The Gloss January 2017

IN THE MOOD FOR CHANGE / COMING ON STRONG / SS�� WARDROBE UPDATES / SUGAR CRASH / FOOD, TRAVEL � WINE

MAGAZINE JANUARY 2017

with THE IR

A

ISH TIMES

7 1 R A E 0 Y 2 L NEW

U F Y A PL

S E V O M G I B S N' O I H FA S

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www.roche-bobois.com Photo Michel Gibert, used as a reference only. www.gudea.fr / TASCHEN.

CONTENTS

INSIDE THIS ISSUE

PU B LI S H E R

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Polly Devlin, Noreen Hall, Antonia Hart, Catherine Heaney, Penny McCormick, Aoife O’Brien, Peter O’Brien, Therese Quinn, Luis Rodriguez, Natasha Sherling CON T R IB UT IN G P HOTOGR AP HER S

Michael Dwornik, Neil Gavin, Renato Ghiazza, Olivia Graham, Neil Hurley, Lisa Loftus, Barry McCall, Joanne Murphy, Liam Murphy, Amelia Stein, Suki Stuart

ON THE COVER

�3

HUNTING & GATHERING Trans-seasonal styling tricks

18 THE LOWDOWN Your guide to what's new and now for the next twelve months

�6 A SHOW OF STRENGTH

The power of strength in body, mind and wardrobe

28 MOODBOARD Susan Zelouf gets down and dirty while embracing her messy side

30 FASHION'S NEW IDEAS How to interpret SS17's freshest and most exciting trends

34 LET'S DO LUNCH Anne Harris breaks bread with Lord David Puttnam

36

SWEET & SOUR It's time we broke our sugar addiction, writes Sarah Breen

38 BEAUTY BUFFET The latest launches, products and need-to-know trends

Stella McCartney's SS17 show, photographed by Jason Lloyd-Evans

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42 FOOD Start the year as you mean to go on – by eating more fish, urges Trish Deseine

�6

THIS GLOSSY LIFE The Irish women making it in US media

4 | January 2017 | THE GLOSS MAGAZINE

THE GLOSS welcomes letters from readers, emailed to letters@thegloss.ie.

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OUR JA NUA RY SALE

W E BELIEV E In doing things differently Year-round discounts aren’t us. Our prices are what they are. We’ll never inflate them so that we can reduce them later.

So to honour the tradition of ‘the January sale’, we prefer to give you something instead. Call it a helping hand to do something big or small.

It’s an approach that felt more like us.

Visit us online to explore our January sale, the Neptune way. And to explore our kitchen collections up-close, we’d love to see you at one of our stores.

neptune.com Dublin. Fermanagh. Kildare. Kilkenny. Limerick. Meath. Offaly. Wicklow.

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Y R A U N JA

Fluent in five COLOUR CARDS ... reaching PEAK KALE … MRS TRUMP’S inauguration outfit … CAPE CRUSADERS … and SILENT SLINKERS

W

e are all multilingual these days and are especially fluent in the paint colours. Farrow & Ball are officially to blame: we can all name at least three of their iconic colours, like Wimbourne White, Elephant’s Breath and Vert de Terre without hesitating. Be prepared to hear a lot about Dulux Denim Drift. The Pantone Colour Institute predicts the main colours as seen on the spring collection catwalks that will be reflected in our homes are; Kale Green, Flame Coral, Island Paradise Aqua, Niagara Denim Blue and Sunny Primrose Yellow, all inspired by nature. Turn to page 16 for more ...    Kale is on the list – we’ve been wearing the colour green since schooldays, but as a vegetable it’s so last year. This year heralds the wonders of cauliflower, black garlic, water melon water, and maca powder. For ski fanatics, the latter is good for building stamina at high altitudes – after all it comes from Peru. As for lifestyle trends – sage smudging to cleanse spaces of atmospheric heaviness is all the rage in LA; apparently the next stage for KonMarie addicts.    Feature walls are morphing into “Muse Walls” as seen at the big reveal of the late ALEXANDER MC QUEEN’s Mayfair apartment, currently on the market for a cool £8.5m. Renovated and designed by PAUL DAVIES London studio over a 16-month period, it features a fashion catwalk and images of ISABELLA BLOW and ANNABELLE NIELSON, as well as references to McQueen’s iconic design motifs.    Black and white photographs are very now – see The Radical Eye: Modernist Photographs from Sir ELTON JOHN at Tate Modern. They include work by IRVING PENN, MAN RAY and EDWARD STREICHEN. Should you prefer an old-fashioned portrait then get in line for one by Belfast-bred artist COLIN DAVIDSON RUA. His recently unveiled portrait of QUEEN ELIZABETH II – for which she sat at Buckingham Palace shortly after her 90th birthday – will be touring Ireland and UK this year.

Davidson has painted BRAD PITT, ANGELA MERKEL, JOHN MONTAGUE and SEAMUS HEANEY among other notables and some of his earlier work is for sale at Ross’s Auctions in Belfast.    It may well be a case of new year, new job for some. Bear in mind that staple interview questions (where do you see yourself in five years’ time?) are no longer worth prepping.

Google is famous for its difficult questions and lateral thinking exercises. Apparently, their aim is to work out if candidates are a good cultural fit, and how they deal with 6 | January 2017 | THE GLOSS MAGAZINE

TOP TRUMPS: Who will dress the First Lady for the January 17 inauguration?

challenges. Though one executive secretly admitted that his criterion is “would I like to travel on a transatlantic flight with the applicant”. At Topshop, one interviewee was asked what magical power she would like to have, while M&S had two online tests prior to a role play exercise – an extensive interview for a temporary position! That’s enough to make you run for the fridge door, though for many this month will be Drynuary. What will be drinking this year? Have we reached peak gin? Apparently “a glass of Pig” is the go, as in Pignoletto. The sparkling wine from the hills of Bologna is drier than prosecco …    Speculation abounds as to “who” MELANIA TRUMP will wear for the inauguration on January 17. Our money is on RALPH LAUREN whom Mrs Trump favours alongside international labels Gucci, Dior and Balmain. Of the fashion industry’s biggest names, MARC JACOBS and TOM FORD say they won’t be dressing Trump any time soon, despite fellow icon TOMMY HILFIGER’s comments that “any designer should be proud to dress her”. “I have no interest whatsoever in dressing Melania Trump,” Jacobs told WWD. “Personally, I’d rather put my energy into helping out those who will be hurt by Trump and his supporters.” American designer CYNTHIA ROWLEY has perhaps given the most sensible response to the question. “In the midst of this heated debate, the question actually seems somewhat irrelevant. She can simply purchase whatever she wants, so how can we control it?”    Have you signed up to Cefinn yet? That’s SAMANTHA CAMERON’s new fashion line, launching today. Much has been made of THERESA MAY’s photoshoot in The Sunday Times magazine sporting AMANDA WAKELEY leather trousers and cashmere polo with Burberry

trainers. May confessed that her husband is a dab hand at shopping for accessories for her. Wish we could all say the same – most Christmas presents from our other halves come with a gift receipt, and are still to be returned. When will they learn?    Yearning for a cape, inspired by PHOEBE PHILO’s new collection for Céline? Look out for Sands and Hall, the label started by Irish designer SARA HALL who divides her time between Spain and studios in London and Dublin.

Made from Harris and Donegal tweed, Hall’s vintage styles have a waiting list. We’re coveting the Bardot blue cape.    “Slinker” is the term now used to define those of us who avoid eye contact, fake non-recognition and generally avoid phone calls (“Sorry I was in a meeting” is the “dog ate my homework” excuse du jour). So desperate to get someone to talk to him in London, American JONATHAN DUNNE handed out 500 “Tube Chat?” badges on the Underground.

The idea bombed and is further proof that collectively we would prefer anything than to engage in conversation these days. No one does lunch anymore, while slow lanes are being created in some supermarkets for older citizens, apparently the only ones who want to gossip at checkouts.    Practise your dance moves this month. Tea dances are set to make a comeback in 2017 (there are tons of pretty tea dresses for SS17 too). The film La La Land starring RYAN GOSLING and EMMA STONE, a homage to Old Hollywood musicals, is a feelgood inspiration to get you shuffling, though for serious ballet connoisseurs the feature-length documentary Dancer on Ukranian SERGEI POLUNIN (released in March) is a must. Polunin has been compared to both NUREYEV and BARYSHNIKOV, while his offstage antics are equally mesmeric.    Thinking of getting married in 2017? “Mangagement rings” are officially a thing (already the norm in South American cultures), with one in ten females now proposing to their partners. As for the rings; women proposing usually choose thicker bands with discreet diamonds.    No author was more preoccupied by marriage than JANE AUSTEN. 2017 is the Year of Literary Heroes in the UK, a celebration which hinges around the 200th anniversary of Austen’s death. No doubt fans will have read Eligible, Curtis Sittenfeld’s update of Pride & Prejudice based in Cincinnati – (Lydia marries a transgender personal trainer, while Mr Darcy is a wasp-ish brain surgeon). We wonder if The Georgian Society will do anything to highlight the author, whose forte was as much to describe the era’s architecture as the trials and tribulations of singletons? ^

READER EVENT

THE WEDDING SALON AT THE MERRION ON MARCH 25 FROM 11AM-4PM

Calling all brides-to-be (and their mums, bridesmaids, friends) – THE GLOSS MAGAZINE’s Wedding Salon, at The Merrion, is essential for brides who want their weddings to be sophisticated, intimate and memorable. Event planner extraordinaire Tara Fay will host a day of bridal dressing, hair and make-up, table design, menus, flowers, gifts, photography, budgeting and planning. Every attendee will receive inspirational ideas and practical advice. Tickets are ¤75 (limited availability) and include coffee, luncheon and a gift bag as well as a Wedding Salon folder of useful information and contacts. Come on your own, with your mum, sister or friend – it’s also a lovely gift for someone you know who has recently become engaged.

RUNNING ORDER ❖ MORNING

COFFEE Introduction to planning your wedding ❖ HAIR

by Brown Sugar ❖ MAKE-UP

Romantic looks ❖ THE DRESS

with guest bridal designer Louise Kennedy ❖ MUSIC, FLOWERS,

STATIONERY, GIFTS ❖ LUNCHEON

WITH WINE Themed tables, floral displays, menus and more ❖ PHOTOGRAPHY with

guest photographer Barry McCall

FOR TICKETS (d75 TO INCLUDE COFFEE, LUNCHEON WITH WINES, GIFT BAG AND INFORMATION FOLDER) OR QUERIES, CALL THE GLOSS ON 01 275 5130.

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REFRIGERATION

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HUNTING

FAS HIO N NOW-HOW

TRANS-SEASON TRICKS

JASON LLOYD-EVANS

We’re in fashion purgatory: the sales are in full swing and AW16 trends are already looking dated. So what do we wear now? There’s plenty out there, thanks to high street retailers adopting a See Now, Buy Now model which means spring collections are appearing in stores from early this month.

Ahead of this season, Marks & Spencer conducted extensive customer focus groups to inform their fashion strategy for SS17. The idea of the “year-round wardrobe” which emerged was translated both into natural fabrics in heavier weights that work from now well into spring, including lightweight leather and excellent year-round cashmere, and layering, also a focus at Prada, right. As temperatures rise, simply shed one layer at a time. Other season-bridging tricks include the handy black body, a splash of yellow and anything in teal ...

THE GLOSS MAGAZINE | January 2017 | 13

GATHERING

PRADA

Channel the Trend 1

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JASON LLOYD-EVANS

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ALL-YE A R RO U N D

TRANS-SEASONAL DRESSING 1. 1920s-style chandelier, d365, at DEBENHAMS. 2. Lips & Boys lipstick in Bradley, TOM FORD, d35, at Brown Thomas. 3. Colour-block pleated top, d65, at MARKS & SPENCER. 4. Black Colarado light-weight body, d159; WWW.WOLFORDSHOP.COM. 5. Prep + Prime Essential Oils, MAC, d26.50, at Arnotts. 6. Mahogany candle, d14.99; WWW.H&M.COM. 7. Geometric print platform-sole shoes, d630; WWW.PRADA.COM. 8. Hair grips, d2.99, at BOOTS. 9. Extra Lip Tint, BOBBI BROWN, d32.50, at counters nationwide. 10. Teal Dante velvet chair, d1,749, at MARKS & SPENCER. For stockists, www.thegloss.ie

14 | January 2017 | THE GLOSS MAGAZINE

Cassina – 244 MyWorld Sofa

Cassina – 244 MyWorld Sofa

Cassina – 244 MyWorld Sofa

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GET THAT FEELING Putting fun back into fashion was top of the agenda for many houses: there was a carnival atmosphere at Stella McCartney’s (choreographed) dance-off during the finale of her SS17 show; a flash mob took over at Dolce & Gabbana’s Club Tropicana; positive messaging stamped all over T-shirts, coats and shirts. Feeling good is the recurring, upbeat, moodboosting message for the new season.

MIU MIU

OPENING The first standalone Urban Decay boutique in Ireland is due to open on Dublin’s Grafton Street this spring. Expect a run on Liquid Moondust for eyes, since glitter is a big trend for the season. In the meantime, the Blackmail Vice Lipstick Palette (€35, at House of Fraser) is not to be missed.

WHAT’S TRENDING IN

MARY KATRANTZOU

CÉLINE

Your must-read guide to all that’s happening in fashion, beauty, interiors and culture

SOMETHING FROM THE BAR?

SNEAKER RULES From wispy feathers and sparkly jewellike embellishment to retro-style classic minimalism and 1980s renditions, sneakers continue to dominate. Watch out for knitted uppers forming an ankle sock.

BUY THE BOOK After the unprecedented success of The Girl on the Train (which sold 15m copies worldwide), Paula Hawkins’ second novel is set to be the publishing event of 2017. Into The Water, another twisty psychological thriller, is out May 2.

18 | January 2017 | THE GLOSS MAGAZINE

GO FLUORO The future looks bright – neon-bright, in fact. A streak of surprising colour, whether on lips or eyes, lifts your look in an instant. Take your lead from SS17 catwalks such as Simone Rocha and Mary Katrantzou, where fluoro-bright matte lip colours stole the show: try MAC’s vivid Shadescent lipstick in Candy Yum Yum, or Tom Ford Lips & Boys in Cristiano, ¤35.

“Amaro – Italian for bitter – is an expanding category,” says Robert Caldwell, bar manager at Press Up entertainment Group. “Everyone has probably heard of Campari, Aperol and Vermouth but liqueurs that blur those lines such as Cynar, Punt E Mes, Amaro Montenegro, Fernet and Amer Picon will undoubtedly become more mainstream this year and will suit those trying to avoid sugary cocktails. Expect to see bars shortening their cocktail lists to eight to 15 great well-made drinks and changing their menus more frequently throughout the year too.”

