Polo Lifestyles August 2022: Prince William seals his Victory with a Kiss

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U K SA ND POLO · ROYAL C H ARIT Y P OLO C U P · B R I T I S H O PEN PO LO C HA M PI O N S HI P F O R T HE C OWDR AY G OLD CUP

SEALED WITH A KISS!

PRINCE WILLIAM & THE DUCHESS OF CAMBRIDGE AT THE ROYAL CHARITY POLO CUP

EXTREME REJUVENATION THE PHILIPPINES' CROWN JEWEL

THE HAVES & THE HAVE-YACHTS EVERYTHING THAT MONEY CAN BUY AND THEN SOME FACING THE CHALLENGES OF PERSONAL GROWTH

A NEUROLOGIST'S INSIGHT TO PROTECTING MEMORIES

THE WORLD OF WINE AT YOUR DOORSTEP

A BETTER 'ME' = A BETTER 'WE'

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Ambassador Claude-Alix Bertrand Publisher

Joshua Jakobitz Editor-in-Chief

William Smith

Aubrey Chandler

Copy Editor & Philanthropy Contributor

Contributing Photographer

Claire Barrett

Contributing Photographer

Eva Espresso

Lifestyles Contributor

Cezar Kusik

Wellness Contributor

Raphael K. Dapaah

Trends Contributor

Head of Photography

Contributing Photographer

Wine Contributor

Art Contributor

Eric CarrÉ

Michael J. Snell Joey Velez

Brett Chody

Justin "Goliath" Johnson

Brand Representatives

Wellness Contributor

Michael J. Snell - The Hamptons Stanley Pierre-Etienne Caribbean Jessica Foret Wax - Santa Fe K & Co. Media - Los Angeles

Polo Lifestyles is a publication of HT Polo Publishing Co. 995 Detroit Avenue, Suite A Concord, CA 94518

Justin Johnson - Atlanta Contributing Photographers Global Polo Entertainment Eric Carre Nacho Corbolan Matias Callejo Kristian Gonzalez

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Katerina Morgan

Polo Photographer

Content Copyright © Polo Lifestyles 2021 All Rights Reserved.

For information or to advertise Contact editor@htpolo.com Read online at www.pololifestyles.com

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GUARDS POLO CLUB Indian Empire Shield DOMAINE DE CHANTILLY Coupe PGH - Deauville Charity Cup INANDA POLO CLUB Africa Polo Cup SANTA BARBARA POLO & RACQUET CLUB USPA Silver Cup ASPEN VALLEY POLO CLUB High Alpine Cup Mount Sopris Cup Rocky Mountain Open Carbondale Classic Triple Crown of Polo-Aspen

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SCOREBOARDS & COCKTAILS

ROYAL CHARITY POLO CUP PHOTOS FROM COWDRAY POLO PARK Page 42 POLO LIFESTYLES EDITORS & CONTRIBUTORS

Ambassador Claude-Alix Bertrand Publisher Polo Lifestyles @haiti_polo_captain

Eric Carré

Photographer EC Photography @ti_carre

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Josh Jakobitz

Editor-in-Chief Polo Lifestyles @joshuajakobitz

Eva Espresso Photographer

Eva Espresso Photography

@eva.espresso

Claire Barrett

Head of Photography

Claire Barrett Photography

@clairebarrettphoto

Michael J. Snell

Lifestyles & Automobiles Contributor @agnello_1

Raphael K. Dapaah Art Contributor Dapaah Gallery @dapaahgallery

Aubrey Chandler Photographer Polo Lifestyles @aubreychandler

Katerina Morgan

Polo Photographer Horse Polo Art Gallery @horsepoloartgallery

Joey Velez

Cezar Kusik

Wine Contributor Polo Lifestyles @cezartastesearth

William Smith

Brett Chody

Trends Contributor Polo Lifestyles @brettchody

Justin Johnson

Wellness Columnist

Philanthropy Contributor

Wellness Contributor

@velezmentalhealth

@willismith_2000

@goliathcoaches

Velez Mental Performance May & Stanley Smith Charitable Trust

Goliath Coaches

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A perfect polo property hits the market, page 104

The haves and the haveyachts, page 72

Menswear trends for spring/sum- The rejuvenation of mer 2023, page 114 Boracay, page 96

MARRAKECH The Selman in Marrakech delights breakfast-goers with live equestrian shows

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BRITISH OPEN POLO CHAMPIONSHIP FOR THE COWDRAY GOLD CUP

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HE BRITISH POLO SEASON KNOWS HOW TO PULL OUT ALL THE STOPS. FROM THE GROUNDS OF WINDSOR CASTLE TO THE BEACHES OF DORSET, WE’VE GOT ROYALS, CELEBRITIES, SOME OF THE BEST HIGH-GOAL PLAYERS IN THE WORLD AND BOUNDLESS ENTERTAINMENT. IT’S A WHOLE JOB JUST TO ATTEND THE TOURNAMENTS, OPENS AND SPECIAL EVENTS IN JULY.

Hats off to the polo photographers who capture it all so beautifully. They face rain, glaring sun, beastly hot weather, sun burn and exhaustion – and of course, on top of it all, our deadlines.

We’re thrilled to have Prince William and Kate, The Duchess of Cambridge, on our cover this month. The prince captained the U.S. Polo Assn. team for the Royal Charity Polo Cup in July and led his team to victory while simultaneously raising muchneeded funds for causes he supports. The royal couple’s joint appearance and touch of PDA lit up message boards, social media and news sites. But far beyond the PDA headlines, they’re a sweet couple, to whom duty and serve has not only been instilled but is a passion project.

Cowdray Polo Park hosted the British Open Polo Championships for the Cowdray Gold Cup and brought out all the superstars. You won’t want to miss the coverage of that final in our Scoreboards & Cocktails section. Now, between the end of the British season and the French Open de Polo, it’s a great time to jump on a yacht and set sail. We have a fascinating feature story on yachts, mega-yachts and gigayachts this month. Yachts are now the most-expensive piece of real estate you can buy and the size of your, eh, yacht says a lot about you to other yacht owners and afficionados.

If you’ve ever been overwhelmed in the Cabernet Sauvignon section of the liquor store, then our story on Cyber Cellars might be the answer to your questions. More and more fine wine fulfillment companies are taking their products to the Web, where they can share nearly limitless information about the appellations you are most interested in. Shipping is even included in most orders of 12 or more bottles and some will even store your order for you until you’ve reached the minimum to qualify for the shipping special.

Cheers!

Josh Jakobitz josh@pololifestyles.com

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agnello_1 Chanel's new store in The Hamptons was a fun stop for luxury and automobile contributor Michael Snell

dukeandduchessofcambridge

The Cambridges were on-hand at Wimbledon where the Duchess presented the top prize

saks

Earring inspiration for summer that will take us into fall, too, exclusively from @saks page 24

bmwusa Check out the latest color schemes and paint finishes from BWM on new models

eqluxe Capturing moments of serenity in the desert with a beautiful model and lovely human

santabarbarapoloclub The Silver Cup is underway in Santa Barbara, these spectators are dressed for polo in @uspoloassn

christofle Picnic, but make it chic with Christofle's line of line homegoods

goliathcoaches Following his column on toxicity, Coach Goliath posted to TikTok where his video had 59,000 views

sisleyparisofficial Upgrade your beauty routine with geometric lip sticks... make great gifts, too

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Click and comment on our choices... Tag @pololifestyles.

We will share noteworthy comments with you next month.

cnn The world's largest pink diamond has been discovered... how would you have it set?

hauteliving Chanel announced that Miami will host their November show to coincide with Art Basel-Miami

uniquehomes_media Ocean-front. Open-concept. Luxury living at it's finest from The Agency RE

cowdraypolopark The Ladies Open Championship at Cowdray Polo Park was a festive time for all attendees

hautetime Beautiful in blue... a timepiece for generations to come from Hublot

uspoloassn The summer must-have multipurpose bag in a great color from @ USPoloAssn

danaromita Views on views on views in this magnificent property listed by Dana Romita

nasa

NASA released a series of incredible photographs of our galaxy captured by their technology

wellingtonlifestyle Rolls-Royce. Wellington. Polo. Need we say more? page 25

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COWDRAY GOLD CUP P H OTO G RA P H S BY H E LE N C RU D E N

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BRITISH POLO OPEN CHAMPIONSHIP

COWDRAY GOLD CUP

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PECTATORS FLOCKED TO THE GLEAMING LAWNS GROUNDS TO ENJOY PICNICS ON THE SIDE-LINES, VIP HOSPITALITY IN FRONT LINE PRIVATE PAGODAS, LUXURY SHOPPING, LIVE MUSIC, COMPETITIONS INCLUDING THE U.S. POLO ASSN LONGEST SHOT AND THE NO.3 GIN BEST DRESSED, AND OF COURSE THE EXCITEMENT OF THE MATCH ITSELF WHICH FEATURED WORLD NUMBER ONE, FACUNDO PIERES, PLAYING FOR PARK PLACE IN THEIR FIRST GOLD CUP FINAL.

A crowd of several thousand settled in around the field to watch the two teams battle into the final chukka in a fast, entertaining match that featured few whistles and fast, open polo. Conceding one-goal on handicap to begin the match, Park Place set the early tone with a dominant first chukka that began with Francisco Elizalde erasing the one-goal deficit on a 30-yard penalty conversion.

Picking the ball up on the nearside at midfield, Louis Hine ran the rest of the way for his first goal and quickly followed with his second goal to give Park Place the 4-1 lead. A long pass from Camilo Castagnola was finished

by Matt Perry to get Dubai Polo Team onto the scoreboard and ignite a strong second chukka that included goals from P H OTO GRAP H S BY H E LE N C RU DE N

Castagnola and Jeronimo Del Carril to tie the game at 4-all.

The momentum swings continued as Park Place regained control with three consecutive goals to begin the third chukka and were minutes from entering halftime with a significant lead, but Castagnola took the ball out of the air and ran it through the goal to bring Dubai Polo Team within two goals.

Adding his second goal, Castagnola inched his team closer by half time, but they remained trailing by one at 7-6 in favor of Park Place as the third chukka ended.

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pectators descended onto the field to tread in the divots and search for the U.S. Polo Assn token which page 31

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POLO BRITISH CLUB POLO DU DOMAINE OPEN CHAMPIONSHIP DE CHANTILLY

COWDRAY POLO RIDER GOLD CUP CUP

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would entitle the lucky finder to £250 worth of clothing. Those in need of some half time sustenance made their way up to the No.3 Gin Bar or the Nyetimber Routemaster bus both providing the perfect spot to enjoy a refreshing cocktail or glass of fizz with stunning views across the field.

The crowd returned to their seats and the second half of the match got un-

derway. Playing one of his best matches of the season, Francisco Elizalde wove through the defense to score two minutes into the fourth chukka. Excelling alongside Facundo Pieres, Elizalde helped change the dynamic of the match as Park Place extended their lead to four due to an organized defensive effort that held Dubai Polo Team off the scoreboard for the entire chukka. Determined to battle back into contention, Dubai Polo P H OTO GRAP H S BY H E LE N C RU DE N

team turned to their own defense to prevent Park Place from scoring, while Camilo Castagnola added a goal and an assist to cut the deficit in half. With the help of his pony, the ball was kicked forward and Castagnola fought off the defenders in front of goal to send the ball through the posts and raise the excitement field-side as Dubai Polo Team pulled within one. With two and a half minutes remaining, Park Place’s page 33

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BRITISH POLO OPEN CHAMPIONSHIP

COWDRAY GOLD CUP

Elizalde stole the ball on the sideboards and sent a pass to goal. On an impressive cut shot, Pieres scored the decisive goal and followed up with a 60-yard penalty conversion in the final seconds to secure the 12-9 victory and the British Open Polo Championship for the Cowdray Gold Cup title.

Cries of joy could be heard from the Park Place team tent as a crowd surrounded the presentation area.

With both the teams at the podium, The Hon Emily Pearson, daughter of Lord Cowdray, presented the glittering Gold Cup trophy to Park Place team captain, Facundo Pieres and patron, Andrey Borodin. The Most Valuable Player award was presented to Francisco Elizalde by Jason EamesIllingworth of Brand Machine and the Robert Graham Umpires Trophy was awarded to Julian Appleby and Peter Wright by Mrs Betsy Graham.

The Best Playing Pony award was presented by George Pearson to Van Nikita, played and owned by Francisco Elizalde, and the Best Playing Patron Pony prize was presented to Open Sting by Ploy Binsaeng on behalf of King Power.

Celebrations continued in the EFG Lawns Enclosure as polo fans gathered back at the bar and up at The Goalmouth Bar party-goers danced late into the evening as DJ Simon Horn took to the decks.

