Departures Middle East Summer 2019
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SUMMER <strong>2019</strong><br />
Sights,<br />
Sojourns & Styles<br />
FROM SOUTH AFRICA TO SWEDEN
TIME, A HERMÈS OBJECT.<br />
Arceau L’heure de la lune<br />
Time flies to the moon
Haute Joaillerie, place Vendôme since 1906<br />
The Dubai Mall - Mall of the Emirates - The Galleria Al Maryah Island 800-VAN-CLEEF (800-826-25333)<br />
Riyadh: Centria Mall +966 11461 5055 - Kingdom Tower +966 11 211 1317 - Jeddah: Al Tahlia +966 12 284 1481<br />
www.vancleefarpels.com
Perlée Collection<br />
Rose gold, yellow gold<br />
and diamond rings and bracelets.
jaresortshotels.com<br />
/Manafaru<br />
@JAManafaru_Maldives
Some experiences<br />
LEAVE YOU RICHER<br />
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the Real You can rejuvenate. Discover Maldives culture with a cooking class, traditional<br />
massage or local village encounter. Or simply hide away in secluded luxury on an<br />
uninhabited island.<br />
Explore the layers of island life. Soar above the scenery by seaplane and make landfall<br />
on a pristine beach. Step underground for a decadent tasting experience amidst lava<br />
stone and dive under water to meet colourful sea life. Swim, spa, play and indulge as<br />
you muse over the magic of JA Manafaru.<br />
For bookings and more information, please visit jaresortshotels.com or call +960 6500 456<br />
or email reservations.manafaru@jaresorts.com
lia<br />
www.adler.ch
12 DEPARTURES SUMMER <strong>2019</strong><br />
Features<br />
66<br />
Outside the Box<br />
Known for his bold, complex<br />
designs, Pritzker Prize-winning<br />
architect Thom Mayne finally<br />
builds a home for himself.<br />
By Ted Loos<br />
Photographs by<br />
Spencer Lowell<br />
72<br />
It’s Always Sunny<br />
in San Miguel<br />
A longtime mecca for creative<br />
spirits from around the world,<br />
Mexico’s most charming<br />
colonial town is still as<br />
relevant as ever.<br />
By Maura Egan<br />
Photographs by Lindsay<br />
Lauckner Gundlock<br />
80<br />
Grand Hotel<br />
In the Scottish Highlands,<br />
art-world visionaries Iwan and<br />
Manuela Wirth have applied<br />
their Midas touch to<br />
a revitalised hotel.<br />
By Alix Browne<br />
Photographs by Simon Watson<br />
84<br />
Savouring the Season<br />
Off Sweden’s southeastern<br />
coast, the ethereal, rugged<br />
charms of Gotland are<br />
impossible to resist.<br />
By Adam Sachs<br />
Photographs by Felix Odell<br />
p 84<br />
A view of the Parroquia<br />
de San Miguel Arcángel<br />
from the Rosewood hotel<br />
in San Miguel de Allende<br />
LINDSAY LAUCKNER GUNDLOCK
14 DEPARTURES SUMMER <strong>2019</strong><br />
p 28 Inside the<br />
lavish Casa Macorís<br />
in Santo Domingo<br />
Departments<br />
p 24<br />
Ceramic vases by<br />
Marrakech-based Belgian<br />
designer LRNCE<br />
Travel<br />
21<br />
Johannesburg Reframed<br />
Celebrating the long-heralded revival<br />
of Maboneng, the South African<br />
metropolis’s now-vibrant arts district.<br />
24<br />
Shop the Casbah<br />
A fresh raft of designers and artisans<br />
are imbuing Marrakech with a new<br />
modernist spirit.<br />
28<br />
The Dominican Republic<br />
Dresses Up<br />
Brimming with a fresh wave of creative<br />
energy, Santo Domingo may be the<br />
Caribbean’s hottest capital of cool.<br />
36<br />
Restoration Period<br />
The London hotel scene reaches new<br />
heights with a recent cache of new and<br />
new-look hostelries.<br />
On the Cover<br />
PHOTOGRAPH BY<br />
SPENCER LOWELL<br />
Style<br />
16 From the Editor / 19 <strong>Departures</strong> Digital<br />
41<br />
Heavenly Creatures<br />
Dutch artist Ruth van Beek’s colourful<br />
collages perfectly complement the<br />
jewels of the season.<br />
44<br />
Yours, Truly<br />
Customisation programmes let you<br />
have a hand in creating your most<br />
coveted pieces.<br />
48<br />
The Colour Connoisseur’s<br />
Guide<br />
Experts reveal where to go to adorn<br />
your home in a chorus of colours.<br />
50<br />
Pop Goes the Easel<br />
After half a century at the vanguard of<br />
Italian design, Gaetano Pesce’s savantlike<br />
sense of colour still shines through.<br />
52<br />
Doing It Right<br />
Eco-conscious and sustainable<br />
fashion pieces that make the world<br />
a better place.<br />
Culture<br />
56<br />
Mexico Modern<br />
An ambitious US furniture marque<br />
takes inspiration from midcentury<br />
Mexican icons to stunning effect.<br />
p 52<br />
Fashion with a<br />
heart: belt bag<br />
by ethically<br />
conscious<br />
brand Cuyana,<br />
cuyana.com<br />
Keep in touch We welcome your comments and recommendations, which we may edit for clarity<br />
and space. Contact us at letters@departures-international.com. The key All prices are in British<br />
pounds, euros or American dollars unless otherwise specified. Hotel is a member of Fine Hotels<br />
& Resorts ˜ Establishment is either cash only or does not accept American Express cards. Online<br />
extras at departures-international.com<br />
Follow us @<strong>Departures</strong>Int<br />
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: © LRNCE, © CASAS DEL XVI, © CUYANA
CALIBER RM 07-01<br />
LIMITED EDITION JADE
From the Editor<br />
“<br />
The Spanish-language version<br />
of departures-international.com<br />
will be your on-trend<br />
and constantly updated hub<br />
„<br />
16 DEPARTURES <br />
IT IS ALWAYS A THRILL to reveal<br />
something new and exciting that we have<br />
conjured up – and so, concurrent with the<br />
debut of this edition of the magazine, it<br />
also gives me great pleasure to announce<br />
the launch of the Spanish-language<br />
version of our companion website,<br />
departures-international.com/es.<br />
This has been a labour of love for<br />
our team – a bespoke portal where the<br />
three pillars of our English-language<br />
site (Travel, Food and Life & Style) are<br />
now curated expressly for our Spanishspeaking<br />
audience. Whether it is a<br />
guide to Mexico City’s art scene or an<br />
update from the wilds of Uruguay, the<br />
Spanish-language version of departuresinternational.com<br />
will be your on-trend<br />
and constantly updated hub for the latest<br />
openings, reviews and insider tips across<br />
the Spanish-speaking world.<br />
To herald its arrival, we have a few<br />
relevant and topical complementary<br />
articles in this summer edition of<br />
our print magazine. We travel to<br />
the charming Mexican town of<br />
San Miguel de Allende – where a host<br />
of long-awaited hotel openings are<br />
bolstering an evergreen charm that has<br />
been luring artists for nearly a century –<br />
and to Santo Domingo, where a recent<br />
wave of creative and entrepreneural<br />
efforts that have transformed it into<br />
arguably the coolest capital in the<br />
Caribbean. We also profile a pair of<br />
creatives reviving midcentury Mexican<br />
furnishings with exceptional aplomb.<br />
We invite you to bookmark departuresinternational.com<br />
and hope that you’ll<br />
return to it for our uncompromising<br />
editorial integrity and up-to-the-minute<br />
timeliness over and over again.
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ART DIRECTOR Anne Plamann<br />
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SEPARATION Jennifer Wiesner<br />
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Riley, Adam Sachs, Pilar Viladas<br />
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18 DEPARTURES<br />
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SUMMER <strong>2019</strong> DEPARTURES<br />
19
TRAVEL<br />
Painter and impresario<br />
Jonathan Freemantle in<br />
the gallery space at<br />
MK & Artist<br />
Johannesburg Reframed The South African city’s<br />
central arts district, Maboneng, is shining a light<br />
on the creativity of the country as a whole.<br />
by Ben Ryder Howe. Photographs by David De Vleeschauwer<br />
CULTURE TRIP DEPARTURES<br />
21
DEPARTURES TRAVEL CULTURE TRIP<br />
22<br />
From left: Ponte City tower in downtown Johannesburg is now a popular movie<br />
backdrop; a Maboneng habitué; bottom: street art in Maboneng<br />
URBAN BLIGHT DOESN’T have any<br />
beneficiaries – except skateboarders<br />
and graffiti artists. Bheki Dube<br />
grew up a skateboarding kid in<br />
Johannesburg in the 2000s, as the<br />
sprawling city, one of the largest<br />
and richest in Africa, underwent<br />
a staggering free fall into anarchy,<br />
violence and population flight.<br />
“The city was a blank canvas,”<br />
said Dube, who at the time lived in<br />
downtown Johannesburg, where<br />
hijacked skyscrapers, abandoned<br />
hotels and artist-run squatter<br />
colonies proliferated while South<br />
Africa chaotically transitioned<br />
from apartheid rule. “You could go<br />
anywhere you wanted, if you were<br />
brave enough.”<br />
Today, while still facing significant<br />
social challenges, Johannesburg has<br />
given birth to one of the most robust<br />
arts scenes in Africa, owing greatly to<br />
the near-apocalypse of its inner core.<br />
The centre of the decade-long revival<br />
is Maboneng, a now-thriving district<br />
of galleries, restaurants and shops<br />
that is drawing an international crowd<br />
looking to experience the country’s<br />
contemporary culture. “Maboneng is<br />
where Brooklyn hip meets authentic<br />
Africa,” Mark Lakin, cofounder of<br />
Epic Road, a bespoke travel company<br />
specialising in Africa, told me. “It’s an<br />
example of a rising black middle class<br />
amid grassroots arts and innovation.”<br />
Roughly ten square blocks,<br />
Maboneng comprises an old industrial<br />
area next to a pothole-filled road<br />
leading directly to Johannesburg’s<br />
legendary gold mines. Its name, a<br />
Sesotho word meaning “place of<br />
light”, says more about the aspirations<br />
of its inhabitants than the actual<br />
setting: highway overpasses and<br />
hulking warehouses loom over the<br />
cafes along Fox Street, the principal<br />
thoroughfare.<br />
“It was a ghost street when I arrived<br />
in 2009,” said Marcus Neustetter,<br />
codirector of the Trinity Session,<br />
which produces public art. “Over a<br />
quick period we saw a change.” It<br />
started with the opening of Arts on<br />
Main, a complex of brick industrial<br />
buildings converted into art spaces<br />
and shops. William Kentridge, one
of South Africa’s most famous artists,<br />
held a show there in 2009 and soon<br />
opened a nearby studio. The studios<br />
of Magnum photographer Mikhael<br />
Subotzky and conceptual artist Kim<br />
Lieberman are now there too.<br />
Franchises and other massmarket<br />
encroachments have been<br />
kept out of Maboneng, and the tolls<br />
of delinquency and age have been<br />
sedulously maintained, conjuring the<br />
grit of 1980s Tribeca. Painter Jonathan<br />
Freemantle, co-developer of the<br />
Cosmopolitan, a gallery and shopping<br />
venue in a Victorian landmark that<br />
once housed a brothel for miners,<br />
describes the Maboneng vibe as<br />
“just enough chaos”. Freemantle has<br />
turned the Cosmopolitan into “an<br />
active creative space” centred on<br />
music, culture and nightlife, with a<br />
sculpture garden by Patrick Watson,<br />
one of South Africa’s most celebrated<br />
landscape designers, amid the peeling<br />
paint and crumbling walls of derelict<br />
apartment buildings.<br />
Across the street from the garden,<br />
I met Mlungisi Kongisa, a soft-spoken<br />
39-year-old printmaker. I hadn’t<br />
come to Johannesburg to buy art, and<br />
Kongisa, whose inviting gallery, MK<br />
& Artist, is filled with original prints<br />
by the likes of Kentridge and David<br />
Koloane, the elder statesman of South<br />
African painters, wasn’t going to hardsell<br />
me. I had my eye on an etching by<br />
Cameroonian surrealist Joël Mpah<br />
Dooh, but the day was ending and I<br />
needed to think it over.<br />
Maboneng after dark is not for<br />
everyone. Visitors are advised to seek<br />
the guidance of a local like Dube,<br />
who founded and operates Curiocity,<br />
a provider of accommodation and<br />
private tours of public art and other<br />
landmarks. Dube likes to say that two<br />
HOTELS<br />
Fine Hotels & Resorts<br />
properties include the<br />
Houghton Hotel<br />
( thehoughton.com) and<br />
Four Seasons Hotel The<br />
Westcliff, Johannesburg<br />
( fourseasons.com).<br />
Johannesburg Handbook<br />
GUIDES<br />
Dlala Nje (dlalanje.<br />
org) leads tours of lessvisited<br />
areas, like Ponte<br />
City tower, which was<br />
hijacked by gangs in the<br />
1990s and today is used<br />
as a performance space.<br />
Curiocity (curiocity.africa)<br />
provides private tours<br />
of landmarks and public<br />
art exhibits.<br />
A sculpture by Amalie von Maltitz in the garden of the Cosmopolitan<br />
decades ago, a visit by an international<br />
celebrity such as Ava DuVernay or<br />
Oprah Winfrey – both of whom<br />
recently made well-publicised stops at<br />
the studio of painter Nelson Makamo<br />
– would have been inconceivable. But<br />
you still have to know where to go.<br />
The next day I returned to MK &<br />
Artist. Since Maboneng is only ten<br />
years old and built on something as<br />
mercurial as art, there is an anxiety<br />
about its existence, as if it could vanish<br />
at any moment or be turned into a<br />
kind of cultural zoo. After deciding<br />
to buy the etching, I had lunch at<br />
Canteen, a cafe in Arts on Main that<br />
serves elevated versions of South<br />
RESTAURANTS<br />
Few restaurants pay<br />
attention to the aromatics<br />
of fine dining as closely as<br />
Grei, a new addition to the<br />
ultra-exclusive, 53-suite<br />
Saxon Hotel (saxon.<br />
co.za). Canteen ( fb.com/<br />
canteenmaboneng) offers<br />
hearty fare and a welcoming<br />
courtyard.<br />
African dishes, such as biltong and<br />
springbok carpaccio, in a courtyard<br />
shaded by olive trees. It was barely<br />
afternoon, but a party was underway<br />
on the roof, where legs dangled off<br />
a fire escape and a DJ played the<br />
Mankunku Quartet. Below, families<br />
with strollers dined on peri-peri<br />
chicken livers, and outside, a Tesla<br />
tried to wend its way through a street<br />
fair with merchants selling a variety<br />
of goods, from medicinal plants to<br />
seemingly ubiquitous T-shirts saying<br />
iwasshotinjoburg. Someone was<br />
adding a new mural to the layers of<br />
graffiti on the walls of Fox Street. It<br />
was just enough chaos.<br />
GALLERIES<br />
MK & Artist (+27 71 411<br />
7788), a collaborative studio,<br />
sells etchings, linocuts,<br />
woodcuts, monotypes<br />
and other prints. The<br />
David Krut Workshop<br />
(davidkrutprojects.com),<br />
one of the original tenants<br />
of Arts on Main, has a<br />
bookstore as well as a<br />
gallery space.<br />
DEPARTURES<br />
23
DEPARTURES TRAVEL MARKET WATCH<br />
24<br />
Shop the Casbah<br />
Be yond Berber rugs and baskets:<br />
these design, craft and fashion<br />
stores are defining Marrakech’s<br />
new modernist aesthetic.<br />
Riad Jardin Secret<br />
The city has no shortage of<br />
stylish riads, but this six-room<br />
hotel, tucked behind an unmarked<br />
doorway in the Bab Doukkala<br />
area, stands apart for its playful<br />
atmosphere and carefully curated<br />
boutique. Created by Parisian<br />
fashion couple Cyrielle Astaing<br />
and Julien Phomveha, the 20thcentury<br />
home is all detailed<br />
mosaic tiling, lattice woodwork<br />
and splashy textiles. This textured<br />
