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THE FRESH NEW FACES ISSUE

Singapore

2020

ISSN 2301-3397 SGD8.00

Wide-eyed wonder

harris dickinson From Maleficent sequel to Kingsman prequelâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;the fresh-faced youth considers his credentials, the possibility of existing as a pin-up and being the happiest when living as someone else

Contents February 2020 | Volume 12 | No. 86 | The Fresh New Faces Issue

ON THE COVER Harris Dickinson Photography Justin Campbell Tank top, by Salvatore Ferragamo.

T H I S WAY I N 16 18

Neil before God Awe This page is lit Underneath a Sky of Red by Sufian Hakim; a serialised story

STYLE

23 24 26

32 38 40 50 54 64 68

Essentials of style Naturally good-looking Essentials of style Oliver Spencer Essentials of style Louboutin Essentials of style Pierre Alexandre M’Pelé Essentials of style Givenchy spring/ summer 2020 Fashion spread Louis Vuitton Essentials of style Op-ed Fashion spread London’s new faces Essentials of style Paul Andrew Fashion spread Sydney’s new faces Essentials of style Watch-shoe pairings Fashion spread Los Angeles’ new faces Essentials of style Knitwear

WAT C H E S 83 86

88 92

Watches Young watchmakers Watches Omega and James Bond Watches Creative dials Watches Smoky faces

Photograph by Gabe Chen. Styling by Eugene Lim.

Contents February 2020 | Volume 12 | No. 86 | The Fresh New Faces Issue

PORTFOLIO

112 119 126 133 134 136

Cover story Harris Dickinson Feature Autism Photo essay Singaporeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s new faces Feature Hendrix of the Sahara By the numbers The unusual suspects Feature Reed Morano Women we love Christina Tham

Photograph by Gabe Chen. Styling by Eugene Lim.

100

Contents February 2020 | Volume 12 | No. 86 | The Fresh New Faces Issue

ON THE SPINE Illustration Mark de Winne Combine issues No. 85 to No. 95 and be rewarded with the complete illustration.

MAHB

150 154 155 156 158 159 160 164 168 169 170 172 176

Food Kilo Kitchen Food Fable Meats Drinks Live Twice Drinks Ferdinandâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Gin Travel Chow Kit Travel Hotel Soloha Technology Arlo Pro 3 Technology Hideo Kojima Music Finneas Music Indie performers Design China in her hands Design Design of our times Cars Jaguar F-Pace Books Letâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s get personal

Photograph by Gabe Chen. Styling by Eugene Lim.

148

T H I S WAY O U T 178

Blank canvas Maxwell N Burnstein

This way in

Editorial

Art

Production

Editor-in-chief Norman Tan Features Editor Wayne Cheong Fashion Editor Eugene Lim Associate Fashion Editor Asri Jasman Writer Joy Ling Writer Derrick Tan Chief Sub-editor Jacqueline Danam Editor-at-Large (Watches & Jewellery) Celine Yap Contributing Motoring Editor Daryl Lee Group Digital Creative Producer Vanessa Caitlin Interns Ingrid Walker Chantelle David

Art Director Rebecca Chew Junior Art Director Penn Ey Chee Picture Editor Kenny Nguyen

Group Production Director Anna Tsirelnikova Media Trafic & Client Services Coordinator Dao Thu Ha Prepress IMV Repro Senior Reprographic Prepress Technician Phuong Ngo Reprographic Prepress Technician Anh Bui

Contributing

Writers & Stylists Charlie Teasdale, Daniel Dumas, David Bonney, David Kushner, Fabio Immediato, Finlay Renwick, Jane Rocca, Josh Sims, Miranda Collinge, Monty Jackson, Neil Humphreys, Nick Sullivan, Paul Wils, Rose Forde, Sufian Hakim

Photographers & Illustrators Charlie Gray, Dustin Aksland, Gabe Chen, Jefrey Westbrook, John Tsiavis, Justin Campbell, Marc Wouters, Mark de Winne, Maxwell N Burnstein, Menelik Puryear, Phil Dunlop, Ronald Leong, Shawn Paul Tan, Studio Oooze, Yoshiyuki Matsumura

Management

Advertising

Marketing & Digital

IT Manager Marcos Sangga

Accounts & Administration

President Michael von Schlippe

Hearst Magazines International

Esquire

Editors-in-chief

International

Bulgaria Vladimir Konstantinov China Liang Zhaohui Colombia Alberto Sanchez Montiel Czech Republic Jiri Roth Greece Kostas N Tsitsas Hong Kong Kwong Lung Kit Kazakhstan Yuriy Serebryansky Korea Eric Byungjoon Min Latin America Alberto Sanchez Montiel Malaysia

Editions

Sales Director Audrey Wu Senior Account Manager Cornelius Cheng

Marketing Director Natasha Damodaran Marketing Manager Gabriela Edna Chan Regional Head Steven Khu Digital Project Manager Ilias Kimpaev

Administrator HuiYing Soh Admin & HR Manager Archana Gowda

Published by Indochine Media Pte Ltd (201214107E), MCI (P) 072/02/2019, 1 Syed Alwi Road, Song Lin Building #02-02, Singapore 207628, Tel: (65) 6225 4045. By permission of Hearst Communications, Inc., New York, New York, United States of America.

Esquire Singapore is available on board all Singapore Airlines flights in first- and businessclass cabins.

Printed Percetakan Zanders Sdn Bhd, 16 Jalan BK 1/11, Bandar Kinrara, 47180 Puchong, Selangor Darul Ehsan, Malaysia. The views expressed in the articles and materials published are not necessarily those of Indochine Media Pte Ltd (201214107E). While every reasonable care is taken in compiling the magazine, the publisher shall not be held liable for any omission, error or inaccuracy, and accepts no responsibility for the content of advertisements published. Please notify the publisher in writing of any such omission, error or inaccuracy. Editorial contributors are welcome, but unsolicited materials are submitted at the sender’s risk and the publisher cannot accept any responsibility for loss or damage. All rights reserved by Indochine Media Pte Ltd (201214107E). No part of this publication may be reproduced and/or transmitted in any form without the publisher’s permission in writing.

Senior Vice President/ General Manager/ Managing Director Asia & Russia Simon Horne Director of International Licensing & Business Development Richard Bean Senior Vice President/ Editorial & Brand Director Kim St Clair Bodden Deputy Brands Director Chloe O’Brien

Middle East Matthew Baxter-Priest Netherlands Arno Kantelberg Poland Andrzej Chojnowski Russia Sergey Minaev Serbia Milan Nikolic Spain Jorge Alcalde Taiwan Thailand Satiya Siripojanakorn Turkey Togan Noyan United Kingdom Alex Bilmes United States Michael Sebastian

This way in

Editor’s letter

saving face N O R M A N TA N Editor-in-chief, Esquire Singapore

@musingmutley

You know that uncle who’s always a bit crazy? The one who sits at the kid’s table instead of his allocated seat at the adult’s? Who starts yapping to you in that jocular, overly familiar tone as if he’s still in your age bracket? As if he knows his Billy Porter from his Billie Eilish? Insists that ‘Dance Monkey’ is the artist’s name instead of Tones and I? Well, it’s one of my favourite parts of getting together with the entire family—be it Christmas, Chinese New Year or the wedding of your second cousin whom you’ve only met once when you were five and only from across the room at some aunty’s birthday (not even blood-related), but you’re still forced to attend due to some unspoken Asian duty to family, and fork over an ang pow. “How much did you put in your ang pow?” mom asks. “300 ringgit.” “Aiyoh puh-lease lah! Why are you so cheap? At least 400.” “But I thought that was the going rate?” I reply. “And I don’t even know his wife’s name.” “Don’t embarrass me okay! I attend the same church as his mom and cannot have her looking at me on Sunday like I have a stingy son.” In fact, the more remote the family relation who’s hosting the event, the more likely you’ll bump into that random uncle. He’s harmless. Usually highly animated. And always hilarious. With the recent spate of back-to-back festive family gatherings, I’ve been on the lookout for this fun relative to rear his head from the chorus of characters that is my family. My dad recently discovered that he has the gift of healing. Just before Christmas, he was praying for a friend with bad hearing; a fellow churchgoer who had been using hearing aids for years. But after dad placed his hands on his ears, there was a ‘pop’ and his ears were unblocked. It was a miracle. And now dad is laying his hands on anyone for anything. “Come, let me pray for your shoulders Andrew.” “It’s okay uncle Richard, I just tweaked my back when I was in the gym yesterday.” “Receive the blessing!” Aunty Sue, also known as Doctor Sue, together with my cousin Amanda who has just completed her medical placement, are fielding 100 questions about what happened at cousin James’s wedding last year—forever nicknamed The Tan Outbreak when 28 members of the Tan family were struck down with food poisoning after ingesting prawn mee at the pre-wedding dinner, of which 12 were hospitalised.

“Always have charcoal tablets with you,” advises Amanda. “And Buscopan,” adds Doctor Sue. While at the dinner table, uncle Keng is bemoaning the fact that Trump, despite his impeachment, will likely secure a second term in the White House. A volley of heated debate on the topic—on one side, my Trump-supporting mother, on the other, the majority of the family—is rallying its way down the room to me. “What do you think Norman?” asks uncle Keng, lobbing the question to me like a deft backhand. “Well…”, I delay, trying to decide whether to hit it back with a question about the Deep State or dodge it altogether by changing the conversation. “What I really want to know is…,” I’ve decided to let the ball sail pass, “if you could receive an unlimited supply of clothes from three brands for the rest of your life, what would those three brands be?” There is a pause. My dad has stopped praying for Andrew. Aunty Sue has stopped talking about the importance of washing your hands. And my mom is making the same face she did when I told her about the ang pow. “Norman, that is so random,” chimes my teenage cousin Anthony. I’m seated at the kids’ table. It’s more fun here, I had reasoned. And then, my entire table starts laughing. Oh gawd, it hits me like a Nole forehand: I’m now that crazy uncle. We all have diferent faces for the diferent people in our lives. There is the face you wear when you’re at work (serious but funloving), hanging out with your friends (fun-loving but serious) and with the family (formerly ‘cousin with the cool job’, but clearly now ‘that crazy uncle’). And it’s fascinating when that face (or identity) changes with the swerve balls that life throws at you. Head on over to our special feature with SEA Games gold medallist Christina Tham (page 136) as she discusses her career change from swimmer to underwater hockey champion; get to know the fresh new faces in entertainment from London (page 40), Sydney (page 54), Los Angeles (page 68) as well as right here in the Lion City (page 119) in four exclusive shoots documenting their impending rise to fame; plus check in with our handsome cover star Harris Dickinson (page 100) who is on the verge of becoming a household name with his lead role in the upcoming prequel to the Kingsmen franchise, The King’s Man. As always, the book you hold in your hand is full of aces. Whatever the circumstance and no matter the crowd, remember this: you can always save face with a copy of Esquire under your arm. Enjoy the issue.

Column

Neil before God Each issue, Esquire Singapore asks Neil Humphreys to lay himself bare and explore his visceral response to our theme. This time, he examines his awe of young punks leading old farts towards a new hope.

MY late grandmother was the most ‘woke’ woman I have known. Long before the term existed, she was the wokiest of the woke. She never cancelled anyone. She certainly wasn’t vegan and had no concept of organic food. She would’ve assumed that avocado was an American state. She was woke because she loved everyone, all colours, genders and sexualities. She particularly loved the “les-bins”. She couldn’t pronounce the word properly and didn’t really know what they did—something she once chose to share with her stunned teenage grandson—but she loved them anyway. As she pointed out, a “les-bin” fancied women just as her teenage grandson fancied women. So I was probably a “les-bin”, too. Her daft sense of humour underlined a priceless simplicity. Everyone was equal. She was incapable of prejudice, a rare quality even now, let alone back in the 1980s among working-class communities. Her door was open to everyone except Jim, who ran the corner shop and once overcharged her for a bag of sugar during the Second World War. She was a sweet soul, but she had her limits. Anyone was welcome in her house, unless you took liberties with the price of sugar. Today, when I meet, teach or occasionally lecture young Singaporeans—often without being asked—I tell them that they remind me of my dead grandmother. They are not always lattered by the comparison. But to listen without prejudice is a precious commodity. To speak up for the diferent, the marginalised and the vulnerable out of a sense of compassion, rather than self-interest, is awe-inspiring. My grandmother always concerned herself with the interests of others, even when she didn’t understand those interests. To her, animal welfare might as well have been a band on The Muppet Show. So when I became a vegetarian,

E 16

she ofered me a ham sandwich, but with wafer-thin ham to, you know, support animal welfare. Her actions were naïve, but kind, sincere and selless. In this regard, my nan had something in common with Greta Thunberg. A kid with a homemade placard skipped school and sat outside the Swedish parliament, demanding that world leaders acted on climate change. Within a year, young people were mimicking her eforts across the world. Young Turks like Greta command awe among the rational because they generate so much fear among the irrational. They speak for interests that are special, rather than special interests; a subtle diference that has veiny old farts exploding into their fossil-fuelled rice bowls illed with yesterday’s ignorance. It’s wonderful to watch, especially when the debates follow similar lines. Young Turk: We would like to save our planet. We would also like people to be treated the same, whatever their sex, race or gender. Old Fart: Naïve fool! We must serve our political, economic and religious masters. Stop being so damn whiny and sensitive. Young Turk: OK Boomer. Whiny and sensitive Old Fart explodes. Yes, not everyone over the age of 40 bows at the altar of Trump, Brexit, racial privilege and untrammelled greed whilst whipping homosexuals and sucking shark’s in soup through the exhaust of an SUV. Though I’m sure there are websites for that sort of thing. Similarly, not everyone under the age of 25 volunteers at a soup kitchen and wears second-hand clothes, eats only fruit that fell naturally from the tree and travels the world on a skateboard. Though I’m sure there are TikToks for that sort of thing. But young people are seldom speaking up for anything

Column

Monica Baey wasn’t a secret emissary, plotting to overthrow the Singaporean patriarchy from within a prestigious academic institution.

other than their conscience. That’s the wonderful bit. Thunberg scares her most rabid critics because she has made climate change a black-and-white issue. Forget the geopolitical considerations. Is climate change good or bad? Thunberg’s youth and naivety—the apparent weaknesses that are often highlighted to ridicule her idealism—are in fact her greatest assets. She’s too young to be tainted by connections to big business. She’s simply following her moral compass. Just as Monica Baey wasn’t a secret emissary, plotting to overthrow the Singaporean patriarchy from within a prestigious academic institution. The 23-year-old just felt that perverts shouldn’t secretly ilm women taking showers and should be punished appropriately when they do. Like Thunberg, she cut through established, archaic thinking and simpliied. Is sexual harassment right or wrong? Jihye Yang is asking similar questions of South Koreans. A key feminist voice, the 22-year-old has taken her case to the United Nations, demanding safe spaces for women after thousands were secretly recorded in toilets and showers. In Taiwan, Weng Yu Ching has campaigned for LGBT rights for almost a decade. She’s only 24. After years of lobbying, Taiwan became the only Asian country to legalise gay marriage. In each instance, youth was the unstoppable force that overcame a previously immovable object. Youth

ensures a purity of vision. Only the moral issue matters. Should the planet be saved? Should sexual harassment stop? Should all people be treated equally? These Young Turks are sidestepping vested interests and distilling each issue down to its essence. What’s right? What’s wrong? Which side are you on? There’s no ulterior motive as Thunberg’s indiference towards being Time’s person of the year demonstrated. Remember, Donald Trump once photoshopped himself onto a Time magazine cover and displayed it at his golf club. Here are two people with very diferent priorities. One is pure and untainted. The other is orange. So I’m in awe of young people trying to deal with the climate catastrophe, reduce our dependance on singleuse plastics, change outdated views on the LGBTQ community and remind perverts that the occasional grope on the MRT and a quick video of a student showering isn’t ‘a bit of a laugh’. And I’m in awe of young people attempting to do all of this whilst my generation—and those that came before—prices them out of a property market, reduces job opportunities, shrinks land space, pollutes seas and oceans, depletes ish and meat stocks, and then mocks the millennials for being spolit and ungrateful. Hey, kids, you’re welcome! But seriously, thanks for trying. My late, woke grandmother would approve of such selless eforts. In fact, she’d make you a vegetarian sandwich with wafer-thin ham.

This page is lit

Underneath A Sky of Red Chapter Two: The Fallen Lion WORDS BY SUFFIAN HAKIM

T H E C H I L D R E N were gone.

aback. “They’re gone, Lestari. If I had stayed here instead of playing gardener with you, they’d still be here! You did this to our children!” Lestari reached out with a hand and it connected emphatically with David’s face in a resounding slap. “Listen.” David heard it—Sarah’s voice, faint, muled, distant, calling out to her parents.

He felt a thousand voices clamouring within him—his mother’s, his irst girlfriend’s, his former best friend’s, his father’s, among them—all telling him that he was an utter failure. There was a sound behind him—Lestari had inally caught up. “This is your fault!” David yelled at his wife. Lestari was taken

Illustration by Rebecca Chew

“The Prime Minister needs to realise that, through his silence, through his refusal to condemn the acts of nations—powerful allies as they may be —that continue to sufocate our Earth with irresponsible levels of carbon emissions, he is condemning us all to death.” Hussein Mokhtar, environmental activist Speaker’s Corner, January 2024

This page is lit

He followed the voice and within moments it was clear. They followed it to the cracked, mouldy bathroom and pulled hard at a steel handle bolted to the wall next to the ruins of a toilet bowl. The false wall lurched forward to reveal Sarah, crying and shaking uncontrollably in the dark nook behind. The girl raised her pale face and her anguish gave way slightly to relief. “Adam sealed me here,” she cried. “Then he went out to the living room and surrendered to them. I heard everything. They didn’t hurt him, they said they have bigger plans for him.” “We need a plan, David,” Lestari said, ixing her steely gaze on him. She cupped his face with a gentle hand and lucidity came like cool waters upon his being. “We track the raiders back to their hideout,” he said. “We go in stealthily, igure out where they keep their prisoners and get Adam out. We need to move quickly or I don’t know what they’ll do to Adam.” Lestari pulled her daughter out of the nook. “Then what are we waiting for? Let’s save Adam.” They followed the pelesit tracks beyond the outer limits, into the southward roads and the Seletar Expressway. They moved among the trees along the roads, both to conceal themselves from the pelesit and for shelter from the chilly nuclear winds. All three moved quickly, stealthily, landing with the outside of their feet to minimise noise. For an hour, they were the softest whispers in the night. The road eventually led to a dilapidated green sign that said MANDAI ZOO, and a grasshopper, or pelesit in the Malay language, roughly spray-painted next to it. “I have a bad feeling about this,” said Sarah as they forged ahead. Finally, the old zoo came into sight. It was awash in light, a testament to the resources that the pelesit had in these dark times. The front gate was heavily guarded, with at least 10 armed personnel and two trucks outitted with heavy machine guns. “We can’t go through there,” David whispered. “Is there another entrance?” Lestari asked. He nodded. “There’s a side gate closer to the lake.” David took them deeper into the jungle, where the lights and chaos of the pelesit base of operations faded into the night. They followed the walls of the compound, ducking away from the former wildlife research centre—now a lookout tower with a sniper sleeping on the roof. They passed an overturned zoo jeep, rusty and charred, near a large fallen tree trunk. David spied a long, slender object lodged underneath one of the seats. The sounds of the night-jungle deepened here. There were crickets, leaves rustling against the icy winds, and then something else. Something more monstrous. David saw it irst, a subtle shift in the shadows. He stopped his wife and daughter. “Move quickly but quietly away, eastwards, following our current direction,” he whispered to them, “Move low. Cover to cover.” Sarah and Lestari did as they were told. The beast was not fazed and continued stalking its preferred

prey: the large, slightly meatier male, and not the two females who were scattering into the trees. David backed against a large tree and stopped when his back touched its trunk. The beast attacked. It was a blur of movement in the night. Faded claws that might have glinted once in the past. Thin, wiry mane. Lean, hungry arms. The lion was clearly malnourished, but its hunger made it dangerous nevertheless. It leapt for David. David easily sidestepped its lunge and hit it in the face with the deadwood. The wood splintered apart upon contact and the lion smarted from the pain. But it recovered quickly. David ran, towards the west, away from his family. The lion chased. He ran slightly over 100 metres when a heavy paw caught him in the side and sent him hurtling into the mud. He reached out for something—anything—and found himself with a handful of mud. He turned. The lion was almost upon him. David lung the mud into the beast’s eye. It recoiled and started swiping at its own face. The man—the prey—got up quickly and ran again. The lion gave an angry roar that sent birds scattering into the night. “Papa!” Sarah’s shout was soft and distant, barely even registering against his own beating heart. He kept running. He saw it again: the overturned jeep. He aforded himself a quick glance behind. The lion was emerging from a thicket, its feline eyes crazed, animalistic, merciless. It bounded towards David, who began searching the jeep frantically. He found the long, slender thing under one of the seats—an old tranquilliser rile. But he could barely turn when a paw connected with his chest. The lion’s claws dug in deep and drew blood. David fell back into the mud, winded, a fresh shock of pain emanating from his chest. His back on the mud, David inally registered how cold the night was, yet there was neither snow nor rain. Just mud and blood and the detritus of a nation that once stood proud. And then all that dominated his vision was the face of a crazed, hungry lion. Once, its species was a symbol of the former nation of Singapore. It stood for courage, independence, strength. Now, it was sallow, hungry, weak. It opened its mouth to reveal razor-sharp teeth and a parched tongue. And then—a rock hit the lion in the side of its head. “Get away from my father!” Sarah cried from behind the fallen tree. Lestari was next to her, linging stones. The beast turned, roared ferociously and started bounding towards his wife and daughter. That was all the motivation that David needed to get up, take aim and ire with the accuracy of someone who took his National Service seriously. The tranquilliser dart hit the lion in its hind and the great beast collapsed in a heap mere metres away from Lestari and Sarah.

Tune in to the next issue for the next chapter of Underneath A Sky of Red.

Photographs and styling by Sean Ashley and Dionna Lee of Studio Oooze.

Still life

1|5

Leather Hello Kitty bag, by Balenciaga.

Style 28

Fashion in bloom

Bonding time

Dial C for creativity

Givenchy springs to life in Clare Waight Kellerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s latest menswear line.

You can get your hands on Agent 007â&#x20AC;&#x2122;s newest Omega two months before the movie airs here.

These watchmakers make full use of the tiny space aforded by dials to captivate and enthrall.

Style

Essentials of style

MEET THE MOCCABOOT It’s a moccasin! It’s a boot! It’s both. And damn stylish. By Yuketen.

SHINY! (AND S U S TA I N A B L E ) Titanium—not just for your knee after a motorcycle wreck. It also makes for an extra-light, durable cup and spork. By Snow Peak.

K E E P WA R M Recipe for staying toasty: combine this sweater from Chamula with a sustainable shirt from Outerknown. By Chamula and Outerknown.

Naturally good-looking

B E S T F O O T F O R WA R D Keep fleet of foot with these rubber-soled boots imbued with a healthy dose of Italian cool. By Tod’s.

In case you hadn’t noticed, outdoor companies are producing some crispy gear that can be worn on the streets as easily as on the trail. Here are a few of our favourites that

PAC K I T I N Patagonia: loved by hypebeasts yet true to its roots with this hip pack created from repurposed materials. By Patagonia.

SOFT BUT STRONG Proof that Bally can be rugged? This techno wool jacket. Proof that Best Made is more than axes? This supersoft fleece. By Bally and Best Made Co.

HAPPY FEET Treat your toes with these luxe, richly textured cotton socks. By Loewe.

CONVERTIBLE CARGOES Finally, cargo pants capable of taking on the MacRitchie Trail yet elegant enough for a downtown cocktail bar. By Loewe.

PAC K I T U P Camping out at a national park? Smuggling White Claw into a warehouse party? Epperson’s backpack has you covered. By Epperson Mountaineering.

Words by Daniel Dumas. Photograph by Jefrey Westbrook

you can cop right now.

Left: jacket, sweater and trousers, all by Oliver Spencer; boots, by Alberto Fasciani.

Words by Nick Sullivan. Photograph by Menelik Puryear

Right: jacket, turtleneck sweater and trousers, all by Oliver Spencer.

Oliver Spencer’s trick isn’t complicated, just perfectly executed. The designer takes the idea of the uniform—be it workwear or military— and tweaks it with interesting shapes and heavily textured fabrics, creating a lexible daily wardrobe for the creatively inclined. It’s a strategy that’s worked in his native UK and across the world, and it’s about to get a major boost in the States, thanks to the brand’s placement in ive Nordstrom stores. Spencer credits the “more style-conscious” American dressers out there. “They’re thinking, ‘what am I wearing’?” he explains. “I want to look put together but not too put together. I don’t want labels all over the front of everything.” Fellow Brit Sam Lobban, the men’s fashion VP of Nordstrom, saw the value for his shoppers. “Oli’s take... is a good complement to what we already do,” he says. “You can still wear it dressed up, but it has a lived-in quality to it. That’s always pretty important to our customer.”

Working, but not stif Brit designer Oliver Spencer brings a sense of stylish ease to your daily uniform.

Style

Essentials of style

Derbynose.

The greatest showmen Louboutin brings back the fun and spectacle of the circus with its spring/summer 2020 collection.

Style

Essentials of style

Words by Eugene Lim

Montezupik nude loafers.

It is hard to avoid the reference of ‘started from the bottom’ when talking about Christian Louboutin and his shoes. After all, the Parisian shoe designer literally built a massive luxury empire with a pair of red bottom stilettos. While that statement is accurate, it is also somewhat reductive of his work. Sure, the red-painted soles of his shoes have become a cultural icon and the list of celebrities who love them runs long, but his shoes are more than the colour of their soles. What sets his soles apart is Louboutin’s ability to weave his whimsical, fun and over-the-top personality into his designs. Which brings us to his spring/summer 2020 presentation held at Musée des Arts Forains in Paris, where he threw a circus-themed party to celebrate the launch of his latest men’s collection. Now by this point, you would expect the collection to be inspired by the circus; after all the privately owned museum houses curiosities collected from funfairs and circuses. But for Louboutin, the circus means much more than human oddities, fire breathing and lion taming; it is the pinnacle of showmanship and spectacles. Which is why, instead of a verbatim translation of the circus theme, Louboutin instead took inspiration from the stars who performed at the circus, calling the spring/summer 2020 collection the Loubi Constellation. On the sneaker front, updates were added to the Spike sock sneaker and Red Runner, but the star on the casual end of the spectrum is Happy Rui. This new silhouette takes inspiration from the iconic styles of tennis sneakers from the 1970s and is given a twist with a new toecap construction and a raised outsole.

On the formal end, Louboutin shows his whimsical side by melding the aesthetics of the clown shoe with the classic black derby shoe. The result, called Derbynose, features an exaggerated toecap on a classic derby. While the inspiration might be comical, the result is anything but; it lends a nice new energy to a classic. One other silhouette that stands out is a metallic sequins loafer that features hand-painted elements on it. Before we dive into the other elements of the collection, it’s time for a history lesson; an insight into the way Louboutin views colours. When starting his own label, he struggled with translating the same dynamism of his 2D sketches into 3D prototypes; that was when he got the inspiration to paint the soles of his shoes red. Red is more than just the Pantone number it was assigned; it represents the spectrum of emotions that he wanted to translate onto the shoe. Similarly, when he conceived the Nude collection, he saw it as a concept of blurring the line between the foot and the shoe, rather than a shade. Making its debut for the men’s universe, it sees classics like the Louis Junior sneaker, Montezupik moccasin, Nanou espadrille and Pool Stud slide, in eight shades of nudes. But the highlight is the inclusion of the Loubilab pouch, a crossbody bag with a built-in wireless charger. The constellation theme is also translated into other accessories with a new 3M reflective fabric that turns iridescent when it comes in contact with a bright light. Ernest Hemmingway once said that “the circus is the only fun you can buy that is good for you”. We counter that—with the decline of the actual circus, this Louboutin collection is a great alternative.

Pierre Alexandre M’Pelé aka Pam_boy.