1

LOWDOWN GIAMBATTISTA VALLI

SCENE STEALER

EMILIA WICKSTEAD

MICHAEL KORS

What’s that? The sound of Oscar buzz for Loving, starring Irish actress Ruth Negga and Joel Edgerton (below, in Vogue) as Mildred and Richard Loving, in the true story of an interracial couple in 1950s Virginia. Negga’s performance has already garnered her a Best Female Lead nomination at the Independent Spirit Awards. Loving is in cinemas from February 3 – bring tissues.

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FLORAL TRIBUTE

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Giambattista Valli’s new collection is an appreciation of floral motifs. Think tiny gardenias, camellias, peonies and lilies of the valley on crisp white backgrounds.

Watch blooms quickly start to blossom in stores come February.

THE COLOURS Global colour authority Pantone has given us a peek at the hues that will be everywhere this year (each year, Pantone sells the self-predicted shades to fabric mills, printers and other designers). It’s a simple model, and business has never been better.

A versatile blue called Niagara and happy, pretty Primrose Yellow are the colours (out of ten) destined to dominate cushions, paint, summer dresses and smart accessories.

4

BIENVENIDO A MIAMI Aer Lingus will be flying direct to Miami from September 2017 so expect the Florida hotspot to become the new winter sun destination. As hotels go, it doesn’t get more hip than the Faena, which opened in 2016 having been renovated under the watchful eye of Baz Luhrmann and his Oscar-winning wife, costume designer Catherine Martin. Go for the retro-glam pool and stay for the incredible art, including pieces by Damien Hirst and Jeff Koons; www.faena.com. Another reason to head to Miami? Art Basel, taking place in early December; www.artbasel.com

1. Indigo velvet cushion, 035, at MARKS & SPENCER. 2. & 3. Sea Life matte emulsion paint; Sea Star matte emulsion paint, both 032.99 for a quart, BENJAMIN MOORE at MRCB. 4. Enamel and brass side table, Broste Copenhagen, 0159; WWW.AMARA.COM.

ALEXA’S NEXT MOVE BOOK A TABLE Single dish restaurants continue to be A Thing. The latest in Sydney is Mr Topper’s Toast Bar where you choose your bread and then add a tasty topping, such as avocado, goats cheese, chilli flakes and mixed sesame seeds (aka The Daily). In London, Soho’s new HipChips specialises in gourmet chips ‘n’ dips. With seven varieties of potato to choose from, and a vast selection of savoury and sweet dips on offer, it will no doubt appeal to the posh post-pub crowd. How long ‘til we get one? www.hipchips.com

Her fashion label ALEXACHUNG, debuts in May. Expect everyday luxuries as well as denim, eveningwear, shoes and jewellery.

THE GLOSS MAGAZINE | January 2017 | 19

LOWDOWN

PRACTICAL FASHION

Professional trendwatcher, Linda Tol

O’Driscoll’s Armitage daybed covered in Stable of Ireland’s aubergine wool fabric.

For details, www.sodf.ie.

CHANEL

The ultimate high-end comeback? Fend off winter downpours with a traditional Scandi-style raincoat.

Seen on all the right people at the spring shows.

HOMEGROWN TASTEMAKERS Fresh from the collaborative project with Louis le Brocquy’s archive prints, Stable is making its first foray into the world of furniture with the help of award-winning furniture designer Simon O’Driscoll. Hot on their heels, watch out for the fruits of TextISLE, a collaborative project between designers and producers to develop new products which will be unveiled at Showcase 2017, January 22-25 at the RDS.

CHEAP CHIC Forget scrunchies and hairbands, this season we’re loving old-school hair elastics for your (messy) pony. If you consider the utilitarian loop of elastic elastic a relic from school gym classes gone by, think again. Double-job by stacking on your wrists like colourful charms.

Street style, Milan Fashion Week SS17.

FRINGE BENEFITS

FASHION X FUNCTION: This classic raincoat by Swedish label STUTTERHEIM is top of our shopping list, ¤225.

MUST-HAVE COAT Space feeling drab? Taking its name from the distinctive colour of Italian chicory, Radicchio No96 Estate Emulsion has a bright, modern feel.

Try painting your woodwork a gloss in the same shade for impact. This vibrant hue will instantly draw attention to your art. From Farrow & Ball.

We truly admire all the sleek side partings and expensivelooking ponytails swinging down the catwalks. But if you’re not 25, and you’ve coloured your hair for a long time, achieving the look isn’t a walk in the park. Instead, we’re inspired by Danish model Freja Beha Erichsen’s chunky fringe – more youthifying than getting your forehead injected.

LISTEN UP Irish comedian Maeve Higgins has started a new podcast, Maeve in America, featuring hilarious and moving immigration stories from the US. It couldn’t have come at a better time. Subscribe now; www.maeveinamerica.com.

FEMININE FASHION Former model Jenny Drea’s SS17 collection quietly surfaced last month and it left us longing for more. Hues of nude, blush and terracotta, as in this neoprene dress, were used throughout. Available soon at the Design Centre, Powerscourt Townhouse, Dublin 2.

TAKE THE BISCUIT Lismore Food Company’s gourmet biscuits, in flavours like Caraway and Irish Seaweed and Hazelnut, Cinnamon and Raisin, are our new indulgence. For stockists, see www.thelismorefoodcompany.com.

20 | January 2017 | THE GLOSS MAGAZINE

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LOWDOWN

WARPAINT As we long to see blue skies again, it’s no wonder that blue is a recurring shade for spring, with denim, lapis and cornflower shades for lashes, liner or nails. At Victoria Beckham, blunt streaks of azure across eyelids on bare faces conjured the idea of “urban warriors”.

See Marion Cotillard’s incredible makeup in last year’s Macbeth for inspiration.

EARN YOUR STRIPES

ONE NIGHT IN HEAVEN Blue stripe cotton shirt, ¤55, at MARKS & SPENCER.

A Gordon Gekko-style pinstripe is spring’s staple shirt. From blow-your-budget versions with an asymmetric twist, to good highstreet renditions, they always look smart. If you are not willing to invest, steal your boyfriend’s.

NEW KIDS ON THE BLOCK Frustrated with the selection of kids clothes in Ireland, ex-childrenswear buyer Caroline Dunne started to purchase abroad for her little ones. Fast forward to the launch of her new company, Little Larks. Catering for girls (and boys soon) from newborn to eight years old, expect ditsy print blouses, smocked dresses and knits by Irish designer Laura Chambers. www.little-larks.myshopify.com.

Recently named Best Hotel in the World by Condé Nast Traveler magazine, the secret is out – Ballyfin is the jewel in Ireland’s country house crown. The elegant neoclassical mansion, a former Patrician Brothers’ school, sits behind closed gates on 600 acres in Portlaoise and was painstakingly restored over eight years before opening its doors in 2011. Checking in is a lesson in hospitality – after being personally greeted outside by staff who whisk the car away, guests are ushered inside past a roaring fire.

The rooms are exquisite, laden with Irish art and antiques from around the world, reminiscent of how they would have looked when the lively Coote family lived there in the 1820s and entertained 200 guests at a time. Now with just 20 bedrooms and a maximum capacity of 39, the hotel is opulent but cosy, the food, delicious and plentiful.

It goes without saying that the service is impeccable, but what sets Ballyfin apart is its staff, many of them local or former pupils. So unpretentious and charming, your wish is their command. It’s the perfect combination.

From V560 per room per night; www.ballyfin.com

INSTA-WORTHY

Rose Oona wool rug, from ¤270; blush Circus pouf, ¤460, both WWW.NORMANNCOPENHAGEN.COM.

We’ve all heard the cerulean speech in The Devil Wears Prada: the speed of fashion’s runway-to-rack process (big brands “copy” predicted runway hits and, within a couple of months, near-perfect “inspired by” designs are in store). Now, the interior world is catching up. No sooner is a colour or accessory a major hit on Instagram (the interior-lovers bible) than the trend is available to shop. A few months back, London restaurant Sketch’s interior fit-out was the Insta-hit, now you can get a bit candyfloss cool with this retro-detail blush Circus velvet pouf by Norman Copenhagen.

22 | January 2017 | THE GLOSS MAGAZINE

TIME FOR TEA For one week only, pastry chef Mourad Khiat will be bringing the famous fashion-inspired afternoon tea, Prêt-à-Portea, from The Berkeley to The Merrion. Featuring pastries inspired by designers including Louise Kennedy, Simone Rocha (above), and Jason Wu, it’s a glossy way to banish the January blues. January 28-February 5; ¤45 per person.

METALLICS SHINE Fashion month may be over, but one word came from the streets: metal is hot. Be daring.

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BY APPOINTMENT ONLY

Forget trying to achieve a tiny waist or a thigh gap, that’s so last year. Training trends are focused now on building a powerful body, with a mental strength to match ...

If you’ve ventured inside a gym recently (it’s January, you’re not alone) you will probably have noticed some subtle changes in the weights area. Whereas not too long ago this space would have been wall-to-wall bulked-up men grunting at each other, now it’s just as likely to be filled with women of all ages looking taught and toned. And yes, some of them will probably be grunting, because they’re #girlswholift (search the hashtag on Instagram for a taster) – and they lift big.

Ornagh Lee (right) is one such woman for whom strength training has changed her life. Hailing from an athletic background, her fitness slipped during adulthood but discovering Crossfit, a cult-like strength and conditioning programme, rekindled a deep-seated love of training competitively. The former make-up artist orchestrated a huge career pivot and she’s now a Crossfit and weightlifting coach as well as teaching female strength and f lexibility in her own studio.

“It didn’t take me long to become hooked on Crossfit,” Lee says. “As I began to grow stronger I wanted to spend any free time I had in the gym. It was my main priority. I became a lot more confident and I felt accomplished and proud of what I was achieving. For me, strength training is about discovering and learning what your body is actually capable of. Of course, there are bad days when things that should feel easy feel hard and it can be quite demotivating and draining.

Black contrast-collar caddy cape, ROKSANDA, ¤1,898; www. matches fashion.com

FEMME-FATALE SHADES Go large! Oversized frames, bags, jewellery all add mystery and make you appear strong, even on off-days.

26 | January 2017 | THE GLOSS MAGAZINE

BE INVINCIBLE Add a dash of superhero styling: the cape is back for SS17.

THE SPIKY HEEL There’s something confidenceBlack boosting about pointed-toe wearing a pair boots, ¤39.95; at ZARA of sky-scraping, spike-heeled, pointy-toe shoes.

Love the sporty stripe on the trouser leg.

EXAGGERATED SHOULDERS What says power dressing more than an oversized paddedshoulder silhouette?

Think shoulders reminiscent of your favourite 1980s girl band.

But bigger.

JIL SANDER

STRONG AT WORK ... SEND STRONG SIGNALS WITH YOUR WORK WARDROBE

ZIP AND GO The jumpsuit has superceded the skirt as the power woman’s outfit of choice. Note: you look thinner, taller and more elegant in black.

But you learn to understand and read your body and mind better with time. I started to feel more comfortable in my own skin and my quality of life improved dramatically.”

Once of the most common misconceptions women have about strength training is that, rather than helping them create a strong, lean silhouette, it will result in excess bulk. “This makes me laugh,” says Lee. “Strength training will make you stronger and, along with a healthy diet, will allow you to start seeing some muscle definition. Actually increasing in size requires a serious amount of effort which will vary depending on the individual. So your personal goals will determine your outcome.”

Lee herself has seen a rise in the number of women swapping the treadmill for barbells and her clients range in age from 18 to 50+. “Women of all ages are starting to see the benefits of strength training and want to take charge of their health and fitness no matter what age. They are starting to realise they too can become strong and find it liberating.”

In the same way as we train our bodies to be strong, our mental muscle can be developed to make us better able to cope with everyday – and extraordinary – stressors. Emotional resilience is the mental muscle that makes you tough enough to bounce back and carry on. “Resilience is the ability to keep moving forward despite being knocked back time and time again,” says psychologist Owen Fitzpatrick, whose recent TedxTalk focused on strengthening the positive inner voice, one aspect of learning emotional resilience. “Perseverance and Determination are words I use interchangeably with the concept and, although not exactly the same, they both convey the attitude of being able to bounce back when you find yourself dealing with a setback, failure or rejection.

Anyone can learn to become more resilient as they change their philosophy around adversity.”

In the same way we engage in strength training for our bodies, there are exercises we can do to build emotional resilience, according to Fitzpatrick. “CBT [Cognitive Behavioural Therapy], NLP [Neuro-Linguistic Programming] and Mindfulness are all great approaches to

help us take charge of our own minds. By training ourselves in these disciplines, we build useful beliefs and take control of how we think. The key is to learn to reinterpret what failure means and what rejection means, to build a new philosophy about when things go wrong. We need to train ourselves to focus on the future and for adversity to provoke us to learn more about how we can succeed the next time.”

How to start training that mental muscle? “Write down one of your goals and the potential setbacks you may have to face as you strive for this goal. Decide how you need to use that setback and learn from it in order for you to achieve the goal. Mentally rehearse yourself doing this over and over again.

“Another exercise would be to notice the kinds of negative thoughts you are having when you face adversity. Challenge these thoughts by questioning their accuracy, their evidence or their reasoning.

“Learn to stop being bullied by your negative voice and start standing up for yourself in your own head. The inner bully will still pipe up. Trying to quieten it doesn’t always work, but what does is challenging what that voice is saying and speaking strongly to yourself.” This, maintains Fitzpatrick, can become a way of life, but you must work at it.

“Practise on a regular basis, challenging your own worries, stresses, fears or negative beliefs. Question yourself … and reassure yourself.”

Is this training you should do alone or can you benefit from a group session, a “personal trainer” or even an app?

“It really is like physical training, it comes down to what you’re willing to do. Surrounding yourself with others who think in a useful way as you learn to change how you think is great. Getting a personal coach to work with you can be effective. If you have the discipline, using an app can work if that app trains you to take control of your thoughts. It really comes down to what you are prepared to do. The more disciplined you are, the better the results you will get.

Like anything in life …” ^ www.instagram.com/ornagh_ morechalk. www.owenfitzpatrick.com.

White showerproof jacket, HEROINE SPORT, c270; print sleeveless shower-proof jacket, ALALA, c213; metallic gym bag, BALSA 201, c178.

CAROLINA HERRERA

SAINT LAURENT

PHOTOGRAPH BY ARDOUR

HEALTH

THE POWER LIP For SS17, the red lip is bolder, brighter and more full-strength than ever. Make it matte. TRY: MAC Viva Glam lipstick: all d20; supports those living with HIV.

GOOD FOUNDATIONS Marks & Spencer’s activewear range is built on the technology used in its lingerie collection, with fabrics to “hold and hug” and four-way stretch for ease of movement.

POWER UP YOUR KIT Looking and feeling provides a motivating boost. TRY: Technical activewear at Skulpt, Blackrock Shopping Centre, Co Dublin.

