique pearls that were harvested in Qatar Pearl Legacy’s local pearl farms.” Pradeep, the farm manager of the Qatar Pearl Legacy, explains: “The oysters are off Ras Laffan, to the north of Doha, and are found 20 meters below the sea. We collect them every day and bring them to the farm where we clean them and then put them back in the water in an hour.” Pradeep has been to Tahiti, which he describes as “a very different experience and a larger scale than what is seen here." His learning curve has been exponential and the expertise is now in use in Doha. “The grafting team from China inserts the shell from the Mississippi oyster and this is similar to both the Tahiti Oyster and Qatar Oyster, making sure that the color of the pearl does not fade and is similar to the inside of the oyster.” The maximum size of the pearls from Qatar is 106 g, says Pradeep, while normally pearls fall in the 55 to 58 g in category. The process of grafting is being experimented with to maximize the commercial value of the farm, and it is exciting times for the country, as its original vocation is being revived and commercialized, bringing in forces from around the world: expertise and direction from the French Polynesian King of Pearls and his Tahitian workers, labour from China and Nepal, passion and commitment of the country’s rulers and marketing strategies from one of Qatar’s oldest family businesses. It is a coming together of forces that defy cultural boundaries but are bound by a love for this gift of nature.

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SOUL IN THE MACHINE how do you hang a song oN THE WALL? for her retrospectIve at MOMA, BJOrK COMBINED THE TWO SiDES OF HER CREATiVE GENiUS — SOLiTaRy COMPOSiTiON aND COLLABORATiVE MASTERY OF DESiGN, TECHNOLOGY AND ViSUALS — TO CHANGE The way wE EXPERiENCE MUsIc forever. agaIn.

BY EMILY WITT PHOTOGRAPHS BY INEZ AND VINOODH STYLED BY MEL OTTENBERG

VERY ALBUM Bjork produces

resolves itself into a story. The story begins with the songs, the raw material through which Bjork channels emotion, autobiographical experience and philosophical ideas. The songs cohere into a universe. They take on colors, elements, an instrumental sound. They have a physical character, whom Bjork will portray on the album cover: the shy-girl songs of ‘‘Debut’’ as a virginal innocent in silver mohair; the volcanic beats of ‘‘Homogenic’’ as a patriotic warrior; the tribal rhythms and trumpets of ‘‘Volta’’ as a wanderer in electric blue, neon green and red. The albums and their stories map the bifurcation of Bjork’s artistry. There is Bjork the musician, who creates her music in an emotional cocoon, tinkering with technologies, concepts and feelings; and Bjork the producer and curator, who seeks out collaborators to help her translate her work beyond sound, who has an unparalleled ability to disperse herself across a vast range of media. In the popular imagination, it is the latter vision of Bjork that spectacularly dominates: Bjork who has a gorilla for a dentist; Bjork in a pearly dress that she pierces into her skin; Bjork wearing a mask of spines. But it should be known that by the

time these visions of Bjork reach us, even as they seem like dispatches from the future, they are snakeskins that Bjork has already shed. They are the stories that have coalesced, while she has continued on into the protean, the experimental and the unsung. THE LONG SEAM between the Eurasian and

North American tectonic plates runs mostly under the Atlantic Ocean and surfaces in Iceland, in a national park called Thingvellir. Here, the plates inch apart above sea level, forming in their rift a deep and formidable lake, Thingvallavatn. A thousand years ago, the Vikings held their parliament here. It is near this place, on a snowy slope overlooking the water, that Bjork keeps a small cabin. On the Saturday before the winter solstice, in the twilight of late morning, a veil of mist and snow lay over the landscape. The drive from Reykjavik was a journey through a desolate cloud, the sameness broken only by the occasional huddle of shivering Icelandic horses. The lake was invisible behind a wall of fog, except when it vertiginously appeared alongside the road, gray and roiling. Bjork drove to the cabin in a Land Rover. She waded through snow up the hill in white platform shoes, a dress and tights of fluorescent

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yellow and an ellipsoidal white puff coat. Later, one of her friends will tell me that she has been wearing neon yellow all year, a color she associates with healing and transformation. Bjork comes in from the snow with a lunch of bread, cheese, pastries, yogurt and chocolate. She finished mixing her newest album two days ago, followed by a party to which she invited the girls’ choir that sang on ‘‘Biophilia,’’ the brass band that played on ‘‘Volta’’ and her knitting group, which meets Wednesday nights in Reykjavik. Bjork’s current knitting project is a lilac mohair sweater. She thinks she might have pulled a muscle from dancing. She puts on a pot of coffee.

