AIR Magazine - Empire Aviation - December'20

DECEMBER 2020

SOPHIA LOREN

Contents

AIR

DECEMBER 2020: ISSUE 111

FEATURES Thirty Four

Let’s Talk Hollywood star Elisabeth Moss tells Alexandra Pollard why it’s time women stopped biting their tongues.

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Forty

Hearst Amongst Equals Anna Murphy meets Gabriela Hearst to talk privilege and responsibility.

Forty Six

Fifty Two

After a decade long absence, silver screen icon Sophia Loren is back - and sharing the secret to her stamina.

Chris Anderson on what became of those who traded blows with The Greatest.

Sophia The First

The Men Who Fought Ali

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Learn more at executive.embraer.com/praetor600.

L E A DING T H E WAY

Contents

DECEMBER 2020: ISSUE 111

REGULARS Fourteen

Radar

Sixteen

Objects of Desire Eighteen

Critique Twenty

Timepieces EDITORIAL

Twenty Eight

Art & Design

Chief Creative Officer

Fifty Eight

john@hotmedia.me

John Thatcher

Motoring

ART

Sixty Two

Art Director

Gastronomy

Kerri Bennett

AIR

Sixty Six

Illustration

Journeys

by Jet

Leona Beth

COMMERCIAL

Sixty Eight

Managing Director

What I Know Now

Victoria Thatcher General Manager

David Wade

david@hotmedia.me

PRODUCTION Digital Media Manager

Muthu Kumar Twenty Four

Jewellery

Why the lifestyle of Andrew Grima proved every bit as fabulous as his jewels.

Tel: 00971 4 364 2876 Fax: 00971 4 369 7494 Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission from HOT Media is strictly prohibited.

HOT Media does not accept liability for any omissions or errors in AIR.

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LEADING THE WAY

FOR BUSINESS AVIATION

BOOK NOW W W W. M E B A A . A E R O

Empire Aviation Group DECEMBER 2020:ISSUE 111

Welcome Onboard

ISSUE ONE HUNDRED AND ELEVEN

Welcome to this issue of AIR, our private aviation lifestyle magazine for aircraft owners and onboard guests.

As we approach the end of an unprecedented year, we can look back on an extraordinary period of time and consider some of the things we have learned along the way and look ahead to next year with increasing confidence.

One noticeable feature of 2020 is that the benefits of private aviation have become more appreciated as an attractive option for leisure and business travellers looking for additional comfort, privacy, security and convenience in the air, in the terminal and at the destination.

We believe this trend will continue into 2021, with more people experiencing private aviation for the first time.

Our year has also been filled with a range of activities, from supporting the vital repatriation of people to the safety of their home countries, to flying medicines and supplies to places in need, and the evacuation of critically ill patients. It’s been our privilege to use our skills and experience to help out in these situations.

As we look ahead to 2021 with growing optimism, we can see the potential for private aviation to continue its quick recovery and we already anticipate a number of positive announcements for the new year. We have a pipeline of several new aircraft poised to join our managed fleet – extending our operations into new territories in the process – while charter bookings are very encouraging. There is even growing interest in aircraft sales.

In fact, some analysts are predicting that private aviation will fully recover by mid 2021 – whether it will be led by the business or leisure sectors remains to be seen, but we have already seen a strong interest for leisure charter.

So, after a very challenging year for many of us, we are expecting 2021 to be very active and much more positive and we must thank all our aircraft owners, charter clients, and all our business partners for working together to get through a very difficult period.

I must also thank every member of the Empire Aviation team for their dedication and commitment in making sure we have been able to continue to support all our owners and customers, throughout the pandemic.

In this issue, we take a look at private aviation from both leisure and business perspectives and the attractions and benefits of private aviation for people looking to explore the world again – we look forward to welcoming them onboard.

Enjoy the read.

Paras P. Dhamecha Managing Director

DECEMBER 2020

SOPHIA LOREN

Cover: Sophia Loren/Alamy

Contact Details: info@empire.aero empireaviation.com

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Empire Aviation Group DECEMBER 2020:ISSUE 111

Air charter: designed for business and luxury travel Why private jet travel offers unique advantages

Companies with a range of different travel needs – but perhaps not enough regular missions for a dedicated business aircraft – may find air charter to be the best alternative to commercial flights. Meanwhile, leisure travellers may be looking for a greater degree of privacy and personalisation.

At first glance, private charter flights may look similar to scheduled airline flights in terms of the actual flighttime needed to reach a destination.

But this is really where the similarity ends, because private jets offer a range of unique advantages.

Even today, at a time of social distancing and virtual meetings, business people still use private jets to make sure they are in the right place, at the right time, to complete deals effectively and efficiently.

Private aviation offers a multitude of benefits such as not having to follow a rigid schedule, and your missions can be tailored to suit any travel itinerary, including multiple destinations.

On the ground, checking-in is an equally personal experience and is far more relaxed than commercial.

Security and safety are paramount, of course – bags still need to be scanned, and all passengers must pass through 10

security. The appropriate checks and screening must be completed but without all the delays usually associated with scheduled airlines.

So, you really can arrive for your flight 15 minutes before departure.

As well as travelling efficiently, business people travelling together on a charter flight can conduct onboard meetings and review business with the assurance of total privacy. In these unusual and unpredictable times, couples and families may choose to travel privately and discreetly to their second homes or luxury (and private) destinations in regions such as the Indian Ocean. Chartering a private jet provides freedom and confidence, enabling you to relax and enjoy your journey with your colleagues, family or friends in your own private cabin.

The growing interest in private aviation has been a feature of 2020 and highlighted the various advantages and benefits of private charter solutions, which provide alternative options for individuals, families and companies. Whatever the reason for the charter, in our experience once people have enjoyed a taste of private aviation, it quickly becomes a passion.

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Empire Aviation is a leading provider of Aircraft Sales, Aircraft Management, Aircraft Charter and CAMO Services.

2009 BOMBARDIER GLOBAL 5000 S/N: 9315

Airframe: 3,086 Hours / 1,057 Landings Engines: Rolls-Royce Corporate Care Model: Global 5000 Features: Recent 120 Month Inspection, Refurbished Cosmetics, Batch 3.3 Avionics, FANS 1/A+, ADS-B Out, RAAS, 13 Pax

2013 BOMBARDIER CHALLENGER 300 S/N: 20395

Airframe: 1,479 Hours / 924 Landings Engines: Can Deliver with Engines and APU on MSP Model: Challenger 300 Features: Like New Condition, 10 Pax Lufthansa Technick Interior, CPDLC, ADS-B, WAAS, Wifi, and Much More Tel: +971 4 299 8444 | Email: aircraftsales@empire.aero | www.empireaviation.com I Dubai U.A.E.

The Artful Boutique

Richard Mille opens its first flagship boutique in Saudi Arabia

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s a brand that always dares to push the limits, Riyadh’s sky-reaching Kingdom Centre is a fitting location for Richard Mille’s first flagship store in KSA. True to form, this is not your average watch boutique. It’s more gallery-like,

a visually rich expression of the brand’s ingenuity – black leather walls, cracked glass panels, Wenge wood parquet, and Sophie Mallebranche’s cream wallpaper providing a neutral backdrop for the timepieces to take the eye.

“With the rapid developments and ambitious growth planned for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, a major trade and investment epicentre, we are very excited to have established a Richard Mille landmark in Riyadh. Over the years we have developed strong relationships with our Saudi clients, and with the new boutique in Kingdom Centre we really hope that we can provide them with a more immersive brand experience and a wider product range to choose from,” commented Peter Harrison, CEO of Richard Mille Europe, Middle East and Africa.

Those clients – avid collectors among them – will be able to peruse models from the whole collection: sports, lifestyle watches, high-performance tourbillons and extraordinary limited-edition pieces in one of three dedicated VIP areas. Between timepiece viewings, clients can browse a curated collection of art books from an onsite library that’s stocked with weighty tomes from the Richard Mille Group-owned publishing house, Éditions Cercle d’Art. Riyadh’s flagship boutique continues Richard Mille’s expansion across the Middle East, dovetailing with its ever-growing client base in the region.

The new Richard Mille boutique is located in Kingdom Centre, King Fahad Road, First Floor and is open from Saturday to Thursday from 10:00 am to 10:00 pm and on Fridays from 04:30 pm until 10:00 pm 13

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AIR

Radar DECEMBER 2020: ISSUE 111

It’s been a year of hunkering down, but isolation need not mean desolation. Soneva Fushi’s newly launched Water Retreats – the largest in the world – have been designed to ensure the utmost privacy, with even the retractable roof that slides back above the master bed to reveal the starlit sky made in such a way as to operate as quietly as possible. Which is just as well really, as you wouldn’t want to be disturbed as you hurtle down your own water slide into the warm and welcoming Listerine-hued Indian ocean.

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OB JECTS OF DESIRE

OBJECTS OF DESIRE

Master craftsmanship, effortless style and timeless appeal; this month’s must-haves and collectibles

OB JECTS OF DESIRE

BOUCHERON

SERPENT BOHÈME RING Boucheron’s latest ode to the Serpent Bohème, which began way back in 1968, still references the head-evoking droplet and its signature gold beads in its latest guise, but here it’s multiplied to striking effect. The largest is fashioned from a beautifully hued turquoise

stone, made ever more alluring by those gold beads. Completing the trio are smaller gold drops adorned with eight diamonds apiece.

Three is also the number of pieces in the set, comprising a two-motif turquoise bracelet and earrings.

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OB JECTS OF DESIRE

C H O PA R D

RED CARPET COLLECTION Chopard’s annual celebration of its longstanding partnership with the Cannes International Film Festival has delivered yet another showstopping Red Carpet Collection, each nature-inspired piece (73 in all) nothing short of spectacular. This blossoming necklace 2

is crafted from Fairmined-certified ethical 18-carat white gold and titanium, and set with tourmalines (129.19cts), pink sapphires (28.53cts), tsavorites (8.77cts), emeralds (4.54 cts), moonstones (12.40 cts) and diamonds (4.93cts).

OB JECTS OF DESIRE

BREGUET

M A R I N E T O U R B I L L O N É Q U AT I O N M A R C H A N T E 5 8 8 7 This is a timepiece that truly celebrates Breguet’s illustrious history. Comprising a tourbillion (invented by founder AbrahamLouis Breguet in 1801), perpetual calendar and an equation of time, it also honours Breguet’s sea-faring legacy (Breguet appointed

the official watchmaker of the French Navy in 1815 by the King of France, Louis XVIII).

Impressive detailing sees a guilloche-peaked wave motif in the centre of the dial, and a hand-carved depiction of an ancient flagship of the French Navy on the reverse.

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OB JECTS OF DESIRE

D AV I D M O R R I S

FO RT U N A O PA L E T E RNI T Y RIN G Legend has it that Fortuna was a Goddess revered for both her beauty and strength, two characteristics beautifully expressed in this pink opal eternity ring. It’s part of a wider, cheerfully-colourful collection (blue agate, green chrysoprase and Mother

of Pearl are used alongside pink opal) of rings, bracelets and necklaces set in either rose gold or yellow gold and offset with white pavĂŠ diamonds which have been designed versatile enough to be worn from day through to night.

