2015 commissioning: profiles

As she prepares to auction off part of her majestic archive of dresses, Bazaar introduces DAPHNE GUINNESS to artist MAT COLLISHAW to discuss fashion as art, and the foundation she has set up in memory of her late friend Isabella Blow Photographs by MAT COLLISHAW www.harpersbazaar.co.uk

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he is the true synthesis between art and fashion,’ David LaChapelle said recently about his friend Daphne Guinness. And it’s hard to argue. Not only because of her many collaborations with designers and artists over the years, most recently with jeweller Shaun Leane on a chainmail-anddiamond-encrusted ‘Contra Mundum’ glove, which Guinness wore as if she were an entombed knight at a special installation at Jay Jopling’s townhouse last year.

But also for the fierce commitment with which she buys and wears pieces, and displays them as works of art. She is fashion royalty, and there are few great designers of recent years who haven’t reaped the benefits of her attention and munificence.

Someone else Guinness considered to be an artist was the late Isabella Blow, whose archive of clothes she saved from auction by purchasing in its entirety in 2010. It’s her friendship with Blow, and her wish to have that archive properly displayed, that have led to this latest venture – an auction of 100 pieces from Guinness’ wardrobe, including the three outfits featured here, at Christie’s in aid of her newly launched Isabella Blow Foundation.

It seems only fitting that Bazaar should pair Guinness with another artist, Mat Collishaw, to produce a series of scene-setting portraits: framed by Collishaw’s motif of butterfly wings set aflame, the savage, gothic, poetic images match the woman herself. After the shoot, Bazaar asked the pair to stay on to talk art, fashion and Guinness’ ongoing ‘crusade’ to honour her great friend. AJESH PATALAY

them away. Then Alexander McQueen died, which added an extra dimension. I was also putting on a show of my own dresses at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York, which was a two-year process. It wasn’t until that was over that I thought about how to put on a show of Issy’s archive – because a lot of people are interested – and how to make it poetic. The only way I could think to do it was by reversing the karma and selling some of my pieces to fund a foundation, which would bring the archive back to Central Saint Martins, and also support artists and fashion students there. I want the archive to be with the family rather than it being anything to do with me.

MC So Issy’s sisters will be taking over the foundation?

DG Exactly. I also want the foundation to have a medical aspect to support research into mental health and depression [which Blow suffered from]. Because it’s not just about fashion. Issy wasn’t just about fashion; Issy was an artist, and there is no question about that.

MC It wasn’t so much the clothes themselves, was it? It was the transformative power of clothes. I think she had that strong desire to transcend the commonplace and become something special.

DG That’s why her archive is very important. It was who she was. She loved these things; they were her children. I know people collect stamps; people collect cars. But Issy, she didn’t just collect clothes, she loved them as works of art. David LaChapelle, who was one of her best friends, said to me the other day: ‘Make sure you don’t restore the clothes too much.’ And he’s right – half the fun was how her dress would be ripped or she’d be hobbling around in one heel or have lipstick smeared on the fabric. You have to keep the Issyness about it.

MC I like that she was never part of the establishment. She was always a champion of the underdog; she was the underdog herself.

DG She always helped young designers who didn’t have a bean. She didn’t have any money, but she’d give everything she had to them. She was very generous.

MC How difficult will it be to part with some of your dresses for the auction?

DG Well, I’m actually getting really upset about it. There’s a silver bodice dress by McQueen that I love.

MC If you see someone wearing it across the room at a party…?

DG Oh, that would be nice, like seeing an old friend. Some people say designers can’t be artists, but I think about five per cent of them are.

MC Do you feel a certain satisfaction from having been a patron to so many different designers, artists, film-makers?

DG I don’t really feel that I’m that important. People who are innately gifted – it’s their gift, not mine. I’m also a patron of Crisis, the homeless charity, and it’s extraordinary what they do. They teach people how to cook and how to paint. People build a network of friends and realise they’re not alone. I’m honoured to be involved.

MC That’s great, Daphne. What other plans do you have upcoming? Will you be in London to celebrate the Jubilee?

DG Well, I like the Queen! She’s been fantastic. I don’t really think about the Royal family otherwise – they’re just there.

They cost 50p per citizen per year. I mean that’s nothing really.

The Queen’s very frugal.

The evening auction of ‘The Daphne Guinness Collection; Sold to Benefit the Isabella Blow Foundation’ will be held at Christie’s South Kensington, 85 Old Brompton Road, London SW7 (www.christies.com), on 27 June 2012. The pre-sale exhibition will run from 23 to 27 June.

Daphne Guinness is a patron of the Crisis Commission (www.crisis.org.uk).

An exhibition of artworks by Tracey Emin, Antony Gormley and Gillian Wearing, among others, will run until 22 April at Somerset House in aid of the Commission, followed by an auction at Christie’s on 3 May.

Issy’s sister said to me, ‘You must come and see the dresses.’ I couldn’t actually look at them. They smelt of Issy’s perfume, Fracas MAT COLLISHAW It’s good to finally meet you. We’ve almost met

once before. I followed you into the Bryan Ferry party about a year ago, for the launch of his album Olympia. The taxis couldn’t get to the Dean Street Townhouse because the road was closed, so we had to stumble down Dean Street. I remember watching the low cut of your dress from behind.

DAPHNE GUINNESS Really? Well, I think we almost met before that. It was with artists Tim Noble and Sue Webster and Issy at a pub in Shoreditch.

MC Oh, going back at least 10 years then. Tim and Sue were with the Detmar Blow gallery, and Detmar and Issy were together then.

DG Yes, exactly. Of course, I love your work, especially what you’re doing now with butterflies. My apartments in London and New York are filled with butterflies.

MC Well, let me come round and I’ll burn them for you. [Laughs.]

Perhaps you should tell me why you’re auctioning off your dresses?

DG Well, two years ago I found myself in the peculiar position of having to buy up Issy’s archive. Her sisters were being forced to sell it [to settle debts on the estate]. I had to act quickly. I don’t know what I was thinking. Like Joan of Arc, I wanted to save this thing…

MC A crusade.

DG A good crusade, I think. I’d do anything for my friends. Before I bought them, Issy’s sister said to me: ‘You must come and see the dresses.’ I couldn’t actually look at them. They smelt of Fracas [the perfume Issy wore], and I was crying a lot. After the sale, I locked 146 |

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MOTH TO A FLAME This page: Daphne Guinness wears a vintage dress from her own collection that will be sold at the Christie’s auction, along with the other dresses featured in this story and other pieces. Prices are expected to start from about £300. Shoes (worn throughout), from a selection, Massaro. Jewellery (worn throughout), her own.

Previous pages, left: vintage Alexander McQueen dress.

Right: vintage Mandalay dress. Sittings editor: Pippa Vosper. Hair by Paul Pruchnik for Realhair. Make-up by Jo Frost at CLM, using MAC. Manicure by Sophy Robson at Streeters, using Chanel

BORN SURVIVOR Marianne Faithfull wears tuxedo cape, ÂŁ775, Dsquared. Shirt, ÂŁ140, Canali. Coat belt (worn as scarf ), from a selection, Maison Martin Margiela. Circular ring, ÂŁ8,725, Albion Trinketry

by Peter Doherty and Hannah Martin. Charm ring, from a selection, Maria Francesca Pepe

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Pellegrino, and I took the Pellegrino. Then finally, about 11.30/ quarter-to-12, they brought round Mars bars! And I thought they were doing it to insult me. Just for a moment, hearing the words â&#x20AC;&#x153;Mars barsâ&#x20AC;?, my head came up, like an old horse in a battle. â&#x20AC;&#x153;How dare you offer me a Mars bar!â&#x20AC;? Of course, thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s nonsense; they didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t know me.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; Marianne has come to talk about her new album, Horses and High Heels, due out in March. She has just finished her big scene â&#x20AC;&#x201C; in Luxembourg â&#x20AC;&#x201C; as the housekeeper in the film of the novel Belle du Seigneur, also starring Jonathan Rhys Meyers and Natalia Vodianova.

She is preparing for a world tour most of next year. She is a trooper and a woman, as she says herself, of great stamina, for all her vulnerability and â&#x20AC;&#x201C; still and ever â&#x20AC;&#x201C; fragility, with which she says she has to be very careful on a daily basis. Her survival is, in that degree, all the more impressive.

How did we first meet? It was in 1972. We reconstruct the past incomprehensibly after the photo shoot, through mouthfuls of Lebanese studio lunch. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;I came to your house but I canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t remember why,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; she says. I can.

She was conducting an affair with a Parisian boy of the arrogant-misogynist opiomane school, who was staying with us, a friend of my French then-wife. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Oh, him,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; says Marianne. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;That wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t going to work. Very decadent and destructive. Thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s why I liked him. It never really ends that well. I was very fucked up then. And Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m not talking about drugs. I must have still felt very abandoned and unable to see myself as a solo act.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; How many lives had she lived and counted? So many, and all quite different.

Her heroin years began in 1968 and ended in 1979 when she returned startlingly to life with her excellent album Broken English.

Paris, I suggest, is a good place to get the measure of lives led. If youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve had episodes of your life there, even fleeting romances, its streets and places will trigger memories of previous incarnations â&#x20AC;&#x201C; at different ages, with vanished friends â&#x20AC;&#x201C; like no other city.

France is where Marianne has some of her greatest fans, particularly from its intellectual population, who like the way she carries the burden of her experience and her survival on her sandpapered voice. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;I have had several lives in Paris. First of all, just going as a little-girl 17-year-old pop singer and doing photo sessions for [youth magazine] Salut les Copains with that great photographer Jean-Marie PĂŠrier, who of course I fell for, and meeting Serge Gainsbourg and things like that.

Then another with Mick Jagger and Donald Cammell and Deborah Dixon and going to Castelâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s and the Whisky Ă Gogo, and then being on drugs in Paris, which is another thing again, and now I live there not on drugs, as a musician. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Prussian Blueâ&#x20AC;? is a song I wrote about this present incarnation on my new album, a song written with David Courts, who goes back to the earliest life, to my marriage to John Dunbar in 1965. And this song is full of optimism.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d called some mutual friends that morning, for their reflections.

One of them, the actor Peter Eyre, described acting with Marianne (â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;She was so beautiful, terribly sweetâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;) in a play called Early Morning at the Royal Court in 1968, in which Florence Nightingale (played

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arianne Faithfull stands small under the lights in a silver trenchcoat, her hair coiffed into big, soft curls, a creamy Odette. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a war story, so far. Nine hours stranded on the Eurostar from Paris, another two getting a taxi to her hotel. I remark how little she has complained about it. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m a good little soldier, thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s what I am,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; she says. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;The reason why Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m so cool about it is because I was sitting with this charming couple in their eighties whoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d grown up in the war. And they were so fucking cool. I was dazzled, and my father would have been like that, too.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; (Major Faithfull, of MI6, frequently parachuted behind enemy lines.) So, for a while all was stiff upper lip. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;They came round with champagne and San

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PHOTOGRAPHS: REX FEATURES, CAMERA PRESS. PREVIOUS PAGES: HAIR BY ADRIAN CLARK AT CLM, USING BUMBLE AND BUMBLE. MAKE-UP BY SHINOBU AT CLM, USING CHANEL S/S 11

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s much as the past has come to define Marianne Faithfull, her unique allure and rock â&#x20AC;&#x2122;nâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; roll cachet continue to influence the worlds of music and fashion. She has partied with Kate Moss, befriended Carla Bruni and collaborated with such contemporary titans as Jarvis Cocker, Rufus Wainwright and Nick Cave. She graces front rows â&#x20AC;&#x201C; from Chanel to Marc Jacobs to Stella McCartney â&#x20AC;&#x201C; and is regularly hailed a fashion icon, never more current than now for her soignĂŠ masculine style. Her roles as an actor distil what we most love about her â&#x20AC;&#x201C; she has played God (in Absolutely Fabulous), Empress Maria Theresa (in Marie Antoinette) and a leatherjacketed free spirit (in Girl on a Motorcycle).

Who else could span these worlds â&#x20AC;&#x201C; from the divine to the dĂŠgagĂŠ â&#x20AC;&#x201C; with such authority?

Of course, that extraordinary range echoes her life story, with its succession of highs and lows, starting with her sudden ascent to fame at 17, when in 1964 she recorded her first hit single â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;As Tears Go Byâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;, penned by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards.

Within just over a year, she had married her artist boyfriend John Dunbar, given birth to her first (and only) son Nicholas, and left Dunbar for the Rolling Stones frontman. By 1970, after a passionate five-year affair, she had left Jagger and become addicted to heroin, and was living on the streets of London. It took until 1979 for her to tear back from that brink with the release of her seminal punk-influenced album Broken English. Despite considerable success since (including a dozen albums), her years of hard living, followed by a cancer scare in 2006, have inevitably left their mark.

It was pre-comeback, in the early 1970s, that Faithfull first met James Fox, the former Sunday Times correspondent who wrote White Mischief and co-authored their mutual friend Keith Richardsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; autobiography Life, published last year. Bazaar invited Fox to interview the legendary singer-songwriter and actor, who was happy to return to London from her home in Paris for this reunion with an old friend. AJESH PATALAY

by Marianne) goes down on Queen Victoria. It was taken off almost immediately, leading to terminal mockery of the Lord Chamberlainâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s office. Eyre, playing Prince Arthur, says to Florence: â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;I love you.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; Marianneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s very delayed reply was suddenly out of the character â&#x20AC;&#x201C; a low and languid â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Yeeeessssss.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;What were you doing?â&#x20AC;&#x2122; Peter asked after the show. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;I took some heroin before the scene,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; said Marianne. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;I thought it would work better.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Good story, but I really took to smack around the time I played Ophelia a year later,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; says Marianne today. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;I did occasionally take smack before then, so it may be true.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; I tell her that Keith Richards took out of his autobiography, in a rare moment of correctness, a memory of Marianne, the convent girl, and the song â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;As Tears Go Byâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;, one of his first compositions with Jagger. The line was: â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;And then it was recorded by the nun with the big gazongas and went to No 1.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; I said Keith thought it might cause offence to his old friend. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Oh, I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t mind,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; says Marianne, laughing. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;He had a thing about my tits. I didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t know that, but I found out years later.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; The new direction for Marianne on Horses and High Heels is a return to writing songs after a long block of several years that, she says, was latterly tied up with a difficult emotional moment in her life. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;I thought I couldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t go on; that I was going to die. I wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t drinking or doing any other drugs.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; She did, though, have an addiction to sleeping pills, whose effects were just as severe, she says, as being on heroin.

Around three years ago, she decided to go to drug rehabilitation â&#x20AC;&#x201C; after which, she says, â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;you sort of donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have an ego, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s been torn down. So it took me a couple of years to get over these different things and find my feet where I am todayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;. She has come back with four songs of her own, including the title song â&#x20AC;&#x201C; a memory of sounds, of Dublin, the horses in Ballsbridge where she lived in the Eighties, and of Paris, the girls in high heels running along Rue dâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Anjou.

She has returned with a formidable line-up â&#x20AC;&#x201C; the kinds of musicians her legend can apparently pull with ease â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Lou Reed and American singer-songwriter Dr John are among many other righteous people sitting in on these sessions at the Piety Street Studios in New Orleans, where she recorded the album. She has come with cleverly picked, heart-plucking songs, mixed with an earlySeventies sound, with covers of Carole Kingâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Goinâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Backâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; and Lesley Duncanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Love Songâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;, which fit nicely with her vocal pitch. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;The Seventies are often put down as the time that style forgot, but there really was some wonderful music. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s why itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s such a guitar record, because of the sound I wanted.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; The rhythm section contains George Porter Jnr on bass, of legendary New Orleans funk band the Meters. Her new key guitar player and fellow songwriter is Doug Pettibone, a brilliant picker from California; and the musical direction comes from John Porter, an old friend of Marianne who, by coincidence, is married to Linda Keith â&#x20AC;&#x201C; the woman who first broke Keith Richardsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; heart back in 1964. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;John is so important because heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s English and he understood my songs,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; says Marianne.

â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;To be honest, it was a very hard record to make. Expectations were high, and my expectations of myself were higher, and I couldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t quite do it. And thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s why I had such a hard time finally accepting it all, because my voice has its limit. I wish Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d taken better care of it.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; She giggles. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;The alcohol and the drugs and the smoking changed my voice. Thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s one way of looking at it, and the other way, which I prefer, is thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s the real me in there and Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve had to find the voice to express it.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; Whatever the quality of the voice, she is now established as a major vocal star, and her popularity is evenly spread through the world, though sheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s particularly big in France and Germany.

She has a strong pull for younger musicians, with many of whom she has collaborated, including Jarvis Cocker and Nick Cave.

Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s not just the voice, for many of them, but how it reflects the life she has led, and the line of pedigree that leads back to so many mythical figures she grew up with. She represents, too, what it required to actually live and survive that pioneering period of music â&#x20AC;&#x201C; which was a considerable amount of balls. I got a text from Cave from his tour bus in Los Angeles: â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Working with her was a dream. Sheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a true singer. Into the studio, one take, breaks your heart. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s that beautiful racked chainsaw of a voice with its English primness that gets me. It ainâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t just â&#x20AC;&#x153;lived inâ&#x20AC;?, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s condemned.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; In fact, as her record shows, the chainsaw can tune up well. It can still do country catchand-sob; pedantic English madrigal that Cave likes; Weimar Republic despair Ă la Lotte Lenya. There is much real sadness and loss in both the content and the delivery of these songs. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;I did and I do have regrets,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; she says. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;I canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t say I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t. On the whole, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s all been great stuff, good grist to the mill, and itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s developed me. Thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s nothing like SIXTIES ROYALTY it, having everything one minute and losing Marianne Faithfull in 1965. Opposite: with absolutely everything the next. This will Mick Jagger in 1967 force a lot of changes on you, which may not be immediate, but which will come.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; What first came to mind? â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t think that all you need is love any more. I did at the time. I know that you need a lot more than that, though you do need love as well.

You need to be honest, at least with yourself, which is terribly difficult because there is deception everywhere in the mind.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; A part of this deception is the struggle she has with her own steadily growing success. She says that self-doubt is an old, coruscating habit. Cocker describes how, unlike most much-recorded stars, her performance in the studio wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t slick or well ironed. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;She seemed quite nervous, unsure of her ability,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; he told me, â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;which endeared her to me. Her voice, on the contrary, reflects the life sheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s led, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s the real thing.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Doing well feeds into my self-destructiveness,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; she says. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;I felt it badly maybe three weeks ago. Everything was going so well I couldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t bear it. I wanted to stop myself, bring it down. But I overcame it. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Yesterday,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; she says, her face lighting suddenly, â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;I just stopped listening to my album with my super-critical mind that can only hear the faults. Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve stopped doing that. Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m listening to the music. I think Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m beginning to enjoy it.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Horses and High Heelsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; (NaĂŻve) is released on 7 March.

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MAN AFTER MIDNIGHT Colin Firth wears tuxedo jacket with satin lapels, ÂŁ1,050, Alexander McQueen at Selfridges. Cotton shirt (sold with cufflinks), ÂŁ345, Yves Saint Laurent. Trousers (sold as suit), ÂŁ2,400, Tom Ford at Harrods. Satin bow tie (sold as set), ÂŁ109, Boss Black. See Stockists for details. Grooming by Georgie Eisdell at Exclusive Artists. Photographed at Bob Bob Ricard

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In spite of the warm, rich voice, there is something difficult to get close to about Colin Firth. This, of course, is part of his charm and also something that infuses his acting. In his roles, he often appears as though behind a sheet of glass, and when that shatters, the effects are breathtaking. Few actors cry on screen better than Firth. Thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s the poignant moment in A Single Man when George breaks down after the family ban him from his boyfriendâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s funeral.

In The Kingâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Speech too, Bertie, as he was known, suddenly weeps inconsolably on realising what it will mean to be King George VI. On the subject of screen crying, Firth muses: â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;If youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve got a mask on, I suppose youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re safe behind it to release certain things.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; Then out of the blue, he adds: â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m not very good at it in real life, funnily enough.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; Arenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t you? â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;No,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; he says, wistfully.

You canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t help but think of an updated Darcy as you watch Firth sipping his vodka tonic and struggling to talk about his emotions.

The vision of the troubled Jane Austen hero emerging wet and smoldering from a lake in 1995â&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Pride and Prejudice became the focus of middle-class womenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s fantasies, yet marred much of his career. It left him typecast to the extent that Helen Fieldingâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s character in the Bridget Jones books â&#x20AC;&#x201C; the rude, awkward Mark Darcy â&#x20AC;&#x201C; was reportedly inspired by it.

When asked about the Darcy moment, he modestly analyses why the female population of Britain is essentially mistaken about his sex appeal: â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;It was because youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve seen this man so buttoned up.

It was the storytelling, it wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t anything to do with me.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; Firth loves to analyse. He soon steers the conversation on to â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;extraordinary ejaculationsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; yet, alas, heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s only referring to the writing style of DH Lawrence. In spite, or maybe because, of coming from a family of teachers, Firth failed to complete his A-levels (something he now admits heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s trying to make up for).

He woke up on the morning of his retakes, â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;thought â&#x20AC;&#x153;fuck itâ&#x20AC;? and went back to bedâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;.

Yet even from an early age, he was something of a sophisticate. Instead of hanging out at bus stops or engaging in vandalism, he sated his teenage angst on Camus, Rimbaud and especially Baudelaireâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Artificial Paradises (an essay on the pros and cons of hashish versus red wine), although he adds with a grin that another attraction to such exotic writing was that â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;a girl I fancied read that stuff â&#x20AC;&#x2122;.

At 24, scarcely out of London drama school, he was offered the role of passionate Marxist teenager Tommy Judd alongside Rupert Everett in the 1984 film adaptation of Julian Mitchellâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Another Country. A string of acclaimed roles followed including The English Patient, Tumbledown, Fever Pitch and Shakespeare in Love. And yet, as far as his image was concerned, it was the affable â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;posh boyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; (and his incarnations in Love Actually, Bridget Jonesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Diary and Mamma Mia!) who always prevailed.

So how does it feel now that heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s finally respected as a â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;seriousâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; actor? His face darkens (anger is one of Firthâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s more seductive looks), but then a flicker of smile appears and he begins to talk of a new friend whoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s helped him cope with that success. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Tom Ford and I have connected in a way that I think is very rare,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; he says, adding that he, Ford, the designerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s partner, magazine editor Richard Buckley, and Firthâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Italian wife Livia often meet up away from the film worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s bright lights. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Appreciating whatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s happening to you takes a bit of serenity. And if you donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have access to

that, youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re in trouble. We relish each otherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s company in a more intimate environment. Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m enormously grateful that I have that.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; Firthâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;wilfully perverseâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; side (heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s not a rebel, he insists, despite his flunked A-levels) clicked with the single-mindedness of Ford, a man also known for his insistence on doing things his own way; not to mention a shared penchant for roguish humour. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;That mischievous side to him is always bursting to get out,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; says Firth, recalling an awards ceremony where he drank a little more than he should have. The next night, Ford did a re-run of Firth clinging merrily to a door. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;He has a habit of imitating bad behaviour.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; This new friendship has, Firth says, enabled him to see that â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s very easy to squander your blessings on neurotic doubts and fears that youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re going to have those good things taken away from youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;.

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rock even stronger than Ford is his wife of 13 years, Livia Giuggioli, 39, a film producer originally from Rome, who runs Eco Age, a fashion shop in west London dedicated to green living. They met in Colombia in 1996 when working on an adaptation of Joseph Conradâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Nostromo. It was love at first sight for Firth (â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;instinctive, inexplicable, Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve never looked backâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;). She doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t see him as the â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;smoulderingâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; type, and he claims to be more of a â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;nerdâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; around her.

But then, Livia Firth is not the average Hollywood-style wife.

Undaunted by the prospect of having to appear more frequently on red carpets, she launched a â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;green-carpet challengeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;, which involves only wearing sustainable fashion â&#x20AC;&#x201C; often reworked versions of 1960s dresses donated by friendsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; mothers. Firth has learnt Italian â&#x20AC;&#x201C; a great tonic, he says, to escape his English self. It releases him â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;into a wonderfully different and rather mysterious worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;. This leads us back to crying. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;A lot of Latin men have no shame in crying,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; he says. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;African men, too. I think itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s quite an Anglo thing. Russians seem to be quite comfortable with tears, as well.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; He escapes as much as he can to the family house in Umbria with Livia and their sons, Luca, nine, and Matteo, seven.

Twenty-year-old Will, Firthâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s son with former long-term partner Meg Tilly, is also a frequent visitor. Firth starts to talk about how he might well run off and â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;lie fallowâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; for a while, but itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s unlikely he will do so just yet. He has three new film projects; then thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s his work for Brightwide.com, his website that showcases political cinema; and, of course, the potential Oscar nomination.

Meanwhile, he says, heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s determined to try to enjoy his extended ride on the rollercoaster of fame. He recalls the recent London premiere for The Kingâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Speech. After the hysteria of the red carpet, when everyone had taken their seats in the cinema, he slipped off to recover alone in the empty lobby. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;I looked out of the window and I suddenly realised there was a funfair taking up the whole of Leicester Square. And I hadnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t even seen it! Success is like tunnel vision. You sometimes find yourself not fully appreciating where you are.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; So he took a deep breath and went back to face the music. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;I thought, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Get into this. You may even be gone tomorrow. You are here, youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re proud of the piece, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s up there on a great big screen.â&#x20AC;?â&#x20AC;&#x2122; Back at the restaurant, Firth gazes into his empty glass, then gets up, ready to go to another gala. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;There are moments, I suppose,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; he says with the hint of a grin, â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;when it all feels rather wonderful.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;The Kingâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Speechâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; is released nationwide on 7 January.

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PHOTOGRAPHS: REX FEATURES, GETTY IMAGES

BODY OF WORK From top: Firth with Matthew Goode in â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;A Single Manâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; (2009). Opposite Helena Bonham Carter in â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;The Kingâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Speechâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; (2010). With Crispin Bonham-Carter in â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Pride and Prejudiceâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; (1995). With director/designer Tom Ford in Los Angeles in 2009

bserving Colin Firth in downtime, you can see why directors have tended to typecast him as the debonair English gentleman. While the Bazaar team prepare for a photoshoot to celebrate his new film The Kingâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Speech, Firth holds doors open, offers to carry equipment, chats in Italian to the photographer and is generally being the affable, sensitive, self-deprecating chap who might have just stepped out of a Richard Curtis film.

He tells the anecdote of how he recently found himself in Paris trying to impress an Austrian director famous for his bleak epics when his mobile phone suddenly went off â&#x20AC;&#x201C; with a â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Super Trouperâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; ring tone (a remnant from his stint in Mamma Mia!). â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Not ideal,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; he quips, with perfect timing.

His fellow Mamma Mia! actor Meryl Streep describes his humour as â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;wickedâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;; but underneath the bonhomie, the politeness and the eagerness to please, there is something unmistakably brooding.

When you ask his old friend Emma Thompson what heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s like, the first thing she replies is: â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Very serious, is Colin.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; She jokes that during the filming of Nanny McPhee, in which Firth plays the hapless romantic lead, she had to keep reminding him: â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Colin â&#x20AC;&#x201C; this is Nanny McPhee, not Nanny Macbeth!â&#x20AC;&#x2122; Tom Ford glimpsed this depth and potential for darkness when he cast Firth in A Single Man, a film that transformed his career.

Firthâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s image was spectacularly revamped when he played the mid-life-crisis gay professor George in the award-winning 2009 adaptation of Christopher Isherwoodâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s short story; and, now 50, he finds himself propelled from quirky-British-film-star status to respected actor of substance on the international movie circuit.

This newly discovered gravitas undoubtedly helped him win his new role in The Kingâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Speech. Firth excels alongside Helena Bonham Carter as the Queenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s buttoned-up father, George VI, blighted by a serious speech impediment from childhood â&#x20AC;&#x201C; and his performance has already been tipped for Oscar success. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s something about Colin that does seem very contained on the surface,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; Ford says. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Yet inside, you know thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s enormous emotion.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; This unbroken storm of passions is almost palpable when the shoot is over and Firth and I find ourselves sitting alone in the boudoir-style private dining room of a London restaurant. Raking one hand through a head of dark locks and cradling a vodka tonic in the other, he describes the whirlwind of his life during the past two years. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Success,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; he says, sighing, can feel like â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;reeling back into space â&#x20AC;&#x201C; itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s certainly not a restful thing thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s happening to youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;.

He has changed out of the Alexander McQueen suit he was photographed in, and is now wearing his own flatteringly cut ton sur ton black shirt and jacket. The two top shirt buttons are undone and the fabric is straining at the neck just enough to suggest a batâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s squeak of sexuality â&#x20AC;&#x201C; as well as a few dressing tips from Ford.

Firth has become better at fashion since A Single Man. The film was so low-budget that much of his remuneration was Tom Ford suits (â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;They fit well and theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re just very, very classicâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;). Patting his toned stomach and adjusting his horn-rimmed specs (by Tom Ford, naturally), he admits Ford came into his life at just the right time, as far as his physique was concerned. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;I was at an age where you think, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Oh, shall I let it all go?â&#x20AC;?â&#x20AC;&#x2122; he says. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Actually, Tom caught me at that point and it was great.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; He still sees the personal trainer Ford hooked him up with. They box in the back garden of his Chiswick house.

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CHARLOTTE’S

WEB Almost four decades after she transfixed audiences in The Night Porter, Charlotte Rampling is as devastatingly charismatic as ever. In a frank and revealıng interview, SIMON SCHAMA is drawn in by the powerful allure of the uncompromising icon, and gets the inside story on her phenomenal life and career

PHOTOGRAPH: XXXXXX

Photographs by SOFIA & MAURO. Styled by CARMEN BORGONOVO

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DARK STAR Charlotte Rampling photographed at L’Hôtel in Paris in November 2009. Dress, £375, Joseph.

Bracelet, from a selection, Dior Fine Jewellery www.harpersbazaar.co.uk

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Rampling is perfectly frank about her distaste for interviews, telling me that one reason she doesn’t do many films is that she finds ‘the exposure’ tawdry. ‘There are so many things I hate,’ she says, offering a steely smıle

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career has been its range; and though it’s the truth, this is not something she’s used to hearing.

It’s a paradox. On the one hand, she insists that somehow there has to be something in the part that is also of her. On the other hand, she was crucially guided by Visconti to understand the psychological morphing needed to make a performance credible. (We enjoy a brief Visconti love-in when I reveal that some of my earliest movie passions as a teenager were La Terra Trema and, especially, Rocco and His Brothers, which took me weeks – if ever – to get over.) When she murmurs of his charisma and handsome, Marxist-aristo charm, it’s obvious that he became for her the warm-blooded fatherly mentor. When, in The Damned, she had to play a scene pleading for the life of her children, she went to Visconti in despair, saying she had no idea how to do it, that she couldn’t do it. ‘Listen, Charlotte,’ he said, ‘you don’t have to have done anything like this. You must just believe you have done it.’ Later, standing right beside the camera as she acted, he urged her: ‘See behind the eyes.

See behind the eyes…’

Without Visconti’s guiding hand, then, there would have been no Night Porter and no international fame. It was Dirk Bogarde, the tortured male lead in The Damned, who saw she could play something quite different, and working with the director Liliana Cavani devised the script and plot for the strange, terrifying, sadomasochistic fantasy that became The Night Porter. Rampling recalls putting Visconti’s advice to the test early by having to do, right at the start of the shoot, ‘the fucking concentration-camp scene. I had to sing’.

For all the thunderstruck acclaim she received for the film, life was not altogether plain sailing. Many parts came along, many of them mediocre. Her first marriage (to actor Bryan Southcombe) broke up when she fell headlong for rock composer Jean Michel Jarre. It was mega-force love, and articles regularly appeared about the Beautiful Couple’s romantic life in Paris. But every so often, in the 1980s, she would hit a reef, falling into what sounds like the same depression experienced by her father. Being cared for by her husband, she’d recover, only to sink into the terror of its return.

There must have been a moment when Jarre had had enough, as he took up with a younger civil servant, and in 1997 Rampling’s second marriage ended. Then, in 2001, her mother died, and it freed something up in her. She became much closer to her father, moved by his kindness and love for her mother. (‘It was his redemption,’ she says.) And, when the truth about her sister’s suicide was let out, she was at last allowed to grieve.

The join between Rampling’s emotional life and working life became sewn together by the great French indie director François Ozon. She says, looking back on her career, that her best films have been ‘a documentary

For all the thunderstruck acclaim she received, life was not altogether plain sailing. Her first marriage (to actor Bryan Southcombe) broke up when she fell headlong for rock composer Jean Michel Jarre. It was mega-force love

ENIGMA VARIATIONS From top: with Alan Bates in ‘Georgy Girl’ (1966). In ‘The Damned’ (1969). With Philippe Leroy during the shooting of ‘The Night Porter’ in 1974. In ‘Boogie Woogie’ www.harpersbazaar.co.uk

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was the true north on Rampling’s compass. It was from him she got her backbone and physical bravery. ‘Made you climb walls, did he?’ ‘Oh everything,’ she says, ‘We [she and her sister] couldn’t be wimps.’ He saw in Charlotte the tomboy; the fighter, the one who in some way might be an athlete. Godfrey ran the second leg in the 400-metres relay at the notorious Berlin Olympics of 1936, and is captured in Leni Riefenstahl’s Olympia winning the gold for Britain. The runner immediately behind him had fallen ill and was way behind when Godfrey took the baton and carved his way through the pack. ‘He was beautiful,’ Rampling emphasises, looking wistfully into the distance. ‘They said he ran like a god, and they were right.’ He paid a price for his heroics. A leg went out, and was never quite the same again.

Rampling was born 10 years later, in Sturmer, Essex (I greet her as a fellow Essexian and she smiles in mildly snobbish surprise, ‘Really?’). Her father had already become remote or, in her own word, ‘frightening’, disappearing into silent distances that seem to have translated into emotional intimidation. In fact, he was as much frightened as the frightener. ‘Of what?’ ‘A haunting,’ says Rampling, sighing a little. ‘He began to carry the weight of the world on his shoulders.’ The load of it crushed him into periodic depressions, which his daughter felt the burden of, growing up first in Fontainebleau, where her father was stationed for NATO as a lieutenant colonel with the Royal Artillery (and where she was part-educated, becoming fluent in French); and perhaps even later, at a distance, at the girls’ boarding school St Hilda’s in Bushey, Hertfordshire.

The playpen of the late Sixties was, of course, the antidote to all this patriarchal gloom, and like so many other cool stunners, Rampling played hard. ‘I did everything very young,’ she says. She worked as a model before being spotted in a Cadbury commercial and cast in Silvio Narizzano’s 1966 classic Georgy Girl as the impossibly fine-boned, hard, hot number, against Lynn Redgrave’s adorable dumpy duckling who eventually gets the man.

Then came the shattering moment when the Swinging stopped. Her 23-year-old older sister Sarah fell ill while pregnant, gave birth prematurely, fell into a steep depression and shot herself. Shortly after, their mother, who had always been very close to Sarah, suffered a stroke, and was left severely disabled.

In a matter of weeks, Rampling, now in her early twenties and with the world about to be at her feet, was robbed of the two people she loved most in the world. (Her grief was disrupted by her father’s insistence, so as not to upset her mother during her long, painful rehabilitation, that the truth of Sarah’s suicide remain a secret. The official version would be that she suffered a cerebral haemorrhage.)

It’s not surprising that acting became a way of changing the subject, moving into someone else’s skin. If the part called for it, Rampling would do pain, not be its victim. It was while she was shooting an Italian film with Gianfranco Mingozzi in 1968 that Luchino Visconti spotted her and cast her in The Damned, his epic tale of dynastic corruption at the beginning of the Third Reich. As the Jewish daughter-in-law of the only liberal scion of the family, Rampling was pitch-perfect: tender, poignant and desperate (a rebuttal to those who think of her as mostly sexy-tough). I tell her that I’ve always thought one of the remarkable things about her

PHOTOGRAPHS: THE KOBAL COLLECTION, REX FEATURES

T

here’s a crunchy moment in The Night Porter when Charlotte Rampling lays a trap for her ex-concentrationcamp guard, played by Dirk Bogarde, which involves him walking over broken glass. He does so and smiles. Ten minutes into the interview with her and I know how he felt.

The lacerations are minor, the attractions powerful. But there are moments when it feels bloody. It’s not that Rampling is openly hostile; just giving off waves of someone enduring a minor indignity, like a dental check-up.

To be fair, she had been perfectly frank about her distaste for interviews, telling me that one reason she doesn’t do many films is that she finds ‘the exposure’ tawdry. ‘There are so many things I hate,’ she says, offering a steely smile. I grin back wanly, hoping I’m not the most recent addition to what’s obviously a long list.

Call me a cynic but is there not a smidgen of disingenuousness here? Is she not – for all her smouldering disdain through photoshoots – just the teeniest bit complicit in this perennial curiosity about whether she still has ‘the Look’? (She does.) Doesn’t she actually enjoy the gasps of disbelief that the body which in the 1970s turned men into warm puddles on the floor is still, at 63, a thing of beauty? Probably.

But you believe her when, tightening her lip a little and making a face as though she’s swallowed something dodgy, she talks wanly of the rounds of film promotion – talks, that is, while avoiding eye contact and mostly directing her words diagonally across me to the restaurant wall. Still, at the start of a year that promises a number of high-profile Rampling performances – in films including an adaptation this September of Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go, co-starring Keira Knightley and Carey Mulligan; Danny Moynihan’s satire on the London art scene, Boogie Woogie, in spring; and, coming this autumn, the latest from American auteur Todd Solondz, Life During Wartime – she will surely have to gird herself for the inevitable run of ‘exposure’.

For a time, installed in a corner booth at the upscale London restaurant where we have agreed to meet, we just contend in awkwardness; she doing her cat impersonation, me the floppy old terrier who just wants to woof and play. But then, when I ask her in earnest (for this is what actually interests me) about how she came to be the mindblowingly great actress she is, she emerges from under the hedge of her frowning, and turns directly towards me as if surprised that anyone – for a magazine article – would want to talk about how she came by her craft?

Then it suddenly becomes a very different story; a story, in fact, of how her life and art have flowed into each other, for she’s not shy about talking about some chapters – at least of her own family history, rather than her married life and loves – weighted though it is with trouble and sorrow.

Her father Godfrey Rampling died last year (aged 100), and no degree in advanced psychoanalysis is needed to understand that he

INNER SANCTUM Jacket, £1,275, Balenciaga by Nicolas Ghesquière at Browns. Trousers, £559, Givenchy by Riccardo Tisci at Harrods.

Heels, £450, Alexander McQueen. Ring, from a selection, Dior Fine Jewellery.

See Stockists for details. Hair by Romina Manenti at Airport Agency, using Bumble and Bumble. Make-up by Maria Olsson at Jed Root. Manicure by Kamel at B4 Agency.

Stylist’s assistant: Nicholas Galletti.

Opposite: at home with Jean Michel Jarre, step-daughter Emilie and son David in 1979

of me’. (Indeed, without the deep stain of her personal drama, her acting would just be an affectation, the calculated projection of ‘the Look’.) But in her two films for Ozon, Under the Sand (2000) and Swimming Pool (2003), she reached for, and achieved, something much more profound: the sensuality of melancholy; the embodiment of the angry wound.

In Under the Sand especially, in which she plays a childless, affectionate wife whose husband disappears on a beach in south-west France while she has her eyes closed sunbathing, Rampling’s capacity to play the light moments – bursts of wiltinducing laughter in the midst of sex, breezy certainty in the gathering distress – give the drama its full tragic force.

She also loved playing Miss Havisham in a BBC adaptation of Great Expectations, reading Dickens and looking up David Lean’s classic to prep; and had the part of graceful, sexually potent middle age nailed. ‘They suited me,’ she says of roles in films like Laurent Cantet’s 2005 Heading South, about a professor who travels to Haiti for sex with the local young men.

But you somehow don’t want Rampling just to corner the market in sexually compulsive crosspatches, though she is said to perform brilliantly in a hotel-bedroom scene as a rich, unhappy sexual predator in the upcoming Life During Wartime. Still, the work she has done lately – including a feature about street dancers in England called StreetDance; Never Let Me Go, in which she plays the enigmatic and haunted headmistress Miss Emily; and a comic

turn in Boogie Woogie – seems to draw on that capacity for range that Visconti first saw in her. ‘But I just don’t get that many parts,’ she says, ‘not the scripts I can be bothered with.’ After her sister died, she swore she would not make films ‘ just to entertain’. And if there have been projects in the past that have fallen short of that lofty principle, there’s no doubt that, in her early sixties, she no longer has truck with the mediocre.

It’s dark now, out there on the rain-slick London street; and gradually the lights are being dimmed in the Italian restaurant. The tape recorder goes off. I order glasses of white wine. She demurs for a second and then is happy when I overrule her. She is off later to see her friend Kevin Spacey’s play of Inherit the Wind at the Old Vic. With her velvety voice, it’s not surprising she has done theatre both in London and Paris – a Marivaux and the unedited, terrifying version of Strindberg’s Dance of Death. But now she wants to talk a bit about my childhood, not hers, and we do, friendliness replacing professional curiosity. She has stopped looking at the wall. ‘What am I going to do to pass the time?’ she teases, giving me the full-on charm. I am speechless. Then the angel passes, and back comes a self-satirising version of Grumpy Puss. ‘Will it be good?’ she worries of the play. It’s the audience, not the actors, she’s already taking exception to. The massed sitting, the clapping… ‘You know I hate places where people all do the same thing.’ The fact that she laughs at her own vehemence is a sure sign she really means it.

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PHOTOGRAPH: CORBIS

PHOTOGRAPH: XXXXXX

After her sister died, she swore she would not make films ‘just to entertain’.

And if there have been projects in the past that have fallen short of that lofty principle, there’s no doubt that, in her early sixties, she no longer has truck with the mediocre

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VIVA BANDERAS

Antonio Banderas’ wild, erotic collaborations with Pedro Almodóvar made him one of the world’s most desirable men, and a major international star. Now, after 20 years, he is back with the famed director, and is once again exploring his dangerous side. Here, the virile Andalusian talks Hollywood life, sex-scene chemistry and misunderstanding Madonna

By WENDY IDE MADRID MEN Antonio Banderas and Pedro Almodóvar on the set of ‘The Skin I Live In’

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NO INHIBITIONS Abril and Banderas’ famous sex scene in ‘Tie Me Up, Tie Me Down’

and said, “You have a very romantic face, you should do movies.”’

A couple of months later, the director asked Banderas to star as a gay Islamic terrorist in his 1982 Labyrinth of Passion, the first of five consecutive films that saw the reputation of the director and the star grow in tandem. For Almodóvar: ‘Through the Eighties and Nineties, the actor that best understood me and was able to play my parts was Antonio Banderas.’

And in turn, the director understood his leading man, animating the young actor’s sexuality with dark stories of visceral eroticism and transgressive desire: from the bullfighter in Matador (1986) who attains sexual fulfilment from murderous acts, to the smouldering Carlos in Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (1988), and the aforementioned sadomasochist in Tie Me Up, Tie Me Down.

Banderas’ incendiary sexual presence in the film caught the attention of some very powerful people, not least Madonna, who was undergoing her own erotic period, so brashly illustrated on her ‘Blond Ambition’ tour. When she came to perform in Madrid, the singer famously called Almodóvar to arrange a dinner. ‘“Antonio,” Pedro said, “she would love to get to know you,”’ Banderas recalls. ‘I couldn’t speak English at the time. She said a lot of things at the table when we were having dinner, I couldn’t understand shit. I was just flipping out that I was sitting down close to Madonna. She was very famous already, and we were just local people. So it was kind of flattering when somebody said, “She likes you, a lot.” I said, “Oh, really? I’ve no idea what I should do about this, I mean, I’m married” [to his first wife, Ana Leza]. So, nothing happened.’

One thing he is at pains to deny is that his connections with Madonna had anything to do with promoting his profile in the States – ‘I was afraid of it at the time, because she was a very powerful woman. I didn’t want to be Madonna’s boy. For good or for bad, I just wanted to have my own career’ – when he was subsequently cast in The House of the Spirits and Philadephia (both 1993) as Tom Hanks’ tender lover. (It was partly thanks to Almodóvar’s Law of Desire that Banderas accepted the role, at a time when many heterosexual actors were wary of such material. ‘Pedro Almodóvar opened my mind through the movies that we did together,’ he says fondly.)

Ironically, it may even be that Madonna owes Banderas a debt of gratitude in the career stakes as, according to the actor, he put

in a good word for her with the director of Evita, Alan Parker. By then, Banderas had cemented his legendary status by appearing alongside Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt in Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles in 1994 (perhaps one of the last films that successfully exploited both Banderas’ sinister and erotic potential in equal measure) – along with his marriage to Hollywood royalty Griffith, who he met on the set of Two Much in 1995. (She gave birth to his daughter Stella del Carmen the following year.)

In some ways, Evita marked the pinnacle of Banderas’ Hollywood career. Despite successful collaborations with Robert Rodriguez and Salma Hayek, his subsequent repertoire always seemed disappointing, as if Hollywood, not daring to see him as Almodóvar had once done, had forgotten his fire. (Although this was briefly reignited in 2003 during his Broadway revival of Nine, based on Fellini’s 8½, for which he was nominated for a Tony Award).

Critical acclaim or no, Banderas’ career has been trailblazing in one sense. He was one of the first Hispanic actors to make it in Hollywood in the Nineties (along with the Mexican Hayek), paving the way for Penélope Cruz and Javier Bardem, with whom he hangs out in LA, where they all now live.

‘We play games, we love that. We play one called “Wolves”.’

Banderas launches into a complicated explanation of this roleplaying game for actors. It’s a kind of murder mystery in which the ‘wolves’ have to hide their identity from the other players, who are trying to guess who they are. ‘Penélope, Javier, now Eva Longoria comes too. We get together once a week. Penélope and Javier

‘It was very, very sexy to shoot that scene.

Victoria is a very open-minded woman. We were not afraid of touching, kissing, anything. I remember that scene as a celebration of sex’

PHOTOGRAPHS: MIMMO CATTARINICH/MCPHOTOINT.COM

He denies the speculation that the Spanish auteur punished t’s a sultry midsummer day in Madrid. Outside his acting offspring for abandoning him for America. ‘Personally, El Deseo, legendary director Pedro Almodówe kept our relationship going, sometimes more frequently than var’s production headquarters, a throng of others. But it’s not the same as when you’re working together… young Madrileños (in an insouciant uniform It was actually very interesting just to rediscover myself again.’ It’s of quiffs, rolled-up jeans and espadrilles) loiters fair to say that The Skin I Live In represents a reunion not just with nonchalantly on the pavement’s edge, hands in Almodóvar, but also with the actor that Banderas once was. In pockets, as if posing in an early Movida film. the new film there is more of the passionate madness of his characMeanwhile, inside the offices, elegantly ter in Tie Me Up, Tie Me Down – in which he plays an escaped casual in a white shirt and jeans, sits the origipsychiatric patient who captures and holds a porn star hostage – nal ‘smouldering’ prototype: erotic legend and than there has been in the whole of his intervening career. His the erstwhile Movida director’s first muse, performance in the 1990 film entered the annals of erotic legend, Antonio Banderas. After a 20-year hiatus of in particular his sex scene with Victoria Abril.

Hollywood productions – including Philadel‘I was not married to Melanie [Griffith] then, so I can tell you phia, Evita and Frida – the Spanish actor has that it was very, very sexy to shoot that scene.’ He fixes me with an returned to his roots to collaborate with his intense stare. ‘For both of us. We stayed six hours in that bed, and ‘maker’ in the director’s new film The Skin I Live In. Victoria is a very open-minded woman. There was a lot of Even after all these years (Banderas currently teeters on the humour in it. We had chemistry, we were not afraid of touching, brink of 51), the chemistry between the pair is still palpable; of kissing, of anything, of our own sexuality, of our own bodies, the actor’s seductive sway over the director undiminished. In a high so we just jumped into that scene with tremendous generosity state of anxiety over an issue pertaining to the film, the diminutive on both sides. Obviously you are surrounded by people, it’s kind of Almodóvar circulates the office frantically, jabbing a finger at the weird, but I remember that scene as a celebration of sex.’ screen of his smartphone, silver hair bristling with agitation. And The revival of such passion and yet one lazy smile from the actor, intensity (after years being subsumed the subtle raise of a quizzical eyeby Hollywood’s two-dimensional brow twinned with a gentle pat on ‘Latin roles’) has no doubt been his mentor’s arm, and Almodóvar’s brought about by the catalyst of inner bull is gently lulled to a standworking with Tie Me Up’s director still. The office breathes a collective again; though after two decades, he sigh of relief. ‘Pedro hasn’t changed,’ says, it came as something of a culsays Banderas, affectionately. ‘But ture shock. ‘I had a hard time in the I learn something new every time I first week of rehearsals. He called us work with him.’ a couple of months before we started This reunion, for the sixth doing the movie. I realised a week Banderas/Almodóvar collaboration, into those rehearsals that it was the first since the cult sadomasochnot about rehearsing – he was just istic farce Tie Me Up, Tie Me Down domesticating us. He was trying in 1990, which launched the to say, “OK, you’re coming from actor’s international career, repreAmerica, you’re coming with a lot sents the rekindling of a creative love of ideas – forget about them.” affair. And Almodóvar’s gift to his ‘He’s a very difficult director to favourite actor on the occasion of the work with, which is good,’ he re-consummation of their partnercontinues. ‘I wouldn’t criticise him ship is to give him back his danger. for that. He imposes his personality, The talent that Hollywood had CHEMISTRY SET and it’s difficult to escape the tremmost recently decreed would be Almodóvar (bottom) directing Victoria Abril and Banderas on the set of ‘Tie Me Up, Tie Me Down’ endous gravity that he has. A solar best employed providing the voice system can only have one sun – if it of an animated pussycat (see Shrek 2 has two, that’s not a solar system, it’s a problem. If you accept that and the forthcoming Puss in Boots) is finally getting to show his claws you are a planet around that sun, you will shine with him.’ again, as a plastic surgeon with a God complex, bent on avenging the Banderas first met Almodóvar soon after the 19-year-old aspiring rape of his daughter, in Almodóvar’s high-camp melodrama meets actor from sleepy Málaga (whose dream to become a professional horror film. In The Skin I Live In, Banderas is sensational. He combines footballer had been replaced by thespian ambitions after an injury) a limpid softness – a gentleness, almost – with the cold, calculated arrived in Madrid at the height of the post-Franco artistic renaisinstincts of a sociopath. He’s a monster wrapped in cashmere. sance, now referred to as La Movida Madrileña. Almodóvar, a leading So why, when it’s clearly such a match made in cinematic heaven, exponent of the movement, was 11 years his senior, and had just has it taken so long for Banderas to reunite with the man he credits completed his second feature, Pepi, Luci, Bom, in 1980. By all accounts, as the most formative influence on his life and career? when the director saw the young Banderas in a small theatre ‘Maybe it was my fault, or the fault of Hollywood,’ he purrs. production, it was love at first sight. ‘He stared at me,’ Banderas ‘There was a time when actually I couldn’t work with him, because says, mimicking his mesmerised look. ‘At the time, I had really long I literally had signed on for two or three years in advance to hair and a moustache and a little beard. He looked me in the eye Hollywood films and I would have been sued if I had dropped out.’

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are both very good at Wolves. I have seen Penélope doing things that you wouldn’t believe to win, picking huge fights with dear friends of hers, unbelievable!’

It’s perhaps not surprising that Banderas has found kindred spirits in Cruz and Bardem: all were shaped, and thereafter reanimated, by the hand of Almodóvar. There is no doubt, like Cruz’s return in Volver, that Banderas’ reunion with the director has already breathed new life into this career: alongside more Spy Kids (the fourth episode), he will appear in Steven Soderbergh’s Haywire, and Black Gold, a film set in the Middle East about the oil boom of the 1930s, as well as a new writing-directing project.

Thus is Almodóvar’s Midas touch, although it can sometimes come at a price. As, in the background, the director darts in and out of El Deseo’s rooms, Banderas pays tribute to his unique on-set vision. ‘It’s great to know that Almodóvar is more Almodóvar than ever…’ And with that, he sighs the sigh of a long-suffering wife who is still very much in love with her husband. ‘Being directed by him is hell… but it’s a very creative hell.’

‘The Skin I Live In’ is released nationwide on 26 August.

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KING OF ALL HE

SURVEYS

Two decades after his memorable turn as Dracula, Gary Oldman once again has Hollywood at his feet, following the Oscar-nominated success of his last film. The irresistible former wild child speaks to AJESH PATALAY about posing for Prada, his latest passion and how he has put the South London rebel to rest

Photographs by TRENT MCGINN Styled by ALISON EDMOND

G

ary Oldman is standing on a balcony at Chateau Marmont, taking in West Hollywood like a lord surveying his fiefdom.

The magisterial three-piece ensemble he’s wearing is by Prada, but the darkly commanding presence he brings to it is pure Oldman: Dracula meets Beethoven meets Sirius Black. Hamming it up, he wields a curtain rod like a schoolmaster’s cane, then a magic wand, and finally a conductor’s baton, waving it triumphantly as though leading the city in a rendition of ‘Ode to Joy’.

If Hollywood is playing to anyone’s beat now, it’s surely his. With his Oscar nomination for Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy barely in the rearview mirror, the 54-year-old is reprising his role as Commissioner Gordon in Christopher Nolan’s much-anticipated The Dark Knight Rises (‘You faint just watching the trailer. Oh my God, it’s going to make so much money’) and cooking up secret projects with, among others, Hollywood’s other reigning Brit, Colin Firth. This very afternoon he has been hailed by industry chronicle The Hollywood Reporter as ‘the top-grossing actor of all time’. It’s this last distinction that his American manager Douglas Urbanski, a close friend of 25 years who riffs with Oldman like a Costello to his Abbott, especially savours.

‘The piece uses all the right words, like “iconic” and “legendary”,’ Urbanski says. Oldman, who may have lived in America for 20 years and be one of Hollywood’s all-conquering heroes, weighs this up with a very English dry appreciation, a faintly disapproving smile creeping across his face. ‘You like big words like that, don’t you, Doug?’

But then, plenty of big words have been uttered about Oldman, not least by a generation of young actors who regard him with awe.

as he did at the end of April (‘That was kind of exciting’), or flying to Scotland for a two-day cameo in Monster Butler opposite his acting hero Malcolm McDowell (‘One of those things that had to be done’), or even plotting a possible return to the stage after almost 30 years (‘Here in LA, in some little dump, just for the hell of it’).

‘I just feel more open to stuff,’ he says over lunch in the garden.

In person, Oldman is not what you’d expect: not brooding or diffident; upbeat would be closer to the truth. Thoughtful. Dressed neatly in a white shirt and black chinos, Oldman has no rough edges, just languid charm, even gentleness – which is not something you’d have heard a decade or two ago, when his sexiness burned through the screen and he was lionised and chastised in equal measure for being an acting genius (capable of explosive performances as Sid Vicious in Sid and Nancy or the Count in Francis Ford Coppola’s Dracula), and an alcoholic hellraiser who tore through relationships with Uma Thurman and Isabella Rossellini (both of which barely lasted two years). That was the Oldman we knew, the original South London bad boy whose hard-drinking father left when he was seven, and who grew into a star and a loose cannon, at his wildest landing in jail for drunk-driving in 1991 after a night out with Kiefer Sutherland in LA, eventually checking into rehab a few years later.

‘The wilder days probably weren’t as wild as people reported,’ he says. ‘It seems like a whole other life, a different person. I don’t know if I liked myself very much then. I was caught up in a sort of tornado.

You’re young and impressionable. You’ve got ambition, testosterone. You start to make money. You’re around beautiful women but you’ve always got this mistress, which is the work. It’s quite selfish.

I just don’t think you necessarily have the maturity to handle it.

With a bit of longevity, I’ve mellowed a bit. I think it’s about being… comfortable and settled. Though, I don’t mean settled as in, “Oh, I’ll just settle for that.” You can still strive to make things of quality.’

Perhaps it was becoming a single father in 2001, when his third marriage to American model Donya Fiorentino foundered and he was granted custody of sons Gulliver and Charlie, now 14 and 13, that shifted his priorities. (‘I [had] to be their moral compass,’ he has said.) A full-time ‘muppa’ (his children’s word for mum and papa combined) who did the daily school run and dined at home with the kids every night, Oldman started making familyfriendly career choices that kept him closer to home. Ambitious projects, such as a possible follow-up to his 1997 semi-autobiographical directorial debut, Nil by Mouth, were put on hold. He grew out of playing incendiary, high-octane villains and took to vulnerable, heroic father-figure roles, such as Sirius Black and Jim Gordon in the Harry Potter and Batman franchises – ‘[making] virtue look exciting’, as one critic put it. Then, in 2008, he married English jazz singer Alexandra Edenborough (‘generous, loyal, sweet, not a mean bone in her body’, says Urbanski), with whom he is currently redecorating their 1920s house in Los Feliz, Hollywood.

‘This is how you know it’s true love, when you watch them picking out stuff,’ says Urbanski. Oldman adds: ‘I’ll pass something and say, “You see that awning?” and she’ll go, “I was just going to mention that.” We’re completely in tune. I mean, occasionally I like blinds for something, she likes drapes and we get in a bit of a tangle…’

Later, with conspicuous zeal, he snaps one of the hotel’s wooden banisters on his iPhone and coos over a panel of Spanish tiles.

‘I know, this sounds boring,’ he says. ‘I’m dull. I sound dull.’

But domestic bliss seems only to have further released his acting capabilities. When Oldman landed the role of CONTINUED ON PAGE 164

‘The wilder days probably weren’t as wild as people reported. I don’t know if I liked myself very much. I was caught up in a sort of tornado’ Tom Hardy, his co-star in The Dark Knight Rises, calls him a ‘god’; Benedict Cumberbatch say’s he’s ‘a master at the height of his powers and an utter one-off ’; Daniel Radcliffe strives to emulate him; Ryan Gosling named him his favourite actor; and Jessica Chastain burst into tears when she met the man she ‘would gladly become a vampire [for], if it meant that I was to live eternally alongside [his] Dracula’. How many admirers still swoon over that performance?

Perhaps the most surprising accolade has come from Miuccia Prada, who, clearly appreciating Oldman’s blend of sex appeal, humour and gravitas, cast him in her A/W 12 menswear show, featuring an austere collection of high collars and tailcoats intended as a ‘parody of male power’, and also picked him for that collection’s ad campaign, shot by David Sims. ‘I thought about it for 10 seconds and said, “Yeah, OK, why not?”’ says Oldman. ‘It was different. It was a gas, mainly because of Mrs Prada and her team, who are meticulous and treated me royally. Also, my youngest, Charlie, wants to be a designer, so he’s been lucky to meet Miuccia and be hanging out with the right people.’

Catwalking in Milan is just the sort of leftfield venture Oldman loves right now. Like directing a webcast of Jack White in concert, 128 |

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AN ENGLISHMAN IN LA Gary Oldman photographed at Chateau Marmont, wearing wool suit, £995, Burberry Prorsum. Cotton shirt, £195, Paul Smith.

Previous pages: wool coat, £1,710; wool waistcoat, £715; wool trousers, £525; cotton shirt, £335, all Prada. Satin bow tie, £46; sunglasses, £203, both Paul Smith. See Stockists for details. Hair and grooming by Erica Sauer at Eamgmt

STOCKISTS ‘KING OF ALL HE SURVEYS’

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 128

George Smiley in Tinker Tailor Solder Spy, the 14-week shoot in London took him away from home for the longest stretch in years. ‘The kids were a good age, and although I’ve had the same nanny for 11 years, there is a difference between a mother figure and a nanny. I mean, Alex was organising everything: the house, the schools – you know, the phone is ringing and the school needs this cheque or this form to be signed for a field trip. I can let her make executive decisions and it frees me up a little. It was nice to be playing a leading role again.’ After years of confessing in interviews that he’d lost his interest in acting, his passion was definitively reignited: ‘It was wonderful. You get to work with the crème de la crème of British acting.

Being around that talent is exciting. It brings your game up.’

Reprising the role of the incorruptible Commissioner Gordon in The Dark Knight Rises, Oldman was reminded of the exhilaration he’d had working with Heath Ledger. ‘There’s a location in London that we went back to – we also shot a bit of Tinker Tailor there – and it was weird, literally standing on the spot where I had first met Heath.

‘To watch Heath was dazzling. He had a light around him.

I don’t know what it was. If he put his mind to anything, I think he could probably… he was thinking of directing. He was a great chess player too. I played him a couple times. He [always] won.

‘Ten or 15 years earlier,’ continues Oldman, ‘I would have been a candidate for the Joker, but it is nice to be a certain age and play a certain type of character; and you watch Heath bouncing off the walls and I thought, “Oh God, rather you than me.”’ Oldman now ‘is not unlike the character [of Gordon] himself ’, says The Dark Knight Rises director Christopher Nolan: ‘A reliable, dedicated guy who will never surrender until the job is done.’ Those missing his aptitude for stony-hearted villainy will have to settle for his brief turn as bootlegging gangster Floyd Banner in John Hillcoat’s Lawless.

For all his currency in Hollywood, Oldman retains the outsider’s sensibility and trace of defiance that made him a maverick to begin with. He enjoyed the whole Oscar ride and was especially pleased to receive flowers from Tom Cruise after his Best Actor nomination (‘I sent him a fan letter years ago, after Magnolia. That whole relationship, the love lost with the father, was so touching. I cried my eyes out’), but is realistic about the pitfalls of what was a ‘somewhat political’ process. ‘You have to have acceptance of who you are, not worrying about what somebody over there is doing,’ he says. ‘All that insecurity, “he’s better looking”, “he’s taller”, “he’s better than me”.

Thank God all of that has gone. You get philosophical. You just go, “Fuck ’em.” I’m OK. Though awards definitely get you believing it for a while.’ He recalls his decision years ago to turn down the lead in Tim Burton’s Edward Scissorhands (‘Reading the script, I just didn’t get it’), then seeing the opening sequence and getting Burton’s vision instantly, but shrugs off any lingering regret. ‘You’re not chasing things like you used to. You don’t sweat the small stuff.’

For all his blithe maturity, some fans will be relieved to hear that Oldman can still be counted on for a little bad-boy behaviour, albeit on the back of his newfound thirst for interior design. ‘We are going to do a boys’ weekend,’ he says. ‘I’ll make a deal with the boys.

I get to look around Leland Stanford’s house, which is this white Renaissance [Revival] house in Sacramento, and then we’ll go to this big ‘airsofting’ place just outside of Sacramento. They’re like BB guns. They shoot little plastic pellets that break the skin. You wear a mask and goggles and shoot at one another. Basically it’s war,’ he says, casting me a knowing look. ‘Boys just love them.’

‘The Dark Knight Rises’ is released nationwide on 20 July, and ‘Lawless’ is out on 7 September.

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here was a moment at the Old Vicâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s recent â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;192â&#x20AC;&#x2122; anniversary gala in July that epitomised what the theatre does best â&#x20AC;&#x201C; draw together some of our greatest talents and conjure up something close to magic. Towards the end of the evening, hosted by Stephen Fry in the spectacular atrium of Battersea Power Station, Paul McCartney took to the stage to entertain an audience that included Old Vic owner Sally Greene, actors Joely Richardson, Saffron Burrows, Jeremy Irons and, of course, the playhouseâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s inimitable artistic director Kevin Spacey, who duly rushed the stage to join McCartney in an impromptu duet. As the opening chords of McCartneyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s last song â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Hey Judeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; rang out, the fomer Beatle made a dedication to one of the Old Vicâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s most illustrious alumni. â&#x20AC;&#x153;This is for you, Judiâ&#x20AC;Śâ&#x20AC;? he declared, as the entire room spun round to catch Judi Dench in joyful floods of tears. It was an emotional reminder of what sets the Old Vic apart; as home to John Gielgud, Laurence Olivier and Ralph Richardson, the Old Vic has always been cherished by its actors; a national institution defined, exalted and loved by the great players who have been lucky enough to perform there. www.harpersbazaar.co.uk

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The Old Vic is the most extraordinarily beguiling theatre in the world to me. I come to work in the morning and I canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t believe my luck. You see, the Old Vic has been in my life since I was a child.

My parents brought me to London when I was very young and we saw plays at the Old Vic, and I loved both the city and the theatre even then. Years later, in an amazing twist of fate, I was asked to join the group of people who were trying to save the Old Vic from an uncertain fate, and later I decided to throw my hat into the ring to be its artistic director.

So Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve loved the Old Vic as an audience member, but Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve also been fortunate to now come to know it as an actor, a director, a producer [and artistic director since 2003]â&#x20AC;Ś and in every guise it has been a truly wonderful personal journey.

The Old Vic is beautiful in itself, architecturally. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s the oldest working theatre in London, and is seen as a most perfect Victorian theatre. Historically, too, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s extraordinary. It has always been known as an actorsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; theatre â&#x20AC;&#x201C; I guess that is why I feel so at home there. And itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s not just my favourite stage in the world, but also loved by the many great actors who have played there over the years. Peggy Ashcroft, Richard Burton, John Gielgud, Vivien Leigh, Laurence Olivier, Judi Dench, Albert Finney, Ian McKellen, Simon Russell Beale, Joan Plowright, Diana Rigg, Maggie Smith, David Suchet, Peter Oâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Toole, Jeff Goldblum, Rebecca Hall, Eve Best â&#x20AC;&#x201C; I could go on â&#x20AC;&#x201C; all of these extraordinary talents have graced the Old Vicâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s boards.

So why did I choose to run a very old London theatre, rather than some Broadway house? Well, to start off with, no one in New York asked me! But the real story is a series of unexpected turns in my life. I did The Iceman Cometh at the Almeida Theatre in 1998, and we then transferred to the Old Vic. I fell in love with the place. Sally Greene, who ran the trust that had bought the theatre, asked me to join the board, and then to help find an artistic director for a new Old Vic Theatre Company. Then, one evening in 1999, as I walked October 2010 |

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WOOL TROUSERS (SOLD AS SUIT), ÂŁ400; COTTON SHIRT, ÂŁ90, BOTH PAUL SMITH. SEE STOCKISTS FOR DETAILS. GROOMING BY PANOS AT CLM, USING KIEHLâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S

OH, WHAT A CIRCUS! Old Vic artistic director Kevin Spacey photographed at the theatre in July

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I remember accosting John Gielgud shortly after I’d stepped in [in 1998] to rescue the place, and asking his advice about how to run it. I was suddenly feeling overwhelmed by the enormity of what I’d taken on. He cocked an eyebrow in his own inimitable way and said: ‘My dear girl, I have no idea, but just follow its dreams.’

I thought that was sage advice – he meant to really listen to the theatre space and that would help me know what to do.

Then, by a twist of fate, I saw Kevin’s legendary performance in The Iceman Cometh at the Almeida, and his sheer presence, virtuoso skill and charisma suddenly meant that I knew exactly what to do.

I had to persuade this great Hollywood actor, who’d only recently picked up his Oscar for American Beauty, that what he really wanted to do was not to earn millions in LA but to come to lead the Old 242 |

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When I was a little girl, with no intention of going on the stage, I was taken to see my brothers in their school plays at St. Peter’s School York. They were nearly always Shakespeare, so I grew up with a tremendous love of Shakespeare. When I was a student at the Central School, I spent many evenings at the Old Vic, having bought a ticket right up in the Gods. I think it was 6d or 9d (old money!) at the time. By 1953, the Old Vic was in a parlous state. When Michael Benthall took over, he launched the Five Year Plan, which involved staging all Shakespeare’s plays. During my visits to the Old Vic at that time, I saw Ralph Richardson, Richard Burton, John Neville, Michael Hordern, Coral Browne, Barbara Jefford and many other brilliant actors. It was a long time before the Beatles, yet there was a kind of hysteria as the fans screamed for Richard Burton or John Neville.

In 1957, as I was leaving drama school, Michael Benthall asked to see me and I auditioned for him. He asked me to join the company. I was to play Ophelia and other small parts and walk-ons, and understudy. My first day at the Vic, the previous company had just come back from a tour to America and they were wearing big badges saying ‘I love Elvis’. I didn’t even know who Elvis was.

I had a flat in Queensgate at the time. I turned up for my first rehearsal of the nunnery scene with a terrible allergy to washing powder, my right eye complete closed and covered in spots. Coral Browne, who was playing Gertrude, said I must be allergic to Michael Benthall! She and her husband, Philip Pearman, moved me into the flat at the top of their house, where I stayed for a couple of weeks until I moved in with Barbara Leigh Hunt and Juliet Cook in Eton Terrace. The company was very much like a family.

I did not get very good notices for Ophelia. The critics were enraged that the so-called National Theatre had employed a schoolgirl straight out of drama school to play the part. I recovered from the notices and went on to play, among other things, Maria in Twelfth Night, Hermia in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and Juliet in Romeo and Juliet, directed by Franco Zeffirelli. There were lots of other parts too and a great deal of understudying and walking-on. I was there until 1960.

I remember the year of the Asian flu epidemic and during Henry VI, when a great rabble was meant to enter, there were only four girls left who had not succumbed to the flu. Some weeks after this, I got www.harpersbazaar.co.uk

HERE’S TO VIC Guests at the Old Vic’s 192nd-anniversary party, clockwise from left: Stephen Daldry and Judi Dench. Sally Greene and Nick Clegg. Jeremy Irons. Paul McCartney and Mary McCartney.

The Old Vic’s anniversary party was held at Battersea Power Station, and was supported by W Doha. To see more pictures of the event, visit harpersbazaar.co.uk

PHOTOGRAPHS: BEN ELWES, CHARLIE WHEELER

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Vic, which he has done with such unwavering energy, commitment and faith that it astonishes me still.

There have also been hilarious moments such as the first trustees’ board meeting in 2001, which took place on the stage with the table laden with papers, flowers and sweets, facing forward into that iconic auditorium. Elton John, Kevin and I, Evelyn de Rothschild, Stephen Daldry, Peter Mandelson, Michael Bloomberg and David Furnish were all ready to commence when suddenly Vivienne Westwood, who was refurbishing a theatre dressing room along with Missoni and Stella McCartney, wandered onto the stage, tottering on the highest yellow heels, looking outrageously incredible, looked at us all and said: ‘Am I in the right room?’

I suppose, lastly, a memory I will treasure for ever because, without me knowing it at the time, it was to herald the start of an incredible journey, was the first Billy Elliot workshop. I watched the birth of a total phenomenon in its rawest, purest form: one piano, one boy, and the alchemy of some of the greatest in the business coming together for this new project: Lee Hall, [choreographer] Peter Darling, Elton John, Stephen Daldry, Eric Fellner and Tim Bevan. Goose-bump city.

And the air in this dear theatre crackled and fizzed with magic.

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along to the theatre, I realised that I was helping to find someone for the job I had wanted my whole life – and, before the chance slipped by, I put my own name forward, and here we are a decade later.

I always knew the kind of theatre I wanted to run. I was heavily influenced by my experiences in New York, working for the legendary artistic director Joe Papp, who ran the Public Theater and brought free Shakespeare to Central Park. I knew I didn’t want the Old Vic to be an island where only wealthy people could afford to go, when the Old Vic was nestled in such a diverse community as Lambeth, Waterloo and the South Bank. So we set about building programs for young people, offering 100 seats a night for £12 to under-25s, and devising a broad educational curriculum and initiatives supporting young artists through our Old Vic New Voices programme.

And why do I care so much about this stuff? Because when I was a young hopeful kid, dreaming of becoming an actor, I started to find my confidence, enjoy the process of acting and creating work for the stage and collaborating with others through similar programmes that were available in my junior- and high-school experience. And I was blessed to have met an incredible mentor when I was just 13, in the great actor Jack Lemmon. He taught me that if you’ve been successful in your chosen career, it is your obligation to spend a good portion of your time sending the elevator back down to help others. So, right from the start, our work with young people was as important to me as our work for the main stage. It continues to be what keeps me so engaged and why we are all excited to have recently opened up the Old Vic Tunnels under Waterloo Station as a new and innovative performance space for art, theatre, music and film.

I have been incredibly lucky. We have a wonderful staff who are dedicated to this building and make it a pleasure to come to work. We are all tremendously proud that we set out to offer this kind of theatre.

And we’ve a thrilling season to come – my seventh as artistic director: great visionaries like Anthony Page, Richard Eyre and Thea Sharrock as our directors; wonderful actors in the grand Old Vic tradition, from much-loved performers like the brilliant and funny Tom Hollander to newer stars like Lisa Dillon and Tom Burke; and plays by Noël Coward, Terence Rattigan and Georges Feydeau.

And more surprises with our galas and events that, like the recent Old Vic 192 Summer Party, always produce just a little bit of magic.

And that is why the Old Vic is so special to me. Because, even after all these years, it can still make my dreams come true. Singing ‘Hey Jude’ with Paul McCartney at our anniversary gala, him dedicating it to the wonderful Judi Dench, having the incomparable Stephen Fry as our host… oh, what a night! Here’s to many more.

Happy birthday, Old Vic, we love you.

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My first professional job was at the Old Vic in a version of Beauty and the Beast [1985], which transferred from Liverpool. My grandfather Michael Redgrave had performed there with Olivier in what they called the â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;eternal Hamletâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; [1937], because it was the uncut version. Olivier was playing Hamlet and my grandfather was playing Laertes on the night my mother [Vanessa Redgrave] was born. My grandmother was in hospital giving birth to my mother and there was to be a sign from the wings when she had been born.