P H OTO GRAP H S BY H E LE N C RU DE N

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BRITISH POLO OPEN CHAMPIONSHIP

COWDRAY GOLD CUP

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COWDRAY GOLD CUP

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ROYAL CHARITY POLO CUP PRINCE WILLIAM LED TEAM U.S. POLO ASSN. TO VICTORY

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.S. POLO ASSN., THE OFFICIAL BRAND OF THE UNITED STATES POLO ASSOCIATION (USPA), IN CONJUNCTION WITH ITS LICENSING PARTNER IN THE UNITED KINGDOM, BRAND MACHINE GROUP (BMG), SERVED AS THE OFFICIAL APPAREL AND TEAM SPONSOR FOR THE 2022 OUT-SOURCING INC. ROYAL CHARITY POLO CUP.

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Held at the impressive Windsor Great Park, Flemish Farm’s Guards Polo Club hosted the event on July 6 for the second consecutive year. The Club is one of only four polo clubs in the United Kingdom that stage elite high-goal tournaments, such as the Royal Charity Polo Cup. The day included several games featuring His Royal Highness, Prince William, Duke of Cambridge, who was team captain for the U.S. Polo Assn. Team.

The other teams competing in the event included Team Monterosso/Vikings and

Team BP Polo. The Duke of Cambridge played extremely well, highlighting his athleticism and teamwork on the field as he led the U.S. Polo Assn. Team to a strong showing on the day.

Kate, The Duchess of Cambridge, also attended the event and presented trophies to the teams. She delighted the crowd when she allowed her husband, Prince William, to steal a kiss, a rare moment of public affection between the royal couple. Kate wore a black and white Emilia Wickstead dress to polo.

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“It is an honor for The Duke of Cambridge to captain the U.S. Polo Assn. Team and for our brand to be the Official Apparel and Team Sponsor for the prestigious Out-Sourcing Inc. Royal Charity Polo Cup once again,” said J. Michael Prince, president and CEO of USPA Global Licensing, which manages the global, multi-billion-dollar U.S. Polo Assn. brand.

U.S. Polo Assn. designed custom performance jerseys for all participating polo players, umpires, and flaggers. Attendees of the event received handcrafted silk U.S. Polo Assn. scarves, pocket squares and special event caps. The annual event raised funds and global awareness for important charities supported by the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, including Welsh Rugby Charitable Trust, The Forward Trust, The Anna Freud Centre, The Foundling Museum, The Passage, East Anglia’s Children’s Hospice (EACH), London’s Air Ambulance, Mountain Rescue England & Wales, SHOUT and Family Action.

“Philanthropy is at the heart and soul of the U.S. Polo Assn. brand, and we are proud to sponsor events that benefit important charitable causes around the world and positively impact the lives of others through the sport of polo,” said Prince. “Supporting high-profile and philanthropic events in the United Kingdom is yet another example of U.S. Polo Assn.’s authentic connection and love for the sport of polo.”

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ROYAL CHARITY POLO CUP

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ROYAL CHARITY POLO CUP

Left to right: Saad Audeh, Juan Martin Zubia, Siri Evjemo-Nysveen, Alessandro Bazzoni, Amr Zedan, Her Royal Highness the Duchess of Cambridge, Aiyawatt Srivaddhanaprabha, James Harper, His Royal Highness The Duke of Cambridge, James Beh, Oliver Fanshawe, Henry Porter, Garvey Beh page 51

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ROYAL CHARITY POLO CUP

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ROYAL CHARITY POLO CUP

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ROYAL CHARITY POLO CUP

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UK SANDPOLO

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PHOTOGRAPHS COURTESY THE ACADEMY OF MOTION PICTURES

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WELCOME HOME WITH ITS PURCHASE OF THE INTERNATIONAL POLO CLUB, THE US POLO ASSOCIATION HAS SECURED A NEW, PERMANENT HOME FOR POLO

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HE UNITED STATES POLO ASSOCIATION ANNOUNCED THE PURCHASE OF THE CORE ASSETS OF THE INTERNATIONAL POLO CLUB (IPC) PALM BEACH IN WELLINGTOWN, FLA.

The USPA acquired 161 acres from WEP Polo LLC and WEP Polo Operations LLC, including Fields 1 through 5, the IPC grandstand, the Pavilion, the Mallet Grille, the Seventh Chukker, the USPA Clubhouse shop, the Outback Field, the Outback facility, and the IPC social club page 68

and its facilities, including a swimming pool, gym, and tennis courts.

The IPC property will be called “The USPA National Polo Center – Wellington” (NPC).

The purchase brings to life the USPA Board of Governors’ vision of a USPAowned “Sunday Field” that will serve as the permanent center of polo in America and set the standard for excellence in polo.

The USPA will continue to host the Gauntlet of Polo® at NPC, but it will also use the facility to support

polo played at the medium- and lowgoal levels. The USPA intends to keep substantially all the current IPC staff in place. Tim Gannon, co-founder of Outback Steakhouse and threetime winner of the U.S. Open Polo Championship®, will serve as Chairman of the Board of a newly formed USPA subsidiary created to revitalize the social club and hospitality facilities.

With its ownership of the National Polo Center, the USPA has secured a perpetual home for polo in America that will serve the same function as the AAPcontrolled Palermo fields and AAP-

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owned Pilar fields do in Argentina. In short, the facility will enable the USPA to showcase its tournaments, develop American players, and sustain an environment that will retain and attract new players and sponsors at every level.

It will also secure the future of winter and spring polo in South Florida, which many of the sport’s key participants from throughout the country rely on as a major source of the annual income that allows them to participate in polo at their summer and fall club locations.

Beginning this year with the FIP World Championship, which will be hosted

by the USPA at Valiente Polo Farm and NPC from October 26 through November 6, 2022, the USPA plans to open the annual Wellington polo season in October. This expansion of play dates will allow USPA member clubs in and beyond Florida to play their tournament semifinals and finals at the National Polo Center when it is not being used for the Gauntlet®.

“The investment in a high-profile Sunday Field will enable the sport and brand to control our destiny for future generations,” said J. Michael Prince, President and CEO of USPA Global Licensing,

which manages the global, multi-billion-dollar U.S. Polo Assn. brand. “With a global footprint across 190 countries, we view the Sunday Field as a unique opportunity to highlight U.S. Polo Assn.’s authentic connection to the sport and build additional global brand awareness.

Additionally, this opportunity will create an epicenter of polo to promote not only high-goal events such as the Gauntlet of Polo®, but also other best-in-class opportunities at all levels supporting key polo competitions and demographics, such as international, low-goal, medium-goal, women’s, intercollegiate, interscholastic, youth and many others.” page 69

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HIGH SOCIETY

THE HAVES & THE HAVE-YACHTS page 72

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N THE VICTORIAN ERA, IT WAS SAID THAT THE LENGTH OF A MAN’S BOAT, IN FEET, SHOULD MATCH HIS AGE, IN YEARS. THE VICTORIANS WOULD HAVE HAD SOME QUESTIONS AT THE 40TH ANNUAL PALM BEACH INTERNATIONAL BOAT SHOW, WHICH CONVENED THIS MARCH ON FLORIDA’S GOLD COAST.

A typical offering: a 203-foot superyacht named Sea Owl, selling secondhand for $90 million dollars. The owner, Robert Mercer, the hedge-fund tycoon, was throwing in furniture and accessories, including several auxiliary boats, a Steinway piano, a variety of frescoes, and a security system that requires fingerprint recognition. Nevertheless, Mercer’s package was a modest one; the largest superyachts are more than 500 page 74

feet, on a scale with naval destroyers, and cost six or seven times what he was asking.

For the small, tight-lipped community around the world’s biggest yachts, the Palm Beach show has the promising air of spring training. On the cusp of the summer season, it affords brokers, builders and owners (or attendants from their family offices) a chance to huddle over the latest merchandise and to gather intelligence: Who’s getting in? Who’s getting out? And, most pressingly, who’s ogling a bigger boat?

On the docks, brokers parse the crowd according to a taxonomy of potential.

Guests asking for tours face a gantlet of greeters, trained to distinguish “super-rich clients” from “ineligible visitors,” in the words of Emma Spence, a former greeter at the Palm Beach show. Spence looked for promising clues (the right shoes, jewelry, pets) as well as for red flags (cameras, ornate business

cards, clothes with pop-culture references). For greeters from elsewhere, Palm Beach is a challenging assignment.

Unlike in Europe, where money can still produce some visible tells—Hunter Wellies, a Barbour jacket—the habits of wealth in Florida offer little that’s reliable. One colleague resorted to binoculars, to spot a passerby with a $100,000 timepiece. According to Spence, people judged to have insufficient buying power are quietly marked for “dissuasion.”

At the Palm Beach show, I lingered in front of a gracious vessel called Namasté, until I was dissuaded by a wooden placard: “Private yacht, no boarding, no paparazzi.” In a nearby berth was a 280-foot superyacht called Bold, which was styled like a warship, with its own helicopter hangar, three Sea-Doos, two sailboats, and a color scheme of gunmetal gray. The rugged look is a trend; “explorer” vessels, equipped to handle remote journeys, are the sport-utility vehicles of yachting.

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We are living through the “greatest boom in the yacht business that’s ever existed,” as Bob Denison—whose firm, Denison Yachting, is one of the world’s largest brokers—told me. “Every broker, every builder, up and down the docks, is having some of the best years they’ve ever experienced.” In 2021, the industry sold a record 887 superyachts worldwide, nearly twice the previous year’s total. With more than 1,000 new superyachts on order, shipyards are so backed up that clients unaccustomed to being told “No” have been shunted to waiting lists.

One reason for the increased demand for yachts is the pandemic. Some buyers invoke social distancing; others, an existential awakening. John Staluppi, of Palm Beach Gardens, who made a fortune from car dealerships, is looking to upgrade from his current, $60 million yacht. “When you’re 40 or 50 years old, you say, ‘I’ve got plenty of time,’ ” he told

me. But, at 75, he is ready to throw in an extra 15 million if it will spare him three years of waiting. “Is your life worth $5 million dollars a year? I think so,” he said. A deeper reason for the demand is the widening imbalance of wealth. Since 1990, the United States’ supply of billionaires has increased from 66 to more than 700, even as the median hourly wage has risen only 20 percent. In that time, the number of truly giant yachts— those longer than 250 feet—has climbed from less than 10 to more than a 170.

Raphael Sauleau, the C.E.O. of Fraser Yachts, told me bluntly, “covid and wealth—a perfect storm for us.”

And yet the marina in Palm Beach was thrumming with anxiety. Ever since the Russian President, Vladimir Putin, launched his assault on Ukraine, the superyacht world has come under scrutiny. At a port in Spain, a Ukrainian engineer named Taras Ostapchuk, working aboard a ship that he said was owned

by a Russian arms dealer, threw open the sea valves and tried to sink it to the bottom of the harbor. Under arrest, he told a judge, “I would do it again.” Then he returned to Ukraine and joined the military. Western allies, in the hope of pressuring Putin to withdraw, have sought to cut off Russian oligarchs from businesses and luxuries abroad. “We are coming for your ill-begotten gains,” U.S. President Joe Biden declared, in his State of the Union address.

Nobody can say precisely how many of Putin’s associates’ own superyachts— known to professionals as “white boats”—because the white-boat world is notoriously opaque. Owners tend to hide behind shell companies, registered in obscure tax havens, attended by private bankers and lawyers. But, with unusual alacrity, authorities have used subpoenas and police powers to freeze boats suspected of having links to the Russian elite. In Spain, the government page 75

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detained a $150 million yacht associated with Sergei Chemezov, the head of the conglomerate Rostec, whose bond with Putin reaches back to their time as K.G.B. officers in East Germany. (As in many cases, the boat is not registered to Chemezov; the official owner is a shell company connected to his stepdaughter, a teacher whose salary is likely about $220 a month.) In Germany, authorities impounded the world’s most voluminous yacht, Dilbar, for its ties to the mining-and-telecom tycoon Alisher Usmanov. And in Italy, police grabbed a veritable armada, including a boat owned by one of Russia’s richest men, Alexei Mordashov, and a colossus suspected of belonging to Putin himself, the 459-foot Scheherazade.

In Palm Beach, the yachting community worried that the same scrutiny might be applied to them. “Say your superyacht is in Asia, and there’s some big conflict where China invades Taiwan,” Denison told me. “China could spin it as ‘Look at these American oligarchs!’” He wondered if the seizures of superyachts marked a growing political animus toward the very rich. “Whenever things are economically or politically disruptive,” he said, “It’s hard to justify taking an insane amount of money and just putting it into something that costs a lot to maintain, depreciates, and is only used for having a good time.”

Nobody pretends that a superyacht is a productive place to stash your wealth.

