Number V July MMXIII by ‘Ultimate luxury group’
Writing and translation Coralie Rubé
Editing and advertising Malika Ben Mustapha
Summer has finally arrived… and with it sun, beach, lightness and decadence. Don’t miss the boat to California! Cradle of the star system, American Dream symbol, sparkles and glitters, California does still convey this image of glamour and success, which seduces by its apparent frivolity and joie de vivre. But like a mirage that clears up while we are getting closer and closer, California unveils itself under a new light as we tame it. Far from the overrated and superficial cliché conveyed by the cinema from Hollywood, California reveals a new facet, more cultural and complex than we can imagine at first sight. Thanks to a cultural combination, it appears to be an infinite source of inspiration, a creativity stimulator that is not done inspiring artists from all over the world. It is not a coincidence if California gets a bit into our daily lives. Whether it is on our table, in our bathroom, or even in our dressing room, California is everywhere and brings along a few beams of its sunshine. With your head in the clouds and a light heart, go conquer the American West with the ‘U’ Magazine as your travel companion in this sunny getaway.
Writing Laure de Régloix (www.kissmyart.fr)
Marketing and advertising Benjamin Guiborel
Art Direction (graphic design) and editorial Benoît Cannaferina (www.cannaferina.com)
Writing Laurent Pécha (www.ecranlarge.com)
Art Direction (Photography) and editorial Grégoire Mahler (www.gregoiremahler.fr)
Director of Publication Zakary Chanou
Writing Lou Camino (www.loucamino.com)
‘U’ Editorial
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organic haircare. reduction to the essential.
www.lessismore.at
numBEr V ‘ 8 ’ Wellness & Fashion ‘ 10 ’ Californian Apparition ‘ 16 ’ Lady to Cloud ‘ 22 ’ Before Midnight ‘ 26 ’ Over Lay ‘ 32 ’ The excessive Golden State ‘ 5 ’
yemaya-thes.com
ELIXIRS
La quintessence des Fleurs...
COLLECTION ELIXIRS Fleurs à infuser Le Jasmin Fleur de l’amour au parfum envoutant, la fleur de jasmin invite à la séduction et aux plaisirs. Précieuse et délicate cette infusion est recommandée pour traiter les maux de tête. Elle a des propriétés sédatives, facilite la circulation sanguine et diminue la pression artérielle. Le Lys Royale par nature, la fleur de Lys offre une infusion épicée à la coloration unique. La fleur de lys est utilisée pour son action apaisante sur le système nerveux. Elle est recommandée pour faire face à l’anxiété et aux insomnies. La Roselle Les fleurs de Roselle sont grandes et splendides. Elles s’épanouissent à l’aube et tombent au crépuscule comme pour nous rappeler que chaque jour est un nouveau jour. Un goût intense, rond, fruitée à consommer en infusion chaude ou froide. Riche en vitamine C, la Roselle facilite la digestion. Elle est diurétique et dépurative. Elle s’utilise aussi dans le traitements des bronchites et angines pour ses vertus apaisantes.
Design packaging par l’Artiste Koralie
WELLNESS & FASHION Made in Laguna Beach Travel around from your home! Well and truly made in a little workshop by Laguna Beach, Laguna Candles offer a new range of candles in tribute to the charm of their home land. Breath the air of Laguna Beach while lighting “Laguna
Oskar Metsavaht’s California California was muse to Brazilian fashion designer Oskar Metsavaht for his Spring / Summer 2013 Osklen collection, “Endless Summer” is available in the brand’s flagship stores and in select boutiques across the world. “Osklen in California” is an art and fashion project Oskar Metsavaht created as part of his “Endless Summer” collection. It includes a dreamy art book showcasing major pieces of the collection shot on location in Santa Monica, Vasquez Rocks, downtown Los Angeles and Malibu. In the book, Oskar
reflects “Like a road trip through the most important aesthetic contributions, I think Californian lifestyle and scenery, like other great cultures, has lent a way of living to the rest of the world; from the psychedelic roughness of the rocky deserts to the innovative mindset, from the mythical surf points to the iconic representations of the peace and love dream”. The California seen through the eyes of Oskar Metsavaht looks particularly appealing to us. www.osklen.com
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Paradise”, one of the candles from the “Coastal collection”, with acid notes of citrus lime and verbena. Moreover they are homemade and eco-friendly, made from soy wax. www.lagunacandles.com
Melt for Me! Bath candy-like cosmetics Based in Los Angeles, Me! Bath has brought about a revolution to bath rituals since 2002, establishing them as real spa rituals that every woman waits impatiently. The first product and bestseller of the brand is the Bath Ice Cream, with different savours, or flavours, each
one more appetizing than the next: papaya nectar, birthday cake, chocoholic… The range has expanded with Body Icing or Shower Sherbet. Let yourself go to a yummy experience! www.mebath.com
Delarom invigorating orange oil Back from your holidays, what is more pleasant than a small detail that makes you delve back into summer sensations? The delicate orange perfume will send you back in your little paradise, when the day comes to an end and plants fill the garden with fragrance, after sun beams have caressed your skin all day long. Start afresh by rubbing this
