Portfolio - July 2018

ISSUE

151

NORWAY’S OIL

MONACO’S MASTERPLAN

What happens when it runs out?

The principality’s latest land grab

POLISH FARE

CONTENT IS KING?

The country’s food scene explodes

Why brands are becoming publishers

PEAK ETHICS Can outdoor brands swap profit for morality?

JULY ISSUE 151

The business of life & living

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A DESIGN FOR LIFE P26

Exploring London’s Design Museum

JULY ISSUE 151

CONTENTS UPFRONT

10

CELEBRITY BUSINESSES

The changing face of Hollywood entrepreneurs

LIVING

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A slice of luxury in the heart of London

KATE SPADE REMEMBERED

Why the iconic designer mattered

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THE FIXER

Inside the world of Hollywood’s favourite crisis manager

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PARIS PROPERTY

A townhouse with spectacular views

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HOTEL

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WHAT TO PACK

From Cebu to Nice, we’ve got you covered

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POLAND RISING

Why the country’s cuisine is heating up

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EXHIBITION

A Klimt exhibition with a difference in Paris

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COLUMN

Precision in a time of chaos

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33,164 copies December 2017

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CONTENTS FEATURES

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BOARDROOM PUNKS

The business mavericks that prove sometimes the little guys win

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NORWAY’S BLACK GOLD

Can the country learn to live with a new greener way of managing its resources?

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CONTENT MARKETING

As brands turn into publishers, is content marketing a magic bullet for the big brands?

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E-COMMERCE AND THE FUTURE OF FASHION

Does the rise of e-commerce spell the end of fashion retail as we know it?

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MONACO’S LAND GRAB

Will the principality’s reclamation project solve its housing worries?

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UPFRONT

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Risky business David G. Taylor explores the world of celebrity businesses and why some succeed and some fail

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obert De Niro’s sushi restaurants are more famous for their co-founder and VIP clientele than its signature Black Cod Miso. But one celebrity definitely not welcome at Nobu is Donald Trump. Earlier this year De Niro said so, expressing his dislike for the US President and questioning his intelligence.

His statements made global headlines but fortunately appear not to have hurt the Nobu brand.

That’s important, because this year Nobu marks 25 years of hospitality with a burst of luxury hotel openings that’ll double its worldwide portfolio to 16. Among its notable summer 2018 launches, high-living guests can now stay at Nobu Hotel London Shoreditch, in a hip eastern enclave of the English capital, and Nobu Hotel Marbella on the Andalusia coast of sun-drenched southern Spain.

The additions bring the hotel portfolio to eight with as many more in various stages of development. Very soon you could be relaxing at Nobu’s in Barcelona, Riyadh, Los Cabos, Chicago, Toronto, São Paulo and Atlanta. “2018 is an exciting time for Nobu Hotels,” Trevor Horwell, CEO of Nobu Hospitality group tells Portfolio.

“We’re on track to operate 20 hotels globally by 2020.”

Hopefully, more guests will respect De Niro’s candour than recoil from it. However his comments do highlight the risk of having celebrities closely associated with a business. They frequently say and do whatever pops into their recognisable little heads, and potentially that could hurt ‘the brand.’

The story of the Nobu brand began in the late 1980s when Robert De Niro first visited Nobuyuki Matsuhisa’s eponymous Los Angeles restaurant. The chef had an adventuresome style that impressed De Niro. So, alongside From Dusk Till Dawn producer Meir Teper, a business partnership was forged.

“Nobu Matsuhisa was reluctant to grow the company at first, and it took four years for De Niro to convince him,” Horwell says. It wasn’t until 1994 that the first Nobu restaurant launched in TriBeCa, New York. Its JapanesePeruvian fusion dining began expanding globally and eventually, in 2009, the restauranteurs became hoteliers.

Nobu has since been named among ‘Luxury’s 25 Most Innovative Brands’ by The Robb Report, alongside the likes of Hermès and Chanel; themselves no strangers to channelling star-power.

Hermès with its (Jane) Birkin bag - named after the British-

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UPFRONT

French actress and Je T’aime singer, and Chanel’s No. 5 ads linking the perfume with Marilyn Monroe, Catherine Deneuve, Nicole Kidman and even Brad Pitt.

Luxury consumers are notoriously discerning, so how and why do celebrity endorsements have any impact at all? “They don’t always work,” explains Joe Barnes, digital director of global marketing agency, PRCO Studio.

matches the celebrity (creatively and strategically) and the celebrities’ audience, the results,” he says, “can be astronomical.”

Big gains don’t come without risk, however. These can range from “operational complications” such as suddenly dealing with high volumes of orders and an influx of traffic, Barnes says, to “brand equity problems” such as the fallout from a celebrity scandal.

“When it works it’s because a product aligns to celebrities’ beliefs, interests or personalities”

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“But when they do, it’s due to an understanding of the celebrity, and how they influence their fans and consumers. An endorsement that aligns a brand to celebrities’ beliefs, interests or personality,” he says, “gives an authentic message to consumers” who therefore are influenced by them.

When an endorsement goes wrong, Barnes explains, it’s usually a result of the brand not “naturally fitting” the consumers’ view of that celebrity. The recent pairing of Serena Williams and Bulgari Jewellery was a big success story for PRCO, says Barnes. When Prince Harry and Meghan Markle got betrothed in May, Williams arrived at the UK wedding in a stunning Bulgari necklace that made the news websites of Time, Harper’s Bazaar and PopSugar.

A fitting demonstration of the uncommonly diverse audience such an endorsement can reach.

It “worked well,” says Barnes, “because it aligned on an interest level.” Serena is well-known for her style statements and this year launched her own fashion brand; she therefore “appreciates the style, provenance and history” of Bulgari’s jewellery, says Barnes. ”So her wearing it at the royal wedding made sense to her, her fans and social commentators. If the product

Simple sponsorship deals seem most susceptible to turning sour. In 2012, Brazilian footballer Ronaldinho lost his Coca-Cola contract and a reported $1.3 million, when he absentmindedly appeared at a press conference with a can of its arch-rival Pepsi. Tiger Woods similarly lost credibility for being unfaithful.

Although in his case, it was the 2009 allegations of extramarital affairs that’s said to have ended his relationships with AT&T, Accenture, Gatorade and Gillette.

Once a sure-fire winner for luxe brands such as Tag Heuer, Rolex and American Express, Woods has latterly proved a loose cannon, garnering the wrong kind of press once again with his 2017 arrest for driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs. Sponsors such as Nike and Bridgestone Golf have been quite forgiving. In fact, this year Bridgestone released a Tiger Woods edition golf ball but, according to the New York Times, Bridgestone had conducted a post-scandal survey to gauge the public’s reaction.

Bad press isn’t always harmful; in rare cases, it may enhance a celebrity’s bankability. When Kate Moss was pictured allegedly committing a crime in the Daily Mirror in 2005, the supermodel

$22m

The amount Kate Moss earned in 2005-07 despite some bad behaviour

lost some work including a $5 million H&M contract. However, according to Celebs Net Worth Today, years 2005-2007 were some of her “best ever, monetarily”, with her edgy notoriety earning Moss in excess of $22 million.

Good or bad, the star endorsement is not a modern phenomenon. The luxury lifestyle marketing agency, Sugarfly recalls the 1866 case of Moët & Chandon in a 2017 blog. The company, ‘commissioned the [British music hall] entertainer George Leybourne to write and perform songs such as Champagne Charlie, about the virtues of champagne. Dozens of songs were commissioned by champagne houses at the time,’ it says, ‘including Ruinart-Polka and the Charles Heidsieck Waltz.’

Unsolicited star promotions can unwittingly work too, as one

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cognac brand found in 2002.

When US rapper Busta Rhymes released his track Pass the Courvoisier (featuring P Diddy and Pharrell), the brand ‘saw sales rise 30 per cent,’ Sugarfly says.

Endorsement of a product is one arena, but like De Niro, many A-Listers put both their cash and reputations on the line. The few succeed. Last year, fellow thespian George Clooney sold his premium tequila brand, Casamigos, for $1 billion. He had launched it in 2013 with friends Michael Meldman, a real estate developer, and Rande Gerber, a model turned entrepreneur, better-known as the husband of supermodel Cindy Crawford. Each partner should collect a palatable $233 million pre-tax, Forbes reported.

The ever-lengthening list of star backed-businesses include lingerie from supermodel Heidi

Klum, footwear from TVs Sex and the City’s Sarah Jessica Parker and Crystal Head Vodka from Ghostbusters’ actor Dan Ackroyd.

But when a star already has the fame and the money, why risk harming their ‘personal brand’?

“To become a celebrity takes drive, confidence, and determination in the face of impossibly low odds for success,” says Jon Nastor, founder of Hack the Entrepreneur – the book, blog and podcast for budding industrialists. “These are the same skills it takes to become a successful entrepreneur. Once their celebrity is achieved, this drive doesn’t disappear,” he says simply, “instead it gets redirected.”

For every Beats by Dr Dre success story however, there’s a Trump Airlines. The ill-fated Kardashian Kard debit card, JayZ’s J Hotel and Natalie Portman’s

“overpriced” Té Casan vegan heels are among some of the “hairbrained” schemes “doomed from the outset,” gleefully recounted in MSM Money’s recent article, 29 Celebrity Businesses That Failed Miserably. So, what are those getting it right doing differently?

“The most successful celebrity entrepreneurs are building businesses around their passions,” says Nastor. “Doing this leads to a congruency with their existing personal brand and maximises the effect of their celebrity on their business,” he says: “Drew Barrymore is doing this with wine, Jessica Alba with health and wellness, and Robert De Niro with fine dining.”

When quizzed about Nobu’s success, Horwell asserts that all three stakeholders (Matsuhisa, Teper and De Niro) have provided “leadership,” “insight” and “creative direction.” But what specifically, I ask, have been De Niro’s biggest contributions?

“Robert De Niro is a creative visionary,” he says, “who saw the sheer mastery in what Chef Nobu was doing.” The actor was also “instrumental” Horwell adds, “in the move to go into hospitality and open hotels. He rightly noted that other hotels were using Nobu Restaurants and its customerbase as a draw,” he says. “And he believed that we could do that ourselves, in a way that extended what we stand for as a brand.”

While all the Nobu hotels reference the same “Japanese sense of design detail” and offer that coveted “Nobu service,” Howell explains: “We are committed to making sure each and every hotel has its own distinctive identity and a sense of locality. This is one of our most important development strategies,” he attests. “At Nobu Hotels, nothing is a carbon copy.”

CELEBRITIES’ AWARD SHOW BOUNTIES GROW Celebrities can win big at awards shows, and that’s without even picking up an award. Take, for example, the gifts handed out at the recent MTV Awards.

Guests got a three-night stay at Planet Hollywood Costa Rica and The Six Senses Singapore. They also received a Swarovski crystal bracelet, a pair of Jabra headphones and some olive oil. Every award show now features gift bags worth thousands of dollars, with brands happy to shell out freebies in the hope that the stars will tweet or Instagram their loot.

George Clooney and Ronaldinho, who have both earned millions from celebrity endorsements

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UPFRONT

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What Kate Spade meant Vanessa Friedman and Tiffany Hsu look back at the fashion designer Kate Spade’s legacy

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here is a lot of talk these days about the lack of women at the top of fashion brands – the statistics are terrible, the gender imbalance striking. It is one of the reasons Kate Spade, the designer who was found dead in her home on June 5, was so important to so many of us. She represented not just a terrific talent who built an idea about handbags into what became a billion dollar brand, but a critical figure in the continuum of

That’s why, in so many profiles over the years, Spade – or her brand, which she personified – was put in the same cultural bucket as everyone from Dorothy Parker and Nora Ephron to the fictional heroines Nora Charles and Holly Golightly. I always thought of her a bit as Mary Richards throwing her hat up in the air with joy at taking on the big city at the start of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, not because they had the same style, but because they seemed to have the same approach.

Spade represented not just a terrific talent who built a billion dollar brand but a woman who defined US fashion women who have defined fashion in the United States: designers who thought about what other women (like her) would want in their closets (and later, their homes) and who solved that problem without elitism.

But it may be more instructive to think of her as a natural heir to Bonnie Cashin, Anne Klein and Liz Claiborne, and the predecessor of Tory Burch and Jenna Lyons during her J. Crew reign, not to mention Stacey Bendet of Alice

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UPFRONT

& Olivia. In the history of women spearheading fashion brands in the United States, Kate Spade was a bridge between the early female icons of the sportswear era,

Spade began with a handbag but grew into linens, china, clothing and accessories

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and those of the current lifestyle age. She recognised the looming accessories boom, a bubble we’re still in today, and parlayed her success into all sorts of other areas where a design mind could legitimately have a claim. That seems like obvious strategy today, but when Kate Spade did it, it was wide-open territory.

So while Kate Spade the company may have begun with a handbag – Spade Scotchtaped her ideas together out of paper when she was an editor at Mademoiselle magazine – it didn’t end there. It grew into linens, china, picture frames, clothing and personal organizers.

She created accessible luxury before that was an official term.

