T Qatar Issue 6 : 2011 by Oryx Group of Magazines

contents Design & Style 2011

T 4 CONTRIBUTORS 7 REMIX

It’s all about... going big, sleep spas, plug my ride, Jason Wu’s Taipei, caffe society, moody Milan, The Pearl shopping, Ermenegildo Zegna’s 100 years of style, Lanvin’s luxury line, when it's cool in Doha.

25 GET

The must-haves: a blazer of note, a red-hot dress, a chair of authority.

29 TALK

On the Indonesian island of Sumba, the surfing is legendary – and the culture even more so. By Adam Fisher. 34 Courchevel, France, is a

playground for the rich and fabulous. By Michael Paterniti. 38 Walter Albini is the genius who invented Italian ready-to-wear. By Christopher Petkanas. 40 Yearning for iceberg lettuce from the local A&P? you might suffer from foodie fatigue. By Alexandra Jacobs. 42 Meet Federico Marchetti, the man who puts fashion on the Net. By Horacio Silva.

44 SEEN QATAR

Architect Jean Francois Bodin reconstructs an ‘anti-iconic’ museum space into a home for the geniuses of modern Arab artists. By Sindhu Nair. 50 A fairytale life. Sophia Loren proves that when women want something, they get it. By Vani Saraswathi

contents

55 AGENDA

Tough times don’t seem to have stopped the hotel rush. New properties, along with smartened-up amenities and pioneering designs, keep popping up from Buenos Aires to Bangkok. T surveys the next hotel hot spots.

61 MOLTO MILANO

Artwork by Mario Godlewski

62 BOLDFACE MILAN

Meet the stars who set the agenda. Text by J.J. Martin. Photographs by Paolo Pellegrin.

70 ROCK STAR

On an island in the Pacific Northwest, a house that is as rugged as its setting - but comfortable, too. By Pilar Viladas. Photographs by Dwight Eschliman.

84 TIMELESS

Massimo Vignelli’s calender is still up to date.

On the cover • Photograph by Bosco Menezes, at Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art. 'The guardian of the fertile crescent' by Ismail Fattah executed by Ali Nouri.

CONTRIBUTORS MICHAEL PATERNITI For ‘’The Money Trail’’ (Page 34), Michael Paterniti sidled up to Russian billionaires in the French Alps to see how the other .001 percent skis. Life took some getting used to after he returned to his home in Maine: there were no waiters in lederhosen refilling his Champagne flute, and he had to drive himself to work ‘’in a Honda, as opposed to the driver taking me in the Escalade.’’ Paterniti is the author of ‘’Driving Mr. Albert,’’ and his next book is ‘’The Telling Room,’’ a nonfiction tale of cheese and revenge.

managing editor Vani Saraswathi deputy editor Sindhu Nair assistant editors Ahmed Lotfy Ali John Hunt fashion & lifestyle correspondent Orna Ballout editorial coordinator Cassey Oliveira contributor Shalinee Bharadwaj

PAOLO PELLEGRIN Paolo Pellegrin is one of the pre-eminent photojournalists covering global conflicts, often mentioned in the same breath as war-zone daredevils like James Nachtwey or Ron Haviv. He has won eight World Press Photo awards and in 2007 was awarded the Robert Capa Gold Medal Award - the closest thing photojournalists have to a Nobel Prize - for his coverage of the war between Israel and Lebanon. (An example of his work is at far right.) Stories like ‘’Boldface Milan’’ (Page 62) replenish Pellegrin’s spirits so that he can plunge yet again into a place like the Gaza Strip. (‘’It’s just one of those open wounds,’’ he says of the smoldering Palestinian-Israeli conflict.) A Roman by birth - ‘’We think of Milan as the enemy,’’ he jokes - Pellegrin splits his time between the Eternal City and New York.

J.J. MARTIN Much like Tilda Swinton’s character in the white-hot melodrama ‘’I Am Love,’’ J.J. Martin fell for an Italian and followed him back to Milan. Only after nine years there has she learned the ropes. ‘’Milan is counterintuitive,’’ she says. ‘’Things that would take a year to figure out somewhere else - where to find the best supermarket, who to call when your apartment floods - take five years here.’’ Martin, a Los Angeles native, chalks up recent reports of cultural lethargy in Italy not to a lack of talent but to a failure in marketing. ‘’Italy, and Milan in particular, are hopping with intriguing people,’’ says Martin, the Italian editor-at-large of Wallpaper and the author of many stories in this issue, including ‘’Boldface Milan’’ (Page 62). ‘’But they don’t know how to promote themselves.’’ The designer Enzo Mari, one of Martin’s subjects, is a perfect example: ‘’The guy doesn’t even have a Web site.’’ Martin’s apartment in central Milan is filled with vintage furniture, like these Osvaldo Borsani chairs (far left), which she covered in Costume National fabric.

chief executive officer

art director Venkat Reddy – production Sujith Heenatigala assistant art director Hanan Abu Saiam senior graphic designers Ayush Indrajith Sampath Gunathilaka M D

asst director

managers – marketing Mohammed Sami Zulfikar Jiffry senior media consultant Chaturka Karandana media consultant Victoria Ferraris Hassan Rekkab

marketing research

& support

executive

accountant

Amjeth Ali Pratap Chandran

sr. distribution executive Bikram Shrestha distribution support Arjun Timilsina Bhimal Rai

Qatar

published by

Oryx Advertising Co WLL P.O. Box 3272; Doha-Qatar Tel: (+974) 44672139, 44550983, 44671173, 44667584 Fax: (+974) 44550982 Email: tqatar@omsqatar.com website: www.omsqatar.com

From Top, from left: Robert Maxwell; from greg lynn form; From Jason Schmidt (2); Robert Fleischauer; AFP.

ADAM FISHER Adam Fisher, a former editor at Wired, traveled to remotest Indonesia for ‘’Water World’’ (Page 29). His home break is Pedro Point, outside San Francisco, where the waves are smaller and there are fewer headhunters. At the eco-resort Nihiwatu, Fisher routinely saw people ‘’getting shacked’’ (surfing patois for ‘’getting tubed’’ - surfing patois for success). ‘’That’s the holy grail,’’ he says. ‘’Getting to that is like performing at Carnegie Hall.’’

& editor- in- chief Yousuf Jassem Al Darwish Sandeep Sehgal executive vice president Alpana Roy vice president Ravi Raman

publisher

It s All About . . .

Going Big . . . Plug my ride . . . Jason Wu’s Taipei . . . When it's cool in Doha. CityCenter Las Vegas, a hotel and entertainment mega-complex that opened last year.

Large and in Charge North America The starchitect-heavy CityCenter (citycenter.com) opened last December on the Las Vegas Strip with 5,900 hotel rooms. LA Live (lalive.com) created a whole new neighborhood in downtown Los Angeles. Setting sail next month, Royal Caribbean’s Allure of the Seas (allureoftheseas.com) joins Oasis of the Seas (left) as the world’s biggest cruise ships. To come in the Bahamas: Baha Mar (bahamar.com), with six hotels and the Caribbean’s largest casino.

They Must Be Giants For today’s travelers, big is the new buzzword.

f you think big,’’ says the tag line for the 1,000-acre Baha Mar resort about to break ground in the Bahamas, ‘‘think bigger.’’ Sound ridiculous in a recession? It’s more of a harbinger than you’d imagine, at least in the travel world: led by Las Vegas’s CityCenter and the Marina Bay Sands Singapore, a new wave of mega-scale complexes that were conceived during the boom have recently opened their doors, with several more in development, from the Alps to Abu Dhabi. ‘‘I think it’s the future,’’ says Andy Cohen, executive director of the architecture firm Gensler, which worked on CityCenter and has a similar mixeduse project brewing in Shanghai. ‘‘Whether it’s sports, entertainment or retail, the ability to have all that variety in one place is key. People want choice.’’ In flush times, developers with access to cheap capital realized the power of the grand gesture to lure travelers, even to remote areas. They could create entire destinations from scratch, usually with the support of local governments, then profit from the outsize buzz. ‘‘It’s a model that started 15 years ago in Vegas and Macao,’’ says David Scowsill, president of the World Travel and Tourism Council, ‘‘and since then it’s just spread.’’ The principle has worked equally well for the world’s two largest cruise ships, both Royal Caribbean’s, which use the spectacle of sheer magnitude to dispel the notion that there’s nothing to do at sea. Despite the current appetite for ‘‘boutique’’ experiences, travelers may discover that more is more after all. Beyond offering almost limitless choices, these massive playgrounds are often startlingly innovative. ‘‘We can create major amenities, like sky parks, that are only economically feasible in these circumstances,’’ says the Marina Bay Sands architect Moshe Safdie, referring to the project’s 133,000-square-foot aerial garden. Experienced globe-trotters interpret this as better value, while inexperienced tourists — who Scowsill says make up a substantial portion of mega-resorts’ clientele, especially in the East — like feeling insulated from the outside world, with everything they could possibly need at arm’s reach. ‘‘With these big properties, there’s a settling feeling,’’ Cohen says. ‘‘You understand it, it’s exciting, it’s a known entity.’’ And if nothing else, the new giants have the lure of escapism on their side. Right now, too much may be the only thing that seems like enough. MONICA KHEMSUROV

Europe The golf and spa resort Costa Navarino (costanavarino.com) opened in Greece this summer with two Starwood hotels. And that was Phase 1. Elsewhere on the Continent, Andermatt (above; andermatt-swissalps.ch) in the Swiss Alps and Budapest’s Dream Island (dreamisland.hu), pegged by some as the Vegas of Hungary, are in development.

Middle East A 317-acre golf course is, for now, the main attraction on Abu Dhabi’s Saadiyat Island (above; saadiyat.ae), but by 2020 it will be joined by nine five-star hotels and four museums, including a branch of the Louvre. On the beach of Oman, the Salam Yiti (omran.om/yiti.htm) trio of luxury hotels and residences is scheduled to be up and running by 2013.

Marina Bay Sands: Pablo Sanchez/Reuters/Corbis

‘I

Asia The Marina Bay Sands complex (above; marinabaysands.com) in downtown Singapore has attracted international attention with its triple towers, massive sky park and more than 2,500 hotel rooms. The Shanghai Tower, set to open in 2014, will be the tallest tower in the Far East, with hotels stacked on top of cultural sites.

Slumber Spas

MUST-HAVEs • rad pads

iPad cases, from top: Hermès, QR2802 ($770). Go to hermes.com. Hermès store is at The Pearl-Qatar. Valextra, QR2,695 ($740). Go to barneys.com. Want Les Essentiels de la Vie, QR1074 ($295). Go to lagarconne.com.

There’s no rest for the weary these days, at least if the number of spas offering ‘‘guided sleep’’ treatments is any indication. Yelo Spa (above; yelonyc.com) in New York City is adding targeted power naps to its menu for ailments like jet lag, stress and hangovers. The Desert Dreams Massage at Red Mountain Resort & Spa (redmountainspa.com) in Utah and the Dreamweaver Massage at the Hard Rock Hotel’s Rock Spa (hardrockhotelsd.com) in San Diego both promise to bring you to a trancelike state. And for a holistic approach, the Lodge at Woodloch (thelodgeatwoodloch .com) in the Poconos will hold the Dreams as Oracle seminar from Jan. 28 to 30, in which participants are put through a regimen of sleep-inducing spa treatments, sessions with a dream coach, hydro-massage waterfalls and drumming. But then, if you’re so sleep-deprived that ‘‘you go spend QR546 ($150) on a massage, you’re pretty far along,’’ says Dr. Bradly Jacobs, a director of the wellness program at the Cavallo Point Lodge spa (cavallopoint. com) outside San Francisco, which treats sleep problems with hypnotherapy and acupuncture. ‘‘Go ahead and see a doctor anyway.’’ HOLLY SIEGEL

It used to be much simpler to earn your environmental stripes, but these days anything short of brewing your own biodiesel gets you dirty looks in yoga class. At least Hertz is making things a little easier. Beginning in late December, customers in New York, Washington, D.C., and San Francisco, and on select college campuses, will be able to rent a Nissan Leaf, the first mass-market, zero-emissions electric car. The Leaf can go about 100 miles on a full charge, so if you’re planning on roving into the wilderness of no charging stations (Hertz is working on building an infrastructure of stations nationwide), you’re better off with the slightly less saintly hybrids, like Priuses and Volts, also available. Rest assured, for those vacationing without a vegan or a sense of environmental outrage, there is still fun to be had: Mustangs, Sebrings and Caddies galore. Go to hertz.com. ETHAN HAUSER

still life by ilan ru bin

* All prices indicative

bottom: from nissan

plug my ride

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Native Son

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On his first visit home to Taiwan since Michelle Obama catapulted his name into the fashion stratosphere, the designerJason Wu was greeted by paparazzi, velvet ropes and tons of fans. Here, ‘‘the glory of Taiwan,’’ as Wu is now known in his birthplace, talks about his return to Taipei, where change is in the air but the old ways aren’t forgotten. chelsea zalopany

Traveling to Taiwan soon after showing his latest collection at New York Fashion Week was all about decompressing for Wu. One of his favorite chill-out 2 (villa32.com), a hot-springs spa. spots is Villa 32 ● ‘‘The Taiwanese are big on tea,’’ Wu says. Just don’t expect a to-go cup in the city. (But you can pick up packets of oolong, Wu’s favorite, to bring home). Having a cup at Tea House (30 TongHua Street) can take up to an hour: ‘‘I think it’s nice to slow down a bit. It’s very much a custom.’’