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OB JECTS OF DESIRE

PAT E K P H I L L I P P E

R E F. 6 3 0 1 P G R A N D E S O N N E R I E The sounding of time dates to the 14th century, when hand and dial-less clocks in the squares of cities used to sound the full hours. That idea is taken to extreme levels of ingenuity with this, Patek’s first wristwatch to feature a grande sonnerie, a highly coveted 5

and extremely elaborate sound function that is extremely rare in a wristwatch. It strikes on the full and quarter hours and is complemented by a petite sonnerie and minute repeater, encased in platinum alongside a new 703-part movement.

OB JECTS OF DESIRE

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OB JECTS OF DESIRE

JAGUA R

E -T Y P E S E R I E S 1 for improved drivability, and a seamlessly integrated retro-look modern audio system with Bluetooth connectivity. Whether the fixed-head coupe or the soft-top roadster, it’s fair to say that the Jaguar E-Type is one of the most beautiful cars ever built.

This 1965 design classic is offered for private sale via RM Sotheby’s by an owner who completely restored it upon purchase in 2014, adding modern enhancements in the form of a Tremec five-speed manual transmission, Wilwood brakes, wider wheels 7

OB JECTS OF DESIRE

PR A DA

CLEO BAG A feature of the Spring/Summer 2021 Womenswear collection, the Cleo is a glorious fusion of Prada’s past, present, and future. You’ll see the brand’s wellhoned expertise of construction in the bag’s strong yet feminine silhouette, while

softly sloping sides have been crafted to hug when worn against the body. But while it’s sleek and streamlined, this is a bag with a soft side, too, evidenced by brushed calfskin and lightweight spazzolato calf leather.

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OBJECTS OF DESIRE

Critique DECEMBER 2020 : ISSUE 111

Books

AIR

I

n Leah Cohen’s Heart, You Bully, You Punk, a spinster teacher sees her life altered when, with her star pupil housebound following a fall, she begins to tutor the girl and gradually falls for her father.

“Cohen’s characters are familiar in their failings and lovable in their tender quirks,” reviews Bookpage. “Her writing style and tone lend a lightweight grace to at-times heavy subject matter…

Cohen’s gentle philosophizing reminds us that while the past may not even be past, and the future often feels dangerously obscure, the present – bountifully populated by both strangers and cousins – offers its own rewards, if we choose to embrace them.”

Booklist was also full of praise: “Cohen perfectly captures the chaos of a big family event, with all the personalities and baggage that come with the territory, adeptly mixing humor and sentiment to create an intoxicatingly rich story that bursts off the page with life.”

So too Ron Charles, writing in The Washington Post, who said: “An absolute

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delight. . . A perfect summer novel: funny and tender but also provocative and wise. . .Cohen’s ability to acknowledge the agony of that strife in the context of a modern, loving family makes this one of the most hopeful and insightful novels I’ve read in years.”

Billed as the perfect book for the holiday season, One Day In December,

by Josie Silver, tells the story of Laurie, who had all but given up on the idea of true love until meeting Jack. “Get ready to be swept up in a whirlwind romance,” reviews Hollywood star Reese Witherspoon. “Laurie falls in love at first sight with a stranger, and spends the next year looking for him.

Fate brings them back together at Christmas, but not in the way anybody expects: turns out he’s dating her best friend. It absolutely charmed me.”

USA Today was equally charmed: “Consider setting aside some time and prepare to be charmed as author Josie Silver takes readers on a captivating journey – where female friendship is as important as romantic love…An unmistakable winner.”

“The pacing is just right, the tone warm, and the characters sympathetic…

Anyone who believes in true love or is simply willing to accept it as the premise of a winding tale will find this debut an emotional, satisfying read,“ enthused Kirkus Reviews.

In The Kingdom, author Jo Nesbø tells the story of Carl, who returns to his hometown with a mysterious new wife and a plan that appears too good to be true. Sure enough, things take a grisly turn for the worse. Praise for the book doesn’t come from any higher than the master of horror, Stephen King, who said, “I couldn’t put it down … Suspenseful … Original … This one is special in every way.”

Library Journal is another fan: “Captivating . . . Guaranteed to be in high demand. As the story unfolds, it builds in dread and depravity. The small-town atmosphere resembles a Peyton Place as envisioned in an unlikely collaboration between Raymond Chandler and Henrik Ibsen. The complex characters and twisting plot will keep readers turning the pages and eager to discuss.”

Critique DECEMBER 2020 : ISSUE 111

Art

Artemisia Gentileschi, Esther before Ahasuereus, about 1628-30; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Gift of Elinor Dorrance Ingersoll, 1969 (69.281)© The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

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ondon’s splendid National Gallery is showing Artemisia until Jan 24, highlighting the work of Baroque superstar Artemisia Gentilesch, an artist whose sexual assault at the hands of Agostino Tassi, to whom she was apprenticed aged seventeen, saw her tortured with thumbscrews during the subsequent trial to make sure she was telling the truth. She was. The gruesome experience would inform her art, birthing a body of painted works characterised by men being beheaded by strong women. “It’s a modern feminist fable from the seventeenth century, and most of it’s true. The rape, trial and success all happened. But reducing Artemisia to ‘scorned woman who beheads men’ misses so much of her story, and ignores so much of her talent,” says Time Out London.

“What you realise, looking at the stumbling figure of Saint Januarius or the ludicrously luxurious fabrics of Ahasuerus, is that Artemisia wasn’t just a woman, or just a painter of women, she was a painter. Full stop.

And she could hold her own against

most of the best of her era.”

Reviewing for The Times, Rachel Campbell-Johnston says, “Setting out into the territories of the great male masters, Artemisia approached long-familiar stories from a unique female slant that lends her retelling a peculiarly complex and perturbing force.

“Self Portrait as the Allegory of Painting is a masterpiece. A woman who poured her whole life into her painting now presents us with a picture of herself. She turns away from her audience: as if she does not even notice us standing awestruck before her. Artemisia may have been more than capable of flamboyant attentionseeking, yet she is an artist so much a part of the world she is creating that painting and personality seem completely to merge. And her works are all the more powerful for that.

Elsewhere in London, as part of the Royal Academy’s Winter Exhibition, you’ll find Polly Morgan’s taxidermy-filled How to Behave at Home showing at the Bomb Factory.

A “fabulously unique show that will have you squirming,” reckons Waldemar Januszczak, writing for The Times. “Declare yourself to be a taxidermy enthusiast and David Attenborough will be round to bash down the door while Extinction Rebellion set fire to the house. Today taxidermy is a cultural no-no. Except in the world of art,” he continues.

“Her art may consist largely of dead animals, but there’s no sense of death about it. In the end, her art says something genuinely insightful about the modern world.

She turns snakes into mirrors and holds them up to us. To do this with taxidermy is brave and special.”

The Guardian’s Hettie Judah also praises Morgan, saying that, “There may not be an elegant term for the jangling, queasy, uncanny chills induced by certain combinations of materials and textures, but by God does Polly Morgan understand the territory. Her exhibition is gloriously discomfiting: a multi-hazard zone of phobias and sensitivities.”

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Timepieces

DECEMBER 2020: ISSUE 111

Time for Change Breitling CEO Georges Kern on why women’s watches will be more prominent than ever before and his brand’s drive towards sustainability WORDS: JOHN THATCHER

AIR

T

he world of horology chimes with few more engaging characters than Breitling’s CEO Georges Kern. Whether speaking of the brand’s plans for the future or its storied past, he does so with genuine passion. It was noticeable again to the watching world, who logged on to witness the live launch of the brand’s first-ever Chronomat designed for women, the charismatic Kern using the webcast to also broadcast news of his company being the industry’s first to offer its clients the option of having their timepiece delivered in a 100% recycled and recyclable watch box. Both, you sensed, are proud additions to Breitling’s timeline, the smile that says so etched on Kern’s face.

So, what of the new line of Chronomat for Women watches? “There is a long and proud history of dedicated women’s models at Breitling, dating back to the 1940s,” Georges tells AIR a few days after the online launch. “At one time, we had important Breitling collections for women, including the TransOcean, the Lady J, and the Galactic. One part of our motivation in launching the Chronomat for Women collection was to build on our legitimate historical legacy of fine women’s watches. We had done that already with the Navitimer Automatic 35 and the Superocean 36.

Both of these women’s watches were interpretations of some of our most iconic collections” It’s no surprise, then, that the new Chronomat models also feature design elements which communicate their pure Breitling DNA. “They have the Rouleaux bracelets that have characterised the Chronomat for more than 35 years. They also have the classic Chronomat rider tabs on their bezels and, of course, the fluted crowns that have long been associated with the Chronomat,” says Georges.

Design features that make them “immediately recognisable as a Breitling from across the room.”

A lot has changed since Breitling’s first female watch, with the most notable difference expressed in how tastes have changed, needs evolved. “Going back to the 1940s, Breitling, like most luxury brands, produced ladies’ watches that were delicate and very feminine and which were arguably worn more 20

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Previous pages: the new Chonomat for Women in 36 and 32mm sizes Right: Breitling CEO, Georges Kern

AIR

We cannot save the world, ‘ but we can be part of the solution ’ as fashion accessories than for their function as timepieces,” says Georges.

“They tended to have tiny dials and were generally bejewelled and made of precious metals. Historians suggest that these watches were typically purchased by men for the special women in their lives. Those days, I’m happy to say, are long gone. Nowadays, women are looking for a watch that is as appropriate for a board meeting as it is for the beach. The women who are enthusiastic about Breitling watches are drawn to great design, but they also want performance, quality, flawless functionality and superb after-sales service. Women – and men – want watches that will stand up to the dayto-day challenges of an active lifestyle.

“Women have been an increasingly important part of our clientele, and by dedicating a collection of Chronomats especially to them, we were underscoring the fact that, going forward, Breitling’s watches for women will be more prominent than ever before.”

To add substance to that soundbite, the brand has called in the Spotlight Squad to help promote the collection, a trio of high-flying women comprising an Oscar-winner (Charlize Theron), Chinese TV and film royalty (Yao Chen), and a principal dancer with the American Ballet Theatre (Misty Copeland) who was once hailed by Time magazine as one of the world’s 100 most influential 22

people. “Yao, Charlize and Misty are the very definition of women of purpose, action and style, and we’re thrilled that they are part of our family,” says Georges, proudly.

There is, however, a more nuanced reason for the trio’s selection. “Misty’s, Yao’s and Charlize’s achievements – not only in their professional worlds but in their commitment for positive change – are truly incredible. They have all broken down barriers and have reshaped reality for the greater good. And as a personal quality, a person’s decision to use his or her success to empower others is something I value greatly,” says Georges.

They are qualities shared by Kern, who was the driving force behind Breitling’s decision to develop the industry’s first 100% recycled and recyclable watch box. I wonder why something which seems such an obvious step hasn’t been taken previously? “First of all, it’s not an easy thing to do,” reasons Georges.

“Any brand in any industry has to focus on its core business first and it’s easy for packaging to be moved down the priority list. Breitling has a commitment to sustainability and working with ecologically-driven partners like Ocean Conservancy (with whom Breitling organises ocean and beach clean-up efforts), Outerknown, the Solar Impulse Foundation and others mean that we’re often involved in dialogues about how we can

make our brand more sustainable and how we can optimise our own ecological footprint. There’s been a lot of support for our sustainable watch box initiative and I’d like to think that the positive response to what we have done will motivate other brands to take similar steps.”

As always, time will tell. But Georges, for one, is hopeful. “Sustainability as a movement has a lot of momentum, and I would encourage people not to be cynical about it. If industries and brands are embracing sustainable practices to enhance their public profiles, the results are still positive.

