T Emirates: The New York Times Style Magazine by T Emirates

Design November – December, 2014

T Emirates : The New York Times Style Magazine Design November – December, 2014

A Search for Quality

Abstract art influences in Delpozo. Channing Tatum’s Unfinished Business. The simplistic decor of Yves Saint Laurent’s Tangier Home. AED 20

Table of Contents

Yves Saint Laurent’s Tangier bedroom, which has remained untouched since the designer’s death in 2008.

Page 70

Features 66 Work in Progress

Had Channing Tatum not flexed his comedic muscles by mining his stripper past, he might have been just another jock who peaked too early. An Oscar-worthy dramatic role and a surprising new hobby show that he still has unfinished business.

74 One

Nearly identical fashion for men and women makes a strong statement about the way designers are approaching gender today. Photographs by Jamie Hawkesworth Styled by Joe McKenna

By Rob Haskell Photographs by Collier Schorr Styled by Jason Rider 70 The Strength of Simplicity

At Yves Saint Laurent’s final home in Tangier, Morocco, a stunning example of plain yet highly refined décor — and a dramatic changeup from the treasure palaces that came before. By Marian McEvoy Photographs by François Halard

ON THE COVER: The actor Channing Tatum, photographed by Collier Schorr and styled by Jason Rider.

T Emirates: The New York Times Style Magazine

FRANÇOIS HALARD

Design November – December, 2014

ADD ELEGANCE WITH OUR DESIGN SERVICES Sheikh Zayed Road 04 3808093 / Garhoud Street, Dubai 04 2826767 www.nakkashgallery.com

Table of Contents Page 44

Left: Delpozo’s forthcoming 2015 collection. Below: Polo Ralph Lauren dress, AED 2,931 ralphlauren.com

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Page49

13 Sign of the Times

Trumpeting the arrival of the Golden Age of Design. 16 This and That

Ridley Scott hits the club; vegetables are chic; Carsten Höller’s birds; Rodarte’s rugs; funny memoirs; and more. 22 Watch Report

The enduring elegance of simple chronographs. 24 Market Report

Black-and-white sweaters that are anything but boring. 25 Design Report

Fifty years later, Cedric Hartman’s iconic lamp shines on. 26 By the Numbers

Airport food’s rapid ascent. 27 Market Report/Design

28 Take Two

André 3000 and Fran Lebowitz chew on spicy oatmeal, two-way sunglasses and a handbag shaped like a train. 30 Market Report

Metallic collars worth sticking your neck out for.

Lookout Emirates 31 The Luxe List

A variety of luxury items inspired by a Middle Eastern heritage. 33 Transparent Time

Translucent casebacks unveil a timepiece’s inner workings. 34 A Neutral Affair

The neutral shade of gray takes on the leather bag. 35 A Tale of Persistence

Over the last 18 years Thomas Lundgren, the Swedish chief executive of The One, has worked to create one of the Gulf’s leading home furniture retailers. He’s also on a mission to save the world.

39 Upholding Tradition

Giuseppe Santoni and his master shoemaker, Silvano Sollini, reveal the efforts of the Italian leather shoe brand Santoni to pass on its traditional shoemaking techniques to a younger generation.

Arena 55

A collaborative tale from the minds of Joshua Ferris, Jenny Offill, Mohsin Hamid, James Patterson, Elif Batuman, Rivka Galchen, Anthony Marra, Adelle Waldman, Nicholson Baker, R. L. Stine, Hanya Yanagihara, David Baldacci, Rebecca Curtis, Ben Marcus and Zadie Smith.

42 Fashion Under the Hammer

A talk with Christie’s Director and Specialist Head of Textiles and Costumes, Pat Frost, about her personal journey in fashion through the auction house.

59 Business of Style

The all-American designer Michael Kors turns Shanghai into his own personal runway.

44 The Abstraction of Color

Creative Director Joseph Font of Delpozo is taking inspiration from the art world for his 2015 collection

Quality 49 In Fashion

The subtle romance of crochet and lace.

Arts and Letters

FROM LEFT: IMAGE COURTESY OF DELPOZO; MATTHEW KRISTALL

Sleek tray tables feel more modern than midcentury.

By Design

A brutalist 1960s church is home to Joerg Koch, the editor of the Berlin culture magazine 032c. 80 Document

A cheeky charades group acts out its favorite clues.

53 Making It

Meet the unlikely 36-year-old craftsman behind Berluti’s exquisite handmade shoes. ALL PRICES ARE INDICATIVE

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Channing Tatum in a vintage T-shirt, AED 411, meletmercantile.com, and Ralph Lauren Black Label sweater (worn underneath), AED 606, ralphlauren.com.

Page 66

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’KAABA PICTURE AS A MISPRINT 6’ 2014. BY HAMRA ABBAS. COURTESY OF LAWRIE SHABIBI GALLERY

Sign of the Times

Thanks to a convergence of creativity, technology and big money, the Golden Age of Design may finally be upon us. BY ROB WALKER

November – December, 2014

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Sign of the Times

THE GOLDEN AGE OF DESIGN has been heralded many times over

THIS DESIGN MOMENT is also about a different marketplace —

the past couple of decades — four, by my count. Now, this previous momentum paired with technology, community and big business has fueled something new: an unprecedented belief in the power of design to not only elevate an idea, but be the idea. First, at the turn of the 21st century, it became a democratic affair. Everyday objects were made more beautiful and more readily accessible, and suddenly it was no longer acceptable for things to be unnecessarily unattractive. Moment two arrived soon after, by way of products such as the iPod, which exemplified the possibility of form as actual function. ’’Design,’’ Steve Jobs told me in 2003, is ’’not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.’’ And the business world took note of what design could do for profits. As the aughts advanced, it occurred to people that if design could make products work better, it might also be able to make the world work better. Design was heralded as a creator of social change: Magazines like Good spread the word about its impact on humanity and politics; the Cooper Hewitt museum staged a show in 2007 called ’’Design for the Other 90%,’’ and a popular T-shirt from the period read: ’’Design Will Save the World.’’ Finally, a fourth moment: The advent of social media made clear that the masses not only responded to design; they cared about it enough to speak up. A new Gap logo was attacked by online mobs, and Tropicana scrapped a redesign of its orangejuice packaging after a public rebuke.

that of ideas. The influential MoMA senior architecture and design curator Paola Antonelli believes that one of design’s most important functions is ’’to help people deal with change.’’ Her exhibitions have featured projects such as the EyeWriter, a pair of glasses outfitted with eye-tracking technology that lets a user ’’draw’’ with his eyes. Created for a paralyzed artist, the product is a collaboration between technologists and designers, and relies on open-source software. It has no commercial ambitions. It’s simply a sharp example of an expressive designed object. We’re living in a time of ’’acknowledged urgency,’’ Antonelli says, and pragmatic fields from science to politics to business are looking to design for ’’inspiration, alternative processes, metaphor and a bit of uplift.’’ (’’Delight’’ has become a buzzword in Silicon Valley.) As a result, design has become incredibly multifaceted in recent years, encompassing subfields such as interaction design, critical design, environmental design, social design, biodesign and service design, to name just a few. It’s become a medium for expressing ideas, raising provocative questions and addressing social and individual anxieties.

’People who make things generally have not been in the seat of power, because they’re busy making things.’ But that’s starting to change.

THESE DAYS, engineering-centric Silicon Valley sees design as something that no longer just adds value, but actually creates it. Last year, Nest Labs, maker of the sleekly styled smart thermostat, was purchased by Google for $3.2 billion. This was not just a staggering amount of money for a company that specializes in household objects; it was Google’s second most expensive acquisition ever. The industrial designer Yves Béhar, who is behind the elegant Jawbone Up fitness tracker, sometimes takes equity stakes in start-ups he works with rather than payment. Instead of thinking of himself as an outside consultant, Béhar invests in companies that invest in design, banking on their future growth. The idea that design can generate profit is now being embraced by venture capitalists, too — that rarefied class known for its relentless focus on the marketplace as the ultimate arbiter of value. The well-regarded Silicon Valley venture firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers raised eyebrows last year by bringing in John Maeda, the former president of the Rhode Island School of Design, as a partner. The firm has noticed more designers starting companies with the help of engineers, rather than the other way around. Kleiner’s Mike Abbott points to the Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, who moved from software to hardware when he founded Square, the seamlessly designed product that lets anyone take credit-card payments through a smartphone. Similarly, the homesharing firm Airbnb’s systematic thinking and simple user interface have made it immensely popular — and earned it a $10 billion valuation. (Two of its founders are RISD graduates.) Smart design is intrinsic to its success. ’’People who make things generally have not been in the seat of power,’’ Maeda argues, ’’because they’re busy making things.’’ But he believes that’s starting to change, and that eventually people like Airbnb’s co-founders will bring design-based thinking to mainstream business practices.

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SO IS DESIGN a business builder or idea spreader? Both, often at the same time. In earlier moments, the democratization of design was about what we could buy. Now it’s about what we can make and how we can sell. The online marketplace Etsy has redefined how small-scale makers can earn a living, or at least subsidize a creative hobby. Last year, the site hosted more than a million active shops. According to a 2012 survey, nearly a fifth of Etsy sellers considered running their creative businesses their full-time job. Crowdfunding services like Kickstarter also enable aspiring design entrepreneurs to find support for their projects. One breakaway success was an early-stage ’’smart watch’’ called Pebble, which could connect to smartphones, display emails and text messages and even run apps. Two years ago, without the backing of an established company — let alone venture capitalists — its founders raised more than half a million dollars in a matter of hours, eventually bringing in $10 million to develop the watch. As Maeda observed, today’s design student may be less interested in building a portfolio than in simply crowdfunding an idea. Allan Chochinov, head of the Products of Design graduate program at the School of Visual Arts, talks about how design has moved ’’from the aesthetic, to the strategic, to the participatory.’’ In his thinking, the ’’open source’’ ideology we normally associate with certain corners of tech culture has made its way into design. Engineering and design are melding; code-y enterprises are making objects; and objectmakers are hardwiring all kinds of things with code. Young designers need to be conversant in tools like the Arduino platform (inexpensive hardware for programming interactive objects) and customizable Raspberry Pi computers (credit card-sized circuit boards that can plug into monitors and keyboards). Style, functionality and engineering are now one and the same, and even mundane objects are virtuously designed. What is certain is that all these combined elements — style, function, social impact, creativity and profit motive — have yielded an original vision of what design is and why it matters. Design has fundamentally changed the way we experience the world, from the way we interact with objects to our expectations about how organizations are structured. It’s a new and exciting moment for design — that is, until the next one comes along.

This and That A Cultural Compendium

Cuckoo’s Nest

Carsten Höller’s home is literally for the birds.

ILLUSTRATIONS BY KONSTANTIN KAKANIAS

Ridley Scott Hits Annabel’s Cinema’s most distinguished directors don’t typically make documentaries about nightclubs — but then, Annabel’s isn’t just any club. With rich red banquettes and walls dotted with Art Deco paintings, London’s most storied members-only boîte has for decades been home to celebrity habitués like Frank Sinatra and Lady Gaga, and has become synonymous with revelry and riotous nights. In ’’A String of Naked Lightbulbs,’’ produced by Ridley Scott, actors, supermodels and rock stars conjure the blurry nocturnal memories they shared at the establishment — reportedly the only bar ever patronized by Her Majesty the Queen. The film focuses quite a bit on the drink of choice — claret, always claret — and the strict dress code that once kept the Beatles from getting through the door (in fairness, they weren’t wearing shoes). And while it does an excellent job of recapping the early days of the scene, it also makes a case for the venue’s enduring relevance. ’’I think when something is put together with that kind of affection,’’ the musician Bryan Ferry says, ’’it kind of lasts forever.’’ annabels.co.uk — NATE FREEMAN

’’Beautiful, no?’’ the Belgian artist says, pointing to a Siberian rubythroat darting around a large cage in what was once the guest room of his Stockholm apartment. Höller, known for his playful, participatory installations — tube slides that span multiple floors, rooms with giant mushrooms hanging from the ceiling — has spent the past several years filling his personal aviaries with feathered friends acquired from Belgium, Italy, Holland and Germany. Höller also meticulously photographs his collection, tracking each bird’s development from egg to adult. ’’They look quite beautiful when they are older,’’ he says. ’’But in the beginning, they look like aliens.’’ In addition to incorporating the birds into his 2011 exhibition at the New Museum in New York, he has been making photogravures of one-of-a-kind canary crossbreeds with the Danish artist Niels Borch Jensen. ’’I just don’t know where it comes from,’’ the former agricultural entomologist says of his obsession. Certainly not his mother: ’’She’s like, ’What kind is this?’ and I say, ’I’ve told you like a hundred times, that’s a song thrush! It’s very easy to recognize!’ ’’ andquestionmark.com — DAN CRANE

FASHION MEMO

Dust Off the Leisure Suit A sleek new silhouette elevates the ’70s staple from business-casual kitsch. From left: Alexander McQueen jacket, AED 16,143, and pants, AED 8,062. Marni top, AED 3,452, and pants, AED 3,122, modaoperandi.com. Derek Lam top, price on request, and pants, AED 3,636. Louis Vuitton jacket and pants, price on request, louisvuitton.com. Prada jacket, AED 7,750, and pants, AED 6,648. Miu Miu top, AED 9,219, and pants, AED 6,152. ALL PRICES ARE INDICATIVE

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CLOCKWISE FROM TOP RIGHT: PIERRE BJÖRK; CARSTEN HÖLLER; COURTESY OF MIU MIU; COURTESY OF PRADA; COURTESY OF LOUIS VUITTON; COURTESY OF DEREK LAM; MARNI; COURTESY OF ALEXANDER M C QUEEN

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This and That

Dream Weavers

FOOD MATTERS

Center-Stage Vegetables

To shape the narrative of each fashion collection, the Rodarte designers Kate and Laura Mulleavy manipulate the structure of their textiles, subjecting fabrics to handpainting, distressing and even burning. For the Rug Company, the sisters are applying their love of 3-D textures to five new styles of carpet — including porcelain, ivy and marble motifs — that echo some of their LOOPED IN Laura (left) clothing’s most memorable and Kate Mulleavy in patterns. Taking into account front of their ivy trellis ’’how every thread interacts with rug. Below: a cobalt motif in knotted wool and silk. each other and how the fibers read in different rooms and light,’’ they ’’worked on shades and textures that would make a whole world for someone.’’ From $123/sq. ft., therugcompany.com — EVIANA HARTMAN

The vegetarian-heavy menu trend in downtown Manhattan is picking up steam, but unlike other food fads, this one doesn’t seem like it will go out of fashion. In March, Bobby Flay opened the Mediterranean-inspired Gato, where the best-selling item is a kale and mushroom paella. In SoHo, stylish diners are flocking to Navy, where Camille Becerra incorporates ingredients sourced from a Pennsylvania farmers’ cooperative into a vegetable- and seafood-based menu that includes charred snow peas with peanuts, chili and basil. Later this fall, Amanda Cohen will move Dirt Candy, her popular meatfree restaurant, to a larger space on the Lower East Side, while Jean-Georges Vongerichten is expected to open his newest spot, a vegan and vegetarian eatery for ABC Home, in early 2015. At Narcissa, in the newly revamped Standard East Village hotel, John Fraser has made vegetables from the hotelier André Balazs’s upstate farm the basis of a fantastic meal. ’’Chefs aren’t thinking about how to make ’vegetable’ dishes anymore,’’ according to Flay. ’’They’re making interesting, healthier dishes in general, and vegetables have become more a part of that.’’ gatonyc.com, navynyc.com, dirtcandynyc.com, abchome.com, narcissarestaurant.com — LAURA NEILSON

Zines that aren’t just for angry teens.

GOD SAVE THE ZINE Clockwise from top right: Darren Goins’s ’’Big Bright Eyes on This Big Bright Screen’’; Sumi Ink Club’s ’’Variety Gate’’; Ed Templeton’s ’’Photographs by Spot’’; Travis Diehl’s ’’Spiralogues’’; Sarah Soquel Morhaim’s ’’Year of the Ghost’’; Alex Heilbron’s ’’Strawberry’’; Public Fiction’s ’’Dispatches’’ #1 and #5.

T Emirates: The New York Times Style Magazine

While insurrectionary pamphlets have existed since the invention of the printing press, zines only came of age in the 1970s thanks to punk culture and cheap Xerox copying. Today, they embrace different styles (pointillism, poetry) and subjects (gay goths, Italian dogs), but almost all are still selfpublished in limited runs. In Los Angeles, artists are rediscovering these D.I.Y. publications as a way to experiment and showcase their work. For ’’Photographs by Spot,’’ Ed Templeton combines laser-printed photos of the SoCal punk and beach scenes with covers that have been Risographed — an ’80s copying technique that uses a stencil and singlecolor ink. Travis Diehl’s ’’Spiralogues’’ documents a trip to Robert Smithson’s earthwork ’’Spiral Jetty.’’ Sumi Ink Club, by Luke Fischbeck and Sarah Rara of the band Lucky Dragons, reproduces details from the illustrations they make at public drawing events. ’’Any way you can cheat Kinko’s is smiled upon,’’ says Jenn Witte, of Skylight Books in Los Feliz, where stapled and stitched zines are displayed on a clothes rack. skylightbooks.com — JONATHAN GRIFFIN

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP RIGHT: AUTUMN DE WILDE; COURTESY OF THE RUG COMPANY; MARKO METZINGER. ILLUSTRATION BY KONSTANTIN KAKANIAS

FEELING FOR

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This and That CLOSE READ

Four comedians bare their souls (and other bits) in their upcoming memoirs.

