AIR Magazine - Jetex - November'23

NOVEMBER 2023

JODIE COMER

Showrooms:

Contacts:

Social Media:

The Dubai Mall

+971 4 2262277

mahallatiJewellery

Dubai Marina Mall

retail@mahallatijewellery.ae

mahallatiJewellery

Mall of the Emirates

www.mahallatijewellery.ae

Mrs.Mahallati

Gold Souk

breguet.com

Type XX

2067

The Breguet Type XX has accompanied the most experienced pilots since 1954, landing on the wrist with perfect precision.

Make History with us.

Contents

Credit: Linda Evangelista photographed by Steven Meisel. Vogue Italia, March 1993 © 2023 Steven Meisel. All rights reserved. Stylist: Joe McKenna. Hair: Ward Stegerhoek. Makeup: Denise Markey. Taken from the book Linda Evangelista photographed by Steven Meisel, published by Phaidon

NOVEMBER 2023: ISSUE 146

FEATURES Thirty Eight

Forty Four

Fifty Two

How, since Killing Eve made her famous, Jodie Comer now stands on the brink of superstardom.

Three decades ago, Alexander McQueen released his debut collection, marking the start of an incredibly creative career.

Steven Meisel is the man the A-listers trust to make them look fabulous. So, who is he?

Tim Blanks investigates.

Killing It

All Hail McQueen

The Man In Black

11

Contents

NOVEMBER 2023: ISSUE 146

REGULARS Twenty

Radar Twenty Two

Objects of Desire Twenty Four

Critique

Twenty Six

Art & Design Thirty

Jewellery Thirty Four

Timepieces Sixty Two

Gastronomy

AIR

Sixty Six

Travel

EDITORIAL

Sixty Eight

Editor-in-Chief & Co-owner

What I Know Now

John Thatcher john@hotmedia.me

ART Art Director

Kerri Bennett Illustration

Leona Beth

COMMERCIAL Sixty Two

Motoring The beauty of British Colombia is the perfect setting to enjoy the quiet luxury of the all-electric Mercedes-Maybach SUV.

Managing Director & Co-owner

Victoria Thatcher

PRODUCTION Digital Media Manager

Muthu Kumar

M e d i a C i t y, D u b a i , UAE Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission from HOT Media is strictly prohibited.

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

12

ALPINE EAGLE With its pure and sophisticated lines, Alpine Eagle offers a contemporary reinterpretation of one of our iconic creations. Its 41 mm case houses an automatic, chronometer-certified movement, the Chopard 01.01-C. Forged in Lucent Steel A223, an exclusive ultra-resistant metal resulting from four years of research and development, this exceptional timepiece, proudly developed and handcrafted by our artisans, showcases the full range of watchmaking skills cultivated within our Manufacture.

Jetex NOVEMBER 2023: ISSUE 146

Welcome Onboard NOVEMBER 2023

November is traditionally one of the peak travel months for all of us at Jetex, and this year has been the busiest yet.

Early this month, we look forward to inaugurating a spacious new concourse at the flagship Jetex Dubai private terminal. Complete with bespoke retail and leisure facilities, the new concourse also presents the opportunity to discover vintage aircraft, specially delivered to us from the United Kingdom, as well as a range of ultimate supercars – in addition to enjoying award-winning hospitality in new VIP lounges.

The biennial Dubai Airshow will once again take place at Al Maktoum International Airport on 13-17 November. Featuring more than 1,400 exhibitors and 20 country pavilions, this is an exceptional opportunity to network, do businesss, and explore endless innovations in the aerospace industry. One of the biggest highlights of the show, the static park and flying display will feature over 180 of the world’s most advanced aircraft on ground and in the air.

In time for the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, the new flagship Jetex Abu Dhabi will be officially open to welcome global private jet travellers flying in to attend this exceptional sporting event in the UAE capital.

Passengers traveling via Jetex Abu Dhabi can look forward to a seamless travel experience with several spacious private lounges of VIP and VVIP terminals, elegant hospitality, and luxurious amenities synonymous with the Jetex brand. On-site immigration and customs support ensure smooth formalities for arrivals and departures.

The secure apron and hangar parking facilities can accommodate up to 50 aircraft, offering a wide range of ground handling services.

Jetex Abu Dhabi marks a milestone for our brand and confirms our commitment to the region. We are especially excited to bring the Jetex experience to the UAE capital. We aim to create a regal welcome to this beautiful city for our international guests, as well as to ensure that every need is anticipated, every wish is granted, and every minute is memorable when you are with us at Jetex Abu Dhabi.

As always, thank you for choosing Jetex for your global private jet travels. All of us look forward to taking you higher in utmost comfort and luxury – and with complete peace of mind.

Adel Mardini

Founder & Chief Executive Officer

Cover: Jodie Comer

by Shayan Asgharnia/AUGUST

Contact Details: jetex.com 15

Jetex NOVEMBER 2023: ISSUE 146

Fly Private to Abu Dhabi Why a trip to Abiu Dhabi is this season’s hottest ticket

Abu Dhabi’s cultural landscape is constantly evolving, welcoming debutants and hosting iconic events.

Here’s why you should be in the capital of the Emirates this season.

The stars of the motor-racing world zoom to Yas Marina Circuit every November for the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix. The city’s racetrack, which was designed as an Arabian version of the Monaco circuit, has since been joined by Ferrari World Abu Dhabi, a motor-racing theme park and the appropriate home of the world’s fastest roller coaster.

The Yas Marina Circuit on Yas Island is gearing up to host the three-day Abu Dhabi Grand Prix event from November 24-26. The race will conclude the 2023 FIA Formula One World Championship which, for the first time, will be running 23 races in a season — the highest number yet. Race-view suites remain a highlight at W Abu Dhabi in 18

Yas Island, which stands right atop the racetrack. Head there to watch the spectacle from the comfort of your room, or prop yourself on the Main Grandstand, which overlooks the home straight and offers a direct view of the stunning pyrotechnics that Abu Dhabi is known for.

SeaWorld Abu Dhabi — the first Middle Eastern outpost of the classic American theme park — is a realm of marine-themed immersive experiences, with six different marine habitats and the region’s largest multispecies aquarium.

Snow Abu Dhabi will open on Reem Island as one of the world’s largest indoor snow parks, with rides and dining areas across 10,000 sq ft.

Think sub-zero temperatures in Abu Dhabi, with snow up to your ankles.

Pritzker Prize-winning architect Jean Nouvel’s Louvre Abu Dhabi keeps impressing on Saadiyat Island.

The exterior alone is worth the trip: from a distance, the museum looks like a silver mushroom. Works by Da Vinci, Gauguin, and Mondrian are on display along with other art, manuscripts, and objects of historical, cultural and sociological significance.

Spanning millennia, the items on display originate from societies and cultures from all over the world.

Until January, visitors can also discover sacred texts from the monotheistic religions, as well as artefacts from the collections of the Bibliothèque nationale de France, Musée du Louvre, and Louvre Abu Dhabi.

Travel to Abu Dhabi with Jetex: from seamless itineraries that include private jets, helicopter and limousine transfers, luxury resorts and curated entertainment to the glorious Jetex Abu Dhabi private jet terminal.

Truly elegant, truly fit for royalty.

Radar NOVEMBER 2023: ISSUE 146

AIR

Gucci’s 102-year history is celebrated in the visual fantasy that is Gucci Cosmos, an immersive experience now showing in London, the city in which, in 1897, a young Guccio Gucci worked as a luggage porter at The Savoy hotel, igniting a passion for the art of luggage making that would ultimately birth the Gucci brand. Conceived and designed by British contemporary artist Es Devlin, the exhibition takes visitors on a voyage through Gucci’s past, present and future, set out through a series of ‘worlds’ that draw together myriad treasures – many previously unseen – from the Gucci Archive.

Gucci Cosmos, 180 Studios, 180 The Strand, London, until 31 December 2023

20

21

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

CA ROLINA HER R ER A

SPRING/SUMMER 2024 Wes Gordon celebrated his fifth-year down the runway during Dubai Fashion anniversary at the helm of Carolina Week last month, following its New Herrera by taking inspiration from York bow in September. As such, while a moodboard peppered with fashion still looking clean cut, chic, and crisp, imagery from the Nineties. “Clean is pieces were played up. In addition, a too often boring and soulless,” he said micro-pleated tulle ballgown in black of a collection that was also trotted and lavender stripes stole the show.

1

OB JECTS OF DESIRE

RICHARD MILLE

R M 0 7- 0 1 C O L O U R E D C E R A M I C S Once called “a shotgun wedding between Bauhaus and Fisher-Price,” Memphis Design, its aesthetic very much rooted in the 80s, has made a comeback among the tastemakers of our times, including Cécile Guenat, Creative and Development Director at Richard Mille: “I find Memphis

Design particularly fascinating in its diversity and freedom.” Those two words describe perfectly Mille’s Coloured Ceramics collection, defined by its lightweight TZP ceramic cases and hand-crafted guillochage as much as its eye-popping hues of blush pink, lavender, and powder blue.

2

OB JECTS OF DESIRE

RAMI AL ALI

SPRING/SUMMER 2024 RT W Referencing the nature-inspired work of the artist Steven Meyer, Ali evokes the sense of the seasons in a 30-piece collection that takes Meyer’s method of revealing the inner beauty of flowers and leaves via x-ray images and reinterprets it as delicate

but clearly structured silhouettes.

Ali’s own artistry is clear in the level of craftsmanship, which adds an additional layer to a colourful collection comprising shades of lavender, sky blue, mist green, champagne beige, and blush pink, alongside silvers and golds.

3

OB JECTS OF DESIRE

AREA

R E A D Y-T O - W E A R A N D C O U T U R E R U N W AY Since its founding in 2014 by designers Piotrek Panszczyk and Beckett Fogg, New York-based AREA has sought to innovative in both its use of textiles and embellishments. For this collection the duo explored the idea of primal instinct and its evolution through fashion history,

looking specifically at how bones and fur — materials originally used as means for survival — were subsequently transformed into symbols of aristocracy and wealth.

