Brummell May 2014

Eye on the future Celebrating the City’s talented Ones To Watch 2014 • London’s next star chefs • 100 years of Maserati How to produce your own Bordeaux • Where to sharpen your kitchen skills • Facing polar bears in Canada

AN

EL EG ANT

PERF ORMANCE

THE ALL NEW QUATTROPORTE. A CELEBRATION OF ELEGANCE, TECHNOLOGY AND POWER The all new Quattroporte is more than just the fnest luxury high performance sports saloon. It blends extraordinary beauty with uncompromising performance from a range of V6 and V8 engines. A classic and exclusive grantourer with unmistakeable Italian design.

For more information on the new Maserati Quattroporte, call 01943 871660 or visit maserati.co.uk

Offcial fuel consumption fgures for Maserati Quattroporte range in mpg (l/100km): Urban 16.2 (17.4) – 36.2 (7.8), Extra Urban 33.2 (8.5) – 54.3 (5.2), Combined 23.9 (11.8) – 45.6 (6.2). CO2 emissions 274 – 163g/km. Fuel consumption and CO2 fgures are based on standard EU tests for comparative purposes and may not refect real driving results.

Q U A T T R O P O R T E

www.maserati.co.uk

L-evolution Collection

BLANCPAIN BOUTIQUES ABU DHABI · BEIJING · CANNES · DUBAI · EKATERINBURG · GENEVA · HONG KONG · MACAU MADRID · MANAMA · MOSCOW · MUNICH · NEW YORK · PARIS · SEOUL · SHANGHAI · SINGAPORE · TAIPEI · TOKYO · ZURICH TEL. 0845 273 2500 www.blancpain.com

Welcome to Brummell ‘Success in the City needs to be defned more rigorously than it was in the past,’ opines our columnist David Charters. It’s all very well to be a powerhouse in the workplace, but now society demands a more rounded approach to life, and an additional activity that validates and endorses is considered a necessity. Tenacity and drive, not to mention old-school ruthlessness, must be tempered by measure, reasonableness and caring – the soft stuff. The skills set and energy of the fnancial services arena applied to the voluntary sector has to be a good thing: contributing brainpower, rigour and experience is of great beneft to both parties.

In Brummell’s latest annual Ones To Watch list, the expert panel – who are no slouches in the high-achievement department themselves – pored over the abundance of young talent nominated this

year. Merely demonstrating drive and consistently outperforming peers was judged to be not quite enough to meet the stringent criteria, which sought out those under-40s who contribute both inside and outside their companies via their involvement in mentoring, fundraising, networking, advocacy groups or the Third Sector, or by establishing entrepreneurial projects.

We also look beyond the City and fnd a clutch of bright young things with enterprising callings who have set up an artisan business or are pursuing a creative impulse or embracing innovative technology to launch new platforms for their passions. The conclusion has to be that there’s no shortage of impressive talent out there making its mark and proving inspirational.

Joanne Glasbey, Editor

The world’s finest luxury motoryachts from 40 to 155 feet.

Sunseeker London +44 (0)20 7355 0980 www.sunseekerlondon.com

Sunseeker Poole +44 (0)1202 666060 www.sunseekerpoole.com

More style. More pace.

Unmistak ably Sunseeker 80 Sport Yacht

©T&CO. 2014

ATLAS® OLD BOND STREET 25 OLD BOND STREET, W1S 4QB CANARY WHARF CABOT PLACE, CANARY WHARF, E14 4QS ROYAL EXCHANGE THE COURTYARD, ROYAL EXCHANGE, EC3V 3LQ 0800 160 1837 | TIFFANY.COM

Contents • Brummell

Contents 12

15

Cover illustration: Craig & Karl 17 Show Media Brummell editorial 020 3222 0101 — Editor Joanne Glasbey Art Director Dominic Bell Managing Editor Lucy Teasdale Chief Copy Editor Chris Madigan Deputy Chief Copy Editor Gill Wing Senior Designer Jo Murray Picture Director Juliette Hedoin Staff Writer Charlie Teasdale Style Director Tamara Fulton Copy Editors Nicky Gyopari, Katie Wyartt Creative Director Ian Pendleton Managing Director Peter Howarth — Advertising & Events Director Duncan McRae duncan@fyingcoloursmarketing.com 07816 218059 — showmedialondon.com brummell@showmedialondon.com — Visit Brummell’s website for more tailor-made content: brummellmagazine.net

22

24

26

28

32

35

Foreword If bankers must dial down the venal bloodlust at work, David Charters suggests, why not apply those useful skills to charitable work?

Money no object A collection of mid-20th-century strobefash photography that turned science into art goes on sale BEAUMONDE News Bespoke tennis racquets, stylish running wear and a vintage bike race – plus, for the less active, private-jet tours of luxury hotels Motoring It is 100 years since the brothers Maserati set up shop in Bologna, spawning a line of beautifully designed road and race cars Tailoring From 13th-century French royalty, via Beau Brummell during the Regency, to Paul Smith now, blue is the colour of summer suits New watches A round-up of some of the most exciting horological innovations and designs, as revealed at this spring’s watch fairs Travel Go face to face in the north of Canada with one of nature’s marvels: the cuddly-looking but potentially deadly polar bear After the City The man who quit the trading foor and set up a frm that matches the most talented graduates with the most suitable internships

46

35

46

54

58

74

58

66

68 Colour reproduction by Fresh Media Group, groupfmg.com. Printed by Manson Group, manson-grp.co.uk 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.

71

72 54

FEATURES Ones To Watch 2014 Our annual list of 30 young London-based fnancial services specialists who are not only outstandingly successful but also bring an extra dimension to business in the City Creative talent In addition to celebrating City wünderkinder, we also toast those bringing youthful zest to the creative industries: meet the artisan kitchen product designers, jeweller, cocktail-bar reviewer and conductor Watches Ones to watch: the timepieces – a selection of this year’s models that impress Style Modern, clean-cut alternatives to the workaday suit, with sleek accessories

By George The roar of classic American V8s at the Goodwood Revival race meeting EPICURE Food & drink news Bespoke home pizza ovens; sherry and pisco sour masterclasses; Atherton’s latest opening and Outlaw takes over PittCue Kitchen skills How to hone your techniques – butchery, fsh flleting, sushi and dim sum preparation, coffee ‘baristing’ and more Wine Make your own high-quality Bordeaux wine with a consultant oenologist who usually works for Châteaux Latour, Laftte and Lynch-Bages Chefs to watch Restaurant magazine editor Stefan Chomka names the young kitchen visionaries set to transform London’s dining scene

11

Change of heart

Foreword • Brummell

13

Investment bankers had it all. Now the skills that brought us wealth need to be tempered with ‘soft stuff’ and applied externally to good causes, to meet the new criteria of success

Words: David Charters Illustration: Brett Ryder

‘So you’re a banker? No kidding?’ Furtive glance over your shoulder to make sure no one else is listening. ‘Do you generally let on to people about what you do? Or do you say you do something else… like being an undertaker or a furrier or selling crystal meth…?’

OK, I made the last bit up. But the rest is authentic. There was a time when the coolest person at the drinks party was the investment banker. By defnition, we had it all – money, talent, success, infuence. For a while, we felt everyone wanted to be us, and we sort of understood why.

And then it all changed. Nothing lasts for ever, and we should not have been surprised. The boot is now frmly on the other foot, and we are learning humility, empathy, listening skills… all those soft factors that didn’t matter when we were earning gazillions and all those poor people with their noses pressed against the glass looking in at our privileged world were dazzled and unquestioning.

To be a successful banker in today’s world you need something additional that did not matter in the past, an external reference point that validates and endorses and says you are not just some venal, shallow, one-dimensional suit with a blood lust for large bonuses (even if part of you remains quietly unchanged from the old days).

Today’s successful banker needs all the hard-deal skills of the past but also has to ft with the Zeitgeist. Ruthless, rigorous, tenacious and driven, but also measured, mature and reasonable – even caring – and certainly aware of something more meaningful than the shape of the yield curve.

If those sound mutually exclusive, then the way to accommodate them is to be as bad – or, depending how you see it, as good – as you’ve always been in your work, but to ft in the soft stuff in your spare time. Head of syndicate in your day job, charity trustee/fundraiser/mentor in the evenings.

In the old days, there were no evenings. Work was an end in itself, and we put in all the hours we could in a culture of presentee-ism where simply being around when someone achieved a success

Today’s banker needs to be aware of something more meaningful than the shape of the yield curve

could make a difference at bonus time. Today, you have to deal with the same workload, but ft in a fundraising dinner or a charity board in the evening, and whatever you do in your ‘spare time’ has to be a success: the best, biggest, most widely written-about, celebrity-strewn fundraiser, rather than just an average event.

This should be good news. Unleashing City shock troops on a needy world to provide help, advice, expertise and, above all else, the sheer abundance of energy that is part of the DNA of investment banking cannot be bad. Charities characterised by good intentions may still lack management rigour. However noble the aims, tough choices still have to be made, priorities determined and performance monitored.

Getting an investment banker on the case can be a very good thing indeed. Even if we don’t always practise what we preach in our own industry, at least we understand the theory and are not backward in sharing our wisdom with others. And if things have to be closed down, costs stripped out and people fred, we’re the ones for the job. If we do it to ourselves, do you really think we’d hesitate to do it to your people too?

But there is a better, more positive aspect to the involvement of the City in the third sector.

Success needs to be defned more rigorously than it was in the past. Toys are passé, as are homes and art and all the superfcial trivia that once served as a benchmark for having arrived. He who dies with the most toys wins. Yeah, right. Contributing and giving back are in, conspicuous consumption

is at the very least under the microscope. So we have success – but what are we doing with it?

That is where the City will make a difference.

One stormtrooper can outmatch a room full of well-intentioned fnancial illiterates. Is that a good thing? Shouldn’t they be protected from those dreadful people with their mastery of numbers and unrelenting skills of interrogation? Of course – unless you believe that what the third sector does, matters and should be subject to the same rigour as the rest of society. And boy, can we bring rigour.

We also bring ambition. Anyone can be average, but if we are sacrifcing our precious spare time we expect to see a result. The creativity and forcefulness of investment bankers is wonderful if harnessed in the right way. And we are accustomed to rejection. We spend our lives asking for the business, the mandate, the order, and when we are knocked back, we bounce up again and keep going. So who better to help with charitable fundraising? Asking for money is in our blood, so point us in the right direction and we’ll do it.

It may be that we’re mixing an unpalatable cocktail, that City skills are useful if delivered in a toned-down, sugar-coated manner, but the kind world of the third sector really doesn’t want the full-on version. Not if I have anything to do with it. There is now a pressing urgency and relevance about the work undertaken by the voluntary sector.

A privileged few of us have kept on doing very well indeed even in troubled times, but an awful lot of others have not, and could use a helping hand. And there’s no one better to help them than the people who fght every day in the markets against the best the world has to throw at them.

Is it a tough world? Of course. So no better reason for enlisting the fnest that the toughest of all competitive worlds can provide. Let slip the dogs of fnance. But all in a good cause. l The Ego’s Nest, by David Charters, the ffth novel in the series about City anti-hero Dave Hart, is published by Elliott & Thompson, £6.99

Dr Harold Edgerton. Gussie Moran, 1949 © Harold Edgerton Archive, MIT. Courtesy Michael Hoppen Gallery

Brummell

15

It’s exciting to come across a pioneer who has helped alter the way we look at the world. Dr Harold Edgerton is one such. Among his many achievements, he invented the strobe fash in the early Thirties while an Institute Professor at MIT – a breakthrough that ensured his place in the pantheon of photography’s true originals. The process allowed time literally to be stopped, which revealed the perfect arc of a tennis serve or the precise moment of a bullet exiting a gun.

Pivotal in developing early aerial and oceanic reconnaissance images, during World War II, ‘Doc’, as he was monikered, created a strobe light powerful enough to be used at night; the resulting images were crucial in establishing an absence of German forces in key strategic locations just prior to the D-Day landings in 1944. He also invented underwater photographic techniques and side-scan sonar devises to map the ocean foor, working with marine biologist Jacques Cousteau.

While Doc always regarded himself primarily as a scientist, and his legacy survives in that world, it also exists in the astonishing aesthetic and abstract qualities of the images he produced.

His engineering talents and aesthetic sensibility made ‘frozen movement’ part of our modern visual vocabulary, and his work has been exhibited by art institutions such as New York’s MOMA for over 70 years and is now collected by museums worldwide.

The upcoming exhibition at the Michael Hoppen Gallery (6 June to 2 August), which houses one of Europe’s largest collections of photography, specialising in 19th- and 20th-century images and contemporary photographic art – presents a rare opportunity to view and buy many of the images and fnd out more about the affable and engaging Dr Harold Edgerton. michaelhoppengallery.com Tennis caught ‘Gorgeous’ Gussie Moran, whose short skirt shocked Wimbledon offcials in 1949, photographed by Harold ‘Doc’ Edgerton, using his strobe-fash technique. The print is on sale at the Michael Hoppen Gallery

A sale of strobe-fash pictures from the Thirties and Forties offers an opportunity to capture the fastest actions in physics

Words: Joanne Glasbey

V I E W T H E F I L M AT: W W W. G I E V E S A N D H A W K E S. C O M

Beaumonde Timing the world; running kit ft for a champion; a British spin on an Italian bike race; bespoke tennis racquets

Peak ftness ← L’Eroica is an Italian bike race with a difference. The rules state that, to compete, a rider’s bike needs to be ‘heroic’ – that is to say, a road frame built before 1987. Participants tend to dress appropriately, opting for vintage outfts, and respect the race’s ethos of enjoying the ride together and sampling great food along the way.

This June, a British rendition of the race will take place for the frst time.

At L’Eroica Britannia, the same rules apply, but the route options – 30, 55 or 100 miles – differ in that they wind through the Peak District National Park.

