T Qatar May-June 2015 by Oryx Group of Magazines

Men’s Style May- June, 2015 From Mary Russell's collection: Helmut Newton photographing Charlotte Rampling in Cannes, 1976.

Page 84

Features Jean-Michel Basquiat

The rarely seen sketches and notes that the artist made in the 1980s, which formed the basis for his painting. By Luc Sante 64 The Beat Goes On Looks that channel the heady, freewheeling days of the East Village in the ’70s. Photographs by Karim Sadli Styled by Joe McKenna

80 A Moment in Time The photographer and fashion insider Mary Russell reminisces about — and shares intimate snapshots from — her life among some of the most stylish names of her generation. By Marian McEvoy Photographs by Mary Russell

COVER IMAGE: RICHARD CORMAN/CPI SYNDICATION; MARY RUSSELL

60 The Unknown Notebooks of

74 The Colossal Emptiness of China’s Most Excellent Tourist City

The residents of Ordos, a coal-rich, skyscraper-filled playland in the Chinese province of Inner Mongolia, would like to tell you how wonderful their city is. You just have to find them first. By Jody Rosen Photographs by Weng Fen

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ON THE COVER: A photograph from 1984 of Jean-Michel Basquiat in his studio on Great Jones Street, New York City. By Richard Corman.

Lookout 10

Sign of the Times

Tracing the rise of hip-hop’s influence on the runway. 14

This and That

Adornment on the hair; Lee Radziwill's coats; elderly ensembles; and more. 20 The Moment From fitted tanks to foppish neckerchiefs, a look at the softer side of men’s style.

Page 49

24 Watch Report Minimal timepieces that dial it down.

Quality

35 In Fashion Relaxed suiting that’s made for letting loose. 42 The Thing A perfectly simple Hermès watch that’s simply perfect. 43 Food Matters Elizabeth Alexander confronts the loss of her husband and finds solace in the recipes, rituals and aromas of the life they shared.

Arena

45 N o, Thank You With the hysterical rise in men’s grooming practices, one writer asks: Are we plucking and primping ourselves into submission? 47 By Design In his near-empty home, the art director Sam Shahid’s most precious objects are behind closed doors. 88 Document Leanne Shapton’s paintings of flower arrangements.

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: FRANÇOIS HALARD; MATTHEW KRISTALL

Page 35

Above: The art director Sam Shahid's home in Greenwich Village. Bottom left: a model wearing a Louis Vuitton jacket, QR13,550, and pants, QR3,200. Hermès tank top, QR1,360, hermes.com. Marni shoes, QR3,040, marni.com. In God We Trust NYC necklace, QR300.

T Qatar: The New York Times Style Magazine

TALENT FOCUS Prada's menswear at Dover Street Market.

Page 27

Lookout Qatar 18 This and That Chanel watches and fine jewelry arrive in Doha; the Louis Vuitton Foundation illustrates the link between modern artists of the 20th century and contemporary artists of today; the art of the kimono; Jaeger-LeCoultre takes to the desert. 26 New Direction Always delivering the unexpected, Dover Street Market reveals its Middle Eastern connection. 28 On the Verge Malaz Elgemiabby’s thesis at Virgina Commonwealth University in Qatar is all about raising awareness about a particular issue in Sudan. 32 In Fashion Couture designers Charles and Patricia Lester celebrate a remarkable 50 years in business.

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56 Arts and Letters Kate Lord Brown, a Doha-based author, talks about her new book and her eternal thirst for untold stories of the past.

ART

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52 By Design With the current boom in design, investing in furniture that’s passed on from one generation to another is growing in popularity.

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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.

Sign of the Times

Remembrance of Things Lost As we increasingly outsource our memories to devices, we may be forgetting the pleasures of imperfect recall. BY WALTER KIRN

raw experience into a finished, archived artifact. When I try to recall my childhood (which, as a memoirist and fiction writer, I’m often inclined to do), I don’t have recourse to an exhaustive catalog of images and documents. My parents never shot home movies and they took family photos only rarely, on ceremonial occasions when everyone was compelled to smile tautly and mask what was really going on inside them. As a consequence, revisiting my youth can feel rather like a homicide investigation. Working from clues and the accounts of witnesses, including the highly unreliable one who lives behind my eyeballs, I wait for scenarios to form and patterns to emerge. If they seem plausible I delve into them further, especially if the images align with the murky emotions they conjure up. I tend not to question the resulting mental scenes despite being well aware that photographs and secondhand stories have been shown to create false memories. Clear or hazy, bright or dim, my recollections are private, mine alone, and written in synaptic smoke, not subject to verification by instant replay. What makes memories precious, even certain ‘‘bad’’ ones, is forgetting, of course. Remember forgetting? I’m

FREEZE FRAME A composite photograph of tourists in Times Square capturing the scenery.

‘‘MEMORY LANE,’’ 2008, FROM ‘‘BABEL TALES’’ BY PETER FUNCH

WHAT IF MARCEL PROUST had kept an Instagram account? What if he’d used a smartphone to snap a photo of every evocative morsel he’d ever eaten? Would he still have written ‘‘In Search of Lost Time,’’ his multivolume account of the vanished social universe of his youth, unlocked by the taste of a madeleine dipped in tea? These questions occurred to me a couple of months ago when I picked up my son, 13, and two of his friends after a long day of downhill skiing at a resort near our home in western Montana. They stowed their gear in the trunk and piled in. As I pulled out of the crowded parking lot, eyes on the slick road, I asked them about their day. No answer. I glanced to my right, at my son, then in the rearview, and saw that all three of my rosy-cheeked young passengers were absorbed in the same task. They worked with their heads down, thumbs and fingers flying, occasionally passing their cameras to one another. ‘‘Whoa!’’ I heard. ‘‘Awesome!’’ ‘‘That jump was sick!’’ I tried again to start a conversation about the day’s most memorable moments but my son was so busy with his highlights reel that I realized this was his day’s most memorable moment: the reviewing and editing of the video footage from his helmet-mounted GoPro camera; the conversion of blurry

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Sign of the Times

not so sure my son will. There’s also a chance that people might miss it someday. ‘‘Black Mirror,’’ the dystopian British TV series (now available for posterity on Netflix), devoted one of its early episodes, ‘‘The Entire History of You,’’ to the nightmare possibilities of total digital recall. The premise is that the hip and affluent have adopted a new gizmo: a tiny ‘‘seed,’’ surgically implanted in their necks, that records (and can also replay on a TV screen or in its owners’ brains) footage of everything they see and hear. Oddly, no one seems to mind being filmed continually by others, even during sex; indeed, the appeal of the implant seems partly based on its users’ desire to reenact the thrilling erotic encounters of their pasts, occasionally while making love to another partner in the present. The inevitable crisis occurs when a tipsy, jealous husband scrutinizes footage from a party that indicates his wife and the male host may be infatuated with each other. The husband MIND OVER MATTER A 2011 installation of printouts of photos that had been uploaded to Flickr over a 24-hour period. grills her on the subject, learns that she and the host are carrying on, and forces her to replay A graver problem with offloading our memories is that we may for him a scene of their having sex; later, his wife having be degrading our capacity to make them the old-fashioned way. left him, he cuts out his own seed with a razor blade rather than I’ve long suspected that this might be true; in fact, I may be an retain the painful memories. extremist on the matter. One reason that I’ve never kept a journal is The fallacy behind this script is that there would be a market that the attention that goes into keeping one is, I feel, more profitably for a device that enables complete and perfect recall. Not even my spent on engaging with the moment. I’d rather live in the instant than GoPro-toting son wants that. His instinctive goal is to record ’gram the instant. Support for my instinct came the other day when I exceptional experiences that he expects he may want to savor again read about a study conducted at University College London on the someday, saving himself the Proustian alleged contribution of technology to early trouble. He inherently understands that dementia. The research suggested that memory consists of constructing, and later regions of the brain crucial to forming reconstructing, narratives, not just storing memories — in this case of the features and and retrieving data. Memory is an locations of landmarks in physical space — imaginative act; first may tend to wither prematurely with the use we imagine what we’ll want to keep and then of automated navigation aids. The part we fashion stories from what we’ve kept. of the hippocampus that remembers things Memories don’t just happen, they are built. simply doesn’t turn on when a device The problem for my son — and performs the task instead. for everyone who relies on microchips to A remembrance never formed is worse, far preserve the present for future examination worse, than a remembrance lost. — is that we have no idea who we’ll be At 52, increasingly forgetful, I sometimes rack when the time comes to reflect on who we were. Despite my brain for past experiences that I’m positive are in there our tendency in the computer age to think of ourselves as soft somewhere and draw a blank. It’s frustrating, but the blank still machines, the human mind is not a hard drive, a neutral marks a spot — a spot where a memory used to be and might, if I repository of information. The melancholy passage of the years tends eat the right cake, reappear. What makes memory magical is its to change our values as we age, and the awesome backflips imperfections and its unpredictability; try as we might, we never of 13 don’t hold the magic they once did; not when compared to quite control it. It draws our attention to the margins of stories that the image of a loved one who has since gone absent, say. If I’d had once seemed to be the main events. Someday, when my son reviews a smartphone with a video camera back in my early adolescence, his footage, what will come back to him may not be his ski stunts I doubt that I would have trained it on the things that matter to but other aspects of that winter day: the voices of his friends, the me now, like the sight of my mother reading in her blue armchair, shadows on the mountain, the face of his father beside him in underlining passages from Proust. the car.

If I’d had a smartphone with a video camera back in my early adolescence, I doubt that I would have trained it on the things that matter to me now, like the sight of my mother reading in her blue armchair.

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‘‘24 HRS IN PHOTOS,’’ BY ERIK KESSELS AT FOAM IN AMSTERDAM, KESSELSKRAMER

Lookout

This and That A Cultural Compendium

FEELING FOR

Senior Swagger Bermuda shorts and bucket hats usher in the season of the septuagenarian.

The Anti-Bully Backpack

FEELING FOR

Topographic Tops From Rick to Raf, designers take in the view. From left: J. W. Anderson top, QR3,580, j-w-anderson. com. Raf Simons top, about QR6,445, rafsimons.com. Rick Owens top, price on request. Marc by Marc Jacobs top, QR355.

ALL PRICES ARE INDICATIVE

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CLOCKWISE FROM TOP RIGHT: JUSTIN NAMON/RA-HAUS FOTOGRAFIE (3); COURTESY OF MARC BY MARC JACOBS; VALERIO MEZZANOTTI; RAF SIMONS; COURTESY OF J. W. ANDERSON. ILLUSTRATIONS BY KONSTANTIN KAKANIAS

It used to be that the only way to make a backpack look remotely cool was to wear it off of one shoulder, projecting the vibe of someone only halfway committed to going to school. But this is no longer the case, thanks to MadPax’s eccentric, cartoonish bags, which are alternately spiked, bubble-covered or block-shaped, and occasionally appear to be dipped in a rainbow of sprinkles. In 2010, the company’s co-founder Tina Huber tested a prototype by putting it on her son, a second grader, and sending him to school. ‘‘At the end of the day he got back in the car, and I was like, ‘Tell me everything,’ ’’ Huber says. ‘‘And he goes, ‘I seriously felt like Jesus. Everybody wanted to touch me.’ ’’ Before long, Willow Smith started wearing one, as did the children of Ben Affleck, Hugh Jackman and Heidi Klum. While the backpacks come in many different styles, all of them look instantly iconic, combining elements of sci-fi, exotic wildlife and Memphis design — and all of them can be worn comfortably, and with confidence, on both shoulders. From QR116, madpax.com — LEON NEYFAKH

Lookout

This and That THE RING MASTER Clockwise from below left: Lee Broom; Crescent Lights and a Hoop Chair from the designer’s new collection, price upon request.

A Splash of Flash

In a season of underdone hair, a little adornment can make all the difference.

Design With a Bit of Drama

IN HER WORDS

The style icon Lee Radziwill recalls discovering the coats of Martin Grant. ‘‘Years ago, while looking around Barneys with my friend André Leon Talley, I came across a black leather jacket that I was mad about. I hadn’t heard of the designer, but André knew immediately that it was Martin Grant, an Australian who now lives and works in Paris. I live there too, for part of the year at least, and upon my return I was determined to track him down. It wasn’t easy finding his tiny shop in the Marais, and when I did, it was closed for lunch. So I walked around — and then around some more — until it was open, and there he was, skinny, boyish and super low-key. For me, his talent lies in making coats and jackets that never feel trendy because he understands and respects line, proportion and simplicity. Even now that his Paris quarters are large and lovely, how lucky we are that he doesn’t need or want to show off. And how lucky I am that we remain the closest friends.’’ MARTINGRANTPARIS.COM

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THE EASE OF ELEGANCE From far left: looks from Martin Grant’s spring 2015 collection. Inset: the designer and Lee Radziwill in Corsica in 2008.

CLOCKWISE FROM BOTTOM RIGHT: FRÉDÉRIQUE DUMOULIN; COURTESY OF MARTIN GRANT; FRÉDÉRIQUE DUMOULIN (2); LUKE HAYES; ARTHUR WOODCROFT (2). ILLUSTRATIONS BY KONSTANTIN KAKANIAS

Clockwise from top left: Dolce & Gabbana (showpiece only); Valentino Garavani, QR1,375, ; Céline, QR1,560, bergdorfgoodman. com; Bottega Veneta, QR4,400.

The British furniture and lighting designer Lee Broom is known both for his clever, often nostalgic creations and the elaborate ways he displays them: In 2012, during the Milan Furniture Fair, he showed inside an old pub that he bought in London, disassembled and rebuilt in Milan. This year, he’ll return to the prestigious event with a unique take on the department store — Memphis-style chairs and fragmented mirrors in the ‘‘gents’ fitting room,’’ fluted tables that furnish the ‘‘bookstore’’ and tubular fluorescent lamps with cut crystal that illuminate the ‘‘perfumery.’’ ‘‘I always try to do something theatrical,’’ he says. ‘‘And once I learned that the department store was an English invention, I knew I had the right idea.’’ leebroom.com — TOM DELAVAN

Lookout Qatar

This and That

Rites of Passage

The kimono collection owned by the kimono master Suemi Nishiwaki, coupled with a number of abaya designs by Asma Sckali, saw two diverse cultures and distinct female garments take center stage. The abaya collection was heavily influenced by Japanese traditions. The event was held to mark the Cherry Blossom Festival celebrated in Japan. It included a Chakai tea ceremony as well as a performance by student drummers of the Japanese School of Doha. The fashion event was organized after six months of collaboration between the team in Qatar, the Japanese Embassy in Doha and Hiroko Kitazume in Tokyo. Kitazume, the wife of a former Japanese ambassador to Doha, collaborated on this initiative and invited Nishiwaki to showcase her collection of over 1,000 kimonos. Nishiwaki is regarded as one of the most prolific kimono collectors in Japan. She is also an assistant professor of Intercultural Studies at the Yamaguchi Prefectural University. The Doha

audience was exposed to the culture of kimono draping, and the various styles of the clothing that are worn during the different stages of a woman’s life. Owing to the detailed handwork that goes into making a kimono, one garment can cost up to $100,000 (QR363, 968). Some of the kimonos on display in Doha took three years to complete. Bridal pieces are, of course, much more expensive. “Owning a kimono is not a luxury for all Japanese women. Brides-to-be often need to rent one for their wedding. The rental price for a few hours can go up to a few million Yen,” Kitazume says. “Many local Qatari women have asked if they can buy one of these unique kimonos,” said Nishiwaki, who brought along a few pieces that were on sale. — ABIGAIL MATHIAS

Keys to a Passion The Louis Vuitton Foundation champions contemporary art within the cultural landscape of Paris, in the colossal and cutting-edge Frank Gehry-designed building. Since opening in October last year, the Louis Vuitton Foundation has been defining its role through a series of introductory exhibitions, including Keys to a Passion. Illustrating the link between modern artists in the 20th century and contemporary artists today, the exhibition presents major works that stand out as important historical reference points. “I wanted the foundation to express this historical and founding scope through works that we deem to be ‘keys’ to the creations of the 20th century, works that elicit true passion,” says the president of Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy (LVMH Group), Bernard Arnault. These works, including Claude Monet’s “Water Lilies” and Piet Mondrian’s “Dunes”, share the element of being ahead of their time and have acquired iconic status as pieces that are widely studied and debated. Curated by Suzanne Pagé and Beatrice Parent, with Isabelle MonodFontaine as scientific adviser, the project was a monumental task of loaning key exhibits that belong to different museums all around the world. “Many of these works are difficult to see firsthand. They have been brought together here to offer visitors the irreplaceable experience that comes from an emotional and personal encounter with a unique work of art,” Pagé explains. The exhibition runs until July 6 at the Louis Vuitton Foundation, Avenue du Mahatma Gandhi, Paris. — DEBRINA ALIYAH 22

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NEW AND OLD "Three Women" by Fernand xxxxxxx Léger, on loan from the Museum of Modern Art, New York

FASHION FROM THE EAST Inset: The kimono master Suemi Nishiwaki; Kimonos dispalyed during the fusion fashion show at St. Regis, Doha.