We cannot save the world, but we can be part of the solution.”

A cohesive move toward sustainability is not the only driver for change, with the current pandemic likely to alter people’s preferences, perhaps all the way down to the type of timepiece they desire. “I strongly believe that consumer behavior will change after Covid-19; things that were excessive just won’t be acceptable anymore,” suggests Georges. “The world will slow down. Things will be uncertain, at least for a time. People will want something to hold on to in a world that feels shaky and unpredictable. They’ll want craftsmanship – analogue products like mechanical watches – more than ever. There will be a renaissance.”

If he’s right, you can expect Breiting’s forward-thinking CEO to be at the forefront of what comes next.

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Jewellery DECEMBER 2020 : ISSUE 111

The Gold Father Swinging London’s grooviest jeweller, Andrew Grima’s celebrity lifestyle was every bit as fabulous as his jewels

AIR

“S

ince discovering the work of Andrew Grima, I have not only become a collector of his exquisite creations, I have also become one of the many to be inspired by his unique and inimitable designs. Each piece of jewellery, each watch, each object is a sculpture.”

It is not often that I can say I know exactly how Marc Jacobs feels, but when it comes to the late Andrew Grima, he and I are of one mind. Jacobs’s quote appears in a new book about a man the dust jacket calls “arguably Britain’s greatest jewellery maestro”.

Were I the publisher, I would have dropped the ‘arguably’, but then I am a little obsessed with Grima, that most ostentatiously modern of jewellers.

I have vague memories of his shop on Jermyn Street, but I was too young (and nowhere near rich enough) to have visited it. By 1986, it was gone, demolished and replaced by a façade of eye-blistering banality – a crime against aesthetics about which the then newly founded English Heritage should hang its head in shame.

But to be fair, the landlord would have had a hard time letting the premises to any half-sane retailer: encased in great slabs of rough-hewn slate riveted to an oxidised metal exoskeleton, it flouted the conventions of retail in as much as it did not have windows, rather there were peepholes and arrow slits through which inquisitive passers-by would peer to examine exotic creations in curious minerals and fantastically shaped textured gold.

An architectural metaphor for its 24

These pages, left to right: Grima’s former store on London’s Jermyn Street; Andrew Grima

founder and his creations, the shop had such power and personality that it would have overwhelmed anything other than the miniature masterpieces in gold, platinum, precious and, more typically, semiprecious stones exhibited within.

In today’s big brandscape, it is difficult to imagine the position Andrew Grima occupied in the world of jewellery half a century ago. Born in Rome in 1921 into an affluent MalteseItalian family who moved to London in 1926, he grew up an artistic child, happy to spend all day sketching.

But in the mid-1930s, the family lace business collapsed along with his father’s mental health, and childhood came to an abrupt end as he found work as a technical draughtsman.

From 1941 to 1945, he served in the British Army in Burma. Demobbed, he attended a secretarial course, the only man in a class of women, one

of whom he married, joining her family’s jewellery business, where, one day in 1948, he saw his future in a moment of Damascene clarity.

Two stone dealers arrived “with a suitcase of large Brazilian stones – aquamarines, citrines, tourmalines and rough amethysts in quantities I had never seen before,” he later recalled.

Inspired by the mineral abundance, he persuaded his father-in-law to buy the lot and he started designing. “This was the beginning of my career.”

Rejecting the dainty figurative designs that dominated post-war jewellery, he developed a bold style characterised by abstract forms.

He showed at the 1961 International Exhibition of Modern Jewellery in London, describing it as “the turning point in my career as designer and manufacturer... it set my mind searching for new shapes and forms.” The book describes “the opening salvo for a British-led design movement, fronted by Grima, that would dominate the jewellery world for the next 20 years”.

More than that, Grima was part of a gathering constellation of forces that would shape popular culture: Alec Issigonis’s Mini for the British Motor Corporation had made its debut in 1959, the Beatles released their first hit in 1962, Mary Quant was awarded Dress of the Year in 1963, and by 1966, Time magazine had a new name for London: the Swinging City.

The same year, Andrew Grima won the Duke of Edinburgh’s Prize for Elegant Design, which cited new techniques that “have given

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AIR

much greater scope to the designer and have released him from rigid conventions of settings – and much of the credit for this liberation, and for the new gaiety that has resulted, must go to Andrew Grima.”

He had succeeded in attaching value to “creative design, as distinct from the intrinsic value of the precious stones and metals”. The citation also noted, “With these changes the designer has achieved a personal status very different from his immediate predecessors.”

To paraphrase, Andrew Grima had become Britain’s first celebrity jeweller.

His name was a synonym for glamour and grooviness. Jean Shrimpton was shot by David Bailey for the cover of Vogue wearing a diamond and textured-gold Grima ring set with an egg-sized aquamarine; Sharon Tate, too, was photographed, her naked body bedizened with Grima; and, when not making films, Ursula Andress was happy to model his work.

His status was cemented by the opening in October 1966 of his eponymous shop, whose corrugatedaluminum automatic door concealed a two-storey interior designed

by Ken Adam that could easily have been a Bond villain’s lair.

Grima’s office was in a white textured-concrete tub-like pillbox bunker in the centre of a room that was all futuristic showcases, exposed brick, wall-to-wall deep-pile carpet and modernist leather furniture.

Film critic Alexander Walker was dazzled by the “translucent spiral staircase, a helix of light”.

The opening party was presided over by that hippest of royals, Lord Snowdon, for whom Grima made a gold model of the aviary he had designed at London Zoo Grima’s great gift was the chameleon quality of fitting in everywhere while remaining himself. His designs were equally at home ornamenting models or monarchs: not only did the Royal family present him with an award, Princess Margaret, Princess Anne and the Queen commissioned Grima (from time to time HM can still be seen wearing Grima brooches on her Christmas broadcasts). And for a while the gift given by the Queen 26

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Andrew Grima had become Britain’s first celebrity jeweller. His name was a synonym for glamour and grooviness

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to the wives of visiting heads of state was, lucky them, a Grima jewel.

Grima became more famous than many of his customers. He did not need what today are euphemistically known as brand ambassadors – quite the reverse. When Canada Dry wanted to promote its ginger ale, it recruited Terence Conran and Andrew Grima to front its advertising campaign.

“The ginger ale has to be fine enough to bring out the best in scotch. And for my taste, only Canada Dry does that,” he was quoted as saying, beneath a jet-set montage of him, pipe perpetually clenched between his teeth.

He embarked on what the book describes as “brand collaborations”, creating a handful of gem-set 18ct-gold lighters for his friend and backgammon opponent Richard Dunhill (grandson of Alfred) and touring the world in grand style promoting a collection of one-off timepieces made for Omega.

One memorable photograph shows him under armed guard in Venezuela.

The 1970s were also defined by evermore extravagant jewels, carried off with the flair of haute couture shows. He scoured the planet for exotic stones and visited customers he regarded not so much as clients but patrons. Wherever he found himself, he was constantly designing, sketching on hotel notepaper, drinks coasters and the back of menus.

Grima enjoyed the better things that life had to offer and insisted on getting them. “Andrew Grima loved his caviar,” recounts the book, “and was somewhat put out when he discovered that Swissair had stopped serving it on the Zurich-Hong Kong connection.

He spoke to the stewardess, who was

terribly apologetic and asked where he was staying in Hong Kong. Within hours of their arrival at the Mandarin Hotel, a kilogram tin of Iranian caviar was sent up to their room with the compliments of the airline.”

For a while, there were Grima shops in New York, Zurich, Tokyo and Sydney, but an alliance with an unsatisfactory investor in 1984 ended the dream of Grima as a global brand.

But even failure was a chic affair Grima-style; with his glamorous second wife, Jojo, scion of the Cullinan diamond dynasty whom he met when she was a DJ at Annabel’s, he divided his time between a set in London’s Albany, a villa overlooking the Riviera, and a chalet in the shadow of the Palace Hotel in Gstaad, where he had his last shop and where he died in 2007.

Today the name and the work are continued by his widow and his daughter Francesca, who have a unique way of designing in the Grima idiom, creating pieces using the same techniques and sometimes the very same craftsmen as Grima did at his glorious zenith.

Grima continues to bewitch a generation too young to have known the man in his prime. Marc Jacobs and Katie Grand are fans; Gigi Hadid and Taylor Swift have both been photographed for magazines in Grima.

Such is the power of Grima designs that they have even won over Jojo’s current husband, the epicurean William Grant, who became so intrigued by his predecessor that he wrote the book on him. A collector of modern British art, Grant explains, “Andrew Grima was friends with Graham Sutherland, John Piper, Elisabeth Frink and Barbara Hepworth.

He collected their art and they bought his jewels: he can truly be considered in the context of British modernism.”

Next year is the centenary of Grima’s birth and, given the influence he continues to exert, a retrospective exhibition is long overdue. In the meantime, Grima fans can content themselves with this book, which is by far the cheapest thing you are ever going to find with his name on it.

Andrew Grima: The Father of Modern Jewellery by William Grant, published

by ACC Art Books, is out now

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Coco Pops The first retrospective dedicated to the Gabrielle Chanel ever to be held in Paris tells a showstopper of a story

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Art & Design DECEMBER 2020:ISSUE 111

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Left: exhibition picture by Olivier Saillant Next pages, from left to right: exhibition picture by Olivier Saillant; Marion Cotillard enjoys a private viewing

etter fashionably late than never... After two years and an haute €8.1m renovation, the Palais Galliera, the City of Paris Fashion Museum, reopened recently with the landmark retrospective Gabrielle Chanel. Fashion Manifesto.

Celebrating the enduring influence of the couture trailblazer, it’s – incredibly – the first retrospective dedicated to the designer ever to be held in Paris, a city with which her name is synonymous.

Staged thematically and chronologically, the show is inspired

by Chanel’s passions and hallmarks, with nods to Coromandel screens, deep black lacquer and fragmented mirrors recalling her apartment and the staircase at 31 Rue Cambon on which she presented her collections.

The show opens with a groundbreaking early item: a summer 1916 version of the marinière sailor top in plain ivory silk jersey – a fabric then used for men’s underwear.

Embodying the free spirit of the social set in Deauville (the resort where Chanel opened her first boutique, in 1912) and Biarritz (where she set up a fashion house in 1915), the top was a manifesto for comfort, ease and feminised menswear that set Chanel apart from the corseted Belle Époque.

For Miren Arzalluz, director of

the Palais Galliera, who curated the show alongside collection curator Véronique Belloir and the Palais Galliera team, a renewed discovery of Chanel herself and her work revealed a “richness, sophistication and diversity” that consistently guided the couturier’s oeuvre.

“What’s really moving is how this woman integrated the notion of comfort and freedom of movement, this natural way of moving, into the world of haute couture, which had never been done before,” notes Arzalluz.

‘Iconic’ is one of fashion’s most overused words, but Chanel repeatedly earned the accolade.

A glass box displays an original bottle of N°5 perfume from 1921, its angular lines lit like a jewel.

Other highlights include an example of her Little Black Dress (dubbed “Chanel’s Ford” by American Vogue), created in 1926; the beige and black slingback, commissioned from Raymond Massaro in 1957; the 2.55 quilted handbag from 1955 – still the house’s best-selling item alongside the tweed suit – and costume jewellery, with bold Byzantine-inspired pieces lending a counterpoint to the deceptive simplicity of the clothes.

