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T H I S W AY I N
BEFORE WE BEGIN A BRIEF GUIDE TO THE MONTH AHEAD
MUBADALA WORLD TENN IS CHAMPIONSHIPS World number one Novak Djokovic will defend his championship against the likes of Rafael Nadal, Andy Murray, Stanislas Wawrinka, Jo-Wilfried Tsonga and Gaël Mon�ils at the International Tennis Centre in Zayed Sports City.
January 1 2 3 4
BALLET GALA
The Madinat Jumeirah will host French ballet stars from the Paris Opera,, with the likes of Ludmila Pagliero and Karl Paquette performing contemporary and classical pieces. Jan 8�10
5 6
HANKOOK 24H DUBAI The 24-hour endurance race at the Autodrome, Dubai Motorcity with touring cars, GTs and 24H�Specials as well as GT3 and purpose-built race cars. And it’s free admission. 24hseries.com
7 8 9 10
EVERYDAY MIDDLE EAST � PHOTOGRAPHY EXHIBITION
Collection of 90 images on show at Al Serkal Avenue, Al Quoz, featuring images taken of
everyday life using mobile phones by 25 professional photographers from the Middle East and North Africa.
11 ROMEO AND JULIET
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The performance of Shakespeare’s classic is brought to life at the Madinat Jumeirah by renowned dancer and choreographer Jean-Christophe Maillot from Les Ballets De Monte Carlo.
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Jan 8�10
14 15 16 ABU DHABI HSBC GOLF CHAMPIONSHIP
The European Tour event will attract golf icons such as Rory McIlroy, Martin Kaymer, Matteo Manassero, Henrik Stenson and Justin Rose who will battle it out over the three days to win the $2.7 million prize.
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Jan 15�18
DUBAI MARATHON
More than 25,000 runners, including last year’s winner Tsegaye Mekonnen and three-time Olympic champion Kenenisa Bekele, will compete in the marathon as well as 10km and 4km races at what is set to be the region’s largest mass-participation event.
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DUBAI POLO SILVER CUP SERIES Start of the Silver Cup series at the Dubai Polo and Equestrian Club, as some of the world’s best polo teams compete. The Gold Cup series starts next month. dubaipologoldcup. com. Jan 23�Feb 6
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OMEGA DUBAI DES ERT CLASSIC Golf’s big hitters, including Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy, will compete against defending champion Stephen Gallacher for the $2.5 million prize money at the 25th edition of this three-day PGA Tour event.
T H I S W AY I N
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CONTENTS ALL THE STUFF THAT’S INSIDE
E S Q. PAG E
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WINTER COATS Stay warm and stylish when you travel this month.
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MMA IN PAKISTAN The US exile bringing Mixed Martial Arts to an unli kely new audience.
LIAM HEMSWORTH No, not Thor, his brother. The story of the younger sibling who followed his brother off a small Australian island and into the limelight.
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ARMS DEALING Russia’s route to the Middle East via Soviet-era ports.
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AR T A new DIFC exhibition featuring the world’s art masterpieces. p3 4
FILM Our pick of the big films coming your way in 2015. p3 6
GRAPHIC NOVELS Five you should read... and not a superhero in sight.
THE JOURNEY TO MARS... ...begins this March with the launch of the most ambitious manned space mission in years.
p4 1
TV Four new TV series starting this month that are worth watching. p4 2
GOLF The rising star of the sport on his appearance in the UAE.
ON THE COVER
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p102
p108
WHAT I’VE LE ARNED
TRAVEL
EXIT NOTES
Sound advice to take note of from stage and film star, Patrick Stewart.
A long weekend in Dublin? Straight after Christmas? Oh, go on then...
Have we really killed half the animals on earth in the past 40 years?
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Photography by Bleacher + Everard. Styling by Kate Hazell. Grooming by Kate Goodwin at Illumin8. Mr Hemsworth wears: Jumper, Dhs3,554, Dolce & Gabbana and trousers, Dhs1,325, Richard James at Mrporter.com
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PRESIDENT�CEO Duncan Edwards SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT, CFO AND GENERAL MANAGER Simon Horne SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT� DIRECTOR OF LICENSING AND BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT Gautam Ranji SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT�INTERNATIONAL PUBLISHING DIRECTOR Jeannette Chang SENIOR VICE PR ESIDENT�EDITORIAL DIRECTOR Kim St. Clair Bodden EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, EDITORIAL Astrid O. Bertoncini CREATIVE DIRECTOR Peter Yates FASHION AND ENTERTAINMENT DIRECTOR Kristen Ingersoll SENIOR INTERNATIONAL EDITIONS EDITOR Luis Veronese
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PAG E
58 THIS MONTH’S COVER STAR
LIAM HEMSWORTH Style editor Kate Hazell �lew to New York (courtesy of the good folks at Emirates) to shoot Hunger Games star, Liam Hemsworth at The Ace Hotel. “Liam, despite being one of the most chilled out actor’s I’ve ever worked with, was also the �irst person that’s ever arrived early to the set; a true professional,” she says of the experience. “And after handing him a guitar and Liam surprising the room with his skills, we take full credit for any future music career he might now embark upon.”
Bulgaria: Hristo Zapryanov China: Li Haipeng Colombia: Francisco J. Escobar S. Czech Republic: Jiri Roth Greece: Kostas N. Tsitsas Hong Kong: Kwong Lung Kit Indonesia: Dwi Sutarjantono Kazakhstan: Ildar Khaibullin Korea: Heesik Min Latin America: Manuel Mar tínez Torres Malaysia: Sam Coleman Middle East: Jeremy Lawrence Netherlands: Arno Kantelberg Philippines: Erwin Romulo Romania: Russia: Igor Sadreev Serbia: Milan Nikolic Singapore: Sam Coleman Spain: Andrés Rodriguez Taiwan: Thailand: Panu Burusratanapant Turkey: Togan Noyan United Kingdom: Alex Bilmes Vietnam: Nguyen Thanh Nhan United States: David Granger
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Published by and Copyright (c) 2015 ITP Lifestyle Publishing A division of ITP Publishing Group Ltd, registered in the British Virgin Islands Co. N o. 1402846 The publishers regret that they cannot accept liability for error or omissions contained in this publication, however caused. The opinions and views contained in this publication are not necessarily those of the publishers. Readers are advised to seek specialist advice before acting on information contained in this publication, which is provided for general use and may not be appropriate for the reader’s particular circumstances. The ownership of trademarks is acknowledged. No part of this publication or any part of the contents thereof may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form without the permission of the publishers in writing. An exemption is hereby granted for extracts used for the purpose of fair review. Published and distributed monthly by Licensee ITP Consumer Publishing Ltd by permission of Hearst Communications Inc, N ew York, United States of America. PRINTED BY EMIRATES PRINTING PRESS L.L.C. DUBAI
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T H I S W AY I N
20 YEARS AGO THIS MONTH A LETTER FROM THE EDITOR
ERIC CANTONA’S KUNG�FU KICK
THE ROBOTS ARE COMING!
C
lever chap, that Stephen Hawking. The British physicist has contributed greatly to our understanding of the universe over the past few decades, including the fiendishly hard subject of black holes, which seem to conform – much like Conan O’Brien’s hair – to different laws of physics than the rest of the universe. (Incidentally, I once saw Hawking going up the wheelchair ramp into a cinema in Cambridge to a screening of Fever Pitch, and I remember being slightly disappointed that it wasn’t a more highbrow film, but I suppose even geniuses need a day off.) Anyway, because Stephen Hawking is so darned brainy, I listen to what he has to say whenever he airs his thoughts on a subject. Recently, he has spoken out on the dangers of artificial intelligence, arguing that once machines learn to out-smart humans they will pose a threat to mankind. He’s not alone in this thinking. Tech developer Elon Musk, himself no intellectual slouch, thinks the same. The basic premise is that if robots ever develop the self-preservation instinct common to most life forms, then we would lose out in any battle for resources or control. I understood the argument but remained sceptical because it seemed so fantastical. And then I read a book about the Victorians and it reminded me that periods of inconceivable change do happen. The 19th Century utterly transformed most of the planet, from railways to electricity to communications, science and empires. The world in 1900 would have been largely unrecognisable to someone looking at it from 1800, which you can’t even say when
Some higher intelligence might even release a decent Windows update, which would be a boon for all humanity”
comparing the year 2000 to 1900. So who’s to say Hawking is wrong in thinking we might one day be ruled by robots? On the other hand, maybe they’ll be kindly C-3PO-type characters and not like Kubrick’s evil HAL, in which case we’ll be fine. Some higher intelligence might even release a decent Windows update, which would be a boon for all humanity. Speaking of time passing, I’ve never really got why people make a fuss about New Year. Those Big Ben chimes always make me think of John Cleese’s character Basil Fawlty musing on mortality to himself. Zoom! What was that? That was your life, mate. That was quick, do I get another? Sorry mate, that’s your lot. And then I inwardly chuckle at the gallows humour of it all and set about breaking my resolutions before they’ve even begun. With that spirit in mind, you’ll find none of that “New Year, New You” baloney in this issue, as we think you’re doing fine as you are. So read on – especially the story about space travel on page 76. It’s a rather more positive example of technology at work and the ingenuity of mankind. You’ll even learn how astronauts pee in space. Happy 2015!
On January 25, 1995, the Manchester United striker Eric Cantona was leaving the pitch after being red carded for kicking a Crystal Palace player. As he walked toward the touchline, an opposition fan, Matthew Simmons, shouted at him from the stands. Exactly what he said is disputed, but it enraged the Frenchman who launched a KungFu kick on his tormentor followed by a punch. Cantona was banned from playing for nine months, the longest ban in English football in the 30 years since Tony Kay and Peter Swan were banned for life for a betting scam in 1964. Without their iconic target man, Manchester United went on to lose the league to Blackburn Rovers. The club stood by Cantona, however, and he went on to captain his team to glory. But he was unrepentant of his actions, later describing the episode as the best moment of his career, “because these kind of people don’t have to be at the game.” “I don’t care about being some sort of superior person,” he also said. “I am not a role model. I think the more you see, the more you realise that life is a circus.”
JEREMY LAWRENCE
WRITE TO US WITH YOUR THOUGHTS OR OBSERVATIONS ON LIFE IN GENERAL:
[email protected]
JANUARY 2015
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NOVEMBER 27, 2014
MADINAT ARENA , DUBAI The fourth annual Man at his Best Awards took place last month, hosted in spectacular fashion by Jumeirah at the Madinat Arena, Dubai, to celebrate the achievements of men and women in the Middle East over the past year. Presented by Audi and sponsored by HTC, Chivas, G-Star Raw, Plan B and Bremont, the uniformly glamorous array of guests were welcomed into the ballroom with a special performance by The Music Of Queen: A Rock & Symphonic Spectacular. An opening speech from Editor-in-Chief Jeremy Lawrence followed, before hosting duties were handed over to the safe hands and familiar face of Tom Urquhart. Famed UK opera singer Wynne Evans then provided some excellent entertainment to complement the lavish dinner. The presentation of 21 awards was the focus of a night that culminated in the recognition of Esquire’s International Man of the Year, Hollywood actor Idris Elba, and our Man of the Year, the supremely talented EmiratiBritish director, Ali F. Mostafa. Afterwards, guests were directed to the outdoor terrace for the official after-party, which came courtesy of Chivas Regal, to enjoy the boon of Duran Duran’s Roger Taylor manning the decks until the early hours.
Our presenter for the evening, Tom Urquhart, and below and right, the sponsors who made it happen
WITH THANKS TO OUR SPONSORS
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PRESENTED BY
PRESENTED BY
PRESENTED BY
INTER NATIONAL FASHIO N BRAND:
PHILIPP PLEIN The German designer is known for his luxurious take on everyday pieces, including T-shirts, sneakers, bomber jackets and denim. He has an aggressive approach to expansion and is set to become a household name. Unfortunately Philipp was unable to attend, so the brand’s International Head of Marketing & PR, Ludivine Pont, �lew in from Europe to accept the award.
PRESENTED BY
HUMAN ITARIA N:
LOCAL FASH ION BRAN D:
LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT
MAHMOUD KAABOUR
VELSVOIR
A W A R D :
An award-winning �ilmmaker, writer, and lecturer from Beirut, Kaabour’s third feature �ilm Champ of the Camp followed the lives of Dubai labourers competing in the Champ Ka Camp competition — a labour camp version of Arab Idol. Showing courage, tact and an appreciation for the full story, our winner captured a warm, human tale that showed the humanity of all the people involved.
The three brothers, Zac, Zubair and Talha Timol split their time between Dubai and London while managing their burgeoning menswear company. Specialising in the design of luxury accessories for the modern-day dapper gent, Velsvoir pieces have been showing at London Collections Men for the past two seasons, resolutely proving that their brand is as popular internationally as it is in this region.
DAVID MAY As a young engineer in 1982, May was part of the early team of expats who seized the chance to make something of themselves in Dubai, back then a small but ambitious desert town. And in so doing he helped build the city. With numerous iconic projects under his belt, today May is the MD of MKM Commercial Holdings, continuing to look out for the future of Dubai.
WITH THANKS TO OUR SPONSORS
JANUARY 2015
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PRESENTED BY
PRESENTED BY
INTERNATIONAL WOMAN OF THE YEAR:
1.
PRESENTED BY
PRESENTED BY
2.
PRESENTED BY
3.
MUSI C AWARD:
THE WANTON BISHOPS
CLAIRE WILLIAMS The deputy team principal of the Williams Formula One racing team and daughter of its founder Sir Frank Williams, Williams has ascended the motorsport ranks to become the most senior women in F1 history. As one of the few female faces around the pit lanes, Williams has openly encouraged the involvement of women in the sport at the highest level.
PRESENTED BY
Likened to a Lebanese take on The Black Keys, this indie blues band is, in Esquire’s humble opinion, de�initely the coolest thing we’ve heard all year. A blues and garage-rock band originating from Beirut, the duo comprises of Nader Mansour and Eddy Ghossein. In 2013 they toured their debut album internationally and in November they supported The Who at the Formula One after-race concerts in Abu Dhabi.
PRESENTED BY
4.
PRESENTED BY
INTERNATIONAL MAN OF THE YEAR:
IDRIS ELBA In the decade since emerging in HBO monsterhit series The Wire, our winner has gone on to become one of cinema’s most sought-after commodities. Establishing himself on the Hollywood circuit with a number of recent blockbusters, his biggest performance to date came in 2013, taking on the role of Nelson Mandela in The Long Walk to Freedom.
W O M A N W E L O V E :
ESQUIRE READERS’ AWARDS:
DIMA SADEK
AS VOTED FOR ON ESQUIREME.COM
As News Anchor for LBCI, Sadek has garnered a reputation as courageous, outspoken and witty. She tackles sensitive topical issues in her work by opening conversations on subjects such as Gaza, government censorship and the persecution of Iraqi Christians by ISIS. She executes this with �ierce intelligence, integrity, class and style. We can think of no one more deserving of our Woman We Love accolade.
1. BEST R ESTAURANT :
Ristorante Armani, Armani Hotel, Dubai 2. BES T BAR :
Iris, The Oberoi, Dubai 3. BES T CLUB:
White Dubai, Meydan Racecourse 4. BEST EVENT:
2013 Etihad Airways Abu Dhabi Grand Prix
WITH THANKS TO OUR SPONSORS
JANUARY 2015
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James Mowatt being presented with his Best Dressed Man of the Night Award
Virgin Radio DJ Kris Fade with Juliana Down’s Dia Hassan
International Woman of the Year, Claire Williams
WITH THANKS TO OUR SPONSORS
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Comeback of the Year winner Oliver Wilson, dressed in Dunhill
The Music of Queen - A Rock & Symphonic Spectacular
Founder of sponsors Plan B, Harmeek Singh
Esquire’s Andrew Wingrove, special guest Dr Bassem Youssef and JeremyLawrence, all dressed by Dunhill
Style Editor Kate Hazell, wearing Philipp Plein, with the Wanton Bishops
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JANUARY 2015
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Models dressed in Dsquared
The interactive HTC stand
Zaki Ali dressed in Ascots & Chapels and wife Farzin Ali
The winners of Best Local Fashion Brand, the Velsvoir brothers
Steve Cornish, Sarah Johnson, Sarah Feyling and MMI’s Mike Smith
WITH THANKS TO OUR SPONSORS
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A particularly memorable tux sported by TV presenter, Layne Redman
Editor-inChief Jeremy Lawrence with Bremont’s co-founder Giles English
Egyptian actor Yasser Farag dressed in Ralph Lauren, and wife Rania Saba dressed in Hugo Boss
Fashion blogger, Paul Ramos
Our Woman We Love winner, Dima Sadek
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JANUARY 2015
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2015
is looking better already Loved our Hot Bachelors and want more? The top 12 �nalists from this year’s Hot 50 will appear in a totally smokin’ calendar, which is our gift to you with our January issue. That’s 12 whole months of gorgeous guys, from us, to you. You’re welcome!
E A U e h t n i
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INFINITI QX70s Elite Sport
The 2015 Cosmo Hot Bachelor calendar: free with the January 2015 issue of Cosmopolitan Middle East, on sale now*.
MaHB MAN AT HIS BEST
20 FILMS FOR 2015
Art: THE MASTERS COMES TO TOWN THIS MONTH AN EXHIBITION AT DIFC TREATS US TO WORKS FROM SOME OF THE ART�WORLD’S BIG�HITTERS
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IFC’s Opera Gallery hosts Icons of Art this month. Historically, every gallery in the international network has a ma sters show once a year to serve as a reminder that besides selling contemporary art, Opera Gallery has more than 20 years of experience to offer the best of established art ists. The aim is to showcase artists that each had a meaningful
impact on the art world during the last century. The artists chosen are all well known, collected, exhibited and are housed in permanent collections and museums worldwide. Pieces vary in their execution to illustrate an array of techniques. Over the next two pages, gallery manager Sylvain P. Gaillard talks us through a selection of the works.
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MAN AT HIS BEST
Art
ANDY WARHOL Bald Eagle from Endangered Species (1983)
PICASSO Tête de Faune (1958)
Screenprint in colours on Lenox Museum Board
Born in Pittsburgh in 1928, Andy Warhol began studying art at an early age and graduated from the Carnegie Institute of Technology in 1949. He then moved to New York and started work in advertising, where he displayed his talents as a draughtsman and illustrator. Towards the end of the 1950s, attentive to the “return to �iguration” that was taking place in New York, Warhol began making works that drew on everyday life: cartoons and consumer products. He lent these works a serial logic, which is perhaps his greatest contribution to the history of art. In 1962, Warhol participated in the Nouveaux Réalistes exhibition with key �igures such as Roy Lichtenstein and Yves Klein. The show marked the beginning of the Pop Art movement. Warhol would go on to produce some of the most important and recognisable works in the late twentieth century. In 1983, Warhol produced a portfolio of 10 different screen-prints for the series Endangered Species. He based all the images on other photographers’ pictures, to which he added his own idiosyncratic �inishing touches. “Bald Eagle” is a particularly vibrant example from this series.
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Coloured wax crayons on paper
We selected this piece — alongside three of his others — because of the medium and the subject. Very early on, Picasso showed a lot of interest in mythology and metamorphosis, which translated into his body of work. This piece in particular depicts a faun, which in Roman mythology was half-man half-goat. The faun was capable of guiding humans who were lost or in need. Besides being very well executed, this piece is very representative of a recurring subject that Picasso studied and depicted during his entire career.
NIKI DE SAINT PHALLE
MARC CHAGALL
Chat (1988)
Nature Morte (1975)
Painted resin and light bulbs
Oil on canvas
The Paris-born artist Niki de Saint Phalle was fascinated by animal forms throughout her career, and drew enormous inspiration from the primitive energies of the natural world. In this highly characteristic work, the artist demonstrates the qualities for which she is famous: a vivacious sense of sculptural form, exuberant use of colour, and an infectious playfulness. The artist’s joy in creation is evident on the surface of the work, particularly in the vein-like branching pattern that adorns the cat’s blue body and suggests a circulatory system. Saint Phalle’s sculptures were often large in scale, adorning public squares and fountains, but the scale here is closer to the domestic. The lightbulbs add a wonderfully comic touch, playfully invoking the relationship between �ine art and furniture. Never formally trained as an artist, Saint Phalle developed an early interest in painting that soon progressed to sculpture, the form through which she attained international fame. It was in 1979, while married to Jean Tinguely, that she began her most ambitious project, a sculpture garden based on the Tarot and situated in G aravicchio, Tuscany. Finally opened in 1998, The Tarot Garden a�irmed Saint Phalle’s place in the �irst rank of twentieth-century sculptors.
Marc Chagall’s paintings are often characterised by fractured surfaces, fantastical characters and dreamlike environments. In this painting, however, he adopts a more restrained approach. Chagall dedicated the painting to Valentina Brodsky, whom he married in 1952, and who became the central female character in all his paintings. The embracing lovers in the lower right of the work could be an expression of Chagall’s love for his greatest muse. Based on his studio in the commune of Saint-Paul-deVence, the background scene is painted in calming, neutral tones,
the lovers appearing to melt into the room’s soft light. In contrast, the lavish bouquet explodes into daubs of yellow and red, in a celebration of the natural world.
JOAN MIRÓ Femmes Dans La Nuit (1977) Pastel and pencil on board
Miró studied at the Beaux-Arts in Barcelona and later at the Accademia Galli. In 1919, he met the most important artists of his generation in Paris. Initially in�luenced by Fauvism and Cubism, Miró was later integrated into Surrealism by André Breton. Despite these in�luences, he proved himself to have the most original imagination and humour, always lending new life to the world. His works are among the most celebrated in the history of modern art, and form part of every important collection in the world. In this piece, women have been drawn in Miró’s trademark style. One also encounters the iconography for which he is famous: crudely drawn stars, bold lines and child-like suns. Besides being representative of his style, this piece is playful and the format interesting.
RAOUL DUFY Le Casino de Nice (1925) Watercolour on paper
Raoul Dufy attended the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, where he was in�luenced by the Impressionists and the Fauvists, to whom Dufy owes his brilliant use of colour. He was also a successful illustrator, as well as a designer of textiles, ceramics and tapestries. By the 1920s, Dufy was dedicating his energies to painting alone, developing his distinctive style, characterised by its vivacity and lightness of touch. Dufy was enchanted by the light on the Côte d’Azur. “Le Casino de Nice” is an excellent example of his work from this period. The casino in this work has been lightly sketched in �ine blue lines, while the palm trees have been rendered in blots of pale green. The brushwork is energetic and free, conveying the sense of freshness for which Dufy’s work is celebrated.
PIERRE�AUGUSTE RENOIR Deux Filles Dans Un Pré (circa 1910) Oil on canvas
ROBERT LONGO Study of Tiger Head 16 (2012) Graphite and charcoal on vellum
Born in 1953 in New York, Robert Longo is one of the most important artists of his generation. He developed an interest in images from mass-culture at an early age. He would draw upon these to make his world-renowned works. Famous for his expansion of the possibilities of drawing and for his brilliant draughtsmanship, Longo has revolutionised the way in which we see this medium. Trained as a sculptor, his drawings often retain a three-dimensional quality, their sharp, elegantly rendered lines opening out into the space of the viewer. Longo has been the subject of several important retrospective exhibitions: including those at the Hamburg Kunstverein and Deichtorhallen and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago. “Study of Tiger Head” is a brilliant example of Longo’s drawing. The subject is beautifully rendered and its photographic quality is testament to the artist’s skill and imaginative vision.
This is one of t wo Renoir pieces we selected, and one of the most important of the exhibition, from a historical and value perspective. Renoir began painting while working in a porcelain factory, and in 1862 moved to Paris to study �ine art under the aegis of academic Swiss painter Charles Gleyre. It was there that he met artists such as Claude Monet and Alfred Sisley, who would exhibit with him in the �irst Impressionist exhibition in 1874. Renoir developed arthritis in later life and moved to the warmer climes of Nice at Les Collettes, a farm close to the Mediterranean. Known for his distinctive Impressionist style, he relentlessly painted until his death in 1919. This piece is very representative of his later works, characterised by the dissolution of outlines and colour for which the artist is famous.