JORK HAS BEEN feeling a little sensitive about her visual

collaborations lately. It’s not that she isn’t proud of them, but she worries sometimes that the visual element of her work overshadows the music, her life’s obsession. ‘‘It wasn’t so much that I was really ambitious to do the best visuals in the universe,’’ she explained. ‘‘It was more that I burnt myself on spending a lot of time doing music and then seeing visuals accompanying them that just didn’t fit that music at all.’’ Bjork, now 49, spent her teens and early 20s immersed in the collective do-it-yourself ethos of Iceland, where ‘‘if someone else wanted to put out a record we would just make the poster by hand.’’ She made a record of folk songs at 11, then found punk as a teenager, but she was, in pop music terms, a late bloomer when she diverged to what she describes as the ‘‘matriarch energy’’ of electronic beats — the effeminate, queer, culturally diverse heritage of underground dance music. In the late 1980s, as a singer in the postpunk band the Sugarcubes in Reykjavik, Bjork began secreting albums by 808 State and Public Enemy, teaching herself about a musical lineage that ran from Kraftwerk to Detroit techno and on into England, to Kate Bush, Brian Eno and Warp Records. It’s only a two-and-a-half hour flight from Iceland to London, so that’s where she moved with her young son at the age of 27. It was 1993, early in a new technological era. She was a single mom with an interest in solitary endeavor, intrigued by what she’d seen in some nightclubs in Manchester. ‘‘It was really difficult for me to be that selfish,’’ she would later recall. The move from the provincial to the global, from the charming mess of homegrown collaboration to the unknown possibilities of a career as a soloist in a newer genre of music, was also her declaration of independence from the macho vernacular of rock ’n’ roll. (You may have noticed that Bjork, who has used a Tesla coil as an instrument, has all but ignored the electric guitar.) From then on, ‘‘mostly it was my songs and my vision, and I would decide what would be in which song and when.’’ Going forward, she would express her vision clearly to her collaborators, and choose them with great care. As she finished her first solo album, ‘‘Debut,’’ she saw a music video by a French band called Oui Oui on television. She contacted its director, a young filmmaker named Michel Gondry. They talked about their hippie parents and the Russian folk tales they had watched as children, and he directed the fairy-tale video for

'she creates a cIrcLE around her whIch Is her unIverse, and befORE EACH CIRCLE CLOSES ITSELF SHE JUMPS OUTSIDE TO CREATE A NEW CIRCLE. SO EACH ALBUM GOES INTO A NEW DIRECTION REGARDLESS Of THE SUCCESS Of THE PREVIOUS ONE.'