aesthetic extends to their shop,<br />
where they carry high-design<br />
versions of traditional crafts like<br />
kilim pillows and tadelakt clay pots.<br />
riadjardinsecret.com<br />
The Moroccans<br />
Seed oil derived from the prickly<br />
pear cactus, oud-infused argan oil<br />
and black soap made from crushed<br />
olives are among the organic<br />
products at this spot, next to the<br />
Jardin Majorelle on Rue Yves Saint<br />
Laurent. The store, which supplies<br />
Riad Jardin Secret and Aman<br />
A light installation by<br />
artist Francis<br />
Upritchard hangs in<br />
El Fenn Boutique<br />
Resorts, stocks its beauty line<br />
along with home accessories and<br />
jewellery from regional designers,<br />
including Scandi-Moroccan fashion<br />
brand Bougroug, which mixes<br />
Norwegian minimalism with local<br />
craftsmanship. themoroccans.ma<br />
El Fenn Boutique<br />
The interiors of the hotel El Fenn are<br />
an Instagrammer’s dream, and its restaurant/<br />
shop allows visitors to replicate the look.<br />
Items found throughout the hotel – including<br />
the handwoven kilim throws on the daybeds<br />
– are for sale alongside clothing, jewellery<br />
and accessories sourced from the region.<br />
The kitsch-free store offers only the most<br />
exquisite Moroccan crafts: quality caftans,<br />
colourful bread baskets, geometric Fez<br />
pottery. El Fenn’s co-owner, Vanessa<br />
Branson (sister of Richard and founder of<br />
the Marrakech Biennale), also adorns the<br />
walls with rotating works from international<br />
artists. el-fenn.com<br />
LRNCE<br />
Belgian designer Laurence<br />
Leenaert’s line of modern textiles,<br />
ceramics and clothing is a<br />
welcome change from the city’s<br />
usual wares. Her studio, in an<br />
industrial area in the city’s<br />
northwest, carries rugs, pitchers,<br />
kimonos, sandals and more – all<br />
with a sense of whimsy that calls<br />
to mind Picasso’s ceramics, Miró’s<br />
line drawings, and local tribal<br />
patterns. Handcrafted in North<br />
Africa, the pieces recently launched<br />
at Maison et Objet Paris, and will<br />
soon be available in a new<br />
medina outpost. lrnce.com<br />
LRNCE’s Ruwa carpets are hand-knotted<br />
in the Atlas Mountains; left: limited-edition<br />
Qalb vases from LRNCE<br />
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: KASIA GATKOWSKA; © LRNCE (2)
DEPARTURES TRAVEL MARKET WATCH<br />
26<br />
Riad Yima<br />
Pop Art photographer and<br />
designer Hassan Hajjaj<br />
runs this vibrant gallery/<br />
shop/cafe – awash in<br />
colour and packed with<br />
eclectic goods –<br />
in a refurbished home in<br />
the medina. Everything<br />
inside is for sale, including<br />
babouche slippers,<br />
upcycled Coca-Cola-crate<br />
benches and Hajjaj’s own<br />
street portraits of<br />
Moroccan fashionistas<br />
(he’s known as the Andy<br />
Warhol of Marrakech).<br />
Despite the<br />
overstimulating decor, it’s<br />
still less frantic than<br />
walking through the<br />
souks. riadyima.com<br />
La Famille<br />
Offering some of the<br />
best views in the city<br />
(and a welcome<br />
respite from the souks<br />
and sun), this leafy<br />
rooftop restaurant<br />
specialises in vegetarian<br />
dishes like aubergineand-mint<br />
hummus,<br />
grilled-fennel tagliatelle<br />
and homemade cakes.<br />
A boutique selling<br />
crafts, homewares and<br />
jewellery recently<br />
opened at the stylish<br />
spot. Also for sale are<br />
the intricate ceramics<br />
and glassware used in<br />
the restaurant.<br />
+212 5243 85295<br />
Lalla<br />
As one of the most<br />
in-demand personal<br />
shoppers in Marrakech,<br />
with clients that include<br />
Sarah Jessica Parker and<br />
Gwyneth Paltrow, Laetitia<br />
Trouillet can skillfully<br />
navigate the city’s souks.<br />
Her itinerary may include<br />
her own space, Lalla,<br />
which is filled with<br />
handbags, home<br />
accessories and vintage<br />
wares in styles you won’t<br />
see elsewhere. For<br />
souvenirs, check out<br />
the pouches fashioned<br />
from vintage Moroccan<br />
fabric and handmade<br />
accessories for the hair.<br />
lalla.fr<br />
Marrakshi Life<br />
The pieces at fashion photographer Randall Bachner’s clothing store are handwoven and<br />
tailored in the adjacent atelier, where artisans use traditional Moroccan techniques to create<br />
decidedly contemporary yet relaxed looks. The intentionally oversized tailoring on everything<br />
from soft blazers to boxy jumpsuits means everything is unisex. This season, the five- year-old<br />
brand introduced a patchwork of recycled pieces as part of its commitment to zero waste.<br />
marrakshilife.com<br />
Max & Jan<br />
This airy, whitewashed<br />
space has everything from<br />
sleek leather bags to bold<br />
jewellery, but regulars go<br />
for the contemporary<br />
clothing by Belgian<br />
owners Maximilian Scharl<br />
and Jan Pauwels. It’s a<br />
combination of urban<br />
streetwear and traditional<br />
Moroccan elegance:<br />
colourful prints on<br />
billowing harem trousers,<br />
flowy tunics, jumpsuits<br />
made with interesting<br />
fabrics. The recently<br />
opened rooftop<br />
restaurant, which serves<br />
updated local staples,<br />
overlooks the bustling<br />
medina. maxandjan.com<br />
From top:<br />
photographer<br />
Hassan Hajjaj’s<br />
tearoom-cum-shop<br />
Riad Yima; the<br />
industrial interior of<br />
Max & Jan<br />
FROM TOP: HASSAN HAJJAJ; MARC VAN VAEK
Eric - Life Saver<br />
Courchevel • Baden-Baden • Paris • Vence - Côte d’Azur • St Barths • Cap d’Antibes • Antigua - West Indies • London • São Paulo
28 DEPARTURES TRAVEL DISPATCH<br />
Casa Macorís, one of the<br />
colonial houses to rent<br />
at Casas del XVI, a hotel<br />
in Santo Domingo<br />
The Dominican Republic Dresses Up<br />
Santo Domingo’s most stylish and creative power<br />
players are turning the historic Zona Colonial<br />
into a new Caribbean hot spot. by Jacqueline Gifford<br />
ON A STIFLINGLY HOT September<br />
afternoon in the Dominican Republic<br />
– humidity hovering at, oh, 99.9<br />
percent – I found myself on my way<br />
to get a pair of espadrilles in Santo<br />
Domingo’s Zona Colonial.<br />
Ricardo Fernandez, the Spanishborn<br />
owner of La Alpargatería<br />
(laalpargateria.com.do), a company<br />
selling handcrafted shoes, was<br />
walking me from his first boutique,<br />
set on the tiny Calle Salome Ureña,<br />
to his newer atelier on the wider Calle<br />
Las Mercedes. The original is a lowkey<br />
affair, with a few rows for display<br />
and a courtyard out back where thick<br />
vines cover decaying stone walls.<br />
Think part Brooklyn, part New<br />
Orleans, with a dash of downtown LA.<br />
The atelier, however, is a more<br />
polished shop in an early-20thcentury<br />
building, its façade painted<br />
an electric blue. There, you can<br />
pick from among the endless fabric<br />
swatches – cheerful florals, bold<br />
stripes and plaids – and walk out with<br />
a pair of espadrilles for under $50.<br />
There are many boutiques like La<br />
Alpargatería in this utterly charming,<br />
centuries-old part of Santo Domingo<br />
© CASAS DEL XVI
30<br />
DEPARTURES TRAVEL DISPATCH<br />
– which is having a bit of a moment.<br />
Government money is sprucing up<br />
the streets. Artists are settling here.<br />
Interiors guru Carlos Mota, a world<br />
traveller who has put down roots<br />
in the Dominican Republic, bought<br />
an apartment in the Zona two years<br />
ago and recently decorated the new<br />
branch of Mesón de Bari (302 Calle<br />
Hostos), a cafe beloved by well-heeled<br />
locals. He calls the town “a hidden<br />
treasure, an undiscovered Cartagena.<br />
You walk around and you find layers.”<br />
I’ve been covering the Caribbean<br />
for years, yet Santo Domingo – the<br />
capital of the Dominican Republic<br />
and home to some 2.6 million people<br />
– was entirely new to me. Which is<br />
somewhat of a surprise, given that<br />
it’s a four-hour flight from New York<br />
and the oldest European city in the<br />
Americas, established in 1496 by<br />
Bartholomeo Columbus (yes, brother<br />
of Christopher).<br />
“Most people don’t think of<br />
visiting Caribbean cities, but from<br />
Santo Domingo’s<br />
Zona Colonial<br />
dates back to<br />
the 16th century<br />
a style standpoint, Santo Domingo<br />
is brimming with boutiques,” said<br />
Andria Mitsakos, founder of lifestyle<br />
brand Wanderlista, who produces<br />
furniture here. Like Mota, Mitsakos<br />
is an inveterate traveller. She recently<br />
gave up her Manhattan apartment to<br />
live a more nomadic lifestyle, renting<br />
in Athens and the Zona, where she’ll<br />
spend weeks at a time designing rattan<br />
From left: Mamey Galería shows<br />
contemporary Dominican artists; variations<br />
on the espadrille at La Alpargatería<br />
furniture and scouting crafts. “The<br />
architecture is inspiring,” she told me.<br />
Hundreds of 16th-century Spanish<br />
colonial buildings still stand here,<br />
now reimagined as contemporary<br />
shops, galleries, even hotels.<br />
Interior designer Patricia Reid,<br />
longtime Zona resident and friend of<br />
the late Oscar de la Renta, has seen<br />
this area go in and out of fashion.<br />
(Most business still takes place in the<br />
modern city centre.) “One hundred<br />
years ago, this was the ‘in’ place to<br />
live,” explained Reid, who designed<br />
Julio Iglesias’s homes in Punta Cana<br />
and Marbella, Spain. “It’s coming<br />
back. I don’t want it to be a museum. I<br />
want it to be a living city.”<br />
Reid is a master at mixing found<br />
objects from Bali and Morocco<br />
with mahogany furniture made in<br />
the Dominican Republic and then<br />
layering in her own paintings and<br />
drawings of nature. You can get a feel<br />
for her eclectic, colourful work at<br />
Casas del XVI (casasdelxvi.net), which<br />
consists of six colonial-era mansions<br />
in the Zona with features like open-air<br />
courtyards and pools. In the coming<br />
years, more houses – which, with their<br />
brick archways, terracotta floors and<br />
wood-beamed ceilings, can take up<br />
to a year to renovate – will be added,<br />
so that the hotel will feel like a sort of<br />
mini village. The star attraction right<br />
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: VICTOR STONEM; © LA ALPARGATERÍA; VICTOR STONEM
32 DEPARTURES TRAVEL DISPATCH<br />
From top: pineapple-shaped planters and vases made by<br />
Ysabela Molini under her Casa Alfarera brand; a new outpost<br />
of Mesón de Bari, a cafe serving traditional Dominican food<br />
that was designed by decorator Carlos Mota<br />
now is the two-bedroom, exclusive-use<br />
Casa del Diseñador, a former home of<br />
de la Renta (other houses can be rented<br />
by the room).<br />
One morning, over cups of rich,<br />
tar-thick Dominican coffee at the<br />
Casa Macorís, one of the houses in<br />
the Casas del XVI collection, I chatted<br />
with Amelia Vicini, whose family is<br />
responsible for the project as well as<br />
numerous other properties in the Zona.<br />
Beside economic investment, she<br />
credited the area’s resurgence to the<br />
young diaspora moving back: people<br />
like Carolina Contreras, an influencer<br />
and founder of Miss Rizos, a blog<br />
and salon that encourages women to<br />
embrace their curls.<br />
With her statement glasses and<br />
natural hair, Parsons-educated Natalia<br />
Ortega, who grew up in Santo Domingo<br />
and returned after college, may be the<br />
most emblematic of this new creative<br />
set. She works with Dominican and<br />
Haitian artists to weave beautiful<br />
straw hats for her line Los Tejedores<br />
(lostejedores.com), started with her<br />
boyfriend, Ricardo Ariel Toribio.<br />
Ortega now moves between studios,<br />
meeting clients in person and selling<br />
her pieces online.<br />
Santo Domingo is nothing if not<br />
social: after speaking with one artist,<br />
they’d connect me to another, and<br />
so on. Through Mota, I met fashion<br />
‘‘The Zona Colonial<br />
is a hidden treasure, an<br />
undiscovered Cartagena.<br />
You walk around<br />
and you find layers”<br />
designer Oriett Domenech (oriett<br />
domenech.com), who has dressed Kylie<br />
Jenner. At her atelier in the city centre, I<br />
fell hard for one of her hand-cut, bodyhugging<br />
shift dresses – made entirely<br />
out of cork. And through Domenech’s<br />
husband, investor Miguel Angel<br />
Gonzalez, I ran into Vanessa Gaviria,<br />
whose SBG restaurant group owns the<br />
Mediterranean-influenced La Cassina<br />
(fb.com/lacassinasantodomingo).<br />
Power-lunching may be a thing of the<br />
past in New York, but it’s alive and<br />
well at this low-lit, formal spot in the<br />
neighbourhood of Evaristo Morales.<br />
But this current wave of artists<br />
is mainly based in the Zona. There,<br />
you’ll find Ysabela Molini, creator of<br />
Casa Alfarera (casaalfarera.com) and<br />
a brilliant ceramist who sources all<br />
her clay on the island (no easy feat)<br />
and makes massive pineapple-shaped<br />
urns as well as delicate sconces,<br />
plates and vases. And Alejandro<br />
Ruiz and Eddy Guzmán, the owner<br />
and curator, respectively, of Mamey<br />
Galería (mamey.co), which combines<br />
a cafe, bookshop and cinema with<br />
two galleries showcasing historical<br />
and contemporary works by<br />
Dominican artists.<br />
At times, I felt like the Zona was<br />
one big roving street party. When<br />
the heat had subsided, I set out<br />
early on a Friday evening, passing<br />
through the Parque Colón, to see the<br />
soaring Cathedral of Our Lady of the<br />
Annunciation, which dates back to<br />
1512. Children were chasing balloons;<br />
men gathered to play dominoes. After<br />
dinner, I circled back to the Parque,<br />
now alive with music.<br />
FROM TOP: KARLA READ; HAROLD LAMBERTUS
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Enjoy a complimentary night.<br />
Soak up more sun, savour the spa, dine at an award-winning restaurant or see more sights in a longed-for<br />
destination with a complimentary night from Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group.<br />
Stay from 6 June to 2 September, <strong>2019</strong> and receive a complimentary third, fourth or fifth night when<br />
you book at any of the participating Mandarin Oriental hotels from 1 June to 28 August, <strong>2019</strong> and pay<br />
with an American Express® Card in the Platinum® Cardmember’s name.<br />
As a Platinum Cardmember, you will also enjoy Fine Hotels & Resorts 1 benefits including:<br />
Mandarin Oriental Jumeira, Dubai<br />
OUT<br />
IN<br />
Room upgrade 2 at<br />
time of check-in,<br />
when available.<br />
Guaranteed 4pm<br />
late checkout<br />
Noon check in,<br />
when available.<br />
A unique<br />
amenity 4 valued<br />
at US$100<br />
Daily breakfast<br />
for two<br />
In-room Wi-Fi 3<br />
For more information or to make a booking, contact Platinum Service: (+973) 17 557788 (<strong>Middle</strong> <strong>East</strong>) and<br />
800 1999 5555 or (+966) 11 407 1999 (K/SA)<br />
1<br />
Available for Platinum Charge Cardmembers only, and excludes Platinum Credit Cardmembers who are not also Platinum Charge Cardmembers.<br />
2<br />
Certain room categories are not applicable for room upgrade or special offer. 3 Complimentary in-room Wi-Fi is not available in all locations.<br />
See Terms and Conditions for details. 4 Special amenity varies by property, call your Platinum Travel service for details.