During the duel between Hamlet and Laertes, the sign was given, and apparently, the duel was cut short. When the curtain came down, Laurence Olivier stepped out and said â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Laertes has a daughter.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t know if this is true but the story goes that he added â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;â&#x20AC;Ś and a new star is born.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; Those are just the family connections, but all the greats have performed at the Old Vic, and in a theatrical sense, the building is a landmark.

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HOLD ME, THRILL ME Jeff Goldblum and Joely Richardson photographed at the Old Vic

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JEFF WEARS WOOL JUMPER, ÂŁ122, JOHN SMEDLEY. JEANS AND BELT, HIS OWN. JOELY WEARS FINE-KNIT BODY, ÂŁ205, THEORY. STRETCH-CREPE TROUSERS, ÂŁ215, JOSEPH. SEE STOCKISTS FOR DETAILS. HAIR BY KEN Oâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ROURKE AT STREETERS. MAKE-UP BY FLORRIE WHITE AT D+V MANAGEMENT, USING CHANEL A/W 10

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The audiences for Speed-the-Plow [2008] were always warm, lively and ready to laugh. At curtain call, Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d look out and meet all of them in a glance. I particularly remember one curtain call when a girl in the third row stood up with a massive placard saying: â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Jeff, hereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s my numberâ&#x20AC;Śâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Some people claim there are ghosts at the Old Vic. I never experienced any, but I believe the building is haunted by the great actors whoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve performed there. I remember there was a picture of Laurence Olivier as Hamlet hanging in my dressing room. Derek Jacobi, who Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d acted with in the film Adam Resurrected, came backstage and said casually: â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re in the dressing room where I came to visit Olivier.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; That was daunting. I just hoped I would be worthy of sharing the same space.

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I have three abiding memories of the Old Vic. My first and earliest memory was in 1957, when I was a student in Bristol, going up to London with a couple of other students and visiting the Old Vic. I never even thought of going into the West End â&#x20AC;&#x201C; I just wanted to see whatever was on at the Old Vic. We got tickets for the gallery.

I saw Judi Dench as Juliet. Of course, I fell in love with her and developed a lifelong crush. She was absolutely dazzling.

My next encounter was in 1961. I was in rep at the old Sheffield Playhouse, and I got a call to London to audition for what proved to be the last year of the original Old Vic company. They were going on an 18-month world tour with three productions, all starring Vivien Leigh and directed by Robert Helpmann. Walking out for my audition on that stage, where so many great actors had walked before me, I remember thinking: â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;My life in the theatre canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t be any better than this.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; My audition was pretty pathetic. They didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t offer me anything, but I didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t care but because Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d spoken Shakespeare on the stage of the Old Vic. I would have that for the rest of my life. Then, about a month later, I got a telegram saying that somebody had dropped out, www.harpersbazaar.co.uk

and asking if I still wanted to join the Old Vic tour. So I got a role in the company: playing the second officer in Twelfth Night and walkons in The Lady of the Camellias and Duel of Angels. We toured for 15 months, and my total contribution to all three productions was the line: â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Antonio, I arrest thee at the suit of Count Orsino.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; Jumping forward, the third Old Vic memory I have is from when I was in Hollywood shooting Star Trek: The Next Generation. We were in our last season, and over the Christmas break for three weeks I performed my one-man show based on Charles Dickensâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; A Christmas Carol [1988] at the Old Vic. I got the red-eye from LA to London early one morning, and I went straight to the Old Vic with my suitcases in the car. They showed me my dressing room, told me that it used to be Laurence Olivierâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s dressing room.

I walked through the wings, through the upstage entrance onto the stage, I looked out to the auditorium and I burst into tears.

Gosh, how old was I? A 53-year-old man standing blubbing on the stage because this was the place Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d always wanted to be. I was overwhelmed. I was there for only three weeks, but every minute was so precious and exciting.

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I was at the Old Vic when â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Sirâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;, as we called him, was in charge â&#x20AC;&#x201C; thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Laurence Olivier. I remember the first day of rehearsals for Tom Stoppardâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s comedy Jumpers [1972] â&#x20AC;&#x201C; I turned up to find a line of huts outside, which was where the administrative offices were. It was very modest and cosy. Thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s where we rehearsed. Tom Stoppard was there too, looking very dapper, as he always did. For the final production we were very dependent on the stage revolve for scene changes.

During the first dress rehearsal, the revolve got stuck; but the second dress rehearsal was wonderful and I remember hearing waves of laughter from the auditorium. I went on to star in The Misanthrope and Macbeth. I remember one performance of Macbeth [1972], when the fire curtain wouldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t go up, and we all went to the pub next-door in full costume. I was dressed as Lady Macbeth, but I still got served.

We werenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t tanked up because the break wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t that long, but I had a glass of wine in me, and after that the second half zipped along.

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My father bought the family tickets for Henry IV Part I, Henry IV Part II and Henry V [1985]. I was 17 and, frankly, doubtful that this would be more fun than getting drunk on Malibu and Coke at the Camden Palace (it was the Eighties, remember). Having studied Henry IV Part I for O level, I did know and love the play, but I was completely unprepared for what I saw. The production was enlightening, using the popular culture of the time to close the gap between Now and Then. My favourite moment was when a scene ended with the English baying for war, wrapped in Union Jacks, with skinheads pogo-dancing around, howling like dogs, and what seemed like a Wembley-full of football hooligans punching the air and spitting. As the last demented skinhead pogoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d off-stage yelling some offensive jingoistic chant, the action seeped into the next scene as the French king murmured: â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Thus comes the Englishâ&#x20AC;Śâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; That scene featured a formal garden, all the characters picnicking on a white cloth, dressed in spotless white, and the Dauphin standing with his back to us in a very tight pair of white trousers.

Many years later, I had the honour to be in the same company as Andrew Jarvis, he of the tight white trousers, and was able to compliment him on his fine arse in person.

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the flu as well, and one night in Hamlet, I cried my way through the part. John Neville actually shook me and said: â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;If you are not well enough, donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t do it. The audience has not come to see you crying all the time.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; It was a valuable lesson. In fact, everything I learned about the theatre, I really learned in those four years at the Old Vic.

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The Old Vic brings with it authority, authenticity, adventure and a certain degree of accessible sophistication. It doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t dumb down.

I remember one night during the run of Waiting for Godot [1997], I was walking under the bridges near Waterloo on my way home, and a young man walked fiercely and quickly towards me. I thought: â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Oh no, Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m going to get mugged.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; He stopped abruptly in front of me and said: â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;I saw Waiting for Godot last night â&#x20AC;&#x201C; it was fucking brilliant.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; I was so touched. That is whatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s glorious about the Old Vic â&#x20AC;&#x201C; it provides a highly sophisticated menu for a very populous audience.

Every time I walked out on stage as Estragon, it was overwhelming and refreshing. We performed for six months: Alan Howard as Vladimir, Greg Hicks as Lucky, and Denis Quilley as Pozzo. It was a cast that would greet each other warmly before every performance. We came to rely upon each other greatly. We also went through the death of Princess Diana, which happened halfway through our run. It was strange to go on stage only hours after her death. By the last night, the closing sentences of the play (â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Vladimir: Well? Shall we go? Estragon: Yes, letâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s go. [they do not move]â&#x20AC;&#x2122;) were delivered from the heart. It was with genuine grief when we left.

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I think as soon as Kevin arrived at the Old Vic, there was a feeling of him shaking up London theatre, bringing in international talent and mixing people in a really successful way. That is obviously true of the Bridge Project, but also of the â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;24 Hour Playsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;. There was a feeling that whether you were from America or England, as actors we all just loved doing theatre. The year I took part [2005], I was in a Neil LaBute play called Some Girls with Catherine Tate. We went to the Old Vic after the show, and I remember both of us thinking: â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Christ, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Saturday night and weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve just done two showsâ&#x20AC;Śâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; But, getting to the Old Vic, we immediately felt the energy from that room of actors.

The brilliant thing is that, unlike most work you do as an actor, there is no preparation. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s like falling and hoping thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a net beneath you. You all gather the night before with your props and you have fun talking â&#x20AC;&#x201C; actors love being around other actors â&#x20AC;&#x201C; and then you 246 |

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Performing at the Old Vic, youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re aware of all the angst and excitement and adrenalin that has seeped into those dressing rooms â&#x20AC;&#x201C; the tendons in the walls tense with the jitters and nerves of actors.

One of my most charged memories of the Old Vic was the opening night for Gaslight [2007]. I was putting my costume on backstage, and because it was the summer and hot, I had put the skirt and corset on, leaving the bodice until the five-minute call. When I put the bodice on just before I was due on stage, I noticed a glaring problem. During the dress rehearsal we had decided to make a change to the front panel. This had been done, but had left the bodice lopsided. There was a sudden panic. The wardrobe mistress rushed in, and I was still not ready at the beginnerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s call. In the end I made it to the stage about 15 seconds before the curtain went up, racing through the wings, gathering the skirts of this enormous dress and trying not to trip. As soon as I took my position, I suddenly thought: â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Appreciate this, the curtain is about to go up on your first performance at the Old Vic.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; And I felt this swell of adrenalin and emotion replacing the panic.

While I was in Gaslight, there was no point going to the pub after a performance, because my dressing room was so majestic. It was great having an open house in my dressing room every night. You know the Old Vic dressing rooms are made for sin. Also, Kevinâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s last-night parties are legendary â&#x20AC;&#x201C; when there are no cameras about, and thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s just us in the bar drinking.

Kevin has some great stories of his time there â&#x20AC;&#x201C; my favourite is about Courtney Love and Peter Oâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Toole at the 2003 Fundraising Gala. Courtney was singing a song on stage, dressed up in this incredible duck costume; Peter Oâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Toole was on next and waiting backstage. Kevin was stage-managing the whole night. Watching Courtney, he was thinking: â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Oh my God, thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Peter Oâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Toole and I have Courtney Love on stage in a duck costume. What will he think Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve done to the Old Vic?â&#x20AC;&#x2122; He was trying to shrink into the floor out of embarrassment. Then Peter Oâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Toole came up behind him and whispered into his ear: â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Sheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a jolly good duck!â&#x20AC;&#x2122;

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My favourite moment at the Old Vic was stepping forward towards the front of the stage to deliver Rosalindâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s final words to the audience for the epilogue of As You Like It [2010] on press night. Seeing the house lights gradually lift to reveal a sea of open faces in the audience â&#x20AC;&#x201C; strangers, family, friends and colleagues emerging from the semidarkness â&#x20AC;&#x201C; and suddenly becoming intensely aware of the history of this place, the people who have made this great theatre and kept it living all these years, the ancestors of this play, the great actors before us who have told this story, spoken these words for over 400 years, and the Rosalinds before me with whom I share this experience.

And as these thoughts raced through my mind I turned upstage to see my husband [Christian Camargo], playing Orlando, standing in the doorway. Art mirroring life. A moment I will never forget. www.harpersbazaar.co.uk

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My first memories of the Old Vic are from one of its most golden periods when, as our National Theatre, it was run by Larry Olivier.

He had peopled it with some of the finest actors in the country. The nearest I came to it was performing at its offshoot the Young Vic, just up the road, under the direction of Frank Dunlop. But we were allowed to eat in their canteen, backstage in the bowels of the building, and sometimes, if we timed it right, we could rub shoulders with greatness â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Maggie Smith, Derek Jacobi, Judi Denchâ&#x20AC;Ś One evening [in 1974], when coming in through the stage door off the Waterloo Road, I passed a small, insignificant-looking man in a scruffy brown overcoat, before realising it was the great Sir Laurence on his way home after giving the towering performance I had just seen. It was to be many years later, towards the end of his life, that our paths would cross again, when he joined the cast of Brideshead Revisited, and I could begin to get to know him and watch his brilliance at closer quarters. As an actor just starting out, to have had that opportunity to watch such a company as he assembled, performing some of our greatest classics, was perhaps one of the greatest gifts I have been given. It set a benchmark for me to aspire to, and left memories that stay with me still.

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go home to bed, come in the next morning and are handed your piece.

It can be intimidating, depending on the length of the play, because youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re meant to learn it by heart. I was in an eight-minute play with Gael GarcĂ­a Bernal. I had to play the guitar and kiss him a lot, which was pretty fun. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;The 24 Hour Playsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; represent the best of what you love about theatre as a child, like playing charades and grabbing costumes from a cupboard. Only the Old Vic could recreate that.

ROSAMUND WEARS VELVET DRESS, ÂŁ1,162, ANTONIO BERARDI. SEE STOCKISTS FOR DETAILS. HAIR BY KEN Oâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ROURKE AT STREETERS. MAKE-UP BY FLORRIE WHITE AT D+V MANAGEMENT, USING CHANEL A/W 10

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EMPIRE BUILDER Zaha Hadid wears wool crepe coat, ÂŁ1,500, RM by Roland Mouret at Harrods. Double gunmetal rings with adjoining chain, from a selection, Asos.com

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THE WHITE ROOM Zaha photographed at home wearing wool crepe coat, ÂŁ1,500, RM by Roland Mouret at Harrods. Silver pendant on silk ribbon, about ÂŁ315, Camilla James. Double gunmetal rings with adjoining chain, from a selection, Asos.com. All other clothes, her own

G.5.´@ D<?91

The biggest challenge of the year

â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m an architect: every day is the biggest challenge.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; What was the best advice youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve ever been given?

â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Rem Koolhaas was my teacher at the Architectural Association. Heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s the sort of person you listen toâ&#x20AC;Śâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Success isâ&#x20AC;Ś

â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t know. But we do have a lot of really good projects in really good places. Is that it?â&#x20AC;&#x2122; What is your secret weapon?

â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Humour. It gets you through.â&#x20AC;&#x2122;

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Friendship is important.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; She also has a world-class archive of clothing by Miyake and Yohji Yamamoto (â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;a brilliant manâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;), and plenty of Lanvin. If she hadnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t been an architect, she says, she would have been a fashion designer. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Or maybe a shrink.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; Whereas Zahaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s reputation and reach are global, her first British building was completed only a month ago, and even more surprisingly itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a school, the Evelyn Grace Academy, in the edgy South London area of Brixton. The whole edifice rises in a swooshing arch over a running track â&#x20AC;&#x201C; a fabulously Hadid-type solution to the innercity issue of a site thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s really too small for the needs of 1,200 pupils.

Her own schooling was rather different. Born in 1950 in Baghdad, where her father was a prominent politician, young Zaha first went, she tells me, â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;to a nunâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s school in Baghdad. Isnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t that bizarre? Then to an awful boarding school in Hertfordshireâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;. She took a degree in maths in Beirut before finding her way to the radical Architectural Association School of Architecture in London, where she regularly attended lectures in a Chantal Thomass coat made entirely of bright pink feathers. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Talk about camp! It was stunning, though. I went to Moscow in it one time. Imagine me standing in a queue at Leninâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s tomb. I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t think the soldiers had seen anything like it.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; Success was far from instant. She didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t build anything until 1993, when she was in her early forties, and that was a fire station in Germany. She won a competition â&#x20AC;&#x201C; twice â&#x20AC;&#x201C; to build the Cardiff Bay Opera House in the mid-1990s. But the funding application for her overarchingly avant-garde vision was rejected, and the project was scrapped. (It was later replaced by the Wales Millennium Centre, the design of which the local dignitaries handed over to one of the original competitionâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s runners-up.) â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;It was very tough,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; she says, sighing. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Being a woman, then being foreign, and being an Arab.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; Then, in the 2000s, Zahaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s fluid, hitherto alienating forms began to make sense and see the light of day.

If Zaha can take some credit for broadening the possibilities for women in her profession, she still canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t equate it with family life. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;When I could have had children, it didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t occur to me. And with architecture, if you stop for a bit, I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t know how you go back. You have to be so focused all the time. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a very complex job.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; Is her office her family? â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a family set-up, maybe, but itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s not the same.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; Her apartment, as much a gallery as a home, is scattered with her unusual furniture, devoid of art and knick-knacks, bar a surprising deep-pink raffia basket in the bathroom with dried, dusty pink roses spilling out of it. She says she rarely entertains here, and her home does suggest a single life, dedicated to work. It wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t always like this. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;When I was at the Architectural Association, I was partying all the time,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; she says. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;I did that till the late Eighties. Then I had to start taking things seriously.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; Now she dines at Moro, Scottâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s, Yauatcha and the Wolseley, and regularly lunches at Shoreditch House, â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;always late, at 3pmâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;. She enjoys going to Miami. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s very relaxed, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Latin. It used to be really incredible â&#x20AC;&#x201C; I remember staying at the Delano and it was like a scene from a Ricky Martin video â&#x20AC;&#x201C; but places change.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; She never intended to live in London, she says, â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;but I came to study and loved it more and more. The English let you do what you want.

They donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t really care. And London is one of the great cities in the world. The only thing it fails in is architecture. But maybe thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s fine.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; While Zaha may feel there is yet work to do here, few would deny that her architecture has already conquered the world.

OPPOSITE AND PREVIOUS PAGE: SEE STOCKISTS FOR DETAILS. HAIR AND MAKE-UP BY NIKKI PALMER AT MANDY COAKLEY, USING SISLEY

sk anyone to name a female architect, and probably only one comes to mind: Zaha Hadid. And yet, in a profession in which women are so poorly represented, sheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s not just its most successful female practitioner; she is, regardless of gender, counted among its ruling elite.

In 2004, she became the first woman to win the Pritzker Architecture Prize (the architectsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Oscar), then in its 26th year; and in October, she walked off with the RIBA Stirling Prize for her contemporary-art museum, Maxxi in Rome, which she accepted clad in an exquisite yellow Prada coat. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s all a far cry from her education in a convent in Baghdad in the 1950s. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;I know, I think itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s amazing,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; she says of her success, sitting in her glaringly white apartment, just round the corner from her office in Clerkenwell, London, finishing a toasted sandwich skewered with caperberries on cocktail sticks. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;But, you know, you get hit on the head all the time in this business. You have to deal with daily issues and that humbles you. You donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have time to think how incredible it is.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; Not that Zaha â&#x20AC;&#x201C; now so recognised in her field that sheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s up there with other single-namers like Madonna, Damien (Hirst), or Naomi (Campbell) â&#x20AC;&#x201C; is known for her humility, exactly. She is as flamboyant as her buildings, renowned for their dynamic curves and dramatic swooping silhouettes, and as eyecatching as the iridescent finishes of her sinuous furniture pieces. Outspoken, never knowingly underdressed (a couple of years ago, she developed quite a penchant for American Apparelâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s electro metallic leggings, but she has since gone back to black), and decidedly diva-esque, she can fill a room with her presence, as well as her put-downs. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;She has a great sense of humour,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; says longtime friend, architect Nigel Coates. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;But if you know her, wellâ&#x20AC;Ś she can be difficult too.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; Today sheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s on fabulous form, and before the shoot is wrapped in a padded silk Issey Miyake jacket, worn upside down, because, she says: â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;I always wear his pieces that way round. They just look better.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; Coming from a lesser artist, it would sound absurdly irreverent. But I bet even Miyake is happy for an acknowledged genius like Zaha to reinvent his designs.

Right now, newly turned 60, she is on a roll. So much so that a staff of over 400 are beavering away in her studio, which occupies a former Victorian school. Between them, they are working on 80 projects that include products and buildings. Twenty big architectural works are currently on site around the world, from a performing-arts institute in Abu Dhabi and a library and conference complex in Azerbaijan to a transport museum in Glasgow thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s opening next year and, of course, the Aquatics Centre for the 2012 London Olympics, with its sinuous stingray-inspired roof. And there is the set and costume design for an opera in Los Angeles in the offing (she may work with Vivienne Westwood). The past year has been a big one: Maxxi, which took 11 years to complete, had a grand opening in November 2009; the art only arrived early this year. Its interior of labyrinthine black metal stairs, twisting corridors, concrete tubes and cavernous halls has been an unbelievable success with the locals. On top of this, an opera house in Ganzhjou, China, was opened in May this year. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;The buildings Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve made are what I collect,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; she says. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;And people.

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Men, women, love and sex – themes that have always been close to Martin Amis’ heart. And in his latest novel, he returns to them again, this time, perhaps surprisingly, tackling the thorny issue of feminism.

RACHEL COOKEmeets the modern literary giant still aflame with an unquenchable passion Portrait by JULIAN BROAD

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eeting Martin Amis is not unlike having a tutorial. He lives in Primrose Hill, and when you ring the bell, the drill is as follows: he shakes your hand; he takes you into his drawing room, where two vast fuchsia sofas look like open wounds against the sludgegrey walls; then, while you plonk yourself onto one of these, he arranges himself on a small, hard chair directly opposite. It is left to his American-Uruguayan wife, Isabel Fonseca, now a novelist herself, to make you a cup of tea, and to bring it smilingly to you in a delicate china cup. But then she scoots, slipping from the room in an elegant instant – she is quite amazingly beautiful – and silence falls. Amis, as patrician and as pugnacious as ever, awaits your first question. All this is not to suggest that talking to him isn’t fun; it is. He likes being interviewed – he has never made much secret of that – and his answers are deliciously expansive: as witty and considered as tiny essays.

In the old days, of course, it was always men who got to interview him: young men who were in love with his dazzling, snarling prose and his reputation for cool; who admired all those black and white photographs of him as a twentysomething literary sensation, a cigarette always to be found resting arrogantly on the plump pillow of his lower lip; and who were up for playing a round of tennis or snooker with him. As he has grown older, though, it is mostly women who get to turn up at his elegant front door, and this suits him very well. He admires women more and more as he gets older, or at least this is what he says. ‘I’m a gyno-crat,’ he began boasting, some years ago, when he first started telling people he was going to write a novel about the sexual revolution. Perhaps the true motor of this new respect for females, however, is his hunch that, when a man reaches the end of www.harpersbazaar.co.uk

SEX

his life, all that really matters is ‘how it went with women’. In the early Nineties, he suffered a gruesome divorce from his first wife, Antonia Philips, the mother of his two grown-up sons, and he still winces at the thought of it (he has been married to Isabel, 46, the mother of his two young daughters, Clio and Fernanda, since 1996; there is also 33-year old Delilah, whom he only discovered to be his daughter in the 1990s, the result of an affair with British artist and author Lamorna Seale). Sometimes, this talk of the ‘gynocracy’ seems to have more to do with guilt over past sins than with real conviction.

Amis’ new novel The Pregnant Widow is set at the end of the Sixties, at the point at which women suddenly started to go to bed with men – I mean with men whom they were not intending to marry. Most of the action takes place over the course of a long, hot summer in a castle in Italy. Amis insists that the majority of the book’s narrative is not autobiographical. But still, its narrator, Keith Nearing, student of literature, wannabe critic, and admirer of girls in all their March 2010 |

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PHOTOGRAPH: © DAFYDD JONES

BRIT LITS, BIG CITY Martin Amis, Christopher Hitchens and Tina Brown at Amis’ book-launch party in New York in 1995.

Opposite: Martin Amis photographed for Bazaar in January 2010

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LET’S TALK ABOUT

many sweet varieties, bears a certain resemblance to his creator at a similar age: a voracious reader, he is also as anxious about his looks as the diminutive Martin once was (and perhaps still is: Amis turned 60 last year, an age he describes as a ‘video nasty’; he now spends most of his time trying to avoid the mirror). Nearing is also unusually insightful. He knows the world is turning, and he intends to make the most of it. How much sex can he have, and with whom? ‘The year was 1970, and he was 20: to this historic opportunity, he brought his minimal handsomeness, his plausible tongue, his sincere enthusiasm, and a certain willed but invigorating coldness. There were disappointments, near things, there were some miraculous aquiescences (which still felt like liberties, in the shame-and-honour sense: involving impudence, overfamiliarity, taking advantage). Anyway, the free-love business certainly worked best with girls who were acting like boys.’

Was it really like this? Aren’t revolutions only recognised once they have passed into memory? Amis licks his lips. ‘We did sense it, but you didn’t mention it. You thought, “What’s this?” It was like that scent that goes through the Serengeti and makes the wildebeest stampede. It was very weird, and an enormous change. I was peculiarly well-placed in that all my male friends had terrible fights with their fathers, which I’m sure were about envy; the fathers would have liked to have had sex before marriage. But I didn’t have that, because Kingsley [Amis, his father] had had that fight with his father, and he wasn’t going to do it to my brother and me. He erred in the other direction, and was sort of cheering us on.

He very much liked the idea of us having lots of girlfriends. When he established that we’d both lost our virginity, he took us out for a really great celebratory lunch in Soho, and then he bought us a gross of condoms each.’ Wasn’t his teenage self embarrassed by this? ‘Slightly. But it was also great.’

He describes The Pregnant Widow as ‘rather feminist’, but I’m not so sure. Its female characters – from Keith’s girlfriend, Lily, to Scheherazade, the woman with whom he is obsessed, to Gloria, with whom he has one day of wild abandon – are defined mostly by where they stand on the issue of pre-marital sex. Roughly speaking, they fall into one of three groups: those who won’t; those who will; and those who do, but feel bad about it afterwards. Apparently, though, this is deliberate. ‘Yes. I spent an awful lot of my teen years trying to indoctrinate girls into sexual activity. “Come on, this is 1969…” Working-class girls were much more restrained than middle- and upper-class girls. But if it was against their nature, you had to respect that. The clever ones felt their way. That was the best they could do. It was the girls who had to do all the changing, not the boys; the difficult stuff all fell to them.’

Was it wonderful, all this sex – assuming you hit on the right girl – being offered up on a plate? ‘We were all terrified.’ Why? ‘Well, what would that be? It would be 6,000 years of girls not doing things. The weight of the past can be enormous. You’re finding your way out from under that.’ Did men, eager as they were to get laid, also secretly despise women who would sleep with them? ‘Yes, subconsciously.

That’s the weight of the past again. The idea that society changes within an instant of everyone deciding that it’s a good idea is an illusion. Deep, temperamental, psychological change is awfully slow.’

All this emphasis on sex seems to leave no room for the question of whether men also began treating women as their intellectual equals.

But he disagrees. ‘The great battle in the love game was finding a girl

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everything ratcheted up a level. In 2002, there was the row about his Stalin polemic, Koba the Dread; critics thought it inadequate, absurd, even insulting. A year later, they laid into his novel Yellow Dog with an enthusiasm so rabid it would not have looked out of place on some reality-TV show. Then there was the racism row. In 2006, in the days after the transatlantic aircraft bomb plot was uncovered, Amis told an interviewer: ‘There’s a definite urge – don’t you have it? – to say, “The Muslim community will have to suffer until it gets its house in order.”’ He talked of deportations and strip searches. Controversial at the time, these comments came back to haunt him in 2007, when Terry Eagleton, his colleague at Manchester University (Amis is a professor of creative writing), likened his thoughts to that of a BNP thug. Finally, last autumn, he said of Katie Price (aka Jordan): ‘She has no waist, no arse… all we are really worshipping is two bags of silicone.’ At this point, the M-word raised its shaven head once again. Also, the S-word (snobbery). No wonder the supposedly feminist The Pregnant Widow is so keenly awaited. Even as I write, implements – knives, nail files, anything – are being sharpened.

He thinks the attacks on his work have something to do with who his father was. ‘There’s never been any restraint. I’m like Prince Charles: born into it.’ (Though this, of course, ignores the ecstatic praise he received – for The Rachel Papers, for Money – earlier in his career.) But also, there is what he calls ‘this great wallow of triviality’: the world of Katie and Peter and The X Factor. ‘I had to hold my 13-year-old’s hand when the winner of The X Factor was announced, in case it wasn’t [he pushes out the name with a brilliantly comic wince]… JOE. There’s a joyful philistinism out there. It’s an odd, impenetrable culture, in which the trivial is [venerated].’

He has finished a draft of a novel about this world, featuring a Jordan-like figure called Threnody and a man called Lionel Asbo, who wins £90 million on the lottery.

This will be a big year for Amis. He will publish a novel, deliver another, and continue work on a third. In the spring, the BBC will screen its adaptation of Money as part of its Eighties season (he hasn’t seen it, but he isn’t optimistic: ‘I saw a Lucky Jim they did; it was agony – some writer thought he was funnier than the book.’) How much more does he think he has left in him? ‘I’ve thought about this.

Dickens, Austen… it used to be that the body gave up first. Now, the mind does. I almost got myself into a funk about this. All writers who live beyond 70, their powers start to go. I interviewed Graham Greene on his 70th birthday, and I said rather thoughtlessly to him: your religion must be helping a lot now. He said, “No, I’ve hardly got any faith now. Faith is a talent and, like all your talents, it evaporates with age.” I’m fine at the moment. I’m having a good spurt.

But a greater effort is needed to keep a whole novel in your mind.’

I try to cheer by reminding him how many great writers didn’t even get started until they were over 40: George Eliot, Joseph Conrad, Penelope Fitzgerald. He brightens. ‘Yes… and my wife!’

Fonseca published her first novel, Attachment, in 2008. Which brings us, neatly, back to where we started: the sexual revolution. Amis likes to tell you that women’s lib made a mistake by failing to put housework – a 50:50 deal – at the top of the agenda right from the very beginning. So, now that Fonseca is writing, is he doing a bit more around the place? A low chuckle. ‘Yeah… terrifying prospect,’ he says.

‘The Pregnant Widow’ (£18.99, Jonathan Cape) is out now.

‘This whole misogynist tag. It’s the first word you reach for, in the same way that “racist” is often the first word you reach for.

It’s a serious accusation; it’s a golden grenade.

You throw it, and nothing comes back’

PHOTOGRAPHS: GETTY IMAGES, SNOWDON/VOGUE/CAMERA PRESS, REX FEATURES

‘My father liked the idea of my brother and me having lots of girlfriends. When he established that we’d both lost our virginity, he took us out for a great celebratory lunch and bought us a gross of condoms each’ THREE AGES OF MAN From top: Martin (centre) with brother Philip and father Kingsley in 1957.

Martin photographed by Lord Snowdon in 1978.

With wife Isabel Fonseca in London in 2008

with whom you could be yourself. It was never any good unless that was true. I don’t think that if you’re at ease with them, you can’t fancy them. I never felt that. Or if they’re clever. I was very attracted to clever women.’ I suppose this is right. Amis’ ex-girlfriends include Tina Brown, the former editor of Vanity Fair, Emma Soames, the former editor of Tatler, and Julie Kavanagh, the biographer of Rudolf Nureyev. Still, it’s strange that he keeps referring to women as ‘them’.

As he sees it, sexual freedom was not without its consequences.

‘Once the social revolution began, then, no question, everyone was trained in promiscuity. But it was a marvellous illusion that people could be promiscuous for 10 years, then think, “Right, that’s over.”’

One of the most ‘promiscuous’ women in his novel, Gloria, ‘sort of forgets to do other stuff ’ – by which he means have children. Another, Keith’s sister, Violet, is abused by men who take advantage of her.

Violet is based on Sally, Amis’ sister, who died in 2000 aged just 46, an alcoholic and a depressive. ‘She [Sally] was certainly a victim of that generational change. She was not equipped. She lived in America with my mother when she was 13, and she took some big drugs, and when she came back it was as if her mental age did not move on. She was a difficult child, sweet but perverse and hopeless. Self-destructive.

No sense of self-preservation. But that didn’t make her death any less shocking.’ She would, he tells me, often come home with a black eye.

“I had a kind of breakdown years after she died. All my energy went…’ Because he felt guilty at his failure to protect her? ‘Yeah, a bit. My brother tried harder than me. He was braver than me. I couldn’t bear it. But even he had to give up. She was incorrigible.

She could not be corrected. My mother feels that, too. She did endless rescues.’

What have other women readers said about his novel? ‘So far, so good. Not that they need a case for that word “misogynist”.’

His voice curdles. ‘This whole misogynist tag. It’s the first word you reach for, in the same way that “racist” is often the first word you reach for. There was this thing: “Martin Amis at 60”. People were asked about the misogynist thing. I was disappointed to see Marina Warner [the novelist and cultural historian], who’s an intelligent girl, reaching for that. It’s a category mistake. In satire, everything is exaggerated.

The men are gross and pathetic, too. But they just detach the women from the novel. It’s a serious accusation; it’s accusing you of being pathological. It’s a golden grenade. You throw it, and nothing comes back. You don’t have to take responsibility for it.’ mis knows all about verbal grenades. I wonder: does he put on a tin hat before he picks up the newspaper? For a man who spent most of his teenage years refusing even to read a novel – it was his stepmother, the novelist Elizabeth Jane Howard, who encouraged him to read Jane Austen, a clever bit of coaxing that ultimately helped him to win a place at Oxford, where the former academic dropout won a congratulatory first – his career as a writer has long been trailed by gossip and controversy. In the 1990s, the stories were mostly about his teeth (they hurt; he was forced to lavish cash on them; this was considered very un-British) and about money (his agent, Andrew ‘the Jackal’ Wylie, was said to have won him an advance of £500,000 for his 1996 novel, The Information). The following decade, though, www.harpersbazaar.co.uk

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REIGNING

CAMPION

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With Bright Star, a hauntingly emotional film about the poet John Keats and his lover Fanny Brawne, Jane Campion confirms her standing as the world’s most important female director. Novelist JEANETTE WINTERSON meets the uncompromising movie-maker with a flair for portraying the fiercer side of love.

Portrait by PATRICK SWIRC

IN BLOOM Film-maker Jane Campion photographed in London this year www.harpersbazaar.co.uk

Here is a film about a poet, about words, and the poetry is used throughout without flinching, and at the same time the thread running through the film is the unsayable truth of love, what happens underneath and above language.

Film, of course, is its own visual language, and Campion, who also has a degree in fine art, is not afraid of beauty, nor is she afraid to hold a shot. This is a relief in the crazy fast-forward world of movie-making, where Nintendo culture seems to have infected the rate at which we are supposed to catch images. In a Campion film you have time to feel, time to cry, time to reflect. The pace is slowed down, not sped up.

‘People resist experience coming through their senses,’ she says.

‘They like it fast and simple so that they don’t have to feel what they might feel. You know how people limit life to make it more survivable – if that’s how you are, you won’t want an art experience that opens you up – even though it’s what you really need.’

She thinks for a moment, then says: ‘That’s OK, it’s democracy of experience: you can go and see Spider-Man’ – she bursts out laughing – ‘but my movies are for all those people Hollywood doesn’t serve…’

Campion admits she has a European outlook – inevitable in the Commonwealth New Zealand culture in which she was brought up. ‘We’re not American,’ she says. ‘I was raised on Buñuel movies. My mother was an actress, wore a Chanel suit and took me to the cinema in Wellington to watch films I didn’t understand…’ She laughs again. She has a lovely positive feel about her, opinionated, tough, but also compassionate and with a wise eye on human nature. ‘I am interested in sexuality as the great leveller. If we could feel more, we would judge less.’

When I ask her to comment on the question of how little overt sexuality is in her new movie – compared to, say, 2003’s In the Cut, Campion’s previous film, based on Susanna Moore’s erotic thriller – she says that she wanted to portray the ‘sensuous quality’ of Keats’ work, and the yearning and longing that he and Fanny felt for each other. ‘Their relationship is so much more than sexuality. The attraction is huge, but by restraining that, visually, I can expand the range of feeling. You know how it is when you really want someone but can’t have them, how all your senses are heightened. I wanted that here.’

‘People resist experience coming through their senses,’ says Campion. ‘They like it fast and simple, so that they don’t have to feel what they might feel’

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here is a beautiful moment in the film when Keats is defending both Fanny and his passion for her to his friend Brown, the well-off, well-meaning but coarse-cut poet who thinks that women are for sex. Keats turns on him and says: ‘There is a holiness to the heart’s affections…’

Campion is not afraid of this. All of her characters in all of her films are on a spiritual journey. The point is not happiness, nor even resolution; Campion looks for meaning. ‘Keats understood consciousness, he understood what it is to be alive: the sensuality is there, the sexuality – he was no wash-out – but most of all, there is consciousness. That’s what attracted me to him, to his poetry.’

Ben Whishaw is a perfect Keats, and because Campion is so great with actors, and because she rehearses, as she would in the theatre, her actors have time to become their characters.

The dynamic between Whishaw and Abbie Cornish, as Fanny Brawne, is tense, tender, developing and ultimately heartbreaking. www.harpersbazaar.co.uk

This is a weepie, but there are no crocodile tears. It’s such a relief to watch the real thing.

Not that Campion could be bothered with anything less than the real thing. She is uncompromising in her vision; a true artist who chases the dream, not the dollar. ‘You have to trust what comes through your heart.’

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PHOTOGRAPHS: THE KOBAL COLLECTION. PREVIOUS PAGES: HAIR AND MAKE-UP BY TARA HICKMAN, USING ARMANI. FLOWERS BY JAMIE ASTON (020 7387 0999; WWW.JAMIEASTON.COM)

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arvey Keitel called Jane Campion ‘a goddess’. I was thinking about that word while I was waiting for her in her suite at the Soho Hotel in London. Standing at the window watching the rain – images of her new film Bright Star washing through my mind, remembering the words on Keats’ tombstone: ‘One whose name was writ in water’, and hearing the door open behind me, and she’s there; substantial, confident, leather jacket, a lot of hair, something of the sky about her in the wide and open clarity of her nature, but a sense of what might be darker and destroying too. Not destructive, but destroying.

‘Power,’ I thought, standing on tiptoe to kiss her. This is the woman who squared up to John Malkovich when she directed him in The Portrait of a Lady in 1996. ‘Inspiration.’ She worked with Nicole Kidman to deliver a supreme performance as Isabel Archer in the same film. ‘Fearlessness.’ Her 1989 film Sweetie was booed in Cannes, but in 1993 she became the first woman to win the Palme d’Or, for The Piano, and here we are, 20 years after the booing, with an unafraid, deeply emotional and beautiful film about the poet John Keats and his love affair with Fanny Brawne.

‘He worshipped her,’ Campion says. ‘She made his best poetry happen. When I was reading his letters, I understood that you can’t talk about him without talking about her.’

Bright Star is a love story, yes, and it’s a costume drama set in 1818, but there is nothing sentimental about it. Campion – now 55 – doesn’t like the ‘soft adaptations’ of Jane Austen, or the way the film industry has prettified Austen’s toughness.

Campion’s own 19th-century sensibility is nearer to Emily Brontë than it is to Jane Austen, and in Bright Star, as in The Piano – with its portrayal of the affair between George Baines (played

by Keitel) and Ada McGrath (Holly Hunter) – she has ‘borrowed from the mood of Wuthering Heights’, by which she means the fierceness of love. In her Oscar-winning The Piano, there was also the celebration of landscape that Brontë works with so powerfully.

In Bright Star, as in The Portrait of a Lady, the landscape has been turned inwards.

I can’t think of any film director, male or female, who is better than Campion at re-focusing the past so that we can enter into a time that is remote to us, and strange, as well as showing us how human nature is always recognisable. Keats and Fanny are neither modern people dressed in old clothes – the usual problem with costume drama – nor some anthropological curiosity.

It may be because Campion has a degree in anthropology that she both respects the distance that history allows, as well as finding the continuity necessary for emotional connection. ‘There has to be feeling,’ she says. I tell her I cried three times in the film, and we talk for a bit about what she calls ‘the feeling world’.

The choice to make Ada mute in The Piano allowed an emotional reaction away from language/thinking, and in Bright Star, the motif of sewing – Fanny can make and sew anything – stitches the narrative together in a way that is brilliantly subversive.

ven at her level – even as the most important female director in the world – getting the money for Bright Star wasn’t easy. The film had faltered until Tanya Seghatchian at the UK Film Council came across the script and knew it was something she would want to fund. Seghatchian, who made her name producing the early Harry Potter films, and is best known for her work on the brilliant My Summer of Love (2004), is as much a maverick as Campion herself. (‘I am only interested in brilliance,’ Seghatchian says.) We could do with a lot more of that attitude in the dumbed-down democracy of movies and the media.

Campion herself has decided she wants to play wilder than ever. ‘I’m planning a six-hour TV thing, set in a remote part of New Zealand, a commune of women, post-menopause, washed-up, picking up their pieces, some still cranking up their romantic addictions…’

How will the guys cope? She laughs a lot. She likes men, she doesn’t have an agenda, and she’s pleased that the response from men to Bright Star has been both positive and emotional. Yet she’s very clear about how the world is: ‘We live in a male-centric reality. Women don’t know how to trust themselves, even how to look at themselves. It’s maybe better now for women like you and me than it was 20 years ago, but look at the young women who read the glossy magazines – it’s still all about body image and desirability. Will a man want you? We are still trying to get past that.’

We talk about Susie Orbach’s new book, Bodies, and the recent outcry about airbrushed models and anorexia, and it’s a relief to know that if you watch a Jane Campion movie – set in the past or the present – you will be watching real women deal with real issues.

She’s a realist all right, but the breathtaking beauty of her films comes out of that tough realism being broken through with a poetic, dreaming self, that allows in all the imaginative worlds that are so often denied to women, or refused by them in a bid for everyday survival.

Campion isn’t married any more, and she has a teenage daughter. She has been down her own hard roads emotionally.

She has broken the rules and smashed the glass ceiling, but I get the feeling that her great idea about the commune of washed-up women somewhere on the rim of the world is a project that will give her a lot of personal satisfaction.

‘I had a yoga teacher – she’s dead now; I based Fanny’s mother on her in the film. I started yoga at 42, and my mental and physical self has gone on improving at an age when that isn’t supposed to happen. So I know that anything is possible.’

She laughs her big, bold goddess laugh. ‘When really big things happen to you, you hit the floor, and that’s the best place to be.

Then you get up and re-make your world.’

‘Bright Star’ is released nationwide on 6 November.

Campion is compassionate, with a wise eye on human nature. ‘I am interested in sexuality as the great leveller.

If we could feel more, we would judge less’

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DYNAMIC DUOS From top: Ben Whishaw and Abbie Cornish in ‘Bright Star’ (2009).

Kate Winslet and Harvey Keitel in ‘Holy Smoke’ (1999). John Malkovich and Nicole Kidman in ‘The Portrait of a Lady’ (1996). Holly Hunter and Anna Paquin in ‘The Piano’ (1993) November 2009 |

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Writer and director Pedro Almodóvar’s passionate, savvy portrayals of women have been at the heart of three decades of riveting cinema, garnering him global acclaim and two Oscars.

AMY RAPHAEL meets the self-styled ‘feminist man’ to discuss sex, fashion and womanly intuition; and his enduring muse and star of his latest film, fellow Spaniard PENÉLOPE CRUZ, opens up about the pair’s special relationship

PHOTOGRAPH: XXXXXX

Portrait by SOFIA SANCHEZ and MAURO MONGIELLO

PHOTOGRAPH: SOFIA SANCHEZ AND MAURO MONGIELLO/BRYDGES MACKINNEY/TRUNKARCHIVE.COM

PEDRO’S ANGELS

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HOLD ME NOW Penélope Cruz and Pedro Almodóvar www.harpersbazaar.co.uk

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I

t’s hard to think of another director who loves women as much as Pedro Almodóvar. Over a career spanning 30 years, the Spanish writer-director has given life to a generation of flamboyant female creations: real women made of flesh, whose blood runs thick with passion, grief and desire. They might be prostitutes, nuns or downtrodden housewives, but they are always heroines, fighting for domestic survival and, in his new film Broken Embraces with Penélope Cruz, willing to sacrifice all for love. Whereas too many of mainstream cinema’s female roles are caricatures catering to male fantasies, Almodóvar celebrates women in their glorious complexity: exalting their curves in skin-tight leopard-print; capturing the poignant beauty of their eyeliner, smudged with tears.

It’s no wonder that most of Hollywood’s female population is queuing up to work with him. Vanessa Redgrave worships Almodóvar. Emma Thompson reportedly pleaded with him for a part. (‘Pedro understands emotion and eroticism, ergo he understands strong women,’ says Thompson. ‘Simple as that.’)

Kristin Scott Thomas is a fan. So is Tilda Swinton. Even Madonna (whose admiration for Almodóvar and lust for his young star – Antonio Banderas – were immortalised in 1991’s In Bed With Madonna) once tried to charm her way into one of his films in the 1980s, giving him a tour of the Dick Tracy set. But he apparently wasn’t interested. Despite his cult status and the lure of Hollywood, Almodóvar still makes films in Spanish with Spanish actresses.

Given the bold statements of his films – whose protagonists include a female impersonator, a drug-addicted porn actress, a pregnant nun, a transsexualprostitute father figure and a sexually depraved matador – I expect Almodóvar to make a grand entrance when I meet him in London this summer. Instead, he is almost a shrinking violet, and surprisingly shy. Portly, with a mass of wiry, grey hair, he is cagey about his age, but is thought to be turning 60 this September. He orders tea with honey and, with the use of a young translator, talks in heavily accented English, breaking into his native language each time he becomes passionate about a subject.

One of his favourite subjects is, of course, women – and they are always discussed in fast, fervent Spanish: ‘The truth is that men are very dull! Male characters demand films that are dark and grave, whereas female characters lead me to make films that are more baroque, fun and full of light. I have always been fascinated by women; always paid them a lot of attention. They mean more to me than life itself.’

Since his first feature film, 1980’s Pepi, Luci, Bom, Almodóvar has worked with some of Spain’s best-known male actors – notably Antonio Banderas and Javier Bardem – in a succession of risqué and risk-taking films; but it is his actresses who have always taken centrestage. He describes himself as a ‘feminist man’, and his films are love letters to a cast of strong Spanish actresses of all ages, who reappear again and again in his work: real-looking women – from Rossy de

LADY LOVES From top: Penélope Cruz and Carmen Maura in ‘Volver’ (2006). Cecilia Roth and Marisa Paredes (background image) in ‘All About My Mother’ (1999). Rossy de Palma in ‘Law of Desire’ (1986).

Cruz in ‘Broken Embraces’ (2009)

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PHOTOGRAPHS: THE KOBAL COLLECTION

‘The truth is that men are very dull! Male characters demand films that are dark and grave, whereas female characters lead me to make films that are more baroque, fun and full of light. Women mean more to me than life itself ’

Palma, with her Cubist face, to the tough good looks of Carmen Maura – who, for the most part, would not be considered classic leading ladies by Hollywood.

At the start of his career, Almodóvar’s women tended to be larger-than-life: hysterical (Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, 1988), vampish (Matador, 1986), or even drag queens (Bad Education, 2004). But by the time he made All About My Mother (1999) – for which he won the first of his two Oscars – Almodóvar’s focus had shifted to a more complex portrayal of strong women.

His female characters may at times be vulnerable – weak, even – but they always outshine the men who surround them (who appear pale and insipid, like drab birds in their shadows).

In the new Broken Embraces, the beautiful and tragic Lena – an aspiring actress with a compulsively jealous lover who bankrolls a film on the condition that she takes the lead – is the focal point around which the male characters revolve. They obsess about her, desire her, control her and, ultimately, victimise her. Yet her passion and willingness to sacrifice herself for love elevate her above them all; she allows herself to be ‘held prisoner’ in a loveless and abusive relationship, first to save her dying father (her rich boss foots the hospital bill in return for her becoming his lover), and then to save her true love, the director, and his film. When I broach the subject of Cruz’s portrayal of the complex Lena, both vulnerable and defiant, Almodóvar grins like a lovestruck teenager. ‘Penélope right now is a woman who’s so full of light. She shines in every aspect of her life. The character of Lena required a certain darkness that Penélope doesn’t have, so she had to delve deep to get to that place.’

For the most part, working with Almodóvar has been the making of actresses. His professional love affair with Cruz began when she starred in Live Flesh and, two years later, in All About My Mother. She was then seduced, inevitably, by Hollywood, where she starred in mediocre films such as Vanilla Sky, before returning to her mentor. Cruz is without doubt at her most powerful and entrancing in Almodóvar films, bringing to life characters that might otherwise be cartoonish: in Live Flesh, she plays a prostitute who goes into labour on a bus; and in All About My Mother, a nun impregnated by a transvestite and dying of Aids. Without her work with Almodóvar, which liberated her from the confines of two-dimensional Hollywood love interest and exalted her performances to Loren-like status, she may never have been cast as the melodramatic Maria Elena in Woody Allen’s Vicky Cristina Barcelona – nor won an Oscar for that part this year.

Cruz has always said that Almodóvar’s films were the first in which she was allowed to play ‘a real woman’. In 2006, she starred in Volver as beautiful working-class housewife Raimunda, who casually deposits her murdered husband’s body in a freezer (he was abusing her daughter, who stabbed him). Though he remains there for most of the film, we don’t care; we are too engaged by the female characters and Raimunda’s attempt to cover up her child’s crime. Throughout the entire film, men are dismissed as soon as they turn up – it is the solidarity between the hardworking women that counts.

This is something that is deeply rooted in Almodóvar’s childhood. Growing up in the 1950s in La Mancha, an arid plateau in central Spain (the region in which Volver, too, is partly set), Almodóvar was surrounded by women. He had two sisters and a brother, a father who didn’t understand his arty, shy son, and a mother to whom he was very close. In the conservative, claustrophobic town, he spent time with his mother’s friends, his female neighbours. ‘I always felt completely CONTINUED ON PAGE 316 www.harpersbazaar.co.uk

PENÉLOPE CRUZ ON ALMODÓVAR

‘I

’ve always been blown away by Pedro’s work. I discovered his movies when I was very young and became obsessed with them. The day I saw Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! ended up being a major turning point in my life – I was 15 and went to see it in a cinema in Madrid alone. Afterwards, I walked around thinking, “OK, I have to meet this director one day. I have to work with him. I have to try to become an actress.” I immediately applied to theatre school. I wanted to work with Pedro more than any Hollywood director, not only because of his movies, but also because I was curious about his personality.

Why did he know women so well?

‘When I was 17, Pedro called me; he’d seen my first two movies.

He said I was still too young but that he’d call me when I was older. When I was 23, he cast me in Live Flesh; we’ve now done four movies together. We have become very close friends, and I feel that in a way I grew up with him. He’s seen so many transitions in my life, and we’ve gone through a lot together. He’s always been there for me; he’s just like one more person in my family. He loves me to tell him everything about myself, but he finds it harder to talk about himself. He’s sometimes a little shy.

‘Even though we’re close friends now, I’m always surprised at how well Pedro understands women. We become like X-rays in his presence. He sees everything. He pretends that he doesn’t, which makes it even more scary. I think he gets under the skin of his female characters because he’s a great observer. He’s so curious about what goes on in peoples’ minds and hearts.

‘Working with Pedro is always a challenge. He’s always given me roles that have been very important for my career and also for me as a woman. Lena in Broken Embraces was the most difficult character of all because she’s more subtle. She’s a different age – she’s close to 40, and I played her when I was 34 – and she has a very different character from my own. We rehearsed for three months. Half of the day was spent rehearsing in Pedro’s office and the other half deciding upon the look. He chooses every pair of shoes, every outfit and accessory. I enjoy dressing up in character, because then ego doesn’t get in the way. It’s not about looking good or bad – it’s about being in the right outfit. So it can be a long but fun process.

‘I always trust Pedro’s choice of costume – even when he wanted me to have a very big bottom in Volver. As a joke one day he suggested I wear a padded bum to see if it made me walk differently.

Something happened to my energy and I felt more down-to-earth.

When I got the Oscar nomination for Volver, I talked to Helen Mirren at the ceremony and I discovered she had worn a padded bum in The Queen, too. We had a lot of fun talking about fake butts.

‘Pedro never stops working. He’s like a machine, writing all the time, planning his next project. Maybe one day he will work outside Spain with actresses who aren’t exclusively Spanish, but at the moment he still prefers to work in his own language, in his own country.’

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‘BRINGING SEXY BACK’

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 122

feeling well.’ He pauses, the emotion catching in his throat. On the night his mother died, he says, he woke up in the early hours of the morning, sensing her passing. He switched off the phones in an attempt to postpone the call that would confirm his fears. That was six years ago; it is a loss he still feels keenly.

Berardi is a sensitive soul. He agonises over everything. Small things.

Big things. Anything. But it’s not only angst that makes him uncomfortable adopting the mantle of celebrity designer. He recounts how it took him three attempts to get into Central Saint Martins; he felt his face didn’t fit then, and still doesn’t. ‘Let’s put it this way, when I did get in, I was the fattest person there. For the first year, no one talked to me,’ Berardi says, his statement taking me by surprise, given the lithe figure sitting before me.

‘When I did lose weight, my life changed. People would vie to catch my attention. But it makes it very difficult to trust people because you know you are the same person you were when you were 18 stone. It was a bitter pill to swallow. Losing the weight was not a relief.’

He may have shed the pounds, but he claims he still dresses to blend in.

‘It goes back to childhood. I was extremely obese, so I didn’t want people to notice me,’ he says, pointing to the anonymous polo-shirt, jeans and box-fresh trainers he’s wearing today. ‘I look in the mirror and I still see the me who was 18 stone.’

Perhaps this is why Berardi is such an advocate of more womanly figures (his designs range up to size 16 – practically unheard-of in highfashion circles). He has often spoken out about the size-0 debate, discussing the problems he has finding girls who adequately fill his womanly clothes. ‘I love a curvaceous look. I love tits and bums. What can I say? My family is Italian.’

Still, to couch his aesthetic in terms of his Mediterranean heritage would be far too reductive. Instead, his clothes are a distillation of what Berardi believes are the opposing forces of womanhood: vulnerability and strength, poetry and pragmatism, eroticism and modesty. ‘That’s how I see women. They are incredibly romantic creatures, but they are also the ones who wear the trousers,’ he says. ‘A man can be as masculine as he wants, but just by being feminine, a woman can be much more powerful and bring men to their knees. My work is simply a celebration of that.’

‘PEDRO’S ANGELS’

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comfortable with my mother’s circle of friends. I lived in a very conservative village, but it was the women who solved all the problems.’

He stirs more honey into his tea. ‘In this matriarchy, the women would pretend to be serving the men, but behind their backs they would act with a lot of intelligence and common sense. So the man would be king, but the women would be head of government and all the other ministers put together. When my two older sisters started dating boys, my mum was not only aware of it and accepting of it, but she would also lie to my father because he would never have accepted it.’

The young Almodóvar went to a Catholic school where, he has claimed in the past, he was molested; at nine he declared himself an agnostic. He loved the films of Bette Davis, Joan Crawford and Audrey Hepburn, read voraciously and dreamed of a different life in Madrid. He finally left for Madrid at 17, worked at Spain’s national telephone company for 12 years, and wrote, acted and made films on his Super 8 camera by night, becoming a key figure in the La Movida Madrileña movement – part of the cultural renaissance after the fall of the Franco regime. In 1980, he directed Pepi, Luci, Bom, followed by films including Matador (1986), Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (1988), Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! (1990), All About My Mother (1999) and Talk to Her (2002), which would define his blend of humour and melodrama, his sexually liberated themes and his bold visual style.

Almodóvar has always taken the aesthetics of his films extremely seriously; from the trademark neon sets to the brightly coloured and leopard-print costumes worn by his female characters over the years, his attention to detail (and penchant for women’s fashion) is obsessive. ‘It’s not a question of the superficiality of fashion; I want to transmit the characters’ emotion through the clothes they wear. I remember a moment in Casablanca when Ingrid Bergman meets Humphrey Bogart again after a long time, and she asks if he remembers the last time they met. Of course he does:

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it was in Paris the day the Germans invaded the city, and while the Germans were all wearing grey, Bergman was wearing blue. He’s [only] talking about clothes, but the emotion he transmits…!’

At a screening of Broken Embraces (which is set in the 1990s), Cruz’s wardrobe inspired audible gasps from female members of the audience, as she sashayed into shot in shoulder pads and pencil skirts (echoing the Almodóvar-inspired power-dressing of this season). It’s clear that the director spent a lot of time thinking about Cruz’s wardrobe for the part. ‘When Penélope is with her rich and powerful lover, she is wearing Chanel,’ he says.

‘In one bedroom scene, she’s in a black Chanel gown with gold chains around the neck. She looks splendorous, but she’s also a woman who is chained to luxury, chained to the man who represents that luxury.’ He pauses for a sip of tea. ‘The middle of the movie is really like a film noir, and so she wears a red John Galliano outfit that’s very inspired by the 1950s, which is the golden period of noir. When she’s shooting [film within a film] Girls and Suitcases, she’s naive and happy and light. By chance, I was walking through Paris and saw this Pierre Cardin dress that was very Pop and geometric – perfect for the Audrey Hepburn style I had in mind.’ In the past, Almodóvar has talked about being a gay man who loves to dress his actresses as though he were dressing up dolls. In one scene, Cruz tries on different wigs, including a platinum-blonde Warhol bob, and is transformed into different versions of Hollywood femmes fatales. ‘It was very hard to choose a wig, as everything suits Penélope, but we had such fun!’

This is not, of course, the first time he has experimented with Cruz’s look to recall strong, sexy cinematic icons. Almodóvar is greatly influenced by Fellini, Italian neorealist cinema and its heroines, Sophia Loren, Claudia Cardinale and Anna Magnani. There’s an iconic shot in Volver in which the camera looks down on Cruz while she’s washing the dishes. It’s one of the sexiest shots of a housewife in recent cinema – and a loving homage to Loren. He also, quite famously, padded out Cruz’s slim bottom in Volver to enhance the sexy-housewife look. ‘Ah, yes!

Here’s a woman who’s working the whole day and is tired but also desirable.’ He smiles and looks wistfully down at his own, less-than-svelte physique; he is always on some diet or other.

In indigo jeans, white trainers and a Gucci jacket, he obviously cares how he looks more than most directors. ‘I am often asked if I understand women better because I’m gay. You understand women if you pay attention to them! We belong to the same species!’ He then explains that he was, in fact, bisexual through his teens and twenties. ‘When I was twentysomething, I lived with a girl for three years – as both flatmate and lover. I’ve become very familiar with one woman, which is enough for me to understand women and create strong female characters.’

Almodóvar’s films may be a direct reaction against his conservative Catholic upbringing under the Franco regime, but without his female lovers and the women who populated his childhood, he may have been a very different film-maker – one not so pursued by Hollywood women.

As he gets ready to leave, I have one last question: how did he make it through those years in a tiny village in La Mancha? Again, he roars with laughter. ‘I knew from an early age that I had to be as strong as Bette Davis in order to survive.’ And with a small, Japanese-style bow and a quick handshake, he is gone.

‘Broken Embraces’ is released nationwide on 28 August.

‘NATALIA’

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success is ‘her strength’, which she says comes from leaving home at such a young age. Photographer Astrid Muñoz says: ‘Natalia tells it like it is, but at the same time she has this “happy little girl” side that makes you want to hug her.’

David Bonnouvrier, Natalia’s agent at DNA Model Management, who has worked with her from the beginning of her career, attributes her success in part to her background. ‘She’s lived a full life, so she brings that to pictures. There’s nothing blank about Natalia.’ Bonnouvrier also cites her determination: her drive is such that she was modelling swimwear when she was four-and-a-half months pregnant; after her last baby, Viktor, she was back on the Louis Vuitton catwalk in three weeks. Then there’s the head for money acquired so early on. ‘All those years selling fruit created a canny businesswoman; she’s a real good bargainer,’ Justin adds.

Forthright and direct, Natalia is a force to be reckoned with (she is one

of the few models who have spoken out on eating disorders, participating in a panel discussion at the Council of Fashion Designers of America in 2007). Her philosophy is: ‘If I don’t feel like it, I don’t do something.’ And when she does want something, she doesn’t hesitate to roll up her sleeves, especially when it comes to fundraising. The list of donors for the Naked Heart Foundation reads like a roll-call of fashion land; everyone from Stephen Meisel to John Galliano has dug deep. The model who posed for them has had the courage to turn the tables and ask for a favour in return.

Natalia doesn’t suffer from the selective-memory syndrome of so many stars, which is partly what draws people to her. She remains loyal to all her friends and family (looking after them now that she can). Her sister now has a carer, and that first boyfriend – well, she bought him a car to thank him for his support. She’s even honest enough to express relief at what she escaped: the destitution of the friends left behind. ‘I did have two girlfriends at school who were lovely,’ she says warmly. ‘They would give me clothes and feed me. I recently went to visit one of them when I was back home.

She’s a single mum now, and it’s really hard. Her mother’s not working any more, and they are having all these problems. In fact, I’m helping them out [now] with money, which is ironic.’

Natalia’s loyalty is, above all, to her family. She and Justin are a close team. ‘He always tells me, “It was love at first sight.”’ But the pair argued on their first date, in 2000, over dinner at Georges in Paris (Natalia thought Justin was dating another girl). In the end, she made him wait two months for their first kiss. ‘It was immediately clear that Natalia was a passionate, emotional woman and wasn’t to be played with,’ Justin recalls. ‘She spoke straight from the heart with sincerity, charm and Russian fire.

She was irresistible.’ At their wedding, she demonstrated her endless resourcefulness. ‘My dress was made for me by Tom Ford. I added my own touch at the last minute when I realised that, as we were in a Russian Orthodox church, I needed a veil. I grabbed some netting that was being used to decorate the room and made a veil myself. It made the dress even more special and personal.’

Justin – with whom Natalia now has three children – is an artist known for his eccentric ways (currently, he has a passion for all things to do with moths), but he still finds the time to accompany Natalia on her assignments. He is also the one she credits with ‘predicting a lot of things happening to me when I was saying, “Hey, come on, you’re crazy – I may never get there.” It’s not that I wasn’t sure in myself, but more that I couldn’t imagine a certain level of success.’ The couple work well together, between their homes in London, Sussex, New York and Uruguay. ‘What helped me stay a “normal” person is that I met Justin very young. I was in a serious relationship and had children very early on in my modelling career. When other models were maybe going out to nightclubs, I was bringing up my children and had a husband at home.’

Over the years, I’ve come to think of Natalia as a Matryoshka doll: there are several women within that famous body. At first glance, there is the supermodel – the strangely beautiful face that adorns posters and magazine covers around the world. And then, inside that, there’s a second Matryoshka: the mother of seven-year-old Lucas, three-year-old Neva and Viktor, who is 18 months, all of whom she manages to look after around her career. But the third – perhaps at the very heart of Natalia – is the woman with a goal to open 500 playgrounds and to see a better future for Russia’s children. Today, she has gained a perspective on her fashion career. ‘I treat m o d e l ling differently now,’ she says. ‘I am more of a brand that people want to associate with, which is useful to benefit my charity and other projects.’

It’s 10pm at the Bazaar shoot, and the summer sun has finally set over the fields behind Natalia’s Sussex home. The shoot over, in the darkness, we tramp through the long grass using the lights of our mobiles to guide us to the house.

Inside, Justin is waiting; he has prepared a simple supper of spinach and poached eggs, which we eat around the large oak kitchen table. Talk soon veers to the next Love Ball in London in the spring. Natalia wants the event to become an annual Russia-meets-London love-fest, where growing ties and friendships can be celebrated – the face of Calvin Klein perfume is now a poster-girl for Anglo-Russian relations. There’s a knock at the door, and in comes her grandmother (her Babushka) to say goodnight (she lives with Natalia’s grandfather in a cottage next-door) – and

suddenly it feels as though all the pieces in this enchanted life have fallen into place. It was, after all, Natalia’s Babushka who encouraged her to leave Russia. ‘She told me that a new life had to be better than what would happen to me if I stayed.’ How right she was.

For more information about the Naked Heart Foundation, visit www.nakedheart.org.

‘DON’T WORRY, BE HAPPY’

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and understanding, ‘but it also clogs up our ability to shake off minor worries’, agrees McMahon. ‘Women also remember negative things in the past and predict they are going to happen again, while males are much more likely to let bygones be bygones.’

How very worrying. So why-oh-why do we do it? (she asks, wringing her hands). Worrying about the paltry and the petty is, of course, indulgent and egocentric – and, in that sense, deeply human. An evolutionary biologist would argue that it is a natural by-product of having a brain that is capable of such high-wire feats as considering the future. Perhaps, too, fretting diverts us from the real story – mortality, oil running out, that kind of thing – and thus runs interference for thoughts that may otherwise seem too overwhelming to comprehend. Worrying, it is also posited, gives us imaginary control over future dangers. A mother who can foresee the cradle falling can do something about it. The issue is, though, that very few boughs break, leaving us with all those wasted witterings jamming our faculties.

Some women have found methods to break the cycle of binge thinking.

Take Caroline Michel, CEO of literary agency PFD. ‘I’m a great believer in talking things through with someone who can throw a whole new light on what’s worrying you,’ she says. ‘I used to lie in bed and think “if only”.

Now I let go and move forward – and I’m a great one for compartmentalising things.’ There’s much to absorb here: letting go, talking through, compartmentalising so that a single worry doesn’t leak over your psyche like spilled ink. As Dale Carnegie, author of How to Stop Worrying and Start Living, says, we should try to ‘live in day-tight compartments… shut the iron doors on the past and the future’.

Discussing even idiotic concerns with a friend can certainly dissipate them, just as it’s easier to be in a dark room if you have company. All too often, though, we don’t share our worries – we hoard them, embarrassed at how flimsy they are. The Yale researchers found that one in three of us doesn’t talk to anyone else about their concerns – and yet admitting our ludicrous cares is cathartic, it bonds us as women and humanises us, like admitting we’ve never read Proust.

There are countless other ways to still the storm. Some swear by writing things down – once it’s on paper, it’s no longer circling your mind like a hawk – or by chanting a mantra (om mani padme hum is a classic, though my mother prefers ‘lemon meringue pie’). Others sing or whistle; some schedule time for worrying (‘Oh, it’s five to seven – I’ll just have a quick worry, and then we can get back to our game of chess’). Another tactic is visualisation. It works for me. I line up worries as imaginary helium balloons, or rowing boats tied to a jetty, and then let them go, one by one. Better still, according to psychologist Robert L Leahy, author of The Worry Cure: Stop Worrying and Start Living, is to embrace uncertainty, accepting that many aspects of life are beyond your control. ‘Many worried people equate uncertainty with a bad outcome,’ he says. ‘When you accept uncertainty, you can stop worrying. Focus on the things you can control.’

It’s how Nicky Kinnaird, founder of Space NK, manages. ‘I don’t worry about matters I can’t affect; if I can do something about it, I will, but I won’t let it eat me alive if I can’t,’ she says. ‘Exercising first thing is my daily escape – it sets me up mentally for the day. Also, advance planning is everything…’

Planning, exercise – and you can add ‘focus’ to those watchwords. It’s not the presentation you’ve prepared for with detailed notes and a PowerPoint memory stick in your handbag that scares the pants off you; preparation always gives a focus that negates the need for worry. It’s those more twitchy business meetings and conflict-prone situations, where the outcome is less predictable, that give our minds the freedom to roam and worry. If you’re lined up for any business encounter, then mentally prepare by choosing one single purpose and sticking resolutely with it, immune to all else.

But perhaps the best method to rid yourself of worry fever is to recognise this vital fact: nobody is looking at you. They’re far too busy thinking about themselves. Leave them to their asinine anxieties and sail on by, perhaps quoting Hamlet, that consummate worrier, for good measure: ‘There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.’

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n the inner sanctum of Tom Fordâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s colossal new London headquarters everything is immaculate; from the gleaming sideboard which is neatly topped with black and white nudes (mementos from some of his more outrĂŠ advertising campaigns) to the chrome lamps and pristine cream sofas, to the towering walls in palest grey (itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s specially formulated Tom Ford Grey). Even the three pots of perfectly sharp pencils on the corner of his vast macassar desk seem to be standing to attention.

But Ford is not content. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s far from perfect for his finely tuned sensibilities. Someone has hung linings in lieu of his finished â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;drapesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; (though seriously you would never know) and, more pressingly, the room temperature is not attuned to the correct level. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll just have to sweat,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; purrs the designer, who looks as if he will do no such thing in his exquisite black suit and crisp, unbuttoned white shirt.

Perfection is something at which Ford excels â&#x20AC;&#x201C; on all levels. Both personally (this is clearly a man whose film-star good looks and sharply trimmed stubble require a great deal of daily maintenance; he seems at least a decade younger than his 49 years) and professionally.

For Ford is the ultimate modern polymath; a trend-setting, empire-building and decadedefining designer turned award-winning film director, producer and writer who now, much to everyoneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s relief, is back in fashion. www.harpersbazaar.co.uk

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6@ /.08 BeyoncĂŠ wears embroidered fishnet and python-pattern sequin evening gown and fishnet boots on the catwalk of Tom Fordâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s debut womenswear show. Opposite: Ford after the show www.harpersbazaar.co.uk

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Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s been more than six years since he left both Gucci and Yves Saint Laurent, amid teary standing ovations and petal-strewn runways. And a lot has changed. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;I had to catch up,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; he says, as he leans back into his sleek cream and chrome mid-century modern chair.

Fordâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s absence from fashion has also allowed him a critical distance, in which he has reassessed where fashion is at now. With his return, as you would expect from the man who ruled fashion during his Gucci years, he is setting an entirely new agenda too, putting the mystique and glamour back into fashion.

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n a damp evening in Manhattan last autumn, Ford unveiled his debut own-label womenswear collection. There were no invitations; each of the 100 or so guests received a phone call asking them to come to the designerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Madison Avenue store at 6.30pm on 12 September.

Once inside, they were treated to the most intimate, decadent and thrillingly exclusive fashion experience most of those present had ever attended. Aside from a handful of supermodels, the clothes were worn by â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;realâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; women who also happened to be, in most cases, friends of the designer. Lauren Hutton, Marisa Berenson, Julianne Moore and BeyoncĂŠ were just a few of the mega-watt names in the 32-look line-up.

And, like a traditional couture show, it was all accompanied with a personal narration by Ford who posed in his slick tuxedo by a grand fireplace, framed by magnolia branches trimmed with pink cymbidium orchids â&#x20AC;&#x201C; a mise-en-scène that was almost certainly as carefully conceived as the finely nuanced look of every single model who walked down a catwalk monogrammed with gold â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;TFâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s.

The clothes, which were as rapturously received as the presentation, were described in turn as â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;glamorousâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;, â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;luxuriousâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;, and â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;chicâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;.

As Karen Elson put it after the show: â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;We each felt like we looked the best we were ever going to look. We were in heaven.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;All of us had been in the building since three in the afternoon getting ready; old friends and new young stars,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; says fellow model Lauren Hutton. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;And we didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t even know how extraordinary the clothes were, because we had only seen our own before in solitary fittings. But when we all lined up to go out â&#x20AC;&#x201C; oh my! It was extraordinary to see.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; When Ford left the fashion world in 2004 after a wrangling over contracts with Gucci Groupâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s parent company PPR, he didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t think he would ever design clothes again. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;I was 43 years old, I had enough money to live the rest of my life. I had absolutely nothing on my calendar, no responsibilities, no job, no career. I was so burnt out I was convinced that I was never going back into fashion â&#x20AC;&#x201C; convinced. I was lost.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; But, he says, his business partner Domenico De Sole and friends knew Ford would one day return. A year ago, he decided it was the right time to come back to womenswear because he had â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;something new to say and a new way to say itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;What was missing from fashion was fun,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; says Ford, emphatically. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;You look at all those old pictures from the shows in the Seventies where the models were twirling around and everyone was smiling. [Fashion] has lost that a little bit, and I understand that; itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s such a big business. It was a big business then too, by the way.â&#x20AC;&#x2122;

Coming back at a time when the industry has reached saturation point in terms of exposure, Ford decided to keep the whole thing under wraps. Other than Terry Richardson, who played house photographer for the evening, there were no cameras allowed.

There was no live streaming on the internet, no images released.

Even guests were banned from taking pictures on their phones (and any leaks promptly removed from Twitter accounts the next day). â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve been perplexed being out of fashion when I would see a real designer collection, or couture collection, was being streamed live over the internet,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; Ford says. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;I think itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s pointless. Now listen, if I could have my clothes in stores within a month I would have them on the internet immediately, but because I canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have them in a store for five months, why should they go on the internet? Why should I help H&M figure out that leopard is the right thing for the season?â&#x20AC;&#x2122; Of course, the lock-down nature of the show only helped to create an unprecedented amount of buzz (no one can choreograph fever-pitch excitement quite like Ford), but his concerns about fashionâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s overexposure are timely when many designers are questioning the high-speed, trend-chasing nature of the business.

Images of his collection are being released just as women are starting to think about what to buy in the new season, and actresses on red carpets will only be seen in the clothes a month or two before they are available. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;The clothes will hopefully still seem fresh. They wonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t be overexposed, you will still be able to get excited,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; he says.

Fashionâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s obsession with the new was, of course, something that Ford helped to propel during his time at Gucci and YSL, where his seasonal missives spread into global trends like wildfire â&#x20AC;&#x201C; an irony not lost on the designer: â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;You know, it was a different time, a different place. We were democratising luxury. My company now is the opposite of that. The pendulum has swung back, and we are trying to really service the customer and make things that have an intrinsic value.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; For Ford, that means old-world glamour, beautifully executed. The new collection features plenty of slick, elegant tailoring, including the fabulous cream trouser suit modelled by Hutton in his show, and a black leopard-print suit worn by Amber Valletta.

Many of these tailored styles nod to his Savile Row-inspired menswear.