invigorating oil after shower, it facilitates firming up and eliminates tensions and stress. For a well-earned wellness break, pour few drops of Delarom oil in your bath. A delicious scent will perfumes the atmosphere, and you will fully benefit from its invigorating virtues. www.delarom.fr
Dermaesthetics, Beverly Hills Formula The family business spent the past 20 years creating a professional skin care range, with their staff of experienced chemists, technicians, estheticians and doctors. In its products, we find the active ingredients with the best results, which submitted to a battery of tests before they were selected. The equation is simple, in Dermaesthetics clinical-looking jars, each ingredient is
efficient, and there is nothing unnecessary. The Californian brand has already showed what it could do to a won over and faithful clientele, thanks to its dramatic results on the skin’s quality. The active enzyme therapy treatment in particular is not done getting itself talked about! www.dermaestheticsusa.com Coralie Rubé
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Californian Apparition
German photographer Stefanie Schneider radiates the Galerie Hug with her Polaroid’s series “The Girls behind the white Picket Fence”, shot in the Californian desert. Between photography, cinema and painting, the surrealist aesthetic of the series is worthy of a thriller by David Lynch. ‘ 10 ’
‘ 11 ’ Crédit Stefanie Schneider
‘U’ Art & Design
The Southwestern USA, its burning deserts and dated myths, this is what inspires the pictures huntress from Berlin in pursuit of solar landscapes. Stefanie Schneider spends indeed most of her time on the West coast, in a canyon or along a dusty road not far from Hollywood’s lights. For her Polaroid’s series “The Girls behind the white Picket Fence”, the artist chose the torpor of the Twentynine Palms desert. Set against a background of sandy plains, the artist makes up a scenario. A pretty and mysterious girl evolves in a “no man’s land”
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between a deserted caravan, few cactuses, an old parasol and a white wooden fence. 100 % American. The story is blurry and crumbled. But it is no big deal, we love to get lost in this oneiric universe that progressively grabs us. Faded, almost burnt, Stefanie Schneider’s pictures seem to come from a Road Movie from the 70s. We would almost expect to see Telma and Louise… Saturated light, strangely vintage colours, holes and halos lay like an unpredictable filter. The picture becomes a fiction, a parallel reality. Her trade
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‘U’ Art & Design
secret? She uses expired Polaroid films, whose chemical substances react randomly on the picture. “My work consists of a balance between light and controlled chemical reactions”. Then, in her laboratory in Berlin, she re-takes photos of her pictures and enlarge them. Sometimes she put them together to make a film out of them. Cherry on the cake, the galerie Hug shows one of her 60-minutes “polamovie”, made from 4,000 Polaroid pictures. Laure de Régloix
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Galerie Catherine et André Hug, “The Girl behind the white Picket Fence” Photographs and film by Stefanie Schneider From 13 June to 20 July 2013 40 rue de Seine – 2 rue de l’Echaudé, 75006 Paris ‘ 15 ’
Dress Vivienne Westwood Belt Vintage Ring & Necklace Swarovski Shoes Azzedine Ala誰a
lady to cloud
Photograph Grégoire Mähler Stylistw Alessandra Stella Hairdressing Jonathan Geimon (airport agency) Using Bumble and bumble Make up Ismaël Blanco (Aurélien agency) Model Dana Fiona (City agencY)
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Dress Fifi Chachnil
‘U’ Magazine
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Top & Skirt Andrew Gn
Ring Swarovski Belt Azzedine Ala誰a
Before midnight
For several years in France, the cinematic summer is synonymous with a flood of blockbusters. America forces through with a multitude of films, each one more dramatic than the last. To find your place in this jungle, you got to be tough. Or have a real cinematic proposition, as it is the case for Beforemidnight, third episode of a romantic saga that started almost 20 years ago. ‘ 22 ’
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‘U’ Events & Entertainment
Recollection of the facts. In 1995 is discreetly released Beforesunrise. We witness the encounter in a train of Jesse, young American writer in the making and Céline, French tourist with strong beliefs. Over a night in the streets of Vienna, these two will get to know and love each other, and make the promise to meet again six months later at the exact same place. The film leaves us on the promises of reunion. The alchemy between the two main actors, Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke is already striking and the film has this astonishing particularity to be a three-man project, between the two actors and their producer, Richard Linklater. A unique collaboration that will make the works richer over years. When we watch these Before, we obviously see a little bit of them, without knowing where exactly. It is what Julie Delpy confirms when we talk to her about the trilogy: “There is a little bit of me in Céline. But