Wanted Magazine: April issue 2020

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2020

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ED’S LETTER

04 / 2020

Sarah Buitendach

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NE MINUTE YOU’RE having lunch with mates at Bellinis, bragging about your imminent US vacay. The next, you’re holed up at home, thinking nostalgically about that visit to the petrol station last week.

What a turn our world has taken since I wrote my last editor’s letter. In less than a month, my life has become a bizarre balance of bouncing between live updates of The New York Times, The Guardian, and BusinessLive to keep myself in the loop regarding coronavirus breaking news, stats, and presidential statements. And, well, little else.

I’ve always worked from home when I needed to, but now my bed-office (boffice) is the new normal.

In my de facto realm of self-isolation, I’ve been on my social media drug of choice — Instagram — a lot. And that’s where friend and fellow journalist Nechama Brodie and I hatched a plan. In a moment of delirious overzealousness by the two of us, who are living and working in our PJs, we decided to start an Insta challenge that forced us to get creative. So for the past two weeks we’ve been picking a theme daily and kitting ourselves out, even though we are tantamount to being #alldressedupwithnoplacetogo.

We’ve been artistic masterpieces and dressed like our 1990s selves. I channelled my inner Hilary Mantel, and went quasi-Tudor, and we’ve gone fully black and white. We even got dolled up like the girls in a Robert Palmer music video. White ’80s guitars included.

Others on the ’Gram are joining in, and so far, we’re amused (and are hopefully amusing) and well distracted. Of course, what it boils down to is proper escapism.

From something totally devastating that feels absolutely out of our control.

Likewise, this issue of Wanted has provided our team with some solace.

Poring over the shoots created by photographer Kevin Mackintosh and our fashion team (and the cover) reminded me of the incredible talent in this country.

Robyn Louw’s piece on buying a race horse made me laugh out loud — it’s also utterly fascinating. As is Zanele Kumalo’s story on luxe CBD products. Now there’s a base ingredient to give some real calm right now, let’s be honest.

WHAT A DIFFERENCE A DAY MAKES

We’ve compiled our lists of podcasts, movies, and YouTube shows to watch when you’re at home. We got literal and picked a few bubble hotels and geodesic domes to which you can dream of escaping. We even have a piece by Jono Hall about the magic of board games. I have a physical repulsion to the concept but even I am tempted by his spinning a magic web about their charms.

Who knows where we’ll find ourselves in four weeks’ time, but I hope this issue gives you a small break and offers the luxury and loveliness Wanted has always stood for.

Keep yourself and your family safe and, where you can, show all the kindness and generosity possible. They never go out of fashion.

Cover credits Fringe wool neckpiece, R1 950, Erre; jacket, R2 680, AKJP

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WA N T E D O N L I N E . C O . Z A

“BEAUTY LIES IN THE DETAILS OF THE GRANDEST STRUCTURES, AND THE FINEST.” ORA ÏTO, CREATOR OF SHAPES, WEARS THE VACHERON CONSTANTIN PATRIMONY.

EDITOR Sarah Buitendach (sarahb@arena.africa) MANAGING EDITOR Matthew McClure 011 280 5605 (mcclurem@arena.africa) CREATIVE DIRECTOR Anna Lineveldt JUNIOR DESIGNERS Carike de Jager

and Manelisi Dabata FASHION DIRECTOR Sharon Armstrong (armstrongs@arena.africa) JUNIOR FASHION EDITOR Sahil Harilal BEAUTY EDITOR Nokubonga Thusi (thusin@arena.africa) FASHION INTERN Nombuso Kumalo DÉCOR DIRECTOR Leana Schoeman (leanas@sundaytimes.co.za) GROUP MOTORING EDITOR Denis Droppa (droppad@arena.africa) SUBEDITOR Benazir Cassim

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Katharynn Kesselaar (kesselaark@arena.africa) BUSINESS DAY EDITOR Lukanyo Mnyanda PUBLISHER Aspasia Karras HEAD: Advertising Sales Eben Gewers MANAGING DIRECTOR Andrew Gill BUSINESS MANAGER Yvonne Shaff 082 903 5641 (shaffy@arena.africa) ACCOUNT MANAGER Johannesburg Tamara Nicholson 083 604 0949 (nicholsont@arena.africa) ACCOUNT MANAGER Western Cape Samantha Pienaar 082 889 0366 (pienaars@arena.africa) ACCOUNT MANAGER Durban Gina van de Wall 083 500 5325 (vdwallg@arena.africa) Wanted is available with Business Day nationwide.

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12 Nduduzo Makhathini and all that jazz

28 Courses on horses: what you need to know

32 Press play on happy home time

CONTENTS 38 No smoke and mirrors: CBD goes luxe

40 The who and what of design right now

48 Out the box: the new frontier of board games

SA N D TO N C IT Y D i a mo n d Wa l k B ou t i qu e U2 2 Tel : +2 7 11 326 7767

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WAT C H E S

04 / 2020

Gary Cotterell

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QUALITY TIME

H I S YEAR TU D O R celebrates the 50th anniversary of its first chronograph. Called the Oysterdate, it was sporty, robust, and utilitarian while offering some unique ’70s flair. While the brand already acknowledges this timepiece through the Heritage Chrono collection, first launched in 2010, we are eager to see Tudor Heritage what it has up its sleeves in celebration Chrono of this special year. Powered by a selfwinding calibre 2892 mechanical movement with additional mechanism for chronograph function, the 42mm Heritage Chrono, priced from around R65 000, is a slightly bigger, modern interpretation of the Tudor chrono-logy 39mm Oysterdate “Homeplate” (7000 series) but adopts key aesthetic elements of the original.

That first chronograph was powered by a Valjoux 7734 mechanical movement and got its nickname in reference to its unusual pentagonalshaped hour markers, which resembled the home plate on a baseball field. Its unusual, symmetrical dial design was available in grey or black with orange second markers and chronograph seconds hand. Two bezel options were also offered with a tachymetric scale — one in Plexiglas (ref 7031), the other finished in satin-brushed steel (ref 7032) — reminding us of the racetracks that inspired chronographs

in the first place. A third prototype (ref 7033), although never commercially available, had a bidirectional rotating bezel with a 12-hour marked black disc in aluminium. This style was adopted for the Heritage Chrono collection and alluded to the brand’s diving heritage.

Incidentally, this version also had useful GMT functionality, with its rotating bezel facilitating second-time-zone tracking.

The 2013 Heritage Chrono Blue was inspired by the second generation (7100 series) with its signature blue launched in 1971, and dubbed the “Montecarlo” because of its roulette wheel-style dials.

Introduced in 1976, the Tudor “Big Block” (series 9400) was its first self-winding chronograph, earning its nickname for its thicker case designed to accommodate the rotor of its new movement. The asymmetrical dial layout was influenced by the new Valjoux calibre 7750 movement, which saw the addition of an hour counter, three subdials shifting left, and a big date aperture at 3 o’clock.

Tudor broke with tradition in 2013 to show off its technical abilities through the fashionable, matte-black, hi-tech ceramic Fastrider Black Shield, however, one of my favourite releases is still the 41mm Tudor Black Bay Chrono S&G of 2019.

This gorgeous two-tone update on the 2017 stainless-steel model combines the diving identity of the Black Bay with its characteristic “snowflake” hand and the functionality of a purist’s chronograph for the racetrack. tudorwatch.com

NEWS 01.

THE NEW CONNECT The next generation Tag Heuer Connected luxury hi-tech wristwatch has a new lightweight 45mm case design inspired by its chronographs and offers a custom-designed digital experience geared towards performance. Daily connected services run through Wear OS by Google while the new Tag Heuer Sports app takes care of immersive sports experiences. tagheuer.com or Picot & Moss 011 669 0500

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AHEAD OF THE CURVE Louis Vuitton’s Tambour Curve Flying Tourbillon Poinçon de Genève is the latest complication for the company’s iconic “drum” case, first seen in 2002. The exterior sleeve is a proprietary carbon-fibre composite, CarboStratum, which fits over a titanium inner case and lugs.

A high-jewellery version is also available in white gold and CarboStratum set with 354 diamonds. Behind the bold design of the monogrammed skeletal dial ticks the calibre LV 108 manufactured at LV’s La Fabrique du Temps in Geneva, Switzerland. POA, louisvuitton.com

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A GRAND AFFAIR Grand Seiko is marking the 60th anniversary of its first watch “made to be as precise, durable, comfortable and beautiful as humanly possible”.

Presented in platinum 950, 18kt yellow gold or this elegant Brilliant Hard Titanium, the Re-Creations Of The First Grand Seiko are faithful to the 1960 original, with the same slim profile but with a case diameter increased from 35mm to a more contemporary 38mm.

Titanium, from R120 000, grand-seiko.com

OBJET

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Sahil Harilal Judd van Rensburg

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A W A LK IN TH STOCKIST LOUIS VUITTON LOUISVUITTON.COM

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Fa s t la n e s n e a k e rs , R 1 5 Â 0 0 0 , L ou is Vu it t on

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DOWN TO BUSINESS

04 / 2020

Lukanyo Mnyanda Freddy Mavunda

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S I STARTED writing this, I began to wonder whether I’d be in Europe or not by publication day. By the time I had finished, the answer was crystal clear. The computer said NO. Not only was I not able to go to the UK, but a trip to Port Elizabeth was also out of the question unless I was prepared to drive almost 11 hours, preferably by myself, without any stops.

That’s how quickly the coronavirus panic has spread. It seems like an age ago that it was a curiosity out of China. It was still concerning, but in a distant way, just like when you turn the TV on and see a story about floods in Bangladesh or hurricanes in the US. Even when the disease started to spread across the world and the extent of the crisis in Italy became evident, it still didn’t feel so real.

Donald Trump was still downplaying it, while at the same time authorities in the UK were approaching it

rather casually, even suggesting that a rise in infections might not be a bad thing as it might build immunity among the population, especially the younger ones. The elderly, it seemed, were to be left to their own devices.

One thing can be said about our government, which often, and rightly so, attracts its fair share of criticism, is that its approach didn’t display such complacency. Health minister Zweli Mkhize was proactive in communicating with the country’s population from when the first case was reported to President Cyril Ramaphosa’s 15 March announcement of drastic measures such as a travel ban on foreign nationals from high-risk countries, including the UK. Up until this point I had been thinking of repatriating my UK-based family.

To say the required mind change has been surreal would be an enormous understatement. One week, you are thinking it’s all fine; the epicentre is China and

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SHARE IN THE LUXURY text

Paul Theron

“One week, you are thinking it’s all fine; the epicentre is China and they seem to be getting on top of it” When I decided to try it out a couple of years ago and leave my family in the UK, the havoc unleashed by the coronavirus was the last scenario I would have imagined — something more akin to a dystopian movie. And if anyone would have told me that it was remotely possible, I would have laughed in their face. But I’m not laughing now.

Mnyanda is the editor of Business Day

RAVELLING TO A fun location with loved ones is the greatest luxury of all. In recent weeks, the coronavirus outbreak has thrashed the share prices of travel-related businesses, especially airlines. Who knows when the world will return to normal, and when people will set out on tour again?

I consider online travel agencies to be an exciting investment opportunity. The best entry point is the largest listed online travel company, Booking.com. There are others like Expedia, Tripadvisor, Ctrip and Trivago. Airbnb is not listed yet.

Up until March, there were simply not enough hotel beds to sell. In other words, hotel

occupancies were too high, limiting growth. If that demand returns, it might take time for hotel property developers to catch up.

