AIR Magazine - Empire Aviation - March'22

MARCH 2022

LUCY BOYNTON

HAPPY DIAMONDS – HAPPY ME - Handcrafted in Ethical Gold -

Contents

AIR

MARCH 2022: ISSUE 126

FEATURES Thirty Four

Forty

Forty Six

Fifty Two

From playing a secret agent to ’60s siren Marianne Faithfull, it’s the biggest year yet for indemand Lucy Boynton.

In the Nineties, there was one photographer who was always in the right place, at the right time. We meet Dave Benett.

What do you do when you’ve conquered the catwalk? Make music with Snoop Dogg, if you’re Heidi Klum.

As seminal movie The Godfather turns 50, AIR looks into the story of its filming.

We Love Lucy

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Big Shot

Work Like A Dogg

An Offer You Can’t Refuse

Contents

MARCH 2022: ISSUE 126

REGULARS Fourteen

Radar

Sixteen

Objects of Desire Eighteen

Critique Twenty

Art & Design Twenty Four

Timepieces Thirty

Jewellery

EDITORIAL

Fifty Eight

Chief Creative Officer

Motoring

John Thatcher john@hotmedia.me

AIR

Sixty Six

Journeys

by Jet

ART Art Director

Kerri Bennett

Sixty Eight

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 Two

Gastronomy Michelin-starred chef Sebastian Frank is on a mission to elevate the perception of Austrian food. Next stop, Dubai.

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

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

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NIKKI BE ACH RESIDENCES DUBAI • BVLGARI RESORT & RESIDENCES DUBAI P O R T D E L A M E R • S U R L A M E R • V I L L A A M A L F I • B L U E W AT E R S R E S I D E N C E S | M E R A A S . C O M

Empire Aviation Group MARCH 2022:ISSUE 126

Welcome Onboard MARCH 2022

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

Private aviation continues to grow strongly in response to demand from business and leisure charter clients — travellers looking for the practical convenience and all the other benefits of a business jet, like flying to your personalised schedule. The idea of luxury is often associated with business jets, usually relating to the aircraft itself and the comfortable and well-appointed cabin space and all the onboard technology and amenities they offer.

But for most owners and charter passengers, the ‘luxury’ element is most closely associated with the privacy, personal space and bespoke services it provides — your destination, your route, your timetable.

For people who value their time and space and have access to private aviation services, this must surely be the ultimate luxury — for business or leisure. We explain more in this issue.

When it comes to aviation, aircraft range is a vital factor, whether you are a prospective buyer/owner or charter client. It determines which airport and destination can be reached — with or without a stop, so you can plan the kinds of missions that can be flown with the aircraft.

For many, a more extended range is an essential feature of an aircraft and means you can fly longer distances non-stop. So, they naturally gravitate towards the larger business jets with spacious cabins.

When we talk about luxury in the context of private aviation, the epitome of aviation luxury must surely be the Bombardier G6000 business jet. We already have three of these outstanding aircraft on our managed fleet and all three are available for charter. It’s an aircraft that is in demand and it’s easy to see why. In this issue, we introduce you to the aircraft and share some insights on why this aircraft is so popular with owners and charter clients.

Enjoy the read.

Paras P. Dhamecha Founder & Managing Director

Contact Details: Cover: Lucy Boynton Getty Images

info@empire.aero empireaviation.com

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Empire Aviation Group MARCH 2022:ISSUE 126

Perfecting The Art of Private Aviation How Empire Aviation enhances the personalised experience of private jet travel A private jet offers the ultimate luxury travel experience and Empire Aviation makes private aviation an even more personalised experience for aircraft owners and charter clients.

Since launching in Dubai in 2007, our award-winning team has developed 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.

The company operates in the key regions for private aviation, covering 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 10

India and San Marino, and aircraft sales representatives based in the US. In fact, Empire Aviation provides all the major services associated with private aviation — aircraft management, flight operations and charter, as well as aircraft sales — and it’s the integration of these services and the expertise and experience of the team that enables Empire Aviation to provide a high degree of personalised services.

The company manages private jets on behalf of owners and Empire Aviation’s asset management approach means that each aircraft owner has a unique business model and set of services.

Several of the managed private jets on the fleet are available to the charter market and comprise aircraft of different types and cabin configurations, offering a wide choice to meet all types of charter missions.

As a charter broker, Empire Aviation can also arrange aircraft charter anywhere in the world for business or leisure, combining end-toend luxury and privacy on the ground and at the destination.

The company’s ‘Luxury Partner’ programme combines the unique benefits of private jet travel with award-winning travel partners, including the super-premium resorts ofGulfstream the Indian Ocean and Thailand — G650 favourites among private jet charter clients — Soneva, Lily Hotels’ Hideaway Beach Maldives, Private Plan, and Raffles Seychelles. Your chartered business jet will take you there and stop over for as long as you need it.

A private aircraft can take you as far as you can imagine with style, safety and comfort — and with all the luxury you would expect.

Empire Aviation Group MARCH 2022:ISSUE 126

Thinking of chartering a business jet?

Think Global 6000 The Global 6000 puts you in easy reach of many of the world’s leading destinations Of course, chartering a business jet is not always about business.

The onboard bespoke comforts, thoughtful attention to detail and dedicated personal service of the finest luxury hotel suite is a clear sign that you are in professional hands and experiencing one of life’s greatest personalised pursuits — perhaps the ultimate luxury. In fact, some of the world’s most desirable and exotic destinations and luxury hotels are now combining stays with jet charters.

Private aviation meets the demands of a very discerning group of travellers who expect the highly personalised level of service associated with the ultimate luxury travel experience — whether this is for business or pleasure or a combination of the two.

A private charter aircraft can take you as far as you want to go — with style and comfort. Depending on the type of jet, you can reach most major destinations in the world 12

directly and many smaller airports closer to your final destination. From Cannes to St Moritz or London City, a business jet can take you there.

Empire has one of the region’s largest and most diverse fleets, providing our customers with a selection of aircraft types to complement any business or leisure charter requirement. You can experience first-class onboard service from our ‘silver service’ trained cabin crew and enjoy the freedom of private air travel with Empire Aviation Group.

All of our cockpit and cabin crew members are required to go through several re-training sessions each year.

This stringent requirement ensures that all our crews are fully up-to-date on the aircraft they fly, so that our customers can feel safe, confident, and at ease when flying onboard our aircraft.

Empire also has access to charter operators worldwide with over 4,000 executive aircraft available, offering a wide choice of aircraft types, depending

on the number of people travelling and the type of mission requested.

If this sounds appealing, then you might want to consider the Bombardier Global 6000. The Global 6000 has excellent long-haul capabilities, with a flight range of 6,000nm (nautical miles) and maximum speed of 660mph. It puts you in easy reach of many of the world’s leading business and leisure destinations.

It comfortably accommodates up to 13 in plush seating, has a well-equipped galley, plus a private stateroom. There’s plenty of headroom and plenty of luggage space.

For onboard entertainment, the aircraft is fitted with the latest technology, which includes wi-fi connectivity. The Ka-band (the fastest in-flight internet connectivity worldwide) will ensure that wherever you travel, you can always stay connected.

Radar

100 looks alongside 100 artworks comprise Fashioning Masculinities: The Art of Menswear, a major exhibition of men’s style through the ages that opens at London’s V&A this month, in partnership with Gucci. Contemporary looks by legendary designers and rising stars will be displayed alongside historical collections and iconic photographs depicting changing styles. “Masculine fashion is enjoying a period of unprecedented creativity.

It has long been a powerful mechanism for encouraging conformity or expressing individuality,” said the show’s co-creators, Claire Wilcox and Rosalind McKever.

Fashioning Masculinities: The Art of Menswear, in partnership with Gucci, runs from March 19-November 6 at the V&A, London

Credit: © Chris Steele-Perkins/Magnum Photos

AIR

MARCH 2022: ISSUE 126

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OB JECTS OF DESIRE

This month we shine a spotlight on Spring-Summer 2022 Haute Couture

OBJECTS OF DESIRE

OB JECTS OF DESIRE

CHANEL

SPRING-SUMMER 2022 HAU TE CO U T URE It was a memorable show that opened with Charlotte Casiraghi riding through the lines of seated guests on horseback, trotting out a collection that conveys “a great lightness and a lot of freshness: ethereal dresses that float as if suspended. Lots of flounces,

fringes, macram, bright lace, iridescent tweeds, colourful jewelled buttons,” highlighted Virginie Viard, who also drew inspiration from the 20s and 30s and devices (such as trailing scarf panels) used by Coco Chanel during that period.

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OB JECTS OF DESIRE

RV D K

SPRING-SUMMER 2022 HAU TE CO U T URE “Even from the lowest of the low, we can make something cool and interesting,” Dutch couturier Ronald van der Kemp told Vogue recently. It’s a truism that has been manifest in his couture collections since he debuted in 2014, collections for which he makes use of only recyclables

and what he can find in his studio — trailblazing a path for the fashion industry to follow. As inventive as ever, in this collection van der Kemp fashions individual dresses from three distinct fabrics to look different dependent on the angle they’re viewed from.

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OB JECTS OF DESIRE

U LYA N A S E R G E E N K O

SPRING-SUMMER 2022 HAU TE CO U T URE Continuing its longstanding collaboration with traditional ateliers, Ulyana Sergeenko’s latest couture collection sees crystal details and lace used prominently throughout. For the former, transparent, dark blue and emerald crystal details adorn bustiers,

corsets, and a headpiece, while lace — woven by the craftswomen in the Kruzhevnoi Krai atelier — is at its most beautiful on a sublime white dress.

Crafted entirely from lace, it took ten craftswomen (working simultaneously) a total of 2,450 hours to complete.

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OB JECTS OF DESIRE

S C H I A PA R E L L I

SPRING-SUMMER 2022 HAU TE CO U T URE In his collection notes, Daniel Roseberry mused how “Fashion has insisted upon its relevance over these past two years, and yet I can feel that even some of its practitioners are no longer convinced. What does fashion mean, what does fashion have

to say, in an era in which everything is in flux?” Roseberry answers that question by ushering in ‘an age of discipline’, paring down the colours used to just black, white, and gold — the latter in a shade specifically formulated for the house.

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OB JECTS OF DESIRE

DI DI T H E DI PR A SE T YO

SPRING-SUMMER 2022 HAU TE CO U T URE Didit Hediprasetyo’s couture collection is as chic as it is functional. Designed with a confident woman in mind (hence muse Carla Bruni), you’ll see Hediprasetyo’s sense of form-fitting couture in an array of figure-hugging pieces, including a light silk jersey gown

with leather inlets and elegantly ruffled lines crafted from lace. Elsewhere, songket — a traditional North Sumatran weaving technique — is utilised on a sharply cut trench-coat and elegant tuxedo, while the fabrics used range from silk jersey to Japanese denim.

