L'officiel Australia, January 2015

NO 002 February 2015

Beauty TIMELESS

POPPY DELEVINGNE Boho belle

BARBARA PALVIN Summer in Ibiza

LILY McMENAMY A model daughter

ODE TO THE ROSE THE NEW WAVE IN HAIR A SCENTED HISTORY

Sharon

STONE I N I R I S VA N H E R P E N

Reclaiming the spotlight

N O 002 February 2015

HESTON BLUMENTHAL MICHAEL KORS LAKE BELL lofficiel.com.au AUS: $8.95

INC GST

ISSN 2204-2350

9 772204 235007

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CONTRIBUTORS

CONTRIBUTORS

JACK WATERLOT

ROMAIN GAVRAS

NOELLE FAULKNER

CARLI PHILIPS

DANIEL CORDNER

ALEXIA PETSINIS

PHOTOGR APHER

PHOTOGR APHER

CONTRIBUTING ART & CU LT U RE ED I TO R

WRITER

SENIOR DESIGNER

WRITER

Coming from a family of artists, painters and movie set designers, at a young age Jack Waterlot began capturing the beauty of the people, places and cultures he experienced.

Discovering fashion in his teens, Jack found a way to combine photography with the artistic impulses in his blood. Although young, the Paris-born, LA-based talent has worked with international editions of Vogue, Elle and Interview, working with top models including Behati Prinsloo, Missy Rayder and Sean O’Pry and legends Naomi Campbell, Cindy Crawford and this issue’s cover star, Sharon Stone (page 82). “The minute she walked on set, I looked at her and immediately felt her power,” he says.

“She looks at you and you are hypnotised, you can’t turn your eyes away. On top of everything, she is probably the sweetest woman I ever met. She was so happy to be on set, which made everything a dream.”

In front of or behind the camera, Romain Gavras triggers a sense of passion. Born in Athens in 1980, Romain has directed several short films, starred in others and directed music videos for Kanye West and Jay-Z, and MIA as well as notable commercials for Opium by Yves Saint Laurent (starring Emily Blunt) and Dior Homme Parfum with Robert Pattinson. His handiwork can be seen in this issue in the fashion shoot Summer Getaway (page 134) where he flew to Ibiza to photograph Hungarian beauty Barbara Palvin in a sultry, tropical portfolio.

As a voracious reader, pop culture trivia enthusiast, cinephile, art history lover and music geek (no, really, she’s an ex-sound engineer), to say that L’Officiel Australia’s Contributing Art and Culture Editor Noelle Faulkner lives and breathes her profession is putting it lightly. In this issue, Noelle called up multi-media artist, illustrator and animator, Quentin Jones (Short & Sharp, page 24) the fashion filmmaker it-girl on the speed dial of every major brand, and quizzed her on all the little things that move her. Each month, this Sydney-based freelance writer highlights the coolest burgeoning and established creatives in the cultural landscape. She’s the resident gig guide, read recommender, playlist curator and film critic—but if you ask her, she doesn’t really consider that side of things work.

An avid traveller with a keen eye for design, Carli Philips is a freelance journalist and the Melbourne editor of luxury interiors magazine Belle. A regular contributor to fashion and lifestyle publications in the US, Asia and the United Kingdom, her feature stories have appeared in titles such as Elle Decoration, Monocle, Harpers Bazaar, Nylon, Vogue Living and The Australian newspaper where she compiles a regular column. In this issue, the interiors voyeur and globetrotter visited San Francisco where she went behind the scenes at the new Battery private members’ club (In The Club, page 76). “It was a fascinating insight into the exclusive world of societal privilege 2.0.”

As a boy Daniel Cordner always had a shelf full of Rolling Stone and Smash Hits magazines to hand, growing his obsession for editorial design. For a kid from the country, the pages provided him with an opening to the wider world. Now with 15 years of design expertise under his belt—he’s worked with all manner of creative clients, from circus performers to the Melbourne Theatre Company—Daniel joins L’Officiel Australia as senior designer (pages 1-180). When he’s not putting together an edition of L’Officiel, Daniel can be found, depending on the day, in his design studio in Melbourne’s CBD, pedalling around town on two wheels, doing handstands for the heck of it or whipping up a batch of his eponymous brand of treats, Dan’s Nut Bars—heartily endorsed by the L’Officiel team, often as their sole source of sustenance during long days of deadline.

Delving into L’Officiel’s archives for the monthly Retrospective (page 30), Alexia Petsinis has seen it all—the evolving parade of designers, personalities and aesthetics that have shaped the magazine for over 90 years. “Working with the archives is like taking a vivid journey through the history of the 20th century and into the present,” she says. “One can never truly appreciate fashion until the social and cultural influences that have shaped it are understood.” Alexia also complements her writing with fashion and lifestyle illustration and is currently collaborating with Penguin Books on a creative project to be launched in the near future. Alexia sees fashion through its interplay with fine art, history and philosphy.

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JOINthe

CLUB WORDS

Carli Philips

JOIE DE VIVRE

With a second dotcom boom morphing Sa n Fra ncisco into a playg round for the rich and powerful, a decadent mem bersonly club has opened its golden gates to the high-tech elite.

Voyage

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JOIE DE VIVRE

RIGHT THE LIBRARY FAR RIGHT THE EXCLUSIVE MEMBERS-ONLY BAR

E

very July, thousands of America’s richest and most powerful magnates, politicians and tycoons head to Bohemian Grove, a private, men-only compound deep in the redwood forests near the Russian River in California for their annual encampment.