The event is a result of two years of meticulous planning, and routes have been carefully mapped out to take in the park’s most handsome features: the Chatsworth Estate, the Monsal Trail and the various feats of Victorian engineering dotted around. It’ll be colder than its Tuscan incarnation, but just as beautiful. 20–22 June; eroicabritannia.co.uk

The fairest of them all Connoisseurs of the fner things in life should know about Masterpiece London – a display of the highestquality art, antiques and design. Its independent experts scrutinise each exhibit so buyers can be confdent in their purchase. With fare from Scott’s Seafood & Champagne Bars, Le Caprice, the Ivy Bar and the Mount Street Deli, it’s like the best of Mayfair relocated to The Royal Hospital, Chelsea. 26 June – 2 July; masterpiecefair.com

A case in point ↑ Tumi’s Alpha II collection represents the pinnacle of the company’s three decades of design innovation and commitment to crafting world-beating luggage. With 14 patented components, the expandable carry-on is made from ultra-durable nylon and features a virtually damage-proof handle, an expandable main compartment and even a removable suit sleeve. It will be available at Tumi’s newly opened fagship store at 211 Regent Street. £645; uk.tumi.com. To read an interview with Tumi CEO Jerome Griffth, visit brummellmagazine.net

Hands across the world ↑ Jaeger-LeCoultre’s new interpretation of the Dual-Wing movement in its handsome pink-gold Duomètre Unique Travel Time watch – worn by brand ambassador Clive Owen, above – is the frst world-time model that enables to-the-minute adjustment of its second zone. A celebration of technical prowess, it’s divided into two mechanisms: one that displays local time and another showing it in an alternative zone – and the operation of the dual display does not infuence the running of the watch, which enhances its precision. £34,100; jaeger-lecoultre.com

18

Beaumonde • News

String theory ← Summer heralds the arrival of the Wimbledon tennis championships, but before you get inspired and take to the court for a few sets, consider a custom-made racquet from Head.

The bespoke service takes in individual skill, experience, technical needs and taste to create the perfect racquet.

Available to order online (where you’ll also fnd a tutorial video from Novak Djokovic), each one is available in a plethora of guises, with options including three string types, fve grip sizes and a range of weights and balance settings. What’s more, each racquet is engraved with the owner’s name – a touch that will offer some succour when in the grips of a tiebreak. head.com/custommade

Top-fight travel For a truly once-in-a-lifetime journey, a Four Seasons’ Private Jet Experience is right up there.

Travelling by dedicated jet for Shorts story ↑ Quintessentially British brand Sunspel has had a connection with James Bond for close to a decade. It began in 2006, when it was tasked with designing polo shirts for Daniel Craig in Casino Royale, and then, in 2012, the Barbican challenged the company to recreate Sean Connery’s famous blue swim shorts from Dr. No for its Designing 007: Fifty Years of Bond Styling exhibition. This provided the impetus for Sunspel to create a range of shorts in a matte polyamide fabric that is perfect for swimming, but has the appearance of classic chinos. £120; sunspel.com

a month, guests stay in the very best hotels in the Four Seasons portfolio, such as that in Chiang Mai in Thailand, or the Beverly Wilshire in LA. One trip in the portfolio takes in Europe’s most culturally rich cities, while another is a full round-the-world voyage. fourseasons.com/aroundtheworld

Art of penmanship ↑ It’s pleasing when two revered and renowned companies pool resources to collaborate, as the results have the potential to be outstanding. In this case, the nearly 100-year-old Caran d’Ache family enterprise, which makes iconic pencils, fne-arts materials and luxury writing instruments, has got together with vintage acclaimed French glassware specialists Lalique to produce a trio of exceptional fountain pens: the Black Crystal, White Crystal and Crystal & Diamond editions. The latter is limited to just 18 pieces, and is made in white gold, set with 341 cascading diamonds totalling 3 carats. From £2,300, carandache.com

20

Beaumonde • News BRUMMELL PROMOTION

A dram and a place

The Dalmore’s master distiller Richard Paterson on the joy of taking a sip in the sun People often ask me what was my most memorable whisky-drinking experience.

It was not sitting in a leather armchair by a freside, but the time a friend and I climbed to the summit of Beinn An Oir (‘mountain of gold’) and opened a bottle at the top. It was sensational.

When you drink whisky outside, you get something else out of it. It is not only a spirit for the winter: after all, the motto of the Clan Mackenzie, which owned The Dalmore for 100 years, is ‘I shine, not burn’. I like to think that refects the sunshine that helps the barley grow.

At our distillery in Alness on the Cromarty Firth, I sometimes take a bottle of The Dalmore King Alexander III down to the Yankee Pier to share with guests. I took some sales guys there once in the rain and they thought I was crazy. Then the sun came out and the beauty of the setting was revealed. You could see it in their eyes – that would be with them for the rest of their lives.

The distillery, with its stone walls, pagoda roofs, Oregon-pine washbacks

and the River Averon fowing between the four stills, is a magical place, full of history. In World War II, it was a US naval base, hence the name of the pier.

Then there are the warehouses by the waterfront, where the maturation takes place in a traditional dunnage arrangement of three tiers of cask, and the briny air creeping in from the North Sea. All this sense of place goes into the whisky.

The 12-point-antlered stag on every bottle harks back to 1263, when one Mackenzie ancestor saved Alexander III from being gored in a hunt. The grateful king allowed the clan to use the royal symbol henceforth. The subtle, complex whisky that bears his name is matured in six different casks and refects the deep, rich heritage of The Dalmore.

The Dalmore King Alexander III, £140; thedalmore.com

In the ascendant Quintessential British style house Hackett is reprising its Rising Stars project, which promotes the work of artists with studios local to its stores across the world. It will feature creations in its windows that range from the conventional to the boundary-blending, all of which will be available to buy.

So, while you peruse this summer’s stylish suiting and elegant swim shorts, you can also pick up a work from a talent worth watching. hackett.com

A good run ↑ An exercise in understatement, Iffey Road’s range of running wear is classic in design, but thoroughly modern in function. The collection of T-shirts, shorts, leggings and long-sleeved tops was created by runners for runners.

Each garment is packed with technical features – be it the Merino-wool fabric, precision ft or a carefully positioned

pocket – and offers outstanding comfort in even the most grim of conditions.

Beyond the clothing, the company promotes the simplicity, inclusivity and sheer joy of the sport – its name was inspired by the Oxford track where, 60 years ago this month, Roger Bannister set the record for the frst sub-fourminute mile. iffeyroad.com

22

Beaumonde • Motoring

Shape of things to come From top The Maserati 250F (produced between 1954 and 1960); the A6GCS (1947–56); and the Tipo 4CS 1100 (1931–36)

On the marque For a century, the sleek lines and driving prowess of Maseratis have rarely failed to thrill – and the evocative cars are roaring with life once more

It’s 2014, and time to celebrate 100 years of Maserati, the legendary Italian marque that made its frst car in, er, 1926. OK, maybe it’s not really a century since the frst Trident-badged car turned a wheel – but it was in December 1914 that the Societa Anonima Offcine Alferi Maserati was established in Bologna, adopting the town’s trident-of-Neptune insignia as its badge.

Initially, Alferi and brothers Ernesto and Ettore prepared Isottas for racing, then tuned and raced for Diatto until it stopped production in 1926 – leaving the Maseratis to make the frst car bearing their own name: an eight-cylinder, Diatto-based racer in which Alferi scored a class win in that year’s Targa Florio to lay the foundations of the trident legend.

Further victories impressed industrialist Adolfo Orsi, who bought the company and took it to victory at the 1939 Indianapolis 500 before car production was temporarily abandoned during World War II. Production resumed post-war with a series of beautiful road cars with bodywork by Pininfarina, Zagato and Frua atop the A6 chassis.

The early Fifties also saw Juan Manuel Fangio score the frst of a string of race victories for the marque, culminating in his ffth and fnal world championship win in 1957, driving the legendary 250F – the model that also gave Stirling Moss his big break in F1.

Despite Fangio’s glorious victory, 1957 was a black year for Maserati, which lost several drivers in a string of unrelated accidents. This led the company to axe its works team, although it continued to build cars for other people to race, notably the legendary, tubular-framed ‘Birdcage’ models of the early Sixties.

It was during the Swinging Sixties and into the Seventies that some of the most evocative Maserati road cars were developed, including the Bora, Mistral and Ghibli. Their stunning looks and slightly naughty image attracted an eclectic bunch of well-known names, from the Shah of Iran and the astronaut Wally Schirra to Peter Sellers, Kirk Douglas, Peter Ustinov and Sandie Shaw.

It was in the same era that ownership of Maserati passed to Citroën – a partnership that led to the development of the mongrel Citroën SM (Maserati engine, Citroën bodywork) and the Merak SS, Khamsin and Quattroporte II. But then Citroën went bankrupt, leaving Maserati to be saved by the Italian government.

Ownership shifted to Alessandro de Tomaso and, by the Eighties, the lovely mid-engined road cars had been replaced by boxy, front-engined, rear-wheel-drive coupés such as the Biturbo, Shamal and the Ghibli II, designed by Italian styling house Giugiaro.

Maserati’s renaissance proper began in 1993, however, when Fiat bought the company and launched the 3200 GT in 1999, which developed into the 4200 Coupé and Cabriolet, with the GranTurismo and Quattroporte arriving soon after, under Ferrari ownership. Now back under the wing of Fiat, Maserati looks to be in rude health, with the new Ghibli expected to reinforce the marque’s presence on the world stage, with an annual production fgure of 20,000 cars.

Alferi would no doubt approve – although the thought of the optional diesel engine might have him spinning in his grave. Probably at around 8,000rpm. l maserati.com

Maserati S.p.A. This article frst appeared on classicdriver.com

Words: Simon de Burton

24

Beaumonde • Style

True blue British designer Paul Smith predicts a sea change in suiting this season, as navy edges out sombre black and grey as the colour of the summer

If you were watching Andy Murray’s historic Wimbledon victory last summer, you may have noticed an inadvertent fashion statement that was made several times as the cameramen picked out a glamorous couple in the crowd.

The twosome in question had nothing to do with the stock-in-trade wife-or-girlfriend close-ups so beloved of TV producers, but instead were just a couple of interested spectators. Who happened to be Hollywood movie stars.

Bradley Cooper and Gerard Butler – for it was they – turned up in almost-matching blue tailoring, shirts and ties: Bradley in full suit, Gerard teaming his jacket with separate trousers. Their co-ordinated appearance on Centre Court – the perfect example of a seasonal formal/informal occasion – did much to remind us how useful summer blues can be.

Another man who gets this is designer Paul Smith, well known as an adventurous colourist through his work with prints and stripes. Yet it is his navy-blue two-button single-breasted Soho suit that is, apparently, the season’s key item.

A moment’s consideration will explain why. Blue is at the subtle end of the spectrum – interesting, but not overly dramatic like, say, red. It has a rich backstory – it’s the colour of NATO peacekeepers (the term ‘blue on blue’ denotes friendly fre) and has a long and noble association with royalty (the 13th-century French), divinity (the ancient Egyptians), art (from Byzantine church decoration to Picasso’s blue period and Yves Klein’s patented International Klein Blue) and fashion.

This magazine’s namesake, Beau Brummell, is said to have been instrumental in this last category. The Regency dandy revolutionised menswear when he created a suit that followed the lines of the body – a long, ftted tailcoat and, tight, full-length trousers instead of breeches and stockings. Brummell also favoured a palette of one plain colour, such as blue or grey. Originally, a coat and trousers would be different colours, but during the 19th century, one became fashionable.

By the latter part of that century, black suits were the uniform of businessmen, but the blue option made a return in the 20th.

A blue suit is a blank canvas – less severe than a black one, less corporate-looking than a grey one

A bigger splash From top The two-button, single-breasted Soho suit is a key look this season; Paul Smith fan David Hockney, in New York in 1972, in a typically colourful ensemble

As a designer, Paul Smith clearly favours the more eccentric end of the fashion spectrum – he told me once how he loved the fact that David Hockney would come into his store in Covent Garden and buy brightly coloured, oversized sweaters: ‘He’s always been a stylish dresser,’ he explained. ‘It’s just the way he puts things together. When I saw him last, he was wearing a double-breasted pinstripe suit in a lovely blue with an apple-green tie. He’s extremely stylish in a very British, very idiosyncratic way, and not afraid of mixing colours and patterns.’

Certainly, Smith, as a no-nonsense Northerner, understands that, for most of us, the ideal is to make a fashion statement without looking like we’re trying too hard. In this, he has something in common with Beau Brummell, who is alleged to have said, ‘If people turn to look at you in the street, you are not well dressed.’

At the launch of his British Collection for autumn/winter 2014 at London’s menswear fashion week earlier this year, Smith talked of how he understood the importance of what he calls a ‘nudge-nudge approach’ to designing menswear, citing how he focuses on subtle details such as ‘a notch on a collar or the width of a shoulder’. A top tip, he said, was ‘wearing a chambray shirt under a blue suit instead of a white shirt with a tie.’

So this is where the Paul Smith classic navy suit really comes into its own. It is indeed a blank canvas – less severe than a black one, less corporate-looking than a grey one – that can be styled in a multitude of ways. White shirt and classic tie: professional. V-neck knitted T-shirt, jeans, brown shoes with blue suit jacket: casual, out-of-offce. And, of course, with the aforementioned chambray shirt: modern hipster.

If you’re looking for a really useful addition to your wardrobe this summer, investing in one of Paul Smith’s supremely versatile blue whistles will pay dividends. l The Paul Smith two-button single-breasted Soho suit is available from paulsmith.co.uk

Peter Simins/ Condé Nast Archive/Corbis

Words: Peter Howarth

S I G N AT U R E L O A F E R 1 8 0 Flame marked petit-point welt stitching, Limoges

26

Beaumonde • Watches

New tricks Of the bewildering number of watches being unveiled at this year’s Swiss watch fairs, which ones offer true innovation and technological advances and aren’t just novelty releases?

Words: Robin Swithinbank

Forgive me if I take a moment to remember one of the many daft scenes in the Eighties spy-spoof Top Secret! – the one in which a blind party-trick salesman-cum-informant slips some intelligence to Omar Sharif’s hapless Agent Cedric. Sharif ends the sequence with purple ink, squirty cream and the cinders of an exploding cigar all over his face, but the line that sticks in the mind is the creepy salesman’s pitch – ‘Souvenirrrrs, novelteeees, party-trricks’ – delivered in a wonderfully silly Eastern European accent by the brilliant Ian McNeice.

