AIR Magazine - Empire Aviation - April'22

APRIL 2022

SAMUEL L. JACKSON

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Contents

AIR

Credit: Sean Lennon and Irina Lazareanu by Philip Gay for Zoo Magazine, S/S 2008, issue no. 19 © Philip Gay, from Runway Bird: A Rock ’n’ Roll Style Guide (Flammarion, 2022)

APRIL 2022: ISSUE 127

FEATURES Thirty Six

Forty Two

Forty Eight

Fifty Four

Samuel L. Jackson is Hollywood’s highest-grossing actor of all time — and no one is more outspoken

Discovered by Kate Moss, muse to Karl Lagerfeld, and engaged to a rock ‘n’ roll bad boy. Irina Lazareanu reflects.

Why it’s not just his showstopping styles that set Olivier Rousteing apart from the fashion crowd.

Monica Bellucci has been a model, film star and Bond girl.

Her next trick? Putting opera’s tragic diva back on stage.

Money Spinner

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Songbird

Wonder Boy

Diva Moment

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Disrupting Diamonds

Contents

APRIL 2022: ISSUE 127

Credit: Photographed by Brian Siambi

REGULARS Fourteen

Radar

Sixteen

Objects of Desire Eighteen

Critique Twenty

Art & Design Twenty Eight

Timepieces Thirty Two

Jewellery

EDITORIAL

Sixty

Editor-in-Chief

Motoring

John Thatcher john@hotmedia.me

Sixty Four

Gastronomy

ART Art Director

Seventy Two

Kerri Bennett

What I Know Now

Illustration

Leona Beth

COMMERCIAL Managing Director

Victoria Thatcher General Manager

David Wade

david@hotmedia.me

PRODUCTION Digital Media Manager

Muthu Kumar Sixty Eight

Journeys by Jet John Thatcher enjoys a memorable safari across Kenya’s wildlife-rich plains — and makes a long-necked friend along the way.

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Empire Aviation Group APRIL 2022:ISSUE 127

Welcome Onboard APRIL 2022

Welcome to this issue of AIR — our inspiring luxury lifestyle magazine for our private aviation community of aircraft owners, charter clients and partners. If you are reading this onboard an Empire Aviation operated flight, I wish you a comfortable and relaxing experience.

It’s clear that 2022 has started with a burst of energy. Despite the current global headwinds, a surge of confidence and activity suggests we are moving towards pre-pandemic economic growth and opportunities.

For Empire Aviation, we have the added bonus of a new set of industry awards that also help assure us that we are moving in the right direction as a company and as a team. We were fortunate enough to be nominated and announced as winners of the Aviation Achievement Awards in two categories — Outstanding Contribution to Business Aviation, and Aircraft Management Service Provider of the Year.

Aircraft Management is the core of our business and our services to aircraft owners and so this is an especially satisfying achievement.

Outstanding Contribution is an individual award but it is very clear that it is a recognition of the performance and commitment of the entire team. I would like to thank everyone at Empire Aviation and all our owners, customers, and partners — so many people have contributed to our success and to helping us make this recognition possible.

One service area that does not get enough recognition is that of onboard services and especially the difference and impact that Corporate Flight Attendants make to the passenger experience.

While the whole team focuses on the aircraft and flight operations, the essence of the experience in terms of personal comfort often comes down to the performance of a single attendant. So, it is very appropriate that we feature one of our senior Corporate Flight Attendants in this issue — who has been delivering high service standards at Empire Aviation for the last 12 years.

Enjoy the read.

Paras P. Dhamecha Founder & Managing Director

Contact Details: Cover: Samuel L. Jackson Getty Images

info@empire.aero empireaviation.com

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Empire Aviation Group APRIL 2022:ISSUE 127

Paras Dhamecha Wins Outstanding Contribution to Business Aviation Award Founder and Managing Director of Empire Aviation Group wins AAA (Aviation Achievements Award) 2022, which highlights outstanding examples of leadership, professionalism, integrity, trust, passion, vision, and inspiration Leading by example, Paras has steered Empire Aviation through the pandemic by maintaining all operations and services within the restrictions, while simultaneously supporting the company’s staff, aircraft owners, and the community through repatriation flights.

He has also identified and responded to the unique opportunities for private aviation, focusing the business on the growing potential for aircraft sales, expanding in the Indian market with the signing of an ISR (International Sales Representative) agreement with Gulfstream for India, and innovating services with the launch of a new Luxury Partner programme targeting leisure charter. Paras has also continued to invest in the business’ future with a new aviation management platform.

Empire Aviation Group Wins Aircraft Management Service Provider of the Year AAA (Aviation Achievements Award) 2022 highlights the Aircraft Management organisation which displays exceptional dedication and service excellence Since launching in Dubai in 2007, Empire Aviation Group has developed into a global private aviation business integrating a comprehensive range of services, based on a distinctive asset management approach and personalised service, ensuring aircraft owners and charter clients enjoy all the privacy, safety, comfort and convenience of private aviation.

Empire Aviation operates in the key regions for private aviation, covering 10

the USA, Europe, India, Africa and the Far East, in addition to the Middle East.

The Empire Aviation team comprises 120 aviation specialists across the globe, with branch offices located in India and San Marino, and aircraft sales representatives based in the US. Today, Empire Aviation holds AOCs (Air Operator Certificates) in the UAE and San Marino, and a partner NSOP in India, as well as private operations

approved in the Cayman Islands.

Empire Aviation provides all the major services associated with private aviation — aircraft management, flight operations and charter, as well as aircraft sales and CAMO. It’s the integration of these comprehensive services and the expertise and experience of the team that enables Empire Aviation to provide a high degree of personalised services.

Empire Aviation Group APRIL 2022:ISSUE 127

Welcoming You Onboard Say hello to one of Empire’s Corporate Flight Attendants

The day-to-day challenges of a Corporate Flight Attendant (CFA) are many and varied. They demand a consistently calm, confident, and adaptable management approach, with a leadership style which creates a positive onboard experience for aircraft owners, guests, and all the operating crew.

CFAs are responsible for every aspect of cabin management within each operation, including safety, security, interior standards, stock control, and catering requirements for all passengers and operating crew. All whilst ensuring client confidentiality and providing a luxury travel experience with the highest professional standards.

According to Emma Waltham, Empire’s CFA team member, most onboard guests arrive with very high expectations of their journey and she relishes the challenge and the opportunity to create a lasting impression, reflecting the Empire brand.

Emma began her flying career 16 years ago when she joined a global carrier and spent four years working in First Class Commercial Aviation. It was a perfect grounding for a move into private aviation and she joined Empire in 2010. Since then, she has built a unique depth of experience across a wide variety of business jet types.

Emma shares her experience and insights into this most demanding role.

“My introduction to the aviation industry began 16 years ago, when I made the transition from the UK to the UAE as a newly-recruited in-flight member of a global commercial carrier. The educational Safety and Service Programme by a worldleading operator is extensive. This foundation of rigorous industry training fundamentally prepared me for the daily cultural dynamics and high professional standards, which I continue to apply within my role as Lead Corporate Flight Attendant.”

Emma’s years of commercial experience, managing the passenger 12

profile of Business and First Class guests, instilled a vast understanding of the rich cultural diversity in the UAE and Gulf region. In addition to cultural awareness, she also developed crucial experience in handling the expectations of high-profile guests, which often included members of royal families, Heads of State, public figures, and business executives.

This experience fully equipped her with the tools required to excel in her professional role with Empire.

“Within the professional expectations, I believe personal flair and consistency are critically important in providing a memorable luxury travel experience for the guest, whilst representing the Empire brand to the highest standards. This is what will ultimately promote return custom. It is especially important to treat each new guest onboard as though it were their first private aviation experience. First impressions are the most crucial and equal to the ambience experienced when you enter the lobby of a luxury hotel. Consistent standards should always be set when welcoming guests onboard.”

Emma highlights examples of ‘flair’ in the onboard experience such as personal touches, including experience ‘accents’ and elements of surprise like birthday cards, cake or flowers to mark a birthday, or a hand-written card from the operating crew for children (“it never fails to please”). It could also include guest’s personal favourites, such as chocolates, specific toiletries, music, movies or reading material.

“Going the extra mile often requires additional preparation time and effort in researching passenger profiles.

However, exceeding client expectations almost always pays off, which should always be the professional objective.”

Emma’s role also includes anticipating guest needs and problemsolving when the need arises.

“Whilst recently researching a high-profile guest, I discovered the lead passenger’s dog, which would also be travelling with us, had strict

Empire Aviation CFA, Emma Waltman

vegan dietary requirements. I spent several hours personally visiting every pet store in the city, attempting to source vegan dog treats. This resulted in the client being both surprised and delighted in having these items readily available on-board without request.

“When catering for another passenger, who confided that the trip was due to a very serious family emergency at home, I was able to work with the Captain In-Charge, who obtained special permission for the client to contact his family via our onboard satellite phone during the journey. Thankfully, the passenger contacted us later to confirm a happy outcome and to express gratitude in being able to contact his family at a critical time.”

For Emma, no two days are the same, and maintaining professional standards heavily depends on her passion for the role. After almost 12 years, she is now privileged to be able to share her knowledge and guidance when being involved in training new members of Empire’s onboard team.

“The importance of a bespoke travel experience has never been more so than during the last two years and is a reminder that our industry is constantly growing, developing, and adapting to clients’ changing needs,” she says.

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Radar

Dropping in time for Ramadan is Maria Grazia Chiuri’s annual ode to gold, Dior Or, a capsule collection comprising couture pieces — flowing dresses, blouses, and matching skirts — and a raft of shimmering accessories, including suitably hued iterations of the Dior Book Tote and Lady Dior bags.

It also features signature footwear, from these D-Connect sneakers through to DiorAct sandals and Dway mules. The exclusive line is available from Dior boutiques in the Middle East, as well as pop-up stores in Riyadh, Dubai and Kuwait.

Credit: Melanie & Ramon

AIR

APRIL 2022: ISSUE 127

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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

CHANEL

FA L L- W I N T E R 2 0 2 2 / 2 3 R E A D Y-T O - W E A R Tweed has long been a staple at Chanel, used to thread its past to its present.

It dates to Gabrielle Chanel’s time in Scotland, where she revelled in wrapping up for countryside walks. In tribute, Virginie Viard has devoted the entire FW22/23 collection to the woollen fabric.

“We followed the footsteps of Gabrielle Chanel along the River Tweed, to imagine tweeds in the colours of this landscape,” said Viard in her collection notes. Cue colourful coats, jackets, and — to combat the Scottish elements — thick-ribbed tights and thigh-high Wellies.

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OB JECTS OF DESIRE

BRIONI

F W22 painting Allegory of Air. While the architecture of expert tailoring remains a constant across the pieces, it is stripped of any constricting rigidity. In the absence of weight, the importance of texture comes through via new construction techniques and refined materials.

Brioni outlines its core purpose as creating clothing of ‘unparalleled lightness and comfort, whose beauty is timeless.’ It is lightness that takes the lead in this collection, for which Design Director Norbert Stumpfl drew inspiration from Breughel the Elder’s 2

OB JECTS OF DESIRE

RAMI AL ALI

AW22 RT W Across 27 pieces, Rami Al Ali hones his technical expertise — his celebrated couture skills and signature beadwork playing an integral role. Delicate fabrics like tulle, satin, and organza are incorporated with luxurious Mikado silks to create designs influenced by the

transitional shift from day to night. As such, pieces range from sleek mini-dresses to voluminous, multi-layered skirts. This transition is also reflected in the colour palette: forest green, raspberry, and mandarin meld into a strong presence of charcoal black.

