T Emirates: The New York Times Style Magazine

Women’s Fashion September - October, 2013

T Emirates : The New York Times Style Magazine AED 20

Women’s Fashion September - October, 2013

AED 20

MODERN GIRLS

The Contradictory Rooney Mara Victoria Beckham’s Extreme Ambition & Meet The UAE’s Fashion Royalty Dubai’s Most Stylish Women Talk Fashion

www.richardmille.com

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

Women’s Fashion September - October, 2013

Royal Design

Women in Style

This Is Rooney Mara

The Writer’s Room

Travel Diary

Madiyah Al Sharqi, daughter of the ruler of Fujairah speaks exclusively to T Emirates about her life as a princess, her family and her own fashion label. By Orna Ballout.

Three of the UAE’s most stylish professional women speak to T Emirates about power dressing in the workplace. By Priyanka Pradhan.

Meet the actress who is aloof, icy, playful, curious, remote, opaque, funny, shy, distant, nice, impenetrable, guarded and unreadable. Photographs

by David Sims. Styled

by Joe McKenna. Text by David Amsden.

A view of Rome, a pristine computer screen, a photograph of Basquiat, an I.B.M. 196c typewriter, the ghost of another author. For these five writers — each of whom releases a new book this fall — all they need to inspire is within these walls. Photographs

by John Spinks.

The neighborhood of Castello Orientale — with its tourist-free streets and old fashioned way of life — feels worlds away from Venice. By Marella Caracciolo Chia.

Photographs by Danilo Scarpati.

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68 Urban Fabric

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The cacophony of the 86 New York street is the perfect match for the season’s bold graphic prints toughened up by the city’s perennial favorite — black. Photographs

by Glen Luchford. Styled

by Suzanne Koller.

74 Working Girl clockwise from top: glen luchford; David Sims; juergen teller.

Victoria Beckham wants to rule the world. By Sarah Lyall. Photographs

by Juergen Teller.

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Clockwise from top: A model in a Chanel dress, AED 38,071, brooches, from AED 2,020 and Tom Binns necklace, AED 2,846; Rooney Mara as photographed by David Sims; Victoria Beckham works on the floor of her offices in London.

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T Emirates: The New York Times Style Magazine

On the Cover: Photographed by David Sims.

Styled by Joe McKenna.

Copyright © 2013 The New York Times

Table of Contents

Behind the T 10

Lookout Sign of the Times

The fashion industry is broken in more ways than one: runway shows don’t match retail expectations; designers can’t keep up with demand; and customers can’t buy a coat in winter. So who’s to blame? By Suzy Menkes.

11 This and That

Paola Navone’s new home line for Crate and Barrel.

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Lookout Emirates Special Focus: Time and Again

The run-up to the holiday season sees an array of timepieces for the discerning UAE connoisseur. For women, embellished and ornate watches take the lead while men’s watches are dominated by unconventional dials and exclusive limited edition pieces.

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Lipstick is getting some face time again, but not the slick, vampy variety.

This time around, it’s a subtle stain, like the lasting remnant of a summer strawberry. By Amanda Fortini. Photograph by Ben Hassett.

Contemporary Trailblazer

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Artist, curator, teacher and soldier, Mohammed Kazem has been at the forefront of contemporary art in the UAE since the 1980s. He speaks to T Emirates about the UAE’s still fledgling art scene. By Orna Ballout.

Quality In Fashion

Fall’s sugary pastels — lavender, pistachio, pale rose, butter cream — are a romantic respite from so much hard-working black and white. Photographs by Paul Wetherell. Styled by Vanessa Traina.

23 In the Air

Velvet has long been the calling card of the stylishly privileged. Now, it’s fashion’s turn to embrace the stuff of royals. By Carolina Irving, Miguel Flores-Vianna and Charlotte Di Carcaci.

28 Objects

As luck would have it, the most alluring accessories of this season are also the easiest to wear.

Photographs by Liz Collins.

Styled by Kate Lanphear.

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T Emirates: The New York Times Style Magazine

Quality Emirates Jewel In The Crown

With renowned Londonbased international jeweller David Morris, preparing to launch his Abu Dhabi flagship store, the son of the company’s founder and current MD, Jeremy Morris, talks about the brand’s unique approach to design.

By Orna Ballout.

34 A Picture and a Poem

The National Book Award finalist James Richardson’s meditation on the small hours inspires the street artist.

KAWS to call it at night.

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Clockwise from top left: The Reverso Cordonnet Duetto from JaegerLeCoultre; a model at Prada; the 1815 Rattrapante Perpetual Calendar watch from A. Lange & Söhne; Paola Navone Collection plate, AED 55, and fork, AED 73 for a set of 6; Crate and Barrel. Illustration by Konstantin Kakanias.

Copyright © 2013 The New York Times

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: image courtesy Jaeger-LeCoultre; ben hassett; Image courtesy: A. Lange & Söhne ; márton perlaki.

On Beauty

Table of Contents Chief Executive Sandeep Sehgal

Editorial Managing Editor Aaron Greenwood

Arena

Assistant Editors Orna Ballout Priyanka Pradhan Correspondents Mia Fothergill Fox Cordelia Ditton Gwenda Hughes-Art Richard Thompson-Travel

Diamond in the Rough

The Mexican architect Tatiana Bilbao may favor Brutalist forms, but with her signature light touch she’s creating her country’s most elegant buildings. By Nicolai Ouroussoff. Portrait by Isabelle Pateer.

art Senior Designers Nadia Mendez Ushi Pohlner Shawn Cadzow Photographers Ajith Joseph Nigel Dickens Robert de Wailly

37 Bohemian Billionaire

Seeing the Light

Wanderlust

The Second Coming

She may be one of the world’s youngest selfmade billionaires, but for Tory Burch, creative director and CEO of her eponymous fashion label, it has never been just about the money.

By Priyanka Pradhan.

For his fervent private collectors, James Turrell’s celestial skyspaces are an excercise in blind faith.

The temperamental artist regards them as test runs for his life’s work in the Arizona desert. Somehow, everyone’s happy. By Edward Helmore.

Photographs by Jackie Nickerson.

Dazzled by traditional craftsmanship and a riot of colors during a surprise trip to Peru’s Machu Picchu, the shoe designer Tabitha Simmons finds inspiration for her latest resort collection. By Maura Egan. Photographs by Craig McDean.

After more than 230 years, Houghton Hall — one of Britain’s finest Palladian houses — is being reunited with its unparalleled art collection. By Rita Konig.

Photograph by Anders Gramer.

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Stranger Than Paradise

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50

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Welcome to Marin County, the most beautiful, bucolic, privileged, liberal, hippiedippie place on earth. Love it or loathe it — it’s just hard to leave it. By Adam Sachs. Photographs by Andres Gonzalez.

production Production Manager Viktor Ahmed Production Supervisor Tushar Raval

Marketing and Sales Assistant General Manager Poonam Chawla Deputy Advertising Manager Neema S. Purswani Assistant Brand Manager Tarun Gangwani Marketing Coordinator Disha Gagwani Printed at Emirates Printing Press LLC, Dubai Distributed by GN Distribution

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

92 of The New York Times

The artist Konstantin Kakanias takes in the haute couture shows in Paris.

Editor in Chief Deborah Needleman

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Fashion Director at Large Joe McKenna

Creative Director Patrick Li Deputy Editor Whitney Vargas

Managing Editor George Gustines Photography Director Nadia Vellam

Clockwise from top left: Tabitha Simmons with a Peruvian woman in a traditional papier-mâché mask; Simmons’s Peru-inspired Mopsy shoe; the Horizon room in the skyspace James Turrell created for Jim Murren in Las Vegas.

The New York Times News Services General Manager Michael Greenspon Vice President, Licensing and Syndication Alice Ting

COPYRIGHT INFO

Published by

Vice President, Executive Editor The New York Times News Service & Syndicate Nancy Lee

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

UMS International FZ LLC P.O. Box: 503048, Building no 9, Office 106, Dubai Media City, Dubai, United Arab Emirates Tel:+9714-4329467 Fax: +9714-4329534

Editorial Director Josephine Schmidt

BPA Worldwide Consumer Membership Applied for September 2013.

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T Emirates: The New York Times Style Magazine

Licensed Editions

Editor, T International Editions George Gustines Coordinators Gary Caesar Jessie Sandler

Copyright © 2013 The New York Times

clockwise from top left: craig mCdean; image courtesy of Tabitha Simmons; jackie nickerson.

T, The Style Magazine

Document

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

ABU DHABI ART 2013 GALLERIES AB Gallery Agial Art Gallery Art Sawa ARTSPACE Athr Gallery Ayyam Gallery Bait Muzna Gallery Carpenters Workshop Gallery Edward Tyler Nahem Fine Art, L.L.C. EOA.PROJECTS Gagosian Gallery Galeri Zilberman Galerie Brigitte Schenk Galerie El Marsa Galerie Enrico Navarra Galerie GP & N Vallois Galerie Janine Rubeiz Galerie Kashya Hildebrand Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac Galleria Continua Gallery Isabelle van den Eynde

Hanart TZ Gallery Hauser & Wirth Horrach Moya Hunar Gallery kamel mennour Kerlin Gallery Kukje Gallery / Tina Kim Gallery Lam Art Gallery Lawrie Shabibi Leehwaik Gallery Leila Heller Gallery Lisson Gallery Meem Gallery October Gallery Paul Stolper Gallery Salwa Zeidan Gallery Sfeir-Semler Gallery The Breeder The Park Gallery The Third Line Tina Keng Gallery

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*Gallery list correct at time of printing, visit abudhabiartfair.ae for up to date information.

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Behind the T

Seeing the Light (Page 50) “He’s a mesmerizing character who holds collectors in his thrall,’’ says the writer Edward Helmore about James Turrell. Jackie Nickerson, who traveled far and wide to photograph Turrell’s art in private collections, was equally struck by the community of spiritual people that ‘‘one of the greatest living American artists’’ seems to build around his work and ideals. ‘‘It’s rare that something like art connects people like that,’’ she says. ‘‘He’s the bridge that connects the collectors with this itch inside their psychic self.’’

Suzanne Koller Urban Fabric (Page 74) Suzanne Koller is the co-founder and fashion director

of the Paris-based style magazine Self Service. For this issue, the Austrian stylist shifted her focus stateside to New York City. She says she was ‘‘inspired by the black-and-white pictures of William Klein from the 1960s, when he was scouting elegant women in fashion.’’ And she credits the team, including the photographer and the model, for how the story came to life on the page: ‘‘Glen Luchford captures the vibe of an elegant afternoon throughout the streets of New York, and Julia Nobis makes the fashion desirable.’’

The Writer’s Room

You put together two ‘‘Glad to know you, things that have not Clint.’’ The friendly been put together passport controller before. And the world was not to know that is changed. People may British people are not notice at the time, sometimes given a but that doesn’t matter. family name first, The world has been followed by the name changed nonetheless. their parents wanted them to use.

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T Emirates: The New York Times Style Magazine

The morning Claire Limyè Lanmè Faustin turned 7, a freak wave, measuring between 10 and 12 feet high, was seen in the ocean outside of Ville Rose.

East of the Tolly Club, after Deshapran Sashmal Road splits in two, there is a small mosque. A turn leads to a quiet enclave.

A warren of narrow lanes and mostly middle-class homes.

Clockwise from top right: jackie nickerson.

(Page 86) Don’t judge a book by its cover. Instead, judge it by its opening lines.

The works below are being released this fall by the authors featured in this issue.

Nothing is black and white A 1963 fashion photograph at the Paris Opera

by William Klein.

Sign of the Times

Something Is Wrong Here

and hang out in downtown galleries, trawling for inspiration for his shows. But with the number of collections now doubled, there is no time to do much travel beyond the virtual kind.

If we accept that the pace of fashion today was part of the problem behind the decline of John Galliano, the demise of Alexander McQueen and the cause of other well-known rehab cleanups, nonstop shows seem a high price to pay for the endless ‘‘newness’’ demanded of fashion now.

The strain on both budgets and designers is heavy. And only the fat-cat corporations can really afford to put on two mega ready-towear shows a year, or four if you add two haute couture shows, or six if you count men’s wear. Resort and prefall push the number up to eight. A couple of promotional shows in Asia, Brazil, Dubai or Moscow can bring the count to 10.

Ten shows a year! If you knock off the holiday season and the summer break, that means a show nearly every month.

But who needs more fashion and is gagging for yet another show? And how can designers cope, given that even the prolific Picasso did not churn out work like factory-baked cookies?

It is not just creatives who are under pressure. We editors might love, love, love! a fall collection, but before it is even delivered to American stores in August for our readers to savor, fashion is on to the next big thing. (Retail shipping dates vary in different international cities.) A round of resort shows starts during the early summer months, over a six-week period. There might be new

The fashion industry is broken in more ways than one: runway shows don’t match retail expectations; designers can’t keep up with demand; and customers can’t buy a coat in winter. So who’s to blame?

William Klein/Trunk Archive

By suzy menkes

I was chatting with the hot young London designer Jonathan Anderson, marveling at how in just three years he had matched his transgender frilly men’s wear with the addition of his intriguing women’s collections. ‘‘What’s that?’’ I asked, looking at a spread of drawings on the wall of his studio-cum-workroom in London’s down-at-the-heels Dalston neighborhood. (Think: East Village.) ‘‘Resort!’’ said the 28-year-old Northern Irishman whose label is known as J. W. Anderson.

Resort? Already! This guy has been in business only five years and has just 12 people in his studio. Does he really have to join the fashion treadmill, churning out more than four collections a year?

A treadmill it is, as Alber Elbaz of Lanvin said with a sigh recently, before his men’s-wear show: he used to go on exploratory trips

Women’s Fashion September - October, 2013

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Lookout

Sign of the Times

South of France, to be the first in her country to get one of the designer’s ‘‘Ricky’’ alligator bags.

With the world’s press gathering in New York for the spring 2014 season’s official September kickoff — followed by London, Milan, Paris and then shortly thereafter for prefall — who can define the purpose of these different shows? Do we take the current international spring and fall presentations as an expression of pure creative imagination, as opposed to the more commercial collections that customers are likely to buy? When I started my editor’s job, so many moons ago, haute couture had just stopped being a oneto-one with wealthy clients and had become a laboratory of ideas.

That now seems to be the role of international ready-to-wear.

Being a lover of fashion that stretches the outer limits of a designer’s imagination, I always favor powerful runway shows.

But — full disclosure now — I don’t actually know or write much about the resort collections, other than when Karl Lagerfeld

ideas, simpler, more wearable styles or even a negation of what went before. But not to worry! The fall collection will be gone from the stores in approximately two months, with unsold pieces we had raved about hanging forlornly as markdowns.

For all the promotional excitement attached to the international collections, it is the resort or prefall lines that are on the shelves for close to six months, while the so-called main line is in and out in about eight brief weeks.

How to make sense of this endless rush for the new when there are no longer any simple markers, like seasons? During the summer, when you are looking for a breezy maxi dress, the fall wool coats are hanging on the rails. Come early November, they will have vanished in favor of resort, which used to be called cruise, as if everyone hopped on a boat to the Caribbean with the first autumn chill.

Who are the crazy ones? The buying public demanding fashion now!, clicking online to buy during Burberry’s live-stream runway show months before the clothes are produced for the stores? The online shoppers hitting on special delivery pieces from Net-a-Porter that no one else will have — at least for the next two weeks?

Or has fashion itself gone mad, gathering speed so ferociously that it seems as if the only true luxury today is the ability to buy new and exclusive clothes every microsecond?

There is no doubt that online shopping has fed the craze for speed, because when you can’t touch the fabric or try on the outfit, the only emotion you experience is the excitement of the purchase and the thrill of beating everyone else to it.

Then there is a further, phony current of desire and longing, stage-managed by e-tailers and stores. They whip up excitement with their so-called limited editions, with the waiting list to buy a bag or the mapping out of objects to specific countries. I will never forget an oligarch’s wife telling everyone at a Ralph Lauren event in Moscow that she had taken a private plane to Cannes, in the

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T Emirates: The New York Times Style Magazine

offered a midseason Chanel show at the Château de Versailles, or Dior was presented in Monaco. Since I already spend five weeks at a time hopping between fashion capitals, there is no way that I can spend an extra month in New York — even if that is where the majority of salable designer clothes are seen.

Chief executives mutter privately about the high cost of maintaining ‘‘freshness,’’ yet they know that showing resort in New York has become a second and vital tool in worldwide promotion and that those sales can make up around three-quarters of a brand’s annual income. The story here is also about control, with the work of the big fashion houses increasingly unfiltered by journalistic critiques or magazine spreads. The clothes most worn by people are the clothes least commented on by the press.

The images now go directly to customers via online shows with advertising campaigns as a backup.

With the traditional six-month lead time on the delivery of international show content, designer collections can be outpaced by the so-called fast fashion chains. H&M, Topshop and Zara, or even Target and J. Crew, would have their versions for sale before the designer looks hit the stores.

So the pace of high fashion had to become equally frenetic. Both the management and the creatives are under constant, year-round pressure, especially the European designers who are obliged to show in New York, bringing in their teams, chasing the best models and replaying the tension and drama of yet another runway show.

And this additional pressure is not just for one extra season, but twice a year — after resort comes spring and after that prefall — in a whirligig that seems to be spinning out of control.

Does this nonstop parade of what’s new have an upside? With global warming upsetting traditional summer and winter climates, and with a global market expecting clothes at once suitable to a warm and humid Singapore, the deep freeze of Russia and the upside-down seasons in Australia, all these fresh fashion shows each month could be seen as logical for customers.

But whoever said that logic and fashion make a good fit? As the fashion carousel spins ever faster, the concern is that, while the stream of newness never runs out, there’s going to be a good deal more crash and burn among designers in the future.

from left: Yannis Vlamos/GoRunway; Gianni Pucci/GoRunway; Filippo Fior/GoRunway; Gianni Pucci/GoRunwaY; Filippo Fior/GoRunway.

