25.08.17
Elizabeth
olsen A superstar for our times
PARTY ANIMALS: the Tory insurgents and their plots for power modernist love: architectural holiday homes Plus: the best ice creams in town, ollie dabbous’ latest opening and the new hair-washing rules
CONTENTS 5 Notting Hill is totally brill in CAPITAL GAINS 7 Interiors envy and the ultimate crisp ranking in UPFRONT 9 Our MOST WANTED is Fendi’s logo bag 10 The TORY SUCCESSION: who’s in the running? 17 Think you’d better read right now: WILL YOUNG on anxiety and his LGBTQ podcast 20 All hail queen ELIZABETH OLSEN 31 It’s time for tea in BEAUTY
EDITOR Laura Weir
35 GRACE & FLAVOUR eats at Henrietta 37 TART barbecue tender charred octopus 38 Restaurant-made booze and oyster pairings in DRINKS 41 ESCAPE to the UK’s modernist getaways
Jonny Cochrane; cover: Elizabeth Olsen photographed by Blair Getz Mezibov. Styled by Nicky Yates. VICTORIA BECKHAM bodysuit, £665 (victoriabeckham.com)
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GELUPO, W1 ‘This bijou spot does incredible gelato, granita and sorbet, serving classic flavours alongside delicious quirky offerings such as tahini or pomegranate. So. Good.’ AliceAzania Jarvis, features director
42 Jeremy Scott’s MY LONDON
Here are the ES team’s top five London spots for ice cream
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MB SOFT ICE, W6 ‘There’s nothing like a 99 in the sun while strolling by the river. Especially when that 99 is from the van always parked by your house.’ Sophie Paxton, merchandise editor
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NARDULLI, SW4 ‘Nardulli ice cream parlour is so authentic, you will be transported to Italy after one bite. Totally worth the mile-long queues that stretch to Clapham Common.’ Natalie Salmon, social media editor
RUBY VIOLET, NW5 ‘Ruby Violet in Tufnell Park is a must for its unique flavours and super cute vintage parlour.’ Helen Gibson, picture editor
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YORICA!, W1 & W11 ‘All the fro-yos and ice ‘creams’ at both stores are vegan and can be topped with gluten-free sprinkles and sauces.’ Wendy Tee, acting art director
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Editor Laura Weir Deputy editor Anna van Praagh Features director Alice-Azania Jarvis Acting art director Wendy Tee Fashion features director Katrina Israel Commissioning editor Dipal Acharya Associate features editor Hamish MacBain Features writer Frankie McCoy
Acting art editor Andy Taylor Art editor Jessica Landon Picture editor Helen Gibson Picture desk assistant Clara Dorrington
Merchandise editor Sophie Paxton Fashion editor Jenny Kennedy Fashion assistant Eniola Dare
Social media editor Natalie Salmon
Chief sub editor Matt Hryciw Deputy chief sub editor Nick Howells
Beauty editor Katie Service Deputy beauty and lifestyle editor Lily Worcester
Office administrator/editor’s PA Niamh O’Keeffe
Contributing editors Lucy Carr-Ellison, Tony Chambers, James Corden, Hermione Eyre, Richard Godwin, Daisy Hoppen, Jemima Jones, Anthony Kendal, David Lane, Mandi Lennard, Annabel Rivkin, Teo van den Broeke, Hikari Yokoyama Group client strategy director Deborah Rosenegk Head of magazines Christina Irvine
ES Magazine is published weekly and is available only with the London Evening Standard. ES Magazine is published by Evening Standard Ltd, Northcliffe House, 2 Derry Street, Kensington, London W8 5TT. ES is printed web offset by Wyndeham Bicester. Paper supplied by Perlen Paper AG. Colour transparencies or any other material submitted to ES Magazine are sent at owner’s risk. Neither Evening Standard Ltd nor their agents accept any liability for loss or damage. © Evening Standard Ltd 2016. Reproduction in whole or part of any contents of ES Magazine without prior permission of the editor is strictly prohibited
25.08.17 ES MAGAZINE 3
capital gains What to do in London
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by FRANKIE M c COY
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Seeing red
Negronis are the best cocktails in the world — a fact that Rotorino in Dalston is celebrating with its Negroni Nights. From 10.30pm to 3am, all six negroni variations cost £7, the music gets loud and you can soak up the booze with some ridiculously good value £5 lasagne. 27 Aug (rotorino.com)
Want theatre but can’t bear to stay inside during summer? Hit the National’s River Stage Festival, with exclusive previews of Zimbabwean dance act Tavaziva and an NT Live screening of Twelfth Night (above). Quite the late summer night’s dream. Free. 25-28 Aug (nationaltheatre.org.uk)
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Cometh the carnival
It’s that time of year when Notting Hill becomes a vibrant mass of pounding reggae, feathers and eensy-weensy bikinis. Don’t miss Monday’s parade, alongside a healthy dose of Duppy Share rum. 26-28 Aug (thelondonnottinghillcarnival.com)
Screen scene
4 Common People
Alamy; Rex; illustration by Jonathan Calugi @ Machas
Waterside works
Wring the last drops out of London’s festival season down on Clapham Common at South West Four, with headliners Deadmau5, Knife Party and Pendulum ensuring you can hang up your raving boots for autumn, satisfied. Tickets from £62.50. 26-27 Aug (southwestfour.com)
Duckface, dinosaurs and John Travolta’s quiff: Pop Up Screens’ dedication to showing our fave old films at out-of-the-way spots is admirable. This week head to Hither Green’s lovely Manor House Gardens for Four Weddings and a Funeral, Jurassic Park and, best of all, Grease (left). From £12. 25-27 Aug (popupscreens.co.uk)
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last chance: Catch the brilliantly raucous schoolgirl
musical Our Ladies of Perpetual Succour at the Duke of York’s Theatre before it closes on 2 September and the real school term starts.
5 Jump around
Opportunity to release your inner child alert: this weekend a giant, inflatable obstacle course for adults known as The Beast is taking over the grounds of Alexandra Palace. Race you there. Tickets £22. 25-28 Aug (thebeastlondon.com)
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Hens behaving badly
Bridesmaids, eat your heart out — Rough Night is the new, excruciatingly funny girls-on-tour comedy that sees Scarlett Johansson (left) and Zoë Kravitz on a hen do that goes a tad wrong when they accidentally kill the male stripper. Oops. Out 25 Aug
look ahead: The Proms gets proper edgy with
electro mash-ups during its one-off performance at The Tanks at Tate Modern on 6 September.
25.08.17 es magazine
UPFRONT Laura Craik on supermodel home envy, her latest style sleuthing and crispgate
Josh Shinner; Getty; Vogue.com; Instagram
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very time I get back from holiday — unless I’ve been somewhere especially heinous — I start finding fault with my house. ‘This kitchen is too wooden,’ I say, gesturing at the dark iroko worktops, knackered oak floorboards, original stripped pine shutters and reproduction antique pine door. ‘It’s like living in a sauna, minus the chic Scandi minimalism. Or the warmth.’ To be frank, I could have done without Kate Moss’s palatial Highgate home being splashed all over Architectural Digest this month. If there’s one thing guaranteed to make you feel inadequate, it’s supermodels’ cribs. They’re not like footballers’ cribs, where you can quietly console yourself that yes, your sofa might be wine-stained and in a shade not fashionable since 1998, but at least you’re not living in Xanadu, with purple flock wallpaper, zebra skin rugs and a tiki bar. By contrast, Kate’s wallpaper is de Gournay, her bathroom curtains are embroidered silver saris and she lives in a ‘grisailleenveloped space’. I too want a grisaille-enveloped space. Right after I’ve googled what it is. The one stylistic tic that confounds me, though, is the supermodel penchant for plastering the walls with pictures of herself. Kate’s pad is full of them; so too is Cindy Crawford’s, as a video of her Malibu home, shot for American Vogue, recently revealed. Here’s Cindy, butt-naked and draped in a boa constrictor! It’s a little onanistic. Although if I looked like Cindy Crawford, maybe I’d hang naked photos of myself everywhere too, instead of ones in baggy navy jumpers, looking vexed. Meanwhile, it’s back to looking at kitchen worktops, stair carpets, mid-century floor lamps on 1stdibs.com, and other items that I can’t afford. A new study claims that one in three Londoners admits to constantly redecorating their house. Only one in three? Everyone I know is in a permanent state of dissatisfaction with their home, forever glowering at some loathed objet they bought on eBay half-pissed. We shouldn’t be so harsh on ourselves. Cindy Crawford has a cushion embroidered with the words ‘Love Life’. It doesn’t get much naffer than that.