For jackets and trousers there are three key cuts that will be continued into future collections. Tailoring is softened up with billowing silk poet blouses, and form-fitting pencil skirts and corset tops reflect his high-octane Gucci days. There are plenty of wonderfully glamorous dresses too; the fringed electric-blue dress worn

by Elson or the pale pink, feather-embroidered column worn by Moore, who says she feels â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;thrilled and delightedâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; by the designerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s return to fashion. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;He is never going to let you look bad.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; Every piece feels opulent. There are trenches in white suede, and jackets in mother-of-pearl discs or shredded tulle â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Fordâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s version of a summer fur. Accessories include sleek clutches in precious skins, hammered gold cuffs or gold feather earrings, and elegant feathercovered cloches and felt fedoras. Everything is intentionally timeless. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d like to think you are going to keep wearing them as though they are your own vintage collection; that one day your daughter will go to your closet and say, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Oh. My. God. Mom, what is this? I want that! Can I have that?â&#x20AC;&#x2122;â&#x20AC;&#x2122;â&#x20AC;&#x2122; says Ford, mimicking a fashion-crazed teen.

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Stella Tennant wears sequin mother-of- pearl jacket, georgette blouse and skirt, and hammered silver and pearl necklace, with a feathered clutch www.harpersbazaar.co.uk

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Joan Smalls wears silk crepe tank dress with georgette silk underdress, and a shredded silk organza cocktail shrug

Liya Kebede wears hand-painted silk georgette fringed evening dress, feather and lace heels, and gold-dipped feather earrings www.harpersbazaar.co.uk

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The showâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s breathtaking casting, for which models ranged in age from their early twenties to almost 70, also made it very clear that these were clothes for women of all different ages. Despite his own age-defying good looks, the current obsession with youth is not something that sits well with Ford. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;There used to be a look for women who were older. You didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t wear certain things, you did your hair a certain way â&#x20AC;&#x201C; but today, 70-year-old women who keep themselves together want to look just like their 25 [year-old] counterparts,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; he says. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;I was shooting something recently and I was trying to find older women who had not had anything done to themselves, and I was thinking back to Louise Nevelson and Georgia Oâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Keefe and Martha Graham and Diana Vreeland, and these women who bore their age in a wonderful way. They became older, they became wrinkled but they also became really cool looking, and we donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have that any more.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; So Ford is championing a roll-call of real women who can carry that torch, women who, he says, have been on his design board season after season since his very first days at Gucci. For his show, he enlisted Marisa Berenson, whom he has known since he accosted her late at night at a Vanity Fair party more than a decade ago; Lauren Bacall, who is a neighbour in Santa Fe; and artists Lisa Eisner and Rachel Feinstein, who are both good friends. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;All these women are intelligent; they all have kids and jobs and lives, and they are all different ages. I went after people I thought were inspirational and women who are iconic. Even designing for them I thought, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Letâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s say you are making a film about Lisa Eisner. How would I costume that character?â&#x20AC;? I took each of their personalities and tried to exaggerate them.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; If Ford dressed women in a highly stylised look each season at Gucci and YSL, his approach now is very different. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;I always find it a little odd, quite honestly, when a woman buys a head-to-toe look and you see them walking down the street in the shoes, the bag, the skirt, the glasses, the whatever â&#x20AC;&#x201C; itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s like they have no personality,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; he says. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;I think, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Oh, poor thing.â&#x20AC;?â&#x20AC;&#x2122; â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;The women [in my show] donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t change their look from day to day. They have figured out who they are â&#x20AC;&#x201C; thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s what makes you iconic, by the way. Figure out who you are, figure out what you like, figure out what you look good in.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; Perhaps more surprisingly for the man who pretty much put the sex back into fashion, these clothes are more about an elegant sophistication than in-your-face sexuality. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve changed a lot in that Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m older, so maybe Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m more about sensuality then sexuality, but also the times are too.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; Naturally all this super-elegant luxe doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t come cheap, with prices closer to couture than ready-to-wear. Dresses range from about ÂŁ2,900 to ÂŁ22,000, and jackets cost about ÂŁ2,500. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;My clothes are expensive,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; says Ford, unashamedly. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;But for me, at this stage in my life, whatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s interesting is trying to make the best thing I can make. I want to do a beautiful stitch on a leather jacket. I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t want to do the cheapest stitch on a leather jacket; that just doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t excite me and, quite honestly, I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t think I could relate to the kind of woman who could tolerate the cheap stitch. I live a very different life now, where I have the ability to search for perfection in every material thing that I experience.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; For Ford that quest for perfection now spans well beyond

womenswear. As well as clothing for men and women, which is now sold in 27 own-label stores around the world, heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s adding an extensive line of skincare and make-up later this year. His collaboration post-Gucci with EstĂŠe Lauder was, he says, simply a â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;teaserâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;.

Thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s little doubt that Ford will build his own company â&#x20AC;&#x201C; into which he has poured much of his personal fortune â&#x20AC;&#x201C; to become the kind of luxury behemoth he created at Gucci, where he transformed a lacklustre label reportedly on the brink of bankruptcy into a multi-brand powerhouse worth around $10 billion in one decade.

But heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s equally confident that he can juggle all that with his other great love â&#x20AC;&#x201C; making films. He still seems shocked than anyone would have doubted his ability to make his award-winning debut A Single Man. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;It really didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t occur to me that I was taking any risk.

It was only after I made it that people said to me, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Wow, do you realise that people were really laughing when you said you wanted to make a film?â&#x20AC;? They certainly never laughed to my face. In LA, people can nice you to death.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; Not that it would have put him off. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;He didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t want to start by showing people he could do it small, he did it big,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; says his good friend Eisner. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;He is frikkinâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; fearless, confident in his talents and very determined. He is a very fast learner â&#x20AC;&#x201C; itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s really scary. There is nothing he canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t do.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;When I put my mind to do something, thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s not a lot of stopping me,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; agrees Ford. He has just completed the screenplay for his next project (he plans to make a film every three or four years), a â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;very dark comedyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; he wrote from scratch. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;I was going to try and push myself to make it this summer â&#x20AC;&#x201C; we shut down for a month in August â&#x20AC;&#x201C; but I think,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; he says, slowing for dramatic effect, â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;I. Need. To. Chill. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t really like downtime,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; he continues, although when pushed the designer does at least admit to a penchant for trash TV, and shows including Glee, Desperate Housewives, and costume dramas such as Downton Abbey, which he records and watches late at night. Or he goes cybershopping for beautiful console tables on 1stdibs.com. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Oh. My. God. It is the best internet site in the world.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; But time out is not something that comes naturally. As well as perfecting his screenplay and masterminding his global expansion, he is building a mega-mansion in Santa Fe, where he grew up with his sister Jennifer and parents Tom and Shirley, who worked in real estate. He is also redecorating his Mayfair house. When we meet, his partner of 25 years Richard Buckley has been exiled with their dogs Angus and India to their Los Angeles home, while the house is painted and carpeted. How on earth does he put up with living with a workaholic perfectionist? â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;It must be so hard,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; says Ford.

But there seems to be equilibrium to Fordâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s intense existence, especially as he approaches his 50th birthday in 2011. Julianne Moore recalls the time when he confided: â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;I canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t wait to be 50 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; I have waited my whole life to be 50.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;When I was a little kid I wanted to be 50 desperately,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; he says. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;I didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t feel like a little kid, I didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t want to play games with the other little kids. I wanted to live in a fabulous apartment and wear great clothes and have grey at my temples and have a beautiful car and be having cocktails and smoking cigarettes, and thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s what I wanted to do. In a way, I felt 50 even then. Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m only now starting to feel like myself.â&#x20AC;&#x2122;

Lauren Hutton wears silk and viscose trouser suit, oversized crepe de chine top, crocodile pumps, and a fedora with feather trim. Right: Daphne Guinness wears leopard-print sequin and lace evening dress, silk ottoman fringed evening coat, and feather and lace heels

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Marisa Berenson wears fishnet embroidered evening gown, and mesh sling-back pumps. Left: Rachel Feinstein wears silk crepe cocktail dress with shredded silk shrug, and satin ballet heels www.harpersbazaar.co.uk

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WOMENOF THEYEAR

LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT

JUDI

DENCH Sheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s an acting legend whose masterful roles, from Queen Elizabeth I to the head of MI6, have seen her conquer stage and movie box office alike. VIV GROSKOP meets the ever-mischievous icon Photographs by JR MANKOFF Styled by VANESSA COYLE

WOMENOF THEYEAR TOP OF THE CROPS This page and previous page: Judi Dench wears silk dress, £1,599, Lanvin. All jewellery, her own

year, Dench appeared in Jane Eyre and Pirates of the Caribbean: On udi Dench has sported her gamine crop Stranger Tides, as well as collaborating on a short film with Sam for the best part of her career. Given her lonTaylor-Wood. In June, she became a fellow of the British Film gevity on stage and screen, it’s a hairstyle Institute, a tribute to her lauded half-century in film and theatre that has endured for almost half a century. since she made her Old Vic debut in 1957.

Throughout those decades, crammed with She has three major films out in the next few months: J Edgar, historic performances and 10 Bafta awards, directed by Clint Eastwood, in which she plays the mother of the look, like the woman, has remained Hoover (Leonardo DiCaprio); a cameo in My Week With Marilyn, unchanged: at once classic, playful, ageless. starring Kenneth Branagh; and John Madden’s The Best Exotic Indeed, it’s hard to believe that Dench has Marigold Hotel, also starring Maggie Smith and Bill Nighy. reached the grand age of 76, partly because Plus, finally, the new Bond has just begun filming at Pinewood, of the prolific nature of her work in recent after numerous false starts. (The 23rd Bond film was on hold for years, but mostly because of her presence. some time because of MGM’s financial crisis.) Sam Mendes is She has possibly the most mischievous and directing, so ‘it will be a blast’. (She starred in a production of The engaging eye contact I have ever experiCherry Orchard that Mendes directed in his early twenties.) enced – like a child’s. When you catch her She is looking forward to resuming the sexy, sparky dynamic glance, it’s as if Judi Dench as a little girl is between M and Bond. ‘Daniel Craig… oh, he’s a great joker,’ she looking straight back at you. says flirtatiously, ‘and M… well, she’s very bossy. But then she has That’s the innocent, childlike ‘Jude’, as her to be. It’s hugely fun to play, and I’m always learning something new friends call her. But there’s also an imperious with her.’ Then, suddenly seriously: ‘You know you have to underside; a regal presence so beloved of the stand the responsibility on their shoulders is huge in that role.

British public. Her status in the national conFor both Daniel and Pierce [Brosnan].’ She seems to relish being sciousness is something akin to a monarch. associated with the 007 brand, without all the trappings of actually ‘Have I played more queens than anyone being Bond. When her phone springs to life a few minutes later (to else?’ she booms, appalled. ‘I would rather her intense embarrassment: she has a horror of people who use someone said, “You have played more sluts than anyone else.” I have mobile phones during conversations), hilariously, her ringtone is played no more queens than anyone else!’ the Bond theme tune. Her daughter, actor Finty Williams, put it on But monarchs are her best-known roles: Victoria in Mrs Brown, there for her. (Mother and daughter live together during the week, which changed everything for her in 1997; and Elizabeth I in at Dench’s Surrey home, with Williams’ son Sam, 13.)

Shakespeare in Love, which won her an Oscar. ‘I don’t know how Williams now also chooses Dench’s many films I made before Mrs Brown, roles, as she famously never bothers but they didn’t seem to come to much.’ herself. When her husband Michael She chuckles wryly. ‘After that, I got a Williams was alive (he died from lung lot of film scripts.’ These parts – and cancer 10 years ago at the age of 65), he becoming Bond’s boss M in 1995 at the would read scripts for her. Her husband age of 61 – transformed her from a The actor’s friends pay tribute to her life in drama of 30 years, Williams was her co-star on Shakespearean actor into an internaTV’s A Fine Romance (the television tional star, conveniently avoiding the series they filmed together in the early sexpot path many actresses have to take.

1980s, which won her two of her Baftas).

Today there’s more than a hint of Dench legendarily never really prepares thespiness to her, and she’s dressed ‘I didn’t get to know Judi until we did a play together, Madame de Sade, at Wyndham’s Theatre for anything. ‘It’s good to have a role head to toe in flowing black jersey with in 2009. It was a really intense production, but from where you’ve already read the book. a sprinkling of delicate jewellery. She day one we had such a laugh. Ian McKellen and I had read The Shipping News, Notes on murmurs appreciatively about a Donna Patrick Stewart were rehearsing Waiting for Godot a Scandal and Chocolat before I was Karan dress she tried on for the Bazaar in the room next-door, and on our first day we got asked to play those roles. But in a way shoot. Physically, she’s the embodiment this bunch of flowers from them saying, “To the most delicious bunch of sadists, from the tramps you have to forget everything you know, of what the French call bien dans sa peau, next-door.” Judi said, “I think we should take this because it’s about the director’s vision.’ comfortable in her own skin, easing her sadism thing a little further, and write one very rude She’s not interested in what the role is, shoes off and curling her stockinged word on a bit of paper and slip it under their door.” but who she’ll be with. ‘I choose things feet up underneath her in the armchair.

And so it went every day, back and forth, sending because it’s with people I would like Emotionally, though, the fragility these rude words to each other, until our opening night when we took a very naughty picture of to work with. I really have no idea who she often shows on-screen is evident. ourselves with whips and things, in our wigs and I would like to play.’

She talks about not being able to bear huge dresses. That was all Judi’s instigation.

She has immersed herself in film watching herself perform. ‘I watch myself ‘During the run we had such fun backstage. since her husband’s death. ‘Work with my head in my hands. I always Our rooms were on the same floor. You’ve never helped enormously,’ she says of the think, “That was not my thought or my seen a dressing room like hers – just the amount of flowers and cards. Ian McKellen sent her an period immediately afterwards, when intention.” They say the camera doesn’t orchid that was so big it took up the entire shower. she was filming The Shipping News. lie, but I think it does all the time. I am Because she’s Judi, between a matinée and ‘Kevin Spacey was wonderful to me.’ forever thinking, “Why didn’t I do this evening performance, she always managed Michael used to send her a red rose instead of that?”’ Outwardly, she to get in a delivery from J Sheekey of a pint every Friday. Now her daughter Finty couldn’t be happier – or busier. This of prawns or something else delicious.’

There’s nothing like THE DAME Rosamund Pike

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Judi’s WORLD

What was your highlight of 2011?

‘Being directed by Clint Eastwood in J Edgar.’

Which career moment do you look back on most fondly?

‘My first job, when I was cast in Hamlet as Ophelia and went to the Old Vic, where I stayed for four years.’

Most valuable advice you’ve ever been given?

‘When I appeared in Cabaret, Hal Prince told me I did not

have to find a new voice to sing – I should do it in the same voice I use to speak. And Peter Hall told me I did not have to play the whole character in every scene – one aspect is enough. By the end of the play you have the whole person.’

What is your secret weapon?

‘My ability to laugh at myself.’

Who is your woman of the year?

‘Eliza Manningham-Buller [former director of MI5].

I heard her giving one of the Reith Lectures and thought she talked an inordinate amount of sense.’

OF WOMENTHE THEYEAR

Tom Hiddleston

Stephen Frears

‘I wanted to go to the Old Vic, and I went sends her a pink one. ‘Our relationship ‘For me, kindness and mischief most sum up Judi.

She is excessively kind. To everyone. And she loves there straight away after drama school. was romantic – and volatile. He was a good practical joke. Or any joke, for that matter.

I love Shakespeare, and to be able to my harshest critic.’ She giggles as she Anything to burst the bubble of pomposity or play a part or even walk on as the underremembers A Fine Romance. ‘We had sanctimoniousness. She is incredibly playful. I study, four or five times a season… a lovely time doing that. But I really remember on the set of Cranford she was the life It was just as I had imagined.’ don’t remember very much about it and soul of the party. She once corralled Imelda Staunton, Jim Carter, Michelle Dockery, Jodie Her early career had a huge setback, at all, except that I had that horrible Whittaker and me to play “international charades”. however. ‘When I played Ophelia in bowl haircut.’

You have to get up and “charade” a city in the Hamlet [in 1957], I was hammered by I feel it’s almost foolish to ask her world. If I remember correctly, Judi got up and sat the press. I learnt a lot.’ Even worse, she what her favourite parts have been. like a buddha, and then started batting away was then replaced in the US tour of the ‘Cleopatra [at the National Theatre in imaginary creatures crying “shoo, shoo”. Budapest.

‘I am always impressed by her love of new things, play. ‘It was hard. But it was good for me.’

1987] – absolute hell, but I adored every new people, new ideas. I recently played her son in Her great lifelong acting friends are minute. A Little Night Music [the a short film called Friend Request Pending, which Barbara Leigh-Hunt (Lady Catherine National, 1995]. Notes on a Scandal – premiered at the London Film Festival. She plays de Bourgh in the BBC’s Pride and I loved playing an obsessive woman. a woman who uses Facebook to meet men. She Prejudice), Tim Pigott-Smith (he And I admire Cate Blanchett very loved it. Many actresses of her age and stature might turn their nose up at that sort of idea. Not Judi.’ appeared in Quantum of Solace) and much. That was the one where people Maggie Smith. Is Dench a Downton Abbey said, “Oh, but it wasn’t at all like you…” fan? She positively gasps for breath. ‘I She rolls her eyes in frustration. ‘I just certainly am. You get so wrapped up in want to say to them, “But that’s what I’m it, you never want it to stop.’ Of the new trying to do when I do everything!”’ She ‘Some years ago, I was in a Chekhov play with Dame Judi at the National, during which I was crop of actresses, she particularly likes continues. ‘Cranford was wonderfully directed to lie on my back centre-stage whilst Michelle Dockery (Lady Mary in good fun. But then I haven’t not had fun Judi crawled all over me, clutching at me, begging Downton; she also appeared in Cranford) in anything. Although, having said that, me not to go to Moscow. She would also, on and Carey Mulligan, who is often sugI used to always say that the bit I like occasion, whisper certain saucy things in my ear. gested as Dench’s natural heiress. ‘She’s best is when I say, “I’m going to do it.”’

I know I was supposed to be concentrating on my motivation or something, but actually I lay there divine. I can’t wait to see Shame [the Because in rehearsals it’s awful because thinking, “What did I do to deserve this?” upcoming Steve McQueen-directed I can’t get it right. And then when I’m ‘Apart from the mysterious element, the film]. She’s very talented.’ doing it, I’m still trying to get it right. unreadable part of her talent, she operates, as it Has she ever met anyone who has And then it’s over and I’m sad.’ were, unarmed. She arrives onstage without tricks awed her? ‘Clint Eastwood. Because She grew up in a theatrical houseor the usual defence mechanisms. This requires great courage – there aren’t many people at it. of his physical presence. He is legendhold. Her father was the resident GP for ‘Whenever I have acted with her, she has been ary, and when you meet him you know York Theatre Royal; her mother, the kind enough to keep a straight face – which, for why. He doesn’t have to lift a finger – wardrobe mistress. As a girl she dreamt her, is saying something. She has been a staunch and he barely does. He speaks in of being a ballet dancer, but changed her colleague and a true democrat.’ a whisper. It’s fantastic being directed mind when she discovered that she’d by him, mindblowing. He speaks very quietly, works fast and likes have to give up at the age of 40 and teach (this is amusing, as she to be finished by 4.30pm to go and play golf.’ That doesn’t sound shows no signs of ever wanting to give up anything at all). very rock ’n’ roll. ‘Believe me, with Clint Eastwood it is.’

In her teens, she very quickly decided on what she wanted: a life She is known among fellow cast members as a prankster, and her in the theatre, training first as a set designer, and then an actress at generosity is legendary. Ian McKellen once joked that he never the Central School of Speech and Drama (Vanessa Redgrave was wanted to work with her again after he found her wrapping a fellow alumna). She graduated with a first and four acting prizes.

Even after 50 years of thespian Christmas presents in her dressing ‘What makes Dame Judi so great? Well, she’s got some big balls. (Make sure you leave that in. It’ll acclaim, her approach to her career room in July. But her giving nature is make her laugh.) She has always been good. I first remains pragmatic and humble. Her exaggerated, she insists, when I mensaw her perform when I was 17. She was playing ambition now is, she says somewhat tion that someone once estimated that Ophelia at the Old Vic, and she could do things in improbably and very dramatically, ‘to she sends 450 Christmas presents the most extraordinary way. I first got to know her be employed’. She has always said this. a year. ‘450?’ she reels, shocked. ‘No. when I cast her in a television film called Going Gently in 1981. She played a nurse on a cancer ward (She does mention later that the one What crap! I just send small, jokey and she sat on the side of the set demurely crocheting person she longs to work with is Baz things to people I don’t get in touch with a cushion for me with “Fuck ’em” written on it, a Luhrmann. She has dabbled with the all year round.’ She is intensely amused jibe to the critics. That’s the thing about Judi – she’s musical form in the past. Her sassy turn by all the untrue anecdotes that leak out a tough old bugger. She also brightens up wherever as Sally Bowles in Cabaret in 1968 was about her. It said in one article that she she goes. She is a sparky, bright, lively, complicated woman, and I’m very lucky to know her.’ sensational; and she also appeared in loves gin and tonic. The temper flares Rob Marshall’s Nine in 2009.) again. ‘I have never had a gin and tonic Her energy levels show little sign of in my life.’ Another said that she had waning. She feels a sense of urgency to sent Daniel Craig a dress for his secret get things done; though she is not fully wedding to Rachel Weisz in June. ‘I ‘I first met Judi in 1982 in an Italian restaurant in immune to the onset of age. ‘It’s fucking didn’t even know Daniel was getting Hampstead, then she asked me to dinner. The rooms in her house were tiny; I didn’t know how she and pathetic, growing old,’ she says, laughmarried. Ridiculous.’ [late husband] Michael kept from knocking things ing at herself. ‘You know, I have a Kindle Unusually for her, she has had over. I certainly sent a few objects flying. Thank but I can’t use it because I can’t read some rest periods in the past year. goodness she now lives in a bigger house. the instructions.’ At the moment she is ‘I had a lot of the summer off and it was ‘Over the years, I have worked with her on a intensely frustrated by her failing eyeattractive to me, which surprised me. number of plays and films, but my fondest memory is from when we were making Saigon: Year of the sight, which means she has to have all But it’s dangerous when it comes back Cat in Bangkok in 1982. She was very lonely and her scripts blown up to A3 size. ‘I can to working, because you have to crank missed her husband and daughter – indeed, she still do the crossword, but it has to be yourself back up to speed. Actors are vowed never to film abroad again until Finty was in a very bright light.’ Despite all this, in a tiny minority of people who do grown up. I had my own three-year old daughter she comes across as inspiringly poised, a job they love. As Michael always used with me – I was looking after Darcy by myself – and she used to run straight to Judi when she saw her. I serene. ‘Inwardly, I don’t handle it well,’ to say, “Now, this is a play I’m going to found it incredibly moving because their attraction she says quietly, looking away. run to every day.” I don’t flatter myself to each other was so real and so unforced. They It’s clear what keeps her going, though: that I’m the only person to play a part. used to sit together happily by the hotel pool. a childlike lust for life. ‘I love everything.

I learnt that lesson with Ophelia.’ She ‘As an actor she has a plumbline directly to her I love learning something. I love having says this with a trace of bitterness. It’s feelings. She has to feel secure, and she finds that on her own, really. You often feel powerless to help. people around me. I love going to a resastonishing that after being nominated I remember my play Amy’s View at the National; taurant I haven’t been to before. Very for six Oscars in nine years, she should she was lost in rehearsal, then found her dazzling small and childish things, that’s what still be driven by the memory of the one performance the day of the first dress rehearsal.’

I get excited about. I love a good joke – time in her stage career she was stung. and behaving badly sometimes.’ Her eyes dance with excitement. ‘I She still fears that rejection. ‘There are never enough roles for love the prospect of something fantastic happening.’ After all, Judi women. There aren’t and there never have been. The older you get, Dench still has her whole life ahead of her – filled with the curiosthe fewer there are. There are just so many more stories about men. ity of living. It is hard to believe that there will ever come a day when It has always been like that. When there aren’t enough parts, you she doesn’t enthral us. Whether it be with poignancy, mischief, can’t be complacent about any part. No one is invulnerable. The fragility or bite, it will always be with that uniquely ageless spirit. moment you walk off, somebody else will walk on and do it.’

Dench’s finest MOMENTS

With husband Michael Williams and their newborn daughter Finty in 1972

David Hare

Bill Nighy

‘Romeo & Juliet’ at the Theatre Royal Haymarket, 1967

PHOTOGRAPH: XXXXXX

As Ophelia in ‘Hamlet’ at the Old Vic, 1957

In ‘Cabaret’ at the Strand Theatre, 1968

With Gwyneth Paltrow collecting Oscars for ‘Shakespeare in Love’ in 1999

With Billy Connolly in ‘Mrs Brown’ (1997) www.harpersbazaar.co.uk

With Daniel Craig at the British Independent Film Awards in 2007

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BELLE

DE JOUR Fiercely original style leader Carine Roitfeld has made an indelible mark on fashion as magazine editor, stylist and model. A modern-day Diana Vreeland and muse to Tom Ford and Karl Lagerfeld, the drop-dead-chic French icon (soon to become a grandmother) is the woman we all want to be, says JUSTINE PICARDIE

F

Portrait by KARL LAGERFELD

irst, a confession: the night before I interviewed Carine Roitfeld, I sleepwalked to the wardrobe, rummaged through six different pairs of trousers, tried them all on, then pirouetted across the bedroom, somewhat to my family’s alarm. Such is the power of Carine Roitfeld – darling of global bloggers and street photographers, formerly editor-in-chief of French Vogue for a decade, longstanding collaborator with Mario Testino and Tom Ford, and arguably the most influential stylist in the world – to infiltrate one’s unconscious mind, as well as the everyday choices we make about fashion.

If Anna Wintour remains the most dominant editor in fashion today, then Carine Roitfeld is its prevailing muse, a contemporary Diana Vreeland, the ultimate pin-up for the older woman, more famous than many of the models that appeared in her magazine. It was Roitfeld who defined the erotic charge of Gucci in the 1990s – smoky eyes, tumbling hair, high heels, silk shirt unbuttoned, tightly fitted pencil skirt, but with the androgynous edge of a tuxedo jacket – and it’s a look that she has honed into being entirely synonymous with her own.

Since her departure early last year from French Vogue (having transformed it into the beating heart of the industry; albeit one too perversely visceral for some), she has emerged as an instantly recognisable brand. She has styled advertising for Chanel, Givenchy and MaxMara; starred as herself in a Barneys New York campaign; launched her book, Irreverent, a celebration of her work at French Vogue; composed another with Karl Lagerfeld about the Chanel black jacket; guest-edited V Magazine; and is now planning a new bi-annual fashion bible, as yet unnamed, but you can see why an eponymous title has been rumoured.

Being Roitfeld has proved extraordinarily successful, even after her controversial exit

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NOIR HEROINE Carine Roitfeld photographed by Karl Lagerfeld, wearing head-to-toe Givenchy

by Riccardo Tisci S/S 12

from Vogue (her reign culminated in an issue guest-edited by Tom Ford, featuring the designer on the cover with 15-year-old model Daphne Groeneveld, and disturbing photographs inside of madeup little girls dressed in adult clothes). Did she jump, or was she pushed? Reports vary, but her own account is one of escaping from a cage and finding her wings: ‘I’m still like a butterfly going from one job to another job. But it’s quite lovely – I hope to keep this freedom, to have fun – though when I launch my own magazine in September, I’ll only be working on that.’

I

am talking to her in her Paris apartment, overlooking Les Invalides, one of the most beautiful views in the city. Inside, it is full of natural light, a warm cocoon against winter chills; high ceilings, graceful cornicing, all painted the palest shade of cream from top to bottom; wooden parquet floors throughout; greige leather sofas; art books on the coffee table (Avedon, Murakami, Beaton); framed photographs leaning against the walls (Dalí and Warhol), alongside family pictures of her partner of 30 years, Christian ‘Sisley’ Restoin (the founder of the Equipment clothing line), and their two children, Julia and Vladimir (both very much part of the dynasty – Julia is a model, designer and art director, with a new lingerie range, while Vladimir is an art dealer and curator in New York).

At 57, Carine is about to become a grandmother – 31-year-old Julia is having a baby in May with model Robert Konjic – a prospect that delights her, at the same time as surprising her. ‘I’m going to be a baboushka!’ she says (the word a reminder of her paternal Russian grandparents and father). ‘My kids still seem young to me, though actually, my daughter is a woman, she’s not a little girl. It’s a good thing, because although we are a very close family, she lives far away from me, in New York, and now she needs me more, she has questions, she needs advice, something has changed in relations since she has become pregnant, and I’m very happy about it.’ This is how Carine talks – a charming rush of idiosyncratic English, a smile on her face and in her voice, her French accent intact (the ‘h’ always dropped, like the ‘r’s, as in: ‘I am wewy appy’). ‘We have to buy a Christmas tree again, and I haven’t done that for years – so this is good, this is life. This life, thank God, is bigger than fashion.’

Roitfeld’s attachment to family life has also allowed her to learn the art of the slow burn: she did a bit of modelling after school (a cover for a British teen magazine, Look Now, and some work for Kenzo); then started writing and styling for French Elle, in between raising two children ( Julia, born in 1980, and Vladimir, who is four years younger). Her career gathered pace with Mario Testino’s; they met in 1990, when he photographed Julia in a Vogue Bambini fashion shoot, and the pair thereafter teamed up for advertising and editorial clients, developing a reputation for delivering a consummate blend of glamour with a streak of edginess.

‘From the day I met her, she had that quality that it seems only French women have,’ says Testino, ‘a true sense of elegance mixed with sexiness, mixed with the moment in fashion.’

Four years later, Tom Ford encountered her at a photo studio in Paris, and was instantly smitten: ‘It was summer and it was very hot and she was working on a shoot with Mario Testino. She was wearing

Her children Vladimir and Julia in 1990

grey pants made out of Lycra T-shirt material with a narrow elastic band and a very skimpy top. She also had on a pair of high-heeled slingbacks and was stepping on the back straps. I was in love the moment I first laid eyes on her, and even did a show where all of the girls wore slingbacks but stepped on the back straps, as a homage to the first time I met her.’ Both men clearly regard her as undimmed by her departure from French Vogue. ‘Ever since she left, I have seen her go back to her classic look,’ says Testino, while Ford declares: ‘What I love most about Carine is her independence. She is so confident and sure of who she is – whatever she puts on, women want.’

According to Amanda Harlech, Lagerfeld’s long-term muse at Chanel and another fan of Roitfeld’s: ‘Carine has found that she’s loved, and she is very loveable. She’s not a mean girl – she has two lovely children and a loving partner – she’s got things sorted out. But she’s also become a star – even more so than before.

There’s been a snowball effect – and this is fashion. Nobody wants to be associated with a sinking ship, but if there’s a frigate in full sail, they want to be on that boat.’

So here is Carine Roitfeld, sailing through her fifties, looking not just good for her age, but damn good, full stop. Today she is without her trademark heels, having just finished a ballet lesson, and yet still the quintessential ‘femme parisienne’. (‘Elle a du chien,’ as they remark in French – an idiom which suggests free-spirited allure, rather than its literal translation; in English, we would say ‘foxy’.)

Details matter, of course, so here they are: fitted grey leggings

by Track & Field, like the ones she was wearing when Tom Ford first saw her (‘They’re not so new, I got them at a Brazilian shop in New York, just next to the Carlyle hotel, I like staying at the Carlyle or the Mark, the Upper East Side is like being in a movie for a French girl’); cream and grey Margiela trainers, a grey cashmere vest and cardigan. ‘It’s a classic old cardigan from Hermès,’ she says, ‘from a Jean Paul Gaultier moment. People think I only wear new clothes, that I’m very trendy, but I like classic things on me, to mix with a trendy pair of shoes.’ Her beige cashmere coat is also Margiela, her scent is Opium by YSL (‘I’ve been faithful to it for 20 years’), her underwear by Carine Gilson (‘beautiful, sexy, and not vulgar – couture lingerie’), her little cream leather shoulder bag by Givenchy (its lightness and discreet silvery chain a practical concession to her

Roitfeld on holiday in Brittany aged 16

With Sisley, Julia and Vladimir in St Barths in 1996

‘I love Carine’s independence. She is so confident and sure of who she is – whatever she puts on, women want’ – TOM FORD

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PHOTOGRAPHS: COURTESY OF CARINE ROITFELD

long-held aversion to carrying a clutch or anything heavy or obvious; she’d rather keep her hands in her pockets, she says).

‘I think it’s good to see me like this – it’s very unusual – and honestly, it’s very comfortable.’ She’s tired today, she admits, after several recent trips to New York, but doesn’t look it: her long hair is shiny, as always (‘I’ve gone back to my natural colour’ – by which she doesn’t mean allowing the grey to show, but returning to a darker brown, after several years of honey-colour highlights); and her skin is glowing, without any obvious evidence of Botox or fillers (she prefers facial massage – ‘very firm’ – and also did a stint at Chiva-Som last year, with plenty of yoga and stretching). ‘Yesterday, I was shooting with Karl, and that always means you will finish quite late – and after, I kept working on emails, so I didn’t get to bed before 2.30, and my ballet teacher was coming this morning at 7am, and I didn’t want to miss her. Also, I had to take pills for the jet-lag, I took a ▼

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LOOK OF LOVE With long-term partner Christian ‘Sisley’ Restoin in Los Angeles. Left: an early modelling test shot, aged 18. Right: wearing a boyfriend’s T-shirt the same year

Aged 18, attending the Cannes Film Festival with her father

pill, so I’m still a bit sleepy. It’s difficult for me, the jet-lag, even though I’m travelling all the time. Now I try melatonin, it’s very strong, it works quite well, like a sleeping pill – if you don’t sleep, you feel so bad.’

Nothing works for me, I say (though I don’t tell her my tiredness is from last night’s sleepwalking, rather than transatlantic jet-setting).

‘I will give you one pill of mine to try,’ she promises, but in the event, I don’t take her up on her kind offer – which I’m now regretting, because whatever it is that Carine Roitfeld is taking, I want some of it, too. Instead, she makes me freshly brewed English Breakfast tea, served without milk, in delicate white and gold porcelain cups, and a small plate of dates. ‘So the tea, it’s OK for you, an English girl?’

Working with Lagerfeld, she says, is hugely enjoyable, despite the late nights. ‘Karl is so smart, and makes me laugh a lot, we have a good time working together, it has been a new experience, so there is something magical.’ (As for Lagerfeld’s view on Roitfeld: he says she ‘doesn’t fall into the trap that a lot of stylists do’, but instead ‘thinks about the woman first’, before the clothes.) We chat about who might take over at Dior after John Galliano’s demise – apparently not Marc Jacobs. ‘I hear so many names, Alaïa, Alber Elbaz, Nicolas Ghesquière, Tom Ford, Riccardo Tisci, I think it’s difficult to find the right person – the right shoe for the foot, do you say that in English?’

Spend any time with Roitfeld, and you can see why designers and photographers value her; she’s an enthusiast, as well as chic; light-hearted, yet hard-working; sexy and womanly, but not threatening. According to Olivier Zahm of Purple magazine, who edited Irreverent: ‘She wields a clever blend of elegance and bourgeois convention, on the one hand, and provocation and freedom,

Carine was his fiancée. This might seem troubling in its incestuous suggestion – ‘It was not very nice for my mother, I think we were like Serge Gainsbourg and his daughter,’ she remarks, breezily – yet apparently not to Carine. ‘As the song says, my heart belongs to Daddy,’ she says. But Roitfeld’s longstanding monogamy and fidelity to her partner are uncompromised by her loyalty to her father. She and Sisley aren’t married – ‘I’m superstitious; if you don’t get married, you don’t get divorced, and so it is very good this way, I am with the same person after 30 years.’

Similarly, her openness towards provocative images – she has often used raw meat or blood in her shoots, going back to her earliest work with Testino – appears not to undermine her stable domesticity; indeed, she places the origins of that imagery within the realm of a bourgeois household. ‘When I was a little girl, we had dogs, and my mother gave me a knife to cut up the raw meat for them – and it was something I liked to touch – it was sensual – though, for me, when I’m eating a steak, I like it very well cooked.

But maybe cutting the meat gave me a good sensation.’ And when her children were still at school, she says, ‘I had time to take care of them… travelling together, doing a lot together, football, horseriding, the dentist, good and bad things, seeing their teachers, the difficult stuff as well – it keeps my feet on the reality. OK, I can fly away with my pictures, have fun with Mario Testino, doing pornochic, but then I have to go home and cook.’

Thus Roitfeld possesses a practical view of what suits women that co-exists with her more subversive styling. ‘I would never share my daughter’s wardrobe,’ she says (though she has handed down a great many clothes to Julia, including the shorts that she no longer wears). ‘Every five years, you have to go through your wardrobe and say, “This is possible, this is not possible.” But you have to be happy with yourself – there is something good in each person, it could be the eyes, the décolleté, the ankles, the legs, the hair, the brows, the colour of the skin.’ She doesn’t like to be overdressed, she says – ‘I get an award for being the best dressed, but at the end of the day, I’m not Daphne Guinness.

I don’t like people to look at me for my dress. The letter is more important than the envelope. But if you feel good in your envelope, then you will feel better about yourself.’

Hence her ability to question the wilder edges of her visual aesthetic: ‘When I look at my book, it’s like going to a shrink – you say, “My God, it’s a long time, and all these clichés you’ve been putting in the pictures, why do I always use the knife, the blood, why this repetition?”’ So why use them? ‘Maybe it’s because I am terrorised by blood – if I cut myself, it’s difficult even for me to lick my blood, and if they are doing an injection, I can’t look at it. And the same if my kids were bleeding – it’s very difficult for me to see it – so I couldn’t be a doctor, but maybe that’s the reason I put it in my pictures. I love tattoos in pictures, but I would never get one myself; I love punk in pictures, but I was never a punk myself. Maybe I need something crazy in the pictures, because otherwise my life would be too safe, non?’

Yet ultimately, her life – or at least, its harmonious surface – appears anything but mundane to those of us who admire her look; her powerfully individual allure, more beguiling for many grown-up women (myself included) than images of younger girls, however exotic or contentious the props. ‘Be yourself ’ is an over-used maxim – but with Carine Roitfeld as an exemplar, it suddenly seems meaningful again…

‘Irreverent’ by Carine Roitfeld (£60, Rizzoli) is out now.

A 2011 French ‘Vogue’ shoot commissioned

by Roitfeld and shot by Mario Testino.

Above right: notes from fashion friends.

Right: at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2010

‘OK, I can fly away with my pictures, have fun with Mario Testino, doing porno-chic, but then I have to go home and cook’

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PHOTOGRAPHS: MARIO TESTINO, KARL LAGERFELD, COURTESY OF CARINE ROITFELD, GETTY IMAGES

on the other.’ As a stylist, observes Amanda Harlech, ‘she’s at the top of what she does – it’s all about the glimpse of a bra and a beautiful silk stocking, something a little bit rebellious’.

Roitfeld herself identifies her look as the manifestation of her upbringing in Auteuil, the 16th arrondissement of Paris, ‘a very posh neighbourhood’. Her father, Jacques Roitfeld, was a successful film producer, who worked with Roger Vadim and Brigitte Bardot, among others; her mother, ‘very Parisian, the perfect housewife, tremendously well organised’. When I ask Carine if she liked her mother (who died several years ago), she looks shocked, replying ‘of course’, not missing a beat. But it was her father who she adored, with a passion that is still apparent, over a decade after his death.

‘My father was not often there, but when someone is absent you dream of them, he was the fairy tale. I wanted to please my father, I wanted him to be proud of me. My brother was more beautiful than me, but I get better as I get older.’ (Her older brother is ‘still a beautiful man’, she says, ‘but we are very different. We don’t see much of each other, he works in film and TV, but we are connected, we are family; in a crisis, we would be there for each other.’)

If fashion is, in part, a competitive sport – with prizes for the most attractive, the most compelling, but only if they don’t look like they’re trying too hard – then it makes sense that Roitfeld should have been in training since childhood. Her mother loved fashion, and dressed her daughter in designer clothing from an early age, while her father taught her how to seduce and amuse, taking her to the Cannes Film Festival when she was 17, and telling people that

SHE’S IN FASHION With daughter Julia and Linda Evangelista front-row at Alexander Wang S/S 12

Mario Testino fixing Roitfeld’s Azzedine Alaïa dress for a ‘Vanity Fair’ party. Left: with photographer Steven Klein at a Dolce & Gabbana party in Cannes. Above left: with Tom Ford

A 2004 sketch of Roitfeld by Karl Lagerfeld

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‘S

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rock singers fierce and full-throated, loaded with carnal knowledge.

Chrissie Hynde one minute, Debbie Harry the next; it doesn’t bear thinking about, does it?

But here’s the dirty little secret about our favourite hard blonde: she is, in fact, a bit of a softie; easy-going, open, very smart, and no sweat to talk to. Debbie Harry is doing this interview in anticipation of the release of a brand new album, Panic of Girls. Sample some of the tracks from the web, especially ‘What I Heard’, and you know right away she and Chris Stein are back in brilliant form: edgy but full-on pop musicality. But she’s also doing it because she has no problem talking about Blondie now and then. So she looks you straight in the eye; smiles, laughs that lightly smoked laugh; March 2011 |

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▼

Uber-fan SIMON SCHAMA meets Blondie singer Debbie Harry in Manhattan as the iconic band launches its brilliant new album. They discuss dizzying career highs and harrowing lows, and how Harry’s sexy pop-rock attitude paved the way for Madonna and Lady Gaga

PHOTOGRAPHS: ANDY WARHOL © THE ANDY WARHOL FOUNDATION FOR THE VISUAL ARTS/CORBIS, GETTY IMAGES, DEBORAH HARRY (1978) © THE ROBERT MAPPLETHORPE FOUNDATION, COURTESY OF ART + COMMERCE

BACK TO BLONDIE

o, did you perform at high school?’ I ask the rock star.

‘God, no,’ she says, ‘painfully shy.’

‘That’s hard to believe,’ I say, thinking of the feline claws and purrs with which she launched Blondie; remembering the little rasp in the voice of the stalker: ‘One way or another, I’m gonna getcha getcha getcha.’ We took a look at her lines, sharp and curvy at the same time and let the voice fall on us like a gladiator’s net.

‘Oh yeah,’ she comes back, ‘sometimes I still get the shys.’

But not in live performance, not in Australia and New Zealand where Blondie – Debbie, plus two of the original band, Chris Stein and the great drummer Clem Burke – recently co-headlined with the Pretenders, the dream tour for anyone who likes their women

A

fter the inevitable arts degree, and not yet bleached, she famously did a stint as a Playboy Bunny. ‘Fun and horror… like most things.’

Mistreatment? I ask, fishing. Only by women dates, she says; when they thought their men were hitting on the rabbits. She sang as a back-up in a folk band called Wind in the Willows, but she’d listened to rocking blues coming out of the radio in Newark: the Catman Hour and the great Cousin Brucie. Downtown beckoned in the early Seventies; Velvet Underground and waiting tables at Max’s Kansas City; the pre-CBGB cradle of punk. New York Dolls were primping and singing; a big Attitude Change was tuning up. One night, a friend asked her to front a band calling itself – what else? – Pure Garbage. ‘Gee that sounds good,’ she said, ‘better than Plain Garbage.’ But by the time she showed up for the gig, the band had already broken up. It was when she hooked up, personally and musically, with Chris Stein that Blondie came to be born and triumph. Though it’s obvious they worked together, Harry always gives Stein the lion’s share of credit for the lyrics of their strongest hits. But the perfect fit between how Harry looked, her body language; the attack voice dressed up in raw silk or brushed velvet; the super-smart lines – all that was, indivisibly, the work of a true partnership.

There was a third in the mix to make Parallel Lines the commercial as well as critical knockout it was: Mike Chapman, the Australianborn producer who, she says, had the pop-aesthetic they needed to go from downtown New Wavers into the mainstream. Plenty of DJs had checked out what Blondie had to offer and didn’t like it. Chapman 286 |

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changed all that and for a decent run, they never looked back. The genius designer Stephen Sprouse dressed her counter-intuitively; the more boyish she got with pencil lines, little suits and ties, scanlines from a television printed on the fabric, the higher the sex-voltage.

This reinvention of the Blonde was waiting to happen. ‘It was already in people’s heads’, she says, from the movies: cocktail sipping, hard-talking spirited give-no-quarter blondes in fitted pencil skirts like Eva Marie Saint ‘luring men to their doom’ as an excited Cary Grant put it in North by Northwest. Warhol’s Factory was stocked with bleach jobs but Nico sounds fey next to Blondie. ‘I felt women in the Seventies always sung songs about being victims.’ Even the ones with the piled-up hair like Dusty Springfield, or the teary version of Marianne Faithfull. ‘They just stood there.’ Not Blondie. She made the moves. ‘When you met me in the restaurant/You knew I was no debutante.’ The sappy pop opening line was the fake smoochy comeon, before the flick of the scarlet fingernail dug just where it counted.

‘I will give you my finest hour/The one I spent watching you shower.’

It wasn’t much of a stretch to wire up all kinds of pop currents to downtown punk and New Wave. Stein had been to London and come back full of reggae – cue ‘The Tide Is High’. ‘Heart of Glass’ and ‘Picture This’ could not have been poppier. But then, a lot of what her friends the Ramones did might have come straight from the Beach Boys – ‘Rock ’n’ Roll Radio’ or ‘Rockaway Beach’ – only much much louder and much much faster. All the same, Blondie’s accessibility provoked inevitable accusations of selling out from old comrades of the CBGB era – Johnny Ramone (‘always frowning’) and Joan Jett (‘one of the most vehement’). Harry bears no ill-will about this. ‘She [ Joan] was true to her colour… everybody was afraid disco was taking over.’

It was only four years from the release of Parallel Lines to the break-up of Blondie in 1982. Maybe they were running out of creative steam; there were the usual management feuds, but it was a frightening, rare and initially undiagnosed auto-immune disease attacking Chris Stein’s skin and eating into the rest of his body that ultimately made it impossible to go on. In their last concerts, she says, looking down, suddenly shadowed by the memory ‘he was 120 pounds’ (less than nine stone). Harry devoted a lot of her time to seeing him through a terrifying ordeal, which, though labelled pemphigus, still seems to defy most clinical analysis.

So it’s good to report a happy ending. After recording some solo albums (‘not spectacular’ she insists, rebuffing a compliment), Blondie reformed with four of the originals including Stein, and Harry is unapologetically proud of the rarity of a band staying close, enduring through nearly four decades, and powering up their distinctive music again. Ultimately, this jubilant survival seems more important to her than any monster fame, the kind in which everything gets sunk into Brand. She knows well enough how a whole line of tough-cookie out-there rock chicks – Madonna, Lady Gaga – all took Blondieishness where Debbie Harry wouldn’t or couldn’t go. She concedes this without any wistfulness or envy. ‘I admire the completeness of their decision. It becomes a force, and we are all entertained by it. Even if we degrade it by gossip, we’re still in awe of it.’

But if ‘it’ isn’t for Blondie, what is, after all this time? If you weren’t at the Isle of Wight Festival or Sydney last year, just check out YouTube and you’ll see a fine, precious thing: a hard-driving band (Stein now silvery-haired but with all his rocking engine intact); and Debbie herself, prowling the stage, tough and tunicked-up, heavy metal (and sometimes a dagger) at her belt; gorgeously dangerous, but actually when she sings ‘I’m not frightened by love’ doing nothing more than celebrating, artfully, what men and women can get up to. If they damned well try, anyway.

Blondie’s new album, ‘Panic of Girls’, will be released later this year. www.harpersbazaar.co.uk

PHOTOGRAPHS: GETTY IMAGES, © THE ANDY WARHOL FOUNDATION FOR THE VISUAL ARTS/CORBIS, CORBIS

and gives off enough human warmth to light up a raw Manhattan morning when the fall has got its talons into the dying year.

We are sitting in the restaurant of a Midtown hotel. Around the corner are Suits chowing down on their breakfast eggs. Amidst this dull brassiness, Debbie Harry’s genuine good nature burns bright.

The cat-eyes still shine; the mouth that snarled ‘Rip Her to Shreds’, crooned ‘Denis… un grand baiser d’ éternité ’ and moaned ‘Picture This’ still does its lip magic. She’s wearing a fine-spun loose thread white cotton sweater thrown over a dark T-shirt with just the carelessness that permanently beautiful women can effortlessly pull off.

Revisiting her classics, above all Parallel Lines, I’m struck by the range of her voice. So much has been noted and written about the Blondie-affect – its urban hipness; the sharp threads; the metallic sleekness of the sound – that you forget what an amazing voice it is that could open ‘Heart of Glass’ at the top of the register and dive into downtown chanteuse in ‘Rip Her to Shreds’. ‘I always approached singing as an actor,’ she says, and while the persona she acted was all of a piece, she could make it sound brittle, voluptuous and most everything in between. Which is maybe why she occasionally flirts torchily with old-time standards. A version she did with Iggy Pop of Cole Porter’s ‘Well, Did You Evah!’, written for Crosby and Sinatra, is – especially on video – an amazing performance. And I like a version of ‘Stormy Weather’, even though Debbie herself doesn’t rate it.

‘Funny,’ she says, ‘I was singing that song, driving in from New Jersey this morning.’ I tell her it’s what the business programme on National Public Radio plays when the market goes south. She laughs, because whatever storms there were – and there have been plenty – seem distant. She was an adopted child and I ask her whether she was in contact with her birth mother. ‘Oh I hired a private detective… but…’ No dice. ‘Did it bother you?’ I ask, idiotically. ‘Of course it bothered me,’ she flares, ‘but I didn’t need a mother. I had a mother. One is enough.’

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REFLECTIONS OF A SUPERSTAR Mark Ronson wears blazer, £1,375, Bottega Veneta. Cotton T-shirt, £16, American Apparel.

See Stockists for details. Grooming by Halley Brisker at David Coffin Management

n the recesses of a West London studio, a scene from A Clockwork Orange is playing out. Our protagonist, clad in thuggish Dr Martens, a white blazer and the trousers of an ornate black and grey Lanvin suit, stands nonchalantly inside a six-foot threewalled mirrored box, the leader of a gang of selves reflected in its surfaces ad infinitum. Yet, while the Bazaar shoot takes inspiration from Stanley Kubrickâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s 1971 sci-fi film, the mood is perceptibly different.

The music blaring from the studio speakers is not Beethoven but Kanye West â&#x20AC;&#x201C; though equally triumphant â&#x20AC;&#x201C; and in the place of Malcolm McDowellâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s antagonistic antihero is the affable superstar DJ and music producer Mark Ronson, who poses amiably for the photographer, dancing lithely around the tiny space, followed by a formation of his own peroxide-quiffed army.

Indeed, Ronsonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s own aura could not be far enough from that of the â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;droogsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;; refined and impeccably mannered (he punctuates every sentence with â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;pleasesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; and â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;thank-yousâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;), he is the epitome of a gentleman â&#x20AC;&#x201C; the dapper musical aristocrat of the transatlantic pop scene. It is Ronson, with his suave, fashion-savvy panache so reminiscent of a rocker from another era, from Bowie to Bryan Ferry, who can, in part, be credited with bringing back a touch of old-school glamour to the realm of British male musicians (dominated in the Noughties by a raft of cookie-cutter indie-rock boys). Such debonair style, along with his en pointe talent for musical alchemy (his Motown brass-band-tinged production of Amy Winehouseâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Back to Black won a host of Grammy awards, and he collaborated with Lily Allen at the launch of her career), has made Ronson one of the most alluring creative players on the New YorkLondon scenes, a fact not lost on his current paramour, French actor and singer JosĂŠphine de la Baume, who languishes on his arm, the Jane Birkin to his Serge Gainsbourg.

With eyes like melted chocolate, high cheekbones and a strong, masculine jaw, Ronson, on top of his musical talents, is male-model material; he has walked for Tommy Hilfiger and been summoned

by Frida Giannini to design for Gucci. Few are immune to the Ronson touch. He is one of a trio of rock â&#x20AC;&#x2122;nâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; roll siblings: his sister Samantha is also a DJ and the one-time lover of wild child Lindsay Lohan; and Charlotte is a NY-based fashion designer, favoured by Gisele BĂźndchen and Gwen Stefani. Ronson himself has most recently worked his magic by breathing new life into Eighties icons Duran Duran, helping them to resurrect their synth-filled sound.

At 35, he is the undisputed master of the bespoke collaboration, showcased in both his Brit Award-winning album Version â&#x20AC;&#x201C; with Winehouseâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s ubiquitous â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Valerieâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; as its highlight â&#x20AC;&#x201C; and last yearâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s release Record Collection, featuring the skills of a wide array of artists, from Jake Shears of camp electro quartet Scissor Sisters to the doleful soul vocals of a resurgent Boy George. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Mark is a real gent,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; says George. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;American, but with a European edge.

He was easy to work with and totally laid-back. I call him

â&#x20AC;&#x153;the wizardâ&#x20AC;?, because he knows how to put different people together and it always works.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; Now seated after the shoot, Ronson shrugs, modestly dismissing the notion of such wizardry. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;You know at little school when the teacher wrote on your report card â&#x20AC;&#x153;plays well with othersâ&#x20AC;? or â&#x20AC;&#x153;doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t play well with othersâ&#x20AC;?,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; he says in his laconic transatlantic drawl. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Well, I guess Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m just a â&#x20AC;&#x153;plays well with othersâ&#x20AC;? kind of kid.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; Born in North London, Ronson, a relation of Malcolm Rif kind, transferred to New York when he was eight; his diverse musical output is without doubt a product of his transatlantic existence and his socialite and rock â&#x20AC;&#x2122;nâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; roll heritage. His mother, Odeon-cinema heiress Ann Dexter-Jones, is often referred to as â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;the bestconnected woman in Manhattanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;, and his father Laurence Ronson was a band manager in the 1980s who possesses an encyclopaedic knowledge of music. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Markâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s nursery-school teacher was horrified by the fact that during a school talent-show contest in which the children were asked to sing their favourite song, he sang â&#x20AC;&#x201C; at the age of three â&#x20AC;&#x201C; punk rocker Ian Duryâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s â&#x20AC;&#x153;Sex & Drugs & Rock & Rollâ&#x20AC;?,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; says his mother. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;It was his fatherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s current favourite.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; Ronsonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s â&#x20AC;&#x201C; and his twin sistersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; â&#x20AC;&#x201C; immersion in the music and celebrity realms was only deepened when his mother married Mick Jones, a founding member of soft-rock legends Foreigner.

The couple threw legendary parties in New York, populated by Hollywood stars and the rock sceneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s leading lights (Ronson recalls as a child slipping out of bed to join such soirĂŠes, sitting in front of the speakers and air drumming in time to the music in his pyjamas).

It was a creative, social household, frequented

by Robin Williams (who often put him to bed), Christopher Reeve and John Lennon, whose son Sean lived nearby and became Ronsonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s best friend. Surrounded by such talents, it is hardly surprising that, at the age of six, Ronson announced that when he â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;grew upâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; he wanted to make music. (â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;It is better to have one superpower than be Superman,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; the young Ronson once to told Reeve; his was undoubtedly a musical ear).

But no manufactured, precocious pop career awaited Ronson; instead, he launched himself at 19 as a professional DJ on the New York hip-hop scene. It was here he would earn his reputation and encounter the names that he would work with in the future. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;When I was a kid starting out, Puffy [Combs] and Jay-Z and those kinds of guys did come to the clubs I was playing at because they liked the way I DJ.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; As a result of his musical kudos, Ronson was also embraced by New Yorkâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s fashion world: in 1999 he was shot in his recording studio for a Tommy Hilfiger campaign (for which he produced the music). His profile escalated further in 2003 when he became a regular fixture at Justin Timberlakeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Chelsea-based club Suede â&#x20AC;&#x201C; a celebrity haunt for Hollywoodâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s movers and shakers, who often invited him to DJ at their private parties (he even played at Tom Cruise and Katie Holmesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; wedding in 2006). Ronson was dating Rashida Jones, the daughter of legendary producer Quincy Jones (to whom he would propose in 2003 with a custom-made crossword puzzle which spelt â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Will You Marry Me?â&#x20AC;&#x2122;), but he soon began to feel pigeonholed by his celebrity associations. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;I was starting to get written off a bit in America as a DJ kid that plays all the fashion parties, even though Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d made my name in a very credible way â&#x20AC;&#x201C; namely, hole-in-the-wall clubs on the Lower East Side that didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t

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give a monkeyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s who my parents were, let alone know who they were,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; says Ronson. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Suddenly, people just seemed to decide that I was a vapid party boy.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; Despite a certain ambivalence over Ronsonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s credentials in America, back in London he was about to sample his first taste of success as a producer. While DJing at the Notting Hill Arts Club in 2006, he met smart-mouthed, up-and-coming cockney chanteuse Lily Allen (like Ronson, the daughter of a rock â&#x20AC;&#x2122;nâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; roll parent, in this case the Groucho Clubâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s most notorious member, actor Keith Allen). After listening to her demo, Ronson persuaded Allen to join him in New York and work on a couple of songs together. As her record label wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t keen to fund the trip, he flew her across the Atlantic on his own Airmiles, putting her up at the Chinatown Holiday Inn (â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;It was during the bird-flu epidemic, and Lily was surrounded by all these Asian men wearing masks. I think it freaked her out a little,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; says Ronson). During that trip they recorded â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Littlest Thingsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;I was like, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Well, letâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s go record shopping first,â&#x20AC;?â&#x20AC;&#x2122; he continues. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;I remember being in the listening booth and finding that sample from this Seventies soft-core porn film Emmanuelle, and I said to Lily, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Do you like this?â&#x20AC;? and she did. So we went home and sampled it. Lily really broke down the door for me. She was the coolest kid on the block by far â&#x20AC;&#x201C; and I had this song on her album, and people started seeing me in a different light.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; Further notoriety (both tabloid and critical acclaim) awaited Ronson in the form of one of the most hedonistic offsprings of recent celebrity culture. In London, he was introduced to emerging singer Amy Winehouse via an EMI contact.

An old-school soul diva with the looks of Maria Callas and the voice of Billie Holliday, she immediately bonded with Ronsonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s retro vision and Motown sound. The result of their melodic union was the brilliant multi-platinum Grammy Award-winning Back to Black, which catapulted both Ronson and Winehouse into the limelight; though for the singer it was perhaps such intense media scrutiny that would, in part, bring about her drug-fuelled downfall. She also guested on his second album Version â&#x20AC;&#x201C; featuring contemporary re-workings of tracks by the Smiths and Radiohead â&#x20AC;&#x201C; with a cover of the Zutonsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Valerieâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;, which became the soundtrack of the year. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;It was such a snapshot of a moment,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; says Ronson. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;You play Version and itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s like 2007.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; With the ubiquity of â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Valerieâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; came the increasing presence of Ronson in the press; tabloid intrigue for the soap-operatic lives of Winehouse and his sister Samantha seeped into his own by association. In 2008, Lohan and Samanthaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s relationship became public, their sapphic relationship (coupled with the actorâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s precocious behaviour and substance addiction) became front-page news, injecting a further frisson of rock â&#x20AC;&#x2122;nâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; roll into the Ronson familyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s name and further intrigue into the producerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s own erotic liaisons.

Ronsonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s first high-profile relationship with Rashida Jones ended in 2004, despite the marriage proposal; thereafter, he was photographed with a coterie of female friends on both sides of the Atlantic, fuelling occasional ripples of speculation. But it was not until 2008 that he emerged with a new relationship with British model Daisy Lowe (daughter of one-time Primrose Hill hellraiser Pearl Lowe and musician Gavin Rossdale). The pair â&#x20AC;&#x201C; the epitome of the symbiosis of fashion and music for a CONTINUED ON PAGE 352

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PATRON OF THE CHARTS From top: Ronson with Amy Winehouse at the Brit Awards in 2008.

With Lily Allen in New York. With girlfriend JosĂŠphine de la Baume at the Q Awards last year www.harpersbazaar.co.uk

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SAM I AM Sam Taylor-Wood wears silk and lace slip, £155, Stella McCartney. Mesh, lace and silk robe, £428, La Perla. Jewellery, her own www.harpersbazaar.co.uk

PHOTOGRAPH: XXXXXX

PHOTOGRAPH: XXXXXX

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walk into Sam Taylor-Woodâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s sitting room with an armful of clothes from my new collection. Sam tenderly hands over her tiny new daughter Wylda to the babyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s father Aaron, and strips off to try on my gifts, revealing a slim, toned body with a slight curve in place of her usually taut stomach. This is â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;typical Samâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;; at the time we meet, two months after giving birth, aged 43, she is effortlessly in shape. I am interviewing her at her home of a year, a beautiful white stucco building overlooking a London park â&#x20AC;&#x201C; its rooms modern, comfortable and easy to hang out in â&#x20AC;&#x201C; which she shares with Aaron Johnson and her three children.

As has been widely and almost obsessively reported, Aaron is 20 years old. They met when he played the starring role of John Lennon in the film Nowhere Boy, the first feature the award-winning artist has directed, which was nominated for a Bafta this year. All of this fairy tale that has happened over the past two years is â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;typical Samâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;, in that there seems to be a bubble of good luck that she lives in. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s not quite that simple, of course. She works at her art with fanatical dedication, pushing herself constantly all available hours. But there is something about Sam that, when things go right, they go spectacularly right.

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e hadnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t seen that much of each other since I stayed with her in Sicily during the summer of 2008. She was there with her then husband, the art dealer Jay Jopling, and a group of us friends.

That year they had rented a vast and beautiful Visconti-esque villa with endless interconnecting drawing rooms, set in shaded gardens filled with lemon-trees. It was fun and exciting to be with them: a close group, regulars including Johnnie Shand Kydd, Daniel Craig and art director Kim Sion, but with new people thrown into the mix.

Jay is generous in the grand manner and imaginatively so â&#x20AC;&#x201C; he puts his talent into the enjoyment of his friends and they, in turn, are beguiled by his thoughtfulness and feel great loyalty to him. But things were tense between our hosts. Sam got a stomach bug and hardly ate, getting thinner and thinner, which seemed to reflect her torment. It was painful to watch. Impressively, they both remained on good terms throughout this period of their impending separation later that year and divorce, which followed in 2009.

The day after we meet, Sam, Aaron and Wylda are off to America for a month-long tour to promote Nowhere Boyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s US release, joined at various stages by her daughters with Jay â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Angelica, 12, and Jessie, four. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve had to get very Zen about travelling so much with a newborn, breastfeeding while doing 20 interviews a day. I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t know how I will do it â&#x20AC;&#x201C; at the same time, fucking hell, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a challenge!â&#x20AC;&#x2122; she says, looking delighted. People may go on about the 23-year age gap, but it is Sam who looks young, radiating happiness and calm. She has always had allure, that inscrutable quality that makes people want to please her and be her friend without even knowing why. But this time she is happy, which is novel: â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;I have always been interested in shifting and change, but this time I feel I am completely settled, calm and happy.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; I remember a conversation we had ages ago about happiness,

when she said she thought melancholy was underrated and an important source of fuel for her work as a prolific artist (the youngest ever to have a retrospective show at the Hayward Gallery). â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;I used to say that, and I still feel the same, in the sense that I will always use those experiences,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; she reflects. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;The difference is, now that I am so happy, my melancholy is better channelled. I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t dwell on the sad experiences, whereas they used to hang heavy with me. It made me who I am, but Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m not constantly trying to find answers any more.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; Sam has always been open about her childhood. Her mother walked out of the house when she was 15 and the family (her sister, younger half-brother and stepfather) had no idea where she was for six months until Sam spotted her through the window of a house on their street. She had moved in with another man a few blocks down the road â&#x20AC;&#x201C; no apology, no explanation. It was as if there had been a shock that Sam never quite recovered from, something private that kept her separate, sealed in a suit of armour. She was diagnosed with cancer twice, the first time within a year of the birth of Angelica and again three years later. So much for the lucky bubble.

Her solution has been to work her way out of problems; it is how she manages fear. Her work ethic is prodigiously sustained. Not for her the carrot juice and meditation option; she takes the Joan of Arc way, confronting what would thwart most people by attacking from the front and applying herself to ideas. After the second bout of cancer, she made the music video for Elton Johnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;I Want Loveâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;, a moody, brilliant piece of work starring pre-reformed Robert Downey Jnr in what looks like one uninterrupted take. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;I thought, â&#x20AC;&#x153;I canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t do it,â&#x20AC;? and Elton said, â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;â&#x20AC;&#x153;You can!â&#x20AC;&#x2122;â&#x20AC;&#x2122;â&#x20AC;&#x2122; she explains. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;He pushed me back out into the world and gave me confidence, which kickstarted my other work. He is strangely psychic and picks up when I am in a creative lull.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; Elton is one of Samâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s closest friends. They shared what they called a 100-year birthday when she turned 40, with Barbara Windsor climbing out of a cake.

Just when things were unravelling in her personal life, she plunged into the most daunting project of her career â&#x20AC;&#x201C; to direct a feature film based on John Lennonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s childhood. She told me that when she first saw the script it was the most compelling screenplay she had ever read and, even though the film was attached to another director, she knew she had to get it.

To make a film is one of the most difficult things to accomplish, but to add Lennon, someone who millions feel so possessive about, is intimidating in the extreme. The result, Nowhere Boy, which came out at the beginning of the year, is a masterpiece and it received almost universal rave reviews. You are gripped from the first frame. There is not one concession to the clichĂŠs of the Beatles/ Lennon story. It is as brilliant in all the things it doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t say, as well as the riveting story that it tells. The performances from AnneMarie Duff, who plays Lennonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s young mother, and Kristin Scott Thomas as Aunt Mimi are extraordinary, but the undisputed star is Aaron Johnson. Here is an actor of such talent. How could anyone play Lennon? Yet he was Lennon. You only have to see Matthew Vaughnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Kick-Ass, in which he plays a nerdy American kid masquerading as a superhero, to doubly appreciate his fierce ability.

Samâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s debut in feature films came with a sharp learning curve â&#x20AC;&#x201C; a novice directing one of the most experienced actresses in the business. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Kristin is such a powerful presence. When she came on set,

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TEAL DEAL Satin dress, ÂŁ475, Stella McCartney at Harvey Nichols. Suede pumps, ÂŁ495, Christian Louboutin. Jewellery and bra, Samâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s own www.harpersbazaar.co.uk

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What was the highlight of 2010 for you?

‘Giving birth at home to Wylda Rae.’ What was the biggest challenge of the year?

‘Giving birth at home.’

What was the most invaluable advice you were ever given?

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SEE STOCKISTS FOR DETAILS. HAIR AND MAKE-UP BY JANE BRADLEY AT NAKED ARTISTS, USING SISLEY PHOTOGRAPH: XXXXXX

PHOTOGRAPH: XXXXXX

‘Breathe through the pain and ride the wave.’

What is your secret weapon?

‘My right hook, followed by a quick upper cut.’

JEWEL ROLE Satin, elastic and lace bodysuit, about £480, Dolce & Gabbana. Yellow gold and diamond bracelet, £13,200; yellow gold earrings, £2,910, both Boucheron. All other jewellery, Sam’s own www.harpersbazaar.co.uk

I felt like a schoolgirl. I think she enjoys throwing down the gauntlet. I was afraid of her challenging me, and not being able to stand up to her and be as good as I needed to be to direct someone so brilliant,’ she says, laughing. ‘There was a moment of this fantastic duelling where she said to me: “Is this really how we are going to do this?” It was a locked-horns moment where the whole set goes quiet. Then it was me, standing equally firm, and both of us feeling that we were strong enough to deal with the subject. That moment brought us together and we were the best of friends after that.’

How big a switch was it to make the transition from the world of art into the film industry – as a director, no less? ‘It takes a different type of brainpower to work on art, and I am totally focused on film at the moment. I don’t differentiate with my art, it’s what I am doing right now, how I am being creative,’ she tells me. ‘The last thing I did photographically was with you and Susie Bick. When you asked if I would take pictures of Susie in the clothes you have designed together, I know your work so well and that made me know exactly what I wanted to do. It was the same with Nowhere Boy. I could visualise it as a 3-D thing.’ Sam had first got to know my clothes 10 years ago when I sought her out to collaborate with me on a film.

I was looking for a different way to show my work. We never made that film but we became friends, my clothes suited her, and this year we collaborated on a photographic shoot in lieu of a show.

I ask her if she plans to direct more feature films. ‘I hope to but I haven’t found anything I like yet. I have been trawling through scripts but nothing has aroused my curiosity so far. What I am doing, though, is another collaboration with Elton,’ she relays excitedly. ‘He phoned me just after I gave birth to Wylda and said, “What about directing my Vegas show?” I said, “I’ve just had a baby, I can’t think like that!” He knows me so well, that I wouldn’t be able to resist it. When I was lying breastfeeding, I started thinking, “Well, it could be like this…”’ The show opens in May 2011 and involves her art-directing everything from the lighting to the costumes, dancers and films – every detail, in fact.

We hear the baby crying from the other room, demanding to be fed. Aaron, who has been giving her a bath, carries her in and it is time for me to leave. The interview has ended and I haven’t asked her about the age gap because I thought her heart would sink at this endlessly posed question. In fact, it is Sam who texts me and suggests we mention it. We arrange to speak a few days later when she is in New York. She phones me while stuck in a traffic jam on the road to Long Island. I ask her who talked about babies first. ‘Oh, Aaron, almost before anything started between us, he said he wanted kids. He was very clear about wanting a family. We hardly go out now, it’s just us. You know what I used to be like!’ she says. ‘Aaron has brought a set of values I didn’t even know I was looking for, family values. He is more grounded. He has been getting work offers which he has turned down because he wants to be here for the crucial beginning months of Wylda’s life. This time I don’t want help and Aaron wants to be here and be involved. How refreshing is that?

‘In the old days, “controversial” in a relationship meant same-sex or mixed races,’ Sam continues. ‘Now, it is a woman with a younger man. That would not happen with a man and certainly not with a male director. Every single article about the film in the UK has mentioned the age difference between us, however unrelated, and almost none in America.’

It was while in New York that Sam received the ultimate endorsement of her work. ‘We held a screening and Yoko Ono made a surprise appearance. She stood up and said, “If you want to know about John Lennon, then you must watch this film.”’

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standing ovation, the other audience members make a hushed and befuddled exit, as if what they have seen that night has shaken them to the core.

From a tragic tale of epic grandeur to a sunlit photographerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s studio in Holborn: Acosta enters stage left, dressed in a knitted beanie, faded jeans and a linen jacket, looking more like a louche rock star than the honorary-titled principal guest artist of the Royal Ballet. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;I am Carlos,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; he introduces himself politely, and enquires about his direction. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Just look fucking handsome,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; growls David Bailey, with his habitual talent for getting straight the point, without song or dance. But by the end of the shoot, the 37-year-old Cuban ballet boy has even charmed our irascible photographer (so much so that they pose for a portrait together); they are, after all, both â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;boys made goodâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;.

I am already well acquainted with the charisma of Carlos Acosta, which is no less formidable in close proximity than at a distance onstage. We meet at rehearsals at the Royal Opera House for his final Swan Lake performance. Dancing in grey tracksuit bottoms and a long-sleeve blue T-shirt streaked with sweat, his body is delicately muscular, elegant and poised: Michelangeloâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s David in www.harpersbazaar.co.uk

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he thrill of watching Carlos Acosta dance is a strangely physical experience: its effect on the body is something akin to the onset of fainting, deliciously falling, combined with an electrifying jolt (like the feeling you get from a shot of tequila). And so here I am, seated at the Royal Opera House at Acostaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s final performance of Swan Lake, the last of several rare star turns in the lead role that have captivated London. In the hands (and thighs) of Acosta, Prince Siegfried is dashingly handsome, testosterone-fuelled and, quite frankly, sexy. He bounds gazelle-like across the stage, drawing audible gasps from the stalls, to scoop up his snow-pale Odette (played tonight by Spanish ballerina Tamara Rojo), who, one feels, might melt under the heat of Acostaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s gaze. At the finale, downy swans shimmer in rows as the lovers glide past, united in death. After a prolonged

sportswear. The Royal Opera House conductor, pianist and rĂŠpĂŠtiteurs barely register my presence, but Acosta breaks out of an air-lacerating grand jetĂŠ to get me a chair.

It is such physicality and feats of athleticism, of course, that have made Acosta a cult figure on the world stage (though his striking bone structure and visceral heterosexuality have not been lost on the female fans of the ballet world). Since his arrival at the Royal Ballet in 1998 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; after dancing his way around the world from the age of 18 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Acostaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s adrenalin-fuelled performances and sex appeal have changed the face of the stuffy world of ballet, imbuing it with a new excitement and universal appeal, and winning himself the impassioned allegiance of both civilian and famous fans (including Jude Law and Natalie Portman). In ballet terms, Acostaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s appearance in the lead role is the equivalent of Prince or BeyoncĂŠ headlining. It is hardly surprising that tickets for just four performances of Romeo & Juliet at the O2 (in which he reunites with Tamara Rojo) are already like gold dust. Which other ballet dancer can sell out a stadium? Which other ballet dancer brings such sensuality to the art? â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Siiiâ&#x20AC;Ś la sabrosura, la rumba! â&#x20AC;&#x2122; Acosta exclaims (which roughly translates as â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Yesss, sauciness and good timesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;), doing a little hip swivel, when I speak to him after the rehearsal (I know he is coming before he arrives because of the appreciative ripple of female laughter that marks his passage through the Royal Opera House). But itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s not just the Herculean body and luscious corkscrew curls that are in Acostaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s favour; itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s also his quick repartee, earthiness and cheekiness, which are so characteristically Cuban (I can say this, because I am married to one of his fellow countryman). I ask him: â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Can you ever get bored of this incessant mention of your sexiness?â&#x20AC;&#x2122; â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;No!â&#x20AC;&#x2122; He flings his arms back and stretches his legs out at 90-degree angles. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;It is wonnnderful.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; Acosta knows that whatever stardust he has that sets him apart has been seen in few other male ballet dancers in history. You need less than the fingers of one hand to count those whoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve achieved true fame: Rudolf Nureyev, Vaslav Nijinsky, Mikhail Baryshnikov (who later played Carrie Bradshawâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Russian boyfriend Aleksandr Petrovsky in Sex and the City)â&#x20AC;Ś and Carlos Acosta.