In a column this spring headlined “a superyacht is a terrible asset,” the Financial Times observed, “Owning a superyacht is like owning a stack of 10 Van Goghs, only you are holding them over your head as you tread water, trying to keep them dry.”

Not so long ago, status transactions among the elite were denominated in Old Masters and in the sculptures of the Italian Renaissance. Joseph Duveen, the dominant art dealer of the early 20th century, kept the oligarchs of his day—Andrew Mellon, Jules Bache, J. P. Morgan—jockeying over Donatellos and Van Dycks. “When you pay high for the

priceless,” he liked to say, “You’re getting it cheap.”

In the 1950s, the height of aspirational style was fine French furniture—F.F.F., as it became known in certain precincts of Fifth Avenue and Palm Beach. Before long, more and more money was going airborne. Hugh Hefner, a pioneer in the private-jet era, decked out a plane he called Big Bunny, where he entertained Elvis Presley, Raquel Welch and James Caan. The oil baron Armand Hammer circled the globe on his Boeing 727, paying bribes and recording evidence on microphones hidden in his cufflinks.

But, once it seemed that every plutocrat had a plane, the thrill was gone.

In any case, an airplane is just transportation. A big ship is a floating manse, with a hierarchy written right into the nomenclature. If it has a crew working aboard, it’s a yacht. If it’s more than 98 feet, it’s a superyacht. After that, definitions are debated, but people generally agree that anything more than 230 feet is a mega-yacht, and more than 295 is a gigayacht. The world contains about 5,400 superyachts, and about 100 gigayachts.

For the moment, a gigayacht is the most expensive item that our species has figured out how to own. In 2019, the hedge-fund billionaire Ken Griffin bought a quadruplex on Central Park South for $240 million dollars, the highest price ever paid for a home in America. In May, an unknown buyer spent about $195 million on an Andy Warhol silk-screen portrait of Marilyn Monroe. In luxury-yacht terms, those are ordinary numbers. “There are a lot of boats in build well over 250 million dollars,” Jamie Edmiston, a broker in Monaco and London, told me. His buyers are getting younger and more inclined to spend long stretches at sea.

“High-speed Internet, telephony, modern communications have made working easier,” he said. “Plus, people made a lot more money earlier in life.”

A Silicon Valley C.E.O. told me that one appeal of boats is that they can “absorb the most excess capital.” He explained,

“Rationally, it would seem to make sense for people to spend half a billion dollars on their house and then $50 million on the boat that they’re on for two weeks a year, right? But it’s gone the other way. People don’t want to live in a 100,000-square-foot house. Optically, it’s weird. But a half-billion-dollar boat, actually, is quite nice.”

Staluppi, of Palm Beach Gardens, is content to spend three or four times as much on his yachts as on his homes.

Part of the appeal is flexibility. “If you’re on your boat and you don’t like your neighbor, you tell the captain, ‘Let’s go to a different place,’” he said. The preference for sea-based investment has altered the proportions of taste. Until recently, the Silicon Valley C.E.O. said, “a 50-meter boat was considered a good-sized boat.

Now that would be a little bit embarrassing.” In the past 20 years, the length of the average luxury yacht has grown by a third, to 160 feet.

Thorstein Veblen, the economist who published “The Theory of the Leisure Class,” in 1899, argued that the power of “conspicuous consumption” sprang not from artful finery but from sheer needlessness. “In order to be reputable,” he wrote, “it must be wasteful.”

In the yachting world, stories circulate about exotic deliveries by helicopter or seaplane: Dom Pérignon, bagels from Zabar’s, sex workers, a rare melon from the island of Hokkaido. The industry excels at selling you things that you didn’t know you needed. When you flip through the yachting press, it’s easy to wonder how you’ve gone this long without a personal submarine, or a cryo-sauna that “blasts you with cold” down to -110 degrees Celsius, or the full menagerie of “exclusive leathers,” such as eel and stingray.

After a morning on the docks at the Palm Beach show, I headed to a more secluded marina nearby, which had been set aside for what an attendant called “the really big hardware.” It felt less like a trade show than like a boutique resort, page 77

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with a swimming pool and a terrace restaurant. Kevin Merrigan, a relaxed Californian with horn-rimmed glasses and a high forehead pinked by the sun, was waiting for me at the stern of Unbridled, a superyacht with a brilliant blue hull that gave it the feel of a personal cruise ship. He invited me to the bridge deck, where a giant screen showed silent video of dolphins at play.

Merrigan is the chairman of the brokerage Northrop & Johnson, which has ridden the tide of growing boats and wealth since 1949. Lounging on a sofa mounded with throw pillows, he projected a nearly post-coital level of contentment. He had recently sold the boat we were on, accepted an offer for a behemoth beside us, and begun negotiating the sale of yet another. “This client owns three big yachts,” he said. “It’s a hobby for him. We’re at a 191 feet now, and last night he said, ‘You know, what do you think about getting a 250?’ ” Merrigan laughed. “And I was, like, ‘Can’t you just have dinner?’”

Among yacht owners, there are some unwritten rules of stratification: a Dutch-built boat will hold its value better than an Italian; a custom design will likely get more respect than a “series yacht”; and, if you want to disparage another man’s boat, say that it looks like a wedding cake. But, in the end, nothing says as much about a yacht, or its owner, as the delicate matter of L.O.A.—length over all.

The imperative is not usually length for length’s sake (though the longtime owner told me that at times there is an aspect of “phallic sizing”). “L.O.A.” is a byword for grandeur. In most cases, pleasure yachts are permitted to carry no more than 12 passengers, a rule set by the International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea, which was conceived after the sinking of the Titanic.

But those limits do not apply to crew.

“So, you might have anything between 12 and 50 crew looking after those guests,” Edmiston, the broker, said.

“It’s a level of service you cannot really contemplate until you’ve been fortunate page 78

enough to experience it.”

As yachts have grown more capacious, and the limits on passengers have not, more and more space on board has been devoted to staff and to novelties. The latest fashions include iMax theaters, hospital equipment that tests for dozens of pathogens, and ski rooms where guests can suit up for a helicopter trip to a mountaintop. The longtime owner, who had returned the previous day from his yacht, told me, “No one today—except for assholes and ridiculous people— lives on land in what you would call a deep and broad luxe life. Yes, people have nice houses and all of that, but it’s unlikely that the ratio of staff to them is what it is on a boat.” After a moment, he added, “Boats are the last place that I think you can get away with it.”

Even among the truly rich, there is a gap between the haves and the have-yachts.

One boating guest told me about a conversation with a famous friend who keeps one of the world’s largest yachts.

“He said, ‘The boat is the last vestige of what real wealth can do.’ What he meant is, you have a chef, and I have a chef.

You have a driver, and I have a driver.

You can fly privately, and I fly privately.

So, the one place where I can make clear to the world that I am in a different category than you is the boat.”

After Merrigan and I took a tour of Unbridled, he led me out to a waiting tender, staffed by a crew member with an earpiece on a coil. The tender, Merrigan said, would ferry me back to the busy main dock of the Palm Beach show. We bounced across the waves under a pristine sky, and pulled into the marina, where my fellow-gawkers were still trying to talk their way past the greeters. As I walked back into the scrum, Namasté was still there, but it looked smaller than I remembered.

For owners and their guests, a white boat provides a discreet marketplace for the exchange of trust, patronage, and validation. To diagram the precise workings of that trade—the customs and anxieties, strategies and slights—I talked to Brendan O’Shannassy, a vet-

eran captain who is a curator of whiteboat lore. Raised in Western Australia, O’Shannassy joined the Navy as a young man, and eventually found his way to skippering some of the world’s biggest yachts. He has worked for Paul Allen, the late co-founder of Microsoft, along with a few other billionaires he declines to name. Now in his early 50s, with patient green eyes and tufts of curly brown hair, O’Shannassy has had a vantage from which to monitor the social traffic.

“It’s all gracious, and everyone’s kisskiss,” he said. “But there’s a lot going on in the background.”

O’Shannassy once worked for an owner who limited the number of newspapers on board, so that he could watch his guests wait and squirm. “It was a mind game amongst the billionaires. There were six couples, and three newspapers,” he said, adding, “They were ranking themselves constantly.” On some boats, O’Shannassy has found himself playing host in the awkward minutes after guests arrive. “A lot of them are savants, but some are very un-socially aware,” he said. “They need someone to be social and charming for them.” Once everyone settles in, O’Shannassy has learned, there is often a subtle shift, when a mogul or a politician or a pop star starts to loosen up in ways that are rarely possible on land. “Your security is relaxed— they’re not on your hip,” he said. “You’re not worried about paparazzi. So you’ve got all this extra space, both mental and physical.”

O’Shannassy has come to see big boats as a space where powerful “solar systems” converge and combine. “It is implicit in every interaction that their sharing of information will benefit both parties; it is an obsession with billionaires to do favors for each other. A referral, an introduction, an insight—it all matters,” he wrote in “Superyacht Captain,” a new memoir. A guest told O’Shannassy that, after a lavish display of hospitality, he finally understood the business case for buying a boat. “One deal secured on board will pay it all back many times over,” the guest said, “and it is pretty hard to say no after your kids

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have been hosted so-well for a week.”

For O’Shannassy, there is something comforting about the status anxieties of people who have everything. He recalled a visit to the Italian island of Sardinia, where his employer asked him for a tour of the boats nearby. Riding together on a tender, they passed one colossus after another, some twice the size of the owner’s superyacht. Eventually, the man cut the excursion short. “Take me back to my yacht, please,” he said. They motored in silence for a while. “There was a time when my yacht was the most beautiful in the bay,” he said at last. “How do I keep up with this new money?”

The summer season in the Mediterranean cranks up in May, when the really big hardware heads east from Florida and the Caribbean to escape the coming hurricanes, and reconvenes along the coasts of France, Italy, and Spain. At the center is the Principality of Monaco, the sun-washed tax haven that calls itself the “world’s capital of advanced yachting.” In Monaco, which is among the richest countries on earth, superyachts bob in the marina like bath toys.

In the morning, I had an appointment for coffee with Gaëlle Tallarida, the managing director of the Monaco Yacht Show, which the Daily Mail has called the “Most shamelessly ostentatious display of yachts in the world.” Tallarida was not born to that milieu; she grew up on the French side of the border, swimming at public beaches with a view of boats sailing from the marina. But she had a knack for highly organized spectacle. While getting a business degree, she worked on a student theater festival and found it thrilling. Afterward, she got a job in corporate events, and in 1998 she was hired at the yacht show as a trainee.

With this year’s show five months off, Tallarida was already getting calls about what she described as “the most complex part of my work”: deciding which owners get the most desirable spots in the marina. “As you can imagine, they’ve got very big egos,” she said. “On top of that, I’m a woman. They are sometimes arriv-

ing and saying”—she pointed into the distance, pantomiming a decree—“‘O.K., I want that! ’” Just about everyone wants his superyacht to be viewed from the side, so that its full splendor is visible. Most harbors, however, have a limited number of berths with a side view; in Monaco, there are only 12, with prime spots arrayed along a concrete dike across from the club. “We reserve the dike for the biggest yachts,” Tallarida said. But try telling that to a man who blew his fortune on a small superyacht.

Whenever possible, Tallarida presents her verdicts as a matter of safety: the layout must ensure that “in case of an emergency, any boat can go out.” If owners insist on preferential placement, she encourages a yachting version of the Golden Rule: “What if, next year, I do that to you? Against you?”

Does that work? I asked. She shrugged.

“They say, ‘Eh.’” Some would gladly risk being a victim next year in order to be a victor now. In the most awful moment of her career, she said, a man who was unhappy with his berth berated her face to face. “I was in the office, feeling like a little girl, with my daddy shouting at me.

I said, ‘O.K., O.K., I’m going to give you the spot.’”

That afternoon, I made my way to the bar, to meet the yacht club’s general secretary, Bernard d’Alessandri, for a history lesson. The general secretary was up to code: white trousers, blue blazer, club crest over the heart. He has silver hair, black eyebrows, and a tan that evokes high-end leather. “I was a sailing teacher before this,” he said, and gestured toward the marina. “It was not like this. It was a village.”

Before there were yacht clubs, there were jachten, from the Dutch word for “hunt.” In the 17th century, wealthy residents of Amsterdam created fast-moving boats to meet incoming cargo ships before they hit port, in order to check out the merchandise. Soon, the Dutch owners were racing one another, and yachting spread across Europe. After a

visit to Holland in 1697, Peter the Great returned to Russia with a zeal for pleasure craft, and he later opened Nevsky Flot, one of the world’s first yacht clubs, in St. Petersburg.