For Wu, the trip was complete when his brother 3 from the gave him this handmade glass cat ● specialty store Liuligongfang (liuli.com). ‘‘My Chinese zodiac is a dog,‘‘ Wu explains. ‘‘But I’m an exception because of how much I love cats.’’ Speaking Mandarin came in handy for Wu at the 4. traditional Taiwanese restaurant Si Zhi Tang ● ‘‘My favorite thing about Taiwan is the food,’’ he says. A three-hour family-style dinner involves small plates — ‘‘little Chinese tapas.’’ He loves the lemongrass jelly and sesame and cucumber noodles. In the heart of the city stands Taipei 101 (www.taipei-101.com.tw), the second tallest building in the world, with the fastest elevators. ‘‘You don’t even have time to feel your ears pop,’’ Wu says of the 37-second ride to the 89th-floor glass

shelf life • on the case

It feels a little sacrilegious to call anything stamped Louis Vuitton a doorstop, but ‘‘Louis Vuitton: 100 Legendary Trunks’’ (Abrams; QR619 ($170) for the deluxe edition, right) qualifies by heft alone — it’s nearly 500 pages and weighs about 10 pounds. The exhaustive, lushly illustrated book traces the history of Vuitton luggage; carry-ons these are not, either in spirit or in scale. There are engineering innovations (a bed that folds into a trunk, for the 19th-century explorer Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza), concept-only wonders (the ‘‘Jetsons’’-esque Mars Trunk, which opens to reveal a mini cocktail bar and CD and book storage) and trunks customized to hold the inspirations and playthings of writers and artists (books for Ernest Hemingway, surgical knives for Damien Hirst). An accompanying exhibit is on view at the Carnavelet Museum in Paris until Feb. 27, 2011. ETHAN HAUSER 12

* All prices indicative

observation deck. The designer sees skyscrapers going up left and right: ‘‘It’s all moving really quickly now. It seems there’s not a building less than 30 floors.’’ ‘‘My mom is a really good cook,’’ Wu says. ‘‘We used to make dumplings together.’’ Second to mom’s are the dumplings at Din Tai Fung (dintaifungusa.com). Hungry patrons are expected to use a clean spoon between every flavor (truffle being the big hit) and are even given an instruction manual. ‘‘There’s a line around the block every day of the year.’’ 5, a Wu is smitten with ‘‘Writing With Thread’’ ● book on traditional Asian textiles he stumbled upon at the Xue Xue Institute (www.xuexue.tw), an arts school where several local fashion designers have studios. Look for Asian motifs in his coming collections.

Portrait and locations by Justin Guariglia; Still Life IMages: Jens Mortensen.

The Museum of Contemporary Art Taipei (www.mocataipei.org.tw) is the center of the city’s budding art scene (with a great design shop, 1 .) Housed in a where Wu picked up this T-shirt ● refurbished historic building, the museum has locals happily looking ahead. ‘‘There are a lot of talented native artists now with their own space,’’ Wu says.

now showing • iron men 2

On an unassuming side street in Paolo Sarpi, Milan’s burgeoning Chinatown, Mirko Pancaldi (near right) and Davide Grosso are flying the flag for design’s future being in the past. Since 2001, the pair, who collaborate under the G | Lab name, have been drawing attention for their delicately ornate furniture and lighting fixtures made from discarded aged wood and laser-cut iron. ‘‘We are known for breathing new life into traditional materials and forms,’’ Pancaldi says in the G | Lab showroom, which occasionally doubles as a workshop for average Giovannis wanting to learn time-held wood-turning and ironwork techniques. ‘‘All of our designs refer back to 18th-century French and Italian furniture traditions, and to patterns and shapes found in nature.’’ And so a slab of industrial iron becomes a filigreed room divider that is as intricate as it is commanding, and a hunk of maple found in an abandoned sawmill has a second life as a Baroque cabinet. Is this work, which often has Oriental accents, a function of the showroom’s location or the result of travels to Asia? ‘‘I’ve never been to Asia,’’ enthuses the usually taciturn Pancaldi. ‘‘Only the Asia of my imagination.’’ HORACIO SILVA

caffè society

There’s more to Milan dining than Da Giacomo and Fioraio Bianchi Caffè. These local favorites will get you off the eaten path. MARCO VELARDI The repast: Dinner The place: Il Nodo, Via Pietro Calvi, 5;

011-39-02-738-4589; ristoranteilnodo.it. The scene: No-frills atmosphere and outstanding traditional Sardinian food draw pesce lovers. The order: Lorighittas con le triglie (pasta with goatfish); tagliata di ricciola con carciofi (amberjack with artichokes).

The repast: Aperitivo The place: Cucchi, Corso Genova, 1; 011-39-02-

8940-9793; pasticceriacucchi.it. The scene: Intellectual and fashionable types get a front-row view of the passing evening crowd. The order: The Cucchi house cocktail; infinite tiny savory pastries.

The repast: Breakfast The place: Marchesi, Via S. Maria alla

The repast: Cocktails The place: Nottingham Forest, Viale Piave, 1;

011-39-02-798-311; nottingham-forest.com. The scene: Cocktail-bar regulars mix with an

eclectic young crowd to sip Dario Comini’s molecular cocktails until the early hours. The order: Mondrian Martini; 20 variations on the mojito.

P hotographs by Danilo S carpati

Porta, 11/A; 011-39-02-876-730; pasticceriamarchesi.it. The scene: Elegant Milanese and Piazza Affari locals step back in time at one of the city’s most revered pasticcerias. The order: Breakfast standing at the bar; pralines; cakes; panettone for Christmas.

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The biggest surprise about Milan’s galleries is how few Italian artists show there. Scattered about town or gathered in a few clusters, they wield enough international clout to make up for the time it takes to travel between them. Most ambitious is the Naples-based Lia Rumma’s new temple to minimalist cool (1) at Via Stilicone, 19. One of the largest commercial galleries in Europe, it opened last May and has attracted a fashionable clientele. Its triple-height space, designed by CLS Architetti, easily accommodates anything the artists on its blue-chip roster (Marina Abramovic, Andreas Gursky, Anselm Kiefer, Ettore Spalleti, Vanessa Beecroft) can think up. Trust the Giò Marconi gallery (2), Via Alessandro Tadino, 15, for more cutting-edge excitement from artists like Nathalie Djurberg, Annette Kelm and Matthew Brannon, who get the run of two exhibition rooms and an underground lair. For a more historical view (for example, on Arte Povera artists), go upstairs to the Marconi Foundation, founded by the gallery patriarch Giorgio Marconi. At Via Borgonuovo, 3, is the Anglophile ProjectB, which features museum-worthy shows by such Brit Pop stars as Jake and Dinos Chapman, Keith Tyson and Marc Quinn. For something stubbornly conceptual, the Peep-Hole (Via Panfilo Castaldi, 33) is a nonprofit run by two independent curators who commission special projects by (you guessed it) artists from everywhere else, as well as emerging locals. Across town, an open storage area greets visitors entering the Massimo De Carlo gallery (3), an energetic shop in a former warehouse at Via Giovanni Ventura, 5, that is equal to any in New York’s Chelsea. Since 1987, De Carlo has introduced contemporary artists from abroad; last spring the New Yorker Josh Smith and the Angeleno Elad Lassry made their Italian debuts there. Currently, the two exhibition floors are hosting shows by Matthew Monahan and Roland Flexner, a star of the 2010 Whitney Biennial. Close by is the Federico Luger gallery (4), which opened at Via Ventura, 5, last April. Though Luger’s focus is mainly on European and Latin American artists, his lone American artist, Franklin Evans, has a show up through the end of November. For authentically Italian art, there’s always Leonardo’s ‘‘Last Supper,’’ at the Piazza Santa Maria delle Grazie (reservations required). LINDA YABLONSKY

SALONI Milano NYC

Milan’s annual design week, Salone Internazionale del Mobile, turns 50 next April. As part of the global run-up to the festivities, New York will host ‘‘I Saloni Milano in New York,’’ a six-week program starting Nov. 29 that will bring a taste of the design world’s reigning extravaganza to Manhattan. It’s a mini-Salone, in which 20 Italian furniture showrooms (including B&B Italia, Flos and Poltrona Frau) will host ‘‘Italian Christmas’’ exhibitions; the director Peter Greenaway’s Milan-centric video installation, ‘‘Leonardo’s Last Supper: A Vision’’ (right), which was seen at the Salone in 2008, will take over the Park Avenue Armory; and the theater visionary Robert Wilson will create video portraits of Roberto Bolle, who dances at La Scala, interacting with an assortment of iconic design objects (Nov. 30 through Dec. 18 at Center 548, by invitation only). Design has always been close to Wilson’s heart. ‘‘When I was 8 years old,’’ he says, ‘‘in the middle of the night I took all the plates and glasses out of the kitchen closet and put them back in the shelves in a designed order.’’ Perfetto. MARK ROZZO

from top: w. hannappel; from giò marconi gallery; alessandro zambianchi; from federico luger; Luciano Romano/change performing arts.

Where the real gallerinas go.

QATAR

Must stop shops at The Pearl By Orna Ballout

t's love at first sight with the consortium of coveted brands available in the luxurious surroundings of The Pearl Qatar. Here we present some must-visit stores under the Emporium belt. Oh, and did we mention there's a sale starting on Jan 27 for 21 days, credit cards at the ready... Love Moschino

Love Moschino boasts a perfect position overlooking the beautiful waters which glisten with fancy yachts at Qatar's most prestigious shopping destination, The Pearl. It's hard to miss the store with its eyecatching red heart shaped handles fitted on large glass doors, which surely entice eager fashionistas in for a peak. On entry, love is all around you, literally, as decorative quirky heart elements feature prominently throughout, from the silver hearts worked into the floor to the dazzling display on the ceiling and on the lush red couches and stools. This theme complements the heart logo renowned with the label, and can be found on key pieces of clothing too. The Italian brand, which has been in Doha since 2009, is popular with both young and older generations with its offerings of casual, chic and most importantly, affordable clothing. You'll find promising collections for men and women; the current theme is inspired by the 80s with a contemporary twist. A very appealing accessories range is on offer with a selection of funky bags, shoes, belts, necklaces, scarves and hats. Mesmerising Mulberry

It's like walking into accessories paradise when you enter the Mulberry store, and you'll probably burn a hole in your wallet as it's a task not to purchase the must-have totes, clutches, briefcases and wallets dazzling on display. Every discerning fashion lover's dream is to own something from the luxurious

leather offerings from the British brand with all the pieces exuding 'Le style Anglais'. All the furniture hails from the UK, and proudly shows off the successful range. A huge sparkling purple leopard catches the eye, as does the antique yellow sofas which command attention on the retro purple rug. Wooden display units shine in different locations, each with inviting key Mulberry highlights. With many different styles to choose from, an iconic bag, Alexa, inspired by British style icon Alexa Chung, proves to be a popular choice on Qatari shores, as it gives buyers instant access to Chung's shaggy, chic, and effortlessly cool style. Get ready for the arrival of the highly anticipated S/S 2011 collection hitting stores soon. The range is inspired by the children's fairytale novel, The Secret Garden, and is packed with promising pieces.

Spring Summer 2011 collection highlights: Edie

The Edie family, a collection of chic, cool bags inspired by 'Little Edie', the star of the Grey Gardens documentary, are painstakingly designed and predicted to fly off shelves as quickly as hot cross buns. Edie is available in Heavy Grain leather, Powder Beige, Sparkle Tweed in Oak and Patent in Electric Blue. For a little bit of sparkle, two bags from the collection feature a detachable guitar-style strap, emblazoned with a 'rabbits and roses' print to keep in line with the whimsical aura of The Secret Garden inspiration. We're predicting this lot will adorn every style savvy girls arm as a favourite 24 hour bag very soon.

Kenzo

Kenzo, the well-renowned Parisian brand recently celebrated its 40th anniversary, and is a must stop shop for fashion lovers looking for beautifully crafted clothing with that chic touch. The first store opened in Qatar's Emporium to great success and hence its venture to the Pearl. Unfortunately boys, its only ladies fashion available, and how lucky we ladies are with the treats on offer. There's something for everyone with the amazing pieces featuring feminine floral prints and delicate detailing. The store surroundings are tastefully decorated to mirror the stores found in Paris with features like pretty floral decorative elements adorning the walls. Four collections are available including Defile, Mainline, Pre Spring/Summer 2011 and Kenzo Jeans. Pre S/S highlights include a beautiful floral maxi dress designed with intricate beading and sequins on the shoulder for a little pizazz. The colour palette is grounded in natural hues of soft pinks, with focus on floral patterns in a selection of chiffon blouses; wide leg trousers also stand out and are set to become one of the seasonĂs hottest trends. Quirky accessories like belts and key rings are on offer, and marking the 40th anniversary, some special and fun 'speed' items are available.

QATAR

Style Saavy Models flaunt stylish attire on the catwalk

Ermenegildo Zegna

100 years of style

ast year – 2010 – was a landmark year for luxury brand, Ermenegildo Zegna, which celebrated 100 years of success at the forefront of fashion. To mark the occasion, the Italian family run business driven by the fourth generation of the Zegna family, revived a little piece of history. This was achieved by revisiting

the craftsmanship of 1910 using Fabric Number 1, the first fabric masterminded by Ermenegildo Zegna himself. The brand also created 100 limited edition centennial watches crafted by Girard Perregaux and one hundred limited edition fountain pens with Omas, amongst other things. The luxury Italian menswear brand provides the ultimate wardrobe components for the modern man created with the fusion of fashion and

function. Highlights include the carefully crafted suit collections, referred to as ‘Couture’ tailoring, characterized by carefully crafted details, noble materials and the trademark cross-stitch. All garments are hand crafted in Italian factories; intricately canvassed, cut and constructed, commanding ultimate dedication with over 33,000 stitches and 18 hours of craftsmanship. The ‘Made to Measure’ service caters to all refined palettes with its possibilities of tailor-made suits, leather garments, jackets, pants, shirts, coats and ties. Other offerings include an array of inviting sportswear pieces from ‘Zegna Sport’ and sophisticated luggage, briefcases, footwear, fragrances, underwear and home wear from the jam-packed accessories range. Ermenegildo Zegna is available in 86 countries including the Villagio Mall, Doha Qatar.