At its high, Booking.com stock (code BKNG in New York) traded at above $2 000, giving the company a market value of over $80-billion. It owns and operates several travel-fare aggregators and travel-fare metasearch engines, including its namesake and flagship Booking.com, Priceline.com, Agoda, Kayak, Cheapflights, Rentalcars.com, Momondo, and OpenTable. A large part of its business is outside of the US. In my view, Booking.com needs more US operations. If I were running the company, I’d consider a knock-out merger offer for smaller rival Expedia, which has a market value of $12-billion.

Investors should buy this one for their portfolio now, while it’s going at 25% off! If you are going somewhere, use its service to book your flights and hotel room (you should always support the companies in which you invest).

Theron is CEO of asset manager Vestact

PORTRAIT TREATMENT MANELISI DABATA

TRUTH IS STRANGER THAN FICTION

they seem to be getting on top of it. And then it explodes in Italy and you wonder whether you can travel to Europe. Then, in no time at all, you are not sure when you’ll see your children again.

As at the time of writing, I still have no clue. There is little light at the end of the tunnel and it’s difficult to avoid panic, imagining what could happen if and when the virus spreads to South Africa’s poorer areas where self-isolating is near impossible.

Even being told that we are not Italy, where the spread has been aided by its much-bigger proportion of older people among the population and its more concentrated living conditions, was of little or no comfort.

It still remains to be seen how this will change parts of the population for whom international travel had become routine, and for the globalised economy, with its interlinked markets and supply chains. In this era of globalisation, high-speed internet, and Skype, having families across borders had stopped being such a strange concept.

STYLE NOTES

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Nokubonga Thusi Robyn Alexander

EUROPE’S LOSS IS OUR GAIN

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LET’S GET LIFTED Step aside lightweight formulas — we’re eyeing some pretty luxurious, rich textures to take with us into the autumn/ winter season.

The Chanel Le Lift range comes rebooted with a crème and crème yeux containing botanical alfalfa concentrate derived using biotechnology.

The super-active botanicals, jampacked into silky, melt-in-your-skin textures, will have your eye area and skin looking more luminous, lifted, smoother, and firmer with every application. Chanel Le Lift Crème, 50ml, R2 200; Chanel Le Lift Crème Yeux, 15ml, R1 445

insel Gallery, representing a number of South Africa’s best contemporary jewellers, was ready to depart in March for Germany’s Frame 2020 fair when the event was cancelled because of coronavirus concerns. It had been the first gallery from Africa to be invited to exhibit at this prestigious event, and was due to present work by Liz Loubser, Carine Terreblanche, and Mariambibi Khan, among others. Now all this exquisite jewellery is available to their local fans instead, so head over to Tinsel online or check out its Instagram feed (@tinselgallery) to shop for your new favourite.

House Style

A GREAT ESCAPE

SMELLS LIKE COSTA RICA

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Hertex’s new Metropolitan range of premium wall art — all printed on canvas and sold framed — makes the perfect finishing touch for any space.

Explore the current trend towards monochrome with the Kwango, Mara or Zambezi options, or add a lush feel with Eden or Savill pieces. Shop online at hertexhaus.co.za

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Originally launched in 1927 and named after the Vuitton family’s country estate, Heures d’Absence is the brand-new scent from Louis Vuitton.

Completely recreated by master perfumer Jacques CavallierBelletrud — the original formula was lost after just 300 bottles of the scent had been made — this gorgeous floral fragrance includes jasmine, rose, and mimosa. In spirit, it’s all about moments of grace filled with quiet daydreams. louisvuitton.com

scape to Costa Rica with the new sweet, fruity floral scent from Berdoues Collection Grands Crus. Taking its inspiration from Costa Rica’s indigenous flower, the guaria morada, notes of orange, amyris, and patchouli give it a deliciously endearing sweet scent that you can actually wear all day without feeling overwhelmed. Berdoues Collection Grands Crus Guaria Morada, R1 595, available at selected Truworths and Foschini stores

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Debbie Hathway

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“The spaces I like playing at are those that connect us to origin and identity, where we can tap into something deeper than this very moment”

E LOVE THIS man with an uncommon depth… when he walks into a room, soul walks in with him.” These were the words of American virtuoso trumpeter Wynton Marsalis in his introduction of multi-awardwinning South African musician and Blue Note artist Nduduzo Makhathini to a Joy of Jazz festival audience last year.

Makhathini had joined the Jazz at Lincoln Centre Orchestra in paying tribute to the music of American pianist and composer Duke Ellington.

If you’ve been unable to witness that entrance in person, you only have to hear Makhathini put fingers to keys to get the picture. His work has grabbed my attention repeatedly as I’ve scrolled through his Instagram feed to get a sense of the man and his music, and followed the journey to the launch of his Blue Note Records debut album, Modes of Communication: Letters from the Underworlds on 3 April this year. When he plays, there is little choice but to tune in to the moment and the message.

Makhathini’s new album boasts a global hit list. It includes the likes of US saxophonist Logan Richardson and bassist Zwelakhe-Duma Bell Le Pere.

South African collaborators include tenor saxophonist Linda Sikhakhane, trumpeter Ndabo Zulu, drummer Ayanda Sikade, and both Makhathini’s wife Omagugu and his daughter Nailah on backing vocals. Senegalese percussionist El Hadj Ngari Ndong features too The band’s Pan-Africanist outlook is deliberate, underpinning Makhathini’s desire for music performances to be “a space for conversations that open a discourse of African histories that reside beyond the borders of this continent”.

For Makhathini, performance is about connecting the histories of South African jazz, unknown to many people worldwide, to this jazz portal that Blue Note has created over the past eight decades. Founded in 1939, the iconic American musical label’s artist list reads like a constellation of past and present musical supernovas: John Coltrane, Elvis Costello and The Roots, Lena Horne, and Miles Davis included.

Jazz in SA dates back to the 1920s.

Reuben Caluza wrote ragtime songs in Zulu in the 1920s and 1930s. Makhathini learned about him in a book called African Stars: Studies in Black South African Performance by Veit Erlmann, Philip V Bohlman, and Bruno Nettl. “That’s just a few years after jazz was ‘invented’ in the US. People often think about music on this continent as something that emerged from the echo of the broader narrative of jazz in the diaspora. One of my views

is that we have to consider a kind of parallelism as well. Some of these things are already embedded in our cultural concepts. If you think about traditional ceremonies, in a precolonial sense there were already aspects of improvisation, call and response, syncopation… these are all signifiers of what people call jazz today.”

A human being first and foremost, Makhathini also describes himself as a father and husband, somebody’s child: “They all define who I am but in the artistic world, I present myself as an artist, healer, improviser and scholar,” he says.

Makhathini is a practising sangoma.

As for style, he favours a working definition above a specific genre. “It’s ‘our music’. That way it embraces your history, your ancestry, the fact that it’s not yours alone… there are other contributions made by other people.”

only way an ancestor continues to live in an ancestral realm is through the vocalisation and chanting of their names.

Playing at the Cape Town International Jazz Festival was not just about the excitement of playing for a big audience.

It was also about immortalising the invisible histories embedded in these spaces. On a deeper level I connect with those memories.” Of course, he’s disappointed that the festival had to be postponed due to the coronavirus pandemic. “It came with great sadness to read about the postponement, especially because it is in the moments of fear, confusion and sadness that people should gather. But one understands that large gatherings present huge risks.

Meanwhile let’s all keep safe.”

As current head of the music department at the University of Fort

KIND OF BLUE Performer, academic, family man.

Nduduzo Makhathini is the first South African musician to sign to Blue Note Records and he has just dropped a new album Similarly, he prefers to play in spaces that stand for something. “Space is a kind of energy bank and space has memory, so the spaces I like playing at are those that connect us to origin and identity, where we can tap into something deeper than this very moment. Early last year I played at Blue Note in New York. John Coltrane and Thelonious Monk have played there. I felt my performance was connecting with the histories that this space carries,” says Makhathini.

He feels similarly about performing at “Africa’s grandest gathering”, the Cape Town International Jazz Festival. “Some of my heroes have played there. Around 2007 I played with Zim Ngqawana (flautist and saxophonist),” says Makhathini.

“John Mbiti, the Kenyan writer, says the

Hare in the Eastern Cape, Makhathini juggles touring, teaching, and family life with relative ease. He is currently doing a PhD on artistic practices. When he travels to a gig it is part research and part internationalisation for the department.

He pairs all his performances with the presentation of an academic paper or a workshop. “I always felt there was a connection between being an artist myself and someone contributing to the development of some kind of abstract idea of tomorrow, and how artists can contribute to that picture. I see it as part of the work that I have to do. Because of that energy, time avails itself.”

Modes of Communication: Letters from the Underworlds is available on all good music portals.

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ET’S FACE IT, South Africa’s unstable political and economic landscape has led to a surge in interest in offshore investment from local investors. People want superior returns, in addition to stability and security of assets. However, when planning on moving money abroad, there are a few other crucial considerations to keep in mind. Before you spirit your hard-earned cash to some account in, say, the Caymans, you’d better take a step back. You first need to think about mechanisms to invest offshore, the various tax implications of these investment vehicles, and currency-fluctuation factors.

In most cases, investors send discretionary money offshore while their investments in South Africa satisfy their income needs on local soil. The question is, when it comes to offshore investment, should you invest directly or through an indirect vehicle such as an asset swap or feeder fund?

Essentially, direct investing involves converting rands to foreign hard currency and investing that hard currency abroad.

One of the key reasons for direct investing is to have money available in specific countries, to use when travelling, to finance your children’s varsity overseas, or any situation when having money abroad for immediate use makes sense. Other reasons to invest directly are to hedge against local political instability in a country of residence and for emigration.

When you decide to invest offshore indirectly, you need a way to get this money abroad. This is referred to as an asset swap, which is essentially an investment manager’s offshore allowance. The main difference between direct and indirect offshore investing is that the indirect offshore investments must be paid back to South Africa in rands.

IMAGE 123RF

DIRECT VERSUS INDIRECT INVESTMENT

SO YOU WANT TO INVEST OFFSHORE? also clamp down heavily on estateduty taxes.

These and other tax complications can be curtailed by investing in a life wrapper, such as Old Mutual’s International Investment Portfolio+.

This investment platform legally compels the company to take responsibility for all tax affairs of the investments therein.

DON’T GET TRIPPED UP BY TAX

CURRENCY FLUCTUATION

There is a myriad of tax considerations that investors often don’t factor in before taking their assets offshore.

For example, the US and UK — and most other countries — require that non-residents pay inheritance tax on assets, including property and direct shares. If you own shares on the New York Stock Exchange, for example, your estate is liable for a 40% offshore inheritance tax on all investments above $60 000. These jurisdictions

An obsession with the short-term volatility of the rand and the conversion rate in question when planning to invest abroad is common among local investors. What they don’t take into account is that, while the rand strengthens, global markets tend to correct at the same time, voiding the strong showing of the rand.

It seldom happens that the rand strengthens while the markets go

Wayne Sorour, head of Old Mutual International Sales and Distribution on what you’ve got to consider before you take the plunge

down. So, while you wait for the rand to improve by 10% to send money offshore, the market can gain 10%, resulting in zero gain. Investors could do better to phase in these investments over a set period to account for these currency fluctuations.

WHERE TO INVEST? While the South African investment environment is relatively limited, offshore investing has the added complexity of a choice of thousands of companies and funds to invest in.

This is where intimate knowledge of and expertise in the offshoreinvestment space is crucial.

If an investor is risk-averse, lumping all their money into risky offshore equity markets isn’t the way to go. First, an investor riskand-needs analysis must be done by their financial advisers to decide on the various asset classes to invest in abroad. Money invested offshore is normally for medium- to long-term horizons and often forms part of investors’ discretionary investments.

There is also the added complexity of geographical exposure to markets in the US, UK, EU, or emerging markets, among many others. That means it’s really advisable that a client’s investments are overseen by a financial adviser, in conjunction with an investment manager who can structure a discretionary portfolio according to the investor’s risk profile.

