Donatella Versace`s Day, Alber Elbaz`s Deep Thoughts, Diana

The wa ll sTr eeT jour na l M ag a zine
seP TeMBer 2012
FALL FASHION
Donatella Versace’s Day,
Alber Elbaz’s Deep Thoughts,
Diana Vreeland’s Family &
Christian Louboutin’s Garden
N EW
YO R K
B E V E R LY
H I L L S
DA L L A S
CHICAGO
GREENWICH
B AL
H AR B O U R
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OSCARDELARENTA.COM
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september
28
88 fashionably loud and
incredibly baroque
The heavy jewels, brilliant embroidery and
exquisite lace of fall’s finery shine among
Paris’s glittering streets.
PHOTOGRAPHY BY KATJA RAHLWES
STYLING BY SABINA SCHREDER
94 The collecTor
At his home in the French countryside,
Christian Louboutin adds to his treasures
with a vast new archive of his beloved
shoe designs.
BY DANA THOmAS
PHOTOGRAPHY BY ALExANDRE BAILHACHE
PRODuCED BY CAROLINA IRvING
104 dreaming in oTToman
Istanbul, a city built on contradictions,
has a thriving cultural scene that is forging
a bridge between its past and its future.
BY LAWRENCE OSBORNE
PHOTOGRAPHY BY ANDRES GONzALEz
112 ausTeriTy measures
A new crop of coats are strikingly
voluminous and bold.
PHOTOGRAPHY BY BEN TOmS
STYLING BY ROBBIE SPENCER
120 like home, only beTTer
London’s most exclusive new club
is a stylistic reflection of its owner’s
impeccable taste at home.
BY RITA KONIG
PHOTOGRAPHY BY JAmES mERRELL
AND ROLAND BEAuFRE
cover
Photography by Katja Rahlwes in Paris.
Ralph Lauren Collection cape and pants; Dries van
Noten blouse; Chanel necklace and earrings; Sonia
Boyajian necklace; Chanel Fine Jewelry watch
80
this page
Photography by Julia Hetta.
Céline jacket and shirt; Hugo boss tie
For details see Sources, page 130.
19
CONTENTS
“He smiles broadly and,
at that moment, the richest
man in Japan unbuttons
his shirt to show me
his Uniqlo underwear.”
—“this man wants to clothe the planet,” p. 64
32 backstory
34 market report:
trend
Autumnal hues and gypsy
looks set fall’s tone.
38 market report:
news
Louis Vuitton adds high
jewelry to its repertoire
in a new shop on
the Place Vendôme.
104
94
online @WSJ.COM/MAGAZINE
Exclusive photos of Christian Louboutin’s Paris apartment. Also, outtakes from “Dreaming in Ottoman,”
our exploration of the ancient yet modern city of Istanbul. wsj.com/magazine.
20 SEPTEMBER 2012
60
45 soapbox
Lanvin’s head designer,
Alber Elbaz, empowers
women through fashion.
50 tracked
Donatella Versace
oversees her couture
show, a glamorous
dinner and a raucous
after-party.
56 partnership
A generation apart, radio
auteur Ira Glass and teen
blogger Tavi Gevinson
are kindred spirits.
60 style
The visionary Diana
Vreeland was a force to
be reckoned with—
in fashion and in her
own family.
112
CloCkwise from top Istanbul’s Sakirin mosque; model Franzi
Mueller in a Maison Martin Margiela coat; a memo Diana Vreeland
wrote on the themes of the 1960s when she was editor at Vogue;
the expansive gardens at Christian Louboutin’s country home
in France’s Vendée region.
clockwiSE FRoM ToP lEFT: andRES gonzalEz; BEn ToMS; BEn HoFFMann; alExandRE BailHacHE
28 editor’s letter
c u lt u r e
+
l i va b i l i t y
economic
+
investment
c l i m at e
CITI IS THE proud SponSor
o f T H E 2 0 1 3 W S J . M ag a z I n E
InnovaTor of THE YEar aWardS
environment
+
land use
e d u c at i o n
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h u m a n c a p i ta l
mobility
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infrastructure
pl ace s
of
powe r
progress
+
potential
i n n o v a t o r s a r e d e d i c at e d t o e x p l o r i n g “ w h at i s p o s s i b l e ”
m at e r i a l s c i e n c e , r o b o t i c s , l i f e s c i e n c e s
g a m e - c h a n g i n g i n f o r m at i o n t e c h n o l o g i e s
research and development of new technologies
l ay i n g t h e g r o u n d w o r k f o r p r o s p e r i t y
meeting struggles with solutions
e l e v at i n g e x p e c tat i o n s
leap-frogging infrastructure investments
d r a m a t i c i n c r e a s e s i n h u m a n c a p i ta l
p i v o t i n g r a p i d ly i n t o a n e r a o f e x p l o s i v e g r o w t h
in the process of structural change
g l o b a l g at e w ay s , p o i n t s o f g o v e r n a n c e
l aw m a k i n g
d i p l o m at i c n e g o t i at i o n s
c o r p o r at e vo t e s
d i a l o g u e a n d d e c i s i o n s h av e a n o u t s i z e d i m pac t
wat e r , s e wa g e a n d e n e r g y s y s t e m s
pu b lic s pace s
a i r p o r t h u b s , b i c yc l e s h a r i n g a n d p e d i c a b s
I s B o s t o n s t i l l i n? A b u D h a b i ? S i n g a p o r e?
Is your city a contender? Voting continues and the
list is being pared. We started with 200 innovative
cities that are raising the bar for their citizens and
for communities around the globe with forward-
s h i n y s u b w ay s , r a p i d t r a n s i t s y s t e m s , h i g h - s p e e d r a i l
d i v e r s e t r a n s p o r tat i o n a lt e r n a t i v e s
new ideas and productivity
c r e at i v e t h i n k i n g
enthusiasm about acQuiring knowledge
yo u n g , a m b i t i o u s s t u d e n t p o p u l at i o n s
h i g h n u m b e r s o f a d v a n c e d d e g r e e holders
raising the bar for the world
m o r e r e s i l i e n t a n d h e a lt h y com m u n iti e s
n e w w at e r c o n s e r vat i o n m e a s u r e s
r e c l a i m e d b r o w n f i e l d s a n d wat e r f r o n t s
green infrastructure
increasing energy efficiency
current economic growth
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investment prospects
s ta n d i n g o n t h e i r f e e t o r e v e n m a k i n g p r o g r e s s
Qualit y pu b lic s pace s
conserved historic buildings a n d n e i g h b o r h o o d s
t h e a b i l i t y t o s a f e ly wa l k d o w n t h e s t r e e t
museums, community centers
SP EC IA L A DV ERTI S I N G P R O M OTI O N W I TH TH E WA L L STR E E T J O U R NAL
To co m m em o r aTe 20 0 Y e ars o f c iTi
CITYOF THEYEAR
c a s T a VoT e f o r i N N oVaT i o N
thinking work in areas like education, land use,
economic progress and infrastructure. Your
votes and analysis from Urban Land Institute
professionals are helping us narrow the field.
View the list and vote at wsj.com/ad/cityoftheyear.
technology
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research
Program details and criteria for selection are available at wsj.com/ad/cityoftheyear.
CONTENTS
120
45
73
—Alber elbAz, “soApbox,” p. 4 5
64 renegade
Japan’s richest man
wants to dress you and
everyone you know.
73 making it
The inspiration behind
Valentino’s fall collection
is a group of iconic
women that includes Patti
Smith, Joyce Carol Oates,
Louise Bourgeois and
Susan Sontag.
50
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24 SEPTEMBER 2012
76 design
The designs of the ’70s
look better than ever,
owing to the clean but
luxe aesthetic of the
era’s furniture designers,
like Maria Pergay, Pierre
Paulin, Francois-Xavier
and Claude Lalanne.
80 fashion
The season’s gamine
looks make a convincing
argument in favor
of the subtle appeal
that comes from
foregoing frills and
embracing tomboy chic.
132 still/life
A look at the most
adored possessions of
the fashion designer
L’Wren Scott—items
that form an emotional
portrait of the woman
behind them.
CloCkwise from top Club owner Robin Birley’s Knightsbridge
home; a gown from Valentino’s fall collection stands among
inspiration boards; Lanvin designer Alber Elbaz; models lounge at
the Ritz Paris before walking in Versace’s couture show.
clockwiSE FRoM ToP lEFT: Roland BEauFRE; danilo ScaRPaTi; REnE & Radka ThiBaulT MonTaMaT
“Sometimes you don’t
really need armor
to feel protected. Sometimes
maybe you need just a
chiffon dress to hug you.”
YOU
SPEAK
SOFTLY
AND
CARRY
A
LOUD
BAG
WE KNOW YOU’RE OUT THERE
THE COPLEY SADDLEBAG, A CLASSIC SILHOUETTE IN
SMOOTH LEATHER, ELECTRIFIED IN NEON PERSIMMON.
I N T R O D U C I N G T H E H A N D B AG A N D S H O E S H O P S AT J C R E W.CO
W.C O M
EDITOR’s LETTER
ExpEcT ThE
unExpEcTED
fall, with its empty notebooks and sharpened pencils, the cooling of temperatures and the updating of
closets—all the possibilities of a renewed mood and
a fresh start. While we anticipate the rituals of this
time of year, what really excites us and heralds the
season are all the wonderful new things we didn’t
see coming.
This issue pays tribute to the unforeseen in ways
that we hope will inspire and delight: crazy, overthe-top fashion, as seen on our cover, that offers a
sense of freedom and fun (page 88); Lanvin designer
Alber Elbaz, who, while remarkably humble and shy,
belted out a heartfelt rendition of “Que Sera Sera”
on stage after his 10th-anniversary show (page 45);
the high-school blogger phenomenon Tavi Gevinson,
who had her 15 minutes of fame four years ago, got
bashed by the very press that courted her and then,
undaunted, launched the online teen magazine
Rookie with the help of mentor and like-minded
friend Ira Glass (page 56); pictures that reveal how
dressing like a boy can be a very feminine thing to
do (page 80); a Middle Eastern city that is stylishly embracing its complex Ottoman heritage as it
forges its cultural future (page 104); and Christian
Louboutin, a passionate gardener and collector of
beautiful things who also happens to make some of
the most coveted shoes on earth (page 94).
Finally, we introduce a new back page: Still/Life
will feature a cultural icon sharing a selection of his
or her most beloved possessions—a kind of selfportrait told through personal artifacts. This month
fashion designer—and Mick Jagger lady friend—
L’Wren Scott inaugurates the page. Happy autumn!
Deborah Needleman, Editor in Chief
d.needleman@wsj.com
fashion illustrated Antonio Lopez’s 1966 drawing was inspired by a Francis Bacon painting.
A retrospective of the artist’s work will be held at The Suzanne Geiss Company in New York starting September 7.
assistant to the editor
editor in chief Deborah Needleman
executive style editor David Farber
executive editor Chris Knutsen
copy chief Minju Pak
Alainna Lexie Beddie
weB editors Allison Lichter, Robin Kawakami
european editor Rita Konig
fashion features director
photo editor Damian Prado
contriButing editors
photo director Nadia Vellam
production manager Scott White
creative director Patrick Li
managing editor Brekke Fletcher
Whitney Vargas
art director Pierre Tardif
senior editor Megan Conway
market editor Andrew Lutjens
contriButing art director Shawn Carney
senior associate editor Adrienne Gaffney
junior designer Alex Konsevick
fashion assistant Jane Chapman
Alexa Brazilian, Michael Clerizo (watches),
Sara Ruffin Costello, Carolina Irving, Joshua
Levine, Ambra Medda, Meenal Mistry,
Charlotte Moss, David Netto, Dana Thomas
puBlisher Anthony Cenname
gloBal advertising director
Stephanie Arnold
associate puBlisher/europe
Claudio Piovesana
Business manager
Julie Checketts
senior marketing manager
Jillian Maxwell
WSJ. Issue 28, September 2012, Copyright 2012, Dow Jones and Company, Inc. All rights reserved. See the magazine online at www.wsjmagazine.com. Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission is prohibited. WSJ. magazine is provided as a supplement to
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© ESTaTE of anTonio LoPEz & Juan RaMoS, CouRTESy ThE SuzannE GEiSS CoMPany, nEw yoRk
we look forward to the crisp, bracing spirit of
e d g y a n d p r ovo c ati v e , i m ag e - m a k e r a n d s t y li s t,
c a r i n e r o itf e l d e d it s h e r s i g n at u r e lo o k i nto a c o lle c ti o n o f
c h i c c o lo u r s a n d to o l s i n s p i r e d by h e r a e sth e ti c .
m accos m e tic s .com/c a r i n e
28 SEPTEMBER 2012
confidently going
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From left: Roiphe;
Julia; Hannes;
Roiphe’s new book,
out this month.
DREAMING IN OTTOMAN p. 104
Lawrence Osborne, who has lived in Istanbul for the last year,
describes it as a “secretive and beautiful city that never quite
yields its true core to the outsider. Perhaps Istanbul is so dense,”
he says, “that it cannot be unraveled in the way that one would
come to understand a Western city.” Photographer Andres
Gonzalez, who divides his time between Istanbul and Portland,
Maine, was struck by the city’s hidden residential treasures. “Many
of the homes couldn’t be seen from the streets,” says Gonzalez.
“The door or gate would open up to lush gardens and grand décor.
It was mind-blowing to see how some Istanbulis make such an
atmospheric space for themselves despite the overcrowded city.”
32 SEPTEMBER 2012
C A E S A R S PA L A C E
GIRLS WILL BE BOYS p. 80
Katie Roiphe isn’t the oxford-wearing gamine in men’s clothing
that she describes in her essay on tomboys. “I am actually not a
tomboy and barely ever wear flat shoes,” she says, adding, “but my
daughter Violet is, because ‘girls clothes take too much time.’ ”
Hannes Hetta, who styled the shoot alongside his sister,
photographer Julia Hetta, better appreciates the trend behind
fall’s slouchy jackets and boxy brogues for women. “I have
a real thing for tomboy dressing. I think every woman should
consider a little bit of menswear in their wardrobe.”
From left: Osborne;
Sakirin, the first
mosque designed by
a woman; Gonzalez.
Istanbul now boasts
almost as many
billionaires as London
and many more than Paris.
CITYCENTER
BELLAGIO
ASPEN
ALA MOANA CENTER
T H E PA L A Z Z O
HOUSTON GALLERIA
From left: Over-the-top
glasses; stylist Sabina
Schreder; Groeneveld with
Lagerfeld bag; Rahlwes.
B E V E R LY C E N T E R
The famed Place de la Concorde and Place Vendôme
set the scene for our fall fashion story celebrating
the season’s love affair with gold. WSJ. Creative Director
Patrick Li imagined the shoot as “everything a bit too
much,” with Dutch model Daphne Groeneveld playing
an extravagantly styled Prussian princess touring
Paris. According to Li, “Photographer Katja Rahlwes
documented our fictional character through
her own relentlessly glamorous and sexy lens.”
B E V E R LY H I L L S
FASHIONABLY LOUD AND
INCREDIBLY BAROQUE p. 88
TOP ROW, FROM LEFT: MIKAEL ZUMSTEIN; ALEXANDRE BAILHACHE; ©DAVID X PRUTTING/BFANYC.COM. SECOND ROW, FROM LEFT: COURTESY MERCURA; STEFANIE KUNZ; WSJ. MAGAZINE; COURTESY KATJA RAHLWES.
THIRD ROW, FROM LEFT: ANNA SCHORI; N/C; COURTESY HANNES HETTA; RANDOM HOUSE. FOURTH ROW, FROM LEFT: COURTESY LAWRENCE OSBORNE; ANDRES GONZALEZ; COURTESY ANDRES GONZALEZ
From left: Bailhache; Louboutin
in his walled garden; Irving,
in one of the jackets she designs
under the Irving & Fine label.
L E N O X S Q U A R E S H O R T H I L L S S O U T H C O A S T P L A Z A R O YA L H A W A I I A N S H O P P I N G C E N T E R 1 8 0 0 . 3 3 6 . 3 4 6 9 F E N D I . C O M
THE COLLECTOR p. 94
Contributing style editor Carolina Irving, who has known
Christian Louboutin for 25 years, was among the first with whom
Louboutin shared his plans for a new shoe archive on the
grounds of his house in the French countryside. Contributing
editor Dana Thomas, a longtime fan of Louboutin’s work, who
wears his shoes almost exclusively, went to see it for herself one
rainy Sunday. “I don’t wear anything else, except my running shoes,
Havaianas and a pair of sandals from St. Tropez,” she says.
Photographer Alexandre Bailhache recalls Louboutin’s idea to brave
the rain for a portrait with an umbrella. “It was very Mary Poppins!”
NEW YORK
Louboutin’s
favorite workout
is swinging
on the trapeze.
BAL HARBOUR AMERICANA MANHASSET
BACKSTORY
MARKET REPORT
TREND
InTO ThE
MysTIc
From ornate gems to
exotic embroidery, a gypsy
spirit is in the air
5
1
4
3
1 Salvatore Ferragamo
2 Marni stole
3 Fendi iPad case
4 Dolce & Gabbana bag
5 Repossi earrings
For details see
Sources, page 130.