I am also in the words that Jesse pronounces. Besides I am almost as masculine as feminine. My masculine part is very developed, it has allowed me in the course of the storyline to often write for the character interpreted by Ethan.” In 2005, in Beforesunset, we discover that the two ex-lovers have not seen each other as planned. Life goes on, but on the occasion of a tour for his book inspired by his Viennese night, Jesse meets Céline again in Paris. And during a long conversation in the streets of the capital, the duo will get closer once again. Would it be enough for them to live together at last? One more time, the story lets the door open to all possibilities. Even if the most romantic spectators will probably believe in the birth of a real love story. Eight years later, the mystery totally dissipates: Jesse and Céline are together. They are no longer alone astwins
have come from their union. Beforemidnight takes us back with success in the ‘obligatory devices’ of the saga, that is to say the long scenes where our two characters will exchange views about life and their experiences in the heart of Greece, as sunny as their burning debates. If the two first Before followed a seduction tone, it is different in this third opus. Goodbye romance, hello dreary everyday life of the couple. And the film reminds us how much life together demands a constant commitment and a re-assessment. Sometimes it is so accurate, that we gladly take all the occasions to laugh that the loverbirds’ lively disputes give us. Because we must not bury our head in the sand: as close as characters are with their actors, they reflect before all else the most familiar face, ours, the face that we build in the course of years. And here it reveals the incredible impact and appeal of the peerless series in the history of cinema: its ability to evolve simultaneously with our own existence. We have stopped counting the links between their and our stories. Watching the Before, also means that the cinematic barrier shades off in favour of a never-distorting mirror of the couple’s reality. In Midnight, we do not see the most pleasant reality, to the point of inviting the ghost of Ingmar Bergman during the last particularly harsh half hour. Paradoxically, and contrary to its predecessors, optimism is finally more significant. “It is Richard’s choice” admits Julie Delpy, “it is a succession of films about love, it is not completely dark and negative”. We hope that we will have the occasion, perhaps, to meet again Céline and Jesse in a decade or so! We already have a suggestion for the title: Beforedawn. Laurent Pécha
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‘U’ Magazine
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over lay
Photograph Grégoire Mähler Hairdressing & Make up Delphine Kellog Model Marie-Ève (NEXT agency)
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Los Angeles
Photographers Lou Camino & Grégoire Mähler
Death Valley
‘U’ Destination
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The excessive Golden State
California is not this compilation of clichés, shams and triviality that we like to imagine. Or maybe it is… but only part of it is. This is also a place where every instant Nature reminds us that we cannot cheat with it. ‘ 33 ’
San Fransisco
Yosemite park
‘U’ Destination
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California is one of these places that we think we know even though we have never been there. It is quite symptomatic of the United States and a consequence—regrettable for some— of the exportation and the massive adoption of this American culture, conveyed by the cinema, TV shows, their stars and sparkles that fascinate. The gold rush is over for a long time, but California has stayed this American Dream symbol, the “magnet” that it seemed to be back then. When you go there, it is like you go meet the greatest myths and their most universal icons. Sea, sex and fun… To get a better idea of what the Golden State refers to in the popular imagination, I chose to do a quick local survey. Confirming results: the Golden Gate, The Dude, Baywatch, the Silicon Valley, Los Angeles, Joe Dassin, Armistead Maupin, Venice, the Beat generation, surfing and the enormous waves of Mavericks, the wine from the Napa Valley, the orange, the Mexican border, the Ted conferences, Hollywood, Death Valley, Julien Clerc, San Francisco, Californication, Schwarzenegger (the actor and the governor), Cars and Flash Mac Queen’s team, Beverly Hills and the Beach Boys… But what comes first, from far, is idyllic picture combining sun ocean beach roller skates palm trees and shades… In other words, holidays, showing off and frivolity, a prudish variant of Gainsbourg’s sea, sex and sun, without any doubt a Californian leitmotiv! Los Angeles and San Francisco, vibrating and excessive megalopolises 18 million people live in Los Angeles—known as Angels’ city despite its breathtaking dimensions for inhabitants of the Old Continent—, it represents half of the population in California, the most populated State of the country. Not far, San Francisco—Frisco for those who are in a rush—and its bay, with 7 million inhabitants, look like a suburban town. These two overexcited and radiant hubs, although they are dissimilar, still represent the urban and unmissable lighthouses of the State.