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OB JECTS OF DESIRE

DIOR

SPRING-SUMMER 2022 HAU TE CO U T URE The theme of Maria Grazia Chiuri’s latest couture collection is ‘art in dialogue’, for which she wished to convey how art and craft meet through a shared language, using Indian art as the conduit. As such, Indian artists Madhvi and Manu Parekh

had their works embroidered into wall tapestries by regular Dior collaborators Chanakya, a school of crafts in India.

On the catwalk itself, embroidery also played a prominent role, used on occasion to construct entire silhouettes.

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OB JECTS OF DESIRE

VA L E N T I N O

SPRING 2022 CO U T URE In a collection titled ‘Anatomy of Couture’, Pierpaolo Piccioli wished to break some of the unwritten rules.

“When you do couture, you have the house model. And you apply the body of the house model to 50 or 60 models on the runway. I wanted to embrace

the idea of different proportions of body, different sizes, different ages,” he explained, before the runway showcased those very sentiments.

As for the clothes, the silhouettes remained true to the body, enhancing its frame and age.

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OBJECTS OF DESIRE

Critique MARCH 2022 : ISSUE 126

Film Nitram Dir. Justin Kurzel When a loner’s first true friendship ends in tragedy, his anger escalates to culminate in the most nihilistic and heinous of acts.

AT BEST: “Another extraordinary achievement from Kurzel [director].” — Luke Buckmaster, The Guardian AT WORST: “The restraint is laudable but little more is explored or revealed than we already know.” — Jane Freebury

The Desperate Hour Dir. Phillip Noyce AIR

Recently widowed mother Amy Carr finds her family life thrown into further chaos when a shooting takes place at her son’s school.

AT BEST: “Entertaining enough to keep one fully engaged.” — Hanna B, Film Threat AT WORST: “Stunningly incompetent when it’s not being offensively exploitative”’ — Brian Tallerico, RogerEbert.com

Ultrasound Dir. Rob Schroeder When a stranded driver is rescued by a stranger, his night starts to unfold in a way that soon puts him at the heart of a web of deception and manipulation.

AT BEST: “A bold, creative sci-fi thriller that continually upends audience expectations.” — Shaun Munro, Flickering Myth AT WORST: “There’s a limit to how long a movie can mess with viewers’ minds.” — Nick Schager, Variety

You Won’t Be Alone Dir. Goran Stolevski In an isolated mountain village in 19th-century Macedonia, a young girl is kidnapped and then transformed into a witch by an ancient spirit.

AT BEST: “A haunting and often distressing wander through the darkness of a life bartered away.” — Kat Hughes, THN AT WORST: “Inventive and enthralling, once it finds its identity.” — Kristy Strouse, Film Inquiry 18

AIR X RICHARD MILLE

The Sands of Time

How Richard Mille’s support for sport in Saudi Arabia led to the world’s most unique polo tournament

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or the second time since its inauguration in 2020, the spectacular topography of AlUla — home to more than 200,000 years of human history, and five successive civilisations over 7,000 years — set the scene as Richard Mille joined forces with the Royal Commission for AlUla (RCU) and the Saudi Polo Federation (SPF) to stage the groundbreaking Richard Mille AlUla Desert Polo last month — the first modern polo tournament in the world to be staged in the desert.

Having been the official Timekeeper of the debut two-day event, Richard Mille returned as both Title Sponsor and Timekeeper for 2022, a role Peter Harrison, CEO of Richard Mille EMEA, is immensely proud of. “The 2020 tournament was a milestone event for both Richard Mille and the Saudi Polo Federation. Hence, we wanted to deepen our involvement this year as we are committed to supporting the development of the sport in Saudi Arabia,” said Harrison. “This year’s event was nothing short of remarkable as we witnessed some of the best polo players in the world in action as they competed against the iconic backdrop of the

AIR

AIR X RICHARD MILLE

This year’s event was nothing short of remarkable as we witnessed ‘some of the best polo players in the world in action as they competed against the iconic backdrop of the AlUla terrain ’

AlUla terrain. It was definitely an exciting moment for the global polo community.”

Those players included the likes of Adolfo Cambiaso, Juan Martin Nero, and 10-goal polo icon Pablo Mac Donough, a member of the Richard Mille family and partner of the brand since 2011 — Mac Donough could be seen sporting his RM 53-01 Tourbillon Pablo Mac Donough throughout the tournament.

The high-quality games took place in a specially built arena close to the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Hegra, as four teams of three battled it out to hold aloft the Richard Mille AlUla Desert Polo Trophy for the very first time.

Playing alongside the game’s greats were five Saudi players, identified for their vast potential. “This is proof that the sport is starting to grow, particularly amongst youth,” commented Amr Zedan, Chairman of the Saudi Polo Federation. “The Kingdom has the

largest youth population in the world, with more than half of residents under the age of 25. Sport is a vital component of the Saudi Vision 2030 blueprint for the future of the country and we have a long and unbroken relationship with equestrian and horsemanship, so marrying the sport with this tradition seems a perfect match — both now and in the future.

“The sport of polo has been played here for the past 50 to 60 years but not widely enough, so we are looking at ways to encourage new players, broaden the appeal of the sport and take the game to a new audience.

Creating events such as Richard Mille AlUla Desert Polo and encouraging the world’s best polo players to visit Saudi Arabia is a great way to do just that.”

With Richard Mille’s support timed to perfection, a bright future for the Kingdom’s budding sports stars looks to be carved in stone.

Critique MARCH 2022 : ISSUE 126

Books it all, are teased apart in all their complexity, within a story that also touches on universal themes of love, identity and belonging,” praises Associated Press. It’s an opinion shared by Kiley Reid, writing in O, The Oprah Magazine: “I don’t think I’ve read a book that covers passing in the way that this one does… epic.”

From the Nobel Prize-winning Olga Tokarczuk comes The Books of Jacob, a story set in the mideighteenth century which sees a man of mysterious origin, Jacob Frank, cast a charismatic spell that attracts an increasingly fervent following. “Monumental,” states Wall Street Journal. “Incalculably rich in learning and driven by a faith in the numinous properties of knowledge.”

“You can practically smell the damp earth, the household fires, the dry paper of Nobel laureate Tokarczuk’s epic set across the villages of 18thcentury Poland. Everything about The Books of Jacob, including Tokarczuk’s generous, comfortable style, is vast but meticulously detailed,” praises Vulture. In a starred review, Booklist

was also in awe of Tokarczuk’s skill.

“With language that’s engaging, erudite, and spiced with witty colloquialisms and wonderful turns of phrase via Jennifer Croft’s supple translation, Tokarczuk explores the state of being an outsider in places with fixed cultural boundaries.”

In Other People’s Clothes, Calla Henkel tells the tale of wwo American ex-pats obsessed with the Amanda Knox trial, who suddenly find themselves at the nexus of murder and celebrity. “Darkly funny, psychologically rich and utterly addictive. I couldn’t stop turning the pages as this witty, harrowing tale of twisty female friendships, slippery identity and furtive secrets unfolded. This is a debut you won’t want to miss,” suggests fellow author Megan Abbott.

Booklist calls it, “A propulsive portrait of obsession and paranoia, set against the backdrop of lateaughts Berlin. Pop-culture references abound, none of the characters can be trusted, and twists and turns are both abundant and shocking.”

Credit: Penguin Random House

The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennet tells of identical twin sisters who ran away from their black community when aged 16. Many years later, while one sister now lives with her black daughter in the same southern town she once tried to escape, the other secretly passes for white in another part of the country, and her white husband knows nothing of her past. “A story of absolute, universal timelessness — a story of what it means to simply be, to grow up and define oneself and reinvent, to negotiate a place in the world. It’s also a deeply American story, rigorously engaged with a country’s racist past and present, while interrogative of its foundational values, like choice and legacy. For any era, it’s an accomplished, affecting novel. For this moment, it’s piercing, subtly wending its way toward questions about who we are and who we want to be,” says Entertainment Weekly. “Beautifully written, thoughtprovoking and immersive… Issues of privilege, inter-generational trauma, the randomness and unfairness of

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Art & Design MARCH 2022: ISSUE 126

Blast From The Past Why Tavares Strachan is on a mission to unearth the trailblazers that history had forgotten AIR

WORDS: CARU SANDERS

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These pages, clockwise from top left: Henry Hudson, Horizon Line Somewhere Over Egypt, 2022; Henry Hudson, Horizon Line Somewhere Over the Pacific Ocean, 2022; Henry Hudson, Horizon Line Somewhere Over the Mediterranean Sea, 2022 Last page: Henry Hudson

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conversation with Tavares Strachan is not dissimilar to a visit to one of his timed exhibitions. An hour isn’t enough to take in the sheer velocity of his vision as an artist, or the breadth of his journey as a man blazing his trail through the art world.

Following his hugely successful first ever London exhibition at Marian Goodman Gallery in October, Strachan is currently exhibiting an installation titled, EIGHTEEN NINETY, in a renovated warehouse in the historic town of Ad Diriyah, on the edge of Riyadh, as part of The Diriyah Contemporary Art Biennale.

EIGHTEEN NINETY follows in the footsteps of In Plain Sight, the exhibition that won Strachan rave reviews in London. It may have been staged during an unprecedented time for the art world — with cancelled exhibitions and shuttered galleries — but for Strachan it will be remembered as the time his solo show took the UK art scene by storm, earning five stars from The Guardian’s exacting art critic, Adrian Searle.

Strachan is known for his ambitious projects and a dedication to honour the unseen and the unsung through meteoric art projects. This forms the through line to his work, along with excavating forgotten, marginalised characters from historical obscurity long before it became a cultural necessity.

The New York-based artist now lives in Harlem with his family but grew up in a rowdy household with five other brothers in the Bahamas, where his mother juggled jobs as a hotel maid and a seamstress to make ends meet.

Strachan’s obsession with exploration started as a child and was nurtured by a whimsical mosaic of experiences.

From gazing at the stars in the Nassau moonlight, to spending months at sea, Tavares was constantly inspired with the idea of infinity and the challenge of knowing the unknowable. These experiences sharpened his awareness, not just of the world that existed away from the island, but of the ecosystems, hemispheres, oceans, and the solar systems that have informed his art.

At school, he loved science and mathematics, but as he adored the mechanics of storytelling more, 22

‘

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

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he decided to become an artist, a vocational move that his parents didn’t really understand.

When he was 16, Strachan spent his summer holiday out at sea, as part of a deep-sea fishing crew that got him interested in exploration, an obsession that has never ceased.

Finishing school two years later, he took his first trip overseas to work in the glass shops of Cairo, to add another dimension to his art vocabulary.

Strachan’s strides to make systemic changes in the art world has included several expeditions to the Arctic, cosmonaut training in Russia, and launching a gold bust into space that circles the earth. However, the work that first put Strachan on the international art world map [in 2006] involved transporting a 4.5-ton block of ice via FedEx from the Alaskan Arctic to the Bahamas. Stored in a solar-powered freezer chamber in Nassau, the installation honoured the story of African American Matthew Henson, an overlooked Arctic explorer who, in 1909, may have even been the first to set foot on the North Pole.