To symbolise this change, the pair applied thousands of Swarovski crystals to bombé skull heads, bracelets, and colliers.

4

OB JECTS OF DESIRE

J E SSIC A MCCOR M ACK

CARMEL A

Carmela is the imaginary muse for Jessica McCormack’s latest collection of eyepopping pieces, a powerful Italian siren who would not look out of place in The Sopranos. Swirled into pasta shapes like spaghetti and tagliatelle to not only signify Carmela’s famous pasta al pomodoro but

also her sashaying hips, bold diamonds and solid gold are used to complement her Ferrari-red manicure in a range that features beautifully made necklaces and rings. It includes this stunning spaghetti hoop ring stack, a whirl of different cut diamonds and gold.

5

OB JECTS OF DESIRE

CHANEL

S P R I N G - S U M M E R 2 0 2 4 R E A D Y-T O - W E A R The story of Virginie Viard’s SS RTW collection begins in the ancient hillside spa town of Hyères, on the French Riviera. It’s here that we find Villa Noailles, the summer residence of art patrons Charles and Marie-Laure de Noailles, close friends of Gabrielle Chanel,

who, in 1923, asked French architect Robert Mallet-Stevens to design the modernist escape. Drawing inspiration from the geometry that defines the villa’s design, Viard weaves in colourful patterns to a sun-kissed collection that spans bathing suits to evening dresses.

6

OB JECTS OF DESIRE

7

OB JECTS OF DESIRE

A . L A N G E & S Ö H N E

Z E I T W E R K M I N U T E R E P E AT E R H O N E Y G O L D A. Lange & Söhne has a rich history of creating unique acoustic characteristics for its always sought-after timepieces and this beautiful Zeiterk Minute Repeater continues the tradition. Limited to just 30 pieces, it is the only mechanical wristwatch to combine a jumping

numerals display with a decimal minute repeater, and at the push of a button sounds the hours, ten-minute intervals, and minutes. It’s a distinctive sound, aided by the use of 18-carat honey gold (exclusive to Lange), which further imbues the watch with a rich appearance.

8

OBJECTS OF DESIRE

Critique NOVEMBER 2023 : ISSUE 146

Film Priscilla Dir. Sofia Coppola Sofia Coppola tells the unseen side of a great American myth in Elvis and Priscilla’s long courtship and turbulent marriage.

AT BEST: ‘A transportive, heartbreaking journey into the dark heart of celebrity.’ — Marlow Stern, Rolling Stone AT WORST: ‘Priscilla’s delicate mystique struggles to free itself from an oppressive moodboard.’ — David Robb, Slant Magazine

The Holdovers Dir. Alexander Payne

AIR

A made-for-the-holidays movie in which a curmudgeonly teacher at a prep school is forced to remain on campus during Christmas break to babysit a handful of students.

AT BEST: ‘It’s like a hug for those who could really, really use one.’ — Louisa Moore, Screen Zealots AT WORST: ‘Never quite feels effectively or fully conceived.’ — Jesse Catherine Webber, In Review Online

The Killer Dir. David Fincher After a hit goes wrong, an assassin battles his employers, and himself, as he becomes embroiled in an international manhunt.

AT BEST: ‘Even if this is a story we’ve seen many times before, it’s still a damn fine assassin film.’ — Alex Billington, firstshowing.net AT WORST: ‘The Killer ends up seeming hollow and pointless.’ — Nicholas Barber, BBC.com

Fingernails Dir. Christos Nikou A controversial new technology states that a couple has found true love.

However, one partner isn’t sure of the findings.

AT BEST: ‘It’s sweet and funny and occasionally grotesque.’ —Andrew Webster, The Verge AT WORST: ‘Looks like cinema. But it feels like a gargantuan waste of time.’ — Meg Shields, Film School Rejects 24

Critique NOVEMBER 2023 : ISSUE 146

Books

The conversations that took place when Coco Chanel invited French author Paul Morand into her St. Moritz residence at the end of WWII are revealed in The Allure Of Chanel, a book The New York Social Diary calls “An interesting memoir because it’s all about what she (Chanel) thinks, not what she did.” Morand, who had been hired to write Chanel’s memoir, kept these conversations hidden away in a drawer for many years, only coming to light a year after the designer’s passing. In them, Chanel talks of myriad things, including her philosophy of fashion and the story behind the legendary Number 5 perfume. “This enchanting, tiny book is the closest anyone can get to a face-to-face with Coco. It’s written in her voice (‘that voice that gushed forth from her mouth like lava’) and in her words (‘those words that crackled like dried vines’), and though it’s full of lies, omissions and contradictions, there’s enough raw

truth in it to reflect the extraordinary woman who was Chanel, even though glimpsed shard by shard in a broken mirror,” reviews The Spectator.

In The Code Book, author Simon Singh writes the first sweeping history of encryption, revealing the dramatic effects codes have had on wars, nations, and individual lives.

“It would be hard to imagine a clearer or more fascinating presentation…

Mr. Singh gives cryptography not only its historical dimension but its human one,” says The New York Times. “A good read that, bless it, makes the reader feel a bit smarter when it’s done. Singh’s an elegant writer and well-suited to the task of leading the mathematically perplexed through areas designed to be tricky,” says Seattle Weekly, while The Economist calls it “Enthralling” and “Commendably lucid,” going on to say that the book, “Provides a timely and entertaining summary of the subject.”

Pavini Moray PHD, author of How To Hold Power, claims to know the secret to being an ethical, inspirational boss. “Chock-full of effective and practical suggestions for how to deal with workplace triggers and conflict, How to Hold Power will help you develop a meaningful leadership practice… his is a must-read book for every leader who wants to hold their power with skills and grace,” says fellow author Becky Margiotta. “This book addresses one of the biggest challenges of leadership: how to hold on to your humanity while maintaining empathy for those you lead, all while meeting your bottom line. Written with clarity and warmth, the book shares best practices through powerful examples and transformative easyto-access exercises,” writes another author, Nir Eyal, while community management consultant, Carrie Melissa Jones, says it makes for, “Perfectly timed and necessary reading for today’s leaders.”

25

Art & Design NOVEMBER 2023: ISSUE 146

A Design For Life Why Chopard’s Caroline Scheufele has added couture clothing to her creative bow

AIR

WORDS: JOHN THATCHER

26

27

AIR

T

he Cannes Film Festival is well versed in debuts. Indeed, many a celebrated movie was shown for the first time in this sunkissed slice of the French Riviera, including E.T, Apocalypse Now and Taxi Driver. But the debut that caught our attention at this year’s festival was more red carpet than silver screen – Caroline’s Couture, Caroline Scheufele’s presentation of 50 couture garments, the first time Chopard’s Co-President and Artistic Director has entered the world of high fashion.

On paper, it seemed a daring move for Chopard, the renowned jeweller and watchmaker, whose rich history dates all the way back to 1860. But from a design perspective, this was very much a logical step.

Each year at Cannes, Scheufele also showcases her Red Carpet Collection, a dazzling display of one-of-a-kind high jewellery pieces whose number grows by one each year to coincide with the amount of Cannes Film Festivals staged to date: seventy six. It is therefore a huge creative undertaking, yet one that Scheufele felt could be further enhanced with a line of equally exclusive complementary clothes.

“I have always been fascinated by fashion,” Scheufele tells us. “The idea came to me to invent a wardrobe that allows high jewellery and clothing to be considered in a complementary way to enhance the silhouette. Like for watches and jewellery, I draw inspiration from the beauty of nature and its many colours.

“My challenge was to design a charismatic collection that also serves our jewellery creations, setting them off to their best advantage. While the colour range starts with black and white, it offers many other beautiful pieces reflecting the palette of the precious stones. These singular items are intended to combine with each other, or with other clothing elements.”

Scheufele’s choice of colours isn’t the only way in which her clothes mirror her jewellery designs. Just as each piece of high jewellery is meticulously handcrafted, so too is every item of clothing artfully constructed, the same level of painstaking detail employed, and the same commitment made to use only the finest materials. “My goal was to achieve complete harmony between clothing and jewellery, in order to make the woman even more beautiful than she

28

is, using exquisite raw materials with the perfect cut and impeccable finishes.”

This saw Scheufele source fabrics from the likes of Zurich’s Jakob Schlaepfer, which has been supplying materials to the fashion industry for over 100 years, and Como’s influential Gentili Mosconi, a common thread that runs through many of the world’s leading brands.

These are materials selected to last, an important consideration for Scheufele and Chopard as a whole, the brand being somewhat of a pioneer when it comes to sustainable luxury. “A wardrobe is like a jewellery collection, which time makes more and more precious because it is accompanied by slices of life and carries experiences, memories and memorable moments within it.

It is this approach to jewellery that I wanted to transpose to clothing.

“Like jewellery, I designed the garments to accompany women towards a future in which what is loved once can be loved forever. The pieces are not intended to take centre stage for just a single season before becoming obsolete. They can be worn year after year, as perfectly proportioned icons within a timeless wardrobe. I created these pieces for

the garments to accompany women towards a future ‘ I designed in which what is loved once can be loved forever ’ women who, like me, are in love with beauty – meaning true beauty, the kind that never goes out of fashion.

“As with my watches and jewellery, I wanted to take a responsible approach from an ethical, social and environmental point of view. In watchmaking and jewellery, nothing is wasted because the raw materials are expensive. With this, every metre of fabric was used, so that there are as few scraps as possible.”

The social aspect Scheufele speaks of relates in this case to the Kalhath Institute in India, a not-for-profit education and preservation centre dedicated to the craft of hand embroidery and Indian artisans. “The exquisite embroidery for my couture designs is woven with Japanese beads, the smallest in the world, creating a delicate texture.

