T Emirates: The New York Times Style Magazine

Design July - August, 2013

 THe IMPoRTAnCE OF

MRS. PraDA

ingie chalhoub talks trials and tribulations Alice temperley's desert adventure emirati khalid shafar on Living the dream The vintage couture Bazaar

www.richardmille.com

CALIBER RM 011 FELIPE MASSA FLYBACK CHRONOGRAPH Skeletonized, automatic Winding chronograph movement Annular calendar with oversized date and month indicator 12-hour totalizer 60-minute countdown timer Chronograph flyback function Hand ground titanium baseplate and bridges Rotor with ceramic ball bearings Special tungsten-colbolt alloy rotor weight 6-positional, variable rotor geometry With 18-carat white gold wings Balance wheel in Glucydur with 3 arms Frequency : 28 800 vph (4Hz) Moment of inertia : 4.8 mg/cm2 62 Jewels Incabloc for bottom plate and balance cock Water resistant to 50 meters Finished and polished by hand Central caseband in titanium with (front and back) bezels In titanium or 18-carat red or white gold

Design July - August, 2013

Vintage Couture

Living the Dream

Power of One

Too Tough to Handle

Lost in Time

From that iconic dress in Breakfast at Tiffany’s to a nondescript, but equally enchanting pair of earrings from the 1940s, the charm of vintage couture fashion is becoming more apparent today− not just for its aesthetic appeal but also for its ever appreciating asset value. By Priyanka Pradhan.

Not many people would be brave enough to leave a successful corporate career to realize their true passion.

But Emirati Khalid Shafar says taking that bold step was key to turning his dreams into reality. By Orna Ballout.

Miuccia Prada is a fashion designer by profession, but she’s also an art curator, film producer, fledgling architect, conflicted feminist, avid consumer and unreconstructed socialist. Meet the modern woman. By Andrew O’Hagan.

Harnessing the dark side with black bikinis and a leather cover-up.

Photographs by Craig McDean. Styled by Joe McKenna.

Far from Morocco’s welltrodden tourist route lies Taroudant, a remote market town where a colorful group of expats have created a most stylish haven. By Christopher Petkanas. Photographs

by Simon Watson.

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clockwise from top: mario sorrenti; COURTESY Bambah Boutique; simon watson.

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Clockwise from top: Miuccia Prada wears a blue and white gingham coat from her fall collection. She stands outside her new Fondazione in Milan, designed by Rem Koolhaas and set to open in 2014; interior of Dubai-based vintage store Bambah Boutique; local children play soccer outside Taroudant.

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T Emirates: The New York Times Style Magazine

Copyright © 2013 The New York Times

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Table of Contents

You may not get room service or a terry cloth robe, but what Airbnb vacation rentals lack in amenities, they make up for in unbelievable, sometimes rather bizarre experiences. By Gideon Lewis-Kraus. Photographs

by Frederik Buyckx.

11 This and That

The designer Jasper Conran reinvents the family business; Cubism with a fashion twist; the Palais Liechtenstein in Vienna reopens; appreciating art books; the men behind Mercedes Motoring.

14 Take Two

Bjarke Ingels and Colleen Atwood take on Willie Nelson, lightweight luggage, Dom Pérignon rosé and more.

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Lookout Emirates Home Couture

Donatella Versace speaks exclusively about Versace’s collaboration with The Haas Brothers on a collection she describes as “couture for the home.”

By Orna Ballout.

24 Art of the Matter

The second edition of the International Emerging Artist Award is providing upcoming artists with a chance to break into the international arts scene.

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Quality A Welcome Warmth

Bronze lends as much gravity and sophistication to a room as it does an outfit. Photographs by Philippe Lacombe. Styled

by Noemi Bonazzi.

29 Clockwise from top left: Emirati Winner, Dr. Hamad Al Falasi’s 3D calligraphy and digital photography artwork on Emirati Colloquialism; the classic French slipons get a revamp; Donatella Versace.

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T Emirates: The New York Times Style Magazine

Copyright © 2013 The New York Times

clockwise from top left: Courtesy IEAA; Konstantin Kakanias; courtesy Versace Home.

Sign of the Times

Advertorial

Table of Contents Chief Executive Sandeep Sehgal

Editorial Managing Editor Aaron Greenwood Assistant Editors Orna Ballout Priyanka Pradhan Correspondents Mia Fothergill Fox Cordelia Ditton Gwenda Hughes-Art Richard Thompson-Travel

Arena

art Senior Designers Nadia Mendez Ushi Pohlner Shawn Cadzow

Yes, Please

Photographers Ajith Joseph Nigel Dickens Robert de Wailly

Givenchy’s Riccardo Tisci’s edgy fall collection has the fashion world buzzing. But he has always staked his career on punking the status quo — challenging notions of sexual identity and class bias with the cut of a skirt.

By Andrew O’Hagan.

Photograph by Liz Collins.

production Production Manager Viktor Ahmed Production Supervisor Tushar Raval

Marketing and Sales Assistant General Manager Poonam Chawla

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Alice in the Desert

True Grit

Alice Temperley takes time out of her busy schedule, shooting her latest collections in the sand dunes of the UAE and opening a new store in Doha, to talk inspiration, riding the recession and being True British. By Orna Ballout.

The glamorous Ingie Chalhoub is known as fashion’s first lady in the Middle East, but she hasn’t reached the top without learning a few tough lessons along the way. By Priyanka Pradhan.

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Fashion Architecture

Storyteller

T Emirates unravels the persona of writer Jeffrey Archer who continues to thrill and entertain at the age of 72. By Priyanka Pradhan.

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Coco Chanel once said: “Fashion is architecture.

It’s a matter of proportions.” With this in mind, we set out to discover the relationship between the two fields, talking to fashion designers and architects from across the world. By Orna Ballout.

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Assistant Brand Manager Tarun Gangwani Senior Sales Manager Mohamed Galal Marketing Coordinator Disha Gagwani Printed at Emirates Printing Press LLC, Dubai Distributed by GN Distribution

For marketing queries please call +97150-1447656 E mail: poonam@temirates.com Twitter: twitter.com/t_emirates Facebook: facebook.com/temiratesedition

T, The Style Magazine of The New York Times Editor in Chief Deborah Needleman Creative Director Patrick Li Deputy Editor Whitney Vargas Fashion Director at Large Joe McKenna Managing Editor George Gustines Photography Director Nadia Vellam

The New York Times

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T, The New York Times Style Magazine, and the T logo are trademarks of The New York Times Co., NY, NY, USA, and are used under license by UMS International, UAE. Content reproduced from T, The New York Times Style Magazine, copyright The New York Times Co. and/or its contributors 2013 all rights reserved. The views and opinions expressed within T-Emirates are not necessarily those of The New York Times Company or those of its contributors.

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T Emirates: The New York Times Style Magazine

News Services General Manager Michael Greenspon Vice President, Licensing and Syndication Alice Ting Vice President, Executive Editor The New York Times News Service & Syndicate Nancy Lee

Licensed Editions Editorial Director Josephine Schmidt Editor, T International Editions George Gustines Coordinators Gary Caesar Jessie Sandler

Copyright © 2013 The New York Times

top: courtesy Alice Temperley; Liz Collins.

Clockwise from top: Alice Temperley; Givenchy’s Riccardo Tisci in his atelier, in a sweatshirt from his fall 2013 men’s collection.

Behind the T

Power of One

Cover Story (Page 76) ‘‘Miuccia

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has an unbelievable vision, which goes beyond fashion,’’ says Mario Sorrenti, who shot Mrs. Prada for the cover. While in Milan to interview the press-shy designer, the novelist Andrew O’Hagan (right) climbed to the top of the Duomo, ‘‘from where Luchino Visconti once filmed. Mrs. Prada loves those movies too, and I felt, looking over the city, that I was seeing into the heart of that rich and stylish culture that still feeds her work today.’’

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Kids These Days

1. Andrew Ross Sorkin, financial columnist, The New York Times: Writing this essay reminded me of my 20s. It was an amazing time. It felt like anything was possible. When I started DealBook, I remember being told it would never work. But I didn’t care. I wanted to prove the naysayers wrong.

2. John Maeda, president, Rhode Island School of Design: My conversation with the founders of Instagram was further affirmation that what differentiates products today is feeling and emotion.

3. Harriet Quick, author, former

British Vogue fashion editor: I admire Alexander Wang’s bold maneuvers, his infectious energy and ability to plunge in deep.

4. Brian Stelter, media reporter,

The New York Times: I blogged my way into a job at The New York Times, much as Ezra Klein did at The Washington Post. He’s a year older than I, and immeasurably wiser.

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5. Aimee Bender, novelist and

professor of English at the University of Southern California: I’m impressed by how Helen Oyeyemi continues to grow and play with form and ideas on her own terms. Hers feels like a mind free and exploratory and unhindered.

6. Liesl Schillinger, journalist and

contributor to The New York Times Book Review: I reviewed J. K. Rowling’s sixth Harry Potter book for the New York Times Book Review in 2005, and hugely enjoyed it. So when I heard Samantha Shannon compared with J. K. Rowling, my interest was piqued. And more importantly, when I read her book, I instantly wanted to know more about her.

7. Andrew Sullivan, founding editor, The Daily Dish: Meeting Chris Hughes was like meeting a current version of myself: asked to run a major magazine in my 20s. Except I was never as mature as Chris. And I did not have hundreds of millions of dollars.

8. Jody Rosen, music critic, New York Magazine: Benny Blanco was totally charming and eloquent and goodhumored. At one point, he made an analogy involving the difference between toilet paper and wet wipes.

T Emirates: The New York Times Style Magazine

Craig McDean The Dark Side (Page 82) The concrete jungle

set the scene for the shoot. ‘‘I wanted it to feel urban to match the toughness of the clothing,’’ says the photographer Craig McDean about shooting the leather-jacketand-swimwear-clad models in an empty pool, a project that he says was reminiscent of ‘‘a combination of many things I love, including skateboarding and motorbike culture.’’

sorkin: michael cohen; MAEDA: JON KAMEN; STELTER: EARL WILSON; BENDER: MAX S. GERBER; SCHILLINGER: ALBRECHT ALVENSLEBEN; SULLIVAN: COURTESY OF THE DAILY BEAST; McDean: Simon Roberts.

(Page 68) We asked a group of authorities on subjects ranging from music to design to literature to profile the most game-changing men and women under 30 in their fields. Here, their impressions.

checking in The author arrives at his Airbnb apartment in Antwerp.

Sign of the Times

Su Casa Es Mi Casa You may not get room service or a terry cloth robe, but what Airbnb vacation rentals lack in amenities, they make up for in unbelievable, sometimes rather bizarre experiences.

By gideon lewis-kraus Photograph by Frederik Buyckx

One of urban life’s uncommon diversions is the

chance to ransack the drawers of an anonymous neighbor. Airbnb is the Internet service, for those of you who don’t have a Danish architect leafing through your local Lonely Planet at your kitchen table right now, that lets ‘‘hosts’’ rent their extra bedrooms or entire apartments, mansions, tiki huts or goatskin yurts to travelers.

In only five years, Airbnb has created a marketplace that offers 300,000 listings in 35,000 cities in 192 countries. It’s been so successful that half the tech start-ups these days go around flattering themselves with Airbnb comparisons: there’s an Airbnb for boats, and one for power tools, and probably one that will let you rent

Design July - August, 2013

11

Lookout

Sign of the Times

Airbnb lets you book their linens from your phone.

out your extra sheep to fertilize somebody’s lawn. Airbnb, for its part, might bill itself as a cheaper, roomier, warmer way to overnight — less deracinated than a hotel, but without the creakyfloorboard unease of a bed and breakfast — but the great unadvertised draw is the chance to spend time amid somebody else’s trappings.

Airbnb lets you book their linens from your phone. There’s been a lot written about the ‘‘sharing economy’’: on the one hand, services like this make for more efficient resource allocation; on the other, they offload what was once regulated institutional risk onto the consumer. But somehow these arguments, which will be worked out in the courts and capitols, have tended to ignore what’s actually weird and interesting about this new mode of travel: Airbnb indulges the fantasy that we might temporarily inhabit another life.

It’s in part because of this lived experience that Airbnb guests aren’t just users, they’re evangelists. I recently lit out to sightsee three other people’s lives in three nights in three European cities: London, Stockholm and Antwerp.

The voyeuristic frame gives some Airbnb experiences a kind of erotic charge, or at least it did during the impromptu Airbnb gettogether I somehow ended up throwing in London, where I was staying in a duplex warehouse in Shoreditch. While I’d been waiting in the freezing courtyard to be let in — Hotels 1, Airbnb 0 — I’d read down the list of my neighbors-for-the-night, which read like the billing for a trip-hop reunion: the tenants had such names as Darq and Magnetised. The owner, who was ‘‘surfing/working’’ in Australia, had described the apartment in an e-mail as “a good space to chill and paint, so feel free to paint if you’d like!’’ Once I finally got inside, the flat revealed itself to be perfectly contiguous with its Shoreditch environment: with its casually abused pleather settees, mannequin torso and panels of decoratively broken surfboard, it looked like one more cafe-bar-bike-repair joint. In Airbnb’s spirit of connectedness, I Instagram-crowdsourced descriptions of the owner’s artwork; one friend commented that it was ‘‘Warhol goes Ke$ha.’’ My bedroom, in a windowless basement, had a stairway that curved upward to meet curtains, which in turn hid a cardboard wall.

I hadn’t planned to bring anybody back with me, but the more I talked about the place over drinks at the pub with friends, the more the gang assembled clamored to see it. They could sit around and whinge at the pub any night, but it wasn’t often they got to have a hotel party at a neighbor’s flat. ‘‘It’s ‘Queer Eye for the Absent Guy,’ ’’ my friend Tom said, flicking the switch that backlit the Euripides bust by the bongos, in front of the skateboard-mounted vinyl couch. The group noted the unreconstructed ‘‘Point Break’’ aesthetic and the fact that everything from the lime-green shag to the wall mirrors had been set at rakish angles. They argued over the rent (probably £4,000 to £6,000 per month), the municipal legality of windowless bedrooms and the merit of the Tesco-brand

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T Emirates: The New York Times Style Magazine

sweet potato, coconut and chili soup in the fridge. My new friend Anna had never heard of Airbnb, and asked if she could do this in her own flat, up the road in hipper Dalston. I showed her listings on her block. ‘‘Do I have to let them use the bathrooms?’’ she asked.

But the promise of voyeurism can undermine itself: once you’ve introduced the kind of self-consciousness that results from having to put verified photos of your upholstery on the Internet, at least some owners take down their Euripides busts. It’s been increasingly noted that one of the unfortunate surprises of the contemporary Internet is the proliferation of corporate uniformity.

This is nowhere more apparent than on Airbnb, where it often seems as though each residence is striving to out-Bulthaup the next.

The place I’d booked in Stockholm was an altar to minimalism, showcasing the no-place of international design with the star(c)k accouterments of a boutique hotel: Vitra chair, antique apothecary bottles, home D.J. kit, paperback of Jonathan Franzen’s ‘‘Freedom.’’

My host, Erik, who’d e-mailed me from an H&M address, met me and my friend Christian, whom I brought along from London, at the door in a nice-looking outfit recognizable from one of a variety of commensurate urban enclaves: a fitted denim shirt, indigo knit tie and jeans cuffed up over handmade British boots.

Erik didn’t seem put out as we inventoried the possessions that had become, by dint of our arrival, decorations: in the foyer, Comme des Garçons cologne and Lonely Planet’s ‘‘Fiji’’; in the kitchen, home-pickled carrots and dried goji berries. Perhaps to compensate for his recent Airbnb experience in New York, in which the host had dropped off the keys and split, Erik very kindly offered to spend the rest of the afternoon showing us around. As we walked in the fashionable Sodermalm neighborhood, Christian asked him what was new in Sweden. ‘‘Exercise,’’ Erik ticked off, ‘‘and sourdough.’’

By the latter, he explained, he meant a certain consciousness of time, a methodical slowness — foraging for your own mushrooms, going sailing, anything that would get you offline for a while. We strolled through the area where, Erik said, they’d filmed the ‘‘Dragon Tattoo’’ movies, though he admitted with pride that he hadn’t seen any of them. ‘‘I am also proud to be the last person on earth who hasn’t seen ‘Gangnam Style.’ ’’ The whole experience was an almost cartoonishly apt example of how handily the Internet drove anti-Internet culture: we’d picked Erik’s flat for its international homogeneity, but what we got was a meandering day with odd and engaging Erik.

Antwerp, home of such designers as Martin Margiela and Ann Demeulemeester, is exactly the sort of place where the austere tyranny of international design has made a lot of the Airbnb offerings seem sort of bland — sleek and overcurated. I looked, in turn, for the most deranged-looking option: a ‘‘Bohemian’’ flat crowded with Brazilian antiques that seemed entirely sui generis.

My host, Tania, was from Rio, and had just begun to list this

The entryway of the Swedish apartment.

functional light bulb and the voluble owners who, after a long day of travel, stand between you and a drink. But if, despite all that, you’ve got the foolhardy curiosity to stay in Antwerp’s only boho-Brazilian lodging, you’ve got a decent chance at ending up at the kind of place no guidebook and no concierge in his right mind would ever think to endorse. We toasted to Airbnb’s special diminishment of ease in travel. Which, for some of us, isn’t a price to pay; it’s the reward itself.

Image courtesy: gideon lewis-kraus.

apartment, atop a bar that she owns with her husband. They kept another flat for themselves across the street, over their BrazilianMexican restaurant. They had decorated the place with work imported from a collective in Minas Gerais, Brazil. On the walls floated jetsam palings emblazoned with disembodied religious limbs: a bloodily outstretched arm over the four-poster bed, a slim cut of a naked torso over the door to the kitchen. There were sculptures made of mounted whale vertebrae, and a coffee table book, captioned in Dutch and Italian, on the life of Steve McQueen.

As Tania ran up and down the stairs looking for an entirely unnecessary replacement bulb for the bedside lamp, I gave Erik, of Stockholm, an effusive five-star review on my phone. Christian grumbled that, Tania’s kindness notwithstanding, sometimes you just wanted to check in and get on with it. As far as I was concerned, the place was great, and Tania’s antics were neurotically endearing.

We went over to Tania’s restaurant for nachos and fajitas over Duvels before going in pursuit of the ‘‘alternative’’ scene Tania had mentioned to us. We washed up at the Hypothalamus, one of those bars at the end of the world.

The ’80s pink patterned wallpaper clashed coherently with the Delft tiles. A drunk quartet of clairvoyants took up their instruments and moved from ‘‘Proud Mary’’ through ‘‘Danza Kuduro’’ to ‘‘Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door.’’ (It was our duty as Americans to supply the Axl Rose caterwauls, which earned us some light applause.) A Lebanese leprechaun wearing a neat Lincoln beard collected donations in an inverted cymbal. Fresh out of euros, we threw our remaining kronor into the cymbal, and he bowed. This was precisely what Airbnb travel, at its best, might offer, if you don’t mind the waiting to be let in, the agonizing search for a

The place I’d booked in Stockholm was an altar to minimalism, showcasing the no-place of international design with the star(c)k accouterments of a boutique hotel: Vitra chair, antique apothecary bottles, home D.J. kit, paperback of Jonathan Franzen’s ‘Freedom.’

Design July - August, 2013

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Lookout

This and That A Cultural Compendium

Furniture That’s Simply Chic In May, the interior decorator James Huniford unveils a brand-new Chelsea showroom and a sophisticated furniture collection, made up of the type of pieces the designer previously created only as one-offs for his high-profile clients.

The designs, Huniford says, are meant to be ‘‘user-friendly’’ — scale and contemporary livability are paramount, and dimensions, as well as upholstery, are all customizable. This is furniture that inhabits that elegant territory somewhere

between modern and classic. A tufted slope-armed sofa (AED 28,649) is refreshed with a casual low-slung profile; a campaign-style side table (AED 17,630) is cheekily updated with a not-remotely-portable stone slab and chains; and a two-tiered occasional table (AED 21,303) has a brass base with an industrial feel. ‘‘I like the tension between contrasting materials,’’ the designer says. ‘‘Metal and stone, wood and glass.’’ hunifordcollection.com KEVIN MCGARRY

Scent Notes

Highland Breeze Obsessed with W. B. Yeats’s epic poem ‘‘The Wanderings of Oisin,’’ the perfumer David Seth Moltz traveled to Ireland and Scotland to collect inspiration for HYLNDS, his latest collection for the Brooklyn-based D. S. & Durga. What emerged from his travels are three unisex scents that each evoke the lands in the Celtic myths Yeats drew upon: one is Isle Ryder (left), an accord of jasmine, gorse and poplar bud that conjures Finlaggan, ruins of a castle in the middle of a lake on the peaty island of Islay. JULIA FELSENTHAL AED 661; barneys.com

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T Emirates: The New York Times Style Magazine

Kickstarters The architect Rafael de Cárdenas has electrified Rivieras, the classic French slip-on, with a sharp new pattern available in four color combos. De Cárdenas says the shoe brand was a natural fit for him. ‘‘I like their form and shape as well as their nod to the ’60s and ’70s French Riviera summer culture,’’ he says. ‘‘I also like that they are called a ‘leisure shoe,’ almost as though wearing them might relax you regardless of whether you’re leisurely or not.’’AED 367; Opening Ceremony, (212) 219-2688

conran portrait: julian broad; Opposite page and top: illustrations by konstantin kakanias.

