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Xxxxxx Francesco by Francesco: Happily Ever After (2002).
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Teary-eyed Italian artist Francesco Vezzoli made his name satirising the vainglorious worlds of international fame and celebrity. But an exciting new direction finds him ditching his Rolodex and returning home. by max crosbie-jones
hen I spot Italian artist Francesco Vezzoli across a crowded fivestar hotel lobby, he appears a little out of place, dressed as he is today in a somewhat disheveled combination of shorts, jacket and trainers. This is ironic: Francesco, 44, is not just a man comfortable inhabiting the decadent world of 21st century luxury – he is a challenging artist whose entire body of work consists of borrowing and remixing elements of it, putting a grand rococo-frame around it and calling it conceptual art. Since graduating from London’s Central Saint Martins in the mid1990s his art, ranging from petit-point embroidery and videos to elaborate public spectacles, has had a consistently high celebrity quotient. It’s the art-world equivalent of an Elton John birthday bash – everybody who’s anybody appears to have been invited. He has, for a mock-commercial, had Michelle Williams and Natalie Portman catfight on the carpet of a Baroque apartment over a bottle of fictional fragrance Greed. He has convinced Milla Jovovich, Courtney Love and Helen Mirren to slip on Versace togas for a mock-trailer for Gore Vidal’s Caligula. He has
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Vezzoli replaced the lead actors with art-world figures for these faux-movie posters, on display at recent MOCA Los Angeles show “Cinema Vezzoli” (2014).
transformed hip-hop star Nicki Minaj into a heavily powdered 18th century courtesan for a magazine covershoot and got Kate Moss to DJ at the opening party for a Pradasponsored 24-hour museum in Paris. And, for MOCA Los Angeles’ 30th anniversary gala, he conceived (and pulled off) a surrealist homage to Russian high culture that had Lady Gaga playing a pink Damien Hurst piano whilst clad in a Frank Gehry hat and Miuccia Prada dress – and the Boshoi Ballet pirouetted behind her. If the practice of contemporary artists can be reduced to a shtick, then Francesco’s is pulling celebrities down through his trap door and out into an operatic parallel universe. Or it was. “I’ve moved away from working with celebrities,” he declares in his smooth Italian accent, as we sit in the Miami sunshine, the rays bouncing off his shades. “This is not happening for me anymore.”
The reason for this, he explains, has nothing to do with logistics or expense. It’s about saying what he wants to say succinctly. “I could give you an intellectual answer,” he says, “but to be honest I felt I had exhausted the topic. I did a fake commercial, a fake collection, fake publicity, fake election trailers and fake movie trailers. I touched on all those points where politics and publicity, beauty and publicity, culture and publicity meet, so I decided to move on.” At this moment in time, Francesco’s moving on entails looking back. Way back. Often egregiously gaudy, his work has always telescoped the past to comment on the present, only now that telescoping finds him looking back with a more sustained and thoughtful gaze towards ancient Rome. His most recent show, which wrapped up at MoMA PS1 in New York back in March, featured classical Roman statuary
– something he has appropriated before, only never quite like this. With the help of restorers, Francesco gave five busts that he acquired at auction a layer of paint. “I’ve done diptychs before where I put them into relation with modern sculptures,” he says, “and I’ve done insertions where I basically add pieces to these sculptures. But the most poignant and I think daring step was to bring back the colour that they once had.” Back up a second: Francesco is not playing the artistic-license card when he says “the colour that they once had.” And there’s a reason for this. Art historians are now largely agreed that the view of the white marble bust as the polished acme of classical art is a misrepresentation, as a large proportion of them were originally painted. In other words, the impression left by your trip to the British Museum or Parthenon is
wrong: what many busts strived for was fidelity or even hyper-reality, not some impossibly refined and remote and alabaster-white Platonic ideal of beauty. For Francesco, this is proof that classicity was, in fact, “garish, kitschy and colourful – all those things that you don’t see anymore because all that’s now left is the structure.” Teatro Romano, as this project is called, marks the start of a brave (and more nuanced?) new direction for an artist best known for getting public figures to participate in projects that challenge our perceptions of them. But it’s not altogether that unexpected a direction given another recurring theme in his work: a questioning (from within) of the nature of institutions and culture consumption (something he also did in shows such as 2012’s “24h Museum” and last year’s “Vezzoli Primavera – Estate,” which took place across three of Florence’s
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One of five restored busts that comprised “Teatro Romano” at MoMA PS1.
Francesco’s work has always telescoped the past to comment on the present, only now that telescoping finds him looking back with a more sustained and thoughtful gaze towards ancient Rome.
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The poster for “Cinema Vezzoli,” a 2014 show at MOCA Los Angeles in which Vezzoli deconstructed the vocabulary of filmmaking and celebrity-driven culture.
fag meant being sophisticated refined house-museums). As a If the practice of contemporary artists can be or fashionable.” Most of all, he reviewer for The Brooklyn Rail puts Cinema Vezzoli is presented by yoox.com reduced to a shtick, then Francesco’s is pulling was fascinated by how the social it, Teatro Romano “is not about with : FRANCESCO VEZZOLI . ALMA RUIZ . LUCA CORBETTA . GIOELE AMARO . interactions in them had little to educating the viewer so much as celebrities down through his trap door and Generous supportwe is provided by anonymous donors . Additional support is provided by . Marion Hauff . Munich and Mack Sennett Studios do with status or money. Like the reconstructing the way normally out into an operatic parallel universe. In. kind media support is provided by KCRW 89.9 FM and Los Angeles magazine . loved-up clubbers, this scene was encounter history.” open-armed. “In Italy the club an art fair. (For the record, the Does his restoration work bring working with inanimate objects is scene was always linked to wealth,” latter agitate him: “You made this us closer to historical fidelity? Or that he felt he had gotten too close object carefully, with so much love, he recalls. “You had to be rich is it wanton desecration? By giving to famous human beings (certainly and be at the table with a bottle of and then you see all these people these busts back their eyebrows his ironic treatment of them could champagne. Instead, the clubbing walking passed and not caring, so and imperfections and original be mistaken for idolatry). His culture in London was a real form you just suffer.”) vigour, is Francesco bringing us obsession with celebrities is wellof culture. It was a leveler, but also Nightclubs – particularly into the time of these statues? Or documented. As a teenager growing bound to different sub-cultures. It London’s – also stoked his interest is he merely bringing them into up in the provincial Italian city was a whole new universe and one I in tribes. In the mid-nineties, a ours? Which is ‘truer’ and more of Brescia, 50 miles northeast of enjoyed terribly.” substance-soaked club scene was valuable, the bust faded by time, or Milan, he was cinema-mad and It was around this time that thriving in the hedonistic British the bust that appears unmediated by smitten with Donna Summer, then Francesco took up needlework. capital. He was never into the it? Also, Francesco thinks Teatro Blondie; and while studying in He started out making petit-point club drugs, he claims, but he was Romano signposts another important London he devoured fashion shows. copies of the calling cards left by hooked on the clubs. “I went to question, one that’s especially “I remember going to see the prostitutes in phone boxes. On an all of them,” he says, “not just the pertinent to an Italy that is, after the Vivienne Westwood shows back in art-theoretic level it was an early gay ones. All the ones promoters socioeconomic inertia of the recent the nineties, or the Galliano show dalliance with appropriation, and like Steve Strange and Leigh recession years, trying to rediscover in Paris: the wonderful 1994 one “a way of using a very domestic Bowery were doing.” In them, he a lost sense of greatness: “What do with the wolves howling,” he says. language to represent sex and encountered a new “concept of we want to make of our past?” “I was obsessed with fashion.” desire.” It was also a declarative queerness,” one that didn’t exist Fast forward to today and he’s still statement – “kind of decorative, in Italy, where “you were either ne has to wonder if another an artist that you’re more likely to kind of gay, kind of silly… a straight or a fag,” and “being a reason Francesco is now see taking in a fashion show than
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24h Museum (2012). For this ephemeral installation sponsored by Prada, Vezzoli erected a “non-existent museum” in Paris’ historic Palais d’Iéna. It hosted parties and press conferences, as well as interpretations of classical sculptures, during its 24-hour lifespan.