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: ST. REGIS, DOHA, CHANEL, JAGER LE COULTRE AND LOUIS VUITTON FOUNDATION

A kimono fashion fusion show brought together Qatar and Japan in a display of culture and style.

A Doha Home for Chanel Chanel was meant to arrive in Qatar much earlier, but like all new ventures, the process took its due time. When the doors of the first Chanel watches and fine jewelry boutique in Qatar (and the third in the region) opened, it garnered the attention it was meant to. Located on the first level of Lagoona Mall, the new boutique is designed by New York architect Peter Marino, who designs all of Chanel's boutiques across the world. Gold is the overall theme of the Chanel store's interior. Not flashy, ostentatious gold, but the regal fine shimmer of gold on the walls, subtle gold fringes on the furniture, a larger shine on the chandeliers and over the famous Chanel signature fireplace. The hint of luxury and class is not missed nor is it overtly present, making the customer comfortable with and aware of Chanel's trademark finesse. The 150 square-meter space is inspired by the homes of Gabrielle Chanel, most notably the townhouse at 29 Faubourg Saint-Honoré and her apartment on the Rue Cambon. As they enter the boutique, clients are able to discover Chanel timepieces, located on the right. On display is the House’s full collection of watches, including the latest novelties: J12-365, J12-G.10 and Première Rock. The left side of the new boutique is dedicated to fine jewelry, adorned with a Venetian Rococo carved gilt-wood and gilt gesso mirrors from the 18th century. The space reveals exceptional pieces from the “Sous le Signe du Lion” collection, that is unique to Doha. It was inspired by the majestic lion which held a distinct place in the life of Mademoiselle Chanel. The VIP Salon Room is the most beautiful space in the boutique, furnished with a sofa and a polished bronze coffee table by Ingrid Donat. — SINDHU NAIR

A NEW HOME Above: View of the interiors of the new Chanel store in Lagoona mall; left: Mademoiselle Privé Coromandel Or Sculpté, a special edition watch by Chanel exclusively for the Qatar market.

A Desert Shoot Jaeger-LeCoultre has collaborated with two of the Middle East’s most well-known online personalities for a photo shoot in the heart of the Arabian desert, to share the story of the brand with the deeprooted heritage of the region. Zahra Lyla, the fashion, beauty and lifestyle blogger and graphic artist from Lyla Loves Fashion, and Ahmad Daabas, the founding publisher and editor in chief of AMDMode, took to the sands on a desert safari wearing timepieces from the latest 2015 collection — including the Master Calendar Meteorite, the Rendez-Vous Moon, as well as the Master Compressor Extreme LAB 2. — SINDHU NAIR

SUN AND SAND Zahra Lyla, Ahmad Daabas share the story of the desert.

May - June 2015

Lookout

The Moment

Menâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s style is progressing toward a more delicate aesthetic. Here are some of the poetic undertones of this new look. PHOTOGRAPHS BY MATTHEW KRISTALL STYLED BY JASON RIDER

THE TANK One fitted like an undershirt but thick enough to be worn on its own with trousers.

Gucci tank top, QR2,275. Louis Vuitton pants, about QR3,170.

ALL PRICES ARE INDICATIVE

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EXTRA-LONG PANTS Intentionally left unhemmed, with an equally relaxed shirt.

Lanvin pants, QR4,530, barneys.com. Dries Van Noten shirt, QR2,580, barneys.com. Alexander McQueen sneakers, QR2,255, alexandermcqueen.com.

May - June 2015

Lookout

The Moment

A NECKERCHIEF Twisted and knotted on an open neckline, like a modern-day Nureyev.

T Qatar: The New York Times Style Magazine

Boglioli neckerchief, QR710, boglioli.it. Burberry Prorsum shirt, QR3,260.

MODEL: SIMON FITSKIE AT ELITE LONDON. HAIR BY KRISTEN SHAW AT JED ROOT USING ORIBE HAIR CARE. MAKEUP BY GIA HARRIS AT ARTMIX CREATIVE FOR TOM FORD. CASTING BY ARIANNA PRADARELLI. PHOTOGRAPHER’S ASSISTANTS: STUART GOW AND RON NEWKIRK. STYLIST’S ASSISTANTS: KELLY HARRIS AND BENJAMIN KENNEDY

MISMATCHED SUIT

A jacket and trousers with a different pattern but a similar tone.

Ermenegildo Zegna Couture jacket, QR14,180, and pants, QR4,000. Dries Van Noten tank top, QR545, barneys.com.

May - June 2015

Lookout

Watch Report

Without Much Ado Timepieces so perfectly minimal they leave you wanting for nothing.

Clockwise from top left: Coach Bleecker, QR1,270, coach.com. Uniform Wares M37, QR1,420, uniformwares .com. Boccia 3538-01, QR273, boccia.com. Mondaine Simply Elegant, QR1,275, nordstrom.com.

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MODEL: SHANE DUFFY AT PARTS MODELS. MAKEUP BY ANNE KOHLHAGEN USING DIORSKIN AT SUSAN PRICE NYC. MANICURE BY YUKO TSUCHIHASHI FOR DIOR VERNIS AT SUSAN PRICE NYC. SET STYLING BY SAMUEL FARRIER. SWEATER: J. CREW, QR820, JCREW.COM

PHOTOGRAPHS BY MATIN ZAD

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: GUCCI SNEAKERS, GUCCI.COM. TOD’S SNEAKERS. ACNE STUDIOS SNEAKERS, ACNESTUDIOS.COM. CANALI SNEAKERS, CANALI.COM. GIORGIO ARMANI SNEAKERS. ALEXANDER M C QUEEN SNEAKERS, ALEXANDERMCQUEEN.COM. LOUIS VUITTON SNEAKERS, LOUISVUITTON.COM. ERMENEGILDO ZEGNA COUTURE SNEAKERS,

Lookout

Market Report

White Sneakers

After seasons of loud, colorful trainers comes the welcome respite of quiet leather kicks. PHOTOGRAPHS BY JOANNA M C CLURE

Clockwise from top left: Gucci, QR2,370. Tod’s, QR1,985. Acne Studios, QR1,820. Canali, QR2,475. Giorgio Armani, QR3,185. Alexander McQueen, QR2,260. Louis Vuitton, QR3,115. Ermenegildo Zegna Couture, QR1,800.

May - June 2015

Lookout Qatar

New Direction

The Elite Club CREATIVE VISION Kawakubo remains the quiet creative strength behind both Commes des Garçon and Dover Street Market.

That Dover Street Market is a fashion beacon is not a mystery, but that Middle Eastern designers there rub shoulders with the likes of Comme des Garçons and Sacai is a revelation.

IN THE MID-2000s, shopping at Dover Street Market was comparable to the secret handshake of the cool kids. An eclectic following of the artsy types, the fashion insiders and the nonmainstream dressers gladly traversed to London’s Dover Street, a place that was very much under the radar. Comme des Garçons’ Rei Kawakubo led the multi-brand concept — an assortment of giant brands with fresh names, resulting in a unique aesthetic quite like Kawakubo’s own. A decade later, the concept has established roots in Tokyo, Beijing and, most recently, New York. The visionary yet encompassing merchandizing of the stores has amassed not only discerning shoppers but enthusiastic designers, who look forward to being featured seasonally. Dover Street Market’s practice of shutting the stores biannually to reveal entirely new concepts each season was conceived by Kawakubo, who still today designs key spaces within each outpost. Designers and brands are given the freedom to curate and stylize their own space — a philosophy of creation championed by Dover Street Market. Adrian Joffe, Kawakubo's husband and the president of Comme des Garçons, says, “We like to share our space with anyone who has a vision and sense of the importance of creation. It can be anything strong, creative and original,” Joffe says. The DNA of Comme des Garçons as a brand that is forward, exciting and constantly evolving has been imprinted into the philosophy of the duo’s work in DSM, a retail space that is unexpected and always keeps both fans and designers on their toes. Well-traveled Arab shoppers are no strangers to the merry playground of Dover Street Market, especially its London store. It is a relationship that was cultivated some three decades ago when Comme des Garçons was first introduced to the region through the famed Al Ostoura boutique in Kuwait. The success of the collections and the understanding of the philosophy of Comme des Garçons made it easy for Arab clients to relate to the colorful concept of Dover Street Market. “Some of our most loyal clients are from the Middle East. Their tastes are extremely sophisticated and refined, and they buy very strong signature pieces from Dover Street Market,” Joffe says. Dover Street Market’s position of being able to house brands that are worlds apart under one roof is unique, creating an unexpected synergy. On one hand, there’s the overarching luxury offering of exclusive capsule creations from Prada and Nicolas Ghesquière’s

T Qatar: The New York Times Style Magazine

CLOCKWISE FROM BOTTOM LEFT: REI KAWAKUBO PORTRAIT BY EIICHIRO SAKATA © COMME DES GARCONS CO LTD. PHOTOGRAPHS COURTESY OF PRADA, MAISON RABIH KAYROUZ, DOVER STREET MARKET. ADRIAN JOFFE PORTRAIT BY THOMAS LOHR.

BY DEBRINA ALIYAH

CURATED SPACES Clockwise from left: Prada's menswear at Dover Street Market New York; Kayrouz was among the first Arab designers spotted by Dover Street Market; Commes des Garçons' space at Dover Street Market London; JW Anderson's collection at Dover Street Market Ginza in Japan. Below: Joffe has been the engine driving Kawakubo's vision.

specially-designed Louis Vuitton space. On the other, the gritty urban interpretation of Hood by Air goes with obscure sneaker brands that only the most devoted will know. The main narrative in all the stores, naturally, is anchored by the multi-faceted Comme des Garçons collections, from runway to special projects. And in the midst of it all, art installations serendipitously fill the space. Kawakubo’s vision to focus on talent and the limitless possibilities of being different has made Dover Street Market an invaluable launching platform for emerging designers of all backgrounds. “Sacai, Jonathan Anderson, Simone Rocha and Delfina Delettrez are among those who have achieved success after starting with us. We are proud of that,” Joffe says. It is also a proposition that is especially relevant in an age where the lines in fashion are blurred beyond genres, genders and market positioning. Designers from the Middle East are very much part of the equation, too. The widely celebrated Lebanese designer Rabih Kayrouz leads the pack which now includes jewelers Noor Fares,

Suzanne Kalan, Dina Kamal and Dalila Barkache, whose works are available at Dover Street Market. Kayrouz moved from couture to focus on ready-to-wear in 2012 and has found support and friendship in the Dover Street Market team. “We share the same visions and values, and in promoting our brand to their clients, they become ambassadors to the brand,” Kayrouz says. Both Fares and Kalan specialize in fine jewelry, and while having built niche clientele in the world of luxury, Dover Street Market has expanded its exposure to a new audience. “It opens people’s eyes to amazing creations in an inspirational avant-garde store. This has given me a scope to develop as a designer,” Fares says. There’s a lot of optimism regarding the rise of talent in the Arab world. Though some designers have been eschewed by industry players in the West for their difference in aesthetics, Dover Street Market is fiercely open-minded to diverse points of view. “There is no one kind we look for,” Joffe asserts. “There is so much talent from the region, without a doubt. We can support them by offering spaces, working on installations and events, and of course, buying their collections.” From an emerging designer’s perspective, this approach is a spring board that is unrivaled by other stockists, as not only does the personalized visual merchandising helps them tell their stories, but the integrated marketing also serves as an all-in-one engagement with the right people in the industry. “They know the needs of their customers and the capability of their designers very well,” Kalan says. And of course, it is a badge of honor — being selected by Dover Street Market is like earning Kawakubo’s stamp of approval on the designers’ work, and this is indeed noteworthy in fashion circles. “It’s quite a compliment to have a presence at Dover Street Market,” Kalan adds.

May - June 2015

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The Story of Stigma Sudanese artist Malaz Elgemiabby uses drama and artistic performances to shed light on the story of the abused, voiceless women in her country. BY SINDHU NAIR

T Qatar: The New York Times Style Magazine

IMAGES COURTESY OF MALAZ ELGEMIABBY

THE POWER OF DRAMA Malaz Elgemiabbyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s performance art touches on various facets of abandonment. Here, she symbolically gives up her voice and abandons her own breast milk.

THE BLOW OF SEPERATION Clockwise from right: Elgemiabby's "The Soul Maker" was her most acknowledged work which she abandonded to accentuate her own sense of loss; The Soul Maker making the rounds in the Souq Waqif.

MALAZ ELGEMIABBY’S PRESENTATION for her M.F.A thesis at Virginia Commonwealth University of Qatar raises awareness about a growing problem in Sudan: women giving birth out of wedlock, which remains an extremely taboo matter in the Islamic country. The mothers and their children traditionally suffer abuse and criminalization that leads to the mothers abandoning their babies. What is revolutionary is how Elgemiabby uses her medium of performance art to seek out attention and in some cases, use even shocking dramatization to bring about a change in perspective. In her first video, Elgemiabby is with a curious-looking contraption that is a cross between a toy and a moving sewing machine. According to Elgemiabby, this represents “a breath of life.” The video, titled “The Soul Maker”, plays out the process of Elgemiabby walking through the Souq Waqif and stopping the machine to blow air, representing life, into a balloon and shaping this into a mold that nebulously resembles a breast, while haunting music by John Barrow plays in the background. She then proceeds to leave these representations around the souq, outside shop doors, near ledges, beside window panes. “Through mass customization, I was trying to design a process that would produce multiple outcomes. My inspiration was humans, and the magic of life. I wanted to capture this breath inside a physical entity,” she explains. In trying to communicate the sense of loss that accompanies the act of leaving behind the work of art or the breath of life here, the performance artist intends to highlight a bigger story — the plight of Sudan's unwed mothers. “It is not like death,” says Elgemiabby, speaking about the

‘I wanted to capture the breath of life inside a physical entity.’ underlying theme of abandonment that runs through all the acts. “There is no acknowledgment of death, because life continues while the sense of loss is decisive.” Everything that Elgemiabby represents in her thesis is an extension of the story she has begun to narrate. The second photograph is slightly disconcerting, showing Elgemiabby emptying a bottle, which she identifies as her own breast milk, into a canal in Venice. “My identity as a mother was compromised. The loss I felt was beyond my own comprehension and I mourned this loss for three days. I was also weaning my baby off my milk at that time,” she says. “It made me realize the pain that the unfortunate mothers in Sudan experience when they go through a far more heart-wrenching process of separation.” It was her interaction with some social entities in Sudan that Elgemiabby came by this sad reality and in the course of her discussions, debates and research, she met numerous such mothers who identified with the performance she has highlighted. “My intention was not just to share their pain but also to create an awareness of this incidence,” says Elgemiabby. “In Sudan no one speaks about this taboo. They do not speak about the mother, or the child who has been abandoned. The child is equally shunned as they are seen as an evidence of shame.” In 2010, an average of 110 newborn babies were being abandoned

May - June 2015

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On the Verge

OUT OF SIGHT Right: Elgemiabby sacrifices her own breast milk into the muddy waters of a canal in Venice. Below: She playacts a victimized mother who is ridiculed by society while her child's father is ignored.

in Khartoum, Sudan every month. Half were estimated to die before receiving any assistance, while those who survived abandonment were admitted to a state orphanage, Maygoma, where mortality rates stood at over 80 percent. Research suggested that the majority of abandoned babies were born outside of marriage. This figure of abandoned newborn babies has tripled by 2015. Elgemiabby took the process of abandonment further. She discontinued “The Soul Maker,” one of her most celebrated work of performance art, and then abandoned her own voice for a week.

