The singer-songwriter and supermodel on fashion, the future and ghting back
ARTS
Kate Moss, Isamaya Ffrench, Ella Eyre, Jane Birkin
We make diamonds using four natural ingredients, the sun, wind, rain and something we have too much of, atmospheric carbon. In doing so, our technology turns a negative into a positive.
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The season’s most uplifting finds
11 ARTS & CULTURE
London’s don’t-miss exhibitions
Inside London’s two new LGBTQ+ cultural spaces
The female gallerists changing the art world forever
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The latest news and key trends to know now
ROLE MODEL
Singer and supermodel Karen Elson on finding her own voice
The blockbuster show celebrating the continent’s style
From Dakar to Marrakech: the new-gen African designers
Flora Macdonald Jonhston’s key fashion buys of the season
The glittering launches and most covetable pieces
42 ON SHOW
2022’s dazzling couture jewellery collections 46 GOLDEN HOUR
Spectacular watches to invest in for a good time
The new cult products and trends to try 52 FFRENCH CONNECTION
Makeup artist Isamaya Ffrench on ripping up the rulebook
58 SUPERCHARGE YOUR SKINCARE
Alessandra Steinherr edits the latest beauty launches 60 ACE YOUR BASE
The new skincare foundations 62 COSMIC GIRL
The story behind Kate Moss’s spiritualwellness brand Cosmoss 64 A SCENTS OF AUTUMN
The freshest new fragrances
70 TASTING NOTES
Where to eat and what to drink: the latest from London’s dining scene
72 TABLE TALK
Hilary Armstrong reviews the buzziest restaurant openings in the capital
76 TAKE IT OUTSIDE
The best alfresco terraces for sundowners and sunsets
Must-visit hotels and experiences across the globe
82 ISLAND LIFE
Why the northeast coast of Corfu should be on your radar
Home & Interiors
Interior design ideas and inspiration
92 BRIGHT YOUNG THINGS
Inside the exuberant world of design duo Campbell-Rey
Last Word
96 MY LONDON GLOSSARY
Ella Eyre’s little black book of the capital
London is a city alive with possibility, fostering creativity at every turn. The Arts & Style Issue is a celebration of the visionaries, originators and innovators who are shaping the capital’s contemporary scene - and beyond - featuring its brightest names.
No-one bridges art and style as effortlessly as our cover star, Karen Elson. After 25 years in the fashion industry, the flame-haired supermodel and singer-songwriter continues to blaze a trail, and has recently released her third album Green. But success has not come without its struggles, and Karen opens up about the obstacles she’s had to overcome along the way.
Unconventional, directional, experimental… makeup artist Isamaya Ffrench also blurs the boundaries of art and fashion as a modern creative force redefining beauty. She talks to us about focusing on individuality and the power of authenticity - and she shares her essential beauty buys and need-to-know skincare tips. Autumn is a season of reflection and renewal, which makes it the perfect time for Kate Moss to unveil her wellness brand Cosmoss. We bring you the inside track on how the supermodel’s journey of self-discovery was the inspiration behind the launch.
London’s cultural landscape is one in which diversity, equity and inclusivity are evermore hard-wired. We go behind the scenes of two LGBTQIA+ spaces in the capital - Queer Britain in King’s Cross, and Queercircle in Greenwich, each a much-needed hub for LGBTQIA+ arts, culture and social action; and the city’s most inspirational female gallerists tell us how they have forged ahead in a hitherto man’s world to change the course of art forever.
Fashion, as always, takes centre stage. To mark the V&A’s blockbuster show Africa Fashion, we celebrate the new-gen African designers who are bringing fresh perspectives to the continent’s storied past; while Flora Macdonald Johnston edits her favourite AW22 buys for the season ahead.
Enjoy the issue.
Charlotte Adsett, Editorial DirectorArmstrong INTERIORS EDITOR: Amy Moorea Wong SUB EDITORS: Lisa Howard, Samantha de Haas CONTRIBUTORS: Amah-Rose Abrams, Bridget Arsenault, Eloise Hendy, Olivia Lidbury
Ray Searle ray@theglossarymagazine.com
PRODUCTION MANAGER: George Willis production@theglossarymagazine.com
SUBSCRIPTIONS: subscriptions@theglossarymagazine.com
EDITORIAL ENQUIRIES: editorial@theglossarymagazine.com
Floor, 86-90 Paul Street, London EC2A 4NE
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The jewellery designer’s new collection interplays flowers and female sexuality to seductive e ect. anissakermiche.com
Feel uplifted with this season’s most joyful fi nds
Light artist Benoit Lalloz has created the Infra Luna candle warmer for Byredo, which gently heats up the wax to di use its scent around the home. byredo.com
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Stella McCartney debuts her new responsible skincare line with a trio of eco-friendly products - a Reset Cleanser, Alter-Care Serum and Restore Cream - all formulated with natural active ingredients and presented in reusable bottles made from recycled glass. stellamccartneybeauty.com ,
The Attico Devon Mule, £640
With their bold tiger print and pyramidal heels, these mules are for walking on the wild side. theattico.com
Carolee Schneemann, Eye Body: 36 Transformative Actions for Camera , 1963. © ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London 2022
Until 8 January 2023
From sexual expression and the objectification of women to human suffering and the catastrophe of war, American interdisciplinary artist Carolee Schneemann never shied away from addressing the issues of our time. Bringing together over 300 pieces spanning Schneemann’s extraordinary six-decade career, this is the first major exhibition since her death in 2019 and a true celebration of one of the most boundary-pushing creatives of the last century. barbican.org.uk
TATE MODERN 20 September - 16 April 2023
Another one to book ahead for, Tate Modern’s new show brings together the sculptures of Maria Bartuszová (many hitherto rarely seen on these shores). The exhibition traces her work back to the 1960s, when the Prague-born Slovak artist began to develop her distinct method of casting white plaster by hand, resulting in the abstract, delicate works for which she is so revered. tate.org.uk
1 October – 22 January 2023
In what promises to be autumn’s hot ticket, this majorCredit Suisse exhibition sheds new light on Lucian Freud,one of the most storied figurative painters of the 20thcentury. From his early, more intimate works to thosemonumental naked portraits, more than 60 paintingsspanning over seven decades promise a compellinginsight into one of art’s true greats. nationalgallery.org.uk
Lucian
14 October 2022 – 8 January 2023
The Swiss artist Henry Fuseli spent most of his life in London, working at what is now The Courtauld. Beneath his cultured exterior he harboured a secret obsession with the female figure and this exhibition brings together 50 of his drawings, which give an insight not only into Fuseli’s long-held fascination, but also late 18th- and early 19th-century attitudes to gender, identity and sexuality. courtauld.ac.uk
Reflection with Two Children
Tate Maria Bartuszová, Untitled, 1985 Henry Fuseli, Sophia Fuseli, her hair in large rolls, with pink gloves, in front of a brown curtain, 1790, Zürich, Kunsthaus Zürich, Collection of Prints and Drawings, Donated by Friends and Patrons, 1914
Until 10 April 2023
There has never been an exhibition that has addressed ASMR, aka Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response – until now. A tingle-inducing sensation that begins in the scalp and travels down the spine, inducing euphoria or deep calm, millions download videos to trigger the feeling.
Here, digital artworks, paintings and videos tell the story of the culture, community and creativity of this online phenomenon.
designmuseum.org
Until 11 December 2022
A major celebration of South Africa’s most famous living artist and Honorary Royal Academician William Kentridge. Expect to see Kentridge’s finest pieces from the 1980s to the present day displayed across the Main Galleries, including rarely seen drawings, animated films, a mechanical theatre, sculptures, tapestries and performance pieces. Some are semi-autobiographical, others highlight the “inequities, barbarity and absurdities of the modern world” with a focus on the post-colonial legacy across the African continent.
royalacademy.org.uk
26 October - 8 January 2023
A fascinating exploration into how contemporary artists use the medium of clay in ever more inventive and innovative ways. From abstract sculptures and immersive installations to fantastical figures and unusual twists on everyday objects, the artworks address topics ranging from architecture to social justice and politics. The one thing they have in common? They’re all made of clay. southbankcentre.co.uk
William Kentridge, Video still from Notes Towards a Model Opera , 2015. Courtesy the artist © William Kentridge William Kentridge, Comrade Tree, I Report to You, 2020. Collection William Kentridge27 October – 19 February 2023
From 1970s punk to modern witchcraft, this is a spellbinding study into horror, looking at it less as a genre and more as a reaction and provocation to some of our most troubling times. Told in three acts - Monster, Ghost and Witch - it includes all the maverick artists and creatives who have drawn inspiration from the monstrous, mystical and magical, providing a unique perspective on Britain’s counterculture over the past 50 years.
somersethouse.org.uk
DESIGN MUSEUM
Until 25 June 202
London-based Yinka Ilori is known for sprinkling his technicolour magic across murals and playgrounds, laundrettes and basketball courts. Now the multi-disciplinary artist’s rainbow aesthetic - inspired by the African fabrics of his childhood - comes to the Design Museum with a joyful exhibition of kaleidoscopic installations, geometric patterns and graphics.
designmuseum.org
GOLDSMITHS CCA
5 November - 12 February 2023
Cinzia Ruggeri wore many hats. A seminal, but overlooked, figure within Italian postmodern art and design, she was a fashion and furniture designer, an artist and interior architect, a sculptor and teacher. This is a fascinating deep dive into her life and practice, celebrating the imaginative, provocative, elegant and unpredictable worlds she created.
goldsmithscca.art
Ritratto di Portrait of Cinzia Ruggeri.
Photo: Occhiomagico. © Occhiomagico
23 September - 12 March 2023
Artist and designer Kaffe Fassett’s name is synonymous with colour, pattern and texture. In recognition of his extraordinary talent, the Fashion and Textile Museum brings together over 70 original pieces, each of which gives an insight into Fassett’s kaleidoscopic world and weaves a fascinating tale of his five-decade career, in which he devoted himself to the worlds of knitting, needlepoint and patchwork, earning an MBE in 2018 in the process. fashiontextilemuseum.org
Until 30 April 2023
This is Korean-Canadian artist Zadie Xa’s largest solo exhibition in London to date, commissioned by the Whitechapel Gallery - and it’s not to be missed. Working across multiple mediums, Xa often draws on her own experience to explore cultural conflation, systems of power, home and belonging. For this show, she has created a site-specific and immersive installation in which a new body of paintings, sculptures, textile works, suspended marionettes and masks are all positioned within a large-scale structure inspired by a traditional Korean home known as a hanok. whitechapelgallery.org
Until 16 October 2022
Milton Avery is, without question, one of North America’s greatest 20th-century colourists. From rarely seen early works and paintings of family, friends and self-portraits to his final paintings of the 1950s and 1960s, this is the first comprehensive show of his oeuvre in Europe and is a wonderful celebration of an artist who, as Mark Rothko once said, “penetrated every pore of the canvas to the very last touch of the brush”. royalacademy.org.uk
Portrait of Zadie Xa. Photo: Benito Mayor Vallejo Zadie Xa, Dream Dangerous, 2020, Live performance, Frieze Live 2020 CLOCKWISE © Vicky Wozniak ©In a matter of just a few weeks, London celebrated the opening of not one but two new dedicated LGBTQIA+ cultural hubs. Both have been designed to provide a safe and creative place for the queer community in a city where, depressingly, over 50 percent of dedicated LGBTQIA+ spaces have closed in the past decade.
First to throw open its doors, in May, was Queer Britain, the UK’s first national LGBTQIA+ museum, occupying the ground floor of a historic building on Granary Square, King’s Cross. It’s been a long journey since its inception in 2018 but the new gallery spaces, exhibition areas and retail shop are now ready to welcome all, regardless of sexuality or gender identity, in what director and co-founder Joseph Galliano describes as “a hugely important step … the start of something beautiful.”
The museum’s programming promises to shine a light on the rich, diverse history and culture of LGBTQIA+ communities across the country and beyond, kickstarting with the debut exhibition We Are Queer Britain, which runs until Spring 2023 to mark 50 years since the first UK Pride march - a turning point for gay liberation. Artefacts on display include a letter by Sir Elton John to his younger self, a rainbow hijab and Oscar Wilde’s Reading prison cell door, plus there’s also a virtual reality museum dedicated to platforming stories and artwork of LGBTQIA+ people.
Meanwhile, over the river, the charity Queercircle - which works at the intersection of arts, culture and social action - has a new space on Soames Walk in Greenwich’s Design District, which opened in June. “We now have an opportunity
Two dynamic new cultural hubs in the capital will celebrate queer identity, champion LGBTQIA+ talent and provide support for the wider communityThis page: A selection of images from Welcome To Queer Britain, the museum’s temporary exhibition, which ran over the summer, including various pieces from its photographic collection and archives
to collaboratively design community-informed programmes that push the boundaries of arts and culture, learning, and health and wellbeing in a holistic environment,” founder Ashley Joiner tells The Glossary.
Queercircle’s inaugural exhibition in the main gallery, Let Me Hold You by artist Michaela Yearwood-Dan, and The Queens’ Jubilee - a show comprising rare photographs of the radical drag queens of the Gay Liberation Front on display in the reading room - have both been a resounding success. With a new exhibition by Bones Tan Jones scheduled, and Jacob V Joyce announced as the first artist-in-residence, autumn promises great things.
Queercircle will also host wellbeing events throughout the year, focusing on social isolation, stress and anxiety. “Our hope is that when people visit the space, they not only come to see the exhibitions, but feel seen themselves too,” concludes Joiner. queerbritain.org.uk; queercircle.org
This page, clockwise from right: Gay Liberation Front, Radical Drag Queens arrested at Festival of Light Demo, 1971 © Mirror Pix / Alamy; Members of the Gay Liberation Front demonstrating outside Bow Street Magistrates Court in 1971 © PA Images / Alamy Stock Photo; Stuart Feather conducting a Street Theatre Demo at the Festival of Light, 1971; Portrait of Stuart Feather © Zefrog / Alamy Stock Photo; Stuart Feather and Bob Mellors, co-founder of the Gay Liberation Front, running their Saturday market stall in Portobello all on display in Queercircle’s the Queens’ Jubilee exhibition
It’s no secret that for much of history, the art world has been a boys’ club. Throughout the 1800s, as public galleries began to open in Britain for the first time, many prominent male art critics declared their staunch belief that women could not create ‘serious’ art. Entrance into art schools was also nearly impossible, with the Royal Academy not allowing women into its Antique Schools until 1862. Even if they managed to secure entry, the education women received differed wildly from their male counterparts, with life-drawing classes, in particular, kept firmly off the table.
Forced to work against nearly insurmountable odds, perhaps it shouldn’t come as a surprise that as late as 1971, a male gallerist was still able to ask an art historian, “Why have there been no great women artists?” Luckily, that historian was the now-legendary feminist critic Linda Nochlin, who took the man’s question and wrote an eviscerating essay on the topic as part of a controversial issue on ‘Women’s Liberation, Women Artists and Art History’ in the journal ARTnews.
With characteristic wit, Nochlin shattered the illusion that art history is universal and demanded an end to institutional and social prejudices. In doing so, she changed the field forever.
Now, over 50 years since Nochlin’s ground-breaking essay, there are, of course, a great many Great Women Artists. But, perhaps even more significantly, there are a great number of women running some of the most well-respected, prominent galleries, and establishing the careers of many of the most interesting artists working today.
Indeed, many of these female gallerists in London’s thriving contemporary art scene have been instrumental in diversifying the art world, challenging established norms, and championing the talents of rising art stars. As Nochlin wrote, “feminist art history is there to make trouble, to call into question, to ruffle feathers”.
For many years art dealing has been a man’s world, but these leading London gallerists are changing the course of art foreverWords AMAH-ROSE ABRAMS and ELOISE HENDY Alison Jacques. Photography: Hannah Starkey
Berners Street, Fitzrovia, W1 alisonjacques.com
“Idon’t consider myself as being defined in the art world by my gender, but by what I do and what the gallery has achieved,” Alison Jacques tells The Glossary. She has more than ample reason to feel this way - the Fitzrovia gallerist has established herself as one of the most influential figures in the contemporary art world, not least for her unwavering support for female artists.
Her eponymous gallery is renowned for its focus on the work of women previously overlooked in the canon of art history. Thanks to Jacques, many of these under-acknowledged artists have been given major international shows, including Brazilian painter Lygia Clark at the Guggenheim Bilbao in 2020 and textural artist Sheila Hicks at the Hepworth Wakefield in 2022; while this September, Tate Modern hosts a retrospective of the work of Slovakian sculptor Maria Bartuszová.
Yet it hasn’t always been rosy. “Up until the last five years, I have encountered misogyny and certainly a privileged ‘boys’ club’ which was deliberately exclusive, patronising and stereotypical in terms of its attitude to women,” she says.
Jacques often speaks of her respect for established female gallerists such as Maureen Paley, Victoria Miro and Sadie Coles, as well as New York pioneers such as Barbara Gladstone and Marian Goodman. “Today, the art world does feel more equal,” she says. Though she cautions that, despite progress, we must “remain mindful of those who are not supportive of women’s rights. We are not quite there yet. Artists and art world professionals are still working with countries with horrendous women’s rights records, but hopefully we will get there in the end and the compass will reset itself.”
Eastcastle Street, Fitzrovia, W1 addisfineart.com
“It is incredible to be a female gallerist in London’s dynamic art scene at this time,” says Addis Fine Art’s Rakeb Sile, “and to have the opportunity to provide a platform for artists from the Horn of Africa, a region that has been vastly under-represented in the international market thus far.”
And what a platform she and gallery co-founder Mesai Haileleul have built, opening their inaugural gallery in Addis Ababa in 2016. As Ethiopia’s first white-cube space for modern and contemporary art, it has received plaudits from all corners of the art press. “It has been very gratifying to see the strong presence that young, female artists - such as Merikokeb Berhanu, Selome Muleta and Tizta Berhanu - have recently found in Ethiopia, where they have historically been overlooked,” Sile notes.
The pair have enjoyed similar success with their Fitzrovia gallery, which opened its doors last October, and which is already garnering high praise for the quality of work from Ethiopia that it is introducing to the London market and representing on the international stage. Pace of Life, the recent exhibition of paintings by Nigatu Tsehay, was met with critical acclaim; so too the show of work by Addis Gezehagn - the first of its kind in Europe - whose intricate and labour-intensive assemblage canvases are kaleidoscopic in their beauty. As the gallery approaches its first birthday, the future looks just as bright for Addis Fine Art.
For Yoruba speakers, it is immediately clear who Tiwani Contemporary is for, and which artists Maria Varnava wants her gallery to champion. In the West African language, primarily spoken in southwestern Nigeria, ‘tiwani’ means ‘it belongs to us’. From the outset, Varnava’s intentions have been clear: to support, promote, and showcase the talent of international contemporary artists, and, above all, Black women artists.