“In Italy, the club scene was always linked to wealth. Instead, the clubbing culture in London was a real form of culture. It was a whole new universe and one I enjoyed terribly.”
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Selfie Sebastian (Self-portrait as St. Sebastian by Andrea Mantegna, 2009/2014).
It’s hard to shake the image of Francesco as a rapscallion who, blessed with no small amount of cunning and self-possession, has charmed his way past the towering gates of global celebrity, only to begin chipping gamely away at the pillars with his chisel.
Gala (Portrait of Gala Dali as Sylvia in La Dolce Vita (2008).
perfect reaction to the environment I grew up in,” as he once told an interviewer. And on another, more prosaic level it got him out of attending classes at Central Saint Martins. “Nothing was wrong with art school,” he insists, “it was great, but I hated going. Needlework was the perfect practice to escape school with because to do a full one takes you a month.” It has been a leitmotif in his work ever since. In his screen-printed images and Monty Python-esque appropriations of Renaissance-era Madonna with child paintings, stitched teardrops stream from the faces of contemporary divas such as Dolly Parton and Liza Minnelli, or supermodels such as Naomi Campell and Linda Evangelista. This isn’t mere decoration. For Francesco, there exists a compelling link between celebrity and embroidery – early on in his career he found out that many movie stars practiced it for its therapeutic and solipsistic quality. Particularly inspiring was the story of how Silvana Mangano, Italy’s “sophisticated answer to Sophia
Loren,” became a needlepoint fanatic after the death of her son in a plane crash. “Learning this,” he told a journalist back in 2011, “created a link for me between embroidery as an art form and a place of isolation, concentration, and refuge from pain.” In light of this, Francesco’s signature tears can be read as an expression of sympathy for the plight of female celebrities. Links such as this crop up regularly in his work. Whether he’s sat quietly embroidering in one of his own videos (self-mythologising is another Vezzoli trope), immortalising iconic women in knock-offs of the old masters (“women fuelled my fascination, men didn’t”), staging a week-long takeover of online video channel NOWNESS (as he did in late March), or discussing the machinations of gay hook-up app Grinder, there’s usually a hidden depth lurking under that shallow surface. And that won’t be going away. What will, he tells me, is the layer of irony that has, until now, coated his substantial body of satirical commentary on celebrity,
Tua (Portrait of Dolly Parton After Palma il Vecchio and Ambrosius Bosschaert, 2010).
glamour, media and fame in our very mixed-up times. “My work used to always be full of irony, but not anymore,” he warns. Are we witnessing an artist at a creative crossroads? It would appear so. Now based in Milan, he spends a lot less time hanging around in capitals such as London or L.A. or on the road – the “comfortable road” – than he used to. And this coming-home is being mirrored in his work. When I ask what we can expect from him next, he talks not of dissecting fame or calling in favours with celebrity friends but furthering his “historical search” and a “big leap into the past and roots of my nation.” This is an unexpected about turn for an acclaimed provocateur who was doing very nicely – not a market star by any means, but respected by art institutions, and with a long list of high-profile solo shows, ephemeral events and Venice Biennale appearances to his name. According to Francesco, we should expect more of the unexpected. “I’ve changed many times, so I’m
not worried about becoming cliché,” he says. “First they said, ‘ah, you’re the needlework artist.’ Then they called me the video artist. And now they say I’m the antiquities artist. And in five years I’ll be something else.” Still, for now, it’s hard to shake the image of Francesco as a rapscallion who, blessed with model’s looks and no small amount of cunning and self-possession, has charmed his way past the towering gates of international celebrity, only to begin chipping gamely away at the pillars with his chisel. His aim: not to bring them tumbling down, but to show us what their foundations are made of. One hopes that, as he moves back out through the gates and sets off in a new direction, there are many more such transgressions still to come. Francesco will have a solo show at Turin’s Galleria Franco Noero in June, and in November he takes part in New York’s Performa 2015 festival. Alternatively, the website www.wannabevezzoli.com lets you make a Vezzoli series of your own.
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Sofa so Good Are you sitting comfortably? Antonio Citterio has made it his mission in life to ensure you are. And yet, he does more than just make sumptuous furniture. With his firm creating buildings and interiors far and wide, this designer and stararchitect is one of Milan’s greatest living cultural ambassadors. by max crosbie-jones / portraits by dan carabas
Entrance to a villa at the Bulgari Hotel, Milan.
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oll over Rome, step out the way London, back away slowly from the champagne bar Tokyo: 2015 is Milan’s year. As you read this, this great Italian city is gearing up to host the World Expo, and the excitement is not just building – it’s palpable. The finishing touches are being put to the ultra-futuristic feats of architectural one-upmanship (and there will be many, not least 145 country pavilions), the speeches prepped, the wine glasses polished, the pillows puffed, the bed sheets tucked. An estimated 20 million people will flock there between May and October to digest the latest developments in food and nutrition practices. But for organisers, Expo Milano 2015 is more than just an opportunity for participating countries and corporations to showcase their approach to the challenges of sustainable food development with an orgy of foodier-than-thou interactive displays. With it spurring on several massive urban renewal projects, it will also serve a legacy-building role, this at a time when the flagging Italian economy is crying out for a shot in the arm. The message is clear: Expo Milano 2015 is the best thing to happen to Milan in a while, but arguably an even greater thing has already happened to Milan: Antonio Citterio. What’s that, you say? You’ve never heard of this loafer-wearing, chino-clad, Audi-driving 65-year-old? Such is his modesty that he surely likes it this way, but the truth is that, barring a couple of other mega-successful Milanese – namely Piero Lissoni and Patricia Urquiola – few have done more to elevate Milan’s global status than he has in his slow-burning, forty-five-year career. Design-wise, most of us are a little bit Citterio, whether we dig his style or not. The masculine sectional sofa that you’re reading this article on, that polished lamp shade beside you, that bathroom cabinet, the airport lounge, the chic seating island marooned in the middle of your local upscale mall, that ergonomic treadmill… chances are that a few of the manmade objects you encounter on a daily basis – be they made by a
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high-end brand or a more egalitarian one, Citterio or merely Citterio-esque – owe a debt to him. He’s a leading light of what the New York Times has dubbed New International Style. He makes sofas and kitchens and bathrooms and modular wall systems and office desks and more. But he’s not just an industrial designer – he is also one of the most important architects in the world. A starchitect. A brand. And yet, he’s no Frank Gehry or Daniel Libeskind. He doesn’t have the splashy temperament, nor the abrasive style (more on that later). Antonio’s furnishings, interiors and buildings aren’t eye-catching talking-points. He doesn’t court shock value or glam frills, or value outré shapes or humour above functionality. That’s not his wont and that’s not him. According to him, he doesn’t even have a style. “No,” he says bluntly when, on meeting him, I go for the jugular and ask him if he does, adding, “And this is an important distinction. I don’t have an obsession with style. I work with synthesis more than expression.” e are in the offices of Antonio Citterio Patricia Viel and Partners. Located on via Cerva, just around the corner from the Milan branch of B&B Italia, one of the high-end furniture brands he has a long and prosperous working relationship with, it’s a smart office in a slender and severe stone building. Yet this office, this environment, this world, is alluring in its deceptive simplicity. Antonio sits behind a large white desk, shelves lined with monographs behind him. The furnishings we sit on are products he and his firm has designed over the years; and leavening that severity – and adding visual energy – are pieces of contemporary art. “When I do something, I have to learn, to understand why I’m doing it.” He, like his designs, is cool and collected. He chooses his words slowly and carefully. “I don’t want to see a building in Berlin like one in Bangkok. I’m not interested in
Antonio doesn’t court shock value or glam frills, or value outré shapes or humour above functionality. That’s not his wont and that’s not him.