Headquartered in San Francisco, they are members of the ultra-exclusive Bohemian Club where the waiting list is decades and membership fees are upwards of $20,000. But anyway, it’s invitation only.

The city has a long legacy of dynastic social clubs housed in prime city real estate­—the stately 19th century Presidio Golf Club; posh Pacific-Union gentlemen’s establishment; America’s oldest athletic society, The Olympic Club; the distinguished University Club and the elegant Metropolitan that provides a “unique milieu for social activities for women”. Founded by Levi Strauss, the Concordia-Argonaut Club has served as a “second home to many of the Bay Area’s most distinguished families”, according to the website.

But for today’s younger generation of bluebloods, there’s little in the spirit of London’s legendary private members clubs, frequented by silver-spooned socialites and attractive celebrities who prefer to party in private. Most telling is the absence of the 20-year-old Soho House, whose clubhouses are still considered cool with the hottest creative kids of film and media despite having 13-plus locations worldwide.

CH A RG E O F T H E BAT TERY

It’s been likened to Soho House, with selective admissions, excessive membership fees, luxury hotel, rooftop deck, and art and film launches, but where Soho House has been known to avoid “suits” and corporates, does the Battery have much choice in a city overrun with techies, entrepreneurs and financiers?

Its founders, husband-and-wife team Michael and Xochi Birch (who sold their Bebo site to AOL for $850 million in 2008 and bought it back for $1 million five years later), think so.

The duo launched their decadent 60,000 sq foot Battery Club last year with a $15 million re-fit courtesy of interior designer of the moment Ken Fulk. Initiation is by way of an inscribed book donated to the library and discretion is enforced; no social media, no mobile phone conversations (there are Sbooths for that) and absolutely no pitching. But in a city of newly minted tech-heads, a dress code would be suicide. So, according to the charter, anything goes.

“We want diversity. Our primary driver is to foster equal gender representation, ethnicities, ages and members from a range of industries and backgrounds to keep the club in balance,”

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Initiation is by way of an inscribed book donated to the library and discretion is enforced; no social media, no phone conversations and absolutely no pitching. says Birch, who looks somewhat out of place in his own club with shoulder-length hair and a backpack. “We don’t just want people that can afford it because it’s not as interesting to just have one ‘type’. We encourage people with a less conventional path that are trying to do and create—musicians, actors, writers.

But this city doesn’t have so many—we’re not LA,” he says of the club (annual fees start at $2,400, “about the same as a nice gym”) with scholarships and artist rates for those less flush.

Cherry-picked by a 17-person committee (you must be nominated by a current member to be considered), the board remains secret, but Birch maintains they are a microcosm of how he wants the club “curated”. Rumoured invitation-only first members were of the tech fraternity; Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom, One Kings Lane co-founder Alison Pincus and husband Mark Pincus of gaming platform Zynga.

“It’s a telling time for such an exclusive club to arrive in San Francisco,” Anisse Gross from The New Yorker observed.

“As a second dot-com boom sweeps the city, its inhabitants are feeling the repercussions of a surge in wealthy transplants.

The city, long reputed as a haven for provocateurs and cultural innovators, has quickly transformed into a playground for the rich, where tech money sends rental prices soaring as the less fortunate tenants battle it out with the rent board.”

Indeed, it’s a far cry from the city’s original spirited, freethinking counterculture clubs like the Billboard Liberation Front, art-based Rat Bastard Protective Association, Suicide Club and Cacophony Society, which ultimately led to the birth of the Burning Man Festival.

THE NEW ORDER

While critics have been quick to judge the Birches as “playboy geeks trying very, very hard to be cool”, the couple has always been well respected for their humble commitment to charity.

“We wanted a greater purpose to the club. We have a lot of wealthy and influential members and part of the DNA of Silicon Valley is that when you are financially successful you find a way to give back. But this doesn’t necessarily make someone a great philanthropist,” says Michael.

“But, alas, charitable largesse has been the one arena in which the new folk have not so easily assimilated the ways of the old,” says Vanity Fair writer Evgenia Peretz, commenting on the rising tension with the city’s establishment who have traditionally supported cultural institutions like the ballet, the opera, and museums. “But the notion that some higher class of citizenry should dictate which causes are worthy runs counter to the very DNA of the tech talent. Among this crowd, the

old ways of doing philanthropy seem hopelessly retrograde.”

The Birch’s belief in the intelligent, active engagement of social justice issues led to the formation of Battery Powered.

Spotlighting worthy causes, members are encouraged to participate in roundtable discussions and expert lectures. The launch theme was ‘breaking the cycle of incarceration in the California prison system’. The Birches cover all operational costs.

They say The Battery was born from their mutual love of the traditional local watering hole (they just purchased an actual pub in the north of England). It’s an unusual analogy considering the egalitarian nature of a pub, but Michael explains, “I’ve always loved the relaxed environment of a pub, but you can’t do the village pub thing in a city, it just doesn’t work. It’s too big, there’s too many people and I hate the idea of lining up.

A space is beautiful when it’s not entirely crowded, and this way we can control both numbers and types of people.”

One thing the local pub doesn’t have is an Art Program.

Directed by German-born Thomas Moller, rotating exhibitions, local studio tours and international field trips seek to engage members with the Bay Area arts community. Moller calls it “art as a social enterprise”. Which may seem a stretch for an exclusive venue, but with tech titans holding the keys to the golden gates it may be the start of something bigger.

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