One of Strachan’s other major projects was a pink mobile neon installation, You Belong Here. The installation featured a 100-foot neon art piece that would be transported from one location to another on a 140-foot barge on the Mississippi River. The barge that carried the piece was made visible from different regions and places throughout New Orleans.

It was created to pass on a message to the residents in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, encouraging them to examine themselves and what the city meant to them and their futures.

Returning again to the matter of what we collectively choose to remember from history lies at the core of Strachan’s practice, coupled with a deep interest in exploration. In 2018 he worked with the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s (LACMA) Art+Technology Lab and Elon Musk’s SpaceX company to launch a satellite containing a 24-carat-gold canopic jar in the likeness of Robert Henry Lawrence — the first African American astronaut to be selected for any space programme — who died on a training flight in 1967. The satellite was launched on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and will continue to circle the Earth for seven years after launch.

All of the stories, experiences, and unearthing of hidden histories have contributed to Strachan’s Encyclopedia of Invisibility, a 17,000-entry encyclopedia that pays tribute to the stories left out of Encyclopedia Britannica. The Encyclopedia of Invisibility was compiled over an eightyear period, and in Strachan’s words, “Is a place where all the invisible things can be seen.” He explained, “The inspiration was sparked by Matthew Henson and his story. What became apparent to me was that there is this whole world of invisibility that was in plain sight.”

Much in the same way as Sir Steve McQueen — the Turner prize- and Oscar-winning force who has longsince eclipsed his reputation as an artist — Strachan is now something of an authority on telling lost stories.

In 2018, a study was undertaken

by Artnet on the representation of black artists in museums. They found that art by African American artists made up only 2.4 percent of acquisitions of the 30 museums they surveyed. Whatever the mould in the art world is, Strachan is breaking small parts of it, piece-by-piece.

Continually mindful that the ability to tell a story has always been one of the most powerful aspects of art, Strachan has masterminded a series of unmissable artistic visual experiences. In doing so, he is attempting to engage and converse so that he might answer some of the questions that history has swerved.

EIGHTEEN NINETY runs until March 11 as part of The Diriyah Contemporary Art Biennale

Opening pages: In Plain Sight, 2021 These pages, from top to bottom: Tavares Strachan; You Belong Here, 2012

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Timepieces

MARCH 2022: ISSUE 126

Changing Times How the wish to create something extraordinary for Muslims led to the founding of a new watch company and a unique collection of timepieces WORDS: JOHN THATCHER

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AIR

hile the demise of the traditional timepiece was — as many had guessed — greatly exaggerated when the smartwatch debuted, advancements in everything from machinery to materials and methodologies has seen the industry embrace the new in its pursuit of improving the durability or functionality of a watch. We’re at a point, and have been for some time, where tradition and technology entwine. Where there’s a genuine sense of excitement about what can be achieved, not what will be lost.

Wind the clock back a few years and we find ourselves at a restaurant in Zurich, where Tom Morf and Pascal Stübi are at lunch, enjoying one of their many conversations about an industry in which they share a long history.

The subject up for discussion on this occasion is innovation in the watch industry, or, rather, the lack of it. “Of course, one aspect was the limitations of mechanics in general, and we discussed the possibility of combining two worlds — traditional mechanical watchmaking and pioneering technology — which would allow us to really break new ground,” remembers Morf of that day.

Fast forward to now and that new

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ground has been broken by Aramedes, a company founded by Morf, Stübi, and their other partner, Moritz Ritter. “Because of my knowledge of the various international markets, including the Middle East, Pascal asked my opinion of creating something extraordinary for Muslims, since no premium timepiece with Islamic indicators exists,” outlines Morf. “We were both very excited about it.”

And well might they be. The Mecca Collection is the brand’s flagship, comprising four models in all, an innovative set of timepieces incorporating functions that support Muslims in observing the key practices of their religion. “The Mecca Collection was born through the notion of Islam being based on sunrise and sunset, and the faith being practiced daily,” explains Morf. “Think about it the following way: sunrise and sunset change every day — even if you don’t move location. Days get longer or shorter. Now, if you move from one city to another. or from one country to another, that is a true challenge to overcome. It took us a very long time to find the right answers to these questions; calculations are complex and it is impossible to create such real-time adjustments in a purely mechanical

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Our ambition was always to ‘create something unique ’ watch — this is where, after immense research and development, the AraTec 1 Module came in.”

The AraTec 1 Module is a high-tech electronic component that can be integrated into the watch case along with the mechanical movement. The associated software calculates the location of the wearer via mobile radio triangulation, and the watch displays the information on subdials. Each subdial has its own step motor on the module that controls the hands of the analogue displays. Additionally, an Aramedes Mastertimer mobile phone app was created. The owner uses this app to initialise and calibrate the watch, connecting it via Bluetooth by using the pusher at 2 o’clock on the watch case. Once calibrated, the watch and its module work independently of the app and phone. When the owner changes location significantly relative to Mecca, a notification appears on their phone asking them if they’d like to update the location on the watch.

“The Mecca Collection has three different functions: the Mecca indicator (Qibla), that allows you to show the direction to Mecca anywhere in the world; the prayer time indicator (Salah), that reminds you five times a day with a vibration alarm, when you need to pray; and lastly the Ramadan indicator (Sawm), which will tell you when to start and stop fasting during the holy month of Ramadan. All of these functions are implemented in an analogue fashion with hands,” says Morf.

The Mastertimer Salah works by displaying the next prayer time in a sub-dial at 9 o’clock, as well as the direction of Mecca in a sub-dial at 3 o’clock, and incorporates an alarm that vibrates silently at the appropriate time. The alarm can be activated and deactivated by the pusher at 4 o’clock on the watch case. Fifteen minutes after the current prayer time, the 26

Salah indicator automatically jumps to the next prayer time. The Islamic indications are complemented by a traditional display of hours, minutes and central seconds, while the dial comes in a choice of five colours, including green with copper subdials, a UAE limited edition.

There is also the Mastertimer Salah Tourbillon Automatic, which offers all of the features of the Mastertimer Salah, with the addition of a flying tourbillon in a titanium cage.

The Mastertimer Qibla indicates the direction of Mecca. The pusher at 2 o’clock activates this function in the subdial at 6 o’clock, which complements the classical display of hours, minutes and central seconds. The watch is offered in a choice of two dial colours, silver or fumé.

Lastly, the Mastertimer Sawm shows fasting times during Ramadan with a sunrise/sunset indicator at 6 o’clock, supplementing the Qibla and Salah displays and prayer time alarm. These indications are complemented by a traditional display of hours, minutes and central seconds, with the dial offered in a choice of three colours.

Alongside the Mecca Collection is the three-piece Zürich Collection, more classical in design. “Our ambition was always to create something unique with very high quality,” says Morf. “Our motto is: ‘everything is important and every detail makes a difference.’ We wanted to create something timeless and classy, yet combine both worlds; mechanical watchmaking and hightech electronics.

And the future? What will Morf and his colleagues discuss the next time they sit for lunch? “We have created a technology platform that will one day allow us to further explore new functions, but for now, we will focus on rolling out existing Aramedes models on a global scale — after all, we’ve only just started our journey.”

Previous page: Mastertimer Salah Tourbillon Automatic Right: Aramedes CEO Tom Morf Below: Mastertimer Qibla

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O N T H E WAT E R F RO N T Life’s a charm at Port de La Mer, Dubai’s exclusive collection of high-end freehold apartments in iconic Jumeirah ART DIRECTOR: KERRI BENNETT PHOTOGRAPHER: OSCAR MUNAR LOCATION: PORT DE LA MER BY MERAAS

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Stylist Gemma Jones Hair and Make-up Katharina Brennan Model Corrinne Santos Clothing Del Core SS22

Jewellery MARCH 2022 : ISSUE 126

Tall Tale For her first high jewellery collection of the year, Boucheron’s artistic director Claire Choisne turned to the remarkable story of a colossal Maharajah and his record-setting commission WORDS: JOHN THATCHER

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f the two high jewellery collections Claire Choisne dreams up for Boucheron each year, one is always inspired by the past, the result of a deep dive into the rich archive of the storied house, from which a single chapter piques her interest.

On this occasion, the remarkable tale of the Maharajah of Patiala, who strolled across Place Vendôme flanked by guards carrying six iron safes on the morning of August 2, 1928, fired her imagination.

It’s easy to see why. In those safes were 7,571 diamonds and 1,432 emeralds, their destination still unknown as the Maharajah’s eyes scanned the square’s abundant jewellery houses. They finally settled on Boucheron, whose prize was the largest order ever placed in Place Vendôme, a fact that remains true to this day.

Welcoming the Maharajah into his boutique was Louis Boucheron, son of the maison’s founder, Frédéric, who thereby accepted the task of creating 149 designs in just six months from the contents of those six safes.

“When I joined Boucheron ten years ago, it was the first story that everybody told me,” says Choisne. “I was totally fascinated by it and by the original drawings.

What struck me the most was the scale and volume of the pieces, made for such a tall man (the Maharajah was said to be 6 ft 7), which is crazy to imagine.

“Historically, the pieces are impressive, but from a design point of view, it’s over the top for today. Obviously, they were made to show off status and power.

Personally, it’s not what I like. I prefer a personal approach to jewellery, that you buy for yourself, to express your style and your personality.”

That preference ultimately directed Choisne and her team of creatives as they sought to produce a modern interpretation of the legendary pieces, reimaging the Maharajahs of today as men or women who want to express their personal style, not wealth, while reaffirming the links to ancestral India.

“I worked on the dimensions and on the scales in order to bring delicacy, to get a lighter, more subtle effect,” reveals Choisne. “I also worked on the colour ratios, to modernise the collection, to bring purity to it and to highlight the designs.

That’s why only one set in this collection (the New Maharajah set, consisting of a necklace and a pair of earrings crafted from platinum, diamonds, emeralds, rock crystal) has colour with the use of Colombian emeralds, and the rest of the collection is an all-white palette of diamonds, rock crystal, pearls, and motherof-pearl. Without the presence of colour, light is free to travel through, and you

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There is no room for error, it is not like a drawing that can be erased

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Opening pages: New Maharajah necklace These pages, clockwise from top left: New Sarpech brooch; New Maharani necklace; New Padma Diamants and Cristal rings 32

are able to see the patterns much more clearly and to discover them in an intriguing way.”

One such pattern was created by glyptics, the ancient technique of gemstone engraving. “Many lotus flowers have been engraved on rock crystal and mother-of-pearl in the collection, for example on the three necklaces that comprise the New Maharani set. I was inspired by a lotus pattern on a bazuband — an arm bracelet — from the 1928 commission.

I am very happy to put forward this technique as it is extremely rare. In fact, there are only three people in France expert in this craft. They have golden hands, as they are able to carve into very fragile stones such as emeralds without breaking them. There is no room for error, it is not like a drawing that can be erased.”

As such, it was one particular piece from the New Maharani set, the New Maharani Necklace, which proved the most challenging. “I imagined the piece as a lace of diamonds and rock crystal.