Not His Father’s Conran Shop Jasper Conran reinvents the family business.

Since taking over his father’s venerable stores last year, the designer Jasper Conran has been quietly revolutionizing the brand. At the flagship Chelsea location in London, shelves brim with Marie Daâge Limoges porcelain, vintage Blodwen Welsh blankets and linens as crisp as Granny Smith apples. There are edgier home pieces by Maison Martin Margiela, chic-beyond-chic stainless steel kitchens

by Alpes Inox and divine cloud sculptures that the artist Benedetta Mori Ubaldini makes out of chicken wire. Conran has also added an entire section dedicated to the sort of children’s goodies — pink roller skates, giant buttons, paper pompoms — that you want to buy regardless of age. In May, he will reopen the Conran Shop’s location in Marylebone, complete with a Penthouse apartment, fully decorated and shoppable, and a roof terrace. ‘‘I love the idea of the store as a magazine,’’ Conran says. ‘‘It’s about highlighting different things, and discovering and showcasing new talent.’’

81 Fulham Road, London; 011-44-20-7589-7401 RITA KONIG

bright vision Jasper Conran (right) has added new wares like the Vitra Heart Cone chair, chicken wire sculptures by Benedetta Mori Ubaldini and Marie Daâge teacups.

All the prices are indicative.

Design July - August, 2013

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Lookout

Sub Section

Costume Drama It’s no surprise that Camille Miceli makes jewelry that is covetable and well designed. The daughter of a French stylist, Miceli began creating jewelry for Louis Vuitton back in 2004 and, since 2009, has been doing the same for Dior. Her superchic personal style has been touted by fashion heavyweights like her current boss, Raf Simons, as well as her former employer Marc Jacobs, who has called her his muse. Each piece in Miceli’s prefall collection for Dior has the ability to single-handedly pull an outfit together. These are objects that are both substantial and restrained — like the Diorama necklace, a breastplate-like collar of goldfinished metal adorned with a single, gleaming red glass stone. JULIA FELSENTHAL

good as gold From left: Dior Mise en Dior Podium necklace, AED 15,794, Diorama cuff, AED 4,959, and necklace, AED 7,162, and Mise en Dior Tribal earrings, AED 4,720; (800) 929-3467.

A Fine Feather In ‘‘From Europe With Love,’’ which opened on May 2 at the Cristina Grajales gallery in SoHo, the Paris-based designer Sam Baron reinterprets traditional European design with what he calls ‘‘a kind of French sense of humor.’’ He applies a champagne-colored lacquer to Louis XVI-style cabinets, and deconstructs the traditional process of painting these bisque porcelain birds made by the venerable Portuguese house Vista Alegre.

ALAINNA LEXIE BEDDIE

The Benz Whisperers It’s not unusual to see a hipster tooling around Silver Lake or Williamsburg in a beat-up old Mercedes. What’s rarer is to find those 35-year-old sedans, coupes and wagons restored to mint condition.

That’s the particular obsession of J. G. Francis (above right), who with the help of Sean Johnstun, founded Mercedes Motoring, a boutique restoration company based in Glendale, Calif. Francis says he had an epiphany after buying a 1979 300SD for $700 (AED 2,571). ‘‘I’ve heard people say somebody should make a car that will last forever,’’ he says. ‘‘Mercedes did that 40 years ago.’’ The engineering may be superior — and that diesel engine still gets competitive gas mileage — but it’s the design that attracts many of the company’s clients. The classic colors, like mint green and China blue, and a boxy profile make these cars distinct from the S.U.V.’s and egg-shaped hybrids now crowding the roads. ‘‘I have never been drawn to things that are over the top,’’ Francis says. ‘‘I like things that are subtly amazing.’’ mercedesmotoring.com TOM DELAVAN All prices are indicative.

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T Emirates: The New York Times Style Magazine

miceli: nicolas hidiroglou; far left necklace: sarah anne ward; mercedes: SEan johnstun; birds: ari espay.

Now Showing

On the Verge

Applied Arts As Old World luxury companies seek to modernize their wares, a Swiss school’s design students offer some bright ideas.

By pilar viladas

Creative Class Clockwise from far left: Aurélie Mathieu and Philippe Karrer’s Brick vase for Baccarat; Guillaume Noiseux’s Space Capsule vases for Bernardaud; Guillaume Sasseville’s Jump rope for Christofle; Elsa Lambinet’s Stretch vase for Baccarat.

this month during the Milan fair. Unlike previous projects, in which student designs might only be one-offs or limited editions, the lights are meant for production. ÉCAL’s director, Alexis Georgacopoulos, says, ‘‘They’re entrusting us with something that’s more commercial from the start.’’

Another vote of confidence is a pledge from the Swiss watch company Vacheron Constantin to sponsor the program for the next three years.

These collaborations become laboratories for innovation and ideas. The students are introduced to prestigious companies and have access to their factories and artisans.

Moreover, says Aurélie Mathieu, a co-designer of the Brick vase, the program ‘‘pushes you to be professional and really efficient. The school works a lot like a studio. How do you make a project; how do you sell it?’’ This, she adds, is not often the case at other design schools.

And the manufacturers have first dibs on just-hatched talent. As Georgacopoulos says, a big question in luxury goods these days is: ‘‘Can brands reinvent themselves without losing their heritage?’’ For companies with rich histories, dazzling archives and skilled craftspeople — but which are struggling to remain relevant in an increasingly competitive global marketplace — programs like ÉCAL’s offer a never-ending supply of bright young things.

Design July - August, 2013

Collage by lucas Zarebinski.

For the last several years, the coolest design schools were those, like Design Academy Eindhoven in the Netherlands, that turned out the most conceptual work, much of it laced with social commentary. But now the school whose name seems to be everywhere is the ÉCAL/University of Art and Design Lausanne. Like many of its peers, the 192-year-old Swiss institution offers an undergraduate degree in industrial design. But unlike many schools, it also has something called the Master of Advanced Studies in Design for Luxury and Craftsmanship, which was founded five years ago and has made a name for itself through its collaborations — with luxury goods companies like Baccarat, Christofle, Bernardaud and Audemars Piguet — that bring new ideas to old-line manufacturers.

Two years ago, a group of ÉCAL students caused a sensation during the Milan furniture fair with an exhibition of witty reimaginings of a Baccarat classic, the Harcourt crystal goblet. Last year, another group came up with a series of colorful, ornamented vases, one of which, Brick, has been produced in a limited edition by Baccarat, along with a juice-squeezer goblet from the Harcourt project.

This year, students worked with Baccarat on a collection of table, wall and hanging lights that will make its debut

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Lookout

Take Two

A dual review of what’s new.

Bjarke Ingels

Colleen Atwood

Dashing Danish architect and torchbearer for sustainable design. He is working on a pyramidshaped residence in Manhattan and was recently chosen to reimagine the Smithsonian’s campus in Washington, D.C.

Oscar-winning costume designer who realizes many of Tim Burton’s twisted visions, including the goth-metal look from ‘‘Edward Scissorhands.’’

Her first Broadway production, ‘‘Breakfast at Tiffany’s,’’ is now at Manhattan’s Cort Theater.

I’m the wrong person for this. My first cassette that I got as a kid from my cousin, who I thought was the coolest guy on earth, had Kraftwerk on one side and Kim Wilde on the other. Willie Nelson is totally alien to me.

I have to say, I’m not big into men’s jewelry.

But I tried it on my girlfriend and the dark metal looked great with this funky black dress she had on. It looks like something from ‘‘The Matrix’’ — somehow everything in ‘‘The Matrix’’ has this S-and-M aesthetic.

I have a soft spot for rosé, and this one’s just amazing. I drank it with my girlfriend in Copenhagen. It’s great to get as a gift so you don’t have to think of the price; you can just sit back and enjoy something of such beautiful quality.

It’s beautiful. I love how it’s very disciplined geometrically, but because of the gradual variation it creates a feeling of something organic. It actually reminds me of some of the architecture projects that I’m working on now.

Luggage ‘‘AirBag’’ carry-on by Michael Young for Zixag (AED 863).

Music The new Willie Nelson LP, ‘‘Let’s Face the Music and Dance,’’ with covers of Django Reinhardt and Irving Berlin.

Jewelry Eddie Borgo torpedo bracelet (AED 1,836).

Bubbly Drink Dom Pérignon Rosé Vintage 2002 (AED 1,230).

Textile ‘‘Nevada’’ fabric from Pierre Frey (AED 845 per yard).

This is an A+ for me. I love that it’s so lightweight. The only weight comes from what you put in the bag, not the bag itself.

I went to San Francisco for a ballet job and took it with me, and it worked great.

When I first listened, I had jet lag and was driving ­— the cadence was so slow, I was sort of like, ‘‘Really?’’ But this is great late-night listening. Willie Nelson can sing just about anything. He’s so diverse.

Because of my work I don’t wear a lot of jewelry on my wrist, but if I did, I would wear this with a simple black dress and let it be the feature. As it is, I barely got to touch it before my 23-year-old daughter put it on her wrist and walked away.

It has a really crisp, light flavor to it. We’ve been having beautiful weather in L.A., and I poured a glass and looked out my window at the turquoise sky and all the greenery, and then at this beautiful, rosy pink Champagne.

It didn’t let me down.

If I had a late-’60s or early-’70s project, this would make a fantastic coat. When you fabric shop as much as I do, you sort of get to know what’s out there. It’s nice to see something using geometrics but in a fresh way.

All the prices are indicative.

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T Emirates: The New York Times Style Magazine

ingels: Ulrik jantzen; Nelson: David mcclister.

The soft front is really nice, very well designed. I wasn’t big on the hard plastic back.

With bags it’s very subjective. I have this Japanese Hideo Wakamatsu bag I love because it looks like a ‘‘Star Wars’’ storm trooper.

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Lookout Emirates

“The Middle East Is Paramount to Me” Manolo Blahnik Luxury shoe designer Manolo Blahnik tells T Emirates he’s planning an expansion in the GCC market in the near future, but says he aims to keep it exclusive. “I want it to remain small,” he says, “in order to provide the best quality and keep making exciting, well-designed shoes, beautifully made.

“The Middle East is paramount to me,” Blahnik continues. “The women are quite extravagant and love beautiful, well-made items, as they possess a great sense of quality. They love color and know what they want. They also love lush fabrics, metallics and rock crystal accessories and other stones.”

The Manolo Blahnik Autumn/Winter 2013-14 Collection reflects influences ranging from ornamented styles, touching on historical references, to military-inspired knee-high boots with zips, buckles and a high heel. PRIYANKA PRADHAN

The Harry Winston Premier Glacier timepiece looks as though the diamonds have been randomly set in a disorganized manner, creating a glacial impression, but in fact the setting is extremely complex and precise. Each of the baguette-cut diamonds on the dial assumes its elongated lozenge shape from the invisible setting style that transforms it into a dramatic asymmetrical pattern.

The 18-carat white gold watch has a specially-made dial plate with an elaborately carved grid engraved and etched to hundredths-of-a-millimeter precision, so that each diamond is set exactly, with no metal showing.

The end result is a dial fully adorned with baguette-cut diamonds weighing approximately 8.88 carats. Just five of these Premier Glacier timepieces, each with a total of 497 diamonds (weighing approximately 30.59 carats), will ever be made.

Priced at approximately three million dirhams each, the Premier Glacier timepieces are available upon request. P.P.

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T Emirates: The New York Times Style Magazine

Dutch avant-garde furniture designer Natanel Gluska, best known for his unique wood furniture designs, is finding a footing in UAE homes.

The Dubai-based designer furniture showroom Voglia is now housing works by Gluska, including his “Long 8 Chair”, “Crocodile Bench” and “V Stool”, which have already been successful in Singapore, where they were first launched.

IMAGES COURTESY clockwise from top: Manolo Blahnik; Voglia; Harry Winston.

Five of a Kind

Out of the Woodwork

Carolina Hererra AW 2013-14 Menswear: Outdoor Bound The CH Carolina Herrera collection for men, said to be inspired by the AngloAmerican “dandy” style is reminiscent of a sporty and relaxed take on days spent hunting and enjoying the countryside. Natural color tones such as camel, tan, brown and green take center stage, particularly in the sportier and more casual part of the tailored collection. Touches of other colors like deep blue, mauve, yellow, orange and burgundy complete the collection’s color palette. P.P.

Black to the Future Black is the new black for Autumn/Winter 2013-14, and the Furla FW collection aims to celebrate this monochrome trend to the hilt. The collection plays with layering different materials- glossy with matte and soft with hard, as “total black” is re-interpreted for the season.

The collection sees the use of furs and natural materials, while it draws inspiration from the Siberian Tiger. P.P. The Furla FW 2013-14 collection is available at Boutique 1 in Dubai.

A Matter of Taste IMAGEs COURTESY clockwise from top: boutique 1 ; carolina herrera; Nespresso.

Master sommelier Giuseppe Vaccarini and green coffee expert Edouard Thomas recently curated the first-ever Middle East chef academy in Dubai, designed to bring together renowned chefs and connoisseurs from around the region.

Hosted by global coffee brand Nespresso, the academy saw 20 participating chefs and sommeliers from the MENA region, including Oman’s Zighy Bay Six Senses Resort, Jeddah’s Park Hyatt and the Four Seasons Hotel in Riyadh. The chefs created their gastronomic masterpieces using coffee in desserts, main courses and even starters for a unique gourmet experience. P.P.

Design July - August, 2013

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Lookout Emirates

From the Perfumer’s Desk Renowned French perfumer and connoisseur Frederic Malle was recently in Dubai to launch his Collection Editions de Parfums, a concept that sees him collaborate with perfumers he considers “the top nine noses in the world”.

He told T Emirates about his visit to the Middle East: “In my time here in Dubai, I studied local fragrances for my collaboration with Dominique Ropion, one of the best perfumers in the business. The perfume is greatly influenced by local perfumery from the Middle East, and not just oud but many other scents, sights and sounds of Dubai. It is a style of perfume with traditions, ideas and concepts that are intrinsically from the Middle East.” P.P. Collection Editions de Parfums is available exclusively at Harvey Nichols, Dubai.

A First for Abu Dhabi French fashion designer Stephane Rolland has chosen Abu Dhabi to launch his first pret-aporter boutique. Rolland says Abu Dhabi was a natural choice, considering his strong relationship with the Middle East and the support and recognition he has received from women in the region.

The boutique will feature 10 non-seasonal capsule pret-a-porter collections throughout the year as well as shoes, bags and limited-edition jewelry and accessories. P.P.

Bulgari’s Autumn/Winter 2013-14 accessories collection emphasizes metallic tones and translucent effects as well as graphic motifs and embroidery. Debuting this season are the new Bulgari Lipstick daytime clutches with jewel-clasps and contrasting linings, inspired by the divas of yore who’d carry these roomy pochettes with them to retouch their makeup. The signature Bulgari jewel-clasp adorns these clutches in cabochon-cut glass and colored hard stones in chromatic combinations. P.P. The collection is available at Bulgari stores across the UAE.

All Set for a Summer Cocktail

Part jewelry, part watch, the Gancino bracelet from Salvatore Ferregamo catches the eye. Inspired by the symbol of the Ferragamo universe, the Gancino Bracelet was unveiled at Baselworld in Switzerland, earlier this year. The cocktail watch comes with small, 22.5 mm diameter Gancino-shaped case in steel or IP rose gold, and a soleil-finish dial in silver and antique rose hues. P.P. Available at Paris Gallery, UAE.

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T Emirates: The New York Times Style Magazine

IMAGEs COURTESY clockwise from top left: Harvey Nichols, Dubai; Stephane Rolland; salvatore Ferragamo; Bulgari.

Lipstick Clutch, Anyone?

Made-to-Measure Magnificence Location, according to Erkan Fere, CEO of The Left Shoe Company, is the most important aspect of retail. And that’s why the new made-to-measure luxury footwear brand chose DIFC in Dubai, an area bustling with over 15,000 city-slickers including lawyers and bankers, the brand’s typical clientele, to open its first Middle East store.

Combining modern technology with traditional craftsmanship is at the heart, or rather the soul, of the brand’s offering. “Customers can build shoes with us; they can choose their favorite model, color, leather – it’s all about customization,” Fere says about the customer experience. “The Internet offers another channel for customers,” he adds, as once the company

has your measurements the options are never-ending – coupled with the convenience of buying made-to-measure shoes at the click of a button.

While the material options currently focus on leather and suede, come October customers will be in for a treat when the brand introduces its premium line, consisting of exotic skins and other unique offerings. Orna Ballout The Left Shoe Company is located in the Gate Building, Level 1, Marble Walk, DIFC.

Four must-visit locations – China, the Himalayas, India and Venice – are the sources of inspiration for Swarovski’s A/W collection, “Secret Treasures”.

Inspired by her personal travels around the world, Swarovski creative director Nathalie Colin has developed an eye-catching range that captures the essence of the surroundings that influenced her.

“As a true admirer of the orientalist, explorer, writer and adventurer Alexandra David-Neel, I imagined such a journey across continents and mountains transposed into today’s times,” Colin reveals. ORNA BALLOUT

IMAGES COURTESY clockwise from top: The Left Shoe Company; Omega; Swarovski.

Iconic Inspirations

An Ode to the Oceans As conservation of the world’s oceans and marine life becomes paramount to the planet, Omega’s Seamaster Planet Ocean 600M GoodPlanet does its bit to help. The innovative wristwatch supports the GoodPlanet Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to inspiring every person on Earth to follow a lifestyle that respects our shared environment.

Inspired by the colors of the ocean, this timepiece is designed with extreme adventurers in mind, and is water-resistant to 60 bar (600 metres/2000 feet). PRIYANKA PRADHAN

Design July - August, 2013

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Lookout Emirates

Home Cou ture Donatella Versace talks exclusively to T Emirates about Versace’s collaboration with The Haas Brothers on a new collection she describes as “couture for the home”.

By Orna Ballout

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T Emirates: The New York Times Style Magazine

Donatella Versace poses with the Hass Brothers, the talented duo who created the luxurious furniture collection for Versace Home.

“For me, there is only ever one trend: more, more, more.” This is how the famously ostentatious Italian designer Donatella Versace explains her home décor preferences. Never one to shy away from the limelight, the Versace Group vice president and chief designer’s brash sense of style has long been epitomised in Versace’s clothing and home wares collections.

A long-time advocate of designer collaborations, Versace recently teamed up with Nikolai and Simon Haas of The Haas Brothers to produce a high-end furniture line.

Recalling their first meeting in New York, Donatella is effusive in her praise of the LA-based designers. “They came in with the most incredible ideas, and I knew immediately that I wanted to work with them.

“They are unafraid to be bold, and to be daring,” she claims, adding that the duo were allowed complete freedom when designing the collection.

Designed to challenge, the range features provocatively named pieces ranging from the Stud Club to the Bondage Bench – a leather hallway bench that Donatella says pays homage to the “Bondage” collection designed in 1992 by the late Gianni Versace.

Versace is confident the range will find favour in the UAE. “I know that in your country people respect and demand true luxury, and something that no one else has. The [collection] is ideal for them,” Donatella boldly claims.

All images courtesy of Versace Home.

“For me, there is only ever one trend: more, more, more.”

Clockwise from top: Stud Club Chair; The Donatella Chair; Honeycomb Club Chair; Bondage Bench; Honeycomb Side Table.

Design July - August, 2013

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Art of the Matter

The second edition of the International Emerging Artist Award is providing upcoming artists with a chance to break into the international arts scene.

By Carole Rinaldi

The IEAA, founded in the UAE in 2011, was born out of the passion of its

director, Rebia Naim, for emerging artists. Living in Dubai, she imagined a contemporary art competition that would focus more on the career development of the artists by giving them experience at an international level through exhibitions and media exposure rather than offering a cash prize.

IEAA winners thus gain recognition by art professionals through the involvement of the international contemporary art galleries that are partners of the event. The core identity of the IEAA is based on the promotion of artists whose work and practice reveal a wide range of artistic innovation. The IEAA is a springboard for the careers of talented artists who are only waiting to be known. Regardless of the competitors’ age, what matters is the quality and originality of their work, and the way is open equally to photographers, sculptors, video artists, performance artists, painters, digital artists etc. As Rebia Naim emphasizes about her relationship with them, “we listen to the artist [and] try and establish the basis of their career as an individual,” adding that “it is a great enriching human experience.” It is through them that this unique platform of emerging artists is created.

This year, two official winners were designated: Pablo de Laborde Lascaris, of Mexican origin, representative of the international scene, and Dr. Hamad Al Falasi from the United Arab Emirates; but the quality of the selected candidates was such that the IEAA wanted all of the top ten artists to be exhibited alongside the two winners at the FN Designs gallery in Dubai.