Greek-Cypriot by birth, Varnava spent her formative years in Lagos, before moving to the UK to study art. A job at Christie’s followed, but it was while doing a master’s thesis in African studies at SOAS that the idea of Tiwani Contemporary was born. “I started Tiwani Contemporary inspired and encouraged by a great woman and visionary - the Nigerian curator Bisi Silva who founded CCA Lagos,” Varvana says of her gallery’s foundation in 2011. It has since gone from strength to strength, giving early representation to globally renowned artists such as Njideka Akunyili Crosby and Simone Leigh, who was awarded a Golden Lion at this year’s Venice Biennale alongside London-based artist Sonia Boyce - the first time in the Biennale’s 127-year history the prize has gone to a Black woman artist.
With a second space that opened in February in Victoria Island, Lagos, Varnava is turning her attention to rising stars, such as Joy Labinjo, Miranda Forrester and Michaela Yearwood-Dan, and the inaugural exhibition at the new site was, in fact, of Labinjo’s work. “I have always felt a responsibility to ensure the work of women remains intimately connected to Tiwani Contemporary’s exhibition programme and infrastructure,” concludes Varnava.
Maria Varnava. Photography: Pantelis Hadjiminas (P Studio)
Rakeb Sile. Photography: Bandele Zuberi
Kingly Street, Soho, W1 sadiecoles.com
Sadie Coles has forever had an eye for all things cool. When still in her early 30s, she curated a series of shows championing younger artists she believed were standout talents of their generation. One was Grayson Perry, another Sarah Lucas. By the time Coles set up her own gallery in 1997, there was an undeniable buzz about her. Even when the paint was still drying on the new walls, she was being hailed as “a smart cookie in the contemporary art world” and “a legend”.
The gallery was on Soho’s Heddon Street, right next to where David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust vinyl sleeve was photographed (Bowie apparently popped up at Coles’ first Sarah Lucas show, accompanied by Charles Saatchi). Now, Sadie Coles HQ is based across three West End spaces: its largest gallery is on Kingly Street, as well as galleries on Davies Street in Mayfair and Bury Street in St James’s (though they often mount numerous offsite projects throughout the city and abroad). Coles represents around 50 artists and artist’s estates, including renowned names like Richard Prince and Helen Marten, and emerging talents such as LA artist Martine Syms, London-based simulation artist Lawrence Lek, and Katja Seib, who has just had an exhibition at the Davies Street gallery.
Never afraid to challenge the status quo, Coles is always looking ahead to how the art world can change in response to political and technological shifts. In a recent interview with Jarvis Cocker, she stressed that, “great art is great art, so if an artist does something really interesting in a digital form, for me that’s just as exciting as someone making a great painting”.
It is no hyperbole to say that London’s art world would not be where it is today without Maureen Paley. Since the late 70s, New Yorkborn, UK-based Paley has been a staple on the scene - first bursting into the capital as a student at the Royal College of Art, when she would gravitate towards Soho establishments such as The French House, The Coach & Horses and The Colony Room, hanging out with the likes of Francis Bacon, Derek Jarman and Lucian Freud.
Since then, Paley has certainly done more than mingle. Recognised everywhere for her iconic beehive, Paley has transformed careers and altered the very fabric of the city over the last four decades. First founding her Bethnal Green gallery in 1984, Paley is a stalwart of the East End (she has another space in Shoreditch, Studio M) and was amongst the first to present contemporary art in the area — the previous absence of which is now unimaginable, given East London’s status as a thriving creative urban hub.
A true trailblazer, Paley represents some of the most recognisable faces in contemporary art, including the Turner Prize-winning artists Gillian Wearing, Wolfgang Tillmans and Lawrence Abu Hamdan. This summer, Paley brought a sliver of surreal Americana to the British seafront, with lively paintings by LA-based Esther Pearl Watson featuring flying saucers and glittery meteorites on display at Morena Di Luna, Paley’s seaside gallery in Hove. Visit and you might just get a tour from the gallerist herself, who likes to spend weekends down on the coast when she can.
Maureen Paley, London Three Colts Lane, Bethnal Green, E2 maureenpaley.com Sadie Coles. Photography: Jack Andrew Davison Maureen Paley. Photography: Devin BlairEastcastle Street, Fitzrovia, W1 pilarcorrias.com
When Pilar Corrias welcomed visitors to her new gallery on Eastcastle Street in 2006, she was the first woman to open an art gallery in London’s West End for a decade. Some might see such a move as a risk, but not Corrias, who had already established herself as one of the best connected and most magnetic personalities on the capital’s art scene. Prior to this, Corrias had made her name at the Lisson Gallery and Haunch of Venison - two of the capital’s most revered contemporary galleries - showing conceptual pieces by artists such as the Turner Prize-winning Keith Tyson, American artist Dan Graham, and British sculptor Anish Kapoor. It was her work with Kapoor that first brought her into contact with a member of fashion royalty, who she now counts as a close friend – Miuccia Prada bought her first Kapoor from Corrias, when the gallerist was only 28.
Corrias opened her second space in 2021, commissioning architectural studio Hesselbrand to transform a 1730s townhouse on Savile Row into a space where you can expect to see anything from AI-based new-media art to oil paintings and large-scale installations. She is a champion of a young, global generation of artists, including Swedish-born, Oslo based artist Ragna Blay, New York painter and sculptor Gerasimos Floratos and the German artist Ulla von Brandenburg, who lives and works in Paris. As her list has grown, she has put representing women artists at the heart of her work and her gallery now represents over 30 international artists, two thirds of whom are female.
Conway Street, Camden, W1 rebeccahossack.com
Ajournalist once described Rebeccca Hossack as “the beautiful gallery owner, promoter of Aboriginal Art and other cultures, wit and genius” and one of three of “the most remarkable women of our time”. The other two? Germaine Greer and the Queen.
Certainly, Hossack cuts a striking presence in the art world. With gallery spaces in London, New York and Miami, Australian-born Hossack deals in art from all over the world, establishing herself firmly as champion of non-Western artistic traditions. Her London space was the first art gallery in Europe to exhibit Australian Aboriginal painting, which it continues to promote through its regular ‘Songlines’ seasons. In the 34 years the gallery has been active, Hossack has also curated exhibitions of work from the Bushmen of the Kalahari, and from tribal India and Papua New Guinea.
In addition to her roster of non-Western artists, including Mathias Kauage and Brazilian folk artist José Borges, whose prints she describes as “a distinctive blend of bold imagery, lyrical simplicity and a teasing sense of narrative”, Hossack also exhibits Western contemporary art, with a particular focus on mid-career women artists, such as printmaker Rose Blake, painter Emma Haworth and ceramicist Avital Sheffer.
As the traditional boundary between high art and craft continues to be broken down, Hossack should certainly be seen as a pioneer - a prescient supporter and promoter of non-traditional and non-Western art forms, techniques and practices. Little wonder that she is the go-to gallerist for collectors including Sir Paul Smith, PJ Harvey, Dave Gilmour, Emma Hope and the late Dame Anita Roddick.
Pilar Corrias.
Photography: Charlie Gray Rebecca Hossack. Photography: Heathcliff O’Malley
16 Wharf Road, Islington, N1 victoria-miro.com
Paula Rego. Chris Ofili. Yayoi Kusama. Grayson Perry. Chantal Joffe. Kudzanai-Violet Hwami. The story of Victoria Miro is nothing less than the story of contemporary art.
After studying painting at the Slade School of Fine Art and working as an art teacher in Battersea and Slough, Miro opened her Cork Street gallery in 1985. At 750 sq ft, the Mayfair space was positively tiny compared to her next gallery, a huge converted Victorian furniture factory on the edge of Hoxton, where she remains to this day. Stretching over two floors, its vast scale certainly caused a stir in 2000, prompting one newspaper to write: “At last, one of London’s contemporary art dealers has a gallery space to rival the best of New York.” Indeed, it’s still one of the largest commercial spaces in the capital. In 2017, she also opened a gallery and artist’s studio in Venice, a stone’s throw from the iconic Piazza San Marco.
Over the past four decades, Miro has remained consistent in being a savvy and skilful contemporary art dealer. Nowhere is this more apparent than in her representation of previously overlooked or obscure female artists who are now some of the most famous names in modern art, such as Francesca Woodman and Alice Neel. Miro is irrefutably a powerhouse, so much so she was awarded an OBE for services to art in 2018.
Victoria Miro.
Photography: Suki Dhanda / Courtesy Victoria Miro
Previewed at the Cannes Film Festival and revealed with a starstudded party in Paris, Bulgari’s 2022 high jewellery collection is a fantastical journey to a bejewelled Eden. “I imagined a garden where the gems have become flowers, and flowers are now gems,” says Bulgari’s creative director, Lucia Silvestri, of the new Garden of Delights collection, which includes a show-stopping collar wreathed in tourmaline, emerald and mother-of-pearl blooms. POA; bulgari.com
Compiled by CHARLOTTE ADSETT
For Alexander McQueen AW22, Sarah Burton took her cue from community and specifically mycelium, the subterranean network of fungal threads. The collection is rooted in nature, with mushrooms alluded to throughout, including this stand-out jacket, its razor-sharp tailoring and voluminous neckline mimicking the mushroom’s silhouette. alexandermcqueen.com
As part of his Aria collection to mark Gucci’s centenary, the house’s creative director Alessandro Michele has updated the classic 1950s cat-eye and given it a contemporary twist with these shiny two-tone sunglasses, their winged frame adorned with sparkling, eye-catching crystals. £810; gucci.com
Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons reimagine the iconic Prada emblem with their AW22 take on the tote bag, the Supernova. The statement silhouettewhich proved a hit when it debuted on the runway - is a lesson in glossy chic, combining smooth brushed leather with an ombre effect at the seams.
£2,700; prada.com
Back to school shoes get a metallic fashion spin at Miu Miu with these patent leather loafers. While the square toe and low block heel are the epitome of classroom chic, the gold and silver tones and faux-pearl detailing will add shimmer to your working wardrobe.
£750; farfetch.com
Look Sharp
Accessories go retro, a metallic spin on loafers & denim gets upcycledAlexander McQueen, Fall-2022. © Paolo Roversi
Founded by three fashion editors, Italian brand Blazé Milano – best known for its sharp tailored blazers – is tapping into the 70s disco scene to offer up retro glamour and unabashed glitz this season. Expect its trademark mannish attitude mixed with boxy silhouettes and plenty of sequins blaze-milano.com
The Eighties are back in a big way when it comes to hair accessories right now. New brand Katya, founded by London stylist Kate Lorga, debuts with its Crystal Rose and Teardrop collections, which see hair clips and claws given a glam multihued-meetscrystal twist. And Italian headwear brand Marzoline has launched a preppy capsule line with London-based creative consultant Alexandra Carello featuring oversized bow clips in nostalgic shades and prints. katya.world; marzoline.com
The denim world isn’t known for its sustainable credentials - but that was before ELV Denim came on the scene. The British label (it stands for East London Vintage) was founded by fashion stylist Anna Foster after she saw the UK’s shocking textile waste issues fi rst hand. With pieces designed and made in Dalston, solely from upcycled materials, the label is expanding to include cotton poplin shirts, skirts and trouser suits and it now offers a madeto-order service too. elvdenim.com
Katya
Alexandra Carello x Marzoline
It’s 8.30am in Nashville and Karen Elson already knows today is going to be a good day. “It’s the first time in months where I don’t have a long, long list of things to do, honestly I am relishing in that.” We’re speaking over Zoom, and though I can’t actually see Elson (“I’m not camera ready,” she teases), it’s clear from her voice that she is feeling buoyant.
After all, days off at home don’t come often. At 43, the British supermodel and singer-songwriter is as in demand as ever. Indeed, she’s not long back from couture fashion week in Paris, where she opened the Ami Alexandre Mattiussi menswear show alongside Cara Delevingne and Paloma Elsesser. She’s also recently launched her third album (her first in five years) Green, flying across the world to promote it, before kicking off a residency in New York’s revered Café Carlyle. “Who knew I was a lounge singer!” she laughs. After the whirlwind of the last few months, these are the days she appreciates the most. Luxury, says Elson, is “peace and quiet, a glass of wine and a nice chat with my children at the end of the evening”.
With her flaming hair, sharp bone structure and porcelain skin, Elson is one of the most iconic and impossible-to-pigeonhole models of her generation. From shaved eyebrows to septum rings, posing with lions for a Tim Walker shoot to her immersive performance for Alexander McQueen’s famous Spring/ Summer 2004 Deliverance show, which saw her dramatically carried off the runway by the designer, she has done it all. She’s graced multiple magazine covers (appearing on Vogue 38 times to date); been the face of global campaigns for Louis Vuitton, Versace, Burberry, Lanvin and Tom Ford; walked for pretty much everyone; and worked with all the photography greats including Bruce Weber, Peter Lindbergh, Patrick Demarchelier, Helmut Newton, Mert Alas and Marcus Piggott, Annie Leibovitz, Ellen Von Unwerth and more.
The highlights of her illustrious 25-year career in fashion are many. She opened the Marc Jacobs Autumn/Winter 2006 show whilst heavily pregnant; appeared alongside fellow supers Naomi Campbell, Kate Moss and Stella Tennant as one of eight British models to close the 2012 London Olympics, resplendent in a gold lace Burberry dress; and starred in a mini-musical for Moschino (she and creative director Jeremy Scott go back a long way). Though for Elson, her “pinch-me moment” was working with McQueen on Deliverance
British-born, Nashville-based supermodel and singer Karen Elson on style, standing up for herself and the secret to her success
And yet, Elson’s legacy in the fashion industry goes far beyond her otherworldly beauty. She has been vocal about her experiences in an often-toxic industry - aged 16, she was sexually assaulted by a model scout in the back of a taxi during Paris fashion week. She ran away and told a friend, and the next day the same scout threatened to have her sent home. Then there was the agent who offered to pay her to lose weight; and being dropped from all her Milan fashion week shows for being deemed ‘too fat’ when she was just 19. She is very open about her uphill battle with an eating disorder. “It’s hard to stay in recovery and work in an industry in which thinness is so celebrated and deeply ingrained. It’s difficult to free yourself from those trappings when they’re considered entirely normal,” she writes in her memoir The Red Flame (Rizzoli).
“It absolutely forced me to have a reckoning because a lot of that stuff happened in my early days. I’ve had to learn to stand up for myself,” Elson tells me. “You know, it’s been very rare that I’ve had people stand up for me.” The #MeToo movement has undoubtedly played its part in Elson speaking up and she is a fierce proponent of models’ rights, using her platform to advocate for more ethical and accountable working conditions. As well as her continued work around The Fashion Workers Act, in 2020 she set up Model Mentor, a forum where young models can share their stories and seek advice. “A lot of model agencies themselves may have an HR department for the agents, but the models don’t have any mechanism to report grievances,” she explains. “Because there is a lack of legalities in the fashion industry, it gives the opportunity for those with sinister intentions to be able to get away with it.”
She’s seen these ‘bad seeds’ again and again throughout her career and is determined to expose them. “Even one is too many. Because that one bad seed could do a lot of damage to a lot of young people. Scouts find young people all over the world, and they can be vulnerable - there’s a lot of young refugees who are models, and it becomes this sort of lifeline, you can become a model on the promise of money and escaping difficult circumstances and that’s really alluring. But it also gives the person who is scouting that model a great sense of control.”
Elson’s own start into modelling came with a similar sense of urgency. Growing up in Oldham, Manchester, she witnessed the rocky fallout from her parents’ divorce. At school she was bullied for her appearance (one bully told her she was “so fucking ugly”) and had been hospitalised for an eating disorder by the time she was eight. When she signed to a Manchester agency while still at school, she saw it as a way to escape from a future which, she has said, didn’t look “particularly bright
and sparkly”. On her 16th birthday, she booked a train ticket to London and never looked back.
In the early days of her fashion career, she worked with Donatella Versace as a fitting model and landed shoots with a then fledgling Marc Jacobs. Her first major runway was Chanel’s 1997 Fall show alongside Kate Moss, Linda Evangelista and Naomi Campbell. By the time she was 18, she’d landed an Italian Vogue cover shot by Steven Meisel. Soon after, Karl Lagerfeld made her the face of Chanel, calling her “the beauty of the new millennium” (he also fondly referred to her as “a mixture of something from the Middle Ages and a mutant from another planet”). In the era of the glamazon supermodel - Cindy Crawford, Helena Christensen et alElson, with her edgy, goth girl look, had made it, and then some.
She’s put this early success down to her ability to be malleable and easy to manipulate. Are these qualities she had to unlearn in light of negative experiences, I wonder? “I can still be malleable on set with people I trust,” she says. “If I feel good, I can morph into whatever they need, and that’s the key: if I feel comfortable and safe, I’m willing to do what it takes. But on the business side, that’s different. I need things buttoned up, I need to know what’s happening, I need to know what is expected of me before I walk on set, I need to know what I’m getting paid. That, for me, is immovable. I think a lot of people in fashion don’t want models to be businesswomen because the moment we are is the moment we look at the business and go, ‘Hmm, this is strange’.”
Workplace sexism is something Elson has encountered throughout her music career too. She began singing with the support and encouragement of her then husband, the White Stripes frontman Jack White - with whom she has two teenage children, 16-year-old Scarlett and Henry, 15 - releasing her first album in 2010. “I was sheltered in that sense,” she explains. “After [her second album] Double Roses, I felt I was constantly battling this sort of internalised misogyny within the music
industry. I was single, post-divorce, I didn’t have as much protection. So, I was sort of thrown out there. I had a lot of negative experiences. And it put a bad taste in my mouth about the music industry; it felt like it really enabled a lot of men of questionable character to thrive. I felt very disillusioned.”
Elson recounts occasions of fellow musicians, “inviting you out on the road because they have ulterior motives, not because they actually believe in your music” and record label executives “just talking about how you look and how they want to quantify your looks versus your music”.
The pandemic and subsequent lockdowns proved pivotal, however; being grounded in Nashville gave Elson the opportunity to connect with music in new ways. She started listening to Nick Cave and Joni Mitchell, who made her turn to music in the first place, reconnecting as a fan first, artist second. Inspired by more of her favourite artists, she began Redhead Radio, a series of acoustic covers of her favourite songs - from Elton John’s Sacrifice to Dancing On My Own by Robyn. The sessions took the form of impromptu Instagram live sets, before she later released two EPs.
She also began to embrace Nashville’s rich aural history and the musical community on her doorstep. When it came to working on Green, Elson wrote with Daniel Tashian and Ian Fitchuk, the Grammy-winning co-producers behind (fellow Nashville resident) Kacey Musgraves’ Golden Hour. She describes them as “solid human beings, family men with integrity”. The studio sessions felt
“I think a lot of people in fashion don’t want models to be businesswomen because the moment we are is the moment we look at the business and go,‘Hmm, this is strange’ "
relaxed and collaborative, and the result is a country-tinged album full of storytelling and sunny acoustic pop.