All these men brought a self-transformation to their work, a powerful charisma and a story, he says. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Nureyev was something never seen before. The world was divided when he arrived, and he had defected. He had his own persona; he was a king with a rock â&#x20AC;&#x2122;nâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; roll style. He was androgynous, and men, women and little girls loved him. He was wonderful. Baryshnikov, too, brought something completely different. And I have something new.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; He pauses. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;The whole life I had behind me.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; Acosta is referring to his Billy Elliot-style propulsion from the backstreets of Havana onto the world stage.

Acosta owes his success to â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;a combination of factorsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;In the ballet world, I am exoticâ&#x20AC;Ś I am the only black guy at this level, and that includes the Bolshoi, the Paris Opera Ballet, in New York: everywhere. And I am a very good technician. My dance has the wow factor, I can do impossible feats, have a very strong body, and can change from one role to another. My dancing is not uni-dimensional, and Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve been able to surprise.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; He delivers his good points with an apparent lack of arrogance, just a simple Latin frankness. In turn, he brushes off his â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;the only straight lead in balletâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; tag: â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;That is such

a myth. Whether you are gay or straight, if you are not projecting a man falling in love with a woman, it is that you either donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have the skills or the interpretation. Look at Nureyev. Sure, later on he became more affected, but when he arrived? He was all man.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; Like Nureyev, Acosta has developed a cult following that comprises its own global luminaries, though he is bashful about his high-flying friends. He does admit, when pushed, that Law and Sienna Miller became acquainted after watching him from the wings.

(Clive Owen is also a new friend. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;He is a lovely guy,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; says Acosta.)

He has been a good friend of Black Swan star and Oscar winner Portman since she cast him as the main character in her directed segment of New York, I Love You, a 2009 short film anthology. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Sheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s very bright, and she took a very big chance engaging me in New York, I Love You,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; he says. Portmanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s piece was about an inter-racial relationship between two separated parents and their daughter. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;The producers thought she was crazy. On the first day of practice, I was in her apartment reading the script in this dead voice, and I could see these professional actors looking at me and thinking, â&#x20AC;&#x153;This guy is the main character?â&#x20AC;? I was nervous about translating to that medium, but she kept calm and she never pressured me, and little by little I gained confidence.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; He commiserated with Portman regularly during the filming of Black Swan, when she faced a gruelling routine to play the part of Nina, a ballerina disintegrating psychologically under the pressure of her lead role in Swan Lake. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Her profile of a classical ballerina was very credible,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; he enthuses. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Classical ballet requires a lot of physical strength, and I can imagine how difficult it must have been for her to learn, in only a few months, how to dance with pointe shoes. It was really hard work for me at the beginning too, but I wouldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have changed it for anything.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; He is sanguine about the twisted world portrayed in Darren Aronofskyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s hot-blooded ballet thriller. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Listen, apart from all the clichĂŠs that have nothing to do with our world â&#x20AC;&#x201C; I mean, he seems to have made up a lot of strange ballet vocabulary we donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t use, and no one would ever say, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Go home and touch yourself,â&#x20AC;? [as Vincent Cassellâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s character Thomas advises his repressed protĂŠgĂŠe] â&#x20AC;&#x201C; youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d get done for sexual harassment â&#x20AC;&#x201C; itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s not a bad movie.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; He laughs impishly. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;The ballet world has many dark sides, not everything is glittery and happy when the curtain goes down.â&#x20AC;&#x2122;

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Acosta has his own experiences of the hardships of ballet training.

The poverty-stricken 11th child of a Cuban truck driver, often underfed, seethed with resentment when his father forced him into ballet school, thinking it would teach his wayward â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Juniorâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; discipline, as well as getting him a free lunch. Acosta, who passed his time body-popping on Havanaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s street corners, dreamed instead of being a footballer. He was twice expelled during training, but his precocious talent meant he always found his way back in. Acostaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s once-feared father is 94, and the son now feels a great loyalty towards him. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;I go to him any week off I can get.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; He sighs, then reflects: â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;It is hard living a life apart [from your homeland].â&#x20AC;&#x2122; Since winning the Prix de Lausanne gold medal at 17, Acosta has been dancing internationally for two decades. As part of the English National Ballet, the National Ballet of Cuba, Houston Ballet and American Ballet Theatre, CONTINUED ON PAGE 179 www.harpersbazaar.co.uk

THIS PAGE AND PREVIOUS PAGE: STYLED BY CAMILLA POLE. SEE STOCKISTS FOR DETAILS. GROOMING BY NIKKI PALMER AT MANDY COAKLEY, USING DIOR S/S 11

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BARRIO BOY Carlos Acosta wears his own clothes. Previous page: black cotton vest, ÂŁ25, Calvin Klein Underwear

H A R P E R’ S B A Z A A R

| Month 2009

www.harpersbazaar.co.uk

MISCHIEF MAKER

Irreverent artist Grayson Perry has come a long way since his 2003 Turner Prize win, with a new, epic tapestry marking a departure from his trademark ceramics. And as his art evolves, so too does the style of his famous alter-ego Claire – who has become a vehicle for the creativity of fashion’s future talents. By SHERYL GARRATT. Portrait by DAVID STANDISH www.harpersbazaar.co.uk

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PORTRAIT STYLED BY CHLOE BEENEY. SEE STOCKISTS FOR DETAILS. HAIR AND MAKE-UP BY BERNIE LONG AT MANDY COAKLEY, USING KIEHL’S AND INGLOT. PHOTOGRAPH: THE WALTHAMSTOW TAPESTRY (DETAIL, 2009), © THE ARTIST, COURTESY OF THE VICTORIA MIRO GALLERY AND THE PARAGON PRESS

PHOTOGRAPH: XXXXXX

THE ONLY WAY IS UP Grayson Perry photographed at the Victoria Miro gallery. Black and white silk ‘cobweb’ dress, from the Giles archive. Silver Lurex dress (worn underneath, just seen on arms), from a selection, Vivienne Westwood Anglomania. Black veiled headdress, £630, Stephen Jones. Opposite: detail from ‘The Walthamstow Tapestry’

He has become a regular on the art-party circuit over the years, and is swamped with invitations daily. He could go out every night, he says, but he is more selective now. ‘If I get an envelope that’s silver and very stiff, I know it’s a party I won’t want to go to. It will be the launch of a shop, or some kind of promo, and it’ll say something like, “You’ll get a free BlackBerry if you come.” And I think, “I can afford a BlackBerry now, and I don’t want one, so why would I want to go to your party?” I tend to choose things where I’ll bump into people I like, where I won’t feel used. But I have a nice time, because I like dressing up. Any opportunity to put on the best frock.’

P

erry’s apparent overnight success actually came after years of struggle. He held his first show 25 years ago; since then, his work was always shown and always sold, but never matched the spectacular commercial success of that of his peers, like young British artists (YBAs) Damien Hirst or Jake and Dinos Chapman, his fellow 2003 Turner nominees. ‘I didn’t get on the trendy list,’ he says now with a certain pride. ‘My work didn’t square with the shouty shock tactics of the YBAs, maybe.

‘I didn’t make a living wage from my work until I was in my late thirties,’ he adds cheerfully. ‘I rose without trace, I always say.’

Born in Chelmsford in 1960, Perry had a pretty dismal childhood. When he was five, his mum left his dad for the milkman. His own dad drifted away and lost contact, and his stepfather was a violent, macho character who bullied and hit his wife. To cope, Perry escaped into a fantasy world populated by his Airfix models and presided over by his beloved teddy bear, the gloriously named Alan Measles.

By the age of 10, he was also secretly dressing up in his mum’s clothes and developing his transvestite alter-ego, Claire. ‘Any child in a difficult position will intuitively develop a strategy to normalise, and to survive their situation emotionally,’ he says.

‘That’s the brilliance of the human mind, really, that it fantasises and adapts. And dissociates.’

After graduating from Portsmouth Polytechnic with a BA in fine art in 1982, he moved to London and lived in squats, discovering pottery at an evening class. His blurring of the lines between craft and fine art confused the art world and perhaps made it slightly wary of him, and by his late twenties he was starting to consider a ‘plan B’ of moving into advertising. But then he met Philippa, at an evening class in creative writing. ‘We had to do a diary for a week, and we both laughed uproariously at each others’. So we went for a drink afterwards and generally bitched about the other people in the class – which has bound us together for the next 25 years!’

A former art student herself, Philippa believed in Perry’s work and supported him financially for the next decade. Later, when she trained as a psychotherapist, she encouraged her husband to try therapy, which helped him cope better with his anger, mood swings and bouts of depression. After six years of therapy, which helped heal the scars and ‘tidy up my mental toolshed’, he says, the traumas and rejections of his childhood seem a distant memory – although Alan Measles is still a big presence. Perry’s custom-made clothes are often decorated with teddies, and on the day we meet, his handbag is shaped like the bear’s head. ‘He crops up in a lot of the work, too. He’s powerful. He represents all of the traditional,

‘Any child in a difficult posıtion will intuitively develop a strategy to survive their situation emotionally. That’s the brilliance of the human mind, that it fantasises and adapts’

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PHOTOGRAPHS: EAMONN M CCABE/CAMERA PRESS, ALPHA. WE’VE FOUND THE BODY OF YOUR CHILD (GLAZED CERAMIC, 2000), THE SAATCHI GALLERY, LONDON; PHOTOGRAPH BY STEPHEN BRAYNE, COURTESY OF STEDELIJK MUSEUM, AMSTERDAM

G

rayson Perry is having a fashion moment. When I walk into London’s Victoria Miro gallery, he is up a ladder having his picture taken, wearing impossibly high platform heels and an elaborate cobweb-pattern dress with wiring that makes it appear to magically float in the air behind him. It was, he observes afterwards, as he strips down to tights and Calvin Klein Y-fronts, then slips into his own green gown, black velvet bolero and smaller heels for our interview, ‘all very Cecil Beaton!’

As we eat lunch together at the gallery and discuss his epic new work The Walthamstow Tapestry, for a moment I’m aware that there’s something surreal about talking art with a man dressed like a dowager aunt. But it’s a fleeting moment, and Perry sees the absurdity as clearly as anyone. Some transvestites take themselves very seriously, he says, but it’s hard to keep your dignity when you’re a man in a frock. You have to acknowledge that on some level, you look pretty comical. ‘I always overdress, for any situation,’ he says with a laugh.

‘Like sitting here in my floor-length evening dress in the middle of the day.’

The 49-year-old is very comfortable in his own skin, and has a loud, deep laugh and an honesty that makes him instantly likeable.

Since winning the Turner Prize in 2003 – and memorably attending the ceremony wearing white ankle socks and a flouncy pink baby-doll dress – he has become something of a national treasure. His wife Philippa and daughter Florence, now 17, accompanied him to the event, both beaming with pride; the media warmed to him and his family, and the comments book at the Tate showed him to be a popular winner with the public, too. His ceramic pots, including We’ve Found the Body of Your Child (2000) and I Was an Angry Working Class Man (2001), are decorated with sharp, sometimes shocking social commentary – and an equally sharp wit – but they are also beautiful, and easy to enjoy. ‘I even got good write-ups in The Sun,’ he says, still slightly bemused.

Six years on, Perry is not just an artist but a pundit and keen observer of contemporary British culture: he has written for the broadsheets, made TV documentaries and curated exhibitions, including ‘Unpopular Culture’, a selection of post-war British art from the Arts Council’s archives, which is currently touring the UK. Perry has also collaborated with the fashion world, though he is careful about which projects he chooses: he recently designed fabric for Liberty’s new Prints Charming collection; was a judge, along with Giles Deacon, for Texprint 2009, a competition for textiles designers; and tutors young British talent on the Central Saint Martins print BA course.

Perry clearly loves to dress up. At the shoot earlier – to which he arrives bleary-eyed and half-made-up, in a yellow and pink toy-pattern dress – he brings along a suitcase full of size 10 heels and Alice bands with exaggerated bows (in a rainbow of colour options), which he selects with almost religious reverence. At the Serpentine Summer Party this year, he stunned guests in a dress of his own design that bore what seemed to be a patchwork face of Jesus. (‘I really hate good taste,’ he says.)

positive male qualities: leadership, fatherhood and hard work.’

The bear has become a god-like figure, an object of veneration in Perry’s world – something he plans to take further in the special motorbike he’s having custom-built, with a glass shrine for his ragged toy on the back. ‘I’ll probably ride round Europe a bit on it – in a special outfit, of course. I’ve always been a great lover of motorcycles, so I’ve always wanted to do a work of art as a motorcycle. Alan has never been outside the house in 25 years, so when we get him into what I call his Popemobile, it will be kind of funny.’

One of the joys of success is finally having the budget to play with expensive ideas like this, to create work on a bigger scale than the ceramics that made his name. ‘I didn’t set out to become a potter,’ he says. ‘But it was cheap to make and it sold, which was a big thing when I started. Then I saw there was a lot of mischief to be had with it, that I could use it as a slightly outside viewpoint, from which to tease.’

But ceramics now counts for only about half of his output. He doesn’t want to get bored, he explains, or to spend all his time in his Walthamstow studio churning out the same signature ideas. ‘I’m nearly 50 now, and I do feel that I have to keep myself interested.’

So he has plans – big plans. At some point he’d like to build a temple: an ornate, secular place where people could get married, celebrate civil partnerships, hold their funerals and enjoy ‘all the pomp and glory’ without the baggage of religion, if they don’t want it. He has already designed the structure, but is not in a hurry to build it. ‘I think it would dominate my life for a long time.’

For now, there’s The Walthamstow Tapestry, an intricately detailed 15-metre-long, threemetre-high machine-woven epic showing the journey from birth to death in vignettes of ordinary life, inspired by the big housing estates that surround his studio. We see people travelling through their lives – shopping, eating takeaways, walking the dog – transported in a variety of vehicles, from a baby buggy and toy bike to a motorised wheelchair and hearse.

Plastic bags caught in trees, and cartons, bottles and disposable lighters litter the work, just as they litter the streets of our world. And all the while, familiar brand names float around them, literally woven into the fabric of their lives.

‘It’s about the meaninglessness of life,’ Perry says, ‘and all of the little emotional way-stations on the way that are the brands we encounter. When you take the brand away from its product and the logo, you just have the name left. And when you read it, all the emotional resonance of it comes up. What does Woolworths or Marmite or Lehman Brothers or whatever mean, when you say it? Of course, that may be different from what they would want you to think.’

If money has allowed him to spread his wings as an artist, Claire’s identity has also evolved. Like most transvestites, Perry started off wearing his mum’s clothes in secret, then moved on to charity-shop finds and high-street stores like Marks & Spencer and Principles, before finally shopping at higher-end stores such as Whistles, when he could afford it. About a decade ago, he says, he’d perfected his look to the point where he could walk down Oxford Street looking so much like a regular woman – even if he was a little on the tall side – that no one gave him a second glance. It was boring, he says, and the thrill had gone.

‘Then I bought this bridesmaid’s dress CONTINUED ON PAGE 288

‘At first I went through my little-girl phase. So I had all the frills and flounces and petticoats.

But now I like just experimenting with how embarrassing I can be’ FIRED UP From top: ‘We’ve Found the Body of Your Child’ (2000)

by Grayson Perry.

Perry at work in his studio. At a Tate Modern party in April this year, wearing a dress designed by Central Saint Martins student Lee Yaroshevski

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‘WRITING IN CHALK’

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 162

were moving in some extraordinary way of their own, twitching like a dying bird’s wings.

And then there was nothing, just the sensation of flapping, flickering limbs, until the darkness was speared by voices and there was sound and confusion and she opened her eyes and wished she hadn’t because there, looming vast and concerned in front of her, was Miss Harrison’s doughy face, the dark hair above her upper lip visible, her eyes bright with shock and in her own mouth was the unmistakeable metallic taste of blood where her teeth had crushed her betraying tongue.

‘We need to do some tests,’ the doctor said. He was old with white hair that sprouted above his eyes and out of his ears and on his chin, but curiously not on his head. Beryl clutching her bag, and already hot in her old stained mac, drew her hand across her mouth. A bluebottle buzzed at the window, there was a cup of cold coffee on the desk. The doctor was still writing; he would not have had any problem with Miss Harrison’s poem.

‘Does she suffer from headaches?’

‘No.’ ‘Vomiting?’

Beryl looked momentarily puzzled. The doctor waited then repeated the word, adding with the tail end of exasperation: ‘Is she ever sick?’

Beryl shook her head and, in so doing, dislodged a filmy trail of dandruff.

‘No.’ Her fingers fidgeted with the clasp of her bag, then withdrew a handkerchief. She blotted her nose clumsily.

Lesley wanted to go. They had waited a long time to get into this office and now the man with hairy eyebrows and ears was making lengthy notes and asking her mother slow questions.

There was a small bare silence into which Beryl inserted her voice bravely.

‘It’s not serious is it?’

‘Serious?’ The doctor looked as if Beryl had spoken in tongues. He removed his glasses and stared at her.

‘We think she might have fitted.’

Fitted? Lesley thought. Into what? What had she fitted into? She remembered a story told long ago, about someone called Alex going down a rabbit hole. Lesley had always wanted to be like Alex, sliding down into an unexpected place. Perhaps that’s what the doctor meant, that at last she had fitted into something unusual and wonderful.

‘Anyone in your family with a history of epilepsy?’

History. Lesley saw Vikings, curved boats and sails, men with ruffled shirts and earrings, women with long tight-bodiced gowns, witches and bonfires. But her mother was shaking her head, so she obviously did not fit in with any of them.

‘Nowadays we can control it with medication.’

A pause as his fingers, long and pale, slid like crab’s legs across the page.

Lesley watched the outlines they made and wished she could do that, so that she could copy the sea poem in minutes from the outlines made by Miss Harrison’s chalky hands, and she would be able to read it because the circles and lines and crossed and dotted letters would all be the right size and in the right places and that would make it easy to understand and she would read it and remember it and stand in front of the class and say it all, every little word, and she would see the surprise and shock on Stephen Howard and Stuart Philpott’s faces who would never again be able to taunt her and Miss Harrison would clap her chalky hands together and shout ‘Well done!’ And everyone would cheer and her tongue would never come out of her mouth again without her permission.

But right now, she and her mother were sitting in this room at the hospital at the end of a long brown corridor and the doctor was asking Beryl more questions and writing things down and then handing her a piece of paper and telling her to take it to the lady at the desk outside who would make an appointment for tests.

TESTS. Please don’t let this mean more writing and remembering and reciting.

Words and letters were following her like stealth bombers, waiting to ambush her at every turn. Lesley wanted to say to her mother: ‘I don’t have to write anything, do I?’ but Beryl was already taking the piece of paper in her stained and calloused fingers and was standing up, wiping her mouth with her hand, while the doctor was not looking at either of them anymore but was instead reaching for other papers that had nothing to do with them, but with people who were sitting outside in the hot waiting room and who would soon come in for their turn.

Beryl, however, who so clearly should now be moving towards the door, had not done so. Instead, she was rooted like some gigantic tree, her hands with the paper clutched in them, clasped in front of her. Lesley tugged on her arm.

Even she knew they were expected to go. She feared the moment when the doctor would raise his ancient face and discover they were still standing there.

But now, even worse, her mother was speaking in a voice Lesley had never heard before. Thickened and shaky, it was as if Beryl had something caught in her throat. Was she going to be sick? Lesley looked at her mother in horror.

‘It’s only that… I have to know…’

Here, Beryl coughed and spluttered and blotted her nose frantically.

‘Is she going to be… you know… all right? She is, isn’t she, only you didn’t say… I don’t understand… I have to know if it’s serious.’

The words were tumbling and falling like pebbles onto the doctor’s desk.

He had raised his head at last and was staring at Beryl in amazement.

And then: ‘She’s all I have, you see, her dad went years ago, it’s just the two of us and I couldn’t bear it if…’

The words faded away. It was like when Miss Harrison wiped chalky writing off the blackboard. Sometimes the outlines, ghostly and faint, stayed behind. The words ‘anything happened to her’ were like that, suspended and only half visible, hanging there in front of them all. Lesley gulped. Beryl raised a huge fist to dash away tears. The doctor stared.

And then he stood up and, leaning across the desk, grasped Beryl’s hand in his. The pale crab fingers curved tenderly around Beryl’s vast hand. For a few extraordinary seconds, they stood like that, the pair of them, as if someone had cast a spell and turned them to stone. Lesley, also bewitched, stood staring, amazed and unbelieving. No one had ever touched her mother like that.

‘She’s going to be fine,’ the doctor said and this time his voice had lost its jagged, splintery edges and had now become rounded and soft. Lesley, who it seemed, could not stop thinking about writing and letters, saw his voice as if it were formed of the gentle ones: o, a, e and u. The spike and clash that came from x and v, j and k had vanished.

And then finally movement: Beryl snatched her hand away, flushing a deep, distressed pink. The doctor sat down heavily and rearranged his glasses. At the window, the bluebottle continued to buzz. Lesley pulled at her mother’s hand. She knew they really had to go now but, looking up into her mother’s face, found something extraordinary there. Large and mottled, it was still flushed, her lazy eye (a carbon copy of Lesley’s) remained in place as did the snag tooth and the encrustation of toothpaste. Beyond all of this, however, beneath the familiar and the spurned, lay something else: a sweetness, a gentleness, a strength, things Lesley had never seen before.

Spilling and tumbling into the room, the tangle of emotions that had made Lesley curl up inside, like paper singed by a match, had their roots in her mother’s face. But now she looked and saw, beginning for the first time the slow sweet process of recognising them for what they were.

The Bazaar/Orange Short Story Competition searches for new, unpublished female writers each year. This year’s stories were all written on the subject of ‘Mother’.

Helen Barton’s entry was selected by a panel of judges chaired by Susan Sandon (managing director of Cornerstone, a division of Random House) and included Marina Lewycka (novelist), Lauren Laverne (broadcaster), Peter Strauss (managing director of literary agency Rogers, Coleridge & White), Kate Mosse (co-founder and honorary director of the Orange Prize) and senior editors from Harper’s Bazaar.

The judges praised Barton’s particular ability to tell a story authentically from a child’s point of view. Helen won £1,000 for her story, as well as a masterclass at Random House with her fellow finalists. Two more stories, by finalists Jenny Holden and Brooke Dunnell, can be read at www.harpersbazaar.co.uk. Look out for the entry details to next year’s short-story competition in the March issue.

‘MISCHIEF MAKER’

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 231

in an Oxfam shop, a little-girl-style dress in peppermint green-andwhite striped silk. I tried it on, and it took me right back to why I started dressing up. It made me realise that it wasn’t about wanting to pass as a woman; it was about me as a man putting on dresses. From then on, I had dresses made. At first I went through my little-girl phase, because that’s the kind of ultimate fantasy of femininity, I suppose. So I had all the frills and flounces and petticoats. But now I quite like just experimenting with how embarrassing I can be.’

As part of his five-week course for second-years on the Print BA at Central Saint Martins, Perry asks students to design a dress for him; he buys the ones he likes best. His brief gives fashion’s future talent a freedom to think outside the box, to create outrageous things they’d never normally make. ‘I tell the students that I like to have a slight moment of hesitation before I leave the house: “Is this just too much?” So if you want to make me a bolero with teddy-bear-shape breasts, let’s go for it.’

This year, one of Perry’s favourite outfits from the course was a challenging dress in leather and fishskin, with penis-shape frogging details, made by a student from the former Soviet Republic of Georgia. ‘It’s very heavy, structural, slightly sinister,’ he says with relish. ‘She hasn’t finished it yet, but hopefully I’ll have it soon.’

Having one-off pieces made gives you a different relationship with your wardrobe, he says. He’s never been a great follower of fashion: ‘It’s one of my nightmares, that I’ll become fashionable – because by definition, you then become unfashionable. I like clothes, I like style, and I like costume – folk costume, particularly. But the fashion business I find slightly repellent in its addiction to novelty for its own sake. I’ve had all of my clothes made for me, and I’d feel bad if I threw any of them out. It would be like a betrayal of a relationship.

‘For me, that’s the future: smaller fashion houses that can operate through the internet, with digital technology allowing them to customise a lot more easily,’ he continues. ‘If you’ve got a digital print system, for instance, you can design prints for each customer, and you can have that facility on-site, rather than needing a huge mill. I would love it if everybody on the street looked different, and all had their own fashion – however bonkers and misguided it was.’

Claire still has her own bedroom in the large, comfortable bookfilled house in Clerkenwell where the Perrys have lived for the past 25 years. It’s decorated in a chintzy country-house style, with a brass bedstead, patterned wallpaper and tie-backs on the curtains. But these days, it’s used more to put up Florence’s friends than for Perry’s dressing-up.

‘I used to have days that I would call “leisure tranny days”. The day would just be about enjoying putting on a dress, going down the shops, showing off, buying some shoes, experimenting with eyeshadows, and that would be me enjoying myself. I hardly ever do that now, because I’m so busy. It’s a shame.

‘Being a public figure has changed the nature of transvestitism for me. Now I’m Grayson Perry. Which means I get license to be daft. I can get away with anything,’ he says with a mischievous grin. ‘But it also means it’s less thrilling going out on the street. I’m not that anonymous weirdo anymore.’

‘The Walthamstow Tapestry’ is at the Victoria Miro gallery (020 7336 8109; www.victoria-miro.com) from 9 October to 7 November. ‘Grayson Perry’ by Jacky Klein (£35, Thames & Hudson), a fully illustrated monograph of the artist’s work to date, is published on 5 October. ‘Unpopular Culture’ is at the Longside Gallery in Wakefield until 25 October, and then at the Victoria Art Gallery in Bath from 7 November to 3 January 2010.

‘MY FLAIR LADY ’

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 235

Elsewhere, there was a portrait of Cowles by fashion illustrator René Gruau, drawings by Jean Cocteau and a painted screen by Vertès; one of the three figures on it is Cowles.

‘I used to go to dinner at the flat at the Albany, which was decorated in all these incredible ice-cream colours,’ says Nicky Haslam. In 1960, the Evening Standard reported on one of her famous Wednesday-night salons: ‘You’ll meet actors, musicians, statesmen, writers and artists. Fleur Cowles has the ability to get together some of the most interesting people in the world and make them sometimes gay, sometimes brilliant – but never dull.’

‘They were never too threatening, never too formal, nor too serious,’ says Brooke de Ocampo, who met Cowles while working on her book Bright Young Things. ‘Everything was always done with a sense of humour. She had such great youth and vibrancy.’

In the summer, Cowles would also open up the barn in her Sussex home, hire a grand piano and throw concerts. And she was masterful at grand gestures: for a birthday of the Queen Mother, she held a dinner and invited Pavarotti to sing ‘Happy Birthday’. ‘Everything was done with a seeming lack of effort,’ de Ocampo says.

When Cowles launched Flair in February 1950, it stunned the publishing world with a level of creativity and cultural content that had never been seen before – or after. Covering fashion, travel, art, decor and literature, it was a new form of magazine. There were pop-up pictures, see-through cover cut-outs, invisible heat-sensitive ink, scented pages, innovative inserted sections, accordion-fold, peek-a-boo flaps, five different printing techniques, different textures of paper, silk-like materials, fabric swatches, gold ink, removable art prints, and split pages on the fashion spreads, so the reader could mix and match each of the sweaters on the top half of the page with the skirts on the bottom half.

Flair’s manifesto: ‘The best things, the first things, uniting its readers in an aristocracy of taste.’ And it duly delivered. ‘No one was too inaccessible, too grand… if I wanted them…’ said Cowles.

The 12 issues included: Tennessee Williams’ first magazine piece; paintings by Winston Churchill; the first US publication of Edgar Degas’s 1887 doodles. There were contributions by Colette, Dalí, a then-unknown Lucian Freud, Simone de Beauvoir, George Bernard Shaw, Cocteau, WH Auden, Saul Steinberg, Tallulah Bankhead and Eleanor Roosevelt.

Cowles even persuaded the Duchess of Windsor to open up her Paris

home for a piece that included pictures of her candle-lit salon, with its Chinese cabinets and Chippendale mirrors from St James’s Palace. There was also a pull-out booklet of the Duchess’ entertaining tips.

Despite the coup, Cowles was not a great fan of her fellow American: ‘She was a tough-looking woman who told the Duke what to do. “Get me this, don’t do that, don’t tell that stupid story.” She smashed him down, but he was weak and didn’t mind. She never forgave him for giving up the throne and following her to Paris. She had hoped he’d stay in London and ask her to be Queen.’

If Cowles felt there was a subject that was worthy, it would become a mini book insert: fashion illustrations by Gruau, portraits by Steinberg, Cocteau’s ‘Letter to America’.

In April 1950, the Paris Issue boasted a pop-up spread of the Place Vendôme – a panorama scattered with little windows that opened up, adventcalendar-style, to show the goings-on behind the classical façades: tea at the Ritz garden, the Schiaparelli and Lucien Lelong interiors, Noël Coward’s flat.

Sadly, though Flair sold well, advertisers didn’t buy pages. Every copy, sold at 50 cents, cost $1.25 to produce. Cowles’ husband, the publisher Mike Cowles, pulled the plug after one year. Fleur had lost her husband’s company an estimated $2.5 million. ‘I cried,’ she said. ‘It was heartbreaking – I was so proud [of Flair].’

Cowles didn’t fret long; it was not her way. She picked herself up and transformed herself into an author. In 1951, she wrote Bloody Precedent, a scathing analysis of the Perón regime in Argentina. It was not the first time she had refashioned herself. She was notoriously secretive about her humble beginnings and age. Once, she said: ‘I was born in Montclair, and I’m not going to talk about my family. I’m not going to talk about my age, because I’ve lied about it all my life.’

She certainly had. She had reinvented herself from the very beginning. In fact, she was born Florence Freidman in New York on 20 January 1908 to Morris Freidman, a novelty salesman, and his wife, Lena. She often described her father as a Bostonian businessman. She bluffed her way into a job as a copywriter at the iconic American store Gimbels. A column for The New York World-Telegram followed in 1933, by which time her name was Fleur Fenton.

She went on to start her own advertising agency with her second husband, Atherton Pettingell. (She had already ditched her first – Bertram Klapper, a manufacturer of wooden shoe-heels.) But it was her next husband, Mike Cowles, who would pave the way for her transformation into a doyenne of the cognoscenti.

Mike Cowles oversaw a publishing empire that comprised four newspapers, four radio stations and two magazines including Look, a more tabloid version of Life. ‘I was ashamed of him because of Look,’ Fleur Cowles said later. ‘It was a sleazy barbershop sheet. The horror of it!’ Nonetheless, she flexed her editing muscles at the magazine, directing the women’s pages, transforming it into a vibrant and hugely profitable general-interest publication.

She also conducted most of the big interviews, gaining access to statesmen and opinion-makers around the world – face-to-faces with Gamal Abdel Nasser, Eva Perón, the Shah of Iran, Queen Frederika of Greece, Madame Chiang Kai-shek. But with the launch of Flair, she placed herself among their ranks. ‘It became a lifetime passport,’ she said. ‘After Flair was born, Fleur and Flair were inextricably and permanently intertwined, and we have never been untied – it still opens doors to writers, painters and designers.’

Needless to say, the Cowleses were a power couple in New York society.

‘Well, anyone who was anyone wanted to know people with three magazines, five newspapers, five TV stations and five radio stations,’ said Fleur.

Presidential advisor Bernard Baruch became her close friend and mentor, making introductions all the way to the White House. She helped persuade Eisenhower to run for president, and was rewarded by being asked to become his unofficial representative. She was on first-name terms with many world leaders and could approach them informally in a way diplomats couldn’t. In 1953, she was sent as an ambassador to the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. She wore a grey dress by Valentina – to match the stone of the Abbey. Time magazine quoted her as saying: ‘I dressed down so as to not detract from the Queen.’ Cowles was furious, threatened to sue, and extracted an apology.

By this time, the Cowleses’ marriage was disintegrating. Mike had a mistress. Fleur was adamant she wouldn’t tolerate his cheating or even a separation; she wanted a divorce. It came through in July 1955 and, much to everyone’s shock, including hers, just four months later she married Meyer – he was younger and probably richer than Mike Cowles. Cary Grant was best man. ‘Part of her charm is the extravagance of her luck, and the puzzlement of how she has gotten along in life,’ said friend Eleanor Lambert.

So began her new life in London. ‘I’ve known the power elite, but I don’t need that any more. What I need is friendship,’ she said after moving here.

She refashioned herself once again; became the confidante of kings, queens and presidents, actors, artists and authors – and probably the most

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omen have always been strong: this much we know. But now, in this time of crumbling financial systems and stumbling political leaders, female resilience is seen as nothing less than a lifeline. With unchecked machismo blamed as one root cause of the economic crisis, talk comes of a new female order rising from the wreckage.

Certainly, across all fields, remarkable women are visible and audible as never before â&#x20AC;&#x201C; and not operating as men-in-disguise, but according to their own no-less-fierce instincts and value systems. As Harriet Harman attempts to transform the culture of the Square Mile by opening more top jobs to women with her Equalities Bill, Sun editor Rebekah Brooks (nĂŠe Wade) is breaking through to boardroom level as she takes up the post of chief executive of News International. In Paris, the work of 200 female artists is filling the Centre Pompidou for the first time, in a groundbreaking all-women exhibition.

Many have already observed the positive influence of a woman in a manâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s world. James Rubin, who worked as Assistant Secretary of State in the Clinton administration alongside the first female Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, observed how she brought to the table â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;a willingness to avoid needless confrontation, a greater sense of teamworkâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;. He adds: â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Certainly, my wife [CNN www.harpersbazaar.co.uk

chief international correspondent Christiane Amanpour] would say I became a nicer person as a result of spending so much time with Madeleine.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; (And not only did she make Rubin nicer, she paved the way for successive Secretaries of State Condoleezza Rice and Hillary Clinton.)

If this nascent female order needs a physical symbol, it is the strong arms of Michelle Obama (a visual echo of the bicep-flexing munitions worker Rosie the Riveter, who appeared on a US World War II poster under the slogan â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;We Can Do It!â&#x20AC;&#x2122;).

Obamaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s toned limbs â&#x20AC;&#x201C; whether hoeing in the White House vegetable garden or looped supportively round her husbandâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s waist â&#x20AC;&#x201C; are as she is: simultaneously impressive and reassuring. She is a woman who has already turned her position as â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;somebodyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s wifeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; into a role that is far-reaching and potentially world-altering.

As a couple, the Obamasâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; obvious respect and admiration for one another is particularly eloquent. Time was, a formidable woman was a ball-breaker, and considered less than desirable.

But now, men (or those with mettle, at least) find a womanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s strengths, not her vulnerabilities, irresistible: strong is sexy.

Bazaar asked the partners of women we admire to explain their attraction. These men are hardly Dennises to their Maggies, even if they may surrender control of the TV remote. It is a thrill to see these women as they do: with a mixture of love and awe â&#x20AC;&#x201C; and possibly just a touch of infuriation. NAOMI WEST September 2009 |

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LOVE AND PRIDE Designer Nicole Farhi with her husband, playwright David Hare, photographed by Sofia Sanchez and Mauro Mongiello in London in July 2009

PHOTOGRAPH: XXXXXX

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â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;To this day, I still think Tinaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s most significant breakthrough had to be putting Annie Leibovitzâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s photograph of a pregnant Demi Moore on the cover of Vanity Fair. Having, really, the balls, I think, to put a naked, pregnant woman on the front of a magazine was a huge risk and a huge triumph. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;The most important thing about Tina as an editor is her bravery, allied to a skill and sensitivity and intelligence. You had to be very, very brave indeed to take over Vanity Fair, which was a failing magazine that had already been through two or three other editors; or to take over The New Yorker in 1992, where one editor called her â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Stalin in high heelsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;When she told me that she was going to introduce â&#x20AC;&#x201C; not just put her toe in the water, but go really big on â&#x20AC;&#x201C; photography, by bringing Richard Avedon onto The New Yorker staff, I applauded her, but I expected the roof to fall in. And of course it did. There was a lot of criticism about the changes she made, but if those things hadnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t been changed, that venerable magazine wouldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have survived. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;As an executive, sheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a total, brilliant closer. She has a remarkable capacity for focus. I canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t tell you how many meetings Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve felt like screaming in. But if Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d known I had a chairman like Tina, I would not have been so restless. Although even I am in terror when she runs a meeting, because if I relax or make some utterly irrelevant remark, Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll get cut down to size in a second. Sheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s very direct. She knows what she wants, and insists on making progress. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;In our marriage, sheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s incredibly supportive; sheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a constant refreshment as a wife. And one of the things that I find so remarkable 260 |

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CHRISTIANE WEARS WOOL TROUSERS, ÂŁ350, BURBERRY PRORSUM AT BROWNS. COTTON SHIRT, ÂŁ185, ARMANI COLLEZIONI. SATIN COURTS, ÂŁ595, CHRISTIAN LOUBOUTIN. SEE STOCKISTS FOR DETAILS. STYLED BY CARMEN BORGONOVO. HAIR AND MAKE-UP BY CLAIRE DE GRAFT AT MANDYCOAKLEY.CO.UK, USING TIGI HAIRCARE AND NARS

â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m reluctant to say anything about Nicole Farhi that isnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t obvious the moment you meet her. I can promise you, what you see on the surface runs down to the centre. Clearly, she has blinding taste, the best taste of anyone Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve ever met. But, far more important, because she herself is so deeply grounded in the love of her parents, her daughter and her family, she is able immediately to extend friendship and understanding to anyone not fortunate enough to enjoy the same security. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;The most telling thing about Nicole is that after eighteen years of living with her, I have never once known her to criticise anyone â&#x20AC;&#x201C; man or woman â&#x20AC;&#x201C; because of what they were wearing. You would think at some point Nicoleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s husband would have heard her let loose some remark about somebodyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s clothes. Never. Not once.

Nicole simply sees fashion differently â&#x20AC;&#x201C; as an opportunity for people to wear what they like, for the reasons they like and in the ways they like. Alan Jay Lerner said you should never judge someone by their attitude to money or the opposite sex. Nicole never judges anyone by their attitude to clothes. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;This generosity, the democratic ability to help other people be who they are, is at the heart of her singularity as a designer. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s also the reason why, along with perhaps only a few others in Britain, she has prospered and been so well loved for so long in a profession otherwise known for its cruelties and stunning reversals of fortune. Her roots run deep, back to France and then back to Turkey.

In the generation Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve spent with her, her clothes have deepened and grown lovelier. As has she.â&#x20AC;&#x2122;

James Rubin How do you feel when people call you a â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;strong womanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;?

Christiane Amanpour I think theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re right: I am a strong woman. If

I wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t, I couldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have done this job. It requires not just physical strength, but emotional and intellectual strength too.

JR Do you think being a woman has helped or hindered at CNN? CA Well, Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve always said that being a woman is just the same as being a man, but better. Thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s nothing we canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t do. Female journalists are now considered equal on the battlefield â&#x20AC;&#x201C; in front of the camera and behind the camera. The only place weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re severely under-represented is in the executive suite â&#x20AC;&#x201C; thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s the next frontier.

JR But even in the early days at CNN, didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t people ask you to do things they wouldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have asked a man to do?

CA Perhaps. I mean, when I first joined CNN as a news assistant on the foreign desk, my boss was a woman. Lest you think that should make her more sympathetic, it was exactly the opposite â&#x20AC;&#x201C; she was reluctant to accept I wanted to succeed as a foreign correspondent, and she tried to make me look stupid. I remember she poked fun at me to the president of the network, saying: â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Christiane thinks sheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s going to be a foreign correspondent.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; That upset me, but it toughened me up. My strength has come from having to be tough.

JR There is a sense in your coverage of Bosnia that you changed the world and forced politicians to take notice.

CA I do feel the Bosnia coverage is my most important work. I knew reporting would affect how it was seen and dealt with.

JR Was it one of your proudest moments?

CA Yes. I think all of us journalists there feel we helped effect change. We reported the truth and made it impossible for the world to allow the slaughter of innocent civilians without doing something to stop it.

JR When youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re in dangerous places, such as Sarajevo, how do you deal with fear?

CA Bosnia was the first place I experienced genuine fear. I remember within the first 10 days of being there, we decided to do a feature shoot at the zoo, which was on the front line. Weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d heard the animals were starving. It was me, my producer and my camerawoman. When we got there, we were bombarded. The men in the hills rained down mortars. I was very scared. I wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t married, I didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have kids, but my producer did.

I just said to him: â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m sorry, Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m sorry, Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m sorry.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; JR Youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re older now, and people tend to take fewer risks as they get older. Is it harder now to get on a plane to go to a war zone?

CA Well, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s harder, sitting here, to summon the desire to go. But the minute Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m on the plane, I get that old feeling. Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve just come back from Iran, Afghanistan and Gaza filming a documentary called Generation Islam about Muslim youth. There is so much that energises me when Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m in the field. I want to come home because itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s hard to be away from family â&#x20AC;&#x201C; especially my little boy Darius â&#x20AC;&#x201C; but I still love it in the field.

JR When we were first going out in 1997, I remember being woken up in the middle of the night to be told youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d been kidnapped by the Taliban, which turned out to be more of an arrest. When you were in that situation with a potential partner for the first time, did it occur to you that, in addition to your family, you had other people to think about?

CA Yes. Maybe not right then, because I couldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t make a phone call or anything. But it occurs to me more now. Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m much more careful.

JR More likely to wear your bulletproof vest?

CA Yes, more likely to wear the vest. I still hate the helmetâ&#x20AC;Ś JR You hate it because itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s bad for your hair!

CA Oh itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s bad for everything. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s bad for your hair, but itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s also

bad for your mental state. You feel hunkered down. You canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t run.

JR (disapprovingly) Yeah, Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m used to you not wearing it.

CA My parents and my husband have never told me what to do,

which is pretty lucky.

JR Life changed when we got married, and particularly when we

had Darius. You have a very demanding husbandâ&#x20AC;Ś CA (smiling) Thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s true.

JR â&#x20AC;Śand a child who is naturally demanding. How do you balance all that?

CA Balance is difficult. And I genuinely believe itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s harder for women.

JR Why? CA I think we are expected to do much more, to run the family, household and job. Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve been lucky in that I have such a wonderful husband. Youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve not travelled when Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve travelled, which has been fortunate for Darius â&#x20AC;&#x201C; and for my peace of mind.

JR Youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve reached the top of your profession, and people say you have unique drive. John Simpson said you had the style of a boarding-school head girl.

CA Well, John should know.

JR By â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;head girlâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;, I guess he means bossy.

CA Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll give you that. I am a bit bossy. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s possible that women are bossy and men are driven. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s just perspective.

JR Where does your drive come from?

CA I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t know. I just knew I wanted to be in the middle of world events, and that I wanted to cover them. That came from fleeing the revolution in Iran. [Amanpourâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s family left Iran in 1980.]

JR Which strong women do you admire?

CA Barbara Walters [US TV journalist].

Sheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a major survivor. When she was eased out of her prime-time slot at ABC News, she created this powerhouse daytime show called The View. Also [ journalist and editor] Tina Brown, who continues to reinvent herself; and women like Aung Sang Suu Kyi, Sonia Gandhi, Margaret Thatcher and my mother.

But I have a question for you. You live with a strong woman and have worked with strong women like Madeleine Albright.

It takes a lot to do that, doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t it, my sweet?

JR Well, the basic issue is whether you like women, and like them as more than just something to look at. Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve been lucky in that I worked for someone I liked in Madeleine Albright. You and I have been married for 11 years. We both have huge demands on our time. How would you say we make it work?

CA Well, Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve always been very organised. Maybe itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s part of being the eldest of four girls, maybe going to boarding school and gaining that discipline at a young age. I also have a lot of stamina.

Maybe Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve taken on too much. I should let my husband do more.

He might like that. What do you think?

JR [wryly] The advantage of asking the questions is I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have to answer them. Do you think youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll succeed in getting your husband to do more?

CA I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t know. Husband, will I succeed?

JR Depends on what you ask. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Amanpourâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;, a daily interview show, will air on CNN from mid-September. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Generation Islamâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; will be shown on CNN International on 14 August.

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AMERICAN EXPRESS Foreign correspondent Christiane Amanpour with her husband, ex-diplomat and journalist James Rubin, photographed by Philip Sinden in Holland Park in July 2009

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CATHERINE BAILEY WEARS DRESS, ÂŁ1,245, ALAĂ?A. PEARL EARRINGS; PEARL RING, BOTH FROM A SELECTION. BELMACZ. SEE STOCKISTS FOR DETAILS. PHOTOGRAPH: XXXXXX STYLED

BY CARMEN BORGONOVO. HAIR BY TYLER JOHNSTON AT CLM, USING BUMBLE AND BUMBLE. MAKE-UP BY GEORGINA GRAHAM AT CLM, USING MAC

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1.C61 /.692F ]U\a\T_N]UR_ $ \[ Z\QRY 0.A52?6;2 /.692F !# â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Catherine is like a Hitchcock woman, except that sheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s not blonde.

Anyway, brunettes are more mysterious, with those dark eyes and hair. The first time I saw Catherine, she walked into the studio and I thought, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Shit, thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s something special about this one.â&#x20AC;? She was all elegance. Weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve been together 28 years now. I just love being with her. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s the feeling that someone is totally on your side. And the fact that sheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a strong woman makes it even better. Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d rather have a strong woman on my side than a weak woman. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Catherine has a sexual aura, but itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s not blatant. When she did the Agent Provocateur shoot in 2007 (she played the Lady of the Manor, wielding a whip over two naughty French maids), I thought she was a slag for doing it; all those men getting off on her. But it was great. The casting was perfect. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;I think Catherine likes being with a bad boy; thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s why she fell in love with me. Sheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s never tried to change me. If Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d been a good boy, I wouldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t be with her. When I did my book of portraits of her, The Lady Is a Tramp, it was a kind of compliment, because [it showed that] sheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s completely unpretentious. If you look at Cole Porterâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s lyrics, they say it all.â&#x20AC;&#x2122;

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MODEL COUPLE Catherine Bailey with her husband David Bailey, photographed by Sofia Sanchez and Mauro Mongiello in Davidâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s studio in July 2009 www.harpersbazaar.co.uk

â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s an enormous amount of passion behind what Shami does.

When Geoff Hoon, the former labour minister, recently accused her of being â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;emotionalâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; on Newsnight â&#x20AC;&#x201C; which I always think is a strange accusation â&#x20AC;&#x201C; she really laid into him, saying, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Yes, too right, I am emotional about torture!â&#x20AC;? And thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Shami completely. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;When I met Shami in the early Nineties, I was a pupil barrister and she was pulling pints behind the bar. She was incredibly feisty, with wonderful, big brown eyes. She had this great working relationship with this hulking East End barman, and yet she was able to relate to all the judges and QCs who came there too.

She treated them all equally. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Just before Shami joined Liberty [of which she is director] six years ago, I remember complaining how there wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t a significant voice on civil liberties in our country. You can see in the way that ID cards are being debated today how that has all changed. The repeal of the 42-day detention rule is probably her greatest single triumph, but that signifies a wider achievement in the way that she â&#x20AC;&#x201C; and her team at Liberty â&#x20AC;&#x201C; have really changed the political agenda, putting civil liberties on the map. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Shami is courageous about her views, and at the same time sheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s got this ability to find common ground with people â&#x20AC;&#x201C; even if you donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t agree with her, you can see the reason in what sheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s saying.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; September 2009 |

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about her as a mother is her determination to spend time with our children; despite her hectic schedule, she gives them attention and love. There are probably still one or two people who resent Tinaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s success. She bears this with remarkable fortitude, but when her magazine Talk folded in 2002, she went through purgatory, so in a curious way she is now accepted â&#x20AC;&#x201C; not only accepted, but popular, as somebody who has paid her dues. Sheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s gone through the New York cycle of acceptance and rejection, resurrection and celebration, and sheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s in the latter stage now.â&#x20AC;&#x2122;

.;1?2.@ 8?<;A5.92? SN`UV\[ QR`VT[R_ ! \[ SN`UV\[ QR`VT[R_ C6C62;;2 D2@AD<<1 #% ‘When I first saw Vivienne, I was absolutely flabbergasted by the way she looked. She came to teach my fashion class at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts wearing rocking-horse shoes (her famous wooden platforms) and an argyle all-in-one catsuit – charcoal with beige, very traditional Scottish – with a plait around her head and a little clutch bag made out of wooden beads. I loved it. But the most thrilling thing, I think, was when she started to talk: I had this outof-body experience, you know, when somebody is putting into words all the things that you think yourself in your time alone.

‘I was 25 and she was 50. But I never had to seduce my teacher – maybe she seduced me. We got together over a long period of time; we would go to dinners or to visit a museum; then at one point she asked me if I would come to London to work with her on a collection, and I said, “Yes, of course I’ll come,” and I never went back. That was 17 years ago. Now we’re married and we still live and work together, and when that works, it’s the ultimate place. It can also be very stressful, and very hard work doing four collections every year, at least twice yearly. I get really uptight about things, but Vivienne is so cool. She doesn’t fucking care about anything. I love order, and she loves chaos; she is still the Queen of Anarchy. But whatever friction we sometimes have, it all means nothing, because when you look at it, our relationship is beautiful. I love living with her. I suppose she wears the trousers in the relationship, and I wear the skirts.

‘I think what is most phenomenal for me about Vivienne is the energy she still has, both physically and mentally. I am a strong, fit man, but Vivienne always keeps up with me in everything: at work and when we cycle to the studio together every day. She’s got more energy than most 20-year-olds. I live off that energy. She’s like a fountain to me. She keeps me going.

‘Vivienne is one of those people who really wants to change the world, and sometimes that’s quite hard to live with, and I think at times it can be painful for her, too. She really does deeply care about climate change and where the world is heading. But I am most proud of her when she is experimenting, draping fabric around a dummy; she shows me and I always think it’s genius. Of course, she has been very influential in fashion and has given a choice to people, another way of wearing clothes and seeing life.

‘Wherever I go with Vivienne, whoever we’re with, I always fancy her the most out of everyone. Always. We were recently at a party in New York – all these New York women were there – and Vivienne just smiled and I thought, “Nobody is like her. No one is anywhere near.” Maybe it’s partly because she’s English – they’re a bit crazy, these English girls. And she’s a Northern girl – they seem to have a certain drive and energy to them. Vivienne’s on another planet and I’m on another planet, and I’d rather be with her than all of them.’

A.F9<? 5.083<?1 QV_RPa\_ #! \[ NPa\_ 5292; :6??2; #!

‘The thing that turns me on – as a man and as an artist – is talent. The fact that Helen is a great actress was an important part of my attraction to her. That she’s a very sexy woman wasn’t lost on me either.

‘Our first proper encounter was not exactly what you would call positive. I had seen her before in an experimental performance in California (with Peter Brook’s theatre company); three or four years 264 |

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later, I called her in for a casting for White Nights with Mikhail Baryshnikov [released in 1985]. We were running late, and were out getting a sandwich when she arrived. When we got back, she was piping mad. She said, “Are we going to read, or not?” She read beautifully, of course, and got the part; though she certainly wasn’t courteous.

‘Last year we worked together again, on my film Love Ranch.

When she first arrived on-set, she had just caught the flu. It’s hard when you’re sleeping with someone every night who is hacking and coughing, then you have to ask them to get up and work the next day in sub-freezing temperatures; but she was incredible. My wife is always the leader on-set (not just in my films); to have the star of your film standing there like a rock, delivering in the most brilliant way, is such a gift.

‘In her work, Helen’s strength is her fearlessness. She is not a neurotic actress. She can always surprise me. Taking on the role of the Queen in Stephen Frears’ film was an incredibly difficult decision for her. I hadn’t visited her on-set, and hadn’t seen her in the role until the premiere at the Venice Film Festival. The first image on the screen was the Queen sitting for a portrait, and she’s dressed in all her queenly drag. I was truly surprised and shocked. I just broke out laughing – and I have a very large laugh. She was saying, “Shhh! Stop it!” Then when I finally settled into the film, she leaned over to me and said, “Darling, will you ever sleep with me again?”’

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‘My first impression of Mariella was that she was really fast uphill.

I met her up a mountain in Nepal on a Himalayas charity trek, eight years ago. It was a bit of competition, because I had to keep up. We didn’t get together immediately; in fact, we argued. I think she told me to be quiet, because I was up late drinking whisky and she wanted to sleep. Nothing’s really changed.

‘It would be fair to say that Mariella’s quite bossy. She’s a tough cookie, and she rarely agrees with me. She wears the trousers, definitely, but she’s also very caring, loving and often confusingly soft.

‘Mariella has been in TV for nearly 20 years. It can be a tough, sexist business, but that makes me all the more proud that she does it so well. Nothing she does is half-baked; for Open Book on Radio 4 and The Book Show on Sky Arts 1, she reads two novels a week.

She reads every last one as if her life depended on it, staying up all bloody night. Now she keeps me awake.’

D6996.: @6245.?A d_VaR_ !& \[ Q\PbZR[aN_f »YZ ZNXR_ :<99F 16;22; " ‘I always have flurries of pride about Molly’s documentaries. It’s wonderful to see the huge impact they’ve had, and the way they’ve made people think about subjects they normally wouldn’t be interested in: crumbling British institutions, whether they be the London zoo, the Tube, the army, the House of Lords, or the countryside.

They are all tales of how Britain is changing, and what is being lost.

‘When Molly is making a film, she is constantly obsessing.

She lives and breathes that world for years at a time, and I usually live and breathe it with her, too. We started dating when she was editing In the Company of Men [1995], for which she lived in an army barracks in Northern Ireland for a year. She would turn up to see me at 11 o’clock at night, after the edit. My main www.harpersbazaar.co.uk

responsibility was just to feed her, because otherwise she’d forget.

‘We’ve got three children now. Because of her extraordinary energy and commitment to everything, she is a wonderful mother, and she fills our kids’ lives with fun and intrigue. She’s always managed to carry on working, and film until quite late into her pregnancies. And when she was making her film about Tony Blair, she had to shoot between certain hours because she was breastfeeding our eldest, Maude, who is now 12, at the same time.

‘It’s fascinating – and sometimes frustrating – walking down the street with Molly, because you might be planning to go from A to B, or A to Z, but you might have to go through the entire alphabet on the way. She’s so universally curious that any dark corner, tunnel, cave or interesting alleyway will attract her attention. Molly’s complex routes have led me into all kinds of intriguing encounters that I might never have had without her.’

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‘In my relationship with Gillian, I’m cleaning and maintenance, and she makes all the decisions. She’s also in control of the TV remote. I don’t know how it became like that, but it happened quite early on in the relationship.

‘When she moved in with me in 1997, she was working on 10–16, a piece in which she filmed adults and dubbed them with children’s voices. I’d worry all the time about her going around to strangers’ houses to record them, but there’s no fuss with Gillian; she just gets on with it. When she did Drunk – a video of four drunks in a studio – she was always chatting with street drinkers and alcoholics; she is completely fearless in that way.

‘Despite Gillian’s steely determination, the lead-up to the Turner Prize, that year, was awful. She just wouldn’t speak. To lighten things up, we made a piece of work together, Hand Jobs. It was a Punch and Judy puppet show, except she was a mute wig (her hair doesn’t move), and I’m a talking bin (my flat was always spotless before; when she moved in, it turned into a newspaper heap). Gillian and I share a puerile sense of humour.

‘She’s always been very supportive, and paid the bills for a couple of years when the galleries couldn’t make sense of me financially.

After I did my performance piece, Break Down, in 2001, in which I catalogued and destroyed all my possessions, Gillian bought me a new Saab, even though I destroyed some of her things by mistake.’

?605.?1 ?<42?@ N_PUVaRPa $# \[ PURS N[Q _R`aNb_NaRb_ ?BA5 ?<42?@ # ‘I’m just as in love with Ruth now as I was when we first met 37 years ago. Between our early morning walks in Hyde Park and our games of singing Scrabble – her invention (she’s terrific, while I can’t sing a single note) – she finds ceaseless ways to surprise me.

‘Ruth wasn’t a chef when I met her; she was a student. We ended up moving to Paris, and she learnt the art of cooking there.

When she opened the River Cafe, it wasn’t exactly easy – it took Ruth and business partner Rose Gray seven years to turn a profit, and then the restaurant burnt down and reopened in the middle of the financial downturn. We were both worried, but her enthusiasm never flagged.

‘It’s very unusual to have two women owners and principal chefs, and it really creates a sense of community in the restaurant. I’ve www.harpersbazaar.co.uk

always loved strong women. She’s a remarkable leader (though you never know you’re being led), and she’s great at delegation – she’s always getting me to do things without me realising it.’

@0<AA 1<B49.@ ]U\a\T_N]UR_ ! \[ N_aV`a A?.02F 2:6; !# ‘“Aren’t you scared?” people used to say to me, when I first went out with Tracey four years ago. And I’d say, “Not at all. Quite the opposite.” The perception of Tracey Emin that most people have is not the Tracey I know. She’s very loving, exceptionally loyal and honest; she’s always doing the sweetest things, like spending three months tracking down an old friend of mine so I would have someone to hang out with at her retrospective in Bern this year. (In the end, she flew out my old fiancée.) Tracey is someone who, when she’s stressed, doesn’t hold it in. She deals with it immediately, but the explosions don’t happen so much anymore; and she’s big enough to say sorry. She has mellowed a lot. Thank God. ‘There are very few people in the public eye who stand up on their own two feet and take as much flak as she does. There’s a perception that she must have a PR, but she’s definitely not managed. What you get is all her. As an artist she’s very true to herself. If someone says, “I’d like another blanket, like the one at the Tate,” she absolutely won’t do it. Art, for her, has very much been her saviour.

‘She’s my best friend. She’s an all-round brilliant woman.

When people meet her, they go away and say, “She’s lovely,” and I say, “Yes, she is!”’

<9 =.?82? d_VaR_ QV_RPa\_ ! \[ NPa\_ A5.;162 ;2DA<; # ‘Perhaps the greatest contradiction about Thandie is between her size and her strength. She may be tiny, but damn, she’s powerful.

I don’t just mean that she can beat me in an arm wrestle, although tragically she can. I mean that such is the force of her presence and personality that sometimes, when she walks into the room, I’m almost convinced I can see reality rearrange itself so that she forms its centre.

‘Thandie’s beauty, so fascinating to so many others, is, for her, the least interesting thing about herself. After 15 years, it is still hypnotic to me, but over time it has come to represent something more than genetic accident. For me, her beauty is a physiognomic affirmation of so many other qualities: her wisdom, her generosity, her compassion, her capacity for forgiveness, her potty-mouth, her strength… Having said that, at times I wish she wasn’t so gorgeous. My friends merrily send me links to websites after we’ve been to some party, and there’s red-faced me, sartorially inelegant and perpetually between expressions, while at my side my wife glows; the comments underneath all boil down to this: they think she could do better. These, and any other issues arising from marriage to a good and successful actress – the macroneurotic diet, the perpetual bleeping of the CrackBerry – are, I’m very well aware, high-class problems.

‘George Orwell said that by 50, we get the face we deserve.

Thands is years away from that milestone, but, my God, I want to be around when she gets there. If we think she’s beautiful now…’

For more men on strong women, visit www.harpersbazaar.co.uk.

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Julianne Moore’s desire to tackle the most demanding roles has given her an acting CV of wildly diverse characters; at 49, she has yet to be typecast. With a typically potent performance about to hit cinemas, she chats to GLENN O’BRIEN about working with Tom Ford, and why she’ll always choose the complex and extreme over a Hollywood happy ending Photographs by PAOLA KUDACKI. Styled by SOPHIA NEOPHITOU-APOSTOLOU

PHOTOGRAPH: XXXXXX

ALWAYS WANTING MOORE

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ulianne Moore’s redheadedness is what draws my attention every time I see her around Manhattan – and one does see her around Manhattan, especially downtown.

I’ve seen her at art-world events and on the street. I saw her once at the Apple Store. I don’t notice her because she looks like a famous movie star; I notice her because she’s the beautiful redhead, kids in tow, acting normal… and because I notice red hair – I can’t help it.

When we meet for brunch at one of her favourite bistros, Cafe Cluny in the West Village, the first thing that draws my attention is, again, her red hair. It is long and natural and baroquely sculptural. The second thing is that she doesn’t look anywhere near 49, though neither artifice nor intervention appears to be responsible for her youthful appearance. She’s slim and has beautiful bones, and though only 5’3”, she seems pretty tall when you’re sitting down and she’s standing up. So you stand up. She’s tall on film. And she’s so beautiful, you don’t even notice what she’s wearing.

‘The camera loves her,’ declares Tom Ford, who cast her opposite Colin Firth in his forthcoming (and remarkable) directorial debut A Single Man, based on the 1964 novel by Christopher Isherwood. Moore plays Charlotte (or Charley), a fantastic Englishwoman and fortysomething widow stranded in Los Angeles in 1962 who is also the best friend – and former lover – of George (Firth), a reconfirmed bachelor grieving for his male lover of 16 years who has recently died in an accident. It’s such a perfect character – an ageing beauty struggling to retain her verve and gaiety with the bleak prospects of being single and 50 just as the Sixties are about to swing. Moore is extraordinary.

‘She absolutely inhabited the character,’ says Ford, who first met Moore fitting her for the 1998 Academy Awards. Moore remembers the meeting with great fondness. ‘I went to a fitting at the Beverly Hills Hotel, and I brought my son Cal, who was a few months old,’ she says. ‘Tom is utterly charming and so handsome. I was completely swept off my feet. He was so sweet to my baby and me. And I wasn’t feeling all that attractive – I’d just had a child and my boobs were all big… anyway, he made a dress for me, which I subsequently did not wear because it felt too revealing at the time, but he was really great about it and told me not to worry.’ (Ford later dressed her for the 2003 Academy Awards in ‘this great green dress’ of silk

georgette and ruffles that secured her status as his flame-haired muse while at Yves Saint Laurent.) After Ford retired from womenswear in 2004 with talk of making movies, Moore ran into him at the Metropolitan Museum Costume Institute Gala with his partner Richard Buckley. Moore recalls asking: ‘“What’s going on with your movie?” They both lit up, and Tom said, “Funny you should ask.”’ Funny because Ford had written the part of Charley with Moore in mind. Ford sent her the script, and Moore said yes right away: ‘I loved the character and what Tom had to say about it.’

In conceiving the film, Ford was incredibly specific about what he wanted, particularly about Charley’s look. ‘She’s based on Tom’s grandmother,’ Moore reveals. ‘In the book, she’s kind of butchlooking. A drab haircut and hairy legs. Tom was insistent that my character be a blonde – that was a wig – and he had a whole thing with that elaborate eye make-up. Tom’s grandmother, whom he idolised, was very glamorous, and my character is someone who would spend all day doing her make-up. The dress I wore was from a vintage shop in Santa Fe [New Mexico], which is where his grandmother was from. I loved that the character is a sort of loving homage to someone he really cared about. It’s nice to have that amount of care and detail lavished on a character.

‘What I also love,’ she goes on, ‘is the warmth of the relationship between Charley and George; the longevity and love and dependability there. Tom loves women. He wants you to look as beautiful as possible and be as desirable as possible. And George is a character who’s like Tom, who can appreciate a woman, her beauty and her desirability, although he might not want it romantically.

I liked that complexity.’

Firth, who admits to having wanted to work with Moore for years, remarks of her methods that ‘in acting, if you are relaxed and the person opposite you is completely convincing, you get a lot of your performance for nothing’. He adds: ‘It was a bit hard to stay gay when she tried to kiss me, though.’ Off-camera, the pair quickly hit it off. Firth recalls: ‘Julianne and I had three intensive night-shoots together in the middle of – for me – a five-week shoot. They were the highlight. We didn’t manage to shut up for a minute. To be honest, the actual business of doing a take was a bit of an interruption.’

‘What a great guy,’ Moore raves, when I ask her about her very English co-star. ‘Colin is so charming and easy and funny and engaging, and incredibly self-deprecating and normal and terrific.

And he looks amazing. So dashing.’

Ford remembers that ‘she would be talking away with Colin until we called “action”, and just immediately go into her British accent and become Charley. She did it so smoothly that it seemed effortless. When I looked at her through the lens, it was startling: she was actually luminous, and I instantly understood what star quality really was’.

Colin Firth remarks of Moore’s methods that ‘in acting, if you are relaxed and the person opposite you is completely convincing, you get a lot of your performance for nothıng. It was a bit hard to stay gay when she tried to kıss me, though’

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SIREN CALL: RAMP UP THE GLAMOUR OF SLEEK DRESSING WITH SEXY AVANT-GARDE CUTS This page: silk and tulle jacket, £776, Antonio Berardi.

Previous pages: black crepe gown with harness detail, £2,720, Gucci.

White gold and diamond earrings (throughout), from £2,350, Shaun Leane.

Ring (throughout), her own

‘When I looked at her through the lens, it was startling: she was actually luminous, and I instantly understood what star quality really was’

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PHOTOGRAPH: XXXXXX

DOUBLE TAKE: A SHOCK OF RED HAIR AND A DASH OF ATTITUDE CARRY OFF YVES SAINT LAURENT’S HAUTE-CHIC NUMBER WITH APLOMB This page and opposite: crepe bustier, £635; matching skirt, £875, both Yves Saint Laurent. Silver charm necklace (throughout), £390, Shaun Leane www.harpersbazaar.co.uk

PHOTOGRAPH: XXXXXX

TOM FORD

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Star quality, certainly, but Moore is also a genuine actor. She’s not herself in every film. Firth identifies her great talent for being ‘frivolous, tragic, silly, sexy, mysterious or approachable with equal commitment’. She is no blank canvas, but she could be described as the sort French playwright and director Antonin Artaud was referring to when he said that ‘an actor is an athlete of the heart’.

During her 20-year film career, Moore has played a coke-snorting porn star (Amber Waves in Boogie Nights), a fragile omniphobic (Carol White in Safe) and a super-brazen artiste (Maude in The Big Lebowski ); she’s escaped dinosaurs, aliens, Pablo Picasso, Hannibal Lecter and Norman Bates. She has been involved in many failing marriages and numerous promising affairs, and been murdered by her son, all the while resisting typecasting – except that she’s (almost) always a redhead, often with freckles. (Interestingly, she went blonde as Charley and also, by her own insistence, to play Cathy Whitaker in Todd Haynes’ Far From Heaven. ‘The iconic American heroine was a blonde,’ she said at the time, ‘and I wanted the audience to reference that Lana Turner blonde.’)

Of course, A Single Man’s Charley is just the latest of several Englishwomen Moore has played for stage and screen, most memorably the scheming Mrs Cheveley in An Ideal Husband and the adulterous Sarah Miles in The End of the Affair. Before I leave to meet her, my wife asks me what I might ask her. ‘Maybe why she plays these Englishwomen,’ I say. ‘Well that’s a dumb question,’ my wife replies. ‘It’s because she has red hair.’ ‘Shouldn’t that mean she plays a lot of Irish and Scots?’ ‘No,’ says my wife, ‘there aren’t any good Irish or Scots parts.’ Moore laughs. ‘Your wife is probably right. I do think red hair has something to do with it.’

Moore is actually of Scottish, not English, descent. ‘My mother is from Scotland,’ she tells me. ‘She came to the United States when she was 10, and went to high school in New Jersey with my father, who is an American. I think I look very much like my mother. I just lost her six months ago. It was a pretty painful thing.

She was only 68, and it was very unexpected.

It was shocking. I thought I’d be 68 when she died, not that she would be 68. It’s been dreadful. She died of septic shock. She hadn’t been in the hospital or anything; she just felt sick and thought she had a sinus infection, so she stayed at home in bed and she was feeling better and went back to work and collapsed. She went to the hospital, they stabilised her and the next morning she died of an embolism. I can only talk about it like it was an accident, like a car accident or a building falling on someone. It was terrible… but I think that’s where my “UK” comes from.’

Talking about her mother, she tears up slightly. Nothing rolls down her cheek, but I see the moisture in her eyes and I feel a little guilty; a little intrusive. But she moves on. Maybe that’s one of the things that make a great actor – a heightened sensitivity and emotions close to the surface, but a trouper mentality.

Ford calls her ‘fearless’ as an actor. David Hare, who wrote the screenplay for The Hours, points to her unique ‘emotional expressiveness’. He says: ‘She likes parts that are demanding or extreme; women who are in terrible trouble. That’s what drew her to The Hours. She plays a woman who leaves her family and walks out when her son is very young. In Hollywood, that is

not sympathetic, not something actresses are queuing up to play.’

That willingness to tackle challenging, even dangerous, roles informs another upcoming part, in Canadian director Atom Egoyan’s Chloe, out in March. It’s a movie about middle-aged marriage. Moore explains: ‘My character thinks her husband [Liam Neeson] is having affairs, so she hires a young prostitute [Amanda Seyfried] to set him up. It’s her way of finding out what her husband is doing and what he wants, and she keeps pushing the girl further and further and the girl keeps reporting back to her. It’s really about what happens in a long-term relationship, the distance that happens in a long-term relationship. So many movies are, “Hey, I want to get married. I want to get married! Hey, look, I got married!” When in fact, for most of us, you get married and it’s a really long and complicated period in your life. Leading up to it becomes incidental after a while, but that’s the part that is consistently dramatised.’

I

n real life, Moore’s marriage, her second, is an undramatic, relatively unpublicised and by all accounts successful union with writer-director Bart Freundlich, who is 10 years her junior, and whom she met in 1996 on the set of his directorial debut The Myth of Fingerprints. They have two children: Caleb, 12, and Liv, seven.

‘When you meet her as a person,’ says Hare, ‘she’s very sweet, very sympathetic, very domestic, she loves her family, she can talk for hours about the best sofa to buy. When you need to know where to buy an egg timer, call up Julianne.’ Not perhaps what you expect from an actress best known for turning in such potent, simmering, highly wrought performances.

‘In person she is wildly, wildly funny,’ says Egoyan. ‘I think she’s aware of the type of roles she usually performs, and she pokes fun at herself from that point of view.’ Playing to this wildly funny side, she has just started filming a guest-starring role in Comedy Central series 30 Rock, with Tina Fey and Alec Baldwin. It takes her back to her roots, in a sense, in that she laboured on TV (on soap opera As The World Turns) through the early years of her career. ‘I play someone who went to high school with Alec Baldwin and finds him on Facebook. But I just started, and I really don’t know where it’s going. I have a little arc. It’s not permanent.

But they are so funny, and the bar is set so high in terms of comedy. I don’t really watch television, but I buy it and download it.’

It will be interesting to see how Moore’s starriness translates back to the small screen, and small-screen comedy at that.

After brunch, we go for a walk through the Village. It’s one of those perfect bright New York days. Looking around the changeless neighbourhood, it strikes me that if you ignored the cars and the store windows, it could still be 1962, the year her character from A Single Man inhabits. We talk easily about kids and schools and, passing some closed shops, the ailing economy, before, saying goodbye, I turn east and she walks south. Crossing a street, I look back and see her, a few blocks away now, entirely unnoticed by passers-by, her red hair momentarily catching the sun.

‘A Single Man’ is out on 12 February. ‘Chloe’ is out on 5 March.

Tom Ford calls her ‘fearless’.

David Hare points to her ‘unique emotional expressıveness. She likes parts that are extreme; women who are in terrible trouble. In Hollywood, that is not sympathetic, not something actresses are queuing up to play’

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VINTAGE-INSPIRED CORSETRY AND AN ULTRA-MODERN SILHOUETTE CHANNEL A SILVER-SCREEN VIXEN Tulle and crystal dress, from a selection, Antonio Berardi. Mesh bra, £10, American Apparel

She could be described as the sort Antonin Artaud was referring to when he said that ‘an actor is an athlete of the heart’

NEW-SEASON NUDE AND COUTURE CUTS DELIVER A FLAWLESS PERFORMANCE This page: net dress, £900, RM by Roland Mouret.

Opposite: velvet jacket; velvet trousers, both from a selection, Givenchy Haute Couture by Riccardo Tisci. See Stockists for details. Hair by Serge Normant at Serge Normant at John Frieda Salon.

Make-up by Gucci Westman for Revlon. Manicure

by Alicia Torello at Defacto, using Chanel

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PHOTOGRAPH: XXXXXX

PHOTOGRAPH: XXXXXX

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Women International, Baghdad-born Salbi, who now lives in the US, grew up under the pall of the Iran-Iraq War. At just 23, prompted by reports of women refugees being raped in the Balkan War, she ploughed $2,000 of her own honeymoon money into an organisation to campaign for the plight of women during war.

Women for Women International has since backed humanitarian work in Bosnia, Rwanda, Kosovo, Sudan and Afghanistan.