The challenge consisted of having a necklace that could move and adapt to the body of the client. The craftsmen had to find ways to hide the articulated system, while having no space to do it.

In addition, they were very ingenious to create only one clasp for this versatile necklace that you can also wear as a full necklace or as a choker. It’s a prowess! Once I saw the final piece, I

loved it. I think you can feel the Indian inspiration of the piece with the lotus pattern, but at the same time you feel its delicacy. It’s also my favourite piece!”

The transformative nature of this necklace is a standout modern element of Choisne’s designs — each piece of the 1928 collection was created as a whole. And the reason for its multiuse is twofold: “While the original designs for the Maharajah order were mainly made to be worn by a man, I wanted to turn the concept around, to make jewels for women that could be borrowed by men. In addition, at Boucheron we create high jewellery to be worn in everyday life. The saddest part is putting a jewel away in a safe. Thus, the important thing for me is to remain as free as possible in the design and think beyond gender, to only look for the best aesthetical result. That is why when we work on sketches with my creative team we are not doing traditional ones, as we prefer to draw the jewels on a portrait of a man or woman to better picture the piece worn, to imagine the look, and to think about the multi-wear options.

“My creative process is very intuitive, it’s guided by an inspiration, a moment, a dream,“ says Choisne.

Considering the spectacular homage to the original commission she has created, we can all be thankful of the moment the Maharajah of Patiala set his sights on Boucheron that warm summer’s day.

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From starring as a secret agent to playing ’60s siren Marianne Faithfull, it’s the biggest year yet for in-demand Lucy Boynton

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hat’s the protocol for greetings in the age of omicron? “Are you hugging? I’m hugging” says actor Lucy Boynton, removing her black face mask and leaning in.

It’s a crisp December morning, with anxiety and Christmas cheer swirling in the cold London air. With her choppy blonde bob, striped polo-neck and highwaisted jeans, Lucy could pass for an east London creative-agency worker.

But thanks to a streak of buzzed-about roles and a sense of style that’s made her a red-carpet star (not to mention her status as half of a Hollywood It couple, through her relationship with Rami Malek), Lucy is one of the most in-demand young actors working today.

Across a coffee table at The London Edition in Fitzrovia, Lucy — familiar from roles as varied as the young Beatrix Potter, Freddie Mercury’s best friend Mary Austin in Bohemian Rhapsody, and scheming socialite Astrid Sloan in The Politician — is unaffected and thoughtful, ready to talk about everything from lockdown (“I got through it with lots of books, and Veep”) to spies.

That’s because her latest project is The Ipcress File, a new miniseries adaptation of the 1962 Cold War spy novel by Len Deighton.

Lucy plays Jean Courtney, an agent with a steel-trap mind. The first time we see her, she’s on her way to work, stepping off a London bus in a teal skirt-suit and neat tweed hat.

When she reaches her corner desk, another agent asks her to sign off on his summary of a recent operation. Jean corrects every line, then eviscerates him with a glacial, “I will not sign this.” Lucy plays her with pure nerve and precision — but Jean’s parents and fiancé believe she’s a tea girl at the BBC. Lucy nods. “Jean is so self-possessed and intelligent, and aware of all of her capabilities in an environment and a world that is not willing or ready to see that in a young woman.”

She was drawn to “every element” of Ipcress, from the period to the cast (her co-stars include Joe Cole as Harry Palmer, and Tom Hollander as Major Dalby), to the spy-versus-spy intrigue.

“I’ve always found the ’60s fascinating. Adding to that the world of espionage — it’s irresistible.” And 36

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I used to be really scared of it, the fashion industry is quite daunting then there’s the character of Jean herself. In the 1965 film starring Michael Caine, Jean was a secretary.

For 2022, Trainspotting writer John Hodge updated her as an agent in her own right. “She’s just undeniably cool and so empowering to read and to embody,” says Lucy. “It was kind of terrifying to take that on. She’s so much more than I felt I was, but I just absolutely wanted to be a part of it.”

Instead of the muted, anonymous colours you’d expect a spy to wear, she plays to social expectations of upper-class femininity in bright colours and jewels.

Forget the men in black — the most formidable spy in Ipcress is a lady in red. “She can dress in the boldest colours and hide in plain sight,” Lucy says. “People see her and don’t assume that she could be in such an influential position. She uses people’s underestimation of her in her favour.”

Has Lucy ever felt underestimated in her career or ambition?

“Inherently as a young woman, you are underestimated. Especially at a young age, and as an actor — it’s very easy for people to assume that

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they know what you can do.”

Underestimate her at your peril: at 27, Lucy has been working as an actor for over 15 years, in a remarkable range of projects.

“She’s highly intelligent and selfpossessed — witty and watchful and nobody’s fool,” Tom Hollander tells me over email. “Obviously stunning, and blessed with truckloads of what I think is known as star quality. But it’s what’s going on underneath that is truly compelling: the understatement, the old-fashioned reserve; sometimes steel, sometimes all mischief.”

Lucy was born in New York. Her parents, Graham Boynton and Adriaane Pielou, both journalists, moved the family back to London when she was four years old. She and her older sister Emma-Louise were reluctant to let go of their American accents.

“We would catch each other saying ‘to-mah-to’ instead of ‘to-may-to’, point a finger and say, ‘English girl, English girl!’ It was the ultimate insult.

Whereas now I feel very British, and so grateful to have grown up here.

“I really align with the British sensibility. I love the cynical sense of

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humour, the self-deprecation. And a certain practicality — I guess it’s that classic stiff upper lip element, that you just grit your teeth and get through.”

She describes a dreamy childhood in south London — “a lot of invisible animals, a lot of playing on my own”.

Her mother bribed her to read, paying Lucy 70p per completed book.

“I chose the skinniest books I could find. Joke’s on me, because it triggered my love of reading.” When she was 10, a casting director sat in on a drama lesson and invited Lucy to audition to play the young Beatrix in Miss Potter, starring Renée Zellweger as the adult Potter.

She got the part and still considers herself “so lucky. That first project was so child-friendly, and the most romantic version of this industry you can find.”

Lucy’s mother chaperoned her on set. “Her attitude was, ‘You’ll do this one beautiful, enchanting film, and then you’ll go back to school.’

Cut to now and I’m still doing it.”

Years later, Lucy found out that her mum and agent filtered the projects they would permit her to audition for, declining anything too out of step with school term dates, or too dark or mature (the 2009 adaptation of Alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bones, which went on to star Saoirse Ronan, was among the projects they passed on).

“She wanted to protect my childhood and keep me young for as long as possible. Because when you’re a child on set, you’re treated like a child, but also with the expectations of an adult — you work eight-hour days and you’re expected to turn up prepared, and deliver.”

She learnt quickly to avoid talking about her roles when she was at school, “and to kind of keep those two worlds separate”. It helped that she had a supportive, tight-knit social group.

Her best friend from school, Ellie, remains her best friend today. “It was an exciting side piece — she came with me to my first premiere, but then we went back to school as normal and never talked about it.”

James Allen’s, the all-girls school she attended, sounds understanding of her acting career, if not particularly progressive in its outlook. “Everything was taught in the context of the inevitability of male bosses,” she says.

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“I do wish the school had had a more feminist education. When you have 800 girls, the opportunity of celebrating what it is to be a woman and kind of injecting into these girls the idea that you can do anything would be so powerful.”

She took a break to finish school and considered university, going so far as to start applying for courses in psychology. “But then I realised I already knew that acting was what I wanted to do” — so she started auditioning again.

Her breakthrough came when she was 22 and played teenaged toughgirl Raphina in 2016’s Sing Street.

Roles in the supernatural horror Don’t Knock Twice and Kenneth Branagh’s Murder on the Orient Express followed (she’s been hooked on the half-moon manicures she had done for the film ever since).

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But most viewers will know her from Bohemian Rhapsody, the much-lauded Freddie Mercury biopic. As Mary Austin, she played the singer’s best friend and constant. The production was plagued with chaos, going through a change of director before it went on to win four Academy Awards.

How challenging was the shoot? Very challenging, Lucy mouths. “There were definitely some tearful phone calls to my mother… [But] especially because of the experience of filming, we all became so close,” she says.

“We were unbelievably lucky to have had people who acted as anchors. And Rami [Malek, who played Mercury] was a leader on that set, in a way I’d never seen before. I don’t know how that film would have turned out without someone like him.”

Lucy and Rami have been together since meeting on the film. While she

found success early, his breakthrough didn’t come until his mid-30s, when he starred as hacker Elliot Alderson in the techno-thriller series Mr Robot (he’s 13 years older than Lucy).

Aside from an effusive Oscar acceptance speech (“Lucy Boynton, you are the heart of this film, you are beyond immensely talented, you have captured my heart. Thank you so much”), they’re intensely private.

She responds to any questions about their dynamic as a couple in the singular: How did you two spend time in lockdown? “Baking projects? I never got into that — I just read a lot”’ And she won’t even confirm that they live together in London and Los Angeles. It’s a subtle but firm way to hold a boundary.

“Just having to talk about [my relationship] is a really strange feeling,” she says. “Especially since

Credit: ©Emily Cronin / Telegraph Media Group Limited 2022

the whole point of my job is that you don’t know much about me, so that I can disappear into characters.

Having to field questions that are very personal feels like it’s taking away the possibility of [doing that]. I would always much rather talk about work.

Anything else feels counterproductive.”

Her ambivalence about the publicprivate divide extends to social media.

“I’m not very on it and I don’t have any instinct to engage with it,” she says. The images she sporadically shares with her 950k Instagram followers include pre-red-carpet snaps, casting announcements and book recommendations.

“I kind of forget about it, and then I come back, and of course I want to celebrate the work that I’m lucky to get to do… But the idea that anyone would read into that as my full personality is slightly concerning.”

The red carpet is one of the only places Lucy and Rami are ever photographed together. Despite that one time they appeared in matching pale-grey looks at the 2019 Critics’ Choice Awards (hers was Gucci, his, Givenchy), she swears they never intentionally coordinate.

She’s said that red carpets can be nerve-racking places, so is it nice to walk them with someone who gets it?

“Christ no! Imagine having to stand next to your person and present in a way that feels authentic… Who we are behind closed doors is who we are, and then the red carpet — wonderful as it is when it’s in celebration of your work — is a strange thing.”

She may find it strange, but that doesn’t keep her from being very good at it. Her playful and adventurous sense of style has made Lucy someone redcarpet watchers look forward to seeing.

She works with stylist Leith Clark and make-up artist Jo Baker to ensure she never appears in anything short of a major look. Back in September, she wore a deep-Vneck black Chanel jumpsuit and a dramatic, ’60s-inspired cat-eye to the premiere of No Time To Die, in which Rami played the villain, Safin.

“I used to be really scared of it, the fashion industry is quite daunting.

But Leith does it in a way where it feels like an expression of you and an enhancement of who you want to be in that environment,” Lucy says.

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Just having to talk about my relationship is a really strange feeling. Especially since the whole point of my job is that you don’t know much about me

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“She’s freed me from feeling anxious about getting it right, ever. You’re always gonna get it right if you feel good. That’s all that it is. If you loved it at the time, you can’t regret it.”