On beauty: ’’If you are lucky, there is a moment in your life when you have some say as to what your currency is going to be. I decided early on it was not going to be my looks. I have spent a lifetime coming to terms with this idea and I would say I am about 15 to 20 percent there . . . Believe me, blond hair can take you really far, especially with the older men. It can really distract from the face .’’ (Dey Street Books)

On performance: ’’The number-one rule in show business is: Never follow a singer with a singer. The number-two rule in show business, incidentally, is: Never look Barbra Streisand in the eye when she is walking onstage, or during foreplay.’’ (HarperCollins)

On modesty: ’’Directly showing family and neighbors and co-workers that you’re proud of the way you live accomplishes something on a core level that intense advocacy sometimes can’t. So for the most part your style is to lead by example, to show ordinary people — Oprah, say — around your home, to . . . see what kind of family the four of you really are. And let Oprah take it from there.’’ (Crown Archetype)

WHEN IN SANTA FE

Vintage Americana

A different kind of carnival rolls into the Big Easy.

URBAN RENEWAL Clockwise from above: Will Ryman’s steel sculpture, ’’Icon,’’ 2011; Camille Henrot’s sound and video installation, ’’Grosse Fatigue,’’ 2013; Lucien Smith’s oil painting, ’’Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin,’’ 2013; the curator Franklin Sirmans.

New Orleans has long been regarded as a buffet for culture enthusiasts: jazz aficionados, food obsessives, architectural purists, literary junkies and those seeking enlightenment in the form of wanton decadence. Missing from the menu, however, has been a marquee art festival. That changed in 2008, when the city hosted America’s largest international biennial, Prospect.1, to help bolster its post-Katrina renaissance. Kicking off this month is the exhibition’s third installment, Prospect.3, during which museums, public parks and galleries dotting scrappy St. Claude Avenue will be transformed into a showcase for nearly 60 artists from around the world. Curated by Franklin Sirmans of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Prospect.3 aims to be a reflection of the city’s singular spirit — a show that mixes the canonized with the newly celebrated (Jean-Michel Basquiat, Camille Henrot, Lucien Smith) to explore ideas about the American South, crime and punishment and the region’s embrace of Mardi Gras culture. ’’New Orleans is a place where you have this high contrast between the clean and the dirty, the good and the bad, the old and the new, those who have and those who have not,’’ Sirmans says. ’’It’s really a microcosm of our whole country.’’ Oct. 25-Jan. 25, 2015, prospectneworleans.org — DAVID AMSDEN

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For more than a decade, Scott Corey’s byappointment-only showroom has been Santa Fe’s best-kept fashion secret, with bigname designers making pilgrimages to his warehouse to source denim, cowboy boots and Southwest antiques. With the jewelry designer Julienne Barth, Corey has opened Santa Fe Vintage Outpost, a new shop along the historic East Palace Avenue, just a block down from where the Manhattan Project physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer once kept an office. The adobe storefront houses Mexican peasant dresses, wool blankets and reworked indigo Mali cloth alongside Barth’s own creations and jewelry from Zuni, Navajo, Hopi and Santo Domingo tribes. ’’If it’s interesting and unusual,’’ Corey says, ’’it’s in here.’’ santafevintage.com — KATE DONNELLY

CLOCKWISE FROM BOTTOM RIGHT: JULIENNE BARTH; COURTESY THE ARTIST AND PAUL KASMIN GALLERY, NEW YORK; COURTESY THE ARTIST, SILEX FILMS AND KAMEL MENNOUR, PARIS; COURTESY SALON 94, NEW YORK; MUSEUM ASSOCIATES/LACMA. ILLUSTRATIONS BY KONSTANTIN KAKANIAS

On parenting: “I enrolled them in a small private school that Meryl Streep and Dustin Hoffman sent their kids to . . . There wasn’t a dry eye in the playground as Ms. Streep handed over her lunches to her kids and, with the brave determination of her Oscar-winning performance as Sophie, made the choice to get in her Volvo station wagon and drive away.’’ (HarperCollins)

Watch Report

Don’t Work So Hard After years of ever-complicated mechanisms, the simple chronograph still gets the job done — elegantly. PHOTOGRAPHS BY CHARLIE ENGMAN Top left: A. Lange & Söhne Double Split, AED 471,621, alange-soehne.com. Boss suit, AED 7327, hugoboss.com. Brunello Cucinelli shirt, AED 2,277. Top right: Chopard L.U.C. 1963 Chrono, AED 163,230, chopard.com. Marc Jacobs suit, AED 7,328, marcjacobs.com. Brunello Cucinelli shirt, AED 2,314. Bottom right: Montblanc Meisterstuck Heritage Pulsograph, AED 126,721, montblanc.com. A.P.C. jacket, AED 2,222, apc.fr. Gucci shirt, AED 1,083, gucci.com. Bottom left: Longines Single Push-Piece Chronograph, AED 38,843, longines.com. Michael Kors jacket, AED 1,451, michaelkors.com. Brunello Cucinelli shirt, AED 2,167. ALL PRICES ARE INDICATIVE

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STYLED BY JASON RIDER. MODEL: MATTHEW CADIGAN AT FORD. HAIR BY RACHEL TOLIN USING ORIBE. MAKEUP BY AKIKO SAKAMOTO USING CHANEL FOR SEE MANAGEMENT. MANICURE BY RIEKO OKUSA FOR DIOR VERNIS AT SUSAN PRICE N.Y.C. SET DESIGN BY CHAD DZIEWIOR AT BRYDGES MACKINNEY

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Things Yule Like • Roald Dahl’s Willy Wonka • Moscow City Ballet’s The Nutcracker • Sheherazade et la 1002ème Nuit

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Market Report

Black and White Sweaters The basic crew goes supergraphic. PHOTOGRAPHS BY JOANNA M C CLURE

Clockwise from top left: Ami, AED 1,340. Comme des Garçons Shirt, AED 1,561. Topman, AED 293. Saint Laurent by Hedi Slimane, AED 4,959. Alexander McQueen, AED 5,491. Kent & Curwen, AED 1,818. Dior Homme, AED 3,673. Krisvanassche, AED 2,564.

ALL PRICES ARE INDICATIVE

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Design Report

A Light Touch Cedric Hartman’s understated floor lamp became an immediate design classic when it launched in 1966 — and has never fallen from favor. BY TOM DELAVAN PORTRAIT BY ANDRES GONZALEZ

LAMP: JOANNA MCCLURE

FIFTY YEARS AGO in Omaha, Nebraska,

BRIGHT IDEA Hartman’s iconic 1UWV lamp is surprisingly low profile, just thick enough to conceal the long bulb and supported by a metal tube only half an inch wide. Top right: Hartman in his Omaha, Neb., loft.

Cedric Hartman came up with a design that foretold the future of lighting: a slim metal floor lamp with a small triangular shade that all but disappeared in a room. Unlike the attentiongrabbing lamps of the time, with their decorative bases, bulky shades and ambient lighting, Hartman’s slender design directed light only where needed. ’’The goal was to make a lamp that didn’t force you to look at it during the day but got the light where you want it,’’ he says. The result was the 1UWV, which had the functionality of a task lamp but was attractive enough to put in the most stylish homes. Within a year, the Museum of Modern Art selected the lamp to be part of its permanent collection, and it quickly became a favorite of high-end decorators as well as architects and perhaps the most widely imitated lamp in the world. Flip through books on Billy Baldwin, Mark Hampton, Hugh Newell Jacobsen or virtually any interiors magazine and you will find it. Like a game of ’’Where’s Waldo?’’ you will see it, discreetly peeking over the arm of a chair, or perched quietly next to a sofa. Today, due to the advent of tiny, flexible LED strips, a lamp can take on almost any form. But back then, such a low profile was revolutionary. Despite its delicate design, the 1UWV is so well made that it lasts for decades, holding its value like a vintage Mercedes or a Rolex. In person, the quality of the lamp, down to its elegant, transparent spherical switch, is immediately

apparent. The act of unwrapping a beautifully packaged Hartman feels almost ceremonial, as if you are revealing something precious and exquisite. (It actually comes with white gloves, the kind worn by handlers of expensive artwork.) Its subtlety makes for incredible versatility. In traditional settings, it’s a jewellike accessory; in contemporary spaces, it is understated and architectural. The perfectionist in Hartman has mixed feelings about the 1UWV today. He believes technology has made it possible to address some of what he considers the lamp’s shortcomings. ’’In my view, it isn’t well enough articulated and I was always bothered by it getting too hot,’’ he says. To him it was a rough draft, or a memorable early role for which he’s been forever typecast. In subsequent years, he’s continued to design lights, in addition to sofas, chairs and tables — ’’quiet, good-looking pieces,’’ as he describes them — though the 1UWV is still his best-known work. Hartman, like his designs, does not call attention to himself. He still lives in Omaha, preferring to quietly focus on his craft. Despite his aversion to self-promotion and his physical distance from the centers of the design world, he has succeeded not only in building a profitable business, but also in making a product that stands on its own merit. At 85, Hartman has no intention of retiring. ’’I’m thinking about an LED component for the 1UWV,’’ he says. ’’I’m still working on getting it right!’’

November – December, 2014

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By the Numbers

Percent of travelers who buy food aboard flights

Airport Restaurants

In recent years, as airlines around the world have cut back on in-flight food, a wave of business-savvy chefs have given rise to the golden age of airport dining. Want champagne and caviar? Take a seat at the Petrossian bar at LAX. Have a taste for perfectly marinated goose meat? Check out Hung’s Delicacies at Hong Kong International. Even local joints — Ivar’s fish bar in Seattle, the Salt Lick in Driftwood, Tex. — have gotten into the act, opening airport outposts that make it feel as if you’ve visited even when you’re just passing through. (Chefs at Phoenix Sky Harbor International think so highly of their food they’re pushing to host a James Beard Foundation dinner at the airport next year.) Indeed, thanks to a doubling of air traffic in the past 15 years — not to mention a general refinement of taste on the part of travelers — eating at the airport no longer means just preflipped burgers and cafeteria seating. Here, some stats on food’s rapidly ascending staging ground. — JACOB Z. GROSS

Percent of travelers who buy food at the airport

+500%

Est. increase in the amount of space allotted for restaurants and bars in American airports since the 1960s

120,000 lbs.

Amount of brisket sold last year at the Salt Lick at AustinBergstrom International Airport

Number of croissants sold each year at Heathrow

50,000 sq. ft.

Approx. area of the dining space at Qatar’s new Hamad International Airport

30 min.

Approx. length of the brewery tour at Munich International’s Airbrau, billed as Europe’s only airport brewery

$16

Avg. amount per flier spent at Chicago’s O’Hare Terminal 5 before it was redesigned this year

$26

Amount per flier spent after the redesign

’’Width of our first three fingers’’

Thickness of the burgers at Heston Blumenthal’s Perfectionists’ Cafe at Heathrow, inspired by an oral physiologist’s discovery that this is the widest our mouths can comfortably open to eat 26

Richard Branson’s top picks: (not including the Virgin Atlantic clubhouse)

1. Cat Cora’s Kitchen at SFO 2. Tyler Florence Rotisserie in Napa Farms Market at SFO 3. Star Alliance lounge at LAX 4. MoVida at the Sydney Airport

26 miles

Distance from O’Hare at which the cows for the beef served at Tortas Frontera by Rick Bayless graze

Number of airport restaurants with a Michelin star (Top Air in Stuttgart)

$167

Cost of the seven-course tasting menu at Top Air

Contestants on ’’Top Chef Masters’’ who have opened airport restaurants

AVG. NUMBER OF PETROSSIAN ’’CAVIAR PICNIC IN THE SKY’’ PACKAGES (COST: UP TO $1,009) SOLD AT LAX EACH MONTH (INCLUDES CAVIAR, A PETROSSIAN TOTE, TSAR-CUT SALMON, CRÈME FRAÎCHE, PEARL SPOONS AND TOAST POINTS)

Free meals offered by major airlines to coach passengers on domestic flights in the U.S. since 2010

FROM TOP LEFT: SIM CANETTY-CLARKE; BRITISH AIRWAYS SPEEDBIRD HERITAGE COLLECTION

200+

Number of dishes offered by the vendors at Changi Airport’s Singapore Food Street

6.4 million

$195,000

Price of a bottle of Château Margaux Balthazar 2009 at Le Clos’s flagship at Dubai International, making it the world’s most expensive wine

Market Report

Tray Tables

With circular tops and clean lines, a midcentury workhorse enters the modern era.

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: CRATE & BARREL LINC TABLE, CRATEANDBARREL.COM. E15 HABIBI TRAY SIDE TABLE, KARKULA.COM. HOLLY HUNT MIA TABLE, HOLLYHUNT.COM. NVDRS GERGETI COFFEE TABLE, NVDRSDESIGN.COM. DESIGN WITHIN REACH BOLLING TRAY TABLE, DWR.COM. B&B ITALIA FAT FAT TABLES, BEBITALIA.COM. ROCHE BOBOIS BOW END TABLE, ROCHE-BOBOIS.COM. B&B ITALIA HUSK ROUND SMALL TABLE, BEBITALIA.COM

PHOTOGRAPHS BY JOANNA M C CLURE

Clockwise from left: Crate & Barrel, AED 547. e15, AED 8,338. Holly Hunt, price on request. NVDRS, price on request. Design Within Reach, AED 3,287. B&B Italia, from AED 2,637. Roche Bobois, AED 5,436. B&B Italia, AED 6,454.

ALL PRICES ARE INDICATIVE

November – December, 2014

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Take Two

André 3000

Fran Lebowitz

Atlanta-based rapper, actor and professional Polaroid shaker who is best known as one half of the pioneering hip-hop duo Outkast. He recently starred as another musical icon, Jimi Hendrix, in the biopic ’’Jimi: All Is by My Side.’’

American essayist, understated style icon and gavel-banging ’’Law & Order’’ judge whose next book is coming together so slowly that ’’I could write in my own blood without hurting myself.’’

I don’t know if I need that much variety in one pair of shades. You got a lot of flipping around, a lot of joints. It’s like a fire truck with a driver in the front and a driver in the back.

Reversible Sunglasses From Kaibosh and the Norwegian clothing line Haik (AED 899, kaibosh.com).

Just taking a spoon to it and eating it was kind of brutal. I know everybody’s on a health kick, but I always go back to the foods I grew up with as a kid: Now & Later, Laffy Taffy and Starburst.

If I saw a girl in the club with it on, I’d be like, Oh, that’s pretty interesting. But I don’t know if I’d pay for that much for it. I wear an orange hat every day and it costs, like, a dollar.

It’s a fun desk thing if you work at an office. But I’m not home a lot, and everything already comes up on my smartphone. This is doing the same job, but just making paper that you have to throw away.

This is ultra-awesome to me. There are a lot of sexual references in this, and I have that in my art as well. I think it comes from being a kid and fantasizing about things.

Spicy Granola Bad Seed’s Chili Granola, which goes with tacos or yogurt (AED 40, mouth.com).

They’re two-way sunglasses, all right — they stay on one way, they fall off the other. I only have one pair of sunglasses because they were so expensive. It was either one and an apartment, or two and live outside.

I’m not a granola purist — I do not consider eating to be a field of ideology and scholarship, unlike everyone else. But ’’chili’’ and ’’granola’’ are two words that should never go together.

You can tell the idea came to him as if it was the concept of gravity — ’’And then it came to him!’’ — but it’s too adorable for me. I’d be more interested in a train in the shape of a handbag.

Moynat’s Train Bag Created with Pharrell Williams (AED 47,492, Dover Street Market, New York).

Tiny Printer A web-connected box that spits out news headlines, text messages, daily schedules and most-liked Instagram photos (AED 731, littleprinter.com).

Chris Ofili Show A retrospective of the Turner Prize-winning English painter (Oct. 29Feb. 1, newmuseum.org).

I was vastly entertained that the Internet, which is killing newspapers, now gives you something where you can print out a little newspaper. It’s like a hunting rifle that makes little deer.