Figments of imagination Runway looks from the fall collections that will be photographed by magazines but most likely never find their way to consumers, from far left: Gareth Pugh, Alexander McQueen, Dolce & Gabbana, Thom Browne, Versace.

Come early November, fall wool coats will have vanished from stores in favor of resort, which used to be called cruise, as if everyone hopped on a boat to the Caribbean with the first autumn chill.

This and That A Cultural Compendium

Seriously Sexy

The politely blunt manicure has finally grown up. Now the nails of a midcentury screen siren — long and almondshaped in rosy red — feel dangerously modern.

Chanel Le Vernis Nail Colour in Elixir, AED 99; chanel.com.

Right: the new nail, as shown at Valentino. illustrations by Konstantin Kakanias

Dining à la Carte The renowned Italian designer Paola Navone is known for her funky, colorful, East-meets-West style, which she has brought to her work for companies like Gervasoni and Driade. Now Crate and Barrel has asked her to envision an affordable home line with the prompt: ‘‘What would you do if you were having people over for dinner?’’ In response, Navone has designed all the components of her ideal dining room, from splotchy blue-and-white glazed plates to high-backed Windsor chairs to red steel hanging lights to a dining table with a tiled top and legs of reclaimed teak. — PILAR VILadas Como flat plate, AED 55, and fork, AED 73 for a set of six.

Available starting Sept. 9; crateandbarrel.com.

Feeling for

Deliberately Imperfect Last spring, the 25-year-old London-based designer Yang Li debuted his first runway collection, a line of reimagined street-wear staples with a gothic influence. For someone so young, Li has accomplished quite a lot: after dropping out of Central Saint Martins, he interned for Raf Simons, and by the tender age of 23 had already caught the eye of Michèle Montagne, the in-demand French publicist and stylist who helped shape the careers of Ann Demeulemeester and Haider Ackermann. Li’s clothes are made in Italy, and finished with absolute precision — except when they aren’t. He loves an element of spontaneity, like slashing the two front pockets of a slim-cut classic bouclé jacket. ‘‘Art is not all clean lines, but has a human touch,’’ he said. ‘‘Same with fashion.’’ — MALINA JOSEPH GILCHRIST All the prices are indicative.

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clockwise from top left: Brad Bridgers; Courtesy of Chanel; Marcio Madeira/Zeppelin (3); CHARLES SIMON.

the find

Sub Section

On Beauty

Big Red

Lipstick is getting some face time once again, but not the slick, vampy variety. This time around, it’s a subtle stain, like the lasting remnant of a summer strawberry.

By amanda Fortini Photograph by ben hassett

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T Emirates: The New York Times Style Magazine

Among women who wear lipstick — and some 80 percent of us do — there are two types: those who feel nude without a dark, dramatic slash of crimson on their lips, and those who prefer their lips to look ‘‘nude.’’

(Or rather the cosmetics industry’s idea of ‘‘nude,’’ a hue that is nothing like actual human lips in the buff.)

In the first group are the divas, the drama queens, the glamour pusses, rebel-punks and icons in the making: the look-at-me women who love attention and know that wearing an arresting lip color is a blatant, easy way of attracting some. These women view loud lipstick as an accessory they would never go without, as fundamental to the image they want to project as fabulous high heels. Their patron saints include Clara Bow, Bette Davis, Barbara Stanwyck, Elizabeth Taylor, Marilyn Monroe, Madonna, Dita Von Teese and even the fictional Betty Draper — women so associated with their lip color that it’s difficult to imagine them without it. Bold-lip aficionados believe, as Diane Von Furstenberg once quipped, that ‘‘lipstick is to the face as punctuation is to a sentence.’’

Those of us who belong to the second group, however, cringe at the thought of noticeable makeup. That’s not to say we don’t wear it; some of us spend an inordinate amount of time applying products in order to appear as if we don’t have any on. Dark lipstick, in my view, has always been the cosmetic equivalent of a persnickety foreign sports car: awesome to behold, maybe fun to test-drive, but requiring far too much maintenance for everyday life.

And so, although I had a brief, ‘‘Friends’’-era flirtation with a shiny eggplant lipstick, I’ve belonged to the latter camp for most of my adult life, favoring soft pinkish-brown shades that are as introverted as I am. As a teenager, I first fell in love with the color when I saw it on Audrey Hepburn in ‘‘Breakfast at Tiffany’s.’’ It seemed, like her, impossibly sophisticated, elegant and classy. ‘‘Hand me my purse, will you, darling? A girl can’t read that sort of thing without her lipstick,’’ she chirps with forced brightness to George Peppard’s writer-character, Paul Varjak, as he prepares to read her a breakup letter from her Brazilian lover. In the mid-1990s, when I discovered Bobbi Brown’s palette of neutrals (she introduced her first collection of 10 shades in 1991), I was hooked. I wore her Raisin and her Rose for years, later cheating with M.A.C.’s Twig. Not long ago, I returned to Bobbi, favoring yet another variation on the theme, this time Sandwash Pink.

Yet for a few seasons now, my old standby has seemed distinctly less modern and chic. While browsing streetstyle blogs, I began to notice that fashion-forward young women were trading in their lip gloss for the crisp, matte, sharply etched reds of wartime pinups and postwar

model: holly rose/next models. Makeup: Francelle; Hair: Diego Da Silva for Tim Howard Management.

Section Lookout

Pucker up Clockwise from left: a model at Prada. Hourglass Aura Sheer lip stain in scarlet, AED 96; sephora.com.

Covergirl Outlast lip stain in Plum Pout, AED 27; covergirl. com. Yves Saint

Laurent Rouge Pur Couture Vernis à Lèvres Glossy Stain in No. 1 Violet Edition, AED 125; yslbeautyus.com.

Lipstick Queen Velvet Rope in Entourage, AED 184; barneys.com.

makeup: stan wan; prada and Marni: Go Runway.

The models looked as though they had been drinking wine, licking Popsicles, eating berries or biting their lips until they bled.

Hollywood starlets. At parties, my most stylish friends were showing up in Nars’s Jungle Red or Fire Down Below.

At several of the fall 2013 runway shows, makeup artists painted the models’ lips dark, saturated, piquant shades of wine, plum, purple and bordeaux — nouveau-goth colors we haven’t seen much of since the late ’90s, except on Bella and the Cullen family in the ‘‘Twilight’’ franchise.

(There was also, it’s worth noting, some fuchsia and poppy to brighten all the melodrama.) What kept these lipsticks from looking dated is that they tended to be stains, not thick creams or dry mattes, with a sheerer, lighter texture than one would traditionally associate with such intense hues. As a result, the colors felt natural and organic instead of cosmetic or synthetically concocted in a lab: the models’ mouths looked as though they had been tinted by drinking wine, licking Popsicles, eating berries, rubbing their lips with flower pollen or biting them until they bled. ‘‘Think blooming rosebud mouths rather than gothic vamp,’’ says Lucia Pieroni, the creative director of Clé de Peau Beauté, who did the magenta pouts at Vera Wang. Pat McGrath, global creative design director for Proctor & Gamble and one of the most influential makeup artists working today, notes that we are seeing a ‘‘rouge revolution’’ — a term she coined to define the ‘‘new, sophisticated ways to wear matte lips in fuchsia, deep berries, burgundy and reds.’’

What are these new ways of wearing lipstick?

According to many makeup artists, the key is to layer, layer, layer. (First rule of lipstick: any two colors mixed together look snazzier than one alone.) And then, after all that varnishing, strategically undo what you’ve done: engage in some artful blotting. It’s this final step that renders the lips stained, not shellacked.

McGrath, who, as the makeup artist behind the Prada, Miu Miu, Lanvin and Dior shows might be the reigning queen of conspicuous color, describes her overall

full pout From top: a model at Marni. M.A.C. Pro Lipmix in Crimson, AED 55; maccosmetics .com. Estée Lauder Pure Color High Intensity Lip Lacquer in Electric Wine, AED 92; esteelauder.com.

technique as ‘‘layering lip liners and pigments to create new stains and finishes.’’ At Prada, she achieved a sensual, glossy, berry-tinted look by applying an initial coat of stain (CoverGirl OutLast LipStain in Plum Pout), followed by two additional lip colors (CoverGirl LipPerfection Lipcolor in Enchant and Hot), one after the other. The medley was then ‘‘intentionally faded out with wet wipes,’’ to give the feeling of morning-after makeup — ‘‘the sultriness when makeup is left over,’’ as McGrath puts it. Tom Pecheux, creative director for Estée Lauder, likewise piled on the product at Marni (M.A.C.’s Hang Up Lipstick over Crimson Lipmix, topped by a basic red pigment) after which he erased ‘‘the contours of the lips’’ for a three-dimensional impression.

These stains will likely work even for the color-averse, à la yours truly. Because they’re softer and more translucent than traditional lipstick, you won’t feel like your mouth is entering a room and leaving the rest of you behind. Plus, purplish hues tend to flatter almost any complexion. But the real allure of this ‘‘imperfectly perfect’’ style, to borrow Pat McGrath’s words, is that it frees the wearer from the tyrannical perfection of dark lipstick.

Peter Philips, who conjured deep burgundy lips for Fendi by applying ‘‘perfectly drawn’’ color and subsequently blurring the lines, notes that an unfinished lip was a practical advantage behind the scenes at a chaotic fashion show. With a ‘‘perfect matte lip,’’ he says, ‘‘if two or three girls mess it up, you would see right away.’’ Not so with this raw-edged approach. Women in the real world thus needn’t be too precious about these stains. Eat, drink, smoke, kiss, apply it in the back of a moving cab — your lipstick will remain intact. ‘‘A lip like that quite often looks more beautiful when it’s worn off a bit,’’ Philips says. Perhaps because it implies that the woman wearing the lipstick is kissing, eating, living life.

Curious to try out this look, I head to the drugstore and purchase a few products. Makeup artists advise that a pronounced lip should be your pièce de résistance. It should be worn with clear skin, a swoop of nude eye shadow, a couple of swipes of mascara and not much else. Philips also suggests curling your lashes and grooming your brows so ‘‘the focus is not just on the bottom of your face.’’

My canvas clean and uncluttered, I apply CoverGirl LipStain in Sassy Mauve, then fill in with a CoverGirl LipLiner called Sophisticated — McGrath used both for the Miu Miu show. I follow her directive to wipe off the middle of my lips with my fingers, and glance in the mirror. The intensely pigmented plum color brightens my eyes and warms my sometimes-sallow skin. I look chic, fierce, intimidating and maybe a little dangerous, like a film noir heroine, not like my usual self. But do I look sexy? Honestly I think I seem more likely to eat a man than to attract one. ‘‘Men don’t really think women are being sexy when they wear a dark thing like that,’’ Philips says, ‘‘but women feel great.’’ Isn’t that the point?

All the prices are indicative.

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Lookout Emirates

Of Designer Collaborations After Raf Simons for Adidas, Isabel Marant for H&M and Jason Wu for Lâncome, comes news of another designer collaboration this season.

Banana Republic has partnered with Issa London for an exclusive designer capsule collection which includes classic knee-length dresses and accessories for women. The collection features items in the brand’s signature safari prints with neutral and jewel-tone accents, while jewelry from the collection includes statement gold chain necklaces and bracelets, as well as leather wrapped bangles.

PRIYANKA PRADHAN

The collection is available at Banana Republic stores across the UAE.

Fast Friends In another top-end collaboration, Italian sports car manufacturer Ferrari has launched a limited edition handset in conjunction with Vertu. The handset takes design cues from the ergonomic lines of the Ferrari F12 Berlinetta. Ferrari’s design director, Flavio Manzoni, selected Diamond Like Coating (DLC) to protect elements of the phone. DLC is similar to the coating used to protect engine components.

The VERTU Ti Ferrari also features a Ferrari app, unique to Vertu, which integrates content from Ferrari’s website and in-house magazine as well as other social media. PRIYANKA PRADHAN

Images courtesy (TOP TO BOTTOM): BANANA REPUBLIC; VERTU; THE ONE.

The handset is now available from Vertu stores across the UAE.

Grey Matter From charcoal striped feature walls to aluminum riveted furniture, the color grey is dominating home décor this season. Drawing inspiration from this trend, UAE homewares retailer The One has launched an array of furniture in grey, including muted grey metallic armchairs and trunk-style side tables in leather and metal. PRIYANKA PRADHAN Available at The One stores across the Middle East.

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Lookout Emirates

Special Focus

Time and Again This summer saw the release of an array of luxury timepieces in the UAE. For women, embellished and ornate watches are on trend, while limited-editon timepieces featuring unconventional dials have proven popular with discerning males.

Jaeger-LeCoultre

Reverso Cordonnet Duetto

Vacheron Constantin

Traditionnelle Haute Joaillerie Watch

Inspired by a 1936 model, the Reverso Cordonnet Duetto encircles the wrist in a cordlet-style bracelet, and features more than 1,250 diamonds.

Available at Jaeger-LeCoultre boutiques in The Dubai Mall, Etihad Towers and Marina Mall Abu Dhabi. AED 965,000.

Price available upon request.

Versace

Venus A ring adorned with a blue, dark pink or green topaz describes an asymmetrical orbit around the small guilloché dial and is silhouetted against the colored glass with its see-through effect.

Available at the Versace Watch & Jewellery boutique at The Dubai Mall. Starting price AED 5,100.

Salvatore Ferragamo

Idillio

The “Sirena” timepiece from Salvatore Ferragamo features marine leather with dials in white or grey mother of pearl. The design of the face incorporates an unusual inlay technique that provides the appearance of fish scales.

Available at the Paris Gallery boutiques across the UAE. AED 6,300.

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T Emirates: The New York Times Style Magazine

IMAGE COURTESY CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT: Jaeger-LeCoultre; Vacheron Constantin; Salvatore FerrAgamo; VERSACE.

This Patrimony timepiece is handcrafted in 35 mm 18K white gold, set with 308 round-cut diamonds.

Featuring a diamond-set case and crown, the watch has a fully paved dial with applied hour markers in 18K gold and a see-through sapphire crystal caseback.

Montegrappa

Chaos Watch Automatic designed by Sylvester Stallone

Hand-made in northern Italy, where its mechanical movement is housed by artisans, the Chaos timepiece comes in a striking case, fashioned from a choice of silver or gold, with black PVD-coated back. It features a signature skull-and-serpents motif that continues around the case, including a small, engraved skull on the winding crown.

Available at Montegrappa Boutique, Emirates Towers Boulevard, Dubai. AED 318,080.

BOVET

Rising Star The Rising Star, produced in a limited edition of 190 pieces, has been completed by nine pairs of unique pieces whose dials on the movement side are decorated with miniature paintings reprising the themes of enamels displayed on historic timepieces from the 19th century.

Versace

Available at all Ahmed Sediqqi & Sons across the UAE. Price available on request.

IMAGE COURTESY CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT: Montegrappa; Ahmed Sediqqi & Sons; TAG Heuer; A. Lange & Söhne; VERSACE.

DV One Skeleton This model debuted at the luxury watch and jewelry expo Basel World 2013. It showcases a unique skeletal dial, which enables one to see the finely tuned mechanical movement inside. The unique dial is divided into two hemispheres – the skeletonized east and the dialed west. With almost half of the dial dedicated to the skeleton display, the watch also shows off some of the components that make up the Dubois-Dépraz chronograph module and base movement.

Available at the Versace Watch & Jeweler boutique at The Dubai Mall, UAE. AED 16,800.

TAG Heuer

A. Lange & Söhne

1815 Rattrapante Perpetual Calendar The mechanism behind 1815 Rattrapante Perpetual Calendar is visible through the sapphire-crystal caseback and ranks among the most fascinating ones in a movement. With a rattrapante chronograph, a perpetual calendar, a moon-phase display, and a power-reserve indicator, it unites more horological complications than the dial suggests at first sight.

Carrera 5 UAE Limited Edition The TAG Heuer Carrera Calibre 5, emblazoned with the UAE national flag at 6 o’clock, is available in only 250 limited edition pieces. The watch symbolically commemorates the birth of the United Arab Emirates with stand-out hand-applied rose gold plated indexes at 12 and 2 o’clock. The words ‘UAE Edition’ are clearly inscribed on the scratch resistant sapphire glass case back.

Available across the UAE at the Tag Huer BoutiqueThe Dubai Mall and all Al Manara boutiques in Abu Dhabi. AED 12,000.

Available from the A. Lange & Söhne boutique in The Dubai Mall. Price available on request.

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Lookout Emirates

Contemporary Trailblazer Artist, curator, teacher and soldier, Mohammed Kazem has been at the forefront of contemporary art in the UAE since the 1980s. Here, he talks to T Emirates about his burgeoning international profile and his ambition for the country’s still-fledgling art scene.

By Orna Ballout

This year he is showcasing his work in his first solo exhibition at the Venice Biennale, the 55th edition of the prestigious art event.

Showcasing the theme, “Walking on Water”, and on display until November, it is, Kazem explains, “a very simple but deeply concentrated piece of work” which explores political and social issues.

In 2002, Kazem threw wooden panels into the sea “to reflect the wars and everything happening in our lives”. In order to raise the issue, “I used nature’s elements to carry those pieces out of the border, freely, with each piece going in different directions.”

This work was documented in a series of photographs and film, and, along with a maquette he created in 2005, has been revisited to create his work in Venice: a chamber that visitors can enter to experience sights and sounds of the sea, and the marrying of art and nature with deeper political meaning.

Despite being the only artist selected to represent the UAE at what is recognised as one of the art world’s most important events, Kazem is modest about his success and instead sings the praises of curator Reem Fadda and the UAE Pavilion, who selected him, for their efforts “in developing this collaboration.”

Artist Mohammed Kazem.

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T Emirates: The New York Times Style Magazine

image courtesy of The UAE Pavilion.