She and her husband and business partner, Andy, mimicked the structure of great luxury houses, with a creative mind and a business mind building a company side-by-side (think Pierre Bergé and Yves Saint Laurent, or Valentino and Giancarlo Giammetti). But high fashion is often aesthetically challenging and comes with its own velvetrope-like barriers to entry, while neither Spade’s style nor her price points turned people away. They welcomed them in. They were not neurotic or conflicted or fraught with existential angst. They were fun. They were also fur-free before it became trendy. The name on the label was lowercase for a reason.

Women who bought her products could imagine being her friend.

Each piece promised to brighten a room or an outfit (often literally, thanks to their colour scheme), and the assumption was, Kate Spade the person would too.

Which is also what makes her end so startling. She had been so effective at building her brand, so good at weaving what looked like cheer and wicker-bicycle-basket attitude into every product she made, so adept at consistency of message and mien, that the assumption – even after she left her eponymous company in 2007 – was that as the name was, so was she.

That she later reportedly changed her name to Kate

Valentine Spadeto reflect the name of a new company, Frances Valentine, and to distance herself from her former brand, seemed to suggest that she had sprung back after her sabbatical from whatever problems had arisen after Kate Spade was sold to investors and then began to change hands with dizzying speed. That she was back.

Though now it seems all those assumptions may have been wrong. Whatever happened in her life, however, and whatever happens to the brand that still bears her former name, what should never change is the contribution she made: not just to a lot of wardrobes, but

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to the idea of the modern woman. She stepped forward.

She opened stores.

She moved all of us along.

Kate Spade was a fashion dynamo who turned a cheerful vision of affordable luxury into a leading US brand, but relinquished control before it became a commercial juggernaut. Initially known for simple handbags in punchy colours, the Kate Spade New York label grew into a sprawling lifestyle brand that includes furniture, baby gifts and sneakers. Spade walked away from her company more than a decade ago and was nurturing a new label before her untimely passing.

KATE SPADE’S RISE January 1993 Starting the Brand Not long after quitting her job as an editor at Mademoiselle magazine, Spade began her company with the help of Andy Spade, whom she later married. Andy Spade, who met his future wife at Arizona State University, put $35,000 from his retirement savings into the fledgling business.

The couple introduced an initial lineup of six purses, including one later sewed using burlap fabric sourced from a potato bag maker. In 1996, the Spades opened a store in the SoHo section of Manhattan, and by

1998, the company was generating $28 million a year in revenue.

February 1999 A Big Sale to Neiman Marcus The Spades sold 56 per cent of the company to Neiman Marcus, the high-end department store, for nearly $34 million. The label spent the next few years expanding into other retail categories by entering licensing partnerships with Lenox’s home goods, selling luxury diaper bags and strollers, dressing flight attendants and immortalising its preppy Upper East Side aesthetic in $70

coffee table books. The company also faced criticism that the factory workers making its handbags were being grossly underpaid and responded by saying it could not control its contractors’ labour practices.

October 2006 The Spades Cash Out Neiman Marcus, which was taken over by two private equity firms the year before, bought out the remainder of the Kate Spade brand.

Neiman then promptly sold the full Kate Spade package for $124 million to Liz Claiborne, a clothier that had already acquired Juicy Couture and Lucky

Brand Jeans. In 2007, the Spades left the brand, which by then was generating more than $80 million a year in revenue.

January 2014 Changing Names Liz Claiborne, which sold much of its portfolio and changed its name in 2012 to Fifth & Pacific, rebranded itself as Kate Spade & Co. The company, long a target of counterfeiters, also developed a strong presence at outlet malls and department store discount shelves, raising concerns among analysts that it was devaluing its reputation.

May 2017 Another Sale, a New Venture Coach, which has since become a holding company called Tapestry, agreed to buy Kate Spade & Co. for $2.4 billion. By this time, Kate Spade offshoots like Kate Spade Saturday and Jack Spade had been shut down.

A year earlier, in 2016, the Spades and two partners quietly started a new company, Frances Valentine, selling handbags, footwear and accessories online and through retailers like Bloomingdale’s and Nordstrom.

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UPFRONT

The Fixer

Abby Aguirre meets the man who has made a career fixing PR crises. Then, along came Harvey Weinstein

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ichael Sitrick couldn’t comment on Harvey Weinstein. Until a few weeks earlier, Sitrick’s crisis management firm, Sitrick and Co., had been managing Weinstein’s unprecedented crisis. Sitrick had dropped Weinstein, but he couldn’t say why. He couldn’t confirm if it was because Weinstein had stopped paying his bills, though he could confirm it was true that Weinstein had stopped paying his bills and that the two parties were in arbitration. He couldn’t say if there were other factors.

But he could say what were not factors. He could confirm, for instance, that he did not resign out of concern for his company’s own reputation. “You can’t do that,” Sitrick said. “You cannot put your firm’s interests ahead of the client’s interests.”

Sitrick could also confirm that he had not grown morally uncomfortable with the flood of allegations against Weinstein.

When I asked about this – and this was not long before Weinstein would be arrested in Manhattan on charges of rape and a criminal sexual act and swiftly indicted by a grand jury – he looked at me as if I’d just stepped off a UFO. “The law of this land is innocent until proven guilty,” Sitrick said. “There hasn’t been a single case that has gone to trial.” All this to say: Sitrick could not “comment,” but

he could do what he has made a fortune doing for the better part of three decades. He could spin.

Even if you don’t know his name, you know his work. Sitrick has been managing the narratives of besieged celebrities since the early 1990s. He represented Kelsey Grammer when the star was accused of having an affair with his underage baby sitter. He helped Christian Slater when the actor was arrested on charges of assaulting his girlfriend, biting a man who tried to stop him and then trying to grab a police officer’s gun. When Erin Everly, about whom Axl Rose wrote “Sweet Child O’ Mine,” was suing Rose for assault, Sitrick got her story on the cover of People magazine. Sitrick was retained by Halle Berry when she was in a hitand-run, Naomi Campbell when she was accused of assaulting her housekeeper and Rush Limbaugh when he was arrested on prescription drug charges.

When The New York Daily News reported that Kobe Bryant may have been flirting with someone other than his wife at a Jay-Z concert, Sitrick was there to push back: “There was no touching of the face and he did not dance with her.” It was Sitrick who released the first statement on behalf of Chris Brown after he was arrested on charges of assaulting Rihanna: “Words cannot begin to express how sorry and saddened I am

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Michael Sitrick, of the crisis management firm Sitrick and Company, at his office in Brentwood, California

over what transpired. I am seeking the counselling of my pastor, my mother and other loved ones and I am committed, with God’s help, to emerging a better person.”

Sitrick has also deployed his strategies on behalf of Michael Vick (the dogfighting ring), Alex Rodriguez (the steroid scandal) and R. Kelly (where to begin).

But although his celebrity clients attract a disproportionate amount of media coverage, they represent less than 10 per cent of Sitrick’s caseload, he said. Corporate crises are his specialty, including Exxon after the Valdez oil spill, Enron during its accounting-fraud implosion and Theranos, the company that claimed to have revolutionised blood testing but didn’t.

Sitrick helped Roy Disney oust Michael Eisner and he helped American Apparel oust Dov Charney. He has represented the Daniel Pearl Foundation, on a pro bono basis, and the creator of Girls Gone Wild.

of the videos and raised questions about ABC’s practices, effectively turning a story about bad meat into a story about bad journalism.

Richard Wald, an emeritus professor at Columbia, was an executive at ABC at the time, and he has asked Sitrick to address his journalism students over the years.

The point of the lesson, according to Wald, is that “just because a journalist is finished with a story does not mean the story is finished with the journalist.” Of Sitrick’s work for Food Lion, Wald said: “He did an absolutely brilliant job, but it annoyed the hell out of me at the time.”

Sitrick, 70, was once a journalism student himself, at the University of Maryland. He moved into public relations after graduation, following a stint reporting for the Baltimore NewsAmerican. “I love journalism,” he remembers telling his wife, Nancy Sitrick, “but I’d rather eat.” When Sitrick moved to Los Angeles with his wife and three young daughters and founded his firm, in 1989, he

Sitrick helped Roy Disney oust Michael Eisner and helped American Apparel oust its founder Dov Charney One of Sitrick’s more notorious cases was for years taught at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, a kind of cautionary tale about the perils of going undercover.

In the early 1990s, two producers for Primetime Live, an ABC news programme, got jobs in Food Lion supermarkets and secretly videotaped workers, raising questions about the company’s meat handling practices. Food Lion then went to Sitrick, who obtained outtakes

made it something of a policy to hire onetime editors and reporters.

“It’s easier to teach journalists PR than to teach publicists what news judgment is,” he said. Sitrick and Co. quickly acquired a reputation for pushing back against the press, using many of the same strategies as journalists. Sitrick represented the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles during its sex abuse scandal, the Kabbalah Centre when journalists suspected it of being a cult and the

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UPFRONT

Harvey Weinstein enters Manhattan Criminal Court after being arrested

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Church of Scientology during its investigation by The New Yorker.

Prominent lawyer Edwin Stier, a former federal prosecutor, said he has retained Sitrick in cases in which “a public relations strategy became important to try to get accurate information in the public domain powerfully enough to move public opinion and change national policy.”

He recently sought Sitrick’s help to protect the scoops in Icarus, the documentary about Olympic doping.

It went on to win an Oscar.

Other powerful lawyers turn to Sitrick, including Marc Kasowitz, part of President Donald Trump’s personal legal team, who said he has used Sitrick in a “variety of large, high-profile cases.” When Kasowitz emailed a stranger with threats last July, warning him to “Watch your back,” Sitrick responded to the press inquiries that followed: “While no excuse, the email came at the end of a very long day that at 10pm was not yet over.”

One advantage to being retained by lawyers for a client rather than by the client himself is that Sitrick is technically a member of the legal team and therefore protected by attorneyclient privilege. And though he is not a lawyer, Sitrick views himself as a litigator in the court of public opinion. He also charges lawyerly rates – as much as $1,100 an hour.

It was in early October, a couple of days after The New York Times published its first report about Harvey Weinstein, that the Hollywood producer called upon Sitrick to fix the unfixable.

Weinstein had initially handled his own press, together with Lisa Bloom, the lawyer and daughter of Gloria Allred. It hadn’t gone well.

“I came of age in the ‘60s and ‘70s,” Weinstein said in an early statement, before announcing a $5 million foundation for female directors,

Although Sitrick is not a lawyer, he is protected by client-attorney privilege and charges lawyerly rates: as much as $1,100 an hour to be named after his mother, and misquoting Jay-Z lyrics: “I’m not the man I thought I was and I better be that man for my children.”

Sitrick, who said his memory of the initial contact is hazy, was called

by Weinstein’s lawyers on October 7, the day Sitrick’s mother died.

He was in Chicago making funeral arrangements. It was for this reason that he passed the Weinstein case to his colleague Sallie Hofmeister, Sitrick said, not because of the optics of having a woman run things, as reports suggested.

Hofmeister is a former journalist. She took over on October 8, the day Weinstein was fired by the Weinstein Co. Sitrick described his firm’s role in the Weinstein saga this way: “Our job was to make sure nothing was issued to the media, no statements, without clearance from the lawyers. Our job was to find out what information the

reporters had, what information they wanted, go to the lawyers, tell them, and talk to the lawyers about what they wanted to say.”

Hofmeister issued Sitrick and Co.’s first response, on October 10th, when The New Yorker published an article reporting that people at the Weinstein Co. knew about the misconduct. “Any allegations of non-consensual [acts] are unequivocally denied

by Mr. Weinstein,” the statement said. “Mr. Weinstein has further confirmed that there were never any acts of retaliation against any women for refusing his advances.”

It went on: “Mr. Weinstein has begun counseling, has listened to the community and is pursuing a better path. Mr. Weinstein is hoping that, if he makes enough progress, he will be given a second chance.”

That was the first and last time the firm’s statements would refer to “a second chance.” Later that day,

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The New York Times published another article, this one containing quotations from Gwyneth Paltrow and Angelina Jolie accusing Weinstein of abuse of power.

By February, more than 80 women had accused Weinstein of harassment or assault, and many of his business associates had spoken about a culture of complicity at his companies.

Things would get even worse for Weinstein. On February 11th, Eric Schneiderman, then the New York attorney general, before he resigned after reports that he assaulted four women, filed a civil rights lawsuit against Weinstein.

Weinstein was already under investigation by law enforcement in three cities. That same day, the Weinstein Co. filed for bankruptcy and released all former employees from their nondisclosure agreements. Sitrick and Co. issued what would turn out to be one of its final statements to USA Today, for an article on March 22: “Mr. Weinstein categorically denies ever engaging in any non-consensual conduct with anyone.” Two months later, Weinstein was arrested. His lawyer is Benjamin Brafman,

whose clients have included Martin Shkreli, Dominique Strauss-Kahn and Vincent Gigante, known as “The Chin.”

Sitrick’s first book, published in 1998, is called Spin: How to Turn the Power of the Press to Your Advantage. He wrote it with Allan Mayer, who was a force behind the entertainment division of Sitrick and Co. before he left to help found the public relations firm 42 West. In Chapter 3, Inside the Reporter’s Head, the authors explain that journalists are a peculiar species motivated not by money, but by an odd mix of cynicism and idealism and an egomaniacal drive to “own” a story. The authors also write: “As grubby as they may often seem, journalists are no less susceptible to the American dream than anyone else.” In Chapter 4, News Media Abhor a Vacuum, Sitrick lays out one of his key tenets: that strategic press representatives must engage the media; “no comment” should never be a first resort. “If you won’t talk to them, they’ll simply find someone else who will,” he and Mayer write, “which is to say, if you don’t tell

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your story, someone else will tell it for you.” In keeping with that rule, Sitrick quickly agreed to an interview for this article.