“It was very painful as, my voice is my identity, I was known as an outspoken person. It was very frustrating to remain mute. I even had others speak on my behalf when I had to do a presentation. When I felt some conflicting statements on my project but could not correct it,” Elgemiabby recalls. “It was during this phase that Her Highness Sheikha Mozah bint Nasser visited our college and I was expected to take her through this process, but could not do it. It was heart-wrenching. “Some people empathized with my self-inflicted situation, some ridiculed; some of my friends even ignored me during the entire process. Many started avoiding me,” Elgemiabby says. She tries to associate her experience with those of the stigmatized women: “Shame brings silence and silence brings further apathy.” The final enactment was in Sudan, where she staged a play depicting the crowd's reaction to a woman, played by Elgemiabby herself, who gives birth to an illegitimate child and abandons the baby while the father is ignored during the process of punishment. “The crowd throws eggs at the woman while the man is in a glass case, as he seems to be removed from the whole incident,” Elgemiabby says. “I designed the performance and the male performer is shielded by the glass cover while the crowd gets intense in its reaction,” she says. The performance was watched by officials in the government and their reaction was quite dramatic as they seemed to empathize and even acknowledge that such stigma exists in society and some even within their own families. Each of the scenes that Elgemiabby enacts is brutal in its message. For Elgemiabby this is more than a performance, it is an acknowledgement of her country’s social anathemas — her own awakening to the existing evil and her response to it. Trust Elgemiabby to look at this from an entirely different perspective, taking her performances to nuture a spirit of learning, “I realized that there is no word in Arabic for empathy,” she says. “I want to develop a notion of performance research design and try to introduce the word empathy through performance art.”

T Qatar: The New York Times Style Magazine

Lookout Qatar FLUID MOVEMENTS Devoré Velvet Anybody's jacket from Charles and Patricia Lester's collection.

In Fashion

A Glorious Marriage of Art and Couture A length of hand-pleated, pure silk of birdswing iridescence is lovingly draped around a mannequin. As the fluidity of fabric transforms itself into aesthetic movement, elegance transpires. So commences the creation of art couture as crafted by a marriage of inspiration and science.

COUTURE DESIGNERS CHARLES AND PATRICIA LESTER are celebrating a remarkable 50 years in business. The husband-andwife partnership whose rags-to-riches story of surviving a halfcentury in the fashion industry is surely a golden triumph. Although expect not the blaring of trumpets or flamboyance of fanfare, for that is far from the Lesters’ style. As is their way of doing business, the celebrations shall adopt a dignified air: wellcurated and charitable exhibitions, orchestrated fashion shows and a lap of honor that befits a couture house whose artworks have graced the red carpet, swathed the bodies of international royalty and celebrity icons, enhanced the stars of opera and cinema and adorned the walls of museums and stately homes. In a cut-throat industry governed by flavor-of-the-month fastpaced style, fashion is hardly ever timeless. Contrary to the everchanging whirlwind of disposable design, Charles and Patricia’s collections are works of ageless, wearable art, inspired by Mother Nature and the color palette of life itself. As connoisseurs of color they have created a kaleidoscope of sublime tones such as

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Birdswing, Poison Apple, Malachite and Shattered Rainbow. Together with an experimental approach to design using a secret process of hand pleating, hand painting and treatment on pure silk and sumptuous velvet, their exceptional fabrics determine that in their world, textiles, art and fashion defy conformity. “After 52 years of marriage we still get on well,” confirms Patricia. “Our different strengths are guided by the same thinking, we problem solve intuitively. Our different skills within the creative and business side are complimentary of each other.” Both designers have an exemplary passion to create. Charles’ photography skills have produced stunning images of the collections. Every aspect of their business is produced in-house, allowing for meticulous attention to detail. “I take inspiration from the intricacies of natural form, accidental patterns, like the touch of a bird’s wing on the sand,” notes Patricia. A garment takes many days to create with a generous amount of pleated silk for a standard dress. Aside from the tiniest portion

ALL IMAGES COURTESY OF CHARLES AND PATRICIA LESTER

BY JUDITH JONES

of machine sewing, each process is skillfully done by hand: dying, pleating, sewing, intricate beadwork and swirling — affirming each item is an exclusive handcrafted artwork. Among the lavish menu of style names are Danuta, Titania, Princess Lauder and Mistress Iris. Size is not a discriminating element. “The essence of our work is that we create clothes for real women. Women who are of different shapes, not different sizes,” Patricia explains. What began in 1965 as dabbling in dressmaking as a means to fuel their finances is now an established, well-respected, in-house couture empire albeit, of manageable scope. The couple has a wealth of international clients, and the distinguished list of fans privy to the treasure chest of bespoke textile and garment design includes royalty, celebrity, art collectors and ardent appreciators of luxury. Sensuous creations in a spectrum of color have adorned window displays and rails of rather grand stores: Harrods and Liberty in London, Isetan in Tokyo; New York’s Neiman Marcus, Bergdorf Goodman, Barneys, Nordstrom and Saks Fifth Avenue; also the select wardrobes of Middle Eastern princesses. A fusion of fashion and interior design has been a natural progression with an expanse of swirled silk tapestries, wall hangings and soft furnishings portraying an aura of opulence. The Lesters appear to have entered the world of haute couture discreetly, in a reserved manner. Their influence has been great but not loud. Their presence in the arena of high fashion and interior design has been constant yet not obvious. Dedication to each other is foremost. A mutual respect for each other’s talents as individually gifted innovators is paramount to their united success and longevity. “People often assume that Charles is the brains and I am the dotty artist,” Patricia says humorously. “However, he can be, and indeed is, very creative and I can be quite bright.” Operating from a historical workhouse located in the lush valleys of South Wales, the Lesters are helped by a handful of dedicated, highly

A mutual respect for each other’s talents as individually gifted innovators is paramount to their united success and longevity.

JOURNEY IN FASHION Clockwise from top: Charles and Patricia have survived five decades in the fashion industry; the Gold Swan from one of their collections; a bridal gown; costume commissions for the 1997 film Wings of a Dove; Icon Blue dress from the Oman fashion show in 1989.

skilled local artisans. Charles, born in 1942 in Oxfordshire, England, and Patricia, born in 1943 in Nairobi (where she lived until the age of five before her parents returned to Great Britain), first crossed paths during their studies at colleges in Oxford. Charles qualified as a physicist and mathematician and Patricia as a secretary. In 1963 the couple married and moved to South Wales, Charles having secured a job as a research scientist at I.C.I Fibres while Patricia took up the role of secretary to the chief engineer at British Steel. Following the birth of Georgina, their daughter, Patricia wanted time at home with her child but needed to supplement their income, so the typewriter was replaced with a sewing machine. Armed with a few basic dressmaking skills and a yearning to

May - June 2015

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In Fashion

The daunting prospect of working with the synthetic fabrics of that era prompted the couple to experiment with traditional tie-dye and batik techniques on natural fibers.

MATERIAL AESTHETICS Clockwise from far left: hand printed velvet Cuddle Jacket in gold and puppy brown; hand pleated velvet cuddle jacket in Platinum.

experiment, hers was initially a trial-and-error approach. “It was a tough, self-taught apprenticeship, fitted around the role of wife and mother,” Patricia recalls. Making children’s clothes was Patricia’s initial foray into the garment industry. An array of outfits made for her daughter garnered enough attention and orders to warrant setting up a market stall in town. An adult collection followed and sold via the home ‘party plan’ route — a direct sales vehicle derived in the 1950s. “The business was not an overnight success and has taken many years of dedicated hard work,” Charles explains. The daunting prospect of working with the synthetic fabrics of that era prompted the couple to experiment with traditional tie-dye and batik techniques on natural fibers. The concept of treating specific colors in ways to effect the fabric was a major factor in the overall result. Continual experiments using Charles’ scientific skills fused with Patricia’s artistic vitality and their parallel desire to create something distinctive, ultimately evolved into their eventual hallmark: fluid hand pleated silk in divine colours that, once discovered by influential industry doyens, opened doors into the world of couture. “The Lesters have carved out a unique place in international fashion. Their fluid kimono coats and neoclassical pleated dresses, all hand-dyed or printed in their Welsh workshops, are

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worn by women of independent spirit and artistic bent who want modern evening clothes that are outside the fashion loop,” states Suzy Menkes, the editor of International Vogue. A small, exclusive boutique in England became the initial outlet for a capsule couture collection comprising minimal, pleated column dresses whose simplistic and unconventional qualities outshone the parade of voluminous ball gowns that were de rigeur. Harrods’ request to purchase a quantity of garments cemented their reputation as respected couturiers, as did a window display at the Liberty store which served to catch the eyes of appreciative, Arab ladies who indulged in the bespoke and private service the Lesters could provide. The designers’ relationship with the Middle East continued to florish when in 1989 they accepted an invitation from Pat Alston, the wife of the then-British Ambassador to the Sultanate of Oman. Three fashion shows were attended by a selection of the Sultanate’s royalty and local and expatriate dignitaries. In Kuwait, the clothes found a niche at the designer store Al Ostoura. The exclusivity of private viewings proved lucrative, while presence in fashion stores worldwide expanded rapidly. The designers’ romantic aesthetic appears on stage and screen through costume commissions and set textiles for productions like Mascagni’s opera “Iris,” and the film “Wings of the Dove.” The actress Helena Bonham-Carter says “The clothes have a wonderful texture; the shapes are incredibly comfortable to wear and are very flattering.” Actress Sian Philips enthuses, “How often do you get the chance to wear a work of art?”

In Fashion

Gotta Move

Whether slim-cut or slightly slouchy, spring’s new lightweight suits feature a relaxed construction that lets you cut loose, anywhere, anytime. PHOTOGRAPHS BY MATTHEW KRISTALL STYLED BY JASON RIDER

Calvin Klein Collection suit, QR5,080. Hermès tank top, QR1,350, hermes.com. Marni shoes, QR3,020, marni.com. In God We Trust NYC necklace, QR290. All_Blues ring, QR655, allblues.se. All prices are indicative

Quality

In Fashion

Canali jacket, QR7,465, and pants, QR2,185. Hugo tank top, QR182. Loewe shoes, QR3,100, loewe.com. A.P.C. necklace, QR435. All_Blues ring, QR655.

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HermĂ¨s suit, QR14,020. Hugo tank top, QR180. Loewe shoes, QR3,100. A.P.C. necklace,QR435.

May - June 2015

Brioni suit, QR24,760, brioni. com. Hermès tank top, QR1,350. Marni shoes, QR3,020. In God We Trust NYC necklace, QR290

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MODELS: MARC-ANDRE TURGEON AT SUPA MODEL MANAGEMENT, MATTHEW DAVIDSON AT FUSION MODELS. HAIR BY SHIN ARIMA USING REDKEN FOR FRANK REPS. MAKEUP BY ASAMI TAGUCHI USING MAC COSMETICS FOR FRANK REPS. MANICURE BY YUKO TSUCHIHASHI FOR DIOR VERNIS AT SUSAN PRICE NYC. TAILORING BY JOEL GOMEZ. CASTING BY ARIANNA PRADARELLI. PHOTOGRAPHER’S ASSISTANTS: GASPAR DIETRICH, MORGAN ASHCOM, CHRIS CALLAWAY. STYLIST’S ASSISTANT: KELLY HARRIS. SHOT ON LOCATION AT SKYLIGHT MODERN WWW.SKYLIGHTNYC.COM

Quality In Fashion

Runway Report

Denim Remix

The season’s crisp trousers, flowy topcoats and fitted blazers make us see indigo in a whole new hue. PHOTOGRAPHS BY OLIVER HADLEE PEARCH STYLED BY CARLOS NAZARIO

Bottega Veneta jacket, QR14,300, cardigan, QR4,000, and jeans, QR1,760, bottegaveneta.com. Comme des Garçons shirt, QR2,370.

May - June 2015

Below: Andrea Pompilio coat, QR2,730, andreapompilio.it. Michael Kors polo, QR640, and sandals, QR910, michaelkors.com. Loewe jeans, QR3,120. Right: Yang Li jacket, QR4,900, yangli.eu. Gucci tank top, QR3,500, and shirt, QR1,175, gucci.com.

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MODELS: PIERO MENDEZ AND JACKSON HALE AT SUPA MODEL MANAGEMENT. HAIR BY KEI TERADA AT JULIAN WATSON AGENCY. MAKEUP BY THOMAS DE KLUYVER AT D+V MANAGEMENT. PROP STYLING BY STEPHANIE KALLERGI AT ANNA BURNS STUDIOS. CASTING BY MADELEINE OSTLIE AT AAMO. TAILORING BY LEAH HALL. PHOTOGRAPHER’S ASSISTANTS: TEGEN WILLIAMS, RAF FELLNER. STYLIST’S ASSISTANTS: SIAN MAHER, AMY HANSON. HAIR ASSISTANT: CATHY ENNIS

Quality Runway Report

Above: Ralph Lauren Purple Label jacket and vest, QR17,100 (for suit), and shirt, QR1,640, ralphlauren. com. Yang Li jeans, QR1,860. Achilles Ion Gabriel sandals, QR2,615, achillesiongabriel.com. Right: Moncler Gamme Bleu jacket, price on request, moncler.com. Marc Jacobs sweater, QR3,040, marcjacobs.com. Boglioli shirt, QR1,255, boglioli.it. Craig Green jeans, QR2,000, Dover Street Market New York.

May - June 2015

Quality

The Thing The new Slim d’Hermès is an expression of luxurious minimalism. Unlike timepieces designed to measure your steps while tracking your pace, the French house has created a line of watches for both men and women — its first series in over 20 years — that marks the passing of time in the most spare and elegant way. Enclosed in a slender rose gold case, the luminescent dial of the watch shown here features numerals custom-created by Philippe Apeloig, a well-regarded French graphic designer. (Apeloig is also behind the signage for Jean Nouvel’s upcoming Louvre Abu Dhabi.) A sapphire crystal case back reveals the ultrathin automatic movement, manufactured at the prestigious Swiss watchmaker Vaucher, now owned in part by Hermès. As befits a company that started out making leather harnesses for European noblemen in 1837, the hand-stitched Havana alligator strap receives the same attention to detail as does a Kelly bag. Valuing creativity and craftsmanship above all, Hermès shows how perfect simple can be. Slim d’Hermès watch, QR67,360, hermes.com. — RACHEL GARRAHAN

PHOTOGRAPH BY JOANNA M C CLURE

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Quality

Food Matters

Eat, Memory

The poet Elizabeth Alexander’s memoir recounts her romance with her late husband, but it also tells the story of their romance with food. In her Manhattan home, the tastes and scents of their shared life linger. BY JEFF GORDINIER PHOTOGRAPHS BY ALPHA SMOOT

CURATED KEEPSAKES Among the mementos on an altar Elizabeth Alexander set up in honor of her late husband, the artist Ficre Ghebreyesus, who died in 2012, are wood block paintings, a pill tin with marbles from her father, a Mexican milagros cross and a pair of papier-mâché masks.