‘‘Human Behavior,’’ her first music video as a solo artist. From then on, each album doubled as a nexus of deviation through which Bjork exposed popular audiences to often-obscure fashion designers, filmmakers and, later, when she made her first app for 2011's ‘‘Biophilia,’’ computer programmers. Unlike David Bowie, who created an alter ego, or Madonna, whose visual transformations always have a mocked-up, storyboarded feeling, Bjork tailored her collaborations to the specificity of each song, to the character and story that she wanted to convey. When she worked with the director Chris Cunningham, who directed the robot-sex video for ‘‘All Is Full of Love,’’ she told him the song was about where love and lust meet, and showed him ivory statues from Asia that he translated into his own melancholic vision. To invoke the scale of ‘‘Biophilia’’ on tour, she wore dresses from an Iris van Herpen collection inspired by photographs of microorganisms. ‘‘It’s creating a whole universe and not only creating the music,’’ said van Herpen. ‘‘She really knows what she wants.’’ From the vantage point of a couch in front of a cathode-ray television on some lost Saturday afternoon in 1998, I can see Bjork shaking her bald head as if avoiding a gnat and morphing into a silver polar bear. I was unsurprised when Andrew Thomas Huang, the 30-year-old filmmaker who directed a video for Bjork’s MoMA show, had an identical adolescent memory of watching ‘‘Hunter,’’ the video directed by Paul White. Young Americans, bored in their homes, exposed to some vision of Europe and art and electronic music. Like the best science-fiction writers, Bjork has always tempered the futuristic with a reminder of the ancient. Both hunter and technobear, she is an avatar of the digital future, the soul in the machine. Few musicians have so enthusiastically embraced technology, often using unorthodox methods. On her last two albums, she has used audio software called Melodyne to embroider harmonies with her own voice, altering the pitches on a single track and then weaving together the result. ‘‘I spend sometimes a couple of weeks on each song,’’ she said of her process with the software, ‘‘like painting the cathedral ceiling.’’ When dealing with more complex technology, like the fabrication and programming of the new electronic instruments she has helped invent, she thinks of her role as ‘‘the Kofi Annan that goes between two worlds.’’ ‘‘She doesn’t even go in and make records in a traditional way,’’ said Derek Birkett, Bjork’s manager, whom she met 32 years ago when she was playing benefit shows for the miners striking against Margaret Thatcher with her band Kukl. (Birkett’s label, One Little Indian, has put out her albums since then, and beyond selling distribution rights she has never signed over to a major label.) In search of new ideas, Bjork has toured the MIT Media Lab and attended the National Geographic Explorers Symposium. She has interviewed composers she admires, including Arvo Part and the late Karlheinz Stockhausen. She rarely records in a studio, preferring the spontaneous session. Antony Hegarty, who sings accompaniment on a song on the new album, recorded the track

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while they were on vacation in the Caribbean. ‘‘We were just swimming in the ocean and then I was like, ‘Oh, do you want to sing on this song?’ ’’ she said. ‘‘I think he literally had sand on his legs when he sang it.’’ ‘‘She creates a circle around her which is her universe, and before each circle closes itself she jumps outside to create a new circle,’’ said Gondry. ‘‘So each album goes into a new direction regardless of the success of the previous one.’’ Or, as Bjork says, ‘‘When people expect something of me it’s the only thing I can’t do.’’ For her retrospective at MoMA, she has sought to ensure that the visitor will not merely see a visual or documentary archive, sterilized from the process of creation itself, but some combination of Bjork the orchestrator and Bjork the musician. The clarification need not be made that Bjork is an artist, but, as she has adamantly reminded the MoMA curator Klaus Biesenbach, her medium is not her videos or photographs but the songs that precede them. It was due to Bjork’s concern about the neglect of her songs that she initially hesitated at the prospect of the MoMA show because, she thought at the time, How do you hang a song on a wall? If she were going to do a retrospective, the existing museum practices for formatting sound would have to change from tinny speakers emitting noises in darkened alcoves into something entirely unfamiliar. As Biesenbach told me, the exhibition is not about Bjork’s art, it is Bjork’s art — an attempt to transform forever how a musician’s work might be presented in the context of a museum. Wearing headphones, visitors will walk through an auditory hallucination of Bjork’s career, which culminates in a new immersive environment — in Bjork’s language, ‘‘a song.’’ The song, from her new record, is 10 minutes long and called ‘‘Black Lake.’’ I listened to it in Bjork’s cabin, watching the snow melt as it hit the windowpane and the water droplets roll down. Outside, the pine trees trembled in the wind. Later, I asked Bjork what it was about. The question felt petty and even ruthless because I already knew the answer, as anybody who hears the song will know the answer. ‘‘Yeah. . . .’’ she replied. We sat and stared into our tiny glazed coffee cups. ‘‘It’s about an end of a relationship, really,’’ she finally said. ‘‘Probably that’s the best way to put it.’’