SHE SAYS: ‘Always smile. Because even when I am talking with my enemy, I will not let him defeat me. My smile is my victory. My smile is my resilience. My smile says I love life, I still see the beauty of it, even though you want to show me only the darkness.’

CLINTON SAYS: ‘The day before I signed the Dayton Peace Accords to end the war in Bosnia in December 1995, I had invited a small group of individuals to the White House whose humanitarian efforts helped end Europe’s biggest nightmare since World War II. ‘Among them was a young woman named Zainab Salbi, who had escaped her own nightmare only five years before. The daughter of Saddam Hussein’s pilot, she left a difficult and dangerous life to come to America. After her arranged marriage ended in abuse, and escalating war at home made her unable to return, she had no choice but to start again.

‘What makes Zainab one of the most inspiring women I’ve ever known is not just her amazing personal story, but what she has done with it. In response to the fate of women in rape camps in Bosnia, Zainab started Women for Women in 1993, creating oneon-one “sister-to-sister” connections between sponsors in the United States and Europe, and survivors.

‘To date, Women for Women has served more than 200,000 women in eight countries. Each woman has a sponsor who sends letters and $27 each month, which might not seem like much, but in poor countries, it’s enough for food, water, schoolbooks and perhaps seed money for a small business venture.

‘As Zainab told her fellow panellists during a session at the Clinton Global Initiative on Investing in Girls and Women earlier this year, women anywhere can succeed, even in the face of high barriers, blatant discrimination and horrible physical and emotional abuse. Women for Women sisters are making baskets in Rwanda and cultivating and selling flowers in Kosovo. Whatever their vocation, they are all living proof that investing in women – in their education, healthcare, and employment – empowers them and makes stronger communities and nations.

‘Where women endure, so does peace. And as Zainab has shown us through her life and work, just one woman with hope in her heart and the courage to begin again can make all the difference.’

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AS: THE FIGUREHEAD THE FACTS: Over the past 10 years, Queen Rania has used her

position to bolster a number of causes. Never one to duck a difficult issue (domestic violence, child abuse and ‘honour’ killings – all taboo subjects in her country), the very modern stateswoman has also helped hundreds of Jordanian women start their own 100 |

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suffering injustice. I believe in trying to get to the root of the problem, even if it’s not popular.’

ARMANI SAYS: ‘Queen Rania is a remarkable woman and an inspiring advocate for reform. A (RED) supporter like me, she is so effective because she is intelligent and passionate in her beliefs; and as a beautiful and elegant woman, she also exerts a unique fascination. You can see how her presence injects real energy and confidence into meetings where serious matters are discussed and decided. She is a catalyst for good.’

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AS: THE WONDER WOMAN THE FACTS: The fashion icon and queen of the wrap-dress

is also a philanthropic dynamo who, through the Diller-von Furstenberg Family Foundation (with her husband Barry Diller and son Alex von Furstenberg), has donated more than $30 million to various international causes. Along with her recent pledge of $10 million to the High Line project, which is turning New York’s former elevated railway into a landscaped walkway, she fronts the Vital Voices Global Leadership Network, helping women across the globe with campaigns from anti-trafficking to HIV/Aids.

SHE SAYS: ‘I wanted to be an empowered woman, and I became one. And now I want to empower every woman.’

IMAN SAYS: ‘Diane is a feminist in stilettos, a sexy force of nature who has used her name so wisely and effectively. What she has done with an organisation like Vital Voices is testament to her support of women’s rights and women’s leadership globally. She has weathered the storm that is called fashion and she is still standing, albeit on beautiful gams.’

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AS: THE BRAVE FRONT THE FACTS: A Burundi-born doctor, Ndayishimiye juggles a

variety of roles (including advisor to the Geneva-based Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria, and head of the National Aids Council in Burundi) that point to one common goal: the fight against HIV/Aids and treatment of those living with HIV – an intensely personal cause, given that she is HIV-positive herself. As well as spearheading local projects – training counsellors, building up support groups, combating discrimination – she has loudly protested the G8’s failure to provide enough funding, and her country’s inadequate distribution of antiretroviral medication.

SHE SAYS: ‘I’m a mother, a doctor, and I live with HIV. I also represent millions of people living with HIV/Aids, tuberculosis and malaria at the Global Fund board. I am grateful to the Global Fund for the millions of lives saved, including in my own country.’

BRUNI SAYS: ‘I met Dr Françoise on my first day working with the Global Fund in Burkina Faso in February. She is a hugely impressive woman. I discovered a mother of four living in a foreign country, working tirelessly to improve the living conditions of women and children in the developing world. Being HIV-positive, she represents hope through the life she lives, and demonstrates the strength and bravery required from us all to overcome these global health issues. I’ve been very lucky to discover a woman of such virtue, who is an inspiration in her work and her life.’ www.harpersbazaar.co.uk

THIS PAGE ANDXXXXXX PREVIOUS PAGES: HAIR AND MAKE-UP BY COLLEEN RUNNE, USING SHISEIDO PHOTOGRAPH:

AS: THE WOMEN’S KEEPER THE FACTS: The co-founder and President of Women for

businesses, through the Queen Rania Center for Entrepreneurship.

SHE SAYS: ‘We are morally obliged to help people who are

²

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Previous pages, left: Diane von Furstenberg.

Previous pages, right: Queen Rania of Jordan www.harpersbazaar.co.uk

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AS: THE SUPER MODEL THE FACTS: As president of the Naked Heart Foundation, the

Russian model has fought to give inner-city children in Russia the basic right to a secure and fun place to play – something she never had growing up in a bleak industrial town outside Moscow.

In the past four years, her foundation has opened more than 30 parks and playgrounds across Russia, including one in Beslan last month – only a fraction of her ultimate dream of 500.

SHE SAYS: ‘The biggest thing I can do for my soul is to hear that laughter, and to see all these children in the play parks that my foundation built.’

KLEIN SAYS: ‘Natalia is an inspiration to me. She was not handed her success; she comes from a very modest background, which contributed to her desire to give back. She has quietly and resolutely gone about touching people’s lives in a positive way.’

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AS: THE CARE-GIVER THE FACTS: In co-founding the Maggie’s Centres, Lee has real-

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HAIR AND MAKE-UP BY COLLEEN RUNNE, USING SHISEIDO

HEART OF THE MATTER Model and president of the Naked Heart Foundation Natalia Vodianova

PHOTOGRAPH: XXXXXX

ised the vision of late writer and garden designer Maggie Keswick Jencks. Lee was Maggie’s nurse, and it was during chemotherapy sessions that the pair dreamt up the idea for centres in which cancer patients could convalesce in a serene, uplifting environment. In 1995, Maggie lost her battle with breast cancer, but thanks to Lee’s hard work, there are now nine centres around the UK (and more in the pipeline), designed by ‘starchitects’ including Zaha Hadid, Rem Koolhaas and Frank Gehry.

SHE SAYS: ‘When I worked in a hospital, I thought I was close to my patients, but it was not until we opened the first Maggie’s Centre in Edinburgh, and those same patients came to me and told me things they would never have been able to discuss before, that I realised the vital importance of Maggie’s Centres.’

TAYLOR-WOOD SAYS: ‘Laura has taken a fantastic idea and made it work for tens of thousands of people across the UK. After being diagnosed with cancer, it is easy to feel like everything is slipping away – your sense of who you are, what your life means and what your future holds. Maggie’s helps people anchor back into the moment, the day, their lives and all that matters.

I can’t think of anything more important than that – feeling valued, especially at a time when you are raw.’

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AS: THE BEACON OF HOPE THE FACTS: Despite being incarcerated for 14 of the past 20

years, Burmese activist Suu Kyi stands alone as the enduring force behind, and heroic face of, the fight for a democratic Burma.

Elected Prime Minister in 1990 but promptly arrested by the military junta and prevented from taking office, the Nobel Laureate continues to meet with foreign emissaries, enduring personal hardships with a grace and courage that have served only to make her a more potent symbol of peaceful resistance.

SHE SAYS: ‘I can accept whatever happens to me so long as I’m working for something that is right.’ www.harpersbazaar.co.uk

CHAKRABARTI SAYS: ‘I have been director of [human-rights

organisation] Liberty for six years and although my organisation has taken on the government over many issues, at no point have I been arrested and held in secret detention without charge or trial, or been placed under house arrest, far away from my family. Aung San Suu Kyi has faced all this ill-treatment and more with a dignity and strength of spirit that appear bottomless. Despite the offer of an end to imprisonment if she left her country, Suu Kyi chose detention over liberty, such was her dedication to her cause. How many of us could say we would have the courage to do the same?’

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AS: THE FRONTLINE DOCTOR THE FACTS: A medical doctor born in Uganda but trained in her

family’s native Rwanda, Asiimwe, who is 34, is leading the charge in the fight against HIV and Aids in Rwanda. As Executive Secretary of Rwanda’s National Aids Control Commission, she has fought for better access to life-saving medication and more health workers. She is also director of the Treatment and Research Aids Centre in Kigali, one of many beneficiaries in Rwanda of more than $22 million of (RED) money.

SHE SAYS: ‘In my years of living, will I be able to see Rwandans view Aids as a disease and not a death sentence? That’s what I want.’

JOHANSSON SAYS: ‘She possesses a wisdom and openness that far surpasses her years. During my visit to Kigali to see (RED) money at work, what struck me most was Dr Anita’s sensitivity towards the struggles of people living with HIV. She approached them as a truly empathetic peer. I’m honoured to have met her.’

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AS: THE ECO-FILM-MAKERS THE FACTS: The documentary-makers behind McLibel brought

us The Age of Stupid in 2009 – a low-budget docu-drama about the devastating effects of climate change, which has so far been seen by 53 million people in 60 countries. British-born Armstrong (who you may also know as the woman who called Boris Johnson her ‘knight on a shining bicycle’ after he rescued her from attack in London in November), has just launched 10:10, a campaign aiming to reduce the UK’s carbon emissions by 10 per cent in 2010.

ARMSTRONG SAYS: ‘We have to deal now with something that’s going to happen in 30 years. The only way to do that is to use our intellect. Otherwise, we might as well be yeast.’

GILLETT SAYS: ‘We would like to see the public, the world’s leaders and the media come together on the planet’s biggest, most pressing problem: climate change… if there’s not a dramatic change on everybody’s part, we are not going to solve this.’

STYLER SAYS: ‘Franny and Lizzie’s The Age of Stupid is a grim warning about what our future could so easily hold. Film is an incredibly powerful medium in society today, and a really important tool for reaching all age groups. I would love to see more film-makers doing what Franny and Lizzie are doing – using film to communicate valuable lessons in visual, entertaining ways.

They have reached a huge audience making low-budget films, funded in a creative and innovative way, telling stories of ordinary people having extraordinary impacts on our world.’

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MacCallum has invested over $200 million in adolescent girls across the developing world. Fighting to unleash the power of â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;the girl effectâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;, the foundation focuses on education, health and economic programmes that give girls at risk the chance to escape the very familiar cycle of poverty and deprivation.

SHE SAYS: â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;A 12-year-old girl in poverty is the most powerful person on the planet. When you invest in her, transformation for her and the next generation is possible.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; THE BUFFETTS SAY: â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;The notion that girls are the key to changing the world may not be intuitive when you first hear it, but listen to Lisa talk about â&#x20AC;&#x153;the girl effectâ&#x20AC;? and youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re hooked.

With her infectious and brilliant energy, Lisa is helping to make girls visible where they are usually invisible.â&#x20AC;&#x2122;

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AS: THE FEARLESS ACTIVIST THE FACTS: For the past 12 years, the Somali-born model and

author (of Desert Flower, which sold more than 11 million copies) has battled to end female genital mutilation, a procedure she herself underwent without anaesthetic at the age of five. Having founded the Waris Dirie Foundation and the PPR Foundation for Womenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Dignity and Rights to campaign against this stillwidespread practice, Dirie also set up the Desert Dawn Foundation to raise money for schools and clinics in Somalia.

SHE SAYS: â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;The world has to be a kinder place. It has to change.

I want people to grow up learning a healthy respect for every human being, loving, caring and sharing, and respecting women.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; TURLINGTON BURNS SAYS : â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Her decision to brave her own emotional scars in order to turn the spotlight on this issue is profoundly inspiring. I hope to bring some of her strength to my own work on maternal health with organisations like Care and (RED).

If only we had more fighters like her.â&#x20AC;&#x2122;

/299. 3?2B1 ;<:6;.A2@¨ 0.:69. /.A:.;45296175 AS: THE GUARDIAN ANGEL

THE FACTS: In her signature headscarves and patterned silks, the Iranian-born psychologist has become a much-loved fixture on the streets around South London, where she first set up her charity Kids Company in 1996. (Even bus drivers pull over to give her a lift.) Having begun with a rented office under a railway arch and expanded into three drop-in centres and a therapy building, Kids Company cares for children failed by social services â&#x20AC;&#x201C; many homeless, all at risk. Batmanghelidjh is credited with reducing crime and drug abuse among those in her care by 90 per cent.

SHE SAYS: â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;What every child needs is a quality attachment to a caring adult. We talk about services and needs, but what is the emotional goal? We need to put love at the centre of social services.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; FREUD SAYS: â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;People donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t get lost and ignored with Camila; they get taken care of and made whole. She gives comfort and courage â&#x20AC;&#x201C; and inspires it in others.â&#x20AC;&#x2122;

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AS: THE FORCE FOR GOOD THE FACTS: As co-founder of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

â&#x20AC;&#x201C; the worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s largest charitable endowment, at over $30 billion â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Gates has, with her Microsoft-founder husband, radically altered the scope of philanthropy. In her pursuit of the foundationâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s goal to target killer diseases, the maths whizz, who was also a vital early supporter of (RED), co-founded by Bobby Shriver and Bono, has helped save the lives of millions.

SHE SAYS: â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;We started this foundation with the premise that all lives are created equal. If an American child should be protected from measles, then so should a child in Zambia. We know how hard eliminating Aids and malaria will be, but we are not daunted.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; SHRIVER SAYS: â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;She studies longer, invests smarter and leads wiser than anyone else. Knowing sheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s at the forefront of the issues that drive extreme poverty should put us all at ease a little.â&#x20AC;&#x2122;

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AS: THE SMOOTH AGITATOR THE FACTS: Hailed a â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;goddessâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; by the people of Nepal, the actor

has campaigned for the liberation of Tibet, for the oppressed people of Burma and the plight of the Gurkhas. Last year, she secured a high-profile victory for the right of Gurkha veterans to settle in the UK, eliciting congratulatory calls of â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Lumley for PMâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;.

SHE SAYS: â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;In my life as an actress, Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve been lucky enough to help with all kinds of organisations. But because Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m a Gurkha soldierâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s daughter, this has been with me since I was born. It is an odyssey that has come to an end. Although my parents are dead now, I felt all the way through this, and particularly in Nepal, that they are both there, so thrilled and proud.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; GYALTSEN GYARI SAYS: â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Joanna is the most gracious and eloquent of advocates for my homeland. She combines the warrior spirit of a Gurkha with an unwavering and clear-eyed commitment to peace and justice over oppression.â&#x20AC;&#x2122;

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AS: THE PRISONERâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S ADVOCATE THE FACTS: Made partner at one of the Cityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s most prestigious

law firms at just 28, Algar later turned her back on corporate life to pursue a more urgent vocation. As executive director of Reprieve, a charity charged with upholding the legal rights of defendants in the direst situations, Algar has stood up and fought for prisoners around the world, including inmates on death row and detainees in Guantanamo Bay â&#x20AC;&#x201C; whose treatment has drawn her very vocal condemnation over recent months.

SHE SAYS: â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;I left my commercial firm because I thought the world was going to hell in a handcart and I should do something about it. I believed Reprieve was one of the few organisations that could really make a difference. It does.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; LANE FOX SAYS: â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Clare could easily have become the successful head of a legal firm, but instead she took on a tricky job in a very important area. She is fiercely driven, working every hour to get lawyers to people who need help. She is a real rock.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; www.harpersbazaar.co.uk

HAIR AND MAKE-UP

BY COLLEEN RUNNE, USING SHISEIDO PHOTOGRAPH: XXXXXX

AS: THE GIRL-POWER GURU THE FACTS: As managing director of the Nike Foundation,

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JUST DO IT The Nike Foundationâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s managing director Lisa MacCallum www.harpersbazaar.co.uk

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AS: THE PROVOCATEUR THE FACTS: Her feisty reputation belies the fact that, for more

than a decade, the Streatham-born supermodel has got behind a wealth of causes, from Breast Cancer Care and Crusaid to Fashion for Relief, which she co-founded. Now, as Global Ambassador to the White Ribbon Alliance, a charity campaigning to make pregnancy and childbirth safer for women and babies all over the world â&#x20AC;&#x201C; of which Sarah Brown is patron â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Campbell is championing a cause that aims to save 500,000 lives a year.

SHE SAYS: â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;People say the fashion industry doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t do enough for charity â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m trying to change that. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s not just about sitting back and talking about [global issues]; itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s about taking action.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; BROWN SAYS: â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;The Naomi Campbell I had heard about was beautiful, successful, always late, a bit frightening, even a bit out of control. I canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t even remember why I agreed to meet her. The Naomi Campbell I met was certainly beautiful, but also sincere, direct, and impatient in a good way. She is just as confident talking to world leaders and fashion leaders as she is speaking to community leaders in Streatham or South Africa. She is determined to bring her energy to the White Ribbon Alliance, a cause that needs help. The Naomi Campbell I have come to know has proven herself a loyal friend and a woman of her word. She is a fearless challenger of the established position if she sees the need for change, whether in her call for greater diversity representation in the media, or the demand for greater focus in international development on womenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s health and rights. She is generous, authentic and hard-working. The maternal-mortality campaign gained a powerful ally the day she â&#x20AC;&#x201C; and her BlackBerry â&#x20AC;&#x201C; walked through the door and offered support.â&#x20AC;&#x2122;

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STYLISH AMBASSADORS Sarah Brown and Naomi Campbell, who are working together for the White Ribbon Alliance for Safe Motherhood 106 |

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PHOTOGRAPH: XXXXXX

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HAIR AND MAKE-UP BY COLLEEN RUNNE, USING SHISEIDO

AS: THE VOICE OF REASON THE FACTS: Filing from conflict zones round the world, British-

Iranian Amanpour, now Chief International Correspondent for CNN, has become an institution among news folk. She has dodged snipers in Sarajevo, chased down major scoops and pitted herself against some of the worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s biggest (male) names with dispatches we have come to trust and rely upon.

SHE SAYS: â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;I am fiercely committed to reporting the truth without fear or favour, politics or ideology. Objective, factual reporting today is more important than ever.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; KHAN SAYS: â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;I met Christiane a few years ago, and she has become a good friend. She hasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t become one of those knowing insiders who adopt an haute-diplomatic air. Thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s no world-weariness, no condescension; sheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s an infectious optimist, as interested in the man who sells her coffee on the corner as in Nelson Mandela.â&#x20AC;&#x2122;

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AS: THE CONSCIENCE THE FACTS: Never more trailblazing than in her environmental

stance, the fashion designer has stayed true to her â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;no animalsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; policy, shunning fur and leather in favour of cutting-edge alternatives. With her father Paul and sister Mary, she recently launched www.harpersbazaar.co.uk

Meat Free Monday, a campaign attempting to reduce the 20 per cent of greenhouse gases generated by the meat industry.

SHE SAYS: â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;I was brought up to understand that we are all here on planet Earth together. The beliefs I was raised with â&#x20AC;&#x201C; to respect animals and to be aware of nature, to understand that we share this planet with other creatures â&#x20AC;&#x201C; had a huge impact on me.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; SAFRAN FOER SAYS: â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;The difference between heroes and villains is often a question of what is done with the views that most people share. Does anyone think itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s right to torture animals?

Is anyone fully comfortable with the idea of wearing another animalâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s skin? And yet, most of us find ways to smudge, diminish or forget our values, supporting industries â&#x20AC;&#x201C; factory animal farming, the fur and leather trade â&#x20AC;&#x201C; that we know require us to ignore our better instincts. McCartney takes our shared values as her starting point, and that clear line of sight between beliefs and practice is worth celebrating. We owe her thanks for acting on our values.â&#x20AC;&#x2122;

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AS: THE UNIFYING SPIRIT THE FACTS: The former Catholic nun, academic and writer (of

numerous bestsellers including her most recent, The Case for God ) has campaigned assiduously to further the common vision of the worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s major religions. She commands audiences of thousands in Pakistan and the US, is consulted by the US Senate and Congress and is a top attraction at the World Economic Forum and Nato.

To much fanfare, she has just launched a Charter for Compassion to foster mutual understanding between the worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s faiths.

SHE SAYS: â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;All religions are designed to teach us how to live joyfully, serenely and kindly in the midst of suffering.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; KENNEDY SAYS: â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Karen is a thoroughly engaging speaker whose knowledge is so free-ranging yet profound that she leaves an audience feeling uplifted and hopeful. Her work is providing the means to counter a rising tide of extremism in our troubled world. I believe she is a heroine for our times.â&#x20AC;&#x2122;

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AS: THE FIRST LADY THE FACTS: During her first year in the White House, the

Harvard-educated lawyer turned â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Mom-in-Chief â&#x20AC;&#x2122; has more than lived up to her promise: from her impeccable style choices to playing dinner lady at the local soup kitchen, she has exemplified strength, intelligence and warmth. Her trip to the UK in April typified the â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Michelle effectâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; when a speech she gave at a London girlsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; school resounded like a call-to-arms to women of all ages.

SHE SAYS: â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;I was surrounded by extraordinary women in my life, who taught me about quiet strength and dignity. Whether you come from a council estate or a country estate, your success will be determined by your own confidence and fortitude.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; YEOMANS SAYS: â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Ever since she swirled in white chiffon across the room at the Presidential Inaugural Ball, the First Lady has captivated us with expectation. Is it the romance of date nights with her husband that we fell for? The â&#x20AC;&#x153;donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t screw it up, buddyâ&#x20AC;? comradeship? Or simply her innate enthusiasm for everything she does? Sheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s sexy, smart as a whip, and catnip for men and women alike. No one better invigorates the argument for change, and weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re all waiting to see what Obama will do next.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; January 2010 |

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STOLEN MOMENTS

REBECCA HALL and BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH – a fiery couple making the most of their time together. As the pair’s on-screen passion lights up BBC Two’s hit drama Parade’s End, Bazaar brings the old friends together to rekindle their affair once more Photographs by SOFIA SANCHEZ AND MAURO MONGIELLO Styled by PIPPA VOSPER

Rebecca Hall I first met you when I was 10. Did you know that?

Benedict Cumberbatch Really?

RH I came to Harrow with my prep-school headmaster to see my

best friend’s older brother in The Taming of the Shrew and you were playing Petruchio.

BC How funny. So I would have been 15.

RH Then I met you a couple of years later at Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre. You were playing Benvolio in Romeo and Juliet.

BC I’d learnt to act a bit better by then. And I liked you because you said you’d like to see me play Romeo. But we got to know each other properly on Starter For 10 [in 2006], and a little through David Birkin [nephew of Jane] and Freddie Stevenson, who are both friends of mine.

RH David was my first flatmate out of university and Freddie is my ex-boyfriend. So we genuinely are mates.

BC We both wanted to work together, didn’t we? I wouldn’t have done Parade’s End unless you had done it and I don’t think you would have done it unless I had.

RH Absolutely. [She begins to tuck into the tart.] Keep talking. I’m going to eat all the cake while you speak.

BC [Laughs.] Actually, Parade’s End was tricky for me because I’d come straight off Sherlock. Even if I’d had a couple of months to prepare, it would have been challenging. Parade’s End is a very unwieldy piece. When we started you had such an extraordinary idea of who Sylvia was, fully formed in your mind. I had to play catch up. And there was a huge level of expectation. I loved working with Tom Stoppard but he got obsessed with us doing the material. He started writing me into the screenplay before I’d said yes to the job.

RH He was sweet. He sent me a card saying it would make his year if I said yes. How could I not?

BC I suppose that was part of the seduction. But I did feel a little below par. Tom was nothing but charming and supportive, but I think he was nervous about my navigation of the role. Well, 246 |

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sometimes it made me nervous having him around. But being with a friend, I leant on you a lot and you were incredibly supportive.

RH No, we leant on each other. I think the fact that we knew each other meant that a lot of the work of playing a couple who had been together for 10 years was already done. It was easy for us to be with each other.

BC And a lot of fun. I’ve never had more fun on a job. It’s wonderful to work with a friend, because you share all the intimacies, all the problems, all the joys. It helped that Tom wrote a fucking brilliant adaptation. You’ve known Tom since childhood?

RH Well, I have memories of him from when I was wee because my dad [director Peter Hall] worked with him a lot. But I didn’t really get to know him until I did The Cherry Orchard [at the Old Vic], which he adapted, a couple of years ago for the Bridge Project. He was in the rehearsal room all the time and we became good friends.

He gave great notes to people. I overheard him say to one actor [in a Stoppardian voice]: ‘I’m egging it, but you’re over-egging it.’

[Laughs.] The other great one was: ‘It’s not that I can’t hear you. It’s that I’m not being asked to listen.’

BC That’s a brilliant note.

RH The thing that I always love about working with him is the ‘pinch yourself ’ moments. At one point on Parade’s End, we were sitting in a field and there was silence, and he suddenly turned around and said: ‘The problem with nihilism is…’ as if I’d been having a conversation with him about it for the past 20 minutes.

In person he twinkles. I mean, he’s remarkably sexy. He’s charming, witty and great fun to talk to. Personally, I think that’s always the sexiest thing about someone.

BC [Smiling] I find him terribly attractive too.

RH You find him terribly attractive?

BC I had to really behave myself, keep my hands firmly under my bottom. As in ‘sitting on my hands’, readers of Harper’s Bazaar.

RH I hope that gets quoted: ‘“Tom Stoppard’s so sexy I had to keep my hands on my bottom,” says Benedict.’

BC I heard something about you falling off a horse during the shoot.

RH Oh, yes. You weren’t there that day. There was a beautiful, gleaming racehorse, which was quite frisky and badly behaved.

Exactly the kind of horse Sylvia would have. In one scene, Sylvia has to leap a three-bar fence sitting side-saddle. Obviously, there was a stunt woman for that and they brought in this docile actor’s horse for my shots. Cut to Tom Stoppard. ‘Is this the horse? It’s not a very “Sylvia” type of horse.’ He was just asking. But, being an idiot, I decide that actually I should sit on the other horse and it will be fine. During the scene, I have to wield a whip and shout at someone.

Three takes are fine. On the fourth, I get more emotional with my acting and swipe the whip through the air. I don’t hit the horse, but the whooshing triggers the horse who runs off down the field and knocks me off. It was very dramatic. Luckily, I was held together by the corset. There is footage of [my co-stars] Janet McTeer and Jamie Parker, who the camera happened to be on, as the horse went out of shot. Them going [she mimes her jaw dropping].

RH Don’t you think it’s a really exciting time for TV right now?

BC Well, I remember growing up with incredibly good television.

The fact is, you can take more artistic risks now because of the levels of money involved, but you still have to fight for your worth in the marketplace, because the only thing anyone wants is a replication of something that’s already successful. The number of times we were strong-armed by the BBC into producing a sort of Downton Abbey…

RH Well, there’s nothing cosy about Parade’s End. BC Absolutely. It is a peculiar, wonderful, deliciously rich, www.harpersbazaar.co.uk

MARTINIS AT MIDNIGHT This page: Rebecca Hall wears silk top, £595; crepe wide-leg trousers, £895, both Daks.

Rhinestone pendant, £1,340, Lanvin. Benedict Cumberbatch wears cashmere long-sleeve T-shirt, £850; wool and mohair trousers, £390, both Hermès. Wool and cotton jacket, about £670, Dries Van Noten. Previous pages: Cumberbatch wears wool bouclé suit, £1,330, Calvin Klein.

Cotton shirt, £450, Louis Vuitton. Hall wears velvet and georgette dress, £4,050, Tom Ford ▼

U

nlike their fictional counterparts, husband and wife Christopher and Sylvia Tietjens from BBC Two’s ongoing adaptation of Parade’s End, Benedict Cumberbatch and Rebecca Hall aren’t at each other’s throats, hurling crockery across the room out of marital spite. Rather, installed at Brasserie Zédel in Piccadilly Circus for afternoon tea, the quick-witted pair, now 36 and 30 respectively, are conversing with all the mischief and erudition one expects from old friends.

If Parade’s End, a five-part drama about the shifting mores of marriage, the aristocracy and women’s rights at the time of World War I, has caught our attention, it’s surely because Cumberbatch and Hall, serving a sparky and often very sexy script by Tom Stoppard, have brought all their restless intelligence to the screen. We can only hope for as much from their upcoming appearances in three of Hollywood’s biggest blockbusters, as Cumberbatch takes on the role of the dragon Smaug in Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit: There and Back Again and the villain in JJ Abrams’ Star Trek sequel, and Hall joins the cast of Iron Man 3. Over cups of honey and lemon (Hall is attempting to ward off laryngitis) and a shared pear tart with cream, Cumberbatch and Hall chat about why Parade’s End is not the next Downton Abbey, the current renaissance in TV and the fun of beefing up for Hollywood. AJESH PATALAY

intelligent piece and it should stand alone. I do think there has been a renaissance in television in America: Mad Men, Breaking Bad, Homeland.

RH Homeland was great. I’ve gone all Scandinavian. I like The Killing and The Bridge. The first series of The Killing was sublime. Watching the family go through so many grieving processes, it was so moving.

BC And a brilliant narrative hook. God, do you care; God, do you want some justice for them.

RH I have a little theory. I think part of our obsession with all those subtitled dramas is the fact that we can’t be on email or text or Twitter as we’re watching them. As a viewer, you need a challenge to get drawn in. Then, when you do get drawn in, there’s so much joy in getting stuck into something that lasts for hours. The subtitles help because you are forced to concentrate. Parade’s End has a little bit of that because it’s complicated. You are forced to listen.

BC I always get into trouble for talking about things that have yet to come out. But, for the benefit of Bazaar readers, I have to ask about Iron Man 3. Who are you playing? What are your lines?

RH [Laughs.] I could tell you, but I’d have to kill you.

BC You’re still filming?

RH Yeah, I’ve done two weeks. It’s a new experience… I mean, it’s no secret that I’ve held out from doing something like this for a while, and there are plenty that I’ve said no to. The thing that made me go for it is that the Iron Man films are funny.

BC They really are.

RH And I wanted to work with Robert Downey Jr. I think those films have worked because they employ interesting actors and you can tell Gwyneth Paltrow and Robert are having fun. It’s something I’ve genuinely never done before. I’ve never run around in front of a green screen or dealt with explosions or special effects, so I thought: ‘I want to know what that’s all about.’

BC I totally agree. Smaug from The Hobbit is such an iconic character. I loved playing a reptile and doing the kind of motion-capture work that Andy Serkis did as Gollum in The Lord of the Rings.

RH It’s a very different technique, being able to stare at a green screen and pretend that aliens are landing. I mean, that’s really pretending.

BC It’s almost theatre. You’re working with massive levels of suspended disbelief. On Star Trek, I had a real blast, doing stunts and huge fight sequences. It was a fucking joy to do. I always wanted to do a little ‘boys with toys’ stuff. I went up four suit sizes; ate 3,000 calories for three weeks straight; trained my ass off.

RH Me too. Can’t you tell? [She flexes her biceps.]

BC Villains are great fun to play.

RH I think there should be a female powerhouse Bond villain.

BC I’d be up for that.

RH I don’t think I should do it, by the way. It should be an iconic villain, not just a femme fatale, but someone really wackjob, Grace Jones-style. Someone frightening and crazy but female.

BC I think Sam [Mendes]’s villain, old haircut…

RH Oh, you mean Javier [Bardem].

BC …he’ll be amazing.

RH What Bond villain would you play?

BC I’d like to play Bond gone wrong.

RH What do you mean?

BC I don’t know. Maybe his brother. Somebody deep in the fabric of Bond’s trusted world. Something subtle and psychological, rather than someone with a lair or a massive army. That would be fun.

RH Bond mark two. Well, now you’re showing your true colours…

[She hums the Bond theme tune.]

‘Parade’s End’ is currently showing on BBC Two on Friday nights at 9pm.

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We leant on each other.

The fact that we knew each other meant that a lot of the work of playing a couple who had been together for 10 years was already done. It was easy for us to be with each other

HOLD ME, THRILL ME, KISS ME… Cumberbatch wears wool bouclé suit, £1,330, Calvin Klein. Cotton shirt, £450, Louis Vuitton.

Pony-skin loafers, £595, Christian Louboutin.

Hall wears velvet and georgette dress, £4,050, Tom Ford. Leather heels, £360, Gianvito Rossi.

Gold and sapphire ring, £980; gold and diamond ring, £1,300; gold and enamel ring, £500, all Ruth Tomlinson. Gold and diamond ring, £1,425, Astley Clarke. See Stockists for details. Hair by Ben Cooke at Frank Agency, using Lockonego. Make-up by Emma Kotch at Streeters. Manicure by Trish Lomax at Premier, using Mavala. With thanks to the Bar Américan at Brasserie Zédel (www.brasseriezedel.com)

MAN AND MUSE Tippi Hedren and Alfred Hitchcock on the set of ‘The Birds’ in 1962

RARE

As Sienna Miller steps into Tippi Hedren’s shoes for a new BBC drama, AJESH PATALAY brings the two stars together to talk about working with Hitchcock, motherhood and standing up to Rupert Murdoch, and finds out they have more than matching avian tattoos in common Portraits by JONAS BRESNAN Styled by PIPPA VOSPER

September 2012 |

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▼

FLIGHT OF FANCY Sienna Miller wears silk organdie dress, about £1,270, Dolce & Gabbana.

Wool coat, £3,795, Corrie Nielson. Lace shoes, about £590, Dolce & Gabbana.

Left hand, from top: gold-plated silver ring, £78, Alexis Bittar at Harrods.

Gold ring, £4,880, Belmacz. Right hand: Gold-plated silver and crystal ring, about £157, Alexis Bittar. Earrings, her own

PHOTOGRAPH: PHILIPPE HALSMAN/MAGNUM PHOTOS

BIRDS

S

ienna Miller and Tippi Hedren make for a beguiling pair. At 30, Miller is glowing, effervescent, a blur of giddy, girlish energy, pitching up for Bazaar’s shoot in a simple white top, jeans and ballet pumps.

Then there’s Hedren: poised, delicate of frame – she’s now 82 – but robust of character (this is a woman who runs her own big-cat reserve in Los Angeles), impeccably turned out in head-to-toe black, with just enough jewellery to hint at expensive tastes and legendary status.

These two generations of star – different eras, different expectations – have come together for a special Bazaar shoot and to tell the story of one man’s campaign of harassment and tyranny and one woman’s battle to overcome it. (No, we’re not talking Rupert Murdoch, though Miller’s treatment by the News of the World kicks up strong reactions when talk turns to phone hacking later.) The man in question is Alfred Hitchcock, who launched Hedren’s career by casting her, then an unknown fashion model, in two of his greatest films, The Birds (1963) and Marnie (1964).

But stardom came at a price, as brilliantly dramatised in the new BBC drama The Girl, in which Miller plays the young Hedren (very convincingly, it’s worth noting). On top of gruelling treatment, Hitchcock was notorious for subjecting his ‘blondes’ to real-life trials (including, in Hedren’s case, having live birds flung at her during the climax of The Birds, after which she had to be hospitalised). The director became fanatically obsessed with Hedren. When she rebuffed his advances and eventually wriggled free of her exclusive contract, it was to the considerable detriment of her career.

But like Miller, Hedren has never been afraid of a fight. ‘I’m working on my second federal bill, this one to stop the breeding of big cats,’ she declares. Nor, it seems, is she afraid of a little rebellious behaviour. At Bazaar’s The Birds-inspired shoot, Hedren is tugging down one side of her jumper and baring her shoulder, in what Hitchcock aficionados might call ‘a surprising reveal’. ‘I got it two years ago as an 80th-birthday present to myself,’ she says, uncovering a defiant commemoration of her most famous film: the tattoo of a bird. ‘I was at an autograph session in Florida; there was a tattooing convention going on and I thought it might be fun. The bird design seemed perfect. I had to line up three martinis first.’

‘Did you?’ marvels Miller, recognising a kindred spirit (she has her own bird tattoo on her wrist). ‘So it was, “Happy birthday, Tippi.

You’re 80. Here’s a tattoo.” I mean, you are the coolest goddamn woman in the world.’

It’s a verdict borne out when the two actors sit down after the shoot to share notes on Hitchcock, phone hacking and ‘the most important role of one’s life’ – becoming a mother.

Tippi Hedren I just saw footage from the film. I think your performance is right on.

Sienna Miller Thank you.

TH I was nervous seeing it. It’s a strange experience, to have a movie made about yourself.

SM It was such a difficult period in your life.

TH Oh, yes. Traumatic. Frightening. Joyous. Exciting. I mean, it was so much.

SM To relive that is probably quite nerve-wracking.

TH Absolutely.

SM I felt a responsibility to try and capture your spirit. It’s a dangerous game, trying to play somebody who is an icon.

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TH Especially one who is still alive.

SM And will probably outlive all of us.

TH I think so! [Laughs.]

SM You were incredibly helpful when we met last November, maybe three weeks before filming.

TH At the Shambala Preserve in LA. SM It’s an extraordinary place. I got a tour. Beautiful lions and tigers. Do you still have the liger [a lion-tiger mix]?

TH No, he died. We’re down to 53 cats now.

SM Only 53! We didn’t get nearly enough time together in LA, but I remember you were very complimentary about Hitchcock’s genius.

TH Absolutely. He was not only my director, he was my drama coach.

He gave me an unbelievable opportunity. I had done commercials in New York, so I had technical training in front of the camera, but breaking down a script and developing a character – that’s entirely different. The education he gave me in acting was phenomenal.

SM In a film like The Birds, you were pretty much in every frame.

I think everyone is intrigued by that performance and what Hitchcock was like, what you had to endure. The abuse started as early as the screen test, didn’t it?

TH They tried so hard to break me. Martin Balsam was flown in to be my leading man, and of course he went along with Hitch’s tricks.

SM He was an arsehole. Sorry. But it’s uncomfortable to watch that footage. There was one moment where Marty talks about necrophilia in front of you. It seemed like he’d been told to go for you, a deliberate provocation. You dealt with it extraordinarily well.

TH It rolled off my back. I thought: ‘This is so silly.’ It just got worse during the shoot. Hitch used to tell these very dirty stories…

SM …constantly, knowing that it made you uncomfortable. He would be really inappropriate, wouldn’t he? Lunging at you. And he followed you for a while, didn’t he?

TH Oh, God. He had me followed, he had my handwriting analysed… He was constantly staring at me on set, even from the other end of the soundstage.

SM There is something really creepy about that. I do think that’s what is great about this script. It captures that underlying tension, sort of a bubbling volcano, like one of Hitchcock’s films. A feeling of something not being right…

TH He talked about me as ‘the girl’ when I wasn’t in favour with him.

I suppose he wanted it to be a putdown. He told [my co-stars from The Birds and Marnie] Rod Taylor and Sean Connery: ‘Do not touch the girl,’ and he tried to control who I could or couldn’t see off set.

SM It must have been hard to be the victim of his obsessive attention. How difficult was it for you to stand up to him?

TH Not hard at all.

SM Really?

TH His behaviour was repulsive to me. After Marnie came out, I said: ‘I want to get out of the contract.’ He said: ‘You can’t.

You have your daughter to support. Your parents are getting older.

I’ll ruin your career.’ And he did.

SM He kept up your contract for how long?

TM Over a year. After Marnie, I was, as the Hollywood expression goes, ‘hot’. So many producers and directors wanted me. All Hitchcock said was: ‘She isn’t available.’ Later, he turned the contract over to Universal and they asked me to do a television Western.

I said: ‘I’m not interested in that.’ They ended my contract and, two weeks later, Charlie Chaplin called for me to do A Countess from Hong Kong, which came out in 1967. [Hitchcock’s assistant] Peggy told me he almost had a heart attack when he heard.

SM I read that. He was furious. I think it’s CONTINUED ON PAGE 337 www.harpersbazaar.co.uk

‘Hitchcock was not only my director, he was my drama coach. He gave me an opportunity. The education he gave me in acting was phenomenal’

HITCHCOCK BLONDE ON BLONDE Tippi Hedren wears cotton and silk dress, £2,199, Alaïa at Harrods.

Velvet cape, £1,399, Yves Saint Laurent. Gold-plated silver earrings, £1,017; matching necklace, £1,460, both Tom Ford.

Sienna Miller wears silk gown, £3,465, Antonio Berardi. Bolero, £3,250, Alaïa at Harrods. See Stockists for details. Hair by Luke Hersheson at Julian Watson. Make-up

by Lucia Pica at Art Partner www.harpersbazaar.co.uk

September 2012 |

H A R P E R’ S BA Z A A R

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‘KEIRA’

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 233

a way that I think I wasn’t in my early twenties. I think in your late twenties it’s all sort of coming together. I think you get certain points where you suddenly find you really need help, and the first time that you have to ask for help, particularly if you’re not naturally someone who does, it’s such a massive kind of moment of having to understand that you can’t take it all on your own shoulders and, actually, you do need to share it out. It’s the best thing when you’ve learnt that lesson.’

These lifeblood friendships are so important to Knightley that she has repeatedly resisted the idea of a move Stateside; she lives there for the duration of filming when necessary, but always returns swiftly to her home in the British capital. ‘I am very close to my family. I am very close to my friends. I like the fact that in London I can get out of what I do,’ she says. ‘I don’t have to just be defined by what I do, and I find in LA, if you’re an actress, you can’t get out of the film industry, it’s all about that, as far as I found, though I’m sure there are other people who would say that’s complete bollocks.’

Thanks to my wedding-talk time-wasting, the interview is drawing to a close and I still have a couple of key questions left to ask: firstly, when is she happiest? ‘Work-wise, it is amazing when you’re doing a scene and you’re working with somebody that you click with and for a second, or a couple of seconds, it’s real. And then it’s like magic, it’s like a drug. Otherwise, a good book, a nice meal, a lovely girls’ evening, you know. I do like a pub – gin makes me cry though; I’m a vodka girl. And I’m shit at karaoke, but on occasion, a bit of karaoke as well. A good dance I think is very, very necessary.’

I ask her how she thinks her friends would describe her. ‘Oh fuck, I haven’t a clue. I hope I’m a laugh, I hope I’m there for them. I’m far too introspective; I’d like to be more outgoing. I’m working on that.

Constant work in progress: that’s how I’d describe myself. This bit’s quite a nice bit, so maybe I’m onto the right track. Of course, I’ve said that now and probably jinxed myself, so maybe I should touch wood.’

You’ve got to take happiness when it comes, I say.

‘You do. It’s fleeting and you have to grab it.’

But it will come back.

‘Absolutely, that’s what you learn, isn’t it? You go down, you come back up again.’

That’s the idea – relationships, life, everything.

‘All of that.’

A rollercoaster, as Ronan Keating once said so eloquently.

‘Ronan Keating was right about all of it.’

‘Anna Karenina’ is released nationwide on 7 September.

‘RARE BIRDS’

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 286

really evident it was a different world back then. If that happened today, there would be a sexual-harassment lawsuit.

TH This is going to be an important film for women, because this isn’t an isolated situation. It happens all the time in the workplace.

How do women deal with it? My answer was to just get out.

SM I’ve never been exposed to it, fortunately. You hear about the casting couch and producers trying it on with young girls, but I never experienced that. I think women watching this film will be empathetic. In the film, Hitchcock comes across as a tragic, unhappy man who hated himself and was obsessed with you, a strong woman who was not going to reciprocate or pander. It’s a fascinating story.

TH I didn’t talk about it for 20 years, not until Donald Spoto’s biography of Hitchcock came out in 1999. It was odd – everyone on set knew what was happening, but nobody talked about it. [Hitchcock’s

wife] Alma once said to me: ‘I’m sorry you have to go through this.’

SM That’s amazing.

TH I just looked at her and thought: ‘You could stop this.’ She was the power behind him.

SM Was there a heavy emotional toll from it all?

TH Actually, no, because I knew I was right. I told myself I had to get out of it and the repercussions would lead where they may. I knew he would follow through on his threat to ruin my career because he was a vengeful person.

SM I imagine if you’re a certain type of woman, there’s no decision.

I mean, with the phone-hacking scandal and Murdoch, I stood up for myself. You’re either one of those people who sit back and accept things or you make a stand and sacrifice an awful lot in doing that, but it’s something to do with self-respect.

TH You say: ‘Wait a minute, this is wrong.’

SM Plus, with me, there was an element of vengeance. If you find out that someone has been listening to your telephone messages and reporting on them – the ramifications that has on all aspects of your life – it’s not something you can [ignore]. I’m really glad I did it. I think the work of all the people involved means the media will be better. We come from this great country, yet we’re famous for our bad press, and that’s depressing. It’s kind of chicken-or-egg. Is there a desire for seeing people fall, or has that been fed by the media? It’s a hard one to figure out.

TH What is the purpose of being cruel to people? In the US, we have papers that can be pretty brutal.

SM It’s more the internet now.

TH That as well, for sure.

SM I got full admissions [from the News of the World] and got a settlement fee, which was a lot less than what they made off me over the years. That’s not what it’s about, but somebody said to me: ‘What is the cost?’ and the cost of all the attention is that in every interview you’re more of a celebrity than an actress. That perception causes damage. It’s really difficult to overcome. The media really does have an effect. I would hear back via agents that [producers] were saying: ‘She’s a bit tabloid.’ It’s hard when the persona that sells newspapers takes over and the whole job of being an actress is about convincing people that you’re somebody else.

I was lucky. I did work and I got good reviews, but that was never as interesting, in the culture that we live in, as who my boyfriend was. I’m sure there’s certain behaviour that didn’t help, but I think I was really freaking out quite publicly. It kind of perpetuated itself: the more attention, the more surveillance, the more scrutiny, the more paranoia, the more I reacted and freaked out. I just didn’t cope with it very well. Looking back, I was in my twenties and didn’t know what I was doing. But resilience has always been my saving grace. I thought: ‘There’s no way I’m going to let this infringe upon my life.’ I was quite stubborn. It feels like I can manage it a lot better now that there isn’t extraneous attention and scrutiny, and I think people genuinely don’t give a shit any more, which is nice.

TH Now you’re embarking on the most important role of your life.

SM Yes, being a mum. I was so looking forward to meeting this person inside of me and also experiencing the insignificance of everything else when the baby arrived. It’s funny, when you’re pregnant all you imagine is the pregnancy and the birth, and that’s what you’re gearing up to. Then there’s this moment when you go home from the hospital and suddenly there’s this baby and you realise that’s the rest of your life. I imagine motherhood is going to be something I really love and enjoy.

‘The Girl’ airs on BBC Two in late August.

ENTENTE CORDIALE

PHOTOGRAPH: GETTY IMAGES

An icon of radical chic for four decades, Jane Birkin has raised pulses and eyebrows in equal measure. As her incredible love affair with Serge Gainsbourg is retold for the big screen, Bazaar unites the actor and chanteuse with kindred spirit Jean Paul Gaultier to discuss fashion, film and Anglo-French relations

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Portraits by TRENT MCGINN. Styled by NATHALIE RIDDLE

GOOD DAY SUNSHINE Jane Birkin in Paris in March. Denim dungarees, about £265; wool top, about £245, both Jean Paul Gaultier. Leather sandals, £780, Hermès.

Watch; bracelet, Jane’s own.

Opposite: Birkin with Serge Gainsbourg in about 1970

LOVE, ACTUALLY Birkin and Gainsbourg on the set of the 1976 film ‘Je T’aime Moi Non Plus’.

Opposite, from left: the couple on holiday in Saint-Tropez with children Charlotte and Kate in 1977. Birkin and Gainsbourg in the 1970s

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JPG: I love it!

JB: He said: ‘Give me your agenda and I’ll

put pockets in it.’ I said: ‘Well, why don’t you make a bag instead? Something a bit bigger, and with proper handles.’ I asked if it could be something that would stay open all the time, in black. Later, M. Dumas asked if I would mind if it was named after me; I said I’d be honoured. I thought it would be a good idea if the bag came to some good, too.

Hermès agreed to financially help charities that I support, so that bag has helped the International Federation for Human Rights, and campaigning in Burma.

Bazaar: Do you both still feel like the enfants terribles you’re reputed to be?

JB: I never thought I was. When you’re in the middle of it, you’re not thinking you’re doing something shocking. If the macramé dress didn’t please me because it was too high in the front, then I put it the other way around.

JPG: Jane, what you don’t say, because you’re very modest, is that none of the phenomenon of Serge would have happened without you. Of course I knew of Gainsbourg in the early 1960s, but it was after you arrived that he started to make incredible music like ‘La Décadanse’ [Gainsbourg and Birkin’s 1971 release], which had that scandaleuse dance where he turned you around backwards. It was you as a couple that was important. And the attitude you have with fashion, the way of life you have that people want to have too, this is something a designer cannot replicate. It’s only a woman who can create this – a woman who is free.

JB: Maybe that’s got to do with being English. I remember meeting Julie Christie for a play project, and she came out of her house with her specs on her nose looking quite divine, in her pyjamas and a pair of gumboots, taking out her own rubbish. Going around in pyjamas would be surprising here, but if you did it on the King’s Road, no one would turn their head. We English have that June 2010 |

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of Brigitte Bardot. Voilà, the world’s most risqué It couple was born.

Their steamy duet of the same year, ‘Je T’aime… Moi Non Plus’, complete with overtly sexual lyrics, Birkin’s Lolita delivery and orgasmic moans, became the soundtrack to the era. Together, Birkin and Gainsbourg became prolific transgressors of sexual and cultural mores (their story is told in the fictionalised biopic Gainsbourg: Vie Héroïque, due for UK release this summer). In 1976, Gainsbourg wrote and directed an erotic film adaptation of ‘Je T’aime…’, about a bisexual love triangle among two men and an androgynous, crop-haired Birkin. The actor’s gamine beauty created a fashion archetype – tousled hair, casual, boyish – that is still seen today, from Kate Moss to Birkin’s own actor-and-model daughters Lou Doillon and Charlotte Gainsbourg. (Birkin has another daughter, photographer Kate Barry, from her first marriage, to composer John Barry.) But, more than 30 years and 53 films later, as Birkin can be seen dancing around in black lace knickers for the trailer of her latest French film, Thelma, Louise and Chantal, she still wonders what all the fuss is about.

Jean Paul Gaultier has raised a lot of eyebrows himself, since starting his career in fashion in 1970 at the atelier of Pierre Cardin and – in 1976, aged 24 – launching his own label. In 2003, when the infamous enfant terrible de la mode took the helm of ready-to-wear collections at the venerable house of Hermès, a ripple of excitement ricocheted through the fashion community. Gaultier’s clothes embody confrontational sex appeal, eclectic, global references and large doses of Frenchness. His perfume ads are masterpieces of sexual suggestiveness – implied ménages-à-trois, Breton-shirt-clad sailors and corseted femmes. In 1990, Gaultier sculpted the outrageous peach satin ‘torpedoes’ that adorned Madonna’s breasts during her Blond Ambition tour – a witty moment in fashion history that Birkin remembers fondly…

ALEXANDRA MARSHALL

‘I never thought I was an enfant terrible. When you’re in the middle of it, you’re not thinking you’re doing something shocking… What do I care if I’m dining with President Chirac, and I eat salad with my fingers?’

PHOTOGRAPHS: CORBIS

he spring sun is beginning to settle over the rooftops of the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré in Paris, casting long shadows across the top-floor patio garden, when Jane Birkin arrives, an overstuffed, sticker-laden version of her namesake Hermès bag (in chocolate brown) casually dangling from a single exposed shoulder to reveal a portion of elegant collarbone. At 63, she is as wide-eyed as ever; her hair is chopped, lending an air of nonchalant chic to her casual ensemble – indigo jeans, an eau de nil Isabel Marant sweater and lace-up espadrilles – that subtly recalls the spirit of her provocative legacy. In a bijou sitting room just inside the terrace, a spread of English tea and sumptuous patisseries awaits, along with Bazaar’s flamboyant interviewer for the day: fellow French fashion icon, ardent nonconformist and kindred spirit, 58-year-old Jean Paul Gaultier. This is the first time Birkin has seen the designer since she sat front-row at his Avengers-inspired Hermès S/S 10 show a few days earlier (he has overseen ready-towear there since 2003). Unsurprisingly mutual fans, the pair greet each other with a warm embrace before cosying up to talk eponymous handbags, Serge Gainsbourg and the inimitable je ne sais quoi of Birkin – cult actor, chanteuse, ardent campaigner and enduring purveyor of radical chic.

From the vantage point of 2010, it’s hard to understand how scandalous it was when Birkin burst into 1966’s Blowup, giving her native Britain its first taste of full-frontal nudity and making her one of the most striking faces of Sixties counterculture. Two years after her debut, the fledgling actor quit these shores for Paris, where, on the set of 1969’s Slogan, she fell into the hirsute arms of her co-star, provocative French pop star Serge Gainsbourg, the recent ex-lover

Jane Birkin: I first met you at fashion week a few years ago, but I already knew about all you did for Madonna. I remember thinking, ‘I wish he’d make me one of those bras,’ but with two tiny cones, like when you’ve nibbled right down to the end of the ice-cream.

Jean Paul Gaultier: I feel like I met you before we met, because I had seen your movie Je T’aime Moi Non Plus, and I knew all about you. You were a big part of my fashion education from the 1960s and ’70s.

The way you went around in little sandals like nothing, and wore that very open macramé dress on Gainsbourg’s arm. There are few people who would have the reflex to destroy their clothes like you did, when you would tear the collars of your T-shirts to show your neck. Brigitte Bardot had the nerve, when she asked the shoe company Repetto to make lower-cut ballerina pumps. And you did too.

JB: Well, regarding the T-shirts, I just liked to see my childrens’ necks [laughs]. Kate and Charlotte and Lou all have beautiful necks and collarbones. It’s my favourite part of the body.

JPG: I just love the way you wear your clothes. How you would pull on your sweaters to show a shoulder. To me, Jane, your way of moving, your unique attitude, was always so inspiring. And you still are like that, and it’s still fashionable – timeless. You never betrayed yourself. More than a muse, you are something like a guru.

And with the Birkin bag, you are more than a designer because it was what you needed for your way of life, that’s what shaped it. You were a real part of the creation, honestly.

JB: Well, you know how that bag came about. My problem with the Kelly bag at the time was that you couldn’t put enough stuff in it. I carried a picnic basket and an agenda, but things were always falling out. Then in 1984, I bumped into a man on a plane trip who said: ‘Why don’t you have something that holds your things?’ I said: ‘When Hermès makes an agenda with pockets in it, I’ll get one.’ So he said: ‘But I am Hermès. I am Monsieur Jean-Louis Dumas from Hermès.’

indiv idualism. So what do I care if I’m dining with President Serge. She was just worried about missing school. I loved her in Lars Chirac at the Elysée Palace, and I eat my salad with my fingers? von Trier’s Antichrist last year, too, and I thought she deserved that Best Actress prize at Cannes a million times over. Now, lately, with Bazaar: Did you really do that? all the tributes to Serge and this new film [Gainsbourg: Vie Héroïque], JB: Absolutely. I knew jolly well that it’s simply not done to cut salad, I’ve felt a bit like leaving the country. It sends you backwards to such so what else can you do but use your fingers? My father used to do it. an extent. But I’m happy for Serge. I’m glad he was able to experience But also I knew I was loved, and that makes you bolder. You take people’s adulation before he died. By then, he knew he was greatly it for granted that people will accept you. You feel frightfully at ease. loved, and for a man who loved himself so little, it was very important.

JPG: It’s true what you say. I have also been surrounded by people who loved me: my grandmother, my mother and father. My grandBazaar: Jane, you may be English, but you’ve always been a very mother let me do everything I wanted. I remember in the early Sixties, good advertisement for France. watching TV with her where we lived, in the suburbs of Paris. I was JB: They’re so much more open-minded here. When Je T’aime Moi nine, I think, and I saw a report on the Folies Bergère. So I sketched Non Plus came out in England, they’d only show it in the redone of the dancers during class, with fishnets and sequins. My light district. Here, it was at the cinema on the Champs-Elysées, teacher saw it, and to punish me she made with a defence from the French Ministry of me tour all the other classrooms. When the Culture, and François Truffaut was telling other boys saw me they smiled and laughed, people: ‘Don’t go see my film, see Serge’s.’ I and suddenly I wasn’t rejected at school was lucky in Paris that I was fairly pretty anymore. My sketches became my passport. and smiled a lot. But they love foreigners here. I mean, on the Champs-Elysées JB: L’enfant terrible! you can see any film from any country.

JPG: But am I really an enfant terrible? I There’s no other country whose most-loved would say I have the attitude of a child in actresses have been foreign, from Romy my work. But terrible, I don’t know. Terrible Schneider to Claudia Cardinale to my good for whom? What I express in my clothes self, and after that Charlotte Rampling and might shock some, but I’m not trying to Kristin Scott Thomas. provoke; I’m trying to reflect what people around me are doing. And now? I’m workJPG: But I feel like we Parisians are not so ing with Hermès, so come on! pleasant. Our mentality is very negative. We always say ‘no’ first. Or ‘it’s not bad’. Never JB: Yes, but you’ve mixed up all different ‘I liked it’. I was from the suburbs of Paris. kinds of people in your work – old, young, Serge Gainsbourg with daughter Charlotte on the set For me, Paris always meant fashion, and my thin, heavy. There were at least five differof the video for their song dream was to make fashion, so this was ent cultural references in your last show.

‘Lemon Incest’ (1985) where I came. But you know what has really JPG: Honestly, my way of creating and inspired me, for at least 20 years in fashion? provoking has always come very naturally.

I love London. Going there is like taking But in this moment, we’re very politically vitamin pills or drinking a huge orange correct and a lot of things are shocking. I juice at breakfast. I love the gardens, the think it’s regressive. In the Seventies, things rock ’n’ roll, all the extremes, and people were much different, like with Je T’aime Moi really speaking with their clothes. London Non Plus. It was a movie that was very ahead for me is where you can do what you like. of its time. To show two homosex uals like real men was very advanced. It made a big, JB: Well, I’ve actually gotten very American, big scandal. But today, maybe it wouldn’t thanks to darling Lou, who moved to New have even come out.

York for a time. They have a completely different attitude, very open. Now I think JB: Yes, these days you’d be knocked there’s not a second to be lost saying you sideways for so much of what Serge did. love people. It pleased me so much when I He certainly wouldn’t have been able to read your biography [Jean Paul Gaultier by Colin McDowell] to see do ‘Lemon Incest’ [the duet 13-year-old Charlotte sang with how much you loved your grandmother. It made me think: ‘Ah, Gainsbourg, the video for which featured father and daughter there will be someone for us.’ I sort of kidnap my grandchildren out lounging on a bed]. But I thought that project was a wonderful idea. to my house in Brittany. You try to recreate what was fun for you First, the play on words, between zeste de citron, which means ‘lemon with your grandchildren. For me, that was having a wild childhood, zest’, and incest de citron, ‘lemon incest’. But also, the only way Serge on holidays on the Isle of Wight with my brother and sister. We’d could really show his daughter he loved her, and take her in his go off on our bicycles and not come home until night fell. arms, was if he did it in a film like Charlotte For Ever [Gainsbourg’s 1986 film starring his daughter], or for the video of ‘Lemon Incest’.

JPG: Your positivity is always amazing.

He was such a shy man, he never would have dared otherwise.

JB: Well, I believe in human beings. Nowadays people get off their arses and help others. You can find people willing to die for Bazaar: Was it strange to be Charlotte’s mother then, when people their ideals. That would be a wonderful way to die. How can you were so scandalised by the record? not believe in humanity when you see that?

JB: At the time, people saw Charlotte didn’t like giving interviews on television about it, so some felt uneasy. But certainly not me.

I rather pushed her into doing Charlotte For Ever because she was To see the best of Jane Birkin’s influential style over already doing films, and it was a unique opportunity to do one with the past four decades, visit harpersbazaar.co.uk 134 |

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PHOTOGRAPH: CORBIS

‘These days you’d be knocked sideways for so much of what Serge did.

He certainly wouldn’t have been able to do ‘Lemon Incest’ [with daughter Charlotte]. But I thought the project was wonderful’

GARDEN PARTY Birkin and Jean Paul Gaultier photographed in Paris in March. Jane wears wool jumper, £860; wool trousers, £1,400; leather sandals, £780; felt hat, £840; lacquer bracelets, £420 each; stainless steel watch with leather strap, £1,680, all Hermès. Jean Paul wears his own clothes.

See Stockists for details.

Jane’s hair and make-up

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ominic Cooper is half-naked in the middle of a forest. He is standing on a tree stump with the workedout abs of a Greek god. His denim jeans are skin-tight, his grey boots casually roughed up. A stylist hands him a wet, muddied white T-shirt, which clings to his torso, emphasising each and every muscle. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s as though he has just emerged from a lake â&#x20AC;&#x201C; despite his 32 years, a vision of chiselled youth.

It is a fantasy world into which Cooper, now on the cusp of going global with roles in some of Hollywoodâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s most hotly anticipated films, slips effortlessly.

He first caught our attention in Alan Bennettâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s The History Boys, playing the cocky and seductive Dakin who, with his blazer collar flipped, knows he only has to smile mischievously at a woman (or man) to elicit their attention. Since then, Cooper has raced through a succession of smouldering neâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;er-do-well roles, from Keira Knightleyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s adulterous lover in The Duchess, to the six-packed groom Sky in Mamma Mia! and the tawdry London charmer Danny in An Education. But none can quite compare to his latest, and surely sexiest, role in Stephen Frearsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; terrific new film Tamara Drewe. Adapted from Posy Simmondsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; graphic novel, which is itself inspired by Thomas Hardyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Far from the Madding Crowd, the movie tells the story of a newspaper columnist who returns to her home village of Ewedown, having been transformed, after a recent nose job, into an outrageous flirt. The film is a triumph, packed with acerbic one-liners and terrifyingly accurate observations on relationships. At its sexy heart is Cooper as narcissistic rock-star drummer Ben Sergeant. With his black eye make-up and his buff, tattooed body, Ben seduces Tamara (Gemma Arterton at her most gorgeous) simply by smiling at her. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;I had to be careful not to make Ben into a caricature,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; says Cooper, with his (now clean, dry) casual white T-shirt unbuttoned and falling off his shoulder to reveal a bicep of iron. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;The character couldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t be too ridiculous. I was in a band called Dagmar at school â&#x20AC;&#x201C; I was the useless singer â&#x20AC;&#x201C; and I loved playing an utterly self-absorbed rock star. It got something out of my system.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; Cooperâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s masterstroke is in allowing Ben to be utterly self-involved and petulant, yet devastatingly attractive. You see how he managed it when you meet him. He may not be good-looking in an obvious way â&#x20AC;&#x201C; those puckish features, that sly expression â&#x20AC;&#x201C; but he has a cracking smile that verges on the devilish. He is tall (much taller in the flesh than you expect), lean and physically imposing. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s not above getting slathered with oil for the cover of [gay magazine] Attitude,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; notes Rosamund Pike, his on-screen girlfriend in An Education, â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;but strangely Dominic is the only straight guy I know who can pull that off and still retain his sex appeal with the girls.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; His most satisfying performances have traded on both his looks and talent. The brief scene in An Education in which he dances in a nightclub with Carey Mulligan is one of the most darkly

compelling, even predatory, scenes in the film. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;All I know is that I wanted the scene to be playful,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; Cooper says, shrugging.

You sense that for all his currency as a stud, Cooper is nervous about being seen as nothing more. When I ask him what he sees in the mirror, he jokes evasively: â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;An ageing potato that wonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t ever play the good-looking lead.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; It canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have helped that Cooper â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;felt obligatedâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; to get a personal trainer for Mamma Mia! â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Towards the beginning of filming I got a bit nervous, because these hunky dancers were constantly glistening themselves in tanning oil and looking extraordinarily muscular.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; Coyly, he admits he still works out. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;I would never have dreamt of seeing a personal trainer. But actually it can be fun.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; Does it bother him that the majority of the public now knows him only for his washboard stomach? â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;I loved Mamma Mia! â&#x20AC;&#x2122; he says. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m very proud of it, but itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s funny being known for something like that when thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s other work that youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve put so much into.â&#x20AC;&#x2122;

P

ooper says that if he hadnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t gone into acting he might just have drifted through life. Brought up in Greenwich by his mother, a nursery-school teacher (his parents separated when he was young), he went to a tough comprehensive school in south-east London, where a show of confidence was essential and acting became a lifeline. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;I was lost without it,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; he says. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;I wouldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have known what I was doing. I was so un-academic and so badly behaved. I didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t take anything seriously. We did a production of Cabaret where I was the Emcee, with white make-up and rouged lips. It was unbelievable. I got so much from it. And the reaction it got from other kids who didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t get a chance to see much theatre, you could see it had an effect. I remember thinking, â&#x20AC;&#x153;If you can do this for a living, this is it.â&#x20AC;&#x2122;â&#x20AC;?

Having worked since the age of 15 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; in a cafĂŠ, as a runner â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Cooper paid his own way through the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art; he cites John Hughes films like Planes, Trains & Automobiles and Ferris Buellerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Day Off as his most enduring points of inspiration while training. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;The comedy aspect of those performances â&#x20AC;&#x201C; that was the magic for me.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; After graduating, he did a stint at the National Theatre, before landing his role in The History Boys. It was on that production that he befriended James Corden, who played the overweight class clown. Cooper has lived with Corden, who is also 32, for years. They still share a house, despite the fact that Cooper has bought a flat down the road and both men are in long-term relationships: Corden with a television producer, and Cooper with Amanda Seyfried, the former child model and actor, whom he met on the set of Mamma Mia!, and who is now one of the hottest young stars in Hollywood. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;James and I probably should go our separate ways, but we do have a nice time together,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; says Cooper, recalling a domestic set-up of â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;chaos and council regulators coming to remove us, bailiff orders and drum kits being played at five in the morningâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;. Like Cordenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s, Cooperâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s reputation for having a good time is no secret. Rosamund Pike admits: â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;I look to Dominic for a wild night out. He and I closed down the Met Ball in 2008. Last time we went out in London, we woke up in a boat on the Thames.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; CONTINUED ON PAGE 350

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SUPER COOPER Dominic Cooper wears cotton T-shirt, ÂŁ45, Hugo Boss. Bracelets; 1950s vintage Rolex watch, both his own.

Previous pages, left: wool pea coat, ÂŁ500, Michael Bastian for Gant. Cotton T-shirt, ÂŁ135, John Varvatos. Denim jeans, ÂŁ1,650, Dior Homme. Leather boots, ÂŁ165, All Saints. Previous pages, right: Hugo Boss T-shirt, as before. See Stockists for details. Grooming by Cheryl Corea at Mandy Coakley, using Dior Homme Dermo

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hen Jenson Button describes what it feels like to drive at 220 miles an hour, his eyes flutter shut and his breathing quickens. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;The speed is something you get used to, but never the cornering,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; says the Formula 1 champion. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;The g-force pushes you into the seat and you canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t see or hear the crowd for the roar of the engines â&#x20AC;&#x201C; but the smell,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; he smiles, â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;of the brake rubberâ&#x20AC;Ś thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s nothing like it. There you are, trying to control an 800-horsepower beast that shouldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t be tamed, and you are at the absolute limit of what your body can do.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; There is no doubt that the 30-year-old in front of me is at the peak, though not the limit, of his abilities. Reminiscent of a young Steve McQueen, Button languishes in an armchair; his slim six-foot frame, containing the taut body of an athlete, is swamped in a hooded top of the softest terry-cotton, and his trademark almost-beard is as artfully unpruned as ever.

The Frome-born son of a onetime rally driver is the sporting hero of novels, a man with the winnerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s sheen that eludes some of our most successful sportsmen. In his gentlemanly demeanour and relaxed presentation is the sophistication and stylish refinement so notably absent from todayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s football stars.

From the start, when he joined Formula 1 in 2000, Button possessed a James Huntlike gilded allure: a sportsman with the physical attributes of David Beckham and the style credentials to sit front-row at Dolce & Gabbana (his team is now sponsored by Hugo Boss and TAG Heuer). But beneath his model exterior lay a skill for intelligent driving and an iron will to succeed; after 10 years plagued by car problems in Formula 1, the man dismissed as a playboy (who had only ever won a single Formula 1 race), stole the world title from rival British driver Lewis Hamilton. And now â&#x20AC;&#x201C; as part of the prestigious, all-British McLaren team, which he joined in November, alongside Hamilton â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Button will be vying with his teammate to claim this yearâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s title; and so far, he is still on a winning streak. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Jensonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s etiquette on the track is beyond reproach. Thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s not many of that calibre,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; says three-time world champion Jackie Stewart. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;There are ways of winning without using questionable tactics on the track, and Jenson has a good ethical soul. As a driver, heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s smooth and precise; heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s still, and he doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t bully or force the steering wheel. Jenson gently coaxes the car. Heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s fluid with it.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s true that there is a certain purity about Button that renders him unique in the sullied sporting world. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Apart from being one of the most handsome, charming and approachable of young men,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; says close friend and Formula 1 enthusiast Yasmin Le Bon, â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Jenson is special in that he doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t need huge drama or ego.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; And yet ego, if you were to heed the digs made by his peers during his early years, might easily have become a problem. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;I probably didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t help the situation by behaving the way I did,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; he says now of his lifestyle in his early years in Formula 1. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;When I was still very young and first moved to Monaco, I went out and bought a 20-metre Princess boat, and it was a bit in-your-face. I went through a period

of wanting a big house and fast cars and I think I did take my eye off the ball. All that makes you a playboy in peopleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s mindsâ&#x20AC;Śâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Did he relish proving people wrong when he crossed the finishing line in Brazil last year, clinching the world title? â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Actually, I didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t think about anyone except myself then. It made me smile afterwards to think of what certain people had said in the past, but thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s not the reason I race. I race to win because, to me, losing is failing.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; But, despite his wins, the â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;playboyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; label has always put Buttonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s relationships â&#x20AC;&#x201C; including his last, with British beauty Florence Brudenell-Bruce â&#x20AC;&#x201C; under press scrutiny. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;But Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve only ever had three proper girlfriends,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; he says, shrugging. Indeed, he has been with his current girlfriend, 25-year-old Jessica Michibata, a sylphlike half-Japanese, half-Argentine model, for over a year and a half now. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;It was difficult not to think â&#x20AC;&#x153;wowâ&#x20AC;? when I first saw her, but she spoke perfect English too, which I thought was great, and she understood my sense of humour.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; Any girlfriend of his, he insists, needs not only to enjoy â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;the glamorous side of Formula 1â&#x20AC;&#x2122;, but also to understand the importance of the sport to him, and his need to focus. Were rumours that Michibata was banned from crucial races last year true? â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;I like having her there sometimes, but I think itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s important to have your space. When she does come, sheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s never in my face, but maybe itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s not such a bad thing that she lives in Japan at the moment.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; Such is Buttonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s commitment that he enforced a sex ban in his relationship during the 2009 Championship, or so the whispers on the F1 circuit go. Jenson leans teasingly forward when I ask him to comment: â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;I couldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t possibly say.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; Which means itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s true. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Does it?â&#x20AC;&#x2122; He laughs, enjoying himself. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Look, all Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll say is that Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m a very focused person when Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m racing, because you have to be.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; Now in his fourth decade, does Button feel the lure of settling down and starting a family? â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Well,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; (he fidgets in his seat) â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;I always go into a relationship hoping the girl may be the one, but Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m certainly not in a rush. When Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m old enough, I definitely want kids. Then I can bore them to death telling them what Daddy achieved when he was a race-car driver.â&#x20AC;&#x2122;

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KING OF SPEED Jenson Button wears leather and shearling jacket, ÂŁ1,699, Boss Selection. Cotton T-shirt, ÂŁ25, Boss Black. Previous pages: in a Mercedes-Benz Pagoda.

Leather jacket; cotton Hugo Boss T-shirt; jeans, all his own. Steel watch with alligator strap, ÂŁ4,500, TAG Heuer www.harpersbazaar.co.uk

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he racing bug was something Button inherited from his father, who bought him a go-kart when he was eight, and now lives near the world championâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s seaview apartment in Monaco (he divorced Jensonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s mother when his son was a toddler). As the youngest brother of three sisters, it was, perhaps, predictable that Button should choose to go into a super-macho sport such as this. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;They used to dress me up as a girl, and put make-up on me,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; he says, colouring a little beneath his Monaco tan. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;But I probably shouldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t tell anybody that, should I?â&#x20AC;&#x2122; Although he laughingly concedes that the pampering and early cross-dressing may have played a part in his desire to succeed in the sportâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s testosterone-fuelled world, it was the competition, he claims, that drove him from the age of nine to become a teenage motor-racing prodigy. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;As a schoolboy, I used to love finishing first, looking down at the other kids and seeing them unhappy.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; It has been 21 years since Button began his racing career, and 10 since he entered Formula 1 with the hope of one day winning the championship. But when Honda pulled out of F1 a year and a half

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GEAR CHANGE Cotton T-shirt, ÂŁ25, Boss Black.

Wool knit jumper, ÂŁ139, Hugo.