Looks she’s loved include the harlequin Christian Dior gown and spiky lashes she wore to the premiere of The Politician in 2019, and the perfect little striped shift dress she wore to Chanel’s Métiers d’art show in December. “That’s kind of my favourite shape, where you feel really free and mobile, but chic. Chanel do it right.”

Off the red carpet, she’s most likely to be found in jeans and a T-shirt, or a striped polo-neck, like the one she’s wearing today. The blue quilted handbag and double-C logo boots add a decidedly more luxurious note to her outfit (she’s worked with Chanel and is the face of Chloé’s first all-natural perfume).

“I’m tremendously lucky to be carrying that around,” she says, stroking the bag. “I recently heard Nicola Coughlan [from Bridgerton] say that if you have a nice bag, it doesn’t matter about the rest of the outfit. I love that. I really believe that you can have the right bag and then wear jeans and a T-shirt and feel put together.”

After our interview, she’s off to record more audio for Ipcress.

She’s looking forward to revisiting the project — “One of my favourite experiences of my career, ever.”

The cast and crew spent five months shooting in Liverpool in early 2021 before going to Croatia. Filming under lockdown conditions bred unity. “The whole cast and crew became really close,” she says, then declines to show me the Ipcress WhatsApp group.

She’s full of praise for her castmates.

Tom Hollander was “electric — everyone picked up that energy from him”. Once, filming an elaborate shoot-out in Croatia, “Tom was getting so carried away the director kept saying, ‘Tom, you don’t have to do your own sound effects for the machine gun.’ It was brilliant.’

Next up is Why Didn’t They Ask Evans?, an Agatha Christie adaptation directed by Hugh Laurie and co-starring Jim Broadbent and Will Poulter. “Lucy has a glittering intelligence that draws your eye at every moment. She lets you into her brain, rather than hurling it all over the room,” Laurie says.

“The tighter things get, the cooler she becomes — 90 seconds till sunset, the horse is getting skittish, the matches are wet, the car won’t start — and she turns into an assassin.”

All qualities no doubt useful in her role as Lady Frankie Derwent, who stumbles into a murder mystery with friend Bobby Jones (Poulter).

There’s also a biopic about singersongwriter Marianne Faithfull in the works, with Lucy attached as star and executive-producer. She sat next to Faithfull at the Chloé show in Paris in February 2020, just before the pandemic pressed pause on the project. “She was everything you would want Marianne Faithfull to be,” Lucy says, smiling. “She was really cool and nonchalant about [the film].

“I think she’s had her story told so many times that she doesn’t seem anxious about it in any way; she’s just excited for it to happen.” The film will see Lucy time travelling back to ’60s London. Her Marianne will pursue love and find infamy as a figurehead of Swinging London, alongside Mick Jagger.

“There’s this narrative that has followed her around, of people trying to impress this angelic image upon her, that she keeps trying to buck against. I hope this feels more authentic to her.”

But first, Ipcress: she’ll get to see the first two episodes at a screening later today. What is it like — seeing the finished version of a muchloved project for the first time?

“Terrifying at first,” she says, “but then it’s like watching a home video of something you experienced with your whole family. When you can finally see everyone’s work, it’s beautiful.”

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Big Shot

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In the Nineties, there was one photographer, Dave Benett, who was always in the right place, at the right time. As an exhibition celebrates his work, he talks to Charlotte Edwards WORDS: CHARLOTTE EDWARDS

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D

ave Benett, paparazzo turned society photographer, has asked me to meet him at Soho House on Greek Street in central London, but I am not 100 per cent sure what he looks like, so accustomed am I to seeing him with a Nikon to his face, features cast in shadow by the blitz of his flash gun. But I needn’t have worried. When he arrives, there are explosions of his name from all corners.

“Dave! Dave!” a man waves vigorously, another pumps his hand, a woman blows a kiss. Young actors, Benett tells me. One might be a singer, now he comes to think of it. The exchanges continue as we pass along corridors, stars with glassy complexions: “Dave!” “Dave!” “Hi!” “Hi!” This is striking. For the early part of his 30-year career, it was Dave Benett calling the names, restrained by metal barriers, perhaps, or a bouncer’s arm.

“Diana!” “Kate!” “Naomi!” “Liz!” The prize was a split-second glance, enough to “bang off a couple of frames”. He is most famous for his shot of Liz Hurley, head thrown back, taking a step in that Versace pinned dress. But there are thousands more: Kate Moss, 19, a sweet-faced innocent, wearing a seethrough slip; Arnold Schwarzenegger waltzing with Sylvester Stallone; Elton John hugging Gianni Versace, Geri Halliwell in her Union Jack dress; Princess Diana out with Liza Minnelli (“She gave us eight seconds to take those,” he says). All are the subject of a new exhibition, Great Shot, Kid. Dave has ditched the double denim he used to wear in those days, he says, for all-black, and the MGB he used to ride around in with “the lads”, “the boys”, as he calls the other Fleet Street snappers, but the accent is still pure Seventies Laaaan-don. His hair is still long but completely white.

With his dark-rimmed eyes, he looks like a circus hypnotist. He’s 64 now.

The past decade has been hard. Not because of the late nights and endless jetting (to Cannes, to Los Angeles, to Moscow), but because his 17-year-old son Joe died in 2012 after inhaling a toxic substance he and his friends had mistaken for laughing gas. Grief destroyed his marriage, he says. Then in April 2020, he was hospitalised with Covid, and if it hadn’t been for the intervention of one young doctor, he may not have survived. “Couldn’t have

These pages. clockwise from top left: Amy Winehouse, 2007; Bella Hadid, 2016; Jack Nicholson and Danny DeVito, 1993. Courtesy of Dave Benett

been more than 27, standing there in his PPE. In the end he saved my life.”

Benett lost three and a half stone, but was straight back out there once lockdown lifted. He’s been a contributing photographer for Getty Images since 2004. There are three parties tomorrow. After he moved into his flat in Belsize Park as a single man, the neighbour asked what the hell it was he did, coming back and forth with a roller suitcase at all hours.

He reckons he’s snapped every single celebrity from Nelson Mandela to Michael Jackson to Jay-Z and Beyoncé to Jack Nicholson and Sharon Stone.

“I mean, the only two I missed were Elvis and Lennon,” he says. Long before he did stars, he was a news photographer. “I did Dennis Nilsen, ‘Eyes of a Killer’, remember that?

That was my picture. Front page of The Sun.” His first ever shot was of a motorbike policeman holding up a bag and in it was a gun that had been used in a robbery. “It was a Colt. In those days it was quite a shocking thing.

Published in The Mirror, that one.”

Showbiz today is for the most part tame. He completely understands when someone like Daniel Day-Lewis says, “‘Dave!’ [He puts his palms up to imitate the actor asking him not to

take his picture.] But I never see him unless he’s in the movie that he’s doing, so I respect that.” It’s the ones that are half in, half out, the ones that want to play to the photographers when they need it, as if the photographers are somehow working for them, those are the ones he can’t abide. “There’s a few actors like that. It’s not like I want to find them in the street or when they’re picking up their kids from school. I don’t want that. But when they are here at a promotional event...”

Can he say who? Rowan Atkinson is “terrible”, he says. “It’s like getting blood out of a stone, to get a picture of him.” Also, Sacha Baron Cohen. “He’s quite happy if he’s arrived as Ali G or whoever. It’s always really difficult for guys like us, because we’re working in a party and he’s married to that beautiful girl Isla [Fisher], and he don’t want his picture taken and you think, ‘What the hell? What’s going on?’ And that opens up that whole debate about, ‘You can’t abuse my art,’ and you think, ‘You’re only a bloody comedian. You’re a comic actor and suddenly you’ve got airs.’”

Andrew Ridgeley of Wham! used to be rude when he was younger, but now he’s great. “Most of them are great,” he adds, especially the younger generation who have a different attitude entirely 41

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to fame and how it works. He loves Cara and Poppy Delevingne and says Bella Hadid will take time out of a shoot to sit down with her teenage fans, and that Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie “are lovely girls, by the way”.

It all sounds sedate compared with the days of flash-bleached palms outside London restaurants such as San Lorenzo and Langan’s.

He once punched Prince Ernst of Hanover (“Dodgy German aristocrat.

Remember him?”), who was trying to beat up a colleague. People forget sometimes there’s a person behind the camera, he says, but later he admits, “photographers tend to hide behind their cameras” too.

Hiding behind his camera, he watched the world rotate. He saw the frenzy over Princess Diana, whom he met a few times, and definitely did not chase anywhere. He saw the prices for pictures of her tick up, pap agencies proliferate and the increased intensity around her image until the crash in Paris and the rules changed. He witnessed the birth of Cool Britannia, shimmering Kate and shimmering Naomi, Britpop, YBAs; Tracey Emin being nominated for the Turner Prize. God, he loved those days. The excesses were extreme, the people were cool, the photographers had power. “It was rock’n’roll in the Nineties and Noughties,” he says.

“If you didn’t get photographed by us, no one knew what you’d done.”

Along with fellow photographer Richard Young, he’d hang out with George Harrison. “One night I was sitting at this table and we’re chatting to George intensely. And his wife’s thrown a serviette at him. He opens it up and in pen she’s written, ‘Careful, you’re with the press.’ Do you know what he did? He gave it to me. Still got it. He did it because he wanted to say, ‘I don’t care. I know you two boys.’ Because we weren’t press. We’re photographers.”

I tell him how fascinating I find looking at Dafydd Jones’s fly-on-thewall photographs from Oxford balls in the Eighties and spotting all the politicians in power today, and he says they were the chroniclers of an era, Dafydd Jones and he, and others like Young. He remembers standing outside Sir David Frost’s summer party, with 42

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The only two I missed were Elvis and Lennon

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Young and a German TV crew who were making a programme “about how smooth the paparazzi were, and Lord Snowdon walked up and said to the TV crew, ‘In 50 years’ time, they’re not going to be looking at my pictures.

They’re going to be looking at these two guys’ pictures. You know, because they’re telling you about that time.’

“Lord Snowdon,” he adds.

“What a compliment.”

Why did it change? “Mobile phones,” he says. “Terrible things.” The iPhone killed rock’n’roll? “Definitely the bad habits. I mean, it happens, you know, that a party will get really good, but there’s so much organisation.

Too much. PRs have total control.

And how can you be ‘extravagant’, shall we call it, when someone can photograph it? Because even a dodgy phone picture is enough. Let alone video.” Plus, social media changed fame and now everyone wants to be seen. A photograph of a celebrity went from being worth hundreds or even thousands of pounds to “two or three quid” today. And he says he knew the process of him being more “in” than “out” was complete when Vanity Fair invited him to cover their Oscars party and insisted he stay “inside” and not venture beyond the front door.