THE GLOSS MAGAZINE | January 2017 | 27

MOODBOARD 1

“CLUTTER AND MESS SHOW US THAT LIFE IS BEING LIVED.”

I’m messing around in bed as much as possible.

Benefits of great sex include rude health and fabulous bedhead hair!

ANNE LAMOTT

2

3 4

“I FIGURE IF I’M GOING TO BE A MESS, I MIGHT AS WELL BE A HOT MESS, RIGHT?”

THI S MON T H T H E M O O D IS:

MESSY

MINDY KALING

SUSAN ZELOUF gets down and dirty I’m hearing voices: encouraging whispers, gentle reminders, cajoling entreaties, firm admonitions, shrill remonstrations escalating to unhinged screams – my copy of Marie Kondo’s bible of tidiness taunts me, even if I can’t seem to echolocate it amidst the f loor fauna of things that no longer spark joy or fit me. It’s January and the neatest aspect of my life is my To Do list, a perfectly punctuated, grammatically correct set of columns, soldiers awaiting word from their general to begin the assault on the havoc wrought by 2016. And what a messy year it was! Who’d blame us for wanting to stay in bed drinking boozy hot chocolate, giving our lists the month off?

Life is a cabaret, my friend, but somebody’s got to clean up the morning-after mess. The pressure to reinvent ourselves ramps up postNew Year’s Eve hooley, as we get hit by the next wave of goopy gurus admonishing us to revamp our bodies, decant our closets, reframe our hopes and realise our dreams. I have, instead, decided to dig my scuffed heels into “the mud pit of my own making”, described by artist Sean Scully in his 2014 Hugh Lane Gallery talk as practically a creative state, a necessary precursor to the impulse to rescue ourselves from “the hole that we have to climb out of ... wrecking balls swinging at ourselves”. Scully gives legs to the archetype of the self-destructive, wildly talented artist – stumbling, wobbling, swaying, “madness tempered by discipline”, at once drowning and waving.

In Katie Roiphe’s best-selling book of essays In Praise of Messy Lives (languishing on my list of books to read since 2012), she compares “the allure and embarrassment and comedy of the messy life” to the “tameness of contemporary sins”, tempered by our Fitbit enforcers, designed to make us “more sensible, much healthier and more prolific.”

If we are not strengthening our cores, detoxing our bodies/beliefs/ larders and unfriending our inner weaklings, then we must be going to 28 | January 2017 | THE GLOSS MAGAZINE

hell in our Hermès handbags. Yet, according to Roiphe, there’s a case to be made for being a hot mess: “Is there some adventure out there that we are not having, some vividness, some wild pleasure that we are not experiencing in our responsible, productive days?”

A piece by Nicole Swengley in the Financial Times How to Spend It magazine forecasts 2017 as the year of the cocktail cabinet, a sophisticated affair replete with stylish glassware, witty swizzle sticks and a dazzling array of drink, marking a return to entertaining at home. When I was growing up in suburban Long Island, my parents had a mid-century modern bar, a sprawl of walnut, polished chrome and black leather, my father acting as bartender wielding a shaker, neighbours seated on swivel bar stools clutching highballs. This was called Book Club. I can’t remember seeing any books, but Lila Goldstein was a memorably glamorous attendee, mincing up our circular drive on vertiginous heels, a waft of Estée Lauder’s signature Youth Dew perfume announcing her arrival. Her marriage to Stan struck me as thrillingly messy, its inevitably scandalous breakdown a tragedy for the three children I’d babysat for since I was eleven (which would probably be illegal today), yet I fiercely claimed Goldstein as role model, trying on her frosted lipstick and squeezing my chubby self into her glittery tube tops after putting the kids to bed.

Our neighbourhood was a hotbed of messy affairs, wheeler-dealers engaged in corrupt local politics (my father), and even a crime of passion in which the spurned mistress ended up doing time after shooting her lover, my mother visiting her in jail in solidarity. Perhaps that cocktail cabinet ought to have a lock, in case the party gets a bit ... messy. In the meantime, I fully intend to unearth my copy of Marie Kondo’s The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up and begin decluttering.

Next month. ^ @SusanZelouf

THIS MONTH’S MOODBOARD I’M KNITTING my own chunky cableknit throw, like this one from www. campkitschyknits. com. (1) Visit www. thisisknit.ie for classes, patterns and wool.

I’M FORMULATING a theory re: the relativity of genius to mess. Einstein’s desk on the day of his death in 1955, snapped by LIFE photographer Ralph Morse. (2) I’M UNRAVELLING in an organic cotton jacket by A New Cross, from www. springsioux.com.

(3) Order online or visit their sexy Paris shop in le Marais.

I’M HIBERNATING in a custom Big Loop merino wool sweater, made to order by blogger Anette at www.lebenslustiger. com. (4)

Modern a nd H and Painte d Be sp o k e K i t ch e n s

D e s ig ns I ns p ir e d B y Yo u County W icklow +353( 0) 404 64548 www.noeldempsey.com

FASHION

FASHION’S

CREATURES OF COMFORT

NEW IDEAS

Camel sweater, c19.99, at H&M.

THE MICRO BAG Just about enough room for your lipstick, credit card and key(s).

Street style at Milan Fashion Week SS17.

Hummingbird Lockett minaudiere, JIMMY CHOO c3,350, at Brown Thomas.

VALENTINO

SAINT LAURENT

The cropped-leg pantsuit is really all about the trouser/ shoe combo. Don’t be afraid to take a short cut - as long as you do it in a (smallish) heel.

Camel skirt, c69, at COS.

VALENTINO

CROPPEDLEG SUITS

SIMONE ROCHA

1 The Modern Trench 2 The Statement Sleeve 3 The Stripe Top 4 The Fuchsia Dress 5 The Cropped-Leg Suit 6 The Smart Slogan T-shirt 7 The Summer Leather Skirt 8 The Frame Bag 9 The Kitten Heel 10 The Pearl Earring

Earthy hues of terracotta, taupe, khaki and olive are what the fashion industry’s premier crew are going to be wearing come March. Lucky for us, this most neutral of neutral palettes is easy to wear, eternally flattering and always looks chic.

Fashionable yet timeless and functional – it’s the perfect trend to buy into.

LOEWE

BAG IT

EARTH TONES

STELLA MC CARTNEY

STELLA MC CARTNEY

The cutting-edge: what to expect this spring, according to AISLINN COFFEY

LOGOMANIA

Mrs Prada gave a nod to the East with Asian-style prints and detailing. The best silks to swoon over?

Gilda Ambrosio (pictured) and Giorgia Tordini’s cult label Attico. For an affordable alternative, try Siam Su in the George’s Street Arcade, Dublin 2.

This shoe marched down so many catwalks that it is sure to be the shape of the season.

Black kittenheel shoes, ¤29.95; at ZARA

30 | January 2017 | THE GLOSS MAGAZINE

CÉLINE

KITTEN HEELS VETEMENTS

EASTERN PROMISE

TOPSHOP

Logos are big business, as are slogan T-shirts and sweaters.

Stella McCartney’s Girls Thanks T-shirt already has the fash pack forming a queue.

Meringue pearl earring, ¤495; WWW.NATASHA SHERLING.IE.

PEARL EARRINGS It’s time to graduate into grown-up territory –we’re craving these pearly drops.

Fuchsia dress, Autograph, ¤88, at MARKS & SPENCER.

FUCHSIA Meet the season’s new shade: hot fuchsia.

This colour made a big impact on the spring/ summer 2017 catwalks.

FASHION

Lightweight, butter-soft leather, no longer reserved for winter, is a spring wardrobe classic. No getting hot under the collar with these paper-thin tan toppers spotted on creative consultant Ada Kokosar and glossy favourite Miroslava Duma at Paris Fashion Week, SS17.

BOX-SET FASHION

Black Elegant suede frame bag, Mansur Gavriel,¤721; WWW.ENVOY OF BELFAST.COM.

ALTUZARRA

Red and blue stripe top, PROENZA SCHOELER, ¤430; www.neta-porter.com.

DVF Von Furstenberg’s new chief creative officer Jonathan Saunders brings with him a refined design aesthetic.

IN THE TRENCHES

DION LEE

Pink stripe sweater, ¤79; & OTHER STORIES.

LOUIS VUITTON

If you haven’t already binge-watched The Crown, the Netflix drama about Queen Elizabeth II, it featured endlessly beautiful clothes and accessories. Now QEIIstyle snap-fastening frame bags are back for 2017 - Céline’s catwalk version is a thing of beauty while Mansur Gavriel’s Elegant bag also fits the bill.

STRIPE OUT The fashion brigade are all out for eye-catching stripes. Make these your summer wardrobe staples.

Easy, fluid, non-cling, midi-length, draped jersey dresses in a knockedback muted palette. Meet the cool girl’s answer to easy dressing.

MIU MIU

Green leather skirt, ¤595, at LK BENNETT.

FLUID ELEGANCE

LOUIS VUITTON

CÉLINE

URBAN SUMMER LEATHER

A look that took centre stage at Fashion Week, the pared-back trench coat – understated and certain to elevate your workwear wardrobe.

Pale blue wool coat spotted at Paris Fashion Week, SS17.

RETRO COATS This spring, we’re fending off the cold bite in retro-style coats – think Jackie Brown meets Jackie O. These feminine, well-cut, ladylike double-breasted overcoats will be in array of pastel colours with button details to add a vintage feel.

Caramel cotton trench coat, ¤299, at HOBBS

MOVING HOUSE

CHRISTIAN DIOR Maria Grazia Chiuri’s debut show for Christian Dior was one of the hottest tickets at Paris Fashion Week.

LANVIN French designer Bouchra Jarrar showed her first collection for Lanvin. The reaction? Somewhat underwhelming.

SAINT LAURENT Anthony Vaccarello’s version of the new Saint Laurent girl is “certainly not bourgeois or classic”.

THE GLOSS MAGAZINE | January 2017 | 31

BOOKS

LOVE CONQUERS ALL Novelist and playwright Molly Keane shared her life at Belleville in Ardmore, Co Waterford with many interesting characters, notably her beloved husband Bobbie, writes their daughter SALLY PHIPPS

W

When she was involved in the effervescence of life, Molly Keane seemed to have assimilated the tragedy of her husband’s untimely death. She appeared to be reconciled and healed. In fact, it was an unstable acceptance which she frequently lost and despaired of.

Her references to her dilemma in her notebooks have the bleakness of acute grief about them, even years after the event. In 1984, when she was 80, she wrote, ‘To me, it was more than death . . . a terrible value of the past was born for me.’

Her time with Bobbie at Belleville was her Garden of Eden, and the loss, sudden as a knife blow, became the shaping wound of her life. Of course her marriage was a Garden of Eden with shadows which afterwards she was reluctant to acknowledge. Belleville had the atmosphere of a safe house. It faced south, and the sun shone into the rooms through tall windows. It was built in 1820 on a gentle hill, protected by an L-shaped screen of woods behind which the Monastery of Mount Melleray stood. It was modest and countrified, not a grand mansion, but everything about the fabric of the house had the comforting elegance and robustness – “the dignity with so little heaviness” – of late-Georgian architecture.

This quality was apparent in numerous ways, in the small arched chamber linking the chain of reception rooms, in the thin glazing bars of the windows and the slightly uneven rocklike front steps on which people often sat.

Although Woodrooffe had been her real home, and remained so, the time came to progress. The sense of place running through her work – almost its backbone – was rooted in her own nature. Belleville, with its generous, sunlit proportions, was the home she dreamed of both before she went there and after she lost it. Later, as children in other houses, we were made aware of objects coming from there which had a fragrance like petals fallen from a midsummer f lower.

Her grand coffee ice cream laced with cognac and scattered with roasted almonds was always served in a cut-glass bowl. She said, “I decided to marry Bobbie when I caught sight of that dish with a rich trif le in it the first time I dined at Belleville.” Her domesticity was so ingrained that there is a shred of truth in this joke.

He was six years younger than her, she seduced him in a sense, and in so doing she herself fell entirely in love with him. He was gentle and humorous, tall, with a dark skin that loved the sun, and long green eyes. He was sympathetic, easy to confide in, and apparently very relaxed, except for one thing. He suffered from a stammer. This seems to have been an aff liction besetting children of his era. King George VI stammered, as did Elizabeth Bowen. There was a theory that it was caused

32 | January 2017 | THE GLOSS MAGAZINE

Clockwise from left: Keane gardening at Belleville.

In a polyphoto with her daughters Virginia and Sally. Keane and Bobbie on their wedding day.

The jacket of the Abacus edition of Good Behaviour.

Virginia and Sally playing in the garden.

by forcing left-handed children to use their right hand. Molly, who believed that love solved everything, claimed she had cured Bobbie. In fact his stammer did improve after they met.

They were married in October 1939. Their wedding picture shows them on a London street, smiling, their fingers interlaced. Molly is wearing a fur coat with a spray of orchids pinned to the lapel. Her play Spring Meeting had been produced to great acclaim the year before; it was Molly’s dowry. This triumph – and being mentioned in the same breath as Noël Coward in James Agate’s review in the Sunday Times – was much more than financial in a peculiar way: the success had released her to marry Bobbie. She came as the giver, not the taker, and that was very significant to her. She could plot and contrive and take when she felt she had to in lean times, but this was very hard for her, and turned her into a much tougher person than she wanted to be, or indeed was, and was sometimes carried to

lengths of perversity. It drove her into the protective shell of sharpness which benefited her literary style, but was often destructive in her personal life. She was on the crest of a wave, artistically and emotionally, when she got married.

Success, which came and went from her several times during her career, seemed to make her innocent and trustful, and give her a sense of herself in which the dark notes and guilt were quiescent. She lost the feeling of stealing Bobbie away. Because she was a star, she could see that being one was fairly unimportant. When her light waned, the old craving returned.

BOOKS Bobbie was a good husband for an artist. He grew up in the hunting world, but he was equally at home with actors and writers. He was able to heal Molly’s labyrinthine tendency to compartmentalise her existence because he was proud of her writing, and comprehended the pain of the creative process. His intuitive kindness supported and strengthened her when she was vertiginously stretched between living her life and writing about it.

“Writing takes something out of my comfort and makes my resistance very thin.” Stepping off the high wire of a morning’s work put her in a strange exhausted state.

Bobbie understood what she went through. She describes him literally rescuing her from this one afternoon at the sea: “I felt stupendously disinclined for effort spent and in dread of further expense. Bobbie was so sweet. My God, how sweet he is. He came back in the boat to get me and made me play like a determined child.”

In 1939, Spring Meeting transferred to Broadway. It brought Bobbie and Molly to America on honeymoon.

Writers longed for recognition in America, and the generous remuneration this brought in. Molly, with her talent for dialogue, hoped to go on to write for films.