I remember when Giuliani tried to close Ofili’s show at the Brooklyn Museum. Even for Giuliani, who was endlessly horrifying, it was a shocking thing to do. But if this guy uses actual elephant dung in his work, then perhaps I’d rather just have a picture of a picture in my house. ALL PRICES ARE INDICATIVE

SCOTT GRIES/GETTY IMAGES; DIMITRIOS KAMBOURIS/GETTY IMAGES/AFP. IMAGES FROM TOP: COURTESY OF KAIBOSH; PENNY DE LOS SANTOS; MOYNAT BAG FOR PHARRELL WILLIAMS; BERG; COURTESY CHRIS OFILI, DAVID ZWIRNER, NEW YORK/LONDON, AND VICTORIA MIRO, LONDON

A dual review of what’s new.

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Neck Collars

Significant sculpture to frame the face and anchor a look. PHOTOGRAPHS BY JOANNA M C CLURE

Clockwise from top left: Lanvin, AED 5,821. Saint Laurent by Hedi Slimane, AED 16,876. Aurélie Bidermann, AED 5,913. Louis Vuitton, about AED 11,128. Balenciaga, AED 2,552. Dior, AED 15,426. Maison Martin Margiela, AED 8,392. WXYZ Jewelry, AED 1,671.

T Emirates: The New York Times Style Magazine

PROP STYLIST: PAUL MORENO. CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: LANVIN COLLAR, NET-A-PORTER, (877) 678-9627. SAINT LAURENT BY HEDI SLIMANE COLLAR, (212) 980-2970. AURÉLIE BIDERMANN COLLAR, (212) 335-0604. LOUIS VUITTON COLLAR, (866) 884-8866. BALENCIAGA COLLAR, (212) 206-0872. DIOR COLLAR, (800) 929-3467. MAISON MARTIN MARGIELA COLLAR, (212) 989-7612. WXYZ JEWELRY COLLAR, WXYZJEWELRY.COM

Market Report

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Portofino Time

The Luxe List

A selection of luxury objects inspired by a Middle Eastern heritage. BY REBECCA ANNE PROCTOR

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: PHOTO BY PETER LINDBERG; COURTESY OF IWC; COURTESY OF ROBERT WAN; COURTESY OF FREDERIC MALLE

Night Oud Perfumer Dominique Ropion’s first composition for Editions de Parfums Frederic Malle comes in the form of the Oriental scent of oud. Unlike other perfumes called oud, which contain mere traces of this precious ingredient, Ropion’s fragrance entitled The Night is created with an unprecedented proportion of oud from India which the perfumer has combined with a generous amount of Turkish rose and amber. The scent stems from Ropion’s continuous fascination with Middle Eastern culture. “I have been fascinated by the scents of sophisticated people from the Middle East ever since I was a teenager, when by chance I would encounter them in London, Paris or the South of France,” says Malle. “My desire to seek out true Oriental scents led me to conduct numerous trips to the Middle East, as well as to open an Editions de Parfums in Dubai.” Available at Bloomingdale’s Dubai at The Dubai Mall. Price on request.

Evoking the classic elegance of the Italian coastal town of Portofino, IWC Schaffhausen recently unveiled the new Portofino Midsize collection. These refined wristwatches were specially launched in Dubai in the presence of the brand’s CEO Georges Kern and accompanied by a photography exhibition of works by Peter Lindbergh who was commissioned by IWC to shoot renowned friends of the brand, including Emily Blunt, Karolina Kurkova and Adriana Lima. Exquisitely captured in black and white, each photograph portrays the refined classicism of the new Midsize collection. Created for both men and women, the collection offers timepieces which are slightly smaller and more refined in style. Each has a case measuring 37 millimeters in diameter and is available in four red-gold and six stainless-steel versions. An understated variation comes with 12 jewels on the dial, while a more sumptuous piece is available with a diamond-set bezel. This year will also see the return of the moon phase display to the Portofino watch family. In the classic yet imaginative Portofino Midsize Automatic Moon Phase, the earth’s satellite is set in a cloud scene cast in space amidst a starry night sky. Available in Dubai at the IWC boutique in The Dubai Mall and BurJuman Centre, and in Abu Dhabi at the Marina Mall and The Galleria. Price on request.

Pearl Bar Well known for his jewelry and watch items made from fine Tahitian-cultured pearls, Robert Wan’s pearl bar is set to open at Bloomingdale’s Dubai in The Dubai Mall. Nicknamed “The Pearl Emperor of Tahiti,” Wan is one of the predominant producers of Tahitian pearls worldwide. Commonly known as “black pearls,” Wan’s Tahitian pearls are found in a variety of natural colors, from pitch black to shimmering shades of purple, green, bronze, and pink. The brand’s innovative jewelry pieces combine precious gold and silver as well as other luxurious materials. At the brand’s new pearl bar, shoppers can take a personality test to ascertain which Tahitian pearl best suits their character. Available at Bloomingdale’s in The Dubai Mall, Harvey Nichols in Mall of the Emirates and at the Robert Wan Showroom, Almas Tower in Jumeirah Lakes Towers. Price on request.

November – December, 2014

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Grecian Inspiration Magnificent cuts and vibrant colors make Dubaibased Syrian designer Ola Kashani’s eponymous swimwear brand a mesmerizing ensemble of sleek and stunning forms. Deriving its inspiration from ancient Greece, Kashani’s 2015 resort collection plays on the idea of a Grecian queen who is at once brave, confident and exceptionally feminine. Such ideas can be found in the look and feel of each bathing suit which is one-of-a-kind and handmade with meticulous craftsmanship. Available on www.olaswimwear.com. Price on request.

Metallic Sheen The creative director of luxury leather goods brand Baraboux, HRH Princess Reema Bandar Al Saud, is an expert in travel. Born in Saudi Arabia, she was raised in Washington, D.C. and now divides her time between homes in London, Riyadh, Los Angeles and Florence, where the Baraboux leather workshops are located. Al Saud created Baraboux for women who, like her, wear more than one hat. “I have designed a collection with the mission of easing daily life for the modern woman,” she says. Baraboux’s ultra-chic, practical and versatile bags include features that allow elegant day bags to transform into glamorous evening clutches. The idea is to have one bag that provides the function of two. For Baraboux’s Autumn/Winter 2014 collection, the brand collaborated with creative consultant Caroline Issa on a collection comprising classic shapes with vibrant patterns and an avant-garde spirit. Available at Saks Fifth Avenue at BurJuman Centre in Dubai. Price on request.

Palestinian Patterns Vibrant patterns and textures evoking the colorful embroidery and tribal-like style of local artisans from Palestine, Southeast Asia and Thailand are the design elements found within Dubai-based fashion brand Mochi. The label’s ethnic creations have now been showcased at several European fashion weeks, including in London and Milan, and worn by celebrities such as Rita Ora and petite fashionista Mira Duma. Through the incorporation of historical patterns in modern silhouettes, Mochi merges Eastern and Western sensibilities. Moreover, the brand is a reflection of the work of local artisans who incorporate ancient methods of embroidery and craftsmanship. Originally from Palestine, the brand’s founder Mochi Aya Tabari has a love of exotic cultures as well as the preservation of local traditions. Mochi’s latest Palestinian collection reflects on the historical embroidery of Tabari’s homeland. In addition, 10 percent of all proceeds from the collection will be donated to the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund (PCRF). Available on www.allthingsmochi.com. Price on request.

T Emirates: The New York Times Style Magazine

Available at the Isabel Marant boutique in Mall of the Emirates or on boutique1.com. AED 13,600.

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: COURTESY OF OLA SWIMWEAR; COURTESY OF ISABEL MARANT; COURTESY OF MOCHI; COURTESY OF BARABOUX

Modern Nomad

Isabel Marant’s long-sleeved Rami leather embossed Croc Jacket has all the elements that make it an ideal garment to wear for a night out. The jacket slips on with ease and has a ruffled detailing which provides it with a more form-fitting and feminine look. Couple it with an Isabel Marant top, trousers and heels. The designer’s first store in the Middle East is scheduled to open in December at Mall of the Emirates.

Transparent Time CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: COURTESY OF JAEGER-LECOULTRE; COURTESY OFCARTIER; COURTESY OF CLAUDE MEYLAN; COURTESY OF HUBLOT; COURTESY OF RICHARD MILLE; COURTESY OF HERMES; COURTESY OF BOVET; COURTESY OF CORUM

These watches reveal their inner workings through translucent case-backs.

Clockwise from top left: Jaeger-LeCoultre Master Grande Tradition QP 8 Jours, price on request. Cartier Tank LC Sapphire Skeleton Watch, price on request. Claude Meylan Tortue de Joux, price on request. Hublot Classic Fusion Tourbillon Skull, price on request. Richard Mille RM 017 Tourbillon Extra Flat, price on request. Hermès Arceau Squelette, AED 35,500. Bovet Amadeo Fleurier 44, Amadeo Skeleton, price on request. Corum Admiral’s Cup AC-One 45, price on request.

ALL PRICES ARE INDICATIVE

November – December, 2014

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FROM CLOCKWISE: COURTESY OF SAINT LAURENT BY HEDI SLIMANE; COURTESY OF BOTTEGA VENETA; COURTESY OF ETIENNE AIGNER; COURTESY OF ALEXANDER MCQUEEN; COURTESY OF EMPORIO ARMANI; COURTESY OF TOD’S; COURTESY OF JIMMY CHOO; COURTESY OF SALVATORE FERRAGAMO

A Neutral Affair

Gray gives the ubiquitous leather bag a new feel. Clockwise, from top left: Saint Laurent by Hedi Slimane, AED 129,000. Bottega Veneta, AED 21,800. Etienne Aigner, AED 7,130. Alexander McQueen, AED 22,400. Emporio Armani, AED 3,400.Tod’s, AED 7,130. Jimmy Choo, AED 5,750. Salvatore Ferragamo, AED 9,690.

ALL PRICES ARE INDICATIVE

T Emirates: The New York Times Style Magazine

A Tale of Persistence Swedish CEO of The One, Thomas Lundgren, has a vision: to create innovative furniture and help others in the process. BY REBECCA ANNE PROCTOR

ALL IMAGES COURTESY OF THE ONE

Thomas Lundgren, seated in his furniture store, The One.

THOMAS LUNDGREN IS LATE. I’m seated in the upstairs café of one of the Swedish CEO’s now many furniture outlets called The One. The ambience is warm and inviting and filled with the multitude of innovative and fashionable furniture items that The One is known for. A lovely young Indian man named Ibrahim waves hello to me. He notices that I am sitting by myself and asks with a smile how he can help me. As he comes closer I realize that this man appears to suffer from Down syndrome. And yet, he’s incredibly efficient, getting the waitress to take my order and telling me about the store. Ibrahim is one of many physically challenged individuals that The One employs as

part of the company’s mission to improve the world. Lundgren suddenly appears. He’s tall with slightly long, disheveled, dirty blonde hair and a cool demeanor. He apologizes for being late and then turns to Ibrahim and says, “Ibrahim here is the boss when I am not here.” Lundgren’s open and seemingly carefree demeanor is incredibly disarming. He’s cool, collected, humble and generous — unexpected qualities from someone who’s achieved so much. It’s clear that he has many admirers among his staff. The first thing we speak about is his art-making. Lundgren is a painter and furniture designer, and he compiles music. He loves

November – December, 2014

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GLAMORAMA Furniture items from The One’s recent Glamorama collection.

food and assists with creating the menu of the café where we are seated. “These things spur my alter ego,” he says. “I am what you call ’unemployable’ and that’s why I needed to have my own company.” Often described as the creator of the modern Middle East’s furniture retail revolution, Lundgren calls himself a passionate idealist in search of his own happiness and on a mission to save the world. I witness this fervent sense of idealism immediately when he hands me his business card, or rather has me “choose a card” from a panoply of colorful ones all in the same form and design. I choose a purple card and observe the front side which depicts a man with an afro hairstyle and sunglasses seated in yogi cross-legged style and wearing a white shirt with the word “dare.” “That is the genie,” Lundgren tells me. Just below the man is a slogan that reads “Dare to challenge everything, apart from good taste.” Lundgren then tells me to scratch the shiny bit below to see what prize I won. “A dance lesson from Thomas,” it reads. Lundgren laughs and says he can’t dance. The card is printed on 100 percent recycled paper and bears all of Lundgren’s information on the back side. All principal staff at The One have such cards — fun reminders of the creative environment in which they work. “The guru on the card tells of our core values: love, learn, dare and believe,” says Lundgren. These elements most certainly assisted him in the creation of this imaginative furniture store in the midst of the Gulf desert. The One is a hodgepodge of interesting furniture items; some are classic in style, while others are vibrant in color and cutting-edge in form and function. The company is known as a destination where customers can buy luxury furniture at affordable prices. “We don’t sell products; we sell feelings,” says Lundgren. For a company that started off 18 years ago with just two employees, The One now has a staff of 650 with stores across the Middle East, including in Bahrain, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Qatar, Tunisia and the UAE. Entitled Glamorama, the company’s latest collection features animal prints on a variety of

T Emirates: The New York Times Style Magazine

items, including pillows, sofas, rugs and chairs. Customers can head to The One, which Lundgren prefers to call “a theatre”, and blend black, beige, brown and maybe a hint of red with a mix of metallics, mirrors, velvet, animal prints and fur for a decadent furniture ensemble. And they will have friendly staff like Ibrahim to help them do so. But The One isn’t all fun and games. The beginning was hard. “We started the concept 18 years ago when there was nothing here,” says Lundgren, who ran away from Sweden when he was 24. “My father died when I was five and I always dreamed that there would be something better — somewhere else,” he adds. He left school and started to work as a photographer, until he replied to an advert in a newspaper for a decorator for IKEA in Saudi Arabia in 1983. He lived there for 11 months and then moved to Kuwait to work for IKEA there with his girlfriend, who is now his wife. They left everything when Kuwait was invaded in 1990 during the Iraq-Kuwait War. After Kuwait’s liberation, they returned for two years but then decided to start their own company. “We went to Bahrain because at the time there was a lot happening there, mostly because they had an airline,” Lundgren remembers. But the couple eventually chose to settle in Dubai because of its larger land mass. Lundgren spent several months trying to get loans from banks to start his furniture retail company, only to be met with rejections. “If you come to my office, you’ll see tons of rejection letters,” he laughs. “They thought I was too young and they didn’t understand why a furniture retailer was needed. They thought there were already retailers in the region, but there were just traders.” At the time IKEA was probably the only professional furniture retailer. When questioned about his concept, he’d reply, “Think IKEA, but different. IKEA sells furniture and I want to sell fashion.” Lundgren started running out of money and in the summer of 1995 his wife said, “Should we take what we have left and leave?” I told her “No, that we would stay.” Stay he did and the money finally came. But it was only after seven years that the company broke even. “There were no boom or busts during this time,” recounts Lundgren. “People think Dubai has been like this forever and it hasn’t. The boom started around 2000, but before that it was just survival.” Lundgren tells

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how the Lebanese women helped the company survive. “They’re very fashion-oriented and liked our design,” he says. “But The One caters to all — expats, Arabs, local Emiratis and Westerners.” We’re currently sitting in the company’s second store which opened in April 2007. The first one is in Abu Dhabi near the Maqta Bridge. “Dubai was a very small place,” Lundgren remembers.“We had no customers whatsoever and in 1997 we opened this one in Jumeirah. The summers were dead and everyone would go away. This was considered a hardship place. We would have to create special employment packages so that staff could return home in the summer.” It was also the Jumeirah store that helped The One get through those initial years. Lundgren tells how in those days it was situated near the American School in Dubai and how American housewives would drop off their kids in the morning and afterwards come to the store to have coffee and go shopping. The store was also located near Spinney’s — the biggest supermarket at the time. “Then the stewardesses from Emirates Airlines would come around 10 in the morning and around midday businessmen who knew the stewardess were there would arrive,” he smirks. “And then at two in the afternoon local women would come because it was near to where they worked at various banks and ministries. Then the expat women and their husbands would come around six or seven to make decisions together and later, at around eight or nine, the locals would arrive with their wives. It was the same every single day. This was the place to be!” A wealth of different nationalities still passes through The One’s doors; it is a place that caters to all. The company now has three people doing the design, including Lundgren who does furniture to produce around 12,000 products, with 60 percent designed inhouse and 30 percent produced by the company’s manufacturers, but “we change the shape or color if we need to,” says Lundgren. The remaining 10 percent is left as it is. “People can buy glasses as they are!” he says with a laugh. “And I design around three to four products a day,” says Lundgren. With his creative edge, I find this easy to believe. But the big picture for Lundgren is about saving the world. And in his opinion, the only way to do this is through education. “Education will teach you how to survive,” he says. He became even more determined to help in 2002 when he had open heart surgery after a heart murmur was found. “I would have been dead in seven years if I didn’t do the operation,” says Lundgren. “This is when the whole charity thing started.” Part of The

FUSION FURNITURE The One’s range of furniture items come in classic and contemporary offerings.

