Women’s Fashion August 24, 2014
Features 80 The Genius Next Door
Four years after the death of her boss, mentor and close friend, Sarah Burton is finally ready to break free from the haunting legacy of Alexander McQueen. An intimate look at fashion’s reluctant star. By Andrew O’Hagan Photographs by Karim Sadli Styled by Joe McKenna
To those who knew her, Loulou de la Falaise was more than just Yves Saint Laurent’s brilliant and expressive muse. An icon in pictures. By Marian McEvoy 92 A Feminine Cut
With a few ladylike flourishes, like tapered waists and portrait necklines, classical tailoring feels smart and elegant. Photographs by Mark Borthwick Styled by Jonathan Kaye
The wild garden Loulou de la Falaise tended at her country house in Boury-en-Vexin.
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Ralph Lauren Collection jumpsuit, QR11,998
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ON THE COVER: Photographs by Karim Sadli. Styled by Joe McKenna. Model: Edie Campbell Leather-embroidered cape and dress with thigh-high pony-skin boots, from Alexander McQueen's Fall 2014.
ALEXANDRE BAILHACHE; MARK BORTHWICK
88 The Real Deal
Table of Contents
Page 28 Left: Saint Laurent by Hedi Slimane coat, price on request. Wolford bodysuit, QR946. Puro Iosselliani earrings, QR855, and necklace, QR910. Right: the back garden of Francesca Amfitheatrof, Tiffany & Company’s new design director. Below, left: Ralph Lauren Collection coat, QR18,188. Right: Hèrmes coat, QR28,038. On both: Loewe bag, QR6,153. Saint Laurent by Hedi Slimane shoes, QR3,258.
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Arena 71
Food Matters
The esteemed chef Joël Robuchon sets out to cure what ails you with his nutrition-based recipes. One intrepid hostess puts his premise to the test. 73
Once reserved only for off-hours duty, the lowly flat makes a power play among the fashion set.
Lookout
75 On Beauty
16 Sign of the Times
18 This and That
Ai Weiwei and an anti-‘‘Waterworld’’; furniture packs on the pounds; a sharpshooting pop sensation; luscious lashes; and more. 28 Runway Report
Leopard prints 32 Market Report
Chain-strap bags 34 Take Two
Courtney Love and Jenna Lyons opine on Dior heels, Diana Vreeland perfume and an arty dog magazine.
Quality 49 In Fashion
Simple, knee-length coats make dressing for fall a walk in the park.
Smudged makeup and tousled hair are indicators that women have better things to do with their time, and yet a look this careless requires product. 77 Home and Work
The Brooklyn townhouse of Tiffany & Company’s new design director Francesca Amfitheatrof. 100 Document
Cindy Sherman’s 29 blond wigs
54 The Thing
A Pomellato cocktail ring 55 The Moment
Lapel adornment, mini purses, kneehigh boots and other signifiers of the season. 59 Watch Report
Delicate gold watches 60 Objects
Fit to be displayed among objets d’art, high-gloss bags and shoes in rich hues are the season’s most prized possessions. 65 In Fashion
Short skirts, nubby sweaters and collegiate starter jackets are the key elements behind the new youthquake style.
FROM LEFT: ARNO FRUGIER; ALPHA SMOOT; JENNIFER LIVINGSTON
Cathy Horyn makes a case for the commercialization of high fashion.
Yes, Please
Lookout Qatar
Downtown Design is back for a second showing, this year with the theme 'Original'. The fair will showcase companies and brands that define the evolution of contemporary design.
36 This and That
Couture designer Rani Zakhem is inspired by the culture of the places he has lived; the technical watch from Officine Panerai; Dunhill's Autumn Winter 2014/2015 Chassis collection; Deena Aljuhani Abdulaziz, the founder of D’NA, is in a collaboration with Nathalie Trad; and the surreal world of Maldives.
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40 The Trend
When the house of Fendi presented its first collection of ready-to-wear fur, it was the first time anyone had seen a new future for fur. Fluid, light, and wearable, the legacy for the Italian house was cemented. 42 Runway Analysis
For AW/14 the Middle Eastern designers went back to their roots to embrace their cultural heritage.
45 Creative Fair
Cristina Romelli Gervasoni, Downtown Design's director, tells why Dubai has become so relevant to the international design scene.
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Talent Watch
Alessandra Facchinetti of Tod’s is compared to Céline’s Phoebe Philo, and the brand’s last collection was termed a minimalist moment in Milan.
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Straightforward, commercial clothes used to be the antithesis of high fashion. Now, they are the benchmark. BY CATHY HORYN
IN THE SUMMER OF 1965, after several lackluster seasons, Yves Saint Laurent
took a major step forward. Not only did he introduce his famous Mondrian shift, he also showed baby-doll dresses with wide collars and sashes. With their patent-leather shoes and hair bows, the models looked like little girls, Gloria Emerson wrote in The Times. Nonetheless, she called the collection ‘‘the brightest, freshest and best he has ever done.’’ The eagle-eyed Emerson also raved about the small jackets worn with studded belts: ‘‘Saint Laurent has probably never come face to face with a real Rocker, but his big belts seem reminiscent of the ones they wear.’’ At 29, Saint Laurent had finally caught the winds of the ’60s. But the youthful mood didn’t last. Before long he was paying extravagant homage to 20
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gypsies and Russian peasants — not the freewheeling girls on the Left Bank. His clothes never again had the erotic sweetness of those lollipop dresses. That is, until Hedi Slimane revived them at Saint Laurent. His are not so sweet, but that is not the point. Slimane located the moment when the brand was truly cool, the years between 1965 and 1968. His predecessors at Saint Laurent tended to look at the whole YSL career, going for the key moments. Slimane, though, has largely confined his view to a single window. Then, adding a dark gloss of California rocker angst, he has kept his message stunningly simple — to the point where his clothes, while clearly high in quality, have the attitude of a trendy street label. It’s as though he refuses to strive for the standard goals of a luxury designer — to make modern,
ANDY WARHOL COURTESY OF CHRISTIE’S IMAGES LTD. 2014/BRIDGEMAN IMAGES ©2014 THE ANDY WARHOL FOUNDATION FOR THE VISUAL ARTS, INC./ARTISTS RIGHTS SOCIETY (ARS), NEW YORK
Sign of the Times
PAPER DOLLS The increasingly mainstream direction of high fashion, as depicted by Andy Warhol in ‘‘Fashion Figure,’’ circa 1963.
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: COURTESY OF SAINT LAURENT; COURTESY OF BOTTEGA VENETA; COURTESY OF CÉLINE; COURTESY OF LOUIS VUITTON; COURTESY OF ALTUZARRA; COURTESY OF MIU MIU
conceptual or intellectually resonating clothes. Instead, he creative constraints imposed on designers now that fashion is makes straightforward commercial fashion that a woman can viewed globally, often on tiny screens. He used the word instantly relate to. ‘‘guardrails’’ to emphasize the lack of freedom a designer I’m no fan of Slimane’s, but he’s clever. In two years as has. On the other hand, he said, the designer who sticks creative chief, he has barely broken a sweat as he fetches to those limits will likely be successful. another pussy bow from the ’60s time capsule. Last year, Another factor is simplification. Here, a bit of Saint Laurent led Kering’s three biggest luxury brands in background is necessary. The rise of haute couture in revenue growth with an 18 percent rise, beating Gucci the early 20th century dovetailed with advances in and Bottega Veneta. He has also defeated his critics, communication and travel, and so, too, the public’s who no doubt sensed the futility of continuing to unusual interest in this rarefied world. There are wellpoint out that he doesn’t seem to be trying very known stories of Paris policemen and taxi drivers hard to be inventive. (In my own case, he banned being able to recognize couture, like a cop in the me from Saint Laurent’s runway shows when I ’30s who refused to arrest a feminist agitator on the was this newspaper’s critic.) As Tim Blanks wrote grounds that she was dressed by Molyneux. By the ’60s, last season on Style.com, ‘‘There is no longer everyone knew about the latest fashion, if not from any shock of the whatever in what he is offering.’’ Mary Quant, then from the Beatles. But sometime in So why write about Slimane now? Here’s why: If the late ’80s, fashion discovered semiotics. Clothes you accept that fashion reflects the times — and I do suddenly acquired meaning (think of the efforts to ‘‘decode’’ — then you have to concede that in this respect a Helmut Lang show or almost any by Martin Margiela). Slimane has been impressive, even prescient. His Saint You truly needed to be an expert to appreciate why a jacket Laurent collections perfectly capture the mood and values was worn inside out or why a dress that made you look like of the present. The need for simple messages. The triumph a bag lady was cool. Susan Sontag described a similar shift of branding. The shortening of horizons due to economic in the arts in the mid-60s, noting that ‘‘the most interesting and factors. The lack of prejudice toward old ideas, especially creative art of our time is not open to the generally educated; it among young consumers. I would never expect any demands special effort; it speaks a specialized language.’’ Today, designer to own up to such pessimistic motives. But neither as high fashion moves closer to mass media — with branddo I assume that Slimane, with his gift for marketing, hasn’t hosted YouTube channels, films, huge spectacles — there is thought about them. pressure to simplify. I also wonder whether the surge of new For the fall collections, it was intriguing to see how brands — their shows often crammed with weird and banal many designers fell in line with Slimane and offered designs — hasn’t caused elite designers to rethink matters. straightforward clothes of their own. I’m thinking, for Hence more straightforward clothes. instance, of Céline’s ’40s-style coats, the tasteful sweaterFinally, we may be running out of ideas. In a review last and-skirt looks at Bottega Veneta and Altuzarra’s classic year of the Prada Foundation’s reconstruction of a 1969 show, wrap coats. Being the genius that he is, Karl Lagerfeld at once ‘‘Live in Your Head: When Attitudes Become Form,’’ Holland mocked and praised commerce, presenting Chanel in a postCotter, an art critic for The Times, wrote, ‘‘We’re in an age Warhol supermarket and sending out perky tracksuits, of remake culture, an epidemic of re-enactment fever.’’ the ultimate fashion commodity. I imagine they’ll be a hit. Cotter, who actually praised the show, cited other examples Even Nicolas Ghesquière, with his much anticipated first of ‘‘old is new’’ thinking. That has never been a problem for collection for Louis Vuitton, showed wearable styles with the fashion industry, but it does make it easier for a polish: trim coats, ’60s-cut minis, modest accessories. And that’s luxury brand to justify its practices. not what people expect from Ghesquière, who for most of his 15 Each year, it seems, we live in a different world, and years at Balenciaga created a genuine stir. There, he developed this takes an adjustment that no longer feels incremental cutting-edge materials and artful interpretations of archive looks. but profound. First came Sept. 11. Then came the shock of the What struck me about the Vuitton show was Ghesquière’s recession — well, the shock of realizing that the American dream comment that he listened to what women around him wanted to wear. Did may have come to an end. As Christopher Hitchens, quoting Saul he care before? Also, it’s clear that he was stripping Vuitton of the Bellow, defined the dream, it was ‘‘that universal eligibility to be preferences of his predecessor, Marc Jacobs, notably irony and theatrics, noble.’’ To make the record of your own life — come what may! — at the same time that he was distancing himself from Balenciaga, now under as Bellow’s Augie March does. But in the long decade since Hitchens Alexander Wang. So a neutral, normal statement makes sense. Only time aired that thought, we’ve seen horizons shorten. Income inequality is the will tell how committed Ghesquière is to it. primary cause; people simply can’t afford to risk new experiences. It’s also Anyway, I suspect that many women are thrilled to find clothes that promise true that stuff we never had to think about before, like smartphones and new more wear, given the money they’re spending. As much as young designers hate kinds of entertainment, has gained the upper hand, inspiring us in many creeping commerce, no one has produced a style that matches in originality ways but also narrowing our sights with all manner of guardrails, so what was Rei Kawakubo’s black-clad armies of the ’80s or Prada’s ugly-chic rebuke to once noble is now a universal fast-track to fabulousness. Milan glitz in the ’90s. Then, too, young consumers don’t seem to care Whether that is a good development or a bad one is not really the BUSINESS OF whether their clothes are ‘‘original,’’ a hang-up of my generation. But concern of fashion designers, though. Their job is simply to reflect FASHION Easy to there are other reasons for the rise of commercial fashion. their times in a conscious way. In 1965, the year of the baby dolls, the wear — and understand — The easiest to see is branding. It’s so pervasive in our culture mood was encapsulated by the words on a popular T-shirt in Paris, straight from that it functions for some as a means to fulfillment. People definitely clothes also observed by Gloria Emerson. It said, in French, ‘‘I am free and the runways by get enthralled with things — sports, TV shows, fashion — in a way I am alive.’’ Since then the quest to be modern — and that is really some of the most influential designers, that a fan in the ’60s or ’70s wouldn’t recognize. One assumes that what we are talking about — has been complicated by a new set of clockwise from has a lot to do with ‘‘the religion of branding,’’ as Michael Rock considerations, none of them less valid than wit and imagination. top: Saint Laurent, Bottega Veneta, put it. Rock’s firm, 2 x 4, does branding and graphic design So, while I may not care for Hedi Slimane’s Saint Laurent, it doesn’t Céline, Louis Vuitton, for companies and art institutions. Recently, we spoke about the matter. He has grasped modernity in its totality. Altuzarra, Miu Miu.
September-October 2014
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This and That
ILLUSTRATIONS BY KONSTANTIN KAKANIAS
Cool Beans
From Ralph Lauren to Bergdorf Goodman, something’s percolating in the fashion world. Trends come and go, but fashion folk will always agree on the merits of a good, strong cup of coffee. Now, a handful of designers and retailers are brewing up java-related projects of their own. LVMH recently purchased a majority stake in the company that owns Cova, the 197-year-old cafe located on a prime corner in Milan’s main shopping district; plans are afoot to expand the brand, placing Cova outlets in close proximity to the conglomerate’s flagship stores. Bergdorf Goodman’s new Goodman’s Bar, housed in its men’s store, will soon start serving Illy Monoarabica roasts during daylight hours. Scott Sternberg of Band of Outsiders
recently designed limited-edition paintdrip mugs for Starbucks, where he stops in daily for his iced venti red-eye. And Ralph Lauren tapped his favorite roaster, La Colombe, to create three custom blends — espresso, drip and decaf — for Ralph’s Coffee, the new cafe in the Polo flagship store in Midtown Manhattan. Shoppers can take home signature bags of beans or enjoy a fresh cup with a brownie, made from Lauren’s mother’s recipe. Sternberg’s theory on why so many designers are hooked on caffeine? ‘‘Because it makes you skinny, duh.’’ pasticceriacova.it; bergdorfgoodman .com; ralphlauren.com — EVIANA HARTMAN
NATURAL GLOW From left: Ambra Medda in a Paris atelier designed by the architect Robert MalletStevens; Miss Viv’ L’ArcoBaleno bag, QR14,748.
Roger Vivier’s New Muse
The curator and design-world darling Ambra Medda has collaborated on a special sequined version of the house’s classic Miss Viv’ bag, inspired originally in 2009 by another statuesque beauty: France’s former First Lady, Carla Bruni-Sarkozy.
FEELING FOR
Single Earrings
Jewels so striking that one, worn alone, is enough.