Four days after that, as I read Chapter 7 – Preempt the Situation – a Google Alert appeared in my inbox, delivering what Deadline Hollywood billed as an exclusive: “Sitrick and Company Resigns Repping Disgraced Mogul Harvey Weinstein.” The Blast, a celebrity news site and TMZ spinoff, followed a few hours later with an anonymously sourced article stating that Sitrick and Co. had filed for arbitration in February, after Weinstein’s bill went unpaid.

“We’re told,” the article said, in the most passive tense, “that even after legal documents were filed to collect from the disgraced producer, Weinstein and his reps ‘begged’ for the firm to continue working with him. We’re told Sitrick refused.” Was Sitrick already starting to write this story?

The Brentwood, Los Angeles, offices of Sitrick and Co. occupy the top floor of a black building on San Vicente. Airy and immaculate, they have the feel of a law firm, but with newsroom touches.

Brown leather armchairs are arranged in the reception area where a cable-news ticker rolls silently across a screen.

Sitrick’s private office is behind two security doors. There, he sat in yet another leather armchair, next to a large potted plant. Asked question after question about Weinstein, Sitrick dodged and dodged. He became a little more forthcoming when the approach took a more general tack.

So, hypothetically speaking, what were reasons he might drop a client?

Sitrick said he might take that step if the client treated his staff badly. He also said: “I’m not talking about any particular client, but one of the reasons we have resigned cases is people have lied to us or told us information that wasn’t true and we believe they knew it.”

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JULY / PROPERTY

ISSUE 151

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SYDNEY HIGH-END RETAIL BOOM CONTINUES Sydney’s luxury retail sector is booming and shows no sign of slowing down. Sales volumes of luxury brands such as Bulgari, Prada and Louis Vuitton have recorded year-on-year growth of more than 10 per cent in the past five years. Analysts believe part of this boom is due to luxury brands partnering with streetwear labels and capturing the youth market. Another factor is the rise of well-to-do tourists from China and India who contribute 30 per cent of sales to the high end stores.

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UPFRONT

The Design Museum Conor Purcell discovers a stunning addition to London’s cultural landscape

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ocated at the edge of leafy Holland Park in London’s Kensington, the Design Museum is one of the newest – and most welcome – additions to London’s cultural map. The move from its former home last year – a former banana ripening warehouse near Tower

Bridge – has given the museum a new lease of life. The space itself is breathtaking. The interiors were created by legendary designer John Pawson, while the overall structure was built by OMA, the architectural practice led by Rem Koolhaas. It is a reimagining of the building which once housed

the Commonwealth Institute, and is essentially a building within a building, as the original structure is protected.

Deyan Sudjic succeeded Alice Rawsthorn as director of the museum in 2006 and has overseen the move from the site at Shad Thames to Kensington. Sudjic’s

JULY / THE BUSINESS

background is in journalism – he set up the legendary architecture magazine, Blueprint, in 1983 and also directed the Venice Architecture Bienalle in 2002.

Open and clearly passionate about all forms of design, he is clear about what a museum such as this should do. “I think that design is a lens to understand the world around us and the world is moving faster and faster, and so I think someone needs to ask what the long term impact of all this is. What does it mean when Instagram, which cheekily stole Kodak’s logo, sold for a billion

dollars having twelve employees and Kodak vanished, having at one stage employed 80,000 people.”

Design is a multi-varied thing, something hinted at during the museum’s opening when Sudjic said that he hoped the museum would “unite the design tribes, but also speak to a wide audience, and make design a mainstream part of the conversation.”

“There are a lot of tribes in the world of design and fashion is one aspect that is important,” Sudjic says. “We do six exhibitions a year – and we get almost no state funding. This

250

The number (in thousands) of visitors to the museum in its first 12 weeks

“Design is a lens to understand the world around us and someone needs to ask what the long term impact of all the changes is”

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is a £10 million a year operation and we get £200,000 from the Arts Council. The rest we have to self generate, which does put you in touch with your audience, so we do need to have something every year which will attract people and get them to pay – in the case of our Ferrari exhibition – £16 a ticket.” So far, it’s paid off with 250,000 people visiting the museum in its first 12 weeks, the same number that visited in a year in its previous home.

It’s not hard to see the attraction. There is a big, airy atrium, around which walkways take visitors to the exhibition spaces, restaurant, educational facilities and offices. The light oak and the wide staircases emit a sense of calm – and this is very much a museum to explore

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at your leisure. With just 25 per cent of the gallery space given to the permanent collection, this is a space that can adapt to the things that fill it. The permanent collection, Designer Maker User, is an ode to the everyday objects that, through design, have changed our lives.

Take, for example, the wall of objects; objects – from the Technics turntable to the Ikea bag – which take on a new meaning when curated in this way. And this is not a museum of British design, featuring work from around the

UPFRONT / THE BUSINESS

world. “Design is borderless and how can you even say what British design is. The famous example is the iPhone which comes in a box marked ‘designed in California’ which was designed by a team led by someone who happened to be educated in Britain and made in a factory in China owned by Taiwanese with components from eight different countries.”

The current exhibitions include a tribute to Azzedine Alaïa, the iconic fashion designer, who passed away while planning the exhibition. It’s a celebration of

The inflatable duck that became the symbol of anti-Rousseff protests in Brazil in the Hope to Nope exhibition

his work, his relationship with his muses (including Naomi Campbell, who donated some of the dresses) and his process. In the basement, there’s the wonderful Hope to Nope: Graphics and Politics 2008-18, which shows how graphic design and technology have played a role in the major political movements of the past ten years. It includes a wall of magazine covers featuring Donald Trump, to North Korean propaganda stamps and the inflatable yellow duck that became a symbol of Brazilian protests

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against the then government of Dilma Rousseff.

Sudjic points out that a great museum needs to be a living, breathing thing, not just a placeholder for exhibits. Take for example the designers in residence programme, which provides a space for designers to hone their craft, supported by the museum.

That started in 2010, and each year sees a different theme – from Identity in 2013 to Support in 2017. There’s a library (filled with design books and magazines from around the world), rooms where local school children can learn about design, and, in the basement, an archive, which is currently being assembled.

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UPFRONT / THE BUSINESS

Integrity is also important, as Sudjic points out. “While the exhibition we did was about Ferrari, it was not a Ferrari showroom and it really did reflect the brand. We showed an extraordinary man, Enzo Ferrari through the personal positions he once had. We showed the process of design which is still physical in the case of Ferrari.

We showed a clay model which is actually crafted by Brits working in Modena where the factory is, we showed the wooden tools he used to get the shape right and we showed how the engines are made.

It all reflects the values we have.”

That hard work and thought has paid off. It won European

Museum of the Year earlier this year, topping a list of 40 from around the continent. And, as life becomes ever more digitised, the role of the design, and of places like the Design Museum, will become more important. “I think there has been a reaction to the digital explosion which has killed off so many physical objects. Humans are hardwired to appreciate tactile things – it’s not an accident that vinyl is making a comeback, it’s not an accident that people still value well produced book and magazines,” says Sudjic.

Add to that, well produced museums.

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UPFRONT / CLASSIC READ

Janesville: An American Story Amy Goldstein’s portrait of an American town devastated by the financial crash is both humane and far reaching

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harrowing, in-depth look at the death of one factory (a General Motors assembly plant) in one town – Janesville, Wisconsin – is sort of a field report of a farewell to a part of American life that will probably never return.

For decades, towns like Janesville were a symptom of America’s standing in the world – a measure of the country’s place at the top of the global food chain before globalisation and automation hit.

Janesville was always considered a bellwether for the American dream, a town of 65,000, almost completely reliant on the manufacturing industry. When the US economy did well, Janesville did well. When the US economy stuttered, so did Janesville. And, in 2008, there was quite a stutter. The economy was on the brink of collapse, and while the US government provided bailouts to the big banks, the countless blue-collar factory workers across the country weren’t so lucky. While some of the those jobs went abroad, many – thanks to automation – are gone forever, and so the future, as Goldstein outlines in her book, remains bleak.

The book also sheds light on the political efforts to reverse GM’s decision to close the plant, focusing on the current house speaker – and then local congressman – Paul Ryan. He begs GM’s chief executive, Rick Wagoner to think again. “Give us Cavaliers,” he begs.

“Give us pickups.” Any model other than the unpopular SUVs the plant is currently churning out, he means.

“You know you’ll destroy this town

if you do this!” Ryan’s entreaties are unsuccessful, but the passage sheds light on the impotency of politicians to do anything about the collapse of that section of America’s manufacturing sector.

Goldstein follows a cast of characters from the announcement in 2008 to 2013 and examines what happens when a factory that gave a town life, shuts down. This is a business book that ignores the boardroom, but focuses on the factory floor, on the men and women who make up a company’s workforce.

Much of the book focuses on the townsfolk’s attempts at retraining. The local job centre provided a test called JobFit. Applicants were measured on traits such as manual dexterity, maths skills, and sociability, and recommended for jobs or training courses. Some ended up working with special needs kids; others ended up as prison guards. Goldstein writes that for many former factory workers,

“Many of the factory workers didn’t know how to turn on a computer” the modern world of work was a mystery. “The most surprising fact about these arriving factory workers was how many of them didn’t know how to use a computer – didn’t even know how to turn one on.” When the students learned that handwritten papers wouldn’t be accepted, some of them dropped out. Some found work, some undertook gruelling commutes to work in GM plants hundreds of miles away, some never worked again.

The book ends on a mixed note – although Janesville’s unemployment rate is only at four per cent, there are huge social problems that have emerged as a result of the closure. Suicide rates doubled after the plant closed. Drug abuse skyrocketed – something that is mirrored across the Rust Belt as the newly jobless come into contact with cheap opiates. Goldstein is a fantastic writer, and she feels a real affinity with the people she meets, without ever lapsing into mawkishness. A book that illustrates the challenge large parts of America face if the country is ever to recover from the events of 2008.

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How big can a business become before it has to compromise its core values?

Gary Evans looks at the eco-warriors, activists, and punks who want to prove the market doesn’t always have to win

PUNKS IN THE BOARDROOM

PUNKS IN THE BOARDROOM

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ou and I are going into business together. We’ve got this mutual fr iend, you see. This fr iend wrote a novel, best novel I’ve ever read, but they can’t find a publisher. I know books and you know business, so we publish it between us, get a thousand copies made. They sell. So now you and I are going into publishing together.

The thing is: I’m a bit of a dreamer. I want us to publish the sort of writers the publishing industry usually excludes. Let’s pay them fairly. Our staff too. We’ll never cut corners on the quality of our books and we’ll use only the most sustainable materials. We’ll be carbon neutral – no, carbon positive. A percentage of sales must go to social and environmental projects. We’ll be outsiders. No matter how big we become, no matter how much it costs us, we will never compromise.

You’re more of a pragmatist. That’s not the way the world works, you say. Sooner or later every dreamer has to face the realities of life in business.

Yvon Chouinard’s outdoor clothing company was in trouble. The Patagonia owner took some of his staff on a pilgrimage to see the zen master of business management.

Chouinard found Dr Kami living on a large yacht in Florida. He was a small man with a big white beard, well into his 70s, but full of restless energy. He’d built his reputation as chief strategic planner during booms at IBM and Xerox. Dr Kami was supposed to be retired now, but he’d recently helped transform Harley-Davidson.

Dr Kami wore an open shirt with epaulets on the shoulders and a captain’s hat. He spoke in a squeaky voice with a thick accent of some sort.

Dr Kami asked Chouinard: Why did you get into business in the first place?

Chouinard was pioneering rock climber throughout the 1950s and 1960s, so pioneering the climbing equipment couldn’t keep up. So he made his own. He taught himself to blacksmith and sold reusable chrome steel pitons out the back of his car. He made little profit. He lived to climb, travelled constantly, and slept outdoors most of the year, but never owned a tent until he was 40.

For a while, he ate cat food.

“At a time when our economic system is failing us so profoundly, the virtuous practises of any one company aren’t going to make much of a dent in the problem”

Campers waiting in line to get a permit to climb Yosemite

In 1966, Chouinard Equipment opened its first blacksmith shop in a tin shed behind an old slaughterhouse in Ventura, California. Chouinard changed his output to promote clean climbing, which meant the climber left no trace of damage on the rockface. He got into clothes. The clothing company he called Patagonia.

By the end of the 1980s, Patagonia brought in nearly $100m in revenue. But Chouinard made ‘the classic mistake of a growing company’ and grew too quickly. Now he needed Dr Kami.

Chouinard stressed that, really, he was just a craftsman who happened to have a successful business. Really, he dreamt of buying a boat and sailing off into the sunset. He hadn’t sold up and retired already because he worried about the way the world was going. He needed to do something about it. Chouinard told Dr Kami about all the money he’d given away to good causes, that he wanted to make even more money so he could give that away too.

Dr Kami didn’t buy it. He said so with some colourful language. If Chouinard just wanted to give money away, he should sell the company, start a foundation. Chouinard worried what would happen to his company if he sold up.