Fashion, one emoji at a time How does one speak to a generation that consumes media in rapid succession and has access to a multitude of social media platforms? Young fashion critic and journalist

It’s not easy being a fashion critic (or any other critic for that matter) in this day and age. The Internet has unequivocally provided us with a universal platform for anyone who’s anyone, the freedom to express their thoughts, opinions and—more commonly now—false truths, all while having the seemingly impenetrable anonymity of a screen name. Everyone has an opinion and everyone has the right to present those opinions to an audience of their choosing. But in an arena where elements of craft, taste and knowledge intertwine so tightly such as in fashion, these opinions are not always based on a combination of all three. As subjective as fashion is, there’s always somewhat of a consensus when something is deemed ‘stylish’, or at the very least, ‘tasteful’.

Pierre Alexandre M’Pelé has managed to cut through the noise and has become the source of fashion information for a crowd that’s hungry for knowledge, but also with a short attention span. Under the moniker of @pam_boy on Instagram, M’Pelé has gained popularity for his brutal honesty, revealing insider secrets (through screenshots of anonymous Instagram direct messages) and educating followers on all things fashion. It’s the fashion reviews the Central Saint Martins graduate puts out every fashion week season on Instagram Stories that have become his trademark. Taking screenshots of an entire collection from Vogue Runway, M’Pelé breaks down each look with not words, but emojis. And they’re not just restricted to the standard everyday emojis too. For example, M’Pelé uses the volcano emoji

Words by Asri Jasman. Getty

Pierre Alexandre M’Pelé seems to have cracked that code.

Style

Essentials of style

to denote a look that’s ‘super hot’, the corn emoji for a look that’s ‘corny’ and the tornado emoji for the ones that has him ‘blown away’. As it stands, the index for his emoji reviews contains at least 30 of these picture characters. But who’s M’Pelé away from @pam_boy? And what does he really think about the fashion industry, some of its designers and his cult following? We speak to the Congo-born, French-speaking fashion critic in a more traditional format.

amazing people who work super hard and some of them work in fashion for all of their lives. Something might not be the right vision, but the execution might be good, so to me it’s always trying to ind that balance as well. “I don’t want to be someone who’s going to shoot a gun at everyone and at every target. I think it would be quite unnecessary; it would make me feel like I’m Diet Prada or something. (laughs) There’s always more behind what we see. And that’s what I try to uncover to the best of my abilities.”

T H E R A I S O N D ’ Ê T R E O F A FA S H I O N C R I T I C

“The role of a fashion critic is to analyse and digest fashion and to feed it to the people because it’s often not so easy to translate what a fashion designer wants to say or wants to convey with their clothes. I think a good fashion critic is someone who can understand the current zeitgeist and is able to translate the work of a fashion designer into words for people to understand where we are as a society.”

C A N A FA S H I O N C R I T I C A L S O H AV E FAV O U R I T E S ?

“I’m a fashion critic but I’m also a human being. But the thing is, I’m always open about this. I love Chanel and I love Karl; don’t even listen to me when I review them. (laughs) I’m very open and upfront about this, which a lot of journalists aren’t. Because I know journalists who write press releases for brands and then they review those brands for other magazines. And they don’t necessarily advertise that connection between them and the brands. “You’re going to get my opinions and my critiques, but if you want something impartial, don’t come for me when it comes to some brands. I want to be very clear about who I like as well. It’s great for me to have a lot of followers but I feel that me speaking in a very honest way to my audience is the most important thing.”

C R E AT I N G H I S T R A D E M A R K

“I think it was after I graduated from Central Saint Martins. I was already writing on Instagram and gained a little bit of traction. But when Instagram Stories launched, I had to ind a way to adapt to people’s attention span because Instagram Stories are so short. It was kind of like an epiphany to me: “If I’m not going to use words, what can I use? I’m going to use symbols. What symbols?” And then I realised that we use emojis all day and everyone uses that universal language.”

H AV I N G M A R C J A C O B S A S A FA N

“I think Marc saw my Instagram—one of my reviews—and then we just started chatting. We both realised that we love fashion. I haven’t met someone who loves fashion the way he loves fashion. And to me, that was really something because at the end of the day, we’re all on the same boat—we’re all in this industry, we love fashion and we all love to dress up. So for me to meet someone of his status who supports me, on the basis of we both love fashion, I think that’s tremendous.”

L A U N C H I N G H I S O W N P R I N T P U B L I C AT I O N

“Instagram is not sustainable; we’re always looking for the next big thing and it’s very ephemeral. So to me having a publication that’s kind of grounded would allow me to be saner, irst of all, mentally. And also to not rely on online because within social media platforms, there’s always the idea that things are never meant to last, including someone’s popularity. It was really important to start SCRNSHT to also show that what I do online is only a little bit of what I can ofer to the industry.”

H I S T H O U G H T S O N LV M H C R E AT I N G A L U X U R Y FA S H I O N B R A N D F O R R I H A N N A

“It feels as if it’s a test—creating a brand from just the fame of a celebrity—for a world where we wouldn’t need fashion designers anymore. Because when you really think about it, LVMH promoting this is LVMH trying to erase the creativity in the process and focus on the proits. I have a big issue about this. And the clothes are not even good. (laughs) So it’s a bit of a situation.”

BEING HIMSELF WHILE WRITING FOR OTHER FA S H I O N P U B L I C AT I O N S

“The people who ask me to write for them know what they’re going to get from me. I make it very clear because I don’t want any sort of conlict of interests between magazines and the brands that they might work for. I get a lot of freedom which is great, and I try not to think about the diferent relationships that might play in the background between brands and people involved in the magazines I write for. So if I really want to say something, I’m going to say it.”

W H AT T H E FA S H I O N I N D U S T R Y S H O U L D D O BETTER ON

“Equality and inclusivity and sustainability. Only because we just have to do better. It shouldn’t even be a ight anymore. It should literally just be the norm. I feel like the luxury and the fashion industry speaks to everyone, and they’re very happy to take everyone’s money so they should be able to represent everyone as well. And not just on the façade. I need more female CEOs, more female executives and more people of colour in the boardroom; everyone needs to be involved. It’s just the way we will progress. “And sustainability, only because it just makes sense. Fashion can never be fully sustainable because it’s an industry. I don’t want this idea that we can be 100 percent sustainable; it’s completely false. But we should do as much as we can.”

ON THIS ONE-LINER WHILE REVIEWING THE LO U I S V U I T TO N S P R I N G/SU M M E R 2 0 2 0 M E N ’S C O L L E C T I O N : “A B L O H H A S A T E A M O F TA I L O R S T H AT C A N M A K E G R E AT S T U F F.”

“My reviews have to be fair. There’s one thing, which is the creative side, and there’s also the technical side. Virgil Abloh’s work might be crap or might not be as interesting as we might want it to be, and that’s also an opinion, because they work with

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Essentials of style

Haute horticulturalist Clare Waight Keller cultivates a new man for the maisonâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;a rich and diverse bouquet that blends bourgeois with backstreetâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;for Givenchy spring/summer 2020.

that form the bread-and-butter of the business); bright and joyous dafodils potted around the front windows (up-and-coming stars donning the seasonal fashion pieces), and at the very front, near the pavement with the greatest exposure, carefully pruned and blossoming roses (the latest ambassadors decked out in statement pieces as symbols of the dream and romance of the house) enticing passers-by to enter. For a maison like Givenchy, a couturier steeped in such rich history, its celebrity clientele forms part of its foundation; as if the roots of the trees that stand proudly on its front lawn have grown to intertwine, supportively and inextricably, with the base of the house. Therefore, if Ariana Grande is Givenchy’s current muse and lowering rose (fronting the latest autumn/winter 2019 women’s campaign), then without a doubt, it is the likes of Jacqueline Kennedy, Wallis Simpson and the incomparable Audrey Hepburn who are the maison’s towering cypress trees and foundation. It was, after all, Hepburn who famously wore the Givenchy ‘little black dress’ in Breakfast at Tifany’s.

Words by Norman Tan

C U LT I VAT I N G A M O D E R N M A L E G E N T R Y

But what about the men? Who is our Hepburn, our Lauren Bacall and Greta Garbo? Under the auspices of ex-creative director Riccardo Tisci, the Givenchy garden was planted with the likes of Jay-Z, Usher and Kanye West donning the Rottweiler-print that was emblematic of his tenure—like Venus ly traps, carnivorous and alluring with a savage beauty. But with Clare Waight Keller now at the helm, a new Givenchy man is being cultivated that taps into the oh-so-trendy interplay between the bourgeois and backstreet—peonies mixed with wild daisies—banking on that mélange of tailoring with streetwear that continues to rule the runway and retail tills alike. For last season’s autumn/winter 2019 collection (that was

To buy into a luxury fashion brand is to buy into a house of ideals and values; a foundation laid with its origin story; its walls erected through savoir faire and craftsmanship; the roof buttressed with its reputation; and the interiors dressed, painted and upholstered, arranged and then rearranged, season after season, by its creative director. The garden is a curated landscape of celebrity ambassadors and friends of the maison: strategically planted evergreen trees bordering the property (iconic clients in classic dresses and suits

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Essentials of style

presented on mannequins in the maison’s Paris showrooms), she unveiled a ’70s-inlected ofering featuring belted petrol blue leather patchwork jackets and lared suits (vivid in their saturated punches of aubergine and burgundy) alongside hooded sweats and bulbous technical parkas, all grounded with serious leather boots and laced brogues. But for her latest spring/summer 2020 collection, to underscore the importance of grooming this new market, Waight Keller opted for a solo men’s runway show in Florence during Pitti Uomo—the biannual trade show that draws the menswear cognoscenti from all four corners of the globe. T H E GA R D E N E R’S N E W T R E A DS

Staged in the sprawling gardens of Villa Palmieri, an opulent late 14th-century patrician estate complete with landscaped labyrinth hedges, statement fountains and winding stone staircases connecting its tiered grounds, male models stepped out in ensembles of suits, coats and gilets layered in monochromatic shades—pale fresco hues of damask rose, buttermilk and powder blue—but, as a key point of diference from the previous season, anchored each look with sneakers. From high to low-top multi-coloured sock trainers, Waight Keller presents the Givenchy man with several athletic footwear options this spring/summer season. However, the sneaker du jour has to be the exclusive collaboration with Onitsuka Tiger (blending couture savoir faire with Japanese know-how) that features the Mexico 66™ GDX shoe in two variations: an all-white iteration with a black tab and ‘Givenchy’ lettering accompanying the Onitsuka Tiger stripe, plus a black version with signature Givenchy red detailing on the heel. It is Givenchy’s irst partnership with an external sneaker manufacturer on a global scale and, in turn, it is also Onitsuka Tiger’s irst collaboration with a luxury brand. FA S H I O N I N G B O U Q U E T S

In this new Givenchy garden, the celebrity blooms are varied and diverse. Actor Zachary Quinto stands beside a pond in a black silk shirt made from a composite of chain-print checks and pinstripes; Darren Criss walks up the ivy-covered stairs in a tailored blue suit

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worn over a green kaleidoscopic shirt; and Taiwanese actor Jasper Liu has planted himself on the patio overlooking the rolling Tuscan hills in a long-sleeved top emblazoned with punk-inspired motifs. It parallels neatly with the new sartorial vision that Waight Keller has orchestrated for the house; a veritable fusion of oldand new-world aesthetics, further exempliied in the runway’s pulsating soundtrack—metallic shrieks of a dial-up modem laced with French spoken word. “Art nouveau with a post-Internet glitch,” explains the show notes. In essence, Waight Keller is an haute horticulturalist. She has pruned and preened her spring/summer 2020 menswear collection like lowers, fashioning the looks like bouquets; each meticulously arranged to suit the many extravagant rooms that exist in the Givenchy man’s maison; each catering to the diferent taste proiles (or facets) of her discerning male clientele, celebrity or otherwise. B LO O M S FO R E V E RY RO O M

In the living room, where the Givenchy customer might welcome guests for afternoon tea, Waight Keller has bundled overcoats and trousers cut from a decadent Italian jacquard (featuring traditional lorals that morph into pixelated new shapes) together with oversized boxy short-sleeved shirts in a washed stone hue; akin to the rakish elegance of coupling fragrant gardenias with the rustic appeal of large dahlias for the day. Over in the entertainment room, where the pool table might sit alongside a VR console, Waight Keller profers a uniform of straight-cut trousers held up with chunky chain belts and tops embellished with gothic Fleurs du Mal calligraphy in abstract prints or, alternatively, shrunken knit cycling tops worn with perforated leather trousers and magnetic webbing belts. That is, the menswear equivalent of pairing stalks of Birds of Paradise with hardy marigolds and the visual impact of large chrysanthemums. For the classic sartorialist hosting dinner guests? On the formal dining table sits a bouquet of exotic orchids (structured threebutton or double-breasted suiting), paired with long and languid lilies (those billowing translucent hooded parkas in pastel yellows and blues made from velvet-touch nylon), accented with springs of vibrant iris (miniature top-handle trunk luggage with reinforced leather corners). Our favourite arrangement, hands down. And when dinner is over and it’s time for a night cap at the bar, devastatingly chic eveningwear comes in the form of handembroidered metallic sequinned jackets and coats worn with loating cr̂pe scarves; extravagant like long-trailing jasmine combined with dozens of full-bodied white magnolia lowers. UNDER A TUSCAN MOON

When the show ends, the night sky above the 14th-century estate is illuminated with a laser light show—purple and yellow beams cut through tall Italian cypress trees as guests sip from lutes of champagne and dance under a bright Tuscan moon. High fashion meets high tech. 14th-century villa turned rage party. Tulips combined with blood-red roses. From a distance, Villa Palmieri stands ablaze on its Florentine hilltop. And, on the decks, by the DJ and directing proceedings, is Waight Keller. This might be the house that Givenchy has built, but tonight, this is the garden that she has nurtured.

Special Project

Virgil Abloh continues his exploration of the idea of boyhood with the Louis Vuitton spring/summer 2020 collection as he puts a playful, subversive twist on traditional menswear codes with a dose of florals.

Photography by Gabe Chen Styling by Eugene Lim

Special Project

where

the wild

flowers are

Tulle jacket, tulle T-shirt, tulle shorts, rubber boots, tufted Monogram canvas mini trunk bag and Monogram meshÂ weekender bag, all by Louis Vuitton. Facing page: wool jacket, silk shirt, wool shorts, rubber boots, and metal and ceramic bracelet, all by Louis Vuitton.

Special Project

Cotton and canvas jacket, silk shirt, wool trousers, suede sneaker, and metal and ceramic necklace, all by Louis Vuitton. Facing page: wool coat, cotton and gabardine parka, cotton and gabardine trousers, rubber boots, metal and ceramic necklace, and rope belt, all by Louis Vuitton.

Special Project

Model: Noelle Woon / Mannequin Studio. Hair and make-up by Sha Shamsi using Chanel Beauty and Hanz De Fuko. Photographer assisted by Eric

Special Project

Wool coat, nubuck leather and wool coat, wool trousers, suede sneakers, and metal and ceramic necklace, all by Louis Vuitton. Facing page: cotton and canvas parka, cotton and canvas trousers, suede sneakers and tufted Monogram canvas weekender bag, all by Louis Vuitton.

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Essentials of style

Does talent count in fashion anymore? From celebrities to Instagram influencers, it seems that almost anybody these days can create a fashion brand, helm it and be successful. Associate fashion editor Asri Jasman wonders if talent is really needed in order to flourish in fashion.

Justin Bieber shows of a Drew shirt.

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Essentials of style

“So what do they look like?” I ask every time I hear the announcement of a relative unknown taking on the role of creative director of a fashion house. There’s a part of me that’s always cynical about it. It’s not that I’m privy to the inner workings of these brands (I wish), but of late, there’s a pattern that I’ve been noticing. These creative directors are young, male and good-looking. Daniel Lee of Bottega Veneta, Bruno Sialelli of Lanvin and Daniel Roseberry of Schiaparelli are just the most recent examples that come to mind. They’re a new generation of creative directors who have been seemingly plucked from obscurity and given the opportunity to design and front fashion houses that have decades of history. And let’s face it, creative directors no longer are hidden behind their muses and bundles of toiles; their faces and presence are as crucial to the brand as the ambassadors who front their campaigns season after season. There’s no denying that at the heart of it, fashion is about beauty and the appreciation and celebration of it. So it’s little wonder then that seeking to look for and create beauty has spilled over into inding a creative force to somewhat it into that ideal as well. I’m not questioning the talents of the three aforementioned designers, not at all. The fact that they’ve also cut their teeth working for some of the biggest fashion brands around, before getting the opportunity to steer the creative direction of their respective fashion houses, speaks to their experience and talents. But it’s when the visual identity of a person, coupled with a lack of formal fashion training (or none at all), afords them the opportunity to create a fashion brand, that’s a problem. We’ve seen it before, of course, most prominently since the turn of the millennium. Celebrities such as Justin Timberlake, Drake and most recently Justin Bieber have all created their own fashion lines. Closer to home, Malaysian celebrities have a knack for founding businesses that often incorporate some form of fashion (with modest fashion being a popular choice) once they get to a certain level of fame. It’s also not uncommon to ind established celebrities turning their attention to fashion as a business, as a means of making money, as their original careers and popularity start to dwindle. Then as social media inluencers became a thing, these celebritylites began capitalising on their following by dabbling in shoe lines, accessories, jewellery and other forms of fashion items that purportedly they’ve had a hand in making. While the idea of being able to start a fashion business with almost no foundation and training in design may seem like that idyllic notion of an ‘American dream’, it gives the allusion that anything is possible without having the necessary skills and tools; all it takes is popularity, and lots of it. It’s also rather telling that LVMH, a luxury fashion conglomerate, created a luxury brand for the irst time in almost two decades, and it’s founded by an entertainer. Rihanna’s Fenty was launched in May 2019. While it’s not her irst dabble in fashion (Rihanna has had a long-standing collaboration with Puma), the decision for Fenty has deinitely more to do with Rihanna’s pull factor than her supposed design chops. I can’t imagine Rihanna slaving over the paper patterns of her corseted shirt dresses or spending hours mulling about the narrative for her next collection. Can you?

Drake wearing October’s Very Own at the 2nd Annual OVO Festival.

The idea of a fashion designer now has clearly become less to do with actual know-how about tailoring, it and aesthetic, and more about just being ‘part of the design process’. How involved the person is behind the scenes is often questionable. It makes more sense for these celebrities to then collaborate with brands and their existing creative directors. Lewis Hamilton’s work with Tommy Hiliger, Kanye West and his partnership with Adidas as well as Michael B Jordan’s collaboration with Coach are ine examples of how the famous can add their input and touches to the work of actual fashion creatives. There’s that prestige of being part of a fashion brand and we all don’t have to pretend that a signiicant part of the design process was undertaken by our idols. If it sounds like I’m a fashion purist or elitist, well, maybe I am. I ind it baling that we’ve come to a stage where we value aesthetics and draw as opposed to real fashion talent. The purpose of design is to constantly challenge and in turn, elevate what’s normal. But if we’ve made the way for talent and skills to be pushed to the back of the line, we’ll be stuck in a vacuum of uninspired fashion. A huge majority of celebrity-founded fashion brands are by no means the H&Ms or the Zaras of the industry. Their distribution is small and they’re more privately owned businesses than huge volume corporations. But the fact that they exist, especially at a time when we’re constantly rethinking our lifestyle and environmental impact, is also an issue. There’s absolutely no reason for them other than to pander to a fan base that could have just been satiated with one-of merchandise. We can’t all be genetically lucky and possess trained skills like Daniel Lee, Bruno Sialelli and Daniel Roseberry, after all.

Londonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s fresh faces The five English actors who are extending their impact to Hollywood and beyond. Words by Joy Ling Photography by Charlie Gray Styling by Fabio Immediato

On Viveik: top, trousers and trainers, all by Marco De Vincenzo; belt, by Eleventy. On Emily: dress, coat and tights, all by Gucci; clog shoes, byÂ Celine.

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Jumper, by Gucci at Matchesfashion.com Facing page: coat, by King & Tuckfield.

ANSON BOON

A distinctive face you’re unlikely to forget, Anson Boon is one of those actors you google after finishing a series. It’s no surprise Boon has already been announced as one of Screen International’s stars of tomorrow when he’s all over the screens. Alexandre Aja’s Crawl last summer brought us his role as Stan, while sci-fi psychological drama The Feed by Channing Powell of The Walking Dead let us see Boon as the young Anton. Since featuring in Netflix’s The Alienist, he continues across multiple film and television projects like Roger Michell’s remake

of Blackbird with the illustrious cast of Kate Winslet, Susan Sarandon and Mia Wasikowska. Just last month, Boon starred in Sam Mendes’ directorial feature 1917 on the penultimate year of World War I alongside George MacKay, Benedict Cumberbatch and Colin Firth. Boon is a busy man. Finally, he takes on the lead role in the upcoming horror thriller The Winter Lake, where he plays a withdrawn teenager who makes a grim discovery about his neighbours while exploring his mother’s childhood farm. We can’t say we’re not excited.

Top and trousers, both by Salvatore Ferragamo. Facing page: jacket, by Isabel Marant; trousers, by Salvatore Ferragamo.

LO U I S PA RT R I D G E

Louis Partridge was first a recurring face in the political medieval series Medici. Set in the early 15th century in Florence, Italy, the show tracks the wealthy family’s power struggles and secrets in its ascension in a time of great social upheaval. Admittedly, it’s pretty intense for a debut. The teen actor then went on to appear in feature film Amazon Adventure that’s based on an inspiring true story, and more famously, Paul King’s well-received and heartwarming Paddington 2 alongside Hugh Grant. Partridge belongs to a group of generation Z faces that harnesses the potential for reshaping the industry. One where a role can easily completely transform his life and possibly ours as the consuming audience. Thus, as with all things new, time will tell.

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VIVEIK KALRA

Viveik Kalra has indeed experienced a rapid rise with one of the lead roles he earned straight out of The Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama. He auditioned three times for the role of Javed in Gurinder Chadha’s Blinded by the Light, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. The film attained such critical acclaim that it generated the festival’s biggest sale. Even during drama school, the 22-year-old actor from Windsor, Berkshire secured a leading role in his first year on the thriller TV series Next of Kin. In the tangle of betrayal, conspiracy and murder, you can only imagine Kalra’s depth in carrying that role while handling life as a student. Once again collaborating with Chadha, who has been known to represent the industry’s Indian diaspora, Kalra joined Tom Bateman, Marc Warren and Lesley Nichol in a drama following the lives of residents living in a Delhi mansion on the cusp of the 19th century. Kalra has much to say about the racial landscape that he’s exposed to and understands the significance of the opportunity he holds in his roles. This year, he breaks into the sci-fi world with the recently shot Voyagers opposite Colin Farrell and Lily-Rose Depp. Chronicling the multi-generational mission of a group’s search for a new habitable environment, the odyssey is one to look forward to in 2020.

Above: jumper, by King & Tuckfield. Left: jumper, by Eleventy.

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EMILIA JONES

Emilia Jones’s career debut was at the wee age of eight. On Lone Sherig’s feature ilm One Day, she played a small part, a character named Jasmine. Now, the rising British actress has traversed family licks like Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides and of-kilter ilms such as High Rise which boasts a star-studded cast including Tom Hiddleston, Jeremy Irons, Sienna Miller, Luke Evans and Elisabeth Moss. It’s obvious to say she’s done everything from comedy to horror and even westerns. Netlix fans probably ind her familiar as Charlotte from Residue, but Jones stands on her own in Dr Who in her role as Young Queen of Years, Merry Gejelh. Still, it was her leading performance in the ilm adaptation of Horrible Histories that garnered her a nomination for best actress at the Children’s BAFTA Awards. Most recently, Jones has completed the forthcoming Pathé Films/Vendôme Group feature, Coda, where she plays the leading role of Ruby, the only hearing child in a deaf family who has a talent for music. This year, the actress revisits Netlix in in the highly anticipated series Locke and Key, based on Joe Hill’s popular comic book series.

Above: dress, coat and tights, all by Gucci; clog shoes, by Celine Above, right: jacket and skirt, both by Dolce&Gabbana.

On John: suit and shirt, both by Nanushka.

JOHN MCCREA

Everybody will soon be talking about John McCrea. We know him as Jamie in Jonathan Butterell and Tom MacRae’s British musical Everybody’s Talking About Jamie. Receiving an Olivier nomination for best actor in a musical and a WhatsOnStage award in the same category for his titular role, McCrea tells the story of the teenage drag queen with his soul. The show has seen sell-out runs at Sheield’s Crucible theatre, moved to the spotlight in London and will soon be adapted to ilm. For the self-professed naturally exuberant actor, this is a call of destiny. McCrea went from being an easily distracted kid to encountering drama class for the irst time upon the suggestion of his teachers. One of his early roles? ‘Unnamed sewer child’ in

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, who only makes his appearance well into Act 2. The twist being, as he tells Playbill, that while his entire dance school came to see him, because of the stage set breaking halfway in the show and his late entrance, none of them were able to see him perform. Since leaving the West End, McCrea has worked on some of the most exciting British television including thriller Giri/Haji, Netlix’s Dracula, feature ilm God’s Own Country and even an upcoming Disney ilm. Even so, there’s no forsaking the stage. He’s set to return in early spring with Danya Taymor and Jeremy O Harris’s melodrama Daddy. Just as The Critics Circle has deemed—the most promising newcomer.

Make-up by Andrew Denton. Hair by Brady Lea / The Only Agency using Kevin Murphy

On Anson: shirt, belted trousers and trench coat, all by Rochas.

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ESQ&A: Paul Andrew, creative director of Salvatore Ferragamo On surreptitiously taking photos of Bronzino paintings in the Uizi Gallery, the atrocious state of luxury menswear today, rebranding the house of Ferragamo with leather ready-to-wear, and the must-have garment for men this season.

E S Q : It’s your debut menswear show as Ferragamo’s creative director, but looking at the collection, there is such continuity from previous seasons when you designed in tandem with Guillaume Meilland, who oversaw the men’s ready-to-wear, and you the women’s line. Take the colour palette for example, it continues to be vivid and diverse. P A U L A N D R E W : I thought that this collection should be somewhat of a homecoming. So I decided that I wanted to show the collection in Florence during Pitti Uomo and, somehow, organically made the entire collection about Florence. When I started walking through the Uizi Galleries and saw the series of Bronzino paintings, I was drawn to the colours—they are so unique and beautiful and somewhat rare. You’re not supposed to take pictures in the gallery, but I snuck some photos of the paintings when no one was looking and came back to the oice and had my design team extract those colours to create the palette. That’s how the palette was born for this season. E S Q : Talking about connecting the show to Florence, you also took inspiration from the Fountain of Neptune that the house of Ferragamo recently restored and applied Neptune prints to generously cut shirts in pastel hues. P A U L A N D R E W : That’s right, the Ferragamo family had just inished paying for the renovation of the statue of Neptune in Piazza della Signoria. And as I was working on the prints for the collection—I actually had so many other prints I was thinking about—I suddenly thought, ‘Oh my gosh, I should really make Neptune the motif of the season’, and so that’s how that was born. The prints are inspired by late ’60s and early ’70s Italian illustrations that I found in the archive, and the inal Neptune motif that you see in the collection is hand-drawn by my print designer. And then that got me thinking: where to do the fashion show? E S Q : So you thought about holding your show next to the Neptune statue? P A U L A N D R E W : Yes, I wanted to do it next to the statue and everyone told me I was crazy, that it’s never been done and we’d

Words by Norman Tan

There’s something about talking with Paul Andrew—his proper English demeanour, the way he leans in to tell a story—that feels like he’s sharing conidences. “It comes more naturally,” he says. “More so than womenswear?” I ask. “I think so,” he continues. “I get to wear the pieces I design.” He steps back, lashes a wry smile and draws both halves of his blazer together at the waist. He’s dressed in a vermillion red Ferragamo suit, his turn-down shirt collar held in place with a slim, black leather tie, and although there’s more than 100 people in the restaurant, he commands the room with a quiet conidence. Handsome, composed and fully embodying his newly appointed role as Ferragamo’s creative director. We’re in Beijing for the reshowing of his debut men’s collection for the luxury Italian house—irst launched in June last year during Pitti Uomo; on a hot Tuscan summer day that’s a far cry from the bitingly cold winter evening here in the Chinese capital—and Andrew is keen to steer Ferragamo to new waters. “You know, I think menswear today is in a pretty atrocious place in general, I’m sorry to say,” he tells me, discreetly yet rather directly, earlier that day. “How so?” I prod. “I think that if you look at so many of our so called ‘luxury competitors’, they’ve all engaged with sportswear and tried to elevate it. There’s hoodies, sweatpants, T-shirts and sweatshirts on the runway and, you know, I feel like that isn’t luxury to me and it doesn’t belong at a house like Ferragamo.” He scans the room, checking to see if his aides are within ear shot, before continuing: “There’s also so many brands designing a product that is just for a photograph and I feel that also doesn’t belong at a house like Ferragamo.” As we sit, knees-to-knees inside a historic Beijing temple—the venue for the menswear presentation—with exposed beams above us and a series of mannequins dressed in his latest collection to my left, Andrew generously shares more conidences: returning to Florence for his men’s collection, tapping into young Hollywood with Hero Fiennes-Tiin, and why, when it comes to leather craftsmanship, everything old is new again.