From left: Erickson Beamon, QR2,476, Curve. Bottega Veneta, QR3,568, bottegaveneta.com. Hermès, QR4,187, hermes.com. Eddie Borgo, QR582, net-a-porter.com. Saint Laurent by Hedi Slimane, QR2,895. Céline, QR4,369 (sold individually), neimanmarcus.com. Maria Canale for Forevermark, QR48,249, neimanmarcus.com. Nikos Koulis, QR44,426, londonjewelers.com. 22
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CLOCKWISE FROM TOP RIGHT: SOFIA SANCHEZ AND MAURO MONGELLO; COURTESY OF ROGER VIVIER; P. BAXEVANIS/GREY STUDIO; ANTFARM; JOSHUA SCOTT (2); COURTESY OF EDDIE BORGO; VICENTE SAHUC, GRÉGOIRE ALEXANDRE, JEANFRANÇOIS JAUSSAUD AND CLAUDE JORAY OF STUDIO DES FLEURS; JOSHUA SCOTT; COURTESY OF ERICKSON BEAMON
A Cultural Compendium
Lookout
This and That THE SHAPE OF THINGS From far left: Melitta Baumeister; designs from her debut collection.
A NEW LINE
Melitta Baumeister’s sculptural designs are wild and weird but also eminently wearable. Rihanna turned up at Paris Fashion Week in March wearing a black pleather jacket that was hyperbolic in form, so protective with padding that it made her bodyguard seem kind of superfluous. Was it Comme des Garçons? Rick Owens? Raf Simons for Dior? No, no and no. The look was from Melitta Baumeister, a 28-year-old German designer who has gotten serious attention in New York since showing her debut women’s wear collection earlier this year at the VFiles Made Fashion show. ‘‘Garments have been made the same way for such a long time,’’ says Baumeister, who graduated from the M.F.A. program in fashion design at Parsons last year. ‘‘I’m interested in magic, in new ways of making common shapes.’’ Her architectural designs contain several pieces that look like Calvin Klein classics bred with Eva Hild’s ceramic sculptures, but are actually cast in pure white single-ply silicone from molds of existing knit sweaters and tank tops. In an age of anxiety over the loss of craftsmanship and couture techniques, Baumeister shrugs: ‘‘I am keeping the numbers small to be more exclusive, but in truth, I embrace the ease of reproduction.’’ melittabaumeister.com — SARAH NICOLE PRICKETT
NOW BOOKING
The Incredible Bulk More is more in modern furniture design, where what was once squared-off and sleek is now rounded, bulbous and supercomfy.
Philippe Malouin Mollo chair (top), price on request, established andsons.com. Yonoh Foot chair, QR10,596, propertyfurniture.com.
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The Martha Washington hotel, built in 1903 to house unmarried women, reopened in September in New York’s NoMad neighborhood, with austere new interiors by Annabelle Selldorf. ‘‘Our design for the hotel was very much influenced by the spirit of large, open spaces at the turn of the century,’’ says the architect, who updated the Renaissance Revival landmark with a walnut palette, blue tile floors and tons of glass to NEW AGAIN From top: Danny offset the space’s gothic fluted Meyer’s Marta restaurant in the Martha Washington hotel; the columns. Danny Meyer will lobby as it looked in 1913. also be opening Marta, a restaurant serving rustic Italian food, yet another fitting nod to the Washington’s namesake, who was known for being an expert hostess. chelseahotels.com — BROOKE BOBB
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: UNGANO & AGRIODIMAS; PAUL JUNG/THE LICENSING PROJECT (2); SELLDORF ARCHITECTS; THE COLLECTIONS OF THE MUSEUM OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK. ILLUSTRATIONS BY KONSTANTIN KAKANIAS
A Ladies’ Hotel Open to All
This and That
DAVID BENJAMIN SHERRY at Salon 94 ‘‘Climate Vortex Sutra,’’ 2014
AMY YAO at 47 Canal ‘‘Skeleton, no. 2 (basic needs and the right to the pursuit of a good life),’’ 2013
The L.A. Art Invasion
SAM FALLS at Hannah Hoffman Gallery ‘‘Untitled (Venice, Palm 4),’’ 2014
GABRIEL KURI at Regen Projects ‘‘Credit Becomes Retail,’’ 2014
JORDAN WOLFSON at David Zwirner ‘‘(Female Figure),’’ 2014
Sun-soaked isolation seems just the thing to spark inspiration. When Thomas Demand and Ryan Trecartin relocated to Los Angeles in 2010, they added momentum to the city’s burgeoning status as an art capital to rival New York, London and Berlin. Of course, its abundant light and space have always drawn a certain kind of artist — members of the Light and Space movement, for instance, like Bruce Nauman and James Turrell. But now, with new gallery neighborhoods in Hollywood and Downtown, the endless expansion of LACMA and the impending arrival of the esteemed FIAC art fair, it seems that everyone, major figures and young guns alike, wants to call L.A. home. In the past two years, David Benjamin Sherry, Sam Falls, Gabriel Kuri, Silke Otto-Knapp, Amalia Ulman and Jordan Wolfson have relocated to the Southland, while others, like Liz Craft and Amy Yao, have returned, choosing its sprawl over more cosmopolitan art meccas.
L.A.’s appeal lies in ‘‘the possibility of disappearing,’’ says Ulman, an Argentine who previously worked in London and Spain. ‘‘I’m so autonomous here,’’ adds Wolfson. ‘‘I have my studio, my house and my small life.’’ Both artists create work that explores isolation: Ulman shoots selfies in airplane bathrooms and five-star hotels; Wolfson’s scantily clad robotic dancer at David Zwirner caused a sensation this spring. ‘‘In L.A., artists can test things out without the glare of the spotlight,’’ says Ali Subotnik, a curator at the Hammer Museum, who moved from New York in 2006. ‘‘The proximity to the entertainment industry guarantees that the art world will never be the main industry in this town, so artists are able to work on the sidelines.’’ Anonymity has become its appeal: like no other place, L.A. offers artists the ability to be alone, together. — KEVIN MCGARRY
FASHION MEMO
Bring on the Redheads!
Fiery hair popped up frequently on the fall runways, adding a nonconformist punch of personality.
FACE TIME
From Gucci’s feathery lashes to Prada’s ode to Tammy Faye Bakker, mascara is having a moment.
Mascara at Prada’s fall show. To get the look: Lancôme Grandiose, QR120. Dior Addict It-Lash, QR95. Burberry Effortless, QR105. Tom Ford Extreme, QR165.
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ALL PRICES ARE INDICATIVE
CLOCKWISE FROM CENTER LEFT: GABRIEL KURI, ‘‘CREDIT BECOMES RETAIL,’’ 2014/COURTESY REGEN PROJECTS, LOS ANGELES/PHOTO: BRIAN FORREST; SAM FALLS, ‘‘UNTITLED (VENICE, PALM 4),’’ 2014; AMY YAO, ‘‘SKELETON, NO. 2 (BASIC NEEDS AND THE RIGHT TO THE PURSUIT OF A GOOD LIFE),’’ 2013/COURTESY OF 47 CANAL, NEW YORK/PHOTO: JOERG LOHSE; DAVID BENJAMIN SHERRY, ‘‘CLIMATE VORTEX SUTRA,’’ 2014/COURTESY OF THE ARTIST AND SALON 94, NEW YORK; JORDAN WOLFSON, ‘‘(FEMALE FIGURE)’’ 2014/COURTESY THE ARTIST AND DAVID ZWIRNER, NEW YORK/LONDON; KEVIN TACHMAN/TRUNK ARCHIVE. ILLUSTRATIONS BY KONSTANTIN KAKANIAS
Lookout
A Felt Frenzy
Inspired by the industrial fabric, designers are adding heft and durability to ladylike looks.
WHEN IN PARIS
The designer Jacques Grange reimagined the Grand Palais as an enormous French garden under glass. world, include carpets that look like flower beds, an imposing fountain at the entrance and topiary art placed in pots that flank the vendor booths. And yet, despite Grange’s grandiose green thumb, his greatest childhood memory of the royal residence has nothing to do with its perfectly manicured grounds. ‘‘I was particularly obsessed with Marie Antoinette’s bathroom,’’ he says. sna-france.com — BROOKE BOBB
Clockwise from top left: Proenza Schouler fall 2014. Proenza Schouler bag, QR2,786. Marni fall 2014. Dries Van Noten shoes, QR3,204, saksfifthavenue.com. Fendi bag, QR15,476, barneys.com.
The Curious Case of Kiesza
How a Canadian ballerina-turned-sailor became the season’s biggest pop music breakout.
A LEAGUE OF HER OWN Clockwise from above: Kiesza, seen here on the streets of New York in June, has racked up over 60 million views for her ‘‘Hideaway’’ video; while enlisted in the Naval Reserve, she guarded Queen Elizabeth II; at the International School of Ballet in Calgary, Alberta.
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‘‘I’m always on an exploration,’’ Kiesza says of her latest voyage: the charttopping pop single ‘‘Hideaway,’’ steeped in the sound of ’90s-era dance divas like Crystal Waters. Favoring weeklong Rocky Mountain escapes and raging-wind sea excursions as a teenager, the Calgary-born singer enlisted in the Canadian Navy to fulfill her thrill-seeking streak. ‘‘They’d wake you up in the middle of the night firing blanks at you and setting off fake grenades,’’ she recalls gleefully of boot camp. Despite being pegged as a sharpshooter, the military’s restriction on her sense of self (‘‘I stick out like a sore thumb wherever I go’’) led Kiesza to de-enlist after two years. Writing and performing music offers her a new high. ‘‘It’s a growing passion that I became addicted to,’’ says the Berklee College of Music graduate who will release her debut album in October. But don’t expect her to stay stagnant for long. ‘‘Life experience brings out different emotions and different perspectives on things,’’ she says. ‘‘I just want to be constantly evolving.’’ kiesza.com — DAN HYMAN
ALL PRICES ARE INDICATIVE
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP RIGHT: PROENZA SCHOULER (2); MARNI; JOSHUA SCOTT; COURTESY OF FENDI; COURTESY OF STEAMPOP MUSIC LTD. (2); TIBA VIEIRA. ILLUSTRATION BY KONSTANTIN KAKANIAS
When the Grand Palais hosted the 27th Biennale des Antiquaires, Jacques Grange brought the feel of the Palace of Versailles’s lush gardens to the glass-domed exhibition center. ‘‘I was inspired by the groves and the arabesques,’’ says the French interior designer, who visited regularly in his youth. His plans for the fair, which showcases the finest rare furniture, artwork and jewelry from around the
FOOD MATTERS
Spring Has Sprung Skye Gyngell makes a triumphant return to the culinary spotlight with her most ambitious restaurant yet. While preparing for the October food writer at British Vogue), she has opening of Spring in London’s grand collaborated with artists to realize her Somerset House, the Australian chef vision of a ‘‘feminine yet strong Skye Gyngell is reflective. ‘‘I started restaurant.’’ A wall of the light-filled cooking at dining room facing the Petersham Thames will be covered with Nurseries in a ceramic blossoms by the cleared-out Brazilian artist Valeria potting shed Nascimento; Maureen with dirt floors Doherty from the cult and a couple of boutique Egg has pans,’’ she says fashioned sorbetof the beloved striped uniforms with restaurant. It fitted aprons; and the was surprising, then, acclaimed garden that she decided to designer Jinny Blom leave just a year after has created Spring’s she was awarded her centerpiece, a winterfirst Michelin star. ‘‘It garden atrium with was never my own, walls of cast-Corian and, stars or no stars, Gunnera manicata IN GOOD TASTE From top: the chef Skye Gyngell; her spring it was time to follow leaves. As for the food salad with borage and pansies; my heart,’’ she says. itself, Gyngell’s Somerset House, a cultural When Spring’s doors hallmark is her artful institution in central London. open it will represent composition of not only a professional milestone but a seasonal flavors. ‘‘It has always been my personal one for the single mother who dream to make my own bread, butter, once struggled with addiction. yogurt, ice creams — everything,’’ she Calling on her contacts in the design says. ‘‘I can do that now.’’ and fashion worlds (Gyngell was once a springrestaurant.co.uk — DAVID PRIOR
Cosmic Creations
Designers are going where few have gone before, with everyone from Calvin Klein to Rick Owens getting into a sci-fi state of mind.
Despite inflated budgets and egos, the art provocateur makes his film acting debut. In 2013, after more than six years as the head of video for TED Talks, Jason Wishnow went to Beijing for a break. During a visit with Ai Weiwei he asked the artist to appear in ‘‘The Sand Storm,’’ a short film he had been developing. Drawn to Wishnow’s idea of water as a metaphor for the flow of information, Ai agreed to play a water deliveryman in an arid world. They shot rogue near Ai’s studio in the gritty district of Caochangdi, where a spike in Beijing’s pollution index required the crew to wear face masks and gave the film its sickly brownish yellow tint. By the time Wishnow locked his edit, he was out of cash, so he launched an ill-fated Kickstarter campaign. Ai sent Wishnow a cease-and-desist letter, furious that his image and involvement had been exaggerated and ‘‘co-opted for promotional purposes.’’ Kickstarter suspended the campaign, and Wishnow returned to Beijing hoping to make amends. In a widely reprinted — and ultimately successful — open apology, he wrote, ‘‘Creative endeavors with artistic titans should not be treated lightly.’’ The rebooted campaign became the third-best-funded short film in the site’s history, bringing in over QR364,150.
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Ai hasn’t made any further comment. He doesn’t say much more than that in the film, in which he mainly drives a tuk-tuk while wearing a costume that’s part Mad Max, part Chinese laborer’s uniform. But his presence is deeply felt in ‘‘The Sand Storm’’ — which will premiere exclusively at tmagazine.com — just as it is in the international art world. Asked on set how he felt about his role, Ai answered with typical mischievousness: ‘‘In life, we all deliver something.’’ — SAMANTHA CULP
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: RII SCHROER; JASON LOWE; MARCUS GINNS; STILL FRAME FROM ‘‘THE SAND STORM’’/CAMERA BY CHRISTOPHER DOYLE. ILLUSTRATIONS BY KONSTANTIN KAKANIAS
Ai Weiwei and the Apocalypse
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Runway Report
Where the Wild Things Are Leopard, the naughtiest of prints, is back in fashion. But the look is tailored and covered up, leaving any risky business to the imagination. PHOTOGRAPHS BY ARNO FRUGIER STYLED BY JASON RIDER
Above: Giorgio Armani coat, QR32,318. Margaret Howell sweater, QR2,385, margarethowell.co.uk. Miu Miu skirt, QR3,131, miumiu.com. Prada scarf, QR1,037, prada.com. The Row bag, QR10,742, net-a-porter.com. Right: Gucci top, QR12,745, and pants, QR17,843, gucci.com.
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ALL PRICES ARE INDICATIVE
Left: Givenchy by Riccardo Tisci coat, QR44,790, and skirt, QR8,703, saksfifthavenue.com. Top left: Jimmy Choo bag, QR6,536, jimmychoo.com. Acne Studios sweater, QR1,056, acnestudios.com. Miu Miu skirt, QR4,806. Above: Tom Ford coat, price on request. Donna Karan New York shirt, QR2,166, donnakaran.com. Christopher Kane skirt, QR5,061, mytheresa.com. Prada scarf, QR1,037. Givenchy by Riccardo Tisci stole (in hand), QR14,165.
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Left: Sportmax dress, QR14,165. Dior pants, QR5,644. Hermès boots, QR5,826, hermes.com. Above: Anna Sui coat, QR2,530, amazon.com. Diane von Furstenberg sweater, QR975, dvf.com. J. W. Anderson skirt, QR3,823, saksfifthavenue.com. Puro Iosselliani earrings, QR855. Miu Miu shoes, QR2,767.