QATAR

Lanvin Life in Luxury

he sumptuous collection, Tri-bal, is packed with promising pieces showcasing technical materials exuding a designerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s flair. Close attention is paid to detail which features the contrast, or clash, of opposites. Quirky shapes factored into fabrics shape the body like an asymmetrical shoulder or a pleat revealing a tribal neckline. Maroon fox fur, gold evening-wear, misty shades, concrete abstractions and whirls are all tokens of an energetic range. Highlights include leopard print pumps, grigri-enchained talisman bags in magnificent colour palettes of burnished reds, ash blacks and lava greys. Lanvin has it all with this must-have mesmerising line. The collection is available from ZAI Boutique located on Salwa Road â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Al Waab City, Doha, Qatar. For more information call 44092600

QATAR

When it’s cool, it’s hot By John Hunt

anuary was an unusual month in Doha. A whole raft of events and occurrences took place simultaneously that meant there were more big names in the city during the first month of 2011 than you’d find in a Sri Lankan phone directory. Two events were taking place outdoors, made possible by the winter weather which is simply superb at present. The foreboding that another brutal summer is just around the corner was pushed to one side by the Open Tennis and the Asian Cup. The tennis is an annual event, of course, and the usual suspects were in town. Both Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal (a man so goodlooking it’s actually annoying. Local sensitivities aside, will you stop removing your shirt? Thank you) reached the semi-finals but Nadal fell at the penultimate hurdle and so Federer it was who saw off Nikolay Davydenko, Nadal’s semi-final victor, in a tepid final. The sense of disappointment in the crowd (especially among teenage girls; rumor has it that Russian housewives put a picture of Davydenko on the mantelpiece to keep the kids away from the fire) that it was not the ‘big two’ facing each other for the title was palpable. Hey, there’s always next year. The Asian Cup kicked off at Khalifa on the 7th of the month with Qatar entertaining Uzbekistan. The majority of the 37,000 crowd were not so entertained, however, as a dismal performance from the homeside saw them beaten 2-0 by the central Asian outfit, a knot of whose supporters celebrated as if their application to take part in the Eurovision Song contest had finally been ratified. However, let’s hope the fortunes of the Maroons improve, as

Roger, roger Federer triumphs at Khalifa, again...

Hair today... but Bruno needs a boost

it’s only 11 years until the world’s best will be lining up against them. If the abundantlytressed Qatari coach Bruno Metsu promises to get a haircut when his team next wins then by the time you read this, Qatar should be homing in on the cup... The ICC (International Cricket Council) also arrived early in the month to hear the case of the Pakistani cricketers embroiled in the ‘spot fixing’ gambling row. What naughty boys they have ‘allegedly’ been. Not sure Qatar can claim (or would want to claim) a coup in having this process take place here as the ICC remains headquartered in Dubai but one of the three accused has previously been convicted of doping offences which means he is forbidden

from entering the UAE. You wonder at what point people are going to realize that drugs and Arab countries are like oil and water (geddit?) Prior to the start of the Asian Cup, its umbrella confederation, the AFC, also held its congress in Doha. This meant a date with slimy FIFA President Sepp Blatter. Here’s a man that loves the city. Most likely because he’s reviled almost everywhere else in the world. Y’all come back now Sepp, y’hear?! Qatar’s positioning of itself as a global hub for sporting events and conferences of note is something we are now seeing evidenced regularly. This January has seen a flurry of activity – that will have to suffice until we’ve lasted through another tortuous summer...

off peak

Power suiting softens up. Photographs by Ilan Rubin

Giorgio Armani blazer, $2,575 (QR9,378). At Giorgio Armani Boutique, 760 Madison Avenue. Market editor: Bruce Pask. Set styling by Peter Tran. Armani Boutique is at The Pearl-Qatar.

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Water World

On the Indonesian island of Sumba, the surfing is legendary â&#x20AC;&#x201D; and the culture even more so. Adam Fisher heads back to the Stone Age.

photographs by bobby fisher

t the government’s request, the tribes that populate the remote Indonesian island of Sumba stopped hunting heads in the 1950s. Or at least that was what was supposed to happen. In reality, a head was lopped off in an intratribal war as recently as last March. ‘‘We had to stop sending people on trips to the waterfall for months until things settled down,’’ says Claude Graves, one of three Westerners living permanently on the island. Graves and his wife have spent the last 20 years building Nihiwatu, the most exclusive and lavish surf destination in the world. The hideaway resort draws ultrarich, über-athletic adventurers, who come to test themselves against a legendary wave and to be surrounded by one of the last Stone Age cultures on Earth. The Dutch, who opened the East Indies in the 1600s to the spice trade, called Sumba ‘‘Sandalwood Island.’’ They relinquished control of Indonesia after World War II, and Sumba, isolated on the far end of the archipelago, became Indonesia’s wild wild west. Today its few towns are little more than dusty trading posts or missionary settlements,

and the majority of the 600,000 citizens live as their ancestors did: in small, widely dispersed villages. When Graves first scouted the beaches, permission to explore came only after negotiation with tribal kings. ‘‘We had an escort of a dozen barefoot porters carrying our equipment,’’ Graves remembers. ‘‘When we came to the edge of a tribal boundary, they’d melt back into the jungle and another crew would appear and continue on with their escort.’’ Graves and I are taking in the view from the sand-floored pavilion that serves as Nihiwatu’s dining room, bar and social center. To the south is a Brobdingnagian set of rocky pinnacles marching into the Indian Ocean. To the north the widest, most immaculate beach I’ve ever seen stretches for miles, like a bolt of raw silk unspooled between sea and jungle. There’s no evidence of human habitation at all, not even footprints in the sand. Graves owns everything within view — most significantly, the right to surf a large and hollow wave, which peels perfectly and breaks on the reef in front of us. Nihiwatu is home to one of the best surf breaks in Indonesia, maybe even the world. To surf the break, you need permission from Graves. The fact that he’s built a luxury eco-resort right in front of it only makes it

On the horizon The beach at Nihiwatu, the site of one of the best surf breaks in the world.

more remarkable. And for these sins, Graves is reviled by much of the surf world. ‘‘They say that you can’t own the waves in the ocean,’’ says Graves, presiding at the bar in board shorts and Vans. ‘‘I never believed that.’’ As the beach’s owner and benevolent dictator, he’s made two rules: There will never be more than 30 outsiders on the property at any one time, and never more than 10 in the water. ‘‘It’s going to stay wild,’’ Graves says. ‘‘I guarantee you that.’’ Graves grew up in the ’50s , a surfer on the Jersey Shore. In the ’70s, the oilexploration industry took him to Bali. ‘‘I built the first house on Kuta beach,’’ he says, referring to Bali’s oldest surfing mecca. ‘‘Back then there was no electricity, no roads, no people in the water, just the rice paddies and me.’’ Today Kuta is, according to Graves, ‘‘the Ibiza of South East Asia,’’ one giant traffic jam with a techno soundtrack. So in 1989, Graves abandoned Kuta for Sumba, a island that’s a five-day drive from Bali. He calls his first five seasons in Sumba his ‘‘Mosquito Coast’’ years. And indeed, he came

Sand blast From left: Nihiwatu post-mud bath; one of the resort’s snaking pathways.

down with malaria. ‘‘I stopped counting after the 30th time I got sick,’’ he says. He, his wife and their newborn baby camped on the beach for those first years while they laid the groundwork for a resort. The first job was to piece together the property through hundreds of land deals, each of which had to be sealed by slitting the throat of a boar. (Graves wielded the knife.) Then came the challenge of building a luxury resort in one of the most remote corners of the world. It took a decade. Making a virtue out of necessity, Nihiwatu is totally off the grid — and even manages to produce much of its own food, electricity and diesel fuel. My fellow guests are all from Paris, flown in on a chartered jet from Bali. Among them are a count and countess, an heir to the Hermès name and fortune, a French diplomat, and the artistic director for the fine jewelry division of Louis Vuitton. Their leader is the jeweler, Lorenz Bäumer. He’s the best surfer of the group, and his home surf break used to be Biarritz, until he discovered Nihiwatu. Bäumer and crew begged me to keep their place a secret, because there is every reason to come here. The diving and snorkeling are spectacular, and even tidepooling routinely turns up rarities like the blue-ringed octopus. The fishing is world class and there is plenty to do on land: mountain biking, trekking, yoga, massages. What makes Nihiwatu distinct from other spectacularly sited luxury resorts, however, starts just outside the front gate. In material terms the natives of the 400 villages that surround the resort are the poorest people in the poorest state in all of Indonesia. Most farmers

‘They say that you can’t own waves in the ocean,’ Graves says.‘i never

believed that.’

make do with a Robinson Crusoe level of technology: bamboo pipes funnel water from well to field, and water buffalo hooves serve as plows. Yet by other measures, Sumba is exceedingly rich, and to explore its villages is to witness a culture untouched by modernity. The Sumbanese believe in an animist religion, in which life is a kind of purgatory, to be spent preparing for the afterlife by hewing great sarcophagi out of rock. These megaliths can weigh up to 20 tons. After the stone is quarried, a vast team of men hauls it with braided vine and great heave-hos. They move only a few inches at a time, and it can be many miles of mountainous terrain between quarry and village. If everything is done correctly, the recently deceased climb into heaven on a ladder of water-buffalo horns. My guide in all things Sumbanese is Dato, the head waiter at Nihiwatu and a young clan chieftain in a nearby village. As we relax on his porch after sightseeing, he offers me betel, the

traditional intoxicant of the region, which turns one’s teeth and mouth bright, bright red. ‘‘Sumbanese lipstick!’’ Dato says, grinning as he spits mouthfuls of the drool-inducing mixture through the bamboo floor slats and onto the pigs that live below his house. I laugh hysterically, until I realize that my head is spinning. For all of Sumba’s ethnographic treasures, what keeps the likes of Bäumer coming back is the wave. Which is why he and his friends have essentially booked the whole resort for most of August, for the next five years solid. By renting out the resort, Bäumer gets Nihiwatu’s wave, and the resort’s many amenities. There are board boys who wax his board and carry it to and from the water. If he does get caught in the riptide, there’s a Zodiac, which will zoom by to pick him up. The boat will even drop him off in the lineup, where everyone waits for the waves, if he doesn’t feel like paddling out himself. There’s a surfer-dude cliché that no matter who someone is on land, ‘‘in the water, everyone is equal.’’ By that logic, Bäumer, once he puts down his Louis Vuitton beach bag and pulls on his aqua socks, is like anyone else. Anyone else, that is, who paddles out with staff in tow: a photographer and his own personal surf coach. Later, I meet Terry ‘‘Surf Coach to the Stars’’ Simms, Bäumer’s pro. Simms is a fast-talking high school dropout from California who made good as a pro surfer in the ’90s and parlayed that into a personal coaching career. His life today is spent bouncing between Hawaii, Mexico, Costa Rica and Indonesia with high-rolling clients in search of big barrels and the courage to charge into them. He spends so much time at Nihiwatu that he’s practically considered an employee. ‘‘When they’re ready, I bring 31

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By the end of the week, the waves die down a bit, and the real action can be found at the bar, after dinner. Graves anchors himself there and reels everyone in with story after story: the tribal war on his beach in 1988, with a thousand warriors on each side. Raids by surfers so intent on getting a piece of the wave that Indonesian soldiers had to be called in. Being framed for the murder of a tribal king. The powerful shaman hired to kill him. Other stories about the Sumbanese are less sensational. ‘‘We dug them a few wells when we first got here,’’ Graves remembers. ‘‘At first we couldn’t figure out why they didn’t use the water to expand their fields — until we got the malaria tests back.’’ The results showed that the region’s villages were plagued by some of the highest infection rates in the world: ‘‘They weren’t lazy,’’ Graves says. ‘‘They were physically too weak to work.’’ Moved by their desperation, Graves started the Sumba Foundation, a charity that now dwarfs the operation of the resort itself. The majority of the 750 people who visit the resort each year end up making a donation, which, in a sense, makes Nihiwatu the marketing arm of the Sumba Foundation. The lure of a perfect, empty wave gets the jet set to Sumba, and the plight of the Sumbanese opens their wallets to the tune of almost a half million dollars a year. The foundation digs wells, builds health clinics, fights malnutrition and links the resort and the villagers in a circle of green

No man is an island Claude Graves and his wife, Petra.

development. ‘‘What this place really is,’’ Graves says, ‘‘is a big school.’’ Nihiwatu is home to an organic garden and egg farm: demonstration projects that teach local farmers how to raise food that the resort will buy. A foundation-supported biodiesel plant has already jump-started the market for copra — dried coconut meat, which can be pressed for oil and fed to Nihiwatu’s generators. And because copra can be harvested with nothing more than a machete, it puts cash directly into the hands of those who need it most. Graves wants to eliminate energy-sucking air conditioning entirely from the next round of guest accommodations, which will be built from bamboo that is grown on site. ‘‘Treehouses,’’ he says, ‘‘up in the canopy.’’ It’s not just the environment that Graves strives to preserve, but the area’s unique culture as well. Every time he starts or finishes a project, he gets an animist priest to come in and sacrifice a pig. He calls it ‘‘a good insurance policy,’’ yet it’s clear that it’s more than just that. After 20 years of living in paradise, he’s gone native. ‘‘I’ve got the carvers working on my stone now,’’ he says, gesturing toward the jungle. ‘‘Why not? It’s better than being buried in New Jersey.’’ n

essentials • sumba, indonesia getting there Hourlong flights to Sumba leave from the international airport on Bali. There are several flights a week, including a charter operated by Nihiwatu (nihiwatu.com). Once you land, it’s another 90 minutes by car to the resort. Resort staff will meet you at both airports and guide you through the lines, which can get chaotic. Bali is a long haul from most places. Singapore Airlines (singaporeair.com) and Cathay Pacific (cathaypacific.com) both have flights from the United States.

to see a slide show of more images from sumba, go to nytimes.com/tmagazine.

Bobby Fisher

them here,’’ he says. ‘‘I’ve brought M&A guys from Goldman, Silicon Valley millionaires, wealthy Europeans. Rob Lowe was invited, but he blew his chance.’’ One morning at dawn, Simms sneaks me a private lesson. After shoving me into a couple waves that would normally have me headed for cover, he says, ‘‘You’re doing great! I can get you barreled today!’’ And then, right on cue, a big set comes our way. ‘‘Outside!’’ Simms yells. ‘‘Paddle hard.’’ I’m within spitting distance of a giant tube, mesmerized by the gaping mouth of the wave. It’s nothing like the ‘‘green room’’ of a million surf posters. It’s hugely bigger, glowing with emerald light: an otherworldly play of the tropical sun refracting through vertical walls of azure sea. There’s a sound, too — a roar that grows louder as the wave peels toward us. ‘‘That’s one of the great things about this wave,’’ Simms shouts above the din. ‘‘I can get even my novice clients really close to the heart of it all.’’