34 SEPTEMBER 2012
aRTwoRkS By DaniEl SEan MuRPhy PhoTogRaPhy By F. MaRTin RaMin
Christian Dior Boutiques: www.dior.com
2
MARKET REPORT
TREND
shAdEs Of
AuTuMn
Color is one of the
cornerstones of
fall style with rich tones
in tomato and sage
1
2
The New Miracle
6
5
3
1 Louis Vuitton
2 Pomellato ring
3 Devi Kroell clutch
4 H. Stern earrings
5 Tod’s purse
6 Tom Ford lipstick
4
36 SEPTEMBER 2012
For details see
Sources, page 130.
aRTwoRkS By DaniEl SEan MuRPhy PhoTogRaPhy By F. MaRTin RaMin
the Moisturizing Soft Cream
Introducing
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©2 012 R EED K R A KO FF L LC
marKET rEporT
NEWS
Louis Vuitton
Haute JoaiLLerie
necklace, cuff and
ring from the Paris
Vendôme Collection;
the new shop in Paris.
diamonds
in paris
It used to be high jewelry
was the province of great
jewelry houses, like Cartier
and Bulgari. Now a number
of fashion brands are getting
in on the action, with Louis
Vuitton leading the way
BY Meenal MistrY
PHOtOGraPHY BY PHiliPPe lancOMBe
38 sePteMBer 2012
watches. Like all of Vuitton’s retail spaces, the glittering new store
is designed by architect Peter Marino. The 1,600-square-foot boutique has two private salons and a workshop on the fourth and fifth
floors. The ground-floor windows are shaded by a metallic chain-mail
curtain, which diffuses natural light while providing clients with just
the right amount of privacy. A mirrored sculpture by contemporary
American artist Teresita Fernandez hangs from the two-story-high
ceiling like a shower of crystal raindrops frozen mid-fall. In addition
to a watch showcase and permanent collections of monogram and
nail-head-motif pieces, the store stocks the impressive one-of-a-kind designs of Lorenz Bäumer, the
house’s artistic director of fine jewelry.
The boutique signals Vuitton’s push into the
haute joaillerie arena, but its presence also signifies a growing trend among high-fashion brands
to enter into or deepen their commitment to fine
jewelry. Last fall, Dolce & Gabbana and Salvatore
Ferragamo debuted their own collections. The
former played on its Sicilian roots, creating rosaries and crosses in rubies, sapphires and pearls.
Ferragamo partnered with Gianni Bulgari, who
designed for his family’s legendary label before
forming his own company in 1989. The range riffs
on Ferragamo’s futurist logo and iconic horseshoeshaped Vara buckle, made available in yellow gold
cOurtesY lvMH (sHOP)
It’s fIttIng that the shape of the Place Vendôme in Paris resembles an emerald-cut diamond. For nearly 120 years, the world’s
leading high jewelers have lined the gently beveled square. Frédéric
Boucheron was the first tenant of the sort, moving his store into
No. 26 in 1893, just five years before the Ritz hotel opened its doors
nearby. In 1902, Joseph Chaumet settled into No. 12, and four years
after that came Van Cleef & Arpels at No. 22. On and on it went. Today,
it’s also home to Breguet, Piaget, Buccellati, Rolex, Mikimoto, Patek
Philippe, Hublot, Repossi and Mauboussin, as well as the fine jewelry
boutiques for Dior and Chanel.
And, now, Louis Vuitton. The French luxury label has opened its
first high jewelry boutique at No. 23. A coveted spot on the plaza isn’t
easy to find. “If you miss it, you have to wait 10 years, so we decided
to go for it,” says Hamdi Chatti, vice president of fine jewelry and
R e e d K R a Ko f f.c o m
HUGO BOSS FASHIONS INC. Phone +1 212 940 0600
MARKET REPORT
NEWS
and diamonds. “We are not a brand that goes in too many different
directions, but many of our competitors are in fine jewelry and customers were asking for it,” Ferragamo’s CEO Michele Norsa says.
Last year, Giorgio Armani added jewelry to his Armani Prive haute
couture collection. This July, Versace, which has sold fine jewelry
since 1998, did the same, showcasing 16 one-of-a-kind Atelier Versace
cocktail rings during its haute
couture show. (Plans to open fine
jewelry boutiques are in the works.)
Add to the list Hermès, Ralph Lauren
and Bottega Veneta, all of which
have recently launched or doubled
their offerings.
Expanding toward the higher
end of the luxury spectrum might
seem counterintuitive in an industry
that’s characteristically spun off in
the other direction—with secondary lines, fragrances and licensed
products. But unlike more mainstream consumer categories that are
still struggling as a result of the financial crisis, luxury has been on
the upswing since 2010. According to a forecast report by Altagamma,
the Italian luxury goods lobby, jewelry and watch sales are expected to
rise another 10 percent this year.
For Vuitton, which, despite creative director Marc Jacobs’s influential ready-to-wear lines, is still best known for handbags, staking
a claim in the category has the potential to elevate the brand. The
BOSS Black
Vuitton’s new boutique
signifies a growing trend
among high-fashion
brands to enter into or
deepen their commitment
to fine jewelry.
RALPH LAUREN
FINE JEWELRY
New Romantic
Chandelier earrings
and Modern Art
Deco cuff
158-year-old label didn’t launch jewelry until 2001, when Jacobs
designed a playful charm bracelet with collectible travel-themed
trinkets, like a miniature Speedy bag and a tiny gold Eiffel Tower
studded with diamonds. According to Chatti, Jacobs intended the
bracelet as a one-off but reconsidered when he was approached on
a flight by a customer who had bought three and wanted more. Since
then, Vuitton is making up for lost time. In 2004, Jacobs created the
first complete 110-piece fine jewelry collection that established core
styles. He eventually appointed Camille Miceli, his stylish head of
communications who had been dabbling in design, as creative advisor for jewelry. She worked on buzzy projects like a collaboration
with rapper Pharrell Williams that yielded bracelets and brooches
inspired by French heraldry. In 2008, the label patented two petallike diamond cuts to replicate the exact graphic flower and clover
motifs of its iconic monogram. CEO Yves Carcelle calls the designs
“a challenge of epic aesthetic and technical proportions.”
With the hire of Bäumer a year later, Vuitton made its intentions
ALL PHOTOGRAPHY THIS AND FOLLOWING PAGE BY F. MARTIN RAMIN; STYLING BY ANNE CARDENAS
ARMANI PRIVÉ
necklace,
ring and cuff
shop online hugoboss.com
40 SEPTEMBER 2012
MARKET REPORT
NEWS
Bottega Veneta
bracelets, cuff
and ring
THE NEW CITI / AADVANTAGE CARD
®
®
THE JOURNEY IS JUST BEGINNING.
Unlike more mainstream
consumer categories
that are still struggling as
a result of the financial
crisis, luxury has been on
the upswing since 2010.
gucci
bracelet and ring
from the Horsebit
Collection
For details see
Sources, page 130.
42 SEPTEMBER 2012
about entering the fine jewelry arena clear. Bäumer had spent two
decades at Chanel while also designing his own line. (He, too, has a
private showroom in the Place Vendôme, on the third floor of No. 4,
and plans to open his own shop there as well.) Since his arrival, he’s
created four collections for Vuitton. The first was an elaborate bib
necklace with multicolored sapphires, white diamonds and spinels
that formed overlapping kaleidoscopic circles. It looks like the intricate workings of a watch. Tapping into Vuitton’s travel heritage, he
called the range L’Ame du Voyage, or the Soul of the Trip, and it was
inspired by everything from Notre Dame’s stained glass to the Maasai.
This year’s collection, Escale à Paris, is based on various iconic landmarks in the city—but only those that Vuitton himself would have
seen in the late 19th century. The pièce de résistance is the ChampsElysées necklace: a diamond sautoir with dark-red spinels running its
length to approximate streetlights; a diamond-studded white-gold
Arc de Triomphe rests at the clavicle.
Bäumer also quietly accepts custom commissions for Vuitton. A
workshop has been designed over the Place Vendôme boutique, where
clients can come in to personally choose stones with a gemologist and
then meet with Bäumer to work out a design. However, just entering
the workshop, Chatti carefully notes, is an earned privilege. “You need
to order first,” he says with a smile. “It’s like a club.”
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Ideas & PeoPle
soApBoX
purity of vision
At his studio in Paris,
Elbaz has asked that
everything be white
and for his staff to wear
white work coats so
that the neutrality of
the space can lead to
greater creativity.
Alber elbAz is A rAre bird in a business oft dominated by ego and drama. Humble, funny and all about
the work, the beloved Lanvin designer eschews the
high-profile social life of his star clients. Likening himself to “a concierge in a beautiful hotel,” he feels it’s
best not to hobnob with the guests: “It’s good not to
know all these people, not to go to all these parties, to
just be in the shadows a little bit and be able to dream.
That way I can keep the fantasy of who they are and
what they are looking for.”
The Moroccan-born Elbaz began his career with
Geoffrey Beene in New York before moving in 1997 to
Paris, where he soon landed the top job at Yves Saint
Laurent. Abruptly replaced by Tom Ford when Gucci
Group bought the company, he eventually moved to
Lanvin, where he has clearly had the last laugh. The
world’s longest-running fashion house, which was
founded in 1889 by Jeanne Lanvin, was barely breathing when Elbaz arrived in 2001. Almost overnight, the
designer’s whisper-light frocks and beribboned accessories became favorites of both critics and consumers.
A rare coupling of mystery and wearability, the clothes
reflect the sensibility of their creator, who says he works
from intuition and emotion and is a dogged ignorer
of trends. “I want to know where is that committee in
Switzerland that sits to decide what is in and what is
out,” he says. “I don’t listen to the formula makers. I
think maybe I have a selective hearing disorder.”
This year, after his knockout 10th-anniversary show,
Elbaz treated the crowd to a performance of “Que Sera
Sera,” including the gender-tweaked line, “When I was
just a little boy, I asked my mother what will I be?”
When he finished singing, every woman in the room
was cheering, grateful for the path he’d chosen.
ALBER ELBAZ
The Lanvin designer
offers his touching take on
why he will forever
believe in the transformative
magic of fashion
BY JULIA REED
photogRAphY BY REnE & RADkA
45
IDEAS & PEOPLE
SOAPBOX
46 SEPTEMBER 2012
MASTER OF CEREMONY
Runway looks from
Elbaz’s fall 10th-anniversary
collection, which echoes
many of the themes he is
best known for; the designer
serenading the crowd.
translate it and make it relevant. For me, I don’t want
to see a maharajah on Fifth Avenue. So I have to ask:
Is it comfortable? Can you enter a taxi? Can you have
dessert if you wear that dress? And sometimes I have
to be honest: “F--- the dessert, get the dress!” In the
end, the most beautiful thing is that nobody will know
where it comes from. The idea is that you look at a
dress and say, “Well, that’s a great dress.” It doesn’t
matter if you take it from the maharajah, from Brigitte
Bardot, from the ’60s or the ’80s. The important thing
is to erase the evidence.
What do you wear in a bad economy? This is a very,
very sensitive issue. On one hand, you say that when
things are going sour—when everything is not as easy
and fun as it used to be—maybe there is some element
that can bring fun and joy again. And it’s chocolates,
maybe it’s love, and it’s a beautiful red dress. If I
were a buyer today in one of the American department stores, I would go with extremes—the most
beautiful, the more expensive, the more eccentric.
I would take risks. The worst thing would be to
buy only the little black dress. You know why?
Because everyone has it already. I would go
with a purple dress, something different.
On the other hand, the world is going
through so many changes. People are protesting about salaries and they can’t afford to buy
a home. There are a lot of companies that are
taking what we are creating and translating
them to the masses. So we cannot be accused
of eating cake when the world needs to have
bread. Because in our little domain, we create
ERIC RYAN/GETTY IMAGES (ELBAZ); FIRSTVIEW (RUNWAY)
I THINK FASHION IS ONE THING to the world,
and it’s another to the people who work in
it. It seems like one of those glam jobs in
which you wake up and don’t have cereal
because you have champagne, and you
mostly start at 6 o’clock—not in the morning but in the evening—and by 7 you have
to rush to do something else. The reality is
very, very different. Producing so many collections every year, starting from scratch and
turning creation into business—it is a very difficult thing to do.
There was a time when designers hated other
designers. But today there is actually major
respect between many of us. We understand
each other. We are all going through the same
stressful process. Before shows we send each
other little cards with congratulations; we send
each other flowers. We’re kind of a crazy family, but still a family. There are many designers
I really respect and love. I love Azzedine (Alaïa).
I like Narciso (Rodriguez) and Marc (Jacobs) and
Nicolas (Ghesquiére) from Balenciaga. The first collection Raf Simons did for Dior was gorgeous. I’m not
jealous of people—I’m only jealous of people who can
eat and not gain weight. I respect talent. When I see
talent and when I see a good person who comes with
the talent, I melt.
Fashion used to be a family business. For years and
years, it was the kind of business in which mothers and
fathers and children and grandchildren would all work
together. And there was something in that. Because
family is the only place where you feel comfortable
enough to make mistakes, and in creation, mistakes
are really important. They drive you forward. We have
no titles at Lanvin; at lunch everybody eats together
and the studio feels as one. I don’t believe in a hierarchy, in a pyramid of people reporting to other people
who report to me. I always say that if you really want
the truth you have to go to the basement because that
is where things happen. If you look for the truth in
the penthouse, usually it’s fake.
I feel today we have to relearn how to be small
again. The industry now is very strong and
very powerful and very big and loud. I think
it’s an important time to go back to design,
to think small and to go back to creativity.
It’s not just about marketing, but about
creativity again, about a return to intuition, to emotion. We have to bring joy
to people—that’s the essence of the job.
I’ve never worked with a muse or
thought, Oh, I am so inspired by her,
because I’m not doing the collection for
one woman. I’m making it for different
women, different ages, different body
shapes, different colors. Everything
can inspire you: a story, a conversation
with a buyer, a need, an editor’s comment.
All we are as designers are infantile antennae. We are just so childish and naïve. We have
to capture the moment and then we have to
project that back into our work. I have an idea
and sometimes it is very grand, then I have to
1.866.MAXMARA
IDEAS & PEOPLE
48 SEPTEMBER 2012
TRUE COLOR
Alber wearing his
signature necktie
and glasses; a classic
Lanvin cocktail dress
with a kicky peplum.
One woman told
me every time she
wears Lanvin men
fall in love with her.
Another told me
she wore Lanvin to
face her husband’s
divorce lawyer
because she
felt protected.
Edited from Julia Reed’s interview with Alber Elbaz.
FIRSTVIEW (RUNWAY)
ideas that are being translated by High Street a season, or even an hour, later. I think the fact that we are
the source of the High Street fashion is good. A year
and a half ago I did a project with H&M, which is something I would never have done before, but I thought
it was important. It was about giving something to
people that they could not afford, something that they
only dreamed about. And it felt good to know that
95 percent of the clothes had sold around the world
within four hours.
I’ve never felt bad about going to extremes, and
it’s not about how much it costs. When you work in
an atelier that is located in central Paris and not on
a boat in China, it’s different. When you do a design
and you do it seven or more times to find the right cut
and the right proportion, it’s not easy to get there,
and that’s why it’s costly. I don’t just buy the dresses
somewhere and present them on the runway—I make
them. Sometimes it takes me 10 hours to make one
jacket, one skirt. The fact that you are touching something yourself brings emotion to it. I was watching a
chef on television and he took a lemon and squeezed
it with his hand. He said that he could do it with a
machine, but he felt that if he did it with his own hand
the person eating the salad would be able to taste
what he put into it. I put all of me into my work. This
is all I have: I don’t have kids; I don’t have a family
that I created. But I feel that every day I create a new
family. My life in that sense is complete. I find excitement at work; I don’t need anything afterwards. At
10 o’clock at night, all I want to do is come home and
watch Kim Kardashian get a haircut—it’s like a vacation, you don’t have to think.
It seems as though every time you want to be a
modernist you have to make something a little bit ugly.
And if you make it really ugly then it’s really modern
and really cool. But beauty is never démodé. Beauty is
the one thing I think everyone is seeking. That’s it—to
touch beautiful things, to make women feel beautiful.
And this is power, you know, to feel beautiful. I always
say that women are very strong and men are powerful.
But beauty gives you both strength and power. I never
think of it. It’s just one of those natural things. It’s the
only thing I know how to do.
Not everything I do is perfect, but I learn from mistakes. Once I was told that a girl who had done our
campaign in the previous season was out, that she was
no longer the right person to use. And I was a sucker, I
said okay. A month later I saw her on the street walking with her sister, and when she saw me she started
to cry. She said, “Why didn’t you take me, Alber?” And
I felt so small and so stupid and such a victim of the
system that I said, “Never again.” That’s what I mean
when I say that I’m going back to intuition and to feeling and to what I believe.
Sometimes you don’t really need armor to feel
protected. Sometimes maybe you need just a
chiffon dress to hug you. And if you feel that the
dress hugs you and the dress loves you, you
feel strong and protected. I never consider
myself as doing sexy clothes at all, but then
after the show people tell me, “Wow, the
girls are so sexy.” You know why? Because
they feel fearless.
Two different women told me two
different things at two different times,
and I always go back to them. One person told me that every time she wears
Lanvin men fall in love with her, and
I thought that was so beautiful. The
other one told me that she was in a taxi
going to face her husband’s lawyer
because she was getting a divorce, but
she was wearing Lanvin and she felt
so protected. If I can make men fall in
love with women and if I can protect
women, I think I can die peacefully.
A week before he died, I called
Mr. Beene and told him that everything I know he taught me. He was
my boss and he was my family. I was
coming out of nowhere without any grand
portfolio. I didn’t come from a big school.
I came from Israel to New York and had
a little job making mother-of-the-bride
dresses. He taught me that it doesn’t matter
where you come from but where you are going.
He never did things just because you are supposed to do them. He had the ability to create
and to laugh and to make women feel beautiful and to mix technology and beauty together.
I think that because he was overweight and I’m
overweight, our fantasy was lightness. So we
projected our fantasy to the clothes, and now all I
do is light, light clothes because it’s the one thing I
don’t have. That is why I’m too afraid to lose weight
because then I might make heavy clothes. You are
laughing, but I am not.
maxmara.com
SOAPBOX
2012 H.Stern® | www.hstern.net/ancientamerica
Ideas & PeoPle
tRACKeD
donatella versace
It would be easy to categorize the perpetually tanned and toned designer as a fictional fashion
character in a candy-coated fantasy—were she not such a shrewd powerhouse
BY Adrienne gAffneY
photogrAphY BY thiBAult montAmAt
FiFteen years ago, Donatella Versace bid her brother farewell
in the lobby of the Ritz Paris without realizing that it would be the
last time she would see him. This year’s Versace haute couture show,
held at the hotel—the site of so many of Gianni’s presentations—was
historic on a multitude of levels, completing the passing of the torch
and highlighting the titan that Donatella has become.
As the 2008 recession ushered in an era of austerity, Versace’s
unrestrained opulence made the fashion house a likely victim.