Go west: Lotta Volkova
SHONKY TONK WOMAN If a picture paints a thousand words, then a stylist’s Instagram feed paints a thousand clues about her clients’ forthcoming collections. Judging by the travels of Lotta Volkova, we can expect a lot of deep Midwestern American influences surfacing in Vetements and/or
Top spot: Kate Moss and her Highgate neighbourhood
Beach babe: Cindy Crawford at her Malibu home
“If I looked like Cindy Crawford, maybe I’d hang naked photos of myself everywhere too” Balenciaga in the coming months. The stylist has been touring down Highway 79, taking in the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally, The Beaver Bar and various shonky motels en route to Rapid City, South Dakota. Anyone who remembers Hogs & Heifers, the saloon bar that ruled over New York’s Meatpacking District (before it got pushed out by rent rises), will get the aesthetic gist. Hipsters, you might want to start growing your beards and your sideburns. POTATO HEAD I’m still raging about the Oxford University student whose list of top 30 favourite crisps went viral, thus gazumping a personal project I’ve been finessing for decades. Isn’t it enough that people from Oxford University run the country? Do they have to start asserting their dubious taste in snack foods over us as well? How this elitely educated person can rank so many ready salted crisps in his top five is beyond me, but then, the world is divided into two types of people: those who think ready salted is the devil’s spawn, and those who are wrong. If a crisp doesn’t rip off the roof of your mouth with its piquant sting, it’s not truly a crisp. Walker’s pickled onion till I die. Of stomach acidity. No.1 crisp
HOT THE ARBOUR CAFÉ AT THE BOMA GARDEN CENTRE Kentish Town’s answer to Petersham Nurseries. Sort of.
NOT BACON SANDWICHES Set to rise by up to 90 per cent thanks to soaring pork and butter costs.
flavour?
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THE most WANTED
Tetris Tetriminio lights, £16.50, at amazon.co.uk
Block party: Pink, logoed — Fendi’s latest offering is bags of fun
Fendi Kan I bag, £5,290, at Harrods’ F is Fendi pop-up store from 4 September (020 3626 7020)
PHOTOGRAPH BY NATASHA PSZENICKI STYLED by SOPHIE PAXTON
25.08.17 es magazine
battle of the blues While the PM has been on holiday, talk of who might succeed her has gripped her party, with a gaping division opening up between the established right and a band of liberal, forward-looking young guns. So who will prevail? Charlotte Edwardes investigates illustrations BY nathalie lees
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hortly before recess, when the Commons shut up shop and Theresa May packed her Converse and Colgate and took a hike, a group of young Conservative MPs and politicos met for dinner. This was not a Cameroonian-style Notting Hill affair with a good Pauillac and Marlboro Lights. It was in Finsbury Park, Labour heartlands, and no one at the table was over 40. The mood was of brewing rebellion. ‘The feeling was — and is — that the current Cabinet doesn’t represent us,’ says an MP who was present. ‘They are not attracting younger voters and there’s a genuine fear for the party’s future.’ Another MP adds: ‘The generation on top — Boris Johnson, David Davis — are bluffers. Things are serious at the moment. We don’t want bluffers. There’s a real dismay at the level of mediocrity in Theresa’s team.’ All summer, they say, there has been a palpable crackle of frustration. Ruth Davidson has broken ranks on immigration. David Davis, the Brexit Secretary, has been heckled by Dominic Cummings, head of the Leave campaign, who described him as ‘thick as mince Johnny Mercer and as lazy as a toad’. There’s that and Kemi Badenoch feeling, says one Tory, ‘of the generals having failed and it’s time for the colonels to act’. As the horror of June’s election recedes, so the anger builds. Many are still spitting fury at the manifesto, which one prominent Tory MP describes as ‘so arrogant. They thought, “We can literally put a s*** in a folder and people will vote for us.”’ There are no ideas they can get
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behind, no one to represent them. ‘If you talk to any backbenchers, they say, “Oh it’s all terrible. No one listens,”’ says a former Tory minister. Worse still is May’s partnership with the DUP — whose ideas are as alien to progressive Conservatives as Jeremy Corbyn’s. ‘The gulf between backbenchers and Cabinet — and even junior ministers and Cabinet — is huge,’ he continues. ‘That’s partly generational, but the PM made a mistake not promoting fresh blood. First to create a sense of newness; second, because it’s always dangerous to leave clever, talented, pushy people sitting around with not enough to do.’ So where are the new ideas? Where is the positivity? What the hell is going on with Brexit? Where is the Conservative’s answer to Labour’s activists Momentum? Where are the Bright Young Things? ‘The rumbling of rebellion is there,’ says George Trefgarne, public affairs consultant and former journalist credited with first identifying the ‘Notting Hill’ Tories. ‘But it’s inchoate. It’ll be like a kaleidoscope: you’ll start to see these people, they’ll start to emerge and start grouping together. They’ll be seeing each Ruth Davidson other at weekends, in the evening. They’ll find somewhere to congregate. We’re waiting to see that obvious gang emerging.’ Back in 2004 the Bright Young Things were easy to find and not just in the wisteria-decked villas in Notting Hill. Many had been to school and university together, others gravitated to their gatherings with a shared desire to modernise the Tory party and upend the existing order. The mission was to dethrone ‘bed
strands. She is both a blockers’ like David Davis (yes, even then) and usher in a new era of lesbian, kick-boxing Cameroonians — who arguably had more in common with Tony Blair former BBC journalist than Margaret Thatcher. and an Army reservist, In the intervening elections — 2010 (described as the ‘golden practising Christian. generation’), 2015 and even 2017 — young ‘modern and progressive’ Her re c ent much Tory MPs flooded the party. They were clever, aspirational, liberal celebrated article for the minded and believed in the ‘fast track’ pace at which David Cameron new centre-right news had rocketed to the top, not plodding though decades of worthy jobs site UnHerd (started by and rising without a trace à la Theresa May. Tim Montgomerie, the ‘Then after the Brexit vote,’ says a former chief of staff, ‘once Boris founder of rightand Michael had killed each other, the Conservatives just wing website ConservativeHome.com, wanted nanny to come and hold their hand. Theresa was who’s and pitched as a rival to those sites the status quo candidate.’ proliferating on the left) showed she is The young MPs of the past three elections — who make certainly thinking about the national, not just up the majority of the parliamentary party — did not Scottish, challenge for her party. But maybe it will expect to be ‘ignored’ and ‘sidelined’ so quickly. In the top be all about who among the Westminster crowd she echelons of Cabinet, Amber Rudd, elected in 2010, is a throws her weight behind; some saw it as significant lone representative. Many feel deliberately turned against. that she was recently seen boozing with Amber Rudd. ‘We saw a chance disappear in front of us,’ says an MP But how to force change on an enfeebled elected in 2015. david cameron government? ‘We have such a small majority, everyone The déjà vu of David Davis hovering at the wings has to make their views heard and influence the certainly serves to sour the mood of the lower ranks. That Government without rocking the boat,’ says a wellplus the backbiting, the briefing, the backroom plotting, known Conservative MP. ‘Back in 2010 backbenchers played out against the backdrop of hubris that was the could be a pain in the neck: we could sign letters and election. ‘No one wants to see any more seedy election threaten to rebel. Now you feel things are so fragile campaigns,’ says one high-profile Tory. you might knock her off her perch by being clumsy. And indeed it was with vituperative zeal that May theresa may We’d end up in general election territory and with a swept away all trace of Cameron’s influence (even blocking communist government for five years, for which proposed public appointments of his allies). She brought the public would punish the hell out of us.’ back the banished men of grey Conservatism — parochial As for bringing on new talent to the top of politicians more village fete than Wilderness Festival. government, right now the sacking of any senior Under May all things metropolitan were suddenly bad, individual in May’s top team ‘is like removing all things regional good. ‘A citizen of the world is a citizen a supporting wall’. So how will the young of nowhere,’ she boomed in her 2016 conference speech — talent be tested and measured? Fresh faces instantly alienating progressive MPs, the Financial Times — like Cameron and Blair — tend to come through in (40 per cent of readers subsequently voted Tory, 39 per cent Labour) opposition not power. Many feel May’s only option is a and most of London. ‘Arguably,’ says one MP in his 30s, ‘if she hadn’t gentle reshuffling to promote younger talent when she damned citizens of the world she wouldn’t have lost Kensington.’ is stronger — ‘perhaps in the new year or spring’. Most So the debate in the Conservative party is this: Kensington or would like to see her slough off ‘dead wood like Bishop Auckland? Andrea Leadsom’. A young Tory explains: ‘Do you look at the election result and say, “Oh my God, look at all these seats we lost like Kensington and The appointment of Gavin Williamson, 41, as Canterbury, do we need to reconnect with the salaried, university educated professional classes?” If you think that is the problem, someone like Amber Rudd is probably your answer. ‘The other argument says, “Things went wrong but we’ve got this big increase in working-class support, we are in touching distance of taking Bishop Auckland off Labour, so we should double down on being the party of Brexit.”’ Is that the Donald Trump direction? ‘That’s not a bad shorthand. Essentially the choice is between being more Cameroonian because that’s what delivers seats like Kensington, or appealing to Northern workingclass seats and people who didn’t have a voice. The person who wins the Tory leadership is the person who can reconcile those two strategies.’ Some see Scottish Conservatives leader Ruth Davidson as the living embodiment of the reconciliation of those apparently contradictory
next?