Snowbound Left: guests can ski in and out of the luxury boutiques at the Cheval Blanc hotel. Above: a valet at Hôtel de Charme Les Airelles.

The Money Trail Courchevel, France, is a playground for the rich and fabulous. Michael Paterniti gets his bling on.

hile checking in at the hotel that first afternoon in the French Alps, I met a fine, terrier-like dog named Al Capone. He was admirably groomed, pearl coat nearly glowing, and he proceeded through the lobby with such aplomb — did he realize that he stood only a foot and a half? — that I was filled with immediate admiration for him, if not a scintilla of envy. Judging by the clientele here, his owner might have been a Russian oligarch, a Euro titan or a celebrity scion of some sort, and so could only offer me a wan smile and a few brief words. But that was to be expected. Women sashayed past in ski outfits that would have cost your average proletarian a month’s wages; men sat by the fireplace drinking bottles of Cognac whose sticker price resembled that of a compact car. And Al Capone followed his curious nose, snuffling for nonexistent crumbs, until he bumped up against my alien, American shoe. If I’d landed at one of the ritziest hotels in one of the ritziest places on earth — a place named Courchevel — with an idea of settling in to ski the fabled slopes and cast a gimlet eye on the bread and circus of the rich and famous, well, dog or not, Al Capone embodied a message I could heed: act like you belong, take your Milk-Bones where you can, and try not to soil the Oriental carpet. Given my Communard instincts and lousy wardrobe, it was going to be hard. The five-star Hôtel de Charme Les Airelles is a stomping ground for the jet set and their kids, bodyguards and mistresses (oh-la-la!): it boasts of roughly three staff members for each of its 52 rooms and, on my visit, even had a palefrenier on property to

P H O T O G R A P H s BY H enrik D u ncker

care for the miniature Falabella horses. On the afternoon of my arrival, I decided to quickly get my own billionaire on by summoning the Hermès horse carriage driven by a Frenchman named Fred. Fred did not ski, but it was in this mountain environment full of wild weather and pillowed snow, he said, that he felt most alive. My wife and I took our place on the back seat, covered by a cashmere blanket. It was snowing, as if scripted, and we clip-clopped down past lit chalets, intermittently passed by gleaming Mercedes and BMW sedans. The village, while fancy, wasn’t particularly ostentatious at first glance, in that approaching whiteout. True, we couldn’t see into the shop windows bedecked with Fendi, Roberto Cavalli and Prada gear. Here, at the end of the day, the air smelled of wood smoke and grilled meat, and the most intense activity seemed to buzz around the ski lifts. ‘‘For me,’’ said Fred, gesturing to the now-invisible mountain and then to the warm, twinkling lights of the little square, ‘‘it may be very fancy, but it’s also very magic.’’ There is a reason the rich come here: Courchevel is

a splendid place, a true alpine wonderland, a canted plinth of pine-treed beauty above which rises the stunning, coruscated high peaks of the Massif de la Vanoise. Located in the Savoy region of the French Alps, the town of Courchevel is actually divided into five entities. The original village, Saint-Bon-Tarentaise, is the lowest at approximately 3,600 feet. The rest are marked in ascending altitude by meters: Courchevel 1300 (or Le Praz), Courchevel 1550, Courchevel 1650 (or Moriond) and Courchevel 1850, which actually can be found at 1,747 meters (5,732 feet), though that fact seemed to have mattered little to the resort founders, who conjured a fictive bit of marketing to compete with other big ski resorts. As part of Les Trois Vallées — which includes the valleys of Saint Bon, Allues and Belleville — Courchevel links to the largest ski area in the world. And here, spidered among 370 miles of ski trails, is everything for every skier: off-piste, backcountry, couloirs, groomed trails, powder fields. There are high-altitude restaurants, an altiport with one of the most treacherous runways in the world, and huge Gazex tubes sounding in the early morning, creating instant mini-avalanches to stabilize the ever-shifting mountain for the coming day of skiing. The story of Courchevel’s birth and rise to grandeur is one inspired by French resilience and, ironically, stubborn egalitarianism. It was originally labeled ‘‘the People’s Ski Resort,’’ and the initial plan was partially hatched by an architecture student, Laurent Chappis, along with Maurice Michaud, a Savoy highways engineer, as they languished in an Austrian prisoner-of-war camp during World War II. Somehow

The village has all the traits of a traditional French village, and then

or your upper-middle-classers. And then able to ascertain a map of the region there’s a Courchevel of dorm rooms and while in captivity, Chappis and Michaud cheap pasta that belongs to the saisonnières ruminated over how to connect the three — the resort workers. On The Courchevel valleys as well as how to design a Enquirer, a Web site run by one English mountain resort with the help of the saisonnière that provides slice-of-life portraits farmers and peasants who already lived from the underclass, a chalet girl writing there. Soon after the war, the Savoy under the nom de plume ‘‘Belle de regional council hired Chappis as town Neige’’ describes an incident while cleaning planner for the new resort, and for ‘‘rich yet tight clients,’’ in which she is Courchevel took its shape according to forced to pick up the bedside ‘‘chunder’’ of a his vision: that the mountain would come hungover teenage boy as he lies nearby first, that buildings should blend with ‘‘without so much as an embarrassed flinch.’’ the environment and should not stand ‘‘I may take revenge by cleaning the loo with taller than the surrounding trees, that their toothbrushes,’’ she writes. aesthetics should outweigh profits. And At Les Airelles, I myself only witnessed yet as the resort grew and commercial a couple of incidents of inexplicable behavior pressures increased, unrestricted — a Russian angry that his top-of-the-line development in defiance of Chappis’s rental gear didn’t feel quite right, an indistinct plan led to the bulldozing of much of grumble in a dining room full of delicious the original station in favor of the large offerings. In response, the staff, attired in luxury hotels he’d rejected. With them dirndls, lederhosen and boiled-wool jackets, came the boutiques and restaurants that seemed remarkably friendly and low-key. dominate Courchevel today. There were so many things to keep straight: However egregious the gash left by the club and restaurant reservations; travel resort’s commercial proliferation, one itineraries syncing chauffeured Escalades, or would hardly consider it a torture to stroll helicopters, to meet all the private jets. Not to the streets of Courchevel 1850 in its mention the more over-the-top requests: past present form. The village has all the traits guests have had sudden needs like a hot-air of a traditional French village, and then balloon (in which to propose to a girlfriend) all the glitz of Avenue Montaigne. (In fact, and enough pink balloons to cover an area certain boutiques, like Louis Vuitton and greater than a football field. Dior, provide ski-in, ski-out shopping.) The mash of development hews to what one might call ‘‘potpourri chalet.’’ Les before arriving, I’d spent my Airelles, which is situated perfectly own winter as a sort of New England Sherpa slopeside and accoutered with bits and boy for my kids, lugging ski gear, buckling pieces of deep history — the ceiling in boots and zipping jackets all to make it to the the lounge comes from a 12th-century first lift and hear the words, ‘‘Daaaaad, I have Venetian villa, the lobby floorboards to go to the bathroom . . . NOW!’’ But at the Downhill racer A Versace-clad skier surveys the trail from a 14th-century castle — offers an hotel’s ski salon, my preheated boots were approaching Rocher de la Roze mountain. example of that eclecticism. And in this delivered by a ski valet. Both he and I reached way, the village possesses a strange kind of for them, and a minor tussle ensued until I timelessness. realized what was happening: He wanted — no, was determined — to put As for the clientele — those demanding the entire maxi-crêpe of sport, on my boots for me. I relented, then clomped outside, where a pair of skis fashion, cuisine and night life (and not necessarily in that order) — much is lay waiting, pointing downhill. A man in a white jumpsuit with a big floppy made each year of Courchevel’s glitterati: the comings and goings of Kate hat — the uniform of the Savoyard chasseur alpin — suddenly appeared, Moss; David and Victoria Beckham; Prince William and Kate Middleton. and gestured. ‘‘Monsieur, s’il vous plaît.’’ I stepped in, and was off. The latter two were supposedly around sometime near my stay — though That crystal day on the crystal mountain, my wife, as usual, had us dressed in Fendi or whatever, everyone looked the same. The Russian skiing anything that seemed skiable, me tumbling behind. What billionaires, and their scandals, are tracked like stocks. confounded us most was how few people were willing to venture into (In 2007, Mikhail Prokhorov, one of the richest men in Russia and now the the Great Ungroomed, a k a knee-high powder. I soon classified this majority owner of the New Jersey Nets, was arrested in Courchevel for his strange defect of Courchevel as the Three Sisters Problem. We’d eaten involvement with an alleged prostitution ring. After four days in jail, he lunch at a table next to the Three Sisters, fresh-faced Italian girls in was released and the charges were dropped.) stretchy designer pants, with a mother who herself looked 20, all of them And yet Courchevel isn’t exclusively for the mega-wealthy. Generally torridly working their cellphones. Our paths crisscrossed several times on speaking, the farther down the mountain you stay, the cheaper the prices. gondolas going up, and while they were proficient snow-plowers even with For instance, Courchevel 1300 is downright doable for your lower-upper, phones to their ears, they seemed to beam toward the après-ski.

ALL THE GLITZ of Avenue

Henrik Duncker

Montaigne.

WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION DON’T STAND A CHANCE AGAINST THESE HEAT-SEEKING GETUPS. PHOTOGRAPHS BY MATTHIAS VRIENS

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Peak performance Saulire, one of Courchevel’s highest mountains.

(Similarly, the Russians were legendary for partying all night, waking late, only bothering to ski several hours, if at all, and then hitting Les Caves, a local club where tables can cost upward of $10,000 (QR36,420) on New Year’s Eve, to repeat the whole exercise in debauched revelry.) Even for us, the trappings of Courchevel were a force nearly equal to the skiing. Back at Les Airelles, we ate shrimp from New Caledonia, with 50-year-old balsamic vinegar. The Jacuzzi had disco lights. The pool, with waterfall, looked like something built by the pharaohs. In the lounge, on couches before the fireplace, men huddled in close, secretive circles, speaking Russian, their bodyguards at the bar or in the lobby, keeping watch. (One later told me of a client who had installed four of his mistresses at the hotel simultaneously.) Al Capone toddled by every once in a while on his search for a crumb of some sort, towing his owner, who offered a friendly grimace. It would have been an affront to try to intermingle any more with that dog. Above him, at checkout, humans settled their bills, some equaling a year, or two, of college tuition. On a day just before I was scheduled to leave, I was offered something called a ‘‘douche sensorielle’’ by a very nice woman at the spa. Was this billionaire code? I had responded wearily (to mask my warily), as if I were just a little tired of the many douches sensorielles in my life. I casually sipped on a detoxifying elixir with lemon balm and spinach hops before I was led to a large glass-and-tile stall with six nozzles on the wall and three overhead. An ethereal, feminine voice — God? — prompted me to choose my douche of choice: Boreal Freshness? Spring Awakening? Polar Cold? I was in a Tropical Storm sort of mood, and instantly found myself blasted on all sides by warm water while lasers flashed lightning and thunderclaps sounded. It was a car-wash kind of lashing and pummeling, in surround sound. But nothing could have prepared me for the climax. Everything went silent; I stood dripping, clenched for the next blow, then relaxed just as the sluice above unloaded a bucket of arctic water on my head, causing me to emit a sudden cry. It was a shrill, giddy holler, one that might have roused a few partyers from their naps upstairs, but if it was a sound of pure joy, or some sharper stab of pain, I’m still not sure. n

essentials • courchevEl 1850, France

Hotels Hôtel de Charme Les Airelles The ultimate lodge, with valets, Michelinstar dining and a spa with a snow cave for après-ski relaxation. Le Jardin Alpin; 011-33-4-79-00-38-38; airelles.fr; doubles from about $1,500 (QR5,463). Cheval Blanc This sleek chalet is owned by LVMH’s Bernard Arnault. Le Jardin Alpin; 011-33-4-79-00-50-50; chevalblanc.com; doubles from $2,100 (QR7,648). Le Mélézin An Amanresorts hotel with luxury spa and hammam, set directly in the mountain. Rue de Bellecôte; 011-33-4-79-08-01-33; amanresorts.com; doubles from $1,100 (QR4006). Le Palace des Neiges Kitted out in Alpine-chic décor. Le Jardin Alpin; palacedesneiges.com; doubles from $710 (QR2,585).

Henrik Duncker

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The Great Heap Forward

Walter Albini is the genius who invented Italian ready-to-wear. Christopher Petkanas reports.