ELIZABETH ALEXANDER PLACES a black

puck of charcoal on top of the blue flame of her kitchen stove. Within seconds, sparks blaze and scurry across the surface of the charcoal like the electrical grid of a city lurching back to life after a blackout. When the ink-dark ember is sufficiently hot, she removes it from the flame with a pair of tongs, slides it into a small bowl and covers it with a miniature cairn of frankincense tears. The ‘‘tears,’’ which are pebbles of compressed fragrance, sizzle away into upward-swerving ribbons of smoke. As she basks in the scent — a scent that has deep roots in East Africa, a scent said to be so calming and healing that it was among the gifts the Magi brought to the cradle of the infant Jesus — she carries the plate around her high-rise apartment on Manhattan’s West Side and lets the incense permeate every room.

‘‘It’s like blessing a space,’’ says Alexander, an acclaimed poet and a professor at Yale (she chaired the African-American Studies Department for four years), who is perhaps best known for reciting her poem ‘‘Praise Song for the Day’’ at President Barack Obama’s first inauguration. ‘‘Meanwhile, the coffee’s ready.’’ In Eritrea, the African coastal nation where Alexander’s late husband, Ficre Ghebreyesus, had grown up, this incense ritual often goes hand in hand with a communal coffee ritual, and you’re supposed to sit patiently through both for the amount of time that it takes to prepare and sip three small cups of coffee — to do otherwise would be rude. Ghebreyesus eventually fled Eritrea, and he found solace in returning to such peaceful reminders of his strife-torn homeland. ‘‘Even if you’ve lost everything, you can still do coffee and incense,’’ Alexander says. For her, the ache of

loss comes from a different source, but the solace is the same. She drifts from room to room, savoring the scent. ‘‘The smoke clings a little bit,’’ she says. ‘‘I just think it’s the most beautiful thing.’’ Alexander’s latest book, ‘‘The Light of the World,’’ is an elegy that records, in hypnotic waves of love and grief, how her life was transformed when she met Ghebreyesus in the spring of 1996 — and how it passed through yet another metamorphosis, in the spring of 2012, when he collapsed from a heart attack on an exercise treadmill at their home in New Haven, Conn. If there is a romantic subplot in the book, it’s the story of their mutual love for food over their 15-year marriage, of how recipes and rituals of eating animated their time together. Food makes an appearance on seemingly every other page: Italian pastries and espresso in the East Village, figs in a backyard garden, Easter bread baked with hard-boiled eggs. ‘‘It was a house where Ficre made red lentils, and spicy beef stew, and Bolognese, and the curried vegetable stew alitcha, and I made eggplant parmigiana and chicken cotoletta Milanese in the manner he taught me, and pesto from basil in the garden, and blueberry kuchen and chocolate Pavlova and chocolate chip cookies with sea salt sprinkled on top,’’ she writes. Although Alexander and Ghebreyesus hailed from different streams of the African diaspora (he was an Eritrean judge’s son who became a refugee from war and suffering in East Africa; she was the daughter of a White House civil rights advisor to President Johnson), they quickly achieved that most enviable of bonds, a happy marriage. She relished his steadying presence, and Ghebreyesus, a chef and painter, ‘‘loved having company in the studio — my company,’’ she says. To hear others describe it, their home in New Haven was part sanctuary, part salon, part atelier. ‘‘It seemed to be a space where they created beautiful things — food and

May - June 2015

Quality

Food Matters SACRED MEMORIES Clockwise from far left: a photograph of Ghebreyesus circa 1970; an Eritrean incense burner; an untitled painting by Ghebreyesus; the couple on their wedding day in 1997; with baby Solomon in 1998; at their final Christmas together in 2011.

babies and art,’’ says Farah Jasmine Griffin, a professor at Columbia University, and one of Alexander’s close friends. (The couple had two sons together, Solomon and Simon, now 16 and 15.) In person, Alexander comes across as social and gregarious, with a light-up-theroom, superwoman bearing, but she can also be wary and tightly wound. She seems to have found her ideal counterpart in Ghebreyesus. Friends of theirs remember him as almost egoless — patient, quiet, a lover of gardening and reading and cooking, comfortable in his own skin, content with letting Alexander own the spotlight. In 1992, with two of his brothers, Ghebreyesus opened Caffé Adulis in New Haven, a city then largely dominated by red-sauce Italian joints. Almost overnight, Adulis turned into a buzzy gathering spot for both locals and Yale faculty members, and the food drew the attention of the New York Times reporter and gadabout R. W. Apple. Alexander includes in the memoir a recipe for shrimp barka, an unlikely mélange of shrimp, basmati rice, sliced dates, shredded coconut, chopped tomatoes and grated Parmesan that wound up becoming the cafe’s mythical house specialty. ‘‘People said they literally dreamed of it,’’ Alexander writes. Such was the local obsession with shrimp barka that new mothers would call Caffé Adulis from the maternity wards of New Haven and ask to have the dish delivered to their hospital beds. Early in their relationship, Ghebreyesus brought a dish of shrimp barka home to Alexander: ‘‘I thought, ‘I have never tasted anything like this in my life. This is the most delicious thing I have 48

eaten in all my days.’ ’’ A similar state of delight appears to have endured long after her opening flush of courtship with Ghebreyesus (‘‘When we first became lovers, we entered a three-day, threenight vortex’’), and it’s the bliss of their domestic Eden that gives the tragedy at the center of ‘‘The Light of the World’’ its centrifugal force: Elizabeth Alexander found the right man, but lost him in an instant. ‘‘His big heart burst,’’ as she describes his death in the book. She was devastated. ‘‘I cried so hard I woke myself,’’ she writes, remembering a dream in which Ghebreyesus returned and held her hand. ‘‘My bed, the bedroom, the house, was suffused with sorrow. Sorrow like vapor, sorrow like smoke, sorrow like quicksand, sorrow like an ocean, sorrow louder and fuller than the church songs, sorrow everywhere with nowhere to go.’’ Although the memoir was wrenching to write, eventually she pushed through and finished it. ‘‘Part of what was beautiful about writing the book was that I was with him,’’ she says. The result feels classic and universal, as it ebbs and flows unpredictably between memory and mourning. Alexander’s poetry, in books like ‘‘The Venus Hottentot’’ and ‘‘American Sublime,’’ is known for being big-hearted and accessible; her bracing, clarifying essays in ‘‘The Black Interior’’ force us to see black artistry, such as the films of Denzel Washington or the paintings of Jean-Michel Basquiat, from fresh perspectives. But ‘‘The Light of the World’’ is almost guaranteed to find a larger audience than have her verse or her scholarly endeavors. ‘‘That really makes me happy,’’ she says, as she sits on the couch at home, beneath clusters of family photographs and shelves of books. ‘‘I

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want my work to reach people. What is human is that we suffer — that’s the damn truth. But what’s also human is the way that we survive.’’ It would be easy to say that completing the memoir led Alexander to that state of mind so sanctified by talk-show hosts — closure — but that would also be glib and incorrect. Her late husband’s habits and creations continue to surround her. His presence clings, like the frankincense, and you get the feeling that she’s not ready to let the smoke dissipate. Later tonight, she’ll head downtown to Bond Street for a rib-eye steak and truffled pasta and a good bottle of red wine at Il Buco, their favorite date spot, but for now, in her West Side apartment, she moves from room to room like a museum docent, telling the stories behind each of his paintings. ‘‘With the canvasses, sometimes I touch them because it’s like, ‘This was his hand, his DNA’s in there.’ ’’ In the cupboards of her kitchen, she has the implements for that Eritrean coffee ceremony: the long-handled bean-roasting pot known as a menkeshkesh, the long-spouted clay brewing kettle called a jebena. And she could go through the stations of the coffee ritual, yes, but there would be something weird about demonstrating it for a solitary visitor, something staged and artificial — ‘‘it would be like putting on a dashiki,’’ she says. When she honors the memory of her partner, she continues to insist that every gesture be authentic.

CAFFÉ ADULIS’S SHRIMP BARKA 4 tablespoons olive oil 3 medium red onions, thinly sliced 4 to 6 cloves garlic, minced 5 very ripe and juicy tomatoes, chopped coarsely Salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste 1/2 cup finely chopped fresh basil (1 bunch) 15 pitted dates (1/2 cup), cut crosswise in thirds 3 tablespoons unsweetened shredded coconut 1/2 cup half-and-half 1 pound medium shrimp (16 to 20), shelled and deveined 2/3 cup grated Parmesan cheese 2 1/2 cups cooked basmati rice 1. In a large, heavy pot, heat olive oil over medium heat. Add onions, and sauté until wilted, about 10 minutes. Add garlic, and continue sautéing, stirring frequently to prevent sticking, for 2 minutes longer. wStir in the tomatoes, salt and pepper. Cover, and cook for about 5 minutes. 2. Add basil, dates and coconut, and reduce heat to medium-low. Cook, uncovered, stirring occasionally, for 5 more minutes. Add the half-and-half, cover, and cook for 3 minutes. 3. Add shrimp to sauce. Cook, covered, until shrimp turn pink, about 5 minutes. Stir in cheese and then the rice, and serve immediately. Serves 4

No, Thank You

Vanity Clause One writer argues that the rise of over-grooming may be neutering his generation of men.

IMAGE COURTESY OF SHUTTERSTOCK

BY ANDREW O’HAGAN

SOMETIMES I WAKE UP in the night worried my skin is dry.

Sometimes I think the shampoo industry is trying to penetrate my brain. My hands are never entirely clean, though I’m forever caressing them with soap or alcoholic rub. My soul is tired. I’m always 10,000 miles from home, and there’s something new in the water that’s making me sick. I bought a new cologne that was recommended by a famous

nose, and I think it makes me smell of self-doubt. I can’t eat ice cream because it makes me fat and spoils my memories of childhood. My eyes are puffy, not from weeping — not yet — but from peering at my phone looking for guidance about what restaurant to take her to and what film to mention and what book to recommend. I’m not wise anymore, and it’s all because of bread and coffee and meat and cheese; it’s all May - June 2015

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No, Thank You HEALTHY CHOICES The modern diet is a labyrinth of restrictions and warnings, leaving us with, well, not much.

because of gluten. I don’t know whether I should depilate or not and I wonder if my father ever really liked me. The dog is worried. I think it’s picking up my anxiety about the fact I might never win an Oscar, though I’m not in films and I generally think Hollywood is a place full of sociopaths and hookers. I suspect I’m allergic to the leather on my watch. I think my shoes are against me in principal. I’m stoned with sentiment. The inner organs are happy but will soon be asking for a small reprieve. There is nothing left for me in the supermarkets, nothing at all, yet I wait in line for cures that can’t deliver. Welcome to the male condition. Welcome to the fresh hell of new choices. I’ve been thinking for a while now of writing a self-help book about why men weep in cars. Oh, you didn’t know that? You didn’t know that’s what the new Ford F-Series truck is for? You thought it was for whizzing the kids to water polo and juggling class? No — the new car is a man cave, a space that is custom-built for housing the male of the species in a state of temporary, unknowable distress, while he drives too fast playing Bruce Springsteen. The first time he cries, he thinks it’s the red night sky and the weight of duty. He thinks it’s just life, the children and passing time and all the things he never said to his mother. And then it slowly dawns on him: It’s the onion rings he might never eat again. It’s the bags of doughnuts. It’s the cigarettes he will never smoke and the carcinogens that he once soaked up like daylight. And now he’s upset. Why? Because his entire inner self, no matter what it used to be, is craving exactly four gallons of 100 percent natural coconut water. It’s craving antioxidants, a seaweed body wrap, a follicle-exciting head massage with essence of snail slime. It’s goodbye to sugar. It’s goodbye to fat. Every living fiber in his being is now enslaved to the punitive needs of his immune system. He wants to lie down in a cold tank and be pampered by life-hating charlatans. He wants to ban all cravings from his tired body and wake up in the Elysian Fields of a new, clean, needless self. I made the mistake a few years ago of befriending some actors. For a while, between jobs, they measured out their lives in tequila shots, but that didn’t last long, and they soon got back to the professional business of sculpting their bodies and purifying their blood. I remember one of them, a star of ‘‘Game of Thrones,’’ being caught by his trainer eating four packets of Monster Munch at a bus stop instead of going to class. It was as if he’d massacred his family. His eyes were full of tears as he told me what he was doing to his skin. ‘‘I’m not looking after my machine,’’ he said, ‘‘and nobody wants to hire a person who eats wheat.’’ The young man was handsome and 27. He’d already discussed the possibility of Botox, was deeply into slimming and had a battalion of gay advisers with big ideas. I like him, but something in our friendship died the day he came round to our house with some almond milk he’d made himself.

Don’t misunderstand me. I know stuff is bad for you. You might remember a previous column where I admitted, after some regrets, that waking up with a clear complexion and without a hangover might be the wave of the future. But I draw the line when it comes to daily worship at the temple of your own body. I don’t advocate the metal hair comb my father used, or burning your face with cheap astringents, yet I feel certain that something in masculine solidity is lost with the enforcement of beauty regimens. What do I mean by ‘‘masculine solidity’’? I mean the suavity that comes as if by accident, without noticeable effort. Simple as that. Men exfoliate every day if they shave properly and that’s enough — and a little cream won’t harm. But surely there is only room for one oscillating microdermabrasion brush in any happy heterosexual bathroom. I don’t care if you think it’s sexist: It’s not a man’s job to pluck his eyebrows or plump his lips. People must do as they wish, of course, but to my mind (and according to my prejudices) male beauty loses its essence with premeditation. It’s a failure of natural elegance for a man to seem beautified, and the pressure on him to be so may be the biggest sexual category error of our times. I consider fashion and well-being to be hobbies of mine. Fairly recent hobbies, as it happens, but lovable nonetheless, and fun. Men have always had secret regimes, always had worries about their hair and had midlife dalliances with youthful treatments, but there is now an explicit pressure on men to impersonate the women in their lives, and that is arguably becoming true of straight men in a way that it formerly wasn’t. Over-grooming is now a mode of hysteria common to every other man I know, and it isn’t attractive. I believe it feeds off a larger anxiety in the culture, the obligation to self-invent, the demand for constant increase, and it has made the men of my generation into emotional shadows of their former selves. I repeat: I love fashion and I’ve always denied the expectation that men should be sweaty, Neanderthal pigs, but I would be failing my obligation to honest perception if I denied that the rise of over-grooming may have slightly neutered my generation of men and turned us into petted creatures, somehow alienated from ourselves, and stranded at some point distant from our instincts. Tradition, especially when it comes to sexual stereotypes, is often worth obliterating, of course. But is it possible that our generation is busy throwing out the boyfriend with the aromatherapeutic bathwater? I wouldn’t mind looking O.K., but may I pass on the parfum de minceur? There are men everywhere who feel liberated by the wiles of metrosexuality, and I am one of them, but there is also a brake one might apply when speeding headlong into narcissism. I wonder if the growth in male self-love generally — and the commercial avarice surrounding it — isn’t harming male self-esteem. Funnily, I grew up thinking there was altogether too much male self-esteem in the world, but now I wonder if it isn’t going the way of that other shibboleth, male duty. Chain superstores are said to be considering installing ‘‘guy aisles’’ in their stores, to save men from wading through acres of female products to get to what they need. You see these men already, like extras from ‘‘Night of the Living Dead,’’ walking around supermarkets, appearing stunned and wide-eyed at the choices they suddenly have to make. ‘‘Am I a hair-putty kind of guy?’’ they say, ‘‘or more of a gel spritzer or a maximum-hold wax?’’ And I see it in their eyes: Soon they will be in their cars and driving too fast and weeping into the ugly distance. You start off in life with dew in your eyes and a clean slate and hopes to burn, and one day you wake up with regrets and a mustache. But must you wax it?