Your son proud to wear it in his.

Investing in a watch in your thirties.

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WEALTH

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Sharon Armstrong & Louw Kotze Kevin Mackintosh production designer Daryl McGregor production

photography

All items, price on request, Black Coffee

Sculpting and colouring a new South African aesthetic

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FA S H I O N

TH E S HAP E OF

THINGS

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Woollen collar, R2 950, Erre; trousers,R8 280, Viviers; hat, R2 800, Crystal Birch

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Dress, R8 400, Erre; combat boots, worn throughout, from R2 999, G-Star Raw

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All pleated items, price on request, Roman Handt; yellow boots, R2 249, Palladium

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Dress, R6 800, collar, R1 500 both Mantsho; combat boots, from R2 999, G-Star Raw Opposite page: Dress, price on request, Gavin Rajah

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Jacket, R1 850, culottes, price on request, both Reign; All combat boots, from R2 999, G-Star Raw

Jacket, skirt, both price on request, Gavin Rajah

Black dress, R14 200, Tiaan Nagel; white trousers, R3 800,David Tlale

PHOTOGRAPHY KEVIN MACKINTOSH/LUSTRE PHOTOGRAPHER’S ASSISTANT EZRA MOKGOPE/LAMPOST HAIR MARY GOUVEIA / LUSTRE MAKEUP RENEE DE WIT / GLOSS ARTIST MANAGEMENT STYLIST’S ASSISTANT BRIGITTE ARNDT DIGITAL TECHNICIAN GRANT SMITHERS DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY NICK BURTON MOORE 1ST AC MARK VAN ZYL PRODUCER ROBERT KENT & SCOTT BAKER PRODUCTION MANAGER CHRIS CHIVELL PRODUCTION COORDINATOR ELLY ROUX PROPS ASSISTANT THOMAS HILL RETOUCHING TRAVYS OWEN/SWANSONG MODELS SARAH/FABULOUS DOT COM SISIPHO/ICE MODELS PIVOT A/TWENTY MODEL MANAGEMENT AZA M/MY FRIEND NED JAY JAY/BOSS MODELS

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Shirt, R1 380, trousers, R1 150, both Reign

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Jacket, R8 500, mesh tunic, R4 500, both David Tlale

Stockists

AKJP studio 079 490 9492 Black Coffee blackcoffee.co.za Crystal Birch therealcrystalbirch.com David Tlale davidtlale.com Erre 073 885 9068 Gavin Rajah gavinrajah.com G-Star Raw g-star.com/en_za Mantsho 071 881 4828 Palladium 011 444 2270 Reign reignfashionsa@gmail.com Roman Handt romanhandt.com Tiaan Nagel 066 441 6475 Viviers info@viviers.studio

PA R T N E R S H I P

THE POWER OF CHOICE

Buy your BMW from the comfort of your home

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OU COULD be lying in the bath, getting some sun in the garden, bingeing on series on the couch. And buying your next dream car while you’re at it.

No, seriously, we mean it. Buying a BMW from your couch — it’s that easy.

And, let’s face it, there’s never been a better time for a little bit of practical indulgence while you’re stuck at home.

That, dear Wanted readers, is the magic of BMW Anywhere, a new digital-first initiative from the always-innovative brand. You’ll still enjoy a purchase

experience that gives you all the benefits of a physical dealership, but with plenty more. The brand’s new online store, buy.bmw.co.za, puts the customer at the centre of everything BMW does. So you’ll have access to more — all at your fingertips. Online you’ll be able to:

SET YOUR BUDGET

TRADE-IN

CHOOSE A BMW

CHECKOUT

Get a BMW on your terms with a range of different finance options, from cash to instalment and rental plans.

Do you have a vehicle to trade in? You can get an estimated trade-in online to use towards the purchase of your new car. BMW Anywhere connects you to every dealership in the country.

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At time of publication

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Robyn Louw

John Constable, Golding Constable’s Black Riding-Horse

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It’s the sport of kings and it never goes out of fashion. Robyn Louw presents the rookie’s guide to buying a racehorse.

If you dare

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O YOU WANT TO BUY a racehorse? Abandon logic, all ye who enter here! There is good reason for the joke that the fastest way to make a small fortune is to start with a large one and buy horses.

With statistics reflecting that only 3% of foals will ever become stakes winners, one has to accept that it’s like owning a yacht, or having a mistress — you enjoy the journey and don’t expect any returns.

You’ll be told a lot of things when looking at horses and people will bandy around terms like “AER” and “ROI” (most of which are a LOB). What they won’t tell you is that owning a racehorse has nothing to do with pale and boring things like investments or earnings, and even less with common sense. They are, instead, a Willy Wonka’s golden ticket into one of the most fascinating worlds imaginable. There is glamour and excitement, money (usually out of your wallet), beautiful people and travel — and horses are the passport to all of that. Be warned that the coin may land on the other side and bring frustration, heartbreak, and disappointment, but if you can laugh in the face of danger — and reckon your wallet and nerves can take it — read on!

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WHERE TO BUY There are lots of ways to buy a horse, the most common being at one of the many auctions held throughout the year. The sales calendar kicks off in January with the CTS Cape Premier Yearling Sale, held at the CTICC. It is generally scheduled around the same time as the L’Ormarins Queen’s Plate, making it the perfect excuse for a long weekend in Cape Town.

There’s the smaller, regional Cape Yearling Sale in February, and then the industry mainstay, the BSA National Yearling Sale at Germiston in April, usually coupled with Champions Day at Turffontein. Finally, there’s the KZN Yearling Sale, which can

“Racing sells dreams, and as dreams go, it offers some of the biggest and best”

A catalogue page from a horse sale reflects much more than just name and age

be combined with a trip to the Durban July — if you’re starting to see a pattern here, you’re not wrong!

Thoroughbreds traditionally embark on their training careers from around the age of two and a half. It’s worth noting that in the southern hemisphere, the season starts on 1 August and runs till 31 July and southern hemisphere-breds all turn a year older on 1 August. The

trouble with buying a yearling (a horse aged between one and two years) is that it will be at least a year before your new acquisition is ready to go to a training yard, which can prove testing. To cater for folks who prefer their gratification a little more instant, there are 2 Year Old sales and even Ready To Run sales, at which you can buy a horse that has already been backed and

worked and is theoretically “ready to run”.

BY THE BOOK Whichever you choose, the list of horses on offer will be published in a catalogue, which contains each horse’s pedigree and relevant family information. If one is taking the business seriously, these provide great entertainment and study material in the weeks leading up to a sale. More serious buyers may even choose to visit their selections on the stud farm for a pre-sale inspection.

The father is referred to as the “sire” and the mother is the “dam”, and the catalogue will extol the virtues of both as well as any notable siblings and other family members down the female line. Successful horses are denoted with “black type” (bold lettering) and horses earn small black type (lowercase) for placing in graded races or bold black type (uppercase) for winning graded races, so a page “loaded with black type” indicates a horse from a successful racing family.

There is violent debate about whether yearlings ought to be sold named or unnamed.

Some buy horses just because they like the name, while others refuse to consider anything they can’t name themselves.

Fortunately there is a middle ground and should you buy a horse you like with a name you don’t, you can apply to change it before the horse races.

HOW TO CHOOSE When contemplating a group of horses, one trainer was moved to comment, “It’s always possible, not likely but unquestionably possible — that one of them, almost any one of them, could be the greatest horse that has ever set foot on a racetrack. You know that almost certainly this will not be the case. But you cannot say it is impossible.”

Selecting a yearling is something of a dark art. You can ask a trainer to advise you, enlist the help of a bloodstock agent, or imbibe a lot of the hospitality on offer and simply “wing it” (a popular choice). People will feel legs, check wind, scope throats, and measure throatlatches. But know that you can study and

scheme and plan and end up with much the same result as throwing your catalogue into the air and buying whatever page it happens to land open on. Racing is just like that. Which is one of its most appealing aspects.

While weighing the odds and studying pedigrees is noble, one cannot predict or measure heart or the all-important will to win, and racing folklore is littered with stories of the cheap little horse no-one wanted defying all odds to become a champion.

Those stories are the best of all, because more than anything, racing sells dreams, and as dreams go, it offers some of the biggest and best.

A WILD RIDE If you collect experiences rather than things, you’ll never run out of storage space and if it’s experience you’re after, there is little to equal racehorse ownership.

Be warned — the business is fast, furious, and pressured.

The highs and lows come thick and fast and can test you to the limit, because there are no half measures. Much as you can’t be a little bit pregnant, you also can’t be a little bit involved with racing. You dive into the deep end, because, well, there isn’t really a shallow one!

And it’s all condensed into a tiny microcosm, where personalities, emotions, and events are accelerated and amplified, so you really can live a lifetime in your lunch hour.

It is not for everyone, but for anyone mad enough to throw their hat into the fray, racing offers a space in the parade ring and a hell of a ride.

It can be rude and crude, and it is filthy, hard, back-breaking work. It’s early mornings, little sleep, and a constant battle to maintain an equilibrium. But find the right crowd and we more or less guarantee that you will never drink so much, party so hard, laugh so loud, or have as much fun as you will with racing people. You will be excited, exhausted, and hungover in roughly equal amounts and should you ever be blessed enough to lead your horse into the winner’s enclosure, well, there’s simply no feeling like it.

Life is short. Buy the horse.

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PA R T N E R S H I P

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S THE DAYS get shorter, the nights perceptibly chillier, and the fireside starts beckoning, it’s time to choose the right cognac to enjoy with friends and family. For over 300 years, Martell has been producing the finest French cognac with a dedicated following and its new VSOP eaux de vie continues this venerable legacy. At the first sip, alluring notes of yellow stone fruit such as plum, greengage, and cherry seduce the senses, accompanied by a subtle spiciness imparted by the oak barrels in which the cognac is aged.

It is here, in these fine-grained red oak barrels from the Troncais Forest in central France, that the secret to Martell VSOP lies. These limitededition, 200-year-old barrels are selected by the Martell House and impart fewer tannins to the eaux de vie than younger oak barrels. Martell VSOP is a cognac that is smooth, refined, and reflects the expertise and commitment that go into producing each drop. martell.com

PE AG RFE ED CT TO ION

Martell VSOP, aged in rare, fine-grained French red oak barrels, is the perfect accompaniment to a chilly evening with loved ones

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Carike de Jager

YouTube

Disappear down the YouTube rabbit hole. Users of the video-sharing platform upload more than 400 hours of content every minute, so there is little chance of running out of options. You can pretty much watch anything on YouTube, as long as it abides by their stringent copyright laws, but here are a few choices to keep you hip, informed, and up with the cool kids.

In the vlogging world, David Dobrik is the name to know. This 23-year-old Slovak-American YouTuber boasts a following of 15-million subscribers and a

GET IN THE

net worth of $7-million. Dobrik creates regular four-minute-21-second videos focusing on his crazy life and the antics he gets up to with his fellow YouTubers, The Vlog Squad. After watching one video, you will wonder what all the fuss is about; five hours later and 70 autoplays in, you’ll still be wondering but somehow won’t be able to stop yourself from watching.

NPR Tiny Desk Concerts is a video series hosted by American National Public Radio, and is exactly what the name implies; musicians performing a concert at a small desk. It’s a great place to see

OW WNN TTIIM MEE DDO

up-and-comers, as well as some big names, perform and talk about their music. Taylor Swift loves it so much she calls it one of her “favourite corners of the internet”, and, as we know, if TayTay says it, it must be true.

Trying to explain to someone why YouTube reaction videos are so watchable is near impossible. You just have to glimpse them to understand.