The guru of georgette Walter Albini meditates on his spring/summer 1977 collection.

companies in Italy in the early ’70s, but Albini was the first to put together a team of manufacturers, give himself billing above them and put all his designs on the runway in a single show,’’ says Tonchi, the editor in chief of W and former editor of this magazine. ‘‘He was a branding pioneer, the first creator of Italian fashion to leave the atelier for the factory.’’ Albini broke the mold in 1971, combining in one presentation his dresses for Misterfox, knitwear for Escargots, blouses for Diamant’s, jersey separates for Callaghan and coats and jackets for Basile. One firm, Ferrante, Tositti, Monti (F.T.M.), handled distribution for all five lines. Retailers bought and merchandised them as a single collection. Albini scored a second first that season by deserting the city of Florence, where most of the shows had been

held in Palazzo Pitti since the early ’50s, for Milan. Missoni, Krizia and Ken Scott followed. As his fame grew, he acquired a well-earned reputation for being fast and loose (if not to say dissolute), compulsive, restless and disdainful of money. It hardly needs mentioning that Albini, the rebellious son of bourgeois parents from Lombardy, was also a ferocious snob. ‘‘Albini, Lagerfeld and [Yves] Saint Laurent were all from the same generation; the press spoke of them as three geniuses from three places,’’ Tonchi says. ‘‘But Albini never had anyone behind him in his personal and professional life the way Saint Laurent and Armani did. There was no Bergé or Galeotti. Because Albini’s business always lacked structure, he was never able to make a fortune out of it. His career was full of highs and

courtesy of maria Vittoria Backhaus. from ‘‘walter albini and his times’’ (marsilio).

t’s typical of the murky legend that has accumulated around Walter Albini that no one can even agree if the design college he attended in 1957 in Turin, Italy, at the age of 16 was an all-girls school that he somehow charmed his way into — or if he simply happened to be one of the few guys at an institution with a lot of women. One version is a lot sexier and more useful for burnishing his eminence. Not that you needed to back in the ’70s, when Albini was at the height of his powers and there were only two names that got every tuned-in London design student’s motor running: Chloé’s Karl Lagerfeld, who still had one foot in the chrysalis, and his fellow Krizia alum Albini. If it’s possible to feel nostalgic for something you’ve never known, then the young plotters at St. Martin’s felt it for Albini’s storm of polka dots, floor-grazing tea gowns in tiers of floral georgette and plaid velvet dinner suits tipped with swan feathers. His mania for the ’20s and ’30s, for Chanel and Poiret, for cigarette holders and Champagne buckets, only added to the élan. Beyond a sly talent for gender bending that would have an enormous influence on Giorgio Armani, Albini intuited how the business of fashion could be done differently in Italy. If a new book, ‘‘Walter Albini and His Times: All Power to the Imagination’’ (Marsilio), by Maria Luisa Frisa and Stefano Tonchi, does its job, Albini will be forever known as the man who invented Italian ready-to-wear. ‘‘Sure, there were a lot of designers whose names were associated with clothing

shipshape and with an industrial chill, on the other hand, were a tidy résumé of the times. Not the least of the book’s pleasures are the records of Albini’s homes, images of the models he favored and the work of photographers then à la mode, editorial royalty from an age when Herb Ritts and Bruce Weber were just gearing up: Apollonia van Ravenstein, Barry McKinley, Alfa Castaldi, Barry Lategan, Chris von Wangenheim. Here is Albini — wide white pants, white shoes, semi-transparent white shirt, dark pinstriped jacket — shot by Hiro on the streets of Rome with the actress Ewa Aulin in 1972 for Harper’s Bazaar. Fast-forward three years and he’s a model in his own show at Milan’s Ristorante all’Angolo, wearing the ‘‘his’’ version

from top: manfredi bellati; david bailey; courtesy of csac. all from ‘‘walter albini and his times’’ (2010 fondazione pitti discovery).

His own creation Clockwise from above, Walter Albini for Misterfox Preraffaellita collection, 1971; the chic of Araby in 1976; Albini and a countess friend at a Villa d’Este party in 1980.

Albini was almost heartbreakingly glamorous,

a halston-like figure on

top of the world.

lows and he was full of contradictions, a very unstable, excessive character.’’ By the ’80s, the tidal wave created by Armani, Versace and all the other big guns to whom Albini had shown the way had reduced him to less than a footnote. He died in 1983 at the age of 42, presumably of AIDS, according to Tonchi. Since then, he says, ‘‘Albini has been airbrushed from history.’’ Valentino might have something to say about Albini prefiguring ‘‘the fashion designerdeus ex machina as guarantor of a lifestyle in which clothes play a central . . . role,’’ as Angelo

Flaccavento suggests in an essay in Frisa and Tonchi’s monograph. But as the book hardly strains to document, Albini was certainly out there, smoking his brains out on the beach on Capri, or else looking bored and superior, a Yorkshire terrier balanced on his forearm. The lifestyle Albini guaranteed for himself included a crib on the Grand Canal in Venice, an apartment on Piazza Borromeo in Milan and a hideaway in Sidi Bou Said near Tunis. What Albini was thinking when he sheathed his Venice entrance hall in marbleized plastic and linoleum, we will never know. His Milan digs,

of his natty ‘‘Duca di Mantova’’ suit. In 1979 it’s ‘‘A Dinner With Walter Albini’’ in Casa Vogue, the table laid with a cloth from his home-furnishing fabrics collection. Only when he allowed himself, at nearly 40, to be pictured in one of his disco-ready zodiac T-shirts did Albini’s narcissism boomerang. One prefers to remember him as he appeared in black tie in the company of some countess at a party at Villa d’Este. Slipping a mask of pheasant feathers he’d made over that marvelously shaped head, he is almost heartbreakingly glamorous, a Halston-like figure on top of the world. Not long before he died, Albini had announced that fashion was dead, ‘‘that it was only about styling now,’’ Tonchi says. To make his point, Albini presented a ‘‘non-collection’’ of bits and pieces borrowed from journalists, photographers and designers, assembling them into static looks hung on a wall with plaster masks of his face. ‘‘Albini died young, with no friends,’’ Tonchi says. ‘‘Nowadays stylists buy their friends and live forever!’’ n 39

the rules: alexandra jacobs

Grass Fed-Up

Foodie fanaticism is giving the rest of us indigestion.

quarter-century ago, the term ‘‘foodie’’ denoted a small set of people who lived on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, lined up at the Silver Palate on weekends and occasionally roasted a chicken breast in a packet of aluminum foil with something peculiar, like raspberries. Now these people are everywhere in America, and they’re cooking anything they can get their hands on, around the clock — tutti foodie. The farmers’ market in New York’s Union Square, once a sleepy little happening where restaurateurs foraged for chives to tie the tops of their beggar’s purses, is now a quad-weekly mob scene so dense you need a cleaver just to get out of the subway exit, let alone hack through the towering forests of purple cauliflower. Midwestern homemakers devote entire blogs to cupcakes. Your Republican father-in-law can pronounce ‘‘quinoa.’’ Things have reached a fever pitch in the San Francisco Bay Area, where Eric McDougall, a creative marketing consultant for the tech industry, prepares meals for his guests on a Blue Star range (‘‘what Julia Child used to use’’), has regular chicken cook-offs with a musician acquaintance, doesn’t like Chinese garlic (it has to be Gilroy garlic) and bragged to me about trips to a farm in West Marin County that supplies baby lettuce to the legendary Berkeley restaurant Chez Panisse. ‘‘Their chefs get it Saturday. We get it Friday, before it’s even shipped,’’ McDougall said, adding without apparent irony: ‘‘Our salads are completely alive — moving around on the plate. They still have bugs on them.’’ Anyone else craving a nice refreshing wedge of iceberg lettuce from the local A&P? Paralyzed hosts have always turned to takeout for succor, but even that now has its perils. One pal, so food-fatigued that she recently commenced a juice cleanse, told of a customer finding a pebble in the soup at the

illu stration BY brian rea

locavore restaurant Eat in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. (No relation to the proto-gourmet Eli Zabar’s E.A.T. on Madison Avenue, where a pint of seafood salad, origins uncertain, costs $45 (QR163).) ‘‘It’s like we’re getting so close to the earth that we’re being forced to eat it,’’ she said despairingly. At the coyly named Peasant in SoHo, meanwhile, an editor took umbrage at the goat lasagna and organ meat. ‘‘I only like tongue-in-cheek when it’s humor,’’ she harrumphed. ‘‘I’m a hard-core carnivore, but I feel like things have gotten so extreme that it’s hard to have a simple roast chicken.’’ (Never mind doing something cute with raspberries!) ‘‘I can barely keep up with my friends in Napa,’’ said Alyssa Shelasky, 33, the fiancée of the ‘‘Top Chef ’’ contestant Spike Mendelsohn, who blogs about her cooking (mis)adventures at Apronanxiety.com. ‘‘I do the best I can’’ was how she characterized her humble attempts at homemade pasta and herb-garden cultivation, which in another era would’ve been considered super-foodie but now — when some civilians are slaughtering antibiotic-free cattle with their bare hands — seem the bare minimum for entertaining. Mendelsohn lives in Washington, D.C. (and occasionally cooks for the first

* All prices indicative

agronomist, Michelle Obama), while Shelasky commutes between there and Los Angeles, where, she said with an air of relief, ‘‘everyone wants a lighter meal or a kitschier meal — food trucks and Canter’s. As far as the pedigree of the food, it’s a much smaller conversation, more who was at the dinner party than what was at the dinner party.’’ Not so back East, where Shelasky’s younger sister Rachel had some trouble upholding the credo of her employer, Real Simple magazine, during a recent dinner party on Shelter Island, N.Y. ‘‘There were these two guys who made homemade ice cream on machines, and one of them had shipped special vanilla beans from Madagascar,’’ she said. ‘‘I’d have been perfectly content with even Häagen-Dazs vanilla.’’ (A fresh-faced 30, Rachel is too young to remember when Häagen-Dazs, which originated in the Bronx, was considered the absolute height of foodie snobbery.) ‘‘My contribution to dessert — this is so embarrassing,’’ she went on, ‘‘was the Toll House log. They were probably thinking, Oh, what a lame-o.’’ But really, what’s lamer than culinary oneupmanship at the expense of guests’ comfort? Like a backyard pig roast where the 200-pound animal is not cooked through. (‘‘People were slicing off raw pieces of pork and shoving them into their mouths,’’ one attendee said. ‘‘Several reported not feeling well the next day.’’) Or the 20-course, Bouley-style tasting menu staged by a real estate developer in his Southampton mansion to woo a young belle of my acquaintance. ‘‘I guess he wanted to impress me,’’ she said, ‘‘but it was too fancy — gels and foams. Really elaborate, really awkward. And he kept jumping up from the table, leaving me sitting there all alone. Honestly, I’m not even sure if he liked me.’’ She’s now dating a lawyer who doesn’t cook. ‘‘Never, never, never,’’ she said. ‘‘He once made me frozen ravioli.’’ Total foodie-cide — but she sounded a bit relieved. n

The Italian Jobber Horacio Silva meets the man who puts fashion on the Net.

ederico Marchetti likes to compare himself to Caronte, the boatman who leads Dante into the underworld. He’s joking — sort of. Since June 2000, when he founded Yoox.com, the online merchant of discounted high-end clothes and accessories, Marchetti has been helping fashion labels navigate the Internet’s murky waters. ‘‘The Caronte is like a bridge between two worlds,’’ says Marchetti, sitting in the duplex apartment that he shares with his girlfriend across from the Teatro dal Verme in the Magenta area of Milan. ‘‘In my case, it’s bringing together fashion and online, two worlds that were so distant from one another 10 years ago and are now closer than ever.’’ It’s a testament to Marchetti’s gentle prodding — unlike that of Caronte, who beat sinners over the head with his oars — that Yoox.com, with its lure of overstock and unsold stock from previous seasons, attracts more than 6 million unique users a month. Since 2006, when he hung out the shingle for Marni.com, Marchetti has also been creating and managing e-commerce sites for brands from Armani to Zegna. Last December, when the Yoox Group, which had total revenues of more than $210 (QR765) million in 2009, went public, it was remarkably the only initial public offering on the Milan Stock Exchange that year. The I.P.O. may not have surprised industry analysts, but it certainly raised the profile of a Web site that had largely existed below the radar. ‘‘Italians are not always the best at marketing,’’ quips Marchetti, a former stock analyst who is usually clad in fashionable but nonthreatening workaday basics from A.P.C. and its Italian analogue, Piombo. ‘‘If you take the C.V. of an Italian and an American, the American looks impressive and the Italian looks like he hasn’t done anything. There is definitely a cultural element to it, but I think that we are also a little bit low-profile. Our DNA isn’t really to be in your face.” Instead, Marchetti’s ‘‘piano, piano’’ approach has involved a lot of hand-holding, particularly

P H O T O G R A P H BY danilo scarpati

Here’s looking at Yoox Federico Marchetti at home in Milan with a painting by Laura Baldassari.

of the traditionally conservative Milanese fashion industry, which was initially dismissive of the Internet but is now as fixated with it as a Twitter-happy teenager. ‘‘Ten years ago, they were scared,’’ Marchetti says, ‘‘and I have to say that they were right, that on the Internete’’ — despite having studied English from a young age and spending several years in New York, he still adds the last vowel — ‘‘their brand was going to be presented in a way that was worse than in a physical retail store. And it was less beautiful online; there was less focus on quality, it was much slower, and we didn’t have the consistency between on- and offline. You cannot have a brand that has a beautiful store on Fifth Avenue or Via Montenapoleone and has a terrible online store.’’ Marchetti’s success in creating synergies between brick-and-mortar stores and their Internet complements has involved educating fashion brands on the merits of exclusivity, customer service and the need to be selective when it comes to online distribution. By creating monobrand stores, the entire supply chain of which is overseen by the Yoox Group, he has forged close alliances with the world’s most prestigious labels and also created a sizable alternative revenue stream. (In addition to the fee it charges for building the sites, the company receives a percentage of sales.) He has also eschewed the vogue for simply replicating a brand’s core values online

* All prices indicative

and instead taken a more tangential art- and design-heavy approach, particularly on thecorner.com, Yoox’s more avant-garde full-price sister, which was introduced in 2008. ‘‘It’s the opposite of the museum model,’’ he says of his artistic collaborations with creatives like Hedi Slimane, Nick Knight, Antony Hegarty of Antony and the Johnsons, and the late Malcolm McLaren. ‘‘Museums are generally big and have small gift shops. We are a big shop with a small museum.’’ Yoox recently started selling contemporary design pieces by the likes of Achille Castiglioni and Philippe Starck, a move that stems as much from business imperatives as it does from Marchetti’s affection for art and design. Evidence of his fixation — works by Ettore Sottsass, Franz West, Yoshitomo Nara, Mark Kostabi — decorates his apartment. Holding pride of place in the living room is one of the few big-ticket items that Marchetti splurged on post-I.P.O., a Warhol of his beloved Dracula. He becomes uncharacteristically animated when discussing the vampire count. ‘‘You could say I am a little bit obsessed,’’ he says. ‘‘I even went to Transylvania and to Whitby in England, the abbey where Bram Stoker wrote ‘Dracula.’ I’m really intrigued by that part of the story: one of the most famous books was written by a guy who never went to see what he was writing about. It shows me the power of imagination.’’ n

Mathaf

The muse has landed Architect Jean Francois Bodin reconstructs a minimalist, almost â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;anti-iconicâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; museum space from the shell of an old school building, making it home for the geniuses of modern Arab artists. sindhu Nair by

PHOTOGR APHS BY

BOSCO MENEZES

ith a score museum designs already under his belt, French architect Jean Francois Bodin’s Qatar rendezvous has resulted in Mathaf. The recently opened Arab Museum of Modern Art, housed in a refurbished school building off Education City, is a stark and curious site. “Earlier an architect was awarded a museum work when he was at the fag-end of his career, when it was assumed that he was learned enough to take on such prestigious projects. But now museum design has become more “normal” – no more prestigious than a hospital project,” says Bodin. Best described as an unexciting white square building, the Mathaf structure pales in comparison to the iconic Museum of Islamic Art on the Corniche, designed by IM Pei. But that is before you see the play of space inside. Mathaf, on close scrutiny, takes the role of a platform, allowing the artifacts and the installations to establish the look and feel. A minimalistic white arena where the performers take center stage. Mathaf is also distinct in the way it has developed from its challenges. Bodin says, “The first challenge was the school building which was in concrete. Then we had to design keeping in mind that this is not a permanent structure for Mathaf. The museum will be relocated to another purpose-built structure after five years. Then the issue of low ceiling. Museums are best with high ceilings because of the size of the artifacts it has to house. Another challenge was the corridors and small box like classrooms. A museum does not have many corridors – it has large meeting spaces and huge exhibit areas.” So, where have the corridors disappeared? And the dinky box-like classrooms? That’s where Bodin’s expertise emerges. How he straddles the two extremes, of coming up with the best design solution while not letting the building eclipse the artifacts. “Now museums are the place where people who appreciate art and understand what it stands for congregate. I am doing something for these people. The Museum is a place for people to have an experience and discover art, and the building is also a subtle part of this process.”