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OB JECTS OF DESIRE

GUCCI

E XQUISITE GUCCI “It’s a men’s collection during women’s fashion week,” stated Alessandro Michele post-show. “My masculine world is very, very broad. Men have opened a dialogue with a feminine world and I was thinking about the opportunity to show this.” On pieces that blurred the

lines between genders, athleisure and tailoring, the three-stripe calling card of Adidas was prevalent — part of a far-reaching collaboration between the two brands — on everything from sharp suiting and headgear to an extravagant ballgown.

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OB JECTS OF DESIRE

S U P R E M E X B U R B E R RY

SPRING 22

With spring in the air, Supreme and Burberry have teamed up to curate a fresh capsule collection of items that will be split across the stores of both brands.

Supreme will exclusively sell a car coat, shearling-collar puffer jacket, trucker jacket, rugby top, hooded sweatshirt,

jeans, denim shorts, T-shirt, crusher hat, six-panel cap and skateboard (the majority of it clad in Burberry’s signature plaid), while over at Burberry’s stores the exclusive pieces include a funnel-neck jacket, jogging pants, and a rather dapper silk pyjama set.

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OB JECTS OF DESIRE

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PR A DA

F W22 WOMENSWE AR Since Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons teamed up in 2020, their creations have always captured imaginations — and column inches. This collection follows suit, clothes that order you to dress like you mean it as an antidote to the ‘anything goes’ days of

the pandemic. Here, pragmatic pieces are given new emphasis and significance, while the Prada archive has also been combed.

“There are never direct recreations, but there is a reflection of something you know, a language of Prada,” said Simons.

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OB JECTS OF DESIRE

N E T-A - P O R T E R

R AMADAN EDIT Net-A-Porter’s seventh — and biggest to date — Ramadan collection is a colourful edit of regional-inspired designs, many of which are exclusive.

Highlights include Taller Marmo’s ‘one size’ pieces, while Jenny Packham and Marchesa Notte present statement,

floor-skimming dresses and regal capes.

Elsewhere, Oscar De La Renta and Reem Acra offer structured kaftans, and Alex Perry’s abundant skill comes through on tailored suiting that’s perfect for formal iftars. The capsule also includes fine jewellery pieces.

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OBJECTS OF DESIRE

Critique APRIL 2022 : ISSUE 127

Film Eiffel Dir. Martin Bourboulon With Paris set to stage the 1889 World’s Fair, Gustave Eiffel is tasked with building something memorable for the event. (We know how that turned out).

AT BEST: ‘Ambitious, handsomely appointed and unapologetically old-fashioned.’ — Lisa Nesselson, Screen International AT WORST: ‘Not a biopic so much as a sketchy piece of historical fiction.’ — Peter Debruge, Variety

Mothering Sunday Dir. Eva Husson AIR

Left home alone on Mothering Sunday, a woman takes the chance to spend time with her secret lover. But events that neither can foresee will change her life.

AT BEST: ‘A thoughtful and deeply affecting meditation on the loneliness of the lifelong writer.’ — Kevin Maher, Times AT WORST: ‘So much of the film is choppy and claustrophobic.’ — Bill Chambers, Film Freak Central

The Duke Dir. Roger Michell In 1961, a 60-year-old taxi driver stole a Goya portrait from London’s National Gallery, promising its return only if the government invested more in elderly care.

AT BEST: ‘The kind of heist movie that will steal your affections from under your nose.’ — John Nugent, Empire Magazine AT WORST: ‘Consistently lacks the bite needed to offset its sense of sleepy comfort.’ — Christopher Machell, Under the Radar

Hatching Dir. Hanna Bergholm When a young girl finds a wounded bird and brings home its strange egg, the creature that emerges becomes her closest friend — and a living nightmare.

AT BEST: ‘It’s a wild and weird ride; a cult classic in the making.’ — Randy Myers, San Jose Mercury News AT WORST: ‘The film begins to grind to a halt soon after the egg hatches.’ — Peter Sobczynski, eFilmCritic.com 18

AIR X RICHARD MILLE

State Of The Art Richard Mille Art Prize highlights the extraordinary contemporary art scene in the UAE, while paving the way for burgeoning talents to shine

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nderneath Jean Nouvel’s spectacular dome at Louvre Abu Dhabi, the inaugural edition of the Richard Mille Art Prize was staged last month. Seven artists were shortlisted for the award, with Bahraini-American artist Nasser Alzayani selected as the winner — prior to the announcement, Nasser and his fellow artists agreed to share the $50,000 prize, regardless of who won.

Alzayani describes his work as “a research-driven documentation of time and place through text and image, as well as found and cast objects”, and his winning piece, titled Watering The Distant, Deserting The Near, is based on a recently dried-up spring in Bahrain. Since 2016, Alzayani conducted research on the spring’s water levels to develop a multimedia installation which features data and archival material, along with song lyrics, poetry and personal recollections.

AIR X RICHARD MILLE

Nasser is paving the way for future artists ‘across the region to join this initiative and encourage all creative talent to take part ’ Peter Harrison, CEO of Richard Mille EMEA

AIR

This page. clockwise from left: Nasser Alzayani; part of Nasser’s winning work, Watering The Distant, Deserting The Near

The winning work was selected by a distinguished four-member jury including HH Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan bin Khalifa Al Nahyan, Chairman of UAE Unlimited, an avid art collector and patron of the Centre Pompidou, the British Museum, and Sharjah Art Foundation.

“I am so thankful to have won the 2021 Richard Mille Art Prize,” said an emotional Alzayani. “I am so proud to have been able to show this work. This experience has given me a lot more than art, it has given me the chance to build a community of peers I look up to and lifelong friends. I am very grateful for the support that this initiative has provided, and I am excited to see what the future holds for me and the other artists who will be given this opportunity.”

Prior to the ceremony, invited guests — including superstar Pharrell Williams, in town for Richard Mille as a friend of the brand — were treated to live music and an electrifying dance performance, while also given the opportunity to assess the shortlisted artworks for themselves: specially erected displays in The Louvre Abu Dhabi were devoted to each artist, giving them the platform to explain their work through multimedia channels. What was overtly apparent was their shared passion for the region and its heritage, which provided the cornerstone of each piece. It’s a passion Richard Mille, in partnership with Louvre Abu Dhabi, is determined to indulge through its annual Art Prize — safe to say, Nasser Alzayani will be the first of many local artists to benefit from an initiative designed to champion burgeoning talents while progressing contemporary art within the UAE and beyond.

The open call for submissions for the second edition of the Richard Mille Art Prize will be announced soon.

Critique APRIL 2022 : ISSUE 127

Books oblivious leaders, and beleaguered citizens. The scandal at its heart is shocking in the sheer scope of its venality, and Fenton’s years of reporting lays it bare in novelistic, riveting detail. Here is a writer with a singular command of his story, spinning a dark tale so deftly that it’s impossible to look away.”

In The Performance, by Claire Thomas, three women at different points in their lives share a night that will change everything for them. “Engaging and evocative, Thomas’s imitation of wandering minds is flawless and yet entirely comprehensible. Without drifting into stream of consciousness, she nonetheless reproduces that vast galaxy of thoughts that revolves around the dark matter of anxiety at the centre of each life…. I have never been invited into the minds of people sitting through an entire play: It feels oddly intimate,” writes Ron Charles, The Washington Post. In its starred review, Booklist says: “Thomas portrays three generations of women — anxious, resolute, uncertain — who emerge as indelible avatars for

the human condition in times of crisis.

Their regrets and recriminations, promises of improvement, and plans for atonement all play out within a finely wrought framework.

Plumbing themes of intimacy, ambition, grief, and longing with a clarity that is both universal and precise, Thomas’ slim novel offers a rich source for book groups and all contemplative readers.”

The Life of the Mind, by Christine Smallwood, tells the story of Dorothy, a supplementary professor of English in New York City who feels that her life is a failure. “One of the wittiest, most deliciously farcical novels I’ve read in a long time,” reviews Maureen Corrigan for NPR. “This book made me laugh out loud,” says The New York Review of Books, while Refinery 29 hailed Smallwood’s debut work as something, “Wholly original, ultra-precise and very funny… the perfect book for anyone who — consciously or not — narrativizes their life, and sometimes gets filled with an overwhelming sense of dread that they’ve lost the plot.”

Credit: Penguin Random House

Investigative journalist Justin Fenton’s We Own This City is the true tale of the police corruption scandal that followed the 2015 death of Freddie Gray, a twentyfive-year-old black man who was in police custody at the time. “A standout examination of the failures of policing, laid out in context with greater systemic failures…We Own This City is a sobering and necessary account of one dramatic way that trust was destroyed, but it is as much a damning indictment of how that destruction grew out of a mixture of negligence, incompetence and hubris,” reviews The Wall Street Journal. Says the New York Times Book Review: “Fenton populates his narrative with a network of officers, informants and street dealers, all with different motivations and interests.

The overall effect is to capture the disorienting, churning quality of a city where the good guys and bad guys aren’t easily distinguished.” Fellow author Evan Ratliff also praises Fenton. “A masterful account of how police corruption takes root in a Baltimore plagued by crooked cops,

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Art & Design APRIL 2022: ISSUE 127

In My AIR

Mind In Abu Dhabi to present the Richard Mille Art Prize as a friend of the brand, Pharrell Williams, the Grammy-award winning singer-songwriter, producer, and entrepreneur (most recently as founder of product company Humanrace), took time out to share his thoughts on art exclusively with AIR…

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Art & Design APRIL 2022: ISSUE 127

AIR

On what first drew him to the art world…

I’ve always been attracted to art, and I think everyone is — it’s just recognising what art is. The clothes that you wear, the table that you sit at, the building that you’re in, all of it is someone’s creation, someone’s art, the result of their idea. As children, we are exposed to art via all kinds of disciplines, from music to television shows, books to movies. It’s all art, yet we might not realise it as such and therefore do not give the artists and their skill sets the appreciation they deserve. Even if you were living out in the wild, the forest or the jungle, it’s all God’s creation, so there’s nowhere where humankind isn’t surrounded by creativity. I just always love art as it is, but I’ve always appreciated its metaphysical side, too.

On what the art world could do to make art accessible to a wider demographic…

I think where the art world could do a much better job is pointing it out, letting people know that art is all around us.

On what role art can play to drive positive change…

Art has always played a role in changing things, so as much as things

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There’s nowhere where humankind isn’t surrounded by creativity

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are being created, things are also evolving. Each time a car is designed, a few years later they evolve it. That’s art. Creativity and creation is ever evolving. Even mankind. I mean, what did we look like a million years ago?

On what, as a collector, he looks for in artworks…

I don’t like flat art, in no way, shape or form. I don’t mean physically flat, I mean intellectually and on a communicative level. I think art needs to speak to you, to have dimension in its intention or else it’s just flat. It could be beautiful picture, but if it doesn’t do anything to you, it’s just flat. Art needs to have a sentient dimension.

On how the process of creating his own visual artworks differs from creating music…

It’s all the same. The word ‘sweet’ gets used in every artistic discipline: food can be sweet, a smell can be sweet,

music can be sweet, sculpture can be sweet, even people can be sweet, so it’s all the same. Again, with the word ‘bitter’ - you can have bitter songs, bitter lyrics, bitter poetry bitter smells, bitter candy, it’s all the same. Art is art.

On what’s currently inspiring his design sensibility…

I’m on this journey of trying to, like, put emotive properties into a petri dish to boil it all down to its lowest common denominator to say, okay, that’s it. And it’s quite a journey, because it changes with all the different sensory modalities.