Essentially, they are short videos of someone reacting to something like a film trailer, TV show, music video, prank, or craze. We told you this one sounds like

a stretch. For some reason though, it’s addictive. Our choice: Steven in Stereo, a die-hard music fan who reacts to music videos, live performances, and albums of musicians from an array of genres.

For safe voyages of discovery, The Luxury Travel Expert posts regular vlogs of his own travel experiences including reviews, advice and travel lists.

The video tours of Business and First-Class cabins on various airlines are definitely worth watching before you plan and book your next adventure (when it’s safe to travel again, of course).

We’re all going to be spending a fair bit of time at home over the next few months.

Our team of professional couch potatoes offers their suggestions for entertainment to anticipate and smart ways to pass the time

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Podcasts

If you aren’t already on the podcast train, you best hop on board. How else will you be able to start conversations with “I was listening to a podcast the other day…” and then go into a detailed description to bore your friends and acquaintances?

This downloadable digital audio file format has been around a while but it was the 2014 investigative journalism series Serial that got a lot of people hooked.

Here are a few of our top listening suggestions of the moment: Desert Island Discs is a BBC Radio 4 programme that started way back in 1942.

In each episode, a well-known personality picks eight songs, a book, and luxury item that they would take with them if they found themselves cast away to a desert island. The music choices are as diverse as the public figures the show has featured — think scientists, writers, and Spice Girls. Get hooked and you’ll soon be playing along and choosing your own discs.

There are some great film-themed podcasts. The Rewatchables offers a roundtable of film fans and special guests who discuss the films they think are worth watching multiple times. Film choices range from Happy Gilmore to The Godfather but we suggest starting with Quentin Tarantino “fangirling” over Christopher Nolan’s epic masterpiece Dunkirk.

99% Invisible is one of the most popular podcasts on iTunes. Presented by velvet-voiced Roman Mars, the show focuses on all forms of design, architecture, and city planning. This podcast will change the way you look at the world around you.

Start with episode 277, which focuses on the once-notorious Ponte City building in the Johannesburg inner city.

Crime is a hugely popular genre in the podcasting world. Root of Evil: The True Story of the Hodel Family and the Black Dahlia investigates the infamous 1947 Black Dahlia murder.

This is a companion podcast to a limited TV series I Am the Night, created by Wonder Woman director Patty Jenkins, which proposes that the killer was Dr George Hodel. What really flips this investigation on its head is that it is driven by Hodel’s own son and kin who believe that their patriarch was involved. This is a family airing decades of dirty laundry.

Jo Buitendach

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Films and series

No matter how much doom and gloom there might be in the world, a new Wes Anderson movie is always — always — going to make you feel better. And his latest, The French Dispatch, looks like an absolutely gorgeous addition to Anderson’s oeuvre plus — unlike his last outing, Isle of Dogs — it isn’t animated, so you also get to play spot-the-legendary-actors in this one.

From Owen Wilson to Tilda Swinton, the gang of Anderson regulars is all here.

The film follows the production of the final issue of a print news and culture magazine called The French Dispatch (very obviously inspired by the legendary New Yorker magazine) as the publication reprints and revisits some of its most famous stories. Three of those pieces play out during the film as stories within the wider story, and it’s these “snapshots” that some of the film’s most charming cameo moments seem likely to come from.

Look out for Timothée Chalamet playing a student activist, and Benicio del Toro as a famous artist who happens to be in jail.

For many of his fans, brilliant visual styling is the chief source of his films’ charm — but there’s much more to a Wes Anderson film than how it looks.

This one will likely be an elegiac tribute to the glory days of print publications, and we can probably expect a good few musings on the nature of art, writing, and rebellion too.

The US release date (pandemic permitting) for The French Dispatch is 24 July 2020; releases in other countries (including our own) are set to follow in August and September.

Robyn Alexander

This month, the latest season of US series What We Do in the Shadows is out. If you’ve never seen this little gem, you’re missing out.

But let me take a step back to the beginning first. In 2014, a Kiwi movie of the same name was released. It was directed by and starred the now-extremelypopular Taika Waititi (Jojo Rabbit, Thor Ragnarok) and his mate Jemaine Clement.

It follows a bunch of vampires (made undead over various centuries) living in modern-day, very humdrum Wellington, New Zealand. The bizarre, deadpan mockumentary was a sleeper hit that now has a huge following. Last year, the pair reunited with a new team to make a US series based on the original film. Stateside, a different bunch of vampires live in Staten Island, New York. Laszlo, Nadja, Nandor the Relentless, and their housemate Colin Robertson — he’s an energy vampire (we all know a couple of those, don’t we?)

— muddle through modern life and the result is hysterical. Binge watch the movie, the first season (on Showmax) and then the latest episodes in one go. It’s spooktacularly good fun. Sarah Buitendach

Books, podcasts, films, and series.

All you need to keep you going behind locked doors

Books

Apeirogon, by the great Colum McCann, is an extraordinary novel, both in plot and execution. Placing you somewhere between watching a documentary and reading a novel, it’s based on the true story of two grieving fathers, from opposite sides of the Israeli-Palestine conflict, trying to find their way to a common humanity. It’s the kind of book that will keep you busy for days and will send you off reading and researching in many different directions.

Perfect if you’re self-isolating.

Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid is a quick and satisfying read that looks at race and white privilege in America, with insights South Africans will appreciate. This is NOT worthy, preachy stuff — it’s a fabulous, clever, and funny read that brings real issues right home.

The Book of Gifts by Craig Higginson.

This is local author Higginson’s fifth novel, and I would say his most nuanced. It’s a gripping story of a teenage boy and his complex family, set between Johannesburg, Umhlanga, and Mauritius. How nice it is to fantasise about champagne around the pool at the Oyster Box through Higginson’s descriptions. Oh, and Anna’s (yes, the Anna of Love Books) famous carrot cake makes an appearance in the novel too.

Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell is one of the best things you’ll read this year. The devastating story of Shakespeare’s family, and in particular his son, Hamnet, set during the time of… yes, the bubonic plague. Nothing feels more appropriate.

Kate Rogan

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Michele Magwood Shannon Daniels

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HIGH GLOSS The heyday of magazines may have passed, but that doesn’t make the scandal, the salaciousness, and the stories that surrounded them any less beguiling

THE GLOSSY YEARS

Nicholas Coleridge

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ICHOLAS COLERIDGE once worked out that he had eaten at the storied London restaurant Le Caprice 560 times, but had never read to the bottom of the menu. He eats the same thing almost every time — a duck and watercress salad — because he believes the point of lunch is not the food, it is “to buy 70 uninterrupted minutes of my guest’s time”.

Coleridge, the urbane nabob of the Condé Nast empire, has published his deliriously entertaining life story The Glossy Years: Magazines, Museums and Selective Memoirs (Fig Tree) which chronicles the three golden decades of the industry, from the ’80s until the advent of the digital age.

He led a starred life in a starry world, and though it is hardly a rags-to-riches story — he was Eton- and Cambridge-educated — he was a good journalist first and a Savile Row suit second. He’s also a best-selling novelist in his own right, and chairman of the V&A Museum.

The rarefied, empyreal world of magazines often bordered on the mad. With a keen eye for anecdote, Coleridge writes, for instance, about Isabella Blow, the fashion director of Tatler and “a key voyager in the darker fens of fashion. She frequently wore a hat with a giant pink lobster on top, a corset or medieval armour”. One night she arrived at a dinner wearing a full black burqa, with a veiled slit for her eyes, and a pair of stag’s antlers on top. “I asked, ‘Issie, are you going to be able to eat anything under that?’ ‘I’m not here to eat’ came her muffled reply.” Tragically, Blow eventually died by suicide.

Coleridge had himself started as a junior

“So far, nobody has invented a digital way to replicate the gloss and sheen of the printed glossy or the way that ink shimmers on the page, like moonlight on the surface of a lake”

journalist on Tatler under the valkyrie Tina Brown, who would go on to reinvent Vanity Fair. One of his jobs was to secretly flog review copies of art books to a secondhand dealer. The cash would be slipped to Julian Barnes, then the magazine’s restaurant critic, to pay for his meals.

Coleridge’s first taste of royalty came when he disguised himself and snuck into the “chauffeur’s party” in Windsor Castle, held for the drivers of the guests attending Prince Andrew’s 21st birthday party. He picked up enough gossip from them to fill a column for his newspaper.

Cut to a day in 1991, when Princess Diana was dropping in to a supposedly clandestine lunch at Vogue House. She was, he says, unexpectedly tactile, touching his arm, covering his hand with hers, and speaking with a disarming frankness. She told him that William had called her from Eton. “‘Poor boy, he’s only fourteen. Some of the other boys were teasing him, saying my tits are too small.’ She held on to my elbow. ‘Nicholas, I want to know your real view. Are my breasts too small?’” He blushingly reassured her and then walked her to her car, where a handful of paparazzi leapt out. He discovered that she had tipped them off herself to her whereabouts.

Now, he and Prince Charles work closely on such projects as the Campaign for Wool, which encourages designers and buyers to choose wool. The individual butter pats at dinner at Clarence House, Coleridge reports, are embossed with the prince’s feathers.

In Vogue House, where magazines occupied their own floors, the drama was endless. A Tatler editor running to throw herself out of the window when he fired her; a staffer’s dachshund called Alan Plumptre crushed to death in the famous revolving door; the GQ editor who died, high on drugs and drink, in the bed of a prostitute.

John Travolta pilots himself to a GQ awards ceremony, but his “toupée assistant” flies separately with the star’s wigs as hand luggage. Philip Green and Mohamed al Fayed are repellingly awful.

Now retired from Condé Nast, Coleridge glosses over contentious issues, such as the industry’s lack of racial and social diversity and the size of models. And one expects more analysis of the freefall of magazines other than a comment about former readers staring “Moonie-like” at smartphones.

He’s convinced that stronger magazines will survive in print for many years to come.

“So far, nobody has invented a digital way to replicate the gloss and sheen of the printed glossy,” he writes, “or the way that ink shimmers on the page, like moonlight on the surface of a lake.”

Still, he admits that the glossy years of magazines are gone. My, that was fun while it lasted.

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Katharynn Kesselaar

quantities of a limited-edition product and building hype around it.

The nature of collaborations has also evolved. Where once it was enough to place another’s logo on a product, brands are now actively involved in creating once-off pieces that merge both the creative forces and signature aesthetics of the labels involved.

And these products are seriously coveted.

Shoppers queue for hours on release days to get a tiny piece of fashion history.

From collaborations with artists, celebrities and brands, the past decade has seen a tremendous amount of success from groundbreaking projects — but that’s not to say that all fusions have been good. Here are our picks, including those appearances by our very own homegrown exports like Mami Wata, AthiPatra Ruga, and Nicholas Hlobo.

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IMITED-EDITION product drops from exclusive brand collaborations have soared in the past few years, with fashion labels’ relevance hanging in the balance — if you aren’t collaborating, what are you even doing?

Where there was once competition and opposing brands were sworn enemies, the new decade has meant welcoming the other team with open arms, and getting by with a little help from “friends” has become an incredibly viable marketing strategy.

Brand collaborations, however, are not new. The trend started gaining traction back in the noughties. Probably most memorable was that of Karl Lagerfeld and H&M in 2004 (special mention: H&M joined forces with local brand Mantsho in 2019). Now, almost every brand has hopped on the bandwagon, with the most successful of them merging luxury fashion with street- and sportswear.

According to a report entitled “What It Takes to Power Luxury Brand Collaborations” by fashion-trade journal WWD, the rapid upward trajectory of collab culture is a result of many things: a way for brands to create hype and attract new markets and a way to satisfy the increasing demand for new, unique goods. Vogue Business explains that the unprecedented success of the streetwear and athleisure movement has also played a pivotal role by encouraging brands to experiment with the “drop model” — releasing small

Adidas, Prada, Gucci, they’re all mixing things up.