Linen trousers, Jensonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s own. See Stockists for details. Grooming

by Cheryl Corea at Mandy Coakley, using Kiehlâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s www.harpersbazaar.co.uk

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ago, and Jenson was left without a job, it seemed for a moment that his dream might never be realised. But Button did not quit. Instead, he insisted on a dramatic pay cut of ÂŁ5 million, to help fund a buyout of Honda management and put together a new team under the name of Brawn GP; ironically, after 10 years of being the almost man of F1, Button finally got his winning car from this team. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;After many years of competing in F1 cars that were decidedly off the pace, he has proven his great skills, dedication and perseverance by becoming the F1 champion,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; says Goodwood owner Charles March. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;He deserves his place in history as a motor-racing great.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; Despite his glory in recent years, Button is also reflective about his Formula 1 past. The pressure on sportsmen nowadays to live a blemish-free existence is unrealistic, he says, given the age at which so many start. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;If you do all your learning in public, youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re going to make mistakes, and those are often blown out of proportion.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; Buttonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s routine doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t leave much time for play. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Racing takes over my life. I work out a lot, do triathlons and cycle in the hills outside Monaco.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; With every extra ounce slowing him down, he is disciplined about his diet. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;If I have a dessert or a drink, I make sure I deserve it.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; Which may explain why race-car drivers and models are so compatible, I suggest. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Oh, no. Jessica eats like a piglet.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; hen you consider the risks Formula 1 drivers run every time they race, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s not surprising that they donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t often pause to ponder the possibilities. Button is unsure how to answer when I ask whether that â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;dance with deathâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; is the biggest thrill of all. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;When you just save the car from the barrier,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; he says eventually, â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;you do get this tingly feeling that goes all the way up your spine. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s not so much that youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve cheated death as that youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve got away with it.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; Only once, in 2003, during a Monaco Grand Prix practice, did he not get away with it. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;I lost control coming out of the tunnel, pulling 33 Gs, and when I hit the wall it felt like my flesh was being ripped off my bones.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; He came to in an ambulance, with â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;people cutting off my suit and sticking needles in my arms. When I asked the nurse how I was doing, she just said, â&#x20AC;&#x153;I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t knowâ&#x20AC;?â&#x20AC;&#x2122;. The next question Button asked, once in hospital, was when he would be allowed back out to practise. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;They couldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t believe it,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; he says with a laugh. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;But in a way it was a good experience to have, because it showed me how much both the human body and a car are capable of taking.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; Not that the drivers escape completely unscathed. Button says he has â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;lumps and bumpsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; all over his body from where seat rubbing has damaged bones, â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;which grow back in a strange wayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;. Despite his lithe frame, his neck is intensely muscular. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m pretty happy with myself,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; he adds. Would he ever front an underwear campaign, as David Beckham did for Armani? â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;God, yeah. Although youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll never get a picture of me in underpants being serious â&#x20AC;&#x201C; I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t think I could do that. I find that â&#x20AC;&#x153;true gritâ&#x20AC;? stuff hard, and I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t think Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d ever do a naked ad either, which I have been asked to do.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; And with that Button laughs, ready to rise from his seat; he has more pressing matters at hand. This season he faces a new challenge, driving alongside his teammate and rival Hamilton with McLaren â&#x20AC;&#x201C; a team that evokes greatness on an Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost scale. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;I wonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t be racing when Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m 40. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s too stressful, so Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d say I have four more years in me,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; he says. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;My aim is to win again with McLaren, but even if my career stopped now, Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d die a happy man.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; He pauses. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a fantastic feeling, but strange, too, because once youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve achieved your ultimate dream, what happens then?â&#x20AC;&#x2122; July 2010 |

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Julianne Moore’s desire to tackle the most demanding roles has given her an acting CV of wildly diverse characters; at 49, she has yet to be typecast. With a typically potent performance about to hit cinemas, she chats to GLENN O’BRIEN about working with Tom Ford, and why she’ll always choose the complex and extreme over a Hollywood happy ending Photographs by PAOLA KUDACKI. Styled by SOPHIA NEOPHITOU-APOSTOLOU

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ALWAYS WANTING MOORE

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ulianne Moore’s redheadedness is what draws my attention every time I see her around Manhattan – and one does see her around Manhattan, especially downtown.

I’ve seen her at art-world events and on the street. I saw her once at the Apple Store. I don’t notice her because she looks like a famous movie star; I notice her because she’s the beautiful redhead, kids in tow, acting normal… and because I notice red hair – I can’t help it.

When we meet for brunch at one of her favourite bistros, Cafe Cluny in the West Village, the first thing that draws my attention is, again, her red hair. It is long and natural and baroquely sculptural. The second thing is that she doesn’t look anywhere near 49, though neither artifice nor intervention appears to be responsible for her youthful appearance. She’s slim and has beautiful bones, and though only 5’3”, she seems pretty tall when you’re sitting down and she’s standing up. So you stand up. She’s tall on film. And she’s so beautiful, you don’t even notice what she’s wearing.

‘The camera loves her,’ declares Tom Ford, who cast her opposite Colin Firth in his forthcoming (and remarkable) directorial debut A Single Man, based on the 1964 novel by Christopher Isherwood. Moore plays Charlotte (or Charley), a fantastic Englishwoman and fortysomething widow stranded in Los Angeles in 1962 who is also the best friend – and former lover – of George (Firth), a reconfirmed bachelor grieving for his male lover of 16 years who has recently died in an accident. It’s such a perfect character – an ageing beauty struggling to retain her verve and gaiety with the bleak prospects of being single and 50 just as the Sixties are about to swing. Moore is extraordinary.

‘She absolutely inhabited the character,’ says Ford, who first met Moore fitting her for the 1998 Academy Awards. Moore remembers the meeting with great fondness. ‘I went to a fitting at the Beverly Hills Hotel, and I brought my son Cal, who was a few months old,’ she says. ‘Tom is utterly charming and so handsome. I was completely swept off my feet. He was so sweet to my baby and me. And I wasn’t feeling all that attractive – I’d just had a child and my boobs were all big… anyway, he made a dress for me, which I subsequently did not wear because it felt too revealing at the time, but he was really great about it and told me not to worry.’ (Ford later dressed her for the 2003 Academy Awards in ‘this great green dress’ of silk

georgette and ruffles that secured her status as his flame-haired muse while at Yves Saint Laurent.) After Ford retired from womenswear in 2004 with talk of making movies, Moore ran into him at the Metropolitan Museum Costume Institute Gala with his partner Richard Buckley. Moore recalls asking: ‘“What’s going on with your movie?” They both lit up, and Tom said, “Funny you should ask.”’ Funny because Ford had written the part of Charley with Moore in mind. Ford sent her the script, and Moore said yes right away: ‘I loved the character and what Tom had to say about it.’

In conceiving the film, Ford was incredibly specific about what he wanted, particularly about Charley’s look. ‘She’s based on Tom’s grandmother,’ Moore reveals. ‘In the book, she’s kind of butchlooking. A drab haircut and hairy legs. Tom was insistent that my character be a blonde – that was a wig – and he had a whole thing with that elaborate eye make-up. Tom’s grandmother, whom he idolised, was very glamorous, and my character is someone who would spend all day doing her make-up. The dress I wore was from a vintage shop in Santa Fe [New Mexico], which is where his grandmother was from. I loved that the character is a sort of loving homage to someone he really cared about. It’s nice to have that amount of care and detail lavished on a character.

‘What I also love,’ she goes on, ‘is the warmth of the relationship between Charley and George; the longevity and love and dependability there. Tom loves women. He wants you to look as beautiful as possible and be as desirable as possible. And George is a character who’s like Tom, who can appreciate a woman, her beauty and her desirability, although he might not want it romantically.

I liked that complexity.’

Firth, who admits to having wanted to work with Moore for years, remarks of her methods that ‘in acting, if you are relaxed and the person opposite you is completely convincing, you get a lot of your performance for nothing’. He adds: ‘It was a bit hard to stay gay when she tried to kiss me, though.’ Off-camera, the pair quickly hit it off. Firth recalls: ‘Julianne and I had three intensive night-shoots together in the middle of – for me – a five-week shoot. They were the highlight. We didn’t manage to shut up for a minute. To be honest, the actual business of doing a take was a bit of an interruption.’

‘What a great guy,’ Moore raves, when I ask her about her very English co-star. ‘Colin is so charming and easy and funny and engaging, and incredibly self-deprecating and normal and terrific.

And he looks amazing. So dashing.’

Ford remembers that ‘she would be talking away with Colin until we called “action”, and just immediately go into her British accent and become Charley. She did it so smoothly that it seemed effortless. When I looked at her through the lens, it was startling: she was actually luminous, and I instantly understood what star quality really was’.

Colin Firth remarks of Moore’s methods that ‘in acting, if you are relaxed and the person opposite you is completely convincing, you get a lot of your performance for nothıng. It was a bit hard to stay gay when she tried to kıss me, though’

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SIREN CALL: RAMP UP THE GLAMOUR OF SLEEK DRESSING WITH SEXY AVANT-GARDE CUTS This page: silk and tulle jacket, £776, Antonio Berardi.

Previous pages: black crepe gown with harness detail, £2,720, Gucci.

White gold and diamond earrings (throughout), from £2,350, Shaun Leane.

Ring (throughout), her own

‘When I looked at her through the lens, it was startling: she was actually luminous, and I instantly understood what star quality really was’

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DOUBLE TAKE: A SHOCK OF RED HAIR AND A DASH OF ATTITUDE CARRY OFF YVES SAINT LAURENT’S HAUTE-CHIC NUMBER WITH APLOMB This page and opposite: crepe bustier, £635; matching skirt, £875, both Yves Saint Laurent. Silver charm necklace (throughout), £390, Shaun Leane www.harpersbazaar.co.uk

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TOM FORD

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Star quality, certainly, but Moore is also a genuine actor. She’s not herself in every film. Firth identifies her great talent for being ‘frivolous, tragic, silly, sexy, mysterious or approachable with equal commitment’. She is no blank canvas, but she could be described as the sort French playwright and director Antonin Artaud was referring to when he said that ‘an actor is an athlete of the heart’.

During her 20-year film career, Moore has played a coke-snorting porn star (Amber Waves in Boogie Nights), a fragile omniphobic (Carol White in Safe) and a super-brazen artiste (Maude in The Big Lebowski ); she’s escaped dinosaurs, aliens, Pablo Picasso, Hannibal Lecter and Norman Bates. She has been involved in many failing marriages and numerous promising affairs, and been murdered by her son, all the while resisting typecasting – except that she’s (almost) always a redhead, often with freckles. (Interestingly, she went blonde as Charley and also, by her own insistence, to play Cathy Whitaker in Todd Haynes’ Far From Heaven. ‘The iconic American heroine was a blonde,’ she said at the time, ‘and I wanted the audience to reference that Lana Turner blonde.’)

Of course, A Single Man’s Charley is just the latest of several Englishwomen Moore has played for stage and screen, most memorably the scheming Mrs Cheveley in An Ideal Husband and the adulterous Sarah Miles in The End of the Affair. Before I leave to meet her, my wife asks me what I might ask her. ‘Maybe why she plays these Englishwomen,’ I say. ‘Well that’s a dumb question,’ my wife replies. ‘It’s because she has red hair.’ ‘Shouldn’t that mean she plays a lot of Irish and Scots?’ ‘No,’ says my wife, ‘there aren’t any good Irish or Scots parts.’ Moore laughs. ‘Your wife is probably right. I do think red hair has something to do with it.’

Moore is actually of Scottish, not English, descent. ‘My mother is from Scotland,’ she tells me. ‘She came to the United States when she was 10, and went to high school in New Jersey with my father, who is an American. I think I look very much like my mother. I just lost her six months ago. It was a pretty painful thing.

She was only 68, and it was very unexpected.

It was shocking. I thought I’d be 68 when she died, not that she would be 68. It’s been dreadful. She died of septic shock. She hadn’t been in the hospital or anything; she just felt sick and thought she had a sinus infection, so she stayed at home in bed and she was feeling better and went back to work and collapsed. She went to the hospital, they stabilised her and the next morning she died of an embolism. I can only talk about it like it was an accident, like a car accident or a building falling on someone. It was terrible… but I think that’s where my “UK” comes from.’

Talking about her mother, she tears up slightly. Nothing rolls down her cheek, but I see the moisture in her eyes and I feel a little guilty; a little intrusive. But she moves on. Maybe that’s one of the things that make a great actor – a heightened sensitivity and emotions close to the surface, but a trouper mentality.

Ford calls her ‘fearless’ as an actor. David Hare, who wrote the screenplay for The Hours, points to her unique ‘emotional expressiveness’. He says: ‘She likes parts that are demanding or extreme; women who are in terrible trouble. That’s what drew her to The Hours. She plays a woman who leaves her family and walks out when her son is very young. In Hollywood, that is

not sympathetic, not something actresses are queuing up to play.’

That willingness to tackle challenging, even dangerous, roles informs another upcoming part, in Canadian director Atom Egoyan’s Chloe, out in March. It’s a movie about middle-aged marriage. Moore explains: ‘My character thinks her husband [Liam Neeson] is having affairs, so she hires a young prostitute [Amanda Seyfried] to set him up. It’s her way of finding out what her husband is doing and what he wants, and she keeps pushing the girl further and further and the girl keeps reporting back to her. It’s really about what happens in a long-term relationship, the distance that happens in a long-term relationship. So many movies are, “Hey, I want to get married. I want to get married! Hey, look, I got married!” When in fact, for most of us, you get married and it’s a really long and complicated period in your life. Leading up to it becomes incidental after a while, but that’s the part that is consistently dramatised.’

I

n real life, Moore’s marriage, her second, is an undramatic, relatively unpublicised and by all accounts successful union with writer-director Bart Freundlich, who is 10 years her junior, and whom she met in 1996 on the set of his directorial debut The Myth of Fingerprints. They have two children: Caleb, 12, and Liv, seven.

‘When you meet her as a person,’ says Hare, ‘she’s very sweet, very sympathetic, very domestic, she loves her family, she can talk for hours about the best sofa to buy. When you need to know where to buy an egg timer, call up Julianne.’ Not perhaps what you expect from an actress best known for turning in such potent, simmering, highly wrought performances.

‘In person she is wildly, wildly funny,’ says Egoyan. ‘I think she’s aware of the type of roles she usually performs, and she pokes fun at herself from that point of view.’ Playing to this wildly funny side, she has just started filming a guest-starring role in Comedy Central series 30 Rock, with Tina Fey and Alec Baldwin. It takes her back to her roots, in a sense, in that she laboured on TV (on soap opera As The World Turns) through the early years of her career. ‘I play someone who went to high school with Alec Baldwin and finds him on Facebook. But I just started, and I really don’t know where it’s going. I have a little arc. It’s not permanent.

But they are so funny, and the bar is set so high in terms of comedy. I don’t really watch television, but I buy it and download it.’

It will be interesting to see how Moore’s starriness translates back to the small screen, and small-screen comedy at that.

After brunch, we go for a walk through the Village. It’s one of those perfect bright New York days. Looking around the changeless neighbourhood, it strikes me that if you ignored the cars and the store windows, it could still be 1962, the year her character from A Single Man inhabits. We talk easily about kids and schools and, passing some closed shops, the ailing economy, before, saying goodbye, I turn east and she walks south. Crossing a street, I look back and see her, a few blocks away now, entirely unnoticed by passers-by, her red hair momentarily catching the sun.

‘A Single Man’ is out on 12 February. ‘Chloe’ is out on 5 March.

Tom Ford calls her ‘fearless’.

David Hare points to her ‘unique emotional expressıveness. She likes parts that are extreme; women who are in terrible trouble. In Hollywood, that is not sympathetic, not something actresses are queuing up to play’

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VINTAGE-INSPIRED CORSETRY AND AN ULTRA-MODERN SILHOUETTE CHANNEL A SILVER-SCREEN VIXEN Tulle and crystal dress, from a selection, Antonio Berardi. Mesh bra, £10, American Apparel

She could be described as the sort Antonin Artaud was referring to when he said that ‘an actor is an athlete of the heart’

NEW-SEASON NUDE AND COUTURE CUTS DELIVER A FLAWLESS PERFORMANCE This page: net dress, £900, RM by Roland Mouret.

Opposite: velvet jacket; velvet trousers, both from a selection, Givenchy Haute Couture by Riccardo Tisci. See Stockists for details. Hair by Serge Normant at Serge Normant at John Frieda Salon.

Make-up by Gucci Westman for Revlon. Manicure

by Alicia Torello at Defacto, using Chanel

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n grappling with Vanessa Redgraveâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s considerable talent as an actress, Christopher Hitchens once wrote: â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;She has the uncanny ability to register, and to transmit, the idea of pain and suffering. What we have here, it seems, is someone with at least one less skin than the rest of us â&#x20AC;&#x201C; someone whose exposed nerves twitch and jangle at the lightest brush with reality.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; To see the truth of that, look to her Oscar-winning title role in Julia, or her Mrs Wilcox in Howards End, or her Briony Tallis in Atonement. Or consider her extraordinary theatrical might exemplified by the 74-yearoldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s most recent stage performance in Joan Didionâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s play The Year of Magical Thinking, about a woman grieving for her late husband and daughter, in which she was hailed as â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;heartbreakingâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; and â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;sublimeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;.

Offstage too â&#x20AC;&#x201C; and never more so than now â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Redgrave provokes deep feeling. In her politics sheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s been as controversial as sheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s been heartfelt, since she lay down in Trafalgar Square in 1961 as part of a CND demonstration and was hauled off by police. Having stood for parliament (twice) as a member of the Workers Revolutionary Party, been an outspoken supporter of the PLO (to the detriment of her acting career) and backed initiatives for Unicef and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, which aids Palestinian refugees in Gaza and southern Israel, she also campaigns for the rights of British detainees in GuantĂĄnamo.

Meeting her, you are struck by how, as both actor and activist, she radiates integrity and dignity. She is also warm and friendly, despite clearly still aching with grief after the death of her daughter Natasha last year from a skiing-related head injury. Today, at least, she is upbeat and excited, because at Bazaarâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s behest she is to meet a very special woman. Indeed, Redgrave jumped at the chance to be introduced to someone she admires tremendously, a woman who, in turn, has flown in from the Middle East just to spend a few hours in Redgraveâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s company.

That woman is Zainab Salbi, the 40-year-old founder of New Yorkbased organisation Women for Women International, which supports female survivors of war in countries including Bosnia, Rwanda, Sudan, Iraq and Afghanistan. Such is the renown of her work in the US that she has won the support of Bill Clinton and Oprah Winfrey, among others.

This spring sees the public launch, on 8 March, of Women for Women International in the UK, which Bazaar is supporting (see page 157).

Apart from Salbiâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s extraordinary achievements as a campaigner, she also possesses a compelling personal story. She was born and raised in Iraq, but her life changed when her father was chosen to be Saddam

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helping women in Bosnia â&#x20AC;&#x201C; then Rwanda, Kosovo, Congo, Afghanistan. One of the last countries we expanded to was Iraq. It took me coming full circle to realise what my mother had done for me.

VR Is she still alive?

ZS She died 10 years ago. She had Lou Gehrigâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s disease. For nine years I hadnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t seen her or my family. I was in America and they were in Iraq.

My mum got sick and came to America for treatments, and we realised she was dying. That last year with her put everything into perspective.

VR Thank God she was with you.

ZS The process of her death was the best gift my mother could give me. The honest conversations we hadâ&#x20AC;Ś VR How wonderful. You could talk to each other.

ZS She couldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t speak and her only means of communication was writing. I asked her about my past, about why she had sent me away, and she wrote that she was afraid Saddam would hurt me. She wrote down her own story too, her life in Iraq. Going through that whole process with her changed me to the core. I learnt, through my first marriage to an abusive husband, through the war and my motherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s death, that all misfortune leads to fortune, in different ways. Whether itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s to wisdom or sometimes to peace. Those misfortunes have contributed to what I am, which I am grateful for.

How do you deal with the misfortunes in your life? And the losses?

VR Well, there have been many. Some of them Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m still dealing with. Last year my eldest daughter died. And that changed my world, because it isnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t usual that the mother survives and the daughter dies, except in horrible situations like war or Gaza.

I still find it very difficult, of course. I found it difficult when my mother died [in 2003], but I knew she had to.

I was grief-stricken and missed her desperately, because she lived with me for the last few years of her life. But you accept that â&#x20AC;&#x201C; even if you rebel spiritually because you canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t bear your mother to have gone. Nevertheless, you know this has to happen, with old age. But when your daughter dies, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s so unacceptable, particularly when itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s not expected in any shape or form. Actually, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s pretty terrible if it is expected.

ZS All I can tell you is that after my mother died, writing my book, which tells my motherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s story as well as my own, helped me a lot.

Before I wrote it, it felt like there was a black stone in here [she points to her chest] and in the process of writing and crying, that black stone dissolved into crystal. I can talk about my mum now and not cry. It doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t stop the mourning, but it was healing for me.

VR I used to be a big diary writer, but I havenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t written for quite a while, and Joely, my second daughter, has been urging me to write again, to write to Natasha in my diary. And I said to her: â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;I know youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re right, but I canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t bring myself to do it. I literally cannot do it.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; Although I knew she was right, I knew. But to write to my daughter and not be able to hear back, to leave a message for her not to ring me back, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s still a very, very hard thing.

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VANESSA WEARS HER OWN CLOTHES. ZAINAB WEARS CHAIN DRESS, ÂŁ1,025, ZAC POSEN. PEARL NECKLACE, ÂŁ370, DOVER STREET MARKET. RING, ÂŁ8,430, GUCCI. STYLED BY CARMEN BORGONOVO. SEE STOCKISTS FOR DETAILS. HAIR AND MAKE-UP BY TANIA COURTENEY AT MANDY COAKLEY, USING BUMBLE AND BUMBLE AND ORIGINS. MANICURE BY TRISH LOMAX AT PREMIERHAIRANDMAKEUP.COM, USING MAVALA. WITH THANKS TO JASMINE STUDIOS. PHOTOGRAPHS: CAMERA PRESS/HECHT PHOTO FEATURES, GETTY IMAGES, MAGNUM PHOTOS

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PHOTOGRAPH: XXXXXX

FIGHT THE GOOD FIGHT Clockwise from left: Vanessa with daughters Natasha (left) and Joely in about 1970. Outside the American Embassy in Grosvenor Square, protesting against the Vietnam War in 1968. Speaking in Washington on behalf of GuantĂĄnamo inmates in 2004

Husseinâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s personal pilot. Her family became members of Saddamâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s inner social circle, the privilege and peril of which overshadowed Salbiâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s early life before she left Iraq for an arranged marriage in America. As Salbi recounts in Hidden in Plain Sight: Growing Up in the Shadow of Saddam, her memoir written with journalist Laurie Becklund: â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;My private hell, and that of my family, was that we spent so much time with Saddam Hussein himself.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; Salbi has just returned from a four-week trip for Women for Women International, which included visits to Iraq and Gaza. On meeting â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Redgrave and Salbi are giddy when introduced, greeting each other like old friends â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Redgrave asks her first about Gaza.

As two women from radically different backgrounds â&#x20AC;&#x201C; who both grew up during war, have become fearless pioneers in their own right and suffered their fair share of personal tragedy â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Redgrave and Salbi come together to talk politics and war, mothers and daughters and the pull of family.

But first, how did Redgrave come across Salbi and her work?

Vanessa Redgrave Well, before Bazaar cooked up this wonderful meeting, my daughter, Joely Richardson, had been telling me about Women for Women International.

The work you do sounds fantastic.

Zainab Salbi Thank you.

VR I was interested to hear that youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d been to Kosovo and Bosnia. I have a lot of friends there, and was there during the siege in Sarajevo.

ZS Thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s how Women for Women International started.

VR Really?

ZS Yes. So I grew up in Iraq and my parents knew Saddam Hussein.

VR Yes, I read that.

ZS My father was his pilot. My family were his close friends, which was like a prison. We lived under constant threat. Saddam killed his best friends. He killed everything. When I was 19, my mum got me out to America through an arranged marriage.

VR Thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a very brave mother.

ZS She was always very strong. She told me I had to be strong and independent and that I should never let anybody touch me or talk to me the wrong way. But then she asked me to marry a man I didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t know, which contradicted everything sheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d told me about choosing my own path. She said: â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve got to accept this. I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t care what you do after you get to America. Just escape.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; VR And live.

ZS Yes, live. But at first I was very angry. My husband was very abusive, he raped me. I left him after three months. Later I realised that my mother was no different from the women I work with in the Congo or Bosnia who say: â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Take my daughter, give her a better life.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; VR When did you go to Bosnia?

ZS In 1993. I remember reading newspaper stories about rape camps there. I grew up during the Iran-Iraq War. I knew how it felt to be in war, waking up in the middle of the night and seeing the house next to ours destroyed by a bomb. So I said to myself, I need to do something about Bosnia. Thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s how Women for Women started, by

I just needed to be fully there for the cause. trying to help. Because right now Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m trying He set me free out of love. My work is what to help in my own little way, as I have since keeps me alive â&#x20AC;&#x201C; spending New Yearâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Eve 2003, helping some of the prisoners get out in Gaza, seeing life at its rawest, thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s what of GuantĂĄnamo. I find myself still doing this. makes me feel most alive. It comes with Thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s still one more British detainee called sacrifice, but itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s worth it.

Shaker Aamer. Heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s been there eight years, and heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s like the others â&#x20AC;&#x201C; completely innoVR Well Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m very aware that I left my children cent, just caught up in this whole situation. [to pursue politics] at times when I could So how can I not help him and help his have stayed at home with them. It was a very family â&#x20AC;&#x201C; how can I not? Because, basically, no black-and-white issue as I saw it then. Later one else can do a few of the things I can do.

I understood it was intimately connected.

ZS You do a lot of things many people would ZS You mean the personal and the political? not be willing to do. Speaking out. Telling VR The individual and the universal, philothe truth. That takes a lot of courage. sophically speaking, yes.

VR It isnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t really courage. Courage is when ZS Is that compulsion still as strong now as youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re afraid and you still do something. Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m it was maybe 30 or 40 years ago? not saying Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve never been afraid. Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve been VR I think the compulsion is just the same.

Salbi with Saddam Hussein afraid in a number of personal situations, But Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve learnt a lot more. Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve learnt that one in Baghdad in about 1988 but Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve never been afraid to speak out. of the things one must do is help the younger generation â&#x20AC;&#x201C; not only other peopleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s chilZS Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m very passionate about injustice. Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m dren, but help my grandchildren grow. not just angry, it pisses me off. I was talking to a friend, a Jungian analyst who suggested ZS Very true. that my passion against injustice stemmed VR When you have a compulsion it just from injustices I had witnessed as a child drives you. If Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d been a single mother with that I couldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t do anything about. I realised absolutely no money, I would still have he was right. Is your childhood what drives found a way to do something, helped the Red your passion against injustice?

Cross raise money or whatever. And I believe that if youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve got a compulsion, you must VR It started like that. I grew up during the have inherited something from your mother, Second World War, and I was determined even if you were reacting against her. to resist â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Hitler, the Japanese fascists â&#x20AC;&#x201C; even though I was of an age when I could do very ZS Oh very much so. little. All I could do was read books and VR I didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t realise that for a long time. write and put on plays with a friend â&#x20AC;&#x201C; he was ZS I wouldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t be here if my mother hadnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t G.6;./ @.9/6 seven and I was four. We invited people to ingrained in me the need to be strong. come, and everybody paid a halfpenny.

Sometimes itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s hard â&#x20AC;&#x201C; I just took a 15-hour Then we sent the money to a fund for the merchant-navy seamen bus ride from Gaza to Cairo. In Iraq I saw all that destruction and who were bringing food into the country.

I heard heart-wrenching stories. It comes with a price. When I first returned from Bosnia, talking to all those women who had been ZS At the age of four? raped and worse, I was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress synVR At the age of four and five and six and so on. My brother Corin drome. I learned that I needed to hold a place for me. Now I meditate was even younger â&#x20AC;&#x201C; he was two and a half years younger than me, every day and I read verse by [the Sufi poet] Rumi morning and night. and we got him into the play too. So I was brought up with that sense of responsibility, a wartime duty to everybody, wherever they VR Is it reading the verse out loud. Or remembering what he is are. So when Sarajevo happened at the end of â&#x20AC;&#x2122;92, I thought: â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve saying that helps? got to get there, Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve got to get there.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; Everything else was put aside.

ZS Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s what he says. Have you read him?

Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m sure you can identify with that.

VR Indeed. I was introduced to him by a wonderful actor friend of mine on my 70th birthday, the same night I got married [to longZS Absolutely. But was it difficult? You mention putting everything term partner Franco Nero]. else aside. How much did you sacrifice?

VR I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t know. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a total compulsion as far as Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m concerned. Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m ZS Fantastic. [VR laughs.] physically and mentally unable to not go. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s as simple as that.

ZS I started this trip a few weeks ago in London. Then I went to Iraq, then Lebanon, where I spent Christmas, and then Jordan, Cairo and ZS Me too. The Kosovo war was the big test for me, because my Gaza. Then I came back here, and you were the last meeting of the mum was dying. She told me to go. trip. And itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s helped put all of that in perspective. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s been a reminder VR The beginning of â&#x20AC;&#x2122;99? that we have to continue to speak out. And the fight continues.

ZS Exactly. I said: â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re dying, I need to be with you. You are the most important thing in my life.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; But she insisted: â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;You need to go.

VR Please let me know at any time if thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s something you think They need you. I will wait for you.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; She died in June, the week after I should know or should do.

I got back. She really did wait.

ZS Absolutely. You are an inspiration. I remember Gloria Steinem, who is a great mentor and friend, once said to me when I was very VR She hung in there. tired: â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;You have to take care of yourself because it will continue ZS She knew it was important to me and she enabled me to do that. for a long time, the fight against injustice. You have to take care of The people who love me have enabled me. Three months ago I yourself.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; Meeting you, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a reminder â&#x20AC;&#x201C; one just has to continue. got divorced from my second husband. Not for any hostile reason.

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PHOTOGRAPH: ZAINAB SALBI

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n a blazing hot day, Karen Elson enters a cafĂŠ in Manhattanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s SoHo, all wrists and elbows, knock-kneed as a newborn foal and with an air of reservation that belies her success. The 31-year-old, in a stripy Diane von Furstenberg dress and flat sandals by shoe designer Tabitha Simmons â&#x20AC;&#x201C; her â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;best friend in all the worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; â&#x20AC;&#x201C; refers to herself these days as â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;a grown-upâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;, but makes the odd concession to her younger self â&#x20AC;&#x201C; like today, a big orange flower in her tangerine hair. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s all good,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; she says, smiling, as other people say might say â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;helloâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;.

Elson is, quite simply, lovely: almond-shape eyes, mother-ofpearl skin and the proportions of a crane. Her appeal is her otherworldliness, her livid red hair and ghostly pallor so startling that within a few years of being discovered as a teenager from Oldham, she was fronting campaigns for Yves Saint Laurent and Chanel, where Karl Lagerfeld called her â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;a mix of a mutant from another planet and something from the Middle Agesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;. Her accent is just as rootless, flat vowels from a northern-English upbringing clashing with more languorous Americanisms as she orders polenta, hash browns and a frisĂŠe salad with poached egg. (â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;I love lots of sides,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; she says.) She has always felt â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;very placelessâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;, and although she tries to hold fast to her Englishness after more than a decade living in the US, â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;it is fadingâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;, she says sadly.

Elson is an apparition of Forties glamour, with the recognition factor of a supermodel and the cachet of a rare style icon, consolidated by her new career as a singer-songwriter: her first album, The Ghost Who Walks, was released this summer to critical acclaim.

Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s quite an evolution from Elsonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s debut, 13 years ago, as a grunge model on the cover of Italian Vogue, devoid of eyebrows and beneath the headline â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Le Freakâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; â&#x20AC;&#x201C; part of the jolie laide aesthetic of the late 1990s. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Karen is amazing and becomes more beautiful every day,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; says Tom Ford, who chose Elson for his recent eyewear campaign. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;She has come into her own as a woman, and this gives her an allure that really cannot be had when one is young and unformed.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; Today, Elson is as in demand as ever, the current face of YSLâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Opium and also modelling for Louis Vuitton and Chanelâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Resort collection. Yet, for all her elegance, there is still an air of avant-garde about her that no amount of mainstream success can dampen. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m not a regular-looking model, which has probably enabled me to last so long,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; she says. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;I am different.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s true, she is different. The only person with style in her ballpark is her husband, who produced her new album: Jack White, star of the White Stripes, the Raconteurs and the Dead Weather, gothic hero to Elsonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s ghostly heroine. Wan and ironic, they could be the product of someone elseâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s imagination â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Wilkie Collinsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; perhaps, or Mary Shelleyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s â&#x20AC;&#x201C; or the embodiment of each otherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s fantasies.

With Whiteâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s help, Elson is becoming the musician she has always wanted to be. She has been writing songs since she was a teenager â&#x20AC;&#x201C; she bought her first guitar in the early years in New York

â&#x20AC;&#x201C; but until recently lacked the confidence to share them. She has, however, performed in public since 2005 as part of New York cabaret outfit the Citizens Band, with Maggie Gyllenhaal and Rain Phoenix, among others. That groupâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s burlesque combination of dirt and glitter is detectable as an influence on The Ghost Who Walks (the title comes from the nickname Elson was given by bullies at school, for her tall, bony frame and distracted air).

Throughout most of her fashion career, Elson kept her music ambitions hidden for fear of being ridiculed â&#x20AC;&#x201C; the â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;model who thinks she can singâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; syndrome. Nine years ago, she nearly made a record with a couple of friends, among them James Iha, the guitarist for Smashing Pumpkins, but walked away at the last minute; it didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t sound like her, she says. The idea of writing and performing her own material terrified her. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m more vulnerable, up there as me,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; she says, â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;without all the accoutrements that go with modelling.

In the fashion world itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s all smoke and mirrors, and I was very nervous about putting myself out there. The fear of judgement, of really letting anyone know where I am.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; What turned it around was moving with her husband in 2005 from New York to Nashville, where everyone â&#x20AC;&#x201C; taxi driver, plumber, postman â&#x20AC;&#x201C; is a musician on the side. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;It made it more legitimate for me, because everybody had a day job. It made me realise, â&#x20AC;&#x153;You know what? I can be a model and make music, because this is what everybody else does in this town.â&#x20AC;? In New York it was much more like, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Who do you think you are?â&#x20AC;?â&#x20AC;&#x2122; Still, it was only with the bedroom door closed, the bathroom door locked and in a windowless space the size of a restaurant booth â&#x20AC;&#x201C; her walk-in closet â&#x20AC;&#x201C; that she found the peace of mind to write, surrounded by her vintage dresses. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;I just felt safe. Maybe I felt safe being around my stuff. Thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s probably something to be said for that.â&#x20AC;&#x2122;

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he was nervous about letting White hear the first half of the album, in case he thought she was trying to muscle in on his territory, or it wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t up to scratch. But his reaction was very positive. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;[The songs] were grounded in the blues and country musicâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s darker sides,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; says White. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;She was writing for her own voice â&#x20AC;&#x201C; some songwriters donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t know how to write for the sound of their own vocal chords. It has to be natural, and she has that in spades.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; White is good at constructive criticism, she says. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;There are so many people who would just say, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s great, darling, thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s great,â&#x20AC;? when somethingâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s terrible. He would give me criticism, but he also knew when to let me be and not put too much of his personality into it. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s definitely not a Jack record. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s very much my soul in there, and he just cleaned up the messy parts.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s to Elsonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s credit that, despite Whiteâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s production (and he also plays drums on the record), it sounds very much like her, full of sharp angles and sudden turns, half whimsical, with the underlying nightmare quality of a runaway fairground ride or something sinister found in the weeds; Opheliaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s face, luminous below the waterline. The music is Americana, a mixture of folk, gothic and country â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Loretta Lynn is a big influence on both her and White. But, says Elson, although the sound is Nashville, the tone and lyrics draw down into her roots in

SUPER COOPER Dominic Cooper wears cotton T-shirt, ÂŁ45, Hugo Boss. Bracelets; 1950s vintage Rolex watch, both his own.

Previous pages, left: wool pea coat, ÂŁ500, Michael Bastian for Gant. Cotton T-shirt, ÂŁ135, John Varvatos. Denim jeans, ÂŁ1,650, Dior Homme. Leather boots, ÂŁ165, All Saints. Previous pages, right: Hugo Boss T-shirt, as before. See Stockists for details. Grooming by Cheryl Corea at Mandy Coakley, using Dior Homme Dermo www.harpersbazaar.co.uk

BLACK MAGIC â&#x20AC;&#x201C; MIU MIUâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S FLOWER-EMBELLISHED GOWN IS THE PERFECT AUTUMN LBD Karen Elson wears wool dress with metal flower detail, ÂŁ1,085, Miu Miu. Previous pages: silk and lace dress ( just seen), ÂŁ2,900, Dior

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EYE-CATCHING SWAROVSKI CRYSTALS AND LACE CREATE A UNIQUE AND GLAMOROUS EFFECT Tulle body with Swarovski-crystal detail, ÂŁ2,315, Antonio Berardi.

Opposite: antique tulle beaded dress, ÂŁ4,795, Ralph Lauren www.harpersbazaar.co.uk

PHOTOGRAPH: XXXXXX

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the north of England and her occasionally dreary childhood. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a loneliness, a spookiness, thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s something desolate there,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; she says. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;A lot of those songs are wrapped up in my Englishness. Where I lived wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t terrible by any stretch; it was just a working-class town, with terraced houses and grey. Grey and grim. I remember going out with my dad on Saturdays and weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d drive up to the moors, and even that landscape, the moors and hills, thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s something very morbid about it. I always felt that, when I lived in Oldham. A heaviness. Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m sure people in Oldham will hate me for saying this, but when I was there I just feltâ&#x20AC;Ś this huge weight on me, constantly. When I left, it wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t that that weight disappeared, but Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m familiar with it. So, way more than Nashville, [these songs] are Oldham.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s with mixed feelings that Elson goes back to England these days; waiting for her there is the ghost of her 13-year-old self, truculent and unhappy, â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;a miserable teenager, battling to get out of that placeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;. There is a lyric on the album: â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;I was old before I learned to grow youngâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; â&#x20AC;&#x201C; is that how she feels? â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Yes. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s true. I think when I was younger I was stoic. I didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t know how to feel, ever.

I didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t know who I was, or how to express myself.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; Elson, who has a twin sister, Kate, and two much older halfbrothers, left Oldham at the age of 16, having been discovered a year earlier in Manchester when, to cheer her up, her mother took her to a talent scout for Boss Model Management. (Her parents â&#x20AC;&#x201C; father a joiner, mother a dinner lady â&#x20AC;&#x201C; separated when she was seven.) She was signed on the spot, but it was a few years before her life was transformed from blackand-white into colour, The Wizard of Oz-style, as she likes to characterise it.

When she was 18, Steven Meisel shot her in the famous â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Le Freakâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; pose for that Italian Vogue cover, and she became his muse. His request to shave off her eyebrows didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t strike her as radical at the time, she says â&#x20AC;&#x201C; she had been messing around with her appearance since her early teens. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;I shaved my eyebrows off, why is it such a big deal?â&#x20AC;&#x2122; (She thought recently about chopping her hair off and dyeing it white-blonde, but her agent urged her to think again.)

| October 2010

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SUPER COOPER Dominic Cooper wears cotton T-shirt, ÂŁ45, Hugo Boss. Bracelets; 1950s vintage Rolex watch, both his own.

Previous pages, left: wool pea coat, ÂŁ500, Michael Bastian for Gant. Cotton T-shirt, ÂŁ135, John Varvatos. Denim jeans, ÂŁ1,650, Dior Homme. Leather boots, ÂŁ165, All Saints. Previous pages, right: Hugo Boss T-shirt, as before. See Stockists for details. Grooming by Cheryl Corea at Mandy Coakley, using Dior Homme Dermo

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FRILL SEEKER â&#x20AC;&#x201C; VALENTINOâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S FROTHY LACE BRINGS A TOUCH OF DRAMA Lace gown, from a selection, Valentino.

See Stockists for details. Hair by Serge Normant at Serge Normant at John Frieda Salon. Make-up by Rose-Marie Swift for RMS Beauty.

Manicure by Bernadette Thompson at Bernadettethompson.com

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efore she was 20, Elson had moved to New York and was sharing a flat with other models â&#x20AC;&#x201C; among them, over the years, Jade Parfitt and Erin Oâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Connor, who, together with Elson, made up the new grunge aesthetic. Driven by the popularity of models such as Stella Tennant and Kate Moss, â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;a new leaner, slightly tougher, image was being embracedâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;, says Parfitt. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;This led to a new kind of London-cool vibe. The industry loved the style and attitude of British models, and that was when models like myself, Karen, Erin, Georgina Cooper and Iris Palmer started working a lot.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; They lived together in the East Village, still itself a grungy area, and, says Elson, â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;were woken every night at 3am by screaming of one kind or anotherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;. It was that combination of glamour and dirt that she would always find compelling. Two years later, everything changed when Giseleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s healthy, tanned, Brazilian look came in, and Elsonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s went out.

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Yet, despite the new model movement, after a while, Elsonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s look began to transcend fashion fads. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;As we all grow up, our style changes and evolves,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; says Parfitt. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;I do remember when Karen became Karl Lagerfeldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s muse and did the Chanel campaign several seasons in a row; she would come back to the hotel laden down with Chanel goodies. She was suddenly a lot more grown-up and stylish than the rest of us.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; Elsonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s longevity was partly a question of bone structure, and partly due to her continuing air of exclusivity â&#x20AC;&#x201C; her ability to adapt and, as with Meisel, know exactly which jobs to say yes to. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve always been of the philosophy that less is more, as far as modelling is concerned,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; says Elson. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;I learned that lesson from when I first became successful as a model. I got every campaign one season: Moschino, Chanel, Versaceâ&#x20AC;Ś and then by the next season, no one gave a damn. Youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve got to ride the wave, but once youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve got past that point, youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve got to be discerning and choose carefully.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; She has weathered enough bad times. Her boyfriend Raphael de Rothschild died of an overdose in 2000. There have been other dysfunctional relationships, too, before White. Elson was irritated recently when someone said to her: â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;How can you write songs about sadness [in your music]?â&#x20AC;&#x2122; She huffs. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Just because Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m a model and a pretty woman and live this charmed life with a fantastic rock-star husband doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t mean I havenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t ever experienced sadness or loneliness or felt isolated and depressed. Not to lick my wounds, but Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve felt things and theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve been bugging me for so long that I had to get them off my chest, and theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll keep bugging me and Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll keep writing songs about them.

Same with Jack; Jack writes some vicious songs, and I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t lie there awake at night thinking, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Oh no, isnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t he happy?â&#x20AC;?â&#x20AC;&#x2122; Life in Nashville with children Henry (three) and Scarlett (four) is surprisingly quiet, given Whiteâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s rock-star status; Elson compares it to â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;living in the English countryside, but with big malls dotted around that I never go to because they scare the living daylights out of meâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;. She was nervous about moving there, so far from everything she knew, but â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;it has been one of the best moves Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve ever madeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;, she says. Elson and White recorded The Ghost Who Walks in the studio in their back garden, in the midst of daily family life. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s just home,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; she says. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;I mean, to make music is really the most natural thing in our house.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; When they met, on the set of the video for the White Stripesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Blue Orchidâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; in 2005, White, then 29, was already half a decade into his cult status as the dapperly dressed icon of provocative rock. Elson appears in the video as a flash of white lace, red hair and a rolling blue eye, interspersed with Whiteâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s ringmaster antics, while Meg, his first wife, rocks like Sweeney Todd â&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Mrs Lovett and breaks plates. (For a while, Jack and Meg pretended to be brother and sister. Their marriage and divorce papers surfaced in the press in 2003.) Elson and Whiteâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s wedding took place on a boat on the Amazon, with Meg in attendance.

The attraction between the couple was instantaneous, says Elson. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re kindred spirits, me and him. You meet somebody and you instantly connect. It was like weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d always known each other.

Five years and two kids into it, weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve obviously done all right.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; Together, the pair now embrace their shared love of the musical realm, but what about fashion? â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Jack knows who he is and has always known who he is. He appreciates CONTINUED ON PAGE 300

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fashion – not like a fashionable human being, but he respects a well-made piece of clothing.’

Why else does the relationship work? ‘We’re both very accepting of each other’s flaws. We’re very compassionate with each other. We’re good friends. When you’re younger and you first fall in love, it’s the most magical feeling, and you think you’re going to be together for ever, and then you go through life and get these heartbreaks and it’s hard to not become cynical. But Jack and I aren’t cynical about our relationship. We’re lucky to have each other. So let’s not screw it up.’

They decorated the house, a former Civil War hospital with an old-fashioned porch and magnolia-trees in the garden, without the aid of interior designers. (Before he was a rock star, Jack, who grew up in Detroit, Michigan, was an upholsterer.) ‘We hodgepodge it and mix everything up, and somehow it’s home.’ The main area of conflict is his passion for taxidermy. Elson smiles thinly.

‘He loves a good stuffed animal, my husband, to the point where…’

She purses her lips. Words have been had? ‘Yes. “Please don’t come off tour with another creature.” I mean, some of the stuff is beautiful, but… they’re his, not mine.’

Their other main hangout is her vintage-clothing store, Venus and Mars, which she opened two years ago in downtown Nashville (though it is now at risk of closure – there isn’t the time to run it, she says sadly, with her music career taking off ). When she opened the shop it was a pure expression of her all-consuming passion for vintage. But her drive has faded a little, and today she is wary of being known as ‘the local English eccentric wandering around Nashville in a wacky floral-print dress’. Or, as she puts it, smiling: ‘Granny Takes a Trip.’

Elson is all grown up, now a wife and mother, and her style has slowly evolved. She has become ‘a little bit more discerning’.

‘A good vintage piece is great, if it’s well done – but if it’s too old, it just looks shabby. And I don’t want to look shabby. I’m trying to dress a little more elegant.’

Elson says she could never fully renounce the wonder of thrift.

‘Good vintage stuff is essential, but you have to have some good pieces too. For the longest time I only wore vintage and was against any designers. Now I’m the opposite; I need a few good pieces.’

Elson once expressed concern – in jest – that her children might one day think they had been raised in the Addams Family; but an air of surprising normality reigns in the household. She dresses Henry and Scarlett not in the guise of Victorian orphans, as one might expect, but in Stella McCartney for Gap – McCartney sent her a big box of her range as a gift. And Elson collects them from pre-school in jeans and no make-up, like all the other mothers.

But however she dresses or whatever she does, the beautiful oddity of Elson will, at some level, always stand out. It has taken her a while – the course of her fashion career – to come to terms with it, but now it’s something she embraces and celebrates. ‘The older I get, the more liberated I become,’ she says. ‘I feel much younger now than I did at 13, you know?’ And now that her career as a musician is about to take off, she can say with confidence that she has finally found her own individual voice. ‘I’m a rare bird, in a town of normal folks,’ she says half-proudly. And with that, Elson adjusts her orange bloom, smiles broadly and saunters out into the intense New York sunlight, where her hair, for a moment, appears to catch flame.

Karen Elson’s single ‘The Truth is in the Dirt’ is released on 20 September.

Follow Elson’s model transformation, from catwalk star for Chanel and Dior to solo singer, at harpersbazaar.co.uk

GODFATHER OF COOL Bryan Ferry has been an icon of

raffish glamour since he shot to fame in the Seventies. As he releases a hotly anticipated new album with a string of current chart stars, the eternally elegant singer tells STEPHANIE THEOBALD about the appeal of darkness, the strength of Kate Moss and the glamour of Lady Gaga Portrait by ADAM WHITEHEAD. Styled by NATHALIE RIDDLE

SMOOTH AS SILK Bryan Ferry wears blue wool suit, £2,500, Kilgour. Brown leather brogues, £970, Berluti. Shirt; belt; sunglasses, all his own. Grooming

by Sarah Reygate, using Clarins

B

ryan Ferry looks serene as he lies on the elegant couch in front of me in his London playboy pad – Berluti shoes dangling, tortoiseshell glasses resting on his blue Charvet shirt (the Duke of Windsor’s favourite brand) as though he’s about to be psychoanalysed.

‘Sorry if I’m a bit spaced out,’ he says, grinning up at the high ceiling of the building in West London’s Olympia that doubles as his recording studio.

‘I’ve been travelling a bit.’

Ferry has indeed been roving. He has just flown in from Belgium; last week he was in Japan, touring to promote his new solo album, Olympia, which features, among others, Scissor Sisters, Groove Armada and old Roxy Music member Brian Eno. ‘It was amazing,’ he says of his recent trip. ‘I felt really good in my skin…’

This buoyant figure, now 65, is miles away from the heavy-hearted man I met at dinner six years ago in Bangkok. I had gone to Thailand with Detmar Blow – husband to Ferry’s close friend Isabella – to see the singer on the Asian leg of his world tour.

In the flesh, the man Tom Ford called ‘the ultimate style icon’ lives up to expectations. You can’t help but feel butterflies when you first meet Ferry. It’s partly his physical presence: six-foot-two with broad shoulders, that famous floppy hair, languid eyes and impeccable suiting. But the heart flutter is also down to Ferry’s image: the glam-rock sophisticate from Roxy Music, the avant-garde band that fused art, music and fashion to create a spectacle of futuristic decadence that exploded into the drabness of the early 1970s. Ferry subsequently developed his famous dishevelled, tuxedo-clad playboy aesthetic – a look that has made him a style reference for more than a generation.

Even crossing the Chao Phraya River to go for dinner, Bryan Ferry was doing a very good impression of being Bryan Ferry: staring wistfully into the night, his famous fringe blowing in the breeze as though from some hidden wind machine in a video shoot for one of his lovelornmatinée-idol numbers. Yet he was beyond wistful, seemingly lost in a misery far beyond anything contained in ‘Slave to Love’, the Eighties classic about the bittersweet sensation of heartache. When he saw a barge passing, he suddenly remarked: ‘Quite ghostly, isn’t it?’

As I remind him about this now, he breaks into one of his deep laughs. ‘Yes, I like darkness,’ he says. ‘I like sadness… I was in the middle of a terrible divorce which wrecked me, tore me apart.’

He is referring to his split from former model and socialite Lucy Helmore – muse to Philip Treacy and Manolo Blahnik – his wife of 21 years, who appeared in a helmet on the cover of Roxy Music’s 1982 album Avalon. Rumours cited Ferry’s obsessive dedication to his music career as the reason for the break-up, which resulted in the rupture not only of his family – the couple have four sons – but also his social group, which included Detmar and Isabella Blow.

There has always been something elusive and attractively tortured about Ferry. Thankfully, today, his sadness is of a very different kind – channelled to a purely artistic level. Olympia – his newest solo work – resonates with both exhilaration and a rich melancholy.

The artwork for Olympia is also classic Ferry territory. The singer has always been famously exacting about his album art, from the cover of Roxy Music’s For Your Pleasure (1973), depicting Amanda Lear in skin-tight leather holding a black panther on a leash, to 1975’s Siren, with subsequent girlfriend Jerry Hall. The new album cover promises to be just as iconic, featuring Kate Moss as its cover star.

‘Kate’s probably the strongest kind of female presence since Marilyn Monroe,’ he says, lifting his head from the couch. ‘Just as Marilyn Monroe inspired Andy Warhol and Richard Hamilton, Lucian Freud and Marc Quinn have been mesmerised by Kate’s muse-like qualities.’

Ferry explains that the title refers not only to this arty pad-cum-recording studio in Olympia where he has lived and worked for more than 20 years, but also to Manet’s Olympia.

‘It was a very controversial picture in 1863. She’s like a courtesan, which in a way is the prototype for the Roxy covers,’ he says.

Ferry once said that designing the covers was like ‘designing the perfect fan’. His Roxy Music aesthetic was hard-edged and high-gloss, and the girls he designed were predatory and impossibly glamorous; very ‘Rita Hayworth comes to the 21st century and goes disco-dancing’. In 1973, NME ran a review of the Roxy Music audience, as opposed to the band: boys with military shirts and floppy fringes, girls with pillbox hats and Forties pencil skirts.

But despite his growing fame and the prevailing myth that his youth was spent in a whirl of groupies and orgies, Ferry’s essential nature was introverted. ‘I didn’t go out much in the early days,’ he says. ‘I felt kind of a loner.’ That is, until he met extrovert and theatrical designer Antony Price, who (as well as dressing David Bowie and the Rolling Stones) began to create looks for Roxy Music.

Price’s fashion vision was ‘fetish meets fantasy’ (McQueen, Mouret and Galliano have referenced his extreme tailoring), and his costumes for Ferry went from green sequinned jumpsuits and glamorous GI Joe uniforms with high waists and broad shoulders, to Forties-style lounge suits. (He dropped the sequinned look after Gary Glitter started copying it.)

It was Price who brought in Amanda Lear for the cover shoot of 1973’s For Your Pleasure (Ferry’s favourite Roxy album), Salvador Dalí’s muse and a model for Chanel and Ossie Clark who was rumoured to be transsexual. Ferry met Lear at the shoot, and the resulting picture by Karl Stoecker was dark and lavish – like a premonition of David LaChapelle. A spacey Las Vegas rises up behind Lear’s dominatrix Dietrich in an Antony Price tight leather dress as she pulls a black panther on a leash.

‘The image and the music reflected 1973,’ Ferry says. ‘A bit dark, a bit urban. It wasn’t “pixies in the country dancing round a campfire”. It was clubs, six-inch stilettos and black panthers on leads.’

Bryan is said to have dated Lear, and yet now he will only say that he became ‘very close friends with her after the shoot… um… yeah… it’s funny…’ Of the sexuality rumours, he chuckles knowingly.

‘I never discussed it with her, ever. It wasn’t any of my business.’

He smiles then adds: ‘I like to collect curious people – characters.’

As well as the mercurial Price, he mentions his good friend the late Isabella Blow, who Ferry would frequently join for light

BEAUTY QUEEN Left: Ferry with Amanda Lear in 1973.

Above: Lear on the cover of Roxy Music’s 1973 album ‘For Your Pleasure’

Antony Price’s fashion vision was ‘fetish meets fantasy’, and his costumes for Ferry went from green sequinned jumpsuits and glamorous GI Joe uniforms with high waists and broad shoulders, to Forties-style lounge suits

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PHOTOGRAPH: XXXXXX

PHOTOGRAPH: GETTY IMAGES, MICK ROCK/ RETNA PICTURES, REX FEATURES

THE THRILL OF IT ALL Brian Eno, Phil Manzanera, Rik Kenton, Andy MacKay, Ferry and Paul Thompson performing as Roxy Music at the Royal College of Art in 1972

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Above: Lucy Helmore on the cover of ‘Avalon’. Below: Ferry with Helmore in London in 1981

OUT OF THE BLUE Above: Jerry Hall on the cover of ‘Siren’ (1975). Right: Ferry with Hall in about 1976 www.harpersbazaar.co.uk

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suppers at Claridge’s [they met through Ferry’s then wife Lucy Helmore]. ‘She was an amazingly creative woman,’ says Ferry, who once rented a New York Brownstone from Anna Wintour, and subsequently introduced Blow to the American Vogue editor-in-chief.

Light suppers at Claridge’s and legendary fashion editors are, naturally, a long way from Ferry’s roots as the son of a pit-pony handler in County Durham. And yet he was aware of aesthetics early on. His first stage appearance, featured in the local press, was as Malvolio in a school production of Twelfth Night, camping it up in yellow stockings to try to impress Olivia. He says this got him thinking about how clothes could be a good form of disguise.

‘We [Roxy Music] were quite shy, you see. Dressing up onstage seemed a good idea – making a bit of theatre seemed the way to go.’

His aesthetic sensibilities were deepened in the mid-1960s when he studied fine art at Newcastle University, under British Pop Artist Richard Hamilton. Ferry’s passion for art has only increased over the years. He is a collector of Bloomsbury painters such as Vanessa Bell (Virginia Woolf ’s sister) and Augustus John. But on the white brick walls here in the Olympia studio are prints and paintings by acquaintances including Richard Hamilton, Mark Lancaster and Cecily Brown. The white coffee tables are arrayed with art books by Warhol, Hirst and his friend Richard Prince.

He says he saw Hamilton recently at the artist’s Serpentine Gallery retrospective.

‘It’s scary seeing one of your teachers again and [Richard] is so clever, such an amazing mind. I always feel [laughs] kind of unworthy.’ Then, out of the blue, he adds: ‘But he once said I was his greatest creation.’

On graduating, Ferry moved to London and taught pottery, before forming Roxy Music in 1970. It was not until 1975 that he met the cover star of Roxy Music’s fifth album, Seventies supermodel Jerry Hall.

Ferry sits up from the couch and his voice becomes tight when I ask about the image in which Hall, dressed as a blue-painted mermaid, claws her way out of the water.

Had he met Hall before the day of the photoshoot?

‘I had not met Jerry at this point,’ he says. Then, sighing: ‘But I’d seen pictures of her by Norman Parkinson. There were these pictures of her with long hair – perfect for a mermaid. We went to Anglesey in Wales because we were looking for somewhere with incredible rocks and spray. But the day we went, it was the hottest day in history, so it looked like Greece, which was also good. There was this Greek-myth thing to it. And Antony painted her blue.’

As the story goes, Hall couldn’t get the paint off after the shoot and went back to Ferry’s house where they romantically removed the paint, starting up an affair. Is the story true? ‘Oh, no, Antony was taking the paint off,’ he says. ‘He was scrubbing her down. But yeah, we did start… going out together then, for about a year.’

Is he still in contact with Hall? ‘Not really, although she is a friend of my friend Ivor’s [Ivor Braka, the London-based Francis Bacon art dealer]. ‘I… get on fine with her now. It’s funny how you can live in London and not see people for many years.’

I was always struck by the story I read about the night Mick Jagger and Jerry Hall got it together. Jagger and Ferry were friends at the time, and they were apparently playing a game of pool as Hall looked on. Ferry is said to be famously

competitive – obsessive, even. He won the game but lost the girl.

When I mention the episode, Ferry shoots me a look. ‘I don’t play pool,’ he retorts. ‘Billiards?’ I suggest. He breaks into one of his deep chuckles: ‘The Jerry thing was pretty blown out of proportion. When you think about it – one year in the life.’

Ferry appears keen to get off the subject of the past and return to the present, which seems, frankly, a much more optimistic place.

Although Roxy Music split in 1983 and Ferry went solo, turning out Eighties classics like ‘Slave to Love’, the band have toured together intermittently since 2001, including several festival gigs this year.

Ferry’s relationship with 28-year-old feline brunette Amanda Sheppard – a fashion PR – also continues to blossom. She met Ferry in 2008, and now shares a house with him in Chelsea – when she can lure him away from this white-bricked studio down the road.

Then there’s the fact that his four sons have successfully flown the nest. Otis, 27 (who famously protested against the Labour government’s fox-hunting ban), is still politically active in the Countryside Alliance; Isaac, 25, is now Ferry’s manager; Tara, 20, plays drums on his father’s new album and also has plans to be a photographer; and his youngest, Merlin, 19, has just returned from a gap year in India.

Although Ferry is in his seventh decade, his reputation as a refined pleasure-seeker – who enjoys good suits, art, fine wine, vintage cars and lavish parties – is not waning. His social highlights this year have included the Raisa Gorbachev Foundation Party, where he played to Anjelica Huston and Vanessa Redgrave; and a dinner thrown by Prince Robert of Luxembourg to celebrate the 75th anniversary of his grandfather’s acquisition of Château Haut-Brion.

Meanwhile, he continues to inspire a new generation. As well as his Olympia collaborators Scissor Sisters, who have taken the Roxy Music postmodern glam idea and given it a twisted 21st-century dimension, there are other fans he never knew he had.

‘Alicia Keys asked me to do a set with her the other day,’ he says of Keys’ charity Black Ball, held in London in May, when he shared a set with the singer. ‘And then there’s that chap from Kasabian… Duran Duran are obvious ones.’

Nicky Haslam once told me that his favourite thing about his friend is that he is ‘refreshingly unpredictable’. And, as the interview comes to a close, Ferry suddenly bounces off the couch, apparently glad that his shrink session is over, joking that he finds it interesting that the 1970s seem to be ‘back’: ‘Lady Gaga, for instance, I think she’s quite Seventies. In the sense that she’s quite theatrical, has a stage persona. Glamour is important for her. She’s very New York; strong; in the same way Madonna was.’

Talk turns to Tramp, the wild Mayfair private club of the late Seventies that counted Bianca Jagger, Anita Pallenberg, Terence Stamp and Keith Moon among its regulars. The one-time introvert now lights up: ‘Tramp!’ Ferry exclaims. ‘I had some of my best nights there. It was sort of upmarket but seedy at the same time.

A mixture of all sorts – dissolute, quite decadent, loud disco music…’ He stops and there’s a slight misty moment as he looks into the distance as if another ghostly barge is passing by.

‘Fascinating…’

‘Olympia’ by Bryan Ferry is released on 25 October.

Appearing in a school production got him thinking about clothes as a form of disguise. ‘We [Roxy Music] were quite shy, you see. Dressing up onstage seemed a good idea – making a bit of theatre seemed the way to go’

PHOTOGRAPHS: ADAM WHITEHEAD, GETTY IMAGES, REX FEATURES

COVER GIRL Kate Moss in a photograph from the cover shoot for Ferry’s new album‘Olympia’.

Left: Ferry with Amanda Sheppard in London earlier this year. Below: performing with Alicia Keys at London’s Keep a Child Alive Black Ball in May

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EARTH MOTHER Trudie Styler wears white silk and organza shirt, £220, Joseph. Black leather belt, from a selection, Marni.

White acetate and viscose jacket, about £1,370, Chloé.

White wool trousers, from a selection, Emilio Pucci.

Black patent heels, £436, Casadei

LEADING

LADY

Film producer, environmental campaigner, actor, yoga guru… the list of Trudie Styler’s credentials is endless. JUSTINE PICARDIE meets the inspirational wife of Sting as she founds a new female-focused production company in Hollywood, and heads back to the stage Photographs by JR MANKOFF

also one of the most persuasive women in the industry’); and Guy Ritchie (set on his way by Styler with Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels, and subsequently introduced by her, as producer-turnedmatchmaker, to Madonna). And as of this year, her reach is finally extending to Hollywood, through her new production company, Maven Pictures, established with Celine Rattray (two decades younger than Styler, but with a formidable track record, most recently on The Kids Are All Right). ‘I always really admired her taste,’ says Rattray, who approached Styler last May with a view to going into business together, ‘and she’s also a remarkable woman – compelling, positive, kind, nurturing, and an inspiration in how she conducts herself as a working woman, while also balancing her family life as a wife and the mother of four children. She’s a great role model, whose decision-making process is based on kindness and total support for other women, whether they are interns or famous actresses.’

Such dedication may explain why Maven has several high-profile women onboard, including Bridesmaids star Kristen Wiig in Imogene, with Annette Bening as Wiig’s gambling-addicted mother. ‘We’ve got a lot going on in 2012,’ says Styler. ‘A Morgan Spurlock film on the environment – that’s a really important piece, he’s so courageous – and Steven Zaillian’s adaptation of Khaled Hosseini’s novel A Thousand Splendid Suns. So there’s that, and both Julia Roberts and Sarah Jessica Parker have come to us with their next projects.’ The former is starring in Second Act, a workplace comedy; the latter is attached to A Marriage Affair, about a wife who suspects her husband of infidelity, and starts an online relationship with him under an assumed identity. If these were not enough, Cate Blanchett is starring in Cancer Vixen, adapted from Marisa Acocella Marchetto’s memoir.

‘We didn’t set ourselves up to be a feminist production company,’ says Styler, ‘but we do both agree that there is a paucity of great starring vehicles for women. It really is a man’s world out there, and we’re thrilled that great actresses want us to do their projects.’

It was Styler who came up with the company’s name – ‘It means the best at what you do’ – which might be equally well employed to describe her own role, as observed by Matthew Vaughn (himself the recipient of Styler’s support as a producer on Lock, Stock). ‘Trudie is a true maven,’ he says, ‘and has worked very hard to achieve it.

Anyone working with her should consider themselves lucky.’

Clearly, he is not alone in this view; Styler has recently reprised her acting career, which had previously tended to take second place to Sting’s schedule. Next up is the female lead in Pam Gems’ play Arthur and Guinevere (‘They’re 25 years into their marriage, and she is on trial for life for her adultery with Lancelot’), following a wellreviewed appearance as Samuel Johnson’s beloved friend Hester Thrale in Max Stafford-Clark’s play A Dish of Tea with Dr Johnson (which successfully transferred from the Edinburgh Festival to London’s Arts Theatre last year, and is about to open in New York).

‘For one reason or another, I didn’t get to work with Max [former artistic director of the Royal Court] when I was at the RSC in the 1980s,’ she says, ‘even though he was my idol.’ So she was delighted to get the call from Stafford-Clark about the part of the 18thcentury society hostess. ‘He said, “I’ve come to dig you out of retirement – I think you’d be very good as Hester Thrale, you’ve got a lot in common with her.”’

Certainly, Thrale was as renowned for her social status as the actor who plays her (the latter is famously well-connected, able to pull together Tom Cruise and the Dalai Lama for a fundraising

Often bullied at school, Styler was called ‘Scarface’ by her classmates, a reference to the marks left from being run over by a truck radiant in her Versace gown designed by her friend Gianni, who is beaming beside her in one shot – and when Sting gazes affectionately at his wife over the kitchen table at lunch today, they still look like a couple in love. Not that they’re mushy – he’s in brisk professional mode, with 12 musicians rehearsing in situ for a new album – though they seem happier with each other than anyone else in the room. (As for the tantric sex: she has been telling people for years that it was a legend sparked off by a throwaway joke that Sting made to a journalist; more fantastical than everyday reality).

But for a change, the conversation is not about Sting this afternoon, because it is Styler’s career that is centre-stage. Already highly regarded in the film industry for her commitment as an independent producer of crusading documentaries, Styler has also distinguished herself by nurturing new writers and directors – including Duncan Jones, whose film Moon won a Bafta (‘She has the perfect blend of imagination and practicality to get movies made,’ says Jones. ‘She’s 198 |

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MAIN IMAGE: STYLED BY GABRIELE HACKWORTHY. SEE STOCKISTS FOR DETAILS. HAIR BY ALAIN PICHON. MAKE-UP BY EMMA LOVELL. PHOTOGRAPHS: GETTY IMAGES, REX FEATURES, XPOSURE

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iven the reputation for energetic tantric sex that constitutes an essential element of the myth accompanying the marriage of Sting and Trudie Styler, the fact that I am rummaging inside her trousers after Sunday lunch at their Wiltshire manor house may not come as a complete surprise to readers. We have both partaken fully of the home-cooked meal – including vegetables grown on the organic farm at the heart of the estate, and ice-cream made from milk supplied by their small herd of cows – and I, for one, am feeling replete. But still, there is a job to be done, and that involves delving into Styler’s skinny jeans, beneath which, I can reveal, are several layers of thermal underwear. ‘Can you see?’ she says, as I search for the label within. ‘I got them at Dover Street Market, if that’s any use.’

Sadly, brand moniker there is none, so I am unable to supply further details, aside from the fact that at 58, Trudie Styler has the body of an athlete (the result of an hour and a half of daily yoga, and hardcore evidence that she practises what she preaches in her yoga DVDs) beneath a nicely judged weekend outfit: Tory Burch gilet, black stripy jumper by Yohji Yamamoto, sturdy Spanish-leather riding boots and a vintage 1960s Cartier gold belt. Her pale golden hair is piled upon her head in an elegantly messy bun; her skin like fragile porcelain in the winter sunlight that streams into the woodpanelled Elizabethan drawing room. Around her wrist is a diamante bracelet spelling out: ‘I Love Trudie’ (‘A birthday present from Zac and Sheherazade Goldsmith’s children’), a sentiment generally shared by her widespread circle of friends. For, despite some bad press in the past – dating back three decades, when she was condemned as ‘the other woman’ in the break-up of Sting’s first marriage, to Frances Tomelty (mother of the elder two of his six children, and Styler’s former friend), she also inspires warm affection; not least from her husband of 20 years.

Several pictures from their wedding day are displayed – the bride

dinner with ease). Yet for all Styler’s additional credentials as an earth mother, she falls short of Mrs Thrale’s 23 pregnancies: ‘Only five of Hester’s children survived. She was always pregnant or burying her children – but she was quite resilient, you would have to be.’

Styler herself was prepared to put her own children ahead of her work, especially when they were younger. Mickey, her first daughter, was born in 1984; her son Jake, the following year; then Coco (who now has her own burgeoning career as a singer) in 1990; and Giacomo in 1994. That said, after a promising start in the RSC and a role in the BBC period costume drama Poldark, the offers had already begun to dwindle after she became involved with Sting (some speculated at the time that she had become persona non grata in the theatre, perceived variously as home-wrecker or a rock-wife diva). But she did not slip away into a life of idle luxury; to be more precise, she was busy amid plentiful luxury, establishing charities and businesses, as well as fulfilling her role as châtelaine, supervising five residences: the Elizabethan Grade-I-listed Lake House; an exquisite Queen Anne townhouse overlooking St James’s Park in London; a splendid villa and vineyard in Tuscany; a New York apartment; and a Malibu mansion.

Is it such privilege that has made a few naysayers envious of Trudie? That she has not just been content with marrying such a senior member of the rock aristocracy – one of the richest pop stars in the world, with an estimated fortune of £180 million – but also refused to stay meekly silent? In my admittedly limited encounters with her, she has proved to be genuinely philanthropic – well known for the Rainforest Foundation that she founded with Sting in 1989, raising more than £15 million and campaigning for the Amazon long before it was fashionable to do so – but also a generous donor and tireless advocate for other causes (including Kids Company, for which Styler hosts annual summer camping holidays at Lake House). All this, while having the time of her life in her late fifties – an age, she remarks, that brings with it a sense of ‘knowing ourselves more – we’re at ease with ourselves and who we are, we aren’t hiding’.

Yet it was at this stage that her mother was already in a steep decline from Alzheimer’s (she was diagnosed at 54 and died six years later, just after the birth of Trudie’s first child) – a poignant contrast to Styler’s own wellbeing, and the catalyst for her commitment to healthy living. The difference is as sharp as so much else in her story. The middle child of three girls, Styler grew up in a council house in the Worcestershire village of Stoke Prior; their father www.harpersbazaar.co.uk

STAND SO CLOSE TO ME From left: Styler and Sting at a party in London in 1982. At their wedding in 1992. With Guy Ritchie and Jason Statham in 2009

worked in a lampshade factory, their mother was a school dinner lady. She has described herself to me in the past as ‘a bit lonely and starved of the frills of parental indulgence, because they just couldn’t afford it. We never starved, but there was a feeling of there not being quite enough of anything.’ Often bullied at school, Styler was nicknamed ‘Scarface’ by her classmates, a reference to the marks left by an accident in which she was knocked down by a Co-op delivery van when she was two and a half. Her mother sued the Co-op, and the compensation money helped to finance Styler’s training at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School; not that her father approved of his daughter’s desire to become an actor, although he later became reconciled to her choices. As for her mother: ‘She had a weight problem, she was obese, she was unhappy’ – possibly contributory factors, according to Styler, for the early onset of Alzheimer’s. ‘My mum wanted to escape her reality – she wanted to live and to travel and to see everything. In fact, I think she dreamed of the life I have.’

What a long way Trudie Styler has come since her childhood; but like the rest of us, she surely carries some of it with her. Hence the acknowledgement of the vast privileges she shares with her husband (who came from a similarly working-class background).

‘Sting and I didn’t have very much growing up, and now we have all this, we really appreciate it. We often go for a walk at night, and when we come back and see the house with all the lights on, we think, “My God, this is our house” – there’s still that wonderment.’

That said, Styler’s sense of good fortune and optimism has another component; the bedrock of her past, reminding her of where she has come from, and how this leads her onwards in life. ‘I survived a brutal encounter by a truck,’ she says, a finger touching, just for an instant, the near invisible white trace of the wound around the socket of her left eye. ‘I wear my scars of that day, to this day, and I know that there’s a very good reason I fought off death – I struggled to stay alive, I am alive, and you’re not going to push me down by saying a few mean things about me, because I’ve been there before.’

‘Trudie Styler’s Pure Sculpt’ yoga DVD is available on Amazon from 30 April.

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SOLE

SISTER

Tamara Mellon’s style and business savvy are as chic and sharp as the stilettos that helped her build a £500 million retail empire.

The Jimmy Choo founder talks father figures and official missions with CLARE COULSON. Plus, her best friend VASSI CHAMBERLAIN recalls the highs, lows and lost loves Photographs by TRENT McGINN Styled by VANESSA CHOW

SMOKING JACKET Tamara Mellon wears velvet and silk jacket, £2,625; silk and satin trousers, £1,175; cotton shirt, from a selection, all Tom Ford at Harrods. Snake-print patent heels, £795, Jimmy Choo Icons collection

Vassi Chamberlain recalls the party lifestyle, movie-star moments and tragic losses she has shared with the shoe mogul

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e were on holiday together, as we often are; it was Christmas and Tamara had rented a villa in St Barths.