QATAR

This design perception could also be why Mathaf can be considered as one of the best restoration projects in the region.

Art and Architecture Clockwise from left, Art experts explain the story of the collections, the painting in the background is Masks Marching, by Ala Bashir, 2003; The foyer which houses paintings of HH the Emir and HH Sheikha Mozah by Yan Pei Ming; Sheikh Hassan addresses the media at the opening ceremony of Mathaf; Painting by Mohammed el-Melehi; Installations outside the Museum by Adam Henein Al-Safina (The Ship) 2008-2010

The Building Mathaf is a 5,500-squaremeter facility that includes galleries on two floors, a cafè, a museum shop, a research library and an education wing. One enters Mathaf through a terrace that features a shaded outdoor seating area for the cafè. From the terrace, visitors will pass through a screen-wrapped scaffolding-style facade, upon which imagery and video can be projected at night. Inside Mathaf, the flexible space has an informal and contemporary aesthetic. Like the collection it houses, this temporary structure expresses a balance between the old and the new. The lobby or the meeting space is definitely appealing with the bold sketches of the Emir and his consort, HH Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani and HH Sheikha Mozah bint Nasser Al-Thani. In a stark white setting, another installation in bright colors tries to attract attention but fails miserably as theoil on canvas sketches dominate the room with its size and stateliness. Inside the Museum, the bright and flexible spaces have an informal and contemporary aesthetic. Floors are finished in an industrialstyle grey resin and another modern design interpretation is the museum shop which is located in a repurposed shipping container. Mathaf ’s exhibition galleries, which occupy a total of 2,180 square meters feature high ceilings and moveable walls that can accommodate a wide range of work from the permanent collection or special exhibitions. The exhibit spaces are almost maze-like, with art placed strategically; making each installation appealing not only for its artistic quality but also because of the way it is displayed. For instance, the large metallic installation which is more like a hole on a sheet, right at the opening of another display area, makes for a dramatic placement. What endears visitors to Mathaf other than the art itself, are the doodles on the walls which directs one to the manara, the education wing, or maktaba, the research library, mahal, the museum shop or even maqha, the coffee bar or just to the gallery spaces. The Work Mathaf has its origins in the wide-ranging activities of its founder and Qatar Museum Authority Vice Chairman, His

QATAR

Let there be light Clockwise from right, Passages are no longer passĂŠ; 'Slippers and Wire' by Hassan Sharif, 1994; Painting by Mohmoud Said, 1938; Three paintings titled Homage to Michelangelo by Ali Talib, 1994; Mixed media by Shakir Hassan Al Said, 1999; The Pyramid, 'Symbolism through Ants' by Taheya Halim, 1960s

Excellency Sheikh Hassan bin Mohamed bin Ali Al-Thani. Sheikh Hassan began his collection in the 1980s, starting with the acquisition of works by Qatari artists and then broadening its focus to include works by 20th century artists throughout the Middle East, North Africa and the Arab diaspora, as well as objects that inspired many Arab modern artists, such as pre-Islamic works from ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt. From the beginning, Sheikh Hassanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s penchant for collecting was part of a larger project of documentation and advocacy. In 1994 ,he installed much of the collection in a villa that served as a private museum and as a resource for living artists and for teaching others about Arab modern art. An artist residency program was also established at the museum, primarily hosting Iraqi artists who needed a place of refuge. To honor Sheikh Hassanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s history of providing studios for artists and his emphasis on education, QMA and Qatar Foundation have developed the museumâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s first home in the Education City. The Mathaf collection owns more than 6,000 art-pieces and presents the main trends and sites of production of modern Arab art from 1840 till now. The first exhibition that is taking place in the reconstructed museum building is Sajjil: Century of modern art. This exhibition shows more than 100 artists and major experiments in aesthetics. At the heart of Mathaf, though, is the original collection of thousands of paintings, sculptures and works on paper brought together by its founder, HE Sheikh Hassan. The collection includes work by artists from every Arab country, representing major trends and sites of production in the region. The earliest modern works are from the 1840s, and the most recent contemporary works bring us up to the present day. It was HE Sheikh Hassan's personal mission to build a collection that would highlight the significance of Arab art and would become a public resource. He also collected books and periodicals and began an artist residency program, which created a wealth of archival materials documenting Arab artists and artwork. Mathaf is now working to ensure that this collection will be available for artists and scholars to visit and study in person. Mathaf aims to have the collection documented in an open online database for the public. n

QATAR

Sophia Loren

When women want something, they get it. By Vani Saraswathi

It’

s been a fairytale life... and she is clear that having any regrets at this point would be regretting being Sophia Loren. “How can I regret to be Sophia? How can I regret to have a family that I have? How can I regret the appreciation I receive as an actress?” With unfading grace, and long, well-toned legs that a 20-year-old would die for, this smashingly gorgeous 76-year-old looks back at her life with great pride and more than a little nostalgia. In Doha, for the launch of her Damiani line of jewellery, hosted by Blue Salon, Sophia Loren was as candid as she was charming. Probably spending time with her grandchildren – 3 and 4 years of age –

and their total immunity to her stardom, keeps her grounded. “Even if I were to share my story with them, they would think it was some kind of a fairy tale.” And a fairytale is what it has been. In a war-ridden Europe, 13-year-old Sofia Villani Scicolone and her mother sought out cinema as a means of getting out of poverty. “We couldn’t eat, couldn’t find anything to go on in life. My mother decided we should go to Rome - the city of the Cinema. With her by my side, we went looking for opportunities to Cinecitt‡ Studios. I got a small role in Mervyn LeRoy’s Quo Vadis starring Robert Taylor and Deborah Kerr.” With that she started meeting more people, and with every consecutive role her part got bigger. “The media started taking interest in my looks and I had coverage everywhere in Italy. The rest you know...” Her life turned on its head when she was 15 and she met the much older Carlos Ponti , a force to reckon with in the film industry – the man who would go on to dominate her life and career – a fact she makes no bones about, and even seems a tad proud of.

QATAR

“When we met, we started to work together, or rather, he started to work for me, because I had no clue about the industry. We built a wonderful relationship – of course he was married, though not happily I must say. When I was 19 years old, he decided – because he decided everything for me, I had no experience to take a decision for myself or for the two of us – on going serious with our relationship. I spent a great deal of my life with him... 23-24 years.” To have been in the limelight and in a profession as demanding as the one both were in she says love is what gave her a long and happy relationship. “LOVE. If you don’t have that, you don’t know what you are doing. Carlos was a very important person for me, to have beside me... I wanted to marry him and have children with him. You know, women when they want something, they achieve it.” Powerful, influential, good-looking men have played a great role in her life. Cast opposite some of the dandiest heroes of the time, Loren says she was most attracted

– professionally and purely platonic, she is quick to state – to actors who were a bit like her. Mentally and emotionally. “Cary Grant was one of them. Damiani Sophia Loren Collection Marcello Mastroianni was another – he was a very simple man, the man next door, funny and friendly. Peter Sellers had a great sense of humour and we worked beautifully together.” She reiterates, “Not love, but I always tried to have a warm relationship with my co-stars, because if you had to do a role and to try to be believable, you have to trust the person in front of you. That’s what I tried to Of the line she lends her name and style to, she says: “The right family, right time... they were proposing things to me, and whatever they asked do.” me to look at I liked very much. It was very simple and something that I Her idol, however, was Anna liked to wear when I have the opportunity.” Magnani whom Sophia Loren Though she refuses to give jewelry advice to women – “I can’t answer describes as: “A great artist. Full for every woman on what she should have”, she says. She likes jewels that are close to the face. “Because they give a sparkle – sometimes you of life and temperament. Full of don’t have that glow, and sometimes you need it through jewels.” eagerness to be who she was.” Though a broad, beautiful choker adorns her neck, Sophia Loren says Despite her passion for cinema, women these days tend to go for simpler jewels. “Because some people Hollywood never appealed to may not accept big extraordinary jewels. So you have to go with jewels her. that are very simple, that are suited for you and you like to wear.” “I went to America at a moment She does not participate in the designing of the jewels but she is involved in its review. “I am not a designer, but when they propose a line when we were still at a stage of of jewels, I express my likes and dislikes. But I don’t only think of it from ‘are we going to get married or my point of view, but from others. If I choose something I like but they not’. I liked America because it don’t, they will have to explain it.” gave me the opportunity to learn On her visit to Qatar, she says she will talk to her children and let them the language – I think an actor know that there are places in the world they have never seen, “and I think there is a good opportunity now to have a wonderful vacation with should not be secluded in his or little children, because I have a good friend here,” flashing her highher own comfort zone or birth voltage smile in the direction of Nabil A R Abu Issa, Vice Chairman of place. One should extend Abu Issa Holding, the company behind Blue Salon.

oneself as much as possible. I worked a lot there, worked with some wonderful directors. “But personally, I never liked to live there and build a family there. I am from Naples, and I knew if I have to give my best I had to be with people and characters I’ve known since childhood. When I came back to Italy after my Hollywood stint, I started doing things close to my heart and soul.” She brushes off ‘having everything in life’. “I don’t have everything – there is always something not there. But, I am fine with myself. I think I have achieved what I wanted to, with hard work. If you take what you’ve done for granted, then you don’t appreciate your success. Now, I appreciate so much what I’ve achieved, because I fought for it, I wanted it so bad, and with the help of some good people around me, who made things possible for me. “I like what I have, but I am not pompous about who I am. With great discretion I accept all this and live my life – to be greeted as I am greeted and to be loved...” It’s that rich life to which she attributes her looks. “I think a woman looks well because of the life you lead. Because if you are happy and satisfied with your life... if you are happy with you family, that reflects on you.” But nip-tuck is something she prefers to stay clear of. “I would be afraid to look at someone else. It’s your personal choice, but I detest the idea. Ageing is absolutely fine. Of course you have to take care of yourself, but not change your face. It’s your face since you have had since birth, why would you want to change it?” n

Agenda

boom-boom rooms

new hotels

ones to watch

SAN MIGUEL DE ALLENDE The Rosewood San Miguel de Allende (rosewood sanmiguel.com) will soon open its stunning colonial-style hotel (with tequila tastings!) in the beloved Mexican destination.

LHASA A hotel on the roof of the world: the new St. Regis Lhasa Resort (stregis.com) takes luxury to 12,000 feet, steps from the holy Potala Palace. It’s a game changer for the Tibet Autonomous Region.

MALDIVES Next up in the beach-state are the superchic Viceroy (viceroy hotelsand resorts.com), the sexy Beach House (beachhouse maldives.com) and the luxe Anantara Kihavah Villas (anantara.com).

PARIS An Asian invasion: Philippe Starck remade the Royal Monceau for Raffles (raffles .com), Shangri-La (shangri-la.com) arrives next month, and a Mandarin Oriental (mandarin oriental.com) will hit in 2011.

PUNTA DEL ESTE With Las Piedras Fasano (laspiedras fasano.com), the Brazilian boutique bigwigs plant a flag in Uruguay’s answer to the Hamptons. Expect polo fields, a boathouse and an Arnold Palmer golf course.

NEW ZEALAND Tucked into a native forest on the shores of Lake Wakatipu, the new Matakauri Lodge (matakauri.co.nz) offers upscale adventurers doorfront access to the aptly named Remarkables mountain range.

RAJASTHAN The latest jewel of India takes inspiration from Jaipur’s gem industry. At the 63-suite Devi Ratn (deviresorts.in), red sandstone is made into lyrical domes and arches, and surfaces sparkle with metal inlay.

illu strations BY andrew holder

new hotels

WHAT YOU GET FOR $500 A survey of five properties across the globe.

Room Imperiale Suite, 585 square feet, facing Montevideo Street. En Suite Frette linens; televisions hidden behind a mirror beside the tub. extras A personal butler; your own printed business cards. Free for all Wi-Fi; a bottle of wine from the Algodon Wine Estates in Mendoza. $500 (QR1,821); algodonmansion.com.

coworth park Ascot, england ▼

w Retreat koh samui, thailand ▼

Room Superior King Room, at just over 300 square feet. En Suite Wrought-iron beds; heated floors in the bathrooms. extras Copper roll-top tubs; pastoral views. Free for all A daily supply of house-made fudge; reservations at the Michelinstarred chef John Campbell’s hotel restaurants. $491 (QR1,788); coworthpark.com.

Room Tropical Oasis Retreat, at a whopping 1,720 square feet. En Suite W signature fluffy bed; an outdoor living room with a daybed. extras A private pool (unusual at this price). Free for all Bliss sink-side goodie bag; free Wi-Fi; a killer beach just steps away. $520 (QR1,893); whotels.com.