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ALL PRICES ARE INDICATIVE
MODEL: DASHA DENISENKO AT ONE MANAGEMENT. HAIR BY SHIN ARIMA USING REDKEN AT FRANK REPS. MAKEUP BY CHIHO OMAE USING MAC COSMETICS AT FRANK REPS. MANICURE BY CASEY HERMAN AT KATE RYAN INC FOR CHANEL LE VERNIS. PROP STYLIST: DAVID DAVIS. STYLIST’S ASSISTANT: OLIVIA HESS DANIELSSON. ALL FURNITURE: TWO JAKES
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STYLED BY MALINA JOSEPH GILCHRIST. PROP STYLIST: RACHEL HAAS AT JED ROOT. CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: PACO RABANNE BAG, BARNEYS.COM. PRADA BAG, PRADA.COM. DIOR BAG. CHANEL BAG. JIMMY CHOO BAG, JIMMYCHOO.COM. MARC JACOBS BAG. PROENZA SCHOULER BAG. SAINT LAURENT BY HEDI SLIMANE BAG.
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Market Report
Ace Hardware A chain strap lends some over-the-shoulder heft to the new lady bag.
PHOTOGRAPHS BY JOANNA M C CLURE
Clockwise from top left: Paco Rabanne, QR7,100. Prada, QR29,860. Dior, price on request. Chanel, QR22,213. Jimmy Choo, QR8,557. Marc Jacobs, QR32,773. Proenza Schouler, QR5,735. Saint Laurent by Hedi Slimane, QR5,425.
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ALL PRICES ARE INDICATIVE
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Take Two
A dual review of what’s new.
Jenna Lyons
Courtney Love
J. Crew president and creative director, geek-chic poster girl and Lena Dunham’s no-nonsense magazine editor on the past season of ‘‘Girls.’’
Grunge goddess and social media live wire who rose to fame as the lead singer of the band Hole. She’ll appear as a preschool teacher on the FX series ‘‘Sons of Anarchy’’ this fall.
I’d like to have a custom-made plaster pillow for everything I own. The headphones are beautiful. They’re so white. So pristine. And the padded leather going onto this pillow . . . doesn’t it feel a little ‘‘bad nurse’’? Yeah, I’m all in.
Dog Magazine Four & Sons, a canine-themed literary and art biannual (QR72 per issue, fourandsons.com).
Headphones Beats Studios x Snarkitecture headphones with plaster pillow (QR2,184, beatsbydre.com).
Dior Shoe I had a lot of dental work done when I was young — like, a lot. The first thing I thought of when I saw these are those pink dental molds. I’m wondering if that was his inspiration.
I thought they were going to be more provocative. Her point of view was so strong and definitive. My favorite was Absolutely Vital, only because I think it’s probably the spiciest.
Leather pump with rubber sole (QR5,280).
Diana Vreeland Scent A line of fragrances inspired by the late fashion editor (from QR673, neimanmarcus. com).
Kara Walker Jug I actually have one of these. I use it to water the plants. It’s gorgeous.
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So this is the Monocle of dogs? I get it. It’s dog porn. I want a borzoi, like the fabulous women in the diamonds — like Josephine Baker. I’m fabulous! I’m single! I’m a diva! A borzoi!
A limited-edition pitcher by the American artist (QR1,638, Bernardaud NYC).
These are seriously beautiful. It’s veering on conceptual art, the way the pillow is dented in the plaster, though I’m not a fan of winter white. And certainly not after Labor Day.
I love Raf Simons, but these are diabolical. It looks like it came out of ‘‘Star Trek.’’ You know, I love getting shocked by Lady Gaga’s costumes, or whatever — although that’s wearing thin — but this is just too weird for me.
I am a fragrance snob on an epic level. I love that they’re using Vreeland’s language — Marvelous! Vibrant! Divine! Extravagant! Vital! — but some of it smells like a bad hooker.
It’s beautifully rendered, but I think for white people to own it would be kind of tacky. I just think it’s politically incorrect, and knowing that I’m politically correct is important to me.
ALL PRICES ARE INDICATIVE
LYONS: MIREYA ACIERTO/GETTY IMAGES. LOVE: VINCENT SANDOVAL/GETTY IMAGES. FROM TOP: COURTESY OF FOUR&SONS; BEATS BY DR. DRE; COURTESY OF DIOR; COURTESY OF DIANA VREELAND PARFUMS; MARKO METZINGER
It’s awesome. The writing is excellent. My secret vice is animals on Instagram. When I’m having a bad day, I’ll go on it and look at puppies.
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Ahead of Its Time
The Dunhill Autumn Winter collection has a unique carbon fiber effect.
Designed specifically for those who travel, the Luminor 1950 3 Days GMT 24H is a new watch from Officine Panerai. Despite its rather technical name, this watch is built to enable the second time zone to be read simultaneously with local time by means of an independent central hand which makes one revolution of the dial every 24 hours. It is also the first watch from Panerai to adopt a new manufacture movement, the automatic P.9003 calibre. The most innovative feature relates to the GMT function,that is indicated over 24 hours instead of 12 hours. It also has a newly designed circular power reserve indicator on the back of the watch, which is clearly visible and easy to read through the sapphire crystal in the caseback. ABIGAIL MATHIAS
Dashboard Inspired Brands have been inspired by art and artists. Some like Dunhill were already known for motoring provenance. Taking it further, the Autumn Winter 2014/2015 Chassis collection from Dunhill found inspiration in the leather of motor car dashboards of the 1900’s. The cult carbon fiber effect on this range is created by fusing intense heat with highly technical liquid print and a metal printing plate to create a unique three-dimensional appearance. Available in elegant blues, chestnut browns and racing greens, the details on the bags such as D-rings, padlock cases and leather zip pulls — as inspired by the brand's design hallmarks. The facet glass was used by Alfred Dunhill while designing the interior lights in the car in the early 1930s. SINDHU NAIR IN THE RIGHT HANDS: Officine Panerai's latest technical offering.
If Arabian royalty has a face for street style, it would be Deena Aljuhani Abdulaziz — the Saudi Arabian princess whose fashion insight merits reverence with a quiet yet farflung influence among emerging designers.
Clockwise from top left: The Raleigh, The Leon, the Adler and the Dixon, four distinctive styles of clutches from the L’Esprit Deco Modern.
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The founder of D’NA, a members-only boutique, has often been photographed lately with a clutch in hand — presumably a personal favorite in line with fashion’s renewed love affair with the minaudière. After a well-celebrated trunk show by accessories designer Nathalie Trad at D’NA’s Doha outpost earlier this year, the duo has come together to launch L’Esprit Deco Modern — a specially handcrafted capsule collection as part of the designer’s Fall collection. Trad, who bagged the best regional accessory designer title at the 2014 Grazia Style Awards in Dubai, delved into the Art Deco movement of the 1920’s and 30’s as the focal point of the collaboration. “We wanted to tap into this luxurious deco sensibility by creating a collection of clutches that are both irresistible objects of desire as well as precious heirlooms meant to be passed down from one generation to the next,” says Trad. The collection features four distinctive styles: the Adler, the Dixon, the Leon and the Raleigh — a collective outcome of the designer’s study on haute jewelers’ techniques in the 20’s with the furniture design work of Jean Prouvé and Jean Michel Frank influencing the choices of material. The collaboration, “an adventure and labor of love,” for Trad, is available exclusively at D’NA boutiques in Riyadh and Doha as well as online at FarFetch.com. DEBRINA ALIYAH
COURTSEY OF DUNHILL; COURTSEY OF OFFICINE PANERAI; COURTSEY OF NATHALIE TRAD
Holding On to Deco
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On Talent
The Couture Prince The de facto story of a couturier from the Middle East usually starts in Lebanon — the creative cornerstone that seems to give birth to waves of designers with fantasyladen creations that would rival any Disney princess’s wardrobe. BY DEBRINA ALIYAH DIVERSITY IN FASHION Rani Zakhem's Couture Fall 2014 presentation.
COURTESY OF RANI ZAKHEM
DESIGNER RANI ZAKHEM’S version comes with a little
African twist — growing up in Nairobi, where his family fled from then war-torn Lebanon. Drawing from the vibrant colors and rich diversity of Kenyan culture, the designer leaped head-on into the world of fashion. With a prestigious Parsons training, the label Rani Zakhem came to life in 2009, first with a special focus on the plus-size market and then onto what the designer does best, couture. A couple of successful collections later, Zakhem made his Alta Roma debut in July with the Couture Fall 2014 presentation. The accolade was a defining moment as Alta Roma is primarily an Italian showing with little international representation. “It provided innumerable opportunities in terms of growth, exposure and brand establishment,”
he says. The collection, Metamorphosis, offers Zakhem’s narrative of a woman’s evolving moments in life from dusk to dawn, and from youth to maturity, and is executed in impressive technical touches of kaleidoscopic geometric embroidery, laser devoreflocked tulle and silver degrade pailettes. Zakhem’s strength in dramatic and sensual creations has made fans of celebrities like Kelly Rowland and Roselyn Sanchez, who walked the red carpets in his pieces. The wave is riding high for Zakhem, though he is mindful of the highly-saturated luxury market in the region. “It is important to be fresh with a strong identity to stay competitive,” he says. “There’s also a need to truly understand your clients and adapt accordingly to truly be an international brand.”
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In Pictures
Paradise: There and Back Again Barely five hours away, a surreal and ethereal world exists, waiting to truly take you away. Welcome to the Maldives. BY AYSWARYA MURTHY
STANDING THERE on that pristine Maldivian beach and watching the warm,
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STRANDED ON PARADISE: Unadulterated natural beauty peppered with luxurious hospitality at the Sun Siyam Iru Fushi in the Maldives.
COURTESY OF THE SUN SIYAM IRU FUSHI RESORT & SPA
clear water kiss my feet, I experienced an emotion that was alien to my jaded and cynical soul. It feels almost silly in retrospect but at that moment, I felt special. Not in the I-have-my-place-in-the-world kind of way. But on a larger cosmic scale. The universe was born bathed in light, matter came together, the first drop of water flowed through the cracked veins of the young earth, volcanoes erupted in fiery passion and fell back into the earth exhausted and coral reefs climbed upwards around them — all in gradual preparation, over billions of years, for the curtain raiser on the ninth day of September in the year 2014, when I would look up from a tiny speck of an island somewhere in the Indian Ocean and behold the glory of it all. As I said, it is a silly notion but one that I couldn’t shake off during my entire stay on the island of Iru Fushi. With the Sun Siyam Iru Fushi island resort in sight and our seaplane starting its short descent towards it, I realised I had honestly never been as happy to see a piece of land. The Trans Maldivian flight was loud, buckled a lot and was being flown by a pilot wearing shorts and flip flops. But fortunately, distractions are aplenty. No matter how many postcards of tropical islands you might have seen, nothing prepares you for the real thing. Shades of blue and green splashed onto the natural canvas all around you, rings of corals shining through the crystal waters, schools of fish that barely cast a shadow under the surface, islands of every size (some merely a small patch of sand with just enough room for you, a beach umbrella and your three favourite books) — the views are gorgeous and will be seared in your memory forever. And it has only been an hour since you landed in Male. The unforgettable Maldivian experience, which is enhanced by breathtaking natural beauty, is taken all the way to completion by the sheer luxury of the Sun Siyam Iru Fushi, previously run by Hilton but now under the management of the home-grown hospitality brand Sun Siyam. Their accommodations, more than 200 in number, range from sunrise beach villas with plunge pools and jacuzzis to decadent water villas perched on the jetty that give you direct access to the sea. At any given time, there are at least 700 people — staff and guests — on the island; an island that you can walk a full circle around in under 11 songs. And yet, there were moments when I felt like I was the last soul on the planet. But never in a melancholic way despite the fact that the whole place is simply sick with romance. Much like the island, which produces its own power and water, you too feel self-contained; whether you are taking a moonlight stroll with a loved one or are curled up under the sun with a good book, you wouldn’t need anything else for the rest of your life. The outside world is not welcome. Testimony to this is that although epoch-shaking events like Kate and William's pregnancy annoucement and the iPhone 6 launch were going down during my stay there, I remained blissfully unaware. Guests end up staying at the Sun Siyam Iru Fushi for an average of seven days, we are told. So by the third day if you find yourself wanting to do more than just stare at your lover's eyes, the resort has enough in store. From banana boats to kite surfing, every level of adrenaline rush you are aiming for is within reach. Excursions are arranged to visit gorgeous snorkeling sites or find dolphin schools; yoga, tai chi and Pilates classes are regularly scheduled and DJs and live bands play late into the night. The perfect island to be happily stranded on.
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THE DIRECTION Clockwise from left: Karl Lagerfeld and Silvia Venturini Fendi at the closing of the house's Fall 2014 runway show; the five Fendi sisters with Lagerfeld in the early days of the fur revolution; the first Fendi fur collection by Lagerfeld featuring Fendi as a child in 1965.
The Trend
For the Fur of It The science of the evolution of a material that might not seem to be an obvious choice for the region. Designs make up for the lack of practicality.
FRANKLY SPEAKING, the notion of fur in the Middle East screams
impractical and downright ridiculous. Cascading down the Corniche in a mink coat on a balmy winter evening of 15 degrees C hardly does the fur any justice. But the image that fur needs to be in an austere coat form is also an archaic perception. The evolution of materials in garment-making has come far, especially when innovation drives designers to take a pair of scissors to the precious fur. The intrinsic value of what Karl Lagerfeld and the five Fendi sisters, Paola, Anna, Franca, Carla and Alda — daughters of the founders Edoardo and Adele Fendi –— did in the 60s when they revolutionized the use of fur in fashion is one that is everlasting. The rigidness and hassle of fur in its earlier forms, weighed down by layers of lining thought necessary to protect the expensive material, made the garment solely a status symbol rather than
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anything fashionably functional. When the house of Fendi presented their maiden collection of ready-to-wear fur, it was the first anyone had seen of the new future for fur. Fluid, light, and wearable, the legacy for the Italian house was cemented. In contemporary times, the personification of this luxurious material has further evolved with Lagerfeld and Silvia Venturini Fendi, daughter of one of the famous five Fendi sisters, Anna, and mother to accessories designer Delfina Delettrez, at the forefront. On the lesson of staying relevant, the house of Fendi is able to keep a finger on the pulse of the changing needs of women — light wearable mink coats are great, but what about using fur for a myriad of other fashion items? Silvia remains the only family member active in the operations of the Roman house. “Experimentation is such a vital part of Fendi — my family initiated
COURTESY OF FENDI
BY DEBRINA ALIYAH
THE LEGACY Clockwise from top left: Fendi remains the only Italian house in the world to have its own fur atelier; daughter of Silvia, jewelry designer Delfina Delettrez has recently designed a fur-inspired jewelry line for the house of Fendi; the five Fendi sisters, Anna, Carla, Franca, Alda and Paola worked together in the fur ateliers; a sketch of the Astuccio fur coat by Lagerfeld in 1971.
the change of ridiculous big furs in the 60s and the craftsmanship that has passed down from generation to generation has kept this alive,” Silvia Fendi explains. The emblematic relationship between Lagerfeld and the family has been the driving force behind the work that Fendi has done with fur. “He rethought the furs from a status symbol to a normal garment as a dress by taking away the linings and giving lightness to it,” Silvia says. Karl has always been a presence in Silvia’s life since she was a child, a vision now immortalized in the 1965 Fendi campaign photo featuring a young Silvia and Karl wrapped up in fur. “I remember Karl working with my mother and her sisters, sketching and brainstorming. He is an incredible person, very clever,” Silvia says. Lagerfeld has remained the head of
‘Experimentation is such a vital part of Fendi — my family initiated the change of ridiculous big furs in the 60s and the craftsmanship that has passed down from generation to generation has kept this alive.’ womenswear for Fendi for nearly 50 years and Silvia is the creative director of accessories and menswear. “We know each other so well that there is no need to speak much when creating collections. We understand each other with just a look. Karl gets bored easily and always wants to be surprised so our work is very projected towards the future,” Silvia explains. Fendi’s fur atelier has seen some marked strokes of creativity meets science lab-inspired moments. In Fall 2008, the Gold Molecular Fusion technique was developed where 24k gold molecules were placed on the edge of the fur pieces as paint brush strokes while the metamorphosis technique became the benchmark for Fendi, fusing fur and texture together seamlessly. “My favorite remains the traditional Intarsia workmanship — a complex, elaborate method that takes many hours to create one fur coat,” Silvia says. In the past two decades, Silvia has been credited with the rise of the legendary Fendi IT bags; the sensational Baguette that went on to win the Fashion Group International’s accessories award, the Spy and of course, the much-coveted Peekaboo. The presence of fur in Fendi’s accessories line is very much an integral part of its
success — fur details are a signature for almost all of the house’s offerings. The Baguette was released in a 24k gold mink version using the same Gold Molecular Fusion technique, while the current season serves up an utterly playful Monster Bug Baguette that comes with its own repertoire of Monster bag charm friends. “Small accessories as the fur charms have been designed to give the possibility for everyone to live the fur dream even if not being able to afford a fur coat,” Silvia says. This Fall, Fendi’s fur is on everyone’s lips again; one, of course, for being one of the most fur-applicative ready-to-wear collections and, two, for the introduction of Karlito — a fur charm in the image of Lagerfeld himself. A tongue-in-cheek homage to Lagerfeld, for the extent of how he has changed the image of fur in the past five decades. On that note, it makes so much more sartorial sense to still be able to stroll down the Corniche on a Doha winter evening in fur, just in a lighter form of perhaps a fur-trimmed scarf.