Gleaming, treasure-chest mounds of it are laid out in one of the newly inaugurated Galeries Gabrielle Chanel 29

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Credit: @ Katya Foreman Telegraph Media Group Limited 2020

spaces in vaulted terracotta brick downstairs. Coming onboard after the exhibition was underway, under the initiative of the museum’s former director, Olivier Saillard, Chanel was the exclusive sponsor of the museum’s renovation and extension, co-financed with the City of Paris, more than doubling exhibition space for the site which is now the first permanent fashion museum in Paris.

While the faux jewellery dazzles, there’s also the Comet brooch, one of only two known surviving pieces from Chanel’s first and only foray into fine jewellery, the ‘Bijoux de Diamants’ collection in diamonds and platinum from 1932.

“This is a very important exhibition for understanding Chanel. It showcases the very beginning of the Chanel story, Gabrielle Chanel’s body of work that allowed the brand to take off and to become what it is today, concentrated in 350 of her creations, her creative stance, her vision of fashion, her modernity – and her vision of women, too,” said Bruno Pavlovsky, president of fashion at Chanel, who toured the exhibition with Virginie Viard, the house’s artistic director. A number of Chanel ambassadors including Vanessa Paradis and Caroline de Maigret were also spotted wafting through the corridors at the preview.

“What struck me – and I’m no fashion historian – is how consistent Mademoiselle Chanel’s style is… her audacious way of breaking codes and proposing a style that became timeless. There are many dresses that we could find in our collections today, that would be absolutely spot-on,” added Pavlovsky.

Complemented by loans from museums and private collectors from around the world, including Vogue’s Hamish Bowles, and the V&A, which loaned an evening ensemble that once belonged to Diana Vreeland (a jawdropping autumn-winter 1937-1938 black sequin trouser suit with white ruffle blouse), the majority of the pieces come from the archives of the Palais Galliera and Chanel Patrimoine, with the show focused on her creations.

(Not a mention of her English playboy lover of the 1910s, Boy Capel.)

Emotion kicks in with sophisticated dresses from the 1930s, minimalist

What’s really moving is how this woman ‘integrated the notion of comfort and freedom of movement into the world of haute couture ’

flapper styles entirely embroidered with tiny sparkling beads, and featherweight floaty dresses, whose inlaid embellishments merge with the cut to emphasise their shape.

Among the after-hours showstoppers are a midnight blue silk-tulle starprint evening dress dusted with sequins and a multi-coloured ostrichprint evening dress with a pink ostrich-feather trim at the bust.

“We always begin by making the dresses of dreams. Then, we have to cut, trim and remove, never add,” reads a quote. (Chanel originally opted to remove the feathers, as seen in video footage from the time. The client likely had them added back on.)

The show culminates on the lower floor, post-war, with the iconic looks of the 1950s and 1960s. Standing to attention in a curved gallery are a row of tweed suits, including styles worn by Marlene Dietrich and Grace Kelly, some draped with pearls.

Invented in 1954, when Chanel re-launched her couture house at age 71, and accented with braided trims, gilded buttons and pockets – essential features of a men’s suit – the tailleur’s stark minimalism deliberately broke with the curvaceous New Look aesthetic still popular at the time. For strong-willed Chanel, the supple cardigan-style jacket and skirt resting on the upper hips represented a new manifesto of modern femininity, upheld through to her final collection, for spring-summer 1971.

Mademoiselle Chanel herself hovers over the exhibition in grainy blackand-white photographs and portraits by contemporaries such as Horst P. Horst and Jean Cocteau. Her presence attests to the fact she always created first and foremost for herself.

‘Gabrielle Chanel. Fashion Manifesto’ is at the Palais Galliera, Paris, until March 14, 2021.

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AIR OF DISTINCTION Richard Mille pushes the limits sky high with extraordinary timepieces

ART DIRECTOR: KERRI BENNETT PHOTOGRAPHER: GREG ADAMSKI, MMG ARTIST

Shot 1 Victor wears: RM 028 Automatic Winding Diver’s Watch Material: red gold Strap: red rubber price available upon request Andjela wears: RM 07-01 Automatic Winding Material: white gold, diamond dial Strap: white gold bracelet price available upon request Shot 2 Andjela wears: RM 07-01 Automatic Winding Material: white gold, diamond dial Strap: white gold bracelet price available upon request Shot 3 and Shot 4 Victor wears: RM 58-01 Manual Winding Tourbillon Worldtimer Jean Todt Material: titanium and red gold Strap: brown rubber price available upon request Andjela wears: RM 037 Automatic Winding Material: white gold, diamond dial Strap: white rubber price available upon request Shot 5 Andjela wears: RM 07-01 Automatic Winding Material: red gold, full diamond set Strap: black rubber price available upon request Shot 6 Victor wears: RM 033 Automatic Winding Extra Flat Material: titanium, diamand case Strap: grey alligator leather price available upon request Richard Mille UAE Boutiques The Dubai Mall Grand Atrium, Ground Floor, Dubai The Galleria Mall Al Maryah Island Abu Dhabi

Models: Andjela and Victor/MMG Stylist: Gemma Jones/MMG Hair and Make-up: Katharina Brennan/MMG Location: Al Bateen Executive Airport, Abu Dhabi Clothes: (shot 1) Victor wears Hugo Boss, Andjela wears Kristina Fidelskya and carries Salvatore Ferragamo; (shot 2) Andjela wears Kristina Fidelskya and carries Salvatore Ferragamo; (shot 3 and shot 4) Victor wears Brunello Cucinelli jacket and t-shirt and Mr Porter trousers, Andjela wears Kristina Fidelskya; (shot 5) Andjela wears Iris and Ink; (shot 6) Victor wears Berluti jacket and Brunello Cucinelli t-shirt

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Elisabeth Moss tells Alexandra Pollard why it’s time women stopped biting their tongues

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Shelly.

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few years ago, a journalist observed of Elisabeth Moss: “She excels at quiet, tightly wound characters who suppress their feelings.” The work she has done since seems designed to prove that statement wrong. She snorted and raged and spat blood in Her Smell (2018); she took a pair of scissors to her own face with a rictus grin in Us (2019); she stabbed and shot her way out of danger in The Invisible Man (2020). Now, we have Shirley.

In the claustrophobic chamber piece, Moss is horror novelist Shirley Jackson, a snarling, antisocial agoraphobic.

She saw a lot of herself in the writer.

“I’m very much a loner,” says the 38-year-old brightly, between sips of a pale-green smoothie. “Lockdown for me was kind of a breeze because I have no problem staying at home for long, long periods of time, and I have no problem not seeing anybody.

And I also bury myself in my work.”

Moss is speaking over Zoom from her home in New York. The actor – who’s been dubbed the ‘Queen of Peak TV’ by New York Magazine – has said that she stores her awards on her bookshelves, but there’s no sign of her two Golden Globes (for Top of the Lake and The Handmaid’s Tale), her Emmy (also for The Handmaid’s Tale) or her Screen Actors Guild Award (for Mad Men) on the cluttered ones behind her.

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Shirley is the first time in Moss’s three-decades-long career that she has played a real person – though the story takes delicious liberties with Jackson’s life. Erasing her four children and inventing an infatuation with a young married woman, it is more concerned with capturing the writer’s complex spirit than sticking to the facts. We first meet her surrounded by dust and detritus, deep in what her husband Stanley (Michael Stuhlbarg) refers to as one of her “bouts”. The arrival of new tenants Fred (Logan Lerman) and Rose Nemser (Odessa Young) – the latter of whom Shirley becomes somewhat smitten with – breathes new life into her.

Moss found the role liberating. “I think there’s a Shirley in a lot of us as women,” she says. “We tend to hesitate to say things because we don’t wanna seem bitchy and we don’t wanna seem difficult, and we bite our tongues and we have to almost speak in a different way than men do. What I loved about Shirley is that she just said exactly what was on her mind and she didn’t give a s*** if she came off as a bitch.”

In one scene, stuck at a party she no longer wants to be at, Shirley pours red wine all over the host’s sofa just for the thrill of it. “How many times have we wanted to do a similar thing?!” says Moss. “You just wanna be like, ‘F*** this party, I don’t wanna talk

to this weird guy who’s speaking too close to me.’ We’ve all been there.”

If Moss sounds a little misanthropic, her demeanour is anything but. Dressed in a tie-dye jumper, with her Zoom screen name declaring her ‘Lizzie Moss’, she is spirited and conspiratorial, taking quick, excited breaths and speaking as if she’s on the verge of laughter.

She rubbishes the idea that acting should be a gruelling artistic process.

“My job is pretty great,” she says, picking up a script from beside her and shaking it at the camera. “I have these scripts that are written and I get to pretend and I get to imagine. It’s a ridiculous job and I make money at it and I feel invigorated by it. I’ve just never felt that it was a dark place, I’ve always felt that it was a light place.”

Not that the work she does could be described that way. The Handmaid’s Tale is so brutal in its depiction of a misogynistic, totalitarian society that it gave one newspaper critic an anxiety attack. Moss was midway through filming the show’s first season when Donald Trump was elected, and suddenly the idea of women’s rights being stripped away didn’t seem so far-fetched. Just as Mad Men’s Peggy Olson had become a feminist icon – you’ll have seen the image of Peggy swaggering into work, sunglasses on, cigarette in mouth – so Offred became a symbol of female suffering and survival.

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CREDIT: Alexandra Pollard / The Independent / The Interview People

The Handsmaid’s Tale

It hasn’t always been easy to be at the vanguard of a feminist movement.

She says it was a “mistake” to claim in an onstage Q&A that the show was a human story, not a feminist one. And as a lifelong Scientologist – born in LA, the self-described ‘Valley girl’ was raised with the religion by her musician parents – she’s had to defend herself against accusations of hypocrisy. When a fan claimed on Instagram that “Gilead and Scientology both believe that all outside sources (aka news) are wrong or evil”, Moss responded, “That’s actually not true at all about Scientology.” Her religion is one of the few things she doesn’t like to talk about in interviews.

“I get the fascination,” she’s said, “but you have a right to your privacy.”

Today, Moss has no problem framing her work through a feminist lens.

She says that this year’s The Invisible Man, the blockbuster horror about a woman, Cecilia, who escapes from her abusive partner only to be stalked by his invisible presence, was a “gigantic analogy” for abuse and gaslighting.

“The invisible man could be your exboyfriend, ex-friend, ex-boss, whatever it is that you feel like you’re haunted by in any sort of abuse cycle,” says Moss.

“That’s what we wanted it to be. That feeling of, ‘I need to overcome that, I need to fight back against this presence that won’t go away, this trauma that won’t go away.’ That was the story that we were trying to tell, while Trojanhorsing it in this horror thing.”

We never actually see the abuse that Cecilia is escaping, but we don’t need to. Moss’s every flinch, yell and shudder betrays the depth

of her character’s trauma. Though she is capable of capturing every nuance, she is not a single-teardown-the-cheek kind of actor; her cries are full-body convulsions.

Countless women wrote to her after the film came out – one of the last big releases pre-pandemic, it made $134m at the box office – to say how much they related to the story. “I would have friends who I didn’t know had gone through an experience like that say to me that it was cathartic to watch,” she says. “I think we all have experiences where we feel like we were gaslit or taken advantage of or told that we were crazy for thinking or feeling something.

That story of abuse is not something that has arisen in the last five years.