FN Designs holds a special place in the competition with the outstanding support of its director, Her Highness Sheikha Wafa bint Hasher Al Maktoum, who is patron of the award and an artist herself.

After Pablo de Laborde Lascaris’ first successful exhibitions in Dubai at FN Designs (March 2013) and in Singapore at Vue Privée Gallery, the emerging artist was invited to become an associate of the two-year-old Galerie Gourvennec Ogor in Marseille, whose French director, IEAA juror Didier Gourvennec Ogor, is also President of Marseille Expos and a prominent figure within MP13, Marseille-Provence 2013 European Capital of Culture. The Emirati winner, Dr. Hamad Al Falasi, and Hamdan Buti Al Shamisi, who came third in the contest, were also invited to participate in future exhibitions in Dubai at FN Designs.

Through this approach, IEAA artists have secured great opportunities at the start of their careers. Thus, Pablo de Laborde Lascaris was invited to

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Above: Artwork by Hamdan Buti Al Shamisi entitled “Short bio...”, who placed 3rd in the Emirati Award category, IEAA 2013.

Event Promotion

firmly rooted in the Emirati culture, is also reflected in the work of Shamma Buhazza, an Emirati artist currently studying at Parsons the New School for Design in New York, who is a particularly promising talent. In her notably committed works, this 19-year-old young woman, who won second place in the IEAA Emirati section, conveys her perception of women in UAE society.

The next competition will introduce a way of integrating design and its components into the IEAA adventure with the creation of the International Emerging Designer Award (IEDA) for the 2014 edition. But the IEAA will really take on a new dimension with an online gallery. As Rebia Naim says: “The online gallery is a platform designed to reward the best works of the IEAA contest. This initiative is in keeping with our vision of providing broader recognition for emerging artists. This online gallery will bring visibility to those who took part in the competition.”

The launch of the next contest is already announced for September 2013. Thus, new artists and emerging contemporary designers will be able to spread their wings and export their talent to new horizons.

Clockwise from top: Artwork titled ‘Battleship 2.0’ mix media installation (2012) by the IEAA 2013 winner, Pablo de Laborde Lascaris; Shamma Buhazza’s artwork, mix media collage (2010); Emirati Winner, Dr. Hamad Al Falasi’s 3D calligraphy and digital photography artwork on Emirati Colloquialism; Pablo de Laborde Lascaris’ work titled ‘Pitch’ (2012).The IEAA Singapore opening.

ImageS courtesy Pablo de Laborde Lascaris; IEAA

showcase his work in the Swab Barcelona Art Fair from October 3-6, 2013 with Galerie Gourvennec Ogor, along with other shows that they proudly look forward to in 2014. This is what the gallery owner, Didier Gourvennec Ogor, says about his collaboration with the emerging artist: “Pablo will be exhibited from October 31 at Galerie Gourvennec Ogor in a solo exhibition. He will have the opportunity to invest a space of nearly 200 square metres by 4.7 metres in height. This is a difficult exercise for artists in general, but I am sure he will take advantage of this great opportunity. The exhibition is already booked in the program of Marseille-Provence 2013 European Capital of Culture. As I am very excited by this new collaboration with such a promising artist, of course it will be followed by other projects of exhibitions or fairs...”

Indeed, a distinctive feature of IEAA is also to focus on the artist’s long-term career and to strengthen the position of avant-garde Emirati artists. Dr. Hamad Al Falasi emphasizes this dynamism towards the arts in the Emirates: “The art scene within the UAE has blossomed in the past 10 years. This is clearly seen in the number of art galleries, UAE art fairs, art programs, art competitions and, above all, the rise in public receptiveness to art. The authorities have given extra attention to the field, too, with a number of initiatives and programs introduced at different educational levels.” The IEAA also enjoys the support of prestigious partners such as the Dubai Culture and Arts Authority.

Dr. Hamad Al Falasi presented a series of photographs entitled “Colloquialism”, about which he says: “My aim is to document pure colloquial words used within UAE society and to emphasize their beauty in an artistic format. The location for each photograph was carefully examined and chosen to reflect on where those words once originated and where they might become extinct.” This practice,

The IEAA in figures

Number of countries represented: artists from over 120 countries.

The IEAA was founded in 2011 by Rebia Naim.

Total number of participating artists: over 2,500 in two editions.

For more information: www emergingartistaward.com

From left to right: Dr. Hamad Al Falasi; Olivier Henry, owner of Vue Privée; Rebia Naim, IEAA director and Pablo de Laborde Lascaris, International Emerging Artist Award 2013 winner.

Design July - August, 2013

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INTERNATIONAL EMERGING ARTIST AWARD

3 rd Award Edition

Call for entries

International Emerging Artist Award* Special category for Emiratis: Emerging Emirati Artist Award

International Emerging Designer Award

Submit your Exhibition Project Deadline: 31.12.2013

Register Online All media accepted. See rules Background artwork by Mehri Nazartavasouni

Objects

A Welcome Warmth Bronze lends as much gravity and sophistication to a room as it does an outfit.

Photographs by philippe lacombe styled by NOEMI BONAZZI

GEOMETRIC ANGLES Clockwise from top: Luna Globe by Downtown, AED 36,509; profilesny.com. Samuel table by Egg Collective, AED 18,805; eggcollective.com.

Roger Vivier clutch, AED 8,797; (212) 861-5371. Aerin sea urchin, AED 2,755; aerin.com. Cast Cairns, AED 2,350 per set, and Cut Cube bookend, AED 2,498 per pair, by Joseph Magliaro for TOC Studio; tableofcontents.us. Belperron brooch, AED 67,948; belperron.com. Addie table by Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams, AED 2,736; mgbwhome.com. Aerin round match striker, AED 698. Calvin Klein Collection shoe, AED 6,593 (212) 292-9000.

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Quality

Objects

ORGANIC FORMS Clockwise from top: Blackman Cruz Workshop Tentacle sconce by Kathleen O’Keefe, AED 22,037 each; blackmancruz.com.

Tom Dixon Bash bowl, AED 1,451; abchome.com. Kelly Wearstler Double Hands Sculpture, AED 4,756; Bergdorf Goodman, (212) 753-7300. Repossi diamond bracelet, about AED 947,608; repossi.com. Emilio Pucci bag, AED 7,419; emiliopucci.com. Lanvin shoe, AED 4,591; Bergdorf Goodman. Mattia Bonetti Metals table (glass top not shown), AED 165,280; paulkasmingallery.com. Armani Casa Fontana tea lights, AED 477 and AED 1,488; armanicasa.com. Valentino shoes, AED 2,920; valentino.com.

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T Emirates: The New York Times Style Magazine

design market editor: monica khemsurov.

SURREALIST TOUCHES Clockwise from top: Linden chandelier by Charles de Lisle, AED 49,584; thefutureperfect.com.

Blackman Cruz Workshop Ear bookends, AED 6,978 per pair. Calvin Klein Collection bag, AED 10,835. Blackman Cruz Workshop Hand sconce, AED 12,855. Céline shoes, AED 4,003; (212) 535-3703. Reed Krakoff bag, AED 8,410 reedkrakoff.com. Lindsey Adelman Studio light, AED 3,306; thefutureperfect.com. Cache Cache table by Hervé Van der Straeten, AED 286,486; ralphpucci.net.

All the prices are indicative.

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Dubai-based vintage concept store, Bambah Boutique.

The Vintage Couture Bazaar The appeal of vintage fashion lies in its heritage, rarity and ingenuity, while its exclusivity is guaranteed by a premium price point. T Emirates investigates the growing popularity of vintage fashion as an investment opportunity.

By Priyanka Pradhan

Is buying a 1940s vintage couture gown as solid an investment as purchasing a Matisse masterpiece?

Yes, if vintage couture experts are to be believed. Seeing the demand and appreciation in value of vintage couture at high-profile global auction houses, more investors and fashion-conscious folks alike are trying it for size.

According to research by online resource Vintage Textile, which aims to educate and inform enthusiasts, vintage clothing benefited investors more than any other collectible category in the period 1990-2012.

The source gives the example of a Chanel women’s suit from the 1960s, which went up from $805 (AED 2,957) to $3,220 (AED 11,827) in less than six years (quoted prices are actual realized prices at major auction houses). This works out as a 300 percent appreciation over 6 years, or 20 percent a year. A more recent example is a Charles James evening dress that climbed from $29,900 (AED 109,826) to $49,450 (AED 181,635), yielding a 65 percent appreciation, in two years.

As in the case of art investment, the ingenuity and rarity of the collectible play a major role in determining All Figures are indicative.

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image courtesy, Top Right: Bambah Boutique. Next Page top left: Image of audrey hepburn from arts-wallpapers.com; Image courtesy: Christie’s.

Quality Emirates

images courtesy clockwise from top right: Shoes and bag - Garderob boutique; store images - Bambah boutique.

Top: Audrey Hepburn’s iconic Givenchy dress from the movie, Breakfast At Tiffany’s. Right: The Givenchy black dress worn by Audrey Hepburn is sold at Christie’s for $923,187 (AED 3,390,958) in 2006.

the price tag attached to the item. But more specifically for vintage couture, the designer, period, fashion house and story or narrative of the item are just as important.

The iconic little black dress designed by Givenchy and worn by Audrey Hepburn in the film Breakfast at Tiffany’s sold at Christie’s for $923,187 (AED 3,390,958) in 2006, while the estimated value was only between $98,800 (AED 362,902) and $138,320 (AED 508,063). Similarly, “The Collection of Elizabeth Taylor” in 2011, in the Christie’s “online-only” section, made a record $10 million (AED 36,731,000) in a series of sales that made a total of $183.5 million (AED 673,995,473), showing the stellar demand for vintage fashion today.

According to Clare Borthwick, specialist at Christie’s Vintage Couture department, there’s growing mass appeal for vintage fashion, and the business is being fueled not only by seasoned connoisseurs and collectors but also by people influenced by Hollywood. She says: “The wardrobes of film stars and generational legends often attract great attention at auction and command the highest prices due to their status as memorabilia rather than purely fashion pieces. We have, however, sold some memorable pieces of vintage fashion, including the personal collection of Coco Chanel in 1974, as well as a 1966 YSL ‘Mondrian’ dress that fetched £30,000 (AED 163,961) and a 1939 velvet evening jacket by Schiaparelli that made £73,250 (AED 400,337) in our last Vintage Couture sale in 2012.”

Borthwick says they also see a lot of buyers from the Middle East, owing to significant

interest in “modern vintage”, paying particular attention to luxury handbag auctions, specifically labels such as Hermès, Chanel and Louis Vuitton.

Apart from the high-profile auctions, vintage bazaars in discreet nooks and street corners of the world are also doing brisk business, but on a smaller scale. Although the UAE used to be a bit behind the times, according to Dubai-based vintage boutique owner Maha Rasheed, the business is catching up, with increasing awareness of the nuances of vintage fashion in the region.

Rasheed, who runs Bambah Boutique and sources authentic vintage items from across the world from LA to Japan, says: “Perceptions are slowly changing, and people are becoming more comfortable about wearing vintage and pre-owned items in the Middle East. If the items are impeccably restored, maintained and presented, one does not mind that the item is not brand new.

Celebrities and movies have also made more people aware of vintage fashion, and there’s no

taboo in buying worn pieces. Even pre-owned or pre-loved items that are not vintage per se have a big market here in the Middle East, and I think it’s a good trend!”

One such “pre- owned” fashion boutique owner, Micha Maatouk from Garderobe, says her customers are highly fashion-conscious, affluent, and know their vintage Birkins from their Kellys.

“While we do get a few good vintage pieces from 30 to 40 years ago,” she says, “we mostly deal with preowned luxury and designer items as young as 10-15 years. These are consumers who don’t like to be seen in the same designer dress, shoes or accessories more than once or twice and so sell their piece to us for half the price. We at Garderobe then split the profits with the consignee in a 50-50 agreement. So yes, they get to clear out their closet every season and get about half the price of the item back.”

Apart from the aesthetic value of the items and the history associated with them, the price Below, bottom and bottom right: Interior of Dubaibased vintage store, Bambah Boutique.

Top: Pre-owned ‘modern designer vintage’ items at Garderobe Boutique.

Design July - August, 2013

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SectionEmirates Quality

images courtesy: Jaeger-LeCoultre.

of pre-owned fashion then becomes a key factor for her customers. “The prices of these items could vary,” she says. “You could sometimes find a 30-year-old Valentino gown that originally cost easily more than AED25,000 at less than 20 percent of the price now, but then you could also end up paying more than the original price of a designer vintage handbag that is not available any more, or has an endless wait-list at the brand’s store. I’d say the pre-owned market is increasingly becoming an important part of the vintage fashion movement.”

But because the authenticity of vintage items is difficult to assess, and they can sometimes be challenging to find or even uproariously expensive, “vintage-inspired” fashion and jewelry has come under the spotlight in a big way. Inspired by the vintage era from the 1920s to the 1960s (by definition, items from before this period are considered “antique”, but the term “vintage” is being more loosely translated in today’s context), these fashion and jewelry pieces attempt to capture the cuts, colors, prints and essence of the vintage era for a slice of nostalgia, but without the price tag of the original vintage pieces.

Laurent Cathala, Vice-President, Emerging Markets of Tiffany & Co., says Baz Luhrmann’s recently-released adaptation movie The Great Gatsby has created strong interest and demand for 1920s-inspired jewelry.

“Although Tiffany & Co. does not offer vintage pieces for sale,” he says, “many of our designs are based on the original sketches and collections found in the Tiffany archives. These designs highlight the timeless beauty and unerring quality of Tiffany designs. These archival pieces also transcend fashion trends

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T Emirates: The New York Times Style Magazine

“I like my investments where I can see them… hanging in my closet!”

Design July - August, 2013

images courtesy: Tiffany & Co.

and hold great appeal for discerning customers. In addition to Tiffany’s Great Gatsby and Blue Book Collections of fine and statement jewelry, we introduced this year the Ziegfeld Collection. Also inspired by the same Jazz Age, it is named after New York’s legendary Ziegfeld Theatre, a model of Art Deco architecture that opened in 1927. The jewelry captures the period’s elegance with freshwater cultured pearls, black onyx and sterling silver.”

Similarly, Swiss luxury watch manufacturer Jaeger-LeCoultre does not sell its original vintage timepieces, but helps verify the authenticity of rare vintage watches for its customers and also restores vintage Jaeger-LeCoultre watches in its workshop in Switzerland. Certain factors of the vintage watch are then considered while evaluating the piece. Stéphane Belmont, marketing and technical director of Manufacture JaegerLeCoultre, says: “In the case of an authentic vintage watch, the watch has a story related to previous owners, a story of transmission of the piece. When a very small quantity of pieces were produced in a certain era, the offer of those vintage watches in the market is very limited today. Where the demand exceeds the supply, the price of the vintage watch goes up every year. The rarity of the watch depends on the quantity, exclusivity, quality of the movement and functioning of the watch, and its aesthetics.”

It is this quality and exclusivity that the vintage business is founded upon. In an age of global retail chains and uninspired, off-the-rack fashion, vintage couture has an undeniable appeal and immense value, as an asset. Carrie Bradshaw from the popular TV series Sex and the City couldn’t have put it better: “I like my investments where I can see them… hanging in my closet!”

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Quality

In the Air

Delft Touch The enduring, evolving and utterly beguiling influence of blue-and-white porcelain.

By carolina irving, miguel floresvianna and Charlotte di carcaci

while a NEW GENERATION OF ARTISTS

nATURAL BEAUTY Josef Frank’s La Plata fabric, designed in the 1940s, is still available through justscandinavian.com. Above right: a 1960 painting from Yves Klein’s ‘‘Anthropométries’’ series.

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and designers are coming up with modern ways to reinterpret the classic combination of blue and white at the same time, its antique porcelain predecessor is hitting record highs at auction. Whether it is Valentino’s oversize florals, influenced by Delftware, on strict puritan-collared dresses, or Rem Koolhaas’s Casa da Música in Porto, Portugal, with abutting panels of traditional azulejos, the trend is unmistakable.

The cobalt compound that gives blue-andwhite porcelain its color was brought to China from Iran by Mongolian invaders in the 13th century. Once its use as a pigment had been perfected, the great trade arteries that ran

T Emirates: The New York Times Style Magazine

from East to West began to flow with new, distinctively patterned ceramics, spawning a mania for all things blue and white — to the extent that European and Ottoman factories began to produce their own hybrid designs in order to meet the insatiable demand.

The craze gradually spread to interiors and textiles, from the tiled walls of merchant houses to gilded chinoiserie pavilions specially built to display princely collections of the precious porcelain.

It’s a fashion that has never abated. The appeal of blue and white is universal: the interplay of the two colors is so harmonious that, however elaborately worked, it never loses its intrinsic charm or calming freshness.

mixed media Clockwise from above left: the artist Lei Xue’s ‘‘Drinking Tea’’ series (2007-13) consists of crumpled porcelain cans decorated with traditional Chinese pattens; Rodarte’s spring 2011 silk print was based on Ming vases; the British painter Howard Hodgkin’s Brush fabric, created for Designers Guild.

clockwise from top right: yves klein/adagp, paris, 2013; courtesy of rodarte; courtesy of osborne & little/designers guild; courtesy of v&M; carlos coutinho; courtesy of prada; courtesy of galerie martina detterer, frankfurt am main, germany.

tile effect Clockwise from below: Rem Koolhaas’s 2005 Casa da Música concert hall in Porto, Portugal; Prada’s 2011 canvas ‘‘Canapa Azulejos’’ bag, inspired by Portuguese tiles.

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fabric of our lives Clockwise from left: a 2007 sculpture by Li Xiaofeng made from broken Ming and Qing dynasty porcelain; Gio Ponti’s lobby for the Parco Dei Principi Hotel in Sorrento Italy, designed in 1961; Marcel Wanders’s 2006 hand-painted reinterpretation of a Royal Delft tulip vase.

Despite its simplicity, the classic blue-and-white color combination always feels exotic and sophisticated.

in the navy Clockwise from above right: blueware tiles by Glithero featuring photograms of London weeds; a Delftwareinspired Valentino dress for fall 2013; an indigo-dyed Ndop cloth from Cameroon, from the mid-20th century.

charming detail Top: the Pagodenburg folly, built in the early 1700s on the grounds of the Nymphenburg Palace in Munich; above: the ceramicist Philip Eglin’s 2011 plate, commemorating Chelsea soccer players.

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T Emirates: The New York Times Style Magazine

clockwise from top left: courtesy of red gate gallery; Sam Grawe; marcel wanders; courtesy of valentino; courtesy of esther fitzgerald rare textiles; Philip Eglin/courtesy of marsden woo gallery; courtesy of bayerische schlösserverwaltung; courtesy of petr krejci/glithero.

Quality

Yes, Please

Man of the Moment Givenchy’s Riccardo Tisci’s edgy fall collection has the fashion world buzzing. But he has always staked his career on punking the status quo — challenging notions of sexual identity and class bias with the cut of a skirt.

Dark prince Tisci, wearing a sweatshirt from his fall 2013 men’s collection, co-hosted the Costume Institute’s gala for ‘‘Punk: Chaos to Couture,’’ at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in May.

By andrew o’hagan Photograph by Liz Collins

Design JulyMonth - August, 00, 2013

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Yes, Please

the clash The fall 2013 Givenchy show at which Antony Hegarty performed included reinterpreted punk staples, like tartans, leather biker jackets and gypsyinspired florals.

I

just witnessed my first fashion moment. A fashion moment, to paraphrase Diana Vreeland, is a sudden, shared intoxication, when watchers are offered a perfect release from the ordinary. I’ve been to a number of fashion shows before, enjoying the spectacle, the happy tribalism of the fashion world and the hungry passion of the paparazzi. I’ve attended the parties and heard the Oh My God talk about this season’s unmissable, life-changing thing. But I’d never before stood beside a woman completely dressed in yellow as she wept into her BlackBerry. ‘‘I can’t. I can’t speak. It’s amazing.

Like, totally amazing,’’ she said.

The crowd was packed into the Halle Freyssinet, near the Quai d’Austerlitz, like Champagne in a dusty cellar, arranged in rows according to our label or our vintage.

The space had gone dark, and Antony Hegarty, of Antony and the Johnsons, backed by a full orchestra, began to sing a haunting song. Then the fall collection for Givenchy, designed by Riccardo Tisci, unfolded in a very elevating and emotional parade, part gypsy, part Victoriana, with zippers, Bambi sweatshirts, paisley patterns and deconstructed biker jackets.