While Benett was a bit of a flash Harry out on the showbiz circuit, paying in cash to stay at the Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc alongside the Hollywood stars, life at home in north London was traditional. He met his wife Rosann in El Vino in Fleet Street in the early Eighties when she was PA to Kelvin MacKenzie, editor of The Sun at the time. He remembers the first time he saw her — he in his double denim with his cowboy boots he bought from R Soles in the Kings Road. She teased him for blowing smoke rings at her with his Gitanes cigarettes and they dated for five years until Rosann told him to hurry up and get married because who did he think he was, Mick Jagger?

They had a daughter, Camille, who works with him at Dave Benett Photos, followed by Joe, and sent them to academic private schools in north London. It was a late summer Friday in 2012, the last of the school holidays before his A-level year, when two of Joe’s friends came round to ask him to come out with them to mess about. There was some argument over whether he should or not, Monday being the first day of term, but then his father relented.

“I said, ‘Go on, yeah. Go on then.’

“And the boys jumped in a car. Last day I saw him.”

What the Benetts didn’t know was that one of the boys had on him what he thought was nitrous oxide — laughing gas — that he’d been given by some kids on holiday.

Joe was the first to take a big gulp of the gas and it instantly reacted with his heart. The two others, Benett thinks, didn’t take as much and then coughed it out, so they weren’t affected as badly. By the time the ambulance crew arrived Joe was fibrillating. “He didn’t stop filbrilitating. His [heart was] going too quickly. And by the time they had settled him down, his brain was damaged.” The family had an agonising wait at his bedside.

“I was with him for nearly a month trying to keep him,” Benett says. Three times the doctors thought it might be possible to save him. “And then in the end, I thought no, obviously he’s passed. His brain. Too much damage.”

There was no choice in how he would cope: “You just carry on. You’ve got to carry on. Life doesn’t stop. I worked more and more. I started drinking. I didn’t care about much.

“It’s just a club that we all join, you know. It’s a club and you’re in it and you won’t get out of it. It is a very big club in Iran and Syria. We live in a world where it happens all the time. Those things break my heart every time I read them. The thing is, nearly every plot in every TV show has a fatherson relationship in it somewhere.

It’s like a minefield to watch TV. I couldn’t watch Band of Brothers or Saving Private Ryan. I couldn’t.

The idea of young men dying…”

After two years, he was “feeling really bad” and started grief counselling, which helped a lot, and then moved

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on to what he calls “normal therapy”, which he still does. “I realised most people need it. Men don’t do it enough.

They should, because it allows them to say out loud what they are thinking in the back of their minds. My therapist is a lady and she’s brilliant. You don’t have to have a man. I am seeing her less and less now, once a month just to say, ‘Hi, how’s it going?’ To have a good conversation about things.”

He says it will be ten years since

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Joe died this September, and that he can talk about it now without crying. Therapy has taught him how to think about Joe, so he can spend time thinking about him “and then put him away, but not lock him out. And that’s the way to do it. It works. Now I’ve got a James Dean, haven’t I? He will never age.”

It was terrible for Joe’s mother, he says. And after the grief comes the blame. “It destroyed our relationship

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It was rock’n’roll in the Nineties and Noughties. If you didn’t get photographed by us, no one knew what you’d done

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probably, in the end.” He and Rosann have been quietly separated for two years now, and he is coming to terms with what that means. In one way it means being able to play his own music — the Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd. Dylan. And he does feel different, in a funny sort of way.

“But there’s also a massive amount of hang-ups and guilt about it.

Particularly with having lost Joe. And because my parents divorced, I never wanted to be divorced. I wanted to be married for ever. And that’s a big guilt thing. Realising that it hasn’t happened. But lots of people are like this; it’s nothing new. And you don’t have to be hung up about it. In fact, you need to start making new friends. I have lots of professional friends, loads. But they are not friends friends, who you can just call up and say, ‘Let’s go have a cup of tea.’”

David Benett was the youngest of five boys born to a Mauritian surgeon father and an Irish mother. He spent his early years shuttling between London and Mauritius, where he lived a privileged life, he says. They had shorts and socks and pudding bowl haircuts and his mother drank cocktails and played tennis. But on one prolonged trip back to London she began an affair with a man she met on the No 3 bus. “It happens, you know.”

When he was 11, Benett found himself transplanted from a world of beaches and palms to Liverpool to live with his father, who had a job as a surgeon at what was then called Walton Prison, and his stepmother. It was a shock, he says. He and his brothers were boys with “not white skin”, and it was cold and he’d never eaten food like that, and there were dockers’ strikes and three-day weeks. By the time he was 16, his stepmother threw him out, so he went to London to his mother. He describes her as like a character out of a David Hemmings movie — “You know, those women you see ambling down Cheyne Walk with their shoes in their hand after a party.” She got old, he says, “kicking and screaming”.

It was this that allowed him to buy his own camera, two of them. With these, he covered Old Bailey trials and police fights with skinheads and football matches. Great Shot, Kid, the title of his exhibition, is a reference to

Credit: The Times Magazine / News Licensing

Previous page: Lucy Liu, 2005 These pages, from left to right: Naomi Campbell and Kate Moss, 1999; Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone, 2014. Courtesy of Dave Benett

the praise he sought as he rushed to the desks of the Fleet Street picture editors, a notorious bunch not easily won over.

I ask if he had an “eye” back then. He laughs. “I’m from a slightly mercenary school. I’m not too much of a believer in ‘talent’. You get really good at what you do. And then the job gets good to you…

People go, ‘Wow, what an amazing picture.’ They read much more into it.”

He remembers when showbiz started to change the landscape. It was little things like picking up the newspaper and seeing, “Deidre in prison” and thinking, “Oh my God. Who is Deidre?” And then finding out it was someone from Coronation Street. “Suddenly these guys were coming through the door with loads of money in their pockets, and we had no idea what they were doing. It was this thing called showbiz. That’s when we

knew the paparazzi had arrived. The picture editors were calling on these guys. Showbiz was the new news.”

Now he’s as integral to a showbiz guest list as the champagne and goody bag. He knows the music managers and the acting agents and the Hollywood PR people as well as the stars, and there’s no way he’s going to tell me any secrets. So I ask whether he feels the attitude towards women has improved over the years. Whether there is less pressure to ambush women looking “tired and emotional”, as the euphemism used to go, or to always have a pretty starlet on the front page.

“There’s always a new beautiful girl,” he says. “And girls will always come out beautifully made up. Girls are girls, right? If you’re beautiful, you’re going to look beautiful. You’re going to get the red carpet at the fashion awards.

Beautiful women sell everything in the end, until that culture completely goes.” But there is more interest in men. “You might have some really cool guys. And you might have some very cool, glamorous transgender people.

Fleet Street is embracing that now.”

He glances across the room as we leave and it occurs to me that here in Greek Street we are in the first incarnation of the now ubiquitous Soho House chain, launched in the heyday of Nineties London. Back then it was a nest of sweaty bodies and cigarette smoke. Tonight, it’s spacious and there’s expensive art, people on laptops or iPhones, hot young actors waving at Benett and saying, “Bye, Dave! See you soon!”

The Dave Benett exhibition Great Shot, Kid is at the JD Malat Gallery in London until March 8 45

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What do you do when you’ve conquered the catwalk and cemented your legacy as modelling royalty? Cut a track with Snoop Dogg, obviously. Michael Odell meets Heidi Klum WORDS: MICHAEL ODELL

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ery few people are famous enough to host an annual party that assumes legendary status. Elton John with his now defunct White Tie and Tiara Ball is one. The author Jeffrey Archer and his shepherd’s pie and Krug parties of old is another. And so too is Heidi Klum with her annual Halloween bash. Indeed, her 2019 appearance as an alien was utterly gobsmacking.

“I spent ten hours in prosthetics and make-up,” the German supermodel says.

“I don’t think I’ve ever looked better.”

However, it was the first Halloween party she threw, in 2000, that is the subject of renewed interest. It was themed, according to some papers, as a ‘hookers and pimps’ affair. Photos of the night show Ghislaine Maxwell there too.

“Wait, who called my party that?” asks Klum darkly when I raise it with her. “That is disturbing and quite rude. I never even have a theme for my parties. It’s just a Halloween event. I bet that was the tabloids. Secondly, I was wearing a traditional German dirndl, not dressed like a hooker.”

Oh dear. Klum up to this point has been very open and friendly but she does sound a bit put out. Anyway, at this party, at which traditional Bavarian outfits were showcased, the Duke of York and Maxwell were present.

“It was my very first party and I was very excited to meet a prince. To be honest, I had 50 friends there — but everyone else, I have no idea who invited them or him. Obviously you get more press when someone like that comes, so I was pleased, but others arranged it. And he was nice as far as I could tell from saying, ‘Hi, nice to meet you’.”

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I’ll still be wearing miniskirts when I’m 90

What do you feel about him now?

“It’s hard to know what to think.

The story is still unfolding and I’m watching it just like you.”

Klum is at her home in Bel Air and we are talking on Zoom. Her children (daughters Leni, 17, and Lou, 12, and sons Henry, 16, and Johan, 15) are at school and she is about to head off to film an episode of Germany’s Next Topmodel, which she hosts and on which she is also the lead judge. But we are here to discuss her new venture in which she mixes again with royalty, this time from the world of hip hop. Klum has recently recorded a song, Chai Tea with Heidi, with the rapper Snoop Dogg.

“I’m on the 17th season of my TV show and we needed a new theme song. Before we have had Justin Bieber, Lady Gaga and Bruno Mars. This time someone said, ‘Why don’t you do it?’ And so I thought which artist do I most admire in the world? Snoop Dogg! And I see him around the city, so I called him.”

Wait a sec. Klum was married to the British singer Seal for eight years (and he’s the father of her children) and is now hitched to Tom Kaulitz from the German rock band Tokio Hotel. Won’t they take it amiss that all the while Klum was a closet gangster-rap fan?

“Oh no. Tom wrote the song with his DJ partner and Snoop rapped on it.

And Seal has the most amazing voice of all time. I mean that. I still think he has the most incredible voice.”

Has Seal given her any feedback?

“No, he hasn’t. The kids might have played him the song when they went over to stay with him at his place but... he hasn’t mentioned it.”

You have to admire Klum. She’s

game for anything but comes across as remarkably unstarry. It possibly explains how she has survived in the world of modelling for so long.

She grew up near Cologne. Smiley, sporty and tall with what she still calls “child-bearing hips”, she won a contract in 1992 and found global stardom despite her cheerleader demeanour and body shape being out of tune with the listless, androgynous aesthetic of the time.

She recently appeared on the US chat show Ellen wearing a pink latex miniskirt. “I’ll still be wearing miniskirts when I’m 90,” she says. “But that one — I did make a small mistake in thinking I could easily sit down in it.”

Most viewers saw a middle-aged supermodel having fun. However, she does attract trolls. Klum is a former Victoria’s Secret ‘angel’ with numerous fashion and TV interests behind her reputed multimillionpound fortune. Forbes listed her 2020 earnings at $39.5 million. Some say she should be pushing the message that getting older is OK (Klum is 48), that the forever-young ideal can feel like a pressure to some women.