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Cabinet of curiosities: from left, David Davis, Boris Johnson, Theresa May, Philip Hammond and Amber Rudd
Mogg mania : Jacob Rees -M his baby an ogg with d nanny
chief whip is seen as a nod in this direction. ‘Gavin is really good at this. He was Dave’s right-hand man and I really rate him,’ says a former Downing Street official. But it has to be done with subtlety and cunning. ‘Remove anyone senior and she’s creating enemies who will just go out and slag her off,’ says the official. Instead she needs to build bridges and be collaborative — not least to show at least some remorse for her catastrophic handling of the election. What is striking is that the party’s members, who have the final vote on who will be next leader, seem to agree that no one among senior ministers fits the bill to succeed May. There are fewer than 150,000 of these members, two-thirds less than Labour, and their average age is well over 50. Typically they are much less liberal than many younger Tory MPs. But more than a third said in a recent survey by ConservativeHome that they didn’t want anyone in the current Cabinet to lead the party when May goes. Their most popular potential candidate was Davis, with backing from 20 per cent. Only 9 per cent opted for their former darling Boris Johnson — not many more than voted for the relatively unknown right-wing Brexiteer, Dominic Raab. So who? Well in the survey’s ‘other category’ they were allowed to name their ideal candidate — and on that basis the right-wing, umbrella-carrying, pinstripe suit-wearing Jacob Rees-Mogg got almost a quarter more votes than Johnson. That 48-year-old Rees-Mogg shares traits with Corbyn is not unnoticed by commentators. Both have languished on the backbenches, both are the scourge of centrists (so much so that central office under Cameron’s leadership tried to block ReesMogg’s selection as a parliamentary candidate), both are ‘authentic’, ‘honest’ and have a cult following among millennials — not least because of their mastery of social media. Rees-Mogg has the slight advantage here in that he is mercilessly selfdeprecating, especially on Instagram, which has won him thousands of followers within weeks of him joining up. But his entertainment value is seen as a distraction by progressive MPs. He has voted repeatedly against same-sex marriage (because of his Catholic faith) and in favour of stricter asylum laws and mass surveillance. He makes no secret of the fact that for him the idea of progressive conservatism is an oxymoron. But one former minister says his form of absolutism will not succeed: ‘ The
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Conservative party will not survive unless it occupies the centre ground. We need to promote social issues that matter today — what May originally meant when she talked about the “ just about managing”. The minute we disappear into the arcane interests of factions to the right of the party [such as no deal with the EU and total inflexibility over immigration] we are lost.’ Another anxiety, say rebels, is that the wrong ministers — perhaps most noticeably David Davis, Philip Hammond and Boris Johnson — hog the limelight. ‘They don’t represent either the majority of the parliamentary party nor most of the people that vote Conservative, yet they are very keen to be on television. Most younger MPs find them as objectionable as most of the public.’ So how can the younger generation become more visible? A significant opportunity comes with the ‘Conservative Ideas Festival’ on 21 and 22 September, organised by George Freeman, MP for Mid Norfolk, with the aim of oiling the cogs of Tory thinking. Freeman, 50, chair of the Conservative Policy Forum, expects around 200 attendees — ‘no Cabinet’ — made up of party members, activists, counsellors and candidates, as well as people involved in renewal in society, economy and politics (‘but who don’t feel able to be mainstream Tories’), plus commentators and thinkers who might be ‘from the centre-left as well as the centre-right. They might have voted Labour all their life. Our team shares a concern that party politics has become too narrow, partisan and detached.’
“there’s that feeling of the generals having failed and it’s time for the colonels to act” The event will have a philosophy tent, a politics tent, an economy tent and a society tent. For example, James Morris MP is hosting a discussion of Shakespeare and politics. ‘The role of theatre in democracy — stuff you wouldn’t see at Tory conference.’ Fears that Momentum will try to sabotage the event mean the exact location is still secret, but Freeman hints at ‘central east Midlands, an hour and a half by train from London.’ He hopes Cult figure: supporters of the festival will be annual and that Jeremy Corbyn people will be able to ‘camp, glamp, at Glastonbury stay in a B&B. It’s not Glastonbury, but Amber Rudd it’s not the preserve of the party elite.’ The event will feed into the Conservative Party Conference, where — if there is not too much scabpicking over the election — insiders expect ‘a beauty pageant not just at the senior level but at other levels, too.’ When the rampant speculation
about who will save the Tories starts, as it will in the autumn, who communicates it very effectively. He’s also quite will be cursed by being fingered? good looking, which helps.’ From the 2010 intake Dominic Raab, say former No 10 insiders, Another former soldier — turned writer — from ‘will be first off the rank’. The 43-year-old former solicitor, the son 2015 is Johnny Mercer, 36. ‘Have you read his of a Czech Jewish refugee, is MP for Esher and Walton. book?’ I’m asked. ‘People say it’s good.’ He was justice under-secretary below Michael Gove in I haven’t but it’s called We Were Warriors: 2015 and was recently made junior minister in the One Soldier’s Story of Brutal Combat and justice department. sounds like a middle-class Bravo Two As hotly tipped is Rory Stewart, 44, whose Zero. Mercer hadn’t voted before constituency is Penrith and the Border and who was running for his seat, self-funded his appointed junior minister at the department for campaign (appearing topless in a shower gel advert international development after June’s election. He is for Dove) and caused an upset in the selection for an old school polymath: a writer, documentary-maker, Plymouth Moor View. academic, historian, diplomat (he was a governor in Another selection upset in 2017 came in Saffron Iraq by the age of 30) and explorer (he walked 6,000 Walden — a rock solid safe seat — where May’s team miles on foot in Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and had reportedly hoped to parachute in Stephen Nepal). But Raab is considered ‘too right wing’ by Parkinson, one her closest advisers, in a ‘stitch up’. many, and Stewart — although a Hollywood biopic of He was beaten by Kemi Badenoch, a 37-year-old kemi badenoch his life is planned — ‘too eccentric’. One acquaintance former member of the London Assembly who was remarked: ‘Stewart would have been an outstanding brought up in Nigeria. ‘She can dazzle. She’s very PM in the 19th century, if we still had an overseas strong, very opinionated and without a doubt will empire to run.’ be a big name going forward,’ says one MP. Another Another points out Stewart’s serious handicap: he is adds: ‘Everyone is raving about her maiden speech’ an OE. ‘And the Etonian quota can’t be high. We’ll — in which she said that she would not wish the probably have to operate a one-in, one-out policy.’ socialist policies she grew up with in Nigeria upon A former No 10 adviser also suggests ‘brilliant’, anyone — ‘she has an immigrant’s confidence in the ‘bullet-proof’ Amber Rudd, 54: ‘If there was a leadership country and the Conservative Party needs a bit of Rory Stewart election in a year and a half, coming to the end of Brexit, that positivity.’ you could see a situation where people might say, “We’re “the Etonian quota can’t not daring enough to go for one of these Rorys or ReesMoggs, and we don’t want all the obvious men, frankly. be high. We’ll probably need Amber could come through.”’ a one-in, one-out policy” The adviser dismisses fears over Rudd’s ultramarginal of 356 votes in Hastings, saying it would be And — crucially — as well as young MPs the very unusual for a Prime Minister or party leader to lose Conservatives need younger voters. In 2014 two their seat. ‘I’m not sure it has ever happened.’ polls showed a marked increase in the popularity James cleverly Fans of James Cleverly, 47, MP for Braintree since of the Tories among young people. First the British 2015, are enamoured indeed. He is backed for being Social Attitudes survey recorded that millennial ‘good on TV, comfortable in his own skin and happy to support had doubled since 2003 (to 20 per cent); pick fights with the other side’. And he is droll. When then a Guardian/ICM survey showed 54 per cent Corbyn talked about unlocking the potential of ethnic of 18- to 24-year-olds would consider voting for the minorities, Cleverly posted a series of mocking photos party in the 2015 election. of Tory MPs with captions such as: ‘Nusrat Ghani, Any such youth revival was smashed this year Conservative candidate in Wealden. Waiting for Corbyn — as young people turned out to vote for Corbyn to unlock her potential.’ and Labour in numbers unseen for decades. Tom Tugendhat One star, also from the 2015 arrivals, is Tom Supporting Labour has become so fashionable Tugendhat, former principal adviser to the head of among the young that instinctive Tories even lie the Army and MP for Tonbridge and Malling. about their allegiances at parties. The 44-year-old was elected chairman of the Foreign So what can the Tories do? ‘No one knows yet,’ Affairs Select Committee just two years after says a former adviser to the party. ‘One of the coming into Parliament. ‘Chairing a committee is things about Momentum is that they’ve brilliantly traditionally the domain of grey beards,’ comments an created a bottom-up Labour party organisation admiring colleague. ‘The fact that he that is not part of the Labour party. They’ve played stood and won reflects the a blinder. Johnny Mercer general impatience.’ ‘If Tory donors set up a Tory Momentum, that A No 10 staffer adds her would be rumbled immediately as a top-down vote for Tugendhat: ‘He thing and wouldn’t work. So it has got to be about listens. He’s quite liberal, very ideas and connectedness. And coming together. That’s how personable, speaks incredibly well, is societies self-organise. There needs to be a clear message: “Join very kind and was a soldier. He has a the Tories because…”’ good strong Conservative vision and Well, why? That is the work in progress.