FERNANDO BOTERO Circus Musicians (2008) Oil on canvas
A few years ago, the Colombianborn Fernando Botero chanced upon a circus in a small Mexican town on the Paci�ic coast. The poor troupe attracted him because it was similar to those that visited his hometown near the Andes when he was a boy. He found the circus deeply inspiring. As the artist put it, “At the circus one �inds colours, movement, poetry, animals, expressions of the human spirit that one �inds nowhere else”. The circus also allowed Botero to develop his fascination with people who exist on the margins of society. The works from this series are among the most celebrated in Botero’s oeuvre, which forms part of private and public collections across the world. In “Circus Musicians” two men play brass and wind instruments. Rendered in patches of dark green, the paintwork is brilliant. Botero is a virtuoso, one of the most powerful and exciting painters working today. The distortions of perspective and scale are typical of his artistic practice.
Icons of Art will be on display from January 14 to February 4 at Opera Gallery Dubai, Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC); Gate Village, Building #3, 04 323 0909
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MAN AT HIS BEST
Film
TAKE TWO… RE BOOTS O N THE WAY TO A SCREEN NEAR YOU
COMING SOON: THE 20 J A N UA RY 1 6
J A N UA RY 1 6
FEBRUARY 5
F E B R UA RY 2 0
AMERICAN SNIPER
WHIPLASH
JUPITER ASCENDING
THE GUNMAN
With 160 kills, Navy Seal Chris Kyle is said to be the deadliest sniper in US history. His 2012 memoir presented a dramatic account of his missions, including service in Iraq. Clint Eastwood takes charge of the big-screen treatment, chronicling Kyle’s journey from Texas rodeo cowboy to con�licted marksman, all while his wife (Sienna Miller) struggles to cope back home.
Written and directed by little-known Harvard graduate Damien Chazelle, this is already one of the most anticipated �ilms of 2015. An aspiring drummer (Miles Teller) is scouted by a tutor (JK Simmons) whose mentoring style includes mental and physical abuse. Worth seeing for Simmons’ Oscar-bait performance alone.
The space epic from the Wachowskis that has been trailed for months �inally arrives. Mila Kunis is the titular Jupiter who discovers that she’s the heir to an intergalactic throne and the now ubiquitous Channing Tatum is sent to help. Described as a cross between The Matrix and Star Wars it’ll be pretty to look at both in terms of actress and special effects.
Based on Jean-Patrick Manchette’s thriller about an assassin on the run, this is the latest grown-up action movie from Pierre Morel, the French director who gave us Liam Neeson in Taken (2008). It’s hard to imagine a more manly cast, with Sean Penn taking lead sharpshooter duties, ably supported by Javier Bardem, Idris Elba and Ray Winstone.
OCTOBER 23
OCTOBER TBC
N OV E MB E R 2 7
N OV E MB E R T B C
SPECTRE
THE HATEFUL EIGHT
THE MARTIAN
HIGH�RISE
Grossing over $1bn, Skyfall is the most successful Bond �ilm ever. So it’s no surprise director Sam Mendes and star Daniel Craig have been offered another roll of the dice. The project is shrouded in secrecy, of course. We can only tell you that Léa Seydoux is a Bond girl, Christoph Waltz may or may not be playing a baddie and Sam Smith is current front-runner for the theme tune.
The eighth �ilm from Quentin Tarantino should be out in the latter part of the year. If the �inal version is anything like the leaked �irst-draught script then we can expect Reservoir Dogs in the Wild West as bounty hunters in postCivil War Wyoming try to �ind shelter during a blizzard but get involved in a plot of betrayal and deception. Cast includes his regulars Tim Roth, Samuel L. Jackson and Michael Madsen.
The huge success of Gravity in 2013 and this year’s Interstellar has made big-budget, cerebral space movies a hot genre in Hollywood. Here, sci-�i master Ridley Scott ( Alien, 1979; Blade Runner , 1982) tackles Andy Weir’s novel of a Nasa expedition to Mars gone wrong, with Matt Damon as a stranded astronaut, plus Jessica Chastain, Chiwetel Ejiofor and Kristen Wiig.
Veteran producer Jeremy Thomas has been trying to bring JG Ballard’s magni�icent 1975 dystopian novel to the screen for 30 years. At last he’s made it, with brilliant young British director Ben Wheatley (Kill List, 2011; Sightseers, 2012) putting Jeremy Irons, Tom Hiddleston and Sienna Miller through their paces in the terrifying tale of a luxury apartment block in meltdown.
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M AY 1 5
MAD MAX: FURY ROAD Beset by ill fortune and endless delays, director George Miller’s return to the character that made him famous is at long last set to arrive in cinemas, with Tom Hardy replacing original Max Mel Gibson, plus Charlize Theron, Nicholas Hoult and Rosie Huntington-Whiteley in support. Shot in Namibia, it promises to be the thinking-man’s Aussie punk western. DECEMBER 18
STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS A long time ago (1977), in a galaxy far, far away (your childhood bedroom) a creaky space movie changed �ilms forever. Now JJ Abrams (Star Trek , 2009) reunites Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher and Mark Hamill in a continuation of the saga, set three decades after Return of the Jedi (1983). Remember: the force will be with you, always.
JURASSIC WORLD
TERMINATOR: GENISYS
POLTERGEIST
THE FANTASTIC FOUR
POINT BREAK
out June 12
out July 3
out July 31
out August 6
out August 28
MUST�SEE MOVIES FOR 2015 M AY 2 9
UNTITLED CAMERON CROWE PROJECT Writer/director Cameron Crowe ( Almost Famous, 2000; Jerry Maguire, 1996) makes his much anticipated return after a lengthy absence and has rounded up a team that includes Bill Murray, Bradley Cooper and Emma Stone. A US weapons analyst is deployed to Hawaii to oversee the launch of a spy satellite, and winds up on a journey of selfdiscovery. DECEMBER 26
AUG UST 1 3
SEPTEMBER 18
SEPTEMBER 25
OCTOBER 9
PAPER TOWNS
EVEREST
BLACK MASS
British model of the moment Cara Delevingne has a number of �ilms in the can for 2015, but this is her �irst as a lead. Paper Towns is an adaptation of John Green’s bestselling thriller about a teenager, Q (Nat Wolff), searching for his missing childhood friend (Delevingne). If this is anything like the novel, expect a darkly comic take on the young adult genre.
Icelander Baltasar Kormákur (Contraband , 2012) directs this thriller in 3D, based on a real-life 1996 mountaineering tragedy in which eight climbers trying to conquer Mount Everest perished in a sudden blizzard. The cast is as starry as a Himalayan night — Jake Gyllenhaal, Keira Knightley, Josh Brolin, Robin Wright, Sam Worthington — so expectations are, well, high.
Johnny Depp stars in the true story of the vicious Boston gangster, Whitey Bulger, who turned FBI informant when the Ma�ia invaded his turf. Writer/director Scott Cooper (Crazy Heart, 2009; Out of the Furnace, 2013) has assembled a stellar supporting cast including Benedict Cumberbatch, Sienna Miller and Juno Temple.
AUT UM N
AUT UM N
TBC
ST JAMES PLACE (TBC) Written by the Coen brothers and directed by Steven Spielberg, this Cold War thriller is based on the story of Gary Powers, the CIA pilot shot down over the Soviet Union in 1960. Tom Hanks (reunited with the director for the �irst time since The Terminal, 2004) is the lawyer recruited to spearhead the rescue mission. Look out, Oscars 2016. TBC
THE REVENANT
SEA OF TREES
LIFE
LONDON FIELDS
MR HOLMES
Director Alejandro González Iñárritu makes �ilms about people in extreme situations: see 21 Grams (2003) and Babel (2006). In The Revenant, a 19thcentury frontiersman (Leonardo DiCaprio) is robbed and left for dead after being mauled by a bear. Then he takes his revenge. Tom Hardy and Will Poulter co-star. We’re guessing the reviews will feature the word “dark”.
Gus Van Sant (Milk , 2008) is one of the US’s consistently interesting and unpredictable directors. Here, he casts Matthew McConaughey as a man who travels to Japan’s Sea of Trees — a forest at the foot of Mount Fuji — in order to take his own life. There he meets a fellow would-be suicide (Ken Watanabe), but the friendship they forge becomes their salvation.
The rock-photographerturned-acclaimeddirector Anton Corbijn focuses his lens on the life story of a fellow snapper: Magnum’s Dennis Stock (Robert Pattinson), and speci�ically his friendship with his great subject, James Dean (Dane DeHaan). Stock shot the nowiconic Life magazine images of Dean prior to the release of East of Eden (1955).
Both David Cronenberg and Michael Winterbottom tried and failed to bring Martin Amis’ black comedy to the screen. But �irsttimer Mathew Cullen has succeeded, casting Jim Sturgess as petty criminal and pub darts legend Keith Talent, and the lovely Amber Heard as femme fatale Nicola Six. Look out for a cameo by Heard’s real-life love, Johnny Depp.
Following Robert Downey Jr and Benedict Cumberbatch, Sir Ian McKellen is the latest marquee name to don the Sherlock cape. This time — clearly — the �ilmmakers are focussing on the great detective’s later years, when he comes out of retirement to take on (you guessed it) one last mystery. Bill Condon (The Fifth Estate, 2013) directs.
EDITED BY TOM MACKLIN
JANUARY 2015
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MAN AT HIS BEST
Books
NON�SUPERHERO COMICS BECAUSE THE GENRE DOES BEGIN AND END WITH MARVEL, DC AND MASKED MEN IN SPANDEX BY MATT POMROY
W
atchmen creator Alan Moore said “Comics are not literature and they are not film and they are not gallery art . They are something different. They have their own kind of language.” And while you may be bored of superheroes, or were never interested in the first place, comics and graphic novels are a medium full of wit, invention and brilliant, gripping storytelling. Little wonder that so many of them are being turned into films and TV series. You probably know all about Persepolis and Maus (two classics of the genre) so here are five more you should check out that don’t have anything to do with spandex or superheroes.
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THE WALKING DEAD The TV series has been a huge hit for years so you probably already know about this, but the books that spawned it are well worth reading even if you’re up to date with the small-screen adaptation. Because the originals are significantly different from the TV series, having experienced one doesn’t really create spoilers for the other. In fact, it’s like a parallel-world companion piece that is just as dark and even more willing to off a main character when you least expect it.
DM Z In the American near future, with US forces stretched overseas, a domestic militia rise up against the government and start the second American Civil War. Five years into the war the island of Manhattan has become a demilitarised zone and photojournalist Matt Matty Roth becomes stranded when his stran heli helicopter is shot down. He begins to see that life in the DMZ is not like it’s portrayed by his news e station. Described by y its creator as “equal parts a Escape from e York, Fallujah, New aand New Orleans i right after Katrina” th this ran 72 issues that have also been ccollected in 12 trade paperback volumes, and it’s currently in production to become a TV series.
100 BULLETS The enigmatic Agent Graves approaches someone who has been a victim of wrongdoing and informs them who was behind their misfortune and where they can now be found. He then gives them an untraceable gun, 100 bullets and an assurance there will be no repercussions for taking revenge. What starts as a series of self-contained morality tales — with varying outcomes for protagonists — expands into a sprawling epic of betrayal and conspiracy in a modern noir style. It originally ran for 100 editions over a decade, but you can pick it up in 13 collected volumes.
Y: THE LA ST MAN Every male on Earth, (human or otherwise) drops dead on the same day, except for one young man and his pet monkey. He now represents the last hope for survival of the species and heads off across the country with a bodyguard to find out why he survived and what caused everyone
to die. The big “what “ if…”” premise set up a story of gender politics, post-disaster survival and theology, but does so with wit, invention and unpredictability. The live action adaptation has recently fallen through but we’d be surprised if someone else didn’t option the rights.
TREES Ten years ago, giant tree-like structures landed all over the world, crushing cities and causing panic… and then they did nothing, standing on the surface of the Earth as if there were no-one here and nothing under foot. After the chaos, people begin to accept their eerie presence. We pick up from a point following seemingly disparate characters — a mayoral candidate in New York, a young boy in China and researchers in the Arctic — beginning to discover something about the Trees. Cinematic and eerie, we’re only eight monthly-comics in but this is already something fresh and original.
E SQ.
OUT NOW
THIS BOY’S LIFE Will Boast has lived an ordinary life. That is to say, he grew up in Wisconsin with a mother, father and brother, went to school and university, played in a jazz ensemble and lusted after girls. But by the time Will Boast was no longer a boy, he was alone: his mother, brother and father all died in relatively quick succession. Will Boast became the epilogue of his family, and Epilogue became the title of his book. Only it turned out there was also a prologue: after discovering divorce papers in his late father’s briefcase, Boast learned he had two older halfbrothers in England from his dad’s previous marriage that he knew nothing about. He made contact with his new siblings, and now documents their tentative relationship in this new memoir. It’s with the portraits of his immediate family, however, the ones who have gone, that Boast’s writing really soars. Like a less austere Karl Ove Knausgaard, he picks over seemingly innocuous memories: hanging out in the library where his mother worked, shaking his brother’s hand in the hallway at school, the last telephone conversation he had with his father. Will Boast has lived an ordinary life, and it’s as beautiful and painful as any. Epilogue: A Memoir by Will Boast is out on January 8
THE MA N WH O MADE JFK
Or didn’t. But writer Norman Mailer — never short of a kind word to say about himself — once claimed that his pro-Kennedy treatise, “Superman Comes to the Supermarket,” had “won the election for Kennedy.” The article, published in Esquire just weeks before polls opened, rede�ined political reporting with Mailer’s frank, �irst-person voice identifying Kennedy as the “existential hero” who could awaken the nation from its postwar slumber and conformist Eisenhower years. Both Kennedy and New
Journalism had arrived. This book publishes Mailer’s long essay in book form alongside 300 photographs that bring the 1960 Presidential campaign to life. Norman Mailer. JFK. Superman Comes to the Supermarket is out now from TASCHEN for Dhs600
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MAN AT HIS BEST
Books
NUCLEAR REACTORS FOR GOALPOSTS BELGIAN PHOTOGRAPHER JURGEN VANTOMME CAPTURES THE BEAUTIFUL GAME IN THE HARSHEST SETTINGS
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here’s always tension before a match, but for the boys of RFC Huy, the stakes are just that little bit higher. When Saturday comes in their corner of Liege, the Fourth Division team trots onto the field beneath the looming Tihange Nuclear Power Station which, reports say, has been leaking radioactive water since 2006. Photographer Jurgen Vantomme has captured all kinds of pitches in his native Belgium, and his images are among the works on his website at g roundhopping.be and a book is likely to follow. You can see some of them here first.
Pitch imperfect: (from top) RFC Huy Youth at Tihange; FC Union Zandvoorde; KFC Stabelino Deurne;
THREE STRIKINGLY DIFFERENT NEW BOOKS ABOUT FOOTBALL
PUTTING THE BOOT IN
THE GAME OF OUR LIVES
by
by
DAN KAVANAGH
DAVID GOLDBLATT
(Orion Books)
(Viking)
THE SECRET FOOTBALLER’S GUIDE TO THE MODERN GAME (Guardian Faber)
In the English Third Division, a team manager wants to know why his players are being assaulted and there’s only one man to call. This is a reissue of the third of four books following the antics of bisexual detective Duffy, written in the ’80s by the elusive Irish writer Dan Kavanagh (actually the personable English writer Julian Barnes). Out now
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If you’re looking for a book that justi�ies those lost afternoons in the pub watching a ground-out nil-nil draw, then have we got the book for you. With chapters called “Last Man Standing? English Football and the Politics of Gender” and other lofty, notat-all-mindless things, you can swear at the TV with your head held high. Out now
OK, so if Goldblatt’s given you the academic overview of the game, what about the juicy insider dirt? Step forward The Secret Footballer – identity still unknown – whose third book promises to tell you about how players talk, eat, train and think. (We know — that’s news to us, too). Out now
Technology
NO SWEAT ESQUIRE TAKES THE LEG WORK OUT OF BUYING SPORTS HEADPHONES
MAN AT HIS BEST
ISPORT VI CTORY BY MONSTER Sweatproof, noise-isolating ear tips, killer bass. Dhs1,125, monsterproducts.com
BY JOHNNY DAVIS
PMX 685I SPORTS BY SENNHEISER Ultra-light neckband, moisture resistant, great value. Dhs346, en-uk.sennheiser.com
W SERIES BY SONY Operates at two metres underwater, built-in 8GB MP3 player. Dhs461, sony. co.uk
FREESTYLE BY BOSE Tips hold earphones in place, in-line mic control, Bose quality. Dhs663, bose.co.uk
BACKBEAT FIT BY PLANTRONICS Flexible, virtually unbreakable, re�lective �inish. Dhs691, plantronics.com
R E S L A W M A H A R G Y B H P A R G O T O H P
T10I BY RHA Stainless steel construction, 10 sets of ear tips, great all-round sound. Dhs865, rha-audio.com
C
hoosing headphones is hard. If you’re anything l ike us, you can add up the amount you’ve spent on sets ultimately lost, busted or w ith one dicky wi re over the years and weep. Choosing sports headphones is even harder. Whether you run, bike, swim or ski, a good set can make all the difference in motivation. A bad, ill-fitt ing set will make everything worse. When choosing, consider sweat-resistance, how important an i n-line mic is, tangle-free qualit ies and whether on-ear or over-ear best suits your needs.
JANUARY 2015
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MAN AT HIS BEST
Film
…had Pulp Fiction quoted at me? It’s de�initely the movie that’s quoted back to me most. It’ll be “Royale with cheese” or “You must have hit a bump”. Those lines are so quotable because of the style of writing.
…�lew a plane to somewhere I’d never been before? São Paulo in South America is a city arrival, so basically you’re flying with these skyscrapers either side of you as you approach the airport. It was very exciting and I love that.
LAST IMPRESSIONS
JOHN TRAVOLTA THE HOLLYWOOD ICON AND AVIATION ENTHUSIAST ON BAD OUTFITS AND BEING MISTAKEN FOR AMERICAN FOOTBALL PLAYERS BY TOM NORTON
THE LAST TIME I… ...bought a CD? I get given them often. There’s a Sérgio Mendes CD featuring the Black Eyed Peas that I love and keep buying again, as I’m always leaving it in a car or whatever. It’s, like, eternally effective.
...got mistaken for someone else? It happened to me once and it wasn’t that long ago actually. It was American football player Joe Namath. An elderly couple came up to me and said “Oh, Joe! How are ya?! You thought we weren’t going to recognise you, didn’t you?! I knew you back in…”. But when I was in high school, Namath was the biggest deal in football. I looked enough like him back then and, well, it had a certain sex appeal to people, so I didn’t correct them. If they wanted to think they had a conversation with Joe Namath then I was all for it!
…was genuinely scared of something going wrong on a �light? Twenty-two years ago I had an electrical failure that wasn’t very pleasant. But I wouldn’t say I’ve had really had any emergencies.
…went to the cinema alone? Well, sometimes they’ll close a cinema for me after hours, but when did I last sneak in on my own to see something? I definitely have, but it was a long, long time ago.
...WATCHED GR EASE
…bought Esquire? Last month! The one that featured Channing Tatum on the cover. I like him, I think he’s really got it. He’s funny, appealing, real and he’s not full of himself at all. Out of all the young guys, he’s probably got the best potential.
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The whole movie? The last time I saw even an excerpt was a year ago. They have these sing-alongs for the Academy. So I showed up at this special homage to Grease, a special screening where they charged people to come, which is interesting, as it’s perhaps the only movie in history where thousands of people will come and pay more to see it than they did originally.
Esquire was speaking to John Travolta at the UAE launch of the new Breitling Emergency. Features include a new rechargeable battery, dual frequency transmitter and integrated antenna system for location tracking on land, sea or in the air. breitling.com
TV
YOUR NEXT TV FIX
FOUR MORE SCI�FI FILMS BEING ADAPTED FOR TV WESTWORLD
A TV version of the 1973 �ilm about a futuristic amusement park will be screened by HBO at some point this year. Jonathan Nolan is directing, JJ Abrams is involved and the cast includes Anthony Hopkins, James Marsden, Evan Rachel Wood and Ed Harris.
THE MID�SEASON REPLACEMENTS START Aaron Stanford as James Cole
THIS MONTH BY MATT POMROY
12 MONKEYS
T
erry Gilliam’s beloved sci-fi masterpiece has been developed for TV by Terry Matalas and Travis Fickett, who previously worked together on Nikita and Terra Nova. That sentence will probably dismay more people than it excites — never mess with the classics, etc — but it would be harsh to dismiss the series offhand. Gilliam’s film was itself an adaptation of La Jetée (a French short-film from 1962) and for television the basic premise appears to be intact. James Cole returns from the year 2043 to the present in
MAN AT HIS BEST
order to prevent a mysterious organisation, known as the “Army of the Twelve Monkeys”, releasing of a deadly virus that will go on to kill 93 percent of the world’s population. Cole will be helped by virologist Cassandra Railly and Goines, a maths genius with mental issues — the latter role played in Gilliam’s version by Brad Pitt in one of this best performances. Clearly wanting to avoid direct comparisons, Goines will now be female and played by Emily Hampshire in what appears to be an inspired piece of casting. In the original, however, Cole was sent back to get a virus sample for scientists in the future to find a cure, but the TV version requires him to stay and fight, thus opening up all manner of Grandfather Paradox issues that look set to play a part in
the plot. And, as you’d expect, the TV version is broader and involves additional twists, including the kind of shadowy conspiracy characters seen in Nikita, Alias, 24, and The X-Files . The big hump to get over will be the fact that the small screen version is sadly not going to be directed by Terry Gilliam and it’s likely that this is where it will feel hugely different — his inimitable style will inevitably leave this feeling a bit hollow, smallbudget, made-for-TV. The premise, however, should give 12 Monkeys enough scope to make a strong, allegorical, sci-fi series that requires you to think a bit more and, once you get past the lack of Gilliam, it has the potential to be one of the best smallscreen translations since Battlestar Galactica. Starts January 16
LIMITLESS
The smart sci-�i movie with Bradley Cooper as the recipient of pills that enhance his intelligence has been commissioned (at least as a pilot) although it’s unlikely Cooper will reprise his role. He is a producer, however, as are Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman who were behind Alias and Fringe . MINORITY REPORT
A pilot for a TV adaptation of Philip K. Dick’s Minority Report is being made by Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Television. Set 10 years after the end of pre-crime, it follows one of the pre-cogs trying to lead a normal life while working with a detective. THE TRUMAN SHOW
Paramount Television is developing a small-screen version of Peter Weir’s brilliant 1998 �ilm. There’s no word yet as to how they will approach what was essentially a �ilm about a TV series, nor whether or not it will follow Truman Burbank (presumably not played by Jim Carrey this time) after he exits the dome — the point at which the �ilm ended.
A L S O S TA R T I N G T H I S M O N T H
THE NIGHTLY SHOW WITH LARRY WILMORE
Formerly known as The Minority Report, Wilmore’s new show will air Monday to Thursday, �illing the slot previously occupied by The Colbert Report. He was brilliant as the “Senior Black Correspondent” on The Daily Show and the change of title here suggests a move away from racially based satire — which is probably going to make it broader and stronger. This should be a solid replacement for Colbert. Starts Jan 19.
MARVEL’S AGENT CARTER
The ever-expanding Marvel universe now includes this spin-off from Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. with Hayley Atwell reprising her Agent Peggy Carter from the Captain America �ilms. Set in 1946, Carter works for the covert Strategic Scienti�ic Reserve and in a short, eight-episode run she’ll team up with Howard Stark (aka Iron an’s dad) in post-WW2 espionage, counterintelligence and armsdealing antics. Starts Jan 6.
TOGETHERNESS
The new comedy from the Duplass brothers �inds two couples living under the same roof in Los Angeles. Mark Duplass, Melanie Lynskey, Steve Zissis, and Amanda Peet star in the eight-episode run, and while the trailer screams “rich, white-people problems” we’re hugely encouraged by the fact it’s on HBO, so it can be more adult and not have to pander to advertisers’ sensibilities. And it has the lovely Amanda Peet. Starts Jan 11.