One’s mission is to ensure that physically or mentally challenged individuals make up at least 5 percent of their staff. Customers have been thrilled by the mission to offer these people jobs that they can do. And they aren’t just any old jobs. “It’s important that they have real jobs,” emphasizes Lundgren. The One has been what one would term “a successful business.” But success isn’t what Lundgren is after. “When I first started working I thought that success was a place,” he says. “I thought when I reach that place I will be happy. Then people start to call you ’successful’ and you think, ’Am I actually happier than before?’ People think you are happy because you are what they call ’successful.’ When people started calling me this I realized that I actually had more fun when people didn’t call me ’successful.’ When you become an owner you suddenly realize that the salary and wellbeing of all of your employees depends on you.” Lundgren, like any entrepreneur, has a great deal of responsibility and also a tremendous drive to create. But it is really about giving back to society. “I have a friend that says, ’Be selfish, go and help someone,’” smiles Lundgren. “You feel good when you help someone.”

The One’s mission is to have five percent of all its employees be physically or mentally challenged. Adis apicto et eos eum quat latis quam, sit, cus Maximus Aliae conseque prehendamet.

T Emirates: The New York Times Style Magazine

THE TEAM Left: The One Group in March 2011.

The making of the Italian shoe brand Santoni’s bespoke shoes.

Upholding Tradition It can take up to five years for Santoni’s shoemaking apprentices to hone their craft, now a rare art form that is increasingly lacking in skilled craftsmen. At Santoni, the Italian leather shoe brand, Giuseppe Santoni and his master shoemaker, Silvano Sollini, tell of the brand’s determination to pass on the trade to a younger generation.

IMAGE COURTESY OF SANTONI

BY REBECCA ANNE PROCTOR

IN THE LOWLANDS OF ITALY’S MARCHE REGION, between the two hilltop cities of

Macerata and Corridonia, is a workshop where shoes are made. An area known as the home of Italian leather manufacturers as well as shoes and handbags, it is here in a small workshop of approximately 15,000 square meters that Italian footwear brand Santoni creates its cutting-edge and high-end shoes. And while the luxury

goods industry is increasingly dominated by factories that mass produce retail products, Santoni prefers to keep its traditional manufacturing techniques alive through young and eager-to-learn apprentices — a missive which reflects the brand’s CEO Giuseppe Santoni’ s desire to marry tradition with modernity. “The world is moving fast, but we’ve held on to our heritage,” says Silvano

Sollini, the master shoemaker and technical manager at the workshop. It all started in 1975 in Corridonia with Andrea and Rosa Santoni’s passion for shoes. Today the company is present in around 70 countries and makes over 60 million dollars per year. It employs more than 450 artisans who use traditional shoemaking techniques to make the label’s well-known shoes. While

November – December, 2014

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APPRENTICESHIP There’s no mass production at Santoni. Right: Silvano Sollini crafting a pair of shoes with apprentice Matteo Valle. Below: A pair of fine leather Santoni shoes.

men’s shoes were at the core of the business, Santoni expanded the collection nine years ago to include women’s shoes, in both casual and formal styles. Santoni’s ready-to-wear shoes come with Goodyear-welted soles and blake stitching. The company also offers custommade and bespoke services; the former provides the customization of internal lining, colors and skins, while the latter uses cedar shoe trees to create a lasting model that is ready three months after a measurement is taken. The company has also recently introduced the sneaker into its family of styles, providing it with another avenue for creation. Giuseppe Santoni, who became Santoni’s CEO in the 1990s after his father, encourages the collaboration between tradition and present-day innovation. “I have a very young team of designers that travel the world in search of fresh influences,” says Giuseppe. “Through interacting with different cultures they are able to anticipate new trends and create contemporary collections.” However, this forward-thinking ideology should be preceded by the fact that in the 40 years

that Santoni has been making shoes, it has never allowed the efficiency of mass production to alter its more time-consuming and traditional craftsmanship. Giuseppe’s missive is to uphold the tradition of fine shoemaking, but endow a pair of shoes with a cutting-edge look. It is this goal that he has relayed to craftsmen such as Sollini. Nothing is automatic at Santoni. The artisans work more or less how they did during the 1970s — from eight o’clock in the morning until six in the evening, with two hours for lunch. At the helm is Sollini, who began making shoes at the age of 9 and took his first job at 13. A patient yet firm teacher, he supervises his workers with a watchful and attentive eye. “Think three big workshops where up to 450 people work together everyday using their hands,” he says. From conception to the finished product, a pair of Santoni shoes can take up to six months to create. The process begins with the selection of skins, which are then cut and hand-sewn. The pattern can then sit for around 10 to 15 days, during which time the soles are cut and handfinished. After the shoe has been assembled and the sole has been stitched, the shoe is colored by hand according to the special “velatura” technique, which ensures every shoe is unique and

Giuseppe’s missive is to uphold the tradition of fine shoemaking, but endow a pair of shoes with a cuttingedge look.

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Above: Silvano Sollini teaches apprentice Matteo Valle. Right: CEO of Santoni, Giuseppe Santoni. Below: A pair of Santoni shoes in the making.

Santoni’s School of Crafts serves as a way to maintain a tradition and give back to society.

has a deep shade of color. Lastly, the shoe is polished. A reverence for quality is found in every step of the process — even the thread is soaked in beeswax to make it more resistant. But this kind of work takes years and years of experience. “The complexity of this kind of organization is unbelievable,” says Sollini. “Most of all, as you can imagine, we need to count on many people, especially young ones, who are ready to work in this unique way.” The company requires people who are not only skilled with their hands but also passionate,

concentrated, committed, and sensible towards quality. What has been observed among newlyhired staff is a kind of natural selection process.’ The company is open to hiring new people, but many of them give up after the training period. “If they expect a mechanical, repetitive job, they immediately understand this is not the place,” says Giuseppe Santoni. Despite the difficulty of the craft, Santoni is still able to find young and motivated people who want to learn the art of shoemaking and who are ready to work closely with an older generation of skilled artisans. And passing on knowledge to the next generation is the only way to maintain Santoni’s famous quality. “It’s for this reason that we firmly believe in internal training, and Giuseppe Santoni set up a school and a workshop, especially for the most complex competences of shoemaking, such as the cutting of the leather by hand, the coloring by hand, and the stitching by hand,” says Sollini. Santoni’s School of Crafts serves as a way to maintain a tradition and give back to society. It is here that the older generation of craftsmen shares its skills with a younger generation and thus keeps traditional Italian shoemaking techniques alive. “I believe our approach is very important for society, as we contribute to passing on a richness and heritage that is truly and authentically Italian,” adds Giuseppe Santoni. “I’m extremely proud of being Italian, and luckily Santoni reflects many of the values that people usually attribute to Italy: authenticity, passion, quality, design, and

creativity. Our country has been through some difficult times over the last few years, but we still maintain our values which are strong in our private and business life.” But how do today’s luxury consumers understand the value of traditional shoemaking? With so many brands to choose from today, and which are not made with Santoni’s finely-honed craftsmanship, there’s a risk that buyers might search elsewhere for a brand that looks similar but isn’t so expensive. Giuseppe Santoni asserts that this is not the case. “Luxury consumers are more and more informed and educated about quality, so it’s important to give them not only a dream, but also a concrete value,” he says. “Not only in my opinion, but many customers’ opinions, Santoni conveys an incredible value for money. Our product is expensive, but our customers are ready to pay for it as they know they will receive an even higher value for their money.” Santoni is a brand situated at the crossroads between tradition and modernity. Sumptuous velour, leather tassels, patchwork, silk, black patent are just some of the materials that imbue historical shoe models with a contemporary and ever-creative look. Santoni’s ethos lies in the look and feel of its shoes — ultimately a reflection of the hours of craftsmanship involved. “In terms of quality, we work to offer only the best shoe possible,” says Sollini. “In terms of design, ours is a product with a distinctive style that is elegant and contemporary at the same time.”

November – December, 2014

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Design Report

Fashion Under the Hammer

Pat Frost speaks about Christie’s and her personal journey in fashion through the auction. BY SINDHU NAIR

BEYOND VALUE Top: The wedding dress worn by Elizabeth Taylor for her first wedding to Conrad ’Nicky’ Hilton, 1950, was made out of oyster silk satin wedding dress designed by M.G.M. Chief Costume Designer Helen Rose,. It was estimated at $47,000 - 90,000 but sold at $192,193. Right, Pat Frost at the Suzy Menkes fashion auction held in July 2013.

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shape of a McDonald’s carton, from Moschino, handbags have evolved but retained a stronghold on women’s possessions. Frost’s expertise is not only in handbags but in the fashion industry through her work with auction house Christie’s. But her entry was not as spectacular. “Sometimes you need a little luck.” says Frost. “While I was trying to decide what I wanted to do with my life after university, I accidentally discovered Christie’s,” she says. “I started as an administrator in 1987 on a general sale, of which, at that time, there were at least two a month,” Frost’s career development at Christie’s was far from ordinary. “The learning curve was very steep indeed as I learned everything ’on the job’ and by reading as many books as I could find as well as following trend setters in fashion through social media.” Frost has had many fashion highs but one of the many unforgettable moments in her life with Christie’s was when a trunk with patterns of a designer from early history was discovered. “I remember opening a trunk in a warehouse in the industrial suburbs of Paris to find over 100 calico patterns for Schiaparelli gowns, together with swatches of material,” says Frost. “There followed two months of intensive research to try and find an existing gown that matched the

ALL IMAGES COURTESY OF CHRISTIE’S

CHRISTIE’S Director and Specialist Head of Textiles and Costumes, Pat Frost, saw more participants at her session, “Luxury Handbags under the Hammer,” than any other on the program at Christie’s two-day educational workshop on the International Art Market in Dubai. That there were more Emirati women in this session was not surprising considering Middle Eastern women’s fascination for bags. In an Arab woman’s silhouette clad in a not-soexciting black abaya (though the contemporary abayas can no longer fall under this classification), the accessories and the bag in hand are the only two conspicuous elements that can never be compromised. “I feel that the local fashion is very much rooted in local traditions, but also very adaptable to modern life,” she says. “Western design married to Eastern tradition would be unbeatable. I very much look forward to seeing this relationship blossom.” Taking the fascinated audience through the history of bags, Frost proved without much effort that there was no greater investment than in a bag, not just for the value but also for the purpose behind it. From the charmingly embroidered work bag dated to 1675, embellished with unicorns, butterflies, squirrels, to the present day manifestation, one of the variations in thick, spongey, bright red and yellow plastic, in the

‘I feel that local fashion is very much rooted in local traditions, but also very adaptable to modern life. Western design married to Eastern tradition would be unbeatable. I very much look forward to seeing this relationship blossom.’

patterns. We finally matched them to Schiaparelli’s ready-to-wear collections of 1953 and onwards.” In the course of this enquiry, Frost got to exchange ideas with experts on cutting and on Elsa Schiaparelli, among them Azzedine Alaïa, Christian Lacroix, Billy Boy and a number of heads of fashion departments in London’s major museums worldwide. “That’s why I love fashion — it is a real network.” she says. “Everything is so interconnected.” Christie’s tryst with fashion began early with its first textile sale in 1975 that included the wedding trousseau of a most fashionable woman, the Countess von Wied, from 1868. “Fashion has always been on Christie’s agenda,” says Frost. “Even in the 18th century we were selling laces and silks. We started to sell ’Street Fashion’ in the mid-1990s.” But it has been another sale that has inspired Frost the most. “Elizabeth Taylor’s sale was the most ground-breaking sale I have worked on,” she says. “She was larger than life and twice as beautiful.” For someone who follows the fashion scene so closely, Frost has her predictions and favorites, too. “There is a recent concentration on wonderful prints, for which Mary Katrantzou and Peter Pilotto have been very influential,” she says. “However, I think that structure is also a theme at the moment, for which Nicolas Ghesquiere is certainly

prominent. I think the influence of Japanese designers has been rising again.” As a fashion historian, Frost has also been watching Raf Simons at Dior with interest as “he weaves historical elements into his all new designs,” she says. In the current scenario of less haute couture and more ready-towear, with comfort being a predominant trend, it is a matter of dispute as to whose dresses Christie’s would auction if I were to choose a designer from present times. Frost thinks she would pick “a celebrity, with a very active social life, lots of friends and relations, preferably one who is part of the contemporary art scene, or public life, or simply a pop or film star.” Frost puts herself in this imaginary scenario and picks her contenders. “I would say my strongest living contenders at the moment are The Duchess of Cornwall and Daphne Guinness, with Beyonce Knowles not far behind.” Frost has no secrets up her sleeves on the bag that would later create auction history but she strongly advises Middle Eastern women to buy the bag they like most. “If it increases in value, then that is a bonus,” says Frost. “However, the safest choice at the moment would be an Hermès bag made of rare, exotic leather, preferably with diamond-set locks and hardware.”

FASHION HISTORY Clockwise from left: An Elsa Schiaparelli sale in progress; a Vert Irlandais alligator bag sold for $124,976; an empire line gown from Schiaparelli’s sale; Taylor’s Gina Fratini wedding dress worn at her second marriage to Richard Burton sold for $62,500; an ivory silk tulle empire line Alexander McQueen gown worn for various photoshoots by Daphne Guinness; a Schiaparelli sky blue silk crepe bolero, 1940 sold for $22,500.

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New Talent

The Abstraction of Color

Craftsmanship is set to make a comeback in Delpozo’s forthcoming 2015 collection, with Creative Director Josep Font once again taking inspiration from the world of art.

NEW TIDES Josep Font’s appointment to Delpozo has heralded a revival of the brand in international markets.

TRAINED IN ARCHITECTURE, which is seemingly becoming a prerequisite for fashion designers these days, Josep Font has been merging the triptych of art, fashion and construction since his debut at the revived Spanish label Delpozo in 2012. For Spring 2014 he conjured Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot’s portrait of a gypsy woman; this fall it was Italian painter Duilio Barnabe and words from the retro-futuristic novel Logan’s Run; and for next season, Font’s third at the creative helm of Delpozo, the late abstract painter and theorist Josef Albers’ ‘The Interaction of Color’ forms the vital beginnings of the brand’s Spring/Summer 2015 collection, supported by inspirations from the land art of Nils-Udo and the 19th-century glass

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creations of Leopold and Rudolf Blaschka. His academic background has helped Font gain insight into volume, space and proportion. “They are very relevant elements that are applied throughout each season, and their combination is key in my designs,” he says. The combination has Font exploring colors as not only a visual ingredient but also an architectural element for Spring 2015. “On one hand you can find bold graphic, and on the other, designs of a more subtle palette,” the designer explains. The appointment of Font — beloved by pivotal fashion editors for his refreshingly romantic perspective on New York Fashion Week, and by retailers for his commercial viability — to Delpozo, after the passing of

ALL IMAGES COURTESY OF DELPOZO

BY DEBRINA ALIYAH

Font has been consistent in his definition of the Delpozo woman as having, ‘[of] intelligence, poise, and a particular way of relating to the world.’

the label’s founder Jesus del Pozo in 2011, was meant to herald a fresh start with a new creative vision, but the artistic genius of the late designer lives on in Font’s body of work. “Out of respect, we did not want to change what he had done, but between him and I there’s many similarities between the two chapters,” Font explains. There’s an uncanny resemblance between the way Font works and Del Pozo’s style: the draping on mannequins, the emphasis on clear creative inspiration, the consistent analysis in color and fabric, and the quest to make perfect patterns to create the voluminous silhouettes that are signature to the brand. The legacy is easily recognized in the current collections: pieces with subtle yet complex draping, patterns rich in geometric shapes, structured pleats and richly-crafted lapels. This near-obsessive accent on craftsmanship and the construction of every single piece finds a parallel in haute couture work, giving rise to Delpozo’s new term for what they do: prêt-à-couture. It is hardly surprising, given that Font was already a star at the Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture prior to his move to Delpozo. The label’s atelier works with the vision of realizing couture craftsmanship in small production quantities, instead of pursuing the exclusive ’one time only’ badge associated with haute couture. “The collections become available to more than one customer, and it is highly relevant to the modern fashion landscape where women now always look for something personal to set them apart,” Font tells us. Delicate fabrics like bobbinet tulle that are traditionally reserved for haute couture are juxtaposed with modern technical materials, meshing together the time-honored and the new. Development into this new prêt-à-couture niche also involves exploring the emergence of a growing new market, an affluent and design-conscious generation of women who are aficionados of unique aesthetics, a generation that is increasingly prevalent in the Middle East. Font has been consistent in his definition of the Delpozo woman, “of intelligence, poise, and a particular way of relating to the world.” These elements accurately describe some of his most supportive advocates from this region, the likes of fashion

influencers Deena Abdulaziz and Najla Maatouk. In just three seasons the Arab market has surged to become one of the biggest buyers of the label; the Spring/Summer 2015 collection will be available in three multibrand boutiques in Qatar alone, including the celebrated Per Lei Couture. “The Arabian woman has within her nature a constant search for detail,” says Font. “Embellishment is relevant to the extent of how she dresses, and we extend these elements in our pieces.” Delpozo only has two flagship stores for now — a brand new stateside outpost in Miami and another on its home turf in Madrid. The business focus, however, is still on the clothes and the establishment of the label’s characteristic features. “Each collection is an evolution of the previous,” Font muses. “I feel that the future for fashion is to bring back craftsmanship into fresh and modern designs.”