My husband Adrian was swimming with our daughter Allegra and Tamara's daughter Minty in the pool and we were lying on sunbeds. Tamara’s phone rang. ‘Hi Harvey,’ she said. ‘Yes, we’d love to come for a screening of your new movie on the boat tomorrow.’ Who was that? I asked. ‘Harvey Weinstein,’ she replied.

Ten minutes later, the phone rang again. ‘Hi George,’ she said. ‘A cocktail party at your villa? Yes, of course, we’ll be there.’ And that was? ‘George Soros.’ Almost immediately another call. ‘Hi Paul,’ she said. ‘We’ll definitely be at your party on Octopus tonight.’

I already knew it was Paul Allen, the co-founder of Microsoft,

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SEE STOCKISTS FOR DETAILS. HAIR BY KOZMO AT BRYAN BANTRY AGENCY, USING PHYTO. MAKE-UP BY SUSAN HOUSER AT PHOTO OP MANAGEMENT FOR CHANEL. PHOTOGRAPH: COURTESY OF VASSI CHAMBERLAIN

MY FRIEND TAMARA

this year’s biggest fashion deals – the fourth buyout of her company, which valued Jimmy Choo at a cool £500 million.

While the billion-dollar deal is absolutely on her radar, her latest investor Labelux (which has also bought into Bally and Derek Lam) marks a major shift in the business. Mellon was just 34 when she did her first private-equity deal in 2001. ‘I didn’t know what I was going to be up against,’ she says candidly, post-shoot. ‘Private equity is a very male-chauvinist world. At this point in my career, you probably think I have broken through the glass ceiling, but not at all.

‘What is very different about the Labelux deal is that this is not private equity – this is a private family and they take a long-term vision on the businesses they acquire. They’ll nurture the brand.’

It’s just as well, because Mellon has big plans. Next on her Jimmy Choo checklist is China. ‘It’s incredible – there’s a minimum of 50 cities that we can have stores in. It will take five years.’ There are proposals to move into other categories, including ready-to-wear, something she had some experience of with her involvement in Halston – a brand, she is quick to point out, from which she resigned two years ago. ‘We’re definitely going to be developing all that, but we are not rushing. We want to do it right.’

It doesn’t stop there. This autumn she is also launching the Jimmy Choo Foundation, which will raise funds for women’s charities through special projects such as October’s Icons collection – a line of ‘greatest hits’ shoes from the company archives that have been updated and reimagined. ‘It brought back so many emotions and memories,’ she says of choosing the styles. But Mellon is more passionate still about the good she can do with the proceeds. ‘I really want to become someone who helps women find their voice, I want to become a women’s activist. If someone like me doesn’t step up to the plate, nothing is going to change.’ After dipping her toe into charity work with the Elton John Aids Foundation (she raised funds for rape shelters in Africa), her charity will follow similar themes, helping women and children in developing countries.

In light of this summer’s phone-hacking scandal and Rupert and James Murdoch and Rebekah Brooks’ subsequent appearance before a Commons select committee, conversation naturally turns to women in business. ‘I imagine Fleet Street is a tough environment for a woman,’ says Mellon. ‘But I hate people who manage by fear.

When I started the business, I really wanted to create a different

inviting us on to his 415-foot yacht, which is almost more famous than he is. We often laugh about that moment: 30 minutes, three calls, two billionaires, one movie mogul. How on earth had it come to that? Later, there would be a call from Ron Perelman, another billionaire and the boss of Revlon and a dear friend of hers, for dinner at a restaurant. And no matter who’s calling, Tamara always makes sure her friends come too.

It was a far cry from 1983, when we met in a friend’s mews house just off Pont Street. She was 16, I was 18. I had just left school and was about to go to university, she, to finishing school in Gstaad. On paper we couldn’t have been more different: she was fearless and ready to bite life; I was cautious and teetering on prim. I first noticed her red-leather cowboy boots and blunt-cut fringe. She looked edgy and glamorous – the sort of girl I wanted to know. We bumped into each other from time to time, but it wasn’t until 1990 on a banquette in Tramp that I turned round to the person sitting on my left and realised it was her. She immediately said hello, grinning guiltily. She had come to the club alone, hoping to run into a boy she liked. Astonishingly, so had I. That was it. The boys we were chasing never did show up. We went back to her basement flat in Chester Square (her parents and brothers lived in the house above), with its www.harpersbazaar.co.uk

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dusky half-light fills the snug of Tamara Mellon’s Manhattan penthouse, cut only by the thick clouds of smoke from a single cigar.

‘Snug’ is perhaps the wrong word, as there’s nothing bijou about the $20 million apartment the Jimmy Choo founder moved into with her daughter Minty two years ago when she traded her London life for the Upper East Side. Everything here is on a grand scale, from the art (including work by Araki, Terence Koh and Basquiat) to the super-plush rooms filled with vast louche sofas, mid-century modern objets and ashtrays the size of Gucci fedoras. It’s more late-Seventies nightclub than family home.

In the middle of it all, Mellon stands in her stilettos on a leopardprint fur rug, which covers most of the room. It’s five hours into the Bazaar shoot and she is still working the camera like a pro, unflappable and patient despite being squeezed into quite possibly the tightest dress-shirt and tux trousers Tom Ford has ever cut. The last shot done (with the aforementioned smoke), she retreats to a table to have a sugar-boosting fruit-and-granola snack, refusing to view the images. ‘After a year I can look, but never just after a shoot.’

It’s an incredible admission from the woman who this summer posed for Terry Richardson with nothing but a carefully positioned fluffy kitten. Or who this year chose herself as the perfect model to promote Jimmy Choo’s first fragrance in a similarly erotic pose.

But then, Mellon is a walking, tough-talking, jet-setting ad for the luxury brand she started 15 years ago, infusing it with such a defined image that Choo has become a byword for a super-luxe lifestyle that millions of women the world over now aspire to. She has dated movie stars (more of which later) and moguls, and become as famous as the women she dresses. (There is barely a big name who has not walked the red carpet in her creations.)

Beneath her surprisingly soft, wispy voice and impeccable manners, there’s a ball-breaking businesswoman who is not only travelling the globe this autumn in her new role as a British trade envoy for David Cameron (she will take part in conferences in China, the Middle East and Brazil), but who also oversaw one of

DOWN TO BUSINESS Wool mix jacket, £810; matching trousers, £390; matching waistcoat, £390, all Dolce & Gabbana.

Pony-skin heels, £1,195, Jimmy Choo Icons collection

HONOUR BOUND Left: with Harvey Weinstein at the A/W 08 Halston show. Below: with her daughter Minty after receiving an OBE in 2010

UPS AND GOWNS Above: Tamara and Matthew Mellon on their wedding day in 2000. Left: Mellon with Yasmin Mills at a party in 1997

environment. I like to manage people with positive affirmations.’

Her conversation is littered with therapy speak, sometimes hilariously so. ‘It’s my hobby,’ she says, with a burst of laughter. ‘If I wasn’t in fashion, I would have been a shrink. Seriously.’ Her bookshelves are proof of this, as works by Deepak Chopra and titles such as Cosmic Coupling sit between Post-it-marked fashion tomes.

Despite her achievements, she still has a need to know more. ‘I talk to people like Ron Perelman, Jerry Weintraub and Philip Green.

It’s really strange; hanging out with older men really is my comfort zone,’ she says. ‘I love just getting advice, absorbing how they operate.’

Given her back-story, her father-figure mentors come as little

then as an accessories editor at Vogue, she came to her father postrehab with a business plan to launch a luxury-shoe brand with East End cobbler Jimmy Choo in 1996. He agreed to invest £150,000 and remained chairman of the board until his death in 2004.

‘Being around him, I just absorbed his thinking and he taught me great things. He would say things like, “Don’t be greedy, always leave something on the table,”’ she recounts. But, she adds, he was also a blue-sky thinker – something she clearly inherited. When the brand was still young, he told her she had to break America. Within two years, Mellon had opened two US flagship stores.

She then took her Jimmy Choos to the Oscars in 1999, opening salons and outfitting stars. ‘Now it’s like a Moroccan souk! But we’re so established there that everyone just comes to us.’ With A-list endorsement and collections that were sexy but never too overly fashion-forward, the brand grew exponentially. ‘My vision was never to have just a couple of shoe shops in London,’ she says, deadpan. That much is clear. Mellon has built a global brand (now with 120 stores worldwide), which has at its centre the most glamorous real-life incarnation of its DNA. In the flesh, she may be soft and approachable, incredibly natural and fun, but, as Elika Gibbs, Mellon’s friend and ‘organiser’, tells me, she’s as tough as they come. ‘If the tsunami comes, Tamara has an inner rod of steel. And she never, ever sweats the small stuff.’ Mellon agrees: ‘If most people had been through what I have in the last decade, they would probably be in a mental institution.’

Four years after launching Jimmy Choo, Tamara Yeardye married the American banking heir Matthew Mellon in a lavish wedding at Blenheim Palace. They had a daughter, Araminta (Minty), two years later, but by 2003 divorce proceedings had begun.

If their divorce was acrimonious, it was made scandalous when private detectives hired by Matthew Mellon tried to hack into her computer. A very public court case followed in 2007, in which she was forced to give a withering testimony of her former husband.

‘Growing up in a dysfunctional family, there are two ways you can go: into drug addıction, or become an overachiever. I’ve done both’ surprise. Mellon, 44, has had a life with more twists and turns than a Hollywood epic. She is the daughter of Tommy Yeardye, who made a fortune in property before transforming Vidal Sassoon into a global brand, and Ann Davis, a one-time Chanel model.

She grew up between Berkshire and Beverly Hills, before going to board at Heathfield School, aged 14 – a move that, she says, was a ‘huge relief ’, as it provided an escape route from what she describes as her ‘narcissistic, alcoholic’ mother. Later, the young Yeardye became an It girl and party regular, eventually checking herself into rehab aged just 28. When she emerged, she ploughed all her energy into making a success of herself. ‘It was about my independence, my freedom. It was a fight for survival,’ she says. ‘Growing up in such a dysfunctional family, there are two ways you can go. You go into drug addiction or you become an overachiever. I’ve done both.’

Mellon was famously close to her father, a charismatic man who had been a lover of Diana Dors and a onetime stunt double for Rock Hudson. After starting her career on the shop-floor at Browns and 266 |

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TRUE ROMANCE With Christian Slater at the 2008 Emmy Awards

PHOTOGRAPHS: GETTY IMAGES, © COPYRIGHT PHOTOGRAPH BY DAFYDD JONES, REX FEATURES

PUPPY LOVE Diana Dors and Mellon’s father, Tommy Yeardye, in 1957

The following year, she was back in court – this time to successfully sue her mother for £5 million worth of Jimmy Choo stock that had been mistakenly paid into a trust controlled by Mrs Yeardye, and which she had refused to return. They haven’t spoken since.

But Mellon is sanguine about all of this. She is now on good terms with her former husband. ‘Matthew is one of the funniest people I have ever met – he should have been a chat-show host,’ she says.

But her closeness to her former husband, and her move to New York, are both primarily for her daughter’s sake. ‘I want my daughter to love her dad. I want her to have a great relationship with him.’

When we meet, mother and daughter have been on holiday with Matthew’s extended family in Pennsylvania. ‘Here, Minty has a sense of belonging to something bigger.’ But it has clearly given Mellon a family life she has never known, too. ‘It’s so great for me. They couldn’t have been more inclusive, more warm, more welcoming.’

Despite being welcomed into the fold, there’s one thing Mellon misses, and that’s the girlfriends she has left back in London. ‘I’ve got a 25-year history with most of them,’ she says quietly. ‘But there are great girls in New York. Tory Burch is a great friend, and Jamie Tisch. Diane von Furstenberg has been really supportive.’ ‘People adore her here,’ says Burch of Mellon. ‘I’ve always admired her entrepreneurial spirit. And she is clearly a really great mom.’

But she certainly can’t vent her very British sense of humour on her American friends. Shortly before we meet, another friend tells me: ‘No one loves a fart joke more than Tamara.’ She collapses into giggles when I recount this. ‘It’s true! I have a scatological sense of humour. No, it doesn’t go down in New York. At. All.’ Perhaps the only thing missing now from her life is a man. ‘It’s so hard,’ she admits. She has been single since she split from Christian Slater in 2009. ‘I probably haven’t met someone that knocked me over.’ Although it’s hard to imagine how she would find time to fit yet another commitment into her schedule. Life is busy when you are plotting your next billion-dollar deal. For no doubt there will be one on the horizon. Mellon has ever higher mountains to scale, with or without a man at her side. www.harpersbazaar.co.uk

dodgy green sofas, and ate pizza and watched movies.

We were both at crossroads. She was working at Vogue, but partying too hard to concentrate. I was desperate to be a writer, but had got sidetracked by the City and the promise of money. We were both bored out of our brains. Together, we focused on our social lives. We went out every night: she in Alaïa, Chanel and Manolos; me in my mother’s old Biba and Bill Blass dresses. We pursued every avenue that we thought might lead us to eternal love. How did we ever think we would find it in seedy nightclubs? We did them all: Iceni, Browns, Ministry of Sound, etcetera… We once accosted a long-haired Brad Pitt (in London filming Interview with the Vampire) in a club and asked him to a party we invented on the spot. He was sweet but never called us. We never missed a Thursday night in Tramp, and regularly scrubbed up for Annabel's. Music has always been our bond. We interrupt conversations to listen to a song, we dance till 5am if the music is good, we both love Jay-Z and Snoop Dogg, and the opening riff of Hendrix’s ‘Voodoo Chile’.

One morning in July 1995, after pulling an all-nighter, she turned round to me and said: ‘That’s it, I’m done. I can’t do this any more.’ She didn’t tell me immediately (How could she? I was her party buddy), but she had checked herself into rehab. A few weeks later, I met my future husband, Adrian. Thank God. Suddenly we were both on a very different route. She was committed to staying clean and I was madly in love. The three of us would hang out together, either in Adrian’s flat on Elizabeth Street or in her new house across the street in Chester Row. She started talking seriously about wanting to go into business with Jimmy Choo, a cobbler she’d met while working at Vogue (she and the magazine had parted ways after her partying got in the way). I wasn’t sure how serious she was.

But this was a new Tamara, the nascent mogul, the one who was just harnessing her potential, who remains to this day the most committed person to sobriety I’ve ever encountered.

Within weeks of mentioning it, she’d done a deal with Jimmy, who until that moment had been making a few pairs of shoes a week by hand in a basement studio in the East End. The story of how it all started with her first shop in Motcomb Street and where it is today, worth £500 million, is hers to tell. I’ve watched her grow from an irresponsible girl CONTINUED ON PAGE 323 to one who takes on boardrooms of

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tâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a bouncy ride, interviewing Emma Thompson. We are lying on a double bed in an Oxfordshire mansion and Thompsonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s almost pathological fascination with just about everything is giving the mattress a rigorous workout.

The famously outspoken actor, producer, writer and activist is talking passionately about depression (â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Mine metabolised into crippling pain, and that was interestingâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;), child-rearing (â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Your mistakes are their building blocksâ&#x20AC;Ś but God, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s interesting!â&#x20AC;&#x2122;), ageing (â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;I look in the mirror and I see my wrinkles on my face and I think, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Oh, I am old! How do I feel about that?â&#x20AC;?â&#x20AC;&#x2122;) and her recent charity work for survivors of abuse, torture and rape (â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m very curious about all those experiences and what kind of suffering that produces in a personâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;).

After a while, her universal curiosity in the whole world makes her so hot that she hops off the bed to remove the blue mohair Margiela cardigan she has been wearing for the Bazaar shoot in the gardens of the estate owned by her friends film producer Eric Fellner and model Laura Bailey.

(Thompson also donned a slinky chainmail look â&#x20AC;&#x201C; she doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t mind â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;doing a few posh dressesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;, she says.)

Now she slips into a simple white cotton dressing gown. She looks handsome and rakish â&#x20AC;&#x201C; a bit like Julie Andrews in Victor Victoria. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s also pleasantly shocking to see that no, she probably hasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t had any â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;workâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; done, as she has always insisted.

She is radiant, and yet her face can still tell a story. And what a fantastically successful story it has been: a sparkling career spanning more than 30 years that is still going from strength to strength.

Thompson remains the only person to have won Academy Awards for both acting (Howards End in 1993) and writing (the screenplay for Sense and Sensibility in 1996), and this year she was honoured with her own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

The Nanny McPhee films, for which she plays the leading role and writes the scripts, have proved a Hollywood triumph, and she is about to don â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;fluffy socks and fleecesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; to write (in long hand) the third installment in the front room of her West Hampstead home, having already penned a script for a new film version of My Fair Lady earlier this year.

Alongside such achievements, thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a kind of mischievous integrity to Thompson that makes her the â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;thinking womanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s poster girlâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;, an actor who refuses to conform to expectation. There is a rare honesty to her that you donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t get with many of Hollywoodâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s luminaries, who insist on the presence of their agent at interviews (you certainly wonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t find many bouncing up and down on a bed urging you to eat chocolates and drink wine).

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This candour seeps into Thompsonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s performances, too. Sheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s not just a versatile actor with an ability to switch from roles in Hollywood comedies such as 2008â&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Last Chance Harvey to playing Sybil Trelawney in the Harry Potter films; she also has the power to convey emotional turmoil in a way that is both unexpected and deeply moving. Love Actually, for instance, is usually remembered for the almost unbearably poignant scene where she plays the wife who discovers her husband is philandering, but who pulls herself together for the sake of her children.

As for her politics, they donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t seem to have changed much since her Cambridge University days, when she drove around on a motorbike with a shaved head. She is still just as unafraid of being controversial; she bought a plot of land near Heathrow Airport to stop the building of the third runway, and threatened to resign from the set of Brideshead Revisited when film executives asked then25-year-old Hayley Atwell to slim down for her role (â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Everyone has to be so small â&#x20AC;&#x201C; itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s as though actual women are an endangered speciesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;); and her latest project, Safe, is the initiative of humanrights group the Helen Bamber Foundation, of which she is chair.

For the Safe campaign, aimed at helping those forced into labour or sexual exploitation (an estimated 27 million people worldwide), Thompson rallied together actors including Meryl Streep, Julianne Moore, Thandie Newton and Helen Mirren, and asked them to be photographed by her friend Nick Haddow in locations that defined â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;safeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; for them. The results are both intriguing and intimate.

Mooreâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s safe place is in the corner of a bookshop; Newtonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s is in bed; and Rachel Weisz feels free up a tree.

Anjelica Huston wears a pair of shades, â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;which makes you realise a lotâ&#x20AC;Śâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Thompson says, looking ruefully into her glass of wine.

Thompson needs to be super-busy. It has â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;savedâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; her, she admits, on many occasions.

Writing the script for Sense and Sensibility in her mid-thirties pulled her through the â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;ghastly, painful businessâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; of divorce after her six-year-long marriage to fellow actor and director Kenneth Branagh in 1995.

She has spoken publicly about the depressive episodes that she has suffered throughout her life with a level of frankness hitherto unknown in Hollywood circles. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;I think that if youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re in public life and youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re projecting confidence, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s very important to admit to another side that can be very vulnerable to the kind of chemical imbalance that depression is,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; she says. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Then at least thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a little reality check â&#x20AC;&#x201C; people can think, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s not real, that glamour, because there are other aspects to that kind of life or that kind of person.â&#x20AC;?â&#x20AC;&#x2122; It is still hard to reconcile Thompsonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s accounts of mental anguish with the image she presents in her working life. Susanna White, director of the second Nanny McPhee film, says of her: â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Sheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s very confident and knows exactly who she is.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; Thompsonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s face breaks into a girlish grin. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Actually,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; she says, taking a swig of white wine, â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;I couldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t be more confused or stumbling about in the dark at the moment if I tried. And Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m 51 years old! So you just go, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Well, all right, just accept it â&#x20AC;&#x201C; if thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s how I feel, thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s how I feel.â&#x20AC;?â&#x20AC;&#x2122;

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smiling. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;You just live inside the trees and grow back into the earth, The â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;noonday demonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; first hit in her final year at Newnham somehow. That, to me, is the most healing thing â&#x20AC;&#x201C; going to Scotland College, Cambridge. On the surface, everything seemed perfect; and growing a beard, basically.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; she was the bright eldest daughter of actor Phyllida Law and Thompson and the family have a â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;regular hootenannyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; when Eric Thompson, the producer and soothing voice behind The they are in Scotland, she says. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;We all just really go bananas. A lot Magic Roundabout. Sheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d got into the universityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Footlights of it outside â&#x20AC;&#x201C; bouncing into rivers and lochs and things. Thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s comedy troupe and even caught the attention of a London theatriterribly important. Especially as you get older. Moderationâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s cal agent in her first year. a marvellous thing, but itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s also terribly important to lose yourself But behind the scenes, it was another story. When her beloved in a communal wild riot.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; uncle died and her father had a massive stroke, she says she â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;became Food, too, gives her that safe feeling. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;We always have a family slightly dysfunctional. I couldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t really do anything â&#x20AC;&#x201C; had no energy. meal together. Greg always buys me a cookery book for our trips I remember my tutor stopping me in the street on my bike and up to Scotland. It was on onions this year.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; saying, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m worried about youâ&#x20AC;?â&#x20AC;&#x2122;.

Yet sheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s aware that food can be problematic for women, and Thompson didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t tell anyone that she and her sister Sophie refuses to have anyone talk about diets in front of Gaia, now 11. She (who is also an actor) were trying to teach their father to speak smiles as she recalls a trip to Los Angeles in June for a tribute for again. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;I just kind of soldiered on through it, wondering why I felt The Graduate director Mike Nichols. Thompson wore a dĂŠcolletĂŠ so desperate,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; she says.

Vivienne Westwood frock. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;It was fascinating!â&#x20AC;&#x2122; she says. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Tom She was still suffering from clinical depression when, at 24, Hanks and Jack Nicholson and all these blokes going, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Whoaâ&#x20AC;?, soon after graduation, she landed the lead role in a West End because youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve got your boobs right up and your bust is made bigproduction of Me and My Girl. By this time, the depression had ger.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; She couldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t tell if they were â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;attracted or repelledâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Maybe metabolised into physical agony. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;I used to get terrible lower-back a bit of both, because theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re all so used to waifsâ&#x20AC;Ś little girls.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; pain. I was crippled by it. I had MRI scans, thought I had cancer of There is something very likeable about Thompson. You sense the spineâ&#x20AC;Ś I remember one day standing up, sneezing, and it was thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a lot of bravado mixed in with the confidence, but this only as if my back burst into flames.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; makes her more admirable because she has to constantly push A friend put her on to an American doctor. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;He had a diagnosis herself. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;My lifeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s motto,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; she says, shrugging, â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;boils down to, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Try that he calls TMS: tension myositis syndrome. He looked at me and and make things a bit better, if you can, then bugger off.â&#x20AC;?â&#x20AC;&#x2122; said, â&#x20AC;&#x153;You are exactly the type of personality that experiences With that, she swigs back the last of the wine, slams the glass this kind of pain. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s an A-type personality thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s extremely down and gives one of her grins. self-punishing.â&#x20AC;?â&#x20AC;&#x2122; When she accepted the diagnosis, the aches eventually dispersed. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;If I get very angry, Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll still sometimes get feelings in my back as a form of pain. When they diagnose couple of days after our interview, Thompson sends depression, some clinicians will say itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s anger thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s not metabolised me a handwritten letter saying what a pleasure it â&#x20AC;&#x201C; anger thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s metamorphosed into pain.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; was to talk, and how â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;it occurred to me to send you Although the physical agony lessened, the depression returned my favourite bit of writing about depression â&#x20AC;&#x201C; again after the birth of her daughter Gaia, who Thompson had 19th-century styleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;. when she was 40 with her second husband, the actor Greg Wise.

Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a letter penned in 1820 by Sydney Smith, the She wanted to have another child, and struggled through three English writer and clergyman, beginning: â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Nobody has suffered IVF cycles during a period she describes as â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;hellishâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;You want more from low spirits than I have done,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; and continuing with another one, you just do. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s something biological. Once that touch 20 points on how to make things better, from â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;live as well as you paper has been lit, it somehow leads to this insane desire for 17 dareâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; to â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;short views of human life â&#x20AC;&#x201C; not further than dinner or children.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; In 2003, she and Wise adopted a teaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;. The fact that someone should have former child soldier from Rwanda, thentheir favourite piece of depression litera16-year-old Tindyebwa Agaba (known ture at hand strikes me as touching, and affectionately as â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Tindyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;), finally moving on also fabulously defiant.

What was the highlight of 2010 for you? from the IVF nightmare.

Indeed, defiance is a quality that â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;A whole week of perfect weather in You sense that Thompson has had other Thompson possesses in abundance. In her Scotland during the May half-term. breakthroughs, too, notably about what she career, the actor-screenwriter is undoubtEveryone thought we had been to terms â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;the question of spiritualityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;. She uses edly looking at the stars, yet she has the the Caribbean.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; the word â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;healingâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; a lot, and sheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s keen to fascinating ability to appear down to earth Biggest challenge of the year? talk about the things she does to avoid sinkâ&#x20AC;&#x201C; one of us, beset with all our doubts, ambiâ&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Accepting the effects of gravity.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; ing too deeply into melancholy. guities, sadness and joy. But because sheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s What is your enduring philosophy?

As part of the Safe project, she was phoEmma Thompson, sheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s damn well going â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Only be original.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; tographed naked in a river near her second to make the best of it.

Success isâ&#x20AC;Ś home close to Dunoon in West Scotland, a â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;the by-product of hard work and, more The Safe exhibition, with portraits by Nick clue to one of the things that keep her sane: often than not, unhelpful.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; Haddow and hosted by Chanel, is showing in nature. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;There are no mirrors â&#x20AC;&#x201C; nothing London in November. For details, visit www.

What are your ambitions for 2011? reflecting anything back at you,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; she says, helenbamber.org. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m hoping finally to clean out the loft.â&#x20AC;&#x2122;

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OF WOMENTHE YEAR

DESIGNER

SARAH

BURTON No one has had a more transformative year than the Alexander McQueen designer. She shot from relative obscurity to quietly evolve the label’s appeal, transcend the tragedy of her mentor’s death and win universal acclaim as the creator of that wedding dress.

CLARE COULSON meets fashion’s unassuming hero Photographs by DAVID BURTON Sarah Burton is crouched on the cool stone floor of a vaulted backroom at the Conciergerie palace in Paris, coaxing a dress from what looks like a giant’s body bag. ‘Is it the big white one?’ she asks, completely unaware of the very obvious understatement. As one of her breathtaking ‘Ice Queen’ gowns emerges from its box, a dozen feet of densely ruffled organza slowly unfurls on the floor. You can almost hear it sigh, as its crushed layers spread out and its extreme beauty is unleashed.

No fashion house has cast a spell over fashion this year more than Alexander McQueen. When Burton was appointed creative director of the brand in May 2010, it seemed like a pragmatic move – she had, after all, worked alongside the late, great designer for 14 years. It was also, in retrospect, the only solution. Who else could have followed in McQueen’s footsteps at a house that bore his incredible imagination and soaring vision in almost everything he created? But no one could have envisaged what was to follow.

In the space of a year, Sarah Burton has proven her worth on the catwalk with three outstanding collections, showcasing the kind of couture skill and craftsmanship rarely seen in Paris, let alone London. But more than that, on 29 April at Westminster Abbey she put McQueen on a world stage. The exquisite gown in ivory silk gazar and intricately applied lace that she created for the Duchess of Cambridge gave us the fairytale moment of the century.

Just a couple of days after that career-defining day, Burton was in New York for the opening of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s record-breaking retrospective ‘Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty’, which saw 661,509 visitors file into the Costume Institute (the highest ever attendance for a fashion exhibition at the historic venue) to wonder at the designer’s life’s work – forcing the museum to extend its run and offer night-time openings. The queues, which sometimes snaked through the museum and out into Central Park, spoke volumes about how much the fashion house had been catapulted from much-revered brand into global phenomenon. Discussions are December 2011 |

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DREAM WEAVER Sarah Burton, photographed at the Conciergerie in Paris, wears her own Alexander McQueen clothes. Vassilisa wears tulle dress; Kate wears brocade, feather and leather dress, both from a selection, Alexander McQueen

OF WOMENTHE YEAR now under way for the exhibition to come to London next year.

The Duchess of Cambridge’s wedding dress, meanwhile, was also breaking records back in London when, by the end of the summer, Buckingham Palace had taken £10 million in ticket sales from the 600,000 people who visited for a stone’s-throw view of that gorgeous gown, which hung ghoulishly under spotlights all summer.

Through it all, Burton has remained discreet and modest, shunning interviews, politely deflecting inquisitive questioning and, most of all – just as her mentor would have done – determinedly getting on with the work. ‘I think it would have all been very difficult to deal with, but doing the wedding dress, having this opportunity, keeping the house alive has been incredible,’ Burton says, reflecting on the insane trajectory of the past 18 months. ‘I look back and I think, “Oh. My. God,”’ she says, collapsing into heaps of giggles.

It’s easy to see how the Duchess must have fallen for the 37-yearold Cheshire-born designer who came to McQueen when she was in her final year at Central Saint Martins. There is nothing of the haughty fashion designer about her. Thoroughly down to earth, utterly lacking in any pretence, she is dazzlingly warm, approachable. And modest. Because, of course, being so out there was never in her game plan.

‘When you work for an inspirational genius – which Lee was – you don’t ever imagine you will take on that job, especially in those circumstances,’ she says thoughtfully. ‘You’re put in a situation where the spotlight is so on you, and it’s not like it’s something I have always wanted to take on.

But I am really lucky. It’s a privilege and I’ve been given incredible opportunities, even if it was tragic the way that I was given them.’

It’s almost two years since the fashion house was thrown into unimaginable turmoil, when McQueen took his own life on 10 February 2010. In the dark days and weeks that followed, it was impossible to imagine the brand surviving without him, let alone moving forwards. How could anyone step into those shoes? But, for anyone in the incredibly tight-knit McQueen world, it was clear that there was one person capable of doing the job.

‘We thought perhaps there would be a transitionary time,’ says the label’s CEO Jonathan Akeroyd. ‘Perhaps people wouldn’t embrace it as they had done, but in a way it has been the complete opposite.’ For Akeroyd, Burton was the obvious choice for taking the helm. ‘She was on a level with Lee that was unique. Sometimes he would only say a couple of words to her, and she got what he said and would go and execute it perfectly.’

‘It must have been really difficult to take all of that on,’ says Daphne Guinness. ‘And what she has done has been impeccable.

He was such a complex artist. It is extremely difficult to get into anyone’s head, but she was as close to him as one could be.’ Naomi Campbell, a close friend of both McQueen and Burton, agrees: ‘What I think we forget is that she was always there with Lee. For me, it was never about what she could do, it was to do with what she was already doing.’ As critic Tim Blanks put it so succinctly in a review after Burton’s stunning A/W 11 show: ‘She isn’t channelling the McQueen DNA; she is the McQueen DNA.’ What is clear, though, is that McQueen under Sarah Burton is in many ways a different brand than the one built by her mentor. If his creations had appeared exclusive and sometimes even excluding, Burton has brought a softer, more feminine touch to the strong signature of the house. Where McQueen was always drawn to the dark side, torn, as in his final collection, by both angels and demons, Burton has let in the light. ‘He’s very much present in the studio.

The team is all still there, we still work how he worked, but you have to be true to yourself,’ says Burton. ‘I never wanted to just rehash old shows; Lee was always about looking forward.’

And while she may have brought a lightness to McQueen, it hasn’t been to the detriment of the awe-inspiring craft. The current collection – shown as royal-wedding-dress speculation was at its frenzied height, back in March – is a bravura performance of couture technique, with its beautifully sculpted tweed and fur coats, zippered sheaths and finale of jaw-dropping gowns with vast trains of distressed ruffled tulle, and the most intricately embroidered bodices. ‘Because of what Lee did, we can be as creative as we want to be, whether that’s making dresses out of porcelain or shells. It was never, “No, we can’t do that,” and that continues,’ says Burton. ‘I do believe in the craft and the way things are made. I want every piece to feel very special and very beautiful, but not in an overworked way.

I want to get the balance of the lightness and the workmanship.’

If her ‘Ice Queen’ collection universally wowed the critics, then her latest, for S/S 12 – a romantic and otherworldly exploration of adornment inspired by Greek goddess Gaia – took the craft to an

On 29 April she put McQueen on a world stage.

The Duchess of Cambridge’s exquisite gown gave us the fairytale moment of the century

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Sarah’s WORLD What was your highlight of 2011?

‘The royal wedding.’

What is your enduring motto?

‘Trust your instincts.’

What is your secret weapon?

‘My amazing team.’

Who is your woman of the year?

‘The Duchess of Cambridge.’

SEE STOCKISTS FOR DETAILS. HAIR BY SANDY HULLETT. MAKE-UP BY GEORGI SANDEV, USING CHANEL PHOTOGRAPH: XXXXXX

even higher level, with incredibly embellished gowns that used chiffon, embroidery, hand-pleating, beading, laser-cut leather and lace.

‘Each piece had to feel ornate in its own way. The pleating was difficult, and the metallic dresses that were fitted to the body were incredibly complex. I do become a bit obsessive,’ she says, smiling.

It’s that obsessiveness and tenacity that made Burton the perfect candidate to design the Duchess of Cambridge’s dress. Her focus on the ultimate craftsmanship created such an amazing moment for British design. ‘It’s an old-fashioned – or perhaps a new – way of working,’ says Akeroyd. ‘She wants the work to be the thing that gets the attention. She worked very hard to make a beautiful dress for the day, but she didn’t want publicity – she didn’t want to talk about it.’

Keeping the royal wedding dress secret was perhaps fashion’s greatest ever ruse. Only 15 people at McQueen knew about the commission, and only those people were allowed access to the toile, and then the dress, that were guarded night and day in the McQueen archive in Clerkenwell. And in an almost excruciating finale – for the millions who were mesmerised by the dress that emerged from that Rolls-Royce Phantom on 29 April– the true secrets of that dress are still locked away.

Few in the fashion world believed – or dared hope – that the bride would choose McQueen. But when Burton made her dash into the Goring under the cover of a giant fur trapper hat on the eve of the royal wedding, our hearts gave a collective leap. What followed can only be described as the greatest triumph from utter tragedy.

It’s such a bittersweet moment. McQueen would have no doubt loved seeing an Alexander McQueen dress take pride of place amid all the pomp and pageantry of that day at Westminster Abbey. He would have howled with laughter, probably, at the never-ending queues that wound through Central Park this summer (‘He would have loved having his name outside the Met!’ says Burton, smiling.)

But most of all, he probably would have been so very proud of his worthy successor. ‘I often think to myself, “What would Lee have thought?” says Naomi Campbell. ‘He wouldn’t have believed it.’

MCQUEEN FOR A DAY Sarah wears her own Alexander McQueen clothes

OF WOMENTHE YEAR

DESIGNER OF THE YEAR

Stella McCartney

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Stella McCartney is going to make you feel bad about yourself. Not on purpose, of course, but she will make you feel a little lazy, leading you to ask: ‘What on Earth have I achieved this year?’ You see, over the past 12 months, among the new collections, store openings and launches (including a lingerie range, another children’s line and a perfume), there was also the matter of dressing 600-plus athletes for the Olympics. ‘It is crazy when I think about everything I have done this year,’ she admits when I reel off the list. ‘It’s been amazing, but scary. Particularly with the Olympics, I did get very involved, mentally as well as physically, and got emotionally drained… So much work went into it, more than I can imagine now.’

Such is McCartney’s charm that when you’re with her you don’t feel jealous or even inferior. Instead, you feel oddly empowered, mainly because the designer is so incredulous of her own achievements. ‘How have we managed to do all of that and the year isn’t over yet?’ she wonders aloud. ‘Time is speeding by. We need to stop the clock for a bit.’ It is late August and we are meeting at her favourite café, Clarke’s, just minutes from her west-London home.

In almost every interview written about McCartney, there is a sense of surprise that she is smaller and prettier than in pictures. The truth is McCartney is striking, but so different is she in the flesh that, walking past her in the street, you are more likely to notice her shoes (and what shoes!) than her face. She is indeed smaller and, dressed in her own denim skirt, shirt and trench (100 per cent of her wardrobe is her own design), the 41-year-old looks so young it’s hard to believe she has four children (with husband Alasdhair Willis): Miller, Beckett, Bailey and Reiley. In July, she was awarded an Honorary Fellowship from the University of the Arts London, and in her graduation robes could have passed for a twentysomething graduate.

McCartney’s talent for designing clothes that real women want to wear is remarkable; but it is her dedication to Britain’s finest sporting performance in decades that made 2012 her year.

Stella’s WORLD

Your highlight of 2012 ‘Designing the

kit for Team GB.’ Biggest British inspiration this year?

‘This nation is so down on things, so it was incredible to have the Olympic Games here. I went to as much as I could.’

Your favourite moment from this year’s Olympics ‘The Opening Ceremony.

Danny [Boyle] did an amazing job. I don’t think there were any huge mistakes.’

A strong woman is… ‘aware of herself and her power.’

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Kitting out Team GB, setting up a scholarship to help budding designers and putting on a special LFW show – Stella McCartney has had a sensational 2012. By KAY BARRON Portraits by MARY MCCARTNEY

UP THE GARDEN PATH Stella McCartney wears silk chiffon blouse, £460; silk-cotton mix trousers, £625, both from her own collection www.harpersbazaar.co.uk

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Her own Olympic journey began three years ago, when she was announced as the creative director for the Adidas Team GB gear, the first time a fashion designer has ever been involved with the range. ‘It was like nothing I had ever done before, a very different world from the fashion world.’ McCartney has worked with Adidas for eight years, but even a vast knowledge of performance-wear couldn’t prepare her for Olympians. ‘You have to be more informed.

In fashion it’s about what it looks like and not what it is about at all.

There were different rules for each discipline that I had to follow.

You can’t put flesh on flesh, you can’t have a certain cut line, you need to think about sweating. The final product was so removed from what I started with. It was a journey.’

When the kits were first unveiled in March, McCartney faced what she sees as an inevitable public backlash. ‘These are not our colours!’ ‘Where is the Union Jack – it looks like Team Scotland, not Team GB!’ Twitter roared. McCartney sighs. ‘I grew up with a Beatle for a dad in this country; I know what happens here, I get it.

I was never under any misconception that I was going to be flying on good reviews. The major feedback was that there wasn’t enough red, and I was kicking myself, and I still do.’ The designer admits she had a fashion moment. ‘I was being a bit naive. I thought, “This is a presentation, I have 13 ‘models’ and I have to make it look like a team.” We had loads of red looks backstage; some of the kits were entirely red. I should have realised what was happening. But whatever you thought, Team GB definitely stood out.’ Across the street from the café is a cobbled mews still draped in Union Jack bunting and throbbing with bright, blooming flower baskets. ‘You see that?’ McCartney says, pointing. ‘That is what London should be about right now; how perfect is it? Although some journalists would only see the garbage truck and traffic warden.’

Being British has always been core to the Stella McCartney brand.

It’s reflected in everything the designer does, through her Savile Row-inspired tailoring (she trained at Edward Sexton while studying), the irreverent undercurrent that runs through each of her lines, and her ability not to take anything too seriously while working under the very serious PPR luxury group. It has always been a point of agitation to some critics that McCartney, a Brit living and working in London, has shown during Paris Fashion Week since setting up her eponymous label in 2001, and not on her ‘home turf ’ at London Fashion Week. ‘There has been pressure from day one to show in London, but I didn’t want to give up my slot in Paris, as you don’t get one easily,’ she says in her own defence. ‘I have always shown in Paris and I have a great history there. I also have great pride, being a British designer showing there, as there aren’t many of us and it’s hard to get that and be taken somewhat seriously. It’s not that we are not loyal to the UK; we are representing the UK in France.’

Her loyalty to British fashion is revealed in other ways. In February she staged a special eveningwear show during London Fashion Week, supporting British fashion in a key year. Then, in July, on the day she was awarded the Honorary Fellowship, McCartney announced she would fund a scholarship for MA fashion students at Central Saint Martins. Those who receive it must adhere to her strict ‘no fur, leather or animal products’ policy.

‘We’d been talking about it for a long time, and the time felt right to launch the scholarship. As a mother and creative businesswoman,

I think you get to a stage where it’s really important to give back and mentor. More businesses need to get into it. It’s very much the future and the legacy for 2012, [like] the Olympics using the new generation to light the torch.’

McCartney graduated from the BA course at the college in 1995 – infamously using friends Kate Moss and Naomi Campbell to model her final collection – but admits she didn’t really fit in with the other students. ‘They were all so “fashiony”; it freaked me out. So I hung out with the sculpture students because… they were all men! It wasn’t that I didn’t like the fashion students, I just didn’t get that elitism.’ Although McCartney never studied for the MA, Professor Louise Wilson, the lauded head of the course, has become an unofficial recruiter for the Stella McCartney design team. ‘I was always terrified of Louise when I was at college,’ McCartney admits. ‘But she is amazing. She puts personalities together well and knows what will work for us. She has helped us find great people and I have a lot of ex-Saint Martins students in my team. There aren’t many fashion houses creating jobs in London, but I am and that is important to us.’

After an already eventful year, McCartney is hoping to ‘slow down and reassess’, but there seems little chance of that – at the time of meeting, she was completing her S/S 13 collection, which received rave reviews at Paris Fashion Week in October. And it was full of nods to her Olympic experience. ‘Sportswear does feed into it, but on a level I don’t really notice. I definitely won’t have inspiration from the Union Jack,’ she says with a laugh. ‘When I graduated, there was so much more crazy stuff on the runway. I have always been one of those designers who encourage wearability. But now I think there needs to be a couple more [designers] that go a bit crazy again.

Everyone loves the extremes of fashion and the escapism. I still try to have elements of that in what I do. I always drop in something with a bit of irreverence and a twist that makes you think, “Where did that come from?”’

Given the constant demands and ongoing commitments, the question everyone asks of McCartney is, inevitably: how does she do it? ‘Honestly, it’s not easy and it’s silly to pretend that it is,’ she says. Attending the Opening Ceremony and realising that this was the first Games at which women from each country would be represented (‘that freaked me out’), McCartney was prompted to explain to her five-year-old daughter Bailey about the suffragettes and women’s rights as it unfolded in front of them. ‘She really didn’t understand that women had to throw themselves under horses to get the vote, and I hope she doesn’t ever have to understand it. But, at the same time, now we are expected to do everything, which probably isn’t human, and we are in danger of burning out if we try to do everything. It could flip for the next generation and slip, so I think it is important to take note of what one can and cannot do.

I lose it sometimes. If I’ve had four hours’ sleep because I was at something late and up early with the kids, then I am not a particularly good mum, and not a particularly good colleague at work.’

Usually, each weekend the family drives to its Worcestershire bolthole to escape the mania of London; but this year, McCartney’s schedule dictated otherwise. ‘I’m not going to complain. We’ve had an amazing year as a brand. But saying no is an amazing talent.

When I manage to say no to things, it’s like flopping down on a bed.

But it’s also one of the hardest things to do. Next year I need to learn how to say no.’

‘I have great pride, being a British designer showing in Paris. There aren’t many of us’

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OF WOMENTHE YEAR

HERE COMES THE SUN Organic cotton shirt, £370, Stella McCartney www.harpersbazaar.co.uk

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DOMESTIC BLITZ This page: the kitchen of Dinos Chapman and Tiphaine de Lussyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s new house. Opposite: Dinos with daughters Seraphine, Agathe and wife Tiphaine in the den. Dinos wears cotton T-shirt, ÂŁ40, All Saints.

Other clothes, his own. Seraphine wears cotton vest, ÂŁ6, Topshop. Knit jumper, ÂŁ230, Designers Remix Collection at A142 Store. Leather skirt, ÂŁ290, Designers Remix Collection at My-wardrobe.com. Agathe wears knit cardigan, as before. Tiphaine wears lace dress, ÂŁ495, Joseph. Jewellery, her own

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2

riving through lush southern-English countryside, where pretty cottages several centuries old appear at intervals along a narrow winding lane, a wall of concrete suddenly looms ahead, tearing into the idyllic landscape. Behind it, sunk into a former reservoir that last saw service in the 1970s, is an extraordinary piece of new domestic architecture â&#x20AC;&#x201C; as beautiful as it is dramatic â&#x20AC;&#x201C; that is now the second home of British artist Dinos Chapman and his wife Tiphaine de Lussy. Even by Chapman standards (with his brother Jake, Dinos has created some deeply unsettling imagery over the last 15 years), it is an extreme work of art.

Two and a half years have passed since the couple put in their first bid for the site â&#x20AC;&#x201C; resident slow worms had to be relocated; the reservoir floor raised by a metre â&#x20AC;&#x201C; but then, dream homes take time.

The couple now have the house they always yearned for, a testament to their taste for brutalist architecture like that found in Londonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Barbican, as well as many mid-century modern American influences (both namecheck the houses in Ang Leeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s 1997 The Ice Storm, set in 1970s Connecticut, and the 1975 film Rollerball as references). â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve lived our entire lives in a fantasy of being in America,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; says Chapman. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;So weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve recreated our own motel here,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; laughs de Lussy.

The couple have been together for 25 years, and finally married four years ago.

They have two daughters (Agathe, 16, and Seraphine, 18) and a pair of chunky boxers, Snoopy and Woody. While Chapmanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s reputation is for making challenging art, textile designer de Lussy is a mistress of exquisite taste, both in her interior design and her own dress. The house has taken up all her time for the past year, but sheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s now looking forward to running her fashion business, Paris Essex, again with her best friend Carolyn Clewer. De Lussy is as poised and slender as a combination of running, Pilates and swimming would suggest (she is even a trained lifeguard), and possesses, at 46, a figure that most would envy, as well as an innate grace. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;I met her when we were at art college when I was 17. Even then she was the most sophisticated person,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; says close friend Sam Taylor-Wood. Antonio Berardi, another friend and favoured designer, says: â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Tiphaine gives what I do a certain charge, both energetic and sexual. Sheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s an extraordinary woman with impeccable taste. Their new home is a testament to both of them, visionary as only Dinos can be, and perfectly decorated as only Tiphaine could achieve.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; Then he sighs. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re the perfect couple really.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; De Lussy and Chapman may have been snapped at openings with Lapo Elkann and Miuccia Prada, and may have dined with Victoria Beckham, but they are surprisingly private people. While the fabulousness they enjoy from time to time is a delightful by-product of life in the art world, they are reserved about mentioning their friends (who include artists Gary Hume and Georgie Hopton, and Frieze founder Matthew Slotover and his design-doctorate wife Emily King). But with the house itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a different matter. You canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t help but feel the project was a labour of love, and they canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t wait to share the joy. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;I adored it,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; says de Lussy of the business of designing and building.

They are also generous in their praise of Kevin Brennan, a close friend and the architect with whom the pair collaborated on the project. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;I really like Kevin because he has an unhealthy interest in

brutalist architecture,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; says Chapman mischievously. Indeed, as we enter through a full-height steel door and gaze down a long hallway towards an exuberant Chapman brothers sculpture (composed of machinery pieces cast in bronze that were part of a 2008 collection called â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;When Humans Walked the Earthâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;), the evidence is all around us. Both the houseâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s exterior and interior pull no punches when it comes to tough materials (concrete and steel) and unerringly straight lines. There are no soft, comforting curves here. Even the lap pool is a 25-metre rectangular chasm of glinting black stone. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;It had to be 25 metres,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; says de Lussy, â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;so I can train properly in it.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; Chapman is the elder of the two infamous brothers (now aged 48 and 44 respectively) who have never attempted to shield the world from their scorn or the more depraved side of humanity. Their work frequently creates public anxiety or uproar, whether it involves child mannequins with extended penises for noses, or the pair â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;improvingâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; original Goya drawings by adding puppies and clowns, and enhancing original watercolours by Adolf Hitler with rainbows. Chapman is unapologetic when he says: â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Art should be difficult.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; The man at home with de Lussy and the girls in the country, however, isnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t interested in antagonism at all. Tall and slightly damaged by a three-month-old running injury, Chapman lopes around looking a bit stiff around the neck and shoulder, in worn, knee-length shorts and a T-shirt (â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Those shorts come out at the first sign of sunshine,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; says de Lussy). De Lussy makes coffee in the new kitchen (the island is a monolithic black granite block with one side of plain oak drawers), and we all gaze out at disappointingly grey weather and the breathtaking view of rolling green fields.

This is the second time the pair have worked with Brennan. Their London home is one in a row of three on Fashion Street, E1, occupied by artists â&#x20AC;&#x201C; the other two being Jake, and Chris Ofili, who now lives between Trinidad and London. The couple moved in in 1998. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;We designed the life out of it, we took down so many walls,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; says Brennan. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;They didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t really have any furniture, so everything was bespoke.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; The kitchen cabinets were even made to glow in the dark. The walnut dining table has now come to the country, along with the copper Tom Dixon pendant lights and red acrylic Philippe Starck chairs. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Tiphaine is such a great stylist,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; says Brennan. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;So the point was to give her a nice armature to play with. She works by pulling people together. Sheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s like a producer.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; The bedrooms â&#x20AC;&#x201C; lined up along the pool like at a Palm Springs motel â&#x20AC;&#x201C; boast bespoke net curtains by radical Glaswegian textile designers Timorous Beasties (de Lussy was at college with beastie Paul Simmons), devilâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s heads for the coupleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s room, spots for the girls; the downstairs toilets will be lined with Chapman brothers wallpaper (a sort of toile de jouy with imagery lifted from their reworking of Goyaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s The Disasters of War). â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Tiphaine stopped me putting minibars and those miniature kettles in the bedrooms,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; says Chapman. Instead, she went on eBay and bought 1930s furniture for the girls and a lot of Danish midcentury pieces for the rest of the house. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;I hate fussy things,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; she says.

You can see this attitude in their approach to fashion, too, where graphic shapes are mixed with imagination and fun. De Lussy prefers a clean silhouette, often wearing Berardi, Isabel Marant, Martin Margiela and Acne, and a lot by her friend Stella McCartney (â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;all my exercisewearâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;), though sheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll happily pick up a bargain in Topshop.

She also has a fondness for customising trainers for Chapman at

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CHARACTER STUDIES Agathe and Dinos in the pool area; Agathe wears silk and chiffon dress, from a selection, Christopher Kane. Clockwise from below: pieces from 2002â&#x20AC;&#x2122;s â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;The Chapman Family Collectionâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; show. An exterior view of the house. Gary Humeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s maquette for his â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Liberty Gripâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;, created for the lobby of the Sadlerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Wells theatre in London

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Niketown. He likes to buy understated suits made by Start in Shoreditch, and has an unerring ability to buy the perfect present for her. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;He got me a Lanvin dress â&#x20AC;&#x201C; not because he knew what Lanvin was, but because he understood the beauty of the structure and liked the raw edges,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; says de Lussy. She has acted as London brand ambassador for Danish label Designers Remix, helping to launch its S/S 10 collection. She loves its â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;quite Amazonianâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; tailored shapes.

Upstairs in the vast sitting room, a massive B&B sofa shares space with a classic mid-century Lamino chair by Swedish designer Yngve Ekstrom. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;I bought it a few years ago for Dinos when heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d had a foot operation,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; she says. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a bit battered now, which is good for here. We needed pieces that werenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t super-slick.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; It sits on a Chapman brothers rug, decorated with McDonaldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s imagery, to which they often refer. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Jake and I always argue about whether it should go on the wall or the floor,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; says Chapman, as either Snoopy or Woody pads across it with big muddy paws. His brother, perhaps, has a point.

On a coffee table is a ghoulish cluster of mannequinsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; heads with faded copper-coloured hair. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s called Bobble Bubble,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; says Chapman. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;It was part of our Gagosian show in New York in 1997. That was when we realised we needed to start keeping pieces back for ourselves.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; Since then, his collection has grown, and a key part of this project was designing spaces in which to show it. On the ground floor, Brennan squeezed the bedrooms to make room for a gallery holding three pieces from â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;The Chapman Family Collectionâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; of 2002 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; totemic sculptures that look like African art; closer inspection reveals them to comprise symbols from McDonaldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s.

One wall is lined with black brick, the other with smoked glass, a preference of de Lussyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s because â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;it always makes you look goodâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;.

Elsewhere, there is a massive white and pink bronze maquette by Gary Hume of the sculpture he recently created for the Sadlerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Wells theatre â&#x20AC;&#x201C; a Modernist entangling of three limbs. The first piece of art Chapman bought for himself, a pink neon painting by the American artist Peter Halley, leans against the wall of the main room.

De Lussy and Chapman were introduced by mutual friend Sam Taylor-Wood in Hastings, the Chapman familyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s home town, in 1985. Both women were studying fashion at the local art school; when Dinos returned to the seaside town after graduating from Ravensbourne College of Design, she took her friend along to meet the budding painter in his studio. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Sam took me along to see Dinosâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; paintings. They were great. But we were both so shy,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; says de Lussy of that first meeting. Later, Taylor-Wood explains: â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;I met Dinos, who was a surly painter. I thought he was right up Tiphaineâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s street, so I introduced them. I thought his moodiness and idiotic ways with her sophistication were a perfect match.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; The pair met again and the match proved compatible, not least because of their mixed cultural backgrounds. De Lussy, who is half French and half English, grew up in Paris, while the Chapmans were born to a Greek-Cypriot mother and an English father who worked as an art teacher. Their love has endured now for over two decades. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;They are,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; says Taylor-Wood, â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;the most rock-solid couple I know.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; In 1988, de Lussy and both Chapman brothers applied to the Royal College of Art in London and were all accepted. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;It took people a while to realise the connection, and by then it was too late,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; she says, laughing. By 1992, de Lussy was pregnant with Seraphine and the couple were living impecuniously in Whitechapel. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;People

think I had my kids early, but I was 28 when I had Seraphine,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; she says. Then, in 1996, the brothers came to the attention of middle England and, more importantly, the art critics, with a show of provocative work of mutant child mannequins dressed only in spanking new trainers. In 1997, they were part of Charles Saatchiâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s controversial â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Sensationâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; show at the Royal Academy in London.

The press portrayed the brothers as hellraisers. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;I love that idea, that we were tearing up the town,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; Chapman says. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;How could we be when we were spending so much time in the studio doing fiddly things? Perhaps Jake was out and about more. But Tiphaine and I are having a lot more fun now. Tiphaine was having babies back then.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; Nonetheless, all were part of the Young British Artists East End elite, along with fellow â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Sensationâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; artists Damien Hirst, Tracey Emin, Sarah Lucas, Tim Noble and Sue Webster, though Chapman is reluctant to agree. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;The reason we got so much attention was that there was always a photographer there and a journalist to hand,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; says Chapman. The former YBAs reassembled at the coupleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s wedding in Shoreditch Town Hall in 2006. The bride wore a McQueen Goddess dress in voile and leather, made for her in a bespoke bone-coloured fabric, and black Fendi platforms. Chapman was dressed by Yves Saint Laurent. The jeweller Francesca Amfitheatrof, a friend from the RCA, made wedding bands inscribed with the words â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;True love never dies.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;It started with an intimate ceremony and turned into an East End knees-up,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; says Brennan. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Tracey Emin led a spontaneous dance troupe up on the stage at one point.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; When word got around Hoxton that there was a party, the groom had to go outside and take on bouncer duties.

Things will soon be changing again in the Chapman/de Lussy household. Seraphine is about to start an English degree at a London university; Agathe has two years to go at her local East London comprehensive school (her mother, standing by her long-held socialist views, wouldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have it any other way), but she is taking on the occasional modelling assignment. (She was scouted so many times by agencies that her parents eventually gave in and let her sign to Storm.) Chapman is going to see what happens in the privacy of the studio he has set up in the country. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;There are certain things I canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t do in our big studio in Hackney Wick; itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s full of people,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; he says. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Jake and I sometimes need to work in secret from each other.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; And de Lussy and Clewer will be busy re-activating Paris Essex to produce knitted accessories. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;You can go a bit more mad with accessories. We want to play games with texture and scale.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; Chapman is working with his brother on a new show due at White Cube next year, but in the mean time he is designing jewellery. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a bracelet and necklace with a key in silver,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; says gallerist Louisa Guinness, who will launch the pieces at the Pavillon des Arts in Paris. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;One person wears the bracelet, which has been tightened onto their wrist with the key, and the other wears the key on a chain around their neck. The bracelet wearer needs the key wearer to be released.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; As with all Chapmanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s work, there is darkness in its beauty.

The arrival of the new house has meant a halt on holidays abroad.

But then, the Chapmans feel like theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve travelled enough, conceptually at least. They only have to drive an hour and a half out of London, after all, and they come to their own little bit of America, in their big bunker buried in the fields.

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HOTEL AMERICANA The rooftop sunroom. Agathe wears velvet and chiffon dress, ÂŁ1,400, Versus. Lace and leather boots, ÂŁ610, Nicholas Kirkwood. Tiphaine wears satin dress, ÂŁ855, Stella McCartney.

Leather heels, ÂŁ495, Christian Louboutin. Dinos wears cotton T-shirt, ÂŁ40, All Saints. Wool suit, ÂŁ695, Mr Start. Seraphine wears lycra dress, ÂŁ1,475, HervĂŠ LĂŠger. Velvet and perspex heels, ÂŁ775, Charlotte Olympia.

See Stockists for details. Hair, make-up and grooming by Nikki Palmer at Mandy Coakley, using Bumble and Bumble and Bobbi Brown. Stylistâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s assistant: Camilla Denno

OF WOMENTHE YEAR

INSPIRATION OF THE YEAR

Vivienne

Westwood

Fashion legend and campaigning force Vivienne Westwood tells fellow designer BELLA FREUD, who worked for her back in her punk-rock days, about her battle to save the rainforests. Portraits by DAVID BAILEY I first met Vivienne Westwood when I was 16, in a club in London’s Camden Town. I’d just cut off my waist-length hair into a short crop and Vivienne, who liked my new appearance, gave me the much-coveted job of Wednesday-afternoon girl in her legendary shop Seditionaries. It took some confidence for a customer to enter – I once saw Debbie Harry walking past in a red beret looking nervously at the door. She didn’t come in.

Vivienne was the leader of the sartorial revolution, despite being a year older than my own mother. It was exciting to see an adult so unaffected by convention, and we were in awe.

Wearing her clothes was a stylish way of protesting that people noticed immediately. These days, Vivienne’s protest is focused on the environment. She speaks urgently on the individual’s potential to help stop global warming, and supports Cool Earth, a charitable organisation that has bought areas of threatened rainforest to protect it from deforestation and the annihilation of indigenous people.

At the Cool Earth five-year anniversary celebration in Parliament, Vivienne made a telling point about how directly connected the culture of debt and the environment are. When people think of our world crisis in terms of numbers, they forget about humanity and stop making an effort to be responsible for themselves. Vivienne takes any opportunity to raise awareness. At the Closing Ceremony of the Paralympics she took part, riding in a chariot as Queen Boadicea. At a strategic moment, without warning, she unfurled a huge banner, ingeniously folded into her outfit, proclaiming ‘Climate Revolution’. We need more leaders like her.

Bella Freud: Do you think people respond to the word ‘revolution’ in the way they used to?

Vivienne Westwood: You mean that it’s become, not exactly a dirty word – but irrelevant somehow?

BF: It is a word that people don’t like to take seriously.

VW: It has mixed connotations. The French Revolution did more harm than good – I am not in favour of violent revolution. In terms of where we are with our climate, we have to fight. I’m trying to give real, concrete ways for people to inform themselves.

BF: Each generation needs someone to remind them that taking action is the only way to change anything.

VW: Yes, and I think because Climate Revolution is so practical, it will make a difference.

It’s creating a common agenda. It will need big events along the way so that people can come together. The hippie movement was perfect in unifying people. It had a symbol – a flower – and all these big events. People came together.

BF: My experience of that was with punk. Yes, it was antisocial, but young people came together with shared revolutionary spirit. Working for you was a big part of that. I remember a T-shirt you had printed with a letter to Derek Jarman, saying how much you despised his values. It was brilliant; a devastating dismissal. My father was really impressed.

ECO WARRIOR Vivienne Westwood wears the silk-mix cape she wore to the Paralympics Closing Ceremony, which she opened to reveal a ‘Climate Revolution’ banner

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‘I was always going to be someone who had to do something.

I was four. I was going to have to fight’

OF WOMENTHE YEAR VW: [ Jarman] was too complacent, too self-indulgent, not making a universal connection.

BF: Your fashion is inextricably connected to your politics, and people respond so well

to things like your politicised T-shirts. Do you think young people are more politicised than they were 15 years ago?

VW: I’m pleased that, even though I’m gone 70, young people aren’t dismissive of me because I’m old. My fashion credibility helps in the sense that when I open my mouth, people will listen.

BF: I think people in fashion can have more effect than politicians in that respect.

Politicians are always trying to present a sense of balance, whereas you’re drawing people’s attention to something far more directly.

VW: It’s just sticking to principles. Politicians declare a principle, then you hear no more.

BF: I remember you telling me how, when you were very small, you saw a picture of Jesus and were appalled by the way he was treated.

Do you think what you’re doing now taps into something similar?

I wouldn’t be where I am today without…

VW: My reaction to that picture marked my character. I was always ‘Andreas [Kronthaler, her husband]. going to be someone who had to do something. I was four. The way I wouldn’t be doing fashion if it wasn’t I saw it then was nobody else was going to do anything for me – for him; he drives me on. I’m his it had to be me. I was going to have to fight. assistant, but sometimes take a day BF: You’re famous for being ahead of your time, and the moments off without permission.’ when I’ve witnessed you having the ideas, like changing the tights Biggest British inspiration this year ‘The in the ‘Voyage to Cythera’ collection [A/W 89] to sheer nude, when Olympics. Everyone’s attitude changed everyone was wearing black, might sound banal, but it wasn’t; you once it started. In the end it was good for were changing people’s notions of how things should look. morale. Maybe the Paralympics even more VW: I didn’t always want to do fashion. But I knew I’d had an influence so, because they evoked admiration.’ during punk and felt a duty to exploit that, to see where it could go.

Secret weapon ‘A classical education. My If I hadn’t, I wouldn’t have earned my place in the world, somehow. absolute bliss is being able to read.’

BF: I was thinking about when we went on the train to Paris from A strong woman is… ‘one who enjoys Italy to do the ‘Mini-Crini’ collection in 1985. Do you remember? being a woman and doesn’t want to prove We slept on the seats, worrying about going through customs with she’s as good as a man.’ some of the collection, and you were completely alone at that time.

Vivienne’s WORLD

What does the Queen mean to you?

‘Stability. I think she’s a wonderful asset.’ label] persuaded to produce that collection had backed out, terrified, because he thought no one was going to buy it.

BF: It was the most beautiful collection. You’ve always had plenty of courage.

VW: I often tell people this brilliant thing Aristotle said about the acorn being happy to become an oak. He was obsessed with the idea of not saying exactly what something – or someone – is, because it’s always becoming something else. It means that, to fulfil your potential, you have to be strong in your character.

BF: Do you feel courageous?

VW: Oh, Bella, I don’t know. Take the thing I did at the Paralympic Closing Ceremony – I wish someone else could have done that, but only I could.

BF: Was it exhilarating?

VW: I was more relieved that we pulled it off. I had to work out how to do it without telling anybody – I avoided two rehearsals, sending my son Joe instead. I had to have my students cut out and sew on the letters spelling ‘Climate Revolution’, but I didn’t tell them what they were working on, in case they tweeted it or something.

BF: What was the reaction when you unfurled the banner?

VW: Well, it went up on all the screens in the stadium and made an incredible impact.

We didn’t get any publicity for it, obviously, but the photographers got it, which was brilliant. You have to use every opportunity.

BF: People are very happy to create reasons for not doing anything, but campaigners like you remind us that, actually, we can do something. Even if it’s just being encouraged not to use plastic bags. It has to start somewhere.

VW: We have to engage with the world. We have to engage with culture. We need to think about what world we’re bringing our children into.

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VW: Yeah, the man that Carlo [D’Amario, managing director of the

REBEL WITH A CAUSE All clothes, Westwood’s own

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MAGNETIC PERSONALITY Hanif Kureishi in 1984. Opposite: photographed for Bazaar in June this year

I

SCULPTED FORM Wool and organza dress; satin platform heels, both from a selection, Giambattista Valli. See Stockists for details. Hair by Gio Campora for Phyto at the Wall Group. Make-up by Rachel Goodwin for Chanel at Themagnetagency. com. Manicure by Elisha Washan. With

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t’s impossible to think about Hanif Kureishi without thinking about sex. It’s not just because of his sexually charged novels and screenplays, soaked in erotica – it’s as much to do with his image as literary pin-up, rock ’n’ roll writer and socialite who women find hard to ignore. When he became famous overnight in 1985 – his screenplay for My Beautiful Laundrette was nominated for an Oscar – his life was never the same again. ‘It took me a while to get used to it. The drinking, the sexual opportunities, the drugs and the glamour,’ he tells me at his local Café Rouge in Shepherd’s Bush. ‘Quentin Tarantino, rather amusingly, said that you get to have sex with “foreign” women when you’re famous. You can do whatever you want…’

And Kureishi does indeed spend much of the time pleasing himself. It’s 7pm on a Friday and he turns up for the interview not alone, as one might expect, but with his 11-year-old son Kier. When I arrive, they are sitting at a table in the middle of the room. In a dark pinstripe suit and brown shirt, Kureishi is unmistakable – and unmistakably handsome – even though, at 54, the mass of dark hair is now overrun with grey. Although he’s been busy writing the script for his latest project, the National Theatre’s adaptation of The Black Album, the 1995 novel in which he documented the growing discontent among young British Muslims, he is clearly relaxed. He sits back in his chair, master of all he surveys, and orders: two beers and a plate of crevettes for the adults, and an apple juice and frites for his son.

No explanation is offered concerning Kier’s presence; a selfassured, charming boy, he grows tired, slumps at the table and August 2009 |

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THIS PAGE: PORTRAIT: ELISABETH TOLL. STYLED BY ALEX EAGLE. CASHMERE COAT, £595, GIEVES & HAWKES (020 7434 2001). SILK SCARF, £150, KILGOUR (020 7734 6905). OPPOSITE: PHOTOGRAPH: GETTY IMAGES

Hanif Kureishi has always been a provocative and potent literary force. As his new play arrives at the National, he talks to AMY RAPHAEL about his bad-boy travels from suburbia to Hollywood, via sex, drugs and therapy

GARDENS OF SUBURBIA Above: Frances Barber and Roland Gift in Kureishi’s ‘Sammy and Rosie Get Laid’ (1987).

Right: Kureishi in 1970

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white skinhead kissing in My Beautiful Laundrette. But shocking people has never been my intention. It’s too easy to do. To be an artist, you have to say something real about your time, your world.’

In those days his world was, to a certain extent, dominated by sex; did he fall in love easily, too? ‘Yes, absolutely. Back then I was shocked by the force of sex, of love in my life. The whole passion thing meant a lot to me; it really moved me.’ Though, when I press Kureishi on further names and details of such affairs, he is evasive – and the conversation trails off. Certainly, the characters in Kureishi’s novels either embrace sex or are confused by it.

In his semi-autobiographical first novel, The Buddha of Suburbia, published in 1990, the sex is of the guilt-free, coming-of-age kind.

Karim, the half-Asian, half-English central character, is as cocksure and charismatic as his creator. Yet it wasn’t until the publication in 1998 of Intimacy that Kureishi’s art was truly seen to be reflecting his life. Defined by its graphic sex scenes, it was essentially about a man falling out of love with his partner – Kureishi had left his wife and twin sons, Sachin and Carlo, now 16, for Monique Proudlove, his current partner. A woman 20 years his junior, she was described

by The New York Times as ‘self-possessed… with slate-gray eyes’.

Kureishi’s divorce from first wife Tracey Scoffield, a film and TV producer, was nasty. When Intimacy was published, the press accused him of being disloyal. At the time he said that ‘separation is traumatic… And when you hate someone, you may behave monstrously towards them’. Now he won’t talk about either his divorce (although Scoffield now lives nearby and he sees the twins regularly) or his seduction of Proudlove (she is Kier’s mother; they all live round the corner from the Café Rouge). But he insists that when he writes about love and sex, it’s ‘never squalid’. ‘I don’t just write about animal-like copulation – it’s about the ability to be entranced by others.’

He orders another beer and says it’s important to remember how fast it all happened to him at the beginning. ‘When I was nominated for a screenwriting Oscar for My Beautiful Laundrette, I was a left-wing hippie living in a council flat in west London, and my girlfriend was a social worker. I had to go to Oxfam to get my suit.

Then I went to the Oscars, was driven around in a limo, had champagne and flowers sent to my room and sat next to Bette Davis and Dustin Hoffman at the ceremony. It was a terrifying level of glamour, and I’d never experienced anything like it before in my life.’

Kureishi’s old friends were envious of his new fame, so he found himself hanging out with writers, actors, directors – Salman Rushdie and Stephen Frears, who directed My Beautiful Laundrette, became close friends. ‘I like being with people who are more intelligent and interesting than me. I go to lots of literary parties and I’m still hugely excited by it all. I used to wonder why Salman used to go to parties all the time, then I realised that if you spend your whole day at home writing, by the evening you just need to get out of the house.’

In the early days, he certainly enjoyed the women, the drugs and the parties, but in the end they were all a distraction: he wanted to be a proper writer. ‘I didn’t want to be the kid who had success with one screenplay in the mid-Eighties. I wanted to develop a career, support my family. I’d get rather annoyed by the sex ’n’ drugs part of my reputation, because I always took it more seriously than that. In my mind, I was sitting alone in a room, learning to write to a reasonably

high level, and in other people’s minds, I was hanging around getting stoned.’ The truth is probably less black and white; I imagine, at least in the early days, he enjoyed a heady mix of sex ’n’ drugs ’n’ writing.

If he is sometimes seen as arrogant, it is probably because Kureishi has always refused to be modest in that peculiarly British way, and he won’t apologise for his past (his ex-wife was furious about Intimacy and he has also, at various points, fallen out with both his mother and his sister, who accused him of writing about his workingclass roots, when in fact the family were middle-class). Yet he’s not beyond self-help; for the past 12 years, he has been making a weekly visit to a Freudian psychoanalyst. ‘Sometimes I’m really depressed and feeling terrible. Perhaps I’ll have finished a book and be thinking I’ll never write again. Or I’ll have a crisis with a friend. It’s an amazing idea, buying space in the middle of the week to talk.’

In the past he may have nurtured his enfant terrible reputation, but the old Marxist Kureishi was even happy to accept a CBE in 2007: ‘My father came here from Pakistan as an immigrant, and I was being rewarded for doing something good in this country. I was really pleased.’ He would rather be fêted as a chronicler of our times than vilified for his past. It is certainly the work that will be remembered, from the era-defining The Buddha of Suburbia (which proved to be a life-changing read for a 15-year-old Zadie Smith, who had ‘never read a book about anyone remotely like me before’) to the prescience of The Black Album, which is set in 1989, 15 years before the 7 July bombs shattered London.

Inspired by the fatwa against Rushdie after The Satanic Verses, Kureishi wanted to write a novel about the ordinary British kids who were becoming Muslim fundamentalists. He went to their houses, visited the mosques and concluded that debating with them was akin to ‘arguing with a Scientologist’. The Black Album is still trademark Kureishi: the protagonist is confused by sex, this time on offer from his lecturer. And it has now been turned into a play at the National Theatre, directed by relative newcomer Jatinder Verma. ‘I’ve been to the National and met the actors,’ says Kureishi. ‘They’re a bunch of young Asian actors who seem bright and enthusiastic. But most of them are so young, they didn’t know anything about the period in which The Black Album is set.’

Kureishi could happily discuss Islam for hours – ‘People are afraid of arguing about Islam now; they think they’re going to get a bomb in their bed straight away. But you’ve got to keep the debate going’ – which isn’t to say he’s dull company. As well as having a serious, political voice, he also seems determined to sell himself as a contented family man (hence the presence of Kier, perhaps?), but not one who has lost his edge. Back in his study, among all the photos of his boys, sits a sexy picture of Kate Moss, because ‘every writer needs a picture of Kate Moss in their room as inspiration’. Which suggests the boyish, mischievous side of Kureishi is still alive and well.

There’s a groan from the banquette. ‘What time is it, Dad?’ Kureishi finishes his beer. ‘I must go. I’ll take this boy home, lie down with him and read to him.’ He stands up, shakes my hand. ‘An 11-year-old boy is a fantastic thing,’ he says to no one in particular. He picks Kier up tenderly and carries him out of Café Rouge. For now, London’s literary bad boy is just another Dad on a Friday night.

‘The Black Album’ is at the National Theatre (020 7452 3000; www. nationaltheatre.org.uk) from 14 July.

‘When I was nominated for an Oscar, I was a left-wing hippie living in a council flat. I had to go to Oxfam to get my suit. Then I went to the Oscars, was driven around in a limo and sat next to Bette Davis at the ceremony. It was a terrifying level of glamour’

PHOTOGRAPHS: THE MOVIESTORE COLLECTION, THE KOBAL COLLECTION

LOVE AND LUST From top: Kureishi with his sons, Kier and twins Sachin and Carlo, in about 2001. A scene from his Oscar-nominated ‘My Beautiful Laundrette’ (1985), starring Gordon Warnecke and Daniel Day-Lewis

finally, kicking off his red Crocs, lies down on a nearby banquette.

Initially, I panic: how can I talk to Kureishi, the literary bad boy who’s famous for being formidable in interviews, in front of his young son? Is this some kind of random test?