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MAN AT HIS BEST
Sport
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here’s no question Rickie Fowler came of age in 2014. Unfairly billed as l’enfant terrible of US golf, more concerned with fashion than fairways, the 25-year-old responded with his most consistent season, including top-five finishes in each of the major tournaments, a place in the world’s top 10 and a go-to role in the US Ryder Cup team at Gleneagles. More importantly, he looked the player most likely to challenge the growing supremacy of Rory McIlroy. Fowler has now confirmed that he will begin his 2015 season at the Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship this month, hoping to signal his intent that this will be the year he adds his name to the list of golf’s major winners. ESQ: You’ve never played the Abu Dhabi
ORANGE ALERT
HSBC Championship before, so what brings you here now? RF: I have heard a lot of good things about THE ABU DHABI HSBC CHAMPIONSHIP KICKS OFF THE the Championship, and the extremely 2015 EUROPEAN TOUR IN JANUARY WITH THE HELP strong fields that have competed there OF THE RISING STAR OF US GOLF, RICKIE FOWLER over the last few years. I like to challenge BY EDDIE TAYLOR myself and have started to play more on the European Tour, so starting 2015 in a place that I have never played excited me. Abu Dhabi would be a nice place to claim my first European victory. ESQ: What do you know about golf in the region? What are your thoughts on the courses and set-ups here? RF: I have never played in the Middle East during this stretch on the calendar so I am not completely certain what to expect. From what I hear from the American guys, I see it handling similar to the US: quick greens and thick rough off the fairway. I look forward to finding out. ESQ: You had a rough-ish start to 2014, with a few missed cuts in May and June, before enjoying a string of top-10 �inishes. ESQ: After twice coming so close in majors in 2014 are you con�ident you can land one in 2015? Which of the four offers Did you change anything or did you just peak at the right the best chance? tournaments? RF: I’m really proud of what I achieved in 2014. I pushed the RF: I think it is a bit of both, because I had been doing a lot of likes of Rory McIlroy really close at The Open and the US PGA, hard work on the range with my coach, Butch Harmon, to try so I know I’m close to winning something. I just need to keep and make me more consistent. By the time the majors came focusing on my game, keep improving and use the experience around I felt pretty comfortable, so you could say that it was good I have gained to go one better in 2015. It’s hard to single out one preparation and timing. that offers me the best chance, but I have played well at a couple ESQ: You’re currently ninth in the world rankings. Is that something you look at? of Open Championships and feel comfortable on links courses. At St Andrews in 2010, I closed out with a 67 in tricky conditions RF: It’s hard not to because it is a good indicator of how you’re so I am excited to be heading back there this season. playing in relation to your competition. But I think most players
JAN 15�18
SWING
JAN21�24
2015
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Abu Dhabi HSBC Golf Championship Abu Dhabi Golf Club, UAE Commercial Bank Qatar Masters Doha Golf Club, Qatar (Saturday �inish) 2 1 � F E B 1 Omega Dubai Desert Classic Emirates Golf Club, Dubai, UAE
DESERT
JAN
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JANUARY 2015
CAP’N CLARKE? WHY THE DUBAI DESERT CLASSIC MIGHT JUST FEATURE EUROPE’S NEX T RYDER CUP CAPTAIN
It’s now 24 years since Darren Clarke competed in his �irst Dubai Desert Classic, the tournament that helped establish the UAE on the global gol�ing map. The Emirates Hills’ Majlis course had only been opened a couple of years and still represented an oasis outpost, a patch of green surrounded by little more than sand and possibility. “We stayed at the InterCon near the airport,” he recalls, in those tobaccoenriched Ulster vowels. “There was hardly a building between the hotel and the Emirates [Golf Club]. Nothing; just desert. I remember when the Hard Rock was built, and everyone was amazed at how big that was!” Back then, he was a 22-year-old with only one professional season under his belt. In the intervening years, the Northern Irishman has racked-up 25 professional wins, including the 2011 Open at Royal St George’s. He is now odds-on favourite to skipper the European Ryder Cup team when they defend the trophy in Minnesota in 2016, an appointment that will be made by the time he hits his �irst tee shot at the Emirates. It is, he admits, a position he’d love to hold. “It’s up to others to decide,” he says. “But if it’s me, it would be fantastic. I’ve been proud to be a member of the European Tour, so it would be an honour to be asked to captain the European team, no doubt about it.” Whether he’s named captain or not, Clarke will be adding considerable star power to the 2015 Dubai Desert Classic, the third leg of the European Tour’s “Desert
TIME TO PONY�UP Malcolm Borwick, one of England’s best polo players, looks at the sport in the UAE
Swing” around the Gulf. The tournament has long been a �ixture on the player’s calendar, underlining a career-long affinity with the place. “He’s always been the ‘go-to’ guy for Dubai,” says David Spencer, the strategic advisor to Golf in Dubai. “When the Race to Dubai was still just an idea, Darren was one of the people we took into con�idence to gauge the response from the players. We still use Darren as a sounding board now. He remains a very valuable friend to Dubai golf.” “You ask any player on the tour where they like to come most and most of them would say Dubai,” Darren says, who spent Christmas with his family in Jebel Ali. “The locations and facilities in Dubai are similar to what you can �ind in the States. It’s a special place to come and play.”
are trying to play well and win as often as possible and if you do that the rankings will take care of themselves. ESQ: You’re known for your on-course style and your relationship with Puma. Do you have input into your designs, and will the hair stay under control? RF: When I started out, I wore orange to support the fact that I went to Oklahoma State, but as a rule Puma gave me the clothes and I put together the outfits. Now, we’re working more in-depth and I have some input as they’re designing. As for the hair, the Ryder Cup haircut was a one-time thing to get some team spirit going, but I think you’ll see it a little more under control this year! ESQ: What does time off look like? We know you’re an expert motocross rider? RF: I focused a lot on motocross until I broke three bones in my foot, which stopped me taking it so seriously, but I still love to go out on my bike when I get chance. Recently I went cliff diving with my fellow Red Bull Ambassador, David Colturi, and that was an amazing experience.
No matter how daft the haircut, this man continues to date a bikini model
Polo is a growing sport in the UAE and I think it’s going to become a signi�icant player in the next 10 years. The last three or four years have seen a big step forward, and I envisage Dubai being a big competitor for the January, February and March season which is usually in Florida. The sport does have a ‘posh’ tag, which is entirely justi�iable when you look at high-end brands associated with it and, unlike football, the spectators usually spend more time watching each other than the game! But we want to change that and open it up. We’ve been doing city events around the world and Royal Salute plays in over 14 countries each year, so we’re trying to take polo back to audiences who might have lost it. It is a properly professional sport now, with a year-round tour. As with golf, we play 11 and a half months a year. You can’t enjoy the “Champagne Charlie” lifestyle and be successful. Now you have to have dedication and be fully committed, 24/7. That’s the lesson for the UAE, really. The more people they can give lessons to, the more chance one person will become a franchise owner, build their own team, attract professionals and raise the level. The Royal Salute UAE Nations Cup 2015 takes place at the Desert Palm by Per Aquum Retreat, January 25�29
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ESQUIRE ADVERTORIAL
P PERRY & BLACKWELDER’S ORIGINAL SMOKEHOUSE Henry Perry and John Blackwelder, the fathers of authentic ‘slow and low’ roasted meats, knew what good ol’ fashioned hospitality was all about, as witnessed at P&B’s 44
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erry & Blackwelder’s Original Smokehouse (P&B’s) is a brand-new, casual dining concept located in Souk Madinat Jumeirah, taking inspiration from every bit of Deep South BBQ heritage to bring Dubai its first ever, original smokehouse. The restaurant’s philosophy is deeply entrenched in American history, when the first pitmasters in the Deep South developed the art of roasting meat ‘low and slow’ over a smouldering heat to achieve fall-off the-bone tenderness and a beautiful smoky flavour. This is what inspires Executive Chef and Pitmaster Lawrence Wells, using recipes passed down through generations, to create the menu at P&B’s. With family and friends, try the wide variety of true Southern dishes such as succulent meats, tantalisingly authentic short ribs and briskets and homemade barbeque sauces as P&B’s restaurant sets the stage for the emirate’s first original smokehouse. For reservations call 04 366 6197 or visit perryandblackwelder.com Facebook, Twitter, Instagram @ perryandblackwelder
Esq.
ROLL CALL Start the New Year as you would your first day at school — utterly prepared
L L E Z A H E T A K Y B S D R O W
There’s almost a “first day back at school” feeling about Januar y. You know, that first day of term when you had a fully-loaded pencil case and sta rchironed new uniform with your initia ls sewn into the label. Well, just because school is a long and distant memory doesn’t mean you can’t begin the year afresh, so star t as you mean to go on with some monogrammed belongings. Louis Vuitton introduced the Mon Damier Graphite collection at the end of last year, which is now available to customise with initials a nd personalised coloured stripes in five new shades. The 10-piece collection is perfect for t he gent who doesn’t want to lose his bag after playtime.
ESQUIRE APPROVES Mon Damier Graphite Keepall, Dhs8,100, and Mon Damier Graphite wallet, Dhs2,520, both by Louis Vuitton
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STYLE
EDITOR’S PICK
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A lightweight bomber in a thin knit is our warmer climate’s answer to this season’s must-have piece.
2 THE SPORT S WATCHES
L L E Z A H E T A K Y B D E L I P M O C
1. For the skier
2. For the sailsman
Longines has launched the Conquest 1/100th Alpine Skiing. The new sporty 41mm watch displays time to the one hundredth of a second with a new and unique quartz movement, the L440, as well as a microcontroller with a flash memory that allows it to be reset instantly and intermediary times to be recorded, should you be timekeeping on your way down. The sleek time piece also comes with a triple safety folding clasp, should you take a dive into the snow. www.longines.com
Ralph Lauren’s new Sporting Classic Chronometer is driven by the COSCcertified RL336 caliber oscillating at 28,800vph. With a smaller-sized 39mm case in polished stainless steel, this watch is water resistant up to a depth of 100 metres, despite it looking incredibly dapper, has a power reserve of 42 hours, and keeps the hour, minutes and seconds in perfect synchronization with its self-winding RL366 mechanical movement. Around Dhs15,100
Dhs1,039, G�Star Raw
FAST FASHION
AN UPGR ADE FOR YOUR SIGNATURE
Inspired by the pared-down Streamline Moderne architectural movement of 1930s in America, S.T. Dupont has launched its latest work of art, the sleek Streamline-R pen collection. Similar to the curved silhouettes of that era, the luxury writing instruments are made from the French brand’s latest technological innovation, Ceramium A.C.T. — a blend of ceramic and aluminium. The Streamline-R pen is thus 40 percent lighter and three-times more resistant to scratches, which means you can comfortably tuck it into a suit pocket without feeling the weight of such a beautiful-looking pen. From Dhs2,240, S.T. Dupont is at The Dubai Mall, +971 4 3882581
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Usually car-associated clothing can be a little, let’s say, tacky. But that’s not the case for Porsche Design, whose ready-to-wear line of menswear is exactly like its cars — cool, sleek and capable of turning a head or two. Founded in 1972 by Professor Ferdinand Alexander Porsche (the designer of the Porsche 911, who left the car company to start Porsche Design), his A/W14 collection is a far cry from the usual branded polos of other car makers. With a focus on functional, timeless and purist design, the clothes are, well, classy. Tailored, excellently executed staples like coats, jackets and other menswear essentials are all focused around a central palette of black, which will go nicely when sat in a bright red Boxster. Available at The Dubai Mall, +971 4 434 1415
WHAT NOT TO WEAR IN 2015 THREE SCENTS FOR THE SEASON POLO SUPREME OUD
TOM FORD C OSTA AZZURRA
Ralph Lauren has launched its most luxurious World of Polo fragrance, a blend of precious spices, smoky oud and rich woods.
As part of Tom Ford’s new Private Blend Neroli Porto�ino Collection, Costa Azzurra arouses the warm aromas of the Mediterranean with notes of woody pines blended with wildgrowing herbs. Dhs945
Dhs460
at Paris Gallery
L’HOMME IDEAL If you haven’t had a chance to pick up Guerlain’s new masculine fragrance L’Homme Ideal, this month the French perfumery also releases a body range of deodorant and shower gel to match the citrusy scent.
Dhs480
NEW DIREC TION
British brand Mulberry has appointed Johnny Coca as its new Creative Director, who will now oversee design on leather goods, shoes, hard accessories, jewellery and sunglasses. The Spanish-born designer starts the new gig in July when he leaves French brand Celine, where he’s head designer and has been responsible for some of the best-selling and most iconic bags of the past few years. The creative visionary is said to be breathing new life into the 44-year-old brand, so keep an eye out for contemporary takes on essential accessories coming up later this year.
A new year means time to start afresh, especially when it comes to your wardrobe. Here’s Ascots & Chapels dos and don’ts when it comes to a stylish 2015. BORING BLACK TUXEDOS While we think tuxedos are a wardrobe classic, coloured dinner jackets are having a moment. Make like James Bond, who made a midnight blue statement, or you could play with a neutral toned jacket, such as ivory. Consult a tailor to help you pick the right colour for your skin type and frame. NEON/BRIGHT COLOUR Neon and tailoring — even if it is the trimmings or detail on the inside of your jacket — is never a good idea. While the pop of bright colour on accessories, such as shoe laces or the frame of your glasses, made its mark in 2014, this year, the aesthetic is really more understated. FAKES Cheap designer rip-offs are never okay. No one will be thrilled at the bargain you got on that watch in Karama or the “affordable” designer-like wallet you picked up while walking around Grand Bazaar. Keep it genuine and make a statement with the little accents, such as sterling silver cuff links or an heirloom timepiece. THE ILL-FITTING SHIRT Shirts are the perfect foil to a statement suit or the canvas to showcase a knitted tie, if you will, so make sure you take the time to get the absolute perfect fit. Invest in five tailored white shirts that fit you perfectly. THE “TRENDY” SHOE Whether its square tips or a patent leather slip-on, there have been many footwear fads over the years. And while designers usually get it right for the runway, most are best left on the model. Get to know your style — pick a good shape (preferably with wing-tips of varying subtlety, depending on how adventurous you are) in a tan, brown and black and they’ll keep you going for years to come.
Ascots & Chapels is 130-year old British tailors that offers a unique sartorial experience for men, delivered by masters in the art of creative tailoring. Its visiting tailor service, Global Concierge and specialist Colour Consultant, sets it apart. Find stores in Dubai Marina Mall (level 1, +9714 427 0124); DIFC (Marble Walk, +9714 325 2216); Level 1, The Galleria, Al Maryah Island Abu Dhabi (+971 2 6166 999); Souk al Bahar, Downtown Dubai (+9714 450 8576); Pearl Qatar (+974 4002 7989); Unique fitting rooms at the Control Tower at Motor City, Dubai (+9714 362 9975); Al Raha Mall in Abu Dhabi (+9712 556 1767) www.ascotsandchapels.com
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SEA SPRAY L A N D LU B B E R S B E WA R E : J O M A L O N E ’ S N E W S C E N T D E L I V E R S T H E TA N G O F T H E O C E A N
ESQUIRE APPROVES Wood Sage & Sea Salt Cologne by Jo Malone, Dhs470 for 100ml
Once, the world’s best fragrances were produced from a blend of very few ingredients. For example, Creed’s �irst scent, Royal English Leather (launched in 1780), consisted of only mandarin, bergamot, ambergris, sandalwood and leather. Caron’s 1934 masterpiece, Pour un Homme de Caron, contained just lavender, vanilla and musk. Today, the majority of men’s fragrances are produced using a minimum of 12 ingredients,
NEVER WORN SEAWEED A N D S AG E BEFORE? HOW ABO UT THESE UNUSUAL INGREDIENTS?
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but many contain a lot more. Refreshing, then, that British fragrance house Jo Malone has broken the mould with its latest, sea-foam-inspired offering, Wood Sage & Sea Salt. Its select few ingredients include soft musk, seaweed (yup), grapefruit and — of course — sea salt and sage, making the cologne bright and fresh with an earthy, slightly woody base. Great if you’re feeling particularly foggy-headed…
CUMIN
VODKA
INK
More usually found in your takeaway jalfrezi than your day-to-day splashon, Tom Ford uses cumin to give London its earthy spiciness.
Designed as a “party scent”, this bright, slightly sweet offering from Carolina Herrera contains notes of both vodka and gin, appropriately.
London Eau de Parfum by Tom Ford, Dhs805 for 50ml tomford.com
212 VIP Men by Carolina Herrera, Dhs300 for 50ml
Inspired by Japanese calligraphy, Comme des Garçons 2 combines notes of orange and magnolia with the moody depths of Indian ink.
Comme des Garçons 2, Dhs327 for 50ml at Paris Gallery
G N O R T S M R A M A S Y B H P A R G O T O H P
NOT THE FACE! SEASONAL SKIN DEFENCE TIPS
HOW TO PREVENT A W E AT H E R � BEATING BY DERMATOLOGIST DR STEFANIE WILLIAMS
T H I S S E A S O N ’ S M O S T E F F E C T I V E M O I S T U R I S E RS
1. LESS SOAP
“In the cooler months, the skin’s barrier function is less effective. So minimise contact with soap and use an emollient (eg, aqueous cream) or bath oil to wash with.”
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2. CLOSE SHAVE
“When shaving, try using Dermol Cream (a slightly antiseptic emollient) instead of traditional shaving foams that can have a more drying effect.”
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3. LIVE CL EAN
“Avoid junk food and excessive alcohol. And smoking is a massive no-no. The consequences of a skinunfriendly lifestyle should not be ignored.”
4. HYDRATE
“Keep up your water intake: you should drink 1.5 litres of water — preferably �iltered — per day. The difference it can make will surprise you.”
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5. SLEEP WELL
“Always try to get eight hours of sleep at night to give your skin a chance to repair itself. Take an omega-3-rich �ish oil supplement to help counter dry winter skin.”
1. Anti-Age Global Revitaliser, Dhs935, by Sisley 2. Facial Fuel Heavy Lifting, Dhs120, by Kiehl’s 3. Neuropeptide Firming Moisturiser, Dhs1,295, by Perricone MD 4. Perfect Facial Hydrating Cream, Dhs465, by Aésop at Mrporter.com 5. Oil-Free Daily Moisturiser, Dhs430, by Tom Ford 6. Regenerating Moisturising Balm, Dhs281 by Dior Homme Dermo System
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E N Y A P H C T I M Y B H P A R G O T O H P
How is your face? How is it really? Given the cooler winter months we’re enjoying, it’s probably feeling a little healthier than usual: a little less burned, a little more… loved. But the heat isn’t far around the corner so i t’s time you thought about maintaining your skin in the rude health to which it has become accustomed. Aside from eating lots of vegetables, drinking plenty of water and getting enough sleep, a good place to start is with a nourishing winter moisturiser. We’ve chosen six of the most bene�icial.
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COATS IN WHICH TO SURVIVE ABROAD L E AV I NG T H E C O M F O RT O F T H E GCC CLIMATE? THESE’LL HELP
I
f you’re travelling abroad for ski season this month, or just going somewhere colder, it’s essential for your general wellbeing that you invest in a good coat. Unlike other items of clothing you might buy throughout the year, your outer layer is a wardrobe essential. As important for making you look good as it is for keeping you alive when it gets properly cold, a suitable winter jacket is worth some investment. Here’s Esquire’s pick of the best.
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PARKA Containing a �ine layer of super-insulating white duck down, Canada Goose’s Arctic parkas can withstand temperatures well below zero. The outerwear of choice for explorers, mountaineers and extra-sensitive travellers alike, the coyote fur hood not only adds a natty edge, the uneven hair lengths create a windbreak to help protect exposed skin on the face.
Navy Arctic-Tech parka, Dhs3,753, by Canada Goose at Mrporter.com
Diorr Ho Di Homme me
HOW TO WEAR IT Wear yours with a slim roll-neck, a doublebreasted navy suit and a pair of chestnut double monk-straps for a weatherproof, workaday look.
Olive green Techno fabric parka, Dhs7,885, by Moncler
Erme Ermenegildo Zegna Couture Zegn
Dark brown nylon parka, Dhs3,983, by Spiewak Brioni
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OVERSIZED OVERCOAT This season’s runways were awash with oversized coats — layers of fabric designed to swathe the body and steal the show from the rest of your out�it. From drop-shouldered cashmere numbers at Louis Vuitton to double-faced overcoats at Zegna Couture, the billowy-er, the better.
Navy/burgundy cashmere coat, Dhs17,098, by Louis Vuitton
HOW TO WEAR IT Team yours with a pair of highankle Chelsea boots, some tapered wool trousers, an airtex vest and a cashmere overshirt for the ultimate Paris-in-winter look.
Ermenegildo Zegna Couture re
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Charcoal wool coat, Dhs12,528, by Prada
Dark brown cashmere/ wool-blend coat, Dhs2,020, by Boss
Bottega ottega Veneta
Louis Vuitton
Light grey wool coat, Dhs2,771, by Whistles
CAR COAT Slim-cut and single-breasted, this season’s car coats are made to be worn with tonal shades on bright winter days. Avoid black and navy and opt instead for burgundy, camel or an understated pattern. HOW TO WEAR IT As easy to wear with your work suit as they are to wander around during a European city break, a good car coat is the most adaptable garment in your wardrobe. Team with slim chinos, a pair of hiking boots and a buttondown Oxford shirt and you’re good to go.
Camel wool coat, Dhs2,251, by Oliver Spencer
Prada
E N Y A P H C T I M Y B H P A R G O T O H P
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Valentino
Gucci uc
Grey wool-blend coat, Dhs690, by Topman
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he latest Baselworld was an exercise in restraint and reserve, with the majority of brands either having run their course of creativity or just waiting out the economic uncertainty. But in the midst of it all, one watch company took the opposite stand and unveiled a range of watches that made journalists and retailers sit up and take notice. Bulgari is celebrating its 130th anniversary this year and the marque seems to have pulled out all the stops to entertain and surprise the horology world with a collection that has been largely agreed to be among the most impressive of the show. Each piece of the men’s collection is a work of art in its own right, capable of standing shoulder to shoulder with any of the best out there. Not only are the aesthetics pleasing, but the amount of technological innovation that has gone into creating each piece is equally commendable. The team in Neuchatel have been working on these pieces for years, and had waited for this special year to launch them.
PARTNERSHIPS APLENTY
Bulgari L’Ammiraglio del Tempo
TH E AR RI VAL OF BULGARI Bulgari timepieces have, over the years, shown great potential. This year marks their arrival BY LEONG WONG
The high horology division at Bulgari took shape in 2000 when it brought in two of the biggest names in mechanical watchmaking, Daniel Roth and Gerald Genta, as a result of a decision to expand the business by entering the lucrative luxury watch market. That was the start of a long, ambitious route to independence, as Bulgari began its vertical integration exercise, a dream many watch companies have yet to realise. A high-end dial maker by the name of Cadrans Design was the company’s second acquisition. At the same time, it purchased Prestige d’Or, a metal strap producer. Then, in 2007, Bulgari made two further important acquisitions: Finger, a specialist in creating and making highly complex and sophisticated cases for high-end watches, and Leschot, which specialises in producing watchmaking machinery. With these manufacturers securely in the fold, Bulgari set up its own movement manufacturing and assembly division, after acquiring what it needed to be almost entirely independent. In 2009, now a full-fledged watch manufacture, it launched the Sotirio Bulgari Tourbillon Quantième Perpétuel, a beautiful piece of art that displayed the superb skills of the watchmakers who work within the walls of its haute horlogerie division. In case you’re curious, the facility boasts four of the 12 master watchmakers present in the whole of Switzerland. To coincide with its 130th anniversary, Bulgari has lined up a series of watches to impress its existing fan base, as well as bring new ones into the fold. For men, Bulgari has turned its focus to the Octo, which is, aesthetically speaking, one of the best watches from the brand so far. Initially, some might think the sharp edges too hard and harsh, but the more you look at it, the more you appreciate the complexity of its facets and also the work that went into polishing them. The octagonal shape was the initiative of the legendary Gerald Genta and seems as fresh today as when it was first introduced. Four additional models have been added to the Octo range, and they are the Octo 38mm, the Octo Finissimo, the Octo Finissimo Tourbillon and the Octo Velocissimo.
THIN IS IN The Octo 38mm is the downsized version of the previous 42mm, with the recent demand for smaller watches more or less putting an end to the trend of outsized watches of recent
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STYLE Bulgari Octo 38mm in stainless steel
Bulgari Octo Finissimo Tourbillon
which eliminated the need for a regulator, and this makes the tourbillon slimmer. To complete it all, the barrel ha s three ball bearings on its periphery, which hold it in position and guide it, resulting in room to double the height of the spring, and also to help it to harness nearly 55 hours of power reserve. The gem sits at six o’clock on the polished black lacquered dial and bears appliqué platinum hour markers with an Arabic numeral “12”. The hours and minutes are told via skeleton platinum hands that are driven by a hand-wound, mechanical tourbillon movement.