For a while, many of the biggest yachts were symbols of state power. In 1863, the viceroy of Egypt, Isma’il Pasha, ordered up a steel leviathan called El Mahrousa, which was the world’s longest yacht for a remarkable 119 years, until the title was claimed by King Fahd of Saudi Arabia. In the United States, Franklin Delano Roosevelt received guests aboard the U.S.S. Potomac, which had a false smokestack containing a hidden elevator, so that the President could move by wheelchair between decks.

But yachts were finding new patrons outside politics. In 1954, the Greek shipping baron Aristotle Onassis bought a Canadian Navy frigate and spent $4 million dollars turning it into Christina O, which served as his home for months on end—and, at various times, as a home to his companions Maria Callas, Greta Garbo, and Jacqueline Kennedy.

Christina O had its flourishes—a Renoir in the master suite, a swimming pool with a mosaic bottom that rose to become a dance floor—but none were more distinctive than the appointments in the bar, which included whales’ teeth carved into pornographic scenes from the Odyssey and stools upholstered in whale foreskins.

For Onassis, the extraordinary investments in Christina O were part of an epic tit-for-tat with his archrival, Stavros Niarchos, a fellow shipping tycoon, which was so entrenched that it continued even after Onassis’s death in 1975.

Six years later, Niarchos launched a yacht 55 feet longer than Christina O: Atlantis II, which featured a swimming pool on a gyroscope so that the water would not slosh in heavy seas.

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was the oil. After, it was the telecommunications. Now, they are making money with crypto,” he said. “And, each time, it’s another size of the boat, another design.” What began as symbols of state power had come to represent more diffuse aristocracies—the fortunes built on carbon, capital, and data that migrated across borders. As early as 1908, the English writer G. K. Chesterton wondered what the big boats foretold of a nation’s fabric. “The poor man really has a stake in the country,” he wrote. “The rich man hasn’t; he can go away to New Guinea in a yacht.”

Each iteration of fortune left its imprint on the industry. Sheikhs, who tend to cruise in the world’s hottest places, wanted baroque indoor spaces and were uninterested in sundecks. Silicon Valley favored acres of beige, more Sonoma than Saudi. And buyers from Eastern Europe became so abundant that shipyards perfected the on-board banya, a page 80

traditional Russian sauna stocked with birch and eucalyptus. The collapse of the Soviet Union, in 1991, had minted a generation of new billionaires, whose approach to money inspired a popular Russian joke: One oligarch brags to another, “Look at this new tie. It cost me 200 bucks!” To which the other replies, “You moron. You could’ve bought the same one for $1,000!”

Many of the largest, most flamboyant gigayachts are designed in Monaco, at a sleek waterfront studio occupied by the naval architect Espen Øino. At 60, Øino has a boyish mop and the mild countenance of a country parson. He grew up in a small town in Norway, the heir to a humble maritime tradition. “My forefathers built wooden rowing boats for four generations,” he told me. In the late 80s, he was designing sailboats when his firm won a commission to design a mega-yacht for Emilio Azcárraga, the autocratic Mexican who built Televisa

into the world’s largest Spanish-language broadcaster. Azcárraga was nicknamed El Tigre, for his streak of white hair and his comfort with confrontation; he kept a chair in his office that was unusually high off the ground, so that visitors’ feet dangled like children’s.

In early meetings, Øino recalled, Azcárraga grew frustrated that the ideas were not dazzling enough. “You must understand,” he said. “I don’t go to port very often with my boats, but, when I do, I want my presence to be felt.”

The final design was suitably arresting; after the boat was completed, Øino had no shortage of commissions. In 1998, he was approached by Paul Allen, of Microsoft, to build a yacht that opened the way for the Goliaths that followed.

The result, called Octopus, was so large that it contained a submarine marina in its belly, as well as a helicopter hangar that could be converted into an outdoor

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performance space. Mick Jagger and Bono played on occasion. I asked Øino why owners obsessed with secrecy seem determined to build the world’s most conspicuous machines. He compared it to a luxury car with tinted windows.

“People can’t see you, but you’re still in that expensive, impressive thing,” he said. “We all need to feel that we’re important in one way or another.”

If you’ve just put half a billion dollars into a boat, you may have qualms about the truism that material things bring less happiness than experiences do. But this, too, can be finessed. Andrew Grant Super, a co-founder of the “experiential yachting” firm Berkeley Rand, told me that he served a uniquely overstimulated clientele: “We call them the bored billionaires.” He outlined a few of his experience products. “We can plot half of the Pacific Ocean with coordinates, to map out the Battle of Midway,” he said.

“We re-create the full-blown battles of the giant ships from America and Japan.

The kids have haptic guns and haptic vests. We put the smell of cordite and cannon fire on board, pumping around them.” For those who aren’t soothed by the scent of cordite, Super offered an alternative. “We fly 3-D-printed, architectural freestanding restaurants into the middle of the Maldives, on a sand shelf that can only last another eight hours before it disappears.”

Much of the time, superyachts dwell beyond the reach of ordinary law enforcement. They cruise in international waters, and, when they dock, local cops tend to give them a wide berth; the boats often have private security, and their owners may well be friends with the Prime Minister. According to leaked documents known as the Paradise Papers, handlers proposed that the Saudi crown prince take delivery of a $420

million yacht in “international waters in the western Mediterranean,” where the sale could avoid taxes.

Whatever comes, the white-boat world is preparing to ensure future profits, too.

In recent years, big builders and brokers have sponsored a rebranding campaign dedicated to “improving the perception of super-yachting.” (Among its recommendations: fewer ads with girls in bikinis and high heels.) The goal is partly to defuse #EatTheRich, but mostly it is to soothe skittish buyers. Even the dramatic increase in yacht ownership has not kept up with forecasts of the global growth in billionaires—a disparity that represents the “one dark cloud we can see on the horizon,” as Øino, the naval architect, said during an industry talk in Norway. He warned his colleagues that they needed to reach those “potential yacht owners who, for some reason, have decided not to step up to the plate.” page 81

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HIGH SOCIETY

HAMPTONS HAPPENINGS E X C L U S I V E LY F O R P O L O L I F E S T Y L E S

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HIGH SOCIETY

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THE HAMPTONS

HONOREES, GUESTS RAISE $400K FOR CANCER RESEARCH

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ORE THAN 300 ATTENDED THE SAMUEL WAXMAN CANCER RESEARCH FOUNDATION’S 18TH ANNUAL HAMPTONS HAPPENING, ONE OF THE HAMPTONS’ MOST-ANTICIPATED SUMMER SOCIAL EVENTS. HOSTED ON THE BEAUTIFUL BRIDGEHAMPTON ESTATE OF KENNETH AND MARIA FISHEL, THIS BELOVED EVENT RAISED $400,000 FOR GROUNDBREAKING CANCER RESEARCH.

“Over the past 18 years, the Hamptons Happening has raised nearly $6 million for cancer research and with this year’s event we have surpassed that amazing milestone,” said William T. Sullivan, SWCRF’s executive director. “Since its founding, SWCRF has invested more $100 million toward collaborative cancer research, contributing to a number of scientific breakthroughs in the fight to eradicate cancer.”

This year’s event honored Bess Freedman, CEO of Brown Harris Stevens, for the Distinguished Business Leader Award; Mark Melchiorre, Executive Managing Director, CIO & Head of Brean Investment Group,

with the Distinguished Finance Leader Award; Chef Julian Medina, ChefOwner of several popular restaurants based in NYC with the Hospitality and Service Award; and Max Mara with the Fashion Cares Award.

“Cancer has affected all of us in one way or another. We know the struggles of the disease and pervasiveness firsthand.

The Samuel Waxman Cancer Research Foundation has one mission: eradicate cancer. I am honored to be able to participate and contribute to this unparalleled organization and such a worthy cause,” said Freedman.

Melchiorre commented, “Cancer has touched our family many times. My page 87

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mother, aunts, uncles and sister-in-law have all suffered various cancer diagnoses. As a result, our family is very involved in volunteering our time and resources to support cancer research.

The Waxman Foundation is a prominent, local leader in this field, and I am honored to take part in their efforts.”

“I’ve had friends and family with cancer, but because of incredible advancements in treatment, there is always a light at the end of the tunnel. I’m proud to be a part of the Samuel Waxman Cancer Research Foundation’s fight to find a cure and end this disease once and for all,” said Chef Medina. page 88

“Max Mara is honored to be partnering with the Samuel Waxman Cancer Research Foundation, an organization whose mission is to eliminate cancer through innovative and collaborative research. At Max Mara, we honor those who have been impacted by cancer and we are proud to help in the fight to free the world from this devastating disease,” Cristian Notari, CEO of Max Mara USA. While this year was one of the highest-attended years to date, the socialites and their crowds attended in style as we expected nothing less. Attendees enjoyed a night of delicious tastings from dozens of chefs, restaurants, and bev-

erage companies such as Chef Honoree Julian Medina’s Toloache, Coppelia, La Chula and Tacuba; delights from Arlotta Food Studio; Chef Peter Ambrose; Chef David Burke; Phillipe Chow; Union Sushi & Steak; and a curated cocktail selection from Woodford Reserve, who also provided the VIP guests of the evening with individual engraved bottles, Palm Bay, Simple Vodka, Hampton Water and Bridgehampton Breeze Wine.

The event also featured a thrilling live auction facilitated by Heritage Auctions, entertainment by Josh Beckerman, aka The Foodie Magician, DJ Jetset and GR1FN.

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FINE DINING

DRESS CODE REQUIRED TO DINE

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H E A LT H Y M I N D S A N D B O D I E S

A NEUROLOGIST'S INSIGHTS TO PROTECT MEMORIES F R O M D R . R I C H A R D R E S TA K

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S WE AGE, OUR MEMORY DECLINES. THIS IS AN INGRAINED ASSUMPTION FOR MANY OF US; HOWEVER, ACCORDING TO NEUROSCIENTIST DR. RICHARD RESTAK, A NEUROLOGIST AND CLINICAL PROFESSOR AT GEORGE WASHINGTON HOSPITAL UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF MEDICINE AND HEALTH, DECLINE IS NOT INEVITABLE. Memory decline is not inevitable with aging, Restak argues. Instead, he points to 10 “sins,” or “stumbling blocks that can lead to lost or distorted memories.”

Seven were first described by the psychologist and memory specialist Daniel Lawrence Schacter — “sins of omission,” such as absent-mindedness, and “sins of commission,” such as distorted memories. To those Restak added three of his own: technological distortion, technological distraction and depression.

Ultimately, “we are what we can remember,” he said. Here are some of Restak’s tips for developing and maintaining a healthy memory.

Pay more attention.

Some memory lapses are actually attention problems, not memory problems.

For instance, if you’ve forgotten the name of someone you met at a cocktail party, it could be because you were talking with several people at the time and you didn’t properly pay attention when you heard it.

Find regular everyday memory challenges.

There are many memory exercises that you can integrate into everyday life.

Restak suggested composing a grocery list and memorizing it. When you get to the store, don’t automatically pull out your list (or your phone) — instead, pick up everything according to your memory.

Play games.

Games like bridge and chess are great for memory, but so is a simpler game, said Restak. For instance, Restak’s “favorite working memory game” is 20 Questions — in which a group (or a single person) thinks of a person, place or object, and the other person, the questioner, asks 20 questions with a yesor-no answer. Because to succeed, he said, the questioner must hold all of the previous answers in memory in order to guess the correct answer.

Read more novels.

One early indicator of memory issues, according to Restak, is giving up on fiction. “People, when they begin to have memory difficulties, tend to switch to reading nonfiction,” he said.

Over his decades of treating patients, Restak has noticed that fiction requires active engagement with the text, starting at the beginning and working through to the end. “You have to remember what the character did on Page 3 by the time you get to Page 11,” he said.

Beware of technology.

Among Restak’s three new sins of memory, two are associated with technology.

First is what he calls “technological distortion.” Storing everything on your

phone means that “you don’t know it,” Restak said, which can erode our own mental abilities. “Why bother to focus, concentrate and apply effort to visualize something when a cellphone camera can do all the work for you?” he wrote.

The second way our relationship with technology is detrimental for memory is because it often takes our focus away from the task at hand.

Work with a mental health professional if you need to.

Your mood plays a big role in what you do or do not remember.

Depression, for instance, can greatly decrease memory. Among “people who are referred to neurologists for memory issues, one of the biggest causes is depression,” Restak said.

Determine whether there is cause for concern.

Throughout his career, Restak has been asked by dozens of patients how they can improve their memory. But not all memory lapses are problematic. For instance, not remembering where you parked your car in a crowded lot is pretty normal. Forgetting how you arrived at the parking lot in the first place, however, indicates potential memory issues.

There is no simple solution to knowing what should be of concern, Restak said — much of it is context-dependent.