It’s not a bandwagon anyone can jump on – it’s a tale as old as time.”

Moss feels a deep responsibility to tell the stories of women well; she’s been playing complicated female characters since she was a teenager, when she was a schizophrenic burns victim alongside Angelina Jolie and Winona Ryder in Girl, Interrupted and the president’s sparky daughter in all seven seasons of The West Wing.

“Women can be wonderful and can be flawed and can be good and bad and complicated, and for me it’s just about telling the honest story,” she says. “It’s not telling a story of somebody who’s perfect or that’s a morality lesson, it’s just about telling honest stories about women. That’s my guiding principle.”

She points to her favourite line in Shirley. Stanley is questioning his wife’s fascination with a missing woman, a college student she has never even met

but with whom she feels a kinship.

“And she responds, ‘Don’t tell me I do not know this girl,’” says Moss. “I feel like that’s so true of so many of us. I think that we all have this common experience as women, whether it is feeling lonely, or feeling like you can’t talk about something, or feeling like if you do, someone’s gonna call you crazy or hysterical or difficult. We have this common experience, and I loved that line because I loved the idea of her looking at this man and saying, ‘Don’t tell me I don’t know what this feels like. You have no idea what I feel.’”

It’s why she’s so relieved that since the #MeToo movement, women are increasingly sharing their experiences with one another. “I’ve had more conversations in the last few years than I used to have,” she says. “It’s important for us as women to be talking about it. Even if you’re in a meeting and a man cuts a woman off and starts speaking, that’s something that’s now noticed. Now you can say, in the wonderful words of Kamala Harris, ‘I’m speaking.’ It doesn’t mean that it doesn’t still happen, but there seems to be more recognition of, ‘No, you’re not actually allowed to do that.’ Which I think is good.”

Moss tries to set an example for the younger generations, too. “When I observe somebody who I’m working with who has an opinion and they speak up for it, I think it’s important to say, ‘Thank you for doing that. I hear you. That is exactly what you should be doing.’ It’s OK to have an opinion. It’s OK to say it.” She grins.

“Nobody’s gonna think you’re a bitch.”

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Hearst amongst equals Thanks to their stealth-wealth glamour and sustainable credentials, Gabriela Hearst’s clothes are loved by the Duchess of Sussex and Amal Clooney, Anna Murphy meets her to talk privilege and responsibility WORDS : ANNA MURPHY

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verything about the woman sitting in the corner of the breakfast room at Claridge’s is screaming money.

Except it is a Munchian scream: entirely silent.

Because that is what the designer Gabriela Hearst is brilliant at: manifesting the stealthiest variety of wealth. The 44-yearold is her own best (very quiet) advert. Blonde and rangy, in a cream cashmere full skirt with matching jacket, plus black knee-high boots — “I love boots” — she looks every inch the Uruguayan rancher, if ranches didn’t come with mud, that is.

She grew up on one, the daughter of a mother whose family had ranched for five generations and who — bucking expectations in the most literal way imaginable — rode bareback rodeo. Her father was a self-made man who ended up amassing more land than her mother had inherited. Both were anomalies in the “hierarchical, patriarchal Latin America of that time”.

Her earliest memory of her mother, when Hearst was three, was “of her falling off her horse in the rodeo, standing up with her mouth full of blood and just walking across the ring like one of the guys. I used to think she was crazy. Now I think she is a genius and thank her for making my mind so free.” (Her mother is now a Zen Buddhist with a black belt in taekwondo.) Her late father — “it’s from him I get my entrepreneurial hustle” — called her “Captain”. Why? “I was always figuring out in my head how to do two things at once.”

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The thing that Hearst set out to do five years ago was to carve a space in modern luxury. She already knew why this was something worth doing. “I was aware it was a saturated market, that the world doesn’t need another brand, but I wanted to show that it is possible to produce really beautiful clothes with integrity and transparency, to take a long-term view. I wanted to work with the best materials in the world; I wanted sustainability to inform all our decision-making.”

Which she has done, helped by the financial clout of her second husband, Austin Hearst, one of the Hearst magazines clan.

“People who are in a privileged position, like me, need to do something.

With privilege comes responsibility.

You can’t expect someone who is struggling to survive to be able to do it.” The designer – who has a son with Austin and twin daughters from her first marriage – wants to scout out a better kind of fashion business in the hope that those without her balls and/or budget will eventually follow her lead.

Among last year’s achievements, her brand staged the first carbonneutral show of New York Fashion Week, and converted its packaging to biodegradable and compostable alternatives. (Hearst is the kind of woman who can get very excited about coat hangers. I will spare you the details.) She uses 25 per cent deadstock or non-virgin materials, and is aiming to increase this in the future. She is also in the process of switching from air freight to transporting by boat.

She spits out the word “viscose” like the poison she considers it to be. (It’s banned from her collections for its heavy chemical load.) On the subject of wool, on the other hand, she waxes lyrical. “It keeps you warm when it’s cold, it keeps you cool when it’s hot. It’s incredible. And it’s natural. Whereas polyester is basically petroleum.”

Even so, she knows that none of the above would matter if the aesthetic were not right. “Nobody is going to buy my products for my good intentions alone.” To my mind, I say, she delivers clothes for a 21st-century Georgia O’Keeffe. “Oooo, nice” she exclaims.

Here is garb that is at once masculine and feminine, strait-laced – she loves 42

Gabriela Hearst

who are in a privileged position, ‘likePeople me, need to do something ’ a “uniform” – and footloose. This was the paso doble of her childhood, she tells me, the family’s wardrobes made beautifully for them by a tailoress called Tota in the nearest town, with a view to functionality, smartness and the long game.

That the Gabriela Hearst label is expensive is indisputable. Yet what’s inarguable is that the prices reflect the quality and the process, and that this is fashion built to last. “I am too old to work with anything that doesn’t have quality,” Hearst says. (She still seems bruised by her time heading a mid-market brand called Candela.)

What’s more, Hearst tells me that she isn’t interested in trends and bans her employees from looking at catwalk shows. “I don’t want us to be influenced by other brands. I want us to keep our own point of view.”

In all of the above her label serves as contrast to other, more largescale enterprises that are relentlessly trends-focused and – as a result of the so-called democratisation of luxury that has taken place in recent decades – deliver often shoddy quality at similar prices. These days, once the initial lustre has worn off, a luxury

purchase can soon feel anything but.

Riffle through a sale rail or two in a posh store this month if you don’t believe me. (Hearst doesn’t do sales.)

“I always say to people, ‘Just buy one good sweater,’ ” Hearst says. “Don’t buy ten. I think in fashion we need to go backwards a bit, back to quality, to fewer things, while when it comes to energy we need to be future-looking.”

She isn’t particularly interested in growth. “I don’t know how someone builds a true luxury business fast. I have never seen that model. It takes generations to do it right.” Her goal, she tells me, is seven boutiques globally, tops; she opened one designed by Norman Foster in London last year.

Hearst’s clothes feel sublime, made of the finest cashmere or merino wool from the organically raised, grassfed sheep on the ranch she inherited from her father in 2011. Then there are the details, some of them hightech – such as the pockets lined to protect you from radiation from your phone – and some of them so precious, so other-era-seeming as to fit right in to a museum of costume, such as the myriad rows of hand-braided leather that waist a wool crepe dress.

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I think in fashion we need to go backwards a bit, back to quality, to fewer things Is the aesthetic directional? No. Which is another reason why it represents the ultimate in ever-after shopping. “When you grow up two hours from the nearest city you buy the best quality you can because things have to endure. We are talking about quality not for reasons of ostentation but utility.” (Not sure how a rose silk off-the-shoulder blazer, one of the brand’s signature pieces, could pass as utility wear, but I get where she is coming from.) “For me, quality is passion. I live in New York now, and I know all the places to buy the best coffee, the best ice cream.

These scrambled eggs” – she waves her fork over her plate – “are the best in London.” (And, conveniently, just across the road from her boutique.)

It’s this discernment, rigour even, that explains why Gabriela Hearst is the label beloved of celebrities who like to look quietly expensive, not to mention feel it. (Isn’t that what being rich is all about?) Angelina Jolie. Queen Rania of Jordan. Katie Holmes. They are the kinds of women who wear brand GH, as are assorted below-theradar New York power-brokers, plus, it appears — although the brand won’t comment on this — Melania Trump. It’s why Hearst’s idiosyncratic handbags, which hang off the arm like baubles, are carried by everyone from the 44

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Duchess of Sussex to Amal Clooney.

It’s why the front row – which tends, ironically, to eschew the extreme trends for which it serries biannually to pass judgment – can’t get enough of Gabriela Hearst either, be it Sarah Harris, Vogue’s deputy editor, in the brand’s signature slip dress, or Alison Loehnis, Net-a-Porter’s president, in its suiting (“The cut and fit is always perfect”).

Is there an irony that a vision honed by a tradition-focused life on the land should be so avidly embraced by women ploughing a resolutely urban future-facing furrow?

Not if you consider that this was an arena in which sartorial form plus function was allowed to coexist for women long before it did in others.

And not, perhaps, if you consider the frontier land that modern women find themselves navigating. Just like the ranch women before her, “my customer also needs not to have to think about what she is wearing. She has to get dressed in five minutes,” Hearst says.

“I have always had a very clear idea of my woman in my head,” she continues. “My favourite part of what I have done is that now I actually get to meet her in my stores. I often become friends with my clients because they have lived with me in my head in a way. I like them so much.” And they return the favour.

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Credit: Anna Murphy / The Times / News Licensing

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Sophia After a decade long absence, the 86-year-old Hollywood icon is back and sharing the secret to her stamina

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WORDS: CELIA WALDEN

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ophia Loren may have found the best way through these challenging times. “I love Fred Astaire, so when I’m really low – which it’s easy to be right now – I put on one of his films and I dance along with him”’ she says, from her home in Geneva. “When I do that, it stops me thinking about all the bad things that are going on.” As a pickme-up, the Fred Astaire Covid Survival Method is vintage Loren, summing up everything the Neapolitan bombshell has always represented: warmth, passion, glamour, stoicism and joie de vivre.

Even from hundreds of miles away, with a bad connection and the dislocation of a translator sitting in on our call (she speaks limited English), it’s obvious that the 86-year-old still possesses all of those things – alongside an indefinable combination of wit, grace and grit.

That extra factor propelled a skinny little girl, nicknamed ‘the toothpick’, from a poor Naples suburb all the way to Hollywood – and made her an Oscarwinning star, able to move effortlessly

between major US productions and Italian arthouse films. The Pride and the Passion (1957) saw Cary Grant competing with Frank Sinatra for Loren’s affections, while in Houseboat (1958) she was again playing Grant’s love interest (despite his wife having written the original screenplay and Grant’s genuine romantic interest in her). But it was Italian-language films like Two Women (1960) – in which Loren plays a mother protecting her daughter from the horrors of the Second World War – and Marriage Italian Style (1964) that brought her international acclaim. The latter also showcased her chemistry with the actor Marcello Mastroianni.

Loren has continued to mesmerise directors and audiences alike throughout her 60s – in Robert Altman’s 1994 comedy, Prêt-à-Porter, where she and Mastroianni were reunited in Paris; and her 70s – in Rob Marshall’s 2009 romantic musical, Nine. Now, after a break of more than a decade, the star has returned to our screens in her son Edoardo Ponti’s film for Netflix, The Life

Ahead, which tells the story of Madame Rosa, a Holocaust survivor who forges an unlikely bond with a 12-year-old Senegalese immigrant boy named Momo.