In the
Getty; Rex; i-Images; Fame Flynet
running
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Will
power
He’s the pop sensation whose podcast has been the surprise hit of the summer, but Will Young hasn’t had it easy. He talks to Samuel Fishwick about finding success on his own terms and his hopes for a family
Tom van Schelven; Laura Lewis; Rex Features
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hree weeks ago, Will Young should have been at Wilderness Festival, singing duets with Laura Mvula. Instead he was in a field a mile away, clinging to his car’s steering wheel. ‘I couldn’t get out of the car,’ he says. ‘I was there for five hours. I really tried. I just couldn’t.’ Young, 38, has been wrestling with panic attacks like this for five years. His post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is the result, he says, of being bullied at school, feeling ashamed of being gay and separation from his twin, Rupert, at birth (they were born six weeks prematurely and Rupert was placed in an incubator). ‘It just happens occasionally, still. It’s just part of my life. It’s getting better every day,’ he says. Now, Young has turned all he Young with has learned into a podcast, Homo Homo Sapiens, which he likens to ‘an Sapiens co-host, LGBTQ+ version of Women’s Chris Hour’. Rather than focusing on Sweeney current events, he instead discusses issues from transphobia to the time he narrowly avoided a wardrobe malfunction at one of Sir Elton John’s White Tie and Tiara parties. It’s a riot — Young
and his co-host, Chris Sweeney, a film director, are at once both uproariously funny and unerringly discerning — and the podcast features interviews with the likes of journalist Owen Jones, songwriter John Grant and transgender actor Rebecca Root. Most importantly, though, it’s a space in which Young has been able to take back control, something that hasn’t always been easy in a career that stretches back to the moment he first appeared as a 23-year-old on Simon Cowell’s Pop Idol in 2002. Times have changed since then. ‘If someone came out now it wouldn’t be front-page news. You wouldn’t get 40 photographers on stepladders outside the flat, which is what I got. It’s funny because I’m possibly forever branded Gay Will Young, as well as Posh Will Young and Talent Show Winner Will Young. Those are the three. You know, which is fine, it’s just the way it is. We’re all put in brackets. There’s no place for it now. The compost has changed, so that kind of s*** can’t take root.’ He was advised not to reveal he was gay during the show. ‘I had to stamp my feet quite firmly.
Centre stage: Will Young as the Master of Ceremonies in Cabaret in 2012
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Top dogs: Sweeney and Young
Someone said, “If someone asks, don’t tell them.” I was furious.’ He now knows that it’s good to talk; alongside Homo Sapiens, he harbours ambitions of becoming a therapist. Was it hard to come out? ‘It’s not an easy thing to do. But when it’s out, it’s so much easier. It’s like, “Oh, why was that hard?” The pain comes with the repression, and the fear comes with the repression. That gets compounded.’ He grew up in Hungerford, West Berkshire, the second child Young on Pop Idol in 2002 of Robin, a company director of an engineering firm, and Annabel, a plant nursery gardener (he has an older sister, Emma). He says his mum was ‘worried’, even though she’s ‘a total anarchist’ (he has arm tattoos dedicated to his parents: a robin for his dad, a bell for his mum). Why was she worried? ‘She said she was worried about older men and HIV. That’s the kind of fear that had been instilled in people. She told another friend of mine he was going to die alone.’ What are the differences between being gay then and now? More apps and fewer clubs, says Young, although he doesn’t miss ‘messy nights’ at The Joiners Arms on Hackney Road. He’s single. Has he been on Tinder? ‘I met my last boyfriend on Tinder. It was great,’ he says. ‘I got to it because I hadn’t had sex for two years, because I’d been so ill. I couldn’t look at my face in the mirror, it was pretty hard to have sex. I couldn’t go out to clubs because I was still a bit agoraphobic. I wasn’t drinking. I do occasionally now — I don’t really like the feeling of being drunk whereas I used to love it.’