HE OLDEST SONG on ‘‘Vulnicura,’’ Bjork’s new album, is called ‘‘Quicksand.’’ It was written four years ago, when Bjork’s mother had a heart attack that left her in a coma for a week. Her mother recovered, but in the course of her illness a series of revelations about her health — undiagnosed dyslexia, an undetected cardiac condition and the aftereffects of a polio infection as a child — gave her daughter a new understanding of the worldview of the woman who raised her. Bjork always thought of the woman she calls her ‘‘nihilist mother’’ as cool and ‘‘kind of punk,’’ but it meant that growing up, Bjork often played the role of the Pollyanna in their relationship. In the two years that followed her mother’s

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recovery, Bjork’s optimism faltered. She underwent a complicated surgery for vocal cord nodes and ended her long partnership with the artist Matthew Barney, with whom she has a 12-year-old daughter. ‘‘It’s my turn or something, and then I have to deal with it — the black lake in me,’’ she said. ‘‘Because when a relationship falls apart, you have to. . . . It’s pretty hard-core stuff.’’ As Bjork was emerging with a collection of songs from that difficult time, she was introduced to the work of Alejandro Ghersi, who records under the name Arca and has produced beats for Kanye West and the R&B singer FKA Twigs. Ghersi is 25 years old, from Venezuela and gay. Despite the variance in their biographies and their age difference, the two musicians quickly formed a deep creative connection. Bjork explains that in the Chinese astrological calendar they are both snakes, and therefore intuitive and prone to merging. But she also sees Arca, along with emerging artists like Mykki Blanco, Kelela and Le1f, as the newest branch of the music she has loved, a generation for whom she now figures as a matriarch. Bjork might still be in a reclusive compositional phase of work were it not for Ghersi, who interrupted her normal process of slow curation. They drove to her cabin for an exploratory session under her reindeer antler chandelier, and Bjork was impressed by Ghersi’s efficiency as a producer. For ‘‘Vespertine’’ in 2001, Bjork had crafted most of her own beats, but the process had taken three years. ‘‘There’s no way I’m going to wallow in this self-pity for three years, forget it,’’ she said of her decision to finish the album as quickly as possible, to close this circle and move on to the next. Over the next year, she and Ghersi continued to meet, sometimes joined by the producer Bobby Krlic, who records as the Haxan Cloak. The work went quickly and, unusually for Bjork, the songs in ‘‘Vulnicura’’ appear mostly in the order in which they were written, like a series of diary entries. I was lucky to meet Bjork at a moment when the story of her new album had not been set. She described the video for ‘‘Black Lake,’’ directed by Huang and influenced by Ingmar Bergman, as operatic in scale but also stark, centered on her voice and her performance. ‘‘Like a black-and-white psychology movie,’’ she said, and then laughed. ‘‘I don’t know why that was funny.’’ Huang told me of a wound motif, of a clip she had sent him of a spider molting, of the album’s thematic use of lilac and yellow. For now, there is only the album itself, which I heard just once. It is, I think, one of her best albums, intensely personal. String arrangements were prevalent on Bjork’s first four albums but they have been all but absent from her music for a long 10 years, swapped out for experiments with choirs, brass and beats. On this album, Bjork returns to strings, and the arrangements are the most complex she has composed. The intention was to create a solitary, psychological sound. ‘‘I used to say when I did ‘Homogenic’ that the strings are almost like your nervous system,’’ she said. ‘‘Like being played with a bow.’’

CREATIVE MOVEMENT DIRECTOR: STEPHEN GALLOWAY. MANICURIST: GINA VIVIANO USING CHANEL LE VERNIS. LIGHTING DIRECTOR: JODOKUS DRIESSEN. TAILOR: MARLEY GLASSROTH. PHOTO ASSISTANT: CHRIS DAVIS. STYLIST'S ASSISTANTS: ALEXA LANZA, YOHANA LEBASI. HAIR ASSISTANT: TAKU. MAKEUP ASSISTANT: RENA TAKEDA

wearing headphones, visitors to moma will walk through an auditory halluCINATiON OF BJORK’S CAREER, WHICH CULMiNATES iN A NEW IMMERSIVE EXPERIENCE — iN BJORK’S LANGUAGE, 'A SONG.'