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There are so many products in the marketplace that nobody really cares about because there is no space or need for them. You have to understand the needs.
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this kind of style. There are some other architects – very famous team of architects he leads. After consisting mainly of offices ones – that do that. But not me.” If not a style, then what do you and private homes, his architectural vocabulary expanded have? An approach, he explains. “My approach is my style. considerably in 2000, when he was signed on to create his Look at this building. I tried to use old local materials; this first hotel: the Bulgari in Milan. With clean lines and hushed, stone is typical Milanese stone from the twenties and thirties elegant interiors filled with black granite and Burmese teak, – stone that comes from an area close to Milan. For me it was it’s a thing of cool, understated, sober beauty. So universal more important to create a connection between this building was the acclaim that Antonio Citterio and Partners has and other buildings.” become the go-to firm for the luxury brand, creating hotels in Bali and London (the next will What he’s referring to be in Dubai), each one sitehere is contextuality, the idea specific yet distinctly Bulgari. that, as Luigi Puglisi’s writes His firm also does in his rigorous if slightly dry residential buildings and 2004 monograph on Antonio, high rises, many of them “architectural work must in Asia. This is presenting belong to the site, rather than new challenges. For Antonio emerge from it.” This marks there remains a culture gap him out from the explosive in spite of the flattening style of, say, Zaha Hadid, the effect of globalisation. “The Iraqi-British starchitect whose main investment in real sleek, space-ship like design estate is coming from China, for the Tokyo 2020 Olympics Malaysia, Asia,” he says, stadium has been witheringly “but sometimes it feels as if denounced by many fellow it’s happening too quickly architects as, The Guardian and that some people don’t put it recently, a “monstrosity understand an apartment. For that stands out only because us in Europe it’s our culture, of its incongruity with its no?” The concept of urbanity surroundings.” By contrast, is also different. In Milan, Antonio’s urban buildings Ermenegildo Zegna headquarters, Milan, Italy. Antonio walks from his home “underline their presence,” as to his office in the morning, Luigi writes, “without raising then back again at night. But their voice.” As for his country “this quality of urban in Asia doesn’t really exist,” he says. houses, these lie within the landscape, their eave lines tending “I think now the real work is to understand what urbanism to reflect the movement of the terrain, and they are typically really means – what it means to walk on the street and build made of natural materials such as stone or wood. (Even his something close to the other; not just to build a high-rise factory for gym equipment manufacturer Technogym employs building or an icon, but to build the whole street.” such a philosophy, the contours of its roofs flowing with the hills on which it stands). ntonio’s buildings might appear normal, austere even, Contextuality isn’t the only axiom that comprises the in comparison to the Deconstructivist confections of Citterio way. Other principles in his functional, no-frills other architects of this age, but they aren’t drab, nor are they approach include: a fixation with finding the correct solution sterile. And the same goes for his products. A designer for for each project; an anti-decorative obsession that seems to connoisseurs, Antonio’s impeccable creations conjure sober owe a debt to the writings of late Austrian architect Adolf adjectives such as rich, refined, slick, tactile, masculine and Loos; and a quasi-religious belief in simplicity, one that recalls unpretentious, and exude a knowing sense of fashion and minimalism but “never its anorexic forms of renunciation.” luxuriant good taste. (If there is a flaw, it’s perhaps this: Together, these guiding rules have well served Antonio and the
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Backstage wardrobe system for B&B Italia. Axor Citterio E mixer for Hansgrohe.
Grand Repos lounge chair for Vitra.
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they’ve become such a shoe-in for upscale condominiums and hotels and meeting rooms around the world that they can seem commonplace or predictable.) Above all else, they have clarity of purpose, each one being a thoughtful response to a question posed by how we now live, work and play. “There are so many products in the marketplace that nobody really cares about,” he says combatively, “because there is no space or need for them. You have to understand the needs.” Though he sometimes creates new products to fill gaps in the market – gaps he often notices when working on his architecture and interior projects – he doesn’t just churn them out habitually, year after year. You’ve heard of slowcooked food? Well, Antonio is a great believer in slow-cooked design. “What I really like in design is not to do something quickly; it’s to do something for forty years,” he says with a smile. Magazines and newspapers like to rave about the new must-have – the latest limited-edition conceptual sofa or extravagantly-contoured lamp collection – but for him this is not how largescale industrial design works or what makes it enjoyable. Designs evolve over the longterm. They get better and more environmentally friendly as materials develop and our understanding grows. This is how it worked for departed greats such as Eames, and this is how it works for Antonio. His Maxalto collection for B&B Italia, for example, was launched in 1975 and is still growing, while iterations of his cantilevered Visavis conference room chair for Vitra have, since its launch in 1992, sold over one and a half million units and counting. “Every year I do something different; I change the materials or fabrics. It’s completely different to trying to design a new product every year.” How does he set about making these subtle modifications? “I don’t do drawings,” he says. “It’s a sensibility, no? I say, ‘look, maybe we need this
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or to change that.’ And after that I want to see a prototype. This is the craft touch – I consider myself a craftsman.” Sounds borderline simple? For Antonio, with his keen eye for detail and quality materials, it is. “Furniture is now my hobby,” he says grinning, “something I do on Saturday and Sunday – it's very easy. There are 75 architects in this firm and only one designer: me.” here does he sit in the firmament of great designer-architects? Italian design has taken many twists and turns since the end of World War II: rising to supremacy in the ’60s and ’70s, after the hardship of the Mussolini-era forced designers to be creative with humdrum materials; taking a post-modern and altogether whimsical turn in the ’80s thanks to Milan's Memphis Group; paring things down to something safer and more marketable – slick minimalism – in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Striving for sensuality and luxury and timeless designs, the work of Antonio would appear to fit in the latter group. His outlook that is at once global and local, and preoccupation with fine materials and impeccable workmanship, also places him alongside other Milanese changemakers, from Armani to Domus magazine. But as Luigi points out in his monograph, Antonio can’t be pigeonholed so neatly, as his work eschews easy stylistic definition. Not that he thinks this is a bad thing. “Actually,” he writes, “I feel that his not being defined by some ism gives Citterio and his partner Viel a greater sense of control.” A sense of control… that is something Antonio exudes. He is a man with poise and self-assurance and nothing left to prove, it seems – except maybe one thing. There is one thing that he would love to build but hasn’t had the chance to yet. “I want to build a museum,” he says with a rascally, bring-it-on grin. Perhaps we'll make a headline-grabbing starchitect out of him yet.