Emirati artist Mohammed Kazem’s name is rapidly gaining global recognition.

images courtesy of Mohammed Kazem.

‘I was always collecting things and drawing, although I wasn’t sure why.’

Born in Dubai in 1969, Kazem led “a simple life” in his early years. “I was always collecting things and drawing, although I wasn’t sure why,” he says. When he was 14 he met his mentor, Hassan Sharif, who is considered by many the country’s first contemporary artist.

At this time Kazem decided to leave school and join the Fine Arts Society to develop his talent.

Although Kazem’s parents were supportive when their son needed to travel to Sharjah three times a week for art activities, they never really understood his passion. “They felt like I was doing something, but they didn’t really know what – and until this day they don’t know what I’m doing,” he laughs, admitting that his family members have neither visited his studio, Empty 10, located in Al Quoz, nor attended any of his exhibitions.

This doesn’t seem to bother Kazem. “They are proud that I’m traveling and they like to see me in the news,” he shrugs. Would he like to see them more involved? “I have kept this like it is for thirty years. If they ask what I’m doing, I don’t have an answer for them. It’s easier than explaining everything from A to Z.” In 1986, Kazem joined the military, spending the next 23 years as a soldier while simultaneously pursuing his passion for art.

Kazem is among a small group of artists who have worked hard to champion the contemporary art scene in the UAE. Throughout his career, he has juggled the roles of artist, curator and teacher. His work has been selected for notable exhibitions and biennales in Germany, Switzerland and India, to name a few.

And appreciation for his work is evident from his loyal clientele, which spans institutions and museums in Sharjah and Doha to private investors based across the region and worldwide.

With established events such as the Sharjah Biennale and Art Dubai, and major international projects like the Louvre Abu Dhabi and the Guggenheim Museum in the works, it’s clear that the UAE has grand ambitions to establish itself as a centre for art and culture.

While Kazem is optimistic for the future, he feels the country still has a long way to go.

“We are facing an issue with the Sharjah Biennale, that after the opening very few people are coming to it,” he remarks by way of illustration.

Kazem describes the UAE as “very different from other countries in the region”, in that each emirate has “its own institute that organizes activities, and that’s why there’s a variety of events happening across the UAE.” Over the past decade, he has noticed many changes, with more artists and curators becoming active thanks to governmentsponsored education initiatives. However, he believes it is still not enough. “There is no art academy, which is what we really need,” says Kazem. If we want “to bridge the gap between art and the audience,” he stresses, education is the key.

Images from top to bottom: Art works

by Mohammed Kazem, the UAE’s sole entrant at this year’s Venice Biennale.

Women’s Fashion September - October, 2013

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In Fashion

Light Motif

Fall’s sugary pastels — lavender, pistachio, pale rose, butter cream — are a romantic respite from so much hard-working black and white.

cool mint Emilio Pucci coat, AED 17,594; (212) 230-1135.

LaCrasia gloves, AED 550 and AED 1,102 (as belt); (212) 686-5428.

Verdura necklace, AED 18,366; verdura.com.

Proenza Schouler bag, AED 14,417; (212) 585-3200.

photographs by paul wetherell styled by vanessa traina

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Quality

In Fashion

baby blue Mugler hood, jacket and skirt, price on request; opening ceremony.us. Tiffany & Co. earrings, AED 3,673; tiffany.com.

Sermoneta gloves, AED 1,837; sermoneta glovesusa.com.

Bulgari watch, AED 8,265; bulgari.com.

Reed Krakoff bag, price on request; (212) 988-0560.

Proenza Schouler shoes, AED 2,479.

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T Emirates: The New York Times Style Magazine

Butter Cream Bottega Veneta coat, AED 10,101; bottegaveneta.com.

Céline top, AED 3,306; barneys.com.

Mikimoto necklaces, AED 202,020 (top) and AED 235,078; (888) 701-2323.

LaCrasia gloves, ‘AED 550. Stephen Russell vintage Cartier watch, AED 88,154; stephenrussell.com.

Louis Vuitton bag, about AED 27,548; louisvuitton.com.

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Quality

In Fashion

Faded lilac Proenza Schouler coat, AED 110,193 and skirt, AED 37,649. Seaman Schepps earrings, AED 28,282; (212) 753-9520.

Salvatore Ferragamo bag, price on request; (866) 3377242. LaCrasia gloves, AED 1,101.

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T Emirates: The New York Times Style Magazine

Model: Sigrid Agren/ the Society. Makeup

by Pep Gay at Streeters using Chanel. Hair by Esther Langham at Art + Commerce.

All the prices are indicative.

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Fashion assistant: Alexa Lanza. Manicure by Kiyo Okada at Garren NY using Dior Vernis. Set design by Andy Harman at the Wall group.

blush Rose Dior jackets, AED 14,325 and AED 16,528; (800) 9293467. Graff earrings and necklace (top), price on request; graffdiamonds .com. Tiffany & Co. necklace, AED 73,462; (800) 8433269. Giorgio Armani bag, AED 9,164; armani.com.

Nina Ricci gloves, AED 2,020; barneys. com. Bottega Veneta shoes, AED 2,424.

Quality

In the Air

International Velvet The rich textile has long been the calling card of the stylishly privileged. Now, it’s fashion’s turn to embrace the stuff of royals.

The Fall Ready-to-wear collections were shot through with velvets, deep-hued and in rich jewel colors, redolent of the apparel worn

by Pre-Raphaelite damsels and the more sinister queens of Westeros from ‘‘Game of Thrones.’’

The look was opulent and historical: Marios Schwab was influenced by the work of the 15thcentury Flemish painter Petrus Christus. Dolce & Gabbana showed velvet Mary Janes perched on mosaic wedges nearly as high as the chopines worn by 16th-century Venetian courtesans to protect their elaborate gowns from the filth of the streets.

Since the Middle Ages, when wearing the textured fabric became a perk of only the highborn, velvet has been synonymous with luxury.

Artisans of the Italian Renaissance were the first to master complicated double-pile weaving techniques that created plain, voided and figured velvets, often incorporating JudeoChristian and Islamic motifs like pomegranates and carnations. Sometimes the cloth was interlaced with loops of gold metal thread so that it glinted like fireflies. Soon, the textile was exported to the rest of Europe and the Ottoman Empire, where it clothed kings, curtained beds of state and velveted chambers in great displays of conspicuous and easily transportable riches.

Contemporary interiors, too, have benefited from the use of velvet. Pauline de Rothschild covered the vast seating areas in her hugely influential library at Château Mouton Rothschild in a rich azure. And the Milanese interior design firm Studio Peregalli, renowned for its take on modern day historicism, frequently uses the fabric to bring a heightened sense of sumptuous grandeur to any room. Really, what could be more inviting?

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high drama From left: Pauline de Rothschild’s library at Château Mouton Rothschild in Pauillac, France, photographed by Horst in 1963.

Blue period Clockwise from above left: Christopher Kane’s navy cutaway dress; Alberta Ferretti’s purple long-sleeve gown; Richard Sackville, Third Earl of Dorset, painted by Isaac Oliver in 1616 (regarded as one of the biggest gamblers and wastrels of the 17th century, he financed his extravagant wardrobe by selling family land and property); the furniture designer Hervé Van der Straeten’s drawing room in Paris.

Clockwise from Top Left: Horst/Vogue © Condé Nast; courtesy of Alberta Ferretti; © Victoria and Albert Museum, London; Courtesy of Christopher Kane; SIMON WATSON.

By carolina irving, miguel flores-vianna and Charlotte di carcaci

Clockwise from Top Left: Marianne Haas; Paul Barker; © 2013 Bata Shoe Museum, Toronto; Simon Watson; James McDonald; © Victoria and Albert Museum, London; Dolce & Gabbana; El Greco/The Yorck Project; Courtesy of Marios Schwab; shootdigital; Selznick/MGM/Kobal/Art Resource.

verdant fields Clockwise from top left: the antiques dealer Alain Demachy’s dining room in Paris with green velvet walls, photographed in the 1990s; the green velvet state bed at Houghton Hall, designed in 1732 by William Kent for England’s first prime minister, Sir Robert Walpole; Italian velvet chopines, circa 1600, embellished with lace and tassels (meant to be worn indoors by a woman of the upper class); Vivien Leigh as Scarlett O’Hara on the set of the 1939 film ‘‘Gone With the Wind.’’

soft to the touch Above: Marios Schwab’s burgundy paneled dress.

splendor in the grass Clockwise from above: the designer Roberto Peregalli’s salon in Tangier; the velvet Augustus table, designed by Alidad and Thomas Messel, available at alidad.com; a late-15th-century panel of voided satin velvet, brocaded with gold, depicting carnations and pomegranates; Dolce & Gabbana’s Mary Jane; Pope Pius V,

by El Greco, circa 1605.

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Quality

Objects

Happy Coincidences As luck would have it, the most alluring accessories of this season are also the easiest to wear.

Photographs by liz collins styled by kate lanphear

Slate gray bags From left: Alexander McQueen bag, price on request; for similar styles, call (212) 645-1797.

Balenciaga bag, AED 5,308; Edon Manor, (212) 431-3890. Alexander Wang top, AED 4,775, skirt, price on request, and snood (on all), AED 1,469; alexanderwang.com. Chloé bag, AED 8,430; barneys.com. Alexander Wang top, AED 4,775. Sportmax skirt, AED 3,655; (212) 674-1817. Salvatore Ferragamo bag, AED 6,208; (866) 337-7242. Alexander Wang top, AED 3,287, and pants, AED 2,553.

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T Emirates: The New York Times Style Magazine

Low-heel spectator boots From left: Giorgio Armani shoes, AED 2,552; armani.com. Chanel shoes, AED 4,683; (800) 550-0005. Valentino Garavani shoes, AED 3,581; (212) 772-6969. Roger Vivier shoes, AED 3,214; (212) 861-5371. Wolford tights (on all), AED 287; wolford.com.

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Quality

Objects

PavÊ-diamond chains Clockwise from top: Verdura bracelet, AED 1,377,412; verdura.com. Diane von Furstenberg by H. Stern bracelet, AED 1,191,186; hstern.net. Pomellato bracelet, AED 392,470; pomellato.com. Ralph Lauren Fine Jewelry bracelet, AED 268,870; ralphlaurenjewelry.com. Ivanka Trump bracelet, AED 150,597; ivankatrumpcollection.com. Proenza Schouler dress, AED 50,321; (212) 585-3200.

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Models: Rel dade/next models, Dana riley/parts models, ify/fentonmoon models nyc, christina anderson-mcdonald/book mgmt canada; makeup: Ralph siciliano at d+V Management using chanel; hair: dennis devoy for art department; manicure: kiyo okada at garren ny using dior vernis.

Graphic fur coats From left: Michael Kors coat, price on request; (212) 452-4685. Versace coat, price on request; (888) 721-7219. Altuzarra gloves (worn as scarf), price on request; altuzarra.com. Fendi coat, AED 194,674; (212) 759-4646.

Roger Vivier shoes (on all), starting from AED 2,296; (212) 861-5371

All the prices are indicative.

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Quality Emirates

With renowned London-based international jeweller David Morris preparing to open its new Abu Dhabi flagship store, the son of the company’s founder and current managing director, Jeremy Morris, talks exclusively to T Emirates about the brand’s unique approach to design.

By Orna Ballout

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Since its establishment in 1962, David Morris has developed a reputation for producing luxury jewelry with a signature style. In the intervening years, it has also made quite an impact on popular culture, having produced bespoke items ranging from the Miss World crown to pieces that have appeared in several James Bond films.

The jeweller also counts international celebrities from Beyoncé and Oprah Winfrey to David and Victoria Beckham among its clients.

Jeremy Morris, son of company founder David Morris, insists it’s a sense of heritage that draws people to the brand.

“Our signature style is classic with a contemporary touch… we don’t follow fads and trends,” he says.

IMAGEs COURTESY: DAVID MORRIS.

Jewel in the Crown

David Morris (left) and Jeremy Morris.

The classic David Morris Rosecut bracelet (above) and earrings (below).

‘Our signature style is classic with a contemporary touch... we don’t follow fads and trends.’

The design and craftsmanship may be traditional, but that hasn’t stopped the company becoming one of the most active exponents of social media to drive brand awareness. Steered largely by Jeremy’s daughter, who recently joined the company, the strategy has paid dividends in raising the brand’s profile among younger, digital-savvy consumers. In the Middle East, where marketing via social media is gaining momentum, the strategy is also likely to bear results.

Morris says the Middle East remains one of the jeweler’s key international growth markets.

“We are just about to open our second UAE boutique in Abu Dhabi at Sowwah Square. A large number of our clients are based in Abu Dhabi so it is important for us to be closer to them and also to be present in the capital,” he explains.

“The Middle East is a very important market for us and we are constantly striving to come up with new designs to keep our clients interested,” he says, adding that diamonds and pearls remain highly-sought after items among regional customers.

However, the brand’s biggest sellers in the Middle East are still its delicate hand-bracelets, which resemble a diamond glove. “In either white or yellow diamonds, the hand bracelet has proven very popular,” says Morris.

Clockwise from top right: Models displaying David Morris jewelry; the hand bracelet in yellow gold, one of David Morris’ best-selling pieces in the Middle East; singer Cheryl Cole wears David Morris white diamond chandelier earrings to meet Prince Charles at a charity dinner for the Prince’s Trust in February 2012; signature Rosecut diamond bracelets by David Morris.

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Quality

A Picture and a Poem

Evening Song The National Book Award finalist James Richardson’s meditation on the small hours inspires the street artist KAWS to call it a night.

One of the Evenings After so many years, we know them.

This is one of the older Evenings — its patience, settling in, its warmth that wants nothing in return.

Once on a balcony among trees, once by a slipping river, so many Augusts sitting out through sunset — first a dimness in the undergrowth like smoke, and then like someone you hadn’t noticed has been in the room a long time. . . .

It has seen everything that can be done in the dark.

It has seen two rifles swing around to train on each other, it has seen lovers meet and revolve, it has seen wounds grayscale in low light.

It has come equally for those who prayed for it and those who turned on lamp after lamp until they could not see. It deals evenhandedly with the one skimming downstairs rapidly as typing, the one washing plates too loudly, the one who thinks there’s something more important, since it does not believe in protagonists, since it knows anyone could be anyone else.

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It has heard what they said aloud to the moon to the stars and what they could not say, walking alone and together. It has gotten over I cannot live through this, it has gotten over This did not have to happen and This is experience one day I will be glad for.

It has gotten over How even for a moment could I have forgotten? though it never forgets, leaves nothing behind, does not believe in stories, since nothing is over, only beginning somewhere else.

It could be anywhere but it is here with the kids who play softball endlessly not keeping score, though it’s getting late, way too late, holding their drives in the air like invisible moons a little longer, giving way before them so they feel like they’re running faster.

It likes trees, I think, it likes summer. It seems comfortable with us, though it is here to help us be less ourselves.

It thinks of its darkening as listening harder and harder. james richardson

© KAWS, 2013, ink on paper. Poetry Editor: Meghan O’Rourke. Art editor: Gay Gassmann.

‘‘Untitled,’’ by KAWS, 2013.

By Design

Diamond in the Rough The Mexican architect Tatiana Bilbao may favor Brutalist forms, but with her signature light touch she’s creating her country’s most elegant buildings.

By nicolai ouroussoff portrait by Isabelle Pateer

If your first thoughts of Mexico are of drug wars and narco-terrorism, you may have missed out on one of the most improbable cultural resurgences of recent memory, one that has touched filmmaking, art and, now, architecture.

Few have gained more from this revival than Tatiana Bilbao, who first attracted the eyes of the architecture world with the completion in 2006 of a hedonistic getaway she helped build for the artist Gabriel Orozco on a remote beach near Puerto Escondido.

In the past several years, the 40-year-old architect has emerged as one of the country’s major creative voices, building an eclectic portfolio of work that includes

a 10,000-square-foot neo-Brutalist palazzo, the master plan for an art-filled botanical garden and a spiritual refuge in the Jalisco Mountains. The projects vary wildly in attitude and style — and a few suffer from the cutbacks and compromises that plague the career of every young architect.

What elevates her above most of her contemporaries, however, is Bilbao’s ability to combine a taste for visually bold forms with an intuitive understanding of when to tread lightly in a world that looks increasingly fragile. Her work is a welcome reminder that sensitive architecture doesn’t have to be meek and unimaginative.

Bilbao was born to a family of architects. Both an aunt

Women’s Fashion September - October, 2013

rock solid The architect Tatiana Bilbao at the Peter Behrens School of Architecture in Düsseldorf, Germany, where she is a visiting professor.

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Arena

By Design concrete PLAN The Deutsche Bank Auditorium at the Botanical Garden in Culiacán, with ‘‘New Ruins,’’ by the Mexican art collective Tercer un Quinto, in the foreground.

Bilbao’s work, with its combination of bold forms and intuitive understanding of when to tread lightly, reminds us that sensitive architecture doesn’t have to be meek and unimaginative.

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building blocks A research building at the Tec de Monterrey campus in Culiacán uses colored glass and deep overhangs to cut glare and save airconditioning costs.

broken up a five-year partnership to start their own firms. (Romero’s Museo Soumaya, which houses the art collection of his father-in-law, the billionaire Carlos Slim, opened in 2011.) Moreover, the site, on a bluff overlooking a remote beach, was a potential nightmare. Its isolation meant that materials would have to be brought in by boat, and because the region was poor, it would be nearly impossible to find skilled labor. ‘‘It is there that I really came in contact for the first time with the quality of hand labor in our country,’’ Bilbao said, still seemingly astonished at the experience. ‘‘People there are very illiterate. They eat from the sea; they build their houses with palm branches. So they cannot read a plan.’’

The experience reinforced her belief in an architecture of strong, even bold moves, one whose impact didn’t depend on luxurious materials and refined details. ‘‘I became even less interested in this kind of preciousness,’’ she said.