For instance, it’s normal to forget the room number of your hotel, but not the address of your apartment. If you’re concerned, it’s best to consult with a medical expert.

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THE REJUVENATION OF

BORACAY THE PHILIPPINES' CROWN JEWEL DESTINATION

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T HAD BECOME KNOWN AS “PARADISE LOST,” OR A “CESSPOOL,” AS FORMER PHILIPPINE PRESIDENT RODRIGO DUTERTE DESCRIBED THE COASTLINE AFTER IT WAS TAINTED BY SEWAGE.

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The once-brilliant white sand and clear waters of Boracay Island were choking on the trash and traffic that accompanied 2 million annual visitors. It reached a nadir in 2018, when Duterte closed down all tourism on the island for six months—an emergency Band-Aid for decades of ecological abuse.

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B Y PAT R I C I A M A R X / S P E C I A L T O P O L O L I F E S T Y L E S

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THE PHILIPPINES' CROWN JEWEL Then the pandemic struck, and the Philippines closed its borders, halting even domestic tourism to Boracay. It took a severe toll on the local economy, but the silver lining was that this foursquare-mile speck in the Visayas island chain had proper time to truly recover.

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As of February 2022, international visitors returned to revel in this revamped, recuperated, natural playground after what was effectively a three-year convalescence. Locals report the return of flora and fauna, like sea turtles, and hospitality has come back just as

spectacularly.

The luxurious Crimson Resort and Spa, originally opened in March 2018, offers 192 rooms including suites and villas, plus cascading infinity pools, and a private beach.

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Boracay is divided into three “stations,” or areas.

an attached passenger cab — to reach the busier Station 2.

Station 1 is home to White Beach, an area famous for its sunsets, white sands and gentle waves where little ones can frolic and splash. To eat, drink and shop, travelers can walk down the beach or hop on a “tricycle” — a motorcycle with

Station 3 is generally less busy but those looking for the most secluded escape can consider the northwest part of the island — an area locals call “Station Zero.” Home to three luxury resort companies — Crimson, Movenpick and

Shangri-La, it’s for travelers who want a quiet cocktail while their kids build sandcastles on the beach.

With beach shacks giving way to resorts, some travelers may say the soul of the island has changed. Boracay is different now, for sure, but some may say for the better.

THE PHILIPPINES' CROWN JEWEL

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$50 MILLION ON THE MARKET

FOR THIS CARPINTERIA, CALIF. POLO PROPERTY

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O

WNED BY HOLLYWOOD MOVIE PRODUCER AND PROFESSIONAL POLO PLAYER SARAH SIEGELMAGNESS, THE 61-ACRE PROPERTY HAS TWO POLO FIELDS AND RIDING TRAILS.

A luxury polo property played on

by Prince Harry and star polo player Nacho Figueras? Look no further than this 61-acre estate.

This stunning equestrian property in Carpinteria, a charming seaside town in Santa Barbara County, has just hit

the market for $50 million. The owner is professional polo player, philanthropist, and movie producer Sarah SiegelMagness, who purchased the property in 2017. As for why she is selling, it comes down to wanting to travel the world and share her property with others.

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“We play polo all around the world; I call myself a polo vagabond,” owner Sarah Siegel-Magness said. “We have a number of really beautiful properties, and I have a philosophy that one person should not be selfish and keep beautiful places to themselves. I believe multiple people should enjoy multiple properties

such as this because it’s not fair to keep it all to just your family. Whenever I sell a property to someone who enjoys it equally as me, it gives me a lot of satisfaction.”

Just minutes from Santa Barbara and Montecito, the property pairs 360-de-

gree ocean and mountain views with five-star luxury equestrian facilities that rival professional polo clubs. The expansive gated property has two polo fields, pristine landscaping, and all of the equestrian accouterments one could need. For example, there are 100 covered horse stalls, with the option to add 30 more, which offer complete protection for the elite horses that train and ride on the property. There is also an Airstream and a modular lounge, both designed with contemporary furnishings and decor, alongside the fields for players to relax in pre- or post-game.

“The Airstream and the decks are great little spots to hangout,” she says. “They are right on the field. We do a lot of barbecuing here, and there’s also a lot to do on the property, like biking, e-biking, games, soccer, four-wheeling, and lots of outdoor activities all the time.”

There are also tranquil walking and riding trails, some of which lead to the beach, venture into town, or guide you to a neighboring polo field.

For committed equestrians seeking even larger facilities, the two included parcels are perfect for adding additional equestrian or polo facilities, as well as a permanent residence. Siegel-Magness and her family, including her husband three children, use the property exclusively for polo purposes and other outdoor pursuits, and there is no residence on property though the next owner can certainly build one.

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“Polo is a male-dominated sport, generally speaking, so the rarity of this property is that it has a woman’s touch with the landscaping, which is nice,” she says. “It has a different aesthetic than other polo properties, which can be very utilitarian and ours is not that way.”

mountain views. We also really put a lot of creativity and time into making sure that we have lots of native vegetation.

I’m a big flower person, and I’m careful about water usage. We put in beautiful plants and pretty much every part of the property, you’ll see color.”

The existing structures are designed to have a low environmental impact and use solar power. As Santa Barbara has year-round perfect weather, having your own private polo field and equestrian facilities are very beneficial, as the local polo club closes for the season in October. This means committed players can train and play year-round.

The gated property has immaculate landscaping and high-end luxury facilities for an aesthetic and comfortable place for players and bystanders to enjoy. It’s even up to Prince Harry’s standards; Siegel-Magness is a former teammate of Prince Harry’s, and several well-known polo players, like Nacho Figueras, have either visited the grounds or played on the field.

“It’s a beach-lover and a horse-lover’s dream,” Siegel-Magness says. “It is rare, if not impossible, to be able to play polo so close to the ocean, as well as have

“Prince Harry and Nacho have played here many, many times,” she says.

“We also have a lot of celebrities in

Montecito, so sometimes we get friends of our celebrity friends who are also big celebs to come stop by and watch.”

She and her husband are founders of Smokewood Entertainment, which produced the Oscar-nominated film Precious. They are known for producing social justice-minded and thought-provoking films. The couple are also well-known philanthropists, who co-founded the Fresh Air Fund’s Precious Center for Teen Leadership, and are polo patrons in the U.S. and Mexico.

“People who visit here are really happy, and it has a really good vibe,” she says.

The property is co-listed by Fred Dapp and Christian Name.

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Fred Dapp - The Agency T: 310.728.0533 E: fred.dapp@theagencyre.com

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FASHION & STYLE

2023 MENSWEAR TRENDS FENDACE POP-UPS IN NYC & LA page 113

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STYLE

SPRING/SUMMER 2023

MENSWEAR

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10 MENSWEAR I

TRENDS

F THE PAST FEW YEARS (AND WEEKS IF WE’RE BEING HONEST) HAVE TAUGHT US ANYTHING, IT’S THAT FREEDOM TO EXPRESS OURSELVES IN ANY AND EVERY WAY POSSIBLE SHOULD BE CHAMPIONED, AND AS FRIVOLOUS AS FASHION MAY SEEM AT TIMES, THIS BILLION DOLLAR GLOBAL INDUSTRY CONTINUES TO PROVIDE A JOYOUS FORM OF ESCAPE, WHETHER THAT’S IN A PAIR OF DISTRESSED DENIM CHAPS (THANK YOU THOM BROWNE), OR A VOLUMINOUS ETRO CAFTAN THAT BILLOWS IN THE WIND.

This season we got true experimentation, not just from emerging names such as Egonlab, but also from industry stalwarts like Prada who featured leather mini shorts within their line-up.

Silhouettes – pivoting to cater to changing demands – have become much more relaxed, with the shorts suit rising-up to become a stand-out within the tailoring category, and skirts being the preferred choice for show-goers on the street. In more familiar territory the black suit from Craig Green in crinkle textures, or trimmed with fringe at Casablanca looked fresh, and the uniformity of the preppy gentleman stuck page 116

around for another season, this time joined by the varsity team.

The Menswear class of Spring 2023 gave us more reason than ever to delve into what brings us joy – sartorially speaking – and wear it with pride. Here we are delving into 10 of those reasons, and uncovering the Top Trends to invest in for the season.

Nu Rave Meets New Wave The hedonism of the Californian surfer lifestyle is being blended with 1990s Rave culture, as designers channeled trippy prints and thrifted layering into a youthful mash-up of both cultural references, providing a new casual wardrobe solution that could see the return of iconic brands from the era.

The brothers Caten over at DSquared2 embodied the perfect layered combination, mixing Balinese sarongs, extra-long Bermudas, and reworked scuba that was cleverly incorporated into a wavy-checked blazer, while Pigalle’s ombre wide legs were trimmed with a multi-colored rope belt. And as the summer is set to be soundtracked by house-tinged bpm’s courtesy of Beyonce, Day-Glo brights reminiscent of warehouse parties provided the background for graphic logos, and track pants from Vetements, and color block sports sets at Ahluwalia which could usher in a new era for the 1990s shell tracksuit.

Graffiti will also be a print to note as a potential collaboration opportunity.

BY ANGELA BAIDOO/SPECIAL TO POLO LIFESTYLES

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STYLE

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Preppy Deluxe Having been part of the Menswear lexicon for decades, preppy’s elitist codes have been broken down and reworked to face into a generation who believe everything is for the taking.

Championed by luxury fashion houses such as Louis Vuitton, when under the helm of the late Virgil Abloh, as well as Thom Browne, and lifestyle brands including Aimé Leon Dore, the narrative has been revived through a sport, street, and couture lens, which has built a strong community for said brands. With the adoption of the look by younger consumers willing to buy into a less formal version of Ivy League

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style, MSGM’s neon stripe rugby tops paired with airbrushed sneakers will resonate, while Nigo’s second outing for Kenzo embraced patchwork stripes (also seen at Junya Watanabe), and collegiate lettering, V-neck sweaters in cable knits and argyles made a comeback, as did the tie, the accessory to invest in confirmed both on the runway and the streets.

The Short Version In troubling times hemlines rise, and it’s not just skirts that are getting the mini treatment, men’s designers are also taking a risk with micro versions of shorts, it would seem cut-offs are in.

The most directional versions in black leather, seen at Egonlab and Prada, have a clear link to the queer community, who it must be said have had a sweeping influence across the shows. This may hopefully lead to a growing acceptance of all forms of masculinity, as these designs hit the mainstream. But all shorts styling options were a focus, in baggy bermuda silhouettes delivering on the surfer look, or nodding to the uniform of boxers in satin at Etro. Suit pants also got the chop, and gave a modern take on summer tailoring, worn shirtless by most models at Fendi, Givenchy, and Jordanluca, the suit will shake off its stuffy formality in spring 2023.

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Denim Dudes The fact that denim from brands such as Levi’s hold their value at resale and are being elevated to couture-like status by designers such as Glenn Martens of Y/ Project is no coincidence. As a category It has an everyday appeal, and when not bedazzled or embellished has the potential to become a favored heirloom, passing down across the generations.

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rework denim – jeans, jackets, and shirts – into their brand codes. Taak’s knack for artfully destroying the fabric, involves developing a unique jacquard weave, then washing, bleaching, and destroying each piece for a delicately doubled set only equaled in creativity by the trompe l’oeil effects matching Martens disrupted T-shirts with the denim worn beneath. Simple sets also belied their clean cuts, as Bianca Saunders‘ curved sleeves and asymmetric pleats were a highlight of the London schedule.

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STYLE

Hell For Leather Leather was an unexpected twist for summer, especially when facing into soaring global temperatures that are now marking the season, and when it appeared head-to-toe it made for a further questioning of its inclusion, but at a time when consumers are seeking out investment pieces, the material is a safe bet. Black-on-black styling influenced by rock, punk, and western were sent down runway-after-runway, but the real interest lay in the colored-up versions giving leather a spring-like makeover. Sage green shorts were seen at Amiri, while patchwork neutrals featured in a matching set at Marine Serre, but the 80s came roaring back with primary bright red and blue leather being rendered across skinny pants and truckers at Moschino, Celine, and JW Anderson.

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Vest Is Best A very 1990s and 2000s essential, the white tank top has been a symbol of masculinity, minimalism, queer and even DIY culture, since its creation. The one-anddone look is now being adopted as an accessible musthave for the body beautiful. Most stuck to the classic Fruit of the Loom-esque ribbed vest, which was paired with a pair of Y-fronts at Dolce & Gabbana and was so trimmed away at Rick Owens, it was hard to tell if the model was sporting a cropped top. At Versace deep side cut-outs hinted at the beginnings of a bodysuit, with the most interesting iterations coming in from Y/ Project and Dries Van Noten who both gave us camisole styles which hung precariously low at the front from thin spaghetti straps, which faced into the new mood for soft sensuality.