Furniture is now my hobby, something I do on Saturday and Sunday – it's very easy.
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new Christian Louboutin boutique just opened in Paris. It’s pigment available and, true to Louboutin’s fixation on beauty, comes in beautiful: a multi-faceted two-story space with silky white walls, a magnificent, 16-facet crystal bottle (smoothened by a hand-held flame) mirrored details and vaulted ceilings. Natural light filters in through and a sleekly ergonomic, wand-like cap. It takes 22 weeks to craft each a makeshift skylight, brightening up the room with a near-divine handmade piece, enough justification for Louboutin to flaunt them like luminescence and giving it the feel of a mini-shrine. The curious thing: objets d’ art at his Parisian temple to beauty. there are no shoes in this Louboutin temple. Instead, tiny alcoves built The very first nail polish Louboutin launched is an eponymous shade into the wall highlight small glass bottles with long, slim, spired caps. in the same vivid crimson as his signature. Rouge Louboutin is a glossy red Encased in these bottles: nail lacquer, possibly the most luxurious the completely at home in its Parisian birthplace. It’s a red that channels the world has ever seen. heavy-lidded coquettishness of Brigitte Bardot and Emmanuel Beart but The fashion world was all up on its toes in the middle of last year also the gamine playfulness of Audrey Tatou and Marion Cotillard. It’s a when French shoe designer Christian Louboutin unveiled his first foray red that says to the world, “I am beautiful and I won’t be ignored.” Which into beauty. Fashionistas fawned, beauty junkies blogged, the red-sole fan seems to be what Christian Louboutin is gunning for. For the footwear nearly swooned. It was the same kind of fanfare that erupted when Marc designer, beauty is a serious thing, as serious as stilettos completing an allJacobs launched his beauty line in 2013 or Tom Ford two years prior. black ensemble, as serious as leg-lengthening five-inch heels. “If you’re In an industry where evolution is crucial and designers are the catalyst talking beauty, it needs to be beautiful, because we are surrounded by tons for change, the new and the unexpected always generate anticipation and of objects now, in every civilisation, and there are so many ugly objects,” excitement. the designer has said in an interview. “You know, I just want the object to always be present because this Louboutin is among the new is here, this is in your bag, this is in wave of fashion labels (which, your bathroom. Too many objects aside from Marc Jacobs and Tom are ugly, and I think that I do not Ford, includes Burberry and want to add in that direction.” Gucci) that has cast their lot into the world of lipstick, bronzers and Do take it personal blush. Beauty, it seems, has become This beauty venture comes at a the new status quo – when a luxe time of strong momentum for the design house looks to cosmetics Paris-based footwear firm, which, for business, or in Louboutin’s according to reports, produces case, even just nail polish, it is a Beauty and fashion have always nearly a million pairs of shoes a testimony to their place in fashion’s been partners in crime, but a recent year. Now at the top of his game, hall of fame. wave of fashion-designer-produced Christian Louboutin is finally cosmetics shows how lipstick and fulfilling another long-time dream. Beauty needs to be beautiful nail polish can really make a killing. Rouge Louboutin and the 30 other And the designer seems to be shades in the collection are the basking in this elevated position. designer’s passion project, one enveloped in spikes and shine. Less than a year after launching his nail lacquers, Christian Louboutin Expanding into other luxury items such as makeup is a personally has seen fit to build his beauty boutique, cementing the resoluteness of his motivated endeavour for many fashion moguls. Tom Ford admitted as beauty intentions and further proving that his namesake label has an appeal much when he launched his cosmetics line a few years ago. “I’ve cared outside of cantilevered footwear. The boutique is also a testament to the about cosmetics and makeup since I was a kid, and at Gucci, I’d spend willingness of beauty worshippers to plunk down €45 for a small bottle days working with a makeup artist to perfect the show look,” the designers of paint. Then again, this is not just any nail polish. This is polish with revealed in an interview with Women’s Wear Daily. “I never had a desire to a story. Back in 1992, while working on a design for his third footwear wear the clothes, but makeup? That I’m serious about.” collection, Louboutin was obsessing over a particular design that didn’t Tom Ford Beauty, created in collaboration with cosmetics behemoth look as compelling as his original sketch. He impulsively snatched a Estee Lauder, was a phenomenal hit when it launched in 2011. bottle of rich red nail varnish from an assistant and painted underneath Encompassing lipsticks, shadows, blushes, foundations and even basic the shoe, hence the birth of the fashion world’s most recognisable sole. In skincare, the line further propelled Ford, who was creative director at a way, there’s a sentimentality attached to Louboutin’s decision to enter Gucci prior to launching his own brand, as an international name with the beauty industry via nail colour instead of fragrance or lipstick, one that talents beyond skilfully executed suits. Last year, the designer launched 50 has been translated to the designer coming full circle or going back to his different lipstick shades – each one cheekily named after a man from the red-tinged roots. designer’s past and present – just to further bolster his beauty empire and At about 1,600 baht for a bottle (the lacquers are not yet available to show that he has the guts and the means to match up to the industry’s in Thailand but are available online at third-party luxury stores), the biggest luxury brands. WWD recently reported that Tom Ford’s beauty product is being positioned as a genuine, hyper-luxurious experience: brand alone is now estimated to be worth US $370 million. It’s still a tenth the long-wearing, chip-resistant formula has the highest percentage of
Fashion's new face
by ana g. kalaw / illustrations by terawat teankaprasith
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every way: hands-down glamorous yet oozing with that rare brand of highend sexuality. This requirement – how shimmery powder and lacquer cases need to completely integrate into a brand’s DNA – is probably the reason behind the lengthy gestation period that characterises the creation of a designer makeup line. It took about two and a half years for Louboutin to complete his lacquers. It took twice as long for Gucci to complete a full set of cosmetics. Gucci is the latest label to pick up the trend that sees luxury fashion labels entering the makeup market. The Kering-owned Italian house, apparently, needed four years to finalise its posh colour assortment. Produced in collaboration with internationally renowned makeup artist and creative design director for P&G Beauty Pat McGrath, Gucci Cosmetics was unveiled last year in a flurry of interconnected double Gs and gilded black packaging. Inclusive of moisturising lipsticks, volumising mascaras, high-gloss lacquers and even extravagantly soft brushes, this new makeup line is as discreetly luxurious as the name it banners. No attention to detail is spared, from the longwearing formula of most of its makeup to the magnetic Designer-branded closures of its glossy black cases. Gucci Cosmetics makeup and made sure to make a statement when it launched seven months ago, one that says that it doesn’t need to catch fragrance puts a up to any brand, and that, with the pioneer collection piece of the luxury alone, it has already arrived. lifestyle within
of the designer’s $3 billion goal, but Tom Ford Beauty, five years after first launching, is well on its way, one highly pigmented lipstick at a time. Christian Louboutin and Tom Ford’s venture into beauty merchandise also represent a growing movement by fashion labels into the easiest and most obvious form of diversification. Apart from assuaging personaldesigner objectives or elevating a brand’s status, beauty has become a sure-fire way to dredge up more business for a brand. Makeup and skincare allows a label to tap into a new clientele, one that doesn’t necessarily converge with an already existing bag- or clothes-purchasing customer. While ready-to-wear and accessories come with heftier price tags, lipsticks dripping with a brand’s essence present themselves as more affordable yet equally coveted options. “Cosmetics are more accessible,” says Ford. “Our customer is the Tom Ford woman and anyone who aspires to be [one] if they can afford it.”