How do I know when to stop? I don’t know. I don’t think you can. It’s like Pi. It just continues, like the universe.

On which artists should be on our radar…

There’s this little guy in Detroit who goes by the name @poorteffy on Instagram. His context is crazy and his compositional eye is amazing.

Just the way his mind thinks, I find it to be such a journey.

On the principles he shares with the Richard Mille brand…

Research and development, loyalty to intuition, and the willingness to finetune your instincts. Not everybody does that, and I think that’s where we meet.

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Art & Design

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APRIL 2022: ISSUE 127

Far Out Man

In the Swinging Sixties, Karl Ferris’ ‘psychedelic photography’ defined how we saw everyone from the Rolling Stones to the Beatles

K

arl Ferris is the inventor of ‘psychedelic photography’.

Decades before Photoshop, Ferris, a photographer from England, created elaborate, swirling, multicoloured tableaux using montage, filtration, saturation, fisheye lenses and infrared film. At the height of the Swinging Sixties, he hung out with the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, conjured up light shows for Pink Floyd, painted costumes for Eric Clapton, and produced ground-breaking album covers and mind-frazzling posters for Jimi Hendrix, Cream, Donovan and the Hollies.

“I was never just a photographer,” he says, beaming in via Zoom from his home in Ibiza. “I wanted to make pictures. I had a vision in mind, I got the clothes, location, set direction, and I would put it all together, so it was a more painterly approach.”

Ferris had been working in black and white — “the high contrast, David Bailey, mod thing” — when he crossed paths with a Dutch design duo known as the Fool during a fashion shoot in

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Ibiza in 1966, where a proto-hippie community was developing, “full of joy and laughter. I suddenly became aware of a whole world of colour, and I thought, wow, how do I capture this?”

Ferris arranged for the Fool to join him back in London, where they shared a studio in Notting Hill that became a hub of the emerging psychedelic scene, peopled with pop stars and supermodels. They ran “happenings” with live music and light shows, while Ferris was experimenting with “liquid light projection” and colour film. “It was quite technical, and when I first started, I got lousy pictures. But I could make colours freak out and reverse and glow. It was something completely new.”

Among the most famous examples of his work are covers for Jimi Hendrix’s 1967 debut album Are You Experienced (the gaudily flamboyant US edition) and the following year’s Electric Ladyland (a burned-out performance headshot). “Jimi was sweet and softspoken. We’d talk about philosophy, art and music for hours. He was kind of shy, except when he was playing, then he was totally mesmerising. He said the music used to play him.”

One of Ferris’s oddest claims to fame is changing Hendrix’s hairstyle after he saw the star emerging from the shower.

“Usually he wore it like the English guys, straightened out and lacquered down,” recalls Ferris, who encouraged Hendrix to go au naturel. “He said, ‘It looks crazy!’ I said, ‘No, man, it looks unique and spacey, it’s just what we need for the cover.’ His girlfriend trimmed it into a ball at my suggestion, and so we had the very first ‘Afro’.”

A wizened character of slightly ambiguous age — the birthdate he gives, 1948, sits awkwardly with some of the milestones in his life — Ferris has led a charmed existence, dropping in and out of pop history at significant moments like a hippie Zelig. He saw the Beatles in the Cavern — “They were terrific, it was obvious beat music was going to be the new thing” — taught Pink Floyd how to do a light show — “They wanted me to come out on tour but I was too busy, so I gave their roadie lessons” — and even sang on a Beatles record — “There were about 30 of us in a circle chanting Om over the big piano chord on A Day in the Life, with Paul conducting.”

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Ferris also filmed some of the famous footage of the Sgt Pepper wrap party.

“George [Harrison] handed me a 16mm camera and said, ‘Hey, Karl, want to get some shots?’ It was all about peace and love and groove, those were the three words. Everyone was very sweet… even John Lennon! Rival groups would try to outdo each other creatively.

We felt it was a new renaissance, a cultural revolution, and we were going to push it as far as we could.”

Inevitably, it came to an end. “The idea of hippies became a kind of farcical, commercialised thing. You had Coca-Cola and soap powders bringing out advertisements with cheesy flowers.” The Beatles broke up, the Stones headed into exile in France, and “we all kind of dispersed and left it behind. It was an era, and it faded out.”

Ferris’s psychedelic photography is memorialised in his book, The Karl

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Ferris Experience, which is peppered with tales of and rock ’n’ roll excess. “I eventually wound up in Los Angeles, where there wasn’t much fashion work, and I didn’t want to stay in the music business. When it came to money, it was always ‘Speak to the manager’. They’d rip off pitches, try and get stuff for nothing, wouldn’t pay for stock. Jimi’s manager was the worst. It became really nasty.”

Many decades later, Ferris was sitting at a London café when Paul McCartney came strolling by. “He stopped, put his head down, and looked at me, and kept looking, then said ‘Karl Ferris, is it?’ I said, ‘My God man, how do you remember?

It’s been all these years!’ He said, ‘Those days are imprinted on my mind.’ He sat down with a coffee, and we talked about peace and love and groove. It was quite a time.”

Whatever the mould in the art world is, Strachan is breaking small parts of it, piece-by-piece

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Opening pages, from left to right: The Fool inside The Beatles Apple Boutique © Karl Ferris; Gear on the Warpath, Mick Jagger the Grenadier Guards, 1967 © Colin Jones/TopFoto These pages, from left to right: The New Society.

Photograph taken for The Observer, 1967 © Patrick Ward; The Fool designs inside The Beatles Apple Boutique, 1967 © Karl Ferris. All images courtesy of London’s Fashion and Textile Museum 27

Timepieces APRIL 2022: ISSUE 127

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Timed To Perfection A new Navitimer provides the perfect opportunity to reflect on the allure of the original with Breitling’s Watch Archivist, Fred Mandelbaum WORDS: JOHN THATCHER

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ll watch brands will readily point to the emblematic models in their history, but few will single out just one for particular acclaim. At Breitling, however, they are happy to declare that the Navitimer stands alone. “I can confidently say that the Navitimer is the most important watch in Breitling’s history, it is Breitling’s most iconic timepiece,” states Fred Mandelbaum, watch collector and Breitling’s Watch Archivist. “Not only is it one of the most recognisable watches ever made, it’s on collectors’ lists of the greatest watches of all time.”

Such a billing would have sounded fanciful when the Navitimer was created seventy years ago. It was devised to be purely functional, a mere tool in the form of a wrist-worn chronograph with a circular slide rule that would allow pilots to perform all necessary flight calculations. Yet two years on from its launch the design was announced as the official timepiece of

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the largest aviators’ club in the world [AOPA], sending its popularity not just sky high, but beyond the exosphere — it actually made it all the way into space, on the wrist of astronaut Scott Carpenter in 1962, who used it as a 24hour timepiece to tell day from night.

And if that was a ringing endorsement of its functionality, the fact that it was also worn by the likes of Miles Davis and Serge Gainsbourg amplified its style credentials.

“This was a time where transcontinental flights were becoming mainstream and everyone was dreaming of flying over the oceans in jet planes, I think that the Navitimer in some way reflected that period, which is why people started to fall in love with it,” suggests Mandelbaum, assessing the wide appeal of a watch that was supposed to be sold to pilots only. “When Willy [Breitling] saw that the general market loved the Navitimer he very quickly started to sell it to consumers everywhere. This

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Not only is it one of the most recognisable ‘watches ever made, it’s on collectors’ lists of the greatest watches of all time ’ was a surprise to Willy, an unplanned success. which I think often happens.

“I personally started being attracted to the Navitimer in the mid 1980s.

Firstly, it was a fantastic tool watch but it was also unique. There are hundreds of thousands of watches available, however, I would say there are five or six that are different from all of the others and that stand on their own, one of these is the Navitimer. In certain industries you have a brand that defines a segment, for example, Apple in the smart phone industry. In many ways Breitling has defined the chronograph segment since the founding of the company. If you’re a chronograph collector, then Breitling will always play a major part in your collection.”

So how much would it cost to add a vintage Navitimer to your collection? “Outstanding examples of the Navitimer quite rarely come to market”, says Mandelbaum. “Most are sold in private sales between collectors, but by far the highest price achieved was for the ‘John Glenn’ Navitimer Cosmonaute. It was auctioned in late 2019 and sold for US$160,000.”

In the years since it debuted, the Navitimer has had many visual tweaks, though its core design remains unmistakeable. “Some of these changes are easily visible at first glance,” says Mandelbaum. “An ‘all black’ dial and syringe hands tell us that model was an MK1 or MK2, manufactured before 1963; contrasting subdials and a ‘rice beads’ bezel will tell us it is a 1963 MK3; larger contrasting subdials will make it a MK8 from 1968 or later. Then there are the finer details that require

a closer look, the number of ‘rice beads’ on MK2 bezels dwindle over the years as the beads get slightly larger, so an experienced collector can quite easily roughly date them to specific years.”

Decades from now, collectors will be looking for such design details in the new Navitimer, released as the original celebrates its seventieth year. “For the new Navitimer, we have preserved the most recognisable aspects of the icon’s design code — its circular slide rule, baton indexes, trio of chronograph counters and notched bezel for easy grip. Up close, however, its modern refinements come through loud and clear. A flattened slide rule and a domed crystal create the illusion of a more compact profile. Alternating polished and brushed finishings give the metal elements a lustrous, yet understated quality. While a slimmer silhouette on the oscillating weight enhances the open-caseback view of the COSC-certified Breitling Manufacture Caliber 01, which is one of the most outstanding calibers available in the world today,” suggests Mandelbaum.

As a watch collector and archivist, it is the nods to the original Navitimer that really enthuse Mandelbaum about this latest iteration. “I am delighted that it is coming back in its original size of 41mm,” he says of one of three sizes available, with further options offered by way of case material, strap, and dial colour. “But if there is one feature sure to spark nostalgia, it’s the return of the AOPA wings to their original position at 12 o’clock.”

As with the original, interest in this new Navitimer is sure to take off.

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Jewellery APRIL 2022: ISSUE 127

Stone Town

Every year the world’s leading jewellery houses descend on Tucson, Arizona, to buy their colourful rocks. Jessica Diamond joined the Dior Joaillerie buying team on a gem hunt WORDS: JESSICA DIAMOND

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ewellery companies don’t give up their secrets easily; in a world of exacting craftsmanship, competition is fierce. Yet here I am in Tucson, Arizona, about to witness a process that is ordinarily shrouded in mystery. It’s in this unassuming town in the western outreaches of the US that all the big jewellery maisons, including Dior, purchase their coloured gemstones – those centre stones and suites of perfectly matched gems that can turn a piece of jewellery into a masterpiece.

Why Tucson? Scratch the surface (literally) of the state of Arizona and it will give up a multitude of geological treasure – turquoise, agate, garnet, malachite and topaz are found here, meteorite fields dotted with space debris are well documented and dinosaur fossils (if you know where to look) are common. The sleepy town, which is surrounded by banks of enormous saguaro cacti (some 50ft tall and 200 years old), has long attracted crystal and gemstone sellers and collectors and by 1955 a series of trade fairs had been set up. First came the Tucson Gem and Mineral Show and later the American Gem Trade Association show, which today is among the most comprehensive, most impressive places to buy coloured gemstones.