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Bold Bombers The culture around revivals, reboots, and remixes can become tiresome, especially as the recycle/cycle becomes ever shorter – trends from the 2010s are already being mined for their ‘throwback’ appeal. But one style who’s swing back into the fashion orbit is never not welcomed, is the bomber jacket.

Working for a range of bodies and across the gender lines – however fluid they may now be – the atypical shape

of the bomber can be provocative when developed in an ultra-crop, playing into this season’s obsession with skin-baring, or of-the-moment when its proportions are blown up to envelope the wearer like a (squishy) cocoon. Texture was key to give the style an update, with Amiri’s delicate fantasy-inspired embroidered jackets featuring unicorns and a dreamscape, and DSquared2’s tonal sequin embellishment offering a casual occasion remix.

Vacation Stations Channeling the escape needed from the high temperatures which enveloped both Milan and Paris and had many show-goers wilting in outdoor venues, a solution to keeping cool and remaining stylish in the summer was presented in the form of the Resort Shirt. Here designers let loose with print and color, while knitted takes were thrown in for good measure. Patterned jacquards and rainbow crochet stripes were plucked

STYLE

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straight from the seventies at Ahluwalia and Casablanca, Fendi’s crisp boxy shirts are slick enough for the boardroom in golden hour hues, but with the proliferation of skin this season cropped styles from Amiri and MSGM aligned with the moment. And it was Aloha from Hawaii at Celine, where Hedi’s washed-out beach scenes took on a thrifted quality.

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Men In Black (Suits) With many predicting the death of the suit as home and hybrid working took off, we saw a tongue-in-cheek response to that notion with a sea of black suits on the runway, but rather than sounding the death knell, it felt like a celebration of this classic menswear status symbol.

Demonstrating how a well-tailored fit can be used to pull together almost any look, we got Prada’s ‘shop boys’, Rick

PHOTOS COURTESY THE IMPRESSION

Owens creative cutting, Craig Green’s crinkled creases, and Mowalolas curved crop. While at Dolce & Gabbana there was a wholesale adoption, with every kind of option offered, from sheer lace to high-shine pajamas, and a voluminous number that was a Re-Edition from the duo’s spring 1991 collection, giving their customer the opportunity to buy back into the archive pieces that made the menswear division so covetable during the era.

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The Code Breakers Come as you are, was the underlying aesthetic which buzzed across all three cities, reflecting the evolved notions on gender, identity, and sexuality which are taking hold globally, allowing designers to take a human approach to simply designing for bodies, however they identify.

In a rare moment of defiance, it was the emerging designers (clued into the changing of the winds towards more fluid gender norms) who led the way

and showed what the future of fashion could look like. Styling, silhouettes, and shapes were absorbed from a broad spectrum, challenging the editors in attendance, but also their customers to rethink the way they consume fashion and robe themselves, because clothes should be just that, made to be worn by whomever sans exclusivity or judgment.

This season went some way to breaking down a lot of barriers, but it will remain to be seen how these styles – from micro shorts to camisoles, and full-on ballgowns (see Weisheng and

Mr. Saturday for reference) – will be translated IRL, especially in a world that is simultaneously making leaps and bounds yet still seems to be regressing.

Designers to watch from the new guard are Jordanluca (who had some of the best casting at Milan), Hed Mayner, and Egonlab, while more established names brought back the sarong (DSquared2), and the love affair with the skirt continued, going full length at Casablanca, crocheted and twee at Acne Studios, and as part of a risqué ultra-mini skirt suit at Thom Browne.

STYLE

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FENDACE STYLE

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Presented across two celebratory campaign videos, each sees a glamorous cast of supermodels—Adut Akech, Amar Akway, Anja Rubik, Anok Yai, Imaan Hammam, and Lina Zhang—entering the Fendace nightclub to let loose in their fabulously Fendace outfits—as long as they get past the fearsome bouncers on the door: none other than Naomi Campbell and Kristen McMenamy. Looks truly demonstrate the collection’s shared vision, as the Very Versace concept of more-is-more dressing comes together with Fendi’s considered approach to accessorizing and craftsmanship. Print and color is loud and emotive, and fun logoism is fully embraced. Embellishments gleam across gem-studded accessories and jewelry which combine Fendi and Versace brand codes. Styles like the Fendace Peekaboo and Baguette—that combines the iconic Fendi bags silhouettes with Versace codes—and the Fendace La Medusa handbag—where the Fendi FF logo meets Versace’s Medusa—are a clear statement of the collection’s intent to create unique designs with respect for each fashion house at the core.

PHOTOS COURTESY THE IMPRESSION

NYC & LA SUMMER POP-UPS

Fendace is a unique moment in fashion. It’s an exchange of roles and brand codes rather than a collaboration, with designers Kim Jones and Silvia Venturini Fendi bringing their perspective to Versace, and Donatella Versace recasting Fendi through her vision. Inkeeping with this sense of creative freedom and the impulsive fashion show that first announced the coming together of Fendi and Versace last September, the Fendace advertising campaign shot by iconic photographer Steven Meisel captures a sense of fabulous fun and go-for-it flair together with dedicated

videos from renowned filmmaker, Alec Maxwell.

FENDACE

T

HE CAR PULLS-UP, YOU STEP OUT. THERE’S DISTANT MUSIC AND PEOPLE ALL AROUND. YOU GREET YOUR FRIENDS WITH A FLUTTER OF AIR-KISSES AND WALK STRAIGHT TO THE FRONT OF THE QUEUE. WHAT’S THE PASSCODE? FENDACE, OF COURSE. WELCOME TO THE EXCLUSIVE FENDACE NIGHTCLUB— WHERE FASHION HISTORY IS MADE, FRIENDSHIP IS ALLAROUND, AND THERE’S FUN TO BE HAD.

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FENDACE STYLE

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PHOTOS COURTESY THE IMPRESSION

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DIVINE

MARRAKECH

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S WITH MANY GREAT HOTELS, THE SUCCESS OF SELMAN MARRAKECH STEMS FROM A FAMILY HISTORY. THE HOTEL’S OWNERS, SAIDA AND ABDESLAM BENNANI SMIRES, ARE FULFILLING THEIR GRANDFATHER’S DREAM OF SEEING THE FAMILY CREATE A SUCCESSFUL BUSINESS IN HIS HOMETOWN. Educated at a hospitality management school in Lausanne and with a keen interest in Arabian thoroughbred page 134

horses, Abdeslam is a young man driven by his endless enthusiasm. In 2005, he launched a project to combine his two passions within an extraordinary hospitality concept that would set new benchmarks in the travel industry: Selman Marrakech.

Selman Marrakech is a truly unique project that would not have been possible without the support of Abdeslam’s parents and, most of all, his sister Saida, who brings a calmness and pragmatism to proceedings. With their complementary characters, Saida and Abdeslam have managed to create a hotel that echoes their differing personalities, as well as their family history.

Kamil Ennadifi, General Manager at Selman Marrakech, shared what makes the hotel unique and why Marrakech is such an attractive business destination.

What makes Marrakech a good destination for a luxury hotel like Selman?

The local climate is a big selling point.

Marrakech benefits from more than 340 days of sunshine per year, and while it is true winter can bring cold nights, it remains mild during the day. What’s more, this climate has helped sculpt Marrakech’s beautiful landscape, which has attracted the world’s best painters and photographers for decades. Being within just a short three-hour flight of many key European capitals, the city is

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also perfect for short breaks.

Marrakech’s wealth of culture further adds to its attractiveness. The city’s old town – or ‘medina’ – and its many souks are complemented by a new generation of modern-art museums, including the Yves Saint Laurent Museum. It’s fair to say that Marrakech is truly a combination of tradition and modernity. It is also a dream destination for golfers, with 13 world-class golf courses available.

Finally, Marrakech is considered to be one of the safest places in Africa and the Middle East.

Why is it so important that Selman is a family-run hotel without affiliations to any hospitality chains?

The fact that Selman Marrakech is a family-run hotel is what makes it special, and we are keen for guests to feel as though they are at home. As such, Selman Marrakech offers the perfect mixture of Morocco’s famous hospitality and top-class service – without being too formal.

With 50 rooms, five suites and five private villas set over six hectares of landscaped gardens – which also include our impressive 80m-long pool –

Selman Marrakech is a true oasis where each guest can live in total privacy.

Importantly, our staff are attentive without being overbearing. As a result, we have been able to attract a lot of repeat custom, and guests always report that what makes our hotel stand out is the personalized service.

Although the famous designer Jacques Garcia took care of the hotel’s design, the owners’ views were also taken into consideration. The Bennani Smires have also incorporated their favorite pieces of art, adding further to the hotel’s distinctive atmosphere.

Where did the idea of housing Arabian thoroughbreds come from, and how was the breeding program started?

Abdeslam has had the privilege of combining his two passions at Selman Marrakech: hospitality and horses. The hotel contains a live installation of the most beautiful breed of horse in the world, the Arabian thoroughbred, which is an integral part of Moroccan history and culture.

Abdeslam has been able to visit the most beautiful hotels and stables in the world. It was an incredible experience

for him, so he wanted to be able to offer other people the chance to share in this otherwise closed equestrian world, where access is normally only conferred through the invitation of horse owners.

He wanted the guests to be able to enjoy the experience in all its glory and, in doing so, show them the principle of sharing that is so dear to the Moroccan people.

The breeding program, which is called Selman Arabians, was initiated at the same time as the hotel project in 2005 and is inextricably connected to it. The stud farm is located on our 30-hectare property in Rabat, where more than 30 Arabian thoroughbreds are housed. The aim is to command a starring role within the international equestrian scene – something that we are on track to achieve, with many of our horses having won international beauty awards.

How do customers respond to their experiences with the horses?

Our guests are delighted to spend time with the horses and are given several ways of doing so. While some just like to see the horses roaming in the pad-

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SELMAN MARRAKECH docks, others prefer to enjoy our shows, which take place on Friday evenings in front of our Moroccan restaurant, Assyl, and every Sunday during brunch. The latter is an experience offered by no other hotel in Morocco.

on the needs and requirements of the guest, the Espace Vitalité Chenot team can perform and establish specific therapeutic interventions to act on specific areas of the body, working against cellulite, localized fats or cellular ageing by

stimulating natural collagen production.

Our Chenot-trained therapists make it a point of honor to offer individualized treatments that, combined with the idyllic setting, promote relaxation and wellbeing.

Other guests enjoy the opportunity to ride the horses across the property. Our riding expert, Sadek El Bahjaoui, offers an amazing selection of experiences where people can ride easily, even if they are beginners.

What is the Chenot method, and how does it differentiate Selman’s spa from others?

Nestled in the heart of the hotel, our Espace Vitalité Chenot Spa is unique within Morocco. With an area of 1,200sq m, this wellness center boasts an oriental-inspired spa that resembles the hammams of ancient Istanbul. Arranged around a heated central pool, Espace Vitalité Chenot has seven treatment cabins, four hydrotherapy cabins, a jet massage pool, two outdoor heated pools, two steam rooms, a fitness center and a spa shop that sells products from the Chenot range.

We offer treatments inspired by the world-renowned Chenot method, just as they are practiced at the Henri Chenot Centre at Palace Merano. This concept of health focuses on the principle of ‘biontology’, which is based on understanding the evolution of the human body’s vital resources at different stages of life. The Chenot method benefits from 40 years of experience and aims to rebalance the body by helping to rid it of toxins.

Through a personalized care program, it restores the body’s wellbeing.

Beyond the relaxing treatments, Espace Vitalité Chenot offers detoxifying, energizing and regenerating programs, as well as a weight loss initiative that lasts between three and 10 days. Depending page 141

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MANSION OF THE MONTH

STAR RANCH ESTATE ASPEN, COLORADO

JUST LISTED $48,000,000 USD

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MANSION OF THE MONTH

STAR RANCH ESTATE

1200 KESSLER DRIVE, ASPEN

I

NTRODUCING A ONEOF-A-KIND LEGACY ESTATE UNRIVALED IN PRIVACY AND LUXURY. EXCLUSIVELY OFFERED WITHIN THE GATES OF STARWOOD IS ONE OF THE TWO PROPERTIES BEHIND THE IMPRESSIVE SIGN OF STAR RANCH. This stunning property is now being offered to the buyer who appreciates the ultimate mountain dream of owning over 30 acres in one of the most coveted zip codes in the nation, Aspen, Colorado. A sophisticated mountain home that embraces breathtaking views, open spaces, and majestic sunsets from every room in the house. An expansive pond, outdoor pool and terrace, and hot tub complement this special 12,000+ page 146

sq. ft home designed by the internationally renowned French designer Robert Couturier.

It offers a French Country feel with mountain appeal on a grand scale and is only 15 minutes from downtown Aspen.