HAMMER TIME
years. The timepiece comes in three case variants — steel, pink gold and duo tone — with a choice of a black or white lacquered dial, depending on the metal you choose. The hands and the hour markers are in gold or steel corresponding with the case. A new automatic mechanical movement powers the watch. This year, Bulgari got into the game of slim watches, and Octo Finissimo is one of the slimmest watches around, measuring just 5mm, which is quite an achievement. The process of getting the desired thickness isn’t as easy one might imagine. After years of research and trying out new ways to shed the extra steel, the company’s engineers and designers pooled their resources and came up with a two-part solution to minimise the space and accommodate the parts. The large torque that power any additional complications down the road, also permits a reduction of the thickness to a mere 2.23mm. The diameter of the movement, meanwhile, has grown to 36mm to accommodate the parts on the same plane to reduce bulk and maintain integrity. It has certainly worked, and an ultra-slim Octo was born in the form of the Finissimo. The ultra-thin case comes only in satin-brushed platinum, with a black dial that’s decorated with appliqué platinum Arabic hour markers and indexes, with a small seconds between seven and eight o’clock. The hour and minute hands are driven by a hand-wound mechanical movement, which, in spite of its slimness, can still harness up to 70 hours of power reserve. The high torque and large diameter of the movement have a purpose beyond reducing the watch’s thickness. These facets also allow room for additional extras down the line. Finissimo has a tourbillon version, and to keep it all on the same plane, the master watchmakers at Bulgari have come up with the world’s thinnest tourbillon. It is this gem of a grand complication that determines the thickness of the movement, so the team at Bulgari had to find a way to reduce the thickness. Their solution was ingenious, and resulted in a 1.95mm case, which is 0.8mm slimmer than that of its sibling, the Octo 38mm. So how did they do it? Ball bearings were used for the moving parts, and were also positioned on the basic movement, where the tourbillon cage uses a cartridge bearing that allows it to pivot, while the last ball bearing lets the escapement wheel pivot. The timing is adjusted directly on the balance wheel,
If you think the Finissimo Tourbillon is the finest you’ve met, wait un til you meet L’Ammiraglio del Tempo. Once in a while, the horological world will surprise you with something quite spectacular, and this year’s surprise is the L’Ammiraglio, the talented musician in the Bulgari family of watches. The minute repeater — which is one of the most playful of all grand complications, as it engages the wearer to interact with it — sees two further additions to the movement that are rarely seen these days: the detent escapement and the constant force. The minute repeater, which possesses four hammers and gongs striking to the tune of the Westminster Chimes, is nothing new to Bulgari, as it made its appearance a couple of years ago. It’s how the chime is activated that provides the attraction. It’s activated by a trigger, which is an innovation in itself, and isn’t located by the side of the case, as most are; it’s actually activated by a steady push of the lug just above seven o’clock. How that’s done is another matter — the activator is actually part of a very complex case design, as it’s a separate piece that sits along a groove on the inside of the top and the lower piece of the watch case. Don’t worry, the strap stays on securely during activation. One of the hidden stars is the aforementioned detent escapement, which is actually a detached escapement. It took several talented watchmakers more than one hundred years to perfect it. It’s a vital component for sailors to navigate the oceans since precise calculations depend on the precision of the timing of their watch or clock. It is a regulating instrument, as well as a device to re-transmit and redistribute the energy supplied by the barrel spring to the balance, enabling the wearer to tell the time with great accuracy. The second ace up its sleeve is the constant force, (actually a spring that’s permanently wound), which sits on the gear train and is connected to the mainspring of the escapement. It delivers torque to the escapement with minimal loss of energy, and thus adds to the near-perfect precision of the watch. Aficionados won’t need to see the watch’s name to know that its DNA betrays the hand of Daniel Roth. With its classical Roman-Greco influence evident in the multi-layered bezel that’s integrated into the case, the watch’s half-open dial reveals the detent escapement and the hammer and gongs. The solid part of the dial is enamelled in blue for the white-gold case and black for the pink-gold case, and decorated with appliqué Roman numerals in material corresponding with the case. The Bulgari L’Ammiraglio del Tempo is a Octo Finissimo true traditional classic that offers Tourbillon’s deconstructed the custodian the boon of modern movement timekeeping innovations.
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“The Big Bang, the technological revolution, the financial crisis and subsequent legislation… The last 30 years has been a period of huge upheavals” 54
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WHAT I’VE LEARNED IN BUSINESS
JAMES FLEMING Banker, 52
M A H T A L T O N H T U B R A F O Y T S E T R U O C : S O T O H P
I’ve been coming back and forth to Dubai since the mid-1990s. There are over 60 banks in the GCC that focus on wealth management. It shows that there’s a competitive market here with a lot of wealth creation, which requires wealth management. That’s where we come in. Every day is a learning process. But the core principles of planning, structuring, looking at the short-, medium- and longterm, taking into account the needs of the client, and also helping them understand risk management, don’t change. We constantly accumulate knowledge. Our investment experts start with the macro view of what’s happening in the world today, what’ll probably happen tomorrow and how that relates to the past. We then take into account the micro situation of our clients against that background. You’re not going to be accurate 100 percent of the time, so it’s important to diversify. If you happen to get it wrong in one sector, hopefully you’ve diversified your client’s assets so that it has no major bearing on their overall position. The law of unintended consequences can definitely apply when it comes to economics. We come across clients who’ve sold a business they spent 25 years building and haven’t thought about what’s next or how to invest their money. They’ll need education and it’s a whole new language to them because of all the financial jargon that comes with it. Selling a business is a life-changing event and it is often followed by a process akin to grieving. You have to play the part of counsellor. The worst advice you can give them is to invest now. We tell clients to go on holiday, take some time out, think about what it is they want. Once you’ve understood your personal benchmark of wealth for a comfortable life you can then build an income requirement based on those objectives. And it’s different for everyone. If you want a private jet, a fast yacht or houses in four destinations, you must work out what capital you need for that. The great privilege of our job is that we get to meet so many interesting people who’ve done great things. We meet individuals from different industries, and understanding what fuels their ambition and has helped get them where they are today is fascinating. You must have that curiosity in order to offer good individual advice. A study suggested that $5 million will give you a mortgagefree house and a comfortable, but not outrageous, lifestyle. I hope that’s not a soul-destroying thought! When I started out in 1980 the discount house brokers in London still wore top hats. That’s how you recognised them. There were also a few bowler hats around in the city. The Big Bang of 1986 in London, the technological revolution, the financial crisis and subsequent legislation… the last 30 years has been a period of huge upheavals. You spend a lot of your life being too young to do certain things, and then suddenly you become the old boy in the room. Money cannot buy happiness. I’ve seen lottery winners who think that the world is at their feet when the cheque arrives. Many of them have used it badly and lost it all in 18 months.
What surprises me the most is the tendency of humans to ruthlessly pursue asset bubbles to the point of destruction. It’s embarrassing to see how we ignore history by continuing to invent in bubbles and pursue them till they destruct. The 2009 economic crisis emphasised the importance of diversification. People were inflating prices and throwing diversification out the window, which saw concentrated risks in one area. And of course everything then exploded. A �inancial apocalypse was a definite possibility that year. I think most market professionals experienced a crisis of faith. I certainly felt that everything I’d worked for was crumbling around me. Financial monuments disappeared before our eyes. There were several moments where a major disaster could’ve occurred. It was not certain that governments would step in to save entire economies. But as the crisis heightened, sense prevailed and they thrashed out a solution. Looking back it was a fascinating time — but not while we were in it. Do big institutions really learn? I like to think so but I’m not sure. They should have learned their lessons, but they’ll continue to increase share prices to satisfy shareholders, which pushes behaviour down the extreme path again. A lot has been done to fix the problems that led to the crash. There was a danger of a knee-jerk reaction, but regulations have been fairly well thought through before being implemented. Banks are still repairing their balance sheets — you don’t magic capital from thin air overnight — and the recovery will go on to repair the issues. Capital in the Twenty-First Century was a radical book, but you have to respect the depth of research that Thomas Piketty used to support his views, even if you don’t support the conclusions. The great thing about economics is that there is room for many opinions. Too Big to Fail by Andrew Ross Sorkin also offered great insights into the final days leading up to the crash. School made me realise the importance of academic, sporting and pastoral development. I’ve met a lot of very academic people who aren’t well-rounded individuals. Sport teaches you to accept winning or losing, teamwork and following the captain. I coach 15-year-olds in cricket, and the things I tell them most often are to develop their potential, use their abilities to grow accordingly and strive to achieve and be motivated. You often come across young people who think the world owes them a living, but if you’ve got the skills and qualities then just go out there and use them. I use the lessons from coaching sports to teach colleagues in the business. The only other career I would have chosen would have been an RAF pilot. The only thing that put me off was that you had sign up for 10 years, which seemed like a long time back then. Of course it doesn’t now! My favourite sporting moment? Jonny Wilkinson’s drop goal in the 2003 Rugby World Cup final. James Fleming is chief executive of Arbuthnot Latham, a London private bank established 180 years ago, that just celebrated the �irst year of its office in Dubai. arbuthnotlatham.com/dubai JANUARY 2015
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BUSINESS INTERVIEW
WORKING PROGRESS: HARMEEK SINGH THE OWNER AND FOUNDER OF PLAN B OUTLINES HIS STRATEGY FOR SUCCESS I N T E R V I E W B Y E D D I E T AY L O R
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ETTING NOTICED IN DUBAI is often less of a science than a shouting match. With brands jostling for limited space in a consumer market that is driven by magpies searching for the newest, shiniest experiences, agencies have long learned that they must demonstrate the ability to deliver creativity in a conspicuous fashion. Plan B, the advertising, marketing and branding agency launched in 2006 by entrepreneur Harmeek Singh, has successfully combined both in eight-plus years that have seen his company grow from five-person start-up to a 200-employee operation with offices and affiliates across the Gulf and into Asia. His client base now includes the biggest lifestyle and luxury brands — Ferrari, Dunhill, IWC, Adidas — as well as state-run companies and government ministries looking to create exciting events and activations for the country’s residents. “If we’re not turning heads, we’re not doing our job,” he once commented. Indeed, it’s perhaps impossible to be unaware of Plan B’s work, whether it’s driving past the hu ge 3D billboards on Sheikh Zayed Road, standing along the route of the Dubai Marathon (an event the company manages), or walking beneath the waterfall of butterflies in Dubai Mall’s Fashion Avenue. Most recently, they
P T I : S T I D E R C
HARMEEK SINGH’S WORKING DAY
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6am: Wake up.
Switch on my phone. 6.40am: I take a 20 minute jog to help clear the
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mind and get focused for the day. 7am: Get up to date with current affairs and global
were behind the public activities on Kite Beac h and JBR for Eid and the branded stretch-Hummer limousines that promoted the Shah Rukh Khan-backed development, Royal Estates. In December 2013, Harmeek won the Up And Coming title at Esquire’s Man At His Best Awards and, with another year of achievement behind him, it felt appropriate to ask how he has managed to boost business in the last 12 months. How was 2014 for you? Very good, very busy. The business has grown both in terms of people — we’re close to 200 now — and revenues, which are up 30 percent on 2013. So things are positive for us. We’ve worked with Pepsi across the region, created the Emaar Roadshows, which have gone all over the Middle East, Asia and East Africa and we’ve done some interesting things and again worked on the Fazza Championships for cultural sports. You’re well placed to assess the business climate of Dubai right now. Has optimism returned permanently? There’s certainly a confidence in the city again, yes. Expo2020 helped that, and that is going to be a huge opportunity for us and
news. I like to be informed and check emails while having a cup of green tea. 7.45am: Shake
or smoothie for breakfast, except on Fridays when it’s Fruit Loops. 8am: Phonecalls, updating the diary
before heading to the shower. 9.30am: Leave for the o�ice. 10.30am: Internal meetings.
a lot of businesses. Caution remains, of course, especially when you look at the region as a whole, but we are receiving calls from people now who want to plan longer term, and that hasn’t been there for a few years. What has changed in the sector since the economic downturn? When budgets were larger, there was a constant desire for one-upmanship, that whatever a rival brand had done had to be exceeded. So there was an expectation gap of what could be achieved. That has gone away slightly, so it’s more about creativity than scale. Client knowledge has developed a lot also and as people are more budget conscious, they understand that concepts have to be innovative and well thought out. There are also more benchmarks — it’s not just trial and error. You’re in a competitive �ield. How do you maintain competitive advantage? Being stagnant isn’t an option. You have to keep pushing forward, keep in sync with the latest trends and stay creative. You can no longer simply copy or recycle ideas, which was a problem for a long time. We were the first people to try a 3D billboard on Sheikh Zayed Road, which was the huge Adidas boot, and now everyone is doing it — over and over. So, you have to have your ideas and execute solutions in your own way. What is your business philosophy? It’s very much about passion and spontaneity. It’s looking at things that aren’t there, seeing an opportunity and, whatever it is, going for it with 100 percent commitment. If something looks good, there’s no point discussing or debating, just move quickly. Often the best opportunities have nothing to do with planning, just reacting to what’s in front of you. Can you give us an example? Yes, a recent one. I have just come back from Kenya, where we’d been with one of the Emaar Roadshows. We saw there were tremendous opportunities, particularly in the real estate sector, and we instantly decided that we should open an office — not a satellite but a full Plan B team. That will be ready in February 2015. Who has been your principal business mentor? My father. I have always looked up to him and he has achieved a lot of things that I really value, particularly when things weren’t going well, when he had to really fight. He built a business in India manufacturing black-andwhite TVs back when there weren’t so many in people’s homes. The way he dealt with the challenge from China showed a grit that I really admired — and hope I also show now.
AFTER HOURS A TYPICAL WEEKEND
I tend to be very lazy on weekends and catch up on quality family time. We will do activities like go out for a brunch, watch a movie or simply have some retail therapy, followed by dinners or parties. I am a social person and enjoy connecting with people. WHERE TO EAT
I liked Spectrum On One at the Fairmont, which shut recently, for its choice of cuisines. A family favourite is P.F. Chang’s, but if I want typical North Indian cuisine I visit my own restaurant, Oye Punjabi. One of my favourites is butter chicken. HOBBI ES
I am a poet and love writing. Occasionally I will
20 minute break while having a light Indian lunch and beetroot juice. 1.15pm: Creative
meetings and brainstorming with the team. 2pm: External meetings. 6pm: Following
EXPENSIVE LUXURIES
Watches and shoes go a long way with me and I have an extensive collection from limited editions to the regular pieces. WARDROBE
You will often see me wearing my favourite black cap. I am my own style man and choose anything from a designer brand to a street outlet. It’s about what �its my style or suits me. I also enjoy getting dressed up for events.
As my journey as a business owner started in Dubai, I have to say HH Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, UAE Vice President, Prime Minister and Ruler of Dubai. The vision to turn this country from a desert into a city that people from across the world want to visit and work in is remarkable. Ultimately, it’s what every businessman wants to do: create something from nothing. What kind of boss are you? Pretty hands-on, I’d say. I know my job and having built things up from a very small company, it’s difficult to let go of the desire to do things. We worked with the Dubai government on two large activations for Eid, one at Kite Beach, the other down on JBR, and I made sure I went down every day to ensure that everyone attending was having the best possible experience. Of course, it’s important to delegate and to build the right teams, but I still like to be very involved with each project we do.
Esquire editor Jeremy Lawrence presents Harmeek Singh with the Esquire Gentleman of the Year award, 2014
Do you have a motto or piece of advice that is useful to you? If there is one belief that I have tried to carry through my professional life, whether as an employee or now as a business owner, it is that if you’re focused and if your intentions are honest, you will never fail.
“Being stagnant isn’t an option. You have to keep pushing forward, keep in sync with the latest trends and stay creative”
What about role models? Who do you look up to?
12.45pm: I take a
follow up on a recommended book. Since I am a gadget and car fanatic, I am always on the lookout for the latest releases. The most recent addition to my collection is a Ferrari California.
up on deadlines with the team, and summarising the day. It is always good to be organised for the next day and
have all the team working together towards shared common goals. 7.30pm: Gym time. 8.30pm: Dinner.
Normally soup and salad. This is the time our whole family is together, to catch up with the kids and family.
10.30pm: Reading.
Re�lecting. Some of the greatest ideas are born at this time. 11.30pm: Signing off for another day.
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THE STO RY OF L IAM HEMS WORTH , A YOUNG G UY F ROM A TI NY I SLAND OFF T HE COAST OF WORDS AND STYLING BY KATE HAZELL
THE AUSTR ALI AN MAI NLA ND, WHO
PHOTOGRAPHY BY BLEACHER + EVERARD
FOL LOWED H IS BROT HER TO AN UNLIKELY CONQUEST OF H OLLYWOO D. THE QUESTION IS: C OULD HE E VER G O BAC K?
,
Brother THE �OTHER� BOY FROM PHILLIP ISLAND
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he loft suite at the Ace Hotel in New York. A December sun shines bright and hard through the large bay windows, although the thermometer outside reads just five degrees Celsius. Liam Hemsworth is strumming “House of the Rising Sun” on an Epiphone acoustic guitar, customised by Gibson exclusively for the hotel — a nod to the level of detail that goes into an upscale boho joint such as this one. Despite protesting that he only plays a little bit, he’s actually pretty good. Certainly good enough for his publicist, who presumably spends a considerable amount of time with him, to stare with her mouth wide open, clearly oblivious to her client’s hidden talents. She probably shouldn’t be quite so shocked. The last couple of years have shown that Hemsworth is full of surprises. As younger brother of Chris “Thor” Hemsworth, the Australian actor is enjoying his own moment in the limelight, having just starred in one of the biggest films of 2014, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay — Part 1, alongside Jennifer Lawrence and Josh Hutcherson (part 2 to be released later this year). So far The Hunger Games franchise, based on books by the author Suzanne Collins, has pulled in over $1 billion in theatres worldwide and has been breaking box office records since the trilogy debuted in March 2012. Pretty much overnight, Hemsworth has gone from being “Thor’s brother” or “Miley Cyrus’ fiancé” (yep, remember that? The young lovers parted ways in 2013, soon after the singer inaugurated her tongue-poking, pixie-cut image reboot), to an established actor in his own right. On the day of our cover shoot — which sees him effortlessly modelling this season’s deconstructed suiting — he’s come straight from the Good Morning America studios where he was watched by millions over their breakfasts. As soon as we’re done, he has to dash to film The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon. The sci-fi movies have spring-boarded the young star into the upper echelons of Hollywood, with all its attendant demands, but he seems to be adjusting to the new altitude with ease. “I guess the perception of me has changed. More people think about me now and the way people interact with me has changed, but it’s so not much that I’ve changed, you know?” the 24-yearold says in a soft Australian accent. “I still have all my best friends that I grew up with, and they’re still very much my best friends; they’re the closet people around me.” These aren’t empty words. His school buddy, Angus, is with him today on our shoot and gives him a friendly digging when we suggest he tries wearing a pair of Dolce & Gabbana rimmed glasses. “He grew up with me and he’s able to travel with me and it makes it a lot easier when you’re going all around the world, you know?” Hemsworth admits. “It’s nice to have someone who’s normal and familiar. For me it’s very helpful; it’s nice to 60
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have proper mates around. And I’m super close to my family; my brothers are my best friends, we’re all really close to our parents, so I keep all that stuff close to me, you know?” Hemsworth says “you know?” pretty much at the end of every sentence. That could be annoying, but coupled with his unpretentious demeanour (at the end of our shoot he gives everyone a hug and thanks them for their time), instead gives him a familiar feel, and makes it obvious why audiences warm to him on screen. Yet it’s his brother Chris who was the first Hemsworth to catch Hollywood’s eye, and the two, despite the seven years separating them, have very similar, rugged good looks. Chris is the better-known of the two, largely thanks to his part in the Marvel Studios’ comic book adaptations, but as with his height (he’s one centimetre taller than Chris) Liam is catching up fast. Hemsworth was born and spent his childhood years in Melbourne before relocating to Phillip Island, a tiny outpost off the Australian coastline, with his two older brothers, Chris and Luke (who’s also an actor), English-teacher mother and socialservices counsellor father. For anyone who’s seen the cult-classic Australian comedy series We Can Be Heroes by comedian Chris Lilley (the guy behind the equally brilliant Summer Heights High ), Hemsworth likes to recount how the storyline, which featured the bullish Daniel Sim and his partially deaf twin Nathan, mirrored life in the outback with his own brothers. “That was us, man, it totally was. We used to fight all the time,” he laughs. “In the summer holidays we’d live in board shorts and we had a throwing knife, so we’d play this game where you’d have to stand about two metres away from each other and take it in turns to throw it as close to the person’s foot and stick it into the ground. It was really dangerous. I mean, it was kind of blunt, but it would still hurt a lot if it hit you. We used to play that a lot. There were a few cuts and bruises, a few shaves here and there. I think being a young, Australian guy you tend to do those kinds of stupid things.” In other respects, the Hemsworth boys were not at all like their good-natured but essentially blokey Aussie peers. After taking part in high-school plays, and appearing in Home and Away and Neighbours (one or both soaps being a rite of passage for most actors there), Hemsworth followed Chris to LA in 2009. Both brothers auditioned for the lead role in Thor, and while Liam lost out to Chris, that same week he landed a part in a Disney romantic drama The Last Song , based on the Nicholas Spark novel, alongside Miley Cyrus. He’d been in LA just three weeks. “I remember the first thing I saw him do and being really surprised by how natural and comfortable he was in front of the camera,” Chris Hemsworth will tell me over email in response to a question about his younger brother’s early successes. “He always had a solid foundation and focus that was there from day one. I might’ve made a few suggestions with advice over the years but I’m not sure he needed them. Liam has a very strong sense of who he is and what he wants. The main thing I’d say is what my parents always told us, which was just to have fun, enjoy the ride; otherwise do something else.” P R E V I O U S P A G E : Mr Hemsworth wears shirt,
Dhs1,600, Alfred Dunhill and trousers (part of suit), Dhs1,325, Richard James at Mrporter.com. O P P O S I T E P A G E : Mr Hemsworth wears coat, Dhs3,113,
Paul Smith; Jumper, Dhs3,554, Dolce & Gabbana; Trousers, Dhs3,856, Brioni; Chelsea boots, Dhs4,650, Santoni.
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T H I S P A G E : Mr Hemsworth
wears bomber jacket, Dhs7,595, Dolce & Gabbana O P P O S I T E P A G E : Mr
Hemsworth wears cashmere knit polo, price on request, Giorgio Armani
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Liam Hemsworth remembers the advice being more involved than his brother suggests. “While we’d all read lines together and help each other out, Chris and Luke always made such a point of saying, What’s going to separate you from other people, what’s going to be the difference between you getting a job and someone else getting the job? So, you know, they told me to be prepared. They told me that if you commit to something and you believe in it then that’s the best thing you can do in the auditioning process when you first start out.” Whether it was his older brothers’ words of wisdom or his own strong work ethic, Hemsworth managed to avoid the years of waiting tables and back-to-back fruitless auditions and was instead thrown almost immediately into the big studio stuff. Following The Last Song , which propelled the young actor onto everyone’s radar as snaps of him and his co-star girlfriend Cyrus became gossip-mag fodder, leads in action thrillers Empire State, with Dwayne Johnson and Emma Roberts, and Paranoia, starring alongside Harrison Ford, Gary Oldman and Amber Heard, came along before the humongous Hunger Games propelled him into the really serious franchise league.