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THE MIX Models present creations for Maison Rabih Kayrouz during the 2014/2015 Autumn/Winter ready-to-wear collection fashion show on March 2, 2014, in Paris.
Runway Report
A Cultural Synthesis
raised the all-important question in our minds — what does one wear to the supermarket? Smaller shows also did not disappoint. “Queen of Cashmere” Andrea Karg of German brand Allude, focused on texture via raw cashmere, fringing and tassels; Ole Yde, of Danish brand YDE, paid homage to the Fifties’ and Sixties’ jazz greats such as Billie Holiday culminating in a dazzlingly spangled emerald dress. And Portuguese designer Luis Buchincho color-blocked his way through an architectural accolade to artist-photographer Georges Rousse via distortion, trompe l’oeil effects, pleats, ruffles and zips. But we can truly thank Arab designers for bringing our focus to a meld of cultural heritage with a design aesthetic that works equally well be it aimed at the West or East. With the help of Lebanese designer Elie Saab, and other big name Arab designers such as Zuhair Murad and Bouchra Jarrar, the international view of Middle Eastern fashion is moving away from that of an over embellished evening gown to a more progressive aesthetic. At Maison Rabih Kayrouz, the collection, dubbed BarbèsBatroun, was all about mixing culture and allowing a glimpse into Kayrouz’ personal story — he is only the second Arab designer, after Elie Saab, to be voted into the Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture. Barbès is the neighborhood in Paris around the BarbèsRochechouart metro stop, full of people of mixed ethnicities,
BY ALEXANDRA KOHUT-COLE
IN AN EVENTFUL PARIS finale to fashion month, Autumn/Winter
2014 Nicolas Ghesquière’s eagerly anticipated inaugural collection for Louis Vuitton produced what women have wanted all along. Elegant luxury abounded in ideal pieces focusing on belted A-line thigh-high lengths which were feminine without being saccharine. Alber Elbaz’s collection for Lanvin was eye-poppingly extravagant, giving Cecil Beaton a run for his money with his exquisite Edwardian-styled liquid silk and satin chemises, feathered wide brim hats and up-to-the-elbow gloves. While Saint Laurent was secured by Hedi Slimane in the collective fashion consciousness as quintessential glam-luxe rock chic; Sarah Burton’s wild beauty explored the dark side over at McQueen. And Karl Lagerfeld’s luxe trainer-wearing supermodel sweep at Chanel’s Grand Palais show
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COURTESY OF AFP PHOTO / MIGUEL MEDINA
For Autumn/ Winter 2014 collection Middle Eastern designers pay tribute to the legacy of their birthright and their adopted culture.
COURTESY OF SARAH BAADARANI; COURTESY OF TOUJOURI (4).
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predominantly North African or Middle Eastern. Batroun is one of the oldest cities in the world, a vibrant coastal summer tourist spot in northern Lebanon surrounded by lemon groves. “I wanted to tell my story which is a complete mixture as well — I’m Lebanese, I work and produce in France, I am a designer, it’s a French brand — its all about mixture.” Kayrouz’ collection focused on draping and the luxurious fluidity of fabrics that mimic thobes or abhayas in color palettes of navy blue, white, burgundy and gold brocade. “I was inspired from the Hammam — either you get covered with a towel or a coat or you find a cover yourself so it’s a whole attitude of covering and uncovering in a very sensual or erotic way so all the dresses have this attitude of wrapping around.” The coats, in a silk gingham print, imitate a striped towel or bathrobe. Wool and cashmere are seamlessly sculpted. According to the designer, it is “construction enveloping the body, stable but without making any grips.” Not constrained, or constricting but fluid, sensual comfort. “I am not afraid to mix things and make that chic. My work is very mixed but I wanted to convey that attitude of wearing them.” Kayrouz happily mixed daywear, evening-wear, brocade for the day and cotton and cashmere for the night. Qatari label Toujouri was founded by Lama El-Moatassem four years ago. She is Palestinian, born and grew up in Qatar and lived in London for 13 years. She interned at Chloe in Paris for six months before launching her label in the capital. “I have a very emotional connection [to Paris]. The heritage and the culture of the fashion industry here is incredible and very inspiring. Its really important to me to be showing here,” says El-Moatassem. But it’s Doha she calls home, “Many of the younger generation have travelled, we’re educated, we’re learning, so it’s important for me to come back and say, “We also have a great heritage and culture and should show that to the world and do something of an
MIDDLE EAST TALENT SQUAD From top left, clockwisea: British designer Sarah Baadarani; AW 2014 collection from Toujouri and the founder of the brand Lama El-Moatassem.
international standard if we’re capable of it.” El-Moatassem’s collection explored light and culture. Jumpsuits, trousers paired with a simple sweater as classic separates to be styled up or down and easily layered to give a relaxed, chic vibe also to the evening wear — the ballgowns being a signature of the brand. Italian double duchesse silk provided the flawless setting for the jewels lending a matte quality that looks rich. “It’s actually woven on a creamy base to give it that shine,” says El-Moatassem. A jeweled mesh bodice, termed “cage”is inspired by original motifs. She says, “I wanted these pieces to be treated like a piece of precious jewelry to layer it over something else.” Jewels are a continuous theme, taking off from the name of the brand, Toujouri,
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Runway Report
which means treasure chest in Arabic. El-Moatassem’s early inspiration was the French haute couturier Christian Lacroix and the traditional Palestinian cross-stitch technique (Tatreez in Arabic) is the starting point of each collection. The technique is symmetrical and its placing on the garment is structured. “We’ve mixed in with so many different cultures and speak so many different languages, it is no longer just about the old style of traditional embroidery. I wanted to revisit that, modernise it and
‘I’m a Parisian, today I am happy to be in Paris, I am happy to explore Paris. But Beirut is my heart!’ bring in more relevant influences of my — the Palestinian woman’s experiences in the modern day — making it more relevant for a younger generation. The jellabeya pants — it’s not something that we want to wear,” she says. British designer Sarah Baadarani, who shows in London and Paris, is Lebanese with Palestinian heritage, born and raised in London and calls London her home. Her international debut show was at the Zurich Energie Fashion Night 2011 to the sounds of
TAPPING THE MARKET Below: Creative director of Thomas Wylde, Paula Thomas; Toujouri collection and the tough edgy chic for the Middle Eastern customer from Thomas Wylde.
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British band Duran Duran playing live. The aesthetic of Baadaraani’s label is hard and soft — transparency mixed with solids like Chantilly with Guipure lace, velvet and sheer or stiff embroidery on very fine tulle. “I love playing around with something very structured against something very soft.,” she says. Her collection features fluid elegance and exquisite cuts — each piece looks effortlessly sophisticated — hardly surprising as Baadarani learned her cutting skills on London’s Savile Row. Silk slip dresses in white, black, tangerine and raspberry for her AW14 collection are overlaid in a delicate tulle shroud reaching high on the neckline and halfway veiling the hands. There is a lot of play on necklines and collar details, whether plunging to the waist on a dress or high on the neck with a shirt blouse or assymetrically cut on a black floor-length evening gown. Fabrics are delicately flocked velvet layered on tulle with glitter to keep the shine, versatile satin slip dresses in black and red and matte crepe ones in white and orange or a sponge wool jersey contrasting with satin and organza detail running down the side. Inspiration comes from Palestine, Lebanon and Paris and it is this amalgamation of cultures that makes her collection appealing. Baadarani says, “For me Paris is the place to connect with an international audience.” But it’s not a one-way street. The Middle East is a key market for LA-based label Thomas Wylde. British creative director Paula Thomas recently designed Cameron Diaz’ costumes in the Ridley Scott film, The Counselor, and launched her 3,800 square feet LA concept store featuring four feet tall Carrera marble skull heads. A bold violet purple was the color palette staple of her collection, along with a lot of black and tiger print on fluid dresses. The skull motif — a signature of the brand — was developed further as a detailed print; a drawstring belt was weighted with a mini metal skull to punk it up, and newly developed fabrics were tech vibe stretch suiting and a very soft lambskin leather. Transformation was a key theme — many pieces can be zipped on zipped off into something else — a light tuxedo style, for instance, becomes a delectable daytime biker jacket and a short fitted soft leather dress with a slightly flared skirt becomes a streamlined dress once zipped. This is edgy, tough, chic luxury offering something different for a Middle East market that simply adores its luxury. As Thomas said at her Paris presentation, “We have a really good market in Bahrain and Qatar — the Middle East is really good for us.” To continue the Arabian-Parisian theme, the Fondation Pierre Bergé Paris is currently showing the exhibition “Berber Women Of Morocco”. It celebrates Pierre Bergé’s and the late Yves Saint Laurent’s love of Morocco and honors the tribal heritage such as traditional weaving and jewelry, of the Berber woman — recreating that spirit and aesthetic in Paris, direct from the Berber Museum in Marrakech. This cross-pollination of ideas and cultural acceptances, a bringing together of education, is satiating global fashion’s appetite for the new. In a politically-conflicted Middle East, a cultural synchronism rather than a clash was never more propitious than now. As Kayrouz sums it up: “I’m a Parisian, today, I am happy to be in Paris, I am happy to explore Paris.” And what of Beirut? He says, “Beirut is my heart.”
COURTESY OF SARAH BAADARANI; COURTESY OF THOMAS WYLDE (2)
Lookout Qatar
Creative Fair
Designated Design This October brings the second edition of Downtown Design, an event by Art Dubai that showcases original design by international artists. TQatar speaks with Cristina Romelli Gervasoni, the fair's director, about why Dubai has become so relevant to the international design scene. BY REBECCA ANN PROCTOR
COURTESY OF DOWNTOWN DESIGN
AFTER A successful first run last October, Downtown
Design is back for a second showing, this year with the theme 'Original'. The fair will be showcasing companies and brands that define the evolution of contemporary design through hospitality, residential, office and product design for the region's many developers, contractors, interior designers and architects. “The way people live, work and travel is undergoing a radical transformation today,” says Cristina Romelli Gervasoni, Director of Downtown Design.“This is reflected in the creations of the world's foremost designers, and is the single most important driver of the innovations we are witnessing worldwide and which we bring to Downtown Design every year.” The fair will feature a host of leading global
designers showcasing new collections and exclusive collaborations. These include Herman Miller, Fritz Hansen, Carl Hansen, Bang & Olufsen, Tai Ping, Lasvit, Golran, De Vecchi, Elica, Gaggenau, Hansgrohe and Vitra, among others. Through names like these the fair aims to open up business opportunities for the GCC, particularly in the realm of public facilities and commercial residential property — something that, with the region's rapid growth, is much needed. While the prospects for Downtown Design now look very exciting, when it launched last year many art and design enthusiasts wondered how the fair would differ from Design Days Dubai, another fair that takes place each year during Art Dubai and is now in its third run. What did this new fair offer the region that Design Days Dubai didn't already? “Although both are owned and managed by the same team behind Art Dubai, they are very different fairs,” says Gervasoni. “Downtown Design is a curated commercial fair showcasing international brands that produce limitless pieces of design, targeting industry professionals and high-end consumers. Having all these amazing companies under one roof is something that has never been done before in the region, and it is exactly what makes this fair so unique: it is the only place where design enthusiasts can discover the latest global trends and innovations that are shaping the world of design.” Design Days Dubai, on the other hand, is led more by the art galleries featured throughout the fair.
UNDER ONE ROOF: The Downtown Design Fair 2014 will feature a host of leading global designers showcasing new collections and exclusive collaborations. Images shown are from the first edition of the Fair held in 2013.
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Creative Fair
ABOVE: The making of the Wishbone chair at the Craftsman booth during the 2014 fair. BELOW: Upholstered deck chair by Theodore Alexander
Downtown Design is thus better placed to bring global brands to the Middle East. Both fairs are held in a boutique-like ambiance allowing guests to easily peruse the multitude of interesting objects. The two serve different purposes, but both ultimately aim to establish Dubai as a global design destination. Downtown Design features a greater number of international designers than up-and-coming local names, but attempts to balance the two with educational and commercial scope. “We are responding to the UAE and GCC markets' growing thirst for the best in global design," says Gervasoni. "It is estimated that construction deals in the UAE will reach $315 billion, which will significantly drive business in the interior and industrial design sectors. Growth in residential and commercial developments is expected to continue across the region, with Qatar and Saudi Arabia slated to spend almost as much as the UAE over the next few years.” Thus the role of Downtown Design is to bring together major players in the design industry to help meet the demand for high-end design in the region. But as Gervasoni underlines, the fair is also keen to highlight the work of emerging local talent, as it did last year with the Abu Dhabi tannery Al Khaznah and its new division Atelier AK, which produces camel-leather upholstered furniture on an international scale. Renowned Czech designer and manufacturer of bespoke light fittings Lasvit will be exhibiting at the fair for the first time. The company has won many awards for its innovative glass art installations and kinetic sculptures. “This is the right time for us to be in the Middle East market,” says a spokesperson for the company. “The region is experiencing unprecedented growth in the hotel, residential and commercial sectors, and Downtown Design provides the ideal environment to showcase our glass art installations to a growing number of customers here who are after original design in lighting and other sectors.” It’s an impressive international line-up of design heavyweights for
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such a young country. But in the end, the fair is about providing a creative edge to the region. “Exposure, exposure, exposure,” says Gervasoni. “The fair is the best opportunity for emerging and aspiring designers from the region to meet with the world's most respected brands, to learn from the best, and experience first-hand what product design, craftsmanship and innovation can bring to commercial design.” It certainly adds another platform to the many that have been established in the UAE to honor design, under the wider umbrella of support for the arts and creativity. But Gervasoni has an even larger vision. “We believe there is an emerging culture of design in the region that we have a responsibility and opportunity to nurture,” she says. “Downtown Design hopefully helps to shed light on the fact that quality-driven pieces can be part of everyday life,” she adds, recalling how, growing up in Italy, design was second nature. “I still use my grandmother's chairs today, and I can do that because of their innate quality and originality,” she says. An original design piece, in her view, carries with it the brand's ethos and heritage: “It is the innovation and craftsmanship that goes into designing that perfect glass or couch. And that cannot be replicated.” Downtown Design takes place from October 28-31, at The Venue in Downtown Dubai. For more information visit www.downtowndesign.com.