Collectors come to the show for more than just gems, however. During the fair the town is full of enthusiasts from around the world and their extraordinary finds. Giant raw pink quartz crystals, man-sized rocks cleaved open and bursting with amethysts, huge ammonites (a strange hybrid of fossil and jewel), bowls carved from zebra agate, petrified wood, jade from Canada, boulder opals from Ethiopia, and slices of meteorite are a fraction of what’s on display. But it’s the gemstone dealers I’m here to see, accompanied by the Dior Joaillerie buying team, who have a shopping list that dreams are made of.

Philippe Scordia is my guide: a charming Parisian who has been in the jewellery industry since 1976, joining Hermès as director of the jewellery department in 1984 before moving to Dior in 1997 to set up a fine and high jewellery division. Three months after his arrival, Bernard Arnault, the chief executive of LVMH, recruited Victoire de Castellane as creative director and she relied on Scordia’s stone-buying knowledge for the next 22 years as she reshaped the jewellery landscape with coloured gemstones that had rarely been seen before.

Scordia formally retired in 2021 but still works for Dior, consulting and 33

Opening page: Galons Dior Ring, white, pink gold, diamonds, rubellite and pink lacquer Opposite page: Galons Dior Ring, pink and white gold, diamonds and pink spinel; Galons Dior Ring, white gold, diamonds, blue tourmaline and blue lacquer

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Before Victoire de Castellane, all the Parisian companies just used rubies, emeralds and sapphires

advising his successor. It’s clear from the moment that we enter the show that he is much-loved and respected. Dealers reach across their showcase cabinets to shake his hand and he is stopped frequently to be warmly embraced. Dealers reserve their best stones for him. “As a buyer you begin to know the dealer’s inventory,” Scordia says. “Before we arrive at the fair we’ll chat on the phone and let them know what we’re after – it’s an ongoing relationship. But the question that we always ask ourselves is: what is the excellence of one particular supplier, what do they excel at?”

The speciality of Chris Price Opals, a father-and-son company from Sydney, Australia, is self-explanatory. It is the main supplier to Dior of rare black opals and regards de Castellane as instrumental in turning around the once-maligned stone’s fortunes; many of Dior’s most iconic pieces contain an opal. The rough, Chris Price says, is bought from Lightning Ridge mine in New South Wales and cut in Australia, to ensure ethical standards of employment and practice. The straight-talking miner-turned-dealer, now in his late sixties, started digging in 1974 but gave it up to cut and sell. “We had our first meeting with Dior in 2003 and Victoire immediately understood the opal’s rarity and vitality that no other stone can give,” he says. “Our journey with them has just been the most fantastic adventure.

And the finished pieces are magical, just magical.”

At Arnoldi International, a 100-yearold company from Idar-Oberstein in Germany, the third- generation dealer René Arnoldi, a jovial raconteur, is holding court with his two sons. Scordia says that they are the perfect suppliers 34

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to Dior for excellent stones of consistent quality and dimension. “Before Victoire, all the Parisian companies just used rubies, emeralds and sapphires, but around 15 years ago it all changed – and now we very much specialise in colour, all because of her creativity,” Arnoldi says.

Arnoldi’s showcases are filled with a rainbow palette of aquamarines, tourmalines and spinels that it buys from Mozambique, Kenya, Tanzania and Nigeria, as well as Brazil, “the mother to all coloured gemstones”, and then cuts in Germany. Companies such as Arnoldi support many local artisanal mines and have done so for decades; René has just cut some aquamarine from the 1920s. What took him so long? “I cut for pleasure!” he says. “I will sell the stones when I feel like it, slowly.”

We move across to another appointment, this time to a closed stand that’s run by an Indian family based in New York, elegantly dressed in cream Brunello Cucinelli with serious watches on their wrists. Their inventory is incredible – juicy rubellites the size of gobstoppers sit beside strings of emerald beads fit for royalty. Inside, the Dior buying team are looking for sapphires, specifically ten carats and above, for the June 2023 collection. Slowly, carefully, gemstone packets are brought forward and laid in front of Philippe and two other buyers. They’re looking to build a set for a run of blue in a necklace – but crucially all must be from the same origin (Sri Lanka, Myanmar or Madagascar). “It’s what the client wants these days – it’s more selective, more exclusive,” Scordia says. The team start studying the stones closely under a loupe and a gem torch. Any additional

treatment of the stone is noted (many coloured gemstones are heated to increase the depth of colour); in this case all packets are marked “no heat”, the perfect scenario (although some stones marked “moderate heat” will be purchased here).

Then a prospective stone is brought out, which is not on their shopping list: an extraordinary 26-carat Sri Lankan sapphire from the Elahera mine. The buyers are calm; this is like a wellchoreographed dance and they work in pairs to check each other’s decisions.

The sapphire won’t be bought on the spot but instead will be sent to Paris for a decision “by committee” made up of de Castellane, the marketing team, he high jewellery department and the stone buyers.

Other jewellery houses are holding similar appointments around the fair, so I ask Scordia what the competition is like for the best stones. “It’s all a question of human relationships, but I don’t want to compete with other houses and I don’t want to feel I’ve missed out. We’re a very small community so it’s important everyone leaves feeling happy.” Interactions between the houses are polite but brief.

We’re ushered out and are about to leave the fair when Alan Kleiman, another dealer, calls us into his stand.

He wants to show us a rare emerald from Mozambique and a ruby that he has recut from ten carats to 8.25. He’s lost value, but has made it a better gem.

“It’s important I have the best stones,” he says, adding, “I need to hear ‘magnifique’ from you Philippe, otherwise I haven’t done my job!”

“C’est tout magnifique,” Scordia says quietly as we leave. I couldn’t agree more.

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n ke ne is more outspo

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WORDS: JONATHAN DEAN

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W

hen we meet, Samuel L. Jackson is in London, making a superhero television show called The Secret Invasion. He has been coming to Britain since 1980. “Yesterday I went through Shepherds Bush,” he says.

“Where I used to buy weed.” Another time he went to Blackpool. “I don’t know if I like Blackpool that much.” Soon he heads back to Los Angeles, where he lives with his wife, LaTanya, a fellow actor. There he will pick up the Academy honorary award, a statuette given to stars who, awkwardly, never won an Oscar. Jackson has only one nomination, for Jules in Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction.

“I should have won that one,” he says, smiling. He also cites his role as the junkie in Jungle Fever as another that got away. He was beaten to a nod by two of the cast of the gangster film Bugsy.

“My wife and I went to see Bugsy,” he says. “Damn! They got nominated and I didn’t? I guess black folk usually win for doing despicable s*** on screen.

Like Denzel [Washington] for being a horrible cop in Training Day. All the great stuff he did in uplifting roles like Malcolm X? No — we’ll give it to this…

So maybe I should have won one. But Oscars don’t move the comma on your

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cheque — it’s about getting asses in seats and I’ve done a good job of doing that.”

This is Jackson to a tee. He sits there, so enormously relaxed spilling out opinions that he often just chuckles, puts his feet up. Wearing clear-framed round specs, his voice, as you know from more than 150 films, rises, falls and squeaks when he finds something daft.

His drug years, his mother’s dementia, Joe Rogan — it’s a verbal storm from a 73-year-old who happens to be the highest-grossing actor of all time. The combined box office from his films is $27 billion — his closest real rival is Robert Downey Jr at $16 billion.

Ten appearances as Nick Fury in Marvel films help, as does Jurassic Park and three Star Wars movies. When Jackson was making his third Star Wars in 2004, George Lucas told him that, when the film came out, Jackson would usurp Harrison Ford at the top of the earners chart. “I’m going to do that before then,” Jackson said. “Because I’ve got this little movie coming called The Incredibles.”

Anyway, he is pleased about the Academy honorary award, although he goes on to say that he is tired of elitism, and luminaries such as Martin Scorsese who have recently derided Marvel films.

These pages, from top to bottom: Still from Jungle Fever; still from Pulp Fiction

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Every opinion is not precious, but everyone seems to think they are

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“All movies are valid,” Jackson says.

“Some go to the cinema to be moved dearly. Some like superheroes. If somebody has more butts on seats it just means your audience is not as broad. There are people who have had successful careers but nobody can recite one line of their parts. I’m the guy who says s*** that’s on a T-shirt.”

“They should have an Oscar for the most popular movie,” he continues. “Because that’s what the business is about.”

Spider-Man: No Way Home made $1.8 billion — should they give it an Oscar?

“They should! It did what movies did for ever — it got people to a big dark room.”

Now for something utterly different and a drama starring Jackson as the lead in The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey, currently showing on Apple TV. Based on a Walter Mosley novel, it tells of a man with dementia offered a miracle cure, and if it were a film it

might have led him to that Oscar.

Jackson has done serious before — notably in A Time to Kill, on trial for the murder of the men who raped his daughter — but not for a while. This one is personal, though. Dementia runs in his family. His mother, grandfather, aunt, uncle — they are why he took the role.

“I remember the last time my mother called my name,” Jackson says. She was Elizabeth, a factory worker and single mother, who died in 2012. “She was watching TV and a film of mine was coming out,” he says. “I popped up on the screen and she looked at me and said, ‘Oh, Sam.’ That was it.” After that he would look at her trying to figure out who he was. She would get angry. “I don’t know if she was running through faces in her mind or seeing me from when I was a little person. Or as this big person.”

Given the family history, is Jackson afraid? “Of course,” he says. “I have times 39

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Credit: The Times/News Licensing

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Oscars don’t move the comma on your cheque when I can’t remember a name that I know I know. Or walk in a room to get something and go, ‘Why am I in here?’ But I also still remember pages of dialogue a day. So, do I think about it? Yes. Am I worried? I’m 73 … 74? 73 …” He laughs.

“See, like that! But it had happened to my mum and my grandfather by now.

So I think I’m OK. For the moment.”

Physically he is more than OK — a superfit man with a skincare regime who tends to be in the sort of highoctane action role previously not associated with actors his age.

“Yet people know I’m 73,” he says.

“I’m not going to get into a fistfight with some 20-year-old. But I’ll shoot him. I can do that. If a guy hits me, I’m down.

I’ve got 15 seconds of fight, so I don’t put myself in those positions. Let’s not stretch credibility.” He has a bad knee, so his characters will often be shot in a leg or twist an ankle so Jackson can limp. In Captain Marvel they used digital tricks to de-age him decades, like in The Irishman. “That’s the worst,” Jackson barks. “I don’t know what company Marty [Scorsese] used but it wasn’t the company they used for Captain Marvel.”

What a blast he is. So many bases are covered it feels like a game of baseball. On occasion, while waiting for a question, he pulls a quizzical face and you worry he is about to shut you down — but he just keeps on talking.

This is how conversation goes. We talk about politics in films and he says: “What’s the politics of Snakes on a Plane?” — his thriller about, erm, snakes on a plane. I say some think that, post 9/11, it was about the need for air marshals. “Every opinion is not precious, but everyone seems to think they are,” he says. He tells me that his daughter, Zoe, 39, who also works in film, stopped him going on social media as much as he did. His edgy humour did not translate to Twitter and he was always one post away from getting cancelled.

“People are always calling me about doing a podcast, but I can’t talk for an hour without saying something f****d-up.”

And so to the blowhard world number one podcaster Joe Rogan. Not because of vaccine scepticism, but his use of the n-word. “He is saying nobody understood the context when he said it,” Jackson says, rolling his eyes. “But he shouldn’t have said it. It’s not the context, dude — it’s

that he was comfortable doing it. Say that you’re sorry because you want to keep your money, but you were having fun and you say you did it because it was entertaining.”

So his use of the n-word lacked context?

“It needs to be an element of what the story is about. A story is context — but just to elicit a laugh? That’s wrong.”

