Brummell Summer 2016 by Show Media Ltd

Ones to watch Honouring 30 of the City’s young movers and shakers • Giving as good as they get – making altruism work Raising a glass to British bubbly • Classic cars for modern drivers • Impressive impresarios

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Welcome to Brummell This issue, we proudly present our Ones to Watch listing for 2016, with the aim of showcasing the exceptional young talent populating London’s financial-services industry and related sectors. Our expert panel applied rigorous criteria to the inspiring longlist of nominees to select this year’s contenders. The majority met the first set of requirements: under-40s who have demonstrated innovation, drive and energy while outperforming their peers or markets, who have the potential to rise to the top. But we know it’s not enough these days to just be a powerhouse in the workplace, and the panel’s second set of standards earmarked those who contribute both internally and externally of their companies via mentoring, fundraising, networking, advocacy groups or

the third sector, or by establishing entrepreneurial projects. It was a difficult task, and the shortlist was eventually rounded out to 30 women and men who ticked all the boxes, and more. We also talk to the young City professionals who are embracing the philanthropic message of ‘effective altruism’, a new movement taking hold in the wake of William MacAskill’s book, Doing Good Better; and we meet a clutch of youthful entrepreneurs who have launched new platforms for their personal passions. In an age of cynicism and selfishness, it’s refreshing to see such talent all around us, which is not only effective and inspiring, but often changing lives for the better. Joanne Glasbey, Editor

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Contents • Brummell

Contents 10

Cover illustration: Rob Bailey Show Media Brummell editorial 020 3222 0101 — Editor Joanne Glasbey Senior Art Director Dominic Murray-Bell Managing Editor Lucy Teasdale Chief Copy Editor Eirwen Oxley Green Deputy Chief Copy Editor Gill Wing Art Director Jo Murray-Bell Picture Director Juliette Hedoin Picture Editor Amy Wiggin Assistant Editor Jemima Wilson Copy Editors Kristin Braginetz, Debra Daley, Mikey Fullalove, Tanya Jackson Creative Director Ian Pendleton Managing Director Peter Howarth — Advertising & Events Director Duncan McRae duncan@flyingcoloursmarketing.com 07816 218059 — showmedialondon.com brummell@showmedialondon.com — Visit Brummell’s website for more tailor-made content: brummellmagazine.co.uk @BrummellMag

Foreword The City’s new generation will need vision, stamina and a strong sense of ethics to effect real change, says David Charters Money no object The bespoke portraiture service that puts your pet pooch on your pocket square BEAUMONDE News Paul Smith at Dover Street Market; a stylish swimwear collaboration; private tailoring without the scary price tag; Idris Elba and Superdry; the beauty of blue suede shoes Furniture Plastic fantastic: Kartell brings its fun, funky Italian style to London After the City Twenty five years in the City taught José Pemán the value of aesthetics – and now he’s building a personal paradise in Ibiza

FEATURES Ones to Watch Brummell celebrates the City’s emerging talent pool Creative talent Beyond the boardroom: the new generation of entrepreneurs

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Colour proofing by Rhapsody, rhapsodymedia.co.uk. Printed by Pureprint Group, pureprint.com Brummell is published by Show Media Ltd. All material © Show Media Ltd. Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission is strictly prohibited. While every effort is made to ensure the accuracy of the information contained in this publication, no responsibility can be accepted for any errors or omissions. The information contained in this publication is correct at the time of going to press. £5 (where sold). Reader offers are the responsibility of the organisation making the offer – Show Media accepts no liability regarding offers.

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Racing Family traits run strong in Freddie Hunt, the 28-year-old son of F1 racing driver James Motoring If hours spent under a car bonnet doesn’t appeal, but driving a vintage motor does, consider joining the Classic Car Club City philanthropy The young high fliers who are pledging their earnings to efficient charitable projects Iconic design Leading furniture maker Molteni brings the work of one of Italy’s most visionary designers, Gio Ponti, to its showrooms EPICURE News A slowed-down supper club; new spins on Sunday roast; salads from Peter Gordon; a dedicated poke bar; Obicà’s new flagship; 90 years of Godiva; eat, drink and play golf Culinary ones to watch The hot new chefs plating up in the capital Wine As English winemaking continues to thrive, Gusbourne Estate is leading the way Need to know Burberry’s new modern fragrance for men takes inspiration from London’s past

Foreword • Brummell

New order

Armed with a fresh consciousness, the next generation of City talent has the power to change more than just perceptions

Words: David Charters Illustration: Brett Ryder

Whenever I see a crop of new talent, I ask myself two questions. First, why do they all look so young? Is it just that my generation looks so old? I put that down to us having a lot of miles on the clock – we are still 25 on the inside. And second, were we that good when we were at that stage in our careers? More than ever, I think that mine was the last generation to have a really great time in the City. It wasn’t that we had it easy – competition was fierce, and we certainly worked hard, but we also played hard, in the days before the PC Thought Police ruled out fun. And we were staggeringly well paid. Today, there are fresh challenges, not least of which is the attitude of the world at large towards the City and what we do. At one level, that should not matter – one of the things we should be good at in the City is working out the objective reality of the world in which we operate, and dealing with it. While newspaper editors are trapped in the daily grind of knee-jerk headlines, and politicians are slaves to focus groups and whatever is trending on social media, we drill down to the substance rather than form, cut through the fog, the muddle, and work out what lies beneath. When we get it right, it means we do not have to deal with surprises, because we anticipate future events: Russia resurgent, China going through a bumpy patch, the alienation of the voting public in mature democracies, a new era of regular cyber catastrophes and so on. Surprises in risk businesses are generally not good news, even if you still make money, so we look to apply discipline and turn the world into a more comprehensible place. Does that mean there is no place for emotion in what we do? Absolutely not. We still make judgement calls, draw on experience to help us assess risk and, from time to time, take a deep breath and a big leap into the unknown. On the other hand, we also look at how feelings impact our decisions. Sentiment may be hugely important in the way markets operate, but it is another factor we can analyse, quantify and seek to comprehend. At our best, we are the ultimate iconoclasts, debunking myths and getting down to hard-nosed reality.

We’ve had our heads down, ashamed and awkward in the presence of those who had to bail out our industry

Like it or not – and many do not – efficient, liquid markets are morally neutral, neither ‘right’ nor ‘wrong’ – they simply are. The best outputs of the best firms that deal with these markets are closer to the dispassionate, objective assessments of the intelligence services than the mass media or the sound bites and speeches of politicians. All of which leaves me disappointed when I see how muted the City’s voice is in some of the great national debates going on at the moment. Since 2008, we’ve had our heads down, avoiding controversy, ashamed and awkward in the presence of those who had to bail out our industry – ie, everyone else in the country. In the City, the older generation has a wary, jaded air. Our generals are gun-shy. Far from marching towards the action, they keep their heads down and consider a good week to be one in which they are not mentioned in the press. We will have to wait for a new generation to take charge before the City reasserts itself. Some would say that is a good thing, wholly appropriate for an industry that nearly bankrupted the nation and yet still pays itself on an epic scale and with a sense of entitlement that many living outside the Square Mile find bewildering. Yet, if the City wants respect, it should earn it, and there is no better way than raising our heads above the parapet, engaging fully in the debates that will shape the country’s future, and taking a position – but one based on objective research rather than wishful thinking. At the same time, the new generation will need to tell people what we do and why it matters. It is no longer enough to get on quietly with our work, piling on the bonuses and hoping to be left in

peace, pleading client confidentiality and price sensitivity to avoid difficult questions. That is the old way; it will not pass muster in the post-crunch world. Instead of avoiding transparency, embrace it; shine a spotlight into the City and welcome it. The same generation – some of those profiled in this edition – will also be expected to be active citizens. All the bail-out support, all the privileges, come at a price. The City has never been short of senior figures taking on roles in public service, politics, the third sector. What will be different for the new generation is the expectation that they should contribute at a far earlier career point, while still ascending the ladder, raising a family, building their own financial security. The older generation had the luxury of securing their selfish goals first. The new one will not be so fortunate. Let’s briefly get excited. Imagine creating a national infrastructure commission that took politicians out of the debate about airports and railways and power-generating barrages – all the things our leaders run away from currently – and then imagine staffing it with the pick of our infrastructure experts – bankers, economists, lawyers, accountants – and telling them to make decisions in the long-term national interest. Today, it would be unthinkable, so low is the esteem in which the City is held. But in a few years and with different, younger faces, it could be one of the most transformational steps for any government to take. Whatever happens, we need those new faces. It will be good for the City as they – a large number of them, in the future, women – take on the outside world, all of them sharing a key characteristic: that they are not the old generation. And it will be good for everyone when they undertake leadership roles in broader initiatives that benefit the whole nation. It will be tougher for them than it was for us, and they will be entitled to feel angry at the way we blundered. But as I’ve said before, if it were easy, anyone could do it. ● The Ego’s Nest by David Charters, the fifth novel in the series about City anti-hero Dave Hart, is published by Elliott & Thompson, £6.99

AN ICON JUST GOT LARGER

THE NAVITIMER 46 mm

Brummell

Going to see a man about a dog? Turnbull & Asser can immortalise your beloved best friend on a silk pocket square

Photography: Andy Barter

There’s surely no disputing that the boundless enthusiasm, unswerving loyalty and unconditional love that your dog offers on tap makes your world a better place. (Unless, of course, you prefer a cat.) You can now commemorate this bond and keep your dog even closer to your heart – literally – courtesy of Turnbull & Asser. The new bespoke service from the Jermyn Street tailor celebrates man’s best friend by printing a portrait of your pooch on one of its silk pocket squares. This can be achieved either by uploading an image through the company’s online portal, or by visiting one of its London flagship stores. Even better, 10 per cent of the proceeds from each custom creation will be donated to the Dogs Trust charity, making a difference to the welfare of canine companions across the country. Every dog has his day – as the saying goes – and yours can be emblazoned in your breast pocket. Bespoke silk square, £295; ready-to-wear, £75; turnbullandasser.co.uk

kartell goes sottsass - a tribute to memphis kartell.com

Beaumonde Swim shorts, blue suede shoes, affordable private tailoring and Superdry’s collaboration with Idris Elba

Massimo Vitali/Vilebrequin

Swim with the current ← Vilebrequin has dressed the chicest beachgoers ever since founder Fred Prysquel established the company in Saint-Tropez back in 1971. Prysquel’s early swimwear designs were influenced by both the apparel of California’s surfers and the vibrancy of his French Riviera surroundings, and bold prints remain its signature style. Next month, the brand launches the second design from its two-part collaboration with photographer and long-time beach-scene chronicler Massimo Vitali. This latest features an image of the rocky pool below the Hôtel Provençal on both a tote bag and its Moorea and Merise swim shorts. From £110; uk.vilebrequin.com