Hotels offering a complimentary<br />
third night with two paid nights<br />
Mandarin Oriental, Hong Kong<br />
The Landmark Mandarin Oriental, Hong Kong<br />
Mandarin Oriental, Macau<br />
Mandarin Oriental, Miami<br />
Mandarin Oriental, Milan<br />
Mandarin Oriental, Munich<br />
Mandarin Oriental, New York<br />
Mandarin Oriental, Prague<br />
Mandarin Oriental Pudong, Shanghai<br />
Mandarin Oriental, Taipei<br />
Mandarin Oriental, Washington DC<br />
Hotels offering a complimentary<br />
fourth night with three paid nights<br />
Mandarin Oriental, Barcelona<br />
Mandarin Oriental Wangfujing, Beijing<br />
Mandarin Oriental, Boston<br />
Mandarin Oriental, Canouan<br />
Mandarin Oriental Jumeira, Dubai<br />
Mandarin Oriental, Geneva<br />
Mandarin Oriental, Jakarta<br />
Mandarin Oriental, Marrakech<br />
Mandarin Oriental, Paris<br />
Mandarin Oriental, Sanya<br />
Mandarin Oriental, Singapore<br />
Mandarin Oriental, Tokyo<br />
Hotels offering a complimentary fifth night with four paid nights<br />
Mandarin Oriental, Lago di Como<br />
Mandarin Oriental, New York<br />
Mandarin Oriental, Paris<br />
Mandarin Oriental, Macau<br />
Terms and Conditions<br />
1) Special offers valid only for new Fine Hotels & Resorts bookings through The Platinum Travel service from 1 June to 28 August <strong>2019</strong> (inclusive) for hotel<br />
stays from 6 June and completed by 2 September <strong>2019</strong> (inclusive). A minimum consecutive paid stay is required to receive special offer. Payment must be<br />
made in full with an American Express® Card in the Platinum Cardmember name. Complimentary night offer is non-transferable and non-cashable.<br />
Category restrictions and other restrictions apply to the special offer. Cardmember must travel on itinerary booked to be eligible for special offer and<br />
Fine Hotels & Resorts benefits described. Noon check-in and room upgrade are based on availability and are provided at time of check-in. Certain room<br />
categories are not eligible for room upgrade or special offer. Breakfast amenity varies by property, but will be, at a minimum, a continental breakfast.<br />
Complimentary Wi-Fi is provided in room, with the exception of select properties where in-room Wi-Fi is included as part of a mandatory daily resort fee or<br />
is not available. In this instance, complimentary Wi-Fi will be provided in a common space on property. In the case where a Property includes cost of Wi-Fi in<br />
a mandatory resort fee, the Cardmember will receive a daily credit from the Property in the standard amount that the Property charges for Wi-Fi. The credit<br />
will be issued on the Cardmember final statement upon check-out. Benefit restrictions vary by Fine Hotels & Resorts property and cannot be redeemed<br />
for cash, and may not be combined with other offers unless indicated. Advance reservations are recommended for services such as spa, dining or golf<br />
in order to take advantage of the Fine Hotels & Resorts Special amenity during your stay. Benefits are only applied at checkout and expire at checkout.<br />
Limit of one benefit package per room, per stay. Three room limit per Platinum Cardmember per stay. Back-to-back stays within a 24-hour period at the<br />
same property are considered as one stay. Participating Fine Hotels & Resorts properties and benefits are subject to change. Cancellation policy varies by<br />
property; Contact The Platinum Travel service for details. Offer cannot be used in conjunction with any other promotions, offers or privileges.<br />
2) Fulfilment of the offer is the sole responsibility of Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group. The promoter of this offer is Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group, 8th Floor One<br />
Island <strong>East</strong>, Taikoo Place, 18 Westlands Road, Quarry Bay, Hong Kong, Telephone +852 2895 9288.<br />
3) Cardmember must stay a minimum of two, three or four consecutive paid nights to receive the complimentary night. Minimum length of stay varies by<br />
property and complimentary night will be credited upon check-out.<br />
4) Offer is subject to availability and below blackout dates apply: Mandarin Oriental, Barcelona: 14, 19, 22 and 26 June, 13 and 20 July, <strong>2019</strong>; Mandarin<br />
Oriental, Boston: 25 June, 17 July, 30 August, 2 September, <strong>2019</strong>; Mandarin Oriental, Geneva: 28 July, 1, 5, 9, 13 and 17 August, <strong>2019</strong>; Mandarin Oriental,<br />
Hong Kong: 28 May, 25 June and 27 Aug, <strong>2019</strong>; The Landmark Mandarin Oriental, Hong Kong: 11, 12, 26 and 27 June, 20 and 21 August, <strong>2019</strong>; Mandarin<br />
Oriental, Macau: 7 – 9 June, <strong>2019</strong>; Mandarin Oriental, Milan: 12 and 15 June, 13 and 16 July, 29 August, 1 September, <strong>2019</strong>; Mandarin Oriental, Munich:<br />
6 June, <strong>2019</strong>; Mandarin Oriental, New York: 12, 18 and 25 June, 10 and 17 July, <strong>2019</strong>; Mandarin Oriental, Paris: 6, 10, 14, 18, 22, 26 and 30 June, 4 July,<br />
30 August, <strong>2019</strong>; Mandarin Oriental, Sanya: 6 – 8 June, <strong>2019</strong>; Mandarin Singapore: 9 August, <strong>2019</strong>; Mandarin Oriental, Tokyo: 27 July, <strong>2019</strong>; Mandarin<br />
Oriental, Washington DC: 11, 18 and 20 June, 17 July, <strong>2019</strong>.<br />
5) Should any dispute arise, the decision of American Express International, Inc. and the participating merchants shall be final.
36 DEPARTURES TRAVEL CHECKING IN<br />
Restoration Period<br />
The ever-expanding London hotel<br />
scene has added a sparkling lineup of<br />
new and newly redone properties all<br />
across the city. by Ben Ryder Howe<br />
“THE HISTRIONIC ART is the London art par excellence,”<br />
travel writer Jan Morris once wrote. The city is a non-stop<br />
spectacle of pageantry and performance, where, according<br />
to Morris, “the greasepaint is always on”. Nowhere is this<br />
currently more evident than in the sheer multitude and<br />
ambition of new and reborn London hotels.<br />
Take, for example, one of these properties, The Stratford<br />
(manhattanloftgardens.com) at Manhattan Loft Gardens, a<br />
42-storey, double-cantilevered tower. Harry Handelsman,<br />
the 69-year-old developer behind the project, wants to shift<br />
the city’s centre of gravity towards Stratford, a previously<br />
grim part of London best known as the site of the 2012<br />
<strong>Summer</strong> Olympics. It’s a tall order, but Handelsman,<br />
who with André Balazs brought the high life to sleepy<br />
Marylebone with the Chiltern Firehouse, is confident that<br />
Manhattan Loft Gardens will serve as a beacon to the young<br />
and chic. It’s certainly big enough: designed by Skidmore,<br />
Owings & Merrill, the team behind the Burj Khalifa and<br />
One World Trade Center, the 146-room obelisk (there are<br />
also 248 rental lofts) hovers on the eastern flank of the<br />
metropolis, far enough to be only dimly visible from the<br />
city centre, a radical statement of confidence in the power<br />
of the city to limitlessly expand.<br />
While Manhattan Loft Gardens aims to dazzle<br />
with spectacle and size, the Belmond Cadogan Hotel<br />
Left: a junior suite at<br />
the impeccably restored<br />
Belmond Cadogan Hotel<br />
in Chelsea; below: the<br />
terrace of the Mandarin<br />
Oriental Hyde Park’s<br />
Royal Suite<br />
( belmond.com) seeks to impress<br />
with stateliness and exclusivity.<br />
Situated on a Chelsea corner readymade<br />
for a foggy, gaslit scene from<br />
a Henry James book jacket, the 54-<br />
room Queen Anne–style town house<br />
has been operating as a hotel under<br />
various owners since 1887 (it was<br />
the scene of Oscar Wilde’s arrest for<br />
indecency in 1895) and now becomes<br />
Belmond’s first London property.<br />
Belmond likes its hotels to feel as if<br />
they have been in place forever, which<br />
the Cadogan certainly. The pièce de<br />
résistance is Cadogan Place Gardens, a<br />
proper English garden (members-only<br />
but open to hotel guests) shaded by<br />
mulberry and plane trees and featuring<br />
a pair of macadam tennis courts.<br />
FROM TOP: © BELMOND CADOGAN HOTEL; © MANDARIN ORIENTAL HYDE PARK, LONDON
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DEPARTURES TRAVEL CHECKING IN<br />
38<br />
The former Camden Town Hall<br />
Annexe, in King’s Cross, a Brutalist<br />
slab that once housed a radical leftist<br />
city council, is aesthetically the<br />
antithesis of a Chelsea town house but<br />
in its way just as pure an expression<br />
of London’s character. Three years<br />
ago, the run-down hulk, on the verge<br />
of demolition, was acquired by the<br />
Standard. As a construction manager<br />
showing me the rooms said, “Nothing<br />
should be boring in a Standard,” which<br />
would be almost impossible inside the<br />
aquarium-like, 266-room property,<br />
with its convex windows and bulbous<br />
concrete façade. Almost everything in<br />
the Standard, London (standardhotels.<br />
com) had to be specifically designed<br />
for the undulating, curvilinear space.<br />
There are inspired touches such as<br />
the additional matte-black floors<br />
planted fez-like atop the original<br />
beige structure, an external elevator<br />
that conjures a vertically ascending<br />
miniature red London bus, and an<br />
inventive adaptation of the hotel’s<br />
windowless central rooms, which<br />
have been geared towards DJs and<br />
other nocturnal types.<br />
The Standard is a hotel to gawk<br />
at, but for sheer number of camerapointing<br />
tourists blocking sidewalks,<br />
it’s hard to beat the Mandarin Oriental<br />
Hyde Park, London ( mandarin<br />
oriental.com), an opulent landmark in<br />
London’s glitziest shopping district.<br />
A fire last summer briefly derailed<br />
the most extensive renovations in the<br />
building’s 130-year history, leaving<br />
only its public spaces open (including<br />
Dinner by Heston Blumenthal, the<br />
Michelin two-star restaurant). The<br />
hotel fully reopened this spring<br />
and features all-new guest rooms and suites, as well<br />
as two penthouses ornamented with chandeliers and<br />
other lighting referencing the British crown jewels. (The<br />
penthouses also come fortified with bulletproof windows<br />
and sleeping quarters for bodyguards.)<br />
For pure glamour, the Connaught ( the-connaught.<br />
co.uk) is a hotel so opulent you might want to arrive in a<br />
tuxedo (or, as a guest standing next to me at check-in did,<br />
a bathrobe). Charles de Gaulle’s favourite hotel in London<br />
(he installed himself on the first floor during the Blitz),<br />
the Connaught recently added the Mews, a town house<br />
offering high-touch hotel service in a private residence.<br />
Furnished with artwork from the Gagosian Gallery (Louise<br />
Bourgeois, Marc Newson) as well as a grand piano, the<br />
Mews stands just a block away from the Connaught, to<br />
which it connects via a private corridor. You will likely be<br />
tempted, however, to come and go through the Mews’s<br />
carriage house entrance on Adams Row. Fulfill your fantasy<br />
by wearing one of the Burberry trenches in the closet or<br />
dipping into a Moynat leather jewellery trunk filled with<br />
vintage treasures. After all, as Morris wrote, echoing the<br />
city’s most famous scribe, “London is a stage!”<br />
Clockwise from top<br />
left: a membersonly<br />
garden, open to<br />
Belmond Cadogan<br />
Hotel’s guests, that<br />
includes a pair of<br />
macadam tennis<br />
courts; one of 146<br />
rooms within the<br />
Stratford; the Mews,<br />
a private town<br />
house addition at<br />
the Connaught,<br />
features art from<br />
Gagosian Gallery<br />
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: © BELMOND CADOGAN HOTEL; ED REEVE; © THE CONNAUGHT
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JEWELLERY PHOTOGRAPHS BY JON ERVIN<br />
Graff ruby and<br />
diamond earrings,<br />
graff.com<br />
STYLE<br />
Heavenly Creatures Precious stones of all hefts<br />
and hues light up Dutch artist Ruth van Beek’s<br />
colourful collages.<br />
OBJECTS OF DESIRE DEPARTURES<br />
41
DEPARTURES STYLE OBJECTS OF DESIRE<br />
Left: Van Cleef & Arpels<br />
white and red gold, ruby,<br />
sapphire and diamond<br />
earrings, vancleef<br />
arpels.com; above: Chopard<br />
rose gold, pink sapphire and<br />
ruby earrings, chopard.com
Tiffany & Co platinum<br />
and pink sapphire<br />
earrings from the <strong>2019</strong><br />
Four Seasons of Tiffany<br />
collection, tiffany.com<br />
DEPARTURES<br />
43
DEPARTURES STYLE PERSONALISATION<br />
44<br />
Yours, Truly From designer denim to status trainers,<br />
made-to-order programmes let you have a hand in<br />
customising your most coveted pieces. by Hayley Phelan.<br />
Photographs by Richie Talboy. Styled by Jenny Hartman<br />
1<br />
3<br />
1 John Hardy custom<br />
gold necklace with<br />
opals, diamonds,<br />
sapphires, topaz and<br />
mother-of-pearl<br />
AFTER 80 YEARS of making understated<br />
handbags, leather-goods brand Valextra –<br />
known for eschewing logos and branding –<br />
has launched #NoLogoMyLogo, a bespoke<br />
programme that invites customers to design<br />
their very own handbag. After clients choose<br />
the shape, size and colour, and then submit<br />
their initials, a team of graphic designers<br />
creates a one-of-a-kind pattern based on<br />
those specifications.<br />
“Typically logos are about the brand,” said<br />
Sara Ferrero, CEO of Valextra. “But that’s not<br />
what we’re about. This is a celebration of the<br />
customer and their own unique personal taste,<br />
rather than a celebration of us as a company.”<br />
High-end fashion has long been about<br />
having the right designer bag or the “It”<br />
shoe, but these days true luxury is about<br />
making something yours and displaying<br />
your individual aesthetic. Louis Vuitton<br />
recently launched a line of menswear that<br />
allows clients to put their mark (monograms,<br />
patches) on everything from trainers to jean<br />
jackets. Meanwhile, Brunello Cucinelli<br />
debuted a made-to-measure suiting<br />
programme this past autumn, and Gucci has<br />
2<br />
2 Valextra leather-andonyx<br />
“NoLogoMyLogo”<br />
monogram bag; Brioni<br />
made-to-measure<br />
wool coat<br />
3. Brunello Cucinelli<br />
made-to-measure wool<br />
suit; Prada made-tomeasure<br />
shirt;<br />
Valentino men’s trainer<br />
with monogram patch
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while relaxing in a jacuzzi in the privacy of your<br />
own balcony.<br />
With superbly designed rooms and suites,<br />
Mulia Resort speaks of style and luxury at every turn.<br />
Complemented by ample facilities and amenities –<br />
including four swimming pools, a dedicated fitness<br />
centre and international culinary presentations in its<br />
nine signature restaurants – Mulia Resort is the ultimate<br />
destination for all travellers alike.<br />
Promising a private sanctuary, Mulia Villas is<br />
a haven for those seeking comfort in luxury and<br />
solitude. With personal 24-hour butler service, a private<br />
swimming pool and a lush tropical garden area<br />
surrounding ample outdoor living space, expect to<br />
experience a getaway fit for royalty. Rejuvenate at the<br />
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treatments, dedicated wellness suites, hydrotonic pools<br />
and Asia Pacific’s first ice room.<br />
THE MULIA, MULIA RESORT & VILLAS • Jl. Raya Nusa Dua Selatan, Kawasan Sawangan • Nusa Dua 80363 • Bali<br />
Tel: +62 361 3017777 or Toll Free: 0800-1-1 MULIA (68542) • themulia.com
DEPARTURES STYLE PERSONALISATION<br />
46<br />
6<br />
4 Marco Bicego adjustable<br />
yellow-gold necklace;<br />
Blazé Milano made-toorder<br />
silk blazer<br />
5 Louis Vuitton men’s<br />
“Now Yours” customisable<br />
denim jacket<br />
6 Pomellato adjustable<br />
white-diamond bracelet,<br />
linked to adjustable<br />
rose-gold bracelet with<br />
adjustable slim rose-gold<br />
bracelet<br />
7 Lanvin made-to-measure<br />
wool suit and shirt; Cartier<br />