Syren top and gloves. Hair by Christiaan. Makeup by Dick Page for Shiseido.

March - April 2015

As fashion continues to demand ever more output and speed, many designers are finding freedom in the artisanal. Welcome to a season of exposed topstitching, frayed edges, crinkled linen, drawstring burlap and other

THE HUMAN TO disciplines of applied art.

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MANICURIST: MARIAN NEWMAN AT STREETERS. DIGITAL TECH: JAMES NAYLOR. PHOTO ASSISTANTS: SIMON ROBERTS, HUAN DUONG NGUYEN, MARK LINCOLN, LARS BRONSETH. TAILOR: CAROLINE THORPE. STYLIST'S ASSISTANTS: JOHN PASHALIDIS, MATT KING. HAIR ASSISTANT: DAVID HARBOROW. MAKEUP ASSISTANT: MARIA COMPARETTO. SET BUILDER: PETE JENKINS. PROP ASSISTANTS: HATTY ELLIS-COWARD, SCARLET WINTER, CAROLINE BYRNE, HOLLY M C CULLOCH

A LOCAL

It might not be as flashy as Dubai or Qatar â&#x20AC;&#x201D; but Sharjah has become a creative hub, thanks to a sheikh with a penchant for botany and his daughter, Hoor Al Qasimi, whose talent lies in gentle transgression.

INTERNATIONAL ART SCENE BY CAROL KINO PORTRAITS BY BHARAT SIKKA

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OPENING IMAGE: MAIDER LÓPEZ, FOOTBALL FIELD, 2007, INSTALLATION VIEW/ PHOTO BY ALFREDO LOPEZ, IMAGE COURTESY OF SHARJAH ART FOUNDATION

SHEIKHA HOOR AL QASIMI’S presentations about the Sharjah Biennial, the international art exposition she has overseen since 2003, tend to begin in the same way. ‘‘Let me explain where Sharjah is,’’ she says, pointing to a map of the United Arab Emirates. The only emirate of seven to span the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman, Sharjah ranges from desert and mountains in the west to beaches and mangroves in the east. Like the other emirates, it is ruled by a hereditary monarchy; the sheikha is the youngest daughter of the ruler of Sharjah, His Highness Sheikh Dr. Sultan bin Mohammed Al Qasimi. But bundled into a big sweater and wearing thick-rimmed glasses, Hoor Al Qasimi resembles not so much a member of royalty as a student of painting, which she once was, at the Slade School of Fine Art in London. Last December she was back at the Slade for a day of studio visits and to give a lecture, following a month of meetings with artists and curators that had sent her zigzagging through Europe, Jordan and the Persian Gulf. Like her schedule, Qasimi’s identity traverses continents. Conversant in more than seven languages, including Japanese and Mandarin, she lives the typically hyper-scheduled life of an international curator, ricocheting between time zones in search of local knowledge. At a time when biennials have dizzyingly proliferated, merging to create an art-starstudded brand of globalism, the Sharjah Biennial — which Qasimi inherited from her father, who founded it in 1993 — has come to be known as a local laboratory, the kind of event to which artists dream of being invited to make work and curators flock to find new talent. It also illustrates the fact — which can sometimes seem a paradox — that great contemporary art can thrive quite nicely within a conservative Islamic state. In a darkened lecture hall at the Slade, Qasimi projected an image onto the screen: the square outside the Sharjah Art Museum marked up like a soccer field. The 2007 installation by the Spanish artist Maider López was, like much of the art the biennial features, socially engaged, humorous, applying a gentle scrutiny to the art world and its institutions. Another slide, depicting the courtyard of a 19th-century house covered with bloodstains that revealed themselves to be delicately painted crimson flowers — a 2011 installation by the Pakistani neo-miniaturist Imran Qureshi — recalled the Arab Spring’s uprisings, at the time only a few hours’ drive away. ‘‘Everyone says Sharjah is very conservative,’’ Qasimi told her students. Dress codes are stricter there than in Abu Dhabi or Dubai, and alcohol harder to procure. ‘‘But the performances do push the limits.’’ In 2011, the popular Mauritanian griot Dimi Mint