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never get permission from the mayor. But after being quite persistent, somehow, we managed to convince the relevant authority in Florence. It was a great privilege.

model in the studio when we do ittings together—taking a coat of him and throwing it on her, taking a pant of her and putting it on him, and seeing how things look—it creates this wardrobe that is not unisex, but it’s deinitely connected.

E S Q : How do you work with Guillaume now that you’re Ferragamo’s creative director? I understand that your working relationship with him was symbiotic. A partnership of sorts? P A U L A N D R E W : The relationship has been so great since I started working on clothing with him. He’s such a gem, he’s like my brother. That irst season when I was working on women’s and he on men’s, I said to him why don’t we work together and do the fashion show with men’s and women’s in one show? To really show that we have one, singular vision for this house because this had been a major problem up until that point—that there were diferent designers overseeing diferent product categories, no one spoke to the other one and it ended up being a schizophrenic nightmare when it went into the store. You didn’t really understand what the brand stood for, what was the aesthetic that season.

E S Q : Hero Fiennes-Tiin seems to be one of your male muses. He closed your debut men’s show in Florence, was dressed in Ferragamo for the Met Gala last year and he’s now the face of your new Ferragamo fragrance. Do you have him in mind when you design menswear? P A U L A N D R E W : He’s deinitely my buddy. I hang out with him a lot and really enjoy his personality, he’s also such a talented actor. In terms of being a muse, he encapsulates what I envisage for the brand—he’s very sensitive and sophisticated at the same time. He’s one of the most polite people I’ve met in my life, but for the formality he has, he also dresses in the most casual way.

E S Q : So in your new role, it’s important to continue working closely with Guillaume? P A U L A N D R E W : Deinitely. We have a female model and a male

Photographs by Salvatore Dragone

E S Q : Who is the Ferragamo man and woman then? Are they related? Do they share the same house? P A U L A N D R E W : They are friends, they could be boyfriend and girlfriend, they could also be brother and sister. There’s deinitely this unity and shared aesthetic.

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Essentials of style

So I guess his personality does inform the way I’m thinking and designing. He also loves colour and that’s also something I love to engage with too.

E S Q : So what is old is new again? P A U L A N D R E W : Yeah. We are asking these artisans to reopen

leather looms that have not been used in 20 to 30 years and start weaving again; doing those things completely by hand. So there’s an amazing efort in craftsmanship now.

E S Q : Is it important to tap into young Hollywood? P A U L A N D R E W : Well, he comes from a Hollywood acting

background. And Ferragamo was born in Hollywood so it sort of made sense for me to engage with Hollywood in a new way. I think he’s one of the up-and-coming talents who is going to be massive in seasons to come. So I’m glad we’ve got him on-board as an ambassador.

E S Q : Is there a design detail in the current collection that might not be obvious by just watching it on the runway or lipping through lookbook images? P A U L A N D R E W : There are so many hidden details in this collection. One of the things I love is the use of leather trim. There are all these coats with double collars. If you put your ingers between the collars they open, you can lip one side up and in the centre it’s lined with nappa leather. Also, I’ve styled the show with a lot of diferent layers that might look heavy, but if you feel them in the store, you will realise that they are so lightweight; they are super easy to wear during summer.

E S Q : With such a crowded fashion market, it’s so important for a brand to have a clear identity. How would you deine the identity that you are building for Ferragamo? P A U L A N D R E W : The aesthetic that I’ve created is related to the fact that I understand people want to be casual and want ease in the way that they dress, but it’s not sportswear-inspired. I’ve been looking at ’80s and ’90s workwear pieces, reworking them in terms of fabrication and silhouette in more luxurious ways. Now you might ind a jumpsuit in beautiful nappa leather or a workwear shirt or pant in the highest quality tropical wool twill fabrications. So there’s an ease and an efortlessness to the wardrobe and there’s also a vibrancy with colour.

E S Q : The wardrobe is full of easy-to-match colourful separates. It’s energetic yet aspirational and there’s a premium polish to it all. P A U L A N D R E W : Thank you. But I still have a lot of work to do. It’s just the beginning. We’ve introduced, hopefully, a new vision and now I’m very engaged in elaborating that and bringing forward product that is going to resonate in a massive way with the marketplace. We’ve done that deinitely with women, with the Studio bag and now this new Viva shoe on the runway.

E S Q : You’ve infused a lot of leather into your ready-to-wear pieces; it’s no longer just the Ferragamo shoes and bags that are crafted from leather. For example, last season you showed a long leather scarf for womenswear.

E S Q : And for the men? What is the your male equivalent? P A U L A N D R E W : I’ve launched this new bag for men’s, which

“ T H E R E ’ S A N E A S E A N D A N E F F O R T L E S S N E S S T O T H E WA R D R O B E A N D T H E R E ’ S A L S O A V I B R A N C Y W I T H C O L O U R .”

P A U L A N D R E W : Yes, it’s leather on one side and cashmere knit on the other. When I embarked on this journey, I tried to identify what the codes of this house were. And leather made sense because we are a luxury leather goods brand. So I thought, we need to own leather in ready-to-wear also. It wasn’t something my predecessors were particularly engaged with. So now I’m working with some of the best leather ready-to-wear manufacturers in Italy. Our leather ready-to-wear sales have skyrocketed. E S Q : There must be a lot of leather innovation in order to create your collections. You are applying leather in a way that we haven’t seen in a while. P A U L A N D R E W : Well, it started by going back to our archives. Salvatore left behind 15,000 pairs of shoes when he passed away. And there’s so many awesome details on those shoes. So every season I take something out of the archive and then try to rework it in some way. We’ve gone back to some of these leather artisans in Tuscany and had them tanning skins in ways that they haven’t done in many generations. I’m doing a lot of work with deer skin now, which is not a leather people have been using very much recently. It is very light and soft. And then also with the accessories, I’ve been doing a lot of woven leather pieces.

again is in deer skin in a couple of diferent sizes. I’m excited about it. I feel men are carrying backpacks again. E S Q : What about a key garment for men this spring and summer season? P A U L A N D R E W : It’s not a Paul Andrew collection if there isn’t a jumpsuit. It’s something I’ve started since I began as creative director of women’s, and now overseeing men’s as well. Whether it be in leather or a technical lightweight nylon for this summer collection, you always need a jumpsuit. And they are always designed in a way that can be drawn in at the waist to give you form, and often in a way that you can take of the sleeves and let them back hang, so it becomes a pant with details. As well as this season, the tank top. E S Q : We shot Harris Dickinson on our February cover wearing

one of your tank tops. P A U L A N D R E W : Oh really? That’s great. I have so many friends in their ’20s and seeing the way they dress today, it’s incredible how the tank top has become the new wardrobe staple. I’ve introduced those in these beautiful, technical cottons with two tones. They feel youthful and fresh.

Sydney’s fresh faces It’s always nice to see a familiar face, but it’s cool to meet a new one too. Words by Eugene Lim Photography by John Tsiavis Styling by David Bonney

From left: On Amy: shirt and trousers, both by Todâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s; earrings, by Gucci. On Josh: jacket, shirt and trousers, all by Dior Men; rings, by Heart of Bone. On Jamie: jacket and trousers, both by Bally; shirt, by Ermenegildo Zegna XXX; frames, by Mykita; sandals, by HermĂ¨s. On Blair: T-shirt and boots, both by Givenchy; trousers and cummerbund, both by Blair Archibald; necklaces, by Heart of Bone. On Tom: jacket and trousers, both by Emporio Armani.

JOSH DOWDLE AND AMY DOWDLE , MUSICIANS

If it’s the last thing you hear, it should be rising electronic dance band, Lastlings (we couldn’t resist the pun). Sonically, they blend robust bass that is wonderfully contrasted with Amy’s soulful vocals. But there is beautiful pacing to their tracks, which heightens it. Their list of accolades is impressive, having played at festivals like Coachella, and they just wrapped up a North America tour. With a plan for the launch of their debut LP later in the year, 2020 is going to be a big year for them.

On Josh: jacket, trousers and T-shirt, all by Ermenegeldo Zegna XXX; rings, by Heart of Bone. On Amy: polo shirt, by Saint Laurent by Anthony Vaccarello; skirt, by Song for the Mute.

B L A I R A R C H I B A L D , M E N ’ S FA S H I O N D E S I G N E R

Blair Archibald has always been a great fashion designer, but being named Australia Woolmark Regional Menswear winner and winning the prestigious BT Emerging Fashion Designer Award in 2019 does not hurt. The New Zealand-born, Melbourne-based Archibald places a big focus on the quiet evolution of classic menswear staples and workwear pieces. To him, clothing doesn’t have to be overly complicated for it to shine. A subtle shift in proportions and placement injects a fresh energy into classics we are familiar with. But more than just design, the designer also places a huge focus on sustainability. Good design and a strong moral compass, that’s the kind of fashion designer we want in our future.

Jumpsuit, by Blair Archibald; necklaces, both by Heart of Bone; belt, by Givenchy; sneakers, by Louis Vuitton.

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Essentials of style

J U AY K E N N E DY, M O D E L , D J A N D A C T O R

Singapore-born Sydney-based Juay Kennedy has all the makings of a rising star in our digital age: good looks, charisma and talent by the truckload. He embodies the deinition of a multi-hyphenate, counting dancing, acting, modelling as well as being placed in an Australian Football League programme for players who show potential to play professionally. But the reason Kennedy is on this list is how he channels all these diferent facets of his life and the people in them to inspire him. And thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s something that canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t be taught.

Coat, by Dolce&Gabbana; hoodie, by Song for the Mute; denim jeans, by Bottega Veneta; rings, by Heart of Bone; sneakers, by Bally.

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EDDIE BENJAMIN, MUSICIAN

Eddie Benjamin is a singer, songwriter and bass player who exudes an unmistakable air of efortless cool. Take all of that and add a dash of irreverent humour of the Tik Tok generation and you have the makings of a pop star. For reference, check out the song where he sampled the snores of fellow Australian singer, Sia and ‘Silent Night’ and sang over them. This kid will be more than all right.

Jacket and trousers, both by Givenchy; jacket, by Song for the Mute; necklace, model’s own.

JA M I E P R E I SZ , V I SUA L A RT I ST

Jamie Preisz might have made his name as a portraiture painter with his painting of Jimmy Barnes that nabbed him the Archibald Packing Room Prize in 2018, but the talented painter is looking to expand his range and shake the notion that he is a one-trick pony with his latest solo show, Soft Machine. The show features still-life paintings of chrome objects. While there is no specific theme, the idea of painting metallic reflections is an intentional technical challenge. But perhaps it’s his way of looking inwards, a self-portrait of sorts. In an interview, Preisz further elaborates: “[The reflection in the chrome pieces] are all distorted and that’s how I think about these paintings. This show is like a whole bunch of self-portraits because I’m in all of them.”

Jacket, shirt and trousers, all by Gucci; frames, by Mykita.

TOM DALZELL , ACTOR

Tom Dalzell began his career by guest-starring on the Australian TV series, Packed to the Rafters, followed by the comedic drama Wonderland. Don’t let his classically handsome looks mislead you, Dalzell has range. The young actor got his biggest break last year, playing a huge role in Between Two Worlds, a thriller drama where the lines between two seemingly unconnected families gets increasingly blurry. He might not be an international household name yet, but you’ll want to remember his name.

Jacket, by Dolce&Gabbana; polo shirt, by Hermès.

Coat, by Tod’s; T-shirt, by Dolce&Gabbana; trousers, by Saint Laurent; bag, by Bally.

TOM RUSSELL , ACTOR

Tom Russell might joke that he dresses up as Tom Holland’s Spider-Man for kid’s parties but the young actor has some serious acting chops. He made his debut at the tender age of 12, costarring in the feature ilm Last Ride alongside Hugo Weaving. That led to a series of other roles in TV miniseries and ilms. But not one to rest on his laurels, he enrolled in Australia’s prestigious

National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA) to further hone his craft. Singapore might not be familiar with NIDA, but perhaps you would be more acquainted with its alumni, which includes Cate Blanchett, Mel Gibson, Judy Davis and Weaving. That’s some lofty alumni to live up to, but we get the feeling that Russell might be more than ready for the challenge.

Hair and make-up: Kimberley Forbes / Network Agency using R+Co, Oribe & Clemence Organics @kimba_hairandmakeup Hair and make-up assistant: Christina Sabounjian. Lighting: Mike Pedersen. Styling assistant: Tina Milani Production assistant: Christopher Xi. Special thanks to The Marlborough Hotel, Newtown and Vasco Bar, Surry Hills

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From left: On Juay: jacket, by Hermès; shorts, by Song for the Mute; rings, by Heart of Bone; sneakers, by Tod’s.

On Eddie: jacket, T-shirt and shoes, all by Louis Vuitton; watch and rings, model’s own.

On Tom: parka and T-shirt, both by Burberry; trousers, by Dolce&Gabbana; sneakers, by Bally.

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Essentials of style

Black Penton corduroy jacket and black Penton corduroy trousers, both by Oliver Spencer; black cotton socks, by Pantherella; black grain leather Pembroke shoes, by Crockett & Jones. Superocean Heritage Chronograph 44 Outerknown, 44MM steel-black steel on blue Econyl yarn strap, by Breitling.

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Setting the pace Chunky statement watches go best with chunky leather shoes. Edit by Charlie Teasdale Photographs by Phil Dunlop

Khaki stretch-flannel jacket, pale blue cotton-twill shirt, and khaki stretchflannel trousers, all by Joseph; white cotton socks, by Pantherella; black leather loafers, by Churchâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s. Type XXI 3817 Flyback Chronograph, 42MM stainless steel on brown calfskin strap, by Breguet.

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Photographerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s assistant: Tom Skinner. Model: Everton / Wilhelmina

Essentials of style

Dark grey/white chalk stripe wool-alpaca-cashmereblend suit, white/mauve striped Italian cotton shirt, navy merino jumper and charcoal cotton socks, all by Pink Shirtmaker; dark brown leather shoes, by Manolo Blahnik. Pilotâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Watch Chronograph Top Gun Edition Mojave Desert, 44.5MM sand-coloured ceramic on beige rubber strap, by IWC Schafhausen.

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Blue large-check wool jacket and blue large-check wool trousers, both by Kin by John Lewis & Partners; pale blue cotton socks, by Pantherella; black suede Wallabee boots, by Clarks. Captain Cook Automatic Blue, 42MM stainless steel on stainless steel bracelet, by Rado.

Los Angeles’ fresh faces In the birthplace of American entertainment, Los Angeles is where you’ll find creatives of all sorts working their way in hopes of achieving that Hollywood dream. And whether you’re from out of town, a son of an industry legend or stumbling unknowingly into fame, it’s the place to be. Words by Asri Jasman Photography by Justin Campbell Styling by Monty Jackson

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Shirt and trousers, both by Louis Vuitton. Facing page: jumper, leather shorts, leather bucket bag, socks and leather combat boots, all by Versace.

E VA N M O C K

Evan Mock is the definition of a cool kid. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s not enough that he knows how to skate and surf, he looks undeniably good in fashion and has an instantly recognisable look punctuated by bold fuchsia hair. Oh and did we mention that his signature hair colour was featured on an Instagram video that musician Frank Ocean posted? That was all it took for Mock to gain a throng of new followers (he now has upwards of 249,000 followers on Instagram) and the attention of the industry at large. The Hawaiian native even

filmed and photographed a project for Saint Laurent in 2019, walked for Louis Vuitton and 1017 Alyx 9SM, and appeared in campaigns for Aldo, Paco Rabanne and Nike x Sacai. But with all that practically overnight recognition and fame, Mock is often seen at home making skate videos, surfing and having a ball of a time in whatever situation he finds himself inâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;including hanging out with Travis Scott at the recent Dior Men autumn 2020 runway show in Miami while dressed head-to-toe in the brand.

Denim and PVC hoodie, by Emporio Armani. Facing page: leather jacket, denim jeans and leather boots, all by Gucci.

JACOB BIXENMAN

It’s diicult to not talk about Jacob Bixenman without bringing up the name of pop star Troye Sivan, especially when they’re both quite prominent in each other’s Instagram feeds. In fact, Bixenman appeared in Sivan’s music video for ‘Heaven’ and the duo also starred together in a special campaign for MAC Cosmetics Viva Glam lipsticks’ 25th anniversary that beneited HIV/AIDS-related causes. As a model, Bixenman is no stranger to the fashion runway, walking for a diverse portfolio of brands

that include Palomo Spain, Ami, Kith and Moncler Gamme Bleu’s inal collection. Bixenman’s penchant for image-making has seen him take a more creative role: shooting the cover of Paper Magazine that featured transgender musician Teddy Geiger, a behind-the-scenes series for Mark Ronson’s music video for ‘Late Night Feelings’ and directing a short for Puma. It’s fair to say that Bixenman is a multifaceted artist who is comfortable and talented behind and in front of the camera.

Silk shirt, T-shirt, denim jeans and leather belt, all by Saint Laurent by Anthony Vaccarello. Facing page: nylon suit and leather crossbody pouch, both by Ermenegildo Zegna XXX.

THOMAS DOHERTY

Hailing from Edinburgh, Scotland, Thomas Doherty may be familiar to anyone who’s watched Disney’s musical hit franchise, Descendants. The franchise centres around familiar Disney characters and their children, and has since gained a viewership of 21 million. Doherty appeared in the second and third ilms of the franchise as Harry Hook, the son of Captain Hook, displaying his acting, dancing and singing abilities. It’s Descendants that has propelled him to stardom, amassing an impressive four million followers on Instagram. In HBO’s Catherine the Great,

Doherty acted alongside Dame Helen Mirren as one of the titular character’s lovers. He’s also a recurring character in Legacies, a spin-of series that’s based on the popular The Vampire Diaries series. Coming up next in his already promising ilmography is a three-episode appearance in a television remake of the 2000 ilm, High Fidelity, which also stars Zoë Kravitz. It seems apparent that Doherty has a knack for choosing projects that prove to be hits, and if that’s anything to go by, we’re bound to see more of the Scottish actor in years to come.

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Leather shirt and cotton cargo trousers, both by Salvatore Ferragamo; jewellery, by Chrome Hearts; shoes, stylist’s own. Facing page: jumper, trousers and backpack, all by Givenchy; jewellery, by Chrome Hearts.

PA R I S B R O S N A N

There’s no mistaking that last name. Paris Brosnan is the youngest child of 1995 to 2002’s James Bond, Pierce Brosnan. And just like his father, Paris has been blessed with good looks, afording him the opportunity to walk for runways the likes of Balmain, Ralph Lauren and Dolce&Gabbana. While modelling is what he’s made a name for himself in, the 18-year-old is poised to make a career in the creative arts. Paris is a college student at Loyola Marymount University where he’s studying ilm and television. In 2019, Paris ilmed a documentary on the childhood hunger crisis in Sri Lanka

and how the United Nations World Food Programme has been tackling the issue. That sense for community and social causes is also evident in his partaking in an internship in the US Senate during the summer of 2018, and also lent his cinematography skills by making a video to encourage young people to vote. Most recently, Paris, together with his older brother Dylan, were selected as Golden Globe ambassadors—an annual tradition of giving the children of Hollywood celebrities an opportunity to be part of the awards show—during the 77th edition of the Golden Globe Awards.

W I L L P E LT Z

It’s not uncommon for an athlete to switch from sports to entertainment, but that’s usually after decades of being in a sport. Will Peltz chose to switch a lot sooner, thanks to his sister, fellow actor Nicola Peltz. It was while helping her read lines that he felt acting could be something he’d enjoy doing. After making a move to Los Angeles in 2009, Will scored several acting roles which included acting alongside Justin Timberlake in In Time, as well as appearing in the Netlix original, Sierra Burgess Is a Loser. Most recently, Will had a stint in the critically acclaimed teen drama series, Euphoria, which has been described as ‘boundary-pushing’. Next on the agenda is a natural disaster ilm, Thirteen Minutes, with Anne Heche and Peter Facinelli. Set in a small American town, the everyday lives of residents are turned upside down when a huge tornado hits their town and inhabitants have only 13 minutes to ind shelter and protect all whom they hold dear.

Coat, shorts, socks and leather combat boots, all by Versace; T-shirt, by Hanro. Facing page: nylon parka and backpack, both by Givenchy.

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Grooming by Mira Chai Hyde

Essentials of style

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Population: 160 On a tiny Irish island, a knitwear company is making clothes with global appeal. Above and facing page: originally from Dublin, Tarlach de Blรกcam founded Inis Meรกin Knitting Company after moving to the remote Aran Island in 1973.

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Words and photographs by Finlay Renwick

Essentials of style

and the primary school with its roll of 20 students. A solitary sheep stands in a windswept ield opposite the factory, staring impassively of into nothing in between mouthfuls of grass tinged the colour of rust. White and pastel houses pockmark the otherworldly landscape in the distance. “It might sound like an old-fashioned company,” says Tarlach de Blácam as he shows me around the production loor, a whirl of activity, spools of colourful fabric and cardboard boxes full of orders ready to be shipped of on the Monday morning boat to the mainland. “But we’re actually very modern.” He gestures proudly towards a high-tech Japanese knitting machine that is able to weave 12-gauge fabric. “That’s really opened things up for us,” he says. “It means we can create extra ine and soft garments.” A row of six local women are busy handinishing jumpers in various shades of navy, burgundy, ecru and sage, silent in their mutual concentration. “It’s a very diicult skill. Some of these ladies have been with the company since we founded it.” The factory employs 21 staf and is by far the island’s biggest employer. Its lookbook is modelled by a Galway isherman fortunately blessed with a set of high cheekbones.

Shuddering against the impact of the North Atlantic Ocean, the boat rocks wildly from side to side, as if in the clutches of a giant, malevolent toddler at bath time. It’s too much for one passenger, who seeks solace in a sick bag. A pensioner in a leather jacket and scufed loafers snoozes gently beside him, counting king crab in his sleep. “A bit choppy out there,” says the ferry’s captain, appearing unfazed as towering columns of roiling surf erupt from every angle. Eventually, a beacon appears through the October evening gloom. Three dim spotlights and the tiny harbour of Inis Meáin. Forty-eight kilometres of the west coast of Ireland, at the mouth of Galway Bay, Inis Meáin (population: 160) is the middle and least populous of the three Aran Islands, joining Inis Mór and Inis Oírr as lonely, limestone outcrops huddled together against the great stormy caprices of the Atlantic. Sail due west for some 3,000km and the next land is the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador. It is certainly an unlikely spot for a luxury fashion brand. Inis Meáin Knitting Company, founded in 1976, is based in a handsome, whitewashed building with a corrugated steel roof near the island’s centre, just down the hill from the church

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“ W E ’ R E F L AV O U R O F T H E M O N T H ! YO U N G G U Y S C A R E M O R E A B O U T W H E R E T H E I R C L O T H E S C O M E F R O M N O WA D AY S A N D WA N T T O G E T K I T T E D O U T, W H I C H I S G R E AT F O R U S .”

Spry, reined and smartly dressed in a navy Donegal sweater, gingham shirt, indigo denim and tortoiseshell frames, de Blácam is a tall, 72-year-old man. A Dubliner by birth, he moved to the island in 1973 with his wife, Áine Ní Chonghaile, a native of Inis Meáin who was teaching in the Irish capital when they irst met. “We came here intending to write,” says de Blácam, who studied Celtic languages at Trinity College, “and ended up setting up the knitwear industry! Back then there was nothing on the island whatsoever. No electricity or running water, no proper pier for the ferry. The place was disintegrating. A lot of people were leaving for good. We wanted to do something to create employment. It made sense to focus on a trade that honoured the island’s heritage.” De Blácam and Ní Chonghaile felt there could be a wider demand for traditionally crafted Aran knitwear: the hardwearing, heavy yarn sweaters that had been knitted by the women of the island for millennia, updated with more luxurycentred fabrics. “I thought if we targeted high-end stores in Europe and Japan we might be onto something,” de Blácam says. Today, its jumpers, cardigans and unstructured jackets—which range in price from around GBP200 to GBP400—as well as accessories, are stocked by Anderson & Sheppard, Matches Fashion, Macy’s in New York and boutiques and department stores in Italy, Germany, Japan and China.

“Inis Meáin is one of those brands which is an absolute expert in its ield,” says Damien Paul, head of menswear at Matches Fashion. “It creates understated, best-in-class knitwear in muted colours and tones that can work for any man. It’s the sort of product you end up having for years and is far removed from seasonal trends. It’s deinitely a brand that chimes with the emerging slower approach to fashion our customers appreciate.” “Nowadays, I have to hold back on sales. It’s been a hard slog to get to this place,” says de Blácam, who remembers the “awful” winter of 2009 when the world economy tanked. Suddenly, artisanal Irish knitwear didn’t factor into most people’s budgets. “Now we’re lavour of the month! I can’t aford to overbook and that’s the danger. It seems like young guys care more about where their clothes come from nowadays and want to get kitted out, which is great for us.” Barely 4.8km by 6.4km in diameter, Inis Meáin means, fairly straightforwardly, Middle Island in Gaelic, the irst language of its residents. In the evenings during my guest-house stay, I sit alone in a room painted Rothko red, eating homemade soup and soda bread while a radio plays traditional music—jolly, iddleheavy ditties interspersed with music-less songs, strange and salty calls to prayer recited with a quivering beauty. Across a moonless sky, the weak amber lights of the harbour are the only break in the darkness. The renowned Irish language playwright, poet and folklorist John Millington Synge, who spent summers

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Inis Meáin Knitting Company has export markets all over the world. Its clothing bears the symbol of an upturned currach—a traditional Irish small boat.

of the black pebble beach, and has a boat for ishing: cod, plaice, mackerel in summer and the occasional monkish. “I used to scuba dive, but I’m TFO now… Too F*cking Old!” “I’ll be sad when some of the old folk go of,” he adds, nursing a cup of tea at the kitchen table of the family home, a book-lined, converted schoolhouse in the same white as the factory with a neatly painted blue door. “I admire the independence and the way of life. Because this place was so isolated, they had to be able to adapt. You couldn’t rely on anyone else.” Before the pier was built, de Blácam would have to row out to meet the ferry, moored of the island, in a traditional Irish wood-framed boat called a currach. “That was the only option if I wanted to get my orders shipped!” Lunch over, he gathers himself to head back to the factory as America wakes up and comes online, to check for new knitwear orders. A large kitchen window faces out towards the Atlantic, as do many on Inis Meáin. During the winter, de Blácam and Ní Chonghaile might sit and watch a storm roll in, the salt air rattling against the glass. “We’ve seen it all!” she says as empty plates are cleared. “The storms, the wind and rain. Waves like you wouldn’t believe.” Today, there’ll be no such spectacle. A brief shower has given way to a hazy afternoon, the soft light turning the rusty grass golden, the fury of the Atlantic reduced to a gentle lapping against the island’s ancient shores.

on the island, studying its rich heritage, wrote in his 1907 book The Aran Islands: “This is the last outpost of ancient Europe. I am privileged to see it before it disappears forever.” The Aran Islands are home to around 200 bird species, including puins, herons, ringed plovers, cuckoos, stonechats, skylarks and linnets. I’m trailed by a suspicious crow as I trek irst to the remains of a 4,000-year-old Celtic fortress and then on to the far northwestern corner of the island on de Blácam’s recommendation, a place where Synge would often meditate facing out to the horizon. In May, wild lowers erupt here in a sea of colour, owing to the relatively temperate climate and fertile soil. “I’m always looking at the colours and shapes of the local fauna and lora for our collections,” de Blácam says. At this time of year, with the lowers long since decayed, wild thistles poke up from between moss-covered rocks and thickets of blackberries line the roads. Traditional drystone walls snake around the land creating a primordial maze. As you reach the clif edge, Inis Mór comes into view, obscured through a prism of sea spray. With 800 residents, it is jokingly referred to as The Metropolis by locals on the smaller island. “A lot of people might ind it lonely here,” de Blácam says over a lunch of ham with potato salad and tomatoes grown in his eldest son Rory’s weather-proof polytunnel, “but I wasn’t made for cities.” He still swims in the sea, even as winter approaches,

A gathering of Singaporeans who have a head for success and a heart for community. From business leaders and policymakers peacocking in pinstripes, to consultants and creatives brainstorming in T-shirts, The Esky Club exists to challenge and break down mediocrity (and that carcinogenic notion of ‘good enough’) in order to stir up and instigate purpose-driven action on social issues—both at home and abroad. It’s iron sharpens iron kind of stuff. Sure, there might be cuts and bruises (to your ego), but they will be soothed with generous lashings of whisky, thought-provoking debates and soul-building conversation on matters that, well, matter.