The reason for recalling this lowbrow movie moment in an article about high-end watches is to mischievously suggest that there could be few better straplines for the annual Swiss watch fairs. Of the many ‘novelties’ proudly unveiled, plenty achieve trinket and/or gimmick status.

The challenge when visiting the fairs is to fnd the watches that are genuinely innovative and interesting. In the throes of the shows – January’s Salon International de la Haute Horlogerie and March’s BaselWorld – that task is complicated by the sheer number passing under one’s nose. The litmus test is to see what remains in the memory a few weeks on, much like the best line from a flm. Here then, in fve categories, is a selection of the most memorable from this year’s fairs.

The challenge when visiting the fairs is to find the watches that are genuinely innovative and interesting

Fairs’ fare Above, from left: Omega Seamaster 300 Master Co-Axial; Blancpain Fifty Fathoms Bathyscaphe Chronograph; Chopard LUC Tourbillon Qualité Fleurier Fairmined; Vacheron Constantin Patrimony Traditionnelle 14-Day Tourbillon Openworked; Breguet Classique Tourbillon Extra-Thin 5377PT. Stockists details on page 74

Anti-magnetic mechanical timepieces Few if any technical novelties deserve as much attention as the advances currently being made in anti-magnetic watches. Magnetism is to watches what lockjaw is to a gossip – once the moving metal parts in a watch are magnetised, they stop working properly and ultimately altogether if the problem isn’t seen to.

Strong magnetic felds are ubiquitous, spewing out of our computers, tablets and mobile phones, which is why wearing a mechanical watch while using your laptop is a bad idea. As is leaving your watch on top of your phone while you charge it overnight (as an unwitting friend of mine did until I advised him otherwise).

The current king of anti-magnetism is Omega, whose Master Co-Axial series of calibres launched this year can repel magnetic felds up to 15,000 gauss – far more than you’ll fnd in your phone.

The Seamaster 300 Master Co-Axial is my pick of the collection, largely because it’s a successful revival of a diving watch from the Fifties – a golden age for the genre.

Blancpain’s Fifty Fathoms Bathyscaphe Chronograph has a silicon balance wheel at its beating heart and is anti-magnetic to 1,500 gauss (still plenty), and Rolex’s latest Milgauss (resistant to 1,000 gauss) has a poppy ‘Z blue’ dial.

Watches • Beaumonde

Tourbillons The tourbillon (French for ‘whirlwind’) may be an anachronism, but it has lost none of its power to wow, as proved by two of the oldest, most traditional brands in watchmaking this year.

Breguet has been the frst name in tourbillon watches since its eponymous founder, AbrahamLouis Breguet patented the anti-gravitational pocket-watch device back in 1801 – and that is a position that it has no inclination to relinquish if the Classique Tourbillon Extra-Thin 5377PT is anything to go by.

Records suggest that, at 7mm thick, it is the thinnest automatic tourbillon in the world, which is a claim a fair few watch houses would love to make. It somehow manages to squeeze a 90-hour power reserve inside its 42mm platinum case, while, aesthetically speaking, this timepiece is as unashamedly conservative and elegant as afternoon tea at Claridge’s.

Talking of records, Vacheron Constantin landed arguably the most esoteric world best at this year’s shows with its Patrimony Traditionnelle 14-Day Tourbillon Openworked. Also a 42mm platinum timepiece, it has the longest power reserve of any skeletonised tourbillon currently on the market, which is an obscure apex, but an impressive one nonetheless.

Pilot’s watches The pilot’s watch is an archetype and, as such, is above trend. The latest crop includes Bell & Ross’s WW1 Guynemer, a timepiece with a round ‘shot-peened’ steel-grey PVD (vaccuum-coated) case made in tribute to World War I French fying ace and Légion d’Honneur recipient Georges Guynemer.

Oris made its frst pilot’s watch in 1938. Its newest, the Big Crown ProPilot Day Date, is a straight-up military classic that has a utility feel to it, particularly on an olive textile strap.

Hamilton is one of the great pilot’s watch brands – it produced a million timepieces for the Allied forces during World War II. Its 2014 offering includes the Khaki Pilot Pioneer, available with either a lightweight coloured aluminium case, or a heftier and less overtly fashion-conscious steel option. It’s automatic, comes on a hardwearing NATO strap, has an 80-hour power reserve and will cost well under four fgures.

Carbon-fbre cases Watches cased in carbon fbre were rarifed things only a few years ago, but as the technology behind them becomes more accessible, so the latest models have become more affordable. Known in the main for its classical styles, Raymond Weil

27

pulled one of the surprises of the BaselWorld fair with its Nabucco Rivoluzione II, a macho chronograph with a carbon-fbre and titanium case. The collection behind the watch is named after Verdi’s opera and this new model is available boxed with a pair of Sennheiser headphones.

TAG Heuer introduced a new form of carbon into watchmaking this year with its Carrera CMC Concept Chronograph, which has a carbon-matrix composite case that weighs just 19g – the same as two pound coins. Built around the Calibre 1887 in-house movement, it also has the 12 o’clock ‘bullhead’ crown and push-button arrangement seen on last year’s 50th-anniversary Carrera.

Ethical materials The watch industry has a long track record with philanthropy, but when it comes to sourcing ethically produced precious materials, it hasn’t always been as readily engaged. However, that looks set to change, with Chopard leading the way.

Its LUC Tourbillon Qualité Fleurier Fairmined is the world’s frst watch made in Fairmined gold – a material Chopard has championed previously in its jewellery. The gold comes from Colombia’s Coodmilla cooperative, which Chopard has pledged to support into the future – which is, without doubt, a good thing. l

Beaumonde • Travel

Bear with us Opposite: A polar bear ambles past guests of Seal River Heritage Lodge This page: Another bear pokes a curious nose into the accommodation block at the camp

Alamy; Dennis Fast/Churchill Wild

28

Travel • Beaumonde

29

Beauty in the beast Miles from civilisation in the Canadian wilderness, a killer is at the window. But that is exactly what people are here for: close encounters with the deadly but magnifcent polar bear

Words: Ian Belcher

He looks so docile. Gentle. Cuddly. In the ethereal light of a 4am dawn, the giant bundle of pristine white fuff sniffs languorously at the lodge window, ambles past the front door and gnaws tenderly on an outbuilding latch, before curling up and settling into serene slumber.

You could almost hug him. Almost. But just a day or so before, the same lovable polar bear was smashing through several feet of ice with meat hook claws, ripping out helpless seal pups and tearing them apart with blood-drenched fangs.

On refection, it’s probably best not to hug him.

You can, however, stalk him. Seal River Heritage Lodge, a pinprick of gloriously isolated civilisation 60km north of Churchill on the empty west coast of Canada’s Hudson Bay, claims to be the only place on earth (apart from its sister lodge to the south) where you can walk with polar bears. Its knowledgeable, experienced, well-armed guides deliver thrilling eye-to-eye encounters with the alpha predator in Manitoba’s savagely raw, big-sky wilderness.

If you’ve ever wondered what it’s like to be on display in a zoo, this is your chance. Seal River’s cosy accommodation, alchemised from a derelict whaling research station, cocoons you securely in the heart of a polar-bear hotspot – if such a thing

is climatically possible – with 1,000 of the global population of 20-25,000. The planet’s largest predators stare inquisitively through its strengthened panoramic windows and chain-link compound fence, watching you watching them.

‘Don’t stick your camera lenses through the fence,’ warns guide Andy MacPherson, during his opening safety talk. ‘They might push it into your forehead. And don’t have the strap around your neck – they can grab it.’

We’re not in danger. Not yet. The bears are about to arrive for several months of summer fasting and foraging on land. They’re currently 90km away in the bay, gorging on two-month-old seal pups on a huge melting ice foe – the remnants of last winter’s freeze. ‘They’re out there flling their boots,’ says Andy. ‘It’s not pretty.’

Nonethless, as we gather for our frst hike, the two guides aren’t taking any risks. They carry rocks, canned pepper spray, shotguns and starting pistols to fre bangers. Add in Andy’s camoufage trousers and wrap-around shades and we appear to be on a mission with a Navy Seal.

A brilliantly informative Navy Seal, that is.

The guide leads us across a shoreline dotted with super-sized boulders, onto Arctic tundra carpeted

with bright yellow mastodon and exquisite purple freweed. We cross ancient beaches far from the sea, evidence of how the land has rebounded since the last Ice Age. They’re home to 400-yearold stone circles – prime real estate for Inuit property developers whose tent rings boasted 360-degree wrap-around views. Today, however, those panoramas don’t include bears.

To get our frst view, we motor out to sea in a Zodiac infatable. The giant carnivore is perched on a rock studying a potential feast of Beluga whales.

He reminds me of a kid with his nose against a sweet-shop window – until he stands on his hind legs, displaying nine feet of fur, teeth and claws.

He’s only a kilometre offshore – and heading our way. Our polar-bear stalk looks imminent.

Yet, next day, there’s no trace of him. Instead, the largest predators loom menacingly above our heads like airborne manta rays. They’re bald eagles with 6ft wingspans and one-tonne nests.

Astounding vital statistics, perhaps, but not polar bears, Mr Attenborough, sir. Will I be here long enough to see our prey arrive? At 11.04pm on the third night, I fnd out. One of the guides knocks on my room door: a bear, dripping from its long-distance paddle, is approaching

Beaumonde • Travel Bear necessities Left: Guarded by armed guides, the guests see for themselves the polar bears’ power Below: Guests set off in RIBs to stalk the animals down the coast

the compound. Clad in thermal long johns, I watch the 1,000-pound giant lollop towards the window and stare into the dark interior. Can he make out human shapes?

He’s vanished by the next day, but it doesn’t matter. Two more arrive that night. They’re here.

Finally. In just a few hours, we’ll be walking with polar bears. The next morning our group sets out, invigorated by a fresh shot of adrenaline. The guides sport their usual armoury but, as a textbook stalk depends on knowledge of bear behaviour and body language, they don’t intend to use any of it. ‘I’ve only fred once – and that was into the ground,’ says Andy. ‘The whole idea is not to spook them.’

The weather helps. A cooling 40kmph crosswind carries our scent away from a creature that, with the nose of a top sommelier, can detect prey from up to 60km. It also stops us dripping with an unholy mix of sweat and bug juice, applied liberally to deter gruesomely large mosquitoes.

We tramp over springy seaweed and damp, shiny grassland before ascending a low ridge. The guides scan the fat landscape through binoculars. Bingo.

He’s hunkered down 180m away. ‘He just swam 90km,’ says Andy. ‘Anybody would need a rest.’

On instruction, our 16-strong group closes rank and starts to approach in a single-fle snake.

We slither over tundra to within 120m. Then 100m.

Tension rises. We move to 95… 90… 85m. Deep breath. And then he spots us. ‘It’s OK,’ reassures Andy. ‘He’s calm, watching, not staring. We’ll sweep to one side rather than straight on like an aggressive rival.’

We stop at 70m. I look around and every single person is staring through a camera – the antithesis of being in the moment. It doesn’t bother the bear. He’s not huffng, puffng or making direct eye contact. Seventy metres becomes 60, then 55. I’m almost tiptoeing, but the animal appears completely unfazed. Is it a poker bluff?

The guides remain between our target and us, talking in low, monotone voices. Their caution

Polar bears are faster than a racehorse from a standing start and gallop at 40mph: ‘You’ll never outrun them’

is understandable: polar bears are faster than a racehorse from a standing start and gallop at 40kmph. ‘You’ll never outrun them,’ says Andy.

‘You wouldn’t stand a chance.’

We don’t put it to the test. At 50m, the bear sits up, sniffs and stands, never taking his eyes off us.

‘Peak condition,’ sighs Andy, using a description you’ll never hear at Milan Fashion Week: ‘look at the fat roll on those hips.’ I do. It makes me feel better about my own love handles. My fnal view is of the bear’s enormous furry posterior vanishing into the tundra. A positive role model for the big-boned he may be, but he’s still not getting that hug. l Abercrombie & Kent has an all-inclusive eight-day Birds, Bears and BelugaWhales itinerary from £6,895pp, including fights; abercrombiekent.co.uk

Dennis Fast/Churchill Wild; Bill Lyne/Churchill Wild

30

SEEING SOMETHING N EW. The Courtyard at Rosewood London, steps away from Covent Garden

A S E N S E O F P L AC E . RO S E WO O D L O N D O N N OW O P E N . +44 20 7781 8888

| london.reservations@rosewoodhotels.com | rosewoodhotels.com

32

Beaumonde • After the City

Interning point When trader Robin Kennedy couldn’t answer his grandfather’s question, ‘What do you do?’, he quit. Now his company fnds work placements for young talent

Words: Charlotte Metcalf Photography: Trent McMinn

Robin Kennedy’s team works around a table-tennis table at the back end of the well-appointed Strand offces of a media and music company. He might not be earning as much as he did in his City days, but he’s building a business and describes himself as feeling ‘totally in tune’ with his work.

After leaving Edinburgh University in 1999, Kennedy went straight on to HSBC’s graduate programme as an equity derivatives broker and was headhunted four years later by Commerzbank.

‘I used to work on a lot of arbitrage deals and really believed there was value in them,’ he says.

‘I told my grandfather I had four screens and two telephones, and connected buyers to sellers, but he kept asking, “What do you actually do?”

He was an architect who built things like the Ugandan parliament building and he made me revaluate what I was really contributing.

‘I was lucky that Commerz decided to streamline its European operations because it afforded me the opportunity to leave the City and follow my heart,’ he continues. ‘To my father’s disdain, I had a retirement party at the age of 27 and moved to Switzerland to work as a ski instructor.’

Kennedy spent the next three years in Verbier.

‘I probably went into the City without thinking

about what I really wanted to do and still needed to get things out of my system,’ he says. ‘I started out teaching kids to ski and in some ways found it more gratifying than a bonus, but it still wasn’t challenging enough. I dabbled with a few other local business ideas, but the City breeds ambition.

I knew I had bigger fsh to fry.’

Back in the UK, Kennedy’s old friend, Harry Becher, who helped start the luxury concierge company Quintessentially, was constantly being approached by young people desperate for work experience and companies looking for bright graduates. ‘Facebook was coming into its own and we realised we could harness the web to connect young people with exciting opportunities,’ says Kennedy. ‘I knew we were on to something, so I moved back to the UK in 2007 to start WEXO: Work Experience Online. We took a few risks and I used a lot of what I’d picked up in the City to raise money in a risk-averse environment, but we managed to get what we needed to kick off.’