The 1977 version of Romain Gary’s novel won an Oscar, and given Loren’s nuanced and moving performance, Ponti’s film deserves to do the same.

Although she sounds upbeat on the phone, it’s clear that the past few months have not been easy for Loren, who has homes in Rome and Naples but has primarily been based in Geneva ever since she and her late husband, the film producer Carlo Ponti, had their two boys. Edoardo, now 47, is an LA-based film director and writer; his brother, Carlo Jr, 51, is an orchestral conductor working in the US. Marooned by the coronavirus, Loren, who lives alone in Geneva, misses her family desperately. “I haven’t been able to see my four grandchildren [aged between eight and 14], and my sister is in Rome,” she tells me in her rich, sing-song accent, “and I don’t really feel I can go out, so I stay in and read, and 47

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do things that make me feel good. I’m lucky to have friends around me that I can chat to and who will make me laugh. But when I came here, I didn’t realise that the pandemic would reach the whole world – not just your own town and city, but our whole world.”

Loren last saw Edoardo in June, when he flew to Geneva to take images of her after The Life Ahead’s promotional shoot was cancelled. Ponti is grateful for that now, he admits. “We spent two days having so much fun. And I really discovered a different side to my mother,” he explains. “The muscles of a model and an actress are polar opposites, after all, but she is so nimble. Anyway, we didn’t just want to do something banal, and because I see her in life putting on make-up or on her exercise bike, I wanted to have her doing some of those things – but then also bring some glamour into it. Because you can’t have Sophia Loren without glamour.”

Both Edoardo and Carlo were raised in that same Geneva apartment. “My father had bought it because at the time my mother was having a hard time staying pregnant [Loren miscarried twice in her late 20s] and there was an obstetrician in Switzerland who put her on a medical course that allowed her to keep the pregnancy. So she gave birth to my brother and I there.”

The memories Loren surrounds herself with are a comfort to her, but she yearns for a return to normality. “Our lives are completely different to what they were just yesterday, and I never expected that.” She breaks off – sighs. “I am very upset. Because I live a life that I would have thought it was impossible to live [before the pandemic], and I am afraid – so afraid. You feel that you are losing your time. But what can one do?

Just believe in yourself and try to be strong, try to be positive, try to convince yourself that everything will be fine.”

The title of her new film, The Life Ahead, could scarcely be more apposite. Neither could its themes be more prescient. Race, immigration, integration and the breaking down of barriers between different cultures, and the old and the young, are at its core.

When filming started on this Italianlanguage adaptation, Ponti can’t have imagined that the ‘cancel culture’ movement – spreading, even then, through universities and across social 48

media – would be threatening to annul the very stuff our pasts are made up of.

“But it was always my intention to create a movie that was socially charged but not political,” he tells me. “Because in the end we all just want two things: we want to be seen and we want to be heard.”

By showing what a Holocaust survivor has both to teach and learn from a Senegalese immigrant in desperate need of a mother figure, The Life Ahead makes the point that the opposite is true.

“History is something that you have to be able to talk about with younger people, so that we can really open their eyes as much as possible,” says Loren. Her very first memories were of “the bombs falling and exploding, and the anti-aircraft siren wailing” in the Italian town of Pozzuoli where she grew up, the illegitimate child of Romilda Villani and Riccardo Scicolone, a construction engineer of noble descent.

In her autobiography, Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow, Loren admits that still now the memories of ‘hunger pangs’ and the ‘cold darkness of those dreadful nights of war’ are real enough to make her sleep ‘with the light on’.

“But sometimes you don’t know whether children will believe what you tell them.

Though we can hope that by telling them about the world we have lived in, it may help to open their eyes to [the future].”

Even the longest life and greatest breadth of experience, however, cannot prepare us for what Loren calls the ‘uglinesses’ of the present. And as we discuss the racial themes in The Life Ahead, the riots that took place after George Floyd died in police custody in May, and the emergence of the Black Lives Matter movement, Loren’s voice is steeped in sorrow. “It’s a very, very sad thing, which is difficult to talk about.

And I genuinely really worry, not only for myself but also for my children and for the world around me.” Yet she believes that the power of stories like The Life Ahead is not to be underestimated. “It’s so lovely and important that in the film Momo encounters no barriers, and I think that this film has many answers to the [predicaments] we’re in. And I hope it can help people right now.”

The 10-hour days Ponti’s film necessitated would have been gruelling for any actor, let alone one in her late 80s, but Loren insists that her stamina is unparalleled. “I am the most tireless

actress in cinema. I could work 20 hours a day and never get tired. I have so much energy and I’m only interested in moving forward.” And she won’t rule out taking on another project post-Covid.

“I was very proud of her because what often happens to actors of a certain generation is that their acting style gets frozen in the era that they were most famous,” Ponti points out. “My mother, however, approaches every movie as if it were her first: with the same anxiety and excitement and spontaneity. Every time she wants to reinvent the wheel, but she’s doing it with a wealth of experience behind her.”

You are born a certain way and you cannot change that. So if ‘they had tried to change me, I just would have said, bye-bye ’

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Many would assume it would be easier to work with one’s son. “But if anything I’m harder on her, because I know her truth so intimately,” he tells me, “so it’s actually tougher for my mother to be directed by me. What’s amazing about our working relationship is that we never exploit the fact that we are mother and son. And yet what we do use and what elevates the work, I think, is the telepathic and emotional connection that we have. I just have to look at my mother or touch her hand and it’s immediately explosive.” As ‘self-believing’ and ‘driven’ at 86 as she was at 26, Loren’s “a woman who embraces everything in life at 100 per cent”, Ponti assures me.

“Ninety per cent for her is a failure!”

If there’s one common denominator among the stars I’ve interviewed who are deserving of the term ‘icons’, it’s an unerring self-belief. Unlike Debbie Reynolds, who admitted to me that she found it impossibly painful to watch the films made in her younger years, Loren feels “the absolute opposite. I’m very attached to them. I like to watch Sophia as she was at 17 or 18 years old.

It makes me cry, because it reminds me of the wonderful life that I’ve had.”

Her confidence is founded on ability rather than looks. “I never looked at myself in the mirror and thought, ‘You are so beautiful.’ “No, I was never happy about how I looked.” And now?

“Now, I like myself when I look in the mirror. I don’t think bad things at all, only good. But it’s about what you do with your life, isn’t it?” she stresses.

The Hollywood machine never tried to remould Loren in the image of the conventional starlet – although she does concede in her memoir that she was often considered “too much” there, whether because of her extravagantly curvy physique, her strong nose or, perhaps, simply her outsized sex appeal. “But listen, you are born a certain way and you cannot change that,” she says with pride.

“So if they had tried to change me, I just would have said, ‘Bye-bye.’”

It also helps to explain her claims, in the wake of Me Too, that she never experienced sexual harassment in the industry – something it’s hard to believe. In her memoir, I remind her, she recounts how Marlon Brando “grabbed at me” during a romantic scene in Charlie Chaplin’s 1967 film A Countess from Hong Kong. Did that not feel like 50

feel that you are losing your time.

‘ButYouwhat can one do? Just believe in yourself and try to be strong ’

harassment? “Oh, but he was afraid of me! He didn’t dare do anything else after that. Just one look – that was all it took.” Does she think that the Me Too movement will have helped young actresses feel less vulnerable on set now, though? “It’s a very difficult question to answer because what happens all depends on them and on the situation – it depends on so many things.”

The rise of ‘intimacy coaches’ on set, who are able to choreograph intimate scenes and set boundaries so that actresses no longer have to feel uncomfortable, is one solution, she says, when I ask her what can be done to make things safer. “Because you have to find the best way to cope with things nowadays. Otherwise you can just say, ‘I don’t do those kinds of scenes,’ or opt for a different genre of film altogether.” But although feminism has “done some wonderful things over the years”, she says, “we still have a lot to achieve [in terms of equality] in other areas, like family and relationships”.

Loren admits that, along with her self-confidence, it was the protection of her husband of 41 years, Carlo Ponti, that ensured she never felt vulnerable.

Ponti was also her agent, and the one who discovered her, aged 16, at a beauty pageant in Italy. Although the celebrated Italian film producer was 22 years her senior, and married (but separated) at the time, he was finally able to divorce his wife and marry Loren in a secret ceremony in 1957 – much to the dismay of admirers like actor Cary Grant, who

had courted her on the set of The Pride and the Passion the previous year and then proposed to her, without success.

“I was very young, and at that time I really needed someone to help me. Carlo was the right person,” she explains.

With The Life Ahead, as with every project embarked on and every decision made since her husband died in 2007 at the age of 94, Loren asked herself, “Would Carlo like it?” Her answer? “He would have loved the film, I’m sure. I would never make a film that he wouldn’t have liked,” she says, vehemently.

Loren is amused by how many people ask her, ‘What’s the secret to a happy marriage?’ “Because the answer’s no secret: to love each other. To love the family you are raising together.

To be happy together, always. It’s something you feel inside,” she says, with great emotion, and I feel sure that, at the other end of the line, Loren has her palm pressed to her chest. “Many marriages don’t work because people don’t have anything to talk about with each other, but Carlo and I had the world to talk about. We shared everything with each other.”

As for the joy of motherhood, just talking about it leaves her breathless.

“Women are reborn with motherhood – that’s certainly what I felt. Because motherhood is the most beautiful thing in the entire world.” She won’t be drawn into talk of maternal guilt, however – instead, suddenly becoming pragmatic. “In life you have to decide if a mother has to work, because if

Credit: Celia Walden @ Telegraph Media Group Limited 2020

not, at a certain point the family can crumble. You have to see what type of family you have, what sort of life you want to lead. And it may be that you have to change your way of life a little.”

For the moment, Loren’s lifestyle is as pared down as it has ever been. She tries to cycle daily on her exercise bike in her bathroom, and to be disciplined about what she eats. Fans fond of repeating one of her most famous quotes, “Everything you see, I owe to spaghetti,” will be dismayed to hear that it’s apocryphal. “I never said it,” she shrills. “Because if you eat a lot of spaghetti, you get fat! I like pasta, of course, but I eat it in a moderate way, because I always try to stay fit and pretty, but I’m not a fan of deprivation.

That’s taking things too far. So whenever I need to, I just eat a little less.”

As the author of two bestselling cookbooks, the actor has always found the process of cooking therapeutic, she says, but particularly so over the past few months. Combined with “reading a great deal”, immersing herself in the “funny old films that are able to take me away from it all through laughter”, and, of course, dancing along with Fred Astaire, time spent in the kitchen has enabled Loren to maintain her serenity – and look forward to the life ahead.

I hope that future life will include the Oscar she and Ponti’s film fully deserves.

After all, when, in 1962, Loren became the first actor to earn an Academy Award

for a foreign-language film, for her role in Two Women, she was so scared of fainting if she won – or being too upset if she didn’t – that she stayed at home that night and made tomato sauce instead.

But “even now, just talking about the idea makes me nervous”, she confides, overcome with emotion. “So much so that it’s hard for me to talk.”

We’re almost out of time, but before I let Loren go, I’m curious to know which of the A-list actors she might find herself nominated alongside in January she rates. “To be honest, I don’t watch many modern films,” she demurs. But there must be a particular actor she admires above all others? “Yes,” she says, with a husky little laugh: “Sophia Loren.”