Abba had sung one of her last concerts in a building overlooking the seaside promenade known as the Corniche before a dancing crowd. How hard to push limits in Sharjah has at times been a matter of controversy. For now, Qasimi’s message to students was of the importance of creative flexibility, of feeling things out as you go. The biennial’s upcoming edition, organized by the American curator Eungie Joo, she explained, would take place in an abandoned ice factory near the east coast and in a building shaped like a flying saucer, among other locations, but the details would be left open until nearer the opening. ‘‘People always ask, ‘What’s your future plan?’ ’’ she said. ‘‘We always say, ‘We don’t know. We experiment.’ ’’ Of course, it also helps if the place where you’re experimenting is ruled with something of a free spirit. About the flying saucer — a 1970s edifice that was at one point a grocery store, then a Saudi fast-food chain — Qasimi explained that she had recently wondered how it came to be there in the first place. ‘‘So I asked my dad, ‘Who decided to build a flying saucer in the middle of the city?’ ’’ she said. To her surprise and delight, the sheikh had responded, ‘‘Me.’’ QASIMI’S FATHER, who took the throne in 1972 after his older

CULTURAL CAPITAL Opposite: a 2007 installation by the Spanish artist Maider López that turned the square outside the Sharjah Art Museum into a soccer field. Below: Sheikha Hoor Al Qasimi, who in 2003 took over the biennial her father, the ruler of Sharjah, founded in 1993.

brother’s assassination in an attempted coup, is known for his artistic sensibility. While other Emirati rulers focused on business, trade and projects such as building the world’s largest artificial harbor or tallest skyscraper, the sheikh steered his emirate toward culture, which he deemed ‘‘essential to the spirit.’’ A playwright and author with two Ph.D.s, he formed theater companies, founded the U.A.E.’s first coed university and, in 1982, launched an international book fair that still creates traffic jams. In a 1979 speech, he told an audience that it was ‘‘time to stop the ‘concrete revolution’ of civil construction in the country and replace it with a ‘cultural revolution.’ ’’ In 1980, the sheikh backed the formation of the Emirates Fine Arts Society, founded by the U.A.E.’s avant-garde, including conceptual artists such as Hassan Sharif, his protégé Mohammed Kazem and the land artist Mohammed Ahmed Ibrahim — providing them with a place to meet and hold classes: an early model, perhaps, for the sort of low-key patronage his daughter’s Sharjah Art Foundation now offers. (Kazem, who joined the

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society as a teenager, told me that he thought the sheikh knew ‘‘every single person in the city.’’) In 1993, the sheikh began opening museums — of archeology, art, calligraphy — and, in the same year, inspired by a similar enterprise in Cairo, founded the Sharjah Biennial. When Qasimi is in Sharjah, she often discusses ideas with the sheikh at 4 a.m., when he rises each morning to write. The day after her talk at the Slade, over a coffee near Tate Modern, she spoke proudly of his wildlife preserve and the capital’s Heritage and Arts Area, which now incorporates artists’ studios and newly built exhibition spaces. He is also a poet, she said, which is why ‘‘every time he gives speeches you get chills.’’ He had encouraged his children to pursue their own creative ambitions, perhaps because his dreams of studying botany had been derailed by his brother’s death when, as Qasimi put it, ‘‘he had to come and take his job.’’ (Qasimi’s twin brother, Khalid, runs the U.K.-based men’s wear label Qasimi.) Reem Fadda, the associate curator of Middle Eastern art for the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, calls Sharjah ‘‘a little haven for a lot of artistic practices. Traditional values are important, but it is very open-minded when it comes to cultural production.’’ In practice this has meant that Sharjah’s artistic output has been not radically political but rather formally experimental; Fadda noted that conceptual art, performance art and land art all emerged in the area before they became prominent in the Levant. (Qasimi, who is proud of this history, intends to focus on the country’s early years in the National Pavilion U.A.E. at this year’s Venice Biennale; she is the first Emirati national to curate the show.) But the Sharjah art scene is often overshadowed by glittery goings-on elsewhere in the U.A.E. and Qatar, its neighbor to the west, even if reports of harsh conditions for migrant workers on building sites have somewhat dimmed their luster. In recent years, the region’s self-reinvention as a cultural destination has included plans for the cultural district of Saadiyat Island, which will hold outposts of the Guggenheim and the Louvre. Meanwhile, Qatar, the world’s richest country by per-capita G.D.P., has a growing number of museums and is home to several megamillion-dollar projects by Western stars such as Richard Serra and Damien Hirst. Activities