“The embroidery and various ornaments are configured to enhance

the lower part of the silhouette from the waist downwards, leaving the torso clearer, like a jewel box, for the jewellery that adorns it.

“When you are lucky enough to live a charmed life, it is only right to create a virtuous circle by giving back what you can for the benefit of others. The Kalhath Institute works to strengthen the skills of the artisans, to pass on this exceptional expertise within India, and to put in place framework conditions enabling the craftspeople to earn fair wages – these are exactly the kind of steps we have been taking for several years at Chopard.”

And what of the next steps for Caroline’s Couture? Will we see a new collection at next year’s Cannes? “We’ll see,” says Scheufele. “What is certain is that I do not plan to open a store. It’s a capsule collection, a pilot project, and I want it to remain very exclusive.”

29

Jewellery NOVEMBER 2023: ISSUE 146

AIR

Feeling Blue

Nathalie Verdeille’s first Blue Book collection for Tiffany & Co. embraces the beauty of marine life

WORDS: JOHN THATCHER

30

Jewellery SEPTEMBER 2022 : ISSUE 132

31

AIR

T

he history of Tiffany & Co. tells us that the simple can sometimes spark the extraordinary. Eager to reach potential customers in their homes during the brand’s fledgling years, the storied jeweller debuted the world’s first direct mail catalogue, its cover plain but distinctive due to its now iconic hue, which gave the catalogue its name, Blue Book.

That was 1845. Fast forward to the present day and the Blue Book, once the preserve of Tiffany & Co.’s myriad merchandise — silverware and clocks, fine china and glassware — is now the symbolic shopfront for the brand’s most extraordinary high jewellery creations.

The latest chapter melds Tiffany & Co.’s past and future, the enduringly influential oeuvre of Jean Schlumberger’s designs providing the catalyst for Nathalie Verdeille’s first Blue Book collection, the mesmerising Out of the Blue.

Renowned for his fantastical creations during two decades at Tiffany, which began in the 1950s, France-born Schlumberger reimagined the unrestrained beauty of nature in whimsical ways, bringing jewels to life. “Jean Schlumberger’s designs take the familiar and transform them into the extraordinary,” states Victoria Reynolds, Tiffany & Co.’s Chief Gemologist & Vice President of Global Merchandising. “There is an incredible amount of artistry and craft involved in Schlumberger’s designs that require the unique hand of the jeweller creating the piece, which comes from years of studying his pieces and how they are created. The key to realising his designs and his vision is about entrusting his brilliant designs to the craftspeople who are, themselves, artists.”

As Tiffany & Co.’s Chief Artistic Officer, Verdeille was the artist entrusted to continue the underwater narrative Schlumberger dreamed up, a vivid interpretation of marine life as spectacular high jewellery pieces.

Described by Verdeille as “a dance between mimesis and stylisation, representation and figuration, realism and abstraction of nature,” Out of the Blue is split into six themes. Shell draws inspiration from Schlumberger’s Shell brooch, its key piece a beautiful white gold necklace bedecked with 32

‘

All our gemstones have something magical, an inner beauty

custom-cut diamonds and featuring a blue cuprian elbaite tourmaline of 10 carats. Coral evokes the movement, texture, and lightness of the colourful marine invertebrates, best expressed in a platinum and 18k yellow gold bracelet with over 25 carats of tanzanites and diamonds. For Starfish, a more literal interpretation sees a starfish-shaped platinum ring topped with a 2-carat diamond.

Tiffany & Co.’s renowned savior faire comes to the fore in a pair of dazzling Star Urchin earrings, which feature hand-carved carnelian spikes to mimic a sea urchin’s protective exterior.

Crafted from platinum and 18k yellow gold and featuring a resplendent oval imperial topaz, another engaging feature sees the earrings tremble slightly when worn, a nod to the gentle motion of a submerged sea urchin. The same technique brings Sea Anemone to life, most magically in a bracelet adorned with 9-carats worth of blue cuprian elbaite tourmalines scattered between diamonds that have been set with their culets facing out, imparting a spiky nature.

Fish formed many of Schlumberger’s creative visions and Pisces pays homage by way of striking suites characterised by extremely rare padparadscha sapphires, including a remarkably artful brooch.

“The collection features spectacular

’

displays of coloured gemstones and diamonds. With rare and unusual gemstone pairings — including padparadscha and Umba sapphires, tanzanites, purple sapphires, blue and green cuprian elbaite tourmalines — each jewel is part of the mystical aquatic world,” says Verdeille, enchantingly.

Finding such stones is the task of Reynolds, who has been with Tiffany & Co. for over three decades. “My team and I are in constant search for the rarest and most spectacular gemstones that nature has to offer, and it can take several years to find what we are looking for in terms of the ideal stones.

I always say it is akin to a Broadway audition, because each gemstone must have a very special quality for us to acquire it, beyond just having superior colour and being the best in its class. So, when we find that special stone, it is absolutely exhilarating.”

How does she know a particular stone is special? “It’s mostly a visceral feeling, a gut reaction to a beautiful gemstone that draws me in. From there, I know it’s the one.”

Reynolds’ love affair with stones began to blossom early. “I distinctly remember my first visit to Tiffany & Co.’s Fifth Avenue flagship store when I was around nine years old.

I went with my father, who was purchasing a brooch for my mother.

I still remember walking through the doors and being mesmerised by the main floor, especially the array of diamonds and coloured gemstones.

That feeling has stayed with me.”

It’s that feeling that accompanies Reynolds and her team on buying trips across the world, sometimes in search of a stone to fit a particular design brief, other times simply searching for something rare and unusual. “For either, the challenge — but also the excitement — is that every single one is selected by hand. Sometimes we find the gemstones and other times they magically find us. It can take years to find the perfect gemstone for a specific design, and other times we come across the ideal gemstone and know that it must be ours.

“All our gemstones have something magical, an inner beauty, which is when we know that they are truly of Tiffany & Co. calibre. The thrill for me? After all this process, a one-of-a-kind gemstone that is set in our jewellery will come to symbolise a very personal moment for the person who wears it — a marriage, birth of a child, or other special occasion that they will always treasure — and is as unique as the stone itself.”

Alongside Jean Schlumberger in the pantheon of legendary designers to have contributed to Tiffany & Co.’s rich archive are Elsa Peretti and Paloma Picasso, whose timeless creations still inspire the house today. This delicate balance of heritage and modernity is now a defining characteristic of the brand, though it’s not simple to strike.

“Staying in the sweet spot between heritage and modernity can present challenges,” says Reynolds. “Excellence in design and craftsmanship has defined everything that we do since our founding in 1837. Innovation allows us to bridge heritage and modernity; it is also integral to our DNA. So, it is innovation that allows us to continue to create the world’s most exceptional high jewellery, designs that are at once classic and contemporary. In keeping with our superior craftsmanship, we are always seeking out new techniques in how we cut our gemstones, as well as new ways to set them, always with the aim of creating the most beautiful high jewellery in the world.”

Out of the Blue is further proof that Tiffany & Co. continues to do just that.

33

Timepieces

AIR

NOVEMBER 2023: ISSUE 146

34

Journey Through Time Vacheron Contsantin’s latest novelties beautifully showcase its long-standing technical and aesthetic signatures WORDS: JOHN THATCHER

A

s sure as the passing of time is the fact that, regardless of which of the brand’s seven current collection lines it is added to, any new timepiece from Vacheron Constantin exudes a certain elegance that no other watchmaker can replicate. A distinct, refined aesthetic that runs right the way through Vacheron’s vast catalogue of alluring creations.

Shanghai’s Watches & Wonders provided the most recent platform for Vacheron to showcase its signature style, the brand unveiling several new timepieces that range from the dazzling to the extraordinary.

For the first time – no doubt spurred by the ongoing success of its female-focussed Égérie line – Vacheron swells its Patrimony collection with a diamond-encrusted jewellery piece, its stunning sparkle the result of the painstaking snow-set technique, for which diamonds of differing diameters are individually selected and carefully placed to cover the dial in full.

It’s a process that means the 37mm dial of each timepiece is, in fact, unique. “We felt that the elegance of the collection lent itself admirably to a bolder version in terms of setting,” explains Christian Selmoni, Vacheron’s Director of Style and Heritage. “That’s why we opted for a snow setting on the dial, which offers this singular aspect of random preciousness with a fascinating sparkle. If we look back at the history of Vacheron Constantin ladies’ watches, which dates to the late 19th century, we realise that gem-setting has been successfully adapted to all eras, particularly during the Art Deco period, without ever being confined to a specific watch range. We perpetuate this tradition because we are convinced that the work of craftspeople can sublimate any collection.”

35

AIR

Opening pages and right: Métiers d’Art Tribute to Explorer Naturalists Opposite page, from top to bottom: Traditionnelle manualwinding; Patrimony self-winding jewellery

It’s the remarkable work of these craftspeople — engravers, enamellers, guilloché specialists and jewellers — that takes centre stage on the Métiers d’Art Tribute to Explorer Naturalists collection, four ten-piece limited edition watches that pay homage to the scientific explorations undertaken by the Beagle, a 19th-century British naval vessel that sailed leading naturalists (including Charles Darwin) on a series of voyages across the world’s oceans to document their discoveries in far-flung lands.

Engraving and enamelling bring the Beagle to life on the white-gold Cape Verde and pink-gold Straits of Magellan pieces, where it floats on blue-enamelled waves, aside a vivid depiction of the rich flora the explorers encountered, a luxuriant backdrop onto which the hours and minutes are displayed.

Inspired by fauna, the white-gold Tierra del Fuego and pink-gold Cape of Good Hope models are artistic treasures, the former exhibiting a 3D butterfly and two birds aside a miniature painting of an ancient map of Tierra del Fuego, the latter depicting 3D birds and an iguana among verdant foliage, alongside a map of the Cape of Good Hope. Each example is powered by the selfwinding in-house calibre 1120 AT/1.

So captivating are these pieces that it’s easy to overlook what lies beneath their extraordinary dials.