Here are Wanted’s favourite fashion mashups from the past year

DIOR LADY ART X ATHI-PATRA RUGA Pictured above, launched January 2020, available in selected Dior boutiques.

REEBOK X VICTORIA BECKHAM Launched January 2019, (main image) available online at Reebok.com and victoriabeckham. com.

GUCCI X DISNEY Launched January 2020, available online at Gucci.com and in stores.

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MONCLER GENIUS X MAMI WATA Launched March 2020, available online at moncler. com, in 200 Moncler stores globally, as well as in some of the world’s top department stores and boutiques.

PRADA X ADIDAS Launched December 2019, available online at adidas.com and prada.com and at selected Prada stores worldwide.

LOUIS VUITTON ARTYCAPUCINES X NICHOLAS HLOBO Launched June 2019, each model of the art-inspired Artycapucines Collection is limited to 300 pieces, available in stores and online. Pictured from left are Hlobo’s version and those by Jonas Wood and Alex Israel.

ADIDAS X BEYONCÉ’S IVY PARK Launched January 2020, available online at adidas.co.za (currently sold out).

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BBEEAAUUTTYY

Zanele Kumalo

Zanele Kumalo discovers how cannabis has grown into the new luxurywellness market in South Africa

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T WAS INEVITABLE that, after the 2018 Constitutional Court ruling that decriminalised the private use of cannabis in South Africa, hemp- and marijuana-extract products would find their way into our boutiques, department stores, and spas. And shift stereotypes about who welcomes weed into their lives. Already, Business Day reports that Africa’s legal cannabis industry could generate more than $7.1-billion a year by 2023 if more of the continent’s major markets follow the trend of legalisation.

Joanne Hope is the founder of female-focused local brand KushKush, who, as part of wanting to “cultivate a refreshing and inspired representation of cannabis culture”, curates and sells online, “beautiful but functional premium cannabis lifestyle products and nifty, specialised tools”.

Many, mostly-imported, items up for sale, like a small, round solid-brass grinder (R1 840), and crystal ashtray with sustainable black-walnut wood detail (R1 800), could live happily just as objets d’art on your coffee table. Then there are beauty and wellness products such as CBD intimacy and face oils (both R825) by Kiskanu that would delight any beauty influencer’s bathroom cabinet. Kiskanu is a small, family-owned-and-operated business based in California, led by a woman.

KushKush is certainly marketed to le beau monde but also

serves as “a safe space for like-minded women (who have an open, curious and progressive approach towards cannabis) to connect, network, learn, share and feel at home”. Hope says the inspiration for the business came about shortly after the ruling and she found herself “standing in a seedy ‘head’ shop in Cape Town”, waiting for her boyfriend to buy a vaporiser. She says, “I was shocked at how poor the retail experience was: the shop was dingy, and crammed with disorganised piles of product. It put me off shopping there and I felt too intimidated to ask the many questions I had.”

First she spoke to girlfriends who were also interested in art, fashion, decor, design and weed, and found they felt the same way she did about the options available. Then she researched other markets like Canada (medical cannabis was legalised in 2001 and for recreational use in 2018) that were further along in terms of cannabis normalisation. She was inspired by what she found: “a vibrant community of strong, positive, entrepreneurial women from all walks of life who are doing great work in building an exciting but sustainable new industry”.

Back in the US, one of those women, actress Gwyneth Paltrow, had trotted the green plant and its benefits into the high-end lifestyle space at the 2018 Los Angeles conference of her wellness brand, Goop, along with other messages and products around alternative healing. This, 10 years after she first started Gooping the world in 2008. Currently touting an emeraldgreen facial elixir made from hempseed oil by skincare brand Votary (costing over R1 800), Goop takes the benefits of cannabis very seriously.

Beyond skincare and infused cocktails, Paltrow admitted to talk-show host

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cream on your skin or dropping oil into your mouth, the CBD is from the hemp plant. Both THC and CBD have separate and different therapeutic qualities but, because CBD is non-psychoactive, that’s what companies will infuse beauty and health products with.

There hasn’t been enough scientific research on the effects of CBD on the skin, but it seems to help with chronic pain, stress, and reduction of inflammation.

A happy benefit is the treatment of acne, eczema, psoriasis, and rosacea.

Dr Jennifer Vickers, a dermatologist based in Texas, tells The Zoe Report that “some studies have shown that topical CBD can also help reduce oil production in addition to reducing inflammation in the skin, which are two main players in the generation of acne”, and “that the anti-inflammatory effects can help calm skin and reduce redness, too”.

Howard Stern that she does indulge in the high life occasionally, and even popped CBD-infused bath bombs into goodie bags at Goop’s LA meetup.

It’s important to make a quick note of the weed family here. Hemp contains a much higher percentage of CBD (cannabidiol, a type of cannabinoid), only trace amounts of THC (tetrahydrocannabinol) and won’t get you high, whereas marijuana has plenty of THC and much less CBD. Cannabinoids are chemical compounds that make up the cannabis plant. According to another premium SA wellness brand called Goodleaf, founded by Jenni Katz and Warren Schewitz, “there are over 113 unique cannabinoids, CBD and THC being the most well-known and studied”.

A 2018 health report from Harvard Medical School says, “CBD is commonly used to address anxiety, and for patients who suffer through the misery of insomnia, studies suggest that CBD may help with both falling asleep and staying asleep.”

Chances are that if you’re applying a

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With beautifully designed stores in Cape Town, Joburg, and Pretoria, Goodleaf’s top-selling topical product is a CBD glow serum (R395), which also contains African botanicals like mongongo oil (rich in Vitamin E) and baobab oil (high in omega fatty acids) to replenish moisture and target signs of fatigue. But its bestseller is its oral-use CBD drops for R1 595, which contains 1 500mg of organic, broad-spectrum hemp extract plus MCT oil (extracted from coconut oil). It also makes a yummy CBD-infused sparkling water flavoured with mango and ginger (R225 for a 12-pack).

Of course, the luxury market — and the beauty market in particular — always needs a new story to tell to entice cosmetic junkies. It’s difficult to ignore the buzzy ingredient that was illegal not too long ago. Mainstream brands are already on the bandwagon.

Kiehl’s sells a cannabis sativa seed oil herbal concentrate, said to fight acne and reduce redness, for around R800, while overseas brand Sephora launched Saint Jane, a botanical-rich, luxury CBD beauty brand, about a year ago. Its bestselling product is the Luxury CBD beauty serum, (R2 100), which promises to detoxify pores and boost the skin’s natural glow, while hemp molecules work to “visibly calm redness, clear blemishes, and deeply restore” skin.

We wonder when Dior and Chanel might follow suit.

Already, Joburg’s Life Day Spa and Renaissance Day Spa offer CBD cannabis-oil massage rituals for R790 and R850 respectively.

A report by Big Market Research says that the global CBD skincare market is expected to reach close to R60-billion in six years from now, growing at a healthy rate of 24.8% between 2019 and 2026.

Here at home, questions are being raised about the industry’s sustainability, using local crops and supporting growers whose income has long been from growing hemp and marijuana — in particular, generations of women in the Eastern Cape who have been small-scale farmers for over 200 years.

A Forbes piece on Saint Jane founder and CEO Casey Georgeson says “she personally sources the company’s hemp from sustainable, female-owned farms”.

Meanwhile, Hope says she hopes to play a role in normalisation by “offering a judgement-free space for the higher-end female cannabis consumer”.

This kind of entrepreneurial trailblazing is a big departure from anything to do with the plant being seen as undesirable, criminal, and seedy.

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DDEESSIIG GNN

04 / 2020

Graham Wood

Hot product:

designed by interior-design studio ARRCC, spawned a few bespoke furniture designs

by Okha, ARRC’s affiliated furniture-design studio.

The “audacious new afrominimalism” of the lodge found expression in pieces like the Laguna coffee table, which Okha has now launched as a stand-alone piece. Its sensual, organic form was

THE LAGUNA COFFEE TABLE BY OKHA While we’re going into raptures about the crossovers between design and architecture — here’s another one. Cheetah Plains, a new lodge in the Sabi Sands Game Reserve, launched last year and

inspired by a pool or lagoon, its polished black metal top mimicking the surface of a still body of water. “The shape was motivated by landscape mass as well as the project’s internal spatial layout and was therefore informed both by practicality and nature’s poetry,” says Okha’s creative director Adam Court. okha.com

Laguna coffee table

Here’s Here’s an an update update on on the the South South African African design design landscape, landscape, including including new new products products and and big big thinkers thinkers

IN THE LOOP Names to know:

NISHA AND JUSTUS VAN DER HOVEN

One exciting discovery to come out of InCommon, the exhibition that kicked off the Wits School of Architecture and Planning’s academic year, has been the talents of creative couple Justus and Nisha van der Hoven. Both architects, they also dabble in art, film, and fashion design.

Nisha is the curator for FuturePart, a kind of embedded research unit set up by architecture firm Boogertman

+ Partners (B+P), and is the design mind behind the interiors of co-working space Workshop17. Justus is a director at ARC Architects, a day job that combines architecture and property development with private interest in film and a passion for making drawings of futuristic or fantasy African cityscapes.

As curator of the exhibition, Nisha drew on the talents of Justus and his furniture-designer brother Marcus of Takk Studio.

The exhibition itself dealt with

the rather academic topic of the “Possibilities of Collective Space” and was all about the future of African cities, especially the potential of inner-city public space, finding common ground, and exploring what makes cities safe, liveable, and vibrant.

It presented research from the unit, including inner-city street photography, some of B+P’s projects, film, and design concepts.

The magic was how vital and accessible they made it. They transformed the foyer of the John Moffat building at Wits,

designing bespoke cabinets (powder-coated with leftovers from various Workshop17 projects). Their clever rotating and tilting panels displayed both posters and models, and turned the building into a kind of shopfront of ideas.

Apart from the bigger picture — “trying to change spatial narratives of fear… to commonality and participation”, said Nisha — the creativity and design talent of this dynamic duo is exciting to watch. futurepart.com

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The essentials:

IMAGES SUPPLIED

NEW FROM DOKTER AND MISSES Katy Taplin and Adriaan Hugo, the duo behind Dokter and Misses (DAM), have been quite preoccupied with large-scale projects lately — bringing their talents to projects such as 1 000-room university residences — but they’ve still made time to launch some designs that can fit on a tabletop. The recently launched Hourglass is a collaboration with Ngwenya Glass, the eSwatinibased glass-blowing factory and studio, which manufactures using only recycled glass.

They’re known as much for their own work as for their openness to collaborations with designers such as DAM, with whom they devised a series of lights called Moonjelly a few years ago.

Taplin likes the “balance between handmade and refined” that comes from working with Ngwenya Glass.

The new range of glassware plays with two trends: one towards wine and champagne glasses losing their stems, and the other with people’s newfound appetite for options.

So they designed a beautifully balanced and proportioned series of cups — one pair for red and white wine and another of champagne flutes and coupes — and fused them at the base.

The result is a kind of upsidedown vessel you can flip. “So you could choose which way you use it,” says Taplin. But they’re just as good for cocktails or water.

The name, Hourglass, is a play on the idea of spending time together, says Taplin, as much

as it is on the shape. And they look amazing when they fill a table en-masse.

Another recent launch from DAM is their range of Brick Lights, an experiment with the very base unit of architecture: the brick. They source unfired “green” bricks and etch geometric patterns into them using the “counterintuitive” technology of CNC cutting to shape them. (Counterintuitive, Taplin explains, because

working with ceramics is usually messy, hands-on, tactile work — and they’ve decided to play with the possibilities of industrial processes.) Then they fire the bricks themselves and wire them for lighting.