Entrepreneurial effect Darren Burn is the creator of outofoffice.com, the first mainstream travel company to focus primarily on the LGBT market. In January, he was backed by ex-banker Ross Marshall and ex-management consultant Andrew Harding. The duo’s own yourgolftravel.com has, in 11 years, achieved the accolade of becoming the largest golf-travel company in the world, with this year’s turnover forecast to be £80m and 400,000 clients so far sent to 3,000 clubs and resorts in 22 countries. Eight years ago, the pair helped launch spabreaks.com and, in 2015, with the Jockey Club, founded racingbreaks.com. This year, the company – having brought together its success stories under the name Palatinate Group – has acquired Love Velo, a European cycling-holiday concern. The savvy travel tsars are sure to go far. palatinategroup.com

Cornering the market ↑ Designer Paul Smith opened his first shop – a modest space of just 3x3m – in Nottingham in 1970. Last month, Dover Street Market relocated to a bigger site on London’s Haymarket and Smith opened a cube-shaped replica of that original store in its basement. The layout of the Paul Smith ‘cube’ will shift to match its ever-changing contents, and everything inside will be for sale, from the prints on the walls to the trunks in which items are displayed. paulsmith.co.uk

True blue ↑ Founded in 1891, French footwear company JM Weston has long had connections to the art world – past clients include painters Kees van Dongen and Maurice Utrillo. More recently, it has been inspired by artist Yves Klein’s ‘blue period’ of the 1950s, characterised by the use of an ultramarine pigment that he patented as International Klein Blue – its limited-edition leather-and-suede Le Moc’ loafers are in the exact hue. £620; jmweston.fr/en

Beaumonde • News

Above Idris Elba wears Idris Elba + Superdry Reversible Coach jacket, £125; Refined T-shirt, £30; Classic jeans, £75. Right, from top: Two-way travel bag, £100; Classic maritime chino shorts, £55; Set suede bomber jacket, £345

Look sharp ← Want the exacting attention afforded by the commission of a bespoke suit without the intimidating price tag? Consider Savile Row stalwart Gieves & Hawkes. It has integrated its made-to-measure offer into an accessible new private-tailoring service. For £1,200 – a fraction of the starting price of £5,000 for its fully bespoke suiting – customers receive an individually tailored garment, crafted to the highest specification, in 8 to 10 weeks. In addition to suiting, plus dinner and more casual jackets, the Gieves & Hawkes private-tailoring service extends to waistcoats, trousers, shirts and even velvet evening slippers. An appointment for a consultation can be booked via its website. gievesandhawkes.com

Dressing the part ↑ ‘We know what Superdry does – and it does it amazingly well,’ says Idris Elba. However, when the company enlisted the actor’s help, it was because it ‘wanted a departure’. He expands: ‘I thought our collaboration should have something of my essence: fewer logos and more smart than casual.’ In a nutshell, that’s the rationale of the Idris + Superdry collection, now in its second season. ‘Idris was already wearing Superdry – picking out what was appropriate for him – and that’s how we met him,’ says the brand’s co-founder, Julian Dunkerton. Like Elba, he’s no teenager, so the project is perhaps an acknowledgement that it was time to tweak the brand’s aesthetic to suit those customers who’d grown out of its more ostentatious style. The result is a collection of shirts, sweats, jackets, coats and jeans that still exemplifies Superdry’s love of detail but presents it in a more refined way. It was inspired by Elba’s own wardrobe: ‘We started with what I wear – and yes, this really is my favourite jeans cut and this really is the type of T-shirt I always wear – and embellished it.’ The aesthetic, he says, is decidedly homegrown. ‘I designed it for the English gent – you know, we like a particular cut of skinny jeans, we like a certain fit when it comes to knitwear.’ For Dunkerton, Elba’s the perfect collaborator for a brand looking to broaden its appeal: ‘He’s the coolest Englishman out there.’ The collection is available from May; superdry.com/idris

Beaumonde • Furniture

Flexible friends With the launch of Kartell’s London flagship, its CEO, Claudio Luti, talks Italian flair and stylish, funky furniture

Words: Gemma Billington

Above Designed by Piero Lissoni, Kartell’s revolutionary new lightweight Piuma chair has a maximum thickness of 2mm

Nearly 70 years since its inception, furnituremanufacturing giant Kartell has become a symbol of modern Italian design, renowned for products that merge style, wit and technical innovation. Kartell was founded in 1949 by chemical engineer Giulio Castelli and his wife Anna Castelli Ferrieri. The couple shared a vision to produce objects with ‘innovative characteristics’ to which ‘new manufacturing technologies’ could be applied. The Castellis were part of a generation of influential post-war Italian designers that included the likes of Pier Giacomo and Achille Castiglioni, Ettore Sottsass and Gae Aulenti. Nearing retirement in the late 1980s, the couple decided to pass on the company baton to their son-in-law, Claudio Luti. Ostensibly, he was not the most obvious candidate. Luti had studied economics before going on to work in fashion. After more than a decade as Gianni Versace’s right-hand man, he felt ready for a change. The opportunity to take over Kartell arrived at just the right time. The transition from fashion to furniture was, he admits, a challenge in the beginning, but the ever-resourceful Luti embraced it with open arms. The move provided him with a chance to start afresh and to implement his own strategy. On taking over as CEO in 1988, Luti swiftly realised his role in the reinvention of Kartell. ‘On the one hand, it was clear in my mind that I had to respect Kartell’s DNA,’ he explains. ‘On the other, I wanted to completely revolutionise the perception of the brand and of plastic materials.’ As a creative medium, plastic has always had a bit of a bad rep. Following a surge in popularity in the 1960s and 70s, it rapidly fell out of favour. Luti’s ingenious plan was to enlist the help of some of the industry’s most exciting and revered

talents to restore the appeal of plastic and to explore its technical capabilities. In 1988, Luti collaborated with Philippe Starck on the Dr. Glob ‘stacking’ seat, which was made using a special plastic polypropylene compound. Another innovation came in 1999 with ‘La Marie’, again in collaboration with Starck. It was the world’s first fully transparent chair, formed from a single polycarbonate mould. These early works, Luti explains, ‘embodied all the key elements found in Kartell products: research, high quality, glamorous design and functionality.’ They also marked the beginning of an ongoing relationship with Starck, who has created some of Kartell’s most iconic pieces. Collaboration continues to play a pivotal role for the company. Among this year’s launches – which include lamps from artist Tokujin Yoshioka and previously unreleased pieces by the late Ettore Sottsass – is the Piuma by Piero Lissoni, a thin, light and durable chair weighing in at just 2.2kg. Kartell reached another milestone with the launch of its first UK flagship earlier this year. Located in London’s Brompton Design District, the showroom features an ‘all-round Kartell lifestyle’ concept. Alongside its core furniture collections, it also offers lighting, fragrances, bathroom fittings and fashion accessories. Never one to rest on his laurels, Luti hopes that the opening will encourage new collaborations with London designers and architects. ‘I see this new flagship as a sort of “operational beachhead” for setting up new projects,’ he explains. ‘Today, the entire company is proud to have a new home in London. Nothing but great projects can spring from it.’ ● kartell.com

Beaumonde • After the City

Home and away After a career that included 25 years in the City, José Pemán has returned to Ibiza, where he’s building a personal paradise

Words: Charlotte Metcalf Photography: Maria Simon

José Pemán is showing me an exciting sculpture by Mascaró, one of a number of modern works gracing the terrace of his Ibiza home. The bold, contemporary house is painted a vibrant burnt orange, and is hewn into a mountainside that commands views over the island and beyond to Formentera. Pemán began building this home 18 years ago, returning to the island where he once lived as a hippy and musician after leaving his home town of Valencia as a teenager. When he talks about his career, his manner is so relaxed that it seems like an effortless arc from Ibiza and back again. Yet in the middle were 25 or so years in the City, where Pemán’s career soared. ‘I was studying politics at the University of Virginia and a friend suggested I’d gain some political insight if I dipped into the world of finance. So I went to see Chase Manhattan in New York,’ remembers Pemán. There began his meteoric rise, via Venezuela to London, where he became CEO of Chase’s investment bank.

‘My father told me that you can work for someone or for something, or you can work for yourself. I reckoned I’d done the first two, and I was in my fifties and the right age – I’d reached my top level of incompetence,’ he laughs. ‘Besides, to progress I would have had to move to New York, and I had no intention of doing that because London was in my blood.’ In fact, Pemán left for Madrid to found his own investment house. ‘I wanted to be near my family, but then I was asked to be a director of Enskilda Securities, which brought me back to London. Through Enskilda I met three important people in my life: Gerard de Geer, Hans Hermann Münchmeyer and Martin Andersson. We founded Brunswick Investments Ltd, Moscow’s most successful broker-dealer house, and then sold it to UBS a few years later.’ Pemán had made his fortune, but then became ill with cancer. ‘I was being treated in Madrid but resting in Ibiza,’ he explains. ‘Every time I came here it was paradise, and I started thinking about living where I worked instead of rushing around between places.’ Pemán was already vice president of Procisa, a Madrid-based property company in which he’d also invested. ‘Luis Garcia Cereceda, my partner, who is sadly dead now, was the brain behind Madrid’s La Finca, one of Spain’s first exclusive gated communities. I worked with him for 10 years and we built 400 houses. He was the best developer in the country – creative, with fantastically good taste. I learnt a lot from him.’ ‘I looked around Ibiza and saw that there were either houses sprawling all over the mountains, or apartment blocks ruining the skyline. I wanted to build a secure complex like La Finca that blended with the terrain, managed from the inside so people living abroad could feel secure and know they could pick up the phone and have anything they wanted,’ says Pemán of his next move. Pemán teamed up with architect Maged Bermawi and created Calaconta, a seaside complex of 33 luxury houses, 30 minutes from Ibiza town. Six of the properties comprise the Calaconta Collection – larger builds with interior patios. ‘I want every house to have its own sky,’ enthuses Pemán. ‘Good taste is about having the courage to please yourself – perfection is the enemy of beauty. I think this place pleases most people,’ he smiles, sweeping his hand around the Calaconta living room we’re now standing in, open on two sides to the sea beyond. ‘One thing I learnt from Chase is that chief executives don’t just run the place, they convey a style. That was certainly true of David Rockefeller. Other American banks in London were having beer and pretzels at 4pm, but we had high tea; and Chase had one of the finest art collections. In the City I learnt the value of aesthetics in the workplace.’ He also learnt the importance of teams. ‘The City used to hire individuals, but from the 1980s it started hiring teams of four, five, six people at a time. It’s cheaper, faster and more efficient, and that’s how I work now.’ Though he still visits London, Ibiza is where Pemán plans to stay. Looking out from his terrace, resplendent with sculpture and ancient trees, over lawns to the sea beyond, who can blame him? ● calaconta.es

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Ones to Watch â&#x20AC;˘ Brummell

Ones to Watch 2016 Brummell is proud to reveal the fourth annual Ones to Watch listing, celebrating the breadth, performance and achievement of bright young talent in Londonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s financial services sector and allied fields. The judging panel, comprising experienced professionals and high achievers from different parts of the industry, applied rigorous criteria to the lengthy list of nominations. Nominees are required to be under 40 years of age and an outperformer in their market and, beyond that,

need to demonstrate drive, energy and an entrepreneurial spirit. Additionally, the judges looked for evidence of a nomineeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s holistic contribution to the organisation for which he or she works, whether internally, as a leader of a networking or advocacy group, or externally, as a champion of a charity, mentoring programme or other such project. The 30 individuals selected are on the ascent and, just as importantly, making the world a better place by giving back on their way up.