By pooling work placements, the company was able to fll them on the basis of merit and, Kennedy says, ‘democratise access to opportunity’.

He continues: ‘I’d learnt to be a good salesman in the City, but I knew I’d be even better at selling something I genuinely believed in. In 2009, we went live to users to a great reception and were featured on the BBC London News.’

Making money from work experience proved diffcult, however, and he was forced to reassess the revenue model: ‘With youth unemployment on the rise, unpaid internships were becoming rife, which didn’t sit comfortably with us, so we partnered with a company that was able to offer fnancial incentives to companies paying its interns.’

This meant that, by the time London 2012 came round, they were in the fortunate position of landing a contract to supply paid interns and graduates to work at all the Olympic venues.

‘It’s been a rollercoaster ride,’ admits Kennedy, ‘but we turned WEXO into a company with seven employees and a turnover of half a million. And we’re now involved in some exciting discussions.

March was our best month ever in terms of traffc.

At various stages, we’ve had the nerve to look long and hard at the business. While it’s good to stick at what you do, like being a good trader, it’s important not to get emotional and to adapt when necessary.

‘If your unique selling point remains intact, you can make it work. Our USP is the technology we use to connect talent with opportunity and we’re using it to try and redefne the way people look at recruitment. By meta-tagging the data in people’s CVs, if a small company in Bristol needs someone nearby who can use Photoshop and speak French, we can fnd them more effciently.’

While Kennedy admits he misses the banter of the trading foor, he doesn’t regret his decision.

‘I wasn’t mercenary enough to stay there. It did teach me a lot, though: you had to earn respect and we learnt to think quickly and work hard under pressure – it was a tough, fve-to-nine environment.

Now I work even harder for less money, but what I’m doing sits far more comfortably with me.

Rather than betting on a business, I’m building one – and helping people choose the career paths that are right for them from the get-go.’ l wexo.co.uk

Ones to watch • Brummell

Ones to watch 2014 Words: Maria Yacoob Photography: Philip Sinden Co-ordinator: Duncan McRae

Once again, Brummell is proud to celebrate the abundance of young talent in London’s fnancial services industry and related sectors. Our expert panel – all high achievers themselves, listed on page 38 – applied rigorous criteria to a particularly long list of nominations to select this year’s Ones To Watch. There were many candidates who met the frst set of standards: under-40s who have demonstrated innovation, drive and energy, who have consistently outperformed their peers or market and who have the potential to rise to

the very top. But in these days where a more rounded approach to life in the City seems an appropriate way of maintaining London’s prominence in global fnance, the judges were looking for additional factors. They chose people who have contributed both within and outside their frms to networking and advocacy groups, mentoring and charities, or are pursuing additional entrepreneurial or creative projects. On the following pages, meet 30 people who are making waves in the fnance sector and inspiring those around them.

35

36

Brummell • Ones to watch

Copenhague desk

by Ronan & Erwan Bouroullec, £525, SCP

Patrick Voss ← Strategic marketing and planning director, Kinetic Partners Voss is the strategic marketing and planning director at Kinetic Partners, a fast-growing professional-services frm that is focused exclusively on the fnancial-services industry.

He is a key part of the central team that puts structure and strategy in place to support business growth. In 2011, he co-founded Radius, a consultancy that aims to bring diversity and inclusion to the heart of businesses. Radius has revolutionised LGBT networking, providing a much-needed business-focused slant, including engaging more than 25 corporate members in events. Voss oversees the Radius Inclusion Pledge Programme, which exposes leaders in organisations to difference while working with a diverse range of staff on core-business challenges. He is also the chair of governors at Tower Bridge Primary School, where he has been driving change to improve its performance.

Kate Scott → Senior associate, Litigation and Regulatory Group, Clifford Chance Scott’s professional work makes the headlines.

As a senior associate in Clifford Chance’s Litigation and Regulatory Group, she advises major US and European banks on contentious and reputational issues. She is currently a lead associate on the team defending Barclays in the groundbreaking LIBOR test case and is frequently involved in FSA/FCA investigations.

She also recently advised an investment bank in connection with a high-profle criminal trial.

Her full-time job deals with high-value claims, but outside work, Scott uses her skills to help empower others. She helps run the International Law Book Facility, which ships recycled legal textbooks to not-for-proft organisations across the globe to help access to justice, and conducts mock job interviews for GCSE students in Newham and for Crisis, helping homeless people get back into employment.

Miranda Abraham Head of emerging markets, loans syndicate, Barclays With 15 years’ experience in investment banking, Abraham is responsible for managing all aspects of underwriting, pricing, syndication strategy and liquidity for Barclays loans across the CEEMEA regions. She is an active member of the Barclays Women’s Initiatives Network. In January, her events committee raised £68,000 for socially excluded women in Eastern European and African countries suffering the devastation of war and confict. She is a mother to two young children.

Alex Buchanan Co-founder, Mirabaud Alternative Capital Buchanan has worked for a variety of City institutions in equity sales and corporate fnance during his 15-year career before joining Swiss bank Mirabaud to set up a division raising equity and debt fnance for private companies. In 2010, he published The Game – How the World of Finance Really Works (updated in 2013), a satirical study of the day-to-day machinations and politics of the fnance industry that has become a bible for City-focused graduates. He gives regular talks to universities and business schools.

Kelly Birt Director, corporate banking and securities, global markets, Deutsche Bank AG Birt was hired to set up the listed derivatives global-client commerce team on account of her industry experience and exceptional talent for building and managing senior client relationships.

Professional relationships are also the crux of her work as a founding member of the London board of Women in Listed Derivatives (WILD), which gives women a platform to connect with industry peers.

Last year, she climbed Mount Kilimanjaro, raising over £150,000 for the Alzheimer’s Society.

Stacey Toder Feldman ← Director, customs and global trade, Deloitte LLP With more than 15 years’ experience advising clients on international trade matters, Toder Feldman is currently a director of the customs and global trade practice at Deloitte LLP. She specialises in global export controls, sanctions and customs-compliance matters, and advises on trade matters across the US, EU, Asia and the Middle East. She speaks frequently at industry conferences and works closely with US, EU, and UK government agencies to support the development, interpretation and enforcement of trade policy. She is recommended as a recognised expert in her feld by World ECR, the leading international journal on export controls and sanctions. A champion of diversity and inclusion in the workplace, Toder Feldman leads the Deloitte Women’s Network, was selected to represent Deloitte in the ICAEW’s Women in Leadership programme and participates in the frm’s mentoring programme.

Ulrik stool by Alex Hellum, £189, SCP

Kate Boyle Founder, KBPR At a time of great change for the pensions and investments industry, Boyle is at the forefront with her fnancial services PR and marketing frm, set up in 2009 to ‘bring a new style of communications, educating people and generating debate’. Five years on, KBPR has a portfolio of infuential clients across the pensions and investments industry. Boyle is regularly invited to judge a range of the industry’s largest awards, and is herself a previous winner of the Financial Times Pension and Investment Provider Awards as PR Adviser of the Year.

Roland de Marsangy Sales director, Liquidnet Since his appointment in 2012, de Marsangy has led the European growth of Liquidnet, a global trading network that executes trades of behalf of around 750 top asset managers. Revenue has increased by 95 per cent in France alone. He now also leads the frm’s EMEA emerging markets business. He regularly speaks at industry forums on issues facing the asset management industry. De Marsangy has connections with Africa and recently travelled to Rwanda to help in the Agahozo-Shalom Youth Village, supporting over 500 teenagers in need.

Laura Clerici Head of strategic bank partnerships and marketing, RSA Insurance Group Throughout her career, Clerici has worked for American Express, Barclays and RSA, directing multicultural teams across Western Europe and emerging markets. In her current position, she has negotiated, developed and implemented strategic bank partnerships in the Baltics. She is a board member at Women in Banking and Finance and a newly appointed trustee at the Yogi Ashokananda Foundation, working to further the education and wellbeing of disadvantaged children in India.

Mike Horridge Vice-president, fxed income division, Morgan Stanley Horridge’s outstanding abilities as a trader have seen him rise swiftly through the ranks to his current role, where he is responsible for handling the relationship and day-to-day trading activity of large, global equity hedge funds. Of parallel importance are his efforts to help the company climb the ranks of the Stonewall Workplace Equality Index to become the top-scoring investment bank. Horridge chaired the Interbank LGBT Forum from 2010 to 2013, widening its reach across the City. He is also a keen musician.

Ones to watch • Brummell

39

Vikas Kedia → Managing director, FlexTrade UK Ltd Kedia is the managing director of FlexTrade UK Ltd, a fnancial-software frm that specialises in trading solutions, including EMS, OMS and algorithms for multiple-asset classes. He joined FlexTrade when it was a start-up frm in New York and opened the London offce in 2002.

‘The talent in London is amazing, and has made it possible for us to build state-of-the-art applications.’ FlexTrade’s products use a multitude of technology, and it has created partnerships with large companies such as CBOE to provide specialised trading solutions.

Kedia works hard to promote diversity at FlexTrade – it has employees of 15 nationalities – and has launched an internship program.

He was involved in the building stage of Pratham UK, a charity for underprivileged children in India that raised over £100,000 through a black-tie event. He is also a founding UK member of the Indian Angel Network.

Peter Hughes Vice president, centralised dealing desk, Northern Trust Asset Management Hughes has been with Northern Trust Asset Management since 2008. Since 2012, he has been actively involved with the Alpha Trader Forum, an exclusive, invite-only, London-based discussion forum for buy-side traders to exchange ideas, issues and best practice. The consensus is then used to engage proactively with bodies such as regulators and the European Commission. Hughes also fundraises for the Nystagmus Network, which supports sufferers of an incurable sight condition.

Renee Krall Commercial director, Platts Krall manages the proft-and-loss of 160 products and helps develop product strategy across all commodity groups at Platts, a leading global provider of information and benchmark-price assessments in commodity markets. She is responsible for building global teams and leading their development. With over a decade of professional experience spanning two continents, she is an active leader in the company’s mentoring programme. Krall fundraises for an animal charity that fosters and rehomes large dogs.

Nancy Ives Senior people-development manager, BT Ives leads talent management, learning and development across six BT businesses around the world. She says, ‘I’m passionate about creating the right environment and opportunities for career development.’ She recently launched the frst learning programme within her division to be credited by the CIMA (one of the governing bodies for accounting qualifcations). She is studying for an MSc in Business Psychology, mentors children at local schools and has coached young people with mental-health issues on getting back to work.

Jimmy Kwok Transaction due-diligence specialist, Ernst & Young Kwok is at the forefront of two defning global business movements. As a due-diligence specialist, his 10-year career includes time working within HM Treasury during the fnancial crisis. He also leads the Ernst & Young Far East Network, which organises activities such as panel discussions exploring the China-Britain trading relationship, leadership development breakfasts and Far East cultural etiquette workshops for those seeking to explore opportunities in China and Japan.

40

Brummell • Ones to watch

Ishinomaki bench by Keji Ashizawa, £365, SCP

Robert Gardner ← Co-CEO, co-founder and lead consultant, Redington Redington designs, develops and delivers investment strategies to pension funds and insurance companies around the world. As co-CEO, Gardner was named one of the world’s 25 most infuential consultants by Pensions Insight. In 2009, Gardner co-founded a separate company, Mallowstreet, an online community bringing together pension-fund decisionmakers and product providers. ‘Digital media’s ability to facilitate education and collaboration can help tackle the global pensions challenge,’ he says. In 2012, Redington launched RedSTART, a fnancial-literacy initiative that sends fnancial professionals into schools. Gardner recently abseiled down The Shard in aid of Commando Spirit, a charity supporting ex-marines.

Lily Lapenna Founder and CEO, MyBnk Lapenna started her career in international development, focusing on non-formal education.

She became aware of the positive impact of microfnance, so created the frst online and in-school youth-led banking scheme: MyBnk-in-a-Box. Six years on, MyBnk has reached 75,000 young people and is expanding internationally. Lapenna has successfully lobbied to include fnancial education in the secondary-school curriculum. She is also a board member of Para Durumu, the frst fnancial-literacy initiative in Turkey.

Kitty Parry Founder, Templars Communications Parry founded her thriving PR consultancy, which specialises in fnancial services with a core understanding of family offces, in 2009. She was shortlisted for Communications Professional of the Year 2013, and was a fnalist in the Network She Awards Young Businesswoman of the Year.

Parry founded the Accelerating Change Network, which helps women in business, and is a member of the UN Media Coalition and a mentor with the Cherie Blair Foundation. Last year, she launched the Social Media Charter for FSPs.

Karen Lomax Director, global transaction banking division, Deutsche Bank Lomax heads up the EMEA sales team for trust and agency services. She is responsible for driving the sales strategy and manages a team based in six locations across Europe. A keen supporter of working mothers within Deutsche Bank (she is a hands-on mother of three herself), she offers informal mentoring. She and her daughters run the annual Cancer Research Race for Life, and she actively supports numerous charities, including FareShare and Malaria No More UK.

Claire Peel Finance director, corporate banking and securities, Deutsche Bank Peel heads the team responsible for ensuring the integrity of the division’s fnancials to support decision-making. Peel is the epitome of homegrown talent, moving from graduate trainee to MD. She was involved in the set up of the Mumbai fnance team. Peel is a member of both the Deutsche Bank Women Global Leaders programme, which facilitates networking sessions and a mentoring programme, and the diversity committee, which has led to the launch of a structured sponsorship programme.

Leila Mayet Sales and client-relationship manager, Aquis Exchange Limited Mayet’s skill in building strong and meaningful business relationships is hard to beat. At panEuropean equities exchange Aquis, she manages new business sales, and maintains active business relationships across Europe. She was previously at NASDAQ OMX Europe and, as part ofthe NASDAQ Women’s Initiative, created professional development events for London-based peers. Mayet continues to promote the professional growth of women on the board of Women in Listed Derivatives London.