steel Santos de Cartier<br />
watch with interchangeable<br />
straps<br />
7<br />
4 5<br />
recently expanded its unisex DIY programme<br />
to include cardigans with varsity-style<br />
letters. At Tiffany & Co, customers can have<br />
everything from monograms to handwritten<br />
doodles engraved on a wide array of<br />
products as part of its Make It My Tiffany<br />
personalisation programme.<br />
“You could say it’s evidence of our<br />
increasingly individualistic society,” said<br />
Fflur Roberts, head of global luxury goods<br />
at research firm Euromonitor. “Customers<br />
want to make their own statement.”<br />
Take insider-favourite women’s suiting<br />
label Blazé Milano. While the company now<br />
sells ready-made blazers, its made-to-order<br />
programme, which allows clients to pick<br />
from 14 different button types, six linings,<br />
and countless colours and fabrics, remains<br />
the cornerstone of its business. Allowing<br />
individuals to partake in the crafting of<br />
something doesn’t just result in a beautiful<br />
item – it can also provide an opportunity<br />
for self-reflection. “I think being part of that<br />
process can be quite a profound experience<br />
for people,” said Beth Bugdaycay, cofounder<br />
of Foundrae, a cult jewellery label known<br />
for its medallion-shaped charms and cigarband<br />
rings. With a new customisation<br />
programme, her clients can select from<br />
various symbols and gemstones to create a<br />
talisman that commemorates a meaningful<br />
moment in their lives. That it happens<br />
to come with bragging rights about one’s<br />
creative genius is merely a bonus.<br />
SET STYLING BY MARGARET MACMILLAN JONES. GROOMING BY MIGUEL LLEDO AT ARTLIST NY USING CLARINS.<br />
MODEL: MELCHOR MERCADO AT NEW YORK MODELS. CASTING BY ERIN SIMON
SPECIAL PROMOTION<br />
VAKKARU MALDIVES<br />
Ultimate romantic getaway in a timeless sanctuary<br />
Set on a secluded island within the Unesco<br />
Biosphere Reserve of Baa Atoll, just a<br />
scenic 30-minutes seaplane flight from Male<br />
International Airport, Vakkaru Maldives is an<br />
unforgettable paradise designed for travellers<br />
seeking an intimate getaway in one of the most<br />
desirable island destinations on the planet.<br />
An extensive selection of 125 beach and overwater<br />
villas and suites feature rustic Maldivian<br />
charms, intelligent connectivity and private<br />
beachfronts or overwater terraces. Indulgent<br />
dining choices from across the world are offered<br />
at six gastro venues, comprising the perfect<br />
environment to relax and unwind.<br />
Engaging experiences await at Splash,<br />
the resort’s water-sports, excursion and dive<br />
centre. There are also extensive kid’s facilities,<br />
floodlit tennis and badminton courts and a<br />
24/7 over-water gym which offers personaltraining<br />
and yoga sessions. The over-water<br />
Merana Spa, meanwhile, features 12 treatment<br />
rooms, a salon, boutique and wellness area<br />
complete with its own lounging space, sauna<br />
and steam rooms, Jacuzzi and plunge pool.<br />
Let the timeless allure of the Maldives<br />
welcome you in as you discover the warmth<br />
and affection of its people in this idyllic<br />
island retreat.<br />
VAKKARU MALDIVES • Baa Atoll, Republic of Maldives • Tel: +960 660 7000 • Fax: +960 660 7777<br />
reservations@vakkarumaldives.com • vakkarumaldives.com
48 DEPARTURES STYLE BRIGHT IDEAS<br />
The Colour Connoisseur’s Guide<br />
The experts weigh in on where to find everything<br />
from ombré glass furniture to red bath fixtures to<br />
give your home a new kaleidoscopic look.<br />
by Joe Harper. Illustrations by Jordan Andrew Carter<br />
ACCENT FURNITURE<br />
Decorator Amy Lau loves works by the<br />
Latvian-born, Amsterdam-based furniture<br />
designer Germans Ermičs. “His furniture adds<br />
an interesting, bespoke touch that makes a<br />
room so distinctive and memorable,” she says.<br />
One of her favourite pieces is his 2017 Ombré<br />
Glass Chair, a boxy seat that fades from one<br />
colour to the next across just four planes<br />
of glass – a medium he uses for most of his<br />
designs, which include tables, consoles and<br />
shelving. “Alchemy of colour is the cornerstone<br />
of his work,” says Lau. germansermics.com<br />
HARDWARE<br />
Fashion designer Lisa Perry<br />
also has a talent for decorating<br />
interiors, as is evident in her<br />
new book Lisa Perry: Fashion,<br />
Homes, Design (Assouline).<br />
To create bold spaces akin to<br />
her 1960s-inspired clothing,<br />
Perry says she adds pops<br />
of colour to all-white rooms.<br />
One way to achieve this is<br />
with doorknobs, and Perry<br />
suggests Bonnemazou Cambus,<br />
a French brand that brings<br />
unexpected shapes to handles<br />
in bright hues. “Hardware is<br />
not always a place where<br />
creativity can shine, but their<br />
pieces make a statement,<br />
and the colour choices<br />
are electric,” says Perry.<br />
bonnemazou-cambus.fr<br />
UPHOLSTERY<br />
Danielle Fennoy of Revamp<br />
Interior Design in New<br />
York doesn’t like how most<br />
upholstered furniture only<br />
comes in understated shades<br />
like beige or grey, so to make<br />
her pieces unique, she often<br />
reupholsters everything.<br />
She prefers Romo’s Black<br />
Edition Herbaria Collection<br />
(romo.com) for its organic<br />
patterns in bright colours;<br />
Maharam (maharam.com) for<br />
a retro look, typified by the<br />
Millerstripe wool by Alexander<br />
Girard, which was designed in<br />
1973; and Dedar (dedar.com)<br />
for the unexpected. “Dedar’s<br />
colours are richer, deeper and<br />
more complex than those I’ve<br />
seen elsewhere,” says Fennoy.<br />
ART<br />
“Gary Petersen’s Constructivist paintings are<br />
transfixing,” says famed decorator Jamie Drake.<br />
He discovered Petersen at the New York gallery<br />
McKenzie Fine Art, which represents a roster<br />
of abstract artists who aren’t shy about using<br />
colour. “His pieces have a rhythm of overlapping<br />
geometries that is upbeat and energetic. They<br />
create a true focal point, with a Jazz Age spirit,”<br />
says Drake. mckenziefineart.com
MURALS<br />
Designer Richard<br />
McGeehan often<br />
commissions<br />
Brooklyn artist Matt<br />
Austin, whose work<br />
ranges from detailed<br />
landscapes to abstract<br />
geometries; they take<br />
about two weeks<br />
to execute. “Go to him<br />
for the unexpected<br />
and the amazing,”<br />
McGeehan says.<br />
mattaustinstudio.com<br />
TEXTILES<br />
Fawn Galli’s first book, Magical<br />
Rooms (Rizzoli), is a study<br />
in opulent colour. She found<br />
inspiration for the spaces<br />
featured in the book from her<br />
travels to places like Oaxaca,<br />
Mexico, where she sources<br />
textiles from Los Baúles de Juana<br />
Cata (+52 951 501 0552), which<br />
works with local artisans who<br />
use natural dyes. When in Tokyo,<br />
she likes Morita (morita-antiques.<br />
com), which sells woodblockprinted<br />
furoshiki wrapping cloths<br />
and embroidered sashiko fabric.<br />
“It’s one of my favourite places<br />
for vintage kimonos and wall<br />
hangings,” says Galli.<br />
BATH FIXTURES<br />
Rather than sticking to traditional<br />
finishes like nickel and brass,<br />
designer Nicole Fuller suggests<br />
adding whimsy by choosing<br />
from the colourful selection<br />
of faucets and handles from<br />
Fantini. The Italian brand’s Nice<br />
Collection features translucent<br />
acrylic knobs with bases offered<br />
in six different hues. For an<br />
even brighter look, the rounded<br />
spouts and cross handles of<br />
the I Balocchi series can be<br />
finished in a fire-engine red.<br />
fantiniusa.com<br />
WALLPAPER<br />
Celerie Kemble, of the family-run Kemble Interiors,<br />
says wallpaper easily brings colour to a room. “My go-to<br />
is Schumacher,” says Kemble, whose own collection<br />
for the brand includes lively motifs like the striped<br />
Creeping Fern. “I love adding their Romeo marbleised<br />
paper to bookcases. It’s both wild and scholarly at the<br />
same time.” fschumacher.com<br />
CARPETS<br />
“We can easily forget the luxury<br />
of a beautiful carpet under bare<br />
feet,” says designer and hotelier<br />
Kit Kemp. She often collaborates<br />
with Christopher Farr to make pieces<br />
like Egg & Dart – a geometric<br />
jute-and-wool rug featuring blue,<br />
orange, green, yellow and red<br />
dots throughout – which she used<br />
inside the Meadow suite at her<br />
Crosby Street Hotel in New York.<br />
christopherfarr.com<br />
TILES<br />
Mission Tile West, which has<br />
showrooms throughout the Los<br />
Angeles area, offers machinecut<br />
tiles that are painted by hand.<br />
Designer Peter Dunham, who chose<br />
the brand’s eight-by-15-centimetre<br />
offerings in the Tahiti colour for a<br />
1905 house in Santa Monica, says<br />
he likes the automation aspect<br />
for providing tight grout lines, but<br />
the hand-painted element for its<br />
dazzling hues. missiontilewest.com<br />
LIGHTING<br />
“I love colourful<br />
lampshades, and Bhon<br />
Bhon makes the most<br />
beautiful ones,” says<br />
New York designer<br />
Miles Redd. Based in<br />
Queens, Bhon Bhon<br />
handcrafts custom<br />
shades using everything<br />
from painted linens<br />
to pierced leather.<br />
Its pieces have been<br />
featured in the homes of<br />
Gloria Vanderbilt, Sting<br />
and Madonna, to name<br />
a few. Redd suggests<br />
trying a pink shade:<br />
“It will glow like a glass<br />
of brandy held up to<br />
firelight.” bhonbhon.com<br />
DEPARTURES<br />
49
DEPARTURES STYLE VISUAL STIMULATION<br />
50<br />
Pop Goes<br />
More than 50 years into his career, the radical nonno of<br />
Italian design is still using colour to defy convention.<br />
by Karin Nelson. Photographs by Stefan Ruiz<br />
Above: designer Gaetano<br />
Pesce in his Brooklyn studio<br />
with his Up chair for B&B<br />
Italia; right: Pesce recently<br />
reproduced his 1984 Pratt<br />
Chair in new colours for the<br />
gallery Salon 94 Design,<br />
salon94design.com<br />
the Easel<br />
WHEN GAETANO PESCE was nine,<br />
he punched his teacher for being<br />
stupid. Improper as the act was,<br />
it was also fortuitous. He was<br />
expelled and then enrolled in the<br />
only other school in Padua, Italy, an<br />
all-girls institution. “I was the only<br />
boy, and I learnt a lot about how to<br />
think and act,” says the architect and<br />
designer. Two decades later, in 1969,<br />
he produced his now iconic Up chair<br />
for B&B Italia, a bulbous seat shaped<br />
like an ancient fertility goddess. With<br />
its spherical ottoman attached like a<br />
ball and chain, the chair symbolised<br />
the oppression of women by men.<br />
It was the first industrial-design<br />
object to express such a political<br />
point of view – and 50 years on, it’s as<br />
relevant as ever.<br />
But then Pesce, who turns 80 in<br />
November, has always been a designer<br />
for our times. His work, which runs<br />
the gamut from bouncy resin vases<br />
to an office building covered with<br />
flowerpots, is fluid, imperfect, wildly<br />
innovative and, most markedly,<br />
colourful. “Colour is vital. When I<br />
CHAIR: COURTESY GAETANO PESCE/SALON 94 DESIGN
LAMP: COURTESY GAETANO PESCE/SALON 94 DESIGN<br />
Pesce’s one-of-a-kind 2018 Medusa table<br />
(right) and 2016 resin-and-steel Rug lamp<br />
(above) for Salon 94 Design<br />
started using it, my colleagues were<br />
dressed like priests, which I never<br />
understood,” says Pesce, referring<br />
to a time when both the culture and<br />
aesthetics of design took their lead<br />
more from staid architecture than<br />
from art. Even when his pieces are<br />
laden with social commentary, they<br />
are joyful. Which is why, along with<br />
Kaws, Jeffrey Deitch and Laure<br />
Heriard Dubreuil, who installed a<br />
cabinet he designed – shaped like<br />
a smiley face and painted candyfloss<br />
pink – in her New York fashion<br />
boutique The Webster, his biggest<br />
fans are children. “Art is not drama,”<br />
says Pesce, seated in his bendy 357<br />
Feltri chair for Cassina, which Raf<br />
Simons reupholstered with American<br />
quilts for last year’s Design Miami.<br />
“Art is life, and in a moment when<br />
our world is a little depressing, it’s<br />
important to make something positive<br />
and pleasurable.”<br />
To celebrate the Up chair’s<br />
anniversary, Pesce staged an 8m<br />
version of it in Milan’s Piazza del<br />
Duomo this April as part of the city’s<br />
Design Week. And earlier this year,<br />
he presented new and old works at<br />
Galerie Nathalie Obadia in Brussels.<br />
Pesce, who’s been based in New York<br />
since 1980, still goes to his Brooklyn<br />
studio every day. He’s busy creating<br />
new pieces and playing around<br />
with innovative materials, such<br />
as a translucent resin he recently<br />
used to recast his 1984 Pratt chairs,<br />
making them even more vivid. In the<br />
autumn, he’ll show new work at the<br />
Manhattan gallery Salon 94 Design,<br />
and, as part of the city’s Performa 19<br />
Biennial, he will present a resin rug,<br />
pieces of which viewers can carve<br />
out and take home. “Art is done for<br />
others to enjoy.”<br />
Right: Pesce in his<br />
studio working<br />
on La Perdita della<br />
Manualità (The<br />
Loss of Dexterity),<br />
a deflated hand<br />
sculpture about the<br />
decline of handwork<br />
DEPARTURES<br />
51
52 DEPARTURES STYLE WORLDLY GOODS<br />
Doing It Right<br />
Ethically made, eco-conscious,<br />
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1 Carolina K Nina reversible bikini top<br />
in recycled nylon, carolinak.com<br />
2 Eleven Six Sadie crochet top in<br />
Peruvian pima cotton, crafted by<br />
Peruvian artisans, eleven-six.co<br />
3 Riley Studio modular anorak in<br />
water-resistant cotton, certified by<br />
the Better Cotton Initiative, riley.studio<br />
4 Mayamiko Dalisto maxi wrap<br />
dress in responsibly sourced cotton,<br />
mayamiko.com<br />
5 Mandkhai suit trousers made from<br />
sustainable Mongolian cashmere and<br />
merino wool, mandkhai.com<br />
6 Pour Les Femmes cotton boyfriend<br />
nightshirt; the brand partners with<br />
Action Kivu, a non-profit promoting<br />
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54 DEPARTURES STYLE WORLDLY GOODS<br />
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Dani glasses in naturalPX<br />
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neubau-eyewear.com<br />
2 Okapi 18kt gold-plated<br />
springbok-horn clip made<br />
by a community project in<br />
South Africa, okapi.com<br />
3 Lilian Von Trapp double-<br />
tie necklace in recycled<br />
yellow and rose gold,<br />
lilianvontrapp.com<br />
4 Mountain & Moon gold-<br />
plated Christine earring set<br />
with pink chalcedony; part<br />
of the brand’s sales are<br />
reinvested into projects<br />
supporting women in India,<br />
mountainandmoon.com.au<br />
5 Baume Custom<br />
Timepiece 41mm<br />
Retrograde made with<br />
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baumewatches.com<br />
6 Alama Iture bracelet,<br />
hand-beaded by a Maasai<br />
woman in Tanzania,<br />
alama-project.com<br />
7 Sydney Brown slides<br />
with raffia upper and corkcovered,<br />
recycled-fibre<br />
insole, sydney-brown.com<br />
8 Sep Jordan Koutubia<br />
cushion in graphite cotton<br />
and linen, handmade<br />
by refugees in Jordan,<br />
sepjordan.com<br />
9 Lidia May leather Diana<br />
satchel, hand-embroidered<br />
in Bangladesh, for a project<br />
empowering women in<br />
urban Dhaka, lidiamay.com<br />
10 Vikapu Bomba<br />
handwoven tote made<br />
from grasses of the<br />
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vikapubomba.com<br />
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56 DEPARTURES CULTURE GREAT SOURCES<br />
Mexico Modern<br />
A burgeoning furniture brand<br />
is reviving a host of near-forgotten<br />
midcentury maestros. by Pilar Viladas<br />