November – December, 2014

ART IN COLOR Looks from the label’s Spring/Summer 2015 collection that draw on Josef Albers’ work.

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The Marketplace

Parisian Rendezvous The Biennale des Antiquaires in Paris proved once again to be the perfect occasion for fine jewelry brands to introduce their creations to another type of audience: the art-loving crowd. BY NINA STARR

EIGHTY-SIX internationally-renowned fine art and antique dealers, mostly French, converged on Paris between September 11 and 21, 2014, to take part in the invitation-only Biennale des Antiquaires, a showcase of culture, savoir-faire and heritage, where they presented more than 5,000 rare and beautiful objects worth in total about $40 billion. This major event on the global art market calendar, which debuted in 1962 and this year welcomed its 27th edition, provides an international stage for exhibitors seeking to attract the elite of wealthy art collectors and connoisseurs from around the world. Far from the mood of austerity in Europe, the art market proved it was steady, especially for exceptional artworks and high jewelry. The interior design of the Biennale, which is an important part of the fair, was created by French decorator Jacques Grange who was tasked with recreating the feel of the Château de Versailles’ perfectly-manicured gardens (the work of the talented 18th-century French gardener André Le Nôtre) over 14,000 square

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meters of exhibition space under the iconic glass dome of the Grand Palais. It included carpets resembling flower beds, an imposing scented fountain, trellises, arbors and potted topiary. Handpicked galleries like Kraemer and François Léage from Paris, Marlborough from New York and Gisèle Croës from Brussels, presented their rarest masterpieces, ranging from archaeology and Asian art to 18th-century furniture and modern paintings. “It’s a great time now to buy French antiques, which are undervalued,” said Mikaël Kraemer, the fifthgeneration antiquarian of the Paris-based, family-run Kraemer Gallery, which holds the world’s largest privately-owned collection of 18th-century French furniture and objets d’art. “Today, our clientele comprises the most powerful and richest people in each country and city,” added Kraemer. “They are much younger than in the past — mainly in their mid-40s, when they were 20 years older not too long ago. Before, you had to work all your life before acquiring an antique or artwork. The

ALL IMAGES COURTESY OF BIENNALE DES ANTIQUAIRES

THE MARKET Below and right: French decorator Jacques Grange recreates the feel of the Château de Versailles’ perfectly-manicured gardens for the Biennale de Antiquaires.

ALL THE GEMS Clockwise from top left: Making of Bulgari jewelry; the making of Cartier’s panther medallion; the medallion is set in a platinum necklace set with blue sapphires, onyx and diamonds.

Far from the mood of austerity in Europe, the art market proved it was steady, especially for exceptional artworks and high jewelry.

market has changed, which is positive. Many of our collectors mix antique furniture with Old Master or Impressionist paintings, or modern or contemporary art, and this gives a certain cachet to each of their art pieces. If you mix top quality in every category together, you get very wonderful, eclectic results.” While jewelry has always been a part of the Biennale, the event used to showcase mainly vintage jewels. This year, however, haute joaillerie was placed in the spotlight, with 14 contemporary fine jewelry houses including Boucheron, Bulgari, Cartier, Chanel, Chaumet, Dior, Piaget, Siegelson, Van Cleef & Arpels and Wallace Chan — the highest number in the Biennale’s history and comprising one-sixth of the exhibitors — displaying their ultra-luxurious collections, including many one-off creations. In addition to Giampiero Bodino from Italy and David Morris from England making their first-ever Biennale appearances at the 2014 edition, visitors saw the return of Alexandre Reza and Graff Diamonds after absences of 14 and 12 years respectively. Hands down the most improved collection since the 2012 Biennale, Piaget surprised us with 125 creations that marked a true turning point for the brand. Commemorating its 140th anniversary this year, Piaget decided the time had come to devote an intense effort to its jewelry sector, which it hopes to grow from 30

to 50 percent of its business, investing heavily in larger, top-quality precious stones of significant importance rather than fine stones. “The Biennale is almost the single most important high jewelry event for Piaget, as it is apparent that each participating brand is in a class of its own,” remarked Jean-Bernard Forot, Piaget’s Jewelry Marketing Director. Gold is Piaget’s metal of reference, and its $ 510,000 18-carat pink gold necklace with imposing turquoise beads and marquise-cut diamonds featuring the ‘palace’ motif (a traditional technique used by Piaget since 1966, where the upper part resembles a wild silk-like iridescent ribbon and the bottom is made from hundreds of interwoven links) required 400 work hours, testifying to the brand’s dedication to preserving the skill of exquisite gold craftsmanship within the manufacture. Biennale veteran Cartier, a participant at the fair since 1964, presented a panther medallion on a magnificent platinum necklace set with blue sapphires, onyx and diamonds by master glyptician (or gem-cutter) Philippe Nicolas that illustrated the meticulous art of micromosaics, a centuries-old tradition born in Italy. To create the micromosaic in volume was a major challenge requiring thousands of hours of work, much more than the time needed for even a very complex necklace. Chanel, meanwhile, at the Biennale for its fifth time, presented 87 creations characterized

November – December, 2014

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CRAFT AND TECHNIQUE Left: a Bulgari necklace being set; the $21 million necklace set with more than 1,100 carats of impressive emeralds; Bulgari’s Elizabeth Taylor collection.

‘Paris remains today the capital of high jewelry in terms of craft and technique.’

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by audacity and inspired by the freedom cherished by Gabrielle (Coco) Chanel, referencing the Café Society movement that spanned the decades from the 1920s to the ‘60s. Having invented a completely new lifestyle, the period marked a break with all existing social conventions. Chanel’s $1.6 million Café Society necklace, associating blue and yellow sapphires, orange garnets, tsavorites, spessartites, red spinels and diamonds, shone in an interlacing of primary colors like light, airy mobiles, evoking a stained-glass window or a sort of flower, and representing a new vocabulary at Chanel in terms of color and design. Celebrating its 130th anniversary, Bulgari showcased approximately 100 unique pieces “to establish Bulgari’s creativity as a blend of innovation, use of unusual gemstones (in shape and color) and excellent craftsmanship,” according to the firm. “The Biennale is one of the most important events in the world; the most refined and expert art and jewelry collectors attend this event,” remarked Senior Jewelry Director Giampaolo Della Croce. Divided into three main themes — Diva, Serpenti and Musa — the Bulgari collection included a $21 million necklace set with more than 1,100 carats of impressive emeralds. Also included were a pair of detachable diamond and ruby clips that convert into a pair of snake earrings. In reinterpreting Peau d’Âne (Donkeyskin), a little-known French fairy tale of a young princess and her quest for love, Van Cleef & Arpels revisited its favorite themes of feminine figures, magic and romance via a delightful mix of precious and hard stones. A brooch in the

shape of a dragonfly with thin transparent wings set with multicolored pink sapphires illustrated its innovative mystery setting technique, where see-through rather than opaque stones are used and the metal structure completely disappears from view. Three years and several hundred craftsmen in both in-house and independent Parisian high jewelry workshops were required to make the collection. "There is, really, a French and Parisian tradition of high-end jewelry,” said President and CEO of Van Cleef & Arpels, Nicolas Bos. “Paris remains today the capital of high jewelry in terms of craft and technique. You find great jewelers in different countries, but there has been such a strong tradition here of innovation in high jewelry that is very difficult to surpass.” Completed just in time for the Biennale, a necklace featuring a stunning 125.30-carat cabochon-cut Burmese sapphire paired with a 33.14-carat natural pearl by the Bond Street jeweller David Morris was proof of the brand’s uncanny ability to track down the most fabulous stones of the very best colors and cuts. Jeremy Morris, son of the founder, had perhaps the best explanation for the centrality of such treasures to this year’s Biennale des Antiquaires. “Jewelry is an art form,” he said. “Each piece incorporates many artistic mediums, from drawing and painting to creating the design and crafting the jewelry itself, like a wearable sculpture.” And jewelry, as shown through the pieces on display at this year’s Biennale des Antiquaires, not only speaks to the designers, but allows wearers to say something about their personality.

In Fashion

Kindred Spirits Lace and crochet are sisterly acts of devotion to the intricacies of fashion. PHOTOGRAPHS BY MATTHEW KRISTALL STYLED BY JASON RIDER

Burberry Prorsum dress, AED 10,266, burberry.com.

November â&#x20AC;&#x201C; December, 2014

Quality

In Fashion

Left: Sacai Luck jacket, AED 4,282, and skirt, AED 2,820, barneys. com. Right: Loewe sweater, AED 3,268, barneys.com. ChloĂŠ skirt, AED 12,102.

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Missoni dress, AED 10,229. Sharon Wauchob dress (worn underneath), AED 2,571, sharonwauchob.com.

November â&#x20AC;&#x201C; December, 2014

In Fashion

Left: Louis Vuitton dress, about AED 22,772, bra and underwear, price on request, louisvuitton.com. Right: Dior dress, AED 35,260. Cami NYC slip, AED 508, caminyc.com. Allen Edmonds x Club Monaco shoes (left), AED 1,340, clubmonaco.com. Grenson x Club Monaco shoes (right), AED 1,433, clubmonaco.com.

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MODELS: YULIA MUSIEICHUCK AND JULIA FUCHS AT FORD. HAIR BY OWEN GOULD AT THE WALL GROUP. MAKEUP BY ASAMI TAGUCHI USING CHANEL BEAUTÉ FOR FRANK REPS. CASTING BY ARIANNA PRADARELLI. STYLIST’S ASSISTANTS: KELLY HARRIS AND RAYNER REYES. SHOT ON LOCATION AT SAM’S POINT PRESERVE

Quality

Making It

The Shoemaker’s Shoes

A YOUNG SOLE Casalonga, 36, in a traditional leather shoemaker’s apron in front of sculpted lasts in Berluti’s Paris workshop.

Like a growing number of his generation, Jean-Michel Casalonga is interested in old-world artisanship over mass production. Meet the master craftsman behind Berluti’s exquisite bespoke shoes. BY STEPHEN HEYMAN PHOTOGRAPHS BY FRANÇOIS COQUEREL

ELEVEN YEARS AGO, JEAN-MICHEL CASALONGA , a goofy mutton-chopped kid from Perpignan, France, was studying for an advanced degree in physics when he decided to switch career paths and become a shoemaker. He probably shouldn’t have been able to just talk his way into an apprenticeship at Berluti, one of the most prestigious men’s shoe companies. But young blood is rare in the world of bespoke footwear, and Casalonga is, if not persuasive, at least persistent. ’’I had to call the guy who was in charge of the workshop every week for months,’’ he recalled. ’’Finally, he just said, ’Come in for a few weeks, and we’ll see.’ ’’ Casalonga was 23 when he started as an unpaid intern. He hid his work from his parents for a year and a half, and tried to balance shoemaking with his studies. He had always loved building things as a child — tree houses, compasses, a leather case for his pocketknife — and first saw shoemaking as an extension of this tinkering impulse. ’’I just wanted to learn for myself,’’ he told

me at Berluti’s timeworn workrooms in Paris, off the Champs-Élysées. But this extracurricular activity quickly became an all-consuming passion. He dropped out of school and spent five years learning the approximately 250 precise steps needed to make a single pair of Berluti shoes, eventually becoming the house’s youngest maître bottier, or master shoemaker, at age 30 in 2008. Berluti, which has been owned by the French luxury conglomerate LVMH since 1993, has expanded in recent years, adding custom suits and a ready-towear collection to its offerings, but shoes — bespoke shoes, specifically — remain a cornerstone of the brand’s prestige. Casalonga has made them out of hand-oiled Venezia leather, but also beaver tail, python and shark. He has made derby shoes and riding boots, and golf shoes that cost more than golf carts. His job has turned him into a student of masculine insecurity. He has given a boost to short guys who want to be taller, and a little extra toe for tall guys who think their feet look comparatively puny. He knows the lining

November – December, 2014

Quality

Making It

TOOLS OF THE TRADE The process of making Berluti bespoke shoes, from an initial anatomical mold and measurements (top left) to a finished custom alligator shoe (far right). One pair takes 50 manhours and at least six months to design.

Casalonga has studied the foot bones — metatarsals, phalanges, etc. — and can tell if you play soccer or tennis, if you spend most of your days standing or sitting, if you’re a frequent flier and will need to account for swelling.

fetishists: the Japanese clients who want a little flash when they de-shoe at a restaurant in Ginza, the Arabs who need their wingtips to stand out from the pile at the mosque. He has studied the foot bones — metatarsals, phalanges, etc. — and can tell if you play soccer or tennis, if you spend most of your days standing or sitting, if you’re a frequent long-haul flier and will need to account for swelling. ’’Shoemaking is a relationship. You start with somebody touching the feet, which is something a bit intimate,’’ he said. A typical pair of Berluti custom shoes, designed by Casalonga or one of the company’s other two master shoemakers, takes 50 man-hours to construct over a period of at least six months. They start at about $7,000, and can run much higher. There is a fitting — six to 12 measurements are made, for volume, width, weight-bearing — for the last, a model foot precisely carved out of hornbeam. Casalonga carves the lasts on a paroir, an appealingly medieval tool sourced from Paris flea markets — it’s essentially a giant machete attached at one side to a workbench. In his heavy leather apron and thick-rimmed glasses, Casalonga wields it expertly, slicing off shavings of hornbeam in great big sweeping motions, while constantly referring back to his indecipherable measurements and pencil notations. ’’It’s a bit like a sculpture,’’ he said. ’’For me, we work in the way of making the foot more beautiful than it is.’’ The last is used to make a prototype — a fully functional shoe, made of second-rate leather — which goes out to the client and is then cut up and marked for further adjustments. More carving to the last is followed by hand-grinding the finer details with a coarse file called a rasp, and then sanding the rough parts smooth. Finally, the soles and uppers are constructed around the last, painstakingly stitched together by hand using pig hair wrapped in seven strands of linen. The finished shoes are then colored, also by hand, with Berluti’s blend of mineral dyes. Everything about Casalonga’s life is anachronistic, from his job to his choice in music (Northern soul) to what he drives (a 1961 Vespa that he meticulously restored himself ). He lives in the Latin Quarter, because he

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finds it refreshingly uncool, and when he’s not working, retreats to his personal workshop near his parents’ place in Perpignan, where he is now restoring a classic Citroën 2CV, the iconic French ’’deux chevaux.’’ ’’My wife says it’s a nightmare to go shopping with me, because I’m always examining the construction of everything, wondering how it’s built and if I could do it better,’’ he said. In the kitchen, Casalonga doesn’t cook, but he peels. ’’I peel everything with a knife. Tomatoes, grapes. Have you tried a peeled grape? It’s so good.’’ Suffice it to say, Casalonga loves shoes: He owns 50 pairs and describes himself unironically as a ’’shoe addict.’’ Still, he sees choosing his particular line of work as something of an accident. ’’What I really like to do is work with my hands. I came into shoes and I still love them, but it could’ve been tailoring or something else.’’ Even in other superluxury men’s wear companies, he now has contemporaries, like Angelo Di Febo, who became Brioni’s youngest-ever master tailor — one of only four men to hold that title — at age 27. ’’Ten years ago I would’ve said we will be the last ones,’’ Casalonga said. ’’But now I can say definitely there will be a new generation. They don’t want to be bankers or office workers. They want to make things. So it can be shoes, it can be suits, it can be furniture, a boat.’’ Casalonga was recently in Hong Kong, where a powerful Chinese client desired a pair of driving shoes that would look like fashionable loafers but perform like Formula One racing boots. (He made Casalonga test-drive his McLaren to drive home the point.) Casalonga said experiences like these make for good stories, but not much else. ’’I don’t want to sound blasé, but this life traveling around, meeting customers, is more funny than exciting.’’ He’d rather spend the day at his paroir, carving. Berluti’s bespoke shoes are available at the Berluti boutique in Level Shoe District at The Dubai Mall. For more information, visit www.levelshoedistrict. com, or call +971 4 50 16930.

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Section

MOHSIN HAMID REBECCA CURTIS

R. L. STINE RIVKA GALCHEN

Arts and Letters ZADIE SMITH

Exquisite Corpse

NICHOLSON BAKER

Taking their cue from the Surrealist parlor game, 15 renowned authors upend the solitary process of writing, responding to one another to create a collaborative — and very singular — work of fiction. ARTWORK BY LISA KOKIN

PHOTOGRAPHS BY MARKO METZINGER

THEIR MOTHERS WERE DISTANT COUSINS long estranged. They gave birth within minutes of each other, same hospital, different rooms. (I was not there.) The boy grew up west of the interstate, on the outskirts of the university; the girl in a high rise with a JOSHUA FERRIS balcony overlooking the water. He won scholarships; she dropped out. Both married, had children, worked hard, suffered losses. In the end they were alone. She had an early-morning flight, he took the overnight. The next day they found themselves, before the small explosion, across from each other in the cafe, in a foreign land in the grip of turmoil, strangers still.