Want to join? You need an invite. Best way to secure an invitation? You do you, and the rest will follow.

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Vision 2020 There is a place for mechanical watchmaking in the future. These talented young minds are making certain of that.

REXHEP REXHEPI, 33 Akrivia Genève

watches of celebrated watchmaker François-Paul Journe alongside whom Rexhepi had worked for 18 months. The movement was so brilliantly crafted and splendidly finished that the Grand Prix d’Horlogerie de Genève wasted no time in naming this stellar timepiece Best Men’s Watch of the year. The crowd went wild. It was a well-deserved win. Now thrust into the limelight, Rexhepi and his success story is the new role model for all aspiring watchmakers. Some have already likened him to legendary watchmaker Philippe Dufour, who is also famous for exquisite handcrafted watches like Simplicity. And just how in demand is the Rexhep Rexhepi Chronomètre Contemporain, you ask? Take the Only Watch 2019 results as a reference. That unique piece was estimated to sell between CHF40,000 and CHF60,000, but it bagged a cool CHF360,000. But Rexhepi remains driven by passion, with a work ethic so impressive it pulled an industry legend, famed case-maker Jean-Pierre Hagmann, out of retirement. So there is absolutely no doubt that Akrivia and Rexhep Rexhepi are two of the biggest names to follow in 2020 and beyond. Says Rexhepi: “Akrivia has evolved gradually, but now I want to go to the next stage—creating our cases in our own workshop, in exactly the same spirit as our movements. With the exceptional experience and expertise of Jean-Pierre, I want to integrate an almost-forgotten profession into Akrivia. Our collaboration is based on our common desire to create beautiful, handcrafted cases to showcase the movement.”

Words by Celine Yap. Photograph by Marc Gysin

Rexhep Rexhepi was just 25 years old when he started his brand, Akrivia, in 2012. And, as much as its watches are exceptionally well-made, Akrivia was just another new kid on the independent watchmaking block. Jostling for a share of the market with the likes of FP Journe, Kari Voutilainen, Greubel Forsey and more, Akrivia’s grand complications offered yet another watchmaker’s take on haute horlogerie. But this dramatically changed in 2018 when the Kosovan-born watchmaker revealed his magnum opus, the piece known as Chronomètre Contemporain. A simple time-only watch, it bore Rexhepi’s name instead of the brand’s and was completely devoid of any mechanical complication. Utterly refined, its pure enamel dial and modest dimensions were the antithesis of Rexhepi’s more complex creations for Akrivia, although this style was arguably much closer to his graduation piece, a classic pocket watch made during his apprenticeship at Patek Philippe. Chronomètre Contemporain also brings to mind the

Far left: Rexhep Rexhepi Chronomètre Contemporain. Left: Rexhep Rexhepi.

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M A SA H I R O K I K U N O, 3 7 Masahiro Kikuno Handmade Watches

of luxury. One can only learn and show this in one’s lifetime. But this kind of mastery isn’t easy, not everyone would achieve it. To be certain, watches with craftsmanship is true luxury.” Kikuno discovered watchmaking at a young age. Through a watch magazine at a bookshop, he discovered the principles and ideals of haute horlogerie, the savoir faire of Swiss watchmaking and all the stories behind the industry’s best watchmakers. Thus motivated, he attended watchmaking school in Tokyo, learning watch repair and teaching himself more through English watchmaker George Daniels’ book on watchmaking. Daniels was a major source of inspiration for Kikuno, who describes the ultimate goal of a watchmaker as to be able to create the watches that he enjoys. In addition to the wadokei temporal hour watch, Kikuno also made a tourbillon in 2012 beautifully decorated with a herringbone finish, then the Orizuru in 2013 with a stunning handcrafted mokume-gane dial, which was the highlight of the Mokume watch in 2014. Inspired by Japanese culture as well as traditional design, Kikuno prides himself on providing full transparency on the making of his timepieces. He thinks the industry should do so too. “What is traditional watchmaking?” he asks. “I think that answer is different for everyone. To get my watchmaking understood, I show all the processes in an album and let the customers decide.”

When he was 28 years old, Masahiro Kikuno created the first temporal hour wristwatch, a fascinating timepiece based on a 17th-century clock called a wadokei that accurately reflects sunset-sunrise with movable hour numerals. The fact that he could accomplish such a unique device was already a great feat, but more impressively, Kikuno did almost everything by hand. Wheels, bridges, plates, dials, even cases, and outsourcing just bare essentials such as jewels, springs, crystal and straps. This piece showcased Kikuno’s unique approach to watchmaking: handcrafted, traditional and spiked with Japanese culture. During the early 2010s, there was nothing quite like this on the market. So he caught the eye of the Académie Horlogère des Créateurs Independents and was inducted in 2013, becoming the first Japanese watchmaker to set foot into this sacred inner circle. Born in Hokkaido and today based in a little town named Matsudo in Japan’s Chiba prefecture, Kikuno truly believes in the value of craftsmanship. He says: “For the craftsman, to be able to show his craftsmanship is the joy of life. I don’t merely want to complete watches. I don’t want to make them without any craftsmanship. That is not for me.” He continues: “Craftsmanship is the most precious of all techniques. It is the ultimate definition

Photographs by Masahiro Kikuno and Shinichi Ichikawa

Above: Masahiro Kikuno. Right: Wadokei Revision.

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Below: Raúl Pagès. Right: Soberly Onyx.

industry today. His piece, called Tortoise Automaton, aims to bring back this forgotten tradition. A walking tick-tocking piece of art, it triggers such emotions as you’ve never felt about any other timepiece. And emotion, says Pagès, is what mechanical watchmaking should be all about. “Modern mechanical watchmaking must provide emotion. Historically, the search for precision was a necessity for any scientific research. Since the mid-20th century, with the invention of the quartz movement, no mechanical timepiece is as precise. This is why I value the soul and artistic dimension in my work.” Emotion is also what got Pagès into horology. Literally hooked on a feeling, he says: “When you make an object yourself that has taken several months of work, the feeling you get when you assemble the last component is an enormous accomplishment and satisfaction. I think that when I create a timepiece, I’m looking for that feeling.” Being an independent watchmaker gives Pagès the autonomy to create what he likes. Timepieces such as Soberly Onyx may not appeal to great masses of people—indeed not everyone can afford a handcrafted watch—but that is perfectly fine by him. “I think there will always be recognition for a mechanical art that focuses on heritage, crafts and culture. I think that independent watchmakers have the responsibility to save it and to transmit the knowledge. I hope that we will thrive to create original concepts because the need for intellectual and emotional stimulation is what mankind needs.”

R AÚ L PAG È S , 3 7 Pagès Watches

Photograph by Benjamin Visinand

Like many of today’s independent watchmaking greats, Raúl Pagès started out repairing and restoring old clocks and pocket watches. Learning from the best, he received classical training at Parmigiani’s restoration department for four years and also worked at the Patek Philippe Museum in Geneva. Because antique timepieces often utilise components that are no longer in production today, a restorator needs to make them by hand, hewn from solid pieces of raw steel or brass, sometimes gold. This imparted something invaluable in the Spanish watchmaker’s mind: that making watches by hand can and should never be replaced by machines. Says Pagès: “I love the tradition of horology and I am inspired while working with antique pieces. Very few watchmakers can make all the components, excluding stones and hairspring, by hand, so it is important for me to safeguard this knowledge. For me the soul of a timepiece lies in true craftsmanship, the art of finishing and the details.” In all of his contemporary creations, he adds, only simple watchmaker tools and hand-operated machines are used. Not even CNC? Not at all. Pagès specialises in automata, one of Swiss watchmaking’s nearextinct art forms and practised by only a handful of brands in the

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The 42MM Seamaster Diver 300M is worn on a mesh bracelet in No Time To Die but is also available on a NATO strap.

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Unbreakable Bond

Words by Celine Yap

Where there’s smoke, there’s ire. Where there’s James Bond, there is Omega.

The latest James Bond movie mustn’t have been easy to film. It’s been all over the news. No Time To Die changed directors, script writers and even the composer. Of course Agent 007 also changed, from Daniel Craig’s titular James Bond to new character Nomi as played by Lashana Lynch. But one thing remained constant and that’s the presence of an Omega on the secret agent’s wrist. In fact, as the filmmaking world goes on about Bond 25 for the number of James Bond movies to date since Dr No in 1962, Omega remembers a 25 of its own. That would be the number of years passed since the watchmaker appeared alongside Bond on the big screen. The partnership has grown stronger and deeper ever since. “James Bond is a fundamental part of Omega’s identity,” says CEO of Omega, Raynald Aeschlimann. “Many people speak about collaborations in the watch industry, but this is a true partnership.” Indeed, what started in 1995 evolved, 25 years and nine spy flicks later, into a unique story told jointly by Omega and James Bond. “We love working with the 007 team,” Aeschlimann enthuses. “We share their creativity and passion, and we are able to help enhance each other. James Bond represents so many of Omega’s own qualities, such as sophistication, adventure, elegance and style.” At the beginning, the movie featured standard Omega watches. “The famous Seamaster Diver 300M used in GoldenEye was part of our core collection. It wasn’t a commemorative watch,” says Aeschlimann. But gradually the brand started to make special or limited editions each time a new Bond movie hit the theatres. To date Omega has made more than 10 references for the entire franchise, all of them from the iconic Seamaster line. Why Seamaster? Aeschlimann reveals that this timepiece traces back to the original series made in 1948 for the British military during World War II. Moreover, Seamaster was worn by different military units throughout the years, including many divers and naval officers. He adds: “The costume designer who worked on GoldenEye in 1995 therefore believed that the Seamaster was the most appropriate watch for Commander James Bond to wear. It was true to his character.” Fans of the movie seem to agree, as Omega reports a spike in sales each time it launches a new James Bond watch. Aeschlimann shares: “The Seamaster 300 Spectre was particularly successful. We created a beautiful watch, of course, but the marketing and promotion really took the sales to an unbelievable level. It showed the true power of the James Bond universe.” The new Seamaster Diver 300M 007 Edition goes on sale in February and this piece is extra special because not only will it be worn by Craig in No Time To Die, it was also designed with the English actor and the filmmakers. Craig notes: “When working with Omega, we decided that a lightweight watch would be key for a military man like 007. I also suggested some vintage touches and colours to give the watch a unique edge. The final piece looks incredible.” Spot this fantastic timepiece in the movie when it gets here in April.

SCREEN TIME All the Omega watches worn by James Bond since 1995.

Omega Seamaster Professional Diver 300M Pierce Brosnan wore the quartz version of this model in GoldenEye. Then in Tomorrow Never Dies, The World Is Not Enough and Die Another Day, he upgraded to the mechanical model. Omega Seamaster Professional 600M This was the watch worn by Daniel Craig in his first Bond movie, Casino Royale. Omega Seamaster Diver 300M Also in Casino Royale, Craig was wearing this piece on the train where he met Vesper Lynd. Omega Seamaster Planet Ocean 600M In Quantum of Solace, Craig returned with Seamaster Planet Ocean 600M, but this time on a steel bracelet. This watch also appeared in Skyfall. Omega Seamaster Aqua Terra Skyfall Bond also wore this slimmer more elegant dress model in Skyfall and Spectre. Omega Seamaster 300 The first James Bond edition on a NATO strap, this watch appeared in Spectre with new features such as the lollipop seconds hand and bidirectional rotating bezel. Omega Seamaster Diver 300M Limited Edition Craig suggested vintage touches and colours to this latest special non-limited edition, which will be seen in No Time To Die.

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Special appearance

practicality but rather, poetry, that this incredible timepiece was conceptualised. Hermès, with the help of movements specialist Agenhor, choreographed this spectacular dance of two moons where the satellite discs’ ethereal weightlessness belies an immense complexity underneath. As for the décor, Hermès showed of some serious artisanal chops. Lacquer discs with painted numerals in the Arceau’s signature slanted font add a touch of whimsy. Aventurine (or meteorite) inlaid with mother-of-pearl provide the backdrop. And if you look really closely, you can catch a beautiful Pegasus prancing around the southern moon, which funnily is placed on top while the northern moon sits below. That’s Hermès creativity at work and not at all a mistake. The result is a topsy-turvy that’ll have you seeing stars, counting moons and making magic.

HERMÈS

Two loating satellites positioned across from each other. Slowly but surely they move in a circular direction. For eternity they chase one another, sometimes eclipsing, and sometimes revealing, the phases of the moon. Far above, a velvety night sky blanketed by stars ofers a glimpse of the ininite universe above us. We could be looking through a telescope, at a planetarium, or it could be the view through the porthole of a spaceship, but it is none of these. Such is the phenomenal beauty of the Hermès Arceau l’Heure de la Lune. Not your garden-variety moonphase complication, this watch uses a rotating twin-disc mechanism geared to mimic the moon cycle, which is around 29.5 days a month. This unique device simultaneously displays the phases of the moon in the northern as well as the southern hemispheres. Yet it wasn’t because of

Words by Celine Yap

When the humble dial becomes a stage, a tapestry, a landscape, a point of view.

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HUBLOT

Since its role is to tell the time, a dizzying spectacle is probably the last thing you’d expect from a dial. But the Hublot Classic Fusion Carlos Cruz-Diez is designed to leave us feeling more than a little lightheaded. Criss-crossing black lines interplay with a palette of disco colours to create a mesmerising display that’s never quite the same. After all, constant evolution was what the Venezuelan artist had been going on about throughout his career. Cruz-Diez believed that colour evolves continuously in time and space. He believed that colour is not a certainty, but a circumstance. That red is maybe red, but an object under the sun looks not the same as when it’s held under the shade. Beginning in 2015, the collaboration between Hublot and Cruz-Diez sought to bring kinetic art to watchmaking. As Ricardo Guadalupe, CEO of the Swiss watch brand, says: “Kinetic art is a disruptive art form that places the spectator’s perception at the centre of the piece in order to question the purpose and status of a work of art. Together, we have created a working piece of art that can be worn on the wrist.” The result is a two-level dial treated in saturated Pantone colours connected to two transparent discs with printed black lines that are driven by the hour and minute hands. So every passing minute brings a new perspective to this artwork, embodying the essence of this quote by Cruz-Diez: “Colour is light, time and space. Colour is not in the past, it is a continuous present.”

GLASHÜTTE ORIGINAL

The great thing about owning your own dial manufacture is that you can do anything you want in any amount you like. You could specify the most minute detail or a unique colour, you could create something that’s never been done before. That last route was the one Glashütte Original took with the hugely popular Sixties Annual Edition. First in green, then in orange, the German manufacture covered this otherwise very classical timepiece with wild streaks and jagged markings that got everyone who’s keen on watches all ired up, which is probably the best reward for its efort. Twenty-ive steps were required to produce these dials, colour, textures and all. German silver blanks are punched out with a unique tool and then go through a 60-tonne press to get that striking iligreed pattern. Apparently, this technique, deliberately selected for the Glashütte Original Sixties collection, dates back to the 1960s. Then a second press gives it a domed proile, which is another feature of watches from that period. Why? Because people wanted slimmer watches but movements were still fairly thick, so a domed dial allowed the watchmaker to mask the extra height. But until it gets a bright coat of colour, the dial is far from inished. Numerous layers of lacquer are applied in order to achieve a rich hue, then comes the much vaunted dégradé inish, where black paint is carefully sprayed on the edges, and the piece goes into a kiln for the colours to set. When all that is done, the technician makes eight cuts on the dial for the hour markers. Then imprints the four hour numerals and all the wordings, and inally adds 12 luminous dots around the dial by hand.

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P AT E K P H I L I P P E

From time to time, Patek Philippe pulls the rug from under our feet with brow-raising timepieces like the Calatrava Weekly Calendar Ref. 5212A. You take one quick look at this seemingly classical dress watch and immediately notice something’s of. With the exception of its brand logo, the wordings and numerals all over the dial don’t look perfectly uniform at all. In fact, they look almost handwritten. But that can’t be right, only, it is. Ref. 5212A has an unusual typography derived from the personal script of one of Patek Philippe’s watch designers. Dangerously similar to Comic Sans, it’s meant to remind us of the school calendars from the past. And using it lock, stock and barrel was the direct order of company president Thierry Stern. Stern revealed to Esquire Singapore in an earlier interview that the entire commercial team was initially quite apprehensive about this creative direction, but he pressed on because he was sure it would work. Well, Stern was at least half right because the market is divided dead centre about it. Of course, the fact that it’s a steel piece does wonders to boost buyer demand. Indeed, this is one of the few contemporary Calatravas in steel. But don’t expect Ref. 5212A to be any easier to score than a steel Nautilus or Aquanaut even though it’s not a limited edition. As with any novelty Patek Philippe, demand far outstrips supply. The weekly calendar mechanism within ofers a number of innovative features too, but ultimately it is this unique dial design that has the industry buzzing. Who would’ve known that something minor like choice of font could drive us all nuts? Oh right, Stern did.

CORUM

The Corum Golden Bridge presented in 1980 was one of modern watchmaking’s greatest disappearing acts because it was a watch with no dial. Yet, in spite of the many shapes, sizes and materials it’s been made in so far, the fact that it has no dial remains one of the most alluring features of Golden Bridge. Housed within a gold case itted with transparent sapphire crystal on all sides, there was nothing inside except a vertical strip of mechanical components telling the time. Called an in-line baguette movement, this allowed the watchmaker to create one of the earliest threedimensional timekeepers that was beautiful from all angles. Indeed, Golden Bridge has since always been feted for its unique and breathtaking architecture. Over the years, numerous variations have been introduced and one of the latest is the Golden Bridge Round 43. Believe it or not, this piece is the irst Golden Bridge with a 43mm round case. So what the watch ofers other than a vast void is a stunning display of cable wires reminiscent of some of the world’s most famous suspension bridges. Think the Millau Bridge that stretches across the River Tarn’s valley in France, Nanpu Bridge in Shanghai or Lovers Bridge in Tamsui, Taiwan. Its one-of-a-kind design is the sort that starts conversations between strangers and that’s always the best type of bridge to be building.

G R A N D S E I KO

In any watch manufacture, the best work benches are the ones that face the window. They are traditionally reserved for the master

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watchmakers because they get the greatest amount of light. Usually, indeed not always, these best seats in the house also ofer the best views. At the Grand Seiko Micro Artist Studio in Shiojiri, Japan, its windows look out over sprawling mountainous landscapes. Come winter, heavy snowfall in this region, sometimes called the Japanese Alps, blankets the surrounding hills and meadows in mesmerising white. Captivated by this pristine beauty, the Grand Seiko artisans sought to replicate the scene on its timepieces. They succeeded with the 20th anniversary Spring Drive limitededition platinum and gold pieces. The Grand Seiko Spring Drive SBGZ001 and SBGY002 feature what the manufacture calls the snowlake pattern, which is inspired by the delicate shimmery texture of freshly fallen snow. Executed entirely by hand, you don’t just see the ingenuity but feel it too as the platinum SBGZ001 model has its case and dial fully covered. Yet unlike actual snow, which is so ephemeral, the beauty of these timepieces lasts forever. If you let it catch the light at diferent angles, you’ll get to see the unique craftsmanship that sets Grand Seiko apart from all other manufactures.

it, a lower in full bloom made of mother-of-pearl and painted with translucent enamel symbolises summer, accentuated by the yellow sapphire at its heart. Then there’s the third lotus lower, loating on the water, representing autumn. And winter is the seed pod at six o’clock crafted in gold and studded with seven precious diamonds representing its seeds. Animating the dial further, the koi swims blissfully round and round, swishing its tail back and forth, ducking beneath the leaves and then returning to the surface to glimpse at the sky. So delicate it sometimes goes unnoticed, a little dragonly hovers above the pond, acting as the power reserve, and comes to rest on a leaf when power is depleted. Jaquet Droz’s unparalleled automata savoir faire truly sets this timepiece apart from anything else it has done.

ROGER DUBUIS

Because it has a watch named Excalibur, it’s only a matter of time before Roger Dubuis looks to King Arthur’s Round Table for creative inspiration. In Excalibur – The Knights of the Round Table, the usual hour indexes make way for 12 Arthurian knights. Crafted in three dimensions, they measure just 6.5mm in height, but examine them with a loupe and you’ll see they’ve been sculpted, engraved and inished in great detail. Notice how they are done in simple geometric shapes? That’s because each knight is crafted in the style of low poly art, which is a love-hate aesthetic, but that’s okay because a Roger Dubuis watch is never about mass appeal. Plus, it perfectly complements the Excalibur’s signature knurled bezel and crown resembling the crenellations of a fortress. From a picturesque garden pond to the moon, from an artistic canvas to a poetic snowscape, watchmaking can travel as far and wide as we can imagine or take on any guise in miniature. They may tell the time or read the date, but as these ones prove, a watch is never just a watch.

JAQUET DROZ

The pretty little pond brims with life. Lotuses thrive, you see them blooming in all stages, and pebbles smoothed by the clear blue water peek beneath luscious leaves. Koi and dragonlies frolic above and beneath the surface, each minding their own business. Time passes by, marching constantly, but no one is in a hurry. No, it’s not a painting and neither is it a Japanese Zen garden. It is the Jaquet Droz Magic Lotus Automaton. Here, the lotus represents the four seasons, but you can also see how it is a metaphor for the stages of life. A lotus bud carved in mother-of-pearl accompanied by gold petals is spring. Next to

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Photographs by Shawn Paul Tan Styling by Asri Jasman

thank you for smoking From light to dark, the subtle allure of smoked dials takes centre stage in these timepieces.

Patek Philippe Ref. 5524R Calatrava Pilot Travel Time 42MM in rose gold case on a vintage brown leather strap.

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H Moser & Cie Pioneer Centre Seconds 42.8MM in steel case on a black fabric strap.

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Seiko Presage Cocktail SSA401J1 40.5MM in stainless steel case on a brown leather strap.

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TAG Heuer Autavia Calibre 5 Chronometer 42MM in fine-brushed and polished steel case on a fine-brushed and polished steel bracelet.

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Longines Legend Diver 36MM in stainless steel case on a brown leather strap.

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Photographer assisted by Kat Midori

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Hamilton Intra-Matic Auto 38MM in stainless steel case on a black leather strap.

Still life

2|5

Tom Ford Soleil Neige eau de parfum 50ML, by Tom Ford.

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A sense of joy

Theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re not like us

Faces of the future

Acting gives Harris Dickinson a magical feeling that borders on euphoria.

Being the odd one out is never fun.

Theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re the next big thing, the rising stars of Singapore. Find out what makes them tick.

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Hiding

plain sight

Harris Dickinson is standing on the brink. Is he a one-hit wonder or is he here to stay? Is he a Prince Philip or more of a Frankie? Could he even be, dare we predict it, the next 007?

Words by Josh Sims Photographs by Justin Campbell Styling by Rose Forde

Facing page: leather jacket and leather shirt, both by Paul Smith.

“Who’s that guy...

what was that movie?

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Cover story

Facing page: leather jacket, leather shirt and leather trousers, all by Paul Smith.

Is it Terence Stamp?” Harris Dickinson has interrupted himself. A random thought has barged into his conversation low. He’s looking perplexed. “I had a weird dream last night about Terence Stamp being sick,” he says, as though the fantasy maladies of a fellow English actor might pose a problem. “Who made Eureka? Or The Witches?” he asks. “No, hang on, it’s a Passolini ilm— Theorem. Have you seen that? Anyway, Stamp was really prominent in my dream. I don’t often dream of actors.” Some, it might be suggested, could well be dreaming of him, however, and given this fresh-faced actor’s roles to date, that’s no big surprise. Dickinson irst made his mark in Eliza Hittman’s acclaimed 2017 independent ilm Beach Rats, in which he plays a kid in the New Jersey ’burbs discovering his sexuality, unsure whether he’s straight or gay, but exploring both sides. He followed that with the lead in Steve McLean’s Postcards From London, playing a gay male escort in a hyperreal version of London’s Soho district during its heady red light days. Both roles involved baring his arse as much as his soul. Yet, more recently, he’s lipped these arty credentials on their head, playing the dudish love interest in the ilm adaptation of the teen sci-i novel The Darkest Minds, and the handsome prince in Disney’s Maleficent: Mistress of Evil. Think “nobility, fairness, that regal look”, he says. “Getting the part of a prince was weird for me, a boy from Walthamstow [in north-east London]. It was the kind of thing that didn’t happen, ridiculous and great at the same time.” A fairy tale, you might say. But it means his metaphoric poster is undoubtedly now on the walls or screen savers of young women and men alike. And it’s not a notion he’s comfortable with. “I don’t like the idea of being a pin-up. No. No,” he says emphatically, slightly horriied even, as if the idea had never occurred to him. “Why would you like that? What does it mean?” Dickinson likes to ask questions of himself, as though he’s still working it all out. And, in a way, he must be. Only 23, while he’s done his fair share of drudge work to ill in the long gaps between acting assignments, he’s made it young where some actors never make it at all. It’s been a roller-coaster few years in which he’s hardly stopped working. He’s about to get a taste of the big time too, having won the lead role in the forthcoming The King’s Man, a prequel to the successful Kingsman series of espionage romps that helped put Taron ‘Rocketman’ Egerton’s name on the map. It’s Dickinson’s irst lead in such mainstream, widedistribution fare. “I’m still wondering how this has happened to me,” he concedes, and his puzzlement certainly seems unafected. “I know I’ve worked hard. I’ve been lucky. And I’m aware that luck can run out. But I’m not scared about how fragile the job [of acting] is. I’ll always make money, somehow. I auditioned for three years and didn’t get anything so I got a taste of that and know what it’s like not to be working as an actor. I know how rare it is to get a lot of work, so I’m just knuckling down and going with it. “That said, I’m aware of the exposure [The King’s Man] will bring, the mass audience and the pressure that comes with that,” he admits. “It was a scary thought to begin with, but you put that to the back of your mind because you can’t think about that while doing the job. It’s a big thing to get a role like that and it’s incredibly satisfying. I met Matthew

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[Vaughn, the director] on a Wednesday afternoon, went to his house and read a few scenes and then got it. It was really quick, man. It wasn’t a high-pressure environment, which is great, because some auditions feel like you’re being interviewed to go to the moon.” For all that his career so far spans a mere seven years, Dickinson was one of those kids who always wanted to be an actor—who loved dressing up, putting on impromptu one-man shows for his family (he’s one of four siblings, all of whom, he says, are excellent performers), always in the school play, going on to make short ilms for entry into local festivals. Enjoy it though he did, school itself didn’t work out so well for him. He had, he says, “some issues with some teachers and was made to feel a bit worthless, that I didn’t belong, so I got frustrated. That combination didn’t work well for 16-year-old me.” Ironically, for someone who says he has no trouble learning lines, “that education system of remembering info in order to regurgitate it for a test” was always a challenge. “I was engaged in art and theatre because it felt personal to me,” he says. “But I was somewhere else in class. I didn’t come out of school feeling encouraged”. Rather than continuing with further education, and seemingly with few other options, Dickinson considered applying for the Royal Marines, one of the British Army’s elite regiments. He’d long been a member of the Army Cadet Force, an organisation for schoolaged children, with a vague interest in later joining the armed forces. “I was a chubby kid so I enjoyed the itness, the structure of it. I was iring guns so you get to feel manly—all that stuf,” he says, “though sometimes I missed the training because I had theatre to do and the oicer would look at me as if to say, ‘what do you mean, you’re “doing a performance”?!’.” In retrospect Dickinson reckons he wouldn’t have got in to the Royal Marines. “I’d have been too sensitive for them,” he suggests. But he was saved from inding out by Graham Bryan, whom a thankful Dickinson is careful to cite by name. He’s the youth theatre drama coach who took Dickinson aside and persuaded him that he had talent and a chance of making it in what is a notoriously ickle industry. “I think it’s unusual to be set on acting so young. But I just loved entertaining people,” says Dickinson. “I got that magical feeling when I performed—a weird euphoria. And when I went to the cinema it gave me a sense of joy too. And that joy is deinitely still there. When I’m on set I’m marvelling at all that’s going on. That joy has got more intense because I’m at a place where I’m starting to understand it more, even if sometimes it’s hard not to watch some ilms and not think ‘I bet that took 10 takes or that angle’s not great’. But the fact is that if I hadn’t had

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the people around me to encourage me I might not have [pursued] acting. I didn’t know anyone in the industry, nobody in my family was part of it, no connections, it wasn’t a world I knew. It was mentors who made me feel like I was able to do it, that it was realistic.” His parents were behind him. His dad, who has a rather more ‘proper’ job as a social worker, and his hairdresser mum, who’d wanted to be an actress but, for reasons of family inances, was persuaded out of it by her father. And they were all, it certainly seems, proven right in backing him. “But then my parents always supported me in pursuing acting because I was always so deiant about doing it,” laughs Dickinson. “And they’re thrilled for me. I’m making a living out of my passion at a pretty young age and that’s really cool.” Indeed, Dickinson is still working his craft. The wideeyed wonder he expresses about his job—hanging with Michelle (Piefer) and Angelina (Jolie), working with Ralph (Fiennes)—is still, it seems, hitting home. But he’s determined to get better at what he does, experimenting with whether he’s more classical or method in his approach. He may be mindful of the story of the 1976 movie Marathon Man, for which Dustin Hofman chose to go without sleep for three nights so that, ready for one scene, he looked and felt genuinely haggard, only for his bewildered co-star Laurence Olivier to tell him “my dear boy, why don’t you just try acting?”. “I’m deinitely still iguring that one out with each project. I’ve lived a life and I deinitely have things to draw on. It’s not like I sit there and if I need to cry I have to think about a cat I had that died when I was eight. It’s performance, it’s acting, you know what I mean? But, for the want of sounding pretentious, you do want [a character] to feel real. It has to feel palpable otherwise you can’t ind the reality in it,” says Dickinson, who plastered his room with pictures of John Paul Getty III, the kidnapped grandson of the richest man in the world at that time, when he was playing the unfortunate heir in Danny Boyle’s 10-part FX series Trust, which aired in 2018. “I’d go to bed looking at him, which sounds a bit creepy. It wasn’t just him, but getting into that world, his family. It deinitely helped. “Sure, there’s a part of me that acknowledges the absurdity of method acting,” he adds. “It can often be a selish behaviour in relation to those around you. It can prohibit an easy working environment on set. It doesn’t always work because you’re working in a team. But I do try to stay in a part in my own head and if it’s an accent—like in The King’s Man or Maleficent, which is a far higher RP [received pronunciation] than the way I speak—then the lines can get blurry. Once I’ve gotten to a certain point, I can move in or out of a character.”