Whatever her misgivings at the time, it’s hard to imagine a more gorgeous site. To get to it, you clamber up a steep hill and through a tangle of cactuses and

adam wiseman

and an uncle, as well as a dozen or so cousins, have also practiced in the profession. Her grandfather Tomás Bilbao was a minister of urban development for the Spanish Republican government until Francisco Franco installed his fascist dictatorship in 1939, forcing him to flee.

Eventually he brought his family to Mexico, which was becoming a safe haven for leftist intellectuals and artists. ‘‘He had more influence on me in politics and as a planner than as an architect,’’ Bilbao said as we sat in her Mexico City office. ‘‘My grandfather was the black sheep of the family. Kind of a rebel.’’

Bilbao’s own rebellion amounted to a stint in Milan, where she flirted with industrial design. In less than a year she was back studying architecture in Mexico City, and became infatuated with a group of early South American Modernists that included the Brazilian architect Lina Bo Bardi, whose muscular compositions in concrete and glass were imbued with a bright, populist spirit. ‘‘Someone like Bo Bardi was easy to relate to,’’ Bilbao said, pointing out that the Brazilian, who died in 1992, was one of the rare women in architectural history to run her own firm, something that remains an anomaly. ‘‘Plus I was not born into a rich family. So you could say I was always closer to populist culture. I was never drawn to the Swiss architecture thing.’’

Bilbao’s first big break came eight years ago, when Orozco asked her to help him build a beach house modeled on an 18th-century observatory he had seen in New Delhi.

Orozco pictured the project as a ruin in the making. ‘‘I always liked the idea that it could be abandoned someday and swallowed up by the jungle,’’ he explained.

The offer arrived at a turbulent time in Bilbao’s life.

She was entangled in a messy divorce, and she and Fernando Romero, another rising star in the growing constellation of Mexican architectural talent, had just

By Design

mangrove trees before emerging at the top of an outcropping of rocks.

From there you look out over the rooftop pool — a hemisphere of pale blue water embedded in the center of a cross-shaped wood deck. The pool’s form evokes various symbolic references: it can be read as a reflection of the dome of heaven or as an inverted version of Andrea Palladio’s 16th-century Villa Rotonda, with its central dome and Greek cross plan.

The Orozco house put Bilbao on the map. Still, it was essentially the artist’s idea, and it wasn’t until the completion of more recent works that one could begin to glean a clear picture of who she was as an architect. The most ambitious of these projects was a 10,000-square-foot house built for a wealthy industrial family on a mountainside in Monterrey — the kind of commission that young architects feast on.

Bilbao conceived the design as a cluster of hexagonshaped rooms — like a human beehive — some of which step down to a pool and a small garden while others project out from the side of the mountain. These simple concrete shapes were then modified to fit the existing mountain terrain and the needs of the family. A hexagon that houses the dining room was shaved off on one side to make room for a tree that the architect wanted to preserve; an informal living area was pinched at one end to accommodate a staircase.

Think of it as eco-Brutalism: an architecture of primitive forms that has been forced to bend to its surroundings. It’s a strategy that reflects a trend popular

She may be a modernist, but Bilbao is not an elitist. ‘You could say I was always closer to populist culture. I was never drawn to the Swiss architecture thing.’

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among a number of young architects today, who are drawn to the raw, sometimes brutal styles of 1960s and ’70s architecture as a way to escape the increasingly slick computer-driven excesses of the past years.

Recently, Bilbao has veered toward more severe architectural forms, especially when faced with a less sympathetic client. In Culiacán, she was invited to design a research building for a technical university that was looking to build something on the cheap: big flexible floor plans for scientific research, or that could be rented out to companies.

The site, on a piece of leftover land that overlooked a busy thoroughfare, was susceptible to flooding.

Bilbao set the building on a big mound of grass and then stacked the floors, several at a time, in alternating bands of green, blue and bronze glass, some on a northsouth axis, others facing east-west, so that their ends jut out in four directions.

The effect is both visually striking and makes sense functionally. The deep overhangs provide shade, cooling interiors and cutting down on energy costs in a city where temperatures regularly approach 100 degrees. The colored glass, which is darker on the upper floors, cuts out glare where the sun is harshest. Best, the roofs of the cantilevered slabs act as partially covered balconies where employees and students can take a break. It’s an example of how a few bold, carefully calculated moves can overcome the kind of bottom-line thinking that would have killed a more refined design.

The best evidence of Bilbao’s growing maturity, however, is her willingness to use a light touch when the commission demands it — a trait that is visible in two civic projects that she began several years ago, one in Culiacán, the other outside Guadalajara. In Culiacán, for a project to upgrade the city’s botanical gardens with art installations — by the likes of Olafur Eliasson and James Turrell — Bilbao laid out paths and added amenities like an orientation center, an auditorium and public bathrooms. Additional buildings are still being constructed — 16 in all — one of which will house

Sacred Spot The four 80-foottall concrete slabs of ‘‘Gratitude Open Chapel’’ in Lagunillas, designed by Bilbao and Derek Dellekamp, near the start of a pilgrimage route.

orozco: iwan baan; all others: adam wiseman.

Arena

research facilities. The plan weaves a series of roads and pathways into a loose, informal narrative — one that embraces nature, art and architecture.

Bilbao demonstrates a similar restraint in her master plan for the 72-mile-long pilgrimage route through the Jalisco mountains near Guadalajara. Designed in collaboration with Derek Dellekamp, and financed by the ministry of tourism, the project was conceived as a way to revive a series of sleepy, impoverished towns scattered along the way. The plan includes a series of small interventions — a chapel, viewing platforms, public bathrooms and informal shelters — laid out along the same dirt path that pilgrims had followed for two centuries. The tallest of these structures would act as visual markers, helping orient pilgrims as they make their way through the mountains.

Bilbao and Dellekamp invited an international group of architects, including some friends from Mexico City as well as the artist Ai Weiwei, to design most of the individual structures. Bilbao and Dellekamp’s main contribution was a small open-air chapel set in a patchy field and surrounded by a low stone wall. It is nothing more than four slender white concrete slabs, 80 feet high, that mark the four points of an imaginary cross.

The first thing you notice as you enter it is the contrast between the starkness of the white slabs and the rough, uneven surface of the earth. Later in the day, when the sun beats down on the site, the southernmost slab casts a shadow over the center of the chapel, creating a momentary refuge. A small steel plate is impaled in the upper portion of the slab — Bilbao said that it is intended to rust over time, leaving a stain that will spread down from the puncture, an interpretation of Christ’s wound.

This hardly seems like architecture at all, of course.

It doesn’t provide shelter; there’s no plumbing or electricity. But the chapel evokes a strain of architecture that extends back to the Mayans. It’s a hard-core work, spiritual yet unsentimental, and it gets to the heart of Bilbao’s art. At a time when architecture seems to be in a state of limbo, struggling to find a way forward, Bilbao seems to be searching for something primitive and lasting, yet of her own time.

geometry lessons Clockwise from left: a spiral stair connects the rooms of the Casa Ventura in Monterrey; Bilbao designed a cluster of hexagonal rooms that offer views from the mountainside; the main entrance looks into a garden.

Think of this work as eco-Brutalism: it recalls the raw, primitive architectural forms of the 1960s and ’70s, while still demonstrating its environmental awareness.

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ARENA EMIRATES

Bohemian Billionaire She may be one of the world’s youngest self-made female billionaires, but for Tory Burch, creative director and CEO of her eponymous fashion label, it has never been just about the money.

Designer Tory Burch posses for the camera in her flagship store New York.

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Tory Burch was just another New York socialite with a privileged upbringing and a glamorous life when she decided to venture into the luxury fashion retail business. Despite having no formal qualifications in either fashion design or business management, Burch has built a $3.5 billion women’s clothing and accessories business in less than ten years, ultimately surpassing long-established rivals such as Michael Kors and Coach in revenues.

With starting capital of $2 million, Burch established a boutique in New York with the help of her husband at the time, venture

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capitalist Chris Burch. By leveraging her previous work experience in the PR and marketing departments at fashion houses such as Ralph Lauren, Vera Wang and Loewe, along with her reputation among New York society’s upper echelons, the designer’s premiere collection sold out on the opening day of her flagship store in 2004. Quite an achievement for a relative novice.

“People imagine the fashion industry to be very competitive, but I’ve found the opposite – I have had many great mentors and friends willing to help along the way. This journey is beyond anything I could have imagined, and it’s a journey we’re still on” as a business, she says. “In so many ways I feel like we are just beginning.”

Burch pioneered the concept of “affordable luxury” in 2004, retailing a “preppy-bohemian luxe” style for the masses.

“I love fashion, from Uniqlo to Celine, but at the time I felt there weren’t many options in between,” she says. “I recognized a void in the market for beautiful, well-designed pieces that didn’t cost a fortune. I knew what I was missing from my closet and thought other women might feel the same way, so I began developing the concept, which was embodied by my parents, the most impeccably stylish couple I have ever known. They remain my greatest source of inspiration but, of course, each collection has its own distinct influences; in addition to my parents, my team and I are inspired by art, music, travel and other cultures.”

This is how Burch’s $200 Reva Ballerina shoes, one of the least expensive items found in the luxury category, came to form the backbone of her multi-billion fashion business.

Having expanded her retail network to more than 83 stores worldwide, while generating revenues of more than $800 million a year (2012), she has come to challenge large global fashion houses that have been in the business for decades longer.

Burch attributes her success to hard work and perseverance. “There are no shortcuts – starting a company takes a lot of time, energy and good, old-fashioned hard work. It isn’t easy, but it’s worth it if you have a unique idea that you are passionate about,” she says.

Despite coming from a financially secure

Francesco Corrazzini.

By Priyanka Pradhan

all images courtesy of Tory Burch.

‘I recognized a void in the market for beautiful, well-designed pieces that didn’t cost a fortune.’

background, Burch faced challenges common to all entrepreneurs.

“Everything that went into building a start-up – raising capital, finding partners, hiring the right team – was a challenge,” she explains. “The two and a half years before our launch were very intense and I worked harder than I ever thought possible.”

One of Burch’s biggest tests came in 2006 with the end of her marriage to her husband and business partner. A messy legal battle followed the divorce, with Chris Burch claiming in court that his wife’s business had hindered the growth of his own fashion retail chain, ‘C. Wonder’. Tory counter-sued, claiming Burch had created a knockoff brand with massmarket versions of top-selling Tory Burch items. This compelled her ex-husband to resign from the board of directors of Tory Burch and sell his stake in the brand.

Never one to focus on the past, Tory Burch is currently working on her Autumn/Winter 201314 collection. The self-confessed workaholic is creating a “Gustav Klimt and René Laliqueinspired free-spirited and romantic mood”.

Burch says, “We focused on the details: dragonflies and scarabs printed on dresses, as well as wrapped around the heels of shoes; metallic prints and patterns; mixed textures; and subtle volume. It all centers on the idea of 24-hour dressing – special pieces to wear from day to evening.” Burch has also designed a limited-edition scarf especially for her Abu Dhabi store, opening this year, to woo her target consumers in the region.

Burch identifies young aspirational women, collegians and even high school students, as her brand’s main clients. Given this demographic, she says social media remains an important communications tool.

“I tweet and Instagram myself, and our team manages platforms like Facebook, Tumblr, Pinterest and Weibo,” she says. “Our social

media conversations have to be organic and authentic to who we are.”

Burch is equally invested in her non-profit foundation, which provides grassroots financial support for female-owned start-ups, mainly in the US. “I wanted to help other women and their families,” she says. Based on our experiences starting a business, I thought we had something to offer aspiring female entrepreneurs. Through research I learned that it was extremely difficult for women to get small business loans in the U.S. But women are a great investment – they pay back their loans at a high rate, and invest earnings back into their communities. I felt loans and mentoring for female entrepreneurs were the best way for our foundation to contribute. We had a mentoring event in Marrakech last year, and we hope to expand all of our programs internationally at some point.”

But despite the hectic traveling schedule, a business empire to run and three children to raise, Tory Burch seems full of energy. She’s looking forward to her fragrance launch and a women’s activewear line in the near future. “I want to be like Wanda Ferragamo and work until I’m 85,” she says.

Clockwise from left: Tory Burch Fall 2013 runway show; the Tory Burch flagship store at Madison Avenue, New York City; Tory Burch Fall 2013 runway show; Tory Burch limited edition scarf designed exclusively for the Abu Dhabi store opening; Floral Vienna Top Handle in black and white floral; Tory Burch store in Chungdam, Seoul.

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ARENA EMIRATES

Fashion Princess Royal-born Madiyah Al Sharqi talks to T Emirates about her life as an Emirati princess and the success of her label, which is enhancing her reputation as one of the UAE’s most promising designers.

By Orna Ballout

Growing up in the Emirate of Fujairah, ruled

Madiyah Al Sharqi at work in her studio.

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Image COURTESY Madiyah Al Sharqi.

by her father, His Highness Sheikh Hamad bin Mohammed Al Sharqi, Madiyah Al Sharqi’s life was destined to be different. But with a down-toearth and warm personality, everything about Madiyah herself is quite normal. “People might think it’s nice to be a princess, but sometimes it’s not, because all eyes are on you, everyone knows what you’re doing, where you’re going, and you can’t do anything – but there are also advantages where you can help people,” she says.

One advantage, which would influence her career choice, was being immersed in the world of haute couture, with designers regularly visiting her palace to create custommade gowns for her family. As a child, the princess often travelled abroad with her mother, mostly to Lebanon, to visit the fashion houses of designers (and family friends) such as Zuhair Murad, Elie Saab and Abed Mahfouz.

She even interned with the latter for three weeks during her second year of studies at Esmod Fashion Institute in Dubai. “It was such a good experience when I interned there. It didn’t feel like work, more like being with friends because I knew everyone,” she recalls.

However, fashion wasn’t always her calling.

Before enrolling at Esmod Dubai, Madiyah studied political science at Zayed University for six months. “I knew it definitely was not for me,” she says of the experience.

‘People might think it’s nice to be a princess, but sometimes it’s not, because all eyes are on you, everyone knows what you’re doing, where you’re going, and you can’t do anything—but there are also advantages where you can help people.’

images courtesy Madiyah Al Sharqi.

Looks from Madiyah Al Sharqi’s Autumn Winter 2013-14 Collection, inspired by the Art Deco movement of the 1920s.

However, since then, the 23-year-old designer’s career has gone from strength to strength. After just three seasons, her fashion collection is now available in 17 retail outlets across the GCC. Madiyah says success came early, with her second collection already generating profit. “I’m overwhelmed. Everything is a real shock for me, I didn’t expect it at all,” she says.

While her mother is her biggest supporter, Madiyah reveals that she had a tougher time convincing her father, His Highness Sheikh Hamad. The turning point, she says, was “when I showed him all the media coverage; from the fact that my second season was profitable he knew I was serious about it, and now he really supports me”.

Fujairah, the emirate where the princess grew up, has shaped her fashion ideals, Madiyah says. “Fujairah is simple; even our house is simple, there’s nothing extravagant about it – and I think I’m mainly inspired by this simplicity in everything I create.”

A simple palace? “It’s not that simple, but compared to the others, maybe,” she giggles.

Madiyah says simplicity is fast becoming a defining feature of her work. “I always mix a lot of fabrics, such as leather, wool, fur and chiffon – and I’m noticing that I tend to color block a lot.”

Travel has also played an important role in influencing

her approach. “I think it’s been really helpful for my career, as it has opened my eyes design-wise. I take things I’ve learned from overseas and create designs from an Arab perspective, with a touch of modesty,” she reveals.

Her extensive travels have also given her the opportunity to shop everywhere. “Paris is hands down the best,” she says, before revealing that her wardrobes are so full that half of her possessions are hidden away in suitcases.

Although Madiyah always designs with Arab women in mind, different muses play a role in each of her collections, the most prolific being Marie Antoinette. “I’m obsessed with her! She inspired my first collection. It’s the way she lived, the story of her life, her fashion, everything about her inspires me,” she enthuses.

At the time of our interview, Madiyah is busy preparing to travel to India to compete for the International Woolmark Prize. Her entry involved creating a capsule collection that, if successful, could lead to her participating in Milan Fashion Week. “My aim is to develop my business in the Middle East and take it international. This is one of my biggest dreams,” she smiles.

Madiyah Al Sharqi is available at Mahani, Symphony Boutique and S*uce Boutique.

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ARENA EMIRATES

W

omen in Style

Three of the country’s most stylish professional women speak to T Emirates about power dressing in the workplace.

By Priyanka Pradhan

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Rosemin Manji Director of RR&Co Bespoke Luxury Management

Who are style icons? The only person I would call an ‘icon’ is the late Jacqueline Kennedy, whom I still admire. Apart from her, the women I believe have great personal style are Aerin Lauder, Amy Fine Collins, Tory Burch and Ines de la Fressange.

How does fashion influence your work? My business is strictly in the luxury fashion sector, so I have to represent the brands I work with and incorporate them in my wardrobe. I only work with brands I truly love, which helps. No day is the same. If I am with a designer, my outfit is likely to be more colorful like a Peter Pilotto or Preen with trendier shoes. If I am talking business I prefer to wear a shift dress from Dolce & Gabbana or Saint Laurent.

Image courtesy OF Mounette Knoll.

What are your top fashion picks for women in the workplace? I’d invest in a good quality day bag that can fit all the necessary items (documents, iPad, phone etc.) My top picks are Anya Hindmarch’s Bathurst bag, Prada large tote, and Hermès Birkin for bags. For heels, I recommend Christian Louboutin’s Decollete or Simple pump.

A well-cut shift dress is good for travel and to layer. Roland Mouret, Dolce & Gabbana and Oscar de la Renta are brands that dominate my wardrobe.