Laura Lewis; Getty Images; Rex Features
“I got Tinder because I hadn’t had sex in two years, because I’d been so ill. I couldn’t look at my face in the mirror... I was still a bit agoraphobic” Young has worked hard to get better. The attacks came on slowly — at first, he simply found it harder to leave the house. ‘I couldn’t cope with anything. This was continuous. I found it hard to leave for anything. Everything I loved was hard.’ Then he found he couldn’t look himself in the mirror. There was ‘derealisation’, when sufferers see other people and the environment around them as hallucinogenic, and ‘depersonalisation’, in
The singer with the Prince of Wales in 2004
With his Brit for best British Single in 2005
which they feel detached, observing themselves as if they were someone else. Eventually, he was diagnosed with PTSD while appearing in a West End production of the musical Cabaret in 2012. His treatment included seeing a shaman and doing ‘shaking therapy’ — shaking like an animal to ‘release trauma’. He has spent at least £500,000 on therapy, he tells me. ‘I’d do anything. Chris [Sweeney] said if you have a problem, you throw everything at it. That’s what I did. I wasn’t going to stay in that position. I only live once. I was either going to kill myself or get through it. I was determined enough and strong enough and had a strong enough constitution to get through it.’ Was that the reason he walked off Strictly Come Dancing last year? Partly. ‘I wouldn’t be asked to do it again and I don’t think it would be a good idea, even separate from my PTSD, which was making it intolerable because I couldn’t get out of bed.’ Developing a ‘toolbox’ to deal with his anxiety and addictions — he’s admitted to addictions to alcohol, shopping, porn and even love, and has said he could still spend £200 on socks in Sports Direct — has been hard. But the work has hardly dried up. He is working on a covers album while next month he starts a UK tour with National Theatre director Rufus Norris and Louise R edk napp, playing the Master of Ceremonies again in Cabaret. His worth was estimated at £13.5 million in 2012 and he is pragmatic about the idea of running himself as a business. He says people recognise him less. ‘Of course it bothers me,’
he says. ‘I mean, it doesn’t get to the core of me. But I’ve got an ego. Also, it’s reflective of how my business is going to be doing. Me being recognised is part of the brand. They think I’m Olly Murs, it’s awful.’ Does he want to marry and have kids? ‘Oh yeah. I’d be a great parent. I love kids,’ he says. Then he wavers. ‘I mean, it changes from day to day, I think. The problem with being a gay man, I say, is that I can’t sleep with my boyfriend and magically produce a child. So there’s a lot more time to think. I can’t go, “We’re trying for a baby.” There’s a little bit of chance to it when it’s like that, it’s still quite laissez-faire.’ Indeed, Young seems optimistic about most things. He’s back in London (he had moved to Penzance for his health). He runs. He chats to people he meets in Hyde Park. His car, a Mercedes G Wagon, is his safe space. And he has his podcast. ‘The best thing is it’s not about me. Everything I do has always been about me,’ he says. ‘That’s wearing. More and more to the point where I won’t do it and I’m now just doing these things. I feel like I can be myself, which is why it’s all so wonderful.’ Next year, they plan to take it on a tour around the UK. ‘The podcast is showing me that I’m at the point where I could very possibly just stop everything else. It’s just making me so happy.’ Ultimately, that’s all you can ask for. (homosapienspodcast.com); ‘Cabaret’ is at the New Wimbledon Theatre from 21-30 September (atgtickets.com)
25.08.17 es magazine 19
All hail queen
Elizabeth With her indie flicks and blockbuster roles, Elizabeth Olsen has cultivated the kind of career most actresses dream of. She tells Tiffanie Darke about her famous sisters, her fears for America and how she plans to build her empire PhotographS BY Blair Getz Mezibov stylED BY Nicky Yates
VICTORIA BECKHAM bodysuit, ÂŁ665 (victoriabeckham.com)
20 es magazine 25.08.17
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t’s a sweltering day downtown in the Bowery, the sort of humid August heat when it feels like Manhattan is melting. Boys in artful sarongs and beards cruise the sidewalk, girls in high-waisted cut-offs and snapbacks lean against open-air bars. It’s noon, and no one dares move too fast. But Elizabeth Olsen is not hot. In fact, she says she has frostbite in her fingers. Wearing black Calvin Klein jeans she picked up for $20 in a vintage store, slim black ankle boots and an oversized Altuzarra blouse, she’s been in air-conditioned TV studios doing interviews all morning and needs to defrost. She has asked that we meet in
Il Buco, a rustic Italian restaurant with the sort of premium paysan menu you’d recognise from places such as the River Cafe. This, she confides, is her favourite restaurant in New York: ‘My sisters have been bringing me here for my birthday since I was 15.’ Ah yes — her sisters. Mary-Kate and Ashley, the button-cute Disney twins who grew up in the full glare of the public eye, then reinvented themselves as fiercely private fashion entrepreneurs (their label, The Row, is as hot as ever, and they now own high-end concept boutiques in New York and LA). Elizabeth — or Lizzie as she introduces herself — shares their delicate features: blonde locks, Bambi eyes and symmetrical porcelain face. But what’s intriguing about this sister is that she can turn
25.08.17 es magazine 21
ARAKS pyjama top, £255 (araks.com). MESSIKA rings, £2,170 each (messika.com)
those looks to power. Six years after she burst on to the scene with a critically acclaimed performance in the indie flick Martha Marcy May Marlene, her carefully chosen roles have included Scarlet Witch in the unstoppable Marvel franchise, Avengers; Audrey Williams, Hank Williams’ wife and manager in the biopic I Saw the Light; and most recently, FBI agent Jane Banner in Wind River, a harrowing story of rape and murder set on a Wyoming Native American reservation, directed by Oscar-nominated Taylor Sheridan. This is the kind of career about which most actors dream: balancing respected low-budget independents with blockbuster international fame. Olsen, it becomes clear, possesses an acute understanding of how to make the business work for her. Doing films like Avengers ‘allows you to sell a film to investors’, she explains, as she helps herself to black kale salad and slivers of pata negra. ‘It gives you recognition in an international market. You then have more freedom of investors for independent films.’ At 28 she has also finally launched herself on social media, having created an Instagram account last year. Under the guidance of her friend, the comedian and actress Aubrey Plaza, she is using it to simultaneously cultivate her fan base and poke fun at herself (check out Olsen’s ‘Feed me Friday’ posts featuring unflattering paparazzi shots of her eating). But she also has an eye on the prize. Any aspiring actor who wants to pick up a commercial deal needs a sizeable social media following. And those commercial deals give you exactly the sort of fame you need to get those independent film projects off the ground. ‘That’s why George Clooney does Nespresso,’ she explains. So far Olsen has cameoed for Miu Miu, but now she’s ready for something more: ‘People want to be a part of something that’s giving back to something else. I would like to be a part of that because it’s something that I would be proud of. But it’s also something that would help me as an actor trying to get films made.’
“It’s horrible to think how the rest of the world is viewing the states right now. You don’t really know how to fix it as an individual because you can’t”
In this way Olsen is classic New Hollywood — clever, independent, well behaved, working the system. And like every good millennial, she is also strong on activism. ‘It’s horrible to think how the rest of the world is viewing the United States right now. You don’t really know how to fix it as an individual because you can’t. What is cool about what’s happening right now, however, is that while people have always talked about causes that they are interested in, now they are actually actively a part of them.’ Research for her role in Wind River has only made her more socially aware. ‘I ended up visiting the rape treatment centre in Santa Monica. It’s an amazing facility, for adults and minors. I was like, “What could I actually do?”’ Volunteers run the playroom, so Olsen went through a training course. When she finished filming, she
25.08.17 es magazine 23
MIU MIU coat, £1,515; dress, £1,605 (020 7409 0900)
With Aaron and Sam TaylorJohnson at the Avengers: Age of Ultron premiere
Elizabeth Olsen with Wind River co-star Jeremy Renner With Tom Hiddleston
With BFF Aubrey Plaza
With her sisters, Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen
Getty Images; Rex Features
ULLA JOHNSON sweater, £1,031 (ullajohnson.com)
returned to volunteer and now makes it a habit every Tuesday. ‘Going and playing cards with a bunch of really sweet people and just making them feel like a kid when they’re going through a traumatic experience — that to me is something I can walk away and be happy with… You make connections. If you go at the same time every week you see the same people. I see the same people every week when I’m in town. It’s a beautiful community... It’s really an incredible, supportive place. I love being a part of it.’ It’s no surprise that Wind River led her down other paths. Based on the true stories of the writer and director Taylor Sheridan following the years he lived on a reservation, it shines a light on the loophole in American law that lets those who commit a crime on a reservation (an area of land managed by a Native American tribe, rather than the state government) walk away free if they are not charged within the boundary lines. Given the limited police resources for investigating crimes within these vast jurisdictions, there are numerous undocumented cases of missing Native American girls. No national register exists to account for them. ‘It’s just another example of how we’ve screwed over this group of people from the beginning of this country,’ says Olsen.
We’re chatting easily now; this is usually the point at which the interviewer attempts to find out if her celebrity is going to divulge any details of who she is dating/ fancying/breaking up with. Olsen has been linked to a few leading men in the past, including Tom Hiddleston and singer-songwriter Robbie Arnett. But I can’t quite bring myself to ask. The thing I liked most about Wind River was the absence of a romantic play. With Jeremy Renner — a local hunter whose own missing daughter and broken marriage haunt his every move — taking the title role opposite Olsen, you would expect the actress’s FBI agent to step in as romantic saviour. But she doesn’t. There is no love affair concluding the movie.
“I ended up visiting the rape treatment centre in Santa Monica. It’s an amazing facility, for adults and minors. I was like, ‘What could I actually do?”’ ‘Taylor had to fight people on it,’ says Olsen. ‘Because some people want that to happen. They think that it’s going to make it a better movie or more people would want to see it. Which was one of the reasons I loved the script. It’s just a man and a woman having a partnership trying to figure out how to provide justice for this young girl.’ These are exactly the kinds of roles women want now. ‘The women in his film end up being the strongest. They’re the ones that fight for their life the hardest. He wanted the women to be the survivors.’ The waiter, who has now begun to suspect that pretty blonde ‘Lizzie’ might be someone more important than a walk-in, is bringing offerings of oozing burrata to the
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Olsen with Tom Hiddleston in I Saw the Light in 2015
In 2011’s Silent House
In Martha Marcy May Marlene in 2011, below
With Aaron TaylorJohnson in the Avengers: Age of Ultron in 2015
as they go. Then I look at the photos and I’m like, “It did look nice. Why was I crying?”’ Another revelation for her was this shoot for ES at The Whitby Hotel. ‘The photographer was great, we were in a cool hotel, it was a really great atmosphere. We had a great time. Like genuinely — I ended up getting in a bathtub at the end of it and got my hair wet. It was just fun.’