Dr Kami put an end to the meeting. He said: “Maybe you’re kidding yourself about why you’re in business.” Chouinard later wrote, ‘It was as if the zen master had hit us over the head with

PUNKS IN THE BOARDROOM

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PUNKS IN THE BOARDROOM

Anita Roddick, the co-founder of the ethical company, The Body Shop. The Big Issue, which Roddick backed when it started up in 1991

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a stick, but instead of finding enlightenment we walked away more confused than ever.’

Naomi Klein put it another way. The author and capitalism critic wrote the introduction to Chouinard’s book Let My People Go Surfing. She said, ‘at a time when our economic system is failing us so profoundly, the virtuous practises of any one company aren’t going to make much of a dent in the problem.’

You and I are now the owners of a small but established publishing house. We’ve had a few successes, a few failures too. In fact, some of our authors are dragging us down. You say it’s time to cut them loose. Maybe some staff too. Our authors are mates, I say. We don’t have staff, they’re family. You’re not having any of it: are we a charity or a business?

John Bird started The Big Issue in 1991. He wanted the magazine to give people living on the streets a sustainable alternative to begging or worse. He’d been homeless himself. Vendors buy copies at half the cover price and sell them at their own profit or loss.

Bird got backing from Gordon Roddick, cofounder of the Body Shop, the ethical cosmetics company known for its social and environmental campaigns. The Big Issue struggled. Roddick told Bird the magazine must break even or he’d close it down.

Bird reduced the magazine’s size, the quality of it paper, and doubled the price. He made 10 per cent of his staff redundant. “I realised I needed to mix up our homeless employees with professional people,” Bird recently said.

Other publishers of street newspapers criticised the Big Issue for putting profits ahead of ethics.

Bird believes you can be both profitable and ethically correct. The magazine isn’t a charity but a social business, part campaigner and part provider. It must give customers what they want, but change them, and change the world. The Big

PUNKS IN THE BOARDROOM

The Big Issue is part social business, part campaigner and part provider. It has helped 100,000 homeless people earn millions

Issue has now sold more than 200m copies and helped almost 100,000 homeless people earn well over £100m.

Philosopher and cultural critic Slavoj Zizek made a career of arguing that what appears to be ethical, radical, or subversive is really just business as usual. Take Starbucks. The coffee’s expensive, he says, but every time you buy a cup money goes to third-world famers or clean-water programmes.

The more you buy, the more good you do. This narrative helps us get rid of the guilt of consuming.

So we consume more. Zizek says it’s “the ultimate form of consumerism.”

“Zizek confuses moral commitment with guilt,” says Ron Beadle, professor of organisation and business ethics at Northumbria University. But this moral commitment is growing so companies with an “ethical narrative” will do better. “The

problem then becomes,” Beadle says, “how to do this when operating at scale and so there is a real choice between the classic market demand for growth and the desire to both stay in control and maintain the “authenticity” of your business.”

You and I now own the fastest-growing publishing company in the country. We want our authors to reach an even bigger audience. You say we need investment. I worry investors mean compromise. Can a company change and stay the same? How do you sell more without selling out?

Laura J. Spence’s research shows that a company’s “social responsibility” is linked to the “personal reputation, values and integrity of the owner-manager.” The professor of business ethics at Royal Holloway, University of London, also found smaller company’s find it easier to uphold values because they’re less complex and therefore less bureaucratic. Shareholders and their need for “profit maximisation” generally add complexity and bureaucracy.

James Watt started craft brewery BrewDog with schoolfriend Martin Dickie in 2007. The aim: to oppose “the so-called insiders who have ill-served the people for so long with sub-standard products.”

They called their flagship drink Punk IPA. Watt knows how to drum up business. He once drove a BrewDog tank through London.

He projected a naked photo of himself onto the Houses of Parliament. When banks wouldn’t lend him money, he started crowdfunding programme called Equity for Punks and raised millions.

This year BrewDog appears on the list of Britain’s 100 fastest-growing private companies for a record sixth time. In April last year, an American private equity house bought 22 per cent of the company for £213m. That means BrewDog is worth nearly £1bn. Shortly after, Watt announced BrewDog will give away 20 per cent of profits every year – 10 per cent to staff, 10 per cent to charities.

Watt has spoken about a stock market listing, but only if he can do it his way: “We can IPO but not IPO the voting shares or float a smaller

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PUNKS IN THE BOARDROOM

percentage where no investor or pension fund can force us to do anything we don’t want to.”

Critics say his talk of capital injections and growth trajectories undermines his punk credentials: the outsiders now look like the insiders they set out to oppose. Watt says there’s nothing stopping you being a punk in the boardroom.

“If an “outsider company” is one that refuses to conform or comply with the status quo, then, yes, we are an outsider company. You shouldn’t have to choose between growth and good practice if you build your business on values that aren’t tied exclusively to cash. Success for us is a validation of our values, it is a verification of our belief that the market is thirsty for change.”

You and I go our separate ways. You decide to sell your share of our company. You want to focus entirely on social and environmental projects. I buy you out. I still believe I can make our industry better, that I can make the world better. Sooner or later, you say, every dreamer has to face the reality of life in business.

“If an outsider company is one that refuses to conform, then yes, we are an outsider company”

In 1968, Yvon Chouinard and climber friend Doug Tompkins drove an old Ford from California to southern Chile and Argentina, to the remote area called Patagonia. “It set the course for what we were going to do later in life,” Chouinard said.

Today, the outdoor clothing industry is worth over $4bn in the US alone. Chouinard knows most Patagonia customers are no longer people like Tompkins and himself. One name given to the company by critics is Patagucci.

Tompkins started two separate billion-dollar businesses. He’d already sold outdoor-gear company the North Face before the road trip. He’d completely cashed out of fashion brand Esprit by 1990. “I just realised,” he said, “what I was doing was making a lot of stuff that nobody needed and pushing a consumerist society.” Tompkins and his wife – Patagonia’s first CEO, Kris McDivit – went on to preserve land in Chile and Argentina, huge parts in the real Patagonia.

In 2015, Chouinard and Tompkins went on another trip to Chile – “just for old times.”

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Brewdog CEO James Watt

PUNKS IN THE BOARDROOM

Back in California, Chouinard’s bosses put together a plan to sort out sales and cash flow, and he took busloads of employee out to camp out and discuss his newly minted management philosophy: all decisions were to be made as if Patagonia would be in business for another one hundred years. The turnaround was quick.

The company famously started making fleece jackets out of plastic soda bottles in 1993. Ever since, Patagonia’s been an industry leader at finding more sustainable materials, improving labour practises, and reducing its environmental impact. The Chouinard family has taken little money from the company and gives one per cent of sales to good causes – over $100m so far.

The Chouinard family gives one per cent of sales to good causes – $100m so far

Tompkins’s kayak capsized in near-freezing water and he died. His legacy is the two million acres of wild land he saved by turning it into national parks. “No human has ever done this,” Chouinard said.

The North Face and Esprit are now public companies. Chouinard said: “Going public would be the death of this company. It’s impossible to be a public company and be responsible.” Patagonia is still private.

In 1991, with the company still failing, Chouinard considered a loan from the Mafia.

He eventually fired 20 per cent of the staff he considered family. He went on another staff pilgrimage, this time to Argentina: he took Patagonia to Patagonia and came up with a solution. Chouinard realised Patagonia’s problem was the world’s problem in microcosm. Patagonia, like the world economy, had become dependent on a growth it couldn’t keep up with.

North Face co-founder Doug Tompkins

Patagonia actively urges customers not to buy its products. You can buy second-hand gear on its website. The company owns the largest clothes repair factory in North America and makes videos on how to repair your old gear. If you mess it up, you don’t void your warranty.

Chouinard’s old tin shed in Ventura has grown into a dozen buildings: a cafeteria serving healthy food, on-site child care centre, no private offices. When the waves are good, staff take their surfboards down to the beach and make the hours up later.

You and I used Chouinard as our role model, Patagonia as a blueprint. We’re not the only ones.

Some of his more surprising visitors in Ventura include Coca-Cola and Walmart. They flew teams in to try and learn how to be better companies.

Naomi Klein agreed to write the introduction to Chouinard’s book not to endorse Patagonia but to endorse him: ‘the story of an attempt to challenge the culture of consumption that is at the heart of the global ecological crisis.’

Chouinard eventually found the answer to Dr Kami’s question about why he was in business: ‘I wanted to create in Patagonia a model other businesses could look to in their own searches for environmental stewardship and sustainability.’

He’s 79 now. He still tinkers in the old tin shed sometimes. He says when he dies they’ll stuff his body and mount him in there, do tours. It’d be a mordantly fitting tribute: see the man who proved you can do business without ever compromising your values, but first pay the entry fee.

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BLACK GOLD OF THE NORTH David Whelan examines if Norway can make the transition to a new, greener way of developing its remaining oil reserves

BLACK GOLD OF THE NORTH

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t is the worst kept secret in the world that Norway have had complete control of the vast majority of North Sea oil since 1963.

For 50 years, it has been a black treasure trove of energy and revenue – seemingly endless and managed to the highest degree.

Nowadays, Norway is undergoing a transformation and future-proofing itself against the inevitable: the day when the well runs dry. Currently, the country has a population of 5.2 million and an oil fund of over $1 trillion. But it was not always like this, and it may not be like this forever.

Wealth came to Norway almost by accident. It was in the 1950s when oil and gas was discovered nearby, in Groningen, Holland. This alerted prospectors to a new concept: if there were resources at the base of the North Sea, then perhaps there were some further north. At the time, most experts doubted that the Norwegian continental shelf would hold such pleasures.

Within 15 years, however, gas and oil were found in giant quantities, resulting in the Norwegian government declaring sovereignty over the shelf, preventing independent parties from exploration and production without a license.

Norway’s great transformation had begun – the state smelt great wealth, and a brighter future.

A rapid change occurred, culminating in 1969, where Ekofisk was discovered – one of the most bountiful fields to ever be discovered. Norway went from a country dependent on imports to self-sustaining. At the beginning of drilling, foreign interests dominated the shelf on license from Norway, but in 1972, Statoil was founded and, with it, the rule that 50 per cent of state participation is required within each production license. Statoil, which now trades under Equinor, was founded by the Storing, Norway’s parliament, as a PLC under the operation of the state in order to establish a domestic petroleum industry. With

Stavanger, Norway, the centre of the country’s oil industry

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this, Norway began to open the shelf gradually, and kept the ‘blocks’, where independent companies could mine, down to a limited amount to ensure competitiveness.

Another seismic change occurred in 1985, when Norway established that it would split its operations in two – 50 per cent going toward Statoil and the second to the State’s Direct Financial Interest (SDFI), allowing for Norway to own interests in gas fields, offshore activities and onshore facilities. Come 2001, these two initiatives allowed the Norwegian state to sell 15 per cent of the SDFI’s assets to Statoil, which was subsequently privatised and sold off. The revenue of this went into the oil fund.

All this had a great knock on effect toward the creation of the famous Norwegian welfare state. Since the discovery of natural resources on the shelf, Norway has gained the equivalent of $ 1,500,000,000,000 in today’s money, or, 12000 billion NOK. A quar ter of this has been reinvested by the state into the country – assisting the creation of such things as real estate, infrastructure, field development and exploration.

Nowadays, it contributes roughly a quarter of

the country’s value creation per annum, and it is estimated the state has a $1 trillion wealth fund for its population. The money transformed Norway into a world leader in healthcare, quality of life and happiness.

It reached this landmark in 2017 for the very first time. “I don’t think anyone expected the fund to ever reach $1tn when the first transfer of oil revenue was made in May 1996. Reaching $1tn is a milestone, and the growth in the fund’s market value has been stunning,” said Yngve Slyngstad, the fund’s chief executive at the time.

Despite this being an ongoing process for half a century, it is estimated that only 43 per cent of the total resources have been produced. Yet a large amount of the remaining resources lie in the Norwegian Sea and the Barents Sea – further north, closer to the Arctic. Remote, undeveloped and potentially dangerous to the environment.

“There’s ample evidence to conclude that all the sweet spots of Norway’s continental shelf have been found,” said Viktor Katona in OilPrice, sighting a recent round of licenses only being taken up by 11 bids when 24 blocks were available. Another issue, added Katona, is the fact

Top Left: Statoil CEO Eldar Saetre Above: The Scarabeo 8 deepwater oil drilling rig after being re-fitted at the Westcon AS yard in Olensvag

that drilling is moving north, which may breach point 112 of Norway’s constitution.

112 concerns the issue of management ‘based on long-term considerations, safeguarded for future generations’; during the great era of climate change, there are questions to be answered as to whether the current blocks on offer are truly considerate or sustainable. GreenPeace have demanded they stop, but there are 200,000 jobs on the line. There is a desire in Norway to disengage its assets from the shelf. The reasons for this are two fold – one, a genuine want to become green and two, most of the largest fields are being sucked dry.