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Beauty and the bank Glamorously packaged, designer-branded makeup and fragrance puts a piece of the luxury lifestyle within reach of women who can’t afford to spend tens of thousands on a high-end designer dress or a six-figure handbag. Coco Chanel, the first designer to diversify into beauty with Chanel No 5 was privy to this piece of wisdom long before anyone else, and so were Christian Dior and Yves Saint Laurent. Consumer aspiration allows, even promotes, the reach of women Cosmetic collaborations saleability of fashion-produced beauty. At the same who can’t afford If they’re not purveying their own beauty brands, time, it encourages an extreme form of brand loyalty to spend tens of designers are in cahoots with some of beauty’s biggest among die-hard fashion followers. Beauty is an easy thousands on a players to produce limited-edition collections. In 2013, way to make money. Beauty can take a brand all the high-end designer Lanvin designer Alber Elbaz translated his fanciful way to the bank. dress or a sixdesigns into colourful eye makeup for Lancôme. Makeup also isn’t subject to seasonal figure handbag. The set incorporated Elbaz’s signature whimsical obsolescence the way ready-to-wear is. Nude illustrations – cartoonish eyes, wriggly polka dots and lipstick, red nail colour or concealer can remain in sketchy hearts – into mascaras, eyeshadows, liner and a brand’s repertoire for years, with more chances of a pair of falsies. Late last year, a second collaboration achieving cult status than a tote bag or a pair of shoes. between Karl Lagerfeld and Shu Uemura featured the The women who bought YSL’s iconic Touche Eclat beauty brand’s most iconic products emblazoned with sketched portraits of concealer when it first launched 20 years ago are most likely still buying Choupette, the designer’s feline companion and possibly the world’s first it now. However, the woman who bought a pair of YSL Tribute pumps in It cat. (Choupette has two maids, a bodyguard and a personal chef, not 2009 is not necessarily buying another pair six years down the line. Beauty to mention a Twitter account with nearly 47,000 followers.) Aside from surpasses trends in a way fashion, in its propensity for constant change, Lagerfeld, Shu Uemura has also collaborated with designers Viktor & Rolf can’t. History has also shown that beauty products have more of a pull and, most recently, jewellery designer Yaz Bukey. Another fashion-beauty over fashion merchandise during economic downturns. The consumers team-up that produced amazing, not to mention lucrative, results was Phillip of luxury retail don’t necessarily stop shopping even when faced with a Lim’s recent collaboration with Nars. Jewel-toned nail varnish sold-out to recession; they just gravitate towards less expensive pick-me-ups such as fans who could easily purchase the collaboration’s $20 polish as opposed to lipstick or eyeliner. the designer’s $700 bags. Fashion and beauty partnerships have also seen mass-market or All in the DNA drugstore beauty brands sidling up to designer labels for upmarket cred, “Diversifying into colour cosmetics is no novel strategy for apparel from Lulu Guinness-created brushes for Tangle Teezer to Betsey Johnsonbrands,” blogs Ashma Kunde, apparel analyst for market research company updated tissue boxes for Kleenex to Rebecca Minkoff signing on as Color Euromonitor International. “The category is considered a natural extension Designer of the Year for the Essie brand of nail polish. Short-term hookto clothing due to its evident association with fashion.” Beauty products ups between mass-marketed brands and fashion designers are mutually are meant to complement a fashion designer’s philosophy from packaging beneficial: designer gets the chance to go viral while drugstore label gets a to marketing efforts to the range itself. Tom Ford’s cosmetics, coated in shot at upmarket imaging. Who knows? The collaboration might even prove burnished brown packaging and promoted with ads featuring sultry-looking lucrative. women with bed hair, mirrors Tom Ford’s ready-to-wear collections in
Still from “Wanderlust” directed by Encyclopedia Pictura (2008).
all is full of love Björk has come to New York’s Museum of Modern Art, but does its reverential retrospective hit the right notes? by michael thomsen t’s hard to imagine Björk’s career without music videos. Like many other pop musicians, she has used video as a way of both expanding the emotional palate of her music and underscoring its unusualness. In the waning days of the music video, with MTV long since transformed and the era of YouTube sensations quietly retreating into the past, Björk’s commitment to the form has become an anachronism, an attempt to reclaim for art what’s only ever been meant as an ornament of marketing. Her newest album, Vulnicura, was released along with a small explosion of music videos including a “moving album cover” to explain the collection’s metaphor of volcanic rebirth, and a video made for Oculus Rift, but the most unusual is for the album’s centrepiece, “Black Lake,” commissioned by the Museum of Modern Art as part of its new show celebrating the musician’s career, a presentation that is almost singularly focused on the mutable version of Björk let loose across her catalog of music videos. When viewed in isolation, “Black Lake” is a boilerplate music video, a singer filmed while touring through some symbolically loaded landscape, but when viewed in a museum it feels jarringly artificial. Presented in a small
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screening room designed by architect David Benjamin and a small group from software design company Autodesk, the “Black Lake” installation attempts to answer the exhibition’s central question of how to hang a song on a museum wall. Benjamin and his team attempted to recreate the narrow gullies of volcanic earth Björk wanders through in the video, lining the walls and ceiling of the room in black-felt sound panels, each shaped in the conical image of digital sound waves taken from the song. The space feels both primordial and cryptically patterned. The video is projected on opposite walls of the room, causing the audience to self-arrange into two separate groups seated on the floor (there are no chairs) like children assembling around a storyteller, a confessional Earth mother whose emotional distress merges with the 156
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landscape of black soil and electric blue lava gushing from earthen wounds in sobs. The video recalls the video for “Big Time Sensuality,” which helped establish Björk in the public imagination in 1993. Brash and celebratory, it shows the singer on a massive flatbed truck moving through the caged streets of Manhattan. The camera is static, but Björk is in motion throughout, growing indifferent and wandering away from the camera and then returning to it in bursts of youthful exuberance. In “Black Lake,” Björk follows the camera, which is constantly retreating from her mournful reach. The impression one has is less of a phenomenological outburst of joy than of a suffering human invisibly chained to the camera, chasing after its reifying glance. The video captures an act
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of submission and manufactures its repetition until its subject is made disincarnate, suspended in the air in a costume of copper-coloured strands drawn away from her body like dandelion florets, which, once emptied, prompt her departure into the volcanic gloom. There is something stalker-ish in the exhibit’s collection of old costumes and obsessive cataloging of Björk’s work. Immediately upon exiting the “Black Lake” presentation, you encounter another small theatre playing a four-hour loop of every single music video Björk has ever made, and on the floor above is a linear maze decorated with an array of infamous costumery, childhood mementos, and scraps of songwriting material. Called “Songlines,” this portion of the exhibition is meant to be a sort of post-mortem fairytale, constructed through invasive access to mythic leftovers and narrated as an epic poem by Icelandic poet Sjón, one that tells the story of “a girl who lived alone in a lava field in a forest.” One winds through a landscape of discarded identities, iconic moments in an emotional history. There is Alexander McQueen’s dress of little silver bells worn in the video for “Who Is It? (Carry My
Joy on the Left, Carry My Pain on the Right),” the swan dress worn to the Academy Awards in 2001, and the furry gray sweater worn on the cover of Debut, here worn by a mannequin frozen in a glass case along the atrium railing at the edge of the exhibit. All of it adds up to a sort of proof that Björk is real, not the human who methodically composes, performs, records and mixes music each year, but instead the mythic entity evoked through that music’s transformation into commercial material, transmedia spectacles whose primary purpose is to invent a need for something the media itself doesn’t – and can’t – contain. Wandering through the “Songlines” portion, there is an unavoidable sense of incoherence, each piece having been made by a different set of hands and according to a radically different aesthetic, though always for the cause of a music video, to decorate the landscape of salesmanship they look in on. To hear Björk speak about her work, or to simply listen to it, her imprint and presence are unmistakably cohesive. The ways in which her records try and develop away from some inescapable tonalities and rhythms before inevitably returning to the
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All of it adds up to a sort of proof that BjÜrk is real, not the human who methodically composes, performs, records and mixes music each year, but instead the mythic entity evoked through that music’s transformation into commercial material.