I could finish by saying the crowd went wild and the rest is history. (They did. And it is.) But the subversive tracings in Tisci’s collection will connect him to fashion history in a different way next month, when he co-hosts the Costume Institute Benefit to open the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s landmark show ‘‘Punk: Chaos to Couture.’’ I’ve loved punk since I was a kid and have always felt drawn to its ribald, cheeky and rather powerful habit of lighting into our complacencies. If you were around in the 1970s and remember how mundane everything was, how mired in self-importance and gray authority, then you might welcome punk’s very necessary spirit at any time. The Met show is bound to open up some excellent arguments, not least about whether the Americans or the British arrived first with punk. But that hardly matters. What matters is whether this brilliantly scabrous, inventive and politically questioning movement is still a relevant life force in the culture today. The answer, if you believe in the influence of Tisci, is yes.

When I turned up to meet Tisci at the Givenchy offices on the Avenue George V, where he has been creative director since 2005, I found him to be pleasingly conspiratorial and fun, naughty as an old school pal

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T Emirates: The New York Times Style Magazine

who knows why you dumped your homework. He even had the cigarettes, American Spirit, which he smoked quickly, stubbing them out each time he made a fresh point. Tisci is brown-eyed, roughly handsome and gesticulating — an engine of dark intensity, like the chief troublemaker in a film by Luchino Visconti, with a secret shyness. Basking in the afterglow of that week’s triumph, he was keen to share his distaste for conformity and his ideas for change. ‘‘I know I can make beautiful clothes on the runway,’’ he said, ‘‘but why not give people something to think about at the same time? For me, that is punk. Punk is an attitude — it is being free, it is being honest. When I was young, I felt punk was like me dreaming. I was attracted to all these sounds and to the look of these people. I felt that I had something to say that people didn’t understand. Emotions come from reality, not fakeness.’’

Before talking about his own childhood he lit another cigarette and waved the smoke away. ‘‘My story is intense,’’ he said, ‘‘and if I was born again I would ask God to give me the same story.’’

He was born in Cermenate, Italy, to working-class

counterculture Clockwise from above: a 2008 Givenchy ad; a model wearing a Rottweiler sweatshirt and dog collar in Tisci’s fall 2011 men’s show; a zippered shoe from prefall 2011.

clockwise from Top Right: go runway; catwalking/getty images; go runway. all other images courtesy of riccardo tisci and givenchy.

Arena

a new upgrade in gender equality. ‘‘When you get to a place like Givenchy, you get power,’’ he said. ‘‘I hate to use this word, but, yes, you get power. And you get followers because you are making people beautiful, you are changing people. I can sell more bags, I can sell more beautiful shoes, but, next to that, you have the power to give a good message to people. I had this friend called Leo who was transgender. I helped her through her journey and eventually we used her in our advertising campaign. Everyone was against it, but we did it.’’

It must seem far off to many people, Givenchy, high fashion, the Avenue George V, the Met. But Tisci feels that everything he does comes not only from the little streets of his childhood but also from the little streets of today. ‘‘It’s actually the beginning of my inspiration,’’ he said. ‘‘I make sure that in every collection there is stuff for kids with less money. They might have to save up but it is reachable. My sisters still work in factories, and why shouldn’t normal people have the chance to dream, to wear the Givenchy label? I want my sister, my nephew, my niece to be able to go to a Givenchy store and buy something, not just a princess, you know?’’

I think I do. When I was growing up, the soul of punk was to be found in a safety pin that you could fix to your school blazer as a way of giving the finger to the headmaster. It wasn’t much, yet it was everything, a way of finding your own voice with a small articulation of the word ‘‘no.’’ And if punk has a creative potential across decades, it was always going to be that, even though, in Riccardo Tisci’s case, the articulation is anything but small: it is phenomenal, powerful, classy and moral.

One imagines that Tisci’s involvement in the Met Ball is something of a consummation for the boy from southern Italy who once whitened his face and mangled his jeans. ‘‘A lot of the established designers, they don’t really care about the relationship between creativity and social change. That is why I love some of the younger people like Christopher Kane and Rodarte.’’ He smiled at the world beyond his clear Paris windows. ‘‘They really care,’’ he said, ‘‘and it blows me away with happiness.’’

‘‘A lot of the established designers, they don’t really care about the relationship between creativity and social change. That is why I love some of the younger people like Christopher Kane and Rodarte.’’

Tisci, now an international star, feels he owes no debt of thanks to his native country. He feels let down by its attitude to him, but, more than that, he objects to the chaotic authoritarianism of Italy’s church and state, and you see such rebellion in his work: ‘‘I have been killed so many times in my career for saying things.

The punk legacy adopted by Tisci leads him toward new kinds of emotional and political engagement. He cares about femininity and its attackers and many of his design ideas stem from that. ‘‘I want to break down the legend of Italian men being macho, you know, the whole thing: Italian women and their large breasts, the football and the pizza, the women always dominated by the men.’’

Givenchy not only has a dreamer as its head, but in Tisci it has a thinker and an activist, too. This, for me, is where the punk ethos, however far it has flown from its origins, comes home to roost: an international luxury goods company has a chief designer who cares about the rights of the people he is selling to. And that is not nothing. He loves the industry — loves fabulousness, loves success — but he also sees it as the vehicle for

gothic revival Clockwise from top left: at Tisci’s spring 2012 haute couture collection, models wore bull rings in their noses; his spring 2010 men’s-wear show; fall 2007 women’s-wear show; a nose ring from the fall 2012 men’s collection; a 2011 Givenchy print campaign.

Design July - August, 2013

all images courtesy of riccardo tisci and givenchy

parents who had eight girls before they had him. ‘‘My father wanted a boy. And then he died when I was young.

I went through suffering but it informed both the head and the heart, making me who I am. We had no money and I grew up amongst these women: they are my greatest inspiration and my biggest fans.’’ He tells a story of difficult teenage years coming to terms with his own creativity in the strong macho culture of Italy. ‘‘I grew my hair long and did my face white. My mother was clever: she never stopped me. I looked like a real freak but I was reading a lot, and that, too, made me dream. It was London and New York I dreamt about.’’

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Alice in the Desert

Arena Emirates

By Orna Ballout

Image above: Quintessentially English fashion designer Alice Temperley enjoys a break during her busy photo shoot schedule.

At our meeting, on a typically sunny Friday afternoon

in Dubai, Alice Temperley seems slightly tired. (Her PR manager informs me they’ve been up at the crack of dawn every morning, shooting her Cruise, Bridal and Autumn/Winter 2013 collections in the Ras Al Khaimah desert.) She nevertheless exudes a laid-back, elegant style, kitted out in a pretty white skirt teamed with a white blouse, both from her Spring/Summer 2013 collection. Alice carries herself in a way that is both ethereal and elegant, two words that could equally well describe her fashion collections. Her life, however, is “not as floaty and fairy-like as somebody might think,” she jokes, adding that “it’s extremely hard work, and all the people that know me say they don’t know anyone else that works as hard.”

Temperley’s fashion-focused ethos has enabled her to build a strong brand, coveted for its intricate embroidery,

Design July - August, 2013

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image courtesy of Alice Temperley.

Alice Temperley takes time out of her busy schedule, shooting her latest collections in the sand dunes of the UAE and opening a new store in Doha, to talk inspiration, riding the recession and being True British.

Arena Emirates

embellishment and impressive craftsmanship. “We’re really focusing on taking the brand to the next level. It’s a fantastic time; we have two amazing lines and the collections are getting really strong because we’ve been in the business long enough to know what we’re doing, hopefully,” she laughs.

Alice’s dedication and determination throughout her career have earned her a clientele that includes some of the most discerning women across the world, among them none other than the Middleton sisters, the ideal clotheshorses to increase Temperley’s global appeal (remember that gorgeous green Temperley gown Pippa wore to the Royal Wedding party?) In 2011, Alice’s contribution to the fashion industry was taken to new heights when she was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) by Her Majesty the Queen at Buckingham Palace. Her brand’s popularity can also be seen from Google’s Zeitgeist list, where it appeared fourth among the most searched-for fashion labels in the UK in 2012.

An alumna of London’s Central Saint Martins College of Arts and Design, Alice completed her studies with a Masters degree at the Royal College of Art before launching her brand, Temperley London, in 2000. With the support of her family, who she says provided her with a “huge amount of strength to build the brand,” Alice was able to develop a business that produces 14 collections a year, including Cruise and Pre-Fall collections across the ‘Temperley London’ line, a younger diffusion ‘Alice by Temperley’ line and two ‘Temperley Bridal’ collections.

Everything about the Temperley world reflects a quintessentially British theme – even Alice’s 4-year-old son, Fox, boasts a name that conjures up visions of the English countryside, or a character from a British novel.

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T Emirates: The New York Times Style Magazine

“I just imagined a letter and someone signing it ‘Fox,’ in an ink pen, because I like ink pens; I wanted something unusual and it came to me one morning,” she recalls on the name choice. But has she always been so patriotic, I wonder? “I’m just British, I don’t actively try,” she giggles, revealing that the book she penned in 2011 to celebrate 10 years of Temperley was not initially intended to be called True British, either. “…It was supposed to be a decade of Temperley, and everyone decided that as we were so naturally British, it wouldn’t be right not to celebrate that; it’s just about English training and English sensibility, and not being afraid to use it,” she says.

But things haven’t always been so smooth. During the recession in Britain, a time that cast gloom and uncertainty across the country and saw fashion brands such as Luella washed away, while others were snapped up by conglomerates, Temperley weathered the storm.

“This wasn’t easy,” Alice admits frankly. “Putting your head down and really hard work” were key to staying afloat. “…Everything that happened with the recession made you focus on your core attributes as a brand,” she elaborates.

Another challenge comes from working so closely with family, which makes it difficult to separate work from private life. “That’s why having a house in Somerset is so important – to escape,” Alice reveals. Somerset, in the West of England, is where Alice spent her childhood growing up on her parent’s cider farm. The idyllic countryside offers the designer a break away from the hustle and bustle of city life, and from the brand’s offices in London’s trendy Notting Hill (the building’s façade is painted with a British flag, in true Temperley style). Both places offer her inspiration: while in London she has her amazing team and the fast-paced lifestyle, Somerset is

ALL imageS courtesy of Alice Temperley.

T Emirates brings you the world exclusive images of Temperley’s Cruise Collection, captured in the desert dunes of the UAE.

Temperley London is available at The Dubai Mall.

For more information, visit Temperleylondon.com.

“We’re really focusing on taking the brand to the next level. It’s a fantastic time; we have two amazing lines and the collections are getting really strong because we’ve been in the business long enough to know what we’re doing, hopefully.”

Some of Alice’s favorite pieces, including dresses she could wear all the time along with a jumper inspired by one she made during college.

ALL imageS courtesy of Alice Temperley.

just as important, “to be able to sit there and draw in silence. Peace and quiet is so important to me,” she notes, adding that “the reality of being there every weekend isn’t peaceful really, when you’ve got a business to run and a child at school in London.”

Alice is clearly enthusiastic about fashion: the question that excites her the most in the course of our interview is being asked to recall her proudest design achievement to date. “Oooohhh!” she says excitedly, before listing off her favorites. “There’s one knitted jumper that we do, that I made myself on a machine in college – the honeycomb.

Then there are dresses, the icons, perfect dresses I would wear all the time, such as the tattoo dress, lattice dress and various others.” Alice admits that she has a weakness for shoes, although she “doesn’t really have time to go shopping.” The other designers she respects change from season to season, depending on who is working at different houses. “I think every fashion designer says it, but Alaïa has the most amazing business structure. Dolce & Gabbana are doing very beautiful things at the moment, and I think the last collection at Dior was really amazing.”

The day after her T Emirates interview, Alice jetted off to Gulf neighbour Qatar to open her new Temperley London store at The Gate Mall. According to the designer, Temperley’s collection of eveningwear, kaftans and cocktail dresses go down a treat with the local clientele.

“We have a really loyal customer base in the Middle East.

It’s good to be here to support it – and even better that we can come here and do amazing shoots,” she beams.

Design July - August, 2013

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Arena Emirates

Storyteller He has sold more than 250 million books in the course of his career, but author Jeffrey Archer’s success has been punctuated by introspective pauses and even some arresting question marks. T Emirates unravels the persona of a writer who continues to thrill and entertain at the age of 72.

It may come as a surprise that the man who has authored many a Machiavellian scheme and plenty of meandering conspiracy theories is, in person, a hard-as-nails straight talker. He’s also quite a number-cruncher for someone who is so entrenched on the literary side of the world.

He rolls off numbers, figures and statistics with the ease of a seasoned marketer. “I have to say my figures are very cool,” he says, comparing his latest book in The Clifton Chronicles trilogy, with his last published novel in 2009. “For my last book, hardback sales were up 40 percent, e-book was up 26 percent and softback was down 7 percent.”

But then he suddenly floors you with his witty, animated (and somewhat geriatric) charm.

He worries as he predicts a bleak future for bookstores in the face of competition from the e-readers and Kindles of the world. “If this [trend] continues, soon there will be hardbacks and Kindles, no paperbacks. Next, hardbacks will go and Kindles will remain, and sadly bookshops will go too. I much prefer to hold the physical book and read the old-fashioned way, but looking at the statistics, it’s going to be very tough on bookshops.” His voice wavers with emotion, but only for a moment, before the shrewd marketer within him reappears.

“Personally, this trend doesn’t affect me, because more people are reading me now on the digital platform than ever before, so no, it doesn’t affect me as a writer – look at my readership figures, for example. In the digital world today, it’s the bookshop that will be affected, not the author,” he says.

According to Archer, there’s a positive side to the democratization of the publishing world.

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T Emirates: The New York Times Style Magazine

image courtesy of jeffrey Archer.

By Priyanka Pradhan

“Today,” he says, “anyone can showcase his or her talent on the digital platform by being a self-published author or even a blogger. So yes, I’d encourage young talent to get going by themselves. If I had had this sort of opportunity back in the day, I would have adapted to whatever was needed, as I always have.”

Archer has picked up a few survival skills along the way, to maintain the momentum of his success. One of those skills happens to be his sharp marketing acumen, something he acquired the hard way.

“In my first experience of promoting my book Kane and Abel on an American TV talk show,” he recalls, “I learnt that time is money. I was on the show with other guests such as Billy Carter and (believe it or not) Mickey Mouse, and we all had just six minutes to share between the three of us. The first two guests had taken up 4.5 minutes by the time the host said ‘Hi Jeff, I see you came over on Concorde,’ and I rambled on... ‘Yes, indeed!

Concorde – it’s a feat of mankind built by the British. It’s twice the height and speed of any aircraft built by man so far. You can have breakfast in London, lunch in New York and dinner in….’ And I was cut off by the host saying ‘That’s great. Thank you, it’s been lovely having you on.’

My publishers were livid.”

Looking back to his early days, Archer says his main literary influences were American author F. Scott Fitzgerald and English writer Richmal Crompton, but there were also others. “My all-time favorite remains the classic The Count of Monte Cristo – it is a masterpiece. Of late though, I’ve been reading The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared and the Hilary Mantel book Bring Up the Bodies.”

What interests him most in the books he reads (and writes), he says, are people and characters. Being a

“Anyone can showcase his or her talent on the digital platform by being a self-published author or even a blogger. So yes, I’d encourage young talent to get going by themselves. If I had had this sort of opportunity back in the day, I would have adapted to whatever was needed, as I always have.” steadfast admirer of the late Margaret Thatcher and an ex-politician himself, he says he always writes strong female characters, drawing inspiration from the women in his life, and the villains in his books are inspired by politicians he has come across. “Most of my own characters are based on people I know, because then they become more real to me and to the reader. Also, people even inspire me to write – normal people I meet everyday. You see, stories are in people… sometimes they just don’t know it.”

So, then, there’s no writer’s block for Archer, one would imagine? He confirms: “No, I never experience writer’s block, because I’m a story teller… and characters and stories are everywhere! Another thing is that I don’t plan a particular plot more than two pages before I write it – mapping things out in detail beforehand really scares me. It’s a hell of a risk, but it’s a lot more fun if I don’t know, otherwise the plot may become predictable and stale for me and for the reader.”

Archer’s last 16 books have all been international #1 bestsellers, and his top-selling work, Kane and Abel, is on its 97th reprint. He was recently in Dubai at the Emirates Literary Festival 2013 to promote his latest book, the third in his Clifton Chronicles series, which he hopes will surpass his previous record.

Does he feel under pressure to outdo his previous accomplishments, then? “Of course there is pressure when I sit down with a pen,” he agrees, “and it gets worse in a way, because I am expected to churn out another number one with each book. There’s always pressure, but what I think any author must do is not buckle under it and do what is popular or fashionable at the moment – don’t just toe the line. Remember, Jane Austen came from a small village and she wrote about a mother trying to get rid of her daughter by way of marriage. It was a great hit. Next, she wrote about a mother trying to get rid of four daughters! But you see, Austen was a genius because she didn’t move with the fashion of the day – she stuck to what she was great at, and did it exceptionally.”

Another strong motivation for Archer is recognition, though not necessarily by way of literary awards or prizes. “I have won awards in France, one in Germany and one in the US, but I have never won anything in England and I never will, by the way. I am what is known as an ‘entertainer’ in the UK, and I’m not allowed to be a storyteller and win a prize – only ‘writers’ win prizes in England, and I’m happy this way. I’m happy that my books are read by the masses. In fact,” he sums up, “if you asked me ‘What do you want in life, Jeffrey?’ I’d say I want to be read by more people than any other author on Earth.”

Design July - August, 2013

Jeffrey Archer’s latest book, The Best Kept Secret (2013), third in The Cliffton Chronicles series.

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image courtesy of jeffrey Archer.

Jeffrey Archer photographed with a selection of his international best-sellers.

Section Arena Emirates

Sub Section

Living the Dream Not many people would be brave enough to leave a successful corporate career to pursue their true passion. But Emirati Khalid Shafar tells T Emirates that taking that bold step was key to turning his dreams into reality.

By Orna Ballout

financial crisis in Dubai as the ideal opportunity to exit the corporate world and follow his ambition of carving out a career as a furniture designer. Although his family didn’t openly express how they felt about his instinctive actions, Shafar admits that he “could see the worry in their eyes”.

With a new gallery in the heart of his home town (the Ras Al Khor Industrial Area in Dubai) displaying his covetable handmade furniture collection alongside his collaborations with international brands, it’s clear that Shafar has no regrets – just big ambitions. “I want to be one of the strong references of Emirati style, if not the first,” he says, adding that in the future he would like researchers to come and study his design ethos.

Considering his personality to be quite “earthy,” Shafar believes that his traditional traits are quite the opposite of what people expect from him. “I’m not an IT type of person or a software designer. I sketch and then prototype – but I think it’s because I have the luxury of having a workshop at the gallery,” he shares, laughing when he further reveals that he’s been using the same phone for three years and is still using Version 1 of the iPad – the one without a camera.

Shafar’s design objects each tell a fascinating story. As we sit on his “Illusion

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T Emirates: The New York Times Style Magazine

image courtesy of Khalid Shafar.

Khalid Shafar was “nearly at the peak” of his career in 2009. Yet he saw the

Dine” chairs at his gallery, the down-to-earth Emirati tells the tales that have shaped his design and work ethic. He remembers how, when he was younger, men used to stroll outside his house calling people into the street to sell them goods hidden inside the colorful sacks they carried on their backs.

He fondly recalls the sense of excitement he experienced rummaging through the bags in search of toys and trinkets, while his mother would seek out textiles and garments. This memory is what gave birth to the idea of the ingenious “Auction” table, one of his most beloved pieces, with the heavy fabric bag gathered under its round top. “I thought about mothers with kids and a lot of toys scattered around the house, who want to hide and store things quickly when guests come over; the sack is inspired by those merchandisers” from all those years ago, he says.

While 33-year-old Shafar had always envisaged himself as a designer, he pursued a corporate career in marketing before leaving his job in 2009 to move abroad and study in New Zealand. During his travels, Shafar got the ultimate opportunity to work in Brazil with his idols, the Campana Brothers. “I love the simplicity of their design philosophy. The way they transform such simple and humble materials into functional pieces of design and art.”

Among his own design objects displayed at the gallery, I spotted the book by, and about, Tom Ford – a man he counts as another inspiration. “I really appreciate the way he has positioned himself in the market, and how his boutiques across the world are of the utmost luxury,” he says. And a fashion connection can

also be seen in Shafar’s own work. “I treat my work as fashionable items. The labels on the pieces I’ve created have been inspired by labels on garments – I think it adds a soft touch to a piece that has been crafted from wood.”

Acknowledging challenges in the local market, Shafar says there are not many things available to a start-up company, and getting a license can also be difficult as there is no specific design category. “My company is listed as a trading company, which is not what I’m doing purely; I’m designing and manufacturing,” he stresses. But he’s got the patience and passion to build his brand. “I still consider myself an emerging designer. I need to build a reputable Emirati brand comprising pieces that are designed and produced in the UAE.” During his time off work, Shafar is a selfconfessed “foodie” and takes great delight in visiting “fine dining” restaurants with his friends. “If I get a dish that I love, I don’t like to share it with anyone, not even a bite,” he chuckles. Aside from food, he is a keen traveler, and with the demands of his job he can be out of the country as often as 10 times a year.

“Istanbul is one of the most inspiring places I’ve ever visited. I’m fascinated by the Ottoman era and the mix between new designs, nice food and exhibitions.”