WHEN AMANDA and Sebastian Reant began their furniture<br />
company, Luteca, in Dobbs Ferry, New York, in 2015, they<br />
were at the forefront of a revival of interest in modernist<br />
and contemporary Mexican architecture and design.<br />
Amanda, who is British, and Sebastian, who is French,<br />
each had careers in management and marketing (she in<br />
the home furnishings world, he in the entertainment and<br />
digital fields), but they shared a passion for design, and a<br />
2014 trip to Mexico was a revelation.<br />
While the design world grows increasingly familiar with<br />
the storied midcentury icons from northern Europe, the<br />
Reants discovered an untapped Mexican reservoir that<br />
was fresh and exciting. “We think Mexican design has<br />
something universal,” Sebastian says; it encompasses “pre-<br />
Columbian culture, Spanish colonial culture and 20th-<br />
Inside the<br />
Mexico City<br />
showroom<br />
century modernism.” This eclectic<br />
mix has made the style popular with<br />
big-name interior designers like<br />
Martyn Lawrence Bullard, Shawn<br />
Henderson, and Commune Design,<br />
the LA firm that used Luteca’s San<br />
Miguelito counter stools in recent<br />
projects.<br />
Luteca’s first collection focused on<br />
furniture by Pedro Ramírez Vázquez,<br />
the architect who codesigned<br />
Mexico City’s National Museum<br />
of Anthropology and its Museum<br />
of Modern Art, among other noted<br />
structures of the 1960s. In 2017,<br />
Luteca reissued pieces by Michael van<br />
Beuren, the American-born, Bauhauseducated<br />
designer who moved to<br />
Mexico in 1936. These include the<br />
Alacrán chaise, designed with Klaus<br />
Grabe, which was a winner in MoMA’s<br />
Organic Design in Home Furnishings<br />
competition in 1941, and the Woven<br />
PIA RIVEROLA
FROM TOP: ARCHIVES OF AMERICAN ART, SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, ESTHER MCCOY PAPERS; © LUTECA; PIA RIVEROLA<br />
Credenza, a 1940 design in wood with<br />
palm-cord doors.<br />
Luteca’s roster of contemporary<br />
collaborators includes Jorge Arturo<br />
Ibarra (who is also the company’s<br />
design director), Sami Hayek, the<br />
French-Mexican Studio Martes and<br />
the duo of Rodrigo Berrondo and<br />
Pablo Igartúa. In one way or another,<br />
they all draw on Mexico’s 20thcentury<br />
design history or its native<br />
materials to produce furniture that<br />
evokes tradition in a new way.<br />
For its latest release, Luteca<br />
returned to the 20th century, with<br />
two pieces by Clara Porset, another<br />
key figure in Mexico’s modernist<br />
history: a sculptural wood-and-glass<br />
coffee table that Amanda calls “so<br />
modern it could have been designed<br />
yesterday” and Porset’s take on the<br />
classic Mexican butaque chair, with<br />
its sinuously curved wood frame.<br />
“Porset offered us an opportunity to<br />
highlight a female designer who was<br />
doing amazing things in the mid-<br />
20th century that are still admired<br />
today,” she says.<br />
Born in Cuba in 1895 and educated<br />
in both the US and France, Porset<br />
fled Cuba for Mexico as a political<br />
exile in 1935. She was soon working<br />
with prominent architects like<br />
Luis Barragán and Mario Pani on<br />
everything from high-end residences<br />
and restaurants to housing projects,<br />
and her design for a steel-tube chair<br />
was included in the catalogue of<br />
MoMA’s International Competition<br />
for Low-Cost Furniture Design in<br />
1950. Her interiors and furniture were<br />
known for integrating her modernist<br />
education with a genuine interest in<br />
Mexican traditions. Porset owed the<br />
latter in part to her travels throughout<br />
the country with her husband, Xavier<br />
Guerrero, a well-known muralist<br />
and activist. But as humanistic as<br />
her approach was, Porset’s aesthetic<br />
had no room for frills; as she said in<br />
a 1931 lecture, “We are in a position<br />
to perceive and appreciate an austere<br />
beauty stripped of all ornament.”<br />
Porset’s brief return to Cuba after<br />
the 1959 revolution to work with<br />
the Castro regime alienated many<br />
of her peers. But in her later years<br />
in Mexico, Porset resumed her long<br />
career teaching industrial design at<br />
the National Autonomous University<br />
of Mexico (UNAM); her work was<br />
recognised in Mexican museum<br />
exhibitions, and she received various<br />
awards before her death in 1981.<br />
Porset was not the only 20thcentury<br />
designer who was fascinated<br />
by the butaque; it was also interpreted<br />
by William Spratling, who is best<br />
known for his work in silver, and<br />
by van Beuren, whose own, more<br />
reductive version is also now being<br />
made by Luteca. Porset, however,<br />
was keen on maximising the chair’s<br />
ergonomic potential, as well as<br />
respecting its vernacular roots. Later<br />
this year, Luteca will introduce<br />
another well-known Porset design,<br />
the Totonaca chair, inspired by a<br />
sculpture dating to the fifth or sixth<br />
century BC. Luteca worked with<br />
UNAM, which houses the designer’s<br />
archive, to develop the technical<br />
drawings for all these pieces.<br />
Another Mexico-based project,<br />
Luteca’s Txt.ure line, was developed<br />
by Regina Pozo in collaboration with<br />
the last remaining group of native<br />
artisans still weaving tule (a marsh<br />
plant similar to a cattail) – a craft that<br />
dates back to the Mayans. Together,<br />
they’re working on a series of seating.<br />
Luteca produces its furniture in<br />
the US but has added a factory in<br />
Mexico to meet the demand for<br />
From top: designer<br />
Clara Porset (right);<br />
a Porset coffee table<br />
by Luteca<br />
projects there, like Jon Brent Design’s<br />
Four Seasons Resort Los Cabos and<br />
Cherem Arquitectos’ 1 Hotel Cabo.<br />
Last year Luteca opened a showroom<br />
in Mexico City.<br />
And now the company has just<br />
opened its first US showroom, in<br />
New York City, giving it an outlet to<br />
broadcast its message to even greater<br />
numbers of designers. “We’re trying<br />
to reach a global audience,” Amanda<br />
says. “But Mexican design is still<br />
influenced by local cultures and<br />
traditions. It’s very personal.”<br />
DEPARTURES<br />
57
LUXE ESCAPES<br />
Endless white-sand beaches as far as the eye can see, crystal-clear<br />
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Soneva Fushi<br />
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Six Senses<br />
Kaplankaya<br />
Breathtaking natural<br />
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LOCATED ACROSS THE BAY FROM<br />
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Seamlessly bridging old and new, the resort<br />
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Offering a truly integrative approach to<br />
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BOZBUK MAHALLESI, MERKEZ<br />
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Shangri-La's<br />
Villingili<br />
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A tropical gem beyond the equator.<br />
Your sanctuary beyond paradise<br />
VILLINGILI ISLAND, a stunning jewel in<br />
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Relax in style at one of our private villas<br />
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Its expansive footprint ensures that there<br />
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Refresh mind and body with our daily<br />
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VILLINGILI ISLAND, ADDU ATOLL<br />
MALDIVES<br />
FOR MORE INFORMATION OR TO MAKE A BOOKING, PLEASE CONTACT YOUR PLATINUM TRAVEL SERVICE
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Four Seasons<br />
Mahé<br />
Discover Seychelles’<br />
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A TROPICAL AMPHITHEATRE of treetop<br />
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The villa interiors are inspired by rustic<br />
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activities bring fun and adventure to those<br />
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ANSE, BAKE LAZARE, PO<br />
BOX 1397, VICTORIA, MAHÈ,<br />
SEYCHELLES<br />
FOR MORE INFORMATION OR TO MAKE A BOOKING, PLEASE CONTACT YOUR PLATINUM TRAVEL SERVICE
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One&Only<br />
Reethi Rah<br />
A place where turquoise<br />
clear waters meet<br />
cloudless azure skies<br />
ONE&ONLY REETHI RAH is a truly rare<br />
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glamour set amid the vivid turquoise waters<br />
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NORTH MALÉ ATOLL,<br />
REPUBLIC OF MALDIVES<br />
ONEANDONLYREETHIRAH.COM<br />
FOR MORE INFORMATION OR TO MAKE A BOOKING, PLEASE CONTACT YOUR PLATINUM TRAVEL SERVICE
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The St. Regis<br />
Abu Dhabi<br />
Abu Dhabi's finest urban resort<br />
located at the vibrant heart of the<br />
UAE capital with a 200 metre stretch<br />
of pristine beach, overlooking the<br />
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LIVE EXQUISITE at The St. Regis Abu<br />
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Situated between the 33rd and 49th floors,<br />
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UAE capital while offering the signature St.<br />
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the Abu Dhabi Suite adjoins the two Nation<br />
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metres with a captivating 360 degree views<br />
of the city.<br />
The hotel is home to The Nation Riviera<br />
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spacious swimming pool, a children’s club,<br />
one of the UAE’s largest spas and nine<br />
distinctive restaurants and lounges cater to all<br />
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Located at the heart of the Abu Dhabi<br />
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THE ST. REGIS ABU DHABI<br />
NATION TOWERS, CORNICHE<br />
ABU DHABI, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES<br />
STREGISABUDHABI.COM<br />
FOR MORE INFORMATION OR TO MAKE A BOOKING, PLEASE CONTACT YOUR PLATINUM TRAVEL SERVICE
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W Koh Samui<br />
Explore nine miles of tropical<br />
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LOCATED ONLY 15 MINUTES away from<br />
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W Koh Samui luxury resort has the finest<br />
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Start the day with a workout at FIT,<br />
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hotel’s contemporary Japanese restaurant,<br />
Namu, or the all-day dining restaurant, The<br />
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Make yourself at home with a 24/7<br />
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W KOH SAMUI<br />
4/1 MOO 1, MAENAM, KOH SAMUI<br />
SURATTHANI, THAILAND<br />
WKOHSAMUI.COM<br />
FOR RESERVATIONS CONTACT RESERVATIONS.WKOHSAMUI@WHOTELS.COM OR +66 77 915 999
O<br />
U<br />
T<br />
S<br />
I<br />
D<br />
E<br />
T<br />
E<br />
B<br />
X<br />
H<br />
O<br />
The award-winning architect<br />
Thom Mayne – known for his daringly<br />
complex buildings around the world –<br />
ÿ nally designs one for himself.<br />
by Ted Loos. Photographs by Spencer Lowell.<br />
Styled by Michael Reynolds<br />
66
Thom Mayne clad his Los Angeles<br />
home in an aluminium screen<br />
that adds to the camouflage look<br />
67
Cheviot Hills, in west<br />
Los Angeles, looks<br />
like so many old<br />
neighbourhoods in<br />
the city: perfectly<br />
manicured lawns,<br />
wide pavements, and<br />
comfortable uppermiddle-class<br />
houses<br />
68<br />
in a wide array of architectural styles, including Tudor<br />
Revival, Mediterranean Revival and modern Craftsman.<br />
But then there’s Thom Mayne’s house – a modernist box<br />
of metal and glass surrounded by greenery and fronted<br />
by a pool, largely invisible from the street. It’s the most<br />
personal expression to date from the iconoclastic architect,<br />
who built the house for himself and his wife of 37 years,<br />
Blythe Alison-Mayne.<br />
Mayne, a tall and gangly 75-year-old, is almost<br />
incapable of doing unprovocative work. He won<br />
architecture’s highest honour, the Pritzker Prize, in 2005,<br />
and his LA-based firm, Morphosis, is known for designing<br />
thoughtfully muscular buildings like Manhattan’s 41<br />
Cooper Square, which houses Cooper Union’s humanities<br />
and engineering schools and has a sloping, riven metal<br />
façade, and the Bloomberg Center at Cornell Tech, on<br />
New York City’s Roosevelt Island, which is topped by<br />
a dramatic canopy full of solar panels. His upcoming<br />
projects span the globe, from a research building in Seoul<br />
to the US embassy in Beirut.<br />
“Most people who see our work don’t think domestic<br />
architecture,” says Mayne. “Building a home puts you in<br />
a completely different mindset: from the macro level to<br />
intimate detail.” Case in point: his living room cantilevers<br />
over the pool and has a partially see-through floor that<br />
reveals the water below. The glass walls fronting the pool<br />
open completely, so guests can dive right in from the<br />
living room. “And people do,” says Alison-Mayne, who<br />
was a financial manager at her husband’s firm for years.<br />
The house is Mayne’s first domestic project in a quartercentury,<br />
and was completed in late 2017 on a site that used<br />
to hold the home of the sci-fi writer Ray Bradbury. Mayne<br />
says the house was explicitly influenced by the Case Study<br />
Houses (1945-66), modern icons with the California vibe
In the living room, Mayne<br />
displays mixed-media art he’s<br />
completed over the past seven<br />
years. The floor lamp is from<br />
Artemide; opposite: Mayne with<br />
his wife, Blythe Alison-Mayne<br />
69
“It goes back to the<br />
way we live: constant<br />
communication,”<br />
Alison-Mayne says.<br />
“There’s no man<br />
cave, no place where<br />
people go to escape”<br />
70<br />
of spare lines and indoor-outdoor living, but this<br />
wasn’t going to be an academic exercise. “When we<br />
started, we said, ‘This is not Thom Mayne. This is not<br />
Morphosis. This is our house,’ ” the architect says.<br />
Partly clad in metal with large, semi-perforated<br />
circle shapes – imagine hole-punched hanging chads<br />
– the home is one complex puzzle. The main house is<br />
only 130 square metres above ground, but an adjacent<br />
guest one adds another 74. It feels bigger perhaps<br />
because the houses’ parts overlap and bleed into each<br />
other – the architectural equivalent of a jazz musician<br />
on a riff. While the design stresses privacy in some<br />
ways, there are a lot of open elements that aren’t<br />
conventional. Mayne wanted to prove something, too.<br />
“Thinking of the group I’m compared with, the Coop<br />
Himmelb(l)aus, the Frank Gehrys, the Zaha Hadids”<br />
– he means the Big Architectural Statement types – “I<br />
wanted to instead make architecture secondary to the<br />
landscape. It should just about disappear.” He adds,<br />
“It’s the thing I’m most happy about. It proves I can do<br />
something softer.”<br />
Softer, maybe, but not safe. “Everything’s off by a<br />
degree and a half,” says Mayne, standing in the mainfloor<br />
hallway and gesturing at the slightly-off angle of<br />
the white walls. “It gives you a dynamism.” Luckily,<br />
Morphosis had a shop to fabricate all the custom parts.<br />
The living room has a skinny vertical section cut out of<br />
one wall, facing the entrance, the better to see who’s<br />
coming to the door, says Alison-Mayne with a smile.<br />
The main staircase has a portion that seems impassable<br />
to all but tiny children, since another volume juts into<br />
its space; you have to walk around that volume, but as<br />
you do, you discover two new vistas: up to the left, an<br />