“The Métiers d’art collection is first and foremost about putting technology at the service of beauty,” outlines Selmoni. “In other words, to use watch movements whose displays are arranged in such a way as to leave the dial free for maximum expression by the craftsmen. The Manufacture calibre 2460 G4/2 is one such movement, with hour, minute, day, and date indications on discs, with apertures positioned around the periphery of the dial. The calibre 1120 AT/1 follows the same philosophy. But this extra-flat, 5.45mmthick movement with trailing hours on an arched minute track requires a slot in the dial to allow rotation of the 36

We are ‘ convinced that

the work of craftspeople can sublimate any collection

’

three-hour satellites. The craftsmen in charge of the models in this new collection must therefore organise their compositions to take account of a break in the dial, which is therefore on two levels. This complicates the task.”

The deep green that we see as a feature of the Tribute to Explorer Naturalists collection takes prominence on two new Traditionnelle models, one sized 38mm and the other 33mm, the bazel of which is adorned with 54 diamonds. A classic made modern.

“The first watches in the Vacheron Constantin collection to feature monochrome dials date back to the early 19th century,” says Selmoni. “During this period, timepieces were richly adorned on the case side, yet more understated when it came to the dial.

Despite this sobriety, the watch face was already being explored as a field on which to express new decorative techniques, such as applied numerals on a matte surface, guilloché work on the central zone, as well as textured effects.

“The monochrome green sunburst dial of these Traditionnelle models continues this tradition while adopting a more contemporary approach, recalling the advent of ultra-thin watches in the early 20th century.”

Will we likely see other dial colours

added to the collection? “Vacheron Constantin’s approach to dial colours remains essentially classic and consistently in sync with the spirit of its collections. It is, however, clear that in recent years, watch lovers have shown a definite inclination towards more colourful, livelier models. These two new additions to the Traditionnelle collection demonstrate that Vacheron Constantin is perfectly attuned to these trends and capable of adapting them to its own aesthetic. It is therefore highly likely that other dial colours will be added to the chromatic range, but always in the spirit of moderation and elegance characterising Vacheron Constantin-style watchmaking.”

That’s certainly true of the everelegant Overseas collection, to which a new 35mm self-winding model has been added, one defined by pink gold, first used by Vacheron in the 1920s before a drop off in its popularity.

“Our Asian clientele helped bring pink gold back into our designs in the early 1990s. Since then, it has become the preferred choice,” says Selmoni.

Just as Vacheron Constantin, centuries after its founding, remains the preferred choice for the modern watch connoisseur.

37

38

AIR

Since Killing Eve made her famous, Jodie Comer is now on the brink of superstardom WORDS: ED POWER

39

AIR

J

odie Comer has finally killed off Killing Eve. Her Tony Award win for best actress for the Broadway run of Suzie Miller’s one-woman play Prima Facie earlier this year confirmed the Liverpool-born, English actress as a once-in-a-generation talent. A star who can radiate warmth and vulnerability as easily as drip menace while dispatching someone with a hairpin. She can at last move on from that iconic Killing Eve shot of her character, sociopathic hit-woman Villanelle, strutting across Paris in a billowing champagne-pink dress.

Stars often turn to the stage when they have conquered Hollywood and are looking for something else to do.

But for Comer, making her West End debut last April in Prima Facie (which subsequently transferred to Broadway) was the equivalent of slamming on the emergency brake and hitting reset.

Post-Killing Eve, she struggled to find parts worthy of her talents. She was reduced to being a spectator in the Ridley Scott-directed Ben AffleckMatt Damon two-hander The Last Duel and was under-used opposite in Ryan Reynolds in video game romcom Free Guy. The lowest moment came in the dire Star Wars sequel, The Rise of Skywalker, where she had a stunt cameo as the mother of heroine Rey. Comer was in danger of becoming a meme – a special effect to be dropped into productions to trade on the recognition value she had clocked up with Killing Eve. The irony was that, even as she struggled on screen, off it she was the perfect A-lister. Unstarry and with a

40

‘

On stage success confirmed her as a once-in-ageneration talent

’

dry wit, Comer is a natural on the red carpet. She has also conquered US chat show circuit, where the hosts, having never previously encountered a Liverpool accent in the wild, are bowled over by her homespun charm.

But with Prima Facie, she hit reset.

In it, she played a London barrister who cynically makes her living from sexual assault cases only to find the tables turned when she is raped. Her character has been complicit in a system in which the victim is put on trial as much as the accused – and now she must negotiate a moral maze she had a hand in creating.

If the production was a sensation in London, in New York, it gave Comer her On The Waterfront moment (On The Waterfront having turned Marlon Brando into a star). Prima Facie confirmed her to be both a charismatic leading lady but also one of the most promising actresses of her generation.

As shop windows go, her Broadway run was unsurpassable – with a steady drip of Hollywood power-players in attendance. How glad she must be that she opted to star in the original West End production rather than opposite Joaquin Phoenix Ridley Scott’s Napoleon biopic (from which she bowed out amid a post-Covid scheduling conflict).

Suzie Miller based Prima Facie on

This page, from top to bottom: still from The Last Duel (2001); still from The Bikeriders (2023);

41

Above: still from Free Guy (2020)

her own experiences as a lawyer in Australia. However, the portrait of a justice system skewed against women has resonated just as strongly in London and New York. Prima Facie also did something Ridley Scott and Ben Affleck could not by turning Comer into a movie star. Last year’s NT Live screenings of the play grossed close to $3 million across five days – surpassing the box office take of the Reese Witherspoon-produced adaptation of bestseller Where The Crawdads Sing. Comer had already done the impossible in making us empathise with an assassin in Killing Eve. But now she was working an even bigger miracle – drawing multiplex viewers to a challenging one-woman play about inequities in the legal system.

She has seemed merrily unfazed through all these highs and lows. So well adjusted is she that even a Twitter pile-on over her relationship with lacrosse-playing New England heir James Burke failed to put her off track.

While filming Free Guy in Boston, she “fell in love” with Burke. Then came reports that horror of horrors, Burke was a registered Republican – theoretically, a Donald Trump supporter. Social media weighed in, but Comer refused to acknowledge the backlash.

42

“It was really shocking,” she told InStyle magazine at the end of 2020.

“It was the first time I had ever been dragged into something like that. And it wasn’t just me; it was my family. I had seen the absurdity of what I was being accused of and what my partner was being accused of. I decided for my own health that I was not going to try and convince these people otherwise.”

So what next? In the short term, she’s steering away from blockbusters. First up is this month’s The Bikeriders, from art-house director Jeff Nichols, an introspective study of a Sixties biker gangs in which she plays the wife of Elvis star Austin Butler’s character.

Comer then stars alongside Benedict Cumberbatch in The End We Start From, a climate change drama set in a London rocked by apocalyptic floods. She is also due to appear in The Big Swiss, a sex therapy HBO comedy directed by Adam McKay. McKay previously directed the pilot of Succession – so if Big Swiss catches fire, it could become a sensation.

These projects will no doubt prove a worthwhile use of her talents. They will also underscore her versatility as she shifts from character parts (The Bikeriders) to comedy (Big Swiss).

After that, though, there are no limits to what she might achieve.

Her acting abilities and ease on the promotional circuit make her the perfect ambassador for a project with designs on award season. But she is also a fantastic physical actor. In Killing Eve, she went beyond merely capturing the moral emptiness at the heart of the damaged Villanelle.

She brought real bite to the murder scenes. Villanelle didn’t simply kill people: she garrotted, stabbed and shot them – and Comer imbued that mayhem with a visceral crunch.

She was similarly punchy in Free Guy, playing an action hero in a video game whose speciality was riding a bike and shooting a machine gun simultaneously. Free Guy was a skit on gamer culture, and her character was written as a caricature.

But Comer sold the explosive setpieces. She could easily rip it up as an action hero if she wanted.

In other words, Comer could be the next Jennifer Lawrence – a girl next door with Oscar cred. Or she could be another Meryl Streep, an intense performer willing to plunge off the deep end to arrive at a place of emotional truth. Or how about a gender-flipped Keanu Reeves, fronting her own John Wick-style franchise? Whatever the future holds, it feels Comer is on the eve of something huge.

Credit: © Ed Power/Telegraph Media Group Limited 2023

AIR

merrily unfazed through ‘ I She hasallseemed these highs and lows ’

43

AIR

Three decades ago, a young man released his debut collection, marking the start of a career that would see incredible creativity – and drama WORDS: STEPHEN DOIG

44

45

AIR

T

he term ‘disruptor’ is overused today, but in the case of Alexander McQueen it is apt.

McQueen, the son of a London cab driver and a teacher, not only defined fashion in the 1990s and early 2000s, but became a byword for rebellion.

At his catwalk shows, models’ bodies were encased by metal frames, live wolves snarled, and rings of fire flamed. And behind all this theatre, there were the clothes. Trained on Savile Row as a teenager, the designer had an eye for rigorous tailoring.

Tradition was mixed with groundbreaking, forwardthinking fashion.

McQueen – Lee to his friends, Alexander being his middle name and a stage name of sorts – revelled in his ability to shock; detractors pointed to cage-like structures that mimicked the apparatus of slavery, or extreme corsetry and spiked metal jewellery coloured with historic misogyny.

Darkness was part of his signature – his 1992 MA graduate collection was inspired by Jack the Ripper – and it was a darkness to which McQueen would eventually succumb privately, taking his own life in February 2010 at the age of 40, shortly after the death of his mother, and three years after his long-time collaborator Isabella 46

Blow, the stylist who ‘discovered’ him as a student, died by suicide.

Blow may have unearthed this rough diamond – paying in instalments for his entire graduate collection and having it delivered in bin bags by McQueen – but his talent was always going to bring him fame. Alongside the challenging parts of his aesthetic, there was a poetic romance: fresh flowers spilling from necklines, delicate lace dresses with dramatic trains, a Grimms’ fairy tale in fashion form.