He was talking about the war now. The war! The war! It was all the men ever talked about. (Was it coming? Was it coming? Hell, yes, it was coming!) He spoke darkly of beef jerky, peanut butter, disposable wipes. He’d trained himself to eat thistles. JENNY OFFILL ‘‘Get guns,’’ she said. ‘‘I hear guns are good.’’ She thought of her precious hoard: seven cans of creamed corn, chocolate frosting that NEVER expired. He urged her to study herbal medicine. No, no. She

already had a backup plan. Did you hear about the suicidal homeopath? She took 1/50th of the recommended dose. Neither of them took much notice of the waiter, which was perhaps strange, since the waiter had a glass eye, a marked undertow in the rolling tide of his beard where a bullet had removed half his chin and a limp so pronounced it made his pelvis shimmy with MOHSIN HAMID every step, side to side and up and down, thrusting lewdly like that of an unhinged and particularly horny salsa dancer. No, they had eyes only for each other, those two. But my eyes were everywhere. I had taken notice of the waiter. And the waiter had taken notice of them. I eavesdrop. I observe. I record everything. That is my life’s work. How interesting, how fortunate, that a pair of solipsists could be sitting across from one another in the same cafe — now they’re standing — babbling out their life stories. I take it all in. The glass-eyed JAMES PATTERSON November – December, 2014

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Arts and Letters

JAMES PATTERSON

concentration for a moment, it’s true, how could I not? I also knew the where of Anderson.

ELIF BATUMAN

DAVID BALDACCI

ANTHONY MARRA

waiter, at one time a mercenary soldier, wounded in the Sudan. The chain-smoking shrew crouched behind the cash register, bored out of her small mind, observing nothing at all. There are so many competing images, so many shrill voices echoing inside my head. I feel as if I might implode. But enough about me. The man and the woman were still in the cafe, making small talk. The glass-eyed waiter was sizing them up for something. He was remembering the Sudan. The man and the woman were inadvertently ELIF BATUMAN annoying one another. The woman was showing off, in her way, about being a lifelong bad girl, done now with her third husband. The man was showing off, in his way, about being a lifelong scholarship kid, suddenly a widower. She thought he was a pussy (for all his thistle-eating); he thought she was a brat. They were talking at cross-purposes. And then I overheard her say, ‘‘Look, let’s make the wager. The only way to find out what we honestly believe, and not just what we wish we believe, is to lay a wager.’’ There she had me. I was on her side now, maybe because I like people who make things plain, or RIVKA GALCHEN coerce them into a seeming plainness. ‘‘My ethics aren’t about statistics,’’ he said. ‘‘I could give you the location of Anderson,’’ she said. ‘‘That’s the wager. I’m sure I don’t have to explain to an intelligent man like yourself, having Anderson would change everything. But I wager, when you understand just where Anderson is, you’ll not find it in yourself to take action.’’ He spoke lowly, he seemed to be saying something about the elephants, I’m not certain, I lost my

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They left together, each assuming the other had paid the bill. I followed. A half-block behind us, the glass-eyed waiter limped out the cafe door, shouting, a ribbon of receipt paper held overhead. ANTHONY MARRA Then, the explosion: a concussive detonation; white heat; smoke charcoaling the pink evening skies. Broken glass had repaved the road outside the cafe with a jagged luminosity stretching from one side of the street to the other, save for an elongated patch of empty asphalt in the shape of the waving waiter. ‘‘Am I hurt?’’ the man asked as he pulled me to my feet. ‘‘Thank you,’’ I said, brushing gravel from my suit and edging away. ‘‘I’m fine.’’ I squinted into the crowd. Where had she gone? Perhaps it was sexist that I’d expected more from him. Not that I’d expected much from either. ADELLE WALDMAN Fatuous American journalists — competitors — but both besotted with the idea of themselves as ‘‘war correspondents.’’ (Of course, he was eyeing a cushy editor post back home; for her, the job was just a buffer against loneliness after things blew up with number three.) I had believed this assignment was a wild-goose chase, a demotion of sorts after what happened last time. Until she said what she had about Anderson. ‘‘Anderson called me yesterday,’’ she’d said in the cafe, just before they’d left. ‘‘Andy’s one of us. He wants things to be better. He’s a man with grievances, justified grievances, but he tries to rise above them. He’s suffered, but he’s still searching for the jewels in the plum NICHOLSON BAKER cake. He doesn’t always know what to do with what he knows.’’ She’d paused, and then her voice had dropped to a whisper. ‘‘He knew that we would be meeting here. He told me that he’s a master of disguise.’’ I grabbed the man’s arm and turned him back toward the cafe. ‘‘Look over there,’’ I said. ‘‘Look at the waiter.’’ The waiter was standing, ignoring the crowd, watching us, waiting for us to address him. Suddenly the man understood. ‘‘Anderson?’’ he said to the waiter. ‘‘It is you, isn’t it? Andy?’’ ‘‘Both of you should come with me,’’ Anderson said. He spoke with a faint, unidentifiable accent. He led us toward a long blue car. ‘‘I can take you to her hotel.’’

I started to follow Ryan to the car. But a familiar voice rang out on the set: ‘‘CUT!’’ And our esteemed director, E. J. McRobb, burst off his chair, waving his clipboard. ‘‘Rolph?’’ E. J. boomed, using the clipboard to shield his eyes. ‘‘Where’s Rolph? The explosion isn’t R. L. STINE working for me. I asked for a blast, not a firecracker pop.’’ Rolph lumbered over from somewhere, half a sandwich in his hand. ‘‘One of the detonators missed its cue.’’ ‘‘I don’t want an explanation. I want an explosion,’’ E. J. said. Ryan turned to me. ‘‘It’s going to take a whole day to reset and rebuild the cafe. Want to drive to Malibu? Get some beach time?’’ E. J. stepped between us. ‘‘Where’s Marla? She isn’t supposed to leave the scene. She’s supposed to get into the car with the two of you.’’ The three of us did a 360, but no sign of her. A few minutes later, I found her lurking at the side of my trailer. ‘‘Marla? What’s wrong? Why’d you leave?’’ She shuddered. ‘‘I’m scared, Todd. Seriously. That explosion was real. It hurt. I still have glass in my hair.’’ She locked those beautiful green eyes on mine. ‘‘It wasn’t right. I think we’re in danger. E. J. — he’s crazy.’’ I started to protest, but she grabbed my arm. ‘‘Todd, don’t you wonder why E. J. has never been allowed to finish a film?’’ Of course I knew why E. J. had never been allowed to finish a movie. Everyone knew why E. J. had never been able to finish a movie. But it wasn’t what Marla was implying, what she was hoping: those old rumors, most of them probably propagated by E. J. himself HANYA YANAGIHARA — that the reason the second lead in ‘‘Eastern Exposures’’ had had to be recast wasn’t because he had died of a drug overdose, but because E. J. had killed him. (Though no one actually knew how. Poisonous snake? It had been close enough to the jungle, after all. Arsenic, shot between the third and fourth toes? Rohypnol, a nudge onto Chonburi Expressway at rush hour before he collapsed completely?) Or how that little girl who followed E. J. from station to station at the craft services table, silent and slim as an ermine, wasn’t actually his daughter, but his slave, a souvenir plucked from a squalid apartment complex in Dushanbe. Actresses, I thought, and not for the first time. And then came all the other thoughts, unfolding scroll-like before me: Why am I here? Why am I doing this? And then: My cowardice. Here I was, in L.A., when really, I needed to be 10,000 miles east, in Trieste. And I needed to be there by Thursday, or there would be no return, not for me, and certainly not for Francis. But that’s not what I said. What I instead said was ‘‘Marla, then we have to kill him first. We make sure the explosives go off early while E. J. is standing there.’’ Marla looked at me, stunned but intrigued. It was then I realized I’m no actor. I’m a coldblooded killer, like that bastard Francis already DAVID BALDACCI was. Like I would have to be if I ever made it to Trieste. I gripped her shoulders. ‘‘And you’re the key!’’ ‘‘Me? How?’’ ‘‘Sex. He wants you. An assignation. Then, boom.

We’ll give a great eulogy. The performance of our lives.’’ Actually, I would give a great eulogy. Why leave loose ends? Goodbye, Marla. Damn, this killing thing was addictive. ‘‘You’re no techie.’’ She yanked me into my trailer. We stripped. She’d ask E. J. to ‘‘rehearse’’ with her, I said. At night. I’d hide offset. Mid-‘‘scene’’ she’d need to ‘‘get something.’’ I’d hit REBECCA CURTIS ‘‘blow.’’ I bent her legs back. I thought, She’ll make an exquisite corpse. ‘‘Not sure,’’ Marla said. ‘‘E. J.’s got warts.’’ I saw wadded C-notes in her purse. ‘‘You’ve had sex before,’’ I said. ‘‘Don’t you want sex that’s explosive?’’ HANYA YANAGIHARA Francis, I thought. It was eating babies. We’d wanted roles in this flick where there’s nothing left on earth to eat but cockroaches and babies. Verisimilitude, Francis said. To win great roles, do great stuff. We picked Trieste because the exchange rate was good. But rumors gypsies sold babies were false. So we stole one. We ate it, but got caught. I escaped; the gypsies chained him in a basement. He had to get their ‘‘queen’’ pregnant in six cycles. Five had passed. They let him send me letters. The ‘‘queen’’ weighed 500 pounds. But the problem was him. They’d tested. His morphology was only 2 percent. ‘‘Americans,’’ the gypsy doctor said,‘‘have lousy sperm, due to podcasts, Kindles, iPhones and chemicals in their lousy water.’’ They fed Francis creamed corn. The ‘‘queen’’ was ovulating Thursday. They had a ‘‘mystic’’ who’d know if she’d conceived on Sunday. If she hadn’t, Francis was dead. Marla stepped off the plane in Trieste, her face aching. She touched above her lip, where Ryan’s mustache kept growing in. It felt sharp and soft at once, and she couldn’t keep her hands out of it. One of Ryan’s eyes wasn’t behaving, which just figured. At the BEN MARCUS hotel Marla tried to wash it out, and she very nearly did. The water made it go vacant and white. She’d need to keep that eye closed. Was it enough to be riding shotgun inside that loser’s body, finishing the little bitch’s work for him? It wasn’t. Still, she had a few minutes, and she needed to be convincing to Francis, so she coordinated a final orgasm for Ryan, using the hallway mirror to calibrate her technique. It was hard to feel sexy with Ryan’s body. It felt like she was washing dishes, except at the end, when a feeling of live birth descended, as if she’d been shot through a wet cannon, ending up as a soupy mess on her hotel floor. On the way to the museum, lumbering inside Ryan, whose muscles could barely command the body forward, Marla suddenly knew why he was so small-minded and bitter, so scheming. He was in pain all the time. It hurt to

November – December, 2014

JOSHUA FERRIS

BEN MARCUS

JENNY OFFILL

be him. Poor Francis. This would all be his problem soon. Marla arrived at the Piazza Venezia with a few minutes to spare. Across the street, at the Museo Revoltella, Anderson’s ‘‘exhibit’’ would soon begin, and she needed to be ready. She walked toward the big white building, playing childishly with the Italian: ‘‘the revolting museum.’’ Actually, it was in the best taste: simple lines, a clean, classical facade. That was what was so revolting about it. All the provocations inside had been tamed. ZADIE SMITH Now the tourists came to see the ripped canvases and the blunt perspectives, the de Chiricos, the Fontanas. It was what you did before getting an ice

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ADELLE WALDMAN

cream. She also wanted an ice cream — the sun was brutal. She kept walking. Crossing the square felt like being in a de Chirico, the shadow of her new body stretched so far. But no one found her strange; no one blocked her way. Perhaps everybody drags their body through the world with the same painful effort. At the entrance she left $5 in the box and walked the great stone stairs. Again she had the sense of something flattened out: all these individual artists constrained to live together now under one roof, sharing rooms, sharing walls, gathered by Anderson’s whims or by the dull rules of chronology and influence. Like a graveyard! Buried forever next to whomever. ‘‘Can I help you?’’ asked a guard, rising from his chair. Marla turned and saw how close she was standing to him. Being in Ryan seemed to mess with her spatial awareness. Her peripheral vision was shot. She stepped back and worked hard to make Ryan smile. ‘‘I’m looking for the Lucio Fontana?’’ ‘‘Room six.’’ And it was wonderful to approach that room, finally. To see, first, the slashes and the black shimmer behind, and then, on the central bench, Anderson and Francis, waiting for her. Waiting for him. She knew she had been brought here for Francis, but as she crossed the threshold it really seemed any combination was possible, anything might penetrate anybody, and the result would be the same. She watched them stand and begin clapping. She felt like a triumphant soprano. Both men came and took her hands. His hands. They faced each other. Then they turned toward the greatest of the Fontanas: one huge slash down a canvas of pure arterial red, leading to that shimmering black beneath. It was large enough that a man might enter it. A woman, too. ‘‘Shall we?’’ asked Marla, inside Ryan. And they did.

Business of Style

An American in Shanghai Michael Kors takes his one-man show — glamorous fashions, zingy one-liners, crazed fans and all — on the road. BY NICHOLAS HARAMIS PHOTOGRAPHS BY KA XIAOXI

He shoots a look at his husband and business partner, Lance LePere, who ’’HERE, TAKE A FAJITA.’’ Michael Kors spins the lazy Susan like it’s the met Kors while interning at his Paris office. ’’What color are the walls, Lance?’’ Wheel of Fortune so that a starchy circle lands in front of me. ’’Add a little bit Scanning the empty, ornate main room of the Dragon Phoenix restaurant, of onion to it. Some hoisin. Put a little cucumber on that duck skin — turn it LePere says, ’’Um . . . Ladurée?’’ Kors shakes his head. ’’You must be into a dietetic delight!’’ The 55-year-old American designer arrived in exhausted. I say it’s Claridge’s.’’ Kors raises an eyebrow as if he’s just taught Shanghai from New York yesterday and, despite a bit of jet lag, he’s in good everyone an important lesson on globalization. ’’The world is connected,’’ spirits. He’s currently on the wave half of the wall-and-wave mentality he’s he says. ’’Ladurée turned into Claridge’s, which is really Tiffany, and Audrey adopted over a lifetime of travel. ’’You hit a wall,’’ he says, pantomiming the Hepburn just wafted by!’’ impact, and moving into a fluid, rolling-with-the-homies arm motion. ’’After It’s this limitless reserve of campy one-liners that has made Kors such a that, you ride the wave.’’ This is Kors’s first trip to the city, where he’s pleasure to watch for 10 seasons as a judge on the fashion competition series come to open a glistening, two-story flagship. He will also host a thousand ’’Project Runway,’’ which helped propel his business into a billion-dollar style-savvy guests (including the actors Camilla Belle, Freida Pinto empire. The show is also why, on the other side of the world, he can’t cross and Hilary Swank, who have been flown in for the occasion) at his label’s the street without running into a fan — or a knockoff of one of first-ever hyper-immersive, multimedia runway show in an MISTER CONGENIALITY his coveted handbags. airplane hangar an hour’s drive away. But right now, he’s focused Michael Kors on the terrace After dinner, while exploring the Bund, a city-center boardwalk on food. Picking at another dish, he says, ’’Ooh, I love crystal of his suite at the Peninsula hotel, overlooking the surrounded by oddly shaped skyscrapers with bright lights shrimp!’’ His smile widens the way it does when he’s famous Bund, a scenic casting rainbows along the Huangpu River, Kors is stopped about to crack a joke. ’’You know her, right? The drag queen waterfront destination in multiple times — often by smartly dressed women in their 20s, from Nashville? She’s friends with Won Ton Consommé!’’ central Shanghai.

November – December, 2014

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MASS APPEAL Left: the designer at the opening of his new store on Nanjing Road. Below: Peking duck and other traditional Chinese dishes during dinner at the Dragon Phoenix.