Later (possibly as a result of this production of Spring Meeting) she was asked to do a movie script of Enid Bagnold’s National Velvet but it was turned down by the studio. Until Good Behaviour she really never succeeded professionally in America. Social life was a different matter. She ref lected the attitude of her generation towards America. They looked on it as a place full of hope. It was before the hard sell took over and the country still had an innocent image. Hers was a very Manhattan vision, vibrating with wisecracks, dance tunes and ice rattling in Tiffany cocktail shakers. Hers was an F Scott Fitzgerald America of the rich “committed to hedonism” in a casual, stylish way that had echoes in her own world.

After she returned to the Blackwater Valley she could still hear the language of New York spoken by her friend Adele Cavendish and her mother, Mrs Astaire. She had a special affection for her American friends, and the ones to whom she was closest were Adele, and later on Phyllis Mitchell. Molly and Bobbie both loved Adele, known to everyone as Dellie. Her small face – resembling that of “a delicately beautiful monkey” – has been painted by Kokoschka. When they met her, she had just become the châtelaine of Lismore Castle, and she was bringing panache and irreverence to the job and the county. She retired from the stage after she married Lord Charles Cavendish in 1938. Before that, she had always danced and sung, even as a child. She and her brother, Fred, had performed in vaudeville, chaperoned by their serene disciplinarian mother. They grew up to become stars of Broadway musicals, which transferred to London.

Fred Astaire, with his casual grace masking a faultless technique, later became the sublime master of all film dancers. He has said that, in the theatre, Dellie had been better than him, and he had always followed her.

She and Molly were a similar bird-like shape, and Dellie often gave Molly her clothes, including a suit made by Chanel, which demonstrated the cut and structure for which she was renowned. It had a military look, softened and gently f lared with silver buttons and a trim of red, green and blue braids. Molly kept it for years, and wore it at Virginia’s [her daughter's] christening, with its matching braided cap and eye veil, which only came out on rare occasions. Dellie and Molly were alike in temperament as well as physique, both originals, quick-witted, prone to changes of mood, and in a dark

fit, to saying the unforgivable. They would relieve their feelings with a shower of foul language. Dellie did this on purpose to “épater les bourgeois” especially during a lull at her dining table. Molly applauded Dellie’s daring.

She was daring herself, but she was imbued with her society’s rules. Adele neither knew nor cared about the rules. She came from another world, married into the highest echelons of the British aristocracy and regarded Anglo-Ireland as quite pretentious and ripe for send-up.

Molly records an incident when Dellie, surrounded by rather straitlaced company, was inspired to embark on one of her sophisticated fantasies. “I lay there in my bed with nothing to do, and thought I’d like to meet a very chic middle-aged man – the type of Ribbentrop – and he should have a really happy home life, only I’d give him just that extra thing he couldn’t expect from his wife after 25 years. He’d have a garçonnière in Paris, and we would travel there separately, and meet . . . and we would have lots of fucks and I’d like him to have hair going grey, and all the money in the world, and he would have to – you know – take the little woman round to Cartier’s.’

On another occasion, she remarked to astonished hunting ladies: “I’ve seen such cute-looking tweed pinafores. Let’s all get one run up, and then we must go nutting. We’ll go through the woods in our pinafores, and we will just be girls looking for things.” There is an oblique sadness apparent in this mocking. Dellie suffered from the loss of practising her art. Sometimes she felt depressed and trapped in her high, beautiful house

Molly, with her talent for DIALOGUE, hoped to write for films. Until Good Behaviour, she never really succeeded in AMERICA. above the river, and longed to be back in the theatre.

Molly understood this, she was intoxicated by her recent discovery of it. Paradoxically, Dellie was also in love with Lismore Castle. It is a romantic citadel, perched on a cliff. If you approach it from the east, or the north, you feel you might be dreaming, it is such an unexpected sight in the Irish landscape, yet it is subconsciously familiar because it is the quintessential fairytale castle.

Much changed and added to over the years, its present form was shaped by the bachelor duke, son of Georgiana and a cousin of Lady Caroline Lamb, another original whom he brought to his home in 1812 to recover from her love affair with Byron. This was evidently before his improvements, because she disputed with him about the relative dampness of the place and, one evening, to prove her point, she opened the door to a frog. As it hopped slowly inside, she followed behind with a candelabra, saying, ‘Pray walk in, sir. I have no doubt you are the lawful possessor, and my cousin only an interloper.'

A sheltered courtyard lies beyond the ancient gatehouse, where for a short time in winter the softness of a huge mimosa tree brings the South of France to this universe of limestone walls. The interior was Gothicised

by Pugin, and the rooms high above the river and the trees give one a disembodied, f loating sensation. Adele’s husband devised an ironic standard which used to f ly from the highest tower, depicting the snake, banished for ever from Ireland by St Patrick, twisting and golden

on an emerald-green background. The series of demesne walls, based on what were once fortifications, create a secret universe removed from its surroundings. In his brilliant book The Village of Longing, George O’Brien describes growing up in Lismore, architecturally dominated by this exotic building, with people endlessly speculating about what went on there, and wondering if Fred Astaire might be in residence.

In some ways, Dellie’s story was the classic one of the dancer (the 1920s equivalent of a fairy princess) and the grandee. Her husband Charlie was very adorable, sensitive, elegant and funny, but he was tragically aff licted by alcoholism. Among others, he is rumoured to be the model for Sebastian Flyte in Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited. Molly and Bobbie said that during Prohibition he carried a hollow walking cane which he kept topped up with iced champagne, and they believed that it was the prohibition which drove him over the edge into drunkenness.

Molly’s intense response to houses and rooms and objects in rooms is evident in her writing, and, of all the rooms which she herself created, the drawing-room at Belleville was undoubtedly her favourite. It was decorated in peaceful shades of pale grey, rust and dark blue. The damasked stuffs were plain except for one chintz printed in an inky Chinese cypher. Although there were elegant, robust pieces of 18th-century furniture, the room had a 1930s f lavour, like her clothes. It was sort of glamorous, with plump cushions and a cocktail shaker in the corner.

Molly bit the stems of f lowers and fixed them in huge bouquets which fanned against the gable walls. In the evening, the smell of these seasonal blooms poured into the air, the astringent scent of daffodils, azaleas, “like a fog of honey and pepper’” the sweetness of lilac and the sharpened aromatic smell of autumn plants, particularly the phlox with its subtle powdery scent. She swore when the f lowers swivelled, stripped off the leaves and wildly wielded her secateurs. When she was finished, she would smoke a cigarette gazing anxiously across at her creation.

She was sometimes pleased, but often dissatisfied.

Flowers were a source of cut-throat competition. Molly said “we vied with each other in the forcing of bulbs”.

The châtelaines were frequently scornful about one another’s endeavours. She, who was sharp herself when it came to stiff gladioli, unscented “new” roses, and too much mauve, had a deep passion for f lowers. They released a kind of pure love in her – connected with place and her feeling for places. Wanda, a gleaming purple primrose which blossoms in February, was an icon to her. Whenever she moved home, she would cultivate a little piece of ground for it at once. It is emblematic of her spirit, being vivid, delicate and tough. Among her fictional characters, her grand and bossy mothers often experience their few self-forgetful moments when contemplating their beds of rare irises or nerine lilies. In Time After Time Jasper Swift is “bent, like a reed in a cold breeze’” and his negativity is only revoked when he is in his garden, or carrying in the f lowers he has managed to rescue from its engulfing wilderness. Most gardeners share in this vein of secret passion, but it seems to take a particular extreme form among the Anglo-Irish ones, as though making the land which does not quite accept them bloom affords them a sense of communion they long for, and are usually deprived of. ^ By Sally Phipps.

Extracted from MOLLY KEANE: A Life, published by Virago, an imprint of the Little, Brown Book Group.

THE GLOSS MAGAZINE | January 2017 | 33

INTERVIEW

LET’S DO LUNCH

by Anne Harris

L

34 | January 2017 | THE GLOSS MAGAZINE

ILLUSTRATION BY LAUREN O’NEILL

Over coffee and cream cakes in Skibbereen, Lord Puttnam reveals a surprising new project and waxes emphatic on Brexit

ord Puttnam’s father, Leonard, has an extraordinary place in the annals. A photojournalist, he covered the hell that was Dunkirk, a bloody defeat and massive evacuation. But Churchill decided differently: he sent Puttnam’s father and another photographer straight back to Dunkirk to change the narrative. Literally. They set up pictures of heroic soldiers and brave little fishing boats. The myth of Dunkirk was born, the spirit of a nation saved and the course of the war changed. This double Dunkirk DNA is clear in his son: the ability to see the bigger picture, to tell story by lens and light, and above all the ability to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.

David Puttnam’s insistence on finding the silver lining is striking. Like the way that discovering Cisco technology after a bad car crash in Italy in 2011 got him thinking,“Maybe I can do that [digital] for Ireland.” Or the way his unhappy period as head of Columbia Pictures led to his living in Skibbereen. I am certain its kaffeeklatsch culture, where farmers and film stars gather for coffee and gossip and cakes exploding with cream, was part of the attraction.

aired recently on RTÉ, and he is happy. But I know he has watched A celebrated in horror the unfolding of Brexit. film and I steel myself for the serious stuff documentary which will dominate discourse in producer, David Puttnam 2017. Which just proves how easy was named it is to forget that David Puttnam Ireland’s Digital doesn’t do predictable. Ever.

Champion in 2012. He lives in Surprise number one: Puttnam is West Cork with making a movie – his first in nearly his wife of 56 20 years. “It’s the story of the Arctic years, Patsy.

30, who were jailed by Putin. The script is three-quarters there and I’m looking for a Jennifer Lawrence or Emma Stone.” Although he downplays it – “I prefer to say I’m causing a movie to be made” – he is clearly excited. This film gets right to his essence. “I believe young people today should be activists.” He describes himself is an “issuist” and agrees many of his films are too.

Surprise number two unfolds in action: he reaches into his pocket and pulls out a card. “This is for you. It might be worth a few bob in Sotheby’s sometime. It’s my last one.”

The card proclaims him UK Trade and Culture envoy to Vietnam, Cambodia, Burma and Laos and he is still jetlagged from an intense seven-week trip there. He has resigned. “I spent the last five years arguing for the rule of law, how you build an independent state on an independent judiciary – something which my own government were not prepared to preserve. The thing that did it was the newspaper headline “Traitors” over the High Court judges who ruled that Parliament would decide on Brexit.” The card gesture was dramatic, but when he tells me his father “always slipped a ten-bob note into my pocket – even when I was 30”, I’m touched by tradition.

And the silver lining? “I taught film there.” He reaches for more pocket treasure – pictures which run the gamut of enraptured students in small classes to enormous floodlit gatherings. His satisfaction is apparent. “You are so lucky,” I remark.

“That’s exactly what Patsy said to me at four o’clock this morning.” Four o’clock in the morning chats after all these years? What is the secret? “I married my best friend from school who I knew since she was 13 and I was 16.”

He talks about their family and her sensational cooking but knows the clincher is: “ She’s always been able to make the adjustments.”

And she has had adjustments to make. Perhaps the biggest was the move to Hollywood in 1986, where his efforts to change the system at Columbia made him powerful enemies and caused him to resign after a year. The stress left him with ME, which means bouts of depression. “You’re always afraid the next one will be the big one.” But It was the ME which led them to Skibbereen, which ultimately became home.

He is angry. At Brexit, at Boris Johnson, at the BBC. “Brexit is a denial of everything my generation stood for.

The Brexiteers seem to have been lobotomised about history between 1927 and 1937. They used the Goebbels playbook: grab power, own a couple of newspapers, identify the Other [Jews or Immigrants] fan the flames of disquiet.”

There are huge problems to be surmounted. Like “the problem of finding good people to take responsibility. What percentage of the 48 per cent who voted to remain in the EU will be called upon to drive Brexit? My fear for society is we have lost the wisdom to anticipate the consequences of our actions.”

Who knows? If anyone can find a way to change the story, he can. ^ LORD PUTTNAM:

It was in Field’s coffee shop on August 28 1997 that the Oscar-winning film producer discovered he had a new title.

“A couple of days after Blair’s Mayday victory, education minister David Blunkett rang to ask me to work with him. I was delighted. A little while later, another call came. Would I accept a peerage? I explained there might be a complication [Blunkett]. ‘Leave that to us,’ came the reply. But nothing happened. May, June, July, most of August came. Then I opened my paper. I was Lord Puttnam of Queensgate.”

It may seem paradoxical, the direct line from the House of Lords to a far-flung Irish café. But paradox is just another word for an exciting life. A producer of 27 films – ten Oscarwinning – may dedicate 20 years to public duty; a movie mover and shaker can be happily married to the same woman for over half a century; an Englishman may be an Irish patriot, by becoming Ireland’s Digital Champion, promoting a tech-savvy nation.

We are in Kalbos Café, around the corner from the Ludgate Hub, brave new blueprint for other towns, on the day the Supreme Court in London began to deliberate Brexit. Skibbereen café society is mad for chat with him about Making Ireland Click, his four documentaries,

BUSINESS WISDOM

BUSINESS WISDOM DID ANYTHING IN YOUR FAMILY BACKGROUND INFLUENCE YOUR JOURNEY TO YOUR CURRENT ROLE? Both my parents instilled a very strong work ethic, integrity and a sense of pride and responsibility in what I did from an early stage. My parents had busy professional careers – my mother was a lecturer and always worked while we were kids, so I also had a very strong role model.

THE ACCOMPLISHMENT YOU ARE MOST PROUD OF? I am very proud to have four beautiful, happy and healthy children and a successful career.

I am extremely lucky to have a very supportive husband, mother and childminder (who are all part of my logistics team!)

HOW YOU APPROACH DIFFICULT SITUATIONS? I stay calm, listen and break the problem down into component parts while separating the subjective and dealing with the facts as objectively as possible.

HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE YOU TO GET READY IN THE MORNING? PHOTOGRAPH BY DOREEN KILFEATHER

Personally, 20 minutes – getting the three older kids out the door is the problem.

THE CV A graduate of UCC and UCD, Mandy O’Sullivan qualified as a chartered accountant with Arthur Andersen in 2000. She then moved to London to join Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein’s investment banking division.

She spent a year in the technology sector team and then two years in the European transaction group working on crossborder mergers and acquisitions.

She returned to Ireland in 2004, joining NCB Stockbrokers’ corporate finance division. They were acquired by Investec in 2012.

FROM THE DESK OF ...

Mandy O’Sullivan DIRECTOR, INVESTEC CORPORATE FINANCE WHAT KEEPS YOU AWAKE AT NIGHT?

THE COMPANY? Investec is a specialist bank and asset manager providing a diverse range of financial products and services to a niche client base in Ireland, the UK, South Africa and Australia and certain other territories.