“You know, what I like about it, is that it’s a really easy record,” muses Karen. “It’s easy on the ears, it’s got this sort of lightness. I really came into myself as a songwriter, I felt less inclined to prove myself to people, I just wanted to make a nice record.” That lightness, she explains, is exactly what she needed. The world was in a period of intense uncertainty, and the
process of writing and recording it was the antithesis.
With Green garnering some rave reviews - critics have called it “poetic and beautiful” and “a lot brighter and warmer than anything she’s done, but every bit as good” - and the recent launch of her lifestyle brand ŪRŌ, which debuts with a limited edition run of three scented candles, I wonder what’s next for Elson. “I’d love to act one day, I think it would be so much fun,” she says. “I also want to make
a documentary about models, as we don’t get the credit that we deserve for being the multi-faceted women we are. I’d also love to make a fashion musical because… why not?”
As our time draws to an end, we chat briefly about her life in Nashville. She moved there in 2005 and now describes it as her “little oasis”. She has often exalted the joys of the Tennessee state city, praising it for its creative community (Nashville’s nickname is Music City) and for the “real sense of relaxation I have here that no other place can give me”. Elson’s personal style very much reflects this easy-going vibe. “I’m much more about ease these days than anything elaborate,” she tells me. “I used to wear vintage dresses a ton when I was younger, but I’ve passed those along to my daughter. I’m much more into simple dressing. I love Nili Lotan, Isabel Marant, and I’m super excited about Phoebe Philo coming back too. On stage it’s all dazzle – I love Alex Vaultier, Valentino, and Michael Kors.”
As a British woman in America, she has a sharp awareness of the USA’s darkening trajectory. “Because I live in the south, I get a real window into the other side of America. A lot of people in Tennessee have never even left the state, they live in their own version of reality which isn’t a well-travelled version of reality. That’s not even me being dismissive of those people, but I think you have to pay attention to the fact that people live in their own bubbles. I don’t think there’s an easy fix.”
Still, she feels hopeful. “I think what’s happening right now is a direct consequence of a person like Trump being President, we’re still dealing with the political fallout, which should be a warning of what can happen. There’s a younger generation that knows right from wrong, and as they become the voting majority, like all things, there is an ebb and flow, a balance and counterbalance. It might take time and I don’t think this is going to be an easy fix, but I have to find hope and positivity in the darkness.”
Karen’s third album Green is out now; karenelson.com
Throughout my career I’ve regularly shot a wide array of beautiful nude images. At times I’ve had a love-hate relationship with being nude. While editors and designers often complained that I didn’t fit into their clothes, photographers and some magazines have frequently asked me to be naked. There was an uncomfortable dichotomy: praise and fetishise my milky-white skin and subtle curves without any clothes on but criticise my body when the dress doesn’t fit. It’s been a frustrating conundrum to have my body caught up in a Catch-22 of adoration and disdain.
To be a great model I was expected to not have boundaries, to be willing to do whatever it took to get the shot,
to take my clothes off, to put myself in dangerous situations, and to never speak out if I felt uncomfortable. These days, I’m much more vocal about my comfort level and I expect to be treated with respect. But when I was younger, I often didn’t have the courage to speak up for myself. I was afraid of retaliation or being labelled as difficult to work with. My first nude image was shot when I was 16. How depressing it is to write that down. It was during one of my first shoots in Paris. In the photo I look androgynous; I’m flat-chested and have a child’s body. The nudity was gratuitous, done simply to be artistic
and edgy. No consideration was made for my age, and no one chaperoned me on set. Countless teenage models have shot nudes over the years for fashion publications under the guise of art.
With the advent of the internet, these images can be posted online and taken out of context, which is incredibly disturbing. All the nudes I’ve shot were for highly regarded and respected magazines, photographers, and projects that were never pornographic.
It was called ‘art’ but now nude images of me are indeed displayed out of context all over the internet, which colours it all in a different light.
LEFT TO RIGHT: Tim Walker, Vogue Italia, June 2003; Tim Walker, British Vogue, December 2008; Tim Walker, British Vogue, June 2016. BELOW: Tim Walker, Love, September 2013
In an exclusive extract from her book, Karen Elson talks gratuitous nudity, navigating toxicity and re-educating the fashion industry
Yet that’s not to say that all the nudes I’ve done I regret or were photographed under duress. I feel beautiful and empowered in all the nude images I’ve included in The Red Flame. It was very important for me to include photos from shoots that I have positive memories of. I’m proud of them and don’t feel diminished in any way.
Tackling the issue of nudity is the perfect opportunity to discuss other issues within the fashion industry at large. A much-needed awakening happened during the recent years in the advent of #TimesUp and #MeToo.
In my professional life I’ve encountered bullies and had negative experiences at the hands of those who abused their power. What saddens me is the lack of selfreflection and genuine accountability by those in this position. Many accused of bad behaviour have gotten away with it for so long that it has become normalised, both within the industry and for the accused.
To re-educate an entire industry on its complicity and offer workable solutions is not easy. The fashion industry is mostly unregulated, which has led to a Wild West mentality, where anything goes - including inappropriate behaviour.
While some progress is being made, it’s not yet enough to celebrate meaningful, lasting change. In my opinion, for true change to happen, an entirely new infrastructure needs to be created, but it needs support from the upper echelons of the industry to be implemented and successful.
People from all walks of life are emerging and educating the fashion industry’s hierarchy that the way forward means dismantling the archaic unwritten rules of the past. The goal is to create a new, positive business model that respects the rights of all those in fashion, along with doing away with a narrow-minded vision of beauty, and instead embracing a spectrum of people of different ethnicities, body sizes, abilities, gender identities, and beyond.
I’ve survived this long in the industry by being savvy and tough as nails in order to make sure I’m treated with respect, but it takes a lot of emotional energy to always be on my guard at work. It shouldn’t take scandal after scandal to ignite the flames of change. What I’d like to see is the fashion industry have its reckoning and embrace its humanity, so that everyone who enters this world will be safe and have their rights protected.
This is an edited extract from The Red Flame (£50, Rizzoli)
“I’ve survived this long inthe industry by being savvyand tough as nails in order to make sure I’m treated with respect, but it takes a lot of emotional energy"Luis Sanchis, The Face, August 1997 Thomas Schenk, Dutch, No. 30 November/December 2000 Thomas Schenk, Dutch, No. 30, November/December 2000
It’s been years in the planning, but Fashion finally opened at the Victoria Albert Museum in July - much to curator Dr Christine Checinska’s delight. “ Fashion is the UK’s most extensive exhibition of African fashions to date, giving a platform to creatives from over 20 countries across a broad spectrum of aesthetics,” she tells The Glossary. “It is both a timely and conscious celebration of this innovative and impactful scene.”
The exhibition is beautifully researched and presented, focusing on two time periods - independence and liberation, and the contemporary moment - spread across a couple of floors of the gallery. Checinska - a creative designer in the fashion industry for brands such as Margaret Howell, as well as a scholar, fashion
An exhibition at the V&A celebrates the continent’s flourishing fashion scene from the 1950 s pioneers to the new-gen creatives of todayImane Ayissi, AW 2019 Models holding hands, Lagos, Nigeria, 2019 by Stephen Tayo Self-portrait, Gouled Ahmed, Addis Foam, Ethiopia
historian and the V&A’s inaugural senior curator of African and African Diaspora Textiles and Fashion - and project curator Elisabeth Murray have brought together over 250 objects to tell this story, from garments to photographs, film to personal mementoes.
While pieces have been sourced from the museum’s own collection (including 70 new acquisitions), others are from the personal archives of some of the mid20th century’s most iconic designers or have been lent by the stars of Africa’s contemporary scene.
“African fashion creatives are leading the way when it comes to cutting edge global fashions,” Checinska continues. “They are charting their own courses and in doing so are shifting the geography of fashion. This groundswell in creativity and global impact is being felt across fashion, music and the arts.”
Indeed, the exhibition opens with a shimmering fuschia pink silk and raffia number by Cameroon-born, Paris-based designer Imane Ayissi whose designs - which weave together traditional
African craftsmanship with modern haute couture - are a red carpet go-to of Zendaya, Angela Bassett and Aïssa Maïga. It’s quite a statement and sets the tone for a series of eye-catching and compelling displays.
The ground floor concentrates on the mid-late 1950s to 1994, a time of political and social reordering across the continent as countries gained independence. This was an era of radical change, also known as the African Cultural Renaissance, which saw the worlds of music, visual arts and fashion flourish.
And so you have protest posters, publications and album sleeves, which spotlight the struggles at the time juxtaposed with the energy of Africa’s creativity. Another section - The Politics and Poetics of Cloth - looks at Africa’s rich textile history and how wearing indigenous cloth was akin to making a strategic political point. A highlight is a commemorative cloth made in the early 1990s following the release of Nelson Mandela, depicting the soon-to-be first Black president of South Africa and the words: “A better life for all - working together for jobs, peace and freedom.”
The Vanguard section of the exhibition showcases the first wave of African designers to gain attention beyond the continent. Standouts include a reimagining of the traditional
Nigerian ìró by Shade Thomas-Fahm - often referred to as ‘Nigeria’s first modern fashion designer’ - and a silk-and-lurex dress by Malian designer Chris Seydou, famous for his bògòlanfini designs.
On the mezzanine level of the exhibition, the new-gen designers, collectives, stylists and fashion photographers take centre stage, introduced by a specially designed piece called A Dialogue Between Cultures, a contemporary take on the burqa by the experimental Moroccan house Maison ArtC. The continent’s leading contemporary names are all represented. There’s a menswear look by Rwandan fashion house Moshions, as well as an ensemble from Nigerian womenswear brand Iamisigo’s Spring/ Summer 2019 collection, ‘Gods of the Wilderness’, which references ancient west African masquerade costumes.
Nairobi-based Ami Doshi Shah’s brass, sisal and borax salt neckpiece explores the talismanic role of jewellery, while South African womenswear designer Thebe Magugu’s ‘Alchemy’ collection centres on African spirituality. This section is one of Checinska’s favourites, representing “designers open to exploring the challenging issues of the day through their work, taking storytelling fashions to a new level”.
Towards the end of the exhibition, Co-Creation focuses on personalised twists on tradition, with the outfits created by Accra-based designer Kofi Ansah for the wedding of Lady Ashley Shaw-Scott Adjaye and architect Sir David Adjaye OBE taking a star turn.
“Africa Fashion showcases a range of works by creatives with differing aesthetic vocabularies, motivations and preoccupations,” concludes Checinska.
“The story we aim to tell is of agency, abundance and unbounded creativity, one that provides a glimpse of a buzzing fashion scene that is as diverse as the continent itself.”
Africa Fashion runs until 16 April 2023 vam.ac.uk
Kofi Ansah, ‘Indigo’ Couture, 1997 by Eric Don-Arthur ‘Je Vais Décoller, 1977’ by Sanlé Sory
Founded in 2016 by Paris-born, Ivory Coast-raised creative director Sarah Diouf, Tongoro is a ready-to-wear label with a strong emphasis on African fashion and craftsmanship. All materials are sustainably sourced on the continent and each and every piece is made in Dakar, Senegal by local tailors (Senegalese tailoring is some of the best in the world). The longterm goal is to “create a new dynamic for Africa-based manufacturing, and foster the economic and social development of artisanal workers in Western Africa.”
The label counts Beyoncé, Naomi Campbell, Iman and Alicia Keys as fans, who no doubt favour it not just for the billowing silhouettes, bold patterns and graphic prints that ripple through the collections (SS22 saw voluminous shapes and black-and-white geometric motifs blazoned across flowing jumpsuits, maxi dresses and playsuits) - but also for the fact that the brand is based around empowering women. tongoro.com
Founder and creative director Artsi Ifrach established Maison ARTC at the age of 28, swapping his career as a ballet dancer for one in fashion and setting up an atelier in the heart of Marrakech. The self-taught Israeli-Moroccan designer - described as a ‘visionary’ - has gone on to garner international acclaim for his avant-garde designs, showing at Haute Couture Week in Paris.
A champion of the slow fashion movement, Ifrach uses vintage fabrics, repurposed garments and traditional textiles - often sourced at local markets - to create contemporary, sculptural silhouettes. At once playful and bold, all of his pieces are one-of-a-kind, made by Moroccans in Morocco. Each design is always exquisitely photographed, further blurring the lines between art and fashion.
“Africa Fashion means the past, the future and the present at the same time,” Ifrach says of the V&A exhibition. “The joy of life and the joy of colour are completely different and very particular to the continent. It’s a language of heritage, it’s a language of DNA, it’s a language of memories.” maisonartc.com
From Morocco to Cameroon, Senegal to South Africa, these new-gen labels are blazing a trail across the continent’s fashion scene
Iof fashion began in Cameroon where, as a young boy, found cutting up his become a dancer, as well
he could often be found cutting up his mother’s dresses to better understand how they were made. Like Maison ARTC’s Ifra, Ayissi went on to become a dancer, as well as a successful model for the likes of Dior and Valentino. But it was his passion for couture that prevailed - and, after moving to Paris, he set up his eponymous label in the French capital in 2004.
Two decades on and Ayissi’s high-voltage made-to-measure pieces continue to bridge the gap between the traditional and the contemporary, blending elements of African tribal art with modern haute couture and mixing locally sourced organic fabrics (Ayissi favours textiles like kente and bògòlanfini, created in collaboration with cooperatives) with silk and taffeta. The red carpet go-to for the likes of Zendaya and Angela Bassett, it is one of Ayissi’s bold creations that opens Africa Fashion at the V&A. imane-ayissi.com
Ever since Kimberley-born, Johannesburg-based designer Thebe Magugu unveiled his debut collection in 2017, he has been a strong advocate of the political power of fashion, addressing cultural, social and political issues through his garments, from gender-based violence to apartheid. Alongside his signature sharp tailoring, love of texture and bold palette, Magugu is known for incorporating prints into his designs that reference Africa’s past and retell its stories.
addressing of texture and bold palette, Magugu is
His inventiveness and talent saw Magugu win the prestigious LVMH Prize in 2019, the first African designer to receive such recognition, and last year he was a finalist in the International Woolmark Prize (Yves Saint Laurent and Karl Lagerfeld are previous winners). Referring to the V&A exhibition he says: “Now more than ever African designers are taking charge of their own narrative and telling people authentic stories, not the imagined utopias.” thebemagugu.com
Having worked for BritishGhanian architect David Adjaye before switching to fashion and graduating from Central St Martins with a Masters in textile futures, Sindiso Khumalo founded her eponymous Cape Town-based label in 2015. Khumalo’s mother was a political activist who fought against the apartheid regime, inspiring her to draw on her heritage to create modern textiles with a strong emphasis on African storytelling. A passionate advocate for social equality and female empowerment, Khumalo often weaves these elements into her collections.
Sustainability and craft are also close to Khumalo’s heart. She designs by hand using watercolours and collage, before working closely with NGOs and small workshops in South Africa and Burkina Faso to develop the handwoven and hand-embroidered textiles, using natural materials such as hemp, linen and organic African cotton. A joint winner of the LVMH Prize in 2020, she has shown at Milan Fashion Week and spoken at the United Nations on sustainability in fashion. sindisokhumalo.com
Coperni
£715, koibird.com
Coperni has taken traditional tailoring and ripped up the rule book. These denim hybrid trousers are the most hyped product of the season thanks to their slim fit and sudden-vintage Levis flare, which makes for an incredibly flattering silhouette (even if it’s sartorially discombobulating).
Style with boots and an oversized boyfriend shirt.
£346, hereustudio.com
Handmade in Spain, Hereu Studio’s penchant for making well-made leather shoes is undeniable - there’s a reason why they adorn editors’ feet at Fashion Weeks. These backless leather loafers are perfect for those not quite ready to commit to the chillier days of autumn just yet.
£265, nanushka.com
While Nanushka is synonymous for its eco-conscious ready-to-wear, it makes devilishly good sunglasses and all with bioplastic (a recycled form of acetate). This burnt orange pair has a 1960s vibe, but their thick arms keep it contemporary.
Chanel
£4,120, chanel.com
The classic printed silk scarf has long been ubiquitous in the chicest of wardrobes. The tried-and-tested accessory - always a favourite of Her Majesty the Queen - gets an update this season, with Chanel embellishing its ecru and navy version with twinkling jewels. Twist around a low bun for a chic hair accessory or style as a top beneath a trench or jacket.
£572, modaoperandi.com
Luisa Dames, founder of Berlin-based footwear label Aeyde, once told me she only ever makes a shoe if a woman can walk in them for 24 hours straight.
Embracing this season’s Western trend, her new cowboy boots are highly stompable, while the colour palette of muted maroon and cream is suitably autumnal.
Coperni
Gucci x Adidas £345, gucci.com
One of the most exciting aspects of 2022 has been the collaborations between luxury and streetwear (Burberry x Supreme, Nike x Jacquemus...). The glorious menagerie of high-low has made for some thrilling accessories - Gucci x Adidas’s fresh and playful take on the humble beret is a case in point.
Pearl Octopuss.y
£164, pearloctopussy.com
Pearl Octopuss.y is redefining the realms of decorative jewellery. The ethos? Jewellery shouldn’t be confined to one place. While a lapel is a fine place to wear a brooch, why not use this as an eccentric pearly cu ink? Now, that’s chic.
As the days get colder, get your happiness hit by sticking with bright, dopamine-inducing
colours. Amina Muaddi’s bold pointy-toe
pumps are super comfortable thanks to their martini glass-shaped heel and they’ll look oh-so-cool peeping out from the bottom of baggy low-slung cargo pants.
Bea Bongiasca
£1,100, koibird.com
Jewellery is moving away from minimalism with brands opting to clash colours in interesting pairings this season. Designer Bea Bongiasca is at the fore, fusing coloured gemstones with wiggly resin stems. Create your own shape combinations and colourways by stacking and adding.
Acne has a knack for creating the ‘it’ blazer of the season - and it's encapsulated the mood we’re all a er with its XXL boyish, boxy and oversized version - and that’s seriously cool-looking comfort.
£6,300, louisvuitton.com
Is it a raincoat? Is it a flight jacket? I don’t care, it’s delicious. The slouchy frame and leather inserts of this Louis Vuitton jacket add a fresh aviation spin on the classic mackintosh. It also o ers the best of both worlds - elemental protection and a chance to display your full outfit beneath.