The house presents five en-suite spacious bedrooms, each with custom detail and personality, and extensive amenities throughout the home, including the wine room, his/her offices, theatre, cigar room, weight room, an oversized 3-car garage, plus auto court for all the toys you could possibly imagine. With stunning outside entertaining areas and truly captivating views, this house is one of a kind for Location, Lifestyle and Luxury.

Aspen is internationally renowned as a winter and summer resort. It offers the finest in culture, shopping and dining. It

is a mecca for year--round recreational activities and offers endless opportunities… golfing, fishing, skiing, hiking, biking, rafting, kayaking and more.

Enjoy its endless beauty throughout the seasons.

Located 200 miles southwest of Denver and 130 miles east of Grand Junction, Aspen is at the southeastern end of the Roaring Fork Valley. The Roaring Fork Valley stretches from Glenwood Springs in the northwest end to Aspen on the southeast end and is surrounded by the White River National Forest. The town of Aspen is surrounded on 3 sides by Aspen Mountain, Smuggler Mountain and Red Mountain.

Aspen is home to three ski mountains – Aspen Mountain and Aspen Highlands and Buttermilk Ski Areas.

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PRICE $48,000,000 | BEDROOMS 5 | BATHROOMS 6 FULL AND 2 PARTIAL | EXTERIOR 30 ACRES

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MANSION OF THE MONTH

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CASTILLO CARIBE CARIBBEAN LUXURY IN THE CAYMAN ISLANDS PRICE UPON REQUEST

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OW YOU CAN HAVE IT ALL: LIFESTYLE, LUXURY, LOCATION AND LIMITED TAX LIABILITY. WITHOUT DOUBT CASTILLO CARIBE IS ONE OF THE FINEST BEACH-FRONT ESTATE HOMES IN THE WORLD OFFERING EVERY LUXURY FOR MODERN DAY LIFE WITH ALL THE LIFESTYLE OPTIONS ONE WOULD EXPECT FROM THE CAYMAN ISLANDS AND THE CARIBBEAN.

Although the Cayman Islands enjoy year-round sunshine and a temperate climate, this benefit is eclipsed in most people’s eyes by the Islands’ offshore status. The Cayman Islands are well known as a financial center on the world’s stage and provide the highest quality of lifestyle available in a tax

neutral environment, making it very appealing to people of high net worth to seek residency here - a position that is actively encouraged by the local government and, as a British Overseas Territory, is a very stable option.

There are a number of destinations in the world that are able to offer offshore status to a greater or lesser degree, but the Cayman Islands have no local taxes whatsoever: no property tax, no income tax, no capital gains tax and no inheritance tax. Castillo Caribe offers a rare opportunity to combine this with privacy, security, luxury and lifestyle all on a pristine white sandy beach overlooking the crystal-clear waters of the Caribbean Sea. The space afforded here is too limited to provide adequate description of all the properties features and amenities, please request a detailed package by emailing: heather.carrigan@sothebysrealty.com.

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NANTES PAYS DE LA LOIRE 44000 FRANCE

PRICE $29,967,206 USD BEDROOMS 8 / BATHROOMS 2 FULL INTERIOR 10,7639 SQ FT. / EXTERIOR 317.29 ACRES NANTES, PAYS DE LA LOIRE, 44000 FRANCE HUS STUD FARM This exceptional estate comprises not only a historic chateau but also one of France’s biggest equestrian facilities with page 154

the capacity to house approximately 400 horses. The castle has been restored and offers 1000 sq. meters of perfectly renovated living space including an indoor pool, a steam room and a gym. The spacious grounds comprise 128 hectares including private access to the River

Erdre, a 30-meter mooring, extensive equestrian training facilities including show jumping and dressage with 200 hectares extra rental. Restored outbuildings, helicopter pad and only 35 kilometers from the international airport. The sale includes 300 horses.

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In Search Cyber Cellars of Solace CYBER CELLARS

T H E WORLD OF WIN E AT YOUR DO ORSTE P

WILLIAM SMITH @willismith_2000 COPY EDITOR & CONTRIBUTOR

F

OR MANY OF US, THE PANDEMIC USHERED IN CHANGES TO OUR LIVES AND EVEN DENIED US INDULGENCE IN THE THINGS THAT BROUGHT GREAT JOY. FOR OENOPHILES, THAT MEANT TREASURED JAUNTS TO WINERIES FOR TASTING AND PURCHASING DROPPED OFF DRAMATICALLY. page 158

One study from early 2021 found a more than 90 percent decrease in visits to wineries in Spain and decreases above 70 percent for nearly every other major wine producing country’s wineries.

Wine tourism collapsed.

niche. In this month’s column, I offer up a few of my favorite online wine sellers.

Explore, imbibe and enjoy!

For wine lovers seeking more variety and less commercially driven brands than those available from local grocery store aisles, that meant new patterns set in for keeping those wine palates piqued and satiated. And in the same way that consumers flocked to online shopping for delivery of, well, everything, wine purchasing was no exception.

Wines ‘Til Sold Out, or WTSO, has developed a strong following by developing a model where a single wine is up for sale until it is “sold out.” WTSO’s limited-time, flash deals profile wines of every type and from every geography. There is no way to know what will be up for sale or how long you have to purchase it. There is no clock that counts down the purchase window and no glimpse into what may come next. It makes the whole thing a bit of a mystery so the best way to know what is currently being offered is to sign up for their

While not a replacement for your favorite local wine store, new purveyors of online wine purchasing have exploded and clearly filled a pandemic-fueled

Wines ‘Til Sold Out www.wtso.com

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alerts.

And while you may not be able to actually taste that wine in the virtual environment, WTSO does an excellent job in providing information about the wine being featured including a graph showing the varietal, vintage, grape, country, region and percent of alcohol. When ratings are available – and they nearly always are for wines that land on WTSO – they are also featured. For example, as I was writing this column, WTSO was profiling a 2019 Chateauneuf-duPape with ratings from The Wine Cellar Insider, International Wine Report, Wine Spectator, Jeb Dunnuck and Wine

Advocate. Every profiled wine also includes technical and tasting notes and usually an interesting note about the winemaker or producer.

WTSO’s model is also premised on delivering up a deal. That 2019 Chateauneuf-du-Pape was advertised as having an original $80 price tag, not available for purchase anywhere else on the Internet, and could be had for $40.

Buy two and shipping is free (though at lower price points WTSO typically requires the purchase of four bottles for complimentary shipping). Wines tend to ship quickly after purchase. Legendary Sauternes Chateau d’Yquem has made

appearances on WTSO, though WTSO excels in bringing more obscure wines from small producers to market.

Wine Spies www.winespies.com Online wine seller Wine Spies promises to “uncover top wines at the best prices in the world.” While WTSO’s model has an inherent unpredictability to it, Wine Spies’ cheeky marketing promises some certainty: We are Wine Spies, a small team of Agents, and masters of our craft.

Every single day when the clock strikes midnight, we feature a brand new wine on our site, at a crazy deal - for 24 hours. page 159

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In Pursuit of the Perfect Glassware

Wine Spies also works diligently and succeeds in providing interesting and extensive information about the wine currently being offered. They also tend to offer a greater number of wines that are familiar. For example, they recently offered a number of different vintages of winemaker Randall Grahm’s Le Cigare Volant at a deep discount (I purchased the 2011 Bonbonne Reserve as well as the 2015 and 2017 vintages and am looking forward to a vertical tasting with friends).

Another advantage of Wine Spies is that they offer “lockers” where purchases can be held and shipped later. A locker is full when it becomes a case of 12 and then it ships for free.

Wine Access www.wineaccess.com “The barrier to the world’s best wine isn’t price. It’s access,” proclaims Wine Access, an online wine store launched in 2017. True to the marketing, Wine Access offers an extensive inventory of wines not readily available elsewhere.

Shoppers can search by type of wine, varietal, country, region and even by food pairing. My favorite function is the ability to shop by Michelin Restaurant, which gives you access to select offerpage 160

ings from wine lists at such establishments as Daniel.

Wine Access offers wines at nearly every price point and frequently offers discounts on selected feature wines. Details and descriptions are extensive for every wine on the site, and a bonus with Wine Access is that they include cellar tags and fact sheets for every wine purchased and shipped.

Wine Access also mimics earlier online wine sellers in offering clubs – six of them to be exact that have set shipments of a certain number of bottles. The Michelin Guide club offers members a selection of wines five times a year that are selected by sommeliers at Michelinstarred restaurants. The Wine Access Collector’s Club is their upper-tier club shipping four times per year “focused on securing and sharing cellar-worthy treasures from the world’s most iconic wineries.”

Underground Cellar www.undergroundcellar.com For the more adventurous among us, there is online wine seller Underground Cellar, which incorporates into the experience an element of “rolling the dice.” Underground Cellar assembles various wines into an individual offer,

sets a price per bottle, and promises that a certain number of bottles will be “upgraded” to a more expensive bottle.

For example, a recent offering, “Investor Cabernet & Blends BLOWOUT,” had a $100 a bottle buy-in where every bottle was worth at least $100 retail, but among the 46 different wines included in the offer, you might be upgraded to the 2014 Larkmead Solari Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon valued at $550.

Beyond choosing the individual offer, there is no ability to choose among the bottles included in the offering and you are seemingly at the mercy of the algorithm that apportions out the various upgrades. I, myself, have enjoyed this element of adventure and enjoyed wines I might have never otherwise encountered.

Underground Cellar offers Cloud Cellars where customers can store up to 500 bottles at no cost. Customers then select bottles from their Cloud Cellar for shipment and all cases of 12 bottles ship free.

WILLIAM SMITH COPY EDITOR & CONTRIBUTOR POLO LIFESTYLES 2022

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ALIGN WITH YO SPIRITUALITY · FAITH · QUESTIONS · GROWTH · FOCUS

ARE YOU

INTRINSIC OR EXTRINSIC? MAKE YOUR MOTIVATIONAL STYLE WORK FOR YOU

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HETHER YOU’RE CHOOSING WHAT SHOW TO WATCH OR WHICH JOB OFFER TO ACCEPT, EVERY CHOICE WE MAKE INVOLVES EITHER INTRINSIC AND EXTRINSIC MOTIVATION. AND YES, THIS IS TRUE EVEN IF YOUR BIG DECISION OF THE DAY IS WHETHER TO WATCH “STRANGER THINGS” OR “OUTER BANKS.”

Maybe you really want to watch Eleven fight monsters from the Upside Down, but your friends just won’t stop talking about the Pogues and the Kooks. Do you choose “Outer Banks” so that you can be part of the conversation? That’s what we call extrinsic motivation. Or do you opt for “Stranger Things” because that’s what you wanted to watch? That would be intrinsic motivation.

No, extrinsic motivation isn’t just a fancy word for peer pressure, and intrinsic motivation isn’t just the ability to ignore FOMO. These two different forms of motivation are a way to define what really drives your decisions: is it an inner desire, or an outside force?

Truth is, you probably experience a mix page 164

of both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, but pinpointing which type drives which decisions can help you learn how to truly motivate yourself in all areas of your life.

“Knowing which of these motivates you can be an eye-opening experience,” therapist Katie Luman, LPC, tells POPSUGAR. “It’s an opportunity to re-evaluate your goals, values, and relationships.” POPSUGAR spoke to four mental health professionals about intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, what makes them different and — the real question of the hour — whether one of them is actually the key to a more fulfilling life.

us happy and joyful.”

Examples of intrinsic motivation include anything you do for pure enjoyment, like: •

Working hard in school because you enjoy learning new things

•

Working hard at your job because your work is personally fulfilling and meaningful

•

Exercising because it makes you feel good

•

Journaling or writing for personal pleasure

•

Learning a new skill or hobby for yourself, not because of external pressure

•

Cleaning your space because you like feeling organized

What Is Intrinsic Motivation?

“Intrinsic motivation involves doing something because it’s personally rewarding to you,” says clinical psychologist and author Monica Vermani, PsyD. Sure, you might receive external validation for a task after you finish it, but that validation wasn’t the reason you did the task in the first place. With intrinsic motivation, “we act and behave in certain ways because we enjoy an activity, a process, a chance to learn, experiment or grow,” Vermani says.

“Intrinsic motivation springs from our authentic selves engaging in what makes

You’re probably motivated by both intrinsic and extrinsic factors, but you may be more drawn to one over the other. According to clinical psychologist Carla Manly, PhD, people with an intrinsic motivation style will likely: •

Value their own opinions about their behaviors over others’ opinions

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OUR PURPOSE IN SY N C W IT H YO UR V IB E

R E N E WA L · C O M M U N I T Y · S U P P O RT · E X P LO R AT I O N · E N E R G Y

•

Do activities for their own satisfaction, rather than being rewarded for it

•

Not require compliments and praise from others to feel good about themselves

•

Be involved in projects in a behindthe-scenes way, where others may not know about it

“Intrinsic motivation is our true self, not distracted or manipulated by external expectations,” Vermani says. Following

where intrinsic motivation leads helps you connect more deeply with yourself and may result in positive mental health outcomes: studies show that intrinsic motivation is associated with reduced anxiety and depression.