So the universal building block is repurposed and made sculptural, working beautifully as individual units, but with lots of potential for modular combinations.

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Brick Lights

dokterandmisses.com

Trend watch:

WALLPAPER ART Hourglasses

One of the biggest interior trends of the season is another crossover — this time between the realms of pattern design and art. Print designers such as Cape Town’s Lemon have long been working with other designers to create original offerings. “What sets us apart in the print-product landscape is that all our designs are custom created by us,” says Kevin Frankental, co-founder and director of Lemon. While they’re not limited editions or originals, they now come with the option of being mounted and framed. Lemon is also working on collaborations with local artists on special commissioned collections. madebylemon.co.za

Lemon wallpaper art

InCommon exhibition at Wits University

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MOTORING

04 / 2020

Denis Droppa

F

MARKS THE SPOT

P300 RWD R-Dynamic Coupé

Jaguar’s F-Type cruises into 2020 with improved driving dynamics and a major facelift

2020 / 04

IMAGES SUPPLIED

T

HE ROAD WINDING through the mountain pass in northern Portugal had more twists than an Agatha Christie novel.

Jaguar had improved the driving character of its newly reworked F-Type and wanted us to know it. So for the car’s international media launch it chose a road regarded as one of the best pieces of tarmac in Europe — with fast, flowing bends, narrow mountain passes, and village cobbles, the N222 near Porto has a bit of everything to challenge a sports car.

“Some sections of the route are highly technical: we hope this will give you the opportunity to really experience the new F-Type’s agility and responsiveness,” read Jaguar’s pre-drive brief.

Indeed. When the British carmaker launched the F-Type in 2013 as the spiritual heir to the iconic E-Type of the 1960s, it proposed to make it a true driver’s car. The British marque had previously built fast but athletically muted grand tourers for gentlemen of a certain age, but nothing that would rock the Richter scale of true enthusiast drivers.

The F-Type changed that, bringing Jaguar into the golden circle of sharp-handling sports cars. The car had slick roadholding to go with powerful engines, and the most direct steering yet to be found in a Jaguar, even though the turning action felt a little too light for drivers seeking the ultimate in corner-carving feedback.

That’s been fixed with the F-Type’s 2020 reboot. The electric power steering’s been given more heft and “feel” in both the roadster and coupé versions, along with chassis and suspension upgrades that further evolve these two-seaters into better driver’s cars.

The one that felt most playful on those Portuguese bends was the P575 F-Type R, the intercontinental missile of the bunch with a sonorous 5.0l supercharged V8 mounted in the newly redesigned nose.

Good for 0-100km/h in 3.7 seconds, it was all chest-thumping bravado as it thundered along with a noise that seemed almost loud enough to shake olives off trees in the surrounding orchards.

The car has a Quiet Start function if you don’t wish to incur the wrath of your neighbours, though.

All-wheel drive keeps the car’s heady 423kW power in check, sticking to the tar even with very indelicate throttle inputs by the driver.

I also drove the entry-level P300 model with its 221kW 2.0l turbocharged, fourcylinder engine and rear-wheel drive. ’Tis somewhat more modest than the

V8 version in terms of horizon-chasing performance, but as the lightest car in the lineup, it’s endearingly agile and a genuine treat to drive on winding roads.

It blurts a surprisingly hoarse sound for a four-cylinder, and the 5.7 second 0-100km/h sprint isn’t exactly pedestrian.

This Jag is also available as a 280kW 3.0l V6 supercharged P380 version, in a choice of rear-wheel-drive and all-wheel drive — though these weren’t available to drive at the launch.

The F-Type’s curve-hugging nature is married to an impressively bump-soaking ride for a sports car. The active suspension is calibrated for low-speed comfort and high-speed control, and my two-day, 600km road trip passed by without any middle-aged body aches.

In a styling revamp that involves more than a dash of Botox, the 2020 F-Type adopts slim horizontal headlamps to replace the vertical ones, to exaggerate the car’s visual width and give it a more pressed-down look.

The daytime running lights have a signature J shape, and at the rear the slim tail-lights are redesigned with an LED chicane signature.

Interior updates see the analogue instruments replaced by a customisable digital panel with three display themes, and a modernised touch-screen infotainment system. The cabin’s look and feel has been updated with Windsor Leather and satin-finish Noble Chrome.

“The F-Type’s curve-hugging nature is married to an impressively bump-soaking ride for a sports car” GET IT The new Jaguar F-Type will be launched in SA in May. The following models will be available:

P300 RWD R-Dynamic Convertible R1 180 800

P300 RWD R-Dynamic Coupé R1 182 700

P380 RWD R-Dynamic Coupé R1 440 500

P380 AWD R-Dynamic Coupé First Edition R1 579 200

P380 RWD R-Dynamic Convertible R1 438 700

P380 AWD R-Dynamic Convertible First Edition R1 573 000

P575 AWD R Convertible R2 304 600

P575 AWD R Coupé R2 306 200

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NAVIGATOR 04 / 2020

D i sp a t ch e s o n a l l t h i n g s c ool , c ove t a bl e , a n d c onve r s a t i o n - wo r t hy

F R O M S A LT F L A T S T O W E ’ V E G O T T H E P E R F E C T F O R Y O U

T H E A L P S , E S C A P E P O D S

text

Julia Freemantle

KACHI

LODGE

2020 / 04

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TRAVEL:

How about engaging in selfisolation the opulent way?

We scoured the globe to find the very best, most indulgent escapes that literally give new meaning to the concept of living in a bubble. Take your pick from the igloos, the geodesic domes, and the round rooms with views. Could you think of anything better than escaping the humans and your worries and just kicking back with uninterrupted views in your own pocket of bliss?

It’s not exactly a hermetically-sealed holiday, but it’s as close as you can get.

Wanted editor Sarah Buitendach picks her fave spheres of affluence

J OY IN

TANZANIA:

Asilia Highlands Lodge

TH E If you miss these, what are you doing with your life even?

BU B B L E ASILIA

HIGHLANDS

LODGE

BOLIVIA:

A little closer to home, take a walk on the wild side by setting up camp in one of Asilia’s eight luxury perspex and canvas dome tents.

They’re dotted about and peeking above the lush forests that look onto the Olmoti Volcano, which is just near the world-famous Ngorongoro Crater. We’re mad about the fact that you’ll have views to the Serengeti, and of incandescent African night skies from your room. There are, of course, impressive safari drives on offer — plus bird safaris and crater walks and hikes. asiliaafrica.com

Kachi Lodge Retreat to the Uyuni Salt Flats in central Bolivia for lunar-like luxe.

The series of six geodesic dome suites is situated in the middle of this breathtakingly surreal salt pan — the largest of its kind in the world. Chill under the llamaand alpaca-wool blanket in your designer pod or mingle with the flamingoes who call the pan home. Drop by a nearby volcano, check out archaeological sites, or even visit nearby quinoa fields.

Then eat the protein-rich grain for dinner, along with other local specialities prepped by the team who run one of the country’s top restaurants, Proyecto Nativa. kachilodge.com

ASILIA

HIGHLANDS

LODGE;

MAASAI

GUIDE,

BARAK

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N AV I G A T O R

04 / 2020

FINLAND:

Lake Inari Aurora Hut Now here’s a thing: a glasswalled tent situated on the ice from which you watch the Northern Lights. We know, we’re obsessed with the idea too. Imagine lying on your bed while the pulsating, roving lights of the Aurora come and go overhead?

You can, obviously, only visit in winter and these wee glamping shelters are few, so we’d imagine you’d better book well in advance — and sharpish. nellim.fi/nangu

SWITZERLAND:

Whitepod eco-luxury hotel

Dior

Going to ground in one of the Whitepod suites dotting the mountainside at the beginning of the Alps, you’d be forgiven for thinking you’d stepped into a Bond film. And that perhaps gun-toting bad guys on skis might whizz by. Ok, you don’t want that on ANY vacay, but there’s such an undeniable 1980s espionage-chic aesthetic about this hotel setup that they’ve even decorated one of the domed hideouts 007-style. We’d rather stay in something a little comfier (the wood-panelled cosy chalet, in fact), have breakfast in bed, and look over the pine trees in summer and snowy wonderland in winter. whitepod.com

FINLAND:

Aurora Dome It’s a similar vibe to the hut on Lake Inari but we had to include this dome on Lake Jeris too because, well, look at the gorgeous Lappish-inspired interiors of this bubble. We’d suggest staying in a wooden cabin next door, and then spending a night in one of their comtemporary igloos. They’re lush and sexy but don’t have toilets, so you’ll have to make a 50m dash in your thermals to the loo. Worth it for one night of sky-gazing and snuggling in your own dome, we reckon. harriniva.fi

PA R T N E R S H I P

ESCAPE TO THE ISLAND Fly Airlink to St Helena island

IMAGE COURTESY OF ST HELENA TOURISM

L

OOKING FOR a unique adventure? Why not visit St Helena island? This remote southern Atlantic island is safe and secure, with no weather extremes, and is one of the last “undiscovered” destinations on earth.

This 122km² volcanic island, with its spectacular natural landscape, has an abundance of indigenous wildlife and vegetation, a rich history and a tranquil lifestyle.

In the past, tourists could only get to St Helena island by travelling for five days aboard a mail ship but the island is easily accessible with Airlink’s scheduled flights between Johannesburg and St Helena island on Saturdays and seasonal flights from Cape Town.

The island offers birding, fishing, diving, and heritage tours for the experiential traveller. A full island tour

is a great way to discover the entire island’s stark geology, fauna and flora, architecture, and historical attractions.

Fantastic hiking trails are a year-round drawcard — and don’t miss the 21 Post Box walks and the Festival of Running in November.

During peak season, admire the spectacular sea life, watch humpback whales, bottlenose and rough-toothed dolphins, and devil rays too. In fact, St Helena island is home to 85 species of vegetation, 10 species of fish, and the critically endangered St Helena plover.

The off-peak season continues to provide a great opportunity for guided photography tours, writing and yoga retreats, plus the chance to enjoy some of the world’s rarest coffee — possibly the best you’ll ever taste. In addition, you can visit a golf course and gin distillery that are considered to be among the most remote in the world.

Napoleon Bonaparte was not the only famous prisoner to have been sent to the island by the British government.

Our own Zulu king Dinuzulu kaCetshwayo was exiled there in 1890 for leading his army in rebellion against British rule in KwaZulu-Natal.

In addition, more than 6 000 Boer soldiers were exiled to St Helena island after the Second Boer War. Pay a visit to the prisoner-of-war camp at Deadwood Plain, the Boer cemetery at Knollcombes, and Ladder Hill Fort to learn more about the incredible events that have played out on the island.

To experience this bucket-list destination, book flights direct on flyairlink.com/ destinations/flights-to-st-helena or contact your travel agent or tour operator.

For activities and accommodation, visit sthelenatourism.com

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04 / 2020

Jono Hall

I

HAVE A FRIEND whose eyes will instantly glaze over if any explanation of the rules of a board game takes longer than a single minute.

She will also groan dramatically and immediately reach for another frozen margarita if there is even the hint of someone saying, “And then you also have to remember that you can only use the Super Meeple to block off your opponent’s Battlestation if they’ve sung Katy Perry’s I Kissed a Girl in original Elvish while trying to overthrow the Spanish government.”

Which, actually, is fair enough.

Because, honestly, that is how the rules of modern board games sound a lot of the time.