£3,600, valentino.com
Barbiecore was arguably conceived at Valentino’s runway show earlier this year, which featured models in head-totoe Valentino Pink PP, a custom shade created in collaboration with Pantone Color Institute. The eye-popping hue sent shockwaves of joy around the world but so too did the clothing. This dress with its perfectly squared shoulders, scallop neckline and applique flowers is highoctane in both glamour and fierceness.
Louis Vuitton
Acne Studios
Gucci x Adidas
Valentino
The latest launches & most covetable new pieces to have on your radar
Compiled by KIM PARKER
To commemorate his journey as a jeweller and the fact that it’s a decade since he founded his eponymous brand in New York, Fernando Jorge has reinterpreted nine of his signature designs as white gold and diamond high jewellery - including these Disco earrings as worn by Beyoncé and Saoirse Ronan. Price on request; fernandojorge.co.uk
Sloane Street jeweller Anabela Chan has unveiled colourful new versions of her popular Cupid’s Bow earrings, which originally launched at the end of last year. This breezy blue pair, with featherlight recycled aluminium ribbons and sparkling pear-cut spinels (the gemstone of the moment), would make a stunning seasonal update for any jewellery box. £1,490; anabelachan.com
Tapping into this year’s trend for all things logo-ed, the new Color Dior fine jewellery is a playful take on both the brand’s monogram and Monsieur Dior’s famous love of rainbow hues. With diamond-paved clasps, yellow gold letter links and cheerful lacquer embellishment, these pieces promise a bright season ahead. POA; dior.com
To mark the 50th anniversary of Audemars Piguet’s Royal Oak timepiece, the watchmaker has once again collaborated with Carolina Bucci. In contrast to the last two Bucci-designed gold Royal Oaks, the Italian jeweller has created an all-black ceramic 34mm limited-edition with a mesmerising mirror e ect on the dial that animates its Tapisserie pattern with a holographic rainbow. £45,700; audemarspiguet.com
“As a fashion designer, I normally construct pieces that can sit anywhere on the body, but when you’re designing a watch, you only have the wrist space as your creative canvas. It’s a fantastic challenge,” says the Swiss leather designer Yvonne Reichmuth.Nevertheless, the new DolceVita watch she has created with Longines packs a seriously stylish punch: its double straps, rivets and clasps take their cue from horse bridles, whilst its luxurious finish evokes the sleek body harnesses andcorsets of Reichmuth’s own label, YVY. As a unisex timepiece, the watch is also meant for anyone to wear. “It looks as elegant with a shirt and tailored trousers as it does with jeans or a little black dress,” says Reichmuth. “I’m excited to see how everyone will wear it.”
Longines DolceVita x YVY watch, £1,350; longines.com
From £4,000; jessicamccormack.com
As one of London’s most sought-after engagement ring designers, Rachel Boston had to do something special to celebrate a decade in the industry. Her new collection of ten one-of-a-kind pieces is exactly that - think bold, Art Deco-esque silhouettes, statement bands and unusual coloured diamonds in a mix of antique and modern cuts. Each is unique and destined to bring joy for years to come, much like the very best of weddings.
Rings from £7,000; rachelboston.co.uk
Taking inspiration from the cult 1987 vampire film Lost Boys, jeweller Jessica McCormack has conceived a new 19-piece collection which combines gothic motifs with her signature ‘cool girl’ flair. Diamond crucifix pendants, mismatched diamond teardrop earrings and enamel rings all feature, as does a seductive take on an ID bracelet, with a diamond-set name plate in the shape of a mirror - a nod to the way vampires lack reflections.
From gigantic gemstones taking centre stage to dazzling odes to the past, this is what we learnt at the latest HIGH JEWELLERY Presentations
Words KIM PARKER
Midnight Aura Necklace by De Beers
Cascade Gris Earrings by Pomellato
Emerald Necklace from Hortus Deliciarum by Gucci
Solstice Voluptuous Ribbon Earrings by Piaget
The latest chapter of De Beers’ high jewellery collection, Alchemist of Light, featured the Midnight Aura collar necklace, inspired by the hues of shimmering green stardust. Hundreds of bezelset diamonds in an articulated black rhodium mesh create a soft, flexible collar, embellished with a central 20.57-carat pear-cut white diamond drop and cabochons of African chrysoprase – the first time the jeweller has used the gemstone.
Bulgari’s Emerald Venus collar, part of its paradisical Garden of Wonders collection, has reimagined the lacy fronds of Mediterranean ferns as elegant ‘branches’ of brilliant-cut diamonds studded with polished emerald beads, surrounding a central 20-carat Colombian emerald.
Meanwhile, Chopard’s new Chopard Loves Cinema collection featured a glamorous, red-carpet-worthy collar adorned with 188 carats of rosy-hued Indian rubellites and a glittering pink sapphire pendant.
Gucci has launched the latest chapter of its fantastical high jewellery collection, Hortus Deliciarum, which is inspired by everything from the 18th Century Grand Tour to Art Deco architecture. Chief amongst the kaleidoscopic array of over 100 new jewels were pieces set with gemstones of astonishing size and beauty, including one diamond necklace with a 172-carat hexagonal-cut emerald and another with a 84.59-carat rubellite pendant.
There were XL diamonds aplenty this season, too. Van Cleef & Arpels’ entire high jewellery
collection was crafted around 67 extraordinary diamonds cut from a single 910-carat rough which the house acquired back in 2018. Its Atours Mystérieuse necklace, for example, features one of the diamonds (a large 79.35-carat oval-cut stone) set amidst romantic scrolls of Van Cleef’s signature mystery-set rubies.
Messika has been similarly inspired by a huge rough diamond, this time
a 110-carat stone which yielded 15 exceptional brilliants. These have been incorporated into an Egyptian-themed parure named AkhBa-Ka which consists of a dramatic white gold collar adorned with a 33-carat central stone and a pair of asymmetric winged earrings with graphic-cut diamond drops.
Hermès unveils its haute bijouterie once every two years, but it is always worth the wait. This year, creative director of jewellery Pierre Hardy has envisioned a set of striking jewels accompanied by their own (entirely detachable) ‘shadows’, as if lit from above with a spotlight. One of the stars of the collection is the Chaînes D’Ombre necklace: a white gold and pavé diamond collar with an accompanying ‘shadow’ created from midnight-hued spinels and sapphires.
Rather than electrical lights, the Milanese jeweller Pomellato has been inspired by natural daylight this season. Its La Gioia collection celebrates the evolution of the sky from dawn to dusk, with polished gold and slate-grey spinels evoking the intensity of a summer storm, or ombré sweeps of rubies and pink sapphires replicating a fiery sunset.
Piaget also looked heavenwards when designing its new Solstice jewels. White diamonds and vibrant pink gemstones have been used to suggest the joyful vibes of the longest day of the year, whilst Australian black opals and deep blue Sri Lankan sapphires nod to the hues of the longest night.
Chaînes D’ombre Necklace by Hermès Atours Mystérieuse Necklace by Van Cleef & Arpels
With its latest Atelier Tasaki collection, the Japanese jeweller Tasaki has imagined a veritable water world. For one set of earrings and a necklace, tumbles of glossy white Akoya pearls and marquise-cut diamond drops perfectly capture the movement of cascading water, while its Radiant collar is composed entirely of aquatic-coloured gemstones, including turquoise, aquamarines, Paraiba tourmalines, and blueish South Sea pearls.
The house of Chaumet has also set sail on a marine-themed odyssey for 2022. Its Ondes Et Merveilles high jewellery is dedicated to the movement of the sea in all its glory. A necklace inspired by the Gulfstream is made up of breezy whorls of minty-hued emeralds, Madagascan sapphires and diamonds, as are its matching rings and earrings, giving the impression of swirling winds and waves.
Harry Winston has taken its cue from altogether calmer shores. Its new Shades of Blue suite is an elegant riff on the crystalline waters of Santorini, with diamonds, sapphires and aquamarines, whilst its St. Barts necklace is set with gemstones the exact hues of a tranquil Caribbean coastline.
Gulfstream Necklace by Chaumet
Earrings by Harry Winston
Radiant High Jewellery Earring, Necklace and Ring by Tasaki
History lovers will adore Tiffany & Co.’s latest Blue Book jewellery collection (named after the catalogue in which the New York jeweller traditionally advertised its wares). Entitled Botanica, many of its pieces pay homage to the great Jean Schlumberger, who designed for Tiffany throughout the 1960s and 1970s. New takes on his ornate, floral-inspired creations can be seen throughout the collection, such as the diamondstrewn Fleurage bracelet, which was reimagined from an original sketch that Schlumberger first considered as a setting for the iconic Tiffany Diamond.
Chanel has also looked to its archives, namely at Coco Chanel’s very first (and only) foray into the realm of diamond jewellery. The couturier’s celestial-themed Bijoux de Diamants collection from 1932 was the jumping off point for 77 spectacular new pieces, including showers of diamond comets, blazing suns and glowing moons embellished with blue tanzanites or pearls.
Buccellati has gone one historical step further. The Italian jeweller’s ‘newest’ collection consists of 41 vintage jewels, ranging from a 1940s brooch all the way to an elaborate cuff from 2002. These precious pieces are now available in just six Buccellati stores worldwide and represent some of the finest craftsmanship ever produced by the house.
Alongside the classic Place Vendôme-based jewellers, the biggest names in fashion are now proving their mettle in the increasingly competitive arena of High Jewellery – with female artistic directors excitingly leading the way. Dior’s Victoire de Castellane showcased a virtuoso collection of 137 new jewels called Dior Print, in a nod to the house’s iconic patterns. Delicate ‘ribbons’ of white gold have been embellished with multicoloured gemstones to emulate the floral prints, checks, tie-dye and stripes of its iconic catwalk creations, with mesmeric results.
Over at Louis Vuitton, Francesca Amfitheatrof (formerly of Tiffany Co.) has introduced Spirit, the brand’s largest-ever high jewellery line, with 125 pieces that reflect its founder’s values of ‘liberty, grace, fantasy, radiance and destiny’.
And Fendi chose to reveal its debut high jewellery designs, created by Delfina Delettrez Fendi, on its Couture Autumn/Winter 2022 runway. A one-of-a-kind parure consisting of a necklace, earrings and cocktail ring was crafted from white and yellow diamonds, mirroring the sunny hues of the Roman house’s iconic logo. An inverted FF monogram (designed by Karl Lagerfeld in 1965) also appeared within each design, crafted from baguette diamonds. A capsule collection, perhaps, but one that points to bold ambitions within the world of high jewellery. Watch this space.
&
Soleil 19 Aout Ring by Chanel
Dior Print Ring by Dior Joaillerie
Cuff from 2002 by Buccellati
Blue Book Necklace by Tiffany & Co.
Destiny Suite by Louis Vuitton
KIM PARKER
Proving that good things really do come in small packages, Omega’s new Mini Trésor collection takes its renowned Trésor design (an icon since 1949) and shrinks it, creating a capsule collection of 26mm models with novel bracelets and finishes.
We especially love the two all-gold iterations, which are cra ed in the brand’s own 18ct alloy, ‘Moonshine Gold’, and are finished with asymmetric rows of diamonds set across the bezel and lugs.
From £19,550 omegawatches.com
Having its own exclusive foundry since the early 2000s has enabled Rolex to cast its timepieces in its own yellow, white and pink gold alloys to ensure their purity, as well as their durability. Its Oyster Perpetual DateJust 31 in 18ct yellow gold blends the house’s classic styling with modern flourishes, such as a white diamond bezel and an olive-green dial with a floral motif, set with 24 further diamonds.
From £33,250 rolex.com
Although Bulgari’s flexible tubogas watch bracelets debuted in the 1940s, they rose to fashionable heights in the 1970s and 1980s, coiled around the likes of Grace Jones and Andy Warhol. Today, the sinuous charms of the Bulgari Serpenti Tubogas are no less alluring - wrapping one around your wrist is still the fastest way to channel some heady Studio 54-esque chic.
£28,000 bulgari.com
With a shimmering silvery dial textured like fine shantung silk and a bezel set with 160 white diamonds, Patek Philippe’s e ortlessly elegant Twenty-4 epitomises the look of a couture day-to-night timepiece. Its smart 324SC self-winding movement and 30m water resistance prove that it is also a watch that was built to last a lifetime. £38,260 patek.com
Named for both the big cat and for Cartier’s former creative director, Jeanne Toussaint (who worked at the maison until 1970 and adopted the panther as her ensign), the Panthère has remained one of Cartier’s quintessential dress watches for many decades. This year, it gets a style update with a choice of four new colourful dials, including a burnished gold with a polished sapphire cabochon in the crown. £18,800 cartier.com
Its ‘cresting wave’ motif and the ship’s wheel design on its rotor may be a nautical nod to Breguet’s history as the o cial chronometer-maker of the French royal navy, but the Marine 5517 is equally suited to being an elegant everyday watch on land, thanks to some thoroughly modern styling. Cue a streamlined dial and a sporty, satinfinish bracelet which ensure this timepiece is a great day-to-night option for city dwellers and sailors alike. £42,600. breguet.com
Taking its distinctive shape from the padlock on the Kelly bag, devised by Robert Dumas in the 1930s, Hermès’ new Kelly watch is a playful spin on a legendary design.
The clean lines of its engraved rose gold bracelet (also available in a fully diamond-paved version) are o set by the mobile padlock watch with its delicate mother-ofpearl dial. This can be detached and worn on a leather cord, allowing its wearer to tap into this season’s trend for necklace watches, too.
From £32,250 hermes.com
Hublot has released six of its iconic watch models (including its Big Bang Integral, Classic Fusion Chronograph and Spirit of Big Bang) entirely made in yellow gold. Souped-up with rubber straps, matte black skeleton dials and bezels punctuated with six signature screws, these timepieces elevate Hublot’s sporty aesthetic to super-luxe heights. £43,500 hublot.com
One of the most anticipated launches at this year’s Watches and Wonders fair was Vacheron Constantin’s reissued 222 watch in 18ct yellow gold. The timepiece is a gleaming homage to the original 222, which was launched in 1977 to mark the 222nd anniversary of the storied Swiss maison. The retro styling of the original has been updated with contemporary innovation, including an enhanced calibre and a sleeker bracelet, ensuring the all-new 222 will remain iconic for many decades to come. Price on request vacheron-constantin.com
Pick up your prescription for the ultimate summer glow-up, from world renowned cosmetic doctor and treatment pioneer, Dr Sebagh. This powerhouse trio of radiance-boosting heroes will leave your skin gleaming and golden—without the sun—whilst delivering serious ‘Ageing-Maintenance’ skin care benefits.
Lightweight yet luxuriously nourishing, Luminous Glow Cream makes the perfect, oil-free summer moisturiser with an added, glow-getting advantage. Pearlescent pigments catch the light, instantly giving skin a dewy, ‘lit-from-within’ look. Use it as an illuminating primer, too, or mix with foundation, for summer-sheer coverage and the freshest finish.
Bespoke your sun-kissed glow with the award-winning SelfTanning Drops, with fractionated melanin to help shield skin against the damaging effects of (digital) HEV light. Add a few drops to any moisturiser, serum or body lotion, for a naturallooking colour that develops over a few hours and lasts 2–3 days.
The finishing touch, Shimmering Body Oil leaves skin soothed, nourished and hydrated, from top to toe, with a hint of glistening gold. A unique blend of two, carefully chosen types of nacre (mother-of-pearl) make it suitable for all skin tones.
Available in-store and at drsebagh.com
Always innovative, Dior has launched Rouge Dior Forever, the house’s first transfer-proof bullet lipstick. The clean formula is resistant to contact and won’t smudge on skin or clothes, providing up to 16 hours of non-stop wear. Available in 22 ultrapigmented shades, all delivering a soft, matte finish, the lipstick is also infused with red peony extract to help keep lips hydrated. £35; dior.com
Yara Shahidi wearing Rouge Dior Forever (300 Forever Nude Style), shot by Viviane Sassen for Parfums Christian DiorAmi Colé, the clean beauty brand created by Senegaleseborn, New York-based Diarrha N'Diaye-Mbaye to celebrate melanin-rich skin, is now available to buy at Net-a-Porter. The products, which include a skin tint, highlighter and lip treatment oil, are made with natural ingredients and have been designed as no-makeup-makeup. net-a-porter.com
Soho House credits its always-on-the-move members as the inspiration behind its new beauty line Soho Skin. The capsule of ten products has been formulated with high-performing ingredients to deliver on both simplicity and consistency, specifically targeting the effects of global travel, pollution and fatigue for restored radiance and vitality. sohoskin.com
Loewe has added to its garden-inspired home fragrance capsule with the launch of a cucumber scented candle. Developed by creative director Jonathan Anderson and artisan perfumer Núria Cruelles, the natural wax candle will fill your home with a cool, aquatic aroma with a twist of fresh mint. £78; perfumesloewe.com
UK-based wellness brand Heights, which has a focus on braincare, has launched its Smart Supplement - and it is amazing. e formula of 20 clean, highimpact essential vitamins, minerals, healthy fats and antioxidants target cognitive function for improved mood, sharper focus, better energy and sounder sleep. £40 for a month’s supply; yourheights.com
The brain-boosting supplement, a multi-tasking lip tint & the renaissance of a skincare icon
Compiled by CHARLOTTE ADSETT
Hollywood makeup artist Jillian Dempsey has teamed up with her A-list client, actress Kristen Stewart, to create the Lip Locket Necklace. A wearable piece of jewellery, the chunky chain comes with a pendant that contains a lip gloss available in four custom shades for an on-thego sheer tint of moisturising colour. jilliandempsey.com
Two natural deodorants have launched recently, both of them stand-out for their efficacy and chic eco packaging. The Deodorant Gel from cult body care brand Nécessaire is a cooling, quick-dry gel that’s formulated with 5% AHA (alpha hydroxy acid) and niacinamide to neutralise odour, treat discoloration and prevent ingrown hairs. London-based brand AKT - founded by two West End actors - has debuted with The Deodorant Balm. Packed with nourishing, plant-derived ingredients, making it ideal for sensitive skin, it also comes with a Gua Sha-esque applicator. necessaire.com; aktlondon.com
Natura Bissé’s iconic age-defying face cream Diamond Extreme is 20 years’ old and to mark the occasion, the luxury skincare brand has given the original an upgrade. The improved formula comes in two textures, rich and light, and contains a cocktail of natural ingredients and cutting-edge actives to firm, smoothen, repair and protect. Book in now for the new Diamond Energy Facial available at Harrods. The multi-faceted 60-minute treatment delivers all the cutting-edge actives you need for a visibly lifted, smoother and rebooted complexion
naturabisse.com
Isamaya Ffrench is one of the most progressive and creative make-up artists in the industry. Here, she talks pushing boundaries, launching her own brand and the future of beauty
Words LUCIANA BELLINI Photography STEVEN KLEIN
First of all, let’s get one thing straight - yes, that is her real name and no, she didn’t make it up.