Why is fashion important to you? I believe in dressing for the occasion, so if that means a meeting or cocktail party I dress in what is appropriate and respectful. Fashion is the way I communicate. It is my personal message and my personal style that I am conveying.

What is your style statement? Feminine, classic with a trendy twist.

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ARENA EMIRATES

Tima Ouzden Creative Director, DXB Store, Art Dubai

How does fashion influence your work?

When you look good, you feel better. When you feel better, you work better!

Where do you shop most frequently? Mostly online, at thrift and vintage stores. Shopping online is convenient and quick, thrift and vintage shopping is just a lot of fun. I also love S*uce and IF Boutique as they both satisfy different sartorial cravings. IF Boutique for my love of black, comfort and unobtrusive sensuality and S*uce for the love of colour, embellishment and femininity.

Which collections are you most looking forward to in the coming Autumn-Winter season? Alexander Terehov’s collection inspired

by Mihail Bulgakov’s “Master and Margarita” — a sartorial interpretation of my favorite book, complete with appliqués reminiscent of Schiaparelli/Jean Cocteau collaborations.

Why is fashion important to you? It is undoubtedly, for me, the most democratic form of expression as well as a subject I never stop learning about.

Image courtesy OF Aya Atoui.

What is your style statement? It’s not what you wear…it’s how you wear it.

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Dina Butti TV Presenter for Dubai One’s celebrity show, That’s Entertainment, writer, artist and emcee.

What do you wear to work? On a day of filming, it’s all about glamorous dresses and statement accessories — my favorites have been influenced by traditional Arabic attire with a modern twist (dresses by Palestyle, Toujouri or Essa). I also like to get dressed up according to the ‘theme’ of a shoot, whether it’s a Bollywood outfit or superhero costume.

It always inspires celebrities to be more playful during the interview.

What influences or inspires your personal style? On a recent trip to Japan I was very inspired by the many girls who are unapologetic about experimenting with their looks — from wigs to glow-in-the-dark makeup to toys and accessories. They also find the most creative ways to make fashion statements — for example, using umbrellas as accessories, which are often in unusual shapes but still somehow complement their outfits.

Image courtesy OF bareface Entertainment.

Who is on your designer wish list for Autumn Winter 2013-14 and why? ESSA! He uses the strangest materials, brightest colors and most unusual cuts and yet somehow his pieces are flattering and, most of all, unforgettable. Plus, the fact that he’s from Sharjah makes me want to show off a local UAE brand.

What is your fashion advice for women in the workplace? I think there’s nothing hotter at work than a woman in a pencil skirt, especially here in the Arab world where the ladies are so curvy! I also love color and recommend turning heads with a bright blazer, top or shiny heels. But you have to be practical - if you can’t breathe in an outfit or walk in certain heels, ditch them. That look of discomfort always kills the appeal.

What is your style statement? Love it or hate it, as long as you remember it!

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Section

Sub Section

Seeing .

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For his fervent private collectors, James Turrell’s celestial skyspaces are an exercise in blind faith. The temperamental artist regards them as test runs for his life’s work in the Arizona desert. Somehow, everyone’s happy.

the light By edward helmore Photographs by jackie nickerson

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W

ith his long white beard

and measured manner of speech, the acclaimed light artist James Turrell cultivates the image of a cosmic cowboy. It’s a compelling presentation, and an effective tool in his long-running campaign to seduce patrons and collectors into what he describes as ‘‘another kind of seeing.’’ The ‘‘skyspaces’’ and ‘‘dark adaptations’’ Turrell creates for the homes, gardens, swimming pools, screening rooms, pagodas and pyramids of private collectors — almost anywhere the artist determines that the arrival of light at dawn and its departure at dusk can be captured to its full, revelatory effect — may differ in attribute and design, but they all pay tribute to and serve Turrell’s higher calling: the Roden Crater Project, northeast of Flagstaff, Ariz., that is his inspiration and his burden and will one day be the centerpiece of his substantial legacy.

In the late 1970s, he optimistically informed the Dia Arts founder and collector Philippa de Menil that the giant sky observatory he was planning to sculpture into the extinct volcano would be complete by 2000. ‘‘We’re closing in on that date now!’’ he says, impishly. After all, when your work is concerned with the movements of the cosmos, what are a few years here and there? Since Turrell is constantly refining his ideas about light and space, there’s no real expectation he will ever declare it done. Then again, he insists, ‘‘I didn’t expect it to be my life’s work. It’s just this strange furrow I’ve chosen to dig.’’

For now, Turrell’s Roden Crater is closed to visitors. But this summer the art world heavens will align for fans of the artist, with concurrent shows at the Guggenheim in New York, LACMA in Los Angeles and the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston. In addition, Turrell has scheduled a series of tours of the Crater (patrons only) — all serving to affirm him as a visionary artist whose medium is light itself. ‘‘I want these spaces to engage you, your perception, and for you to be conscious of how you are engaging your senses,’’ he explains.

The initiation of a collector into Turrell’s realm can be protracted, often taking years between a buyer’s receipt of the artist’s plans and a work’s completion. (A private Turrell commission typically costs up to $2 million).

Thereafter, Turrell’s collectors, ‘‘some very idiosyncratic if not totally eccentric people,’’ as he puts it, are required to maintain the work to exacting specifications. In return, collectors gain something more. In addition to those hotly sought invites to the Crater, they become adjunct participants in his celestial field studies, entries in a geographical sketchbook in which he explores his evolving notions about light and space. To date, he’s installed 82 private and institutional skyspaces, each carefully tuned to its environment and light characteristics. ‘‘I’ve

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been practicing the repertoire I’m assembling at the Crater on all these collectors,’’ the artist, 70, says, pausing to stroke his beard. ‘‘I don’t think they feel used, but there is a direct relation.’’

In describing the importance of journey in his pieces, Turrell mentions a night-blooming cereus known as the Queen of the Night. One could see the flower cactuses bloom in the desert, he suggests, or in a greenhouse in Gramercy Park, where he keeps an apartment. ‘‘It’s the same object of perception but a completely different experience,’’ he explains.

Likewise, it’s entirely different working with the soft, moisture-laden light of Scotland or Ireland (where he once lived on an island) as compared with the hard, high-altitude desert light of Arizona. On a recent trip to Beijing, Turrell found the light caused by the smog so

severe that the foreground light bore almost no relation to the background — similar to the effect J. M. W. Turner (like Mark Rothko, a hero) must have seen in 19th-century London. ‘‘I can’t believe how prescient he was,’’ Turrell says. ‘‘He was painting what he saw, and that was before Impressionism.’’

Turrell’s obsession with light, which may have originated with his stint as a high-altitude reconnaissance pilot, turns on the cusp of its coming and going. His goal, as he says, is to capture light as if in a dream: ‘‘We come into sunrise with dark-adapted eyes, so we’re more sensitive to light in the morning.’’ But even a guru knows that there are limits to what his followers will do in their quest for illumination. Art collectors aren’t known for rising early, he points out, ‘‘so I’d be a fool if I just dealt with sunrise.’’

Turrell’s goal is to capture light as if in a dream: ‘We come into sunrise with dark-adapted eyes, so we’re more sensitive to light in the morning.’

‘‘Picture Plane,’’ Los Angeles

feature attraction Jarl and Pamela Mohn’s screening room, open to the elements and bathed in fluorescent LED light, where colors change every few seconds.

Previous spread: the skyspace at night; James Turrell.

The idea to commission Turrell to design a screening room was straightforward for the prominent art collectors Jarl Mohn (the founding C.E.O. of E! Entertainment Television) and his wife, Pamela. Turrell proposed that once you strip narrative away from film it’s nothing more than projected light. So by cutting the aperture of the skyspace to the same dimensions as the screen, you achieve a kind of symmetry. ‘‘The idea was so powerful it was as close to an impulse buy as you can get,’’ Mohn says. Turrell didn’t stop there.

He proposed designing the entire room: the chairs, the end tables, the fabric on the walls and the carpeting in colors that would serve to heighten the experience. Instead of Turrell’s typically spartan skyspace bench seating, he designed seats modeled after those in an old DC-3 airplane that were then fabricated in Germany.

The project took two years to complete, a comparatively rapid build. (‘‘Agua de Luz,’’ a pyramid skyspace in the Yucatán, took seven.) ‘‘I’ve told him many times the room is the centerpiece of our social life,’’ Mohn says. ‘‘He’s created an amazing, magical experience.’’

‘‘Craiganour,’’ Perthshire From the dry high Arizona desert to the damp Scottish moors, Turrell and the music producer Ivor Guest, Lord Wimborne, found that they shared a bond over big landscapes and a sense of scale and time that the wilderness sometimes invokes. ‘‘Craiganour,’’ the earth-and-slate skyspace at Guest’s Scottish lodge, is one of Turrell’s most harmonious installations. For the collector, the piece has come to symbolize the regeneration and conservation work on the estate: ‘‘I was up in a ruined bothy looking through a windowless window frame. I just thought, This is already like a Turrell the way it frames the landscape.

Wouldn’t it be fantastic to build one? A place you could inhabit and think about things.’’ Guest took a trip out to Flagstaff and flew around the Painted Desert in the artist’s plane. ‘‘He said, ‘Let’s fly underground,’ and dropped down into the canyon. Then he did a touch-and-go on the side of the crater. It was pretty wild.’’ With Scotland’s low skies and the slate interior of the container, the piece intensifies the ultraviolet blues in the light. ‘‘I don’t think James is just about art, at least not when he’s working to the full extent of his vision,’’ Guest says. ‘‘It’s about a lot of things. He’s a traditional guy but the outcome is very futuristic.’’ open spaces Clockwise from left: Ivor Guest sits against the slate interior of the skyspace at the Craiganour lodge in Scotland; the sporting lodge’s exterior; the skyspace’s oval aperture.

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‘It’s a gateway to the celestial world. It captures me more than a traditional work on paper.’

desert oasis Clockwise from above: the Horizon room in the skyspace Turrell created for Jim Murren in Las Vegas, lit up in magenta; benches separate the piece’s two rooms; an exterior view.

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‘‘Arrowhead,’’ Las Vegas Twenty minutes from the Strip — to quote Milton, ‘‘Where Joy for ever dwells: Hail horrors, hail Infernal world . . . ’’ — Jim Murren, the chairman and C.E.O. of MGM Resorts International, commissioned Turrell to build a skyspace set into the red rocks adjacent to his Modernist home.

The artist proposed to build a small pyramid connecting an Oculus room and a Horizon room. One sees mixed light from the Strip, the other darker light from the sky above. He placed a bench between the two rooms: ‘‘The money shot,’’ Murren says, where the viewer can observe both apertures. ‘‘The color

palettes are dramatically different.

I tend to look up, not across, because my life is about the Strip.’’

Murren, who studied art history in college and also commissioned Turrell to install a light work at the CityCenter Las Vegas, asked the artist for a piece that connected him to the land and the sky. ‘‘It’s

a gateway to the celestial world,’’ Murren says. ‘‘It captures me in multiple ways, more than a traditional work on paper or work on canvas — the kind of work I was trained to appreciate.’’

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country outing From left: the interior of ‘‘Seldom Seen,’’ a skyspace in the gardens of Houghton Hall; David Rocksavage stands in front of the skyspace; the 18th-century house.

‘‘Seldom Seen’’ and ‘‘St. Elmo’s Breath,’’ Norfolk

The collector believes ‘St. Elmo’s Breath’ was inspired by high-altitude reconnaissance missions that Turrell flew over Russia and China, but Turrell says the piece was inspired by the discharge of lightning.

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Houghton Hall, considered one of the finest Palladian houses in Britain, is home to two Turrells: ‘‘Seldom Seen,’’ a skyspace set within the formal garden of avenues and beech hedges, and ‘‘St. Elmo’s Breath,’’ a dark installation of milky pinks and purples in a water tower. ‘‘In the 18th century there was a tradition of follies and gazebos in parkland — things to be discovered — so we were creating a folly in the modern tradition,’’ explains David Rocksavage, Marquess of Cholmondeley. The collector believes ‘‘St. Elmo’s Breath’’ was inspired by high-altitude reconnaissance missions that Turrell flew over Russia and China, but Turrell says the piece was inspired by the discharge of lightning. Either way, the artist’s references date back further. ‘‘In Aleppo, Syria, there’s a 14thcentury mental asylum. The patients were in enclosed spaces with different size circular apertures open to the sky. Every artist works within a frame, but James goes further back to earlier civilizations.’’

‘‘Raising Kayne,’’ Santa Monica Part of Turrell’s skill is to incorporate the lifestyle requirements of his collectors. The Kayne Anderson Capital Advisors chairman and founder Ric Kayne, whose daughter Maggie introduced Turrell to the family, found that he and his wife, Suzanne, could use a skyspace over their outdoor dining area. Turrell came over one evening and sat in their Santa Monica yard. ‘‘I told him I wanted the space to be both social and yet could be meditative and experienced by one,’’ Kayne says. ‘‘He proposed three concepts, and I loved them all.’’ The winning piece can be raised and lowered hydraulically to function as a skyspace as well as a dining area that seats 12. Turrell ended up also designing the new Kayne Griffin Corcoran gallery in Los Angeles. ‘‘His vision is epic beyond most contemporary artists and thinkers,’’ Kayne says.

mood lighting Ric and Suzanne Kayne’s Santa Monica skyspace, which lowers to form an outdoor dining area.

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She considers the piece finished. ‘You have to start somewhere and end somewhere — and let the next person who comes along have something even better.’

‘‘Revised Outlook,’’ Santa Monica Dallas Price-Van Breda knew she wanted an oval-shaped skyspace for her home. ‘‘I think he was hoping we’d order a piece for the swimming pool,’’ she says. Her friends, the avid collectors Norman Stone and Norah Sharpe Stone, have a Turrell pool piece in their Napa Valley farmhouse. ‘‘You have to dive down underneath it and come up in the middle to be able to see the skyspace, and that’s not something I wanted to do.’’ Her initiation began, as it does for many collectors, with a trip to the Roden Crater to gain an understanding of what the artist is trying to accomplish. ‘‘He’s the best one to explain to a potential buyer what it is,’’ says Price-Van Breda, who tends to use the skyspace, which is nestled in the hillside garden, for contemplation.

She invites friends to tour her collection and frequently ends the trip at the Turrell. On one such tour, a friend was expelled by the

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group for talking too much. ‘‘I guess people have a different way of experiencing art,’’ she says.

Since its completion, Turrell has upgraded the lighting of ‘‘Revised Outlook,’’ replacing the original tungsten yellow light with programmable color LEDs. ‘‘Now I have the be-all and end-all with the latest in lighting strategy and theory,’’ Price-Van Breda says. She considers the piece finished. ‘‘You have to start somewhere and end somewhere — and let the next person who comes along have something even better.’’

Sky light Right: the aperture of Dallas Price-Van Breda’s skyspace. Opposite page, clockwise from top: The collector’s California home, with Turrell’s work at right; hundreds of small LEDs cast a glow that changes how the eyes see the color of the natural sky; the skyspace’s entrance.

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Arena sea change Left: an antique boat at Venice’s Naval History Museum. Below: volunteer instructors from the Remiera Casteo rowing school make their way down a canal.

Travel Diary

Hidden Venice Just a short walk from bustling Piazza San Marco, the little-known neighborhood of Castello Orientale — with its tourist-free streets and oldfashioned way of life — feels worlds away.

streets, bootleggers sold their stuff in plain daylight, and the police didn’t even bother to come here.’’ Though this ‘‘Bronx of Venice’’ mystique has since tamed down By marella caracciolo chia Photographs by danilo scarpati — now former convicts and addicts can learn to garden at the local greenhouse run by a group of social workers — Castello Orientale is the last bastion of authentic Venetian life. There are few souvenir shops, dialect is the preferred language, and home‘‘Tourists Not Allowed!!! Real Travelers and cooked delicacies include age-old recipes like fried cow’s Indigenous Native Venetians Only!’’ These words, breast and boiled spleen. ‘‘Some of the older ladies have written in English on a freshly inscribed plaque above never even set foot on Piazza San Marco!’’ Gervasuti the entrance to the Gervasuti Foundation for the arts, claims. The indifference is reciprocated: many sum up the local sentiment in Venice’s Castello Orientale.

Venetians still consider the area This working-class district on the far eastern tip of the an outskirt of the city, and, city — a maze of streets and squares nestled in between despite it being a mere 15-minute the Biennale gardens and the Arsenale — has always walk from its center, only come distinguished itself for being impermeable to the here to get deals on fresh produce trappings of mass tourism. Of the approximately 25 and home goods. million visitors who land in Venice, a city of 60,000, every For centuries, the community’s year, only a tiny number make their way to this frontier livelihood revolved around the territory. However, recently a handful of Venetians have Arsenale, the shipyard that laid rediscovered this area and are helping to revive an Old the foundation for Venice’s World way of life, which has both Venetians and savvy power, and today many residents travelers coming to soak up its hidden charms. still work as fishermen or in ‘‘When I was growing up, this area was wild,’’ says shipyards. There is a real Michele Gervasuti, one of the directors of the avantattachment to the lagoon and the garde Gervasuti Foundation. ‘‘Youth gangs roamed the

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Museumworthy Michele Gervasuti, the president of the Gervasuti Foundation, in front of an installation by the artist Chiharu Shiota.

Travel Diary

Though its ‘Bronx of Venice’ mystique has tamed down, Castello Orientale is one of the last bastions of authentic Venetian life.

Danilo Scarpati

rustic appeal Clockwise from top: the designer Ilaria Miani in her Venice home, which she rents out to visitors; a shrimp dish by Mauro Stoppa; Miani’s house.

water beyond it. (Venice’s Naval Museum is located here.) ‘‘Being off the tourist tracks allows us to live our life,’’ says Sergio Veronese, a volunteer at the Scuola Remieri Casteo, a rowing school where children and visitors are taught for free.