IN CONTROL: Alessandra Facchinetti has the brand's ethos in mind as she works her creative vibes.
Talent Watch
A Winner All the Way She is being compared to Céline’s Phoebe Philo, and the brand’s last collection was termed a Céline moment in Milan. What does Alessandra Facchinetti of Tod’s have to say about the prospects?
ALL PICTURES COURTESY OF TOD'S
BY SINDHU NAIR
SURROUNDED BY a flurry of anxious activity in the aftermath of the Autumn Winter show in Milan, Alessandra Facchinetti seemed to be just a tiny bit affected by all the media attention. This was her second collection as Tod’s creative director. The season’s direction and designs would make or break it for the designer who did not have an easy career path despite her having worked with the best and fostering an interest for her creations in the industry. A day after the show and with reviews that would make any designer preen with pleasure, Facchinetti takes all the attention in her stride. Developing a women’s ready-to-wear line to accompany Tod’s shoes and bags has brought her praise from fashion critic Suzy Menkes who described her collection as,
“precise and chic ” in the International New York Times, and hailed her second collection as “streamlined, modern, and women-friendly,” concluding that “Tod’s seems to have found a winner.” Thinking back to the moment when she was asked to be the creative force behind Tod’s, Facchinetti agrees that it was a challenge, albeit an entirely different one. “I was ready for change,” Facchinetti says. “This profile was something I enjoyed because of the Italian connection and also because the ideals of Tod’s, detailing and quality, which were similar to mine.” Facchinetti had worked with big names earlier in her career and already revealed her creative streak; as Tom Ford’s successor at Gucci and later as the creative
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Talent Watch DEEP COLOR Clockwise from far left: Selections from Tod's Autumn/ Winter collection 2014; the designer sketches the shoes and then coordinates it with designs for clothes; the show was held at the Padiglione d'Arte Contemporanea in Milan and Facchinetti's sketches show how she detailed the interiors of this museum.
director at Valentino. While her work at both of these houses was lauded, neither appointment proved the right fit, and she soon left the brands. “I have taken away something from each of the houses that I have worked in,” says Facchinetti. “All of them come with so much history and I can see that I have imbibed some qualities of each of them. I have had very invigorating discussions with these designers and I will value all that was shared.” At Tod’s, she has to go about designing from the foot up. And this was a challenge that Facchinetti loved taking on. “This proved to be much more exciting,” she says. A tan-blue leather high boot paired with a leather coat, the historic Tod’s moccasins in colors that stimulate, chocolate-red, a rich navy blue and a very subtle pink, all celebrated in different metallic embellishments that do not take the attention away from comfort or the material, paired with trench coats, or the most classic of patterns, the checks, applied in wool and silk, are just some examples from the collection. For many the designs were winners, for the simple reason that customers could see themselves wearing the clothes that Tod’s made. To Facchinetti her collection is “hyper-feminine or more graphic when exploring the sartorial style with a sophisticated uni-sex flavor. Simplicity in spirit but with a unique vision of being dressed with a purpose,” she sums it up. While seasonal clothing seems to have become a staple with fashion houses, Facchinetti believes that ready-to-wear has grown to be much more, straddling climates and geographical barriers, adorning a Chinese woman, being held by a Middle Eastern diva or fitting perfectly onto an American foot. In this global fashion world, brands like Tod’s scale territories and are as much at home in Chinese markets as they are on Italian home ground. “I think you can wear the clothes I design in many different ways,” says Facchinetti. “I always think that my clothes come to life depending on how the person wears it. That’s the beauty of clothes.”
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Leather is the staple for Tod’s and it is a celebration of the material at the show. It swishes and moves provocatively, shines like lacquer in some creations and falls effortlessly from the shoulders as it comes to life at the hands of the designer. Thin yet light, stretchable nevertheless taking on the form, the leather has taken much more physical and chemical composition to become almost like cotton at the hands of the designer. Laser-cut skirts, a flowing coat, stand testimony to the new material.“Leather is cotton, and shiny like silk,” says Facchinetti about this “new” material and to perfect it she was assisted by the age-old artisans at Tod’s. “I worked with our artisans and explained to them what I wanted from leather, to lacquer it to look like waxed cloth, and they helped me attain what I had envisioned.” “Leather is like the heart of the brand, and I find it especially enthralling to experiment with the age-old tradition of the brand,” she says. “You can say that I gave it a new spirit.” While Facchinetti is all in for innovation, she is firmly guided by tradition, and that’s what makes her association with Tod’s unique. She believes that the love for heritage, the respect for labor and creativity makes her work at Tod’s more like a vocation than an occupation. How about the pressures that comes with a creative head’s role? While the best designers have cracked under duress, what makes Facchinetti feel positive about the industry? “With a great team and respect for each other, I feel anything can be achieved. I also love my work so much that I have never thought about it as pressure,” Facchinetti says. And if she was not designing clothes, Facchinetti would be doing so many things, browsing through art shows, attending cultural gigs, designing her home (which she has already perfected in the unique Facchinetti way), but she emphasizes that fashion will always be her first love.
Left: Carolina Herrera coat, QR13,072. Hermès shirt (worn throughout), QR7,009, hermes.com. Right: Oscar de la Renta coat, QR9,431. Hermès shirt (worn throughout), QR4,278. On both: Céline sunglasses, QR1,438. Loewe bag (worn throughout), QR6,154, loewe.com. Saint Laurent by Hedi Slimane shoes (worn throughout), QR3,259.
In Fashion
These Coats Are Made for Walking So lightweight and beautifully made, they do all the work. PHOTOGRAPHS BY BEN GRIEME STYLED BY JASON RIDER
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Quality
In Fashion
Left: Bally coat, QR12,727. Right: Proenza Schouler coat, QR12,708. Opposite, left: Chloé coat, QR10,742. Right: Hermès coat, QR24,762. On both: Céline sunglasses.
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Quality
In Fashion
Left: Dior vest, QR34,958. Right: Milly vest, QR2,275, saksfifthavenue .com. Opposite, left: Dolce & Gabbana coat, QR28,203, dolcegabbana.it. Right: Diane von Furstenberg coat, QR2,905, bloomingdales.com.
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MODELS: NICOLE KEIMIG AND TABITHA PERNAR AT THE SOCIETY MANAGEMENT. HAIR BY OWEN GOULD AT THE WALL GROUP. MAKEUP BY JUNKO KIOKA AT JOE MANAGEMENT USING CHANEL. MANICURE BY CASEY HERMAN FOR CHANEL LE VERNIS AT KATE RYAN INC. DIGITAL TECHNICIAN: HEATH M C BRIDE. PHOTOGRAPHY ASSISTANT: MATT SIMMONS. STYLIST’S ASSISTANT: OLIVIA HESS DANIELSSON. DOGS: ALL TAME ANIMALS, INC. SPECIAL THANKS TO THE MARK HOTEL, N.Y.C.
Quality
The Thing IF POMELLATO QUIETLY cemented its reputation as the everyday jewelry of chic European women long ago, this new cabochon-cut coral ring is the Milanese house’s most decadent party favor. A oneof-a-kind in the company’s Pom Pom haute joaillerie collection, the titanic stone is set in white and rose gold, and surrounded by 141 white diamonds, orange sapphires and red spinels arranged in a mosaic pattern. Requiring more than 300 hours to design, the ring is inspired by the lush equatorial opulence of the 1930s. The only details left to be desired are a black-tie fete and a stiff cosmopolitan. — BROOKE BOBB PHOTOGRAPH BY KATE JACKLING
CHIN CHIN Pomellato Pom Pom haute joaillerie collection coral ring, price on request, pomellato.com.
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Quality
The Moment
This season’s feeling of careless elegance doesn’t imply an inattention to detail. In fact, it requires it. PHOTOGRAPHS BY AMY TROOST STYLED BY SARAH ELLISON-PRAT
1 THE CORSAGE A feminine flourish against the backdrop of a bold coat.
Bottega Veneta coat, QR12,746, bottegaveneta .com. Dries Van Noten corsage, showpiece only.
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The Moment
2 KNEE-HIGH BOOTS
A mod look, when paired with the now-ubiquitous minidress.
Saint Laurent by Hedi Slimane coat, price on request. Valentino dress, QR28,367. Gucci boots, QR5,808, gucci. com.
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3 A HINT OF SHEER
Peeking out from a long skirt or a low-cut jacket.
Donna Karan New York jacket, QR9,085, skirt, QR4,351, and belt, QR1,638, saksfifthavenue.com.
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4 THE MINI-BAG
Finally, an evolution from the evening clutch.
Boss dress, QR3,987, hugoboss. com. Lanvin bag, QR10,888, net-a-porter.com.
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HAIR BY ESTHER LANGHAM. MAKEUP BY FRANCELLE AT ART + COMMERCE. MANICURE BY MICHINA KOIDE USING CHANEL AT ART DEPARTMENT. SET DESIGN BY KATE LANDUCCI AT MARY HOWARD STUDIO. MODEL: JANICE ALIDA AT ELITE. STYLIST’S ASSISTANT: JEAN HALL
Quality The Moment
Watch Report
Small Indulgences Gold timepieces as slender and delicate as a woman’s wrist.
STYLED BY JASON RIDER. MODEL: LAURA KARGULEWICZ AT WILHELMINA. GROOMING BY RACHEL TOLIN AT THE WALL GROUP FOR CHANEL. MANICURE BY ALICIA TORELLO AT THE WALL GROUP USING ZOYA. PROP STYLIST: THEO VAMVOUNAKIS AT STACY VOGWELL PRODUCTIONS. STYLIST’S ASSISTANT: OLIVIA HESS DANIELSSON
PHOTOGRAPHS BY CHARLIE ENGMAN
Clockwise from top left: Movado Dot, QR5,444. Cartier Mini Tank Américaine, QR127,452, cartier.us. Dior Timepieces La Mini D de Dior, QR118,348, dior.com. Hermès Faubourg, QR55,350, hermes.com.
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Quality Objects
Prized Possession High-gloss handbags and heels in a range of decadent colors are the most covetable accessories of the season. PHOTOGRAPHS BY ANTHONY COTSIFAS PRODUCED BY MICHAEL REYNOLDS
GRAY MATTER From left: Valentino Garavani boots, QR6,718. Balenciaga bag, price on request.
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NEUTRAL TONES From left: Marc Jacobs bag, QR4,005. Gucci boots, QR3,623, gucci.com.
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Quality
Objects SHARP CONTRAST From left: Emporio Armani bag, QR3,077, armani. com. Bottega Veneta bag, QR54,622, bottegaveneta .com. Brian Atwood shoes, QR2,530, brian atwood.com.
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RETOUCHING: ROBERT WILLINGHAM. PHOTO ASSISTANT: KARL LEITZ. PROP STYLIST’S ASSISTANT: EVAN SCOTT
FRENCH BURGUNDY Clockwise from top: Roger Vivier shoes, QR2,530. Bally boots, QR4,916. Tod’s bag, QR4,606.
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Quality
Objects DARK HORSE From left: The Row bag, price on request. CĂŠline shoes, QR4,551, Ikram, Chicago. All decorative objects from Seidenberg Antiques, New York City, seidenberg antiques.com.
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Quality
In Fashion
City Girl An uncompromising youthquake revitalized the fall runways with collegiate starter jackets, short skirts and nubby sweaters that inspire a coltish confidence. PHOTOGRAPHS BY THOMAS LOHR STYLED BY JASON RIDER
Louis Vuitton dress, about QR13,473, belt, QR2,621, and sunglasses, QR2,986, louisvuitton.com.
Quality
In Fashion
Right: Tod’s jacket, QR27,220, and sweater, QR3,805. Top: Burberry London coat, QR15,276, burberry.com. Miu Miu sweater, QR6,008, and skirt, QR2,767, miumiu .com. Marlene JuhlJorgensen necklace, QR3,313, Delvaux bag, QR10,014, barneys.com.
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Etro top, QR2,243, and sweater (tied around waist), QR4,661. Miu Miu skirt, QR5,535. Christopher Kane bag, price on request, similar styles at Blake, Chicago. Chanel bracelet (worn as key chain), QR5,280.
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Quality
In Fashion
Left: Coach jacket, QR5,808, and skirt, QR2,166, coach.com. Dolce & Gabbana bag, QR9,449, dolcegabbana.it. Above: Hilfiger Collection sweater, QR1,784. Hermès boots, QR5,007, hermes. com.
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MODEL: YSAUNNY BRITO AT THE SOCIETY. HAIR BY TOMOHIRO OHASHI AT MANAGEMENT + ARTISTS. MAKEUP BY LILI CHOI USING LAURA MERCIER AT ARTLIST. MANICURE BY CHRISTINA CONRAD AT CALLISTE. PARIS PRODUCTION BY TOBIAS BRAHMST AT BACKWALL. STYLIST’S ASSISTANT: OLIVIA HESS DANIELSSON
Missoni tops, QR7,501 and QR3,133 (tied around waist), and skirt QR5,862.
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THE COOKING CURE Joël Robuchon and Dr. Nadia Volf argue that trout combats anxiety and sadness, while endive protects against obsession, binge-eating and bad breath.