“The Barents Sea has had its estimate of reserves doubled in recent times,” says Ozer Dindjer, an energy researcher. “They have yet to

No one expected the oil fund to reach $1 trillion when it was created in 1996

reach peak capacity in oil production, they are still exploring but the economy would be wise to start diversifying.” Norway’s interests with the Barents Sea rests on two fields – both named Johan – that will begin full production in 2019. Conservative estimations suggest that 660,000 barrels will be produced a day by 2022 in Johan Sverdrup, and 200,000 barrels in Johan Castberg. In other words, by 2022 these two fields are projected to produce half of Norway’s entire output alone.

“Norway is very reliant on oil exports and crude prices are still very far off their peak from 2008,” adds Dindjer, “and there are no signs of even reaching $100 a barrel anytime soon, despite claims from certain members of the government.

A lot of work has been put in to make these Johans profitable. Cost cutting measures, as well as underselling. It has helped increase demand – but we’ll have to wait to see.”

Other obser vers disagree. Petroleum and Energy Minister, Terje Soviknes, declared in May that it was “far from unlikely” that Norway may see a return to the $100 a barrel golden era. This rise in forecast has come thanks to output cuts by OPEC and Russia, among other factors. Dramatic investment cutbacks across the past few years will also see the cost of a barrel soar – though we won’t see that repercussion until next year.

Indeed, current barrels are going for $65 in 2018, which is an increase on the yearly estimate.

This has allowed the Norwegian state to consider its options. After a decade of decline in oil prices, Norway estimated that it would withdraw 72.3 billion NOK from its oil fund, but a healthy year has reduced that to a third, at 21.1 billion NOK. This is a positive for the fund – as it was only in 2016 when Norway, for the first time since the inception of the oil fund in 1996, was forced to withdraw money. It took out a rather sizeable 87.7 billion NOK to keep the economy on track. This was not part of the plan: the fund was meant for future generations, not today.

Of course, there is a touch of the man moaning about his diamond shoes being a little too tight about all this: few countries can boast an almost infinite amount of finance to turn to if things get a little dicey. Growing unemployment, along with an increasing number of migrants and refugees, slowed the economy down more than expected – and the state has had to offset this by dipping into its notorious ‘piggy bank’.

But the question of what the fund is truly for, or how Norway intends to spend it, provokes an interesting answer. The fund, as of today, is

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invested in 72 countries and 9,146 companies – it is, to put it in idiomatic terms, too big to fail. Or is it? It seems that from having to withdraw for the very first time in 2016, to reaching $1 trillion in 2017 to moving drilling further north in 2018, that the situation is more volatile than conventionally perceived. On recent estimate, there’s roughly $200,000 set aside for each of its 5 million residents.

“Norway’s investments reach beyond the state,” says Dindjer. “For example, it is one of the world’s greatest investors. It owns roughly 1.4 per cent of every listed company in the world.” It is a fund that boasts 55 per cent of its size due to savvy investments, including $30 billion in real estate, though the vast majority lies in equity. “Norges Bank, who operates the funds,” adds Dindjer.

“Recently suggested that the state gives up its shares in oil and gas, ironically to avoid the fund being dependent on their trade prices.” Currently, the fund has investments throughout the petroleum industry, roughly totalling $40 billion, – the largest with Shell – which feels like a rather smart (though cyclical) business direction. Sell the licenses to private companies to mine the shelf, receive revenue from the production, invest revenue into the private companies. A splendid set of affairs when the price of a barrel is up and the resources full to the brim, less so when forecasts look dim. Volatility is what the Norwegian parliament is desperate to avoid.

The main objective of the oil fund is, of course,

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so that future generations of Norwegians can benefit from the oil long after the resources have dried up. In May of this year, top Norwegian academics openly declared that removing the fund’s connection to oil and gas would be for the best – a large boon to Norges Bank before the government meets later this year to vote on it. In an open letter, academics from the University of Oslo declared that, ‘the advice given by Norges Bank has a solid scientific basis, and has broad support in both national and international academic communities.’

Despite the reliance on petroleum for financial security, the future for Norway appears to be green. In 2017, the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) suggested that one way for Norway to use its fund would be within renewable energy. “One way to achieve a good outcome would to be to invest in renewable energy, a fast growing segment of the global energy economy and one that is now widely seen as a mainstream sector with a positive investment outlook,” suggested their published report.

This was greeted with approval in Norway – with the government voting in April 2018 to allow the fund to be used to invest in unlisted renewable projects, like wind farms and solar parks. This opened up a new, greener future for Norway – previously, the state was banned from investing in unlisted infrastructure unless they were imminently seeking to be floated on the stock

Left: Yngve Slyngstad, chief executive officer of Norges Bank Investment Fund; Above: Norges Bank HQ in Oslo

Norway’s aim is to use the revenues from oil to become the ‘green battery’ of Europe, reinvesting in clean, renewable projects

exchange. This new motion allows the state to invest early, and to potentially reap financial gain – as well as helping to achieve global carbon targets.

Tom Sanzillo, Director of Finance at the IEEFA, estimates the value of the unlisted renewable energy market at $1 trillion, and described the change in policy as a “major turning point.”

This is in line with Norway’s stated aim to become a ‘green battery’ of Europe, with its abundance of

hydroelectricity and membership within the Offshore Grid Initiative, most of which has been funded by its petroleum interest. If Norway can now use its fund to invest in a variety of renewable initiatives, then it seems that oil may, after all this time, end up being the catalyst for a greener future.

One fear, voiced in a recent study by the University of Cambridge, is that such investments would induce a rapid evolution in renewable energy and associated technologies – resulting in a drastic decline in demand for petroleum as the ‘carbon bubble’ pops. The study suggested that the world is on the brink of a crash far worse than 2008 if oil becomes an outdated energy source, resulting in between one to three trillion worth of fossil fuel investments becoming stranded assets.

By 2035, the study suggests, oil prices will be so cheap that even the largest companies will not reap their revenues. The main target for all nations should be to reduce its energy efficiency ratings – or the bubble will burst.

The good news, however, is that Norway is apparently one step ahead of this. Sverre Alvik, Director of the Energy Transition research programme in DNV GL, predicts that global energy demand will flatten by 2050 – thanks to a natural drop in energy efficiency. In simple terms, the average human uses a bath full of energy daily when only a pint glass is required; re-education, technolog ical advances and renewable infrastructures will, hopefully, set that right over time. The DNV GL outlined a plan for Norway and the world that would, if followed, turn “waste into wealth” as a “multi-trillion-dollar opportunity.”

The aim, then, for Norway appears clear. From the bank to the shipping boat, the shelf seems to be part of the past, present, but not the future. If all goes to plan, assets will be sold and reinvested into green and renewable projects – in the obvious hope that there will be a world left for the descendants to use all the money their ancestors made.

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THE RISE (AND RISE) OF CONTENT MARKETING With brands looking to produce their own content, Anthony Tierney finds out if we have reached peak saturation

CONTENT MARKETING

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t used to be easy. Create a product or service. Advertise that product or service on television, radio or in a newspaper or magazine. A brand’s job was to interrupt the good content (radio shows, newspaper columns) with the advertising and hopefully make it funny, smart or interesting enough that people paid attention and bought your product.

These days, of course, the media landscape has utterly transformed. From Instagram Stories to HBO, from Facebook Live streaming to Amazon Prime, there are more ways than ever to consume content. And as the choice of content expands, so the attention span of the consumer contracts.

It takes a lot to get the average person’s attention and something even more compelling to keep it.

While once brands relied on traditional media to get access to an audience, these days more and more brands are producing their own content.

Why? Well, let’s go back in time to 1965 and the bedroom of an average 15-year-old schoolgirl.

In 1965, she would get her entertainment from television (three channels), magazines (if her local shop sold them) and newspapers (the one her father bought). That was it. In 2005, the average 15 year-old would have hundreds of channels of television to choose from (if she had cable), as well as the internet, with a plethora of sites devoted to whatever she is interested in (from celebrity gossip to horse riding). Magazines and newspapers still exist, in fact there are more of them then ever before. While the differences between the choices in 1965 and 2005 are huge, our 15 year old will still consume media created by big media corporations. Move to the present day and that has all changed. It’s very likely the 15 year old will consume content created and distributed by her peers (on the likes of Instagram and Snapchat) or by celebrities. It’s also very likely she won’t ever buy a magazine and if she does go online, it will be to consume information through social media rather than traditional websites.

Today, there are a multitude of ways brands can (and are) communicating with their audience.

From e-books to podcasts, social media to longform video, magazines to short films, the choice is endless. According to Cathy McPhillips, VicePresident of Marketing at the Content Marketing Institute, it’s an exciting time to be telling stories.

“It’s very exciting to see brands creating their own content, telling their own stories, connecting with their customers and building relationships

GE has used a variety of methods of getting the word out from more traditional ones such as sports sponsorship, to setting up its own podcast

rather than overtly selling to them. Don’t get me wrong… traditional advertising still has a role to play, but content marketing can complement paid advertising, and can even make paid more effective.” Many brands still don’t understand content marketing – and as McPhillips points out, the biggest difference between traditional marketing and content marketing is that “in content marketing, the focus is on the customer, not the product.” She adds: “it’s solving a problem for a customer. And in many instances, it may be a problem they didn’t know they had. It’s building that relationship, giving them facts, information, an emotional connection before they’re ready to buy, so when they are ready to take action, they already know, like and trust you.”

Contently’s head of Content Strategy, Joe Lazauskas, puts it even more succinctly: “You can’t just ram your message down the throats of a captive audience anymore. There’s a magical

CONTENT MARKETING

“We are now in a period where brands are setting up the infrastructure to ensure they are producing quality content”

escape pod buzzing in our pockets that has changed marketing forever. If you want to get people’s attention today, you need to offer entertaining, interesting, and useful content that people actually want.”

He adds: “Brands are beginning to understand that it’s impossible to create and distribute great content without a developing a strong, documented content first. I’ve watched content marketing evolve in brand marketers’ minds from an experimental top-of-funnel activity – blogs,

native advertising, social media, etc – to a core component of all marketing. I tend to agree with Gartner when they say that content marketing isn’t going to exist as a standalone industry in a few years, because all marketing disciplines will require great content to succeed. Right now, we’re in a period where brands are finally doing the dirty work of setting up strong infrastructures within their organisation to ensure that they’re producing quality content for all areas of their business.

It’s not easy. But I’m really encouraged by the commitment I’m seeing from the executive level.

As a result, I’d predict a huge explosion in content marketing investment over the next few years.”

There are lots of companies getting it right.

Take GE. It has launched two podcasts, which have resulted in more than eight million downloads. It also worked with the New York Times to create a branded video to launch the NYT VR app, which was distributed to more than 1.3 million Google Cardboard headsets. For GE’s head of media innovation, Alexa Christon, such endeavours make sense. “The whole point of that is not just to reach scale – it’s to say, ‘this is coming,’” Christon told Adweek. “This experience is going to happen. It will be in your homes. It will travel with you.” A key part of GE’s strategy is to keep its branding to a minimum. “It’s about thinking how this message is going to hit on some sort of emotional and logical driver [for consumers],” Christon said. “It’s not just storytelling – marketers should have more of a voice in product development and marketing should have more of a voice in the products that could touch consumers.” That was illustrated by the company’s experiments on the (now defunct) Vine platform. Vine was a video sharing platform where users could share six-second clips. GE hosted a series called ‘six-second science’ that proved hugely successful. “We learned that we needed to experiment in low-fi ways and get out there,” Christon said.

“We’ve been keen on not boiling the ocean, not going after scale, scale will come,” she said. “Scale comes in aggregate. We look at not just related behaviours but addicts and evangelists – when people are involved in science, are they more likely to do X? [It’s about] finding those places where we can look at the audience but reach them in a really unique way. It is not a science – it is an art.”

That reliance on technology looks set to continue. Take for example AI. Open Influence, a marketing company that focuses on matching

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“Content marketing will become more datadriven IT and marketing departments will work together”

Above: Penguin launched a quarterly magazine in 2014

brands to influencers, uses AI to tag content and figure out which influencers are generating the most engagement on various campaigns. “For our influencer marketing campaigns, we’re now able to index and analyse millions of pieces of content, making it visually searchable in real-time using Amazon Rekognition along with other AI tools,” Chief Technology Officer Micky Dionisio said.

“AI makes it possible to find relevant influencers based on their campaign objectives while effectively predicting and monitoring campaign performance.

This allows marketers to find them based on performance and ROI rather than who’s available.”

The Content Marketing Institute’s Cathy M c P h i l l i p s ’s a g r e e s w i t h t h i s. “ C o n t e n t marketing will become even more data-driven. IT departments and marketing departments will work hand in hand. Leading content marketers are way ahead of the curve on this.”

Live streaming is another technology that brands have embraced in recent years. While it’s no surprise that video has taken off the way it has (the average video generates 135 per cent greater organic reach than a photo), live streaming is even more powerful. A recent report stated that viewers spend eight times more on live video than on regular video. Cisco’s recent visual networking index repor t suggested that by 2019, video content will make up 80 per cent of all global internet consumption. Live streaming will play a huge role in that, allowing brands to interact with customers in real time. “Live streaming fosters the closest interaction possible to a real-life

conversation where consumers can ask questions and receive responses from brand ambassadors directly in real-time,” says ProSense founder and CEO, Stanislav Glukhoedov. “Its interactive nature gives consumers an increased sense of engagement that is unedited and authentic – an experience traditional social content like blog and photo posts cannot create.”