Although Shafar’s new life is a far cry from the corporate world he once commanded, it seems that old habits die hard. “I thought that the workload would be very flexible, especially considering I’m managing my own time,” he says, adding somewhat surprisingly: “But for the past few months I have been starting to get really excited when the weekend approaches!”

images courtesy of Khalid Shafar.

“I want to be one of the strong references of Emirati style, if not the first.”

For more info, visit khalidshafar.com

Clockwise from top: ‘Illusion’ chairs; ‘Palm’ coat stand; ‘Auction’ table; ‘Egaal’ table lamp.

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MODERN. CONTEMPORARY. ABU DHABI ART. 20 - 23 November 2013 UAE Pavilion and Manarat Al Saadiyat Saadiyat Cultural District Abu Dhabi, UAE

abudhabiartfair.ae

Organised by:

image courtesy of The Etoile Group.

Arena Emirates

The glamorous Ingie Chalhoub, widely recognised as fashion's first lady in the Middle East, is carving a successful niche in the region's luxury retail market as head of the Etoile Group.

By Priyanka Pradhan

true grit Design July - August, 2013

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Arena Emirates The Ingie Paris boutique in Kuwait.

Dubai’s financial district that I first met Ingie Chalhoub. I had heard of her, of course, but what I discovered that day was that even the chief of the luxury retail firm ‘Etoile Group’, has butterflies in her stomach before every show. I could tell that by the way she paced the floor as her designer label’s Autumn/Winter 2013-14 press preview took place at the same gallery, on a grand runway created especially for her. She then ascended up on the ramp, after a little coaxing from her team, to take a bow and pose shyly for the cameras – quite unlike the intimidating persona I had expected.

“There is always great excitement but also some stress before any seasonal launch of the collection,” Ingie says. “All the preparation is tiring and energetic at the same time. I am a perfectionist and I feel extremely conscious about every single detail.”

As I also came to realize that day, the ambitious, influential and rigorously detail-oriented Ingie Chalhoub is also exceedingly charming, and truly humble. Even as she single-handedly navigates multimillion-dollar deals every other day in the fiercely competitive Middle East luxury retail market, she carries herself with rare panache and a certain je ne sais quoi that makes her all the more intriguing.

As president and managing director of the Etoile Group, which operates more than 70 luxury boutiques in six Gulf countries, and as creative director for her eponymous designer label, she has her hands full. But 30 years ago, when she opened the first Chanel

“Challenges test your mental strength; you need to turn them to your advantage. Let obstacles motivate you to strive even harder. I am now even more driven and determined to reach more milestones and push myself further.”

Ingie Paris AW 2013-14 Collection.

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boutique in the Middle East, she didn’t know she was making fashion retail history.

It was serendipitous that the franchise deal was finalized on her wedding day, making her big day even bigger. The groom happened to be Patrick Chalhoub, scion of one of the most established business empires in the region and son of the illustrious Michel and Widad Chalhoub. Having married into a powerful lineage of retail moguls, and with the advantages that come from being part of the influential Chalhoub family, Ingie set out to make a remarkable debut in the regional retail industry and to carve out her identity as a persuasive entrepreneur and luxury retail powerhouse in her own right.

In the years that followed, she worked hard to build credibility and earn the confidence of global luxury retailers such as Christian Dior, Tod’s, Hogan, Valentino, John Galliano, Ralph Lauren, Dolce & Gabbana and Christian Lacroix, and she came to be credited with making a huge contribution to the UAE’s luxury retail segment.

But before one can call it a charmed life, Ingie says it’s been far from easy. The Gulf War in 1990 changed things irrevocably for Ingie, as her Chanel and Dior stores in Kuwait were looted during the conflict, and her business ran into the ground.

But despite the devastating loss, she pushed herself to pick up the pieces and get to work as soon as the Chalhoubs moved to Dubai after the war, even with a newborn baby in tow. After relocating, Ingie quickly became a formidable retail empire.

“Challenges test your mental strength; you need to turn them to your advantage. Let obstacles motivate you to strive even harder. I am now even more driven and determined to reach more milestones and push myself further,” she says.

The motivation to go on, she adds, came from her supportive husband and her inner resilience. She not only had the task of rebuilding her business from scratch, but now also had the additional responsibility of being a mother, and had to manage the two roles – a balance she describes as most challenging.

“I would say balancing a personal and family life with a professional one is probably one of the most difficult challenges businesswomen face. You need to be disciplined, organized and efficient with your time, and set

Images courtesy INGIE Paris.

It was at a quaint art gallery in

The Ingie Paris AW 2013-14 Lookbook.

look at something and know immediately whether it’s right or wrong, or what needs to be changed; it’s a skill that is rare.”

She adds: “You also need to believe in yourself. We are often our own worst critics, but we need to focus on the positive, as self-belief is a key factor in order to succeed.”

TOP: Images courtesy Ingie Paris.

boundaries not just for employees and your business colleagues but even for yourself!”

But just as things were settling down, the global economy, and subsequently the Middle East economy, was hit by the tumultuous financial meltdown. The luxury retail sector was in the eye of the storm, but the Etoile Group showed remarkable resilience at this time. The mood in the retail industry may have been very somber, but just then, in 2009, Ingie launched her own luxury designer label, Ingie Paris, a move that showed nerves of steel and sparkling self-confidence.

Inspired by French sophistication and old-world glamour, she applied her sharp business acumen and innate sense of style to create a capsule collection for the essential “Ingie” woman, someone she envisions to be a lot like herself.

“The Ingie Paris woman is refined, modern and dynamic,” she says. “My designs cater to her multifaceted, playful nature, interests and lifestyle, from dramatic, glamorous eveningwear that she might don for a red carpet event to chic yet comfortable daywear she can wear to a museum or show off at a relaxed brasserie.

That is why I think the collection appeals to women across all cultures; they understand luxury but want it interpreted in a contemporary manner that suits their international lifestyle.”

The launch of her own label was yet another dream realized for Ingie, but, not one to rest on her laurels, she’s now hoping to expand internationally through luxury retailers and eventually have more standalone stores. For the Etoile Group too, she says, the emphasis is on expanding horizons to focus on Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Abu Dhabi.

The Ingie Chalhoub success story has been peppered with setbacks, but she has overcome the hurdles each time, due to her dedication and strong belief in herself, something she hopes will inspire other female entrepreneurs and businesswomen. “[You need] hard work, passion and a strong vision of what you want that can never be downplayed. But there are also those things that are part of one’s character that can also help you to succeed. For me, it’s a strong eye for detail, and my creative ability. I have the ability to

“You also need to believe in yourself. We are often our own worst critics, but we need to focus on the positive, as self-belief is a key factor in order to succeed.”

The Ingie Paris boutique in Kuwait.

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Arena Emirates

Constructing Fashion Coco Chanel once said: “Fashion is architecture. It’s a matter of proportions.” With this in mind, T Emirates set out to discover the relationship between the two fields, talking to fashion designers and architects across the world.

Architecture is a significant source of inspiration for many fashion designers,

Clockwise from above left: OMA Associate Ippolito Pestellini Laparelli has worked with Prada on the design of its fashion show sets; Architect Zaha Hadid has collaborated with many fashion brands, including Lacoste and Swarovski.

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who deliver innovative collections based on avant-garde building design. Similarly, fashion plays an important role for architects, with many industry experts channeling their knowhow into an array of fashion projects.

It has been common practice for fashion houses to seek the expertise of renowned architects to help them design their stores. For instance, Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas developed the flagship store for Prada in New York, and his company, OMA, has built a strong relationship with the Italian fashion house as it continues to design its fashion show sets. “The stage sets for the shows are the purest form of collaboration between OMA and Prada. They are designed in tandem with the creation of the collection. The two disciplines come together in an intense osmosis to generate surprise and emotion in the audience, while staging the values of the brand, season after season. With fashion-show set design, we submit to the process and logic of fashion and adapt to its

T Emirates: The New York Times Style Magazine

vitality and speed. It’s a great enrichment,” says Ippolito Pestellini Laparelli, an OMA associate who works on Prada’s projects.

“Architects can learn a lot from the fashion process. Too often we tend towards an excessive refinement and order. Fashion can be liberating,” he adds.

As well as designing fashion stores, IraqiBritish architect Zaha Hadid has established an in-depth association with fashion, having teamed up with Louis Vuitton on bag design, Swarovski on jewelry, and Melissa and Lacoste on shoes. “There is a lot of fluidity now,” Hadid says, “between fashion, architecture and art – a lot more cross-pollination in the disciplines.”

Out of all her design projects to date, Hadid has found the shoe collaborations the most fascinating. “Our 2009 design for Lacoste adapted the dynamic fluid grids of our architectural work. When wrapped around the shape of a foot, these grids expand and contract to undulate and radiate as they merge seamlessly with the body.”

clockwise from top: Images courtesy of Prada; Lacoste and Swarovski.

By Orna Ballout

Constructing Similarities

According to Anas Younis Shanaah, founder of the eponymous shoe label Aennis Eunis, who graduated with a degree in Architecture before making his foray into the fashion field, “architecture is the mother of all design. So by default, any design process becomes similar to architecture in one way or another.”

Shanaah says that in his lustworthy shoe line Aennis Eunis, references to his architectural background can be seen in details of “arabesque patterns that could be a decorative application.” He further elaborates that there are “less obvious approaches that are present as a feeling… lines intersecting…the use of layering and contrasting, blocks of color working against patterns… These are ways ‘architects’ think of a problem.”

Recognizing her work as “mini-sculptures,” Farah Nasri, a qualified architect and founder of contemporary 3-D printed jewelry line HKD (Hooked), says that jewelry design allows her to fuse her architecture and fashion knowledge to develop something “avant-garde formally and conceptually.” Nasri believes that the processes of architecture and jewelry design are similar, “since the fingers are my site and I design the jewelry to sit perfectly around them – hugging them, sculpting them, just like a building would sculpt its site.”

Comparing the two creative undertakings is difficult, “as one can argue for and against similarities,” says award-winning architect André C. Meyerhans, the man behind both the design of Dubai’s Al Garhoud Bridge and jewelry brand Mario Uboldi.

“While jewelry usually focuses on pure decorative aspects, architecture needs to fulfil many purposes of use, to acknowledge structural limitations and to respect its context.” Meyerhans, however, translates his architectural ideas into his own collection and “trusts that crossing the borders between the trades helps to push boundaries.”

Images courtesy clockwise from top right: Aennis Eunis; Mario Uboldi; HKD.

Clockwise from top: Anas Younis Shanaah, founder of Aennis Eunis, references his architecture background in his shoe designs; André C. Meyerhans, the man behind the design of Dubai’s Al Garhoud Bridge, has channeled his creativity into his jewelry brand, Mario Uboldi; 3-D printed jewelry line HKD founder Farah Nasri refers to her pieces as “mini sculptures.”

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Arena Emirates

Adapting Skills

Rasha Alkhatib’s jewelry brand, Studio Roar, comprises pieces that gather inspiration from the 19th-century Persian Mirza Akbar Architectural Scrolls.

Abrar Alebrahim, founder of Th’haba Jewelry, says the latest collection has been created as “an abstract of the Nolli plan of Kuwait City in the 1950s.”

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T Emirates: The New York Times Style Magazine

Images courtesy clockwise from top: Studio Roar; Th’haba Jewelry.

For Emirati architect and jewelry designer Rasha Alkhatib, problems in the construction industry meant that she, along with many other architecture graduates, experienced unemployment after graduation. “I wanted to engage myself with a project that was fun and motivating till I found a job,” Alkhatib says. And in 2011, the creation of Studio Roar allowed her to do just that. Inspiration for her jewelry pieces are sources from the 19th-century Persian Mirza Akbar Architectural Scrolls and the French architect Jules Bourgoin’s “Arabic Geometrical Pattern and Design”.

Historical inspiration also plays a key role in Th’haba Jewelry, the brainchild of Kuwaiti architect and designer Abrar Alebrahim, who says that jewelry “is simply another scale of architectural design, one you can wear on your body and ornament yourself with.” “For the love of Kuwait: Reminisce”, Alebrahim’s most recent collection, has been developed as “an abstract of the Nolli plan of Kuwait City in the 1950s.”

Fashion designer Dina JSR’s collection ‘Poetical Movement’ explores Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava’s most successful works.

Dubai-based designer Shrekahnth’s Autumn/Winter collection pays tribute to some of Paris’s most iconic landmarks.

Architectural Inspirations

Images courtesy TOP: Dina JSR; ABOVE: Shrekahnth.

When constructing her fashion collections, architecture is a key source of inspiration for fashion designer Dina JSR and has even become a signature staple of her work. In her collection “Poetical Movement” the designer explores Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava’s most successful works. “I’ve always been impressed with the art of architecture and its beauty, so I found combining fashion with architecture quite interesting, because the dresses that I design are quite structured, detailed and geometric,” she reveals.

Another fashion designer to draw inspiration from the beauty of buildings is Dubai-based Shrekahnth. His recent work pays homage to some of Paris’s iconic landmarks, including the Eiffel Tower, Notre-Dame and the Arc de Triomphe. Shrekahnth points out that architecture inspires and helps “to build unique ideas, textures and moods.”

Whether it’s architects stepping into the world of fashion to work with its key players, or fashion designers building impressive collections inspired by architecture, it’s apparent that both fields work harmoniously together to produce cutting-edge and unique results that ultimately embody the essence of design.

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Arena

home front Jemima Khan in the sitting room of her Fulham house, which she decorated herself.

Media Report

The Unlikely Activist Jemima Khan may live the grand life of an English aristocrat, but behind the famous boyfriends and the important hair is a serious political journalist and a budding documentary film producer. Her latest project? Taking on WikiLeaks.

By sarah lyall Photographs by eva vermandel

The address is unremarkable and the

street unexciting, but to slip past the nondescript front gate is to enter an alternative universe, a leafy enclave of secluded houses smack in the center of southwest London. This is where Jemima Khan lives, in a house with soaring ceilings that used to be a factory for old-style taxi carriages.

It was a shock to find this little slice of privilege within a shout of the bustling, thrusting Chelsea soccer stadium; it was a different sort of shock to meet Khan, who presents her own misleading facade. Wearing skinny jeans and a large letter-sweater-style cardigan, she was all long slender legs, glossy flowing hair, radiant English skin and articulate charm. She offered tea, apologized for the state of her dog-distressed cushions, took off her boots, curled up on the sofa next to Brian —

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the dog in question — and tossed out a barrage of questions meant to disarm and deflect.

She prefers to be interviewer rather than interviewee, she said apologetically, particularly in light of how mean-spirited the British papers can be about someone with her background, and how they can twist words into different meanings. ‘‘I haven’t done any interviews for quite a while,’’ Khan said. ‘‘I am naturally quite an open person, and I always end up saying too much.’’

But she has made an exception in the service of ‘‘We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks,’’ a film about the online antisecrecy group and its founder, Julian Assange, that was directed by Alex Gibney (‘‘Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer’’) and of which Khan is an executive producer. Khan has been involved with Assange’s case since he was arrested

in December 2010, and she helped post bail for him, but the movie examines him and his work with a cool dispassion.

As she talks about her own work, Khan realizes there is a bit of a perception problem, a slight disconnect — her charmed upbringing and potentially frivolous existence at odds with, as becomes increasingly clear, the seriousminded, hyper-busy reality of her working life.

The tabloids persist in calling her ‘‘socialite Jemima Khan,’’ as if that were an official title, like ‘‘doctor,’’ and Khan, 39, has indeed appeared often in the party-photos sections of glossy magazines and Web sites. Her father was the late financier Sir Jimmy Goldsmith; her mother is Lady Annabel Goldsmith, a legendarily charming hostess whose first husband, Mark Birley, named Annabel’s nightclub after her. The two had 10 children between them; Jimmy Goldsmith was an inveterate keeper of mistresses (in fact, Annabel was his mistress before she became his wife) who fathered children with four different women. Life around the dinner table was complicated, noisy and filled with vociferous debate about the issues of the day.

Khan was a serious student, ‘‘which is why I don’t understand why my children have to be coerced and virtually waterboarded into doing their revision,’’ she said, laughing, using the British expression for ‘‘studying.’’ But at 19 she dropped out of college to marry the Pakistani playboy/cricket star-turned-politician Imran Khan, who exuded charm and exoticism. It was a bit of a shock for everyone.

‘WikiLeaks exposed the most dangerous lies of all, which are those that are told to us by elected governments.’ freak — an ultimately unknowable person.

Khan’s connection to the movie came because she was an admirer from afar of WikiLeaks and, for a time, a high-profile supporter of Assange’s in Britain. ‘‘There was a lot of stuff coming out about Pakistan, which confirmed suspicions I had about the sort of doubledealing of the government,’’ she said of the WikiLeaks material. And more simply, ‘‘I don’t like lies,’’ she explained. ‘‘WikiLeaks exposed the most dangerous lies of all, which are those that are told to us by elected governments.’’

She was drawn into Assange’s odd, charismatic orbit after the British authorities placed him in solitary confinement while he fought extradition to Sweden, where he is wanted on charges of sexually assaulting two former WikiLeaks volunteers. Along with other sympathizers, Khan helped post his bail, which ran to the hundreds of thousands of dollars.

But then several things happened. Working with Gibney on his WikiLeaks documentary, Khan served as his liaison to Assange and was sucked further and further into the morass of Assange’s suspicious, conspiracy-theorysuffused mind. Assange at first seemed amenable to an interview on camera, but became increasingly, maddeningly obstructive, finally heaping so many conditions and demands that negotiations over the terms completely broke down.

Then Assange suddenly jumped bail — Khan and the other supporters lost their money — and dramatically sought political asylum in the Ecuadorean embassy, around the corner from Harrods, where he has remained, confined to a small studio, since last June.

He has never responded to Khan’s e-mails asking him to explain his legal situation, she says, and she said her agreement to help post bail was never meant to allow him to avoid facing the charges in Sweden, but merely to get him out of prison while he prepared a legal case and continued his WikiLeaks work. She has not spoken to him since June of last year.

Khan recently wrote an elegant article for New Statesmen about her evolving feelings — admiration turned to disillusionment — toward Assange.

While claiming to support the notion of a just society ‘‘based upon truth,’’ she wrote, WikiLeaks has in fact ‘‘been guilty of the same obfuscation and misinformation as those it sought to expose, while its supporters are expected to follow, unquestioningly, in blinkered, cultish devotion.’’

Assange’s supporters have denounced ‘‘We Steal Secrets,’’ saying that its examination of the sex charges

against Assange amounts to irrelevant sensationalism. On the contrary, Khan said, Gibney actually unearthed a great many details about Assange’s past that he ended up not putting in the movie. ‘‘Alex is an ethical, scrupulous person, and I think he decided that it was not relevant to the story, and the Swedish case absolutely was,’’ she said.

Meanwhile, Khan is starting work with Gibney on another documentary, about drone warfare.

So please do not say she is a socialite. ‘‘There are plenty of things that you can call me, even if they are not flattering, but socialite, I think, is incorrect,’’ she said. Nor should anyone assume that growing up with money has somehow made her feel entitled. On the contrary, Khan said, as the interview wound down, it has cemented her hunger for doing something meaningful. ‘‘I know people in similar situations who haven’t really worked or who have sort of squandered their money,’’ she said. ‘‘The result is, I suspect, just massively low self-esteem and an unfulfilled life.’’

She led the way to the door, through the courtyard, and back to that nondescript gate, discussing why there was a huge hole in the ceiling of her entryway. (It has to do with a shared plumbing connection with a nearby house, and the unwise tendency in that house, apparently, to flush baby wipes down the toilet.)

The next day, she sent an e-mail clarifying her position. ‘‘I didn’t mean to suggest that I am not very lucky,’’ Khan wrote. ‘‘I just meant that it’s easy to become indolent, entitled and to lose a sense of purpose if you don’t have to work.’’ She finished: ‘‘In my experience, being busy and working hard is the key to sanity/happiness.’’

home office Khan at her writing desk in the house’s sitting room.

eva vermandel

‘‘A born-again Muslim twice my age who lived in Lahore and wanted to be in Pakistani politics isn’t any father’s idea of a perfect sonin-law for their teenage daughter,’’ Khan said wryly. ‘‘But they both married against their parents’ wishes and eloped,’’ she added, of her parents, ‘‘so they weren’t exactly in a position to intervene.’’

Marry she did. She moved with her new husband to Pakistan, learned Urdu, had two sons and threw herself into political and social causes, becoming a public figure in her own right, her every outfit and utterance dissected and obsessed over. The couple divorced after nine years, growing apart but remaining good friends, whereupon Khan returned to London and embarked on a passionate romance with the actor Hugh Grant. (She remains good friends with him, too, as well as with the literary agent Luke Janklow, another recent ex, she said, adding that she is happily single now.)

Along the way, Khan somehow pulled off the neat trick of reinventing herself from Hello! magazine stalwart to serious person consumed by serious issues. She went back to school, finished her undergraduate degree and then studied modern trends in Islam at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London. Now she is associate editor of the political magazine New Statesman, for which she writes fluent and incisive political profiles, and is Vanity Fair’s European editor at large.