Words: Jemima Wilson Photography: Trent McMinn Co-ordinator: Duncan McRae

Brummell • Ones to Watch Claire-Marie Smith ← Director, Coutts Smith heads Coutts’ private and business banking and is responsible for 40 per cent of the brand’s client base, with 90 members of staff under her remit. Previously, she managed fraud prevention across the wealth division in RBS, helping to shape its robust security and fraud-prevention strategy. A strong advocate for diversity and inclusion, Smith is a key figure in Coutts’ mentoring scheme, as well as a mentoring programme with Arrival Education, which spots young talent from all walks of life. She also provides external coaching on fraud and financial awareness to a number of schools and businesses.

Mike Mompi → Director of early growth ventures, ClearlySo Working with companies that have a positive impact on society and the environment, since 2013 Mompi has led transactions for more than 40 of ClearlySo’s nearly 100 client businesses, leading to capital-raising activity exceeding £100m in valuesaligned investment. He also led the UK Business Angel Association’s Social Impact Investment Deal of the Year in 2015, 2014 and 2013. He currently sits on the European Business Angel Network’s (EBAN) Impact Investment Committee (EIIC), is a Trustee at MyBnk, and co-founded and sits on the Board of MakeSense UK.

Melanie Aimer Global head of client development, global markets, BNP Paribas After joining BNP Paribas in 2013, Aimer built a new global client development team to cover fixed income and now global markets spanning all trading regions across the bank. She formally and informally mentors within BNP Paribas and currently sits on the bank’s global corporate sales and global institutional sales committees, as well as the UK Diversity & Inclusion Council. Aimer is often invited to be a keynote speaker at top talent, diversity and inclusion events with other nonfinancial global organisations.

Naomi Bowman Global legal chief operating officer, HSBC Having worked on some of the most prominent UK banking administrations, integrations and mandatory regulatory changes of the past decade, Bowman has achieved notable career success. She has held several positions at HSBC, including head of business management and strategy for the Global Standards Programme, where she created the function responsible for financial and vendor management and resourcing strategy. Bowman is an active diversity champion and was Women in the City’s Future Leaders Award winner in 2014.

Karina Burrowes EMEA technical support manager, Bloomberg LP Burrowes joined Bloomberg as a graduate in 2011 and has progressed from individual contributor to leader, then manager in less than five years. A co-leader of the Bloomberg Women’s Community, Burrowes has a strong interest in gender diversity and is an advocate for a number of women in the technical-support department. She has organised events on topics linked to diversity and inclusion, from panel discussions to a workshop for leaders on male advocacy, which explored ways of tackling workplace gender issues.

Ones to Watch • Brummell Deepti Vohra ← Director, financial services, PwC Vohra has continuously progressed her career since joining PwC as a graduate. Passionate about workplace equality, inclusion and talent, she has an active role in PwC’s Gender Balance network and has mentored girls in school, university and within the company. Outside PwC she is a board trustee for a local charity and works with the insurance industry charitable foundation, leveraging her networks to increase charitable contributions. She is also working with Level 20, a non-profit organisation set up to promote the number of women in private equity.

Helen Campbell Senior manager, PwC Specialising in the management of large transformation programmes, Campbell leads a growing team in her sector. As one of the co-founders of GLEE@PwC, the firm’s inclusive and businessfocused LGBT network, she sits on the leadership team setting the network’s strategic direction and acts as a visible lesbian role model. She also led the creation of the GLEE@PwC Foundation to spearhead a strategy, focus and structure to increase the network’s outreach in the community, and has helped launch GLEE Northern and Republic of Ireland over the past year.

Ben Canning Managing director, BNP Paribas Canning heads up UK and emerging markets equity capital markets in London. He leads mandate origination and oversees execution of stock market floats, rights issues and convertible bonds. He also works with FTSE clients, and on first-of-a-kind floats in London for companies from Russia, Kazakhstan and Nigeria. Canning co-chairs BNP Paribas’ UK Ability Network, which provides support to those differently abled and educates the wider employee base on disability. Last year, numerous events were held to break down the stigma associated with mental illness.

Emily Coates Consultant, sustainability and climate change, PwC Coates has been promoted within PwC each year since 2014, and in her current role focuses on women’s economic empowerment and human rights with multinationals. She is the mental health champion in PwC’s disability, ability and well-being network, and has founded and supported numerous initiatives – notably representing PwC at a mentalhealth event and arranging a nationwide online conversation with executive board members. She was awarded the PwC consulting department’s Inspirational Colleague Award in 2015.

Isobel de Carles Human resources graduate programme, RBS De Carles has played key roles in many diversity initiatives at RBS and externally. She set up the Multicultural Network at Williams & Glyn; helped design the RBS Senior Leadership Development Programme and started the Female Leaders Insight week, in which students can shadow senior women at RBS. She helped establish the Inspiring Leadership Trust, supporting vulnerable women and children through education, and led the 2015 launch event. She is studying for a Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development qualification.

Stephen Evans Private banking executive, Barclays Wealth and Investment Management Prior to joining Barclays in 2010, Evans had a strong sporting career, competing for Great Britain at the highest level in wheelchair basketball and wheelchair tennis. He now works with a team that manages more than £1bn-worth of assets under management generating £10m of revenues, and is a specialist at understanding complicated international structures for HNW res-non-dom and US offshore clients. He mentors junior banking aspirants within Barclays and supports the Peter Westropp Memorial Trust to raise funds for unpaid carers.

Jenny Fallover Delivery programme manager, enterprise business systems, Thomson Reuters In addition to managing enterprise-wide transformation projects in her role at Thomson Reuters, Fallover is a leading advocate for the UK LGBT community and serves as global chair and EMEA lead for the company’s LGBT business resource group, Pride at Work. She is also a passionate technology diversity champion, a mentor for Coder Dojo, and an Apps For Good expert. She is the newly appointed London City Director for Lesbians Who Tech and a committee member of the Gay Women’s Network.

Brummell • Ones to Watch Katie Henry Assistant manager, insurance and investment management audit, KPMG Henry has made a significant impact in her local community and across KPMG since joining as a graduate trainee in 2012. As a member of the Women in Financial Services Steering Committee, she has developed numerous initiatives to promote KPMG’s diversity and people agenda and is co-authoring a report on the firm’s contribution to the UN sustainable-development goal of gender equality and empowerment. At The Passage, a homeless charity in London, she trained fellow KPMG volunteers to provide ongoing skills training. Gabby Herron Associate, energy, transport and infrastructure, Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer LLP As a finance lawyer, Herron has advised financial institutions and borrowers in more than 30 jurisdictions worldwide. Her pro-bono work includes being legal advisor to Stonewall Housing, a charity developing the UK’s first older LGBT housing scheme; a student mentor for DiversCity in Law; and an assessor for the Stephen Lawrence Scholarship Scheme. Part of the steering committee for Freshfields’ LGBT Network, Halo, she is co-founder and global chair of Halo Champions, the LGBT allies programme.

Cameron Colquhoun ↑ Managing director, Neon Century Intelligence Colquhoun is at the very forefront of the tech and ethics revolution in the due diligence and political-risk sector. After 10 years running cyber and terrorism operations for UK intelligence, in 2014 he founded Neon Century, a corporate intelligence business focused on open data analytics. The company counts a range of FTSE 100 firms as clients, but Colquhoun devotes 10 per cent of Neon’s resources to social causes. Additionally, he offers internships to graduates from disadvantaged backgrounds and mentors students at Brunel University.

Rupal Kantaria Social impact programme manager, Oliver Wyman Kantaria has over a decade’s experience in financial services strategy consulting, most recently as COO of Oliver Wyman’s EMEA insurance practice. She co-leads its Women’s Network globally across 30plus offices and is a strategic advisor to her family’s charitable foundation, which aids women’s economic empowerment in the UK and India. Kantaria is a director of the Women for Change network, connecting City leaders who use their skills for positive social impact. She is passionate about using the power of the private sector to drive social change. Charlotte Lach Executive manager, AIG UK and Europe Lach joined AIG on the professional associate scheme as an underwriter in 2011. She began her current role in 2014 and works alongside the CEO of AIG Europe Limited, supporting and driving the development and execution of key strategies and initiatives impacting the business. She won the Crawford Prize for best overall performance in the Advanced Diploma in Insurance in 2014, and was awarded Young Achiever of the Year at the British Insurance Awards in 2015. She also co-founded the Young Professionals Group, AIG UK.

Tessa Marchington ↑ Founder, Music in Offices (MIO), Investec International Music Festival Marchington has brought music to more than 1,000 UK workers by setting up office choirs, facilitating music tuition and developing creative management leadership and diversity programmes benefitting companies including Citi, Standard Chartered Bank and Deloitte. She also founded the Investec International Music Festival and is a mentor for school children at the Women of the World Festival. In 2012, she was made an Associate of the Royal Academy of Music, and in 2014 was a founding member of the 99 network at the IoD.

Brummell • Ones to Watch

Hannah MacKenzie Project manager and business analyst, Société Générale A veteran of the commodities markets, MacKenzie previously worked for the London Metal Exchange before moving to Société Générale in 2007. She has since held a variety of roles in the firm, including head of commodities operations in London. She is also the deputy chair of Société Générale’s LGBT Network in the UK and co-chair of Interbank, the structure of LGBT networks from financial services firms. She is also a Lieutenant Commander in the Royal Naval Reserve and is currently HMS Wildfire’s executive officer.

Stuart Mason Capital markets lawyer, Clifford Chance As co-chair of Clifford Chance’s LGBT+ network, Mason has been a role model for the LGBT graduate community, supporting events such as Student Pride and the LGBT Future Leaders conferences. He helped create the firm’s first Stonewall Ally programme and assisted in launching a reverse mentoring programme for the firm’s senior leaders. He has also collaborated with several clients to improve their diversity and inclusion strategies. He was nominated for junior lawyer of the year by the Law Society in 2015.