Mauro Stoppa moved here to live alone on his 52-foot ‘‘bragozzo,’’ one of the last surviving barges of its type, in order, he says, ‘‘to pay homage to the lagoon.’’ Stoppa does this by taking small groups on cruises to discover nearby islands like Lazzaretto Nuovo, with its archaeological museum and ruins that date back to the Bronze Age; Sant’Erasmo, which is blanketed in fields of vegetables; or Chioggia, which has a busy fish market.

Afterward, he serves meals made from the local bounty to his guests.

Giorgio and Ilaria Miani are a pair of pioneers who have come to the area to create a more genuine, slowliving kind of experience for tourists. Over the years, the couple have bought and restored dozens of buildings all over Italy. In 2009, they purchased a six-bedroom palazzo in Castello Orientale. ‘‘Giorgio discovered this area by chance,’’ says Ilaria, a furniture designer and interior decorator. ‘‘He had come here to buy a fridge for our apartment in the Giudecca and returned several hours later without the fridge but with a new house.

Our friends thought he had gone crazy buying a house there!’’ The Miani residence, which can be rented, stands on the water’s edge of San Pietro, a tiny island with a rich history. It was the site of the first Venetian settlement, nearly 2,000 years ago, and its main Palladian church is the location of Venice’s first seat of religious authority

before Napoleon moved it to San Marco in 1807. Except for one night in June, when the population of Castello gathers on the island’s ‘‘campo’’ to celebrate its patron saint, eat fried fish and drink gallons of wine, this island and its environs are an oasis of peace. ‘‘For a Venetian,’’ says Toto Bergamo Rossi, the director of the Venetian Heritage, ‘‘this isolation is a blessing.’’ Rossi was also in charge of the restoration of the nearby Badoer-Giustiniani chapel. Filled with marble carvings by 15th-century Lombardo sculptors and lined with paintings by Tintoretto and Veronese, it is one of Venice’s most resplendent Renaissance churches. ‘‘It even has a Bellini, and yet it is always empty,’’ Bergamo Rossi concludes. ‘‘Were it in Paris or London, there would be queues lining up to see it.’’ ‘‘Most people come to Venice just to see this strange place that has water instead of streets,’’ says Jane Da Mosto, who moved to the area from London and established a cultural preservation group. Elsewhere, perhaps. But not in Castello Orientale, the last holdout where true Venetian-ness carries on.

Preservation society Right: a depository for old rowing boats. Below: the Badoer-Giustiniani Chapel, which was restored in 1999.

Go to tmagazine.com for additional travel details.

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Arena

higher ground Clockwise from left: Craig McDean and Tabitha Simmons atop Huayna Picchu mountain overlooking Machu Picchu; Simmons’s Instagrams of Peru’s Sacred Valley and a local Quechua woman in Cusco.

Wanderlust

Romance in the Andes Dazzled by traditional craftsmanship and a riot of colors during a trip to Peru’s Machu Picchu, the shoe designer Tabitha Simmons finds inspiration for her latest resort collection.

By maura egan Photographs by craig m C dean

For their 10th anniversary, the photographer Craig McDean

surprised his wife, the stylist and shoe designer Tabitha Simmons, with a trip to Machu Picchu, in Peru’s Sacred Valley. ‘‘It was such a treat. I’d rarely even got flowers or a card before, and then I get this amazing adventure,’’ the British-born Simmons says.

The first stop on their five-day tour was Cusco, the ancient Incan city perched at 11,200 feet. The couple recuperated at the Palacio Nazarenas, a luxurious hotel housed in a 17th-century convent, which even pumps oxygen into guests’ rooms to stave off altitude sickness.

Cusco, which until recently was a flyover stop for trekkers on their way to Machu Picchu, has undergone a renaissance in the last few years with an influx of five-star hotels and fancy fusion restaurants serving up Novo Andean cuisine. But Simmons skipped the fine dining to check out the more local scene. ‘‘I heard the words ‘local market’ and had to go.’’

At the San Pedro food market, the Quechua women offer

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everything from coca leaves (they supposedly help with headaches at such elevations) to roast guinea pig to steaming bowls of chicken soup, which some Peruvians like to slurp down for breakfast. Simmons was dazzled by the traditional dress of the Quechua women, with colorful dirndl skirts and tall white gessoed hats. ‘‘I love how they mix their clothing together — they’ll layer a bunch of skirts on top each other,’’ Simmons says.

After two days of acclimating and strolling around Cusco’s European-style plazas and colonial churches, the couple boarded the Hiram Bingham, a 1920s Pullman-style train, to Machu Picchu. ‘‘It was like stepping into another time,’’ she says of the train’s silver service dining car and the observation deck, where passengers can take in the dramatic mountainous landscape and the Urubamba River rolling by.

To properly scale Machu Picchu, Simmons, who is known to always be properly stilettoed, ‘‘left fashion behind,’’ opting for her

Shoe images: courtesy of Tabitha Simmons. From top: Sandal with bow detail on block heel in Peruvian silk, AED 2,736; mytheresa.com.

Pointed flat with t-bar strap and contrast apron in Peruvian silk, AED 2,847; saksfifthavenue.com.

Adidas Stan Smith sneakers. After making it to the top of the ancient city and exploring the stone ruins, the couple felt emboldened enough to take on the 8,900-foot high Huayna Picchu mountain, which rises just above Machu Picchu. ‘‘I made the mistake of looking down and saw all these narrow stairs,’’ says Simmons, who was baffled that her husband — typically the one more afraid of heights — was not suffering from vertigo.

ALL ABOARD Clockwise from top left: Back on the ground, Simmons was happy Simmons sipping a pisco sour on the train; to explore less dizzying terrain like the village with a Peruvian woman in a traditional papier-mâché mask; the route to Machu of Chinchero, where she visited a traditional Picchu; Simmons’s Peru-inspired Mopsy weaving cooperative. Here the women make shoe; the textile dyeing process. dyes from the surrounding nature — the red hue is made from grinding up cochineal insects, while the orange comes from tree bark. ‘‘It’s breathtaking to see how many beautiful things they create: Machu Picchu, all these textiles, without any technology,’’ says the designer, who was inspired enough to base her latest resort collection on her first foray into Peru. ‘‘I’m usually thinking of Victorian England for my shoes so it was nice to be a little more festive and colorful.’’ For her version of a ‘‘romantic Peruvian print,’’ she designed a multicolored stripe pattern with tiny abstract hearts woven into espadrilles and sandals. It’s a love letter to Peru but also to her husband and her family. ‘‘After seeing all this beauty and color, I really want to come back,’’ she says, ‘‘but next time with my two boys.’’

ARTS AND CRAFTS Clockwise from below: a view of Machu Picchu; an alley in the village of Chinchero; a weaver at the cooperative; the designer was inspired to take a picture of the embroidered dolls that serve as ‘‘clean room’’ and ‘‘do not disturb’’ signs at Palacio Nazarenas; her Heart flat.

travel notes

Palacio Nazarenas Sky-high luxury in the heart of Cusco; palacionazarenas.com. Hotel Monasterio The 400-year-old monastery features the original chapel; monasteriohotel.com.

Machu Picchu Sanctuary Lodge. A scenic retreat in the shadow of the Lost City; sanctuarylodgehotel.com.

Hiram Bingham train. Gourmet dining and dramatic views aboard an iconic luxury liner; orient-express.com.

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work in progress Once the paintings in Houghton Hall’s Saloon have all been rehung in their original places, the room’s William Kent-designed 18th-century set of furniture, upholstered in the same cut-wool velvet as the walls, will be returned as well.

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The second coming By rita konig Photograph by anders gramer

In 1779, the descendants of Sir Robert Walpole, the first prime minister of England and owner of Houghton Hall — one of Britain’s finest Palladian houses, decorated by one of its finest interior designers, William Kent — found themselves in a bit of a bind.

Unable to settle debts, mostly of the gambling and overspending variety, the family was forced to sell its unparalleled art collection, including countless works by Rubens, van Dyck and Velázquez. The buyer was Catherine the Great, the deal brokered by James Christie, of the now famous auction house, and every last piece was shipped off to the Hermitage in St. Petersburg. Now, thanks to the vision of Houghton’s current owner, David Rocksavage, Marquess of Cholmondeley, more than 70 pieces are being returned to their original home in Norfolk for an exhibition that runs until Sept. 29.

Every part of this collection, its reuniting and its hanging, is shrouded in romance and excitement. After the sale, Houghton was pretty much closed for 100 years until Rocksavage’s grandmother, Sybil Sassoon, eventually opened it up again for the family. One can’t help feel that this has contributed to a sense of time sealed in aspic, especially since, unlike the artwork, everything else in the house — the tapestries, bronzes and furniture — remains exactly as it was some 250 years ago. ‘‘One’s always tried to imagine the rooms with all the original pictures as they are the only things missing,’’ Rocksavage says.

Before all the pictures were rehung, one could glimpse the puzzle that

lay ahead. In the Green Velvet Bed Chamber, Thierry Morel, the show’s curator, noticed that a Kent-designed frame over the fireplace housed an ill fitting painting. When Poussin’s ‘‘Holy Family With St. Elizabeth and John the Baptist’’ arrived from Russia, he measured it and discovered the Poussin was a perfect fit for the frame.

They had been separated for 230 years. In the Saloon, an almighty room with dark red cut-wool velvet on the walls, an assortment of treasures like Salvator Rosa’s ‘‘Prodigal Son,’’ Bartolomé Murillo’s ‘‘Immaculate Conception,’’ Luca Giordano’s ‘‘Vulcan’s Forge’’ and Paris Bordon’s ‘‘Venus, Flora, Mars and Cupid’’ are being restored to their original locations. In any other setting, the paintings intended for over the two doorways alone would draw a crowd.

It’s hard to appreciate the undertaking of moving this many priceless works of art between two countries, and their journey by truck and sea through Europe with their Russian curators. Once at Houghton, unpacking each piece has been a carefully orchestrated dance requiring about 20 people, all with very clearly defined roles. A British conservator inspects a painting with an LED torch.

Satisfied there is no damage, a Russian conservator then takes his flashlight and inspects it. Many paintings have Cyrillic inscriptions written on the back, another reminder of their long history. It’s quite amazing that the collection is still intact at all, partly thanks to the tenacity of the curators at the Hermitage. During the 1920s, Stalin needed to raise funds and the Hermitage was an obvious place to rob. The curators hid quite a lot of the works and falsified the value of other pieces to prevent their sale.

Not everything was saved and quite a few paintings went to different places, including Frans Hals’s ‘‘Head of a Young Man’’ and Velázquez’s ‘‘Pope Innocent X,’’ which were eventually sold to Andrew Mellon. (They now reside at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., which, like a number of institutions, has generously lent works back to Houghton for the exhibit.)

During the installation process, the rooms were filled with the sounds of English and Russian voices. One can’t help but imagine a similar scene taking place when Catherine the Great’s emissaries first walked these gilded halls. This time, at least, the story has a happy ending.

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Advertorial

FALl fashion ISSUE Mara: David Sims; Model: Glen LuchfoRd.

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Céline top, AED 20,202; (212) 5353703. Comme des Garçons Comme des Garçons shorts, AED 1,175; (212) 604-9200.

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Aloof, icy, playful, curious, remote, opaque, funny, shy, distant, nice, impenetrable, guarded, unreadable.

T his is Rooney Mara.

Photographs by DAVID SIMS Styled by Joe M c KENNA text by david amsden

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Mara may not win people over in the way of Jennifer Lawrence, who never fails to come across as an irrepressible dervish of Kentucky Fried Fun, but she also doesn’t risk exhausting us with the robotic eagerness to please of an Anne Hathaway.

Calvin Klein Collection dress and jacket, price on request; (212) 2929000. Opposite: Hermès cape, AED 27,548; hermes.com.

Dries Van Noten sweater, AED 2,553; Opening Ceremony, (212) 219-2688. Limi Feu pants, AED 1,073; lagarconne.com.

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during which she got to showcase her chameleon-like ability to mold herself into a variety of disparate characters while collaborating with a fantasy list of directors. First there was ‘‘Side Effects,’’ Steven Soderbergh’s Hitchcockian thriller about the pharmaceutical industry, in which Mara turned in a nuanced performance as the manipulative, pseudo-depressive wife of a fallen banker. Right after that wrapped she made her way to the Los Angeles set of ‘‘Her,’’ Spike Jonze’s take on sci-fi scheduled to come out in November, in which she portrays the ex-wife of a writer who falls in love with his computer’s operating system. Then she was off to shoot two films in Texas: the just-released ‘‘Ain’t Them Bodies Saints,’’ by the newcomer David Lowery, and Terrence Malick’s still-untitled meditation on love and obsession set against the backdrop of Austin’s music scene.

Even before she had a career, Mara, who keeps a secret list of characters she’d like to play and people she hopes to work with, had a precociously clear idea of how she wanted to be seen in the industry. She became interested in acting at a young age, when her mother took her and her sister, Kate, to Broadway musicals and introduced the two to classic movies. ‘‘My sister started acting when she was young,’’ Mara says of the elder Kate, who’s currently starring in the Netflix political thriller ‘‘House of Cards.’’ ‘‘But I just knew I didn’t want to be a child actor. I knew I wanted to go to school and wanted to start when I was older, so I would be taken seriously.’’ The topic of her family, however, is one that retriggers Mara’s desire to keep certain facets of her life hidden behind veils. ‘‘I hate it when people ask me about my family — my football family,’’ Mara says of the clan known in sports circles as the founding and current owners of the Pittsburgh Steelers (on her mother’s side) and the New York Giants (on her father’s), an N.F.L. legacy from which she is eager to extricate herself. ‘‘It has no relevance to acting.’’

Mara’s latest decision — to stop working for a while when she is in her prime of what can be a maddeningly narrow window for women in film — is further evidence of how the 28-year-old actress values the idea of staying shrouded in a bit of mystery. ‘‘I haven’t worked since last Thanksgiving and I have no plans on working anytime soon,’’ she tells me. ‘‘After a movie I always feel a little lost. While you’re doing it you feel like you’re having some sort of revelation, like it’s real, and then its over and you’re like, ‘That was not real.’ ’’ Mara acknowledges that this hiatus is something of a gamble but to talk to those close to her is to learn that her ambition is tempered by her instincts toward selfpreservation. ‘‘She doesn’t operate from a place of fear,’’ Jonze says. ‘‘She’s looking at the whole picture, and wants to figure out how to live her life.’’

These days that means leaving Los Angeles to spend time in New York. Talking about the possibilities of a summer spent unemployed, Mara becomes downright giddy, far from the frosty creature she’s typically portrayed as. ‘‘What’s something I could learn? What’s a new skill I could acquire?’’ she wonders aloud, before launching into a to-do list of achievements she hopes to rack up by summer’s end: learning a new language, probably French or Spanish; getting a sewing machine and teaching herself how to quilt; maybe dabbling in embroidery; finishing a novel she’s been struggling to get through. But more than anything, she tells me, she has become fixated on the idea of learning ballroom dance. She explains that, like acting, dancing would force her to shed her naturally reticent husk. ‘‘I have hidden rhythm — like, I’m a crazy dancer when I’m alone — but I’m a little too shy to let it come out in public.’’ Mara pauses, and then adds, ‘‘But, let me tell you, it’s going to come out.’’

location scout: john hutchinson; tailor: lars nord; photo assistants: Nathan Jenkins, edward mulvahill, sam Rock; postproduction: SKN; location: Hudson Highlands State Park, nysparks.com; Hair Assistant: Keisuke Terada; Makeup assistant: Susie Sobol.

�

ooney Mara is not known for giving off the warmest of first impressions. Standoffish, aloof, icy, remote, guarded, distant, opaque, steely, impenetrable, unreadable: such tend to be the words used by journalists to describe their encounters with the actress, a less than inviting list of adjectives that I decide to lob at her the moment we meet in Manhattan. I figure my little ignoble stunt will put Mara on the defensive, stir up some deep-seated insecurities, maybe even provoke a flash of anger, all in the name of exposing some new, hidden dimension of the actress to the world. ‘‘Yeah,’’ Mara says when I finish. ‘‘I kind of have a bad reputation, don’t I?’’ Her tone is so unruffled that she may as well be remarking on the weather in a city she doesn’t care to visit. And from there? Silence.

Mara fixes me with the same unblinking, glacier-eyed stare she deploys so penetratingly on screen — most notably in her breakout role, as the cyberpunk Lisbeth Salander, in David Fincher’s 2011 adaptation of ‘‘The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.’’ Finally, sensing victory in my discomfort, a sly grin springs up on Mara’s elfin, alabaster face. ‘‘Isn’t mystique and the unknown,’’ she asks, ‘‘part of what keeps you drawn to someone?’’

Well, yes. Then again, in our confessional age the desire to conceal has been largely eclipsed by the urge to reveal. Today, the sort of actors who once complained about the tabloids now take to Twitter and Instagram to produce their own self-centric versions, carefully curating their personas, forever setting the record straight, always ensuring that we are fed a steady and quasiintimate diet of everything from their eating habits to handbag preferences to what they look like (gasp!) without makeup. Mara, in this landscape, represents a disarming and refreshing outlier: she may not win people over in the way of Jennifer Lawrence, who never fails to come across as an irrepressible dervish of Kentucky Fried Fun, but she also doesn’t risk exhausting us with the robotic eagerness to please of an Anne Hathaway. Should I or anyone else choose to reinforce the chilly stereotypes of Mara already laid out for public consumption — well, go right ahead, is her attitude, one she began honing long before she became famous. ‘‘In high school, people thought I was stuck-up because I didn’t talk to anyone,’’ she says of growing up in Bedford, N.Y., a bucolic suburb of the city. ‘‘It was just because I was shy and scared, but I think because I’m super-self-possessed that it doesn’t come across as scared so much as stuck-up. I would hear what people thought and be like, ‘No! I’m actually nice!’ ’’ She laughs, rolls her eyes. ‘‘But now people can think whatever they want.’’