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SOCIAL EXPERIMENT From top: Sheikh Dr. Sultan bin Mohammed Al Qasimi (center) circa 1985 outside the Emirates Fine Arts Society, the country’s first artists’ association; the artist Walid Al Wawi in his Sharjah Art Foundation studio.

there are now overseen by the glamorous 31-year-old Her Excellency Sheikha Al Mayassa bint Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, sister to the emir and chair of the Qatar Museums, an organization that collects art so voraciously that it’s been held responsible for inflating the contemporary art market worldwide. In contrast to that other famous ‘‘art sheikha,’’ Qasimi has offered a more modest support, helping new work by less heralded artists get made and shown. She remembers the moment she was put in charge of the biennial as sudden and mysterious although one suspects that her position as the ruler’s daughter might have had something to do with it. She was 22 and the only woman on the committee. The controversial proposals she put to the board — to seed projects throughout the city, bring in outside curators, incorporate performance and video, make the whole thing more political — were inspired in part by Documenta 11, the huge international exhibition held every five years in Kassel, Germany, which she had visited in 2002, shortly after graduating from the Slade. With the opening of the sixth edition of the biennial only six months away, half of the longtime members quit. WILLIAM WELLS, the co-founder and executive director of

Townhouse, one of Cairo’s first independent art spaces, visited Qasimi’s first biennial, which opened on April 8, 2003, the day before American troops formally occupied Baghdad. ‘‘We all rushed there to criticize, and we were shocked,’’ he confessed. ‘‘People began to realize that there was an opportunity,’’ he said, ‘‘that these people with influence and money, they were on the same page as us — they actually wanted to show the work we wanted to show.’’ The sheikh’s biennial by all accounts had been a rather staid affair, housed in a convention center with national-pavilion-style areas filled with artists recommended by government ministries, heavy on neomodernist painting and sculpture, the same names repeated each year. Together with the British curator Peter Lewis, who’d been active in the London artist-run DIY gallery movement of the 1990s, Qasimi abolished the national-pavilion model. ‘‘I thought, so many people live in the diaspora now and you can’t really pinpoint where people are from,’’ she explained. Artists helped put the show together. Farhad Moshiri, a Tehran-based artist whose crystal-encrusted paintings have gone on to reach up to nearly $1 million (QR3,640,000) at auction, and his wife worked

CENTER IMAGES, LEFT TO RIGHT: COURTESY OF H.H. SHEIKH DR. SULTAN BIN MOHAMMED AL QASIMI; SUSAN HEFUNA, SHARJAH AFAZ DRAWINGS, 2013/2014, INSTALLATION VIEW/PHOTO BY ALFREDO LOPEZ, IMAGE COURTESY OF SHARJAH ART FOUNDATION; ALAIN SAINT-HILAIRE