Donatella responded decisively, bringing in a new CEO, Gian
Giacomo Ferraris, who responded by cutting the workforce by 26
percent, closing stores in Japan and centralizing production to
tighten costs.
Last year, Versace, which remains family-owned, returned to
profit, generating $420 million in revenue. At the same time, she’s
launched a haute couture collection, taken rising star Christopher
50 SeptemBer 2012
Kane under her wing as the designer of her lower-priced Versus line
and made a foray into mass market, with an H&M collaboration that
sold out in half an hour in some places.
Donatella herself might veer into caricature were she not such a
perfect embodiment of her brand. The 57-year-old, who’s overcome
her own battles with drug abuse, never has a bleach-blonde hair out
of place. When she travels—usually with her Jack Russell, Audrey—
her hotel suite is redecorated to Versace standards ahead of time.
She wears her clothes tight, her heels high and smokes wherever she
pleases. A thoroughly modern businesswoman with a fascination for
American politics, Donatella designs some of the most sizzling and
overtly sexy clothes in the industry.
Never having aspired to be a true designer before her brother’s tragic
death, she finds herself the star of the frenzied show on the day of her
second couture presentation. Cue the music.
go time In the hours
before her couture
show, Donatella
transforms a wing
of the Ritz to her
center of operations
as she previews the
collection for a group
of reporters.
Katie Holmes wears H.stern jewelry
New York Fifth Avenue | Crystals at City Center Las Vegas | The Village of Merrick Park Coral Gables
IDEAS & PEOPLE
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TRACKED
3 p.m.
Heads down from her room
where she has been holed up
answering last-minute calls and e-mails
to prepare for the show.
6:30
a.m.
Wakes up
56
pairs of shoes
on hand for the show.
0
goals scored by Italy
against Spain in the European Cup final.
Donatella has been keeping track
of the game and is devastated by the result.
Each is a couture creation, crafted
as a corset for the foot, with all
of the straps and buckles measured
to fit the models’ legs precisely.
at the Ritz hotel’s Vendôme Suite,
her favorite room in the hotel, with nerves.
Breakfast
6
5
tarot card signs
depicted in Swarovski
crystals and rose-gold embroidery
on the belts in the show.
people in her entourage
Her personal assistant, her security
guard (who remains with her at
all times), her driver in Milan and her
hair and makeup artists.
7
inch heels
3:55 p.m.
Discusses the seating plan
with her PR staff for the postshow dinner.
32
6:30 p.m.
Runway is cleared
for rehearsal
Donatella watches from the audience
alongside McGrath, stylist
Melanie Ward and Versace design
director Lorenza Baschieri.
5
outfit changes
during the day
makeup artists
led by the legendary Pat McGrath
and 22 hairstylists at
work to prepare 26 models.
Donatella’s standard height.
She considers her 4.7-inch heels ‘flats’
and wears them to walk her dog.
42
couture rings
created by Versace for the first time.
Each model will wear the
one-of-a-kind jewels as part of
her runway look.
52 SEPTEMBER 2012
21
seamstresses
have been flown to Paris from Milan
and divided into teams, each
working 8-hour shifts around the clock.
Donatella appears for her show in
outfit no. 3—a short black Versace couture
dress, Versace diamond ring and
sunglasses—before the presentation begins.
© PAUL SEHEULT/EYE UBIQUITOUS/CORBIS (RITZ); STOCKBYTE (CIGARETTE); IMAGE SOURCE (COFFEE); ADAM GAULT/OJO IMAGES (YOGURT); COURTESY ATELIER
VERSACE (JEWELRY); MARTIN ROSE/GETTY IMAGES (PLAYER)
Coffee, yogurt, 1 Marlboro Red.
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IDEAS & PEOPLE
TRACKED
9
meetings with reporters
(print, online, TV)
throughout the afternoon. Donatella gives
them a preview of the looks.
15
minutes
100
guests at a seated dinner
at the hotel’s L’Espadon restaurant.
11:45 p.m.
with Anna Wintour and her daughter
backstage before the show, which
is held atop the Ritz’s pool. Donatella walks
them through several pieces, as models
and stylists work frantically.
Arrives at the after-party
already underway in the Ritz’s
pool room, which has been completely
transformed into a nightclub.
Countless
26
26
iPhone photos taken
by celebs and mortals alike.
5
songs danced to
by Donatella, including George Michael’s
“Freedom” (which Donatella requested) and
“Paper Planes,” performed live by M.I.A.
looks shown
looks shown
On the menu
8
Raspberry-dressed lobster, dover sole
and a citrus-fruits savarin
with both red and white wine.
2,000
from Donatella as she watches the
show on a monitor backstage before
emerging to take her bow.
roses flown in
from South America for the room’s centerpiece,
in Donatella’s favorite colors.
1
tiny look of dismay
when a model nearly slips on the runway.
54 SEPTEMBER 2012
12 a.m.
Slips out of the party
8
celebrities dressed
by Versace
for the show, including Christina Hendricks,
Elizabeth Banks, M.I.A. and Jessica Alba.
and heads straight to bed, as the hotel
is seamlessly returned to its former state.
WSJ. MAGAZINE (MENU)
claps and dance moves
ideaS & PeoPle
Pa R t N e R S h i P
The Blogger
and The
radio STar
She’s in high school and
he’s 53, but nevertheless,
Tavi Gevinson and Ira Glass
are kindred spirits whose
off-kilter charisma turns
fans into disciples
By AlicE GREGoRy
PHoToGRAPHy By kyoko HAMAdA
56 SEPTEMBER 2012
Both Ira Glass and tavI GevInson are fascinated
by the magical realism of everyday life, whether it’s
first encounters with the unknown (Glass) or the daily
eccentricities of Midwestern teenage-hood (Gevinson).
As host of the much-adored, long-running radio show
This American Life, Glass has become something like our
national storyteller, providing a forum for highly personal yet idiosyncratic stories concerning everything
from gossip to gambling. In roughly the same amount of
time his show’s been on the airwaves, Gevinson, a junior
in high school, has come of age. Last year she launched
Rookie, her feverishly read online magazine for girls who
are, like its editor, precocious, fashion-obsessed and a
little offbeat. In her inaugural editor’s letter, she issued
“infinite big fat thank-you’s” to a roster of facilitating
adults that included Glass, whom she referred to with
affectionate mockery as “Cool Dad.”
Gevinson and Glass’s generation-straddling friendship began when they were introduced through Glass’s
wife, Anaheed Alani, who is now Rookie’s story editor. As
a media veteran himself, Glass acted as a sort of protector
for Rookie, encouraging Gevinson, now 16, to pursue sole
ownership and helping her to navigate industry perils.
Media Match
Gevinson, editor of
online magazine Rookie,
and Glass, host of This
American Life, having a
coffee (and hot chocolate)
break at New York’s
Highliner Restaurant.
Still, Gevinson was hardly new to life in the spotlight. By the time Rookie launched last September, she
was already famous, thanks to the personal blog she
started at age 11. The fashion world was smitten with
her oddball dressing and dyed-grey hair; here was a
prepubescent wunderkind who looked a bit like Miss
Havisham. Seemingly overnight, Gevinson received
windfalls that typically come to those many times her
age: a column in Harper’s Bazaar; coveted front-row
runway seats; a collaboration with avant-garde label
Rodarte—and then the inevitable ire of jealous detractors. But now, with Rookie thriving, Gevinson’s status as
an Internet stalwart seems firmly secure.
These days, Glass and Gevinson mostly talk at Rookie
parties or on conference calls—Gevinson sitting atop
her daisy-print bed in Oak Park, Illinois; Glass padding
around his kitchen in New York. His jokes are met with a
not uncommon eye roll, but their rapport is a sweet one.
After discovering that Gevinson was using her computer’s internal mic to record herself singing and playing
the guitar, Glass gave her one that was able to capture
high notes. As thanks, she sent him a heartfelt rendition
of “Moon River.”
ideaS & PeoPle
PARTNERSHIP
ira on Tavi
the fIrst tIme I met tavI was during a breakfast meeting in New York at Le
Grainne, one of those faux-French places where you can get omelets and crepes.
She looked really tiny and really young, and she was still dressed like a little
kid—this was before Tavi had
decided she was going to dress
“pretty,” like a more typical
teenage girl. She would explain
that she was giving a talk at the
Met or MoMA or something,
but then her father would inter—
rupt to be like, “Okay, Tavi, here
are the things on the menu that
you would eat.” I think she got
hot chocolate. It was like, “Oh,
right. You’re a child.”
Pre-Internet, my guess is
she would have been just a
really bright, nerdy kid who
was into lots of stuff and made
little things that some people
in her circle would see. But
John Waters wouldn’t be quoting her. Lady Gaga wouldn’t
be quoting her. She’s invented
her own paradigm, like all the
people who do the best creative
work: They invent their own
paradigm and then they inhabit
that paradigm better than anybody else could.
Tavi is capable of both melancholy and fantastic optimism.
It’s weird to say, but she seems
like a peer, like a fully developed writer, editor and maker of
things. She absorbs things and
has figured out how to render
it in prose that’s fun to read—
it’s impressive as a real-time
documenting of a teenage girl’s
thoughts. And her pop-culture
knowledge is weirdly encyclo- BiRdS of a featheR Gevinson found her ideal mentor in Glass.
pedic. I remember her writing in
some post a few years ago, “This reminded me of a Joni Mitchell song.” And I was
like, “Why is anything reminding you of a Joni Mitchell song? You’re 13! Why is that
even happening?”
One of the things that’s really terrible when you’re a kid is that you can’t just go
out and get a drink. I mean, Tavi can’t drive, she can’t just get in a car and take off.
She has all the adult work without any of the adult freedoms. I don’t even know if
she has a bank account. I guess she must? I told her that by doing the Web site, she
was saying goodbye to being a kid. Her time wasn’t going to be her own, and she was
going to be working constantly. She chose that with open eyes and has been very
grown-up about it in a way that is really impressive and sobering.
I wasn’t that confident at her age, and I’m not that confident now. I’m not being
facetious. I’m a reporter—if I don’t interview someone, I don’t have much to say and
I definitely can’t just sit down and knock out 800 words on any subject you give me.
On a school night. With trig homework. I mean, respect. I wish there was a way to
punctuate that, so it’s like someone in a rap video. Re-spect.
“I wasn’t that confident
at her age, and I’m not
that confident now. I’m a
reporter if I don’t
interview someone, I don’t
have much to say.”
58 SEPTEMBER 2012
Tavi on ira
I can only ImaGIne how weIrd it would be for your wife to come home and say
she’s going to start working for a 15-year-old, then look up this kid online and see
photos of what looks like an 80-year-old granny wearing bag-lady layers.
There’s a line in my May editor’s letter about Sex and the City, where I reread it
and was like, “That joke’s too out there.” I considered taking it out, but you know it
was 1 a.m., so I just went with it. The next day I considered taking it out again, but
then Anaheed forwarded me an e-mail from Ira where he had just pasted that line
and wrote “Funny!” so I left it.
Talking to Ira is really interesting because he tries to refrain from saying things
that are stupid or a waste of time. Not like an obsessive dictator, but like someone
who only wants to share what he thinks could be insightful to another person, and
aside from those things, he just wants to listen to other people and not be a ham.
He likes puns and people being peculiar. Sometimes he tells a hilarious story and
when I try to retell it to a friend, I realize that whatever happened wasn’t actually
that funny or interesting, or even a
happening at all. He’s just really great
at talking.
I had always thought of business
and creativity as being totally separate, but Ira helped me to see that
they’re actually really related to one
“Like me, Ira’s
interested in stories
about normal humans
being incredible,
about magical things
happening in
places that might
seem boring.”
another. He never told me what to do
but acted as a guide, helping me figure out what I wanted, and in a way,
that’s what we want to be for readers
of Rookie. It’s not about us granting
anyone permission; it’s about letting
girls know they can grant themselves
permission. That spirit formed when Ira made me reconsider what I truly wanted
the site to be.
Ira continually has really great insights about being independent but mainstream. Like me, he’s interested in stories about normal humans being incredible,
about magical things happening in places that might seem boring.
He’s been the ideal mentor for Rookie, offering advice, support and an
understanding of what I want the site to be, but editorially, he doesn’t claim to
understand the mind of the teenage girl. After we published a post about stickers,
he was like, “Is that the name of a drug? Are you speaking in code?” So I covered a
piece of paper completely with stickers and gave it to him. I made sure there wasn’t
any white space.
Anaheed and I are working on the proposal for a Rookie book, and Ira was like,
“It needs to be a girls-punch-you-out kind of thing,” so now we just refer to the
book as the girls-punch-you-out thing. I actually do think we should call it Girls
Punch You Out Thing, just so it will follow him around forever.
Edited from Alice Gregory’s interviews with Tavi Gevinson and ira Glass.
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IDEAS & PEOPLE
untitled, n.d.
photograph by
Louise Dahl-Wolfe
A GODDESS In thE fAmILy
Diana Vreeland’s style, visionary talent and love of fantasy left an indelible mark on
fashion and the culture at large—but a more complex legacy at home
by aaron gell
One day in 1918, 14-year-Old Diana Dalziel opened her diary and began to reflect
on her long search for a feminine role model, a “perfect” girl she might choose to
emulate. The pursuit hadn’t yielded any acceptable candidates. Thus, she would try
a new tack: “I shall be that girl,” she declared.
Still, the future Diana Vreeland never quite gave up looking, and the fruits of her
search would fill the pages of Harper’s Bazaar, where she served as the fashion editor in the 1940s and ’50s and, later, at Vogue, which she steered during the hothouse
’60s, in the process introducing American women to such stylistic innovations as
60 sePtember 2012
the miniskirt, the bikini and the false eyelash. Perhaps more important, she gave
the fashion world the high-low mix that still prevails today. A well-born product
of Parisian society, she was famous for her exacting standards, directing her staff
to iron her dollar bills and Kleenex, and polish the soles of her shoes with a rhino
horn. But she was also enthralled by pop culture, palling around with Warren Beatty
and Jack Nicholson, helping to redefine our notions of beauty by featuring unconventional models like Penelope Tree and Twiggy and championing the denim blue
jean. Along the way, she became an icon in her own right, almost certainly the most
ben hoffmann (Portrait of alexander, lisa and olivia); courtesy of emi lu astor and rachel ward (black & white Portrait)
lounge act
Diana Vreeland with
her husband, Reed,
sons Frecky and Tim
and niece Emi-Lu
Astor at the Vreelands’
country house in
Brewster, New York.
untitled. n.d. Posthumous digital reProduction from original negative. louise dahl-wolfe archive. center for creative PhotograPhy ©1989 arizona board of regents
StYle
influential style arbiter of the 20th century.
“I am Diana, a goddess,” she wrote in a subsequent
diary entry, and, “therefore, ought to be wonderful,
pure, marvelous, as only I alone can make myself.”
That extraordinary self-invention is the subject of
Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has to Travel, a new documentary by Lisa Immordino Vreeland, the wife of the
legendary editor’s grandson, Alexander Vreeland. (The
film, which is being released in the U.S. this month,
was codirected by Bent-Jorgen Perlmutt and Frederic
Tcheng, the editing team behind 2008’s Valentino:
The Last Emperor.) Featuring interviews with not
only fashion insiders—like former Women’s Wear
Daily editor John Fairchild and photographer Richard
Avedon—but with Vreeland’s own sons, who remain
openly conflicted about their mother, the film presents
an intimate and layered portrait of a complex woman:
tough and emotionally distant but bearing a dazzlingly
outsize spirit and keen sense of fantasy.
“I didn’t just see her as a fashion person,” explains
Lisa, sitting under a grape arbor beside the couple’s
shingle-style cottage in Bridgehampton. “I really loved
her philosophical side.”
Vreeland offered up her prescriptions for living in
a monthly column called “Why Don’t You,” penned for
Bazaar beginning in 1936. “Why don’t you wear violet
velvet mittens with everything?” she
suggested, displaying a signature
mix of frivolity and papal decree.
“Why don’t you have your cigarettes
stamped with a personal insignia?”
S.J. Perelman lampooned the column
in the New Yorker, but he’d missed
the point: The more preposterous
the suggestions, the more liberating
the effect. Oh, why the heck not? the
column demanded of women who
were then beginning to see the possibilities being shaken loose by the
modern era—what’s stopping you?
“She was trying to teach people
lessons,” Lisa notes. “She was saying,
‘Go out there and push your life, discover things, try a different point of
view.’ I felt like that was something I
could benefit from.”
A few years ago, inspired by
Vreeland’s mettle, Lisa—formerly a
PR executive for Polo and the founder
of the sportswear line Industria—
boldly resolved to direct a film, her
first, about Vreeland’s life. At the 2011
Toronto Film Festival, it was eagerly
snapped up by Samuel Goldwyn in a
late-night bidding war.
While Lisa never met Vreeland,
Alexander, who oversaw marketing
for Ralph Lauren and Giorgio Armani
before becoming executor of his grandmother’s estate, happily shared his
own memories and insights. “She was
a wonderful grandmother, very supportive, encouraging, open-minded
familY album
Right: Vreeland
with her son Frecky
(top), his wife, Betty,
and their sons, Nicky
and Alexander.
Below: Alexander
today, with his
wife, Lisa, and
their daughter,
Olivia, at home in
Bridgehampton.
and interested,” Alexander says. He
and his brother, Nicky, now the abbot of
a Tibetan Buddhist monastery, called
her Nonina. “Of course, she was from a
generation that wasn’t really changing
diapers,” Alexander adds with a smile.
Instead, there were drives through the East End in
Truman Capote’s Jaguar, which, he recalls, had a console between the front seats that always seemed to
be stuffed with cash. “He’d open it up and say, ‘Go buy
something!’ ” There were fashionable gifts—shearling
coats, one year, for Alexander and his brother—“but
she wasn’t sitting there art-directing our lives.” And
there were Rolling Stones concerts and woozy afterparties with Mick and the boys.