DESCRIBE YOUR ROLE: As a director in corporate finance in Investec Dublin, I am responsible for advising clients on our full range of corporate finance services including mergers and acquisitions, disposals, fundraisings, strategic advisory and valuations, as well as working with my corporate broking and equity capital markets colleagues on public market activity including IPOs. I also interact with my colleagues in the other divisions of Investec Dublin as well as my investment banking colleagues in our international offices.

Right now, it’s a toss-up between my ten-month-old and my six-year-old!

A CHARACTERISTIC YOU BELIEVE A BUSINESS LEADER SHOULD POSSESS? I think emotional intelligence is a very important component of a business leader’s skillset.

A leader who is self-aware and able to connect with their team will command their respect and commitment as they seek to drive performance.

WHAT IS THE MOST USEFUL WAY TO ENGAGE CLIENTS? A breakfast or a lunch is useful for a general catch-up, however, if real engagement is required on a specific matter, a proper roundtable business meeting during the working day is most effective.

ADVICE TO WOMEN WHO ASPIRE TO BE IN LEADERSHIP ROLES? Have a strong team around you, both professionally and at home, don’t be afraid to ask for help and have confidence and belief in your ability. ^

YOUR BUSINESS PRIORITIES FOR 2017?

Our objective is to continue to deliver a bespoke relationship-based service to the Irish market, whether you are a private client or an early stage, SME or large corporation. Thankfully, we have the ability, both domestically and through our international network, to meet those varying needs. Investec is committed to expanding its presence in Ireland and we are very excited about 2017.

HIGHLIGHTS AND CHALLENGES DURING YOUR TENURE? Deal completion is always satisfying no matter how many times you do it, particularly if there has been a long gestation period. I led the sale of Start Mortgages to Lone Star which was awarded Financial Services Deal of the Year in 2015 – it was a nice accolade for all involved. In our business, there are always external challenges which we have to work through with our clients, whether they are internationally or domestically driven, but that is what makes my job so interesting.

MY WORKING LIFE:

THE WAY I DO BUSINESS 1. WORK/LIFE BALANCE When I am not at work, I prioritise my family and friends. Weekends are very important family time. If I have work to do at the weekend, I will do it when the kids are in bed rather than impact their day.

2. STRENGTHS?

I have strong project management skills,

which helps with multi-tasking, I’m a team player and I always try to do my best for the client. 3.

WEAKNESSES? I am always thinking or analysing

something and I’m bad at switching my email off. At the moment, I’m trying to avoid checking it for two hours when I get home.

BUSINESS

4. LOOKING THE

I don’t have time to think too much about what I’m wearing

in the morning so I prefer separates like dresses, shirts, trousers and skirts.

I have recently started shopping online but I still prefer to find a good boutique that knows my style.

5. PLANNING FOR THE FUTURE

As I am balancing a busy work and personal life, it is often financial matters that get neglected. I have peace of mind in knowing that my personal finances are being handled by the experts in Investec’s wealth and investment division who look after my savings, pension and life assurance.

THE GLOSS MAGAZINE | January 2017 | 35

HEALTH

SWEET & &SOUR In 1967, the New England Journal of Medicine published a report by Harvard scientists who claimed that cutting down on fat, not sugar, was the best way to address the growing problem of coronary heart disease. What the medical community did not know, at least until internal documents were released last year, was that the report, funded by the Sugar Research Foundation, was specifically designed to refute claims that sugar was in fact the disease’s chief contributing factor.

And so started a global war on saturated fat that has lead us to a point where today, supermarket shelves and fridges all over the world are crammed with sugar-laden, low-fat foods that are widely perceived by consumers to be healthy. The result? Cardiovascular disease is the most common cause of death in Ireland, killing around 10,000 people every year and, according to the WHO, we are projected to be the most obese country in Europe by 2030.

“The average person has no idea how much sugar they’re consuming and it’s kept from them,” says Dr Robert Lustig, Professor of Paediatrics in the Division of Endocrinology at the University of California, San Francisco and author of Fat Chance: Beating the Odds against Sugar, Processed Food, Obesity, and Disease.

“The New England Journal of Medicine article really formed the basis for our dietary thinking throughout the 1970s all the way to today. It’s only now that we 36 | January 2017 | THE GLOSS MAGAZINE

have enough data to implicate sugar and exonerate saturated fat. If it says low fat, it’s high in sugar and any food that says low fat ought to have a skull and crossbones on it.”

It’s estimated that the average Irish person consumes 24 teaspoons of sugar every day. To put that in context, two years ago the WHO revised its sugar guidelines to recommend that adults consume no more than six teaspoons a day to avoid health risks such as weight gain and tooth decay. And while some sugar is easily identifiable – fizzy drinks, a Jaffa Cake, that Sunday morning pain au chocolat – vast amounts are often hidden in the most unsuspecting places. Take breakfast cereals, for example. While it’s probably no surprise that a bowl of Kellogg’s Frosties contains nine teaspoons of sugar, a serving of Special K with Berries, a cereal specifically marketed as a waistline-friendly healthy breakfast, contains six. That’s your daily quota reached before you’ve even left the house.

Sarah Wilson is a former editor of Cosmopolitan Australia and the author of the bestselling book, I Quit Sugar, as well as several successful spin-off cookbooks.

After being diagnosed with an autoimmune disorder that attacks the thyroid called Hashimoto’s disease, she was told by countless nutritionists to cut back on sugar as it is known to f lare the condition. “I committed to a fortnight of no sugar at all, to see how it went,” Wilson says. “Then I just kept going.

PHOTOGRAPH BY JESUS ALONSO

Recently released documents prove that the sugar industry paid off scientists in the 1960s to downplay sugar’s role in obesity and blame fat instead. Today, the average Irish person consumes 24 teaspoons of sugar daily.

Let’s break the addiction, writes SARAH BREEN

Within two weeks I noticed visible differences in my health and appearance, particularly my skin. I’ve now been off sugar for six years and I can say it’s had the biggest impact on my disease than any other medical “fix”. I have zero thyroid antibodies now. I’m on the minimum dosage of thyroxine and my hormone levels have fallen back into the right range. Even my bloods are back to normal, something my doctors thought was impossible. They’ve confirmed it was the changes I made to my diet that are the most probable cause of my huge improvement.”

Giving up sugar completely revolutionised Wilson’s approach to food and eating, so much so that she’s

HEALTH learn how to nourish your body with nutrient-dense, real food. For me, the emotional addiction was the most challenging. Sugary food was my reward. My comfort. I was petrified about living even one day without a sweet treat. What would I do when I got my 3pm slump? How would I cope when I was out with friends? But viewing my new vow as a short-term experiment somehow made it seem more doable.”

It turns out, the so-called empty calories that sugar provides are actually the least of our worries in terms of what it is doing to our bodies. “Sugar does three things that other substances we consume don’t do,” says Dr Robert Lustig. “Sugar and alcohol are metabolised exactly the same way because they are virtually the same molecule – after all, alcohol is created from the fermentation of sugar. Everybody thinks sugar is bad because it’s empty calories but it’s not, it’s like alcohol – toxic if you consume over a certain dose. That’s the first thing that’s wrong with sugar. The second is it causes the Maillard Reaction, also known as the Ageing Reaction.

Every time that reaction occurs, a little hydrogen peroxide is given off, which kills off cells. This is part of normal metabolism but fructose, the sweet molecule in sugar, causes this reaction to occur seven times faster than glucose. Finally, sugar is addictive. The only way to treat an addiction is to abstain from it but how can you abstain from sugar when it’s in everything? By eating processed food, the addiction continues.”

“What we have SHOWN categorically is that if you take SUGAR out of kids’ diets, their METABOLIC HEALTH reverses within ten days.”

made a career out of it, now offering an eight-week sugar eliminating programme online through her website www.iquitsugar.com, where she also blogs.

“Imagine our energy burning set-up as a fire,” she explains. “When we eat sugar, we’re feeding the fire with little bits of paper and tiny sticks. So, we have to keep on feeding it to keep the fire going. When we take sugar out, and fuel our fire with vegetables, protein and fat-based snacks – think nuts, cheese, eggs – we’re essentially throwing a big solid log on the fire. We can then walk away for a good four or five hours before we need to feed it again. Take out the sugar, and you simply don’t have the energy slumps anymore. Because you

Four years ago, Sarah-Jane Mullane, an Irish healthcare professional living in Perth, Australia, decided to break the addiction. “I thought I was a healthy eater, and that’s how I was perceived by my friends, yet I was consuming about three and a half times the recommended amount of sugar per day.” For the first two years, she admits, she talked about little else, constantly justifying her food choices to friends and acquaintances. “In hindsight it had been on my mind for a while that there was something up with the diets and healthy eating advice being doled out by “expert dieticians”. I read David Gillespie’s Sweet Poison, which appealed to my scientific leanings, and gave myself two months to implement what I’d learned.”

The main sources of sugar Mullane set out to eliminate were a spoon in black coffee, chocolate, pastries, a sprinkle on fruit and adding it to sauces, but once she put her diet under the microscope, the amount of hidden sugar she was consuming startled her. “Balsamic vinegar really surprised me. Tomato ketchup and breakfast cereals were huge eye openers too – although I knew they were far from healthy, the amount of sugar they contain is shocking. Honey and maple syrup are full of fructose too and are no better than table sugar – that was a surprise, as I was always told that honey is a healthier alternative.”

Once she removed it from her diet, the effects were

immediately evident to Mullane. “I lost weight, not a huge amount, around my waist mainly. And I had no more bloating. My skin and hair were better and overall I just felt lighter. I have an under-active thyroid and I was able to decrease my medication for the first time in six years.”

Today, Mullane, currently pregnant with her first baby, has slightly relaxed her stance on sugar, although she still avoids it as much as possible. “I’ll have a taste of a dessert, a couple of squares of chocolate a week and I won’t be the annoying guest at a dinner party – I will eat what I am given. However, I don’t crave sweet treats and would much prefer a cheeseboard to cake. If everyone is having a pavlova, I’ll just have the whipped cream and fresh fruit with some cinnamon – delicious.” And what, if anything, does she miss? “The crunch of a biscuit or the texture of cake, so I will have some but it’s usually a disappointment and I get over it pretty fast.”

Although sugar consumption is directly linked to obesity, the relationship between the two is complicated, especially in children. Today one in four Irish kids is considered obese. “There are a lot of things that contribute to obesity,” says Dr Lustig. “If you look at the foodstuffs that lead to it, the top two are potato chips and French fries. Sugar comes in third, far behind. The problem is the way sugar is metabolised. When you consume a can of soda, your body doesn’t register that you’ve just ingested 150 calories.

Because of the insulin resistance in the liver fat that it causes, your insulin levels rise and your brain thinks it’s hungry so you want to eat. And you eat more of everything, not just sugar. What we have shown categorically is that if you take the sugar out of kids’ diets and substitute starch instead their metabolic health reverses within ten days.

In our clinic, we have proven countless times that when you get kids off sugar, their overall food intake goes down because they just aren’t as hungry. Sugar doesn’t cause just cause weight gain itself, it’s the catalyst that drives the brain phenomena that promote the weight gain.”

In last year’s budget, Finance Minister Michael Noonan announced that we would be joining a growing list of countries including Britain, Belgium, France, Hungary and Mexico in imposing a tax on sugar-sweetened soft drinks, due to be implemented in 2018. It will work out at around 10c per can. But, according to Dr Lustig, it alone won’t have much impact on the obesity epidemic. “The modelling data suggests that for a tax to really reduce the consumption of sugar it has to be 20 per cent or greater,” he says. “In Mexico, where the tax is ten per cent, we saw a short-lived reduction in consumption until the soft drinks industry started introducing new items. Taxation is one mode of reducing societal availability, but it’s not always the right mode. And ultimately education alone has never solved any substance of abuse. Norway, Sweden and Denmark used to have a massive alcohol problem – there was reduced productivity because people were calling sick and they had a lot of car accidents and cirrhosis of the liver. In 1977, they banded together to pass two pieces of legislation. First, they nationalised all the liquor stores so the government controlled pricing. The second thing they did was they subsidised low-alcohol beer and taxed high-alcohol spirits. The taxes from the spirits paid for the beer subsidy. By providing both an inducement and a punishment, they were able to nudge people from highalcohol spirits to low-alcohol beer. Over the next 20 years, economic productivity increased and car accidents and cirrhosis of the liver decreased. Those two laws are still in place today because they worked.”

Your move, Minister Noonan. ^ THE GLOSS MAGAZINE | January 2017 | 37

BEAUTY

Buffet

BY SARAH HALLIWELL

TH I S M ONTH

WE’RE USING ...

YSL’s spring collection The Street and I is lifting our spirits. From dual-colour eyeliners and Kiss & Blush Duo Sticks (d33) to white for nails, this collection, inspired street art, is hard to ignore. From d19.

ISABEL MARANT

The SEAVITE BY DOCTORS MULROONEY skincare range has excellent credentials, with its marine-rich ingredients, and it has a sleek new look. We love the Replenishing Face Cream (above) for light but lustrous moisturising. d47.50; www.seavite.ie and pharmacies nationwide.

NEW YEAR, NEW SKINCARE

W

e are commitment-phobes when it comes to skincare. Just when we find a product we love enough to use forever, something new comes along to turn our heads. So a range that’s under the radar, very plainly packaged and featuring some honestly quite weird-smelling lotions might seem one to bypass. But the exclusive Parisian line BIOLOGIQUE RECHERCHE, now 35 years old, is one of those insider secrets that might just be a skin-changer. One of the only places to try it in Ireland is Skin by Olga, a new salon in Donnybrook that aims to deliver a proper change in your skin, rather than just a relaxing experience. “Lots of clients stop wearing make-up when they use this range,” says Olga Kochlewska, an no-nonsense expert who will analyse your skin and customise a treatment, using facial massage techniques and galvanic currents to stimulate the blood vessels. Since the focus in beauty this year is on having your best, most glowing skin, this is a fine place to start. Biologique Recherche products are singular in their concentrated raw ingredients, lack of oils or artificial fragrance and high levels of concentrated actives. They do smell a little weird – it’s a shock when you’re used to rose- and lavender-scented elixirs, but focus on results over the pleasure principle, and you get used to it.

The cult product is Lotion P50 (left), an exfoliating, balancing lotion used after cleansing for startling results in brightening skin. We can’t quite give up our Crème de la Mer entirely, but feel inspired to commit to this natural approach. Facials from d105.