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©DUANE MICHALS. COURTESY OF DC MOORE GALLERY, NEW YORK

It’s a failure of natural elegance for a man to seem beautified, and the pressure on him to be so may be the biggest sexual category error of our times.

SOUND OF SILENCE Sam Shahid in the living room of his three-story home in Greenwich Village.

By Design AS AN ART DIRECTOR, Sam Shahid composes

pictures that make you stop and look: a young couple, nude, on the back of an elephant; a tangle of men engaged in a game of sexual Twister. His provocative advertisements for Calvin Klein, Banana Republic and Abercrombie & Fitch stirred controversy throughout the ’80s and ’90s, paving the way for a more open-minded approach to branding and inspiring countless imitators drawn to his spare aesthetic. Shahid, in his uniform of

Behind Closed Doors Bombarded by imagery all day at work, the renowned advertising provocateur Sam Shahid comes home to, well, very little. BY CATHY HORYN PHOTOGRAPHS BY FRANÇOIS HALARD

khakis and a crisp white shirt, describes his style as American Pure. ‘‘I always use the words ‘simplicity’ and ‘direct,’ ’’ he says. To enter Shadid’s three-story prewar apartment in Greenwich Village is to understand those words, and to get the sense that success has bought him something else: silence. In a way, it is a reaction to the demanding whirl of fashion. He has created a nearly empty setting in which even his most soul-satisfying possessions — books, art — are May - June 2015

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By Design ROOM WITH A VIEW Left: Shahid’s dining room table with an Apple glass vase by Ingeborg Lundin and Lynn Davis’s ‘‘Tomb, Palmyra, Syria’’ photograph on the floor. Below: in his bedroom closet (from left), a Joe Brainard gouache painting, Mats Gustafson’s ‘‘A. J.’’ watercolor, a painting titled “White Roses” by Jack Ceglic, Shahid’s ‘‘Beau’’ photograph and a German porcelain figurine designed by Karl Tutter.

banished from sight behind doors that blend seamlessly with the walls. It’s as though he has chosen to contain his passions in order to clear his head and, at the same time, draw out the openness of the space. Pausing in the entrance hall, he opens a closet door, saying, innocently, ‘‘As you know, storage is a real problem in New York . . .’’ There, resting on a ledge above his mud boots, is a sublime Chinese terra-cotta horse illuminated from above. The pleasure of looking at the horse seems both temporal and private. Shahid closes the door. Grinning, he says, ‘‘Friends come by and say, ‘Art in the closet?’ Yes, because I don’t always want to see it. I want it to be a surprise.’’ A similar experience occurs in Shahid’s bedroom, on the second floor. Groups of dazzling photographs — by Walker Evans, George Platt Lynes, Bruce Weber and Larry Clark, among others — are arranged above his shirts and trousers, dozens of nearly identical styles. (The shirts, by the way, are all hung on purple wire hangers from Meurice Garment Care. Leave it to an art director to turn a throwaway into a virtue.) The few art pieces that he keeps out, including a Warhol drawing 52

‘Friends come by and say, ‘‘Art in the closet?’’ Yes, because I don’t always want to see it. I want it to be a surprise.’

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OUT OF SIGHT Clockwise from left: the closet inside Shahid’s third-floor reading room; among the works stored inside the flat-file cabinet are Todd Hido’s ‘‘A Road Divided’’ and a limited-edition portfolio of photographs from Bob Colacello’s ‘‘Out’’; Shahid’s reading room includes a custom table, a pair of Paul Kjaerholm chairs and a Richard Prince drawing.

It’s as though he contains his passions in order to clear his head and, at the same time, draw out the openness of the space.

in the guest bedroom, are left on the floor. ‘‘At work, I have so much stuff around me,’’ Shahid explains. ‘‘And then you come here and it’s serene, calm.’’ This strict aesthetic applies throughout the apartment, from the streamlined kitchen to the shower taps in the master bath. A Southerner from Birmingham, Ala., Shahid is warm, quick and a little outrageous. ‘‘The day I was born, I think I knew I was coming to New York,’’ he says. That determination to craft a singular style, and a life, is powerfully evident in the stillness of his home. Except for a select few, like a Lee Friedlander monograph, opened on a woodand-steel dining table by the Danish designer Poul Kjaerholm, his books are behind doors, arranged on shelves. He got the idea to leave open a picture book on a table or a bed, he says, from his friend Calvin Klein. The picture-perfect effect is very similar to the magic of framing, which photographers and set designers understand. Seen from the dining area, the living room, with its arrangement of Kjaerholm chairs and a wash of sunlight, is more than minimalist; it is like a well-edited photo. ‘‘What’s amazing to me on a shoot is all the garbage around — stuff here, stuff over there — and then you frame it,’’ he says. ‘‘And all of a sudden you look at just that moment.’’ I suppose a visitor could get carried away exploring the apartment’s Japanese puzzle-box surprises and lose sight of its real quality, which is that behind many of the lacquered paneled walls, there is actually a fully functional room. Press one wall, and it opens into a guest room. Press another to reveal a beautiful marble bathroom. Whereas the two lower floors act as a typical apartment, the third floor is something of a May - June 2015

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By Design WHITE BOX Clockwise from left: Some of Shahid’s art, including a Jack Pierson photograph, in a front hall closet; a bathroom with Spanish limestone floor and travertine sink; the master bedroom, with a Calvin Klein cashmere blanket, Italian white marble bowls and a drawing by Mats Gustafson (right) opposite another Jack Pierson photograph.

Shahid didn’t want a place that felt like a home. ‘I wanted a hotel,’ he says with a laugh, ‘without the feeling of transience.’ folly. Shahid told his architect David Piscuskas that he wanted a kind of work space on top. ‘‘Then David said, ‘I think you want to be able to climb up into a cloud in the sky,’ ’’ Shahid recalls. That’s how it feels: airy, light, apart. ‘‘This is where I like to be private and read.’’ The most inspiring thing about Shahid’s trilevel dream is that it’s a testament to the power of collaboration. Shahid gave Piscuskas, one of the founding principals of 1100 Architect, with whom he’d already worked on his downtown offices, free reign to interpret a handful of references. One was Tadao Ando; another, of course, was Kjaerholm. Shahid also specified that he didn’t want to see a single lamp — ‘‘I’m not big on lamps,’’ he says — hence the indirect lighting throughout the apartment. He also insisted, rather obliquely, that he didn’t want a place that felt like a home. ‘‘I wanted a hotel,’’ he says with a laugh, ‘‘without the feeling of transience.’’ But a home is precisely what he ended up with. As the art director and I walk around the top floor, poking into cabinets, I casually wonder if he might one day undertake a new place, since this project was so satisfying. Then, too, judging by the ever-shifting contents of his closets, his moods do seem to change a lot. ‘‘No,’’ he says, shaking his head vigorously. But then his eyes begin to twinkle. ‘‘Unless I find a Cy Twombly.’’ He couldn’t display that alongside the galoshes. 54

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STANDING THROUGH HISTORY Italian manufacturer Cassina's Valiero bookshelf by Franco Albini, designed in 1940.

By Design

With the current boom in design, investing in collectible furniture that’s passed on from one generation to another is growing in popularity. BY NINA STARR

LE CORBUSIER, Pierre Jeanneret and Charlotte Perriand’s LC4 chaise longue. Charles and Ray Eames’ LCW chair. Eero Saarinen’s Tulip chair. Marc Newson’s Lockheed Lounge. These are just some of the 20thcentury design icons that have shown incredible staying power, looking just as contemporary now as they did when they were first designed. Homeowners these days are purchasing investment pieces for their interiors that will look just as good in 50 years’ time as they do today and even three centuries ago, buying everything from 18th-century French classics to mid-century modern masterpieces and future icons. What do they all have in common? They are a mix of style, artistic vision, high quality, long-lasting materials, innovation and skilled craftsmanship. On the top end of the spectrum is rare and exceptional furniture that doesn’t lose value over time: unique pieces, first editions, special editions or very

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small series. While they may not sell for cheap, they will certainly last you a lifetime and more. Spending money on such museum-worthy furniture — whether vintage or contemporary — is seen as an investment, because the designs will continue to stay relevant for years to come. So while you may have to fork out a tidy sum upfront, collectible design will invariably gain in value over time. Traditionally, furniture collectors come from Europe and the U.S., but buyers in Asia and emerging markets are slowly entering the picture and the potential is huge. All are well-travelled, cultured, knowledgeable in design and have an interest in art. When people buy design as an investment in Europe and the US, those being mature markets, they choose vintage, classic and contemporary design, as it belongs to a specific culture, history and aesthetic — Scandinavian, French or Italian

IMAGES COURTESY OF CASSINA, SOTHEBY'S, CAPPELLINI AND GALERIE YVES GASTOU

Lifetime Investment

MORE THAN A LIFETIME Clockwise from left: Fauteuil Crocodile I, a copper, bronze and brass armchair by Claude Lalanne, sold by Sotheby's in Paris; Si Tous les Gars du Monde mirror by Line Vautrin, auctioned by Christie's Paris; Bar aux Autruches by Francois Xavier Lalanne, sold by Christie's Paris; Eames Lounge Chair and Ottoman.

In Asia they are looking to the future and at contemporary design, particularly at international benchmark designers.

that has evolved over centuries in an environment that was not yet globalized, whereas in Asia they are looking to the future and contemporary design, particularly at international benchmark designers. But even if one favors contemporary, the need to study the past is important. A true appreciation of the new can only come with an understanding of the old. Mikaël Kraemer, the fifth generation of his family to run the Paris-based Kraemer Gallery, which specializes in 18th-century French antiques, says, “Buying the best antiques is like buying the best art, real estate or diamonds: With time, everything increases in value corresponding to their beauty, quality and rarity. Pieces that do well are the three styles of kings Louis XIV, XV and XVI by the top cabinetmakers like André-Charles Boulle, Charles Cressent, Bernard II van Risamburgh, Martin Carlin or Jean-Henri Riesener. I recommend to collectors to invest, because the very best 18th-century antiques are very reasonably priced compared with the actual prices of paintings.” He cites a top-quality piece in silver his family sold to a famous couturier in the late ’80s. A couple of years later, he sold it for double the price to a collector from the Middle East, who in turn sold it about four years ago, and the price had tripled. This means in about 30 years, the value of the vintage piece tripled. Another example is a vase that a collector bought in 2000 that sold for double the price about three years ago. Cappellini’s Art Director, Giulio Cappellini, explains the current boom in design, “Today, the public doesn’t see pieces of design only as museum pieces, but rather products to live with every day. Buying a nice piece of design is like buying a painting or a sculpture: it’s something May - June 2015

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By Design

to pass down. This explains the increase in prices.” Loïc Le Gaillard is the co-founder of Carpenters Workshop Gallery, who were part of Middle East's only collectable furniture fare, Design Days Dubai. The price of their furniture range from thousands to millions of pounds and features contemporary design including works of Sebastian Brajkovic, the Campana Brothers, Vincent Dubourg, Studio Drift and Studio Job. Le Gaillard notes: “This is a new era where collectible design is growing rapidly. What’s most attractive about collectible design is that the works are limited editions. Over the last five to 10 years, there has been a resurgence in craftsmanship in contemporary design. Artists and artisans are taking time-tested techniques and pushing them further, whilst blurring the boundaries between art and design. We have a huge new space on the outskirts of Paris where artists and designers can work with the finest artisans and specialised technicians to research and develop new ways of working with materials including metal, wood, fabrics and even semi-precious stones.” Cécile Verdier, the head of 20th-century decorative arts and design at Sotheby’s in Europe, discloses, “The average amount of our clients’ purchases is around 500,000 euros. The ’50s designs, which include artists like Jean Royère, Charlotte Perriand and Jean Prouvé, are in great demand, as this collecting category goes well with today’s interiors and modern paintings. People want to live with their furniture. The 20th-century design has become a real collecting category over the last 10 years.” Furniture from the Italian manufacturer Cassina, whose archive counts more than 600 extraordinary prototypes that have gained great value over the years, can become collectible for a number of reasons: it could be a limited or special edition, a piece that’s part of the brand’s glorious past and no longer in production or a piece that’s special for its numbering — perhaps the first or last of a series. Franco Albini’s Veliero bookshelf, designed in 1940 as a unique piece, was never serially produced due to structural problems, but Cassina brought it back to life in 2011 after intensive research. It has become a collectible today with a value in Italy

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starting from 22,550 euros. Some of the 61 unique tables from Gaetano Pesce’s Sessantuna project for Cassina, launched in 2011 to celebrate the 150th anniversary of Italian unification, have a market value of 30,000 euros to 40,000 euros. Gianluca Armento, Cassina’s managing director, remarks, “Mid-century modern pieces have been extremely popular for the last 40 years. “They don’t follow trends, have an essential form and are not decorative pieces that can often tire the owner,” Armento says. “In the last 10 years, pieces by Charlotte Perriand and Franco Albini have become extremely popular and their value will continue to increase. Gaetano Pesce is a highly-rated artist and, in the past, a number of pieces he designed for Cassina, now part of its archives, have been auctioned at high prices. I believe that items that have slow growth will keep their value in the long run. Unique pieces signed by their contemporary authors will also gain value. For example, in our Taiwan showroom, architect-designer Mario Bellini created a series of Cab chairs in special saddle leather. They are completely unique and therefore can be highly valued, particularly in 10 years’ time. The value of a piece also depends on factors as the designer’s mortality, if the piece is still in production, if the author passes away after producing the pieces, etc. Therefore, quality, authenticity, uniqueness and the impossibility to replicate are key.” Vitra’s re-edition of Jean Prouvé’s Marcoule bench (1955) sells for almost 2,500 euros, while the historical version costs at least double. Examples of return of investment at The Conran Shop, which curates mid-century modern collections, are vintage 1950s Eames DSR chairs that go for around 1,125 euros due to limited availability (a reproduced model retails for 280 euros) or a 1950’s Eames Lounge Chair and Ottoman that sells for around 9,140 euros (compared to a new model retailing for circa 5,350 euros). Arne Jacobsen’s iconic Egg chair from the post-war era goes for 8,440-11,250 euros, while a reproduced model retails from 7,030 euro. Tim Ely, The Conran Shop’s head of furniture, discloses, “People treasure quality and look to invest in classic designs that last a lifetime, investing wisely rather than on mass-produced furniture pieces that can be found anywhere.” “In the past five years, we have seen a higher demand for vintage pieces,” Ely says. “Since there is a limited supply of vintage furniture of sufficient quality and integrity, the prices are increasing in line with demand. However, reproduced collectibles’ prices remain generally the same.” Cappellini’s art director, Giulio Cappellini, comments, “Often, the name of a designer is more important than a single product, like Marcel Wanders, Tom Dixon, Marc Newson, the Eameses and Gio Ponti, who are much sought after. The Cappellini pieces that acquired greater value

CONTEMPORARY PIECES Left: Revolving cabinet by Shiro Kuramata for Cappellini. Below: Solune low table in aluminium and cast bronze by Ado Chale on sale at Galerie Yves Gastou.

finishes and/or colors. For example, Carl Hansen & Son’s CH24 Wishbone chair in 100-year-old beech wood celebrated the 100th birthday of designer Hans Wegner. Pieces with extraordinary value are extremely rare first and second editions that are found recirculated in the auction market. For example, the Carl Hansen & Son CH07 Shell chair designed by Wegner in 1963 was deemed too avant-garde at the time and hence production was halted. But in the ’90s, two original Shell chairs were auctioned at Sotheby’s for £20,000 each. This design has since been in production till today, proving that good design that was never in style would not go out of style.” Space sells the reproduced chair today for 3,275 euros. At Christie’s 20th-century design auctions, limited editions range from 20,000 euros to 300,000 euros on average, while rare historical classics can reach several million euros. Sonja Ganne, director of 20th-century decorative art & design at Christie’s, discusses investing in design, “Design is not a speculative area, contrary to post-war and contemporary art. Time is a key element that will allow a piece to add value, even more so when bought at a high price. Generally, a piece will add value within an average period of five to 10 years. For icons or classics, which means recognized designers with a solid market and exhibition history, you must be prepared to pay already some strong prices and be conscious that it is in the mid or long term that you will make a profit if reselling. Prices have risen by 25 to 50 percent for some of the rarest classic pieces and by 100 percent for some 20th-century iconic works. The design market follows the ups and downs of the financial market, but when quality, rarity and provenance are united, your investment will be positive over time. After the 2008 financial crisis, prices went down by 50 percent before catching again and being more stable now in a healthier market.”