Still, Alexander admits, “She was a much better
grandmother than a mother.” In the film, his uncle Tim
describes growing up wishing he had
a different mother altogether—a “nice
mom, like all my friends had.” Or, as his
father, Frecky, puts it, “She always made
it clear that she wanted us to be originals. ‘You’ve got to be either first in the
class or the bottom of the class—don’t
be in the middle.’ That’s a wretched
piece of advice to give a schoolkid!”
“My father struggled with it,”
Alexander says. “She was very busy with
her own life.”
And she became even busier. Vreeland
didn’t even begin her career until she
was 30, and the period of her greatest
influence occurred in her sixties, when
most of us are dreaming of retirement.
Her success, Alexander says, derived
not only from her perceptiveness and
creativity but from her extraordinary
discipline. During her Vogue years, he
remembers the family coming home late
from dinner and watching as Nonina
“I am Diana, a goddess,”
she wrote in her diary,
“and, therefore, ought
to be wonderful, pure,
marvelous, as only I
alone can make myself.”
61
IDEAS & PEOPLE
“She made it clear that
she wanted us to be
originals. ‘You’ve got to
be either first in the
class or at the bottom
of the class—don’t be
in the middle.’”
got right to work. “There were two light boxes on her
dining-room table and briefcases with images she
needed to look at,” he recalls. “She’d have her white
gloves on and her big wax pencil, and she’d mark in red
what she wanted to see blown up. She did not go to bed
until every image had been looked at.”
Even with that work ethic, he says, she retained her
sense of fun. “You don’t see that playfulness anymore in
the fashion world,” he points out.
In 1971, Vreeland was fired from Vogue by Condé
Nast’s legendary editorial director Alexander
Liberman. Her tastes were deemed insufficiently commercial for the times, her shoots too extravagant. Grace
Mirabella replaced her at the top of the masthead, and
Vreeland fell into a depression. “It was very difficult
for her,” Alexander remembers. “She had no money
and a lifestyle that was still very expensive. She went
into the hospital one or two times”—taking a room
at Lenox Hill to “sort of rest a bit.” Frecky called her
friend Jacqueline Onassis, who came for a visit. “After
Jackie, everyone started coming,” Alexander recalls.
“Suddenly it became a very social thing. People were
dropping by all afternoon and evening.”
Vreeland’s friends rallied to her cause: After she
landed a position as a consultant to the Costume
Institute at the Metropolitan Museum, they pitched
in to cover her salary of $25,000 per year. Vreeland’s
blockbuster exhibitions for the Met—which included
shows devoted to Balenciaga, the Ballets Russes and the
fashions of China, Russia and India—made for another
indelible chapter in a remarkable career.
Through it all, her vivid imagination remained her
greatest asset. Even in her mid-eighties, she maintained
the ability to see past the everyday and invent a more
glamorous, spellbinding reality. Alexander, who cared
for his grandmother in her final years, often accompanied her to Lenox Hill to have her emphysema treated.
On one particularly chaotic day, Vreeland wound up
spending hours on a gurney in the hallway, waiting for a
room, amid a harrowing scene: Drunks were handcuffed
to adjacent beds, screams echoed through the corridor,
bloodied patients were wheeled past.
None of it seemed to trouble Diana Vreeland. Nonina
turned to her grandson and beckoned him close. Her
narrow eyes were gleeful—she had something to say.
“Alexander, this is wonderful,” she whispered. “It’s
like the streets of Naples!”
62 sePtember 2012
age of elegance
Left: Vreeland in
Berlin in the 1960s
with her grandsons,
Nicky and Alexander.
Below: A portrait of
Vreeland painted by
William Acton.
work and plaY
Vreeland’s address
book, a 1947 issue of
Harper’s Bazaar and
galleys of stories
to be published in
the magazine.
Below: Vreeland in
the late 1940s, with
her son Tim and
husband Reed.
ben hoffmann (address book and magazines); courtesy of the diana vreeland estate (family Pictures); Portrait of diana vreeland Painted by william acton courtesy of frederick vreeland
STYLE
IDEAS & PEOPLE
REnEgaDE
scaling up
Tadashi Yanai
plans to open
“hundreds and
hundreds” of new
stores in the U.S.
THIS MAN
WANTS TO
CLOTHE
THE PLANET
Tadashi Yanai’s ambitious
expansion plans would
transform Uniqlo into
a globally dominant brand.
Meet the Japanese
mogul who intends to beat
Gap at its own game
BY SETh STEvEnSon
PhoTogRaPhY BY ERic chung
64 SEPTEMBER 2012
Tadashi Yanai, founder of The global clothing
retailer Uniqlo, is on the other end of a videoconference
screen. From his Tokyo office, Yanai-san speaks enthusiastically about Uniqlo’s innovative fabrics. “Americans
believe cotton is best,” he says, “but we’ve invented
new fabrics that will change your lifestyle.” First,
Yanai marvels over Heattech, a proprietary warmthgenerating Uniqlo cloth developed in partnership with
the Japanese company that provides carbon-fiber for
Boeing 787 Dreamliners. Next, he boasts that Airism,
Uniqlo’s cooling fabric, is “so light you don’t even
know you’re wearing it. It is the number-one must-buy
product for summer.”
I ask if he wears it on steamy Tokyo workdays.
He smiles broadly and, at that moment, the richest
man in Japan unbuttons his shirt to show me his
Uniqlo underwear.
Yanai is refreshingly open about his goals these
days: making Uniqlo the number-one apparel retailer
in the world. His target—$50 billion in yearly revenue
by 2020—will require whiplash gains above Uniqlo’s
current revenue of $12 billion, driving the company
ahead of front-runners Inditex (which owns Zara), H&M
and Gap. This swaggering ambition might ring hollow
if Yanai hadn’t already turned heads among apparelindustry cognoscenti. He established a beachhead in
the American market, opening three attention-getting
stores in New York City—including a gargantuan flagship on Fifth Avenue, the second-biggest store in the
Uniqlo empire. He lured designer Jil Sander out of
retirement for a wildly successful multi-season collaboration. And then there’s the retail environment: Yanai’s
scripted sales techniques and sleek spaces are studied
by Uniqlo managers in Japan before being spread to
markets around the globe.
Uniqlo will open two new U.S. stores this fall—in
San Francisco and New Jersey—while also launching an
e-commerce site. The company hopes to add “hundreds
and hundreds” of stores here, from coast to coast, at a
rate of 20 to 30 a year. In short, Uniqlo is vowing to beat
Gap at its own game, clothing all of America in basics
at affordable prices. Can a brand rooted in Japan—one
employing a distinctly minimalist aesthetic—become
a mainstream U.S. retail force, invading malls in the
Midwest and in Sunbelt suburbs?
Yanai thinks it can, largely because he sees zero
difference between shoppers in Manhattan and in
Milwaukee. In this sense, he draws inspiration from
a noted American minimalist: Steve Jobs, another
retail entrepreneur who had boundless confidence and
a knack for turning simplicity into chic. It’s become
almost cliché to compare successful emerging brands
to Apple, or to equate an iconoclastic business leader to
Jobs. But this is precisely how Yanai views his mission
IDEAS & PEOPLE
MORE TROUBLE FOR
RENEGADE
building on a sleepY familY apparel business that had existed since
1949, Yanai opened his first Uniqlo (shortened from “Unique Clothing
Warehouse”) in Hiroshima in 1984. Expanding steadily over the following decade, he launched strip-mall and suburban stand-alone stores
throughout Japan and, finally, breached Tokyo city limits with a Harajuku
flagship shop in 1998. Soon after, Uniqlo hit upon the product that would
transform the retailer from a ho-hum chain store into a Japanese household name: A $20 fleece jacket, in a rainbow of colors, found the sweet
spot of the recession-strapped Japanese middle class. No longer an
expensive technical fabric meant for mountain climbing, fleece could be
worn on the street or around the office. Uniqlo fleece became ubiquitous
in Japan—in the year 2000 alone, it sold 26 million. It also gave Yanai a
taste of what it’s like to leave your mark on an entire society.
But Yanai wasn’t nearly satisfied. As far back as the mid-’90s, when
Uniqlo was still a small-time regional player, he’d already begun writing memos laying out detailed plans for global expansion. By the early
2000s, convinced that the brand had conquered Japan, he began to
turn his focus overseas, to Europe and East Asia.
Yanai is a man of ruthless ambition and bold declarations, bucking
the mold of the traditional, cautious Japanese executive. Last year, he
wrote an essay for McKinsey Quarterly in which he complained that
“Japan’s biggest problems are conservatism and cowardice” and that
“Japanese businesspeople and companies are lacking in individuality.”
During our videoconference, he pleaded with me, “Please write that
Japan’s leaders must speak out. We have had 22 years of a stagnant
slump. I tell people that we must have the courage to share what we
feel, but no one follows me.”
66 SEPTEMBER 2012
The Japanese business leaders he admires hail mainly from the
technology sector—self-made men like SoftBank’s Masayoshi Son
and Nidec’s Shigenobu Nagamori. But, in general, he says, “We lack
an entrepreneurial culture in Japan.” His real heroes are Sam Walton
and Jobs, which is why he yearned to plant his flag in America—where
entrepreneurial chutzpah is a religion.
In 2005, Uniqlo landed on U.S. shores, opening a trio of
small shops in New Jersey malls. They performed poorly
and were soon shut down. “No one knew who we were,”
U.S. CEO Shin Odake says. “You can’t succeed as a casual
clothing store when you have no brand recognition; you’re
in a small, ordinary space with less than 10,000 square feet.
People need a reason to get excited about you.”
Undaunted, one year later Yanai rebooted Uniqlo in
America—this time with a 36,000-square-foot store in SoHo,
lower Manhattan’s fashion mecca. Two more New York City
locations followed within a few years: a glassy, gleaming
64,000-square-foot shop on 34th Street and another 89,000
square feet parked on a prime stretch of Fifth Avenue. The
Fifth Avenue colossus expanded a space previously occupied by Brooks
Brothers and is backed by a $300 million, 15-year lease.
“Flagship stores on high-profile streets are extremely important
to the brand outside of Japan,” says Odake. “They make a statement.
They spur word of mouth. We can attract higher-level talent. I’m not
sure Jil Sander would have worked with us back in 2005, before we
had these stores.”
When Uniqlo announced its partnership with Sander in 2009 (they
parted ways amicably in 2011, after several seasons of her +J line),
the German designer’s minimalist aesthetic was well-tailored to the
Japanese chain and became a cult favorite among fashion
cognoscenti. Uniqlo’s bread and butter is solidly made,
stylishly cut basics: oxford shirts; polos; V-neck sweaters;
unadorned denim. As the brand grows in the U.S., it has
drawn comparisons to Zara and H&M. But Uniqlo is not,
in fact, “fast fashion” (even though Yanai’s umbrella company—which has additional holdings in Theory, Helmut
Lang and the French chains Comptoir des Cotonniers and
Princesse Tam Tam—is registered under the name Fast
Retailing Co., Ltd.).
A brand like Zara attempts to chase trends, reacting
nimbly season after season. When an unanticipated minifad for purple crocheted tops emerges, Zara will scramble
to move a new item from the factory floor to store shelves
in about two weeks. Uniqlo employs a nearly opposite
supply-chain strategy: It places gargantuan orders up to a
full year in advance, allowing it to negotiate rock-bottom
costs for high-quality work. It then passes on those savings
to its customers. Because it sells wardrobe essentials, it can
count on fairly stable demand. “Our predictive planning is
very accurate,” says Odake, “so we rarely do heavy markdowns. We
don’t operate any outlets in Japan.”
This basics-not-fads approach is particularly well-suited to
America’s recessionary moment. “There are only a few categories that
women will still pay designer prices for,” says Janet Kloppenburg, an
independent retail-apparel analyst. “It’s the must-have handbag, the
best-fitting jeans in the business, the Jimmy Choos or Louboutins. No
one wants to pay up for basic underpinnings. You want to keep those
inexpensive so you can free up your budget to mix in some more expensive fashion items. Uniqlo is budget-friendly, but it doesn’t feel cheap.”
THE EUROZONE.
Yanai’s heroes are
Sam Walton and Steve
Jobs, which is why
he yearned to plant
his flag in America—
where entrepreneurial
chutzpah is a religion.
thE aRt of
folDing
At Uniqlo, clothes are
displayed according
to precise instructions
from Tokyo.
To manY indusTrY observers, Uniqlo’s “Made For All” rallying cry
and its assortment of solid-color casual wear are eerily reminiscent
of Gap. Not today’s Gap—a lumbering giant in decline—but Gap in its
2012 “MOST DEPENDABLE MIDSIZE PREMIUM CAR”
couRTESY of uniqlo (SToRE)
and himself. To him, Uniqlo is less like other clothing companies and
more like Jobs’s high-tech corporate temple: on a constant quest for
innovation, guided by a holistic vision that aims to do much more than
simply move merchandise.
Uniqlo’s creative director, Naoki Takizawa, a former Issey Miyake
chief designer, tells this story about the first time he met Yanai: “I had
been trained to imagine specific customers when I designed an item—
their demographics, their income levels, their lifestyles. But Yanai-san
said he didn’t want a fashion designer who defines target customers.
‘Leverage your competence for the mass public!’ he told me. It’s why
he made Uniqlo’s slogan ‘Made For All.’ He wanted me to think about
the Apple iPhone, which wasn’t made for a certain customer but was,
instead, about creating a perfect product. It’s for everyone. It’s effective and reliable. But its design scheme still gives it strong branding.
He wanted me to achieve the same thing with clothes.”
— J.D. POWER AND ASSOCIATES
Things just got more challenging across the pond. According to a recent J.D. Power and Associates study, the
Genesis was ranked “Most Dependable Midsize Premium Car,” outperforming more expensive European
luxury vehicles. Which to us means only one thing: European sovereignty over these matters is officially over.
The Hyundai Genesis received the lowest number of problems per 100 vehicles among midsize premium cars in the proprietary J.D. Power and Associates 2012 Vehicle Dependability Study SM. Study based on 31,325 consumer responses measuring problems consumers experienced in the past 12 months with three-year-old
vehicles (2009 model-year cars and trucks). Proprietary study results are based on experiences and perceptions of consumers surveyed October-December 2011. Your experiences may vary. Visit jdpower.com. Hyundai is a registered trademark of Hyundai Motor Company. All rights reserved. ©2012 Hyundai Motor America.
IDEAS & PEOPLE
RENEGADE
68 SEPTEMBER 2012
uniqlonEs
The sun never sets
on the empire.
Clockwise from top
right: Flagship stores
in Paris, Shanghai,
Beijing and New York
(5th Avenue).
more than 800 stores, some of the brand’s luster has been worn away
by strip-mall locations and humdrum atmospheres. The Japanese slang
term “Unibare” is meant derisively, applied to someone caught, embarrassingly, clad in one of Uniqlo’s ubiquitous core items.
Fit is another possible hurdle. Uniqlo’s cuts are ideal for Japanese
bodies, but the brand will likely need to tweak its designs to outfit a more
rotund slice of the American populace. This is a surmountable obstacle:
Cutting and sewing are the last steps in the apparel-manufacturing
process. Uniqlo can still order those same high-quality fabrics well in
advance and adapt its sizing to an average American shopper.
For now, Uniqlo’s American invasion is all systems go. The San
Francisco store opening this fall will be 29,000 square feet over three
floors. The Garden State Plaza store in New Jersey—Uniqlo’s first tiptoe back into a U.S. mall after its failed 2005 foray—will be an imposing
43,000 square feet. U.S. CEO Odake has hinted that Uniqlo might run
its entire global e-commerce platform from the U.S., where tech talent
is abundant, and he openly suggests that he’d like to replace himself
with an American executive to head up operations here. In a symbolic
move, Yanai declared earlier this year that English is Uniqlo’s official
corporate language.
In May, Uniqlo appointed a slightly surprising brand ambassador:
Novak Djokovic. The tennis player would seem at first glance to be a
spokesman more suited to endorsing a sports brand like Nike or Adidas,
rather than a casual-wear brand like Uniqlo. But he provides instant
global visibility of a sort Yanai craves. What’s more, while Djokovic is
also constantly jockeying for supremacy with fierce competitors, he’s
already notched a signature accomplishment Yanai-san envies: He’s
reached number one in the world.
couRTESY of uniqlo (SToRES)
heyday, the late ’80s and ’90s, when its pocket tees and pleated khakis
costumed the planet.
“Gap was rooted in the American lifestyle,” says Yanai. “It was
wanted by people. I purchased a lot of Gap clothes. But today there is
nothing to be intrigued by. You don’t feel any excitement.” As for Gap
subsidiary Banana Republic? “It was like a European luxury brand
that was reinterpreted for America and made affordable. But now you
don’t feel that luxury anymore and, at the same time, it’s gotten more
expensive.” With Old Navy—the low-cost
corner of the Gap triumvirate—there is
a sense that the designs lack focus. (Gap
declined to comment for this article.)
Creative director Takizawa feels that
if there’s one thing Uniqlo can steal from
Gap’s dusty playbook, it’s the genius for
merchandising that Mickey Drexler, former CEO of Gap, now at J. Crew, once
brought to the brand. “It was just simple clothes, a T-shirt. But he called it a
‘pocket tee’ and made it an item of desire.
There would be a store window with only
white pocket tees one week and then
all different colors the next. There was
excitement about the stores.”
Uniqlo has managed to return excitement to the apparel store. Though its
clothes are basic, its retail spaces are
novel and edgy, with sleek lines, wideopen expanses and flashing video
monitors. Uniqlo painstakingly curates its displays, taking orders
straight from Tokyo. It stacks items high and fans out an impressive
range of colors. Racks and shelves are impeccably neat, squared off,
shipshape. Service is pinpoint attentive, modeled on Japan’s more formal attitude toward retail transactions. Credit cards are handed back
to customers with both hands, with a touch of pomp. Greetings are
dictated by central headquarters and recited like mantras. Store managers from around the world are all flown to Tokyo to receive several
months of indoctrination at Uniqlo’s global training academy.
The upshot: “It’s almost like an Apple store,” says Kloppenburg. “It’s
a high-tech environment you might associate with a more prestigious
product. They treat customers with low and moderate incomes in a
way they might not be accustomed to.”