Pera Palace istanbul ▼ Room The 538-square-foot Greta Garbo corner room. (The actress supposedly lived at the hotel briefly in 1924.) En Suite French balconies; a rose motif embedded within the textiles (to symbolize Garbo’s fragility). extras Heavenly bathtubs with city views. Free for alL The thrill of sleeping in what amounts to a museum from 1892. $490 (QR1,785); perapalace.com.

four seasons Resort vail, colorado ▼ Room Garden, Mountain or Village view room, each 575 square feet. En Suite A gas fireplace; a deep-soaking tub; rocking vistas from picture windows. extras Hot-water bottles placed between your sheets at turndown. Free for all A ski concierge; an outdoor heated pool with hot chocolate service. From $475 (QR1,730); fourseasons.com.

Beyond the pillow Mint It seems like every hotel these days is offering ‘‘experiences.’’ But which properties are really taking service and amenities to the next level? the new flat-screen Leave your laptop at home and update your FarmVille estate with a hotel-loaned iPad. Hong Kong’s style-driven Upper House (upper house.com) offers them, as do dozens of hotels across the globe.

available at Soho House (sohohouse.com). Aside from using technology that makes you feel, um, naked, the condoms have a heart: for every one purchased, one will be donated to a developing country.

Shop-in-a-box Morgans Hotel Group

Carmel Valley Ranch (carmelvalleyranch

(morganshotelgroup.com) reinvents the vending machine with Semi-Automatic, curated dispensers that let you purchase the necessary (a travel kit by Malin+Goetz), the curious (a Ouija board) and the outrageous (a red rental Ferrari 599 GTB). Hotel à go-go Singita (singita.com), the gold standard of safari lodges, is taking its show on the road with Mobile Tented Safaris. Track the great migration in Tanzania — and get up close and personal with wildebeest and zebras — in luxury-camp setups that would have made Papa Hemingway proud. Smart and sexy Naked Condoms (naked foundation.org), packaged in deluxe boxes that look like high-end chocolates, are now

* All prices indicative

Locavore luxe The newly relaunched

.com) has a beekeeping program, while the Sanderling (thesanderling.com) in North Carolina’s Outer Banks has an artisanal butchering class. Instead of a lousy T-shirt, you can go home with a premium hot dog from your weekend at the slaughterhouse.

Art star Who says art can’t live in a parking garage? When it opens in December, Las Vegas’s Cosmopolitan (cosmopolitanlasvegas.com) will have graffiti by artists like Kenny Scharf below ground. In less shadowy corners you’ll find pieces by Yoko Ono, T. J. Wilcox and a rotating artist in residence (first up: Fab 5 Freddy), all in partnership with the Art Production Fund. Get yours to go at one of six ‘‘art-o-mat’’ vending machines.

TOP, FROM LEFT: FROM ALGODON MANSION; FROM DORCHESTER COLLECTION; from w hotels worldwide; Pera Palace/OGüN ISIK; from four seasons hotel denver.

ALGODON MANSION buenos aires ▼

new hotels

Playing It Cool

1. INTERIOR DESIGN BY SSDG INTERIORS INC./EMA PETER PHOTOGRAPHY; 2. MICKEY HOLE; 3. ATELIER BOW-WOW. BOTTOM, FROM LEFT: ASHLEY PALMER-WATTS; from the fierro hotel; manuel zublena.

Nothing draws a crowd like a boldface designer. Yet these five high-style hotels have managed to fly under the radar — until now. In Hokkaido, Japan, Alexandra Champalimaud is reimagining the European ski chalet for the Far East. Her 200-room Green Leaf Niseko Village has great views of Mount Yotei, is steps from the lifts and is filled with site-specific art by the Japanese artist Soichiro Tomioka. ytlhotels.com.

1 ● 2 ●

3 ●

Nefta, Tunisia, is emerging as an alt-Marrakesh. The designer Matali Crasset is opening her Dar Hi eco-resort here, with sandstone ‘‘pill houses,’’ ‘‘troglodytes’’ and ‘‘dunes’’ that encourage interaction with the desert landscape. dar-hi.net. Gernot Langes Swarovski, the patriarch of the Austrian crystal empire, recently opened Sparkling 1 in the Okanagan Hill Resort ● Valley of British Columbia. More than three million crystals (and $122 (QR444) million) went into the construction of the hotel,

with an angular atrium that refracts light up to 10 miles away and a ‘‘cold sauna’’ that stays at a chilly -162 degrees. sparklinghill.com. Laurence Graff hired David Collins to design the Delaire 2 lodge and spa for Graff Estate ● visitors to Graff ’s Stellenbosch, South Africa, tasting room. The 10 gorgeous lodges, each with its own pool, have become the flophouses of choice for travelers planning to overdo it on the Shiraz. delaire.co.za. No fixed date has been set, but design wonks are anxiously awaiting the opening of the Droog creative agency’s 10-room 3 in Amsterdam. Designed hotel ● by the Tokyo-based Atelier Bow-Wow, the as-yet-named, members-only property is built around a courtyard and resembles perforated Corian. droog.com/ creativeagency/a-new-hotel.

kitchen confidence Casual restaurants with rooms may be the newest fad, but big-league hotels and celebrity chefs are still the flavor of the month. Here are the latest toque-chasing properties.

Mandarin Oriental Hyde Park, London (mandarin oriental.com/london) is the word on everyone’s lips, now that it can brag about Dinner by Heston Blumenthal (above left), the first London outpost of the chef whose restaurant Fat Duck in Bray, England, is a culinary mecca. Expect scallops with cucumber ketchup and peas, and bergamot-cured-mackerel salad (yum?).

In Warwick, England, near Shakespeare’s birthplace of Stratford, the Globe Hotel just reopened as the Lazy Cow (thelazycowwarwick.com), a 16-room bolthole that has take-home swag bags (robestealing encouraged) and, most notably, David Philpot, the chef who hails from London’s Le Caprice and the Ivy, in the kitchen.

After stints at Spain’s renowned Quique Dacosta and the stunning restaurant at the Guggenheim Bilbao, the native son Hernán Gipponi takes over the kitchen at the just-opened Fierro Hotel (above center; fierrohotel.com) in Buenos Aires. His Medinspired dishes are the big draw for lunch and dinner, but guests get a taste of his magic at breakfast (included in a room rate of $145 (QR528)).

One of only two chefs to have earned a Michelin star for Thai food is testing the waters in the cuisine’s home turf. At the new Siam Kempinski Hotel Bangkok (kempinski.com), Henrik Yde-Andersen, the man behind Copenhagen’s masterful Kiin Kiin, creates authentic Thai dishes with a contemporary twist — think frozen red curry with baby lobster salad and litchi foam.

Pierre Gagnaire — a demigod in certain foodie circles — is dazzling the guests (summer only) at the Hotel Sezz St.-Tropez (hotelsezz.com). His Christophe Pillet-designed restaurant (above right) will have a modern-Med menu of dishes like lobster fricassee with basil, tomato purée and fresh gherkins.

* All prices indicative

new hotels

Spas are taking an eco-trip: go to any resort with a conscience and you’ll find more alfresco treatment rooms, more locally sourced products, more carbon-neutral facilities. These four retreats are at the forefront of the green-spa movement, giving guests a chance to convene with nature sensibly while they slough off those old carbon footprints.

Soneva Kiri This secluded island resort one hour

The Ranch at Live Oak Malibu Here’s

from Bangkok has a spa in the jungle that uses only Thai ingredients in its therapies. When you’re done with your four-hand massage, you can have lunch in a suspended bamboo pod, where food is delivered by waiters on zip lines. No footprint there. sixsenses. com/soneva-kiri; doubles from $1,200 (QR4,370).

a recipe for success: find a pristine swath of land in Malibu, Calif.; make everything organic and holistic; then offer cooking classes, massages and (mandatory) hikes. The results: a wait list that looks like the Oscar nominees. theranchmalibu.com; one-week retreats $5,600 (QR20,395), all-inclusive.

Hangaroa Eco Village & Spa Built on the

SaSaab On the banks of Kenya’s Ewaso Nyiro

mostly deforested Easter Island, the 75-room hotel will have all the bells and whistles of a luxe ecoresort (electro-smog machines, microturbines, grasstopped roofs). Eighty-five percent of the staff will be local Rapa Nui, and many of the products used at the spa will be made on the island. hangaroa.cl; doubles from $549 (QR2000) per person, all-inclusive.

river, this lodge (above) offers an uplifting coffee scrub after a long day spent on a dusty camel-back sojourn. Treatments are performed in open-air pavilions and include soothing rubs using African Abor oil, aloe and frankincense, all processed by local women. sasaab.com; doubles from $620 (QR2,258) per person, all-inclusive.

View master The height wars continue in Asia as, brick by brick, hotels compete for the title of world’s highest. Currently taking the baton from the Park Hyatt Shanghai is the Ritz-Carlton, Hong Kong. The International Commerce Center building, which houses the property — 312 guest rooms on Floors 106 to 117 — has a shingled facade that swoops into an elongated base, calling to mind a dragon’s tail (and deflecting the wind during a typhoon). The money shot: a glass-enclosed tippy-toplevel bar and swimming pool overlooking Victoria Harbor, Hong Kong Island and miles of mainland China. 58

* All prices indicative

Chateau du pop

Sofia Coppola’s latest cinematic dreamscape, ‘‘Somewhere’’ (below), celebrates life at the Chateau Marmont, Hollywood’s A-list stomping ground. But the film is by no means the first word on celebrity kerfuffles at the castle-esque hotel. It’s where Elizabeth Taylor nursed Montgomery Clift back to health in Room 3F after his near-fatal car accident and, more recently, where Lindsay Lohan headed after one of her run-ins with the law. Here, a timeline of Chateau lore.

1929: Chateau Marmont opens as apartments. 1931: Operating at a loss during the Depression, the property is sold and reopens as a hotel to the stars. 1933: Jean Harlow honeymoons with her new husband, one year after Groom No. 2 is found dead in their L.A. home; she also has a concurrent affair with Clark Gable. 1950s: Howard Hughes runs his media and airline empire from the Chateau’s penthouse. A reclusive Greta Garbo recedes into the hotel for weeks at a time. 1955: The director Nicholas Ray (age 43) has sex with his ‘‘Rebel Without a Cause’’ star, Natalie Wood (17), in Bungalow No. 2. Wood’s angered boyfriend, Dennis Hopper, spreads the word. 1971: Jim Morrison dangles from a rain gutter while trying to enter his room through the window. 1982: John Belushi overdoses in Bungalow No. 3. 1990: André Balazs buys and starts renovating the hotel, to much starlet delight. 1990s: Johnny Depp claims to have made love to Kate Moss in every room of the hotel. 2004: Rumors fly that Scarlett Johansson got down and dirty with Benicio del Toro in an elevator. (She denies it.) 2007: Britney Spears added to hotel ‘‘Black List’’ after smearing food on her face.

Natural Selection

Qatar show me the money The ridiculously expensive mega-suite is here to stay, and not just in Vegas and Dubai. Anywhere high rollers play, there’s a pen to keep them. But is it worth it? Here, a dissection of the Gianni Versace suite at Miami’s Villa by Barton G. (the designer’s former house), which goes for QR37,000 ($10,000) a night. • Bragging rights to have slept in what was once Gianni Versace’s own 1,400-squarefoot Miami-Rococo man-cave, kept appropriately over-thetop by the Villa’s new owner, the restaurateur and event planner Barton G. Weiss.

• Hand-painted ceiling and wall frescoes designed to make you feel like you’re floating in the clouds.

• An oversize doublehead shower made with Italian marble.

• A six-seat private bar.

• Three balconies: two overlooking the Atlantic and one overlooking a pool covered with 1,000 24-karat-gold tiles.

• A custom-made, double-king-size bed fitted with jewel-toned Versace linens.

• Stained glass windows throughout.

where ART lives.

• Twenty-four-hour butler service. • Seven closets and, in case you want to do a little fashion show for your mate, a minirunway with a floor-toceiling mirror.

Style Seers

TOP: FROM THE VILLA BY BARTON G. BOTTOM: BEN DONALDSON.

The designers Robin Standefer and Stephen Alesch, the principals of Roman and Williams, are revered around New York for their fabulously quirky Ace Hotel and stunning interior work at the Standard. As they take on a new 30-story hotel on West 57th Street, the duo make some design predictions. What is good design? standefer: A hotel shouldn’t be about marketing. It’s the collection of a particular way of thinking, of curating, of comfort and escape. To create that, we try to find objects and ideas which are familiar yet idiosyncratic. It always come down to what’s personal. What’s next for hotels? standefer: A lot of people are moving toward not being trendy, toward the idea of layering and longevity instead of redoing everything every five years. The idea behind ‘‘hospitality’’ is the notion of hosting someone in your home, and there is a movement back to that. This doesn’t necessarily mean being casual and earthy and low-key; a certain amount of decadence is relevant. We believe

we’ll see more ‘‘stylistic sustainability,’’ the creation of classics — this is where we think the industry is going. What works in a lobby? standefer: Experience has to override design; you can’t just have design for design’s sake. The community creates the success of the hotel, and so we try to make communal spaces that are open to everyone. The more generic, the harder it will be for a lobby to succeed. What is your favorite place to stay and why? alesch: We like quirky, messier places, where the staff is sort of winging it but have so much compassion. We love the Kasbah du Toubkal, in the Atlas Mountains of Morocco. The experience is very local. It’s the direction design is headed.

If you want your preferred customers or guests to receive VIP copies, join our “Preferred Destination Program” email: tqatar@omsqatar.com or call Patricia on +974-44550983 * All prices indicative

The New York Times Style Magazine

WINTER 2010

molto milano artwork by mario godlewski

Bold

face

Milan Meet the stars who set the agenda. Photographs by Paolo Pellegrin Text by J. J. Martin

Miuccia PRADA Milan’s burden to maintain dominance in the world of high fashion falls partly on the slim, often foxcovered shoulders of Miuccia Prada, who, together with her husband, Patrizio Bertelli, transformed her grandfather’s leather-goods company into one of the rare birds of fashion: a brand that is as acclaimed on the critical circuit as it is with consumers. Editors, buyers, bloggers, live streamers and gate-crashers alike anticipate her shows. ‘‘I don’t think about it,’’ she says of her unofficial designation as one of the city’s leading designers. ‘‘I think about doing my work well.’’ That work also includes the Prada Foundation, whose exhibitions of art, architecture, film and philosophy give as much of a kick to the city of Milan as they do to the designer. ‘‘I use my work for doing all of the things I like,’’ she says. ‘‘It’s the perfect instrument, so I will never leave it.’’ 63

Davide OLDANI A taste of Milan’s most exciting culinary offerings requires a trip outside the city center to D’O, a spartan trattoria with 36 seats and bad lighting. What the establishment lacks in decorating, it makes up for in pleasures of the palate, thanks to Davide Oldani, its 43-year-old Milan-born owner and chef. Though his training took place in the kitchens of Albert Roux, Alain Ducasse and the pastry chef Pierre Hermé, Oldani is committed to bringing sophisticated food down to earth and into the stomachs of regular people. ‘‘I call it ‘pop cucina,’ ’’ he says. ‘‘It’s for the people, and we have pop prices.’’ Dishes like caramelized onion with hot and cold grana Padano cheese, or rice with cinnamon, capers, olives and watermelon, are sure to please the masses. The eight-month waiting list for reservations, however, is another story.