He’s certainly committed. “I try to go about my life in a nice, kind, respectful and considerate way, but when you get to play people who aren’t like that it’s fun, innit?” he says of his role as the baddie in the forthcoming County Lines, a ilm about the use of child ‘mules’ to carry drugs from London to the UK’s coastal towns and which, he notes, perplexed, was a subject that struggled to get funding. Likewise, word on the street is that many an agent refused to put their actors forward for Beach Rats, fearful that, for a relative unknown, all the nudity and gay sex scenes would prove career poison; and that’s not to mention the bubbling controversy surrounding the idea that only gay people should play gay roles, only disabled people disabled characters, and so on. Dickinson took a more pragmatic approach. He’d been working the bar in a hotel for a few years when he was ofered the part and he wasn’t about to come up with reasons to turn down a lead role under a respected director because it meant getting his clothes of or butting up against identity politics. He made the right call. This evocative but dialoguelight ilm, with a somewhat drifting narrative, is carried almost entirely by Dickinson’s performance. All puf aside, it really is outstanding. It saw Dickinson nominated for an Independent Spirit Award, alongside the excellent company of James Franco, Robert Pattinson, Daniel Kaluuya and (the eventual winner) Timothée Chalamet. “I was worried about [the part in Beach Rats], not because of the gay element, but just because it was a world I didn’t know,” Dickinson explains. “I hadn’t really even been to America at that point and the idea of sex scenes with men was daunting. But it’s good to be challenged. I’d only really be put of by bad material. And I didn’t think about it too much. I just faced it head on and thought about it after, which I think is probably my way. But I’ve done two gay roles now and my approach has been the idea [that] you’re not that person. You’re playing a character, right, that’s not you. Correct representation is important, inclusion and equal opportunities are important—I get that. You have to tell a story in an informed way. But everyone should be free to tell diferent stories in diferent ways.” He doesn’t like to overthink any of this, mind. One thing that keeps coming up in his conversation is a concern with sounding pretentious. He speaks interestingly, for example, of the value of costume for getting into a role: how he couldn’t quite take himself seriously in his pantomimic princely get-up—complete with lowing wig—for Maleficent because it looked so far from who he is day to day, and yet how he’s learnt that costume helps him diferentiate between himself and his character. “Not to sound pretentious,” he adds, not sounding pretentious at all, “but they’re vehicles by which you can move away from yourself.” He speaks of having lost a lot of weight for a part and of how “it sounds pretentious but it felt as though I’d lost parts of myself”. He’ll tell the story of how he once tore the cover of a self-help book he was reading—the portentous-sounding The Power of Meaning—for concern of what lookers-on might wonder. “I mean, it was a really shit cover, man,” he laughs. “But it was an egotistical decision—me not wanting to be seen reading this really obvious self-help book. It was all capital letters. I remember sitting on the train and thinking ‘I have to be less conspicuous about what I’m reading or people are going to think I’m absolutely at rock bottom’. But

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I’ve started not to care what people think about me. I didn’t when I was younger—I just did what I wanted. And I’ve always been thick-skinned. It was the way I was raised. My parents weren’t delicate with me. It was all hand-me-downs and older sibling beat-ups. But I think I developed self-consciousness like most teenagers and it’s especially [acute] when you get into this industry.” What he seems to be getting at is the fact that, as a boy from a normal background and an un-lashy part of London, who’s happier playing villains rather than heroes because they’re closer to the real people he knew growing up, who hasn’t come up through the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art or the Royal Shakespeare Company, and who might now well have been a squaddie in a beret rather than a playful prince in, as he puts it, “a nice open-necked shirt”, well, all this close analysis of craft can feel—how might one put it?—a bit poncey. “I just think there’s too much intellectualising of things sometimes, that placing of so much meaning on things,” says Dickinson. “And I’d hate to come across as taking myself too seriously because I really don’t. Obviously I take my work seriously, but I don’t sit at home theorising about my own technique or ‘my journey’. There’s a little bit too much of that, even if it’s part of human nature to want to unpack things. There’s a lot of importance placed on the entertainment industry, but we’re not saving lives.” One might go so far as to say that Dickinson is keeping a cool head about what to him no doubt feels like a steady upwards trajectory, but which to outsiders looks like something far more meteoric. Perhaps this is because, given his age, he’s still inding himself or at least exploring the options. If costume is, for him, a way into a character, he speaks of how, in his own dress, he loats between what he calls “scrufy functional” and “intentionally styled”. “I have a few versions of myself and I can’t igure out which one to go with yet. None of them are winning,” he says. “They’re all the underdog.” He’s likewise undecided as to whether his age makes his work especially challenging. “There was a period when I was 16, 17, when I just knuckled down and wasn’t enticed by the kind of things 16- or 17-year-olds do. Actually, that’s a lie. I was about to try and sound really sensible but it’s just not the case,” he laughs. “But I have forced myself to be more professional than I would be if I wasn’t in this work. And I think it’s harder to play someone else when you’re still trying to work out who you are. Well, it’s harder because you’re always drifting between ideas of people. And in some ways it’s easier because it means you can be more luid. But I know who I am. I just enjoy playing around with other guises.” Indeed, he hints that he might even be happiest when he’s doing so. Dickinson is surely not alone among actors in embracing the profession precisely as a means of hiding in plain sight. And maybe it says something that the actors he most admires for their commitment and intensity, he says, Anthony Hopkins, Meryl Streep, Sam Rockwell, Michael Shannon, Gary Oldman, Peter Sarsgaard, are also private people, most deinitely actors, rarely celebrities. Maybe even that his dream role, or at least one he’d like to have a go at, is Willy Wonka, the eccentric, reclusive chocolate entrepreneur and, as Dickinson calls him, “quite a tragic, broken person”. Dickinson has spoken of the desire to remain, if not reclusive, then at least elusive—not so easily pigeon-holed.

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“I can’t do [a role] if I feel there’s too much of my own psyche, my own physicality on display. I’m not an overly conident person,” he says—surprisingly, of course, to anyone who doesn’t act for a living. “I ind it so much easier to be someone else—to be brave and strong as a character. I ind doing press scary because it’s just me. [But] I’m not going to complain, say, about having to repeat myself occasionally. A little repetition is minor compared with some of the jobs I’ve done and what some other people do [for a living]. I wouldn’t dare complain about this. I’ve not worked for a while, which is nice. And I know there are not many jobs you can say that and get away with it.” Dickinson is just hanging out today, having breakfast, then maybe going for a yoga session. He’s sat in a busy dining room in London and nobody bats an eyelid. People aren’t peering at him over their yoghurt and granola, perhaps because most of them are not Disney’s audience and The King’s Man has yet to be released. But line up The King’s Man and add his appearance in The Souvenir: Part II later this year—a part Dickinson got when Robert Pattinson dropped out of the project—and all this is going to change. It’s a good bet to say that there will come a time when just nipping to a class for some downward dog will not be an easy option for Dickinson. Yet somewhat counter to the current 20-something culture, fame, he says, is not something he’s all that interested in. And he’s never questioned that standpoint because he never expected it to happen. “I’ve never aspired to be famous and I say that as part of a generation that grew up with that breed of reality TV stars,” he says. “I’ve always just been interested in performing and telling stories. But then I never thought I’d actually be successful in this job. I didn’t assume I’d do well. The fact I’ve made it my income is a bonus. I’m obviously so, so lucky to be doing this job and I’m grateful to be doing it, so I don’t want to complain about that side of the business, but fame for me was never part of it. I’m not really comfortable with the idea. It’s a strange concept. “I did actually get recognised the other day by a homeless man because he said he’d illegally downloaded Maleficent,” Dickinson adds. “He’s a guy I always see near where I live. I used to get him some food here and there. But he didn’t know what I did for work and I liked it that way. He said how he couldn’t believe I was in this ilm and asked me for some change. And then said, ‘now I know you’re in ilms I can push you a bit harder’.”

Look out for The King’s Man in cinemas this September.

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your surroundings to be especially organised, to the point where people pass comment on the fact? Or are you perhaps less sociable than your friends? company Do you ind that conversation doesn’t come culture wasn’t good easily, but that number puzzles are a cinch? at attracting or retaining and, what’s Such predilections might be a long way from more, that it was a special kind of their sometimes debilitating versions, but talent we had huge need for. Without they’re immediate, if anecdotal, evidence wishing to stereotype, it was autistic of how our respective brains’ wiring is as people’s propensity for paying deep diferent as our physical capabilities are. attention to detail, the ability to really That’s not such a hard idea to grasp. And yet, focus on an issue. It’s the kind of talent while variations in our physicality are accepted that a company like ours can’t aford to as part of nature’s ininite variety, those in the miss out on,” explains Levine. “And it’s very human brain remain marginalising. Diferences real. We’ve had instances whereby we’ve in sociality, attention, learning, mood or introduced a new software package and it’s mental functions—traits that deine so-called taken an employee on the autistic spectrum neurodevelopmental disorders the likes of autism, two and a half days to grasp it and other ADHD, Asperger’s and dyslexia—are ranked against employees a month. It’s like, ‘oh Megan, do you some ill-deined standard of normality. But what if, instead, want me to explain that to you?’. we considered our individual human brain as sitting somewhere “We’ve come across a similar experience on a spectrum of variations, one with disadvantages for sure, before. We have people working for us who have but also, critically, with advantages too? The term to low or no vision and they’re bringing insights [to drop is ‘neurodiversity’. product creation and design] that sighted people That was a new one for Megan Levine, would never bring,” she adds. “Sure, this is all who, a year ago, joined the healthcare unknown territory for us so we’ve taken expert advice products giant Proctor & Gamble as wherever we can. But there’s a lot of excitement in the its associate human resources manager company about it all. This isn’t about recruiting 100 for global diversity and inclusion. In people with autism for a feel-good story only to see 95 doing so she took on a pilot programme of them leave.” launched some 18 months ago that saw Nor is Proctor & Gamble alone. Ernst & Young and the company actively seek to employ Microsoft are among other global companies that have people with autism. And that wasn’t just looked into employing people typically sidelined because out of some sense of all-togetherof their mental condition precisely for the benefits that the now cosiness or in order to meet a condition brings. When, for one of its distribution centres, legal requirement. It was a coolly Walmart hired staf who were neurodivergent, the centre calculated business decision. quickly became its most productive in the US. Goldman “There was this awareSachs recently launched a neurodiversity initiative ness that there’s a talent too. But these are still the exception rather than the pool out there that the rule. A report in 2018 from the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development found that neurodiversity is not on the radar of three-quarters of employers in the UK. Small wonder then that the vast majority of autistic adults are not in full-time paid employment. “Organisations are crying out for the skills that neurodivergent people ofer and yet it’s not something most of them are even considering,” concedes Dr Jill Miller, CIPD’s diversity and inclusion adviser. “There are a lot of incorrect assumptions about what neurodivergent

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“The idea of neurodiversity is, I think, an attractive one. We’ve honoured ideas of biodiversity and cultural diversity so this is a next step in recognising that people need brains have a diversity akin to function in a to, say, that of lowers. We workplace, when in fact many don’t pathologise a calla lily changes—better lighting, for example, for not having petals [any or quiet places to work—are to the beneit more than] we diagnose of all employees. Besides, the statistics would an individual with brown suggest that a number of employees are already skin as sufering from a neurodivergent, undiagnosed but doing ine. ‘pigmentation disorder’,” argues There’s an opportunity here for employers to Dr Thomas Armstrong, author of The take a lead role in changing wider societal Power of Neurodiversity: Unleashing the attitudes to neurodiversity. They can Advantages of your Diferently Wired Brain. “But take on the myth-busting required.” what’s really new is that we’re inally starting to turn Certainly the idea of neuroour attention to the strengths inherent in certain diversity—that the new normal conditions—that, without ignoring the hardships is that there is no normal—is that people with the likes of autism might sufer, not widely known, despite being they’re more able to recognise patterns and small some two decades old, at least details in a way that makes them tailor-made for inside specialist ields of study. computer programming, for example.” Australian sociologist Judy Springer— It’s not just autistic people either. Dyslexic autistic herself—irst used the term in people have above-average reasoning and wellthe late 1990s as a challenge to the idea above-average visual thinking ability. As well as the that neurodevelopmental disorders are ability to hyper-focus on an area of interest, ADHD inherently pathological. Rather, Springer people also score higher on creativity tests than proposed, much as physical disability might non-ADHD people. Even people with intellectual be seen primarily as a product of the societal disabilities the likes of Williams syndrome are barriers that disable people—because society often found to be especially musical. is structured around a norm of ‘typical’ physical Indeed, the argument has been made that ableness—so deviation from what’s typical in mental evolution has not yet selected such brain wirings function might likewise be seen as largely a matter out of the gene pool precisely because of their of perception. We should, she argued, think more in distinct, adaptive utility, which might prove crucial terms of there being a neurological pluralism. to the human race—in the computer or cybernetic This was an idea that built on the work of Jim age, the autistic mind may prove superior. This Sinclair, an autism advocate who, in a groundbreaking would be more readily appreciated if there was 1993 speech entitled Don’t Mourn For Us, re-framed a reboot in how we think about the brain: less as autism not as a problem but more as a neurologically a computer, more as an ecosystem and one that atypical way of being. “It is not possible to separate exists along continuums of competence in relation the person from the autism,” as he summarised. to everything from attention to sociability, learning Their way of being cannot be ‘ixed’. Rather, much as to literacy. shops and public transport, buildings and businesses Also requiring understanding is that how this seek to accommodate the physically disabled, so those competence is deined depends an awful lot on elsewhere on the neurological spectrum from the typical your culture. Dyslexia is more apparent in a likewise need to be accommodated through services, culture that places an emphasis on reading technology, training and the like. To railroad them into ability, which, 150 years ago, was being a way that’s consistent with merely a popular notion the exception, not the rule. of normality is to ignore their diference. Armstrong notes how in pre-Civil War America,

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black people were sometimes diagnosed with drapetomania, deined as “an obsession with the urge to lee one’s slave masters”. Then as now, atypical neurological conditions are stigmatised as a burden on society because they don’t conform to the uniform demands of that society. “But attitudes are changing. The critical shift is in seeing these gifts not as just another part of the syndrome, but simply as gifts,” says Armstrong. “It’s not ‘hyper-focus’ as another indicator of disability, for instance. Rather it’s a real and atypical ability to pay attention. That emphasis on the strengths is important because it takes us away from that nice idea that ‘everyone is beautiful in their own way’. Neurodiversity is not about that [kind of relativism]. And I think, with the research that’s going on, we’ll soon get a irmer scientiic underpinning for the idea that it expresses real abilities.” Real abilities that are many and productive too. Dr Tony Lloyd, CEO of the ADHD Foundation in the UK, points out that, with an estimated one in ive people neurodivergent— that’s 20 percent of the global population—this is hardly surprising. Indeed, he says that there is evidence that there’s a very high prevalence of ADHD, speciically among entrepreneurs, also among professional sportspeople and those working in the creative industries. Leonardo Da Vinci and Einstein are suspected to have had ADHD, been autistic or (since many neurological conditions overlap) both. Great minds, as it were, do not think alike. “In fact,” he says, “although it hasn’t always had that name, neurodiversity has always been accepted with the creative industries, where neurodivergent people have tended to thrive,” he says. “Show me a professional chef who doesn’t have some degree of ADHD. The problem is that, while there are more neurodivergent people in public life, we generally don’t see these people celebrated for their diference because they don’t it that stigmatising stereotype of the unruly schoolchild. But this is just not about being ethical or moral. The fact is that to be an entrepreneurial business in the 21st century, you have to embrace people whose brains are structurally and functionally diferent, who can thus think in diferent ways. And it’s not just about staing either. One in ive of your customers is neurodivergent too.” The stigma is still strong, however, for perhaps two key reasons. Language is one: the medical profession is improving— it wasn’t that long ago when ‘moron’ and ‘imbecile’ were

diagnostic medical terms—but it has some way to go. “Words shape our reality,” as Armstrong puts it, “so calling something a disorder, dysfunction or deicit, well, that’s bound to make us think a certain way about a way of being. Look at ADHD. In that one acronym alone there are three negatives: deicit, disorder, hyper. Labelling is a social act. And the labelling here is all wrong.” Secondly, as Judy Springer pointed out, there’s the dominance of the medical model that seeks to pathologise deviations from some standard, a model reinforced by the advent of brain scanners and an improved understanding of genetics, both of which underscore the received wisdom that there’s such a thing as a ‘normal’ brain. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, published by the American Psychiatric Association, tends not to look at people as being on a spectrum or a series of spectrums, but rather slices deviations in brain function into ever iner disabilities such that the categories of illness it lists has more than tripled since it was irst published in 1952. At this rate, everyone will have some or other illness. “We’re working against a disease-based model that doesn’t say ‘let’s ind the strengths in this condition and go with that’, but rather ‘let’s cure it’,” notes Armstrong. Nevertheless, neurodiversity has gathered momentum, with the concept recently applied more broadly to include

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revolve around the ability to retain information and then regurgitate it during an exam, so many neurodivergents are inevitably excluded. “Sure, we have to acknowledge that there are risk factors in working to bring the neurodivergent more into the mainstream of society. A high proportion of people mental with autism or ADHD, for example, also sufer from anxiety,” health conditions the likes of bipolarity, he says. “But the question yet to be answered is whether that schizophrenia and obsessive compulsive disorder. anxiety is part of their condition or a product of their having been But neurodiversity has not gathered that told that there’s something wrong with them. Will the mental momentum without controversy. Advocates for health of such people improve when society accepts the idea of some neurodevelopmental conditions have neurodiversity? We’ve got a lot to work out. It’s comparable to suggested that, in these times of confusing where we were with race 20 years ago. But the diference here is and sometimes abrasive identity politics, that we’re hardly talking about a minority.” neurodivergent has become a fashionable Indeed, neurodiversity can be totally inclusive, argues term, encouraging a self-diagnosis that Armstrong, who has experienced bouts of unipolar depression may account for the increased prevalence which, he noted at the time, made him more creatively ruminative of various conditions. Others have in a way that assisted his writing. “And that inclusivity is simply argued that simply claiming that we’re because the fact is all of us have diferent brains,” he says. “There’s all somewhere on the spectrum may no ideal brain in a vat somewhere against which all other brains have noble intent, but doesn’t should be compared. Accepting that is a potentially seismic shift relect the realities of those in thinking, so change is bound to be a slow process. But we severely impacted individuals do need to accept how we’re all wired diferently—without who need a lot of support to get by in shame, blame, categorisation or diagnosis.” society, if not needing 24/7 care, until the day they die. “When people talk about neurodiversity in relation to autism, for example, it tends to feel like they’re primarily talking about people like me,” says George Stanbury, spokesperson for the National Autistic Society. “I’m autistic but hold down a good job, live independently, function perfectly well in society. And, while they’re not necessarily in opposition, neurodiversity’s idea that autism is part of who an individual is, and the idea that it’s a condition to cure, well, that’s proving very divisive.” Certainly, 20 years on from its irst being proposed, root and branch reforms to help neurodivergent people still seem a long way of. If attitudes in the medical world are slowly changing, and business is starting to drive change, in most countries education still lags behind current thinking. As Lloyd stresses, the traditional educational paradigm— and as a consequence our notions of what constitutes intelligence— still tends to

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Introspective supernova We peel back the layers of these rising titans.

WORDS BY EUGENE LIM PHOTOGRAPHS BY RONALD LEONG

Often, how much you know someone is only skin-deep. Not only literally but metaphorically as well. So when we planned to speak to this crop of fresh faces who are making waves in their respective industries, we wanted to go a little deeper. In addition to the typical way of conducting an interview and shooting a beautiful portrait, we went a step further to showcase them as layers— because after all, we are in truth multi-faceted individuals.

Ilhan Fandi, professional footballer Leather and shearling jacket, by Louis Vuitton. “My dad really inspires me—he is a really good footballer—and I think it runs in the blood. (laughs) Also my brothers inspire me to play better.”

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Leonard Wee, artist Cotton jacket, by Bottega Veneta; silver necklace, by Hermès. “[About my journey as an artist,] it’s not only to tend to the intellectual part of the art world but to have lived a life. To focus on the emotional part of the work. As much as I love art theory and history and teaching it, it’s living life, accepting and embracing who you are as a person. Sometimes it may not be what you want to hear, or what you want to know, but going with it and owning it. That’s something that I have learnt, self-acceptance.”

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Constance Lau, actress Nylon skirt, by 1 Moncler Pierpaolo Piccioli; silver necklace, by Hermès. “I live by this motto that life is too short, so I think you cannot take everything too seriously. You have to take everything with a pinch of salt and let it go.”

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Andrew Marko, actor Silk coat, by Loewe. “My biggest failure was at the start of my career. I was cast in The Emperor’s New Clothes and I was supposed to play the guitar for a song. And I hadn’t practised much. I just assumed that since I already play guitar, this would be fine. But I was still making mistakes two weeks before the opening day and the director came up to me and said she was taking me out of the song. I tried apologising and promised to learn it better before the opening day, but she still took me out and told me: “Let this be a lesson learnt, that if you wanna do this, you have to commit to it.” Since then, I give 110 percent in everything I do because it is so important to me and people can see the efort.”

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Shak’thiya Subramaniamm, musician Shearling jacket, by Burberry; gold necklace, by Tifany & Co. “I don’t mind if you think that my music is not great—that’s your opinion—but I want to be remembered as a kind person.”

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Yeo Siew Hua, director Nylon canvas parka, by Balenciaga. “It is too early to think about legacy questions, but with my work and my life, I try to queer it. To undo certain perceptions and certain judgements that are imposed and break away from that. So I think if people remember me as someone who tried to push things, that would be pretty nice.”

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Hair and make-up for Constance Lau, Ilhan Fandi and Shak by Greg’o using Tom Ford and Keune SG. Hair and make-up for Aisyah Aziz, Leonard Wee and Yeo Siew Hua by Nikki Fu using Redken and Giorgio Armani Beauty.

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Aisyah Aziz, singer Cotton shirt, by Loewe. “I don’t know what I would be doing if I weren’t singing. I would still be writing songs, humming melodies in the toilet. Even if I do a day job, I would still find a way to sing. I don’t think I will be anything else.”

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He taught himself how to play guitar—on an instrument he fashioned out of bicycle cables. He made ends meet by playing his virtuoso style of psych rock at weddings in the desert. But was he ever going to make it as a musician? Was anyone really listening? Somewhere, across the world, another restless soul was searching for him. This is the story of how Mdou Moctar came to be known as . . .

HENDRIX OF THE SAHARA wo rd s by dav i d k ush ne r pho to g ra ph s by dusti n aksland 127

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i n t h e w e e h o u r s of the morning one day in September 2013 in Agadez, Niger, an ancient market town in the middle of the Sahara, eight cops stormed a mud-brick home searching for a terrorist. There’d been reports of a white man with a bushy beard coming and going on a stolen motorcycle—an unusual sight made stranger by the colour of his bike: purple. “Get up! Get up!” the cops shouted as they rustled awake the several men sleeping on the loor. They found not one but two white men, whom they took away for questioning. At the police station, Christopher Kirkley, a pensive, closecropped, 33-year-old from Portland, Oregon, explained that he and his bearded friend weren’t terrorists at all. “We’re making a movie!” he said in broken French. It was the irst one shot not only in Agadez but in the language of the Tuareg, the seminomadic people who hadd roamed the region for centuries. The star of the ilm was one of the men asleep in the mud-brick home: Mahamadou Souleymane, aka Mdou Moctar, a lanky, 29-yearold, explosively gifted left-handed Tuareg guitarist who shredded like a Saharan Hendrix. And the purple motorcycle wasn’t stolen. They had rented and painted it to be the main prop. The men were released after Kirkley explained what the ilm was about. “It’s a homage to Purple Rain,” he told the cops. m d o u m o c t a r w a s never meant to play guitar. While he was growing up in Arlit, Niger, a uranium-mining desert town, his strict Muslim parents, Souleymane and Fatima, considered guitars instruments of evil for booze, hash and heresy. But like anyone who hears the clarion call of rock ‘n’ roll, Moctar couldn’t resist. “It’s like drinking alcohol,” he remembers. “Everyone’s gonna say it’s bad for you. But when you drink it, you feel better and you love it. You do it for yourself.” Moctar, whose father worked as a local merchant, spent his early years in a traditional dome tent with a palm-tree-leaf roof. He had no plumbing, electricity, Internet or radio. The irst time he heard guitar was one night at age 12, when he stumbled upon a man, Abdallah Ag Oumbadougou, strumming and singing hypnotic, acoustic songs to an impromptu audience under the stars. “It was crazy for me,” he says. “Everybody happy. Everybody dancing. The crowd was awesome.” Tuareg rock—a fusion of African folk and American blues and rock, nicknamed desert blues—has been around since the 1970s. Tinariwen, a band from northern Mali, irst brought Tuareg music to the world’s attention. They perform in lowing robes and indigo tagelmusts, headdresses that serve as turbans and scarves— necessary protection from the blowing sand. Backed by repetitive, psychedelic rifs and the seductive beat of goatskin drums, desert blues is politically charged music. The lyrics are often about the struggles of the Tuareg people, who, despite numbering around two million, have been ighting for civil rights for decades. For young Moctar, seeing the Tuareg bluesman that night felt like destiny. “I just need to be like him,” he recalls thinking at the time. Unable to ind, much less aford, a guitar of his own, he built one himself out of bicycle cables and sun-bleached wood. It was a crude instrument, with four strings instead of six, but when the lefthanded boy plucked the sharp wires, he could bring them to life. A bright student known for his majestic singing of the Koran, Moctar would hang out with older musicians after school, hoping

Mdou Moctar’s touring band, clockwise from bottom: Moctar (guitar, vocals), Michael Coltun (bass guitar), Ahmoudou Madassane (guitar, vocals) and Souleymane Ibrahim (drums).