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familiar harmonies, beats and stately melodies tells a better myth of a singular spirit working its way out into the world through the narrow straits of mouth and fingers and brass and strings. Yet the show has an unmistakable potency, a gauche and gaudy power that is less an appreciation of Björk’s confabulations of sound and fancy than a demonstration of the museum’s ability to accommodate a contemporary star in a domineering way, creating a processional of historic importance for articles of clothing that were never meant to function as such. o reinforce the point of total ownership and obsession, the exhibition is suffused throughout the entire museum. The gravity harps handmade for Biophilia by designer Andrew Cavatorta are placed on opposite corners of the museum lobby, one grouping facing the ticket counter and another, single harp
standing in front of the courtyard, a massive line of pendulums swinging in different tempos, each weighted arm plucking a different string and together merging the melodic cascade of notes with an invisible sensation of the air reshaped and set in motion toward one’s waiting body. A floor above, in a satellite exhibit of technologically focused works ironically titled “This Is for Everyone: Design Experiments for the Common Good,” sits a bank of iPads loaded with the app built for Biophilia. The first app to enter the MoMA’s collection, Biophilia is part of Björk’s earnest but doomed attempt to transcend the structural limits of the album and give the world a form of composed musical interactivity that would make them feel as creatively connected to the work as the musicians who’d worked on it. While poetic in theory, the app consists of 10 smaller micro-games to
accompany each song on the album, each of which feels handcuffed and claustrophobic. Unlike sitting down in front of a piano or a Pro Tools station, the more one plays, the less it seems possible to do. These sorts of constraints are an art unto themselves, though they connect less to Björk’s work than to the labour inherent in museum curation itself. In Ways of Looking, John Berger described the emergence of oil painting in the 16th century as a precursor to the emergence of art as publicity, calling it “not so much a framed window open on to the world as a safe let into the wall, a safe in which the visible has been
deposited.”Among all the great museums in New York, entering MoMA feels the most safe-like, a massive rectilinear agglomeration of glass and metal designed to project the foreboding of great value held within while veiling it in an outer neutrality. In the way that the Biophilia app mystifies the act of musical creation behind a haze of digital lights and mostly unresponsive geometric patterns, the “Songlines” exhibit mystifies the obvious and already well-appreciated channels of Björk’s career through its pettiest and most facile pieces. Many have assumed this is a flaw in the show, a sign of
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All installation images courtesy of Museum of Modern Art; photographed by Jonathan Muziker.
The show has an unmistakable potency, a gauche and gaudy power that is less an appreciation of Björk’s confabulations of sound and fancy than a demonstration of MoMA’s ability to accommodate a contemporary star in a domineering way.
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the decadent hubris of curator Klaus Biesenbach, who’s said to have spent more than a decade trying to convince Björk to collaborate with the museum. New York’s longtime art critic Jerry Saltz described the show as “another self-inflicted wound in the most important institution to Modernism on Earth.”ArtNet News’s Ben Davis said it was “just a bunch of stuff that you wander through in vague discomfort.” The Economist wrote that it was “the kind of celebrity flim-flam one might find in a Hard Rock Café.” Beneath these excoriations is the fact that self-inflicted wounds are central to modernism, and the museum has become a place for social masochism. The fixation on clothing in the Björk exhibit, and the importance of it to reinforcing her identity as both unreachably alien and primally human, reflects
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a fundamental rupture with art’s historical functioning, the lucid mythologies of which Berger described as “a garment held out for the spectator-owner to put his arms into and wear.” If there is a unifying principle to the sartorial inventions of Björk’s most iconic work, it is an essential unwearability, the creation of art objects either so unashamedly metaphoric, they wither one’s confidence, or else so structurally abstract and non-functional, they become inhuman and so make one self-conscious of one’s own body. These sorts of catastrophic collisions between art history and signification formed from no known canon leaves one with the uneasy feeling of being sold not a product but a promise of future emptiness. The incompleteness of the exhibit and its attempt to narrate byproducts of Björk’s major works is, in art-historical terms,
a spectacle of insignificance, a reflection of the museum as a space that remains culturally dominant even when it appears to have nothing to dominate with. In the way that the sheet-music industry of the 19th century was driven by the promise of disposability embedded within each pop song, the music video was driven to animate that disposability with a wardrobe built for non-bodies, a landscape invented for non-beings, and an Earth mother conceived for anyone but us. MoMA’s Björk lays out a diorama of seeming flaws so indifferent to criticism that they merely become things to marvel at, portals of disbelief permanently out of place in rooms nobody calls home. “Bjork,” at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, runs until June 7th.
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Aerial view of a South Pacific island.
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SOUTH SEA DREAMING The exquisite beauty of French Polynesia has drawn dreamers ever since its remote islands were revealed to the world in the 18th century. by keith mundy
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painting by Paul Gauguin has just been sold for the biggest price ever paid for an art work, almost US $300 million. The picture is of two Tahitian girls in the artist’s intensely colourful post-Impressionist style that we all know so well. And why do we know it? Because Gauguin’s works in Polynesia hit our exotic escape button. They conjure up dreams of tropical paradise, of lazy days under swaying palms in a voluptuous culture. Even if here in Thailand we have the siren call of our own palmfringed isles with all their natural beauty, Gauguin’s Tahitian paintings still call out to us from a far-flung and still-mysterious, even more magnetic place, the islands of the South Seas. And then we see photographic images and video travelogues showing the staggering beauty of Moorea, Bora Bora and the Marquesas, and it is quite clear that Gauguin wasn’t fooling us about the loveliness of French Polynesia; these islands match our wildest dreams. Located in the lonely heart of the South Pacific, equidistant from Australia and the Americas, French Polynesia is a widely strung out collection of islands grouped in five archipelagos. The whole area is often referred to as Tahiti, but in fact Tahiti is simply the biggest and best-known island amongst a total of 118 islands that make up a
The whole area is often referred to as Tahiti, but in fact Tahiti is simply the biggest and best-known island amongst a total of 118 islands.