Jackson has worked with Tarantino six times. “While we were rehearsing [the slave movie] Django Unchained, Leo [DiCaprio] said, ‘I don’t know if I can say ‘n*****’ this many times.’ Me and Quentin said that you have to. Every time someone wants an example of overuse of the n-word, they go to Quentin — it’s unfair. He’s just telling the story and the characters do talk like that. When Steve McQueen does it, it’s art. He’s an artiste.

Quentin’s just a popcorn film-maker.”

What a load of stories. Still, there are some memories that he would rather forget. Born in 1948, he was brought up in Tennessee before going to college in Atlanta and moving to New York in 1976 to become a stage actor. A lot of drugs followed. One idea Ptolemy Grey has is that we lose our minds so we can forget what hurts us and Jackson has bad memories from that era. He hurt people. “And there are things from then I really don’t remember!” He laughs.

“But I didn’t like that point in my life.”

So let us end on a positive. His latest role is about memory. He has already talked to his daughter about what to do if his mind slips. “Don’t dress me up and send me on stage and pretend I’m OK,” he says, laughing. “I’ve seen that with other actors.”

I ask what he would most want to cling on to later on. “There are performances that I’ve done,” he says. “Times I was so happy to get to the theatre. Then there was when I got sober. There’s a correlation between that and success. I did Jungle Fever three days out of rehab, not needing make-up because I was detoxing. I knew as soon as I got high before work and high at work again this was all going to crumble. So I go back to getting clean.”

His is a life of exceptional adventure.

The Academy honorary award? It’s a belated prize for a mantelpiece of memories of fame and family. “I go back to the wonderful times after I got sober of experiencing my daughter,” he continues about what means most.

“Those are things I want to hold on to.”

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Model-musician Irina Lazareanu was discovered by Kate Moss, became Karl Lagerfeld’s muse, and got engaged to rock ‘n’ roll bad boy Pete Doherty – no wonder she’s written a book WORDS: JOHN THATCHER 43

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I recall one small gathering of dear friends at my flat that somehow exploded into the unofficial Dior 60th anniversary after-party

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or anyone who had a finger pressed to the pulse of the fashion industry as this century passed through its debut decade, Irina Lazareanu needs no introduction. For the rest, the words of Olivier Zahm, co-founder and editor of Purple, provide a sterling summary: “There are dazzling beauties in fashion. Irina is one of them. Some pass through, vanishing with rapture into the world of fashion and in the spirit of the times, disappearing with the designs that they had so luminously incarnated.

And then there are the unforgettable models like Irina: women whose grace, attitudes and looks do not easily disappear, even from a world saturated with fashion imagery.”

Those words are taken from his foreword to Runway Bird: A Rock ‘N’ Roll Style Guide, a book released this month by Flammarion, for which Lazareanu has collated photographs and memories from twenty years in fashion. Twenty years in which, in between walking the runways of Paris, London, New York and Milan — as one of the industry’s most in-demand models — Lazareanu circled with Hollywood starlets, the world’s finest photographers, and 44

avant-garde musicians, becoming one herself with the launch of 2010’s Some Place Along the Way, which Sean Lennon (son of Beatle, John) produced and collaborated on.

She was, then, no stranger to the party circuit. In the book, she says she “can throw a party as well as I can get thrown out of one.” So can she recall any memorable examples of each?

“Ha, ha! Memorable is the key word here. I can solemnly swear that I can’t remember most of them! But I was reassured by several reliable sources that they were always loads of fun. A lot of them were rather impromptu…

I recall the start of one particular small gathering of dear friends at my flat that somehow exploded into the unofficial Dior 60th anniversary afterparty. That was an epic night… so was the collective hangover at the Chanel couture show the following morning.”

As this was a time before iPhones were omnipresent, I wonder whether such parties would have played out differently against a backdrop of instant coverage on social media?

“Absolutely. My friends and I say, ‘I’m so glad there are no photos of that!’ even as we lament the lack of photos from before the age of iPhones. That

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Opening pages, from left to right: © François Rotger; “I got this 1923 hand-beaded dress at an auction in New York. I thought I was going to be married and buried in it ... hopefully not on the same day.” © François Rotger for Italian Mairie-Claire These pages, clockwise from top: “NYC shenanigans.” © Gavin Doyle; © Jan Welters; “Glam rock vibes by Philip Gay from an editorial for Zoo Magazine issue no. 19, 2008.” © Philip Gay. All images from Runway Bird: A Rock ’n’ Roll Style Guide (Flammarion, 2022).

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These pages, clockwise from above: “Cinderella leaving the Style is athepoemzeitthat ball.“ © Gavin Doyle; expresses geist “Hunting for vinyls.” © François Rotger from Italian Marie Claire, October 2008; “The early days with Peter, in London.” © Gavin Doyle.

All images from Runway Bird: A Rock ’n’ Roll Style Guide (Flammarion, 2022)

IRINA LAZAREANU

This book is a love letter to the magical people I’ve been blessed to meet throughout my twenty years in fashion.

Of the countless folk I’ve encountered, the ones you’ll find lurking here are those whose influence impacted me the most, those whose spell endures. Some challenged me, some taught me how to dress, others taught me how to love. In this book I’ll share what I’ve learned from them about style and attitude. And while beauty may seduce you on the road to truth, getting through the voyage in style certainly never hurts.

ISBN: 978-2-08-020696-1

Front cover: © Jan Welters, background images clockwise from top left: © Jen Carey, © Gavin Doyle, Sean Lennon, Irina Lazareanu archives, © François Rotger, © Gavin Doyle.

Back cover: © François Rotger from Italian Marie Claire, October 2008.

9782080206961_RunwayBird_US_Couv.indd Toutes les pages

Flammarion

52995

9 782080 206961 editions.flammarion.com Printed in Bosnia by GPS

22-III

US $29.95 / Can. $40 / UK £22.50 / €25

Création Studio Flammarion

Top model IRINA LAZAREANU blazed down the runways for everyone from Chanel and Dior, to Marc Jacobs and Versace throughout the 2000s. First discovered

by Kate Moss, she became a muse to Karl Lagerfeld and to Nicolas Ghesquière.

Between fittings, she toured with the Babyshambles and Peter Doherty before recording her first album with Sean Lennon. A poet and lyricist, this is her first book.

Flammarion

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and I was quite productive back then.”

The first door was opened by Giovanni modelling agency in Montreal, the second by Kate Moss, who asked Lazareanu to model for an issue of Vogue Paris, which Moss guest edited. Cue fashion shows dressed in Chanel, Balenciaga, and Alexander McQueen, cover shoots for Vogue Italia, W Magazine, and Harper’s Bazaar, constant flights and what seemed like never-ending days.

2017 was the pinnacle of it all, a year so hectic it left Lazareanu “Kind of broke.” Reading her stories from the time, you’re left in doubt that the modelling industry is tough, the models pushed to their limits by the fashion industry’s relentless cycle.

Did Lazareanu grow resentful during this time? “I could never be resentful of the industry I grew up in and that gave me a wonderful and fulfilling life,” she states. “That being said, looking back at those years with some perspective, I’m happy that things have evolved and that we’re now addressing

Rock ’nGui’ Roll A Style de

being said, I did unearth a bunch of amazing Polaroids in a shoe box under my bed, which I used to illustrate the book. There’s something quite magical and nostalgic about finding forgotten lost treasure on film from those secret gatherings! Even so, most days it’s nice to switch off. Nothing beats just being in the moment.”

If it wasn’t for injury, Lazareanu’s life may have painted itself less colourful.

Born in Romania and raised in Canada from the age of five, she moved to London while a teenager to study for a career in ballet. But when a broken knee put paid to that idea, uncertainty clouded her direction. “I must’ve had a thousand doors slammed in my face before one opened,” she remembers in the book. Was she confident one would eventually open? “Not at all. I guess there’s a part of me that is still shocked that one ever did… I somehow landed at the right time in the right place. I’m still very grateful for those uncertain, ‘starving artist’ early days, as necessity is the mother of creation

Rocke ’nGui’ Roll A Styl de

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07/12/2021 17:00

subjects like mental health, self-care, diversity, inclusivity, and sustainability.

These issues were rarely discussed 20 years ago, when being a brunette was considered diversity. Back then, I didn’t have enough free time to be able to think with clarity. It’s only later that I fully came to understand the toll that such a demanding schedule had on me.

It’s hard to get a grasp on things when you’re in the eye of the hurricane.”

Of the many chapters she devotes to people in the book — Amy Winehouse and Mark Ronson, Kate Moss and Milla Jovovich (whom she describes as “The epitome of beauty”) — her fondness for the late Karl Lagerfeld shines through.

She tells the funny story of her first casting for Chanel, when Virginie Viard dressed her to meet Lagerfeld.

“Now, technically speaking, a model isn’t supposed to speak during these proceedings. The code of conduct dictates silence, discretion and grace.

Unfortunately none of my strongest assets! When I get nervous, I babble.

“Within seconds of entering his presence, the butterflies had me performing a monologue of such profound nonsense that Bridget Jones and Ally McBeal would have both been shuffling their feet and elbowing me in the ribs.”

Lagerfeld took to her in an instant, maintaining a special place for her in his affections and ultimately providing

Lazareanu with her favourite memory from her modelling years. “At the Chanel Métiers d’Art show in London in December 2007, Sean Lennon and I created the soundtrack for the show and Karl had the idea to open it by having me walk as the first model out of the gate, and then transition onto the stage to start singing.”

She lists the common characteristics of the designers she worked with as: “Talent. Focused determination. Ego.” But Lagerfeld was unique. “He has an unbelievable gift for discovering and nurturing young talent. And he had x-ray vision to cut through the BS. His knowledge of all subjects was encyclopedic, and he never stopped being inspired. His witty, sarcastic sense of humour was unmatched.”

Before our interview ends, I ask her if she can impart any wisdom gleaned from the eventful period of her life documented in the book? In true Lazareanu style, there’s plenty: “Sleep is important. I didn’t get much then, but I’ve learned. A problem is something you make; life is something you live. Make the most of your time with your loved ones. Not everything is black and white. Go with the f low.

And mistakes are some of the best lessons you could ever ask for.”

Runway Bird: A Rock ’n’ Roll Style Guide by Irina Lazareanu, is out now, published by Flammarion

later that I fully came to understand the toll ‘ It’s onlythat such a demanding schedule had on me ’ 47

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His showstopping styles are loved by the A-list, but it’s Olivier Rousteing’s background that sets him apart from the fashion crowd

WORDS: VASSI CHAMBERLAIN

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ast September’s Balmain show was the talk of Paris fashion week. To celebrate Olivier Rousteing’s ten years as creative director of the label, Carla Bruni, Naomi Campbell, Milla Jovovich and Natalia Vodianova appeared on the catwalk in his distinctive sculptural designs, with the evening introduced by a voice-over from his ultimate fan, Beyoncé. But it was more than a fashion show. The two-day event, which was open to the general public, included music from artists such as Franz Ferdinand and Doja Cat, food stands and limited-edition merchandise.

If that doesn’t sound typical of Paris fashion week, then it is typical of Rousteing, 36, one of the youngest and few non-white designers to have headed a big European fashion house.

(Balmain appointed him head designer in 2011, when he was 25.) That he has lasted as long as he has, in an industry where it’s not unusual for a designer to be booted out after a couple of seasons, is quite an achievement. Yet his remarkable background could be the key to his success. “Because I came from an orphanage I always tried not to disappoint my parents, to be the perfect kid, the perfect student,” he says. “I always thought I was not enough. That I would be sent back.”