While technology has played a huge part in this new era of marketing, there are other ways to get your message out. Take Penguin, the storeyed British publisher, who, in 2014, launched The Happy Reader, a quarterly magazine. Each issue is broken into two: an interview with someone of note (everyone from Ethan Hawke to Jarvis Cocker has been featured so far), and an in-depth look at a Penguin Classic. The title clearly promotes Penguin’s back catalogue, but is done in an original way. They are not the only brand to embrace print. Airbnb launched a magazine called (rather uninspiringly) Airbnbmag last year.

The company learned from the mistake it made when it launched another title, Pineapple, a few years earlier. This time, it partnered with Hearst Magazines. According to Hearst Magazines Chief Content Officer Joanna Coles, “Airbnb is a travel disrupter, and with Airbnbmag, we will disrupt the travel-magazine category with a publication unlike any other on newsstands today.” A quick glance through the magazine would see that it’s similar to virtually every other travel magazine on the market. And therein lies the problem with content marketing – if you are going to do it, you have

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to do it better, or more innovative, then anyone else. GE does that, Airbnb doesn’t.

According to Contently’s Joe Lazauskas, the standards are rising. “I do think we’re really starting to see brands up their game. There are a few examples that come up at every content marketing conference that deserve love – Red Bull has transformed into the premiere extreme sports media company on earth. GE creates incredible content for science and engineering nerds. Chase creates incredibly helpful content on basically every financial topic you can think of. Patagonia produces gorgeous content that feeds its target audience’s love of adventure.

“There are some new ones that I really admire. Dell launched a new publication called Perspectives that won the Digiday Award for Best B2B Branded Content site. It provides fascinating

“I do think we are seeing brands up their game, the likes of Red Bull and GE create great content”

FIVE BRANDS WHO GET CONTENT MARKETING GE GE just seems to get content. The American multinational produces brilliant, original content from its GE Reports blog to its wonderful Podcast Theater (which is closing in on 10 million downloads). For a huge corporation, it maintains a savvy, innovative content arm, and one that has helped changed the public’s perception of it.

IKEA The Swedish furniture giant has never been afraid to try new things. Witness its Place augmented reality app, which let customers see how more than 2,000 pieces of furniture would look in their homes. Cutting-edge and extremely useful, this was content marketing at its best.

Clif Bar

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look at the future of technology. Their podcast, Trailblazers with Walter Isaacson, is also fantastic, and one of the most popular branded podcasts of all time. It was even nominated for a Webby.

Spotify is leveraging its data to create awesome sociological studies on how people interact with audio. One of my favourite case studies, though, is Marriott Traveler. It’s an awesome travel magazine, run by veteran journalists, with 40+ local editions, that drives millions of dollars in direct bookings for the company.”

This rise in quality can be partly attributed to the fact that consumers are far savvier than they were 30 years ago. They expect great, compelling content and they don’t particularly care who provides it. Thirty years ago if you had asked the average British television watcher to name a drama, the vast majority would have said Coronation Street and Eastenders. Nowadays, there are a myriad of world-class dramas with blockbuster budgets and top actors vying for your attention on the small screen (and on your laptop, phone and tablet). It’s harder than ever to get – and keep – consumers’ attention, which is why we have seen brands pivot into producing their own content. As more and more brands do this, not everyone will get it right, but for those that do, the spoils will be great.

This health food manufacturer has used real life people as the hook on which to hang its content strategy. It finds athletes and volunteers who live the Clif Bar life and tells their stories. With no calls to action and a focus on others, Clif Bar has been hugely successful in its content strategy.

Nike Nike’s Breaking campaign – which was an attempt to break a 2-hour marathon – was superb. More than 13 million people watched the race livestream online and there was an hour-long documentary in partnership with National Geographic. This campaign showed what a large-scale, complex marketing campaign could achieve.

Headspace The meditation and mindfulness app has always been a creative content marketer, with a big emphasis on visuals. The brand’s blog, The Orange Dot, is filled with beautiful illustrations – even the photos get the treatment. The playful illustrations reflect Headspace’s brand values and turn what could be a corporate blog into something much more compelling.

BY A THREAD

Jesse Onslow Norton examines the role e-commerce has played in hastening the demise of the traditional retail fashion giants

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igh streets were once the beating hearts of cities, but now they’re going quiet. From the glitz of the Ginza shopping district in Tokyo to the chic boutiques of the Avenue des Champs Elysées in Paris, the story is largely the same. High rent prices, low consumer demand and the rise of online selling have changed the way people shop and retailers have struggled to adapt to the times.

Nowhere has the decline of retail outlets been felt more sharply than in the home of consumer retail: the United States. According to global financial services firm Credit Suisse, as many as 25 per cent of US shopping malls are likely to permanently close by 2022 if footfall continues to drop.

At the same time, online sales have come to dominate the way people shop. In 2017, global e-commerce sales rose to an all-time-high of $2.29 trillion – more than doubling since it first hit $1 trillion in 2012. By 2021, it’s projected that online transactions will account for more than 16 per cent of all retail sales worldwide.

Unlike other sectors of the retail market the fashion industry has been slow to embrace digital sales, but that is beginning to change. While the dot-com boom of the 1990s saw an explosion of retailers launching e-commerce stores, it wouldn’t be until the mid-2000s that the first luxury brands started to come round to the idea that their customers might prefer to shop from the comfort of their own home.

Initially, most of the clothes brands to embrace online stores were fast fashion labels such as H&M, rather than high-end offerings. Today, online apparel sales are the fastest growing category of e-commerce, with a compound annual growth rate of 17.2 per cent, according to estimates from eMarketer. This

growth has primarily been driven by the gradual adoption of high-street fashion labels that once considered e-commerce to be incompatible with their business models.

One company that has drastically accelerated the adoption of online sales is Shopify. The Canadian e-commerce platform simplifies the process for brands to launch online stores and has facilitated more than $55 billion in global sales since launching in 2006. Of the 600,000 online stores that it hosts, fashion is now its number one vertical market.

Loren Padelford is the vice-president and general manager for Shopify Plus – the platform’s enterprise solution for high-volume sellers. He believes that online sales represent an enormous opportunity for the high-end fashion industry.

“When consumer s shop for fashion items they want choice and because those products are highly visual they can be highly successful on e-commerce stores,” he says.

“Online sales have had a profound effect on the fashion market. It’s no longer enough for high-end labels to have their store on the high street or on Rodeo Drive, they have to adapt to demand and be wherever customers want them to be.”

2017 was a par ticularly challenging year for fashion

More than 1,875 clothes stores closed across the US in 2017.

Nearly 10,000 will close in 2018

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“Customers still want to interact with the things they buy. We see a lot of online stores setting up pop-ups and short leases”

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retailers. More than 1,875 apparel stores closed across the United States alone. Market research firm Fung Global Retail & Technology projects that this year a further 9,452 stores will close – 53 per cent more than disappeared during the recession experienced by the US in 2008. Within just 12 months, some high street mainstays such as Abercrombie & Fitch were forced to close half of their bricks-and-mortar stores.

Despite these gloomy figures, the broader outlook for the global fashion industr y is surprisingly healthy. According to international business intelligence firm Statista, worldwide revenue from fashion sales is projected to rise from $481.2 billion to $712.9 billion by 2022. This growth will primarily be driven by the emergence of young, affluent consumers in China and other high-growth economies, but online sales are also boosting sales.

Stagnant wage growth across the developed economies has slowed demand for highend products across the board. According to McKinsey & Co., worldwide sales of luxury goods are expected to grow at a sluggish 3.4 per cent until 2020. But the firm also anticipates that e-commerce has the potential to triple sales of high-end fashion products over the same time period. So why is the picture so mixed?

“I think the retail market is definitely changing, but the statistics suggest that the narrative about the retail apocalypse isn’t the whole story. Human beings like interaction, they like touching and feeling things, they like being involved with other humans. What we see now is that consumers just want to shop on their own terms,” Padelford says. “I think there has to be room in the fashion industry for both kinds of experience. What we’re seeing is that a lot of brands who started online are now moving towards pop-up stalls and short-term leases on retail locations.”

One brand that has followed this trajectory has been the UK-based label Nor-Folk. The label sells childrenswear for parents that are frustrated by the lack of fashionable options available to their kids.

Instead, their products draw inspiration from the Scandinavian minimalism trend and are led by chic graphic design.

Fiona Burrage, the label’s founder and creative director, believes that initially focusing its brand around online sales gave it the opportunity to

Amazon has facilitated the huge growth in online shopping

BY A THREAD

Nor-Folk’s founder, Fiona Burrage

accelerate its launch and connect with a much broader audience than would have otherwise been possible.

“Everything we work with begins from digital design, so it makes sense to start shipping online and work back towards physical stores from there,” she says. “A lot of independent brands would traditionally start with a small boutique, but the cost of having a physical presence has gotten so high in recent years that it’s not really viable anymore. On the other hand, setting up an

e-commerce store is so cheap that it allows new ideas to really flourish and be competitive.”

When Burrage completed the designs for NorFolk’s first clothing range line she posted a promo image of the new line to Instagram. Within just 24 hours of making the range public she had secured thousands of pounds worth of orders and secured interest from wholesalers all across the country.

“It really blew all my expectations out of the water. At this point we hadn’t even registered a limited company, so we had to move quickly,” Burrage recalls. “It was a massive baptism of fire, but we were able to learn a lot very quickly. We found ourselves having to think about distribution differently to traditional brands and invested in our first warehouse. By focusing online we were able to scale our sales to both consumers and wholesalers at the same time.”

Nor-Folk’s range found success not just with regular parents in the UK, but with trendsetters from around the world. Hollywood actresses like Jaime King and Jessica Alba were soon posting images of their children wearing the brand’s apparel. From there, the brand’s success rapidly spread from continent to continent. Today, it’s largest market is also one of the most notoriously difficult for Western fashion labels to crack.

“A lot of indie brands would start with a small boutique, but the cost of having one has got so high in recent years, it’s not worth it”

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“It all started with a calendar I sent for free to a Japanese Instagram influencer. I didn’t think much of it at the time, but soon after a homeware store got in touch asking for three or four products and it snowballed from there. Before long we had department stores and clothes boutiques making quite healthy orders,” Burrage explains. “We had been told that the Japanese market was very skeptical of foreign brands, but their culture and aesthetic has a lot of similarities with the Scandinavian design that we draw our inspiration from.”

The success of Nor-Folk demonstrates the power of e-commerce to rapidly scale up independent brands and connect them with consumers they previously would have been unable to reach. But for the more established labels, the in-store experience is still seen as the most crucial way to preserve the prestige and exclusivity of their brand.

“It’s really only the high-prestige brands that can theoretically get away with not selling online now.

It’s an interesting strategy because they’ve still got the brand loyalty that’s taken decades to build up, and their fans will continue to support them and visit them in-store,” Padelford says. “That being

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said, high-end shoppers are becoming less tolerant of being forced into a single channel. I expect that we will soon see most of the luxury retailers start to branch out and create digital experiences that marry their physical stores with their online presence.”

Industry leaders including Chanel, Céline, Hermès and Dior have long been dismissive of the potential for online sales. Despite the challenges of the high street and the rise of e-commerce, these brands continue to restrict sales of their apparel to their physical stores. The only products they currently offer on their websites are their ranges of cosmetics and fragrances, but they are beginning to explore new ways of leveraging digital content in their sales strategies.

Last year, Burberry announced that it would start selling its apparel online for the first time.

Recognising that it lacked the digital expertise to successfully adapt its brand for e-commerce, Burberry partnered with fashion retail platform Farfetch to provide a consistent and digital experience to its customers. In return, Farfetch used its logistics infrastructure to deliver Burberry items to London-based customers within 24 hours of placing an order.

Brands such as Chanel, Hermès and Dior have long been dismissive of the potential of online sales

Burberry is just one of the high-end fashion brands who has started to embrace online retail

BY A THREAD

Farfetch have also made progress in converting one of high-end fashion’s most resistant brands to online sales: Chanel. The French fashion giant announced in February that it had invested in Farfetch and was keen to explore ways of bridging the online and offline experiences of its customers. In a statement about the deal, Chanel’s fashion president said: “We strongly believe that digital will never replace the feeling of being in a fitting room and trying on Chanel piece… We are not starting to sell Chanel on the Farfetch marketplace – I want to be very clear on that. Our position on e-commerce is the same.”

Chanel may still be unconvinced by the merits of listing its inventory online, but it’s clear that it is open to exploring digital opportunities to capture new customers. At the heart of this approach will be leveraging social media in more engaging ways and adopting the use of new technologies such as virtual and augmented reality.

“Retailers are beginning to embrace the idea that customers expect to be able to return items easily and at no cost”

“Technology is coming on really, really quickly and that’s going to provide new opportunities for high-end fashion. There are a lot of sites doing much more detailed fit analysis than before, which helps customers get the right size item,” Padelford says.

“Retailers are also beginning to embrace the idea that customers expect to be able to return items easily and at no cost. If they can’t expect to return a product that they can’t feel in their hands, then they won’t have the confidence to buy it in the first place.”

Returns rates are a consistent problem for e-commerce stores across all types of retail, but it’s particularly challenge for high-end fashion sellers. Some high-end retailers report that as many as 50 per cent of all women’s fashion items that are purchased online ultimately end up being returned. To address this, labels like Rebecca Minkoff in New York have heavily invested in digital tools that allow customers to try on their clothes in virtual reality.