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Top to bottom: George Chuvalo; Leon Spinks 52

The men who fought Ali

How must it have felt to trade punches with Muhammad Ali, and what became of those who fought him? One photographer decided to find out WORDS: CHRIS ANDERSON

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f you are a boxer, stepping into the ring with an opponent nicknamed ‘The Greatest’ might seem a little intimidating. Of course, it took Muhammad Ali many years to earn such praise, with a professional career spanning two decades, throughout the 1960s and 1970s, and he remains the only fighter to have won the world heavyweight title three times.

He fought some tough, memorable opponents along the way; was an outspoken activist; and he loved to build the hype around his own fights.

Michael Brennan is just one of the many photographers who was mesmerised by Ali. Originally from the UK, Brennan took his career Stateside, sending his work to newspapers back home. He would regularly attend Ali’s fights, press conferences and training sessions, and the two built up a rapport.

“He used to call me The Limey,” says Brennan. “He was great to work with and a lot of fun. I remember, if I ever needed money for rent or whatever, I’d get the bus from New York where I was living close to his Deer Lake training camp and knock on his door. He’d always come out and mess around for the camera, and I’d sell the pictures to keep me going for another month.”

A new book by Brennan, They Must

Fall: Muhammad Ali and the Men He Fought, published by ACC Art Books, features many of the images taken during this time. There are entire sequences captured during training and in actual fights, with a spotlight thrown on the bouts with Ali’s greatest opponents – namely George Foreman and Joe Frazier.

But there is also another project within that Brennan spent many years researching, and which he continued until very recently. His mission: to track down and photograph the men who had fought the icon, discovering what had become of them. The results are surprising. While the years that followed for big names like Foreman and Frazier are relatively well known, other former fighters had to find alternative careers, with some luckier than others.

To begin with, Brennan explains why the fortunes of the men were so varied.

“The money back then wasn’t what it is today,” he says. “To step into a ring at that level now would result in a substantial payday, but that wasn’t the case in the 1960s and 1970s, when some of the fighters only got a few hundred bucks, if that, to face Ali in the ring.”

So boxing was hardly a lucrative career, unless you endured and became a big star like Ali, or found other ways 53

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These pages, clockwise from above: Tony Espert; George Foreman

to make your fortune – like perhaps launching a grill with your name on it.

“It was actually George Foreman that set me off on this project,” Brennan confirms. “It was 1977, three years after the Rumble in the Jungle with Ali, and shortly after his punishing loss to Jimmy Young, which had led to his decision to retire. I had an assignment to photograph him at his home in Texas, and I found out he’d become a street preacher, later an ordained minister. He offered to baptise me in his swimming pool, and I declined.

But on the plane on the way home, I started thinking, so that’s what George is up to, I wonder what all of the other people who fought Ali are doing.”

Naturally, Brennan decided to start at the beginning. “Ali’s first professional 54

opponent was Tunney Hunsaker, and they clashed in October 1960 in Louisville, Kentucky,” says Brennan.

“Hunsaker lost, but when I tracked him down in 1978 he was the police chief of a quiet town called Fayetteville, West Virginia. He’d been in the police force at the time of the fight and talked very highly of Ali – said he knew right away he’d be a champion one day.

“The fight was in Louisville, Ali’s hometown, and not long after he’d won his gold medal at the Olympics, so he was already pretty well known.

I remember Hunsaker telling me that Ali was the best he’d ever fought, and impossible to knock off balance.”

No list of opponents would be complete without Ali’s former arch rival, Joe Frazier, so he was also

tracked down by Brennan. “Frazier and Ali had three epic fights during the 1970s, and Frazier was the target of Ali’s most cutting remarks,” says Brennan. “When I met him in 1979, Frazier had retired, and he was now an entertainer, touring with a group of backing singers called The Knockouts.

He would perform with them at schools, and he also ran a boxing gym and had a few other business interests.

“Even though Ali used to taunt him publicly, and quite brutally at times, Frazier was full of admiration. The two had a relationship built on mutual respect, and Frazier described their bouts as some of the greatest of all time. He said that Ali wasn’t the hardest puncher he had ever faced – that was definitely George Foreman – but

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PHOTOGRAPHY: Michael Brennan

These pages, from left to right: Tunney Hunsaker; ‘Sweet Jimmy’ Robinson

he talked about the love he felt, and the kindness and generosity that Ali would always show towards others.”

With a few shoots in the bag, Brennan took his findings to Sports Illustrated magazine. “The picture editor went straight to the editor,” he recalls. “They said, we love this, we want you to find more. So I tracked down maybe another 10, and they ran it as a 14-page supplement in September 1980, just before that dreadful fight in Vegas between Ali and Larry Holmes. It was clear by that point that Ali had gone too far.”

But while Ali’s career quickly wrapped up, for Brennan this was merely the start, and he continued to track down other opponents over the next 30 years.

The book containing these images is a revelation – it shows how one-time boxers had become businessmen, salesmen and gym managers, or simply fallen on hard times. “A big shocker for me was Leon Spinks, who beat Ali in 1978, taking the title from him and then losing it in a rematch just seven months later,” says Brennan. “When I photographed him in 2006, he was working in a McDonald’s in Columbus, Nebraska. A former heavyweight champion – and 30 years after he’d won a gold medal at the 1976 Olympics!”

Other names featured include Floyd Patterson, then training a new generation of heavyweights, including

his own son; LaMar Clark, working as a boss at a mine in Salt Lake City; Alex Miteff, driving limousines in New York; Chuck Wepner, allegedly the inspiration for the Rocky movies, working as a travelling salesman; George Chuvalo, visiting schools to teach children the dangers of drugs; and Herb Siler and Tony Esperti, who had both been knocked out by Ali in two of his earliest fights, now serving time in a correctional facility. These were men who had traded blows with Ali, some having gone the distance.

Brennan found many of the fighters by scouring phone directories or asking around at gyms. “Buster Mathis, who had fought Ali in 1971, was a tough one to track down, but I found him only seven years after he’d retired from boxing, loading trucks in Grand Rapids, Michigan,” he says. “He told me that Ali’s taunts could play on your mind before a fight, but afterwards Ali came up to him and told him how great he was, and to never give up.”

‘Sweet Jimmy’ Robinson, who fought Ali back in 1961, was another challenge.

“I’d asked around, as I’d heard he was living in Miami, and word must have gotten to him because he showed up at my hotel,” Brennan says. “He didn’t smile once for the photos, and he seemed a haunted man, living on welfare. Life was really tough for him.”

There are questions to be asked

When I ‘photographed

Leon Spinks he was working in a McDonald’s. A former heavyweight champion – and 30 years after he’d won a gold medal at the 1976 Olympics!

’

about the effect that trading blows with an iconic athlete such as Ali might have. Could it initiate a major life and career change, or is this down to the individual? Perhaps once you have fought the best, there are few places left to go in the sport, so a change is then required. What does Brennan himself think? “He was The Greatest,” the photographer muses.

“You can’t say fairer than that.”

They Must Fall: Muhammad Ali and the Men He Fought by Michael Brennan, published by ACC Art Books, is available now, accartbooks.com 57

Motoring DECEMBER 2020: ISSUE 111

Spirited Only the Spirt of Ecstasy and signature umbrella remain from the ’s previous incarnation, a decision that has led to the Rolls-Royce Ghost’s building of a frighteningly brilliant new model

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WORDS: JOHN THATCHER

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o drive or to be driven. That is the question. And it’s a difficult one to answer. The new Rolls-Royce Ghost is a car that has been designed with significant input from Rolls-Royce clients; those who tend to drive their Sprit of Ecstasy-adorned vehicles (customers in America and Europe), those who prefer to be chauffeured (Asia), and those who fall somewhere in between (Middle East). As such, this is a car that appeals to all, one that delivers a game-changing ride whether you’re at the wheel or stretched out in the rear.

Having experienced both - being chauffeured to Dubai’s Emirates Hills, where Rolls-Royce had commandeered a villa very much in the sophisticated style of the new Ghost (all clean lines and free of overt symbols of excessive wealth and insufficient taste), then taking over driving duties for three designated routes across the city - I’d certainly fall on the side of driver, if pushed. But should we have to endure another lockdown in the near future, I can’t think of a better home office than the rear cabin of the Ghost. That’s assuming I’d be able to resist the urge to nod off under the sparkling Starlight Headliner, a smaller version of which, comprised of 850 stars, illuminates the Ghost nameplate on the passenger side of the dashboard whenever the cabin’s interior lighting is activated.

That piece of craftmanship alone took 10,000 collective hours to fashion and is a fine example of the highly complex detailing that characterises the new Ghost. This, after all, is the most technologically advanced RollsRoyce of them all, which may hint at a dashboard of myriad bells, whistles, and blinking lights to boot. Yet, this is a design Rolls-Royce is pitching as post opulent; understated, refined, subtle, a car which doesn’t have to shout to be heard, its elegance whispered.

The first of the three designated driving routes – over the numerous speed humps inside the boundaries of Emirates Hills - presented the chance to road test one of these advancements, the so-called Planar Suspension System. Ten years of collective testing were devoted to developing this scanning and software technology, which has been designed to deliver

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the smoothest of rides. In laymen’s terms, an additional layer of dampers has been placed on top of the car’s usual dampers (a bit like sleeping with two pillows instead of one), further cushioning the feel of any lumps and bumps in the road. Such unwelcome obstacles are also thwarted by the Ghost’s Flagbearer system, which uses cameras to read the road ahead and prepare the suspension system for any impactful changes in road surface.

You’d certainly class speed bumps as impactful but, true to its word, the Ghost glides over them with minimum fuss. Nothing to spook you here.

It’s when we get outside the gated community and onto the open road (as open as Sheikh Zayed Road can be in the middle of the afternoon) for the second driving route that the Ghost starts to reveal more of its

personality, showing off by seemingly taking complete control. Which, of course, it does, to just the right degree.

In addition to that aforementioned suspension system carpeting the road for you, there’s a Satellite Aided Transmission system, which draws GPS data to pre-select the optimum gear for upcoming corners; vision assist, including day- and night-time wildlife and pedestrian warning; alertness assistant; a four-camera system with panoramic view, allround visibility and helicopter view; active cruise control; collision warning; cross-traffic warning; lane departure and lane change warning; and a 7x3 high-resolution head-up display, which makes it crystal clear to see just how effortlessly the Ghost glides towards the speed limit.

Even the doors play a part in the

effortlessness of it all. The front doors can be closed by either driver or passenger at the touch of a centrally placed button, while the doors at the rear are opened with power assistance.

One pull of the door’s handle sees it automatically ajar – useful to inform any waiting valet that you are now ready to exit the vehicle.

Let’s not forget, however, that this is still a beast – a 6.75-litre twinturbocharged V12 petrol engine lurks within, taking you from 0-100kp/h in 4.6 seconds – so the slightest touch of the accelerator provides a glorious yet graceful thrust. And despite this also being a bigger beast than in its previous incarnation - its overall length and width having grown by 89mm and 30mm respectively - an optimum 50/50 weight distribution has been achieved, partially by placing that 6.75-litre V12 behind the front axle.