34 Donnybrook Road, Dublin 4; 01 260 8846; www.skinbyolga.ie.

38 | January 2017 | THE GLOSS MAGAZINE

NEW OPENING: We’re checking out natural, ethical products and treatments at SKINFULL AFFAIRS, just opened on Dublin’s Exchequer Street. www.skinfullaffairs.ie

TRIED � TESTED A sybaritic start to the year

TAKE THREE Pen and pencil shop

WHERE: Ashford Castle, Cong, Co Mayo. WHY: Following its d47m renovation, Ashford has a completely new spa (already named Ireland’s best hotel spa at the 2016 World Spa Awards): where there used to be a few treatment rooms, there’s now a beautifully lit pool, fitness room, hammam and steam room, all housed in an elegant modern glasshouse with views over the lake. WHAT: The Signature Treatment (d110), more than 100 minutes of utter bliss using organic seaweed-based Voya oils and creams and featuring a back, shoulder and head massage, facial and amazing pressure point foot massage. THE EXPERIENCE: The test of any spa is its therapists, and we were in highly skilled hands with Rachel Murphy – the treatment is world-class and deeply therapeutic for mind and body. WHILE YOU’RE THERE: Try the Pure Flow treatment, since Ashford is the only place in Ireland that offers it. It’s the latest technology in improving circulation and optimising blood flow and is used by top athletes. It compresses leg muscles in such a way that you walk the equivalent of 5km in half an hour. So you earn your fivestar dinner in Ashford’s glorious dining room without leaving the bed. TAKE HOME: Voya’s silky Angelica Serratus body oil, d38. BOOK: An overnight winter escape with dinner and a treatment; see www.ashfordcastle.com for details.

1. CLARINS 4 Colour all-in-one pen is brilliant fun. Just like the clickdown pens you had in school, this stylo features black, brown and blue for eyes, plus a lip liner.

Why didn’t anyone think of this before? Limited edition, ¤36, from January 23.

2. HOURGLASS Girl Lip Stylo in 20 shades, from super-nude to deep plum, is light and moisturising. Twist up for colour. ¤32 at SpaceNK, from February.

3. CHANEL’s Retractable Longwear Lip Crayons (¤35) are silky and comfortable to wear.

Limited edition Rouge is the best colour, closely followed by a perfect nude, plus shades of plum and rose. From January 27.

Luxury activity & leisure apparel Ireland’s Premier Boutique for cool and contemporary athleisure brands Home to an Exclusive Collection of Designer labels & accessories Technical Fabrics ideal for all workouts, tennis, walking, running, pilates, etc.

Blackrock Shopping Centre, Rock Hill, Blackrock, Co Dublin & Royal Hibernian Way, Dawson Street, Dublin 2 t. (01) 21 21 821 e. info@skulpt.ie www.skulpt.ie

GLOSSY INSPIRATION you can bookmark…

THEGLOSS.IE • Fashion and beauty news from style editor AISLINN COFFEY and beauty editor SARAH HALLIWELL • Brand new recipes from food writer TRISH DESEINE • Wine recommendations from wine expert MARY DOWEY • Weekly interviews with some of Ireland’s most talented writers • All the BEST FEATURES from previous issues you may have missed ...

THE GLOSS digital edition

THE GLOSS MAGAZINE | January 2017 | 39

BEAUTY

WAYS TO

BRIGHTEN UP YOUR JANUARY Cheer yourself up with this month with illuminating beauty ideas

BRIGHTER SKIN

�

LIT FROM WITHIN Support your skin from the inside out. “Eat zinc-rich foods, such as salmon, pumpkin seeds, chickpeas and garlic, and good fats, like flaxseed and oily fish, plus hyaluronic acid-rich foods like root vegetables, greens and beans, and avoid sugar, which makes collagen bonds less elastic,” advises nutritionist Zoe Palmer-Wright. Solgar’s Collagen Hyaluronic Acid Complex (d39.76) contains a specific type of collagen that is easy to absorb and highly concentrated, to support the outer layer of the skin, as well as joint health.

�

CUSTOM-BLEND Look to concentrated formulas and a “blend your own” approach. Bareminerals’ Brilliant Future Serum, d52, is full of vitamin C for radiance, as is Kiehl’s Corrective Brightening & Smoothing Moisture Treatment, d53 at Arnotts, from January 14. Bobbi Brown Remedies target everything from rehydration to calming; try the limited-edition starter set (d30) to see what works best for you.

3

SUPERFOOD SKINCARE is set to be big this year, with turmeric and kale featuring large, as wellness takes precedence over the idea of “combating” ageing. Chanel’s Blue Serum (d95, from January 13) combines ingredients from the world’s “blue zones”, identified in studies into longevity: so Costa Rican green coffee and Sardinian olive oil are among the actives in this brightening serum.

40 | January 2017 | THE GLOSS MAGAZINE

BRIGHTER MAKE-UP

�

SHAKE IT UP Lancôme Juicy Shakers are a fun way to wear lipstick, containing lots of oils to moisturise lips plus

glossy colour in eight new shades, developed with creative director Lisa Eldridge, including this zingy pink. d22, from January 25.

�

WEAR RED This year, there’s a big focus on red, and new formulas such as Bobbi Brown’s Red Hot Luxe Lip Colours (d32.50), in eight perfect variations of red, are impossible to ignore. Other reds we’re getting out of bed for are Chanel’s Rouge Red nail colour (d25, from January 27), and any of the greatvalue L’Oréal Color Riche reds (palette of six shades, d14.99, at Boots), which are flattering, lasting and smell like sweets.

3

GET YOUR BLUSH ON MAC’s Strobe cream has long been the gold standard for a liquid highlighters: the new peach, silver and gold tinted versions are now available, though we still love the original, now called Pinklite (d34). This is how catwalk skin always looks so gleaming; MAC’s Terry Barber advises using it as a blush for that “lit from within” rosy glow. Nars is justly famous for creating flattering skin-flushes, too, and the Misconduct blush shade for spring (d31) is effortlessly pretty.

THE JANUARY VISIT A new MAC boutique has opened at Arnotts. Launched in 1984, MAC is still hard to beat for sheer inventiveness and creativity. Who else would come up with a Mariah Carey collection? Director of make-up artistry, Terry Barber, reckons that beauty is getting back to what it should be: “Well-conditioned skin, and highlighting perhaps one feature, lips or eyes,” in reaction to the over-done layers of make-up dominating Instagram.

“Skin this season is polished even when it’s quite nude and bare,” he explains. “It is worked and enhanced, with a beautiful amount of shine. Focus less on coverage and more on the surface of the skin.” His secret weapon is Mineralize Time Check Lotion, a moisturiser/primer that’s “brilliant for blurring and filling”. The new Masters collection features the make-up signatures of three key artists behind the catwalk looks each season.

HIDDEN GEM Why you should try Polish skincare Tucked away in Smithfield is a hidden beauty gem. While French names like LA ROCHE-POSAY and VICHY dominate the market in thermal-water cosmetics, Polish brands have long been doing the same – only under the radar. Many of them are stocked at Polish pharmacy Polonia, which opened in 2014: IWOSTIN, for example, is tailored to sensitive and atopic skins, including the popular Capillin collection for skin with reactive capillaries (those who suffer from redness in heat, cold and stress). The mask (¤11.70) really takes down redness, and the Intensely Reducing Redness Day Cream SPF20 (¤13.25) melts into skin.

Designed for sensitive and reactive skins, PHARMACERIS is very popular in Poland due to thoroughly researched ingredients and effectiveness. The suncare range is worth noting, particularly Hydrolipid Protective Face Cream SPF50. BIOLIQ is gaining cult status in Poland for their Intense Revitalising Serum (¤10.50), a gel-like serum that’s full of lipids and vitamins to tighten, brighten and hydrate. Zuzia Whelan Polonia, North King Street, Smithfield, Dublin 7, 01 874 7440; www.poloniapharmacy.ie.

SOCIAL LIFE

My

GLOSSY

WEEKEND PHOTOGRAPH BY CHRISTIAN BANFIELD

BELLA HUDDART

I think of it as f lying from one ideal city to another.

When I touch down in Dublin from Barcelona, I’m already looking forward to wearing the trousers I’ve left waiting for me in my wardrobe. They are grey and cloudy, much like the sky over Ballon where I spend the weekend with my partner Christopher who owns Sandbrook House, a period property built in the early 1700s that sits on 25 acres near the Carlow/Wicklow border, and is available for hire. I love the newness of feeling, yet the familiarity, and I always wonder at how emerald green everything looks. I go for a 7k run as soon as I can and often set off in the sun, encounter rain and hail, then the wind gets up – four seasons in 45 minutes! Arriving from a Mediterranean city which is all oranges and blues, the grey/blue/green palette of Ireland is restful and serene. I use the same palette when decorating the house. I like things to feel the same on the inside as they do on the outside.

My two sons Eddie, 15, and Johnnie, 21, go to school and college in Barcelona but my four other children Georgie, Gussie, Joe and Flora all live in London where I also spend some of my time. They live in my f lat and pay me rent and even our work lives overlap: Georgie was my assistant on my last interiors project. When in London, it’s all about appointments to see suppliers – Rose Uniacke, Jamb lighting and Christopher Howe are favourites. In Barcelona, I do all my paperwork and admin. In Ireland, I sort out my archives and plan my next project. I also find time to work on the next room in the house that needs attention. I yearn for a lived-in look which is one of the reasons why Irish style suits me well – it’s about home comfort, not hotel comfort. No wonder I find it so easy to unwind here.

On Friday evening we might head to the pub in Clonegal for pints of Guinness, then have supper next door at Sha-Roe Bistro. We often end the night staying up for hours drinking whiskey in the bathroom of Sandbrook – well, it’s more of a sitting room now: once a higgledy-piggledy maze of three poky rooms

off the master bedroom, I knocked down walls – with the help of Dennis the builder and Jon the painter, and Margaret Buggy, a fantastic local curtainmaker, it was transformed in a f lash. The moonlight streams in and it’s magic.

On Saturday, we head to the farmer’s market in Carlow for cheeses from Elizabeth Bradley (www. carlowfarmhousecheese.com), Greek olive oil and meat and vegetables. We tend to have at least one gathering every weekend so I cook a stew on the Aga, and chat as I work, which is a real pleasure. After a long lunch I put on my Mackeys boots and we go for a walk. After all the sociability and activity, we look forward to a cosy supper and log fire. On Sunday, I might help Christopher, Jackie the manager and Joey prepare the house for the next lot of guests who might be renting it for a weekend or even longer. We look after every detail, down to the scent of the house, something I am obsessive about and have totally sussed for every place in my life. In Ireland, it’s Amber & Lavender by Jo Malone. It’s nice to think the house is rented out in our absence, I hate to think of uninhabited spaces. Everywhere I live is occupied in my absence thanks to my kids!

In the afternoon, though I never want to leave, I head to the airport for the f light back to Barcelona.

I’m permanently juggling but I only allow the London bits to become stressy – once I see my boys, I know that giving them the sense that they can live in any city, soak up any culture, learn any language, is a liberating feeling. ^ www.bellahuddart.com; www.sandbrook.ie

CHRISTIAN BANFIELD

The interior designer and mother of six is a former Voguette and loves her weekends here

Clockwise from above: A Marylebone penthouse designed by Huddart.

Sha-Roe Bistro, Clonegal.

Carlow Farmer’s Market.

Carlow Farmhouse Cheese. Sandbrook House, Ballon, Co Carlow.

THE GLOSS MAGAZINE | January 2017 | 41

FOOD OD

BY T R I SH

DE

fish fingers, or as a treat, fish and chips from the best chippy in the county in Ballynure.

Served only on Christmas Day, with wheaten bread and lemon slices, smoked salmon was a true delicacy, and an expensive one. In our house, beef was the thing.

Then, in France in my 20s, I started to discover all sorts of new fish species as I shopped and cooked alongside the older generation in my family-in-law. Of all the produce in a typical market, the abundance, freshness and proximity (no plastic wrapping or Plexiglas screens) of fish-with-headson and raw shellfish seemed most remarkable. Weekends spent sailing or beside the sea in Normandy meant that fish arriving directly from Le Havre, Dieppe, Honf leur or Cherbourg was a given. Eyes and gills were always glistening and crabs, lobsters and prawns would still be wriggling. You would order your fish whole, have it weighed and finish your shopping while the fishmonger prepared it, or choose a platter full of oysters, langoustines, whelks and winkles which would be opened for you, then beautifully presented and wrapped. There was always a sense of joy and occasion – of la fête! – as you took away such a plateau, shiny in cellophane and tied with a pink tape bow. As my children were growing up, very often our Sunday roast would be a whole roast sea bass, stuffed with fresh herbs, garlic, lemon and lime, served with a lively green sauce and steamed waxy potatoes.

In Ireland, even in West Cork, there is still a slight reserve and squeamishness when it comes to fish. Counters mostly offer fillets, mussels come in bags, lobster is often readycooked and you are left to fend for yourself when opening oysters. When eating out across Ireland, it is not that easy to find somewhere for a dozen decent oysters, or a simple, fresh bowl of mussels and chips, so much of our fish and seafood is exported to the discerning French.

But the gourmets are fighting back! Recently, at beautiful Ballywalter Park in Co Down, Vibse and Brian Dunleath teamed up with promotional agency Seafish and Michelin star-holding chefs Martijn Kajuiter and Stevie Toman at the first “Loaves and Fishes” event, teaching young chefs and visitors about the nutritional and culinary qualities of some of our lesser known seafood. They’ve given me some of their recipes for you to try. And as healthy new year resolutions go, you’d be hard pushed to find a more delicious one than “eat more fish.” ^ @TrishDeseine

SEINE

LIGHT AND HEALTHY SEAFOOD SUPPERS

Start the new year with one resolution: to eat more fish, advises TRISH DESEINE

A

new year, a new you? Well, we will all be glad to see the back of 2016, but are you counting on celebrating the end of a terrible year by eating differently in the new one?

Fear not, there will be no dietary preaching here, especially at a time when we need hearty, comforting, uncomplicated food, but perhaps instead a little gentle coaxing to reconsider how we buy, cook and eat one of our great national bounties, our fish.

It seems only a f lick of a mermaid’s tail since my childhood, when our family fish intake was the odd Friday duo of plain and smoked cod, fried in butter and served with green beans, steamed potatoes and of course, more butter. It was that or

ROAST WHOLE SEA BASS WITH GREEN SAUCE This is by far the easiest way to cook fish, and arguably the most tasty.

mixed fresh herbs (basil, coriander, flatleaf parsley), finely chopped • A drizzle olive oil • A pinch sea salt • 1 tsp capers, drained (optional) • 1 clove garlic, crushed (optional)

For 6 (20 minutes cooking and preparation)

To serve • 200g steamed green beans • A small handful of hazelnuts, crushed

• A large whole sea bass, cleaned • 1 lime, cut into wedges • A large handful mixed fresh herbs (basil, coriander, flatleaf parsley), finely chopped • Drizzle olive oil • Pinch sea salt For the green sauce 1 lime, juice only • A large handful

1. Pre-heat the oven to 180˚C. Tuck the lime wedges and herbs into the cavity of the fish then drizzle a little olive oil over the skin and sprinkle with a pinch of sea salt. Set the fish in a roasting pan and roast for about 20 minutes. The flesh should come

42 | January 2017 | THE GLOSS MAGAZINE

away from the spine easily but still be firm and pearly white.