I wonder if Kureishi is, in a way, hiding behind his son. Yet this makes no sense: he is one of the brightest and most articulate writers of his generation. And he’s making no attempt to be the prickly subject that endless journalists have encountered. Instead, he is funny and engaging. Perhaps he’s just showing what a liberal parent he is, able to talk about anything in front of his son. Even – or especially – sex.

When I ask him about the racy content of his novels, he doesn’t try to avoid the subject. ‘I suppose I was incredibly interested in writing about sex when I was younger. I was very curious about people being close to one another, what it meant and how disconcerting it was. How anxious it could make you to be close to someone else… Hey, Kier, dude, do you want another apple juice?’

The boy shakes his head, so Kureishi bites the heads off small prawns and talks about his recent trip to Cannes, where he sat on a jury presided over by gorgeous French actor Isabelle Huppert. Kureishi clearly enjoyed the star treatment. ‘It was like being king for two weeks; I had a bodyguard and driver. You need security, as the crowds in Cannes are so huge.’ He grins. ‘And you travel around in a limo with four blokes on motorbikes protecting you.’ He watched two or three films a day, some of which he found hard going and offensive, especially Lars von Trier’s hugely controversial horror film Antichrist.

Yet Kureishi himself is no stranger to controversy. His writing has often impressed – at its best, it is confident, urgent and exciting – but he has also appeared to enjoy being provocative, perhaps as a way of finding his voice. Growing up in the white suburbs of Bromley with an Indian father and an English mother, Kureishi was regularly called a ‘Paki’ and beaten up by other schoolkids. He was bright but ‘very bad academically’. His late father, who left Pakistan in the 1950s determined to be a writer, was never published; their relationship was close but fraught.

Kureishi describes his younger self as a ‘hippie Marxist’, but it was culture and not politics that initially saved him from suburbia. Novels, films and music offered the young Kureishi a lifeline out of his hellish suburban existence; he often says that, when he was 14, he heard Jimi Hendrix’s ‘Purple Haze’, had an epiphany and started writing. Whether this is strictly true or not doesn’t really matter – it certainly suits Kureishi’s image as a rock-star writer.

When I ask if it’s true that his first published writing was for porn magazines back in the Seventies, he laughs. ‘Yeah. For Mayfair, Queen and Game. I used to write 750 words for £12. You had to use the same words over and over…’ From 1979 to 1984, he worked mostly in the theatre, at the Royal Court and the RSC, after which he wrote the screenplays for My Beautiful Laundrette (1985) and Sammy and Rosie Get Laid (1987). With these films came both fame and notoriety. He wrote of a gay, mixed-race affair in Laundrette and a promiscuous middle-class London couple in Sammy and Rosie.

Yet ask Kureishi about being controversial and he sighs. ‘I suppose both those films seemed provocative at the time. Quite shocking and startling. Some people were offended by a gay Pakistani and a

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DOMESTIC BLITZ This page: the kitchen of Dinos Chapman and Tiphaine de Lussyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s new house. Opposite: Dinos with daughters Seraphine, Agathe and wife Tiphaine in the den. Dinos wears cotton T-shirt, ÂŁ40, All Saints.

Other clothes, his own. Seraphine wears cotton vest, ÂŁ6, Topshop. Knit jumper, ÂŁ230, Designers Remix Collection at A142 Store. Leather skirt, ÂŁ290, Designers Remix Collection at My-wardrobe.com. Agathe wears knit cardigan, as before. Tiphaine wears lace dress, ÂŁ495, Joseph. Jewellery, her own

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2

riving through lush southern-English countryside, where pretty cottages several centuries old appear at intervals along a narrow winding lane, a wall of concrete suddenly looms ahead, tearing into the idyllic landscape. Behind it, sunk into a former reservoir that last saw service in the 1970s, is an extraordinary piece of new domestic architecture â&#x20AC;&#x201C; as beautiful as it is dramatic â&#x20AC;&#x201C; that is now the second home of British artist Dinos Chapman and his wife Tiphaine de Lussy. Even by Chapman standards (with his brother Jake, Dinos has created some deeply unsettling imagery over the last 15 years), it is an extreme work of art.

Two and a half years have passed since the couple put in their first bid for the site â&#x20AC;&#x201C; resident slow worms had to be relocated; the reservoir floor raised by a metre â&#x20AC;&#x201C; but then, dream homes take time.

The couple now have the house they always yearned for, a testament to their taste for brutalist architecture like that found in Londonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Barbican, as well as many mid-century modern American influences (both namecheck the houses in Ang Leeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s 1997 The Ice Storm, set in 1970s Connecticut, and the 1975 film Rollerball as references). â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve lived our entire lives in a fantasy of being in America,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; says Chapman. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;So weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve recreated our own motel here,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; laughs de Lussy.

The couple have been together for 25 years, and finally married four years ago.

They have two daughters (Agathe, 16, and Seraphine, 18) and a pair of chunky boxers, Snoopy and Woody. While Chapmanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s reputation is for making challenging art, textile designer de Lussy is a mistress of exquisite taste, both in her interior design and her own dress. The house has taken up all her time for the past year, but sheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s now looking forward to running her fashion business, Paris Essex, again with her best friend Carolyn Clewer. De Lussy is as poised and slender as a combination of running, Pilates and swimming would suggest (she is even a trained lifeguard), and possesses, at 46, a figure that most would envy, as well as an innate grace. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;I met her when we were at art college when I was 17. Even then she was the most sophisticated person,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; says close friend Sam Taylor-Wood. Antonio Berardi, another friend and favoured designer, says: â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Tiphaine gives what I do a certain charge, both energetic and sexual. Sheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s an extraordinary woman with impeccable taste. Their new home is a testament to both of them, visionary as only Dinos can be, and perfectly decorated as only Tiphaine could achieve.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; Then he sighs. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re the perfect couple really.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; De Lussy and Chapman may have been snapped at openings with Lapo Elkann and Miuccia Prada, and may have dined with Victoria Beckham, but they are surprisingly private people. While the fabulousness they enjoy from time to time is a delightful by-product of life in the art world, they are reserved about mentioning their friends (who include artists Gary Hume and Georgie Hopton, and Frieze founder Matthew Slotover and his design-doctorate wife Emily King). But with the house itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a different matter. You canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t help but feel the project was a labour of love, and they canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t wait to share the joy. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;I adored it,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; says de Lussy of the business of designing and building.

They are also generous in their praise of Kevin Brennan, a close friend and the architect with whom the pair collaborated on the project. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;I really like Kevin because he has an unhealthy interest in

brutalist architecture,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; says Chapman mischievously. Indeed, as we enter through a full-height steel door and gaze down a long hallway towards an exuberant Chapman brothers sculpture (composed of machinery pieces cast in bronze that were part of a 2008 collection called â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;When Humans Walked the Earthâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;), the evidence is all around us. Both the houseâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s exterior and interior pull no punches when it comes to tough materials (concrete and steel) and unerringly straight lines. There are no soft, comforting curves here. Even the lap pool is a 25-metre rectangular chasm of glinting black stone. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;It had to be 25 metres,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; says de Lussy, â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;so I can train properly in it.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; Chapman is the elder of the two infamous brothers (now aged 48 and 44 respectively) who have never attempted to shield the world from their scorn or the more depraved side of humanity. Their work frequently creates public anxiety or uproar, whether it involves child mannequins with extended penises for noses, or the pair â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;improvingâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; original Goya drawings by adding puppies and clowns, and enhancing original watercolours by Adolf Hitler with rainbows. Chapman is unapologetic when he says: â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Art should be difficult.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; The man at home with de Lussy and the girls in the country, however, isnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t interested in antagonism at all. Tall and slightly damaged by a three-month-old running injury, Chapman lopes around looking a bit stiff around the neck and shoulder, in worn, knee-length shorts and a T-shirt (â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Those shorts come out at the first sign of sunshine,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; says de Lussy). De Lussy makes coffee in the new kitchen (the island is a monolithic black granite block with one side of plain oak drawers), and we all gaze out at disappointingly grey weather and the breathtaking view of rolling green fields.

This is the second time the pair have worked with Brennan. Their London home is one in a row of three on Fashion Street, E1, occupied by artists â&#x20AC;&#x201C; the other two being Jake, and Chris Ofili, who now lives between Trinidad and London. The couple moved in in 1998. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;We designed the life out of it, we took down so many walls,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; says Brennan. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;They didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t really have any furniture, so everything was bespoke.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; The kitchen cabinets were even made to glow in the dark. The walnut dining table has now come to the country, along with the copper Tom Dixon pendant lights and red acrylic Philippe Starck chairs. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Tiphaine is such a great stylist,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; says Brennan. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;So the point was to give her a nice armature to play with. She works by pulling people together. Sheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s like a producer.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; The bedrooms â&#x20AC;&#x201C; lined up along the pool like at a Palm Springs motel â&#x20AC;&#x201C; boast bespoke net curtains by radical Glaswegian textile designers Timorous Beasties (de Lussy was at college with beastie Paul Simmons), devilâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s heads for the coupleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s room, spots for the girls; the downstairs toilets will be lined with Chapman brothers wallpaper (a sort of toile de jouy with imagery lifted from their reworking of Goyaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s The Disasters of War). â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Tiphaine stopped me putting minibars and those miniature kettles in the bedrooms,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; says Chapman. Instead, she went on eBay and bought 1930s furniture for the girls and a lot of Danish midcentury pieces for the rest of the house. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;I hate fussy things,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; she says.

You can see this attitude in their approach to fashion, too, where graphic shapes are mixed with imagination and fun. De Lussy prefers a clean silhouette, often wearing Berardi, Isabel Marant, Martin Margiela and Acne, and a lot by her friend Stella McCartney (â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;all my exercisewearâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;), though sheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll happily pick up a bargain in Topshop.

She also has a fondness for customising trainers for Chapman at

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CHARACTER STUDIES Agathe and Dinos in the pool area; Agathe wears silk and chiffon dress, from a selection, Christopher Kane. Clockwise from below: pieces from 2002â&#x20AC;&#x2122;s â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;The Chapman Family Collectionâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; show. An exterior view of the house. Gary Humeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s maquette for his â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Liberty Gripâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;, created for the lobby of the Sadlerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Wells theatre in London

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Niketown. He likes to buy understated suits made by Start in Shoreditch, and has an unerring ability to buy the perfect present for her. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;He got me a Lanvin dress â&#x20AC;&#x201C; not because he knew what Lanvin was, but because he understood the beauty of the structure and liked the raw edges,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; says de Lussy. She has acted as London brand ambassador for Danish label Designers Remix, helping to launch its S/S 10 collection. She loves its â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;quite Amazonianâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; tailored shapes.

Upstairs in the vast sitting room, a massive B&B sofa shares space with a classic mid-century Lamino chair by Swedish designer Yngve Ekstrom. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;I bought it a few years ago for Dinos when heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d had a foot operation,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; she says. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a bit battered now, which is good for here. We needed pieces that werenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t super-slick.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; It sits on a Chapman brothers rug, decorated with McDonaldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s imagery, to which they often refer. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Jake and I always argue about whether it should go on the wall or the floor,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; says Chapman, as either Snoopy or Woody pads across it with big muddy paws. His brother, perhaps, has a point.

On a coffee table is a ghoulish cluster of mannequinsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; heads with faded copper-coloured hair. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s called Bobble Bubble,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; says Chapman. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;It was part of our Gagosian show in New York in 1997. That was when we realised we needed to start keeping pieces back for ourselves.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; Since then, his collection has grown, and a key part of this project was designing spaces in which to show it. On the ground floor, Brennan squeezed the bedrooms to make room for a gallery holding three pieces from â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;The Chapman Family Collectionâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; of 2002 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; totemic sculptures that look like African art; closer inspection reveals them to comprise symbols from McDonaldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s.

One wall is lined with black brick, the other with smoked glass, a preference of de Lussyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s because â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;it always makes you look goodâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;.

Elsewhere, there is a massive white and pink bronze maquette by Gary Hume of the sculpture he recently created for the Sadlerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Wells theatre â&#x20AC;&#x201C; a Modernist entangling of three limbs. The first piece of art Chapman bought for himself, a pink neon painting by the American artist Peter Halley, leans against the wall of the main room.

De Lussy and Chapman were introduced by mutual friend Sam Taylor-Wood in Hastings, the Chapman familyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s home town, in 1985. Both women were studying fashion at the local art school; when Dinos returned to the seaside town after graduating from Ravensbourne College of Design, she took her friend along to meet the budding painter in his studio. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Sam took me along to see Dinosâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; paintings. They were great. But we were both so shy,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; says de Lussy of that first meeting. Later, Taylor-Wood explains: â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;I met Dinos, who was a surly painter. I thought he was right up Tiphaineâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s street, so I introduced them. I thought his moodiness and idiotic ways with her sophistication were a perfect match.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; The pair met again and the match proved compatible, not least because of their mixed cultural backgrounds. De Lussy, who is half French and half English, grew up in Paris, while the Chapmans were born to a Greek-Cypriot mother and an English father who worked as an art teacher. Their love has endured now for over two decades. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;They are,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; says Taylor-Wood, â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;the most rock-solid couple I know.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; In 1988, de Lussy and both Chapman brothers applied to the Royal College of Art in London and were all accepted. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;It took people a while to realise the connection, and by then it was too late,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; she says, laughing. By 1992, de Lussy was pregnant with Seraphine and the couple were living impecuniously in Whitechapel. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;People

think I had my kids early, but I was 28 when I had Seraphine,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; she says. Then, in 1996, the brothers came to the attention of middle England and, more importantly, the art critics, with a show of provocative work of mutant child mannequins dressed only in spanking new trainers. In 1997, they were part of Charles Saatchiâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s controversial â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Sensationâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; show at the Royal Academy in London.

The press portrayed the brothers as hellraisers. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;I love that idea, that we were tearing up the town,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; Chapman says. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;How could we be when we were spending so much time in the studio doing fiddly things? Perhaps Jake was out and about more. But Tiphaine and I are having a lot more fun now. Tiphaine was having babies back then.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; Nonetheless, all were part of the Young British Artists East End elite, along with fellow â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Sensationâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; artists Damien Hirst, Tracey Emin, Sarah Lucas, Tim Noble and Sue Webster, though Chapman is reluctant to agree. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;The reason we got so much attention was that there was always a photographer there and a journalist to hand,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; says Chapman. The former YBAs reassembled at the coupleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s wedding in Shoreditch Town Hall in 2006. The bride wore a McQueen Goddess dress in voile and leather, made for her in a bespoke bone-coloured fabric, and black Fendi platforms. Chapman was dressed by Yves Saint Laurent. The jeweller Francesca Amfitheatrof, a friend from the RCA, made wedding bands inscribed with the words â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;True love never dies.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;It started with an intimate ceremony and turned into an East End knees-up,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; says Brennan. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Tracey Emin led a spontaneous dance troupe up on the stage at one point.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; When word got around Hoxton that there was a party, the groom had to go outside and take on bouncer duties.

Things will soon be changing again in the Chapman/de Lussy household. Seraphine is about to start an English degree at a London university; Agathe has two years to go at her local East London comprehensive school (her mother, standing by her long-held socialist views, wouldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have it any other way), but she is taking on the occasional modelling assignment. (She was scouted so many times by agencies that her parents eventually gave in and let her sign to Storm.) Chapman is going to see what happens in the privacy of the studio he has set up in the country. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;There are certain things I canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t do in our big studio in Hackney Wick; itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s full of people,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; he says. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Jake and I sometimes need to work in secret from each other.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; And de Lussy and Clewer will be busy re-activating Paris Essex to produce knitted accessories. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;You can go a bit more mad with accessories. We want to play games with texture and scale.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; Chapman is working with his brother on a new show due at White Cube next year, but in the mean time he is designing jewellery. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a bracelet and necklace with a key in silver,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; says gallerist Louisa Guinness, who will launch the pieces at the Pavillon des Arts in Paris. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;One person wears the bracelet, which has been tightened onto their wrist with the key, and the other wears the key on a chain around their neck. The bracelet wearer needs the key wearer to be released.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; As with all Chapmanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s work, there is darkness in its beauty.

The arrival of the new house has meant a halt on holidays abroad.

But then, the Chapmans feel like theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve travelled enough, conceptually at least. They only have to drive an hour and a half out of London, after all, and they come to their own little bit of America, in their big bunker buried in the fields.

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HOTEL AMERICANA The rooftop sunroom. Agathe wears velvet and chiffon dress, ÂŁ1,400, Versus. Lace and leather boots, ÂŁ610, Nicholas Kirkwood. Tiphaine wears satin dress, ÂŁ855, Stella McCartney.

Leather heels, ÂŁ495, Christian Louboutin. Dinos wears cotton T-shirt, ÂŁ40, All Saints. Wool suit, ÂŁ695, Mr Start. Seraphine wears lycra dress, ÂŁ1,475, HervĂŠ LĂŠger. Velvet and perspex heels, ÂŁ775, Charlotte Olympia.

See Stockists for details. Hair, make-up and grooming by Nikki Palmer at Mandy Coakley, using Bumble and Bumble and Bobbi Brown. Stylistâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s assistant: Camilla Denno

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HAIR AND MAKE-UP BY ROZELLE PARRY AT DW MANAGEMENT, USING AVEDA AND LAURA MERCIER

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Designer Bella Freud’s home is alive with stories, told through works by her legendary artist father, treasures from her fashion career, royal portraits and rock ’n’ roll keepsakes.

STEPHANIE THEOBALD explores this culturally rich haven and pays tribute to the creative dynasty that inspired it. Photographs by CHRISTOPHER STURMAN

BEAUTY AND THE BEAT Bella Freud at home with her drum kit and sketches by her father Lucian

B

ella Freud smiles as she inspects the photograph of Queen Elizabeth II on her kitchen wall. She doesn’t remember the Golden Jubilee, but vividly recalls 1977’s Silver Jubilee. ‘I was 16 and working in Vivienne Westwood’s Seditionaries shop on the King’s Road. Vivienne came in with this vicious open letter to Derek Jarman about how bad his new film Jubilee was. She’d written it on a T-shirt.’

Jarman’s now-cult movie revolves around Queen Elizabeth I being transported to the dystopian London of the 1970s, populated by punks and pretty boys like Adam Ant. ‘I was completely shocked at the severity of the letter. But I really admired her for it because, in a way, my father was like that – absolutely uncompromising.’

The photo of the Queen that Freud and I have been observing at her West London home has a Nan Goldin quality to it. With its backdrop of exposed pipes and grubby walls, it could be a still from Jarman’s punk film. In fact, this is a shot of Her Majesty from 2001, as she was being painted by Freud’s father Lucian.

Bella owns two versions of the shot, taken by her father’s assistant and friend David Dawson. One is cropped, the Queen in close-up;

Nancy Astor’s nephew), sitting on one of the famous zebra-print banquettes of Manhattan’s legendary night club El Morocco.

And, of course, the spirit of the late Lucian Freud is everywhere.

You enter the house through an old garage filled with bikes, then climb a stairway whose walls are covered with photos, taken by Dawson, of the painter with his trademark skinny scarf and aquiline stare. In one, he stands next to a seated man in formal householdcavalry brigadier uniform – this is Lucian’s friend, Andrew Parker Bowles, the first husband of Camilla Parker Bowles, posing for a painting in about 2003.

In the sitting room, there are etchings and small paintings and pencil sketches of a teenage Bella (signed ‘Bel with love’). There is one big, intriguing painting that looks as though it came from a tentative art student, which she explains is an early sitting of her with baby Jimmy and her sister Esther. There were two or three sittings, ‘and then dad met another model’, so it never got finished.

Freud admits one way of getting to know her father when she moved to London from her childhood home in Sussex, aged 16, was to be painted by him. ‘To be in his life was to be in a painting, and that suited me fine. But I also knew I wanted to get on and do my own thing.

Watching him was a great lesson in how to work. The discipline…’

In the kitchen, cradling a blue tumbler filled with freshly made coffee, Freud nods at a black and white photograph on the wall, next to the Queen. ‘I love that picture,’ she says, grinning at the shot of her father casually performing a headstand on a bed as her twentysomething self looks on amused.

‘Dad must have been in his late fifties at the time. You can see how relaxed he is, with his feet crossed. His friend Bruce Bernard wanted to take a picture and he said something like, “Shall I stand on my head?” Another day he joked around, pretending to be Henry Moore. He could be really silly when he was in a good mood.’

‘To be in my father’s life was to be in a painting, and that suıted me fine. Watching him was a great lesson in how to work. The discipline…’

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DESIGNER FRAMES Above: Bella Freud at home, wearing silk dress, £260, Acne. Below, clockwise from top left: Sue Tilley posing for a Lucian Freud painting; a Lucian Freud portrait of Tilley; Leigh Bowery during a sitting; and a photo of Francis Bacon. Left: books and a guitar on the top floor. Above left: treasured photos, including early shots of Christian Louboutin and Penelope Tree

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ut the memorabilia in Freud’s home is not confined to art. The letters from her friend Louboutin on Charvet notepaper, explaining how he’s sending his godson Jimmy a new bow tie for his collection, and notes from Anna Wintour and Carine Roitfeld, pinned to her office noticeboard, are reminders of Freud’s status in the fashion industry. Westwood gave Freud her big break when she returned to London in the mid-1980s by hiring her as an assistant. By 1990, Freud had the confidence to set up her own company, specialising in knitwear: ‘In knit, you can have someone in something slightly prim, yet make it sexy, because knitwear is soft and you can see the shape of the body.’ Her father unexpectedly drew her the now-famous dog logo (inspired by his whippet Pluto), and the rest is history. Her fans today include Kate Moss, Sam Taylor-Wood and Anita Pallenberg.

Freud’s work has gone from strength to strength: she is currently working on clothes for Louboutin’s pop-up shop in Selfridges, and fine-tuning her celebrated annual Hoping Foundation charity benefit, a celebrity version of karaoke, where bids are placed to hear the famous perform onstage – including Moss, Bobby Gillespie, David Walliams and David Gilmour. (Last year, the event raised over £380,000 to support Palestinian refugee children.) But while Freud keeps herself busy, she admits this is still ‘an incredibly sensitive time’, following the death of both her parents last summer. At 68, her mother, Bernadine Coverley, passed away just four days after her father, who died aged 88 on 20 July.

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STYLED BY CARMEN BORGONOVO. SEE STOCKISTS FOR DETAILS

the full shot shows Queen Elizabeth II submitting patiently to the monstre sacré of British art, who we view from behind. (Despite his reputation for being rebellious, the legendary British artist and rake is, on this occasion, wearing a smart jacket to paint in.)

Crammed with fascinating photos, paintings, books and vinyl, Bella Freud’s house is one you never want to leave – filled with finds befitting a member of this most prolific creative dynasty. The fashion designer, 51, lives with husband and writer James Fox (co-author of Keith Richards’ autobiography Life), their son Jimmy, 11, and their border terrier, Joey. The three-storey house has a bohemian pedigree, having served as home to fashion photographer Glen Luchford before Freud and Fox moved in 12 years ago.

Freud speaks in a dreamy, languid manner as she shows me around, though she strides confidently in cork wedges. Today she’s wearing a jumper from her own label (the kind of slogan knitwear for which she is famed) with the year 1970 emblazoned on the front (‘1970 is a bit punk, a bit Patti Smith and it makes me feel good’) and a pair of what she calls ‘schoolboy trousers’ by Balenciaga (‘I like wearing boyish clothes because I think it makes me look more feminine’).

The designer-ramshackle feel of the house, courtesy of London salvage and design company Retrouvius, is impressive enough. Yet what ultimately enthrals is that the walls seem to breathe stories: the photos lining them are secret windows onto the worlds of rock ’n’ roll, high society, fashion and art from the 1930s to the present day. There’s a loved-up Keith Richards on a private jet with his new wife, model Patti Hansen, in the 1980s; a 12-year-old Christian Louboutin looking serious in a beret; Francis Bacon, groovy and sullen in a paint-besmirched studio; a smiling Penelope Tree; a bushy-browed Cyril Connolly; and a picture of a gleaming young blade from the 1930s (Fox’s uncle, ‘Winkie’ Brookes, who was

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BODY AT REST Daphne Guinness at home in London, wearing an Alexander McQueen dress, Yves Saint Laurent shoes and the white gold and diamond â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Contra Mundumâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; glove that she co-designed with jeweller Shaun Leane

donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t cook. I can fix a light fixture, and a wireless. I can pick a lock. Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve got to get my lockpicking set backâ&#x20AC;Ś Some thief nicked it.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; Daphne Guinness, the accidental fashion icon, the woman obsessed over by designers, photographers, artists â&#x20AC;&#x201C; and the odd French philosopher â&#x20AC;&#x201C; delivers the last line deadpan and stares at me with such sweet innocence. Then, with the timing that many an actress fails to acquire after four years at RADA, she allows a filthy raw smile to creep across her exquisite face.

My expression, however, is one of sheer terror, as the two of us are perched on the minute ornamental balcony balustrade of her Mayfair penthouse. Guinness, wearing a tight, tailored black-wool dress suit she designed herself and signature silver heelless Natacha Marro skyscraper shoes, is rocking back and forth on the ironwork, her hands floating free as she nestles on the top rail, which reaches a little above the hollows of her slender knees.

At one point, she is not even on tiptoes â&#x20AC;&#x201C; her feet are touching the clear blue sky. Quite how she is defying gravity beggars belief. A slight gust, or a wobble on her chopines, and â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;poof!â&#x20AC;&#x2122;, we will be examining the buttercup lawns of Mount Street Gardens below at close quarters.

She carries on, oblivious: â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;I got stuck on the top of those railings down there, climbing over them to take a shortcut through the gardens to get to Scottâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s [restaurant]. Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve got spiked a couple of times, hanging upside down by my skirt. How do I get myself off? With difficulty. Tear the skirt. Take it off. I do really ridiculous things.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; Daphne Guinness is quite a piece of work â&#x20AC;&#x201C; a work of art, that is.

The one-time Sloaney aristocratic brewery heiress with the golden locks married the scion of the Greek Niarchos shipping dynasty at 19, disappeared from view, and then re-emerged in London 12 years later, single and transformed into a skunk-maned, high-heel-lessshoe-wearing arbiter of style; collector of art and cutting-edge couture; and friend and creative catnip to such luminaries as Alexander McQueen, Isabella Blow, Christian Louboutin and photographers David LaChapelle and Steven Klein. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;She became this icon when Steven Klein photographed her in the late Nineties,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; says friend LaChapelle, â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;She wears clothes with a sense of humour, and after I photographed her, I fell so in love with this idea of her that I never wanted to shoot another 19-year-old model again.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; Her on-off flame, the French philosopher Bernard-Henri LĂŠvy, has described her as no longer a person but a concept; historian John Richardson, as â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;the object of her own creativity. Her persona is her own masterpieceâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;. When I call LaChapelle to chat about her, he delivers a mini thesis: â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;She is the true synthesis between art and fashion, because she believes that the best, most creative designers, like Lee [McQueen], like YSLâ&#x20AC;Ś they are artists. Daphne is herself, without even trying.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; Guinnessâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; spectral presence, her haunted pallor â&#x20AC;&#x201C; and that towering silver cone of hair dashed through with a streak of black â&#x20AC;&#x201C; have had a profound influence not just on LaChapelle but on fashion as a whole. The long silhouettes of luxe-Gothic trend on the A/W 11 catwalks of Haider Ackermann, Roberto Cavalli and Giles unmistakably recall her dark aesthetic. Such is the clout of the 43-year-old that when she decides to open her legendary wardrobe

and put it on show, as she does this September at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York, its impact is seismic.

The show is part of Guinnessâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; commitment to the blurring of the lines between fashion and art, sartorially pushing every boundary with her futuristic sensibilities (she now posts her daily ensembles on her Twitter page), and collaborating with and connecting designers, artists, photographers and film-makers â&#x20AC;&#x201C; most recently, she worked with jeweller Shaun Leane. This cross-pollination becomes more apparent when she invites me off the precipice and back inside her London home (she divides her time between here and a Manhattan apartment). I abandon chivalry, and hightail it inside before her feet can touch the ground.

Walking along its corridor to her wardrobes, the walls are lined with artworks by Gregory Crewdson, Elliott Puckette, Philip Taaffe, Herbert Draper, Claudio Bravo and Elizabeth Blackadder.

On the other side, snaking their way into a large room full of even more couture, are rails upon rails of high-fashion pieces â&#x20AC;&#x201C; each rack categorised: McQueen, Balenciaga, Chanel, Dior, Gareth Pugh.

Art and fashion are given equal status here. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;What Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve got, what Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve collected or what Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve amassed, Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m not ashamed of. It is a lot, but people donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t accuse other people of having a lot of pictures or books. But clothesâ&#x20AC;Śâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Her voice oscillates between the clear, clipped tones that betray her aristocratic ancestry and a comforting teenage mumble, so soft it is barely audible. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t wear them to look rich.

It is not a status thing; it is a discovery thing. A lot of it is tied in with friendships or things that I have made. Everything I own means something. It is not about wearing a 56-carat canary diamond round my neck, because that, to me, is just gross.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; Given close relationships with â&#x20AC;&#x201C; and patronage of â&#x20AC;&#x201C; some of fashionâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s greatest, particularly the late McQueen and Blow, whose collection Guinness bought in its entirety last year to protect it from being dissembled at auction, her wardrobe itself has both strong historical and sentimental value.

The New York exhibition will showcase more than 100 pieces from her personal collection (a quarter of which is unseen McQueen), comprising also: Dior, Chanel, Givenchy, Valentino and Lacroix Haute Couture, Azzedine AlaĂŻa, Rick Owens, Gareth Pugh creations; her own designs (simple black and white classics that she constantly has refitted, taking things in and out by a matter of millimetres to create â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;the perfect architectureâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;); Philip Treacy hats, Louboutin and Noritaka Tatehana shoes and Shaun Leane jewellery.

She recently collaborated with Leane on â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Contra Mundumâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;

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(â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;against the worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;), an 18-carat white-gold, chainmail and diamondencrusted armour/evening glove worth ÂŁ1.1 million, which took five years to make, and which she displayed at a special presentation, â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;lying in stateâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; at Jay Joplingâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Georgian townhouse. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Lee had quite a lot to do with the glove,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; she says, laughing. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d say, â&#x20AC;&#x153;You two are so hopeless. I could have done that in a month.â&#x20AC;?â&#x20AC;&#x2122; The scene at Joplingâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s was a Gothic tableau: Guinness a corpse in a McQueen body suit, laid out on a Perspex slab and swathed with an antique lace shroud, only the glove and its 4,971 diamonds exposed. When Tom Ford arrived, he planted a kiss on the lips of the Sleeping Beauty, the woman he chose to close his debut S/S 11 presentation. www.harpersbazaar.co.uk

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LIVING THE HIGH LIFE On the balcony of her apartment in a coat from her own label, â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Daphneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;

MOLTEN COLOUR In the bedroom, in an Alexander McQueen-designed Givenchy Haute Couture kimono

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For an heiress whose fortune is reputed to be in the millions, Guinness is surprisingly prolific. An ideas junkie, a painter and poet, she is currently developing a new cosmetics line for MAC (she has previously collaborated with François Nars); editing a film about â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;soul-swappingâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;, which she produced and appeared in (she also recently premiered her film on the death of Jean Seberg on Showstudio, and modelled for LaChapelleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s photographic series â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;From Darkness to Lightâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;, now at the Lever House Art Collection in New York). She is also currently penning a novel.

Her capacity for collecting is just as inexhaustible. The lounge where we now sit is a magical place, straight out of Howardâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s End. It is very English, a grand old Edwardian drawing-room crammed full of objets dâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;art and personal mementos, but somehow uncluttered â&#x20AC;&#x201C;

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A LIFE IN FASHION From top: with her father Jonathan on the day of her Paris wedding to husband Spyros Niarchos in 1987. With Niarchos in 1990. With Isabella Blow in London in 2002. With her son Nicolas and daughter Ines in 2007. At the Met Ball in May this year. With Tom Ford at the launch of her â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Contra Mundumâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; glove in June

Han dynasty Chinese vases; case upon case of butterfly specimens; a Jake and Dinos Chapman crucified â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;McCheesusâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; sculpture; Grayson Perryâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Map of an Englishman (regions include Romance, Sex, and Boys Donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t Cry). There are also Cambodian head sculptures and lots of Gothic-looking prints. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;I like looking at depressing things, things that are dark, because it makes me feel better, not so badly off,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; she says.

An enormous Henry Lamb portrait of her grandmother Diana Mosley, grandfather Bryan Guinness and their dog Pilgrim hangs on one wall. One of the fabled Mitford sisters, Diana married Guinness in the society marriage of 1929, then left him three years later for British Union of Fascists leader Oswald Mosley, who she married in 1936. She spent much of World War II in Holloway Prison at His Majestyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s pleasure, then lived in exile in Paris until her death in 2003. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;I loved her so much,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; says Guinness. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;She was stubborn and very loyal to Mosley, so she wouldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t admit that she was wrong. To me, she said, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m not a public figure, I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have to apologise. I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t think anyone would believe me. They would think I was being a hypocrite.â&#x20AC;?

And that made me believe that she thought about it and that she did regret it. But who knows? She was a sphinx, a bit like me really.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; In the hallway next to some Hogarth prints hangs a portrait of her father Jonathan Guinness, the third Baron Moyne, painted by her mother Suzanne Lisney, an English rose and artist who grew up in France and Spain. A famous style icon, she was a frontrow fixture at the Paris couture shows, with her daughter Daphne in tow from an early age.

Guinness has spoken of an unhappy childhood, when she was sent to boarding school from the ages of 11 to 18. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;My mother just didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t like girl babies, but my brother Sebastian was everything to her. My parents were never normal, but I didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t mind. They didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t come to my school. It was rare that they remembered to pick me up. I just fended for myself.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; Her voice trails off. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;One day we were on an Easter-egg hunt at the castle of some friends in Ireland. But we had to get to Spain. They got there and realised I wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t with them. I was still in the bloody garden in Ireland. I was eight, and it was a huge castle and I had no idea how to get inside. It was just like, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Oh well, now what?â&#x20AC;? I thought, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll make a nest of these twigs and live here.â&#x20AC;?â&#x20AC;&#x2122; In Spain, her parents owned an old hermitage in the bohemian artist colony of CadaquĂŠs, and hung out with Man Ray, Duchamp and DalĂ­. The young Guinness would swim in DalĂ­â&#x20AC;&#x2122;s pool, with or without lobsters as playmates. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;He put chlorine CONTINUED ON PAGE 360

WHITE LADY In the lounge, in a Rick Owens dress and Natacha Marro shoes. Sittings editor: Nathalie Riddle. Hair by Tom Berry.

Make-up by Pablo Rodriguez for MAC. Manicure by Sharon Gritton To see the most influential moments of Daphne Guinnessâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; show-stopping life in style, visit harpersbazaar.co.uk

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PHOTOGRAPH: XXXXXX

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GEORGIA WEARS SILK DRESS, £1,500, RM BY ROLAND MOURET. LEATHER SANDALS, £545, RUPERT SANDERSON. GOLD-PLATE NECKLACE, £397, DJURDJA PHOTOGRAPH: XXXXXX WATSON. RINGS, HER OWN. SEE STOCKISTS FOR DETAILS. HAIR AND MAKE-UP BY CHERYL COREA AT MANDY COAKLEY, USING DERMALOGICA AND NARS

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HOME BODIES Writer Georgia Byng and artist Marc Quinn in the dining room of their new house in north London.

Opposite: Quinnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s sculpture â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Buck With Cigarâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; (2009) in the tennis court www.harpersbazaar.co.uk

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tâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s hard for your senses not to be inspired when you pay a visit to artist Marc Quinnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s new home in north London, which he shares with his partner, writer Georgia Byng. On the balmy late March morning when I arrive, the pale spring sun streaming through the bay window of the kitchendining room illuminates seductive, primary-coloured orchid sculptures (from Quinnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s The Nurseries of El Dorado series) that seem to grow in every corner of the room. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s like living in a mad greenhouse,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; says Byng, who, standing in an orange Roland Mouret dress against the canvas backdrop of a massive-scale, fuchsia-saturated flower, looks like she has sprung from a psychedelic version of Botticelliâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s garden. Here, fecundity is all around.

Fecundity and creativity. Quinn, once a pivotal member of the notorious YBAs (Young British Artists), is, after all, one of the countryâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s most celebrated artists who, along with rebels-withcauses like Damien Hirst, helped make the consciousness of the British public at one with the idea of contemporary art.

And Byng is one of our most successful childrenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s writers, lauded as the new JK Rowling in 2002 when she published the first in her Molly Moon series, with a reported ÂŁ1 million book deal. The coupleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s social circle embraces a good proportion of creative London and the Brit-art crowd, although the pair stress they only ever hang out with people they really like. Gillian Anderson, Mary McCartney and Will Self are regulars at Quinnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s famed studio dinners. Among the art community, their entertaining is reputed to be excellent. (â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Ugh, â&#x20AC;&#x153;entertaining!â&#x20AC;?â&#x20AC;&#x2122; says Byng when Quinn uses the word. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;It reminds me of my mother making tomato mousse in the 1970s.â&#x20AC;&#x2122;) Quinnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s major White Cube show of new work â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Allanah, Buck, Catman, Chelsea, Michael, Pamela and Thomas â&#x20AC;&#x201C; is a collection of disconcerting sculptures of extreme, surgically enhanced bodies: Michael Jacksonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s head rendered, â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;before and afterâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;, in both black and white marble; a transgender couple decorated with beautiful tattoos; a sculpture of Pamela Anderson; and a woman called Chelsea with breasts so large (footballs, really), she has to hold

them up. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Sheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s like a kind of Aphrodite of our time, isnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t she?â&#x20AC;&#x2122; says Quinn of the chesty lady. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;If you buried that in the desert and it was discovered centuries later, it would tell you about our times. These are demonstrations of how people have transformed themselves, like artists, but using their own bodiesâ&#x20AC;Śâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Meanwhile, Byng is currently preparing for the release of the fifth Molly Moon book. Whereas the subjects of Quinnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s exhibition have morphed their own bodies, Byngâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Molly, in the new instalment (Molly Moon and the Morphing Mystery), is able to jump into the bodies of other creatures. A film version of Molly Moonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Incredible Book of Hypnotism is also under way.

Amid all this hyper-artistic endeavour, the couple have recently moved into their new home. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;It took three months to move. I had to stop working completely,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; says Byng â&#x20AC;&#x201C; at 44, the eldest daughter of the Eighth Earl of Strafford. (Her brother Jamie is director of the publishing company Canongate.) The new property is a rather extraordinary, very generously sized detached 1930s family house with its own garden, in one of those areas that have no consistency from street to street. Walk one way, and gunmetal grey tower blocks loom ahead. Walk the other, and the grand red-brick houses of the haute bourgeoisie line the street. In the back garden is a tennis court: at its centre, an arresting life-size nude of a muscular femaleto-male transsexual, Buck Angel, sprayed entirely in gold. Later, Sky, aged four, and eight-year-old Lucas (whose newborn head was famously reproduced by Quinn, sculpted in Byngâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s blended and frozen placenta) dart around the court playing ball, as their father gazes on in an incongruously preppie lemon cashmere sweater and baseball cap.

Quinnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s drunken YBA-bad-boy days, when he possessed an un-squeamish fascination with bodily excretions and escaping the confines of his body (mostly through alcohol), are long behind him.

Heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s 46 now, and stopped drinking completely in 1993, the same year that he and Byng officially got together. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;I suppose that I realised I wanted to live rather than die,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; he once said. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;But Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m an extremist, and Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d prefer to have done it to the limit and then stop.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; Today, Quinn has the presence of a man with a shrewd understanding of the power of the metaphor on contemporary audiences. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Art has gone mainstream and become part of living culture,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; he says, more affable chap than tortured artist. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Before, the only culture was literary, and [contemporary] art was something weird that weird people did.

Now itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s central to peopleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s lives. Some things immediately attract the public; some are more subtle. But the first bring people in to look at the other stuff. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s great to enter the public consciousness.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; It was Self â&#x20AC;&#x201C; that famous head made of 10 pints of his own frozen

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Clockwise from top: the living room. Gary Humeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Baby Lucasâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; (2001) in the hallway. Quinn in front of his own â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Flood of the Bosphorousâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; (2006). â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Sphinxâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;, his painted bronze of Kate Moss, in his study www.harpersbazaar.co.uk

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MARC WEARS HIS OWN CLOTHES

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mall children and Ăźber-artworks might not seem like an ideal combination in a family home. But, surprisingly, thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s something about the proliferation of pieces (by Quinn and his fellow art friends) that makes the Byng-Quinn house feel less, rather than more, formal and adult. Gary Humeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s paintings appear regularly â&#x20AC;&#x201C; a cartwheeling cheerleader in browns and oranges; a portrait of Lucas aged two months in black and red gloss. In his study, a painted bronze of Kate Moss by Quinn (she is another good friend) contorts into a crotchexposing yoga pose like a classical sculpture; and pieces of venerable Gandharan, Jain and Khmer statuary are dotted all around.

Upstairs, the couple have their own rooms. (â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve done a study, and couples who have separate bedrooms have better relationships,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; says Byng, who is woken every morning at 6.30 by her sons.) In Byngâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s is a showstopping Sarah Lucas â&#x20AC;&#x201C; a lifejacket made of cigarettes; and in Quinnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s, a piece by Alighiero Boetti (an Italian artist who died in 1994) â&#x20AC;&#x201C; an embroidered map of the world. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s about the artificiality of boundaries,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; he says. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;And the value of time.

The piece took months to make.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; Nearby, in Byngâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s study, yellow Post-it notes are beginning to cluster on the wall, where she is planning the next installment of her Molly Moon series, to be set in Japan. Before she became a writer, she trained as an actor at the Central School of Speech & Drama in London. Stephen Tompkinson was in her year; James Purefoy, Rufus Sewell and James Nesbitt in the one below. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;I really like acting,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; she says. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;I just didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t like the world. I was no good at hustling, and terrible with rejection.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; She did puppeteering to obtain an Equity card, and then some â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;crappy TVâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; before she began writing for a comic strip. Outside Byngâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s office on the landing is a photograph of Tiger â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Byngâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s 19-year-old daughter from her previous marriage to artist Daniel Chadwick; dressed in a harlequin costume and make-up, she jumps in front of a giant close-up of her eye (part of Quinnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Iris series).

the going-out. We rent something in the north of the island, a different place every time. One year, we took the biggest thing we could get for our budget, and it was like Saddam Hussein meets Gianni Versace,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; says Quinn, laughing. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;When you walked in, there was a white grand piano and a Moorish fountain â&#x20AC;&#x201C; and a dictatorstyle viewing balcony on the first floor. It made a great backdrop for holiday photos.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; Byng adds: â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;We called it the funhouse because there was so much for the kids to do. But the reason the island is so great for a holiday is that just when you think youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re getting cabin fever, the adults can go out and go a bit mad too.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; A couple of years ago, while helping a friend to house-hunt in Mallorca, the pair came across a piece of land for sale in a nature reserve on the island. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d never been to Mallorca before, and we werenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t looking for anything. It was a complete fluke,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; says Byng of the plot where they will now build their architect-designed home, with a studio for Marc and a writing study for Byng. The Mallorca villa will accommodate many of Quinnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s marble sculptures, and be a showcase for his Rainbow (the artistâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s recreation of a rainbow), seen only once before at the Liverpool Biennial in 2002. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s just lights and a fountain of water,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; says Quinn, though anyone lucky enough to have seen it back then will remember its absolute beauty.

The European hedonism, of course, is balanced by more adventurous travelling â&#x20AC;&#x201C; lots of time spent in India, a research trip to Ecuador and the GalĂĄpagos. Byng is off to Japan soon with her great friend, the American photographer Tierney Gearon, to research book six. While the travelling unites the couple (and odd festivals: theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re both keen on the springtime cheese-rolling event in Gloucestershire, and sheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s put summerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Appleby Horse Fair in the Lake District into her diary), from a distance, Byngâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s childrenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s tales and Quinnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s visceral artworks seem to exist as polar opposites. But, as their various projects demonstrate, the couple seem to unconsciously draw their creativity from the same collective pool. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;That whole thing of getting ideas off each other â&#x20AC;&#x201C; itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s lovely to be introduced to different things, to see different lives,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; says Byng. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;When we went to Murano to see Marcâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s glass pieces being made [for Quinnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Morphology series in glass and silver], the glassblower said heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d first started playing with glass when he was eight, and was allowed to have the hot piece left in the mould. For me, access to any childhood story is a bonus. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;But itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s true, isnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t it, Marc?â&#x20AC;&#x2122; she continues. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;My last book was set in Switzerland and all about the environment and things warming up, and you did that project where everything had strange names, like â&#x20AC;&#x153;Desert in Antarcticaâ&#x20AC;?.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; Quinn interrupts: â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;The big Planet sculptureâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; (the giant baby that the artist exhibited at Chatsworth). â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;And what were you doing when I did the Los Angeles one, about time stopping?â&#x20AC;&#x2122; asks Byng. Quinn smiles. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d have to travel back in time to work that outâ&#x20AC;Śâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Allanah, Buck, Catman, Chelsea, Michael, Pamela and Thomasâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; by Marc Quinn is at White Cube, 48 Hoxton Square, London N1 (020 7930 5373; www.whitecube.com), from 7 May. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Molly Moon and the Morphing Mysteryâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; by Georgia Byng (ÂŁ9.99, Macmillan Childrenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Books) is published on 6 August.

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GEORGIA WEARS SILK DRESS, ÂŁ915, DAVID SZETO. LEATHER HEELS, ÂŁ445, RUPERT SANDERSON. GOLD EARRINGS; RING; NECKLACE, ALL FROM A SELECTION, MARC QUINN. SEE STOCKISTS FOR DETAILS. HAIR AND MAKE-UP BY CHERYL COREA AT MANDY COAKLEY, USING DERMALOGICA AND NARS

blood â&#x20AC;&#x201C; that put Quinn on the London art map and in the minds of the public, when Charles Saatchi first showed it in 1991 at his eradefining â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Sensationâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; show. (At the time, Quinn â&#x20AC;&#x201C; the son of a French potter and a physicist â&#x20AC;&#x201C; was sharing a flat with fellow shocktactician and YBA Hirst.) But nothing compared to the furore, five years ago, created by Quinnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s statue of a heavily pregnant Alison Lapper, born with no arms and shortened legs, which graced the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square. A piece raising both political and aesthetic questions about beauty and acceptability, it eclipsed everything heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d done before. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Yes, these major hitsâ&#x20AC;Ś I just have to come out with the next one that tops it,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; says Quinn, laughing.

Clockwise from top left: Quinnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s silver sculpture â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Buck as an Object of Virtueâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; (2010), in his study.

Byng in the living room, in front of an image from Quinnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Irisâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; series.

Artwork for Byngâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s new book. Her bedroom. Sky in front of Quinnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Construction Siteâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; (2001) in the childrenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s room

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HOUSE MUSIC Charlotte, Andrea and Alice Dellal in the first-floor sitting room of their Holland Park home, with a painting by Cecily Brown. Charlotte wears dress, about ÂŁ2,100, Giambattista Valli. Ring, ÂŁ260, Dominic Jones. Heels, ÂŁ795, Charlotte Olympia. Belt; earrings, both her own. Andrea wears bodysuit, about ÂŁ645, Dolce & Gabbana. Skirt, to order; jacket, about ÂŁ1,770, both Giambattista Valli. Ring, ÂŁ300, Dominic Jones at Net-a-porter.com. Alice wears dress, ÂŁ5,965; belt, ÂŁ195, both Alexander McQueen. Platforms, ÂŁ585, Charlotte Olympia. Earrings; ring, all her own

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tâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a rare sun-soaked day in London, and photographic lights are adding an extra layer of heat to an already steamy temperature on the uppermost floor of the Dellalsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Holland Park house. But the three women being shot for Bazaar are as cool as they come. Mother Andrea â&#x20AC;&#x201C; summer-fresh and flawless in a flower-print Prada frock and strappy silver flipflops â&#x20AC;&#x201C; zips in and out of the room, surveying the scene and her daughtersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; poses for the camera.

Charlotte, 29, extends herself, cat-like, across an armchair and smoulders like a pale-skinned Vargas girl, in a Dolce & Gabbana leopard-print blouse and black shorts. Alice, 23, in a tiny Christopher Kane black lace mini and Dolce & Gabbana bodysuit with half a head of icy blonde hair and a trademark shaven undercut, totters over to the record player in skyscraper heels designed by her sister Charlotte, and soon David Bowieâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Changesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; is blaring from the oversize Amati speakers.

Welcome to the wonderful world of the Dellals.

London has its fair share of fabulous families, of rock royalty and grand old names, where the parents and children alike figure in the worlds of art, music and fashion. But among them, the Dellals â&#x20AC;&#x201C; a bi-cultural collision between Andrea, a stunning and spirited Brazilian supermodel, and Guy, a London property magnate from a colourful, wealthy family â&#x20AC;&#x201C; stand out for their individuality and their industriousness. Her magnetic warmth and style guarantee a house thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s always full of fascinating people, both young and old.

His exacting eye ensures that the walls are lined with artworks by the most exciting practitioners of the day: Richard Prince, Cecily Brown, Annie Morris, Christopher Wool, David Bailey, Damien Hirst, Lucio Fontana, Gilbert and George. She is the guest everyone wants at all the best soirĂŠes (â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;I went to the Oscar parties for the first time this year â&#x20AC;&#x201C; all of them, including the Madonna and Demi Moore one,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; says Andrea, who wore a Dolce & Gabbana mermaid gown for the occasion â&#x20AC;&#x201C; â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Dolce & Gabbana, they think of Latin women. They make up a very large part of my wardrobeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;). He, on the other hand, prefers something quieter. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Guy loves a Gagosian dinner,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; she says. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;But otherwise, heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d rather stay low-profile.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; With this family, though, thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s just not going to happen. The children shine in fashion (Charlotte is a successful shoe designer; Alice is a model and business partner of much-fĂŞted young jeweller Dominic Jones), art (their brother Alexander, 27, runs the gallery 20 Hoxton Square) and society. Alexander is dating Charlotte Casiraghi, daughter of Princess Caroline of Monaco. Alice is in a band with smart young models Laura Fraser, Emma Chitty and Isabella Ramsay, niece of the Earl of Dalhousie. Max, the youngest at 19, as slender as a Burberry model but several inches taller, is about to head to university in Washington DC, and unsure as yet what heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll study.

But his father has put an Irving Penn nude of Gisele BĂźndchen in his bedroom by way of suggestion. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Guy studied photography before he joined the family business,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; says Andrea, â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;and heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s always wanted the children to grow up seeing and understanding beautiful things.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; Canvass the opinion of their friends, and the consensus is that to know the Dellals is to love them. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Such an amazing family,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; says top London design gallerist David Gill, a friend of Andreaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s since the 1990s, when she came to an opening at his South London gallery. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;And they know everyone; they know the world.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; H A R P E Râ&#x20AC;&#x2122; S B A Z A A R

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CULTURE CLUB Alice in the entrance hall, with a painting by Christopher Wool and a work by Tatsuo Miyajima. Bodysuit, about ÂŁ645, Dolce & Gabbana. Skirt, ÂŁ450, Christopher Kane. Belt, to order, Dominic Jones. Platforms, ÂŁ585, Charlotte Olympia. Earrings, her own. Ring, ÂŁ215, Dominic Jones at Net-a-porter.com. Opposite, from top: a Gilbert and George piece in the kitchen.

David Bailey portraits of the Rolling Stones in the hall leading to Maxâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s room

‘They’re all extraordinary women,’ says fashion designer Giambattista Valli from his studio in Paris’ Rue Boissy d’Anglas, where Charlotte once interned, and where she had her wedding dress made this year – an expansive fantasy of finest ivory tulle.

‘Their enthusiasm for life and art and fashion is incredible. They are just stunning human beings.’ They are, says Valli, among his many muses, who also include various Brandolinis and Niarchoses.

Mario Testino, a close friend of Andrea’s, first saw her in a Bill Gibb show at the Hyde Park Hotel in London in 1977. ‘I’ve been obsessed with her ever since,’ he says. Testino is godfather to Alex, but feels more like a favourite uncle. ‘I’m a godfather to all the children by default,’ he says, laughing. ‘And Alice has been like my godchild ever since I launched her into modelling,’ he says, referring to a shoot for French Vogue that kickstarted her career in 2003.

As their circle of friends knows, Andrea doesn’t do formal.

‘Nothing is show-off; nothing is a “statement”,’ says Valli. ‘I don’t like that “Mr and Mrs Dellal at home” business,’ says Andrea. ‘I mean, when I go to Valentino’s château, I love it. But imagine looking after all those things!’ Instead she gathers people around her, organically. The family drink is beer. She likes to be barefoot. Guy likes her in jeans and T-shirt. ‘I hate to look made-up,’ she says. ‘It’s important to be natural. Not like a doll.’ Although she turned 50 five years ago, her face radiates a youthful beauty that seems to be more due to genetics, happiness and meditation than any kind of external intervention, and her throaty, Brazilian-inflected vowels are more delightfully sisterly and conspiratorial than grande-dame-ish. It’s impossible to believe that you’re talking to a grandmother (since Charlotte had her son Ray 22 months ago).

The house is furnished with style and subtlety. Sought-after pieces by mid-20th-century Brazilian designer Joaquim Teniero are displayed alongside big cream sofas scattered with scarlet cushions. In the kitchen, a huge oak table, commissioned by interior designer Willy Nickerson (brother of fashion editor Camilla), seats whoever turns up for dinner. ‘We didn’t want a decorated house,’ says Andrea. ‘Guy are I are control freaks. We don’t want to live with someone else’s instant style.’ Although Charlotte has just moved to her first family house, at the top of Ladbroke Grove, and Alice shares with James Jagger in Notting Hill, you can’t help feeling that for everyone, this is really home.

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HOT SPOTS Charlotte in Andrea’s top-floor bedroom suite, in front of works by Jean-Michel Basquiat and Andy Warhol. Shirt, about £445; bodysuit (worn underneath), about £550; shorts, about £300, all Dolce & Gabbana.

Platforms, £830, Charlotte Olympia.

Earrings, her own. Ring, £260, Dominic Jones. Opposite, from top: Andrea’s suite, with paintings by Laurence Owen and Damien Hirst.

Works by Francis Picabia and George Condo in the first-floor sitting room

Andrea de Magalhaes Viera came to London in 1973, when she was just 18. ‘The minute I arrived, I never wanted to go back,’ she says. ‘Everything was very restricted in Brazil then, very conservative. So I started studying English, and then I joined my sister Christina, who was already on the books at [model agency du jour] Lorraine Ashton.’ Andrea fell in love with the catwalk.

‘It was such fun then, doing the Mugler and Montana shows in Paris. I did every Valentino show, and Chanel. It would be me, Jerry Hall, Marie Helvin, Pat Cleveland…’ It was Cleveland, one of the first mixed-race supermodels, who gave Andrea her model alias Rio. Along with beautiful French actress Clio Goldsmith, Gael Boglione (who now owns Petersham Nurseries) and her best friend, high-society fellow Brazilian Charlene de Ganay, a longtime PR for Valentino, the girls would all hang out in Studio 54 on trips to New York. Back in London, Tramp in Jermyn Street was where everyone from the Rolling Stones to Hollywood stars and royalty went to party. That’s where Andrea first met Guy. They married five years later, in 1982, one year after Charlotte was born.

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bone structure to her children. They are as Brazilian as they are British (â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;I made sure of that. Otherwise, whenever they went to Rio â&#x20AC;&#x201C; and we go every Christmas to the apartment on Ipanema Beach â&#x20AC;&#x201C; theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d be gringos with a Brazilian mum,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; she says). They are cultivated, clever and ambitious. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;They are very loved by their parents,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; says Testino, â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;and the parents are very open to letting their childrenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s minds travel and be free. Hence the children all turning out to be incredibly creative and sophisticated.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; Mother and daughters alike, unsurprisingly, have a tremendous sense of style. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Andrea can wear really dramatic things â&#x20AC;&#x201C; sheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s one of the few women who can,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; says Valli, whose dresses both Charlotte and Andrea adore for their womanly elegance. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;All the Dellal females are so balanced with their own femininity, so they know what suits them. Alice interprets clothing, and the label simply disappears. Charlotte is a mix of Rita Hayworth, a cat and a girl. Sheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s never afraid. When she got married in May, she wore her wedding dress, which was enormous and very difficult to walk in, like she was wearing pyjamas.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; Once the ceremony, at the familyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s 500-year-old Sussex estate, was over, the spectacular Scarlett Oâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Hara skirt was removed to reveal what Valli calls â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;a sexy movie-star dressâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; beneath. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;But sheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s that kind of girl, you can play with her.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; She completed the outfit with a pair of her own Charlotte Olympia vertiginous leopard-print shoes, to the approval of guests, who included the Jagger clan, Mark Ronson and European royalty. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve never seen such a beautiful bride,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; says Charlene de Ganay â&#x20AC;&#x201C; which is high praise from someone who spent 20 years with Valentino.

Alice, with her edgy hair, Dr Martens boots and liberal sprinkling of tattoos, is â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;more punked-upâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;, according to her mother. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;She steals my old AlaĂŻa and makes it her own. Once, when we were in Brazil, she found a long see-through black cardigan, which I used to wear over a flowery Plein Sud dress, and wore it with nothing underneath.

But sheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s got a perfect butt, so she looked fabulous.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; Today in London, Alice is dressing to type in a cropped lace top and cut-offs that, to Andreaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s consternation, are cut off just an inch or so too far â&#x20AC;&#x201C; were it not for an old plaid shirt flung around her waist.

Rather more of Andreaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s clothes travel in Charlotteâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s direction. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve stolen lots,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; says Charlotte. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;An amazing full-length sequinned Tom Ford Gucci gown that I still have to wear. And a Tom Ford Gucci Millennium diamantĂŠ dress, which [former Harperâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s fashion editor] Hamish Bowles really wanted for his incredible costume archive. I have a very similar style to my mother, and we both appreciate the same things.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; Andreaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s silver flip-flops were a present from Charlotte, bought in Capri. Clothes that donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t find a family home go to the local Oxfam shop. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;They love me,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; says Andrea, laughing. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve given them YSL, Chanelâ&#x20AC;Ś Sometimes I go past and the whole window is from my wardrobe!â&#x20AC;&#x2122; Although the Dellals could happily spend much of their time at leisure (Guyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s father, known as â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Black Jackâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Dellal for his way on the gaming tables, was reported to be worth around ÂŁ500 million in 2009), they seem unstoppably industrious. Charlotte returned from a three-week honeymoon in Japan â&#x20AC;&#x201C; â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;all culture and drinking beerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;, she says â&#x20AC;&#x201C; with her private-equity-dealer husband Maxim Crewe, and plunged straight back into business, opening her own Charlotte Olympia shop in Maddox Street, Mayfair, just weeks after her wedding. She studied shoe design at the specialist Cordwainers College in London, graduating in 2004, after deciding against the equally sculptural pursuit of corsetry. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;I was attracted by the idea of period costume,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; she says. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;I like things CONTINUED ON PAGE 350 258 |

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SAY IT WITH FLORALS Andrea in her bedroom suite with Charlotteâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s son Ray, in front of a Christopher Wool work. Dress, about ÂŁ1,340, Dolce & Gabbana. Heels, ÂŁ820, Charlotte Olympia. Ring, ÂŁ300, Dominic Jones at Net-a-porter.com.

Bracelet, her own. See Stockists for details. Hair by Paul Merritt for Paul Merritt Studio. Make-up by Karina Constantine at Streeters. Stylistâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s assistant: Camilla Denno. Opposite, from top: a Paul McCarthy sculpture in the entrance hall. Andreaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s suite, with a sculpture by Olympia Scarry

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FROM HEAVEN

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The charm of bohemian idyll Petersham House is testament to the personality and passions of its inhabitants, the Boglione family. Multi-talented globetrotting art collectors with rock- and movie-star friends, they have turned the Richmond home and its adjoining garden centre-cum-restaurant into a beautiful hive of enterprising activity. By NAOMI WEST. Photographs by CHRISTOPHER STURMAN. Styled by NATHALIE RIDDLE

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FLOWER SHOW A Martin Maloney painting and Lucian Freud nudes in the sitting room at Petersham House. Opposite: Francesco and Gael Boglione in the Richmond house’s gardens

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tea-soaked-linen furnishings the perfect backdrop for their extensive art collection, which includes works by Paula Rego, Gary Hume, Alex Katz, Elizabeth Peyton and Damien Hirst. Gael and Francesco travelled the world to source antiques and collectables for Petersham, bringing zinc tables and unfinished statues from south India – Francesco’s spiritual home. They now fill the glasshouses and the alfresco restaurant at Petersham Nurseries, run by chef Skye Gyngell, which has come to inspire cult-like adoration from Londoners and global visitors alike. ‘I think their restaurant inspired my wife and I to open up our own, outside New York,’ says old family friend and Petersham devotee Richard Gere. ‘I would describe their taste as cosy, refined, elegant, warm, eclectic, a little crazy, timeless.’

And now the Bogliones’ discerning eye and passion for far-flung adventure can be shared through Petersham Properties, the new travel-property portfolio that Gael runs with her business partner and friend, actor Annabel Brooks, whom she met through mutual friend Natasha Richardson 15 years ago. Through its website, some of the Bogliones’ favourite global retreats – all of which have passed Petersham standards of taste and beauty – are available to rent for the first time, from the holiday homes of Evgeny Lebedev, Prince Rupert Lowenstein and designer Liza Bruce to the Bogliones’ very own renovated ski chalet in Italy.

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LIGHT, AIR AND WATER Clockwise from top left: Ruby and Lara Boglione. A frescoed staircase in the entrance hall. A 1999 Karl Maughan painting.

‘Pauline’ (1999) by Gary Hume, in the sitting room. A pool in the garden

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Their close friends include ‘an incredibly catholic cross-section’, says neighbour Richard E Grant. Charles Saatchi is one of their circle, and Richard Gere is godfather to their 19-year-old son Harry

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t is the Bogliones’ personalities above all, one senses, that draw such a crowd of people to them. Gael, a statuesque Australian beauty with shoulder-length blonde hair, has an abundant, easy warmth; Francesco, an insurance broker, is engagingly witty. Their close friends include ‘an incredibly catholic cross-section’, says neighbour Richard E Grant – among them rock legends, environmentalists, gardeners, art collectors (Charles Saatchi is one of their circle) and actors (Gere is godfather to 19-year-old Harry – ‘Wonderful kids,’ says Gere. ‘I’ve seen them grow from infancy to adulthood’). ‘Gael’s open-house, sunny, southern-hemisphere philosophy and Francesco’s dolce vita people-loving hospitality make for a winning team,’ Grant adds.

The Bogliones have a special aptitude for unforgettable social occasions. Julia PeytonJones, director of the Serpentine Gallery and a friend of the couple, recalls: ‘One of the most glamorous dinners I have been to in London is the one they held for Cy Twombly at Petersham Nurseries. Mick Jagger and Richard Hamilton met for the first time, and guests left with garden spades and exotic plants.’

Last month, the 1920s ballroom at Petersham House was given over to three candlelit concerts, part of the Petersham Festival; shortly before that, a performance of Chekhov’s Three Sisters, directed by Eve Best and starring Diana Quick, roamed throughout their home. Somehow, even if the rooms of Petersham House were empty (a rarity with the constant rotation of house guests in the cottage and ad hoc Sunday lunches for 16 to 20 people), they would exude vitality, with the soft glow of the naturally pigmented walls, and the figurative and floral artworks that fill them (Lucian Freud nudes, Peter Beard photographs, two great Karl Maughan canvases devoted to the zinging colours and rich textures of Petersham’s herbaceous border, and Damien Hirst’s pink heart

OPPOSITE: RUBY WEARS VINTAGE SILK FLORAL TEA-DRESS, £650, VIRGINIA. JEWELLERY, HER OWN. LARA WEARS CHIFFON BLOUSE, £300, RALPH LAUREN. VINTAGE DRESS AND JEWELLERY, HER OWN. PREVIOUS PAGE: GAEL WEARS DRESS, SANDALS AND JEWELLERY, ALL HER OWN. FRANCESCO WEARS HIS OWN CLOTHES. SEE STOCKISTS FOR DETAILS. HAIR AND MAKE-UP BY NIKKI PALMER AT MANDY COAKLEY, USING LANCÔME

n the cusp of summer, when every hour of sunshine still feels like an unexpected gift, a walk through the garden of Petersham House is gasp-worthy.

Against the backdrop of the lush greens of the nurseries and the Thames-side meadows beyond, great spherical heads of allium sway in the herbaceous border, while a Himalayan mountain dog lolls in the shade of the small clipped boxtrees. This contemporary English idyll – the grounds, and the immaculately preserved red-brick Queen Anne house at their centre – is the home of the Boglione family.

The view from the back of Petersham House may be tranquil, but there is a constant thrum of industry, a sense of ‘things to do’.

This afternoon, Francesco, dressed in an open-necked cotton shirt and navy chinos, is wielding a trimmer, grass-clippings coating his canvas shoes. His wife Gael strides across the lawn towards the house, dressed in a black fitted sweater and jeans tucked into flat black boots, adding another task to her list. ‘We need to wash Antony Gormley’s head,’ she says, brushing the figure – by and of the artist – which has been crowned with bird droppings overnight.

Parked by the swimming pool is 26-year-old eldest daughter Lara’s bright-blue hippie van, nicknamed Betsy Blue, which has covered many miles in Morocco and Europe. Indoors, Lara, whose unaffected beauty echoes her mother’s, is arranging a collection of vivid Murano glass, sourced from the backstreets of the Venetian isle, laid out in their conservatory among the verdant tree ferns.

‘It’s all very well simply to maintain a house like Petersham, but I prefer to keep the place alive – that is, to turn back the clock and live here in a similar way to how it was lived in when it was built, with the house becoming a self-sustaining enterprise,’ says Francesco on his return indoors. Indeed, it is hard to imagine a place more vividly alive than Petersham House. Over the past 12 years, Gael, Francesco and the four Boglione children – Lara, Anna (22), Harry (19) and Ruby (17) – have transformed this lush corner of Richmond Hill into an earthly bohemian paradise through their endless dynamism and exquisite taste in interiors.

The house, together with the adjoining Petersham Nurseries – which the couple rescued from the threat of developers in 2002, transforming it into a whimsical gardening wonderland and one of chic London’s favourite haunts – are testament to the Bogliones’ industriousness, passion for authentic craftsmanship and respect for their surroundings. ‘We employ about 60 people here at Petersham, between the house and the nursery, and miraculously, the whole thing really works.’

Having formerly lived in central London, the Bogliones were lured south-west in 1998 by a friend and local resident, who mentioned to the family that Petersham House, a handsome building then faded and in disrepair, had been on the market for three years without a buyer. ‘I had no wish to move,’ says Francesco. ‘But then I fell in love.’ And the Bogliones set about working their own unique brand of magic: they have painstakingly transformed the house from a be-swagged, overly opulent residence into a light-filled natural beauty, its unpainted cornices and

CHURCH AND ESTATE Clockwise from above: Damien Hirst’s heart-shaped ‘Birthday Card’ (2001) in the ballroom.

A Paula Rego painting in the sitting room. St Peter’s Church, seen from the house’s gardens.

‘Ophelia #7’ (2002) by Robert Longo in the ballroom. An Antony Gormley statue in the garden.

Opposite: Lara and Ruby

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LARA WEARS COTTON SMOCK DRESS, £160, ALL SAINTS. LEATHER BOOTS, £80, H BY HUDSON. JEWELLERY, HER OWN. RUBY WEARS FLORAL DRESS, £60, MINKPINK. LEATHER BIKER BOOTS AND JEWELLERY, HER OWN. SEE STOCKISTS FOR DETAILS. HAIR AND MAKE-UP BY NIKKI PALMER AT MANDY COAKLEY, USING LANCÔME

with butterflies flitting across it, above the stage in the ballroom).

Then of course there are the large vasefuls of flowers from the garden in every room. The garden is looked after by head gardener Lucy Boyd, daughter of the late River Cafe co-founder Rose Gray. estoring Petersham House was a five-year project for Gael and Francesco, with them consulting English Heritage for advice along the way. Every oak floorboard was taken up, scrubbed and waxed; plasterboard was stripped; and walls were replastered in the traditional way. ‘I get a bit over-the-top, trying to make everything perfect,’ Gael says.

But despite the care lavished on Petersham House, it feels a resolutely un-precious house. The furniture is an attractively diverse miscellany: a French 18th-century sofa in the cottage, reupholstered in boldly stitched hessian; a 1940s cocktail table in the living room; leaf-shaped 1980s chairs picked up in Florence, shared among the bedrooms.

One ground-floor corridor is lined with photos that bear witness to the family’s outward-looking, international life. Gael points out a kooky shot of herself, pre-motherhood, in Borobudur in Java, with her head replacing that of a headless statue; then another picture of a happy group on a yacht. ‘That was in Cannes many years ago,’ says Gael.

‘There’s Julian Schnabel in his pyjamas.’

The Bogliones’ passion for travel makes them engaging storytellers. ‘I recall [Gael and Francesco] telling these wonderful stories and showing slides and home movies of their travels all over the Himalayas and elsewhere,’ says Gere. ‘And I remember thinking, “What a great life!”’

Francesco’s enthusiasm for experiencing other cultures goes back to the late 1960s, when he first travelled to India – a country he is still powerfully drawn to. He also spent five years living in Kabul, Afghanistan, ‘on and off ’, before he moved to London to begin working in the City in 1975. ‘When I met him, I had been hanging out with musicians and rock ’n’ rollers,’ says Gael. ‘I thought he was exotic, this young businessman in his handmade suits.

But he was a hippie before that.’ In her former career as a model, Gael travelled all over the world: she had originally relocated from Melbourne to Paris while still a teenager, having won a modelling competition to come and work for Nina Ricci. It was while modelling in New York that Gael met Gere. ‘She was my friend Sylvia Martin’s room-mate,’ the latter recalls. ‘A Brazilian and an Australian – quite a powerful combination. The toast of New York.’

The Boglione children have grown up sharing their parents’ wanderlust. Lara recently combined a trip sourcing wares for the nurseries in India – she has set up a Petersham Trading office in Madras – with work on a documentary about the Kumbh Mela festival in northern India. Anna is studying acting at the Lee Strasberg Theatre & Film Institute in New York. Harry has been away since November, and is currently headed from Cambodia to Laos. Only Ruby is temporarily grounded on English soil, due to her A-levels. www.harpersbazaar.co.uk

Gael’s next trip will be to Sydney, where she is working on another family renovation project: a 1940s house on a cliff in the Palm Beach area. ‘Most people there just rip things down, but I’m restoring it and building some rooms into the cliff, as we’re a big family.’

(The Bogliones remain committed to preserving heritage and the environment at all their properties, working hard to reduce the number of clients arriving by car at Petersham Nurseries. Gael even canvassed for environmentalist and local MP Zac Goldsmith earlier this year. ‘I was so over the moon when he won, I burst into tears,’ she says, laughing.)

The family also enjoy an annual adventure together. ‘Perhaps Venezuela, or a mad ride through India,’ says Gael. And the family invariably pick up new treasures for Petersham wherever they go.

It was on the Bogliones’ avid travels that the idea for Petersham Properties was born. ‘[On our holidays] we would often stay with a friend and fall in love with their house,’ Gael says. ‘But you can’t very well ask, “Can I borrow your house?”’ Well, not until now. As part of their new project, Gael and Brooks have convinced numerous friends and friends-of-friends to allow them to act as rental agents for their properties – which include little lighthouse cottages on the Isle of Man and a private island in the Bahamas. Petersham Properties is a friends-and-family operation – Gael and Brooks are ‘like sisters’ (as both describe their relationship), and Lara Boglione and Brooks’ daughter Ella Harris, an aspiring singer, are working with their mothers on the project.

Now, a whole new chapter of Petersham activities is springing to life, based around fine glassware, and Francesco is visibly thrilled that it will involve his eldest daughter. Coming from a line of northern Italian industrial bourgeoisie, he strongly values the idea of family business (his brother owns the clothing labels Kappa, Superga and K-Way, in which Francesco holds a sizeable stake), of passing on skills through the generations. ‘I’m trying to avoid outsourcing my children,’ he says. ‘I would like to teach them how to work, how to become entrepreneurs.

Petersham is a workshop, an incubator.’ Father and daughter have spent recent months sourcing the most exciting and important pieces of contemporary and vintage Murano glassware from Venice to bring to Petersham, for discerning shoppers.

At the launch of the collection, Lara created a special window display for Dover Street Market – where a space has been devoted to Petersham Nurseries for the past three years – with vintage furniture, and Murano vases overflowing with seasonal flowers. ‘It was like looking into a little room at Petersham House,’ she says, complete with a painting (a floral work by Alessandro Twombly afterwards destined for the Australian property).

Despite the call of countries yet unvisited and the new antipodean home, the Bogliones agree that this time of year is one they would never like to miss at Petersham. ‘To say it is beautiful,’ Francesco says, casting his eyes towards the window, ‘is like saying water is wet.’

Petersham Properties (www.petershamproperties.com). For details of Petersham’s collection of Murano glass, visit www.petershamnurseries.com.

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