Whether gimmicks like augmented reality are enough to substitute the touch of fabric or the fit of a dress remains to be seen, but fashion retailers will need to overcome these challenges if they are to continue competing for online sales. The high growth

rate of e-commerce apparel sales has attracted the attention of more seasoned online sellers who will be keen to outmaneuver the high-street brands.

In September 2017, Amazon announced its first foray into fashion with the launch of its very own brand. The online juggernaut has poached a small team of designers from more established labels and has been mining its customer data to put together a womenswear collection this year.

Bricks-and-mortar may be losing their buzz as commerce shifts online, but the world of fashion continues to break new ground. The high streets may be getting quieter, but with the help of new technologies the people walking them will be better dressed than ever before.

A customer browses the Nordstrom men’s store in Manhattan

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LAND GRAB Lauren Razavi examines whether Monaco’s land reclamation project will solve its housing shortage

LAND GRAB

M

onaco is perhaps best known for its role in three James Bond movies – in other words, for its romantic vistas, fast cars and luxurious casinos. Over the next decade, however, the tiny city-state is undertaking an ambitious urban expansion project that could see it gain a new reputation.

Portier Cove is an in-progress neighbourhood on the seafront that will offer 120 state-of-theart residences including apartments of 4,300 square feet and houses of 11,000 square feet. With developers paying close attention to the project’s sustainability credentials, sea water pumps will be used to heat and cool the buildings, while almost half of the new district’s energy will come from solar panels. The development also includes a harbour for 30 ships, a seafront promenade, landscaped parks, and an extension of conference and cultural centre the Grimaldi Forum.

Realising this project involves more than just the usual concerns of a city sprawling beyond its boundaries, however. Monaco is landlocked by France on three sides and has so far resisted the temptation to tarnish its world-class views by adding high-rise towers to its skyline. The need to extend its boundaries but having nowhere to do

68 Right: Monaco's streetscape Far Right: Prince Albert II of Monaco and Princess Charlene of Monaco

LAND GRAB

so has led the city to expand not upwards or into French territories, but into the Mediterranean Sea instead. Prince Albert II, the city-state’s monarch, signed off on the project in 2015 with the intention of ensuring that Monaco could continue to attract super-rich migrants from nations across the world.

The Por tier Cove development involves reclaiming six hectares of land from the sea. In doing so, it will increase the micro-state’s size by almost three per cent to 208 hectares – still less than two thirds of the size of Central Park in New York. The land reclamation scheme will cost approximately $2bn (£1.5 bn) and add 120 luxury homes to Monaco’s real estate market. These new-build properties will come with a significant price tag of more than $100,000 per square metre, making the apartments more expensive than other major luxury developments such as 15 Central Park West in Manhattan and One Hyde Park in Central London. So what has prompted the pursuit of such an ambitious and expensive land reclamation project by one of Europe’s smallest – yet wealthiest – destinations?

The municipality finds itself in the midst of a housing crisis as demand for luxury real estate in the city-state continues its rapid rise. According to the state statistics organisation IMSEE, not a single new-build property went on sale in Monaco

Monaco faces a housing crisis. Not a single new-build property came to market in 2017

in the year 2017. Land reclamation – a practice the micro-state is already familiar with, having completed a series of such projects between the end of the 19th century and 2002 – is viewed by authorities as the only option to accommodate the thousands of additional millionaires expected to move to the principality over the next decade.

“An increasing number of people want to be in Monaco primarily for the fiscal advantages because it is a relatively low tax threshold location,” says Edward de Mallet Morgan, prime partner at the global real estate firm Knight Frank.

“Whenever there is global instability or change in terms of politics and economics, the super-wealthy and even those who are moderately wealthy

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look to ensure they are paying as much tax as they need to, while still being able to facilitate their work, lives and businesses.”

In other words, migration to Monaco is driven primarily by generous tax laws and a reputation for financial secrecy. Residents are not required to pay any personal income, with the exception of French nationals, who are still subject to taxes in neighbouring France. “There’s also inheritance

"Most of those coming to buy property in Monaco are used to much higher quality of accommodation than Monaco currently provides"

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tax,” de Mallet Morgan says. “Those who are wealthy and aging in other parts of the world are looking for opportunities to preserve their wealth for future generations. Monaco can help them preserve that wealth and capital to help provide for future generations of their family.”

Obtaining a residency permit involves renting or owning property in Monaco, depositing at least €500,000 in a local bank account, and living in the city-state for three to seven months each year. Corporate taxes are also low, as most of the principality’s income arises from taxes on tourism, gambling, and the sale of goods and services. Once you are a resident, there is generally no inheritance tax payable between relatives such as parents and children in Monaco or countries of origin.

“In terms of tax havens, Monaco is viewed very favourably from a lifestyle and geographical perspective. You’ve got the French and Italian Rivieras right there on your doorstep, you’re a helicopter ride from the Alps, and there’s plenty of opportunity to explore the Mediterranean in a yacht,” de Mallet Morgan explains. “Security is also a factor; Monaco is incredibly safe. It has more police per person than any other country in the world. It’s a relatively sensible timezone too, with easy access to most European capital cities.” He adds: “Monaco also has the highest average life expectancy in the world. There are lots of reasons why Monaco is an interesting and attractive place to live.”

Monaco is home to fewer than 40,000 people in total, yet 35 in every 100 residents of the principality are millionaires, with 1,220 of them being ultra-high net worth individuals

worth more than $30 million. Notable residents include racing driver Lewis Hamilton and retail magnate Sir Philip Green, but many of those who call Monaco home are wealthy but stay away from the public eye. Research by Knight Frank estimates that 2,700 new residents will join them by 2026, bringing the total number of millionaire residents to more than 16,000. Their real estate expectations, however, are unlikely to be met without projects like Portier Cove.

“More and more people want to live in Monaco, and the net result is the need for more accommodation. Monaco is principally an apartment marketplace and most of the city’s mid-rise towers were built in the 1950s. That means they’re not necessarily the most beautiful properties in the world and lot of the infrastructure

Above: The Grand Prix is one of the hightlights of the social calendar Right: A yacht docked in Monaco's bay

LAND GRAB

is quite dated,” says de Mallet Morgan. “Given that Monaco has the most expensive real estate in the world, most of those coming to buy property are from places like London, New York and Paris. If they’re used to living in residential towers, generally speaking they’re used to a much higher quality accommodation than Monaco currently provides.”

It is hoped that the Portier Cove development will help Monaco overcome this challenge and bring its new property offerings up to higher, global standards. Despite huge efforts to brand the project as a future-facing eco-neighbourhood – complete with higher specs than any other real estate currently available in Monaco – the project has come under fire for its potentially negative impact on marine life in the Mediterranean. Developers say that all the appropriate precautions have been taken to minimise harm to marine species and prevent damage to the biodiversity of the area, but environmentalists and other experts argue that

A BRIEF HISTORY OF LAND RECLAMATION IN MONACO Over the past 150 years, Monaco has completed a breadth of urban expansion projects that involved reclaiming land from the sea. The majority of them have been initiated by the city-state’s authorities and they have mostly been funded using public money. Since it first reclaimed land from the sea in the late 19th century, Monaco has expanded its area by more than 20 per cent. The largest of these projects to date has been the Fontvieille expansion in the 1970s, which involved reclaiming land to construct an industrial park. Portier Cove will be even bigger and marks the first time such a development has been financed entirely by the private sector in Monaco.

• • • • • •

Coastal Expansion 1880 La Condamine Expansion 1960 Larvotto and Monte Carlo Expansion 1965 Fontvieille Expansion 1970 La Condamine Expansion 2002 Portier Cove 2025

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it’s inevitable for such a large offshore project to negatively impact its surroundings.

Bouygues Travaux Publics, the French construction firm leading the development of Portier Cove, has said that local water quality is being monitored each day by an independent team of scientists who operate on-site. Before the building work began, the company moved protected flora and fauna to local marine reserves and insulated the work site with submarine screens.

There are also plans for 3D-printing artificial coral reefs and other habitats later in the project to replace those that are lost or disrupted. Monaco’s reigning monarch Prince Albert II has a reputation for his dedication to sustainability, and has kept a close watch over standards at Portier Cove.

So will the Portier Cove development set Monaco up for a bright and prosperous future, or turn out to be a costly white elephant? Jonathan Smales is executive chairman of Human Nature, a sustainable urban development firm that works on projects across Europe. He believes this question is largely irrelevant.

"The wealthy will continue to get wealthier and look for havens for that wealth.

Monaco is the most famous haven and will thrive"

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“The city-state’s future is almost certainly as a tax haven for astonishingly wealthy people, and they’ll continue to drive property demand there. The super-rich are Monaco’s economic underpinning and they’re not going anywhere,” he explains. “If the project turns out to be a costly white elephant, they can almost certainly afford it, so I don’t think it matters. The wealthy will continue to get wealthier and increasingly look for havens for that wealth.

Monaco is arguably the most famous one in the world, so it will continue to thrive.”

The land reclamation stage of Portier Cover is expected to be completed by 2020. As well as keeping up with the desires of its incoming residents, Monaco’s urban expansion project may well set a new benchmark for the practice of land reclamation – an area of increasing importance as the effects of climate change are felt worldwide.

“With climate change and sea level rises worldwide, we’re certainly going to see more and more of a need for land reclamation. The kind of engineering skills and methodologies that are used

in land reclamation schemes will likely be deployed for flood defence in existing settlements,” says Smales. “I’m sure there’ll be a new raft of initiatives to build and reclaim land as that happens.”

In undertaking this project, it seems clear that Monaco is working to secure its long-term future as the super-rich’s destination of choice. But the principality also has the opportunity to share its expertise in land reclamation with urban centres across the globe. By sharing its knowledge, it could play a vital role in helping more cities secure their futures in the face of climate change.

Whether this potential will be realised remains to be seen, but in looking after the needs of its population today, Monaco could lead the world in designing the cities of tomorrow.

With Monaco set to welcome nearly 3,000 new residents in the next few years, the need for new property has never been greater

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Capital gains A slice of restrained luxury in the heart of London

JULY ISSUE 151

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LIVING / HOTEL

THE LANGHAM LONDON

WHERE TO STAY

London

PRICE From $500 per night

langhamhotels.com

 LHR

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O

ne of London’s first luxury hotels when it opened in 1865, The Langham London – thanks to a recent renovation – manages to combine understated luxury and a timeless feel.

With 380 rooms, it’s not small, yet there’s an intimacy about The Langham London that many smaller hotels can’t match.

One of the highlights is the underground Chuan Body + Soul spa which features sauna and steam rooms, a very well equipped gym and a 16-metre swimming

“There’s an intimacy about The Langham London that many smaller hotels can’t match”

pool. After a workout, head upstairs and enjoy a cocktail at the Artesian, regarded as one of the best cocktail bars in London. For something more lively, there’s The Wigmore, a stunningly fittedout take on the traditional British pub.

On the third floor, there’s The Langham Club, the perfect place to work, relax or network. Despite being in a city filled with world-class hotels, The Langham London manages to stand out: a home away from home in the heart of the city’s West End.

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FROM THE CONCIERGE

SEE

GO

EAT

One of London’s most interesting destinations, the Natural History Museum is filled with more than 80 million items, showcasing the wonders of the natural world. The perfect place to spend a wet London morning.

Regent’s Park is only a few minutes’ walk away and is one of London’s great parks. There’s a variety of different gardens dotted throughout, as well as London Zoo and a host of al fresco cafes for those long summer afternoons.

London is a foodie paradise, but you don’t have to look far for culinary bliss.

Roux at the Landau serves up gourmet French cuisine. The central counter adds a social element to proceedings and is perfect for solo travellers.

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JULY LIVING / INVESTMENT

ISSUE 151

Vintage airplanes Big returns are no longer pie in the sky

1

As with all investments of this type, the rarer the better. Currently, German World War II aircraft are popular, but their price reflects that.

2

The market is buoyant right now, but that can change and in five year’s time an investment made today might not pay off. Be patient and enjoy owning a piece of history.

3

Look for aircraft that need to be restored. The worse condition it is in, the cheaper it will be to buy, although restoring a vintage airplane is not for the faint of heart, and costs can run high.

L

ike all vintage investments, the aeroplane market goes in cycles. Different eras wax and wane in popularity, with World War II fighter aircraft currently very popular. An LA-based company, Platinum Fighter Sales, recently told Barron’s that they sell 25 vintage fighter jets every year. Much of the market is being driven by hedge funds who buy in $4 to $5 million blocks, which is enough to drive the market prices up. The exchange rate also favours American investors, with Spitfires available for under £2 million (around $2 million) which is a historically low exchange rate.

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LIVING / STYLE

What to pack ... for summer weather in Nice and beyond

Average temp

25°c

Athens Malta Madrid Istanbul

ALSO WEAR IN...

28°C 26°C 25°C 23°C

NICE JULY

Chance of rain: 3%

WHAT TO SEE

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PROMENADE DES ANGLAIS Is there anything better than sitting on a promenade on the French Riviera, people watching? Le Prom, as its affectionately known, stretches five miles around the Bay of Angels, dotted with palm trees and pergolas that keep the sun off.