Indeed, in person Mara is quite friendly, punctuating many sentences with laughter and exuding an eager curiosity about subjects ranging from Philip Roth’s novels to her newfound addiction of binge watching the Swedish pop star Robyn’s latest music video. ‘‘She doesn’t take any interactions for granted, and she won’t hide it if something isn’t worth her time,’’ Fincher says. ‘‘But once you get to know her you realize she’s a playful girl, very funny, with a biting wit.’’ True, yet Mara seems to prefer that you don’t know this about her, recognizing that so long as people get her wrong it means that, as an actress, she is doing something right: remaining a slate so blank that just about any idea can be convincingly projected onto her. Her much-documented transformation for ‘‘Dragon Tattoo’’ (the motorcycle riding! the pierced nipple!) justly earned her a Best Actress Oscar nomination, and in the wake of that success Mara spent the better part of last year shooting four films back to back, a dizzying run

The topic of her family is one that retriggers Mara’s desire to keep certain facets of her life hidden. ‘I hate it when people ask me about my family — my football family.’

Jil Sander sweater, AED 6,391; (212) 925-2345.

Haider Ackermann shorts, AED 11,533; mytheresa.com.

Alexander Wang headband (on neck), AED 1,469 (sold as two-piece set with snood); alexanderwang .com. Hair by Paul Hanlon at Julian Watson Agency. Makeup by Diane Kendal for Marc Jacobs Beauty.

Manicure by Megumi Yamamoto for Chanel Beauté.

Stylist assistants: Carlos Nazario and Allegra Versace.

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The cacophony of the New York street is the perfect match for the season’s bold graphic prints toughened up by the city’s perennial favorite — black.

Photographs by Glen LuchfoRd Styled by SUZANNE KOLLER

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Michael Kors top, AED 27,548, and skirt, AED 7,328; michaelkors .com; Tom Binns necklaces, AED 4,463 (top) and AED 4,223; tombinnsdesign.com.

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Lanvin dress, AED 28,282; (646) 439-0380. Lanvin shoes, AED 3,655; Barneys New York, (212) 826-8900.

Sermoneta gloves, AED 1,653; sermoneta gloves.com.

Opposite: Versace dress, AED 11,295; (888) 721-7219.

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Dolce & Gabbana jacket, AED 11,552, and dress, AED 4,940; dolcegabbana.it.

Giuseppe Zanotti Design shoes, AED 4,389; giuseppezanotti design.com.

Opposite: Chanel dress, AED 38,071, and brooches, from AED 2,020; (800) 550-0005.

Tom Binns necklace, AED 2,846.

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Manicure: Megumi yamamoto for chanel beaute; fashion assistants: ray tetauira, giau nguyen; tailor: keke cheng for lars nord studio.

Givenchy by Riccardo Tisci jacket, AED 19,449, shirt, AED 5,289, dress, AED 8,026, and shorts, AED 5,050; barneys. com. Opposite: Salvatore Ferragamo dress, AED 10,248; (866) 337-7242.

Wolford tights, AED 239; wolford .com. Model: Julia Nobis/DNA Model Management.

Hair by Duffy for Tim Howard Management.

Makeup by Lisa Houghton for Tim Howard Management.

All the prices are indicative.

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WoRKIng GiRl Victoria Beckham wants to rule the world.

By sarah lyall Photographs by juergen teller

Past the closed-circuit cameras, past

the nondisclosure-agreement-wielding security guard, past the Damien Hirst pictures, past the hyperorganized assistant and the bold monochrome walls and the sumptuous gray sofas and the three giant orchids — past all the accouterments of the celebrity household — a toddler sat on the floor, playing with her nanny.

The toddler was plump and adorable, her hair in a little bun that just then was being decorated with a chain made of tiny flowers. The nanny, a minute, seemingly nondescript person in a careless ponytail, was doing the decorating. She looked up. ‘‘I’m sorry — I’ll be looking after her while we do this,’’ she said, a remark that prompted a moment of severe cognitive dissonance, because this was not the nanny at all, but Victoria Beckham herself, barefoot, T-shirted, skin glowing, so tiny as to appear to be in danger of dissolving into the furniture. She wore baggy, oversize boyfriend-y jeans suspended above her super-slim hips by little more than a casual canvas belt and a prayer, and she was surprisingly smiley. ‘‘Harper and I went to the park this morning and picked daisies, but she didn’t quite understand that to make daisy chains you need to leave some of the stem on,’’ she explained, gesturing to the pile of teeny flowers on the floor.

Harper, 2, is Beckham’s daughter, but of course we know that already. We know it just as we already know the names of Beckham’s three sons (Brooklyn, Romeo and Cruz), the name of her husband (David, who, tragically, was not at

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home), her Spice Girls handle (Posh Spice), and many other interesting Beckham-related facts, both important and trivial.

Beckham seized fame by the collar in 1996, when the Spice Girls emerged to become, briefly, the biggest thing in girl bands since the Supremes; fame in turn grabbed her by the throat when she married David, then a dishy Manchester United midfielder with mercurial hair, boundless talent and a yen for the limelight. They were more than the sum of their parts; he, one of the world’s most famous soccer players, with a deadly free kick; she, the impossibly thin, impossibly high-heeled quintessential wife, followed everywhere, photographed everywhere, even her most banal utterances repeated and dissected.

But in the last few years, a new kind of renown has been creeping up on Victoria Beckham, an unfamiliar phenomenon in a Kardashian world where people are famous for just being famous. This is the renown that comes from having a serious job and being seriously good at it. Five years after she shocked the blasé New York fashion world by unveiling a collection of beautifully made, elegant dresses that were chic and understated and ultraflattering, Beckham has established herself as a powerful force in the industry, proving again and again that she is far more than another celebrity slapping her name onto someone else’s product.

She knows her product intimately — she often says she designs clothes that she herself fantasizes about wearing — and they reflect her tastes:

nothing busy, very few prints, color used sparingly, lots of calm clean grays, creams, navys, blacks.

Her first collection evoked the work of Roland Mouret, one of whose dresses she made famous when she wore it to David’s official introduction ceremony with the Los Angeles Galaxy, but she has gradually acquired a new boldness, the confidence to find her own style. Her current collection for fall is widely considered one of the standouts of the season, with masculine-influenced coats, long hemlines and skirts and trousers that skim the body rather than cling to it.

Beckham’s ready-to-wear collection is still purposely small, but she is thinking big. She has branched out into sunglasses, handbags and denim. She has started a younger, less expensive line, Victoria, Victoria Beckham, which features clothes that are less tailored, more casual, more colorful. She has taken her brand global and is expanding most rapidly in the Asian markets, particularly China. Her company, based in Battersea, south London, already employs 90 workers, and is due to expand its office space soon. It recently started an e-commerce site, and there is talk of opening the first Victoria Beckham stand-alone store, in central London.

Here she is at the center of all this, a tiny dynamo in skyscraper heels who gives off an aura of calm — how real it is is anyone’s guess — while everything spins around her. Her ambition is endless. ‘‘I want to reach as many women throughout the world as I can,’’ she said. ‘‘There are more categories that I want to enter into. I have five categories at the moment. But at some point I would love to do shoes, I would love to do fragrance, I would love to do makeup, I would like to do underwear.

There are so many things I want to do.’’

At the moment, though, it was time to eat lunch. (Yes, she eats, though on the other hand she spends a large chunk of time each day doing a Tracy Anderson workout with a personal trainer.) We moved to the table. On one wall was a huge collage-y Julian Schnabel; on another, a David Beckham original: a blown-up black-andwhite photograph of the four children bouncing together on a bed. The house is a rental, and Beckham said she missed Los Angeles, where the family lived most recently — the climate, the openness, the work ethic. ‘‘I am very career minded, and I think my personality is more suited to America,’’ she said. ‘‘I am a working mum.’’

She is also a perfectionist involved in every aspect of her company, from the smallest detail on a cuff, to the type of cushions on the spectators’ chairs at her fashion shows, to the largest strategic decision about where she wants the company to go, to a celebrity’s request to borrow a piece for a party (yes to the query from Naomi Watts, she said into the phone at one point during the afternoon). From the beginning, Beckham said, she realized that her work was ‘‘not just turning up on the red carpet wearing my dresses.’’ She has in the last few seasons begun doing proper runway shows, but wisely started out doing small presentations, making a point of introducing each collection personally, walking the buyers

ALL BUSINESS Beckham, in her own Balenciaga jacket, at her offices in Battersea, south London.

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‘ When you’re in a position to be paparazzi-ed just walking down the street, you’d look a little daft if you were smiling all the time.’

FASHION MOMENT Beckham isn’t nearly as controlling of her office environment as she is of her public image.

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Makeup: Lotten Holmqvist at Julian Watson Agency using M.A.C.; hair: Tina Outen at streeters. Clockwise from Top: courtesy of Victoria Beckham (3).

and editors and sales reps through every aspect of every piece, dazzling them with her command of her product. She frequently schedules in-store events in which she talks to customers trying on her clothes in the dressing room, advising them even as they advise her right back. ‘‘I’m involved in everything,’’ she said.

Lunch — corn soup followed by a salad of greens and fruit for Beckham; sushi for Beckham’s assistant and me; and a fruit platter for everyone — was prepared and served by a chef. ‘‘You are going to think this is real — this is what I get every day!’’ Beckham said. But it is not, apparently. ‘‘Chris’’ — that is the chef — ‘‘comes in a couple of days a week and might make a giant lasagna so I can put it in the freezer and then do it myself,’’ Beckham said. ‘‘David does the cooking.’’

David does the cooking? ‘‘Yes, he’s really good,’’ his wife said. When David was playing soccer in Italy a few years ago, she explained, the family was living in L.A., and he was left alone on his days off. ‘‘So he decided to go to culinary school.’’

She says he is a hands-on father, just as she is a hands-on mother. The nanny apparently works just a few days a week, too, and so Harper sat with us at lunch, trying on my shoes, wandering off with pieces of fruit, and at one point grabbing a piece of paper, covering it with Post-it notes and announcing that she was going to her office. If they can, either Victoria or David always drives the children to school — three boys, three different schools — and collects them. At least one of them, she said, is at every parents’ meeting, every play, every sports event.

Beckham said that she has never missed a birthday, and that it is important to her to keep the children grounded and unspoiled.

Both she and David come from close, hard-working families: David’s father was a gas-company engineer, and hers was an electrical wholesaler. She contrasted her attitude toward that of some of their friends in L.A. ‘‘We have what I consider to be normal birthday parties,’’ she said. ‘‘I’ve been to parties in L.A. that are mind-blowing. I mean, quite literally mind-blowing. People get cellphones in the party bag, that sort of thing. Fabulous, fabulous parties. Ours aren’t like that. They are normal kids’ parties.

We’ll have a bouncy castle, a face painter.’’

After lunch, Beckham put Harper down for her nap, the nanny having materialized; sat for hair and makeup; and changed into her work outfit, all in black: slouchy Isabel Marant trousers, a skimpy sleeveless silk top, a Balenciaga leather jacket and a pair of towering leopard-print stilettos. The ordered taxi failed to show up, so an operative from the on-site Beckham security detail drove us to Beckham Ven-

tures Ltd., where the various teams — the handbag group, the denim group, the financial group — all work in a big open-plan space, and where Beckham was due to have her photograph taken

by Juergen Teller.

Teller has shot Beckham before. He was responsible for the witty 2008 Marc Jacobs ads in which, among other things, she lay inside a shopping bag, with only her splayed legs visible — and she appreciates his no-fuss approach. ‘‘Normally in a fashion shoot you’d be plastered in makeup, in amazing clothes,’’ she said. ‘‘I find it embarrassing when you don’t look like yourself, when you’ve had tons of retouching.’’

At the same time, Beckham is incredibly controlling of her image. Even in supposedly candid photographs, she is invariably shown posing as if she were on the red carpet: one leg in front of the other, body leaning back so that her hips jut forward and emphasize the slenderness of her form.

She never smiles — it is almost as if someone once told her that she looks better scowling — and instead affects a mien of distant hauteur that can come across as snobbishness but in person reads more like shyness and insecurity. ‘‘I dunno,’’ she said, when asked about the no-smiling phenomenon. ‘‘I smile in family pictures.’’ Perhaps, she mused, the reputation she got for being moody during the Spice era stuck. Also, she said, ‘‘When you’re in a position to be paparazzi-ed just walking down the street, you’d look a little daft if you were smiling all the time.’’ (Apparently, the eternally sunny-seeming Kate Middleton never got that particular memo).

She says she is relaxed about how she looks in pictures. ‘‘I don’t want to be made to look like I’m 25,’’ she said. ‘‘I’m 39. I don’t have any issues with my age.’’ That is what she said, at least. But she fretted a bit before the session, and as Teller prepared to take her picture she asked — jokingly, but not — that he go easy on her wrinkles (not that she has any noticeable ones).

For the shoot, Beckham reclined on her office floor, surrounded by fashion chaos: swatches of fabric, soda cans, sketches. She declined the suggestion to include a plate of grapes or some such in the picture. ‘‘We don’t want anyone to know I eat,’’ she said. ‘‘Why ruin that?’’

David, who spoke on the phone to his wife several times during the afternoon but, alas, never appeared in the flesh, is no slouch in the fashion department, either. ‘‘He might sometimes ask advice if he’s going to be late — ‘What should I wear?’ — but generally speaking, he has a really good sense of what works on him,’’ Beckham

said. ‘‘I think he looks great whatever he does. He literally always looks really, really good.’’

They work well together, she said, and then began talking without irony about the brand — the brand she and David have fashioned together, along with Simon Fuller, creator of ‘‘American Idol’’— as if being part of a brand was the most normal thing in the world, as if that is simply what people do. ‘‘You know, we don’t look at it as a big brand,’’ she said. ‘‘It is, but it happened very, very naturally. It seems that now everybody wants to make a brand; everybody wants to build a brand.

Ours happened very organically.’’ And then she said: ‘‘The most important thing is each other and the children.’’

The Beckham brand is one thing; the Victoria Beckham brand is another. ‘‘I just wanted to create beautiful clothes, good quality clothes I wanted to wear myself,’’ she said. ‘‘And then I wanted to create handbags, because I couldn’t find the right handbag that I wanted to carry.

Then I couldn’t find the right sunglasses, so I decided to make my own sunglasses.’’

There is no stopping her. ‘‘I want to get bigger and bigger,’’ she said. ‘‘I absolutely want an empire.’’

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The WRiTeR’s A view of Rome, a pristine computer screen, a photograph of Basquiat, an I.B.M. 196c typewriter, the ghost of another author. For these five writers — each of whom releases a new book this fall — all they need to inspire is within these walls.

Photographs by john spinks

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e s

jonathan lethem

The study at the author's summer house in Blue Hill, Me., where he is a co-owner of the used-book store Red Gap.

I’ve written portions of six or seven books in this study, but it doesn’t really belong to me. The alcove in which the desk is set, the field and tree line through the windows, the surrounding acres, all of these are borrowed from another writer, named Esther Wood, whose grandfather built this farmhouse. She lived and wrote in this house for many years, and then for a long time after she’d lost her eyesight she went on living here, until she, at age 97, died in the bedroom upstairs, as had her father and grandfather, in all likelihood. Her books have titles like ‘‘Deep Roots: A Maine Legacy’’ and ‘‘Saltwater Seasons.’’ For decades a columnist for The Ellsworth American, Wood was a descendant of this town’s 18th-century founders, and the local historian; really, a living emblem of the town’s relationship to its own history, which remains fierce. In our neighborhood Wood is a more famous writer

Lethem’s

‘‘Dissident Gardens’’ than I could ever possibly (Doubleday) tells be. I’ve long since learned the epic family saga that if I want a plumber of three generations or electrician to visit the of radical lefties place, or simply in explaining where I live in New York City. to someone local, it’s best to cut to the chase and say ‘‘Esther Wood’s house.’’

We’ve altered the house as little as possible.

I commissioned the built-in bookshelves, which were carpentered to keep to the look of the molding; the room seemed to have been waiting for them. While sitting here writing my mostly urban books I’ve watched deer, fox and bobcats cross our field, which must be some sort of forest freeway. I always figure the creatures are auditioning for a cameo in Esther Wood’s latest book or column. They’ve got the wrong writer.

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julian barnes

The North London desk where the novelist has written numerous books, including ‘‘The Sense of an Ending,’’ winner of the 2011 Man Booker Prize.

Barnes paints a portrait of grief five years after the death of his wife, the literary agent Pat Kavanagh, in ‘‘Levels of Life’’ (Knopf).

I have worked in this room for 30 years. It is on the first floor, overlooking the tops of two prunus trees, which flower before they leaf, so that in a lucky year there can be both snow and pink blossoms on bare branches. The room itself has always been painted the same color, a bright, almost Chinese, yellow, giving the effect of sunlight even on the darkest day.

I began working here on a small desk with a table set at right angles to it; then I had a desk built to cover the same floor plan but with the triangular hole filled in; later, I had it expanded to take a computer and more drawers, so that it is now almost horseshoe in shape. My old (and late) friend the novelist

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Brian Moore once spent a fortnight working here, and remarked afterwards that it made him feel like a TV newscaster: he kept expecting, when he turned, to see a female colleague at his elbow waiting to take up the next news story. I use the computer for e-mail and shopping; the I.B.M. 196c — 30 years old itself — for writing (or rather, second drafting: nowadays I generally first draft by hand). It is getting increasingly difficult to find ribbons and lift-off tape, but I shall use the machine until it drops. It hums quietly, as if urging me on — whereas the computer is inert, silent, indifferent. The room is usually very untidy: like many writers, I aspire to be a clean-desk person, but admit the daily reality is very dirty. So I have to walk carefully as I enter my study; but am always happy to be here.

jhumpa lahiri

The Pulitzer Prize-winning author's apartment in Rome, where she moved from Brooklyn last year.