Food Matters
PROP STYLIST: VICTORIA PETRO CONROY
A Recipe for Happiness Can a meal be more than just a delicious coming together of fine ingredients? Can it alter your feelings in predictive ways? The Michelin-starred chef Joël Robuchon and his neuropharmacologist have created dishes to cure what ails you. BY LIESL SCHILLINGER PHOTOGRAPH BY KYOKO HAMADA
‘‘MILK PROTEINS DO NOT belong in human bodies,’’
Robert Cohen wrote in his 1997 book ‘‘Milk: The Deadly Poison.’’ A single glass contains ‘‘powerful growth
hormones, enormous quantities of dietary cholesterol, fat, allergenic proteins, insecticides, antibiotics, viruses and bacteria.’’ For a solid year I shunned cheese and September-October 2014
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Arena
Food Matters
Häagen-Dazs, drank Rice Dream and ate my toast dry. I lost 15 pounds. But, as so often happens with restrictive diets, at some point dairy flowed back into my refrigerator, and my weight crept back to normal. Fast forward to 2011 and the book ‘‘Wheat Belly: Lose the Wheat, Lose the Weight, and Find Your Path Back to Health.’’ Wheat, not milk, was the culprit, and once again my persuadable mind succumbed to an alarmist argument. I didn’t lose the weight this time because in the intervening decade I’d casually adopted the South Beach and Atkins diets, satisfying my snack cravings with string cheese and salami instead of bagels and Fritos. But it’s not just health (and skinniness) we’re after from our diets — it’s happiness. The gluten-free converts talk of being clear-minded, and any juice bar offers a host of emotional and psychological claims along with its cups of pulverized shrubbery. So if a goji berry stirs the libido and clams reduce anger, can it all be mixed into a recipe that can feed the soul while also tasting delicious? The
on watercress (to fight water retention, a boon for a particularly bloated friend). Impressed by the book’s description of the restorative powers of grapefruit and cherries, I prepared spritzers of Pellegrino and fresh juices alongside the rosé and white wine. The chilled mint pea soupe élégante contained green peas ‘‘to fight problems of circulation, edema and water retention in the legs’’ and fresh mint (a cooling herb), topped with a dab of crème fraîche and toasted pumpkin seeds (also helpful in battling obsessions). I served up Robuchon’s beets and endive with smoked duck breast, chives and Granny Smith apple along with a sermon: ‘‘The fatty acids in the duck are good for your heart, and it has phosphorous, too, which stimulates memory; the endive combats fear, the hazelnut oil boosts serenity, the beets help the immune system and detoxify the blood and the apples have iron and pectin, which calm the stomach.’’ Our main courses were Robuchon’s trout with carrot tagliatelle (with a little curry thrown in to improve memory) and chicken with preserved lemon. The zucchini in the dish I’d served with them — quinoa with sautéed vegetables and ground golden flaxseeds — was supposed to fight fright. ‘‘Has Robuchon lost his mind a bit?’’ someone asked, but the meal actually seemed to be working. The mint quieted Sabine’s feistiness. The chives helped Lucas release his inhibitions. Zainab’s jet lag disappeared. Victoire, who had taken a liking to the pea soup and was recovering from strenuous hours at the ballet barre, told me, ‘‘The pain in my legs is going away!’’ Michael, fortified by the preserved lemon, said, ‘‘I feel like I could break rocks with my head.’’ For dessert, along with clafoutis I served fresh pineapple, whose bromelain would help us all to digest our trout, duck and pâté. Remarkably, after so many courses, the guests were still light on their feet, possibly due to the trout. Or the pineapple. Or maybe it was the saffron. In the ensuing days, I noticed that my cold had disappeared — surely not a coincidence — and Victoire emailed, ‘‘All my ailments are gone!’’ Plus, two of my single guests, sated on figs and the heart-stirring cherries in the clafoutis, started dating. Were we all just suggestible, or were these food-boosted effects real? The question reminded me of a long-ago college lecture on ‘‘angels and atoms,’’ in which the professor explained that today’s accepted belief that the world is made up of atoms is no easier for most people to prove than the medieval belief that the air contains legions of invisible angels and devils. It is hard to sever science from faith; evidence can be mischievously subjective, and in either case, it works better if you believe. Whatever the reason — conviction, science or the delicious duck breast — my experiment in the alchemy of dining was surprisingly potent. And it was a lovely summer garden meal I won’t soon forget, whereas I can’t for the life of me recall a single Atkins dinner I ever made. (Thankfully, Robuchon and Dr. Volf offer a cure for forgetfulness: caviar, served with a poached egg, smoked salmon, crème fraîche and chives.)
‘I see so many girls today who comfort themselves after a heartbreak by eating ice cream. The most beautiful thing to eat when you have heartbreak is turkey, because turkey has the amino acid tryptophan, which is the basis of our hormone serotonin. But the girls just don’t know that.’ renowned French chef Joël Robuchon and the acupuncturist and neuropharmacologist Dr. Nadia Volf think yes. Their new cookbook, ‘‘Food & Life,’’ transforms kitchen cupboards into medicine cabinets, highlighting the arsenal of wellness that resides in everything from foie gras to the humble pea. Combining his artistry with her scientific knowledge, the pair claims that meals can improve your health, energy and mood, and maybe even help you find love. ‘‘It’s about what to eat at different times, when you feel one way or another. When you are obsessed by a thought that torments you, eat endives and your obsession will go away,’’ Volf said. ‘‘I see so many girls who comfort themselves after a heartbreak by eating Nutella and big portions of ice cream, but it doesn’t work. They gain weight, and they don’t feel better. The most beautiful thing to eat when you have heartbreak is turkey, because turkey has the amino acid tryptophan, which is the basis of our hormone serotonin. But the girls just don’t know that.’’ Among my close circle of friends, ailments range from sore joints and muscles, jet lag and water retention, to poor concentration, night sweats, melancholia, anxiety, frugality, migraine, myopia, hay fever and numbness. For much of June, I’d been felled by a summer cold and cough. When I scanned the catalog of our woes, I blanched, worried that we all needed gruel and bed rest — not a multicourse meal. And yet, on a meltingly hot New York night, I decided to give it a go. I started with a canapé of radish and cucumber with chèvre and lemon rind, intended to stimulate the liver, lessen anxiety and relieve rheumatism and inflammation. I also served grapes (which quell obsessive thinking), figs (a calming aphrodisiac), Marcona almonds (to bolster equanimity and soothe coughing) and duck-liver mousse 76
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LONGCHAMP, DIOR, ALEXANDER M C QUEEN, CALVIN KLEIN, VERSACE, BURBERRY PRORSUM, BOTTEGA VENETA, GIORGIO ARMANI, DR. MARTENS, NICHOLAS KIRKWOOD FOR SUNO, COACH, THE ROW, BAND OF OUTSIDERS, BRUNELLO CUCINELLI, CHLOÉ AND RALPH LAUREN SHOES: MARKO METZINGER. ALL OTHERS: COURTESY OF THE DESIGNER
Yes, Please
The Invasion of the Flats Who knew that the humblest shoe could become a symbol of power in the working world? BY SADIE STEIN
FOR MANY YEARS, it felt like there was a choice before
us: look grown-up and sexy or clomp around like a hearty German tourist. We all knew that flats were practical. But like pencil skirts and straightened hair, high heels denoted polish. Looking over the fall fashion spreads of designer
orthopedic sandals and neon-hued sneakers, I suspect that girls today probably don’t feel the need to wear heels to transform themselves into grown-up women the way I did. Whereas heels were once integral to power dressing, flats now connote a liberation from that stereotype. As clothes have become more gender-neutral, the need to September-October 2014
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Yes, Please
announce our femininity with a percussive soundtrack has vanished. There has never been just one kind of woman who wears flats. Well-to-do Americans have long kept a range in their closets: scuffs for at home, sneakers and walking shoes for sports, sandals and moccasins for weekend getaways. (Heels, of course, were always the ‘‘main event.’’) Conversely, as long as there’s been a counterculture, bohemians from Greenwich Village to the Left Bank have made flats one of their hallmarks: a sign not merely of their general disdain for convention but of their implicit solidarity with honest working folk. Greek fisherman’s sandals, sturdy tromping boots, Turkish slippers and huaraches were indications of an independent spirit, a beatnik irreverence, a cosmopolitan bent. In Hollywood, Audrey Hepburn taught the world that flat could be feminine. Her embrace of the Ferragamo ballet slipper in 1957 (a year after Brigitte Bardot wore the Cinderella slipper by Repetto) made the shoes a necessary gamine accessory, providing a demure counterpoint to conventional midcentury notions of sex appeal. Meanwhile, the continental sexpots of the New Wave — from Anna Karina to Jean Seberg — were frequently pictured in ballet flats or the mod Roger Vivier varietal. Like everything we fetishize 78
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about the mythical French woman, the flat — along with the striped shirt and the scarf, other essentials for the cartoon dame — denoted practicality and childlike grace. Susan Sontag was a devotee of the tennis shoe. Joan Didion wore flats (and presumably still does). The fashion editor Diana Vreeland, dismissive of ‘‘hideous strappy high heels’’ and the mincing walk they imparted, had her flats custom-made by obliging cobblers. Today, all the old tropes and even the recent ones (Birkenstocks, Tevas, shower sandals) have been taken out of the box and made to look fresh and new. You can find driving moccasins, once an icon of staid WASPiness, bristling with ironic attitude, deck shoes in the farthest reaches of Brooklyn. In the summer heat, urban women resembled Greek goddesses in strappy sandals. On runways from Marc by Marc Jacobs to Chanel, the look was bright sneakers and flat boots. Rather than teetering to their town cars, top fashion editors and stylists were suddenly able to hop on Citi Bikes or toodle through the Tuileries. From Lanvin’s laceless oxfords to the Row’s crocodile brogues, Marni’s tasseled loafers to riffs on Dr. Martens at Céline and Alexander McQueen — these are shoes you want to walk in. Nothing could feel more grown-up right now.
CASUAL STYLE Fashion’s flatwearing pioneers, sporting their signature looks.
ILLUSTRATION BY KONSTANTIN KAKANIAS
Whereas heels were once integral to power dressing, flats now connote a liberation from that stereotype. As clothes have become more gender-neutral, the need to announce our femininity with a percussive soundtrack has vanished.
Arena
On Beauty
No Mistake
imitated; I’m thinking of New York’s beauty/junkie queen, Cat Marnell, who applies her YSL Rouge #17 to look as if she has recently escaped a kidnapping. At Vivienne Westwood’s fall show, the models wore what the makeup artist Val Garland called ‘‘a Marilyn Monroe mucky lip, like she’s had a few drinks.’’ Call it ‘‘the new smear,’’ call it ‘‘the smudge.’’ The wearer is clear: She’s a woman undone, but on purpose. ‘‘Undone’’ is the enemy of ‘‘not done,’’ which is also known as the au courant ‘‘no-makeup look.’’ As nudity is distinct from nakedness, so the ‘‘no-makeup look’’ is separated from the ‘‘no-makeup reality’’ by, in order of application, three layers of finely spackled creams, four brow-enhancing products, several individually positioned, almost-black lashes, two shades of blush, a fine dusting of powder to ‘‘set’’ everything and, finally, the subtlest, sheerest lip gloss, painted with a tiny brush. The whole thing takes two hours. I know because I recently underwent this treatment myself for a photo shoot (they wanted me ‘‘natural’’ and ‘‘fresh’’). I felt about as plain as a Vermeer. Afterward, I rubbed a Kleenex all over my face, used a cheap, wine-colored lipstick to stain my mouth and cheeks and applied the kind of lush, wet mascara that always creases in my eyelids, but I like it, so there I was, again my unnatural, pretty self by the time I got home in a cab. And, as it turns out, an accidental example of a trend. Those also prone to putting on makeup in taxis, on
Messy hair and imperfectly applied makeup — smeared lips, ringed eyes or caked-on mascara — conjure the thrill of creativity and the rush of life. BY SARAH NICOLE PRICKETT
COURTESY OF CÉLINE
THE MAN WHO INVENTED MODERN MAKEUP also
invented doing it wrong. In the 1930s, Max Factor picked up one of his brand-new tubes of rouge and drew a Daliesque pout over the naturally little lips of Miss Joan Crawford, transforming her from flapper to unflappable femme. He called his method, playfully, ‘‘the smear.’’ Over the years, the smear appeared on film whenever an actress, usually playing another actress, needed to look, well, actressy. In ‘‘Opening Night,’’ Gena Rowlands disintegrates under a fine black veil and applies her signature rose lip in slippery circles. In a similar, eerie still in ‘‘The Marriage of Maria Braun,’’ Hanna Schygulla’s lipstick is a blotto red mess that recalls Tallulah Bankhead in the ultra-shlocky ‘‘Die! Die! My Darling!’’ Halfway through the 1990s, Courtney Love’s permanent slip dress and sloppy moue — a cross between Crawford’s and a clown’s — was, and is again, widely
OFF-KILTER Above, from left: images from Céline’s prefall 2014 lookbook showing a bare face with smudged mascara, untamed eyebrows and a casually applied plum lip, and a model’s tousled hair and earringless lobe.
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On Beauty
WOMEN UNDONE Above, from left: models with a tangled wet-hair look, shiny skin and nude, barely there lip color at the fall 2014 Marni show; M.A.C. cosmetics A Novel Romance lipstick in Myself, QR58.
subways and/or on one too many Ativans, will be pleasantly bemused to know that ‘‘imperfect beauty,’’ as it’s called in fashion circles, is a bona fide thing, as shown on the fall runways. At Lanvin’s fall 2014 show, Pat McGrath dabbed inky shadow, markerlike, above the lashline, while at Anthony Vaccarello, Tom Pecheux used dental floss to apply red and black squiggles that barely, just barely, resembled eyeliner. Mascara was caked on at Prada, buried in glitter at Altuzarra and left off altogether at Céline, where wet hair and taupe-ringed eyes evoked a fortnight-long bender just ended. In the usual close-ups of models’ faces taken backstage, the hand of the makeup artist was almost disconcertingly visible. You could see fingerprints on eyelids, even mouths. Again at Céline, nails were not only polish-free but uneven, certainly unmanicured. (Of course, youth permits all manner of beauty sins. If you’re not a 19-year-old model, you should try one ‘‘mistake’’ at a time. Rihanna got away with going to the 2013 American Music Awards with obvious tan lines and doobie-wrapped hair not only because she’s Rihanna, but because her makeup, nails and diamonds were neoHollywood flawless.) Maybe the ‘‘undone’’ or ‘‘handdone’’ trend is a way of saying ‘‘no thank you’’ to airbrushing in Photoshop, just as the recent vogue for rough ceramics and crafty abstraction
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in the art world is in part a rejoinder to artists like Jeff Koons who reproduce, en masse, the mass-produced. Or maybe it’s a simple acknowledgment that we’re most of us too busy to bother with the 26 precision tools a nomakeup look requires, and not hydrated, well-slept or content enough for a no-makeup reality. Either way, where I used to begin each day with a canvaslike mask of foundation, I now apply an uneven layer of tinted moisturizer. And sometimes I leave the permanent, bluish half-moons under my eyes untouched. I like to think this is my own interpretation of the novelist Junichiro Tanizaki’s ‘‘In Praise of Shadows,’’ an essay that discussed the Japanese con cept of wabi-sabi that the design writer Leonard Koren later defined as beauty ‘‘coaxed out of ugliness.’’ And once in a while I feel emboldened to color outside the lines. I want to leave in more mistakes, to leave an impression more provocative than good. A face made up in a rush is also done for the rush of making it up, and for the childlike pleasure of showing that you’ve made it. As the American painter Cy Twombly said to the critic David Sylvester, ‘‘Paint in a sense is a certain infantile thing . . . I start out using a brush, but then I can’t take the time because the idea doesn’t correspond, it gets stuck when the brush goes out of paint . . . So I take my hand and I do it.’’
HAND-FINISHED Clockwise from top: an unbrushed, piecey look with dark roots at Louis Vuitton; Bumble and Bumble Semisumo, QR100, spacenk.com; a model with hair pulled back as if with fingers after a shower, dark eyes and clumpy lashes; Estée Lauder Sumptuous Extreme Lash Multiplying Volume mascara, QR95.
PRODUCTS: JOSHUA SCOTT. MODELS, CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: CATWALK PICTURES; DON ASHBY/FIRSTVIEW; SCHOHAJA
Once in a while, I feel emboldened to color outside the lines. I want to leave in more mistakes, to leave an impression more provocative than good.
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Home and Work
Brunch at Tiffany’s As the storied jewelry house’s first female design director, Francesca Amfitheatrof is imbuing modern luxury with an unexpected hint of bohemianism — perhaps the result of her recent move to Brooklyn.
PORTRAIT: FLORA HANITIJO. ALL OTHER PHOTOGRAPHS: ALPHA SMOOT
BY EVIANA HARTMAN
CHARMED LIFE Clockwise from top: Francesca Amfitheatrof in the Tiffany studio with sketches of her first collection, which launches this month; the entry hall of her Brooklyn townhouse; the back garden; the designer’s personal jewelry.