“The women in wind river end up being the strongest. They’re the ones that fight for their life”
Olsen with musician Robbie Arnett
26 es magazine 25.08.17
table. It’s becoming clear why this is an Olsen family favourite — the deli round the corner, I’m told, is ‘insane’. Olsen says when she was at film school in New York (she studied at Tisch School of the Arts) she shopped there all the time. Then she remembers Pesantissimo in Primrose Hill, where she lived for a time while filming Avengers: Age of Ultron in 2014, and used as a pit stop off-licence as it had ‘amazing wine’. ‘If I could live in any city, I would want to live in London,’ she says. She was put up there by the Marvel team and hung out with her friends the TaylorJohnsons, exploring as much of the city as she could by foot. ‘People from London thought I was insane walking from Primrose Hill to Shoreditch along the canal. I ended up having to stop and get blister pads.’ I can imagine this. Despite her commercial and industry nous, Olsen is not a conventional starlet. She insists she hates the red carpet and finds fashion confounding and difficult — ‘It’s not my comfort zone,’ she shudders. A recent trip to the Paris couture shows was different. ‘I went to a Dior show and ended up getting to wear a look to the premiere in New York. I felt great that night just because I felt like I was in something that I love. Sometimes when I’m not in something that I love I cry on the way to the premiere and I’m posing with my shoulders as far back
She has recently bought a house in the Hollywood Hills, which she is renovating while she rents with a friend. Much of her family lives in LA; her parents, Jarnette, a personal manager, and David, a property developer and mortgage banker, divorced in the midNineties and she has a brother and two half siblings: ‘We have weekly family get-togethers, either my dad cooking at my place or the occasional Valley sushi spot. Sometimes it feels like a lot of things to fit in but it’s good we do it.’ While in New York, though, she is enjoying catching up with Mary-Kate and Ashley: ‘I just had dinner with Ashley when the premiere was happening. She was very sweet to come with me to the after-party.’ She clearly adores them. ‘I just think they’re brilliant women. [On their shops] they’re like, “I like this. I like this world. I like art, I like architecture, I like photography, I like fashion,” and they’ve made it into a company... I’ll go visit them at the office and sit in a meeting if I’m in and out of town. They’ll be talking about piping or buttons [and] they have taught me about art.’ Like many switched-on young women, Olsen sees herself in the round. The movie career she describes as a ‘part-time job’. On top of that she is also a reluctant fashion muse, fledgling brand ambassador and, most recently, rape crisis volunteer. It might be a lot to handle, but it also means that in these more uncertain times, if one thing goes wrong, there’s plenty more to fall back on. New Hollywood, indeed. ‘Wind River’ opens in cinemas on 8 September
FRAME jumper, ÂŁ489 (frame-store.com). OLIVIA VON HALLE shorts, ÂŁ345 (sold as a set), at net-a-porter.com Hair by Mark Townsend; make-up by Gita Bass using Simple Skincare, both at Starworks Artists. Fashion assistants: Elizabeth NeSmith and Sophie Dearden. Shot in The Whitby Suite at The Whitby Hotel in New York (firmdalehotels.com)
beauty by katie service
On tray, clockwise from left: IT’S SKIN Cookie & Hand Cream, £9.25; Macaron lip balms, £6.50 each, both at thisisbeautymart.com. PHILOSOPHY Vanilla Birthday Cake shampoo and shower gel, £14.50 (philosophyskincare.co.uk). TONY MOLY Mini berry SPF15 lip balm, £9.50, at selfridges.com. FORTNUM & MASON Macaron soaps (set of 6), £25 (fortnumandmason.com). Below, right: MAD BEAUTY Biscuit lip balms (set of custard cream, jammy dodger and bourbon), £3.50 (madbeauty.com) DESIGNERS GUILD cake candle, below, £55; cake candle, top right, £45 (designersguild.com)
Let Them Eat Cake
Indulge in a feast of lip balms, creams and candles — perfect for beauty lovers with a sweet tooth PHOTOGRAPH BY will bunce STYLED BY lily worcester
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BEAUTY
You beauty!
ON THE SOAPBOX
Maison Margiela’s go-to hairstylist EUGENE SOULEIMAN on new hair-washing rules and how to avoid common mistakes
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ashing your hair is simple, right? Well, maybe — but a few tweaks can make all the difference when it comes to the results. Here are my four golden rules for shampoo success. Never brush your hair straight after you have shampooed it. This may seem obvious but so many people brush their hair before conditioning it. Shampoo strips off everything that’s there to protect the hair, such as your sebum (natural hair oils), meaning that your hair is in the most fragile state and can be easily broken. Only wash the roots of the hair. Rubbing the ends can cause the cuticles to lift and sacrifices shine because less light can be reflected off the hair shaft. And by the time you’ve rinsed off your shampoo it will have travelled down your hair and taken off the dirt anyway. Rinse your conditioned hair in cooler water. This will cause the opened hair cuticles to close, locking in the moisture from the conditioner, which results in healthier-looking hair. Believe the hype. Professional products bought from salons are better; you get better results and you have the SYSTEM opportunity to ask the stylist questions. I PROFESSIONAL always use System Professional shampoo — LuxeOil, £ 20.70, at Wella Salons it’s fantastic.
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(wella.com)
W Annabel Rivkin finds her premier palette
Josh Shinner; Natasha Pszenicki; Instagram
HEADSPACE
In need of a little guilt-free R&R? Neutreat has just the place. With Pilates, circuits, classes and walks in the countryside by day and delicious organic wines (usually off limits on strict detox breaks) by night, this rustic chateau in tranquil south-west France puts the treat back into retreat. Rooms from £450, 1-8 Sept (neutreat.com)
hat is it about Chanel? Why is it that when we hold a single make-up palette in our hand we are instantly connected to everything we love about the French? Hmmm, maybe not love. Maybe it’s everything in the French we aspire to. Not the scary Parisian cab drivers or the ‘everyone keeps a mistress’ marriages so much as the… effortlessness. Or the apparent effortlessness. The packaging that doesn’t change every five minutes because… well, why would it? It’s kind of perfect. Black. Glossy. Not too light and not too heavy. Out it comes from your make-up bag and connects to your very soul. ‘That,’ you think, ‘is me. I am Chanel. Part of me is French and, while faintly vulnerable, I am nonetheless unf***able-with.’ That is the power of Chanel. And that’s before you’ve even opened the darn box. Sheesh. My latest amour is the Palette Essentielle — just out, hurry now, will fly — which encompasses a creamy, balm-like concealer, a meltingly light highlighter and a translucent blusher with enough muscle to bring a wash of colour to the cheeks and, should you choose, elegantly bruise your lips. Nothing vulgar. This delightful trio will be my beach make-up. Just so. A bit of calming down of the complexion along with a blurring of blotches, a whisper of luminosity and a ping of good health. It’s also the answer for evening touch-ups. There is an unfortunate vogue for reapplying bronzer throughout the day and night which, in excess, will make your face muddy rather than fresh. This palette is Sunday morning make-up. It’s ‘I woke up looking like this’ make-up. It’s barely there but makes all the difference. Chanel Palette Essentielle, £52 (chanel.com)
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feast
grace & flavour Grace Dent feasts on Henrietta’s ferociously delicious
food — but turns a blind eye to its clientele and decor
“Only the coldest heart or skinniest miser wouldn’t feel cheered by the fresh warm madeleines for dessert”
Ambience food
Jonny Cochrane; illustration by Jonathan Calugi @ Machas
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art of every great chef’s journey on taking the reins of a hotel restaurant must be the dawning knowledge that although you can cook as beautifully as you like, you cannot beautify the clientele. Unless, that is, you vet everyone booking an Executive Suite and specify to the lumpen, the flammablefabric-clad and the roaringly regional that all their meals should be taken elsewhere. As this is neither hospitable nor lucrative for the hotelier, I go gingerly in my approach to booking such spots. Anne-Sophie Pic may be doing delicious things at the new Four Seasons Hotel but I’d be more thrilled over a recall on a smear test than a hot date there. Almost everybody eating dinner at Sea Containers in The Mondrian, on any given evening, needs to be scraped into the Thames, then thrown directions to swim towards the Bubba Gump Shrimp Co at the Trocadero. Still, Henrietta within The Henrietta Hotel in Covent Garden loitered around my Things To Do list as I will always make time for the work of Ollie Dabbous. Not, I’ll add, due to the much rhapsodised over but now culled Dabbous, but due to Barnyard on Charlotte Street, now closed, which sealed in my mind that this was a man who understood feeding people. Barnyard was a bloody strange place, hewn from corrugated iron and reclaimed timber, resembling the queuing section of some sort of Chicken Run: The Movie ride you might see at Alton Towers. Dabbous was not head chef here, but under his watch the menu featured the sort of sausage rolls, bubble and squeak and barbecue short rib that flavours my dreamscape. I knew that at Henrietta, with Dabbous’ name