One evening though, something magical happened. I managed to keep her attention long enough to get through the rules of a wonderful French game called Dixit. It involves a deck of unique, enchantingly illustrated cards, which are used as cues into the inner worlds of your fellow players. As she actually got into the gameplay (lo and behold!), she loved it enough to want to play it again immediately, then borrow my copy of the game for months, before eventually I had to force her to buy her own at knifepoint.

Board games seem to be Marmite-ish in their ability to generate eye rolls or fanaticism in equal parts. And perhaps part of this is that we’re still either suffering from the hangover created by the terrible board games of our collective past, or the Stockholm Syndrome that convinced us that Monopoly (literally an impossible-to-finish “game” built around the callous exploitation of the wealth gap) was actually good. In contrast, the relatively new Tokaido involves players taking a scenic trip from Edo to Kyoto and seeing who can have the most pleasing experiences along the journey.

We’ve come a long way.

When I was a kid, board games — such as they existed — seemed as eternal as Carte Blanche. Trivial Pursuit, Chess, Backgammon, Monopoly, Scrabble, Pictionary and Risk had always just… existed.

And you certainly didn’t just invent new ones. Which was why seeing my first board game that wasn’t Boggle was a profoundly affecting experience. It was a two-player chess-ish Lord of the Rings-based game and it was glorious — partly just because it was new. And the idea that someone had just come up with this from their minds was amazing to me. I honestly thought there were laws against that sort of thing.

The truth is that new board games, as much as they’ve massively grown in popularity over the past decade, have also increased in their ability to divide. As the inventiveness and complexity have exploded, so too have the derision and the scepticism. There are too many rules, it’s too complicated, it’s too inscrutable (“Why should I care if the Mechazoid wants to crush Manhattan?” I dunno, Janice, just go with it). But then also you see out the corner of your eye on Instagram that your nice accountant friends posted “Had an amazing time playing Catan” and you’re like, “Who are you, Grant?” But it’s because we’re creating games that are finding ingenious new ways to invite us to have fun again. A way to dismiss the passage of time and banish the anxieties of the news and Twitter feeds and Instagram and press conferences.

Forget Colonel Mustard in the ballroom with the candlestick, savant “gamer” Jono Hall schools us on the new world of tabletop strategy, worldbuilding, and fun

Most new games are craftily tactile experiences: there are pieces and figurines and cards that are gloriously satisfying to touch and handle.

The colours and configurations are wonderful to arrange and set out, and the very best games have a dynamic that creates the space for conversations and interaction “off the board”. Just enough looseness at the edges of the gameplay for conversations to continuously swirl and eddy around the fringes of Tshepiso’s concerted effort to get the emperor’s panda to eat a specific combination of coloured bamboo. Just the right required balance of concentration and disregard. For some time now, we’ve been in a golden age of rediscovering the joy of looking across a table at the anguish or triumph in the eyes of our friends and family as we move colourful plastic rabbits, or mechs, or mutants, around clever and inventive playing surfaces. And in terms of the unprecedented way in which the world is changing around us, that kind of simple joy could be seen as somewhat of a silver lining to being holed up in quarantine and self-isolation with loved ones and family.

I have not seen my board games group in weeks now. Sure, we still WhatsApp each other. Reach out to find how we’re all doing, tell each other to “stay safe” and that we’ll “see each other on the other side”. But I miss them.

N AV N AV I G IAGTA OTRO R

1. Catan The OG of the “modern” boardgames landscape, and an eternal crowd-pleaser.

A ridiculously simple mechanic somehow manages to produce original and unique gameplay every single time. Also listening to your friends and family ask, “Has anyone got wood?” will never, ever get old.

2. King of Tokyo A brilliant monster game, with just enough strategy and luck to make the outcome uncertain every time.

Games are quick and sharp.

3. Game of Thrones: the board game An absolute brute of a game.

Fiendishly brilliant at capturing the paranoia, strategy, uncertainty, and strategic violence of the source material. Set aside a whole day for this one. Also, a cooling-off period in which to mend your broken relationships.

I F Y O U ’ R E L O O K I N G F O R A P L A C E T O S TA R T, H E R E ’ S A G U I D E T O S O M E O F T H E B E S T :

4. Bananagrams An evergreen game. Furious fun, simple to explain, and doesn’t need much more than a flat surface to play.

An inexpensive favourite.

5. Mysterium Conduct a seance.

Find the murderer.

It’s gothic Cluedo with a deep vein of intrigue and atmosphere. Also, someone has to literally pretend to be a ghost, which is inevitably brilliant.

6. Carcassonne A delightfully simple and elegant strategy game that involves building medieval cities to exploit for your own gain.

7. Dixit One of the most wildly original and dazzling games of the past decade. It’s visual and perplexing and a guaranteed antidote to any claim of “I don’t like board games”.

8. Takenoko A gentle and engaging game where you build gardens and try to stop a panda from eating your bamboo.

Sounds crazy. But somehow isn’t.

9. Smash Up A fast, multiplayer fantasy card game where twists and turns happen with equal squeals of anguish and delight.

Strategic, inventive, and clever.

10. Hive A straightforward two-player game with the calming rhythms of dominoes or mahjong.

11. Tak It’s as if chess and draughts had a precocious teenager who wrote beguiling haikus and yearned for a simpler time. It’s strategic, thoughtful, and unerringly sexy in its simplicity.

12. Pandemic Band together to fight global destruction at the hands of a rapidly spreading disease.

I mean, what more could you ask of a game right now?

2020 / 04

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photography

Graham de Lacy

R

UMOURS of a new museum to house and present Gordon Schachat’s burgeoning art collection have been circulating for almost a decade. As such, its existence had become somewhat part of Joburg’s urban mythology.

It is always satisfying to see a myth overturned, particularly one such as this. As public intellectual Achille Mbembe noted during his address on the opening night of this new art institution: “Joburg is a big city that needs a big art institution.”

The Joburg Contemporary Art Foundation ( JCAF) is not exactly “big” — with only 450m² of exhibition space.

Well, that is if you compare it to its contemporaries in Cape Town — the Norval Foundation (which has nine galleries) or Zeitz Mocaa (6 000m²).

However, its director, Clive Kellner, reiterates that JCAF was not conceived as a “populist” destination and quality will always supersede quantity.

This approach has, so far, manifested in every communication

and the first event. Refreshingly, the 100 or so in the by-invitation-only audience were “handpicked” due to their iconoclastic approach to culture (according to Kellner), rather than their social or art-world status. Everyone gathered for a lecture — and not a sprawling VIP party designed for Instagram feeds.

The lecture was delivered by someone representing a dialogue with the “global south” (as per the term on the invitation) — Indianborn, US-based academic Arjun Appadurai — that was intended to shift the focus of the opening to “ideas”, says Kellner.

“There is little good intellectual discourse between South Africa and the global south,” he says.

The former director of the Joburg Art Gallery is clearly keen to mould JCAF into a serious public institution, where the focus is on the art and research, rather than fluffing the egos of collectors, art patrons, and even artists. The Zeitz Mocaa, under former director Mark Coetzee,

came under heavy criticism for the lack of scholarship and research underpinning its exhibition and public programming.

The JCAF was introduced first through a glossy, slick, and very considered brochure that was couriered to each person invited to the lecture. In it, there is no mention that this foundation has anything to do with its overly shy patron and the co-founder of African Bank investments, Schachat, or is directed

by Kellner. As such, it steers attention away from the white, male identities driving the institution. An emphasis is placed on the methodology driving the curatorial programme, which is said to spring from an appointed research fellow, and concluding with workshops, discussions, and then the publication of a journal capturing the dialogues and insights provoked by the exhibition and collateral activities.

In his opening address, Kellner expressed concern with the way in which art is consumed.

“In the research we have done we

One of the striking features of the JCAF building is its entrance tunnel, which appears like a piece of sculpture

JOBURG’S NEW ‘SERIOUS’ ART ESTABLISHMENT

Mary Corrigall reports on the ethos of the space Pierre Swanepoel of StudioMAS has transformed an old tram shed into a sleek, contemporary art museum

found that people visiting museums only look at an artwork for 15 to 30 seconds. We want to slow down the experience of looking,” he said.

Could this view, and its overly considered communications, have anything to do with the drawn-out genesis of the institution? After the Forest Town site was purchased in 2012, building was delayed. This was due to a lengthy process in securing approvals from the city and its surrounding neighbours to transform the listed heritage building into an art-exhibition space, according to its leading architect, Pierre Swanepoel from StudioMAS. The sloped entrance bears traces of the building’s previous incarnation as a shed for fixing the trams that ran between City Hall and the Zoo Lake from the 1930s to the early 1960s. On the original tracks which were used to manoeuvre the trams into the building, Swanepoel has established probably the most striking feature of the JCAF: a steel tunnel or corridor linking the exterior to the interior of the building.

It stands out as a sculptural object, inducting viewers into this world of object appreciation.

It is a poetic coincidence that a building once used to fix vehicles no longer able to move is now focused on pausing and considering art, slowing the fast rate of image consumption.

Is this possible, and how? Well, withholding the art from the collection for the opening is one way of doing it. We did receive an invitation to the opening exhibition, rather fashionable in its title and subject: Feminist Identities. Appadurai was entertaining but it was disappointing that his lecture did not frame the opening of a private collector’s museum or set the stage for the “feminist identities” exhibition.

When this show does manifest — starring works by Nandipha Mntambo (a favourite of all new private museums in SA), Berni Searle, Shirin Neshat, Bharti Kher, and Wangechi Mutu — visitors will have to book their time online to view it, as opposed to taking it in in a room packed with other people. In other words, the JCAF will attempt to mediate not just how we perceive art, but also how we view it.

Will this work or will the public reject being dictated to? Or is this a very clever way to build hype around art?

Undoubtedly, the JCAF has set out to plot a new path in the collectordriven, private-art museumsphere.

“We need more sustainable cultural institutions. In the midst of loadshedding and emigration, we want this philanthropic new institution to be a sign of hope,” asserted Kellner.

PA R T N E R S H I P

CONCERT ON YA COUCH text

Jo Buitendach

Get front-row seats for internationally acclaimed tunes

I

t’s concert season, but because of the bans on large public gatherings across the globe, live music festivals and concerts are being cancelled or postponed as fast as you can say “mic drop”. But fear not, music lovers, you can still get your live (or later) concert fix as a number of acts are coming to our rescue and performing live with streamed shows online.

Which means no warm beer, endless queues for portable toilets, or giants blocking your view.

The World Health Organisation and Global Citizen have launched the virtual concert series “Solidarity Sessions: Together at Home” which showcase performances from top musical artists via Instagram Live. Global Citizen curator and Coldplay frontman Chris Martin started the series off with a 30-minute mini-concert. It featured him sitting at his home piano, playing requests and interacting with fans from around the globe. Martin performed some of his greatest hits as well as a little excerpt from David Bowie’s Life on Mars. The likes of John Legend and OneRepublic have also performed so far.

To find out more, follow #TogetherAtHome on Instagram.

Artists are starting to announce alternative livestreaming concerts to bring fans a little of what they are missing. British pop punk act Yungblud performed a livestreamed concert for fans on YouTube in mid-March and is sure to be the first of many to reach out to fans in this way.

If contemporary music isn’t your thing, the Met Opera in New York will also be streaming free performances from its award-winning Live in HD series. All “Nightly Met Opera Streams” will begin at 7:30pm (New York time) and will be available for 20 hours.

WOMEN IN WHISKY: Q&A

T

HE SINGLETON IS perfect for those who are unconventional and break boundaries, says Thandeka Nhleko — legal counsel, marketing, innovation and regulatory for Diageo South Africa. She also tells us about her dream holiday in Switzerland and why cocktails are her weakness

What do you most love about The Singleton? It is a well-balanced whisky that is incredibly versatile. It adds flavour to a drink when mixed and is approachable enough to be easily enjoyed on its own.