Friends talk of his sensitive side, and his loyalty. “When I was in exile,” says Kate Moss, referring to the controversy surrounding a drug scandal in 2005, “Lee walked down the catwalk with ‘We love you Kate’ on his T-shirt. He always had my back, and I always had his.”

The boy who was reportedly bullied on the backstreets of east London, and hid his face in an early photo shoot for i-D magazine in case it caused an issue with the unemployment office, went on to achieve a place in fashion history. Thirty years on from his debut as a professional designer, I spoke to the people who knew the mercurial man himself.

Before he attended fashion college Central Saint Martins, McQueen learnt his craft as a teenager on Savile Row. Danny Hall, now head cutter at Anderson & Sheppard, remembers his arrival in 1984:

“Lee first came to us as an apprentice in the 1980s. I believe that his mother had found an advert for apprentices on Savile Row, and he turned up. The firm offered him a position as a coat-making apprentice, and he worked for one of our most experienced coat makers, Con O’Callaghan, in his late 60s at the time.

“Under Con, Lee learnt about the intricacies of tailoring. He started by making what we call a ‘forward fitting’, which is the customer’s first fitting and includes all aspects of the body construction and shape. Cutters and tailors always work very closely with each other and tailoring apprentices are encouraged to understand the basics of pattern cutting to preserve the Anderson & Sheppard house style.

“Everyone at the house remembers Lee as being hungry for knowledge.

He wanted to learn about all aspects of the making process, frequently visiting other parts of the workshops, whether it was buttons or trouser-making, etc.

What was telling was that, despite his own very distinctive style and his passion for house music, which was pretty unusual on Savile Row at that time, he preferred to work late into the evening rather than go to the pub with the other young apprentices.”

Savile Row gave McQueen a grounding in serious English tailoring, which he

then broke down in his own early designs.

Fashion historian Judith Watt, author of Alexander McQueen: The Life and Legacy, reflects on his formative years: “On his first day at Anderson & Sheppard, McQueen was given a thimble and a pair of shears (never ‘scissor’”).

Each apprentice trained under a master tailor; for two years, he worked under the eye of Mr O’Callaghan, also working on bespoke garments, some of which were for King Charles, then the Prince of Wales. It is urban legend that he wrote obscenities on the interlining of the King’s suits – no evidence was found – but it fell in with McQueen’s bad-boy persona. It normally takes three years for an apprentice to achieve the standard to be passed by a master craftsman. It took McQueen two.

“There followed a trouser-making apprenticeship at Gieves & Hawkes, which he cut short after homophobic remarks by a colleague, ignored by the then management. His ‘bumster’ trousers that followed, for which he used the skills learnt in trousermaking, were his revenge served up cold. ‘You’ve got to know the rules to break them,’ he later said. ‘That’s what I am here for, to demolish the rules but to keep the tradition.’”

Soon, McQueen set his sights on acclaimed London fashion college Central Saint Martins. Watt says: “It was the Red or Dead designer John McKitterick who urged Lee to apply for the Central Saint Martins MA fashion course in 1990… McQueen lurked tentatively outside course leader Bobby Hillson’s office, and, when she glimpsed him, said that he would like to teach on the course, having experience of Savile Row. “He was too young, but Hillson saw an interesting and talented conundrum: a boy who had trained as a tailor but also had some work experience under fashion designer Romeo Gigli. She asked him to bring more of his drawings to look over the next day, and then offered him a place on the course. It was past the deadline for interviews and offers for places, but they made it happen.

His technical abilities and passion for independent research (pre-Google) helped him evolve his own ideas.”

According to his friend and fellow student Simon Ungless, “We were blue-collar people and at Central Saint Martins that was unusual. The

‘

He was a calm and quiet soul, with a side that was pure wild genius. Lee was a van Gogh of fashion

’

other students looked down their noses at you.” The issue of appearance also played a part. “We both looked so different that we were bullied.

“It is part of the myth of Lee McQueen that he was uncouth, but the fact is that he was sophisticated when it came to comprehending fashion. He also developed a passion for nature, in particular birds, eggs, skins, fossils.”

The jeweller Shaun Leane was an early collaborator and friend: “Lee and

I first met on the nightclub scene, about 30 years ago. I was working as a Hatton Garden apprentice and had a friend at Central Saint Martins who was on the same course as Lee; gradually we became a little unit. Lee and I were both Londoners who came from a workingclass background and ended up going into the fashion industry. There was a grit, determination and work ethic in him that I think came from his background. “[Later] I remember going to Hoxton to see a studio space that Lee had found – it wasn’t the trendy hub of east London it is now. I turned up to discuss jewellery for his upcoming show, and found Lee and his team working on different iterations of the McQueen logo, debating the curls on the Q and C. Whenever I see the nowfamous lettering, in some far-flung corner of the world, I think of those early days.”

These pages, from left to right: Alexander McQueen Fall-Winter 2009/2010; a creation from the Girl Who Lived in the Tree collection 47

AIR

In 1992, McQueen’s graduate collection was bought by the fashion editor and stylist Isabella Blow, who soon offered him a base at her London home, along with another young fashion talent, milliner Philip Treacy. He recalls: “My first impressions of Alexander were of this tough little thing. We were introduced by Isabella Blow, who had installed us both in her house in Belgravia after seeing his graduate collection. She came back saying she’d just witnessed something that was like nothing she’d ever seen, and suddenly Alexander was living upstairs.

“The two of us were just starting out – he in fashion and me in millinery – and moved into a condemned building around the corner on Ebury Street, where we would argue about the electricity bill. Neither of us had a penny.

“Alexander was aware that he was something of an outsider. When he would 48

go to Vogue House at lunchtime to show the editors his creation, he would be taken up in the service lift at the back.

But aside from that toughness there was a very romantic, articulate side to him.

“It’s hard to overstate the importance of Isabella to McQueen’s journey; they were in sync in a way that’s hard to describe. They had a constant dialogue about everything that would feed into his work, whether clothing, nature, historical references, literature. She was crucial to his trajectory. Not only did she believe in him so wholeheartedly, she made sure everyone else did.

“We didn’t know at the time that those early shows would become part of fashion history, of course, but we knew we were part of something different.

There was no strategy. Alexander was doing what came naturally to him. He knew what women wanted to look like.

He’d grown up with strong women and

he wanted to express that in his designs.

“The other important thing to note was that he could do every step of the process himself; he was extremely skilled technically. He could cut away at a garment and sew it back together – that’s actually quite rare.”

The fashion writer and author Plum Sykes was another friend: “I worked a great deal with Alexander while I was at British Vogue from 1993 to 1997, where I was an assistant for Isabella Blow, and then later at American Vogue.

His situation in those days was very hand-to-mouth. It was all about being his most creative. He made dresses for me out of bits of fabric he’d got from here and there, and they were incredible; edgy, cool and different.

“He could sketch a design in 30 seconds and cut without a pattern, then drape and suddenly there was this amazing dress. He was an artist whose medium happened to be fashion, but everything he did was a sculpture that ended up in that McQueen silhouette that is so recognisable today.”

McQueen founded his company straight after college and presented his first professional collection in February 1993 with a single rack of clothes at The Ritz – no photographs survive, but it marked the debut of his notoriously lowcut bumster trousers. In the years that followed, shows such as The Birds (SS 1995), Highland Rape (AW 1995) and The Hunger (SS 1996) marked a breakthrough period – and were splashed on front pages. Shaun Leane was backstage: “It was an electric time. The 1990s were so energetic in fashion, art, politics and music, and it was a wonderful time for creatives – people like Sam TaylorWood, Damien Hirst, Tracey Emin, Oasis, Björk. McQueen rode this wave. The shows were unlike anything the fashion industry had seen before, a meeting point where fashion, art and immersive theatre met; you didn’t know whether you’d get fire, ice, snow, wind, wolves, moths.

Lee wanted them to be challenging, he wanted to make people uncomfortable.

“Some of the moments were genuinely dangerous – a fire breaking out in an enclosed space which people thought was supposed to be part of the set but really wasn’t – and I think he relished that line between beauty and fear. Lee was the composer who oversaw this captivating chaos.

“Behind the headlines and the outrageous shows, Lee was meticulous and thoughtful about the art of craftsmanship; but the adrenalin of being part of those moments was like nothing you’d ever felt before.”

McQueen’s shows became the hottest ticket in town, known for their daring, creative exuberance. Model Jodie Kidd recalls the atmosphere: “Working as a model in the 1990s could be an impersonal, demoralising process, but Lee wanted his models to be themselves, to have personality, to engage us. It’s important to remember how different fashion shows in Britain were at that time – very proper and polite. Suddenly it felt like this force was ripping through the industry.

“Being part of Lee’s shows was mad, chaotic and addictive. I remember in one show he put me in contact lenses designed to give me a freaky, reptilian look; I could barely see the end of the catwalk but

‘

it looked great. In another I was in an absolutely minuscule corset designed by Mr Pearl, the famous corset-maker, and literally could not breathe – it was all I could do to stop myself from fainting.

“In another moment that has since become infamous, a car caught fire [during 1997’s It’s a Jungle Out There show, a heater was accidentally knocked over]; everyone was panicking but Lee held his nerve and continued the show, even as the models – and probably the audience – thought they might be in mortal danger. He knew how to keep the front row on their toes. Lee wanted to tell stories with his shows; it was never about just presenting some clothes, and everything about inviting you into his world.”

LVMH boss Bernard Arnault knew talent when he saw it, and in 1996 McQueen landed the job of head designer at LVMH-owned Parisian couture house Givenchy. Until 2001 he would make

collections for both Givenchy in Paris and his own brand, then headquartered in east London. Says Sykes: It was wonderful to see Alexander go from that dark basement studio in Hoxton to the couture salon at Givenchy. He was a fish out of water in Paris, but that was what made his stint there so interesting; he was outrageous.”