PEOPLE ARE INFLUENCED BY YOUR WORDS FOR GOOD OR BAD, AND I WANNA HAVE A POSITIVE EFFECT ON PEOPLE AND CONTRIBUTE TO A MORE POSITIVE FUTURE”
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MR H EMSWORTH W E A R S : Blazer, Dhs5,215, and
trousers, Dhs2,497, both Paul Smith; T-shirt, Dhs350, Orlebar Brown; Glasses, Dhs1,495, Dolce & Gabbana
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THERE WERE A FEW CUTS AND BRUISES, A FEW SHAVES HERE AND THERE. I THINK BEING A YOUNG, AUSTRALIAN GUY YOU TEND TO DO THOSE KINDS OF STUPID THINGS”
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T H I S P A G E : Mr Hemsworth
wears three-piece suit, Dhs9,558, Dolce & Gabbana at Mrporter.com; Shirt, Dhs2,056, Tom Ford. O P P O S I T E P A G E : Mr
Hemsworth wears shirt and trousers, price on request, both Prada
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FASHION ASSISTANT: HEARTLEIGH LITTLE. GROOMING: KATE GOODWIN AT ILLUMIN8 MAKE UP STUDIO. PHOTOGRAPHY ASSISTANTS: BRIAN HAHN AND NICK STOKES. SHOT ON LOCATION AT THE ACE HOTEL NEW YORK.
Interest is certainly increasing off the back of that role. There are rumours circulating around that he might be dating his co-star Jennifer Lawrence (an easy story to conjure up), but there is more to Hemsworth than you’d read in the gossip columns. Both he and Chris are ambassadors for the Australian Childhood Foundation, which works to prevent child abuse and educate schools and communities to put background checks in place for anyone working with kids. “I grew up in a great family and was able to dream big and had an incredible support system,” he says. “The world is scary enough; kids deserve to feel comfortable and, you know, it’s just about paving the path for a more positive future and bringing up kids with morals and a good education. When you’re in my position you have a responsibility to do things. People are influenced by your words and I wanna have a positive effect on people and contribute to a more positive future.” His next project, The Dressmaker, which he’s currently filming with Kate Winslet in Melbourne, sees the actor back in his homeland for the first time since he left for Hollywood. The small, indie film is based on the best-selling book by Aussie author,
Rosalie Ham. It’s set in the 1950s and sees Winslet play a woman who returns to the small town she grew up in to seek revenge. While he’ll be back in front of the cameras with an Academy Award-winner, Hemsworth says he is most excited about meeting up with his old friends for a few beers. “I mean, I grew up on a really small island, we didn’t have traffic lights, it was just paddocks and the ocean,” he reminisces. “Just thinking about having spent my whole life there and already having been quite disconnected and removed from the rest of the world and now being where I am and travelling and working is quite, I dunno…”, he trails off. “I feel very fortunate to be where I am; not many people get out of that small town. I mean, I love that place and I could still go back and live there and be very happy.” Maybe he would be happy to go back home one day. Maybe his new life in Hollywood hasn’t yet seduced him completely. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that it was Liam Hemsworth, with his rock-solid faith in who he is and where’s he’s come from, who seduced Hollywood. In which case he could go anywhere he damn well pleases. JANUARY 2015
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“In the 1960s, I would come back from performing in the theatre to �nd my son watching this show with American guys wearing coloured T-shirts. That’s all I knew about Star Trek ”
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WHAT I’VE LEARNED
PATRICK STEWART Actor, 74 I was always obsessed with t he stage. From the age of 12, when I was first put in a play with adults, I felt more at home and safer than I’ve ever felt in my life. For most people, the stage is terrifying; a darkened auditorium, all the lights on you — it’s the last place most people want to be. But when I’m up there, I know who I am, what I’m doing, and I can express myself. There is documentary evidence — I’ve seen a photocopy of the programme — from around 1949 when I appeared in a local pageant. I played a character called ‘Tom of Towngate’. I have absolutely no recollection of it whatsoever, but that was probably my first stage performance. I didn’t own a television until I was 24, so I hardly saw TV shows at all. Of course, I went to the cinema where I saw Hollywood movies. They were thrilling and distracting, but they were happening over there — they weren’t part of my life. I was kind of odd-looking. I lost my hair when I was 19, so the obvious juvenile roles were never going to come my way. I didn’t look like the kind of young actor to be involved in movies, so I never thought of cinema being an option for me. Film and then television were a happy accident. I �nd the thrill of stage performing is greater now than ever before, and it gets greater all the time. Why? Because now I only get to do great pieces of work, sometimes classic, sometimes modern. The excitement of a live performance has never left me. I think that since I’ve been doing film and television I find the process even more intense. But I love �lming. I love being on camera and the different challenges of acting for a camera. I �nd watching myself on film very hard indeed. I don’t know an actor who doesn’t. I think actors who love watching themselves on film probably aren’t very good. You’re putting yourself at risk, and putting yourself out there. I don’t watch dailies; it would completely intimidate me. Once I feel comfortable about the work I’m doing, once I feel it’s probably okay, then I might watch it several times. I knew almost nothing about Star Trek before I took on the role, so I had to consult my children. In the 1960s, I would come back from performing in the theatre to find my son watching this show with American guys wearing coloured T-shirts but that’s all I recall.
INTERVIEWED BY TOM NORTON
I get irritated that the Star Trek fan base has such a bad press. They’re very knowledgeable, not just about the show but about science fiction. They take the programme quite seriously, and — with the exception of those who like to dress up and occasionally shave their heads — they’re really quite ordinary people. Born: Mirfield, Yorkshire, England, They’re enthusiasts, and over the years, July 13, 1940 with one or two exceptions, I’ve never Best known for: Movie had any problems with those fans. and TV roles in Star I like sneaking into a �lm and Trek and X-Men. watching it with an audience, because it Received acclaim for: playing a white really gives you an insight into how the Othello alongside an whole thing is received. all-black cast Lately, I like doing more comedy than on stage in 1997. I’ve ever done before. I’d love to work with Al Pacino, Dustin Hoffman, Gene Hackman. These are actors from my generation or older, but they come from my cinema-going experience when I was a lot younger. I also think Matt Damon is terrific. My children have taught me about perseverance. What advice would I give them? Be fearless. I was ba ffled a lot by women when I was younger. Not anymore. What baffled me once delights me now. Four years ago I became a skier, I’m officially now an intermediate-level skier. That was at the age of 69. One of the most important things about the Internet is as long as I have a phone in my hand I’ve always got something to look at. Esquire was talking to Patrick Stewart at this year’s Chivas Regal Legends Dinner. chivas.com
PHOTOGRAPH BY JULIAN PARKER
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C O M E S W O H S A D M A R O T H E M N K I S T A T O P A
r e t t i b y r e “ I was v n a c i r e m A to wa rds s a w e r e h t po l ic y a nd mo t io na l e l a e r y r e a v t a h t t i o t t n e n o p m o c m o r f t e g t ’ n a c t s u j u o y s r e p a p s w e n g n i d a e r ” s k o o b d a n N T H E T I N T I S ’ S D H M A A T I O N S H I R A A B N S P I R W I S H O A R V E D T S M Y S E A L A R I T R U S A R A E D M H E M I X I S T A N F O R T I N P A K T N E M O V E M N Y A B Y S O
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YNERGY MMA ACADEMY IN L A H O R E , P A K I S T A N , is almost
empty this morning. But it’s early, and besides, it’s a Sunday. Sitting on the mats with a friend, the gym’s owner, Bashir Ahmad, is dressed in a black robe with the belt loosely tied around his waist, revealing a toned chest and defined abs. A framed pair of bloody shorts hangs on the wall near the building’s entrance. These were worn by Ahmad when he fought the Thai MMA fighter, Shannon Wiratchai, at the ONE Fighting Championship in Singapore in 2013. “It was my first proper fight,” he tells me, as he relaxes before training. “You get closer to the cage, get your hands wrapped and all that nervousness goes away. It’s like an out-of-body experience. Nothing’s going through your mind. It’s just like pure consciousness.” As well as being Ahmad’s official debut, he was also the first Pakistani MMA fighter to represent his country at an international MMA event. He won that bout, and followed it with another victory in his second ONE FC match, held last October, in Kuala Lumpur, by defeating Tanaphong Khunhankaew in the first round. “I felt there was room for improvement,” he says, slightly dismissively of that second match. “Realistically, I’m a baby at this sport. I’ve been fighting for a year-and-a-half professionally and I’ve been training for about eight or nine years, which for martial arts is not that long a period of time. Plus, I started late, when I was 23.” Born in the city of Faisalabad, in Pakistan, Ahmad moved to the United States when he was three years-old. His father got a job after studying at the University of West Virginia. “I lived in a very multi-cultural area outside of DC, so it wasn’t very strange,” Ahmad replies when asked whether it was hard for him as a young Pakistani growing up in the US, “But obviously, back in the 1980s, the knowledge and awareness of Pakistan was pretty limited.” Ahmad says he always had an inclination towards the rough, tough, stuff. As a child, his family would find him outside with an air-gun hoping to shoot birds. “I signed up for the army because I was one of those boys who romanticised the idea of soldiers and war.” He was stationed in Iraq from 2004 to 2005 as a firefighter and says he is thankful of the experience. “It shaped me as a man. I learned so much about the nature of humanity, the good and the bad, the beautiful and the extremely ugly. In war, kindness and cruelty become amplified.” In emotional terms, Ahmad admits that his year-long experience serving against the War on Terror was more difficult. “It made me realise my true separateness from American society,” he says. It was during this time that Ahmad discovered boxing. “Muhammad Ali was my hero,” he says. “And then I read a lot about hand-to-hand combat, self-defence and that led to martial arts. The ‘way of the warrior’ philosophy fit in really well with my circumstances.” Given that he’d be on call at any given hour in Baghdad, Ahmad began frequenting a Morale, Welfare and Recreation (MWR) centre set up for American soldiers. “It was sort of like a gym,” he says. “I started hitting the bag for over an hour and enjoyed it. So all these things combined and I knew when I got back home that I was gonna start training in martial arts.” Ahmad quit the military in 2006 after returning from Iraq. “There was no need to stay longer,” he says of the decision. “But when I left, I was always going to be a soldier no matter what. I missed some aspects of the army routine but I was very comfortable knowing I had joined the family of warriors that has been on this Earth for thousands of years.” If leaving the military was an easy decision, being back in the US was more complicated. He’d resumed an undergraduate degree
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in political science at northern Virginia’s George Mason University, but the experiences in Iraq had left him disillusioned and alienated from American society and life. “Coming back was strange,” he says. “I was very bitter towards American policy and there was a very real emotional component to it that you just can’t get from reading newspapers and books.” He recalls classroom discussions about military strikes. “I was like, You’re never gonna see anything like this, ever, you know? And then you people go on to make decisions about what goes on in the world without any bearing for my personal life, my safety or my family.” Although he finished his degree in 2008 he describes feeling completely detached from a subject that he was once very passionate about. So he filled that gap by throwing himself into martial arts. Enrolling in a street self-defence class for a few weeks, Ahmad moved on to traditional Japanese ju-jitsu classes led by a samurai whose father was a soldier stationed in Japan after the American occupation after World War II. “When I first started I went from zero to 60 very quickly. I began going to two different gyms in my area, then I added a Brazilian ju-jitsu class at the same time. Any spare time I had, I’d fit in martial arts training.” Ahmad then moved to Thailand for a year, where he trained in MMA. Moving from camp to camp, he met with a number of individuals, now influential in the MMA scene in Asia. “I developed a network,” he says, “so when I came to Pakistan and started promoting MMA, all these people saw what I was doing. I became sort of a personality figure in Asian MMA. So when ONE FC wanted representatives from every single country that they could get in Asia, I was the logical choice for Pakistan.” But Ahmad’s dream of promoting MMA in Pakistan required a big change. He knew he had to set up shop on home turf to make his dream real. “Ever since I was young I’ve held a strong connection to Pakistan,” he says of the move. “Compared to the rest of my American cousins I was the only one born in Pakistan and I wore that like a badge of honour. I consider myself a son of the soil. So this was the perfect reason to come back and do something positive for the country.” T H E S Y N E R G Y M M A A C A D E M Y I N L A H O R E came
into being in 2009. Ahmad planned on going back to the United States after setting the gym in motion, but the weeks quickly turned into four years and he has plenty of activities to keep him there for the foreseeable future. Apart from training students at his gym, Ahmad also heads an organisation that promotes MMA in Pakistan. Founded in 2007, Mixed Martial Arts Pakistan (also known as Pak MMA) has brought MMA to the forefront thanks to its popular Facebook page and regular events in association with ONE FC. So far they have hosted Pakistan’s first Brazilian ju-jitsu seminar in 2010 and the country’s first MMA event, Pakistan Warrior Challenge. They’ve also helped organise South Asia’s first MMA event in Pakistan in 2012, at the 10,000-seat Punjab Stadium in Lahore. Despite these successes, moving back to Pakistan brought its own sets of problems. “I feel more at home in Pakistan than anywhere else, but some situations make me feel like an outsider,” he says. “In general, I feel like an outsider everywhere. In the US I am a Pakistani and a Muslim, and in Pakistan I am an American.” Initially, when he approached seasoned Pakistani martial artists, Ahmad would be dismissed. They didn’t take him — a foreign returnee — seriously, or his grand idea to bring all the different martial arts federations and styles together to offer their skills, expertise and knowledge. “You need a variety of martial arts techniques to make the perfect MMA fighter, so I thought everyone would come together and make this super Pakistani champion.
H K I E H S Z A R F R A S D A A S : S H P A R G O T O H P
But they just thought I was bringing this new weird thing from America that no one in Pakistan was going to like.” When it was clear that this plan wasn’t going to work, Ahmad decided to go solo. He says that in hindsight it was the best thing he could have done because it forced him to take a different path from the other traditional martial arts. “By using social media, I attracted a completely different crowd. In order to make it really go mainstream you have to get everybody in Pakistan to accept it and to get the cool factor, so that is kinda the secret to the success of Pak MMA.” F O R T H E Y E A R S A H E A D , Ahmad hopes to remain in
Bashir Ahmad training at his gym in Lahore, Pakistan
“In general, I feel like an outsider everywhere. In the US I am a Pakistani and a Muslim, and in Pakistan I am an American”
Here and above: Bashir Ahmad with his students at Synergy MMA Academy in Lahore
good shape for MMA competitions. He’s canny enough to know that being successful in MMA is not just about how hard you train or compete. “Your personality has a big part to play in the fights you get,” he says. “You need to have that star quality. If you’re always winning on points and running around the ring, you’re not going to be a popular fighter. People wanna see knock-outs, submissions and dominant performances.” One of his mentors is Sensei Jones, a brilliant Canadian martial artist now in his seventies, who taught Ahmad ju-jitsu for two years. Jones instilled within him the spiritual aspect of the sport. “He told us that one should try to minimise injuring the person. Like if someone attacks you, maybe the person is having some kind of emotional breakdown and maybe you have so much more power over that person because you have training. Is it then appropriate for you to use shock and awe? Did you use an appropriate response? Sensei Jones was very particular about these things.” Of course, the appropriate use of force is a grey area, both in and out of the ring. While waiting for his luggage at the Lahore airport after the Malaysia fight, Ahmad saw what looked like a group of prostitutes accompanied by two pimps. One of the men began bumping into him aggressively. “I was like, Easy now. And then he grabbed me and started swearing, like he was threatening to slap me. My instant reaction was Bam! I hit him and he was out cold. At first I was really scared and embarrassed; I was like, God I just killed somebody, and I’ve never, ever, been in a street fight in my entire life! That was the first time I struck anybody outside of training,” Ahmad says. “I was apologising and telling everyone he’d get up in five minutes, and they were like No, you did a good thing! This joker was bugging people!” Beyond his ultimate goal to be a contender for the ONE FC belt, Ahmad hopes to expand his operations in Pakistan, in terms of more gyms, additional events, and to set up an academy for the poor in Pakistan. “I want to have a centre where I get the poor off the street, educate them and prepare them to become future champions. My intention with MMA in Pakistan was to give me a platform. That chapter will begin soon enough.” For now, MMA in Pakistan has some way to go. Other more established forms of martial arts, such as the Pakistan Wushu Federation and the Pakistan Ju-Jitsu Federation, have been funded by the government for a long time and enjoy a solid following. But Ahmad is confident that MMA in Pakistan can have a positive cultural impact “Look at Pakistan’s military,” he says, by way of comparison.” I would say that the culture and standard of behaviour of military personnel here is much higher than the average civilian. I think the MMA lifestyle has the same benefits.” So while Ahmad admits that finding financial sponsors for his planned event is tough, and that the sport in Pakistan remains underground, he believes it has a big future. “It’s going to mirror the growth of MMA in Asia, which is on the rise,” he says. And in a country where good news is often in short supply, that can only be a positive development.
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T H E O D E S S A N E T WO R K MUCH HAS BEEN MADE OF THE TRADE OF WEAPONS TO SYRIA THROUGH TURKEY’S SOUTHERN BORDER. BUT LITTLE ATTENTION HAS FOCUSSED ON THE FLOW OF ARMS FROM A NONDESCRIPT SOVIET�ERA BLACK SEA PORT NEAR ODESSA, THROUGH TURKEY’S BOSPHORUS STRAIT, TO A RUSSIAN PORT ON SYRIA’S COAST. ESQUIRE FOLLOWS THE TRAIL TO SEE HOW IT INFLUENCES THE BALANCE OF POWER IN THE MIDDLE EAST BY STEPHEN STARR IN ISTANBUL
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stanbul’s Bosphorus Strait is calm on a crisp autumn morning. Tourist boats ferry sightseers to the ruins of the Rumelian Castle, a fortress used by the Ottomans to conquer Istanbul almost 600 years ago. A short distance north, through winding turns and past quiet fishing villages, the Bosphorus opens out into the vast expanse of the Black Sea. Every half hour or so, huge tanker ships carrying oil, grain and other cargo pass up and down the 750-metre-wide channel almost silently, monuments to grace and human industry. But appearances deceive. The Black Sea and the Bosphorus Strait have become key passageways for shipping weapons to Middle East conflict zones. Both government elements and private entities from Ukraine and Russia are thought to be involved. Every few weeks — and even days until last summer — the ominous dark grey hulls of warships cut through the calm Bosphorus current, passing from Ukrainian and Russia’s Black Sea naval ports in the north to the eastern Mediterranean in the south, where war has ravaged Syria. Some carried weapons assisting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s fight against rebel groups. Others were sent purely for posture, with Russia seeking to make its presence known in the strategic Levant region. The Black Sea corridor, Russia’s only means of accessing the Mediterranean by sea, has emerged as a crucial tool for Russia’s imperious plans in the Middle East. Syria is a key ally for Russia in a region dominated by American influence. Russia’s support for the Assad government centres on billion-dollar arms contracts, its naval base on the Syrian coast and its desire to stop Western countries from backing a new proWest government in Damascus. Moscow has therefore blocked all diplomatic attempts at unseating President Assad, at the same time shipping weapons, helicopter parts and ammunition to Damascus for much of the past three years. These shipments have proved crucial to the survival of Assad, who has held off jihadists and rebel attempts to end his family’s 40-year rule. Moscow says it is simply honouring the contracts it signed with the Syrian government before the latter’s crackdown on protestors in 2011. Away from the political grandstanding, covert attempts to ship weapons from Ukraine (where Russian and pro-Russian mafia
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groups have been present since the days of the Soviet Union) to the Middle East are happening, too. In November 2013, a ship carrying around 20,000 AK-47s and millions of ammunition rounds was stopped by the Greek coastguard in Greek waters off the Turkish coast. The captain, a Turk, had sailed the ship from Ukraine and claimed its destination to be a Turkish port close to the Syrian border. Marine traffic logs, however, confusingly recorded the ship as heading to both Syria and Libya, both sites of vicious conflict. This kind of activity might have stepped up since the Syrian crisis but it is not new. In 2006, Turkey’s coast guard uncovered a massive haul of undeclared armoured cars, large calibre weapons and ammunition destined for the Arabian Gulf. Its departure point? An unnamed Ukrainian port. The ship’s owner? A prominent shipping firm in Odessa, Ukraine. A year later, a shipment of anti-tank missiles from Ukraine through the Bosphorus to Iraq prompted Turkey to contact Baghdad. The Iraqi ministry of defence said it knew nothing of the shipment or cargo, which suggests that illicit elements in Iraq — a country in the throes of civil war at the time — were responsible. The individuals directly responsible for these shipments often go unnamed, so concrete evidence of private companies’ implicate involvement in weapons-shipping to Syria and elsewhere in the Middle East remains elusive. However, researchers at the Center for Advanced Defense Studies (C4ADS) in Washington, DC, have painstakingly connected the dots. According to their 2013 report, “The Odessa Network”, individuals with ties to both the Russian and the pro-Kremlin former Ukrainian government are involved. A nondescript Soviet-era port on the northern Black Sea is ground zero for this activity. Located two hours’ drive northeast of Odessa, and a couple hours more from Crimea, which was annexed last year by Russia, Oktyabrsk Port was once a top-secret Soviet post and a departure point for missiles that fuelled the 1963 Cuban Missile Crisis. Today its strategic location in the Black Sea, Russia’s closest point of access to the Middle East, means it is used by arms traders and corrupt government officials to ship weapons to Syria, Iraq, South Sudan, Iran and elsewhere. The Odessa Network report found that 43 seaborne arms shipments left Ukraine and Russia between 2000 and 2012. Fifteen
of these went to Arab or Middle Eastern countries, including a cruise missile to Iran in 2000-2001. “Our dataset indicates government ownership and control of virtually all weapons being shipped abroad,” says the report. “It’s impossible to say definitively where the ammunition was going,” says Farley Mesko, a co-author of the Odessa Network report, of the Mediterranean Sea AK-47 guns bust in November 2013. “But it’s worth noting that the firm implicated in brokering the deal has a history of facilitating weapons procurement for Assad, not to mention the ship was headed eastbound in the southern Aegean when interdicted.”
or warships. However, it is the responsibility of the shippers involved to classify the goods they carry, not governments. And the convention also allows Black Sea nations to use the Strait pretty much as they wish. Being the region’s long-time super power, Russia takes most advantage of this. Its warships, laden with weapons, pass through in plain view of anyone who cares to look. Oftentimes, it is Istanbul’s displaced Syrian population who curse at the sight of these ships, knowing countless more compatriots will die as a result of what is happening before their eyes. For Russia, Turkey’s custodianship of the Turkish Straits is crucial to its ambitions farther south in the Middle East. This was recently illustrated by the announcement of Moscow’s plan to add Russia’s prized strategic possession in the Middle East is located 80 more warships to its Black Sea fleet before 2020. in a small Syrian coastal city on the eastern Mediterranean. One of Turkey-Russia ties are close. Ankara exported $7 billion-worth Syria’s two main operating port cities, Tartous is also where city of goods to Russia last year, while Russia is part-funding the folk from Damascus go to eat fish and holiday on the city’s poorly building of Turkey’s first nuclear power plant. Tellingly, Turkey maintained, plastic-infested beaches. won’t line up behind a Western sanctions regime placed on Russia Today Tartous is one of the safest cities in all of Syria and is this year for its interference in Ukraine. “No matter what sanctions home to key allies of Assad. There’s are imposed on Russia, we also a Russian naval base at Tartous; will continue to have unique Moscow’s only permanent military relations,” Turkey’s new presence in the Middle East and Ambassador to Moscow, Umit is a vital sliver of Russian leverage Yardim, said recently. UKRAINE in the region. It’s a 30-hour sail This comes despite the fact from Oktyabrsk in the Black Sea that Turkey and Russia are at to Istanbul’s Bosphorus Strait and odds over Syria. Ankara has Oktyabrsk Odessa another two to three days on the called for an international plan RUSSIA Aegean and Mediterranean Seas, to oust Assad as a condition for Novorossiysk Sevastapol during which time maritime tracking its own military involvement in devices are often switched off to the Syrian quagmire. So why is THE BLACK SEA avoid detection. Turkey not doing more to stop Between 2006 and 2010, almost Russia’s weapons support to half of all Syria’s arms supplies Damascus? Part of the reason, TURKEY came from Russia. And in 2011say maritime law experts, 13 alone, almost a billion dollars’ surrounds the veneration in worth of arms was exported to the which the Montreux Convention S Y R I A country, according to research by is held by Turkey. But more Tartous IRAQ the Stockholm International Peace critical is its huge reliance on Research Institute, an arms tracker. Russia for fuel: of the 45 billion “THE BLACK SEA CORRIDOR, WHICH IS At first glance, these activities cubic metres of natural gas RUSSIA’S ONLY MEANS OF ACCESSING TH E appear little more than a straightTurkey imports every year, 60 MEDITERRANEAN BY SEA, HAS EMERGED AS up dovetailing of interests between percent comes from Russia. A CRUCIAL TOOL FOR RUSSIA’S IMPERIOU S P L A N S I N T H E M I D D L E E A S T ” Moscow and Damascus. But Russia’s And it’s not just Russia that ability to project power in the Middle is set to begin loading the Black East, and consequently Assad’s resilience four years into a bitter Sea waters with guns and weapons: Over the past six months, conflict, are down to an agreement signed in a Swiss mountain warships flying American, Canadian, Spanish flags have entered resort almost 80 years ago, and Turkey’s unique role in the the Sea to stake a claim — often via their membership of NATO — in arrangement that followed. this crucial waterway. The terms of the Montreux Convention mean non-Black Sea-flagged warships can only stay 21 days there, but The Montreux Convention of 1936 laid out the terms for outside powers circumvent this by rotating-out one ship for another. warships passing through the Bosphorus Straits into t he Black Added to this is the half-trillion dollar upgrade of Russia’s Black Sea. Signed by the Soviet Union, Turkey, Britain and other local Sea naval ports in Crimea’s Sevastopol and in Novorossiysk, as well countries, Turkey was made the custodian of the strategic waters as the Black Sea region’s growing importance as a major energy and charged with implementing the agreement. route to Europe. Turkey has also been a member of the International Maritime What does this mean for the Middle East? That Russia will Organisation (IMO) since 1956, which recommends that fight to maintain its influence in Syria, which is good news for governments “should adopt a uniform international code for the Iran, but not for Tehran’s long-time competitors, Saudi Arabia and transport of dangerous goods by sea.” The IMO’s dangerous goods Qatar, who both support rebel groups in Syria. It also means Russia code ranks explosives, which would include ammunition, weapons continues to hold the keys to stability in a region strewn with and missiles, as a class-1 dangerous cargo. violence. And all through several small ports in the Black Sea. Journalist Stephen Starr lived in Syria for �ive years until 2012 In theory this should strictly limit the passage of weapons
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AWAY
In March, astronaut Scott Kelly Ke y will wi un undertake erta e the longest space mission in American Am ri an history. histor . He and a cosmonaut will begin an uninterrupted year aboard uninterrupte a oar the International Space Station — a year ear exposed ex sed to the strange and deep effects e ects o of weig weightlessness, t essness, acute stress,, isolation,, and cosmic radiation. It is the most ambitious manned space mission in years. And it will also be the �rst step in a human expedition to Mars.