The name of a designer is more important than a single product, like Marcel Wanders, Tom Dixon, Marc Newson, the Eameses and Gio Ponti, who are much sought-after.

IMAGES COURTESY OF CASSINA, SOTHEBY'S, CAPPELLINI AND GALERIE YVES GASTOU

SCULPTED FORM The curved structure of the Move rocking armchair by Rossella Pugliatti for Giorgetti, formed by 30 pieces of solid ash.

over time are: Wanders’ Knotted Rouge chair, Dixon’s S-Chair with Cappellini logo and Newson’s multicolored Felt chair.” All three were limited editions. Cappellini sells its limited series for around double the price of its standard catalogue editions, which cost around 3,000 euros for the Knotted chair, starting from 1,300 euros for the S-Chair and 2,500 euros for the Felt chair. Cappellini also sells exclusive products like Shiro Kuramata’s Side 1 chest-of-drawers for 18,000 euros. Paris-based Galerie Yves Gastou, which specialises in “sculptor furniture” (when the object goes beyond its usual function to become a practical sculpture), cites Ado Chale’s amethyst low tables, Jean-Claude and César Farhi’s pair of decorative columns and Philippe Hiquily’s dining table — all made in 1970 and sold for over 100,000 euros — as having brought the biggest returns for their buyers. The gallerist Victor Gastou divulges, “The pieces that have the greatest investment potential are by contemporary designers or designers who don’t have the recognition they deserve. Andy Martin, Gerard Kuijpers, Alain Jacquet or Victor Roman, are some of them. Investors can expect a return after at least 10 years, from double to 10 times.” Christina Caredes, group CEO of Space Furniture, which retails contemporary designs like Pier Giacomo and Achille Castiglioni’s Flos Arco lamp, Verner Panton’s Vitra Panton chair, Eileen Gray’s ClassiCon E1027 table and Alvar Aalto’s Artek Stool 60, says, “Anniversary pieces that are released in limited quantities are good investment pieces since these are usually introduced with rarer materials,

INVESTMENT TIPS 1. Trust your instincts and buy a piece you love, as you will be living with it. Having an emotional connection with the work is essential. 2. Consider the quality, rarity, provenance, innovativeness and story behind the piece, and that it’s an original — not an imitation — and in good condition, as well as the designer’s history and whether he/she is a creator of a new style. 3. Armento says: “Buy a set, for example four chairs, a composition of tables or a group of pieces that the designer imagined for the same home setting. It would be extraordinary if they were the same production number, too.” 4. Le Gaillard says, “Try not to be guided by fashions or fads; think about it as a future heirloom. How will the next generation feel about it? Will it look good in a future home?” 5. Seek professional advice about the designer from someone you trust — whether it’s a gallery, dealer or auction house — and be prepared to sit on your investment to achieve good returns.

May - June 2015

Arena Qatar Arts and Letters

Lost in History The Doha-based author Kate Lord Brown talks about her new book and her eternal thirst for untold stories from the past. BY AYSWARYA MURTHY

STORY STATION Brown's writing nook in her home in Doha.

THERE ARE SOME OF US WHO FEEL OUT OF PLACE IN OUR OWN TIME; constantly at the mercy of a bittersweet pull that keeps dragging us back to a certain age and place. It doesn’t take much to figure out that Kate Lord Brown is one such kindred soul. Maybe it’s because her last two novels, and her two upcoming ones, are set around World War II. Maybe even because she still writes all her stories by hand first. (“The connection between your head, hand and the paper gives the work a different quality, I think,” she says.) But mostly it just shows in how she has rediscovered unremembered elements of a history so recent. It’s amazing how much we forget, she says. She credits her love of that particular period of history to her great aunt Rose, who would keep the young Kate transfixed with stories of her days in occupied Holland. “Rose would tell me about the Resistance and how she helped hide her Dutch husband from the Nazis, thus saving his life. So for me, the name Rose always had a heroic connotation,” she says. One of the central characters in Brown’s most recent book, “The Perfume Garden,” is named Rosa in her great-aunt's honor. Descended from the gypsies of Granada, the fictional Rosa’s story unfolds in Valencia, Spain, during the Spanish Civil War. Several decades later, nestled amidst its orange groves and neroli blossoms, Brown would carefully chalk out the dramatic

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events of Rosa’s life. Valencia might not have been where it all began — for Brown, for Rosa or for the war — but it forms the backdrop of a decisive period in their stories. “The Perfume Garden” shuttles between two timelines as it tells the story of perfumer and expectant mother Emma Temple who, in search of a new start, finds herself standing outside a dilapidated house in Valencia, a gift from her mother after her recent death. Its garden, overrun with weeds, echoes of a secret past. Intertwined with this is the story of Rosa and her days in the house. The book was inspired by Kate’s sojourn in Valencia, during which she came to realize that Spain had, almost too steadfastly, stood by its Pact of Forgetting. With the country's peaceful march of progress demanding the burial of its hurtful civil war memories, powerful stories of bravery, passion and sacrifice were being relegated into obscurity. “I found that even the young people there didn’t want to talk about the war and it sparked the tale for me,” she says. The effort to uncover the annals of local history brought up heartbreaking and seldom discussed accounts of the massacres, the international brigades and the evacuation of children. “I spoke to people who had experienced the war or were fighting to discover the truth about what happened and remember those times — from the general history to tiny details that brought the story to life,” Brown says. “Eventually I had to force myself to stop the research and start the book.” The Spanish Civil War, which in many people’s imagination was the first true chance to fight fascism in Europe, attracted legions of foreign fighters — men and

CANONS FROM CATALONIA Clockwise from top: Kate's second novel, "The Perfume Garden"; Valencia, and its recent history, served as the setting and inspiration for the story; the city during the festival of Las Fallas.

IMAGES COURTESY OF KATE LORD BROWN

The Perfume Garden was inspired by Kate’s sojourn in Valencia, during which she came to realize that Spain had, almost too steadfastly, stood by its Pact of Forgetting. women from countries that didn’t even share borders with Spain, but for whom the fight was personal. Thinkers and artists gravitated toward this visceral struggle — Ernest Hemingway, Pablo Neruda, Robert Capa, Greda Taro, Pablo Picasso, Federico García Lorca — each crafting the narrative of the war through a unique prism, be it prose, poetry, painting or photography. And Brown gives us tantalizing glimpses of some of them. It’s tricky, intertwining the lives of these very real people into those of the book’s fictional characters, she says. Hemingway, whose time in the civil war is well documented, was an easy target, so she steered clear of him except in a passing reference. Celebrated war photographers Robert Capa and Greda Taro, however, make significant appearances in the book. “Capa is charismatic and mysterious, more of a challenge to bring alive in the pages. It was even more so with Taro, his often underappreciated partner and lover,” Brown says. “ I worked with archives in America that housed voice recordings and memoirs he left behind of his war experiences. It was fun to catch some of the unique

mannerisms in the way he talked and expressed himself and use those in the book. “I also wanted to weave in a modern day story so that it wasn’t all terribly sad and there was some redemption at the end of it,” she says. And with Spain being so rich with fragrances — from the orange blossoms in the fields to the incense in the churches — the perfumer’s angle was a natural, light and engaging way to balance out the war story. “I have always been fascinated by perfumes and the magical way scents can carry you back in time. Rose loved perfumes, too,” Brown smiles. This absorbing leg of her research was helped along immensely by biophysicist and fragrance expert Luca Turin, as well as the artisanal perfume-makers she spoke to. “In the book, Emma sells up her successful perfume company and goes back to grassroots, creating perfumes on her perfumer’s organ in her kitchen. So I was keen to speak to people who work on that small scale rather than the conglomerates,” she says. It’s an esoteric discipline, perfumery. It involves creating a scent based on nothing but vague, poetic ideas of what feelings and imagery the smell is meant to evoke. Does it

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Arena Qatar

Arts and Letters

later to Doha. When talking to Brown, it’s intriguing to see how each of her books ties into a different aspect of her life — like a jigsaw puzzle falling into place. The inspiration of her fourth book, “The House of Dreams,” stems from her time as an art history major. In the course of doing the research for her thesis, one name kept popping up in the context of some of the contemporary artists of the World War II era: Varian Fry. “An American journalist, Fry volunteered to travel to Marseille and managed the rescue of over 2,000 artists, writers and intellectuals in danger from the Nazis, getting them to safety in America. He is called the artist’s Schindler,” she says. Brown had always wanted investigate his life further. “He was like an angel on my shoulder saying: Come on, write about me,” she smiles. And eventually, she did. Fry was a hard character to write about, Brown says, because he was such an enigma, even to his friends in real life. “But I was lucky enough to track down a professor in Bard College, who as teenager, was the

Kate Lord Brown was an art curator who used to put together collections for embassies.

look like autumn? Can it conjure up the feeling of a midsummer shower on your skin? Does it sound like your favorite part of town from ten years ago? Does it smell like Danger Red? Can it remind you of a story that had once been beyond recall? The perfumer sits in front of the organ and composes the scent from the many hundreds of notes at his or her disposal. And like Brown says in the book, it might take many years before you get it right. An art curator turned full-time author, Brown will have published four books in as many years come 2016 — many of which she started writing in Valencia, continued in London and completed in Doha. Her debut novel, “The Beauty Chorus,” also focuses on an obscure World War II story: the female pilots who served in Britain’s Air Transport Auxiliary, flying new and repaired or damaged aircrafts between factories and active airfields. At one point there were 168 women in the unit who made up one eight of all the ATA pilots. While these women enjoyed a lot of attention in their day, they have been all but forgotten today. Brown’s interest in the subject was sparked when she chanced upon an obituary for one of these women when she was doing her recycling one day. “I realized I didn’t even know there were women doing these jobs during the war,” she says. The story doubly resonated with her because it was around this time that Brown’s husband made a spontaneous, life-altering decision to embark on a career as a pilot, which led to their move to Valencia, and

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youngest member of Fry’s team in France. He is the last person alive today who was there and experienced the story. A refugee himself, he ended up working for Fry, witness to many incredible stories of bravery.” A lot of latenight Skype conversations later, Brown was ready to tell his tale. For Brown the whole of the 20th century is an unending source of material, a time of dramatic change, that still harbors a few secrets. “I am never going to have enough time to write about everything I want to,” she confesses. And it’s important to her that these stories be told. “We can’t forget. Only if we continue to remember can we prevent history from repeating itself.” So while the public waits to read “The House of Dreams,” which is due to be out next year, it can occupy itself with Brown’s third novel, “The Christmas We Met,” which spans the years between World War I and the 1970s, tracing the journey of a priceless missing tiara, as it recounts the turbulent history of the world and one family in particular. “It’s due to be published later this year and the story begins and ends at Christmas time. Hopefully it will appeal as much to historic fiction buffs as it does to those who enjoy a good love story,” she says. “I think I’m interested in love, in its purest sense,” Brown says when asked about the emotion so central to her books. “I like exploring what it makes people do and become. So it’s not just romantic love between a couple, but love for family, friends, country and ideas. “The Perfume Garden,” for example, has several romantic love stories but it is mainly about maternal love.” After our meeting, Brown presumably goes back to her desk at home, to think about love and war, waiting for the slightest idea that will spark her next book. Maybe, hidden in the rugged beauty of Qatar’s deserts, among the rich mix of people from different backgrounds, and in delicious strain between the rush of progress and a staunch cultural grounding, there lies a secret story that only she can earth out.

IMAGE COURTESY OF ROBERT ALTAMIRANO

For Brown the whole of the 20th century is an unending source of material, a time of dramatic change, that still harbors a few secrets.

FROM LEFT: WENG FEN; MARY RUSSELL ; JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT, ‘‘UNTITLED NOTEBOOK PAGE,’’ CIRCA 1987, COLLECTION OF LARRY WARSH/COPYRIGHT © ESTATE OF JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED/LICENSED BY ARTESTAR, NEW YORK/PHOTO: SARAH DESANTIS, BROOKLYN MUSEUM

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Creation Myths

Inside Basquiat’s Unknown Notebooks 60 A Resurgence of Downtown ’70s Style 64 The Secret Life of a Chinese Ghost City 74 A Moment in Time 80

THE UNKNOWN NOT OF JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIA

ART AND LETTERS Jean-Michel Basquiat, 1987, in his New York studio (all portraits in the story are previously unpublished). Opposite: a page of famous names (thought to be written around 1987) from one of the eight composition books on view at the Brooklyn Museum next month.

BY LUC SANTE 64

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OTEBOOKS AT PHOTOGRAPH BY TSENG KWONG CHI © MUNA TSENG DANCE PROJECTS, INC., NEW YORK. NOTEBOOK: JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT, ‘‘UNTITLED NOTEBOOK PAGE,’’ CIRCA 1987, COLLECTION OF LARRY WARSH/COPYRIGHT © ESTATE OF JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED/LICENSED BY ARTESTAR, NEW YORK/PHOTO: SARAH DESANTIS, BROOKLYN MUSEUM

Graffitist, painter, actor, poet: The late artist’s rarely seen personal writings and sketches are expressions of 1980s downtown New York, and, perhaps, of his truest vision.

EAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT was, famously,

a graffitist who became a painter. He wasn’t the only one to make the transition in that electric moment of the early 1980s, but his path was distinctly different from that of his contemporaries — and not only because he achieved worldwide renown and arthistorical status with blinding speed. The other graffiti artists who made it into the galleries — Crash, Daze, Lady Pink, Futura 2000, et al. — were painters to begin with, muralists who covered the sides of trains with all-over designs in brilliant colors, often but not always incorporating their tags as major elements. Basquiat, however, was a writer. As SAMO, he dealt in words, artfully executed with marker or spray can, to be sure, but nevertheless words intended to convey meaning, slantwise — that is to say, poetry. Eight of his notebooks, from the collection of Larry Warsh, will go on display next month at the Brooklyn Museum. The four most crowded with entries date from 1980 to 1981, when Basquiat was working furiously in a wide variety of media: writing and painting on every surface that came to hand, from walls to sweatshirts to refrigerator doors; playing with his band, Gray; appearing on Glenn O’Brien’s public access show ‘‘TV Party’’; and making the color-Xerox postcards with which he first announced himself to the art world. In those days, it was perhaps not entirely clear to him what direction he would take, but painting was on the ascent. (Three of the other notebooks, speculatively dated 1981-84, 1983 and 1985, only contain a few written pages; the last is thought to be from 1987, a year before his death at 27.) In an unpublished essay in 1992, the late writer and artist Rene Ricard wrote: ‘‘Had he reached artistic maturity at a slightly earlier (or later) time, Jean-Michel Basquiat would have manifested as a poet.’’ Which slightly misses the point. That Basquiat was already a poet is manifest in these notebooks: KAYO IN THE LUNA PARK FREEZE FRAME ON A DRUNK IN THE PIAZZA THAT’S WHAT WE HAVE FOR PIGEONS LUMBERING ON ASPHALT FACEDOWN LEAPSICKNESS THE LAW OF LIQUIDS.