A little-known whisky fact people should know? The word whisky means “water of life”.

Your dream holiday destination? Switzerland. I would love to explore places like the town of Grindelwald nestled between various mountains; the Rhine Falls, Europe’s largest waterfall; take a scenic train ride on the Bernina Express through the Swiss Alps; and visit the Chillon Castle on the shores of Lake Geneva.

What is the first thing you do when you get home? Get into comfortable clothes and listen to a podcast while I cook dinner or lay on my bed and listen to a podcast.

Who drinks The Singleton? The versatility of Singleton means it can be enjoyed by anyone, particularly those who are inclined to break boundaries and embrace non-conventional thinking.

How do you enjoy The Singleton served? In a cocktail, which allows to me satisfy my sugar cravings.

What is the biggest emerging market for whisky? I would say women, which is fitting as we are in an era where women are continuously breaking the mould and self-defining their identity and values.

In what way is The Singleton innovative? The Singleton is a single malt like no other. It has the character and flavour profile to appeal to the most discerning whisky drinker while its smooth and unpretentious branding makes it the perfect companion to those exploring the category.

A top tip for women in business? Don’t work to become indispensable but work to have your absence felt.

The most important lesson your parents taught you? Be willing to go the extra mile. Don’t be complacent, there is always room for growth.

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Helen Clemson

M

Y HUSBAND HAS DISAPPEARED down the driveway. Rather than standing next to the herb garden and enjoying the good view (fields melding into vineyards), he’s chosen to lean awkwardly against the refuse bin. Peculiar. He’s so fussy about pungent smells. Except it seems a cheese maize chip — and a whole packet — gives off a very distinctive odour. Large handfuls are now being shovelled into his awaiting, grateful mouth. I sigh; I’d bought the packet for our four-year-old as a treat to make her do my bidding. But in truth I’m just plain jealous. I haven’t eaten for days — or what has felt like days. It’s actually only been two. I’ve had water, black coffee, herbal tea, diluted green juice — but not so much as a sodding crumb of food.

My book club instigated this madness and I, hating to be excluded lest I didn’t collectively shed and remained just a little plump, eagerly sent all the “totally psyched for this” emojis I could find to the “Liquid Fast” WhatsApp group. I’m always a joiner, even if the task ahead seems like an insurmountable one. So is my husband. I don’t know if it was his competitive nature — or in support of me — but he signed up too. And for three days, with a prep day to get our bodies primed for the shock, we decided to eat nothing in an effort to lose weight (I do feel this was the underlying goal for most of the participants) and reap the health payoffs, such as anti-inflammatory benefits, a boost to the immune system, recycling of elements of cells that have been damaged, as well as improved memory and energy.

For our prep day, Plus One and I dined on a smorgasbord (it didn’t feel like it at the time, but it was a luxury to have a crudité platter) of raw veggies and fruit.

We watered all this down with the liquids that remained our constant companions for the next three days: black coffee in the morning and during the day, lots of water, and homemade herbal tea (fresh mint, ginger, lemon, cumin, cinnamon and so on). I learned a great tip here: add a pinch of sea salt to your homemade brew to help with low blood pressure. Or just eat salt when you feel weak — which I did all the time. Of course, my husband never did. Never. On the fast, you’re allowed diluted green vegetable juice (apple added to the mix is seen as a real indulgence).

I think this was his saving grace but he proudly announced (before

The FAST TRACK

I quietly discovered the driveway Cheas-Nak incident) that not even the tiniest morsel had passed his lips during the entire three days off food. And then the final day arrived; I had folded already. My mood was off-the-charts foul, but worse, I’d lost all concentration for work. I think if I’d done this at a health retreat or similar I’d have had more success, but when still needing to write, parent a small child, and be (at least) a semi-engaged human with the world around me, it was just all too much.

So I turned to clean eating instead (oh, how my halo

shineth bright) and Plus One, despite his claims of being on the straight and narrow, had turned to secret eating. I don’t blame him. It feels desperate to go hungry. And doing a fast as part of a group didn’t help one bit. It did nothing to strengthen my resolve; it only made me feel guilty that I had chosen to go without food. Especially in a nation like ours. Anytime I want I can choose between a kale-and-quinoa salad or a large burger and fries, meaning I’m so privileged that, not only do I get to eat every day, but I also get to make considered nutritional choices. There’s no

Don’t ever ask Helen Clemson to go on a diet.

But don’t ever exclude her from a group one because then she’ll feel just left out and jealous.

A threeday liquid fast with her book club had her in a right ol’ strop; and offered valuable lessons about what it really means to go without

forced fast for me, not even a forced calorie deficit.

The two days of grocery shopping before our family went into isolation against Covid-19 cemented this for me: those who could were piling trollies with far more than their fair share of supplies. Those whom it was clear didn’t have the economic outlay to do so, were just getting the essentials.

Or in some cases, getting nothing at all because there was nothing left. One hopes they’ll have support if times get lean, because no one — especially when you really need to eat — should go hungry.

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Steve Steinfeld

F

OLLOWING THE official word from the president that we all had to stay at home and practise social isolation, I couldn’t wait to try out the new spot everyone seemed to be eating at, The Kitchen. An impressive rollout has seen one of these eateries pop up in almost every home across the country. Each with unique designs, layouts, and types of cuisines.

It’s a dreary Monday afternoon when I decide to visit my local Kitchen — tucked away down a passage to the left of the lounge, opening up onto the dining room. I wait in the doorway for a good 15 minutes before realising no one is going to seat me. The service patently way below average, I decide to settle myself at the counter.

This new joint is open-plan and has adopted the trendy open-kitchen design seen in many top restaurants around the country, allowing diners to view the chef in action. No sign of him yet though.

There’s not a single waiter in sight, there seems to be no menu, and I can’t help but wonder if perhaps the establishment has closed. It’s at this point that a fellow guest walks in; they seem to have been here before and know how it works. They look at me oddly when I remark on the lack of staff, menus, or welcoming bread course. They make their

HUMDRUM, HOME-STYLE Steve Steinfeld reviews The Kitchen, the eating option taking the country by storm

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way to the fridge next to the stove and open it themselves.

It seems this place operates on some sort of do-it-yourself concept — another trend of late. I follow suit and do the same, opening said fridge. I’m pleasantly surprised by what’s inside — there are definitely no signs of panic buying but it’s well stocked and I see plenty of things I can’t wait to order once the chef comes in.

Considering the evident lack of staff, I don’t even consider looking for the sommelier. I rifle through a few drawers and find a corkscrew. I was eyeing the perfect ingredients for a puttanesca pasta in the fridge (hoping it’s on the menu), so decide to choose a wine to match. I take The Valley 2018 pinot noir out of the fridge. It’s been kept chilled — just how I enjoy it — one saving grace of this place. A few minutes later and I locate the wine glasses. All this is proving to be far more effort than a dining experience has been to date.

It’s now been almost an hour and I have not been attended to once, nor does anyone seem to work here. I decide to take it upon myself to cook my lunch. Unearthing the dried spaghetti in a pantry behind me (the layout of this eatery has me baffled), I gather the olives, anchovies, capers, garlic, cherry tomatoes, and

a wedge of Parmesan from the fridge before locating the olive oil and salt in yet another cupboard. I bring the pasta to the boil, throw together the sauce and plate it up myself, amazed at how a place that demands so much from the customer has managed to amass such a large and loyal following. One can only imagine my surprise when another guest walks in and helps themselves to my meal, but I let it slide, considering I’ve made far more than one person can eat.

I finish the meal. All hope of any assistance has been lost at this point, so I take it upon myself to clean up. I make myself a single espresso from the unmanned coffee machine and take a (hopefully) complimentary biscuit out of the jar next to it — it’s the least I deserve after all the effort I’ve been through.

Overall a rather underwhelming dining experience.

Shall return begrudgingly and out of desperation.

This piece is the result of one restaurant critic’s desperation at not being able to get his weekly dose of dining out. Stay safe, stay home, look after one another, and spare a thought for the hospitality industry, which will be one of the hardest hit during this time of crisis. Please support them in any way you can.

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GIFTED

04 / 2020

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avourite perfume?

Frédéric Malle’s Dawn.

It draws inspiration from the daily rise to prayer and spiritual daybreak in the Middle East, with base notes of oakmoss, Turkish rose oil and oud. The building everyone should visit before they die?

The Alhambra in Spain. Essential tech? My Apple Watch. I just have a natural affinity to move more and prioritise exercise when I’m wearing it. Coffee or tea? Coffee — which is usually free because I’ve met my weekly Vitality Active Rewards goals, thanks to my Apple Watch. What is your all-time favourite place to eat out?

Thali in Cape Town. My picks are the sweetcorn bhaji with curryleaf aoli, tandoori cauliflower, and seafood curry. And because it would be foolish not to: garlic naan, ordered twice. In Joburg, I love Coalition. There are few things

as sacrosanct as a margherita pizza.

What inspires you? The concept of shared value. The one item of clothing you bought, instantly loved and still have in your wardrobe years later? A leather biker jacket, bought from APC on a mad dash to Charles de Gaulle. It’s buttery soft and after all this time, by some strange alchemy, smells like nostalgia and anticipation.

Listening to? A rotation of my favourite podcasts: Financial Times’ Start-Up Stories, 99% Invisible, The Creative Review, and Bon Appétit Foodcast. Your dream purchase? Every last piece in the Al Thani Collection. It’s an exceptional encyclopaedic holding of antiquities, jewels, paintings, manuscripts, and ancient works of art. The visual artist you’ve got your eye on? Peter Bellerby of Bellerby & Co Globemakers. He is reviving the fading craft of custom cartography. Favourite city in

the world? New York. I was there in 2015 on a finance fellowship at Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism. Everything they say about it is true: it’s a strange place that feels like home, it has a sound and smell like nowhere else, and no matter how many times you visit, you never have enough time to do everything. Essential beauty potions? Vintner’s Daughter active botanical serum and Joanna Vargas sheet masks.

Reading? On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong. Which book, album, and luxury item would you take to a desert island? Pachinko by Min Jin Lee, Michael Jackson’s Number Ones and a Franklin Mint Collector’s Edition Scrabble. What series have you been bingeing on recently?

Pasta Grannies on YouTube. Over 200 nonnas making every shape and style of handmade pasta you could dream of. It’s an allegory of

culinary heirloom and the comfort and solace of the elderly. What’s next on your list of must-have items? A subscription to The Atlantic, for its sublime journalism.

First thing you add to your grocery cart? Ayrshire double cream, capers, and chocolate. The trifecta with the power of elevation.

A great gift you were given recently? Pyjamas by Olivia von Halle. A place, event, person or attraction that’s recently caught your attention? The legacy of social entrepreneur Leila Janah. Her company Samasource provides AI-driven tech to Fortune 100 companies with data specialists mostly located in East Africa and India. She was passionate about alleviating poverty through the dignity of work in impoverished areas. She died aged 37 in January. The one indulgence you would never forgo? Time alone.

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The former financial journalist, now with Discovery marketing, on her love of custom cartography and watching nonnas make pasta 1. The Livingstone Celestial by Peter Bellerby 2. Pyjamas by Olivia von Halle 3. The Atlantic December 2019 issue 4. East Meets West: Jewels of the Maharajas from The Al Thani Collection 5. Bon Appétit Foodcast 6. New York City 7. Vintner’s Daughter active botanical serum 8. On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong 9. 99% Invisible podcast

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Introducing Boschendal Chardonnay Pinot Noir 2019. A new vintage of rose gold sophistication – carefully crafted by blending the two classic grape varieties of traditional MÊthode Cap Classique. An incredibly elegant, crisp, pale blush wine with outstanding finesse and structure.

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