What Is Extrinsic Motivation?

“Extrinsic motivation involves doing something because you want to earn a reward,” Dr. Vermani says. Examples of extrinsic rewards might include financial gain, incentives, acceptance, or

validation — or a combination thereof.

Extrinsic motivation can be compelled by positive rewards or as a way to avoid negative consequences, like punishment or rejection, Vermani explains.

“When we are extrinsically motivated, our behavior is motivated by external factors pushing us to do something in hope of earning a benefit or avoiding a less-than-positive outcome,” she says.

Examples of extrinsic motivation might include: •

Working hard at work for promopage 165

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DISCOVER YOUR MOTIVATION STYLE

INTRINSIC OR EXTRINSIC? tions or a pay raise •

Working hard at school for good grades or academic awards

•

Exercising because you want to look a certain way and impress others

•

Learning a new skill for work, not because you’re personally interested in it

•

Cleaning your space to impress visitors

•

According to Dr. Manly, people with an extrinsic motivation style are likely to:

•

Want to please others

•

Find compliments and praise from other people very important

•

Try an activity only if there’s a reward involved

•

Be less interested or involved in a project if others don’t know you’re doing it

This might seem to paint extrinsic motivation in a negative light, but it can be a useful and effective style of motivation.

For one thing, expectation of a reward might push you to try something new, which you might end up finding value in — like enrolling in a required computer science class at school, only to find you have a passion for coding.

“Extrinsic rewards can ignite and promote interest in a task or skill,” Vermani says. And the rewards associated with extrinsic motivation can be significant: things like pay raises, career advancements, and prizes can positively impact your quality of life.

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Intrinsic vs. Extrinsic Motivation: Which Is Better?

There isn’t one motivation style that’s better than the other. “Both have a place in our lives,” Vermani says. And while you might be more motivated by intrinsic over extrinsic factors, or vice versa, both of them affect your behavior.

Let’s say someone only experiences intrinsic motivation. Sounds OK, right?

Following your own internal compass and prioritizing joy. Sure — but it›s also impractical.

«As an adult, if you do things solely for your own pleasure and don›t earn extrinsic validation (in the form of pay, community affirmation) you can feel under-appreciated, disconnected, or invisible,» says clinical psychologist Janelle Peifer, PhD. It’s likely that even if you are highly intrinsically motivated, you’ll benefit from outside validation — and lose a sense of connection with your workplace, class, or family if you don’t have it.

A lack of extrinsic motivation might also mean that you care less about working harder for pay raises or good grades, things that can have a significant impact on your quality of life. Plus, when you’re extrinsically motivated by outside rewards, you might feel inspired to push outside of your comfort zone and try new things or learn new skills that you might not have an intrinsic reason to try otherwise.

On the other hand, a life with only extrinsic motivation may feel empty and meaningless. “Extrinsic motivation often falls short of truly satiating an individual’s core emotional needs and masks one’s internal, individual voice,” Peifer

explains. In general, she says, “people tend to feel dissatisfaction if the balance of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation is skewed.»

These are all good things to know when determining your own motivation style, but also if you’re looking to motivate people around you, whether as a leader, manager, or family member. “If you are a team leader, people manager, or parent, it is best to motivate through both intrinsic and extrinsic means,” Vermani explains.

Too much of either motivation style could leave your staff, people, or kids unmotivated with expectations that are too high or low, and they can even have a somewhat symbiotic effect on each other.

A 2017 study, for example, shows that employees crave validation, and that receiving it can actually boost their sense of intrinsic motivation; people recognized for their work within the previous month were 29 percent more likely to find meaning and purpose in their work, according to the research from Globoforce’s Workhuman Research Institute.

If you’re looking for a fulfilled, satisfying life, balancing out your intrinsic and extrinsic motivations — and helping the people around you do the same — is the way to go.

That way, you get both appreciation and validation from the people and institutions around you (extrinsic motivation) and a sense of personal joy and meaning from within yourself (intrinsic motivation). “There is an interplay between intrinsic and extrinsic motivations,” Vermani explains. “A balance is optimal.”

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MOLD YOUR MIND T H E

P O W E R

O F

U N L O C K I N G

Y O U R

M I N D

DEVELOPING YOUR SKILLS

FACING THE CHALLENGES JOEY VELEZ

@joeyavelez88 HEALTHY LIFESTYLES CONTRIBUTOR

S

OMETIMES I THINK BACK TO WHEN I WAS A KID LEARNING TO RIDE A BIKE. YOU START WITH TRAINING WHEELS, THEN EVENTUALLY REMOVE THOSE TRAINING WHEELS, WHICH IS USUALLY FOLLOWED BY MANY CUTS, SCRAPES, AND TEARS FROM THE CONTINUAL FALLING AND CRASHING. However, at some point you stop falling, or at least on purpose, and biking becomes a fun and enjoyable task. The point being is that in order to become proficient at something, there are going to be bumps and crashes along the way.

This does not mean that you cannot do it, but rather that you are growing by challenging yourself.

When we are young, we may not have the awareness that failure is a part of growth. Somewhere along the journey to adulthood our mind shifts and we begin to become self-conscious of our failures. We begin to doubt our own page 170

abilities, we may begin to identify as a failure, and that may result in our challenging ourselves less and less.

RECENT CUTS, SCRAPES, AND TEARS I recently went through a slump at work.

It seemed as if every brief I gave did not go very well. When collaborating with coworkers on new curriculum, I often felt like I was an impostor and that I did not belong. I noticed myself not enjoying my work, not feeling motivated to do the extra work because it seemed like nothing was working.

Luckily, I work with some pretty amazing, strong, intelligent women. They noticed changes in my behavior and decided to give me a pep talk. What they did was remind me that growing your skills and abilities is not always going to be easy. They used an analogy of video games where your experience levels up higher, your meter fills up, and when you succeed at that level and move on to the next, your meter goes back to empty.

This analogy resonated with me – it was not that I was getting worse at my job, but I was challenging myself with doing things differently because I had leveled up, so of course there are going to be those initial struggles, but all that means is that I am growing. And getting better.

HOW TO – REMINDERS Sometimes we need those reminders to get us back on track. I remind myself through affirmations, understanding my purpose, and leveraging other people.

I just mentioned how my coworkers helped me understand that I was growing. Make no mistake, bringing in the perspective of outsiders can be critical to helping realize when you are not thinking straight.

I know I am good at my job. I know I am trying new things. I also know that failure is a part of growth, and yet sometimes we lose sight of that. Asking those in our inner circle to check our own thinking can be a way to remind ourselves that we are on the right track.

Another effective reminder is by creating affirmations. Affirmations are statements of self-belief of who we are as we move through the world. For example, every morning before I start work, I write in my journal two or three affirmations. The morning I penned this month’s article, I wrote “you make an impact” and “you are great at what you do” to help remind me of why I take the risks that I do, why I put in the work that I do, because it will make a difference in someone’s life.

Another effective reminder is grounding

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yourself to your purpose. Your purpose is why you do what you do; what your end state is. My purpose is to care for, inspire, and motivate others to be the best version of themselves. When I am struggling or facing challenges, the act of reminding myself of my purpose provides the motivation I need to keep pushing forward because I know that I

will gain information that will only help me in help others more effectively.

FINAL THOUGHTS This article is your reminder that just because you are struggling, does not mean you do not have what it takes.

Part of what makes success and reaching our goals so fulfilling a feeling is recog-

nizing the struggles and challenges we overcome along the way. What will help you maintain your confidence, your motivation, and your focus is understanding that failure and struggles are a part of the process. Change your mindset on failure and watch yourself grow.

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LIFE COACHING AND EXPERT

WELLNESS EXERCISES

A BETTER ME = A BETTER 'WE' ACCOUNTABILITY VS BLAME

JUSTIN "GOLIATH" JOHNSON

@goliathcoaches WELLNESS CONTRIBUTOR

T

O TRULY LOVE SOMEONE, YOU WILL FEEL LEVELS OF PAIN THAT YOU HAVE NEVER FELT BEFORE. A HUGE PART OF DIVING INTO LOVE AND INTIMACY IS THE UNKNOWN. CONVERSELY, A BIG REASON PEOPLE RUN AWAY FROM LOVE IS BECAUSE THEY LACK THE ABILITY TO CONTROL HOW THEY ACT BASED UPON HOW THEY FEEL AND THAT’S A SCARY THING! We hear people make the old excuse for avoiding love because of how “people page 174

are,” but it’s really because of how they are. It’s the inability to cope with pain, to address fears of inadequacy, and the fear of being manipulated. It’s the self-talk, the inner voice that tells you how ridiculous you were for trusting that person. The inner voice is the one you go to sleep listening to, so it has an astounding effect on what you do and why you do it.

We can get into relationships without having done the necessary inner work, and it further perpetuates the desire to assign blame and shift accountability.

I’m not saying that you cannot get into a relationship without doing this inner work; what I am saying is this: if you have not done the work, it will most certainly show up in your relationship.

What is the work?

The work is rooted in accountability – the accountability of accepting that

you may have experienced trauma, and this frequently comes at the hands of circumstances that were not even your fault or responsibility. It doesn’t matter who’s to blame; it just matters that you are there with yourself to fix and give yourself what is needed – to address the trauma.

Everyone has a personal level of trauma to deal with. Most of our traumas start in childhood. The way your parents communicated with you or with each other. The way the kids treated you in school or the way your teacher embarrassed you in front of the class. Maybe you had a coach that was especially hard on you or perhaps you had to endure racism, sexism or forms of abuse.

Even perceived trauma is trauma and will affect the child you were, which will inevitably affect the adult you have become.

We must take the time to reflect on our

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toxic traits to locate the influence of trauma so we can create new healthy pathway to use in coping and overcoming. Looking in the mirror will be your best friend in the journey of becoming your best self. Life is truly based on your perception of your circumstances and the sooner you realize that it’s not personal, the easier it will be to fix the issues that require fixing. You can only be what you believe you are and if you live in an ideology that allows for you to accept your toxicity, even embrace it, you will continue to attract and give off toxic energy.

A better me for a better us The better you become, the better your relationships will become.

This does not mean essentially that your partner will be better, but it will teach you how to be better and less reactive. Let’s say your father was a very demanding and dominant individual, then you end up with a very dominant and demanding partner. You may say, I’d never be with someone like my father, but to the contrary, that’s usually exactly who we will create a relationship with. We do this because the traumatic response we lived through as children becomes “regular” to us and we accept what we relate to.

We make excuses for the person just as we make excuses for the people in our lives who did not get the necessary help to conquer or at least cope with their trauma.

We need to spend time addressing our reactions to find a better way of coping with our issues. With the example of the demanding and dominate father, it may make you feel unworthy or incompetent in your relationship. Desiring the validation from your partner that you always wanted from your father may result in being taken advantage of. Scrutinizing these trauma responses allows for you to use more emotional intelligence, and therefore, you don’t react from the trauma itself, but rather your processing of it which is power. You come to recognize your triggers and your inadequacies and work with them on your own and with your partner. You are truly strengthening your entire intimate connection by first spending the time to strengthen self.

What’s blame got to do with it?

Blame is the easiest way for us to hide from the reality that we are not infallible. It is so much easier to sleep at night when you can make the excuses for your relationship and hold the other party completely responsible.

But listen up: the blame game is for the weak, it’s a low-energy expression and does not take higher-level processing to execute. Let’s use an example: your partner is unemotional. You can easily rant and rave about how your partner does not care about your feelings or does not care to make you feel loved.

To practice accountability in response to this, you would first say, I will make myself feel loved and anything you do is a bonus.

Secondly, you must express this sentiment in a time and tone that your partner can truly understand.

Thirdly, ask yourself: Do I value my own emotions and feelings, creating personal boundaries to feel my best?

And lastly, have you taken into account your partners emotions or lack thereof? After you have done the work on yourself, then you can open up to being the supportive person for your partner and relationship to heal and grow.

The healing always will start with you. The way you can observe your growth to a higher self is when you no longer are looking to assign fault. Through accountability instead of assigning fault, you open up vulnerability and a safe place for your partner and relationship to grow without judgment.

Your relationship will not work until you learn how to work the relationship. You woke up today, therefore, you have been gifted another day to become the person you have always wanted to be! I believe in you because I believe in me and we can get better and be better, you can do it, because I am doing it as well.

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