“That’s why I’ve had to turn the comments off on my social media,” she says. “Some people say mean things to me. Or else they say mean things to each other, which is in some ways worse.

They are coming onto my platform and fighting among themselves and I don’t want to be the person fuelling that hatred. I have an ‘If I don’t like something then move on’ type of outlook.

The planet is big enough for everyone as long as you’re not hurting anybody.

They should take their negativity elsewhere because I am definitely not

Opening pages: shelves inside Peter Harrington’s Dover Street store in London These pages, from left to right: an artisan at work; equipment at The Chelsea Bindery; a 90-year-old Intertype typesetter

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The coiffed woman is Heidi but at home I put a clip in my bangs and become Helga, and that is the real me

trying to tell any woman they need to be this or that. That’s not me.”

She certainly carries off the vampy look in previews of her new video with Snoop Dogg (he gets to wear an enormous orange fur stole). “I know I don’t look 20 any more but inside, my spirit, my heart, my joy for life is the same. Sure there are jeans I can no longer get into.”

She’s not permanently committed to glamour, she says. Once work is done, she comes home, throws her bag down and puts a clip in her hair, all that changes. “Yes, the coiffed woman is Heidi but at home I put a clip in my bangs and become Helga, and that is the real me, more chilled and relaxed.”

Klum is certainly resilient. Her divorce from Seal was surprising since the pair went to the trouble of regularly renewing their vows. She then married Kaulitz, who is a big star in Germany and 16 years her junior.

“German men are the best,” she says, chuckling.

During lockdown, her husband worked in the home recording studio.

Meanwhile, she swam 20 laps of her pool each morning, worked out in her home gym and tended vegetables in her patch at home. The four children,

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she says, did a lot of art in the garden.

The best weekends, she says, are spent hanging out in what she calls the “cute backyard” (Chez Klum is 11,000 sq ft set in four acres with a swimming pool overlooking LA), with a barbecue.

“I always wanted a big family and I got what I dreamt of. The best times are having all the children and all their friends over, plus Tom and my brother- in-law, and putting steak, chicken and corn on the cob on the fire.

And then I go to the vegetable patch, which I love, and get things for a salad.

But the best delicacy is sausage — it took me ages to find a place in LA that sells the good ones. But I found it! I found my perfect German sausage!”

As we end our conversation, Klum is off to see the final cut of her music video and, if the collaboration is successful, she is open to doing more.

But she is wary. Any parent of teenagers knows they can be the cruellest judges. “Teenagers — oh my god — they are totally honest.

They have no filter. I can be having a good day and feeling positive and one of them will say, ‘Mum, you’re showing a bit of muffin top.’ They will always tell me if I’m going too far.”

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WORDS: RICH JENKINS

As The Godfather turns 50, AIR looks at its influence on cinema — and its troubled production, from studio in-fighting to interference from the real-life Mob

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ven if you haven’t seen it, you know it. Whether it’s the iconic haunting theme music; “I’m gonna make him an offer he can’t refuse”; or a horse’s head in the bed, The Godfather’s ongoing impact on popular culture since its release in March of 1972 is yet to wane.

It swept awards shows in the year it came out, taking home three Oscars including Best Picture, and made household names of Al Pacino, Robert Duvall and James Caan among others.

But its success was far from assured when Paramount signed off on the deal to turn Mario Puzo’s gritty 1969 novel into a big-budget epic on screen.

The Godfather is the tale of Don Vito Corleone, an ageing Italian-American mobster torn between who will succeed him as the boss of his family, and the bitter war that breaks out between the rival New York ‘families’, leaving bloodshed in its hyper-violent wake.

Mark Seal, author of Leave the Gun, Take the Cannoli: The Epic Story of the Making of the The Godfather, available now through Simon & Schuster, tells AIR: “I first saw The Godfather as a college freshman in a movie theater in Memphis, Tennessee, during spring break while visiting my mother in 1972.

“I felt like I was still a kid when I walked into the movie theatre. When I emerged three hours later, I had become an adult, having spent three hours in a world — and immersed in a family, the Corleones — about which I knew little.

“From that moment on, I was obsessed with the movie, its characters, story and creed, which has since become an integral part of the folklore of America and the world.”

It’s almost unthinkable today knowing the legacy the film left behind, but at the time nobody was betting on the movie being a success — financial 54

or otherwise. The novel’s author Mario Puzo was somewhat in the last-chance saloon himself, described as perpetually broke and with a gambling habit. But his genius lay in not just dreaming up the Corleones, but painstakingly coding complex familial relationships between Don Corleone and his sons Michael, Sonny and Fredo. Add in pugilistic enforcers, scheming consiglieres with their own designs on power, and a host of wives and children, and this mob movie suddenly became a lot deeper than gangsters simply shooting each other.

Seal lists just some of the reasons the film should never have worked: “A movie studio [Paramount] that was on the brink of ruin, owned by a company controlled by the volcanic takeover artist Charlie Bluhdorn, who loved movies almost (but not quite) as much as he loved business deals. A young Italian American director who had just turned 30 and took on a movie no other director would touch — and had to fight for every aspect of the film he so ingeniously envisioned. A cast of unknowns who became superstars.

A leading man who was supposedly washed up as an actor, only to emerge in The Godfather with arguably his greatest role [Marlon Brando, who would win the 1973 Best Actor Oscar for his iconic role as Don Corleone].”

Mobsters with families and complex personal lives? Sounds a bit Sopranos, or even Goodfellas — but these cornerstones of the genre simply wouldn’t exist if The Godfather hadn’t leaped from the page to the silver screen.

Mark Seal explains: “It changed cinema in so many ways: making its cast of relative unknowns the venerable stars we know today, propelling its director, Francis Ford Coppola, into the forefront

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The screaming, the fights, the threats that never let up since day one of filming, were worth it

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All pages: Stills from The Godfather

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In a campaign against stereotyping Italian Americans in popular culture, shadowy forces emerged to attempt to stop the film

of the new wave of American directors, making its writer Mario Puzo rich and famous, and paving the way for the future mob movies and television shows that, following Puzo’s and Coppola’s lead, centered around its characters’ families, instead of merely their crimes.

It also fostered the coming era of the sequel, with The Godfather: Part II and, later, The Godfather: Part III” With so many variables and uncertainties involved in the making of the film, production was exactly as unhinged and chaotic as one would fear.

Paramount’s head of production Robert Evans spoke in Leave the Gun, Take the Cannoli about how “The screaming, the fights, the threats that never let up since day one of filming, were worth it.”

But, according to Seal, most potentially perilous of all was a near-war between the movie markers and members of the real-life Mob. He says: “In a campaign against stereotyping Italian Americans in popular culture, shadowy forces emerged to attempt to stop the film in a campaign of letters, protests

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and alleged threats which played out on the streets of New York and Los Angeles — only to facilitate the making of the movie after making peace with the producer by agreeing to remove the one word the reputed organized crime leader Joe Colombo, founder of the Italian American Civil Rights League, felt symbolized the persecution against Italian Americans in the media and film, a word he demanded taken out of the script: Mafia.”

Today, the man who dreamed up the entire caper, Mario Puzo, is a household name. But did he enjoy the final film? Authors aren’t always enamoured with critical and commercial successes made of their works — Stephen King’s aversion to Stanley Kubrick’s interpretation of The Shining is the immediate example.

Mark Seal counters: “There are various opinions, but how could he have not loved how the movie transformed his life? After all, The Godfather novel and movie made him rich and famous, and he published six more novels, all bestsellers, and became

a multimillionaire screenwriter, not only of The Godfather and its sequels but also Superman, in 1978, and its sequel two years later.

“He also told Terry Gross on NPR in 1996 that co-writing the script of the first film was ‘a cinch,’ elaborating: ‘I mean, it was a cinch because it was the first time I’d ever written a screenplay, so I didn’t know what I was doing. And the story I tell is that after I had won two Academy Awards, you know, for the first two films, I went out and bought a book on screenwriting because I figured I’d better learn. And then the first chapter in the book said, study The Godfather — it’s the model of a screenplay.’”

Puzo may have found his version of The American Dream, but the rich and complex characters in The Godfather all had different results — which is why the film resonates as much today as it ever did.

Leave the Gun, Take the Cannoli: The Epic Story of the Making of the The Godfather, by Mark Seal, Simon & Schuster 57

Motoring

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MARCH 2022: ISSUE 126

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The Dark Side How the Ghost has been reengineered to reveal its alluring alter ego, the Rolls-Royce Black Badge Ghost WORDS: JOHN THATCHER

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uke Skywalker was never cool.

Sure, he was a Jedi master, fired the bomb that blew up the first Death Star and managed to conquer interplanetary astral projection (can’t we all?), but his lasting impression is that of a whiny, goody-two-shoes farm boy in an ill-fitting bathrobe. Nobody wants to be Luke Skywalker. And that’s the problem with being saintly. It’s just not alluring.

It was no surprise, then, that Luke’s own father succumbed to the dark side, trading in his tabard and annoying droids for a suit of technology-enhanced black armour, the fearful moniker Darth Vader, and an ability to crush a person’s windpipe from a distance of roughly fifteen feet. Even his chronic asthma only added to his coolness.

Which brings us around the galaxies to the Rolls-Royce Black Badge Ghost, the dark side of the ‘post opulent’ Ghost, the Batman to the Ghost’s Bruce Wayne. The Darth Vader of the road.

The Black Badge, the alter ego of existing Rolls-Royce models, debuted in 2016 with the Ghost and Wraith, followed by Dawn in 2017 and Cullinan in 2019. Now it’s the turn of the new Ghost (one of the fastest-selling products in the marque’s history) to indulge its darkest fantasies.

Like the other Black Badge examples before it, this is a model designed with enhanced torque, power, and control, and offers its owners myriad ways to customise their car, both inside and out.

For a start, clients can select from any of a staggering 44,000 ‘ready-to-wear’ colours, or create their own hue bespoke.

Rolls-Royce has stated the overwhelming majority who go through this process settle on the signature black. And it’s with good reason, too. It is billed as the motor industry’s ‘darkest black’, for which 100lbs of paint is applied, ovendried, and hand-polished by a team of four craftsman to produce the marque’s signature high-gloss piano finish.

For my trip to the dark side, I was behind the wheel of a resplendent rosered model, the last car in a convoy of six to roll out from the entrance of ME Dubai as darkness descended on the city.

The drawback to bringing up the rear of a convoy is that it’s difficult to keep with the pack when so many cars are intent on cutting in between you, determined as they seemed to mess with the symmetry of six Rolls-Royces for their own fleeting 60

amusement. The benefit, however, is that you’re in control of a twin-turbocharged 6.75-litre V12 engine that has been manipulated from that in the normal Ghost to generate an extra 29PS, creating a total output of 600PS. There is also the addition of a further 50NM of torque, for a total of 900NM, while the powertrain has also received transmission and throttle treatments (courtesy of the RollsRoyce Bespoke team) to further enhance the engine’s increased power reserves.