You can hear in those lines an echo of the Beats and the Black Arts Movement, and you can also hear the stabbing rhythm that carries over from his writing on walls to his paintings, which are about language before they are about anything else. As his friend Fred Brathwaite, a.k.a. Fab 5 Freddy, once said about the words on Basquiat’s paintings, ‘‘You can hear Jean-Michel thinking’’: THERE’S A SONG ON THE RADIO WHERE THEY SAY WAVY HAIR INSTEAD OF BLACK CONSIDERABLE CLOUDINESS SO IT WAS SUNG BY SOME WHITEGIRLS 20 YEARS LATER.

THE NOTEBOOKS’ JUMBLE of entries variously sound like song

lyrics, slogans, mantras, fragments of scenarios, of ‘‘routines’’ like those of William S. Burroughs — like everybody in those years,

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Basquiat’s constantly sounding like Burroughs: ‘‘really old shoes take trains with the minerals taped to their stomachs —’’. Among their many other qualities, the notebooks are faithful artifacts of their time. (They reminded me of nothing as much as my own notebooks from that era.) Basquiat, who dropped out of high school, was an avid autodidact, picking up images, words and music everywhere he went, absorbing and applying them, sometimes immediately. He’d glom diagrams from girlfriends’ schoolbooks, ingredients from the sides of packages, signage from the streets (who remembers now when ‘‘Flats Fixed’’ was a phrase you’d read every 10 minutes, walking around?). And, for that matter, in a work from 1987, the skeleton of ‘‘Moby-Dick’’ as revealed in its chapter titles, simply listed minus 66

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articles — ‘‘Loomings, Carpet-Bag, Spouter-Inn, Counterpane, Breakfast, Street, Chapel. . . . ’’ — which has an insistent rhythm that Basquiat makes his own, that sounds like him. He kept his notebooks like a poet would, rather than like his tagging peers, whose notebooks often consisted of endless elaborations on a single tag. Even so, the words aren’t just written; they are sketched. The letters are shapely; their placement on the page matters. (By contrast, the addresses and phone numbers here and there are scrawled.) Basquiat was always a poet and a painter simultaneously, by instinct. In Edo Bertoglio’s film ‘‘Downtown 81,’’ he writes the words ORIGIN OF COTTON on a gray building on East 10th Street, the Con Ed smokestacks looming in the distance. The words and their setting combine to form a powerful and irreducible poetic image. Each letter is perfectly formed and consistent with its partners; he ends the phrase precisely at a seam in the wall. The poetry in the notebooks, fragmentary as it is, constitutes the raw material he would break down further for the paintings, in which phrases are replaced with words: single words, lists, scatterings, agglomerations. These are more efficient, and allow for more ambiguity. He liked to see words at play, populating the surface of a painting like signs on a busy street, their visual rhythm syncopated with their verbal percussion. The words form a diary and a map and a vast inventory of names and dates and lists and historical connections. Sometimes he sketched complex matters with remarkable economy — as in the 1983 painting that sets out the passage from Africa to slave ship to ‘‘Undiscovered Genius of the Mississippi Delta’’ as a kind of textbook page run riot — and sometimes he addressed more elusive matters in huge open-ended rebus-like structures. The notebooks were his laboratory and outflow, predictive less of the specific contents of paintings than of their overall gestalt. It is all flour from the same mill. Reading them puts you in the world of the paintings through sound alone: THIS BUM NAMED BALTIMORE THIS A VAGRANT NAMED CHICAGO ALOT OF BOWERY BUMS USED TO BE EXECUTIVES —

NOTEBOOK PAGES, CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT: JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT: ‘‘UNTITLED NOTEBOOK PAGE,’’ CIRCA 1987; ‘‘UNTITLED NOTEBOOK PAGE,’’ 1980–81; ‘‘UNTITLED NOTEBOOK PAGE,’’ CIRCA 1987; ‘‘UNTITLED NOTEBOOK PAGE,’’ CIRCA 1980-81; ‘‘UNTITLED NOTEBOOK PAGE,’’ CIRCA 1987, ALL FROM THE COLLECTION OF LARRY WARSH/COPYRIGHT © ESTATE OF JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED/LICENSED BY ARTESTAR, NEW YORK/PHOTO: SARAH DESANTIS, BROOKLYN MUSEUM. CLOCKWISE FROM BOTTOM LEFT: JEAN‑MICHEL BASQUIAT, ‘‘HOLLYWOOD AFRICANS,’’ 1983, WHITNEY MUSEUM OF AMERICAN ART, NEW YORK/GIFT OF DOUGLAS S. CRAMER 84.23/ © THE ESTATE OF JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT/ADAGP, PARIS/ARS, NEW YORK 2015; LEE JAFFE; ROLAND HAGENBERG

NOTES TO SELF Clockwise from right: two notebook pages, from around 1987 and around 1980-81, in which words and drawings are carefully arranged to form a visual poetry also seen in Basquiat’s paintings; ‘‘Hollywood Africans,’’ 1983; the artist in St. Moritz, Switzerland, in the same year.

PRIVATE PLACES Clockwise from left: the artist in 1983 at his studio on Crosby Street; a notebook page from around 1987 referencing the amateur boxing matches Basquiat watched as a child; a sketch, with his signature crown and halo, from 1980-81; the artistâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s psalm written around 1987, a narrative poem alluding to addiction and the creative process.

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THE BEAT Goes On

Leather jackets worn with turtlenecks,

white jeans paired with ankle boots â&#x20AC;&#x201D;

this season's pieces recall the edgy bohemia

of the East Village in the 1970s.

PHOTOGRAPHS BY KARIM SADLI STYLING BY JOE McKENNA

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Lanvin jacket, QR17,100, pants, QR4,100, and belt, QR2,365, lanvin.com. Fiorentini + Baker boots (worn throughout), QR1,800, fiorentini-baker.com.

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Loewe jackets, QR10,375, and QR7,610 (worn underneath), loewe.com. Lanvin pants, QR4,100, and belt, QR2,365. Opposite: Ralph Lauren Purple Label coat, QR9,085, and jeans, QR1,800. Balenciaga coat (worn underneath), QR16,570. Louis Vuitton sweater,QR3,585.

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Calvin Klein White Label jacket, QR2,175, calvinklein.com. Louis Vuitton sweater, QR3,585. Opposite: Gucci tank top, QR2,275, and pants, QR3,900. Lanvin belt, QR2,365.

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Prada coat, QR9,230, prada.com. John Smedley sweater, QR875, johnsmedley.com. Gucci pants, QR3,895.

May - June 2015

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SET DESIGN: MAX BELLHOUSE. PRODUCTION: RAGI DHOLAKIA PRODUCTIONS. DIGITAL OPERATOR: EDOUARD MALFETTES. PHOTO ASSISTANTS: ANTONI CIUFO, SIMON PARRY. SEAMSTRESS: DELLA GEORGE. STYLIST'S ASSISTANT: GERRY O'KANE. SET DESIGN ASSISTANTS: ALEXANDRA LEAVEY, TILLY POWER, LESTER LOYD

Louis Vuitton jacket, QR20,025, and sweater, QR3,585. Lanvin pants, QR4,100, and belt, QR2,365. Opposite: Louis Vuitton jacket, QR20,025, and sweater, QR3,585. Model: Xavier Buestel/New York Models. Hair by Damien Boissinot at Jed Root. Grooming by Christelle Cocquet at Calliste. Casting by Ashley Brokaw.

May - June 2015

THE COLOSSAL STRANGENESS OF CHINA’S MOST EXCELLENT TOURIST CITY

Ordos, like so many of the country’s hundreds of new towns, is famous for being empty — a symbol, some would say, of the hubris of rampant urbanization. But the few people who live there see it differently.

BY JODY ROSEN PHOTOGRAPHS BY WENG FEN 78

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PROMISED LAND Two schoolgirls gazing out to Kangbashi New Area, formerly farmland and now the showpiece district of Ordos City, in the Inner Mongolia region of China.

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PARKS AND RECREATION A carousel swing ride in the plaza of a waterfront development in Kangbashi.

RDOS, A MAGICAL LAND in

the just north of China, is a dazzling pearl in the world history and culture. That’s what it says — verbatim, in ungrammatical English — on a plaque that greets you as you enter a rotunda in the Ordos Museum. The city of Ordos sits in a coal-rich wilderness of desert and grassland at the southwestern edge of the Chinese province of Inner Mongolia. It is not even 15 years old and has a minuscule population compared to most Chinese cities. But those facts have not constrained Ordos’s municipal rhetoric. In the museum’s exhibition devoted to Genghis Khan you are told that when the great warrior traveled through in the early 13th century, he praised Ordos as a paradise, an ideal home for both children and old people, with a natural landscape of unrivaled beauty. Signs welcome visitors to ‘‘the famous tourist city,’’ ‘‘the most excellent tourist city’’ and ‘‘the top tourist city in China.’’ The word Ordos itself is a kind of boast: In Mongolian, it means ‘‘many palaces.’’ The outside world has come to know Ordos by a different title: as a ghost city. In recent years, Ordos has emerged as the most famous, and most infamous, of China’s overbuilt and underpopulated instant cities 80

— a would-be ‘‘Dubai on the Steppe,’’ designed to accommodate hundreds of thousands of residents but home to comically few. Internet slide shows and international television crews have captured scenes of skyscrapers and statues looming over empty streets, and pundits have seized on Ordos as a metaphor for the hubris and folly of China’s rampant urbanization. It is true that China is in the throes of a transformation without analogue or precedent. Experts say that in the next two decades, hundreds of millions of rural Chinese will move into hundreds of newly built cities — the biggest building boom, and the largest migration, in human history. Last March, China’s State Council and the Central Committee of the Communist Party released a report, the ‘‘National New-Type Urbanization Plan,’’ announcing the government’s intention to boost the proportion of the nation’s population living in cities to 60 percent by 2020. To meet that goal, China will need to bring 100 million new residents to cities over the next five years. The estimated cost of the plan is $6.8 trillion. Ordos, in other words, is not exactly unique: Everywhere in China, new cities are springing up and spreading out over recently paved countryside. What makes

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Ordos a special case are the mineral deposits beneath it. The land surrounding Ordos City sits on one-sixth of China’s coal reserves. In the early 2000s, China began awarding mining rights to private companies, which generated massive tax revenues, swelling municipal coffers. The government poured much of that windfall into the development of a monumental new district, Kangbashi New Area; hundreds of millions of dollars in capital investment flowed in, spurring a construction boom on a staggering scale. The cycle that was unleashed is familiar: speculation and debt, boom and bust, a real-estate bubble that burst cataclysmically amid downturns in the volatile coal market. Today, the real-estate situation in Ordos has turned macabre. Video billboards along the city’s major roadways display mug shots of fugitive developers who have skipped town, fleeing their debts. There are rumors about the dynamiting of buildings in Kangbashi: about owners of unoccupied apartment towers who hope to create value through destruction, reselling freshly cleared land to new investors. To the extent that ‘‘the famous tourist city’’ attracts sightseers, they are the morbidly curious, who pilgrimage to

Ordos to experience its eeriness. What they find there, though, may come as a surprise. In the shadows of the deserted construction sites and vacant hotels, there are people. They are the citizens of Ordos — not the inhabitants of a ghost town, but the pioneers of a novel kind of 21st-century urban life.

OR THE NEWLY ARRIVED

visitor, the most shocking thing about Ordos may be its cleanliness. On a mild, overcast day this past autumn, the sleek steel-and-glass terminal at Ejin Horo Airport gave off the gleam of a model kitchen at a high-end department store. The city’s impeccably landscaped roadways were equally pristine. In fact, the first human beings spotted on a taxi ride from the airport into the center of Ordos weren’t pedestrians — there were few of those — but municipal cleaning crews, tidying the sidewalks and broad, multilane thoroughfares. It was an absurdist scene worthy of Ionesco or Beckett: corps of street sweepers pushing brooms on streets that didn’t need to be swept. The closest thing to litter in Ordos is the sand that is now and then whipped up by winds in the surrounding

GOING FOR GOLD One of the many grand architectural statements in Ordos (meaning ‘‘many palaces’’ in Mongolian): a newly built stadium, which will play host to this year’s Ethnic Games, a kind of Olympics for China’s minority groups.

Ordos is not empty, but it is weird: part windswept frontier outpost, part demented college town, with the vague mirage of another tacky desert colony, Las Vegas, shimmering in the strobe-lit mist at the fountain show. desert and blown into town. The scale of that town is cartoonishly huge. The dimensions of its plazas, the width of its roads, the square footage of its municipal and residential buildings — everything in Ordos seems like it has been attached to a helium pump and inflated to gargantuan size. In Kangbashi, there

are dozens of apartment towers and hotels, many reaching 15 stories high, with looping circular drives and sweeping lobbies. The Ordos Museum is a mammoth blob that owes something to Frank Gehry; next door, there’s an enormous library designed to look like books stacked on a shelf. The population of

Inner Mongolia is not very Mongolian: There are about four times as many Han Chinese as there are citizens of Mongol extraction. But in Kangbashi, the government has built a kind of Mongolian Disneyland, a city packed with kitsch monuments that evoke the heritage and heroism of life on the steppes. There is a theater shaped like a gigantic yurt; there are streetlamps that take the form of bows and arrows. Everywhere you look, there are horses: murals of Mongol warriors on horseback, a suspension bridge with stanchions in the shape of stallions’ manes. The biggest statue in town shows a pair of massive horses rearing up on their hind legs, each as tall as a small New York tenement building. Images of this architectural excess, circulated on the Internet, have captured the imagination of the outside world. What these photos omit are the people who inhabit the cityscape. On a blustery afternoon in Kangbashi not long ago, groups of men and women in their teens and early 20s gathered on the steps of the museum and the library, and in the adjacent plaza. Some rode skateboards; a group of kids played basketball on a court just outside the library. The dress code was the same that you see across urban East Asia: lots of brand-name sneakers, hooded sweatshirts and other totems of Western culture. A girl of about 13 arrived on a mountain bike, wearing

STRENGTH IN NUMBERS A statue of two stallions outside the entrance to the government headquarters in Kangbashi — one of many public artworks that pay tribute to Ordos’s Mongolian past.

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a baseball cap that read ‘‘Chris Brown.’’ (The R&B star, she explained in English, is her favorite musician.) A little while later, a car came past, blaring slogans and music through a roof-mounted megaphone: a mobile advertisement for Ordos’s newest supermarket. The announcer touted the market’s fresh produce and invoked ‘‘Big Big,’’ a popular nickname for China’s President, Xi Jinping. The soundtrack was the theme music from ‘‘Dallas,’’ the 1980s TV hit. Nearby, seated outside the library, were a group of five young women, all 19. Two were Mongolian and three were Han Chinese; all of them had come to Ordos from small villages in Inner Mongolia to attend Beijing Normal University, which has opened a Kangbashi branch. ‘‘It’s nice here,’’ said one of the women. ‘‘My hometown is a tiny place in the grassland. The people here are more well educated. There’s so much more to do here.’’ What is there to do in Ordos? ‘‘I 82

hang out with my friends. We study at the library. We go to the mall.’’ The mall, in this case, is a five-story building that looms over a parking lot in central Kangbashi. It is essentially a big food court, clustered around a central atrium, with dozens of small restaurants serving regional cuisines from all over China, as well as some Western fast food, like ice cream and pizza. That afternoon, the mall’s eateries were crammed. When the sun set, the action shifted to the parking lot, where groups gathered to socialize, and young men sold electronic dance music CDs out of car trunks ringed with LED lights. Later, many of the parking-lot revelers migrated to downtown Kangbashi’s signature evening entertainment: the ‘‘fountain show,’’ a synchronized display of gushing water, flashing lights and bombastic New Age music. It is billed as Asia’s largest such show, and it looks it: The dozens of geysers are arrayed in a vast reflecting pool that stretches the length of three football fields.