henrietta 14-15 Henrietta Street, Covent Garden, WC2 (020 3794 5314; henriettahotel.com)
6
Glasses of Verdejo
1
Veggie flatbread
1
Runner beans
1
Burrata
£9
1
Chicken
£23
1
Sirloin
£28
1
Hispi cabbage
£5
1
Diet Coke
£5
Total
£66 £9 £12
£157
being hoisted as visionary and director, I would not starve. I’ve no evidence he cooks there, but his influence is present in simple things like grilled flatbreads with sesame labneh titivated with spring blossoms and pickled vegetables. Faffy, whimsical — yes — but also ferociously delicious. I wish this happened more. Lord God, I am over sitting in restaurants smiling wanly through eight courses of semi-flavoured concept. So let it be said that the team at Henrietta is doing great things. A starter of grilled runner beans in an knee-weakening puddle of savoury pine nut praline laced with Sussex slipcote cheese and calamint was a vegetarian’s fantasy. We made a fine burrata with nectarine, honey and lemon thyme vanish rapidly, too. And these dishes, the lovely, cheerful service and, by this point, two glasses of Verdejo, meant I was becoming inured to Henrietta’s troubling decor, which is modelled on the sort of restaurant one might see on Emmerdale if one went to the scriptwriters’ notion of ‘the flashiest place in Leeds’. Henrietta is one long room with a busy bar at one end and at the back, seating at sofa level yet made of separate chairs. There’s an abundance of shelving with not a lot on it. I felt like going back the next day with a job-lot of succulents and some Dulux sample pots. Henrietta, for all its yearning, still has a sense of the multi-purpose breakfast room. And it can do nothing about hotel guests peering at menus, wondering aloud why mackerel, turnip and gooseberry would ever come on the same plate. But if you’re in Covent Garden this is a steady choice for lunch or dinner. The sevenyear, grass-fed sirloin with agria potatoes was gorgeously herby and heroically satisfying. The Yorkshire herb-fed chicken appeared with a sort of warm rustic risotto of barley and Paris brown mushrooms. So much to love here. Fresh warm madeleines were served for dessert with Chantilly cream. Only the coldest heart or skinniest miser wouldn’t feel cheered by this thought. Henrietta is handy, fancy and the sort of place you can take your Aunty Sheila. This is its gift and also its problem.
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feast
tart london Jemima Jones and Lucy Carr-Ellison discover that smoky barbecued octopus is worth a few squeals
Prepping in paradise: Jemima crushes spices for lunch en Provence
Jemima Jones (left) and Lucy Carr-Ellison
Josh Shinner
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antorini, one of the Cyclades islands in the Aegean Sea, is among the most magical places we have been to. Devastated by a massive volcanic eruption more than 3,000 years ago, it is still dramatically beautiful in an arid kind of way, with glorious whitewashed, cubiform houses on the clifftops. Even though the island feels rather stripped of nature with very few trees, the volcanic ash has left the soil rich in nutrients. This is perfect for growing vines, and makes for the most delectable tomatoes and wines. Despite depressing tales of overfishing, fresh seafood seems in abundance. Every day on a recent visit, lunch was a feast of Santorini produce: Greek salads, tzatziki, fried aubergine and courgette and barbecued fish. But most delightful of all was the charred octopus. The tentacled creatures hang on lines outside tavernas, drying out in the sun before hitting the flames. Simple yet fantastic, and crying out for a cold glass of Santorini white wine. When we got back to London we ordered an octopus from The Fish Society, with no idea how to prepare and serve it. Soon we found ourselves staring into Jemima’s kitchen sink as cold water poured over its jelly-ish body and long, slimy tentacles. Worst of all we could see its beady eyes staring at us. It took a lot of squeamish squeals to pick it up, but finally we were cooking our alien monster with onions, garlic and bay, before slicing the tentacles from its head and slapping them on to our Big Green Egg barbecue. Charring is definitely our favourite way to eat octopus: it gives it a smoky taste, a crispy exterior and tender, soft insides. This is a brilliant dish, and well worth all the squeals beforehand.
Serves 4
Chargrilled octopus
For the octopus 1 octopus 1 onion, quartered 1 head of garlic, chopped in half 2 bay leaves 1 red chilli Large tbsp black peppercorns 1 lemon, quartered 1 large glass of white wine
Place the octopus in a large pan with the onion, garlic, bay leaves, chilli, peppercorns, lemon and white wine. Cover with water and bring to the boil. Simmer for about 1 hour, until tender when pierced with a knife. Drain and leave to cool. To make the butter bean purée, heat the butter in a pan over a medium heat, add the garlic, leek and sage and cook for 5 to 8 minutes until soft. Add the butter beans and coat in the leek mixture, then add the white wine, salt and pepper. Simmer for 15 minutes, then use a spoon to break up the beans and take off the heat. Once cooled, blend in a food processor until smooth. To make the salsa, simply stir all the ingredients together. Finally, to char the octopus, light the BBQ and let the coals get very hot. Pull the tentacles from the head, then discard the head and any skin still attached to the tentacles. Coat with olive oil, salt and pepper, then place on the barbecue and char for about 10 minutes until nice and crisp. Spread the purée over the platter, then spoon over the salsa. Place the octopus on top, and finish with the parsley and a squeeze of lemon juice.
For the butter bean purée 75g butter 4 garlic cloves, thinly sliced 1 leek, sliced Small bunch of sage, chopped 2 400g tins of butter beans, drained 1 small glass of white wine salt and pepper For the salsa 200g sweet tomatoes, deseeded and finely chopped ½ red onion, finely chopped 1 red chilli, chopped 1 tbsp chopped oregano 1 tbsp chopped basil 2 tbsp olive oil salt and pepper Parsley and juice of half a lemon, to serve
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Pitt Cue and, below, one of its beers
FEAST
In the MIX
Douglas Blyde discovers that the world is his oyster
Frankie McCoy on the London restaurants distilling their own alcohol
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estaurant boozing doesn’t have to involve marked-up wine lists and overpriced beer and spirits. Chefs and bartenders are “The olive in a dirty Martini working together to cut out the middle man and create their own in-house alcohol brings out the gin’s signature designed to match your meal perfectly, apple marigold flavours” whether it’s small plates at Michelin-starred hotspots, or the best mangalitza pork in For something a little more refined, London at Pitt Cue in the City, where beer is waltz over to Fera at Claridge’s for specifically brewed to match. Why? Because award-winning gin distilled in the they’re control freaks. When he opened his kitchen using a rotary evaporator — a new site last year, says co-founder Simon molecular gastronomic instrument that Anderson, ‘the one thing we had no real leaves the botanicals intact during control over was what went in the beer’. distillation to maximise freshness and Welcome Alphabeta, the on-site brewery flavour. Those botanicals include juniper, where each beer is linked as much to the coriander and apple marigold and the restaurant as possible, down to sharing resulting spirit is silkily herb-sweet — ingredients. The yeast, for example, is the especially, as head bartender Ale Villa same as is used to make the recommends, in a dirty Martini (‘The sourdough (later grilled and topped olive brings out the flavours of the with bone marrow for the naughtiest signature apple marigold’). toast in town); the summer ale is Chemistry lab wizardry is also brewed with the house barbecue rub; deployed at Scout bar in Shoreditch, while the grains in the smoked porter where Matt Whiley ferments inare smoked over the same grill that season produce such as apple and hay fires the featherblade steaks. in 30-litre buckets for three weeks In the mood for pizza? Head to before bottling into fruit wines that Pizza Pilgrims and chase your clock in at 4-8%. Great if you’re a smoked Napoli with a glass of fan of natural wine, and even Pococello — the version of the Italian better with a plate of house liqueur made in collaboration with pickles with truffle yoghurt. Pizza Pilgrims’ Chase Distillery. ‘We were really Ordering the house wine never version of limoncello, disappointed not to be able to sell a sounded so appealing. Pococello
38 es magazine 25.08.17
‘O
Jonny Cochrane; Alamy; glassware available at waterford.co.uk
Match MAKERS
limoncello of the same quality as we were used to in Naples and Amalfi,’ says co-founder Thom Elliot. ‘When we bumped into the Chase Distillery team at Camp Bestival they were interested in helping us. It spurred us on to go back to Amalfi, source some world class lemons and make a limoncello we could be proud of.’ The peels of those lemons are steeped in Chase’s raw potato spirit for a week before being blended with sugar and water for an intense sweet liqueur. Mixed with tonic, it becomes an citrus fizz that cuts through the cushiony crisp pizza dough.