What these facts and numbers translate to, of course, is a supremely powerful car that rather revelled in the task of breezing by the wannabe killjoys in their pushed-to-the-limits sedans as I rejoined the convoy of cars prior to our arrival at Skydive Dubai Desert Dropzone.

We were not here to jump out of a plane (mercifully), but to do something naughty, as is your want when you’re taking a trip to the dark side, obviously.

To test out the full capabilities of the Black Badge Ghost, we were to take it in turns to drive our colourful cars to a makeshift starting line on a runway lit by our headlights alone. Once rolled into positioned, we were then asked to press the button marked ‘Low’ on the gear selection stalk, a button which opens-up the car’s full suite of technologies. One

of these is sound related — the roar of the car’s engine amplified through an entirely new exhaust system. Another relates to the abruptness of performance.

All 900NM of torque is available from just 1700rpm and, once you’re underway in this Low mode, gearshift speeds are increased by 50% when the throttle is depressed to 90%, delivering the car’s abundant power reserves with dramatic immediacy. The rebel within.

This rebel’s cause was to put my foot to the floor on the shout of “Go!”, propelling the Ghost through the darkness from 0-120km/h (now inclined to break the rules, this was more like 140km/h) before hitting the breaks when I reached a line of red lights that guided me back to the stationary safety car. It was exhilarating, even after the third go. Each time was a reminder of how the car’s braking system has also been enhanced — the braking bite point raised, the pedal travel decreased.

It’s testament to the incredible engineering of this extraordinary car that it offers such a serene drive one minute and a full throttle thrill the next, a car that’s both a saint and a sinner, an angel and a devil.

Yet we all know it’s much more fun on the dark side.

To test out the acceleration of the ‘Black Badge Ghost, we lined up on a runway lit by our headlights alone ’

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Gastronomy

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MARCH 2022: ISSUE 126

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A Frank Discussion Michelin-starred chef Sebastian Frank is on a mission to elevate the perception of Austrian food.

Next stop, Dubai WORDS: JOHN THATCHER

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ypically, when a child is forced to do something against their will (say, enrol in a home economics course when you’re the only boy among a throng of teenage girls), they will ultimately rebel against it.

Not so Sebastian Frank. “The course was voluntary, but my mother made it compulsory for me. She thought it wouldn't hurt if a young boy [aged 13] knew something about cooking. And so, in short, I found myself the only boy studying a home economics course.”

Rather than foster a lifelong aversion to cooking, the course sparked an interest in food, which led to Frank undertaking a short internship in a hotel kitchen and then training to be a chef.

Now he owns his own restaurant in Berlin, the recipient of two Michelin stars. Mum knows best. And her influence remains obvious.

“My earliest memories of cooking are not very romantic, rather unsuitable for the classic story of a cook who perhaps spent time in a restaurant kitchen from childhood onwards, or enjoyed grandmother's sumptuous and fragrant cuisine,” explains Frank. “Food, after all, had more of a pragmatic position in our home. My mother, a single parent of three sons, satisfied our almost endless hunger as best she could, and later at school, as latchkey children, I and my brothers usually heated up the pre-cooked food ourselves after school.

“My mother made use of the Austrian home cooking typical for the region we are from (ham fritters, semolina pancakes, schnitzel, grenadier march, rice meat, pancakes). From today's perspective, I wouldn't say that my mother’s food was the best, but it was good and there was never anything like instant meals.”

It’s Austrian food that Frank is elevating to new heights at his restaurant Horváth. “Austrian cuisine is a global cuisine with the influences of many nations, but it has never developed into fine cuisine. I want to show that Austrian cuisine has the potential to do so and is more than just kaiserschmarren or wiener schnitzel.

Because where I grew up, there were many more flavours than the ones many associate with Austrian cuisine.

So, I try to reinterpret the cuisine of my homeland and make it more modern.”

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He does so through a philosophy he terms ‘emancipatory’, ensuring that each and every ingredient is afforded the same consideration — and not the ingrediants you’d readily associate with Michelin-starred restaurants.

“I always try to work with the best possible products and don't want to have to make any compromises in this respect,” outlines Frank. “At first, I started with so-called luxury products, but shortly afterwards, which must have been around 2011, I realised that I didn't want to work with these products, especially since I didn't get them the way I envisioned them. That was certainly my most formative moment, when I went back to basics, to what makes me who I am, and where I transformed my personal history and identity into culinary moments. It became clear to me all at once: What am I even doing? I am not olive oil, turbot, or mango, but trout, lard, garlic and cumin! That is my identity! That actually became clear to me in a single moment.

“Therefore, I started very early on to avoid these exotic products.

Instead, I wanted to focus solely on products that I associate with my home cuisine and that are created in close cooperation with the local farmers. This is how my style developed and how the idea of emancipatory cuisine was formed, according to which every product can be the star on the plate if I treat it with care.

“By deliberately focusing on certain products, I deal with the individual product in a much more intensive manner. This has led to experiments that I probably wouldn't have done under other circumstances. Some of these experiments have resulted in classic dishes at Horváth, such as the celery in salt dough, which was created using only the simplest methods and the craft of preservation.”

Frank was born in Mödling, Lower Austria, and grew up in Bruck an der Leitha, also in Lower Austria.

It's about 25 minutes by car from Vienna, and roughly 30 minutes to the Hungarian border. His career took off at Steirereck in Vienna — arguably the best restaurant in all of Austria — but keen to spread his wings and carry Austrian cuisine with him, he moved to Berlin aged 29 to become head chef

‘

Having a reduced plate that tastes as if it contains 20 components, that's my ideal

’

All pages: Sebastian Frank and dishes from Horváth © White Kitchen

of the equally feted Horváth. “Let's put it this way: the creativity in this city makes it a lot easier for me to develop my own path and contribute my share.”

Within a year he won a Michelin star. A second was awarded in 2015, just a year after he and his wife, Jeannine Kessler, had taken over the restaurant as owners. How did he find the change from heading up just the kitchen to the whole restaurant? “My wife does most of the organising and leaves me in the kitchen,” he concedes.

“At the beginning, I thought about what kind of requirements I would have in the restaurant. How big is my kitchen, how many seats do I have and how many employees? What can I accomplish? Am I still able to cook for

70 guests and do I really need all the components? So, I've eliminated all the gimmicks, and my plates have become increasingly clear over time. I always aim to achieve maximum excitement and complexity with as few ingredients as possible. Having a reduced plate that tastes as if it contains 20 components, that's my ideal.

“Through my approach, I want to present these many flavours and offer Austrian cuisine a stage to which the culinary world turns its attention. I want to bring Austrian cuisine and its traditions into the 21st century and offer them in a clear, purified and vegetable-oriented version.”

Sebastian Frank is at Jubilee Gastronomy, Expo 2020, March 8 65

Travel

AIR

MARCH 2022: ISSUE 126

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JOURNEYS BY JET

Villa Soro

San Sebastián, Spain

I

f its feted food scene brought San Sebastián to the attention of the wider world – this coastal town in the Basque Country is home to the likes of Arzak, Mugaritz and Elkano and boasts the second-most Michelin stars per capita – then its unique charm (local customs, which even include a different way of eating out, hopping from one bar to the next to sample bite-size creations, are overt at every turn) is what continues to draw discerning globetrotters to this sun-kissed strip of Spain.

And it’s here, in the fashionable Barrio de Gros, one of San Sebastián’s most vibrant districts, where Villa Soro will open next month, following a considered redesign by the Soldevila-Ferrer family and the team behind Mallorca icons Sant Francesc Hotel and Can Ferrereta Hotel.

Built in 1898, and one of a few heritage

properties in San Sebastián, this aristocratic villa has been rebirthed as a beautiful 25-room boutique hotel. The meticulous refurbishment of the villa (it was originally designed by prestigious architect Luis Elizalde in the late 19th century), maintains the spirit of the period by enhancing existing heritage features, which include a grand central staircase, spacious guest rooms, a striking wood-panelled bar, open fireplaces and a stained-glass window from the historic chapel. Modern design touches include sleek furnishings in muted tones, a variety of textured finishes, playful checkerboard bathrooms, and restored antique furniture.

A defining characteristic of Villa Soro is its impressive collection of modern Spanish art — renowned Basque and Spanish artists are showcased, featuring works from Iñigo Manterola,

Jose Cháfer and Eduardo Chillida.

The villa’s main house, comprising 15 guest rooms, has the feel of a private residence and is home to a large guest salon, complete with a roaring logburning fire, honesty bar, and a library curated by Maison Assouline. An adjacent building, the villa’s former stables, houses a further ten rooms, some of which boast their own private garden.

Villa Soro’s south-facing positioning means the hotel is bathed in Spanish sunshine throughout the day. Soak it up in the communal garden, where guests will find Eguzki, a bar serving a menu of drinks and small plates made with seasonal, locally-sourced produce. A taste of San Sebastián that you’ll want to return for.

Land your jet at San Sebastián Airport, from where a pre-arranged chauffer service to Villa Soro takes 25 minutes

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What I Know Now MARCH 2022 : ISSUE 126

AIR

Sylvain Gaillard DIRECTOR, OPERA GALLERY DUBAI

The best piece of advice I’ve ever received is to never buy cheap, or you’ll have to buy twice. I like that saying because its core concept can be derived and applied to many things affecting how you choose to live your life, not only material things. Once I grasped the broader essence of this saying, it helped me make smarter decisions.

I first felt successful when other people referred to me as being successful, which is something that I am still not totally comfortable with. You can’t really measure success, this is something so abstract and personal.

I don’t think I will ever label myself successful, I don’t have that level of ego, nor do I feel that this is something that needs to define me.

Living a balanced life, being a good provider for your family and the ones you love, and inspire people. That’s my definition of personal success. There is a quote from a movie falsely stating 68

that when men died in ancient Greece they did not write obituaries, but rather asked “did he have passion?” If anybody says yes about me, then I was successful, I guess.

One thing I do every day is read as much as I can, about as many subjects as I can. This is something that I started practicing when I was doing my MBA. I usually allocate an hour in the morning and another hour at night where I go through current events, the economy, and whatever feels relevant for that particular day. My reading list is very broad, but art, architecture, design, fashion, and economy are the main areas of interest.

A lesson I learned the hard way was to not second guess your gut feelings.

If it sits right, just roll with it. It’s a lot easier having to deal with a bad outcome, rather than beat yourself over the head, knowing that retrospectively you were right.

I’ve always had the utmost respect and admiration (and maybe a little jealousy) to individuals who can move large crowds or cement an unconditional following. I particularly admire standup comedians, visual artists and, more generally, people who are viewed as authorities in their respective craft.

If I could tell my younger self something it would be that everything is going to be alright. I’m a very anxious person, and I tend to over intellectualise way too many things.

Life and maturity have taught me that having a more laid-back approach to life does not negatively affect the outcome of things.

I’m nowhere close to whom I set out to be, there is still a long road ahead, and my ambitions are the fuel to eventually getting there. I am about to become a father, so suddenly, ambitions have dramatically changed (in the best possible way).

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©Photograph: Laurent Ballesta/Gombessa Project

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