French semi-autonomous territory. Despite extending over four million square kilometres of ocean, the territory has a total land area just half that of the Bangkok Metropolitan Area with a total population of only 271,000. Its basic assets are miniscule, but who cares when its scenic value is so gigantic? This is a place of scarcely believable beauty, varying from the forest greens and iridescent blues of the mountainous Society Islands to the turquoise lagoons ringed by white-sand islets in the low-lying Tuamotu atolls, from the soaring emerald peaks of the wild Marquesas in the north to the remote and rarely visited Austral and Gambier islands in the south. In the 1940s, James Michener Sofitel Beach Resort at dawn, Moorea.
The Le Meridien resort, Papeete.
travelled through the southwestern Pacific and came up with a mythical island called Bali H’ai as his earthly paradise for his Tales of the South Pacific. The American author based his tropical idyll on two islands he’d seen, one in the Solomons and one in Vanuatu. Soon Bali H’ai became world-famous via the Broadway musical and Hollywood movie called South Pacific. Only then did Michener visit French Polynesia, to be so stunned by Moorea and then floored by Bora Bora that he said, “This is actually what I had in mind when I invented Bali H’ai.” Moorea, he called “a monument to the prodigal beauty of nature,” but Bora Bora was “the Bali H’ai of the spirit.” There can’t be much more of a recommendation than that: to conjure up a heavenly place in your head, and then to say that you found it in reality. But Michener was only a latecomer amongst those who voyaged to this gorgeous and lonely place. The islands of the central Pacific were the last frontier of human migration, the last places on Earth
to be settled by mankind. These specks of land in the vastness of the Pacific Ocean were first reached by seafarers as late as around 200 AD, when brilliant Polynesians navigating by the stars found their way to the Marquesas, and a century after to the more habitable Society Islands, which include Tahiti, Moorea and Bora Bora. They must have felt they had won humankind’s lottery. When Europeans finally landed in the islands in the late 18th century, they too were overcome by their beauty and abundant fertility — as well as the sensuality and availability of their women, the legendary vahines. Why did the crew of the HMS Bounty mutiny, in that dramatic true-to-life story made into no less than three Hollywood epics? To get back to Tahiti and the arms of its women, and hopefully stay there the rest of their lives. The accounts written by the French admiral Louis de Bougainville and the British explorer James Cook, who landed at Tahiti in 1768 and 1769
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A lagoon belonging to Bora Bora island.
“Why did the crew of the HMS Bounty mutiny, in that dramatic true-to-life story made into no less than three Hollywood epics? To get back to Tahiti and the arms of its women. �
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Overwater bungalows in a lagoon.
A catamaran anchored off Fatu Hiva.
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respectively, started the legend still pinned to the islands like a gardenia in a vahine’s hair. Captain Cook noted in his diary the women “dancing a very indecent dance.” Bougainville, the more cultured of the two, saw “the celestial form of Venus” in the half-naked women and the noble savage in the men, which was leapt upon by Enlightenment philosophers back in France to support their theories of perfect innocence in contrast to the corrupt civilised man of Europe. The French sailors, with more basic tastes, were delighted to see the women dropping their sarongs to entice them ashore. The local attitude to sexuality was as relaxed as the climate was balmy, and totally different from back home. "Taboo" is a Polynesian word, but the Tahitian taboos were not at all the same as the European ones, concerned with food and death, for instance, and not about nooky.
A century later Gauguin still believed in this fantasy of primitive purity and sensuality, which is what set him on his first voyage to Tahiti in 1891. But he soon found that the colonial authorities and Christian missionaries had radically changed the island peoples. Most unfortunately, they had become prim in their dress and morals, but Gauguin pressed on regardless with his vision, determined to make a myth and prove an artistic point to the folks back in stiff, grey Paris. So what is left today of the South Sea paradise? Fortunately, a great deal. For at least a century and a half, brassieres have covered the brown peaks that were once so open to view, but little has altered the loveliness of the natural environment. Roads encircle the main islands like Tahiti and Moorea, with much strip development, and there is also the little matter of nuclear-bomb testing from 1966 to 1996, in two remote atolls located
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1,250 km southeast of Tahiti. But given 118 islands that are expensive to get to and expensive to stay in, tourists are not very numerous, and neither are the natives, so there is not a great deal of development on most of the islands and still an immense amount of natural beauty. Indeed, more than half the islands are uninhabited and unexploited. It’s trip-of-a-lifetime territory for most of those who go there, a place for a well-earned, one-off splurge, or a very special occasion such as a honeymoon. In fact, the islands are specifically sold as a honeymoon destination, garnering love-struck Americans and Australians in particular, as well as shyly amorous Japanese, for whom getting there is less of a stretch than for most people. Tahiti even carries the title of “The Island of Love,” riffing on the image created by all those Westerners from 18th-century sailors through 19thcentury writers to 20th-century filmmakers. If all you want to do is lie back in languor with a translucent lagoon lapping at your feet, there cannot be any more lovely place to do it. World travellers from Robert Louis Stevenson in 1888 to Paul Theroux a century later have said so, each having sailed through much of the Pacific. In his travel book on the Pacific islands, The Happy Isles of Oceania, Theroux goes to Hiva Overwater bungalows perched off the island of Moorea.
Oa in the Marquesas to see Gauguin’s grave on a hillside, then muses about the painter’s work. “The faces in Gauguin’s paintings can be encountered all over Tahiti and the Marquesas, but the backgrounds and landscapes are idealised and dreamlike – the pink meadows and blue beaches are experiments in colour relationships, not expressions of geography. Instead of depicting the Marquesan landscape of great rocks and black cliffs, deep valleys, cataracts and green mountain sides, Gauguin invented Polynesia. So people came. What they find is just as magical.” Above all they find the lagoon, the archetypal Tahiti experience. All of the islands are volcanic in origin, many with soaring mountains eroded into jagged peaks, cloaked, it seems, in rich green moss like spires of emerald velvet. Around them, coral reefs have formed, leaving shallow lagoons between the reef and the island. The Society Islands are like this, with Bora Bora as the beauty queen. Other volcanos, as in the Tuamotu atolls, have been worn away to a verdant flatness or disappeared beneath the sea, but again they are ringed by coral reefs that enclose translucent lagoons in heavenly shades of aquamarine and turquoise. The waters teem with fish, especially on Tikehau, which is edged by both white and pink sand beaches. These lagoons cried out to be enjoyed, and the Polynesian tourist
Tahiti Fact File Flights Qantas and Air New Zealand offer flights from Bangkok to Papeete (Tahiti). Cruises All these cruises depart from Papeete. -Paul Gauguin Cruises Luxury cruises on a mid-sized cruise ship. www.pgcruises.com -Windstar Cruises Luxury cruises on a four-masted sailing boat; www.windstarcruises.com -Aranui Comfortable cruises on an inter-island freighter with passenger cabins; www.aranui.com Yacht charter -Tahiti Yacht Charter Specialist in private sailboat-catamaran cruising in French Polynesia. Raiatea, Society Islands; www.tahitiyachtcharter.com. -An alternative is Tahiti Yachts, www.tahitiyachts.com Resorts -The Brando A new environmentally-sensitive, superexpensive resort on the atoll of the Marlon Brando estate. Tetiaroa, Society Islands; thebrando.com -Tikehau Pearl Beach Resort A honeymooner favourite with overwater bungalows on a blue lagoon. Tikehau, Tuamotus; www.selecthotels.com -Maitai Polynesia Bora Bora The overwater lagoon experience at modest prices. Bora Bora, Society Islands; www.hotelmaitai.com -Keikahanui Nuku Hiva Pearl Lodge A fine place to experience the wild Marquesas. Nuku Hiva, Marquesas; www.pearlodge.com When to go The more pleasant time is the drier and slightly cooler season from June to October, although July and August are busy. The more humid and slightly warmer season runs from November to April.