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In cavernous Building 9 at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, tucked behind a privacy screen, there is a working model of the International Space Station’s toilet. Scott Kelly flicked the three switches that power it up — its control panels, stamped in Cyrillic, flashed with a succession of green lights — and he nodded when a familiar hum filled the air. Three years ago, he commanded the space station for six months, and he came to know the Waste and Hygiene Compartment well. In late March, Kelly will return to his former home as the first American astronaut assigned to live in space for 12 months. This summer, between his morning robotics training and his afternoon Russian class, he took a refresher course in the orbital evacuation of his bowels. The toilet does not have a seat. It dawned on him that he will not sit down for a year. He will spend that year falling so fast he will appear to float — in the instance of the toilet, over a small square of plastic with a circular hole just a few inches across. Only his feet will be anchored by restraints. It is better than it used to be. For the two shuttle missions earlier in his career, Kelly’s training included a toilet with a closed-circuit camera in its bowl, pointing straight up. He had to learn to assume the correct position by checking a nearby monitor, as though he were using a bombsight. Now, on the space station, considerable air suction assists in maintaining alignment. Stool is drawn into a clear plastic bag that lines the hole; the bags have distinctive red
release tabs.. After the astronaut cleans up with gauze and Huggies Natural Care wipes — NASA doesn’t endorse any particular brand of wipe; it just happens to fly Huggies — they’re pushed into the same bag, which is removed, tied up, and shoved into a metal canister the size of a milk jug that, when full, will be jettisoned in a trash ship and turned into a shooting star. Finally, the bag is replaced as a courtesy to the toilet’s next occupant. When the new bag isn’t properly installed, it’s called “short bagging”, and short bagging is the sort of thing that can strain crew relations. Weightlessness changes everything, and it will change Scott Kelly. Because he won’t be sitting, and because the human body is a ruthless and efficient machine, over time his pelvis will lose its bursa sacs, which cushion his hip joints against earthly hazards like toilet seats but become obsolete in space. He will also urinate some significant percentage of his blood reserve — stored in his legs on the ground, but risen into his overstuffed core in the absence of gravity — into a separate piece of the WHC. More specifically, he will take the hose that hangs to the left of the toilet, remove the plastic cap off the yellow, narrowmouthed funnel at its end, open the urine valve, check to see that there’s sufficient air suction in it, too, and aim for the middle. The urine will then pass through a series of centrifuges and purification systems and come out the other end as his water supply.
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Before the urine enters the first separator — a $700,000 Russian-built piece of hardware that spins the air out of it — it will be given a dose of a syrupy, almost black liquid called pretreat. Its exact composition is secret, but it’s some toxic combination of chromium trioxide and sulphuric acid. Human urine, left untreated, will release particulates that will give the waterpurification system the equivalent of the bends. This is a problem that had a team of engineers scratching their heads. Their literal solution was to fight the particulates with pretreat, now one of thousands of responses to the challenges of life in space, our evergrowing collection of improvisations and sidesteps that will allow us, one day, to get from here to there. In such a complicated environment, however, solutions often give rise to more confounding problems. One day during Kelly’s six-month mission, in 2010–11, the toilet’s lights flashed red instead of green. He removed a panel and discovered a faulty hose connection had led to a pretreat leak. In microgravity, the solution didn’t drip or conveniently pool. It formed a shimmering sphere of acids the size and colour of a cannonball that now floated out of the cabinet. Kelly hadn’t been in space long enough to have suppressed all of his gravity-bound instincts. He grabbed an old T-shirt to soak up the pretreat, as though he’d spilled oil in his garage. Unfortunately, that old T-shirt had sweat and therefore water molecules trapped in its fibres. Pour a little acid into enough water and it will disperse. Introduce a small amount of water to a cauldron of acid and something else happens. That old T-shirt didn’t act like a sponge. It was flint. Now Kelly saw and smelled smoke. Fire is the primal fear of astronauts. Every American astronaut who has been killed in a space suit has died in flames. There was a terrible fire on Mir, the old Soviet space station, and it’s whispered about in Houston like a ghost story. (It The International wasn’t fatal; cosmonauts tend to die by Space Station asphyxiation or in falls to Earth.) That’s photographed by the shuttle Atlantis not only because the crew can’t escape in 2010. Opposite, outside or because the fire will consume Kelly in the their oxygen. Fire, like just about station’s windowed cupola during his everything else, behaves differently in six-month mission, weightlessness. and, inset, a A candle’s flame always points station toilet.
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upwards because of gravity. Fire is superheated gas that’s lighter than the air around it. That’s why volcanic plumes and hot-air balloons rise. We can fight fires because they have a predictable architecture, built with a spine like a book. In orbit, fire is not lighter than air. It weighs the same as air, which weighs the same as everything else. A candle’s flame no longer points upwards because there is no up. A candle’s flame is round. A fire will imitate the sun. Kelly’s trip to the bathroom now threatened to turn into a ball of anchorless flame. Happily, one of Kelly’s crewmates was a chemist named Cady Coleman. She understood the nature of acids — she knew that too little water might ignite them, and yet enough water rendered them harmless. But how could she bring one to the other? There was no hauling a bucket from the sink. Coleman found a large plastic bag, soaked some towels, threw them in the bag, and then caught the smouldering ball of acids with it as though she were scooping up a fish in a net. In time, the bag — its combination of enough water and not enough oxygen — snuffed out the threat. It was less warfare than a kind of siege. Now, in Building 9, Scott Kelly looked down at the toilet that will again be his. The lights on the panels continued to flash, and the fans continued to whir. There was the hose with the yellow funnel. There were those clear plastic bags with the distinctive red tabs, and the metal canister into which they will be stuffed. There was the pouch of Huggies. “A year is a long time,” he said.
the one-year mission. Roscosmos, Russia’s space agency, has always been more intrigued by the risks and rewards of long-duration flight than NASA has been. Four cosmonauts spent more than a year in space on the uncomfortable bucket that was Mir, the last in 1999. A narrow-faced Russian named Sergei Krikalev is the current record holder for the most time lived in orbit. Over six missions, he has spent 803 days, nine hours, and 39 minutes weightless. Semifamously, he was on Mir when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. Mir didn’t have many windows, but whenever Krikalev found his way to one, he looked down on a new world. The International Space Station was built in that tumultuous reality. Fearful that aimless Russian rocket scientists might seek stable employment in places like North Korea or Iran, the Americans proposed a more harmonic convergence: the grandest and most difficult construction project in history, built out of Russian wisdom and American largesse. Today, the station comprises two distinct halves, augmented by Japanese, European, and Canadian contributions. The Russian segments are narrower and more austere. The Russians don’t process their urine; they just pee into tanks. They also carpet their modules in Velcro, using nearly every available surface to secure a battalion of objects that otherwise would be satellites. The Americans don’t have nearly as much Velcro in their quarters. They’ve deemed it a fire risk. By treaty, there is agreement between the US and Russia that their conjoined space programmes are out of political bounds. Whatever events might be unfolding on Earth, whatever airliners might be shot out of the Ukrainian sky, there are no sides in space. It helps that the Russians possess our only means to
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manned orbit — the Soyuz spacecraft — and that the Americans control much of the station’s electrical plant and the gyroscopes that maintain its attitude. “We have something up there that is holding us together,” says Michael Suffredini, NASA’s manager of the ISS Program Office. “Right now we have six crew onboard, and we all understand that these men and women are the next step for humanity.” But like countries and their arrangements, the station has a life span: it will stop defying gravity in 2024, or not long after. While it always has been used as a weightless laboratory — more than a thousand investigations in materials and medical research have been undertaken since Expedition 1 in 2000 — the Russians wondered whether the station’s residents might be part of a larger experiment in the time they have left. Six-month expeditions have become the industry standard, but a journey to Mars — MAPC in Cyrillic — will require a crew to spend as long as three years in space. So the Russians proposed that, in the decade or so before the station falls to Earth, as many as twelve subjects be rocketed up, delivered in pairs, to test the physical and psychological limits of humans in weightlessness. (Those four brawny men on Mir were never subjected to intensive diagnostic study; cosmonauts still refuse to give stool samples.) The Americans, fresh off the stunning success of the Mars rover Curiosity, agreed. We’ve proved we can reach Mars with our machines; the exiled dozen will help us decide whether we can reach it with our feet. Such an undertaking requires equal parts optimism and resignation. It takes a certain measure of faith to strap into a seat on a missile in Kazakhstan and trust that you will end up safely in orbit. It also takes the belief that we will one day need to.
For all the hopefulness astronauts represent, they are among the least delusional people on Earth. What Chris Hadfield, a former astronaut and station commander, calls the “North American subculture of pretense” — that sense they have that they can make all their wishes come true — has been stripped from them over years of simulations that end in their deaths. Astronauts are experts in weakness. “I’m in this business to take humans beyond low-Earth orbit,” Suffredini says. “I believe that’s how this species will survive, when we can inhabit other planets if something happens to this one. We need to start proving to ourselves that we can do it.” Scientific research is often a parade of analogues. NASA uses Antarctica and giant swimming pools as analogues for life in space; the International Space Station is about to become an analogue for an interplanetary Noah’s Ark. A moustachioed 54-year-old cosmonaut named Mikhail Kornienko will be the first to represent the Russians. The American is Scott Kelly.
human specimen. Like fighter pilots and test pilots — both of which he has been — Kelly is fairly short. (Because of height restrictions on Soyuz, and because aerospace engineers are obsessed with mass and volume, NASA won’t consider astronaut applicants who stand taller than six foot three.) Five foot seven, 185 pounds on the ground — more like five foot nine, 170 after his year in space; “like a supermodel,” he says — Kelly is coiled and capable of significant momentum, but he’s also fifty years old. He shaves what’s left of his hair with a blade.
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He has sometimes worn a moustache, but not anymore. He does wear glasses. (Astronauts don’t need to have perfect vision, but it can’t be worse than 20/100 uncorrected.) On formal occasions he’ll wear his Navy uniform — he is a retired captain with more than 250 carrier landings to his credit — but Kelly mostly sports jeans and NASA-issued golf shirts. When he pulls into a place like Chelsea Wine Bar — an astronaut hangout just down the road from the Johnson Space Center — and sits at a table with Cady Coleman and Mike Fossum, his fellow station veterans, they look like a group of teachers unwinding. You would never know by looking at them what they have done. That’s until Kelly makes the drive to Ellington Field, pulls on his blue flight suit and survival vest and walks towards a T-38 jet, white with a blue stripe and a NASA logo shining on its tail, a little like a man who knows he has the biggest balls in the room. Astronauts are required to spend a certain number of hours in T-38s each month to keep their flying, navigation, and troubleshooting skills sharp. Some days, Kelly hurtles across to Mobile or Little Rock and then pounds his way back home. On others, he loops through touch-and-goes, taking off and landing and taking off again. He peels into the sky and disappears into the brightness, announcing his return with the roar of his engines, and he whispers across the ground, the faintest of grazes, before he lifts back up where he belongs. To see Kelly in flight is to see a man transformed. Soyuz rolling out on its locomotive towards the launchpad at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan in September 2014.
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He was selected for this mission for several cold and rational reasons. NASA wanted a previous commander to take the critical first spot, and it wanted someone who had completed a six-month expedition without any evident physical or mental fissures. NASA also wanted to send up an older astronaut, so the cosmic radiation he will absorb will have less time to turn into cancer before something else kills him. American astronauts are subject to strict exposure limits, the so-called red line they all fear, not because of the tumour risk but because they’ll be grounded. Those limits were established in part using data culled from the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Kelly also has an identical twin brother, Mark, a retired astronaut and close-to-flawless genetic copy. By the end of Scott’s mission, he will have spent exactly 10 times as long in space as Mark, who has agreed to serve as a control in a series of detailed comparison studies, tracking everything from the microbiomes in their guts to the relative lengths of their telomeres, a sequence in our chromosomes that’s believed to shorten with stress. But mostly, Scott Kelly was chosen because of the stomach sense that he is, more than just about anybody else on Earth, purpose-built to fly. NASA’s psychologists and psychiatrists look for two contradictory-seeming traits in its candidates for long-duration missions: adaptability and resiliency. The first represents an astronaut’s tolerance for the chronic, low-level stress of being away — the confinement, the nearly constant white noise, the defecating in to plastic bags. You yield in the fights you cannot win. The second indicates an astronaut’s ability to withstand acute stress, usually associated with an
unfortunate turn of events. You fight the fights you must win . “Scott is highly adaptable and highly resilient,” says Al Holland, a NASA psychologist who has tested him extensively. He is some rare combination of grit and give. One barometer of an astronaut’s adaptability is his feet. Many first-time astronauts, in their opening days and weeks of weightlessness, will cling to some facsimile of verticality: head up, feet down. It makes them look clumsy in their movements, like skiers trying to push uphill. That’s despite the clear messages being sent by their feet that the rules have changed. After about a month in orbit, astronauts begin sloughing off vast quantities of skin from their soles; it takes only that long for their bodies to decide that calluses, like bursa sacs, are biological ballast. The results can be dramatic. Don Pettit, who has completed two long-duration missions on the station, filmed a crewmate taking off his socks against a black backdrop and a spotlight. It looked like a snow globe. One astronaut made a call to his flight surgeon after a thick wedge of his heel came floating off. “Should I be worried?” he asked Houston. After Kelly returned from his sixmonth mission, he remembers going for a massage and the woman gasping when she got to his feet. She said they were the softest feet she’d felt in her life. Kelly’s feet weren’t really feet anymore. It wasn’t just that he had been launching himself headfirst around the station, having discarded every last upright instinct. Because he had no longer needed his feet to be feet, he’d used them as hands. Rather than having two arms and two legs, he’d had four equal limbs. Handrails became footrails. The calluses that he’d lost from the bottoms of
his feet migrated to the tops, where he had hooked them around restraints like a trapeze swinger. Given another year of pure flight, Kelly might evolve into human history’s first true spaceman. Perhaps the migration of his calluses is just the beginning of his adaptation. We always depict aliens as some version of us. They won’t look like us, because in space, even we stop looking like us. We become spiders that don’t need webs.
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body is so easily recast. NASA keeps a risk matrix, a list of 32 areas of ongoing physical concern. (Roscosmos has an entire division in Moscow, the Institute of Biomedical Problems, dedicated to addressing them. The Russians usually abbreviate it to the Institute of Problems, because nearly every problem in space is a biomedical one.) Some former crises, like bone loss — studies showed that on long missions astronauts were losing as much as 2 percent of their bone mass per month — have been resolved with new exercise regimes and therapies. Others — like persistent sinus congestion, a side effect of the same fluid shifts that lead to the loss of our blood reserves — have proved harder to remedy but seem relatively JANUARY 2015
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Scott Kelly (left), Gennady Padalka (centre) and Mikhail Kornienko (right) in front of a Soyuz simulator. Kelly and Kornienko will launch in March to spend a full year in space.
minor inconveniences. A sinister few continue to pose major obstacles to prolonged expeditions. One in particular didn’t even present as a problem until the last year or two, and it threatens to make a trip to Mars impossible. It’s been dubbed Ocular Syndrome, or VIIP — Vision Impairment and Intracranial Pressure — so-named after its possible cause. It was missed for all these years because most astronauts and cosmonauts are middle-aged, and they’ve reached that stage of life when they might be holding instructions a little farther from their faces to read anyway. But as the number of six-month missions on the station increased, more and more residents began experiencing startling changes to their vision. In one instance, it was so bad that NASA considered bringing the sufferer home. Neither the Americans nor the Russians yet know the cause of Ocular Syndrome. The current hypothesis is that increased pressure in the brain — again, from fluid shifts — is damaging the retinas or optic nerves of certain people, though not all, for whatever equally unclear reason. The one-year missions will help NASA chart these changes and others like them beyond six months. Maybe the effects of weightlessness on the body level off or improve. Maybe they get exponentially worse. Maybe there is the real and terrifying prospect that by the time the first humans get to Mars or try to come home, they won’t be able to see. Although flight surgeons say only that further study is required, there is some evidence that Ocular Syndrome affects only men, and that if it affects them in only one eye, which it sometimes does, it will always take hold in their right eye. That might be a quirk of limited sample sizes; far more men than women have been to space. Or it might prove the opening to some stunning revelation, an invitation to discover a fundamental 82
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difference in the human eye not only between men and women but also between the hemispheres of the brain. We can’t just choose to send women to Mars instead, because the women of Hiroshima and Nagasaki proved far more receptive hosts to cancer. At higher orbits, cosmic radiation is so intense, astronauts see fireworks through their sleeping masks; Scott Kelly could tell when he was between South America and Africa even with his eyes closed, because of the fiery presence of the South Atlantic Anomaly, where the inner Van Allen radiation belt bends closest to the Earth. If we don’t give ourselves a better option than crews of blind men or radiation-sick women, then we won’t survive Mars or its defences. Getting there is only half the equation. Living and working there, in one-third Earth’s gravity — already weak, light-headed, and sore, and now your blood and bursa sacs and feet adapting again — is the other. The most beautiful lure of interplanetary space is its demand that we first conquer us.
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long-duration astronauts have private conferences with NASA’s shrinks. Not even their flight surgeons can listen in. Together they work through a long mental-health checklist: workload and habitability, family and personal relationships, mood and cognition. If the call is a video conference, note will be made of the astronaut’s appearance and mannerisms. The psychologists and psychiatrists are looking for the speed wobbles that can be the precursors of a larger crash.
In Kelly’s case, one of the measures of his orbital mood will be his sense of humour. He is deadpan and dry on the ground, and the working theory is that space makes you more of what you are. It is a compounding environment. If you are a man of faith here on Earth, you will be devout above it. What concerns the shrinks is subtraction, anything that looks like lessening. After his six months away, even Kelly, born flyer, was ready to land. “I’ve taken all my pictures,” he said to Coleman, and his bags were packed well in advance. He’s a scattershot sleeper on Earth, and he gets less sleep in space, and it was beginning to tell on him. Residents on the station are each assigned private quarters, a soundproof box about the size of a phone booth; nobody underestimates the importance of having a door to close. Most astronauts strap sleeping bags on the wall and hang like bats, but Kelly often woke up in strange positions that took his sensory system time to parse. He missed resting his head on a pillow and never shook the desire to roll over, even though without pressure points, sides and backs become as meaningless in orbit as up and down. Some nights he kicked his way out of his bag in his sleep, his zombie arms stretched out in front of him, before he settled against what would have been a corner of his bedroom ceiling at home. He didn’t remember many dreams while in space, but in the dreams he did, he was always on the ground. At its essence, his one-year mission will be an exercise in absences and their mitigation. Before each trip, astronauts sit through a series of “contingency sims.” They walk through what will happen if something bad occurs to them and what will happen if something bad occurs to someone they love, and they handpick their emissaries to gravity, the people assigned to call them in the event of an earthly emergency or, alternatively, to knock on their family’s door in the middle of the night. No astronauts have lost children while in space, considered the worst of the possibilities to confront, but one learned his mother was killed in an accident. Regardless of the sim, none of them ends with an astronaut returning early. “That’s something you need to understand before you leave,” Kelly says. “There’s no going home.” Buzz Aldrin once described bravery as a “gradual accumulation of discipline.” Being able to leave comes in stages. Kelly has tried to occupy the doubtful parts of his brain with the countless small details of his departure. He has put all of his bills on automated payment. He noticed during a Russian class that his credit card is set to expire shortly after his launch; he will have to renew it early. He has updated his will. He hasn’t yet reached the gratitude stage most astronauts pass through, when they take the time to savour last steaks or cold bottles of beer, but he has started preparing for goodbye. “Six months is a huge commitment for any astronaut,” his brother, Mark, says. “I think this is a lot more than just twice as hard.” Kelly is divorced, but his marriage produced two daughters: 20-year-old Samantha, who recently moved back with him in Houston, and 11-year-old Charlotte, who lives with her mother in Virginia. Kelly also has a longtime girlfriend, Amiko Kauderer, who works in NASA’s public-affairs office and has two children of her own. He also has his widower father, Richard, who moved down from New Jersey to join his twin astronaut boys in Houston; Mark and his family; and a wide circle of friends. Kelly will stay connected with them while he is in orbit — there is Internet, a phone, and regularly scheduled video conferences on iPads — but his six-month mission taught him that it isn’t always enough. Amiko would go outside and record the sound of crickets or the rain to send him, but he is aware of the limitations of substitutes. As much as he loved weightlessness, some aches never went away. This is really starting to hurt me , he wrote to Amiko one sleepless night. He had hit the three-quarter mark of his
expedition, considered by the shrinks to be the hardest time: close enough to the end to see it, but not close enough to feel it. (This time around, Kelly will face a special test at the nine-month mark of his mission. Sarah Brightman, the soprano, will be arriving on the station as Russia’s latest space tourist.) He began watching more TV, even though he rarely does on Earth. Recordings of Houston Texans football games were important weekly benchmarks. He saved Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert for his daily workouts. He became obsessed with American Idol. “That’s because Sam sings,” Amiko says. Over the last several months, Samantha has become one of his principal tethers. For years they were miles apart. After his former wife and daughters left for Virginia, Kelly lived an unattached man’s life. When he went up for his six-month mission, he’d been dating Amiko for only a year. He gave up the apartment he was renting and trucked his stuff into storage. Upon reflection, that was a mistake. It left him too groundless. There is a cupola on the station, a half-diamond of flawless windows opening toward the Earth. Studies have shown that astronauts are pulled into it mostly when they are passing over home. Kelly didn’t have one. He has since moved into an immaculately kept new house with a yard and a pool, and it felt even more like home when Sam came back to him to start college, bringing her pets with her. She has a collection of tarantulas. Kelly knows the longer he’s away, the harder it becomes to remember. He will miss a year of Sam’s and Charlotte’s lives. What was once his finish line will soon be his halfway point. He recently decided to have a set of security cameras installed at his house; he can monitor them online. Most of the cameras point outside. His phone chimes when his doorbell does, and he can check to see who’s at the door. But one of them is inside, with a view of his kitchen and living room. When he’s back in orbit, he’ll be able to drop into his sleeping bag with his laptop and see his couch, and his fridge, and his daughter and her family of surrogate spiders. He won’t have to worry about remembering his dreams at all.