Anastasia Petrova Vice president, transition services management, RBS Petrova is an expert at delivering strategic projects across the telecoms and fnancial sectors, and is currently managing a major RBS programme to make sure customers’ needs are met by every initiative. She has launched new initiatives as the personal development manager of RBS’s Focused Women’s Network and was recently appointed its global deputy chair. Petrova is committed to work in the wider community – she has developed the Enterprise Challenge for Young People at her local school.

‘I love it when pupils come up with innovative ideas.’

Charlotte Møller Equity partner, Reed Smith Part of Reed Smith’s commercial restructuring and bankruptcy group, Møller works on complex fnancial and operational restructuring in a wide range of sectors, including in connection with the collapse of Enron and Lehman Brothers.

She was named one of The Lawyer’s ‘Hot 100’ in 2013. Møller has two young children and makes it a priority to retain a good work/life balance.

As a member of the Danish Seamen’s Church, Charlotte leads Reed Smith’s pro-bono efforts to support this charity and others.

Carnegie Smyth Director, Signia Wealth Carnegie brings in-depth knowledge of crossborder transactions and cultures to developing relationships with his frm’s UHNW clients and prospective clients. He is a member of the CIOT and the CISI. As an ambassador for the British Olympic Team, he raised funds through individuals and corporate sponsorship for athletes competing in London 2012 and intends to continue in this role for Brazil 2016. He also supports a Sierra Leone orphanage, organising annual Christmas containers with much-needed equipment and gifts.

Ben Morgan Joint head of bribery & corruption, Serious Fraud Offce Morgan is responsible for multi-jurisdictional investigations involving some of the largest global institutions and played a close part in implementing the new Deferred Prosecution Agreement regime.

His main interest is in corporate conduct and creating a ‘commercially thriving and morally sound’ environment. Last year, Morgan cycled from Land’s End to John O’Groats for homeless charity Crisis. He is a shareholder in Music in Offces, providing music lessons and co-ordinating City workplace choirs.

Nick Stainthorpe Partner, fnancial industry group, Reed Smith Stainthorpe specialises in complex fnance and is currently focused on products that open small and medium enterprise-fnancing opportunities to funds and other alternative investors. His pro-bono work has included the Toynbee Hall legal drop-in centre for the homeless and the South West London Law Centres, where he provided the general public with free basic legal advice on healthcare, housing and employment. Stainthorpe also supports the projects of a documentary photographer and humanitarian campaigner.

42

Brummell • Ones to watch Amy Woolf ← Project manager, Internal Communications, KPMG Woolf has honed her business skills to lead KPMG into the 21st-century world of social media. She is in charge of the frm’s online social collaboration platform. Born and raised in London to a South African Jewish family, she is keen to develop and nurture a corporate Jewish community. As chair of KPMG’s Jewish Society, she won the WIZO UK corporateresponsibility award for ongoing work with Jewish Care. She represents KPMG on the Women on the Wharf steering group, and organised the company’s International Women’s Day celebrations in 2012. As an expectant mother, she is clear in her thoughts on fexible working.

‘Understanding how to cater for an agile workforce is key to retaining talent. I’m lucky that KPMG strives to assist working parents.’

Anna-Lisa Wesley Senior manager, fnancial-services business, Accenture Wesley has specialised in regulatory change management for 10 years in a marketplace in which oversight is tight and competition is intense. She has promoted a number of initiatives this year: Stand Up and Nudge is a networking series combining debate with comedy; and the Accenture Innovation Incubator is designed to build a workforce of digital creatives.

She has two children, and ran the London Marathon in aid of Bath Out and About, which offers meaningful activities to adults with learning diffculties.

Zhanyue Xu Business manager, JP Morgan Xu’s role supports the EMEA credit trading business. He is also co-chair and site lead of the frm’s Asia employees networking group in London, which promotes diversity, business awareness and cross-border career mobility. Externally, Xu works with the Chinese and Asia employee networks of major banks and accountancy frms. He is currently helping recruit volunteer language teachers for the Chinese Association of Tower Hamlets and fnding work experience for young cadets at the South East London Sector Army Cadet Force.

The Panel Anita Karppi Managing director, K&K Global Consulting

Marian Elliott Director, Spence & Partners

Carol Rosati Global head, Inspire/Harvey Nash

Mohammed Khalid VP, executive partner EMEA, Gartner Executive Programs

Cathryn Lyall Board director, Deutsche Bank Clive Furness Managing director, Contango Fleur Bothwick OBE Director of diversity and inclusive leadership EMEIA, EY, and director of the NAS Academies Trust

Patrick Osborne Senior manager PPI Reporting & External Insight, deputy chair, Rainbow Network, Lloyds Banking Group Vanessa Vallely Managing director, We Are The City/ Careers City

With thanks to: Production assistant: Alison Thomson Furniture: SCP; scp.co.uk Special thanks to all those who submitted nominations

Dedicated to Hannah Foxley (1979–2014) Just before we went to press, Brummell and the panel of experts were very sad to learn of the death of Hannah Foxley, one of the 30 chosen for this list.

She was a pioneer both inside and outside the City.

A Chartered Financial Planner and Fellow of The Personal Finance Society, Hannah had a personal mission to change women’s perceptions of fnancial planning. In 2012, she set up The Women’s Wealth Expert, specialising in guiding women through the fnancial minefeld of divorce, as did her book, The Wealthy Divorcee. Her clients found her highly technical approach, delivered with a warm, engaging personality, both reassuring and inspiring. Despite repeated cancer diagnoses, she remained positive to the end. Her brave post-mastectomy nude photo shoot in Cosmopolitan and her personal blog at hannahfoxley.com and on Huffngton Post have reached and moved a global audience. Her infuence will continue to be felt in the City and beyond. l

NEW BR 03-92 CERAMIC · Automatic · 42 mm · Bell & Ross UK +44 207 096 0878 · information@bellross.com · e-Boutique: www.bellross.com Download the BR SCAN app to reveal exclusive content

Brummell Bespoke Promotion

45

HARDY AMIES’ ABC OF LONDON

E is for Eros

In 1964, British fashion designer Hardy Amies published the style columns he had been writing for America’s groundbreaking Esquire magazine as the ABC of Men’s Fashion. Fifty years later, Hardy Amies is still the choice of men about town and, in homage to its founder, the house is once again publishing an ABC – this time, of iconic London stories. Read them on the ABC blog at hardyamies.com, and learn more about our city’s rich cultural history, not to mention great men’s style

Tread carefully now, for one of your life-long beliefs is about be shattered. What you thought was right about a crucial piece of London iconography is incorrect. There is an imposter in town. And his name is Eros, aka Cupid, the God of Love. Or, rather, it isn’t.

The cast-aluminium statue we call Eros has been a pivotal part of the capital’s landscape ever since he was erected on his copper plinth, bang in the centre of Piccadilly Circus in 1893. It was funded by public donation in memory of the 7th Earl of Shaftesbury, who was famous for his philanthropy. There is a myth that the arrow once pointed up Shaftesbury Avenue, as a visual nod to the Earl, but early photos suggest he has always been aiming down Lower Regent Street.

The cheeky god soon became one of London’s most recognisable landmarks, especially when Piccadilly began to use illuminated advertising hoardings in the 1900s, frst with incandescent bulbs and then neon tubes. Millions who had never seen him in the metal knew ‘Eros’ from the opening credits of the early chat show In Town Tonight, which ran on the BBC in the Fifties, when it was still in the middle of a traffc roundabout.

Such was the symbolic importance of this naked, winged fgure with a bow that it was removed in both wars lest enemy bombs damaged it. In fact, poor ‘Eros’ has rarely stood still for very long.

After its brief relocation in World War I, from

Opposite: Hardy Amies spring/summer 2014 collection, photographed in Bar Italia, Soho. Above from top: single-breasted grosgrain lapel jacket with silk bow tie, and cotton-poplin bibbed evening shirt, faded-check wool trousers and canvas tasselled loafers

1922 to 1931, the fgure could be found in Embankment Gardens, taking a break from the chaos while Piccadilly Circus tube station was expanded. It was only back in place for eight years before being moved to Egham, Surrey, in 1939, returning to the ’Dilly in 1947. In the Eighties, when the traffc fow was reconfgured, it was fnally shifted to its present site on the south-west corner of the Circus.

So, if the peripatetic winged deity with the bow and arrow isn’t Eros, who is he? Some say his real name is the Angel of Christian Charity, because of the 7th Earl of Shaftesbury’s good work. But that’s not quite right either. Because it’s actually Eros’s brother.

When sculptor Alfred Gilbert was commissioned to create the Shaftesbury Memorial Fountain, he had already sculpted a statue of Anteros, who was known as ‘the god of selfess love’, in contrast to the capricious Cupid-like fgure of Eros.

So he decided to repeat himself. Gilbert described Anteros as portraying ‘refective and mature love, as opposed to Eros, the frivolous tyrant’.

But the public remained unconvinced. A winged god of love armed with arrows of desire? It could only be Cupid – although they at least used the name of his earlier Greek equivalent. So Eros it became and, we suspect, Eros it will always be. l Available at Harvey Nichols and mrporter.com; hardyamies.com

46

Brummell • Creative talent

This page: Hampson Woods chopping boards.

Opposite: Jonty Hampson, left, and Sascha Gravenstein photographed at their Hackney workshop

Carving a niche There is talent aplenty in the creative world as well as the fnancial sector.

Here, we profle some movers and shakers who are seizing the Zeitgeist

Words: Charlie Teasdale Photography: Trent McMinn

Jonty Hampson and Sascha Gravenstein → Founders of Hampson Woods Most young entrepreneurs have a set model or design that they conceive, develop and take to market – they can remember the ‘Eureka!’ moment and the subsequent trials and tribulations of turning their idea into a reality. For Sascha Gravenstein and Jonty Hampson, founders of Hampson Woods, the process was altogether more gradual.

Having studied business and urban studies, Hampson took up a career in marketing, while Gravenstein, armed with his degree in fne art, worked in flm and freelanced at design agencies across London, before setting up his own studio.

After a year in the stuffy confnes of the offce, Hampson knew his true calling lay elsewhere,

so he began restoring antiques, which included carpentry and cabinetmaking. The friends frst worked together on a building project in the Lake District, and things progressed from there. ‘We started working more and more together,’ recalls Gravenstein, ‘with on-site stuff at places such as the E5 Bakehouse [a bakery and coffee shop in London Fields], and it gradually got more serious.’

Over time, the boys developed a few products, such as the beautiful chopping boards pictured, and began selling them through a carefully chosen group of retailers. ‘It went really well and we started focusing more on making things in the workshop – it just grew and we went with it.’

They targeted the likes of SCP and Heal’s at just

the right time. ‘There was a shift in taste toward decent quality and considered production,’ says Hampson, ‘and we twinned that with actually being available on shops’ shelves.’

Quality, as you can imagine, is paramount for Hampson Woods. Everything is handmade in Hackney from a single piece of wood (glued products tend to fail over time), and is built with care and consideration. With one an artist and the other a cabinetmaker, you might expect there to be confict over the function and form of the products, but it’s something the guys are very clear on: ‘Make a simple, beautiful product.’

And they most certainly have. hampsonwoods.com

48

Brummell • Creative talent

Tatiana Mercer ← Founder of BarChick Meeting Tatiana Mercer, founder of BarChick, is an enlightening experience – even the most feeting of chats will give you the inside track on London’s newest and most exclusive bars, leaving you desperate to explore the city’s liquid assets.

Mercer was just fve days into a social-science degree when she realised it wasn’t for her, so she left university to seek her fortune in the capital.

There was a stint at Icelandic investment group Baugur, then event-planning for hypnotist and self-help guru Paul McKenna before PA work in the fnance sector of the flm industry. On a trip to New York, Mercer took a tour of the city’s secret speakeasies, and an idea formed. Three months later, she quit to found BarChick.

‘It occurred to me that fnding restaurants was easy,’ Mercer recalls, ‘but seeking out the best bars was hard.’ There are countless listing sites that can help if a simple pint is all you’re after, but if you want to fnd a nearby bar that will serve an outstanding old-fashioned, or for somewhere to impress, then BarChick is one of the best places to look. The recommendations are carefully curated and reassessed every three months, and it goes well beyond the confnes of our capital, too, guiding discerning drinkers in 65 cities worldwide.

As Mercer says, ‘BarChick allows you to fnd the best of the best places – what to order, who to say hi to – it’s as if you’re out drinking with me.’

In just three years, the site has gone from a good idea to a trusted companion visited by 100,000 people each month, and the growth shows no sign of slowing, especially now that there is a dedicated app and a bespoke cocktail event service on the horizon. With a seemingly well thought-out plan for expansion, BarChick’s continued success should be secure. But at its core it remains a reliable companion for those bent on a good time – and that’s a market that will never fade. barchick.com

Tessa Packard ← Founder of Tessa Packard Jewellery Tessa Packard’s appreciation for jewellery began, as it probably did for many girls, during her childhood, with the dressing of dolls. The habit developed, and she continued to design accessories.

However, when the time came to study, she opted to go down the route of fne art. After university, she worked with an art dealer for four years, and then changed direction completely.

‘I studied history of art because I felt compelled to do something “safe”,’ remembers Packard.

‘I didn’t think I had the confdence, or the expertise, to start up my own thing. Later, I realised I would regret it if I didn’t try it.’ Armed with the skills she’d learnt in the art business, she attended two short courses at Central Saint Martins – one in jewellery design and the other in starting a creative business – and her new career began.

The frst collection, 2013’s Mexicana, was inspired by the Modernist architecture and bold fabric designs of the Central American country, while the most recent, No Smoke Without Flowers,

had its inception in a Vanity Fair article about opium dens in early 20th-century South-East Asia. The piece referenced the courtesans whose job it was to attend to the visitors. Packard mused on the contents of a courtesan’s jewellery box (the women were sometimes gifted trinkets for their troubles), and the collection had its thread.

‘It’s so whimsical and fantastical, and wearing something from the collection can transport you back to that age.’

The collections are opulent and original, featuring interesting coloured stones and detailing.