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N SHORT, ORDOS is not empty,

but it is odd: part windswept frontier outpost, part demented college town, with the vague mirage of another tacky desert colony, Las Vegas, shimmering in the strobe-lit mist of those fountains. It is unclear exactly how many people live in the city; the government is cagey about the question, and the figures they release are unreliable. But close observers of Ordos insist the numbers are on the rise. The

filmmakers Adam Smith and Song Ting spent two years shooting ‘‘The Land of Many Palaces,’’ a feature documentary about Ordos and its citizens, which debuted in January. They contend that the population increased markedly during the years that they made the movie, between 2012-14, and estimate that about 100,000 currently live in the city. That growth is due in large part to old-fashioned Chinese social engineering: an aggressive top-down

PHOTO ASSISTANT: PANG BOREN

URBAN PLANNING Clockwise from left: a cluster of new apartment buildings, mostly unoccupied; the perfectly landscaped expressway that connects Ordos’s old and new cities, both developed this century; the Ordos art museum, with its futuristic silhouette.

effort to populate sparsely settled Kangbashi. In 2006, the headquarters of the local government was moved to Kangbashi from the Dongsheng District, 20 miles north; bus service between Kangbashi and Dongsheng was allegedly cut off so that Ordos’s public officials would be forced to take up residence in the new town. Some of the region’s best schools, including a high school, were also relocated to Kangbashi. Today, some vacant apartment buildings have become makeshift dormitories, home to teenage squatters whose parents couldn’t afford to move but wanted their children to attend the new district’s schools. On the north side of Kangbashi, the result of a different sort of social engineering can be seen. There, a population of largely middle-aged and elderly residents occupy a cluster of high-rise apartment towers that are arranged on a grid of hilly roads. The area is not genteel. There is little in the way of landscaping, and the few shops, set back from the streets in small strip malls, have a grubby, weather-beaten look. But the place does feel like a neighborhood. The residents sit outside the buildings, joking and gossiping. On the narrow sidewalks and in front of the shops, groups gather to play cards and mah-jongg. These people are new citizens of Kangbashi, but they are not quite arrivistes. Nearly all are former farmers whose lands were purchased by the government, which persuaded them to move to apartment buildings in the new town. A half-century ago, in Mao’s Cultural Revolution, China exiled privileged urban youths ‘‘down to the countryside,’’ forcibly turning city dwellers into rustics. In Ordos today, peasants have been deployed to activate the city that has

claimed their old pastoral homesteads. As you wander around Kangbashi, you catch the surreal flavor of these residents’ transformed lives. One day, I spent a few hours in a place called the Ordos Marriage Celebration Cultural Park — the kitschiest attraction in Kangbashi, which is no small distinction. Billed as ‘‘China’s first open topic park integrating culture, arts and recreation aimed to exhibit the ‘Ordos Marriage,’ ’’ it is a sprawling network of sculpture gardens devoted to the themes of romance and wedlock. Visitors can stroll through the Marriagable Age Square, Love Tree Square and the Chinese Traditional Love Culture Zone. There are gardens devoted to the Chinese and Western zodiacs; there are dozens of statues of hearts. Scattered throughout the garden are a series of grandiose tableaux depicting scenes from a courtship and wedding in the grasslands — hulking statues of Mongols and yurts and, of course, horses. There are real-life horses in

Marriage Celebration Cultural Park, too: a pair of them, hitched to carriages of the fancy old-fashioned gilded sort that the British royal family rides in parades. Visitors can hire the carriages for a romantic spin through the gardens. But on that day, there were no takers. The horses stood stone still in a circular path near the park entrance, looking rather less lively than their sculptural counterparts. Nearby, a half-dozen carriage drivers sat on benches. They were middle-aged men in their 40s and 50s. All of them were former farmers who now lived in apartment towers on the north side of Kangbashi. No one had shown up looking for a carriage ride that week, they told me. In fact, they’d had just a couple of customers in the past month. ‘‘It is the slow season,’’ said one of the drivers with a shrug. It didn’t matter much: With or without business, the government-run tourist office paid their salaries. Even in the ‘‘busy season,’’ they confessed, their eight-hour-long shifts were mostly spent sitting around and talking.

The real-estate situation in Ordos has turned macabre. Video billboards along the city’s major roadways display mug shots of fugitive developers who have skipped town, fleeing their debts.

Economists and urban planners remain divided about whether Ordos will ever populate sufficiently to feel like a ‘‘real city.’’ But the carriage drivers agreed: Urban living was good, and their lot now was far better than it had been when they tilled the hard Inner Mongolian earth. I asked the men where they had lived before moving to their apartments in Kangbashi. One of them, a 56-yearold man named Li Yonh Xiang, spoke up. ‘‘I lived here,’’ he said. Li had been born and raised just steps from the bench where he was sitting. About half of the 90-acre park had belonged to his family; the government bought the land in 2000. ‘‘When we were peasants, we lived according to the weather,’’ Li said. ‘‘Now I live in a heated building with six floors. The city is very nice. There are many cars and buildings, but the air is very clean.’’ He said: ‘‘Sometimes I miss the old days — the farm, the nature. But it’s easy to picture it the way it was.’’ He pointed toward the horsedrawn carriages. ‘‘Our fields were here. We grew potatoes and corn and other things. Our house’’ — he nodded toward the park entrance, framed by a garish arch, studded with red and gold hearts — ‘‘was right there.’’ Is Ordos a ghost city? Not exactly. But for some, it’s a city of ghosts.

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PHOTOGRAPHS BY MARY RUSSELL

A MOMENT IN TIME

MARY RUSSELL IS the insiders’ insider. Try to research her

online and very little turns up. But during the 1960s and ’70s, as a fashion reporter and photographer based in Paris, Russell wrote about, and more memorably, photographed, Europe’s cultural elite: fashion designers, photographers, musicians, actors, artists and aristocrats. Her subjects, who were often her close friends, included everyone from Roman Polanski to Rudolf Nureyev to Jane Fonda, Grace Jones, the Velvet Underground and the Rolling Stones. Russell photographed in black and white, on 35-millimeter film, preferring natural light and candid situations. She often shot in private homes or gardens, from within a closed, insular world inaccessible to anyone who wasn’t a member. The resulting images are characterized by an un-selfconscious intimacy rare among photos of the famous, rich and frequently documented. Russell had charisma to rival that of her subjects, as well as that of the powerful editors and publishers who employed her. While reporting on the comings-and-goings of A-list Europe for John Fairchild, Alexander Liberman, Grace Mirabella, Diana Vreeland and Carrie Donovan — nearly the entire pantheon of fashion greats — at Vogue, Elle, Women’s Wear Daily, Glamour, The Herald Tribune and The New York Times Magazine, she led a private life as vigorous as her professional one, socializing (and occasionally living with) her subjects. In the process, she acquired a wardrobe of couture clothes she has since donated to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Pierre Bergé/Yves Saint Laurent Foundation in Paris. Russell, who still takes pictures, and is now, as she puts it, a ‘‘doting grandmother’’ in her ‘‘70s-ish’’ dividing her time between Paris and Miami, was not born into the beau monde. She was the third of five children in a military family from Marblehead, Mass.; her father was a U.S. Navy captain and her mother a housewife who loved fashion and art. She moved with her family to Nice when her father was stationed there, and for two years studied art and design at the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs. Russell came to New York City as a newlywed in the late ’50s. There, a friend of her mother’s introduced her to Diana Vreeland, at the time editor in chief at Harper’s Bazaar. ‘‘I had always loved clothes and fashion, and wanted to get a job at a fashion magazine,’’ Russell says, remembering that she wore ‘‘a slim dress, a neat chignon and fake confidence.’’ Vreeland called Glamour magazine’s fashion editor and told her to hire Russell because ‘‘this girl looks the part, speaks French, is willing to do anything and is ready to work for next to nothing.’’ In the mid-’60s, Russell opened a small Glamour magazine office on the Place du Palais Bourbon in Paris. ‘‘I was paid a pittance,’’ she recalls. ‘‘But I managed to pull myself together — black-black-black clothes, perfect grooming and a good French haircut.’’ Throughout the next three decades, Russell styled photo shoots for renowned fashion photographers like David Bailey, Helmut Newton, Lord Snowdon and Steven Meisel. She reported on the high life in Europe. She was editor in chief of the shortlived Taxi magazine. And she played as hard as she worked. Her romantic conquests included Count Giovanni Volpi di Misurata, the owner of an Italian racing team whose financier father had founded the Venice Film Festival, and Gunter Sachs, the undisputed king of the playboys, before he married Brigitte Bardot. ‘‘Europe was filled with fabulous, well-off bachelors in the ’60s and ’70s,’’ she says dryly. ‘‘I got to know a few of them.’’ But her real love affair was with her life in Paris. ‘‘The world in which I navigated was private and closed to outsiders,’’ Russell says. ‘‘There was no media frenzy, no social media. Politically correct behavior was yet to be invented. We drank champagne, and we were very naughty — everyone I know flitted from affair to affair. We owned Paris. We luxuriated and played in it. I was in love with love, life, my jobs and the freedom of those times. Most of all, I loved taking pictures. My camera went everywhere with me — I took photos of almost everyone I met. I don’t think anyone ever objected.’’ What distinguishes Mary Russell’s photographs is the personal connection she had with her subjects, her camera’s warm and affectionate eye. She is now putting together a book of her images and letters, ‘‘a scrapbook of those extraordinary times.’’ Recently, she recounted them as she opened her archives for T. — MARIAN MCEVOY

In an era when private moments were in fact private and snapshots truly intimate, Mary Russell partied with and documented Europe’s beau monde. For T, she opens her rarely seen archives from the 1960s and ’70s and speaks about those days.

Helmut Newton and Gunilla Lindblad jumping along La Croisette in Cannes, 1976 ‘‘I adored working with Helmut. He was a total perfectionist with a wicked sense of humor. Helmut was always courtly and quite shy with models when off-camera. Once behind the lens, he barked orders and dictated suggestive poses. Gunilla was one of Helmut’s favorite models — he had this thing about tall blondes. The two of them are literally jumping for joy after finishing a Vogue shoot in Cannes. We’re on our way to a lavish lunch which was underwritten, as always, by Condé Nast. Helmut was notoriously cheap.’’

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Karl Lagerfeld in mirror, mid-1970s ‘‘Karl always surrounded himself with talented people who fed him ideas. Like Machiavelli, he manipulated them, and sometimes would back them financially and lavish them with extravagant gifts. Karl has always been known for his generosity. He was a loner, a huge book collector, and he was obsessed with competing with Yves Saint Laurent when he was designing at Chloé, way pre-Chanel. He was always a fashion genius.’’

Candice Bergen at Peter Beard’s house, 1975

Andy Warhol and gang, 1965

‘‘This photo of Candy was taken at photographer Peter Beard’s decrepit Montauk mill house before it burned down. Candice was one of the many famous women enamored of Peter — she was at the peak of her career here.’’

‘‘These shots were taken at a raucous romp during a trip Andy Warhol and his Factory pals took to Paris for his second solo exhibition there. They posed in bed and in the bathroom of the Hôtel Bourgogne, next door to my Glamour office. The whole crew showed up pretty regularly in Paris in the mid-to-late 1960s. Andy, who is not wearing his trademark platinum wig in this photo, was not well known in France then, but his fame was growing. He was always looking for rich clients who wanted their portraits done. Andy, Edie Sedgwick and the rest of his entourage spent every night at nightclubs, including Le Sept, Castel’s and Regine’s with a cast of French aristos, models, handsome gigolos and essentially anyone good-looking enough to get in the front doors.’’

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Peter Beard in Montauk, 1975 ‘‘I knew Peter when he was a starving hippie character from a good family. In this photo, taken at Peter’s mill house, he had just discovered the model Iman in Kenya. Peter and I flirted a bit, but I guess I wasn’t rich or famous enough to garner his attentions for more than one night of dancing at Castel’s nightclub in Paris.’’

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Helmut Newton photographing Charlotte Rampling in Cannes, 1976 ‘‘Vogue sent us to a villa high in the hills overlooking Cannes to photograph the actress Charlotte Rampling — she was the scandalous star of the moment, who had been involved in a ménage à trois with two men. Helmut was deeply impressed with her politeness and reserve, and he was taken with her lavish sensuality. He deferred to her as a little boy would. She was a different subject for him, because he was accustomed to directing inexperienced, compliant models.’’

Egon and Diane von Furstenberg with their two children, Alexander and Tatiana, at the Lido in Venice, early 1970s ‘‘I rented a flat from Egon in the early ’70s, after he and Diane moved to New York. Egon was such a huge catch — he was handsome, rich, related to the Agnellis, quite crazy and so much fun. Diane snagged him with fierce determination — she brought her charismatic, electric energy to the couple. They were very much in love here. And they adored each other after they divorced. They were among the most daring and avant-garde couples in Europe at that time.’’

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Yves Saint Laurent in Venice, early 1970s ‘‘I took this snap of Yves at Giovanni Volpi’s cabana at the Lido during the Venice Film Festival. Yves was one of the most mischievous friends I have ever had. He was extremely naughty and very endearing and sensitive.’’

Jerry Hall in Paris, 1970s ‘‘Jerry was the queen of Paris’s hottest nightspot, Le Sept, during the ’70s. She’d dance, and loudly, proudly proclaim in her highpitched Texas drawl, ‘I’m gonna be world famous someday — y’all just watch!’ Jerry was smart, ambitious and a true playgirl. She hit the jackpot in every way.’’

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The actor Hiram Keller on the island of Mykonos, 1970s ‘‘Hiram was the most beautiful male animal ever. He starred in Fellini’s ‘Satyricon,’ and when it came out in 1969, Hiram rivaled Nureyev as the most desirable creature of the period. He whisked me off to Mykonos for a romantic weekend, which is where the photos were taken. Hiram was bisexual, and had affairs with people that I can never reveal. Years later, he died young. Sad. But I’m glad to have this photographic memory of him.’’

Jane Birkin sitting at Serge Gainsbourg’s piano in their Rue de Verneuil house in Paris, 1970s ‘‘I took this picture during the time Jane Birkin was the It Girl in France. The French adored her tiny, high little voice and her distinct English accent. She is sitting at her husband’s piano in a white Agnès B. jumpsuit — we all had at least one of them — with her signature ubiquitous strawbasket purse at her feet. She probably didn’t imagine that a luxurious Hermès handbag would someday bear her name!’’

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Pierre Bergé, Yves Saint Laurent and François and Betty Catroux in the garden of YSL and Bergé’s Paris Apartment, 1960s ‘‘Yves and Pierre were well known for their intimate Sunday lunches in the garden of their Place Vauban apartment during the 1960s. Everybody wanted an invitation, but few got them. Betty Saint had married aspiring decorator François Catroux. She has remained a warm and loyal friend to this day.’’

Bianca Jagger and Elsa Martinelli in St.-Tropez, mid-1970s ‘‘Bianca and Elsa both had strong and dominant personalities. They were extremely competitive with other women and each other — I gave them both a wide berth. At this moment, Bianca was married to Mick, whom she wed in St.-Tropez in 1971. Elsa was married to her longtime husband, the photographer Willy Rizzo.’’

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Document

Flowers in Vases ‘‘Amateur Gardening: Picture Book of Flower Arrangement,’’ by Violet Stevenson, published by Collingridge, 1968. Part of a series of paintings from books, by Leanne Shapton for T magazine.

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