frantically alongside Qasimi, pasting up labels and sweeping floors until the doors opened. Qasimi’s decisions since then — to hire an artistic director, the curator Jack Persekian, in 2004; to offer lesser-known artists residencies and commissions; to institute the ‘‘March Meeting,’’ an annual discussion series focusing on the future of art in the Arab world; to establish a foundation in 2009 for year-round projects — have extended the biennial’s purview. Having previously remained in the background, Qasimi has in the last few years become a more visible leader of the operation. On recent visits to Townhouse, Wells observed, she had ‘‘wooed all of our artists over’’ by being ‘‘incredibly personal and charming, without any kind of pretension at all.’’ Talking to Qasimi over several days in London, I got the distinct impression that she had stepped into her role reluctantly. ‘‘I didn’t think this was going to be my job,’’ she told me more than once. One day, she hoped, she might return to painting. Still, it is clearly a job she relishes. Toward the end of her stay, we visited a Saudi artists’ collective headquartered in a warehouse-like space in Southwest London, where she happily chatted in Arabic with Ahmed Mater, one of the founders, and his wife, the artist Arwa Al Neami, both visiting from Saudi Arabia. They were meeting to discuss Mater’s ongoing commission for the Sharjah Art Foundation. ‘‘100 Found Objects’’ chronicles the modern history of Mecca and its transformation into a luxury development, using objects found in the rubble of its building sites: videos, View-Master slides, postcards, a policeman’s whistle. The three had visited the site together and Qasimi was proud to have snuck some old medals out of the country (‘‘with me, nobody suspects’’). Recalling her experience of the holy city, she added, ‘‘People think in the Gulf we all understand each other, but we do not.’’ ‘‘Think global, act local,’’ Mater joked. QASIMI FAVORS SMALL transgressions over the ‘‘épater le bourgeois’’ kind of revolt that’s usually associated with contemporary art. ‘‘You don’t start a debate by offending someone,’’ she told me once. ‘‘You slowly push the boundaries.’’ We had been discussing the now-infamous installation entitled ‘‘It Has No Importance’’ by the Algerian writer Mustapha Benfodil, featured in

Qasimi’s first biennial opened on April 8, 2003, the day before American troops formally occupied Baghdad. ‘We all rushed there to criticize,’ said William Wells, who runs the independent art space Townhouse in Cairo, ‘and we were shocked.’

PUSHING BOUNDARIES Clockwise from below: the street sign, pictured in the 1970s, that inspired the slogan of this year’s biennial; ‘‘Sharjah Afaz Drawings,’’ an installation by Susan Hefuna last year; the artist Nasir Nasrallah in his studio in the Arts Area.

the 2011 biennial, which paired religious and explicit sexual references. Placed near a minority Shia mosque in Sharjah, it had provoked a public furor, upon which the sheikh had the piece removed and fired Persekian. For many, the removal of the work constituted a worrying act of censorship. Others suggested that Persekian’s dismissal had been the result of his poor management. Qasimi was adamant that her father had done the right thing. ‘‘It was actually a democratic decision,’’ she said. ‘‘It was the public that asked us to remove it.’’ For Qasimi, the 2011 crisis forced her and the team to reaffirm their commitment to Sharjah, to ask themselves, as she put it, ‘‘Why are we doing this? Is it for the international art crowd or is it for the local crowd?’’ A boundary had been established, but with it came a new community-oriented energy. Audiences to the following biennial in 2013 noticed even more projects made in tandem with local groups, including the mostly Pakistani workers who usually install the exposition. ‘‘Dictums 10:120’’ by the Egyptian artist Wael Shawky was a performance that involved translating fragments of curatorial talks from an earlier biennial into Urdu, and asking those workers to sift through the artspeak for meaningful phrases, which were then set to Sufi devotional music. Thirty musicians and singers, all seated on pale blue cushions lining a narrow alleyway, performed the composition. As the melody floated through the Heritage Area, people crowded around, straining to see them from nearby rooftops. ‘‘If it’s only for the international art crowd, we can be anywhere in the world,’’ Qasimi said. ‘‘We don’t have to be in Sharjah.’’

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Document

British Pottery A series of paintings by Leanne Shapton from the book ‘Lucie Rie: a Survey of Her Life and Work,’ edited by John Houston, Crafts Council, 1981.

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