Kidd remembers walking in his Paris debut: “It was a big moment; he’d dreamed up this set where a giant tree, cupids, giant angel wings and an opera singer all featured. The couture salon was, as you’d expect, an extremely genteel environment where things had been done a certain way for decades.

Suddenly this east London guy was in there in a polo shirt, switching things up, but what was remarkable watching him work and fit clothes in that set-up was how his skills were up there with the best Parisian couture seamstresses.

“I was being fitted for a white coat,

He was a force like no other, utterly fearless in his conviction and his point of view

’

49

which would open the show, a thing of total beauty. Suddenly Lee took a pair of scissors and just started slashing and hacking at it. The ladies in the salon were gasping in shock; I remember the cries of, ‘Zut alors!’ But he knew exactly what he was doing, of course: his cutting days on Savile Row instilled a profound knowledge in him.

“During Lee’s time at Givenchy, I saw him grow in confidence, but it was a double-edged sword because as he became more important the pressure grew. There was a heaviness weighing him down. He was known for this bravado, but he could be extremely pensive and would go into himself.

He was a calm and quiet soul, with a side that was pure wild genius.

Lee was a van Gogh of fashion.”

Despite the security of his Givenchy contract, McQueen – who used the money to support his own label – faced a backlash. Says Watt: “He seems to have faced more hostile criticism than any other designer.

He made Hubert de Givenchy want to ‘weep.’ Vivienne Westwood said that he had ‘zero talent’… In the early days, Blow, truly his fairy godmother, fought for him, explaining his ideas and importance as a visionary designer.

The press thought the fact that he could be inarticulate in talking to them meant that he was in some ways uncivilised, but missed the fact that he was extraordinarily knowledgeable about history, art and fashion.

“At Givenchy, among those rarefied environments, this was amplified and he was referred to as ‘The Yob of Couture.’.

With the help of the petites mains [the couture atelier] at Givenchy he might manage, wrote one journalist in 1997, but ‘whether the fittings by a workingclass London oik with bad teeth will be so appealing is another thing.’”

In 1998, McQueen’s show, No 13, put supermodel Shalom Harlow at the centre of a presentation that would go down in history. In front of a rapt crowd, her immaculate white muslin dress was sprayed with paint by two robots, as she stood on a rotating disc. Harlow recalls: “When you got the request through 50

‘

There has been no one like him, before or since to take part in a McQueen show, it was always a yes. You never knew what to expect – would you be walking through a snowstorm? Would you have stag antlers coming out of your head? Models could count on being surprised, but I had no idea that No 13 would be beyond anything that had happened on a catwalk before. I arrived on the red-eye, did the fitting and there was actually no rehearsal – there wasn’t time – so I was just shown this platform, and told that it would rotate and that mechanical arms would spray me. The team just trusted in Lee’s vision and his ability.

“I had trained as a dancer, so when the moment arrived I moved instinctively to the music and lights. I had no idea it

’

would become part of fashion history – those machines spraying me in my white dress with paint – I was just trying to carry out what Lee needed from that moment. Looking back, it’s astonishing how forward-thinking Lee was in terms of technology and its invasion of all our lives; I think of the machines as a premonition of that. There was almost something quasi-sexual about their invasiveness… I don’t know if that’s something Lee designed but, looking back, it feels that way. He created strange, dark fairy tales through fashion.

“When I think of Lee, I think of a balancing act between mayhem and precision – the mania around him in the industry and the exacting, methodical

Credit: © Stephen Doig / Telegraph Media Group Limited 2023

AIR

Previous pages, from left to right: both images from Alexander McQueen, Fall-Winter 2006-2007 These pages, from left to right: Alexander McQueen, Fall-Winter 2006-2007; Shalom Harlow sprayed with paint for Alexander McQueen, No13

way he worked. He elevated every single thing he touched, from show to clothes to the people he worked with. It’s easy to forget that, as well as being groundbreaking through what he created, Lee was one of the first to perform and work on that level, at a hugely intense pace, and that took its toll. He was caught in a vortex.

“There was something very childlike about Lee; he was impish and mischievous. There was a softness and vulnerability to him that people didn’t expect; it was an honour to be let in and know him. And to be part of a defining moment in fashion.”

At the turn of the millennium, McQueen was a global star. In 2000, Gucci Group bought 51 per cent of his company, with McQueen remaining as creative director. He continued to rely on close personal collaborations. In the early 2000s he met aristocratic artist and fashion muse Daphne Guinness. She recalls: “I was wearing one of Lee’s creations, a kimono, from Givenchy. I had been wearing his clothes for a while – thanks to being introduced to them by our close friend Isabella Blow – but I hadn’t met the man himself. That night, I was going to a film premiere in Leicester Square and heard a rather loutish, ‘Oi, you!’ behind me. It was Lee. We went to the pub, and our friendship blossomed.

“People have labelled me a muse. I don’t know how to describe it, but I had various functions within his world. We could share ideas. He would come to

my house, riffle through things, tear linings out of gowns, rip the arms off – I’d say, ‘Darling that’s couture, if you could possibly sew it back together when you’re done that would be great, thanks!’

We’d look at a wealth of things together: art, fashion, history books. He was fascinated by history, which you saw in his collections: Highland Rape [inspired by the Highland Clearances of the 18th and 19th centuries], Joan [of Arc], In Memory of Elizabeth Howe [Salem, 1692 – referencing the witch trials].

“Alongside the theatrical pieces, Lee could make you the perfect pair of black trousers, grey dress or sweater – it wasn’t all about the high-impact gowns. That said, even the most overthe-top pieces were so light to wear.

He was a master of engineering.

Everything that had come before him suddenly felt old by comparison.”

In May 2007, Blow took her own life.

McQueen’s response was a creative outpouring, his SS 2008 show. Recalls Guinness: “Lee and I were destroyed by the death of Isabella, and he took it especially hard. Some time after, he met with a psychic who said there was ‘Le Dame Bleue’ [the name of the SS 2008 collection] coming through and that she had a trunk for him in an attic. That moment became his tribute show to her. We were all in tears. It was his love letter to Isabella, beautiful and tender.”

By now McQueen had received a CBE, several Designer of the Year titles at the British Fashion Awards and enough of a windfall from Gucci to allow him to buy

a Georgian townhouse in Mayfair. Says Leane: “Lee was generous. He was on this journey, but wanted others to be a part of it – it was never just about his own ascent.

Lee lived three lifetimes in one, such was his passion… For all the talk about him today and the legend, really he was an east London, working-class boy who kept his integrity throughout the whirlwind…

I remember his laugh most of all; Isabella and him started laughing in a room together, they could light up the world.”

Recalls Treacy: “What was he like as my friend? There was a sweet side to him that you wouldn’t know if you just looked at his reputation, or at the man himself. He was a force like no other, utterly fearless in his conviction and his point of view, but underneath that he was a sweet, gentle boy from the East End of London who loved his mum.”

In 2010, McQueen took his own life. At his label, Sarah Burton, his right-hand woman, took up his mantle. Guinness says: “Just before he died – I don’t believe this has been said publicly before – he told me he intended to take a sabbatical from fashion and study art at Goldsmiths; he wanted to step back from the pace of the industry and was desperate for time to recharge as an artist. I would say, ‘You can’t put yourself through this.’ The pressures were too much, especially for someone as sensitive as him. Lee looked tough but he was so fragile. He made my life such an interesting and joyous place. There has been no one like him, before or since.”

51

52

AIR

Steven Meisel is the man the A-listers trust to make them look fabulous. So, who is he? Tim Blanks uncovers the most elusive figure in fashion WORDS: TIM BLANKS

53

Opening pages: Steven Meisel and Linda Evangelista, 1992 Right: Linda Evangelista photographed by Steven Meisel. Barneys New York, Fall/Winter 1991 © 2023 Steven Meisel.

All rights reserved.

Hair: Garren. Makeup: François Nars

AIR

S

teven Meisel is the greatest fashion photographer ever. There, I’ve said it. While the history of the medium is stacked with dazzling talents, none of them has quite matched Meisel’s range and passion and understanding of fashion. “Many of the good photographers don’t care anything about fashion, ” Franca Sozzani, the late editor of Vogue Italia, once said. “They just like to make an image. But Steven really likes fashion.

And he’s the only photographer who has anything new to say about it.”

And he got to say it over and over and over again, thanks to Sozzani, who virtually handed her magazine to him on a platter. Vogue Italia wasn’t the world’s bestselling fashion magazine (its American cousin outstripped it in sales by at least a million copies a month), but throughout the Nineties, fashion’s ‘golden decade’, and beyond, it was the star-making machine that fuelled the careers of designers, models, stylists, hair and make-up artists. And Meisel was the magazine’s maestro. He photographed every cover of Vogue Italia from 1988 to 2018, 416 in all. He also shot the lead editorial — the main story — for each of those issues. And, most significantly for fashion, it was this work that shaped and drove the supermodel phenomenon.

Apple TV+’s recent release, The Super Models, focussed on the four women who defined the phenomenon as far as the world was concerned: Cindy Crawford, Naomi Campbell, Linda Evangelista and Christy Turlington. It promised to “illuminate a bond that single-handedly shifted the power dynamic of an entire industry”. True, there was a long, heady moment there in the Nineties when fashion felt like it had sucked up all the glamour, the gold, the glory that was once Hollywood’s domain. If the models were the stars, the photographers were the directors, and none was greater than Meisel. His editorials were scenarios where his

54

I think that I’m in ‘every picture that

I take. Regardless of whether it’s a super-commercial something, it’s all me

’

models got to act, to elevate a photoshoot into an Oscar-worthy performance.