She has also written an article about polygamy for New Statesman and presented a BBC radio program on the subject in Britain. In her spare time, if that is the right way to describe it, she finished a screenplay about a young, haplessin-love British woman whose exasperated mother turns to her Pakistani neighbors to help organize an arranged marriage for her.

That is her first foray away from nonfiction. ‘‘I am completely aware that it is a massive cliché to be working on my screenplay, but at least it was commissioned,’’ Khan said cheerfully. ‘‘It could be crap, but I am going to get it done.’’ ‘‘We Steal Secrets,’’ which was released last month, examines the complicated case of Julian Assange and WikiLeaks. It also examines in fascinating detail the equally complicated and possibly more interesting, because it is so shocking, case of Bradley Manning, the troubled, sexually confused Army intelligence analyst whose leaking of secret American diplomatic and policy documents to WikiLeaks led to his arrest three years ago. (He is currently awaiting trial.) As for Assange, the movie dissects all his contradictions, examining him as hero and villain, as an advocate of openness and transparency who is also a deeply secretive, possibly paranoid control

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A place apart The art historian John Richardson’s set at Albany, where he lived from the 1960s to the 1980s.

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T Emirates: The New York Times Style Magazine

London’s best and most secRetive addRess Despite a prime Piccadilly location and a long roster of legendary inhabitants, from Lord Byron to Lord Snowdon, Albany is the city’s most under-the-radar residence — and the powers that be would like to keep it that way.

By christopher gibbs

Design July - August, 2013

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T Emirates: The New York Times Style Magazine

small talk could break the spell of privacy we Albanians prize so deeply. (A nod suffices, a hat raised to a lady.)

While its inhabitants are notoriously tightlipped about the place, it has been home to many storied residents: royals like Lord Snowdon (for a moment); intellectuals like Lord Byron, Isaiah Berlin and Aldous Huxley (and the writer Sybille Bedford, who lived for a while in his servants’ room); numerous

politicians; and the crème de la crème of the style world, like the decorator David Hicks, Baroness Pauline de Rothschild, the American diplomat’s wife Evangeline Bruce and the editor of Flair, Fleur Cowles.

Think of a monastery, but one in which the customary Trinity has been replaced by secular devotions — exacting taste, the pleasures of life and a romantic nostalgia for England’s past — and you have a good feel for the place.

Location accounts for a good bit of Albany’s appeal. Next door to Burlington House, home of the Royal Academy of Arts and other learned societies, a stone’s throw from the enticements of Soho, the grandeur of St. James’s, and the comforts of Mayfair, to say nothing of the canny tailoring of Savile Row, lies this hidden world — part club, part cloister — stretching the full

previous spread and this page: derry moore.

T

he longstanding rules governing life at Albany — the stately Georgian pile situated surprisingly, if conveniently, in the heart of Piccadilly, which I have had the good fortune of calling home for half my life — are mercifully straightforward: no pets, no children, no whistling, no noise and absolutely no publicity.

Photographers have found themselves escorted from the premises, London’s oldest block of flats and one of its most exclusive addresses, for snapping off a frame of the interior courtyard. Residents who are deemed indiscreet risk a ritual scourging by the trustees. So ingrained is the sense of decorum that even to utter a friendly hello to a neighbor as we pass on the stone stairs or the covered outdoor canopy, known as the Rope Walk, might be violating a taboo, as if a few words of

Precious few of the passers-by who throng Piccadilly each day have the slightest notion what lies beyond the building’s imposing pedimented facade.

The Glorious Rooms Opposite: Pauline de Rothschild’s famous drawing room in 1976. Left: David and Evangeline Bruce’s living room in the late 1980s designed by the Colefax and Fowler co-founder John Fowler. Below: David and Pamela Hicks’s set after he redecorated in 1995.

from top: derry moore; john spragg @ www.johnspraggphotography.co.uk.

Until it isn’t, of course. The secrets of the place — and there are many — have gradually tumbled forth over the years, beginning with those of its first inhabitants, Lord Melbourne and his wife, Elizabeth, for whom the main mansion was designed by Sir William Chambers, one of King George III’s preferred architects, as a palatial town house completed in 1774. Both lord and lady enjoyed numerous extramarital affairs (Elizabeth had children by Lord Egremont and by the Prince of Wales, among other paramours, as well as at least one by her husband), creating a salacious mythology that, rightly or wrongly, persists to this day.

After he squandered much of his fortune, Melbourne exchanged his grand house in 1791 with that of the king’s son, the Duke of York and Albany, who installed his Prussian wife and her menagerie of cats, dogs and monkeys. Alas, the Duke of York was as extravagant and dissolute as his predecessor, and he too was forced to sell.

In 1803, an imaginative young developer named Alexander Copland purchased the property. He and the architect, Henry Holland, length of its neighboring Sackville Street. ‘‘It’s incredible to have such a tranquil haven in the dead heart of London,’’ observes the esteemed art historian John Richardson, who lived at Albany from the 1960s through much of the 1980s. ‘‘It was sheer heaven.’’

Even its name has been the subject of excessive debate over the years: most initiates insist, as do I, on omitting the definite article, calling the place simply Albany, though Oscar Wilde, in ‘‘The Importance of Being Earnest,’’ and Charles Dickens, in ‘‘Our Mutual Friend,’’ saw fit to use ‘‘The Albany.’’ To each his own!

Likewise, its units are not referred to as apartments or flats but as ‘‘sets.’’

Precious few of the passers-by who throng Piccadilly each day have the slightest notion what lies beyond the building’s imposing pedimented facade, ably guarded by a formidable team of liveried porters. Which is exactly how we like it.

While the doors have opened a crack in recent years, with the occasional set being snapped up by the odd hedge funder on the open market rather than passing quietly to someone in the know, even a resident of some 40 years, like myself, must be cautious about disclosure. For instance, even with a wonderful new book out to sell, David Hicks’s widow, Lady Pamela (Mountbatten) Hicks, viewed the prospect of talking about Albany as out of the question.

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interior life Right: a corner of Christopher Gibbs’s sitting room today, with an 1820s English Axminster carpet and a Chinese Chippendale chair.

Below: another view of the sitting room, with a linen chesterfield sofa and white caned bergères with Moroccan cushions.

cluster of solitudes for social hermits, the home of homeless gentlemen . . . the place for the fashionable thrifty, the luxurious lonely and the modish morose.’’

Among their number, early on, was the rakish Lord Byron. His more like-minded neighbors included Matthew Lewis, the master of Gothic horror and, per one obituary writer, a ‘‘reckless defiler of the public mind,’’ whose scandalous novel ‘‘The Monk’’ won the enthusiastic praise of the Marquis de Sade.

Another resident was the foppish novelist and opium addict Edward Bulwer Lytton (the man who, incidentally, coined the term ‘‘the great unwashed’’).

Other Albanians, some of whose association with the place is commemorated in a collection of plaques and busts adorning the mansion’s central corridor, include a few prime ministers (Lamb, Gladstone, Heath and, for just a few days, Thatcher); writers like the playwright Terence Rattigan; the actor Terence Stamp (of the sapphire eyes and chiseled cheekbones); and my friend Bruce Chatwin, explorer extraordinaire, who lived in my attic with a Jacob chair from the Tuileries and the 18thcentury bedsheets of the King of Tonga adorning the wall. The glamorous society hostess and publisher Fleur Cowles occupied a

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Images by tobias Harvey.

divided the space into smaller chambers and added two additional buildings, creating a total of 69 sets, some of which were subsequently recombined.

The shrewd Copland had noted the growing need in London for small-scale residences within walking distance of St. James’s and its clubs and the Houses of Parliament, where a country gentleman with no desire for an elaborate dwelling in town could feel at home, with his own beverages and coal cellars down below and a modest billet for a valet upstairs. Copland marketed the apartments exclusively to well-todo, socially connected and unencumbered men.

No women were permitted on the premises (at least not officially) until the 1880s.

In his 1848 novel, ‘‘The Bachelor of the Albany,’’ Marmion Wilard Savage described it as ‘‘the haunt of bachelors, or of married men who try to lead bachelors’ lives — the dread of suspicious wives, the retreat of superannuated fops, the hospital for incurable oddities, a

Before giving up his set and settling permanently in New York, John Richardson took on a few tenants, among them Bryan Ferry, ‘a pop singer, but very gentlemanly,’ and for a month or so, Greta Garbo.

grand apartment the width of the mansion, where she entertained everyone from Lady Bird Johnson to Princess Grace.

Several fictional characters made their homes at Albany as well, including the gentleman jewel thief A. J. Raffles and Ernest, the raffish alter ego of John Worthing in Wilde’s ‘‘The Importance of Being Earnest.’’

Albany also provided the setting for a more recent scandal, the assiduously covered dalliance of Alan Clark, the irreverent Tory M.P. and diarist, not only with the wife of a judge but with her two daughters as well.

I

must not speak of my neighbors now, on penalty of banishment, but on my staircase live a distinguished actor, a philosopher, the widow of a celebrated jeweler, three pretty girls from New York, the secretary to the trustees and myself.

I’ve lived here for more than half my life, having already been something of a regular before making the place my home, a not uncommon route since new residents must be approved by the trustees and the secretary, who orders the life and rhythm of our sanctuary. In this, he is aided by our largest leaseholder, the Cambridge college Peterhouse, due to the benevolence of Mr. William Stone, big-game hunter, botanist and world traveler, who lived in Albany from the 1890s till his death at 101, systematically buying up sets through troubled times. In his will he left all these to his old college, which now has the delicate task of maximizing the value of Stone’s gift while at the same time preserving the spirit, ethics and style of the building for its inhabitants.

I had my first glimpse of Albany before I was 20, as the guest of an Oxford friend who lived in his father’s attic room. It seemed then, and seems still, perfection for a singleton, an oasis of serenity in the frenetic heart of West London.

A few years later, Harold Nicolson, a diplomat, M.P. and erudite man of letters, entertained me in his ground-floor rooms full of

treasures. Not long after, I attended Richardson’s spirited gatherings, where the scholarly and high-minded collided with wilder, more exuberant friends in rooms filled with Picassos, Pre-Raphaelites and Roman busts.

Richardson fondly recalls the uppity antics of Prime Minister Heath’s security men, remembers the courtyard choked with the chauffeured cars of Mrs. Cowles’s glittering guests, and his own subtle, almost lethal handling of a secretary once reluctant to admit him to the sacred precincts.

Before giving up his set and settling permanently in New York, Richardson took on a few tenants, among them Bryan Ferry of Roxy Music, ‘‘a pop singer, but very gentlemanly,’’ and for a month or so, Greta Garbo, whom he identified only as Miss Brown. ‘‘Even the maid, who was a movie buff, never knew it was her,’’ he recalls.

My Albany initiation was long and rich and enjoyable, and I leapt at the chance of a roost of my own in this cloistered world. My first berth was as a lodger in the attic room of a diplomat friend who had married late. When the impending arrival of his first child prompted a move from L6 — infants being about as welcome at Albany as the onset of gout — I moved down to the rooms, where I have lived ever since. (Lucky fellows like me, and perhaps a dozen others on old leases, have rents fixed every three years by the state. The less fortunate have to pay hugely increased rates, and a ‘‘freehold’’ set, one owned outright, could cost upward of $3 million.)

My friend, the diplomat, let me in on a secret.

The rooms were once haunted by a previous incumbent, Welsh baronet who had reportedly drowned — indeed, boiled — in his overheated bath. His spirit seemed lodged in a dumbwaiter that rose to the attic kitchen, jamming the works. A Jesuit priest exorcised him, gently and efficiently.

With that, I had the place to myself and

proceeded to make it my own in the accustomed style: sober mahogany, Oriental rugs, family pictures. I’ve continually reordered these rooms, distilling, paring, pruning, as chaste as my voluptuous nature allows.

So enraptured with my Albany life did I become that, reason deserting me (not for the first or last time) I gave up a spacious Bond Street gallery where I had my antiques shop and took one at the back of Albany, a small if elegant space with an entrance into the building, another onto the street and best of all a door into the underground passage — a quiet, invisible stroll home.

I love returning from Morocco, where I now spend much of my time, seeing the friendly porters at the door, hearing the clip-clop of feet on the Rope Walk, seeing the old-timers sitting in the little ivy-lined garden, sunning themselves by the little bronze statue of Antinous and the fountain, regularly invaded by the ducks from St. James’s Park — and enjoying sudden glimpses into other people’s lives through uncurtained windows, the hours marked only by the clock chimes of St. James’s Church, accompanied by the more uptempo tinkling of the clock at Fortnum & Mason, our local grocers.

At this point, when I am in London I can’t imagine staying anywhere but Albany — all the more reason, perhaps, to clam up, maintain the longstanding omertà (or I should say discretion) that has held sway for centuries now, and count my blessings.

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Advertorial

Lost in time deSIGN July - August, 2013

ISSUE

clockwise from top: simon watson; CRAIG MCDEAN; mario sorrenti.

Far from Morocco’s well-trodden tourist route lies Taroudant, a remote market town where a colorful group of expats have created a most stylish haven.

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kids these days essay BY ANDREW ROSS SORKIN Photographs by HANNAH STARKEY Styled by Kate Lanphear and Jason Rider

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Bill Gates was 20 years old. Steve Jobs was 21. Warren Buffett was 26.

Ralph Lauren was 28. Estée Lauder was 29.

These now iconic names were all 20-somethings when they started their companies that would catapult them, and their enterprises, into some of the biggest successes ever known. Consider this: many of the truly remarkable innovations of the latest generation — a list that includes Google, Facebook and Twitter — were all founded by people under 30. (Mark Zuckerberg, technically, started Facebook even earlier, when he was 19; at 20 he moved to California to turn it into a business.) The number of people in their mid-20s disrupting entire industries, taking on jobs usually reserved for people twice their age and doing it in the glare of millions of social media ‘‘followers’’ seems to be growing almost exponentially.

So what is it about that youthful decade after those awkward teenage years that inspires such shoot-for-the-moon success? Does age really have something to do with it?

It does. And that leaves the rest of us — even those of us just a little older — at a bit of a disadvantage.

The conventional wisdom is that young people bring fresh eyes and a new perspective to confronting problems and challenges that others have given up on. Michael Moritz of Sequoia Capital, a venture capitalist who backed Google, Yahoo and YouTube, once described the phenomenon of 20-something entrepreneurs as a generation of people ‘‘who see no boundaries, see no limits, see no obstacle that they can’t hurdle — it is the most stimulating environment that you can ever be in.’’ Vinod Khosla, another venture capitalist, goes further. ‘‘People under 35 are the people who make change happen,’’ he said at an international conference. ‘‘People over 45 basically die in terms of new ideas.’’

That may or may not be true, but it’s only part of the story.

Peter Thiel, the co-founder of PayPal, and now an investor who was an early backer of Facebook, has another, colder theory that may explain it: Ultimately, it’s about money. ‘‘How many people do you know who said when they were young that they planned to work for a couple of years, put some money in the bank, so that they could later pursue their passion and start a new business or strike out on their own?’’ he asked me. ‘‘It almost never plays out that way in practice.

What seems to happen is that after some period of time, people are making good money and they’re typically spending all of it and it becomes really hard to dial that back. If you bought a house or have all sorts of obligations of one sort or another it may be very difficult.’’

In other words, it’s the young people who have nothing to lose, with no mortgage and, frankly, with nothing to do on a Friday night except work, who are the ones often willing to take the biggest risks. Sure, they are talented.

But it’s their persistence and zeal, the desire to stay up until 6 a.m. chugging Red Bull, that is the difference between being a salaried employee and an entrepreneur.

And with the steady march of technology, young people have gained an even greater sense of credibility among their elders — still worried that they themselves don’t ‘‘get it.’’ Since the 1960s, and especially since the rise of the computer era, older people have been more willing to give opportunities to the most talented 20-somethings as the office politics of old break down. Could this latest crop of entrepreneurial success stories have made it in a pre-Twitter era? Sure. But the rapidity of this digital age has hastened their ascent.

That’s not to say that most 20-somethings are finding success. They’re not. The latest crop of über-successful young entrepreneurs, bloggers, designers and authors are far, far from the norm. In truth, unemployment for workers age 16 to 24 is double the national average. ‘‘Gen X’’ and ‘‘Gen Y’’ have far less wealth than their parents did at the same age, according to the Urban Institute.

One of the biggest challenges facing this next generation — and one that may prevent more visionary entrepreneurs from succeeding — is the staggering rise in the level of debt college students have been left with. If Thiel’s theory is right, it is going to be harder and harder for young people to take big risks because they will be crushed with obligations before they even begin.

If you’re over 29 years old and still haven’t made your world-changing mark, don’t despair. Some older people have had big breakthroughs, too.

Thomas Edison didn’t invent the phonograph until he was 30.

Chris Hughes

Valentino Men’s coat, AED 10,578, sweater, AED 2,497, shirt, AED 2,388, and pants, AED 1,818; (212) 7726969. Armando Cabral shoes, AED 2,002; armandocabral com.

It was once said — by Michael Kinsley — that Al Gore was every old person’s idea of what a young person should be. It surely applies to The New Republic’s latest editor in chief and publisher, Chris Hughes. He was Mark Zuckerberg’s sophomore roommate at Harvard, a key bridge between the tech world and regular human beings, and made a fortune of hundreds of millions of dollars from his tiny share of the company. He moved on to lead the Obama campaign’s groundbreaking use of the Web in 2008.

There’s a confidence about him that I certainly never had — when I, another young gay man, was handed the editorship of that august magazine at the age of 27. We’ve only met a couple of times in coffee shops and, despite my 20 years on him, I felt as if I were a kid talking with a grownup. His hair is slicked down and neatly coiffed, his attire almost fogy, his young, clear, freckled face open.

Why on earth would an Internet multimillionaire rescue a boutique political and literary magazine that has almost always lost money? Hughes’s answer — he wants to

Facebook co-founder; publisher and editor in chief of The New Republic

‘‘convene conversations’’ that help change the world — seems a little jejune, but sincere. There’s a vagueness that immediately evaporates when he turns to the object of his desire: ‘‘I love print,’’ he says. ‘‘Because it’s an incredible technology in its own right. It’s colorful, it’s cheap, it’s disposable, it’s sharable, it’s an object.’’ And when you pick up the new New Republic, you can see the love: the hefty solid paper pages, the superglossy cover, the thoroughly designed interior, the graphics, the use of art and photography in ways the magazine never aspired to before. Because it was too expensive.

As The New Republic turns 100 next year, it says something about its 29-year-old editor that he is seeking to make new what was recently seen as the very definition of old: paper, print, words, meaning. He is the young person’s idea of what a publisher should be. ANDREW SULLIVAN

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HELEN OYEYEMi Author of four novels, and the

The daughter of Nigerian immigrants, Helen Oyeyemi, 28, wrote her first book, ‘‘The Icarus Girl,’’ when she was 18 and still in school. It was met by the British literary scene with amazement and respect. Since that debut, she has written three more novels, her latest being ‘‘Mr. Fox,’’ about a complicated love triangle between a narcissistic writer, his wife and his fictional muse. The book is a bold experiment in storytelling, combining realism and fabulism, humor and darkness, and a new take on folkloric fixtures like the murderous Bluebeard.

It’s a heady brew, but Oyeyemi is so fluent with narrative that she seems to revel in its conventions and pick them apart at the same time, fragmenting and reframing in the manner of a Jeanette Winterson. Her age, as fun as it is to report, has really never been a window into her writing style. Besides, she’s seemed wise beyond her years from the very start. Her next book, ‘‘Boy, Snow, Bird,’’ exploring the archetype of the wicked stepmother, comes out in 2014 from Riverhead Books. ‘‘I’m still climbing around inside stories we all know, or think we know, and I’m enjoying that,’’ she says. Oyeyemi is modest about her rise. ‘‘The more forcibly I’m made aware of the fact that I’ll never be the kind of storyteller I most admire, the less I’ll be troubled by that,’’ she says. ‘‘I’ll probably just become more myself.’’ AIMEE BENDER

forthcoming ‘‘Boy, Snow, Bird’’

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alexander wang Fashion designer of his namesake label; creative director of Balenciaga

Wang’s own sweatshirt and pants. Opposite: Philosophy by Natalie Ratabesi dress, AED 5,124; albertaferretti.com.

Manolo Blahnik shoes, AED 2,479; (800) 937-9146.

As a teenager, Alexander Wang was working in a San Francisco boutique after school and remaking thrift finds for his sister and friends. ‘‘I’d hardly call them ‘hits’!’’ he says. Today, he sits atop a multimillion-dollar business that bares his name, and he was recently named the creative director of Balenciaga, one of the most storied French houses in the world. Skeptics of the 29-year-old designer might say that his press savviness, youthful good looks and Asian-American roots — after all, China is fashion’s next big frontier — have served him exceptionally well. But since he left the Parsons School of Design to introduce his own line in 2007, his swift ascendancy has been defined by a marked pragmatism that’s made him a success with retailers and women alike: capturing the nuances of urban cool with merchandise that’s delivered to stores on time at an accessible price.