At present, Uniqlo enjoys a singular niche in the New York marketplace. Its affordable
clothes are tinged with
hipness, stemming from
the brand’s Japanese provenance, limited American
availability and Manhattan
gloss. If there’s a challenge
still to be met, it’s that the
brand’s vow to achieve an
enormous American presence will eventually force
it to expand beyond urban
centers and prime nuggets
of real estate. When your
footprint is 200 to 300
stores, each venue can’t
be an eye-popping flagship destination. In Japan,
where Uniqlo has blanketed the countryside with
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PLACES & THINGS
maKing iT
amazing grace
Designers Maria Grazia
Chiuri and Pierpaolo
Piccioli stand in front
of the inspiration
boards for their fall
collection at their
studio on the Piazza
Mignanelli, in Rome.
All the lAdies
Valentino’s fall collection is
a poetic nod to a select group
of freethinking women.
A look at the muses
who inspired the fashion
W W 1 HEUR E SAU TAN T E PINK GOL D · Wit h power re s er ve · L imited edition of 50 pie ce s · w w w. bellros s .com
BY meenal mistrY
photographY BY Danilo scarpati
Spend enough time backStage at fashion shows, and
you become fluent in inspiration speak, the language
designers throw around to characterize their new
clothes: “uptown eccentric”; “downtown lady; “Navajo
princess meets Ibiza raver”; “Edie Sedgwick meets Edie
Beale.” With the nonstop churn of the industry’s gears,
the descriptions fly at a dizzying pace until they become
more than a bit meaningless. But something about the
references for Valentino’s fall collection requires slowing down and savoring. The buzzwords that designers
Maria Grazia Chiuri and Pierpaolo Piccioli use are
more conceptual—folk, roots, identity—but they’ve
brought their ideas to life with specific images: 19thcentury portraits of Eastern European women in their
embroidered finery; Patti Smith; Maria Callas; Louise
Bourgeois; Joyce Carol Oates; and Susan Sontag,
to name a few. They are strong-browed, smart and a
bit untamed.
For Chiuri and Piccioli, women are the “protagonists of our collection.” About their fall muses, Piccioli
says, “These are women with their own lives—they are
very individual. Their beauty is linked to their talent.
It’s a different idea of beauty.” Chiuri adds, scarcely
missing a beat: “In the past, Valentino was only one
idea of beauty. We believe it’s about the person, not
just her face.”
You could see hints of their muses on the runway. They chose Smith because they had recently
73
PLACES & THINGS
NORMAN SEEF (SMITH & MAPPLETHORPE); TED THAI/TIME & LIFE PICTURES/GETTY IMAGES (BOURGEOIS); PETER HUJAR SUSAN SONTAG, 1975,
GELATIN-SILVER PRINT, IMAGE: 14 3/4 X 14 3/4 INCHES; 38 X 38 CM. SHEET: 19 3/4 X 15 7/8 INCHES; 50 X 40 CM.; FIRSTVIEW (RUNWAY SHOTS)
MAKING IT
74 SEPTEMBER 2012
INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY
The embroidered crew
neck evokes the sensual
and earthy explorations of
sculptor Louise Bourgeois
(pictured, above, in 1983).
This short midnight-blue
jacket, right, attempts to
convey the cool confidence
of Susan Sontag (pictured,
below, in 1975). Far right:
The designers’ inspiration
board and sketches for the
collection, up close.
© THE PETER HUJAR ARCHIVE, COURTESY OF MATTHEW MARKS GALLERY
WHAT’S IN A FACE
Above: A mood board
at the Valentino studio,
featuring Charlotte
Rampling, Penelope Tree
and Callas, among others.
The designers saw
Bourgeois’s art
and her “femininity
and sensuality”
in their rustic
fisherman’s sweater
embroidered with
tiny sparkling beads.
NANCY R. SCHIFF/HULTON ARCHIVE/GETTY IMAGES (NEVELSON); SAN MARCO/BFI (CALLAS); FIRSTVIEW (RUNWAY SHOTS)
EXOTIC INTERPRETATION
A calvary wool coat channels the
rich Byzantine-style textiles worn by
American sculptor Louise Nevelson
(pictured, above, in 1980). Below:
The short-sleeved tulle top with
beaded embroidery reflects the
dramatic opulence of Maria Callas in
the 1969 film Medea.
THE ARTISTS’ MUSE
Left: The androgynous
organza blouse and
leather culottes
capture the energy
of Patti Smith,
and her undefinable
relationship with
Robert Mapplethorpe.
read her memoir, Just Kids, and were
fascinated by the undefinable quality of the relationship she had with
Robert Mapplethorpe. They could
envision her in a vaguely androgynous
white shirt in organza and cotton with
black leather culottes. “The shirt is very
male and female, but it’s very fragile,”
Piccioli says. “Darkness done in an elegant
way.” The designers saw Bourgeois’s art and
her “femininity and sensuality” in their rustic
fisherman’s sweater embroidered with tiny
sparkling beads—all black but teeming with
texture. They took a light hand with their references so that the clothes felt of our moment,
distilling a longing for pieces that are intelligent,
poetic and also a little tough.
The Italian duo, who took over the house in
2008, sees their task less as a reinvention of the elegant
Valentino DNA and more of an evolution. For fall, a puffsleeved Chantilly lace dress looks traditionally sweet,
but the floral embroidery is actually heavy wool, almost
like an exoskeleton. Their take on the fur coat is a patchwork of the most luxurious astrakhan: mink, velvet and
goat fur. Janis Joplin would have loved it.
They also played with subtle shifts in proportion, punctuating each style with low-heeled
Mary Janes—a refreshing break from the ubiquitous (and obvious) teetering stiletto. They call
the style the Tango. Even their long-sleeved, highshouldered evening dresses are cut high at the
ankle to show off the shoes. “It gives you a different
kind of confident walk,” Piccioli says. “It’s like a
dancing shoe, to go until the late hours—or dancing your whole life.” No doubt, their liberated muses
would approve.
75
JIL SANDER
PLACES & THINGS
DesigN
gabriella crespi
Clockwise from left: The Z desk, (also,
below), circa 1974, in Aerin Lauder’s
dressing room; an extendable coffee table
made of wood, covered in brass, from the
’70s; a pyramid table lamp, circa 1970.
CuE THE ’70S
Long maligned, and now
deeply covetable, design
pieces from the 1970s offer a
welcome mix of louche styling
and refined luxury—and
are a slick counterpoint to
almost any room
76 SEPTEMBER 2012
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With its shag carpeting, macramé curtains and conversation pits, ’70s interior design has suffered a bad
rap, much the same way as have many of that decade’s
offerings, ephemera and ideas. However, the era was,
in fact, an especially fertile and inventive one for
furniture design, with experimental exercises in highconcept craftsmanship sweeping the globe.
The best pieces of decorative arts and furniture
from that time are a curious mix of aggressive and
neutral, showy and shy. Even the most
radical, exuberant flights of fancy have
a hint of formal restraint—clean lines,
elemental geometries, spare expanses
of glass and metal. Today, with the distance of time and the style for mixing
pieces from different periods, much of
the furniture from the ’70s feels like just
the thing to give a room a little kick.
At the time, political upheaval,
such as the May 1968 youth protests
in France and the leftist agitations
throughout Italy, had liberating consequences for designers. The strain of
social emancipation, though, did not
result in democratic, affordable-forthe-people product, as was the case
SiMon uPTon/ThE inTERioR aRchivE (dRESSing RooM); couRTESy PhilliPS dE PuRy & coMPany (fuRniTuRE)
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PLACES & THINGS
pierre pauliN
From top: The Face
a Face sofa from
the late ’60s; the
designer’s Elysée
Palace sitting
room for Georges
Pompidou; a 1973
Groovy chair.
FraNÇois-Xavier
aND clauDe
lalaNNe
From left: Yves
Saint Laurent’s living
room includes a
Lalanne bar and
sheep; a bronze and
copper mirror from
1974; a marble dove
chair, also from ’74.
78 SEPTEMBER 2012
couRTESy PERiMETER
COURTESY
PERIMETER aRT
ART & dESign
DESIGN (Sofa);
(SOFA); ©hEnRi
©HENRI BuREau/SygMa/coRBiS
BUREAU/SYGMA/CORBIS (PalacE);
(PALACE); aRTifoRT/gRoovy
ARTIFORT/GROOVY chaiR/PiERRE
CHAIR/PIERRE Paulin
PAULIN Rdi;
RDI; fRancoiS
FRANCOIS halaRd/TRunk
HALARD/TRUNK
aRchivE
ARCHIVE (aPaRTMEnT);
(APARTMENT); chRiSTiE’S
CHRISTIE’S iMagES
IMAGES LTD.
lTd. 2012 (MiRRoR);
(MIRROR); PaScal
PASCAL CHEVALLIER/THELICENSINGPROJECT.COM
chEvalliER/ThElicEnSingPRojEcT.coM (dovE
(DOVE CHAIR)
chaiR) © 2012 aRTiSTS
ARTISTS RighTS
RIGHTS SociETy
SOCIETY
(aRS),
(ARS), nEw
NEW yoRk/adagP,
YORK/ADAGP, PaRiS
PARIS (lalannE)
(LALANNE)
with mid-century modernism. Rather, a concurrent
rebellion against industrial production meant that
designers were able to envision one-offs that verged on
fine art. In France, Maria Pergay rendered sculptural
forms in painstakingly handworked stainless steel,
drawing out metal’s liquid quality. Pierre Paulin created elegantly voluptuous seating for the Palais
de L’Elysée. In Milan, Gabriella Crespi experimented with architectural, unadorned shapes
such as her Z desk, a zigzag of brass-sheathed
wood. Italian collaboratives, like Archizoom and
Superstudio, made witty one-liners that verged
on pranks (the palm-tree-shaped floor lamp)
alongside more refined riffs on modernism.
Americans like Paul Evans and Wendell Castle,
meanwhile, focused on giving the craft a decidedly organic and upscale spin.
In turn, collectors began to be receptive to
the idea of mixing aggressive contemporary design
with more classical pieces. Henri Samuel, decorator to society fixtures like the Rothschilds and the
Vanderbilts, audaciously paired Philippe Hiquily’s
brass and plexiglass armchairs and daring creations
by short-lived collective Atelier A alongside 18thcentury antiques and Persian carpets. In his Rue de
couRTESy
COURTESY of
OF wRighT
WRIGHT (TiER
(TIER TaBlE);
TABLE); couRTESy
COURTESY PhilliPS
PHILLIPS DE
dE PuRy
PURY & COMPANY
coMPany (CLOUD
(cloud TABLE);
TaBlE); PHOTO
PhoTo BY
By JACOB
jacoB KRUPNICK,
kRuPnick, COURTESY
couRTESy DEMISCH
dEMiSch DANANT
dananT (COMMODE);
(coMModE); PHOTO
PhoTo BY
By THIERRY
ThiERRy DEPAGNE,
dEPagnE, COURTESY
couRTESy OF
of DEMISCH
dEMiSch DANANT
dananT
(inTERioR);
(INTERIOR); douglaS
DOUGLAS fRiEdMan/TRunk
FRIEDMAN/TRUNK aRchivE
ARCHIVE (living
(LIVING RooM);
ROOM); © 2012 aRTiSTS
ARTISTS RighTS
RIGHTS SociETy
SOCIETY (aRS),
(ARS), nEw
NEW yoRk
YORK /adagP,
/ADAGP, PaRiS
PARIS (PERgay
(PERGAY and
AND RougEMonT)
ROUGEMONT)
DESIGN
MARIA PERGAY
Clockwise from top:
A 1968 stainless-steel
and copper triple-tier
table; an amethyst
Flying Carpet daybed;
a stainless-steel
commode from 1972.
GUY DE
ROUGEMONT
Left: Cloud table
in plexiglass and
brushed aluminum,
circa 1971, in
Delphine and Reed
Krakoff’s living
room (also, below).
Babylone duplex, Yves Saint Laurent commingled Art
Deco masterpieces with surrealist commissions from
husband-wife design duo François-Xavier and Claude
Lalanne. Zoomorphic seating brought whimsy to his
library, while an installation of botanical-inspired
mirrors blossomed across his music room.
The period’s streamlined style also made it easy
for decorators to assign pieces to satisfy functional
needs. “Henri Samuel used ’70s furnishings to fill
in gaps, things like large coffee tables and lighting—accoutrements for our modern lives,” says
20th-century furniture dealer Liz O’Brien, who notes
that prices have been slowly rising over the last
decade. Today, a Pergay one-armed Banquet daybed can fetch $120,000 at auction and
a Crespi coffee table, $35,000. This
notion of the practical avant-garde
hints at the decade’s most intriguing legacy: a blend of fantasy and
pragmatism that celebrated both the
handcrafted and the industrial without
quite kowtowing to either extreme. The
most buzzed-about designs embody
myriad contradictions and conceptual
fixations while still being wonderful to
live with. How very radical.
79
PLACES & THINGS
FA S H I O N
THE NEXT BIG THING
IS HERE.
GIRLS WILL
BE BOYS
© 2012 Samsung Electronics America, Inc. Samsung and Galaxy S III are trademarks of Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. Screen image simulated.
Still subversive after all these
years, borrowing from
the opposite sex is sometimes
the most radical, carefree
and confident approach to
getting dressed
By Katie Roiphe
photogRaphy By Julia hetta
Styling By hanneS hetta
“This is The besT advenTure!” the scandalous writer
Vita Sackville-West wrote about the exhilaration of
dressing as a boy she called “Julian” in 1920. “I never
appreciated anything so much as living like that with
my tongue perpetually in my cheek.”
Dressing like a man is the refusal of obvious sexiness
for a potentially more potent other kind of sexiness.
Think, for instance, of Jean Seberg in Breathless, with
her cropped blond hair and oversize man’s buttondown shirt—her lanky boyishness holds its own kind
of sexual fascination. In other moments, with long hair
and a glamorous dress, Seberg may be more classically
pretty, but she is less alluring. “What is most beautiful in virile men is something feminine,” Susan Sontag
says. “What is most beautiful in feminine women is
something masculine.”
Even in our pleasantly postfeminist era, in which
pretty much everyone wears jeans, the predominant
image of a fashionable, dressed-up woman is still a feminine one: heels, dresses, makeup. A fully elaborated
tomboy aesthetic is still noticeable, still a thing, still, in
certain contexts, a statement of some kind.
Part of the charisma of this aesthetic is that it draws
attention to the ways in which the tomboy is not masculine. The playfulness, the theater of it, lies in the
not-boyness of the tomboy.
It’s also a statement of confidence. The style is a rebellion against trying too hard—the usual effort, the more
blatant forms of man-pleasing. Tomboyism involves not
courting male attention in the obvious ways, but, rather,
assuming it, knowing it’s there and doing whatever you
want: It telegraphs independence, seriousness and freedom. It projects the idea or illusion that you are dressing
for yourself.
There is also the idea in tomboyism that you have
chosen comfort over flirtation, ease over fussiness, a
button-down shirt you’ve grabbed off the floor over a
skirt you can’t sit on the grass in. One always knows with
a tomboy: She is wearing shoes she can run away in.
80 SepteMBeR 2012
Fendi jacket
Charvet shirt
Cerruti tie and
Céline pants
The Samsung Galaxy S® III
/SamsungMobileUSA
PLACES & THINGS
FASHION
Chloé coat
MaxMara sweater
Alaïa leggings and shoes
Wolford socks and
Devi Kroell clutch
82 SepteMBeR 2012
MaxMara jacket
Chloé sweater
Reed Krakoff pants
Cole Haan shoes and
Alaïa gloves
83
Valentino coat
Bottega Veneta sweater
and pants
Charvet shirt
Wolford socks and
Bally shoes
For details see
Sources, page 130.
haiR By toMohiRo ohaShi @ ManageMent+aRtiStS, uSing BuMBle and BuMBle; MaKeup By hiRoMi @ Julian WatSon agency, uSing chanel; Model: daiane/FoRd ModelS; caSting: dReW daSent at daniel peddle caSting; photogRapheR aSSiStant: SacSha; aSSiStant StyliSt: leiSa StecheR
S P E C I A L A D V E RT I S I N G F E AT U R E
f e s t i v e
WINES
f o r
Ecco Domani Pinot Grigio and Moscato: Classic Varietals from Italy
by jeff morgan
L
ooking for something to celebrate the return of cool, fall weather? Try Pinot
Grigio or Moscato from Italy, the home of these classic Italian wines. Ecco Domani
makes two of the best.
Ecco Domani takes its name from the trendsetting
design scene in northern Italy and Milan (the words
ecco domani mean “here’s tomorrow” in Italian). Not
far away are the vine-studded hillsides that produce
grapes for Ecco Domani winemaker Fabrizio Gatto.
He crafts them into bright-textured, easy-drinking
white wines. “My goal is to make wines that are
‘fruit-forward’ and food-friendly,” Fabrizio says.
Both Pinot Grigio and Moscato have deep
roots in Italy. In fact, Moscato is believed to
be among the oldest grape varieties in the
world. Moscato-based wines have been
enjoyed for literally thousands of years,
and the varietal’s heady aromatics —
redolent of peaches, apricots and mandarin
orange — without a doubt enhanced
the drinking pleasure of early Roman
connoisseurs. These ancient wine lovers
carried Moscato vine cuttings with them
during their travels throughout neighboring
Mediterranean regions and farther north as
well. They planted the vines and shared their
culture of wine with the local inhabitants.
Much later, Moscato was also transported to
the New World.
True to its origins, Moscato is now grown
in most major Italian wine regions, and its
fruit-forward fragrance has made it the fastest
growing wine varietal in America. Stylistically, the
wine can range from dry to sweet or sparkling to still.
More often than not, Moscato has a hint of effervescence
to highlight its lush, tropical fruit flavors. In a new twist on
this old varietal, Ecco Domani has bottled its Moscato in
a distinctive, iconic blue bottle — one that will please the
eye as much as the wine pleases your palate.