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days into his six-month mission. Kelly is certain that it was a Saturday, because the rhythms on the station change on the weekends. With sixteen sunsets and sunrises each day, and without seasons to measure the passage of time, it’s considered beneficial for a workweek in space to mirror a workweek back on Earth. Monday to Friday, each day is planned down to the minute, and crews are constantly chasing a line that moves through their schedules like a scanner: 15 minutes to draw a blood sample; five minutes to tend to the experimental crop of red lettuce. Sunday is, in theory, a day of reflection and rest. Saturdays are something in between. There is work, but it’s Saturday work: stocking the galley, vacuuming skin out of filters. On this particular Saturday, Kelly remembers that he was fixing the toilet again. He remembers, too, that he had the TV on in the background. It was tuned to CNN. He had just talked to Amiko on the phone. He had caught her at home, where she was indulging in her fully functional bathroom, taking a bath. She was shy to tell him where she was, JANUARY 2015
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but the now-strange sound of water splashing had bounced off the satellite between them. Just down the road, Mark Kelly was spending the day with his teenage daughters, Claire and Claudia. A thousand miles to the east in Virginia, Samantha and Charlotte Kelly were with their mother, an hour deeper into their day. They were helping Sam’s godmother move. A thousand miles to the west and an hour earlier in Tucson, Gabby Giffords, Mark Kelly’s wife and Scott Kelly’s sister-in-law, was meeting constituents in a supermarket parking lot. A twenty-two-year-old man, whose name nobody knew, approached her. Back on the station, Kelly was burying himself in his work. He hadn’t noticed that the TV feed had gone out. The signal is lost fairly routinely, whenever the station blunders into a gap in the Ku-band’s coverage. Only a call from the ground finally broke his concentration. It was Houston. The CapCom told him that Peggy Whitson, a veteran astronaut and chief of the astronaut office, needed to talk to him. She would be on with him in five minutes. Astronauts endure some long minutes, but those were some of Kelly’s longest. During his contingency sims, he had asked that Whitson be his principal bearer of bad tidings. Now, on an otherwise uneventful Saturday, she wanted to talk to him. He felt heavier than he had in a hundred days. Maybe his grandmother had died, he thought. Maybe Sam had been in a car accident. He hadn’t yet connected the black screen on the TV and the phone call. It hadn’t dawned on him that the signal wasn’t lost but cut. Whitson came on the line. The conversation was made private. “I don’t know how to tell you this,” Whitson said, “so I’m just going to tell you: Your sister-in-law Gabby was shot.” The way gravity makes weightlessness hard to imagine, space can make life on Earth seem like an illusion. When the sun is shining, even our biggest cities become washed out and invisible, swallowed by the vaster stretches of brown and green around them. Vapour trails become clouds, and oil rigs become icebergs. It can be hard to believe that there are traffic jams and baseball games and border crossings down there. And it’s next to impossible to comprehend that someone might have just shot your sister-in-law in the head in a supermarket parking lot on a Saturday morning in Tucson. Kelly told Whitson that he wanted to know everything, that she shouldn’t seek to spare him. He wanted to feel what his family on the ground was feeling. He couldn’t be with them physically, but he could be with them in every other way. He told his crewmates what had happened, and he told them that he was going to be okay, but he was going to need to spend some time in his sleeping quarters. The first phone call he made was to his brother. Mark Kelly was still packing his bags in Houston, preparing to fly to Tucson. Over the coming hours and days, Scott made dozens more phone calls — to Mark, to Amiko, to his daughters. He worried that he was calling too much, that in trying to make up for not being there, he might have become too present. “No, it was actually really helpful,” Mark says today. In fact, “he was the rock, pretty much,” Sam Kelly says. Because of his distance, his sense of disbelief dug in for longer than it stayed in the others, and maybe that’s what allowed adaptation to turn into resiliency, as though he were the last of them with any hope that a different reality might be true. President Obama announced that on Monday the nation would observe a moment of silence. Kelly would lead it from space, after he had said a few words. Just before he was scheduled to speak, he called Amiko. She was in Mission Control in Houston. He wasn’t sure how long the moment of silence should be. She told him it should be as long as he wanted. 84
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Kelly soon floated in front of the camera and onto the giant screens in front of her and everybody else. “Houston, Station, on Space-to-Ground One,” he said. “Yes, Station, this is Houston. Go ahead.” Kelly began by talking about his vantage point and how peaceful the planet looked in that instant from space, and how sharply what he saw diverged from what he knew. As he spoke, his voice grew harder through the crackle, a military man about to give an order. “We are better than this,” he said. “We must do better.” Then he asked for the moment of silence in honour of the victims of another one of those days when we did our worst. It was just long enough. He floated out of the camera’s range, swimming back into his sleeping quarters. Amiko’s phone soon rang beside her again.
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astronauts still leave our planet is the place where the first one did: Site No. 1 in the sprawling Baikonur Cosmodrome, carved out of the middle of the Kazakh desert. The launchpad was poured in 1955 under a veil of secrecy so thick — including mislabelled maps and a diversionary mining town also named Baikonur located hundreds of miles to the northeast — most of the men who built it didn’t know what they were building. Sputnik was launched from it two years later. Four years after that, a star-crossed young Russian named Yuri Gagarin sailed into orbit from this Soviet monument to the invisible. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russia leased the site from Kazakhstan; it is the last colony of a former empire. The pad is a wide, cracked concrete slab with train tracks embedded in it. The tracks end at an enormous hole framed by steel gantry towers. Underneath the pad, below that hole, a great crater has been dug out of the brown earth, vertigo-deep and wider than the pad itself. The Russians call the crater the otvod , which roughly translated means “getaway.” In September, six months before he was scheduled to leave the Earth for a year, Scott Kelly climbed down into that pit. Officially, he was in Kazakhstan as a backup for an American named Barry “Butch” Wilmore, a crew-cut Tennessean with a wife and two young daughters who was about to launch to the space station with two Russian crewmates as part of Expedition 41. If Wilmore had fallen in the shower or betrayed some previously undiscovered cavity in his nerve, Kelly would have taken his seat on Soyuz TMA-14M, and another American would have taken Kelly’s place in history in March. Less formally, and more hopefully, Kelly was there to complete a dress rehearsal for his departure, another step in his gradual accumulation of discipline. He would do everything that he will do, except go. The Russians put much faith in patterns and their repetition, and part of their prelaunch ritual is that the backup crew clambers down into the otvod and inspects the bottom of the Soyuz FG on behalf of their captive colleagues, quarantined against prelaunch illness. Kelly was awed to look up at essentially the same collection of boosters that the Russians have employed since 1967. Two nights later, where he was standing would be filled with white-hot flame, but on that bright morning, in the silence and shadow, he was afforded a lung-emptying view. He wasn’t
looking up at a “bird” or a vessel or a ship. Soyuz, plainly and unmistakably, is a colossal rocket. Earlier that morning, at precisely seven o’clock — because that’s when Gagarin’s Vostok had been ferried to the pad, and so that’s when every manned rocket the Russians have fired up since has begun its long journey into space — the rocket was pulled horizontally, business-end first, through a gaping maw in the side of Building 112 by a green locomotive. It can seem as though Russia’s space programme is a celebration of the past as much as it is a hedge against the future. There are constant reminders of who and what came before. As always, one of the locomotive’s headlights had been put out; nobody seems to remember why anymore. A soldier with a sniffer dog walked the track ahead of it. Other soldiers with machine guns marched beside it. The track was aimed due east, towards a just-rising sun, its glow banking bright orange off clouds. In one of humanity’s great pieces of theatre, Soyuz rolled out into the light.
It was muscular and sleek in the thin morning air, the locomotive clanging and whistling ahead of it in wordless testimony to the evolution of our engines. It was more than 160 feet of power and restraint, of stages and modules, from its rhino’s butt through its four gunmetal-grey boosters and its lathe-perfect middle, tapering to its gleaming white cap with its seamless hatch and, somewhere behind it, three seats, shaped more like cradles. When the locomotive stopped and the rocket sat still before a small crowd that could see its breath in the cold, it felt almost impossible that so much of this great and artful machine would be burned up and spent, except for its most essential parts, which would require only five hours and 16 minutes to catch and dock with the station, orbiting at 17,500 miles an hour, somewhere up there. On some nights, if the mathematics and angles are right, you can see the light of the space station streak across the sky three minutes and 16 seconds before the huge rocket lifts off like a greyhound chasing a mechanical rabbit. It can feel like too great a distance to close in so little time. Mars can seem that way. Michael Suffredini believes that it’s possible for one of us to stand on it by 2035, if the will is found and the right investments are made and we figure out a less diabolical way to dissolve particulates in urine. That means it will probably take longer than he hopes. Whether we reach it in the lifetime of Scott Kelly is a function less of our ability than our desire. Mars never seems more remote than when we’re putting bullets into congresswomen in parking lots. It never seems closer than when we’re standing on the cracked concrete at Baikonur. The Kazakh desert already looks as though it belongs to another planet, barren except for conquering packs of wild dogs and herds of camels. “It’s a good first step,” Kelly says. It already feels so far from home. At the Memorial Museum of Cosmonautics in Moscow, underneath a shining titanium monument of a rocket soaring into the sky, there is a black-and-white photograph of Yuri Gagarin as a boy. He was short because his family was poor and he was malnourished — it was wartime and his village of Klushino was under Nazi occupation — but he was a beautiful boy. The photograph is there mostly for other children to see, mounted close to the floor, so that they might remember that this giant was once their size. When the Russians were more
Site No. 1, Kazakhstan: The gantry towers closing on the Soyuz rocket before launch. JANUARY 2015
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deeply invested in the hero-building business, they knew that children needed to believe that someone like them could grow up to be someone like him. Belief is the first of our gaps that needs to be bridged. A galaxy away in Baikonur, not far from the launchpad, two cottages sit among the desert’s few trees. These are for grownups to visit. They are made of white plaster and green wood, with corrugated sheet metal for roofs. In one, Gagarin slept, apparently soundly, before his fateful launch. His small bed, neatly made, sits in the corner of one room, with a table and chairs and a record player. In the other cottage, Sergei Korolev worked more than he slept. He was Russia’s preeminent rocket engineer and designer. He dreamt up Vostok and Soyuz here. In the Energia factory where the Soyuz capsule is assembled, a massive mural of his face is on the wall, with a quote: “The road to the stars is clear.” In his office in his cottage, preserved like Gagarin’s bedroom, there is a plain desk and a single wooden chair and a lamp. These were his instruments to overcome magnitudes. Now, all these years later, Korolev’s rocket inched its way down the tracks, taking more than two hours to cover the not quite five miles to Gagarin’s pad. Then the locomotive’s engineer reversed it up to the hole in the concrete. The rocket was made vertical by hydraulics and levers, and it became even more titanic upright than it had been on its side. Four weighted support arms were swung into position and placed against its hull. The train soon pulled away, and the rocket was left suspended over the otvod as though by magic. When the American shuttle was on its pad, it was pinned to the ground by a series of explosive bolts, showy and pyrotechnic and one more thing that could go wrong. The Russians rely on Korolev’s more ancient and simple physics. The rocket waits, held in place only by those four delicate arms, which act the way flying buttresses hold up a Gothic cathedral’s soaring ceiling, gravity made to work against itself, weakness turned into strength. Soyuz can float on its pad only because it is so heavy. Later, two bearded Russian orthodox priests would visit it, their black robes whipping around them like flags. They chanted and sang baritone hymns in Soyuz’s shadow and waved a cross and threw holy water at it. That was after Kelly had dropped down into the getaway to stare up at the bottom of it, six months before he would strap into a cradle at its top. Twice graced, by Russian mysticism and American marvel, that colossal rocket was deemed ready for launch.
in space, but when he came back to Earth last time, he had gravity sickness. The muscles that held up his head hurt. His spine was painfully compressed. He didn’t smash coffee mugs like so many of his colleagues, letting go of them in midair and expecting them to float, but he did try to kick himself to his bathroom one night and couldn’t figure out why he wasn’t flying out of his bed. For every day they spend in space, astronauts can expect to need a day on the ground to return to some version of their former selves. By that measure, Kelly is about to spend two years away. In the quiet before his departure, he answered a question about whether his time in orbit had changed him in more fundamental ways than the redistribution of his calluses. Whether
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he and his insides were something they weren’t before. “No,” he said. Not everybody who knows him agrees. Before their six-month mission together, Cady Coleman had been a little wary of being his crewmate for such a long time. They could be stony with each other on the ground. He was sometimes too blunt, she thought, oblivious to the needs and feelings of others. She played the flute and was more finely tuned. “There couldn’t be people who are more different than Scott and me,” she says today. “I know there are things he didn’t see.” With the soles of his feet stripped, he was forced to take lighter steps. She was taken by how gentle and kind he was in orbit, how measured he was in how he moved and spoke. “Somehow the imperatives are just more clear up there,” Coleman says. Their time in space didn’t align exactly; she came down after him. She was shocked to find him waiting for her when she landed. Samantha Kelly saw changes in her father, too. In the six months before he went into space, they hadn’t been easy on each other. The breakup of their family had done the damage that all breakups do, and the distance between Texas and Virginia had made it harder for them to repair it. Now they are back under the same roof. They listen to each other. He is more demonstrative in his love. In their first days back together the last time, father and daughter retreated to a friend’s pool. “You have no idea how good this feels,” he said to her as they sat with the sun warm on their faces. The way he said it struck her. “I noticed him being more appreciative of everything,” she says. “I don’t know if he ever knew this about himself, but prior to it… I think he was grateful, but he didn’t really express it a lot. He’s more positive. When I make him a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich, he looks at me like I made him a four-course meal.” Amiko Kauderer talks about those six months her new boyfriend was away as though each were a forge that shaped and strengthened their bond. “We already shared so much, but the launch was when we really kicked off,” she says.
Soyuz launches from the same pad in Baikonur that saw Yuri Gagarin make mankind’s �irst tentative visit to space
They didn’t talk every day at first, but they came to speak most days, and more and more when he began to struggle with the lengths of silence. “We did this together,” she says. They were levelled by his time in space, the astronaut and the small-town Texas girl who works on the ground on behalf of people like him. Now each weighed as much as the other. For the first time in their relationship, there were ebbs and flows in their dependency. Space had made it harder to tell who had needed saving and who had come to the rescue. In Kazakhstan, Kelly helped Butch Wilmore navigate his farewell to Earth. Kelly knew that his last pillow would be one in the Cosmonaut Hotel, where they spend their quarantine; he knew that his last meal with knives and forks would be plates of cured meat and pies with fruit for dessert; he knew that his last goodbyes to the people he loved would be made through glass. There is always a final press conference at which the three members of the prime crew and their three reserves sit in a row, speaking with microphones to a crowd of family and friends and reporters from behind germproof windows. This time, once it was over and the crowd had moved outside, Kelly suddenly appeared in the sunshine. He told Mike Fossum, in Baikonur as an extra set of astronaut shoulders, to find Wilmore’s shy blonde wife, Deanna. Fossum, who had completed a long-duration flight in 2011, understood. Kelly had smuggled Wilmore outside, in the cover of a distant stand of trees. Fossum soon brought over Deanna. Kelly and Fossum went on lookout, turning their backs on the moment they had created. For a free minute or two, husband and wife, though careful not to touch, shared the air and each other, the last time they would be alone together for six months. Two nights later, in the early-morning blackness, Wilmore and his Russian crewmates waved through bus windows one last time, their alien Sokol suits made phosphorescent by the flashes of cameras. The way it always is, an old Russian rock song by a band named Zemlyane — “Earthlings” — about going into space and missing grass had been played for them over speakers. They went to their rocket. Their families headed for a stretch of desert just a
mile from the pad; the Russians believe in proximity. The Wilmores did their best to hide their tension with their smiles. They didn’t succeed. So much effort and hope had come down to these last tugs of gravity, the rocket turned white with a thick blanket of frost, clouds of steam belching out of and up its groaning sides. Once it was pumped full with liquid oxygen and kerosene, it had become a living thing with impulses and desires of its own. Shuttle launches had felt less predetermined and inevitable; they were so often scrubbed late because of a rainstorm at one of the emergency-landing sites in Spain or some small mechanical failure. The shuttle was built with so many outs, lift-off never felt certain until it was. Soyuz leaves no room for alternatives. It is never late, and it is never scrubbed. If you are strapped into one of its seats, you are about to be launched out the other side of the sky. And then the fire was lit, and it filled the getaway and spilled over its banks like a river in flood, those four arms capitulating to the surge and swinging clear. The fire pushed down in a thickening stream, and the rocket lifted off, the sound of its engines taking longer to reach Deanna and her girls than the light, but now it rolled across the sand in a wave, not a rumble but a crack, a thunderclap in their chests. Soyuz somehow found in itself more speed, and within seconds it was truer to say that it had left than it was leaving. It reached into the night like a flare, the desert illuminated in its wake, and when it neared the clouds, the fire lit its way forward, too. Korolev was right, and then he was right again: the road really is clear. Now the Earth had a ceiling as well as a floor, and the rocket burst through it, leaving concentric circles of eerie light. On and up it went, disappearing except for the last of its noise, until it faded out, leaving the early morning dark and quiet again. The Wilmores, exhausted and tearful and joyous, cheered and hugged and turned to make their way to the bus that would start them on their way home. Before they had collapsed into their seats, their husband and father was weightless. Only eight minutes and counting, and he was long gone. After, Kelly resumed his own countdown, T minus one hundred and eighty-three days. There are American astronauts for whom a year in space would pass as quickly as a dream. They are more curious than him, more inventive, less tied to Earth and their girlfriends and their daughters. But he’s the right astronaut for this trial expedition because the right astronaut for the real one will be someone just like him. Kelly is the analogue for the beautiful boy out there who has the notion but not yet the evidence that he will be our first Martian. He will likely be a man and by then middle-aged, because he will need to be cancer resistant, and he will have armoured eyes, because he will need to be able to see, and he will be a pilot, because he will need to know how to fly, and he will be military, because he will need to give and follow orders. “If someone asks you to do something, especially if it’s hard, you shouldn’t say no,” Kelly says. But going to Mars will be so much more than a function of obedience and strength. It will take more than making an engine powerful enough or a descent module responsive enough or the rest of the machine and its crew durable enough. None of us has ever looked out a window and seen the Earth as just another light in the sky. We can’t know what that will do to us until one of us does it. So our beautiful boy will also be doubtful, because he will need to be subject to change, and he will be reticent, because he will need to be incapable of lies, and he will be in love, because we will need him to come back home. JANUARY 2015
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Esquire celebrates the New Year with nine of the most inspirational men taking off in the region. And where better to do that then at Emirates DXB with an A380?
STYLING AND WORDS BY KATE HAZELL PHOTOGRAPHY BY KATE LEWIS
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Tony Underwood Former British Rugby Union player Tony Underwood swapped the muddy field for the cockpit as he now flies A380s across the world for Emirates Airlines. “Professional sport is a young person’s game, and after 27 appearances for my country, I began to realise that my mind would one day start to make promises that my body wouldn’t be able to keep,” smiles the 45-year-old Brit. “In truth, flying wasn’t something I’d thought much about until I sat in the flight deck on a trip to South Africa with the British Lions. I realised that my passion for travel and adventure was fairly well encapsulated in the life of a pilot.” Underwood has been in the UAE for just over a year and can usually be found at the gym, on the golf course, or “belting up and down the Al Qudra cycle track” if not at work. From playing in the Rugby World Cup in 1995 to now being responsible for hundreds of lives thousands of feet up in the sky as one of Emirates’ First Officers, this year he hopes to take further steps to make Captain. “Emerging from a flight simulator after a gruelling assessment every six months is an achievement in itself,” he grins. “What I enjoy about flying is the opportunity to see many places as per the destinations we fly to,” he adds. As Underwood prepares, once again, to reach the top of his professional career, does he any tips for success? “A famous boss once told me that any fool can make things complicated but that it takes a genius to keep things simple. I’ve been amazed at the number of times that’s rung true.” Mr Underwood wears: Suit, Dhs4,147, by Richard James at Mrporter.com; Shirt, Dhs1,350, by Gucci; Tie, Dhs725, by Alexander McQueen at Saks Fifth Avenue Dubai; Trunk, Dhs31,000, Louis Vuitton.
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Hazem Aljesr As owner and Founding Managing Director of art and lifestyle store Cities, 36-year-old Saudi Hazem Aljesr is heavily inspired and influenced by travel, which is evident in his fast-growing business. After starting his career at Tom Dixon Design studios in London, a design and manufacturing lighting and furniture company, Aljesr gained experience in the world of high-end design, and his work has been acquired by museums across the globe, including leading names such as the Victoria & Albert Museum, Museum of Modern Art New York and Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris. His latest project, Cities, which originally opened in Riyadh in 2008, with a second boutique recently opening at The Galleria in Jumeirah 1, specialises in unique art and design sourced by Aljesr on his far-and-wide travels. The store also prides itself on providing regional designers and artists with a larger platform to showcase their work and talent through store installations, exhibitions, and publications. “Travel is so inspiring but you have to be organised. As I travel a lot for work, my three essentials are my iPhone, with which I conduct a lot of business while I’m on the go, and my MacBook Pro,” admits Aljesr, who looks to Lora Piana and Tom Ford for tailoring. And the third? “A lightweight blazer. It’s my go-to piece and appropriate in a number of different settings if you need to look smart.” Mr Aljesr wears: His own suit and waistcoat; Tie, Dhs530, Saint Laurent at Saks Fifth Avenue Dubai. JANUARY 2015
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Simon Parkinson As a resident of the UAE for over a decade, British creative Simon Parkinson has largely carved out his artistic career at the hands of the young city. “The UAE is a dream-making country; it’s still largely a blank canvas and the city is in a fast-paced development phase, even today,” says the 39-year-old, who is Creative Director at global brand and creative design consultancy agency, Brand Union. “How often can you truly say that you were there at the beginning of the creative birth of a city? The UAE set me on a journey and it’s one that I am still loving more than 10 years later.” Having collaborated and worked with the likes of Coldplay and photographers Mert & Marcus, and Nick Waplington, the designer is inspired by the exciting talent the region has to offer. “Working with clients and creatives who have challenged and inspired me to go further in design has been the highlight of my career so far,” he says. “Internationallevel Arab talent such as the artists eL Seed, who I worked with when I designed his first book Lost Walls for its launch during Art Dubai last year, has also been a high point. There’s so much creative talent here it’s hard not to be inspired.” Mr Parkinson wears: Jacket, Dhs5,939, Alexander McQueen at Mrporter. com; Trousers, Dhs1,540, Neil Barrett at Stylebop.com; own shirt and shoes.
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Peter Rear Filmatography, a production company commissioned for private cinema productions, has managed to position itself at the top of its game since launching in 2012. CEO, and digital pioneer Peter Rear runs his studio between London and Dubai. “Dubai has huge opportunities in the luxury sector where the studio operates, but it’s also a great gateway to the rest of the Middle East,” explains the 34-year-old Brit. “Since establishing ourselves in Dubai we have made significant expansion into Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Jordan, Lebanon and Bahrain.” Sir Patrick Stewart — for whom Rear recently produced a showreel collating his great work, and which was presented at the Chivas Legends Dinner last month in Dubai — said of his work, “This is without question the best production of my life’s work ever made. The storytelling and creative insight is astounding.” Impressive words from one of Hollywood’s greats. This month, Filmatography launches its new Middle East Cinema Studio HQ in Sunset Mall on Jumeirah Beach Road. “Combining contemporary design, state of the art technology and groundbreaking innovation, it will deliver a client experience never encountered before,” Rear explains. “For years Filmatography has been delivering world-class cinema to its clients and now the studio will be entertaining them in its own private screening theatre. Later in the year we are planning a pilot for our first feature TV series, which is also really exciting.” Mr Rear wears: Three-piece suit, Dhs9,556, Dolce & Gabbana at Mrporter.com; Shoes and trunk, Dhs31,000, both Louis Vuitton; Shirt and tie both his own. JANUARY 2015
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Mahmoud El Sidani Level Shoe District, set across 96,000 square feet of impeccably designed space in The Dubai Mall, houses the world’s largest range of women’s and men’s shoes under one roof. As part of the Chalhoub Group, people travel far and wide to visit the impressive boutique and unrivalled selection of footwear, for which Mahmoud El Sidani is responsible. “The UAE has definitely helped me launch my career,” explains the 25-year-old Lebanese buyer. “My company is regionally based but has global recognition. It has offered me the chance to meet and work with incredible people around the world. My proudest achievement so far would definitely be when our team won the Footwear News retailer of the year award last month in New York.” As the stylish, self-confessed sneaker-head El Sidani travels all across the world sourcing some of the most rare, interesting and sought-after shoes, what are his goto-trainers for 2015? “My Louis Leeman sneakers, for sure,” he says. “They are a basic in my wardrobe and travel with me where ever I go as they can be smartened up with a suit or look just as great with jeans.” Mr El Sidani wears: Jacket, Dhs9,670, trousers, Dhs2,670, and tie, Dhs705, all by Dior Homme at Saks Fifth Avenue Dubai; Shoes, Valentino, and shirt, both his own.