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to learn. But the surly men just treated the gawky boy with bemusement, taking his lunch money for lessons they’d never give and using him to fetch smokes. Moctar resorted to learning on his own. He discovered he had a natural lair, a relaxed feel for the string and a poet’s passion for lyrics. When he outgrew his homemade guitar, Moctar, who has six siblings, stole one from an older brother, a taxi driver who’d been given a guitar by a passenger but never used it. By his late teens, Moctar was writing songs and jamming with his friends—much to the disapproval of his mother, who was raising the family alone after divorcing her husband. “She told me, ‘You’re just going to sit around home and eat and drink’,” Moctar says with a sigh. “ ‘Now you have to go and be a man.’ ” In Arlit, that meant taking a brutal, 2,900km journey across the desert to ind work in Libya, where Tuareg had been performing odd jobs, as well as ighting in the Libyan army, for years. Leaving his guitar at his grandmother’s house, he became a well digger in Tripoli. After two years away from his family, and his guitar, he came back eager to play again—only to ind that his grandmother had kept it on her roof, where it had splintered into pieces. Once he scraped together enough cash for a new guitar, Moctar felt the music pour out of him again. He resumed writing songs and began playing at weddings, gaining a following for his luid picking, honey-sweet vocals and heartfelt lyrics. Moctar speaks passionately about the Tuareg’s matriarchal culture and high respect for women, which he weaves into his lyrics. “Creator, creator / You must come to the rescue / To all the women / Who are sufering in the desert,” he sings in Tamashek, his native tongue, in his song ‘Ilana’. “My music make the lady cry,” he tells me. “I talk about love a lot and you’re just going to think it’s about your story.” In 2008, he recorded several infectious and innovative songs— blending his bluesy roots with auto-tuned vocals. With no Internet or sophisticated audio equipment, locals would just record songs on their phones and swap them with one another using Bluetooth. Moctar’s songs spread across the desert, phone to phone. But he didn’t dare dream of anything more. “I never think am I going to get money in my music,” he says. “Never.”

He had no plan or purpose other than to learn, live and discover music. He’d spend his days crisscrossing the desert on his bike, drinking tea with the locals, playing guitar and listening to artists. He became fascinated by the area’s grassroots music-distribution system over mobile phones and Bluetooth. “It was this network of material that wasn’t online,” he says. “It didn’t exist anywhere else.” There was one mysterious song he kept hearing over and over again. It was unlike anything else he’d come across—Africanroots rock with auto-tuned vocals and a driving drum machine. “It sounded so wacky and bizarre and diferent from a lot of what was happening,” Kirkley says. But because many of the MP3 songs were transferred without identifying details, Kirkley had little to go on other than a single name on the ile: Mdou. For weeks, he’d keep hearing the song playing from mobile phones, but no one could tell him who was behind it. “It’s this Mdou again,” he sighed. “Who is this guy?” b y 2 0 1 0 , k i r k l e y had befriended and recorded dozens of African rockers, but at increasing risk. While in Kidal, Mali, a hotbed of terrorism in the eastern part of the country, he was urged by the US embassy to leave. Rather than heed its warning, Kirkley went even deeper into danger, sneaking across the border with a gang of young musicians who taught him to fake some of the necessary papers for entry. On their advice, he travelled with a large knife on the back of his motorcycle. “I kind of went of the deep end,” he says. Missing his family and friends, Kirkley decided to return to the States. Back home in Portland, he worked on a blog he had started called Sahel Sounds, devoted to the music of the region. He made promo CDs of some songs he collected, including Mdou’s, calling it Music from Saharan Cellphones, and distributed them for free at record stores to spread the word. One fan was Karen Antunes, who worked at a local vinyl haven, Mississippi Records. “Most people were bringing their versions of Woody Guthrie covers, but this was just super diferent,” she recalls. “The next time Christopher came into the store, I was like, ‘Hey, you’re the guy who dropped of the CD’!” Sharing a passion for music, they fell in love just as Kirkley’s desert-blues compilation spread wide after someone posted it online. “Listening to the mixtape is like sitting beside a desert radio controlled by a restless herdsman,” The Guardian wrote, and it gave an extra shout-out to the “unidentiied Tuareg musician noodling on an ’80s synth”—Moctar. With this boost of interest, Kirkley told Antunes he wanted to put the songs out on vinyl so they could sell them at Mississippi Records and elsewhere. But he didn’t want to do this without the rights. He wanted to compensate the artists, including the mysterious Mdou, the centrepiece of the record. As Antunes slept, Kirkley spent nights scouring the Internet, trying to ind Mdou to no avail. “He got a little obsessive,” says Antunes. “Having this mystery became kind of a delicious thing.” If he was going to succeed, Kirkley realised, he’d have to return to Africa and track him down himself. In 2011, two years after irst hearing Mdou, Kirkley inally got some insight when he met a local who told him the accent of the singer seemed to be from the Tahoua region, a Tuareg area in Niger where Moctar’s family is from. “Okay,” Kirkley said, “that’s a clue!”

b y t h e m i d - 2 0 0 0 s , Christopher Kirkley was just another hipster living the Paciic Northwest dream—in theory, at least. He’d gotten a good degree (bioengineering) and an upwardly mobile job (biotechnology), and he was decorating his apartment on a leafy street in Seattle. And yet, as he was on the phone with Ikea one day discussing toothbrush holders, he felt miserable. “I saw this path,” says Kirkley, the son of a pharmacist and a schoolteacher. “I could make more money. And then buy a boat. And buy a nice house. And pay my bills.” But for what? “I wanted something bigger,” he says. “I wanted to see the world.” After quitting his job and selling everything but the clothes in his backpack, he hitchhiked across the US, combed the beaches of Brazil, trekked through the Amazon rainforest. An itinerant musician, he did some subway busking but wanted to immerse himself in the sort of Sahel music from Mali and Niger that populated his playlists. His inspiration was Alan Lomax, the legendary ethnomusicologist known for his international ield recordings. Kirkley’s ear eventually led him to West Africa, where he hit the road with an audio recorder and, later, a cheap motorcycle.

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Kirkley went on the Facebook page for Tahoua and posted a message in broken French. “I’m looking for this artist, Mdou,” he wrote. “Please write me back or call me.” He included a clip of the song. Soon after, he got a message from a Tuareg man in Niger with the phone number for Mdou Moctar.

must overcome a diicult upbringing and a cut-throat music scene to make it as an artist. They culled stories from locals, like the Tuareg who told Kirkley of the time his grandmother burned his guitar because she thought it was evil, then made him dinner. They struggled with how to adapt iconic scenes in Purple Rain, such as the skinny-dipping, that were too risqué for Moctar’s Muslim community. “Can we show kissing?” Kirkley asked. “No,” Moctar said. “Hugging?” “Nope.” In September 2013, Kirkley and Moctar shot the trailer for their Kickstarter campaign. Against the driving beat of Moctar’s guitar, it showed him, dressed in a purple robe and turban, riding his purple motorcycle around Agadez and performing for throngs of Tuareg in the desert. Though Kirkley had never directed and Moctar had never acted, the short trailer had an artfulness and infectious energy. There was just one problem: the title. They wanted to name the movie some variation of Purple Rain, but there is no word for purple in Tamashek. Instead, they called the ilm Akounak Tedalat Taha Tazoughai, or, in English, Rain the Colour of Blue with a Little Red in It. On 13 January 2014, they launched their campaign, describing the project as “the universal story of a musician trying to make it ‘against all odds’, set against the backdrop of the raucous subculture of Tuareg guitar”. Their goal was USD12,000. A month later, they had almost USD18,000. Shooting the irst all-Tuareg ilm wasn’t going to be easy. They posted a call for cast and crew on Facebook, but the locals feared this weird rock ‘n’ roll ilm would be sacrilegious, if not pornographic. People would sign up for a role, then never show up for auditions. But, one by one, they got their cast onboard: a beautiful Agadez merchant, Rhaicha Ibrahim, to play the Apollonia role, Moctar’s love interest; Kader Tanoutanoute, a guitarist friend of Moctar’s, to play his Morris Day–style rival; and one of Moctar’s older brothers, Abdoulaye, to play his father. The moment they started their 10-day shoot in February 2014, the trouble began. They ired up Moctar’s purple motorcycle only to have it break down in a thick cloud of black smoke and a sickly rumble. “It’s supposed to be this cool motorcycle and it’s just like shit,” says Kirkley, who had to resort to overdubbing a more badass engine roar. Dust storms kept swirling out of nowhere, blanketing the sky and equipment with dirt. Electricity would go out for hours at a time. Cast and crew would show up late for scenes, if they showed up at all. Though Moctar relished the opportunity to act, shooting the same scene over and over again felt maddening. “I have to say everything 10 times!” he recalls. “That makes me so tired.” By the last day of the shoot, Kirkley felt “on the verge of a breakdown” and appealed to Moctar for help. “Dude, listen,” he said. “Nobody’s taking this seriously. If you really want to make this movie, you need to do this stuf.” Moctar, who’d taken to calling him “little brother” as a sign of afection, told Kirkley not to worry. “I’m sorry, little brother,” he said, and he made sure they inished shooting the ilm on schedule. When they eventually screened the movie outdoors in Agadez, the audience applauded so loudly they could barely hear the

“ J E S U I S C H R I S T O P H E R K I R K L E Y . Je cherche votre musique depuis longtemps.” Moctar couldn’t place the accent when Kirkley called in his halting French to say he’d spent two years looking for him. He had never heard an American speaking French and igured his cousin was playing a joke on him. Kirkley was sceptical, too, unsure of whether he had found the right Mdou. But when Moctar played a few bars of his familiar song, which was called ‘Tahoultine’, Kirkley practically leaped through the phone. “Let’s record a bunch of music,” he suggested. “And then we’ll see if we can have enough to make a record.” Twenty-seven hours of lights and a 16-hour drive through the desert later, Kirkley pulled into Agadez. He made his way past the bustling market and silversmiths to ind Moctar, who’d been living there and playing weddings to get by. Kirkley bore a gift: a jetblack Fender guitar, left-handed, of course. Moctar, who’d never seen, much less played, a left-handed guitar, couldn’t believe his eyes. “You have left-handed electric guitars in your country?!” he asked, beaming. Kirkley watched in awe as Moctar shredded. The two couldn’t have come from more diferent worlds, but they connected like long-lost brothers. They spent hot days and dusty nights drinking tea, playing music and trading ideas. “It was just like hanging out,” Kirkley says. “If you feel inspired, play some music. If you don’t feel inspired, you don’t play music. If you feel like you want to talk, you talk.” Before long, Kirkley’s audio recorder was illed with new Moctar songs, which he released on his blog-turned-label, Sahel Sounds, splitting the proits 50-50. The album cover for Afelan showed Moctar in a tagelmust with a cigarette dangling from his mouth as he jammed. But after it sold a modest 500 copies, they needed some other way to break through the noise. Kirkley had a crazy idea. Moctar’s life story had natural drama: the disapproving parents, the competitive music scene and this prodigious axe master coming into his own. Kirkley told Moctar it reminded him of a famous American music ilm from 1984, Prince’s Purple Rain. They could ilm a tribute to the movie featuring Moctar and his music instead—all shot in Tamashek, no less. Kirkley said it’d be a novel way to set Moctar apart from his peers. Moctar had one question: “Who’s Prince?” Later, Moctar and a couple dozen other curious locals crammed into his house as Kirkley showed them Purple Rain. Moctar marvelled at Prince’s face-melting guitar solos and laughed uproariously at the sexiness of his writhing shirtless onstage. When Apollonia jumped topless into a lake, Moctar turned to Kirkley and deadpanned: “We can’t do this scene.” Prince wasn’t his style, but he loved the idea of making a semi-autobiographical ilm that could bring Tuareg music and culture to the world. Moctar and Kirkley began collaborating on a script in the hope of raising money on Kickstarter to inance the ilm. Riing on Purple Rain, and a bit of the classic Jimmy Clif ilm The Harder They Come, it told the story of a Tuareg musician, Moctar, who

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words onscreen. The ilm never reached theatres, but it garnered praise at festivals around the world. The Village Voice called it “a striking, gentle bliss-out of a feature”. i t ’ s a c l e a r , starry night in September at Industry City, an outdoor venue near the East River in Brooklyn, as Moctar and his band play onstage, with Kirkley watching proudly along with the crowd. Moctar’s wearing a silvery blue robe, a long white tagelmust and a low-slung electric guitar as he shreds through a song from his new record, Ilana: The Creator, which has been earning fans and acclaim. Lisa Coleman, of Wendy and Lisa, the iconic duo from Prince’s band, the Revolution, who played on the original Purple Rain, says she’s not sure if Prince got to see or hear Moctar before he died, but she thinks he would have been a fan, too. “He would have been just as blown away as everyone by his playing,” she says. In the years since Moctar and Kirkley’s ilm release, the desertblues brothers have enjoyed their own version of a Hollywood ending. Kirkley’s label has released several records by Moctar, as well as by a host of others from the region, including Abdallah Ag Oumbadougou, the man Moctar saw playing guitar for the irst time in the desert as a child. Though Moctar hasn’t broken through wide yet, he now tours around the world, meeting people and going to places he’d never imagined before. After growing up without any musical inluences beyond the Sahara, he’s catching up on artists like Hendrix and his newly discovered favourite. “I love Eddie Van Halen!” he tells me after the show. “When I see him on YouTube, I never see anyone play like this!” For Moctar and Kirkley, the joy of their success comes from the power of music to bring disparate people together. It’s one of the reasons Moctar wears his traditional garb onstage. “I do that because I’m Tuareg,” he says the next day as he, Kirkley and I drive down to Philadelphia for his next gig, “and I need all the time to show what I am, what is my culture.” As we’re bumping along the highway, Kirkley says: “I think it’s important to have more representations of Islam like this.” Moctar goes on: “You’re going to have very nice people in black people and then you’ve got to have very nice people in white people. What do you get when you mix them together? It’s the beauty.” Their collaboration continues to bear fruit. Kirkley, who’s now married to Antunes, with two young children, is still releasing records from Tuareg rockers, such as the riveting, female-led guitar band Les Filles de Illighadad. He’s also prepping another Tuareg ilm, this time co-written by and starring one of Moctar’s bandmates, guitarist Ahmoudou Madassane. The conceit: a Tuareg homage to Titanic, in which Madassane and friends, driving across the Sahara, break down after hitting a boulder. Moctar wants to do more acting, too, along with making music. When he’s not touring, he lives in Niger with his wife and two kids. Though his mother still hasn’t come around to his music, he’s proud to support her and the rest of his family. He’s also building a school for girls in hopes that kids like his own will have more options for realising their dreams than he did. At the end of the show in Brooklyn, he holds up his Stratocaster and smiles at the crowd. “My guitar!” he tells them, raising it above his head. “She says hi!”

Mdou Moctar performing in San Francisco.

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2020

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By the numbers

tHe 06 unUsuAl S$4.2 MIL sUspECts 11 325 MIL

BoRam

Boram Tube Vlog 22.2 million

ASIA'S POWERHOUSE UNBOXER

4.5 billion total YouTube views. That’s right. Self-made. Handing herself a silver spoon. That’s the way to play it.

YEARS OLD

AVERAGE MONTHLY REVENUE

Starring the unexpected, unfamiliar and often forgotten. A surprising number of today's new influencers are not your usual cookie-cutter versions of pretty young things. With access to technology and social media, fame is now within everyone’s reach. Here are Asia's unusual suspects.

OVER

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MARU aka MuGUmoGu @mugumogu 708,000

THE WORLD’S MOST FAMOUS CAT

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W H I L E R E I G N I N G D E AT H & D E S T R U C T I O N FROM THE COMFORT OF HOME

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DiAnXi XiaoGe Dianxi Xiaoge 3.8 million

THE RURAL INFLUENCER She cooks traditional Yunanese grub. Like lard-sealed pork to hairy tofu.

ZxuAn @zhenxml 662,000

29 YEARS OLD

800 MIL WATCH HER COOK

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LOCAL GAMING LEGEND

Geeky, alone and at home? That’s yesterday’s gamer. He’s Singapore’s most popular Mobile Legends streamer.

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THE WORLD’S FIRST CGI MODEL There’s nothing fake about the Valentino and Hermès she wears.

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TetSuYA KuDO @slvr.tty 135,000

THE DAPPER GRANDPA IN GIVENCHY Dressed by his grandson, but the style is all his. Tetsuya Kudo has loyal followers checking out his OOTD.

: followers

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Finding her rhythm Reed Morano reinvents the British spy thriller.

Director-producer Reed Morano photographed for Esquire at home in South Salem, New York, August 2019.

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“ I L O V E M O V I E S . I WA L K O U T O F A M O V I E T H E A T R E H AV I N G S E E N

Words by Paul Wils. Photograph by Yoshiyuki Matsumura

S O M E T H I N G I L O V E A N D F E E L I A M T H E M A I N C H A R A C T E R .”

to see a woman trying, almost pretending, to be an assassin. I love movies and want to see things I don’t see all the time.” When directing, Morano likes natural light as much as possible and doesn’t go for the super-fast edits now a hallmark of modern movie mayhem. This makes her action sequences beautiful but not overblown. It’s a visual style she developed as a cinematographer, on indie movies and HBO shows, and in the ‘Sandcastles’ segment of Beyoncé’s Lemonade, and has perfected in episodes of premium TV and feature ilms. Before The Rhythm Section, she directed the family-breakdown drama Meadowland (2015) and the post-apocalyptic I Think We’re Alone Now (2018), in which Peter Dinklage and Elle Fanning play the last two people alive. A 42-year-old native of Omaha, Nebraska, now based in New York, Morano has made movies since she was eight, when her stepfather gave her a video camera. When she ran out of things to ilm, she wrote plays and commercials and cast her siblings. Film was a family passion and she remembers being taken to the cinema aged three, with her babe-in-arms brother, by her thensingle-mother, when a babysitter wasn’t an option. “As a kid, I would get obsessed with people my age, or people portraying my age, on ilm,” she says. “ET, I wanted to be Eliot. With The Goonies it was Mikey and all I wanted was to go on an epic adventure looking for buried treasure. Even now, I walk out of a movie theatre having seen something I love and feel I am the main character. I watched Mad Max: Fury Road at Camerimage [ilm festival] because I was on the jury. My leg was in a cast, I was on crutches and even like that, I came out feeling like Charlize Theron’s Furiosa. But I guess that’s my life’s love of movies.” In 2017, Morano became the irst woman in 22 years to win the Emmy for Outstanding Directing for a Drama Series thanks to her work on the pilot of The Handmaid’s Tale. The success of that show has four major elements: Margaret Atwood’s story, Elisabeth Moss’s lead performance, perfect timeliness and its aesthetic. That stark, modernist-yet-human look and feel was set by Morano, who also directed the second and third episodes of season one. “I’m glad I got the opportunity to do that, it feels it was the right thing, for me and them, and it gave the show a distinct feeling. The only regret I have is it would have been nice to stay on the show as a producer to continue to be a helpful person. To help raise your baby. So that’s what I’ll be doing from now on.” Next up, she will be producing and directing some episodes of The Power, an adaptation for TV of Naomi Alderman’s brilliant sci-i novel in which women become the dominant gender. Having risen to the top of directing TV and ilm, Morano can empathise with that.

A ilm’s ‘title drop’, when a character speaks the name of the movie as part of the dialogue, usually has audience members grinning (or groaning) in recognition. The Rhythm Section, however, has one that gets you moving to the music of your insides. Jude Law is on title-dropping duty, as his former MI6 operative Boyd—that’s Boyd, not Bond—explains to would-be assassin Stephanie Patrick, played by Blake Lively, that to ire her gun accurately she must irst control her body’s rhythm section, to think of the heart as the drums and breathing as the bass. Esquire’s man, rapt in row B of Paramount Pictures’ London screening room, could not help but retune his internal percussion on Law’s instruction, and achieved an unexpected moment of Zen, along with Lively on screen. Several other sequences in the ilm turbocharge your cardiovascular system in more traditional action-movie ways: a punishing knife ight in the kitchen of a Scottish cottage, seemingly done in one take; another ‘oner’, a car chase on the streets of Tangier, with a genuine sense of peril; and the frantic tackling of armed terrorists on a packed tourist bus in Marseille. As it trots the globe, avoiding spy-saga cliché and introducing a very modern hero, The Rhythm Section hits all the right notes. Lively is outstanding in the lead and her British accent is lawless. The ilm’s co-producers, Barbara Broccoli and Michael G Wilson, have performed a similar role together on the most recent nine Bond movies, including the forthcoming No Time To Die. So, since the Bond-makers now have a female cinematic secret agent, who needs a woman as 007? “Of course, it was a very cool experience for me to make my irst action ilm with those two,” says Reed Morano, director of The Rhythm Section, “but we weren’t making a Bond ilm. The stunt people had worked on Bond movies and Star Wars and [Broccoli and Wilson] bring other people in the crew who’ve worked with them before. They really supported me in doing my thing, which was to bring something unorthodox to the table as we created something from scratch. I was able to be experimental and do action in ways people weren’t accustomed to.” Action-movie lovers have a very speciic set of buttons that need to be pushed, yet the best action movies—from Die Hard to Mad Max: Fury Road, via Speed, The Matrix, Casino Royale, The Bourne Ultimatum and John Wick—expand the genre’s playbook. Morano’s USP is action with a realness and rawness that gives its hero a palpable sense of potential failure. Even when 007 and the rest are really up against it, you know they’re going shake of that last punch and rally to save the day. In The Rhythm Section, right until the inal act of kick-assery, it’s never clear how Stephanie Patrick will complete her missions, or even if she will. “That is exactly why I did the project,” says Morano. “I wanted to relect a character who is imperfect and lawed and couldn’t automatically do all these insane skills. The cool opportunity was

The Rhythm Section is out on 20 February.

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Words by Joy Ling / Photographs by Shawn Paul Tan / Styling by Asri Jasman

Viscose trench coat, by Loewe; viscose and polyester dress, by H&M.

Lawyer, ex-national swimmer and â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;buddingâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; underwater hockey athlete Christina Tham teaches us to keep dreaming and to dream big.

MAL OPTI

IMAGINE

AN ICE HOCKEY PUCK

WEIGHING 1.25kg.

IMAGINE

MANOEUVRING IT

ACROSS A DISTANCE

O F 2 5 m W I T H O N LY

AN APPARATUS THE LENGTH

OF A KITCHEN KNIFE.

IMAGINE

S I X P E O P L E R E L E N T L E S S LY

TRYING TO SNATCH IT

AWAY F R O M Y O U

F R O M E V E RY D I R E C T I O N.

N O W I M A G I N E D O I N G A L L T H A T,

BUT TWO METRES

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Not only do you exert more efort for each movement against water resistance and ind yourself at the mercy of the puck’s unpredictable movement, you are allowed only seconds to execute before you inevitably come up for air. “I was asked why I play underwater hockey in an interview before the SEA Games and do you know what my answer was? Not for guts and glory or the honour of representing my country, which were words I should have said! Instead, I said because it is so very hard!” Christina Tham is no stranger to competition. If anything, she thrives on it. Just last December at the 2019 Southeast Asian Games, she, along with her teammates, achieved two gold medals in the 6x6 and 4x4 women’s underwater hockey events. Besides the sport being featured for the irst time in the 30-year history of the regional event, her story has quickly gained attention and it’s not diicult to see why. How many of us can win two silver medals in our teens and two golds nearly four decades later in a diferent sport? All while holding a full-time job. “You mustn’t write like I’m the star player because I’m not. It really was a team efort.” The disclaimer comes up, but even she admits the story in itself sounds pretty amazing. “When my teammates were teasing me with the ‘third time lucky’ slogan, I started counting the years since I won my irst SEA Games medal and realised, wow, it’s been 38 years. Many of my teammates are not even 38 yet. Which was the running joke; getting my irst medal before they were born,” she laughs. Tham is clearly grateful for her team. She efuses about individual members and their traits in and out of the pool, but the highest regard she reserves for her captain. “It’s often harder when you’re the leader because we’re not full-time athletes and have to juggle other commitments,” she explains. “So it can be very disheartening when training attendance is not full. Just seeing one person not giving their all can really afect team morale, but my captain has always given her best before, during and after each training session.” That’s just the thing about the sport—an extremely high level of teamwork is required. How do you, while concentrating on the task at hand, stay conscious of the time your fellow members need to surface for breath and it not coinciding with yours? More so in this particular team sport where there’s very little opportunity to communicate during play. No player can score alone and no one player can hold their breath long enough. “So even if you’re a very good player, but your teammates don’t know how you play and vice versa, it is very diicult for the team to do well together. In fact, the better players watch for the right timing to go underwater to assist. As for me, I have this in-built tenacity where I just keep going and don’t know when to give up,” she laughs again, recounting the times she frightened new players with her resolve underwater (cue: “when is she coming up for air?!”). You witness this towards the end of the 6x6 event, when one player emerges from the lurry and unyieldingly drives the puck with great speed into the goal.

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Silk blouse and wool trousers, both by Chloé; steel bracelet, by H&M; suede boots, by Burberry.

Women we love

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Women we love

Tham knows her strengths; her reaction time, speed and long breath hold, but also recognises how they can sometimes be a hindrance; how determination can sometimes become a form of tunnel vision. She was not a natural at reading the game and learning to work with people was one of her primary reasons for picking up the sport. Having been a national swimmer from age seven to 17, competing in it only enhanced the sport’s solitary nature. Despite transitioning to being a practising lawyer, inding success by making partner and head of a legal practice at a young age, she found herself lacking in experience working within a larger team. “I could tell that I was carrying myself in life as an individual person,” she acknowledges. Tham always knew she wanted to do law, inspired by The Paper Chase, a television series on irst-year law students at Harvard Law School. To further her swimming simultaneously, her only option then was to study in Australia, but Tham’s passion lay in UK law. At that point, pursuing law did not feel like a sacriice due to her priorities. Upon graduation, Tham remained highly focused on her career until the global inancial crisis happened and everything changed. “It felt like everything I had built just crumbled overnight,” she alludes to the executive decisions made that afected everyone across the organisation. “It was a very stark reminder that you can’t control anything apart from yourself and you’re subject to things that are simply beyond your knowledge.” The change in circumstances led to a change in mindset, prompting the choice to do more with her life outside her career. And so her commitment to underwater hockey began. “That’s the thing about me. Other people fall in love with the sport or get addicted to it like some of my teammates, but my motivation is diferent. I found it so challenging that I just keep at it because I just can’t believe that I can’t do it! “With underwater rugby I felt like I could do anything, but underwater hockey left me feeling so hamstrung the irst few years. You’re so used to not having any equipment when suddenly you have to execute moves with something external as if it’s part of your appendage?” Even having no issues playing badminton and squash as a child, or golf as an adult, stickwork skill was extremely diicult for her to acquire. She’s uncertain if it has to do with learning it in her 40s. Which leads us to the big question: does she feel her age? “That was actually another reason I wanted to compete. I was turning 50 and I thought this would be a great birthday present to myself. I know it’s a little crazy, people usually just throw a huge party, but I was thinking about how hard I wanted to train to show myself I’m still strong.” Another injection of laughter. And prove herself she did. It turned out that her baseline itness was quite high. In just three months of training, she went from average performance in speed among the team to one of the fastest. It didn’t mean the process was easy. “I never really felt old even at 49 until I was training for this,” she exclaims, comparing those three months to surviving a huge mountain climb, “but I knew I didn’t have the luxury of being young so I was ready to put in the hours to be selected for the team.” Tham refers to it as the hardest thing to do while juggling her day job as head of legal, compliance and company secretarial at Cromwell European REIT, but cites prioritisation, communication and managing expectations as feasible means.