THE SIGHT, FROM ACROSS THE STREET, of Francesca Amfitheatrof
taking in the morning air on the upstairs balcony of her Brooklyn home — a grand, free-standing 1889 Romanesque Revival townhouse in the eclectic neighborhood of Clinton Hill — might almost be an apparition. Lissome and fair, with a profile that calls to mind a John Singer Sargent portrait, she suggests a vision from a bygone era, the original lady of the house. Yet despite her Old World elegance, Tiffany & Company’s first female design director is very much a modern woman. Her sonorous, hardto-place accent is the fruit of an adventurous life steeped in art, culture
and travel. (Her father, a Time magazine bureau chief of Russian-Italian parentage, toured the world for work, while her Italian mother did the same as a public relations executive at Valentino and Armani.) She has lived, at various times, in Tokyo, Rome, Moscow, Manhattan and, for many years until recently, London. Her résumé, too, reflects the fluidity of the times. In addition to creating jewelry under her own name — clever mixed-media objects that interpret organic forms with droll humor and a dramatic sense of scale — Amfitheatrof has lent her skill set to the design of accessories collections for a host of September-October 2014
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ALL THE SMALL THINGS Clockwise from top left: a Tiffany T chain necklace in 18-karat gold; artwork by Amfitheatrof’s children; the designer’s dog in her bedroom; technical sketches of the new Tiffany T bracelets; the Smile pendant in 18-karat gold; Tiffany T diamond band rings; Amfitheatrof wears a mix of Tiffany pieces with a piece of string bought on the beach in Brazil; her sketchbook; two 18-karat gold bangles from the new 63-piece Tiffany T collection.
other labels (eyewear for Marni, jewelry for Chanel and Fendi, silverware for Asprey, objects for Alessi) and to curating art shows and advising private collectors. She arrived in New York last fall after her appointment to Tiffany, where she now oversees a staff of 20 designers. At the time, Amfitheatrof, her husband, Ben Curwin, who works for a tech incubator, and their two children and two dogs had been happily ensconced in a four-story Victorian overlooking Hoxton Square in London. With the U.S. school year imminent, they opted to seek out a rental online; within a week, they’d signed a lease. ‘‘I didn’t know Brooklyn well at all,’’ she says, ‘‘but I wanted somewhere that had that feeling of East London. I’ve always been around artists and creative people.’’ To make the place homier, the couple added a few of their own things: books; some of Amfitheatrof’s designs, including a filigree chandelier fashioned from intricate metal pieces soldered together in the shape of a bird; and a painting of her paternal grandmother by her onetime suitor, the architect Gio Ponti. Reflecting her personal style, Amfitheatrof’s first collection for Tiffany, Tiffany T, offers what might be called a Brooklynized take on fine jewelry. Polished enough for a night on the town, it could also easily be worn on a 82
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stroll to the farmers’ market. ‘‘I like things that clash a bit,’’ she says. ‘‘I wanted to do a collection you can style together, so instead of going matchy matchy matchy, you can kind of choose from within it and feel quite confident in styling it yourself.’’ The modern range of mix-and-matchable designs are laced with sly wit — one necklace uses a double-headed ‘‘T’’ to form a smile — and innovative robotics: Tennis bracelets and rings stretch and contract on railroad-like tracks, while modular linked necklaces twist and flex in all directions for a fluid effect. ‘‘It’s got a clever bit of engineering,’’ she says. ‘‘I’m a bit of a nerd like that.’’ The T assortment is only the beginning for Amfitheatrof, who, as just the eighth person to hold the position since the company was founded in 1837, will oversee all facets of design for the historic brand — tableware, engagement jewelry, gifts, red-carpet one-offs. ‘‘With Tiffany, because of its American design heritage, everything has a freshness and a lightness,’’ says Amfitheatrof. ‘‘That’s something that I really believe in.’’ A comment she makes about the collection could also apply to the refined yet relaxed aesthetic she brings to every aspect of her life. ‘‘It appears more effortless than it is,’’ she says. ‘‘That’s the thread, really.’’
JEWELRY, CLOCKWISE FROM BOTTOM LEFT: MARKO METZINGER (3); JOSHUA SCOTT (3). ALL OTHER PHOTOS: ALPHA SMOOT
‘The T motif is very modern. It’s got an affinity with New York and the immediacy and speed of it. There’s a way that women here dress and move.’
FROM TOP: KARIM SADLI; MARK BORTHWICK; RICARDO LABOUGLE
WILD ROMANCE September - October, 2014
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SHY, UNASSUMING AND NICE, SARAH BURTON, THE ALEXANDER MCQUEEN DESIGNER, IS EVERYTHING THAT HER MAGICALLY HAUNTING COLLECTIONS ARE NOT.
THE GENIUS NEXT DOOR THE WORD ‘‘NICE’’ OVERCOMES a multitude of human
BY ANDREW O’HAGAN PHOTOGRAPHS BY KARIM SADLI STYLED BY JOE M C KENNA
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complications: People can be rich, so long as they’re nice; they can be lazy at school or useless at work, but if they’re nice, it doesn’t matter. Nice is not the same as ‘‘great’’ or ‘‘lovely’’ or even ‘‘sweet’’ — it’s a category of well-pitched, ordinary decency, and a person who has niceness has everything. To my mind, Sarah Burton is not merely one of the world’s greatest designers, she just happens to be the nicest, and she is about to enjoy the flowering of her life. Once thought of as the diligent one, the silent one, the reliable power behind the dazzle of Alexander McQueen, she has emerged as a person with a devastating music of her own. Season after season, she produces beautiful combinations of the gracious and the eerie, giving us worlds that we didn’t know until we saw them. And now, after some dark winters and several seasons in the media sun, Burton seems free somehow, and ready to stake her claim on the future. It is four years since Alexander McQueen — or ‘‘Lee,’’ as he was called — who in addition to being Burton’s boss was also her beloved friend and mentor, committed suicide. She was heartbroken — she finished the collection, assumed the role of head designer (which she never sought) and, soon after, in the hot glare of speculation, made the wedding dress of the decade, for the Duchess of Cambridge. To do it all, to bear it, and still be nice, is to exhibit a set of capabilities that adds even more to an already first-rate talent. I didn’t know Sarah Burton, but we got together over several weeks for this story, at her studio, at restaurants, backstage at one of her shows and, finally, at her house in North London. The first time I met her, I noticed how bitten her nails were, how self-doubting she was and how vulnerable. Yet over the weeks, her strength emerged as it does in her work: determined, sure-footed, risky, humorous and ready to open her soul in order to make contact with people. She hadn’t given an interview for almost two years before this one and even then had said very little, and she found herself speaking in a new way. A portrait emerged of a brilliant woman whose nature has been tested under severe conditions. And yet the person I met could laugh for England, making life stories, and her own life story, into an elegant aria of dreaming and believing. There is depth to her niceness, and a niceness to her depth, which has not only quadrupled her company’s fortunes, but which promises a wealth of great work to come. Burton grew up outside Manchester. Her father was an accountant and her mother was a music teacher. She has four siblings. When she described her childhood to me she spoke a lot about education, about her father feeling that knowledge was something ‘‘nobody can take away from you.’’ On weekends, she and her brothers and sisters would be taken to places such as the Manchester Art Gallery, where she remembers doting on the pre-Raphaelite paintings. When
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Burton brings an English tendency toward dark pleasure as opposed to dark pain. She is a prettier designer than many, but always alert to the mysteriously perverse.
DELICATE TERROR Stella Tennant adorned in a lasercut leather and lace dress with a matching mask and a cage corset, from spring 2012. 86
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HARLEQUIN ROMANCE Edie Campbell steps up in a velvet jacquard jacket with sheepskin collar and trousers, broderie anglaise cotton shirt, silver ivy rings and velvet jacquard steeltoed combat boots, from fall 2014.
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FINE FRIPPERY Tennant in a furembroidered chiffon dress and pony-skin boots, from fall 2014. 88
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we talked about influences, she sometimes glanced over her own personal things, as if she might always be haunted by the things that once haunted Lee McQueen. ‘‘I don’t have that darkness,’’ she said to me one morning as buses roared past her office on Clerkenwell Road. ‘‘I’m not haunted or sad. I don’t have that story in my youth.’’ ‘‘But some artists are lured towards their opposite,’’ I said. ‘‘That’s right. Some people think the pre-Raphaelites show a rather insipid way of representing beauty. But the painting of Ophelia [by John Everett Millais] is dark and beautiful at the same time.’’ ‘‘She’s being pulled under by what Shakespeare called ‘her weedy trophies,’ ’’ I said. ‘‘Literally, being sunk and drowned by her dress. That’s not going to happen to you, is it?’’ ‘‘No, it’s not,’’ she said. ‘‘Though I couldn’t always swear to it.’’ ‘‘Who is your hero?’’ I asked. ‘‘I think my dad is my hero,’’ she said. ‘‘He works so hard, and he never lies. He believes in family. He’s always been totally fair. And he treats everybody in the family equally.’’ I looked for the sources of Burton’s memories of childhood, and the pictures she looked at in Manchester offer a host of beautiful, melancholy signals in abundant, colorful cloth: in ‘‘La Mort d’Arthur’’ by James Archer, a woman and a ghost grieve at the feet of the magical king. ‘‘The Lady of Shalott’’ by William Holman Hunt is drawn from Tennyson’s poem about a woman devoted to her loom and her weave who makes a fateful journey to the outside world. Yet Burton says she had a wonderfully happy childhood. The darkness was stored, and she grew up among the flora and fauna of the North — the windswept moors, the Pennine hills, the long green valleys they call the dales — which finds its way relentlessly into the best of her designs. ‘‘I’ve always loved nature,’’ she says. ‘‘I grew up in the countryside, and when I was a child I loved to paint and draw — that was my first love, actually. Eventually I was drawing clothes, but at first it was flowers and vegetables. So often we were outside, playing.’’ ‘‘What was play for you?’’ I asked. ‘‘A lot of dressing up.’’ ‘‘Were you the boss?’’ ‘‘Yes, always,’’ Burton said, laughing. ‘‘My poor younger sister, she’d get the not-so-good outfits. Fashion wasn’t something in the psyche. I learned very early on you had to go with your heart and it doesn’t matter what people say. My job is quite fearful — I don’t shout the loudest, and I’m quite shy, which was why I was reluctant to throw myself into the public eye. I love beauty, craftsmanship, storytelling and romance, and I probably don’t have the armor to survive the relentless competition that exists in this particular world. But I have my own toughness.’’ You see it in her collections. There is nothing fey about them, and her bold, searching intelligence is everywhere. What she makes are couture works of art, full of a wonderful dreamlike phantasmagoria. As if the material, the organza, the silk and the leather, was alive not only to history itself but to her own personal history, the dark and the light. Sometimes her stylistic similarities to McQueen have been levied as a criticism against Burton. ‘‘What do people think I was for all those years, the cleaner?’’ She helped him draw out the savage brilliance that first made the house famous. For such a retiring person, Burton had no problem journeying with him into the madness of the macabre, the rigid body-contoured corsets, the goldpainted fox-skeleton wrap, the bondage pieces, the kimono-style parachute, the antlered bridal gowns. She helped give birth to these designs and is said to have kept the show on the road through many difficult episodes. But she’s ultimately a different kind of artist. It’s hard to see her sharing the dark roots of McQueen’s fetishistic damage obsession. (His famous ‘‘Highland Rape’’ show, which McQueen said was about the rape of Scotland by England, took place before she joined the company.) Burton’s darkness is more masked, almost more surprising. It comes unbidden from a place of relative personal optimism and sunniness. Her hauntings are more romantic, and the materials she
uses are increasingly different, more celebratory of enduring life and returning nature, despite the brutality at nature’s core. I’d also argue that a larger sense of wearability, and of lightness, of small detail and cool craftsmanship, has matched the house to a new and bigger audience. She is fiercely loyal to Lee McQueen, a fact which brought her, several times during our interviews, past the brink of tears. She loves who he was and wants the company he founded to continually honor his memory, but she has to move on. The work already has moved on, and she knows that is what McQueen himself would have demanded. There is now a feeling, I detect, that she is ready to let him rest, no matter how hard that is. All the great houses had to move beyond their founding geniuses: Coco Chanel died, one must remember, and so did Cristobal Balenciaga and Yves Saint Laurent. Burton took over under traumatic circumstances, and it has taken her this long to be able to truly speak. It took a little work but eventually she opened up about some of the difficulties she’d had. We sat at a large table in her workshop with dresses hanging on every side, organza puffballs, feathered slips. She spoke with love but also with an essential determination. ‘‘He would sit here and I would sit there,’’ she said, pointing to two chairs. ‘‘Sometimes he’d call me at 3 o’clock in the morning just to talk, and we had this relationship where . . . I would do anything for him. And then when he died I didn’t want the job, but then everybody was going to leave and I thought, ‘Well, what else are you going to do?’ ’’ When somebody with that size of talent dies you’re blessed with this legacy, and the legacy gets more and more. ‘‘Lee is Marilyn Monroe. He’s James Dean. And to be honest, it’s taken me a while to stop being afraid and see that the company needs me to be at my best.’’ ‘‘Did you feel angry at him?’’ ‘‘Why?’’ ‘‘Because he left you. Because he destroyed himself. Because you had to finish the collection. Because you had to take over. And maybe nobody gave you permission to be angry?’’ ‘‘I’m not sure,’’ she said. ‘‘But the hardest thing is that I never really understood the pressure he was under. He could deal with all the difficult characters just by telling them to shut up. But I’m not like that. Only now am I beginning to accept the differences between us, and it’s fine. He was a painter who worked in massive brush strokes and I’m a person with tiny brush strokes.’’ The media has been on her case since that sad day in 2010. Many designers with less talent would have crumbled under the pressure, but Burton, despite all the fear and all the doubt and all the grief, has established her aesthetic. She speaks a lot off the record and doesn’t want to raise her voice, but eventually she does. ‘‘Lee and I weren’t cut from the same cloth, but we often cut into the same cloth, so it shouldn’t surprise people, after all these years, that we shared some basic creative instincts. I think I’ve probably spent too much time expressing an anxiety about Lee’s influence, but that’s coming to an end now and a new period is beginning. I loved Lee, but he is gone. And the decisions I will make for this company have already been bold, I hope, and strong, and driven by a creative integrity that is finding its feet in new ways every day. Every great design house knows that legacy cannot be allowed to be a curse and must be a wonderful opportunity for invention. That’s where I am. That’s who we are.’’ It’s worth remembering the motto at Withington Girls’ School, where Burton was a happy pupil in the 1980s: ‘‘ad lucem’’ — toward the light. That is the general direction of her life and her talent. Her husband, David Burton, is also her best friend, and they have twin
‘My job is quite fearful. I don’t shout the loudest, and I’m quite shy, which is why I was reluctant to throw myself in the public eye. I love beauty, craftsmanship, storytelling and romance.’
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‘Every great house knows that legacy cannot be allowed to be a curse and must be a wonderful opportunity for invention. That’s where I am.’