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Route 101, Big Sur
‘U’ Destination
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• For information purposes, you can see the bear that was the model for the drawing at the Academy of Sciences of the Golden State Park in San Francisco, where it is stuffed since 1911
From the most pointless—that we can see on beaches of the eccentric Venice and Santa Monica—to the most subtle—Silicon Valley’s 2.0 brainstormings or Les valeurs personnelles (“The personal values”) by René Magritte at the SFMOMA—, LA, the American city and SF, the European one, are in the place. And they offer to visitors all they expect from a cosmopolitan supercity: beautiful strolls in heterogeneous areas, superb and rich museums—the modern art museum in SF, the Guetty Center in LA… An architecture transcending ages—the Golden Gate and the colourful Victorian mansions surrounding the sloping streets of San Francisco, the undulating forms of the Walt Disney Concert Hall in LA or its old Art Deco downtown in gentrification. The two Californian cities offer a varied and tasty cuisine, reflecting all the migration flows converging towards this El Dorado coast and of course, the permanent entertainment facet—shopping, visit of Hollywood’s studios, hype parties & cie. Beyond the city, a sovereign Nature So yes, California is just like we pictured it. But it would be simplistic to stop there. Just have a look at its flag, so your vision of the omnipresent, triumphing man starts breaking apart: a grizzly bear is swaggering on a piece of green lawn.• The splendid, wild, soothing, immoderate, dangerous Nature is never far, reminding the man that he is only an allowed guest. California, split from North to South by the famous but threatening San Andreas rift, has a sword of Damocles hanging over its palm trees: a devastating earthquake within the next 30 years. But let’s leave disaster films to Hollywood for the moment and let’s stop by the coast! Between ocean and Earth… With 1,300 kilometers of coast, 5,000 if we incorporate bays, California is manifestly a coastal State. A space to discover ideally in a convertible Mustang, taking the mythic and sinuous US 101 that goes until Mexico and offer breathtaking views on a not-so-pacific ocean. To sound local, drop few “It’s insane!” from times to times. Because the Californian cold current force people to wear wetsuit, but seems particularly
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Bristlecone Pines Yosemite
Venice Beach
‘U’ Destination
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welcoming to sea lions. It carries a fog you could cut with a knife, whereas its powerful waves crash on a jagged wild coast, especially in the Big Sur area. The tree lovers too are fulfilled: more than a third of the State is covered by forests, counting numerous sequoia specimens flirting with the clouds, and trees among the oldest ones on Earth. To see them or to go through them, you are overwhelmed by different possibilities: Muir Woods National Monument in the surroundings of San Francisco in Marin County—where some scenes of Vertigo from Alfred Hitchcock had been filmed—Redwood National Park in the North or even Yosemite National Park in the Sierra Nevada mountains, even more inland, where trees even grow on rocks. With its gigantic granit domes, it is also a paradise for hikers, seasoned climbers or waterfall hunters. … and hellish temperatures To disappear even more into the Californian territories, you have got to like heat. The real one, from the deserts where us, mortals whose body is made up of 65 % of water, have trouble breathing, and even more moving. But the weather is ideal for the sprouting of giant yuccas from the Joshua Tree National Park in the Mojaves desert in the South of the State, that go up to the Death Valley. This place holds the world record of the highest temperature ever measured: 56,4° C. Fauna and flora have adapted to these very hostile conditions. The homo sapiens just goes through it, which makes bubble up our senses: canyons with eroded hills as well as Zabriskie Point rocky waves, everything contributes to showing a real palette of impressionist painter. To stop in this evil lair, far from the tumult of the coast, is above all the occasion to hear a pure moment of silence, maybe for the first in life. It is also part of California… Lou Camino
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Los Angeles
Abandoned village of Bodie
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Your concierge’s recommendation This summer your UUU concierge puts you on the way of glamour and splendour! Direction the United States and in particular Hollywood, one of the most famous neighbourhoods of Los Angeles, because of its cultural identity that the cinema has brought to it. World capital of entertainment and glamour, Hollywood is the perfect destination for a sunny holiday! Founded in 1927, the Roosevelt Hotel enjoys a prime location, in the heart of Hollywood, on the Walk of Fame and in front of the famous Sid Grauman’s Chinese Theater. Having recently undergone a complete renovation, the Roosevelt Hotel now offers luxury services and a modern and refined design. Contact your concierge to book your room or suite.
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