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Cotton and polyurethane dress, by Bottega Veneta; silk dress, by ChloĂŠ; steel necklace, by H&M.

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Silk and cotton dress, by JW Anderson; leather trousers, by Sandro; leather boots, by H&M.

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Silk dress and suede belt, both by Fendi.

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Wool three-piece suit, cupro blouse and suede boots, all by Burberry.

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Hair and make-up by Christian M. Photographer assisted by Kat Midori and Melvin Leong.

Women we love

“I like to put myself in an environment where I’m not comfortable as long as I can learn from it and I’m blessed in the sense that it’s not something I have to force myself to do,” she says. “I realised I genuinely enjoy working very hard. I told my husband this recently but he reacted like I was stating the obvious.” Tham describes his drive as one greater than her own. “He’s super intense, very smart and extremely forward-thinking. I’m just glad I met somebody I can respect.” Tham can still play as fast and hard as she used to, but the limits appear at the duration. Especially closer to the SEA Games when training was twice a day on weekends on top of land exercise, there was one thing she found crucial to her endurance—a good old-fashioned nap. That, paired with diet and nutrition. Tham isn’t an ingenue, but her body would make anyone in their 20s envious. Lean and bronzed, she looks the ideal cut-out of a competitive swimmer. For someone who calls swimming a mental activity (“every stroke, every kick, your buoyancy, even the degree you hit the water can really change your speed!”), underwater hockey seems like the perfect sport. One that she wouldn’t be moving on from until she has mastered it, which in spite of the medals, still feels a long way of to her. For now, she’s concentrating her eforts on lobbying for the sport to be included in the next Asian Games in 2022. “There exists such a large and strong swimming and aquatic fraternity that can potentially be converted and leveraged upon. Singapore already has a head start in this sport, so if we can develop this sport no diferently from water polo or synchronised swimming, it could be a podium inisher in a major event.” Tham is uncertain if it can happen by 2022 or if she can even make it to the team then, but she has gathered a task force, written a letter of appeal to the Singapore National Olympic Council and dedicated herself to seeing it through. Whether they would compete in the next Underwater Hockey World Championships in Australia this year depends on an internal poll—after all, it is a team sport where all must agree. Tham is also back to training for the next Asian Masters Swimming Championships after winning a medal in the 50m breaststroke last year. “In the 200m Individual Medley, I placed seventh and missed a medal by approximately 0.2 seconds,” she states, “and that’s without training for the event, so it got me thinking.” It’s fascinating to observe such zeal. Her legacy and continuum make you realise that this lifetime is brimming with potential and, more importantly, there is much that can be done with it. So what does Tham want to do most? The lively spirit in her eyes gleams unmistakably as she answers: “What is life if not using God’s talents and maximising it? I just want to be able to be my best and ind the best people to be with.”

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Still life

4|5

Leather oversized bag, by Bottega Veneta.

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Man at His Best

MaHB 154

158

Mushroom steak anyone?

You only Live Twice

Get cosy on Teck Lim Road

An Australian start-up is hoping this fungus will help save the world.

You won’t find James Bond here, but you’ll find a drink made famous by his creator.

Let your next staycation be on the cusp of Chinatown.

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MaHB

Food

Grilled Spanish Octopus.

Hour by hour Kilo Kitchen is devoted to feeding you every meal of the day.

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Food

Words by Joy Ling

Grilled Corn Furikake.

Think of Kilo Kitchen as a parent; a source of love, provision and good old-fashioned intentions that you are fed three good meals a day. While we’re glad the Wasabi Tuna Tartare and the heavenly Braised Wagyu Beef Cheek remains on the dining menu, it’s hard not to be excited about the revamped brunch and lunch creations. There are the classic brunch touchstones like French toast, acai bowls and all that makes you feel like you’re nailing the first meal of the day, but new dishes are blessed with the Kilo touch. Case in point: a hearty Shakshouka, the deliciously smoky BBQ Grilled Thick Bacon which comes with curried scrambled eggs and toasty potato tostones, or better yet, the option of creating your own breakfast bowl. There are plenty of Asian dishes with Latin-American influences out there, but not all have such dedication poured into them. The sourdough is made in-house and so are the chorizos for the Huevos

Rancheros and the Catalan Butifarra sausage. Get this, even the crème fraiche is exclusively cultured. “The reason is because you will be able to taste the diference,” says executive chef Manel Valero. If you choose to dine in, which you likely will given the restaurant’s ideal location and breezy conditions, the set lunch has five items—one sharing starter, a main bowl, sweet snack, broth

and a non-alcoholic drink—priced at SGD25 altogether. The menu also works along the signature dishes from the spicy Numbing Burrata and Crispy Eggplant in communal portions, but we say the bowls steal the show with their inviting array of colour and nutrition. Taking the street-level nook of an old colonial shophouse, the mix of rustic and cosy against the ample natural light and hanging greenery makes settling into a long meal the most obvious choice of action. Nonetheless, if circumstances do not permit such a luxury, the restaurant is happy to bring its daily goodness to your doorstep via Deliveroo. Essentially, all Kilo Kitchen wants to do is simple: introduce novel flavours and be a haven for hunger anytime of the day. Or as co-founder Joshua Adjodha quips: “Whether you’re nursing a hangover during brunch or seeking a respite from the daily grind during lunch, Kilo Kitchen is open to you.”

Kilo Kitchen is located at 97 Duxton Road, Singapore 089541.

Miso Honey Salmon Bowl.

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Food

Words by Jane Rocca

Modern-day fable What happens when an entrepreneur, a chef-cum-mycologist and a farmer start experimenting with mushrooms?

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Australian start-up Fable has created a plant-based meat alternative that’s caught the attention of British celebrity chef Heston Blumenthal. He was so impressed that he added it to the menu at his world-famous restaurant, The Fat Duck, in London. The entrepreneurs behind Fable are Shoes of Prey co-founder Michael Fox, fine dining chef and scientist Jim Fuller and organic mushroom farmer Chris McLoghlin. They’ve certainly found their match in Blumenthal who is as intrigued about mushroom innovation as they are; ever keen to find a way to introduce a meat alternative that still tastes like meat. They’ve hit the jackpot with their shiitake mushroom-based product that’s designed to have the same texture as pulled pork and beef brisket. Fable makes its debut in Singapore this month with a spot on the menu at Empress, The Garden Club, Pixy Restaurant & Bar and American Taproom. There’ll be a distributor deal signed very soon; bringing this plantbased phenomenon to the mass market for consumers to indulge at home. But for now, it’s only available at fancy top-tier restaurants, indulging diners in a new flavour sensation while also educating us on how to be more mindful with our food choices at the dinner table. It’s all thanks to a Thai professor named Anon Auetragul (more about him later), a curiosity to save the planet, and a mission to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and find a plant-based alternative that inspired Fox to make a diference with his new business venture. Fable is writing its own modern-day folklore—proof that riding a plant-based wave has less to do with being on-trend and more about being kind to the planet and animals. When award-winning company and industry trailblazer Shoes of Prey shut its doors last year, Fox knew it was time to step away from manufacturing highend women’s shoes. After 10 years at the helm, it had become harder to survive in the competitive world of online shopping (he says women simply didn’t want to commit to creating custommade shoes, even if they could be delivered in the desired time frame of two weeks). “Shoes of Prey was a wild rollercoaster journey for me. Our niche idea had interest and plenty of mass appeal, but the consumer didn’t have enough confidence to create their own shoes when it came to the crunch,” says Fox, who separated from his first wife and co-founder Jodie Fox in 2012 but continued working together. The Aussie entrepreneur moved to Copenhagen for six months last year

MaHB

Food

with his wife and their first-born child to realign the chakras (they had their second child while there) and returned to Melbourne to launch the new business model with Heston’s team at Crown Towers. “I’ve been a vegetarian for four years. For me making the switch was driven by ethical, environmental and health reasons in that order,” says Fox. “I got into reading more about industrial animal agriculture and couldn’t think of

anything more I wanted to do next workwise than explore this avenue. Getting to the point of start-up was inspired by a desire to reduce animal consumption and to get people to think beyond meat. Creating meat alternatives that resonate with mass-market consumers seemed like a natural step, and while it’s a trend and plant-based has become a huge thing, it’ll be the way for the future.” Fable’s place in high-end restaurants proves the ingredient can survive

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various creative moves in the kitchen too. It’s designed to have the same texture and taste as meat and can mimic pulled pork and brisket to perfection. It can adjust to a stir-fry or risotto too. In a menu sampling of Fable’s magic mushrooms, the team at Dinner by Heston in Melbourne used the mushroom-based ingredient in a savoury porridge as well as a roast cauliflower main course with smoked brown butter and red wine.

MaHB

Food

happened to be in Thailand on a mission to learn more about the medicinal properties of mushrooms as well as the commercial cultivation possible. “My business partner Chris [McLoghlin] spent a lot of time with the professor in Thailand and it was happening around the time Heston was also learning about cooking with mushrooms and understanding their value,” says Fox. “The professor knew Chris has a scientist background in mushrooms and thought the two should meet and it happened from there. They hung out in Thailand over 12 months ago, again in Singapore last year during the Grand Prix and at the Grand Prix in Melbourne in March. He showed him the product and he loved it. They spent a few days trying and testing many mushrooms.”

“If you took away all the cars, planes, trains and ships, you wouldn’t have as big an impact as when everyone stops eating meat. If we want to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions, we need to reduce our meat consumption.”

Fox is the first to admit he doesn’t have a background in food, but was willing to chew the fat with those who did. He spent time researching the mock meat space in the USA, talking to food scientists in Australia about developing the product, and connected with the esteemed Professor Auetragul in Thailand who has been researching mushrooms since 1974. It was via Professor Auetragul that the Fable lads got to meet Blumenthal, who

Fox says the idea to settle on shiitake proved the most viable in their tried-andtested process. “We all settled on the idea of taking a shiitake mushroom and shredding it to make pulled pork and slow-cooked beef. You get a firmer fibrous mushroom from the stem, making it easier to substitute as a slow-cooked meat alternative,” he says. “We focus on taste and texture first,” adds Fuller. “I’m Texan and grew up on BBQ so our goal with Fable has been to re-create the taste and texture of pulled pork and beef brisket, two of my favourite meats.” From a branding perspective, Fable’s vision was to create a product high quality enough that high-end chefs would want to use, in turn inspiring home cooks to follow in their footsteps. The mushroom-based plant product is grown mostly in Asia (where shiitake thrives) and assembled with the guidance of an Australian food scientist who assists in the manufacturing process in Malaysia. Mushrooms dominate Asian cuisine so it made sense to set up the manufacturing side of the business there. “Australians only eat 2.3KG of mushrooms per person per year, while in Asia it’s 14 percent per person per year,” explains Fox. “We really want to turn that

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around and get people thinking about ways to eat mushrooms that taste like meat so they’re not really missing out if it’s the flavour they’re after.” It was upon learning that Australians consume 100KG of meat per person per year that was enough to make Fox want to convert to vegetarianism. “It forced me to look at my own diet and what I could do to help the planet by changing the way I relied on food and produce,” he says. It also took reading Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer and a conversation with Smith & Daughters’ founder Shannon Martinez in Melbourne, who specialises in vegetarian cuisine, for Fox to feel he was on the right path. “There was a huge campaign in the late ’80s and ’90s when mushroom was dubbed meat for vegetarians. It was an efective message and one we want to bring back,” he says. “My journey to get to this point didn’t just happen overnight, it’s been a 10-year one. I found it weird that as humans we love and care for our pets like cats and dogs, but then we choose to eat animals. Reading about factoring farming and the torturous animal conditions got me thinking about being vegetarian and making the switch a permanent one. There’s a whole range of trends on the market right now encouraging people to go plant-based, but health is the most obvious one. Scientific data shows that we eat too much meat and it’s not good for us to eat that much in a year. There’s more concern globally about the challenges that humanity faces with climate change too and UN data reveals that animal agriculture causes 14.5 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, which is more than all of transport combined. So if you took away all the cars, planes, trains and ships, you wouldn’t have as big an impact as when everyone stops eating meat. If we want to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions, we need to reduce our meat consumption.” Fox points to more data that reveals 38.5 percent of the world’s habitable land mass is devoted to animal agriculture, with a large part of that use being to grow the plants to feed factoryfarmed animals, which can require over eight kilograms of plants to produce one kilogram of meat. “It’s a very ineficient way to produce food,” says Fox. “It’s also a negative impact on other systems. The thought that you need to grow all these crops to feed one animal doesn’t make sense.” Fox says human beings need to change the way we source food. His mission with Fable is merely a stepping stone in that direction for now. If he can inspire others to cut down meat by eating mushrooms, then it’s partly mission accomplished.

Once more

with feeling

The Jigger & Pony Group adds a bar dedicated

to its continuing presence in the F&B field.

We remember Flagship, a dive bar that was run by the Jigger & Pony Group. We went there years ago, a celebratory Esquire gathering, where we drank, ate copious amounts of chicken wings and scream-sang to rock tunes blasting from the speakers. That was then. Now the grunginess of Flagship has transformed into the enigmatic interior of Live Twice; the furnishings are accented by the glow of vintage lamps, like a dying sun filtered through paper doors. If this were any more cinematic, there would be cigarette smoke wafting in the semidarkness, but we’d need a time machine for that. So, you settle into the chair that’s straight out of someone’s chic living room and you look at the drinks menu, which features 14 cocktails. The cocktails look simple: minimum use of garnishes, no stupid paper umbrella. The only indulgence for the picturesque are the glasses they are served in. Again, nothing showy, just the barest distraction of the glass contours; the focus is all about the contents. With an emphasis on flavours and the use of exact ingredients (nothing unnecessary), you get oferings like its signature Vesper, a drink made famous by the writer, Ian Fleming, in his novel Casino Royale (you might have heard of it). To whit: employ Tempus Fugit’s Kina L’Aero d’Or and mix with Ki

No Bi Sei Navy Strength gin and Ketel One vodka; add a sliver of a lemon peel. There’s Mizuwari (which is Japanese for ‘cutting with water’). Usually, if you want to dull your whiskies, you’d add water. When it comes to Mizuwari, Hokkaido soft water is blended with Nikka Cofey Grain Whisky and Nikka Cofey Malt Whisky and then steeped in an earthen pot for three days before being served. The pot is topped up, which means that the vessel is never empty. Sort of like that beef noodle shop in Bangkok, with its soup stock that’s simmered all the time. While the drinks take centre stage, the food is a close contender. The sandos are a delight. The grilled Beef Katsu Sando comes with tonkatsu sauce and Japanese mayonnaise; the Five-Cheese Sando is the Voltron of cheese sandwiches— Port Salut, aged feta, mimolette, mozzarella, Parmigiana Reggiano and a dusting of onion powder.

Live Twice is located at 20 Bukit Pasoh Road, Singapore 089834.

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Words by Wayne Cheong

Vesper.

MaHB

Drinks

One thing cannot be another, someone once said to me. With all due respect, said person was a real stick in the mud. Things can remain as they are or they can evolve into something wonderful and unexpected. Named after the Royal Prussian District forester, Ferdinand Geltz, Ferdinand’s Gin is courtesy of the terroir of the Saar region (a southwestern German state bordered by France and Luxembourg). The area is key to the alchemical properties of Ferdinand’s Gin—the rich mineral soil helps the local botanicals to shine through the gin. It’s a tightrope walk to distil 30 botanicals without one overpowering another. There’s a base spirit that’s cut before the addition of the 30 botanicals (Konzer Talchen valley lavender, rose hip, angelica, etc) for maceration. Once the distillation is done, Riesling from the Zilliken Estate is added. The brand continues experimenting with the kind of products yielded from gin and Riesling. Penetrating the Singapore market are the introduction of this Ferdinand’s Gin line-up. SA AR DRY GIN (SGD108) This is the label’s tried-and-tested, balanced with floral notes and the impressionistic lavender and rose in the mouth before the Riesling sidles in. If you’re on the fence about straying from your conventional gin drink, this will convert you.

Words by Wayne Cheong. Photograph by Christian Hell

SA AR DRY GIN CASK STRENGTH (SGD138) Similar to the aforementioned signature, this is bottled at 66.6 percent ABV. It’s potent, with a fistful of aromas and added bite. SA AR DRY KIND GOLDCAP (SGD208) The maceration process includes special botanicals like vanilla pods, dried Riesling grapes, cocoa beans and mirabelle plums. Infused with Goldkapsel Auslese from the GeltzZilliken winery, this wine garnered 97 points from Robert Parker. SAAR QUINCE (SGD99) This is a homage to Sloe Gin. Fresh quinces are picked from behind the distillery and combined with Saar Dry Gin, which gives it an airy, fruity spirit.

Strange alchemy Gin + Grand Cru Riesling = magic.

Ferdinand’s Gin is available online at www.maltwineasia.com

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MaHB

Kuala Lumpur’s hidden gem A luxurious sanctuary lies within the less explored Chow Kit neighbourhood.

It holds the title of Malaysia’s most infamous neighbourhood—Chow Kit is synonymous with being Kuala Lumpur’s unoficial red light district— but it is rich in character and history, with bustling markets and local businesses. Situated within its labyrinth of streets lies The Chow Kit, Ormond Hotels’ first boutique property. The Chow Kit reframes the notion of luxury for the contemporary traveller, removing excess and extravagance. This is a hub of simplified luxury, which at its heart centres on comfort, purpose and balance. Arriving in an area of the city untouched by skyscrapers or business suits, it’s clear that The Chow Kit’s architecture draws upon its largely undiscovered surroundings. Developed by Brooklyn-based design practice, Studio Tack, The Chow Kit carries a tough, gritty but notably alluring presence on the street corner in which it sits. With a neon sign lighting up the sidewalk, it ofers a place of comfort whilst paying tribute to the area’s colourful past. The lobby is tiled in a rich terracotta clay fire brick—acting as a metaphor for rebuilding the Chow Kit area brick by brick—and upon entering, I am met with a fusion of local culture and modernity. A space that feels reminiscent of a casual social parlour where guests and locals can engage. Its décor is plush in colour-driven furnishing—such as the mustard gold velvet sofa located by the library, where I spent most mornings reading—and locally sourced artwork. A sanctuary from the vibrant outdoors, each room feels more like a home than a hotel. And while rooms still have a culturally rich palette and industrial feel, there is an ambience of light and peacefulness through breathtaking floor-to-ceiling windows and light linens. The decor within The Den—named after Chow Kit’s historically infamous gambling dens—parallels the hotel’s public spaces. But ultimately, the heart and soul of The Chow Kit lies within its kitchen. A space inspired by local kopitiams and traditional cafes, its atmosphere is open and inviting. And with a menu that perfectly combines Malaysian and international flavours—with my recommendation being Nasi Lemak Tumpang, which complements the refreshing chrysanthemum iced tea—it alone is a go-to in the Chow Kit area.

The Chow Kit is located at 1012 Jalan Sultan Ismail, Chow Kit, 50100 Kuala Lumpur, Wilayah Persekutuan Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

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Words by Ingrid Walker

Travel

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Travel

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Welcome to the jungle The shophouses of Keong Saik retain their original facades. But step into Hotel Soloha’s blue-bordered wood-panelled doors at 12 Teck Lim Road and you’ll be met with a bar reception to your left and a pop-art mural by Ethrisha Liaw to your right. (Takeshi Noodle Bar lies directly before you when you step in but I’ll get to that later.) The place is très chic, tropical jungle-inspired. Along with Liaw’s three-metre mural that’s a collage around the theme of ‘play’, there’s also a 13M-high painted elevator shaft. Through the glass of the elevator car, you can see Danielle Tay’s artwork, ‘Spirit of the Forest’, as you ascend or descend. The lobby is small, which is the norm for a boutique hotel, but there isn’t a space for you to sit down and stick your legs out while you wait. Fortunately, the staf will immediately tend to you (if they aren’t encumbered with serving at Takeshi Noodle Bar, which, again, I’ll get to later). Now the rooms; not all rooms are made equal; you’ll need to check with the staf about the sort of room that is right for you before you can book it. Each room is outfitted diferently, with design elements representing a ‘spirit animal’.

There are strict guidelines about construction, especially when it comes to a building like Hotel Soloha. Space is scarce so there are some design quirks in each room. My sitting area only had two chairs so I couldn’t have company over to chill or watch TV. There are other rooms that only have one door that either covers the shower area or the toilet. Then, there are rooms that have bunk beds or a steep staircase that leads to the bedroom. Pregnant women, the elderly and the wheelchairbound might want to reconsider, but if you’re nonplussed and are tickled by the hotel’s quirks, by all means, stay. Each room has a Smart Room Control Unit to operate the lights and air-conditioning, a smart TV and universal sockets. The best part is Takeshi Noodle Bar. Lounge on rattan sofas as you slurp up a bowl of ramen like the Sliced Wagyu Beef with Trufle Iberico Tonkotsu. Again, space is limited so you might want to make a booking or swing by when it’s not the lunch or dinner rush.

Hotel Soloha is located at 12 Teck Lim Road.

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Words by Wayne Cheong

A slice of Eden lies in the midst of the bars and restaurants around Keong Saik Road.

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Technology

The watcher at the door

Words by Wayne Cheong

Keeping an eye out for Arlo’s next improvement in home cameras: the Pro 3.

You can’t be too careful when it comes to protecting your castle. Even when you’re living in an HDB flat, a camera system can add another layer of security to your homestead. Don’t think of it as a wedge in neighbourly trust—the Pro 3 has a larger field of view than its predecessor thanks to 2K resolution with HDR and built-in spotlight with colour night vision capabilities. The latter is very useful as conventional security cameras record in black-and-white, but with colour you’re able to make out more details and clarity. The device also comes with a three-month trial of Arlo Smart—a cloud service that stores and allows you to view your recordings in 2K. Fast and easy to set up, the Pro 3 is wireless (you can

recharge the device’s battery via a magnetic charging cable). It can also detect movement and has an integrated siren that triggers automatically or manually via the Arlo app. With the app, homeowners can also monitor what the camera is seeing as well hear and converse with whoever is at the door. These sound great but, again, you worry that they might be seen as intrusive to your neighbours. Especially when you’re living in an HDB arrangement. Here’s what we suggest: the camera is for the benefit of everyone on the floor you’re on. Its 160° viewing angle lets you record more details than its predecessor, the Pro 2. It’s a winwin solution and one that could unite rather than ostracise.

The Arlo Pro 3 (two-camera system) is priced from SGD899 and is available at retailers including Harvey Norman and Challenger as well as online at the Arlo Store at Lazada.

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ESQ&A with Hideo Kojima Esquire Singapore talks to the video game visionary behind the Metal Gear Solid series

The late film critic, Roger Ebert, once opined that video games were inferior to film and literature, that video games can never be an art. That statement started as kindling before erupting into a firestorm of a debate. But that was in 2005. These days, public opinion towards the validity of video games being an art form leans mostly on the afirmative. And it is a thriving industry: with a revenue of USD120 billion in 2018 according to SuperData. Like any other industry, the video gaming world has its share of icons. Luminaries who have pushed the field to what it is today. Hideo Kojima is one such auteur. He first came into prominence with Metal Gear. Released by Konami, the company Kojima was under at the time, Metal Gear was considered the progenitor of the stealth game genre. He would go on to design other games like Metal Gear Solid for PlayStation, Policenauts and Snatcher. Kojima Productions was founded under Konami and in 2005, Kojima would be vicepresident of Konami Digital Entertainment. Then in 2015, after 30 years at Konami, Kojima left. Prior

to this, there were rumours of contention when the company listed personnel changes with the removal of Kojima’s name and the erasure of all traces of Kojima Productions branding. There were oficial statements about the fallout. Konami said the company was restructuring and that Kojima was “taking a long time of from work”. Kojima remained silent on the matter, though it was suspected that it was due to an NDA that he had signed. On 15 December 2015, Kojima oficially left Konami but now he has a new studio, also called Kojima Productions, and it has entered into an agreement with Sony Interactive Entertainment to develop a video game for PlayStation 4. That game would be Death Stranding. It is a stupefying open-world game with many new mechanics. You play Sam Porter Bridges (voiced by Norman Reedus), who has to deliver parcels in a world that’s plagued with the arrival of BTs or Beached Things, entities that are the deceased souls who failed to cross over and have spilled over to our world. The game also features other actors like Mads

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Words by Wayne Cheong

and his recent game, Death Stranding.

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Technology

Mikkelsen, Margaret Qualley and Troy Baker, among others. Death Stranding would go on to become the bestselling game in Japan. As part of the marketing efort for the game, Kojima embarked on a world tour, which had him start in Paris, then London, San Francisco and Osaka before ending in Seoul. Singapore was one of the countries that Kojima landed in. We talked to him before his meet-and-greet with fans.

concept for Metal Gear, about the mechanics of hiding and evading the enemy, the staf says, ‘oh no, that wouldn’t work. That’s not a game.’ The same scepticism occurred even on Death Stranding. The staf didn’t understand it at first but after we created the basic system, they started to get it. E S Q : Do you think Death Stranding is successful in what you wanted to communicate to players? H I D E O KO J I M A : It was a gamble whether people would understand what I was doing with the game. Y’know, about the idea of building a connection. For example, you can give a thumbs up when you come across a structure that another player has left behind for you to use. My staf wanted to add a thumbs down but I didn’t want to do that. But I think it was a success and I’m very happy that the system is working.

E S Q : What is the idea behind the world of Death Stranding? Was it easier to create these natural landscapes after an apocalypse? H I D E O KO J I M A : It’s not easier. I wanted to do something about a futuristic Earth, where civilisation collapses and mankind has to rebuild. Something like a newborn planet. Yeah, that’s the imagery: a world that’s unspoilt and humanity is scattered across its face. I wanted Sam to traverse a planet, with virgin plains, to connect with other inhabitants. I wanted that comparison to our present state: using stateof-the-art tech to link up via a network.

E S Q : Which came first: the idea of connecting people or the delivery mechanics? H I D E O KO J I M A : I created everything at once. It’s similar to how I work on all my games. A lot of ideas spill out and after a while, certain themes start to join up during development. Everything happens all at once.

E S Q : Much like the Internet. H I D E O KO J I M A : There are many end-of-the-world scenarios that I’ve seen where there are ruins, buildings in disarray and disuse, but I didn’t want to go with that. I wanted something new and beautiful.

E S Q : Not only did you have to develop Death Stranding, but you also had to start and operate a game company from scratch. H I D E O KO J I M A : I’ll explain something about my previous company [Konami]. All I wanted to do is to create games, not produce. But because I wanted more liberty, more freedom in conceiving my games, I had to become a producer. And in order to become a producer in a big game company, I have to be a member of the board of said big game company. For Death Stranding, I wasn’t creating a studio and then thinking about what I wanted to make. It’s more like I wanted to create Death Stranding and this is what I need to do to achieve

E S Q : What was the hardest thing to get right in Death Stranding? H I D E O KO J I M A : There are so many things. One of which is that many people mistake this game as solely a delivery game; you start from point A and end up at point B. That was the most dificult part: trying to convince people otherwise. There will always be dificulties when you start something new and novel. Like when I worked on Metal Gear. Everyone thinks there’s a need to have some fighting element, where the gameplay is just shooting at enemies. So when I explained the

Mads Mikkelsen as Cliford Unger in Death Stranding for PlayStation 4.

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that. While I was creating Death Stranding, I was also creating Kojima Productions. There wasn’t a moment when I had to dwell too deeply about the decision to form a studio. It just happened at the same time. I was quite lucky.

this or do that. The only thing I have to do is provide for my staf. How money is generated, I’ll decide that. E S Q : Death Stranding deals a lot with the afterlife. What are your beliefs in that regard? H I D E O KO J I M A : I lost my father when I was 13 and my mom raised me by herself. Two years ago, she passed away. I lost the two most lovable people in the world but I feel that they are still watching me. I’m still connected to them in some way. It’s like you’re unable to see the BTs but they are around us. I feel that my parents are right next to me.