Adopted by a middle-class white couple from Bordeaux, where he was brought up, his parents were at first steered towards adopting a white kid but they stood firm. “I was smiling at them, they loved my eyes. They loved my smile.” He only recently discovered his true heritage — half-Somali, half-

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Ethiopian — when he made Wonder Boy, a 2019 Netflix documentary that was initially focused on his career but turned into a heartbreaking search for his identity. He discovered his mother was just 15 when she had him, his father 25, but not if their relationship was romantic or indeed consensual.

He has also never managed to make contact with either of them. “I’m happy to know the truth, but I don’t feel the truth right now is enough for me to move on. Now I think it’s time for [my mother] to come to me and not me trying to reach her. But knowing what she went through, she might not want to open that page again with me.”

Does she know who you are? “I don’t know. I don’t know,” he says quietly.

After dropping out of fashion school in Paris, he went to work for Roberto Cavalli, where he was promoted to creative director, before moving to Balmain. His famous friends — Kim Kardashian, Beyoncé, JLo, Rihanna — have brought an A-list social prominence to the brand, but it is his formative experience that is his real point of difference, and why he is a true original, free from fashion’s outdated tropes and keen to keep the house

happy to know ‘theI’mtruth, but I don’t feel the truth right now is enough for me to move on

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I’m such a kid in my mind, I’m not sure I could guide my own child

modern. “There’s a lot of mathematics in fashion,” he says. “You need to learn gravity with clothes. You know how your shoulder is going to be if it’s 10.5cm, you know that maybe it’s going to drop. It’s like architecture.”

In person Rousteing is beguiling and very beautiful. He smiles easily and answers questions thoughtfully. But after a while you realise how enigmatic he is, an old soul who grew up too fast, who was given the responsibility of a global fashion brand before he had even had the chance to absorb the fabric of adulthood. I watch him as he hovers near his muse Bruni as they get ready for a shoot, and while she talks and laughs, he stands close by, speaking in near whispers.

He is close to his adoptive parents but was hesitant about telling them he was gay. They weren’t fazed. “There was of course no problem with that,” he says.

Would he consider adopting a child himself? “No, because I don’t want to have kids.” He thinks about what he has said and continues: “I’m such a kid in my mind, I’m not sure I could guide my own child… You know, I was the Balmain baby. And now Balmain is my baby.” He later tells me that he wears Petit Bateau pyjamas and teddy bear furry slippers; even though his grandmother, who he adores, once gave him a chic pair of Charvet pyjamas, he prefers to sleep in his childish ones.

While he is constantly surrounded in his professional life, he lives alone and is often in bed by 10pm. “I avoid parties and dinners during the week,” he says, because he needs to be strong for work.

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He does not drink much, adding, a little elliptically: “You can still love drinking, but you want to make sure that you don’t drink with the wrong people.”

One night in 2020 he was at home having dinner with a friend when his ethanol-powered fireplace suddenly exploded, burning his face and body.

He immediately jumped in his swimming pool and waited for an ambulance. He spent more than a month in hospital and then convalesced at home, tended to by nurses. There are no visible burns today — although the gold rings he wears conceal some scarring — and he admits he was lucky. “My burns were second-degree ones. After ten weeks my skin began to grow back.”

Who does he think knows him best?

“My driver, Mohammed,” he says.

“He is my best friend. You should speak to him.” When I try later he smiles kindly but then disappears.

’

All pages: catwalk images from Balmain FW22

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Credit: The Times/News Licensing

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Monica Bellucci has been a model, arthouse film star and 50-year-old Bond girl.

Her next trick? Putting opera’s tragic diva back on stage WORDS: CHRIS HARVEY

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n the face of it, they could not be more different. One was a tough cookie from the hard-knock streets of immigrant New York; a girl who saw herself as an “ugly duckling, fat and clumsy and unpopular”. The other would emerge from a happy childhood in rural Italy to be celebrated as “the most beautiful woman in the world”, a fashion muse and film star.

Yet when Monica Bellucci was approached to take on the role of the great operatic diva Maria Callas, she read the singer’s letters and the memoir she had left unfinished when she died at just 53, and “I was so moved.

They were so full of emotion. I just had the feeling that, in some way, I could get in touch with her soul.”

Bellucci began her career as a model for the great Italian fashion houses Valentino, Versace and Dolce & Gabbana. She would go on to make her name in film after a cameo as a voluptuous vampire in Francis Ford Coppola’s phantasmagorical Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992), and her entrancing performance opposite future husband Vincent Cassel in the French arthouse drama L’Appartement, four years later. She later had memorable roles in two of the most controversial films ever made: Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ (she was Mary Magdalene) and Irréversible, the Gaspar Noé sensation that provoked walk-outs at Cannes in 2002.

Now, she is preparing to appear on stage in London this month, reading Callas’s words in a production by Tom Volf, the director of the pitch-perfect 2017 documentary Maria by Callas.

She won’t be singing, she points out, having sung only once before on screen, but admits that she is still a “little bit scared… well, a lot actually”, not least because when her Callas show premiered in Paris before the world ground to a halt in 2020, it was her first time on stage. Back then, Bellucci described her reaction as “pure terror”.

It felt close to home, too. The opera singer, born in America to Greek parents in 1923, rose to great fame in the 1950s, long before Bellucci was born, yet Callas has been part of the actress’s world “for ever”, she says, when we chat over the phone between London and Paris. “In Italy, she is really part of the culture, 56

just had the feeling that ‘I Icould get in touch with her soul ’

Opening pages and right: Belluci stars in a fashion editorial shot by Bruce Oldfield, 1991

because it was the place where she became a huge star. She is considered an Italian artist in some ways.”

Indeed, Callas, who trained as a singer in Athens as a teenager after her mother left her father and returned to Greece (soon to be occupied by the Axis powers in the Second World War), turned down a contract at the New York Met at war’s end and instead sailed for Italy, with her heart set on leading roles – and only leading roles – at La Scala in Milan.

Like Bellucci decades later, her fame would grow outwards from Italy’s shores. Whenever she returned to the US, she inspired a pre-Beatles press frenzy, and she was a sensation in London, Lisbon, Mexico, and Paris, where Bellucci now lives with her daughters, Deva, 17, and Léonie, 11, from her marriage to Cassel. It is also where Callas died, in 1977, from a heart attack.

There are those who believe that the singer took her own life, but her friend the film director Franco Zeffirelli told Italian TV in 2004 that he suspected foul play. “In her final days, she came under the influence of a group of strange Greeks who were connected to her sister and who Maria hated. It’s possible they filled her with substances that killed her.”

I wonder if Bellucci thinks it’s possible Callas may have been poisoned? “Yes, of course, because this is the part of her that nobody knows... when you are very famous like she was, you have to really be careful of the people around you.”

Callas died unhappy and alone.

Her marriage at 26 to a much older man, the industrialist Giovanni Meneghini, had been a failure, and he had banked everything she earned in his name. The love of her life, the Greek shipping tycoon Aristotle Onassis, with whom she had shared a nine-year relationship in the 1960s,

had died two years earlier. They had somehow salvaged a friendship after Onassis – an unapologetic womaniser who knew the value of strategic alliances – had abandoned her to marry Jackie Kennedy, the widow of US president John F Kennedy, in 1968.

Callas learnt of the wedding from the newspapers. “What I feel is that this woman, when she was with Onassis, she knew who he was, she knew the risks of her choices,” says Bellucci.

“I think that the greatest pain of her life wasn’t Onassis,” she adds. “It was that she didn’t have a family and children… she said so many things about how difficult the relationship was that she had with her mother.

She never had a happy family.

And she was looking for that.”

Does she think Callas’s relationship with Onassis ruined her career? They met in 1957, with the diva at the peak of her dramatic and vocal powers.

“I think that she sacrificed her youth for her career,” says Bellucci. “And then when she met Onassis, she discovered in some way her femininity through him and she wanted to live it fully.”

For Callas to turn away from the path expected of her was in character, Bellucci believes. “She’s unpredictable – it’s why she’s so interesting as an artist, but also as a person.”

Callas’s unpredictability – the cancelled concerts, a reputation for temperamental outbursts – contributed to our lasting image of her as the definition of the modern diva; you can trace a line from her to Adele, the latest singer to be branded with that label, following the last-minute cancellation of her concerts in Las Vegas because the set design wasn’t ready. “I think that when you are uncompromising, it is just because you are so perfectionist,” says Bellucci. “You want your show to be like it has to be, and I respect it absolutely.

“It’s so hard to be on stage. Because

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when you’re a singer, when you’re an actor, when you’re a dancer, your instrument is your own person. That’s why all this is very delicate and very fragile. And you have to be protected.”

We talk about Bellucci’s years in fashion, long before the industry faced its #MeToo moment. Was it a toxic world when she was first part of it in the 1980s? “No, actually, I never went through those bad experiences. But I absolutely know that can happen.”

Her elder daughter, Deva, is “17 and a half, and she’s in the fashion business already. She works and works. And, of course, I protect her, because in every work when you’re very young, and you didn’t have so much experience, you can be in difficult situations. As Maria Callas said, there are bad people, there are also very good people. And I met very beautiful people... And sometimes I was also in situations that could be difficult.

But nothing that I couldn’t handle.”

When she says “difficult”, what does she mean? “I’m a woman in a world of men,” she says, as though what this implies is obvious. “And then when I went to cinema, I was already 25 years old, I was already independent, economically independent. So, you know, I never was in situations that I couldn’t handle. I was lucky, very lucky.”

There is a famous photograph of her with Gianni Versace – Bellucci in a white suit; the designer behind his desk – taken in 1995, just two years before his murder. It was a shock: “Terrible.

Incredible. And very sad. He was someone very human. It was a big loss.”

Bellucci’s brief first marriage (to photographer Claudio Carlos Basso) dates from her early years in fashion, but her marriage to Cassel lasted for 14 years. “Me and Vincent, we are divorced for 10 years,” she says, pointedly, when I bring it up. In recent years, she has been photographed regularly with the 39-year-old French sculptor and former model Nicolas Lefebvre – prompting a slew of ‘Who is Monica Bellucci’s boyfriend?’ articles.

How difficult does she think it is, even now, for a female superstar to stop her private life overshadowing her career?

“I protect myself,” she says. “I really 58

‘ I’m a woman in a world of men ’

need my private garden, to have part of my life completely mine. In America, the system makes it more difficult.

But for European actors, I think we are more able to protect ourselves.”

Thankfully, she notes, things are changing for women in film. “Even 40 years ago, even if you were talented, after 40 years old, you wouldn’t work any more.” Bellucci, however, remains in demand: in the works are an action thriller with Liam Neeson called Memory, which is, she tells me, “The first time I have played an antagonist”, and a comedy, Mafia Mama, which she will shoot in the US with Toni Collette and Twilight director Catherine Hardwicke. Was she aware of the mafia while growing up in Città di Castello, in Umbria? “In real life? No. Of course, it was there, but I didn’t feel it. And I hope I’m never going to feel it.”

I ask if she would do Irréversible if she were sent the script today.

“I’m 57, I couldn’t play that role,” she says. Cinema, too, seems to have moved away from such direct confrontation with reality.

“It was another period of time,” Bellucci says. “Gaspar Noé, I have so much respect for him and, you know, it was a special project and I was protected. The result of the film is very violent, but the way we worked was absolutely under control.”

And what of her enigmatic character Lucia Sciarra, who shared a risqué moment with Daniel Craig’s Bond in Spectre – would Bellucci like her to come back in another film? “No, it was a moment,” she says. “I had fun.