Maya Mehta Lawyer, BNP Paribas Mehta is an advocate of social intrapreneurship. As a capital markets lawyer at Clifford Chance, she launched an advice surgery in Newham in 2004 to support Asian girls at risk of forced marriages and other abuse. In 2010, she set up the firm’s global Microfinance Group, encouraging colleagues to use their skills to help low-income people start businesses. Joining BNP Paribas in 2011, she helped launch MicroFinance Sans Frontières in London, lending support to the social enterprise and microfinance sector. She was named in the Financial News Extra Mile 40 in 2014.

Anjel Noorbakhsh Senior associate, ACL Asset Management, London The only graduate of UCL to earn a Bachelor of Engineering in electronic engineering with nanotechnology, until recently Noorbakhsh worked at PwC developing asset-allocation strategies. Now with ACL, she helps global investors access Iranian capital markets. She is a member of the Popli Khalatbari Charitable Foundation (PKCF) Young Committee, and founded the Iranian Women’s Association, the UK’s first non-political and non-religious social enterprise helping to build a global network of Iranian female professionals.

Simon Rodgers Corporate events strategic account manager, Aviva While delivering world-class events for Aviva, Rodgers has also spearheaded cultural change in the company as chair of Aviva Pride, its LGBT employee network. He has maintained Aviva’s position as the only insurer in the Stonewall Workplace Equality Index Top 100 Employers since 2008 and has raised around £40,000 for the Albert Kennedy Trust in the past year. His work extends across the industry and local communities. Of 30,000 colleagues, Rodgers was recently named one of five Living Legends by CEO Mark Wilson.

Hamza Saghir Consultant, risk solutions, RBS Karachi-born Saghir specialises in change management, delivering largescale risk-transformation programmes in the financial sector in Europe and the Middle East. He sits on the board of Heathland Whitefriars Federation school academy and Centre of Aviation, a Pakistani-based institute that trains aircraft-maintenance engineers. He is also on the steering committee of the Cube Network, connecting Muslim professional groups, and is an external advisor to RBS’s Multicultural Network. Recently, the British Council selected him as an emerging diaspora leader.

Alison Chan → Director, banking and finance, Clifford Chance Chan specialises in emerging-market finance. At the height of the European sovereign-debt crisis, she worked on Greece’s historic debt restructuring, advising the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) on its lending and capital-markets activities. She managed the largest commercial transaction the Ethiopian government has yet entered into, and has visited orphanages in the country to donate vital supplies. Chan’s pro-bono work centres on microfinance in the Middle East, North Africa and the UK. She also undertakes work for socialwelfare projects in Tower Hamlets.

Ones to Watch • Brummell Rishi Madlani ← Director, sustainable energy, RBS Madlani leads on the Sustainable Energy strategy at RBS, encompassing the bank’s activities supporting the low-carbon goods and services sector, and contributed to the bank lending over £1bn to that sector in 2015. He is global co-chair of the RBS Rainbow Network, and highlights include marching at London Pride with the RBS CEO and putting LGBT issues on the agenda of a recent board visit to India. Outside work, he has helped form the Leicester City Football Club LGBT supporters’ association and is active on the diversity agenda at the London School of Economics, where he is a governor.

Umer Suleman Senior manager, business risk and control management, HSBC Suleman is an experienced risk SME who has assumed various risk roles during his career. He co-heads HSBC’s Muslim Network and used his experience to run a workshop on leadership and creating effective networks for City employees. He is an executive manager for the Islamic Finance Council on a pro-bono basis and one of the founding partners of Affogato, an ethical artisanal coffee and gelato shop. He previously took a sabbatical to join the Mosaic charity, which helps people from disadvantaged backgrounds.

Rebecca Tuff Vice president, project manager, Barclays Investment Bank Tuff has assumed numerous roles at Barclays since 2007, including chief of staff for the Wealth COO. She is now a project manager, working on projects including structural reform and, previously, the roll-out of dynamic working in the UK. She was COO of the WIN London Barclays Gender network in 2013 before becoming head of communications in 2015. She is currently building an employability programme to support a local school and mentors both through the WIBF mentoring scheme and within Barclays.

Jemma Wood Consultant, PwC In addition to her consulting career at PwC, Wood, aged just 23, has already raised £300,000 for the Cystic Fibrosis Trust, performed in the London 2012 Olympic Opening ceremony and been awarded an honorary university life membership from LSE. Wood actively shares her experiences of living with cystic fibrosis to build confidence and inspire others in the disability community. She regularly provides higher education and employment tips and is events champion for the PwC DAWN Network, one of The Economist’s global top 10 disability networks.

Chanel Fang Zhu Vice president, reputation risk strategy manager, HSBC Zhu is passionate about building a cohesive Chinese business community in the United Kingdom, and in 2009, co-founded SinoPro, an independent network that helps to connect more than 2,500 Chinese professionals in the City. Zhu continues to actively promote diversity issues for the community, and successfully launched the country’s first Chinese Business Leaders Awards in 2015, which celebrate the most talented Chinese individuals and their outstanding contributions to UK business and the economy.

Brummell • Ones to Watch

The panel Meet our esteemed panel of judges who, with their comprehensive knowledge and range of experience, selected our 30 Ones to Watch

Vinay Kapoor UK head of diversity and inclusion; EMEA CIB diversity council, BNP Paribas Kapoor’s career spans more than 20 years, with 15 years spent in banking and finance in the City. He was listed among The Economist’s top 50 global diversity professionals, and featured in The Daily Telegraph’s Top 50 LGBT Executives List in 2015 and 2016, and in The Guardian’s 2014 World Pride Power List. At BNP Paribas, Kapoor has embedded diversity and inclusion at all levels of the organisation, including a Diversity and Inclusion Week, employee network groups and a business-led Diversity and Inclusion Council.

Special thanks to the panel and all those who submitted nominations Hair, make-up and grooming: Nikki Palmer

Kate Nash OBE Founder, PurpleSpace Nash is highly regarded for her work with disability networks, and published the first best-practice guide for running disabled-employee networks in 2009. She now works with 300 UK employers, and in 2014 published a book called Secrets & Big News, in which 2,511 disabled employees took part. In 2015 she founded PurpleSpace, the first professional-development hub for disabled-employee networks, bringing together 850,000 disabled employees. She was awarded an OBE in 2007 and appointed Global Ambassador to Business Disability International in 2013.

Daniel Ricard Knowledge and change management consultant, PwC Ricard is an internal consultant at PwC and co-leads GLEE@PwC, the firm’s LGBT network. He is a co-founder of LGBT TNON (The Network of Networks), which brings together leaders from more than 110 organisations to share best practice and support each other’s operations. He was nominated one of Brummell magazine’s 2015 Ones to Watch: Rising Stars of the City, and was shortlisted for Network Chair of the Year in the Inclusive Network Awards in 2015. He supports several charities through fundraising and pro-bono consultancy.

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To boldly go Pursuing a personal passion or business opportunity and turning it into a way of life requires a certain mindset. Meet four young entrepreneurs whose ventures are reaping rewards

Words: Josh Sims Photography: Trent McMinn

Creative talent • Brummell

Opposite Phoebe Gormley in her Savile Row shop This page Her garments for women are made in the Czech Republic, having been commissioned in London

Phoebe Gormley Gormley & Gamble

At 15, while still at school, Phoebe Gormley undertook work experience with tailor Gary Kingham and her career path was set. During that internship, she began learning the bespoke skills that, as she puts it, ‘can make the kind of garment that gets handed down through the generations’. Six years later, she has launched her own business, specialising in tailoring for women and, in 2015, began sharing premises on the hallowed turf of Savile Row. ‘I’m the first women-only tailor on the street – and I love that fact,’ she enthuses. ‘It’s the realisation of a childhood dream.’ Of course, childhood was not all that long ago for Gormley. But, despite initial resistance to her business idea – ‘women aren’t interested in bespoke tailoring’, ‘they’re too hard to fit’, ‘they’re interested

only in branded clothing’ and ‘they don’t invest in what they wear’ were just some of the objections she faced – her chutzpah won through. She abandoned her university course in costume design in her final year and, using the refunded £9,000 tuition fee, set up shop in London. Keen to avoid the clubby stuffiness that afflicts so much bespoke tailoring, she offered consultations and took measurements there, before having the clothes made in the Czech Republic. Back then, no tailor on the Row was interested in taking on the work; now, few could cope with her order book. It was a leap of faith, she says, hence the name she chose for her new company: Gormley & Gamble. It paid off, though: a lucky break saw a head honcho at Virgin Money place a sizeable

order, and word spread from there. ‘So many women have gone out of their way to support me and help make it happen,’ she says. ‘There’s a real willingness to pay it forward. Being on Savile Row has helped enormously: people assume you must be good – and that means you have to be good.’ Gormley is brimming with ideas – her next project – backed, if all goes to plan, through crowd-funding – is the launch of what she calls ‘an emergency little black dress’. Creaseproof and super-compact, in three lengths and every size, it’s the kind of garment to keep at the office for those occasions when one’s unexpectedly required to don some razzle-dazzle. Expect more inspired thinking of this ilk from Gormley in years to come. gormleyandgamble.com

Clockwise from left Archie Hewlett; Duke & Dexter’s distinctive branding and novel use of prints set it apart from the opposition

Archie Hewlett Duke & Dexter

Archie Hewlett was perhaps never destined for a career in recruitment, but his gap-year job and its requirement to dress ‘smart-casual’ for client events did give him the idea to launch his own company, Duke & Dexter. The premise was simple: to undercut a growing market in, of all things, slippers. Admittedly, however, these are slippers of the sartorial rather than fireside variety – trainer-comfortable, slip-on outdoor shoes – and Hewlett reckoned he could produce a pair for as little as a fifth of the typical cost. ‘I knew nothing about fashion or materials, and always assumed slippers were so expensive because of the velvet they’re traditionally made from,’ he says. ‘But I had a pair made up in a factory – the same one we still use – and realised

that didn’t have to be the case. I noted how the brogue has been transformed into a more casual shoe over the years by being “twisted”, and thought the slipper could undergo the same transformation. Soon, friends started asking me to make some for them, and it went from there.’ Keen to avoid his slippers being pigeonholed as the kind of shoes worn only by men who favour pastel-coloured cords and turn up the collar on their polo shirts, Hewlett, now 21, has produced models in prints such as camouflage, as well as in tweed and linen. He counts women among his customers, too, and a large number of celebrities. ‘They’re love-it-or-hate-it shoes,’ Hewlett concedes. ‘But that’s better than everyone saying, “They’re OK” and having no brand identity.’