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‘‘What have clothes to do with emotion?’’ I asked. ‘‘Oh, everything,’’ she said. ‘‘They can describe a moment in your life or a feeling that is completely instilled in you. Feeling the texture of the material and seeing how it moves on the body, well, that is emotion — it’s emotion-in-motion. It might interest you to know that the clothes that sell best in our shops is the most extreme stuff — people want to express something about themselves and they find an enabler in us, and that’s emotional.’’ One of the reasons Burton has shied away from the media is because certain quarters of it have pursued her. Her biggest project to date, making the royal wedding dress in 2011, meant the press stalked her for months, and the stress of trying to keep the secret and trying to deal with bogus stories came fast on the heels of Lee’s death. The dress was universally admired and it made Alexander McQueen a household name, but there are critics who say she has been too silent. ‘‘I had no idea it would be as big as it was. Only the night before, seeing all the photographers outside the abbey, did I think, ‘Oh, my God. This is massive.’ ’’ When I first brought the dress up with Burton, she wanted to wave the subject away. But during our second meeting, she appeared resolved to put the matter to rest. ‘‘I know we live in a culture obsessed with fame,’’ she said, ‘‘but I happen to believe privacy is a virtue, and the relationship I have with my clients is private. Some people like to think I’ve been too shy or that I’m afraid to speak up about the happy experience I had creating the Duchess of Cambridge’s wedding dress, but I can tell you that is nonsense. I have never been a shrinking violet or a person who is ruled by fear. I loved making the dress, I loved adapting my ideas to suit the person and the occasion, and we put our hearts into it. I respect the intimate nature of that lovely project and I respect the friendships that were forged during it. This is the era of blab, but we’re strong-minded here at McQueen, we always have been, and we’re proud of what we do. There are people in the media who will always want to invent sinister reasons for people’s discretion, but an instinctive, intelligent, imaginative young woman’s wish for a beautiful wedding dress — or any kind of dress — is the most natural thing in the world. And I was honored to pick up the challenge and always will be.’’ So there you have it. Does that sound like a frightened artist to you? Like someone playing second fiddle to anyone? She made the most famous dress in the world and survived to tell us that the tale is hers. It provides a perfect antidote to the prurience of our times and shows Burton to be willing not only to take her values into her workplace, into her home life, but now, after a season of rain, into the sunny uplands of her public image. When I popped backstage to see her after her recent men’s wear show in London, there was a queue of international glamour types lining up to praise what she’d done. It was quite a show — long, lean coats with flashes of red lining, made in Prince of Wales check or houndstooth, with abstract Kabuki patterns lifting them out of England — but she waved off the praise, then smiled broadly when the elderly mother of the show’s hairstylist came up. ‘‘Oh, you’re the belle of the ball, so I won’t keep you,’’ the lady said. ‘‘But how’s the kids? Great. Well, let’s be seeing you before long, darling — you’re looking lovely.’’ ‘‘Would you sooner come back as a butterfly or a bee?’’ I asked her. ‘‘Oh, a bee,’’ she said, her Northern accent suddenly obvious. ‘‘I think I’m more of a worker than I am a painted lady.’’ Everybody who knows Burton admires her, and many of them have waited patiently for her to speak out without being hesitant, to embrace the success she’s having, and to let the light of Alexander McQueen shine equally on the past and the present. She now has her own legacy to think about. ‘‘We’re in the enchantment business,’’ she said. ‘‘Fashion will never stagnate so long as there are teams of people willing to tackle the soul of the culture. That’s what we do here at McQueen, that’s what we’ve always done.’’
PRODUCTION BY GAINSBURY & WHITING. MANICURE BY TRISH LOMAX FOR JED ROOT. TAILOR: CAROLINE THORPE. PHOTO ASSISTANTS: ANTONI CIUFO, LAURENT CHOUARD, SIMON MCGUIGAN. DIGITAL TECH: EDOUARD MALFETTE. STYLIST’S ASSISTANTS: CARLOS NAZARIO, JOHN PASHALIDIS. HAIR ASSISTANT: REBEKAH CALO
girls. If you’re available for optimism, as she is, then the movement toward the light will come naturally, with all the opposing shadows existing like ghosts on a glass negative. In her fall show for Alexander McQueen, Burton set all this to life, like a magician of selfhood. A strange, misty moorland — not unconnected to the landscape of her childhood — was the setting for the combination of beautiful tailoring and wild imaginings that characterize the house. There was a sense of romanticism-in-crisis, of the Bronte sisters, of Heathcliff haunted by the cold hand of death scratching at his window, of owls, dreams and the poems of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, whom Burton cites. The dresses came with capes, fur hoods, bell sleeves and delicate, small embroidery, frilled and frayed hemlines. Clothes like these don’t make themselves, and legacy doesn’t make them either. Some designers are driven not by what is flamboyant in them but by what is recessive. Burton brings to the McQueen brand an English tendency toward dark pleasure as opposed to dark pain. She is a prettier designer than many, but always alert to the mysteriously perverse. Not everyone has obvious demons. With Lee it was skulls, shipwrecks, hospital inmates and birds of prey. But Burton’s instinct might be more subtle. Her instinct might be to see the fly in the ointment, the crack in the teacup, the little details that make the ordinary strange. ‘‘When I went to Saint Martins’’ — the art school she attended — ‘‘a lot of the people there were these flamboyant characters. I thought, ‘God, I’m not like them.’ I thought, ‘What’s going on? I’m really normal.’ But my own demon is the fear of failure. My obsessional addiction is work and there’s a possible twistedness in always putting myself last, you know?’’ ‘‘Were you never really interested in being a star designer?’’ ‘‘Honestly, no. There have been times when, if I could have disappeared from this industry I would have. I had to battle with it. I don’t look like a fashion person, I’m not cool, and I always just loved people who are good at what they do. I’m not interested in going to parties. I hate having my picture taken. When the Met Ball is happening I want to go through the back door. When the giant McQueen show was on there’’ — which became the biggest draw in the history of the museum — ‘‘I didn’t want to go up the red carpet because . . . it’s embarrassing. I’m shy. When celebrities tap me on the shoulder I think they’re asking me to move out of the way. And you know: It doesn’t bother me. I smile about it with my husband, we’re secure. And to me the only story that is worth telling is the story of the work.’’ Someone who works with Burton told me about the pressure she came under to accept the job at McQueen. She was approached for the creative directorship of another major fashion house at the same time and this person told her she’d regret not accepting the offer. ‘‘You’ll always be haunted at McQueen,’’ she said. After Lee’s suicide, the co-worker remembers Burton burning a candle in Lee’s room and leaving off the lights: ‘‘There was just this candle. Sarah had this giant decision to make. And we were all relieved when she took the job. We always knew she had a whole vision of her own that helped Lee’s vision but was peculiar to her.’’ Burton told me she was relieved to be able to talk again about the basics of design and inspiration. She felt she’d been tossed around in a sea of media obsessions — the hunger for news about her relationship with the royals still persists, and a few days before we first met, the media camped on her doorstep again, convinced she had designed Kim Kardashian’s wedding dress, which she hadn’t. With me she became more relaxed, saying it was nice to be back on dry land, talking about ideas, trying to define her way of doing things in a job she loves.
ANIMAL INSTINCT Tennant wears a fur and feather coat with a hammeredmetal bow belt, leather gloves and Mongolian fur-trim boots. Models: Edie Campbell and Stella Tennant/DNA Model Management. Hair by Malcolm Edwards at Art Partner. Makeup by Christelle Cocquet at Calliste.
Sometimes her stylistic similarities to McQueen have been levied as a criticism against Burton. ‘What do people think I was for all those years, the cleaner?’
GREAT TASTE Yves Saint Laurent and Loulou de la Falaise dining out with the model Betty Catroux and her husband, the interior designer Franรงois Catroux in 1970.
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Loulou de la Falaise was a French icon and an enduring muse to Yves Saint Laurent. With her unstudied style and indefatigable spirit, she also represented everything that is brilliant about fashion. BY MARIAN M C EVOY
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UCH HAS BEEN written about
the heady, hedonistic Paris fashion scene of the 1970s and ’80s, and much of it is true. But of all the characters who animated those nonconformist, wildly indulgent, hyperinventive years, Loulou de la Falaise, who died in 2011 at the age of 64, was the star. Celebrated for inspiring and accessorizing Yves Saint Laurent’s couture and ready-to-wear collections for almost three decades, she is the subject of ‘‘Loulou de la Falaise,’’ a new book by Ariel de Ravenel and Natasha Fraser-Cavassoni. From 1975 to 1990, I lived and worked in Paris as a reporter for Women’s Wear Daily, where I had a ringside seat to Loulou’s transformation from the haute-bohemian daughter of a French marquis and the eccentric British model Maxime de la Falaise into Saint Laurent’s trusted muse and a designer in her own right. For those of us who watched her at work and play, she was not simply Yves’s most colorful collaborator, but one of the most vivid female fashion personalities since Coco Chanel. Upbeat, savvy, beautiful and boyishly slim, she looked like a Saint Laurent fashion sketch. How she put herself together was even more remarkable: When she arrived at about 9 a.m. every day to the YSL couture studios on Paris’s Right Bank, it was an event. The pants, jackets, skirts, blouses, dresses, stockings, shoes, shawls, bags and jewelry that she assembled and donned each morning in her 14th September-October 2014
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Arrondissement apartment were unlike anything anyone else in Paris wore, or had ever seen. Heiresses, countesses, models, movie stars and scores of fashion editors wanted to look like Loulou. Whether she was channeling an 18thcentury Indian princess, a pre-Soviet Russian peasant or a 20th-century East Village flower child, her getups went beyond costume. They looked fresh, contemporary. She didn’t dress up to wow the paparazzi (although she was photographed countless times), but rather to delight herself, surprise her friends and, most crucially, impress Yves. Loulou, Yves and my editor at WWD, John Fairchild, were great buddies. A mutual admiration society of three fashion titans, they also challenged and teased each other mercilessly. I can’t remember a single season over two decades that John and I didn’t meet at the YSL headquarters to take photos of a new ready-to-wear collection in progress, inspect a sketch of a couture gown or watch a model being fitted for a tuxedo jacket and pants. At work, Loulou and Yves weren’t very chatty; they communicated in a sort of code. The way she flicked her hair back, extinguished a Camel or uncrossed her colt-like legs sent a signal to Yves, who watched her constantly. He would then pick up a pencil, pause, adjust his glasses, and Loulou would get whatever message he was sending back to her. When she laughed — heartily and from the throat — everyone in the room cracked up too. It was hard not to want to do what Loulou did. At times, the normally selfpossessed, sometimes imperious John was so smitten that he couldn’t speak. I wonder if Loulou’s charm was rooted in her odd sense of self. At once disciplined, rambunctious, confident and vulnerable, I suspect that she wasn’t totally convinced of her power or beauty. She was impish and fun, never condescending or snappy. She looked artistic, and sounded worldly and intelligent in either English or French. She loved all-night parties, 94
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THE BOLD AND THE BEAUTIFUL Clockwise from left: working the camera for Elle magazine in a knit dress from the Yves Saint Laurent Rive Gauche fall 1969 collection; with Saint Laurent and Catroux in 1978; Thadée Klossowski de Rola and de la Falaise on their wedding day in Paris, June 1977; her colorful sketches for more recent design projects at Oscar de la Renta, HSN and Asiatides.
PREVIOUS SPREAD: JACK NISBERG/ROGER-VIOLLET/THE IMAGE WORKS. LEFT PAGE, CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: PIERRE BERGÉ; LYNN KARLIN/FAIRCHILD PHOTO SERVICE; HANS NAMUTH; COURTSEY DE LA FALAISE FAMILY; GUY MARINEAU; PETER KNAPP; GUY MARINEAU; GWENDOLINE BEMBERG. RIGHT PAGE, CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: COURTESY FONDATION PIERRE BERGÉ-YVES SAINT LAURENT; COURTESY DE LA FALAISE FAMILY; COURTESY DE LA FALAISE FAMILY; GUY MARINEAU; PASCAL CHEVALIER; ALEXANDRE BAILHACHE; PETER LINDBERGH; GWENDOLINE BEMBERG; MAURICE HOGENBOOM/VOGUE/CONDÉ NAST; JEAN-LUCE HURÉ
POWER MOVES Clockwise from far left: de la Falaise, her natural beauty captured by Pierre Bergé in Marrakesh, 1969; sporting an androgynous look with friends in the 1960s; at age 16 in one of her first modeling shots, photographed by Hans Namuth in Long Island, 1963; a romantic moment in Italy, 1980.
CHARMED LIFE Clockwise from above: Klossowski and de la Falaise in the courtyard of Palazzo Farnese in Caprarola, Italy, 1977; with her daughter, Anna; an ode to de la Falaise written by Saint Laurent; a young de la Falaise on holiday at sea.
didn’t exercise and smoked like a San Bernardino wildfire, but then so did everyone else in Paris those days. Ditto for the drinks and drugs, which were also pretty ubiquitous in those stylish Parisian circles. And although she excelled at socializing with Rothschilds and the Rolling Stones, she seemed happier when she was with Yves, her reserved husband Thadée Klossowski de Rola — a writer and son of the painter Balthus — and their daughter, Anna. Their wedding party, in June of 1977, was staged on an island in the Bois de Boulogne in Paris. Several hundred guests arrived in a fleet of flower-garlanded boats. Loulou wore a deep delphinium blue outfit with a headdress sprouting stars and a crescent moon. As Loulou and Thadée got older, they spent more and more time in Italy at his family’s sparsely furnished castle. Toward the end of her life, she became an avid gardener, tending the property at their French country house in Boury-en-Vexin. During her last few years, she designed a collection of jewelry for Oscar de la Renta and a line of clothing and accessories for HSN. Thadée stayed home and wrote — he was always the grounded one, Loulou the live wire. Even though she’s gone, she’s as electrifying now as ever.
FOREVER YOUNG Clockwise from above: with her mother, Maxime, and brother, Alexis, in 1968; a portrait by Jean-Luce Huré; wearing a necklace given to her by Saint Laurent and Bergé; at home in Paris, 2004; the wild garden she tended at her country house in Boury-en-Vexin; shot in a subway station by Peter Lindbergh.
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A romantic inclination
TOWARD CLASSICAL portrait necklines and cinched waists is giving
tailoring a more feminine spirit.
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STYLED BY JONATHAN KAYE
Giorgio Armani jacket, QR8,284. Opposite: Michael Kors coat, QR14,547, michaelkors. com. CÊline pants, QR4,551, saksfifthavenue.com. Hermès shoes (worn throughout), QR3,386.
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CĂŠline top, QR9,467, and pants, QR4,551. Opposite: Ralph Lauren Collection jumpsuit, QR11,998.
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Louis Vuitton coat, about QR18,826, top, QR2,986, belt, QR2,621, and earring, price on request. Opposite: Chanel coat, QR28,403. Balenciaga pants, QR3,623, nordstrom.com.
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Burberry Prorsum coat, QR10,177. Balenciaga pants, QR3,623. Opposite: Salvatore Ferragamo coat, QR16,386,. Balenciaga pants, QR3,623. Model: Imaan Hammam at DNA Model Management. Hair by Yannick d’Is at Management + Artists. Makeup by Maki Ryoke using Diorskin at Tim Howard Management.
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PHOTO ASSISTANTS: BIBI CORNEJO BORTHWICK, VICTOR ESTHER. STYLIST’S ASSISTANT: MAX ORTEGA. MAKEUP ASSISTANT: SETSUKO. HAIR ASSISTANT: JERROD ROBERTS. TAILOR: ANNA OUKOLOVA. ON-SET PRODUCTION: SRENICA MUNTHREE PRODUCTIONS
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Document
Cindy Sherman’s 29 Blond Wigs From a collection of 158 wigs shot in the artist’s New York City studio.
PHOTOGRAPHS BY LEANNE SHAPTON AND JASON FULFORD
BY LEANNE SHAPTON
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