Pinot Grigio, a relative of the red Pinot Noir grape,
doesn’t have quite the ancient ancestry of Moscato. But it
has been grown in Italy’s northeast “Tre Venezie” region
for more than a century and enjoyed by generations
of Italians who value its fresh fruitiness and bright
acidity. Sometimes Pinot Grigio grapes are light blue
in color and sometimes they are a delicate pink. During
fermentation, however, the juice is separated from
the skins before it takes on any color at all. The
resulting white wine is prized for the ease with
which it pairs with fresh, light foods. It’s no wonder
so many Italians love Pinot Grigio!
Americans have also discovered Pinot Grigio’s
virtues. It is among the most popular imported wines
in the U.S. Ecco Domani Pinot Grigio, which
first arrived in America in 1996, is now the
number one Pinot Grigio served in restaurants
throughout the nation. With its floral and
tropical fruit aromas, elegant flavor and crisp
acidity, it makes a most refreshing libation.
Like Moscato, a glass of chilled Pinot Grigio
is a perfect drink to kick off a gathering of
good friends.
Ecco Domani Pinot Grigio and Moscato
showcase the classic characteristics of these
two excellent Italian white wines. In northern
Italy, the growing season is marked by warm
summer days — which hasten ripening and
the development of fruit flavors — and cool
evenings — which conserve essential acidity
in the grapes. This balance of fruit and
freshness is what makes Italian Pinot Grigio
and Moscato so enjoyable.
Pairing Food and Wine
With its fresh, fruity taste, Moscato makes
a perfect aperitif without food accompaniment at all —
and Pinot Grigio can also stand alone prior to dinner.
However, both wines pair beautifully with any number of
dishes, ranging from appetizers to main courses.
Matching wine with food is really quite easy. As those
trendsetting designers in Milan would say, it’s all about
style. Bright, fresh flavors on your plate pair well with
bright, fresh flavors in your glass. What could be more
simple? The natural acidity in both Moscato and Pinot
Grigio balance the natural oils in savory dishes as well.
This same acidity refreshes the palate and invites us to
have another bite of the food we are enjoying. And dishes
with a touch of heat and sweetness are complemented by
the vibrant, fruity notes found in both Moscato and Pinot
Grigio. It’s a perfect match! (For pairings and recipes, visit
www.eccodomani.com.)
This fall, treat yourself to a feast of flavors. Every great
meal calls out for a great wine — one that complements
both the food and the setting.
Italian Table Wine, ©2012 Ecco Domani USA, Healdsburg, CA. All rights reserved
facebook.com/eccodomani
84 SepteMBeR 2012
f a l l
CAMPAIGN FINANCED ACCORDING TO EU REGULATION 1234/07.
SEPTEMBER
28
PhotograPh: katja rahlwes
NEW YORK
ISTANBUL
SEOUL
PARIS
the FAShION eFFect
88 our gilded age
94 christian louboutin in the garden
104 istanbul at a crossroads
112 high-volume coats
120 the clubbiest home; the homiest club
FASHIONABLY LOUD
AND INCREDIBLY
BAROQUE
After seasons of stark minimalism,
there’s an unapologetic exuberance
in the air, including gilded gold,
jewel-tone brocades, black lace, capelets
of feather and an endless stream of silk scarves
Previous page: Tom Ford dress, La Bagagerie Paris gloves and stylist’s own scarf. This page: Oscar de la Renta gown,
Viktor & Rolf cape, Vivienne Westwood gloves and earrings and Moschino bag. Opposite page: Jason Wu blazer,
Barbara Bui shirt, Dolce & Gabbana earrings, Salvatore Ferragamo clutch and stylist’s own scarf
P h O T O G R a P h y B y K aT J a R a h LW E S S T y L I N G B y S a B I N a S c h R E D E R
89
Lanvin dress and gloves, chanel necklace,
J. Mendel cape, Bottega Veneta bag and Mykita & Kostas Murkudis sunglasses
Dolce & Gabbana cape, blouse, shorts and earrings
and chanel Fine Jewelry watch
91
DiGitAL teCHniCiAn: JeReMY PiLAin @ iMAGin PARiS; PHoto ASSiStAnt: ViRGiLe BieVHY; StYLiSt ASSiStAntS: ALine De
BeAUCLAiRe & JULiAne LeHMAnn & nAtASHA DeVeReUX; MAKeUP ASSiStAnt: AYA MURRAi; PRoDUCtion: PRoDUCtion PARiS
Dries Van Noten jacket and shirt, Dior necklace, Mercura sunglasses,
La Bagagerie Paris gloves and Giuseppe Zanotti boots
Model: Daphne Groeneveld/Supreme Management, Hair: Alessandro Rebecchi at ArtList
Makeup: Kirstin Piggott at Julian Watson Agency, using Rimmel, Casting: daniel van skye @ artform group
For details see Sources, page 130.
Ralph Lauren collection feather cape and pants, Dries Van Noten blouse,
chanel necklace and earrings, Sonia Boyajian necklace and chanel Fine Jewelry watch
93
THE
COLLECTOR
Christian Louboutin’s home in
the French countryside is an exotic
showcase for his far-flung treasures—bearded iris, Egyptian furniture,
Persian remnants and now a vast archive of his prized shoe designs
housed in a rustic
barn in his garden
the shoes Fit
Louboutin in his archive,
decorated with pressed
flowers from the garden.
Opposite: An alley
lined with iris and fruit
trees leads to a fountain
in the walled garden.
b y d a n a t h o m a s P h o t o g r a P h y b y a l e x a n d r e b a i l h a c h e P r o d u c e d b y c a r o l i n a i rv i n g
rench shoe designer Christian Louboutin
F
is a scavenger. During his constant globetrotting adventures, he collects, well, everything: Egyptian sofas, English farm chairs,
feathers from the Amazon, African masks,
Brazilian mid-century anything, Damascene
tiles and so on. He squirrels these away in a warehouse
in Paris, which he visits regularly, like going to see old
friends. When it’s time to decorate yet another residence—he has five now, in Paris, Portugal, Egypt, Los
Angeles and the French countryside—he rummages
through his treasures, looking for just the right pieces.
Nearly all of the decorative pieces in
Louboutin’s home were purchased on impulse.
“I prefer buying things and figuring out where to
put them later than regretting not buying them.”
Nowhere is this approach more apparent than in
the shoe archive the designer completed this spring
at his home in the Vendée region of France. Housed
in an oak barn on the grounds of the Château de
Champgillon—the regal 13th-century manor he shares
with his longtime friend and original co-backer Bruno
Chambelland—8,000 pairs of his vertiginously heeled
creations, spanning his 20 years as a designer, fill row
upon row of shelves. To frame the collection, Louboutin
has placed searchlights from the Suez Canal (picked
up in Cairo and at the Paris flea markets), Syrian columns purchased at auction, two Aztec-like totem poles
from Mexico City and a pair of Indian rococo columns
found in a Paris antiques shop. Each of these decorative
flourishes was purchased on impulse. “I was thinking to
myself, I can use them somewhere,” he says. “I prefer
buying things and figuring out where to put them later
than regretting not buying them.”
The shelving in the archive is decorated with botanicals from his garden that have been pressed by a local
artisan. The walls are lined with photographs, including a collaboration with his friend David Lynch of nudes
wearing extreme fetish shoes that Louboutin designed
and Lynch shot. He plans to hire a curator to run the
place and wants the collection to be available to students and researchers; eventually, it may open to the
public. There is space for 14,000 pairs of shoes, which
means 100 more a season for the next 10 years. “Then I
will add more buildings,” he says, “or I will retire.”
Louboutin, who is 48, knew he wanted to design shoes
since he was a boy growing up in the 12th arrondissement
in Paris. He doodled them in his books, ogled them at the
Folies Bergère (where he worked as an intern) and boldly
responded to any nosy adult who asked what he wanted
rustic charms
The sofa, chairs and
table in the orangerie
are from 1910 and
were found in Cairo.
96
97
Louboutin’s garden is a
constant source of design ideas.
“It allows me to see blends
of colors, juxtapositions of
gloss and matte surfaces.”
Paradise Found
Topiary towers over hanging
wisteria in the garden.
Below: The house as
seen from the front lawn.
Opposite: The curved
stairwell in the entry hall.
to be: “A shoe designer!” When he received a book of
legendary shoe man Roger Vivier’s work, Louboutin was
bowled over: “How amazing,” he thought to himself.
“You really can make a living designing shoes!”
Louboutin dropped out of school at 16, traveled to
Egypt and India, hung out at the famed Paris nightclub
Le Palace and put together a portfolio of designs, which
he took to various couture houses, looking for a job. He
landed an entry-level spot at Charles Jourdan, which
produced shoes for Dior.
In 1988, he met Vivier and helped put together a retrospective of his work at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs
in Paris. Louboutin so loved working for Vivier that once
it was over he felt he could never work for anyone else
except himself. He launched his company rather haphazardly in 1992, when his friend, the antiques dealer
Eric Philippe, mentioned that a neighboring shop in the
Passage Véro-Dodat was available for rent. Louboutin
took the space, then designed and produced shoes to fill
it. Two months in, a fashion writer was in the shop and
overheard Princess Caroline of Monaco gushing about
the shoes. After an article appeared mentioning this,
Louboutin was on the fashion map.
Over the years, Louboutin’s designs have triggered a
near mania for his shoes: Jennifer Lopez has sung about
them; despite her Sex and the City character’s love of
Manolo Blahnik’s shoes, Sarah Jessica Parker chose
Louboutins for her wedding; Victoria Beckham wore a
towering pair of Louboutin platforms, while very pregnant, to Prince William and Kate Middleton’s wedding;
afterglow
Sunset in the garden
casts a golden light
on a Judas tree in bloom.
Below: Peonies about
to bloom share the
shade of an apple tree
and Euphorbia characias.
onstage, Dita Von Teese wears only his stilettos—“I tell
him my shoe fantasies,” she says, “and I let him sketch”;
and romance novelist Danielle Steel is said to own 6,000
pairs and has been known to buy 80 at a time. “The thing
I always try to remember is that feet are attached to
the leg, and that you must prolong the silhouette,” he
explains. “The shoe elongates the leg and does it discreetly. The goal is to get people to look at a woman’s
legs. It’s all about the leg.” He pauses. “No, it’s not about
the leg. It’s about the woman.”
ouboutin’s hallmark—the red sole that
L
gilded glory
In the living room,
the Louis XV mirror
and marble-topped
table were bought
at auction.
winks with each step—came to him in a sudden burst of inspiration as he was designing
his third collection: Seeing an assistant painting her nails red, he took the polish, applied
it to the sole of a shoe and instantly fell in
love. (Next year, he will launch a cosmetics line, a
project inspired by the phenomenon of “Louboutin
manicures”— black on the top, red on the underside—a
style popularized by the pop star Adele.)
Lately, he has been mired in a lawsuit over his signature look: Louboutin is suing the Yves Saint Laurent
company, which is owned by PPR Group, for copyright
infringement for producing red soles. Of the ongoing
case, he says, “It’s my trademark. For two months I said,
‘Fix it,’ ” and nothing happened. Then they tried to kill
me by saying I can’t own a color. But they own colors for
their makeup and the red-and-green stripe for Gucci.
It’s very much a double standard.” (Representatives
from YSL declined to comment.)
Louboutin’s design ideas often come in sudden
bursts and, as with his interiors, they come from
everywhere: sari ribbons picked up in India; macramé
“There are few plants that
are ugly. It’s how you use
them that may not be pretty.”
well-heeled
Left: Examples of
Louboutin’s signature
red-soled heels.
Below: In the archive,
the mirrored
“basin” on the floor
was modeled on the
Canopus pool
in Hadrian’s Villa,
near Rome.
sandals inspired by African handicrafts; motifs sparked
by Egyptian Coptic crosses, the architecture of Oscar
Niemeyer or details in Lucio Fontana’s paintings. The
inspiration for his famous toe cleavage—or décolleté—
shoes came to him when he saw an old photo of Princess
Diana dancing with John Travolta at the White House.
“She was wearing these really bad English shoes and
they showed half her toes,” he told British Vogue. “It
looked tacky, but so good somehow. She had that naughtiness and it was appearing subconsciously.”
A constant source of ideas is his garden in the French
countryside. He learned about botany during the roaming years of his youth, when he worked as a self-taught
freelance landscaper. “The garden allowed me to see
colors, blends of colors and materials, juxtapositions of
gloss and matte surfaces—it was highly instructive,” he
says in Christian Louboutin, a book celebrating his 20th
anniversary, published by Rizzoli. “Still today, if I close
my eyes I don’t see satin combined with velvet; I see
the thickness of a pansy, which is deep purple bordered
with white, set against the texture of another plant, and
this combination gives me my colors.”
Even the shoe archive was unplanned; the idea for
it came serendipitously when a business acquaintance
“who loves fashion” came to his office on the Right Bank
and asked to see his inventory. The designer escorted
the man to the basement to have a look. “The first box
I opened was a Chinese brocade shoe trimmed with
mink,” Louboutin recalls. “And the shoe was completely
eaten. The man started screaming at me: ‘You have to
be responsible! All this work is beautiful, and yes, it
belongs to you, but it also belongs to fashion history.
It means something. So protect it properly!’
“It suddenly became evident,” Louboutin explains.
“Necessity creates everything in my life. It was necessary to protect the work of a great part of my life.”
Louboutin spends spring and fall weekends and the
month of August at his home in the Vendée, puttering
about in his garden—it’s become his haven, a place his
mind can wander for design ideas as he pulls weeds.
“The magnolia leaf is like patent leather,” he notes,
“and it always looks beautiful with a deep purple, like
prunus purple. There are few plants that are ugly. It’s
how you use them that may not be pretty.”
“When we got this house 25 years ago, there was
nothing,” he says. “Bruno and I decided to put in a
central alley and discovered a fountain under a pile of
overgrowth.” Eventually the sweeping fields behind
the archive will undergo a major intervention by
Louboutin’s boyfriend of 14 years, celebrated French
landscape designer Louis Benech.
Today Louboutin’s company is a global corporation
with 55 stores world-wide and five new men’s stores
on the way—in London, New York, Los Angeles, Dubai
and Tokyo. In May, he was honored with a retrospective of his work at the Design Museum in London—a
two-month-long show that broke the museum’s attendance records, with 38,000 visitors by mid-June.
“Never did I think that I’d be celebrating 20 years in
business,” he says. “I was always thinking about the
greener Pastures
Feathered visitors
strutting in the
garden. Above: A view
into the barn housing
the archive.
next day, not even the next season.”
It’s all part of what Louboutin calls “growing organically”: never forcing things, just following one project
to the next and on and on—a philosophy instilled in
him by his father when he was a boy. “My father, who
was a cabinetmaker, told me, ‘Wood has a grain and if
you go into the grain, you have beauty. If you go against
it, you have splinters—it breaks,’ ” he says. “And I took
that as my view of life. You have to follow the grain—
to be sensitive to the direction of life. I never had the
dream to be a great designer. My focus was just to do
beautiful things.”
103
DREAMING
in
OTTOMAN
Poised between East and West, the modern and
the ancient, secular elitism and Islam,
Istanbul is nurturing a thriving international arts
scene, a growing prosperity and a newfound cultural
awareness that taps into its storied past
call to prayer
Right: The interior of
the Sakirin mosque,
which opened in 2009.
Opposite: A view of the
Bosphorus from the
Bebek neighborhood.
“If the Earth was a single
state,” Napoleon once
said, Istanbul “would be
its capital.”
b y l aW r e n c e o s b o r n e p h o t o g r a p h y b y a n d r e s g o n z a l e z
104
never acted on: “If the Earth was a single state,” he
said, Istanbul “would be its capital.” The Romans,
apparently, thought likewise.
The mood of the city that the Ottomans called “The
Abode of Happiness” today feels quite Napoleonic
in that sense (gone, too, are the loathsome tanneries). Walking into the historic neighborhood of
Bebek on a warm night, struggling through lanes
jammed with girls in fringed boots and convertible
BMWs, past the outdoor frolics of the restaurant
Kitchenette, one passes the billboards on Arnavutköy
Caddesi upon which the latest soap operas are advertised. They are often historical costume dramas—a
bit like The Tudors but in Ottoman garb. The biggest so far is the garish Osmanli (the Turkish name
for the Ottomans) and the extraordinarily terrible
Magnificent Century, about the life of Suleiman the
Magnificent. Hugely popular, these series are little
more than national propaganda. The smash movie
hit of the winter was Fetih: 1453, a celebration of
Mehmet II’s conquest of Constantinople. Fetih is
Turkish for “conquest,” and the film has become
something of an international hit—incredibly, it was
showing in Paris this summer.
Magnificent Century’s décor, meanwhile, is undeniably brilliant. The textures, the color scheme of the
Ottoman heyday, are rendered perfectly, as they are in
Gülgün’s house, and this meticulous re-creation of the
moment of Ottoman supremacy feels like a perfect
judgment of the national mood by the show’s producers. You will often hear from citizens that in the 1970s
the country was backward and insignificant, whereas
now it is the fastest-growing economy in both Europe
and the Middle East—the pride simmers just under
the surface, a paradoxical pride in the defunct empire
spawned by the sometimes brutish, reckless race to
development. During a recent dinner party on the
island of Büyükada, we looked over at the glaring
city of skyscrapers spread across the far horizon
of dark waters and one of the youngish guests, who
had grown up on the island, said that when he was
10 years old that same horizon had been completely
dark. “They built it just as quickly as the Ottomans
built their Istanbul.”
“We are bored of bloodless
internationalism,
of imitating the West in
everything. We are
finally, dare I say, going
back to our roots.”
T
EATIME IN ISTANBUL IS NoT ofTEN a
Proustian moment. It is hardly Proustian
at all, in fact. But in the palatial home of
Serdar Gülgün in Cengelköy, on the Asian
side of the Bosphorus, that precious
adjective earns its keep. The slender,
boyishly elegant Gülgün arrives at the door of his house
on the fancifully named Feyzullah Street dressed in bluevelvet tasseled slippers and matching socks. The street’s
name, he explains at once, is almost a joke—his house
was built by an exiled Hungarian officer in the 1850s, a
man who took on the pseudo-Oriental name of Feyzullah.
“It’s a perfect symbol of our dear Istanbul, is it not? East
and West and back again—ah, but not quite!”