E S Q : I assume that you have a lot of freedom to do what you do, but is a carte blanche detrimental or beneficial? H I D E O KO J I M A : I think it’s a good balance. It’s dificult to explain. I can design everything so I’ve freedom there but there’s the studio to think about, right? I needed to hire staf and I have to care for their welfare so I can’t make a big failure. Unlike a movie director where you can shoot a film and then take a year of because I have these responsibilities of running a studio and a staf to feed, I need to continually create.

E S Q : Do your children know what you work as? H I D E O KO J I M A : Kinda. Not to a huge extent that others know of me.

E S Q : Now you have a lot more people depending on you. H I D E O KO J I M A : I’m responsible for the staf’s happiness. There’s that pressure but I’m not doing anything that I don’t want to do. There are no orders from above telling me to do

E S Q : Was there something you wanted to include in Death Stranding but you weren’t able to do so due to time or budget constraints?

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done before. Death Stranding is about connecting and when players are playing the game, they are trying to connect. You’re not alone, there are others trying to link up with you, setting up structures to make your navigation easier. When you return to real life after playing the game, I want that feeling of connectedness to stay with you. I want players of Death Stranding to connect with other players in real life; when you talk about it or bond over it. In that sense, it’s important for me, the creator, to connect with people in real life too. I want to be part of that connection as well, thus the world tour.

H I D E O KO J I M A : There’s always, always something that I wanted to include in every project. E S Q : One of the themes that the game touches on is the short story by Kōbō Abe about the stick and the rope. What can you tell us about that? H I D E O KO J I M A : It’s dificult to explain. We came from the oceans and when we started walking upright, our hands become free. There’s where the stick and the rope—the closed fist and the open palm—come in. Our hands, the stick and the rope; to fight of and to welcome... those are the earliest tools, traits of the human race. How you live with your hands is important. That same concept applies to how one interacts with other people, the people you work with.

E S Q : For a guy with about 2.9 million followers on Twitter, this must be a Herculean task to meet every one. H I D E O KO J I M A : Well, of course, not everyone. But I can try to meet with as many as I can.

E S Q : With regard to your world tour, does it take you away from your work or do you see this as essential? H I D E O KO J I M A : This world tour is diferent from what I’ve

Death Stranding is out now on PS4.

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Music

Role reversal

Words by Derrick Tan

Meet Finneas. Not as an actor or producer, but as a multi-hyphenate musician.

Genres are restrictive. Sure, they allow listeners to identify music characteristics easily, but that pegs melody creators to a specific style. For Finneas O’Connell, it’s the least of his concerns and this stance has prevailed so far. As the mastermind producer and co-writer for younger sister Billie Eilish’s double platinum debut album, When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?, O’Connell marched to his own beat and presented a sound that wasn’t anything like the others on the current oficial music charts or radio. Weird-pop, Gothicpop, Avant-pop, Art-pop. These definitive terms by critics can’t pin down O’Connell. Or he simply rejects the notion. Bolstered by the success of Eilish’s debut and strong positive reception of his earlier-released singles, O’Connell stepped out from the production shroud and into the solo limelight with his first seven-track EP Blood Harmony. But neither this nor being Eilish’s producer was his first exposure to public attention. A true blue SoCal who was raised in East Los Angeles, California by actormusician parents, O’Connell entered show business as a child actor. From the Cameron Diaz-headlined Bad Teacher and his mom’s (actress Maggie Baird) Life Inside Out to comedy favourite Modern Family and musical TV series Glee, the 1997-born elder sibling knew not to let his personality get in the way of his acting role. In a Skype interview with Esquire Singapore, O’Connell explained that his actor guise exists “only when playing the assigned characters and Finneas the musician is purely him as it’s the songs he’d written about his life and experience encountered”. Talent definitely runs in the family. O’Connell’s fondness for music was instilled in him from a young age. “I always thought it was cool and thought the people who made music were cool. And I wanted to be a person who made music.” And the legendary Beatles were one of his top musical influences.

“I pretty much make music very selfishly. I only make music to satisfy myself and I hope other people will like it.” Without any formal training, O’Connell picked up songwriting through Baird at age 12 and explored producing songs with a Logic Pro. While acting, he discovered that this stint was an asset to creating music too. “It helps to figure out how to make other people feel believable. Thus, it’ll remind yourself what is believable and true for you. Things like that are really important when you’re trying to write a song that people can empathise with and put themselves in your shoes. So, you have to make sure that it’s something that feels truthful, which is similar to what acting is. It’s akin to trying to be truthful, even though obviously, you’re not really the character that you’re playing.” On Glee, O’Connell knew what it took to be professional that resulted him to be mature beyond his age. “Being professional as an actor is important despite its unpleasant long hours. It feels unmeasurable how long our days would be because we would start with a dance rehearsal in the morning. And then we would go to the set to film the sequence. After that, we’d go to the recording studio and record the song for the next episode.” Between filming for shows, O’Connell fronted The Slightlys, an alternativerock band he formed with three other like-minded high schoolers who met at a ‘battle of bands’ contest at Club Nokia in 2012. Losers in the past, but the winning crown was theirs to claim in 2014. ‘Ocean Eyes’, one of Eilish’s earlier viral tunes, was actually meant to be for The Slightlys. O’Connell penned the track but thought Eilish’s vocals were a right fit too. Initially submitted onto SoundCloud at the request of

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Eilish’s dance teacher, who asked the duo to compose a song for original choreography, the mid-tempo piece reached out to other listeners and eventually caught the interest of Interscope, which signed Eilish. The rest is history. O’Connell remains independent while producing all of Eilish’s musical releases and was recently presented the Songwriter of the Year award with Eilish by Apple. He was also nominated for the Grammy Award for Producer of the Year for his work on Eilish’s debut album. O’Connell think all this recognition “probably makes him feel more pressure”. “But I feel pressure anyway, because I really care about the music that we make. And I really want to make music people love and [that] people feel connected to and so I think the pressure is ever-present. I think in this case, I want to make sure that I never disappoint anybody, or even myself.” Now with Blood Harmony out, comparisons are inevitable even though both are entirely produced by O’Connell. Tabloids are just hungry for a news angle. “I know people compare us and I understand that because we’re related and I produced both records. But I think what’s funny is if I weren’t related to her, the music that I make and the music that she creates wouldn’t be compared because they’re so diferent from each other. The last thing I would want to do is to make music that sounds just like others. I mean, I want to make it sound like my vision. She wanted to do the same thing.” Blood Harmony veers away from darkness and amps up on organic instrumental chords. But there are still hints of Finneas’s signature distorted hooks and nuances, which appeared in Eilish’s songs too. “I write all of my own songs, usually sitting down at a piano or with a guitar. So, there’s usually an element of that on my songs, but it’s always about what serves the song best. There’s a song that I produced for

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Music

Blood Harmony is available for purchase and streaming on Apple Music.

[Eilish] titled ‘I Love You’. And that song is incredibly acoustic and doesn’t sport any crazy electronic stuf. “I think sometimes when [Eilish] and I sit down to make music, we’re experimenting and trying out diferent things. Oftentimes, that’ll lead to diferent sonics created, but it really varies. For example, when my record is spinning, it’s not always going to be instrumental-based and with [Eilish’s] stuf, it’s not always going to be electronic.” O’Connell’s audio streams on Spotify can be easily tallied by the million digits. His debut single ‘New Girl’ crossed the 10 million mark, while the love-driven radio-friendly ‘Let’s Fall in Love for the Night’ has 48 million plays so far. On the brooding and deeply personal single ‘I Lost a Friend’, O’Connell belts out the pains of ending a long-term friendship, demonstrated on its glorious chorus. The EP’s title was happened upon while he was touring in London with Eilish. “I heard the term [blood harmony] for the first time when we were in London during winter 2018. And I interpret that term to describe what it

sounds like when siblings sing together. Because [Eilish] and I sing together and I’m sort of, in essence to her career, her blood harmony and I’m related to her. That’s the literal meaning for me. “But I think it’s also a term that’s ambiguous and I don’t think it has only one meaning. I feel if people interpret that as just the meaning of the word, ‘blood’, which is, if you bleed for something, you work hard for it, you might sacrifice yourself for it. And then something being harmonious. Meaning that it works well with other things.” Besides Eilish, O’Connell has gone on to produce for Ashe, Bruno Major, Camila Cabello and Selena Gomez. Undertaking Gomez’s ‘Lose You to Love Me’ transpired as she happens to be on the same label. “I felt really lucky to do that because I love [Selena’s] music and I’ve grown up watching her movies and TV shows.” Not forgetting his acting roots, O’Connell uses film to depict the current music climate and expressed that with single-only releases. “They are comparable to a blockbuster movie— poised to make a profit.

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“[Music singles] are like movies made by film studios to carry the independent films and I think I’m more interested in making music like my favourite independent films. There’s Avengers music. Even though I think Avengers is great, my favourite movie isn’t Avengers. It’s The Social Network. I’d rather make music that feels kind of like that. “I pretty much make music very selfishly. I only make music to satisfy myself and I hope other people will like it. If I just make music that satisfies myself, then I’m making myself feel happy because I don’t have to worry about how well it does commercially or what the reviews say. I know that I made music that has always made me feel really good. So, I think you should always make music for yourself. That’s kind of the way that it should go really.” Finneas is staying full-time with music now, preparing Eilish’s sophomore album and his own LP while experimenting and learning more production ideas and sounds. But O’Connell the actor will not turn down acting gigs if an ideal role is ofered.

Photograph by Matty Vogel

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Shawn Mendes performs for his Spotify fans.

Budding support Believing is not enough. It’s time to convert anticipation into action.

Retaining a loyal music fan base is tough. These days, it’s not just solely about popularity like getting radio airplay, ranking high on the chart and chalking up respectable album sales. Contemporary musicians have to find alternative ways that’ll get their name out there and earn those survival dollars.

What has worked in the past may not be an efective solution in today’s context due to digital advancements and innovation. Streaming services, such as Apple Music and Spotify, disrupt the traditional models of promotion. In order to discover them now, listeners need to do little exploration.

Independent artists not signed to a major record label have the freedom to distribute themselves on any channels, which works both for and against them. Sure, they can easily upload fresh tracks onto streaming sites directly without any external constraints and get featured on ‘New Music Fridays’ by Spotify’s curatorial team, but as of October 2019 according to Digital Music News, “Spotify only pays about USD0.00437 per play. So, artists will need around 336,842 total plays to earn USD1,472”. On the flipside, fledgling musicians can attract their core audience without the need for music gatekeepers. These promising talents should leverage on securing their crowd by engaging with them on social media to ensure inclusivity. Once accomplished, the next strategic step is to have consistent exposure to maintain attention. “The vast majority of musicians are not making enough to live on from streaming, but they shouldn’t expect to,” notes Jack Schofield from The Guardian.“The best way to support musicians you care about is to buy their albums on CD or digitally from Bandcamp, go to their concerts, buy their merchandise, join their fan clubs, follow them on Instagram, subscribe to Patreons and so on. That way, they will get far more of your cash than they would get from Spotify and similar services. Better than that, they will feel their work is appreciated, which is what most artists actually want.”

Hyperspace Beck There’s no letting go of that synth after shelving his indie-folk roots. Besides, who can resist its glossy sheen? After winning two Grammys for Colors, Beck continues to play with electronic modulation assisted by the multihyphenate Pharrell Williams on this latest glitzy LP. While ‘Die Waiting’ features a rare appearance from Sky Ferreira that grazes on folk-rock, the rest, like ‘Chemical’ and ‘Uneventful Days’, exudes exuberant intergalactic pinball funk.

These Elements Låpsley Sensed the radio silence left by Adele? Allow her XL Recordings labelmate to fill the void. The rich-voiced British singersongwriter condensed various personal experiences in the last four years with this EP. “Emotional love, physical desire, depression and self-worth,” Låpsley outlined in a statement. These strong feelings are expressed through a neosoul sensibility with synth rhythms. This is an otherworldly record that oozes doom and elegance simultaneously.

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Songs For You Tinashe “I’ve always felt like an underdog...”, declared the multi-talented R&B musician on social media. From bedroom production to getting a major label deal and then becoming independent again, there’s no doubt Tinashe thrives on autonomy. Her first self-released album under her own label, she’s back in her groove— trap, dance-pop and of course, R&B. Indeed, ‘Know Better’ is one of her finest gems to jam to.

Words by Derrick Tan. Getty

FRESH FREQUENCIES

MaHB

Design

China in her hands

Words by Miranda Collinge. Photographs by Marc Wouters

Ann Demeulemeester brings her distinctive style to the table.

It’s impossible not to look for aesthetic continuity between Ann Demeulemeester’s iconic men’s and women’s clothing design—with its tendency towards the willowy, the gothic and the monochromatic—and the new range of ceramics she has produced for Belgian homewares company Serax, her first major creative endeavour since leaving her eponymous label six years ago. And sure enough, it’s there: the stark blacks and intense of-whites (also, some reds), the delicate yet decisive detailing, the uncanny ability to take a familiar object—say, a 14CM side plate—and turn it into a portal for contemplation of the unknowability of the universe (you see it too, right?!). They may be plates and cups, not coats and boots, but their progenitor is unmistakable. “Whether you’re working on a piece of tableware or a piece of clothing, the mental process is very similar, only the materials and techniques you’re working with are diferent,” Demeulemeester tells Esquire, not unfairly. As one of the groundbreaking Belgian fashion designers known as Antwerp Six (alongside names including Dries Van Noten and Walter Van Beirendonck), Demeulemeester has always had a reputation for singular vision: during the 28 years she ran her label she is reputed to have rebufed the advances of a number of other fashion houses. When she left it in 2013, she did so on her own

terms, announcing her departure with a handwritten letter: “I feel it’s time to separate our paths.” That path that led her to hole herself up in the country house outside Antwerp she shares with her photographer husband Patrick Robyn, where she spent five years learning the techniques that would eventually lead to the Dé collection, with its dégradé painting style, and the other ranges she has designed for Serax (glassware, cutlery a second tableware collection and a lighting range, all available now).

When Dé went into production, she gave WhatsApp tutorials to the porcelain painters in China who were tasked with replicating her brushwork. “The pleasure,” she says, “[is of] making something that would never have existed without you.” In her case, perhaps more than most, she means it absolutely.

In Ann Demeulemeester’s Dé porcelain collection for Serax, each piece has a unique, handpainted finish.

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Design of the times A celebrated graphic designer looks back at a lifetime of groundbreaking work, from brands to bands to burgers.

‘Area Codes and Time Zones’, 2015 (detail) acrylic on Coventry Rag paper 40IN × 60IN

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There’s a running joke among the partners at Pentagram, the celebrated design agency, sparked by a recent AGM, where they all piled into a bus. “We’re being driven up a mountain and it’s very bendy,” recalls Angus Hyland, when we meet at its London HQ. “When we get to the top someone said, ‘I imagined the headlines: Fatal Road Crash: Paula Scher, and others…’.” Pentagram designs architecture and interiors, books, branding and corporate ‘identities’, films, products, posters and websites, and has five international ofices, including London and New York. It is the world’s largest independent design consultancy and may be unique. By its own admission it was established by “three hippies” and remains owned and run by 21 partners. They have equal say. There is no CEO, CFO or COO. Profits are shared equally. They have designed London

Words by Johnny Davis

Design

MaHB

Design

taxis, Paracetamol packaging for Boots, The Guardian and logos for Claridge’s and The Savoy. It turns 50 in 2022. Yet while all partners are equal, some partners are more equal than others. Paula Scher became its first female partner in 1991 and has been described as “the most influential woman graphic designer on the planet”. At 71, she is about to complete what is arguably her most successful year, at least in terms of recognition. Last June, she was honoured as a fellow by the Society of Experiential Graphic Design (SEGD). In October, she received the Pratt Institute Legends Award, which celebrates “individuals… whose works have helped shape the cultural landscape”. In November, she headlined Design Manchester. She also had a show in Netflix’s series, Abstract: The Art of Design. “She’s the first lady of design,” Hyland says. “She’s a force of nature with an amazing, diverse portfolio. And she keeps doing amazing work.” Scher brushes of the attention. “I seem to be getting a lot of it,” she says, down the line from New York. “Maybe people think I’m going to die soon.” There’s probably more to it than that. If you’ve used Microsoft Windows, eaten at Shake Shack or paid money into Citibank, you have interacted with Scher’s work. But it is in New York where she has had the greatest impact. It’s no exaggeration to say she has changed the landscape of that city. She rebranded the Museum of Modern Art as MoMA. She redid the signage for all the city’s parks, replacing a dog’s dinner of instructional signs (‘No bare feet’, ‘No glass bottles’, ‘No explosives, firearms or weapons’, ‘No airplane, hot-air balloon, parachute, hang gilder or other aerial craft’, and, indeed, ‘No dogs’) with a slotting system of unified, celadon-coloured plaques that are neatly ordered and can be read without feeling like you’re being told of. She is also in no small way responsible for The High Line, the 2.3KM elevated rail trail on Manhattan’s West Side that is now one of the city’s most visited attractions. Before they shopped around for funding, its two backers, operating as Friends of the High Line, begged a logo from Scher. She came up with an ‘H’ with double horizontal lines that recalled train tracks, then politely persuaded them that their counter-suggestion (an ‘F’ for ‘Friends’) kind of missed the point. “We didn’t have any money to build it, we didn’t know what it should be,” Robert Hammond, one of the pair, says. “One of Mayor Giuliani’s henchmen, at a public hearing, said, ‘All this project is, is two guys... and a logo’. But you can do a lot with ‘two

Paula Scher, whose music posters include (from top) Best of Jazz (1979) for a compilation of jazz albums, a campaign for The Public Theater’s 1995-96 season and a US promotion for Elvis Costello’s Trust (1981).

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guys… and a logo’. It was critical.” Scher has produced countless posters for theatre productions all over the city, while her powerful Shakespeare in the Park campaigns have become a seasonal tradition. “It’s very gratifying, I love working in New York,” she says. “Design lives and it lives in all kinds of diferent forms.” Always the same but always diferent, if Scher has a go-to style it is to illustrate with type—she’s fond of 45° lettering and De Stijl-inspired grids, though like any designer, she resists pigeonholing. “I use typography to convey spirit. Something silly, something serious, something happy, something stupid. Any point can be made with a word or a letter form.” She dislikes the idea that design should be clean (art speak for minimal). “When I was young I rebelled against the International Style, particularly the font Helvetica, because everybody uses it. They’re still using it now! If everybody is using it, how can it be distinctive?” Before Pentagram, Scher was East Coast art director at CBS Records. Her work for jazz star Bob James’s H, a giant hotdog complete with zippy mustard squiggle, and Sunny Side Up for rocker Wilbert Longmire, a fried egg, remain pop art archetypes. They’re in the permanent collections at the V&A and MoMA. Later, she created Michael Jackson’s Bad cover. “I was 26 years old. I made 150 covers a year,” she says. “I was just this little brat running around doing things. I didn’t even know I had a good job.” Today, one of her talents is creating unifying templates: MoMA is a good example. It’s hefty black logo, in the Franklin Gothic font, is so impactful you can display anything behind it: abstract expressionist paintings, black and white photography or a disparate group show; there is cohesion. “Pentagram is a great place to work,” says Scher, who was born in Virginia, and whose father worked for the US Geographical Society (handpainted maps, artworks really, are one of her sidelines). “If you share profit, it’s excellent because not everybody is likely to have a bad year. And you don’t want to be doing bad work in this group. Because the group is terrifically talented. You feel terrible if you’re making terrible work.” Still, switching of is a problem. “I’m bothered by bad design. I was in a hotel last night and thought, ‘Why is the shower curtain like this?’ Me walking around complaining about the crappy [park] signs was real. Why do I do this? Given the political nightmares in my country, I really shouldn’t care about the typeface on a billboard. But, you know,” she says, “it’s my job to notice.”

MaHB

Cars

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MaHB

Cars

The pacemaker Jaguar’s paciest F-Pace is an absolute lunatic of an SUV at a remarkably nice price,

Words by Daryl Lee

but the compromises it’s made getting there takes the lustre of its performance somewhat.

At a glance, the Jaguar F-Pace SVR is a terribly uncomplicated thing. It’s the best-performing member of the F-Pace family, with a five-litre supercharged V8 lurking underneath a sculpted bonnet with its pair of model-exclusive carbon fibre vents. Against the other F-Pace cars on sale in Singapore—equipped with a two-litre turbocharged four-pot—the V8 in the SVR gets twice the number of cylinders and over twice the power for a total of 550HP. Just five years ago, this output would be ludicrous, but we’re living in an age when super-SUVs are a thing. The Lamborghini Urus, for example, has 650HP. Anyway, if you’re quibbling over the F-Pace SVR having a sub-600HP output, you’re probably the sort to split hairs over nuclear warhead yields.

What I’m trying to get at is that the delivery of that V8 is devastating. It’ll catapult the 2.1-tonne SUV from a standstill to 100KM/H in 4.3 seconds, and should you find yourself on a suitably long stretch of road with no speed limits (a disused aircraft runway, for example), you can get it up to 283KM/H. It’s serious sports car-grade performance, and in a straight line, the F-Pace SVR, as with most others of its ilk (Porsche Cayenne Turbo, Range Rover Sport SVR, Mercedes-AMG GLE 63 and the aforementioned Lamborghini), can and will leave all but the maddest supercars a disappearing speck in the rearview mirror. Sufice it to say, I didn’t get it up to that speed, but even if I did, there’s a good chance the F-Pace SVR would still be a pretty pleasant place to be in. After all, the Jaguar F-Pace SVR is a modern

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super-SUV, and a remit of a modern super-SUV demands that it not only have crushing performance, it should also be a superlative long-haul cruiser. Like a grand tourer on stilts, if you will. Though not really because while you can give a mastodon the running ability of a cheetah, you can’t really disguise its elephantine nature. But, you might be saying, a grand tourer is no flyweight either. Plus, other sporting SUVs also sufer from having to work around the twin issues of big power and big weight. True enough, but a conventional grand tourer is also lower to the ground, which makes for a car that is naturally more incisive. And other super-SUVs like the Porsche Cayenne Turbo and Lamborghini Urus have such chassis tricks as all-wheel steering and active

MaHB

Cars

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MaHB

Cars

S P E C I F I C AT I O N S

ENGINE 5,000CC, 32 valves, V8, supercharged POWER 550HP at 6,000-6,500RPM TORQUE 680NM at 2,500-5,000RPM 0-100KM/H 4.3 seconds TOP SPEED 283KM/H TRANSMISSION Eight-speed automatic FUEL CONSUMPTION 11.9 litres/100KM VES BAND C2 (SGD20,000 surcharge) PRICE SGD388,999 (including COE, excluding options)

anti-roll bars to mitigate the efects of their size and height. The F-Pace SVR, however, has none of those things. As far as electronic chassis gizmos go, the Jaguar has adaptive suspension, adaptive all-wheel drive and an electronically controlled rear diferential. Not primitive by any measure, but without the digital band-aids to, uh, aid the F-Pace SVR, you feel every millimetre of its 1,670MM height and every kilogram of its 2,070KG kerb weight. In all fairness, the Jaguar’s cousin, the Range Rover Sport SVR, is similarly powerful and portly, but the latter doesn’t have the former’s overly firm springs, which lend a sort of lumpen quality to the ride. This is exacerbated

by high-frequency patter introduced by the monstrous 22-inch alloys. The high spring rates (increased by 30 and 10 percent in the front and rear respectively) and five percent stifer antiroll bars mean the F-Pace SVR resolutely refuses to lean on its suspension in corners and let the tyres bite. This makes its demeanour skittish. In a car that’s this powerful and weighs this much, that characteristic is unnerving to say the least. Of course, all that should change on a race track, where the cornering loads are far higher, and I have no doubt the F-Pace SVR will shine brightest there. But really, while you could take your overpowered SUV to a race track, it doesn’t mean you should.

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Not that anyone does, anyway. However flawed dynamically though the F-Pace SVR may be, it’s hard to overlook its price. To be precise, its low, low price that almost made me do a double take. For just SGD388,999, you’re getting a fully loaded (fabulous, thin-backed front bucket seats, an uprated Meridian sound system, autonomous parking functionality, etc), full-sized SUV that will fit the brood in the rear bench, carry around their attendant luggage (650 to 1,740 litres of luggage space) and leave all but the most hardcore sports cars in the shade. Handling foibles aside, the F-Pace SVR represents shockingly good value, even more so when you consider its sticker price includes a hefty SGD20,000 VES surcharge, no thanks to its C2 banding. Incidentally, the money Wearnes Automotive is asking for won’t even get you a base model Porsche Cayenne. It might get you an upper-mid-range Mercedes-Benz GLE or BMW X5, the latter with some change left over. From a horsepower-per-dollar perspective, the F-Pace SVR simply can’t be beat. And that meaty V8 with its intoxicating baritone soundtrack with accompaniment provided by a serving of supercharger whine is enough to forgive a good deal of ills.

MaHB

Books

Novel de novo

The dawn of a tale is always exciting. As the protagonist embarks on an unforeseen route, the same can be said for its authors who debut a new saga too. Tapping their creators’ vast imagination while avoiding clichés, these spunky writings reflect a personal psyche that’s bound to impress.

These titles are available at Books Kinokuniya.

Make It Scream, Make It Burn Leslie Jamison It doesn’t get any more personal than penning autobiographical expositions and sharing them. The New York Times bestseller author Jamison looks back on her youth and as a career greenhorn. On ‘The Recovering’, the celebrated writer talks about her 12-step process to abstaining from booze by suspending scepticism. Often questioning limits and boundaries with sharp observations, she finds joy in misery yet embraces irony too. Hail Jamison!

Reincarnation Blues Michael Poore Is there life after death? Poore’s protagonist Milo experiences diferent lifestyles due to reincarnation and is conscious about every one of them. But he’s not contented. He seeks immortality so as to be with his beloved, Death (or Suzie), forever. Detailing Milo’s last five lives, Poore efortlessly melds dark whimsy with profound hilarity. Death always wins.

Orange World and Other Stories Karen Russell Imagine a world that’s not Planet Earth. How do you envision it to be? For Pulitzer finalist Russell, it involves some magic. What seemingly is a typical romance outline on ‘The Bad Graft’ takes a dreadful swerve into the supernatural realm, thanks to a Joshua tree spirit. This and seven other tales are original and tightly crafted with comical moments. Russell is definitely one of the most expectational literary minds now.

Brilliant, Brilliant, Brilliant Brilliant Brilliant Joel Golby Golby’s stint at audacious newmedia brand Vice has revealed frank sentiments on millennials. Hooked? This collection of new and revisited expanded essays will take readers on an emotional rollercoaster ride. From his signature outright British humour to the poignant yet ludicrous viral read ‘Things You Only Know When Both Your Parents Are Dead’, Brilliant, Brilliant will make you cry tears of pleasure and woe at the same time.

On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous Ocean Vuong The meaning of being a modern male is blurred. There are cis-gender and non-binary sub-categories to consider in masculinity. Vietnamese-American poet Vuong tries his hand at longform and succeeds in imbuing his tumultuous migrant family background with a coming-of-age forbidden love between the same sex into this memoir-like saga. Written as a letter by Little Dog (Vuong) to his mother, who can’t read, this book is grandiose and heart-wrenching.

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Words by Derrick Tan

Every story needs a beginning.

Still life

5|5

Cotton Eye/Loewe/Nature cap, by Loewe.

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Florenceâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s returning faces Fresh faces, familiar faces, all elegantly dressed to thrill. You see them twice a year in Florence, at Pitti Uomo, which is timed perfectly to jump-start each season. They are the gatekeepers of fashion. There are Florentines. There are foreigners. Together, they bring new energy to this ancient city. But who is the true face of Florence? One would think it should be the locals. Although the visitors are bringing a renaissance of their own. Or could it be a melding of these two groups of sartorial savants? Perhaps they are inextricably linked. For this is how the face of cities evolve.

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Analogue collage by Maxwell N Burnstein

Blank canvas

Esquire Singapore. At your fingertips. On the go.

@esquiresg

the FReSh NeW FACeS iSSue

Singapore

2020

the FReSh NeW FACeS iSSue

Singapore

2020

Wide-eyed wonder

ISSN 2301-3397 SGD8.00

Wide-eyed wonder

harris dickinson

From Maleficent sequel to Kingsman prequelâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;the fresh-faced youth considers his credentials, the possibility of existing as a pin-up and being the happiest when living as someone else

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