“It’s Old English, either Mediaeval or biblical, from the 13th century,” Isamaya Ffrench says with a laugh when I bring up the subject. I’m sitting with the unconventional 33-year-old make-up artist – who has been hailed as the most exciting working in Britain today - in the back room of the Soho pop-up she’s just opened to coincide with the launch of her own makeup label, Isamaya Beauty. Situated next to a licensed sex shop, the allblack boutique feels like the physical embodiment of Ffrench’s subversive take on beauty.
As one of the most in-demand make-up artists, who works with icons such as Kate Moss, Cher and Madonna as well as new-gen supermodels such as Bella Hadid, Ffrench is credited with creating some of the most daring make-up looks in recent years. Known for ripping up the rulebook when she first emerged on the scene over a decade ago, she has created a new, truly artistic approach to make-up. Recognised for her darkly creative aesthetic, she’s as well-known for her out-of-the-box use of prosthetics as she is for her bold runway looks, which have seen her send models down the Giambattista Valli catwalk with their faces framed by wildflowers, or adorned with bold silver face piercings as she did for Jean Paul Gaultier’s latest couture show. She’s even used AI technology to put Kylie Jenner on the cover of a magazine where her made-up face appears to be melting.
The walls of the room we’re sitting in are plastered with campaign images for the first drop of her products, the Industrial collection. Shot by Steven Klein, they feature Ffrench herself clad in a series of bondage-inspired latex outfits (the inspiration for the Industrial range draws heavily from the BDSM subculture), in one, her face appearing from beneath an
unzipped rubber hood. If her name seems otherworldly, then so does her look: when we meet, she is in off-duty, minimal make-up mode but is no less striking for it. Dressed head-to-toe in black, with long raven hair, luminescent skin and blue eyes framed by spidery lashes, she looks like a gothic take on a Disney princess. “I’m in these campaigns - and I’ll hopefully keep being in them - because I think it’s important to embody what I’m doing,” she says. “Plus, it’s cheaper, isn’t it? I don’t have a day rate.”
It’s a rather unusual choice for a make-up artist launching their own brand, but then pretty much everything Ffrench does is extraordinary. That said, her upbringing was, by her own admission, resolutely unglamorous – “I was raised by a family of engineers, and I
daughter’s party on Saturday?’”
It turns out she was pretty good at it - so good that she soon started applying her face painting brushes to adults. When a photographer friend asked her to turn his model girlfriend into a ‘sexy tiger’, the shots ended up in i-D magazine. “I just segued into make-up through fashion-industry friends needing me to do body painting jobs,” says Ffrench. “I was just there and somebody that could do it, and then I realised that, actually, maybe I could make a career out of this.” She is disarmingly modest about her meteoric rise, which soon had industry stalwarts such as Nick Knight hailing her as the next big thing. Her unorthodox approach was a breath of fresh air, earning her a reputation not so much as a make-up artist, but as an artist who happens to work with make-up.
was very tomboyish when I was young” – and her path into the industry wasn’t characterised by a love of make-up or fashion editorials. She was, however, always drawn to the creative, and cites Kevyn Aucoin’s seminal book Making Faces, which she bought with her pocket money as a child, as key to teaching her about the powers of transformation.
“That book is my first make-up memory and I was obsessed with it, but I was also obsessed with cinema. I went to theatre school from a very young age, and I was always inspired by films such as Cabaret, with dark but glamorous concepts.”
She enrolled at Central Saint Martins to study product design with the end goal of becoming a shoe designer, but while there took on a side job as a face painter, painting butterflies on kids’ faces to earn a bit of cash. “I still occasionally get emails from Mumsnet with people saying, ‘Hi, are you free to do my
High profile editorials followed, then prestigious brand collaborations, starting off with becoming an ambassador for YSL and moving on to stints developing Tom Ford’s Extreme line, being appointed Burberry’s global beauty director and launching Byredo’s first make-up line. “With those brands, I was brought in to shake things up,” she says. “If they have a very strong aesthetic or a lot of heritage, it can be difficult for them to go there. So, I go there for them.” The launch of her own brand - which was two years in the making - was almost inevitable, and Ffrench admits she relished being able to fully express her own personality and taste without being forced to dilute her vision. “In beauty, people have stopped taking risks - there’s a formula, and I know a lot of people don’t feel like they have anything to connect to, because it’s all too commercial. I think it’s so important to inspire people and show there are other ways of doing beauty.”
The Industrial collection features five hero products: a lash-lengthening mascara housed in a rubber casing; an illuminating skin serum; a do-it-all eyeshadow palette; a lip-plumping tinted gloss, and a brow laminator,
“All the women I work with have a strong vision and a sense of self and identity. That gives me a lot of inspiration"
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I honestly had the most deeply restorative night’s sleep I have had in a very, very long time. Even better, I didn’t feel drowsy the next day, which was something I was worried about Elizabeth Day
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I honestly had the most deeply restorative nights sleep I have had in a very, very long time, even better, I didn’t feel drowsy the next day, which was something I was worried about.
Elizabeth Day
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which you can cover over with foundation to completely erase your brows and pencil them in, as Ffrench memorably did for Rihanna on the cover of British Vogue in 2018. “The first drop started with me asking, ‘What do I like? What do I want to wear?’ This is the aesthetic I align with and there’s nothing like that in make-up currently, so it felt important to do something that stood out.”
The packaging was inspired by the punk rock movement, with the mascara, serum and lip gloss bottles skewered by a silver piercing to tie in with the tough-looking, hand-soldered rings and earrings that are available to buy alongside the make-up, inspired by Ffrench’s own taste in jewellery. Music is a major influence in her work - she grew up playing classical guitar before performing for a time as a singer with the avant-garde theatre collective the Theo Adams Company and formed the experimental music project Alto Arc last year.
Another key focus for the range was sustainability, which Ffrench cites as being hugely important to her personally. “Beauty is one of the biggest industries in the world and there should be better care taken if you’re going to be using up resources. It just baffles me that there are so few options out there.” She hired a sustainability consultant to help her make the best decisions possible when it came to packaging and materials, and many
of the products have been designed to be reused or repurposed - one of the eyeshadow palettes might double up as a jewellery box afterwards, for example. Ffrench references Vivienne Westwood, who she has worked with for a long time, as an inspiration thanks to her ‘do more with less’ philosophy. There will be several different makeup collections launched each year - a concept inspired by fashion’s four seasonal drops - with the next release in October. While Ffrench is tightlipped about what we can expect, she does say it will be completely different to Industrial and will most likely appeal to a new audience.
Ffrench has a devoted legion of fans keen to emulate the edgy looks she creates for her highprofile clients, who she says have taught her more about make-up than any professional course ever could. “All the women I work with have a strong vision and a sense of self and identity. That gives me a lot of inspiration. Cher has actually taught me a lot – she used to work with Kevyn Aucoin, so she’s the original.” As well as being inspired by her clients, she admires the work of the greats such as Val Garland – “some of the stuff she’s done with Gareth Pugh and Alexander McQueen is just exceptional” – and Lisa Eldridge, as well as her friend Daniel Sällström, who’s known for his high-concept drag make-up looks. “But I try not to look at what other people are doing too much, otherwise it can become like a snake eating its tail.”
Ffrench has recently filmed a documentary about the evolution of global beauty ideals, but as for her own provocative aesthetic, she insists she doesn’t set out with the intention of challenging or unsettling people. “I just do what comes out. I find it funny when people say my work is confrontational – is it really, with everything else that’s going on in the world? I just follow my gut, and that’s the pure output. For me, beauty is anything that moves you.”
isamaya.co.uk
“In beauty, people have stopped taking risks … I think it’s so important to inspire people and show there are other ways of doing beauty"
My every day, off-duty beauty look is very low-key. I don’t wear any foundation – when it comes to my skin, I’m not really hung up on imperfections. I like to feel fresh and let my skin breathe; luminosity is important to me. I use Dr Sebagh Luminous Glow Cream (£76), which gives skin a really gorgeous glowing effect. I’ll always wear a minimum SPF30 no matter what time of the year to avoid any sun damage. La Mer The SPF 50 UV Protecting Fluid (£95) is a super-lightweight formulation.
My skincare regime starts with a vitamin C serum, such as Skin 111 Vitamin C Brightening Booster (£100), as it’s a great antioxidant and anti pollutant. I massage it in with a cryo tool from the freezer to tighten and wake up the skin, before applying a moisturiser such as Doublebase (£9.99). It’s an emollient cream that’s often used to treat eczema, so it’s really good for strengthening the skin barrier. At night, I’ll deep cleanse with Eve Lom’s Cleansing Balm (£60), which smells amazing,
and Face Halo Pads (£7). I use Retinol about three times a weekmy favourites are Medik8 R-Retinoate Intense Cream (£215) and 111Skin’s Retinol Oil (£165) to pick just one skincare brand for everything, I’d go for Skinceuticals, because its products actually work. All of its serums are brilliant.
. If I had
Not that many people know you need to warm up your skin before applying makeup. I make sure to spend time doing this when I’m prepping skin for a shoot, as make-up always sets and sits better on warm skin. First, I’ll start with a really good cleanse and exfoliate, especially around the nose and lips, as this is often where you’ll find dry skin. I’ll add a layer of my Triple Hyaluronic Glow Serum (£60), which gives intense levels of hydration and makes skin look much healthier and do some facial massage with a Chinese tool, plus some lymphatic drainage to get rid of any excess fluid.
For me, it’s all about the eyes. I always do a little eyeliner flick and lots of mascara –I’m addicted to mascara, which is why I knew I had to include one in my first drop of products. I really wanted one that stretched and curled your lashes, so the Mascara (£35 in it that lifts the lashes. It also has three levels of pigment, so you get a really intense black. I’ve been using Eyelash Conditioner (£110) while - it has made my eyelashes grow so much. Eyelash curlers are a must before mascara – Kevyn Aucoin (£17) the best ones.
) has a film former Revitalash makes
your chin and the outer eye area.
lot of darkness around their chins due to hormones, so that’s where you should target as it really lifts the face. I don’t like too much concealer under the eye as it makes the face look flat. Always use concealer very sparingly with a small brush to gradually cover blemishes. It’s actually much better on the outer corner as it lifts the eye.
Concealer (£25)
Women tend to get a Laura Mercier Secret is my go-to.
When it comes to taking care of my own skin, there are two people I trust. Jasmina Vico is the best facialist in London. I go to her clinic in Fitzrovia for her incredible bespoke Vico Glow facial treatments and laser to stimulate collagen production – the results are long-term, visible and so satisfying. Jasmina is high-tech, but holisticyour skin is glowing for weeks after a visit. I also go to Dr Brian Fu for microneedling and platelet-rich plasma (PRP) injections, which basically involves blood extraction and then injecting your plasma back into the skin to repair and rejuvenate it.
For new beauty finds, I love visiting French pharmacies. They always have interesting and unusual emollients on the shelves, and I just feel like you get great skincare there. For make-up, I’ll head to Selfridges’ beauty hall because it’s the best one in London.
NAD+ therapy is the one wellness treatment I swear by. When I need an extra boost, I’ll get an NAD+ IV drip. NAD+ is what your cells need in order to function at their best – it helps with mental clarity and brain fog, as well as increasing your energy and metabolism and fighting the physical effects of ageing. I always notice a huge difference after doing it.
When it comes to my signature scent, I like strong, earthy fragrances. I adore patchouli and tobacco – I’m not a floral person. I’ve just discovered Queer Magic by Urania’s Children & The Heavenly Garden (£85) who make beautiful but very unusual perfumes. I also love Undergrowth by Rook Fragrances (£99), which literally smells like soil. That’s the kind of scent I’m drawn to.
like
The beauty mantra I live by is… Sleep. It solves everything. It really does. And I need a lot more of it! You can immediately see it on someone’s face if they haven’t had enough sleep. A good 12 hours at night will sort you out better than any face cream ever could.
Mutha
Cell Rejuvenating Essence, £75
I really like this brand and I haveloved using this multi-functionalessence - it’s like a wellness elixir.
Texture-wise, it sits between a toner and a serum and is packed with bio-fermented ingredientsand hyaluronic acid to soften,plumpen and enhance radiance.
The base is aloe juice, which issuper hydrating and soothing.
I put it on after cleansing, beforemy serum, to bring my skinback to life.
net-a-porter.com
Tata Harper
Superkind Refining Cleanser, £79
If you have a sensitised or reactivecomplexion, this is a really gentlecleanser that nourishes at the same time as it exfoliates. The cleansingagent is lipid-based so it won’tdisturb the skin barrier, while the rice powder buffs away dead flakyskin without irritation, the lactic acid delivers hydration and cranberryenzymes boost cell renewal anddissolve dry skin to reveal a muchhealthier skin surface. tataharperskincare.com
OTO
7-Day Glow Ampoules, £99
Launching in October, this is a seven-day skin bootcamp for dull, lacklustrecomplexions from the luxury CBDbrand. Each ampoule contains 25mgof pure CBD, which really works tosoothe and repair stressed skin, as well as moisture-boosting hyaluronic acid,squalane and calming frankincenseoil - it’s a really beautiful formulationand a saviour for tired skin. Applypost-cleanse before your moisturiser(you probably won’t need a serum)morning and night for a radiant glowafter just one week. otocbd.com
Fermitif Neck Renewal Serum, £175
The neck and décolletage don’t haveas many oil glands as the face so tendto be drier and can look crepey. Thisbeautifully light, rose-scented serumcontains skin-tightening ingredientsincluding bio-firming and bio-renewalpeptides to instantly lift the skin, aswell as the repairing and revitalisingantioxidant CoQ10, collagen-boostingvitamin C and allantoin, and green teato soothe and hydrate. Apply morningand night with the dual-endedapplicator tool for best results.
reviveskincare.com
Beauty Director Alessandra Steinherr shares her edit of the most exciting new season product launches to repair and reboot skin
My Beauty Glossary Your Skincare
Omorovicza
Even Tone Serum, £110
This daily lightweight serumtargets uneven skin tone such ashyperpigmentation, age spots andsun damage. The hero ingredient isamber microalgae, which works onspecific areas of excessive melanin,while mandelic and glycolic acidssmooth the skin texture, and niacinamide reduces pore size and redness. Although designed forall skin types, the gentle, soothingformula is particularly good if you’vea sensitive complexion. omorovicza.com
Noble Panacea
The Exceptional Vitamin C
Booster, £149
What is particularly interestingabout this four-week intensive treatment is its long-term micro-dosed delivery system - while it contains 20% pure L-ascorbic acid, which is very potent,alongside eight additional sourcesof antioxidant vitamin C, it is released throughout the day ratherthan in one go. Mix with yourserum and apply to cleansed skin- my tip is to leave it for a minutebefore your moisturiser - forvisibly brighter skin. noblepanacea.com
Dr Barbara Sturm
Super Anti-Ageing Night Cream, £250
When we age, the skin’s nighttimerepair and regeneration processslows down. This high-performancemoisturiser optimises the skin’s renewal process - it contains a peptide derived from avocado to repair damaged cells and anotherthat strengthens the skin’s micro-circulation. Its silky, not-too-heavy-duty consistency is perfect for this time of year.
drsturm.com
Dior
Prestige La Crème, £320
An upgrade on the original,this rich, velvety moisturiseris ideal for dry to very dryskin. Based around the Rose de Granville, it contains 94% natural origin ingredientsincluding a new extract calledRosapeptide. Known for its regenerative and intensive repairproperties, it acts on the skin’s lipids, ceramides and collagento reverse the signs of ageing,leaving skin feeling hydrated andmuch smoother.
dior.com
Augustinus Bader
The Eyebrow and Lash Enhancing Serum, £115
This brand new serum is a two-inone solution for lashes and brows.
A unique dual-sided wand ensures precise application of the irritant-free formulation, which contains natural ingredients including redwinter algae to improve hair density,biotin and plant-based extracts tostimulate hair follicles, as well as the brand’s proprietary TFC8®-poweredtechnology for fuller, stronger,thicker brows and lashes.
augustinusbader.com
La Prairie Skin Caviar Harmony
L‘Extrait, £650
This elixir, La Prairie’s version of a serum, approaches ageing in a newway by targeting the skin’s ligaments -its vertical scaffolding - to address lossof volume and sagging. Formulatedwith a blend of proprietary caviaringredients and glycerin, you onlyneed to massage a few drops intoskin after cleansing and toning for animmediate tightness, while over timeskin is firmer and smoother, with fine lines and wrinkles reduced.
laprairie.com
This vegan formula comprises 88% skincareingredients, which work on eight signs of ageingincluding volume, fine lines and hydration,making it great for drier, more mature skin.As well as being a treatment product, it’s also abeautiful foundation offering buildable coverageand a long-wearing, natural finish. byterry.com
Sheer Skin Tint, £40
Velvetskin Natural Matte Foundation, £51
This foundation is great forcombination and oily skin, givingflawless matte coverage in 24 shades- it is also transfer-proof and has anSPF30. Matte foundations can be quite drying but this contains D&G’s proprietary Mediterranean GlowComplex, which maintains skin’s moisture levels and suppleness. dolcegabbanabeauty.com
Le Fond de Teint The Foundation, £250
This multi-tasking fluid formula glides ontoskin to give a touch of sheer colour for an even,natural glow; in terms of skincare, it is infusedwith moisture-boosting hyaluronic acid, soothingand redness-reducing tiger grass and emollientsincluding squalane, vitamin E and avocado oil tolock in hydration. summerfridays.com
comes in 25 shades.lock in hydration.
This new upgraded version delivers optimumskincare and make-up. A rich, yet weightlesscream, the ingredients include a rare lakesisextract from Chios in Greece, which preserves the skin’s firmness and elasticity, while a new blurringtechnology delivers good coverage - and it now cledepeau-beaute.com
Vital Skincare Complexion Drops, £63
I am so excited about this serumstrength skin tint. While it deliversbreathable lightweight coverage,giving a perfect bare-skin finish(that no-make-up-make-up look), itsformulation of cold-pressed seed oils, ginseng and pomegranate extractinstantly revitalises and hydrates theskin and neutralises free radicals. westman-atelier.com
Ambient So Glow Foundation, £46
£68
foundation with blurring spheres
This is more like a traditional foundation with blurring spheresresulting in a velvety, soft-focus finish.It’s transfer resistant and is both non-acnegenic and non-comedogenic,making it a good option for oilierskins. Skin-boosting ingredientsinclude glycerin - a humectant -antioxidants and vitamin E. hourglasscosmetics.com
Chantecaille has always had askincare-first approach and this gorgeous rose tint is boosted withbotanicals, including hydratingtamarind and soothing mondograss extracts, while peptideswork on elasticity. Wear it as aprimer, a highlighter or on itsown for a radiant, dewy finish. chantecaille.co.uk
The next generation of an icon. Two textures with Smart Energy Complex.