And all the while the man himself remained a mystery. You’d see him on the front row every now and again, draped in a black hoodie or maybe a trapper hat, always the huge shades and long, jet-black tresses masking his face. Never in an interview, let alone the expensive monographs or exhibitions or editions of prints that regularly celebrated the work of peers such as Peter Lindbergh, Mario Testino, Herb Ritts, Bruce Weber and, before them, Richard Avedon and Irving Penn. “I don’t have an emotional need for that or for congratulations,” Meisel told me flatly in 2014, when I finally did get to interview him for WSJ Magazine on the occasion of an equally rare exhibition of 25 pictures from across his career, which he was mounting with Phillips, the auction house. He insisted that the selection process was agonising because he found it so hard to look at his old pictures.

“Either because I look at what I could have done better or I start crying over the people. I’m ridiculously sensitive.”

Last year, though, Marta Ortega Pérez, president of Inditex, the Spanish fashion behemoth whose flagship is Zara, clearly helped him overcome his reluctance.

In November Steven Meisel 1993: A Year in Photographs opened at Pérez’s foundation in A Coruña, the Galician port where her father opened the first Zara shop in 1975. It was predictably stunning: more than a hundred images, many more than lifesize, chosen from one year in which Meisel photographed

124 magazine editorials, 28 Vogue covers and six advertising campaigns. One year! So how could you possibly edit the whole protean four-decade career into a museum retrospective, let alone a coffee-table wrap-up? “An absurd task,” Meisel agreed in 2014. “I’ll go through contact sheets and in an hour I’ll be crying.” Maybe his sadness is warranted.

Something that stood out in the exhibition was how many of the subjects his camera doted on are no longer with us. In one room alone I remember Lucy Ferry, Isabella Blow and the glorious Stella Tennant. One week in July 1993, Meisel transported the punkish Tennant from a street shoot in London to a studio in Paris, where he photographed her for Vogue Italia with Linda Evangelista and Kristen McMenamy. Such alchemical transformations have always been his speciality, and with them he has changed the lives of dozens of young women and men. As Turlington once said: “To have a campaign, a shoot, a first cover with Steven, that’s the moment when your career has the possibility of transforming into something much, much greater.”

Proof of those wise words — as if more were needed — come in the form of Meisel’s first proper book. Linda Evangelista Photographed by Steven Meisel is a celebration of the years of transformative collaboration between Meisel and Evangelista, the woman who has always best embodied his vision with her ability to inhabit a dozen different personae, everything from pageboy gamine to flame-haired couture siren to cool platinum screen goddess. I’d go so far as to say that theirs is a great fashion love story. And having Evangelista, a great “silent film actress”, as a foil was obviously an inspiration to the storyteller in Meisel. The book revisits some of their most celebrated scenarios: Evangelista channelling Katharine Hepburn, Evangelista as Gina Lollobrigida, as Marilyn Monroe, as corseted femme

55

56

AIR

Credit: © The Times / News Licensing

fatale, grieving widow, showgirl, superwoman and — best and most bizarre of all — ‘Makeover Madness’, a cover story from Vogue Italia in July 2005 in which Meisel and Evangelista re-enact the gory surgical rejuvenation of a rich bitch. (The obvious Meisel-friendly reference would be Elizabeth Taylor in Ash Wednesday.)

That particular issue struck a chord.

Old copies show up for about $375. But the story’s fiercely satirical edge also points to elements that have often been missed in Meisel’s work: their topicality, their sense of humour. Occasionally these collide in controversy, as they did with Madonna’s Sex book, which he photographed. He also got in trouble with his love letter to horror movies in Vogue Italia, which was misinterpreted, to his dismay, as a commentary on domestic violence. And when something like that happened, it merely intensified Meisel’s reclusiveness.

Because he is a recluse. Fashion’s Garbo, no less, with a life circumscribed by the same tight circle of friends and collaborators that has surrounded and protected him for decades. During that long ago conversation I suggested loyalty as a foundation for Meisel’s life, personal and professional. He was happy to take that. And that’s why the last element in what amounts to a trifecta for Meisel is so intriguing. First, the documentary. Then, the book. And finally, Steven Meisel New York, a collection of clothes inspired by his own wardrobe and style obsessions.

It’s all there. The basic black — jeans, hoodies, parkas, oversized coats, a trapper hat (of course) and the chunky engineer boots he favours. But then there are also the emblems of pop culture that Meisel has cherished since he was a boy growing up on Riverside Drive in the glitter of Sixties Manhattan. His dad worked in the music industry. Born in 1954, young Steven saw the Beatles at Shea Stadium, the Supremes at the Copacabana, though he was more rapt by the edgier beat of Andy Warhol’s Factory and the characters who made that scene.

In his collection there’s a faux fur straight out of Edie Sedgwick’s closet. There is a croc-print coat that evokes Pierre Cardin and a lace-up leather shirt that is Jim Morrison all the way. Skinny jeans are skimmed with a silver glaze, denim is coated with sequins. You can feel the presence of the late Stephen Sprouse, Meisel’s wingman in the feverish New

York nightclub scene of the Eighties, in such pieces.

If the Linda book is a love letter, so is this collection. It may be the nocturnal sensibility of a city rather than an individual that Meisel is addressing (New York gets equal billing on the label), but for the promotional campaign he has photographed the clothes on the close few who have personified his mysterious essence over the years, from Evangelista and Amber Valletta to Scott Barnhill and Ash Stymest. Then the penny drops.

Everyone Meisel has ever photographed becomes, in some way, part of him. I mean, he did tell me that, years ago. “I think that I’m in every picture that I take. Regardless of whether it’s a supercommercial something, it’s all me … Am I looking for me in them? No, I am them.”

Mystery solved.

These pages, from left to right: Linda Evangelista photographed

by Steven Meisel. Vogue Italia, March 1993 © 2023 Steven Meisel.

All rights reserved. Stylist: Joe McKenna. Hair: Ward Stegerhoek.

Makeup: Denise Markey; Linda Evangelista photographed by Steven Meisel. Vogue Italia, July/ August 1990 © 2023 Steven Meisel. All rights reserved. Stylist: CarlyneCerf de Dudzeele. Hair: Oribe. Makeup: François Nars. All images from Linda Evangelista Photographed by Steven Meisel

Linda Evangelista Photographed

by Steven Meisel is published by Phaidon and out now 57

Motoring NOVEMBER 2023: ISSUE 146

Out Of This World Mercedes-Maybach releases all-electric SUV as space journeys beckons

AIR

WORDS: NICK WATKINS

58

59

AIR

T

here are some things you just don’t say no to. A Pacific Ocean boat trip to watch whales followed by a hot meal in the wilderness and a private seaplane flight above Vancouver Island’s ancient forests is an experience that’s hard to refuse. The outstanding beauty of British Colombia’s winding roads deserve to be driven by a vehicle equally as beautiful, so soon after the call came to drive a pioneering all-electric SUV, AIR packed a bag.

As we navigate the picturesque mountain routes that unfold with autumnal yellow-leaved trees, it’s tough to decide what we’re enjoying most — the breathtaking scenery or driving the luxury car gliding through it. The views of British Colombia’s spectacular terrain mixed with cutting-edge electric innovation of the new Mercedes-Maybach EQS SUV makes for an experience to remember.

This eco marvel is the first-of-its-kind from Maybach — a brand that is plugging a gap in the market for a luxury electric SUV. Far from a standard SUV, every little detail screams ultra high quality, from the 22-inch wheels clad with the Maybach logo, to the wide leather reclining chairs complete with multiple built-in massage options — including a calf massage for those with tired legs.

One impressive tech feature is the artificial intelligence and inclusion of ChatGPT, designed to take the stress out of your journey. Saying, “Hey Mercedes” followed by a command will prompt the vehicle to start talking back to you. This is incredibly handy if you’re wondering what the best route to take is or whether you’re just looking for some music to play.

The AI bot will even have a conversation with you, joking along the way, if you find yourself wanting a chat. Kidding aside, perhaps the most useful information provided by it is the whereabouts of the nearest charging station. Not that it should be an issue given that the eco EQS SUV has a range of 600km. Charging only takes a matter of minutes too so you’re never out of juice for long. In 31 minutes the battery goes from 10 to 80 percent when connected to a compatible DC fast charger, and enables a top speed of 210 km/h.

“What is good must also be beautiful”, according to Maybach’s mantra, which is why the dashboard is dominated by a MBUX Hyperscreen. Three separate screens are seamlessly integrated into a singular panel that spans the front of 60

The astonishing ‘MBUX Interior

Assist tech carries out requests from passengers by recognising hand and body movements

’

the vehicle. The large middle screen is particularly useful on long drives for the sheer size and detail of the map, which makes it almost impossible to take a wrong turn. In fact, the EQS SUV also displays key information for the driver on the windscreen — including arrows that pop up in real time for when you need to make a turn.

So there’s little excuse going off route.

Playing around with the buttons on the steering wheel quickly takes you on a deeper dive into the astonishing technological capabilities. Perhaps most impressive is the self-drive option that allows you to select the distance you wish to keep from the car in front — from one, two, three of four car lengths. Follow that up by selecting the top speed you want the car to reach and it’ll automatically drive itself to that speed and stick to it, breaking autonomously when necessary.

So all you have to do is sit back and relax — which initially is hard to do but the vehicle soon earns your trust and effortlessly drives itself. You will however hear a warning sound if your hands are off the wheel for too long.

For those in the back, the journey is akin to a business class flight experience with the huge reclining seats, noise cancelling headphones, and 11.6 inch displays to keep entertained. The astonishing MBUX Interior Assist tech uses cameras to carry out requests from passengers by recognising hand and body movements, such as switching on reading lights.

Rear passengers also have direct access to the on-board refrigerator. When it’s time to exit the vehicle, there’s no need to trouble yourself with any handles — a quick swipe of the MBUX Hyperscreen opens (and closes) any selected door.

As we finish our time navigating the beauty of Vancouver Island, Daniel Lescow, Global Head of Maybach, tells AIR he expects this car to be a hit in the Middle East. “The segment is growing in most regions and from a platform perspective the electric EQS SUV offers all that is important to Maybach, from the comfortable seats, the spaciousness, and the latest in technology. We are convinced there will be people in the Middle East interested in this vehicle as it’s the firstof-its-kind, and as soon as the door opens you immediately know it’s a Maybach.”