Martina MONDADORI Sartogo The amount of killer art on the walls of Martina Mondadori Sartogo’s home — Robert Rauschenberg, Julian Schnabel, William Kentridge, Anselm Kiefer and Alighiero Boetti — would seem like booty suited to a collector twice her age. But at 29, the scion of Italy’s most famous publishing family is bulldozing through Milan’s normally sedate contemporary-art scene at breakneck speed. Since 2006, she has run the marketing firm Memoria, which links brands with art and culture. Her side gigs include editorial director (and artist wrangler) at Tar magazine and partner in the Cardi Black Box gallery in Milan with Nicolò Cardi and Barbara Berlusconi — the daughter of Silvio, who, ironically, snapped up Mondadori Publishing in the 1980s. ‘‘We were criticized about all of the media attention,’’ she says of the press tizzy over her unlikely partner. But the glitter has settled: ‘‘We’re there to work.’’

The BUSINESSMEN

Giorgio ARMANI It’s no wonder the Italian papers name-check him as ‘‘Re Giorgio’’ (King Giorgio). A deity among mere mortal fashionistas, Armani began as a determined window dresser at La Rinascente and singlehandedly flipped the pages of fashion history in the 1980s with his deconstructed suits and beautifully muted palette. Armed with a global vision and a D.I.Y. mentality, Armani has meticulously built a multibillion-dollar empire, seamlessly annexing couture, furniture, restaurants and, most recently, hotels. Mention his name today and even Mom knows you’re talking good taste. Armani says his legacy is ‘‘bringing high fashion down to the normal people on the streets.’’ But his biggest accomplishment may end up on the financial page: his privately owned company is debt-free and controlled by the 76-year-old designer himself — a model of restraint, responsibility and, of course, egomania.

Milan’s biggest deals get signed in the office, but they’re hatched a tavola, over a civilized lunch. ‘‘We have good food,’’ says Marco Tronchetti Provera (center), the chairman and C.E.O. of Pirelli, ‘‘so we try to leverage it.’’ Provera, who also serves on countless boards and international advisory councils, has made tires sexy — an unusual feat that’s in keeping with the country’s inspired thinkers. Similarly, Remo Ruffini (left), the president of Moncler, has wrestled the world’s chicest women out of their fur coats and into his cult-status puffer jackets. Boffi, the design shrine helmed by the C.E.O. Roberto Gavazzi (foreground), has put kitchens and bathrooms on par with couture, while B&B Italia, the pioneer of high-end designer furniture, produced 75,000 sofas for Saudi Arabia in the ’70s and hasn’t stopped since. ‘‘We are slaves to our own success,’’ says Giorgio Busnelli (right), the company’s chairman. The same could be said for his tablemates. But at least they get a civilized lunch.

Roberto BOLLE Roberto Bolle’s first ballet class, at age 6, wasn’t a triumph. ‘‘I was a little annoyed because there were all these little girls and no boys,’’ says La Scala’s pre-eminent étoile (or principal) dancer, who grew up in Casale Monferrato, a tiny town in northern Italy. His tolerance paid off: at 11, he was selected by La Scala and shipped off (alone) to Milan, where he studied and danced up to nine hours a day. Now, at 35, he has twirled for every major ballet company in the world, performing as beautifully for Queen Elizabeth II and Pope John Paul II as he does for thousands of screaming plebes in Piazza del Duomo. His profession leaves little time for parties or dancing in nightclubs, but Bolle doesn’t like them anyway. ‘‘There’s not enough space, and the music is too loud,’’ he says. Well, when you’re used to Tchaikovsky and your own spotlight, who can blame you? 68

Rock Star

on an island in the pacific northwest, a house that is as rugged as its setting but comfortable, too.

text by PILAR

VILADAS

photographs by DWIGHT

ESCHLIMAN

Chiseled features Above: the view side of Merrill Wrightâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s house, designed by Tom Kundig, looks as tough as its rocky setting. Left: its opposite side nestles into the rocks.

Cool and warm The entry, left, is cut into the rock. Wright’s private space includes a sitting room, below, that leads to a book-lined bedroom, bottom. In the kitchen, opposite, top, an informal dining area faces a structure that contains bookcases and conceals a television and laundry room. Wright salvaged the wood siding from a house designed by Lionel Pries, a pioneer of Northwest Modernist architecture. Opposite, bottom: off the living room, a terrace has an outdoor fireplace and a window wall that pivots open like a door.

rom one end, this concrete and glass house looks as if it had burst through the rocks on which it stands. From the other, it seems to nestle into them, a civilized shelter in a wild setting. Of course, the reality involves inspired design and engineering, but the appearance is magical nonetheless. The house was designed as a weekend getaway for Merrill Wright, a Seattle resident, by Tom Kundig, of the local firm Olson Kundig Architects, who is known for houses that are both elegantly rugged and eminently livable. It occupies a 15-acre site in the San Juan Islands off Washington State. A compact, 2,200-square-foot box with a sod roof and tall steel-framed windows, the house consists of a main space, 61 feet long and 12 feet high, with a large kitchen at the back and a living and dining area overlooking the water up front. There’s also a master bedroom and sitting room as well as a small guest room on the main floor, and another guest room tucked beneath the house. What looks like a wood-sided boxcar pierces the house at the kitchen end; it contains a utility shed outdoors and a pantry-laundry room and bookcases indoors. (Chris Gerrick was the project manager, and Charlie Fairchild worked with Wright on the interiors.) ‘‘I always knew there would be a big room at either end,’’ Kundig said; one room would offer ‘‘prospect’’ and the other ‘‘refuge,’’ a duality that the architect considers

important to the design of houses, including his own, where the living room commands an expansive view of Puget Sound, while the kitchen and master bedroom look into an intimate garden. The site’s rocky outcropping seemed to Kundig a perfect place to put the house; it reminded him of Native American cliff dwellings or Greek and Italian hill towns. ‘‘Our ancestors did not put their houses on the most fertile parts of the land,’’ he explained. Not that Wright needed land; she has plenty to spare and has been busy tending it herself, adding plants and trees (200 of the latter so far, with 100 more planned for next year). But she was taken with Kundig’s idea. ‘‘At the end of the project,’’ Wright said, ‘‘I realized that what I wanted was a fortress. He just knew that. And he got this ‘inside the 73

Geology lesson The master bathroom sink, above, is carved out of rock, as is the fireplace hearth in the living room, left, a space with a panoramic water view.

rock’ thing. It wasn’t going to be sitting on the rock; it was going to be in the rock.’’ Being in the rock involved blasting and cutting into it, not just for the house itself but for the long, narrow passage to the front door; the hearths of the back-to-back indoor and outdoor fireplaces; and the master bathroom sink, where water runs down through a series of small bowls that were cut into the rock and polished smooth. ‘‘Rock breaks in its own way,’’ Kundig said, comparing the process to ‘‘pulling a thread out of a sweater.’’ A key player in this somewhat risky business was Jim Dow of the builders Schuchart/Dow. ‘‘It’s hard to imagine we could have pulled it off without him,’’ Kundig recalled. The fact that the process left a lot of boulders was a plus: ‘‘I had always wanted to put boulders together and put glass between them,’’ Kundig said. So they became a carport that is part Mies van der Rohe, part Fred Flintstone. Inside, Wright’s house is what all modern houses should be: generally elegant and clean-lined but cluttered and homey in all

the right places. In the kitchen, a table with a fossil brown limestone top, a mustard yellow settee and a pair of Hans Wegner lounge chairs mark the owner’s favorite spot; there, she reads and works in front of the TV that is built into the bookcase. The living-dining room is a mixture of simple upholstered furniture, antiques and the contemporary art that Wright, a mother of two, has collected over the last 20 years or so. ‘‘Art was our fifth sibling,’’ she said of her upbringing; her parents, Bagley and Virginia Wright, are prominent art collectors and philanthropists, and her three actual siblings are all involved in the art world. Wright’s own taste in interiors was shaped in part by the ‘‘two frightening years’’ she spent working for Jean Jongeward, the legendary Seattle decorator who was known for her sophisticated yet comfortable interiors. Wright called her a “taskmaster,’’ but it’s clear that she learned well. These rooms are grown-up but never fussy or forbidding; you’re happily caught between a rock and a soft place. n 75

CHERRYPICKEd from left: Behnaz sarafpour dress, $1,230 (QR4,477). go to barneys.com. calvin klein collection dress, $2,595 (QR9,446). call (212) 292-9000. RAG & BONE SHOES, $875 (QR3,185). GO TO RAG-BONE. COM. ralph lauren collection dress, $898 (QR3,269). GO TO RALPHLAURENCOLLECTION.COM. Cynthia rowley bag, $295 (QR1,074). go to Cynthiarowley.com. calvin klein collection dress, $2,395 (QR8,718). Alexander wang clutch, $795 (QR2,894). go to shop .alexanderwang.com. 3.1 PHILLIP LIM SHOES, $625 (QR2,275). Call (212) 334-1160.Calvin Klein collection dress, $995 (QR3,622). Cynthia rowley Chemise, $595 (QR2,166), and henley, $210 (QR764). marc by marc jacobs bag, $228 (QR830). call (212) 924-0026.

* All prices indicative

Zing!

Luscious color and a light hand with details define the New york spring collections. get set for A season of traffic-stopping loveliness. photographed by emma summerton. ST YLED BY david vandewal .

FRUIT PUNCH from left: oscar de la renta gownS, $8,690 (QR31,631), $5,490 (QR19,984) AND $5,490 (QR19,984). call (888) 782-6357. opposite, from left: altuzarra skirt, $5,463 (QR19,885), tank, price on request, and shoes, $1,064 (QR3,873). go to barneys.com. michael kors dress, $1,595 (QR5,806). call (866) 709-5677. calvin klein collection shoes, $2,295. reed krakoff dress, $1,290 (QR4,696). call (877) 733-3525. l’wren scott dress (worn underneath), $2,160 (QR7,862). go to barneys.com. tommy hilfiger shoes, $248 (QR903), and bikini, $78 (QR284). 3.1 phillip lim dress, $575 (QR2,093). ohne titel top, $415 (QR1,511). go to barneys.com. proenza schouler bag, $1,750 (QR6,370). go to proenzaschouler.com. Tommy hilfiger shoes, $248 (QR903).

* All prices indicative

HIGHLIGHTERS from left: chris benz dress, $1,295 (QR4,714). go to chris-benz.com. victoria beckham dress, about $2,130 (QR7,753). go to neimanmarcus.com. Marc jacobs bag, $1,395 (QR5,078). call (212) 343-1490. proenza schouler dress, $11,750 (QR42,770), bralette, $395 (QR1,438), and dress, $13,250 (QR48,230). marc jacobs blazer, $1,100 (QR4,004). call (212) 3431490. opposite, from left: rodarte dress, $6,210 (QR22,604), nicholas kirkwood for rodarte shoes, $2,790 (QR10,156). go to rodarte.net. thakoon dress, $3,230 (QR11,757), AND SHOES, $1,190 (QR4,331). GO TO NET-A-PORTER. COM. THAKOON BRA, $295 (QR1,074). AT CONFEDERACY, LOS ANGELES. rodarte dress, $8,260(QR30,066), nicholas kirkwood for rodarte shoes, $2,790 (QR10,156). donna karan new york dress, $2,895 (QR10,538). go to donnakaran.com. thakoon shoes, $1,150 (QR4,186). go to barneys.com.

* All prices indicative

Marine corps from left: alexander wang dress, $725 (QR2,639). go to opening ceremony.us. vera wang dress, $1,195 (QR4,350). go to bergdorfgoodman.com. alexander wang trench, $895 (QR3,258). charlotte ronson bra, $125 (QR455). call (212)â&#x20AC;&#x2030;625-9074. alexander wang sweater, $395 (QR1,438). go to bergdorf goodman.com. proenza schouler clutch, $1,750 (QR6,370). cynthia rowley T-shirt, $220 (Qr800).

* All prices indicative

timeless

Page Turner

After all these years, Massimo Vignelli’s calendar is still up to date. In 1966, the furniture company Stendig commissioned Massimo Vignelli to design a promotional calendar. The result, a 3-foot-by-4-foot black-and-white grid of numbers and letters, was snapped up by the Museum of Modern Art for its permanent collection before a single calendar was printed. And it has been in print ever since, becoming at one point a fixture in the office of architects like Richard Meier, whose books and Web site are also designed by the legendary Vignelli. ‘‘I wouldn’t do anything without Massimo,’’ Meier insisted. ‘‘We both resolve ideas with a grid.’’ For Vignelli — who, with his wife and partner in Vignelli Associates, Lella, is also known for designs like New York City’s 1972 subway

P H O T O G R A P H BY jens mortensen

map and stacked plastic dinnerware for Heller, and who co-designed the just-opened Vignelli Center for Design Studies at the Rochester Institute of Technology — the calendar is an exercise in white space (or black; random pages of the calendars are reverse-printed). ‘‘For us, the space outside the type is more important than the type itself,’’ he said. Vignelli also designed a smaller version of the calendar, which he wishes was still in production. ‘‘Some people don’t have room for the large one,’’ he explained. But no matter: even if Vignelli doesn’t receive royalties for it, he’s happy that the big calendar is still in print. ‘‘It’s nice to see how fresh it still looks.’’ Go to unicahome.com. PILAR VILADAS