Each is split into two ranges, one in 18ct gold and the other in silver-gold plate, which allows for two different price points. This means Packard is able to target a gap in the market for carefully considered, UK-made and affordable pieces, but maintain exclusivity at the top end, opening the brand up to a broader audience – a move that seems likely to prove fruitful in time. tessapackard.com

Opposite Tessa Packard photographed at her Belgravia offce This page Tatiana Mercer of BarChick photographed at The Clove Club, Shoreditch Town Hall, EC1; thecloveclub.com

50

Brummell • Creative talent

This page: Hugh Brunt photographed annotating a score at his home in South London

Hugh Brunt ↑ Principal conductor of the London Contemporary Orchestra How does one become a conductor? The path to success as a musician seems simple enough – practise, practise, get your break and practise some more. But the career trajectory for someone looking to command the orchestra is less well-documented.

For Hugh Brunt, co-artistic director and principal conductor of the London Contemporary Orchestra (LCO), the journey began at school in Windsor. ‘I was a choir boy singing in services every day,’ he recalls. ‘We had some amazing opportunities and were absorbed in incredible music.’ From there, he moved on to Radley, then New College, Oxford, where he began conducting, shadowing the principal guest conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra Daniel Harding – ‘an extraordinary, once-in-a-generation guy’.

On leaving university in 2008, Brunt organised a series of concerts under the name London Contemporary Orchestra, alongside viola player and fellow conductor Robert Ames – a friend since their time in the National Youth Orchestra.

‘We thought it would be interesting to showcase some of the music we were passionate about:

scores written in the past 10 or 20 years and commissions from young composers.’ It was a tough year in which to get started, but it taught the pair to be resilient. The concerts made an artistic statement and offered a foundation to progress from, which they have done with aplomb.

In addition to the unorthodox music, the LCO makes a point of playing in unconventional spaces, tailoring each performance to a specifc venue. They’ve performed at Wapping Hydraulic Power Station, Oval Space in Hackney and even the disused Aldwych Underground Station.

Most notably, the LCO has collaborated with a series of rock artists, including Foals, Belle and Sebastian and Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood – Brunt conducted his score for Paul Thomas Anderson’s flm, The Master. August sees the LCO and Greenwood perform the score of another Anderson flm, There Will Be Blood, at a screening at Camden’s Roundhouse – which should prove to be another example of the exciting, and inclusive, work of Brunt and the LCO. lcorchestra.co.uk

“Already a favourite amongst London’s smart drinking set” WALLPAPER

“Every aspect of creating their brilliant spirits has been a meticulously researched labour of love” ESQUIRE

“Starting a gin distillery in London is not exactly a new idea, its just no-one had done it for 200 years” MONOCLE

INTRODUCING SIPSMITH Now and then, something very special comes along. In this case now and then was quite a while. It has been almost 200 years since a copper pot still was operating in London until the three lads at Sipsmith commissioned theirs named “Prudence” in 2009, spearheading the resurgence in small batch spirits and the pure artistry of distillation.

Sipsmith’s London Dry Gin is one of the few gins in the world not made from concentrate. Instead, using the traditional one shot method, it’s handcrafted producing only a few hundred bottles at a time, delivering perfect balance with real intensity and character.

Sipsmith’s Barley Vodka is distilled in copper for purity, and made from just the best spirit from the heart of the run. This means there is no need to flter, add glycerine, fructose, or any aromatisers. No compromises; just unadulterated smooth pure vodka.

www.sipsmith.com

Sea Island cotton. Woven in Switzerland. Made in Nottingham.

SUNSPEL.COM

Of the hour The latest cutting-edge timepieces featuring up-to-the-minute technology and sharp looks to make a serious style statement

Photography: Andy Barter Words: Simon de Burton

Watches • Brummell

55

This page, clockwise from top: Bell & Ross WW1 92 Military; Omega Seamaster Aqua Terra 15,000 Gauss; Tudor Heritage Black Bay Opposite, clockwise from top: IWC Aquatimer Perpetual Calendar Digital Date-Month; Bremont Supermarine Terra Nova; Linde Werdelin SpidoLite Tech Gold

56

Brummell • Watches

IWC Aquatimer Perpetual Calendar Digital Date-Month ↑ Unless you have an exceptional lung capacity, a perpetual calendar that will remain accurate through leap years and short months for more than a century might seem an unnecessary feature on a dive watch. But the fagship model of IWC’s revamped Aquatimer range, limited to an edition of 50, is a demonstration of horological prowess, thanks to the complex engineering required for a large digital display for both date and month. Its 49mm red-gold case makes it the second-largest IWC in history after the Big Pilot of the Forties. £42,000; IWC.com

Bremont Supermarine Terra Nova ↑ Some like it hot, but others – polar explorer Ben Saunders, for example – certainly seem to prefer it cold. Last year, he and teammate Tarka L’Herpiniere walked from Captain Scott’s hut on the north shore of Antarctica’s Ross Island to the South Pole and back again, pulling sledges laden with supplies the whole way. It was the frst time Scott’s 1,795-mile return route to the Pole had been completed, and the pair each wore a titanium-cased Bremont Supermarine watch with compass bezel to help them navigate.

Limited to 300 pieces, the Terra Nova also uses a special oil that doesn’t coagulate at low temperatures. £4,495; bremont.com

Linde Werdelin SpidoLite Tech Gold ↑ If you’re after a genuine limited-edition watch, the independent Danish-owned, London-based Linde Werdelin brand is well worth a look. Each new model is made in small numbers, such as this version of the SpidoLite, with a carbon-fbre case and gold bezel, which will be produced in a run of just 75 pieces. Like all Linde Werdelin watches, the gossamer-weight Spido is designed to accept either of the brand’s two clip-on electronic instruments – The Rock and The Reef – which serve as high-tech sports computers for land or underwater use respectively. £14,640 (plus instrument); lindewerdelin.com

Bell & Ross WW1 92 Military ↑ Part of the French brand’s convincing ‘vintage’ collection, the WW1 (for Wrist Watch One) takes inspiration from the large and easily visible aviation pieces worn by observers and navigators in early combat aircraft. Its 45mm steel case contains a classic military-style dial in which the minutes are given priority through a distinct outside track, with conventional timekeeping being relegated to a smaller central dial. In homage to the fact that many early wristwatches were converted from pocket watches, the WW1 features wire lugs ftted with a thin, distressed-leather strap. £1,950; bellross.com

Tudor Heritage Black Bay ↑ Tudor’s retro-look dive watch caused great excitement when it was unveiled at the BaselWorld watch show in 2012, but left we Brits wanting – the Rolex sister brand had not been available in the United Kingdom for more than a decade. This year, Tudor returns to these shores and the Black Bay is undoubtedly going to be one of its best-sellers.

Closely based on a Tudor dive watch from 1954, it features a lovely domed dial and crystal ftted with the so-called ‘snowfake’ hour hand. The watch is available on a steel bracelet or a strap in a choice of fabric or mellow, pre-aged leather. £2,070; tudorwatch.com

Omega Seamaster Aqua Terra 15,000 Gauss ↑ Anti-magnetism used to be a feature that few of us cared about in a watch, but it’s becoming an essential due to the number of electric motors used in modern life. These create magnetic felds that can play havoc with a mechanical movement – a problem frst tackled by IWC and Rolex in the Fifties with the Ingenieur and Milgauss models, which had dials and inner cases that were made in non-ferrous metals. Omega’s new Seamaster, however, has a movement made entirely from a non-ferrous metal that can resist a magnetic feld of up to 15,000 gauss (around 150 small magnets). £4,170; omegawatches.com

WELCOME TO OUR WORLD

Thom Richard is one of the few pilots in the world to possess the talent, experience and courage required to compete in the final of the famous Reno Air Races – the world’s fastest motorsport. Less than ten champions are capable of vying with each other at speeds of almost 800 km/h, flying wing to wing at the risk of their lives, just a few feet off the ground. It is for these elite aviators that Breitling develops its chronographs: sturdy, functional and ultra high-performance instruments all equipped with movements chronometer-certified by the COSC – the highest official benchmark in terms of reliability and precision. Welcome to the Breitling world.

For your nearest stockist in Great Britain and Ireland telephone 020 7518 7010

B REIT L ING . CO M

CHRONOMAT 44

City, slicker

The devil’s in the detail of modern, sharp and polished alternatives to the grey suit

Photography: Billy Ballard Styling: David Hawkins

Style • Brummell

Step change Opposite: Wool and mohair suit, £1,258, Kris van assche. striped cotton shirt with contrasting plain collar, £115, DaKs. 18ct yellow-gold plain

cuffinks, £2,590, Theo Fennell. This page: cotton feld mac, £595, harDy amies at harvey nichols. Trousers (part of a suit), £1,650, alFreD

Dunhill. cotton socks, £20, Turnbull & asser. hand-burnished calfskin brogues, £350, JusTin DeaKin. calfskin bag, £730, canali

59

60

Brummell • Style

Fit for purpose This page: Glasgow bomber jacket, £590, NorweGiaN raiN at Harvey Nichols.

Cotton and linen shirt, £125, Gieves & Hawkes. knitted tie,

£85, Hardy amies at Harvey Nichols. Opposite: wool three-piece suit, £855, Paul smitH. Cotton-seersucker shirt with tonal stripe effect and

contrasting under-collar, £225, ermeNeGildo ZeGNa. tanned-leather portfolio case, £450, troubadour

62

Brummell • Style

Clean cuts This page: Cotton overcoat, £670, Canali. linen shirt, £105, Brooks Brothers. knitted tie, £85, hardy amies. mohair trousers, £450, Bally.

alpha Bravo lejeune backpack tote, £395, tumi. Opposite: silk jacket, £2,050, and short-sleeved cotton-poplin top, £530, ermenegildo

Zegna Couture. linen-mix trousers, £405, Z Zegna. tanned-leather rucksack, £1,225, trouBadour. Calfskin boots, £660, Jm Weston

Photographer’s assistant tom stone Stylist’s assistant Phoebe haines Grooming alexander soltermann Model Jace moody at next. Stockists details on page 74

www. brummell magazine. net Launching soon, the refreshed Brummell website brummellmagazine.net is an essential resource: your edited selection of the very best in style, culture, food, drink, technology and motoring. With an elegant new design and featuring exclusive interviews, videos and reportage, it’s the indispensable daily dose of the little black book for the City.

Brummell epicure Recipe for success

Epicure • Brummell

n

K s

k i

i

For the gastronome, gourmand, connoisseur or the just plain famished – a section focused squarely on food and drink. Each issue, we bring you a selection of stories both gourmet and oenophile to enhance your enjoyment of dining out, eating in, imbibing and consuming. On the menu as always: hors d’oeuvres of news, followed by main courses of culinary expertise – all washed down with advice on the best in wines and spirits. This issue, we concentrate on rising talent, looking not only at the London chefs to watch, but at workshops for honing your kitchen skills, and creating your own fne wine in Bordeaux.

e

l l

s

f

65

66

Epicure • News

Spiritual teachings ↑ At 5pm on the frst Wednesday of every month, Andina (the Shoreditch High Street sister restaurant of Martin Morales’ Ceviche; andinalondon.com) is hosting free pisco sour masterclasses, overseen by bar manager Miguel Arbe.

Learn the difference between different Peruvian piscos (don’t mention the Chilean stuff) and the importance of Angostura bitters placement. Then, with the rebujito (a sort of sherry mojito) set to be the Aperol spritz of this summer, an insight into the Spanish fortifed wine will come in handy. At the monthly Hurrah Jerez events (£49; drakestabanco.com), presented by WineChap’s Tom Harrow at Drakes Tabanco in Fitzrovia, a fve-course meal is paired with matching sherries – and you take home a bottle of in-demand Fino en Rama.

Fired up ↑ Not famed for its Italian cuisine, Mozambique seems an odd place to conceive a pizza company, but that is exactly where Charlie Nelson was when he had the idea of serving food where everything is handmade, including the oven. On returning to the UK, he enlisted the help of his brother Rory to build an oven, and together they founded Fundi, based on a Swahili word for someone who makes or maintains specialist equipment. That was in late 2012 and, since then, the pair have been touring the country, making exceptional pizzas and garnering a following on the street-food scene.

Now, having optimised their own design, they’ve branched out to offer bespoke oven-building. As they’re fully customisable, you can have any size up to 150cm in diameter and decorate it however you see ft – your oven can even have wheels. fundipizza.com

Toast of London The arrival of London Wine Week next month gives guests the opportunity to sample the wine lists of some of London’s most exclusive bars; attend ‘meet the maker’ sessions, tastings and cellar tours; and enjoy discounts at wine merchants. A large number of bars across London are taking part, including several in the City: Boisdale, Hixter and Grand Café at the Royal Exchange.

2–8 June; londonwineweek.com

Give us Moor ↑ Spanish and ‘Moorish’ (yes, the pun has always been intended) Moro on Exmouth Market in Clerkenwell has been a destination restaurant for more than 15 years. And owners Sam & Sam Clark’s Moro cookbook has been inspiring dinner parties for as long. Now there’s a new publication based on Morito, its tapasand mezze-serving offspring next door.

Brummell has tried some of the recipes and found them easy and fun to prepare for summer lunches – beetroot borani; courgette, pine nut and sumac salad; and scallops in sherry butter are all delicious.

Morito, £26; morito.co.uk

News • Epicure

67

The Outlaw is coming → Pitt Cue, one of the shining lights of the evolution in fast food and purveyor of Soho’s best pulled pork, has joined forces with two-Michelin-starred chef Nathan Outlaw to present a pair of very special events this summer. Pitt Cue’s takeover of Outlaw’s in Rock, Cornwall, has been and gone, but thankfully there’s still a chance to get in on the action when Outlaw takes charge of the Pitt Cue kitchen on Newburgh Street on 15 June. In line with the restaurant’s ethos, the menu for the ‘Sunday Night Extravaganza’ won’t be announced until the evening itself, and it will be frst-come frst-served, so be sure to get there early if you don’t want to miss out on what promises to be an evening of fantastic food. pittcue.co.uk

A European tour ↓ Now that quinoa is popping up on menus from Queen’s Park to Surrey Quays, the question is, what will be the next Peruvian? It could be Portuguese – at least alphabetically. After a full refurbishment, Covent Garden’s Canela Café has expanded and transformed into a more formal restaurant, Canela (canelacafe.com), with fne Portuguese cuisine and a wine list to match.

In Islington, Primeur (primeurN5.co.uk) opens this month, looking to capture the sheer joy to be found in simple, honest food. Brainchild of David Gingell and Jeremie Cometto-Lingenheim, Primeur is inspired by French local grocery shops. The menu will feature dishes such as cuttlefsh, bacon and parsley, and rump steak, snails and garlic.