Gülgün switches from English to French to Turkish,
twirling a perfect, almost Dalinian moustache and
pointing out that the stuffed lion upstairs wears a tiara
“just for fun.” He is an interior designer who consults
for the Turkish fashion house Vakko and is well-known
among Istanbul’s glittering social elites. He guides me
past the pool house and summerhouse and garden into
the ground floor of the restored mansion, which has
been his labor of love for more than 10 years. Here one
finds the traditional Ottoman layout of nine rooms on
either side of a vestibule—this one resplendent with
the enormous mother-of-pearl Syrian mirrors that the
Istanbul upper class loves.
“You may think,” he says as we climb to the secondfloor sofa (“living room” in English, though we have
borrowed the word for its most typical furniture),
“that this is a rather old-fashioned project of mine.
I have re-created an Ottoman-era house. Even the
106
woodwork inside the walls is Ottoman in technique.
But, in fact, it is typically contemporary. Twenty years
ago, no one in Istanbul restored anything. This kind
of house—it’s entirely of the present moment. We are
bored of bloodless internationalism, of imitating the
West in everything. We are finally, dare I say, going
back to our roots.”
The sofa was in a crucifix formation, while its ceiling was shaped like a yurt, a nomadic Turkish tent.
Thus the Ottomans, Gülgün explains, liked to combine
Christian and nomadic influences. Sitting there with
glasses of tea and tahini cookies, among mounted tortoiseshells and 18th-century Murano chandeliers with
the original chipped glass violets, one might think that
the Ottoman spirit of playful syncretism has returned
at long last—yet in a knowing arch form that suits the
city’s current mercurial mood.
When we think of Istanbul, we think of two things
that are, in theory, glaringly incompatible: There is
the rejuvenated metropolis of art festivals and sceney
galleries, the world of wealthy art patrons and of
Vakko itself, which helps sponsor the yearly Istancool
arts and culture festival—attended this May by the
likes of filmmakers Zoe Cassavetes, Chiara Clemente
and Mark Romanek—and then there is the growing
Islamization incarnated by Prime Minister Recep
Tayyip Erdogan, with its purported reactionary desire
to turn away from the West and its evil ways and back
toward the Middle East, which Turkey dominated for
centuries. Do these two disturbingly opposing tendencies, I ask Gülgün, collide in contemporary Istanbul?
“Yes and no. It’s not quite as simple as that. Istanbul
turkish revival
The living room—or
sofa—top left, of
interior designer
Serdar Gülgün’s home
adjoins a bathroom,
top, and a sitting
room, in which
Gülgün is pictured.
is a curious city, a bit of a playground, a paradise for
foreigners like yourself. You can pick and choose what
you want. It’s a string of villages, and you can live
in whatever village you like. Some villages are religiously conservative; others are wild. That is what I
love about this city. You have the choice.”
Although I’d been coming to the city on the
Bosphorus for years with my parents, the metropolis to which I moved about a year ago bore almost
no resemblance to the one I had known back then. In
the far-off 1980s, the stench of the city’s tanneries
could reach the inside of an approaching aircraft’s
cabin as it passed over Bulgaria. There wasn’t an art
installation or an international menu in sight. And
yet wandering with sweaty guidebooks among the
monuments of Fatih and Sultanahmet—lost inside
the Sunken Palace—the sublime Sokollu Mehmet
Pasha mosque and the blue dreaminess of the Rüstem
Pasha, I was always aware of the strange Napoleon
quote, which the Emperor had, for some reason,
gilt trip
Above: An antique
lantern hangs in one of
Gülgün’s sitting rooms.
The dome ceiling of the
adjacent living room,
visible through the
doorway, is shaped like
a yurt, a reference to
the Ottomans’ nomadic
past. Right: A view
of Istanbul’s historic
Galata neighborhood,
once home to the
financial center of the
Ottoman Empire.
T
frame by frame
Above: The gallery
space in photographer
Ahmet Ertug’s studio,
where his own work
hangs on the wall. Right:
Ertug in his studio.
108
URKEY WAS VIoLENTLY SECULARIZED
by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk after the abolition of the Ottoman Empire in 1922.
Arabic script was effectively banned,
which means that when a Turk goes to
the beautiful cemetery at Eyüp he or she
cannot read what is written on a great-grandparent’s
tomb. Until 1829 graves were topped by a figure of the
dead person’s turban—between then and 1925, his fez.
But after 1925, the graves had no headgear at all. Ataturk
required Turks to wear brimmed hats, and this rule
extended to gravestones—no Arabic, no turbans, no fez.
It’s a small example of the way the country was
forced to renounce its own past. In the last decade,
Istanbul has become cool, hip and international—with
new museums like the Istanbul Modern and the conversion of the Tophane, Selim III’s armory building,
into an art space—but it has not solved the underlying
unease of its relationship to the past. Ezgi Esma Kurklu,
a young Turkish friend who is a screenwriter for the
satirical TV show Heberler, puts it this way: “When we
import foreign culture we festivalize it—we put it in a
ghetto. But what really grips us is ourselves. The country is moving back to its Ottoman subconscious—we
have been schizophrenic for far too long.”
That subconscious is palpable in subtle, hardto-describe ways. One could find it in one of the
now-revived Sufi dervish lodges, or tekkes (such as
the Nureddin Cerrahi Tekkesi, the dervish school of
the 18th-century saint Pir Mehmed Nureddin, located
in a gritty corner of Karagümrük), which were banned
until recently and are now flourishing all over the city.
Or one could, at the other end of society, find it in a
magnificently restored mansion owned by the great
Istanbul photographer Ahmet Ertug, whose studio
is in one of the old backstreets of Beyoglu (the house
once belonged to three Levantine sisters
whose ghostly faces adorn the stairwell). Ertug’s grandiose photography
explores both the Greco-Roman and the
Ottoman past and his photographs are
the ones you see inside Hagia Sophia.
He was also the head of a committee in
the ’70s that oversaw the rejuvenation
of the old city—it pedestrianized Istiklal
Caddesi, Istanbul’s Oxford Street—and
paved the way for the city’s current
renaissance. He has seen it grow from a
grimy, provincial tourist city in the ’70s
to what it is now: a metropolis swinging
giddily between brash new wealth and a
revived but ancient cultural awareness.
“Istanbul is at a crossroads,” remarks
Ertug, sitting among his antiques,
carpets and immense collection of handbound books. “We’ve modernized but
now we suffer, like so many others, from
amnesia.” He looks slightly sad but also
curiously determined. “And yet there’s
this yearning among people for something deeper—something more than
conceptualist installations and art parties. This is an unimaginably great city,
maybe the greatest of all the cities of the
past. But what are we doing with it? Are
we living up to it?”
“Hasn’t the population,” I offer, “grown from 4.5
million to 15 million in the space of 30 years?”
“Exactly the problem,” Ertug responds. “And it’s
grown rich.”
Owing to Turkey’s thriving economy, with 8.5 percent annual growth (at least until last year), Istanbul
now boasts almost as many billionaires as London or
Moscow, and many more than Paris. Hence the vast
shopping malls, like Akmerkez and Kanyon, the luxury
gym culture and the obsession with status. Indeed, for
all the city’s historical gravitas—its melancholy, its delicately haunted quality—it feels once again like a showy
link in the great chain of European selfamusement, which is what it was in the
late 19th century. Its luminous beauty, and
its equally luminous cuisine, has helped
that image. It would be hard to imagine subtle new restaurants like KarakÖy
Lokantasi or Mikla in the city I knew as
a juvenile tourist, eating little more than
kebap and ayran. New places open every
year, making Istanbul a gourmand’s playground as well, a place where the art
of eating, while not cosmopolitan, has
reached a kind of everyday perfection.
The preeminent platform connecting Istanbul to the wider world in recent
years has been the international arts
and culture organization Istanbul ’74,
founded in 2009 by Demet MuftuogluEseli and her husband, Alphan Eseli, who
also created Istancool. One night in late
May I went with the Istancool crowd on
a cruise from the Four Seasons Bosphorus
to the Asian village of Kandilli. I noticed,
among the Cassavetes and the Romaneks,
the Turkish actresses Meltem Cumbul and Pelin Batu,
the latter wearing an outrageous hat that looked like a
botanical experiment.
On the windswept top deck, meanwhile, I fell
into delightful conversation with Ayse Kulin, one of
Turkey’s best-selling novelists, and as we sailed past
Arnavutköy and the Rumeli Hisari castle built by the
Fatih Sultan Mehmet, then passing under the sweeping
bridge named after him, Kulin observed that this magical view—presumably familiar to both Alexander the
Great and Byron—was not the whole picture.
“The developers are destroying this city as fast as
they can,” she said. “You would not believe how much
art lovers
Left: The founders
of the arts and
culture organization
Istanbul ’74, Demet
Muftuoglu-Eseli and
her husband, Alphan
Eseli, at home.
spinning on air
Above: Istanbul’s
vast Kanyon Mall, a
symbol of the city’s
new prosperity. Left:
Whirling dervishes
performing at the
Hodjapasha Culture
Center in Sirkeci.
109
reflected glory
Left: The living
room of Zeynep and
Metin Fadillioglu’s
home. Metin, below,
owns the restaurant
Ulus 29, opposite.
they have obliterated already. I suppose we are all asking ourselves how we can hold on to what is precious.
But that is always the dark side of economic success:
the vandalism.”
Indeed. Whenever I take a taxi home from the city
center to Etiler, I pass along the otobahn through an
Alphaville landscape of Trump Towers, kiddy-neon
malls and Carrefour Express supermarkets. It is vast
in scale. And this mall-city is ever expanding. All over
the city, historic buildings are either being demolished or turned into supermarkets and condos. And,
yet, a few streets down from the tourist icon of Galata
Tower, ancient alleys tumble down to the Golden Horn
in a decayed and unlit grandiosity, untouched, it would
seem, since about 1840—such is Istanbul’s gift for mad
contradiction. A vandalism of neglect vies with a vandalism of obsessive development.
From the Suna’nin Yeri restaurant in Kandilli, however, not much vandalism could be seen. The waters
flowed past the tables and their carafes of raki, the lilacs
were in bloom and the mosques were in full song with
the adhan, the call to prayer. The old life of the Asian
Bosphorus—with its ramshackle palaces and gardens
and rose nurseries—its slow riverine pace, seemed
alive and well. In contrast to Kulin, Muftuoglu-Eseli’s
attitude about Istanbul’s ever-changing landscape was
sweetly confident: “I think Turkey has done everything
right: We made democracy work in the Middle East; we
made a modern economy work in the Middle East; we
liberated women; we even have one of the world’s top
biennials, along with Venice and São Paulo. There is
110
tension, but we’ll overcome it.”
A few days later I had dinner at one of
the city’s most desirable nightspots, Ulus
29, on top of the Ulus hill overlooking the
Bosphorus. The restaurant is owned by
entrepreneur Metin Fadillioglu, who is
married to one of Istanbul’s most prominent architects, Zeynep Fadillioglu.
Zeynep created Les Ottomans hotel and
was the first woman in history to design
a mosque: the Sakirin in Istanbul. They
are one of Istanbul’s unmissable couples.
Metin, or so he says, has tried to create a new kind of restaurant with Ulus 29.
Zeynep designed it and it has a proper
wine list (the French sommelier came
over and quietly explained, in grieved
tones, how hard it was to get decent foreign wine because of the Islamic-inspired
alcohol taxes). We drank a bottle of
Rioja Alta—astonishing to see a top
Spanish wine in an Istanbul restaurant—
and Zeynep says that, in her mind, the
tensions between the urban elite and
their plush lifestyles and the Islamic-led
government (and, for that matter, the mostly devout
masses) could not be brushed under the carpet.
“Urban elitism was always the problem in this
country. Istanbul is not a bridge between East and
West—it’s a bridge between two versions of the East.
The secular Kemalist elite lorded it over everyone else,
and that could not go on. So the Islamic element had to
be admitted into the picture eventually. It’s an inevitable process. But we have evolved too far to become
some kind of Islamic state now. It’s too late. Look
around you.”
Indeed, the gilded youth of Istanbul in their Italian
clothes were sitting under huge windows through
which the lights of Asia and the Bosphorus shone,
drinking, like us, bottles of Rioja Alta. This is not Egypt,
nor even Lebanon.
“What we are seeing, really, is the inevitable converging of two Turkish societies: rural, Muslim Anatolia and
elite, intellectual, secular Istanbul,” Zeynep says. “It’ll
be a bit tense for a while.” A new kind of city is emerging: Muslim and global at the same time, but without
the Disney quality of Dubai. Wasn’t that exactly what
the Ottoman city was like?
“Yes. But back in the ’80s I understood this only by
going to the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. I
saw all the Iznik tiles, and I thought, This is what we
have to go back to. And we are.”
But who knows what all of this means to ordinary Istanbul people. Yet another night I went to The
Museum of Innocence in Cukurcuma—Orhan Pamuk’s
delightfully demented monument to his own novel of
designing
Woman
Zeynep Fadillioglu,
left, designed the
interior of the Sakirin
mosque, below, the
first ever conceived
by a woman.
“Turkey has done everything right:
We made democracy work;
we made a modern economy;
we liberated women;
we even have one of the world’s
top biennials. There is
tension, but we’ll overcome it.”
the same name. It was, to my surprise, much less insipid
than the book, perhaps because the idea behind it was
so megalomaniacal and so interestingly obsessive. In
the novel, the protagonist, Kemal, collects everything
that his adored Fusun touches—a thousand everyday
objects that are assembled here. But the museum is
not just a personal endeavor; it is supported by the
Istanbul 2010 European Capital of Culture Agency. It
is, therefore, a part of Istanbul’s official cultural fabric.
As two elderly women from the neighborhood in zipup boots wandered around the exhibition—staring at the
walls covered with text and thousands of cigarette ends
displayed behind plexiglass (Fusun is an avid smoker )—I
overheard them remark about having never been inside
a museum before. The old soda bottles, lottery tickets
and newspaper clippings had them sourly perplexed.
“It’s amazing,” one of them said in a whisper. “It
looks just like the inside of any old house. It’s no
big deal.”
“So that’s what museums are like,” the other said,
and they nodded together in grave satisfaction and disappointment, not to mention a whiff of contempt.
And yet it seemed apt. Pamuk’s love story is about
upper-class Turks in the ’70s caught between their
Western lifestyles and a culture that they rule but to
which they do not entirely belong. In Istanbul today,
that struggle—emotional, cultural and political—has
only grown larger in scale, more irresolvable and yet
more fruitful. It’s a city whose brilliance is strangely
provincial, and whose fussy introspection is set in a
landscape of matchless imperial openness and grandeur. “What city is more beautiful?” I always think as I
cross the Bosphorus Bridge late at night—the Topkapi
and Hagia Sophia lit in gold on the horizon, the palaces
of the late sultans strung out along the shore. And yet
what city is more exquisitely inscrutable even to its
own people?
111
DIOR coat and
THAT FLOWER SHOP
headpiece.
Opposite: HERMÈS
coat and top
The best new coats are voluminously surreal.
But with neat, clipped lines, they’re also strikingly serious
Photogr aPhY bY ben toms st YLIng bY robbIe sPencer
113
HAIDER
AcKERMAnn cape,
coat, top and trousers,
bALEncIAgA
earrings and JAnInA
PEDAn headpiece.
Opposite:
JIL SAnDER coat
EMPORIO ARMAnI
coat, VIKTOR &
ROLF pants and
JAnInA PEDAn
headpiece. Opposite:
cHAnEL coat,
MARc JAcObS jacket
(under coat), skirt,
pants and socks and
PRADA shoes
HAIR Syd Hayes
at premierhairand
makeup.com
MAKEUP Hiromi at
Julian Watson Agency,
using Chanel
CASTING Edward Kim
at The Edit Desk
MODEL Franzi
Mueller/IMG
Set design by Janina
Pedan & Ksenia Pedan
For details see
Sources, page 130.
Photo assistant: amy Gwatkin; DiGital assistant: DaviD Beech, Rokas DaRulis; stylist assistants: elizaBeth FRaseR-Bell, shawana GRosvenoR; haiR assistant: michelle GaRwooD; set assistant: amy sticklanD; liGhtinG: stuDio PRivate; Post-PRoDuction By: stuDioPRivate.co.uk
neIL barrett coat
and that FLoWer
shoP headpiece.
Opposite: comme
Des garÇons
jacket and skirt and
marc Jacobs shoes
LIKE HOME
OnLy
BETTEr
Since the 1960s, the Birley name has been
synonymous with the most atmospheric and exclusive
clubs in London. Now, Robin Birley is bringing
his family’s exquisite personal taste to a
new members-only establishment.
Here, his haunt and home
T
hat is just a blaze of glory, Tom. I think we should
have that. It’s like an English bedouin tent!”
Robin Birley is standing in his new club, 5 Hertford
Street. He’s surrounded by overlapping Oushak rugs
that are being unrolled by porters wearing navyand-white-striped aprons. Tom is Tom Bell, one of
London’s most low-key and highly talented interior and set designers. He’s recently returned home after having spent the last 10 years
living in New York working on ad campaigns for Hermès and Jil
Sander, as well as on photo shoots for a number of Vogues. The two
are choosing rugs for the various bars and sitting rooms on the second floor of the club. Watching Robin’s distinct eye at work—casting
over his collection of pictures hanging cheek by jowl, the comfortable sofas and soft lighting—is to witness what makes a Birley club
a place people flock to: an impossibly chic home away from home.
It’s been five years since Mark Birley, Robin’s father, sold his
empire for $200 million to Richard Caring—the billionaire businessman who has been acquiring most of London’s leading restaurants
and clubs. The group included the world-famous Annabel’s, Mark’s
Club, George, Harry’s Bar and The Bath & Racquets Club, a gentlemen’s gym. When Birley Sr. first opened Annabel’s in 1963, named
after his then-wife, Lady Annabel Birley, no one expected the extraordinary success that lay ahead. For one, the members-only establishment was created in the basement of the Clermont Club on Berkeley
b y r i ta ko n i g P h o t o g r a P h y b y j a m e s m e r r e l l ( C l u b )
a nd rol a nd be aufr e (home)
in the Club
Left: Robin and
Lucy Birley in one of
the dining rooms at
Loulou’s, decorated
by Rifat Ozbek.