Glamour and aspiration are what fashion is all about for Kors, who has never been one to work through his demons with all-black ensembles. who, ironically, recognize him by the aviators he wears anytime he’s out in public, even at night. He gamely poses for photos — almost always with his arms at his side, superhero-style, and always with that toothy showbiz smile. He absentmindedly hums ’’Slow Boat to China,’’ a pop standard from the ’40s that’s been covered by his idols Liza Minnelli and Bette Midler. ’’Everyone is so young here,’’ he says. ’’I feel like Methuselah.’’ The following night, Kors arrives at his new shop on Nanjing Road, not far from Tory Burch and Abercrombie & Fitch stores and just across the street from where Chairman Mao’s former home has been turned into a museum. He’s here to cut a ribbon, to christen the place, and Miranda Kerr was invited to help. The store is packed with photographers. ’’They must be here for Miranda,’’ he says, bounding off with that arm-swinging, sideways walk he uses to close out his runway shows into the crowd. Kors’s origin story in the world of fashion is about as American as apple pie — or, as was the case for a Jewish boy growing up in suburban New York, Sunday-night Chinese. His ’’liberal and out-there’’ mother, a former model who attempted to try out for the Philadelphia Eagles football team (’’at 128 pounds, she wasn’t what they had in mind’’), was loving but far from doting, allowing her young teenage son to take unchaperoned weekend trips into the city with friends. There wasn’t a time when he didn’t care deeply about theater, fashion and the theater of fashion. According to legend — and nobody loves to mythologize Kors more than he does — he designed the dress for his mother’s second wedding when he was 5 years old. At 16, instead of going to his prom, he stopped by ’’to watch the red carpet arrivals,’’ and then

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headed off to Studio 54, where he was a screwdriver-drinking regular in ’’Olivia Newton-John ’Physical’-era’’ outfits. A short stint in acting school was followed by a shorter one at the Fashion Institute of Technology; he dropped out after nine months to work at Lothar’s boutique, whose owner gave him the chance to display his own designs. Soon after, Kors was discovered by Dawn Mello, Bergdorf Goodman’s fashion director at the time, who set his career on the right path, and by 1981, at the age of 22, his clothing was being sold in stores around the country. Even as a child, he was drawn to the rush of adventure. When, in grade school, his classmates brought guppies for show and tell, he brought European currency. ’’There I was, like, ’This is Italian lire. These are French francs.’ I think I was bitten really young,’’ he says, taking in the cacophony of the city from the rooftop patio of his suite at the Peninsula hotel. (He orders ’’one club sandwich, no egg, with a side of fries,’’ before marveling again at the view.) The stamps in his passport have reflected his evolving aesthetic over the years — mixing the known and the unexpected to keep his classic designs fresh season after season. Glamour and aspiration are what fashion is all about for Kors, who has never been one to work through his demons with all-black ensembles. ’’I think about design the way I think about travel,’’ he says. ’’If it’s totally from left field, it turns out to be the thing you wear once and never again. But if it’s something you know too well, you’re bored by it.’’ Now, every time he goes somewhere, he checks to see what people are wearing — and listens to get a sense of what might be missing from their closets. It started in Paris, in 1997, when he was hired by

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the French fashion house Céline. ’’It was the first time I’d noticed that women would buy white winter coats,’’ he says. ’’They didn’t give a hoot.’’ He’s since ’’played with Capri, Wyoming and Big Sur,’’ but not with any sort of specificity. ’’We will not get back to New York and do sea-foam green and gold cheongsam wraps. I never want to turn it into, ’Oh, here she comes, wearing the national costume of Zimbabwe!’ ’’ While dining out in Sydney a few years ago, for example, he noticed a woman wearing a strapless dress over a bathing suit top rather than a bra; his 2011 resort collection captured the undoneness of a day at the beach, with sarong-like skirts and ombré T-shirts. Last year, on a getaway on Long Island to design looks for spring 2014, he became transfixed by the way the curtains in his beach house blew in the wind. ’’That was the moment,’’ he says. The ensuing designs mixed in bits of airy white linen, but there were no Norma Desmond nightgowns or robes. ’’It was just a feeling — nothing literal. It’s like if you buy something too place-specific for your house, like, ’What am I going to do with this Balinese prayer table? I live in a one-bedroom in Murray Hill!’ ’’ Even on this short trip to Shanghai, he’s taken mental notes of the people he’s seen and the clothes they wear: ’’natty’’ men carrying clutches, the prevailing use of yellow and, on OFF THE RUNWAY Clockwise from top left: one woman, a particularly eye-catching pair of diamante Kors at his fashion show heels, ’’almost like she was playing soccer with a in an airplane hangar; Rosie Huntingtondiamond ball.’’ Whiteley (right) and The thing that separates Kors from his less other models backstage; approachable peers — in fact, the thing on which he’s a skyline selfie.

Kors is stopped multiple times — often by smartly dressed women in their 20s who, ironically, recognize him by the aviators he wears anytime he’s out in public, even at night. built his entire business — is his desire to be liked, and with it the effortless way that he’s made himself into a likable showman, as engaged at the Met Ball as he is when talking to his customers. And he in turn can tell a lot about a culture from his public appearances. In the Tokyo store, people not only waited ’’perfectly and calmly,’’ but also ’’in single file,’’ while his Toronto crowds have always been ’’friendly.’’ He was mobbed at a cosmetics store in Manila by women wearing traditional Philippine garb — ’’organza sleeves, very Imelda-ish.’’ But nothing quite compares to New York, where his annual Fashion’s Night Out event turns into what he describes as ’’Gunfight at the O.K. Corral — we had a lady throw her infant to cut a line and meet me. Then there was the sofa-jumper, but that’s anticlimactic compared to the babythrower.’’ On the street, he’s had women remove their shoes to prove to him that they’re wearing his designs. ’’I’ve even signed asses in New York,’’ he says. ’’I have! It’s the weirdest thing.’’ Later tonight, Kors will be driven to the Hongqiao International Airport for the Jet Set Experience, a runway spectacle with holograms, a fake snowfall and the one-off pieces — from cutaway swimsuits to floorlength fur coats — he’s created for the event. He’ll air-kiss actresses and, when it’s all done, take the stage for a Broadway-style send-off next to the supermodel Rosie HuntingtonWhiteley. But that’s not for another few hours. It’s his final afternoon in Shanghai, and he’d like to spend it checking out the French Concession, an area lined with colonial homes and peppered with market stalls. It’ll have to be quick — ’’drive-by sightseeing,’’ as he calls it. ’’I want to take in all the sights and sounds and smells of the city,’’ he says. And then out comes that giant grin again. ’’A little ceramics shopping wouldn’t kill me either.’’ Micheal Kors is available in Dubai at The Dubai Mall and Mall of the Emirates, and in Abu Dhabi at The Galleria on Al Maryah Island.

November – December, 2014

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By Design

Brutalism, Family Style

A monolithic former church complex becomes the center of a rich cultural scene, and a surprisingly joyful home. BY MARCO VELARDI PHOTOGRAPHS BY HENRY BOURNE

’’LIKE ANY GERMAN BOY FROM THE PROVINCES, I dreamt of living in New York,’’ said Joerg Koch, the editor of the German magazine 032c, who was raised in Wuppertal. His life took a different course, and yet the Brutalist church complex in which he lives in the center of Berlin is far from parochial. For Koch, the founder of an influential progressive magazine that cultivates an aesthetic of raw elegance, St. Agnes is a logical choice of home. The former Catholic parish and community

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center was built in the mid-1960s by the celebrated architect and city planner Werner Düttmann and is considered to be a significant contribution to Germany’s Brutalist vernacular. Koch, his wife and their two children recently settled into the imposing structure and are finding themselves surprisingly comfortable in an architecture not known for its hominess. The family moved from nearby Mitte, where Koch had lived since 1995 — back when, according to him,

REGAL UNION From left: the main room of Joerg Koch’s Berlin apartment, where the carpet extends up the walls and a 19th-century portrait hangs over leather chairs and a Biedermeier cabinet; the church tower of St. Agnes, designed by the architect Werner Düttmann.

’We always liked the rich color palette of Milanese apartments but cannot deny our Teutonic fascination with industrial design,’ says Koch.

BY CONTRAST Clockwise from far left: in the library, a pair of sofas and a chair by Konstantin Grcic; a kitschy ceramic vase on a Pallas table also by Grcic; an industrial pendant hangs over a green marble counter in the kitchen.

’’art and music flourished, often at the expense of hot water and working telephones.’’ Mitte allowed Koch room to experiment and to build the foundations of his artistic and professional life. Today the offices of 032c are housed in a stunning contemporary building by the architect Arno Brandlhuber — but Koch, bored of what he calls the ’’monoculture of Mitte,’’ was looking for a new spot to pioneer. In 2012, the German gallerist Johann König and his wife, Lena, invited the Kochs to visit the run-down building in the working-class residential neighborhood in Kreuzberg. The Königs had audaciously purchased it with a grand vision: ’’To bring together people who produce something culturally relevant, be it architecture, exhibitions, magazines or books.’’ The list of occupants now includes the architecture firm Robertneun, the nonprofit art center Praxes and the art-book publisher the Green Box. The main church, measuring more than 8,000 square feet, will be

converted by Brandlhuber into an exhibition space for König’s gallery. The last remaining wing, at the back of the complex, will contain studios for students of New York University. Restoring the monolithic concrete structure is an enormous undertaking that the families hope will not only bring new life to the neighborhood but will also recast an architectural style that has suffered from an image problem. (Brandlhuber describes St. Agnes as a ’’brutiful place.’’) The Kochs now live in an apartment that once served as a rectory, just below the Königs, who occupy the only other private residence in the complex. The unorthodox layout has proved practical for the young family. ’’The beautiful thing is that the apartment gives

November – December, 2014

Arena

Home Front

you complete flexibility. You have one side with a very classical plan of defined bedrooms, a bathroom and kitchen,’’ Koch says, “and another with a large, open space where we have a library, a studio and a terrace.’’ Throughout the apartment, the Kochs have sought to turn up the contrast between new and old, conservative and radical, raw and refined. A heavily ornate ceramic vase sits on a minimal black table by Konstantin Grcic; a 19th-century Lüsterweibchen chandelier hangs in front of a sleek, mirrored scrim; contemporary leather chairs flank a Biedermeier cabinet. The juxtaposition is perhaps most evident in the main room, where a soft purple carpet custom-made by the historic German producer Vorwerk extends across the floor and up the walls to meet a rough concrete ceiling. ’’We always liked the rich color palette of Milanese apartments,” Koch says, ’’but cannot deny our Teutonic fascination with industrial design.’’

The drama and spareness of the purple room give the apartment an air of artful sophistication, yet the space is also full of warmth. ’’There is nothing more disturbing than going into an apartment that looks essentially like an installation where you can’t see any traces of family life,’’ Koch says. The purple room has become a Saturday disco place for the children. ’’We dance in here to really loud Rihanna tracks until we’re all on the floor.’’

RAW AND REFINED Clockwise from top right: the Kochs’ bed, covered with a digitally printed fabric depicting a lush landscape; Joerg and Maria in the purple room, a baseball bat by the skate brand Supreme against the wall; a 19th-century Lüsterweibchen chandelier in front of an installation by the fashion duo Bless.

T Emirates: The New York Times Style Magazine

FROM TOP: COLLIER SCHORR; FRANÇOIS HALARD; JAMIE HAWKESWORTH.

November – December, 2014

GOLDEN TOUCH

Channing Tatum, Sensitive Superstar Page 66 YSL’s Passion for Chintz Page 70 Fashion’s Androgynous Statement Page 74

Channing Tatum has gone from being a stripper in Florida to one of Hollywoodâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s top-earning actors. What does that do to a person? BY ROB HASKELL PHOTOGRAPHS BY COLLIER SCHORR STYLED BY JASON RIDER

PORTRAIT OF AN ARTIST Channing Tatum took up sculpture while shooting a film in New Mexico several years ago. Vintage sweatshirt, AED 779, tank top, AED 455, and pants, AED 455, meletmercantile.com.

EARLIER THIS YEAR, a university in Illinois called Robert Morris decided to offer scholarships to prospective members of its new varsity video-game team. At a time when mathletes, chess kings and all manner of nerds have avenged themselves thoroughly and far beyond the horn-rimmed realm of Silicon Valley, this piece of news shouldn’t have raised any hackles. Perhaps more surprising has been the attention suddenly focused on the high school athlete, so often doomed to a more bitter fate. In February, the satirist Jason Headley released a web short called ’’It Doesn’t Get Better’’ — a spoof of the ’’It Gets Better’’ campaign against bullying — in which erstwhile football captains and homecoming queens warn that life goes swiftly downhill after graduation. In June, the journal Child Development published a study that showed that popular adolescents were more likely to abuse drugs and commit crimes. In Steven Soderbergh’s 2012 film ’’Magic Mike,’’ we meet the title character, played by Channing Tatum, as he emerges from postcoital slumber into a beer-colored Tampa morning, dragging his remarkable body — huge shoulders, tiny waist, a bas-relief of bare buttocks — to the bathroom to shave his pubic hair. ’’Foxcatcher,’’ the new film by Bennett Miller, opens to a somewhat different expression of Tatum’s intense and bankable physicality: the figure of Olympic wrestler Mark Schultz grappling violently on the mat with a dummy, the camera trained on his squirming fingers and misshapen ears, the microphone uncomfortably sensitive to the sound of his panting. After practice, Schultz retreats to a grim brown apartment where the lampshades don’t entirely cover the bulbs, and where a gold medal in a velveteen case seems to offer hollow consolation. This is a Tatum role bereft of sexual glamour; the jock has come crashing down to earth. ’’Foxcatcher’’ explores the true-life relationship between Schultz and John E. du Pont, who in 1996 murdered Schultz’s brother Dave, also an Olympic champion wrestler. It’s a cautionary tale, Tatum says. And for all its libidinal swagger, so is ’’Magic Mike,’’ whose script was based on Tatum’s own experience parlaying his football physique into work as a stripper in Florida at age 19. Both films speak to the limits of physicality, to the hazard of betting early on one’s body. Joseph Allen, a psychologist at the University of Virginia who was the lead author of the study on popular kids published in Child Development, has a cute term for this: ’’the high school reunion effect,’’ in which the beautiful ones return looking diminished, to the quiet glee of rehabilitated nerds in their Audis. Tatum, if he hadn’t stumbled into movie stardom — hardly the career he dreamed of while on the football field at Tampa Catholic High School — might have been just such a casualty, and he knows it well. He arrives for breakfast in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Venice wearing khakis, a white T-shirt and turquoise sneakers — the costume of someone who doesn’t feel the need to embellish what nature provided. He is missing a sliver of his left eyebrow, the result of a bad hop on the baseball field, one of the many stigmata of his athletic glory. ’’I’ve always negotiated the world very physically, from football to tussling at the playground to taking my clothes off,’’ Tatum says. ’’My dad’s a physical guy. I think that’s how I wanted to see myself as a kid, how I won approval, and it’s no secret that that’s how I got into this business. But over time I’ve been able to develop other aspects of myself, sort of on-the-job training.’’ Tatum’s corn-fed look and winking self-awareness have proved a winning combination. Two years ago he starred in three films in the span of five months that grossed over $100 million each; a feat unheard of in Hollywood. One of those blockbusters, ’’21 Jump Street,’’ offers a hilarious exploration of the high school reunion effect. In it, Tatum plays a barely literate meathead (opposite a meek and bookish Jonah Hill) who returns to high school as an undercover police officer to find that the behavior that had made him a popular teenager — for example, punching a black, gay student in the parking lot — now begets outrage. Reid Carolin, Tatum’s best friend and production

partner in the company Free Association, believes that the movie succeeds in part because we are watching Tatum work through his own life story. ’’I don’t know if he understands how brilliantly he’s channeling and poking fun at that part of himself in the character,’’ Carolin explains. It’s tempting, in any case, to think that Tatum has been reappraising an old idea about himself so that he can move on to new ones. Tatum’s path to fame is well known: a blue-collar upbringing mostly in Alabama, Mississippi and Florida, an unsuccessful go of college on a football scholarship, then construction jobs, stripping, dancing, modeling and, finally, Hollywood. The actor, now 34, had to cobble together an education along the way. He is still adding matter, to use a term from sculpture, which has been his quiet passion for the last few years. ’’I could never carve away marble like the ancients,’’ he says. ’’I’m more of an additive guy.’’ Tatum did not exactly coast through adolescence on the strength of his appearance, and he did not always believe that the world of ideas was available to him. As a child he struggled with A.D.H.D. and dyslexia, was prescribed stimulants and did poorly in school. ’’I have never considered myself a very smart person, for a lot of reasons,’’ he says. ’’Not having early success on that one path messes with you. You get lumped in classes with kids with autism and Down Syndrome, and you look around and say, Okay, so this is where I’m at. Or you get put in the typical classes and you say, All right, I’m obviously not like these kids either. So you’re kind of nowhere. You’re just