ysters got trapped in fancy restaurants, which is why a lot of people went off them,’ laughs Rob Hampton, a man on a mission to change that. We meet at Covent Garden’s bijou seafood parlour, The Oystermen, which Hampton founded with Matt Lovell. Together, they transformed a greasy spoon with a false ceiling into a shipshape seafood bar awash with fresh crustacea and intriguing elixirs. In their company, I plunge into the role of brave matchmaker of oysters and ABV. ‘You won’t find our wines on offer in supermarkets,’ says Lovell, pouring steely Cretan white Assyrtiko to accompany Dooriel Creek oysters harvested by ‘a dude and his dad’ in County Mayo. ‘It’s the biggest-selling wine because we’re behind it,’ says Hampton of the enlivening combination, which sees the peach-skin scented wine dovetail with the cucumberflavoured Irish oysters. Next, well chilled Loire red vigorously fights before finally making firm friends with a small but powerful Kumamoto Japanese oyster, raised in Maldon. With an opening honeydew character, the seabed’s earthiness ultimately finds harmony with the forest-floor notes of the angular Cabernet Franc. Soon, higher-strength fare joins the fray. Hampton wants to dispel myths concerning oysters and distillates. ‘Whisky won’t turn oysters to stone in your stomach,’ he urges, pouring young Woodford Reserve bourbon with a Porthilly, which he says is ‘the pinnacle of the English oyster from Rock’. Lovell agrees: ‘They are the creamy sweethearts of Cornwall.’ The pretty, velvety oyster becomes pudding-like under the dark spirit’s auspices, evoking salted caramel. Finally, home-made smoked rye bread schnapps, from the duo’s friends at Snaps + Rye, brings waves of umami to Maldon oysters, leading to what Hampton calls ‘a salty baseline’. My tour ends with sweatinducing Scotch bonnet-infused Konik’s Tail vodka, which Lovell later tells me ‘made a Japanese tourist cry’. Hot stuff. (oystermen.co.uk)
Little Cottage, Cornwall
escape
EDITED by dipal acharya
The white stuff: Little Cottage
Mill House, West Sussex
Gather your 16 closest friends (and their walking boots) for a good old country party in the South Downs. Situated between two 150-year-old windmills named Jack and Jill, Mill House was designed last year by innovative, RIBA-winning architects Featherstone Young. There are two buildings: the airy, stacked cube main house, with five bedrooms and inspiring views over the rolling Downs; and the many-windowed granary building, with two more bedrooms, a wood-burning stove in case you get chilly and a Steinway for late night, wine-soaked singalongs. A walk across the countryside is essential — head two miles over to Ditchling and stop off halfway at The Bull for a pint. And forget takeaway for dinner — there’s a wood-fired pizza oven in the garden begging you to flip some dough. FM Sleeps 17, from £950 per night (themodernhouse.co.uk)
Perched on a Poldark-worthy hillside in Cornwall’s beautiful Praa Sands is Little Cottage. The name is served with a cool slice of irony, because this sprawling modernist haven is the family holiday home of Soho House architect Alex Michaelis — and it’s huge. Days begin with blustery walks on the endless golden beach just feet away from the house, and end with a soak in the garden hot tub followed by supper cooked in the well-equipped kitchen. Hangovers are eased by the cosy wood-burning fireplace, enormous television and a supremely comfortable, giant bean bag. Each of the three main bedrooms comes with a free-standing bath positioned perfectly for coastal views through huge floor-to-ceiling windows. For an antidote to the striking simplicity of the place, head to local beach-top hangout Sandbar for a rustic round of pool, pints and chips all for under £20. LW From £919 for a minimum three-night stay (beachspoke.com)
modern romance Architectural holiday homes for stylish escapes
Live soundly: The Life House
New brick cube: Mill House
The Life House, mid wales
And breathe… The Life House in Llanbister is one of Alain de Botton’s Living Architecture properties and is specifically designed to impart serenity and intense relaxation. How? Extreme seclusion, for one: it’s in a remote area of mid-Wales. Plus it was designed by minimalist architect John Pawson — responsible for the Design Museum’s interior — who took inspiration from Japanese and Buddhist monasteries. Each of the three simple, light-filled bedrooms focuses on a particular relaxing activity: bathing (with a deep bath by the window for contemplation); reading (walls lined with meditative literature); and music (giant speakers and a library of transcendental music). If that’s not calming enough, there are also two ‘contemplative chambers’ inscribed with inspirational quotes from mathematician Blaise Pascal. JK Sleeps six, from £700 for four nights (living-architecture.co.uk)
25.08.17 07.07.17 es magazine 41
my london
Jeremy Scott as told to Katrina Israel
Home is… The Hollywood Hills, where I have been based since I moved from Paris in 2002. What’s the first thing you do when you arrive back in London? Get something to eat at Mildreds (above). I love its veggie burgers.
Where do you stay when you’re in London? Claridge’s — it’s very comfy and cosy and it has impeccable service.
Your earliest London memory? I was 21, and I’d always been told I look like a London kid — think punkish kilts. Even my teachers at college in the US were like, ‘You should be going to Saint Martins, what are you doing here?’ So I got off the plane in London and was looking around for ‘my people’ and tourists kept coming up and asking me for a picture. Which building would you love to buy and live in? Buckingham Palace of course. I think I’d have to bring a few things in, but I would definitely want to keep a little bit of the Queen’s taste.
42 es magazine 25.08.17
What do you collect? I love junk. I have a whimsical personality and sense of taste, so I love going to flea markets. Last season I was collecting all kinds of metal elements for a beret collaboration with English icon Judy Blame for the Moschino show.
The fashion designer loves eating at Sexy Fish, finds his comfort zone at Claridge’s and visits Rellik in Portobello for vintage wares What’s the last album you downloaded? Katy Perry, Witness (left). I’m playing it every day on my laptop. Best piece of advice you’ve ever received? Tom Ford told me: never use your own money, use other people’s. He’s always been like a big brother to me. Who do you call when you want to have fun in London? Fran Burns, Pixie Geldof, Ashley Williams and [Palace founder] Lev Tanju. What are you up to at the moment? I’m here to celebrate Magnum’s
Covent Garden pop-up, my Magnum x Moschino bag collection and a new combination for their dipping bar along with Miss Cara Delevingne (below, with Scott). She was always a big fan and opened my show when some designers thought that she was too small. I remember her being sad and consoling her like, ‘Don’t worry, they’ll all be clamouring one day.’ And now they couldn’t have her if they had bucketloads of cash.
Favourite London retail experience? [Vintage destination] Rellik (above) in Portobello. Co-owner Steven Phillip is so knowledgeable, I just pull up a chair and listen. What’s next? My September New York show, which will mark my 20th anniversary of being independent and owning my own company. Sometimes people have barely graduated from college and they’ve already sold their company, so I feel very proud of that. The Magnum x Moschino pop-up is at 21-23 Earlham Street, Covent Garden, WC2, until 10 September
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What is the best meal you’ve had in London? I recently had dinner at Sexy Fish (left). They did a whole vegan menu — I’m vegetarian — and there was a yummy, yummy tofu and fried avocado dish that was delectable. The giant clamshell of desserts was also to die for.