I couldn’t imagine it would provoke such a fuss… a 50-year-old woman having an affair with James Bond. But maybe [director] Sam Mendes knew.”

And anyway, she adds, “we don’t know if James Bond can come back again”. Ah, yes, indeed – how did she feel about the super spy choosing death for the love of a woman in last year’s No Time to Die? “I actually loved it,” she says. “It was really great.”

She also enjoyed riffing on her public image in a 2018 episode of the Netflix series Call My Agent, in which she played herself, panicking about being single for three weeks, desperate to find an ordinary guy, and coming on to her agent – “the only man who can understand her”. Would the real Bellucci panic if she found herself alone again? She laughs.

“No! I have been single for a lot longer than that.” What about her desire for Mr Normal? Another sly laugh. “Not really.” Then: “Actually, nobody knows what it means to be normal – nobody.”

Maria Callas: Letters & Memoirs is at Her Majesty’s Theatre, London, SW1 on April 24

Credit: © Chris Harvey/Telegraph Media Group 2022

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These pages, from left to right: Belluci on stage as Maria Callas, 2020; Belluci at the San Sebastian Film Festival, 2016

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Motoring APRIL 2022 : ISSUE 127

Fast and Furious A hybrid system plus a twin-turbo V6 combine to provide a visceral, fast and furious driving experience WORDS: ANDREW ENGLISH

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hat does 818bhp feel like?

There’s a 960-metre straight at the Monteblanco circuit near Seville in Spain. Get the nose round the last corner carrying as much speed as you dare and gingerly press the accelerator as the car straightens itself. Then floor it and the battery squirts its 150kW into the 163bhp electric motor while the 654bhp twin-turbocharged 3.0-litre petrol V6 shrieks up to 8,000rpm.

There’s little sensation of gathering speed, none of that unstoppable-forcemeets-immovable-object impression you get from a conventional supercar, you simply press the pedal and you’re there.

Think of a speed and the new Ferrari 296 GTB just does it, with little sense of jeopardy and just a few seconds to listen to, if not exactly savour, what Ferrari calls the ‘piccolo V12’ (little V12) off-beat engine noise before you’re trailing the brakes into the next corner. That’s almost a kilometre in less time than it takes to read this; stirred but far from shaken.

And while this Big Brother element of the car isn’t as obvious as it was, say, in the predecessor SF90 Stradale plug-in hybrid supercar, it’s there all the same. Just as well. really.

After playing with hybrid (LaFerrari and FXX K) and plug-in hybrid in fourwheel drive form (SF90 Stradale), Ferrari is now offering the 296 GTB, a plug-in hybrid which drives only the rear wheels.

It is also, with its 120-degree V6, the first roadgoing V6 Ferrari-badged car — the V6-engined Dino of 1967-74 didn’t carry the famed prancing horse motif.

The company’s first V6, a 65-degree, 1.5-litre unit, appeared in the Dino 156 monoposto racing car of 1957.

Adding to the V6’s efforts is a 6kWh net, 73kg lithium-ion SK Innovation battery running across the back of the seats, with a 164bhp Formula One-derived electric motor sitting 60

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way this car changes direction ‘isThe quite simply stupefying, more race than road car ’

enthusiasm is the normal squad of individual wheel brakes, an electronic differential and the management of the engine’s torque, but also the electric motor which can be used as a drag on the drivetrain which also tops up the battery.

It means you are never exactly sure what this car is doing to rein things in.

And since the systems even estimate tyre grip along with all the usual dynamics, while there’s little doubting that peak power figure it’s seldom attainable, and then not for long.

And if all these systems guard against the uneven weight balance’s tendency towards instability, they also allow that configuration to work in favour of steering response. The way this car changes direction is quite simply stupefying, more race than road car. And the dynamic control, which allows the brake-by-wire, carbon-ceramic brakes to be trailed into a corner (which would have been a no-no on the old generation of cars), feels really quite alarming at first.

Focus and intense concentration are essential. It’s almost too much for public roads, although the road tyre option calms things a little and the softish response of the damping provides a sense

that you have some control, even if that’s an electronically-orchestrated illusion.

Michelin tyre engineer Julien Levray explained that during the development of this car, the front tyre carcasses had to be softened and the rears’ hardened to calm the responses. It sort of goes against the grain that you reduce the grip of the rear tyres on a mid/rearengined car, but it’s all about balance and there’s no denying its effectiveness.

Marc Gené, the charming and eloquent former F1 driver, Le Mans winner, race commentator and Ferrari test driver, took me around the Monteblanco circuit to show me what this car would do. He danced it around, stood it on its nose, and explained that almost inexplicable technique of trailing the brakes into the apex of a tightening corner and then accelerating out.

“It is a racing driver’s Ferrari,” he said as he tore another few millimetres of tread off the Michelins.

And so it is. Driving it felt a bit like a speeded-up arcade game. Floor the throttle, look down at the speedometer and goggle, how did that happen?

I’ve got a feeling this is the future for supercars.

Credit: © Andrew English/Telegraph Media Group 2022

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between the engine and the eightspeed twin-clutch transmission.

The top speed is quoted at 205mph, with 0-100km/h in 2.9sec and 0-200km/ h in 7.3sec. There’s an electric range of up to 15.5 miles at up to 84mph, while recharging the battery using a 7.4kW home wallbox will take one hour.

Citing the egregious Sixties 250LM prototype racer as an inspiration, Flavio Manzoni, Ferrari’s vice-president for design, then draws back, saying, “that doesn’t mean we have looked back”, before pressing the button on the random-word generator with an evocation of “formal purity and a bold personality”.

Thing is, it’s just so big. It’s almost half a metre longer than the old V12engined 250LM, 258mm wider and 72mm taller (it’s also, at 1,560kg in standard road trim with a full tank of fuel, almost twice as heavy).

Yet that’s the way with modern cars and their crumple zones and wide tyres, and while the 296 GTB’s V6 engine saves some space compared with a V12 or even a V8, there’s also the plug-in hybrid to package, which adds heft and size.

And you can see elements of the 250LM in the all-aluminium body, with the cut-off rear of the cabin, the Kamm tail (inspired by engineer and aerodynamicist Dr Wunibald Kamm) and the curvaceous rear wings, about which Manzoni extemporises: “These are not the usual romantic and sinuous curves, but are instead muscular and functional.”

The cabin is a combination of glassy instrument binnacle with all-digital switches and displays, combined with the improbable luxury of a tan leather floor.

After generations of mid-engined cars with bugger all storage space, this is more practical than I expected. The 201-litre front ‘boot’ will accommodate a couple of airline carry-ons and behind the seats, on top of the battery, there’s a 113-litre shelf wide enough for a designer handbag or two.

The huge one-piece digital instrument has a series of touchscreen-activated functions, but the transmission is operated with steering column paddles and a trio of strange-looking sliders on the centre console that wouldn’t look out of place on a sound engineer’s mixing desk.

Out on the road, there’s less of a sense of being chaperoned, more of extraordinary speed. Tempering your

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Gastronomy

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APRIL 2022: ISSUE 127

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Star Quality Across three decades, Michael Mina has cooked for US presidents, collected Michelin stars, and built a culinary empire. AIR meets him at his Dubai outpost WORDS: JOHN THATCHER

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ichael Mina has star quality.

I’m not just talking about the type of stars dished out by Michelin (his eponymous restaurant in San Francisco won two of those, before its pandemic-influenced closure last year) but of how he is outside of the kitchen, walking the floor of his Dubai-based MINA Brasserie as diners leap from their chairs to try and snag a selfie with him.

He’s unfazed by the attention, perhaps unflappable, as befits a man who has spent decades in the combustious environment of award-winning restaurant kitchens, building a portfolio of outlets that currently number 36 and span the United States — his one international outpost is MINA Brasserie Dubai, at the Four Seasons Hotel DIFC. It’s a stellar career built, however, on shaky ground. Quite literally. On his second day in San Francisco the city suffered a major earthquake. Yet, undeterred, Mina set to work the very next day. Three decades on and it’s fair to say that he’s done as much as anyone to put the city on terra firmer as one of the world’s culinary capitals.

“You rarely have things unfold the exact way that you imagine them, but that is the beauty of it,” he says, when I ask if he built his MINA brand in a methodical way. “From day one, we focused on bringing our passion and cuisine philosophy to life, and each success opened up doors and opportunities to launch more concepts that complement each other. I would say the growth of the brand was an evolution, rather than a revolution, stemming from one core philosophy of offering our guests a true world of ‘wow’.”

Brasseries aren’t supposed to ‘wow’.

At least, not in the same way that fine dining restaurants like Copenhagen’s Noma, Barcelona’s Disfrutar, or England’s Fat Duck are primed to do.

Brasseries are all about uncomplicated dishes done well, with the best of them able to elevate such dishes, not just through the use of better ingredients, but via the chef’s wellhoned knowledge of flavours. MINA Brasserie Dubai is one such place. “I would say that every one of our dishes at MINA Brasserie fits our philosophy of flavour-balanced brasserie

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dishes, cooked with impeccable technique and the best ingredients.

A dish that is close to my heart is the tuna tartare, which is an evolving recipe that we’ve been perfecting for over 20 years,” says Mina.

No restaurant escaped the impact of the pandemic, but as we emerge from the long shadow it’s cast over the industry, the brasserie appears best placed to rebound quickest, as Mina suggests. “The pandemic influenced the world in so many ways, and this extends to what guests look for in a restaurant,” he explains. “A dining experience is more than just good food, it is a chance for people to come together and share precious moments of happiness that, for a long time, they couldn’t have. It’s also affected food preferences, with comfort foods growing in popularity. It’s definitely pushed me to revisit some of our menus and add touches of warmth and hominess, also because it is food that I crave, too. The dover sole meunière, which is on the MINA Brasserie menu, is a perfect example. It is hearty and homey. Classically cooked in brown butter, I like roasting it in one pan with asparagus, crispy potatoes, and lemon. In terms of my approach to

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our team, I feel like adversity, while tough to endure, tends to bring people together as they fight to get through difficult times. Team bonds are more important than ever” Born in Cairo and raised in Washington, Mina’s culinary journey began in 1987 at the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park. He supplemented his formal schooling with hands-on experience in Charlie Palmer’s fine-dining establishment Aureole in New York City. He’d go on to work alongside chef George Morrone at the Bel Air Hotel in Los Angeles, with the pair subsequently asked to develop the concept for an upscale seafood restaurant in San Francisco. It became AQUA, where Mina made his mark and name, winning such accolades as Rising Star Chef of the Year in 1997 and Best California Chef 2002, as hailed by the James Beard Foundation.

But back to his country of birth. Has his Middle Eastern heritage played a role in his food through the years? “I grew up in a home where the dining table was always laid out and animated with family and friends around it. It was a happy place that brought us all together. When you enter one of our restaurants [MINA group], I want you

Reflecting on the past is just as rich in inspiration as the present

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Opening pages and left: dishes at MINA Brasserie Dubai This page, top to bottom: Michael Mina;MINA Brasserie Dubai

to feel like you’ve walked into a loving, welcoming home. This influences the service culture at every one of our restaurants. In the kitchen, I get playful with Arabian flavour. You might find crispy falafel bits garnishing a classically European dish — a nod to my favourite homemade falafel by mama Mina! Another touch at MINA Brasserie is one that every one of our guests gets to experience. We serve our bread with honey and cream, which I’d take over butter any day, and is inspired by an all-time Arabian classic, ashta w asal.