different. The system is broken. If we can streamline a multibillion-dollar company, we should be able to help kids who struggle the way I did.’’ It amazes him now to consider that, given his academic challenges especially, no one thought to push him toward the arts. His father was a roofer who fell through a roof and broke his back, and his mother worked a variety of what he calls normal American jobs. ’’It’s just weird that for some people art is a luxury,’’ he says. ’’My parents had no artistic outlet. Some people pass down music to their kids, but I couldn’t tell you what my mom’s or dad’s favorite song is. So when I started going out into the world, I was drawn to people who knew about movies, art, even fashion. I went to New York and did the whole modeling thing, and I just learned everything I could from anybody who knew something I didn’t. I’ve had a few John du Ponts in my life, to be honest. I think that’s one thing I’m pretty skilled at. I can look at a person and say, They’ve got something that I want up there in their head. I’m going to do my best to get in there and absorb it. My mom said, ’Be a sponge.’ And so I’ve learned more from people than I have from school or from books.’’ Tatum met Carolin during the making of ’’Stop-Loss,’’ the Kimberly Peircedirected 2008 film about young Iraq War vets. Carolin had a number of fascinating projects on his plate at the time but wasn’t earning tons of money, and Tatum was having no trouble making money but couldn’t find a project that interested him. Their union has been felicitous: Tatum produced ’’Earth Made of Glass,’’ Carolin’s award-winning documentary about the Rwandan genocide, and Carolin wrote ’’Magic Mike,’’ a film that earned more than $150 million on its $7 million budget. And though their collaboration may initially have married one man’s brain with another’s body, it has evolved into a partnership of equals. Earlier this year they visited Gambia in pursuit of a story they are hoping to develop together. They are honing a script for a biopic about Evel Knievel and another for a film about the Marvel superhero Gambit. They are working on a documentary about military dogs for HBO. There are television projects on the horizon, too. And the pair may try their hand at directing. In September they began shooting a sequel to ’’Magic Mike,’’ a road movie based on Tatum’s experience at an annual stripper convention, where, with thousands of women in the audience, a dancer could make more money in a single night than he could over the entire rest of the year. Tatum wrote a handful of scenes with Carolin. ’’Chan’s a blue-collar person, a worker by nature,’’ Carolin said. ’’So when he’s producing or financing or developing, he doesn’t just want credit for something. He’s looking to get into it, to learn to do it. He’s so physically talented and good-looking and all that movie star stuff, but there’s a curiosity in him that originates in the fact that he really did struggle. Football didn’t stick. College didn’t stick. And yet he has the highest emotional intelligence of anyone I know. And he has the ability to teach others, including me, how to make decisions from that place.’’ People who know Tatum often refer to his sweetness, and lately, unbidden, they mention what a terrific father he must be. In May of last year, Tatum and his wife, the actress Jenna Dewan-Tatum, had a daughter, Everly. He finds fatherhood difficult, but it has taught him to be a more diligent student of himself. ’’You notice your behavior, like, Wow, I don’t have much patience right now. Why is that?’’ he explains. ’’You spend the day watching this thing constantly taking in information, and you have to be sure you’re making that happen. At the end of the day when I put her to bed, I feel glad to have some peace but say to myself, That was so much fun.’’ Tatum pursues his sculpture in a small studio made from a converted catch-all room at the back of his house in the Hollywood Hills. He stumbled into the art several years ago while shooting Soderbergh’s ’’Haywire’’ in New Mexico. Wandering through town on his day off, he passed a storefront through which he could see someone working on a large figurative sculpture. ’’For some reason I was captivated,’’ he recalls. ’’And I had this sort of feeling that I could do it. I don’t know why.’’ He stood staring until the artist beckoned him inside and offered him some clay to work with. Tatum, who still prefers to work in clay, cites Auguste Rodin as one of his sculptural heroes. (’’My stuff

ends up looking like his stuff,’’ he says, ’’although it’s crazy that I would even put our names in the same sentence.’’) He acknowledges that making art has been a refuge from acting at a time when he has never had more offers. ’’It’s so internal. You get so focused on yourself as an actor,’’ he says. ’’You never feel totally confident that you got it right, and in the end the director will cut everything away to tell the story he wants to tell. With sculpting, nothing is cloudy or mystical. It’s just about this object, and if you’re trying to depict reality, and you do it well, then the outcome is the truth.’’ ’’Foxcatcher’’ is a film that frustrates any search for the straightforward truth; it offers a devastating account of an inexplicable act, and Tatum admits that when he first read the script, about eight years ago, he didn’t understand it. Was John du Pont, played by an utterly transformed Steve Carell, in love with Mark Schultz? Was he driven by a desire to please an unloving mother (Vanessa Redgrave, marvelously haughty as the old Mrs. du Pont)? ’’There’s definitely an Oedipal element,’’ Tatum acknowledges. ’’But there’s no resolve. There’s no huge lesson. It just tries to show what really happened, and that’s never easy.’’ Tatum’s friends say that he has never prepared more intensely for a role. He trained for it in the gym during breaks from shooting ’’White House Down’’ in Canada. Mark Ruffalo, who plays Mark’s brother Dave Schultz, advised him to study the real Mark Schultz closely. Tatum spent a number of days with Schultz, and the two remain in touch. ’’It felt like a sensitive situation because Mark Schultz really wanted me to get everything correct,’’ Tatum says. ’’In a two-hour movie I’m never going to be able to show everything about a person, but I tried to grasp the most poignant things and to imbue them into the film. Mark didn’t expect to like it, though it turned out that he did. He was just hoping he’d be relieved, and I think maybe he wanted to get some justice. I’m not sure it’s full enough of that stuff for him — all the stuff that people did to him, terrible, terrible things. The movie doesn’t do that. It shows these relationships that are complicated and beautiful and horrible.’’ Schultz seemed to understand that he might benefit from moving outside his tightly circumscribed world by accepting du Pont’s offer of housing and financial support. This proved to be a disastrous mistake, but Tatum empathizes deeply with the notion of risk that originates in desperation. ’’Personally, I like being pushed into corners,’’ he says. ’’It forces you to be creative. Being a stripper exposed me to a lot of people I might never have met, and that has turned out to be a gift. There are lots of characters I feel I can play as a result. So when people tell me they want to act, I’m like, Okay, if you want to act, go see America. If you can afford gas money, go talk to people and see how they really live. Sure, you can go to theater class at a young age. That’s not how I did it. I would have loved to learn things earlier than I did, but then maybe I wouldn’t have gone and done the things that gave me insight into what it is to be human — to have fears and wants. Like the fear of asking a girl out on a date when I can’t afford dinner at Chili’s, so instead maybe we go to Checkers and I make it cool by turning it into a picnic, put the burgers in a basket of my mom’s and try to make it romantic. That’s the kind of worry I used to have.’’ On screen, Mark Schultz’s brooding face, the stiff, lumbering carriage of his body, so primed for violence, seem to offer testimony to the deepening wells from which Tatum, no longer merely a heartthrob or a gunslinger or a slouch, is now able to draw in his acting. Critics who have not always taken him seriously will find it hard to ignore the achievement of ’’Foxcatcher.’’ Though he remains a physical specimen — this summer he backflipped off the skids of a helicopter into a mountain lake on ’’Running Wild,’’ the popular television show hosted by the extreme outdoorsman Bear Grylls — there is still more catching up to do. Recently Tatum’s wife bought him lessons from a sculptor who emphasizes classical technique. ’’I’ve never studied the classics, but I’d like to,’’ Tatum says. ’’My teacher offered to show me how the Greeks were able to sculpt someone perfectly. From there you can go off and experiment — sort of like jazz. Once you learn to play anything, you can break the form and go and do something even bigger.’’

’I’ve always negotiated the world very physically, from football to tussling

at the playground

to taking my clothes off. I think that’s how I wanted to see myself as a kid, how I won approval, and it’s no secret that that’s how I got into this business.’

BODY AND SOUL Vintage coveralls, AED 1,461, and tank top, AED 455, meletmercantile .com. Vintage boots, AED 1,094, What Goes Around Comes Around L.A. Grooming: Jamie Taylor using Tom Ford for The Wall Group.

LOCATION: MICHAEL FRIMKESS STUDIO. PRODUCER: PETER M C CLAFFERTY. SET DESIGNER: PETER KLEIN AT FRANK REPS. LIGHTING DESIGNER: CHRIS GRUNDER. DIGITAL TECH: MICHEL ANDREO. STYLIST’S ASSISTANT: BENJAMIN KENNEDY

ALL PRICES ARE INDICATIVE

BY THE SEA Yves Saint Laurentâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s bedroom at Villa Mabrouka with Jean-Michel Frank-style furniture designed by Jacques Grange, a 19th-century French wood and beaded glass chandelier and a raw-silk bed cover.

THE ST�ENGTH OF SIMPLICITY Yves Saint Laurent’s last home, Villa Mabrouka, shows just how sophisticated ’plain’ decorating can be — and how radical chintz can seem.

BY MARIAN M C EVOY PHOTOGRAPHS BY FRANÇOIS HALARD

IT’S THE ANTITHESIS of his other homes.

Villa Mabrouka in Tangier, Morocco, which the iconic fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent shared with his partner, Pierre Bergé, is the visual incarnation of a breath of fresh air. No collections of priceless paintings, museum-class Asian antiquities, Renaissance bronzes or walls clad in hand-carved wood paneling here. For almost a decade, until Saint Laurent’s death at 71 in 2008, his preference for artfully layered spaces heaped with beautiful rarities gave way to rooms of spare sophistication. The Villa Mabrouka (mabrouka is ’’luck’’ in Arabic) is by far his most surprising refuge and an object lesson in the power of paring back. But first, the others: There was the twobedroom apartment furnished with fine, early American furniture and oil paintings of American Indians in Manhattan’s Pierre hotel, and the 19th-century neo-Gothic Château Gabriel near Deauville, France. There was a sumptuous ground-floor apartment filled with French Art Deco furniture, antiquities and paintings by Picasso, Goya, Matisse and Ingres on the Rue de Babylone in Paris, and an exotic 1920s compound decorated with French colonial-era furniture and handcrafted Moroccan details, once owned by the painter Jacques Majorelle, in Marrakesh. Compared with Saint Laurent’s other residences, the rarely photographed or seen Villa Mabrouka is not only plain but cheery. His lifelong addictions, bouts with depression and nervous breakdowns have been recounted in numerous books, documentaries and, more recently, two feature films, but you’d be hard pressed to find anything sad or brooding here. Life at Mabrouka was quiet and private. Saint Laurent read, listened to opera and the birds, and watched movies and fishing boats. He went on walks and shared simple meals with close friends, including his muses Betty Catroux and Loulou de la Falaise, the interior designer Alberto Pinto and the garden designer Madison Cox. The glamorous dinners and parties he ringmastered at his other houses were long over by the time he and

Bergé moved in for the summer in 1999. The villa is situated on a cliff five minutes uphill from downtown Tangier, overlooking the Strait of Gibraltar and the southern coast of Spain. Built in the 1960s, it incorporates Modernist and traditional Moroccan features including large, metal-framed floor-to-ceiling windows, whitewashed stucco walls, giant crenellated horseshoe arches and checkerboard-marble floors. One enters the walled compound through a circular courtyard shaded by a huge, drooping rubber tree and a phalanx of chest-high ferns. Sloping gardens spill over terraces laced with wide stone paths and steps that lead down to a biomorphic swimming pool carved into a hill of rock. Cox was responsible for planting palms, Italian lemon trees, climbing vines, iceberg roses, bougainvillea and hydrangea hedges, and installing a large dovecote. The expat American architect Stuart Church designed a pink stucco pavilion with a fireplace and windows looking onto the strait. But it’s not Mabrouka’s scenery or the ’’Moroccan Moderne’’ architecture that stirs the heart; it’s the décor. Most of all, it’s the bold use of chintz. Invented centuries ago in Calicut, India, the glazed cotton fabric printed with colorful patterns depicting flowers, birds, trees, fruits and butterflies became wildly popular during the 17th and 18th centuries. Long considered a staple in the houses of European aristocracy, chintz was elevated in the 20th century by influential interior designers including Colefax and Fowler, Elsie de Wolfe and Rose Cumming. During the last half century, international decorators with a penchant for the pretty, traditional, European ’’country-house’’ style used miles of the stuff, often in matching patterns, for curtains, bed covers, wall coverings and upholstery in unabashedly feminine rooms frequently accompanied by needlepoint pillows, porcelain knickknacks and layers of ruffles. Given its association with décor overkill — and the growing love of anything hard-edged and midcentury-modern — chintz’s appeal faded. It took Saint Laurent and his decorator,

SERENE SPLENDOR Clockwise from left: the entrance hall, with a harlequinpatterned marble floor; the dining room with walls clad in bamboo matting, late-19th-century lamps from Madeleine Castaing’s Paris shop and dining chairs by McGuire; the Salon Jaune, with sisal carpeting, 17thcentury Andalusian pottery bowls, a Claude Lalanne mirror and armchairs in a yellow chintz by Rose Cumming. Opposite: in the Salon Bleu, plush seating upholstered in quilted cotton chintz, also by Cumming.

Saint Laurent insisted on quality materials and workmanship. Most crucially, he was a stubborn, driven rebel with a pitch-perfect take on glamour and fantasy.

Jacques Grange — who used it brazenly and sparingly in Villa Mabrouka’s big, tall, whitewashed rooms — to banish the folderol and make clichéd chintz look fresh again. Grange, whose clients include Francis Ford Coppola, Valentino, François Pinault and the Mark hotel in New York, worked with Saint Laurent and Bergé for more than 30 years decorating most of their residences. He told me that collaborating with Saint Laurent at the Villa Mabrouka was a revelation: ’’For the first time in his life, Yves wanted a restful, open, happy environment — not a treasure palace,’’ he said. For the homes in Normandy, Paris and Marrakesh, Grange and Saint Laurent would often start by devising a scenario, or ’’storyline,’’ based on references to a person, painting or novel. The décor at Saint Laurent’s Château Gabriel was based on characters in Marcel Proust’s ’’In Search of Lost Time.’’ The style of the Rue de Babylone apartment spoke to the influence of two friends, Marie-Laure and Charles de Noailles — among the most important patrons of the arts in the 20th century. For Mabrouka, Saint Laurent conjured a Tangier house where an imaginary English couple might have lived in the 1950s. ’’When he suggested using chintz, I was astonished,’’ Grange said. ’’It was a totally new reference — one doesn’t automatically connect Saint Laurent’s taste in interior design with big, whimsical, turquoise and yellow floral prints.’’

Contrary to what many people think, not all couturiers are gifted, or even competent, designers of rooms. (Coco Chanel, Hubert de Givenchy and Karl Lagerfeld are notable exceptions.) Saint Laurent’s personal decoration was as finely tuned and willful as his fashion collections. He was also one of the most avid collectors of fine art, objets and furniture of our time. He insisted on quality materials and workmanship, and he could afford them. Most crucially, he was a stubborn, driven rebel with a pitch-perfect take on glamour and fantasy. His rooms are impossible to copy. Today, the Villa Mabrouka doesn’t look exactly like the photographs on these pages. All of the big upholstered sofas and armchairs remain in place, but many of the other furnishings and objects — the giant bronze Claude Lalanne water-lily mirrors and the library, for instance — have found a new home in Bergé’s current Tangier house nearby, the Villa Léon l’Africain. But Mabrouka’s bedrooms are untouched; even the padded basket-bed that belonged to the last of the fabled couturier’s four French bulldogs (all of them named Moujik) remains nestled in a corner. The house has been on and off the market for a couple of years now, at prices in the $10 million range. But until some lucky soul snaps it up and transforms the House of Luck, it will retain the atmosphere that made it Yves Saint Laurent’s last, and most stylishly restful, stand.

November â&#x20AC;&#x201C; December, 2014

ONE

As fashion designers blur the lines between the sexes, the freedom to dress regardless of gender allows boys and girls to forge their own identities.

PHOTOGRAPHS BY JAMIE HAWKESWORTH STYLED BY JOE M C KENNA

On him: Prada sweater, AED 8,668, shirt, AED 2,020, and pants, AED 2,387, prada.com. On her: Prada sweater, AED 8,306, shirt, AED 2,020, and pants, AED 2,387. On both: J.â&#x20AC;&#x2030;W. Anderson shoes (worn throughout), price on request, j-w-anderson.com.

On him: Marni shirt, AED 1,689, and pants, AED 2,607, barneys.com. On her: Marni blouse, AED 5,178, marni.com, and skirt, AED 3,599, nordstrom.com. Opposite, on him: Kenzo jacket, AED 4,187, and pants, AED 1,634, openingceremony .us. On her: Kenzo jacket, AED 3,948, and pants, AED 2,148. Comme des GarĂ§ons Shirt shirt, AED 1,799.

November â&#x20AC;&#x201C; December, 2014

Giorgio Armani jacket, AED 10,633 (for suit). Comme des Garรงons Play shirt, AED 844. Opposite: Giorgio Armani jacket, AED 10,633. Comme des Garรงons Play shirt, AED 808. ALL PRICES ARE INDICATIVE

Document

12 Charades Clues Friends who regularly play the game together demonstrate their greatest hits. BY LEANNE SHAPTON PHOTOGRAPHS BY GUS POWELL

Quid pro quo

Fraggle Rock

4-methylcyclohexane methanol

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Tiny Timâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s bloody hankie

Adobe InDesign CS5

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Ozymandias

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T Emirates: The New York Times Style Magazine