Stop for a morning coffee, or an

afternoon drink and watch the locals – and the visiting glitterati – amble past. It’s particularly rewarding at sunset. If you want something more stimulating, head to the wonderful Matisse Museum on Cimiez Hill, north of the centre of the town, which houses one of the largest collections of his work in the world.

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ACCESSORIES

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2

Chopard Grand Prix de Monaco classic racing chronograph watch $7,951 neimanmarcus.com

4 3

Coach brown leather wallet $524 harveynichols.com

5

Berluti Volume Mm leather backpack $3,245 mrporter.com

1. Dolce & Gabbana varsity striped cotton-blend sweatshirt $817, matchesfashion.com 2. Amiri skinny-fit crystal-embellished panelled distressed stretch-denim jeans $1,630, mrporter.com 3. Oliver Spencer pale pink cotton and linen-blend shorts $168, harveynichols.com 4. Balenciaga oversized logo-print denim shirt $832, matchesfashion.com 5. Tom Ford gianni twist-front leather loafer $2,033, neimanmarcus.com

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LIVING / STYLE

What to pack ... for summer weather in Cebu and beyond

Average temp

30°c

Bali Tokyo Kuala Lumpur Singapore

ALSO WEAR IN...

27°C 29°C 29°C 30°C

CEBU JULY

Chance of rain: 35%

WHAT TO SEE

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THE CHOCOLATE HILLS A remarkable geological formation of more than 1,000 hills spread out over an area of 50 square kilometers. The hills are covered in grass that turns brown in the dry season, which explains the name. In recent years there have been some tourist developments to take advantage of the interest in the area.

There’s the Chocolate Hills Complex, which is a government-owned resort and viewing platform. Eighteen kilometers away there’s a mountain resort called Sagbayan Peak which is equally popular. Of course, no visit to Cebu should be made without checking out the world famous tarsier, which is probably the cutest animal in Asia.

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1. Elie Saab cape-sleeve silk-crepe gown $3,300, matchesfashion.com 2. Brunello Cucinelli embellished cotton-blend jersey sweatshirt $1,884, net-a-porter.com 3. Delpozo colour-block peplum cotton top $696, matchesfashion.com 4. Rag & Bone moss high-waisted denim mini skirt $232, harveynichols.com 5. Valentino Garavani rockstud slingback 100mm pump $1,071, neimanmarcus.com

2

1

3

5

ACCESSORIES

4

83 Linda Farrow oversized round-frame rose gold-tone mirrored sunglasses $1,123 net-a-porter.com

Bottega Veneta intrecciato continental leather wallet $756 matchesfashion.com

Niquesa dance ring amethyst and sapphires $5,971 harveynichols.com

LIVING / FOOD

Pole Position

W

84

hen Wojciech Modest Amaro arrived in Warsaw in 2003, he found a local food scene that was anything but. “Most of the restaurants were serving ‘international’ cuisine’ – a rather accidentally designed menu from all over the world with no real philosophy and skill behind it,” says the 46-year-old chef and winner of Poland’s first Michelin star. Having acquired his own skills and philosophy in London, Amaro came back to Poland determined to restore confidence in the local food culture, and to help his homeland rediscover its cuisine.

The course of modern European history had not been kind to Polish gastronomy. First there was the devastation of World War II, followed

by Soviet occupation and the ravages of communism. The end of the Cold War brought new prosperity, and with it came the desire to reboot the Polish identity.

As is so often the case, food seemed a good place to start.

“From my perspective, Poland’s return to the free market and democracy had two significant steps,” says Amaro. “The first was concentrating all efforts on building our life to the standard of the ‘modern world’. The second was from the

WARSAW, POLAND

James Brennan meets Poland’s first Michelin star winner and explores a food scene on the rise

 WAW

moment my atelier was awarded its first ever Michelin star in Poland in 2013.”

Modest only in name, the chef certainly had an impact on Warsaw with his hyperseasonal Polish menu at Atelier Amaro, which retains its single star. Exploring the natural environment across sea, river, field and forest, Amaro uses ultra-modern techniques to showcase Poland’s unique ingredients with the aim of bringing a traditional cuisine into the 21st century.

It’s a familiar trope in contemporary gastronomy. Ever since the New Nordic revolution, it seems every region or country has been looking to redefine its culinary identity. Poland is no exception, although you might not know it. For many outside of Central Europe, Polish cuisine is still largely unfamiliar beyond, say, pierogi and vodka (yes, vodka originated in Poland). Yet there’s plenty more to discover here thanks to a growing band of chefs who are unashamedly reviving a forgotten food culture.

“In the past seven years Warsaw’s culinary scene has grown enormously due to the fact that Polish chefs returned to their homeland with experience and knowledge gained abroad,” says Amaro.

“The open market and the dynamic growth of the Polish economy has seen the rise of many businesses and

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LIVING / FOOD

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companies related to our industry.

There’s a greater awareness of local products and seasonality, an ecological approach and more general media attention given to this subject.”

Amaro’s TV appearances as the star of Poland’s version of Hell’s Kitchen and as a juror on Top Chef have brought him fame and notoriety in Poland. But there are other talented chefs in Warsaw who are equally at home away from the limelight.

Robert Trzópek honed his skills with big names like Raymond Blanc at Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons in Oxford and Rene Redzepi at Noma in Copenhagen. But his restaurant near the University of Warsaw is called Bez Gwiazdek, which in English means ‘Without Stars’.

“We wanted to underline the casual ambience of this place, without a fine-dining atmosphere,” says Trzópek. “We also wanted to share that we are no stars because there are too many cooks who behave as big stars with big egos. We say: we are no stars, we simply cook for people.”

Bez Gwiazdek is indeed an unassuming sort of place with neither tablecloths nor waiters (the cooks serve the food and two sommeliers serve the wine). Its focus is on modern interpretations of traditional dishes from each of Poland’s 16 regions, representing a new region each month.

It is an approach that has led to many interesting discoveries, as Trzópek explains: “From the Podkarpackie (Subcarpathia) region we took a dish called ‘fujarki pastusze’, meaning ‘shepherds’ pipes’. In its original version it is tubes of pastry with a champignon filling. So we made cigarette pastry tubes, filled them with champignon mousse and served it with dried wild mushroom broth with mushroom froth – it looked like a cigarette with cappuccino.”

Perhaps most surprising for Trzópek was discovering obscure regional dishes otherwise considered by local people to be standard and widespread. “I asked my friend from Opole what he’d eaten there and he answered ‘nothing special’.

I knew from research there were regional dishes called ‘buchta’ (a sort of yeast pastry) and ‘Silesian heaven’ (pork with fruit), so I asked him about them and

Wojciech Modest Amaro

he confirmed, but was very surprised we didn’t know them in the Mazovia or Pomerania regions. He was sure the whole of Poland eats like this.”

Would Trzópek consider changing the restaurant’s name if Michelin awarded it a star? “There is a very limited possibility that we get a Michelin star. Casual places like ours in Poland are usually not even considered,” he says. “But if we get it, we will be the first ‘Without

Stars’ restaurant with a star. Let’s test Michelin’s sense of humour.”

Stars or no stars, Varsovian diners have plenty to smile about, according to local food blogger Joanna Mróz, owner of the popular Warsaw Foodie website.

She lists chef Damian Wajda’s interwar inspired Polish cuisine at Bistro Pod Sowami, and Sandra Kotowicz’s fresh take on pierogi at Le’pięamong the highlights of Warsaw’s burgeoning

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“People outside Poland have no idea about its food. But we have a growing cheese and wine movement but we need local recipes as well” food scene. But still, she recognises the struggle for international recognition.

“From my experience, people outside of Poland have almost no connotation to Polish food,” says Mróz. “Pierogi, vodka, bigos and schabowy are probably the most recognisable dishes. But Polish cuisine is extremely differentiated. We probably use more wild mushrooms than anyone else, and most of them don’t even have a name in English.

We have both fresh and sea water fish.

We have Polish farmers making cheese, which is an extremely strong movement, dynamically evolving in the last few years, exactly the same as Polish wines,

which are becoming better and better.”

But is it too early to speak of a revolution in Polish food? Mróz thinks so. “We are just about to define the new Polish cuisine, but it hasn’t happened yet. We can see quite a number of Polish chefs with great Michelin-star experience coming back to Poland and cooking Polish food. They differ in styles and influences, they see the cuisine differently, but the synthesis of their influences will be very soon visible. The definition has to happen though, as we still cannot answer the question ‘what is New Polish cuisine?’ Local produce itself is not enough. Recipes are needed too.”

As far as Wojciech Modest Amaro is concerned, greater education will drive progress. His latest project, called Forgotten Fields Farm, is a far cry from the bright lights of the TV studios, and is dedicated to reviving old Polish ingredients and varieties, as well as creating new techniques and recipes. “When your knowledge grows, so does your appetite,” he says. “People have become more and more interested in healthy food, traceability of ingredients, local products, forgotten traditions and passionate producers. Food is no longer just a fuel.”

Does he expect more accolades from Michelin in the near future? “I am always on the tip of my toes, always hungry to learn, to discover, to progress. My major objective is progression,” he says. “This should lead me to a second star in the coming future – it’s my ambition but not a plan.” Spoken like a true star.

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LIVING / ART

A master, reimagined A spectacular Klimt exhibition in Paris plays with the form

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A

stunning, immersive exhibition of Gustav Klimt’s work from 1862 to 1918, this exhibition has proven a hit since it opened in April.

Hosted in a former foundry in Paris’ eleventh arrondissement, the exhibition will feature 140 video projectors and

a spatialised sound system, as well as more than 3,000 moving pictures throughout a 30-minute sound and light show. While purists may scoff at such an approach, the popularity of these sound and light shows is unquestioned.

Visitors walk ‘through’ the paintings, with characters highlighted and the

music matches the tone of the era. Each sequence focuses on a different time in Klimt’s life and work, from his political posters to the his focus on women.

For anyone interested in Klimt and his work, this is a must.

Atelier Des Lumieres, 38 Rue Saint-Maur atelier-lumieres.com

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Clockwise from opposite: A selection of images from the exhibition and the entrance to the Atelier Des Lumieres, below

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LIVING / COLUMN

The Perfectionists

By Simon Winchester

T

he man who by the common consent of the engineering fraternity is regarded as the father of true precision was an 18th-century Englishman named John Wilkinson, who was denounced sardonically as lovably mad, and especially so because of his passion for metallic iron. He made an iron boat, worked at an iron desk, built an iron pulpit and ordered that he be buried in an iron coffin. Still, a case can also be made that “Iron-Mad Wilkinson” as he was widely known, had predecessors who can lay near-equal claim to parenthood. One of them was a nameless craftsman who worked in Ancient Greece some 2,000 years before Harrison, and whose triumph of precise craftsmanship was discovered in the Mediterranean at the turn of the last century by a group of fisherman.

The Greek team, diving close to the island of Antikythera, found sponges in abundance, as they usually did. Yet this time they found something else: the spars and tumbled beams of a wrecked ship, most probably a Roman-era cargo vessel. Among all the broken wood, they came upon a massive trove of marvels of art and luxury, alongside, more mysteriously, a telephone directory-size lump of corroded and calcified bronze that was almost discarded as being of little archaeological significance. Except that after sitting for two years in a drawer in Athens, overlooked and yet all the while patiently drying itself out, the sorry looking lump fell apart. It sundered itself into three pieces, revealing within, to the astonishment of all, a mess of more than 30 metallic and cleverly meshing gear wheels. One of the wheels had a diameter almost as wide as the object itself; others were no wider than a centimetre. All had hand-cut triangular teeth – the tiniest wheels had as few as 15; the enormous ones had a then-inexplicable 223. It looked as though all the wheels had been cut from a single plate of bronze.

Astonishment at the discovery quickly turned to disbelief, to scepticism to a kind of puzzled fearlessness among scientists who simply could not believe that even the most sophisticated of Hellenistic engineers had ever been capable of making such a thing. So, for almost half a century, this machine – if that is what it was – was locked away again, secured and contained like a deadly pathogen. It was given a name, the Antikythera mechanism, for the island, off which it was found. It was not until 1951 that Derek Price, a young British student of the history and social impact of science, won permission to take a closer look, and for the next two decades he subjected the relic, with more than 80 bits and pieces, to X-rays, probing secrets that had been hidden for more than 2,000 years. Eventually, Price decided that the work was much more complex and important than a mere astrolabe – it was more likely to be the heart of a mysterious computing device, one that had been made in the second century BC. Price’s work was limited by the inability to peer inside the device. All that changed with the invention of the MRI, which led, in 2006, to the publication in Nature, of a more detailed analysis. The researchers concluded that it was the remains of a miniaturised mechanical device. It was a device that “calculated and displayed celestial information, such as the phases of the moon and a luni-solar calendar.” Investigators concluded that the device was very well made, “with some parts constructed to accuracies of a few tenths of a millimetre.” By that measure alone, it would seem that the device could lay claim to being the first precision instrument ever made. Except there is a flaw in the claim.

The device, as model-tested by legions of fascinated modern analysts, turns out to be woefully, shamefully, uselessly inaccurate.

There was disbelief among scientists who could not believe this machine had been made

90 From The Perfectionists by Simon Winchester © 2018. Reprinted courtesy of Harper, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers

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