With his Alexander Wang label, he’s picked up the baton that Calvin Klein and Helmut Lang carried before him, infusing sportswear with an erotic edge that suggests there’s more to life than office rigmarole. At Balenciaga, stepping into Nicolas Ghesquière’s very big shoes, he’s proven he can do a lot more than dress the downtown set. In his debut, Wang has brought a demure elegance to Balenciaga’s architectural heritage, taking classic silhouettes like high-waisted petal skirts, molded peplums and oval-shouldered coats, and toughening them up with paint-crackled mohair, marbleized silk, punkish velvet lace and pristine ivory soutache.

Excelling at two very high-profile jobs is a challenge, but this is where the boundless energy and risk-taking nature of youth is at its best. ‘‘I’m a believer in going out there, working for yourself and being very proactive in getting what you want,’’ Wang says. HARRIET QUICK

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BENNY BLANCO Songwriter and music producer

There are a couple of ways to determine if that sound percolating out of your radio is a song by Benjamin Levin, the 25-year-old songwriter-producer who goes by the name Benny Blanco. First, there’s Blanco’s telltale sonic tang: the sugary chewiness of bubble gum, salty hip-hop, rock crunch and a sprinkling of other, often surprising musical ingredients. Then there’s the law of averages: if the radio’s on, it’s probably playing his song. In the last five years, Blanco has become one of pop’s most reliable creators of chart-topping records. He has co-written and co-produced dozens of hits, including 15 Billboard No. 1s, by some of the world’s top artists: Rihanna, Katy Perry, Kesha, Maroon 5, Britney Spears. It’s a startling track record for someone whose career began so unpromisingly as a third-rate would-be rapper. ‘‘I think somewhere along the way I realized, O.K., no one’s gonna care about a chubby Jewish dude rapping,’’

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Blanco says. ‘‘I realized I’d be better behind the scenes.’’

Blanco accomplished that career transformation in the time-honored manner of chubby Jewish dudes everywhere: with chutzpah. While still a teenager in the Virginia suburbs, he charmed — or rather fibbed — his way into the record industry.‘‘I would cold-call record labels and pretend I was someone else,‘‘ he says.’’ If I patched my way up to the top, I’d be like, ‘You’ve gotta listen to my mixtape!’ ’’ Eventually, he released a critically lauded collaboration with the Baltimore rapper Spank Rock, and came to the attention of the powerhouse songwriter-producer Dr. Luke, who installed Blanco as one of his go-to collaborators. The rest is Top 40 history. ‘‘It’s a great time to make music,’’ Blanco says. ‘‘It’s becoming harder and harder to decipher the line between indie, pop, country, alternative. On the radio, listeners want to be familiar with the sound that they’re like, ‘O.K. That doesn’t make me uncomfortable.’ But they also want to be like, ‘Daaaaamn! What’s that sound?’ ’’ Jody Rosen

EZRA KLEIN Washington Post columnist;

Don’t ask Ezra Klein for a from the University of California, MSNBC and Bloomberg pithy anecdote about how he Los Angeles in 2005 with a View contributor got to be America’s predegree in political science and, eminent Wonkblogger. ‘‘I don’t more important, with hundreds really believe in background of blog posts to his name. He stories,’’ he says. What he blogged his way into a job at believes in is data — so let’s The American Prospect and Boss suit, AED 4,573; hugoboss.com. start there. Klein’s Wonkblog, hosted by The then came the call from The Post, where Wonkblog Marni shirt, 1,322; Washington Post, gets more than 5 million page will turn two in September. What he wanted to do (646) 532-6017. Tie, AED 588; saksfifth views a month. His chart- and graph-heavy on his first day — make the ‘‘actual work of avenue.com. analyses — like a recent 4,200-word dissection of a government’’ comprehensible — is what he does Opposite: Dries Van Noten coat, AED health care experiment for elderly Pennsylvanians every day, almost as often on television (he’s a 9,201; ifsohonewyork.

— are routinely among the most popular stories on contributor and a frequent fill-in host on MSNBC) as com. Melet Mercantile vintage The Post’s Web site. Wonkblog is something of an on the Web. An MSNBC anchor slot seems pajama shirt, AED 691 experiment itself, out to prove that a quantitative inevitable, seeing as how the channel’s president, (for set); (212) 9258353. What Goes approach to Washington can be compelling to a Phil Griffin, is among his biggest fans. But what he Around Comes mass audience. ‘‘What we’ve been trying to do for a sounds most excited about is grooming his fellow Around vintage scarf, AED 286; (212) 343long time,’’ Klein says,‘‘is figure out how to cover Wonkbloggers, all of whom, he swears, are smarter 1225. Blanco’s own the political world through the lens of policy.’’ ‘‘A than he is. He lets out a laugh. ‘‘I didn’t think I would pants, shoes and long time’’ is relative; Klein is 29. He graduated face obsolescence this quickly.’’ BRIAN STELTER jewelry.

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Author of a forthcoming literary fantasy series; college student

Could an unknown 21-year-old Oxford student named Samantha Shannon be the next J. K. Rowling? Three years ago, Shannon was an intern in the office of the prestigious London literary agent David Godwin. That experience came in handy when, less than a year later, she had a manuscript for ‘‘The Bone Season,’’ an ambitious novel, the first of a projected seven-part series, that she had somehow written between lectures. Blown away by the book’s inventiveness, Godwin promptly sent it to the editor in chief of Bloomsbury, Alexandra Pringle. ‘‘Seven hours later I was still reading it,’’ Pringle recalls. ‘‘I just fell completely in love.’’ Bloomsbury gave Shannon a six-figure advance for the first three books, an unprecedented show of support for such an untested first-time author. ‘‘The Bone Season,’’ which comes out in August, is about a 19-year-old clairvoyant named Paige Mahoney, who roams the streets of London, circa 2059, until the secret police send her off to a penal colony that looks a lot like Oxford. ‘‘Her imagination is so extraordinary,’’ Pringle says. ‘‘She reminds me of the Brontë sisters — the world she’s created is absolutely real.’’ Book rights have sold in 18 countries, and three major studios fought over the movie rights. (Britain’s Imaginarium Studios beat out Hollywood.)

Shannon, now in her last year at college, is juggling writing with her studies like she did for the first book. ‘‘I had to cut down on going out with my friends so I could squeeze in writing chapters,’’ she says. ‘‘There was a lot of coffee involved.’’ LIESL SCHILLINGER

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hair by enrico mariotti for kÉrastase at see management; makeup by justine purdue for chanel BeautÉ at tim howard management. Fashion assistants: alex tudela and angela koh.

SAMANTHA sHANNON

MIKE KRIEGER

On Krieger: Woolrich Woolen Mills blazer, AED 1,450; mrporter. com. Canali sweater, AED 955; mrporter. com. Margaret Howell shirt, about AED 1,286; margarethowell .co.uk. J. Crew pants, AED 477; mrporter. com. Moscot glasses, AED 937; moscot.com. On Systrom: G-Star jacket, AED 2,498; g-star.com. J. Crew sweater, AED 826; mrporter.com.

Slowear pants, AED 1,396; mrporter.com.

Opposite: Salvatore Ferragamo top, AED 4,040; (866) 3377242. Sportmax skirt, AED 2,020; (212) 674-1817.

H. Stern ring, AED 14,324; hstern.net.

& KEVIN SYSTROM Compared to the many programming for a reported $1 billion last spring.

Founders of Instagram marvels clogging the iTunes App store What was Instagram’s secret? Looking in 2010, the offering unveiled by a pair back, the founders made a few key design of Stanford grads one October day decisions that proved critical. First, they didn’t really do that much. It simply let removed the choice of portrait (vertical) or you take a picture with your smartphone landscape (horizontal) by limiting images (nothing novel about that) and post it to a square (both). Steve Jobs’s famous online (ditto). insight that good design is less about what’s added than But putting these two commonplace functions together what’s subtracted has never been more amply somehow made both of them feel fresh. It was, in the demonstrated. Second, Instagram let you ‘‘design’’ the words of the Instagram founders Kevin Systrom, 29, and emotional tone of a photo through instant effects — Mike Krieger, 26, ‘‘like a chemical reaction.’’ bringing the power of Photoshop filters to the mobile Neither of the partners had a typical background in generation and giving the most mundane of snapshots the computer science or design. They describe themselves as instant nostalgia of an old Polaroid. ‘‘torn between the world of art and the world of Instagram has transported users back to the carefree technology.’’ But in that middle ground they struck pay dirt, days when a single, simple button and the right subject and the product instantly became a breakthrough hit. Two matter was all you needed to share a magical moment with years after its debut, the app was one of the iPhone’s most family and friends. It put good design in all of our hands, popular applications, with a user base nearing 30 million, and helped us make our photos — maybe even our lives — success that prompted Facebook to scoop the company up seem a little more memorable. john maeda

All the prices are indicative.

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POWER OF ONE Miuccia Prada is a fashion designer by profession, but she’s also an art curator, film producer, fledgling architect, conflicted feminist, avid consumer and unreconstructed socialist. Meet the modern woman.

By andrew o’hagan Portrait by mario sorrenti

Italian Renaissance Miuccia Prada wears a blue and white gingham coat from her fall collection.

She stands outside her new Fondazione in Milan, designed

by Rem Koolhaas and set to open in 2014.

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I

t had gone dark by the time I found the shop in Milan that belonged

to Miuccia Prada’s grandfather. Near the Duomo and housed in a glass and marble walkway called Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, the shop is now like a beacon in some modern Italian fantasy of style and wealth. Outside, there might be industrial decline and migration, but here the lights are fantastic and the people are drawn to it like moths. In the opening scene of Visconti’s classic movie ‘‘Rocco and His Brothers,’’ the Parondis come from the south to seek a new life in Milan. They look out from the tram as it goes through the dark city and all they can see is shops. ‘‘Rocco,’’ says one of the brothers to Alain Delon, ‘‘look at those shops and the lights. It’s like daylight.’’

Mario Prada made leather goods. In 1918 his collection included a lizard bag with marcasite and a buckle of lapis lazuli. The highlight of 1927 was a wallet in toad skin and silver. When he died, his daughter took over, and eventually she brought in her youngest daughter, the smiling Miuccia, who was known to the family as Miu Miu. In 1978, she designed a black nylon rucksack that would later take the world by storm. With her husband, Patrizio Bertelli, she transformed the company from being a much-admired, eccentric retailer of luxury goods into a contemporary design powerhouse with sales of over $5 billion. The famous Prada brand, which includes women’s wear and men’s wear, is much copied — ‘‘The job is to do something interesting with ideas,’’ Miuccia told me, ‘‘and if it is copied I couldn’t care less’’ — and the group

ugly meets pretty Clockwise from right: a runway look from Prada’s seminal spring 1996 collection, for which she designed clashing prints that made a statement about conventional beauty; the original Prada store, opened in 1913 in Milan; the Herzog & de Meuron-designed Prada store in Tokyo, which has a faceted green glass exterior that resembles an emerald.

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includes other brands like Miu Miu and the English shoe company Church’s.

Mrs. Prada, as she is known, who stands at about 5 foot 4 inches, usually gives little away, but when I met her I found her just about ready to open out of her enigma. Some designers are seekers of trends, but Prada actually is the trend, season after season, leaving others spinning at her heels as she unfolds her singular vision of what a woman can be. People keep saying: ‘‘How does she do it?’’ And the secret may lie in how she connects to the spirit of the age: she is a curious capitalist philosopher with a brilliant instinct for modern desire. She is a designer not afraid to reach into what makes people human, asking odd questions, then coming back with very elegant answers. ‘‘Fashion is about the way we compose ourselves every day,’’ Mrs. Prada once wrote. This was on my mind when I met her at her headquarters in the Via Bergamo. The rain was coming down heavily when Prada arrived in a dark blue Audi and quickly dashed into one of the gray buildings. She was charming from the moment we sat down, and filled, you might say, with the easy laughter of strong conviction, the mirth of certainty. And yet Prada is pleased to live within her contradictions. It may be the thing that makes her able to create menacing, interesting work: in her core she is equally unafraid of failure and success. ‘‘When I started, fashion was the worst place to be if you were a leftist feminist. It was horrid. I had a prejudice, yes, I always had a problem with it,’’ she said. ‘‘I suppose I felt guilty not to be doing something more important, more political. So in a way I am trying to use the company for these other activities.’’ She later added, ‘‘I’m not interested in the silhouette and I’m not able to draw. It’s complicated.

I am trying to work out which images of the female I want to analyze. I’m not really interested in clothes or style.’’

We talked about how her sense of style might become an instrument of even greater change. Why, for instance, do women behave as if age is a prison? Isn’t our era’s obsession with youth a form of mass hysteria? ‘‘It is much more of a drama for women, the business of aging. No one wants to age, and I really think we should find a solution. Especially because we live so much longer,’’ she said. ‘‘It used to be that a woman would have only one life, one husband, and if you were bored that was that. Now, you can have two or three lives. So even the concept of family is changing. I think this question of aging will define the society of the future.’’ ‘‘So why not use older models sometimes?’’ I asked. ‘‘Mine is not an artistic world, it is a commercial world. I cannot change the rules.’’ ‘‘But you change the rules,’’ I said. ‘‘If you put an old lady on the runway, other people would do it too.’’

She laughed. In that light her eyes were green; before I asked the

‘When I started, fashion was the worst place to be if you were a leftist feminist. So in a way I am trying to use the company for these other activities.

I’m not really interested in clothes or style.’

previous spread: makeup by lucia pica at art partner; hair by patti bussa at greenappleitalia.com; tokyo store: Nacasa and Partners.

Fondazione Prada CA’ Corner building + Arte Povera; Attilio Maranzano; film still: brigitte lacombe; all others: courtesy of Prada.

question they were brown. ‘‘Let’s say I’m not brave enough. I don’t have the courage.’’

Yet courage is what she does have. When you take on the fashion world and ask it to reconsider the meaning of beauty, that’s courage. She is not, as insurance men say, riskaverse. I asked her what is the power of ugly? ‘‘This is a question close to the meaning of my job.

Ugly is attractive, ugly is exciting. Maybe because it is newer,’’ she said. ‘‘The investigation of ugliness is, to me, more interesting than the bourgeois idea of beauty. And why? Because ugly is human. It touches the bad and the dirty side of people. You know, this might have been a scandal in fashion but in other fields of art it is common: in painting and in movies, it was so common to see ugliness. But, yes, it was not used in fashion and I was very much criticized for inventing the trashy and the ugly. ’’ ‘‘The novelist Flaubert hated the rituals of bourgeois life. You do, also, don’t you?’’ ‘‘For sure. And we have to define what these rituals are.’’ ‘‘Good taste.’’ ‘‘Ah, for sure,’’ she said. ‘‘By definition good taste is horrible taste. I do have a healthy disrespect for those values. I don’t want to sound like a snob, but it comes very easy to me. I have to say that, although I rejected those values for a lot of my life, it was not for very noble reasons. Let’s just say that.

I have to be honest. I don’t feel it was very good or very noble to feel more cultured or superior.’’

Prada pleases herself, and she does it with dedication. She makes what she wants to make, which may be why other designers are not only touched by her aesthetic but appear to have graduated from her school of thinking. ‘‘Prada’s designs stem from an inner vision of herself,’’ said the New York Times fashion critic Cathy Horyn, ‘‘and plainly it’s filled with images from Italian films and conflicts involving beauty. But the upshot is a tangled, whata-woman sexiness.’’

Yet there may be an essence in Prada’s work that says no to selfsatisfaction. It doesn’t say: ‘‘You’re lovely. You deserve this. You’re worth it.’’ It says something more like, ‘‘Who are you? Dare to find out. And dare to be otherwise.’’ This essence has a broad tendency to inflect the moment we are living through. A generation has come about that believes in the virtues of self-invention. I put it to her that she is one of the people who gives lessons in this. ‘‘I had never discovered the real reason for my job, and probably what you are saying is very true,’’ she said, ‘‘that you can choose your life. You can change your mind and change your clothes. We have to talk more because maybe now I know one of the reasons why I do my job.’’

circle of influence Prada’s Transformer, in Seoul, designed

by Rem Koolhaas’s OMA firm in 2009.

The mixed-use building can be rotated into four different shapes: a hexagon, rectangle, cross or circle.

‘‘I am a novelist,’’ I said. ‘‘I invent people for a living. But so do you.’’ ‘‘You are right. I always thought it was an escape, and ‘to dream’ was something I didn’t like. But this is very true and very good also, that you can use the clothes to reinvent yourself. The first thing a poor person has is her body. People talk about luxury — and fashion is more or less expensive — but it is nevertheless democratic.’’ ‘‘One of the cheaper ways of changing yourself.’’ ‘‘It is one of the first levels of emancipation.’’

She relaxed as the hours passed. When we began talking, she kept making as if to take off her coat and then she would put it back on again, not sure if she felt comfortable. I chose to see this as part of her nature: not getting too comfortable. Yet you can see how enlarged she becomes, comfortable or not, with ideas and with the invitation to search her feelings. For someone so dedicated to change, every day another change, this 64-year-old woman loves the idea of being delighted. From her third-floor office she has a slide that winds down to the ground floor, an artwork by Carsten Höller, that allows at least one burst of delight whenever you feel like it. She doesn’t collaborate with artists in her designs — like the slide, they are a fascinating diversion from it — but her art foundation, supporting and exhibiting art, film and architecture, has made her another kind of impresario, a person who gauges the culture’s stories and stimulates investigation. She has supported a clutch

art appreciation From far left: a still from a short film, directed

by Wes Anderson and Roman Coppola, featuring Léa Seydoux, for Prada’s new Candy fragrance; Prada’s Fondazione art space in Venice, which will feature a reconstruction of an important 1969 Arte Povera exhibit this summer.

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This is the position she has created, where a great modern designer can be a mogul, a curator, a lightning rod and a fan. And to think that Prada’s grandfather didn’t want the women in the family to be involved in running the business.

‘‘Can too much democracy hurt fashion? It used to be so elitist and that’s what people liked about it.’’ ‘‘It’s like when too many people go to a museum, does it destroy the level of the museum? I choose a wider audience. I also think when I’m doing the shows I try to be more obvious, more loud, more clear.’’ ‘‘Why?’’ ‘‘Because I think if you don’t scream, no one listens. If you are too delicate, too subtle, your voice gets diluted. But you don’t have to give up the sophistication. The last two days when I’m doing a show, the work is, for me, complicated, but then in the final moments I think, ‘What is the title of this show?’ And then I try to make it more clear, so that it appeals to people who maybe know less about fashion as well as appealing to people that are fixated with it. There are different levels of understanding. You have to touch people.

It’s probably like a song: you have to touch something deep. I’m now trying to open myself much more. In the ’90s, I was considered minimal and this was because I was hiding myself and my ideas.’’ ‘‘You were nervous of criticism?’’ ‘‘Yes. But now I give more of myself. You have to go deeper,’’ she said. ‘‘At the beginning, I didn’t want to give up myself and that was a big problem. A bag is exterior to you, but with clothes you are getting nearer. I knew I would have to give more.’’

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here is something industrial about Prada’s headquarters, something that chimes with the outlying areas of Milan, the housing projects and factories shot by Visconti, whose films have long been a reference point for the designer. It is all of a piece with the clothes actually, marrying form and function, the ugly and the beautiful, to make something that redefines the meaning of glamour. Some designers simply put a shine on desire and then issue the appropriate sunglasses, but Prada is busy finding a whole new way of thinking. You’ll pay for it, certainly, but you won’t pay for it by cashing in your powers of thinking because that’s what she does, consistently imbuing her designs with a personal mindfulness. ‘‘Would you say selling is as important as making?’’ ‘‘Yes. If people take money out of their pockets, it means that what you are doing is relevant to them. I hope they don’t just buy because there is a logo but because the object is relevant to them. To sell is to prove that what you are doing makes sense. I’m completely against the idea that we do fashion for an elite — that would be too easy, in a way.’’

I believe there is a small anxiety in Prada. She worries, perhaps, as a feminist, as a thinker, as a person who loves art and culture — with a Ph.D. in political science from Milan University — that the fashion world might be bent on trivializing the world’s problems. She might also worry that a rich fashion designer is disqualified from addressing such problems or talking about

the shape of things Carsten Höller’s ‘‘Scivolo n. 5 (Slide No. 5) (Miuccia Prada)’’ (2000), at Prada’s Milan offices.

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from top: courtesy of the artist and gagosian gallery, photo by roberto marossi, milano

of filmmakers, like Roman Polanski and Wes Anderson, through short films for various Prada ventures and her friends say she is poised to enter the world of feature films in a meaningful way. A whole generation of artists, including Francesco Vezzolli, Cindy Sherman, Baz Luhrmann and the architects Rem Koolhaas and Herzog & de Meuron, feel connected to her vision of personal transformation. ‘‘I once asked Louise Bourgeois why people were so interested in fashion,’’ Prada told me, ‘‘and she said, ‘In the end, people want to seduce.’ But I don’t think this is enough. I believe it is more complicated.’’