THE COLLECTION AT
If you want to know where you’ll likely find Kate Moss these days, it’s in the garden of her Cotswolds home, among the peonies, poppies and roses. This has long been a special place for the supermodel, somewhere she goes to unwind and recharge her batteries, so much so it was the inspiration behind her latest venture Cosmoss. Launching with a six-piece collection of products, the holistic self-care brand has been over two years in the making and is deeply connected to her Gloucestershire farmhouse.
While Moss may not seem the most obvious choice for a line that focuses on health and wellbeing, she has gone to great lengths to readdress her earlier years as a poster girl for glorious 90s hedonism, going sober and signing up for meditation sessions and detox retreats. These days she does Ashtanga flow three times a week
GirlCosmicand hosts regular sound and gong baths. These practices have, she says, brought a greater sense of balance and solace to her life.
This journey of self-discovery was enhanced during lockdown with Moss using the time to completely switch off, spending her days gardening, flower-pressing and wild water swimming at her rural idyll. It was this deeper reconnection with nature that sparked her idea to launch Cosmoss, a brand designed as “self-care created for life’s modern journeys to make them beautiful, mesmerising and magical”.
As for the collection itself, it’s been carefully crafted to promote wellness both inside and out. “Using only the purest, most potent ingredients … every infusion draws on nature to centre and complete you. A story of reconnection from soul to surface,” Moss explains. For skincare there’s a face cream that uses the ‘Moss extract’, a complex
Kate Moss’s new wellness brand Cosmoss draws on the supermodel’s own journey of spirituality and self-discovery
of three wild Icelandic plants that nourish and hydrate the skin; a foaming cleanser made with rosehip oil and bakuchiol, a plant-based alternative to retinol; and the Golden Nectar antioxidant oil with CBD to calm irritated skin.
The Sacred Mist eau de parfum is made with a blend of essential oils to help with emotional balance, and there are also two mood-boosting herbal teas: Dawn, an energising blend of hibiscus and ginger root, and Dusk, a night time tisane made with soothing chamomile and butterfly pea flower. “I used the incredible colours of the sky as reference for the tones of my teas,” says Moss. All of the products are vegan, sustainably sourced and environmentally conscious, and come in elegant green and gold packaging - a nod to the model’s love for vintage and decadence - adorned with delicate celestial signs. “Nick Drake’s song Pink Moon has been my musical inspiration during the creation of Cosmoss,” explains Moss. “I knew from day one it was the track I wanted to use for the brand. I love the mystery of it.”
There’s a clear emphasis on spirituality and ritual across the range. Both elements have become hugely important to Moss, particularly through her work with the celebrated homoeopath and ‘spiritual guide’ Victoria Young, who she was introduced to by the make-up artist Charlotte Tilbury and Moss’s longtime boyfriend Nikolai von Bismarck.
Based in South Kensington, Young now consults on Cosmoss and was instrumental in developing the unique blend for the ‘Moss extract’. Other influences include her longstanding yoga teacher Nadia Narain and the practitioners at Akra Barut resort in Antalya, where Moss has been going for detox retreats for the past decade - and who she credits with teaching her how to incorporate mindfulness into her life.
As for what’s next for the brand, Moss has hinted that she’d quite like to open her own spa one day. One thing’s for certain: whatever Moss sets her mind to, we have no doubt it will be just as magical. cosmossbykatemoss.com
Eau de Parfum, 50ml, £95
The latest launch from the socially conscious luxury perfume house marries the full-of-life zestiness of verbena, lemon and neroli with the understated warmth of orange blossom, and a touch of musk and vetiver, to create a sunny, mood-boosting fragrance. The fresh-floral scent is the first from the brand to be presented in packaging that has been upcycled from disposable paper coffee cups destined for landfill. sanajardin.com
724
Eau de Parfum, 70ml, £180
Drawing olfactory and aesthetic inspiration from the dynamism of the urban landscape, 724 has top notes of aldehydes and bergamot giving a clean, energising layer to the scent. Tempered by a floral heart of Egyptian jasmine absolute, sweet pea and mock orange, with sandalwood and white musk gently rounding it off, this is a complex fragrance bursting with vitality. lessenteurs.com
Eau de Parfum, 100ml, £173
It’s not hard to guess the main ingredient in the latest addition to Serge Lutens’ iconic Collection Noir collection.
Poivre noir takes centre stage in this unisex fragrance, its sharp, delicately spicy aroma combined with the woody notes of cedar and nutmeg for an exhilarating-meetselegant fi nish. The minimalist Art Deco bottle adds to the allure. libertylondon.com
Eau de Parfum, 100ml, £145
The London-based perfumery looks to the Polish Baltic city of Gdańsk as inspiration for the eleventh fragrance in its travel-inspired collection. Paying tribute to the ‘capital of amber’, the scent’s warm opening of plum, honey and saff ron and its heart of leather, sandalwood and patchouli are complemented by a deep, smoky base of vanilla, musks and ambergris for a rich, golden fi nish. gallivant-perfumes.com
Eau de Parfum, 100ml, £204
Part of the Italian fragrance house’s Signature of the Sun collection, Magnolia Infi nita is a refi ned scent of magnolia, brightened and sharpened with the addition of citrus notes. Over a base of musk and patchouli, the heart notes of the bloom come through alongside jasmine sambac, rose and ylang ylang, while top notes Calabrian bergamot, orange and lemon bring a sparkling flourish. acquadiparma.com
Eau de Parfum, 75ml, £200
This complex parfum is inspired by a portrait of one of the brand’s founders enjoying a night at the theatre in London’s West End in the 1920s. Designed to capture the atmosphere of the evening, the show-stopping perfume opens with soft musk and smokey incense to epitomise the powdery aroma of a dressing room, cut through with flashes of bergamot and citrus to evoke the bright stage lights. harrods.com
Eau de Parfum, 100ml, £110
An update of the playful, hugely popular Twist scent, Miu Miu’s new iteration takes inspiration from the cosmos and has the delicate magnolia at its heart, enveloped by a lush, fruity top layer of Comice pear and sensual Cosmone musk at its base.
Additional notes of cyclamen, iris wood and pink pepper make this fresh-floral fragrance a light, effervescent option for autumn. selfridges.com
Eau de Parfum, 90ml, £235
Inspired by the shoe designer’s Portuguese house, with its garden overlooking the sea, this evocative fragrance combines the crisp smell of the ocean with softer floral notes. White flowers, musk and tuberose lend the fragrance its sensuality, which is given a sharp contrast with the addition of sea salt, lemon and tangerine for a dreamy scent that works for day or night. selfridges.com
Eau de Parfum, 100ml, £280
Elevating fragrance to a work of art, the maison’s L‘Art & La Matière collection celebrates the fi rst anniversary of its relaunch with three new fragrances. One is Cherry Oud, a fruity-floral interpretation of oud wood, the intensity of the cherry highlighted by spicy notes of cinnamon and cardamom while Turkish rose absolute and Bulgarian rose essence bloom at its heart. guerlain.com
Eau de Parfum, 75ml, £155
The latest addition to YSL’s Le Vestiaire des Parfums Signature Collection, which pays tribute to the couture house founder’s wardrobe, this unisex fragrance is inspired by the bow - an accessory that often appeared on Saint Laurent’s catwalk. The floral green scent blends together masculine and feminine, with delicate notes of fig enhanced by juicy blackcurrant and the softness of rose, and a base of vetiver and musk. yslbeauty.co.uk
Eau de Parfum, 100ml, £210
Envisioned by Gian Luca Perris, L’Iris reinterprets the history of Florence through one of its most precious flowers: the iris. At the base of the perfume is iris butter, which is extracted from the flower and matured for six years, making it extremely precious. This powerful natural ingredient is rounded out with geranium, jasmine sambac, neroli and musk, creating a complex, sophisticated blend. smnovella.com
extremely precious. This powerful natural ingredient is rounded out
Eau de Parfum, 100ml, £215
The fourth Los Angelesinspired fragrance from Louis Vuitton, this is an ode to the glittering metropolis by night (the ombre bottle represents the famous sunsets).
An exhilarating quintet of lemon, blood orange, red mandarin, bergamot and lime encapsulates the city’s vibrancy and extroversion, while notes of tiaré flower, sandalwood and powdery musk represent its more romantic side. louisvuitton.com
Eau de Parfum, 100ml, £120
The Spanish fashion house has unveiled the fi rst perfume for its new Botanical Rainbow collection - Earth. Exploring the connections between the realms of art, craft, popular culture and nature, the floral, musky scent is unique in its inclusion of truffle, which gives the fragrance a distinctively earthy aroma mixed with notes of pear, elemi, mimosa and violet. selfridges.com
Akwasi Brenya-Mensa has made his long-awaited London debut with Tatale, which has opened on the ground and first floors of The Africa Centre in SE1. Named after tatale - traditional Ghanaian plantain pancakes - the 33-cover restaurant has been designed by Tola Ojuolape Studio to embody the spirit of chop bars, the traditional eateries of West Africa. Expect a Pan-African menu that focuses on heritage dishes with a side of contemporary, the likes of crisp ackee croquettes, chichinga buttermilk fried chicken wings, and ‘red red black-eyed bean stew’ with baked plantain. tataleandco.com
Compiled by HILARY ARMSTRONG
Rising star Rishim Sachdeva, formerly of The Fat Duck, has been ‘(mostly) vegan’ since he did Veganuary in 2019. His (mostly) vegan pop-up Tendril is at home on Princes Street in Mayfair until September while Sachdeva scouts a permanent site. Don’t miss the beetroot fritter bao and crispy celeriac terrine.
5 Princes Street, Mayfair, W1 tendrilkitchen.co.uk
The new Supper Club at Brown’s Hotel is a home from home in Mayfair. Chef Adam Byatt’s menu of old-fashioned savouries soothes the soul: for example, so -boiled eggs with caviar soldiers, toasted crumpets with potted shrimps, and shortrib cottage pie. Settle in with Scrabble and a G&T.
33 Albemarle Street, Mayfair, W1 roccofortehotels.com
Famed culinary institute Le Cordon Bleu has launched a London HQ complete with fine-dining restaurant, café, event space and cookery school. Its restaurant Cord speaks fluent haute cuisine with a subtle French accent. Dishes include glazed veal sweetbread with tonnato sauce and brill with miso beurre blanc.
8 5 Fleet Street, City of London, EC 4 cordrestaurant.co.uk
Mayfair’s most enchanting members’ club Annabel’s has launched a sixth restaurant within its Grade I-listed Georgian home. The Japanese, now open to members and their guests, is accoutred with antique rugs, Murano glass chandeliers and low velvet seating to seductive effect.
A glamorous setting for the enjoyment of grilled wagyu sirloin with fresh wasabi or rock shrimp and yuzu kosho, accompanied by sake, shochu and near-impossible-to-find Champagnes by the glass.
46 Berkeley Square, Mayfair, W1 annabels.co.uk
It didn’t take long for newcomer Firebird in Soho - the London debut from restaurateurs Madina Kazhimova and Anna Dolgushina of St Petersburg’s Wong Kar Wine - to establish itself as the capital's ‘It’ address. It’s cosy, it’s chic, and the charred peach salad with ricotta and prosciutto is a dream.
29 Poland Street, Soho, W1 firebirdlondon.co.uk
Mriya, meaning ‘dream’ in Ukrainian, is the first London restaurant from Ukrainian star chef Yurii Kovryzhenko and his partner Olga Tsybytovska. The neo bistro, which launched in Chelsea in July, will be staffed by refugees forced to leave their country following the Russian invasion. On the menu: borsch, chicken Kyiv, and contemporary ideas such as smoked trout and vinaigrette with strawberries, peas and crayfish. Dima’s Vodka is behind the bar.
275 Brompton Road, Chelsea, SW5 @mriya_neo_bistro
The new openings & places to know across the capital this season
We are going to be hearing a lot about Adriana Cavita, the Mexico City-born prodigy who came up through Pujol and el Bulli. Following the success of her Dorchester residency last year, she now has her own place, Cavita in Marylebone, where she explores British ingredients through a Mexican lens.
The grilled ‘Cesar’ salad, the smoked beef shin quesabirria tacos and house margarita are the must-tries.
56 Wigmore Street, Marylebone, W1 cavitarestaurant.com
ith the arrival of Nuno number 30 (previously the legendary Elena’s L’Etoile) Charlotte Street has suddenly become an exciting place to eat again. The Wolseley’s founder Jeremy King looks to be enjoying himself immensely over an al fresco lunch on our visit; and we gather the Portuguese president showed up later (not to King’s table, I should add).
starred Viajante, later
progressive Mãos, and now Lisboeta.
I’ve followed Mendes from the groundbreaking gastropub Bacchus in Hoxton to his supper club The Loft Project, then Michelinstarred Viajante, later Chiltern Firehouse (where he fed crab doughnuts to the stars), Taberna do Mercado, to immersive, progressive Mãos, and now Lisboeta. His is a protean talent, which doesn’t so much reinvent itself periodically, as reveal more of itself.
reveal more of itself. in
Lisboeta, in partnership with hospitality group MJMK (Casa do Frango, Kol), has most in common with Taberna do Mercado. Here he is less traveller (‘viajante’) than proud ‘Lisboeta’ (a Lisbon native). The instant I enter the buzzing ground floor space with its long counter and single, shining
tap of Super Bock, I regret the fact we’re booked into the upstairs dining room. I needn’t have worried. The upstairs room is alive with the sound of people having fun. Some drink cold beer; others Portuguese sparkling wines. We glug white port and tonic.
There’s an array of snacks, charcuterie, cheese and small plates and a handful of sharing platters. We snack on wedges of soft sheep’s cheese and vindalho empadas, Goan-spiced pork pies. All chefs do a steak tartare these days – it’s a rule; Mendes’ version sees the meat smoked and chopped with chouriço and pickled turnips. Bacalhau
à Brás is a classic of confit cod, onions and potatoes cut and fried into crunchy allumettes. The star of the show, however, is Dover sole, with a caldo verde sauce, that contrasts the lovingly braised-down kale of Portugal’s national dish with the vibrancy of coriander piso.
The most talked about pudding is a traditional abade de prisco with pork fat custard which I remember from Taberna. However, I have fonder memories of the bolo de bolacha with buttercream, co ee and ice cream, and love the 2022 iteration. To finish, a cup of Delta co ee stirred with a cinnamon stick is touchingly traditional.
MEAL FOR TWO (with wine): £150 SIGNATURE DISHES: Goan-spiced pork pie; red prawn and seafood rice WHAT TO DRINK: White port and tonic
30 Charlotte Street, Fitzrovia, W1 lisboeta.co.uk
braised-down kale of Portugal’s national
Mendes’ Lisboeta at
The lofty glassdomed conservatory restaurant at The Lanesborough on Hyde Park Corner is one of London’s most glamorous dining rooms. For the last few years, however, it’s been spurned somewhat by the style-conscious; its previous occupants – Heinz Beck’s Apsley’s and Eric Frechon’s Celeste – in spite of their Michelin stars, deemed passé. But the time is ripe to rediscover this captivating Regency spot. Bridgerton has rekindled our love of the look, and the Lanesborough Grill is set to be the talk of the ton.
Chef Shay Cooper, a Michelin star winner at The Bingham and later The Goring, takes a modern British outlook. I say ‘modern British’ though his cooking is not to be confused with the latest iteration of the term, all fermented this and that and scraps of nose-to-tail. Modern
British, the Shay way, is defined by classical techniques and an appreciation of the British Isles’ world-class produce. The menu reads simply but is defined by pure luxury: beef fillet, Dover sole and native lobster all appear on our visit, as do such seasonal treats as white asparagus, fresh green almonds and morels.
The grand room and grand cuisine demand a certain swagger from the service team. Happily, our waiter, a natural performer, has it in spades. We’re also enthralled by our sommelier’s choice of wines. Gusbourne’s Blanc de Blancs from Kent is easily the equal of Champagne at £114 a bottle, and Chapel Down’s Kit’s Coty Chardonnay, £137, could take on any Burgundy at the same price.
Given the restaurant was launched in Her Majesty The Queen’s Platinum Jubilee year, it’s only fitting that we order the Coronation
crab salad with curry leaf sabayon. Don’t tell the traditionalists, but the gentle curry spices and mango chutney work far better with fresh white crab than with chicken. Cooper is generous with the crab meat – my kind of chef – which he sets atop Bombay potatoes cut into microscopic cubes. On top, a jumble of crisp fried shallots by way of an onion bhaji. It’s clever and utterly delicious. We also love his wild garlic-laced take on a risotto primavera with asparagus, broad beans and morels and finished with heaps of parmesan, butter and lemon. His later version has girolles, preserved lemons and fresh almond.
No grill menu would be complete without beef Wellington, a dish Cooper refined at The Goring; his uses chicken mousse over the traditional duxelle, for a richer, cleaner finish. As for
the turbot with potted shrimp béarnaise, it’s an instant classic. Be sure to order the hash browns but do save room for dessert: there’s clearly a real star in the pastry kitchen (you should see the Bridgerton-themed afternoon tea). A rose tea ice cream sandwich is a fun throwback to childhood. It takes all the manners I can muster not to eat it with my hands. And lemon tart piped with meringue interleaved with strips of candied citrus, is quite the loveliest I’ve seen. Pre or post-prandial drinks in the Library Bar are a must. A ‘Lilibet’ made of Earl Grey gin and English chardonnay would make a suitably aristocratic choice.
MEAL FOR TWO (with wine): £240
SIGNATURE DISHES: Beef Wellington; Dover sole
WHAT TO DRINK: Gusbourne Blanc de Blancs
68 Duke Street, Mayfair, W1 apricityrestaurant.com
Apricity is a beautiful feeling. It means the warmth of the sun in winter. Surprising, lifeenhancing, even healing. Is it asking too much of Apricity, Chantelle Nicholson’s Mayfair restaurant to arouse that feeling? I hope not. I head there just days after reading an FT investigation into the dark side of fine dining in Copenhagen, where exploitation is rife, and even the good guys turn out not to be so good after all. The report left me wondering, who can we trust?
Chantelle Nicholson’s name springs to mind. The New Zealand-born chef made her name under Marcus Wareing at The Gilbert Scott and later Tredwells, which she took over as chef patron in 2018 and won a Michelin green star. At Apricity, she’s doing all the right things: aiming for zero waste; foraging; supporting small-scale producers; championing regenerative agriculture. The design too ‘closes the loop’ with lampshades made of coffee grounds and a bar clad with waste timber. On top of all this, Nicholson addresses what sustainability means for her people. She’s scrapped tipping; introduced a five-day week; and adopted an 11pm curfew so staff can get home safely. It’s not apricity I’m feeling, but it’s certainly a warm glow.