2. While the fish is cooking, steam the beans and make the sauce.

3. Mix about half the lime juice with the chopped herbs, olive oil and a small pinch of sea salt. Stir in the capers and garlic, if using, then taste the sauce, adding a little more lime juice, olive oil or salt, as desired. You can also blitz all the ingredients in a mini blender for a smoother sauce.

4. To serve, scatter the crushed hazelnuts over the hot green beans and serve alongside the fish and green sauce.

�

MONKFISH WITH MUSSELS, LEEKS AND COURGETTES

A meaty fish, monkfish stands up to dishes with all sorts of robust ingredients.

For 4 (16-20 minutes preparation; 16-20 minutes cooking) • 4 180g monkfish tails • 60g garlic herb butter, diced and chilled • 1 carrot, peeled into ribbons, blanched and refreshed • 1 courgette, sliced and cooked until tender • 1 leek, sliced into rings and boiled until tender • 4 potatoes, boiled and sliced For the mussel broth • 20 mussels • 2 tomatoes, chopped • 2 tbsp tomato paste • 125ml apple juice • 125ml fish stock • 1 tbsp chopped carrot • 1 tbsp chopped onion • 1 tbsp chopped celery • 1 clove garlic, chopped • 1/4 tsp white peppercorns • 1/4 tsp coriander seeds • 1/4 tsp fennel seeds • 1 sprig parsley • 1 sprig thyme • 1 sprig tarragon • 1 bay leaf

MUSSEL BROTH

MONKFISH

In a large pan, sweat the vegetables and garlic in a little oil for 5 minutes then add the tomatoes, peppercorns, seeds, herbs, and tomato paste. Cook for 5 minutes, then add the mussels, cover, and cook until they open.

Remove the mussels and reserve. Add the fish stock and apple juice and bring to the boil. Simmer for 20 minutes, then strain through a sieve.

Season the fish and fry in a hot pan in a little oil until cooked through, approximately 6 minutes, turning regularly. Warm the mussel broth and add the vegetables and mussels to warm through, whisk in the garlic herb butter. Divide some of the vegetables into the serving bowls, top with the fish, then spoon any remaining vegetables and mussels over the fish, along with the mussel broth.

CHARRED SQUID 3 WITH CHILLI JAM This 1990s gastropub favourite should really have migrated to your own kitchen by now.

For 4 (20 minutes preparation and cooking) • 450g fresh squid, cleaned • 1 red chilli, finely diced • 2.5cm piece fresh ginger, peeled and finely chopped • 2 shallots finely diced • 1 clove garlic peeled and finely diced • 2 tbsp soy sauce • 1 tbsp caster sugar • 1 tbsp fresh coriander, chopped • 2 tbsp vegetable oil • Salad leaves to serve 1. Place the chilli, ginger, shallots, garlic, soy sauce, sugar and coriander in a small blender and blitz until finely chopped. Heat half the oil in a small frying pan and pour in the chilli mix.

Cook gently for a few minutes until it becomes sticky, then set aside. This is your chilli jam.

2. Heat a griddle pan over a high heat. Prepare the squid by cutting it in half, slitting it on one side and cutting it into squares. Pat it dry with kitchen paper. Lightly score it on the inside. (score it diagonally in one direction, and then do the same in the other direction, to give little diamond shapes), taking care not to cut right through the flesh.

3. When the griddle pan is hot, lightly brush the squid and the tentacles on both sides with the remaining oil, then season with salt and freshly milled black pepper. Cook for 1-2 minutes, turning halfway through, until it’s lightly charred.

4. Serve warm or cold on a bed of salad leaves, with the chilli jam drizzled over.

PHOTOGRAPH BY DEIRDRE ROONEY

FO

TRAVEL

MAN in A SUITCASE

With Donald Trump’s inauguration less than three weeks away, the US is on TIM MAGEE’s mind Dear US presidential portrait, The first time I saw you, you were hanging in the immigration hall in JFK in 1988, an election year. I’d left home to move to your country to fly planes off boats. President Reagan, that year your VP, George HW Bush, would win. His presidential portrait was of a man who did actually fly planes off boats. The youngest naval pilot in World War II with a war record much more remarkable than anything he did in office, and his legacy turned out to be his son.

The notion of the US Navy didn’t work out for me. Too many flags and moustaches, and nobody who looked like Kelly McGillis. Instead I ended up putting up warehouses outside LA for my great-uncle Aloysius, living near Seal Beach, looking like a mash-up of a Miami Vice extra and a Bosco presenter.

The next guy in the immigration hall portrait – they’re always guys – was Bill Clinton, a smooth southerner about the same age as I am now. Gulp. He’d balance the budget, be part of delivering peace in the North and help make America great at imprisoning people. He was likeable, impressive and I’d get to meet him and, like the cliché, feel I was the only other person in the room.

During his tenure, I’d commute the Atlantic every few weeks in perpetual but first-class jetlag with a gaggle of consultants. I would get to know what things to do in Denver, nearly get killed white-water rafting in the Rockies, and hang out in Omaha looking for vintage furniture and clothes. Mostly I was freezing in South Sioux City, Iowa.

The pilot’s son, George W Bush, was the next guy into the frame. He looks happy, even benign – a picture doesn’t always tell a thousand words. When he was done we expected we’d never see another as misled or dangerous.

Then eight years ago this month, everything changed and you came along in the so-called election of a lifetime.

(That seems quaint now.) President Obama, you look so young in your portrait. When you were elected I thought you could make the sun shine. Towards the end of your first term I was gutted – you hadn’t done half of what you’d promised. What I had missed was that you didn’t campaign on pulling America out of the Great Recession. Because no one knew. You did that, and then, despite having a hand tied behind your back, your middle and third act blew my socks off.

The campaign rhetoric and aspiration seemed petty compared to what you and your wife actually did. I’ll remember the words but mostly the temperament, attention to detail, and that bullet-proof moral compass that would surpass anyone in the portraits that went before you. And that comic timing. You could always get a start as a chat show host if you’re stuck for work at the end of this month.

The portrait that will be hung on January 20 in airports

The Royal Suite at the Halekulani, Honolulu

Hotel del Coronado, San Diego The Modern Honolulu

and embassies around the world is now probably being airbrushed in a fake gilded frame. Maybe there is a series of them: one donning a leopardskin hat, a Russian fur, a pointy Pickelhaube, maybe even a golden crown?

Some in the US want to leave, and I understand them. I’ve been told by friends and family that once this reign begins they’ll give your country a miss for the next four years.

I understand but I don’t agree. And I’m not boycotting travel to the US. This year I’m going back to 1988 and where it all started for me – California. I can fly direct to LA now, then drive south to San Diego, and Coronado. I’ll stay where FDR stayed, in that big Victorian beachside beauty, HOTEL DEL CORONADO. After some Pacific Ocean reconditioning, I’ll skip over the border into Tijuana, the gateway to the coolest wine region, Baja California – without the chintz of Napa, and better food at a tiny slice of the price. I will finish up in Ensenada, topping and tailing the days with clamatos and margaritas, dining in the brilliant LAJA, the Baja dinner destination run by a loveable hilarious crew that need their own television show. www.hoteldel.com, www.lajamexico.com.

After the wine trip I will go back for some cheese, and do the Florida Keys. I’ll dive back into Netflix’s Bloodline and Key Largo on the way over to get into character. Getting an overnighter in Miami Beach, in the cheap but classy THE HALL or THE GALE before picking up a convertible rental locally. Then that dinky drive through that necklace of tropical islands that stretch out like a life-line to Cuba, across the skinny bridges, over turquoise shallows, before collapsing into those white sands after eating myself sleepy with shrimp, conch and stone crab. Then because of you, I can dump my car at Marathon Key and jump the CubaKat ferry for a dusk to dawn visit to Havana.

I’ve had the best New Year’s Eves of my life in Havana but I wouldn’t stay there this time. Just soak up the electricity of a reborn country via its music, rum, people and actual shabby chic for one long day before pelting back across the straits to arrive at dawn at Marathon and to the rest of the holiday in the majesty of Harry Truman’s old

The Hall, Miami Beach

haunt, LITTLE PALM ISLAND. www.jdvhotels.com/ hotels/florida/south-beach-miami/the-hall/; www.galehotel. com; www.littlepalmisland.com.

This year though, my stateside priority is the 50th state.

Despite reading your books, and checking in with you daily for nine years, I’m going to finish the presidential chapter of your life with a lei around my neck. It will help me figure out what influence this laidback tropical melting pot had on its most famous island boy, and well, you know, it’s Hawaii. Your magnificent wife once said “You can’t really understand Barack until you understand Hawaii” – well, okay so.

After a post-flight decompression in the MODERN HONOLULU, I’ll skip your tradition of golf and dad jeans, and take surfing lessons in Waikiki. Then it is island life mode before checking in to HALEKULANI or checking out the blissful peace and quiet of the electronic free sanctuary of TRAVAASA HANA in Maui. www.halekulani.com; www.themodernhonolulu.com; www. travaasa.com/hana/hanaphotos.

So portrait, I wonder what you will do next? Only two weeks left hanging on the walls of all of those changing immigration halls. I don’t see you returning to constitutional law or focusing on your presidential library. My guess is your plans changed a bit recently and it isn’t too audacious to hope that you won’t just retire to Hawaii. Whether you do or not, there is a useful word that you know that covers goodbye, hello again – and affection.

Aloha, Barack Hussein Obama. ^ @manandasuitcase THE GLOSS MAGAZINE | January 2017 | 43

WINE

J

anuary on the dry? Not for me, I’m afraid. The dullest month would be dismal without an occasional glass of wine. But, given the annual new year bombardment of healthy living exhortations, it will be a small glass of white or red with dinner. Dry – probably bone-dry.

Nothing startling there, I hear you say. Apart from dessert wines and a handful of off-dry specialities, aren’t most whites and reds dry? Not exactly. Less and less, in fact. The most disconcerting trend I noticed at tastings hosted by the main supermarket groups in 2016 was the creeping advance of sugar.

Heaps of wines from all over the world tasted slightly sweet, even though they represented styles that the world expects to be dry. Winemakers can manipulate sweetness levels both in the vineyard (leaving grapes to ripen longer) and in the winery, where unfermented or “residual” sugar may remain in a wine after fermentation has stopped. Signs are that many are on a sugar rush.

Why? Out of necessity, occasionally: some grapes are so high in acidity that they need sugar to balance their natural tartness.

A much more common reason is the one that prompts food scientists to put sugar into ready-prepared meals. Consumers

THIS WONDERFUL LITTLE PLACE ... AIX-EN- PROV ENC E

Arran Evans has travelled the world with her rock star dad, U�’s The Edge, but the handbag designer found what she was looking for in France

M

y family has a home in Eze in the South of France which we’ve been going to since I was about seven. We all have a huge interest in modern art and design and Château La Coste, a 600acre organic winery and art and architecture park, is somewhere we love to explore.

The property is so impressive. As you first approach, you’re confronted with Louise Bourgeois’ Crouching Spider sculpture, which sets the tone for what you’ll encounter as you go on. My favourite restaurant is in the Tadao Ando Art Centre. The building itself is constructed from concrete but it has incredible glass walls which allow you to take in views of the vines and the more traditional Provençal château on site. It’s stunning – and architecturally clever. You park underneath the building and as you walk up the stairs

44 | January 2017 | THE GLOSS MAGAZINE

W

IN

E have a sweeter tooth than they realise – or admit to. That same tooth has helped to drive massive trends in wine. New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc, frequently off-dry (though never so described), is one of the most popular styles of all time. Australian and Chilean reds with the luscious berry f lavours that come from ultra-ripe, warm-climate grapes have also been such a huge hit that they have become a template for winemakers across the globe to follow.

But the stealth march towards sweetness that has begun to intensify across supermarket wine shelves isn’t driven solely by consumer demand. Increasingly, sugar is being used to mask the rough edges of wines that would otherwise be unpalatable. It can make them taste fruitier, smoother, plumper, less astringent.

This is especially useful at the cheap end of the market where winemakers often have to work with sub-standard grapes. That extra touch of sweetness is a handy touch-up agent – a bit like wood filler in a half-rotten door.

And, like all the best touch-up agents, it’s virtually invisible. You won’t see it mentioned on back labels; even wine writers struggle to pin down details, Marks & Spencer being the only supermarket group in Ireland to provide the press with information on residual sugar as a matter of routine.

This lick of extra sweetness probably isn’t significant enough to constitute a health risk but I’m wary of it for other reasons. It can make wines less refreshing, less savoury, tiresome after half a glass. How can we avoid it? Easier said than done, but inexpensive wines aimed at the mass market are the biggest culprits. Make this the year when you pay more – and, during virtuous January at least, drink less. ^ @MaryDowey

EY

The increasing sugar content in wine is something we should all be concerned about, writes MARY DOWEY

M A RY D O

W

A DRIER (BUT NOT DRY) JANUARY

BY

LOUIS LATOUR ARDÈCHE CHARDONNAY 2014.

Best with food, this versatile white will develop buttery richness with age.

Alcohol 13%. From O’Briens outlets; Higgins, Dublin 14; La Touche, Greystones, Co Wicklow; usually d16.95-d17.95 but d14 until mid-January.

CARLOS LUCAS JARDIM DA ESTRELA DÃO 2015.

Although some Dão reds can be austerely dry, this one drapes rich red berry flavours around a grippy core. Alcohol 13.5%. From Grapevine, Dublin 7; Power & Co, Lucan, Co Dublin; O’Learys, Cootehill, Co Cavan; about d13.50.

ASCHERI NEBBIOLO SAN GIACOMO, LANGHE 2013.

I love Nebbiolo, the red grape responsible for Piedmont’s famous Barolos and Barbarescos, for its savoury firmness. This juicy Langhe version would make a feast out of sausages and red cabbage. Alcohol 14%. From O’Briens nationwide, d21.95.

and-a-half hours. They have some amazing pieces from big names, like the Frank Gehry Pavilion, where they hold open-air cinema evenings, and the actual wineries were designed by Jean Prouvé. Andy Goldsworthy has created the Oak Room – using interwoven branches, he’s created a beautiful inverted nest.

The first time I encountered it was in high summer so it was baking outside. But it’s almost Louise Bourgeois’ Crouching Spider like a little cave, it was so cool and calm in there.

It’s breathtaking.

I’m definitely a visual person and aesthetics are very important to me. But beyond that, I also like to explore how things are made, from what materials and how the designer might have overcome certain challenges.