office, and up to the right, the loftlike master bedroom.<br />
Perhaps the most striking feature is the dining area’s<br />
faceted ceiling, made of intricately fitted panels, which<br />
curves up to form the back of the headboard in the master<br />
bedroom, whose half-walls overlook the first floor. It’s<br />
a twist on the old modern architecture adage, “Form<br />
follows function.”<br />
Instead of building up, Mayne dug down –<br />
construction crews excavated some 450 truckloads<br />
of dirt. But he only built on one-fifth of the allowable
The stairway to the master bedroom; Alison-Mayne’s office includes a desk chair from Fritz Hansen and a stool from Design Within Reach;<br />
opposite, from above: The property features a 17m-long pool with chaises longues from Royal Botania; Mayne capped a structural steel<br />
beam with Douglas fir to blend with the surroundings<br />
volume. By starting low, he was able to play with levels (the<br />
house has eight elevation points) and insulate from prying<br />
eyes. The perimeter hedge includes what Mayne calls “a<br />
007 moment”: the driveway gate is part of the green wall,<br />
so a portion moves aside when it opens. Thanks to the<br />
design, the normally private couple can spend a lot of time<br />
outside. Mayne wanted to emphasise that the outdoor<br />
entertaining space was part of the house, so he extended<br />
a beam out from the structure and then down towards<br />
the far side of the pool, but there’s a gap midway before<br />
continuing to the ground. “That’s a language I’ve been<br />
working with my whole career,” says Mayne. “Fragments,<br />
the unfinished, works in progress.”<br />
That kind of unconventional, disruptive thinking has<br />
marked his CV since founding Morphosis in 1972. Mayne<br />
spent much of his early career as an uncompromising,<br />
largely academic architect – he was a founding faculty<br />
member at the LA architecture school SCI-Arc – and<br />
his firm faced many lean years. But in the 1990s, with<br />
projects like the brilliantly fragmented Diamond Ranch<br />
High School in 2000, his work started to get noticed,<br />
and today Morphosis is one of the most sought-after<br />
architecture shops.<br />
But it was the small, 1930s bungalow in Santa Monica<br />
where the Maynes raised their two sons – not his previous<br />
signature projects – that inspired the size and feel of this<br />
hideaway. Their former home was famously quirky: the<br />
shower, for example, was in the middle of the living room.<br />
The stall was opaque, but “it was challenging to figure out<br />
privacy,” says Alison-Mayne.<br />
And when their adult sons, now both well over six feet<br />
tall, came to visit, it became clear that the family had long<br />
outgrown the house. “One of my sons said to me, ‘You know<br />
you’re married to an architect, right?’ ” Hence the new house<br />
and its “hotel wing”, a completely separate space with two<br />
bedrooms, a bathroom, and a small living room. No guest is<br />
encouraged to stay too long, by design: “The closets are so<br />
small you can’t move in,” she adds.<br />
But guests can certainly feel at home in this very openplan<br />
living space. “It goes back to the way we live: constant<br />
communication,” Alison-Mayne says. “There’s no man cave,<br />
no place where people go to escape.” She does, however, like<br />
to retreat to her bedroom-bathroom area that opens to the<br />
outdoors. The bed looks across the tops of palm trees to the<br />
shower. Next to the tub is a curved bench that Mayne sits on<br />
to chat with her when she has her nightly bath. The angles<br />
all ensure that the couple can’t be seen from the street or<br />
elsewhere in the house.<br />
Because he is a perfectionist, Mayne is still “struggling<br />
with everything that’s wrong” with the house, he says with<br />
a sheepish smile. He knows Chez Mayne is tailored for<br />
his family, but it’s also on-brand for Morphosis. “As the<br />
world gets thinner and simpler,” he says, “I’m interested in<br />
architecture’s role in countering that.”<br />
71
72 DEPARTURES <br />
A view of the Parroquia de San<br />
Miguel Arcángel from the grounds<br />
of the Rosewood hotel; opposite:<br />
the shop Evoke the Spirit
It’s Always Sunny in<br />
SAN MIGUEL<br />
Some residents call it an energy vortex – others credit the light and architecture.<br />
There’s just something about San Miguel de Allende that continues to draw creative<br />
visionaries from around the world to Mexico’s most enchanting colonial town.<br />
by Maura Egan | Photographs by Lindsay Lauckner Gundlock
ou need to go behind the<br />
closed doors, peek inside<br />
the courtyards in San Miguel<br />
de Allende,” said Bertha<br />
González Nieves, a highpowered<br />
Mexican business<br />
Y<br />
woman. “Here, everything<br />
goes back deep.” González<br />
was sitting in the courtyard<br />
of the cavernous Casa<br />
Dragones, once the 18th-century stables of Los Dragones,<br />
an elite cavalry that helped lead Mexico to independence.<br />
Although González shuttles between Mexico City and<br />
Manhattan, she calls San Miguel de Allende the spiritual<br />
home of the brand.<br />
“There’s an energy here – this is where the revolution<br />
started,” González said. “It’s also the centre of the<br />
country. And the light! It’s the reason why artists and<br />
photographers fall in love with this place.” A picturesque<br />
hill town about 250 kilometres northwest of Mexico<br />
City, San Miguel de Allende started luring international<br />
visitors in the 1930s, when 27-year-old Chicago painter<br />
Stirling Dickinson came through and was immediately<br />
enchanted. He would go on to establish the El Centro<br />
Cultural Ignacio Ramírez (also known as Bellas Artes) in a<br />
former convent and recruit hundreds<br />
of young American veterans to study<br />
there under the GI Bill. (González<br />
advised me to explore the buildings’<br />
cloisters to see an unfinished but<br />
dramatic mural by David Alfaro<br />
Siqueiros, a contemporary of Diego<br />
Rivera, who taught many of the<br />
GIs.) In the postwar years, artists<br />
and retirees alike were drawn to the<br />
city; today nearly 10 percent of the<br />
population is from the US.<br />
It’s been referred to as the Florence<br />
of Mexico, and you can see why. The<br />
main square is unexpectedly European:<br />
the Parroquia de San Miguel Arcángel, a<br />
giant pink sandstone cathedral with neo-<br />
Gothic spires, is one of many churches<br />
in town. There are manicured parks<br />
with sculpted laurel trees and fountains,<br />
and the most treacherous cobblestoned<br />
streets you’ll ever navigate. And as with<br />
its Italian counterpart, those streets<br />
are thronged by an endless procession<br />
of tourists.<br />
74 DEPARTURES <br />
Left: the entrance of Casa<br />
Dragones; opposite: the<br />
pool at L’Ôtel at Dôce 18<br />
Concept House
“This is where the revolution started,”<br />
González said. “It’s also the centre of<br />
the country. And the light! It’s the<br />
reason why artists and photographers<br />
fall in love with this place”<br />
All kinds of tourists: athleisureclad<br />
seniors basking in the year-round<br />
perfect weather; college students<br />
taking pottery and weaving workshops<br />
at venerable cultural institutions like<br />
Bellas Artes and the Instituto Allende;<br />
and Mexican wedding parties from<br />
Monterrey and Guadalajara posing<br />
for family photos in the stately Parque<br />
Benito Juárez.<br />
“I never really had a desire to<br />
visit, because I had heard it was full<br />
of tourists,” said Laura Kirar, an<br />
artist and designer who moved<br />
from Brooklyn to Yucatán in 2017<br />
to restore an old hacienda with<br />
her husband, Richard Frazier. She<br />
started visiting San Miguel for<br />
business and to escape Yucatán’s<br />
summer heat and was soon<br />
enthralled.<br />
“The creative community here<br />
is strong, and it isn’t just painters<br />
and musicians,” Kirar told me.<br />
She works with Mexican artisans<br />
across the region to make her sisaland-henequen<br />
woven bags and<br />
copper objects, which she sells at<br />
Dôce 18 Concept House, a stylish<br />
retail complex in the historic centre. “The entrepreneurial<br />
spirit seems to be thriving here,” she said. “It’s a place of<br />
connectors and doers.”<br />
For the most part, the Americans and Europeans<br />
who’ve settled in San Miguel aren’t just snowbirds<br />
here for the weather. Whether it’s designers and<br />
decorators working with regional craftsmen to make<br />
their wares, hiring local chefs to cook in restaurants<br />
serving new riffs on traditional Mexican cuisine, or<br />
volunteering (there are nearly 100 charities in the area),<br />
the expats who’ve settled in the area tend to be actively<br />
engaged with the community. On Halloween night,<br />
DEPARTURES<br />
75
76 DEPARTURES
Right: chef Donnie Masterton at<br />
The Restaurant; below: a beef rib<br />
taco at Jacinto 1930; opposite:<br />
a guest room at Hotel Amparo<br />
I watched the older American expat couples (who seemed<br />
as excited for the holiday as the Mexican children) hand<br />
out treats to swarms of kids.<br />
“You have to remember that San Miguel’s expat<br />
community originated from that first group of<br />
people who came down here to study the arts,”<br />
said Jeffry Weisman, who bought a place here<br />
in 2011 with his husband and business partner, Andrew<br />
Fisher. The San Francisco-based designers, known for their<br />
opulent interiors, had always loved Mexico but assumed<br />
they would buy near the beach. “But then my sister came<br />
down here for a bridge tournament and told us we’d fall<br />
in love with it,” recalled Weisman. Once they discovered<br />
a former tannery for sale, they traded in their Sonoma<br />
Valley ranch for San Miguel de Allende. The façade of their<br />
property looks simple enough, but after you pass through<br />
the wooden doors, it’s an architectural extravaganza.<br />
They’ve added stone terraces, statement chandeliers and<br />
hulking stone fireplaces. All of the rooms look out onto<br />
a lush garden that leads to a pool with a guest casita and<br />
100-year-old jacaranda trees, which were what clinched it<br />
for Weisman. But it was also the weather. “It’s 75 and clear<br />
most of the year,” he said. “I love the old-world scale too.<br />
None of the buildings are taller than two storeys, and it’s<br />
still cobblestoned streets.”<br />
It’s proven to be an ideal place to work. With so<br />
many family factories and craftsmen in the region, the<br />
designers can produce many of their pieces there. Fisher,<br />
who is also a painter and sculptor, has a loftlike studio<br />
in town and spends nearly all his time in San Miguel.<br />
The pair recently finished work on Casa Blanca 7, an<br />
intimate new hotel just off the main plaza, where they added<br />
SAN MIGUEL ESSENTIALS<br />
Hotels<br />
The town’s classic hotels include BELMOND CASA<br />
DE SIERRA NEVADA ( belmond.com) spread out<br />
across six historic mansions, with a hidden pool and<br />
a cooking school; and ROSEWOOD SAN MIGUEL DE<br />
ALLENDE ( rosewoodhotels.com), which includes<br />
67 rooms done in classical hacienda style, three pools<br />
and a popular rooftop lounge. There is also a slew<br />
of newer boutique properties, such as HOTEL CASA<br />
BLANCA 7 (casablanca7.com), a renovated 300-yearold<br />
residence with Fatima 7, Donnie Masterton’s<br />
Mediterranean-inspired restaurant; HOTEL AMPARO<br />
(hotelamparo.com), which features five eclectic guest<br />
rooms as well as a coffee joint; and L’ÔTEL AT DÔCE<br />
18 CONCEPT HOUSE (l-otelgroup.com), a ten-room<br />
boutique hotel with a rooftop pool.<br />
Restaurants<br />
EL PEGASO ( Corregidora 6) serves hearty dishes<br />
like chiles en nogada stuffed with meat and<br />
raisins and a fragrant chicken soup. JACINTO 1930<br />
(jacinto1930.mx) serves modern Mexican dishes ; try<br />
LA PARADA ( laparadasma.com) for delicious ceviche.<br />
Donnie Masterton’s THE RESTAURANT (therestaurant<br />
sanmiguel.com) offers fresh global comfort food.<br />
Shops<br />
DÔCE 18 CONCEPT HOUSE (doce-18.com) sells<br />
wares from all over Mexico. For hand-dyed textiles<br />
and pottery, check out EVOKE THE SPIRIT (evoke<br />
thespirit.com). FÁBRICA LA AURORA (fabricala<br />
aurora.com) is a former factory filled with galleries<br />
and shops, including gems like Cantadora, for antiques,<br />
and Galería Noyola Fernández. Head to TAO STUDIO<br />
GALLERY (taostudio.net) for high-end furnishings<br />
by Mexican artisans.<br />
DEPARTURES<br />
77
“There’s a true community<br />
that is actively engaged<br />
with the local culture”<br />
78 DEPARTURES <br />
Moroccan<br />
flourishes to a<br />
classic colonial<br />
design.<br />
“It’s pennies<br />
on the dollar<br />
to make things<br />
here,” said<br />
Taylor Goodall, a Houston-based lawyer and the coowner<br />
with his wife Mariana of Hotel Amparo, which<br />
opened this January. Though they shipped in midcentury<br />
pieces from abroad, they’ve furnished much of the fiveroom<br />
guesthouse with textiles from Oaxaca, handcarved<br />
poster beds and papier-mâché objects. It’s an enviable<br />
mix, and I found myself wanting to know the provenance<br />
of every piece. “We want guests to feel like they’re staying<br />
at their coolest friend’s house,” said Goodall, who plans<br />
to open a shop in the lobby to sell commissioned pieces<br />
from local artisans.<br />
There is a lot of creative cross-pollination going on in<br />
San Miguel de Allende. Dôce 18 Concept House houses<br />
a floral studio, a clothing boutique, a ceramics kiosk, a<br />
macaroon stall, several galleries amd a small independent<br />
hotel. One afternoon González took me to visit.<br />
The complex was busy with international visitors but<br />
also young couples from Mexico City who’d come for the<br />
weekend. After a coffee, we headed next door to the very<br />
popular Jacinto 1930 restaurant, where enjoyed oystermushroom<br />
tacos.<br />
For more casual fare, Dôce 18 has a food hall in the back<br />
of the building where Donnie Masterton, an LA native,<br />
has opened a taco stand as well as a grass-fed-burger<br />
joint. In 2008, Masterton, San Miguel’s de facto culinary<br />
ambassador, came to the city and opened what would<br />
become a hugely popular outpost of haute cuisine called<br />
The Restaurant. He had moved down to Mexico a few<br />
years before to take a break from kitchens, having cooked<br />
professionally since he was 15. He fell in love with San<br />
Miguel de Allende and realised there was an opportunity<br />
to open a restaurant focused on local ingredients. He’s<br />
been deeply involved in the town’s burgeoning farm-totable<br />
movement and is building a small eco-ranch just<br />
outside town to grow produce and raise livestock, which<br />
will supply his restaurants. “From a business perspective,<br />
there are fewer hoops to jump through than in the States,”<br />
Masterton told me. “It’s way more<br />
fun to do it down here.” He has just<br />
opened Fatima 7, a <strong>Middle</strong> <strong>East</strong>ern<br />
restaurant in Casa Blanca 7, the<br />
boutique hotel that Weisman and<br />
Fisher designed.<br />
On Thursdays The Restaurant<br />
holds burger night, a tradition that<br />
started during the recession and still<br />
brings in the crowds. However, on<br />
most evenings the place serves as a<br />
local social hub. The night I stopped<br />
by, I met a DJ from Dallas, a Pilates<br />
instructor from San Francisco, and<br />
a reunion group for one of the two<br />
San Miguel Burning Man camps, and<br />
I even bumped into Kirar again. I<br />
asked all of them why San Miguel was<br />
so popular. A few in the Burning Man<br />
group told me about the town having<br />
an energy vortex or an “acupressure<br />
point”. Kirar admitted she didn’t<br />
want to sound all woo-woo, but she<br />
agreed. “There is something special<br />
here that makes me breathe deeper<br />
and smile wider.”