The dining room is buzzing at lunchtime. There’s a set lunch at £35 for two courses, and two tasting menus at £68 or £85 (service is included, remember). We choose à la carte because the picky bits and sides sound irresistible such as fennel crackers with ‘wasted dip’, cured meats made by a female charcutier at Crown and Queue, and Cornish ‘earlies’ with brown butter. Every dish, every drink, tells a story, which the lovely staff communicate succinctly without interrupting our lunchtime badinage.
We learn all about the chap behind our Bourgogne Aligoté who goes beyond biodynamics to work
‘geobiologically’ (something to do with the moon and rocks in his vineyard): we’re sold. We hear also about the Canary Wharf lettuce in a flavourbomb salad with miso aioli and crispy kale; the mushrooms grown in Elstree with Flanders wheat now saved from extinction; and ‘yesterday’s bread’ reformed into those fantastic fennel crackers.
Lest it all sound too worthy, consider the pork belly, which comes with a little kimchi pastry made with pork fat; also,
the ‘chouxnut’, deep-fried, and devilish, with cream and apple, and a heavenly hot chocolate mousse with brown sugar custard. If anything, there are times when there’s too much of a good thing. The deep-fried mushrooms in our main course soak up oil like a sponge, and with punchy XO and wild garlic, they make for an intense eating experience.
But in a way, that’s Apricity. It does take risks with its off-beat wines, supercharged flavours and forwardthinking service, but it may be just the breath of fresh air we need.
MEAL FOR TWO (with wine): £160
SIGNATURE DISHES: Chouxnut, apple, double Cream
WHAT TO DRINK: Fig Leaf Martini
22 Grosvenor Square, Mayfair, W1 the22.london
Like many London diners, I customarily document my dinners on Instagram. At The Twenty Two, the new hotel and members’ club on Grosvenor Square, it feels wrong. That doesn’t mean I don’t make a few quick Reels – I want my followers to know I eat where Madonna and FKA Twigs do; to see the mirrored ceilings and the crystal birds – but I recognise that the tactile beauty of Natalia Miyar Atelier’s design is best enjoyed IRL. It’s opulent yet intimate in the French aristocratic fashion, all gilt mirrors, Persian rugs and sky-blue glass chandeliers. A quick snap doesn’t cover it.
The Twenty Two’s founder Navid Mirtorabi (ex-Blakes) has said he wants to create the sort of neighbourhood place where guests might come four, five times a week for breakfast, lunch or supper. I would happily do so, and I don’t think I’d tire of the menu. Chef Alan Christie
was previously at Picture, Arbutus and Putney Road. He cooks the classics with a light hand. Grilled asparagus with a foamy, golden hollandaise comes with its own little salad of the shaved raw spears for a little freshness and acidity; it works. Polenta chips, precision-cut à la pommes Pont Neuf, are crisp but flu y, with a bit of punch from aubergine ketchup. Grass-fed sirloin steak comes with excellent fries and a beautifully dressed little green salad. We’re not convinced by a beef fillet katsu sando with cabbage and jalapeño salad, overcooked and a little sad for the price. Desserts, however, are pure pleasure: a cinnamon sugar doughnut spilling rich chocolate ganache, and bergamot ice cream decorated with twists of candied peel.
There’s no end of gorgeous things emerging from the kitchen throughout the day. The breakfast menu in particular combines indulgence with the delivery of a day’s worth of vitamins. A vegan full English, spinach and courgette pancakes with crab, and a smoked salmon tartine are just some of the highlights. Readers in search of a new breakfast spot in town, take note.
MEAL FOR TWO (with wine): £175
SIGNATURE DISHES: Ratatouille for two; spinach and pea shakshuka
WHAT TO DRINK: Low ABV cocktails
47 Hereford Road, Notting Hill, W11 cubitthouse.co.uk
It takes me a few seconds to work out the significance of the numbers in brackets on the menu. Of course, calories! The Princess Royal, as the latest addition to the now nine-strong Cubitt House group, is part of a company with over 250 employees, and is now legally obliged to declare calorie counts. I’m instinctively opposed to the new rule but as a fan of a light lunch – a confession for which I realise I risk losing my restaurant reviewer’s stripes – I find the information rather useful. Even if I may never eat focaccia again.
Chef Ben Tish, previously of Norma, joined Cubitt House as chef director in 2021. His love of Sicily and the Italian south infuses the menu at the Princess Royal, where whipped ‘nduja appears with fennel biscuits, T-bone steak with dandelion and grape must, and sugared doughnuts with lemon curd
and sa ron custard. From the raw bar, red prawns with rosemary and orange are a classic Tish dish. The flavour’s sublime, the better for the heads being left on, and what luxury at just 144 calories! A salad with grilled artichokes, spelt, pomegranate and smoked anchovies – sweet, sharp, and tangy – feels positively virtuous (390). Not that the menu doesn’t have a more indulgent side; to wit, Sunday roasts, Princess Parmigiana, and the Iberico ham and three cheese toastie at brunch.
The ambience at the Princess Royal, with its courtyard gardens planted by Jinny Blom and vibrant interiors by Cubitt House director Georgie Pearman, is sunny, Mediterranean and so laid back one’s tempted to book one of the four bedrooms upstairs for a siesta. People all around are doing business but it still feels like a holiday. We could almost be at the beach with whole grilled sea bream with bottarga butter and preserved lemon (480) and the first really good tomatoes of the year with a splash of fig leaf vinegar (82). Just add a bottle of rosé. I could get used to this diet.
MEAL FOR TWO (with wine): £140
SIGNATURE DISHES: Princess Parmigiana
WHAT TO DRINK: Sparkling Rosé Negroni
From Mexican-inspired courtyards to must-visit rooftop bars, these are the alfresco hotspots to know about now
252 High Holborn, Holborn, WC1
rosewoodhotels.com
You may only be steps from High Holborn but let the courtyard at Rosewood London transport you to the sunnier climes of Mexico this season. The sheltered space’s Central American makeover is courtesy of Patrón tequila, who have brought a little slice of Tulum to WC1 with La Veranda.
Aztec rugs, bold ceramics and giant agave plants set the scene (on Sundays the ante is upped further with Latin-infused live music). The cocktail menuperhaps not surprisingly - is big on tequila. We recommend the Paloma, a zingy combination of Patrón Reposado, lime, agave and grapefruit soda. The vibrant all-day menu packs a punch too: think such zesty delights as green tomato, ginger and chilli guacamole, yellowtail tuna tacos with habanero chilli tostada, vegan burritos, double spiced chicken enchilada, and braised pork shoulder quesadillas. And no fiesta would be complete without a slice of their moreish Mexican caramel flan.
the-berkeley.co.uk
The Berkeley has a reputation for transforming its alfresco space into the capital’s latest must-visit sun trap (remember last year’s striped beach huts?). This time, the Knightsbridge hotel has embraced la dolce vita, turning a patch of pavement on Wilton Place into Italian restaurant Il Giardino, complete with olive trees, fragrant plants and festoon lights.
Start with a pear and fig leaf bellini whilst nibbling on chunks of 36-month aged parmesan reggiano, before feasting on chef Antonio Pavone’s menu of fresh-from-the-oven focaccia, sun-dried tomato arancini and creamy burattini, followed by roasted wild sea bass and tagliolini served with pesto made with pistachios from the Sicilian town of Bronte. The lemon-adorned crockery crafted exclusively by Bettina Ceramica adds to the Mediterranean feel, so too the waiting staff, all decked out in navy chinos and Grenson sneakers. As dusk falls, dozens of twinkling Acqua di Parma candles surely make this the most sought-after date night spot in town.
68 King William Street, the City, EC4
wagtaillondon.com
Just when you thought there couldn’t be a rooftop left in the City that hadn’t been transformed into a buzzy bar, The Wagtail arrives. Perched atop the old House of Fraser building on King William Street, this contemporary drinking and dining space has not one but two alfresco terraces offering up 360-degree views of the capital’s skyline, with all the big hitters - the Shard, St Paul’s, Tower Bridge - almost within touching distance.
Former Corrigan’s chef Philip Kearsey is in the kitchen, where he’s dishing up fresher-than-fresh seasonal plates like Welsh lamb with aubergine and confit red peppers, and Dover sole with spring vegetables and mussel sauce. Over at the bar you’ll find award-winning mixologist Angelos Bafas, cocktail shaker in hand, adding unusual ingredients like kelp water, wasabi and pickled cucumber to his drinks. Order a round and settle in to watch the sun slip behind the soaring skyscrapers.
6 Langley Street, Covent Garden, WC2
theconduit.com
With their shared eco-positive focus, The Conduit partnering with Ruinart Champagne to open a rooftop terrace at the Covent Garden members’ club is a match made in heaven. And now, for the first time ever, the 80-cover terrace is open to non-members every Saturday.
In keeping with the club and Champagne house’s commitment to nature and the environment, the plants adorning the terrace have been specially selected for pollination while the furnishings and art are either recycled or upcycled (there’s a strict zero-plastic policy).
As you’d expect, only the best Champagne flows here alongside imaginative floralfruity cocktails (the white peach negroni deserves a special mention), while head chef Paolo di Paolo has curated a cicchetti and à la carte menu that changes with the seasons, featuring the finest Italian ingredients.
20 Hanover Square, Mayfair, W1;
themainemayfair.com
Since arriving on the W1 restaurant scene, Maine Mayfair - situated in a splendid townhouse that was once home to the Duke of Montrose - has made quite a name for itself. Now there’s another reason to visit the New England-style brasserie, aside from its pound-a-shuck oysters and lobster rolls - and that’s its terrace.
The foliage-filled space, tucked away at the back of the restaurant, has been reimagined from the original stables that backed on to Dering Yard, now known as Medici Courtyard. It’s a spot for long, languorous lunches. Start off with something from the raw bar - their Poseidon Tower of 16 oysters, shrimps, scallops, crab and mussels served on an ice-filled platter is a real showstopper - before tucking into everything from moules frites and dry-aged rib eye to American Maryland crab cakes and truffle mac and cheese. This is American comfort food at its finest, in the prettiest of London settings.
Designed as a nature immersive wellbeing retreat with 68 private pool villas, the island’s wild forest remaining untouched, JOALI BEING offers personalised transformative programmes and unique transformational spaces, including hydrotherapy, movement, and sound healing experiences.
Though new, Cap St Georges blends effortlessly into the Cypriot landscape. The 202-room-and-suite beachfront hotel - which sits in Akamas National Park, overlooking the Mediterranean - has been built using natural local stone, its grounds dotted with gnarled olive trees. There’s a private beach cove that’s made for snorkelling, no less than three swimming pools for those who want to sprawl in the sun, a sizable spa and restaurants catering to every taste from authentic Greek to Japanese teppanyaki. A bar with 180-degree sea views completes this Grecian idyll. capstgeorges.com
Compiled by HARRIET COOPER
To mark their 40th anniversary, luxury holiday specialists Carrier have curated a once-in-a-lifetime itinerary across South Africa. With Cape Town as its starting point, the 14-night trip will see guests staying at some of the country’s finest hotels, including the Private Granite Suites at Londolozi Game Reserve (pictured). With experiences such as lunch with Nelson Mandela’s friend Christo Brand, a winelands tour, the opportunity to see humpback whales from the air and a safari on the agenda, this is the African adventure of dreams. carrier.co.uk
Nobu has arrived in Greeceand how. Its newest opening in Santorini perches on the northeast coast of the island, with as-far-as-you-can-see views across the caldera and Aegean Sea. The pretty whitewashed hotel has 20 rooms and suites, five spacious villas, a dual-level infinity pool and yoga terrace. The signature Nobu restaurant is set to become one of the island’s most romantic spots, perfect for feasting on Black Cod Miso and sashimi beneath a blazing Santorini sunset. santorini.nobuhotels.com
For an ultra-luxe take on Robin Crusoe, book Velaa Private Island in the Maldives’ Noonu Atoll for exclusive use. You’ll have the run of the place, from the 47 beach and water villas, houses and residences (sleeping 134 guests), complete with dedicated butlers, to the five restaurants and bar, spa, nine-hole golf course and water sports activities. velaaprivateisland.com
The enchanting 18th century Palazzo di Varignana, near Bologna, has renovated a handful of the ancient country houses and farms on its rolling 75-acre estate to create six new villas. Close enough to the hotel to benefit from its extensive facilities (spa, driving range, excellent dining options), each of the villas is delightfully private with large gardens, swimming pools and knock-out views across centuries-old forests and vineyards. palazzodivarignana.com
Regent Hotels & Resorts debuts in South East Asia with Regent Phu Quoc. Set in the shade of palm trees on Vietnam’s Long Beach, suites and villas are light and airy with huge verandas. This is a place for contemporary Vietnamese and Chinese cuisine and cocktails, holistic spa treatments and trips on the resort’s catamaran. For push-the-boat-out, The Regent Club offers a private rooftop infinity pool and bespoke dining. phuquoc.regenthotels.com
Tiny coves lapped by cobalt blue waters, picture postcard tavernas and villas that set a new level of luxury, Corfu’s northeast coast is the perfect restorative escape
Words CHARLOTTE ADSETT“My childhood in Corfu shaped my life,” the author Gerald Durrell once said. “If I had the craft of Merlin, I would give every child the gift of my childhood.” Durrell’s tales of growing up on the Greek island in the late-1930s are wonderfully evocative. The idyllic little bays with their pebbly beaches, the silvery olive groves and cypress-covered valleys, and the abundance of wildlife of which he wrote - and which inspired his lifelong love for the natural world - are every bit as beguiling today.
Nowhere is this truer than along the rural northeast coast which, as I discover during my recent visit, is home to some of Corfu’s most beautiful and unspoilt scenery. Here, on the second largest of the Ionian Islands (a chain off the west coast of Greece), the off-thebeaten-track beaches are pleasingly uncrowded, the warm sea is crystal-clear
and current-free, and pretty, whitewashed fishing villages dot the shore. If you are looking for understated luxe, this quieter, lesser-known stretch of coastline is your place.
Dubbed ‘Kensington-By-Sea’ for good reason, it is home to the most beautiful vistas on Corfu and hugging the pineand lemon-scented shoreline are some of the island's most luxurious and secluded villas. The Rothschilds have an estate here (you can spot their pale pink villa from your boat), while the fashion set - Rita Ora, Poppy Delevingne, Alice Temperley - as well as Royalty - HRH Charles and Camilla - all head to the area for sun-drenched R & R.
“Corfu has become this quite understated destination,” says Nick Cookson, founder of Villa Collective, which has an exclusive portfolio of curated villas across the Mediterranean, with a focus on Greece, as well as the Balearics, France, Italy and Morocco.
“We do get a lot of high-profile people
Wanderlust
coming here, who want to be under the radar. Plus they appreciate the exceptionally high quality of the villas and the fact they’re on the water - a lot of clients don’t rent a car, you travel everywhere by boat. ”
Each of the properties across the Villa Collective portfolio is a private home - and therefore unique - and has been hand-selected by Cookson
himself, whose criteria has always been a tucked away location and exceptional design. And so, you have luxury masserias in Puglia, palatial Provencal farmhouses, mansions in Marrakesh and sprawling villas across Ibiza and the Greek islands, including new properties in Patmos, a place which Cookson describes as “really very special. And it's so different as well.”
But it’s Corfu which has Cookson’s heart. Having spent summers here as a child - like Durrell - he returns regularly to the family house, Villa Yeraki, which his parents (who also ran a villa company) bought in 1978. I’m here to stay in two of the 55 Villa Collective properties available to rent on the island.
Gaia Sea
Gaia Sea
Gaia Sea
The villa comes with a housekeeper and a private chef, who honed his skills in five-star hotels in London. You can specify exactly what you’d like to eat or, as we do, ask for his recommendations of traditional and contemporary dishes. As plate after plate of exquisite Greek and Corfiot mezze dishes roll out the kitchen, it feels like the ultimate luxury to be eating a meal so skilfully prepared especially for us. With the pink sunset glowing across the water towards Albania, I savour this special moment in more ways than one.
The first is Villa Pashalia, a relaxed family-style affair. Just a 100-metre stroll from a quiet beach, it has all the makings for a perfect multigenerational holiday including five air-conditioned bedrooms all with their own bathrooms, a spacious sitting room, impeccably equipped galley kitchen, media room and a small gym with a cross-trainer and running machine. But it’s alfresco which is the scene-stealer. An inviting L-shaped swimming pool takes centre stage in the beautifully maintained garden, surrounded by big terraces dotted with comfy loungers, sofas and hammocks - some in the shade, others for basking in the heat of the day. The outdoor dining area has a bbq and a long table that’s perfect for cocktails and views across the tops of the olive trees to the sea beyond.
Our days here drift by in hazy bliss, thanks in no small part to the calm and efficiency of the housekeeper Natalia. In between sunbathing, we snorkel at nearby Avlaki Beach (the villa also comes with a paddleboard), where the seafood pasta at the beachside taverna is a must, and explore the local fishing villages of Kassiopi and St Stephano at a leisurely pace. Coffee in the shady square, followed by a swim, before a warm Corfiot welcome and long lunch of fresh fish and chilled rosé at one of the little, family-run restaurants. And repeat.
Our second villa, Gaia Sea, is a recent addition to the Villa Collective portfolio and one of two newly built properties tucked away on the hillside Skinos Estate near Nissaki (the other property, Gaia Rock, is a smaller but no less luxe version of Gaia Sea). The owner is the
creative director of her family’s furniture company and an interior designer, and it shows. Her keen eye for design comes into play throughout, from the clever blend of traditional Corfiot craftsmanship and natural materials (think oak, marble and local stone) and minimalist modern chic, to the objets d’art and bespoke furniture dotted around the villa.
There are four spacious ensuite bedrooms. The master suite upstairs is very private, with its own indoor and outdoor shower, and a huge bath that looks out to sea. The rooms downstairs have their own outdoor areas, and two lead out to the freshwater infinity pool with its wraparound coastal panorama. It’s blue as far as the eye can see - look hard enough and you might even spot dolphins at play.
The villa’s gently sloping garden has seating under the olive trees - known as the “ouzo terrace” - which quickly becomes our sundowner spot, while a small path winds its way to a series of coves, with a ladder for entering the water and a small mooring buoy.
Following the path a little further, we find ourselves in Nissaki bay with its watersports and tavernas; alternatively, charter a boat and head to the cobbled charm and Venetian architecture of Corfu’s Old Town.
A day out on a speedboat exploring the coastline is a must. George, who runs a boat company (and proudly tells us he played the boat driver in the recent television show The Durrells) takes us through the waves to Agni, cruising past both the Getty’s house and the Durrell’s place. Our destination is Taverna Agni, a
Gaia Sea Villa Pashaliafavourite spot of famous politicians we’re told (though don’t let that put you off, it’s gorgeous). After lunch, he whisks us off to some secret coves where we spend a blissful couple of hours snorkelling.