Certainly, many seem to be in the love-it camp: Duke & Dexter already takes orders from 100 countries around the world; will open its first store later this year, in Covent Garden; and has so far grown without either loans or outside investment. ‘I saved £3,000 working in recruitment and that got me going,’ Hewlett says, ‘But I have no commitments, no family, no mortgage – so, in a way, my youth has helped.’ He does, however, admit to at least some seat-of-his-pants decision-making along the way. ‘I’ve no idea where the name for the company came from,’ he laughs. ‘I guess “Duke” sounds slightly regal and “Dexter” slightly American. But I pretty much made it up.’ dukeanddexter.com

Creative talent • Brummell

From above Grind & Co is the cooler alternative to the coffee-shop chain; the company’s co-founder, David Abrahamovitch

David Abrahamovitch Grind & Co

If there’s any truth in the stereotype of student life being mainly about sitting around drinking coffee all day, then at least that paid off for David Abrahamovitch. Thanks to an internship, the UCL economics graduate had already decided that life in the corporate world was not for him. Besides, he’d already had a taste of building something from scratch, having raised £8m to co-found a tech-based platform for the resolution of disputes between law and insurance companies. ‘Doing that was like studying for an MBA – what didn’t I learn?’ Abrahamovitch says. ‘But we grew from a staff of four into a medium-sized business, which only reinforced my feeling that I didn’t like being part of a big machine – I wanted to do something smaller.’

When Abrahamovitch inherited a retail building from his father, his friend and business partner, musician Kaz James, suggested they open a coffee shop – he missed the quality of coffee available back in his native Melbourne. And so, in 2011, Grind & Co came into being. The duo now have six outlets across London, plus one at The Royal Exchange in the pipeline, and, thanks to the £1.3m that was crowd-funded as a bond last year, yet more openings to follow. ‘We originally opened our coffee shop in Shoreditch as a one-off, but it’s spiralled from there,’ Abrahamovitch, 30, explains. ‘We got a lot wrong – we were clueless about health-and-safety and HR, for example. And we also found out just how investment-intensive rolling out a hospitality

business is. But although there were no shortage of coffee shops when we opened, there weren’t as many independents as you might think. And we also created a bit of a scene.’ Each of the Grind & Co outposts is located in a character building and distinctively outfitted. An app allows regulars to pre-order their coffee, and there are plans to open a roastery this year. All branches also serve cocktails, with some offering a food menu, too. ‘No one was doing the day-to-night thing at the time,’ says Abrahamovitch. ‘I think people have really bought into the brand. When I look back, I’m so glad I’m not working for a tech firm. I just couldn’t imagine going into an office and having a boss.’ grindandco.com

Brummell • Creative talent

Above and opposite Rose Lloyd Owen has turned her passion for healthy eating into a business that’s all about taste and top-quality ingredients

Rose Lloyd Owen Peardrop

It takes grit to abandon a good job in an interesting business – talent spotting – to follow your passion. ‘But I think as you get older, doing what you really enjoy becomes more important,’ says 32-year-old Rose Lloyd Owen, founder of catering service Peardrop. ‘And by then I had come to identify that my strengths weren’t really in the office.’ What her colleagues’ grumbles had at least taught Lloyd Owen was that there was, three years ago, a dearth of healthy-eating options. Indeed, she says it convinced her that she could make healthier lunches herself. ‘And I laugh at my naivety now, because back then I couldn’t even wash a lettuce,’ she says. ‘I had no business skills, either.’ Indeed, Lloyd Owen describes the past three years as learning to accept that a business

might not turn out as you intend it: what started out, ahead of the curve, as food focused on health and nutrition soon became just focused on being good and distinctive; and a fledgling delivery service – on her tiny, clapped-out Vespa – was quickly abandoned in favour of outside catering. ‘Our reputation now is for making creative, colourful food; for making what the client wants rather than just rolling out the same old menu,’ says Lloyd Owen, who counts the likes of Uber, Alexander McQueen and Burberry among her customers. ‘If someone wants burger and chips, we can do that. But if someone wants gluten- and dairy-free, we can do that, too, although then, unfortunately, a lot of our fashion clients tell us just to make it look good and ‘Instagrammable’,

because nobody will eat it anyway. We were among the first [to tap into greater health-awareness], but it was important that we weren’t a one-trick pony.’ Not that Lloyd Owen has given up on her intention to offer better living to whoever wants it: she has quickly built on Peardrop’s reputation to launch Fare Healthy, the debut event in 2015 bringing together companies from across the spectrum of health and fitness worlds into a single annual showcase. ‘I wanted to present the big picture of healthy eating and living,’ she says. ‘The last thing I want is to be part of that process of making people feel bad about themselves because they see themselves as unhealthy. This is not about preaching – it’s about being inclusive and fun.’ peardroplondon.com

Rising son

Four decades after his fatherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s feted Formula One triumph, racing driver Freddie Hunt is shining as one to watch behind the wheel

Words: Peter Howarth Photographer: Lorenzo Agius Stylist: Tom Stubbs

Racing • Brummell

It’s 40 years since James Hunt won the Formula One World Championship, but today on the racetrack at Goodwood you could be forgiven for thinking that time had stood still. The six-foot-tall 28-year-old with the blond locks and smiling eyes currently sitting in a vintage Jensen C-V8 Mk II sports car is the spitting image of the racing driver. Freddie Hunt is a driver, but instead of racing in Formula One, he is currently competing in the NASCAR Whelen Euro Series. As a rather charming aside, he explains that he is in the same team as Niki Lauda’s son, Mathias – James Hunt’s legendary rivalry with Lauda senior formed the basis of the 2013 petrolhead action flick Rush. Endurance racing is his thing, he says, partly because he was such a late starter, which means that Formula One is quite a stretch, and partly because, he thinks, it’s less ‘fun’ these days compared to when his dad was competing. The aim, says Freddie, is to get a drive at Le Mans. Growing up around horses, Freddie’s first adrenaline rush came care of polo (he turned pro at 16). But then, three years later at the Goodwood Festival of Speed, things changed when he was offered a drive. He remembers how he did the hill climb ‘in front of 200,000 spectators, with no racing licence. I’d only had my driving licence for a few weeks.’ It was an epiphany, and before long he was testing and quickly secured a season in British Formula Ford. Freddie believes that his passion for speed is down to genes. And as a driver, it is all about speed, and timing. ‘Racing is being able to do that fast time consistently,’ he explains. The subject is apposite, given that as custodians of the James Hunt estate, Freddie and his brother Tom have just helped develop two new chronographs for Swiss watchmakers TAG Heuer to commemorate the anniversary of their father’s 1976 Formula One World Championship title. He likes what the company has done with these two James Hunt special-edition watches. ‘The way they’ve

Opposite Suede jacket, £2,800, KILGOUR; Belvoir polo neck, £139, JOHN SMEDLEY; chinos, £395, THOM SWEENEY; sunglasses, £150, TAYLOR MORRIS; F1 James Hunt watch with NATO strap, £1,100, TAG HEUER. Above Biker jacket, £2,130, FENDI; vest, £30, SUNSPEL; chinos, £395, THOM SWEENEY; Sonny boots, £499, MR HARE; medallion, Freddie’s own; F1 James Hunt watch with steel bracelet, £1,250, TAG HEUER

incorporated Dad’s colours is pretty cool. Red, blue and yellow,’ he says. ‘They come from his helmet – originally they’re the Wellington colours, Dad’s school.’ James Hunt died from a heart attack when Freddie was not quite six years old. He remembers him as being fun – on skiing holidays, taking Freddie and Tom to Silverstone for the Grand Prix, nearly setting the garden on fire by building a bonfire too big – but says he really had no sense of his father’s legacy as a driver until he himself started racing. ‘I mean, I knew he’d won the World Championship, but I didn’t realise actually how loved he was and how famous he was.’ It’s a fact of which Freddie is now clearly very proud, and his own helmet sports his father’s racing colours. Today, he is wearing his father’s gold ring, and his medallion, a present from Lord Hesketh featuring the teddy-bear motif of Hesketh’s racing team, for which James drove in the early 1970s. ‘Personality-wise, we are pretty similar,’ says Freddie of his father. ‘I was never destined to sit in an office,’ he says, and in talking to him, you get the impression of a daredevil attitude that would translate well to the racetrack. But he acknowledges other traits, too – he gets into trouble for speaking his mind, he says, and is extremely competitive. He’s also very disciplined, and this manifests itself in a fierce punctuality: ‘I can’t stand people that are even five minutes late.’ Like many of his generation, though, he has in recent years relied more on his mobile phone for timekeeping than a watch, but he’s converted. ‘I was given four watches for Christmas when I was 13-years-old and by the following Christmas I had lost every single one of them. But now I’m very much looking forward to wearing my TAG Heuer watch.’ ● The TAG Heuer James Hunt Limited Edition chronograph is limited to 1,000 pieces; £1,100 on NATO strap, £1,250 on steel bracelet; tagheuer.co.uk

An exclusive club offers all the thrill of driving a classic car without the effort of ownership

Words: Richard Holt

All images courtesy of Classic Car Club

Driving the dream

When I was a child, there was a popular brand of remote-controlled car called Tamiya – the fastest and best you could buy. I remember being disappointed when the man in the shop showed me a box full of unpainted bits, along with painstaking instructions for putting the thing together. I decided this wasn’t for me. I wanted a car I could drive right away without any hassle. As an adult, I feel the same about classic cars. They are lovely things and I like driving them and looking at them, but spending hours in overalls tweaking and fettling has never really appealed. If, however, you enjoyed building Airfix models as a child and are keen to spend your weekends elbow-deep in engine oil, classic-car ownership is the perfect hobby for you. Classic cars demand commitment and you have to accept that, at some point, they are likely to let you down. Even if they don’t, what do you do when another catches your eye? Unless you go the full Jay Leno and buy everything available, a time will come when you have to move on. The heart, like your garage, has only so much capacity.