A showroom in the Tao<br />
Studio Gallery; opposite,<br />
from top: a cobblestoned<br />
street; a musician walks<br />
past the Church of<br />
Immaculate Conception in<br />
the historic centre<br />
DEPARTURES<br />
79
GRAND HOTEL<br />
By taking over the beloved Fife Arms, art-world power players<br />
Iwan and Manuela Wirth have added another gem to their cultural empire<br />
and given a jolt of energy to the Scottish Highlands.<br />
by ALIX BROWNE | Photographs by SIMON WATSON<br />
80
LAST NOVEMBER, just a few weeks before The Fife Arms,<br />
a Victorian-era hotel in the Scottish Highlands, officially<br />
opened its doors, Iwan and Manuela Wirth invited the<br />
village of Braemar in for a preview. The Wirths, avid art<br />
collectors and the Swiss power couple behind the Hauser<br />
& Wirth gallery empire, purchased The Fife Arms in<br />
2014, and the extensive renovation they undertook had<br />
for the past few years deprived Braemar of its very centre<br />
of gravity.<br />
That night, however, the Wirths took a small but<br />
raucous step toward making it up to everyone: a trio<br />
of local bagpipe troops in full Scottish regalia marched<br />
through the village streets and faced off ceremoniously<br />
at the hotel’s front door. Inside, the many hearths were<br />
stoked and the tables laid with trays of oysters, cured meats<br />
and smoked fish. The village choir performed on The<br />
Fife’s grand stairway, opening its set with a rendition of<br />
“California Dreamin’”, while a ceilidh brought gentlemen<br />
in kilts and young girls in miniskirts to the dance floor<br />
with classic folk numbers like “Dashing White Sergeant”<br />
and “Strip the Willow”. The hotel lounge, reborn as the<br />
Flying Stag, was awash in the good cheer of people who<br />
have at long last been reunited in the place they love,<br />
only to discover that this place is far better than they<br />
remembered it to be. The evening, which coincided with<br />
Saint Andrew’s Day, one of Scotland’s biggest holidays,<br />
culminated in a display of fireworks.<br />
“The Fife was always a place for parties, but it’s never<br />
seen a party quite like that!” exclaimed Alison MacIntosh,<br />
whose husband had played the grand piano in the reception<br />
room, accompanied for a bit by her daughter on the<br />
oboe. MacIntosh had stopped by the hotel to drop off a<br />
handwritten note of thanks. “My sister had her wedding<br />
reception here. I celebrated my twenty-first<br />
birthday here,” she continued. “It was the most<br />
important building in the village, and we could<br />
see it was going down – it was shabby, it was<br />
cheap. I am so happy to see it brought back to<br />
life.”<br />
Opposite page: At long<br />
last Scottish locals have<br />
been reunited with<br />
their beloved gathering<br />
spot, only to discover<br />
it is far better than<br />
they remembered<br />
The Fife Arms was built in the mid-19th century as a<br />
first-class hotel, to capitalise on the newfound popularity<br />
the Highlands experienced after über-tastemakers Queen<br />
Victoria and her husband, Prince Albert, made nearby<br />
Balmoral Castle their holiday home in 1852. Situated<br />
within the Cairngorms, Britain’s largest national park,<br />
the area is known for its spectacular fishing, stag and<br />
grouse-hunting, hiking, and the Braemar Gathering, a<br />
venerable competition in which all manner of heavy<br />
items, including a 6m-long, 60kg tree trunk known as<br />
the Braemar caber, are tossed, thrown or put. Held on the<br />
first Saturday in September, the Gathering is faithfully<br />
attended by Queen Elizabeth every year from precisely 3<br />
pm to 4 pm.<br />
“Everyone has a romantic relationship with Scotland,”<br />
said Iwan Wirth, an enthusiastic fly fisherman who has<br />
been coming to Scotland for decades. “But the Swiss love it<br />
because it looks like our Alpine valleys – Engadine without<br />
the motorways, the hydro plants, the development. It’s sort<br />
of Switzerland before the First World War.” Eventually<br />
the romance of camping out in traditional fishing lodges<br />
(cramped, stinky) on their visits wore thin, and the Wirths<br />
began looking for a place to call their own, big enough to<br />
accommodate their four grown children, assorted dogs,<br />
works of art, and the many contemporary artists who<br />
compose not only the Hauser & Wirth gallery roster but<br />
also their close circle of friends. Before long they found<br />
themselves the owners of such a house – as well as a 90-<br />
room hotel that had seen much better days.<br />
“It was crying for help,” Iwan recalled, contrasting<br />
The Fife’s stately presence in a culturally rich, picturepostcard<br />
village setting against its unsightly modern<br />
additions, its warrens of sad, carved-up spaces, its<br />
leaky roof and its demotion from a storied, first-rate<br />
establishment to a cheap stopover catering to the lower<br />
end of the bus-tourism industry. “Manuela and I take<br />
these long hikes every day whenever we are here, and that<br />
is when we basically discuss everything from the children<br />
to personal issues and the business,” he said. One day, the<br />
couple trekked up to the Braemar weather station, and by<br />
the time they returned home, they had made a decision.<br />
The Wirths like to say that they know nothing about<br />
running a hotel, and that in purchasing The Fife they<br />
were motivated by instinct, enthusiasm and no small<br />
amount of ignorance, but the couple had in fact already<br />
made successful forays into the hospitality business. They<br />
have established themselves in the traditional<br />
art-world capitals (Zurich, London, New<br />
York), and in 2014 they opened Hauser &<br />
Wirth Somerset on an 18th-century farm in<br />
the English countryside, incorporating a<br />
guesthouse, a restaurant and an arts centre<br />
81
into their robust cultural programme. They followed it up<br />
two years later with Hauser & Wirth Los Angeles, which<br />
boasts more than 9,000 square metres of exhibition<br />
space, and Manuela, a bustling, art-filled restaurant. This<br />
past December, they opened their latest outpost, in St<br />
Moritz. “Art is at the heart of everything we do – not just<br />
the work but the process, the thinking,” said Iwan, who<br />
added that Hauser & Wirth aims to reimagine the gallerygoing<br />
experience as an opportunity to build community.<br />
“With Somerset we created a new model. The Kunsthalle<br />
Zurich has 9,000 visitors a year. Somerset has that in<br />
three weekends.”<br />
The artists who had been guests at the Wirths’ house<br />
in Scotland were among the first to sign on for this latest<br />
venture, and they created site-specific projects while The<br />
Fife was still under renovation. These were not, Iwan<br />
noted, commissions per se. “We invited them all for<br />
the Gathering and then sorted out who does what,” he<br />
explained. The walls of The Fife’s Clunie Dining Room<br />
were hand-painted by Argentine artist Guillermo Kuitca<br />
(the installation took him three months, which he spent<br />
toiling alone through the winter, with little daylight and<br />
no heat); the Chinese artist Zhang Enli took on the ceiling<br />
in the Drawing Room, painting a massive watercolour<br />
inspired by ancient Scottish quartz; and after some<br />
consideration Bharti Kher, who splits her time between<br />
India and the UK, decided to take on the spa. “It doesn’t<br />
even need a gallery here,” Iwan said. “The art is embedded<br />
in everything.”<br />
While there is no dedicated exhibition space on the<br />
grounds, art is indeed the fabric of The Fife, and one<br />
could be forgiven for failing to notice the Picasso in the<br />
drawing room, the Lucian Freud in the reception, or the<br />
Gerhard Richter in the dining room, integrated as they<br />
are with the hotel’s sumptuous Victorian interiors. The<br />
decor of The Fife Arms is so spot-on that if Manuela,<br />
whose regular tartan-inflected wardrobe complements her<br />
tousled, flame-coloured locks, had told me that she has<br />
Scottish ancestry and that the carved wooden chairs and<br />
fringed upholstery all came from the attic of her family<br />
estate, I would have been more than inclined to believe<br />
her. While much of the contemporary art does in fact come<br />
from the Wirths’ personal collection, The Fife’s period<br />
furnishings and artworks, including a drawing of a stag<br />
by Queen Victoria herself, were meticulously sourced by<br />
designer Russell Sage and his team, who, under the Wirths’<br />
direction, saw to it that every single detail<br />
had a story to tell. When the hotel’s manager<br />
extraordinaire, Federica Bertolini, inquired<br />
about how I had slept, I learnt that the<br />
mattresses were from Glencraft, a company<br />
that has made them for four generations<br />
of the royal family. The Fife has its own<br />
proprietary tartan and tweed, used for its<br />
bespoke staff uniforms as well as the custom<br />
Opposite, clockwise from<br />
top left: the main hall<br />
lobby; the Victoriana<br />
suites, such as the Prince<br />
Albert, are named for<br />
noble visitors to the<br />
region; hunting trophies<br />
decorate The Fife Arms’<br />
Brae Wing corridor; the<br />
bathroom in the<br />
King Edward VII suite<br />
interiors of its fleet of Land Rovers, and it even has its own<br />
registered coat of arms, featuring an image of a flying stag.<br />
Its motto: “To the Summit”.<br />
Post-renovation, The Fife boasts only 46 guest rooms,<br />
each unique, ranging from Royal Suites named for<br />
noble visitors to the region (I was assigned the Duke of<br />
Fife) to more modestly sized but exquisitely appointed<br />
accommodations inspired by the works of Scottish poets<br />
and scientists. One of the Wirths’ favourites is the David<br />
Douglas room, named for the Scottish botanist who<br />
brought the Douglas fir to Britain from North America<br />
in the 1820s. “This room was a problem,” Iwan admitted.<br />
“The windows are small and they are on the courtyard, but<br />
Russell got his hands on it, and now you feel as though you<br />
are in a forest.” Engraved in the headboard are the words of<br />
the Edinburgh-based artist and poet Alec Finlay: “To learn<br />
about the pine, hold the cone in your hand.”<br />
“What’s the difference between a hotel and a place you<br />
love and want to stay in and never leave?” Iwan asked,<br />
knowing that we only have to look around us to find the<br />
answer. The Fife Arms is a genuinely enchanting place,<br />
but, he continued, “It’s only magic if you don’t know the<br />
trick. And we reveal a little bit of the trick – the enormous<br />
challenge of the restoration here – so people understand. We<br />
want to encourage them to pay attention to architecture and<br />
to history and heritage, encourage them to look after it.”<br />
Then again, magic just might have something to do<br />
with it. As we walked through the hotel the day after<br />
the welcoming party, we encountered an unexpected<br />
visitor. She introduced herself as Maggi Burk and told the<br />
Wirths that she had been summoned there that morning<br />
(apparently, though, no one had called her). As she dangled<br />
a large, tear-shaped bloodstone from her hand, she<br />
informed the Wirths that The Fife sits on a crossing of ley<br />
lines, mythical and invisible paths of energy. Churches,<br />
cathedrals and ancient monuments tend to be situated<br />
along them, which some believe accounts for the exaltation<br />
they often stir up. “In the past people were more in touch<br />
with the energy of a place, more sensitive to the context,”<br />
Burk said. “So they knew more intuitively where to build<br />
things.”<br />
The Wirths looked at each other in disbelief. “We also<br />
have a ley-line crossing at our property in Somerset,”<br />
Manuela replied. “It’s quite remarkable,” Iwan said. And<br />
yet you get the sense that no matter where they find<br />
themselves – in Los Angeles, or Somerset, or, yes, here in<br />
Braemar – the Wirths ultimately create their<br />
own magic. “I am a very grounded person,”<br />
Iwan insisted. “Ley lines go back to the<br />
Druids, but it’s an alternative science, not a<br />
proven science.” In that regard, I ventured,<br />
it sounds quite a lot like something I know<br />
he and Manuela believe in without a doubt.<br />
“Yes,” Iwan concurred. “It sounds like art.”<br />
thefifearms.com<br />
83
Savouring<br />
the Season<br />
Wild strawberries and cardamom buns,<br />
weathered windmills and rocky beaches –<br />
the rugged yet sophisticated<br />
island of Gotland is an ode to the joys<br />
of Swedish summer.<br />
by Adam Sachs. Photographs by Felix Odell<br />
84
A fishing village<br />
on Fårö, an island<br />
just off Gotland<br />
85
86 DEPARTURES <br />
Maurice told me to go to Rute<br />
Stenugnsbageri, a summer-only<br />
bakery at the far northern end of<br />
Gotland, where the Baltic island is<br />
simultaneously rocky and lush and mostly just empty.<br />
Pulling off the two-lane main road, I followed<br />
the even narrower route past dairy farms and open<br />
fields until I found it: an old stone blacksmith’s<br />
shed retrofitted with a wood-fired bread oven and<br />
surrounded by happy Swedes at picnic tables<br />
kibitzing over their fika, the national coffeesnack<br />