Another duo of enthusiasts (below), entrepreneur Andreas Labridis and architect Dimitris Karampatakis, is behind Paddington’s Opso (opso.co.uk).

Named after the ancient Greek word for ‘delicacy’, the new place celebrates the country’s communal dining. Open all day, the kitchen serves traditional pastries in the morning, then a menu of classic and contemporary Greek dishes runs all the way through to 11.30pm.

Tempura fugit As it celebrates its 10th birthday, acclaimed Knightsbridge Japanese restaurant Nozomi is opening its doors for lunch, with a menu overseen by executive chef Ian Pengelley. Which is good news only if your offce is nearby. However, Nozomi has also just launched a delivery service, so now you (and your clients) can enjoy the awardwinning Japanese cuisine from the comfort of the boardroom. nozomi.co.uk

Social life ↑ With an Art Deco interior designed in collaboration with Russell Sage Studios, City Social is now open for business.

The latest in Jason Atherton’s impressive portfolio serves a selection of simple, seasonal dishes based on ingredients such as Cornish sea bass, Lincolnshire rabbit and Creedy Carver duck, while the bar focuses on Prohibition erainspired cocktails. Every table on the 24th foor of Tower 42 is positioned so diners can enjoy the cityscape, or you can keep an eye on the inner workings of the kitchen from the chef’s table. citysociallondon.com

Skills courses • Epicure

A cut above

69

London’s culinary passions have spawned a whole new generation of cooking schools, with top-notch courses designed to sharpen the skills of enthusiastic foodies

Words: Jane Fulcher Illustration: Alex Walker

Being able to follow a recipe is no longer enough to impress in the kitchen. The passion of those interested in food now frequently goes beyond this and into a deep interest in the fner skills of becoming a passable, or even accomplished, chef. London now has a wealth of courses for anyone who wants to learn a new culinary skill – classes in everything from knife-sharpening to pie-making are out there. But with so much on offer, it can be diffcult to know where to start.

Here is our guide to some of the best.

London’s most famous butcher, The Ginger Pig, in Marylebone, is rightly famous for its popular in-depth tuition in pork, beef and lamb preparation and sausage-making. Classes include information about different breeds and cuts, as well as hands-on cooking. The evening concludes with a delicious meal based around what you’ve learnt, complete with wine and pudding and, at the end of each session, you take home the meat you’ve prepared. Classes are 3½ hours long (01751 460802; thegingerpig.co.uk).

The lesser-known but just as enjoyable and informative classes by The Butchery, held in Bermondsey, are also great for anyone looking for an insight into how to butcher beef, pork and lamb and make sausages. You’re provided with a butcher’s uniform and tools and taught a range of techniques, before you butcher an entire section of an animal. Classes are followed by dinner and attendees take home the cuts they’ve prepared.

Classes are fve hours long and are for either pork and lamb or beef butchery (020 7237 0182; thebutcheryltd.com).

For those more interested in fsh, Food At 52 Cookery School, in Clerkenwell, gives a handy overview of fsh and seafood preparation, and teaches delicious recipes you’ll cook again and again. The school runs a multitude of excellent courses, ideal for groups. Classes are fve hours long (07814 027067; foodat52.co.uk).

For more specifc lessons, Billingsgate Seafood School, based at Britain’s biggest fsh market, is one of the best places to learn the ins and outs of fsh and seafood preparation and cookery. It trains

professionals as well as amateurs, and its courses cover everything you need to know, including knife skills, the flleting of different species and how to pick the fnest ingredients, and it also offers specialist shellfsh workshops. Classes last from one hour to a full day (020 7517 3548; seafoodtraining.org). The school also offers courses on sushi and sashimi with Feng Sushi’s Silla Bjerrum that teach preparation techniques and knife skills, demystify the fddly process of arranging sushi and demonstrate how to make perfect sticky rice.

Dinings, the Marylebone-based Japanese cuisine trailblazer, also offers personalised sushi-making classes, taught by the restaurant’s chefs in your own home or another venue of your choice (020 7723 0666; dinings.co.uk). There are dozens of such classes available across the capital, but those at Gordon Ramsay’s Maze, in Mayfair (020 7592 1360; gordonramsay.com), and Sozai Cooking School, in Aldgate (020 7458 4567; sozai.co.uk), are especially worthy of a mention.

If dim sum is more your favour, then it’s worth keeping an eye on A Wong, in Victoria – a restaurant known for its contemporary, original Cantonese cuisine. It runs regular classes that are both enlightening and enjoyable, and turn dumpling-crafting into something you feel you could try at home (020 7828 8931; awong.co.uk).

The West End’s School of Wok also runs excellent dim sum classes, and caters for both professionals and those who prefer private lessons. It offers courses covering Thai and Vietnamese cuisines, as well as wok and knife skills. Courses start at £95 (020 7240 8818; schoolofwok.co.uk).

Although learning knife skills is a part of most courses, for a more intense guide, there are few that can beat Leiths Cooking School, in Shepherd’s Bush. As one of the most famous culinary institutions in the country, it has a lot to live up to, but exceeds expectations. Try either the Slice and Dice Series or the one-week to three-week intensive courses, which will leave you as confdent with a knife as pastry and poussin (020 8749 6400; leiths.com). l

Finishing school Learn more about the craft of the barista, as well as the bean itself Coffee masterclass The team at the handsome and aromatic Work Shop Coffee Company on Clerkenwell Road is known not only for its expertise in brewing coffee, but also its unrivalled knowledge of the intricacies of producing, sourcing and buying the best beans. Those who share its passion for the subject will be gratifed to know it is sharing its knowledge in a series of fun, informative masterclasses that take pupils from coffee cherry to brew. Gain insight into which beans, grind, equipment and even water to use to achieve the best results.

Classes last 2½ hours (020 7253 5754; workshopcoffee.com).

More coffee?

Other courses worth looking into include those at Department of Coffee and Social Affairs’ Coffee School in the City, where two-hour classes focus on brewing or making espresso-based drinks and milkfrothing (departmentofcoffee.com); Kaffeine, in the West End, which runs one-on-one private and group classes (020 7580 6755; kaffeine.co.uk); and Taylor Street Baristas, throughout the City, which runs three-hour Saturday-morning Home Barista classes that teach how to make the most of your own equipment, as well as brewing and tasting (taylor-st.com).

I NEVER USED TO HAVE A DIFFERENT ONE EVERY NIGHT...

Wine cellars less ordinary TEL: 0845 241 2768 . WWW.SPIRALCELLARS.COM

Wine • Epicure

71

Own-label wines With access to some of Bordeaux’s best grapes, you can create your own blend without owning a château

Words: Chris Madigan

The frst wine I tasted, at the age of 10, was at my grandparents’ house in Liguria, which had a few terraces of vines. One lunchtime, my grandfather poured his Cà Rocca red without telling his guests what it was. One asked, ‘Where does this come from?’ and he proudly pointed to the garden.

She replied, ‘Gee, Gerry, it doesn’t travel well.’

This is not a reaction he would have received had he been a client of Viniv, a service that allows you to create your own Bordeaux, using grapes from vineyards across the region, including some of the great appellations. Although there have been other ‘make your own wine’ operations in Europe, this is the frst to go beyond attending a blending seminar and taking home a case of wine with your name on it. With Viniv, the process takes two years, as the wine matures, and the minimum order is a barrel – 24 cases, or 288 bottles. And the quality of the constituent cabernet sauvignon, cabernet franc and merlot grapes is impressive, their terroir unimpeachable.

Stephen Bolger, who founded Viniv after a career in industrial minerals and technology, says, ‘Because other Bordeaux growers have to produce wine from within their own appellation, no one else is able to take cabernet sauvignon from a vineyard right next to a classifed growth in Pauillac and blend it with a St-Émilion merlot.’

Where my grandfather had a neighbour to help ‘perfect’ his blend, Viniv clients have Eric Boissenot, who Max Lalondrelle of wine merchant Berry Bros & Rudd (agents for the service in the UK and Hong Kong) calls ‘a legend of modern Bordeaux, but very humble and a great listener’.

The consultant oenologist has been known to spend the morning completing the fnal blend for Château Latour, before driving to advise a Viniv client at the company’s base at another highly regarded château, Lynch-Bages.

The listening part is important. ‘The frst question we always ask is, “What style of wine do you want to produce?” We wouldn’t use a consultant who tells clients, “You shouldn’t do that.” Our clients want our team to teach them, to improve what they are doing, but want it to be their wine.’

The initial consultation can take place at Berry Bros’ HQ in St James’s. With the help of a consultant, you settle on your base blend. This can be a very educational experience that challenges your assumptions. I thought I was looking for low tannin and a smooth fnish, but the merlot-heavy result lacked a real heart. Changing the cabernet sauvignon

The two-year maturation process gives clients plenty of time to come up with a name and a label design

from a Pauillac to a more tannic Saint-Estèphe gave it just the right oomph and a longer fnish.

It is possible for your involvement to stop at the base blend – two years and from £6,900 later, you’ll receive your cases. However, Viniv and Berry Bros advise clients to make regular visits to Bordeaux – for a hands-on involvement at the picking and sorting of the fruit, and l’assemblage (where you can adjust the equation of the blend by up to 20 per cent). ‘If you talk to members who have taken it to that level,’ Bolger says, ‘they have a completely different appreciation of Bordeaux: they experience the soil, the vines behind the wine.’

The two-year maturation process gives clients plenty of time to come up with a name and a label design (or a brief for Viniv’s graphic designers) – and these can be very revealing: at a recent ‘mash-up’ event at Berry Bros, a tasting where Viniv clients could compare notes on their wines, a bottle of La Femme Pressée, made by a businesswoman and dedicated to ‘women everywhere, of whom so much is asked’, sat next to one called La Dame Qui Danse, made by a group of friends from the City and adorned with a silhouette of an ‘exotic’ dancer.

Viniv’s clients come from a mixture of backgrounds. Bolger says they include a famous racing driver, a Sixties rock star, a Chinese screen siren and a CEO and adventurer who has parachuted onto the North Pole. ‘Many of our UK-based members work for the major banks… It’s a chance to get away and discover more about one of their passions. Wine is a creative outlet.’

Two Viniv clients have even used the experience as a springboard into the wine industry: one is now a signifcant investor in a Cape winery in South Africa and the other, a Swiss-based banker, has set up an artisan vineyard in British Columbia, producing high-quality wines in a Bordeaux style.

However, for many customers, the motivation is simply to produce a wine they can enjoy with friends. ‘There is a social element, certainly,’ says Bolger. ‘People love to compare their wine with others’, and our members are like-minded, so tend to get on well. I was proud to hear a local producer say the mash-up was probably the most signifcant – and fun – networking event in Bordeaux!’

As for the quality of the wines, Max Lalondrelle says, ‘We’ve had blind tastings in which they’ve fared very well in comparison to bottles from well-known châteaux.’ So, no fuel for waspish lunch guests, then. l vinivwine.com; bbr.com/viniv

72

Epicure • Chefs to watch

Beyond the foam The new generation taking London’s dining scene by storm is shaking up restaurant food in the capital forever. And there are even younger talents who are about to breakthrough

Words: Stefan Chomka

Chewing a brick?

Clockwise from above Ben Spalding’s chicken parfait served on masonry; his take on bread and butter; Tom Sellers’ Three Bears Porridge; Isaac McHale’s buttermilk-fried chicken with pine salt

If you’re a fan of fne French cooking, if you consider starched white tablecloths and numerous items of silver cutlery to be the leitmotifs of a good meal, and if you like your wine to be served with a fve-minute speech on its ‘unique terroir’, you might want to look away now. There’s a new group of chefs in town who are kicking off the shackles of French haute cuisine and doing things their way.

Take James Knappett, the founder and chef of Bubbledogs (020 7637 7770; bubbledogs.co.uk) tucked away in Fitzrovia. Knappett’s super-cool premium hotdog and champagne bar is a brazen reinterpretation of fast food as something altogether more premium (how about a ’dog with Caesar dressing, Parmesan and crispy chicken skin?) that is then paired with champagne, just to drive the message home. If that weren’t enough, the restaurant has one more trick up its sleeve – pull back a curtain at the rear to reveal Kitchen Table (kitchentablelondon.co.uk), an intimate 18-cover bar where Knappett and his team serve cutting-edge cuisine inspired by his stints in some of the world’s top kitchens, including Per Se in New York and The Ledbury in London.

Tom Sellers also has Per Se on his CV, as well as Tom Aikens in London and former World’s Best Restaurant winner Noma in Denmark. And, like Knappett, he has blazed a trail with his more unusual approach to cooking. The 27-year-old transformed a Victorian toilet block in Bermondsey for his debut restaurant, Story (020 7183 2117; restaurantstory.co.uk), last year and has worked hard to ensure that this small fact is the most humdrum thing about it. His menu includes

Chefs to watch • Epicure

Chefs such as Ben Spalding are out to demonstrate how spontaneous, challenging and interactive cooking can be

bread-and-dripping: a dish of bread served with a lit candle made of beef fat that slowly melts for dipping, and the fairy-tale-inspired Three Bears Porridge, where one of the three favoured oatmeals is overly sweet, one salty and one just right.

It’s not just the chefs of the fne-dining model – albeit in a very modern style – who are showing their swagger: today’s rising stars are fexing their creative muscles across multiple disciplines. Neil Rankin’s cooking, for example, is more homespun than haute, yet he is building a formidable reputation at his Islington pub, Smokehouse (020 7354 1144; smokehouseislington.co.uk), for his ingenious approach behind the stoves. Smoking is the Scot’s calling, with much of his food – including ham hock, pig’s cheek and cuttlefsh romesco, and duck, kimchi and potato cake – cooked over wood and charcoal using a bespoke robata (Japanese charcoal grill) or on a Big Green Egg, a ceramic barbecue that is the current kit du jour in the UK’s top kitchens.

Dan Doherty is another who’s breaking new ground. He won a prestigious Academy of Culinary Arts scholarship at the tender age of 16, and 12 years on, has reached the dizzy heights – both fguratively and literally – of head chef at Duck & Waffe (0203 640 7310; duckandwaffe.com).