Motoring • Brummell

Thankfully, there is an alternative. Back in 1995, brothers David and Philip Kavanagh realised that many men were buying car after car – automotive swingers, they called them – because they were unable to settle on a preference. So they formed a club that gave members access to all the cars they wanted without the headache of ownership. ‘People come to us with a particular car in mind, whether that’s a Porsche 911 or whatever,’ says Simon Clarke, marketeer at the Classic Car Club, ‘but 90 per cent of the time they don’t end up with the one they were dreaming of. Often, they discover new cars they hadn’t known about, like the Volvo P100, which is one that many drivers come to love.’ The club’s current owner is Nigel Case. He’s been involved from the early days and eventually bought it from the Kavanagh brothers. Case, who describes himself as ‘Classic Car Club member number one’, now runs the operation with his wife, Dinah, and finance director Ian Brookes. At the moment, the club holds around 40 cars, from vintage Jags, Mercedes and Aston Martins

Opposite The Classic Car Club’s covetable Aston V8. This page Its Jenson C-V8 (top left); Mercedes-Benz 230 SL (top right, both images); and Jaguar E-Types and Volvo P1800S (above)

to more modern sports cars such as a TVR and BMW M3. Members purchase packages of Classic Car Club points that they exchange for time behind the wheel – one of its lower-band cars on a weekday in winter will require very few points, whereas a weekend in summer in a higher-band car like the Ford GT40 will obviously use a great deal more. Three years ago, the club moved to spacious premises on Pitfield Street, just north of Old Street. The extra capacity provides more room for it to look after not just its own cars, but also those of select clients. Car Vault London provides secure storage for the vehicles of a few dozen owners who want their cars to be looked after in the optimum environment. So, if you absolutely insist on owning a car yourself, the Classic Car Club can look after it for you, which is great news. Unless, of course, you’re the sort of person who looks at a classic car and thinks of all the hours you can spend with your head buried under the bonnet. → classiccarclub.co.uk

Brummell • Motoring

Old masters

Get behind the wheels of a clutch of vintage royalty or sporty powerhouses for the drives of your life

1967 Volvo P1800S In the 1950s,Volvo was planning a sports car and wanted the design to come from the country that does these things best: Italy. When the Swedish project manager submitted the shortlist, he failed to mention that one of them was by his son, who was working at the Italian design firm Pietro Frua. That one was chosen, so the P1800S was penned by a Swede called Pelle Petterson, though Volvo passed the car off as a Frua design and he wasn’t credited until years later. What’s never disputed is that it’s one of the finest designs of its era. 1965 Ford Mustang convertible The Mustang changed the face of US motoring, bringing aspirational sports-car ownership within the reach of the masses. Launched in 1964, it was a huge success from the start in both coupé and convertible form, with more than a million being made in the first 18 months of production. Today, after six decades, it continues to be manufactured, a sixth-generation having been launched in 2015. For sheer emotional appeal, the early Mustangs are impossible to beat. The 1965 convertible is a perfect example of the pony car at its best. 1979 Mercedes-Benz 450SEL 6.9 As fast saloons go, this is a monster without equal. For brutish muscle combined with a super-smooth ride and 1970s cool, the 450SEL is difficult to beat. It arrived in 1974, its immense 6.9-litre engine laughing in the face of the oil crisis, providing a great surge of effortless power for those who decided a standard S-Class was not quick enough for them. This one was delivered to its first owner in Kuwait and has a full leather interior – not just the seats but the headlining and dashboard, too – and electrically reclining rear seats. 1968 Jaguar MKII Jaguar founder Sir William Lyons described the car as ‘the closest thing we can create to something that is alive’. Over almost a century in business, the company has created some of the best-loved beasts in the motoring jungle. While, nowadays, saloon cars with sports-car pace are made by pretty much every vehicle manufacturer, in the 1960s they didn’t really exist. So the MKII, with its 125mph performance, became the vehicle of choice for anyone who wanted four full seats and sporty handling.

Auctioneers & Valuers Antiques | Jewellery | Watches

Breva watch featuring in the April auction

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Brummell • City philanthropy

In good hands Why a new generation of high-flying, hardcore altruists are pledging 10 per cent of their pay to charities that mean business

Words: Charlotte Metcalf Illustration: Rob Bailey

When Kids Company collapsed last year, Camila Batmanghelidjh became, overnight, the poster girl for everything that’s wrong with charity. She was personally vilified, accused of offences ranging from doling out cash to children so they could buy drugs to hoodwinking the great and the good. Her fall from grace was spectacular, but what did it have to do with the City? It coincided with a stirring sense of unease among City professionals about the Square Mile’s philanthropic reputation and the lack of organisational rigour in the charity sector. ‘Morgan Stanley was criticised for its partnership strategy with Kids Company – City corporate social responsibility is often perceived with cynicism,’ says George Howlett, a senior risk consultant at Deloitte UK. He is one of a growing group of City professionals embracing Effective Altruism – a movement taking hold in the wake of William MacAskill’s book, Doing Good Better. Along with another Oxford philosopher, Toby Ord, MacAskill is a leading figure in the movement and, together, they also started Giving What We Can, encouraging people to pledge 10 per cent of their income. ‘An Effective Altruism “stamp” indicates a charity is well run and has a strong, positive impact on those it seeks to help,’ says Howlett, a ‘pledger’. Last year, Deloitte UK gave Howlett two weeks of

‘community investment’ time to support his work on a project at the Centre for Effective Altruism. ‘The City’s full of business-minded, wealthy individuals who look to optimise the bottom line and be as productive and efficient as possible,’ says Mark Barnes, former global head of Forex for RBS. ‘Many City people already give generously, but if, each time, one asked, “Can I give more? And more effectively?”, the City could be a genuine force for good.’ Profoundly influenced by MacAskill’s ideas, Barnes joined Giving What We Can and took a retroactive pledge to give 10 per cent of his lifetime income to effective causes. He is now an advisor to the Centre for Effective Altruism. ‘The financial crisis undermined my faith in deregulated capitalism and forced me to question my moral beliefs. William has helped inspire me to give more and give effectively.’ The Centre for Effective Altruism is based in Oxford, where MacAskill is associate professor of philosophy at Lincoln College. At 28, he looks more like an eager student than an academic author with a global following. ‘My youth is a double-edged sword,’ he grins ruefully. ‘The movement doesn’t have a leader as such, but I seem to be becoming the public face of it, which is good, given that most of our donors are in their twenties and thirties.’

Brummell • City philanthropy

It’s inspiring to realise that, when you do your homework before you donate, you can change many lives

MacAskill’s integrity is beyond doubt: he gives away everything he earns over £24,000 plus tax and inflation. He has shocked many with his conclusions, such as suggesting giving to disaster relief is not particularly helpful and that buying sweatshop-produced goods is no bad thing. Effective Altruism’s premise is that we can do far more good by supporting charities proved to be effective, so he has devised a rigorous system for analysing charities. His bête noire is PlayPump, a charity that built merry-go-rounds in African villages so children could pump water as they played. It raised millions, becoming the darling of the international media with headlines such as ‘The magic roundabout’ and ‘Pumping water is child’s play’, but the merry-go-rounds were expensive, difficult to maintain, and the children quickly became exhausted. Ultimately, it was a disaster. MacAskill’s book shows how targeted charities with more prosaic aims – such as eliminating intestinal worms – save more lives. The five key questions are: How many people benefit and by how much? Is this the most effective thing you can do? Is this area neglected? What would have happened otherwise? What are the chances of success and how good would success be? The book is a compelling, easy read and its irrefutable logic is what has attracted so many in

the City. Allan Saldanha, senior equity derivatives auditor for Citigroup, says, ‘My City profession means I’m paid far beyond what my family and I need to survive comfortably, and I feel it is only decent that I donate a reasonable portion of my income to effective charities. Giving What We Can changed my behaviour, providing a disciplined framework to donate consistent, meaningful amounts rather than the ad-hoc giving and delaying trap I’d fallen into before. I studied economics and know the value of commitment, so publicly making the pledge and joining a growing community is powerful and the attrition rate is very low.’ Last Christmas, Saldanha raised £69,700 with a donation-matching scheme with the Charity Science foundation. ‘There’s a lot of talk about millennials – my generation – being more globally minded and engaged with charity than ever before, and Effective Altruism is a natural fit,’ says 24-year-old Howlett. ‘It’s a young movement, and many Effective Altruists embarking on their careers now will run companies and design policy in a generation’s time.’ ‘Effective Altruism is transforming how City people see themselves,’ says 22-year-old Kit Harris, a derivatives trader at JP Morgan who has taken the 10-per-cent pledge. ‘We often

mistakenly think we can’t really do anything big, given our limited free time. It’s inspiring to realise that, when you do your homework before you donate, you can change many lives.’ Chris Smith, 25, strategy consultant at OC&C, is renowned for donating 16 per cent of his salary and says, ‘Effective Altruism shows City workers they have immense power to do good, but for it really to take hold, we need to engage a wider audience. It’s all too easy to say individuals can’t solve global poverty, but a lot of lives have been saved through effective charities and we should celebrate that, even as we work towards a more complete end to poverty.’ ‘Global poverty is not an insoluble problem,’ says Mark Barnes. ‘Look at the vast progress over the past 10 years – the health gains and eradication of diseases across sub-Saharan Africa, for example. But for Effective Altruism to really take hold, it needs to make everyone realise that, if we spent as much time investigating the right charities to donate to as we do to buying a computer or phone, we might suddenly find the world is a better place.’ ● Doing Good Better is available through effective altruism.com; all author profits will be donated to effective charities; givingwhatwecan.org

raymond-weil.com

tel: 01428 656 822

Back issues Research, redevelopment and pure mid-century magic has led Molteni & C to launch a collection of original designs by Gio Ponti

Words: Jonathan Bell

Iconic design • Brummell

Images courtesy of Molteni & C/Gio Ponti

Opposite D.153.1 armchair, reissued in leather by Molteni & C, £4,244 This page, from top D.655.1 chest of drawers, £10,266; D.154.2 armchair, £3,284; D.552.2 small table, £1,674; D.754.1 rug, £3,954; D.235.1 chair, £1,050

Italian high-end furniture company Molteni & C is a family owned brand, founded in 1934 and known for collaborating with innovative designers such as Patricia Urquiola, Rodolfo Dordoni and Arik Levy, amongst others. One of its recent projects involved a remake of furniture and furnishings by renowned designer Gio Ponti, a collection the company now sells, with each piece feeling highly contemporary. It was the result of in-depth research, selection and an analysis of prototypes that was made possible thanks to the cooperation of Ponti’s heirs, who signed an exclusive agreement with Molteni & C. The collection includes furnishings that Ponti designed between 1935 (a chair for the first Palazzo Montecatini) and the 1950s (a bookcase, chest of drawers, tea table, armchair, frames and a rug, items all present in the house on via Dezza in Milan, where Ponti lived with his family from 1957 onwards). Ponti is perhaps the consummate Italian designer, a gifted polymath who created furniture and buildings, founded magazines and lived life to the full in a career that spanned some of the critical decades of modern design. His legacy still stands as some of the finest evocations of the midcentury period, while the magazine he founded in 1928, Domus, recently celebrated its 1,000th issue and remains an essential component of the global design discussion. Born in 1891, Ponti served with distinction in World War I before taking up architectural studies and joining a Milanese studio in the early 1920s. The style of his formative years was shaped by the burgeoning Novecento Italiano movement, a stripped-back, neoclassical aesthetic that was embraced by Mussolini as the official style for his National Fascist Party. Ponti’s approach was not so easily pigeonholed or co-opted, however. His buildings were anything but plain, bringing together elegant proportions and honest use of materials. His influence didn’t stop with the structure: Domus also gave him a platform from which to talk about design in all its forms. As an early ‘lifestyle’ publication,

it highlighted the Modernist fascination with industrial production, as well as publishing features on homemaking and decorative arts. This cross-pollination influenced Ponti’s own work. From the 1920s onwards, he explored the burgeoning field of industrial design, creating not just furniture but also glass, ceramics and lighting. Post-war Italy needed investment, and Ponti brought a global outlook, with an understanding of how craft could dovetail with industry, mixing abstract forms with strict geometry and rich texture with machine-finished materials. Many of his pieces remain in production, in particular by Molteni & C. Ponti’s other major legacy lies in architecture. From the outset, he was strongly influenced by his partnership with engineers, especially Pier Luigi Nervi, with whom he collaborated on his most famous building, the Pirelli Tower in Milan. Thirty-two storeys high, the blade-edged tower was commissioned in 1950 to house the headquarters of the eponymous tyre manufacturer. Ponti, Nervi, Antonio Fornaroli and Alberto Rosselli spent six years developing the design, which was the city’s first skyscraper, symbolically located on the site of the company’s original factory. It’s a timeless structure, a razor-edged riposte to the boxy orthodoxy of the International Style. Ponti’s life was his career, from his writing and editing through to hand-painted murals and the dense, elaborate interiors he created for eccentric clients such as the collector Giobatta Meneguzzo, for whom he designed a treasure trove of a house, waiving his fee to ensure an entirely open brief. His work features heavily in the new Molteni Museum in Giussano, a Jasper Morrison-designed exhibit that celebrates 80 years of this pivotal Italian manufacturer, including work by Jean Nouvel, Ron Arad and Norman Foster. Ponti’s commitment to a total, all-encompassing aesthetic life resulted in a rich and varied oeuvre that transcends all labels, yet still defines ‘modern design’ 40 years after he died. Regardless of where you place a Ponti design, it will always become a talking point, if not the centrepiece of a room. ● molteni.it