In spite of the chandelier the room feels quite plain. It’s brightest in the mornings, when I tend to write. The desk belonged to the cardiologist of a former pope. The stones and shells along the windowsill are from Puglia. Two of the postcards are images of female figures from Mycenae. The third is a portion of a fresco by an unknown artist in the Villa Farnesina, in Rome. It depicts a balcony overlooking a city.

An alternate version of what I see.

I sit at the desk to type. Otherwise I sit on the sofa, to write by hand or read. When I read and write in Italian various items surround me: dictionaries, a pen, notebooks in which I jot down unfamiliar words and constructions.

In ‘‘The Lowland’’ The desk faces (Knopf), Lahiri offers the Alban Hills, a sweeping and the Apennines. poignant tale of two The terrace, just brothers separated by beyond the doors, geography and gives onto a sweep ideology. of time and space,

from the Forum and the Palatine all the way to EUR, a neighborhood that Mussolini conceived. I see the Gasometro in Ostiense, the crooked ruins of the Baths of Caracalla, Jesus and the saints on the basilica of San Giovanni in Laterano.

When we were shown the apartment, the room was used for dining. But I knew right away that I wanted to work here. On occasion, in the afternoons, when the sun begins to set, I move out onto the terrace, where there is a bench and a small plaque etched with a line from Dante, to read over some pages. But I need to be inside the room to write.

For many years I had a map of ancient Rome hanging in assorted apartments in Boston, where I wrote most of the stories in my first book. This was nearly 20 years ago, when I’d only read and heard about Italy, before I’d ever come to Rome. Now I live here, with the city spread before me. It still feels unreal. When I’m working, I’m more aware of the sky than of the city. I look at clouds, at seagulls. It’s almost like being at sea.

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edwidge danticat

The Haitian-born author in her Miami work space, with her daughters, Leila (left) and Mira.

daughter, he took a picture I like looking at faces of us and later enlarged while I work. Not actual Danticat’s ‘‘Claire of it and put it in one faces, but paintings and the Sea Light’’ (Knopf) of his signature frames. photographs. I keep a pile digs deep into the I like to keep those of pictures, intriguing intertwining lives of the things nearby because faces torn from residents of a small they remind me of the newspaper or magazine town where a young girl indispensable generosity pages, from which I might goes missing. of my immediate and borrow distinctive larger artist community. features and gestures for However, the picture my characters. that has been with me the longest is a The paintings and prints around my desk photograph of Jean-Michel Basquiat, which I’ve are mostly gifts from friends and sometimes had since moving into my first solo apartment total strangers. I live between Miami’s Design in my mid-20s. A friend who knew how much District and Little Haiti neighborhoods, which I love Basquiat gave me that picture, and fearing means there are always amazing things to look that writer-type notoriety might go to my head, at around me. wrote on the card that accompanied it, ‘‘Don’t I was sitting in a neighborhood deli once ever believe your own hype.’’ I’ve had that having lunch with my daughters and trying to picture on all my desks, at eye level, ever since. do a bit of work at the same time. Sitting next Sometimes when I’m stuck and can’t write, I to us was Dr. Ferdie Pacheco, Muhammad Ali’s just sit there and stare at Basquiat. Or I sit under former physician and a well-known artist. my desk and stare into space. Either way, I know At the end of the meal, he handed me a drawing that when I’m ready to get back to work, there that he had just dashed off on a napkin. Once will be all these faces there to greet me, silent when I went to visit my friend Edouard Duval witnesses to my days of both agony and joy.

Carrié in his Little Haiti studio with my oldest

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richard dawkins

Well, I don’t write only here. My untidy habits drive me to follow the slash-and-burn (or Mad Hatter) principle. Work on a virgin table until the mess becomes unbearable, then move on to a clean table in a clean room — or, on a beautiful summer day like this, one of the five tables dotted around the garden.

Trash that table and move on again. Actually, in the case of the In ‘‘An Appetite for massive 8-foot-square, 6-inchthick, rough-hewn stone table Wonder’’ (Ecco), (Purbeck Jurassic limestone), Dawkins gives readers ‘‘dotted’’ is hardly the word. insight into his But there’s more to be said own evolution as a about the mess. There’s a weird man and a thinker. sense in which I relish the contrast between the paper compost heap and the order and clarity of what’s inside the laptop computer lurching aslant it. I’m pretty obsessive and a perfectionist about what I write. Each page is

The Oxford University fellow and author in his cluttered home office near the university.

read over, several dozens of times, and it changes every time, for the better I hope, by a sort of winnowing process that resembles natural selection — Darwinnowing I suppose we could call it. I find it hard to believe how writers managed in precomputer days. Only my first book, ‘‘The Selfish Gene,’’ was written on a typewriter and every page was a phantasmagoria of crossings out and Scotchtaped inserts. When eventually a clean copy came back from the professional typist, it was as if the sun had come out. The contrast between the Scotch-taped mess and the elegant typescript now comes to mind when I compare the deep litter on my desk to the permanently pristine page on the computer screen.

I was actually writing this very piece at the Jurassic table in the garden when the New York Times photographers arrived. But they obstinately refused to take their camera outside, preferring the chaos of my room.

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Stranger THAN PaRadise Welcome to Marin County, the most beautiful, bucolic, privileged, liberal, hippie-dippie place on the earth. Love it or loathe it — it’s just hard to leave it.

By adam sachs Photographs by andres gonzalez

It was, as Richard Merz tells it, an enlightened mischievousness among the paradise dwellers that brought the water-skiing elephant to Richardson Bay. And it was the enemies of that laid-back enlightenment who drove the elephant out.

Merz has lived among the career sailors, wharf rats, dock hands, artists, off-the-grid idealists and at-sea divorced men of the Sausalito houseboat community, off and on, through five decades. ‘‘I arrived in 1962 and said this would always be the center of my travels,’’ Merz says, as he gives me an impromptu tour of the moored houseboats and the ‘‘anchor outs,’’ those sturdy salty seasquatters living aboard unauthorized boats tied up in what Merz says is one of the last free anchorages on the West Coast. ‘‘It was wuuuun-derful,’’ Merz says of the boat scene here in the ’60s. ‘‘Sterling Hayden, the actor and movie star, was living on a 98-foot sailboat. He and Enrico Banducci’’ — impresario of the

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famed Hungry I nightclub, where everyone from the Kingston Trio to Bill Cosby polished their acts — ‘‘decided things were too slow around here. They knew someone in Southern California who had a trained elephant, and they brought him up here and put him on seaplane floats, attached a speedboat and suddenly you’ve got a water-skiing elephant!’’

Someone alerted Herb Caen at The San Francisco Chronicle.

Spectacle-seeking city folk crossed the bridge by the thousands, parking close to get a view and effectively shutting down the sleepy downtown to gridlock. ‘‘The town elders went crazy because they couldn’t figure out how to tow any of the cars, there were so many. So the City Council passed a resolution that said you’re not allowed to have a waterskiing elephant in Sausalito.’’

I couldn’t bring myself to find out if a pachyderms-on-pontoons

Panther and mother of the late Tupac, Afeni Shakur.

Merz steers us out toward deeper water. A bearded gentleman waves to us. Informed of my purposes, he shouts across the waves: ‘‘Say hello to Abe Rosenthal!’’

He rows to meet us in his own dinghy. It falls to me to break the news, gently, that Mr. Rosenthal has been dead for seven years. Unfazed, he introduces himself as Jeff, local resident of ‘‘many moons.’’ ‘‘Why don’t you live out here if you really want to know about the place?’’ Jeff demands. ‘‘See, the issue is Sausalito. Kerouac and Cassady and all that, but they’re gone now! Now it’s about cash, and the place has become a tourist haven.’’

It can be too easy to fall into conversations like this in Marin — and hard to start the ones you’d rather have.

An acquaintance of mine lives in the little beach town of Bolinas.

I e-mailed asking if we could meet for coffee. He politely begged off, explaining he couldn’t ‘‘speak on behalf of the village. You may know it’s a no-no in this area.’’

But of course I didn’t know. Because well-known bohemian enclaves an hour’s drive from major American metropolises do not tend to be shrouded in pretend secrecy. He wasn’t a recluse.

But he had little to gain and much to lose, apparently, by violating a community taboo of discussing the place with outsiders.

Bolinas, famously, has no road signs pointing to it. (Every time the highway department posts a sign, local residents tear it down.)

You simply intuit the turnoff from twisty Highway 1, take a left at the small hand-lettered notice: ‘‘Entering a socially acknowledged nature-loving town.’’

There’s a slight hippie-theme-park vibe to the place, an old timey preserved-in-aspic ’60s feel that is both cloying and altogether appealing. Some twangy country song is playing on 89.9 KWMR West Marin Community Radio when I pull into town to meet a pal from San Francisco. Browsing the Free Box outside the Bolinas People’s Store, I found an Iris Murdoch novel I’d been meaning to read. Inside I buy some sunscreen and take my change in shiny gold $3 coins, local tender (‘‘Good For Trade In Coastal Marin’’).

A few miles north of town we pick up the trail toward RCA Beach, named for the old radio towers that dot the path. The beach is meant to be a guarded secret of nudists and surfers, but this day we have this wide stretch of coast to ourselves. Someone has built a sturdy little fort of weathered gray planks with messages written on one of them: ‘‘The Only Thing Worth Knowing Is Nothing At All.’’ water world Just south of Bolinas, Stinson Beach attracts a mellow crowd of surfers and sunbathers. Right: a houseboat in Sausalito.

ban was still on the books. Because, apocryphal or not, it’s kind of a perfect Marin story. Which is to say it’s about parking and platitudes, about the eternal tension between the encouragement of kooky freewheeling California freedoms and the contradictory, conservative urge to tamp all that down, to maintain the place exactly as it was found by its latest wave of settlers. Sure you want elephants on water skis . . . but the nattering nabobs of nimbyism say no!

On the way around a dock we pass a line of big happy seals, bellies up in the sun. Some of the houseboats around here are repurposed lifeboats. The late Shel Silverstein once lived on a World War II-era balloon barge called Evil Eye. Others are mansions in miniature. ‘‘This one used to have a heliport on the roof,’’ Merz says, pointing out a particularly grand example of the form. We pass the Whole Earth Catalog founder Stewart Brand’s elegant and trickedout tug Mirene and another said to belong to the former Black

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In Marin there is enough back-to-the-land agrarian hoo haw going around to make you ill in your quinoa salad — but there is also beauty here of such ampleness, such vital intensity, that you want to get out of the car and hug a tree.

A simple Life Above: the dining room at the recently opened Fir & Star at the Olema. Left: cows roaming the hills in Point Reyes.

And more prosaically: ‘‘No Fires — Dirt Has PCBs.’’ The truth is, I always sort of want to hate Marin. But of course — like every other visitor since Sir Francis Drake pulled up to shore aboard the Golden Hind in that fateful summer of 1579 — I always fall in love and want to stay. That temptation to stake a claim, to occupy valuable space, is the slithering snake in the grass that’s making everyone in Eden bonkers.

Walking back through town on the way to a post-hike beer at Smiley’s Schooner Saloon, we stop in at a real estate office. Is it true, we ask, that a water meter (i.e., the only way a new property can be developed) in laid-back Bolinas can fetch over $300,000 at auction? After kindly confirming this and noting that even then they don’t come up for sale very often, the friendly real estate agent notices my camera and odd inquisitiveness and checks herself. ‘‘Are you reporters? Oh my, I guess you probably are. I’m sorry, I really can’t talk to you anymore.’’

Last year, the longtime Marin resident George Lucas made public plans for extending facilities on his massive Skywalker Ranch near San Rafael. A local homeowners group pushed back. Instead of fighting it, Lucas shocked everyone by announcing that he’d sell the land to a developer for low-income housing. Cue the sound of ten thousand conflicted liberal consciousnesses blowing their fuses.

Marin is confusing. Great heavenly chunks of untrammeled nothingness hard up against dense clusters of exurban sprawl.

Confected villages of twee woodsy charm where the housing prices have gone nuts thanks to the great northward creep of tech money.

Unapologetically full of it. Aggravatingly ideal.

Sometimes the place does seem to do its level best to justify the national caricature of itself as a tribe of liberal ‘‘Marin County hot-tubbers’’ (the insult George H. W. Bush famously and crazily

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leveled at the ‘‘American Taliban’’ John Walker Lindh). And, yes, there is enough back-to-the-land agrarian hoo haw going around to make you ill in your quinoa salad — but there is also beauty here of such ampleness, such vital intensity, that you want to get out of the car and hug a tree.

And, in addition to the natural attractions of the coast, there are such mitigating facts as the Son of Yeti pie (house-made mozzarella, hen of the woods mushrooms, etc.) from Pizzeria Picco in Larkspur and its Straus Dairy soft-serve (drizzled in olive oil and sea salt), from the revitalized historic dairy lands around Point Reyes. And there are empty beaches as beautiful as any in America, an hour from the city. And there is Merz, a national treasure and keeper of local lore, philosopher-sailor of the dwindling hobo flotilla.

Merz and I come to shore for lunch at Fish, a pricey sustainable seafood restaurant. We eat locally caught sea urchin on toast and a salad of monkeyface eel. I ask Merz what he’d learned from his time in a commune in nearby Mill Valley. ‘‘That you can live together in total agreement and higher consciousness,’’ he says. ‘‘There was only one strict rule: Don’t leave any hairy soap in the shower.’’

One day I was traveling along the snaky switchbacks of Sir

Francis Drake Boulevard, the long road that tethers the villages of San Anselmo and Fairfax to the depopulated, slightly surreal lush wilds of West Marin.

Go West A local resident at the Marin Country Mart in Larkspur.

Somewhere, the FM dial went fuzzy so I turned to 1610 AM, the National Parks info station. ‘‘You are now traveling in a major valley called the Olema Valley,’’ a voice declares. ‘‘Created by the action of the great San Andreas fault, this fault zone results from the dramatic meeting of two landmasses, the North American plate, which is on the east side of Highway 1 and the Pacific plate, which is on the west side.’’

If you look at a map, the westernmost part of Marin County looks to be tearing itself away from the continent. Indeed the Point Reyes Peninsula is part of the Pacific and inching that way.

Having eaten an ice cream cone at Fairfax Scoop (organic, delicious) and driven through shaded redwood forests and over and around many peaks and valleys, I come to a stop in little Olema. It feels like I’ve come farther than the odometer will cop to. It feels like another planet. Which in a way coastal, bifurcated, misty West Marin is.

Marin County does not lend itself to digesting whole. Its parts are too disparate, the houseboats and watercolor boutiques of Sausalito a million miles from the hilly hideaway of Inverness on the Pacific side of Tomales Bay. This is how I’ve come to terms with Marin, how I stopped worrying about its contradictions and simply appreciated it as is: I take it in little bites.

Fir & Star at the Olema is an historic inn that was recently taken over and given new life by chefs Margaret Grade and Daniel DeLong, who run the exceptionally serene Manka’s lnverness Lodge across the bay. ‘‘I want this place to be a joint,’’ DeLong tells me one night after dinner. Of course it’s more than that. Like everything Grade and DeLong do, it conjures a certain worldview that everything should be perfectly arranged while looking utterly natural and at ease. The menu has a sense of humor (‘‘All Kale Caesar,’’ ‘‘Flat Iron Steak of Beef Last Seen Grazing on Local Grasses Replaced By Peter’s Turnip Tips’’), as do the innkeepers.

But the most remarkable meal I had in the area happened to

SHell Game Oysters at Nick’s Cove on Tomales Bay.

be cooked for me by someone who, though trained in professional kitchens, doesn’t work in them anymore.

Evan Shively is a reformed chef, turned wood craftsman, turned gentleman proprietor of an artisanal salvaged lumber yard. Shively sources the naturally fallen redwoods and valley oaks and slices the trunks into massive live-edge planks, which he then ages before selling to furniture makers as far away as Japan.

After a tour of part of the property (we didn’t make it over to the mobile pizza ovens), Shively invites me up to lunch at the house he shares with his wife, Madeleine, an artist. ‘‘Do you like sea creatures?’’ he asks, and then proceeds to rather casually pull together an amazing assemblage of baby octopus, escarole plucked from the garden and quickly braised, thin strips of kazunoko (Japanese herring roe) — all tossed together with white wine, some local crème fraîche and a soup-ladle-size dollop of salmon roe Shively cures at home. ‘‘What’s the magic of this place?’’ asks Shively, who relocated here from Boston 20 years ago. ‘‘This is an intentional community and it’s a working landscape and it’s also a place that has real history.’’

I think about the gnarled towers of wood outside and the goats roaming the property and the rolling pastured hills I drove through to get here, and conclude there are many types of magic at work in Marin.

Shively concurs. ‘‘There’s just some special sauce here that’s pretty nice.’’

NAtural selection Clockwise from above: guest cottages at Nick’s Cove; Muir Beach Overlook trail; the hills above RCA Beach.

Women’s Fashion September - October, 2013

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A Front-Row Seat The Greek-born artist Konstantin Kakanias is known for his drawings of eccentric characters, the most enduring of whom is a big-haired, beak-nosed, fashion-crazed woman-of-a-certain-age named Mrs. Tependris. This summer, at T’s invitation, Kakanias took Mrs. Tependris to the couture shows in Paris, where she was scandalized by latex-clad, masked models at Maison Martin Margiela, seated amid an audience of Qatari princesses at Armani

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T Emirates: The New York Times Style Magazine

Privé and encased in one of the artist Marina Abramovic’s space-age jumpsuits for Net-a-Porter at the Palais de Tokyo.

Mrs. Tependris, who last attended the Paris shows in the mid-’90s, has kept herself busy with a different type of global affair in the intervening years. ‘‘She had to join a lot of revolutions, do a lot of political acts,’’ Kakanias said. ‘‘She just couldn’t do couture for a while.’’ — JULIA FELSENTHAL

illustrations by konstantin kakanias

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