ritual cherished by all. Free-range Swedish<br />
children frolicked in an orderly manner through<br />
a stone maze. The air itself was intoxicating:<br />
fragrant waves of cardamom and saffron,<br />
butter, cinnamon and rye. Someone was ably<br />
pulling shots on an outdoor espresso machine.<br />
A young boy followed his mother towards a glassroofed<br />
pavilion with open doors and comfortable<br />
chairs and a large stone hearth.<br />
Kardemummabullar are beloved Swedish sweet<br />
buns that can often taste more of cardboard than<br />
cardamom. These, however, were pungent, gooey<br />
and perfect. Just about everything was perfect. At<br />
night, the bakers tossed pizzas with dough made<br />
from local grains in the same stone oven. I’d happily<br />
have taken all my meals there and stayed until the<br />
extended night of winter descended and chased the<br />
summer Swedes back to the mainland, taking the<br />
good pastries with them.<br />
It was all sort of too dreamy to be believed. Not<br />
credible in the sense that remote islands of rusticity<br />
do not typically harbour chill outposts of casually<br />
impeccable style and good espresso. And where<br />
the bakeries are photoshoot-ready, something of<br />
the dreamy, untamed charm of the place has too<br />
often been spoilt in the process. In this way, Gotland<br />
defies the maths of the holiday isle. It’s a gentle,<br />
soul-becalming place of pretty somewhereness and
From far left: a guest<br />
room at Fabriken<br />
Furillen hotel; a<br />
peaceful view of the<br />
Baltic; ceramics at<br />
the Skulpturfabriken<br />
shop; grilled quail<br />
at Krakas Krog<br />
lazy summer-haze nowhereness. It really does defy<br />
expectations, if not belief. Except that, having been on<br />
the island for some time, and having thus acclimatised<br />
to the ways that Gotland dependably dazzles, and<br />
how it regularly leaves you gesticulating into the wind<br />
through the window of your rented Volvo wagon as<br />
it sails past a flock of uninterested shaggy sheep or a<br />
wild pony loitering by the edge of some impossibly<br />
sparkly beach, while ordering your children in the<br />
back seat to “Look at how beautiful this all is!” – in<br />
this way we’d been conditioned to believe.<br />
By the time we met Maurice Dekkers – parttime<br />
Gotlander, journalist, filmmaker, crusading<br />
chocolatier (more on that later) and friend of a friend<br />
– my kids were inured to the spectacle of my shouting<br />
compliments at sheep. This is why we’d come: to pilot<br />
the Volvo in circles around the island – at roughly 160<br />
kilometres long by 50 across at its widest, the island<br />
is Sweden’s biggest, but not so big that you can’t get<br />
around it in a long day’s drive; to swim in the bracing<br />
Baltic; to inhale the loveliness of its wild-lavenderscented<br />
air; to admire the sedge-thatched stone houses<br />
and ailing old windmills; and to mangle the musical<br />
names of the sleepy hamlets as we passed their striking<br />
church spires – the farm towns of Fröjel and Sproge,<br />
Hemse, När, Boge, and the moonscape of Furillen, an<br />
island in the far north. In Holmhällar, we had the wide<br />
sand beach nearly to ourselves. South of Västergarn, we<br />
parked on a patch of grass by the coastal highway and<br />
took our shoes off by the shallow water’s edge. Wading<br />
in, we jumped from rock to rock, which had been<br />
scattered like stepping stones under a domed blue sky,<br />
empty but for streaks of cotton-candyish cirrus clouds.<br />
“It’s difficult to explain the feeling of this place<br />
exactly,” Maurice said when we’d met on the deck<br />
at Ljugarns Strandcafé & Restaurang. Still wet from<br />
an ocean dip, we were trying to put our fingers on<br />
something emotionally self-evident: it’s nice here. But<br />
describing precisely how it was nice was hard. “There<br />
is something about the way the light is hitting the sea<br />
and changing constantly,” Maurice observed. “There is<br />
DEPARTURES<br />
87
88
a feeling that you are not part any more of the rest of<br />
the world.” I liked that.<br />
At the next table, a pair of Italian truffle dogs<br />
nuzzled their lunching owners. “Gotland truffles are<br />
very good, you know,” Maurice said, mentioning a<br />
friend in the neighbourhood, Ragnar Olofsson, who<br />
hunted the elusive delicacy professionally. These<br />
lagotti romagnoli seemed to have acclimatised to<br />
island life. Grey and curly, they looked like small,<br />
dozing sheep.<br />
“I love Amsterdam,” Maurice said of the city where<br />
he lives and works as a filmmaker and the founder of<br />
Tony’s Chocolonely, a chocolate producer committed<br />
to excising slavery from a traditionally troubled and<br />
exploitative business. “But when I arrive here I feel<br />
everything. When I am here the rest of the world<br />
doesn’t exist any more.”<br />
We met through the Danish chef René Redzepi.<br />
Maurice had made a documentary, Ants on a Shrimp,<br />
about Redzepi’s restaurant, Noma. Now he and his<br />
wife, filmmaker and producing partner Benthe Forrer,<br />
are focusing their entrepreneurial and story telling<br />
energies on building something in Gotland with an eye<br />
to protecting what’s special there. In addition to a house<br />
in Ljugarn, the couple recently bought a house in Fårö,<br />
a satellite island just off the northeastern tip of Gotland,<br />
that they plan to renovate, and another in Visby.<br />
V<br />
isby is Gotland’s main town. It has a<br />
well-preserved, walled medieval fortress<br />
– and from the 1100s to the 1300s it was<br />
a seat of Hanseatic League trading power. It’s now<br />
home to an annual medieval festival and what passes<br />
for the seasonal tourist crush. In Visby, you’ll find the<br />
ramparts and museums with their Stone Age relics,<br />
crowded ice-cream shops and cobblestoned alleys<br />
lined with tiny, colourful wooden houses. But for all<br />
of pretty Visby’s Unesco-protected appeal, the real<br />
wonders of Gotland were to be found in its quieter<br />
places, where signs of humans and their doings were<br />
fewer and farther between.<br />
It’s hard to do nothing. The world conspires to<br />
restore diligence. Thoughts, texts, stray bits of news<br />
from the world outside interrupt, unbidden. We’re selftrained<br />
as travellers to hurry up and check things off<br />
Gotland<br />
Guide<br />
STAY<br />
Fabriken Furillen<br />
(furillen.com; open<br />
from July through<br />
mid August) is a<br />
former limestone<br />
factory turned<br />
design-hotel oasis.<br />
Stelor ( stelor.se)<br />
features several<br />
stylish rooms in an<br />
1820s farmhouse.<br />
EAT<br />
Bakfickan<br />
(bakfickanvisby.se)<br />
is a cosy spot for<br />
seafood like smoked<br />
shrimp and fish soup.<br />
Krakas Krog (krakas.<br />
se) offers modern<br />
Swedish cuisine in a<br />
gorgeous country<br />
setting. Lergrav Fisk<br />
& Café (lergrav.com)<br />
is a classic fish<br />
smokehouse with<br />
baskets of shrimp<br />
and smoked eel. Lilla<br />
Bjers (lillabjers.se) is<br />
a lovely farmhouse<br />
restaurant. Ljugarns<br />
Strandcafé &<br />
Restaurang (strand<br />
cafe.se) serves up<br />
seafood and<br />
mini-golf in a<br />
beachside setting.<br />
At Rot (restaurang<br />
rot.se), chef Luqaz<br />
Ottosson prepares<br />
remarkable farm-totable<br />
feasts inside a<br />
From top: Akantus, a shop in Visby;<br />
onions fresh from the garden<br />
glass-blowing<br />
studio. Rute<br />
Stenugnsbageri<br />
(rutestenugnsbageri.<br />
se) is the Swedish<br />
bakery of your<br />
dreams.<br />
SHOP<br />
Akantus (akantus<br />
visby.se) has a nice<br />
mix of antiques and<br />
crafts in Visby.<br />
Formverket<br />
(formverket.se) is a<br />
design boutique<br />
from local Barbro<br />
Tryberg Boberg.<br />
Scarlett Gallery X<br />
Gotland (thescarlett<br />
gallery.com) is a<br />
pop-up founded by a<br />
group of English and<br />
Swedish creatives.<br />
Skulpturfabriken<br />
(skulpturfabriken.se),<br />
a concrete factory<br />
and shop selling<br />
tableware, has been<br />
around since 1995.<br />
DEPARTURES<br />
89
Here was Bergman’s pure distillation of the elements<br />
he’d been seeking: “We found a stony shore facing<br />
infinity.” Later, he reported of the pine trees he’d come<br />
to know: “They sort of become friends. I’ve become<br />
very good friends with the rabbits as well.”<br />
I’d been there only a week but I felt, at least, on<br />
speaking terms with the trees and the shore and<br />
the rock formations, and I would have liked to have<br />
gotto know the aloof sheep and those freshly baked<br />
cardamom buns better.<br />
90 DEPARTURES <br />
A pastoral scene on Gotland<br />
our lists even if what a place really asks for, to know it<br />
best, is simply to be quietly within it.<br />
Fårö is such a place – rugged, windswept and wild.<br />
In 1960, the great Swedish director Ingmar Bergman<br />
arrived in Fårö, more or less by chance, to scout a<br />
scene he’d hoped to shoot elsewhere. Smitten, he<br />
stayed. In thrall to the landscape, the people, the<br />
solitude of an island twice removed from the rest of<br />
the nation, he made Fårö his permanent home.<br />
After crossing the Fårö strait – eight minutes by car<br />
ferry – you drive north towards the Bergman Center,<br />
a museum and cultural centre that opened in 2013. An<br />
oversized board with chesspieces on the lawn awaits<br />
impromptu reenactments of the game between Death<br />
and Max von Sydow’s medieval knight in The Seventh<br />
Seal. In the lobby, there’s an oddly affecting triptych of<br />
photographs showing the auteur buying a newspaper<br />
from a local kiosk. On this tiny island, the photos<br />
attest, is a citizen, dignified but normal in all ways,<br />
performing an utterly pedestrian act. Bergman lived<br />
among the locals as a neighbour and friend.<br />
“I spent an entire winter on Fårö just with my<br />
dachshund,” Bergman once told an interviewer. “It’s<br />
almost uncanny how nature can be engulfing, how you<br />
become friends with the trees on the seashore.”<br />
The beauty is stark and all-encompassing. The<br />
treeless, alvar-covered limestone leads to haunting<br />
sea stacks at the beach at Langhammars. Dark,<br />
woolly sheep graze meadows that are marked by<br />
low, crumbling stone walls. The swimming beach at<br />
Sudersand, with its wide tracts of velvety sand and<br />
cheesy little waterside yoga offerings and thatchedroof<br />
snack shacks, has an end-of-the-world vibe.<br />
Gotland’s flag, flapping proudly on poles everywhere,<br />
shows a magnificently horned ram with a yellow cross<br />
against an endless field of bright Swedish blue. The<br />
blues on enchanted Fårö feel moodier. A melancholic,<br />
sometimes eerie calm and beauty pervades the place.<br />
W<br />
ildflowers crowd the roads in Gotland.<br />
Near Fröjel, I turned off the highway at an<br />
old barn that houses the Scarlett Gallery,<br />
a pop-up. Anthony Hill, an English photographer<br />
and one of the gallery’s founders, had been coming<br />
to Gotland for a while with his Swedish wife when<br />
the idea came to him to open a spot for the summer.<br />
He showed us prints by Swedish illustrators like<br />
Annelie Carlström and a cardboard sculpture by the<br />
Montreal artist Laurence Vallières. Next door, we<br />
met Barbro Tryberg Boberg, who’s lived on the island<br />
for several decades and has written a small, handy,<br />
illustrated guidebook. She also designed a picture<br />
book on the movie houses of Gotland. For an island,<br />
it has a surprising number of cinemas, including some<br />
in barns. One of Boberg’s designs is a tea towel with<br />
a cheerful pattern of ships and buoys interspersed<br />
with a maritime weather report transcribed from<br />
the radio. “They announce the maritime report<br />
four times every day on the radio in this monotone<br />
way,” she said. “To me, it’s like poetry, these words.”<br />
The poetry of the tides. A book on small-town<br />
cinemas in a language I don’t speak. Pretty pictures in<br />
an empty barn. I felt myself settling into the slow, sunbaked<br />
pace of the place.<br />
On our last night on the island, we had dinner at<br />
Krakas Krog, an elegant little restaurant in the village of<br />
Kräklingbo. The young chef, Joel Aronsson, I’d met years<br />
ago at Fäviken in central Sweden and again, weirdly,<br />
when he’d come to cook with the chef Magnus Nilsson<br />
at my house in Brooklyn. It was both nice and strange<br />
to see a familiar face so far from home. Joel’s cooking is<br />
worth travelling for: whole roasted cauliflower with a<br />
sauce made of butter and a seaweed that tastes distinctly<br />
of truffles. Last winter, while the restaurant was closed,<br />
he found the truffle-scented seaweed in the cold waters<br />
off the Lofoten Islands in Norway.<br />
Sometime between the lamb’s liver with grilled<br />
beets and the dessert of local yogurt topped with twin<br />
granitas made of blue Gotlandic dewberry and green<br />
meadowsweet, my son had had enough. Wrapped in<br />
a wool blanket, he fell asleep in a hammock. But the<br />
sun itself, mellow and honeyed, wasn’t quite ready to<br />
give up yet on another blessedly uneventful Swedish<br />
summer day.
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