BRUMMELL PROMOTION

G6 BRIEFCASE MIDNIGHT BLUE LEATHER, £695

G8 CITY TOTE PURE BLACK LEATHER, £895

G9 GYM BAG GREY LEATHER, £750

In the bag Elegant styling and practicality come as standard, whichever Gladstone London design you choose

Words: Jemima Wilson

During a long career working alongside some of Europe’s finest craftspeople, John O’Sullivan was gifted a book containing bag templates from the 1930s. Inspired by these long-forgotten designs, he founded his own leather goods company, Gladstone London, to revive traditional, Londonmade bag styles and make them relevant and functional for the modern man. The G8 City tote, for example, was inspired by a vintage bag found in an antique shop on the Sussex South Downs. It features the company’s signature double-backed handle bases with contrast hand stitching. Practical yet sophisticated, and ideal for all manner of business in the City, the tote looks structured and boxy when the internal zip is fastened but, for a more relaxed feel, it can also be left unzipped. Equally suitable for City professionals is the G6 briefcase, handcrafted from soft calfskin, with a removable shoulder strap. Inspired by the simplicity of traditional English music cases, the

G6 is ideal for carrying documents, a laptop and other personal devices to and from the office. For trips further afield, the G48 Hours travel bag (pictured above left) is roomy enough to hold everything you might need for an overnight stay. It’s lined with easy-to-clean Alcantara and features four multifunctional pockets on one side, as well as a large external pocket locked with Gladstone London’s signature diamond-cut bolt. Also well suited to carrying ample travel or sporting essentials, the spacious G9 gym bag is a chic, contemporary update of a 1930s bolster bag. Each Gladstone London bag is handmade by a team of 10 artisans in a small Italian factory near Lake Como, and the design and manufacturing process takes about 18 months from start to finish. O’Sullivan says he has seen many specialist leather-craft skills decline over the years and, by reinventing long-forgotten creations, he aims to keep these time-honoured skills alive. ● Available from Harrods; gladstonelondon.com

Epicure • Brummell

A menu of dining and drinking stories to sate the most jaded of appetites: an entrée of restaurant launches, unusual eating-out experiences and the best-ever roast chicken lunch, followed by a main course of the capital’s most exciting up-and-coming chefs, and all washed down with a glass or two of Kent’s finest fizz.

Epicure • News Roast masters ← For one of London’s most glamorous Sunday roasts, head to Bob Bob Ricard (bobbobricard.com), famous for its ‘press for champagne’ buttons at every table. The 16oz corn-fed Arkansas USDA Prime Black Angus comes with all the trimmings: roasted potatoes, honeyglazed carrots and parsnips, Yorkshire pudding, caramelised onion, creamed horseradish and truffle gravy. At Hélène Darroze at The Connaught (the-connaught.co.uk), Michelin-starred chef Darroze puts French spin on the traditional Sunday roast (left) with the launch of Le Poulet du Dimanche, a new six-course roast-chicken menu for two. The chicken is stuffed with seasonal ingredients and served with boudin blanc and pommes paysannes. Bringing a taste of Latin America to Mayfair, Coya (coyarestaurant.com) has launched a Peruvian brunch every Sunday from 12pm to 2.30pm. There are a number of interactive food stations, plus a pisco bar and a live chef area where guests can watch their ceviche and tiradito being prepared.

Staples from Naples Obicà launched its new London flagship in St Paul’s in March. The restaurant, mozzarella bar, private dining room and deli focuses on seasonal and organic produce. The menu, created by executive chef Erind Halilaj, features pizzas, salads, pasta, fish and meat dishes, while the wine list includes both traditional labels and little-known Italian grape varietals. The interior has oak walls and floor-to-ceiling windows and is a handy destination for all-day dining, a coffee break or a relaxing aperitivo. obica.com

Bon anniversaire ← The Godiva story began when Belgian chocolatier Pierre Draps created his first pralines in 1926. Now, the brand is celebrating 90 years of innovation with a limited-edition box containing nine special chocolates – one for each decade in its history. The ‘Lady Noir’ comprises white-chocolate ganache and Madagascan vanilla in a dark-chocolate shell, reinventing one of Draps’ earliest recipes; the ‘Egérie Noir’, created by Godiva chocolatier chef Jean Apostolou, is made of rose and raspberry-flavoured ganache coated in dark chocolate. The box was designed by Street artist Oli B, and is inspired by ‘fireworks and all the energy, colour and happiness they bring’. From £15; godivachocolates.co.uk

Slow supper ← Guatemalan rum brand Ron Zacapa is partnering with chef Lee Westcott on a luxury supper club experience to celebrate the art of slow dining. Taking place at East London’s Typing Room restaurant on 9 May, the three-course dinner will focus on the art of slow cooking, and encourage diners to savour every mouthful to help appreciate these techniques. Each dish will be paired with bespoke cocktails using the flavour profiles of Ron Zacapa 23, Ron Zacapa XO, and the newly released Zacapa Limitada, all slowly aged 2,300m above sea level in the highlands of Quetzaltenango – one of the highest ageing facilities in the world. £100pp; tickets from billetto.co.uk

Rob Lawson

Salad year ← Salads aren’t just for the warmer weather, as Peter Gordon’s new cookbook, Savour: Salads for all Seasons, attests. New Zealand-born Gordon is known as ‘the godfather of fusion’, and his restaurants in London include The Providores and Tapa Room in Marylebone and Kopapa in Covent Garden. In Savour, he shares versatile and delicious recipes – some quick and easy, some requiring advance preparation – ranging from vegetarian dishes such as aubergine, quinoa, gem lettuce, tomato and pistachio to meat-based salads such as venison, coconut-curried pumpkin and mustard cabbage. £25; jacquismallpub.com

Above par → Bored of the usual after-work drinks? Head to the provocatively named Swingers, the crazy-golf club opening this spring beneath Brown’s Buildings, just off St Mary Axe. Following its successful stint as a pop-up in Shoreditch, the venture is launching as a permanent dining, drinking and crazy-golfing destination. Housed in a vast former World War II bunker, it features two nine-hole courses (complete with the obligatory windmill and lighthouse), a two-storey clubhouse and mezzanine gin terrace, four cocktail bars, plus the President’s Committee Room for private dining – all in all, a veritable hole-in-one. swingersldn.co.uk

Okay po-kay ↑ You may not have heard of poke (pronounced po-kay) – a diced and marinated raw fish dish hailing from Hawaii – before now. However, at new Mayfair restaurant Black Roe, this increasingly popular alternative to sushi and ceviche takes centre stage. The restaurant is the latest venture by Kurt Zdesar, owner of Chotto Matte in Soho, and it specialises in serving the raw fish from its dedicated poke bar, along with oysters and other fresh seafood. Sustainable meat dishes such as bison rib-eye steak served with a fenneltomato confit and yuzu soy hollandaise, and smoky lamb rack with coconut and piquillio reduction, can also be ordered from the grill. blackroe.com

Hot stuff The young chefs cooking up a storm in kitchens across the capital

Words: Stefan Chomka

As a city that takes its food seriously, London has long nurtured young and upcoming chefs, and the eating-out scene in the capital today is no exception. From killer haute-kebab joints to wine bars that punch well above their weight in the foodie stakes, the city is home to some of the UK’s most exciting eating destinations, run by some of the country’s top new talents. Take, for instance, Elizabeth Allen, head chef at Hackney restaurant-of-the-moment Pidgin (pidginlondon.com). Pidgin is at the forefront of the supper-club approach to cooking, with Allen’s weekly-changing four-course set menu showing that choice isn’t everything. Her CV includes the Michelin-starred Royal Oak Paley Street and, at Pidgin, she distils her experience into a tight offer that keeps folk coming back for more. Then there’s Paul Weaver, who, alongside Mark Andrew and Daniel Keeling, creators of the wine magazine Noble Rot, has turned the traditional wine bar on its head. Weaver has worked in kitchens such as St John Bread & Wine in Spitalfields and superb Kent gastropub The Sportsman and, since Noble Rot Restaurant & Wine Bar (noblerot.co.uk) opened in Mayfair last year, he’s been wowing diners with his now-legendary dishes, including halibut braised in oxidised 1998 Bâtard-Montrachet Grand Cru. Thanks to his experience and to the menu guidance he received from former mentor Stephen Harris, chef-patron at The Sportsman, Weaver has become one of the hottest chef talents in the country. Michael Hazlewood, who heads up the Antidote Wine Bar & Restaurant (antidotewinebar.com), another wine-led venue that has the London foodie fraternity chattering with excitement, has also benefited from some hands-on help. Having cooked at top Melbourne restaurant Attica, he then worked at Antidote under the guidance of Mikael Jonsson, the no-nonsense chef-patron at Michelin-starred Hedone in Chiswick, and has adopted his mentor’s style of producing seasonal food with a flourish. Dishes at Antidote rarely contain more than four key ingredients – Devon crab with courgette and brown butter, say, or kid goat with yoghurt, peas and watercress – but their simplicity makes them sing. If this all sounds as if London has become a haven for wine aficionados sipping glasses of Montagny Premier Cru in chic surroundings, then Lee Tiernan is here to prove otherwise. At his Black Axe Mangal ocakbasi restaurant in Islington (blackaxemangal.com), he cranks out beer-friendly food from a black iron-clad wood-fired oven with heavy metal blaring out over the sound system. Don’t be fooled, though – this isn’t your typical pub fare. Instead, you can munch on shrimpcrusted Mangalitza pork schnitzel, charred hispi cabbage and fermented shrimp butter, or the Deep Throater, a ludicrously delicious muttonand-anchovy-laden flatbread. Just as Tiernan is out to prove that there’s more to kebabs than lukewarm doner meat and cheap chilli sauce, Selin Kiazim is demonstrating that there’s more to Turkish cuisine than the kebab. Oklava (oklava.co.uk), the modern Turkish restaurant she launched in Shoreditch last year, does just that, with Kiazim using to great effect the skills she gained working with the master of