The final leg of our drive takes place just after sunset. Ghosts, of course, do their best work at night, and this one dresses splendidly for the occasion. As well as that Starlight Headliner and dashboard constellation,

20 LEDs have been added to the underside of the top of the radiator grille, giving an exterior glow.

The still of the night is also the perfect setting in which to appreciate the Ghost’s self-titled ‘near-silent soundstage’. It’s impossible not to notice how quiet a ride the car actually delivers. And like almost everything inside and out of the Ghost, many minds, hands, and hours were used to achieve this. Both the bulkhead and floor sections are double-skinned to cushion the sound of the road, while 100kg of acoustic damping materials – placed in the doors, roof, between the double-glazed windows, inside the tyres and within nearly all of the architecture itself – tune out any unwelcome interference.

The end result was only labelled ‘near’ silent because ‘total’ silence was considered potentially disorientating.

As such, in harmonising the acoustics of the car, the team responsible added a single note ‘whisper.’

It’s a very fitting addition because, whisper it, this may well be the best Rolls-Royce yet.

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Ghosts do their best work at night and this one dresses splendidly for the occasion

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Gastronomy DECEMBER 2020 : ISSUE 111

Valley Girl

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Lisa Hilton meets Ana Ros, the former Olympic skier turned Michelin-star chef who has transformed Slovenia’s food scene

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ntil this year, the Soca valley in Slovenia’s Julian Alps was best known as one of the locations for the Chronicles of Narnia films.

But the dramatic, otherworldly beauty of this remote corner of one of Europe’s smallest countries looks set to become one of the world’s hottest gastronomic destinations.

Slovenia, with its ancient wine culture, superlative natural ingredients and a cuisine that combines Balkan, Italian and Byzantine inf luences, has been an under-the-radar foodie idyll for some time. The release of the first Slovenian Michelin guide in June has cemented its gourmet credentials.

Having visited after its three-month lockdown to sample the food at the two-star Hisa Franko, a countryside inn in Kobarid run by Ana Ros, I think it might just be one of the best restaurants in the world.

Hisa Franko looks anything but grand: a charming, slightly tumbledown collection of rustic buildings that you might easily drive past if you didn’t know what was hidden within. The wine bar is scrawled with slogans from the staff, including one from the chef: “Life’s too short for a shitty caipirinha.”

That’s Ros: blunt, direct and committed to perfection. She is celebrated in Slovenia, but she can also be a divisive figure. She has just released a memoir, Sun and Rain, a collection of essays that chronicles her love for the valley and the evolution of her food style. The writing is lyrical and poignant, but Ros takes no prisoners. “I hate comfort zones . . .

That is why my food is different and unique,” she says. She’s comfortable with the idea that people either adore or hate her food. There’s nothing macho or pompous about Ros; she crackles with vigour.

Cooking, she says, has to make sense.

Every dish on her 18-plate tasting menu is justified by its connection to the landscape. Her approach to food – local ingredients pushed to the maximum of f lavour with a combination of traditional methods such as fermentation and cutting-edge culinary techniques – might sound similar to that of the ‘new Nordic’ movement championed by Rene Redzepi at Noma in Copenhagen. But 64

Credit: Lisa Hilton / The Times Luxx Magazine / News Licensing

Opening pages, from left to right: silver mussel, a dish comprised of silver mussel, bitter orange, charcoal-grilled green asparagus; Ana Roa These pages, clockwise from bottom left: the interior of Hisa Franko; dandelion, a dish comprised of crispy dandelion, yoghurt and forest honey; strukelj: Ana Ros considers a dish

to Ros there’s nothing artful about her practice. Slovenia’s approach to gastronomy, centred on indigenous, ecologically sound, seasonal produce, might feel current, but here it’s old news.

For many years Slovenian chefs had little option but to make the best of what they could find. Ros is interested in f lavour, not satiety. “The worst compliment I’ve ever had,” she says, “is, ‘I’m so full.’ ” A great restaurant experience, she says, should be akin to visiting an art gallery; a transformational encounter full of cerebral and sensual pleasure. She claims to be uninterested in trends, instead pursuing depth of f lavour and lightness. You could say the food is as exquisite as the view of the emerald and silver of the Soca river and the soaring mountains, which it is: tiny plates presented like miniature sculptures. You could say it’s delicious, achieving levels of texture and contrasting savour that surprise and delight in equal measure.

Homely ingredients are taken beyond recognition: pine cones, linden leaves, chickweed, beeswax, a dessert based on beer and “junk popcorn”. Standouts on the early summer menu included trout skin stuffed with trout liver bottarga in a trout belly emulsion, a roasted corn tortilla with “fake guacamole” of lovage and smoked egg with a tartare of Dreznica lamb, and a mochi of Tolmin cheese with pear butter and elder blossom vinegar.

Ros never intended to become a chef.

She was in the final stages of qualifying for the diplomatic service (she speaks an embarrassing number of languages) when she met her husband, Valter Kramar, and despite initial opposition from her family, followed him back to the valley where his parents had been running their restaurant for many years. “I think that’s something women have more than men, that sense of following your heart,” Ros says. She was 30 and pregnant with her first child when she began to cook, taking over the restaurant from her in-laws in 2002. Kramar is the sommelier.

Ros had no kitchen experience, but as

zones. That is why my food ‘ I hate comfort is different and unique ’ a member of Slovenia’s junior Olympic ski squad, she was no stranger to selfdiscipline and motivation. And she likes to win. Only 15 years after she started cooking, she was named the World’s Best Female Chef, and today is the holder of Slovenia’s only two Michelin stars, joining the 13 other female chefs who have achieved the accolade in the past two decades.

The world of top-level restaurants has traditionally been dominated by men.

At first, Ros says, other chefs often assumed she was a journalist or PR, and when she was included in events it was often as a gesture to equality.

But despite what she describes as the occasional “Bridget Jones moment”, once they’d sampled her food, no one needed convincing.

Ros doesn’t always wear traditional chef’s whites. “Why not show your character?” she asks. “I like to keep that femininity, you know, a touch of make-up. It’s like my food, why wouldn’t I express who I am?” Today she’s in a f lowing black Max Mara dress with delicately embroidered collar and sleeves. Sometimes she’ll cook in a shirt and jeans, but her favourite labels are Red Valentino and Isabel Marant, and she’ll always keep a pair of Saint Laurent stilettoes in her car.

Meticulous, uncompromising, glamorous yet authentic, Ros’s personality is as unforgettable as her food. Her achievement at Hisa Franko has helped to put Slovenia on the map, but I doubt she’ll stop there.

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Travel DECEMBER 2020:ISSUE 111

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F

rom Romeo and Juliet’s fair Verona, to the Great Gatsby’s glitzy West Egg, the greatest love stories of our time unfolded amid scenic backdrops. This is because, in order to nurture romance, location is, and always has been, key. To craft a memorable tale, there needs to be just the right amount of charm, without gaudy excess. Yet, it is a truth universally acknowledged that finding a resort that can marry intoxicating romance to refined elegance is a challenge.

One property that effortlessly manages to do this, however, is the Four Seasons Resort Dubai at Jumeirah Beach.

Nestled on the sands of Jumeirah Beach, the hotel harnesses its city-meets-beach location to craft diverse love stories which start upon arrival.

Drawing up to the 237-room resort along a palm tree-lined road feels akin to slipping into an ethereal novel. The story continues to unfold inside, with a winding marble staircase, grand vases of freshly-cut flowers, and a decadent chandelier that pays homage to Arabian affluence whilst maintaining the Four Season’s renowned design flair.

Recently refurbished, the Imperial Suite is minimal in style, with opulent finishing and midcentury trimming. Inviting lovers to sequester away in the lap of luxury, its spacious living area, kitchenette and walk-in wardrobes provide a home away from home in which to hunker down. The recipe for a perfect day starts here – a delectable breakfast spread served to you in your room, followed by a private massage for two.

Peel yourself away to sample the resort’s awardwinning restaurants and bars; Asian-flavoured seafood joint Sea Fu and Instagram-famed steakhouse, Nusr-et, two noteworthy must-dines.

But if you’re keen to indulge the heart, a number of bespoke romantic dining experiences can be booked.

Consider making use of the resort’s dual vantage point – with the Gulf on one side and the skyscraperstudded Dubai skyline on the other – at Mercury Lounge’s seventh floor Majlis, which can be privately hired for a tailored dining service. The jetty can also be yours alone, as can a secluded spot by the resort’s famous fireball on the beach.

This is a resort that tugs the heartstrings, one you’ll fall head over heels for.

Once you land your jet at Dubai International Airport, an S-Class Mercedes or Bentley chauffeur for two can be arranged.

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JOURNEYS BY JET

Four Seasons Resort Dubai at Jumeirah Beach Dubai

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What I Know Now DECEMBER 2020:ISSUE 111

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Sonu Shivdasani CEO & JOINT CREATIVE DIRECTOR, SONEVA The best piece of advice I’ve ever received derives from an Einstein quote: ‘One must be prepared to give up who one is in order to become who one will’. I also like Henry Ford’s statement: ‘If one believes one can, and if one believes one cannot, in both cases one will invariably be right.’

A lesson I learned the hard way was that one must be prepared to let go and accept change. Sometimes one holds on to the past and it’s not healthy. This was my experience with Six Senses. Eva and I contemplated changing our lives and selling the Six Senses management business back in 2005/2006. The business was very successful and we found it difficult to let go, so we held onto it for 5 years more than we should have. As a result, we did not achieve the true value that we could have from the business, while there is so much more we could have done over that 5-year period.

My wife, Eva, inspires me with her strong conviction. I am also inspired by my travels, what I read, and those around me.

Continuous learning, enjoying what I do on a daily basis, and a good balance between 68

my work and my life is my definition of personal success.

I’ve realised that what has made Soneva such a success has been that we are always trying new and innovative things. We enjoy doing things first and setting trends; from cultivating organic gardens within each Soneva property, to building the first ever in-resort observatories with resident astronomers and screening a classic movie under the stars at our outdoor cinema. We were also the first resorts to have complimentary ice cream, chocolate, and deli rooms.

As recently as last year, after a health scare, Eva and I decided to steer Soneva more in the direction of wellness. We’ve done this by reducing, or completely eliminating, the use of white flour and refined sugar. We’ve also reduced the resorts’ beef consumption by 75%, and are focussing on more plant-based, vegetarian dishes. We want to introduce more nutrient-dense foods through complex carbohydrates and breads, made using multi grains.

I have been fortunate enough to have experienced many crises during my lifetime. My choice of the word ‘fortunate’ is deliberate. The Chinese word for crisis is two characters: ‘danger’ and ‘opportunity’.

According to Lao Tzu, the Chinese writer and philosopher, ‘Good fortune has its roots in disaster’. And, over the years, I have come to understand these words and have realised that these crises are opportunities to learn, grow and develop. Certainly, we have no control over the hand that we are dealt, but we have total control on how we play it.

I have realised that if we consider a crisis in a positive way, we can always find an opportunity to learn and develop and make our lives more enriching as a result.

Covid-19 has shown all of us at Soneva that, even in the most unprecedented of times, our unwavering spirit and belief allow us to make the best of a challenging situation.

We’ve come out stronger, more resilient, leaner, and more confident in our goals to continue to create experiences that make lasting memories, all while taking even better care of our planet.

DANISH CONFECTIONERY Lakrids by Bülow is the story of passionate craftsmanship for gourmet liquorice. In 2007 we created exceptional Danish liquorice, and today we continue our journey of creating surprising combinations and sensorial taste experiences with liquorice as our core. The ambition has remained the same: To inspire people around the world and spread our love for this unique Nordic flavour.

Johan Bülow

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