The complication is that the person the Prada consumer often wants to seduce is themselves. We want to test who we can be in an atmosphere not bloated with obvious effort. Prada’s clothes make you feel you are appearing at your most calm and your least demonstrative, which is a kind of freedom for people who yearn to look good but don’t want the yearning to show.

Prada trained as a mime, and she performed at La Scala and other places when she was young. She was a communist who believed, like many of her 1960s generation, that change would come not through commodities but through revolution. Well, there was a revolution, but it was, as those who remember the hours after the Berlin Wall came down, a revolution of blue jeans.

People in East Berlin were desperate to get to the shops. Prada is one of the brands that came to life around the same time. But Miuccia floats between knowing the truth of this and wanting to discover other truths that might contradict it. ‘‘When you create something that is ‘out there,’ ’’ I asked her, ‘‘like kitchen utensils hanging on a skirt, do you tend to know in advance that this might not be commercial?’’ ‘‘Yes. But I have to do it. There is an understanding that, when I do a show, no one will tell me what to do. Once, at the beginning of my career, I tried to listen to others and it was all wrong. I have to do what I think is right, and now everybody is happy that it is like this. We might later decide to do something more wearable that is based on the original ideas, but, you know, some collections are easier than others.’’

ordinary life. But in fact she has pushed consistently for fashion to address some of the more searching aspects of the times. Fashion follows her, and artists love her, because she is properly responsive to change. Most iconoclasts become bigots for their own program: not her. She is ready at all times to be proved wrong.

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double club: Courtesy: Fondazione Prada, Milano Photos © Attilio Maranzano; all others courtesy of Prada.

‘

ow important is it for people to love themselves?

I mean women.’’

Her smile grew. She called for Champagne. ‘‘Now that you ask me, I ask myself,’’ she said. ‘‘What do you think?’’ ‘‘I think it’s overrated.’’ ‘‘Bravo!’’ she said. ‘‘This is great.

This is something I can tell my friends. What a liberation. You can hate yourself!’’

She asked me to give her the card with my question on it. She wanted to save it for later. A tray of the world’s most delicate sandwiches arrived, cucumber squares and triangles with small curls of anchovy set at the corner.

Prada’s beautiful, beaten, brown Miu Miu leather coat was now off her shoulders; she was wearing a light brown jumper underneath. She wore a silk, off-white skirt and a pair of burgundy-colored sandals encrusted with fake jewels. Everything she had on her body was invented by her. I told her that if I was in her shoes I’d sometimes be desperate to get away from the brand. ‘‘I’m never in the brand,’’ she said. ‘‘That’s not where you live?’’ ‘‘No. I want Prada to be successful. But the idea of the brand doesn’t interest me, and I never think about it.’’ ‘‘Is your work a self-portrait?’’ ‘‘Yes.’’ ‘‘What makes you so sure?’’ ‘‘It comes from me. It’s my soul. It’s my life. My work and my life are more or less the same thing, and I never consider that the work is something different,’’ she said. The job, the foundation, my personal life, it’s all one thing.’’

You can believe that when you see how her big stores, or ‘‘epicenters,’’ have become not just marketplaces but zones of concentric culture, where a film might be shown and the shop — often built by Rem Koolhaas — might revolve and you might attend a gig by the Hours. This is the position she has created, where a great modern designer can be a mogul, a curator, a lightning rod and a fan. Imagine Andy Warhol at his height with 461 stores operating in 70 countries. And to think that Prada’s

image control Clockwise from right: Prada’s 2001 print campaign, photographed

by Cedric Buchet, which began a pattern of using younger, lesser known photographers; the Double Club, a temporary nightclub set up in London in 2008

by Carsten Höller and financed by the Prada Fondazione; a fall 2013 runway look.

grandfather didn’t want the women in the family to be involved in running the business.

One of her friends told me she liked Elizabeth Taylor, and I thought of the late film star when I saw Prada’s sandals. Prada admits to a trashier side, and she lit up when I said I wanted to talk to her about Elizabeth Taylor’s diamonds. ‘‘Is it O.K. that she got them from men?’’ ‘‘Yes,’’ she said. ‘‘Sometimes I still feel that women don’t appreciate their position in society. That we are not strong enough to impose our thinking. We don’t like businesswomen: we go against women who appear to be like men. And I always wanted to have aspects of character from everywhere, and not only be one way. I had friends who said, ‘No men, no children, total independence.’ I chose a compromise, a complete compromise. I chose a bit of avant-garde, a bit of fashion, and for me it works. I don’t want to reject my past because I have it so deeply inside myself. To be nice with a man, I don’t think it’s so bad.’’ (She is also the mother of two sons in their 20s.)

Prada was the natural choice to dress the girls in Baz Luhrmann’s movie ‘‘The Great Gatsby.’’ In a contemporary way, she understands the conjunction of money and romance and dreams, American or otherwise. She didn’t need a commission: the style of the film could have taken itself from the Fitzgeraldian contradictions and investigations into selfhood that have for years been the hallmark of her work. By the time Prada met Luhrmann and the film’s star, Carey Mulligan, to discuss a possible collaboration, they had already tested some of her clothes on screen. ‘‘You like diamonds?’’ ‘‘I’m interested in jewels,’’ she said. ‘‘I know what it is: I only like antique jewelry because I like the stories attached to them. I like to know who was wearing them. It’s the life of people that interests me. Also, they are beautiful. Flowers and jewels are part of a woman’s history. I like to look at these jewels and wonder if the woman was happy. For instance, I have a brooch which features a boat in the sea and on top there is a little gold rose and over this a spider. And I wonder who gave it to the woman? Was she a lucky woman? What does it mean?’’

She’ll go on thinking. People will go on buying. And one day we might wake up and find that our everyday reality was actually made by shy and pivotal little geniuses like Miuccia Prada, half capitalist, half-communist, searching for the next big idea and often finding it very close to home. When I left her, she was still waving the little notecard with the question on it about whether a woman must love herself in order to be happy. As her car sped away under the low, gray Prada sky, I guessed that her answer might be that loving oneself is irrelevant. What’s important is to know yourself. ‘‘If it’s fake, it doesn’t work,’’ she had said. ‘‘It has to be true to yourself first and then it might be successful.’’

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All the prices are indicative.

Balmain jacket, AED 27,911; barneys.com. Pedro Lourenço swimsuit, AED 2,119; mail@ pedrolourenco.com. Maison Martin Margiela necklace, AED 1744; (212) 986-7612. Prada shoes, AED 2534; prada.com.

Opposite: Christopher Kane jacket, AED 17,225; openingceremony.us. Hervé Léger by Max Azria swimsuit, AED 2,534, and harness, AED 5,134; herveleger.com. Céline shoes, AED 3,121; Bergdorf Goodman, (212) 753-7300.

Repossi ring, AED 30,300; barneys.com.

TOO TOUGH TO HANDLE Harnessing the dark side with black bikinis and a leather cover-up.

PhotographS by CRAIG M C DEAN STYLED BY JOE M C KENNA

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Alexander Wang jacket, AED 6,427; (212) 977-9683.

Michael Kors swimsuit, AED 1,248; neimanmarcus. com. Proenza Schouler belt, AED 1,781; (212) 5853200. Céline shoes, AED 3,121. Maison Martin Margiela necklace, AED 1,744. Nikos Koulis rings, : AED 29,477 (on right hand) and AED 6, 614; shopalchemist.com.

Opposite: Balmain jacket, AED 27,913. Chloé swimsuit, (212) 717-8220.

Giuseppe Zanotti Design body belt, AED 2,295; (212) 650-0455. Prada shoes, AED 2,534

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Acne Studios jacket, AED 5,325; acnestudios.com.

Hervé Léger by Max Azria harness, AED 3,298; atriumnyc.com. Eres swim bottom, AED 642; (888) 656-3737. Prada shoes, AED 2,534. Nikos Koulis ring, AED 36,034.

Opposite: Proenza Schouler jacket, AED 9,145. Hervé Léger by Max Azria swimsuit, AED 2,901. Prada shoes, AED 2,534. Maison Martin Margiela necklace, AED 1,744. Nikos Koulis rings, AED 24,810 and AED 6,614. Models: Julia Nobis/ DNA; Fei Fei Sun/Women Management. Makeup by Peter Philips for Art and Commerce. Hair by Eugene Souleiman for Wella Professionals.

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set design by andy hillman at the magnet agency. manicure by typhaine kersual for jed root. production: Brachfeld Paris; Tailor: Willy G.; photo assistants: Simon Roberts, Huan Nguyen, Henri de Carvalho, Christophe Berlet; stylist assistants: Carlos Nazario, Nicolas Kuttler; Makeup assistants: Sofie Van Bouwel, Mohammed Bouarib ben; Hair Assistants: Fred Teglia, Kazuko Kitaoka; set assistant: Alex Cunningham; set builders: Alexander Eccles, Samuel Overs.

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a step up The Belgian decorator Christophe Decarpentrie sits under a pergola at Le Bastion, one of four homes he shares with his partner, Abel Naessens, in Taroudant.

Far right: a stairway leading up to the terrace of the French decorator François Gilles’s house, which he designed with Arnaud Maurières and Eric Ossart.

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Lost in time Far from Morocco’s well-trodden tourist route lies Taroudant, a remote market town where a colorful group of expats have created a most stylish haven.

By christopher petkanas Photographs by simon watson

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At EAse Left: a bedroom is shaded by arches poolside at Le Jardin/ Bassin, another home shared by Decarpentrie and Naessens.

Right: one of the terraces at Le Bastion.

Taroudant nudges the Sahara and is set on a lush agricultural plain that crashes into the foothills of the Atlas Mountains.

Heaven for some, but it is not to every taste.

As they often have, Jacques and Bernadette Chirac spent the All Saints Day break last year at La Gazelle d’Or hotel in the small southern Moroccan city of Taroudant.

Based on reports in the French media, however, it was not much of a holiday for the former first couple. A story in the newsweekly Le Point had Madame Chirac berating her husband in public (‘‘You’re nothing but the rustling wings of an insect,’’ she is said to have informed him.) According to another story, in Le Monde, when their daughter Claude read that ‘‘le Palais’’ — meaning Morocco’s King Mohammed VI — often picks up the Chiracs’ bill at the hotel, she went into damage-control mode, promptly canceling the five rooms they had reserved for Christmas.

It was a rare flicker in the floodlights for Taroudant, which nudges the Sahara and is set on a lush agricultural plain that crashes into the foothills of the Atlas Mountains. Connoisseurs of the Arab Mediterranean find the place heaven, but it is not to every taste. Unlike Marrakesh, 140 miles to the north, there are no stoplights here, no branded hotels, no expats living out Scheherazade fantasies in glittery riads. The sole noteworthy monument is the nearly five miles of beautiful pisé, or rammedearth, ramparts wrapping the medina. Knotted

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bundles of lamb tripe dry on lines in the open air, and cheerfully painted horse-drawn buggies are not used mostly by tourists, as one might expect, but by locals as a cheap alternative to taxis. Winters are made for palm-grove picnics in shirtsleeves, but summers are too chokingly hot for even a bikini. If you want to buy drinks, say, or cheese or crème fraîche, you have to go to Agadir, an hour away on the Atlantic coast.

While serious development is now under way outside the medina, most of the population is still jammed inside the city’s crenelated walls.

As such, Taroudant retains the inscrutable aura of the small caravan trading outpost it was in the 16th century.

‘‘We’re a lot less in the real world here,’’ says Chris O’Byrne, a French journalist who owns the Aziyade maison d’hôte and worked in Paris for many years for the lifestyle magazine Côté Sud. ‘‘There’s not a lot going on.

That’s the point. You need an interest in nature if you want to live in Taroudant, and a rich interior life. There are days when I would kill for a bookstore or museum.’’

The very absence of basic institutions and services has helped preserve the city, making it a magnet in recent years for a tightknit population of expats. This group is larger, more competitive and more concerned with niceties like placement and finger bowls than one might

A FINE MATCH Local children play soccer outside the town’s ramparts.

HOUSE PROUD Clockwise from top left: a sitting area in Le Petit Palais, another of Decarpentrie and Naessens’s houses; their guesthouse, La Bergerie, from above; beds in La Bergerie; the living room at Le Bastion.

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Architecturally, Taroudant has little of the pedigree of other Moroccan cities. It squeaked through the nation’s years as a French protectorate, without the addition of the kind of European-style ‘ville nouvelle’ that sprung up in Rabat, Fez and Casablanca.

BLUE Period Clockwise from left: Taroudant’s lunar-like landscape; the entryway at the home of François Gilles; the dining room, which leads to one of the property’s four courtyards; an aerial view of the dining areas and swimming pool.

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out of the past Clockwise from far left: the painting studio of the late Chilean artist Claudio Bravo; a cactus garden outside the walls of Bravo’s home; a stairwell leading to one of the house’s terraces.

guess. Taroudant society is still recovering from the 2011 death of the hyper-realist Chilean painter Claudio Bravo, whose palace in the countryside was the scene of dinners where the caviar and foie gras flowed like mint tea. Gone is the ballast he supplied. But life goes on, almost as hectic. ‘‘In Taroudant you need an agenda just for your social engagements,’’ says Mina Sarrat, a Moroccan real estate agent who steers foreigners through the minefield of buying property locally. Due to common law, you can own the dirt an argan tree is planted in, but not the tree itself, and be a legitimate title holder without the title to prove it. ‘‘You meet the most improbable people here,’’ she adds, ‘‘people you wouldn’t meet anywhere else. Socially we live at 100 miles an hour, and we have our own highly functioning grapevine: ‘le téléphone Arabe.’ I tell you, you tell Chris, Chris tells. . . . ’’ Architecturally, Taroudant has little of the pedigree of other Moroccan cities. It squeaked through the nation’s years as a French protectorate, from 1912 to 1956, without the addition of the kind of European-style ‘‘ville nouvelle’’ that sprung up in Rabat, Fez and Casablanca. ‘‘During heavy rains, I’ve seen some of the old pisé buildings collapse like sand castles,’’ O’Byrne says. While stretches of the ancient ramparts have been rebuilt to match the originals, much of the rest of the city is a bland essay in concrete and cinder blocks.

Nonetheless, O’Byrne’s crowd prefers the bombed-out lots of their medina and (relative) modesty of their homes to what they view as the Orientalist excess encountered elsewhere.

The cult of decay — finding beauty in blight, in even urban banality — has a long tradition in Morocco. A certain flyblown quality gave frissons to generations of aesthetes, from the socialite David Herbert to the illustrator Pierre Le-Tan. The town’s humility is the basis for an operatic strain of chauvinism among the foreign

set. ‘‘Those poor Marrakeshi with their bling bling, they have no idea how to live,’’ says the Belgian decorator Christophe Decarpentrie, who moved here part-time in 2002 with his partner in life and business, Abel Naessens.

Between them they own four houses with a total of 22 bedrooms in Taroudant, for no other reason than they bore easily, can afford them and love lending them out to friends. Decarpentrie rules the beau monde in Taroudant. He styles himself a sort of pasha, and people treat him like one. ‘‘A wealthy Brazilian woman came to stay with me,’’ he recalls. ‘‘She was traveling with a four-wheel drive for the country and a limousine for the city. ‘Where are the boutiques?’ she asked. She hadn’t even unpacked.’’ The next day, she was gone.

Even when Farah Pahlavi hosts a party, Decarpentrie says, simplicity is the rule.

Though Pahlavi was exiled along with her husband, the Shah, in the 1979 Iranian revolution, everyone addresses her as Shahbanou anyway, as if she were still on the throne. ‘‘Even if she is always surrounded by a Persian court and our king treats her like she still reigns, the way Farah entertains is so understated, so chic,’’ Decarpentrie says. ‘‘The staff eat first, then the guests are served, and after that we all dance together — the waiters, the gardeners — too much fun!’’ He adds: ‘‘She loves it here because she says it reminds her of her childhood in Tehran in the ’40s and ’50s.’’

Art of the deal Men converse at Taroudant’s food and livestock market, held every Sunday.

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hidden Assets Clockwise from above: a view of the lap pool and exterior of the hotel Dar Al Hossoun at dusk; the hotel’s

Although the exalted style of living practiced by some Westerners evokes the days of French colonialism, the first among them began debarking as recently as 1999. ‘‘If there were four cars in Taroudant back then, that was a lot,’’ Karl Morcher remembers. Drunk on the place’s scrappy charms, Morcher, an ageless, worldly, voluptuously idle character of a type once common in Morocco, and his partner, Abdelmajid Dkhil, later built a vast compound on the outskirts of town, where they live in rooms of perfect Balzacian proportions filled with Jean-Michel Frank furniture, Berber carvings and Dadaist paintings.

Arnaud Maurières and Eric Ossart parachuted into Taroudant the same year, trailing their fame as garden designers who

fine feather The house peacock wanders the grounds at Dar Al Hossoun.

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revolutionized public plantings in France by replacing grannyish pointillist flower beds with fluid, meadowlike compositions.

After restoring a riad for themselves in the medina, Maurières, who is brisk and vivid, and Ossart, enigmatic and detached, received commissions for gardens and rammed-earth houses and renovations from Pahlavi, the horticultural magnate Henri Delbard and the owners of Dar Zahia, a handsome bed and breakfast. ‘‘We are plant people who never thought of becoming architects, until Taroudant,’’ Maurières says. The complicity between habitat and landscape in the region convinced him and Ossart they had something to offer. The couple went on to build a second home next to Pahlavi’s in a ritzy ‘‘suburb’’ bristling with olive orchards, located a fiveminute bicycle ride from town. The compound was later sold to Ollivier Verra, a Frenchman who transformed it into a six-room hotel, Dar Al Hossoun. A succession of six courtyards planted with Maurières and Ossart’s signature arrangements of aloes, agaves, grasses and cactuses revolves like a cloister around the 15 rectilinear structures with flat roofs.

What looks at first like a huge, dry, derelict swimming pool squatted by wild vegetation is in fact a sunken garden filled with bananas and papayas that were carefully chosen to shade tender exotics.

sunken garden, designed by Maurières and Ossart; a guest room, also decorated

by Maurières and Ossart.

The hotel is a game-changer for Taroudant.

La Gazelle d’Or, established in 1961, is no longer a monopoly. Rita Bennis, the Gazelle’s Moroccan owner, grew up in the feudal opulence of Tazi Palace in Rabat and made her ‘‘real first money,’’ she told Le Point, in business with Adnan Khashoggi. If Taroudant was on anyone’s radar before now, it’s because of Bennis, but her world-class hotel’s draconian policies — you need a reservation even to have a drink — have made her a polarizing, even feared figure.

Whatever the squabbles du jour, Roudanis (as residents of Taroudant are called) are one in their attraction to the town’s mystical sense of isolation. And now, with the extraordinary Dar Al Hossoun, and its owner who is committed to giving his guests the full Taroudant experience, the rest of us are invited in on the secret, as long as it lasts.

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Desert Oasis A dense garden of cactuses and exotics surrounds the lap pool at Dar Al Hossoun.

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Document

Francis Coradal-Cugat’s original cover art for ‘‘The Great Gatsby,’’ which Baz Luhrmann brings to the big screen next month, depicts a disembodied face floating in a night sky (center). It is one of the lasting images in literature, but that hasn’t kept book designers from trying to outdo it. The scholar and F. Scott Fitzgerald biographer Matthew J. Bruccoli spent his adult life stockpiling those efforts — ­ pulpy paperbacks, fancy slip-covers, French-flapped foreign editions

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— and today his trove is not only one of the world’s most complete collections but also an illuminating cross section of 83 years of book design. Now housed at the University of South Carolina, the collection is worth several million dollars but Bruccoli, who died in 2008, claimed he was never motivated by money. ‘‘You don’t buy books as an investment,’’ he said. ‘‘You buy them because it gives you pleasure to read them, to touch them . . . to see them on shelves.’’ JEFF OLOIZIA

dhanraj emanuel

A Book By Its Covers

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Francis Coradal-Cugat’s original cover art for ‘‘The Great Gatsby,’’ which Baz Luhrmann brings to the big screen next month, depicts a disembodied face floating in a night sky (center). It is one of the lasting images in literature, but that hasn’t kept book designers from trying to outdo it. The scholar and F. Scott Fitzgerald biographer Matthew J. Bruccoli spent his adult life stockpiling those efforts — ­ pulpy paperbacks, fancy slip-covers, French-flapped foreign editions

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— and today his trove is not only one of the world’s most complete collections but also an illuminating cross section of 83 years of book design. Now housed at the University of South Carolina, the collection is worth several million dollars but Bruccoli, who died in 2008, claimed he was never motivated by money. ‘‘You don’t buy books as an investment,’’ he said. ‘‘You buy them because it gives you pleasure to read them, to touch them . . . to see them on shelves.’’ JEFF OLOIZIA

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A Book By Its Covers

Design July - August, 2013

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