“Inspiration is everywhere. As generic as that sounds, it is absolutely true. Even if it is in the form of a tiny improvement or change to a dish, I try and ensure that novelty is part of my kitchen routine. My way of staying inspired is to ensure I’m experiencing new things, trying new dishes, and going to new places. That, and also reflecting on the past, which is just as rich in inspiration as the present.”

MINA Brasserie Dubai’s location places it amid a cluster of renowned restaurants in DIFC. Does Mina thrive

from that competitiveness? “DIFC is simply amazing from a foodie’s point of view, with some of the city’s best restaurants so close to each other.

From the chef’s perspective, knowing that you are surrounded by excellent competitors certainly provides an additional push for you to stay on your toes and pursuing your next success.

The main drive to succeed and offer

a superior dining experience comes from your own inherent passion, but also knowing that you have to stand out amongst a star-studded line up is an added motivation that we savour.”

And Michael Mina certainly stands out in the world of gastronomy, as all those diners who gathered round him to snap a selfie during his last visit to Dubai bear testimony to.

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Travel APRIL 2022: ISSUE 127

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WORDS: CHARLOTTE EDWARDS

JOURNEYS BY JET

Wild For Kenya On safari across Kenya’s wildlife-rich plains WORDS: JOHN THATCHER

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t’s not until you’re up close to a rhino that you see its softness. That armour-like skin, up to two inches thick and lathered in mud hardened by the sun, unable to shield the hearttugging sight of a mother rubbing heads with her calf, who then steps between her legs for protection as he finally spots our open-topped vehicle edging closer.

Rhinos have notoriously poor eyesight, but by nature this immensely tough and powerful horn-clad creature (white rhinos can weigh up to 2,500kg and run at speeds of 50km/h) cowers in the presence of humans.

Sadly, it’s for good reason.

Rhinos once roamed Africa in their millions, but their horn has always been prized — one can command a price of up to $60,000 on the black market — and poachers have been prevalent. It got so bad that by 1995 the number of black rhinos dropped by 96%, and in many areas of Africa their population was entirely wiped out.

Today, the number of rhinos worldwide is estimated at 18,000, and the battle to ward off poachers is ongoing. Leading the fight for the rhinos are companies like The Safari Collection, which does much to protect and propagate their population across its lodges and wider Kenya.

Solio Lodge, standing in the country’s gateway to the north, is where the fruits of their labour are abundantly clear. Here, flanked by the canvas-worthy scenery of majestic Mount Kenya on one side and the rugged Aberdare Mountains on the other, are 45,000 acres of game reserve, in which the rhino roams in significant numbers, calves overt among them.

Black rhinos, which remain critically endangered, were first brought to Solio back in 1970, and it has since become the most successful rhino breeding sanctuary in East Africa — over 150 rhinos have been bred here, both black and white, which have helped re-populate other parks across the country.

It puts Solio among the finest spots in the world to view this wonderful creature, and it’s the first animal we encounter on our evening game drive, our private vehicle rolling across the plains at dusk, the unfamiliar calls of birds serenading us from branches shorn of leaves for the season.

“How do you know which are white and which black?” asks the youngest of my two daughters, having 69

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noted that both types of rhino are neither black nor white but grey.

Normally when my daughters ask a question I cannot answer (which is most of the time), I surreptitiously ask Siri for the answer. They therefore believe that I am the font of all knowledge, able to dispense information on everything from bygone battles to natural phenomena. I hoped for this pretence to continue until they left home for a husband they consider a dunce in comparison to their all-knowing, worldly-wise dad, and yet I’ve gone and left my phone at the Lodge to enjoy the blissful peace of the wilderness.

“The mouth of the black rhino is hooked, whereas on the white rhino it’s square,” answers Blackie, our spotter.

“That’s right,” I concur, stealing a slice of the glory, though Blackie could have said anything and I’d have agreed.

As a spotter of wildlife, Blackie is brilliant, but he and driver John are even better people, their company warm. Over two days they take us on early morning and late afternoon drives, stopping the truck and setting up a table and four chairs to cook us a ‘bush breakfast’ of freshly cooked eggs, bacon, and sausages in the morning; pulling up to mix gin and tonics as the sun bleeds into the night sky.

“What’s to stop lions coming and eating us?” asks my eldest daughter, a question that would likely stump Siri.

“Because… “ is all I can muster in response, having asked myself the exact same question.

“Lion country is down by the river,” says John assuredly.

“That’s right,” I shamefully concur.

The lions are a real treat, our excitement at seeing a lioness stride across the path of our vehicle is palpable.

She’s on her way to drink from a slip of water in the otherwise dried-up riverbed, her siblings trailing. Later that night we spot the whole pride — the first time the cubs have been spotted in over two months — and John cuts the truck’s engine so we can park up among them, watching as the mother playfully paws at her cubs.

But the night is not done — Blackie is alerted via radio to the presence of a leopard nearby and we speed across the bumpy terrain, warm ponchos provided to protect us from the wind, to where it’s been spotted, stretched out across a tree branch, at 70

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Don’t be surprised if your swim is interrupted by a Rothschild’s giraffe, bowing its neck for a sip of pool water rest, its appetite apparently sated.

At the end of each evening’s drive we return to our Safari Cottage (huge, with a veranda affording sweeping views of passing wildlife, including a few cheeky monkeys hoping you leave a door open for them to clean your fridge of food) to find our fire roaring and our standalone baths (one for parents, one for kids) already drawn.

The perfect end to a memorable day.

It’s a short forty-five-minute flight to Solio’s sister property, Sassab, in Samburu, where its luxury tents are staggered up a mountainside just outside Samburu National Reserve in Kenya’s Northern Frontier District.

It’s not just the accommodation that makes Sassab’s safari experience different to Solio’s, but the temperature and landscape, too. It’s the middle of February and Sassab is hot, the fierce sun leaving rivers parched, land scorched. The scenery is dramatic; all rugged, rust-coloured peaks for as far as the eye can see. And what we see from our room, where the plunge pool juts out above the arid riverbed below, is an elephant, so close you can see every wrinkle on its coarse skin. It digs its foot into the ground, over and over until its strikes down into water,

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its trunk dipping in for a drink.

This is the type of spellbinding sight you get when among animals in their natural habitat.

Like at Solio, our game drives at Sassab are chockful of sightings — here we see a lioness fresh from her kill, her paws caked in blood as her trio of tiny cubs rest up in her shadow. But it’s your immersion into the local culture of Samburu that sets the Sassab safari apart.

Our spotter is Jacob, always as recognisable as he is resplendent in colourful tribal clothing. On our first night he and driver Michael take us to the local village, home to members of the Samburu tribe. Here, Jacob explains village life (it’s how he also grew up) as children, dressed in a mish mash of donated western clothing, tentatively edge closer to us, their curiosity sparked.

Their lives are humble; their huts fashioned from branches, sheet plastic, cardboard and cloth. Each one is small yet homes upwards of nine, and inside they’re stifling hot — cooking is done inside over an open flame.

Here, a person’s wealth is measured in livestock — goats are given as dowry.

This village has a good number of them, their bleats increasingly frenzied as a villager plucks one by the hind legs

Opening pages: Sasaab Family Tent These pages. clockwise from left: Solio Family Cottage © Brian Siambi; Samburu tribe members © Scott Ramsay; sundowners at Solio © Scott Ramsay; The Retreat © Brian Siambi

and demonstrates how it is milked.

To protect them from predators at night, they are penned in by a ring of thorny bushes. A larger version of which protects the whole village, as do a few wild dogs. But wildlife isn’t the only danger to the Samburu — so too is the weather.

Our visit coincides with a drought, turning crops to dust. Jacob points to a mountain in the distance, its flat top setting it apart from the rest of the range. As does that fact that to the Samburu, this mountain is sacred.

“At the top it’s an oasis,” says Jacob. “Beautiful.”

Each day of the drought, a small party of villagers head there to pray for rain. It takes a full day to reach on foot and four hours to climb.

So far, their prayers remain unanswered. Yet the one thing that’s glaringly apparent among the villagers is their happiness. Their smiles are genuine, their laughs plentiful. A lesson that little is needed in life for contentment.

Jacob describes some of the tribe’s rituals: boys are circumcised aged fifteen, at which point they become warriors, defenders of their tribe. They are warriors for the next fifteen years, and though incidents are now rare due to intervention of the government, it can be dangerous — deaths have occurred when one tribe tries to steal cattle from another. As such, a reticent Jacob once refused to go on one such mission, much to the chagrin of his elders.

One night, after he has led us on a

walk along a dried-out riverbed and up a mountain for sundowners (you can also do the trip on camel back), he tells us how he combined his own warrior duties with study in the country’s capital, Nairobi. A broadening of experience which he hopes to widen with travel outside of Kenya for the first time.

“Where would you go?” I ask, scanning the skyline of peaks as a glorious full moon edges its way skyward. A beguiling wilderness.

“Well, before covid came I had a trip booked to Las Vegas,” he replies, which makes me choke on my drink.

Another internal flight (in an aircraft no larger than your average car, which the wind toys with all the way) takes us to Nairobi, home to the Safari Collection’s Instagram favourite Giraffe Manor. You’d have seen the pictures of giraffes poking their necks through the Manor’s windows at breakfast time, but another sizable attraction here is The Retreat. Built to cater to passengers in transit from safari, it has a country club vibe, with a steam room, sauna, hot tub and spa (two treatment rooms), plus a great brasserie and chic dayrooms that are every bit five-star standard.

Best of all, though, is its infinity pool.

It stretches into the giraffe sanctuary, so don’t be surprised if your swim is interrupted by a Rothschild’s giraffe, bowing its neck for a sip of pool water.

Holiday romances rarely blossom into something deeper. But I’m still wild for Kenya and its people, long after leaving.

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What I Know Now

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APRIL 2022 : ISSUE 127

Victor Sanz CREATIVE DIRECTOR, TUMI

The best piece of advice I’ve ever received is to never stop learning and evolving. This advice always holds true and has continued to push me to grow within my career and my personal life.

At times, I would have this mantra in my head as I dived headfirst into new endeavours and challenges. I look at it as an opportunity to continue to evolve, both as a designer and contributor to society When I first saw someone using one of my designs and truly enjoying it, it made me realise that through design we can bring joy to people’s lives.

Something I do every day is to design or create something new that surprises me. It has become my meditation and therapy. I’m constantly creating, so there is never a time when things aren’t swirling around in my head that I need to get out and on paper.

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One lesson in life that took me a long time to embrace is the idea of enjoying the moment that you are in, as you do not know when that moment will present itself again. This is a lesson I feel is learned through time and experience. It is a hard lesson to learn, because by the time it is grasped, so many amazing moments have passed.

I’d tell my younger self that it’s a marathon, not a sprint, and enjoy the moments more. The younger version of me wanted to consume as much knowledge as possible and to always move at full throttle. What I have learned is that the moments of pause are just as beneficial as the moments at full speed.

One never-failing area of inspiration is my family. They are always pushing me to continue evolving and to look at the world with a new perspective. They all look at the world with fresh eyes.

I feel that I am just getting started.

The world is generating and shifting communication at a breakneck speed. With such a dramatic shift, it is allowing me to pursue new creative avenues that I had not even thought were there a year ago. I am always discovering new passions, and looking at ways to explore and challenge myself more.

I define personal success as being able to overcome an obstacle or task that at first seemed impossible. It’s the ability to dive into the unknown and unfamiliar. Give your full self to the process and absorb the knowledge.

It can then be translated to all areas of your life.

TUMI’s latest Alpha Bravo collection, designed by Victor Sanz, is out now.