Doherty oversees what is one of the busiest and most dynamic restaurants in the capital, serving customers 24 hours a day. It is also the highest in London, 40 foors up in Heron Tower on Bishopsgate (and one storey above the second highest, Sushisamba). The vertiginous location matches the 28-year-old’s blue-sky approach,

73

and many of his dishes, from ox-cheek doughnuts to barbecue-spiced crispy pig ears, are true mould-breakers.

Florence Knight also made a name for herself with upper-storey dining – albeit only on the frst foor – at her 28-seat bijou restaurant Polpetto (020 7439 8627; polpetto.co.uk) located above The French House pub in Soho. The 27-year-old recently moved her restaurant to a slightly larger venue down the road but has quickly settled in, creating what is arguably the most exciting Italian food in London.

And there’s more to come, with a number of chefs set to burst fully on to the scene both now and in the coming years. One name to keep an eye on is youngster Georgina Dent who, just out of her teens, is already shaping up to be the next big UK culinary talent. Dent has done ‘stages’ (unpaid internships) at some of the UK’s premier restaurants, including the two-Michelin-starred Marcus Wareing at The Berkeley (recently relaunched as Marcus), The Square, Restaurant Sat Bains, and Dinner by Heston Blumenthal, but only when the two-starred restaurant in which she works full-time – Nathan Outlaw at The St Enodoc Hotel in Cornwall (01208 862 737; nathan-outlaw.com) – closes in January each year.

Such is her passion, and growing CV, that top chefs are lining up to employ her.

Then there’s James Lowe, one third of the Young Turks chef collective – another member, Isaac McHale, went on to open much-feted The Clove Club (020 7729 6496; thecloveclub.com) in Shoreditch last year – who has just thrown open the doors of his debut restaurant Lyle’s (020 3011 5911). Located in the Tea Building in Shoreditch, it’s an all-day restaurant that sees Lowe serving super-contemporary yet stunningly simple British food such as ox liver, damson and pickled elderberry, and aged Dover sole, monk’s beard and anchovy.

For maybe the best example of the kind of frebrand chef that is now emerging, look no further than Ben Spalding. His inventive cooking stole the show at Roganic, two-Michelin-starred chef Simon Rogan’s ‘pop-up’ in Marylebone (now closed), but he left under something of a cloud just a year into the project. He then turned heads at John Salt bar and restaurant in Islington (020 7704 8955; john-salt.com), winning rave reviews for a 12-course menu that featured dishes such as a 45-ingredient salad and a brick coated in caramel and chicken-liver parfait that diners were encouraged to lick. However, this stint was also short-lived, with the young chef walking out.

One might think twice about employing him, therefore, but not about eating his extraordinary food, which you can now do at one of his No Rules events (creative-belly.com). These dinners, held in private rooms in pubs across the capital, are game-changers, with Spalding out to demonstrate just how spontaneous, challenging and interactive cooking can be. Guests are encouraged to bring with them both their favourite and least favourite ingredients, both of which will be served during the meal in dishes that Spalding promises will be delicious. Think of it as Ready Steady Cook meets restaurants, without Ainsley Harriott. l

74

Brummell • By George

Track records

This year’s period-themed Goodwood Revival festival features a new race that celebrates two hugely infuential American motor sport institutions

Words: Philip Watson

The Goodwood Revival has produced many memorable races over its 16-year history. Justly celebrated as ‘the world’s greatest and most popular historic motor race meeting’, the annual three-day sell-out festival at the Goodwood circuit near Chichester, West Sussex, has staged races featuring precious Ferraris, AC Cobras and Aston Martins, legendary grand prix and Formula One cars, and speedy world championship sports cars.

One-off races to mark signifcant anniversaries of such motoring stars as the Jaguar E-type and Ford GT40 have also been organised.

This September, however, sees an extraspecial race enter the Revival programme. In an event that will celebrate both the 60th birthday of Chevrolet’s pioneering small-block V8 engine and the golden anniversary of the mighty Ford Mustang, the 45-minute race will feature such American dream machines as the Plymouth Barracuda, Dodge Dart, Ford Falcon, Galaxie 500 and Mercury Comet Cyclone.

The race marks an American revolution that changed motoring history. While Ford had been producing ‘fathead’ V8 engines en masse since 1932, and other American car manufacturers had made signifcant progress in the development of more and more powerful V8 blocks, the new Chevy V8 was groundbreaking because it was markedly lighter and more compact. Forged

Block busters American V8s, including a Mustang and a Stingray, line up for a race at Goodwood in 2007

by Chevrolet’s visionary designers in 1954, it was glorious V8 muscle brilliantly concentrated.

Debuting as a 4.3L V8 in the 1955 Corvette and Bel Air – themselves iconic cars of the period – the new engine was an instant and runaway success. Not only did its super-intelligent design boast additional qualities of adaptability, reliability and durability, but the small-block V8 was also relatively cheap to build. Within a few years, it was General Motors’ standard mass-produced V8 engine, and it was to be found, with more and more horsepower, in the high-performance cars of nearly every American motor manufacturer.

The small-block V8 also found its way into one of the most famous cars of the era: the Ford Mustang. Perhaps the most successful launch in the history of motoring – more than one million were sold within two years of its 1964 debut – it was at once attractively affordable, infnitely customisable and utterly irresistible, especially when ftted with its famed 289 Challenger V8 engine. Mustangs (and ‘Mustangers’) became the perfect embodiment of ‘populuxe’, the resolutely American consumer concept of luxury for all.

This really was ‘power to the people’ – cars that

were emblematic of something far greater than the sporty, sensuous and technologically advanced vehicles themselves. They were proclamations of prosperity and progress, of national confdence and space-age vision – the cars that proved America was changing the world.

The infuence of these cars on British motoring and popular culture during the Fifties and Sixties was immense. With their revolutionary engines, ostentatious designs and technicolour paintwork, they represented everything that grey, reserved, post-austerity Britain longed for: a sense of freedom, choice and optimism. When Mustangs and Galaxies also started to win on European race tracks, and American cars featured in such fabled flms of the era as Bullitt and Goldfnger as well as in popular songs, their rebellious and romantic appeal was quickly immortalised.

It is this radical and transporting spirit that the Revival hopes to recreate. ‘Goodwood is a fast, all-out, old-style track and this is a unique opportunity to see these American V8s race against each other,’ says Bill Shepherd, a Ford specialist who has raced many highly prized Mustangs, Galaxies and Cobras there. ‘This race is guaranteed to wow everyone who sees it.’ l The Goodwood Revival takes place from 12 to 14 September; goodwood.co.uk

Alfred Dunhill 0845 458 0779; dunhill.com Bally 020 7491 7062; bally.com Bell & Ross 0800 012 4363; bellross.com Blancpain 0845 273 2500; blancpain.com Breguet 020 7355 1735; breguet.com Brooks Brothers 020 3238 0030; brooksbrothers.com Canali 020 7290 3500; canali.com Chopard 020 7409 3140; chopard.com Daks 020 7409 4040; daks.com Ermenegildo Zegna 020 7518 2700; zegna.com Gieves & Hawkes 020 7434 2001; gievesandhawkes.com Hamilton 0845 275 2900; hamiltonwatch.com Hardy Amies 020 7734 2436; hardyamies.com Justin Deakin 020 7247 0985; justindeakin.com Kris Van Assche 020 2204 2013; krisvanassche.com Norwegian Rain 020 7201 8088; norwegianrain.com Omega 020 8555 1569; omegawatches.com Oris 020 7240 1888; oris.ch Paul Smith paulsmith.co.uk Raymond Weil 01428 656822; raymond-weil.com Rolex 020 7024 7300; rolex.com TAG Heuer 0800 037 9658; tagheuer.com Theo Fennell theofennell.com Tumi 0161 332 6451; uk.tumi.com Troubadour troubadour.com Turnbull & Asser 020 7808 3000; turnbullandasser.co.uk Vacheron Constantin 020 7312 6830; vacheron-constantin.com

Andy Smerdon

Stockists

Bespoke prom otion • Brum mell

Cuttingedge art The cut-out pictures of Henri Matisse’s later years were born out of necessity, but – as a new Tate exhibition, sponsored by Bank of America Merrill Lynch, shows – their colourful vibrancy ended up being the most memorable works of his career

Words: George Pendle

The year was 1943 and Henri Matisse – alongside Pablo Picasso, the best-known artist of the age – was not in good shape. He was 74 years old, had recently divorced from his wife of 41 years, was recovering from a stomach operation and had been told he had less than three years to live. And he was living in a France occupied by the German army.

Severely weakened by surgery and increasingly confned to either bed or a wheelchair, Matisse no longer had the stamina to paint. So he put down the paintbrush and picked up a pair of scissors.

Matisse used broad-bladed tailor’s shears to cut shapes in coloured paper. It was the sort of activity you might give a sickly child to while away the hours of their convalescence. But this was far from an idle fancy. Matisse had always been an incredible improviser. Artistic restrictions or obstacles were a form of adventure to him. In 1911, for example, he had painted his mammoth work ‘The Painter’s Family’ on mattress ticking. Now Matisse would take the physical restrictions of his dotage and transform them into one last explosion of creativity. Indeed the art which he created for the next ten years until his death in 1954 – his gouaches découpeées or cut-out pictures – are probably, to this day, his most popular and abiding works.

Propped in a whicker wheelchair, the bear-like Matisse would frst choose from a selection of coloured papers (gouaches) that had been painted by his assistants in shockingly bright colours.

Holding up his giant scissors he would begin to cut shapes with a hypnotic effortlessness, an assistant often turning and rotating the sheet of paper while Matisse cut, so he could keep true to the line he had begun. Although he once described it as ‘painting with scissors’, Matisse was actually doing quite the opposite. ‘It is no longer the brush that slips and slides over the canvas,’ he said. ‘It is the scissors that cut into the paper and into the colour…it doesn’t brush on, but it incises in.’ He was carving the shape out of the paper, a bit like a sculptor working a block

in association with

07

Robert Bayer; Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais/ Jean-Claude Planchet; all © Succession Henri Matisse/DACS

of marble. Yet for all the analogies with other felds of artistic production, the cut-outs were something else entirely. He had created a new medium.

Off the scissors' blades leapt leaves, birds, dancers and vibrant, organic forms. There was a lightness to the shapes he created, or maybe it was the paper medium that imparted some of its insubstantiality to the images. Whatever the case, Matisse believed that he had gained ‘greater completeness and abstraction’ in the cutouts than he had even in his most ethereal paintings. ‘I have attained a form fltered to its essentials,’ he declared.

Confned as he was, Matisse pinned his cut-outs to the walls of his living quarters, attaching them loosely, allowing them to shift in the wind, bending, fexing, and displaying new facets of themselves not just by their movement but by their juxtaposition with other cut-outs. ‘It breathes, it responds, it’s not a dead thing,’ he said of his new art.

The cut-outs soon fowed around doorways, across windows, over mouldings. Matisse constantly reconfgured them, moving them from one wall to

in association with

another, inserting new cut-outs, so that the energy they gave out was forever fuctuating. In his painting years, he had often treated his studio as a central subject – for instance in his monumental ‘The Red Studio’ (1911) – but now it actually became a shifting sculptural work, an installation as fuid and multifaceted as a natural environment.

Matisse would modestly refer to his cut-outs as a ‘little garden’ in which he could walk.

Yet to the visitor it often seemed as if they had entered not a garden but the mind of the artist itself, and that his headspace had become real space around them. Such was the rhythm of colour that sprung forth from the walls, the chiming interplay of forms, the unexpected fuctuations, that one visitor compared the sensation of walking among them to stepping into Walt Disney’s Fantasia.

Matisse would use his cut-out technique to work out designs for books, ballet scenery and stained-glass window designs. Eventually –and with misgivings – he would frame them. For it was on his studio walls that the cut-outs seemed to

Stage presence Previous page: ‘Blue Nude (I)’ (1952, gouache-painted paper cut-outs on paper, on canvas, from the Foundation Beyeler, Riehen, Basel), inspired by African sculpture, which Matisse collected.

Above: ‘The Snail’ (1953, gouache on paper, cut and pasted on paper mounted to canvas, from the Tate’s permanent collection), among the artist’s last works.

Opposite: One of Matisse’s frst cut-outs, ‘The Horse, The Rider, And The Clown’ (1943-44, maquette for a plate for the illustrated 1947 book Jazz)

Bespoke prom otion • Brum mell

09

Matisse would take the physical restrictions of his dotage and transform them into one last explosion of creativity reach their greatest heights and this is what makes the current show at Tate Modern so special. It is the frst time since the artist’s death that so many of Matisse’s cut-outs have been assembled in one place. The works were originally intended to be a unifed whole and the Tate seeks to recreate that feeling by fooding its galleries with his small, fragile cut-outs. It will also be showing some of the gargantuan examples that have become his most popular works, such as the ‘The Snail’ (1952-3), with its inspired arrangement of paper blocks mimicking a shell’s spiral, and the famed ‘Blue Nude’ cut-outs (1952), posters of which have adorned countless bedroom walls since the originals frst appeared on Matisse’s own.

At the time of their creation, the cut-outs were written off by critics as the work of an aged, possibly even senile, talent. But Matisse insisted they would speak to the future, and they did.

Not only was their colourful vibrancy an essential inspiration to the minimalist artists of the Sixties and Seventies, such as Ellsworth Kelly, but the

pinning of the cut-outs to his walls inspired artists from the Abstract Expressionists onwards to look beyond the frame, pre-empting the rise of both installation and environmental art.

When asked how such a dynamic and exuberant series of images could have sprung out of not only the war years but also his own sickness, Matisse replied simply, ‘I do it in self-defence.’ At the Tate, we will fnally get a chance to see how powerful and enveloping that defence was. l Bank of America Merrill Lynch is global sponsor of Henri Matisse: The Cut-Outs at Tate Modern from 17 April to 7 September 2014. Part of the sponsorship supports the Connecting Bow to the World initiative, engaging young people from the East End through workshops, private views and school visits. The result will be Matisse-inspired artworks created by students to transform an underpass on the route to Bow School.

Over the past fve years, Bank of America Merrill Lynch’s art-education programme has directly involved over 100,000 young people from the UK and Ireland