That’s how I work myself – I start with basic materials and allow them to inform the design, which will Château La hopefully lead to something innately beautiful. That’s Coste’s Tadao Ando restaurant the aesthetic I like – clean and honest.

I used to work in product design and I was starting to make handbags for my sister as the occasional gift. you start to see the water and you almost feel like you’re My favourite pastime was browsing in haberdashery emerging from it. Once you’re inside, it’s as if you’re shops and picking up random materials. I’ve used suspended above it. The room also opens out onto a rubber cords in my current collection because I found terrace so you get a really amazing sense of space. rolls of them in one such shop. The lady at the counter The food on offer is seasonal so it changes all the time. explained that designers will often use them inside Everything is organic and grown on the property the leather handle of a handbag as a sort of and the dishes are very simple, Provençal reinforcement. I thought they were beautiful, style. I’ve had the best scallops of my life so rather than hiding them, I turned them into there. And of course, when you pair the Burgundy Iona leather a feature of the bags in my current collection. ^ food with the Château La Coste wine, handbag, SARAH BREEN Château La Coste, 2750 Route it’s pretty spectacular. £790stg; www. de la Cride, 13610 Le Puy Ste Réparade, France; After eating, I love to follow the arranfrances.com art trail, which takes about twowww.chateaulacoste.com

BOOKS BEDSIDE TABLE

What is JP DELANEY reading?

JP Delaney is the pseudonym of an author who has previously written award-winning fiction under other names. In The Girl Before, Jane stumbles across the home rental of her dreams – until she discovers what happened the previous tenant. Ron Howard has signed on to direct the film adaptation. Quercus, ¤19, out January 24 ALYS, ALWAYS

by Harriet Lane Frances, a mousy subeditor on the literary section of a newspaper, comes across a crashed car and holds the hand of a dying woman while they wait for the ambulance to arrive. This brilliant beginning opens a story in which Frances inveigles her way into the life – and eventually, the bed – of the dead woman’s husband, an eminent writer. It’s a great reminder that psychological thrillers can be funny as well as chilling – like Zoë Heller with a dash of Jilly Cooper. W&N, ¤11.20 ETON CROP

by Bill James Why aren’t Bill James’ Harpur and Iles police procedurals better known? Perhaps because there are over 30 in the series, telling the story of a Shakespearean cast of villains with names like Panicking Ralph and Lovely Mover. Detective Inspector Iles in particular is a brilliant creation: an immoral, conniving, political schemer who takes as much pleasure in pushing his chief constable into a nervous breakdown as he does giving drug dealers their just desserts.

WW Norton & Company, ¤18.99 DEFENDING JACOB

by William Landay Andy Barber is tasked with investigating the murder of Ben Rifkin, a classmate of Andy’s own 14-year-old son, the Jacob of the title. Jacob, it transpires, was being bullied

by Ben, and soon becomes the lead suspect.

Complicating the issue is the fact that Barber himself is the son of a murderer, and has been investigating the possibility of a "murder gene", a genetic propensity to violence that he suspects both he and Jacob carry. It has twists aplenty, including a massive one at the end that will have you re-reading the entire book to see what you missed. Orion, ¤13.50

YOUTH WORK With twelve adult novels to her name, EMILY BARR decided to take on a new challenge: writing for the enthusiastic young adult audience

I

had already been making a living from writing for 13 years when I moved into YA fiction, and that happened almost by accident. The One Memory of Flora Banks was not the book I was supposed to be writing but once it came into my head I couldn’t get it out of there. I just had to write it.

At that point, my most recent book, a psychological thriller called The Sleeper, set on the night train between Cornwall and London, had sold relatively well. It was my twelfth novel for adults, and all I was supposed to be doing next was writing something along similar lines.

What, I wondered, would be a bit like a thriller set on a train? I started trying to write a thriller set on a boat, but my heart wasn’t in it. It was not the book in my head.

The book I was longing to write was set in the Arctic, under the midnight sun, with a protagonist who didn’t quite know where she was or what she was doing there. It was a different sort of book from anything I had written before. I started writing it, by default, as a book for adults.

However, I soon realised that Flora needed to be younger.

As soon as I tried her as a 17-year-old, everything fell into place: we all feel both vulnerable and brave at that age, and Flora’s is a coming-of-age story with high stakes.

She has amnesia, which is not an original fictional trope, but her innocence and her taking the world at face value and living in the moment became a way of writing about life, about hurt, about betrayal and beauty and trust. I discovered that what I love about writing YA is the fact that you can be utterly heartfelt, that you can explore everything. It is no place for cynicism. We can all remember being poised on the cusp of adulthood and in many ways I still feel that way, even though I am a grown-up mother of three (two of them teenagers themselves). Writing young adult fiction has been like an explosion of creativity for me.

So I was writing joyously, but it was a book without a publisher. I wrote The One Memory of Flora Banks into an abyss: I was very much writing it for myself without any idea of whether anyone would ever publish it. While I was

writing my insomnia got worse, I ran out of money and my credit cards spiralled almost out of control. All I had to pull me through it was the hope that someone would publish the book. I was teaching and freelancing, but as the bills mounted, it became harder and harder to keep on top of it all.

It was amazing, then, when the book was finished (and my credit cards were completely maxed out) to find that not only did someone want to publish it, but that, in fact, everyone did. I had never imagined that. I spent a surreal day in London going from meeting to meeting with my agent, Lauren, with enthusiastic editors all wanting to publish my book. The day culminated with an amazing couple of hours at Penguin’s offices which ended with a deal being on the table to pre-empt the auction. It was one of those hot summer’s days and I had to dash to Paddington afterwards to catch the last, heaving train home to Cornwall. My phone was out of battery and I couldn’t charge it because I didn’t have a seat, and so I didn’t have a socket: when I did get a seat and get charging I discovered Lauren had done a deal and that Penguin were going to publish my book. Twenty foreign deals have followed. It still doesn’t feel real, a lot of the time.

The build-up to publication has been quite different from anything else I have experienced in my writing career, not least because YA readers are, of course, very much younger than I am. They are full of enthusiasm and life. Early readers have been wonderful and I love interacting with them. The whole process feels exciting and new.

Now that the book is just about to go out into the world I feel as nervous and excited as I did when I pushed aside the boat thriller I never wrote, and decided to write about the midnight sun instead. ^ The One Memory of Flora Banks (Penguin, ¤9.99) is out January 12.

THE GLOSS MAGAZINE | January 2017 | 45

BRAVE NEW YORK WORLD SARAH BREEN meets the Irish women setting the agenda in the fast-paced world of digital media – and finding balance – in the city that never sleeps

The Social Whizz Lydia Daly is Senior Vice President of Social Media at Viacom

Originally from Mallow in Co Cork, Lydia Daly’s degree in international marketing meant she was primed to travel from the beginning of her career. “I worked in advertising initially, first in London, then Amsterdam and then Singapore,” she says. “In 2012, I decided to move to New York and luckily, the agency I was with at the time, JWT, was able to transfer me. About a year later, I was headhunted by Viacom for my current role.”

An early adopter of social media, Daly claims she “fell into” what is now a multi-million dollar industry. “It’s funny, because I only had a couple of years’ experience but that was still more than most other people.” At Viacom, she heads up the branded content division of what used to be a traditional television media company, which has successfully diversified. “Our brands, which include MTV, VH1, Comedy Central and Nickelodeon, have a combined 800m online followers and fans across Facebook, Twitter Instagram and Snapchat. If you represent a brand interested in reaching those people, one way is to co-create content with my team. To do this, we work with a lot of prominent social media influencers, including the most popular YouTube stars.”

The world of social media moves fast, so in order to keep up, Daly is always on the lookout for the next big trend. “I have to be one of the first people to join every new social media platform, even if it’s not one my peers would necessarily be on. That’s the only way you can fully understand them. Luckily I still really enjoy it.”

Although New York work culture is notoriously gruelling, Daly has managed to find balance. “In advertising, you’re expected to work long hours. It’s the same the world over and, of course, New York is 46 | January 2017 | THE GLOSS MAGAZINE

no different. But at Viacom, the work/life balance is manageable, certainly at my level. Contrary to what many people think, family time is very much valued in the US. I have a 16-month-old son and most of my colleagues also have children. Of course I’m on email continuously, but I block off two hours every evening to spend with him. Between Memorial Day, typically at the end of May, and Labour Day, at the beginning of September, there is definitely a vacation mentality here.”

Having lived in New York for four years, the longest she’s ever stayed in one place, Daly and her British husband have officially put down roots. “When I moved here first, I lived in Manhattan, as most people do, but my husband and I have just bought an apartment in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. It feels more like a neighbourhood there; I walk around and bump into people I know and everyone seems to have babies and young children. I’m not quite ready to move to the suburbs though – I like to look at the city across the water.”

When she’s not at work, Daly has discovered there’s more to New York than urban living. “New York is a really huge state with lots to offer and there are gorgeous mountain ranges, like the Catskills, just a couple of hours away,” she says. “In winter, we often get together with other ex-pat friends and Airbnb a big house for the weekend in a pretty little town upstate like Woodstock or Beacon. You can also go a bit further north to Vermont to ski. In summer, everybody decamps to the Hamptons where there are so many different houses to rent and you can spend a gorgeous weekend at the beach. My favourite place to go is Montauk, a beautiful old seaside town that has some of the best restaurants I’ve ever been to. When we were looking for our apartment, we almost bought a house there instead. It’s a thing in New York that people often buy their vacation home first because apartments in the city are so expensive. I know it sounds weird, but it makes sense to New Yorkers!”

This Glossy Life

Lydia Daly, photographed

by Rachel Brennecke, at Viacom in Times Square, New York.

The Décorista Fiona Byrne is an online entrepreneur and interior designer

Fiona Byrne, photographed

by Lauren Gesswein, at home in New York.

Tullamore transplant Fiona Byrne is something of a native New Yorker, having made the city her home 13 years ago. “I used to work in magazines in Dublin covering fashion, beauty and entertainment,” she says. “When I moved out here, I began contributing to The New York Times, New York Magazine, Nylon and more before becoming East Coast editor of NME and focusing on music. I then co-founded the fashion/lifestyle site www.naag.com [with model Agyness Deyn] and a couple of years later my own site, www.byrnenotice.com. I gradually started to move into interiors as a room stylist for Teen Vogue and loved that, so I started www. roomersmag.com, which is my interiors site.”

Byrne is also a contributing interiors editor for cult site www.thecoveteur.com, where she finds interesting spaces to photograph. Such is her eye for interiors that last summer she was commissioned to redesign the rooms at the hip Surf Lodge hotel in Montauk and she’s currently designing an East Village apartment, which will feature on a before and after series on www.thecoveteur.com, starting tomorrow.

“It’s nice that my decorating work is featured in Architectural Digest and such, I never in a million years thought that would be the case,” she says.

On the Lower East Side, Byrne has found the perfect apartment. Although small and noisy, it has windows in every room, including the bathroom. “It’s south facing so it’s really bright too. These are very important things in New York. It’s mostly white because I love minimal.

When I first moved to this neighbourhood it was all bands and skinny jeans and small venues. Now it’s fancy restaurants and hotels.

I’m not mad at that – I like nice wine.”

For unique furniture and homewares without the eye-watering price tag, Byrne recommends Adaptations and Porter James in Brooklyn. “I also like Design Within Reach and The Future Perfect. And Lee Broom just opened a store in Soho – his lights are beyond. Coming Soon in Chinatown has really, really nice stuff too.

Although she would like to eventually spend more time in Ireland, ideally in “a white thatched cottage with a red front door,” she is not prepared to give up her current lifestyle. Her most New York moment so far? “Probably Woody Allen making a joke in conversation with me at a party. It was like being in a movie. I was like, okay, my life has peaked. And last month I went to Marina Abramovic’s 70th birthday party at the Guggenheim. Everyone had to be totally silent and wear noise-cancelling headphones for 70 minutes until a gong sounded. You never know what you’re getting yourself into when you go to a party here, especially in the art world.”

THIS GLOSSY LIFE

Samantha Barry, photographed

by Rachel Brennecke, at CNN in Columbus Circle, New York.

The News Junkie Samantha Barry is Head of Social Media at CNN The last twelve months have been a whirlwind for Samantha Barry, who spent much of her time on the campaign trail covering the US presidential election for CNN Worldwide. The Cork native came to the role via stints at RTÉ 2FM and Newstalk in Dublin and in London at BBC World News.

“I landed in New York in September 2014 and couldn’t imagine coming to CNN at a more exciting time,” she says. “We’ve just been through one of the most dramatic election cycles in US history and social media has been at the core of it. I noticed my Irish friends were using private messaging apps to share news so we launched CNN on Facebook Messenger, LINE and Kik in July as an experiment. We are now the largest news brand across those three platforms.”

Travelling the length and breadth of the country to conventions in Cleveland and Philadelphia and debates

in Michigan, Miami and Las Vegas, Barry and her innovative team created groundbreaking news content for social media. “We sat down with each candidate and took their portraits for Instagram – those images became iconic and went on to appear everywhere. We also shot the candidates in vertical video for Snapchat. They were definite pinch-me moments,” she says.

After two years, the novelty of living in New York has yet to wear off for Barry, who is also a guest lecturer at Yale and a Sulzberger Fellow at Columbia University.

“It doesn’t get old – I feel like I’m in a movie sometimes when I’m walking down the street,” she says. “I love the spontaneity of New York. I love that you can call someone and 20 minutes later be having brunch with them. There are a lot of key Irish tech and media players in Manhattan, people like Darragh Hickey, the co-founder of Web Summit, and Laura Whitmore, who comes here a lot.”

At last year’s Web Summit in Dublin, Barry made it her mission to introduce a team of American CNN executives to the best of Irish cuisine. “I took them to lunch at Avoca and dinner at The Winding Stair. They all went home raving about Irish food,” she laughs.

Barry has now found her favourite spots in New York too: “If I’m spoiling myself, I’ll go to The Polo Bar for cocktails and the Irish woman in me loves The Hudson Hound, which serves great food and has a cosy snug. I just became a member of Soho House too so I’m looking forward to spending the summer at the rooftop pool.”

West Chelsea is where Barry calls home, in a cottage that sounds straight out of a Nancy Meyers film. “It’s the basement of a carriage house,” she explains. “It has the charm of an English country cottage in the heart of Manhattan, and it’s brimming with character.” But it’s to her parents home in Bantry where she goes to fully unplug – whether she likes it or not. “They don’t have any phone signal at their house,” she says. “I always end up going for runs – I literally run a mile to get a signal!”

Could anything tempt her back to Ireland permanently?

“I love going home, and it’s a big part of who I am, but I don’t see myself working in Ireland again. You have to be tough and competitive to survive in New York but I am tough and competitive. The buzz here gets me up in the morning. My siblings are both living abroad too – we’re a family held together by Skype.” ^ THE GLOSS MAGAZINE | January 2017 | 49