Mount Otemanu and a barrier reef, Bora Bora.
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There is not a great deal of development on most of the islands and still an immense amount of natural beauty. Dancers in a Haka group, Ua Pu Island, Bay of Hakahetau.
of the 1962 epic The Mutiny on the Bounty, Brando fell in love during location-filming both with a local girl and with the islands. So much so that he married Tarita Teri'ipaia, his lover in the film, and bought an atoll, Teriatoa. A small atoll off Bora Bora.
Tiki statue on Hiva Oa island.
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Located 50 km north of Tahiti, Teriatoa is the desert island of countless dreams, a cluster of whitesand islets covered in coconut palms set in a blue lagoon encircled by a coral reef. Brando escaped there whenever he could, and after his death in 2004, his estate planned a unique resort that would combine luxury and environmental sustainability in line with the actor’s own vision. Opened in 2014 with 35 secluded villas and two gourmet restaurants, the Brando makes its own energy from the sun and coconut oil, supports research and conservation, and charges guests an arm and a leg – minimum 2,400 euros (about 85,000 baht) per night, everything included. If you’re not satisfied with one island – even that one – and want to explore the archipelagos, several cruise operations offer voyages starting from Papeete. The most beautiful ship has to be the Wind Spirit, a four-masted yacht accommodating just 148 guests operated by Windstar Cruises. The most economical way to cruise the islands is on the Aranui, an inter-island freighter forever doing supply missions lasting two weeks. With cabins for 200 in its rear superstructure, it’s a relatively affordable way to see the Marquesas, where it spends two-thirds of the voyage. But without a doubt the best way
to do the islands is in your own schooner, with your own crew. These islands were made for sailing before the wind on wooden decks, not cruising on diesel in a metal hunk, and you can charter a yacht with crew in Papeete. Surprisingly, only 3,400 euros (about 120,000 baht) gets six people a week on a sailboat-catamaran. But if you’re penniless, there’s still a way, as long as you can get to some yachting port on the Pacific rim like San Francisco or Sydney or Auckland. Ask around for yachts heading to Tahiti and offer yourself as a deck hand. (It often works.) The last word on today’s Tahiti has to go to that acute but grumpy observer, Paul Theroux, again from The Happy Isles of Oceania. Paddling his kayak across a lagoon, he encounters two French women sunbathing nude on a raft, which prompts a truly telling comment. “Once upon a time the Tahitian had revelled in nakedness and seduced European sailors and tempted them from their stern duties on shipboard. But these days only the tourists went naked, and the bare tits you saw were always those of visiting sunbathers. The Tahitians were all covered up and decent; history’s wheel had taken a complete turn, the fantasies were reversed, and now it was the Christian Tahitians who leered, and the pagan French who were naked.”
photo: ©corbis / profile
industry excelled in response, inventing the overwater bungalows that you reach along boardwalks, stilted above the shallow waters. You don’t just go down to the lagoon, you live above it in a watery idyll, especially if you choose the ones that don’t have airconditioning and flat-screen TVs, or electricity at all. But there are not many, because 500-dollar a night luxury is the overwater norm, provided by wellknown five-star brands, at least half a dozen of them on Bora Bora alone. And they’re a bit old-hat now anyway, so if you really want to go for broke, and be eco-responsible too, then you should go for the idyllic exclusivity of the new kid on the beach, the Brando, with its own island. Marlon Brando is intimately linked with Tahiti. The megastar
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Island Idylls In certain parts of the world, islands cluster in great number and with particular beauty, and you sail around a stunningly rich variety of scenery.
The Caribbean
If the South Seas have a serious rival as dream island waters, it is the Caribbean, whose isles are also often gorgeous, languorous and seductive, as well as always warm. First inhabited by Amerindian peoples, then occupied by European colonialists who used African slaves to work their plantations, the lovely Caribbean islands are today the playground of North Americans flying south for tropical sunshine, swaying palms and white sands. The pearl of the Caribbean is undoubtedly Cuba, the largest island with the richest culture, a heady mix of Spanish and African influences. A real one-off is Haiti, the first slave island to throw off its colonial shackles, dirt-poor but with its own vibrant French-African culture. The British used to transfer their most troublesome slaves to Jamaica, which has given the island a potent culture exemplified by reggae and Rastafarianism. In the old Dutch harbour of Curacao, if it weren’t for the bright colours and tropical heat, you’d think you were in Delft. Martinique and Guadeloupe are officially part of France and highly developed, while the string of little Windward Islands, languid, charming but sometimes volcanically explosive, thread down towards South America, ending in the popular holiday isle of Barbados.
The Aegean
The Canaries
Nowadays fully integrated into Spain and a major holiday destination for northern Europeans seeking the sun, the Canary Islands are an archipelago of seven main islands marooned off the northwest coast of Africa in the Atlantic Ocean, with the nearest just a hundred kilometres from southern Morocco. They are volcanic in origin, two bigger islands clearly showing this. The circular Gran Canaria is essentially a huge volcano, while Tenerife rises to the soaring volcanic cone of Mount Teide, Spain’s highest point at 3,718 metres. The islands were originally inhabited by the mysterious Guanche people, a trace of whose culture can be found in Silbo, the whistled language of La Gomera used across gorges. The Spanish colonised the islands in the 15th century, and galleons reprovisioned here on Atlantic crossings. Ever since the 1960s they have undergone intensive tourism development, particularly on Tenerife, which has the most beaches. Lanzarote is noted for its brown lava fields and black sands. Mountainous La Gomera boasts Valle Gran Rey, a canyon leading down to the sea which has a semi-tropical climate. “The Island of Eternal Spring” is a title several of them claim, given a balmy climate of Saharan heat attenuated by Atlantic winds.
Chilly in winter, Europe has archipelagos of sun-blessed isles when the summer comes, all in the Mediterranean, such as Spain’s Balearic Islands and Italy’s Aeolian Islands, but the most varied and largest archipelago is formed by the Greek islands of the Aegean Sea. In fact, the Ancient Greek word “archipelago” originally meant the Aegean Sea, then meant the islands in that sea, which number as many as 6,000 by the highest count, but with only 227 inhabited. Enshrined in legend since the days of Homer, today visited by many millions of sun-seekers every summer, the Aegean islands are grouped in several sub-archipelagos with names like the Dodecanese, the Cyclades and the Sporades. They include legendary destinations like Rhodes, Mykonos and Santorini, each quite different, but united by their typical whitewashed houses, arid landscapes and Greek Orthodox churches, as well as multitudes of beautiful boutique hotels and lively bars. For Europeans, this is as far south as they can go and as hot as they can get while still remaining in their own culture and continent; the Aegean islands have a powerful allure for the people of northern Europe in particular.