Above: The club’s
entrance hall.
121
Square, which was owned by a friend of the Birleys, John Aspinall. “It
was a huge, empty space like an air-raid shelter with kitchens at the
back,” says Lady Annabel, who remarried the late Jimmy Goldsmith.
But from the outset, the club was a hit. “Everyone was there, from
the Kennedys to the royals,” she says. “Teddy, Jackie and Bobby—
there were actors, singers, Shirley Bassey, Frank Sinatra. Mark and
I gave a big party on opening night; everyone gate-crashed—the
American ambassador brought Peter O’Toole. It was jammed. I just
thought, Oh my god, this is the greatest disaster! People, like Drue
Heinz, were squashed to the floor! Once the crowds melted away, the
actors and actresses gone, the last people on the dance floor were me,
Mark, Jimmy [Goldsmith] and Sally [who later married Aga Khan]—
strangely.” The key to Mark’s ongoing success was his innate ability
to create the most effortlessly glamorous environments. He would
travel to France and bring back delicious chocolates to serve after
dinner. The glasses were bought on shopping trips in Venice. He covered the walls of Harry’s Bar with Fortuny fabric and thought little
of the cost. Mark, who died in 2007, had that rare skill of combining
traditional good taste with the unexpected. None of his clubs ever
fell prey to the run-of-the-mill propriety that bogs down so many
other establishments.
Birley’s Knightsbridge apartment
is jam-packed with art.
When the walls are too full
to hang another, the art is stacked,
sometimes three deep, on the floor.
r
obin has inherited his father’s keen eye. Buying and
hanging pictures is one of the things the Birleys do
best. Robin’s own apartment in Knightsbridge is jampacked with art. When the walls are too full to hang
another, the art is stacked, sometimes three deep, on
the floor or even against, say, a drinks tray. Now that
he has Hertford Street, Robin has taken many of his pictures over
to the club and has hung them there. An enormous drawing of his
dogs by his sister, India Jane, used to hang over his bed, but that has
since moved to one of the small dining rooms in Mayfair. At home,
Chaos theory
Left: The drawing room at
Robin’s Knightsbridge
apartment. A self-portrait
by his grandfather, Oswald
Birley, hangs among vintage
Italian photographs and
other Birley family portraits.
The self-portrait is now in
the entrance hall at the
club. Right: Robin with one
of his whippets, Chester.
of Art Deco–East Village graffiti. Robin recalls realizing Ozbek was
the right man for the job when the two were flipping through Tony
Duquette books at the designer’s apartment. “He showed me all
these fabrics and I loved his flat, I loved him, I loved the way he loves
color—that he hadn’t decorated before and he’s a party animal!”
Robin says. Ozbek describes the bar as Afro-Deco. The walls are hung with a
beige, rather tribal Fortuny fabric, and the Bagués wall lights that
line the room have feathered headdresses wedged behind them. The
bar itself has an under-lit agate counter that’s flanked by a pair of
Casa Pupo porcelain leopards—a late 1970s byword in bad taste and
a complete triumph in this room. Lucy serves as the musical director of Loulou’s, which has a highly lacquered, glittered dance floor. “I
wanted music that you would dance with your father or son to, as well
as your own generation,” she says. “If my boys and their friends are
there, it needs to have music that they will want to dance to.” (She
has four handsome sons from her previous marriage to Bryan Ferry.)
One of the dining rooms, painted blue with enormous swags and
tassels, is inspired by the 19th-century Russian painter Leon Bakst.
Beyond that lies an arched corridor, old coalholes that are now a
row of cozy booths designed to resemble Romany caravans. The
arches are painted with wide stripes in hot, spicy colors that Ozbek
describes as a circus stripe. One of the dining rooms is inspired by
all things
Considered
Clockwise from top
left: A detail of the
mantelpiece, with
a photograph of
Margaret Thatcher
that Robin asked
her to sign, a puffer
fish and a taxidermy
rabbit, which was a
gift from his wife;
a drinks tray, with a
picture of a huntsman
that now hangs at
Hertford Street;
Robin’s bedroom, with
a large oil painting—
the artist is unknown.
the sitting room feels slightly Russian. A pair of paisley cotton curtains at the window hangs from brass rods with lawn under-curtains.
The whole place is calm and extremely comfortable. When a visitor
arrives, Robin’s housekeeper brings in a tray with coffee and fresh
orange juice. The oranges, Robin explains, are kept in the refrigerator so the juice will be cold when squeezed. This small indulgence
will be repeated at the club.
“It’s a business fueled by emotion and will be a work in progress
for many years,” Robin says of Hertford Street and its downstairs
nightclub, Loulou’s. The project has included many friends and family
members, including Rifat Ozbek, Jane Ormsby-Gore, Isabel and Julian
Bannerman and Robin’s own wife, Lucy Birley, who collaborated with
him on the art collection. The club is comprised of 10 Georgian town
houses that span an entire block of Shepherd Market, a beautiful and
quiet quarter in the middle of Mayfair. The narrow streets feel rather
secret and, for years, have been best known for their brothels: Part
of Hertford Street was previously a well-known establishment called
Tiddy Dols—one of the “girls” is still rumored to be living upstairs.
Loulou’s, named after Robin’s glamorous cousin, the Yves Saint
Laurent muse Loulou de la Falaise, is the sparkling jewel of the whole
place. Like Annabel’s, it takes up most of the basement, which has
been transformed into a theatrical fantasy by Ozbek, the Turkish
fashion designer and an old friend of Lucy’s. After walking through a
glossy oxblood front door, members and their guests descend a spiral
staircase with a velvet-bound banister rail. The walls are lined in dark
mirrors hung with antique brass sconces in the shape of magnolias. A
chandelier from a 1930s casino hangs in the well of the staircase.
Ozbek was given free rein downstairs—which is rare in the Birley
world—and the result is a singular vision of madcap originality. In
the bar’s seating area, patrons are rather eccentrically greeted by a
stuffed giraffe in one corner and a pair of Manolo Blahniks, mounted
like a hunting trophy in a glass box. The walls are painted in a sort
the Marchesa Casati. Interiors, and particularly those of restaurants, have become so self-consciously designed that to be in such a
flamboyant, fin de siècle, decadent space is strangely liberating. One
can’t help envision Gigi sashaying through the tables, the whole of
Maxim’s falling silent.
Upstairs, and throughout the two floors that make up Hertford
Street, the mood is decidedly calmer and lighter. What one notices
immediately is the utter professionalism with which the place is
run. Many of the 50-person staff have known Robin for more than
20 years. “Whether you are changing a lightbulb or making a soufflé,
everything must be done by professionals,” Robin says.
Though he has, undoubtedly, led a life of privilege, Robin has seen
his fair share of adversity. When he was 12, he suffered an unimaginable accident. During a weekend trip to Howletts—the animal park
owned by Aspinall who, along with running his own businesses, was
a well-known private zookeeper—Robin and his brother, Rupert,
were allowed into one of the tiger’s cages. The tigress attacked Robin
family room
Above: Robin and
Lucy often share their
bed with their seven
dogs. The drawing
of his whippets,
by Robin’s sister, India
Jane, now hangs in
the club. Framed seed
packets run along the
ceiling. Left: Robin’s
nightstand with a picture
of his grandmother,
Rhoda Birley, propped
behind a lamp.
The cartoon behind
the photos was
bought at auction.
125
“I loved his flat, I loved the
way he loves color,
that he hadn’t decorated before and
that he’s a party animal!”
Robin says of Rifat Ozbek.
1527
members only
Clockwise from top left:
The portrait over the
fireplace, off the courtyard
at Hertford Street, is of
Robin’s aunt, Maxine de
la Falaise, as a girl; a sneak
peek at the gents, with
toilets by Thomas Crapper;
the screening room at the
club; images of Oswald’s
portraits of kings, Gandhi,
Churchill and other
prominent subjects line a
corridor—the whisky bar
is in the distance.
as his mother looked on in horror. Despite his terrible injuries and
the 50 or so operations that followed to rebuild his face, Robin has
never given in to self-pity. He started working at a very young age,
entering the hospitality business at 21, when he opened his first
Birley Sandwiches in London’s financial district. Now 54, there are
12 shops and 15 more are expected to open over the next two years.
Robin joined his father in 2003, when he took over operations at The
Annabel’s Group. He ran the clubs with his sister until shortly before
they were sold in 2007. I
t’s not until someone sits down in one of Hertford Street’s
deep armchairs and orders a cocktail that one realizes how
relaxing the place is. Order anything on the menu and it will
be delicious. There is no such thing as social Siberia at a Birley
club, since they don’t let anyone in that they don’t like. Robin
will not give away any members’ names, as discretion is one of
the cornerstones of any Birley establishment. But one can’t help but
imagine decorator Nicky Haslam having a gossipy lunch with Lee
Radziwill or Mick Jagger, depending on his mood; Robin’s halfsister, Jemima Khan, might be sitting at another table, quite possibly
night life
Left: Ozbek in the
courtyard, which
was designed by
Isabel and Julian
Bannerman. Right:
A detail of the
Ozbek-designed bar
at Loulou’s, which is
flanked by Casa
Pupo leopards. The
top of the bar is backlit agate and the
front is stamped
leather. Every stool
is a different velvet
or woven silk.
with her Oscar-winning documentary film producer boyfriend,
John Battsek; a smattering of London’s increasingly international
set of well-dressed Mayfair hedge-fund managers and art dealers
at another; or perhaps a clutch of those terribly chic ladies who
used to lunch at Harry’s Bar or George—fabulous legs, Louboutins, soft
power suits and Kelly bags—and now find themselves at Hertford Street.
While sitting with Robin in the library having lunch, there is
a constant stream of friends passing through. Dave Ker, one of St
James’s leading art dealers, plunks down. He is full of excitement
about the club, having just left a lunch with David Tang, owner of
The China Club in Hong Kong and considered by many to be the
Chinese incarnation of Mark Birley. “Tang said one word about this
place: ‘Faultless!’ ” Ker says. The two then enter into a serious conversation about dogs. Robin hardly ever parts from his five whippets, and Lucy has her own pair of border terriers. When asked if
members are allowed to bring their dogs to the club, Robin says,
“Yes, they can, but I’d like to have a look at the dog first. I don’t
want a whole load of golden retrievers in here. They are frightfully
annoying dogs.” It’s reassuring to know the membership vetting
extends to animals.
127
so surreal
The central seating
area at Loulou’s.
The walls are painted
with a Basquiat–meets–
Art Deco graffiti.
T
he heart of the club, which is laid out like the most
comfortable home, is a large sarcophagus fireplace in
the courtyard. It was created by the Bannermans—Britain’s “It” gardeners. The courtyard was inspired by the
Soane Museum, with patchworks of ancient artifacts
on the walls and two colossal hanging baskets filled
with Jurassic geraniums overhead. There are café tables for lunch on
sunny days, but the real draw is for those who want to enjoy a drink
and a cigarette—or, more likely, a cigar—at the same time, which is
quite a rarity these days.
Off the courtyard is the Ladies Bar, where Marco is in charge. He was
the head barman at Harry’s Bar for 26 years and makes the best Bellini
in London. The room is very feminine, as its name might suggest.
The walls are oyster grey and the front of the bar itself is encrusted
with shells. The bar leads to the dining room, which was decorated
by interior designer Jane Ormsby-Gore. (Another one of Robin and
Lucy’s old friends, she is also reputed to be the subject of the Rolling
Stones song “Lady Jane.”) A mixture of soft watercolors, pictures of
dogs and some old St. Moritz advertising posters from the ’30s hang
on the pale-grey-paneled walls. An Oswald Birley portrait of Robin’s
aunt, Maxine de la Falaise, as a girl rests over the fireplace. The room
is bathed in soft light and has the feel of a Henry James novel. Because
Shepherd Market is set back from the clatter and toot-toot of London
traffic, it gives Hertford Street the feel of being somewhere far from
the brashness of everyday life.
While the pictures at Hertford Street are quite different to those
at Annabel’s and Mark’s Club—which were mostly portraits of the
family and their dogs—it is the arrangement of the pictures and the
fireplaces in almost every room that make this place feel so incredibly
welcoming. Across the hall from the Ladies Bar is its masculine counterpart, the whisky bar. Paneled in oak, the room has the feel of the
Hemingway Bar at the Ritz Paris combined with some chic refuge in
the mountains. From this bar you can see into the courtyard straight
out toward the open fireplace. Off the courtyard is the sampling room,
devoted to selling and smoking cigars.
On the first floor, there is another bar; this one has a counter cut from
a very thick slab of tumbled grey marble. Brian Silva, who manages all
the bars, has 18 recipes just for Negronis. The chef himself presses the
tomato juice for the Bloody Marys, and the ice comes from a 32-kilo
block that’s brought to the club in tremendous chunks, as needed.
Toward the end of Mark’s life, around the time of the sale of his
clubs, father and son fell out over a financial misunderstanding. Robin
was largely cut out of Mark’s will and subsequent contention ensued
between Robin and his sister, India Jane. It leaves one wondering why
he would want to take up Mark’s legacy and follow so closely in his
father’s footsteps. Robin’s response is simple: “I missed everything
about it—the food, the pictures, the people, every one of Pup’s clubs
was like a home.”
This is precisely what Hertford Street feels like: a homecoming, not
just for Robin but for the people he missed—both the members and
the staff. It’s a place where one can sit under a pleasing painting, on
something very comfortable—a roaring fire nearby, a delicious drink
in hand. As Tom Bell says, “It is everything you can’t get anymore.”
129
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pump, $2,580, louisvuitton.com;
Pomellato ring, $9,610, 800-2546020; Devi Kroell clutch, $1,500,
devikroell.com; H. Stern earrings,
$5,200, hstern.net; Tod’s purse,
$29,000, tods.com; Tom Ford Beauty
lipstick, $48, Bergdorf Goodman
Market report: news
Pages 38-42
Page 38
Louis Vuitton Haute Joallerie necklace,
cuff and ring, prices upon request,
vuitton.com
Page 40
Armani Privé necklace, cuff and ring,
prices upon request, 212-988-9191;
Ralph Lauren Fine Jewelry earrings
and cuff, prices upon request,
ralphlaurenjewelry.com
Page 42
Bottega Veneta buckle bracelet,
$62,800, crochet bracelet, $27,000,
cuff, $26,200, and ring, $46,800,
bottegaveneta.com; Gucci
bracelet, $5,000, and ring, $11,550,
guccijewelry.com
girls will
be boys
Pages 80-84
Pages 88-93
Page 88
Oscar de la Renta gown, $8,490,
Saks Fifth Avenue; Viktor & Rolf
cape, $1,790, Mameg LA; Vivienne
Westwood gloves and earrings, price
upon request, viviennewestwood
.co.uk; Moschino bag, price upon
request, moschino.it
Page 89
Jason Wu jacket, $4,810, Saks Fifth
Avenue; Barbara Bui shirt, price
upon request, barbarabui.com;
Dolce & Gabbana earrings, $495,
dolcegabbana.it; Salvatore Ferragamo
clutch, $1,290, 800-628-8916
Page 90
Lanvin dress, $5,250, and gloves,
$865, 646-439-0380; J.Mendel
cape, $3,980, jmendel.com; Chanel
necklace, price upon request, 800550-0005; Bottega Veneta bag, $1,920,
bottegaveneta.com; Mykita & Kostas
Murkudis sunglasses, $497, mykita.com
Page 91
Dolce & Gabbana cape, price upon
Pages 112-119
Page 112
Dior coat, $7,000, 800-929-DIOR
Page 113
Hermès coat, $7,650, and top, $880,
hermes.com
Page 114
Jil Sander coat, $10,350, Jil Sander
boutiques
Page 115
Haider Ackermann coat, $2,835, Louis
Boston, 617-262-6100, cape, $1,985,
luisaviaroma.com, top, $555, Barneys
New York, and trousers, $935, Barneys
New York; Balenciaga earrings, price
upon request, 212-206-0872
Page 116
Emporio Armani coat, $2475, armani
.com; Viktor & Rolf pants, $1,290,
viktor-rolf.com
Page 117
Chanel coat, $6,945, 800-550-0005;
Marc Jacobs jacket (under coat),
$3,900, pants, $875, skirt, $1,700, and
socks, price upon request, marcjacobs
.com; Prada shoes, $950, prada.com
Page 118
Neil Barett coat, $1,235, and leggings,
$1,280, saksfifthavenue.com
Page 119
Comme des Garçons jacket, $1,830,
and skirt, $1,080, comme-des-garcons
.com; Marc Jacobs shoe, $1,245,
marcjacobs.com
© 2012 Dow Jones & Company, InC. all RIghts ReseRveD. 6ao1280
glamour goddess
Diana Vreeland, one
of the most influential
arbiters of style, is
the subject of a new
documentary. (p. 60)
couRTESy of ThE diana vREEland ESTaTE
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L WREN SCOTT
L'WREN
Fashion Designer, LonDon
Objects Of MY AffectiOn: (from left) these chocolates from my
local shop in the Loire Valley remind me of the ones my mother made;
a shawl that elizabeth taylor gave me while we were deep in discussion
about which jewels she should wear in cannes to match a dress i had
made for her; a headmistress doll i bought in a Paris flea market when
i was 18 that inspired the signature dress i later designed; a painting of
my boyfriend, Mick jagger, by cecil beaton; a pink-enamel-jeweled
132 sePTemBer 2012
Mogul bangle, probably made for a man, which i wear high up on the
arm; an 18th-century coco de Mer nut; a pair of 2,670-year-old Greek
earrings—a birthday gift from someone with a keen eye; my favorite
pink french opaline vase; my father’s Ray-bans, found in a drawer after
his death; a Georgian-era portrait ring—it was love at first sight when i
saw this beautiful lady sitting in a case at fred Leighton one afternoon.
i could not let her live there. now she has a nice home.
PhoTograPhY BY anDers gramer sTYLing BY Laura FuLmine
A single journey can change the course of a life.
Cambodia, May 2011.
Follow Angelina Jolie on louisvuitton.com