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Markus Thesleff If you went to any one of Dubai’s hot spots last year, it’s likely that Markus Thesleff and his company, Whissle Hospitality, were involved. As the brains behind cool venues Okku, Claw, RIVA, Cielo Sky Lounge, Sophie’s and Casa de Tapas, 41-yearold Thesleff is fast filling the country with hip eateries that are changing the face of the nightlife and F&B industry in the region. “I love this place. It reminds me of Manhattan 10 years ago — it’s such a melting pot,” excitedly explains the Finn. “The UAE is a friendly and safe place that encourages personal achievement and entrepreneurship, and this year I just want to continue to build what I think is the best boutique hospitality company in the region, one guest at a time.” Mr Thesleff wears: Suit, Dhs10,600, and tie, Dhs750, both Gucci; own shirt and shoes. 96
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Paul Frangie With a degree in economics, a passion for fitness and a believer in good, nutritious food, Paul Frangie is a man of many talents. A well-known face around the region as the founder and presenter of online show This Dude Knows Food , Frangie’s time spent at London’s Tante Marie Culinary Academy and behind the scenes at some of the British capital’s best kitchens (including the three-Michelin-star Restaurant Gordon Ramsay) has led him to 2015, where his big plans are finally coming to fruition. “The rapid growth of the food, media and events industries here in the UAE has given me the opportunity to work on great platforms with amazing people,” he humbly admits. “As the UAE cements itself on the global stage; doing something good here means you get recognised for it internationally.” The 29-year-old Dutchman was certainly recognised last year when he cooked on live TV to over 1.5 million viewers on the UK’s biggest breakfast show, ITV’s This Morning . “It was one of my proudest achievements so far. I believe this is just the beginning, and hopefully there are many more to come. I’m working on my first cookbook, as well as opening my own food and fitness outlet in Dubai. These are both big projects that I’m hoping to get off the ground in 2015.” Mr Frangie wears: suit, and tie, all Ralph Lauren Black Label. JANUARY 2015
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Hamid Rashidmanesh While you may recognise 42-year-old Hamid Rashidmanesh from our Best Dressed list last year, it’s not just his impeccable style that keeps him on the pages of Esquire. As Managing Director and General Counsel of Arqaam Capital in DIFC, Rashidmanesh is one of the founding partners that started one of the region’s fastest-growing and exciting investment banks. “When we first started in 2007, we wanted to bring the best international standards of investment banking to the Middle East,” explain the qualified lawyer, who has lived in Dubai for seven years. “It has been relatively easy to recruit the talent we need into Dubai, with its reputation, social infrastructure and international connections, and DIFC has succeeded in establishing itself as a financial centre in the region.” And while we imagine his collection of immaculate, bespoke three-piece suits will continue to grow, what else does 2015 have in store for Rashidmanesh? “While I’m so proud of founding Arqaam Capital, which has succeeded in growing, prospering and providing jobs to so many people, I look forward to further expanding the business even more, while trying to find a better work-life balance with my family.” Mr Rashidmanesh wears: his own bespoke suit and tie. 98
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David Lessard In a city that is worldrenowned for its ambitious architecture, David Lessard is one of the youngest architects helping shape the UAE’s impressive infrastructure. As Senior Architect at Perkins+Will, and Membership Director at AIA Middle East, the 32-year-old American has worked on some of the region’s most impressive and iconic structures and sits at the head of boardrooms in New York, Prague, Abu Dhabi and Dubai on high-profile projects with some of the world’s leading architects and consultants practising today. “In architecture, there is never one person responsible for realising a project, so to claim any one achievement for myself would be disingenuous,” he smiles. “Having said that, I’ve been invited to speak at public conferences, write for publications and participate in academics all while maintaining a senior level position at Perkins+Will, all before the age of 35 in an industry where you’re considered a ‘young architect’ in your 40s. The UAE’s ambition to grow its infrastructure with a sensitivity towards design provides architects with many opportunities. My career has been shaped by this notion and has forced me to mature in my work much more quickly than if I were practising architecture in the US, which generally tends to work much more slowly.” His Brooklyn background and Italian heritage is evident in Lessard’s flawless style,
which requires no updating. But what about his career, looking forward? “Last year was a year of achievements, as I helped to grow the AIA Middle East member count to the largest international chapter as Membership Director,” he says. “Feeding off this momentum,
my experience in luxury residential and hotel projects brings a wealth of knowledge to a firm that is already well established and proven in creating sophisticated, functional and refined architecture.” This combination has a lot of potential in 2015.
Mr Lessard wears all own clothes, and carries a Rimowa suitcase.
Make-up by Marciel Jospeh at Illumin8 Make-Up Studio, www.illumin8makeupstudio.com. With special thanks to Emirates, www.emirates.com.
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DIRECTORY Where to get all your gear
ABC
ACNE at Boutique1, mrporter.com AGENT PROVOCATEUR +971 (0) 4 339 9570 AHMED SEDDIQI & SONS +971 ( 0) 4 339 8881 ARMANI +971 (0) 4 339 8121 ASCOT & CHAPELS +97150 458 3700 ASOS ASOS.COM AVENUE AT ETIHAD TOWERS 800 384 4238 BALENCIAGA at Saks Fifth Avenue Dubai +971 (0) 4 501 2700 BANANA REPUBLIC +971 (0) 4 339 8462 BAUME & MERCIER +971 (0) 4 339 8880 BIN HENDI +971 (0) 4 348 6361 BLANCPAIN +971 (0) 4 339 8304 BLOOMINGDALE’S DUBAI +971 (0) 4 350 5333 BOGGI +971 (0) 4 325 3422 BOUTIQUE 1 boutique1.com BREGUET +971 (0) 4 339 8756 BULGARI +971 (0) 4 330 8834 BURBERRY +971 (0) 4 339 8357 BURJUMAN +971 (0) 4 352 0222 CALVIN KLEIN +971 (0) 4 340 3448 CARTIER +971 (0) 4 434 0434 CARVEN at mrporter.com CHOPARD +971 (0) 4 339 8333 CHURCH’S church-footwear.com CLARINS +971 (0) 4 434 0522 COLUMBIA +971 (0)4 434 1280
DIESEL SHIRT
MASSIMO DUTTI BLAZER
While we don’t agree with combat trousers, this military shirt is perfectly acceptable.
This jersey blazer is as comfy as a cardigan but will make you look like you mean business.
Dhs1,009
Around Dhs850
DEF
DEBENHAMS +971 (0) 4 339 9285 DIESEL +971 (0) 4 341 1395 DIOR HOMME +971 (0) 4 330 8739 DOLCE & GABBANA +971 (0) 4 341 0626 DSQUARED +971 (0) 4 339 8709 DUBAI MALL, THE +971 (0) 4 362 7500 DUNHILL +971 (0) 4 434 0403 FIN’S at Saks Fifth Avenue +971 (0) 4 501 2700 FRED PERRY +971 (0) 4 339 9358 GHI
GALERIES LAFAYETTE +971 (0) 4 339 9933 GARRARD +971 (0) 4 339 8386 GIORGIO ARMANI +971 (0) 4 330 0447 GIVENCHY +971 (0) 4 330 8282 GRENSON at Boutique 1 and mywardrobe.com GUCCI +971 (0) 4 339 8712 HARRY WINSTON at Ahmed Seddiqi & Sons HARVEY NICHOLS +971 (0) 4 409 8888 HAVAIANAS +971 (0) 50 358 2797 HERMÈS +971 (0) 4 330 8385 HOGAN +971 (0) 4 341 3144 IWC +971 (0) 4 339 8111
ROAMER WATCH
JIGSAW BROGUES
120-year-old Swiss watch brand Roamer makes excellent watches without the worry of your bank balance excessively depleting.
These brushed-cotton brogues are pefect for smartening up weekend wear.
Dhs1,500 at Paris Gallery
Dhs1,375
JKL
J.LINDEBERG at Boutique 1 JAMES JEANS asos.com JAQUET DROZ +971 (0) 4 330 0455 JOHN LOBB +971 (0) 4 330 8244 KENZO +971 (0) 4 434 0472 and Saks Fifth Avenue KIEHL’S at Harvey Nichols LACOSTE +971 (0) 4 339 8294 LANVIN +971 (0) 4 330 8008 LOGSDAIL +971 (0) 4 3233 148 LONGCHAMP +971 (0) 4 339 8460 LORO PIANA +971 (0) 4 330 0546 LOUIS VUITTON +971 (0) 4 330 8060 MNO
MALL OF THE EMIRATES +971 (0) 4 409 9000 MAN�AGE SPA +971 (0) 4 437 0868
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REPLAY JACKET
PRADA EYEGLASSES
It’s the perfect time to dig out, or update your wardrobe with a new denim jacket
A touch of tortoiseshell, especially when it comes to these eyeglasses, is a dapper mans essential. Dhs975
Around Dhs800
MARC BY MARC JACOBS at Saks Fifth Avenue MARC JACOBS at Saks Fifth Avenue MARKS & SPENCER +971 (0) 4 339 8890 MARNI at Harvey Nichols MARTIN MARGIELA at Saks Fifth Avenue MIRDIF CITY CENTRE +971 800 6422 MISSONI Boutique 1 MONTBLANC +971 (0) 4 341 4451 MR.PORTER mrporter.com MY WARDROBE mywardrobe.com NEIL BARRETT at Harvey Nichols NEXT +971 (0) 4 340 3898 OMEGA +971 (0) 4 339 830
PQR
COS JUMPER
CH CAROLINA HERRERA KNIT
This scribble print is perfect for the messy art-lover. Dhs269
Can’t choose which one of this season’s colours you prefer? This jumper sports all three. Price on request
PANERAI +971 (0) 4 339 8444 PARIS GALLERY +971 (0) 4 237 2222 PATEK PHILIPPE +971 (0) 4 339 8999 PAUL & SHARK +971 (0) 4 434 1412 PAUL SMITH +971 (0) 4 359 0099 PHILIPP PLEIN at +971 (0) 4 339 8262 PRADA +971 (0) 4 501 2870 PUMA +971 (0) 4 434 0204 RALPH LAUREN +971 �0) 4 330 8005 RAY�BAN at Al Jaber Optical and Yateem Opticians REISS +971 (0) 4 341 0515 RIVER ISLAND +971 (0) 4 339 9685 RIVOLI +971 (0) 4 339 8496 RODIAL at Harvey Nichols ROLEX +971 (0) 4 339 8000
ST
LA MARTINA TROUSERS
BOTTEGA VENETTA BAG
Team a thin knit with these esquestrianinspired trousers for an alternative take on the winter trend.
This butter-soft briefcase will add a pop of colour to your everyday suit.
Dhs450
Dhs13,700 at Harvey Nichols Dubai
SAINT LAURENT BY HEDI SLIMANE +971 (0) 4 341 0113 SAKS FIFTH AVENUE +971 (0) 4 501 2700 SALVATORE F ERRAGAMO +971 (0) 4 330 8590 SEPHORA +971 (0) 4 232 6023 SIMON SPURR at Bloomingdale’s, mrporter.com SMYTHSONS boutique1.com STONE ISLAND boutique1.com TAG HEUER +971 (0) 4 339 8555 TED BAKER +971 (0) 4 434 0623 THE EMPEROR 1688 at Saks Fifth Avenue THE LUXURY EMPORIUM theluxuryemporium.com THOMAS PINK +971 (0) 4 339 8598 THOM BROWNE mrporter.com TIFFANY & CO +971 (0) 4 339 8256 TIMBERLAND +971 (0) 4 434 1291 TOD’S +971 (0) 4 341 3033 TOM FORD +971 (0) 4 330 8300 TOM FORD EYEWEAR at Tom Ford TOPMAN +971 (0) 4 324 2866 TUMI +971 (0) 4 339 8536
UVW VAN CLEEF & ARPELS +971 (0) 4 339 8001 VANS at Level Shoe Distrcit, +971 (0) 4 5016 888 VERSACE +971 (0) 4 339 8285 VILEBREQUIN +971 (0) 4 392 7456 WAFI +971 (0) 4 324 4555
XYZ Y3 at Boutique 1 ZEGNA +971 (0) 4 339 8749
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DIOR HOMME SNEAKERS
An exceedingly British take on a weekend essential, this holdall is perfect for the dapper gent. Dhs1,100
Despite connotations of your old school gym kit, Dior Homme’s managed to makes velcro pretty sleek. Dhs3,000
1847 +971 (0) 4 330 1847 3.1 PHILIP LIM at Harvey Nichols and Boutique 1
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WHY NOW?
RUGBY See the Six Nations, with Ireland hosting the big boys: France, on Saturday February 14, and England on March 1 at the new Aviva Stadium. avivastadium.ie
R E T S W E R B M A S Y B S N O I T A R T S U L L I
Travel
DUBLIN
GOOD THINGS COME TO THOSE WHO WAIT: NOW THE RECESSION’S OVER, REDISCOVER THE IRISH CAPITAL
W
ith a younger brother and a cousin at Trinity College while the city was riding rodeo on the Celtic Tiger boom in the mid Noughties, I’ve a fair few warm and very, very fuzzy memories of the Irish capital. Now that the Republic has swallowed the bitter pill of austerity, things are looking rosier again, so craic on and visit one of Europe’s most enjoyable cities. Tom Barber is a founder of award-winning travel company originaltravel.co.uk
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GETTING T HERE Emirates �lies directly to Dublin twice per day, but the cheapest option is usually KLM with a three-hour stopover in Amsterdam.
VISIT
TRINITY CO LLEGE LIBRARY I wouldn’t normally recommend heading to a city’s university unless you are a student, but Trinity College’s Long Room library is a staggeringly beautiful space containing 200,000 antique books. Have your socks well and truly knocked off by the Book of Kells Kells, a ninthcentury illustrated gospel that is a shining beacon of light from the Dark Ages. tcd.ie
SHOP
TWEED Leave tailors Kevin & Howlin head to toe in hand-woven hand-wov en Donegal tweed, even down to a bow tie. Clothes designed to deal with the Irish weather and made to last. kevinandhowlin.com SEE
BACON BRAIN When Dublin-born artist Francis Bacon died, his London was painstakingly surveyed and photographed before the contents were shipped and reinstalled in the Dublin City Gallery. Visit to see the room full of slashed canvasses and pages torn from books to get a glimpse inside Bacon’s brain. hughlane.ie
STAY
THE CLARENCE If you can accept that The Clarence is owned by half of U2, this is the best boutique hotel in town. Located on the banks of the Liffey River in the heart of Temple Bar, the beds are big and the service slick, but best of all is The Liqour Rooms, a drinking den in the basement, complete with speakeasy vibe. However advanced your state of refreshment, it should be possible to get back to your scratcher upstairs from here. theclarence.ie; theliquorrooms.com
DINE
COPPINGER ROW You will have opportunities to consume vast quantities of stout while in Dublin, so offset those with the light Mediterranean lunch and superb choice of G&Ts on offer at the Coppinger Row restaurant. coppingerrow.com
THE PIG’S EAR There are plenty of Michelin stars in Dublin, but this can often lead to laurels being rested upon. Coming up on the inside is The Pig’s Ear, where the elegant dining room overlooks the Trinity College campus. Top-quality local ingredients cooked to perfection might not be an original MO, but it works a treat here. Go for the prime Irish rump steak and bone-marrow mash. thepigsear.com
DRINK
THE STAG’S HEAD Obviously, this needs to be a pub serving a world-class world-cl ass Guinness (please note: other stouts are available). available ). One of the greats — on the corner of an unassuming side street — is The Stag’s Head, a Victorian boozer preserved in aspic with marble bar top and mahogany panelling. Enjoy a pint of the black stuff in James Joyce’s one-time local as the eponymous mounted deer looks on approvingly. louisfitzgerald.com/stagshead PARTY
HEAD OUT
HOWTH Take the train to the end of the line at Howth, a charming fishing village, where a bracing walk along the clifftops should blow the cobwebs away. Then tuck into insanely good fish and chips at Beshoff Brothers on Harbour Road. Forget the cod — go for the battered calamari or even ray instead. beshoffrestaurant.com
THE WORKMAN’S CLUB Head to The Workman’s Club for live music (crawling distance from The Clarence) or — if you make it that far — Saucy Sunday at the Grand Social, showcasing new Irish acts. theworkmansclub.com; thegrandsocial.ie
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Drive Dri ve
LOOK OUT, 911
THE BRAND NEW MERCEDES�AMG GT S IS THE SPORTS CAR TO BEAT
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hat can you get for Dhs690k these days? A year’s rent on a five-bedroom pad in a corner of Dubai, or ownership of a central London parking space (if you’re lucky). On the car front at least, your options
JANUARY 2015
open up. It’s the ballpark price where the Audi R8, Porsche 911 and Aston Martin Vantage are slugging it out in the notofficially-a-supercar-but-pretty-damn-close officially-a-supercar -but-pretty-damn-close department. And now, the Mercedes-AMG Mercedes-AMG GT is set t o join in. Following in the wake of the gull-wing-doored SLS, this
Due here in 2015, the AMG GT is a smaller, more affordable option to AMG’s outgoing SLS, and is set to take on the Porsche 911, Aston Martin Vantage and Audi R8
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MERCEDES�AMG GT S IN NUMBERS Y E S R E H L L I
3,982cc twin-turbocharged V8 POWER 503 bhp 0 � 1 0 0 K P H 3.8seconds T O P S P E E D 311kph Approx P R I C E Dhs690,000, (tba, early 2015) ENGINE
smaller, neater and curvier GT has borrowed the good bits smaller, from its predecessor (except the doors) and carved out its own distinctive look. The long bonnet and perched cockpit evoke the look of an old racer, while at the back, the Jaguar F-Ty FType pe now has an early rival for the sexiest rear on the road.
W Y B S D R O W �
With two versions launching — a souped-up GT S alongside the standard GT, due later — Mercedes is hoping the twoseater will be a more accessible option than the bigger, brasher and pricier SLS. Now go figure out where to get the cash. What’s Dhs690k these days after all? JANUARY 2015
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H A E L S I R H C Y B S H P A R G O T O H P
105
Drive
LOW BURN
THE CADILLAC ATS COUPE MAKES A COMPELLING CASE FOR REFINED AMERICAN MUSCLE
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aking on the Germans in have long struggled to make much of an the compact sports coupe impression, there is an appreciative audience segment? There have been here in the Middle East. Indeed, this is a car more sensible automotive that seems to enjoy every inch of Dubai’s ideas. The BMW 4 Series modern road network, from quick-offand the Audi A5 haven’t the-blocks acceleration at Al Barsha’s so much cornered the innumerable traffic lights to the sweeping market as set up an Alpine road block, turns of the desert highways approaching sneering at potential challengers with their Hatta from Jebel Ali. It makes total sense out grand-tourer styling and snarling, scrappy of getting out of bed at 8am on a Friday. kid-brother performance. The pleasure comes from the 3.6-litre Cadillac, though, has been trying and, with V6 engine, which pushes up to 321 horses each iteration of the through the rear wheels CTS, CTS Coupe and with a satisfyingly the smaller, nimbler gravel-throated ATS, has been getting CLASS RIVALS grunt on the emptier admirably close. stretches of road. The With the new ATS magnetorheological BMW 4 SERIES There aren’t many reviews that Coupe, its low-slung fluid-filled shocks, gave it less than full marks when predator of a sports meanwhile, help the it came out, and, until now, was sedan, Cadillac has just car careen with purpose the standard by which others cracked it. Combining into the ever-tightening have been judged. immediate kerb appeal, bend of Al Hessa distinctly Detroit lines Street’s tunnel. AUDI A5 Helped by a facelift in 2012, a and rumble-in-theWith a clean, range of engine sizes and an chest power, it’s a car compact layout, Ultra variant for 28.6kpl fuel that ought to make including a heads-up efficiency, this is the sensible an instant convert of windscreen display, option on the block. anyone sliding into keyless start and highthe driver’s seat for a MERCEDES quality interior, this is test drive. an exceptional car that C�CLASS COUPE This is the most similar in While that in will make some serious terms of body shape to the itself might be a inroads into Germany’s ATS Coupe, with its elongated battle in Europe, mid-range dominance. bonnet and squat stance. where American Especially here in the Impressive interior space, too. manufacturers car-mad Middle East.
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VITAL STATS
ENGINE: TRANSMISSION:
3.6-litre, V6 6-speed automatic
POWER:
321bhp
TOP SPEED:
235kph
0�60: KPL: PRICE:
5.5 seconds 9.4 from Dhs190,000 JANUARY 2015
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THIS WAY OUT
EXIT NOTES Trying to separate the facts from the rumours
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t seems that it’s pretty much the case. Research by scientists at WWF and the Zoological Society of London concluded that we destroyed half of the vertebrate animal population on Earth between 1970 and 2010. The Living Planet Index (LPI), which measures more than 10,000 representative populations of mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians and fish, has declined by 52 percent since 1970. It’s a staggering mass-slaughter in a relatively short period of time. The WWF stated: “These are the living forms that constitute the fabric of the ecosystems which sustain life on Earth – and the barometer of what we are doing to our own planet, our only home.” While the 3,038 vertebrate species included in the report are just a fraction of the estimated 62,839 species that have been recorded around the world, it gives us an idea of how we are destroying life on the planet. Only two years ago the initial investigation by the WWF (for the years 1970-2008) estimated the figure to be around 28 percent, but increased data has revealed the damage is far worse than first thought. “If half the animals died in London Zoo next week, it would be frontpage news,” said Professor Ken Norris, ZSL’s director of science. “But that is happening in the great outdoors. This damage is not inevitable but a 108
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Q: HAVE WE REALLY KILLED OFF HALF OF THE ANIMALS ON EARTH IN THE LAST 40 YEARS? consequence of the way we choose to live.” Over 2,000 sources — data on over 10,000 populations of around 3,000 species of mammal, bird, reptile, amphibian, and fish — from around the globe were used. Freshwater animals (such as frogs) have suffered the biggest drops, with an average decline of 79 percent. Populations of land-dwellers, such as the African elephant, have plummeted by 30 percent. Marine species declined 39 percent, with the biggest losses occurring in the tropics and the oceans off Antarctica — especially among marine turtles, shark species and large migratory seabirds. In South Africa, where 80 percent of all African rhinos are located, the rate of rhino poaching continues to accelerate. The number of animals
poached for their horns rose from 13 in 2007 to more than 1,000 in 2013. Despite growing awareness and improved protection, nearly one in 20 of the country’s rhino population was killed by poachers in 2013 alone, further increasing the pressure on existing populations. Not only have animal numbers been halved, some have ceased to exist altogether. In the last couple of years alone the species that have become extinct include the Pinta Island tortoise, the Formosan clouded leopard (pictured above) and Japanese river otter. If you’re looking for a regional perspective, then consider the hammour fish. According to the Environment Agency Abu Dhabi, overfishing of hammour has placed the species on the endangered list. In recent years, it’s
been over-fished seven times above the sustainable level that would allow the species to naturally replenish itself. The total number of commercially available fish in the country has declined by 80 percent in the past 30 years, according to a study by the Emirates Wildlife Society and World Wildlife Fund. Yet, from mall cafés to local fish and chip shops to celebrity-chef restaurants, there’s no shortage of venues happy to offer hammour, despite the fact that many other restaurants have removed it from their menus. If you want to personally do something about the decimation of life on Earth, then not eating the endangered parts of it would be a good start. The wider problem of man’s impact on the ecosystem we depend on for survival will be a harder fix.