The EQS SUV can justifiably be described as out of this world, thanks to its luxury interior, superb handling and first-class technology. Amazingly it won’t be long before Maybach literally goes out of this world as the brand has signed a partnership with Space Perspective to take passengers 100,000ft above the planet in a luxury capsule, propelled by a giant SpaceBalloon. Meaning soon, not only can Maybach claim to be among the most luxurious brands on Earth — but off it, too.

61

Gastronomy

AIR

NOVEMBER 2023: ISSUE 146

62

The Coast Is Clear Why Grégoire Berger’s dazzling dishes have Ossiano on track to be Dubai’s first three-star restaurant

WORDS: JOHN THATCHER

63

AIR

T

hey say you never forget your first time. The first time I had Grégoire Berger’s food it was served midway through a Richard Mille event staged to honour the Middle East’s finest artistic talents. He was, then, part of the supporting cast for the evening. And yet his dishes were so dazzling, so creative and, obviously, so memorable that he could well have been up there on the stage himself.

He is an artist, first and foremost.

So it’s no surprise that when we meet at Ossiano at Atlantis, The Palm, the multi-award-winning restaurant that Berger has helmed since 2014, he tells me he had never planned to be a chef. It was just one possible outlet through which his creativity could be channelled, an opportunity that came about via a friend who was working at a restaurant in his home region of Brittany, France.

Berger remembers vividly his first day in a professional kitchen, at La Closerie de Kerdrain in Auray. He was early, the first apprentice to arrive, and so he stood alone in his new shoes, crisp white chef’s jacket, and typical checked trousers, taking in the details: how the heat of the stove – still radiating from the previous night’s service – contrasted with the chill of winter outside; the smell of the freshly-scrubbed kitchen; the schedule he would follow, pinned to the wall. Such attention to detail is now a key characteristic of his dishes.

“I also remember feeling excited.

Starting something new in life creates excitement. There's nothing worse than being stuck in a place doing the same thing over and over. I’ve been at Ossiano for many years, but with my team here I always find a way to create something new each day.”

That latest something could well be his best yet: an 11-wave menu entitled Escale, which translates as ‘stopover’, and draws inspiration from Berger’s experiences travelling the world, though the ingredients for it – presented at your table before they are cooked – hail from a much shorter radius: all sustainably sourced from the oceans or within 50km of a coastline.

To go into detail about the dishes would be to spoil your surprise. And you will be surprised. This is theatre, 64

‘

What we are doing at Ossiano is unique

’

the story of each imaginative dish told before your – at times – disbelieving eyes. How Berger combines flavours isn’t the only magical element.

“I always wanted to create another way of thinking, that whatever I was going to do in my career would be different, something outside of the box. The day I arrived at Ossiano I realised I had a gem. I grasped this sense of ownership from day one and started to follow my vision, which was to create whatever I wanted.

“The food we do is endemic; you’re going to find it only here. Of course you will find the same ingredients elsewhere, but what we are doing is unique. To be able to do what we do at Ossiano in a hotel like Atlantis is a miracle. Because by default a hotel like this obviously has a lot of processes that must be followed. Here, they trust me, I trust them, and the guests are happy.”

It’s a pertinent point. With its huge aquarium, Ossiano is arguably Dubai’s most iconic restaurant setting. It would have been easy for the management at Atlantis, The Palm, to hire a chef to devise a menu comprising staple highticket ingredients, guests’ eyes drawn to the countless species of fish floating by, more so than the food before them.

That would have been the safest card to play. And in that respect, Berger’s imaginative approach made him a

wildcard selection. But the gamble has most certainly paid off. Now guests can’t take their eyes off their plates.

This year alone, Ossiano was ranked 87th best restaurant in the world by The World's 50 Best Restaurants; was – at 4th – the highest new entry in the 2023 Middle East and Africa’s 50 Best Restaurants; retained its Michelin star; and, in April, was voted Restaurant of the Year by Gault&Millau, taking four toques in the process.

Such success comes with a caveat.

“The more you succeed in this industry, the harder you have to work to stay on top. If you stop, you’re dead. If you lose a Michelin star, the perception is that you’ve lost your reputation. The industry is such that awards define your value. It’s sad, because when you have guests telling you they’ve just enjoyed the best meal of their lives, that should be the real measure.

“We have been blessed with success, but we never work for the awards; we work for our guests. If you start to second-guess what an inspector wants you to do in order to win an award, you go in a direction that isn’t your own. The purpose is people. Making people happy.”

Berger talks of an ingrained need to question everything, something he attributes to growing up with his father in Brittany, where much of his play time was spent outdoors, marvelling at how nature worked its magic.

“The food that we create is infused with this childhood wonder, to keep it fun, interesting, and intriguing,” he says with genuine passion.

To ensure Berger remains at the cutting edge of the culinary world, the hotel sends him travelling each year, through which he discovers new ways of doing things, eats at other celebrated restaurants, and swaps ideas with fellow chefs. That process has seen Ossiano host a series of collaborative dinners, the latest taking place this month with Spain’s avant-garde Mugaritz.

It was a shock to many when Ossiano didn’t add to its one-star status when the most recent Michelin Guide Dubai was published. But the bigger surprise will be if Ossiano doesn’t become the city’s first three-star restaurant.

In truth, it’s already at that level.

65

Travel NOVEMBER 2023: ISSUE 146

Mandarin Oriental Bosphorus, Istanbul

AIR

Türkiye

66

I

Bosphorus Room

Outdoor pool

Novikov

Spa

n a welcome contrast to the always bustling historic district of Istanbul, where thousands swarm the labyrinthine walkways of the Grand Bazaar and fellow tourist ants, those disembarked from cruise ships the size of football stadiums, form queues that snake for as far as the eye can comfortably see for entrance to the must-see sites, the Mandarin Oriental Bosphorus, Istanbul adopts a sense of calm.

Relatively small by number of rooms, (100, including suites), there is a boutique feel to a hotel that stands on the European side of the Bosphorus, the view from your room’s balcony stretching across the busy sea straight to Asia. Unique.

Grand, though, are some of the hotel’s incredible suites. The Two-Bedroom Presidential Suite makes the most of its elevated position at the top of the hotel to grant guests panoramic Bosphorus views from a trio of balconies. A private winter garden awaits at the Two-Bedroom Royal Bosphorus Suite, the hotel’s largest, while a service kitchen and Bosphorus-facing bar make the Naile Sultan Bosphorus Suite a favoured spot for group celebrations (wedding ceremonies are often staged steps from it).

Come nightfall, when lights flicker atmospherically on the glistening Bosphorus, the hotel becomes a hotspot for the city’s cool crowd, drawn to a stellar line-up of restaurants with striking, high-design spaces inside and out.

Excellent outposts of Novikov and Hakkasan, the latter with a tremendous team of passionate mixologists who revel in crafting something off-menu to meet your personal taste, join Italian outlet Olea, whose terrace is the city’s finest spot (bar none) to while away a Sunday afternoon.

Late afternoon is also a great time to take up the hotel’s offer of a private yacht cruise along the Bosphorus, as day bleeds into night.

Equally blissful is the hotel’s spa. Billed as Istanbul’s first destination spa with very good reason, it is a beautiful space, all 3,000sqm of it, replete with an indoor pool and adjacent garden and, in season, an outdoor 20-metre lap pool, characterised by its magnificent views over the Bosphorus. There is an arm-length list of treatments (some state-of-the-art) to choose from, but an absolute must-do is the time-honoured hammam experience.

The Turkish hammam is believed to have been introduced to the Ottoman Empire in the 15th century, and this faithful treatment takes place in a serene, marble-lined space defined by a dramatically lit, decagon-shaped ceiling dome.

You will leave the spa feeling both purified and pampered. Just as you will leave Mandarin Oriental Bosphorus, Istanbul knowing that you have enjoyed the fine hospitality of the city’s best hotel.

67

What I Know Now

AIR

Illustration: Leona Beth

NOVEMBER 2023 : ISSUE 146

Fatih Tutak TWO MICHELIN-STARRED CHEF The best piece of advice I’ve ever received is to be patient. And another important one — something I learned from one of my mentors, Paul Pairet — is to get a new perspective. He inspired me to see more of the world, to travel, and gain more experience for my education. It made me understand the importance of geography in experimentation, and what is available outside of your comfort zone.

One thing I do every day is assess the produce that the season brings us.

At GALLADA [Fatih Tutak’s newest restaurant, at The Peninsula Istanbul] we champion bold flavours, elevating hyper-seasonal ingredients from distinct provinces throughout Türkiye. To know what ingredients are available at any point is key, because what’s there one day may not be there the next.

So I spend time going around local 68

markets and enjoy building personal relationships with our suppliers.

during my time in Asia, is the beauty of multiculturalism.

We must invest a significant amount of effort in what we do: the kitchen is a place where you truly earn the fruits of your labour. During my almost two-decade journey in Asia, I faced numerous challenging days, but I always had the confidence that I would ultimately receive the well-deserved rewards for my hard work. In essence, without dedication and hard work, culinary excellence is unattainable.

For me, personal success is about pushing my boundaries and always striving for perfection. I want guests at my restaurants to have an unforgettable experience and create incredible memories and connections based on food, like the ones that have inspired me throughout my career.

My people and Türkiye’s heritage inspire me. My journey has been about understanding my country, its history, and helping shape its gastronomic future. However, what I also love and feel inspired by in Istanbul, and what I discovered

If I could tell my younger self something, it would be to work hard and never give up.

Türkiye will always be home and my source of inspiration, but one day I would love to open a restaurant in London. My cuisine is about protecting and projecting Turkish identity while also challenging creativity.

LUXURY RESIDENTIAL REAL ESTATE prime.bhomes.com

A Racing Machine On The Wrist