Culinary ones to watch • Brummell

Clockwise from bottom left Restaurant-of-the-moment Pidgin, in Hackney; a dessert on its weekly four-course set menu; rock oyster Raveneau at Noble Rot; Oklava’s modern Turkish cuisine; Noble Rot’s bar

Vivi Pham; Steele Haigh; Manuel Vazquez

As unconventional as they’re uncompromising, the current crop of chefs is shaking up London’s restaurant scene

fusion, Peter Gordon. Flatbreads (pides) feature, such as one topped with spiced short rib, çemen yoghurt and green chilli, but it’s in dishes such as her pomegranate-glazed lamb breast and sour-cherry pearl barley and crispy-kale salad that Kiazim’s cooking is at its most creative. Diners at Oklava can see Kiazim in action up close, just as those at The Manor in Clapham (themanorclapham.co.uk) can get intimate with the sweet magic of Swiss-born chef Kira Ghidoni. Ghidoni has worked in the top kitchens of Murano and Fera at Claridge’s, and is one of the capital’s most exciting pastry chefs. At the dessert bar of this popular neighbourhood restaurant, she shines with dishes made right in front of diners’ eyes. Her baked vacherin with chestnuts and honey – from beehives on the roof of sister restaurant The Dairy – is the perfect way to round off a meal. For top new talent, you don’t have to look further than two of London’s hottest new restaurant openings: Sosharu (sosharulondon.com) and Pitt Cue Co (pittcue.co.uk). Although the lead chefs cook vastly different styles of food, both engender the dynamic cooking spirit that makes London’s restaurant scene so hot right now. Sosharu is the product of head chef Alex

Craciun’s ambition to master high-end Japanese food and is a collaboration with top chef Jason Atherton. Having worked with Atherton for four years, Craciun relocated to Japan on a research trip, spending a year studying at the Kyoto Culinary School and working at top restaurants to hone his skills before returning to open Sosharu in Clerkenwell in March. Here, he shows off his immense skills at making temaki, tempura and sashimi, and also at the hibachi and yaki grills. Tom Adams is another giant of the grill, and his newly relocated restaurant Pitt Cue Co features a bespoke £60,000 piece of kit. Adams is no stranger to London’s culinary scene, having been at the vanguard of its barbecue movement with Pitt Cue in Soho, but it is with the move to a much larger location in the City that his meat mastery has come to the fore. His deliciously unconventional dishes, such as rabbit and eel sausage, and mushroom and bone marrow mash, make Pitt Cue Co mark-two a must-visit. As unconventional as they’re uncompromising, there’s little doubt that this current crop of chefs is shaking up London’s restaurant scene for the better. You’ll never look at a kebab shop or wine bar in the same way again. ●

Field of dreams English wines are on the up – and Kent’s Gusbourne Estate is breaking new ground

Words: Nick Savage

During an early afternoon in mid-March, Kent bears all the hallmarks of a bucolic British spring. Roe and fallow deer – and wild boar – have recently been glimpsed in the meadows. An occasional flash of brilliance of a daffodil in full bloom appears through the pallid greens of the grass and the browns of the budding trees. But there remains something steely and hard about the landscape. The sun burns bright coronas through the cloud cover. In the distance, underneath a shroud of fog, ancient marshes seem to bristle. I’m standing with Ben Walgate, CEO of Gusbourne Estate, on a grassy knoll in the centre of one of the producer’s many verdant Kentish vineyards. He’s walking me through the choice plots of his grapes. He points out a military canal wending its way through the belly of the fields, created during the Napoleonic Wars. France appears to be weighing on his mind. ‘It’s easy to talk about chalk,’ he says. ‘It’s easy to talk about the similarities between Kent, Sussex and Champagne. But if you gave two chefs the same recipe, it’s almost certain that you wouldn’t get the same outcome.’ English sparkling wine seems to have arrived at a watershed. Purchases of it are reaching unprecedented numbers – 2015 figures published by Waitrose show sales of homegrown fizz jumped 188 per cent from 2014 – and some of the great champagne houses have cottoned on to the fact that there’s something special about English soil: Taittinger has bought 69 hectares of land in Kent

Wine • Brummell

Opposite A tractor trims the vines at the Gusbourne Boot Hill vineyard in Kent. This page, from top The flagship Blanc de Blancs on the labelling line; oak barrels at the Gusbourne winery

For the first time, British producers are considering how they can differentiate their wines from the French

with the plan to produce 300,000 bottles a year eventually. New targets for British producers include increasing wine exports from 250,000 bottles to 2.5 million by 2020. In blind taste tests, English sparkling has been known to win against champagne. For the first time, British producers are considering how they can differentiate their wines from the French, rather than replicate them. Speaking with Charlie Holland, Gusbourne’s master winemaker, I get a better idea of the state of the union in British winemaking: ‘Any new industry must emulate the originals at first, but as they go on, companies need to pioneer new methods to differentiate themselves,’ he says. ‘English wines are dependent upon traditional methods, but with a New World attitude.’ Before addressing the differences, though, it’s useful to be aware of the similarities. In England, as in Champagne, three preferred grape varieties are almost always used to create the wine: pinot noir, chardonnay and pinot meunier. In terms of terroir, there’s little difference between that of the Downs and Champagne – both share the same seam of chalk that runs underneath the Channel. The latitude and altitude are close to one another, as is the average growing-season temperature (England is slightly cooler), the average annual rainfall (England is slightly wetter) and the average harvest month rainfall. Perhaps most importantly to the consumer, the price of an entry-level English sparkler is comparable to that of an equivalent champagne.

The first forays into sparkling wine in England were undertaken as early as the 1750s, which was around the same time it became popular in France, but the first British benchmark happened in the 1960s, when Felsted Vineyard and Pilton Manor began employing the méthode champenoise to bottleferment their wines. However, it wasn’t until earlier this century that English winemaking began to take its current form and become a solvent business. Gusbourne is like a microcosm of the industry. Founded by retired South African orthopaedic surgeon Andrew Weeber in 2004, it’s still a fledgling – its first vintage was released in 2010 – but its growth has been promising. In 2013, it was given a significant financial boost by Lord Ashcroft and was admitted to the Alternative Investment Market (AIM) of the London Stock Exchange. The expansion saw it building its own winery in Appledore and vastly augmenting its vineyards, with 60 hectares planted at the Gusbourne Estate in Kent and 33 hectares planted in West Sussex. While this is relatively small compared to some larger Champagne estates, its quick growth is not. As an investment, a sparkling-wine outfit takes a while to generate returns. It takes years to plant the vines, grow good grapes, and wait for the wine to mature, particularly when insisting it spends a minimum of 36 months bottle-ageing on the lees (yeast), as well as three months on cork, which adds greater complexity. One difference between Britain and France is that there is a lack of older bottles of English sparkling wine. However, there’s

been discussion of a few producers aiming to remedy this by creating prestige cuvées aged on the lees for at least six years. To qualify for the champagne appellation, French winemakers must follow a rigorous set of rules. This is not the case in England, where new techniques and the use of different yeasts can be employed. Due in part to global warming, the climate in Britain is actually more favourable to the harvest during some years – previous years in Champagne have been too hot. Charlie Holland believes the current conditions in Kent are ideal, and the levels of acidity and sugar in the grapes are exactly where they should be. On tasting the wines, the difference is subtly apparent. Gusbourne offers a pinot noir and chardonnay alongside a range of three sparklers. Of the Brut Reserve, the rosé and the blanc de blancs, my favourite is the latter. On the palate, it offers a buttery, creamy mousse with the toastiness of fresh brioche coming through from the chardonnay. Underneath is a backbone of green apple. The high acid offers bright, brilliant sensations in the mouth – an experience I’ve only had a few times drinking champagne. It might be the fact I’m tasting the wine in the centre of the Kentish vineyards on a cold spring day, but it seems to mirror its environment. And that’s likely the most important difference. Like any wine, it is a reflection of its setting. And Gusbourne is quintessentially British. ● gusbourne.com

Brummell • Need to know

Mr. Burberry is a modern combination of wood, spices and aromatic notes, while its bottle design is inspired by Burberry’s iconic trench coat

Pure chemistry Burberry has assembled Britain’s hottest home-grown talent to launch its new men’s fragrance

Words: Peter Howarth

‘I wanted to convey the idea of two people who are passionately in love with each other, and go away for a dirty weekend,’ says Steve McQueen, Oscar- and Turner Prize-winning British director, of his first-ever advertising movie, shot for the new Burberry fragrance, Mr. Burberry. Set in a hotel overlooking Piccadilly Circus, the film features British actor and musician Josh Whitehouse and British model and actress Amber Anderson, and has a soundtrack by British singer-songwriter Benjamin Clementine. The full-length version is available online, and as you might expect from the director of Shame, the Mr. Burberry tale is as gritty as it is stylish. It is also genuinely cinematic. ‘The film was shot on 70mm film,’ explains McQueen. ‘As there are only roughly six of these cameras in existence in the world, this was a unique proposition.’ If this sounds extravagant for a fragrance launch, then that’s because Burberry’s chief creative and chief executive officer, Christopher Bailey, has ambitions for Mr. Burberry to be more than short-lived. Rooted in London’s 19th-century barbershops, with their aromatic, citrus smells, the

fragrance is also ‘inspired by the iconic Burberry trench coat and by London, a city of great contrasts and contradictions,’ says Bailey. Bailey developed the fragrance with renowned perfumer Francis Kurkdjian, who explains: ‘It’s a modern combination of wood, spices and aromatic notes. The result is a very sensual herbal and fruity fragrance, of a classic aromatic fougère.’ A fougère is a class of scent that blends citrus and herbal notes. But ‘in this case it has been totally remodelled and remastered to introduce a radically contemporary creation,’ says Kurkdjian. It is, he says, ‘a richly smoky and very sensual scent without ever compromising its clean earthy code – contemporary yet classically British.’ Along with the fragrance, there is a grooming range and a clothing collection, which includes the new Chelsea-fit Heritage Trench Coat. The bottle is inspired by the coat’s signature design details: the cap references horn-look buttons, while a hand-tied knot in English-woven black gabardine celebrates the innovative fabric invented by Thomas Burberry more than a century ago. ● burberry.com

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Burberry/Steve McQueen

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