Other tavernas recommended to us during the week are Toula’s, also in Agni, and Cavo Barbaro further along the coast. “The tavernas are really authentic,” Cookson says. “They’re not overly fancy; just good Greek food, done well, in beautiful settings.”
One night, on Cookson’s recommendation, we head to Taverna Glyfa, arriving by speedboat, having been picked up by the restaurant owner from the private jetty outside our villa. As we zip across the water at high-speed, James
Bond-style, he tells us it’s standard service for all customers - it’s certainly the only way I want to travel to dinner from now on. Just as we take our seats at one of the pretty white tables, Liz Hurley and her son Damien turn up with friends, seemingly as taken as we are by the sweeping views. The menu is delightfully traditional - moussaka, Greek salad - and as a magnificent full moon lights up the sea, we’re all entranced. With Cookson’s in-depth knowledge - “I can confidently say that we know Corfu better than anyone else” - and love of the island, comes an innate understanding of the importance of having a good management team, both in London and on Corfu (many of the
villas come with their own in-house team of housekeeper and chef) to ensure the smooth running of every guest’s stay. Whether you want to be whisked to your villa by speedboat on arrival; a week-long itinerary planned with boats, tavernas, everything booked; or you just want to take each day as it comes, service is exemplary. It is, what Cookson describes, “a well-oiled machine” which takes “an incredible amount of organisation.” After all, with some villas costing £130,000 a week in high season, there’s no margin for error.
Our time in Corfu has been a dream. All the space and privacy that comes with staying in a villa over a hotel has meant we’ve really, really relaxed. Not to mention the housekeeper who does all our shopping and is on hand to help with anything we might need, while the personal chef has meant we haven’t had to eat meals at specific times, instead setting our own pace. As Grecian odysseys go, this has been both magical and memorable.
A week at Villa Pashalia costs from €8,000 to €25,000; a week at Gaia Sea costs from €11,500 to €29,000 villacollective.com
“We do get a lot of high-profile people coming here, who want to be under the radar. Plus they appreciate the exceptionally high quality of the villas and the fact they’re on the water - a lot of clients don’t rent a car, you travel everywhere by boat"Villa Pashalia
The songs Jane Birkin writes and the stories she tells are laden with her past. And these are glossy, exotic escapades worth remembering - from appearing nude in Michelangelo Antonioni’s era-defining 1966 film Blow-Up, to lending her delicate unguarded vocals to Serge Gainsbourg’s Je T’Aime Moi Non Plus in 1969.
Now 75 years old, the British-born Paris-based muse, model, actor and activist has recorded over 20 albums, appeared in more than 65 films, written a book, inspired one of the world’s most recognisable designer handbags, and left an indelible mark on modern style with her gappy smile, long fringe and slashed-to-the-navel white shirts.
Birkin’s has been a life of adventure, from childhood jaunts to the Isle of Wight and long weekends in Venice with her lover Serge Gainsbourg to circumnavigating the globe for work (she shows no sign of slowing down and, alongside recently collaborating with the French fashion label A.P.C. on a capsule collection, she is currently touring Europe to promote her latest album Oh! Pardon Tu Dormais..., which saw her perform at the Barbican this summer). Here, she shares her cherished travel memories, holiday tips and why Paris will always have her heart.
I first wanted to go to France because my father was there during the Second World War when he was a navigator [in a clandestine naval unit]. He used to drop people off and pick people up on the French coast of Brittany, at an enormous risk to his life. He was a hero with people during the French Resistance and he thought they were the heroes. So, the French, for me, were already very romantic.
I was sent to a French finishing school at 16 I lived in a flat on Boulevard Lannes [in the 16th arrondissement] above singer Edith Piaf and learned how to make chocolate truffles. French girls were always so beautifully turned out. When we took the Metro, they used to have a good laugh at us because we were so obviously English. We’d be wearing maxi skirts and slip-on shoes and they’d have sleek hair, pearl necklaces and twin sets in a Bordeaux colourthey all looked identical.
Actor and singer Jane Birkin shares her travel secrets and dream destinations, from rock pooling with her family in Brittany to falling for Istanbul ’s charm
As a child, I spent summers on the Isle of Wight where we had a cottage. My sister, brother and I used to jump on our bikes at seven in the morning and explore. We were in the very wild part of the island, near Brook Beach, next to Compton Bay. For me, the best childhood is being allowed to be free.
Serge and I used to go down the King’s Road in London and pick up all his clothes in the antique market. Back then I had a tiny house on Cheyne Row. These days, when I come to London, I stay in The Pelham hotel because it’s in South Kensington, where a lot of French people live.
I have recently been in Antwerp, where we stayed in a gorgeous little hotel called August. During the day, I did readings for a play I’m doing in a year’s time, L’Amante Anglaise by Marguerite Duras, and then I did concerts in the evening. I enjoy performing because you visit towns where people show you secret things that you wouldn’t see normally.
I’ve travelled all over the South of France. I used to holiday in Provence as a teenager and I went for many weeks with Serge and my daughter Kate [Barry] when I was filming La Piscine. We stayed at Hotel Byblos and had long lunches at Le Club 55. I’ve also visited Avignon, Marseille and La Ciotat over the years.
Istanbul is a truly romantic place to go. When my youngest daughter [Lou Doillon] was 14, I said, ‘Look, here’s a pin. Stick it into the atlas and I’ll take you wherever the pin takes us.’ And she stuck it in, and it fell between Iceland and Istanbul. So I said, ‘Whatever you like.’
FROM
A.P.C.
SISLEY
A.P.C.
She decided on Istanbul - it’s a magical city and so full of mystery. We visited Topkapi Palace, the Basilica Cistern and the Hagia Sophia, drank coffee at Pierre Loti Cafe and wandered around the spice bazaar. There’s a little hotel, which is called The Green Hotel, and also the Pera Palace [where Agatha Christie wrote Murder On The Orient Express]. The people were charming too.
I’ve bought a house in Brittany, which is exactly on the spot where my father arrived during the war, so it’s fairly romantic. I spend time there with my bulldog Dolly and my grandchildren. On the beach you can move the rocks and find strange creatures underneath - it’s full of crabs. It’s really like Cornwall, and I love it. It’s wonderful too because I can just hop onto a train, and we are off. Two days ago, we were in Antwerp and before that I was in Carpentras, as I wanted to see the oldest synagogue in France.
I miss everything about Paris when I am not there. I love walking around the city. If you’re staying in the city, the Hôtel des Marronniers in StGermain-des-Prés is a longtime favourite of mine. I love the Parisians, and the French with all their strangeness. By that I mean that the English are far more polite. If you fall over, you’re bound to be picked up by somebody who’ll take care of you. They say, ‘Watch your step, love,’ on a train or on a bus. In France, you have to fight for a seat - it’s quite different. But I love all the differences. Plus, French men are very attractive.
Jane Birkin’s complete discography is out now (Panthéon/Universal). janebirkin.fr
The blossoming of Rosenthal x Swarovski sees the world-renowned porcelain artisan team up with the jewellery house to create the prettiest of tableware. Taking inspiration from the 19th-century Austrian art movement, the inaugural Signum collection has a graphic, octagonal design across its tea, espresso and dining sets edged with hand-painted golden accents. The jewellery-like pieces come in four candy colourways - green, pink, yellow and blue - the swan-engraved, cut-crystal lids a final flourish. A feast for the eyes.
From £30; swarovski.com
Compiled by AMY MOOREA WONG
The Mag tables by Daniel Schofield for Collagerie - now available in limited-edition Pantone hues - may be pleasingly simple in design, but each is a labour of love. The circular top and cylindrical base undergo specialist ceramic firing and glazing techniques making them incredibly durableperfect for alfresco evenings. £655; conranshop.co.uk
Daylesford x Colefax sees the Cotswoldbased lifestyle brand join forces with heritage fabric and wallpaper house Colefax and Fowler to launch Quince Garden, a botanical-inspired tableware collection. Delicate watercolours in pastel hues beautify crockery, linens and candles in quintessential English garden style. Napkins £20, plates from £135; daylesford.com
The Gardens: Vol I looks to nature with three new hand-drawn and -painted designs that encapsulate the romance and beauty of the great outdoors. From dreamlike scenes of fantastical trees and dense canopies of vivid foliage to utopian wildflower-strewn gardenscapes, the panoramas will transform any room into Eden. cole-and-son.com
Sink into the Dress_Code, a collection of armchairs by creative studio gumdesign for Italian design brand S•CAB. Inspired by the world of haute couture, they come in a range of colours, textures and seat options (there are outdoor weatherproof versions, too) - including this Fashion design, made of semi-circular cylindrical strips. £726; scabdesign.com
Whether you see it as a practical storage solution or a statement piece - or both, the Jade Nizwa Bar Cabinet by London-based furniture and homewares designer Bethan Gray will shake up any cocktail hour. Made in collaboration with master craftsman Mohammad Reza Shamsian in Oman, the façade fuses ancient marquetry techniques with cutting-edge technology in ombré Italian hand dyed maple. £22,500; bethangray.com
Let your creativity run wild at home with this season’s appetite for abstract designs, statement-making swirling shapes and bold prints
FROM
€433.33, chiaracolombini.com
£15, thewabisabistore.com
Vase, £134, glasette.com
Chair, POA, andtradition.com
£199, wolfandbadger.com
Wiggle Mug, £42, glassette.com
Dipping Bowl, £28, libertylondon.com
€580, chiaracolombini.com
Wackie Dot Glass, £60, ninacampbell.com
Wallis
Small Bench, POA, thefutureperfect.com
Rug, From £2,560.00, floorstory.co.uk
Seater Sofa, POA, heals.com
London-based design duo Charlotte Rey and Duncan Campbell talk creative inspiration, collaborative energy and why they’ll always gravitate towards the extraordinary
OLIVIA LIDBURYDuncan Campbell and Charlotte Rey are almost too fresh-faced to have clocked up over a dozen years working together. But as the saying goes: time flies when you’re having fun. And what fun - with a large side helping of exuberance and fantasythe creative duo are enjoying.
When we speak, the friends in both work and life are about to fly to New York to put the finishing touches to a residential project on the Upper East Side that, owing to Covid, has almost entirely been managed via WhatsApp (and which is heavy on azure-blue terrazzo flooring and custom-made green sofas). Then there’s the Belle Époque sleeping beauty of a villa in San Remo they have been tasked with breathing new life into, as well as the restoration of a family home across the French border in Cap D’Antibes. “We like things that are quite extraordinary, and our clients gravitate to us because of that,” says Rey of their international customer base.
What is just as interesting is Rey and Campbell’s unconventional trajectory into the world of interior design, and how their work straddles multiple mediums; the pair met in the late Noughties whilst interning in Paris on the biannual cultural magazine-slash-book
“We love beautiful antiques, but we’re also very happy to mix them with more contemporary pieces. We call it
"
Acne Paper , which they would go on to edit for several years. Edinburgh-raised Campbell read law at King’s College whilst Rey, who grew up in southern Sweden, moved to London for a Fashion History and Theory BA at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design.
As the cult title closed in 2014 (it was resurrected last year by Acne Studios founder Jonny Johansson), they co-founded their eponymous creative practice in London. Heritage brands who admired the publication quickly came knocking, commissioning Campbell-Rey to create books or consult on branding and art direction, which then naturally segued into requests for ephemeral retail spaces. Then came carefully conceived product lines, such as the exquisite Muranocrafted coloured glassware stocked by Matches Fashion, and a range of scene-setting furniture for luxury online platform The Invisible Collection.
“It wasn’t a huge leap to consider how things appear on a page to real life,” explains Campbell in relation to how the various disciplines all complement each other. “It’s been a very organic progression. As people who are interested in storytelling, that serves us well because when we present a concept to a client, we’re not just saying: ‘here’s a chair and a cushion’, we’re exploring the feeling of a space, it’s almost like creating a small movie.”
The duo share a penchant for colour and opulence, and are influenced by the classic architecture of northern Europe via the convivial way of life in the Mediterranean. Their affection
for history and decorative arts is clear: “We’re always considering how to breathe new life into the traditional,” says Campbell. Indeed, they regularly call on specialist painters such as Magdalena Gordon to add layers of interest to the otherwise perfunctory features, such as a pediment-topped door frame with a lifelike marble finish.
The list of designers they admire is extensive and diverse, ranging from Gio Ponti to Émile-Jacques Ruhlmann. They cite the legendary architect Josef Frank for the way he would consider how the interior would talk to the exterior of a building and turn each room into a work of art - something the duo have taken a handle on as they
“We’re always considering how to breathe new life into the traditional "
collaborate more closely with architects and landscapers across each of their projects. “That concept of creating a complete universe is very interesting to us,” says Campbell.
They mine books - and not Instagram or Pinterest - for inspiration, working most weeks out of Rey’s office in her Chiswick home, which she describes as “very green and very calm and very lovely” (Campbell splits his time between Camden and the Cotswolds, where he has a home with his artist husband, Luke Edward Hall). Of their library-worthy collection of titles Rey says: “The shelves are creaking, it’s terrifying!”
Both tend to treat their own homes as laboratories, playing with concepts there first. “If you’ve an idea, you don’t always want to wait for a client to commission it,” Campbell explains. “It’s fun to use our own homes as spaces to try things out.” Much of the furniture they produce, for example, began life as things they wanted for themselves. The Ottavia Console is one such example. “We made a little console for the end of my bed in London - it’s a slim space, so it had to be quite narrow with very fine tapering legs. That’s something that we sell now,” says Campbell.
Travel and gallery visits also feed their imagination. Working together for so long means the pair have built up an exclusive bank of shared references, bringing a unique collaborative energy. “I can say to Charlotte: ‘Remember that yellow wall we saw in that palazzo?’ and she will know exactly what I mean,” laughs Campbell. Friends joke that their dialogue sounds like ‘whale language’, comparing their shorthand to the clicking sound made by the mammals under the sea.
When not jetting off around the world, the duo are busy expanding their collaborations. In the works is a collection of accessories for The Lacquer Company slated for next spring, and following on from their debut range of Gustavian rugs with Swedish brand Nordic Knots, they’ve been working on an exclusive colourway of said rugs for the hotel Il Pellicano in Tuscany. The increasing demand for bespoke furniture from clients makes for a natural synergy with The Invisible Collection, whose modus operandi is to offer one-off designs conceived by interior designers. There is another instalment planned for next year, with Campbell keen to create a range of lighting.
Yet despite their appreciation of exquisite craftsmanship and luxury, the pair stress that, like many millennials, they are not discriminative when it comes to provenance of items. “We love beautiful antiques, but we’re also very happy to mix them with more contemporary pieces,” says Rey. “We call it Uptown-Downtown , which is the idea that something like a fridge magnet you found in a museum shop can hold as much value to you as a beautiful piece of furniture. One shouldn’t supersede the other, everything should be given space and equal representation, coming together as a symphony.” In Campbell and Rey’s composed world, the result is always harmonious.
campbell-rey.com
Singer Ella Eyre opens her little black book to the capital, from independent fashion boutiques to the best tapas in town
As told to LUCIANA BELLINI
Highbury in north London. I grew up in Ealing but moved to the area nine years ago and have never left. I love the hustle and bustle but also that there’s a great sense of community. It o ers the perfect mix, because it’s still got lots of greenery and open spaces but there are also plenty of lovely pubs, boutiques and restaurants.
Seabird in Southwark, which is on the river and super high up - the outdoor terrace has amazing 180-degree views and it almost feels like you can touch the Shard. They do fantastic oysters and delicious seafood, plus the interiors are beautiful too. I actually ended up emailing the manager to ask where their tiles were from because I want them in my bathroom.
FAVOURITE GALLERY
I like, which are quite unisex and sporty but still have a high-fashion vibe.
FAVOURITE MUSIC VENUE Koko in Camden, which reopened earlier this year. I’ve played there a few times over the years, but one of the most memorable shows was two days after my dad died. It was the first place he had seen me perform live, so it felt very special.
Escocesa in Stoke Newington does the best Spanish tapas in London - everything is delicious, whether it’s their courgette flowers stu ed with goat’s cheese, deep-fried aubergine, pork cheeks or croquettes. It’s got a great low-key, rustic vibe and they also serve a brilliant picante cocktail called a Mezcalita. For a celebratory meal, I’ll head to Yauatcha in Soho for the dim sum - if I had to choose a last meal, it would be their sweet and sour pork.
I recently went to the NoMad in Covent Garden and fell in love with the interiors. When I walked in I thought, “This is what I want my house to look like.” I got to see one of the penthouse suites and it was beautiful, spread across two floors with an amazing spiral staircase. I love it when hotels pay attention to the design details.
Hang-Up on Regent’s Canal is where I get most of my artworks. They’ve got a certain style that I really like and a great eye, with well-known names like Banksy, Bridget Riley and Tracey Emin, as well as up-and-coming artists.
Since I discovered The Urban Flower Co in Crouch End, I haven’t been able to go anywhere else. Their aesthetic is right up my street - very young and modern - and they have a unique approach to putting together bouquets. Their selection of seasonal flowers is unlike anything I’ve ever seen.
I recently discovered Parkland Walk with my French bulldog Iggy, which is this deserted railway track that runs between Finsbury Park and Highgate. It has all these old stations, tunnels and bridges along it - all completely overgrown - and it’s really peaceful. As you’re walking along, you get these sudden glimpses of the city skyline, and when the sun is trickling through the leaves it all feels quite magical.
Ella Eyre’s latest track Deep Down with Alok, Kenny Dope ft Never Dull is out now. ellaeyre.com
unlike anything I’ve ever seen.
based designers, my favourite has to be Shrimps. Hannah
London, which has the best handbag department. I like the oversized look - I love Acne
men’s shirts from Jacquemus, unitard. Their pieces are always
When it comes to Londonbased designers, my favourite has to be Shrimps. Hannah Weiland is just fab and I particularly love all of their bags. I buy them at Liberty London, which has the best handbag department. I like the oversized look - I love Acne and Aries - but my favourite are men’s shirts from Jacquemus, which I wear as a dress or over a unitard. Their pieces are always interesting and well-made.
For glam, I’ll go to Annie’s Ibiza in Soho. Annie Doble’s edit is like
love it. She really knows how to put together a fabulous wardrobe. Goodhood in Shoreditch is also brilliant.
For glam, I’ll go to Annie’s Ibiza in Soho. Annie Doble’s edit is incredible - I feel like I can pretty much pick out anything and I’ll love it. She really knows how to put together a fabulous wardrobe. Goodhood in Shoreditch is also brilliant. They stock a lot of the brands
SEABIRD NOMAD THE URBAN FLOWER CO SHRIMPS ANNIE’S IBIZA, SOHO KOKO CAMDEN
